– It's a race for the governor's mansion in 11 states today, and the GOP could end the night at the helm of more than two-thirds of the 50 states. The GOP currently controls 29 of the country's top state offices; it's expected to keep the three Republican ones that are up for grabs (Utah, North Dakota, and Indiana), and wrest North Carolina from the Dems. That brings its toll to 30, with the potential to take three more, reports NPR. Races in Montana, New Hampshire, and Washington are still too close to call, and in all three, Democrat incumbents aren't seeking reelection. The results could have a big impact on health care, since a Supreme Court ruling grants states the ability to opt out of ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion. "A Romney victory would dramatically empower Republican governors," said one analyst. Click for NPR's state-by-state breakdown of what could happen.
– It turns out Facebook is only guilty of about half of what it’s been accused of in the gay kiss incident. The social networking site apologized yesterday for taking down an image used to promote a “kiss-in” event in London. “The photo in question does not violate our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, and was removed in error,” the site said in a statement, according to the Advocate. But Facebook did not, as has been reported in several places, take down the kiss-in event itself. Here’s what happened: The photo Facebook took down was posted by the Dangerous Minds blog to promote the event. In its initial write-up about the incident, the blog observed that the page organizing the protest had been taken down. But it was actually the organizer himself who "removed" the event, Dangerous Minds clarified. Organizer Paul Shetler explains that he decided to switch it from a public event to a private one, as "there were starting to be trolls posting abusive nonsense on it."
– Not a big fan of Southern California? Neither is Northern California, apparently. Supervisors in rural Siskiyou County voted 4-1 Tuesday in favor of seceding from the state, reports the Times-Standard. The county thinks state officials in Sacramento are too focused on the big metro areas of the south and thus want to form a state of its own—to be called Jefferson. Supporters want to invite other northern counties, and perhaps a few from Oregon, to join, too, notes the Los Angeles Times. ”We have to have government that's local, understands our issues, and has empathy,” says one local rancher. It's clearly a very long-shot bid, one that would eventually require the blessing of both the state legislature and the US Congress. Still, neighboring Humboldt County is expected to meet soon to consider the idea. (Meanwhile, some counties in Colorado want to form a new state of their own.)
– Why did Microsoft buy Nokia's phone business? We now know Microsoft's answer: The computing giant released a 30-slide presentation today arguing that the move will improve Microsoft's margins on Windows phones, which will allow it to invest more in the platform, which will accelerate sales and market share growth, the Washington Post reports. But John Herrman at Buzzfeed has another explanation: "Fear of dying alone." Here's what he and other pundits are saying: The presentation "manages to sound both insane and uninspiring, outlining modest goals that still sound unrealistic," Herman argues—like capturing a whole 15% of the smartphone market. "It's a fitting end for the close of Microsoft's Ballmer era, during which the company … missed out on the most important change in consumer electronics in decades" while remaining profitable in unglamorous ways. Like everyone, Microsoft is trying to ape the Apple model, MobileOpportunity observes. But it's not so sure that's a good idea. "There already is an apple," the blog points out, and other software/hardware hybrid companies, like Palm and BlackBerry, have been crushed under its heel. Maybe Microsoft should have tried to patch up its tried-and-true strategy of licensing its OS. The move risks complicating Microsoft's crucial relationships with other PC and device manufacturers, one analyst tells ZDNet. But he adds that "Microsoft needed to make a bold move" or face "certain terminal decline," and that the price it paid for Nokia "seems extremely reasonable." Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias at Slate digs up a fairly interesting memo from Nokia CEO (and, perhaps, Microsoft heir apparent) Stephen Elop, in which he uses the story of a Deepwater Horizon worker leaping from the burning oil platform—a seemingly desperate, yet necessary move—to explain the company's shift from its own failed OS to Windows Phone. Of course, Yglesias notes, that move "was basically a total failure." To read the full parable, click here.
– The Supreme Court is facing a docket of high-profile political cases that will test whether recent liberal victories were more fluke or firm conviction, the New York Times reports. The court—which is divided 5-4 for conservatives, but saw Justice Roberts vote liberal on Obamacare and same-sex marriage—will look at cases including unions, affirmative action, and possibly abortion. A primer: Unions: Since 1977, unions have been allowed to charge non-union workers for dues that go to collective bargaining efforts, but not political ones. Now California teachers have brought a case saying collective bargaining is itself political. "It could set the stage for a Citizens United-style reconsideration in the area of union dues," a lawyer says. Affirmative Action: Abigail Fisher says that being white played a role in the University of Texas denying her admission back in 2008. The Supreme Court punted on her case in 2013, and now it's back on the docket. Like the unions case, this was brought by a conservative group that recruited the plaintiffs. The death penalty: Justices will decide on capital-punishment cases in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Georgia, and Florida, the Wall Street Journal reports. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer have already expressed doubts about whether capital punishment is constitutional. "One person, one vote": Should state legislative districts be drawn based on their number of people or eligible voters? If justices choose the latter—leaving out immigrants and children—Latinos could lose political clout and rural areas will gain, Politico reports. Abortion: Justices may opt to revisit a Texas law that could reduce the state's abortion clinics from more than 40 to roughly 10. At issue is whether new clinic requirements are an "undue burden" on women's right to an abortion. One commentator believes this Supreme Court session will be ugly for liberals.
– In 1783, after the British soldiers left New York City, George Washington is believed to have stopped for a celebratory drink at the Bull's Head tavern. Now a preservationist thinks he's found the historic site—and if he's right, it could be the oldest building in Manhattan. Adam Woodward had heard that the building at 50 Bowery, currently scheduled to be demolished so a hotel can go up, might have "the Bull's Head's structure, cellar, bones," he tells CBS New York. So he searched the basement, and "found myself in what I am pretty certain is the 1750s historic tavern," he says. Specifically, he found what he thinks are hand-hewn and hand-planed joists and foundation walls from the Colonial era. Since that time, the building has housed a drugstore, a Chinese restaurant, and a beer garden, among other things. Now he's hoping city officials will preserve the site, saying, "What an incredible opportunity that the city suddenly has for this thing to re-emerge." A historian is also convinced it is indeed the old tavern, and investigations have been launched by elected officials and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Eater NY reports. But ultimately, the commission says, it "cannot require the owner to conduct archaeology," so a lot depends on him. He's apparently not talking yet; the New York Times couldn't get hold of him.
– Israel launched a round of airstrikes on Gaza today, wounding two militants and eight bystanders, including some children. Israel says the attack was retaliation for a round of Palestinian rockets fired yesterday, which Palestinians say were in response to another Israeli airstrike earlier in the day, Reuters reports. More than 470 rockets have been fired from Gaza since June, but this was the first time Hamas acknowledged responsibility. As usual the rockets failed to harm anyone, though one did kill some goats at a petting zoo. The incident comes in the wake of a drone flight into Israeli airspace this weekend, which some have speculated came from Iran. An Iranian military official today boasted that the incident proved that Israel is vulnerable, and that its anti-missile defense system "does not work and lacks the necessary capacity." But he denied that the drone was made by Iran, saying such accusations represented a "psychological operation" on Israel's part. "The Zionist regime has many enemies," he said. Iran, meanwhile, is blaming Israel for a hack attack on its oil rigs.
– A Picasso painting that was found to have vanished from a Paris museum more than a decade ago has turned up—in the US, in a package shipped from Belgium. Its papers identified it as a $37 "art craft/toy" and also included the line "Joyeux Noel," or Merry Christmas, the New York Times reports. A man named "Robert" attempted to send the package to a climate-controlled warehouse in Queens, New York, in December, but custom officials at the Port of Newark seized what turned out to be Picasso's 1911 La Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser). French museum officials traveled to New York last month and confirmed the find is indeed the missing Picasso work, which the Centre Georges Pompidou realized was missing from its storerooms in 2001 following a loan request; it was then valued at more than $2.5 million. Court documents don't specify whether the sender or would-be recipient have been identified, NBC News reports, but "a lost treasure has been found," US attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement. She filed a civil complaint yesterday that will have the painting returned to France. The Pompidou's director, who called the painting's rediscovery a "true comfort," hopes the painting can go on display at the museum as early as May, the AP reports. (Another Picasso work was stolen days before this one was found.)
– A dispute over the freshness of Wendy’s fries leaves a 25-year-old Minnesota woman facing criminal charges. According to CBS Minnesota, Wendy's employees claim that Eiram Chanel Amir Dixson became argumentative during a drive-thru transaction just after noon Thursday after the woman asked specifically for fresh French fries. Reports don't specify the condition of the fries, or whether she even received them, but do make clear that an argument followed. Employees allege Dixson reached through the drive-thru window and, after an employee threw a soft drink at her, proceeded to spray them with Mace. The restaurant manager was hit directly in the face while two more employees were also in the line of the spray, per the police report. All three employees provided similar accounts of the incident, according to ABC News 5. Dixson is being charged with felony use of tear gas to immobilize. If found guilty, she’ll face a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and/or a $3,000 to $10,000 fine. Wendy’s drive-thrus see their share of action: last year, a worker was allegedly bit over a wrong order in Virginia, while a Florida man reportedly threw an alligator through a drive-thru window as a prank.
– A 27-year-old Dallas police officer died Wednesday after being shot the day prior at a Home Depot in Lake Highlands. The Morning News identifies the officer as Rogelio Santander. He'd been called to the store around 4pm by a cop who was working an off-duty job there and noticed Armando Luis Juarez was behaving oddly. The off-duty cop detained Juarez and learned he had an outstanding felony warrant. Santander and Crystal Almeida, 26, responded to the scene; authorities say they and a loss prevention officer employed by Home Depot were shot by Juarez as he was being escorted from the store. A source tells CBS Dallas Santander was shot in the back of the head and Almeida was shot in the face. She remains in critical condition, as does the Home Depot employee. Police say Juarez fled and a high-speed car chase ensued, per the AP. He was apprehended Tuesday night and is being held on charges of aggravated assault on a public servant and felony theft. "We got our man," said Mayor Mike Rawlings.
– The US Coast Guard says it's looking for a man who has cost the service about $500,000 after responding to nearly 30 of his fake distress calls, reports the AP. In a press release published Friday, the Coast Guard says the 28 calls have originated from around the area of Annapolis, Maryland. Each call involved the same male voice and used an emergency radio channel. He's been making the calls since July 2014. The two most recent calls were made on the night of July 21 and the early morning of July 22. “A hoax call is a deadly and serious offense,” a Coast Guard rep tells NBC4, which notes that such calls are a felony that carry six years in prison, $10,000 civil fine, $250,000 criminal fine, and reimbursement to the Coast Guard. "Calls like these not only put our crews at risk, but they put the lives of the public at risk.”
– The stars are coming out in a big way as Election Day looms. The latest: Will Ferrell really, really wants you to vote—and he'll do anything to make sure you do, he promises in a new video for President Obama. "Hungry? How about a home-cooked meal? Hope you like angel hair pasta," he says. "You need a guy to help you move a couch? Done. I've even got my own van." But his promises get bigger—and weirder—from there. "If you vote, I'll eat anything you tell me to—garbage, hair, human toenails, underpants, whatever—I'll do it," he swears. The president's name stays out of it until the very end, when Ferrell concludes, while holding a football, "Vote Obama. It's a slam dunk." On Jimmy Kimmel's show last week, Chris Rock offered up a special message to white voters. "In times like these, you need a white president you can trust," Rock explains. "And that white president's name is Barack Obama." His evidence that Obama is actually white? The president used to be called "Barry," he likes to golf, he wears "mom jeans," and he has a Portugese water dog, among other things. Amy Poehler kept her endorsement brief and to the point: "If you can vote, go vote for Obama," she concludes. Obama himself is also urging voters to hit the polls ... and he's doing it cat-meme style. It's not just ads: Celebrities are making last-minute donations to both campaigns, Politico reports. Jake Gyllenhaal, Zach Galifianakis, Renee Zellweger, and Amanda Seyfried all recently made four-figure contributions to Obama's campaign, while Kelsey Grammer, Bob Barker, and John Elway did the same for Romney. Click here, here, or here to see previous celebrity endorsements.
– Mystery surrounds the deaths of two brothers whose bodies were found in their Huntington Beach, Calif., apartment Sunday. Police got a call from the apartment that afternoon and arrived to find Benjamin Ullestad, 25, and Brandon Ullestad, 22, dead from gunshot wounds. A handgun was found at the scene, and police "do not believe there are any outstanding suspects," per a spokesperson, but the investigation is ongoing. Police say there is no threat to the community, CBS LA reports. Possibilities so far include a murder-suicide or an accident, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Orange County Register reports it's not clear who made the "distressed" 911 call from the apartment, and notes that an "accident-suicide" is a possibility. Neighbors say the area is typically quiet, making the incident particularly surprising. According to the brothers' Facebook pages, both attended Cal State Long Beach and Benjamin was a legal assistant at a Newport Beach law firm; both Facebook pages feature photos of the men shooting guns. Police found a June 28 receipt for a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun on a table by the door. Their mother also lives in the apartment where the brothers were found, but was in Tennessee when they died.
– The Wall Street Journal today takes a look at the life and death of 94 little words: the heavily edited and ultimately faulty Benghazi talking points compiled by the CIA in the wake of the consulate attack. Just a day after the attack, the CIA's reports were already referencing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb. The following day, David Petraeus appeared before House and Senate groups; he, too, mentioned the terrorists, and was asked to compile unclassified talking points that Congress could use. By noon on Sept. 14, a draft was circulating—and it referenced al-Qaeda. But an exhausting process of editing followed, with more than two dozen CIA officials weighing in on the copy over email—and battling about the inclusion of al-Qaeda. Those opposed argued it should be removed because the intel was shaky (sourced from intercepted phone calls) and over fears it could alert al-Qaeda members to the fact that they were being watched. The opponents won out, though the term "extremists" remained; the FBI agreed with the call. It also contained this line: "The demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo." On Sept. 15, the CIA station chief in Tripoli began to voice his concern with the assertions that the attack was both spontaneous and that demonstrations were occurring. He sent the CIA an email summarizing his thoughts the next day—but Susan Rice had already been hand-delivered the 94 fateful words the night before, so that she could prep for her news show appearances. Click for the Journal's full take, which charts the ultimate change in the CIA's assessment.
– Mother Earth has given birth to new land. An island has formed in the Pacific Ring of Fire, where a volcano has been erupting since Dec. 20. Tonga's Ministry of Lands, Survey, and Natural Resources tells the Weather Network the volcano is erupting from two vents. One is spewing ash and rock onto an uninhabited island; the other is underwater. An expert who came within a mile of the new island, 40 miles northwest of the capital, says it's roughly a square mile in size. But as it's made of loose scoria—a dark volcanic rock—he says it should erode away within a few months once the volcano quiets, the AP reports. If it were formed from lava, it might be more durable. Still, "it's quite an exciting site, you get to see the birth of an island," the expert says. Ministry officials say rocks are being thrown some 1,300 feet into the air, while the volcano is sending steam into the atmosphere. Bits of ash are now climbing about 6,000 feet, down from 30,000 feet last week. That means planes diverted from the area can now pass over safely. However, ash and acidic rain are still showering anything in a 6-mile radius, killing tree leaves on neighboring islands, ABC Australia reports. The volcano last erupted over five years ago.
– There are roughly 73.7 million kids running around America, and about 16 million, or nearly one in five, of them are doing so fueled by food stamps, according to US Census data out yesterday. That number is particularly alarming when compared to pre-recession levels: In 2007, some 9 million, or one in eight, kids were on food stamps. There are currently about 46 million Americans total on food stamps, down from the 2013 peak of 48 million. The jump signals what Reuters says is a "lop-sided" economic recovery that has left low-income people behind, but it also underscores a fundamental partisan divide over social welfare programs. As the Blaze notes, Republicans want to scale back the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program—arguing that the end of the recession should indicate less need—and trimmed $8.6 billion and 850,000 people from its rolls with last year's farm bill. Democrats, meanwhile, argue that it's too soon to scale back the program. Meanwhile, some other highlights from the Census numbers: 27% of children live in single-parent homes, three times the 9% who did in 1960 10% of kids live with a grandparent, 15% have a stay-at-home mom, 0.6% have a stay-at-home dad, and 38% have at least one foreign-born parent 48% of households are made up of married couples, down from 76% in 1940 Americans are continuing to marry later, at a median age of 29 for men and 27 for women; that's up from 24 and 21 in 1947
– A Florida Starbucks has made it easy for deaf customers to order at the drive-thru—and video of one deaf woman's experience has been viewed more than 6.5 million times since she posted it on Facebook Tuesday. "Starbucks! This is what I'm talking about!" wrote Rebecca King. The 28-year-old tells First Coast News she was surprised on Monday when she drove up to the St. Augustine Starbucks ordering window and a barista appeared on a two-way video screen to take her order via sign language. She went back the next day to record video of her doing the same thing. "It is a big deal to (the) deaf community that Starbucks has one now. Nowhere else has that!" says King. "We all want to have that at every drive-thru in the world." The barista is 22-year-old Katie Wyble, who tells Action News Jax she's had a "passion for sign language since I first saw a teacher use it when I was in preschool"; she continued to study it in grade school, high school, and college. "I think more people need to know about what we’re doing because it moves customer service to a whole new level,” Wyble adds. “I hope it helps make more people aware of what they can to do serve others in their communities." St. Augustine has a large deaf community and the Starbucks in question is brand-new. It's not clear whether other Starbucks locations have the same capability, but the Huffington Post notes that at least two other chains, Culver's and Subway, have installed their own technology to help deaf customers order.
– A tourist in Florida has been sentenced to 15 days jail time after she says she thought she was simply collecting sea shells. Per the Miami Herald, Diana Fiscal-Gonzalez was caught after harvesting dozens of queen conchs from the coast of Key West. Fiscal-Gonzalez, who was visiting from Texas, was reportedly arrested July 13 by a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer following a tip. Fiscal-Gonzalez had a reported 40 conch shells in a plastic container. She told authorities she didn't know it was illegal to collect the live creatures in the state of Florida. A judge sentenced her to jail, anyway, as well as to six months probation. Fiscal-Gonzalez will have to pay a $500 fine as well as $268 in court costs, according to USA Today. The conch has been a protected species in Florida since the 1970s, when over-harvesting led to a steep decline in their population in the region. In the Florida Keys, the conch is especially beloved. Floridians native to the stretch of islands refer to themselves as conchs and Key West High School's mascot is the endearingly named Fighting Conch. An FWC officer said most of the conchs Fiscal-Gonzalez took were still alive and returned to the water following her arrest.
– Christie Brinkley's marriage to Peter Cook ended in 2008 after he had an affair with an 18-year-old; he went on to wed Suzanne Shaw. Shaw stood by Cook's side during the 2012 Cook-Brinkley court battle over child support, and things got ugly: At one point Brinkley told Shaw in a court hallway, "When you find out he's been cheating on you, I'll be here for you." Shaw responded, "Come up with a new line"; Shaw also said that her own marriage to Cook had been marred by Brinkley's "black cloud of hate." Only, um, Shaw and Cook filed for divorce this year ... after Cook allegedly cheated on Shaw. Now Shaw has apologized to Brinkley for bad-mouthing her years ago, Page Six reports. "Christie and I have talked recently and I have privately apologized to her, but, given the public nature of their divorce and custody battle, I feel a public apology is also appropriate and deserved," reads a letter from Shaw obtained by the New York Post. "Christie was wrongly vilified as being an embittered ex-wife. I now believe she had every right to do what she did by taking a public stand," Shaw writes. "Unfortunately, I fell under Peter's spell, but now that the reality of who he is has been revealed, I regret my involvement." Click for more on the latest cheating allegations against Cook.
– With Iowa just two months away, the stakes are high for tonight’s GOP debate. Politico describes it as an “elimination round,” with everyone except Mitt Romney—and maybe the seemingly immovable Ron Paul—“one misstep away from political death." Here’s what to watch for: Will anyone touch Herman Cain’s scandal? Focusing on that circus might hurt the GOP brand, the Daily Beast points out, “so they may instead let him bleed slowly as they avert their eyes.” Who can be the Not-Mitt? Anti-Romney sentiment coalesced this week, but has no standard bearer. Newt Gingrich is gaining some buzz, especially after his heart-to-heart with Cain, so some speculate that he's next. Who matters? “For Huntsman, Santorum, and Bachmann, the debate is totally about relevance and trying to maintain some respectability,” an ex-Huntsman campaign manager says. “Not much more, I don’t think.” Will Rick Perry be sober? Perry is reeling after his, um, interesting New Hampshire speech. Perry can come off “like a deer caught in headlights,” says one strategist. “He’s got to decide, what are the two or three messages I’m going to drive?” What about Mitt? “Romney can begin to play ball-control politics,” says a former McCain adviser. “He just needs to be reassuring and not say anything really dumb."
– Phil Robertson's anti-gay comments have been getting the lion's share of attention in recent days, but he also said a few things to GQ about African Americans that, along with those aforementioned comments, aren't sitting so well with Jesse Jackson. In discussing his youth in pre-civil rights era Louisiana, the Duck Dynasty patriarch said, in part: I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. ... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues." In a Dec. 23 statement obtained by ABC News, Jackson addressed Robertson's comments in no uncertain terms. "These statements are more offensive than the bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 59 years ago. At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law. Robertson’s statements were uttered freely and openly without cover of the law, within a context of what he seemed to believe was 'white privilege.'" Jackson, his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and GLAAD in the statement demand a meeting with A&E execs ... along with Cracker Barrel's CEO, to discuss content and merchandising.
– Eight endangered rhinos have died after a move to a new park in Kenya. Per the AP, the black rhinos died in what Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu calls "a complete disaster" after they were relocated from two locations to Tsavo East National Park last month. Officials suspect salt poisoning as the cause, pointing to higher salinity in water sources in their new home. When the saltier water made the rhinos thirsty, they likely drank even more, possibly leading to their deaths, the country's Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife said in a statement. The rhinos were among 11 moved to the park, and officials said the surviving animals are being closely monitored. The planned relocation of other rhinos to the park has been suspended. As the Guardian notes, the Save the Rhino organization estimates the total world population of black rhinos at around 5,500. The species is targeted by poachers who aim to collect their horns for the black market in Asia. Moving endangered animals from one sanctuary to another is called translocation and is done in hopes of establishing healthy populations in new areas. While deaths can and do occur with such moves, officials say a death rate of this magnitude is uncommon. Kenyan wildlife officials said the results of an investigation into the deaths would be made public as soon as it concludes.
– A rarity in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea today: A soldier from the North defected and claims to have killed two commanding officers in order to do so, reports the Voice of America. Soldiers in the South heard about six shots, then allowed the soldier to cross the DMZ. He is still being interrogated. “We'll see as he's debriefed and it's just a one-off incident, so I don't think there's too much we can read into it besides that at this point,” says an analyst with the International Crisis Group. Pyongyang, not surprisingly, has not confirmed the incident, reports the BBC. The North generally puts only its best soldiers at the border after a careful vetting process, and defections are rare. One reason: The family of a defecting soldier is sure to face harsh punishment, notes VOA.
– This winter's flooding in Northern California has done more than bring relief after years of drought; it's created the prospect of the best gold prospecting in 20 years. Gold hunters in the area tell the Chico Enterprise-Record the floods have "rearranged the rivers" and "move things around." That means gold veins that have been hidden for 200 years are suddenly exposed. According to CBS San Francisco, the floods also swept gold out of abandoned mines and washed it downriver. While KCRA reports that gold can simply be picked off the ground following major flooding, the best prospecting will come in the summer months when the water has receded. Right now, rivers are still high and government workers are trying to keep would-be prospectors away while they get things under control. But in the summer—which experts say could be the busiest since the one that followed major flooding in 1997—stream beds will be exposed for better gold hunting. "I'm going to have a ball," one prospector tells the Chico newspaper. The epicenter for the new gold rush could be the Oroville Dam, which nearly catastrophically flooded this winter and required the use of an emergency spillway for the first time. (This treasure hunter is seeking $1 billion in gold from a sunken ship.)
– When Deena Murphy and Timothy Sullivan wanted to renovate their Raleigh, NC, rental property, they didn't want a DIY project, so they did what they thought was the next best thing: signed up to have an HGTV show do it for them. But per a lawsuit the couple has now filed against Big Coat, the production company behind Love It or List It, as well as the local contractor who overhauled the home, they were left with "disastrous work," including holes in the floor and windows painted shut, the Charlotte Observer reports. The suit also alleges the "reality-TV" program is "scripted, with 'roles' and reactions assigned to the various performers and participants, including the homeowners." And the show's hosts, designer Hilary Farr and real estate agent David Visentin, and its resident general contractor? "Actors or television personalities … [who don't play] more than a casual role in the actual renovation process." Per their contract with Big Coat, the couple deposited $140,000 that would be used to pay Aaron Fitz Construction and its subcontractors. About $85,000 was distributed to Aaron Fitz during the overhaul, even though Murphy and Sullivan say they expressed concerns about mediocre reviews seen on Angie's List. The rest of the money got pumped into producing the show, the couple claims, reports Today.com. They say the show is "even more of a scam than it generally seems," as the AV Club frames it. "The homeowners' funds essentially pay the cost of creating a stage set for this television series," the suit says. A statement from Big Coat's CEO says the company will "vigorously defend what we consider to be false allegations." (This DIY project took six months to make and much less time to eat.)
– Both girls in Wisconsin's disturbing "Slender Man" case will now be pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. Attorneys for 14-year-old Anissa Weier signaled this week that they want to change her plea in the attempted murder case from not guilty to "NGI," meaning that she's likely to be committed to a state mental hospital for treatment if found not guilty, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Co-accused Morgan Geyser, who is also 14, has been diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia and has already entered an NGI plea. Both girls were 12 years old in 2014 when they allegedly stabbed a 12-year-old classmate 19 times and left her for dead in what they told investigators was an attempt to please the online horror character "Slender Man." In July, an appeals court ruled that they should be tried as adults for the attempted killing. WISN reports that lawyers for both girls are seeking to have the case heard by jurors from outside Waukesha County, where the attack took place, because of heavy media coverage.
– Police in San Jose believe a 90-year-old man murdered his 67-year-old stepdaughter—and he might have gotten away with it if she hadn't been wearing a Fitbit. Police say they found Karen Navarra dead at her home Sept. 13 with a kitchen knife in her hand and deep wounds to her head and neck, ABC News reports. After the medical examiner concluded that she had been murdered by somebody who tried to make the death look like a suicide, investigators used surveillance footage to determine that stepfather Anthony Aiello had visited her the day of her death. He told them he had seen her later in the day—but her Fitbit revealed that her heart rate spiked, slowed, then stopped while he was at the house. During a police interview, "Aiello was confronted about the information from Fitbit and the corresponding surveillance video indicating that his car was in the driveway," police said in a statement. After police explained "the abilities of the Fitbit to record time, physical movement and heart rate data," Aiello claimed somebody else must have been in the house. He also claimed that two shirts with blood splatter found in his garage must have gotten that way after he cut himself and shook his hand, KOAT reports. Aiello, who is married to Navarra's 92-year-old mother, was arrested and charged with murder last week. (A Fitbit told a different story after this man said a fat intruder killed his wife.)
– In a lawsuit seeking more than $175,000 in damages, a male student claims the University of Chicago has an "anti-male gender bias" and "routinely portrays a large portion of their male students as sexual predators." The New York Daily News reports the student, named only as John Doe in the lawsuit, was accused of sexual assault by two female students. Despite being found innocent by the university in both cases, John Doe claims that he was the victim of a "fundamentally unfair, arbitrary, and capricious disciplinary procedure" and that the university violated his rights under Title IX. According to Chicagoist, John Doe claims the university disciplines male students "who accept physical contact initiated by female students." The University of Chicago was recently accused of not doing enough for female students who had been sexually assaulted, but John Doe's lawsuit claims the university has now gone too far in the other direction, the Chicago Maroon reports. He says the university did nothing when the two women called him a sexual predator online and in public, leading to the protest of a theater production he directed. He claims the university ignored a Title IX complaint he filed against one of the women after she filed a similar complaint against him. The lawsuit states he was even removed from a physics class he shared with one of the women at her request. In addition to suing the University of Chicago for creating a "hostile environment for men," John Doe is also suing one of the women. (Something similar happened at the University of Texas-Austin.)
– David Plouffe is making the talk-show rounds this morning, and CNN reports that he's wasting zero time in bashing Newt Gingrich for accusing President Obama of politicizing the Trayvon Martin killing, and dismissing the GOP nomination race at large as a "clown show." Gingrich "is clearly in the last throes of his political career," said Plouffe, and instead of exiting "with some shred of dignity," has "clearly chosen" to "say these irresponsible, reckless things." "I think the president spoke movingly about this tragedy, as a father," Plouffe said. "So I think those comments were really hard to stomach, really, and I guess trying to appeal to people’s worst instincts." Elsewhere on the Plouffe dog-and-pony show, as per Politico: On Paul Ryan's budget: "If Mitt Romney is the nominee, then this really is going to be the Romney-Ryan plan. He said he's going to rubber-stamp it." On being "confident" health care reform will be upheld by the Supreme Court: "By the end of this decade, we are going to be very glad the Republicans termed this ObamaCare, because when the reality of health care is in place it will be nothing like the kind of fear mongering that was done." On the White House's gay marriage stance: "We don’t even have a platform committee. We are going to work through the platform process."
– A Florida man murdered a co-worker and then used her phone to send a text to her parents, police say. The parents of 21-year-old Savannah Gold say their suspicions were immediately aroused by the "really strange" message they received after she left for work at the Bonefish Grill in Jacksonville last Wednesday, People reports. "Hey i just wanted to tell you and mom i met a really great guy and we’re running away together," one message to her father said. "I love him and we're leaving tonight i'll call you later when we get to where we are going." "He showed it to me and I immediately knew that it was someone else," mother Sharon Gold tells Action News Jax. "We text each other all day ... and this was not from my daughter." Says father Daniel Gold, "The spelling was all whacked out." After Gold's car was found in the restaurant's parking lot with a slashed tire and her purse still inside, authorities identified manager Lee Rodarte, 28, as a suspect because of inconsistencies in his story. Police say Rodarte, who was in an on-again, off-again relationship with Gold, eventually admitted killing her and led them to her body, which he had dumped in a lake. Investigators believe Rodarte was the one who sent the text to Gold's parents. Her parents say after the disappearance, he told them he was worried about her and even helped hand out missing-person flyers. He has been charged with murder and evidence tampering and is being held without bond.
– The media is moving on from "zombie apocalypse" to "Rihannapocalypse." The gossip rags are teeming with stories about the singer's rebellious ways, and Newser rounds up the juicy tidbits: Sign No. 1 that she's nearing breakdown: The singer apparently spent yesterday shopping in SoHo ... wearing a strapless bra ... that was pretty darn see-through, reports the New York Post. (Click to see a photo.) She now appears naked on a billboard in Times Square, but that's not the falling-apart part. The Daily Mail notes that the ad promotes her perfume Rebelle, and it's the second fashion ad to create buzz this week. The Sun apparently claimed Rihanna used a body double in a sexy Armani Jeans ad, leading the singer to tweet, "Ok @thesunnewspaper, this is the only way I could say this to you!!! F*** YOU." (Click to read the whole tweet, which gets nastier.) She's hanging out with Chris Brown ... in the presence of her family. The Post reports that Brown watched a Miami Heat game with Rihanna's family over the weekend. The two later sat in separate booths at a Meatpacking District club; he sent her table two bottles of champagne. Still, the Post notes that they two have been careful to keep "a coy distance." She has, horrors, been taking more vacations. A source tells the Post that her management and record label execs want her to buckle down, but instead Rihanna is having fun and "posting more on Twitter."
– Two sources tell Variety the Super Bowl LIII halftime act has been chosen, and it's Maroon 5. Another source tells Us, "The offer has been extended and they’ve pretty much accepted," while ETOnline says the band is the "frontrunner" to perform. The band itself, fronted by The Voice coach Adam Levine, has not commented, but Levine has in the past made it clear he'd love to perform there. As for the NFL, it says in a statement, "It’s a Super Bowl tradition to speculate about the performers for the Pepsi Halftime Show. We are continuing to work with [longtime sponsor] Pepsi on our plans but do not have any announcements to make on what will be another epic show." The big game will be played at Atlanta, Georgia's Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Feb. 3, 2019.
– Authorities say a man who held up a Denver bank got a cab ride to and from the robbery. The Denver Post reports the FBI is asking for the public's help to find the suspect. Authorities say the man took a cab to the bank, asked the driver to idle while he went inside, and then had the cabbie drive him to Denver International Airport. Officials say it's unknown if the suspect actually boarded a plane after going to the airport, the AP reports. Video from inside the cab clearly shows the man's face, and pictures taken in the Public Service Credit Union show the man wearing what appears to be a white dust mask while inside the bank, where he threatened a teller with a small handgun.
– Rome wasn't built in a day, but it looks like its Christmas tree may have been. The "toilet brush" of a tree now standing in one of the city's busiest public squares and being roundly mocked in Italy and around the world makes Charlie Brown's Christmas tree look lush by comparison. The New York Times reports that the 72-foot-tall Norway spruce erected in the Piazza Venezia and nicknamed "Spelacchio," or "Mangy," will cost the city about $57,000 in all—and locals are outraged that so much money was outlayed for a tree that one expert says "has clearly been traumatized." Thrillist documents some of the online reaction to the sad, needle-sparse spruce, which it calls a "balding network of pines and brittle branches." "Maybe the dogs drank all the water in the tree stand?" one amused viewer tweeted, while another offered a backhanded compliment: "Big fan of Rome's Christmas tree for looking how we all feel." Others defend the tree, saying it looks OK when it's lit up at night. "We are all Spelacchio!" one supporter told a local paper. Per the Times, the tree even has a few Facebook accounts and a Twitter handle in its name, with one tweet proclaiming: "I have more followers than branches." A consumer rights group that calls the tree a "shameful spectacle for citizens and tourists" is lobbying to have the tree taken down and has asked a local court to scrutinize the tree's costs. Rome's mayor says her office is also looking into TreeGate.
– Day three of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing has opened with a bang: Democratic Sen. Cory Booker says he has ordered his staff to release a Kavanaugh email even though it's supposed to remain under wraps. It's not clear yet what the email says, but NBC News reports that it concerns racial profiling. Booker called his act one of civil disobedience, reports NPR. "I openly invite and accept the consequences," he said, per CNN. "The penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate." Indeed, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn read aloud rules stating that a senator who divulges "the secret or confidential business" of the Senate faces expulsion, reports the Washington Post. "Bring the charges," said Booker. "All of us are ready to face that rule," added fellow Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Democrats have been chafing that too many of Kavanaugh's documents are either being withheld or deemed off limits for the hearing. Booker's stand comes after the New York Times obtained some of those off-limits emails. In one from 2003, when Kavanaugh was working in the White House of George W. Bush, he objects to language that Roe v. Wade is "settled law." He was going over a draft opinion stating that "it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land," but he took exception to the phrase. "I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so," he wrote at the time. As the Times notes, Kavanaugh didn't state his personal opinion on the matter.
– Apparently there are places even South Park fears to tread. After getting a death threat from the jihadist website RevolutionMuslim.com, the show pulled the prophet Mohammed out of this week's episode, bleeping out all mention of his name, putting “censored” banners over parts of the episode and, where necessary, replacing him with Santa Claus in a bear suit, the Huffington Post reports. Here's the deal: last week's episode (which you can see a clip of here) mocked the taboo against showing the prophet Mohammed, having him show up first hidden inside a U-Haul, and then inside a bear costume. This week's episode was to continue that story. It's unclear whether the extra censorship is intended to appease the irony-challenged folks at RevolutionMuslim or mock them. South Park, incidentally, has tackled the issue before, and even depicted Mohammed on screen once with impunity.
– President Obama's big-money "bundlers" are on the rise, with at least 41 supporters now having raised more than $500,000 each for the president, reports MSNBC. That's a sizeable jump from the 27 bundlers—well-connected supporters who help candidates raise big money—reported three months ago. It's also a sign that we're getting closer to the 2012 election season, predicted to be the most expensive ever. "The emphasis has been on doing larger dollar fundraising events, particularly asking for $2,500," said a campaign finance expert. "Events like this help him to raise substantial amounts of money for the campaign allowing him to exceed his pace for 2007." Obama and the DNC have raised more than $165 million so far, well ahead of the Republican field—however, the really big money of Wall Street is increasingly lining up behind Mitt Romney and the GOP, reports the New York Times. Since the spring, Romney has raised more than $1.5 million from banks, hedge funds, and other financial firms; Obama, however, has gotten just $270,000. Goldman Sachs employees alone gave Obama more than $1 million in 2008, but so far in this election cycle, he's gotten just $45,000; Romney, on the other hand, has received $350,000 from them.
– "It’s just again showing that the vegetation in southern California is still very stressed from the drought we’ve had for five years." So said LA County Fire Department Deputy Chief John Tripp in the wake of a Saturday tragedy in Whittier, reports USA Today: A family was taking wedding photos in Penn Park near a 100-foot-tall eucalyptus tree when it uprooted and fell, trapping some of the party underneath. A woman was killed and five others, including 4-year-old girl, injured in the incident, which happened at 4:30pm local time, reports the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. The relationship of the woman and girl to the bride and groom has not been released. NBC Los Angeles reports as many as 20 people were trapped under the tree, and chainsaws were used to extricate them. A witness shared this wrenching observation about the bride: "She was limping a little bit, but she was screaming about her mom—they couldn’t wake her up." An arborist will investigate Monday or Tuesday. NBC notes it rained heavily the previous night.
– Police in South Carolina say they're searching for an inmate who's extremely dangerous—and has managed to break out of a maximum-security prison for the second time since he began serving a life sentence in 2004. Jimmy Causey, 46, has been missing from the Lieber Correctional Institution since around 2pm Wednesday, the AP reports. In his previous escape, he broke out of the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia in 2005 with convicted murderer Johnny Brewer by hiding in a trash truck. After three days on the run, they were recaptured at a motel 100 miles away on Interstate 95 when a pizza delivery driver recognized them and tipped off authorities. Residents near the Ridgeville, SC, prison have been urged to "remain vigilant, keep vehicles and homes secured" while the search continues. Causey, who first went to state prison for grand larceny in 1992, is serving a life sentence for kidnapping prominent Columbia attorney Jack Swerling and his wife and daughter, the Post and Courier reports. He held the lawyer—who had represented him in previous cases—at gunpoint and demanded money. During the trial, the court heard that Swerling had managed to get reduced sentences for Causey on two occasions in the 1990s, but Causey still held a grudge about having been sent to prison at all.
– The IRS official at the center of the recent scandal has been placed on administrative leave, reports the National Review. Lois Lerner had been in charge of the agency's tax-exempt unit, which singled out conservative groups for added scrutiny. Her immediate boss already has been forced into early retirement, and critics have been calling for Lerner's head to roll as well. (Her role in using a planted question to make the controversy public hasn't helped her cause.) On Capitol Hill yesterday, Lerner denied any wrongdoing but invoked the Fifth in refusing to answer questions. The chair of the House Oversight panel, Darrell Issa, says he plans to call her back to testify, arguing that she waived her right to the Fifth by making an opening statement, reports the Hill. The decision to put Lerner on leave comes days after the new acting chief of the IRS, Daniel Werfel, took over.
– A Pennsylvania middle school teacher is in hot water over his spelling of "Hillary Clinton," and no, Benjamin Attinger didn't forget an "L." The Daily Item reports the Shikellamy Middle School teacher was asked by 6th-grade student Mary Reinard for help in sending a letter to Clinton. Mary wrote the letter, in which she reportedly asked Clinton if she really spoke to the dead (a 1996 book said she had imaginary chats with Eleanor Roosevelt and Gandhi, but not Jesus, as a "therapeutic release," per a CNN article published at the time). She and Attinger put it in an envelope bearing the school's return address, and Attinger addressed it: to "HILIAR RODHAM CLINTON." Mary brought the letter home to stamp and mail, and stepmom Shannon Reinard spotted the "liar" in the name and called the school on Friday. In a voicemail Attinger left the Sunbury mom, he apologized and claimed it was a "kind of a joke ... because I was telling her it (talking to the dead) wasn't true." The family met with Attinger and administrators on Tuesday and say they've accepted his apology and don't want him fired. Mary says she's relieved she didn't mail the letter as it was; she hadn't spotted the typo. "I would have felt embarrassed. I wouldn't have been able to go to school for a week." Now, instead of embarrassed, she's "nervi-cided." That's nervous and excited, because after Chelsea Clinton on Wednesday tweeted she'd be happy to hand-deliver the letter to her mom, she was connected with Shannon Reinard on Twitter and told her they'd be on the lookout for the letter, which had been properly mailed. "Please thank Mary for her courage," Chelsea Clinton wrote, per the Meadville Tribune.
– A US serviceman has become the world's first man to ever receive a full penis and scrotum transplant. Per USA Today, the veteran was injured by an IED years ago while on combat tour in Afghanistan. Surgeons from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine announced the historic news on Monday after performing the unprecedented surgery in Baltimore last month. The patient is expected to recover both urinary and sexual function, according to the surgeons. Surgeons said they rebuilt the man's entire pelvic region over the course of 14 hours. Per the AP, the scrotum transplant did not include the donor's testicles, meaning reproduction won't be possible. "We just felt there were too many unanswered ethical questions" with that extra step, said Hopkins' Dr. Damon Cooney. Three other successful penis transplants have been reported, two in South Africa and one in 2016 at Massachusetts General Hospital. Those transplants involved only the penis, not extensive surrounding tissue that made this transplant much more complex. Hopkins is screening additional veterans to see if they are good candidates for this type of reconstructive transplant. The Hopkins patient received an extra experimental step, an infusion of bone marrow from his donor that research suggests may help a recipient's immune system better tolerate a transplant. Surgeons said that is enabling the veteran to take one anti-rejection drug instead of several. In a statement from Hopkins, the patient was quoted as saying: "When I first woke up, I felt finally more normal."
– A 12-year-old was killed and two other boys were injured after a chain link fence electrified by a live underground wire electrocuted them at a city park in Georgia. During football practice at Fleming park in Augusta on Monday, Melquan Robinson hopped a fence to retrieve a ball, WRDW reports, citing the incident report that says when he "went to come back over the fence, he was electrocuted." The seventh-grader was pronounced dead later at Children's Hospital of Georgia, according to the Augusta Chronicle. Two other boys who tried to help their friend were injured and hospitalized, according to reports. The mother of one of them, David Sette, tells WRDW that her son is improving. Per the Chronicle, an adult also was injured in the incident. "We lost a future leader. We lost a future athlete. We lost a child in our city," Melquan's former coach, acting as a spokesman for the bereaved family, tells the Chronicle. The oldest of three children, Melquan loved his family and was very protective of his siblings, he says. Multiple investigations into the incident are reportedly underway, with city officials looking into how the fence became electrified. Georgia Power, offering "condolences and sympathy," said in a statement that the utility "does not control or maintain the voltage" that caused the electrocution. Melquan's family will hold a vigil Thursday at the Bernie Ward Community Center. "This young man was where he needed to be," his former coach says, per WRDW. "He was doing what he loved." (A medieval re-enactor was impaled in a freak accident.)
– After lawmakers approved gay marriage in Hawaii last month, the ceremonies have officially begun. The law went into effect last night at midnight, and six couples were quick to get hitched, the AP reports. At a Sheraton in Waikiki, those looking to tie the knot could join in a giant ceremony. "We started this battle 23 years ago and we get to finish it tonight," says an activist at the hotel. Indeed, Hawaii played a key role in the early gay marriage debate: When same-sex Hawaiian couples sought marriage licenses in the 1990s, a court battle ensued, resulting in the Defense of Marriage Act. In the state, couples can apply for a marriage license and get married in the same day. That could be a boon for destination weddings in a state already well-equipped for tourist ceremonies. A University of Hawaii researcher says the state could see a $217 million increase in tourism thanks to the process. NPR speaks with an Arkansas couple already planning a wedding trip. "There's two things that came in effect when planning where we wanted to be married," says Cyrilla Owle. "First, like any couple, we wanted to see where we wanted to go for our honeymoon. So who doesn't want to go to Hawaii for their honeymoon, right? And the second reason was, where could we get a license?"
– Nasdaq is back in business after an apparent technical glitch brought the exchange to a rare halt this afternoon for more than three hours, reports the Wall Street Journal. The exchange hasn't fully explained what happened, but trading of all Nasdaq securities ground to a halt just after noon today, reports MarketWatch. Other exchanges quickly suspended trading of Nasdaq stocks. "All orders in those securities have been canceled back to customers," says the New York Stock Exchange in a statement. Nasdaq blamed "quote submissions" in an email to investors.
– If you live in America, there’s a good chance you’re shoveling snow today—or will be soon—but beware: The dreaded chore can actually kill you. How to avoid such a tragic fate? Well, for starters, keep your per-shovel load to 24 pounds or less. Beyond that, however, the recommendations get muddled, notes Timothy Noah on Slate: Shovels that make it easier to gather the snow make it harder to lift the snow, and vice versa. There is one obscure shovel supposedly better suited to both parts of the job, but good luck finding one in a hardware store. A few other things will lessen your risk: Don’t start shoveling while snow is still falling (it’s colder, so you’ll put additional strain on your heart); don’t bundle up too much (getting too hot isn’t good, either); and don’t drink coffee (it increases your heart rate) or hot cocoa (who knows why?) right before shoveling. If that all sounds like too much trouble, “wait till someone younger or poorer than you knocks on your door and offers to shovel your walk for $20 or $30,” Noah recommends. “Delegate. The economy will benefit and your cardiologist will thank you.”
– Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel are separating after more than a decade of marriage, Menzel's rep confirms to Us. The 42-year-olds first met in 1995 while both were starring in the original Broadway production of Rent, and later co-starred in the film version of the musical. They married in January 2003 and have a 4-year-old son together. No word on the cause for the split, but Us notes they were plagued by cheating rumors over the summer, and People points out that in April, Menzel said that they sometimes had a long-distance marriage, which can be hard but "we work at it."
– Millions of people flock to Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre each year. Many believe it to house the tomb of Jesus Christ, though scientists have thus far been unable to date the tomb to the time when the Romans built a church around it. Now, however, a new series of tests "corroborates our historical accounts" as a National Geographic writer puts it to NBC News. It's easiest to understand the significance by understanding the history: Around AD 325, experts believe Roman Emperor Constantine the Great arrived in Jerusalem on the hunt for places linked to Jesus; his team identified the cave that they believed Jesus was buried in and built a shrine (known as the Edicule) to enclose the tomb and then a church around it. That church was destroyed in 1009, recounts National Geographic. It was rebuilt, and all archaeological dating coincided with that rebuilding—proving it was at most about 1,000 years old. The tomb was opened for the first time in centuries in October 2016 to allow for the Edicule to be restored. A marble slab was discovered beneath marble cladding, and mortar samples taken from the slab dated to around AD 345. National Geographic's take: "While it is archaeologically impossible to say that the tomb is the burial site of an individual Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth ... [the] results put the original construction of today's tomb complex securely in the time of Constantine." (Scientists have issued a dire warning about the site.)
– Pricey mistake: A Picasso worth an estimated $70 million had to be yanked from an auction at Christie's this week because it sustained damage as workers were preparing it. It's not clear how bad the damage is to Le Marin, or The Sailor, or even how the damage occurred, but the auction house said in a statement that two outside conservators "have made recommendations for the successful restoration of the painting," reports ABC News. One weird twist: The painting belongs to former casino mogul Steve Wynn, who previously had bad luck with a different Picasso painting. Back in 2006, Wynn stuck his elbow through Picasso's Le Reve while showing it to friends in his Las Vegas office, reports Bloomberg, which adds that Wynn has a disease that messes up his peripheral vision. That restoration had a happy ending: The painting had been valued at $139 million prior to the damage, and Wynn eventually sold it for $155 million. This hasn't been a stellar year for Wynn: He stepped down as CEO of Wynn Resorts amid a slew of sexual harassment allegations.
– Breweries across the US are joining forces to raise money for those affected by the deadliest, most destructive wildfire in California history. More than 1,000 beermakers will brew batches of Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, with 100% of the proceeds going to Camp Fire relief efforts, USA Today reports. The fundraiser is being spearheaded by Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., which is headquartered in Chico, Calif., an area that was threatened by the Camp Fire, which burned more than 153,000 acres, destroyed some 19,000 buildings, and killed at least 85 people in Butte County earlier this month. Sierra Nevada brewed its batch of Resilience IPA on Tuesday, founder Ken Grossman said in a statement, and the brewer will make it available in late December. “We know that the rebuilding process will take time, but we’re in this for the long haul,” Grossman says. “Our hope is to get Resilience IPA in taprooms all over the country to create a solid start for our community’s future.” (Check out participating breweries here.) While the Camp Fire, which was fully contained as of Sunday, left the Sierra Nevada brewery unscathed, it did destroy the homes of 15% of the company’s employees, KRCR reports. Initially, the brewer was hoping to get 500 other breweries on board to make Resilience IPA, spokesman Robin Gregory says, adding that they have been “absolutely blown away” by the response. Overall, the company expects the effort to produce about 8.6 million pints. Resilience is described as a “classic” West Coast-style IPA (here’s the recipe for homebrewers). (This man handed out $1,000 checks to Camp Fire victims.)
– Tarek El Moussa, the co-host of HGTV's real estate and renovation show Flip or Flop, is in remission after a battle with thyroid cancer and has an observant viewer to thank. Back in 2013, El Moussa visited a doctor about a lump that had appeared on his neck, but he was told it was benign. Then Ryan Read, a fan and trained nurse, spotted the growth while watching an episode. "This is not a joke. I'm a registered nurse. I've been watching Flip or Flop. I noticed that the host Tarek has a large nodule on his thyroid, and he needs to have it checked out," she told the show's production company in an email, per the Independent. That email prompted El Moussa, then 31, to get a biopsy, which found he had thyroid cancer and that it had spread to his lymph nodes. El Moussa, who hosts Flip or Flop with his wife, Christina, says the pair got to meet Read when his case appeared on an episode of The Doctors. "We actually ended up spending the day with her," he says, per Entertainment Tonight. "It was just such an amazing experience to meet this person, because she stepped up and did what others probably wouldn't have done." He adds that without Read, he may never have known he had cancer, or "by the time that I would've found out, it probably would've been in a much further stage." El Moussa had the tumor removed and underwent thyroid radioactive iodine therapy. Now "I feel fantastic," he tells People. "Every day that goes by, the odds of the cancer [recurring] decreases, so we're really excited for that." (This dog can also spot thyroid cancer.)
– A business associate of a key figure in the investigation into former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty Friday to failing to register as a foreign agent, per the AP. W. Samuel Patten entered his plea in federal court in DC, after prosecutors released a charging document that accused him of performing lobbying and consulting work in the US and Ukraine but failing to register as a foreign agent. Patten has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, reports Bloomberg. Patten was a business associate of Konstantin Kilimnik, a man US authorities have said has ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik worked closely with Manafort, who was found guilty this month of eight financial counts. Kilimnik also is a co-defendant in a pending case against Manafort, brought by special counsel Robert Mueller's team, that accuses them both of witness tampering. The Patten case was referred by Mueller's team to the United States attorney's office in Washington, which is handling it. Andrew Weissmann, one of the lead Mueller team attorneys in the Manafort prosecution, was seen at court Friday. Court papers don't refer to Kilimnik by name, but say Patten worked with a Russian national on lobbying and political consulting services. Prosecutors say Patten, who formed a consulting company with a person identified only as "Foreigner A," worked to set up meetings with members of Congress and also drafted talking points for Capitol Hill meetings. The goal, prosecutors say, was to influence US policy, but they say Patten never filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The law is aimed at promoting transparency about lobbying efforts in the United States.
– If your political scandal lasts longer than four hours, maybe get rid of all that Viagra you've got stashed in the presidential office. The BBC reports authorities investigating South Korean president Park Geun-hye for corruption discovered more than 300 Viagra pills in her office. A spokesperson for Park tells Reuters the 364 pills—a combination of Viagra and a generic knockoff—were purchased last December to treat aides and employees for altitude sickness during Park's trip to Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya in May but never used. The Guardian notes that all three countries have capitals thousands of feet above sea level. Viagra can reportedly be effective against altitude sickness because it reduces blood pressure and improves oxygen transportation in the blood. But that didn't stop the discovery from causing a stir in South Korea, where Park is facing potential impeachment efforts. Park is accused of letting a friend have influence over government decisions and pressuring businesses to give money to foundations that support her policies. There are also rumors that Park was involved in "cultish rituals." Thousands have been protesting and calling for her to step down in recent weeks. A BBC reporter says the discovery of the Viagra will "add an air of remoteness" to Park, who many already see as living in a "different world."
– When an Australian ship heard pings possibly from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, officials saw a big lead open up in the search—but since then, investigators haven't been able to recapture the signal, Reuters reports. That's particularly worrying since the batteries on the jet's black boxes have likely just about run out. But "we need to continue (searching) for several days right up to the point at which there's absolutely no doubt that the batteries will have expired," says Angus Houston, the Australian official leading the search, per CBS News. "If we don't get any further transmissions, we have a reasonably large search area of the bottom of the ocean to prosecute and that will take a long, long time," Houston says. The ship is carrying an autonomous underwater vehicle that can search the depths for the plane, "literally crawling along the bottom of the ocean," Houston notes. Trouble is, findings so far point to "a large area for a small submersible that has a very narrow field of search." Once the vehicle, called Bluefin-21, does head downward, it will conduct 20-hour sonar missions to try to find the plane.
– Palo Alto's planning and transportation commissioner sat down and did the math: For Kate Vershov Downing and husband Steve to purchase a home similar to the 4-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot dwelling they currently rent (with another couple, at $6,200 a month), their monthly payment would be $12,177. That's $146,127 a year on mortgage, insurance, and taxes, and that's assuming they had half-a-million dollars for a down payment. "This is unaffordable even for an attorney and a software engineer," she writes; she's senior corporate counsel to a tech company and her husband works for Palantir. And so after five years of trying to make it work in Silicon Valley, the Downings, "cannot see a way to stay in Palo Alto and raise a family," Kate writes in a public resignation letter posted Tuesday announcing her move to Santa Cruz. She tells the Mercury News that her letter "is not supposed to be a sad story about me. ... I'm extraordinarily lucky and privileged." But she writes that "it's clear that if professionals like me cannot raise a family here, then all of our teachers, first responders, and service workers are in dire straits." Indeed, Curbed SF backs up its assertion that there's little on the market there for less than $1 million with a link to Redfin, which, for example, has a listing for a $729,000 house ... that's 529 square feet. In her letter, Downing—called "one of Palo Alto's most passionate advocates for building more affordable housing" by Palo Alto Online — takes the City Council to task for ignoring residents' clamor for significant change on the housing front; her letter repeats some of the recommendations she herself has made. (Palantir is having a profound effect on the city's commercial space.)
– You may have heard the happy news: Prince William and Kate Middleton are the proud parents of a 3-month-old cocker spaniel. However, if you were hoping to find out what they're calling the puppy, prepare to be disappointed. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have strictly instructed aides not to reveal his name, the Daily Mail reports. Says a spokesperson, "He is a private pet and they do not want his name to be made public although the couple are happy to confirm that they do, indeed, have a new dog." Click for pictures of the "private pet."
– Well, that didn't take long: Less than two days after AMC's CEO gave an interview in which he suggested the theater chain might allow texting in its theaters, he's put out a statement backtracking. "NO TEXTING AT AMC. Won't happen. You spoke. We listened. Quickly, that idea has been sent to the cutting room floor," reads a tweet Friday accompanying the statement. In the statement, CEO Adam Aron acknowledges the social media uproar that followed the texting news (USA Today has rounded up sample tweets from people who swore never to visit an AMC theater again) and says that the chain will not allow texting any time in the "foreseeable future." One analyst tells CBS that Aron's actual idea might not have been as irksome as it sounded: "One of the things keeping millennials away from the movies is that they need to be on their phones all the time. What [Adam Aron] wants to do is segregate different groups so that people don't want to be on their phones, i.e., older demographic groups, and those who do could be in different [auditoriums]." And Aron tried to make that clear on Twitter Thursday, tweeting that AMC might simply do a test run on "VERY FEW screens" and would make sure it was done "in a way we'd be TOTALLY confident ALL our guests will fully enjoy movie going experience." But that wasn't enough, garnering responses like, "No! Not even one! What a stupid idea."
– OJ Simpson's big moment has arrived. A hearing is underway at which he is trying to convince members of the Nevada Board of Parole that he should go free. "I haven't made any excuses in the nine years that I've been here and I'm not trying to make an excuse now," said the 70-year-old Simpson early in the proceedings, per the AP. Later, he added, "I am sorry that things turned out the way they did. I had no intent to commit a crime." He also appeared to stifle a sob in his appeal to the board. Simpson has been imprisoned since 2008 over an armed robbery and kidnapping case, but he and many legal analysts think that the board will vote to release him. If so, he's expected to be out on Oct. 1. The televised hearing is being livestreamed at various sites, including CNN. Per CNN, one of the first questions posed to Simpson by a board member in regard to the robbery, in which he and other men entered a Vegas hotel room to reclaim sports memorabilia, was, "What were you thinking?" Simpson called it a "big mistake" and emphasized that he wasn't armed. "I would never pull a gun on anybody." He insisted that he learned only afterward that one of the men with him, who was "behind me," brandished a gun. Another board member noted that he hadn't taken an alcohol-abuse program as he promised he would at his last hearing. Other Simpson quotes: "I'm at a point in my life where all I want to do is spend as much time with my children." "I've basically spent a conflict-free life." Daughter Arnelle Simpson said her father is "remorseful," and she wants him to come home so they can "move forward," adding, "It's been hard."
– It sounds like a bunch of random words strung together, but it's a real news article: Scott Baio claims that during an elementary school function in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Saturday, the wife of the Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer started cussing him out and then physically attacked him. Baio, aka Charles in Charge and/or Chachi, filed a police report over the incident, and the Ventura County Sheriff's Department is investigating, TMZ reports. Baio is a Donald Trump supporter; Nancy Mack is not, and she allegedly wanted to know how Baio could vote for someone who would talk about grabbing women "by the pussy." Baio says he asked her to stop screaming because kids, including his daughter and a child or children of Mack's, were around, but she kept doing so, using curse words and repeating the above-mentioned "pussy" comment. He says she then grabbed him underneath his arms, shook him, and pushed him. But sources close to Mack say any such movements were simply an attempt to illustrate, for Baio's education, how Trump hugs women. The Inquisitr notes that Mack's husband, Chad Smith, has publicly denounced Trump, saying his backers are "uneducated whites" who voted a "sexual predator" into office.
– The number of Ohio State wrestlers who've come forward to say Rep. Jim Jordan knew about abuse at the hands of their team doctor is rising, despite Jordan's adamant denials. After an initial report on three former wrestlers, NBC News interviews a fourth accuser, Shawn Dailey, who says he was groped several times by Dr. Richard Strauss in the mid-'90s, when Jordan was the team's assistant coach. "It was very common knowledge in the locker room that if you went to Dr. Strauss for anything, you would have to pull your pants down," Dailey, now 43, says, adding he never approached Jordan about his own abuse but took part in locker room discussions about Strauss with Jordan. Dailey specifically backs up the account of former teammate Dunyasha Yetts, saying Jordan's reply to Yetts after Yetts complained about Strauss was: "If he tried that with me, I would kill him." Dailey notes he's a Republican, like Jordan, whom he calls a "close friend" and "good guy" whose campaign he donated to in 1994. Still, "what happened drove me out of the sport," he says. "So I was surprised to hear Jim say that he knew nothing about it. … That's kind of hurtful." Former UFC champ Mark Coleman also speaks out, telling the Wall Street Journal "there's no way unless [Jordan's] got dementia or something that he's got no recollection of what was going on at Ohio State. … I have nothing but respect for this man, I love this man, but he knew as far as I'm concerned." Meanwhile, President Trump has weighed in, telling reporters Thursday that he believes Jordan "100%, no question in my mind." "Jim Jordan is one of the most outstanding people I've met since I've been in Washington," Trump said, adding he doesn't believe the allegations against him "at all."
– A North Carolina woman allegedly locked in the trunk of a moving car by her boyfriend was saved by a quick-thinking 911 dispatcher and a lowly flip phone, ABC News reports. The 29-year-old woman called 911 around 4am Jan. 14. The woman had gotten in a fight with her boyfriend, who was "jealous," according to WRAL. Before dispatcher Tim Medlin could get much information from the woman, the call was dropped. He was unable to get her to answer when he called back. Then Medlin remembered a flip phone the 911 communications center keeps around in case the phone lines go down, WTVD reports. He says texting was the only way he could think to contact her without getting "her in trouble." The woman texted Medlin back, letting the dispatcher know she was in a red Mustang headed toward Fayetteville. Verizon provided the location of the woman's phone, and police stopped her and her boyfriend, Nicholas Mattevi, in Fayetteville. Mattevi, 32, was arrested and charged with false imprisonment. "I can go to bed," Medlin recalls feeling upon hearing of the arrest. "We've done our job." He says he's planning to buy a smartphone for the office to replace the old flip phone and make it easier to text if there's a next time. Medlin's boss tells ABC the dispatcher "really stood by our motto: Failure is not an option." (This 911 dispatcher was accused of hanging up on callers.)
– Credit card purchases are about to get a little slower and a lot more secure. Consumers have been receiving new cards with fraud-prevention chips and on Thursday, a lot more retailers will be asking customers to put their card in a reader instead of swiping it, reports the Los Angeles Times. Oct. 1 is the day that the credit card industry will start shifting liability for fraudulent transactions to issuers and merchants that haven't adopted the new technology, which is already used in much of the rest of the world and is credited with dramatically reducing fraud by making it harder to duplicate cards. Cards without chips will continue to work until they expire, though experts tell the New York Times that consumers who have the choice should always opt to dip a card in a reader instead of swiping it. The chips in the new cards use a system known as EMV, for creators Europay, MasterCard, and Visa. They contain buyer information and add an extra level of security by creating a new code for every purchase, Tech Times explains. In Europe, consumers need to enter a PIN, but US retailers will only require signatures. Around 70% of cards will have chips by the end of this year, according to the LA Times, though the full switch is expected to take years. Retailers worry that the extra few seconds per purchase will slow down businesses at peak times—and that more fraud will now take place online. "It's like closing the front door but leaving the back door open," a National Retail Federation exec tells the New York Times. "The thieves will figure out that the back door is unlocked."
– Things seem to have gone downhill for Tami Erin since she played Pippi Longstocking in the '80s: The actress was arrested yesterday for felony hit and run ... while allegedly driving drunk, TMZ reports. Erin is accused of hitting three cars in LA—in three separate incidents, not all at the same time—and leaving the scenes. A source says she was "totally out of control ... just out of it." At least one person had to go to the hospital, according to law enforcement sources. Erin last appeared on TMZ because her sex tape was being marketed with images of her as a 14-year-old Pippi.
– Frat-house accidents and sexual assaults are getting so common they're impossible to ignore—but how did it get this bad, and why does it keep happening? In an extensive Atlantic piece, Caitlin Flanagan looks at the history of fraternities and their myriad ways of avoiding legal obligations for what goes on behind closed doors. As Bloomberg reported, 60 students have died in frat-related incidents since 2005, a fact "that is dwarfed by the numbers of serious injuries, assaults, and sexual crimes that regularly take place in these houses," writes Flanagan. She chronicles a few incidents, from a freshman girl's heinous rape at Wesleyan University to a young man who fired a bottle rocket out of his butt at Marshall University—and the guy who fell off a deck videotaping it, and later sued Alpha Tau Omega for his injuries. To avoid financial ruin, fraternities have merged into "vast national organizations" that buy liability insurance, and they've created rules about alcohol consumption that are nearly impossible for party-lovers to follow—so when the inevitable lawsuits come, frat members are considered at fault for breaking the rules. That means their soon-to-be-retired parents pay extensive legal bills, and parents' homeowners insurance often pays settlements. So why do universities allow this perilous environment to persist? Largely because fraternity dorms save schools "untold millions of dollars" in housing, writes Flanagan, and the frat-house party image helps lure students into expensive universities. To be fair, advocates also describe the positives—like increased confidence, brotherhood, and leadership training. But parents should know the dangers: "Until proven otherwise," a lawyer tells Flanagan, "they all are very risky organizations for young people to be involved in." Click for her full piece.
– Frightened North Carolinians fleeing Irene are jamming highways as the East Coast steels for what could be the biggest hurricane in decades. At least seven states have now declared a state of emergency, and hundreds of flights are being canceled. Gas stations are running out of fuel and ATMs have been emptied of cash as Americans hit the road for a bumper-to-bumper trip out of Irene's angry path. The Category 3 storm is expected to hit the Southeast sometime tomorrow, and hundreds of thousands of residents have been ordered out of their homes in three North Carolina counties. Norfolk, Va., is also ordering residents to evacuate, and Washington, DC, has been forced to postpone Sunday's planned MLK Memorial dedication. "This is a very, very serious situation," a spokeswoman for Dare County told ABC News. "We have not seen anything like this in the lifetimes of most our residents. Once the storm hits, it will be very difficult to respond to distress calls." Irene is some 700 miles wide now and moving at a slow 12mph, which means it can wreak extensive damage in a region over a long period of time; it could cause up to $13.9 billion in damage on the East Coast. The storm is expected to barrel into New York City on Sunday, packing winds of up to 90mph. New Jersey communities are already being evacuated, and hundreds of street fairs have been canceled and elder care facilities and hospitals in low-lying area will be evacuated in New York today. NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg says residents in low-lying parts of the city should get out today as the transit system is planned to be shut down tomorrow.
– Soon you may no longer have to choose between treating your hangover with coffee or the hair of the dog. Science reports that scientists have successfully spun used coffee grounds into booze, in a process that sounds relatively straightforward. They dried the spent grounds (which, in this case, came from a Portuguese roaster) then added water and cooked the mixture at 163°C for 45 minutes. The liquid was pulled out, dosed with sugar and yeast, and given time to ferment. In order to make it boozier—read, 40% ethanol—the result was concentrated in a process Science likens to that of distilling spirits. But what would such a discovery be without a taste test? The eight "trained" testers who sampled it reported coffee aromas and a bitter taste. They thought age would actually improve it, but ranked it as palatable. (Smithsonian adds that the scientists described it "as having features of a pleasant beverage.") What it's not: Caffeinated. Most is eliminated as the drink is brewed.
– Four Catholic nuns and 12 others were killed during an attack on a home for the elderly Friday in Yemen, in what the Vatican is condemning as an "act of senseless and diabolical violence," CNN reports. According to the AP, six gunmen got past the home's gate in the city of Aden by pretending they were visiting their mothers. Four then entered the building and went from room to room, handcuffing victims and shooting them in the head. The nuns, members of an organization founded by Mother Teresa, were acting as nurses in the home and serving breakfast when the gunmen entered, the BBC reports. One nun was able to escape death by hiding inside a fridge. Two of the killed nuns were from Rwanda, one was from India, and another was from Kenya. A Yemeni cook and Yemeni guards were among the other victims. Pope Francis was "shocked and profoundly saddened" by the violence, according to a Vatican press release. The Vatican's secretary of state says the Pope "prays that this pointless slaughter will awaken consciences, lead to a change of heart, and inspire all parties to lay down their arms and take up the path of dialogue." A spokesperson for the nuns' organization, the Missionaries of Charity, says the nuns decided to stay in Yemen longer than required in order to continue helping people. The identity of the gunmen is unclear, but Yemeni officials are blaming ISIS. Yemen is in the midst of a civil war, which is being used as cover by both ISIS and al-Qaeda. More than 6,000 civilians have been killed since the war started.
– A California mom went vigilante on Friday by grabbing and shoving an alleged 12-year-old bully on school grounds, authorities say. Delia Garcia-Bratcher, 30, was visiting Olivet Charter Elementary School in Santa Rosa, Calif., at lunchtime and asked her 10-year-old son to point out his tormenter. Seeing him, she grabbed his neck, gave him a shove, and told him to cut it out. Well, it wasn't long before the boy ran and told on Garcia-Bratcher, who was charged with inflicting injury on a child, the Press Democrat reports. "It's pretty unreasonable for a parent to go storming on campus like this," said a sheriff's department lieutenant. "You can see fingerprints on his neck." What's more, Garcia-Bratcher may have grabbed the wrong boy, as investigators haven't yet linked him to the bullying, the AP reports. Another AP story notes that a phone under the mom's name has been disconnected, and a Facebook page with her name on it says she was wounded by the accusations and "the truth will be told." Released on $30,000 bail, she's due in court on Thursday.
– Speak the wrong language in front of an African elephant, and she may not like you much. In a study at a Kenyan national park, researchers played recordings of different languages and voices for 47 elephant family groups, comprising hundreds of animals. The recordings included the voices of Maasai men, whose cattle-herding can cause run-ins with elephants. Kamba men, on the other hand, are often farmers or national park workers and present little danger to elephants, AFP reports via Raw Story. While the languages recorded were different, the spoken phrase was the same: "Look, look over there—a group of elephants is coming." When the elephants heard Maasai men, they prepared to protect themselves, sniffing around and moving together. But the voices of Kamba men didn't prompt much worry. "They are making such a fine-level discrimination using human language skills," a study author tells the AP. "They're able to acquire quite detailed knowledge." The elephants also appeared to be able to distinguish between men and women: Maasai women's voices didn't set off major alarm bells, nor did Maasai boys'. The findings come as humans and elephants overlap more often in the park, leading to occasional clashes, Discover notes. Indeed, the study is "sad because it suggests that the conflict between humans and elephants is growing," says an expert.
– He didn't throw anything, but Russell Crowe is making headlines again for his temper. The Robin Hood star walked out on a BBC interviewer who pushed him a bit too far with questions about the legendary outlaw's accent—and some stale gossip about Gladiator. "Front Row" host Mark Lawson said he detected some Irish in the accent the native New Zealander adopted for Robin Hood, and Crowe responded, "Bollocks," reports the Daily Mail. The interview proceeded, and Crowe eventually returned to the matter of the accent, saying, "I'm a little dumbfounded you could possibly find any Irish in that character—that's kind of ridiculous, but it's your show." He was a lot less forgiving when Lawson brought up a recent book that claims Crowe didn't want to do the climactic scene in Gladiator—the actor got up and left. Listen to the interview here; it gets contentious at around 5:50 and ends shortly after the 10-minute mark.
– A rookie cop with the NYPD will face criminal charges after shooting an unarmed black man to death in a stairwell, reports the Wall Street Journal. A Brooklyn grand jury indicted Peter Liang, 27, on charges of second-degree manslaughter in the November shooting of Akai Gurley, 28, reports the Daily News. The charges essentially accuse Liang of acting recklessly, says the newspaper. Police have previously said that Liang's gun fired accidentally as he and a partner were patrolling a public housing complex and preparing to descend a dark staircase. The bullet struck Gurley, who was on a landing one floor below. “They didn’t present themselves or nothing and shot him,” Gurley's girlfriend, who lives in the building, told DNAInfo after the shooting. “They didn’t identify themselves at all. They just shot.” Liang, who has been on desk duty since the shooting, is expected to turn himself in tomorrow morning. The development follows the lack of indictments in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases. Those two deaths involved white officers, while Liang is Asian-American, notes the New York Times.
– "We're not looking for a needle in a haystack, because we haven't found the haystack yet," said the police chief of Duluth, Minnesota, Saturday morning in regards to the case of an elderly couple who had been missing for 8 days. By the afternoon, a helicopter had found both the haystack and the needle, to tragic ends. Ron and Mary Tarnowski were found dead in the Brookston area, near a hunting shack the family owned about 30 miles from Duluth. Foul play isn't suspected. The Washington Post reports the couple lived near one of their sons, Karl Tarnowski, who noticed they uncharacteristically didn't return home on July 29. The Duluth News Tribune reports the couple didn't have cellphones or credit cards on them, nor did their car's OnStar system engage, leaving authorities with little to go on. But there was, perhaps, a general area: Their last sighting had been at 1pm on the day they went missing at a corner store near Brookston. KARE reports the Tarnowskis' Chevy Tahoe was found in a remote area, apparently stuck on what seemed to be a "swampy" trail typically accessed by snowmobilers in the winter. Mary, 78, was in the vehicle; Ron, 82, was outside it, some 50 feet from the road, suggesting he had gone in search of help. Karl tells the Post that it's thought both died the day they went missing; Mary is believed to have succumbed to dehydration and heat. The couple is depicted as a devoted one: A stroke at age 42 left Mary paralyzed on her right side; Ron was constantly by her side, but had himself begun to show early signs of dementia. (This couple was found 75 years after they went missing.)
– Next time someone complains that American TV has gone a little too far, suggest they take a look at the new gimmick of one of Pakistan's most popular shows: free baby giveaways. As in, actual human babies. Host Aamir Liaquat Hussain gave away two infant girls last month and plans to keep going, reports Reuters. Witness the posting on his website: "If any family cannot afford to bring up their new born baby due to poverty or illness then instead of killing them, they should hand over the baby to Dr Aamir." The first two babies were provided by a Pakistani aid organization that takes in abandoned infants, and both the show and the organization insist that the recipients were vetted. "If we didn't find this baby, a cat or a dog would have eaten it," Hussain told his cheering audience before handing over one of the baby girls to a childless couple. Reuters explains that Pakistan has loosened its control over broadcasting in recent years, leading to a slew of such ratings-grabbing stunts. CNN describes this particular show, Aman Ramazan, as a Pakistani version of The Price is Right. Audience members typically win prizes for correctly answering questions about the Koran. Only now, the show is giving away babies along with fridges and microwaves.
– Playing "Taps" on a well-worn bugle, the emotional recitation of "A Soldier's Creed," and calling each other racial slurs one day per week: all time-honored customs in the US Army? That last practice is, at least in one platoon, according to a black staff sergeant who tells the Army Times that he's filed an equal-opportunity complaint against his platoon leader at Alaska's Fort Wainwright for "[encouraging] 'Racial Thursdays' as a way to build morale and camaraderie," the Times notes. The soldier from the 2nd Platoon, C Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment tells the newspaper that although epithets were never hurled his way, he was told upon arrival that the special day was a "tradition" in which soldiers "can say any racist remark you want without any consequences." "It's degrading to the soldiers," the staff sergeant says. "We've had soldiers almost fight over the crap that's going on here." A junior enlisted soldier anonymously backs up the NCO's claim, telling the Times that "you didn't have to participate, but they'd remind you." He recalls a Latino soldier being called a "wetback" and "border jumper" before almost getting into a scuffle when the others wouldn't stop. The Alaska unit is the same one in which 19-year-old Pvt. Danny Chen served before killing himself in 2011 after being deployed. Chen, who was Chinese-American, reportedly had rocks thrown at him and was called names like "Dragon Lady" and "Egg Roll" in the weeks before his death in Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012. A spokesman for the Alaska unit tells the Army Times an investigation into the recent claims is underway and that "there is absolutely no connection between this current investigation and the case of Pvt. Danny Chen. Treating all soldiers with dignity and respect is something this command takes extremely seriously." (Prince Harry once got into hot water with the UK military for using a racial slur.)
– After a furor over changes to its ad terms of service, Instagram tried to clear things up; now, it's simply dropping the changes, the New York Times reports. The company is returning to its old advertising terms from 2010, co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote in a blog post. "Rather than obtain permission from you to introduce possible advertising products we have not yet developed, we are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work." "I want to be really clear," he added. "Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did. We don’t own your photos—you do." Still, the move may have come too late for some users: Similar services like Pheed saw more new users yesterday than any other app in the US, while Flickr's app jumped in popularity from 175 to somewhere in the 20s among iTunes rankings. The question remains, then, how the free service will monetize, notes the Times.
– A New Jersey lawmaker wants to slap stiff fines on motorists guilty of distracted driving, which his bill defines as "any activity unrelated to the actual operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of the vehicle." A story at NJ.com translates that to mean anyone caught drinking, eating, grooming, or reading an e-device, which in turn has led to a spate of stories suggesting that coffee will soon be outlawed in cars across the state. Not so much, reports the AP. Democratic Assemblyman John Wisniewski says his bill never mentions the beverage, adding that he'd be stunned if police pulled over a driver just for taking a morning sip. "It was the 'ham sandwich bill' last time," he says, referring to a previous iteration of the bill. "Now it's coffee." Still, he says he's serious about distracted driving, which was blamed for 400,000 accidents and 3,000 deaths in 2014, ABC7 reports. First-time offenders risk being slapped with a fine of up to $400—and $800 for a subsequent breach, plus a 90-day license suspension. Some critics say the legislation, inspired by a similar bill in Maine, goes too far. Steve Carrellas of the state National Motorists Association chapter told NJ.com that existing laws already cover “unsafe actions, like swerving or crossing a line.” He added, "Would [the bill] make changing the radio station or adjusting the volume illegal?" There's time to figure all that out: The measure has yet to come up for a vote even in committee. (A new report calls attention to drowsy drivers.)
– Amid rising nuclear tensions, two figure skaters Friday became the first North Korean athletes to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics, which will be held just 40 miles south of the demilitarized zone in South Korea, CNN reports. According to the New York Times, 18-year-old Ryom Tae-Ok and 25-year-old Kim Ju-Sik, who have been training in Canada with a French coach, finished with a score of 180.09 at the Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany. It was a career-best performance in an international competition for the pair. Kim says they were motivated by their coaches and the people cheering for them. Ryom agreed: "There were many people of different nationalities and backgrounds cheering for us. The fact that we gave them some kind of joy, that was the best part in the performance." While Kim and Ryom's sixth place finish in Germany was enough to nab them one of the final spots in February's Olympics, it remains unclear if they'll actually compete, Reuters reports. The decision rests with the North Korea Olympic Committee. Both South Korea and the International Olympic Committee have been pushing for North Korean athletes to participate in the Games, hoping it will be a diplomatic balm for the countries. The IOC has been providing travel, equipment, and accommodation to North Korean athletes attempting to qualify (North Korean skiers and speed skaters still have a shot), and South Korea's president said North Korea will have as much time as possible to decide if it will participate. North Korea boycotted the 1988 Summer Olympics in South Korea, but it did send a women's hockey team and taekwondo team to competitions in South Korea this year.
– Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost most of her left leg in the Boston Marathon bombing, will run the marathon this year. Haslet-Davis, who announced her plans Tuesday, tells Boston.com she wanted to make sure she was ready "both physically and mentally"—she was not a runner when she was hit among a group of spectators at the marathon finish line in 2013, but after the bombing she promised herself she'd eventually run the marathon. "I'm going to cry the whole time," she predicts of the April 18 race. Her team, #AdrianneStrong, will raise funds for the Limbs for Life Foundation. Haslet-Davis, a professional dancer, also vowed she'd dance again—and she did.
– An advertising watchdog group warns you to beware of patriotic "Made in the USA" labels on some Walmart products, saying the company uses them far too liberally. The group Truth In Advertising sent Walmart CEO Doug McMillon a letter last week saying that "Walmart's website is mired in USA labeling errors," and ran down a few examples, per the Consumerist: The company's store brand Equate Beauty Wedge Applicator Sponges, formerly labeled "Made in the USA" on the website, "are made in China according to the product packaging," the letter says. Some "USA" labels conflict with the product information on the same Web page, according to the letter—including Equate 7 Day Dental Whitening System Advanced Whitening Wraps (imported) and Almay Intense I-color Liquid Eye Liner (made in Germany). Some USA labels ignore the fact that the product is only partly made, or is assembled rather than made, in the US, the letter adds. "False made in USA labeling on Walmart’s website has misled consumers looking to purchase American-made products," says TINA.org Executive Director Bonnie Patten. In response, Walmart says the two Equate products only recently located in the US—yet the "Made in the USA" label on them is now gone, the Consumerist notes. Walmart adds that it's undertaking "a more extensive quality assurance review" of its website. While there's no official standard for "Made in the USA" labeling, companies can get sued over it for false advertising, AGBeat reports. Click to see a more extensive TINA review of Walmart's "USA" labeling.
– The latest drama surrounding the death of Julia Roberts' half-sister, Nancy Motes: A source tells the New York Post that Roberts may end up in a battle with Motes' fiance, John Dilbeck, who plans to argue that he should be a beneficiary of Motes' estate due to the length of their relationship. Of particular concern: gifts Roberts gave her sister and "intimate family pictures," the source explains. "There is a fear that John could be holding Nancy’s personal items hostage and possibly sell them to the highest bidder. If Nancy had photos and wrote a diary, describing her feelings towards her sister, he could use them," the source adds. And things get more bizarre: In an interview with the Daily Mail, Dilbeck's brother Conner—who has been ranting about Roberts on Facebook—claims Motes killed herself at this time specifically to hurt Roberts' chances of winning an Oscar for her role in August: Osage County. "We are talking about people who are powerful," he says. "People who have very delicate power, people who are in the limelight. Their power can be destroyed very easily if unfortunate things make them look more wicked. They have to be careful, it can destroy their career or their Academy Award." He also claims Motes' suicide note contains secrets about Roberts that Motes wanted to make public, and that Roberts is "terrified" the note could come out. Meanwhile, Radar has stories from both sides: Some sources insist Roberts had been trying to help Motes by getting her into rehab, but Motes' fiance says she was not a drug addict.
– New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was not happy about what he believed was a leak of information from his financial disclosure Wednesday—though it later emerged that the form was available to the public. "In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and @TheJusticeDept #swamp @Reince45," Scaramucci said in a now-deleted tweet, per the Daily Beast. Scaramucci later denied suggestions that his tagging of Reince Priebus was a declaration of war on the White House chief of staff. "Wrong! Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks," Scaramucci said in a second tweet. The disclosure information believed to have enraged Scaramucci appeared in a Politico report late Wednesday. According to the report, Scaramucci earned $4.9 million from his ownership stake in the SkyBridge Capital plus more than $5 million in salary from Jan. 1, 2016, to the end of June this year, when he began a short-lived stint at the federal Export-Import Bank. The New York Times notes that Scaramucci filed the disclosure form June 23 and under federal law, it would have been available to the public 30 days later. "They aren't in process yet," Scaramucci wrote to the Times after being asked why he thought the report had been leaked. He didn't respond after being told it would have been available July 23.
– The Wall Street Journal has revealed a list of potential running mates being vetted by Hillary Clinton, and it doesn't include Bernie Sanders. Possible future vice presidents currently in the early stages of vetting include Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio. A national poll conducted by Bloomberg found Warren leads in popularity among Clinton supporters, 35% of whom wanted to see her as vice president. She was followed by Booker, Castro, and Al Franken. (Newt Gingrich was the most popular VP choice on the GOP side.) While some Sanders supporters had been hoping for a vice presidential nomination for him, Sanders himself wouldn't be interested in the position anyway, according to a source close to him. CNN reports Sanders would rather work to change the Democratic party from the Senate than be seen as a "sell-out" or Clinton's "partner." That may explain the interest in Warren, whose policies are close to those of Sanders and who could possibly bring some of his supporters over to Clinton. Bustle calls her a "shiny apple to Sanders' orange." Sources close to Clinton say the top priority for a running mate is someone who would be ready to step in as president, and that advisers aren't really looking at what a nominee does for Clinton's campaign in terms of demographics and geography.
– A new study says one in seven US colon cancer patients is younger than 50—raising questions about why more young people seem to be getting the disease and what can be done about it, reports HealthDay via the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Colon cancer has traditionally been thought of as a disease of the elderly," says lead author Samantha Hendren. "This study is really a wake-up call to the medical community that a relatively large number of colon cancers are occurring in people under 50." Using government data on almost 260,000 colon-cancer patients from 1998 to 2011, the study also says younger patients more often have advanced cancer and undergo surgery (72% compared to 63% of patients over 50). The young are also more likely to use radiation therapy (53% to 48%) and have a slight advantage in surviving for five years (68% to 67%). Younger people are more likely to have advanced colon cancer partly because they get tested after noticing symptoms (like colon blockage, bleeding, and anemia), while people over 50 are advised to begin screenings, says Hendren. "Unfortunately, these symptoms are often ignored by the patient or doctor or ascribed to something like hemorrhoids," a scientist adds, per Reuters. Hendren's team conducted the study after noticing a rise in colon cancer among young people, Medical Daily reports, but that spike remains unexplained. Physical inactivity, obesity, smoking, and "an effect in our environment" are all possible causes, a Harvard professor says. More screenings for young people might help, but the yield would be low because under-50s are still less likely to get colon cancer. "This would be a big and costly change," says Hendren, who recommends "a lot of research" be done first. (A new killer is expected to top cancer by 2050.)
– A weather event that a National Weather Service meteorologist says "[sounds] like someone drove into your house" likely took place in southern Wisconsin on Tuesday night, and it wasn't a tornado, lightning strike, or earthquake. Instead, it was what's called a "frostquake," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, a rare happening in the Badger State that takes place when water that seeps into the ground freezes and expands, fracturing the ground around it. Although no damage has been called in from the so-called cryoseism, that didn't stop the extreme-weather occurrence from frightening locals. "[Loud] boom and house rumbling at 8:30 here outside of Beaver Dam WI. Crazy. Kids were scared," one resident tweeted. One other possibility for those who heard noises: "[Booms] could have been from Air Force planes on exercise per media," tweeted NWS Milwaukee. (Meanwhile, here's what El Niño has in store for the rest of us this winter.)
– Japan is considering burying its troubled nuclear plant in sand and concrete—the same move made in Chernobyl 25 years ago, Reuters reports. “It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete. But our priority right now is to try and cool them down first,” said an official, as authorities work to restore power. Smoke has been rising from the No. 2 reactor at the plant, and authorities aren’t sure of the cause—though it may be linked to the explosion there Tuesday, notes the AP. New damage has been discovered in the fuel pool at the plant’s No. 4 reactor, hampering cooling efforts to refill it with water (click for more on the alarming situation). US data-collecting flights suggest that radiation hasn’t expanded outside a 19-mile area—but Japan has raised its threat level from 4 to 5 out of 7, pointing to danger that extends beyond the local. The crisis could continue for weeks, said a US official. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post notes, authorities are using every cooling method available, from fire trucks to water cannons.
– A neglected printing machine and nearly 200 blank money-order forms caught the eye of Marc Saunders sometime after he started working at the Postal Service's New Lisbon, NJ, branch in 2014. Four years later, Saunders has been hit with a five-year probation and ordered to pay the agency back almost $100,000 after he pleaded guilty to orchestrating a scheme in which he printed fraudulent money orders and gave them to others to cash, the Cherry Hill Courier-Post reports. Saunders' accomplices, who helped him find people to cash the money orders (including residents of homeless shelters), fared worse on the prison front: Anthony Bell, 39, was given a year and a day behind bars and a $22,400 restitution bill; Eugene Bowen, 36, a 20-month prison sentence and $18,500 restitution; and Andre Sutton, 39, a nine-month sentence and $4,700 restitution. An affidavit filed in Camden federal court by David Bannan, a special agent for the USPS' Office of Inspector General, details how the New Lisbon branch phased out the old money-order machine in 2013. Because it couldn't fit inside the office safe, however, the New Lisbon postmaster placed it inside a cabinet; it remained there when she moved to another branch later that year. The agent details his "evidence pointing to an inside job," noting Saunders ran his scheme between August 2015 and December 2016. Most of the money orders were cashed in the Philly area, as well as in Knoxville, Tenn. Once the stolen money orders started to emerge, Bannan traced the serial numbers to the New Lisbon office, where the machine had gone missing. Investigators then tied people who did the cashing to the suspects via their Facebook connections and cellphone info.
– Thinking of giving up booze for the month after a hedonistic holiday season? Well, you might be an alcoholic making a big mistake, writes Tom Sykes at the Telegraph. As a recovering alcoholic, Sykes should know. "I managed several sober Januaries, and they became an important weapon in my armory of denial," he writes. A real alcoholic, after all, couldn't make it, he reasoned. But the truth is the ritual appeals deeply "to the classic all-or-nothing, getting-away-with-it mentality of the addict," while "normals" have no use for it. He advises instead trying to have just one drink a night—if stopping after one is difficult, you'll know you have a problem. But if you actually are a "normal," it turns out there might be some merit in the month-long detox. The staff at the New Scientist ran a small-scale test on themselves, and got some pretty astonishing results. Ten staffers laid off booze for five weeks, and saw their liver fat, blood glucose, and blood cholesterol levels all fall significantly—reducing their risk for liver disease, diabetes, and heart disease—while four staffers who kept drinking saw no changes. But it was a fairly limited experiment, offering no clue how long those effects will last. Heather Timmons at Quartz argues that such "detoxes" are "useless" in the long-term, since the body regularly clears out toxins all on its own. So instead, she recommends taking two or three consecutive days off from drinking each week, since it takes the liver a full day to recover from heavy drinking—plus, over the course of a year, that ensures as many as 150 alcohol-free days.
– It was a world-class stroke of good luck. An antique "typewriter" snapped up by an eagle-eyed expert in Romania for about $114 at a flea market turned out to be a rare Nazi Enigma cipher machine, CNN reports. The German Wehrmacht Enigma I sold for $51,500 to an anonymous bidder at an auction in Bucharest on Tuesday. During World War II, the German military used the machine to encrypt and decrypt sensitive messages. Depicted in the 2014 movie Imitation Game, dogged English cryptologists at Bletchley Park cracked the code, which the Germans believed unbreakable. Their work was said to have shortened the war by two years. The collector who spotted the rare machine was a cryptography professor who "knew very well what he was buying," Cristian Gavrila of Artmark auction house tells Reuters. Alas, the flea market seller, who thought it an ordinary old typewriter, did not. Romania was an ally of the Nazis until 1944, and historians believe there may be more Enigmas lying undiscovered in attics there. Thousands of machines were produced but very few have come up for sale, per CNN. But the latest sale isn't the biggest by far: A 1944 Enigma machine sold at Christie's New York last month for a record $547,500. Before that, an Enigma machine featured in the 2001 Kate Winslet film Enigma sold in London for $208,137. (Adolf Hitler's purported red phone sold for $243,000.)
– Scientists have made a long-sought—and controversial—breakthrough: They created stem cells from cloned human embryos for the first time, reports AP. In theory, the development by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University means that doctors might someday be able to grow tissue from an ailing patient's own DNA, thus reducing the chance of rejection in a transplant. Commonly cited examples are growing brain tissue to help a patient with Parkinson's disease, or pancreatic tissue to help diabetics. It's "one landmark step in a very long journey," says an expert at Children's Hospital Boston who wasn't involved with the work. The Oregon scientists say they don't think the embryos used in their process could develop into babies, reports NBC News, but the procedure is nonetheless controversial because it requires that the embryos be destroyed. Nature notes that competing technology in the last decade has made the push toward embryonic stem cells less intensive, but adds that the new paper in Cell is sure to reignite the debate. The scientists used eggs from donors, and it took six years to replicate the success they had with monkey embryos. They chalked it up to a series of small revisions over the years instead of a single aha! moment.
– It was a heist worthy of Hollywood: Thieves targeted a London warehouse temporarily holding some of the world's rarest books, cut through its skylights, rappelled down, and made off with more than $3 million in bounty, reports the Telegraph. In total, the trio nabbed more than 160 books, and Business Insider notes that CCTV cameras show the thieves ignoring everything in the warehouse but four containers, the contents of which they checked against a list. "This was a big job," Alessandro Meda Riquier, a dealer who lost about $1.6 million worth of books in the heist, tells the CBC. "Police said that it took more than three hours to complete." The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers has published the complete list of stolen publications, but the "jewel" is a 1566 edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Copernicus, the book in which he theorized that the sun, not the Earth, is at the center of our solar system. Other notables include a 1506 edition of Dante's Divine Comedy, and a copy of Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. It smacks of an inside job, an art attorney tells the Guardian, likening it to the Lufthansa heist in the movie Goodfellas. "Somebody had inside information that they were being kept in a warehouse and were particularly valuable," he says. "Then someone allowed that information to leak out, and criminals took advantage.” (One book dealer was murdered for his copy of a children's classic.)
– Donald Trump seems to have a big new target in his sights: Amazon.com and its founder, Jeff Bezos. In a Thursday interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump accused Bezos of using his Washington Post to try to keep Trump out of the White House. Why? He said Amazon has a "huge antitrust problem" and Bezos is afraid that Trump will go after the company as president. He also said the site is "getting away with murder tax-wise" and that Bezos is using the Post "for power so that the politicians in Washington don't tax Amazon like they should be taxed," reports Reuters. As Fox News points out, the allegations stem from what sounds like a major investigation the Post is conducting into Trump. On Wednesday, the newspaper's Bob Woodward told the National Association of Realtors that "we're going to do a book, we're doing articles about every phase of his life," and that 20 reporters have been put on the story. Trump is preemptively attacking the effort, telling Hannity the book would be filled with "false stuff," per USA Today. "Every hour we're getting calls from reporters from the Washington Post asking ridiculous questions," he said.
– Some Internet users who started out gleeful about the leak of celebrities' nude photos are now busy trying to scrub their hard drives of child porn. Lawyers for McKayla Maroney, who turned 18 in December, say the Olympic gymnast was under 18 when the photos of her were taken and demanded that porn websites remove the images, reports TMZ. Maroney had initially tweeted that the photos were fakes. At Reddit, users of a forum that has been used to share leaked pics have been warned that some pictures of Maroney and MTV star Liz Lee were taken when they were underage and if they're not deleted, "this subreddit will most likely be banned, very quickly." The warning was followed by panicked discussion of how to erase the images, reports the Daily Dot, which describes efforts to advise users how to "remove all record of their criminal activity" as the "aiding and abetting" of a crime. The Prostate Cancer Foundation, meanwhile, has decided to return thousands of dollars donated by users of the same subreddit as "guilt money" for viewing the celeb photos, rather crudely " in honor of Jennifer Lawrence " (Gawker has the explanation here). "Guys, we're literally worse than cancer," one user wrote after the donations were returned, as per the Washington Post. (Apple says the leak wasn't a result of "any breach in ... iCloud or Find My iPhone.")
– Melissa McCarthy jumped into the box-office fray with a new movie this weekend, but Avengers: Infinity War still rules, the AP reports. The Walt Disney Studios on Sunday estimates it has added $61.8 million from North American theaters, bringing its total domestic earnings to $547.8 million in its third weekend. Globally the film has now grossed over $1.6 billion, making it the fifth biggest of all time. The superhero blockbuster easily overpowered newcomers like the McCarthy comedy Life of the Party and the Gabrielle Union thriller Breaking In. In a distant second, Life of the Party earned an estimated $18.5 million, while the modestly budgeted Breaking In took third place with $16.5 million. The mom-themed films were strategically timed to launch over Mother's Day weekend. Both drew mostly female audiences. The comedy Overboard came in fourth with $10 million and A Quiet Place held fifth spot with $6.3 million, Variety reports.
– It's a good question. Why, asks Bruce Crumley in TIME, are French women killing their babies? It may have something to do with a little known, "quasi-schizophrenic" phenomenon called "pregnancy denial," he finds. Women with this condition "either don't realize or cannot accept that they are with child," a doctor says. And, he adds, it's not a French-only thing. Women can become "so convinced pregnancy is impossible that once the child they never wanted arrives, they don't accept it as real and get rid of it," the doctor says. Or, as one psychologist tells the Independent, for some women a baby "is viewed more as an inconvenience, and something to be got rid of in the same way as you get rid of the trash."
– Innocent flub? Public diss? Either way, President Trump and wife Melania provided an unintentionally buzzy moment upon their arrival in Tel Aviv. Watch it via this video clip from the newspaper Haaretz. It shows the president reaching back to take wife Melania's hand on the airport tarmac and then her, well, not taking him up on it. That has triggered lots of coverage along these lines in the Daily News: She "refused to hold her husband's hand and then slapped it away." A post at the Daily Beast raises the ante on that sentiment. But many also were taking a more middle-ground approach, hedging descriptions of Melania's action with phrases like "appeared to be swatting" (People) or "seems to swat away" (Los Angeles Times). The Washington Post, meanwhile, offered one of the most charitable explanations: "Or maybe, upon close inspection of the footage, perhaps she just missed grabbing his outstretched hand, like a trapeze artist flubbing the catch," writes Emily Heil. She notes that Trumpian hand-holding is a favorite topic of White House watchers, meaning the two ought to at least "work on their choreography" if they want to avoid feeding the memes. (This isn't the first time Melania has seemed to flinch at her husband's touch.)
– In 2012, a marketing research company determined Pantone 448 C (aka "opaque couché") was the world's ugliest color—and it's been used to try to save lives ever since. Per the Guardian, GfK surveyed 1,000 smokers back then to find out which hue turned them off the most, and this Pantone pick—a greenish-brown blend that survey participants said reminded them of "death" and "tar"—emerged the winner. Time notes the agency had been commissioned by the Australian government to find a color so repellent it could be used on cigarette packaging to discourage people from lighting up. The new color was found to have the most ability to "minimize appeal" and "maximize perceived harm" and was implemented on plain cigarette packs with health warnings across Australia, the Brisbane Times reported at the time. Early results are now in, and it appears the color that CNN describes as "sludge-like" may have made an impact: Cigarette sales have fallen, and now other countries such as the UK, France, and Ireland are following suit, per Metro. So what is it about the color that makes it such an effective sales deterrent? A color consultant tells CNN it may be the strong resemblance to, well, poop. But not everyone's on board with trashing opaque couché. Pantone sniffs to the Guardian, "At the Pantone Color Institute, we consider all colors equally," noting that the color's "deep, rich earth tones" make it a oft-chosen pick for sofas. But perhaps the saddest entity of all? The long-silent Pantone 448 C Twitter account, which back in 2012 reacted to the news of its denigrated status by tweeting, "I used to feature so much in all your 70s couches, curtains, and wallpapers. What did I do to deserve this?" (Speaking of ugly, this dating site rejects ugly people.)
– Even those not paying close attention to the World Series might be hearing the name Kyle Schwarber being thrown around a lot after the first two games. As in, "The Legend of Kyle Schwarber" as the Chicago Cubs catcher puts it, per USA Today. The 23-year-old suffered a devastating knee injury in the third game of the season on April 7 and sat out the rest of the year. In a surprise move, the Cubs put him back in the lineup for the World Series as a designated hitter. After doubling in Game 1—one of the few bright spots for the Cubs that game, which came after TV analyst Pete Rose predicted he'd strike out three times—Schwarber had two RBI singles in the Cubs' Game 2 victory and scored another run himself. He's batting .429 with two walks. "They're going to make movies about him," says teammate Kris Bryant. No position player has ever recorded his first hit of the season in the World Series. And his "eye" at the plate is astonishing his teammates, notes the Chicago Tribune. The problem for the Cubs is that Schwarber is not medically cleared to play the outfield, but that could change before Friday's game in Chicago, where no designated hitter is allowed. But "the next plot twist— “Will Schwarbs be in left field?'—likely will not be a twist at all," writes Ken Rosenthal at Fox Sports. "He will be in left. He will receive a standing ovation for the ages. He will hit a ball into Lake Michigan, and then ride a chariot down Michigan Avenue, woe to any billy goat that stands in the way."
– Cassie Young is used to strangers reaching out to her on social media. The 31-year-old is a digital director at the nationally syndicated radio program The Bert Show in Chicago, and she's got more than 14,000 followers on Twitter alone. But when a personal trainer offered to whip her into shape after she announced her engagement to her boyfriend of nearly a decade, he became so persistent—and their chat so emotional—that she posted their exchange on Facebook, where it went viral. "If you think of life as a 'game' with being skinny as how you 'win,' this guy is offering to play by the rules and get you there," she writes. "I'm telling you the game is BOGUS. You don't need the game. I reject the game. I REFUSE TO PLAY." Young tells Yahoo that, since she was first teased about her size in 5th grade, it's taken years and many yo-yo diets to love the body she has. But the trainer—whom she won't name, saying that "no one should be vilified because they're ignorant"—told her that if she didn't hire him she should hire someone else because "those pictures last centuries" and her children's children would see what she looks like, per Mashable. "This guy tried to undo the work I’ve done and plant a seed of doubt in my head during my engagement," she says. She replied to him, "I'll look my best because I'll be so happy I get to marry the man I love." She says the positive comments she's received from readers mean a lot, and that life is "too short to be spent worrying about a belly roll." (People recently tweeted memories of the first time they were body-shamed.)
– Looking for your Prince Charming or Cinderella? Set your sights on the new dating website exclusively for Disney fans: MouseMingle.com. Creator Dave Tavres—a former engineer on the Disneyland Railroad—says "the inception moment" for the site came back in 2011 when he was telling friends how hard it was to find women who loved Disney as much as he did, per Mashable. He adds the project isn't all that unusual when you consider there are already dating sites that cater to marijuana users and even Doctor Who fans. In this case, users rate their favorite Disney songs, characters, parks, and movies, as well as their "Disney nerd level." Anyone can create a profile, but you'll need to pay a $12.55 monthly membership fee to contact other Disney buffs, reports Los Angeles magazine. (The 55 in the price is a wink at the year the first Disney park opened.) "Traditional [Internet] dating sites don't understand the passion people have for all things Disney. But we do," the site says. Many user photos already up on the site show people dressed as their favorite prince or princess.
– Three-time NBA MVP and Philadelphia 76ers legend Moses Malone, who with Julius Erving in 1983 brought the City of Brotherly Love its first championship since 1967, has died at the age of 60, reports the Inquirer. "It is with a deep sense of sadness that the Sixers family mourns the sudden loss of Moses Malone," per a team statement. "Moses holds a special place in our hearts and will forever be remembered as a genuine icon and pillar of the most storied era in the history of Philadelphia 76ers basketball." Nicknamed "the chairman of the boards," the AP notes that the 6-foot-10 center was one of the most successful players of his era to make the leap directly from high school to the NBA. The Sixers did not immediately specify a cause of death, saying only that the organization was "once again reminded of the preciousness of life."
– The families of two missing women have been notified after the discovery of a pair of skulls this week outside Kansas City, the Kansas City Star reports. Kara Kopetsky was last seen in 2007; Jessica Runions disappeared last September. Neither woman's body has ever been found. The first skull was discovered by a mushroom hunter Monday in a wooded area of Cass County. According to WDAF, authorities found the second skull Tuesday while searching the area. A number of other bones have also been found. While the families of Kopetsky and Runions were notified, neither of the skulls has been identified yet, KMBC reports. It's unclear how long it could take to get an identification. The families of the missing women are hopeful the remains will soon provide some answers. "Even if it’s not Kara, it’s someone’s loved one and someone has answers,” Kopetsky's mother tells the Star. “Good or bad, someone has answers.” Runions' family has been searching regularly since her disappearance. Searchers found two bodies in January, neither of them belonging to the missing women. Runions, 21, was last seen leaving a party with 28-year-old Kylr Yust, a friend of her boyfriend, in September. Yust has been charged with burning her car after it was later found. Yust had dated Kopetsky prior to her disappearance at the age of 17 a decade ago. Shortly before she went missing, Kopetsky filed a restraining order against him.
– What a relief: Kate Gosselin and her eight children will not go hungry, because the former reality TV star has found a new job as … a part-time blogger for a coupon website, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gosselin is “a longtime advocate of couponing,” according to the CouponCabin.com press release obtained by the Washington Post. Gosselin adds, “No matter what your financial situation is, there’s no reason not to use coupons. It’s like free money in your pocket!” Her first day on the job is Nov. 22, and her first topic will be Black Friday. Click for more on her new gig.
– Tom Brady appealed his four-game suspension over under-inflated footballs with about an hour to spare before today's 5pm deadline, reports AP. The NFL Players Association filed the paperwork on his behalf. The Patriots, meanwhile, issued a detailed rebuttal to the league report on the scandal, saying its conclusions are "at best, incomplete, incorrect and lack context." One notable part: Referring to texts between team employees Jim McNally and John Jastremski, the Patriots say there's no proof they were talking about deflating footballs, reports the Boston Globe. Instead, McNally's "deflator" nickname referred to weight loss, says the team: "Mr. Jastremski would sometimes work out and bulk up—he is a slender guy and his goal was to get to 200 pounds. Mr. McNally is a big fellow and had the opposite goal: to lose weight. 'Deflate' was a term they used to refer to losing weight."
– Debbie Speranza was surprised when she met up with her cousin at a Sydney wedding reception recently and they were wearing the same dress. But both women were even more surprised when they kept bumping into other women also in the same dress—a total of six women at the Australian wedding, which was attended by about 200 people total, showed up in the A$160 (about $128 USD) dress from Forever New. "No we are NOT the bridesmaids just the guests," Speranza wrote on the brand's Facebook page alongside a picture of the six women with the bride, Julia Mammone. She did dub the group #backupbridesmaids when the post went viral on social media, the BBC reports. "Then another walked in … then another one … and another one," Speranza tells the Telegraph. "A couple of the women were a little bit 'ahhhhh' but then we all saw the fun in it." She adds, "It wasn't a setup, I swear. I only knew one of the six women. Three were from the bride's side and three from the groom." The six women and Mammone are scheduled to appear on an Australian morning show Wednesday to discuss the viral incident.
– On the eve of his nomination, Mitt Romney restated his position on abortion—and it's not the same as that of his party or his running mate. "My position has been clear throughout this campaign," he told CBS. "I'm in favor of abortion being legal in the case of rape and incest, and the health and life of the mother." At its storm-shortened convention this week, the Republican Party will officially adopt a national platform calling for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, with none of the exceptions Romney currently favors. Romney's position on abortion rights has evolved over the years, notes AP. He favored abortion rights during his bid for a US Senate seat, but opposed them during the Republican primaries. He described the issue as a distraction in last night night's interview. "Recognize this is the decision that will be made by the Supreme Court," he said. "The Democrats try and make this a political issue every four years, but this is a matter in the courts. It's been settled for some time in the courts."
– The man Slate calls "perhaps the most decorated elementary-school teacher in the country" is facing allegations of "immoral" and "egregious" behavior—including fondling three children—in the wake of an investigation by the Los Angeles Unified School District. The Los Angeles Times reports fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith was fired in October and an investigation launched after a fellow teacher accused him of making jokes about nudity to his students. The results of that investigation were released this week. According to the documents, problems for Esquith started in the 1970s, when he was accused of fondling two boys and a girl. And a former student recalled Esquith putting her on his lap and touching her buttocks and spanking other female students in the 1990s. Other details included in the documents: Esquith allegedly had photos of nude women on his work computer, joked about the size of a student's penis, tickled a female student, and told a fellow teacher that a student liked green M&M's because "they made her horny." The Times reports email records indicate Esquith was acting as an ATM for former students while sending them inappropriate messages. He reportedly told a 14-year-old former student she was "sexy," a "hottie," and "soooooooooooooooo fine." To another he allegedly wrote: "I spank really hard!!! Your bottom will hurt for months." According to Slate, Esquith—who specialized in minority and low-income students—received the National Medal of the Arts, as well as awards from Oprah, Disney, and the Dalai Lama. He was even the subject of a PBS documentary. The Times reports Esquith denies doing anything wrong. (Elsewhere, a "teacher of the year" honoree quit after being informed she was not qualified.)
– Food safety concerns are once again plaguing Chipotle: Consumer complaints filed on IWasPoisoned.com—a website that tracks possible food poisoning cases and helped reveal a 2015 E. coli outbreak at Chipotle locations—suggest close to 200 people have fallen ill after eating at a Ohio restaurant, per Business Insider. The location at 9733 Sawmill Parkway in the Columbus suburb of Powell closed Monday based on "a few reports of illness," with a rep noting "we are not aware of any confirmed foodborne illness cases," reports the Columbus Dispatch. The number of reports has since ballooned to 182 as of this writing, with most describing multiple people with nausea and diarrhea. In one case, a family of six, including four kids ages 1 to 8, describes coming down with food poisoning symptoms after "celebrating completion of the summer reading program with the coupons provided as prizes." Per the Dispatch, a Thursday health inspection at the location found pinto and black beans weren't kept at a high-enough temperature, while lettuce wasn't appropriately chilled. The inspection report noted both issues were corrected the same day, though Chipotle, whose shares fell more than 3% in after-hours trading Monday, says it's doing a deep cleaning of the restaurant anyway. Still have an appetite? You can add guacamole to your Chipotle order for free Tuesday in honor of National Avocado Day, People reports.
– Gwyneth Paltrow wears little more than Louis Vuitton jewelry in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, out tomorrow. Paltrow, 38, who also donned fishnets, modeled a necklace, earrings, and rings for the magazine's jewelry calendar, OK! reports. The mother of two has "no trace of any stretch marks," the Daily Mail amusingly notes, so maybe you want to follow the advice she doles out on Goop after all.
– A longtime Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston has been caught up in the volatile politics of the day, with some calling for a boycott of El Tiempo Cantina. And it's all because Jeff Sessions came to dinner, explains CultureMap. After the attorney general ate there Friday, the owner posted a since-deleted photo online of his son posing with Sessions, saying it had been an "honor" to serve him. Those opposed to White House policies on immigration quickly pounced, with calls for a boycott and worse, reports KHOU. "Death threats," says owner Roland Laurenzo. The restaurant then posted an apology to those it offended and tried to distance itself from White House policies. "El Tiempo does not in [any way] support the practice of separating children from parents or any other practices of the government relative to immigration," Laurenzo wrote. "The posting of a photograph of the Attorney General at one of our restaurants does not represent us supporting his positions." Of course, that prompted supporters of the White House to join the debate, and now El Tiempo is taking flak from both sides. Meanwhile, the restaurant's Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages went dark over the weekend, notes the Houston Chronicle. (A restaurant in Virginia also entered the political fray.)
– A 25-year-old woman taking advantage of Chicago's bike-sharing service died Friday morning after she and a flatbed truck turned at the same time and crashed— reportedly making her the first bike-share fatality in the US since the service first debuted in Oklahoma in 2007, a bike-sharing consultant tells the Chicago Tribune. Per DNAinfo, the woman on the Divvy bike, IDed by the Cook County medical examiner as Virginia Murray, tried to make a turn east from Sacramento Avenue to Belmont Avenue and smashed into the truck making the same turn; a witness says she was thrown 6 feet into the air before crashing to the ground. Murray suffered severe injuries to her upper body and was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Bike-sharing programs—where riders pay a fee to pick up a bike at a self-serve station, then drop it off at another location when they're done—are increasing in popularity around the US, with the Wall Street Journal noting there are about 40 currently in existence. And while the Mineta Transportation Institute has noted bike sharing can be seen as being "inherently unsafe" for bicyclists (including riders not using helmets and not being familiar with a city's landscape), a study found "collision and injury rates for bikesharing are lower" than rates for regular cyclists. (Police say Murray was wearing a helmet, per the Journal.) Still, an Active Transportation Alliance director tells the Tribune that Murray's death is "a tragic reminder that we still have work to do to make our streets safe for everyone." In a statement, Divvy and Chicago's DOT shared their "deepest condolences to the rider's family and loved ones," per the Tribune, with the paper noting that Divvy has provided almost 8 million rides since it was introduced in the Windy City three years ago. (A GOPer thinks bike sharing is a conspiracy.)
– A Florida 12-year-old is facing seven felony charges for allegedly bringing a package of THC-laced gummy candies to school and sharing them with his classmates during a morning gym class at Mulberry Middle School in Polk County, ABC reports. Several students became ill with symptoms that included stomach pain, nausea, and dizziness after eating the Green Hornet brand gummies. Of the two boys and four girls who ate the pot candies, five were taken to the hospital and one was picked up by their parents, the Ledger reports, adding that the boy who brought the gummies to school did not consume them. The kids are reportedly recovering. Edible marijuana products are not currently legal in Florida, which has a medical marijuana program but not a recreational one. “I warned us that all of this was coming,” Sheriff Grady Judd, called by the Ledger a “staunch” opponent of medical marijuana, said. (In Washington, some old pot convictions were tossed.)
– Hillary Clinton paid the obligatory visit to the Iowa State Fair today, and Politico sounds impressed that she could be seen "embracing the masses that engulfed her." It's a contrast to campaign events in the past, including her team's now-infamous use of a moving rope line last month to protect the candidate. It's also a notable departure from her appearance in Iowa in 2008, when she didn't want to mingle with the commonfolk, writes Rachel Bade. Clinton also made headlines this weekend for joking about her email controversy, notes NBC News. "You may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account," she said at a dinner last night. "I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves." Today, reporters grilled her anew about the controversy, including whether her joke suggested she was taking it too lightly. "We'll see how this all plays out, but it's not something the people raise with me as I travel around the country," said Clinton, again reiterating that she never sent or received email marked as classified. The "marked as classified" is an important distinction: It turns out that some emails were indeed considered top secret, though it's unclear whether that designation came about after the emails were sent or whether State Department officials were careless. To help figure it out, the FBI will try to gain access to the accounts of State Department officials who were there during Clinton's tenure, reports the New York Times.
– When you're 90 years old, most people give you a pass to do certain things without question—eat what you want, nap all day, watch Columbo marathons, solicit prostitutes … well, maybe not that last one. At least not in Dennis Port, Mass., where a nonagenarian was arraigned Tuesday for allegedly doing just that, the Cape Code Times reports. Nicholas Salerno is accused of procuring the services of Karen Proia, nearly half his age at 48, allegedly paying her $100 to perform a sex act on June 22, Orleans District Court records note. And that alleged interlude may have gone unnoticed by law enforcement, except that Salerno filed a police report a little over a week later claiming Proia had stolen a necklace from him (the jewelry was later recovered at a local pawnshop, MassLive.com reports). When a cop informed Salerno he'd be charged with a crime, too—solicitation in his case—Salerno reminded that whippersnapper what's what. "I don't give a [expletive]. I'm 90 years old," he reportedly exclaimed. Salerno and Proia, who was charged with larceny and prostitution, pleaded not guilty at their Tuesday arraignments. (A drone caught an elderly man on camera engaging in some questionable behavior.)
– Michael Schumacher's medical files have been stolen from a hospital in France and are being offered for sale to the media, the F1 champ's manager warns. The files taken from a hospital in Grenoble where Schumacher spent months in a coma after a skiing accident last December contain details of surgical procedures and are being offered for close to $70,000, according to the Telegraph. The manager says while it's not clear if the documents on offer are authentic, they have clearly been stolen and, since it is illegal to buy or publish confidential medical data, she will "press for criminal charges and damages against any publication of the content or reference to the medical file," CNN reports. The 45-year-old racing legend finally emerged from his coma earlier this month and is now undergoing rehabilitation in Switzerland.
– This year's public service announcements urging people to get a flu shot might have just gotten some extra ammo: New research suggests the shots not only help ward off the flu but protect the heart as well, reports the LA Times. An analysis of previous studies found that 3% of people who got the flu vaccine went on to have some kind of "cardiovascular event," as opposed to 5% who got a placebo, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That is, those who got flu shots reduced their risk by about a third of having a heart attack. "If there are those out there who for whatever reason don't get the flu shot or don't feel that they need it … this is one more reason why they might help," the lead researcher tells Reuters. So what's going on? WebMD explains a leading theory: The flu triggers an inflammatory immune response in the body, and that inflammation could spell trouble for arteries, especially ones already compromised. If the shot keeps the flu away, all that is avoided. The researchers say those who already have heart disease should be especially vigilant about getting the yearly flu vaccine.
– Eight people have been found dead in a tractor-trailer outside a Walmart in San Antonio, Texas, in what police are calling a horrific human trafficking case. Some 30 other people were found in the truck, which didn't have a working air conditioning system, and they were taken to hospitals, reports CNN. Seventeen of them are in critical condition, while 13 are in serious condition. Authorities said the driver had been held, but they didn't release the driver's identity. A person from the truck approached a Walmart employee in a parking lot and asked for water late Saturday or early Sunday, San Antonio police said. The employee gave the person the water and then called police, reports the AP, and when officers arrived they found the eight people dead in the back of the trailer, police Chief William McManus said. Investigators checked store surveillance video, which showed vehicles had arrived and picked up other people from the tractor-trailer, police said. "We're looking at a human trafficking crime this evening," McManus said. He called the case "a horrific tragedy." The US Department of Homeland Security was involved in the investigation into what happened, he said.
– Congratulations, KFC, your Double Down stunt has gotten more publicity than a Nazi-themed romp with Jesse James. So here's a little more, in the form of what the reviewers are saying: The Double Down "arrives at a new low," writes Sam Sifton of the New York Times. Even the chain's signature chicken is "a slimy and unnaturally moist thing, with flavor ginned up in a lab. It is, in all, a disgusting meal, a must-to-avoid." The sandwich, which "cries out for carbs," is "an almost total dud," writes Robert Sietsema for the Village Voice, noting that "a peek under the top 'bun' reveals hella-small slices of bacon and acres of white cheese." Over at Slashfood, however, the concoction rated a "B"—though admittedly the salt was "not for the faint of heart." And perhaps it has a higher calling than mere lunch: "We can foresee this becoming the new 'hangover food' of choice."
– Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte welcomes a preliminary investigation into allegations of crimes against humanity now underway by the International Criminal Court, a spokesman said Thursday, marking an about-face for a man who once described the ICC as "bulls---." Duterte is "sick and tired of being accused" and is prepared to defend himself in court, though the investigation is "a waste of the court's time and resources," spokesman Harry Roque said in announcing the inquiry that is to decide whether there's evidence to build a case, report the New York Times and Guardian. Roque maintained the government crackdown that's left an estimated 12,000 people dead under Duterte's leadership—though police put the number at 4,000—is a "legitimate police operation" to weed out drugs. Duterte swore to "kill" criminals when he took office in June 2016. He has since faced accusations of mass murder while keeping up a "great relationship" with President Trump. It's those allegations that launched the ICC probe, confirmed by a prosecutor, per the Guardian. In a complaint sent to the ICC last April, a Filipino lawyer representing two men who say they were assassins for Duterte called him a "mastermind" of killings spanning the three decades since he became mayor of Davao in 1988. "Hopefully a warrant of arrest will be issued by the ICC against Duterte and his cohorts," 11 of whom are named in the complaint, the lawyer said, per the Times. Arguing the government is attempting a cover-up, Duterte political opponent Gary Alejano says ICC officials "are the only ones who can step in."
– A man is in "grave" condition after he doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire in St. Peter's Square today around 8:30am local time, ANSA reports. The 51-year-old man was treated at a nearby hospital, then transferred to a larger one, with serious burns to his upper body, the AP notes. A Jesuit priest was first on the scene and threw his jacket on the man before two police officers arrived to extinguish the flames; both were treated for smoke inhalation and injuries to their hands. The motive for the man's act isn't clear, though a piece of paper with his daughter's phone number on it was found nearby.
– A rarity in the weight wars: An FDA advisory panel gave the green light today to a diet pill that could become the first such drug to hit the market in more than a decade. The FDA is expected to make a final decision next month on Contrave, though it generally follows the advice of its panels. Made by Orexigen Therapeutics—whose shares were soaring, notes Bloomberg—Contrave has what MedPage Today describes has "modest" weight-loss effects. Panel members thought the benefit outweighed potential side effects such as high blood pressure. Contrave is a combination of two drugs already on the market: bupropion, an antidepressant also used to quit smoking, and naltrexone, which is used to treat addictions to alcohol and painkillers. One pharmacy professor tells MedPage Today he's sure it will be a huge success initially. "Time will ultimately tell if it is a good drug or not," he adds. "In the meantime, I'm going to let somebody else be the first to take it."
– In the week before Christmas, one Delta Air Lines pilot gave a grieving Arizona family a "gift that no one else could," Tucson News Now reports. Father of three Jay Short died after a battle with lung cancer Dec. 16. Three days later, his family was attempting to fly to Tennessee for the funeral scheduled for the next morning. But a 90-minute delay at the Phoenix airport left them only seven minutes to make their connecting flight in Minnesota, according to ABC News. "This was our last chance to say goodbye to my dad, and if we missed the flight we would [have] missed the funeral," Jay's daughter says. But when they arrived at the gate, the last plane of the day to Memphis was pulling away from the gate. "My son [was] waving his arms and pleading with the pilot through the floor to ceiling windows," News Now quotes Marcia. "I was crying and attempting to console my girls when the phone rang. The pilot was pulling back to the gate to let us board the plane." According to ABC, Capt. Adam Cohen saw the "desperation on their faces" through the gate's windows and decided to turn the plane around. Airline experts point out Cohen could have easily gotten in trouble for the unusual decision, though in this case, Delta has only praised the move. "This is something we’ll take with us, knowing we made a difference," Cohen tells ABC. (Another pilot ordered pizza for his stuck passengers.)
– Warren Buffett's former heir apparent David Sokol misled his boss and violated insider-trading rules when he bought shares in Lubrizol and then recommended Berkshire Hathaway buy it, Berkshire's board has concluded. A scathing report from the board portrays Buffett as a victim of Sokol's deception and says the company may sue to recover the $3 million Sokol made from the deal, Reuters reports. Sokol—who insists he did nothing wrong—has resigned from the company and is the target of an SEC probe, which will gain ammunition from the board's report. "They're throwing Sokol under the bus," a corporate governance experts tells Bloomberg. Buffett is facing questions about his oversight of managers, but analysts believe the board's report will take some pressure off the billionaire investor ahead of Berkshire's annual meeting this weekend.
– Note to celebrities: We know swanky multimillion-dollar parties are probably fun and you get paid a lot to attend them, but it's probably best to skip those held in honor of political leaders accused of kidnappings, torture, and extrajudicial killings. Hilary Swank and Jean Claude Van Damme did not take that advice, which did not win them points with Human Rights Watch. The actors attended a party and concert last week to celebrate the 35th birthday of Chechnya's leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, the AP reports. Human Rights Watch tells the Hollywood Reporter that activists warned Swank’s people about Kadyrov’s less-than-savory reputation before the event, but she attended nonetheless. She reportedly said she was honored to be there and wished the leader a happy birthday, while Van Damme stood up and said, “I love you Mr. Kadyrov.” Others invited to the lavish event, which was held on a floating river stage and included fireworks and acrobatic performances, included Kevin Costner, Eva Mendes, and Shakira, none of whom attended.
– The latest fallout from Michele Bachmann's Muslim infiltration conspiracy theory: Now Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin—whose family, Bachmann claims, is vaguely connected to the Muslim Brotherhood—has been threatened by a New Jersey man. Abedin is under police protection following the threat, and the man—a Muslim—has been questioned, the New York Post reports. Also tangled up in Bachmann's theory: Grover Norquist. The Raw Story reports that a 10-part video cited by Bachmann and her cohorts in their report claims the conservative anti-tax crusader helped the Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Bachmann may not have found much support in DC—John Boehner, John McCain, and others roundly condemned her call for a probe into Abedin and others in government—but she has quite a bit of backing in her home state of Minnesota, Politico reports. In fact, her supporters seem even more energized now, which is why this incident almost certainly will not be Bachmann's undoing. Politico has quotes like these from about two dozen interviews with Bachmann supporters: Bachmann is the "only one telling the truth about this thing," or Bachmann wouldn't "make something up."
– One of the many jarring videos to emerge from the Sunday night mass shooting in Las Vegas shows a defiant man standing and taunting the gunman while most of those around him were on the ground or trying to find cover. You can see the video here, but note that it's disturbing. (The man emerges around the 1:10 mark.) "Come on," he can be heard yelling, while gesturing with his arms in the direction of the source of the shots. As the Daily Dot notes, many commenters have criticized the "hyper-macho response," but is it possible the man inadvertently had the right idea in staying upright? A story at the New York Times that digs into the unusual nature of this attack observes that many people instinctively dropped to their stomachs when the bullets began flying. That's usually wise, "but on Sunday night, the decision potentially put them at greater risk," per the account by CJ Chivers, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, and Adam Goldman. The reason is that the gunman was firing from such a high vantage point, the 32nd floor of the hotel across the street. Any "inaccurate shots—the sort common to rapid or hurried fire, which typically sail high or strike the ground short—could still plunge into areas where people were huddled." Still, the choice was stark for concertgoers in the chaos. One puts it this way to the Times: “Either run and get shot and die, or stay and get shot and die.”
– The Incredible Hulk was feeling pumped up this week—but with IV fluid, not testosterone-induced rage. On Wednesday night, Lou Ferrigno posted on social media a picture of himself wearing a green hospital gown (naturally) and hooked up to an IV in a medical center in Santa Monica, Calif., noting he "went in for a pneumonia shot and landed up here with fluid in my bicep." The 67-year-old actor implied someone administered the shot (apparently a vaccine, USA Today notes) the wrong way, warning others to "keep an eye on who's giving the shot and make sure they not only swab the spot correctly but that you watch the needle come out of the package." Although Ferrigno didn't say what shot he received, People notes that, per the CDC, there are two types of pneumonia vaccines, both suggested for older adults and one of which can produce swelling at the site where the shot was given. All appears to be well now with the star: On Friday morning, he tweeted a picture of himself hanging out with Rocky actor Dolph Lundgren and others at an MMA event the night before in Los Angeles. (Ferrigno's wife was one of many who lobbed accusations against Bill Cosby.)
– How do you know that shutting down the government is an absolutely terrible idea? Because David Stockman is for it, reasons Dee Dee Myers in Vanity Fair. “Bring it on!” declared Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s one-time budget guru, in a Daily Beast interview. “If the Republicans hold the line, Obama will fold faster than a lawn chair.” Stockman, for the uninitiated, led Reagan’s war on the “welfare state” and once confessed that the president's tax cuts were a “Trojan Horse” to bring down rates on the rich. It’s “kind of hard to sell trickle down,” he said. Now, three decades later, trickle down’s been thoroughly discredited—even George HW Bush called it “voodoo economics”—but Republicans have stuck with it, leading us to these massive deficits, “all in the name of a crackpot ideology,” Myers writes. “So when David Stockman speaks, don’t walk, Republicans, run—as fast as you can, in the opposite direction.”
– More than 20 years ago, Iran promised it would stop executing convicts under the age of 18. But a new report by Amnesty International shows that not only has the practice continued into the present day—it's given Iran the dubious distinction of being "one of the leading executioners of juvenile offenders," the New York Times reports. At least 73 youngsters have been executed in Iran between 2005 and 2015, per the report, and at least 160 juveniles are now on the country's death row, and those are probably conservative numbers (the report notes actual figures are probably higher but unknown because info about the death penalty is "shrouded in secrecy"). And it's apparently much worse for girls than for boys, a deputy director for the group says. "Iran continues to lag behind the rest of the world, maintaining laws that permit girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 to be sentenced to death," says Said Boumedouha. This in spite of supposedly significant changes to the country's Islamic Penal Code—changes meant to offer judges "alternative punishments" to the death penalty when juveniles are involved. In fact, the need for those changes in the first place shows what a dismal failure Iran has been in dealing with this issue, since in 1994 it ratified its participation in the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that "neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed [on] … persons below 18 years of age." "The report debunks recent attempts by Iran's authorities to whitewash their continuing violations of children's rights and deflect criticism of their appalling record as one of the world's last executioners of juvenile offenders," the Amnesty report reads. (The Guardian features heartbreaking photos of female juveniles in Iranian prisons.)
– Roughly two-thirds of American adults have been exposed to the herpes type 1 virus (oral; type 2 is the genital one), and they could be predisposed to developing Alzheimer's disease later in life. So writes a group of 31 international scientists and clinicians in an editorial in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, stating that "substantial published evidence" suggests such a link and calling on researchers elsewhere to take action. They claim that some microbes—the virus and two types of bacteria, chlamydia and spirochete—are linked to the progressive neurological disease. "We are saying there is incontrovertible evidence that Alzheimer's disease has a dormant microbial component," writes lead author Douglas Kell in a University of Manchester statement. "We can't keep ignoring all of the evidence." The authors propose that the named microbes "reach the [central nervous system] and remain there in latent form." They can then essentially wake up during the course of aging, under stress, or as the immune system declines. "The consequent neuronal damage ... occurs recurrently, leading to ... ultimately AD," the authors posit. They point to the failure of 413 Alzheimer's drug trials conducted between 2002 and 2012 and "express our concern that one particular aspect of the disease has been neglected," as "antiviral/antimicrobial treatment of AD patients ... could rectify the 'no drug works' impasse." Meanwhile, not all are convinced, with one neuroscience professor framing theirs as a "minority view"; he tells the Telegraph there has "been no convincing proof of infections causing" the disease. (This 38-year-old's form of Alzheimer's is genetic.)
– It's the kind of story you fervently hope is an Internet hoax: a picture of a bloody fetus next to a woman in a hospital bed makes the rounds online, supposedly offering proof that China forced her to have an abortion in her seventh month of pregnancy. But as the AFP reports, it's "basically true," or so admitted China today. Rights groups say Feng Jianmei, a woman in the northern Shaanxi province, was forced to end her pregnancy after she didn't pay a sizable fine for planning to have a second child. The BBC reports that the US-based All Girls Allowed spoke to Feng's husband, who told them she was forced to go to the hospital, and restrained once there. "This is a serious violation of the National Population and Family Planning Commission's policies, jeopardizes the population control work, and has caused uneasiness in society," the provincial government said in an online statement. It recommended that those behind the abortion, who have not been identified, be punished. Late-term abortions have been banned in China since 2001.
– Potential Homeland Security chief Kris Kobach has a thing to learn about keeping his own documents secure: The Kansas secretary of state was photographed with his "Department of Homeland Security Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days" clearly visible before a meeting with Donald Trump on Sunday, the AP reports. The parts of the plan that were visible included a revival of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS, for people from high-risk nations, which he helped create in 2002. "All aliens from high-risk areas are tracked," states his hard-line plan, which also includes "extreme vetting questions for high-risk aliens" on subjects like Sharia. His plan also calls for the US to stop accepting Syrian refugees. The visible parts of the plan suggest that Kobach's vision for Homeland Security matches Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric, including a "rapid build" of the border wall, Politico reports. Kobach has been advising Trump on issues like immigration, and the transition team says they met Sunday "to discuss border security, international terrorism, and reforming federal bureaucracy," the Topeka Capital-Journal reports. It's not clear whether his carelessness with his documents will affect his chances of heading Homeland Security. "That's the height of irony if he's wanting a job in Homeland Security and you're able to see in a photograph what should be confidential information," says Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley. (Trump has told the British that he thinks Nigel Farage would be a great ambassador to the US.)
– France is on lockdown today after a satirical French newspaper published cartoons of the prophet Mohammed—including at least one featuring the prophet naked, reports ABC News. Fearing reprisals, Paris has closed embassies in 20 countries, reports the Jerusalem Post. The caricatures in the cheeky weekly Charlie Hebdo make fun of the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims and the uproar surrounding it. The cover features the prophet being pushed in a wheelchair by an Orthodox Jew under the title Untouchables 2, in reference to a popular French movie featuring a friendship in France between a disabled white man and his black helper. The last time Charlie Hebdo printed an image of Mohammed as a "guest editor" on its cover, its Paris office was firebombed. French government officials have criticized the decision to print the images just as Innocence of Muslims has sparked angry protests in some 20 nations, reports the Herald Sun. Officials didn't try to block publication of the caricatures, but have barred a Saturday protest against the film, reports the AP. Paris police have stepped up security at Charlie Hebdo's offices and around the city, where the top cleric in the largest mosque is already appealing for calm. France is home to Europe's largest Muslim population.
– Carrie Underwood looked out from a Louisville stage Saturday night and saw a young audience member holding a sign: "Carrie be my first kiss." So the country star called Chase, 12, up on stage and offered to make his dream come true—as long as he didn't mind that her husband would be watching, the Oklahoman reports. "OK, how are we going to do this?" Underwood asked. The bold tween's reply: "Lip to lip." That's exactly what Underwood did, and later tweeted: "Thanks, Chase, for the kiss and thanks Louisville for rocking so hard tonight! We had fun! #liptolip"
– Catherine Zeta-Jones has revealed she has undergone treatment in a mental health clinic for her bipolar illness. "After dealing with the stress of the past year, Catherine made the decision to check in to a mental health facility for a brief stay to treat her Bipolar II disorder," said her publicist. The disorder, also known as manic depression, is marked by dramatic shifts in moods. Bipolar II is not as severe as Bipolar I. Zeta-Jones has been under particular stress this year because of husband Michael Douglas' battle with throat cancer, and a tough court struggle with his ex-wife over profits from his film Wall Street 2, notes ABC News. Click for more on Zeta-Jones.
– Surf tragedy in Britain: Three people died after being caught in a rip current off a beach in Cornwall yesterday. Police say a man and woman in their 40s and a man in his 50s died after they were pulled unconscious from the water and airlifted to the hospital, reports the BBC. Four children in the same group were saved. An emergency services worker describes conditions at the popular Mawgan Porth as "dangerous" and says one of the casualties entered the water to assist others who were struggling. The owner of a nearby surf school tells the Guardian that while the currents may have been slightly more dangerous than usual, he has seen far worse conditions. "The waves were bigger, they were quite big. And it wasn't the safest of days to be in the sea," he says. "But it wasn't particularly dangerous. There were lots of safe places to be and they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time." (In California earlier this month, surfers were in the right place at the right time to rescue a couple whose romantic hot-air-balloon ride had gone awry.)
– In an attempt to bury a relic of its past, Vanderbilt University announced Monday that it will pay more than $1 million to remove the word "Confederate" from one of its dorms, the Tennessean reports. Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos called the inscription on Confederate Memorial Hall "a reminder of racism, slavery and a very, very bloody Civil War." The Nashville university's efforts to change the name in 2002 were halted when the United Daughters of the Confederacy sued. The group’s $50,000 donation in 1933 helped build the dorm. A state appeals court ruled the building could be renamed Memorial Hall only after Vanderbilt gave the United Daughters back their money—$1.2 million in today’s dollars. The university has the cash, thanks to a raft of anonymous contributors who wanted the tie to America’s painful past broken for good. "It's a symbol that is, for many people, deeply offensive and painful," Zeppos told the Tennessean. "And to walk past it or to have to live in that space is really something that I just don't think is acceptable.” Yet tampering with Confederate imagery remains controversial, and a new state law makes it harder to do so, the AP reports. Efforts by Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro to remove the name of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from a building could face a tougher climb under the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, which now requires a vote of two-thirds of the state’s Historical Commission rather than a simple majority.
– McDonald's is being sued for allegedly appropriating the work of a deceased graffiti artist without his estate's permission, Consumerist reports. According to Artnet, Dash Snow, who went by the tag SACE, was known for spray painting high-profile locations like the Brooklyn Bridge and even clothes being worn by homeless people. He died in 2009 at the age of 27. Years later, McDonald's redecorated hundreds of its locations with a graffiti motif, Fox News reports. A lawsuit filed Monday by Snow's former girlfriend and current estate manager, Jade Berreau, accuses McDonald's of using Snow's SACE signature as the major element in that redesign without permission. The lawsuit points out that the SACE-ish tag is not only the largest element of the graffiti-themed decor but also the "only element 'created' by a famous artist." It says Snow "carefully avoided any association with corporate culture and mass-market consumerism," of which McDonald's is the "epitome." The lawsuit claims Berreau originally asked McDonald's to remove the offending tag in June, but it "arrogantly refused to comply." She's now suing the company for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, unfair competition, and more. In addition to going against what Snow stood for, the lawsuit claims McDonald's' use of his art could hurt the value of his actual pieces, which have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
– The Wall Street Journal has what it bills as a "behind scenes" look at how the fiscal cliff talks went sour this week—on Monday, to be precise—and a few passages stand out to suggest relations between the president and House Republicans may have actually gotten worse since the election: Boehner to Obama: "I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?' Obama to Boehner: "You get nothing. I get that for free." At another point, Boehner told the president he wanted a deal similar to the one he rejected during their debt ceiling talks of 2011. "You missed your opportunity on that," replied the president. Eventually, an "irritated" Boehner decided to move ahead with his Plan B even while keeping the broader deal on the table. It was a decision that "incensed" the president. (Boehner eventually had to call off the vote anyway.) Read the full Journal story here. At Politico, Mike Allen says it's mostly a "rehash" of old news. But Ezra Klein at the Washington Post thinks the "I get that for free" exchange is "the central fact of negotiations for the Democrats and the central problem for the Republicans." Read his full explanation here of why Democrats think the $800 billion figure isn't what it seems. The talks, meanwhile, remain in limbo until after Christmas, when the best hope will be that the two sides can agree on a scaled-down, temporary plan.
– A German professor has apologized after apparently barring a male Indian student from an internship because of "the rape problem in India." In a now-viral email response to a male student, posted on website Quora, Annette Beck-Sickinger wrote, "I don't accept any Indian male students for internships." The University of Leipzig professor continued, per Time, "We hear a lot about the rape problem in India" and "I have many female students in my group, so this attitude is something I cannot support." Beck-Sickinger tells the Hindustan Times it was a "misunderstanding," but a second student claims the professor also turned down his PhD application, noting she wasn't accepting "any male Indian guests ... due to the severe rape problem in India." Beck-Sickinger argues her comments were taken out of context and the first student was denied an internship because there were "no openings available in the laboratory," CNN reports, per an official statement. She tells the Hindustan Times that the refusal followed an "unpleasant discussion" with the student. "I am by no means racist or xenophobic in any way," she says. "I sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings I may have hurt." Still, Germany's ambassador to India has blasted Beck-Sickinger's actions in an open letter. "Let me make it clear at the outset that I strongly object to this," Michael Steiner writes. "India is not a country of rapists." He also notes India's "lively, honest, sustained, and very healthy public debate" about sexual assault while slamming Beck-Sickinger's "simplistic image" of Indian people.
– Doctors in Canada are patting themselves on the back after what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind heart surgery that saved the life of an unborn child. Halfway through her pregnancy, Kristine Barry of Barrie, Ont., learned her unborn son had a heart defect in which the two main arteries of his heart were reversed, reports the CBC. Putting the aorta and pulmonary artery in their rightful places would require open-heart surgery after birth. But because Barry's unborn son also had no opening to allow blood to flow between the upper and lower chambers of his heart, he would be unable to circulate oxygen through his body once separated from his mother's placenta, with brain and other organ damage occurring within minutes. "He likely wasn't going to make it," Barry, 25, tells the Toronto Star. But doctors weren't about to give up. In what may be the first balloon atrial septoplasty performed on a baby in the womb, doctors from Mount Sinai Hospital and Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto used a needle to insert a balloon through Barry's uterus and into the boy's heart, opening a passageway between the chambers. Five days later on May 23, Sebastian was delivered "all pink and screaming," rather than "blue and not vocal" as initially expected, Barry says. Two months after undergoing open-heart surgery to repair his heart defect, he's healthy and happy and Barry can't thank doctors enough. "It's just amazing what they're able and capable of doing," she tells the Canadian Press. (Read about another heart surgery in the womb.)
– Baltimore Ravens cornerback Tray Walker is in critical condition after a dirt bike crash in Miami, police say. Miami-Dade police say Walker was riding a Honda dirt bike with no lights and wearing dark clothing when he collided with a Ford Escape at about 8pm Thursday, the AP reports. The Ravens say Walker is at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Police are investigating. In a statement, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said, "This is devastating news. Our prayers and hopes are with Tray and his family tonight." WBAL reports that police say alcohol and drugs are not believed to be factors in the crash.
– You’ve got to be pretty crazy to run onto a baseball field during a game, but Grim LeRogue is, arguably, crazier than most. LeRogue was carrying a picture of Alex Rodriguez with a gun pointed at his head and the note, “You have to go bud, you’ve ruined too many of our white queens” when he ran onto the Yankees' field Monday night, the New York Post reports. Apparently LeRogue planned to confront Rodriguez about one of those “white queens”—Cameron Diaz, whom A-Rod is reportedly dating. LeRogue was also carrying a picture of Diaz, which read, “We will be together soon.” He was not, however, carrying any weapons with which to dispatch Rodriguez. He may have been seeking publicity for a 700-page novel he wrote “about a ninja or something,” says his mom. The 33-year-old, who has a record of arrests for assault and burglary, was charged with assault and is being held. For more—including the pictures of Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, and Osama bin Laden he was also carrying—click here.
– Chris Christie has just about had it with that pesky Oracle of Omaha and all his talk about millionaires paying more taxes. The New Jersey governor cut off Piers Morgan's Warren Buffett question at the pass in an interview last night on CNN, telling him, "He should just write a check and shut up. Really, and just contribute. The fact of the matter is that I'm tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he's got the ability to write a check—go ahead and write it." As Morgan protested that he hadn't heard the question, Christie said, "I know the question. Do you really think Warren Buffett needs as much attention from the government as the most vulnerable?" Christie relented a bit, notes Politico, saying that "during difficult economic times you're most concerned about the people who have the potential to suffer the most," but that "I'm not going to get into this class warfare business where certain people are more important than others."
– The home used in the Robin Williams movie Mrs. Doubtfire had a close call with an arsonist last night, say police in San Francisco. Someone used gasoline to set fires at the front door and the garage, but the homeowner smelled smoke and was able to quickly douse the flames, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Damage was said to be minimal. The Pacific Heights home not only became famous in the movie, it turned into an impromptu memorial for Williams after his death, as fans left flowers and mementos, notes CBS Local. Investigators don't seem to think the attempted arson has anything to do with Williams or the movie, however. The current owner is Douglas Ousterhout, a surgeon renowned for his facial feminization procedures for transgender patients. A police official tells NBC News that the incident doesn't appear to be a hate crime. Ousterhout reportedly has had trouble with a former client, and police are investigating whether there's a link.
– The National Portrait Gallery has unveiled portraits of former President Obama and Michelle Obama. Barack Obama's portrait was painted by Kehinde Wiley, an artist best known for his vibrant, large-scale paintings of African-Americans. For Michelle Obama's portrait, the gallery commissioned Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald, first-prize winner of the gallery's 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, the AP notes. The paintings were unveiled Monday at the gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian group of museums. The gallery has a complete collection of presidential portraits. "How about that? That's pretty sharp," the former president said as he caught a first glimpse of the Yale-trained Wiley's portrait, per CNN. Obama also joked he tried to "negotiate" with Wiley to give him smaller ears and not too much gray hair. As for Michelle Obama, she said she was "a little overwhelmed" at seeing Sherald's likeness of her and thought about the impact it would have on "girls and girls of color." "They will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the walls of this great American institution," she said. "And I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives because I was one of those girls." No. 44 was even more effusive. "Amy, I want to thank you for so spectacularly capturing the grace and beauty and intelligence and charm and hotness of the woman I love," he said.
– The lawsuits may have only just begun: Richard Carpenter filed a suit in California Wednesday on behalf of sister Karen Carpenter's estate, saying record companies are cheating both of them out of digital royalties. Richard, the surviving member of the sibling duo, accuses Universal Music Group and A&M Records of not giving the band its fair cut of digital sales of Carpenters records, TMZ reports. He says the Carpenters, who recorded 11 albums and released 31 singles before Karen's death in 1983, are owed at least $2 million, and he notes that the courts sided with Eminem in a similar case in 2010. The lawsuit accuses record companies of shortchanging the duo by undercounting digital downloads and "improperly classifying" downloads as record sales when they should be considered licensing, which has a higher royalty rate, Variety reports. "The Carpenters recordings are among the best sellers in the history of popular music and after 48 years continue to contribute a substantial amount to UMG/A&M's annual bottom line," Richard Carpenter said in a statement. "It seems only fair that these companies account fairly to my sister's estate and to me. I look forward to proving the allegations in court."
– IMF chief/would-be French presidential contender Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested and charged with criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and unlawful imprisonment today following yesterday's alleged attack on a maid in the $3,000-a-night NYC hotel suite Strauss-Kahn had been staying in. An NYPD rep says the 32-year-old maid "told detectives he came out of the bathroom naked, ran down a hallway to the foyer where she was, pulled her into a bedroom, and began to sexually assault her." "She pulled away from him and he dragged her down a hallway into the bathroom where he engaged in a criminal sexual act, according to her account to detectives. He tried to lock her into the hotel room," said the rep. Strauss-Kahn "will plead not guilty," one of his lawyers told Reuters. Strauss-Kahn—who has polled ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy—is finished, says presidential rival Marine Le Pen: "The case and the charges ... mark the end of his campaign and pre-campaign for the presidency and will most likely prompt the IMF to ask him to leave his post." Click to read more about Strauss-Kahn.
– As many as 108 of the 298 people killed on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were researchers, activists, and health workers bound for a major AIDS conference in Melbourne, delegates have been told. Among them was Dutch researcher Joep Lange, one of the world's top HIV experts. He had been researching the disease for more than 30 years; one conference delegate tells the Australian he was "the father of AIDS research in the developing world." Another expert tells the Guardian that "there were some serious HIV leaders on that plane" and that the crash "will have ramifications globally" on research. At the 20th International AIDS Conference, "it's going to be a very somber week," American HIV activist Sean Strub says. "The struggle with the epidemic is bigger than any one individual, but the collective loss of so many important people is one that is emotionally devastating." The premier of the state of Victoria says the doomed plane flying from Amsterdam was supposed to connect with a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. "The shooting down of a passenger aircraft full of innocent civilians is an unspeakable act that will forever leave a dark stain on our history," he says. The Telegraph reports that out of the passengers and crew whose nationalities have been verified, there were 154 Dutch citizens, 27 Australians, 23 Malaysians, 11 Indonesians, six British citizens, four Belgians, four Germans, three Filipinos, and one Canadian.
– "The sarcophagus has been opened, but we have not been hit by a curse," declared the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities after opening a huge black sarcophagus that had been untouched for 2,000 years. Those prone to queasiness might have disagreed. Sewage water had leaked into the Alexandria sarcophagus over the centuries through a crack, meaning that instead of well-preserved mummies, antiquities head Mostafa Waziry and his team found three skeletons, a vile red liquid, and a terrible smell when they opened the sarcophagus, the Guardian reports. The discovery of the massive sarcophagus two weeks ago sparked rumors that the tomb of Alexander the Great could have been found, but archaeologists believe the three bodies were those of soldiers, judging by the lack of elaborate death masks and the arrow wound in one of the skulls, the Week reports. Waziry spoke to the media to dispel rumors that the sarcophagus was cursed, the BBC reports. "We've opened it and, thank God, the world has not fallen into darkness," he said. "I was the first to put my whole head inside the sarcophagus... and here I stand before you ... I am fine." (A less fragrant find was recently made at an ancient necropolis south of Cairo.)
– A barista in Washington, DC, has unintentionally raised a philosophical quandary by rejecting the idea that the customer is always right. When a guy asked for espresso on ice, the barista flat out refused, the Huffington Post reports via a Prince of Petworth transcript. "We don’t do that because it will ruin it. We make the best espresso in the city and putting it over ice will shock it," the barista at Chinatown Coffee Co. reportedly said. When the customer seemed befuddled, the barista replied, "Aw, did I just ruin your day?" HuffPo notes that a few years back, a disgruntled customer blogged about another coffee shop's rejection of his request for the same drink. As the post gathered traction, the shop released a statement of its rules, including: "No espresso in a to-go cup. No espresso over ice. These are our policies. We have our reasons, and we're happy to share them."
– An email spam virus swept through corporate America's inboxes yesterday, causing servers to be shut down at major operations including Comcast, AIG, Disney, and NASA. The virus spread through emails with the subject line "Here you have," which contained a link that downloads a virus that sends the same email to everybody in a user's address book. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating, reports ABC News. Security experts say anybody receiving the "here you have" email should delete it and contact their IT departments. They stress that people should never click links in emails from unknown people, or even in suspect emails from people they know. "The fact that it managed to spread widely through various multinational businesses doesn't say a lot for the security savvy of the workers," notes Neil Rubenking at PC World.
– A 2006 letter from a top Vatican official confirms that the Holy See received information in 2000 about the sexual misconduct of now-resigned US cardinal, lending credibility to bombshell accusations of a cover-up at the highest echelons of the Roman Catholic Church, the AP reports. Catholic News Service published the letter Friday from then-Archbishop Leonardo Sandri to the Rev. Boniface Ramsay, a New York priest who made the initial allegation. Ramsay informed the Vatican in a November 2000 letter about then Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's misconduct with seminarians from Seton Hall University's Immaculate Conception Seminary. Ramsay says he sent the letter at the request of the then-Vatican ambassador because he had heard so many complaints from seminarians that McCarrick would invite them to his beach house and into his bed. Sandri, now a top-ranked Vatican cardinal who was the No. 3 in the Vatican's secretariat of state at the time, wrote Ramsay on Oct. 11, 2006, seeking his recommendation for a former seminarian for a Vatican job. In it, he referred to Ramsay's 2000 letter, saying: "I ask with particular reference to the serious matters involving some of the students of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, which in November 2000 you were good enough to bring confidentially to the attention of the then-Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, the late Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo." Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, at the center of a storm rocking Pope Francis' papacy, cited Ramsay's 2000 letter in his own expose of a cover-up about the McCarrick affair.
– Two teens were shot outside a basketball game at Frederick High School in Maryland last night, and as of this morning police were still looking for the shooter or shooters, who are believed to have escaped on foot. "Gunshots going off around a gym packed with kids," is how a police officer described the 8pm scene. "You can imagine, everybody's running." Students told investigators they saw four or five males in big coats, hands in pockets, walk into the gym during the game and leave just before shots were fired, NBC Washington reports. The victims were boys aged 14 and 15, but it's not clear what school or schools they attend, the Washington Post reports. Police are looking into various motives—possibilities include gang-related violence or a rivalry between the two teams (the other school playing was Gov. Thomas Johnson High, the Baltimore Sun reports). "You would expect it to happen at a varsity game, but it was like a JV game," one sophomore tells Fox News. "Nobody hardly comes to those." The injuries to the two students were not believed to be life-threatening. The rest of the students at the school were released after a two-hour lockdown; the high school as well as a nearby middle school are closed today. Frederick has been named one of the most secure American cities, and Frederick County borders some of the richest counties in the US.
– Tom Hanks took some time off from being awesome to star as an American attorney who must negotiate a prisoner swap in Soviet Russia in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies. Critics and audiences are equally in love, giving the flick a 92% and 90% approval rating, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes. Some highlights: "Spielberg can't help but make the kind of inspiring, classically constructed drama that we keep being told Hollywood doesn't produce anymore. Thank goodness he still does," writes Ann Hornaday writes at the Washington Post. British actor Mark Rylance gives "what, with luck, will be a career-making performance" as accused Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, she adds. He's "an example of screen acting at its most subtle, poignant and exquisitely calibrated." "Bridge of Spies isn't conventionally exciting, and isn't intended to be. Instead, it's satisfying—thoroughly and pleasurably so," writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. It’s "a fascinating piece of fiction based on fact, a Cold War parable of moral principles colliding with the imperatives of national security," he adds. Hanks portrays James Donovan "with stirring conviction leavened by enjoyable zest," Morgenstern writes, while "Rylance's performance is a minimalist wonder." Essentially, the movie "is a moral drama driven by an insurance lawyer. That it works at all is a miracle—or would be, if anyone other than St. Steven were involved," writes Ty Burr at the Boston Globe. "Compact and to the point it's not," but it is "plush, professional, tonally wobbly, and very watchable," he says. He agrees Rylance can "make the doing of nothing seem perfectly, completely riveting," but adds Hanks is "fine company." Lindsey Bahr describes the film as "a slow burn." The filmmakers "toss details at you, shake them all around and piece them back together in the third act ... Only then can you begin to fully appreciate just how lean and purposeful every moment is," she writes at AP. "Spielberg continues to defy our skeptical movie expectations," she adds. This film "echoes in your mind long after the credits roll and begs for a second viewing."
– If you're out on the road, feeling lonely and so cold, all you have to do is…come inside and log onto Netflix, because the streaming service is bringing back Gilmore Girls. Slate reports the return of the popular show—which ran from 2000 to 2007—about a grumpy New England diner owner forced by fate to provide sweets to a fast-talking mother and daughter had been rumored for months before being officially confirmed by Netflix on Friday. With the confirmation comes the announcement that six of the series' main stars will be reprising their roles: Lauren Graham (Lorelai), Alexis Bledel (Rory), Scott Patterson (Luke), Kelly Bishop (Emily), Sean Gunn (Kirk), and Keiko Agena (Lane), according to Deadline. The revival, which is being called a "final season," will comprise four 90-minute movies taking place over the course of a single year, Deadline reports. After being absent for the final televised season, creator Amy Sherman-Palladino will be back to write and direct the movies, giving her a chance to end the series on her terms. According to Slate, those terms better include finding a "worthy partner" for Rory, as her boyfriends throughout the series were "all intolerable in their own right" and "displayed varying degrees of awfulness." No premiere date for the first Gilmore Girls movie has been announced.
– Federal agents discovered two more major drug tunnels between California and Mexico this week, reports USA Today. Each began under a warehouse in Tijuana and ended under another in San Diego. The discovery holds a lesson for cartels: If you're going to spend millions building these things, you might want to invest in better fronts. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents found the first one after noting that the US warehouse had nothing but cheap toys inside, as if it were an exporter, the same front used in a tunnel found last year, reports the Union-Tribune. The discovery of the first tunnel led to the discovery of the second one in a nearby warehouse in the same industrial park. Authorities arrested a 73-year-old woman in Chula Vista, California, suspected of supervising the smuggling operations, reports the LA Times. The tunnels were 600 to 700 yards long and were equipped with lighting and rail systems, with one notably more sophisticated than the other. Unlike previous discoveries—these are the sixth and seventh tunnels found between Tijuana and San Diego since 2010—no drugs were found during the raids.
– The leaders of the Group of 20 nations wrapped up their 2-day summit today in Toronto, striking an agreement to reduce deficits over the next 3 to 6 years without endangering the global economic rebound. The major economic powers vowed to cut their deficits in half by 2013 and "stabilize" debt by 2016 while saying the reductions would be "carefully calibrated to sustain the recovery," reports the Washington Post. The dates are not formal deadlines, thanks in large part to pressure exerted by the US and other allies—including Japan, to which the timeline doesn't apply, the New York Times notes. The American delegation was in the minority cautioning about a double-dip recession. Said one expert: "Aiming for a gradually improving debt-to-GDP ratio by 2016 is hardly wild-eyed fiscal conservatism."
– Ivanka Trump might not have been paying attention at the numerous rallies where her father denounced Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for government use. Officials have confirmed that the president's daughter used a personal email account to send hundreds of emails relating to government business last year, the Washington Post reports. The emails to White House aides and Cabinet officials were sent from a private domain she shares with husband Jared Kushner. Sources tell the Post that aides were shocked at the extent of her use of private email, some of which violated federal records rules—but when she was asked about it, she said she wasn't familiar with the rules. Administration officials say Ivanka Trump's correspondence did not contain classified information and she stopped using the account for government business after the rules were explained to her, the BBC reports. They say that unlike Clinton, Trump never deleted any emails. The American Oversight watchdog group says its freedom of information requests uncovered the scale of private email use. "We expected to find the president’s daughter had an unusual role in the White House, but we didn’t anticipate this kind of extensive use of a personal email server," says Austin Evers, the group's executive director. The New York Times reports that Democratic lawmakers are expected to look into the email issue when they take control of the House next year. (The White House ordered an investigation of private email use last year.)
– First Michael Cohen, then David Pecker, and now Allen Weisselberg. Another longtime ally of President Trump has been granted immunity by prosecutors in exchange for testimony. The 70-year-old Weisselberg is no mere acquaintance: He has served for decades as chief financial officer and executive VP of the Trump Organization, reports the Wall Street Journal. In fact, when Trump was elected president, he turned over the financial reins of his business empire to Weisselberg and to Trump's adult sons. Weisselberg actually started working for the organization in the 1970s, when Trump's father, Fred, ran it, per NBC News. Earlier this year, Weisselberg was called to testify before a grand jury as part of the investigation of Cohen's payments to two women in exchange for their silence about alleged affairs with Trump. Weisselberg had been mentioned in a recorded conversation between Cohen and Trump about how to facilitate a payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen has pleaded guilty to eight charges and said Trump directed him to make the hush-money payments ahead of the election, possibly implicating the president in a federal crime. It's not clear what information Weisselberg provided in the investigation. (This week, Trump suggested that "flipping" in exchange for deals with prosecutors should be illegal.)
– A lot of people in Thailand have apparently discovered that they don't have enough black clothing in their wardrobes for a full year of mourning. Vendors across the country are struggling to cope with a surge in demand for black clothes after the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, and government officials have told inspectors to watch out for traders trying to profit from the beloved monarch's death with price-gouging, reports the Bangkok Post, which, like other Thai newspapers and TV stations, is eschewing color images during the mourning period. White is also a traditional color of mourning in the Buddhist country. "Regarding black shirts which have become more expensive, the commerce ministry has sent teams to inspect white and black clothing vendors to make sure the shirts are not being sold at prices that are too expensive," a government spokesman says. A nurse shopping for black clothes in Bangkok tells Reuters that prices have gone up, but that isn't a major concern right now. "If you compare, the price is higher than before, but this isn't about prices," she says. "We're going to wear them for a year."
– Authorities say an argument over a break room light led to a deadly stabbing involving three workers at Philadelphia International airport, the AP reports. The stabbing occurred around 11:30am Thursday near Gate E6 in what city police say was a "secure area"; NBC Philadelphia says it was a break room for Worldwide Flight Services, an airplane cleaning contractor for Frontier Airlines, that is located on the tarmac. The men's names weren't released. Police say one worker turned off a break room light, angering another worker. The third worker soon pulled out a knife, cutting one of the men across the abdomen. The 28-year-old stabbing victim was pronounced dead at a hospital. Authorities say the two other workers ran off but were soon confronted by police. It wasn't clear what charges they may face.
– Searching for a good deal on a used treadmill? Look no further than Afghanistan, where the US military is selling off 2 million to 14 million pounds of its equipment every week, as it winds down operations there. There's just one catch, reports the Washington Post: most of the equipment is destroyed so parts can't be made into bombs. "Many non-military items have timing equipment or other components in them that can pose a threat. For example, timers can be attached to explosives. Treadmills, stationary bikes, many household appliances and devices, et cetera, have timers," explains a Pentagon spokesperson. All the equipment would be too expensive to bring back to the US, so now a scrap yard near Bagram is piled high with air conditioners, trucks, and TVs that don't work. And the locals aren't impressed. "The Russians didn’t break their things before they sold them to us," says one customer. Meanwhile, the Post reports in a separate article, Afghanistan's army is struggling with broken equipment it can't fix. The US had previously been taking care of repairs, but since it stopped, corruption and an undeveloped local supply chain has made finding replacement parts difficult. "The Americans gave us the Humvees, but they didn’t give us the spare parts," says a local special forces leader. And it doesn't help that gear is being pilfered—one special forces commander just defected to a Taliban-aligned insurgent group, taking up to 30 guns, night-vision goggles, and a Humvee with him, Reuters reports.
– The main obstacle keeping Marco Rubio from seeking re-election to his Senate seat just disappeared. The prospect of Rubio doing so gained traction in the wake of the Orlando shooting, but he continued to insist that he wouldn't run against his friend already in the race, Carlos Lopez-Cantera. Now, however, Lopez-Cantera himself is publicly giving Rubio the all-clear, reports Politico. He says he and Rubio discussed it in recent days, with Lopez-Cantera encouraging him to consider changing his mind. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to say that because of outside pressure,” he quotes Rubio as responding. The incumbent told reporters on Wednesday that he'd go home this week to spend time with his family and consider his next steps. Rumors are swirling that the pair have some sort of plan—perhaps for Rubio to win the seat over a Democrat (Republicans believe he has the best shot), then resign and allow Lopez-Cantera to run before the 2020 presidential campaign. But Lopez-Cantera says that's not the case. "Until I mentioned this, he was really committed to spending time with his kids, being able to be home for more than 10 days without having to go somewhere," he says. As of now, "nothing has changed,” he adds. "I'm still running. Marco isn't." Rubio's decision isn’t expected until the weekend at the earliest, per the Wall Street Journal; he has until June 24 to file for re-election. If he does so, Lopez-Cantera won't run, says Politico.
– No matter how much you like Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, critics are urging you to decline Identity Thief, their new—sadly conventional and unfunny—buddy comedy. Here's what critics are saying, including one who got himself in hot water: As a fan of Bateman and McCarthy, Mick LaSalle at the San Francisco Chronicle wanted to like it. But "what seemed like a good idea—a comedy based on the phenomenon of identity theft—turned out to be comic quicksand," because having your life ruined at random isn't really funny. Bateman comes off as "a dramatic character facing personal tragedy who just happens to be stuck in a supposed comedy." The screenplay "tortures itself" to get its leads on a buddy-movie-esque road trip together, complains Ty Burr at the Boston Globe. "No, it doesn't make sense. Nothing in this movie makes sense. Next to Identity Thief, Inception is a marvel of sober concision." It's littered with "comedy clichés," and worse, an "obnoxious sentimentality," like the "generic equivalent of a Judd Apatow movie." Rex Reed at the New York Observer has drawn criticism of his own for calling McCarthy a "tractor-sized" "female hippo" who "has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success." Many have decried the review as sexist. "Have you ever read a review where a male actor was described this way?" asks Adriana Velez at The Stir, pointing out the host of plus-sized male comedians who haven't faced that kind of ridicule. Meanwhile Manohla Dargis at the New York Times thinks McCarthy is the best part of the movie, "the supernova who burns up this show." But ultimately this is "a lazy comedy" that isn't subversive enough to really cut her loose. "Order must be restored, the family reunited, the wild woman tamed." Everyone must learn a lesson, "and then everything will fit tidily, phonily together."
– It's normally just a legal routine: After the prosecution rests, the defense stands up and asks the judge to dismiss all charges. Today, though, a judge in Alabama surprised everyone and agreed to do just that. As a result, Gabe Watson, accused of drowning his wife on their honeymoon in Australia in 2003, is a free man, reports the Birmingham News. "The evidence is sorely lacking that it was an intentional act," said Judge Tommy Nail. "The only way to convict him of intentional murder is to speculate. Nobody knows exactly what happened in the water. I'm sure we'll never know." Tina Watson drowned while they were scuba diving, and the only witness thought Gabe was actually trying to save her life underwater. Watson served 18 months in prison in Australia after pleading guilty to a manslaughter charge related to negligence, notes AP.
– San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook may have been planning mass murder even before he married accomplice Tashfeen Malik, according to sources close to the investigation. Officials tell CNN that Farook plotted to carry out an attack with somebody else in California in 2012, though it's not clear how far the preparations went. The plan was called off after a round of terror-related arrests in the area "spooked" Farook and his accomplice, one source says. Law enforcement officials tell NBC News that Farook and Malik appeared to have planned the San Bernardino attack for at least a year, training at local gun ranges and making financial arrangements for their 6-month-old daughter and Farook's mother. The FBI is still investigating a loan of $28,500 deposited into Farook's account two weeks before the attack, a loan that an investigator tells NBC "would be consistent with them making preparations for Grandma and the kid." In other developments: The Los Angeles Times reports that former Minneapolis resident Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan, an alleged ISIS recruiter who targeted Westerners on social media, has surrendered to authorities in Somalia. Investigators suspect he may have influenced Farook. The San Bernardino Department of Public Health, which employed Farook and most of the 14 people killed in the attack, trained employees last year for an active-shooter drill in the same room at the Inland Regional Center that Farook and Malik attacked, the AP reports. "Everyone was trying to be quiet and not draw attention to themselves as they were trained to do, to try to find as much protection as you can," an assistant director of the department says. "Unfortunately, the room just didn't provide a whole lot of protection." Law enforcement sources tell the Times that a device Farook and Malik left behind at the scene of the attack may have been designed to kill first responders. The sources say the crude device, which included three pipe bombs, was disabled by water from the building's sprinkler system. See a photo of the holiday party taken just before the shooting here.
– The Man From Hope, Bill Clinton, returns to the spotlight of the Democratic National Convention on its second night—and that worries some people. "There's the possibility of Clinton outshining Obama," one presidential historian tells Bloomberg. "But that's a minor fear." Clinton and Obama have famously crossed swords, but the campaign sees him as a powerful voice who can liken Obama's experience to his own. Here's what else you need to know tonight: Rumors have been swirling that the Obama team demanded to vet Clinton's speech, rumors it played down yesterday. "We have had lots of conversations with President Clinton," Jim Messina said, according to Politico. "This is a mountain out of a molehill." But Obama aides say someone is likely to see it. Clinton will be introduced by Elizabeth Warren, who's locked in possibly the nation's most competitive Senate race against Scott Brown. "I'm going to talk about what I've talked about for years now," Warren told ABC last month. "America's middle class is getting hammered and Washington is rigged to work for the big guy." It's worth noting that Brown didn't speak at the RNC. Warren won't be the only woman, either; Democrats intend to showcase many, USA Today reports, including Sandra Fluke, whom you might remember from her run-in with Rush Limbaugh. A number of CEOs are also on the docket, ready to affirm that an Obama presidency would indeed be good for business, the AP reports. Tonight will also mark Obama's official nomination. Since he ran essentially unopposed in the primary, this will simply be a roll-call of all the states, scheduled for after Clinton's speech. Obama himself is set to arrive in Charlotte today, meaning he could make a "surprise" appearance on stage with Bill Clinton, USA Today speculates.
– If you want to convey something affectionate or romantic and you can't do it in person, it may be better to send an email than leave a voicemail. So report researchers at Indiana University Bloomington in the journal Computers in Human Behavior after analyzing both the messages being sent and the physical state of those doing the sending. Contrary to previous research and conventional wisdom suggesting that a voicemail message is more intimate than email, this study finds that, at least among the 72 college-age millennials analyzed, the act of writing produced in the sender far more emotional arousal and greater use of emotional language. The effect endures, too, since people tend to respond to messages using the same medium, thus the recipient may in turn experience similarly heightened emotions when replying, reports Pacific Standard. "When writing romantic emails, senders consciously or subconsciously added more positive content to their messages, perhaps to compensate for the medium's inability to convey vocal tone," Dennis and Wells wrote in the paper. "Senders engage with email messages longer and may think about the task more deeply than when leaving voicemails. This extra processing may increase arousal." What's more, the students they studied have, they feel, adapted to the medium. "If you look at the new generation of millennials, and that's who we studied, they've grown up with email and text messaging," one researcher says. "So it may not be as unnatural a medium as we at first thought." Or, perhaps, voicemail is just more awkward. (Check out how men and women tend to differ during breakups.)
– A fun foray into finding out more about her ancestry through a popular genealogy website led to a shocking revelation for 72-year-old Denice Juneski: She wasn't related to any of her own relatives—at least not the ones she'd grown up knowing. KARE reports that as Minnesota's Juneski was puzzling over her test results from 23andMe, a woman in a nearby town in Wisconsin took her own DNA test. Linda Jourdeans' results showed that "M. Mayer" was her mother—but that wasn't the woman who had raised her, she tells KARE. The murkiness of this all soon cleared up: Juneski and Jourdeans had been somehow switched at birth sometime after being born on Dec. 19, 1945, at Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul, Minn. The news offered context for things both women had long noticed: Juneski was the only blonde among redheads and brunettes, while Jourdeans, a redhead, was surrounded by lighter-haired kin. Juneski said she also felt out of place in a family of athletes, while Jourdeans was the only athlete in her family. The women tracked each other down in April and have since met a few times, and they're celebrating their special new bond. "I consider it a gift," Juneski says. Together, the women visit one other person at her memory care facility: 99-year-old Marianne Mayer, the woman who raised Juneski and is Jourdeans' biological mother. Rochelle Nielsen, Juneski's biological mother and the mom who raised Jourdeans, died of cancer when Jourdeans was 17. (Were these birth switches done on purpose?)
– Apparently there is at least one celebrity who doesn't take nude pictures: Taylor Swift. Her social media accounts were hacked yesterday by the Lizard Squad, a group that's claimed responsibility for a number of other recent cyberattacks. The group threatened to release nude photos of Swift, but she was having none of the nonsense, Us reports: "any hackers saying they have 'nudes'? Psssh you'd love that wouldn't you! Have fun photoshopping cause you got NOTHING," she tweeted, along with a play off her latest hit: "Cause the hackers gonna hack, hack, hack, hack, hack..." On Tumblr, she assured fans, "My Twitter got hacked but don’t worry, Twitter is deleting the hacker tweets and locking my account until they can figure out how this happened and get me new passwords." She later continued making it difficult for you to hate her by responding, to a fan who had requested that someone tell her to get off Tumblr and do her homework, "Get off Tumblr and do your homework, Destiny." (Swift recently revealed her bellybutton for the first time.)
– A man who got into an argument with his estranged wife over their children was arrested in a house-to-house shooting rampage in rural Mississippi that left eight people dead, including a sheriff's deputy, per the AP. "I ain't fit to live, not after what I done," a handcuffed Willie Corey Godbolt, 35, told the Clarion-Ledger. The shootings took place at three homes Saturday night—two in Brookhaven and one in Bogue Chitto—about 70 miles south of Jackson, after authorities got a call about a domestic dispute, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said. The dead included two boys, investigators said. Godbolt was listed in good condition at a hospital with a gunshot wound; authorities did not say how he was wounded. Bureau of Investigation spokesman Warren Strain said charges had yet to be filed and it was too soon to say what the motive was. Authorities gave no details on the relationship between Godbolt and the victims. However, Godbolt himself shed some light on what happened in a video interview with the newspaper as he sat with his hands cuffed behind his back on the side of a road. Godbolt said he was talking with his wife and in-laws when somebody called authorities. "I was having a conversation with her stepdaddy and her mama and her, my wife, about me taking my children home," he said. "Somebody called the officer, people that didn't even live at the house. That's what they do. They intervene." "They cost him his life," he said, apparently referring to the deputy. "I'm sorry." The stepfather-in-law, Vincent Mitchell, said in an interview that Godbolt's wife and their two children had been staying at his Bogue Chitto home for about three weeks after she left her husband.
– The Tesla Model X that slammed into a highway barrier in California last week and killed the 38-year-old Apple engineer at the wheel had been on autopilot at the time of the crash, Tesla confirms in a blog post. But the company says driver Walter Huang "received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive," adding that "the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision." Tesla also laid some blame on state highway officials, asserting that "the reason this crash was so severe is because the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had been crushed in a prior accident without being replaced." The fact that the vehicle was on autopilot is likely to be controversial because, as ABC News notes, driver Huang had reportedly been concerned about it. His brother told KGO that Huang had brought his Model X back to the dealership complaining that when he used the feature, the car kept swerving toward the very same barrier that it eventually struck in the fatal collision. The NTSB is investigating the crash, including the fire that broke out after the collision. The accident follows another in Arizona in which a self-driving Uber struck and killed a pedestrian.
– A suspected burglar in Las Vegas took a beating after picking a very bad target—the backstage locker room of a group of male strippers billed as "Australia's Hottest Hunks." Police say members of the "Thunder Down Under" group confronted the suspect after spotting him with items from their locker room at the Excalibur Hotel, the Las Vegas Sun reports. The suspect fired a handgun once as he scuffled with the dancers, leaving one slightly injured by gunpowder residue. The suspect, who is believed to have been high on meth, was taken to the hospital, where he was extremely violent with staff and had to be sedated, KVVU reports. He has been charged with attempted murder with a deadly weapon, attempted robbery with a deadly weapon, and burglary with a deadly weapon. MGM Resorts, meanwhile, says the "Thunder Down Under" show remains on schedule.
– No wonder historians haven't been able to find a historic but long-lost French fort in America: They were looking in the wrong state. Researchers from Florida State University say Fort Caroline—which one calls "the oldest fortified settlement in the present United States"—isn't near Jacksonville as long thought, reports Heritage Daily. The 1564 fort was actually on Rhetts Island near the mouth of the Altamaha River. That's about 70 miles away. In Georgia. The discovery would upend some long-held notions about the colonization of the New World and likely disappoint the Fort Caroline National Memorial—in Jacksonville. But there's a big caveat: "We don’t have archaeological proof of the fort at this time,” says FSU's Fletcher Crowe. Instead, the announcement at a conference is based in part on a detailed analysis of old French maps and coastal charts of the US. “We haven’t found [the fort], but we are pretty much closing in on the site," adds co-researcher Anita Spring." The pair also say they've amassed loads of circumstantial evidence. For instance, they say Native Americans near the fort spoke a language known as Guale, and those speakers lived around what is now Darien, Ga., near the newly proposed site. It's definitely "provocative," a University of North Florida archeologist in the Jacksonville camp tells the Florida Times-Union. But “I don’t think it’s enough of an argument for me to change my mind.” It's not clear when actual digging might start to resolve things. (Click to read about how historians are closer to learning why colonists on North Carolina's Roanoke Island disappeared.)
– After 30 years in prison, convicted spy Jonathan Pollard will indeed go free this year. His lawyers and officials with the Justice Department have confirmed the news, which surfaced last week, reports CNN. Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst who got caught passing classified information to Israeli operatives, will go free when he becomes eligible for mandatory parole on Nov. 21. US officials could have objected to the parole and kept the 60-year-old in prison on national security grounds, explains the New York Times. "Mr. Pollard is looking forward to being reunited with his beloved wife Esther," says a statement issued by his lawyers. He "would like to thank the many thousands of well-wishers in the United States, in Israel, and throughout the world, who provided grass roots support by attending rallies, sending letters, making phone calls to elected officials, and saying prayers for his welfare." US officials have denied that his release is any way linked to soothing Israel's anger over the Iran nuclear deal.
– Sochi's opening ceremony kicks off at 11am ET tomorrow, and if you just can't wait for the Olympic news to begin, well, here you go. Competition has already started: Some 32 hours before the opening ceremony, to be exact. The AP reports that early starts are required because Sochi's slate holds a dozen men's and women's medal events added since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Everything happening in advance of tomorrow are just qualifying rounds, though. Among them: men's snowboard slopestyle and women's moguls. Security: Everyone is worried about it, and Russia says everyone should chill. USA Today reports that Russian deputy PM Dmitry Kozak today said, "The level of threat in Sochi is no worse than in New York, Washington, or Boston. Based on information we received from our intelligence services, there's no reason to believe Sochi is under more threat than any city on the planet." He would not, however, comment specifically on... ...Toothpaste bombs: Homeland Security officials yesterday said airlines flying to Russia ahead of the Olympics ought to pay special attention to passengers' toothpaste tubes because they could contain explosives to make a bomb. DHS officials aren't aware of any specific plot in the works, though. Dangerous course? Shaun White made waves when he pulled out of aforementioned new Olympic event slopestyle yesterday, saying that "the potential risk of injury is a bit too much for me to gamble my other Olympics goals on." The Washington Post reports that it's only added to the questions of the extreme nature of the course, which killed the gold medal dreams of Norway's Torstein Horgmo on Monday when he broke his collarbone in a training session. After a number of athletes clamored for changes, the tops and bottoms of a few of the jumps were "smoothed out." A record: These Winter Olympics will see more heads of state and government and international organizations than any prior Winter Games, and three times the number of leaders who showed up in Vancouver, reports the AP. Of course, big names like Barack Obama, Francois Hollande, and David Cameron won't be there. And then there's the gripes about the accommodations and the food...
– Owen "O-Dog" Hanson played on the same championship-winning USC football team as future NFL stars Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart, but he would ultimately take a very different career path. The 35-year-old California man was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison Friday after pleading guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to distribute drugs, reports the Washington Post. His fall from grace is a wild tale: While at USC in 2004, Hanson began selling drugs, including cocaine and steroids, Rolling Stone previously reported. After college, he started working as a bookie in Los Angeles. Years later, his wife would tell a former boyfriend, professional gambler RJ Cipriani, that Hanson wanted to put up millions of dollars to fund his efforts at casinos in Australia, per 9 News. The money was to be returned with a casino check, though Cipriani could keep any winnings. Authorities say it was a scheme aimed at hiding money from Hanson's illegal dealings in Australia, where he could sell cocaine for ten times as much as in LA. Cipriani claims he figured this all out and was purposefully reckless at the casino tables to get out of the arrangement; he ended up losing $2.5 million. But his escape plan wasn't that easy. Cipriani says Hanson threatened him and his wife, including by sending them a video of two men being beheaded. "If you don't pay us our money, this will happen to you," an attached note read, according to prosecutors. The US gambler eventually went to the FBI and Hanson was arrested in 2015 in a joint operation with Australian police. He pleaded guilty in January, and has now been ordered to forfeit $5 million in assets. More than 20 of Hanson's associates have also been charged with crimes related to gambling and drug trafficking.
– President Trump may not have had the biggest inauguration crowd in history, but he may have made a bigger fuss about media coverage of it than any of his predecessors. Sources tell the Washington Post and CNN that on Saturday morning—the first morning of his presidency—Trump contacted Michael T. Reynolds, the National Park Service's acting director, to demand more photos of the crowd on the National Mall. Reynolds, who has worked for the service for 30 years, was "taken aback" by the request, but he sent some aerial photos to Trump, according to the Post's sources. The photos did not, however, provide proof of Trump's claim that more than a million people had gathered to watch his inauguration. Reynolds and the NPS have declined to comment, but insiders say Trump also expressed anger over an NPS tweet comparing his crowd to Obama's, which apparently led to an order for all Interior Department accounts to stop tweeting. White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trump contacted the NPS. She said the call demonstrated the president is "so accessible, and constantly in touch." "He's not somebody who sits around and waits. He takes action and gets things done," she said. "That's one of the reasons that he is president today, and Hillary Clinton isn't." (Trump was still talking about the size of his inaugural crowd on Wednesday, when he gave his first interview as president.)
– Archaeologists in England digging at a 14th-century burial site made an unexpected discovery: A couple buried together holding hands had remained that way all this time, reports ABC News. The man and woman were found at the site of an ancient chapel in Hallaton, along with nine other skeletons, reports the Leicester Mercury. The couple appear to be the same age, but scientists plan further study to see whether they can determine the cause of death. They also hope to determine why the bodies were buried at this particular site, quite a distance away from a "perfectly good church in Hallaton," says a lead researcher from the University of Leicester. Leading theories are that the burial site was used for those who were either sick, criminals, or foreign pilgrims. One man at the site apparently died of a head wound, perhaps from a pole ax in battle, while another had his legs raised to his chest, possibly because of a disease of some kind. Researchers hope further work at the chapel can fill in a gap of about 500 years when not much is known about what went on in the region, reports the International Business Times. (Another recent archaeological discovery sheds light on the brutal way Richard III died.)
– Scott Weiland's death could end up just as fraught as his life. The late Stone Temple Pilots frontman's ex-wife, Mary Forsberg, has filed court documents in an attempt to be named executor of Weiland's will, People reports. Forsberg is the mother of Weiland's two kids, but Weiland had been married to his third wife, Jamie Wachtel, since 2013 at the time of his death. Forsberg says Weiland himself named her executor, and she filed a signed copy of his 2007 will as proof, TMZ reports. But, as the gossip site notes, their marriage was falling apart right around that time, and Weiland was "in the throes of addiction." Wachtel could contest the filing. Weiland's estate is reportedly worth around $2 million, and there's also a trust with undisclosed assets that the singer created while he was alive. A hearing will be held on Feb. 5. (Click for Forsberg's wrenching essay on Weiland's death.)
– Twelve days remain in the fiscal year, and the threat of a second government shutdown in three years remains very much in play. The big problem remains a showdown over funding for Planned Parenthood, with conservative Republicans who are upset about recent undercover videos demanding that the group lose all federal funds. With the clock ticking, party leaders still have "no concrete plan" to avoid the shutdown, reports Politico. One possibility is to pass a temporary measure before the end of the month to allow more time for negotiations in the fall, but that's not a slam dunk—because House conservatives demand that even such a continuing resolution block Planned Parenthood funding, reports the Hill. They're also threatening to try to oust John Boehner—who opposes abortion and Planned Parenthood but doesn't want to hand Democrats a potential gift in the form of a shutdown—as speaker if he backs down. The AP sees a possible way out of what it calls this "political Rubik's Cube." House leaders are pushing through a number of abortion-related measures, including one that passed today to defund Planned Parenthood for a year. The measures stand virtually no chance of becoming law, but leaders hope they will be enough to mollify the conservative rank-and-file. It "remains unclear" whether that will be the case, however, notes the Washington Post. Lawmakers are in session only five more days until the deadline, and about the only safe bet is that the drama will go down to the final day, if not hour.
– Now anyone with a home-brewing kit can drink President Obama's private beer. The administration gave in today and posted a step-by-step video on how to produce the White House brew, the Washington Post reports. The key ingredients in White House Honey Brown Ale turn out to be amber crystal malt, light malt extract, gypsum, honey, corn sugar, and yeast. But try procuring their fresh honey: It was taken from the South Lawn's first-ever bee hive, according to White House chef Sam Kass. The recipe was inspired by "a local brew shop," Kass admits, and refined with advice from brewers already working at the White House. "As far as we know the White House Honey Brown Ale is the first alcohol brewed or distilled on the White House grounds," even though George Washington distilled whiskey and brewed beer at Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson fermented his own wine, and there was drinking during Prohibition, writes Kass. The recipe revelation comes after a long public campaign that included a petition and Freedom of Information request.
– President Trump says he turned down an interview and photo shoot for Time magazine's "Person of the Year" issue, the AP reports. In a Friday evening tweet, Trump says the magazine informed him he was "probably" going to be granted the title for the second year in a row but that it would require "an interview and a major photo shoot." He tweets: "I said probably is no good and took a pass." The magazine, however, is now disputing Trump's version of events. "The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year," said a magazine tweet. Time "does not comment on our choice until publication." As NPR notes, the selection isn't necessarily a positive honor; rather, it's more a reflection of a person's influence. Trump seems to revel in the magazine's recognition: Earlier this year, it was revealed that several of his private golf clubs were displaying fake Time covers featuring his image. This year, the new Person of the Year will be announced on Dec. 6.
– After six months in the hospital being treated for brain cancer, 4-year-old Jillian Massey was sent home for the holidays. But she didn't forget the friends she'd made at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and wanted to give 50 holiday presents to the children still there, the AP reports. Instead, more than 3,000 will be given out after Jillian's story, and the Amazon wish list she created, went viral. Many people donated gifts, and Jillian and her family will deliver them to the hospital Monday.
– North Korea is trying to make sure that no others will be able to defect the way that a young soldier did last week. The fixes aren't exactly high-tech: North Korean soldiers were seen digging a big trench in the border area where the soldier first drove and then ran to freedom, reports Reuters. They also planted trees, apparently to prevent vehicles from getting through in the future. Finally, North Korea also seems to have replaced all of its border security guards, reports the Yonhap news agency, which surmises that any officers involved are in for serious punishment. Details and developments: The soldier: "He's a pretty nice guy," the lead South Korean surgeon says of the 24-year-old defector, identified only by the name "Oh." The patient likes Bruce Almighty and CSI, though USA Today notes it's unclear whether he saw that US movie and show in the hospital or previously in North Korea on the black market. Oh faces a long recuperation, having been shot at least five times. One bullet decimated his colon. The surgeon: The incident has put the spotlight, again, on 48-year-old trauma surgeon Lee Cook-jong. Lee is the one giving regular updates after the surgeries he performs, and the Washington Post reports that he previously became a "national hero" in 2011 when he saved the life of a ship captain shot by Somali pirates. That feat became the subject of a medical drama. Lee, blind in one eye, also served as the inspiration for a character in a second drama called Romantic Doctor, Teacher Kim, which was released last year and gave him certifiable celeb status. The Post uses the terms "heartthrob" and "McDreamy" in the profile. Next for Oh: The surgeon, taking note of Oh's "jarhead" haircut, jokingly suggested that Oh eventually join the South Korean military: "He smiled and said that he would never ever go back to the military system again." When he's stronger, Oh will be debriefed. Then he'll get help with housing, education, and job training from the South Korean government, reports the Guardian.
– They may look pristine, but one in 10 US beaches is ripe with enough bacteria to make you sick. New research shows 10% of coastal and lakefront beaches fail to meet the Environmental Protection Agency's water-safety standards and swimmers could develop a stomach bug, conjunctivitis, pink eye, or even respiratory illnesses and neurological disorders, Time and the Natural Resources Defense Council report. The worst places for pollution? The Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, and New England. The research from state beach coordinators at nearly 3,500 beach testing locations around the country found most of the pollution comes from stormwater runoff, which picks up garbage, oil, and human and animal waste before it ends up in oceans. But climate change, a lack of federal policies, and hundreds of billions of gallons of untreated sewage pouring into the water isn't helping matters. Time points out that in 2012, nearly 2,000 beaches were closed as a result of pollution—in New York and New Jersey alone.
– Want to get paid to travel and drink beer all summer? Of course you do—and World of Beer could make it happen. The tavern chain based in Tampa, Fla., is looking for three interns to send around the world for four months "to explore beer for themselves and share their stories with WOB drinkers across the country." The gig even comes with an impressive salary: $12,000 plus travel, food, and lodging expenses, reports Fox6. In other words, this might be "the best internship ever offered in the godforsaken history of internships," per Vice. World of Beer is particularly looking for strong writers—the interns' work will be published in Draft Magazine—and people with large followings on social media, a rep says. Even beer novices will be considered, per the company website. To apply, drop by one of three locations—in Tempe, Ariz.; College Station, Texas; and Tampa, Fla.—for a live interview or submit a one-minute video online. But make it snappy: Applications will only be accepted until Saturday, and 10 finalists will be chosen the first week of April. The three interns will be selected after Skype interviews.
– It's been left off the NYC subway map for almost 17 years after it was destroyed and buried under rubble on 9/11—but a "quietly, poignantly defiant" version of the Cortlandt Street subway station under the World Trade Center is now open again for business. Redubbed WTC Cortlandt, the station reopened Saturday, with Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Joe Lhota in a statement calling it "symbolic of New Yorkers' resolve in restoring and substantially improving the entire World Trade Center site," per the BBC. The station cost nearly $182 million to reconstruct and includes a newly rebuilt ceiling, an updated ventilation system, and a brighter feel, with quotes from the Declaration of Independence and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights imprinted on a white marble mosaic. The reopening of the station is not only "the last major piece in the city's quest to rebuild what was lost" on 9/11, and a symbol of "rebirth," per the New York Times: It also serves as a "glaring reminder of the dysfunction among the region’s transit agencies," with rebuilding not even kicking off until three years ago. Still, "I wouldn't have missed this day for the world," said Andy Byford, the head of the New York City Transit Authority, at the opening. "This is such a meaningful day ... for the city and the country."
– For the first time, the number of babies born to women over 35 exceeds the number being born to teens, reports the Pew Research Center. Of 2008's 4 million births, one in seven were to older mothers, while one in 10 were to teens. The new, slightly older face of the American mom reflects changes in fertility science, a move toward later marriage, and changing attitudes about childbearing, the Washington Post notes. And the new mom isn't just older, she's also better educated—54% of all new moms, and 71% of the over-35 crowd, have had some college education—and more likely to be unmarried. Some 41% are unwed, up from 28% in 1990. Interestingly, women don't appear to be timing their pregnancies too carefully: About half of the women surveyed said motherhood "just happened," notes the AP. (Click here for a list of celebs who didn't plan on getting pregnant, either.)
– It's election day in Israel, but there's not a lot of intrigue: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is almost certain to win another term, although his ticket (a joint ticket combining his conservative Likud Party with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu) could lose as many as 10 of the seats it currently holds in Parliament, perhaps to Jewish Home, a party that is further to the right. Despite the foregone conclusion, YNetNews reports that the country is seeing its highest voter turnout since 1999, and the election could end up breaking voting records in Israel. The New York Times reports that voter participation had previously been dropping steadily, perhaps due to voter fatigue (Israel held five general elections, plus a direct ballot for prime minister, between 1992 and 2009); it was at less than 65% in 2009. This year, the Central Elections Committee ran a rousing voter drive, and President Shimon Peres urged everyone to vote. The Jerusalem Post notes that US media don't seem to care about the Israeli vote, perhaps because it falls on the day after President Obama's second inauguration. Most US coverage has focused on the less-than-exciting nature of the race and the lack of debate in Israel on some topics—for example, Netanyahu's failure to produce a formal platform.
– Anthropologists who have been working to locate and identify the remains of the boys who died at a notorious Florida reform school traveled to Philadelphia this week, hoping to get answers in the death of yet another student. But when they exhumed Thomas Curry's casket Tuesday, they found that instead of a body, it held only planks of wood, CNN reports. Curry escaped 29 days after arriving at Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in 1925. The school's ledger describes him as being killed on a railroad bridge; a death certificate found in 2008 revealed the teen's skull was "crushed from an unknown cause." His body was supposedly returned to his family, and they buried what they thought was Thomas in the same Philadelphia plot where his great-grandparents lay. Thomas, believed to be either 15 or 17, was one of the 100 boys who died at the Marianna school between 1900 and 1952; about half were buried on the grounds, but the rest were—at least supposedly—returned to their families. "Something was shipped up from Florida, and it was buried, and someone believed it was Thomas Curry," the Pennsylvania State Police officer who helped get the casket exhumed tells the Philadelphia Inquirer, adding that he "absolutely" sees the casket as another of the school's "efforts to deceive, coverups." Says the lead anthropologist on the case, "What we have is more questions than answers." A cousin provided DNA to help identify Thomas, so the team will now attempt to match it to one of the bodies dug up on the former campus—whose former occupants told stories of sexual abuse, being locked in sweat boxes or hog-tied, and, writes the Inquirer, "hunted down when they ran."
– Excellent news for fans of Princess Leia. Or in this case, General Leia. The late Carrie Fisher will appear in the upcoming Star Wars film thanks to unused footage, reports People. Director JJ Abrams announced the move Friday, and he said it had the blessing of Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd. Star Wars: Episode IX, which caps the latest trilogy in the series, is due in theaters late next year, reports CNN. "We desperately loved Carrie Fisher," said Abrams. "Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga without her eluded us," (and) "we were never going to recast, or use a CG character." Fisher died in 2016 at age 60 of cardiac arrest. (See more stories about Fisher here.)
– BuzzFeed has identified Anthony Weiner's newly revealed sexting partner as Sydney Elaine Leathers, a progressive activist in her early 20s who lives in Indiana. Pictures on her Facebook and Formspring accounts look pretty close to the blurred images offered up on The Dirty when it broke the sexting story, and she's talked about Weiner quite a bit online (often on accounts that are now deleted). For example, in a June 2011 Facebook post, she declared: "Rep. Weiner can continue sending dick pics every single day for the rest of his life as long as he continues to legislate like he does. I decided." Her TwitPic account identifies her as an Obama for America field organizer. She also listed Weiner as one of her heroes, wrote at least one blog post about his resignation, and said on Facebook that he shouldn't have resigned. An anonymous source confirms BuzzFeed got the ID right and says he or she saw the messages exchanged a year ago, but a BuzzFeed reporter asked Weiner last night if he knew Leathers and—shocker—got no response. The source, who says he or she has known Leathers since high school, says she "felt she was the important one" to Weiner, even more important than wife Huma Abedin. As for Abedin, Daily Intel notes that she came to a "prescient conclusion" in September's Harper's Bazaar: "People have said many things about my husband—some nice, some not so nice. And that will surely continue. Launching this campaign was not an easy decision for our family to make. Putting yourself out there comes with a cost." (Meanwhile, "cubicle guy" has become a viral sensation after Weiner's press conference last night.)
– "Are we really willing to risk Los Angeles or Chicago in retaliation for an attack on a US military base in the region? Probably not," nuclear strategy specialist Vipin Narang tells the AP. And that's exactly the calculation that gives North Korea a small shot at "winning" in a nuclear conflict, challenging the assumption that launching a nuclear weapon would be automatic suicide for the country. If North Korea feels threatened to the point of using a nuclear weapon, a first target would likely be a US military base in Japan; North Korea would then use its long-range nukes to threaten the US mainland and avoid a retaliatory strike. Experts say this is Kim Jong Un's "theory of victory"—one that President Trump may be attempting to combat with an unsuccessful version of the "madman strategy." Here's what else you need to know about North Korea's most-recent missile launch: Tuesday's missile launch over Japan seems likely to result in even more sanctions against North Korea. But after UN sanctions Aug. 5 targeted millions of dollars in seafood, coal, iron ore, and more, is there anything left to sanction? CNN reports two options are oil and Chinese banks. After Tuesday's missile launch, Trump said "all options are on the table." This was, all things considered, a "measured" response from the president, according to the Atlantic. It was an official statement instead of a tweet, didn't threaten "fire and fury," and avoided calling Kim Jong Un a "wack job." The Guardian reports on the scary morning had by residents of Japan, who were awoken around 6am Tuesday by a government missile warning on their phones. They were given less than 10 minutes to get to a shelter or sturdy building as sirens and special broadcasts blared. The missile test impacted US markets, with the Dow dropping more than 100 points Tuesday morning, Reuters reports. The stock market would recover by the afternoon as the threat passed. Korea expert Stephan Haggard tells the Washington Post that Tuesday was another example of how "weirdly conservative" Kim Jong Un is—carrying out provocative actions with just enough restraint to avoid an actual response. For example, pointing the missile toward Japan, not Guam. Finally, Russia's deputy foreign minister blamed the US and South Korea for Tuesday's nuclear test and came out against further sanctions against North Korea, saying they haven't prevented missile tests in the past and won't in the future, Newsweek reports.
– Former US Rep. Corrine Brown's "One Door for Education" charity raised $833,000 between 2012 and 2016 to award scholarships to disadvantaged students—but prosecutors say only $1,200 was spent on a total of two scholarships. Brown, a Democrat who represented a Florida district in Congress for 24 years, is facing years in prison after being found guilty on 18 of 22 federal fraud charges, WJCT reports. Prosecutors said Brown and aide Elias Simmons siphoned off the rest of the money raised by the sham charity, spending it on travel, lavish parties, and luxuries like private boxes for NFL games and a Beyonce concert, NPR reports. Prosecutors accused the 70-year-old of choosing "greed and personal gain" over public service. She "shamefully deprived needy children of hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have helped with their education and improved their opportunities for advancement," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco, per the Tampa Bay Times. Brown, who lost her re-election bid after she was indicted last year, maintained her innocence and blamed the theft on Simmons. He pleaded guilty to fraud and testified against Brown, as did the charity's president, Carla Wiley, the AP reports. All three will be sentenced at a later date.
– A judge in Florida has allowed a vegan mom who defied a doctor's orders to regain custody of her infant son, reports WFTV. The strange case began in June when police in Casselberry charged Sarah Markham with neglect and took away 2-week-old Caleb. The charges came after a pediatrician diagnosed Caleb as dehydrated and underweight, and told Markham to take him to the hospital immediately, recounts WKMG. Instead, Markham bought soy formula to supplement her breast milk. When she didn't show up at the hospital, police came to her house, and she told them she wanted a second doctor's opinion and stressed that she did not want her son getting formula from animal products. Today, a Seminole County judge granted her custody again with the provision that she provide a nutritionist's report in 10 days. "There's no case, there's no abuse, there's no neglect—there's simply a doctor who has been challenged by a mother, and he didn't like it," says Caleb's grandfather, Bo Markham. The child has been with his grandparents since he was taken out of his mother's care, and now weighs about 17 pounds. "He's still on a soy formula," says Bo Markham. The criminal neglect charges are still pending, though Sarah Markham's attorney—Mark O'Mara, who defended George Zimmerman—says he expects they will be dismissed now. (PETA wants an Indiana sheriff to feed an alleged cannibal a vegan diet.)
– When the weather got bad at Louisiana's T-Bois Blues Festival on Friday night, Jacqui Stavis, two other women, and a Labrador retriever sought shelter in a small tent. But tragedy struck when lightning hit the tent, killing the 28-year-old and the dog and injuring the other two women, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office says in a statement picked up by BuzzFeed. The other two women, ages 30 and 24 and also from New Orleans like Stavis, were hospitalized with "injuries commonly associated with electric shock." Stavis, who grew up in New England, New York, and Wisconsin, had always been fascinated by New Orleans, and moved there in 2009, friends tell the Advocate. "She just dove into the culture of New Orleans, just became a part of it," one friend says. "The Falgout Family is deeply saddened by the tragic event that occurred this weekend at T-Bois Blues Festival," festival organizers posted on Facebook Sunday. (The festival is held on an alligator and crawfish farm owned by the Falgout family, and "Alligator Mike" Falgout produces the festival.) "Every attendee of this small festival is part of the T-Bois family, and we feel as though we lost a family member this weekend. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Stavis family and all those who love Jacqui." Another post on the page notes that Stavis changed her cover photo to a scene from the festival (it appears to be from a past year's festival) while she was in attendance this year. NOLA.com rounds up other Facebook tributes to Stavis, who worked as a massage therapist.
– A New York City high school senior grabbed plenty of headlines yesterday after being named one of New York magazine's "Reasons We Love New York." What was so loveable and New York-y about Mohammed Islam? As the headline of reporter Jessica Pressler's piece proclaimed, "Because a Stuyvesant Senior Made $72 Million Trading Stocks on His Lunch Break." Except the 17-year-old totally didn't, Mohammed now tells the Observer's Ken Kurson. In an interview that took place in the offices of his newly engaged PR firm, with a lawyer by his side, Mohammed says "No, No, Yes" as answers to the following: Did he, as Pressler wrote, make eight figures? Has he invested and made anything off it? Is the story complete fiction? He tells the Observer that he does run an investment club at his school, and that his simulated trades' return was pretty impressive. And, yeah, he did lead Pressler to believe "I had made even more than $72 million on the simulated trades." But as the head of his new PR firm says in a statement to NBC News, "A 17-year old boy who lives in Elmhurst, Queens, responded to a reporter's inquiry and created an inaccurate story. ... His millions are about as real as monopoly money." Kurson's take? A few minutes with a calculator would have prevented another fact-checking mess. "Even if this working-class kid had somehow started with $100,000 as a high school freshman on day one at Stuy High, he’d have needed to average a compounded annualized return of something like 796% over the three years since. C’mon, man." New York, for its part, maintains that "Mohammed provided bank statements that showed he is worth eight figures, and he confirmed on the record that he’s worth eight figures."
– A suspect in the death of a pregnant woman initially claimed the woman gave up her newborn daughter but later admitted taking advantage of her to get the child, according to court documents filed Monday that shed no light on how the woman died. Brooke Crews, 38, and boyfriend William Hoehn, 32, were each charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of 22-year-old Savanna Greywind, the AP reports. Greywind, who was eight months pregnant when she disappeared Aug. 19, died as a result of homicidal violence, per police; no further details were given. Her body was found Sunday night in the Red River near Fargo, wrapped in plastic and duct tape. The complaint offers conflicting stories from the two suspects. Crews told police she arranged to have Greywind come to her apartment on Aug. 19 and told her how to induce labor; she said Greywind came back two days later to give her the newborn. "Crews admitted she had taken advantage of Savanna Greywind in an attempt to obtain her child and possibly keep the child as her own," the complaint said. But Hoehn told police a different story: He said he came home Aug. 19 to find Crews cleaning up blood in their bathroom, and that Crews presented him with an infant baby girl and said, "This is our baby. This is our family." Hoehn told police he took garbage bags containing bloody shoes and his bloody towels and disposed of them away from the apartment complex, where Greywind also lived. The baby girl, who was in good health, was with Crews when she was arrested.
– What happened to Garrincha's body? That's what Brazilians are asking after the soccer great's remains went missing. The one-named, two-time World Cup champ's family revealed the odd disappearance on Tuesday, telling O Globo via the BBC that Garrincha's body may have been lost during an exhumation, though nobody knows for sure. A cousin says per ESPN FC the remains were removed from a grave in a cemetery near Rio 10 years ago, after another family member was buried there. Garrincha's bones were supposed to be transferred to a niche, but cemetery officials concede they have no idea if that ever happened. "It's very upsetting not knowing where he is," says daughter Rosangela Santos. Cemeteries in Brazil are typically divided into two parts, one with tombs and another with concrete niches set like drawers into walls, per the BBC. Two tombs carry Garrincha's name: the original grave where he was laid to rest in 1983, and a second one constructed in 1985 and marked with an obelisk. If the family agrees, Mage Mayor Rafael Tubarao says he'll order an exhumation of the graves and DNA tests of any bones. Garrincha, a nickname meaning "little wren" in Brazil's Portuguese dialect, is widely revered as the nation's greatest dribbler of all time. As one of Pele's teammates, he helped the soccer-crazed nation clinch the World Cup in 1958 and 1962. He died at the age of 49 after years of heavy drinking. (A father revealed his son's remains 20 years after his murder.)
– NASA is cutting off much of its contact and cooperation with Russia—except when it comes to the International Space Station, which NASA relies on Russia to reach. "Given Russia's ongoing violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," all contact with Russian representatives are suspended, "unless the activity has been specifically excepted," an administrator told employees in a memo leaked to SpaceRef. Those excepted activities include any bilateral contacts regarding space station operations, and multilateral meetings including other space station partner nations. NASA is in a tough position. It relies on Russia's Soyuz capsules, but the US has banned China from the ISS for human rights violations, the Christian Science Monitor explains. "If the United States wants to avoid looking extremely hypocritical, this was going to be coming," says one space policy expert. NASA soon issued a statement confirming the memo and saying that it was "laser focused on a plan to return human spaceflight launches to American soil." Russia isn't pleased, if this editorial from the state-run RIA Novosti is any indication. "The statement was way too harsh," the director of Russia's Space Policy Institute said.
– A teacher and a student were killed and another student and teacher were seriously injured in a sword attack at a school in the Swedish town of Trollhattan on Thursday, before the assailant was shot by police and taken to a hospital. Police say a masked man in his 20s used "several knife-like objects" as weapons in the cafe area of the Kronan school around 10am, per the Local and CNN. Two boys, 11 and 15, suffered serious stab wounds; one of them died later in the hospital, while the teacher died at the scene, per the BBC. A hospital rep adds the attacker "is seriously injured and is being operated on." The scene outside the school is still chaotic, where "parents are running around to find their children," says a witness. "I can't understand why it happened here." A student tells the Local, "I was in a classroom with my class when one of my classmates' sisters called her to warn her that there was a murderer at the school." He says he and a few others left the classroom to warn their teacher, who was in the hallway. "Then I saw the murderer, he was wearing a mask and had a sword. Our teacher got stabbed," he says. "The murderer started chasing me, I ran into another classroom. If I had not run, I would have been murdered." Earlier in the day, the school held a meeting based on teachers' concerns that anyone could gain access to the school through the entrance to the cafe, which is reportedly attached to the school and is meant for adults, per CBS News. There are about 400 students at the school, aged 6 to 15.
– A California man believed to have been the serial killer who stalked homeless people in Orange County last year died yesterday after being found vomiting in his prison cell. Itzcoatl Ocampo, a 25-year-old Iraq veteran, had yet to stand trial for the stabbing murders of four homeless men he apparently picked at random and a mother and son he was acquainted with. He was due for a pre-trial hearing in January and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, reports the Los Angeles Times. His attorney tells the AP Ocampo ingested Ajax; he had apparently been accumulating the cleaning product over time. The death "really deprives the victims and the people of California of the ability to put Mr. Ocampo to death on our terms and get justice for the victims of these crimes," says a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. After the former Marine's arrest, family members said he had been kind and generous to the homeless but prosecutors painted a different picture, saying Ocampo saw the homeless as a blight on society and had set a target of 16 murders. His death raises questions about how well deputies were supervising him, his lawyer says; Ocampo had mental health issues and had been on suicide watch temporarily last year.
– When you've got a civil matter overlapping with a criminal one, you may need to prioritize which fire to deal with first. A federal judge agrees in the case of Michael Cohen, approving on Friday a 90-day stay in the civil lawsuit against him and President Trump by Stephanie Clifford (aka porn star Stormy Daniels), the Washington Post reports. The reasoning: Trump's personal lawyer filed a declaration this week noting he intends to plead the Fifth in the Daniels case, as he fears answering questions in that matter could potentially implicate himself in the criminal probe against him in New York, per NPR. FBI agents working on the latter investigation carried out a raid on Cohen's home and office in early April, and because part of that mission was to seek documents related to Daniels' nondisclosure agreement, there may be "large potential factual overlap" with Daniels' civil case, per Otero. "This is no simple criminal investigation," Otero noted Friday. "Whether or not an indictment is forthcoming, and the Court thinks it likely based on these facts alone, these unique circumstances counsel in favor of stay." Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, responded to Otero's ruling on Twitter, tweeting: "While we certainly respect Judge Otero's 90 day stay order based on Mr. Cohen's pleading of the 5th, we do not agree with it. We will likely be filing an immediate appeal to the Ninth Circuit early next week. Justice delayed is justice denied." He added to the New York Times that "we want to get the truth to the American people as quickly as possible." The Post, however, notes it's not unusual for those facing both civil and criminal issues to do exactly what Cohen's doing to avoid incrimination. The next hearing for the civil case has been set for July 27.
– Guess Google execs are serious about that whole reorg under the Alphabet parent-company thing. Just days after Alphabet officially became Google's holding company, it scooped up a brand-new domain name: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com, which has been around since 1999 and was purchased for an unspecified amount, NBC News reports. The page isn't functional as of this post, and a company rep says, "We realized we missed a few letters in abc.xyz, so we're just being thorough." (Google set up that website in August.) It's hard to imagine Google directing the general public to use the site—would you want to type in all those letters every time?—and NBC notes the domain purchase may simply be a preemptive strike to keep others from usurping it for their own use. Two domains the company probably won't be able to get its hands on: ABC.com (for the American Broadcasting Company, owned by Disney) and alphabet.com, which BMW is unlikely to give up, notes Consumerist. If you'd been hoping to nab the domain for yourself, you can always try to cybersquat the site away when Google's hold on it expires in August 2018. (Alphabet has ditched its "Don't Be Evil" motto for one that's not as quirky.)
– Like snacking on dark chocolate? Then we hope you're not doing it to avoid milk, because the US Food and Drug Administration tested 94 dark-chocolate bars and found milk in 61% of them, Quartz reports—including not just products with descriptions like "may contain milk" or "may contain traces of milk," but ones that claim to be vegan, dairy-free, or lactose-free. What if the label doesn't mention milk at all? Yep, the agency found milk in 33% of those cases. Of 88 bars that didn't list milk as an ingredient, 51 included milk. The FDA undertook the project after consumers complained about reacting badly to dark chocolate. Sure enough, it's hard to find a dairy-free heaven in dark-chocolate land: "This can be a problem, since even one small bite of a product containing milk can cause a dangerous reaction in some individuals," a researcher tells Yahoo. The FDA detected milk in 75% of dark-chocolate products labeled "may contain milk," "manufactured in a facility that uses milk," or similar, and found that certain products "had milk levels as high as those found in products that declared the presence of milk," the agency says, noting that consumers should "read 'may' as 'likely'" on such labels. What's more, 15% of dark-chocolate bars with labels reading "dairy-free" or "lactose-free" contained milk, as did 25% claiming to be "vegan." So what's up? Many companies make dark and milk chocolate on the same machines: "And remember, they use a lot of powdered milk products in the chocolate industry, so powder can blow, it can get stuck to equipment," an allergist tells CBS Pittsburgh. Those in dire need of milk-free dark chocolate should find "a trusted source of allergen-free chocolate," says Yahoo, which advises people to "proceed with caution." (If you're not allergic to milk, though, chow down.)
– "He's a decent player for a guy in his 70s," pro golfer Rory McIlroy tells No Laying Up after playing a round of golf with President Trump on Sunday. McIlroy, a four-time major champion, says Trump shot "around 80," Business Insider reports. McIlroy is currently sidelined from competitive golf with a stress fracture in his rib but says he decided to tough it out when he got the invite Saturday night to play with the president. McIlroy isn't the only professional golfer to have weighed in on Trump's game. Tiger Woods has previously said Trump "takes a pretty good lash" for a man his age. But like anything having to do with Trump, Sunday's golf game wasn't without controversy. USA Today reports McIlroy took some heat on the Internet; some pointed out that he had ducked out of the most recent Olympics because they were "too political." On Trump's side, the White House was caught downplaying how much golf the president is playing, according to Politico. The White House originally reported Trump had only played "a few holes" on Sunday, but McIlroy's comments led a spokesperson to admit that Trump decided to "play longer"—a full 18 holes. Trump routinely blasted Barack Obama for playing golf while president.
– After failing to get Congress—or Mexico—to cough up enough cash for a wall along the Mexican border, President Trump has been looking into getting the Pentagon to pay for it, reasoning that it has plenty of money under the new federal budget, insiders say. The sources tell the Washington Post that Trump, worried that failure to build the promised wall will cause supporters to desert him, has been privately pushing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, among others, to make the wall a military-funded project because of national security fears. But officials say the military is unlikely to pay for the wall, and even if the Pentagon was willing, it would require an act and the move would not get 60 votes in the Senate. In a tweet Tuesday, Trump argued that the military is "rich" and building a border wall is all about national defense because there are "enemy combatants pouring into our Country." "Build WALL through M!" he urged. Trump wants $25 billion for the wall, but the latest spending bill allocates just $1.6 billion, with restrictions on how it can be spent. "First Mexico was supposed to pay for it, then US taxpayers, and now our men and women in uniform?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tells the Post. "This would be a blatant misuse of military funds and tied up in court for years." CNN reports that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment on possible military funding Tuesday. The "continuation of building the wall is ongoing, and we're going to continue moving forward in that process," she said.
– Jesse Matthew, charged with the abduction of missing UVa student Hannah Graham, was found in Galveston, Texas, Wednesday on a "beach out in the boonies," as one Texan put it. After a tip, police spotted Matthew camped out on a sliver of sand on the remote Bolivar Peninsula—the site of a mass grave used decades ago by serial killer Dean Corll and accessible by a single road, the AP reports. Matthew is one of many to hole up on the spot (among others: famed French pirate Jean Lafitte, rumor has it), where some stay for months. "We get lots of weird folks," says a local. "It seems like a good place to seek refuge. It's kind of remote." More on the case from the Washington Post and the Daily Progress: Matthew initially said he was "George Carr," but police discovered his true identity when they ran his car's plates. Authorities have searched the car, beach, and sand dunes. The case has brought to light another accusation against Matthew. An official has confirmed he was accused of raping a woman at Liberty University in 2002, but she didn't proceed with the case. He was a student there at the time. "Basically, the woman was saying she hadn't consented and Matthew was saying she had," says an attorney with the Lynchburg Commonwealth Attorney's Office. Searchers have scoured much of Charlottesville, Va., and are moving on to surrounding farms and woodland. They've asked area real estate agents to inspect any vacant buildings or properties they represent, and have told the public to be on the lookout for Graham's iPhone 5S with a pink case or unexplained tire tracks. Authorities are also looking to identify some of Matthew's favorite fishing spots. Matthew has declined to fight his extradition, and Virginia police have been sent to retrieve him. He should arrive back in Charlottesville in a few days.
– Chelsea Clinton is getting some attention for comments she made to Fast Company when asked about following her parents into politics. Her answer has always been a "visceral no," says the 34-year-old resident of New York City, but that's no longer the case: "I live in a city and a state and a country where I support my elected representatives. If at some point that weren't the case, and I didn't support my mayor or my city councilwoman or my congresswoman or either of my senators—and I'm lucky to live in a state where I have lots of women representing me, you know—maybe then I'd have to ask and answer the question for myself, and come to a different answer." At the Washington Post, Aaron Blake points out that Clinton has said something similar publicly on at least one other occasion, though she has never been so specific about possible offices. As for the two senatorial posts in New York, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand is 47 and Chuck Schumer is 63. (Dad thinks Clinton ought to aim a little higher than a Senate seat, of course.)
– A Los Angeles entertainment executive is suing an online dating site for failing to screen out a man who she says sexually assaulted her. The woman is seeking an injunction barring Match.com from signing members until it begins a process to filter out sex predators like her alleged attacker, who has a history of conviction for sexual battery, said her attorney. Match.com is "a very powerful and successful online dating service, and they have the means to do this,” the lawyer told the Los Angeles Times. Match.com officials said they provide safety tips on the website, and warn members that clients are responsible for screening their dates. In the LA executive's second date with a man she met on the site, he allegedly followed her home and attacked her. "This horrific ordeal completely blindsided me because I had considered myself savvy about online dating safety," the woman said in a statement. "Things quickly turned into a nightmare, beyond my control." She was stunned to discover in a subsequent Web search that the man had been convicted of several counts of sexual battery.
– Benjamin Netanyahu today vowed to destroy Hamas' tunnels at all costs, even as Israel called up an additional 16,000 reservists—bringing the total so far to 86,000 troops. "We are determined to complete this mission with or without a ceasefire," he said of the tunnels' destruction, as per Haaretz. "Therefore I will not agree to any offer that does not allow the military to complete this important mission for the security of the people of Israel." He also issued a get-in-line message to two ministers who have been critical of his actions against Hamas, saying "beware of what you're doing." Netanyahu's statement vis a vis the tunnels comes as ceasefire efforts are sputtering anyway, notes the AP, and on the heels of the worst day of casualties thus far in Gaza.
– A mama grizzly linked to the mauling death of two hikers in Yellowstone Park has been killed by rangers. Two men were mauled to death in separate incidents over the summer in the first bear killings in Yellowstone in a quarter of a century. Bear DNA found at the site of the first mauling was also found at the site of the second death a month later. In the first attack, a grizzly sow with two cubs chased and killed a man as he hiked with his wife. A report by Yellowstone rangers concluded that a possible "contributing factor" to the mauling was that the couple "ran from the bear while screaming and yelling," and they decided not to track down the grizzly. "We made a decision at that time, based on all the information available, that we did not have a bear with a history or a bear that was demonstrating any predatory nature," a park spokesman told the AP. But the same sow's DNA was found at the site of the second killing of a hiker walking alone—although tracks and DNA from several other bears were also found at the body, and rangers can't be certain which animal killed the hiker. The euthanized grizzly's two cubs were captured and relocated to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center wildlife park in West Yellowstone. An estimated 600 grizzlies live in the greater Yellowstone area.
– Fear the flu, not the bomb. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday announced that a session on nuclear attack preparedness scheduled for Tuesday will be postponed to an unspecified date, with the session's topic switching to flu and what can be done to stem its spread. "To date, this influenza season is notable for the sheer volume of flu that most of the United States is seeing at the same time, which can stress health systems," the CDC explained, per the New York Times. The session was originally to feature officials from all levels of government discussing US preparations for a nuclear blast, with presentations on "Preparing for the Unthinkable" and "Roadmap to Radiation Preparedness." The Times notes that the CDC made no mention of whether the delay was at all influenced by the outsize interest in the session, which was announced shortly after President Trump's tweet about nuclear-button size. The Washington Post reports the sessions are part of a larger monthly webinar series called Public Health Grand Rounds, and notes that roughly three dozen media outlets had shared interest in covering the session at the CDC's Atlanta HQ. (This 21-year-old thought rest could take care of the flu; he died days later.)
– Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is taking flak over comments he made about why the GOP aims to scrap or least mitigate the estate tax. In speaking to the Des Moines Register, Grassley said the tax often derided by Republicans as the "death tax" is unfair because it taxes earnings twice, first when people earn the money and again when they die and try to pass it on to their heirs. Then came the more controversial part: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies." As NPR notes, that triggered a flurry of online criticism from those who viewed Grassley's remarks as elitist. This tweet is typical of the reaction: "I'm sure those folks would love to invest, but they're a bit preoccupied just trying to make ends meet." The Washington Post notes that it also caught the attention of former Hillary Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson, who tweeted, "[I]f we gave that money in middle class tax cuts, they’d just waste it on hookers and blow. right?” But it wasn't just Democrats taking issue. At the conservative Hot Air site, Ed Morrissey says the comment "is everything right and wrong with the current Republican tax-reform effort in a nutshell." Grassley's first criticism of the "double dip" problem with the estate tax is spot-on correct, he writes. "In the very next breath, however, Grassley commits the same sin that has plagued the tax system for decades, which is Congress’ desire to commit social engineering through it." The House tax plan would eliminate the tax entirely in 2024, while the Senate version would double exemptions to $11 million for individuals and $22 million for couples.
– Well, this is awkward: Robert Pattinson was spotted driving to his house with a "mystery girl" Sunday, and she's now been IDed as model/actress Riley Keough. That's notable for three reasons: Keough is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley. She co-starred with Pattinson ex Kristen Stewart in The Runaways. (Pattinson and Stewart most recently split in May.) She's close friends with Stewart, according to the New York Daily News. In fact, she attended Stewart's April birthday party, as did Pattinson. So, are Keough and Pattinson dating? Most outlets seem to be spinning it that way (a source tells the ever-trustworthy Daily Mail the two are "inseparable," while another tells Hollywood Life that Rob "is so happy that he can trust someone again"). But X17 notes that maybe she was actually running interference for Kristen, trying to reunite the Twilight lovers.
– We get it, parents. You want the best for your kid. Sometimes, that means feeding them nutritious food, reading to them, and being there for them. And sometimes, it means buying them a $6.5 million high-rise apartment in a city on the other side of the planet. That's what one Chinese mother did recently, a top New York City real estate executive told a Chinese TV station, in a story spotted by Time. When he asked her why she was apartment-shopping, "She said, well, her daughter was going to go to Columbia, or NYU, or maybe Harvard, and so she needed to be in the center of the city," says the agent. "So I said, 'Oh, how old is your daughter?' And she said, 'Well, she's 2.'" The move might actually be financially savvy—the apartment's value is already up to $8.9 million—although someone should really tell her that Harvard is in Boston. Chinese social media is already abuzz with speculation that the anonymous buyer might be tied to a corrupt government official.
– Margaret Thatcher was the first, but she'll no longer be the only female prime minister the UK has ever had. Michael Gove has been eliminated from the ballot to become the next Conservative Party leader, leaving Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom as the final two candidates. The winner will become the UK's next prime minister, the BBC reports. Home Affairs Secretary May (a Remain supporter) led the most recent round of voting Thursday with 199 votes, followed by Energy Minister Leadsom (a Brexit supporter) with 84 and Gove with 46. Conservative MPs will decide on a winner, who will take over the job from David Cameron on Sept. 9, the Washington Post reports.
– The latest strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to give researchers sleepless nights aren't the most common—or even the most antibiotic-resistant—but they have an ability that could make them a serious danger to public health. They contain enzymes known as "OXA-48-like carbapenemases" that can break down antibiotics and transfer that ability to normal bacteria in the body through mobile pieces of DNA, reports the Washington Post. and Live Science. The enzymes have been nicknamed the "phantom menace" by researchers because they can be tough to detect. In a report issued this week, the CDC says it identified 43 cases in the US involving the superbug between June 2010 and August of this year, mainly involving people who had traveled overseas, though some cases are thought to have been transmitted in the US. "This is a tricky drug-resistant bacteria, and it isn't easily found," CDC Director Thomas Frieden tells the Post. "What we're seeing is an assault by the microbes on the last bastion of antibiotics." The number of cases is small but rising, Frieden says, warning that what has been detected so far could just be the "tip of the iceberg." An infectious disease specialist tells Live Science that while the bacteria shouldn't be a major worry for the general public right now, doctors and patients should be aware that the best way to combat antibiotic resistance is to try to be more sparing in the use of antibiotics. (A mutation spreading in China has prompted warnings of an "antibiotic apocalypse.")
– Between 1999 and 2013, Eminem released some of his most famous work, including 1999's The Slim Shady LP, 2000's The Marshall Mathers LP, and 2002's The Eminem Show. Now a new company has formed to nab the royalties income stream from his songs from that period, and fans may eventually be able to fatten their wallets by investing via a rather unusual opportunity. Per Billboard, Royalty Exchange has created a new business called Royalty Flow and inked a letter of intent to buy either a 15% or 25% portion of the performer's income stream (depending on how much money it raises via crowdfunding efforts) and then allow fans and investors to share in income from those royalties via dividends if and when the company becomes listed on NASDAQ—a template that Billboard says may prove to be "new business model for other superstar artists." Variety notes the deal comes via brothers Jeff and Mark Bass of FBT Productions, who invested in Eminem's catalog early and are now said to be estranged from him. Although Royalty Exchange's CEO says in a statement the plan offers "a powerful new financing option with a level of transparency seldom found in the music industry," one industry expert tells Rolling Stone that selling an artist's catalog piece by piece "starts to look like human slavery." Meanwhile, Eminem's statement, via a rep: "Eminem is not involved in any deals for the sale of recording royalties and has no connection to this company. The decision to offer the royalty stream for sale or otherwise was made independently by a third party who retains royalties for an early portion of his catalog and Eminem was not consulted." Billboard dives deeper into the financial and legal complexities of this setup.
– The eldest son of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has taken his own life after months of being treated for "profound depression," according to state-run media in Cuba. Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, nicknamed "Fidelito," was 68. Castro-Diaz Balart, who was born during Castro's brief, pre-Cuban Revolution marriage to Mirta Diaz-Balart, headed Cuba's national nuclear program from 1980 to 1992 and was serving as a scientific adviser for the Cuban Council of State at the time of his death, Reuters reports. Castro Diaz-Balart was born in 1949. His mother took him to live in the US after she divorced Castro in 1953. She sent him to visit his father after he took power in 1959 and he never returned him, CNN reports. Castro Diaz-Balart trained as a nuclear physicist in the Soviet Union and spoke Russian, Spanish, English, and French fluently. Paul Hare, a former British ambassador to Cuba, tells Reuters that Castro Diaz-Balart seemed "thoughtful, rather curious about the world beyond Cuba" when he met him at a dinner in Boston two years ago. "But he seemed a bit weary about having to be a Castro, rather than himself," Hare says. The BBC reports that he was related on his mother's side to prominent anti-Castro regime politicians in the US, including his cousin, Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart. (Fidel Castro died 14 months ago at 90.)
– President Trump told Russian officials that firing James Comey took a "great pressure" off him in regard to the ongoing investigation into his campaign's possible collusion with Russia, the New York Times reports. He also told Russian officials the former FBI director was "crazy, a real nut job." The quotes come from a document summarizing Trump's May 10 meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office. The document is being treated as the official account of the meeting, and Sean Spicer didn't dispute its contents. It appears to be another incidence of Trump claiming he fired Comey because of the Russian investigation, contradicting the official reason given by the White House. One official says Trump was attempting a negotiating tactic on the Russians, making them feel bad about the political pressure they caused for him. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign now includes a current White House official as a significant person of interest. Sources close to the investigation say it's now looking at a senior White House adviser close to the president. While the official isn't being identified, current White House officials that have admitted to having contact with Russian officials include Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, and Rex Tillerson. While the investigation is ramping up to interviews and subpoenas, sources with knowledge of it say that doesn't mean criminal charges are a given.
– "Every second counts" in the search for Jayme Closs, and authorities say they've so far received about 800 tips on the disappearance of the Wisconsin teen. The 5-foot-tall 13-year-old with strawberry-blond hair and green eyes was found to be missing early Monday when cops responded to a 911 call at her Barron home; her parents were found there shot to death. In addition to hundreds of tips being called in, USA Today notes that a team of 100 volunteers, recruited on Facebook by Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald, has been scouring the area in a "routine search for articles of evidentiary value." The hunt for Jayme—who Fitzgerald seems certain is still alive, per CNN—isn't just in Barron: CBS News and Newsweek report the FBI has expanded the search nationwide, with the agency placing Jayme on its top missing-persons list and blasting out a missing-persons poster "out of an abundance of caution" to media across the country. More than 100 local and state FBI agents are said to be helping to find her. "At the end of the day, I want a 13-year-old here safe and sound," Fitzgerald said Wednesday. "That's our goal. That's our only goal right now." (So far, not much has turned up.)
– Kate McKinnon is dressed down ("real-person down," without makeup and in sneakers and a baggy tee) and skittish like a cat, reacting so warily to her interview with Lili Anolik for Vanity Fair that Anolik realizes she's "going to have to approach her slowly, carefully, no false moves." The writer dives into the career of McKinnon, whom she calls "perhaps the most gifted of a gifted generation of young comics," reaching back to her first forays into comedy at Columbia and her stint with the Upright Citizens Brigade improv group, and culminating with her current turn on SNL, where she's impersonated everyone from Kellyanne Conway and Elizabeth Warren to Jeff Sessions. But it's her portrayal of Hillary Clinton, the foil to Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump, that has touched an unexpected nerve and propelled her to household-name status. Anolik points out the "intense, instinctive, and visceral" interaction between the two actors. She also notes how McKinnon's Hillary has more "pathos" than versions by previous SNL actors, including Jan Hooks and Amy Poehler. That pathos was born out of the connection McKinnon forged while trying to channel what she believed may have been Clinton's private thoughts. "I started to feel very close to her, just trying to imagine her inner life," McKinnon says. The subject of the real Hillary is broached, though Anolik notes that "Kate actually says very little … because she gets too overwhelmed to say it." The cat that is McKinnon also backs away on "soft, padded paws" when Anolik brings up her personal life, which "since I'm no cop and Kate's certainly no criminal … I lean across the table and switch off the tape recorder." Anolik's full piece on McKinnon is here.
– According to multiple gossip outlets including TMZ, Kylie Jenner is pregnant. The 20-year-old sister of Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian is said to be expecting a baby with boyfriend of six months Travis Scott. Both Jenner and Scott, 25, have reportedly been telling friends about the pregnancy, with Scott even said to have claimed it's a girl. TMZ acknowledges the couple could be "punking" their friends, but says it would be "super weird" if so. The gossip site also points out Kylie has been posting photos of herself from the chest up lately, or old photos, but that she recently posted a photo on Snapchat in which she could possibly be showing, per the Cut. A source helpfully tells Page Six that Jenner "has been looking pregnant for about four months." The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star and her rapper boyfriend "started telling friends a few weeks ago. The family has known for quite some time. She is really excited and so is Travis," one source tells People. Another source adds, "It is an unexpected but completely amazing turn of events that she could not be more excited or thrilled about. Everyone is overjoyed for her. This is the happiest she’s ever been." Older sister Kim is also reportedly expecting via surrogate, and that baby is rumored to be due in January.
– Jerry Sandusky says he was never confronted by Joe Paterno about his suspected sexual misconduct, denies having his access to children restricted at his charity before becoming the subject of a criminal investigation, and completely denies ever sexually abusing children in an extensive and exclusive interview with the New York Times. Sandusky claims that his interaction with children over the years came from his charity work and there was nothing sinister about it. “It was, you know, almost an extended family,” he says. Sandusky gave the interview primarily to defend his decades of charity work. “They’ve taken everything that I ever did for any young person and twisted it to say that my motives were sexual or whatever,” he says. “I had kid after kid after kid who might say I was a father figure. And they just twisted that all.” Sandusky also said he was upset about the damage the scandal had caused to Penn State and Paterno. "I don't think it was fair," he said, adding that he didn't know for sure whether Paterno ever got wind of the allegations because they never spoke of them. Read the full interview, or click here for more on Paterno's role.
– If your short-term plan involves getting pregnant, your immediate plan should potentially be to lay off the potatoes. So suggests a National Institutes of Health study published Tuesday in the BMJ that found women who eat more potatoes before becoming pregnant may be more likely to develop gestational diabetes as compared to their spud-light counterparts. That finding stems from an analysis of 15,632 women who participated in the Nurses' Health Study II over a 10-year period beginning in 1991. A press release explains the women had not previously had gestational diabetes, and at four-year intervals answered questions related to their diet in the year prior. Under the potato category, they were asked to rate their consumption of baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes, fries, or potato chips on a scale of "never" to "six or more times a day." The researchers begin their study by noting just how prevalent potato consumption is, with 35% of American women ages 19-50 eating potatoes daily, and the vegetable accounting for 8% of their caloric intake. Study author Dr. Cuilin Zhang recommends to CBS News that women cap it at one potato portion per week and consider a swap. The researchers estimate that trading two servings of potatoes weekly for a substitute vegetable, legumes, or whole-grain food would reduce the risk of gestational diabetes—which CBS reports affects as many as 8% of pregnancies—by 9% to 12%. As for why women should care, Zhang tells the BBC that women with gestational diabetes can develop pre-eclampsia and hypertension, which "can adversely affect the fetus" and put the mother at higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. The team notes, however, that the study shows correlation, not causation, and says more research is needed. (One country has told its women not to get pregnant right now.)
– A papyrus suggesting Jesus had a wife has sparked continuing controversy since it was announced in 2012 in the Harvard Theological Review. Now, Live Science explains that the evidence against the authenticity of the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" is mounting. Among the site's findings and observations: The supposed former owner of the papyrus, one Hans-Ulrich Laukamp, had no interest in antiquities, say two sources: the representative of his estate and a business associate. What's more, he's said to have obtained the papyrus in East Germany in 1963—a bit fishy since he was living on the other side of the Berlin Wall at the time. Another papyrus reportedly owned by Laukamp and given to Harvard is fake, a researcher has asserted. It looks a lot like the "Gospel," with similar handwriting and ink. Other experts are raising doubts, rather forcefully. "When is this papyrological pantomime, this Keystone Coptic, this academic farce, this philological burlesque finally going to stop?" asks a Brown University researcher. Asks another authority: "At what point do we stop claiming another lottery win and just accept that the whole thing is a forgery?" The story has started "to crumble faster than an ancient papyrus exposed in the windy Sudan," writes Jerry Pattengale in the Wall Street Journal. Specialists are saying that Harvard professor Karen King and colleagues "were the victims of an elaborate ruse," and Pattengale doesn't blame King—it's the media's "rush … to embrace the idea" that's of more concern. Click for his full piece.
– The NSA's controversial spying activities have prevented more than 50 terror attacks since 9/11, the agency's director told the House Intelligence Committee today, including attempted bombings of the New York Stock Exchange and, as previously disclosed, the New York City Subway. Gen. Keith Alexander said he'd go over all 50 cases with Congress, but wouldn't release the information to the public because it would give away NSA secrets. More from the hearing, courtesy of Politico and CNN's liveblog. Alexander said 90% of those cases were disrupted by the PRISM web spying program. The NSA said that while it has assembled a massive database of call tracking information, it has targeted fewer than 300 numbers or other "identifiers" within it. Deputy Attorney General James Cole stressed that the NSA must get permission from the secret FISA court to access phone data, and must have evidence linking their target to a terrorist organization. "This is not a program that's off the books that's been hidden away," Cole said. But Cole also said that the Fourth Amendment didn't apply to phone records, and that people shouldn't expect privacy for them. NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis said that just 22 people at the NSA are authorized to query the phone database. Alexander said the NSA has neither the legal authority nor technical ability to "flip a switch" and listen to a phone conversation. The NSA brass wasn't exactly facing an inquisition. Committee Chairman Mike Rogers painted the NSA as a victim of "a constant public drumbeat" accusing it of a "laundry list of nefarious things … all of them wrong." He said public trust was waning thanks to "inaccuracies, half-truths, and outright lies."
– Emily's List has drummed up its own group of Mama Grizzlies to counter Sarah Palin. The pro-choice group launched a SarahDoesn'tSpeakforMe website and campaign with this parody video, reports the Hill. The group is hoping to raise funds for candidates it supports, citing three races in particular against Palin-backed opponents: Emily's List is backing Barbara Boxer vs. Carly Fiorina, Tarryl Clark vs. Michele Bachmann, and Diane Denish vs. Susana Martinez in the New Mexico governor's race. Click here for more.
– A reunion of "two unlikely friends" happened Saturday during the dedication of DC's National Museum of African American History and Culture, per CNN—and the photo of Michelle Obama's embrace of George W. Bush has now become a "powerful image … for the ages," notes Quartz. CNN notes that the two have become "increasingly chummy" throughout President Obama's tenure, often sitting next to each other at events and even holding hands at a July memorial service for the slain Dallas police officers. Reaction to the photo taken by former White House photographer David Hume Kennerly has made its way onto social media, per Mediaite, with one commenter noting: "This is what America is! we disagree but we don't hate!" Of course, others had to show off their Photoshop skills and make a meme out of the photo, which has now produced variations that include Obama hugging soon-to-be-single Brad Pitt, Donald Trump, and an actual bush; the Huffington Post has compiled its favorites.
– The number of pregnant women in the US and its territories with the Zika virus has nearly tripled, according to a report from the CDC released Friday. USA Today reports 157 pregnant women in the continental US and another 122 in US territories tested positive for the virus, which can cause miscarriages and birth defects. It's unclear how much of the reported increase is due to the spread of Zika and how much is due to the CDC now counting women who tested positive but don't show symptoms, according to CNN. So far, none of the women were infected by mosquitoes in the US. Most got it while traveling to other countries, while a handful contracted Zika through sex. President Obama is meeting with health officials Friday to discuss a response to the virus.
– It wasn't a very happy holiday season for UPS—for the second year in a row. In 2013, the company landed in hot water over an unexpected surge in gifts needing delivery, resulting in some 1.3 million packages that weren't delivered by Christmas Eve. This year, things went the opposite direction: The company hired an extra 100,000 seasonal workers, Consumerist notes, but the uptick in business didn't quite pan out as hoped. The result of all this is new costs for consumers. UPS plans a surcharge for residential deliveries, set to take effect over the course of a few years, Reuters reports. "We absolutely will charge our customers more for the extra costs that we had in peak," CEO David Abney tells the Wall Street Journal. Home deliveries can place a special burden on the company, it says, because homes typically get just one package at a time, whereas a business might receive a pile. Customers may end up seeing higher shipping costs at online retailers, as well as more emphasis on pickup locations like Amazon Lockers in retail stores, Consumerist notes.
– A teenage would-be bank robber in Detroit found himself imprisoned—and presumably regretting one or two life choices—within seconds of being handed money at a bank on Monday, police say. A police spokesman tells the Detroit Free Press that the 15-year-old gave a teller a note claiming he had a bomb and demanding money. As he left with the cash, the teller hit a button that trapped the youth between two sets of doors. The security system, known as a "man-trap," keeps intruders caged until police arrive, MLive reports. Police say the teen, who didn't have any explosives on him, was taken to a juvenile detention facility. (A man who stole a restaurant's tip jar ended up losing money.)
– John Travolta's wife gave birth to new son Benjamin in total silence because that's what Scientology demands, right? Well, sort of. "It's just no words as much as possible. If you need to moan, if you cry out or all of that, of course, that's normal," Kelly Preston said on the Today Show. "But just bringing them in as peaceful and gentle a way as possible." Why? She explains, somewhat confusingly, that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard found that "stress, fears, worry, things like that have to do with the reactive mind and in that part of the mind is different words and commands that can come back to affect you later in life." And she thinks that birthing approach works: "My kids have always been very calm, very peaceful, happy, and I absolutely know that it's very much because of that." In the rest of the interview, Preston goes on to talk about the baby's chosen name (Benjamin is "gentle"), her age (she didn't consider the risks), and her new film. Click for more from the interview.
– So maybe you've been drinking and maybe you're speeding a little, but what to do when a cop tries to pull you over—presenting you with the very real prospect of doing a little time in a less-than-desirable county jail? Step on the gas, and lead police on a merry little car chase to the county that houses your preferred incarceration facility. That is the alleged tale of 34-year-old Oklahoman and prison connoisseur Luz Avilla, who police say was 5mph to 10mph over the limit when an officer in Grady County tried to pull her over. Says a police spokesperson, "Instead of pulling over, the driver accelerated to speeds approximately 90 to 100 miles per hour." Apparently, Grady County jail is the worst. "She wanted to go to jail in Caddo County was her explanation as to why she did not pull over," the spokesperson says. Avilla also apparently did not want to get out of her vehicle, reports News9 via Gawker, and it took an officer with a drawn gun and a bunch of backup to persuade her. For posterity, the entire incident was recorded on the cop's dash cam. Avilla is facing a raft of charges including DUI and eluding police.
– Over the weekend, Tom Hanks' son used the n-word. Twice. Today he helpfully explained why no one should be upset about that. Gawker, not surprisingly, was quick to report both incidents (and to point out that Chester Hanks, or "Chet Haze," as the self-styled rapper goes by, is in fact white). The rundown: On Sunday, Chet posted a photo of himself to Instagram with a caption that said, among other things, "Fuck yall hating ass [n-word] I'll never stop chasing my dream." The day prior to that, he had posted a photo of himself and a friend—or, as he called it, "me and my [n-word]." Controversy ensued. (Sample headlines: "We Need to Talk About Chet," "Chet Haze, Pretend Rapper, Is Now Spouting the N-Word on Instagram," and "Chet Haze Drops N-Bombs on Instagram, Continues to Suck.") This morning, Haze posted another photo of himself to Instagram along with his explanation. It starts: "If I say the word [n-word] I say it amongst people I love and who love me." He goes on to explain the Constitution: "I don't accept society getting to decide what ANYBODY can or can't say. That's something we call FREE SPEECH." The history lesson continues: "Now I understand the older generation who grew up in the Jim Crowe era might have strong feelings against this." But, as he explains, it's 2015 now and the n-word is "a word that unifies the culture of HIP-HOP across ALL RACES, which is actually kind of a beautiful thing."
– An inmate from Utah just weeks away from parole died after a dialysis technician failed to show up—for two days in a row. The Utah Department of Corrections says 62-year-old Ramon C. Estrada died on Sunday of "apparent cardiac arrest due to renal failure," the Salt Lake Tribune reports. The department says Estrada was scheduled to have dialysis treatment on Friday but nobody showed up that day or the next, and he died while prison staff were preparing to take him to a hospital Sunday night, reports the Deseret News. Six other inmates who had also been waiting for treatment were hospitalized, a department spokeswoman says, and one of them was still in the hospital yesterday afternoon. A spokeswoman for the University of Utah Hospital, which was supposed to send a technician to the prison in Draper, tells the AP there appears to have been a miscommunication and there will be a "thorough review of the circumstances that led to this unacceptable mistake." The corrections department also describes the delay in medical care as unacceptable and has suspended its clinical services bureau director while Estrada's death is investigated, reports the Tribune. Estrada, a Mexican national who had been in prison since a 2005 rape conviction, was scheduled to be released on parole on April 21. (County jailers in Alabama are being sued for allegedly withholding basic medical care to cut costs, leading to the deaths of at least three inmates.)
– Wal-Mart is selling a book for kids and parents that makes the case that homosexuals can overcome their "sin" and revert to heterosexuality, Q Salt Lake reports. Chased by an Elephant, the Gospel Truth about Today’s Stampeding Sexuality is by Janice Barrett Graham—the wife of Stephen Graham, who leads the Standard of Liberty group and its philosophy of "pray the gay away." Graham says Chasing an Elephant's goal is to "shed the clear light of truth on today’s dark and tangled ideas about male and female, proper gender roles, the law of chastity, and the God-given sexual appetite." It includes the story of her own son, who claims to have turned from gay to straight after seeing the error of his ways. The book is hardly a bestseller, and for the folks over at Queerty, the fact that Wal-Mart is lending its titanic reach to an anti-gay book is just another example of the big-box store's bias.
– A 7-year-old boy is dead after being shot in the head by a sibling when their parents left them alone in the car Monday afternoon in Tennessee, WBIR reports. According to NBC News, four children were waiting in the car outside a Verizon store while their mother and stepfather paid a cellphone bill when one found a loaded handgun in their mother's purse. Police say the child was attempting to unload the gun when it went off in a "tragic accidental shooting." The bullet struck the 7-year-old in the head, and he died hours later at the hospital, WBIR reports. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, authorities are not releasing the ages of the other children in the car or any of their names. The Department of Children's Services is investigating the incident, WBIR reports.
– Former suburban Chicago cop Drew Peterson once choked his wife, and then asked her: "Why don't you just die?" a friend of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, testified yesterday. Peterson is on trial for allegedly killing Savio and trying to make it look like an accidental drowning in her bathtub. Peterson's fourth wife mysteriously vanished from their home after police opened an investigation into the death of Savio. Savio's pal, Kristen Anderson, also testified that Savio once described how Peterson boasted that he could kill Savio and "make it look like an accident." It was the second day that hearsay testimony from Peterson's late wife was allowed by the judge in the case, reports ABC. There's no physical evidence linking him to her murder. A police officer testified that Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy, was very distraught as they questioned her about Savio's death, and that Peterson "corrected" her answers as she spoke, reports AP.
– The exam to become a master sommelier is notoriously difficult. The years, even decades, of study required to conquer the three-part test of wine knowledge—broken down into theory, table service, and tasting—mean that fewer than 300 people have managed it over 49 years. Now 23 sommeliers who thought they'd joined the upper ranks last month will have to do it over again. The Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas announced Tuesday it would invalidate the results of the blind tasting administered in St. Louis because of "clear evidence" of cheating. An unnamed court master "breached the confidentiality" of the test by releasing "detailed information concerning wines in the tasting flight" ahead of time, the court says, per the Washington Post. The offending master (unnamed) will be stripped of title and court membership, and 23 of 24 newly minted masters must retake the 25-minute tasting test—in which they're asked to identify six wines, down to the year, grape, and region, per the San Francisco Chronicle—before next summer. "It's a tremendous amount of waste and heartbreak for everybody who passed in an honest way," says the sole member of the 2018 class to keep his title, having passed the tasting portion last year. "There are people who have put relationships, marriages, parenting of their children on hold so they can make sure they're professionally successful at this." CMS board chairman Devon Broglie is sympathetic. "I can only imagine how hard it hit everyone to learn that something they worked so hard for was tainted by the actions of a single individual," he says. (You can be a tea sommelier, too.)
– Police have released the heartbreaking 911 calls placed in the moments before Texas mom Christy Sheats killed her two daughters Friday. In the first of three calls—which are "difficult to listen to," say police—Madison, 17, and Taylor, 22, can be heard pleading with their mom not to shoot. "Please forgive me, I'm sorry," a voice says, per the Houston Chronicle. "Please don't shoot, I'm sorry." A scream is then heard, followed by a male voice believed to be that of husband and father Jason Sheats pleading, "Please don't point that gun at us … I beg you, please put it away," per KHOU. "I promise you whatever you want," the man continues before the call ends. A second call includes only muffled voices, screams, and shouts, per the Chronicle. In a third call, a neighbor describes the two daughters lying in the street. He watches as a woman in a purple dress emerges from the house with a gun and stands over one of the victims. "She's trying to shoot again … but apparently she don't have any more bullets," he says, per the Dallas Morning News. He watches the woman go back inside to reload, then return. "Oh! She shot her again," he says, per KHOU. "From the back. She was trying to run." He then hears more gunfire and sees the shooter on the ground—killed by a police officer's bullet. A family friend says Sheats had recently moved back into the home and hid a gun in a couch before calling a family meeting. Fort Bend County police say they received a dozen calls from the home in four years, including three regarding suicide attempts. It isn't clear who the calls were about.
– She's a beautiful, straight-A high school student who's vanished from a big American city, triggering a massive police hunt joined by the FBI. And yet the case of 16-year-old Phylicia Barnes has been slow to percolate to the national radar, complains a Baltimore police spokesman. "I can't see how this case is any different from Natalee Holloway," he said. "Is it because she's African-American? Why?" Authorities are looking for all the help they can get in locating Barnes, a North Carolina resident who disappeared while visiting her college-aged sister in Baltimore on Dec. 28, reports ABC News. She left the apartment, apparently to go shopping, and hasn't been seen since. "At this point, you hope it's an abduction," said the police spokesman. Added her mother: "If she's alive, she's scared to death." Click for more on the case.
– A Michigan medical student is being charged with torturing and killing up to 14 dogs he purchased in the last nine months. Police checked on David Thompson, 24, after a tipster complained that he was bringing in a large number of dogs, mostly Italian greyhounds, that were never seen again. The Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine suspended Thompson last week when the first charges surfaced. Thompson is currently in jail, struggling to come up with his $100,000 bail. If convicted, he faces up to 4 years in prison on each of the 14 charges against him, reports WLNS.
– If you eat well and exercise, you'll probably feel younger than your chronological age. But new research suggests that simply feeling younger than your age—even when accounting for other longevity factors, such as alcohol intake, wealth, illness, education, and smoking—improves longevity, reports Medical News Today. Studying 6,489 participants in the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, researchers report in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine that mortality was only 14.3% among those who felt younger than their age, but was 18% for those who felt their age, and 24.6% for those who felt older. "Someone who feels younger is possibly healthier than someone who feels older—they have fewer diseases, they may be more mobile," a researcher tells CBS Philadelphia. The study couldn't connect self-perceived age with death by cancer, but did establish a strong link between self-perceived age and fatal cardiovascular disease. Factors that speed up self-perceived aging include becoming a parent at an early age, experiencing stress, and developing serious health problems such as cancer. Still, more than 66% of participants say they felt at least three years younger than their chronological age. According to the study, older people who feel old may well slow the aging process by adopting a fresh outlook: "Interventions may be possible," the authors say. "Individuals who feel older than their actual age could be targeted with health messages promoting positive health behaviors and attitudes toward aging." (Other research suggests soda can age our cells as much as cigarettes.)
– The perfect gift for that person who seems to have everything? How about 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, 10 lords a-leaping, and, well, you get the idea. This year, if you tried to buy all 364 items from the "12 Days of Christmas" song, including that partridge in a pear tree, it would set you back $107,300, according to PNC Wealth Management's annual Christmas Price Index. That's a 6.1% increase over last year, which was the first year the gifts topped $100,000. "The rise is larger than expected considering the modest economic growth we've had," says a PNC exec. That's partially because last year's drought caused some bird prices to rise: geese are now 29.6% more expensive, and swans are 11% more, though a partridge—the cheapest item on the list—is still just $15. And, despite the fact that it is Cyber Monday, we don't recommend buying these gifts online. You'll pay quite a bit more, thanks to the cost of shipping live birds, the AP reports. Click to see a breakdown of the costs from each verse.
– The wait for the next season of Game of Thrones just got a bit longer because, as io9 reports, winter isn't coming. At least not yet. New seasons of Game of Thrones typically debut in April, but weather in the European locations where the show films could push that back, the Verge reports. “We’re starting a bit later because at the end of this season ‘winter is here’—and that means that sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes any more," Thrones creators Dan Weiss and David Benioff say on the UFC Unfiltered podcast. "So we kind of pushed everything down the line so we could get some grim, gray weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot.” And who knows, if the real-life winter holds off long enough George RR Martin might even have time to finish the next book.
– It's true: Charlie Sheen revealed to Matt Lauer on the Today show Tuesday morning that he is, in fact, HIV-positive, and has known for four years. "It's a tough three letters to absorb. It's a turning point in one's life," says Sheen. The diagnosis came while he was hospitalized for a series of severe headaches. The 50-year-old actor says he has paid big money to people over the last four years who have threatened to go public with his secret—including a prostitute who once photographed his medication. "I think I release myself from this prison today," he said. Sheen said it's "impossible" that he has transmitted HIV to anyone else. He also told Lauer that he has had unprotected sex with two people since the diagnosis, but both were aware of his status. (TMZ reports that he has settled lawsuits with people who had sex with him but were unaware of his HIV status.) He's not clear on how he contracted HIV, but he spoke of his out-of-control drinking and drug use of a few years ago. "Bad decisions." Sheen's doctor also appeared on the show, and he said Sheen currently has "undetectable" levels of HIV in his body, thanks to medication. (The fight against HIV recently scored a "major win.")
– Days before his death this summer, 39-year-old Max Spiers texted his mother these words: "If anything happens to me, investigate." The Brit just happened to be a well-known figure in the world of UFO researchers, and now conspiracy theories are running wild. Authorities in Poland, where Spiers died, say it was natural causes, and the British government has declined to investigate, reports the Independent. His peers in the UFO community, however, are more than a little skeptical. Kerry Cassidy at Project Camelot says "the entire circumstances are suspicious and I urge everyone to encourage [the release of details] about what really happened and call for an autopsy." Another UFO blogger says, per SFGate: "Healthy people don't just get sick and die, they get poisoned." According to the Telegraph, Spiers had been invited to Poland to speak about his theories at a conference. Friends say he had been staying with a woman in Warsaw ahead of the conference and was vomiting black liquid and suffering from migraines before being found dead on a couch. Spiers' mother, Vanessa Bates, describes him as a "very fit man who was in good health," and she fears her son made enemies after "digging into dark places." But UFO expert Nick Pope tweeted Sunday that the idea of Spiers being silenced is a little much. "Having run the UK government's UFO project I promise we don't go around killing UFO researchers." (Only in Roswell could police investigate a missing flying saucer.)
– Iran thinks it's poised to finally bury the hatchet with the US and strike a sanctions-ending nuclear deal—because officials believe President Obama offered that kind of rapprochement in his letter to newly-elected moderate Hasan Rouhani, a top Iranian adviser tells the New York Times. In Iran's reading, Obama offered face-to-face talks and promised to lift sanctions if Rouhani demonstrates a willingness to "keep your commitments and remove ambiguities." But Washington's interpretation is much less dramatic; an official says Obama wasn't necessarily promising leader-to-leader talks, or any specific sanction action. Rouhani wants to strike a quick deal in the next six months, before parliamentary elections begin. The normally politically powerful military is currently defanged, and Ayatollah Khamenei appears to be on board. In the meantime Rouhani's on a charm offensive. He wrote an op-ed in today's Washington Post in which he offers to "help facilitate dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition," and promises an attempt to "move beyond impasses" with regard to Iran's nuclear program. He's on the interview circuit as well, with one coming up with Charlie Rose. Next week he'll give his first UN address, and for once the US may not walk out, the Post reports. Obama is speaking the same day, so the two might even meet.
– Britney Spears' father, Jamie, has been in charge of her since she was placed under conservatorship in 2008, and he thinks it's about time for a raise, Radar reports. "I continue to perform services to protect and care for Britney’s person and to administer her estate in good faith and in her best interests. I continue to have significant oversight duties relating to her visitation with her children," he writes in a new petition to the court. In addition to the $16,000 he gets for those duties per month, he also gets $1,200 for office rent, and he wants that amount bumped to $2,000, plus $7,200 in back pay for the increased rent he's paid since last year. Brit is apparently also under strict control when it comes to interviews. She's been promoting her upcoming Vegas residency, and her handlers told radio interviewers that during the five-minute interviews, they could only ask about Vegas or Britney's new album or single, sources tell the New York Daily News. "So everyone is clear," the stations are being informed, "no personal questions and no funny business." But apparently the interviews still aren't going well: One was pulled entirely after DJs deemed it "a one-sided conversation," and during another, the hosts needed to ask a distracted Spears one of their questions twice.
– It was considered one of the most precious metals in ancient times—and Plato claimed it lined the temple of Poseidon on the legendary island of Atlantis—but this appears to be the first time anybody in modern times has actually found some orichalcum. Researchers in Sicily say a shipwreck from 2,600 years ago, not long before the time of Plato, has yielded 39 ingots of the mysterious metal, Discovery reports. Scholars have long debated the composition of the alloy mentioned in ancient writings, but testing has revealed the Sicily ingots to be a copper-zinc mix with small percentages of nickel, lead, and iron. "Nothing similar has ever been found," says the superintendent of Sicily's Sea Office. "We knew orichalcum from ancient texts and a few ornamental objects." He tells the Giornale di Sicilia that the ingots were apparently bound for workshops in the town of Gela, probably coming from Greece or Asia Minor, when the ship transporting them sank. The find, he says, "opens prospects of great importance to the research and study of ancient routes of supply of metals in the ancient Mediterranean. ... It will provide us with precious information on Sicily's most ancient economic history." (Divers recently found a "holy grail" of shipwrecks.)
– Lindsay Lohan is making a comeback on the small screen after a three-year hiatus from acting. The NY Daily News reports that the starlet posted a photo from the set of the British television comedy Sick Note announcing her new gig while posing in a blazer with a sleek bob haircut alongside costars Rupert Grint of Harry Potter fame and Nick Frost. Season one has yet to air (it's slated for this fall), but according to the Hollywood Reporter, the series follows Grint after he is misdiagnosed with a terminal illness; Lohan will come in during the second season. She is taking on the role of the daughter of Grint’s boss, who is played by actor Don Johnson. (Lohan made headlines last year while on a covert humanitarian trip.)
– The pilots killed in this week's crash of a UPS plane in Birmingham got two automated warnings that they were coming in too low, says the NTSB. But they didn't have much time to process them—the first came 7 seconds before impact, reports the Wall Street Journal. Three seconds after the first "sink rate" alarm sounded in the cockpit, one of the two pilots said the runway was in sight, but the plane soon clipped power wires and slammed into a hill. A veteran pilot was at the controls: Cerea Beal had 8,600 flying hours with UPS—3,000 alone in A300 cargo planes, the type that went down—and before that served as a Maine helicopter pilot. But it's unclear whether he had ever landed at this particular runway before at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. Authorities say it's tricky because it's not equipped with the electronics for a full instrument landing and thus requires a visual approach. The crash occurred in the pre-dawn dark, while it was raining. "When I heard they were using Runway 18, it caught my attention because of that hill," a commercial pilot tells AP. "It's sad, but it didn't surprise me." A longer runway at the airport with a more modern landing system had been closed for maintenance. The co-pilot was previously identified as 37-year-old Shanda Fanning.
– The transcripts of President Trump's conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia leaked to the Washington Post are giving Americans insight into Trump's negotiating style and how he's relating to America's allies, but David Frum at the Atlantic writes the leak of the transcripts is "unprecedented, shocking, and dangerous." Frum says it's vital foreign leaders know they can speak freely with Trump without their words getting out. "No leader will again speak candidly on the phone to Washington, DC—at least for the duration of this presidency, and perhaps for longer," Frum writes. He says the leaks are evidence of the "cycle of self-destruction" Trump has started in which his misconduct spurs misconduct from the opposition. Here's what else you need to know about the leaked transcripts: The transcripts show Trump continues to lie to the public, the Guardian reports. For example, he accused accounts of his contentious phone call with Australia's Malcolm Turnbull of being "FAKE NEWS," claiming the conversation was "very civil." The transcripts show it was anything but. Meanwhile, Splinter has used bits and pieces of the transcripts to compose a "beautiful, agonizing love letter": "Your words are so beautiful. Those are beautiful words and I do not think I can speak that beautifully." In addition to being angry over the leak itself, Trump is certain to be upset the transcript of his conversation with Mexico's Enrique Peña Nieto shows him admitting the border wall is about politics, not security, the Daily Caller reports. Trump asks Peña Nieto to stop saying Mexico won't pay for the wall—even if it's true—because it's making Trump look bad. The Washington Post lists eight "jaw-dropping" lines from the transcripts, including Trump claiming refugees in Australia are criminals who won't "go on to work for the local milk people" and telling Turnbull theirs was the "most unpleasant call." Need more? The Week has 21 "eye-popping" lines, including telling Peña Nieto, "It is you and I against the world, Enrique, do not forget." Trump also tells Peña Nieto "Your citizens are being killed all over the place, your police officers are being shot in the head, and your children are being killed." During his conversation with Peña Nieto, Trump called New Hampshire a "drug-infested den." NBC News reports this didn't go over well in New Hampshire, where the state's Democratic senators called the comment "disgusting" and "unacceptable" and its Republican governor said Trump was "wrong." Finally, Trump's conversation with Turnbull shows he's either unwilling or unable to comprehend the facts around the 1,250 refugees the US agreed to accept from Australia, Jonathan Chait writes for New York. Trump misstates the number of refugees multiple times, repeatedly and incorrectly calls them criminals, and eventually gets frustrated, asking Turnbull, "What is the thing with the boats?"
– Ron Paul had a testy interview with CNN today that he ended by unclipping his microphone and saying, "Goodbye" as Gloria Borger continued to pepper him with questions, reports Mediaite. The source of the friction was questions about political newsletters that went out under Paul's name about 20 years ago that had racist and homophobic sentiments. The issue has come up before, including during his 2008 run, and Paul seemed fed up with giving the same general response: "I didn’t write them. I didn’t read them at the time and I disavow them. That is your answer.” The issue surfaced anew when the Weekly Standard wrote about the newsletters in its latest issue, notes the New York Times. (One of the more controversial quotes is from a 1992 newsletter about the Los Angeles riots: "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.”) Paul contends that the newsletters went out under his name but that others did the writing and he didn't pay much attention to them. He reportedly made money off the publications, however, and that has kept the questions coming. Business Insider has a backgrounder on the whole issue here.
– A suspect in custody in Brunswick, Ohio, is believed to be linked to the disturbing murders of a woman and her two adult children over the weekend. Police tell People that 45-year-old Suzanne Taylor and daughters Taylor Pifer, 21, and Kylie Pifer, who would have been 19 on Sunday, were discovered dead under covers in a bed, as if they had been tucked in. Police say at least one of the victims was stabbed. The mother's boyfriend, Scott Plymale, is believed to have called 911 Sunday evening after Taylor Pifer's boyfriend, Dale Koster, found the bodies in the North Royalton home and called him, Cleveland.com reports. A suspect identified by Cleveland 19 News as George Brinkman was taken into custody early Tuesday after an all-night standoff. The 45-year-old was led from a home in handcuffs around 5:30am, Cleveland.com reports. The homeowner, a woman, was able to get out unharmed, but Brinkman refused to leave for at least eight hours. Police could be heard negotiating through a loudspeaker with Brinkman, who was apparently drinking whisky during the standoff. Police say he was armed with a handgun, but officers were able to take him down with a Taser after entering the home through the front door.
– Seattle police officers who pulled a vehicle over for speeding and running a red light ended up delivering a bundle of joy instead of a handful of tickets. Officer Anthony Reynolds pulled the vehicle over at around 3:45am Sunday and called for an ambulance when the driver shouted that his wife was in labor, according to the police department. The couple's baby, however, "was determined to beat medics to the scene," police say, and the woman gave birth to a baby girl as three more officers arrived. "After first giving a full-throated cry," police say, the girl "began struggling to breathe," but "with the help of the child's mother, Officer Reynolds cleared the baby's airway and got her breathing again." The couple, who wrote a note thanking the officers for helping deliver "a precious gift," named the girl Hadaya, which is Arabic for "gift," reports KOMO News. (These Canadian cops said they had to go by instinct when they delivered a baby Christmas morning.)
– A Haitian Red Cross official estimated today that 45,000 to 50,000 people perished in the shattering earthquake Tuesday, as President Obama pledged US support of $100 million for what he said is likely to be one of the biggest relief efforts in history. Desperately needed aid began arriving from around the world this morning, the Washington Post reports. An Air China plane carrying a Chinese search-and-rescue team, medics, and tons of food and medicine landed at Port-au-Prince airport before dawn, along with three French planes with aid and a mobile hospital, officials said. A British relief team arrived in neighboring Dominican Republic, the AP reports. Bodies lay everywhere in Port-au-Prince, as survivors, many severely injured, set up camps, salvaging mattresses, plastic chairs, bits of cardboard and food from the rubble. Others streamed on foot into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed little sign of damage, passing ambulances and UN trucks racing in the opposite direction. "This is much worse than a hurricane," said a doctor's assistant working at a makeshift triage center set up in a hotel parking lot. "There's no water. There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die."
– A faltering Chipotle has stumbled yet again, this time losing its place as the No. 1 casual, fast Mexican restaurant to a chain that has about a third the number of eateries as Chipotle, USA Today reports. With more than 650 restaurants to Chipotle's 1,900-plus, Moe's Southwest Grill is now the new king of that particular category, according to a Harris Poll survey that queried nearly 100,000 consumers on more than 3,800 brands (including about 60 restaurants). And Chipotle, in the top spot for three years running before it fell victim to a slew of recent food-safety issues, didn't merely drop to second place—it plummeted to fifth, behind Taco Bell, Qdoba, and Baja Fresh. Competition in the category has been fierce, with Mexican eateries all trying to one-up each other in serving up healthier menu items with more selection. USA Today notes that Moe's is especially known for the ample variety of ingredients used to create build-your-own tacos, burritos, and other fare. But it's almost as if Chipotle gave up, debuting few new menu items and taking a halfhearted approach to alerting consumers to steps it's taken to address the hundreds of illnesses—the New York Post helpfully documents the norovirus, E. coli, and salmonella count—that have resulted from chowing down its food. "I just don't think they did enough to convince customers that Chipotle food was safe to eat," an equity research analyst tells USA Today. Plus, Moe's made sure to capitalize on Chipotle's woes, taking out a full-page ad in USA Today on Feb. 8, for instance, reminding everyone its restaurants were open—Chipotle shut down that day to review food-safety protocol with staff, Eater notes. "Moe’s [now] has an opportunity to continue to convert that brand equity into restaurant visits, closing the visitation gap with Chipotle," the CEO of analytics company Placed Insights tells USA Today. (Next up for Chipotle: burgers?)
– A guitar that once belonged to Kurt Cobain, which is likely worth millions, is now in the hands of Eeries frontman Isaiah Silva, and Cobain's daughter is fighting to get it back in the family. Frances Bean Cobain was married to Silva for 21 months, and she's been trying to get the Martin D-18E (which had the bridge flipped so Cobain, a leftie, could play it comfortably) back ever since they split in March. Silva claims she gave it to him as a wedding gift and it's rightfully his. Now, the battle is headed to court, Page Six reports. "It’s not [Silva’s]. It’s a treasured heirloom of the family. It’s not his to take," Frances Cobain has said. But sources tell Page Six that Silva isn't giving in, and "is forcing the matter to litigation." The guitar, the one Cobain played during Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged show and also thought to be the last one he played before taking his life, was once insured for $1 million but, per experts, is probably worth several times that now. Back in August, Silva requested $25,000 a month in spousal support and half of any money Frances made during the marriage, and said the couple had no prenup, TMZ reported. A judge has since ordered Frances Cobain to pay Silva $15,000 a month as part of an interim settlement.
– The surprise announcement that Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds are ending their marriage may be linked to sparks between Reynolds and saucy Gossip Girl Blake Lively on the set of their recent movie. "Everything wasn’t exactly up to wedding vow snuff" with 34-year-old Ry and Lively "canoodling" during filming of the Green Lantern earlier this year in Louisiana, reports E! Online. It was Johansson, 26, who reportedly pulled the plug on her 2-year marriage. Lively, 23, has apparently already moved on to another Ryan—Ryan Gosling, 30, who could barely come up for air at the Manhattan premiere this week of his new movie Blue Valentine. Click for more background on the split.
– A Delaware family that became seriously ill in the US Virgin Islands was poisoned by an odorless and highly toxic pesticide that should never have been used indoors, according to Environmental Protection Agency investigators. Methyl bromide was used to fumigate a unit at the Sirenusa resort on St. John days before the family was hospitalized on March 20. It was also "used in other apartments around the same time that it was applied here, and also in different apartments in the complex within the past year," an EPA official tells NBC News. Weeks after they became ill, two teenage boys are still in critical condition after being airlifted to a hospital on the US mainland; their father is in stable condition. "We have confirmed that the problem is indeed methyl bromide," which was banned from indoor use in the US—including the Virgin Islands—decades ago, an EPA official tells the AP, describing the gas as a "potent neurotoxin" that "can cause convulsions, coma, cognitive deficits, inflammation of the lungs." The Justice Department has begun an investigation and Terminix, the pest control company involved, says it is cooperating, CNN reports. "Many questions remain why an odorless pesticide of this level of toxicity could be manufactured, distributed, and applied in a residential area resulting in this family's injuries," the family's lawyer said in a statement.
– An appellate court ruling today means that women in rural Texas may have a long drive on their hands if they plan to get an abortion. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the state's new rules, which essentially require clinics to have hospital-level building codes, reports the Dallas Morning News. (Think room and doorway sizes, air-sterilization systems, etc.) Prior to today's ruling, the state had 17 abortion clinics—down from 40 in 2013—but only seven of them currently meet the requirements. An eighth, in McAllen near the Mexican border, was granted limited exemptions. Barring a move by the Supreme Court, the state can begin enforcing the new rules in about three weeks, reports AP. Except for McAllen, those that would remain open are in major cities. A woman in El Paso would have to make a 1,300-mile round trip to San Antonio or cross the border into Mexico, and the AP notes the court found the latter option OK. "Although the nearest abortion facility in Texas is 550 miles away from El Paso, there is evidence that women in El Paso can travel the short distance to Santa Teresa (in Mexico) to obtain an abortion and, indeed, the evidence is that many did just that," the court wrote.
– Actor Steven Seagal has taken on a new role, though it's not likely the kind you'd expect. Per the AP, the Under Siege star has been appointed as a special envoy to the United States on humanitarian issues. Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the news on its Facebook page Saturday. The ministry said the unpaid role will "facilitate relations between Russia and the United States in the humanitarian field, including cooperation in culture, arts, public and youth exchanges." According to CNN, the role will be akin to the United Nations' goodwill ambassador positions. While not a typical role for an actor known more for his martial arts skills than his diplomatic chops, the announcement is no big surprise for those who've followed Seagal at all in the last few years. A close friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin's, the 66-year-old was made a Russian citizen in late 2016 and has publicly defended the leader from critics who question the legality of his most recent election. Seagal was a guest at Putin's swearing in last May after he won the election. Seagal has also vocally defended the Russian leader's most controversial policies, including Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.
– A 59-year-old Kansas man was killed when the motorcycle he was driving Friday night collided with a black cow on a blacktopped road, reports KAKE. Kansas Highway Patrol trooper Brant Birney said there were no witnesses when James Zordel hit the cow on a paved rural road about six miles south of Interstate 70 near Russell. It's not clear if Zordel was speeding or if the cow suddenly appeared from the side of the road, notes the AP. "It was dark. He was driving down a blacktop road and he hit a black cow," Birney said, adding that exactly what caused the accident may never be known. Zordel, who was not wearing a helmet, died at the scene.
– Bill and Kirsten Bresnan are off to an early Valentine's Day start—they've been sharing holiday-themed cards since Feb. 1. But that's not even close to the whole story. Bill has penned a love note to his wife nearly every day since 1974. Bresnan tells the Asbury Park Press that "Kris" was initially a student of his in a six-week prep class for the Series 7 exam; when they started commuting on the same Long Island Railroad train, he began by jotting notes to her on napkins. It grew from there to, by today's count, 10,000 letters, organized chronologically in some 25 boxes. The couple, who say they've never had a fight in all those years and prefer to talk it out instead of argue, call the collection their "love diary." The signature of each letter bears an infinity sign. Some of the notes are short and sweet—"Thank you for being you and loving me," scribbled on a postcard in December 1989—but sometimes Bill goes big, reports ABC News. In the 50 days leading up to Kris' 50th birthday, for instance, he sent a series of 50 special cards. But in the end, Bill says, the key is to focus on and treasure each other, not phones and other distractions; he says dinner each night is eaten by candlelight, with romantic music as a backdrop. As for this Valentine's Day, "We'll probably have a nice dinner, a special bottle of wine, and a piece of chocolate," he says. "We're past the craving for jewelry and expensive nonsense. We just enjoy simply being together." As for his letter-writing habit, he expresses a single qualm to CBS New York: "As I get older, my biggest fear is the day I forget to give it to her." (One couple's love letters from WWI were recently uncovered.)
– The 24-year-old beauty queen stripped of her Miss Delaware title for being too old is suing national and local pageant organizers to get her crown back. Amanda Longacre will still be 24 when the Miss America pageant is held in September, but she turns 25 the next month and says that while she advanced through the competition, she was never told that turning 25 before the end of 2014 would disqualify her. She has filed a $3 million class-action lawsuit, seeking $500,000 for herself and $2.5 million for other contestants who were certified to compete and then disqualified, the News Journal reports. Longacre—who deferred her master's program and her Department of Justice internship after being crowned Miss Delaware—is also seeking a waiver so she can still compete in the Miss America pageant. Her suit alleges that pageant organizers knowingly recruit ineligible contestants to boost participation. The president of the Miss America organization says Longacre's lawsuit is "without merit and we will defend it vigorously," reports the AP.
– The Arcade Fire’s music video-slash-website is a harbinger of things to come. The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive experience that combines video of a kid running through a suburb, animated birds, satellite views of the neighborhood where you grew up (you provide the address), and an invitation to write a postcard to yourself as a child, all as the band’s “We Used to Wait” plays. “Say what you will about the indie-goth aesthetics and the irritating, aggrandizing treatment of histrionic middle-class teen angst, The Wilderness Downtown works amazingly well as an Internet ‘piece’—part video, part interactive project, part regular old website,” writes Max Read on Gawker. “And as music videos appeared to have moved off your television permanently, with the exception of various esoteric MTV channels, it's not too hard to see a future where ‘interactive films’ like this replace the standard clip.” Click here for an even more positive reaction at The Frisky.
– While authorities say some of the victims of Ohio's "execution-style" killings died in their sleep, others may have put up a fight. Autopsies show some members of the Rhoden family had soft tissue bruising, suggesting they resisted their killer or killers, the Pike County Medical Examiner said Tuesday, per NBC News. A 911 caller who reported "blood all over the house" noted it looked like someone had "beat the hell out of" at least one victim. The autopsies confirmed all eight victims—three women, four men, and a 16-year-old boy—were fatally shot; one victim was shot once, one was shot twice, and the remaining victims were shot three or more times, including one person who had nine wounds. Authorities have yet to present a motive, though marijuana-growing operations were found at three of the four crime scenes. Sources say 200 plants recovered were worth about $500,000, reports CBS News. Birds were also found in "small, segregated cages," which is "consistent with cockfighting," says a rep for the Ohio attorney general, per NBC New York. A prosecutor tells the Columbus Dispatch that the family was previously known to police for "altercations with people, that sort of thing ... nothing like this." Police have received 300 tips, sent 79 pieces of evidence for analysis, and are still serving search warrants, reports the AP. (Police say the youngest victim had been threatened on Facebook.)
– Google has already enmeshed itself in your email, your mapping needs, your book collection … why not your wedding as well? The search giant announced Google for Weddings yesterday on its official blog. Wedding planners, watch out: The site will allow users to do everything from organizing guests lists and schedules to creating a wedding website to making save-the-date cards. (The templates were actually designed with the help of "renowned" wedding planner Michelle Rago.) Mashable notes this isn’t the first time Google has created such a personal venture: In 2008, it launched Google Health, which let users monitor their health information online. But that hit a controversial snag when Google teamed up with CVS to provide patients with access to their prescription history via Google Health, causing some to wonder if Google had too much access to sensitive information. (Click for more in the modern world of weddings.)
– We're all taking selfies all the time anyway, so we might as well put them to good use. The Verge reports MasterCard is rolling out "selfie pay" in 14 countries. If additional authentication is needed after online shoppers enter their credit card info, MasterCard users will be able to look into their phone or tablet's camera instead of entering a password, the BBC explains. "Consumers hate passwords," says Ajay Bhalla, MasterCard's chief of safety and security. He says people use terrible, easily hackable passwords. Biometrics, such as facial recognition and the also-debuting fingerprint authentication, could reduce fraud for online shoppers. MasterCard tested out "selfie pay" in the US and Netherlands and found 92% of test subjects liked it. CNBC reports it could make online shopping easier, as MasterCard found 53% of people forget their password at least once a week, leading a third of online shoppers to just give up on buying anything. The next step for MasterCard is using people's heartbeats to verify their identity. People's hearts create their own signature electric signal, and MaserCard is testing out a bracelet that monitors it continuously and sends that information to nearby devices to authenticate the user. Bhalla calls it "constant authentication." But that's still a ways off. MasterCard's facial recognition and fingerprint authentication will be rolled out this year.
– When Donald Trump initially took flak for not challenging a questioner's assertion that President Obama is a non-American Muslim, his campaign explained that he hadn't heard that part of the question. This morning, however, Trump himself took to Twitter in a far more defiant tone: "Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don't think so!" he tweeted. Then he pointed out that "this is the first time in my life that I have caused controversy by NOT saying something." He reeled off three more, one asserting that president Obama wouldn't have defended him if the situation were reversed, another saying the media would have castigated him on free-speech grounds if he had challenged the man, and another saying that Christians' "religious liberty is at stake" around the world. (Still, critics are pouncing, including the White House.)
– Sunday night marked Ricky Gervais' fourth time hosting the Golden Globes—more times than anyone else, even Tina Fey and Amy Poehler—and he's also been the most controversial. Why stars and show producers have always been nervous: Gervais isn't "afraid to throw shade," as Hollywood Life puts it (and a NSFW tweet he posted Sunday afternoon shows he wasn't exactly going in afraid to offend). So what came out of his mouth at this year's show? After showing up at the podium with a pint in hand and calling the audience a bunch of "disgusting, pill-popping, sexual deviant scum," Ricky Gervais confessed he wanted to go into hiding after doing the monologue and that "not even Sean Penn will find me. Snitch." He followed that up with a promise that he'd be nicer this time around, adding, "I've changed. Not as much as Bruce Jenner, obviously." Gervais couldn't resist sneaking in some topical American humor. "Eva Longoria and America Ferrera aren't just beautiful, talented actresses," he noted. "They're also two people that your future president, Donald Trump, can't wait to deport." He stuck to his promise to "bite the hand that feeds me. "That award is, no offense, worthless," he told nominees. "It's a bit of metal that some nice old confused journalists wanted to give you in person so they could meet you and have a selfie with you." Along those same lines, per Entertainment Weekly: "It's right that NBC should host this award show. They're the only network that's truly fair and impartial and that's because they're the only network with zero nominations." "He's been the only person Ben Affleck hasn't been unfaithful to," he said before calling Matt Damon to the stage, per the Telegraph. About women not getting paid as much as men in Hollywood: "I'm being paid exactly the same as [what Tina Fey and Amy Poehler received] last year. No, I know there were two of them, but it's not my fault if they want to share the money, is it? That's their stupid fault." NBC bleeped out what Gervais said to Mel Gibson during their head-to-head, but EW says he noted: "What the f--k does 'sugar t-ts' even mean?"—a phrase Gibson reportedly used during a 2006 arrest. Here are the night's big winners.
– The incident that caused a Florida police union to call for a boycott of Arby's was just a manager's bad joke, says the now-suspended employee involved—but he doesn't expect anybody to believe him because he's a black teenager and it's his word against that of a police officer. Kenny Davenport tells CBS Miami that he told Pembroke Pines Police Sgt. Jennifer Martin that he couldn't serve her not because she was a cop, but because the drive-thru was so busy he had to ask his manager for help. The 19-year-old says the manager then made the bad joke about Davenport not wanting to serve Martin because she was a police officer. When the manager eventually brought the officer some food, she decided she didn't want to eat it. Davenport says he didn't disrespect Martin and he would never refuse to serve an officer. "She hungry, I'm gonna give her some food," he says. The manager involved has been fired and the police department says it has received an apology from the CEO of Arby's and now considers the matter closed, reports Local 10 News. Arby's says all police officers in uniform in Miami-Dade and Broward counties can have a free meal today, reports WSVN, but Pembroke Pines officers may still be dealing with yesterday's leftovers: After the Arby's incident made the news, officers were provided with free meals from McDonald's and Whole Foods, as well as boxes of doughnuts donated by the public.
– John Boehner stuck to his guns in a press conference today, offering precious little hope that a debt ceiling deal was anywhere close to getting done. He thanked Barack Obama for praising his "good-faith effort," but said it mattered little. “Our disagreements are not personal,” he said, according to Politico. “They never have been. The gulf between the two parties now is about policy.” “This boil downs to two things: The president insists on raising taxes, and they’re just not serious enough [about] fundamental entitlement reform,” Boehner said. “It takes two to tango, and they’re just not there yet.” Boehner said he did fundamentally agree that the debt limit needed to rise, the AP reports. But he said the bill could only pass the House if it included an even larger amount of spending cuts.
– "What about the White Cliffs of Dover?" With that, a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology made clear his skepticism about human-driven climate change Wednesday, suggesting rocks falling into the sea accounted for sea level rise. Alabama Republican Mo Brooks responded to a scientist's comment that "the last 100-year increase in sea-level rise … has clearly been attributed to human activities, greenhouse gas emissions" by asking if "other factors" like erosion could be at play. As "huge tons of silt" are deposited in the sea, "the bottom is moving up," Brooks said during the hearing about using technology to address climate change. Plus "you have the cliffs crashing into the sea. All of that displaces water," Brooks said, per the Guardian. Scientist Philip Duffy responded by noting erosion was responsible for "minuscule effects" in sea level rise; it would take a ball of earth 8 miles in diameter to raise ocean levels by about 0.1 inches, per the Washington Post. On Thursday, Brooks circled back to the topic on the House floor, per AL.com. "Erosion is the primary cause of sea level rise in the history of our planet," he added, "and these people who say to the contrary may know something about climate but they don't know squat about geology. Keep in mind I'm talking millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years." Duffy also had follow-up comments Thursday, telling CNN sea-level rise is "really caused by climate change."
– It's Harry Reid's turn to hit legislative turbulence. The House today rejected the Senate leader's plan to raise the debt ceiling in a move seen largely as symbolic, reports AP. The real fight, however, is taking place in the Senate, where GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a letter to Reid signed by 43 Republicans vowing to oppose his plan when it comes up for a vote set for 1am EST Sunday. Those numbers guarantee that Reid would not be able to fend off a filibuster, reports the Washington Post. “It isn’t going to pass,” said McConnell, who demanded that the White House rejoin negotiations. “Let’s get talking to the administration.” The big hope to avoid a default is that Reid and McConnell can somehow forge a bipartisan compromise, but the two were mainly sniping at each other today, notes Politico. “We welcome compromise,” Reid said. “As recently as yesterday, I asked my friend, the Senate minority leader, to help make this Senate compromise more palatable, but we have heard very little from Republicans.”
– While the US has been trying to disgust smokers into giving up tobacco, New Zealand has been considering a more direct idea: raising the price of cigarettes to $100 a pack. The Ministry of Health wants a smoke-free NZ by 2025, and the $100 price tag—which would be implemented by 2020—is one of the ideas being discussed … although officials admit it is "probably unrealistic." The plan seen as the most likely would make a pack of cigarettes a still-sizable $60 by 2025, Sky News reports. But, 3 News adds, Prime Minister John Key is concerned that higher prices may simply encourage a black market.
– What ScienceAlert calls a "giant horror plant" has made its way to yet another US state, and people who come in contact with it could feel the pain. Virginia Tech's Massey Herbarium tweeted last week it had IDed a giant hogweed (aka Heracleum mantegazzianum) plant in Clarke County, later updating that count on Facebook to 30 plants. The plant holds what Fox News deems a "toxic sap," which prevents human skin from protecting itself from the sun's rays, leading to severe burns that can be worsened by sweat. New York state's Department of Environmental Conservation lists other hazards that can result from coming in contact with the plant (as well as some photos of terrible burns), including long-term sunlight sensitivity, oozing blisters, scarring, and even permanent blindness if the sap makes its way into one's eyes. And it doesn't take a lot to fall prey to the poison of the giant hogweed, which resembles an umbrella or mushroom made up of white flowers: A simple brush up against its bristles can spur a reaction as soon as 15 minutes later, with "sensitivity peak between 30 minutes and two hours after contact," per the DEC. It's difficult to stop the spreading of the invasive plant, which is native to the Caucasus region near Russia and was introduced to the US sometime in the early 20th century. Virginia environmental officials are warning the plant may have been spotted in other parts of the state and for people who come across it to not let their bare skin make contact. It also offers a guide for very carefully getting rid of the plant. (Giant hogweed has been found in at least a dozen other states.)
– The PwC accountant whose backstage tweet may have distracted him enough to cause the biggest flub in Oscars history was specifically asked not to tweet during the awards show, a source tells People. "Brian [Cullinan] was asked not to tweet or use social media during the show. He was fine to tweet before he arrived at the red carpet, but once he was under the auspices of the Oscar night job, that was to be his only focus," the source says. "Tweeting right before the Best Picture category was announced was not something that should have happened." The tweet in question, along with others from backstage, have since been deleted. PwC said in a statement Monday night that "once the error occurred, protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough by Mr. Cullinan or his partner," per Us. Meanwhile, the Academy continues to investigate the incident and its relationship with PwC; the Telegraph reports the accounting firm is in "crisis meetings" with the Academy in an attempt to salvage the 83-year-long relationship between the two. Sources tell Deadline one possible change being discussed is adding two more PwC auditors backstage, one on each side of the stage, so that the extra auditor could act as a fail-safe in case the first auditor hands a presenter the wrong envelope again. As for whether the Academy might sever its relationship with PwC entirely, a source tells People the issue is "very complicated" because "vote-tallying and the Oscar night job is just one part of what PwC does with the Academy." Page Six points out that, in an interview earlier this month, Cullinan had noted, "It doesn’t sound very complicated, but you have to make sure you give the presenter the right envelope."
– It seems almost everyone dislikes Nickelback, but one London man apparently hates them more than most: Craig Mandell launched a crowdfunding campaign with the sole aim of keeping the Canadian band out of his city, Time reports. "Don't Let Nickel Back," which is being funded on the Kickstarter-like platform Tilt, has a goal of $1,000. For every $1 received, Mandell will email Nickelback's management on the donor's behalf "kindly requesting that they do not play in London, England, for the foreseeable future." For $5, you get a "slightly more forceful email" sent on your behalf; for $10, an email "full of explicit phrases and lots of capital letters and maybe even a rude emoticon or two." But the pièce de résistance: For a $50 contribution, Mandell will send an email to Nickelback ... with an mp3 of the band's own music attached. "This way, the band will hear their own music, and likely retire immediately," he writes. Mandell was inspired by a recent crowdfunding campaign that convinced the Foo Fighters to play a previously nonexistent show—something he does not want to see happen with Nickelback. Mandell is actually friends with the organizer of that campaign, NME reports. As for the money he raises (he's currently only at $189), Mandell says he's not in the market for "personal profit" and will donate it to charity—"or perhaps therapy for those who've been affected by the band." (Could U2 be heading for Nickelback's fate?)
– True Grit, the Coen brothers’ latest, updates a John Wayne classic—though it may stick closer to the original novel than the first film. Critics are impressed, with the Rotten Tomatoes score currently at 95%: In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis applauds the film’s 13-year-old star, Hailee Steinfeld, who gives a “memorably ferocious performance” as a “character whose single-minded pursuit of vengeance has unmistakable resonance.” The film is “a winning western with just a few dark eddies beneath the surface, one that features a star-making lead performance and some spectacular photography,” writes Andrew O’Hehir in Salon. Still, it “falls just short of being great.” Writing in the New York Daily News, Joe Neumaier calls the movie a “wonderfully entertaining, beautiful Western drama that lets the quirks of the genre gallop freely as it keeps a tight rein throughout.”
– When Rhonda Thill got husband Randy's belongings back after he died in a motorcycle crash last month, her heartbreak was compounded when his wedding ring wasn't among them, she tells Kare 11. "It had to be somewhere," she says. "Maybe the force of the impact—it came off or whatever. I didn't want it to be just left out there." A trooper went to the scene to search, but came up empty-handed, the Pioneer Press reports; likewise her dad and brother with a metal detector. Then Rhonda talked to a high school friend, also a biker, and suddenly a dozen bikers were digging in waist-high grass on hands and knees. After about 45 minutes, KARE 11 reports, one man literally struck gold, spotting the ring pushed down in the dirt. The searchers first gave Rhonda Randy's eyeglasses and a flashlight they had found, per the Press. "She held her head down. … Then I held up my pinky with the ring on it and said, 'And I got this,'" her friend tells the paper. "We had to hold her up. She was about to fall over." Rhonda is still amazed that the group, many of them strangers, would go to such lengths—and grateful to have Randy's ring once more. "It ... makes me feel like I've got a piece of us back together again," she tells KARE 11.
– The fired nanny who has been refusing to leave her former employers' home says she is now ready to go—when conditions are just right. Diane Stretton over the weekend emailed Marcella and Ralph Bracamonte's lawyer blaming the weather and the media for her failure to depart their California home, ABC News reports. There are "always a bunch of news vehicles right in front of the house," the 64-year-old complains. "The media needs to be completely gone before I continue moving." She noted a predicted near-100-degree heat wave will make it impossible to move in the next few days because she "can't work in that kind of heat"—though "if the media stays away, I will be out by the 4th of July. But that depends on the circus not continuing." But Marcella Bracamonte, who says she fired Stretton last month after she "just stopped working," isn't convinced. "I don’t believe her. She is going to show up when I am not here with a bunch of food and water and she will barricade herself in her room," she says. Stretton, for her part, tells KNX 1070 news radio she only refused to work twice, when she had the flu and had worked 90 days straight. "I didn’t get lunch breaks, I didn’t get coffee breaks, I didn't get any holidays. Basically, I was working 24/7." Bracamonte, who tells People that she hired Stretton through a Craigslist ad and that her references checked out, says she and her family will be out of town on the day when Stretton claims she is going to move—but there will be plenty of other family members house-sitting. "I feel like she knows that I'm going to be gone and that she wants to lock me out of my home," she says.
– The Ecuadorian who tried to deliver pizza to a NYC Army base and ended up with a deportation order has been granted an emergency stay by a federal judge, reports NBC News. The stay gives Pablo Villavicencio relief from being returned to Ecuador until July 20, reports the AP, though he'll remain in ICE custody. Villavicencio is a father of two who's married to an American citizen and has a green card application pending. The court found that he "should be afforded a full and fair opportunity to present his case in Federal Court," per a rep of the Legal Aid Society, which is representing him. Villavicencio has at least one big dog in his corner: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who wrote letters on his behalf to both ICE and DHS acting inspector general John Kelly. Villavicencio "is a working father, a taxpayer, and the primary provider for his U.S. citizen wife and two daughters, one of whom suffers from a serious medical condition." Per CNN, he wrote that "New York will not sit on the sidelines as our immigrant communities are threatened," and that "a pattern of conduct demonstrated by ICE agents shows reckless contempt for the Constitution" that "creates an unnecessary humanitarian crisis in New York State."
– Critics are split on The Big C, Showtime's Laura Linney-starring comedy about a woman with cancer living out the last year of her life, which debuts tonight: The cast is perhaps a bit large for a half-hour show, writes Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times, and the whole thing is so determined to be unsentimental that it is instead jammed "with so many over-blown characters and wacky antics that it's impossible to attach meaning to any of them." Heather Havrilesky agrees, noting that the show's attempts to "lighten up" the subject matter turn the whole thing into a "kooky, unsexy" ride that will make you "cringe and beg to be put out of your misery," she writes on Salon. But Alessandra Stanley likes it—especially Linney, "who rarely sounds a false note and here has perfect pitch," she writes in the New York Times. "The series is at its best when sardonic and subdued. Some of the black humor is the kind that cancer patients are prone to share among themselves." For more on the widely admired Linney, click here.
– It has all the trappings of a Tennessee noir: an uncle allegedly dead by his nephew's hand, a gunfight, a mobile home, and a kidnapped fighting rooster tied to a chair. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports police were called to the scene of a deadly shooting early yesterday shortly after 52-year-old Timothy Johnson showed up at his 28-year-old nephew Larry Johnson's mobile home to accuse him of stealing his prized rooster. Larry reportedly claims his uncle pulled a gun on him, so he tried to grab it and was shot in the chest. Police say Larry pulled his own gun in retaliation and launched—in the words of the News Sentinel—a "hail of gunfire" at his uncle. WATE6 reports Timothy was found dead in the driveway, and Larry was airlifted to the hospital for treatment. Officers located the fighting rooster tied to a chair in Larry's mobile home, surprisingly unharmed.
– The plot has again thickened in the mysterious death of Georgia teen Kendrick Johnson: A second autopsy on the 17-year-old's exhumed body has found that before burial almost all of his organs were replaced with newspaper. Kendrick was found dead in a rolled-up wrestling mat at his school in January, in what was originally ruled an accidental asphyxiation. But his parents were suspicious and had him exhumed and examined by a private doctor. That doctor found evidence of "non-accidental" trauma, and now reveals that every organ from Kendrick's pelvis to skull—including his brain, lungs, heart, and liver—is missing, CNN reports. Newspapers were stuffed into the cavities the organs should have occupied "like he was a garbage can," his mother says. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which conducted the first autopsy, says it put all the organs back in afterward. But the funeral home that embalmed Kendrick tells the family's attorney that before it got the body the organs "were destroyed through natural process," and then "discarded by the prosecutor." The county sheriff, meanwhile, says the death is a closed case and refuses to discuss it. Yesterday, CNN revealed photos and video from the scene of Kendrick's death that raise serious questions about investigators' work, showing among other things blood stains on the wall that weren't investigated. "They know something happened in that gym," Kendrick's father says, "and they don't want it to come out." Click for more on the case.
– President Obama sounded like an impatient parent today as the threat of a government shutdown grew larger. Admonishing lawmakers to "act like grownups," the president said John Boehner and Harry Reid would meet again later this afternoon, reports Politico. If nothing comes of it, Obama said he'll order them back at it again tomorrow. "We are closer than we have ever been to an agreement," said Obama. "There is no reason why we should not get an agreement." Boehner spoke immediately afterward, notes AP, and said Republicans would continue to "fight for the largest cuts possible." It's possible another stopgap spending measure can keep government open if no deal is in place by Friday, but the president said he will accept one only if it's good for just two or three days.
– Rarely reticent after overseas incidents, President Trump spoke up early Friday after news streamed across the pond of a rush-hour explosion in the London Underground that injured at least 18 people. He railed on Twitter against the "loser terrorists," calling those responsible "sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard." (The Telegraph notes Scotland Yard hasn't yet indicated that's actually the case; Politico says it's "unclear" what info Trump used to make that assessment.) Trump also suggested we must deal with any such terrorists "in a much tougher manner," including cutting off "their main recruitment tool": the internet. The Independent reports it's not the first time Trump has mentioned internet restrictions, noting he said in late 2015 he wanted to "see Bill Gates" about "closing it up." Trump's tweets next segued into a call to make the US travel ban "far larger, tougher and more specific," though he lamented that "stupidly, that would not be politically correct!" And finally, a dig against his predecessor: "We have made more progress in the last nine months against ISIS than the Obama Administration has made in 8 years. Must be proactive & nasty!" Shortly after his terrorist-themed tweets, Trump moved on to a new topic: the controversy over ESPN host Jemele Hill (though he didn't mention her by name), who earlier this week called him a "white supremacist." "ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth!" he tweeted.
– Here's a scary stat for you, spotted by the Washington Post: About 1 in 5 people nearing retirement have no money for retirement. It comes from a newly released survey by the Federal Reserve of about 4,100 Americans. In total, 31% had saved no money for retirement, though the figure improved to 19% for those ages 55 to 64. What's more, 20% of people over 60 said retirement planning hadn't even crossed their minds, which probably explains why 24/7 Wall St. calls this "the next crisis." Another depressing find: Some 40% of non-retirees 45 and over have had to delay their pre-recession retirement plans. The problem doesn't just boil down to poor planning. "Many respondents, particularly those with limited incomes, indicated that they simply have few or no financial resources available for retirement," researchers say. In particular, a quarter of respondents said they were "just getting by," while 13% said they were struggling, CBS News reports. About 45% of people said they planned to rely on Social Security to pay the bills in retirement, while 25% gave the following answer: "I don't know." Just as many said they expected to work as long as they could, and another 18% planned to get a part-time job after retiring.
– Modern Family star Ariel Winter has words for those who criticized the gold minidress she wore to an event for the show Wednesday night, People reports. Photos from the screening of the season eight finale showed that Winter's outfit stood out among the clothes worn by the other cast members who attended (Julie Bowen, for example, wore black slacks with a simple top, while Ty Burrell showed up in jeans). USA Today describes Winter's outfit like so: "Mesh panels showed off her cleavage as well as the tops of her thighs." But some of the commentary on Winter's outfit went beyond simply calling the teen overdressed, with some going so far as to say she looked "slutty." On Thursday night, Winter responded on Instagram. "Why TF does anyone care that I didn't dress casual like everyone else for the panel? Why do I have to be like everyone else? Why can’t people just let other people feel good about themselves and do what they want?" the 19-year-old wrote. "WEAR WHATEVER YOU WANT PEOPLE! As long as you feel good about yourself that’s what matters. I know I did. Don’t ever let anyone stifle who you are and how you express yourself. Rant over." (Winter says her "baby voice" makes her boyfriend uncomfortable.)
– Who better to offer advice to the lovelorn, the beleaguered, and the downtrodden than a hermit-like Japanese novelist? That's the plan for Haruki Murakami, known recluse and one of Japan's most famous writers, his publisher said today, per the Guardian. According to Shinchosha Publishing, the 65-year-old surrealist author will serve as what the Brits call an "agony uncle" on a page called "Murakami's Place" on its website, dispensing wisdom in response to questions submitted by readers from Jan. 15 through Jan. 31, Reuters reports. He'll tackle "questions of any kind," a company rep says per the Guardian. "After so long, I want to exchange emails with readers," Murakami is quoted as saying by Shinchosha, with the rep adding to Reuters that "he likes to engage with readers, but there's so much interest it's hard for him to interact well. This should be smoother." Marukami once referred to himself as "an endangered species [that] may get intimidated and bite" if people got too close to him, the New Statesman reported in 2013. No one's sure where the self-banished Murakami—often brought up as a possible Nobel Prize candidate—lives, though the Guardian notes he "spends much of his time" in the US; the New Statesman claims he resides in both Japan and Hawaii. Some of the Qs he may receive will likely touch on some of his favorite topics, including cats and the Yakult Swallows, a pro Japanese baseball team. Or they may be more fitting for a writer known for what the Guardian calls "intricately-crafted tales of the absurdity and loneliness of modern life": "We expect there to be some rather strange questions," the rep says, per Reuters. "Which ones he answers depends on him." (Hopefully it will turn out better than this lad-mag column.)
– The New York Times editorial board thinks President Obama has the US blundering into a new war with the expanded airstrikes in Syria. Before the US gets any deeper into the operation, the president should open this up for a full debate in Congress, says the editorial. It's also "puzzling" that in preparing the nation on Sept. 10 for these airstrikes, Obama said nothing about the Khorasan group that is suddenly Public Enemy No. 1. "There isn’t a full picture—because Mr. Obama has not provided one—of how this bombing campaign will degrade the extremist groups without unleashing unforeseen consequences in a violent and volatile region," says the editorial. "In the absence of public understanding or discussion and a coherent plan, the strikes in Syria were a bad decision." Agree: The airstrikes are a "major reversal" for a president who opposed intervention in Syria for so long, writes the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. Can we trust that he won't reverse himself on ground troops, too? Yes, ISIS and the Khorasan group pose threats to US interests, "but is the threat serious enough to justify an ever-escalating role for the US military in Syria and Iraq?" asks the editorial. "Does the US have a clear strategy and achievable aims? The case has yet to be made." Disagree: The Wall Street Journal editorial board not only applauds the airstrikes but thinks US ground troops should be ready to move quickly. If the mission is to succeed, and it must, they'll be needed to direct airstrikes as militants hide in populated areas. "No US President should ever start a war he doesn't intend to win, and wars rarely go as smoothly as advertised in advance," concludes the editorial. "Now that he has attacked ISIS, Mr. Obama must show that America is the strong horse."
– University of Illinois graduate student Yingying Zhang disappeared in June. The Chinese woman's body has not been found, but federal prosecutors believe that Brendt Christensen is responsible for her murder—and they announced Friday that, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions' blessing, they will pursue the death penalty in their case against him. The Chicago Tribune looks at just how rare a thing such a conviction and sentence would be. Illinois did away with the death penalty in 2011, and its use in federal court is far from commonplace. More on the case, the move, and the growing allegations against Christensen: The Tribune reports the last instance of the federal sentence being imposed in Illinois court was in 2005, when Dr. Ronald Mikos was found guilty of murdering a one-time patient who was cooperating in a Medicare fraud trial against him. The Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in 2009, the AP reported at the time, but he still awaits execution.
– Walmart is under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice over allegations that it doled out millions in bribes to Mexican officials in order to grow its business there more quickly, sources tell Bloomberg and the Washington Post. The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits companies from paying foreign officials in an effort to increase business, and if Walmart is found to be in violation of FCPA, the company could face executive departures, slowed expansion in Mexico and other markets, and penalties that could be "incredibly high," says one lawyer. In a note to employees yesterday, Walmart CEO Mike Duke said the company is conducting its own "aggressive investigation" into the allegations; in an earlier statement, a VP had noted that "many of the alleged activities ... are more than six years old. If these allegations are true, it is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for." The top Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee also moved yesterday to open a probe into the incident. Walmart shares dove after the allegations came to light.
– A pair of ghost hunters were found dead in a Nevada apartment yesterday following an hours-long standoff with SWAT teams in what is likely a domestic-violence incident, the AP reports. They were identified by police as paranormal investigators Mark and Debby Constantino, who had made numerous appearances on Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal. The AP reports the couple had a history of domestic incidents, and Debby had taken a restraining order out against Mark last week. They were scheduled to appear in court in December over their pending divorce. Police received a call after Debby's male roommate was found dead in their home yesterday morning, the Gazette-Journal reports. Debby was missing, and police tracked her cellphone to the apartment of her and Mark's adult daughter. When officers knocked on the door, they heard shots fired and a man saying, "Give me 15 minutes to gather my thoughts or I'll kill her." After failed attempts to negotiate, police blew open the apartment door and found Mark and Debby dead inside. Police have so far not released a cause of death, according to the AP. Mark is suspected in the murder of Debby's unidentified roommate. (These 79 celebrities have been charged with domestic abuse.)
– No one's going to call Sparkle a work of cinematic genius: It's a no-surprises remake about the struggles of a 1960s girl group. But if you're a Whitney Houston fan, it may be meaningful: In the Washington Post, Ann Hornaday applauds the film. It "may have begun as nothing more than a tuneful, diverting nostalgia trip, but it turns out to be a surprisingly poignant swan song," she writes. There's an eerie element to Houston's character, who "warns against the depredations of an entertainment industry that indulges and exploits young talent just as intently as it nurtures it." In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers calls the movie "a formula job from scene one to dead end." Still, there's one Houston song ("His Eye Is on the Sparrow") that "almost redeems" the film. "In a movie that feels fake to its core, Houston is the genuine article." During that scene, "I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a dry eye in the house," notes Sara Stewart in the New York Post. "If you’re still mourning Houston’s death, it’s almost enough of a reason to go." But remember, the movie is more of a "showcase vehicle for a new generation of young actress-hyphen-singers" than a celebration of Whitney. And as for star Jordin Sparks, she "fails to sparkle in any way," writes Courtney Shea in the Globe and Mail.
– Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead Saturday at a resort outside of Marfa, Texas, KVIA reports. According to the San Antonio Express- News, the 79-year-old appears to have died from natural causes. Scalia was the longest-serving justice currently on the Supreme Court, having been nominated by Ronald Reagan in 1986. In a statement, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called Scalia “a man of God, a patriot, and an unwavering defender of the written Constitution and the Rule of Law." “We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the Supreme Court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the Rule of Law," CBS DFW quotes Abbott's statement as saying. Scalia spent Friday hunting quail at the Cibolo Creek Ranch and told friends before going to bed that he wasn't feeling well, reports CNN. His body was found in his room after he didn't show up for breakfast Saturday. In a statement, Chief Justice John Roberts called Scalia an "extraordinary individual" who was "admired and treasured by his colleagues." The Chicago Tribune notes that the conservative judge's "sharply worded dissents and caustic attacks on liberal notions were quoted widely, and they had an influence on a generation of young conservatives," the paper states. Scalia's death gives President Obama the chance to get his third nominee onto the Supreme Court, CBS News reports, though that might be tough in an election year.
– A priest rolling around his church on a "hoverboard" while singing May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You on Christmas Eve earned a round of applause from his congregation and a quick suspension from his diocese, NBC News reports. It's unknown how the birthday boy felt about the whole thing. According to Sun Times, the unnamed priest's song-and-roll routine took place just before the end of mass at a church in the Philippines. Fortunately for those who couldn't be in attendance, the whole thing was caught on video. "That was wrong," Rappler quotes a statement from the Diocese of San Pablo as saying. “[Mass] is the Church’s highest form of worship. Consequently, it is not a personal celebration where one can capriciously introduce something to get the attention of the people.” The priest's suspension was announced Tuesday, with the diocese stating that the priest is repentant and views the incident as a "wake-up call," Sun Times reports. "[He] will spend some time to reflect on this past event," reads the diocese's statement. "He would like to apologize for what happened.” A group advocating for a return to the traditional Latin mass used the priest's hoverboard jaunt as evidence of the further degradation of Catholic worship. "This calls for a reparation," the group posted on Facebook. According to NBC, so-called hoverboards were one of the most gifted items this Christmas. But Rappler reports they are facing a possible ban in the Philippines. (Even shoplifters are getting in on the trend.)
– A teenager fell from a stopped gondola ride at an upstate New York amusement park Saturday night, tumbling into a crowd of park guests and employees gathered below in an effort to catch the victim before she hit the ground. The Warren County Sheriff's Office said late Saturday the unidentified 14-year-old girl from Greenwood, Delaware, is at Albany Medical Center in stable condition with no serious injuries. The accident happened on the "Sky Ride" at Six Flags Amusement Park, about 55 miles north of Albany, New York, just after 8pm Saturday, reports the AP. "There does not appear to be any malfunction of the ride, but we have closed the attraction until a thorough review can be completed," a park official said. The sheriff's office said in a statement that the girl was riding the attraction with a young relative, and fell about 25 feet from a stationary two-person car. The New York Daily News refers to Facebook video that shows the girl first dangling from the ride and screaming; people are recorded yelling, "Her neck is stuck," and then telling the girl they'll catch her. Authorities say she struck a tree branch before landing in the crowd. She was treated by park emergency medical staff and transferred by ambulance to Glen Falls Hospital before being taken by helicopter to the medical center. Authorities also say an unidentified 47-year-old park guest from Schenectady, New York, was treated and released from a hospital for a back injury sustained when he attempted to catch the falling girl.
– Just hours after debating tax rates during the GOP debate in Florida, Mitt Romney released his tax returns, revealing that he collected $20.9 million in income last year, and $21.7 million the previous year—nearly all of it in profits, dividends, or interest from investments. None came from wages, reports the Washington Post. He estimates he'll pay $3.2 million in federal taxes for a tax rate of 15.4% for last year's income. The previous year, he paid $3 million in taxes at a 13.9% rate. His tax rates are below most American wage earners because his income isn't from wages, notes Reuters. The Romneys gave away $7 million in charitable contributions the last two years, including $4.1 million to the Mormon church. Romney boasted during the debate that his tax bill is "entirely legal and fair," adding: "I'm proud of the fact that I pay a lot of taxes." Newt Gingrich, who supports a 15% flat tax, quipped during the debate that he wants to bring Americans' tax rate "down" to Romney's. But Romney pointed out that Gingrich wants a 0% tax on capital gains, and that under such a strategy, he would pay "no taxes." Romney has released nearly 550 pages of tax documents, including the 2010 returns for three family trusts and a foundation, after criticism from rivals for failure to bare his income earlier and following a sound trouncing in South Carolina by Gingrich.
– SpaceX had a big morning: It successfully launched its first government satellite and got its rocket to return safely to Earth to boot. The company sent up the spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 7:15am from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, reports USA Today. Nine minutes later, the rocket returned to Cape Canaveral. Details of the spy satellite's mission are classified, reports Space.com, which adds that about the only thing known is that it will be in a low-Earth orbit. The Orlando Sentinel sees Monday's launch as a milestone because SpaceX has previously focused on cargo missions to the International Space Station or commercial telecom satellites. The launch of a government payload, then, marks the start of a new era of competition between SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, which had cornered the market on government launches in recent years.
– Matt McCarthy, a Hollywood DJ, photographer, and model, is suing Josh Duggar for damages, claiming the scandal-plagued reality star used McCarthy's photo for his online profiles, Courthouse News Service reports. TMZ says those profiles included one on cheating site Ashley Madison, and that Duggar is also accused of using McCarthy's image on Twitter and OkCupid. McCarthy says he's been humiliated by the scandal and that people are calling him "DJ Duggar" and "Duggar's boy toy." TMZ reported last year that Duggar apparently found McCarthy's picture by Googling "random guy." At that time, McCarthy said he'd already lost a DJ gig over the perception that he was somehow involved in Duggar's porn-and-sex scandal. The Hollywood Reporter and Gawker also delved into the issue last year, reporting that McCarthy's photo appeared on an OKCupid profile apparently set up by Duggar and seeking "casual sex," in addition to the Ashley Madison profile. Back in the present day, TMZ notes that Duggar is reportedly working at a car dealership now that he's no longer on reality TV.
– Admissions goofs are nothing new. Learning you've lost your admission in July is another matter. That's the situation with the University of California Irvine, which withdrew 499 offers of admission two months before the fall term is to begin. By the Los Angeles Times' count, that's abnormally high: Other UC campuses gave "recession" numbers ranging from seven to 150. Per the school, 290 of the reversals were because of transcript issues; the rest were over low senior-year grades. Many of the newly disappointed are accusing the school of fishing for slight or even unsubstantiated reasons to dump would-be freshmen after too many made the choice to enroll. The LAT cites numbers that suggest they may not be off base: The UC Office of the President says 7,100 students made the decision to enroll, versus a planned freshman class of 6,250. A rep for the school concurs that the admissions office has been cracking down on verifying requirements "as a result of more students [having] accepted admissions to UCI than it expected." In case after case, the crackdown smells off: One student was told only one of the two required copies of her transcript was mailed; she says they were sent in the same envelope. Another student says he was told his transcript didn't contain a graduation date; he says it did. They're appealing, and they're not the only ones: Some 409—or 82%—have, with many of the students quoted by the LAT and OC Register as having 4.0-plus GPAs ... and having already turned down other schools and scholarships. As of Friday, 63 have emerged victorious. The school says the appeals process, which normally takes up to six weeks, has been accelerated.
– The Tampa socialite at the heart of the Petraeus "love Pentagon" sex scandal was the co-founder of a cancer charity that does not appear to have been involved in any charity work, the Huffington Post finds. Jill Kelley and her surgeon husband founded the Doctor Kelley Cancer Foundation in 2007, stating that it "shall be operated exclusively to conduct cancer research and to grant wishes to terminally ill adult cancer patients." But records reveal that the charity went bust later that year, having spent every penny of the $157,284 it started with on expenses like parties, entertainment, and travel. The charity also listed $12,807 for office expenses and supplies, and $7,854 on utilities and telephones, which is a little on the steep side for a charity that operated out of the couple's mansion, the HuffPo notes. But the charity isn't all that's surfaced on Kelley: The mansion where Kelley and her husband threw lavish parties for military top brass has been in foreclosure since 2010, reports the New York Daily News. The couple owes vast sums to banks and credit card companies and has been hit by at least nine lawsuits. Kelley isn't just an unpaid social liaison to nearby MacDill Air Force Base, she's an honorary consul of South Korea, an embassy official tells Foreign Policy. "She assumed this position last August thanks to her good connections and network," the Korean official says, adding that the position is symbolic and has no official responsibilities. Kelley tried to invoke "diplomatic protection" in one of several 911 calls made over the last few days, Fox reports. Complaining about trespassers on her property, Kelley told the dispatcher, "I'm an honorary consul general ... I don't know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well, because that's against the law to cross my property because, you know, it's inviolable." The Wall Street Journal adds that over the summer, Kelley became worried about personal information getting aired and tried to get the FBI to drop its investigation into threatening emails Paula Broadwell sent her. Broadwell, it notes, also sent anonymous emails to military brass bashing Kelley.
– Jamie Lee Curtis eulogized her father Tony at his funeral last year—but just five months before his death, Curtis had disinherited Jamie Lee and his other four children. Inside Edition has a copy of the will, which lists his children by name … then says, “I acknowledge the existence of my children … and have intentionally and with full knowledge chosen not to provide for them.” Curtis left the entire estate to his widow Jill—his fifth wife and not the mother of any of his children, the Telegraph notes. One of Curtis’ daughters contested the will, but was denied by the court.
– American journalist Austin Tice—believed to be the only US reporter held hostage anywhere in the world—was captured in Syria in August 2012. Since then, US hostages James Foley, Peter Kassig, Kayla Mueller, and Steven Sotloff have been killed, and their families fear Tice's parents will soon have to share in their heartbreak. "We are four families bonded together by tragedy and terror," they write in an open letter to Obama at McClatchy. "But there is something that still can be done: Bring Austin Tice safely home." The letter comes a year after Obama promised the US would improve on how it dealt with hostages. "You told us in person that if it were your daughters, you would do anything in your power to bring them home," says the letter. "We are not asking the White House to put anyone in harm's way, nor compromise national security," but to "engage boldly and use all appropriate means to bring Austin Tice safely home as soon as possible." The editorial board of the Sacramento Bee is backing the families. "The US military has a solemn creed: No soldier left behind," it writes. "The same should hold true for Austin Tice." A State Department rep tells McClatchy that Tice's case "has the attention of the highest levels in the US government and the administration."
– More than 120,000 people so far have signed a petition calling for a game that simulates a mass shooting inside a school to be pulled from release. Active Shooter allows players to play as either the shooter or a SWAT responder and is due out June 6 on digital platform Steam, although after outcry erupted, its creator insisted in a blog post it is meant to be a "SWAT simulator" and said he might remove the ability to play as the shooter due to the controversy. Many have spoken out against the game, from politicians to activists to survivors of shootings in Parkland, Fla., and elsewhere, NBC News reports. Vox notes that a screenshot of the game shows that when playing as the shooter, stats are kept on the number of police officers killed as well as the number of civilians killed.
– President Trump said Thursday that he's ready to send the US military to the border to keep a caravan of mostly Honduran migrants out. In a series of tweets, Trump also reiterated threats to withhold financial aid to Central American nations, with particular attention to Mexico. "I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught — and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!" the president wrote. He said border security surpassed any other issue in importance for him, including trade and the newly reformulated NAFTA pact known as USMCA. Trump also asserted that the caravan of immigrants includes "MANY CRIMINALS." The Washington Post suggests that Trump is especially irked because more immigrant parents than ever are reaching the border with children since the US stopped its policy of family separations over the summer. Border Patrol arrested nearly 17,000 family members in September, a record number that's up 80% from July. Trump has previously said he wants to beef up the military's presence along the border until a wall is in place, and he again faulted Democrats on the issue of immigration. "All Democrats fault for weak laws!" he wrote. But comments this week from Nancy Pelosi suggest her party won't be budging on the solution he wants most. "It happens to be like a manhood issue for the president, building a wall, and I'm not interested in that,” she said, per Roll Call.
– Last night was Derek Jeter's last All Star Game, and it went beautifully, as the Yankee captain went 2-for-2 with a double. There was just one problem: That double might have been a gimme. After he left the game, Adam Wainwright said that he wasn't exactly gunning for Jeter. "I was going to give him a couple of pipe shots. He deserved it," Wainwright said. "I didn't know he was going to hit a double or I would have changed my mind. I thought he was going to hit something hard to the right side for a single or an out. I probably should have pitched him a little bit better." Jeter laughed off the comments. "If he grooved it, thank you," he said. Wainwright backed off the remarks before the game was even over, saying he was joking. "I feel terrible about this if anyone's taking any credit away from Derek Jeter," he told Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews. "It was mis-said. … I hope people realize I'm not intentionally giving up hits out there." The Cardinals ace is still sure to come under fire this week anyway, Jerry Crasnick at ESPN predicts, though he thinks Wainwright did baseball a favor "by exposing the massive problems inherent with what the All-Star Game has become in recent years. If there were any doubt, commissioner Bud Selig's 'This One Counts' initiative has outlived its usefulness."
– If you've ever wondered, "What's the worst thing that could happen if I stray from the boardwalk at Yellowstone?", well, the worst thing that could happen is you could be killed in a thermal hot spring. But, among the lesser-but-still-unfortunate consequences, you could be fined $1,000 plus a $30 court processing fee. That's what happened to a Chinese man visiting the Mammoth Hot Springs area of the national park, who was seen leaving the boardwalk, collecting thermal water, and breaking through the fragile travertine crust near Liberty Cap on Wednesday, the Houston Chronicle reports. After a witness took photos and turned them in, officials interviewed the man, who admitted to taking water from the hot springs (he said he wanted it for "medicinal purposes," the AP reports) and said he hadn't read the safety information he was given at the entrance to the park. In addition to being fined, he was hit with a federal violation notice, meaning he must appear at the Yellowstone Justice Center Court. "Without visitor cooperation, park natural wonders will continue to be damaged and more individuals may be injured or killed," park officials say in a press release.
– Nicotine. Caffeine. Betel nuts. You may never have heard of them, but nuts from the Areca palm are hugely popular as a chewable stimulant: Almost a tenth of the global population enjoys them, the BBC reports. A millennia-old tradition, they're the world's fourth-most-popular psychoactive substance, Healthline adds. Their effect is similar to that of drinking six cups of coffee, and many workers engaged in lengthy physical tasks chew them to maintain alertness. Trouble is, they're incredibly dangerous. Potentially leading to oral cancer and terrible mouth lesions, they're likely responsible for tens of thousands of early deaths, the BBC notes. In Taiwan, about 5,400 men receive oral cancer diagnoses each year; as many as 90% of them are betel nut chewers. The situation is only made worse by the way betel nuts are often packaged: in what are called quids, which can be made using known carcinogens like tobacco and slaked lime. The latter can generate small abrasions in the mouth that may help the carcinogens get into the body. Despite the dangers, betel nuts are called "Taiwan's chewing gum," and about half the country's men aren't aware of the cancer issue, an expert says—even as people like Qiu Zhen-huang develop holes in their cheeks. Decades after he quit the stuff, he ended up with a golf ball-sized tumor. The FDA doesn't consider betel nuts safe, Healthline notes, and in recent years, Taiwan has been fighting their use—though it remains legal, Shanghaiist reports. Free screenings and other programs helped cut men's chewing rates in half two years ago, the BBC notes. (As for smoking: Keep doing it, and there's a 67% chance you'll die from it, a study finds.)
– A day after being accidentally introduced as "President Clinton," Hillary seems to be taking pains to kill talk of a future run in New Zealand's media, reports Reuters. Asked whether she'd "ruled out" running through 2016, she replied, "Oh yes, yes. I'm very pleased to be doing what I'm doing as secretary of state." Asked in another interview whether she could be the first female president, she answered, "Well, not me. But it will be someone ..." The significance? Probably not much, writes Laura Rozen in Politico, noting how one of Clinton's answers is tied to her being secretary of state—a post she likely won't hold in 2016. On another front, Clinton said the midterm losses were "big—but not out of the pattern of historical political elections." She added, "I think the president made very clear was he made decisions which were essential for the well-being of the American people."
– New emails are out in the Solyndra mess, and it's probably not a great day to be a guy named Steve Spinner. He is an Obama-fundraiser-turned-Energy-Department-official who pushed hard for the loan even though he promised to recuse himself—because his wife worked as an attorney for the firm representing Solyndra. The major news services are highlighting his role in making sure the loan happened, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Politico. (He has left his post and now works for a Democratic think tank.) The other main point to emerge: A Treasury official raised a red flag about the loan restructuring that went ignored. Mary Miller advised the Energy Department to get the Justice Department to sign off on the deal because it allowed private investors to be repaid before taxpayers if the company went bust. "To our knowledge, that never happened," Miller wrote. Email snippets from Spinner: “As agreed, I will recuse myself from any active participation in any of these applications.” "Any word from OMB? I have the OVP and WH breathing down my neck on this ...," he wrote to an Energy Department staffer (referring to the Office of Management and Budget, the vice president's office and the White House). "How (expletive) hard is this? What is he waiting for?” Spinner wrote, complaining about an OMB official's apparent reluctance to approve the deal. “Will we have it by end of day? If any risk of not, let me know..."
– President Obama staked his presidency on the Afghanistan war last night, but pundits are widely split on how convincingly he made the case for escalation. This was no George W. Bush on an aircraft carrier, writes Matthew Cooper in the Atlantic. This was a community organizer turned war president," making a compelling, "almost Kissengerian" argument that just like with health care we need to spend now to save later, Cooper notes. "The worst major speech of his presidency" left Joan Walsh at Salon deeply pessimistic about the chances of success in Afghanistan. Obama failed to give any convincing reasons why we are escalating the fight in Afghanistan now, and didn't seem all that convinced himself, she writes. Obama's "strangely schizophrenic" emphasis on the possibly incompatible goals of victory and a speedy withdrawal is unlikely to go down well with either liberals or conservatives, and won't persuade the undecided, writes Ross Douthat at the New York Times. The president barely seemed to mention military strategy, he notes. Obama showed "a steely resolve" that had been lacking before, writes Richard Cohen at the Washingon Post. The president showed it is possible to urge a nation to war "using reason and logic, facts and figures—and not by waving the bloody shirt of patriotic fibs," Cohen notes.
– A guy in Albany, Ga., texted his probation officer by mistake asking, "You have any weed?" The probation officer then showed up at the errant texter's house with drug agents who found a bag of cocaine, reports WALB. And that's why Alvin Cross is not only going back to prison for violating his parole, he's serving an extra year. The story seems to have hit a sweet spot of dumb criminal/tech gaffe, because Cross is the butt of a lot of jokes out there: Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "You don’t have to be stupid to go to prison, but it helps." Gawker: "If you were to get high and make a list of people who, hypothetically, you would not want to text with a request for weed, 'probation officer' would probably be near the top." Death and Taxes: "Here’s a little pro-tip: If you find yourself on probation from jail, under no circumstances should you text your probation officer the message, 'You have some weed?'" CNET: "This could happen to any of us. Well, if any of us was serving probation." Metro: This UK (!) outlet takes a more narrative approach: "When prospects look dire and family and friends neglect them, some folks resort to dialing the dealer. However, one man decided to avoid this route, opting to contact a far more unusual confidant instead." And on and on. (The guy who butt-dialed 911 during a drug deal seemed to get better treatment.)
– The US has misspent “tens of billions of dollars” on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan—at minimum—according to a new report from a bipartisan commission set up to scrutinize the issue. The report bemoaned problems like “ill-conceived projects,” “poor planning and oversight by the US government, as well as poor performance on the part of contractors,” and even “criminal behavior and blatant corruption,” according to the Atlantic. “War by its nature entails waste,” committee member Jim Webb tells CNN. “But the scale of the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan also reflects the toxic interplay of huge sums of money pumped into relatively small economies and an unprecedented reliance on contractors.” The report criticizes the government for too routinely using contractors for too many tasks—including monitoring other contractors. It also complained that “untrustworthy” companies continue to win contracts, because there are barriers to suspending or banning them, the Huffington Post notes. A PDF of the entire report can be found here.
– Lucinda Smith, a 43-year-old attorney and mother of two in the United Kingdom, was gardening in March of last year when she suffered a minor scrape on her hand. After feeling pain in her shoulder she visited her general practitioner, who diagnosed a pinched nerve and sent her home with anti-depressants to relax her and advice to visit a physiotherapist, reports the Telegraph. But three days later she was vomiting and in significantly more pain, and her fingers and arm were red and swollen, so she saw another doctor, who sent her to the emergency room. It was there, after a simple blood test, that Smith was diagnosed with sepsis, sent to critical care, and put on intravenous antibiotics. Days later, she died of toxic shock triggered by the sepsis, reports ITV. "If she'd been given the test and had her blood pressure taken when she first complained of feeling unwell I'm convinced she could have been saved," says her mother. Sepsis is a complication that can arise from an infection and, if untreated, quickly become life-threatening. With cases on the rise, the CDC recently launched a campaign to make the general public more aware of its symptoms—including fever or chills, elevated heart rate, confusion, and pain—and thus more likely to ask for a test when in doubt. At a press briefing, CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said he almost lost his infant son to sepsis 20 years ago and that "recognition and treatment against sepsis is a race against time," CBS News reports. (This UK student nearly died of sepsis after forgetting to remove a tampon.)
– An Australian man is dead after walking nearly 29 miles on a steaming hot, lonely Outback road. The unidentified 60-year-old and a female companion were driving to the Windidda Station cattle ranch near the remote town of Wiluna when their car broke down on Sunday, police say. The pair camped overnight, hoping to flag down a passing car. When none had come by early Monday, the man began the 30-mile trek to Windidda with just a "small container of water," the AP reports. He didn't return a day later, so the woman set out after him. She was found yesterday by workers from the nearby Wongawol Station, who took her to her destination, ABC News reports. Her companion had not arrived. Workers began a search and discovered the Leonora man's body on the side of the road, a little over a mile from Windidda, police say. It isn't clear when he died. Though a coroner has yet to determine the cause of death, police say there are no suspicious circumstances; Temperatures reached 106 degrees in Wiluna on the day he began his journey. Police are now reminding Outback travelers to pack plenty of food and water and to stick by a vehicle if they get lost or are unable to continue as vehicles are far easier to spot from the air than humans, WA Today reports. (The story of a boy who spent nine weeks in the Outback has a happier ending.)
– As protests rage on in Egypt, the lawyer at the helm of the defense team representing 21 young female protesters was today arrested at home for "incitement of violence," CNN reports. On Wednesday, 14 of the women—mostly aged 18 to 22, the AP notes—were sentenced to 11 years following their participation in a pro-Mohamed Morsi demonstration. Seven girls, meanwhile, were sentenced to juvenile detention until they turn 18. Charges included illegal gathering, weapons possession, and thuggery; rights groups called the ruling "politicized." "I can't separate his arrest from the girls' case," says another lawyer defending the women, whose appeal is set to be heard Saturday. "This means that any lawyer who comes close to the case will be detained." Though the women were clamoring for Morsi's reinstatement, he added that the lawyer, Ahmed El-Hamrawy, "was part of Morsi's opposition. He demonstrated against him on June 30, but he's been involved in defending freedoms since July 3 ... He's being punished for that." Authorities have long cracked down on Islamists who supported Morsi, but lately, they've been targeting young, secular demonstrators, the AP notes. A new rule bans gatherings of more than 10 people without prior notice.
– At least 41 people have been killed after a building collapsed near Mumbai, the AP reports. More than 50 have been injured, and more could be trapped. At least 11 children were dead, officials said, with more than 20 people missing amid rescue efforts. The seven-story building was in the midst of illegal construction, the BBC reports, with four floors already occupied. The casualties were mostly construction workers who'd been staying in the building, said an official. "The building collapsed like a pack of cards within three to four seconds," said a witness. The disaster occurred as workers attempted to build an eighth floor, the AP notes. Building collapses are frequent in India thanks to weak materials and procedures, reports the BBC. High rises have been increasing in step with population increases, but they're often built without necessary safeguards and licenses. In this case, a witness said, "they made an eight-story building [out] of what was supposed to be a four-story building." Police intend to arrest the builders.
– Faced with a 12-year-old girl hanging by an arm from an 80-foot-high bridge, threatening to end her young life, a rookie cop started talking, reports CBS Los Angeles. Asking the girl if he could come closer, Officer Chris Perez says the child "was just crying and holding on;" she told Perez she had fled a group home in LA, and that she needed help. "It was just back-and-forth banter with me and her," Perez says. "'Can I come closer to you? Can I talk you closer? Can I pull you over the ledge so we can talk in a safer environment?' It was that back-to-back conversation with her that I felt was going so smoothly that I felt comfortable enough to lean over and get her." Per CBS, Perez "leaned over the railing, grabbed her in a bear hug, and helped her over the railing to safety." Police officials credit Perez's "calm, professional actions" with saving the girl, while Perez himself seems appalled that someone so young could find herself so desperate. "I can’t relate, that, oh my Lord, this young individual, this juvenile, is on the other side [on the bridge] what could possibly be going wrong in your life to make you want to do something like this?" But after the rescue, "she was sad and just started breaking down even more," Perez tells CBS News. The girl, who wanted to reconnect with an aunt, her only family, was put in police custody.
– Baby boomers with cash and a campy bucket list take note: Movie director John Waters is hosting a summer camp for grown-ups in Connecticut. While the first iteration, slated for the third weekend in September, is already marked "sold out" (there were 300 slots) on the Camp John Waters page, dreamers of a follow-up will note that the $499 price of admission grants attendees access to a one-man show by Waters, a Q&A, a marathon viewing of his films, Bloody Mary Bingo, Hairspray Karaoke, and more, reports Dazed. Guests also receive an autographed copy of his book Make Trouble, which costs less than $10 on Amazon and may be some consolation for the fact that alcohol is not included. Waters, who just turned 71, is known for such cult classics as Pink Flamingos, Cecil B. Demented, and Polyester. His camp marries what Art News calls "two of the more absurd developments in contemporary leisure"—celebrity-based getaways and "a sort of developmental purgatory" that finds adults signing up for nostalgic recreation such as kickball leagues. Even so, there are at least 300 adults who thought this was a great idea. (Millennials can also sign up for adulting classes.)
– Five children, including 1-year-old twins, died in a late-night fire that swept through a house after neighbors were awakened by a loud boom, firefighters said. The only survivor was the children's mother, who jumped out of a second-floor window Sunday night, according to Youngstown Fire Capt. Kurt Wright. The other three children who died were ages 9, 3, and 2, he said. Investigators were just beginning to search for a cause of the fire, per the AP. Officials said so far, nothing indicates the fire was suspicious. Deborah Rivera, who lives across the street, told the Vindicator she heard a loud boom and called 911. Her boyfriend said flames were shooting out of the first-floor windows. Neighbors told WFMJ the family moved into the house about six months ago. The two-story wood home was built more than 90 years ago. "We have a relatively young department and most [of] the guys have children," said Youngstown Fire Chief Barry Finley. "So it hits pretty hard, and the fact that it's so close to Christmas hits even harder." Firefighters found flames throughout the home's first floor when they arrived and were able to pull out three of the children, but they died at a hospital, Wright said. The mother was taken to a hospital and is being treated for injuries.
– Microsoft unveiled its much-hyped Project Natal motion control system—now renamed “Kinect”—at E3 last night, in a performance long on grandiosity and short on actual revelations. After walking through a set of fake living rooms, the white-poncho-wearing audience was treated to a performance by Cirque du Soleil acrobats dressed as cavemen, as a narrator declared that “history is about to rewritten” and a boy, raising his arms, used his movements usher in the new motion-based way to play games, according to the Wall Street Journal. And what was this grand historical event all about? Well, mostly mimicking the Wii, according to CNET. Microsoft’s camera-based motion controller may have potential, but the games demoed last night mostly looked like analogues for successful Wii efforts, including a yoga game, a racing game, and a Wii Sports-esque game titled—wait for it—Kinect Sports. IGN has a full list of launch titles. Microsoft is expected to reveal more details, including pricing, at its press conference today.
– Not a huge surprise: Lawyers for Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev today appealed his death-penalty conviction, arguing that "continuous and unrelenting publicity" biased jurors and made a fair trial in Boston impossible, NBC News reports. "Put simply, prejudicial media coverage, events, and environment saturated greater Boston, including the social networks of actual trial jurors, and made it an improper venue for the trial of this case," say the papers. The lawyers want another trial at a new location, the AP reports. Earlier this year, the Guardian reminded us that Tsarnaev's appeals will likely delay his punishment for "at least a decade." The April 15, 2013, bomb strike in Boston left three dead and more than 200 maimed or injured.
– Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders introduced legislation to Congress today that would ban private prisons and jails in the United States, USA Today reports. Sanders—who has called the size of the US prison population an "international disgrace"—says the goal of for-profit prisons and jails is to increase the number of people locked up, according to the Washington Post. “The profit motivation of private companies running prisons works at cross purposes with the goals of criminal justice,” the senator says, per USA Today. Legislation cosponsor Rep. Keith Ellison says for-profit prisons spend millions every year pushing for stricter sentencing laws. “Incarceration should be about rehabilitation and public safety, not profit,” he says. The "Justice Is Not for Sale Act" introduced by Sanders today would ban the government from working with private-prison companies, bring back the federal parole system eliminated in the '80s, and end quotas on how many immigrants are held in detention, USA Today reports. According to the Christian Science Monitor, private prisons are a $5 billion a year industry with 19% of federal prisoners currently being held in one, and banning them could face an uphill battle in Congress. The Post reports the legislation could be an attempt on Sanders' part to appeal to African-American and Latino voters. Democratic challengers Clinton and O'Malley have also come out against private prisons.
– Just because Arturo Carvajal is a doctor, that doesn't mean he knows how to eat an artichoke—and he's suing a Miami restaurant for not instructing him on the proper method. Carvajal ordered the grilled artichoke (a vegetable he had "never seen nor heard of previously," according to court filings) and proceeded to eat the entire thing, rather than scraping just the meat off of the leaves. He later found himself experiencing abdominal pain, and doctors found artichoke leaves lodged in his bowel. He filed a suit seeking unspecified damages last month, the Miami New Times reports. In it, he complains that the server failed "to explain the proper method of consuming an artichoke." His lawyer explains that Carvajal thought "it was like a food he might have eaten in his native Cuba, where you eat everything on the plate." The restaurant's lawyer begs to differ: "What's next?" he asks Business Insurance. "Are we going to have to post warnings on our menu they shouldn't eat the bones in our barbecue ribs?" Click here for more wacky lawsuits.
– Another strange kidnapping story is in the news, but the good part is that the 2-year-old at the center of it is safe and sound. Beyond that, things get weird—a man babysitting the boy called 911 to report his whereabouts after seeing an Amber Alert. The key developments: The kidnapping: On Tuesday, police say that Alyssa Chang, 46, and Vien Nguyen, 65, kidnapped toddler Ronnie Tran and his mother from their home in Des Moines, Wash. Chang is the girlfriend of the boy's father, and Nguyen is his paternal grandmother, reports ABC News. The babysitter: After the boy's mother was tasered and tied up in a garage (she would eventually escape on her own, the Seattle Times reports), police say Chang brought the boy to her brother's home in Renton and innocently asked him to babysit. The brother, John Truong, tells KOMO-TV that he didn't know anything was amiss until the next morning when he saw the Amber Alert. The surprise: "I'm eating my breakfast, I'm checking my Facebook, all of a sudden I see this Amber Alert for this child," he says. "And it looks like this child in my bed, and I'm like, 'Oh my God! What's going on?'" He called police, who soon tracked down his sister and Nguyen. Both face felony charges. The bottom line: "There’s a lot of family dynamics involved," says a police official. "As far as why, we can only speculate." (A girl missing 11 years returned to the US Wednesday.)
– More people opted to watch the final installment of The Hunger Games, prominently featuring Liam Hemsworth in its fourth week of release, than did those who showed up to witness the drubbing Chris Hemsworth took in the debut of what was supposed to be a star turn in Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea. Mockingjay: Part 2 took in $11.3 million this weekend, reports USA Today, good enough for its fourth consecutive crown, while In the Heart of the Sea managed $11 million. The movie "is a beached whale," says one analyst. "You can see studios being interested in this story. But the reviews just weren't there and there was no buzz whatsoever for this film." It's been a tough year for Warner Bros., notes the Wall Street Journal: In the Heart of the Sea marks just the latest in a series of flops that included Pan, Jupiter Ascending, and The Man From UNCLE. Warner Bros. has released more movies than its competitors, yet ranks No. 3 at the box office in 2015. For those looking for something in theaters to get excited about, the new Star Wars movie opens Thursday.
– The mysteries of Old Faithful may soon be solved, thanks, in part, to something that looks like a giant hula hoop. American and Danish scientists have this week begun an aerial survey of Yellowstone that actually looks well into the earth, "visualizing" the geology and water as much as 1,500 feet below the surface, says Carol Finn. She's waited a decade to explore what she calls "a last frontier ... in Yellowstone," and the intention is to better map the flow of water that's feeding Old Faithful and rare but sometimes violent hydrothermal explosions. Over a four-week period, a helicopter will fly above, armed with electromagnetic technology that looks like a giant hula hoop. The AP explains it in layman's terms: "The device acts like an X-ray to determine where and how hot water flows beneath the surface." Scientists will use the data to determine whether solid earth, "rotten" sulfuric rock, or water lurks below, which could assist in identifying unstable areas, per Wyoming Public Media. But a press release frames the main quest like so: We know that the water that explodes from Yellowstone's geysers "originates as old precipitation, snow and rain that percolates down into the crust, is heated, and ultimately returns to the surface." We know that it can take as long as thousands of years for that process to run its course. What scientists are hoping to determine are the routes these waters take. "Does it travel down and back up? Does it travel laterally?" asks Finn. Right now, "nobody knows." (Archaeologists made a surprise find underneath a Mayan temple.)
– Thou shalt restore the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes to their natural state once filming wraps up. That’s the commandment given to movie director Cecil B. DeMille, who filmed his epic The Ten Commandments in the sand dunes on the Central California coast in the early 1920s, KCBX reports. Apparently, though, he didn’t follow through. Now, archaeologists are using aircraft to get a bird’s-eye view of the dunes to unearth more treasures of the movie’s set—a giant sphinx was found earlier this year, but plenty more remains from a "lost city" that boasted a huge temple, four more of those sphinxes, massive statues, a 750-foot-long wall, and amenities for somewhere between 2,500 and 5,000 people who worked on the film. DeMille reportedly called the spot “perhaps the most unpleasant location in cinema history,” according to Outside. After another flyover in the next few weeks by the company Applied Earthworks, the search will resume on the ground, archaeologist M. Colleen Hamilton tells KCBX. "We have one historical photograph of the camp itself and we're trying to align that with features that are currently on the ground," says Hamilton. Doug Jenzen of the nonprofit Dunes Center in Guadalupe tells Outside that minerals in the sand—“a natural desiccant”—have preserved the artifacts remarkably well. However, he says, the sands of the dunes are shifting, leaving the old movie props endangered. “It’s disappearing so fast,” he says. As for the commandment that DeMille restore the area after filming: Instead, per Outside, he supposedly blew it up with dynamite to spite rival directors. (In the real Egypt, archaeologists are pretty excited about what might be a hidden room in King Tut's tomb.)
– The owner of the busted rig spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico is itching to get back to work. Transocean chief Steven Newman slammed the Obama administration's 6-month moratorium on deepwater drilling at an oil conference today, the AP reports. There are things the administration "could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary 6-month time limit," Newman said. The government says the ban is needed to give regulators time to study ways of making deepwater drilling safer. A group of companies that supply the offshore drilling industry have filed a lawsuit challenging the ban and a New Orleans judge has promised a decision by tomorrow, CNN reports. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's office has filed a brief supporting the lawsuit. "This is an environmental disaster. Let's not make an economic disaster," an attorney for the state said.
– Wreckage of the Indonesian passenger plane that went missing today has been found, a transportation official tells Reuters, and early indications are that it crashed into a mountainside in remote terrain in eastern Papua. The Trigana Air Service plane, a twin turboprop, issued no distress signal before it went down, reports CNN, and it may have run into bad weather in the mountainous region. The BBC notes that a second plane sent to look for the missing one was forced back by dangerous conditions. Villagers reported seeing the plane crash into the side of a mountain; it's not yet known if there are any survivors.
– It sounds like the stuff of horror films: a creeping black slime that can't be killed. But experts say a real-life microbial invasion is coating some of the nation's most important monuments in black. The National Park Service earlier this month reported the "biofilm" has befouled the Jefferson Memorial, particularly its "gleaming white rotunda," and appears on the Washington and Lincoln Memorials and on tombstones in the Congressional Cemetery. But the mysterious substance—"part algae, part bacteria, part fungi," the Washington Post reports—isn’t unique to the Washington, DC, area. Biofilm has slimed sites around the globe, from Egypt to Italy to the Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia, per the NPS. Scientists are only now "starting to understand what it is, and its relationship to stone," a senior conservator with the NPS tells the Post. The NPS reports it has uncovered a "common factor" related to the establishment of various biofilms: the somewhat vague "presence of nutrients and a place to grow, like stone." It suspects that in the case of the Jefferson Memorial, the dimples and holes that have formed in the eroding marble may create an environment ripe for biofilm. That soft marble poses an additional challenge, notes the NPS, as any treatment needs to be tested to make sure it won't actually inflict harm on the stone. While there's no known permanent removal method, the NPS is evaluating 10 chemicals as potential cleaners and intends to also review options like ozonated water and lasers. The Jefferson Memorial's biofilm first became readily visible in 2006, and there's currently no timeline for treatment.
– A Yelp employee who complained about having to live in near-poverty conditions has a new problem—she needs a job. Talia Jane wrote an open letter to CEO Jeremy Stoppelman on Friday seeking higher compensation and detailing her struggles to afford food, rent, and transportation in San Francisco, and got fired hours later, Re/code reports. "My manager and HR told me the letter and what I wrote violated Yelp’s terms of conduct," she tells BuzzFeed. Stoppelman tweeted that he wasn't involved in her firing and "it was not because she posted a ... letter directed at me." Either way, the letter has drawn attention for its depiction of life with an entry-level customer-support position at Eat24, Yelp's food delivery service, in one of America's most expensive cities. Seems Jane lived mostly on rice and water, slept fully clothed because she couldn't afford heat, and put 80% of her bi-weekly $733.24 check toward rent. (She netted $8.15 an hour.) "So here I am, 25 years old, balancing all sorts of debt and trying to pave a life for myself that doesn’t involve crying in the bathtub every week," she writes in the 2,392-word letter. "Every single one of my coworkers is struggling. They’re taking side jobs, they’re living at home." So did Yelp overreact? A Forbes blogger says the letter has "a condescending tone replete with a smug, accusatory naïveté," and a Reddit user accuses Jane of posting "unprofessional" tweets before the letter. But Stoppelman concedes Jane's point that "the cost of living in SF is far too high" and proposes expanding Eat 24's operations in Phoenix as a solution. Jane, who is accepting donations, doesn't seem impressed: "Yelp is trying to make this die down by lying about it," she says. "Things have just exploded." (A San Francisco "tech bro" called for the city to deal with homeless "riff raff.")
– An Anheuser-Busch brewery in Georgia began filling its cans with something other than beer late Wednesday night to help those affected by flooding in Texas and Oklahoma. "Right now our production line is running emergency drinking water," the Cartersville brewery manager told NBC News. The brewery—one of 12 Anheuser-Busch operates in the US—has directed about 2,000 cases of 24 cans to the battered states. It's not exactly a novel move for the brewery, which partners with the American Red Cross to produce emergency water a few times each year. "There are a lot of folks in need," a Red Cross rep says. And their ranks could swell: CNN reports battered Houston could be in for five more days of storms, and up to 6 inches is expected in some areas of Oklahoma through Sunday. Flood and flash flood warnings were issued yesterday for more than 20 communities, including the Dallas area, where up to 6 inches overnight caused major flash floods; more than 100 flights in and out of Dallas-Fort Worth were canceled yesterday and today. Some 50 miles south in Johnson County, a dozen people had to be rescued overnight, in some cases from "homes inundated with water," NBC News reports. Reuters reports this month has been the wettest May on record in Texas, with the average rainfall hitting 7.54 inches to beat June 2004's 6.66 inches. The bit of good to come from the bad: As of Tuesday, only 5% of Texas was experiencing drought conditions, per the US Drought Monitor; one year ago, that figure was 71%.
– Charlie Sheen's HIV diagnosis was joked about in an email exposed, but never publicized, during last year's Sony hack, the Washington Post reports. The email from a Sony exec was joking about the fact that Sheen wasn't showing up to work on Anger Management, his FX series. "I think I will win the 90/10 bet on the over under on this … it's hard to to be a drug addict and be HIV positive and do 40 eps a year," the email reads. It's always been available on the Wikileaks Sony hack page, but hadn't been released to the larger public until now. The email was referring to a deal that stated if 10 episodes performed well, FX would order 90 more; the series, which premiered in June 2012 and ended in December 2014, was supposed to film 100 episodes in two years, enough to send it into syndication—and it did end up filming exactly that many. As the Post notes, the email illustrates the fact that some in the industry were very much aware of Sheen's diagnosis before he revealed it publicly. Deadline notes that Sheen is currently looking to do another TV series.
– Casey Anthony’s parents are finally speaking out about their daughter’s case in an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw set to air tomorrow and Wednesday, and tidbits are trickling out, People reports. In a clip aired this morning on Today, McGraw asks Cindy Anthony about a post she wrote on MySpace 12 days before Caylee was reported missing that read, prophetically-seeming, "Caylee is missing." But Cindy had no idea Caylee was actually gone that day. She was "missing in my heart," she explains. "She wasn't missing physically. I wanted Casey to know how much she was hurting me. And I thought she was purposely keeping Caylee away from me." Cindy says she "truthfully" doesn’t know why the trunk of Casey’s car smelled suspicious. "Do I want to believe Caylee was back there?" asks George Anthony. "I don't want to believe it. I'm going by what the investigators have told me." As for questions over whether her husband was aware Caylee was missing: "George would have never have put us through those six months of not knowing where Caylee was if he knew where Caylee was," Cindy says. "I watched his heart break every single day."
– More information is being released on yesterday's bus crash that killed four in California. The big rig that jackknifed, spilling metal pipes as long as 50 feet across the highway, was trying to pass slower vehicles when it drifted onto the dirt shoulder and lost control, police tell the AP. With no street lights and little moonlight, the pipes would have been tough to see until they were in range of a vehicle's headlights, police say. And within about a minute of them spilling onto the highway, at about 2:15am, the bus hit them. Passengers were thrown around inside as the bus rolled down an embankment, but miraculously, the youngest passenger—a 12-day-old baby girl—was unharmed, NBC News reports. Mother Ana Perez was breastfeeding her newborn daughter, Daniela, at the time of the crash and, "I didn't let her go," says Perez. Though mom ended up bruised after slamming into a window, Daniela was just fine. "It was a miracle." Making that even more the case: Perez says two of the fatalities were sitting next to her. "When I got up, I was in between two dead bodies," Perez adds. "It was horrible." As for the tour bus driver, he "was trying to avoid (the pipes), but it was too late."
– Investigators are still looking for answers in the case of Rotana and Tala Farea, the sisters whose bodies were found duct-taped together on the banks of the Hudson River last week. Police have disclosed that the sisters, who lived in Fairfax, Virginia, were from Saudi Arabia and had recently requested asylum in the US, the New York Times reports. Rotana, 22, and Tala, 16, had a history of going missing, but police don't know how they ended up in the river. "We do not know that a crime took place," NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot F. Shea said Thursday. "We have a terrible tragedy for sure." Sources tell the New York Daily News that the sisters had been in the US since 2015 and were once placed in a shelter after running away from home. The sources say the mother told police that the sisters disappeared after the entire family, which also includes two brothers, was ordered back to Saudi Arabia. A relative tells Arab News that the sisters were part of a happy family. "They never had any issues and the eldest was sent to college in New York City with her family’s blessing," says the relative, who rejects suggestions that the sisters died in a suicide pact. A police official tells the Times that they are still seeking "what might have been their entry point into the water." Read more on the case here.
– One of the downfalls of being an international pop star beloved by tweens everywhere: Sometimes you end up the target of two would-be assassins hired by a convicted killer to murder you. That's what happened to Justin Bieber, police say. CBC News and the Toronto Star have details of the bizarre plot: Dana Martin, 45, was both the mastermind and the person who alerted police to the plot. He says he hired New Mexico men Mark Staake, 41, and Staake's nephew, Tanner Ruane, 23, to kill four people. Staake and Ruane were arrested late last month, but authorities just discovered Bieber may have been a target. Martin wanted all four of the victims, which were to include both Bieber and his bodyguard, strangled with a paisley tie. Martin is currently in state prison for murder; he killed his victims in a similar fashion. Martin wanted two of the victims castrated, and was willing to pay $2,500 per testicle, but Bieber is not believed to be one of those he wanted castrated. Martin was obsessed with the singer, having written him letters and gotten a Bieber tattoo on his leg. He got upset when Bieber never responded to him. If the whole thing sounds like a macabre publicity stunt, there's reason for that. Martin told police "he was seeking a measure of notoriety so that there would be people outside of prison who would know who he ... was." Oh, and he had nothing to lose: He's serving a sentence of 988 years and change.
– More than two years after they were jailed on charges of spying, American hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal may finally be headed home. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tells the Washington Post he will grant a “unilateral pardon” to the two men, and that he is working to arrange for their release and return home “in a couple of days.” Asked if it will definitely happen this week, the president replied, “I hope so.” Meanwhile, a defense attorney tells the AP that Iran set bail at $500,000 for each of the two men, and will free them once bail is paid. Bail was set at that amount for the third jailed hiker, Sarah Shourd, before her release last year. Last month, Bauer and Fattal were sentenced to eight years, a ruling their lawyer vowed to appeal.
– If you thought being an international superstar was about as crazy as your life could get, think again. Cracked and The Stir round up 15 celebrities with even crazier (and some of them very painful) backgrounds: Woody Harrelson's dad, who walked out on the family in 1968, was a contract killer who probably got away with killing at least two people before going to prison. Then, when he got out early, he was hired to murder a judge, and he went back to prison. Woody tried to get him a retrial, but he died in 2007. Kelsey Grammer first lost his mom and grandpa, whom he lived with. Two years later, his dad was shot to death on his front lawn by a crazed taxi driver. Then his younger sister was murdered by a gang of robbers in a Red Lobster parking lot. Then his two half-brothers died in scuba diving accidents. As if that's not all bad enough, a good friend was killed on 9/11, another good friend was murdered by his own wife, and one of his former wives tried to kill herself and ended up killing their unborn child. Olivia Newton-John's parents fled Germany when the Nazis took over, and her dad ended up getting a job interrogating captured Nazi pilots—not over torture, but over dinner and drinks. One of his interrogations led to the capture of Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess. He later joined MI5's code-breakers and decoded German messages, including secret battle plans that helped the Allies win World War II. Charlize Theron's father was verbally abusive, and while the actress was growing up in South Africa, he once came home drunk and started shooting at Charlize and her mother. Theron's mom managed to get the gun, and ended up killing her husband. Jack Nicholson was born out of wedlock to a 19-year-old aspiring actress, so her parents raised him as their own and he grew up believing his mom was his sister. Leighton Meester's parents and her aunt went to prison when the actress was just a baby, after getting busted smuggling 1,200 pounds of marijuana from Jamaica. Her aunt ended up escaping prison and got on the US Marshals' 15 Most Wanted List. Tobey Maguire's dad robbed a bank across the street from his house—in broad daylight, without a mask. He was caught, not surprisingly, and went to prison for two years. Cracked's full list here; The Stir's here.
– It's the end of another year, and thus time for Michigan's Lake Superior State University to release its 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness. The dozen words and phrases that made this year's cheeky list, per the AP: Spoiler alert Kick the can down the road Trending Bucket list Superfood Guru Job creators Double down YOLO ("You only live once") Boneless wings Passion/passionate, particularly when used by companies And the submission receiving the most nominations: fiscal cliff Click to see the "amazing" words that made last year's list.
– For many people, Kazakhstan is probably best known as the home of fictional newscaster Borat, who made a mockery of the former Soviet republic in the hit 2006 comedy film named after him. But while the country's capital, Astana, may not currently rank as one of the great travel destinations of Europe, with the Expo 2017 world's fair currently underway there—and two global luxury hotel chains set to open—that could all change. According to the Telegraph, Astana is already "regarded in niche travel circles for its captivating architecture," including the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, and the country's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, ordered the construction of a new entertainment center, a miniature golf course, and a river to coincide with the opening of the fair, which is touting the city's "future energy." Since the Expo began on June 10, nearly 100,000 people have visited the Nur Alem pavilion, which is touted as the largest spherical building in the world, the Independent reports. The Kazakhstan government is hoping the event puts the country on the map for international tourism, which has not been a selling point for the world's largest landlocked country, tucked between Europe and Asia. Expo 2017 is also a historic occasion: It's not only the first world's fair held in Central Asia—it's also the first one held in a Muslim-majority country. The fair runs through Sept. 10. (Check out Kazakhstan's "singing" sand dune.)
– Shop on Fifth Avenue? Neither do we, but still: The iconic Henri Bendel department store will soon be gone along with its e-commerce business and 22 other brick-and-mortar locations, People reports. Parent company L Brands is making the move amid increasing retail competition and plummeting company stocks, which fell 55% this year, per CNN Money. A pioneer in US fashion and luxury retail, Bendel has been in business for 123 years and held the country's first fashion show, its website says. The store plans to close in January.
– President Obama says his reaction to the death of ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller is "heartbreak"—but he thinks her "great spirit" will live on. "The more people learn about her, the more they appreciate what she stood for—and how it stands in contrast with the barbaric organization that held her captive," he tells BuzzFeed in an interview yesterday. He stresses the government did all it could to free her, including deploying an entire operation "at significant risk" to free her and other US hostages. The government did, however, stick to its policy of not paying ransoms to organizations like ISIS; ABC News reports ISIS demanded $6.6 million for her release, and had set an August 2014 deadline for payment. More emerging details: Although the government says it has been unable to confirm the cause of Mueller's death, per the New York Times, ISIS sent Mueller's family three photos of her body, according to two people briefed on the family's correspondence with ISIS. Two photos reportedly showed Mueller in a black Muslim hijab that partly covered her face; the third showed her in a traditional white burial shroud. And while the Times sources said they saw bruises on Mueller's face in the photos, there was no evidence of "puffiness or other concussive effects associated with a bomb blast," though they acknowledge she could have been located in a nearby building or injured by flying debris. The rescue operation referenced by Obama took place July 4 in a predawn raid on a Raqqa prison by Delta Force commandos, the Los Angeles Times reports. But the two dozen soldiers were too late: The hostages—who also included James Foley and Steven Sotloff—had apparently been moved a day or two before. "We never stopped trying to get her," a defense official not authorized to speak publicly tells the Times. "We never lost that focus." Officials yesterday told ABC News that Mueller may have been "given over" to an ISIS commander, and that forced marriage could have even been involved. "ISIS didn't see her as a hostage or a bargaining chip," said one. Devastated friends and relatives in Mueller's hometown of Prescott, Ariz., say they hope her death will raise awareness of the plight of the Syrian refugees she worked with, NBC reports. "The things that were important to Kayla are finally getting the attention they deserve," an aunt said. "The world grieves with us."
– North Korea's "Day of the Sun" became the "Day of the Flop" after an attempt to mark its founder's birthday with a missile launch fizzled, according to South Korean officials. An official from South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff says the missile launch from the country's east coast early Friday deviated from a normal trajectory, the Washington Post reports. An American military official says the US also detected and tracked the failed launch, which took place on the most important day in Pyongyang's calendar, the birthday of Kim Il Sung. Officials suspect the missile was a Musudan intermediate-range missile, also known as a BM-25, which Pyongyang has displayed in military parades but never tested before. The country fired a different kind of medium-range missile into the sea last month. Even North Korea's closest ally denounced the latest launch attempt, reports Reuters. The launch, "though failed, marks the latest in a string of saber-rattling that, if unchecked, will lead the country to nowhere," China's Xinhua news agency said. "Nuclear weapons will not make Pyongyang safer. On the contrary, its costly military endeavors will keep on suffocating its economy." (Seoul is getting some vital information from a high-level defector.)
– Lakhan Kale's grandmother would tie him to something on the street before each work day and walk away. That's because 9-year-old Lakhan has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and no one else in Mumbai, India, would care for him, ABC News reports. Cringing? You're not alone: News photos of Lakhan tied to a bus stop drew enough outrage in India that a state-run home took the boy in, and activists found a rallying cry for the nation's 40 to 60 million disabled, reports the Daily Mail (which also has photos of Lakhan). "There's no collective responsibility," said the head of a charity for the disabled. "You have a disabled child, you look after it." A social worker for the mentally ill said Mumbai lacks facilities, and those that exist are low on staffing or short on space in the densely-packed city. An equal-rights bill for the disabled reached the Indian parliament in February, but a lawyer who helped draft it five years ago said it's been diluted. At least Lakhan's grandmother now has peace of mind: "The shelter will also take care of Lakhan's treatments," she told the Times of India, before tearfully asking staffers how often she could visit her grandson.
– Justice may be served to a celebrity chef accused of sexual misconduct: Mario Batali, who stepped away from his restaurant empire last year amid allegations of misconduct, is now under criminal investigation by the NYPD, Eater reports. The department confirmed the investigation to CBS' 60 Minutes, which aired a report Sunday on disturbing allegations that at least one woman was drugged and assaulted at the Spotted Pig, a New York restaurant where Batali is an investor and frequent guest. Numerous female employees said they were harassed and grabbed by Batali and restaurant owner Ken Friedman, and one woman said she blacked out after dining with Batali and woke up alone in a room on the third floor of the Spotted Pig building with a badly scratched leg and what appeared to be semen on her skirt. The woman—an employee at Batali's Babbo restaurant at the time of the alleged 2005 assault—told Anderson Cooper that when she went to work and asked him what happened the previous night, "he just was silent, wouldn't talk to me." She said she called a crisis hotline but didn't end up filing a police report. Police sources tell the New York Daily News that a woman filed a police report after a very similar alleged incident in 2004. The sources say the woman told police she blacked out while drinking with Batali in Babbo and woke up to find him having sex with her. In a statement, Batali said he "vehemently" denied the assault allegation aired on 60 Minutes, though he added that he is "sincerely remorseful" for "deeply inappropriate" conduct in the past and he is not attempting a professional comeback.
– "It opened a great wound inside of me. I pretended it didn't happen." So says a nun who claims an Italian priest sexually assaulted her while she was confessing to him about 20 years ago in Bologna. A new AP investigation finds she's not alone: Religious sisters are apparently being abused by bishops and priests in Asia, South America, Africa, and Europe, and usually keeping quiet about the assaults. That changed this week when five nuns appeared on national TV in Chile and told their stories of sexual abuse by priests and other nuns, Crux reports. It's an older story in Africa, where reports have emerged of priests abusing nuns and pressuring them into abortions; a six-year study and follow-up report for the Vatican found 29 nuns impregnated at one congregation. The National Catholic Reporter revealed that study in 2001, but what the Church did is unclear. Meanwhile, the Vatican remains quiet on the issue and lacks rules to probe and punish abusers, leaving it to local church leaders to take action. "Consecrated women have to be encouraged to speak up when they are molested," says a Vatican official on the condition of anonymity. "Bishops have to be encouraged to take them seriously, and make sure the priests are punished if guilty." But amid #MeToo and an ever-widening Catholic Church abuse scandal, more nuns may be speaking up for themselves. "I see it as two freedoms: freedom of the weight for a victim, and freedom of a lie and a violation by the priest," says the nun allegedly assaulted in Bologna. "I hope this helps other sisters free themselves of this weight."
– The public will feel “a certain shock” at the security failures outlined in the unclassified report on the Christmas Day attack being released today, says national security adviser Jim Jones. In an interview with USA Today, Jones doesn’t downplay the miscues, saying President Obama is “legitimately and correctly alarmed” that intelligence wasn’t acted upon. Combined with the Fort Hood shooting, “that’s two strikes,” says Jones. “He certainly doesn’t want that third strike.” Meanwhile, a Yemeni official confirmed a link between those attacks, telling the BBC that alleged would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had met with radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who authorities believe was also in contact with the Fort Hood shooter. Abdulmutallab was recruited in London, the official said, then flew to Yemen to meet Awlaki. But he noted that the explosives were from Nigeria, not Yemen.
– Marissa Mayer's recently announced ban on telecommuting at Yahoo has caused quite a brouhaha; now, the company is responding. "This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home," the firm says in a statement issued yesterday, per the New York Times. "This is about what is right for Yahoo right now." That was essentially the extent of its comments, but the Times also spoke with Yahoo workers who say a number of employees are slacking. (Earlier reports noted that Mayer had grown frustrated with employees who trickled in and left right at 5pm.) Requiring them to show up at the office could restore some enthusiasm—and allow the company to monitor the situation. Indeed, some telecommuters have even started their own companies while working from home on Yahoo's dime, the workers say. Some employees might quit, but the company would prefer to lose the dead wood. Meanwhile, at Business Insider, Henry Blodget—who works part-time for Yahoo—comes to Mayer's defense. "For the past decade, Yahoo has been in desperate need of a CEO who is willing to set a high bar and make the tough, unpopular decisions necessary to whip the company back into shape," he writes. "Mayer has demonstrated that she is more than capable of doing that."
– A new drug for fatal injections is not only hard to find, it takes twice as long to kill people. US death penalty states like Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana are struggling to find lethal drugs for capital punishment, thanks to a worldwide ethical embargo against pharmaceutical companies selling drugs to US departments of corrections, the Guardian reports. So those states are turning from a three-drug cocktail to one drug, pentobarbital—which takes an average of 20 minutes to kill rather than the cocktail's 10. But does the prolonged death equal inhumane treatment of the prisoner? An anesthesiologist says it's hard to know—there isn't enough research yet—but the way states are procuring pentobarbital raises additional questions. Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana simply asked pharmacies to make the drug (the New York Times slammed such states for entering "a largely unregulated world" of pharmaceuticals). But Louisiana is stuck: It couldn't get any pentobarbital to execute child-killer Christopher Sepulvado on Wednesday, The Lens reports. Officials could try some other drug combination, as Ohio did in executing inmate Dennis McGuire last month—but he spent 26 minutes gasping for breath, the AP reports, and his last words were, "I feel my whole body burning."
– Bad news for Madonna: A judge on Monday said a New York auction house can go ahead and sell some of her personal stuff. Gotta Have Rock and Roll auctions got a hold of a pair of the singer's underwear, a letter Tupac Shakur wrote to her explaining why they had to break up, and other items of hers including a hairbrush, a checkbook, cassette tapes of unreleased recordings, a letter she wrote calling Whitney Houston and Sharon Stone "horribly mediocre," and photos. Madonna had obtained a temporary restraining order last year to halt the sale, saying she didn't know the items were no longer in her possession and believes someone took them from her home. But on Monday, a Manhattan judge ruled that the items belong to the auction house and the sale can go ahead, NBC News reports. The auction house says the sale will proceed in July. The Guardian and the New York Times explain that the judge found Madonna had targeted the wrong person in her legal action: Darlene Lutz, an art collector who helped Madonna build her collection before the two had a falling-out. Madonna claimed her assistants had given her things to Lutz, and the judge said Madonna should have targeted those assistants rather than Lutz. (Lutz herself once said that's how she came into the items, simply by collecting things that were otherwise going to be thrown out: "I knew all of the assistants and stuff would get thrown in boxes and they would just go, 'Hey, here’s some more.'") Lutz said she and the Material Girl had settled their disagreements in a 2004 legal agreement, and the judge sided with Lutz and found that that agreement prevented Madonna from suing. The judge also found that the statute of limitations to recover the items had passed. "Ms. Lutz is now free to do with her property as she pleases without any continued interference by Madonna," said Lutz's lawyer.
– Ben Carson will try to prove he has a handle on foreign affairs during a surprise visit with Syrian refugees in Jordan on Friday. "I find when you have firsthand knowledge of things as opposed to secondhand, it makes a much stronger impression," Carson told the New York Times before setting off for the UN refugee camp in Azraq on Thursday. NBC News also confirmed the trip. "I want to hear some of their stories, I want to hear from some of the officials what their perspective is," he said. "All of that is extraordinarily useful in terms of formulating an opinion of how to actually solve the problem." He added he'll be handing out soccer balls and Beanie Babies as he visits a clinic, hospital, women's and girls' center, and an "adolescent-friendly space." He's expected to return to the US on Sunday. Since the Paris terror attacks, Carson's poll numbers have been dropping, especially in Iowa where he was once leading. One Quinnipiac University poll shows him down 10 points since October, perhaps due to concerns about his grasp on foreign policy. Asked if voters felt he wasn't the right person to lead when terrorism fears are high, Carson said, "I would agree with that assessment," but "that's why it's a good thing it's a marathon, not a sprint. As time goes on they will begin to listen more carefully to what I'm saying." Carson recently drew heat for explaining that he opposes accepting Syrian refugees into the US because the result could be "a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood." He also seemed baffled when asked to name the countries he would call to form an anti-Islamic State coalition.
– Move over, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and fellow birthers. Here come ... the Breitbarters? The untimely death of the conservative blogger has spawned plenty of conspiracy theories on Twitter and elsewhere, the International Business Times finds. Only a few weeks ago, Breitbart announced that he had damaging video from President Obama's college years, and some conspiracy-minded Americans now think Obama may have had Breitbart bumped off. The content of the video is also the subject of speculation, with some of the giddier commenters claiming it contains evidence Obama had numerous gay lovers and was addicted to cocaine. One person not buying the conspiracy theories is the last person to engage with Breitbart on Twitter, Dallas law student Lamar White Jr. White—who Breitbart called a "putz" less than an hour before his death—says he enjoyed the banter and had a lot of respect for Breitbart. "This is a guy who engaged with supporters and critics alike,” he tells ABC. “He seemed like a pretty engaging character, somehow larger than life."
– It sure has been an interesting week for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and things might get worse before they get better. The controversy began last Tuesday when Musk startled his own company board by announcing that he might take Tesla private and, in fact, had "funding secured." Now the SEC is looking into how Musk handled the announcement, and one law professor tells the Wall Street Journal that "the probability that there will be an SEC enforcement action is, I think, quite high." Meanwhile, some bizarre accusations about Musk emerged from rapper Azealia Banks. Coverage: Musk's explanation: On Monday, Musk wrote in a blog that he's been in talks with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund to provide the needed money to take the company private. The post appeared to be an attempt to quell the controversy over his initial tweet, notes the New York Times, which talks to people familiar with the Saudi fund who say a deal is nowhere close. In fact, the story asserts that Musk made his initial tweet with "little forethought." On Monday, Musk also tweeted that he was getting legal and financial advice on a deal from Goldman Sachs and others.
– A man suspected of killing a Texas state trooper during a traffic stop was taken into custody more than 100 miles away, authorities said Thursday night. The Harris County Sheriff's Office announced on Twitter that the suspect was apprehended in neighboring Waller County. The Texas Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement agencies identified the suspect as Dabrett Black, 32, of Lindale, Texas, the AP reports. DPS said the trooper was shot and killed before 4pm Thursday during a traffic stop on Interstate 45 near Fairfield, about 90 miles south of Dallas. The trooper, who has not been publicly identified, was shot with a rifle and died at the scene, the agency said. The suspect then fled. Hours after the shooting, the Waller County Sheriff's Office said the suspect's vehicle was spotted in Hempstead. The sheriff's office said shots were fired but didn't indicate who opened fire. The suspect was apprehended a short time later. Several Texas officials reacted to the trooper's death. In a tweet, Sen. Ted Cruz offered "prayers for the family and loved ones" of the trooper. Gov. Greg Abbott called the trooper's killing a "heinous crime." "Sad on Thanksgiving to lose one of our state troopers in the line of duty," he tweeted. "Prayers for his family. Swift justice for his killer."
– Miami-Dade police say eight people—five of them juveniles—have been wounded in a shooting at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park, the AP reports. Police spokesman Detective Daniel Ferrin says in a news release that two suspects are being questioned about the Monday afternoon shooting. He says two firearms were recovered and the active investigation is continuing. The Miami Herald reports that hundreds of people had gathered in the park after the annual MLK Day parade in the Liberty City neighborhood in northwest Miami-Dade. Ferrin says the victims range in age from 11 to 30, with five listed in stable condition and one critical. He says two juveniles grazed by bullets were treated and released on the scene. Two weapons were recovered at the scene. As for a motive, police are still investigating. "@MiamiDadePD shameful closing to the MLK Parade. Certainly not what the followers of Dr. King Jr. want out of our community," tweeted Juan Perez, director of the Miami-Dade Police Department.
– The way to increase test scores is not to give bonuses to teachers, say researchers at Vanderbilt University. A three-year study found that offers of bonuses as high as $15,000 did little to change results. The report leaves open the question of what will increase test scores, but it casts doubt on the notion of merit pay, one of the solutions being pushed by the Obama administration. “I think most people agree today that the current way in which we compensate teachers is broken," says the lead researcher. "But we don’t know what the better way is yet.” The American Federation of Teachers agrees with the study and says training is one of the key factors that needs to be improved. Story here and from AP here.
– Last month, reports emerged about a strange workplace hazard at Apple's sleek new headquarters in Cupertino. It seems that people keep walking head first into the glass walls at Apple Park. Now the San Francisco Chronicle confirms the news via 911 calls on three separate incidents in early January. Some highlights: First call: "We had an individual who ran into a glass wall pane and they hit their head. They have a small cut on their head and they are bleeding, slightly disoriented." Second call: "So we had an employee, he was on campus and he walked into a glass window, hitting his head, has a little bit of a cut on the eyebrow." When the dispatcher asks if the blood is "spurting or pouring out," the caller clarifies: "I think it’s just leaking … a small cut." Third call: "Um, I walked into a glass door on the first floor of Apple Park when I was trying to go outside, which was very silly." The dispatcher seeks clarity: "You walked through a glass door?" No, the caller responds. "I didn’t walk through a glass door. I walked into a glass door." As Gizmodo explains, Apple wanted an innovative design to allow workers to move around quickly with few distractions, "which sounds great until they started bonking into invisible barriers." (A job application Steve Jobs filled out in 1973 had some errors.)
– Thousands of enraged dairy farmers converged on the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday, and sprayed the building, and the cops who showed up to contain them, with their stock in trade: milk. The protesters arrived on tractors, blocked traffic along many of the city's main streets, then pulled out hoses and let thousands of liters of the white stuff fly, Reuters reports. They also set fire to a trailer full of hay, and hung a nondescript body in effigy. The farmers are demanding a 25% bump in milk prices, which they say have become untenably low, the BBC reports; In Belgium, for instance, a liter sells for about $0.34 wholesale, but costs about $0.52 to produce. Part of the problem: the EU sets an annual quota of about 143 tons of milk, more than Europe can consume. "It's very simple: you can't live off milk anymore," one French farmer said. "If I go on, it's thanks to European aid."
– Even though Ellen Pao lost her gender-discrimination suit against a former employer, she's still widely hailed as a hero for bringing the boys' club atmosphere of Silicon Valley under a microscope. But now she's got a tough choice on her hands: The venture-capital firm she sued, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, says she owes almost $1 million in legal fees—but it will drop its pursuit of the money if she doesn't appeal last month's ruling, reports the Wall Street Journal. Pao's attorneys say they will have a decision in a few weeks. Kleiner Perkins says it offered Pao about $1 million as a settlement before the trial began, but received no response from her legal team. Because of that offer, the company can now go after Pao for expensive witness fees, explains the New York Times. One factor that will surely weigh on the decision: A review of previous cases suggests that Pao has only a slim chance of winning on appeal, reports Reuters.
– New calculations in the cosmos have revealed a surprise: The universe appears to be expanding faster than anyone thought. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists measured the distance to stars in 19 galaxies and concluded that the universe is growing 5% to 9% quicker than expected, the researchers say in a press release. For the record, they calculate the rate to be 45.5 miles per second per megaparsec, the latter being the equivalent of 3.26 million light-years. It's surprising, UPI reports, because astronomers expected the calculations to jibe with previous ones conducted by NASA and the European Space Agency. If the new rate is confirmed, it could challenge some basic precepts about how the universe functions and challenge at least part of Einstein's theory of relativity, reports the Guardian. "If you really believe our number—and we have shed blood, sweat and tears to get our measurement right and to accurately understand the uncertainties—then it leads to the conclusion that there is a problem with predictions based on measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the leftover glow from the Big Bang," says co-author Alex Filippenko of Berkeley, per the Christian Science Monitor. While 5% to 9% may not seem like a big deal, it constitutes a "major discrepancy" in this particular case, notes Gizmodo. Part of the answer around the discrepancy may lie in the "mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95% of everything and don't emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation," says another of the project's researchers. Their findings will be published in Astrophysical Journal.
– President Trump has been accused of signing off on a legally flawed immigration order crafted without congressional input, but according to Politico's sources, his team did have some help on Capitol Hill—they just couldn't tell their bosses about the order. The sources say aides on the House Judicial Committee helped the Trump team draft the executive order between the election and his swearing-in, but they were required to sign nondisclosure agreements and Republican leaders were not informed. In a statement, a committee aide said they had been permitted "to offer their policy expertise," but Trump was responsible for the "final policy decisions contained in the executive order and its subsequent roll-out and implementation." Some senior Republican lawmakers saw a draft version of the order early last week, insiders tell BuzzFeed, but they were left in the dark about major changes, which meant even legal US residents were blocked from entering the country, until after the order was signed. "It was chaotic and very uncoordinated and it caused not only a lot of concern and problems on Capitol Hill, it caused obviously a big PR backlash for the administration," one GOP aide says. According to the Washington Post's sources, the bungled rollout has exposed not just a rift between the White House and congressional Republicans, but between different factions in the White House itself, with many unhappy with Steve Bannon's disregard for tradition. "The problem they’ve got is this is an off-Broadway performance of a show that is now the number one hit on Broadway," says Newt Gingrich.
– Americans trying to save for retirement might be pleased to learn that a new law expected next year will require something that sounds obvious: All financial advisers will be required to work in their clients' best interests. As Vox explains, that is "amazingly" not the case now. Two kinds of advisers currently exist: "Registered investment advisers," who tend to work with the wealthy, are held to high fiduciary standards akin to the standards of doctors and lawyers, and they must indeed work in the best interests of their clients. But the other group, "broker-dealers," are more like salespeople who work on commissions. They're required only to provide "suitable" advice, and there's nothing stopping them from steering their middle-class clients into high-fee products that result in fat commissions for themselves. The Obama administration has been trying to tighten the law—to ensure that all advisers put their clients' interests above their own or their company's—and the spending bill that cleared Congress last week all but ensures it will happen. The financial industry had mounted a "last-minute battle" to kill the provision, but it fell short, reports the Wall Street Journal. As a result, the Labor Department is expected to draft the legislation in January ahead of its implementation later in the year. Proponents say that it will save people big money in their IRAs and 401(k)s, while the industry argues that it will drive many brokers out of business and thus put the price of getting investment advice out of reach for many. At Bloomberg View, meanwhile, former broker and SEC chief Arthur Levitt argues that the change is "long overdue."
– She trusted him. Police say an 8-year-old girl murdered in Santa Cruz, California, willingly went to the apartment of her teenage killer, reports USA Today. The unidentified 15-year-old suspect lives in the same complex and even helped in the search for Maddy Middleton. He was standing nearby when detectives found her body in a recycling bin, reports the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “She knew him," says police chief Kevin Vogel. "She was 8 years old. I think she had a reasonable amount of trust in him. I don’t think she was taken against her will." Maddy was last seen on surveillance video riding her scooter about 5pm Sunday at the Tannery Arts Center, described as a housing complex for local artists. She lived there with her mom. About an hour later, she was reported missing to police. "It's my belief she was killed before we ever got the phone call," says Vogel, who provided no details on how she was killed. Autopsy results were pending, and the suspect may be charged as an adult.
– More details about President Trump's alleged attempt to blackmail the hosts of Morning Joe are leaking out, including the reported involvement of his son-in-law. New York reports Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski found out in March the National Enquirer was planning to run a story about their affair, which had not yet been made public. Scarborough texted Jared Kushner about the story in April, and Kushner told him he needed to personally apologize to Trump for negative coverage in order to kill the story, according to sources close to the situation. Scarborough declined, and the Enquirer ran a story titled "Morning Joe Sleazy Cheating Scandal" in June. The Enquirer denies any knowledge of conversations between the White House and the Morning Joe hosts. In a tweet, Trump claimed Scarborough tried to get him to kill the story; Scarborough denies that. Scarborough also claims to have text and phone records from Trump aides proving his version of events, NBC News reports. Brzezinski also claims the Enquirer had been calling her teen daughters about the story. Trump is friends with the head of the tabloid—a relationship detailed in the New Yorker—and last August tweeted that he would "tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!” Earlier this week, Trump falsely claimed Brzezinski had shown up at Mar-a-Lago "bleeding badly from a face-lift." Scarborough tells Vanity Fair that at the time an impressed Trump had relentlessly pestered Brzezinski for the name of her plastic surgeon.
– The White House says it's "pleased with the early response" to President Obama's new Twitter account, which has crushed a record and received plenty of adoring messages. But it's the hateful, racist posts that are getting attention, including from the Secret Service. New York Times reports users have called Obama racial slurs and "monkey," while others have told him to kill himself. In one post now removed, @jeffgully49 shared a doctored image of Obama's campaign poster showing the president with a broken neck and his head in a noose. Rather than his slogan "Hope," the poster read "Rope." The Times reports that in another post, account owner Jeff Gullickson of Minneapolis said the Secret Service—whose "Internet Threat Desk" monitors all such communications—had paid him a visit. The paper shares research company Topsy's count of one unspecified slur as being directed at President Obama at least 150 times on Monday, the day of Obama's first tweet. The Washington Post reports it took just 10 minutes for a racist tweet to be directed at @POTUS. And then there's the vulgar content. Obama tweeted this very tame sentiment on Wednesday: "An honor to address the Coast Guard Class of 2015. Confident they'll help us meet big challenges like climate change." It was met with plenty of unprintable replies. Gawker on Monday pointed out that every tweet Obama gets, including, say, "spank me daddy," will enter the official White House archives under the Presidential Records Act. (Obama also had a racist problem on Google Maps.)
– Rick Santorum has released four years of his tax returns to Politico, and they show that while his income falls a long way short of Mitt Romney's or Newt Gingrich's, his Washington connections have helped him prosper since leaving Congress. His income hit $1.1 million in 2009—up from nearly $660,000 in 2007—much of it coming from media appearances and consulting work on behalf of health care and energy interests, AP reports. It slipped to $923,000 in 2010. Santorum and his wife, Karen, appear to have paid a tax rate close to 30%—nearly double the rate Mitt Romney's tax returns revealed. Santorum—whose disclosure forms last year showed investment and real estate assets of up to $2.5 million—has now released more tax returns than either Romney or Gingrich. Ron Paul has not released his. "I don’t want to be embarrassed because I don’t have a greater income" than the other candidates, Paul quipped during a debate last month.
– The "person of interest" detained earlier today in Los Angeles' string of arsons has been arrested, reports the Los Angeles Times. "I feel very good that we've got the right guy," says LA Police Chief Charlie Beck. He "had the right stuff in his van, and we are very confident we found our man.'' Indeed, there have been no new fires since the suspect was detained. Police say that the suspect is a German who was embroiled in a fight with federal immigration authorities. Meanwhile, sources tell the Times that they spotted the suspect in the back of a police cruiser, and a number of them flipped him the bird—a gesture he returned with an eerie smile. "It was creepy," says a music producer who witnessed the exchange. Click for more on the case.
– It’s been almost an entire week since the 2010 election, which means it’s time to start speculating about 2012! Here’s the buzz on all the GOP’s presidential hopefuls, courtesy of The Week: Mike Huckabee: The governor-turned-Fox host’s “aw shucks” style has made him the early favorite—he came out on top in CNN’s latest poll, is strong in Iowa, and beat President Obama by eight points in a hypothetical poll match-up. But Rob Port at Say Anything complains that he’s “a big-government Republican nanny statist.” Mitt Romney: He finished just 1% behind Huckabee in the aforementioned poll, and a lot of 2010 winners owe him a favor. "My gut tells me Romney's the frontrunner," says James Joyner at Outside the Beltway. The problem? The health care plan he championed in Massachusetts looks a whole lot like ObamaCare. Sarah Palin: She’s really popular with the base, but the rest of the country hates her. Unlike Huckabee and Romney, she trails Obama in head-to-head polling. Even George W. Bush doesn't approve. Newt Gingrich: The ex-House speaker runs strong against Obama, and he’s won over the Tea Party base with his constant extreme rhetoric. Still, Port doesn't think voters will want “a tired old retread more interested in selling books.” Click here for the scoop on hopeful No. 5.
– Big news for fans of sugary breakfast cereals and social-media-driven brand promotions: Lucky Charms is giving people the chance to win "the unicorn of the cereal world," a box of Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms, People reports. According to General Mills, the contest is in response to the constant requests the company gets for an all-marshmallow box of the cereal. Also, Biz Markie is involved for some reason. To win one of only 10 boxes being made available, post a selfie of yourself holding an imaginary box of Lucky Charms to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and tag it #Lucky10Sweepstakes by Sunday. Or, you know, just buy one of these.
– President Obama's trade agenda lives to fight another day. The Senate this morning handed him the 60 votes he needed, voting 60-37 to end debate on his request for fast-track negotiating authority. It'll vote on final passage for fast-track tomorrow, which the New York Times sees as "virtually ensured" as final passage needs just 51 votes. As earlier reported, 14 Democratic senators backed fast track in a late May vote, and 13 did so today. The timeline, per the Hill: After the fast-track vote, the Senate will vote on a package that includes Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA)—a measure that would provide job training and other help to people who lose their jobs because of the trade deal. Democrats have insisted TAA be paired with the fast track; some on the other side of the aisle oppose it. The House will then need to vote on it, and both Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have pledged to make TAA law. As Politico puts it, today's vote "came as Democrats wavered on whether to trust" them to do so.
– You may think you know Tonya Harding, the US figure skater whose career was ruined when she was associated with an attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan, ahead of the 1994 US Figure Skating Championships. But Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya might convince you otherwise. Presented as a faux documentary, the film starring Margot Robbie has a 90% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what they're saying: "I, Tonya takes greater risks with the biopic genre than any other in recent memory, and it's remarkable how much of it lands upright. It's the triple axel of based-on-true-story movies," writes Andrew Lapin at NPR. Robbie "magnificently" embodies Harding with "a childlike sincerity, a lost-soul cluelessness," he writes. This, and the film's chaotic mix of personas and styles, "builds to a satisfying and illuminating portrait of a poor American girl who maybe never stood a chance." "There's something genuinely electric about the narrative's headlong tumble into madness," coming from "a script where the truth was irrefutably stranger than any fiction," writes Leah Greenblatt at Entertainment Weekly. She found the skating scenes "thrilling." But "Robbie is the real revelation," Greenblatt writes. "She's a powerhouse: a scrappy, defiant subversion of the American dream. You won't just find yourself rooting for this crazy kid; you might even fall a little bit in love." It's "a darkly satiric comedy with the tenor of a Coen brothers movie" and "earns the sort of high marks for creative interpretation that its protagonist complained eluded her," writes Brian Lowry at CNN. But he argues "the sleight of hand used to realize the skating sequences is visually distracting in places." He also says Robbie "struggles" at the start to truly come across as just 15. And though she recovers to deliver "a layered and unexpectedly sympathetic portrait," Allison Janney, playing Harding's mother, "pretty nearly steals the show." Christy Lemire is effusive: Robbie gives "the performance of a lifetime," conveying "the requisite swagger of an athlete at the top of her sport" as well as the "low sense of self-worth buried underneath." As for the film itself, it highlights Harding's outsider status from the outset, which "makes her story relatable beyond the insular world of figure skating," Lemire writes at RogerEbert.com. She concludes by calling I, Tonya a "nearly flawless program" and "one of the year's best films."
– In a case both bizarre and horrifying, a 19-year-old California woman is burning from the inside out. How that's possible: an allergic reaction. Yaasmeen Castanada, a 19-year-old Cal State LA sophomore and mother to a 4-month-old, was battling a sore throat on Thanksgiving, so she took a friend's antibiotic, reports CNN. She rapidly "started having a hard time breathing, and she told her mom that her lips were burning, her throat, her eyes, they got so red that she couldn't talk," says her aunt. Within 24 hours she was hooked up to a ventilator; she's now at the University of California, Irvine, burn center. Her initial diagnosis was known as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, an allergic reaction that caused her skin's layers to part, resulting in open wounds. "It can be considered a burn from the inside out," a dermatologist tells ABC7. But as burn center director Dr. Victor Joe tells CNN, that disease refers to a condition that affects up to a third of the skin; roughly two-thirds of Castanada's skin is affected, and her condition is now called Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis. Though the mortality rate for the diseases can reach as high as 25%, Joe believes she will survive. But he says "we are particularly concerned because her eyes have been affected. This can cause scarring of the corneas, which could lead to permanent blindness." Per a GoFundMe page set up by her family, Castanada has had surgeries since Friday on the top and bottom portions of her body in which skin was scraped to spur new growth. Joe calls the case "sobering" and notes that it's one of about half-a-dozen his unit has seen in the last year. (Last month, a peanut allergy killed a college student.)
– Monday was Bitcoin Pizza Day, the anniversary of the day in 2010 when developer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas in the online currency's first recognized transaction. The same amount of bitcoins would be worth around $22.5 million now. The currency, which sank to $443 a year ago, is up more than 65% so far this month and has been soaring to record highs, passing $2,000 for the first time over the weekend and breaking through the $2,100 and $2,200 marks on Monday, reports CNBC, which notes that a $100 investment in bitcoins exactly seven years ago would be worth more than $75 million at the $2,251 price it reached Monday. Analysts say several factors are behind the steep rise in the price of the currency, including political uncertainty worldwide and the ironing out of technical issues. Japan has also given bitcoins a big boost with new legislation allowing retailers to accept the currency. "The Japanese have caught the bitcoin bug and inefficiencies across markets are being exposed," CryptoCompare founder Charles Hayter tells Business Insider. But other "crypto-currencies," including Ethereum and Ripple, have been rising even faster than bitcoin, leading analysts to warn that a bubble appears to be developing, the BBC reports.
– Plenty of words of praise have been offered for the four Marines shot to death in Chattanooga yesterday, but it's a veteran's silent tribute that is resonating online. Ben Kinsey stood on a South Carolina bridge for four hours yesterday with an American flag, an hour for each victim, reports CBS News. He wasn't looking to call attention to the salute: It just so happened that Noah Smith saw Kinsey on the I-20 overpass and stopped to ask what was going on. His subsequent Facebook post has been shared more than 40,000 times. Smith writes that he parked his car and walked to Kinsey, saying, "'Sir this is really awesome of you but why are you doing this? He replies with 'I'm standing out here for the four Marines killed today in TN. You know they can survive combat and come home during a peaceful time and get killed.'" Kinsey tells CBS that he shows up on the bridge every Sept. 11 for an 11-hour tribute.
– The Justice Department's special Medicare fraud strike team made its biggest bust ever yesterday, charging 107 doctors, nurses, and other alleged fraudsters in a "nationwide takedown" affecting seven cities. All told, they're accused of bilking the government out of $452 million, the Los Angeles Times reports. Among the scams: billing Medicare for never-purchased power wheelchairs, never-held therapy sessions, and unnecessary feeding tubes. Health and Human Services also suspended or otherwise penalized 52 medical providers where it found "credible allegations of fraud." The lion's share of the fraud was allegedly committed by seven people at two Baton Rouge community health centers, who billed Medicare $225.6 million for services the government alleges were unnecessary and often never actually performed, Reuters reports. Kathleen Sebelius hailed the arrests as "another example of how the Affordable Care Act is helping the Obama administration fight fraud," arguing that the controversial law had provided the resources to make the busts. This is the fourth big bust by the fraud team in two years.
– A viral video campaign may not have turned up a warlord accused of murder, rape, and kidnapping in central Africa, but the White House is hoping a ramped up effort by the United States will. The Washington Post reports that President Obama has ordered a strengthened US presence in Uganda—including at least four CV-22 Osprey aircraft, 150 Air Force Special Ops forces and other airmen—in an attempt to find Joseph Kony and deliver him to the International Criminal Court. That brings the total of US troops in the country to 300, outnumbering the estimated 250 fighters of Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, which has taken some major blows recently. The parameters for the new troops—which also include refueling planes, the BBC notes—will be much the same as when Obama sent 100 troops to hunt for Kony in 2011: Personnel may "provide information, advice, and assistance" to the African Union task force hunting Kony and the LRA across Uganda, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Congo, but they may not engage in combat unless in self-defense. The Ospreys in particular "will make a significant difference in the ability to respond to leads" about Kony's whereabouts, and can carry 24 troops each, a Defense Department official said.
– A university has admitted to misplacing a gram of weapons-grade plutonium, and federal authorities want to fine them $8,500. Per CNN, Idaho State University has not been able to account for the bit of radioactive material since 2003 but, nonetheless, believes it was properly stored at a licensed disposal facility. However, with no documented proof, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Friday it must propose the fine. Dr. Cornelis Van der Schyf, vice president for research at the university, blamed partially completed paperwork from 15 years ago as the school tried to dispose of the plutonium. "Unfortunately, because there was a lack of sufficient historical records to demonstrate the disposal pathway employed in 2003, the source in question had to be listed as missing," he said in a statement to the AP. The statement said the plutonium "poses no direct health issue or risk to public safety." The plutonium was being used to develop ways to ensure nuclear waste containers weren't leaking and to find ways to detect radioactive material being illegally brought into the US following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. While the missing amount could not be used to make a nuclear bomb, it could be used to create a so-called dirty bomb to spread nuclear contamination. The university, which has 30 days to dispute the proposed fine, reported the plutonium missing on Oct. 13, according to documents released by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency said a school employee doing a routine inventory discovered the university could only account for 13 of its 14 plutonium sources, each weighing about the same small amount.
– The only people more villainous than clown-faced maniacs are the people who make movie trailers about them, apparently. Comicbook.com reports a Scottish Reddit user named BlackPanther2016 claims he or she is suing Warner Bros. and DC over what he claims were misleading Suicide Squad trailers that heavily featured Jared Leto's Joker. As the Huffington Post points out, despite a prominent presence in the advertising campaign for Suicide Squad, the Joker only appears in the film for about 15 minutes. "I drove 300 miles to London to go watch these specific scenes they had explicitly advertised in their TV ads," BlackPanther2016 writes on Reddit. "They didn't show them to me.” BlackPanther2016 says his brother is a lawyer and their court case for false advertising starts Thursday. He compares film trailers to restaurant menus, and says he definitely didn't get what he ordered when he went to Suicide Squad. “I'm now taking this to court," BlackPanther2016 writes. "I want my refund, the trauma of being embarrassed as I was being kicked out and people laughing at me for wanting my refund." HuffPo doesn't think the disappointed Joker fan has a legal leg to stand on. And Complex can't figure out whether or not the whole thing is a joke.
– Louisiana was good to Taylor Swift and now the singer is giving back in the form of a $1 million donation to help victims of the devastating floods that have killed at least 11 people, reports the AP. The 26-year-old says the donation is a big thank you to her “wonderful fans” in Louisiana “who made us feel completely at home” when Swift kicked off her last world tour there. “The fact that so many people in Louisiana have been forced out of their own homes this week is heartbreaking," she says in a statement, urging "those who can to help out and send your love and prayers their way during this devastating time." The contribution isn’t Swift’s first. Last year the pop idol gave $50,000 each to a young fan battling cancer and an ailing nephew of one of her backup dancers, notes US Weekly. Among others: $50,000 to Philadelphia Children’s Hospital in 2014, and $100,000 to flood relief in Iowa in 2008. (For much more on the scope of the devastating flooding, click here.)
– While his mother was preparing food in the kitchen, a 5-year-old Florida boy called 911 to invite law enforcement officers over for Thanksgiving dinner, the AP reports. Monica Webster of the Walton County Sheriff's Office tells the News Herald that with all the bad calls they receive every day, this was a happy call. But young Billy Nolin's family had no idea he'd invited guests to dinner. Mom Landi McCormick says she was cooking when Billy's grandfather noticed him talking to someone on an old cellphone. McCormick reprimanded Billy when he admitted calling 911. He was crying when Deputy Dannon Byrd drove up. She says the deputy thanked Billy for his kind invitation, then reminded him he should only use 911 for emergencies. The deputies gave Billy a sheriff's badge.
– Being able to freely turn to whatever higher power one chooses (or none at all) is one of the principles America was founded on, but in some states, residents take their religion more seriously than others. A Pew Research Center survey from 2014 was placed under the 24/7 Wall St. microscope to determine which states were most and least religious, and Mississippi took the No. 1 slot, while New Hampshire fell at the bottom. Christianity is the most common US religion (70% of Americans identify as such), but those who don't adhere to any religion are the fastest-growing segment, with the percentage of "religiously unaffiliated" adults increasing in all states except for one. See which states are most pious and which aren't as wrapped up in worship:
– A freestyle skier credited with helping get her sport included in the 2014 Winter Olympics is in a coma in Salt Lake City after a fall, reports the Toronto Globe and Mail. Canadian Sarah Burke, 29, fell yesterday during a training run at a Utah mountain resort. Burke has won gold four times at the Winter X Games in superpipe skiing, which the Salt Lake City Tribune says is similar to snowboarding's halfpipe, but on skis. She was a heavy favorite for Olympic gold in Russia in 2014. "She landed a trick down in the bottom end of the pipe, and kind of bounced, from her feet to her head," says the CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association. "It wasn’t anything that looked like a catastrophic fall, so I’m a bit mystified." The accident happened on the same halfpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce fell and suffered a brain injury in 2009. He is now back on the slopes.
– If anything, the land in the 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone left largely untouched since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 is cheap. After all, studies suggest it won't be inhabitable until the year 4986, reported McClatchy DC in April, and pretty much nothing can be harvested from it. But now Ostap Semerak, Ukraine's environment minister, is drumming up foreign interest in solar power projects across the wasteland, which he says is uniquely, if a bit ironically, suited to renewables, reports Bloomberg. PV Magazine reports that Igor Gramotkin, today the general director of the Chernobyl plant, in April pointed out that "land and transmission line connection" are the most expensive elements of a solar undertaking. Lucky then, that "we already have high-voltage transmission lines that were previously used for the nuclear stations," says Semerak. "And we have many people trained to work at power plants" (thousands still work at Chernobyl). Plus there's all that inexpensive land. Ukraine's interest in renewables is partly politically motivated given the fragile cease-fire with Kremlin-backed rebels near the Russian border, not to mention increasing friction with the Putin camp over natural gas bills. Semerak says four energy companies from Canada and two investment firms from the US have expressed interest in a solar complex at the Chernobyl site, while Ukrainian developers intend to install panels there before 2016 is through. (Apparently human habitation is worse for wildlife than radiation, according to this exclusion-zone activity.)
– Britain's most popular tweeter has apparently quit Twitter after being lambasted for comments about women's sexuality. Actor Stephen Fry tweeted "Bye Bye" to his 1.9 million followers after he claimed he was misquoted in a magazine interview that women don't enjoy sex. According to the interview, the homosexual celebrity, 53, said women obviously aren't interested in sex because they don't seek out casual encounters on the street, reports the Telegraph. He said women only have sex because that's "the price they are willing to pay" for a relationship. "If women liked sex as much as men, there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas," the magazine Attitude quotes him as saying. "Women would go and hang around in churchyards thinking: 'God, I've got to get my f****ing rocks off', or they'd go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to shag behind a bush." He added: "I feel sorry for straight men." Fry insists he was misquoted in the story that triggered a firestorm of criticism, though he hasn't clarified his comments. "Now I'm the AntiChrist," he complained. (Click here for a list of celebs who should quit Twitter.)
– The Pentagon inspector general’s office didn't take the Gen. John Allen-Jill Kelley email exchange lightly, assigning 15 investigators toiling seven days a week to review the thousands of pages of documents. They've now sussed out between 60 and 70 emails that "bear a fair amount of scrutiny," according to a defense official, who didn't elaborate on what those emails might contain. The New York Times reports the purpose of the investigation, which likely won't conclude until 2013, is to determine if one of three violations occurred: misconduct (ie, adultery or inappropriate language), substantial use of government property for personal matters, or a security breach. Those investigators aren't the only ones getting busy. A previously silent Kelley is now defending herself, through her attorney. Abbe Lowell, a big-time Washington lawyer who has represented Bill Clinton and John Edwards, yesterday released emails, phone recordings, and more evidence that, he says, prove Kelley did not try to exploit her relationship with David Petraeus. He also sent out three letters connected to the scandal, the AP reports: He asked the US Attorney's Office in Tampa why Kelley's name was released in the first place, adding that federal privacy laws could apply. He wrote another letter to a businessman Kelley was trying to help make a deal with South Korea, before she lost her honorary consul status. The businessman, Adam Victor, has said in interviews that Kelley was not a skilled negotiator, and Lowell says he defamed her in an attempt to bask in his "15 minutes of fame." In a letter to the Attorney Consumer Assistance Program (which fields complaints about lawyers), Lowell accuses attorney Barry Cohen of talking publicly about conversations he had with Kelley in 2009, thus breaking attorney-client privilege.
– She wasn't a Target employee, but a woman who sure seemed like one allegedly made off with around $40,000 worth of iPhones from a Virginia store. NBC Washington reports Fairfax County cops are looking for the retail impostor, who they say donned attire resembling a worker's getup, waltzed into the stockroom of the Alexandria location with a box, and loaded the box with dozens of iPhones before taking off. WTOP reports the woman, whose image was caught on tape, seemed to be familiar with how things worked at the store, including employee hours and where the iPhones were stored. Police say the theft occurred March 15, but posted about it on Facebook Monday with a call to "help us nab an iPhone thief." (Target recently had a Boston problem.)
– The Apple iPad made its television debut last night with a 30-second commercial on the Academy Awards telecast, which you can view above. The keen eyes at Mashable caught CEO Steve Jobs on the red carpet, and the spot "explains" why he was there. Alternatively, the Detroit Free Press reports, the Disney board member could merely have been supporting subsidiary Pixar's Up, a best picture nominee.
– Americans flocked to the polls this morning, forming long lines in many places around the country. USA Today counted 75 people in line at one DC polling place. Here are some of the stories filtering in nationally: Some problems have already cropped up in Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. One poll worker was caught telling voters they needed a registration card and picture ID, when the law only requires one of the two. Several problems with voting machines also cropped up, in one case forcing voters to be turned away for up to an hour. The lines were also long in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney cast his ballot today, the Boston Globe reports. When asked who he voted for, Romney replied, "I think you know." Scott Brown, meanwhile, marveled at the lines at his polling place. "I've never seen it this crowded before," he said, "and I've been here for 25 years." Joe Biden caused a bit of a stir after casting his ballot in Delaware, when a reporter asked if this was the last time he would vote for himself. "Oh, I don't think so," he replied, which Fox News is taking as a hint that he might run for president again. In New York and New Jersey, confusion reigned, the Wall Street Journal reports. Power outages forced some polling places to make on-the-fly changes, like opening voting machines and switching to paper ballots. "It was very disorganized. You couldn't tell who was running the organization," says one Hoboken voter. The Miami New Times is reporting "imposing lines," even though half of likely Florida voters have already voted—adding that, because Florida's GOP has put 11 lengthy constitutional amendments on the ballot, voting can take a while.
– John McCain thinks a lot of people are getting ahead of themselves. Asked on CBS’ Early Show if he’d endorse Sarah Palin for president in 2012, he said she’d make an “outstanding candidate,” but that it was too early to say he’d endorse her. “I don’t think Sarah would want me to, before she’s even able to make a decision” about running, he said, according to the AP, adding “It’s very early to start picking winners and losers.” For that matter, McCain thinks it’s too early to call the midterms. “I'm a little worried about some of my Republican friends who are taking a victory lap about a week ahead of time,” he said. “Indications are that, as always, the Democrats have a very sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation. We've got to get our vote out.”
– Justice Anthony Kennedy may end up casting the deciding vote in one of the Supreme Court's biggest cases this term—and he appears to be leaning toward joining the court's more liberal justices when it comes to reining in gerrymandering. The court heard arguments Tuesday in a redistricting case from Wisconsin, where Democrats say Republicans created districts so lopsided that they violated voters' constitutional rights. Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, seemed skeptical of the arguments made by lawyers defending the Wisconsin voting map and didn't ask any questions at all of the lawyer representing the Democratic voters, which "would seem to bode well for the challengers," SCOTUSBlog notes. Justices including Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it was time for the Supreme Court to step in and stop partisan gerrymandering, though Chief Justice John Roberts said he worried that the court itself would be seen as partisan if it started striking down voting districts, the New York Times reports. That would "cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this court in the eyes of the country," he said. Republicans including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. John McCain are siding with Democrats on the issue. "It is time to say hasta la vista to gerrymandering and it is time to terminate gerrymandering," Schwarzenegger said outside the court, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
– One of the most touching moments of the Rio Olympics has been rewarded with this year's Fair Play Awards. American runner Abbey D'Agostino and New Zealand's Nikki Hamblin, who helped each other finish the race after falling during a women's 5,000-meter heat, were given the awards Saturday night for what the IOC describes as "two separate acts of selflessness and exemplary sportsmanship." D'Agostino, who was accidentally brought down by Hamblin, helped the New Zealand runner to her feet. Hamblin then stayed with her fellow runner when she realized D'Agostino had injured her leg in the fall. "Winning this award is overwhelming," says Hamblin, per the Sydney Morning Herald. "I am proud [at] what we did and truly believe that you can be both a competitor and kind and responsive at the same time," she says. "Everyone comes here to compete, but there are a lot of people who don't achieve that, and the journey is really important, too." The IOC decided to allow both women to compete in the final, though D'Agostino was too injured to take part, the Guardian reports.
– Eric Hites recently hit 40 and decided it was time to make some serious lifestyle changes. Having reached 560 pounds thanks to soda and a whole lot of sitting around, the DJ says both his health and his marriage are at stake, reports the Newport Daily News. Unfortunately, after getting off to a good start in Falmouth, Mass., (Tiverton-Little Compton Patch reports his dad dropped him and his $170 bike "on the side of the road") and losing 60 pounds in those first two weeks, the Indiana man hit a bump in the road, reports Fox 59: He bent the rim of one of his wheels in Tiverton, RI. "I thought it would take four months, but [having started in June] I’m only in Rhode Island," he says. Fortunately the owner of nearby Newport Bicycle, who says it "seems like a really good cause," built him a new bike by fitting a frame with mountain bike wheels that should support his weight all the way to California; he'll reportedly hit the road again today. Having first made a name for himself when he published the cookbook Everybody Loves Ramen, a compilation of 50 recipes from his college days (he studied graphic design but never graduated), Hites hopes to publish again, this time about his journey. He's traveling with his gear in tow, and writes on his website Fat Guy Across America that first and foremost he's got "to prove things to my wife and love." Patch reports the two were estranged when he set off, and that his wife, who was widowed once before, didn't want to repeat the experience. She has reportedly told him his quest is "the most romantic thing." Hites says he doesn't know his exact weight now (he dresses in size 70 pants), but he may weigh himself on the big scale at the junkyard up the road before getting back on the saddle. He says he hopes to drop down to a chubby but healthier 300 pounds. (When it comes to marriage, this is apparently the best age to wed.)
– The NFL is getting quicker with its mea culpas: Amid another growing controversy, the league admitted its mistake today in penalizing a player over a Muslim prayer on the field last night, reports the Kansas City Star. In the game, referees flagged Chiefs player Husain Abdullah, a devout Muslim, after he slid to his knees for a prayer after scoring a touchdown. Immediately, the league began taking flak: If, say, Tim Tebow, can pray in the end zone and not be penalized, why not a Muslim player? Earlier today, the Council on American-Islamic Relations urged the NFL to clarify its rules to "prevent the appearance of a double-standard," reports AP. Hours later, the NFL said the penalty was, in fact, a blown call. While league rules prevent players from celebrating while on the ground, there is an exception: The "officiating mechanic in this situation is not to flag a player who goes to the ground as part of religious expression, and as a result, there should have been no penalty on the play," says an NFL spokesperson. Abdullah, for his part, wasn't making a big deal of it. (The NFL lost a legal fight today with the FCC over game blackouts.)
– Amanda Knox may yet be extradited, but for now, the 27-year-old has a new gig: writing for a small Seattle newspaper. Patrick Robinson, web editor for the West Seattle Herald, tells the Daily Beast that Knox has been freelancing for a "few months," covering human interest stories and high school plays—in her recent review, Knox philosophizes about how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead questions "everything one takes for granted: time, space, identity, reality, fate, freedom." "Amanda's a very bright, very capable, highly qualified writer," says Robinson, admitting that she used a pen name at first. "She's certainly been through [a] lot and been very easy to work with and very interested and eager in doing stories." As for Italy's ongoing attempt to get Knox back overseas, Robinson says it has "little to nothing" to do with her standing at the Herald: "Why not give her the opportunity to be an actual human being versus a celebrity?" (Knox's ex-boyfriend changed his story over the summer.)
– At least it's not an ancient Egyptian pictogram. While this year's Oxford Dictionaries word of the year is not an actual word, it is a popular image: the "face with tears of joy" emoji, Newsweek reports. "You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication," says Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries. "It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully." Oxford chose this particular emoji by working with SwiftKey, maker of the popular keyboard app, and learning that "face with tears of joy" is the world's most popular emoji. Among the shortlisted 2015 words: ad blocker (noun): the software the stops ads from popping up on websites. Dark Web (noun): that corner of the Internet where website operators and users can go untraced and unidentified. lumbersexual (noun): a youthful urban male who creates a rugged, outdoorsey appearance, usually with checkered shirt and beard. they (singular pronoun): used when mentioning a person who may be male or female. While the "face with tears of joy" emoji took first place, neither it nor any other emoji will be going into Oxford's databases anytime soon, Time reports. (Check out Oxford's word of the year from last year and the year before.)
– The New York Mets' owners have avoided a trial over what they knew about Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme by settling today with the trustee for Madoff victims for $162 million, the New York Times reports. Trustee Irving Picard had sued Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz for $1 billion (later knocked down to $386 million), saying they disregarded warnings about Madoff's dealings; they claimed ignorance. Much of the $162 million will be balanced by money Katz and Wilpon will receive as "net losers" from the scheme themselves. Katz and Wilpon say they're due $178 million as Madoff victims; they'll get a percentage of whatever Picard can obtain from the beneficiaries of the scheme—money that will include the cash from their own settlement. So what does all this mean for the Mets? Wilpon and Katz probably wouldn't have settled had it put their team ownership at risk, ESPN notes. But the team is still tens of millions of dollars in debt to Bank of America and Major League Baseball, among others. The upshot: For Wilpon and Katz to maintain ownership of the team, they'll be counting on fans' attendance.
– Retired Ohio police officer Matt Hickey will get to keep his K9 partner, Ajax, but he "escalated the situation by being disingenuous," his former boss says, per the New York Daily News. Marietta Police Chief Rodney Hupp says Hickey—who announced he would have to bid on his "family member" after retiring from the force last week—has been appointed an auxiliary officer, meaning Ajax can remain with him. Hupp calls the move "a win-win for everyone," but he says it was in the works since Thursday, when Hickey told the media he feared losing his dog. While police were bound by a confidentiality agreement, "you could have stopped this train wreck, simply by saying, 'They're working on a solution,'" Hupp told Hickey at a Monday press conference. "I'm ashamed of you," Hickey responded from the crowd. "You're making up small lies." Hupp admits there's "bad blood," but that won't affect Hickey's status as an auxiliary officer or his ability to keep Ajax. Some $69,000 raised to help Hickey pay for the dog will now be given to charities that work with police dogs, reports CNN.
– Rihanna's derriere isn't as ample as it once was, and the singer doesn't like that fact. "I'm a size 0—and not happy about it!" she tells Us Weekly. "I went way too far. I prefer myself a bit chunkier. I want my old butt back!" The 24-year-old lays the blame on her crazy schedule, which apparently has her losing out on sleep ... and landed her in the hospital post-Met Ball. "It's harsh on your body!" she says of her jam-packed life. And her run-yourself-ragged approach has many worried she's falling apart. Chris Brown and Drake apparently don't mind the size of Rihanna's booty; click for the latest on their reported bar brawl over the singer.
– Apparently the rabbits on Washington state's Whidbey Island are going at it like, well, rabbits. The population in the town of Langley, home to barely more than 1,000 humans, is now numbering into the hundreds, reports NBC News, with residents saying "we've never seen it like this before." Many locals believe that the bunnies are descended from European hares that fled the Island County Fairgrounds decades ago. And while they may be cute, it's getting gross. "There is feces everywhere and there are some illnesses that can be carried and transmitted," Brian Miller, facilities director for the South Whidbey School District, tells KING 5. And the rabbits are burrowing so furiously that they've pockmarked the middle school football field and are destroying the foundations of buildings. "Every day there are new holes, and the ones we've filled in are dug out again," says Miller of the football field, which the district just spent $80,000 restoring. Though the mayor in January indicated the town would let the bunnies be ("I don't think we're going to get into the business of trapping and euthanizing rabbits," said Mayor Fred McCarthy per the South Whidbey Record), an Oct. 7 meeting has been scheduled to discuss the problem. Among the proposed solutions: unleash raptors to hunt them down or physically move the rabbits elsewhere. (At least the bunnies don't appear to be pot-crazed.)
– Hard times elsewhere haven't done any damage to Google's bottom line. The company has announced a whopping 26% year-on-year jump in profits for the third quarter of this year, with net income of $2.73 billion on nearly $10 billion revenue, most of it from advertising, the BBC reports. "The word that springs to mind is 'gangbusters,'" CEO Larry Page boasted, hailing Google+ as a success—although one senior engineer has a different opinion. Google now employs over 2,500 more people than it did three months ago, with a total head count of 31,353 worldwide, GeekWire notes. The news isn't all good for Google, however: The IRS is auditing how the company dodged federal taxes by shifting profits offshore, sources tell Bloomberg. Google is believed to have avoided some $1 billion in taxes worldwide by using a pair of strategies called the “Double Irish” and “Dutch Sandwich."
– NASA is reporting a glitch with one of the two cooling pumps on the International Space Station, but it says none of the six crew members are in danger, reports CNN. The crew shut down some non-essential electrical systems as a precaution while they figure what went wrong and how to fix it. Best case, it's a software glitch and a relatively easy repair. Otherwise, a spacewalk will be necessary, reports NBC News. It will likely take days or perhaps weeks to sort it all out. "They're fine for the near future," says a NASA spokesman.
– It's hard to fathom, but a Chicago woman has managed to get herself arrested 396 times in the last 35 years, reports NBC Chicago. This week, 52-year-old Shermain Miles got released from jail to a residential home for ex-cons, and she told the Sun-Times she is determined to avoid yet another return trip by staying away from old haunts and bad influences. "I’m really not that bad a person," she says. "It was the alcohol I was drinking that turned me into a monster." Her offenses range from minor ones such as disorderly conduct to scarier ones such as an assault on a local alderman two years ago. “Hopefully, she’s seen the light and is tired of being incarcerated," says the chair of the state's Parole Review Board.
– In his only print interview during a visit to the UN, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared “complex, even bizarre,” writes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. The “firebrand” in public was “subdued and very soft-spoken” in person, offering repeated “olive branches” to his interviewer: "We truly like and love the people of the United States," he noted. But after opening with a blessing for all Kristof’s readers, he grew testy over some of the journalist’s questions. Ahmadinejad renewed an offer to end Iranian nuclear enrichment if the West provided the country with fuel already 20% enriched. The material would be used for “cancer treatment medication,” he said. Meanwhile, the Iranian president appeared frustrated by questions over the American hikers held in Iran; while he didn’t call them spies, he said any country would have punished them. As for the mid-protest killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, Ahmadinejad “constructed his own reality,” Kristof writes. “He suggested that she had been murdered by his opponents, working with the BBC, as part of a bizarre snuff film.” Click through for the full article, or an interview transcript.
– A suspected car bomb rocked the Turkish capital of Ankara today, and al-Jazeera cites reports claiming that at least two people were killed. No one has yet claimed responsibility, but Kurdish rebels have been escalating their decades-long fight for autonomy and attacking Turkish targets. Rebel groups, as well as Islamic and leftist militants, have all previously used bombs in the country. Reports of casualties are conflicting: The AP reports none, but says 15 were injured, including three seriously. Reuters, meanwhile, acknowledges the reports of two deaths but quotes a local mayor who says no one has died, but that three have been seriously injured. A local news agency has reported that a woman was detained near the scene. “I felt the blast effect of the explosion some 500 meters away,” says one witness. “I saw vehicles on fire and an injured man said people lost their limbs.”
– A Native American couple is suing Minnesota's department of human services, attorney general, and a commissioner with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, saying the requirement to tell their tribe about their baby violates their right to due process and equal protection. The state law, imposed in 1997, is intended to keep Native American children with Native American families. "We know that the children who grow up outside of their culture suffer greatly,” says one advocate who has counseled such individuals. "The grief is loss of identity. Nonnative homes cannot give an adopted Indian child their culture." But Mark Fiddler, the unidentified couple's attorney and a Chippewa, tells the Minneapolis Star Tribune that they "have the right to make these choices," and that Native American parents "are the only parents in the state that have that duty to notify." Federal law prohibits racial discrimination in adoption except in the case of Native American children, and Fiddler says this is the first lawsuit he's aware of that challenges notification requirements. If the parents aborted the child, they would not have to notify, but by choosing to have the baby and not notify they are considered guilty of fraud and the child could be placed in another adopted home. (The baby, born in April, is currently living with the adoptive parents the biological ones chose.) The Indian Child Welfare Act, meanwhile, could make it more difficult for parents outside a tribe to adopt a Native American child in order "to protect the best interest of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families," reports Fox 23. (Remember the Baby Veronica saga?)
– A subantarctic archipelago is making "huge news": The New Zealand Herald reports there are officially no more mice on the country's Antipodes Islands, which once housed up to 200,000 of the rodents. They caused a big threat to the World Heritage Site by preying on native birds, bugs, and plants, and the five-year effort to do away with them got an assist from the public, with the "Million Mouse Project" fundraising campaign bringing six figures. The Department of Conservation explains that cereal bait laced with rodent toxin was dropped via helicopter on the island during the winter of 2016. A team scoured the island last month looking for any mice and found none. "This is huge news for conservation both in New Zealand and internationally," says New Zealand Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage. She says more than two dozen types of birds, 21 uncommon plants, and more than 150 insect species will benefit. Both Radio New Zealand and NPR note the mice originally found their way to the Antipodes either on 19th-century ships or via a shipwreck and proceeded to purge the island of at least two insect species, as well as to displace some seabirds to other islands. The initiative in the Antipodes isn't a stand-alone: The island nation has also gotten rid of other invasive species in the name of boosting biodiversity, including goats, rats, cats, rabbits, and a local meat-eating weasel. New Zealand's ultimate goal is to rid itself completely of all invasive pests by 2050, per Nature. (Scientists are bashing in the heads of invasive iguanas in Florida.)
– The US has sent two warships to the Black Sea and put planes on standby in Europe as it prepares to evacuate its Olympians from Sochi in the event of an attack. But officials fear their preparations might not be enough, reports NBC News, which describes the effort as "logistically mind-boggling and diplomatically delicate." The big issue: The US can't do much without Russian permission, and it doesn't expect to get that. "Something that looks like the US cavalry riding to rescue Russia … well, it's just hard to imagine that happening," one Russian expert said. The US skiing and snowboarding teams have signed up their own private security company, Global Rescue, which claims it has six aircraft ready for an evacuation if necessary. But having planes isn't the only issue; it's having runways. Sochi's airport is fairly small, so deciding which of the 85 countries competing to use it would be a nightmare. Other teams are also taking special security precautions, the Moscow Times reports. Britain, for example, is sending extra security personnel with its delegation. A German spokesman, meanwhile, said the country trusted Russia, but would "look closely" at the situation. "We will have no aircraft, that is all that I can say."
– Guys might be good at carrying heavy furniture but they tire faster than their female counterparts, new research out of the University of British Columbia shows. "We've known for some time that women are less fatigable than men during isometric muscle tests—static exercises where joints don't move, such as holding a weight—but we wanted to find out if that's true during more dynamic and practical everyday movements," says UBC researcher Brian Dalton in a press release. "And the answer is pretty definitive: women can outlast men by a wide margin." Collaborating with the University of Guelph and University of Oregon, the researchers report in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism that a handful of men and women were asked to flex their foot against sensors as fast as they could 200 times. Those sensors captured several metrics, including speed, power, torque, and even electrical activity in their muscles. The men were both faster and more powerful, but they also became more fatigued "much faster" than the women. Dalton notes that in ultra-trail running, men tend to be faster, but women tend to be far less tired; in fact in Outside, one runner calls for separate goals for women. "If ever an ultra-ultra-marathon is developed, women may likely dominate," Dalton says. But as for the Mars-vs.-Venus battle, Dalton jokes, "there's no battle at all. Maybe more of a balance of the sexes." More seriously: "Both sexes have valuable physical abilities and it only makes sense that we study and develop the tools to afford them the best advantage." (Sex gets better with age for women.)
– In an era of shuttered shopping malls, the biggest one in America is set to be built. Officials in Florida's Miami-Dade County last month approved zoning changes for a 6.2-million-square-foot shopping and entertainment center on a 174-acre site off the Florida Turnpike, complete with an indoor water park, lake, ski slope, ice-climbing wall, 2,000 hotel rooms, and up to 1,200 stores, reports the Wall Street Journal. American Dream Miami—to be "twice the size of the nation's current largest mall" at an estimated cost of $4 billion, per Business Insider—is the somewhat outdated brainchild of Canada's Triple Five Worldwide Group, run by the Ghermezian family. They know a thing or two about shopping malls, having built Canada's West Edmonton Mall, the largest mall in the world when it opened 35 years ago, as well as Minnesota's Mall of America. "But c'mon, Ghermezians. America is over-stored, over-shopped and over-bought … And does anybody really need to go snow skiing in Florida?" Warren Shoulberg writes at Forbes. "I don't see it competing with Disney World," adds a VP of Miami-based Continental Real Estate Companies. Their complaints join those of residents worried about traffic and the environment, and of critics who watched Triple Five struggle to fund New Jersey's as-yet-unopened American Dream Meadowlands mall after taking over the site in 2011, per NJ.com. Critics are also wary of the public subsidies that might be used to open the mall, slated to be the most expensive ever built, but American Dream Miami plans to "be built by private dollars," a lawyer for Triple Five says. Countering what he calls "a campaign of disinformation" by local mall owners, he adds the mall will create 25,000 jobs and attract 30 million tourists annually.
– Jim Carrey will answer questions about former girlfriend Cathriona White’s 2015 death by suicide under oath when he's deposed in a wrongful death lawsuit next week, People reports. White's mother (who, Carrey's lawyer tells Page Six, "didn't know" her daughter for 14 years) and estranged husband filed the lawsuit against Carrey, and in a statement, their lawyer says the actor will be forced to answer questions including "why he provided illegal drugs to Ms. White, why he gave Ms. White multiple STDs and then lied about it, and why he has engaged in a public charade of innocence crafted by his handlers." The suit alleges Carrey, using a fake name, obtained the prescription drugs White ultimately used to kill herself and gave them to her knowing she had a history of depression and suicide attempts. Carrey has repeatedly denied the accusations, and his lawyer says "there’s nothing in his deposition that is going to change the truth." The lawsuit also accuses Carrey of giving White three STDs, and claims that's why she committed suicide. In new legal documents filed as part of the case, Carrey claims White already had herpes before they met, but altered a friend's clean medical records to make it look like she didn't have the disease. She then, Carrey's documents claim, tried to extort him by showing him the "clean" records and later records, from after they started sleeping together, showing she had contracted herpes, TMZ reports. The documents say Carrey can prove his claim thanks to text messages White sent the friend asking for the medical records. TMZ earlier reported that Carrey also claims White tried to use vaginal bumps from a bad wax job as evidence of herpes in her extortion attempt.
– Buying a plane must be thirsty work: Police in Newman, Western Australia, say a man who had just purchased a two-seater Beechcraft decided to drive it home and stop for a beer at a pub on the main street on the way. A resident says he was astounded to see the plane, which had no wings or steering wheel, parked outside the Purple Pub. Even more special was "seeing one of the local coppers poking his head in the door of the plane looking like he was asking for a license," he tells ABC Radio. "Even though no one was in the plane at the time, I was like, what the hell?" After some initial puzzlement over what, if anything, the driver should be charged with, police settled on a charge of "endangering life, health, or safety," reports WAToday. A police spokesman says the incident is being taken very seriously because there were children walking home from school at the time that the man—who doesn't have a pilot's license—was taxiing through the town, using the plane's foot pedals to steer. He passed a breath test at the scene, but police decided to impound the plane.
– Disney has received a patent to take pictures of visitors' feet at its theme parks, the Los Angeles Times reports. Specifically, the patent titled System and method using foot recognition to create a customized guest experience would scan guests shoes when they enter the park then track them as the move about. According to the Orlando Business Journal, this would allow Disney to track guests' favorite rides and paths through the park. It could also allow them to have Donald Duck greet guests by name or get souvenir photos or videos to them more quickly. The scanners could discern everything from shoe color, to wear patterns, to gum stuck on the sole. Disney filed for the patent back in 2015; it was issued by the US Patent & Trademark Office on July 19. The company, however, says it has no plans to actually use its foot camera patent. A spokesperson tells the Times that Disney files a lot of patents in an "ongoing effort to relentlessly innovate and push the boundaries of creativity and technology to create immersive experiences and legendary guest service." Disney had already decided against biometric scanning—such as fingerprinting, retinal scans, and facial recognition—to track visitors because it considers it too invasive, the Stack reports. Plus those methods can be thrown off by things like hats and sunglasses. The company also didn't want to track clothing because that would "require cameras that are visible to the person." The shoe-scanning cameras throughout the park would be "out of a person's line of sight." (But will members of "Club 33" have their photos taken?)
– A 13-year-old girl was found dead in her California home Tuesday, and her 14-year-old brother has been arrested on suspicion of her murder, the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the Sacramento Bee, the body of Ashley Wood was found by her mother in a bedroom in their home in Rocklin. A neighbor called 911 after hearing Ashley's mother yell for help, FOX40 reports. Police arrived at the scene and tracked Ashley's brother to a field a mile away from the home. His name isn't being released because he's a minor. However if he's charged with murder, it could be as an adult. No motive has been identified. Ashley suffered blunt-force trauma, but police aren't offering more specifics. There were multiple crime scenes within the home. Ashley's former coach said the girl was a talented gymnast. And Ashley once hoped to compete in the Olympics, CBS Sacramento reports. "They seemed like an average family to me," a neighbor tells FOX40. "They seemed pretty happy." The home where Ashley's body was found belongs to Jeff Wood, possibly the same Jeff Wood who is a prosecutor for the local district attorney's office.
– Bogged down by some $465 million in debt, Reader's Digest publisher RDA Holdings has filed for bankruptcy—again. Last night's Chapter 11 filing was the publisher's second in 3 ½ years, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company says this second bankruptcy will only make it stronger, allowing it to focus on its North American business and cut its debt to $100 million. "It’s a very good new lease on life," CEO Bob Guth tells Bloomberg. Guth is the company's third CEO since its last bankruptcy, which, of course, was also supposed to give it a new lease on life; the bankruptcy judge at the time declared that the company would emerge "on a very healthy and viable basis." Instead, the pressures facing the print industry have weighed on the company—its most recent earnings showed revenue down 26% on the year.
– President Trump offered the nation a Happy Thanksgiving on Twitter Thursday morning, Or, as the AP put it, "presents his report card [and] passes with flying colors." USA Today's take: "It's time to be very grateful. To him." The tweet: "HAPPY THANKSGIVING, your Country is starting to do really well. Jobs coming back, highest Stock Market EVER, Military getting really strong, we will build the WALL, V.A. taking care of our Vets, great Supreme Court Justice, RECORD CUT IN REGS, lowest unemployment in 17 years....!" The president is spending the holiday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. On his Thanksgiving agenda: thanking military members via video conference. CNN rounds up past memorable Thanksgiving tweets from Trump, including this one: "HAPPY THANKSGIVING to everyone -- I love you all, even my many enemies (sometimes!)."
– The NYPD has made its largest gun bust in recent memory, seizing 254 firearms in a 10-month operation. The guns were smuggled from North and South Carolina into New York City by two gunrunners, who hid the weapons in luggage on discount buses, then purchased by an undercover cop pretending to be a gun broker across a number of transactions, the AP reports. The alleged smugglers, Walter Walker, 29, and Earl Campbell, 24, and 17 others—including Matthew Best, an up-and-coming rapper from Brooklyn—have been arrested. Best's involvement is an interesting one: Authorities stumbled on the gun smuggling operation during a drug investigation, after the rapper posted Instagram photos of handguns and cash. Turns out, Best was helping Walker sell his guns, the New York Post reports. Walker and Campbell bought the guns both on the black market and through gun dealers, and would then stuff a dozen or more into bags and courier them on cheap Chinatown-based bus services, the AP reports. On one occasion, authorities say, Campbell brought along his girlfriend, who carried a deconstructed assault rifle in her zebra-striped suitcase. She then tried to reassemble the gun by looking up a YouTube instructional video on her phone, but couldn't put it back together. The undercover officer bought it for $1,100 anyway.
– Can Edward Snowden afford to be choosy? Authorities in Russia say the NSA leaker has reportedly canceled a request for asylum after balking at the conditions imposed by Vladimir Putin, including no longer leaking information damaging to the US, the AP reports. Snowden has applied for asylum in no fewer than 21 countries, according to WikiLeaks, but the rejections are starting to pile up: Germany, Norway, Austria, Poland, Finland, and Switzerland all say he needs to be on their soil to request asylum. And India this morning "concluded that we see no reason to accede to that request." Norway has confirmed that its Moscow embassy has received a fax that is "probably from him," while Poland's foreign minister says he has received an asylum request from Snowden that he will not recommend granting, the BBC reports. Requests have also been made to Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Spain, and Venezuela, WikiLeaks says. Ecuador's president now says helping Snowden leave Hong Kong was "a mistake," the Guardian reports, but Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro—who is currently visiting Moscow—says his country has yet to receive an asylum request from Snowden, but the leaker has "done something very important for humanity" and "deserved the world's protection."
– A 21-year-old Baltimore County man died in the hospital three days after being repeatedly punched by officers responding to his 911 call, the Guardian reports. According to the Baltimore Sun, Tawon Boyd called 911 early last Sunday. He told officers his girlfriend, Deona Styron, had "got him intoxicated and is secretly recording him." Boyd's grandmother, Linda Burch, says Boyd "was acting...like he was on something." Police noted he seemed "confused and paranoid," and it was clear he "needed to be taken to the hospital." But Boyd started trying to get into police cars and resisted attempts to restrain him, resulting in minor injuries to three officers. Based on the police report, it doesn't appear Boyd was trying to hurt the officers. He was holding onto one of the officer's shirts when the officer punched him twice in the face. At that point, the family's lawyer, Latoya Francis-Williams, says Boyd was "literally attacked" by officers. She says they got on top of him and "really started wailing." “I kept telling them stop before they hurt him,” Burch tells the Sun. “They told me to go across the street before they lock me up.” WBAL reports a medic gave Boyd haloperidol, an antipsychotic drug, to calm him down. An autopsy is now looking into whether the drug played a role in Boyd's death Wednesday from heart and kidney failure. Boyd's family is accusing the police of using too much force. “Mr. Boyd was in need of medical attention, and the police responded with violence,” Francis-Williams tells the Sun.
– It looks like the honeymoon is over between Trump and Obama. "Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition—NOT!" Trump tweeted Wednesday. The Los Angeles Times notes Trump's use of "1990s-style sarcasm." Trump had previously commended Obama on his commitment to a smooth transition of power, but a number of things have changed since then, the Washington Post reports. Many saw comments made by Obama during Tuesday's Pearl Harbor anniversary as directed at Trump. The president urged the US not to "turn inward" and to "resist the urge to demonize those who are different." Trump is also upset with the Obama administration for allowing the UN to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, as well as with Obama personally for saying in an interview he could have beaten Trump and won a third term. In addition, the White House is defending the Department of Energy for not complying with a request from Trump's transition team for the names of employees involved in climate policy, ABC News reports. Transition team spokesperson Sean Spicer at first said Trump's tweets "speak for themselves, very clearly," but later complimented members of the Obama administration for being "helpful and generous with their time."
– The White House has responded to Crimea's secession vote by expanding its sanctions to target several Russian officials, people providing "material support" to them, and players in the arms industry, President Obama announced today. In brief remarks, Obama characterized yesterday's referendum as illegal, and said the sanctions would show "that there are consequences for their actions," according to the AP. "I believe there's still a path to resolve this situation diplomatically," Obama said. But "we're going to stand firm in our unwavering support for Ukraine." The White House named seven specific Russian officials that administration sources described as "key ideologists" and "architects" of Russia's invasion, USA Today reports, along with several other individuals, including the prime minister of Crimea and speaker of the Crimean parliament. Moscow, meanwhile, indicated that it would annex Crimea in short order, the Wall Street Journal reports. "We will take care of our part quickly, quickly and responsibly," the speaker of the Duma said. Vladimir Putin will address Russia's parliament on the matter tomorrow.
– A Michigan man is fuming after he left his car running in a driveway—and got a ticket. "Every person warms up their car," Nick Taylor tells WDIV. "We live in Michigan!" Taylor, 24, left the car idling unlocked at his girlfriend's house on a frigid morning last week. When he returned a few minutes later, he spied the $128 ticket for leaving a vehicle unattended. Taylor posted a photo of the ticket on his Facebook page and railed against the "dip----" Roseville police officer who left it there for "wasting the taxpayer's money." (He later "retracted" the insult.) The post has been shared nearly 14,000 times, but Police Chief James Berlin wasn't backing down, saying you can't leave vehicles running. "This is purely a public safety issue," he tells Fox2. "You see it all the time, people hop in a running car and steal them. Something bad happens when that occurs." And because of the original insult, Berlin says he's not about to tear up the ticket. One footnote for those who practice Taylor's habit of warming up the car: Mechanics say the old-school ritual is no longer necessary in the era of fuel-injected engines, notes USA Today. In fact, today's cars tend to warm up more quickly being driven rather than idling. (This driver faced DUI charges, though he had only caffeine in his system.)
– After months of headlines about the heavy drinking culture at Stanford thanks to the Brock Turmer rape case, the university has announced new rules on drinking: No more hard alcohol at undergrad parties, reports the Stanford Daily. Beer and wine are still OK, but no booze more than 40 proof or 20% alcohol by volume. Undergrads can still keep hard alcohol in their dorm rooms, provided the bottles are smaller than 750ml. “Our intention is not a total prohibition of a substance, but rather a targeted approach that limits high-risk behavior," says a school official. Critics, however, think the new rules carry risks of their own—specifically, students "pre-gaming" in their rooms before parties. “I actually think this is putting students in danger,” Stanford law professor Michele Landis Dauber, who has been critical of the school's sexual assault policies, tells the Guardian. “It’s going to drive it underground … and encourage this super quick consumption not in a public area.” The Turner case "highlighted for many women’s advocates how sex assault cases are often trivialized as a result of the college drinking culture," observes the San Francisco Chronicle, though a campus spokeswoman says the new policy is not directly related to the case.
– Beer drinkers start feeling happy at the smallest sip, even before any alcohol registers, a new study suggests. Indiana University researchers found that dopamine levels in the brain rose when drinkers had just a tiny amount of beer, before any alcohol buzz was possible, reports LiveScience. The not-so-funny part: Dopamine levels shot up the most in those who had a family history of alcoholism, suggesting that some kind of hereditary risk factor was at play, reports the Los Angeles Times. "We believe this is the first experiment in humans to show that the taste of an alcoholic drink alone, without any intoxicating effect from the alcohol, can elicit this dopamine activity in the brain's reward centers," says the lead author. If the connection to those with a family history of alcoholism holds true, the dopamine test might help gauge the vulnerability of those predisposed to alcohol abuse.
– There's a rumble brewing in the wilds of Montana, but the unlikely parties involved aren't slinging guns so much as heading for court. The Gardiner Water and Sewer Treatment District is suing none other than the National Park Service, reports Courthouse News Service, and it's over less-than-pristine water coming from Yellowstone National Park—specifically, water it's being forced to treat that contains high levels of arsenic. The district says that dealing with its sludge ponds will cost an estimated $2 million. Per the lawsuit: An "engineer recommended that the district address this infiltration problem with the park prior to beginning any sludge removal project." Otherwise, the problem would simply return again. But as the district "cannot await the Park Service’s responses any longer, it has been compelled to file suit." Yellowstone is estimated to be contributing 95% of the arsenic present; the engineer doesn't think the arsenic is coming from wastewater, but possibly from leaky pipes or manholes within the park, reports the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Arsenic can occur naturally in geothermal areas, and it's not uncommon in Montana, notes CNS. The district—which first wrote the Park Service in March 2015, then again in December 2015, to no response—wants a court injunction to force Yellowstone to clean up its act, to compensate the district, and to monitor its sewer lines; it's also requesting a jury trial. A Yellowstone rep said only that Interior Department lawyers are "looking into it." (Meanwhile, one of our largest water sources is contaminated.)
– The search is on in Alabama after two men charged with murder and another charged with armed robbery escaped their shared prison cell. Prior to the escape, one of the three began shouting in the cell, saying a cellmate was ill, the Choctaw County sheriff says. A guard checked up on them to find that one was throwing up, CNN reports. He opened the cell door, and the men attacked him, grabbing his keys and cell phone, the sheriff says. The guard was hospitalized and released after allegedly being choked. Now, authorities are looking for Demarcus Woodard, 23, Gemayel Culbert, 32, and Justin Terrell Gordon, 23, the Choctaw Sun-Advocate reports. "I've got three bad inmates, two capital murders and one armed robber, who are on foot," the sheriff tells AL.com. Dogs followed a trail to a highway near the prison, where officials think the men may have been picked up.
– The new release Flight, starring Denzel Washington as drug- and alcohol-addicted pilot, gets a solid 78% on Rotten Tomatoes. Most critics seem to think the acting and directing are superb, but at some point, the movie takes a bit of a nosedive: Flight starts out with a thrilling plane crash, and after that "takes a surprising turn into a drama of addiction and moral exploration," writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, the latter parts feel "shopworn"and "instead of hurtling to a climax, the story moves in fits and starts, loses momentum." Rick Groen at the Globe and Mail praises director Robert Zemeckis' ability to deliver a good crash scene, but thinks his sentimentality hurts the movie. "This movie is captivating until it gets uplifting—Flight soars when it crashes and crashes when it soars," he writes. Good music, strong supporting actors, and great special effects are Flight's strong suits, but the "downward addiction and denial spiral" is all too familiar, writes Tom Long for the Detroit News. "It's that movie, done well, but done again." Peter Travers, writing for Rolling Stone, disagrees. He says those complaining are "missing the point of an exceptional entertainment that Zemeckis shades into something quietly devastating—not an addiction drama, but the deeper spectacle of a man facing the truth about himself."
– If Richard Spencer wants to try to stir up any trouble in Charlottesville, he's going to have to do it anywhere other than the University of Virginia, at least for the next four years. That's because, per the Washington Post, the UVA grad and noted white nationalist has been banned from campus, along with nine others, after they took part in a march of white supremacists on school grounds in August 2017—a weekend that culminated in violence and the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer. "The trespass warnings issued today reflect our commitment to ensuring the safety of our community while upholding the principles of freedom of speech and assembly," UVA President Jim Ryan said in a statement. The ban came down after a yearlong probe by university police, as well as state and federal law-enforcement agencies, into the 2017 rally and those involved. If Spencer or any of the other men banned from campus violate the order, they'll be slapped with a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespassing, CNN notes. "We have drawn a distinction between free speech and conduct that is aimed to intimidate others and promote violence," says Tommye Sutton, the head of campus police. "Such conduct and intimidation will not be tolerated." Spencer's written response to the Post: "Ideas have no jurisdiction and ultimately can't be censored. That said, I have no immediate plans to engage in activism on campus, at UVA or anywhere." (Maybe that's because he's got to deal with his marital and domestic violence problems.)
– Police in South Carolina say they've found a third body on the property of suspected serial killer Todd Kohlhepp—and they think this one could be the last, at least on that property. Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger says that like another body found on Sunday, it hasn't been determined whether this is the body of a man or a woman, CNN reports. "As we stand here tonight, we feel like there aren't any more bodies on this property," a sheriff's department spokesman said at the Woodruff property Monday, per the Greenville News. Investigators say they plan to search other properties, some of them out of state. Kohlhepp was arrested last week after a missing woman was found chained up in a container on his property. The body of her boyfriend was found in a shallow grave the next day. Police say that after the arrest, Kohlhepp confessed to a quadruple murder in a motorcycle shop in 2003, the AP reports. WSPA notes that Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright says that before the confession, he granted Kohlhepp's requests to send college money to a girl he is helping raise, send a picture to his mother, and speak to his mother in person. "We had prayer, the mom and I and the stepdad. And I drove them here and then he did as he agreed. He kept his word," Wright says.
– Dennis Rodman certainly thinks he's influential, but GQ disagrees. The basketball star and self-styled North Korea ambassador is the No. 1 entry on the magazine's annual list of the 25 Least Influential People. Rodman "was the first prominent American celebrity invited inside the nation-sized prison that is North Korea, and he did literally the least interesting thing possible with it," writes Drew Magary. The rest of the top (bottom?) 10: Paula Deen: She's proved herself to be exactly like what you probably always thought she was like. Anthony Weiner: All that public humiliation, and he didn't even have any actual, real-life sex. Justin Bieber: He's now officially too old to be peeing in buckets and making light of Anne Frank. Pope Benedict: The new pope is just way better, and nobody misses this guy. Miley Cyrus: She "spent the entire year foam-finger-blasting herself, licking sledgehammers, and basically trying every inane strategy she could think of to rile up America's few remaining pearl clutchers." Aaron Hernandez: Uh, star athletes who came from tough backgrounds are supposed to act like thugs, not actually be thugs. Prince George: The royal baby got a lot of attention, but when you look at him, he's pretty much just a normal baby. Angela Corey: The prosecutor in the George Zimmerman case failed us all. The Smith family: As in Will, Jada, and the kids. "In just a few years, Will Smith has gone from one of America's most beloved stars to one of its most despicable." Click for the complete list.
– Two Afghan airmen who didn't show up for training at a US Air Force base in Georgia on Monday are missing, and authorities suspect it's because they don't want to go home. An Air Force spokesman tells USA Today that law enforcement officials are searching for Mirwais Kohistani and Shirzad Rohullah, who were being trained in aircraft maintenance. The spokesman tells 11Alive that the men were nominated by the Afghan Air Force and heavily vetted by US authorities before being accepted for training at Moody Air Force Base, so they probably don't pose a threat to anybody in the US. "It's not the first time it's happened, so we just want to find them if we can," he says. Another Air Force spokesman tells the AP that the trainees, who were allowed off the base over the weekend and haven't been heard from since, were due to graduate from the training program next week and return to Afghanistan. The police chief in the nearby town of Valdosta tells the AP that there is "zero indication" that the men are terrorists. "You've got to remember these folks were cleared by the US military and by the Department of Defense to come in and train," he says. "These guys have been here since February of 2015, and they have not caused a problem at all." Three Afghan soldiers who vanished during a training exercise in Massachusetts last year were sent back to their homeland after being caught at the Canadian border.
– How do you conquer a powerful Mayan city-state? Forge a political dynasty, ally with smaller surrounding cities, and slowly envelop until you become leader of the Serpent Kingdom—at least according to one take on a newly unveiled Mayan altar, the AP reports. Discovered in 2017 at the Guatemalan site of La Corona, the nearly 1,500-year-old engraving depicts a king named Chak Took Ich'aak conjuring gods from a shaft shaped like a snake. Ich'aak later governed the nearby city of El Peru-Waka, suggesting that the so-called Serpent Kingdom or Kaanul dynasty forged a movement that grew until it defeated the towering city-state of Tikal in 562 A.D. "... In this case, around 1,500 years ago, I would call this the historical Mayan version of Game of Thrones," excavation co-director Tomas Barrientos tells Phys.org. Archaeologists already knew that Kaanul kings dominated the Maya lowlands for decades, but the altar—which likely dates to 544 A.D.—shows that La Corona "was the place where the most important historical Mayan political movement began to take shape," says Barrientos. Team leader Marcello Canuto sees the dynasty rising up with a mix of cultural appropriation, like conjuring old gods on the tablet to gain legitimacy; marriage, with a princess from neighboring Mexico; and other alliances with powerful forces. Otherwise, beating Tikal "would be the equivalent to Cuba defeating the United States in a war," says Canuto. "They could only have done that ... if they had had the backing of the Soviet Union." Announced Wednesday, the altar is on display at the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Guatemala City, per the Times-Picayune.
– Donald Trump's transition team sent a memo with 74 questions to the Energy Department this week, among them a request for the names of people who have worked on climate change issues recently. Specifically, it requested a list of all employees and contractors who attended the UN's annual global climate talks during the past five years, Reuters reports. The Energy Department responded Tuesday with a refusal. "We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department," says a department spokesperson, who added that the Trump team's request "left many in our workforce unsettled." Many media outlets are framing the Trump team's request as an attempt to "purge" the Energy Department of certain workers. "We will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team," the Energy Department spokesperson continued. An official at the Union of Concerned Scientists applauded the Energy Department's response, calling the Trump team's request "absurd and dangerous," and an anonymous Department of Energy employee called the Trump memo "the first draft of an eventual political enemies list." White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said the request for a list of names "could have been an attempt to target civil servants ... who are critical to the success of the federal government's ability to make policy," and a civil service expert tells the Washington Post that even if named employees weren't fired, they could be "marginalized" in other ways. (Trump has made an interesting choice for the head of the Energy Department.)
– Marco Rubio may have been one of the driving forces behind the Gang of Eight's immigration reform bill, but that doesn't mean he's planning to vote for it. He told radio host Hugh Hewitt yesterday that the parts of the bill related to border security need to be strengthened before the bill heads to final Senate consideration, because he doesn't want the bill to "give overwhelming discretion to the Department of Homeland Security." And if those amendments aren't made, "then I think we’ve got a bill that isn’t going to become law, and I think we’re wasting our time," and he wouldn't support it, Rubio said. The Washington Examiner says such a move would be "an extraordinary turn of events," since Rubio has been the public face of the legislation. Byron York doesn't understand Rubio's change of heart, since the Senate Judiciary Committee actually did strengthen and expand the security measures when it approved the bill. But Rubio could simply be concerned the bill won't pass: He also told Hewitt there aren't 60 votes in the Senate for the bill, and there won't be unless the bill is strengthened, because "the majority of our colleagues are prepared to do immigration reform, [but] they’re only prepared to do it if we ensure that this illegal immigration problem never happens again."
– Two newly released members of Pussy Riot tell the New York Times that they're kicking around the idea of running for political office in Russia. Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, currently visiting the US as part of an international tour, also made clear that they have no intentions of tamping down their outspoken ways. “This is certainly not the time for us to be afraid," says Tolokonnikova. "The situation in Russia has gotten so much worse. And if we couldn’t keep quiet about it then, then we certainly won’t keep quiet about it now." Alyokhina adds that the support they received from around the world made them feel free even while imprisoned. “In light of that, it’s kind of silly to talk about having to go through that a second time as something that would instill fear in us.” The interview is fairly routine stuff, but not-so-routine was their visit to the Colbert Report, where Stephen Colbert "met his quick-witted match," observes Mediaite. Sample response when asked about Vladimir Putin: "We have different ideas about a bright future, and we don't want a shirtless man on a horse leading us" into that future. Watch it here.
– It's going to take decades to completely decommission the Fukushima nuclear power plant, but a critical step in that process began in earnest today, reports NBC News. One of the six 136-foot covers draped over one of the plant's nuclear reactors to keep radioactive materials from seeping out is being painstakingly removed. Tepco officials say it will take till the end of 2016 to pry all six covers off, and till at least 2020 to remove the nearly 300 spent fuel rods lurking underneath. The project, which was supposed to commence last July, was previously postponed because of fears of radiation escaping. "For the safety of Fukushima's residents, we would like the work to proceed with extra care," says the chief of a group of monitors overseeing the project. The total cost and time for the entire decommissioning assignment: tens of billions of dollars over 30 years or so, NBC notes. Meanwhile, the Japanese government today approved an increase in compensation payments to Tepco to a total of $57.2 billion, Reuters reports. That's $7.7 billion added onto the $49.5 billion in taxpayer-funded aid that Tepco had previously been approved to receive. (Check out more details about the decommissioning project on Tepco's dedicated website.)
– The hotel maid accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault has hired a well-known lawyer in France to look for other women who may have fallen prey to the banker, the Telegraph reports. “I was hired to see if we can contact other victims,” Thibault de Montbrial says, explaining that the maid’s US team wanted someone “who had a certain amount of visibility and independence in France, where this is a very complicated case.” The maid’s New York-based lawyer has already appeared on French television once to call for other victims to come forward. Her attorneys can’t directly get involved with the criminal case against the banker, but can help the prosecution. One French legal expert tells France 24 that the move could be a legitimate search for witnesses or “a big communications operation” to show her team is on the offensive.
– Iran's President-elect Hassan Rouhani has begun delivering his message of moderation, calling upon the country's leaders and clergy to stop meddling so much in the private affairs of its citizens. "A strong government does not mean a government that interferes and intervenes in all affairs. It is not a government that limits the lives of people," he said in an address on state TV, Reuters reports. Rouhani has criticized the country's Internet filtering, and chastised state broadcaster IRIB for ignoring important issues. "When IRIB airs the birth of a panda in China but nothing about unpaid workers protesting, it is obvious that the people and youth will ignore it," he reportedly tweeted. Rouhani has also spoken out against enforcement of the country's Islamic dress code, saying he doesn't support religious police cracking down on loose clothing and hairstyles—though he didn't go so far as to say the dress code should end, reports the Guardian. "If a woman or a man does not comply with our rules for clothing, his or her virtue should not come under question," he told a magazine. "In my view, many women in our society who do not respect our hijab laws are virtuous. Our emphasis should be on the virtue." He also says he opposes the segregation of men and women, criticizing politicians who want to ban women from entering soccer stadiums alongside men.
– You've no doubt come across the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, designed to draw attention to the plight of Nigeria's kidnapped girls. DA Lovell has, too, but after a few initial retweets, she's giving it a rest, she writes at the Root. The problem is that hashtag activism like this might raise awareness on a superficial level, but it also gives people "a false sense of accomplishment," writes Lovell. "It makes us feel as if the job is done, thereby keeping us from taking a course of action that may be more effective in the long term." So what's a concerned citizen to do instead? Lovell suggests taking the time to truly educate yourself about what's happening in Nigeria and neighboring countries, or at least start following people and groups that "are doing work on the ground so you know what’s happening even after Twitter moves on to the next trending topic." Problems like this need substantive changes, and a mindless retweet doesn't cut it. At Campare Afrique, Jumoke Balogun sees a bigger problem: All those tweets give the US and other Western governments that much more excuse to expand their military presence in Africa, and "this is not good." But at the Independent, Felicity Morse rounds up the good and the bad and comes down on the side of hashtag activism because of its ability to get the mass media to focus on a neglected subject. It's a force that "is only going to get more powerful in the future," she writes. "It's not to be sniffed at."
– After four years of mapping our planet's gravity, the European Space Agency's GOCE satellite has plunged back to Earth. The GOCE—Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer—was last heard from 75 miles over Antarctica, Reuters reports. It is believed to have burned up on re-entry, with hundreds of pounds of surviving debris scattering somewhere in the Western Pacific. Its gradiometer, the instrument used to make gravity measurements, is made of materials tough enough to survive the fall to Earth, the BBC notes. GOCE—the planet's lowest-flying scientific satellite—mapped Earth's gravitational field in never-before-seen detail, revealing how gravity's pull is uneven across the world. The satellite's fall to Earth, which was inevitable after it ran out of fuel a few weeks ago, was the ESA's first uncontrolled re-entry in decades. But since GOCE was relatively light at 1.2 tons, it didn't attract the same attention as other recent re-entries, including the crash of a failed Russian probe last year.
– It was the "little plop" heard 'round the world. Seth Dixon and Ruth Salas likely thought they'd never find Salas' $3,000 engagement ring again after Dixon accidentally dropped it off a wooden footbridge and into a pond while proposing in Kansas City earlier this month. But thanks to a man WMUR calls a "Good Samaritan with a heart of gold," the couple now has the ring back—and an extra ring from Jimmy Kimmel to boot. That Good Samaritan, Michael Long, also has a metal detector, and so when he heard about the lost ring, he "thought it would just be nice to get up there, help a random couple out, and find the ring before someone else found it." Long says it took him hours, spread out over two days, to find the ring in Loose Park Pond, pulling up a couple dozen nails and a toy car before he unearthed what he was looking for on Saturday. Per the Kansas City Star, the ring had already been found when Dixon and Salas appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday, where they re-created the ill-fated proposal, then accepted a brand-new diamond ring from Kimmel to replace their lost one. (Long says he got in touch with Dixon in California on Monday.) Dixon said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that they alerted Kimmel's staff about Long's discovery once they found out about it—he noted the ring was found while "Ruth and I have been in Los Angeles"—and that "we have been completely honest ... during this entire process." He also notes Kimmel and Co. still insisted they keep the ring. "Now for the next adventure to get married on October 21, 2017!!!!" Dixon wrote.
– Armchair history buffs, take note: A University of California scientist needs all the help he can get finding the tomb of Genghis Khan. The only thing participants need to join the Valley of the Khans Project is a computer and an Internet connection, reports the Washington Post. Under the program, volunteers go to the Field Expedition Mongolia website to sift through satellite images of Mongolia and flag things that look unusual. “What a computer can’t do is look for ‘weird things,’ but when you ask a human brain, you don’t have to tell it what ‘weird’ is; we know,” says Albert Lin. About 7,000 volunteers are already taking part in the program, which was developed with National Geographic. Lin and other explorers on the ground visit sites that get enough flags, but so far the resting place of Genghis and his family remains a mystery.
– Texas is bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Harvey, a storm that meteorologists say could turn into a slow-moving "monster" that batters the state for several days. Harvey is expected to make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane late Friday or early Saturday, and AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski says it "may be nothing short of a flooding disaster" for Texas, USA Today reports. Forecasters say that after it moves ashore, Harvey is likely to end up trapped between two areas of high pressure, keeping it stalled over Texas for up to five days, dumping as much as 35 inches of rain on parts of the state. The latest developments: The National Weather Service says ingredients including warm water and calm air high up have made Harvey a potentially life-threatening storm, with a possible storm surge 12 feet high and winds up to 125mph. "It's a very dangerous storm," National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini tells the AP. "It does have all the ingredients it needs to intensify. And we're seeing that intensification occur quite rapidly." The service's safety resources can be found here. The latest from the National Hurricane Center is here. Harvey strengthened to a Category 2 hurricane early Friday, CNN reports. Several counties along the coast had already issued evacuation orders. If it does become a Category 3 by the time it is expected to make landfall around 70 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, it will be the first storm that size to hit the US since Hurricane Wilma in Oct. 2005 The Corpus Christi Caller-Times looks at what people can expect from a Category 3 hurricane—and at what people who choose to ride it out instead of following recommendations to evacuate should do. With massive flooding and power outages possible in the Houston area, people have been rushing to stock up on essentials, causing chaos at grocery stores and gas stations, the Houston Chronicle reports. Liquor stores are also experiencing a huge rise in demand. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's office says President Trump has called the governor and offered whatever federal resources are needed, KHOU reports. Abbott has already declared a state of disaster in 30 counties. He has also activated 700 Texas National Guard members. Interstate 37's northbound lanes were clogged with traffic late Thursday as people fled the Corpus Christi area. "There is no doubt in my mind that the city will flood," resident Angie Flores, who went to Austin with her husband and their four dogs, tells the American-Statesman. "There are some people who aren't going to leave because they think it’s going to be a good time. I worry about them."
– Since July, at least seven dogs in and around Los Angeles County have been burned, likely with battery acid or another chemical—and now the county is offering a $25,000 reward for help finding the person or people behind the attacks. Two of the dogs (some of which have also been attacked in Kern County) were euthanized as a result of the attacks, the Los Angeles Times reports. Most of the injured animals have been pit bulls, but a golden retriever was also burned in the attacks, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. Authorities also released a photo of an injured cocker spaniel. "We hope that the reward will encourage someone that may have heard something to step forward with information that may lead us to the person who committed these really depraved acts of cruelty," says a spokesperson for LA County Supervisor Michael Antonovich. PETA is also offering a $2,500 reward, the Daily News reports. Money is being raised for at least two of the dogs online; their GoFundMe pages are here and here. (In happier news, these 100 dogs were saved from becoming dinner.)
– There's no doubt about it: The human body goes through major changes in youth and old age. And these biological and social changes may be the reasons behind what researchers are calling less stable personalities at those life stages. In fact, according to a study of almost 4,000 New Zealanders between the ages of 20 and 80, the stability of one's personality increases through youth and into middle age and peaks in our 50s, before we slide back into less stable versions of ourselves, reports Research Digest. As the Smithsonian puts it, "in some ways, our 80-year-old selves mirror our 20-year-old selves." Some traits peaked at different times; the most stable traits in one's 30s are extraversion and neuroticism, while in the late 40s and early 50s it is openness, honesty-humility, and conscientiousness. The only trait that showed "gradually reduced stability" throughout life was agreeableness; apparently we are simply less and less agreeable as we pack the years on. Still, one's most basic personality—introvert vs. extrovert, for example—tends to remain consistent throughout one's life, even if the stability of traits waxes and wanes, notes the Smithsonian. (Other researchers have even calculated the country's most extroverted city.)
– Adel Daoud is a Chicago 19-year-old accused by the feds of trying to detonate a bomb outside a Chicago bar in 2012. His case, however, could serve as the first constitutional challenge to the government's sweeping surveillance techniques, reports the Washington Post. In a court filing yesterday, attorneys for the terror suspect demanded to know whether federal authorities used their expanded powers under a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to nab him. “Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly,” they wrote, as per the Chicago Tribune. "When a criminal defendant’s constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of State Secrets.” Federal prosecutors say they're not obligated to say whether they used the law, and a judge will have the final say, reports WLS-TV. So did they use it? Here's a hint: Last year, when the Senate was debating whether to renew the 2008 law—it's formally known as the FISA Amendments Act—Dianne Feinstein made her case in favor by asserting that it had helped stop "a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar." If the judge rules that the government must acknowledge it used the FAA, Daoud's attorney's would then be able to challenge its constitutionality.
– Think supervolcanoes that devastate entire regions are terrifying? Well sure, but you might be able to outrun them—according to a study that says one prehistoric supervolcano churned out lava at only 10 to 45 miles per hour, Live Science reports. "It's really interesting how you can have such a violent eruption producing such slow-moving flows," says study co-author Greg Valentine. "They still devastate a huge area, but they're slow and concentrated and dense." Published in Nature Communications, the study analyzed an Arizona supervolcano known as Silver Creek Caldera that erupted 18.8 million years ago. It churned out lethal tides of gas and ash known as pyroclastic flows for over 100 miles, inundating parts of Nevada and California, ScienceDaily reports. By analyzing the vast volcanic deposit left by Silver Creek Caldera, researchers found that large rocks had been moved considerable distances. Their conclusion: Only a constant, heavy flow would have moved rocks that were already miles from the eruption. Not everyone buys it, and the researchers warn against taking their study as an excuse for last-minute evacuations. What's more, smaller eruptions (like the one that wiped out Pompeii) are known to spew pyroclastic flows at hundreds of miles per hour, Wired reports. But it seems anyone 90 miles away from Silver Creek Caldera would have had about 10 hours to escape. "I wouldn't recommend anyone try to outrun a volcano, but there's a few of us that could," says Valentine. (Parts of Washington and Oregon were covered in mysterious ash last year.)
– Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed therapist and powerful member of the Hasidic Jewish community of Brooklyn, will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars after being convicted of 59 counts of sexual abuse yesterday, reports the New York Times. After days of testimony from a victim who says she was repeatedly abused by Weberman starting when she was 12, a judge sentenced him to 103 years in prison, just short of the 117-year maximum. During her testimony, the victim, now 18, told Weberman that he "played around with and destroyed lives as if they were your toys, without the slightest bit of mercy.” Weberman's crimes included various sexual acts with minors, sometimes during therapy sessions under the guise of helping girls become more religious. The case is the first in two decades Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes has brought against a member of the Satmar ultra-Orthodox community. While many criticize Hynes for not being aggressive enough toward Hasidic abusers, he says the self-silencing culture of the Satmar community is to blame. The case has divided the community, even leading to violence against a victim advocate.
– In a reversal of course, police in Charlotte on Saturday released bodycam and dashcam footage from the fatal shooting of Keith Scott. (See it here via the Washington Post.) In addition to the video, police also released a photo of the gun they say was spotted in Scott's vehicle. Some early descriptions: Charlotte Observer: The videos "do not show Keith Lamont Scott raising a weapon toward officers nor a gun in his hand." NBC News: "The dashcam video released shows Scott come out of a white SUV while police stand behind another vehicle with their weapons raised and command him to drop the gun. Scott eventually emerges from the SUV slowly and backs away. As he is backing up, four shots can be heard, and Scott can be seen falling to the ground." AP: "Scott can be seen in police dashboard camera video backing away from his SUV with his hands down, and it's unclear if there's anything in the man's hands. Four shots are heard, and he falls to the ground." ABC News: "The actual shooting is neither seen nor heard in the body cam footage.Officer Brentley Vinson, identified by police as the officer who shot Scott, cannot be seen firing his weapon in either video." Rakeyia Scott released her own video of her husband's shooting Friday.
– A Japanese man, who calls himself a "medical marvel," set his third world record for being the oldest competitive sprinter yesterday—one day after turning 105, AFP reports. Hidekichi Miyazaki ran the 100-meter dash at the Kyoto Masters Athletics Autumn competition in 42.22 seconds, but he was shooting for 35, according to USA Today. "I started shedding tears during the race because I was going so slowly," he tells AFP. "Perhaps I'm getting old." Guinness World Records reports Miyazaki's feat is even more impressive because he only started running in his 90s after most of his board-game buddies passed away. In addition to being the world's oldest competitive sprinter, Miyazaki holds the world record for fastest 100-meter dash for runners over 100 with a time of 29.83 seconds, AFP reports. That's about 20 seconds more than it takes Jamaica's Usain Bolt, one of Miyazaki's idols. Miyazaki, who boasts the nickname "Golden Bolt," hopes to one day compete against the famous sprinter. And it might happen. He tells AFP he thinks he has two or three more years of running in him. "I'm fit as a fiddle," he says. "The doctors are amazed by me."
– President Trump's social media chief had to post a retraction Sunday after sharing a video that he wrongly believed showed the impact of Hurricane Irma. "Here is Miami International Airport. STAY SAFE!!" tweeted White House social media director Dan Scavino, posting a video of flooding at an airport. He was swiftly corrected by Miami International Airport itself, which pointed out that the video was not from the airport, CNN reports. The real location and date of the video has not been verified, though it was posted on YouTube on Aug. 31 with a title suggesting that it is Mexico City's airport. It resurfaced on Twitter Sunday mislabeled as Miami. "It was among 100s of videos/pix I am receiving," Scavino tweeted after being corrected. "In trying to notify all, I shared - have deleted." The error was noteworthy because when Scavino shared the video, it was an example of the tweets he said he was sharing with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence hourly, raising questions about the accuracy of his information, the Washington Post reports. The White House declined to comment on how Scavino was verifying posts that he shared with Trump and Pence. Miami International Airport, meanwhile, says it will be closed until at least Tuesday while damage assessment is carried out. (Irma made landfall in Florida for a second time Sunday.)
– A political party in Pakistan has publicly identified the top CIA spy in the country—and it wants him interrogated and put on trial over a recent US drone strike, reports the Guardian. The PTI party, notably led by a former cricket star named Imran Khan, identified the Islamabad station chief in a letter to police. It named him and CIA chief John Brennan as responsible for a drone strike earlier this month that killed civilians along with militants. Wire services are not naming the station chief. PTI officials say he doesn't have diplomatic immunity and therefore should be tried for murder, reports AP. They also say he should be interrogated to provide the names of the drone pilots who controlled the plane from afar. Assuming the identity is correct, it would be the second time in three years that those opposed to drone strikes in the country have identified a station chief. The first one had to leave the country in 2010.
– John Boehner could only laugh when he heard Republicans talking about quickly repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. “Republicans never ever agree on health care," Politico quotes the former house speaker as saying Thursday. Despite President Trump saying to expect a plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare by mid-March, Boehner says an ACA repeal is only "happy talk" and definitely "not going to happen." He says Republicans will eventually settle on only slight changes to ObamaCare and that "most of the framework" will remain in place. Republican lawmakers are currently being beset at town halls with constituents worried about losing their health insurance. CNBC reports a new poll found an even 45% split between voters who approve of ObamaCare and those who oppose it. That's a 4-point increase for the approve side and a 7-point decrease for the oppose side just since early January. The poll found only 24% of voters want the ACA completely repealed; 26% want to see it expanded. Republicans in Congress are now turning to a handful of Republican governors—John Kasich and Scott Walker, among others—to help them figure this mess out, sources tell CNN. Lawmakers apparently want the governors to figure out what to do about the millions of people who received coverage with the expansion of Medicaid under ObamaCare.
– A student at an elite Harlem high school allegedly killed herself on Thursday after she was caught cheating on an exam and cried out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Omotayo Adeoye, 17, a student at the High School for Math, Science, and Engineering at City College, was caught using her cell phone during a German-language exam, Raw Story reports. "Oh, you shouldn't be cheating!" yelled the teacher, Eva Malikova, a classmate told the New York Post. When Omotayo apologized, Malikova allegedly snapped: "Oh, you are not really sorry. That's not a sincere apology!" Authorities say the junior wrote a suicide note on the exam, saying she wanted "to go away forever on the bottom of the river," asked to use the bathroom, and left the school. She then walked to the Hudson River at West 165th Street, where she put her school ID on a rock, ignored the cries of panicked fishermen, and leaped in the water. Witnesses told police that the Bronx girl—who couldn't swim, her father says—bobbed on the water and seemed to force herself under. "I said, 'Come here, come here, don’t go to the water,'" a 71-year-old fisherman told the New York Times. "She was just crying, crying all the time." Several students said they heard her teacher, Malikova, screaming in anguish at school the next day. Search teams still hadn't recovered Omotayo's body as of Saturday night. CBS New York reports the Department of Education is investigating.
– Edward Snowden spent the night in Moscow's airport and was expected to fly to Cuba today—but American authorities are making it clear that they'd prefer that the NSA whistleblower was enjoying their hospitality instead. In a statement, the National Security Council said it expects Moscow to look at "all options available to expel Mr. Snowden back to the US to face justice" especially in light of "intensified cooperation after the Boston Marathon bombings and our history of working with Russia on law enforcement matters," CBS reports. But "intensified cooperation" may not be coming: The Washington Post reports that a Russian official today told Interfax that Moscow doesn't have the legal authority to comply with the US government's request. Other officials add that air travelers who don't cross passport control aren't technically on Russian land; because Snowden is without a Russian visa, there's no way he could have gone through passport control. John Kerry is chiming in, adds the AP, calling it "deeply troubling" if Russia allows Snowden to flee. But is Snowden actually Cuba-bound? The airline Aeroflot told the AP he was booked on a Moscow-Havana flight this morning (the expectation being he'd then travel to Venezuela and then to Ecuador, where WikiLeaks says he will seek asylum), prompting a number of journalists to grab seats on said flight. But Snowden apparently never boarded, reports Business Insider via an article with this headline: "Russia Just Punked a Bunch of Journalists Who Are Now On Their Way to Havana." AP Moscow correspondent Max Seddon confirmed that there was no sign of Snowden, tweeting, "Cuba here we come. Taxiing down Sheremetevo runway and no sign of Snowden. Seats empty still by 17A." How did Snowden get out of Hong Kong yesterday to begin with? Despite the Chinese territory's autonomy, the final decision came from Beijing, sources tell the New York Times. The move lets China save face while avoiding a drawn-out extradition battle. Some legal experts are telling the New York Times the US government goofed in waiting until Saturday to revoke Snowden's passport, though charges were filed June 14. Says a former federal prosecutor, "They missed an opportunity to freeze him in place." Still, the Times notes that Snowden may have still been able to fly to Moscow sans passport thanks to special refugee travel documents from Ecuador that WikiLeaks helped Snowden obtain.
– Not all terrorists are foreigners, and not all terrorists are men. The FBI keeps a list of the most-wanted domestic terrorists, defined as "Americans attacking Americans based on US-based extremist ideologies." And five out of the seven people on the list are women, notes Business Insider. A sampling: Donna Joan Borup: During a 1981 anti-apartheid protest In New York City, Borup allegedly tossed an acid-like substance into the eyes of a police officer. She skipped her court trial and has been on the lam ever since. Joanna Deborah Chesimard: A member of the Black Liberation Army, Chesimard shot a state trooper at point-blank rage during a traffic stop in 1973. She was imprisoned in 1977 but escaped two years later. Josephine Sunshine Overaker: The FBI accuses Overaker of attempting to burn down and destroy an energy facility as part of an attack staged by the radical environmental groups Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. Click here for the full list of wanted domestic terrorists, including the males.
– Residents of the World Cup host city of Samara are being urged to take showers in pairs because the influx of fans is putting a strain on water supplies, the AP reports. The Samara Communal Systems utility company says the combination of a heat wave and "thousands of guests" have meant it's providing 10% more cold water than normal, causing water pressure to drop in some neighborhoods. The company advises locals to "save water—take showers in pairs," adding a smiley face to its message, which came via a press release, per the Moscow Times. Samara is due to host England's quarterfinal game against Sweden on Saturday.
– To most people, it just looks like a smooth, egg-sized rock, but it was part of the founding of the Mormon church and photos of it have now been published for the first time. The images of the "seer stone" that Mormons believe founder Joseph Smith used to translate buried gold plates he said he found in upstate New York 185 years ago were released as part of what the church says is an effort to be more transparent about its past, the AP reports. The photos have been published in a book that also includes pictures of the "printer's manuscript" of the Book of Mormon—a handwritten copy of the original manuscript that was produced by one of Smith's scribes. The book, which Smith said he translated from "reformed Egyptian" with the stone, recounts a visit from Jesus Christ to North America, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. As for the translation, the church has this to say: "Joseph placed ... the seer stone in a hat, pressed his face into the hat to block out extraneous light, and read aloud the English words that appeared on the instrument." It says the translation occurred over three months in 1829 as part of a "a series of miraculous events." Indeed: In March, the Deseret News reported that the church says it takes roughly five years to translate and then produce the Book of Mormon in another language. The church says it is trying to make its history more "tangible" with the release, but Terryl Givens, professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, tells the AP that the church is also trying to show skeptics it has nothing to hide. "Other churches' origins are concealed by the mist of history. Mormonism is the first world religion in which the origins were exposed to public view, to documentation, to journalists, and newspaper reporting." (Last year, the church admitted that Smith had up to 40 wives.)
– A Twitter photo of a dog held upside-down over a beer keg has a pair of college students in Western New York facing animal cruelty charges. The young Labrador retriever, Mya, was apparently being forced to drink, officials say (though another Twitter user says the dog didn't actually have any beer). Shane Oliver and Robert Yates, both 20-year-olds at SUNY Brockport, have been charged with torturing and injuring an animal. Oliver held the dog while Yates took and posted the picture, police say, per the Democrat and Chronicle. The picture, which featured a person wearing a college T-shirt, was posted on a Twitter account called SUNYPartyStories before making the rounds online. It was captioned "Keg stands n Bits," Syracuse.com reports. Mya, whose owner wasn't home during the incident, is in good condition with the local dog warden.
– Moments after his guilty verdict, Dr. Conrad Murray was ordered held without bail and escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Dr. Murray's reckless conduct" is a threat to public safety, said Judge Michael Pastor. "This is not a crime involving a mistake of judgment. This is a crime where the end result was the death of a human being." A Los Angeles jury found Murray guilty of involuntary manslaughter today in the death of pop icon Michael Jackson. One bit of good news for Murray: Jail officers will consider him a "keep away inmate" in an effort to protect him behind bars, TMZ reports. In other words, Murray will get his own cell, shower alone, and won't be allowed to mingle with other prisoners. The doctor's lonely spell will be broken on November 29 for sentencing. The Times notes that he faces up to 4 years in state prison and will probably lose his California medical license. (Read about testimony that Murray gave Jackson a propofol dose 40 times higher than the doctor claimed.)
– If the words "pole vaulting" don't inspire fear in you, they should. That's the upshot of a Vice article about the sport, which succinctly expresses why: "At 20 feet, a pole vault accident is like someone falling off the roof of their house, while running as fast at they can with a thick pole in their hands." If that sounds like a brush with death, it quite literally can be: A 2001 study analyzed the 32 catastrophic pole-vault injuries that were reported to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research between 1982 and 1998; half the accidents resulted in death, and 6 in permanent disabilities. A follow-up study published in 2012 noted that one safety-related change made in 2003 was an expansion of the landing pad's minimum dimensions. In the 8 years that followed, the study noted only two of the 19 catastrophic injuries were fatal. But the rest weren't pretty: major head injuries and spine or pelvic fractures were among them. And a study of collegiate pole vaulters published this last January found 41% sustained some kind of injury, a figure that researchers saw as suggestive of the fact that "injuries are very common in experienced vaulters." The injury stats aren't good, and the potential pay and fame aren't much better. So why the heck do it? Vice talked to US record-holder Brad Walker (one of 18 men to ever clear 6 meters), who sums up vaulters as "risk-takers, usually with something to prove to themselves ... you won't find a vaulter jumping high who doesn't have at least one screw loose." As for why they stay with it, Vice points to its highly technical and challenging nature: As you approach the box you're a sprinter; then you're a gymnast. Walker says you need "significant body control and spatial awareness," too.
– "People without the experience shouldn't be handling these types of animals." This revolutionary statement of the obvious on venomous snakes comes to us by way of a Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission rep in the great state of Florida, where one Austin Hatfield might take that to heart. As MyFox Tampa Bay reports, the 18-year-old captured a water moccasin in his girlfriend's yard last month. A few days later, he had the reptile in a pillowcase on his bed. Says a friend: "He took it out, put it on his chest and it was acting funny, and it jumped up and got him." Specifically, it bit Hatfield on the mouth. "He ripped it off his face, threw it on the ground and he started swelling up immediately. We've done a lot of stuff together. This is the one thing that scared me the most." Hatfield's face swelled dangerously, but he's recovering. The snake, also known as a cottonmouth, was euthanized so Hatfield's bite could be treated, adds the Tampa Tribune. Further, Florida requires a permit to possess such animals, and Hatfield had no permit.
– In stark contrast to earlier evictions, dozens of Jewish settlers ordered to leave their homes in the West Bank yesterday did so peacefully. Israel is in the process of evacuating the Ulpana outpost on the orders of its Supreme Court, which determined that five apartment blocks had been illegally built on private Palestinian land, reports the Washington Post. The Ulpana settlers, who were moved to prefabricated homes on a nearby military outpost, said a prominent rabbi had advised them to avoid confrontation with the military. "This is not a happy day for Israel," one departing resident said. "To leave a house is very simple, but to leave a home is very difficult." Several other evictions based on similar court orders are expected to take place over the next few weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the court order by vowing to build 850 new apartments in the West Bank to replace the 30 emptied units. He has also promised to uproot the five apartment blocks from their foundations and move them to another location, although engineers say doing so would be expensive and impractical, AP notes.
– The new face of Gerber represents a milestone. The company has picked 1-year-old Lucas Warren of Dalton, Georgia, as this year's Gerber Baby—and Lucas is the first child with Down Syndrome selected for the honor, reports People. "He never meets a stranger," says mom Cortney, who tells Today.com that she entered the contest without giving it too much thought. Gerber then chose Lucas out of about 140,000 submissions, calling him a "perfect fit." Dad Jason says he hopes the this "will shed a little bit of light on the special needs community and help more individuals with special needs be accepted and not limited."
– When George W. Bush was introduced to then-vice president of Zambia Guy Scott a few years ago, he thought somebody was joking. Scott is a white man whose parents immigrated to the country when it was still a British colony, and the death of President Michael Sata makes him sub-Saharan Africa's first white leader since the end of apartheid in South Africa, CNN reports. Scott, whose father was active in the anti-colonial movement before independence, has previously served as the country's agriculture minister. In a 2012 interview with the Spectator, Scott said his presence in government was a testament to Zambia's stability and tolerance. "I don't think I would be nearly as welcome in South Africa, for example. Or West Africa," he said. "I get the suspicion they are pretty dubious, wondering what a white man is doing there. But for some reason, I'm very popular here." The country's constitution calls for a new election within 90 days, but although Scott is now the acting president, his parents were not born in Zambia, so he may be ineligible to run for the office, reports the BBC.
– Fresh details of Kayla Mueller's days as an ISIS captive are revealed in an ABC 20/20 report airing Friday night, and they highlight both the horror of her circumstances and her amazing strength. Four former hostages, including three women who shared a cell with the young American in 2014, say they were inspired by her optimism, humor, and the strength she drew from her Christian faith. "She was always considerate of others, even though she herself was in a very difficult situation," says Frida Saide, a former captive from Sweden. "She was always concerned for other prisoners." Mueller, who was repeatedly raped by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died in captivity last year. Former hostage Daniel Rye Ottosen from Denmark describes how she stood up to the notorious "Beatles" group of guards, including "Jihadi John." "One of the Beatles started to say, 'Oh, this is Kayla, and she has been held all by herself. And she is much stronger than you guys. And she's much smarter. She converted to Islam.' And then she was like, 'No, I didn't.'" People notes that the ABC report will also include a chilling "proof of life" video sent to Mueller's parents after her capture in 2013. "I've been here too long and I've been very sick," she says. "It's very terrifying here." ABC also spoke to two Yazidi girls who say that to ensure their safety, Mueller chose not to escape with them.
– Lena Dunham caused a stir last week when she and Girls co-creator Jenni Konner issued a statement defending a Girls writer from allegations of sexual assault against a teen. She has since apologized, but that didn't appease one of the writers for her Lenny e-newsletter. Per Vulture, Zinzi Clemmons issued a statement Sunday announcing she'll no longer work for Lenny and that it's because of Dunham's "well-known racism," which she also dubs "hipster racism." Meaning, in Clemmons' words, that the offender "typically uses sarcasm as a cover, and in the end it looks a lot like gaslighting—'It's just a joke. Why are you overreacting?'" Clemmons explains she feels comfortable saying this about Dunham, as she's known her since they were both in college, when Dunham and her rich friends "had a lot of power and seemed to get off on simultaneously wielding it and denying it." Clemmons adds that someone close to her was "victimized" back then by "someone in Lena's circle" and that he "continues to move in those circles and has a powerful job." She says she stayed at Lenny only because she had a good relationship with the editors there, but that now "it is time for women of color—black women in particular—to divest from Lena Dunham." Jezebel points out a string of other tweets Clemmons posted on the subject, including calling Dunham's online apology a "half-assed attempt to cover your ass." Clemmons also doesn't seem fazed by her detractors. "To all the haters, harassers and abusers creeping into my timeline, remember this: I brought down a major celebrity and her publication with one Facebook post. Try me," she tweeted early Monday.
– This one isn't for the squeamish: Performance artist Marni Kotak's next piece involves her giving birth ... live ... in a Brooklyn gallery. The 36-year-old's "durational performance" runs though Nov. 7 at Microscope Gallery, which the Los Angeles Times reports has been altered to fit Kotak's needs: It now features a shower, her grandmother's bed, refrigerator, and rocking chair, along with a framed sonogram. The gallery will be open from 11am to 6pm until the birth occurs, and will extend its hours if need be for the blessed event. (Kotak is 8 months along, and timed the show, "Birth of Baby X," to coincide with her due date.) "I will be completely engrossed in the act of giving birth before a live audience," Kotak tells the Village Voice. "I will be focused on delivering my child into the world in the healthiest manner possible, rather than on how I look or what the audience may think." She shares plenty more thoughts, on Facebook ("my life ... is not for Mark Zuckerberg"), her influences, and what she'd be doing if she wasn't making art (one option: Russian spy, code name "Marnitov Cocktail"); click to read.
– Apparently you can credit Amalia Damonte for Jorge Bergoglio becoming Pope Francis—or perhaps her father, reports the Week. When Bergoglio was just 12, he had a young "romance" with Damonte, writing a letter saying they would be married and drawing a picture of the house they would live in. She said he vowed to become a priest if Amalia, who lived near him in a Buenos Aires suburb, rejected the offer. However, Damonte's father wasn't about to stand for his 12-year-old daughter talking to boys, and slapped her for starting to write back. "I never saw him after that—my parents kept me away from him and did everything possible to separate us," says Damonte, adding that "it was a thing between children and totally pure." The Telegraph, meanwhile, catches up with the pope's sister, Maria Elena Bergoglio, who says her brother was never jazzed about the prospect of leading the church. "He didn't want to be pope and when we chatted privately about it, we joked at the prospect and he would say, 'No, please no.'"
– Anne Hathaway's nipples got so much attention at the Oscars that they now have their own Twitter account—but Hathaway wasn't even supposed to be wearing the Prada dress that showcased them so well. She had originally chosen a Valentino dress, and Valentino even put out a press release Sunday saying Hathaway would be wearing one of the fashion house's designs. But she made a switch after hearing the night before "that there would be a dress worn to the Oscars that is remarkably similar to the Valentino I had intended to wear," she tells People in a statement. A source tells Us the person in question was Hathaway's own Les Miserables co-star, Amanda Seyfried, who wore Alexander McQueen (you can see a comparison of the two dresses here). But Hathaway has a longstanding relationship with Valentino, who custom-designed her wedding dress, and regrets "any disappointment caused," she says. "Though I love the dress I did wear, it was a difficult last minute decision as I had so looked forward to wearing Valentino in honor of the deep and meaningful relationship I have enjoyed with the house and with Valentino himself."
– When Taylor Swift heard that Naomi, one of her young fans, had to miss her concert because she had been diagnosed with cancer, Swift jumped onto Naomi's GoFundMe page and promptly donated $50,000, People reports. "To the beautiful and brave Naomi, I'm sorry you have to miss [my concert], but there will always be more concerts," she wrote. "Let's focus on getting you feeling better." But because the site caps donations at $15,000, the singer had to carry out four separate transactions—a limit that's now been lifted after GoFundMe got word of Taylor's gesture. "Taylor Swift's donation was so generous that it required us to increase the donation limit on the platform," CEO Rob Solomon said in a release, noting that now the max users can give in one pop is $50,000. He adds that Swift has given more to various GoFundMe campaigns than any other donor in the site's history. As for how Naomi felt about her idol's donation—well, you can see her reaction in this video. (Taylor recently got Apple to bow down before her, too.)
– President Obama's DNC acceptance speech may have inspired more yawns than fervor, but the latest polls are showing him a clear advantage, especially in several key swing states, reports Politico. Republican officials admit that their in-house tracking polls show Obama with a high-single-digits lead in crucial battleground state Ohio. While Mitt Romney can win the presidency without Ohio, it would be very tough. “Their map has many more routes to victory,” said a leading Republican official. The biggest worry for Democrats at this point is that the 6% to 8% of voters who are still undecided are overwhelmingly white, middle-aged, and economically stressed—bad demographics for Obama. But with polls showing a small but clear bounce for Obama, the president is now a "reasonably clear favorite," writes Nate Silver at the New York Times. Obama is now leading by four percentage points in Gallup's national tracking poll, two in Rasmussen's, four in Ipsos', and three in RAND's polling. Campaign officials say they don't expect many big changes over the next couple of weeks, as attention turns to Oct. 3 and the first presidential debate.
– There was fire, but no real firefight. That's the latest revision in the White House's version of events during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. The fire came from some 20 Navy Seals who shot dead bin Laden and three other men and a woman, only one of whom was armed, officials say now. Bin Laden's courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, fired on the Seals as they launched the raid. After he and his wife were shot dead, the Americans weren't fired on again, reports AP. The others were killed because US forces believed they all posed a "serious threat," said a federal source. Initially, White House officials said the special forces came under heavy, prolonged small-arms fire as they moved into bin Laden's hideout. Instead of chaos amidst a hail of gunfire, the team moved methodically from room to room in what the New York Times characterizes as a "one-sided" 40-minute operation, confronting bin Laden aides and gathering some 22 children and women, some of whom were placed in plastic handcuffs. The US forces ended up in bin Laden's bedroom, shooting his wife in the leg and the apparently pajama-clad al-Qaeda leader in the head and chest, reports MSNBC. Bin Laden was shot as he appeared to be reaching for a nearby weapon, said a spokesman. CIA Chief Leon Panetta had reported that the men were "engaged in a firefight throughout the operation." White House officials said all details of the raid were not initially clear. "They were in a threatening and hostile environment the entire time," one official told the Times.
– Pink is on the cover of People magazine's beauty issue, and she's got some adorable company—her young children. The magazine has rebranded its "Most Beautiful" issue as "The Beautiful Issue" and features dozens of celebrities, including some posing with their best friends, their rescue pets, and without makeup. (See the cover here.) People Editor-in-Chief Jess Cagle says the magazine adopted the approach to "make clear the issue is not a beauty contest." Cagle says Pink was chosen after editors saw photos of the singer with her children, 15-month-old son Jameson Moon and 6-year-old daughter Willow Sage. Pink offers her thoughts on parenting in the issue and says she believes in giving affection and letting her son and daughter know that they can count on her and her husband, motocross racer Carey Hart, reports the AP. People reports that Pink spoke with Ellen DeGeneres in a segment that will air Wednesday, and admits she "laughed out loud" when she learned of the news. "I immediately turned to whoever was in the room and said, 'Did you ever think this was as good as it gets?'" Several stars who have been featured on the cover of the magazine's "Most Beautiful" issues in the past are included in the 2018 edition, including Courteney Cox, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, and Julia Roberts, who has been featured on the cover of the "Most Beautiful" issue a record five times. Among the men featured in the issue are Jimmy Kimmel, Drake, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon. The issue is on newsstands Friday.
– America's ambassador to Syria visited one of the cities worst-hit by the crackdown against anti-government protesters yesterday, reports CNN. Robert Ford went to the city of Hama "to make absolutely clear with his physical presence that we stand with those Syrians who are expressing their right to speak for change," an embassy spokeswoman says. An estimated 500,000 people joined an anti-government rally in the city last Friday. The Syrian government accused Ford of going to the city without authorization, saying the visit is "clear evidence of the US involvement in the ongoing events in Syria and its bids to aggravate the situations which destabilize Syria.'' An embassy spokeswoman says the Syrian government was told a delegation would be visiting Hama, although no Syrian "handlers" were taken and officials weren't informed about the ambassador's presence. The city has been a symbol of opposition since 1982, when a crackdown ordered by the present Syrian leader's father killed around 20,000 people, al-Jazeera notes.
– The Force was not with Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday when he tried to use Star Wars references to win an argument on net neutrality—with Luke Skywalker. BuzzFeed reports that it began Saturday when Mark Hamill tweeted a picture of FCC chair Ajit Pai wielding a lightsaber in a video he made to defend killing Obama-era net neutrality rules. Hamill said Pai was "profoundly unworthy" because "a Jedi acts selflessly for the common man." On Sunday, Cruz tweeted to Hamill, misspelling his name as "Hammill": "Luke, I know Hollywood can be confusing, but it was Vader who supported govt power over everything said & done on the Internet." He added: "Reject the dark side: Free the net!" Hamill quickly fired back with a burn: "Thanks for smarm-spaining it to me," he tweeted. "I know politics can be confusing, but you'd have more credibility if you spelled my name correctly. I mean IT'S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU! Maybe you're just distracted from watching porn at the office again," he said, mocking the gaffe that Cruz blamed on a staffer. In a follow-up tweet, he said he regrets leaving the "L" out of "smarm-splaining"—and the fact that Twitter's 280-character limit isn't enough to unpack "all the lies and all the stupid" in a Cruz tweet. Cruz quoted Yoda in another tweet to Hamill, saying Hamill had responded with anger instead of facts and asking: "Who was it that said, "Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate?"
– Seth Owen was over the moon when he received what appeared to be the path to his "life goal" of going to college: an acceptance letter from Georgetown University. But the Florida 18-year-old, who was the co-valedictorian of his senior class, had his hopes dashed when he later received his financial aid package from Georgetown, which had been based on the expected contribution from his family. The problem: He's estranged from his Southern Baptist parents, and was essentially forced out of his home, because he's gay, NBC News reports. Owen says his parents found out he was gay when he was a sophomore, made him go to Christian-based conversion therapy, and eventually told him he had to keep going to their church—which Owen says bashed the LGBT community—or leave. And so in February, he did, crashing with friends instead. He says he was "devastated" when he realized he couldn't afford the tuition for his first year at Georgetown—annual tuition and fees comes to around $70,000, and Owen would have to pay about $22,000 of that, per the Advocate—let alone for all four years. Enter Jane Martin, Owen's former bio teacher, who says Owen always "stood out to me." Martin, who's also gay, set up a GoFundMe for her ex-student, who also served as the ring bearer in her wedding. She explained she wanted to "help … bring a rainbow in the midst of Seth's storm" and "make the impossible possible." The GoFundMe has so far raised more than $82,000—and if Georgetown eventually acquiesces and adjusts Owen's financial aid package, Martin and Owen say they'll use leftover donations to set up a scholarship fund for other gay teens. Owen plans on studying to become a criminal defense lawyer for teens, per WJXT.
– Jake Perry's cats live the good life. And they live it for a long time. One of Perry's felines—Granpa Rexs Allen, who lived to be 34—broke the Guinness World Record for oldest cat in 1998. Seven years later, his kitty Crème Puff topped that record, living to be 38. Plenty more of his cats have made it to at least 30, while, on average, cats live to be 12 to 15 years old. In a profile in Atlas Obscura, Christina Couch writes that she first met Perry when he fixed her bathtub in 2012. It was then that he shared some of his secrets for feline longevity: A breakfast of eggs, turkey bacon, broccoli and coffee … with cream A splash of red wine to "circulate the arteries" Stimulation by way of nature documentaries screened in his garage-turned-theater Lots of love and attention The regimen, says Perry's vet, "is not what they taught us in school." He speculates the diuretic effects of the caffeine may help kidney function, though Couch notes that the science behind Perry's regimen is "shaky at best." And an animal nutrition expert cautions that caffeine and alcohol can be harmful. Perry, 85, recently beat pancreatic cancer himself, and he still has a cat: Jean Claude Van Damme, age 19. These days, however, the title of the oldest living cat belongs to one named Corduroy, KTVZ reports. The 26-year-old Main coon mix lives in Sisters, Ore. "I really think the key to (Corduroy's) longevity is, I've always allowed him to be a cat," says his owner. "We've kept his claws (and) it's allowed him to go outside and defend himself and also hunt." Read more about Perry and his pets here. See a short documentary about them here. (One thing that won't help cats live longer: scaring them with cucumbers)
– The Pentagon is digging deeper in its push for new air and space technologies as China threatens to unseat the US as king of the skies. Speaking with aerospace experts at the China Aerospace Studies Initiative, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work says the US' rival is "quickly closing the technological gaps," per Reuters. Specifically, China is developing highly advanced radar-evading aircraft, reconnaissance planes, missiles, and electronic warfare equipment, Work says, suggesting the US needs to step up its game. That’s becoming increasingly difficult, however, as "the margin of technological superiority upon which we have become so accustomed ... is steadily eroding," Work says. "As the Department of Defense, we're the hedge force," he says. "We say, 'Look, here are capabilities that we see that the Chinese are developing and it's important for us to be able to counter those.'" Though he doesn’t exactly dive into what technologies the Pentagon is working on, he says one way we might do that is with directed energy weapons that can shoot down pricey missiles at a low cost. Interestingly, Work’s comments were quickly followed by a Xinhua report noting Chinese military officials are also boosting development of national defense technology. "The whole of the society should be encouraged to take part in the innovation cause," a Chinese official is quoted as saying. (Tension with China is clear at sea as well as in the skies.)
– Seafood producers from Alaska to northern California have been hit hard by a Chinese ban on imports of West Coast shellfish, the Seattle Times reports. China says it has suspended imports indefinitely after high levels of arsenic and other toxins were found in a shipment of geoduck clams, but fish companies are crying foul, noting that even in the area where the clams were harvested, health authorities have found no evidence of toxins anywhere near harmful levels. Officials say that Chinese authorities have never imposed such a widespread ban on shellfish before and although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expected to enter negotiations with the Chinese government, the closure could last months, forcing seafood producers to find new markets or lay off thousands of workers. "It's had an incredible impact," the geoduck harvest coordinator for Puget Sound's Suquamish Tribe tells KUOW. "A couple thousand divers out of work right now."
– Yes, Hiddleswift is legit. Unless, of course, Tom Hiddleston is lying. "We are together and we’re very happy," Hiddleston told MTV, regarding Taylor Swift, on Thursday. He went further when the Hollywood Reporter asked him whether the relationship is for real: "Well, um. How best to put this? The truth is that Taylor Swift and I are together, and we're very happy. Thanks for asking. That's the truth. It's not a publicity stunt." More from the land of T-Swift: Her ex, Calvin Harris, appeared to continue his Twitter references to the Swift situation, tweeting a couple references Thursday to him "blocking out the haters," Us reports. He later deleted them. As for Harris' original Twitter rant against Taylor, in which he made a reference to her feud with Katy Perry, Perry appeared to respond by retweeting her own tweet from last year, CBS 8 reports: "Time, the ultimate truth teller." And, a source tells Hollywood Life, "Katy can’t help but feel vindicated by this. She’s glad Calvin is finally shining the light on exactly who Taylor is." Kim Kardashian also recently went after Swift. In a preview for Sunday's Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Kim explains why she trashed Swift in a GQ interview, People reports. "I never talk s--- about anyone publicly, especially in interviews. But I was just like I had so had it. I wanted to defend him in it. She legitimately quote says, 'As soon as I get on that Grammy red carpet I'm gonna tell all the press. Like I was in on it,'" Kim tells Kourtney in the preview, referring to Kanye West's lyric about Taylor in "Famous." But then Swift wasn't happy with the reaction, Kim claims: "You know, just another way to play the victim."
– Scientists studying a Stone Age site in Britain came across something that by all rights shouldn't have been there: wheat. More specifically, the researchers found the DNA of wheat dating back 8,000 years off the coast of the Isle of Wight, reports Reuters. That's about 2,000 years before ancient Brits began growing it, but scientists don't think this means that hunter-gatherers in the region were farming earlier than thought. In fact, the lack of wheat pollen at the site suggests it wasn't cultivated there at all. Instead, the scientists say it shows that these old inhabitants were in contact with farmers elsewhere in Europe and participating in a heretofore unknown "international wheat trade," reports the BBC. "This is a smoking gun of cultural interaction," says a co-author of the study in Science. "The conventional view of Britain at the time was that it was cut off," but the find very much suggests otherwise. "We can only speculate how they got wheat—it could have been trade, a gift, or stolen." The best guess is that the wheat came from farmers in what is now France, reports NPR. It's also possible that a land bridge existed at the time linking Britain to Europe, one now covered by the English Channel. The research site itself, called Bouldnor Cliff, is now underwater, but researchers think it was used for boat-building back in its day. (Click to read about how other ancients used flour to try to predict the future.)
– It's not the White House, but Barack and Michelle Obama clearly aren't too disappointed with their new Washington, DC, home: After renting it for several months, they've opted to buy it, reports People. The Obamas purchased the 8,200-square-foot home in the Kalorama neighborhood this week for $8.1 million, snatching it up from NFL executive Joe Lockhart, who bought it for $5.3 million in 2014, reports the Washington Post. Since the family plans to stay in Washington until Sasha, 15, finishes high school, "it made sense for them to buy a home rather than continuing to rent property," a rep says.
– Digital moochers are using Netflix and HBO Go accounts that don't belong to them without even having the decency to suck up to their family and friends to do so. Business Insider reports hackers are selling accounts to digital streaming services—everything from Netflix to Spotify to Marvel Unlimited—for mere cents on the Dark Web, that shady region of the Internet accessed via the TOR browser. "Every possible service and every possible flavor you could think of was being made for sale," Raj Samani at Intel Security tells Tech Insider. According to McAfee, some Netflix accounts were being sold for as low as 50 cents, while accounts for premium sports streaming services top the list at $15. Not only are these prices incredibly low, but many sellers are offering a lifetime guarantee, Tech Insider reports. That means if the account you bought for a buck gets shut down, the seller will simply give you another one. According to McAfee, this illicit marketplace isn't just bad news for the streaming services themselves; it can have repercussions for the actual account holders, too. Your account could be closed because of something the Dark Web buyer does, or the buyer could make purchases using your stored credit card information. Plus you don't want some jabroni screwing up your Netflix recommendations. Tech Insider recommends protecting accounts from interested buyers by using strong passwords and "two-factor" authentication. (This girl will sell you a nearly unbreakable password for $2.)
– The son of NYPD chief Raymond Kelly will not face rape charges over a high-profile accusation that emerged last month, reports DNAinfo. Both the Daily News and New York Times also say that Greg Kelly—TV host of Good Day New York and the son of police chief Raymond Kelly—won't be charged. His accuser, a paralegal in her late 20s, told police that Greg Kelly assaulted her last October after they returned to the Manhattan office where she worked after a night of drinking. “The facts established during our investigation do not fit the definition of sexual assault crimes,” said a letter provided to Kelly's lawyer from the office of Manhattan DA Cyrus R. Vance Jr.
– Time to face facts, ladies: The Tea Party express appears to be fueled by estrogen. A new film on the ferociously reactionary "Mama Grizzlies" examines candidates like Sharron Angle and Nikki Haley (and now Christine O'Donnell) rattling political races—as well as grassroots organizers of the "reborn" conservative movement stretching back to Phyllis Schafly (who wouldn't, of course, want to be associated with anything as unladylike as a hairy bear). The momentum, ironically, makes the Republican Party the current champion for number of women running for the Senate, due in large part to Sarah Palin's "king-making" endorsements, notes the Washington Post. “I don’t know if it's that mama grizzly instinct being awakened, if women are feeling threatened, or if it’s because women are feeling neglected—or empowered—but you can’t deny that there’s something happening today," conservative commentator SE Cupp says on the film Fire From the Heartland: The Reawakening of the Conservative Woman by the right-wing Citizens United. A GOP pollster says no one says "political outsider" like a Republican woman because "so few of them" have made it to the inner sanctums of Washington. (For more on the newest grizzly, click here.)
– It's one of the strangest and most spectacular lines ever uttered during a police chase: "If you see the large group of cows, they're literally following her and chasing her." You'll need to watch the video from Florida's Seminole County Sheriff's Office to appreciate it, but a small herd of cattle did indeed help police catch a suspect fleeing on foot through a pasture, reports TampaBay.com. Police say the woman had been in a stolen SUV being pursued by officers when the vehicle crashed near the pasture. One man who bolted from the SUV was quickly captured, but the woman made it further. "Actually, a large group of cows is following her for a good visual," says an officer in a helicopter. "It looks like they may attack her." The cows, more than a dozen in all, chased the woman to a fence, where she was promptly arrested. Jennifer Anne Kaufman, 46, faces charges of petit theft, possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia, trespassing, resisting arrest, and violation of probation.
– A sad milestone out of Japan: Two weeks after the quake struck, its official death toll has broken the 10,000 mark—and that number is still on the rise, with more than 17,400 missing. Police estimate the toll will surpass 15,000 in the hardest-hit prefecture alone. Among survivors, hundreds of thousands remain in temporary shelters, 660,000 homes lack water, and 209,000 have no electricity. And with the damage expected to cost as much as $310 billion, it’s set to be the most expensive natural disaster in recorded history, the AP reports. Japan has extended the evacuation zone from a 12-mile radius around the troubled Fukushima plant to an 18-mile one, notes the Los Angeles Times. Water is in short supply as bottles fly off the shelves; the government is weighing importing drinking water. Even in Tokyo, 150 miles from the plant, there are reports of radiation in the food chain. The government has now restricted sales of 11 leafy vegetables, prompting farmers’ fear for their livelihood, reports the Washington Post.
– Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sent out his annual letter to shareholders this week, and Business Insider takes note of one part in particular about the company's "Pay to Quit" program. Amazon offers some employees up to $5,000 to leave, and Bezos explains that the principle is "pretty simple": "Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit. The first year the offer is made, it’s for $2,000. Then it goes up one thousand dollars a year until it reaches $5,000. The headline on the offer is 'Please Don’t Take This Offer.' We hope they don’t take the offer; we want them to stay. Why do we make this offer? The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want. In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company." The Tennessean fills in some gaps: The offer is good only for employees in the company's "fulfillment centers"—the warehouses where all those online orders get packed and shipped. A spokeswoman tells the paper that only a "small percentage of employees take the offer." The Huffington Post, meanwhile, notes that many of those warehouse workers are part-timers, and it's unclear whether they would qualify for the deal. Still, it's an interesting idea, writes Max Nisen at Quartz, and it shows how Bezos isn't afraid to experiment to improve his workforce.
– There will be no payday for 29 people who claimed to be Prince's heirs, including a woman who said the CIA covered up her marriage to the superstar, a Minnesota judge ruled in an order disclosed Friday. Reuters reports that Carver County Judge Kevin Eide ordered genetic testing for six other claimants: Prince's sister, Tyka Nelson, three half-siblings by his father, and a possible niece and grandniece. Two half-brothers from Prince's mother will not be tested under the judge's ruling, which will determine the future of an estate thought to be worth up to $500 million. Other rejected claimants include at least five people who claimed Prince was their father, and several who claimed that their father had an affair with Prince's mother, making their father Prince's real father and the late star their half-brother, the AP reports. Under Minnesota law, the estate of Prince—who left no known will or surviving offspring—will be split between siblings, half-siblings, and the offspring of any deceased siblings. Despite the order for genetic testing, Eide's ruling says he "is not aware of any objection or dispute" to the six siblings or half-siblings being legitimate heirs. (A DNA test ruled out an inmate in Colorado who claimed he was Prince's son.)
– Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi returned to the presidential palace today after fleeing yesterday when it was thronged by protesters, Reuters reports. Though 200 demonstrators camped out overnight, traffic was back to normal today and riot police had left the area. In yesterday's clashes, 35 protesters and 40 police officers were hurt. And things are looking to heat up again soon: The Muslim Brotherhood has called for a protest at the palace today against the "oppressive abuses" of the opposition, and the opposition in response called for leftist demonstrators to head back to the palace, leading to fears of violent clashes. Opposition protesters want Morsi to retract his expanded powers and stop a Dec. 15 vote on the new constitution hastily drafted by Islamists. Though they called yesterday's protest a "last warning" to the president, Reuters notes that they have little real chance of stopping the vote, which Morsi is confident will approve the constitution.
– Tiger Woods' second round of the US Open is over, and you will currently find his name second from the bottom on the leaderboard. Which means that out of 156 golfers, he is tied for 154th place. Some are still playing, and it's possible one or two more might end up behind him, but no matter what, his 16-over-par means that he will miss the cut by a mile, reports USA Today. What's more, this is pretty much business as usual for Woods these days. "At a certain point, all of the stragglers are going to let it go—the hangers-on who still believe that Tiger Woods has a chance to regain at least some of his past glory and start playing excellent golf once again, winning a tournament here or there and maybe even another major," writes Steve Silverman at CBS. Those looking for a new phenom might pay attention to 15-year-old Cole Hammer, who is about to start his second round. It's a long shot, but if he finished at 4-under today, he'd probably make the cut.
– A Mississippi man received a 49-year prison sentence Monday for the first-ever conviction on federal hate crime charges arising from the killing of a transgender woman, the AP reports. In a case watched by the LGBT community nationwide, US District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. sentenced Joshua Vallum, 29, in the 2015 killing of 17-year-old Mercedes Williamson. It was the first case prosecuted under the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act involving a victim targeted because of gender identity. Prosecutors said Vallum shocked Williamson with a stun gun, stabbed her, and beat her to death to keep fellow Latin Kings gang members from discovering the two were having sex. Gang rules barred homosexual activity and declared it punishable by death. The couple had broken up in 2014 but a friend had recently discovered Williamson was transgender, per CNN. Guirola could have sentenced Vallum to life in prison, but heeded a lesser sentence suggested in a plea agreement between defense attorneys and prosecutors, citing Vallum's neglected childhood and other issues. Both the judge and defense lawyers said Vallum's history of abuse as a child had to be considered. Vallum pleaded guilty to the federal charges in December. He previously pleaded guilty to a state murder charge that led to a separate sentence of life without parole. On Monday, Vallum begged forgiveness from Williamson's family and friends, though none of them were present—only a few reporters, the judge, and Vallum's father and stepmother. "Every day, I live with the guilt and regret of my actions," Vallum said. "If I could bring back Mercedes by giving up my life, I would gladly do so."
– It's not unusual for newspaper editorials to criticize a president's policies. But the editorial board at the Los Angeles Times is taking the concept to a new level with a multi-part series called "Our Dishonest President." Part one on Sunday issued a warning that President Trump is "so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation." Those traits may have helped him get elected as an "outsider," but hopes that they would be reined in once he entered the White House are fading. The editorial ends with a plea for voters, protesters, members of Congress, state legislators, the courts, the media, etc., to be vigilant about protecting America from its own president. On Monday, part two focuses on Trump's capacity to lie. Plenty of politicians lie, of course, but what Trump "brings to the equation is an apparent disregard for fact so profound as to suggest that he may not see much practical distinction between lies, if he believes they serve him, and the truth." What makes this especially dangerous is that Trump repeats the lies of others, even crackpots. "He gives every indication that he is as much the gullible tool of liars as he is the liar in chief." Verification seems to be a foreign concept to Trump, but it can't be for everyone else, write the editors, who close with advice: "Investigate. Read. Write. Listen. Speak. Think. ... Be suspicious of those who confuse reality with reality TV, and those who repeat falsehoods while insisting, against all evidence, that they are true. To defend freedom, demand fact." Read part one and part two.
– Members of the Broward County Police Benevolent Association handed carnations out to students as they entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School two weeks after a former student gunned down 17 people inside the freshman building. A long line of cars bringing people back to the school in Parkland, Fla., was guided by police as dozens of television trucks and vehicles camped out nearby. About 50 armed officers were on hand, and only students, parents, and staff were allowed through a security cordon. The main entrance is covered with a sign saying "Welcome Back Eagles." Students were told to leave their backpacks at home. Principal Ty Thomas said in a tweet Tuesday that "our focus is on emotional readiness and comfort not curriculum: so there is no need for backpacks. Come ready to start the healing process and #RECLAIMTHENEST." For Madison Geller, Wednesday offered an opportunity to get back into a routine, in spite of her fears, reports the AP. "When I walk in there, I'm going to replay the whole thing in my head. But we have to come here and try to learn," the high school junior said. "This week we will try to be comfortable and get back into the same routine." Angelyse Perez, a senior, said returning offers a chance for everyone to "get through this and be together. But I'm graduating," she said. "I just want to get out of here."
– The remote Alaska town of Galena is accustomed to spring flooding, so much so that many of its homes are built on stilts, reports the AP. But it wasn't prepared for what it faced this week: a 30-mile ice jam that literally jammed the Yukon River and unleashed intense flooding on the town. The waters began to rise Sunday and by yesterday many of Galena's 500 residents had fled via plane, with a few holdouts camping at the airport, one of the only dry spots left. Homes have been ripped from their foundations, cell and electrical service is down, and the bridge to the airport was knocked out. A Weather Service hydrologist at the scene tells the Anchorage Daily News that bathrooms aren't functioning and "there are houses that are totally submerged in water up to the roof." Though no injuries or deaths have been reported, locals say just about every house has suffered damage. And with temps hitting the 80s, the jam is starting to break up—putting a community 14 miles downriver from the jam at risk. Says Koyukuk's mayor, "We're looking at a flash flood. Something like a dam breaking." The expectation is that when the jam breaks, it will send a wave of water toward Koyukuk, reaching it in about four hours.
– A Los Angeles mom accused of running a multimillion-dollar marijuana grow operation in San Bernardino is now suing the city to overturn its pot regulation ordinance, the AP reports. Stephanie Smith, a 43-year-old real estate developer and mother of five, owns three buildings in San Bernardino that were raided by police in December. Thousands of marijuana plants were confiscated, CBS Los Angeles reported at the time. Smith was not arrested or charged, but police accused her of being in charge of the pot "fortress"; she said she was simply the landlord and that her tenants' activities were legal. In her lawsuit, she argues San Bernardino's ordinance "is a backdoor ban that continues the city's illogical campaign against a legal product," CBS reports. California legalized recreational marijuana last year, but sales did not begin until Jan. 1, CBS reported at the time. Smith, who says she is the biggest landlord of marijuana businesses in the state, argues that under the San Bernardino ordinance—which was passed by the city council after Smith's buildings were raided—"any person who has ever had anything to do with cannabis is banned for life from entering the legal market," per the San Bernardino Sun. That's because Smith says her tenants were in the process of being licensed when they were raided, and got approval to operate a week after authorities shut them down, but the ordinance bars anyone who has violated local or state laws related to the cannabis industry from ever entering the commercial cannabis business in the city. "San Bernardino is ... guaranteeing that anyone in the city who operated prior to this law has to remain in the black market," her attorney says. Smith says that could result in monopolies forming in the cannabis industry, and could also prevent her from renting to those in the industry.
– Strong conservative, Tea Party favorite, and rising star Allen West could find his congressional seat gerrymandered Democrat—by none other than the Republican Party. West's "sacrifice" at the hands of his own party smells like the latest example of the establishment fighting back against the Tea Party, according to Legal Insurrection. One Florida legislator, who happens to be working for the Mitt Romney campaign, "tried to hide behind a need to comply with [state and] federal law, but that’s obviously a dodge since there could have been many ways to comply yet not sacrifice West," writes William Jacobson. Never one to avoid controversy, West over the weekend had strong words for President Obama and other top Democrats who have their eye on the Sunshine State come November, telling them to "get the hell out of the United States of America," reports Mediaite. Apparently unfazed by any potential challenge to his seat, West told the Democrats to "bring it on!"
– The Buffalo Bills made a power run through a glass ceiling on Wednesday by hiring Kathryn Smith, the first full-time female member of coaching staff in NFL history. Smith, who has worked in the NFL since 2003 and joined the Bills last year as an administrative assistant to head coach Rex Ryan, is the new special teams quality control coach, reports the Buffalo News. She started out at the New York Jets, where she became a player personnel assistant in 2007 and was promoted to assistant to the head coach in 2014. "She certainly deserves this promotion based on her knowledge and strong commitment, just to name a couple of her outstanding qualities, and I just know she's going to do a great job serving in the role of quality control-special teams," Ryan said in a Bills press release. Her hire is a big step for the NFL, Bleacher Report notes, although there are already full-time female coaches in MLB and the NBA, leaving the NHL with some catching up to do. (Last summer, the Arizona Cardinals made Jen Welter the first woman to hold any kind of coaching position in the NFL.)
– The school resource officer suspended after videos of him throwing a black female high-school student around a South Carolina classroom went viral Monday has been fired, CBS News reports. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott announced the firing of Ben Fields Wednesday after an investigation found his "use of force was unacceptable" and he didn't follow procedure during the arrest. According to NBC News, the decision was made after the sheriff's department looked at videos of the incident and interviewed witnesses. "From the very beginning that's what's caused me to be upset, and continued to upset me, is that he picked the student up and threw the student across the room," Lott says. The Department of Justice is also conducting its own investigation into the incident. This isn't the first time Fields, who is white, has faced accusations of excessive force and racial bias. He's been involved in three other such cases dating back to 2005, and he's scheduled to go to trial over a 2013 racial bias incident in January.
– George W. Bush called the killing of Osama bin Laden a "victory for America." Members of the military and intelligence community who spent a decade chasing him "have our everlasting gratitude," he added. "The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done." Read the full statement at the American Spectator. Bill Clinton also weighed in: "I congratulate the president, the National Security team and the members of our armed forces on bringing Osama bin Laden to justice after more than a decade of murderous al-Qaeda attacks." Mike Huckabee was more succinct, crowing: "Welcome to hell, bin Laden" in his statement. Gordon Felt, the president of the Families of Flight 93, noted: "It cannot ease our pain, or bring back our loved ones. It does bring a measure of comfort that the mastermind of the September 11th tragedy and the face of global terror can no longer spread his evil.” Check out the New York Times for comments from Mitt Romney, Rep. Harry Reid, Sen. John McCain, and more.
– The nonprofit that cares for the Hollywood sign says it will be "deploying additional technology to tighten up surveillance" after the sign was altered to read "Hollyweed" on Sunday. The black and white tarps that transformed the sign had been removed by mid-morning on New Year's Day with no damage to the letters, prompting police to abandon a search for a suspect. But the Hollywood Sign Trust says it will adopt new measures to "deter unwanted visitors in the future," reports the Hollywood Reporter. These could include updates to the existing security camera system, which recorded a "lone individual" dressed in black hanging tarps from the letters around 3am Sunday, reports the Los Angeles Times. Such an incident "shows us where there are opportunities to make improvements," says the trust's chairman, adding the group will work with police to discover the weak link in its security. "Our concern is the safety of the neighborhood and the trespassers that put themselves at risk because it is extremely unsafe to be on the sign," which a student also altered to read "Hollyweed" in 1976 as part of an art project. The existing security system includes 35 cameras that watch the sign and hillside. The area is also protected by a wrought-iron fence and a police officer in a guard house, which is manned at all hours. The Times notes rain and clouds may have provided concealment for Sunday's trespasser.
– The Secret Service exists in part to protect the president, which is exactly why the agent in charge of the Denver district is now in hot water. In a since-deleted Facebook post from October, highlighted by the Washington Examiner, Kerry O'Grady explained she "would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for [Trump]," whom she described as a "disaster to this country" and to the "women and minorities who reside here." Not only did the post suggest O'Grady wasn't prepared to fulfill her job description if need be, but it also violated the Hatch Act banning certain executive branch members from making partisan statements, which O'Grady herself acknowledged, per the Hill. O'Grady tells the Examiner that she is a sexual assault victim and her comments were "a very emotional reaction" to claims that Trump had sexually assaulted women. But she says she also regretted her action after a few days. "I firmly believe in this job. I'm proud to do it and we serve the office of the president," she says, noting her personal feelings toward Trump will not get in the way of her duties. Her comments may, however. A Secret Service rep tells CNN that it is "taking quick and appropriate action" after the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General reportedly received at least one complaint. Critics have suggested O'Grady should be fired, per USA Today.
– That sound you're hearing is probably Wall Street's tiniest violin playing for Jamie Dimon. As many expected, JPMorgan Chase's board slashed the CEO's salary in response to the "London Whale" disaster, dropping his incentive pay a backbreaking 53.5% to $10 million, leaving him a mere $11.5 million with which to feed his family, CNN Money reports. "As Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Dimon bears ultimate responsibility for the failures that led to the losses," the board wrote. Of course, the New York Times notes that the firm had an excellent year despite the Whale episode, with fourth quarter profit up 53% year-over-year. Maybe Dimon can cry on the shoulders of Morgan Stanley's traders and investment bankers, thousands of whom will be getting IOUs instead of cash bonuses this year, the Wall Street Journal reports. In response to the financial crisis, the bank is now breaking bonuses into four chunks, the last of which will come in 2016—if the employees are still with the bank. "I don't think there will be a lot of cheers on the trading floors of Morgan Stanley," one former Fed official remarked.
– A movie crew shooting a film about the life of singer Gregg Allman was hit by a train this week in Jesup, Georgia, killing one crew member and injuring seven others, the AP reports. The crew was working on the tracks without permission on Thursday afternoon—either on the trestle that bridges the Altamaha River or on the river's edge—when a train hit the crew and their equipment, killing 27-year-old Sarah Jones. One other crew member was hurt seriously enough to be flown to a hospital in Savannah. The crew had an arrangement with the railway, CSX Railroad, but didn't have permission to film on the tracks, said the top detective on the case. He told WTOC that the investigation will be considered a homicide for now, "to ensure that we err on the side of caution." The Open Roads Films project—Midnight Rider, starring William Hurt—will still be released but there's no release date just yet, Deadline reports. Meanwhile, messages and tweets are emerging that grieve for Jones' tragic death, reports AccessAtlanta. "Sarah, you will be missed dearly," wrote an actress who has worked with her. "Your smile and love for life ... your daily ambition to make others smile ... will be remembered as long as we live."
– The Man in Black's boyhood home has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, though the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette notes that it took two tries to get it there. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program announced Friday that the home in Dyess where country music icon Johnny Cash lived from age 3 through high school has been added to the register. The nomination's first failed attempt focused on the structure's architectural significance rather than its connection to Cash. The five-room farmhouse was built in 1934 as part of the Dyess Resettlement Colony by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, reports the AP. The Democrat-Gazette reports that the house is owned by Arkansas State University, which spent $575,000 to buy, restore, furnish, and landscape the property. "When we grew up, it was second nature that we wouldn't live in Dyess when we were grown," Cash once said. "It was the aim of every person to get a better job. But if I hadn't grown up there, I wouldn't be what I am now. It was the foundation for what I became." Cash died in 2003 at age 71.
– In a plea to a police dispatcher to "help my sisters," a 17-year-old girl in a childlike, quivering voice detailed years of abuse she and 12 siblings suffered in a house where she said they were shackled to beds, choked and went unbathed so long the stench was suffocating. In the 911 call played in a California court Wednesday during a hearing to determine if her mother and father should face trial on child abuse charges, the girl said two younger sisters and a brother were chained to their beds and she couldn't take it any longer. "They will wake up at night and they will start crying and they wanted me to call somebody," she said in a high-pitched voice. "I wanted to call y'all so y'all can help my sisters." David and Louise Turpin have pleaded not guilty in Riverside County Superior Court to torture, child abuse and other charges. They are being held on $12 million bail each, per the AP. Louise Turpin dabbed her eyes with a tissue as the recording of her daughter was played. The girl planned her escape for two years and was terrified as she climbed out a window and ran to freedom, Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Manuel Campos testified. When she called the dispatcher around the corner from her house, the girl wasn't even sure what street she was on. The kids were rarely allowed to go outside, though they did trick-or-treat on Halloween and traveled as a family to Disneyland and Las Vegas. "I don't go out much so I don't know anything about the streets or anything," she said on the call and confirmed she was reading her address off a piece of paper with her mother's name on it. The girl said she hadn't bathed in about a year and that the house was filthy. "Sometimes I wake up and I can't breathe because of how dirty the house is," she said. (The Associated Press has more details of the call.)
– Lightning strikes people often enough, but usually not when they're opening the fridge for a snack. Such is the plight of Texas high school student Macie Martinez, who was home with her parents on Memorial Day when a storm blew in. She was opening the fridge to grab some applesauce when the bolt struck. "It was so surreal," her mom tells the Houston Chronicle. "There was a loud explosion, everything went dark and at the same time, Macie started screaming, but it wasn't from her throat. It was a deep scream." The teen tells MyFox Austin that she remembers not being able to feel her legs, and her parents hustled her to the hospital. She suffered nerve damage in her arms and hands, and doctors are keeping an eye on her kidney and liver, but she seems to have escaped major harm. "I feel very lucky," she tells the TV station. "Lucky to be sitting here doing this interview today." She's even making light of herself on Instagram, telling people to call her Sparky. It turns out that Martinez's father also got zapped, though his telltale rash didn't show up until after the family had returned from the hospital. "My right arm gets tingly," he says. The family home sustained significant damage from the strike, which a neighbor says appeared to have come from beneath the house and exited through the roof. Appliances were fried, with the coffee maker one of the few survivors. That's fine with mom: "I get my daughter and coffee maker, so I'm set." (This guy survived a lightning strike to the head.)
– Barry Byron Mills, the murderous leader of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, died this month in federal lockup, where he had spent much of his life, according to a report Sunday. Mills, also known by the nickname "Baron," was found dead July 8 in his single-person cell at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo., per the San Jose Mercury News. He was 70 and serving multiple life sentences. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Mills joined the Aryan Brotherhood during a stint at San Quentin prison in the 1970s. He later became leader, aggressively recruiting throughout the state, per the AP. His grip on the gang stretched nationwide but was strongest in Northern California, where many of its highest-ranking members came from. "There's no doubt of his influence in the Bay Area. It's fact, not debatable," retired federal prison warden Robert Hood told the newspaper. "I'm not trying to glorify him, but I can tell you this: He had the admiration of a lot of inmates, but he was also feared." Mills was known for committing brazen, brutal killings—including a savage attempted decapitation while in federal custody in Georgia. Using couriers, Mills distributed orders from coast to coast, leading to a race war between prison gangs and a notorious protection deal with New York mobster John Gotti. Mills first caught authorities' attention by planning and ordering a California bank robbery from his cell. Authorities said Mills' death does not appear suspicious. The results of an autopsy could take weeks.
– The attack on the US consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens wasn't the spontaneous act of violence it initially appeared to be—it was planned. Or at least, that's what the Obama administration suspects. Whereas yesterday's riots in Egypt appeared spontaneous, attackers in Libya showed up with mortars and rocket-propelled-grenades, officials tell the New York Times, though they're not sure yet if those people organized the riot or merely took advantage. But sources tell CNN that they don't believe Stevens was specifically targeted. Stevens died of smoke inhalation, a Libyan doctor tells the AP. A US official says the building caught fire when someone threw a grenade. Employees "were fighting the fire inside and the attackers outside," the official tells CNN, adding that there were "valiant but unsuccessful" attempts to go back and save people. In a brief statement today, President Obama vowed that "justice will be done," the AP reports. He didn't elaborate on what that might mean, but a senior official says that the White House is expected to approve a plan to send spy drones to look for jihadi camps near Benghazi that may have been involved in the attack.
– President Obama is in Cambodia today, meeting with East Asian leaders amid a contentious territorial dispute over the South China Sea. Speaking publicly, neither Obama nor Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao responded to reporters' shouted questions about the tensions, the BBC reports. Instead, Obama referred to a "cooperative and constructive approach" to relations between the US and China, though he cited a need for "clear rules of the road" on trade. But the summit (which joins the 10 ASEAN countries with eight other nations, including China and the US) was expected to focus on the territorial issues. To wit, the AP reports that behind closed doors, the Chinese and Philippine leaders pressed their territorial claims while others called for restraint. Those two countries, along with Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei, all have claims to a portion of the South China Sea, while China and Japan disagree over control of islands in the East China Sea. Trade talks between the East Asian countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand, were expected to be another focus of the summit.
– Addressing a conference in Malmö, Sweden, home of many immigrants, the Dalai Lama said Europe was "morally responsible" for helping refugees who are in danger—but that ultimately those refugees should return to their homelands. "Receive them, help them, educate them ... but ultimately they should develop their own country," he said, per the Local. "I think Europe belongs to the Europeans," and that refugees "ultimately should rebuild their own country," he added. The 83-year-old Buddhist spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner fled Tibet as Chinese communist troops took over the area in 1959, and settled in India, where he was granted asylum, the Daily Caller notes.
– "A girl must marry for love, and keep on marrying until she finds it," oft-married actress and socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor once said. A selection of other great quotes from Gabor, who has died at the age of 99, and whose sayings summed up her flamboyant attitude to life and love: "I'm a great housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house." "Husbands are like fires—they go out when unattended." "I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back." That one was from 1957, after her third marriage ended, the Guardian notes. "A man in love is incomplete until he's married. Then he's finished." "I believe that in life you should always take the serious things lightly and the light things seriously. This attitude of mine gets me into a lot of trouble." "I don't remember anybody's name. Why do you think the whole 'dahling' thing started?" "Personally, I know nothing about sex because I've always been married." People notes that many of Gabor's divorce lawyers were present when she made this quip at an American Bar Association event in 1987. (Click to see Zsa Zsa's life in pictures.)
– The best wedding present Kathy and Brandon Gunn received at their Michigan wedding was one they never opened—at least not for nine years. That was because the gift from great-aunt Alison came with a special instruction: "On the plain white box was a card that read, 'Do not open until your 1st disagreement,'" Kathy Gunn wrote in a post on the Love What Matters Facebook page, spotted by UPI. “Now, there had obviously been plenty of disagreements, arguments, and slammed doors throughout our 9 years," writes Gunn. "There were even a couple of instances where we both considered giving up ... but we never opened the box." Doing that, she says, "would have symbolized our failure." So the box sat on shelves in various closets through the years, gathering dust. "It somehow taught us about tolerance, understanding, compromise, and patience," writes Gunn in a post that so far has racked up 14,000 likes. Finally, on Aug. 30, after the couple put their kids to bed and had some wine, they decided to crack open the box. Inside, they found wineglasses, envelopes of money, and some advice. To Kathy: Pick up a pizza or "something you both like," and get a bath ready. To Brandon: Go get flowers and a bottle of wine. "It was by far the greatest wedding gift of all," says Kathy. The Huffington Post rounds up photos of the couple here. (A math quiz was enough to tank this couple's marriage.)
– President Trump is calling for Russia to be reinstated to the leading group of industrialized nations, now known as the Group of Seven, the AP reports. "Now, I love our country. I have been Russia's worst nightmare," Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Friday morning as he prepared to leave for the G7 summit in Canada, per Politico. "But with that being said, Russia should be in this meeting. Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting?" He added: "Whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run. And in the G7, which used to be the G8, they threw Russia out. They should let Russia come back in. Because we should have Russia at the negotiating table." Russia was ousted from the elite group in 2014 as punishment for President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea and its support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. The suspension was supported by the other members of the group: the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. CNN notes Trump's remarks come after a public Twitter battle Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over new tariffs the US has hit its allies with for "national security" purposes.
– A pair of witnesses support a woman's claim that Bill Cosby sexually abused her when she was 15, her lawyer says in a court filing. Lawyer Marc Strecker says he's seen pictures of his client, Judy Huth, at the Playboy Mansion with Bill Cosby in the 1970s, reports the Hollywood Reporter, information that matches her story. The filing doesn't offer specifics of what the witnesses know, the AP reports, but it does contain a psychologist's assessment that there's "a reasonable basis to believe that Ms. Huth has been subject to childhood sexual abuse." Cosby, whose wife recently reacted to sex assault reports against him, isn't named in the psychological assessment. Meanwhile, yet another woman has come forward with allegations against Cosby, saying he drugged her at another Playboy Mansion party just six years ago, when she was 18. The timing means Cosby could still be criminally charged for the incident, the Hollywood Reporter notes. Chloe Goins plans to report the incident to police, the Daily Mail reports. She says she went to a party at the mansion, where she was introduced to Cosby, who gave her a drink, though she was underage. Feeling dizzy, she lay down in a room offered by Hugh Hefner, she says. Cosby allegedly guided her to the room, and when she woke up, she says, she was naked and he was licking her toes and masturbating. "This isn't something I really wanted out there about myself," she says, but after so many women have come forward, "I feel he needs to pay for it."
– If you've had enough health care talk today, ABC News has a suggestion. Go to YouTube and punch in something about dogs singing along to the Law & Order theme. Dozens of entries will turn up, which one veterinary specialist thinks might have something to do with its high-pitched, complex arrangement. She suspects it stresses out the pooches, but the theme's composer has a more upbeat view. "I can't believe it. This is the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life!" Mike Post tells the New York Post. "They're not running away from it, they're singing along with it. If somebody notices my music and appreciates it, I'm happy."
– Thanks to a team of researchers from Belgium, we may be close to synthesizing and, yes, possibly even bottling and selling the smell of human death, Discovery reports. Eva Cuypers and her team at the University of Leuven separated the tissues and organs of six humans and 26 different animals, placing them in jars to decompose over the next six months. By collecting the gases building up in the jars, researchers identified 452 organic compounds, according to Science. Eight of those compounds were found only in decomposing humans and surprisingly human-like pigs, and five of them were unique to humans. These five compounds—called esters—were created by decomposing muscles, carbohydrates, and fat, Discovery reports. The esters create a "singular chemical cocktail" in decomposing humans and could explain why so-called cadaver dogs are able to sniff out dead people amid any number of competing smells, including other dead animals, Science reports. Cuypers and her team published their findings last week. They believe the results could be used to better train cadaver dogs or even create a machine that could do the same job. And Discovery points out the synthetic smell of decomposing human bodies could prove popular at Halloween parties. Experts have questioned components of the research—including the separation of tissue and organs—and Cuypers plans a follow-up study using full bodies buried in a field, Science reports. (The smell of corpses can also reveal when a person died.)
– There's waking up hungry and there's, well, this. A British cafe has introduced the queen of all breakfasts, a 59-item spread that packs in 7,778 calories. The Corner Cafe's Monster Mega Breakfast comes across as slightly redundant: It contains eggs and omelets, fried potatoes (four portions) and hash browns, and both toast and fried bread. Plus bacon, sausages, mushrooms, chips, onion rings, black pudding, tomatoes, and beans. The meal costs about $22.50 and has a time limit attached: Those attempting to polish it off have an hour to do so if they want to win a place on the wall of champions, a breakfast coupon, and a key ring. They'll be helped (or hindered?) along the way with one of two drinks: their choice of a milkshake or energy drink, reports the Bristol Post. A manager of the Portishead cafe tells the Post that since being launched earlier this month, five people have ordered it and none have finished. Quirky side note: No one under 18 is allowed to order it. The cafe's Facebook page has photos of those who have made the attempt, along with a message to those who have accused it of being wasteful. Its post begins, "We are just a little family run business who can't save the entire world from famine and starvation!" Could the 8,000-calorie breakfast be the start of a trend? The Bear Grills cafe in Congleton, England, made a splash a few months ago with the launch of its own 8,000-calorie meal, the 7-pound "Hibernator." Sweet tooths may prefer its version, which includes four waffles. More on it here.
– Well, it should save on honeymoon airfare, anyway. A 38-year-old Indiana woman married Jesus Christ over the weekend, becoming one of his approximately 3,000 living wives worldwide, CBS News reports. The process is known as becoming a consecrated virgin and is relatively rare within the Catholic Church, with only about 200 in the US. She's not a nun: According to the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins, someone who marries Jesus lives a life of "perpetual virginity" dedicated to serving the church and performing works of mercy while still living in the secular world. Jessica Hayes, a high-school theology teacher in Fort Wayne, tells CBS affiliate WANE she made the decision to become a consecrated virgin after lots of "prayer and soul-searching." She says she believes God calls all people to become married; for some that means wedding their spouse, while for others it means committing to Jesus. Despite the non-traditional groom, Hayes still wore the traditional wedding dress and faced the traditional wedding questions. "My students asked if they should call me Mrs. Hayes when I come back to school next week, and no, I'm still Ms.," she tells WANE. "But, I am married to Jesus."
– LeBron James put a ring on it: The Miami Heat star married longtime girlfriend Savannah Brinson yesterday, sources say, in a hush-hush wedding at San Diego's Grand Del Mar Hotel. The couple, who have two sons, have been together since high school, reports the AP; James proposed on New Year's Day 2012. James' teammates, including Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, were on yesterday's guest list amid high security. And who needs a DJ? TMZ reports that none other than Beyonce and Jay Z serenaded the newlyweds with "Crazy in Love."
– Melania Trump has doubts about some of the people who rub elbows with her husband in the West Wing. She thinks there are people there he can't trust, the first lady tells ABC News' Tom Llamas in a clip from an interview filmed during her trip to Africa. Trump says she gives her husband her "honest opinions" on individuals, with the result that "some people, they don't work there anymore," per CNN. But "you always need to watch your back," she says. Trump also paints herself as the perfect person to be leading a campaign against online bullying: "I could say that I'm the most bullied person [in] the world … one of them, if you really see what people are saying about me," she says. Referring to the effect bullying has on kids, she adds, "we need to educate the children [about] social-emotional behavior ... That's very important." Trump spoke about the #MeToo movement in an earlier clip. The full interview, touching on infidelity and child migrants, airs Friday.
– "I'm a born burglar," says Octave Durham, per the New York Times, which looks at a new documentary about Durham's notorious theft of two Vincent Van Gogh paintings. Set to be broadcast Tuesday on Dutch TV, the 45-minute special by filmmaker Vincent Verweij gets the inside scoop on the 2002 heist Durham says took less than four minutes and nabbed him two works the Times deems "of inestimable value": Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen and View of the Sea at Scheveningen. Durham, who was convicted for the burglary in 2004 and spent just over two years in prison, says he passed cops in his getaway car and brags that he'd pulled off "more spectacular jobs than this"—after years of denying he had any involvement in the theft, per Versopolis.com. In one reveal that may insult art lovers everywhere, Durham notes he didn't run off with the Van Goghs because of any particular love for the great master, or for art in general: He did it because it was an opportunity for a big get. "That's the eye of a burglar," he says. Per NLTimes.com, Durham told a Dutch paper over the weekend he'd wanted to steal two other Van Gogh paintings—Sunflowers and The Potato Eaters—but one was too big to slip out and the other was under heavy security, so he and partner Henk Bieslijn settled on the other two. The Times notes the Van Gogh Museum is still "furious" with Durham, who didn't get paid for the film, and refused to help Verweij. The filmmaker defends his choice of cinematic subject, noting, "You never see documentaries or articles about art theft from the perspective of the thief." (The Van Gogh Museum was pretty stoked when the paintings were recovered.)
– CBS is scrapping its Early Show team, replacing co-hosts Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez with the anchors of the show's Saturday edition, Chris Wragge and Erica Hill. Other more minor players also are leaving in the switch, which takes place early next year, the LA Times reports. The show has been consistently stuck in third place, well behind Today and Good Morning America. Smith, who survived the last major overhaul of the show in 2002, will stick with the network as Katie Couric's main backup on the CBS Evening News, notes AP. Click here for more.
– The Chicago Cubs need to beat the Cleveland Indians both Tuesday and Wednesday nights if they want to win the World Series for the first time since 1908—and there are a number of celebrities hoping they do just that. CBS rounds up celebrities who have been spotted rooting for the Cubs at Wrigley Field this season, as well as a couple other notable fans: Bill Murray: The avid Cubs fan, who also did a White House press briefing focused on the team, has been spotted at Wrigley numerous times—and once he was wearing a shirt stating, "I ain't afraid of no goat," a reference to a goat-related curse that is said to plague the Cubs. Dwayne Wayde and Jimmy Butler: They're sort of required to support the Cubs, since they play for another Chicago team—the Bulls. Blackhawks captains Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, and Jonathan Toews: CBS even has video of these Chicago sports VIPs singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch. Vince Vaughn: The actor was last spotted at Wrigley for an August game. Click for the complete list, including video of a dejected Eddie Vedder.
– Another 130 Marines and special operations forces have been sent to Iraq to help rescue tens of thousands of Yazidi refugees still trapped on a mountain, but this "is not a combat boots on the ground kind of operation," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says. Speaking at California's Camp Pendleton, he described the extra American troops now in the northern city of Irbil as "assessment team members" who will assist the effort to help members of the Yazidi minority threatened by Islamic State extremists. A helicopter bringing supplies to people trapped on Mount Sinjar crashed yesterday after too many refugees climbed on board. More: As the plight of the refugees becomes increasingly desperate, American officials say a ground force may be necessary to get the refugees off the mountain, the New York Times reports. John Kerry says the 130 advisers will be tasked with finding a safe way out. "We will make a very rapid and critical assessment because we understand it is urgent to try to move those people off the mountain," he told reporters today. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, appears to have given up on trying to cling to power at any cost, the New York Times notes. He has told troops deployed in Baghdad not to intervene in the crisis—and officials say the military has told Maliki he no longer has their support. Insiders say discussions on Maliki stepping down are now focused on immunity from prosecution. New Iraqi President Fouad Massoum has chosen deputy parliament speaker Haider al-Ibadi as Maliki's replacement. France is sending arms in "coming hours" to Kurds fighting the Islamic State in a situation it calls "catastrophic," reports the AP. The move comes with Baghdad's blessing. Across the border in Syria, Islamic State militants have made fresh gains, reports the AP. Opposition activists say fighters have seized two key towns near the Turkish border after clashes with other rebel groups.
– For the first time in nearly a month, flesh-eating bacteria sufferer Aimee Copeland has graduated from mouthing words to actually speaking, reports WRDW. "Today…May 27……is AIMEE DAY!!!" her father blogged yesterday; her family has been using the phrase to refer to the day she would be capable of breathing independently, which happened last week. "Our baby can talk," writes Andy Copeland, who adds that Aimee still doesn't know her case is garnering national press.
– Should it ever erupt, a supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park could blanket North America in an ash cloud, wipe out communications, and alter the climate. Given that eruptions of supervolcanoes buried on our planet—and there are several—are thought to occur every 100,000 years or so, however, the likelihood of such an event during your lifetime is small, reports the New York Times. As comforting as that may be, new research out of Arizona State University is far less so. Whereas researchers previously thought such an eruption would be centuries or millennia in the making, an analysis of fossilized ash left over from Yellowstone's last supereruption 630,000 years ago reveals the process could take only decades. Tiny crystals left over from underground magma at Yellowstone show the first sign of the last supereruption was a spike in temperature that coincided with the movement of new magma into the reservoir beneath the supervolcano. The crystals also reveal a supereruption followed much quicker than scientists previously thought—perhaps within decades, or what Popular Mechanics calls "a geologic snap of the finger." This is the first indication that "the conditions that lead to supereruptions might emerge within a human lifetime," which one researcher describes as "shocking," per the Times. For now, though, you can rest easy. The lead scientist at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory tells National Geographic there's no sign of any "magmatic event" at this time. (You might outrun a supervolcano's lava anyway.)
– This could change things: Some Syrian rebels now have antiaircraft missiles, rebels and regional officials say. Video footage appears to show the rebels using such weapons, which have been smuggled into the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. Rebels say they downed a military helicopter yesterday, one of at least four aircraft reportedly shot down this week—if true, that's a quicker pace since the summer, although it's not clear how the copters and jets were brought down. Despite the fact that this could be good news for the rebels, it's bad news for the US, which worries such weapons could end up with anti-Western militias. More from Syria: The rebels today blew up one oil pipeline and one gas pipeline near Deir al-Zour, the AP reports, citing state media. Meanwhile, at least 20 people were killed in government airstrikes on rebel areas last night and this morning, activists say. Though Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has tried to shield Damascus, war has now reached the capital, the New York Times reports. The fighting isn't as intense as in other cities like Aleppo or Homs, but it's drastically increased since a few months ago: Checkpoints abound, kidnappings are common, bombings are increasing, and it's not safe to go out after dark. "How soon before our city, our markets, are destroyed?" wonders one resident. Similarly, Syria's wealthy—many of whom back the president—are now seeing their businesses hurt by the war, and some are losing faith in Assad, the AP reports. Many have seen factories burned or otherwise affected by fighting, and others have had their money restricted by sanctions. Yet more trouble for Assad: Even his own sect, the Alawite minority, is growing discontent, the Washington Post reports. Alawites had been strong backers of Assad, as the Sunni majority backed the rebellion, because they feared losing power to Sunni Islamists. But, though there is no indication that Alawites plan to join the rebellion, there are reports of rifts even within Assad's own extended family.
– Christina Anderson, mother of kidnapped teen Hannah Anderson, was bound and gagged before she was killed by at least a dozen blows to the face and head, according to newly released autopsy results. Her mouth and neck bore "multiple layers" of duct tape. The 44-year-old also had a broken arm and a slashed throat, although the latter apparently occurred post-mortem, the Los Angeles Times reports. A crowbar was found near her body. An autopsy on the badly burned body of her 8-year-old son, Ethan, was unable to pinpoint an exact cause of death. According to the report, "It is possible that he died of thermal burns without smoke inhalation in the house fire" that consumed the home of family friend James DiMaggio, though there were fractures to his skull that could have been caused by either the fire or DiMaggio. Police believe DiMaggio carried out both murders before kidnapping 16-year-old Hannah. He was shot and killed by FBI agents six days later. A police spokesman had no comment on the autopsy results and said they would not be releasing further information on their investigation, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune.
– Another school shooting: Police say two students were shot today inside a Philadelphia high school, reports AP. Authorities say a male and female student were each shot in the arm this afternoon at the Delaware Valley Charter School in north Philadelphia. The injuries weren't life-threatening. One student was in custody and another is expected to surrender soon. NBC10 says it's not yet clear whether the shooting in the school gym was intentional, but a police official tells the station that it was captured on video. The video reportedly shows a group of teens together in the gym when the gunfire breaks out.
– Taliban leaders are insisting that US Staff Sergeant Robert Bales didn't act alone when he allegedly massacred 16 Afghan civilians as they slept. "We don't think that one American was involved," a Taliban official told CNN, without offering further details. "The foreigners and the puppet regime" in Afghanistan "are blind to the truth of what happened here." But whatever the case, Bales should be "prosecuted in Afghanistan, and according to Islamic law," he added. "The Afghans should prosecute him." The comments followed a move by the Taliban last week to cut off talks with the US because of American officials' "ever-changing position," said a spokesman. Meanwhile, more details continue to emerge about Bales, including his and his family's difficulty with repeated war tour deployments, and an arrest record that includes an assault on a girlfriend, and a hit-and-run in 2008. In the accident, a bloodied Bales was seen running into a nearby woods, reports ABC News. Bales said he fell asleep at the wheel, and paid about $1,000 in fines and restitution, according to AP. The case was dismissed. Bales' platoon leader told the Washington Post that Bales was "one of the best soldiers I have every worked with," and that he saved "many a life." Bales' attorney hopes to meet in Kansas today with his client at the Fort Leavenworth military prison.
– A few quotes from Chris Martin's new interview with BBC's Radio 1, airing tonight, are being touted as his first public explanation of his "conscious uncoupling" from Gwyneth Paltrow ... but we really have no clue what he's saying. (E!, for example, points out that he doesn't directly mention Gwyneth, but it's "easy to read between the lines.") Want to try and decipher it yourself? Here are the relevant lines: "About two years ago I was a mess really because I can't enjoy the thing that we are good at and I can't enjoy the great things around me because I'm burdened by this. I've got to not blame anyone else and make some changes. I wouldn’t use the word breakdown, this was more a realization about trying to grow up basically." "If you can't open yourself up, you can’t appreciate the wonder inside. So you can be with someone very wonderful, but because of your own issues you cannot let that be celebrated in the right way. What changed for me was—I don't want to go through life being scared of it, being scared of love, being scared of rejection, being scared of failure. Up to a certain point in my life I wasn't completely vulnerable and it caused some problems. If you don’t let love really in then you can’t really give it back." "[The single 'Magic' is] about saying this person is really awesome and is magic, and of course certain parts of it have to change because that's life but not everything has to be black or white or clear cut and that’s OK. It’s not a question of you either really love someone or you really hate someone, it's more nuanced than that." The consensus seems to be that Martin is taking the blame. Sample headlines: Daily Mail: "Chris Martin reveals how his own personal issues contributed to 'conscious uncoupling' from Gwyneth Paltrow" New York Daily News: "Chris Martin says he's to blame for separation from Gwyneth Paltrow" Jezebel: "Chris Martin Says Conscious Uncoupling From Gwyneth Was All His Fault" PopSugar: "Chris Martin Blames His 'Own Issues' For Gwyneth Paltrow Split" Us: "Chris Martin on Gwyneth Paltrow Split: My 'Own Issues' Contributed to End of Marriage"
– If your local recycler starts turning away your cans and bottles in the near future, blame China. Beijing has stopped accepting certain shipments of recycled plastic from the US, reports Quartz. (It reportedly will no longer welcome unwashed plastics and improperly sorted shipments; other reports say items like coffee cup lids and PVC pipes are on the no-no list.) This, it turns out, is a huge deal because trash has for years been one of the top American exports to China, explains the Washington Post. If China won't buy it anymore, US cities and recycling companies will be scrambling for alternatives. In fact, that's already happening, reports Oregon Public Broadcasting, which talks to one company that has 50 trucks' worth of plastic sitting around thanks to canceled China orders. One sliver of hope is that China genuinely needs this stuff for its manufacturing industry, so it's possible that business interests will pressure the government into relaxing the new "Operation Green Fence" initiative. Failing that, the US will either need to start recycling more of its own trash or find new buyers. Might we suggest Oslo?
– Authorities say a South Carolina woman has been charged with murder after killing her husband by putting eye drops into his water for several days, the AP reports. York County deputies said 52-year-old Lana Clayton confessed to investigators after an autopsy uncovered a high amount of tetrahydrozoline in her husband's body. The chemical is found in over-the-counter eye drops such as Visine. Authorities say 64-year-old Stephen Clayton was found dead July 21 in the couple's home in Clover after apparently falling down the stairs, the Herald reports. Arrest warrants and the statement from deputies didn't give a motive for the alleged poisoning. Lana Clayton also is charged with malicious tampering with a drug product or food.
– A gay couple who were legally married in Connecticut now face being split up by the Defense of Marriage Act. Princeton PhD student Josh Vandiver's husband is a Venezuelan citizen facing deportation because his work visa has expired. The law prevents Vandiver from sponsoring his husband for residency and he is fighting to have the deportation delayed until the Supreme Court rules on the issue, Fox reports. Vandiver says he'll leave the country with his husband if he has to. "We would be willing to leave this country together and go someplace like the UK or Europe or Canada where we could be together, but I don’t want to be a refugee in my own country,” Vandiver tells the Daily Princetonian. “I never imagined that I would face this kind of discrimination from my own country and potentially have to flee it to be with the one I love.”
– Darrell Issa is upping his attack on President Obama following the president's use of executive privilege in an attempt to bail out Eric Holder. A letter to Obama released today minces no words: "Either you or your most senior advisors were involved in managing Operation Fast & Furious and the fallout from it," it reads, "or, you are asserting a presidential power that you know to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a congressional investigation." The White House has continued to insist it has not been working with the DOJ during the congressional investigation into the failed ATF gun-walking operation, but Issa says Obama's use of executive privilege raises doubts about that assertion. Politico notes that the letter probably won't force Obama to do anything, but will definitely get attention. This week is a particularly tense one for the White House: It's very possible the House's decision on whether to hold Holder in contempt will come on the same day as the Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare. Meanwhile, Democrats are looking to spin the contempt motion—as an assault on minority rights that could possibly suppress voters, seeing as the DOJ is currently fighting against voter ID laws. Al Sharpton and a number of other civil rights leaders will hold a press conference on the issue today. "I’m not saying that this is because Holder is black, and I’m not calling [Republicans] racists," Sharpton tells The Hill. "I’m saying what they’re doing has a racial effect, and that’s what we’re going to talk about."
– Florida International University's Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity apparently didn't get the memo that social media isn't the place to go shopping for drugs. The frat has been suspended after its private Facebook page was made public via an anonymous email that included screenshots of 70 posts—some looking to buy or sell cocaine and the prescription stimulant Adderall—was sent to university administrators and the media, the Miami Herald reports. Among the posts the Herald obtained: "Anyone have a connect for coke, not me, a friends wants, lol" (response: "Is diet ok?"). And that wasn't the half of it: Other posts featured images of topless women, one described as being 17; boasts of hazing; digs at overweight women; and gay slurs. Another especially tasteless post: "Guys please put up the PIKE Prays for Boston Banner that’s upstairs outside so that when people start arriving tomorrow morning they see it. This is excellent publicity!" FIU is looking into whether its code of conduct was violated, and campus police have been looped in. It's certainly not the chapter's first offense—past indiscretions include egging a rival frat and painting obscenities on a student's car. Nor is it the frat's first headline-grabbing headache: Last year 22 Pi Kappa Alpha members at Northern Illinois University were charged in a pledge's death; it's also the frat that was involved in the University of Tennessee's infamous butt-chugging incident. (Click for another attempted drug buy gone wrong, this one via Twitter.)
– A drug trial in France has gone horribly wrong, leaving one healthy volunteer brain-dead; three other men may have suffered irreversible brain damage, another has "neurological problems," and a sixth is hospitalized with less severe problems, reports AP. Details on what happened, including what drug was being tested and its manufacturer, remain under wraps. One thing that is known: No treatment is available. Early reports in France suggested it was a cannabis-based painkiller, reports the Guardian, but the health ministry has denied that. The AP describes it as some kind of "painkiller compound." Testing was being conducted by the French company Biotrial, a veteran player in the industry, at a clinic in Rennes. All 90 volunteers who took the drug were healthy before the trial started, reports the BBC. Those hospitalized range in age from 28 to 49 and began taking the drug on Jan. 7. Health Minister Marisol Touraine promised to "get to the bottom... of this tragic accident" and said she's been "overwhelmed" by the tragic turn for participants. "Their lives have been brutally turned upside down." The study had been in phase one, in which volunteers take the drug orally to evaluate its effectiveness and side effects. A message on Biotrial's website states that "serious adverse events" occurred and says that international regulations "were followed at every stage throughout the trial, in particular the emergency procedures for the transfer of subjects to the hospital."
– They call her "chopstick girl," which provides a sense of her size: all of 11 inches long and weighing just 23 ounces. The Independent reports that a girl in southwest China has survived after being born last week at just 23 weeks. She came along after doctors had to perform an emergency procedure on the mother's cervix, which triggered what the lead pediatrician at Chongqing Southwest Hospital called a "spontaneous abortion" (though most definitions seem to frame "spontaneous abortions" as occurring before the 20th week). Shanghaiist reports the 24-year-old mother-to-be was experiencing complications from placenta previa, in which the placenta obscures part or all of the opening of the cervix. Doctors had told the parents the procedure would trigger the baby's birth and gave the infant almost zero chance of survival. But she remains on 24-hour care in an incubator. One complication: She's so young and tiny that her veins are not yet fully developed, making it trickier to provide her with nutrients. Xinhua has photos. (Click to read about a Canadian mom who gave birth in the US and got a bill of nearly $1 million.)
– Listen in on any language anywhere in the world and you're bound to hear a familiar sound: "Huh?" Dutch researchers who studied 10 languages on five continents say the one-syllable utterance might be that rarest of things: a universal word. And it's no mere tic or meaningless grunt, they say in their PLOS One study: It serves the vital purpose of allowing one person to let another know quickly that he doesn't understand something. It's "the glue that holds a broken conversation together," explains the Los Angeles Times. "You can't have a conversation without the ability to make repairs," says a Stanford expert not involved with the study but intrigued by it. "It is a universal need, no matter what kind of conversation you have." The researchers found the word in widely different languages ranging from Icelandic to Mandarin Chinese to West African Siwu, reports the New York Times. And though it may sound a bit different in some tongues—more like "ah" or "eh"—it remains fundamentally the same. They chalk it up to "convergent evolution," notes Science Codex, a term from biology. It's used to explain how different species, such as dolphins and sharks, evolve in similar ways because they live in similar environments. It seems that "huh?" is the linguistic version, a tool so useful to humans everywhere that they can't live without it. (In other language news, researchers suggest that being bilingual helps ward off dementia.)
– An actor in the Predator reboot was a registered sex offender, and it was one of his famous colleagues who turned him in to the studio. Olivia Munn discovered Steven Wilder Striegel, a friend of The Predator director Shane Black who'd acted in one of the film's scenes with her, had pleaded guilty in 2010 for trying to lure a 14-year-old girl online into a sexual relationship, and she alerted 20th Century Fox—which, she tells Variety, initially didn't return her call. She followed up, and the scene was eventually cut. Since then, Munn says she's "getting the cold shoulder," as USA Today puts it, from fellow cast members and Black, who hasn't spoken to her. "It's a very lonely feeling to be sitting here by myself," Munn told the Hollywood Reporter during a promo interview Saturday in which only 11-year-old co-star Jacob Tremblay showed up to sit next to her. "I do feel like I've been treated by some people that I'm the one who went to jail or I'm the one that put this guy on set," she added. Though two of her co-stars, Keegan-Michael Key and Sterling K. Brown, note they weren't set to do the THR interview and that they support Munn, Munn tells Vanity Fair co-stars have dropped out of more than one interview and that no one else issued statements when she encouraged them to. "Right now the reality is that there will be people who wear Time's Up pins and say they support Time's Up, [but] there will be people in Time's Up who aren't really down with the cause," she says. Meanwhile, in an op-ed for Mashable, Adam Rosenberg writes it's "so very wrong" Black hasn't reached out to Munn directly, and that she's facing the media alone. "It's shameful that ... she has to pay any kind of price for doing the right thing."
– A service billed as a Netflix for books is calling it quits after failing to attract enough voracious readers willing to pay $9.95 a month for access to 1 million books. Oyster, which launched in 2013, announced in a blog post that it's going to "sunset" the service over the next few months, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company says it believes "more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade," but it feels "this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for e-books." Those new opportunities will apparently be at Google, which has hired Oyster's CEO, co-founders, and other team members for Google Play Books, reports Re/code. Sources say Google has paid off Oyster investors in what Re/code dubs an "acqhire." Where did it go wrong for Oyster? Consumers stayed away "because binge-reading is more difficult than binge-watching movies," and it didn't help that the service couldn't be accessed on Amazon's Kindle readers, writes Steven Musil at CNET. The company ended up in direct competition with Amazon after it added e-book sales to its subscription service, he notes. People seeking an all-you-can-read service still have the option of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service (which was introduced the year after Oyster made its debut) or, as this columnist notes, libraries.
– The chemical spill that has left more than 300,000 people in West Virginia without water appears to be the product of lax regulation in a state where coal and chemical firms have long operated with little oversight, the New York Times finds. A document released over the weekend reveals state authorities were aware that the company responsible was storing up to a million pounds of the coal-cleaning chemical Crude MCHM at a riverside facility near a water treatment plant, but it's not clear whether the treatment plant knew about the risk, reports the Wall Street Journal. "We can’t just point a single finger at this company," says the director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, noting that the site of the spill hadn't been inspected since 1991. "We need to look at our entire system and give some serious thought to making some serious reform and valuing our natural resources over industry interests." A tap water ban is still in place in the Charleston region, where many schools and businesses remain closed, but authorities say they can "see the light at the end of the tunnel" and they expect the ban to be lifted within days, starting in downtown Charleston and other priority zones, NBC reports.
– Making his first public appearance since his arrest on rape charges in New York four months ago, Dominique Strauss-Kahn admitted today to a moral failing: "What happened was more than an inappropriate relation. It was an error," the former IMF chief said on French television. "I regret it infinitely." But he insisted that his sexual encounter with a maid in a New York hotel was consensual and that she had "lied" about it, the AP reports. Strauss-Kahn also shrugged off a French writer's rape accusation as "imaginary," saying "no act of aggression, no violence" occurred between him and Tristane Banon. A police investigation into that claim is ongoing. Asked about his political ambitions, Strauss-Kahn said he would "take time to reflect" and rest. "But all my life was consecrated to being useful to the public good," so "we will see." Strauss-Kahn saved his strongest words for America's justice system, the BBC reports: "I was afraid, very afraid," he said, "and I was humiliated, trampled before I could even utter a word."
– If the booming sales weren't enough to convince you that Greek yogurt is a thing, try this: Starbucks wants in. The company plans to start selling the yogurt in its stores next spring, and then start stocking supermarket shelves around the country after that, reports the Wall Street Journal. It will be sold as as "Evolution Fresh, Inspired by Dannon," a reflection that Starbucks is teaming with Dannon parent company Danone. Evolution Fresh is the name of the Starbucks juice line already being sold. Why Greek yogurt? It probably has something to do with the fact that US sales jumped 48% to $2.65 billion in the year ending June 8, reports Bloomberg. But one analyst thinks the Starbucks move toward becoming a "house of brands" is a risky one. “When you start to get too diverse with your portfolio, investors just have a hard time characterizing what you are,” he says. “Are they a house of brands or are they about beverage experiences?” (Maybe Starbucks can help figure out what to do with the nasty byproduct that results from the making of Greek yogurt.)
– Crib, car seat, baby wipe warmer—there are so many things expectant parents need to buy. Here's something else for the shopping list: a baby-naming consultant. And "the ultimate exercise in personal branding," as Quartz puts it, is not cheap. Swiss branding firm Erfolgswelle, for instance, charges more than $29,000 to choose the perfect moniker for a soon-to-arrive bundle of joy, Bloomberg reports. Agency head Marc Hauser says his team spends about 100 hours coming up with the perfect name, which includes verifying there's no trademark on the name and consulting historians to determine whether a potential name has "an aggravating past." He uses his own name—Marc—as an example, saying his firm wouldn't suggest it because it's linked to an ancient Roman god of war. If you'd rather squirrel away that 30 grand, say for a college fund, New York-based My Name for Life will help you name junior starting at several hundred dollars. If a baby namer knows what they're doing, "it's worth every penny," Albert Mehrabian, who wrote The Baby Name Report Card, tells Bloomberg's Polly Mosendz. (He gave her name a B-, and here he explains why "Chad" scores a 98 but "Bud" scores a 2.) Quartz quips that instead of paying, you could just turn to your in-laws, who "will probably be happy to provide you with loads of advice for free." Or maybe for something sweeter: In October the New York Times reported on cases in which would-be grandparents have given their own kids everything from $10,000 to the promise of a family business in exchange for the right to name their grandchild. (Here are some free suggestions for unusual baby names.)
– In the Deep South, a predilection for proper manners often means the temptation to tell someone off is replaced with a "Bless your heart." But an obituary that appeared last month in a North Carolina newspaper flouted politeness, and at least one family member isn't happy, KDVR reports. The death notice for Cornelia June Rogers Miller, who died in February, ran in Murphy's Cherokee Scout newspaper, and it wasn't a flattering depiction of the great-grandmother, who "died alone after a long battle with drug addiction and depression." "Drugs were a major love in her life as June had no hobbies, made no contribution to society, and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life," the obituary says. "We speak for the majority of her family when we say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed, and there will be no lamenting over her passing." All of which has her son, Robert Miller, fuming—and he thinks he knows who placed the obituary. "It's unbelievable that my sisters would write this," he tells WTVC, noting his mom was a "loving, generous woman." WTVC managed to track down one of his two sisters, and she tells the station she didn't write the obituary, calling it "tragic." To make matters worse, it appears parts of the obituary may have been plagiarized from one written for someone in California in 2008. "[She] doesn't even have the integrity to write something for herself," Miller says, apparently referring to the sister he thinks trashed their mom. The Cherokee Scout publisher says the paper scans all submitted obituaries but notes they won't change anything unless there's a solid reason. "The family's will overrode the editor," he says. Miller says he sent in a new obituary to replace the printed one. (It's not the first scathing obituary.)
– A new discovery has revived an old theory about ocean water gobbling up ships in the Bermuda Triangle—if, that is, the Bermuda Triangle even exists. Researchers from the Arctic University of Norway say they've spotted large craters apparently created by methane buildups off Norway's coast, Atlas Obscura reports. "Multiple giant craters exist on the sea floor in an area in the west-central Barents Sea ... and are probably a cause of enormous blowouts of gas," they tell the Sunday Times. "The crater area is likely to represent one of the largest hotspots for shallow marine methane release in the Arctic." Other experts have said gas blowouts from such craters, which measure 150 feet deep and up to a half-mile wide in Norway, could explain the sinking of ships in a region between Puerto Rico, Miami, and Bermuda dubbed the Bermuda Triangle. "There is a version that the Bermuda Triangle is a consequence of gas hydrates reactions," Russian scientist Igor Yeltsov said last year, per the New Zealand Herald. Ice-like underwater methane can break away and form gas that bubbles to the surface, Live Science explained in 2014; Yeltsov says it erupts "like a nuclear reaction, producing huge amounts of gas." Research has shown that such eruptions could sink sea vessels, as NBC News reported in 2003, and this YouTube video appears to confirm that. But it's not clear these blowouts even occur in the Bermuda Triangle, the Guardian notes. And skeptics say the Gulf Stream's many tropical storms would better account for the Triangle's lost ships and planes. The very term "Bermuda Triangle" is questionable: Still dismissed by the US Navy, it was invented in a dramatic 1964 article that probed the "mysterious menace" behind ships and airplanes lost in the area. (A teacher may have found "the key" to finding Amelia Earhart's plane.)
– Crystal Harris and Hugh Hefner didn't tie the knot yesterday, and they didn't mope, either. Hef took to Twitter to share his chin-up attitude: "This was going to be my wedding day, but life is full of surprises," the 85-year-old wrote. "After all is said & done, staying single is probably for the best." Single, however, is not code for "alone." Perez Hilton reports that exes Karissa and Kristina Shannon (yep, twins) have already moved back into the mansion, which they left a year and a half ago. And TMZ reports that Hef has been cozying up to Miss January 2011. And how did the runaway bride spend her day? Hanging poolside in Las Vegas in a teeny bikini and high heels with a group of friends, one of which was Heidi Montag. But do we detect a hint of sadness in Hugh's voice? A series of tweets posted in rapid succession this afternoon sound a little down. An example: "The Sunday night Mansion movie is Elle Fanning, Amanda Michalka & Kyle Chandler in JJ Abrams' Super 8. Life goes on."
– A former member of Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan's staff was caught inside Hassan's Capitol Hill office Tuesday night and ultimately arrested Wednesday on charges that he "doxxed" GOP senators. Jackson A. Cosko, 27, is accused of posting "private, identifying information," including addresses, online, Politico reports. A current Hassan staffer allegedly caught him in the office and called police; he had allegedly made an unauthorized entry. Cosko, a George Washington University graduate who also worked for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, had most recently been working as an intern for Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee; he has since been fired. A US official tells the Washington Post the arrest relates to information posted on Wikipedia during Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing; during that hearing, the Wikipedia pages of Republican Sens. Mike Lee, Orrin Hatch, and Lindsey Graham were edited to include addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, and the changes were found to be made from a Capitol Hill computer. All three are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Fox News reports. Cosko is charged with making public restricted personal information, witness tampering, making threats in interstate communications, unauthorized access of a government computer, identity theft, second-degree burglary, and unlawful entry.
– First Jon Huntsman's daughters made a splash on Twitter, thanks to their tactical deployment of wit and snark. Now they're taking to YouTube, featuring a parody of the infamous "smoking man" video put out earlier in the week by Herman Cain's campaign manager, Mark Block, reports Raw Story. All the women sport big mustaches, like Block, and intone their lines with much seriousness, also like Block. But where Block said, "Tomorrow is one day closer to the White House," Liddy Huntsman deadpans, "Tomorrow is Friday, one day closer to the weekend." And instead of Block's line, "If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be here," family ties apparently nix such freedom: “Even if we didn’t believe that, we’d still have to be here,” says Abby Huntsman. And for the big finish? No, they don't puff a cigarette like Block did. But they do blow soap bubbles (very moodily, of course). For some choice snarking from the Huntsman daughters, check this out.
– One person is dead and five more injured in what San Antonio's police chief calls a mall "robbery gone really, really bad." (The number of casualties was in flux.) Police say it began when two men robbed a Kay's Jewelers in the city's Rolling Oaks Mall, then were confronted by two people who tried to stop them as they left, reports MySanAntonio.com. One of the robbery suspects shot and killed one of the Good Samaritans, and the other Good Samaritan then shot and wounded that suspect, reports NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. The second suspect then took off through the mall and began shooting, say police. The AP reports that he injured a man and woman, while two others in the mall sustained non-shooting injuries. Both robbers were thought to be at large.
– If you're the type that likes to gun the engine as soon as the traffic light turns green, you'll love Audi's new models: They include a feature that will alert drivers when a red light is about to change, Recode reports. The Germany company is first offering the feature only in five to seven cities that have centralized traffic light control control; it's expected to roll out by the end of this year. (It will be available in US cities, the AP reports.) The car will count down the time until a light is going to turn green, but will stop counting down a few seconds in advance to ensure drivers actually wait for the light to change before they hit the gas. The feature will be part of Audi's Connect Prime service, which costs $25 to $33 per month and includes other features like music streaming.
– Attention: Miley Cyrus is “not trying to be slutty,” she insists. Sure, she likes to flash a lot of skin (as photos show, she’s recently taken to going pantsless), but that’s just because she feels “more comfortable dressing with a little less,” she tells the AP. “What I'm trying to do is to make a point with my record," which is called...wait for it...Can't Be Tamed, "and look consistent, in the way my record sounds and the way I dress.” And while she says she’s grown into her sex appeal (she is all of 17 now, remember!), “that’s not what I'm trying to do to sell records. I want people to buy my record because of my music.” Meanwhile, Perez Hilton—currently in hot water for posting an upskirt photo of Miley—insists she was wearing underwear in the picture and says he was simply pointing out “she was exiting this car in a very un-ladylike fashion.”
– President Trump was teasing a "very big announcement" Thursday night in West Virginia, CNN reports. And while West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin had hoped it would be "good news" about jobs or the opioid crisis, it appears instead that the state's Democratic Gov. Jim Justice will reveal he's switching parties. According to Politico, no one in the Democratic Party was warned about Justice's plans. “Obviously we're pissed. I mean let's face it, we put a lot of effort in the 2015 election to elect this man as governor,” a Democratic operative in West Virginia says. Democrats had held the governorship in West Virginia since 2001. While Democrats weren't given notice of Justice's switch, they probably shouldn't be surprised. Justice only joined the Democratic Party in 2015 to run for governor. He had been a registered Independent and Republican prior to that and even donated to the Republican Governors' Association a few years before his run as a Democrat. He's also friends with the Trump family and Sen. Mitch McConnell. Plus, the ever-more conservative West Virginia is a hotbed of Trump support. With Justice's defection, there are only 15 Democratic governors in the US and only six states in which Democrats control the governorship and both legislative chambers, the Hill reports. Meanwhile, West Virginia becomes the 26th state in which Republicans control all three.
– Dodgers third-baseman Juan Uribe might want to remember a baseball fundamental: Keep your eye on the ball. Yesterday's game against the Tampa Bay Rays brings us a seemingly innocuous play, notes USA Today, in which Uribe made it to third base on a sac fly. He then made the fatal error of bending over to dust himself off—as the Rays stealthily slipped third-baseman Evan Longoria the ball. Uribe didn't notice and stepped off the bag moments later; Longoria tagged him out, ending the fourth inning. The Dodgers won the game 5-0 anyway, but Uribe's goof prompted this reminder from teammate Yasiel Puig.
– The US and UN are warning that the Syrian government may be organizing another massacre, this time in the town of Haffa, where UN monitors have been impeded, reports the BBC. International envoy Kofi Annan says he is "gravely concerned" about the escalation of violence, and reports of mortar, tank, and helicopter attacks on Haffa and its surrounding villages. "A large number of civilians are trapped in these towns," he warned. The Syrian regime is using "new horrific tactics" on rebellious areas, a State Department spokeswoman says, warning: "People will be held accountable." A new UN reports has, for the first time, placed the Syrian government and its allied militias on a list of groups that kill and sexually attack children, AP reports. The report found that in Syria, children as young as nine have been the victims of killing, torture, sexual violence, and arbitrary detention, and have been used as human shields.
– The class of 2012 entered a tough jobs market buckling under an average debt load of $29,400, according to the annual report from the Institute for College Access and Success. That's up from an average $26,600 in 2011, and the rise can be blamed on rising tuition fees combined with stagnant family incomes. The struggling economy is a "double-edged sword in many ways because (students) and their parents have fewer resources to pay for college costs, which may lead them to take on more debt," the institute's research director tells USA Today. "And then they're entering a down economy where it's hard to find a good job that allows them to repay the debt." A recent study found that parents now cover an average 27% of college costs, down from 37% just three years ago. The institute's report, however, found huge variation in the debt loads from state to state and college to college, with graduates at some institutions carrying an average of $50,000 in debt while others had an average less than a tenth of that, the New York Times reports. Student debt tended to be highest in Eastern states, with Delaware grads the most indebted at an average of $34,000 each. New Mexico graduates had the lowest debt; an average of $18,000. But the class of 2012 isn't the most indebted graduating class in history: That dubious honor goes to the class of 2013.
– A 45-year-old UK artist was arrested Friday on a London train for the dastardly crime of "abstracting electricity"—and according to arrestee Robin Lee, the crime is just as "ridiculous" as it sounds, the Evening Standard reports. Even though the outlets on the London Overground are clearly marked as being for cleaners only—a London Underground forum pointed out by the Guardian notes others using the outlets could cause a power surge—Lee decided to charge his iPhone while commuting and ended up getting nailed for it by an "overzealous community support officer," as Lee describes it. In a British Transport Police statement, Lee was "de-arrested shortly after" for the electricity transgression, but then "was further arrested for unacceptable behaviour" for getting "aggressive" with police. "They should never have arrested me, they knew it was ridiculous," he tells the Standard. "The whole thing was just ridiculous." The amount of electricity Lee ostensibly swiped? It's not clear, but Wired estimates the cost of keeping an iPhone charged for a full year runs less than $1.50. (At least he didn't plug it into an outlet on a Broadway stage.)
– A man shown in two separate videos tailing missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham was interviewed by Charlottesville police on Wednesday and told officers he saw another male approach Graham, put his arm around her, and walk away with her, the Daily Progress reports. The witness said Graham "looked to be somewhat physically distressed and he wanted to make sure she got safely to wherever she was going," a police spokesman said. That second male, now a person of interest in the case, is described as a black male in his late 20s or early 30s; about 5 feet 10 inches; and between 250 and 285 pounds, NBC 29 reports. He was sporting black jeans and a white T-shirt and has a bit of a potbelly. Police say they're on the hunt for other surveillance video from the area to back up the sighting of this man with Graham.
– One way to get the head of Apple to visit the Microsoft campus: Tell him it's picture day with the president of China. Tim Cook and other technology bigwigs—including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Alibaba's Jack Ma—gathered yesterday in Redmond, Wash., for a meeting with Xi Jinping, who's in the US on his first state visit, reports Quartz. While they were there, Xi and the group of 29 high-level US and Chinese tech execs posed for what the site calls "an awkward class photo of super powerful people" that showed, more or less, what it would look like if "the tech world had an All-Star Game," as GeekWire puts it. After touring Microsoft's executive building with Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella and watching high-tech demos, Xi smiled for the camera with the others. Zuckerberg (who Quartz points out does, indeed, own a suit) greeted Xi by speaking to him briefly in Mandarin, the South China Morning Post reports. "On a personal note, this was the first time I've ever spoken with a world leader entirely in a foreign language," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. "I consider that a meaningful personal milestone. It was an honor to meet President Xi and other leaders." One of those leaders was Lu Wei, the Chinese Internet chief responsible for setting up the country's firewall and keeping Zuckerberg's site out—a point not lost on commenters to Zuckerberg's post. "He banned Facebook in China. He doesn't deserve to meet u man," wrote one.
– The press statement's title—"Achieving Parity in Diplomatic Missions"—may seem bland, but the message from the State Department is anything but: It explains the United States has ordered Russia to close a consulate in San Francisco and diplomatic annexes in New York and Washington by Saturday. The New York Times frames the moves as an "expected ... tit-for-tat response" after Russia forced a cut in US embassy staff in late July. Indeed, the AP notes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had said the US would respond by September. "We believe [Russia's] action was unwarranted and detrimental to the overall relationship between our countries," and the Trump administration is making the move "in the spirit of parity invoked by the Russians," per the statement. Once the closures are complete, each country will have three operating consulates remaining. The remainder of the statement: "While there will continue to be a disparity in the number of diplomatic and consular annexes, we have chosen to allow the Russian Government to maintain some of its annexes in an effort to arrest the downward spiral in our relationship. The United States hopes that, having moved toward the Russian Federation's desire for parity, we can avoid further retaliatory actions by both sides and move forward to achieve the stated goal of both of our presidents: improved relations between our two countries and increased cooperation on areas of mutual concern. The United States is prepared to take further action as necessary and as warranted."
– For the first time since becoming POTUS, Donald Trump has met Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting happened on the sidelines of what Reuters calls a "closely watched" G20 summit. They're not kidding, considering the first media coverage coming out of the summit focuses on the handshake between the two, which was of course caught on video. Reuters notes that in addition to the handshake, Trump patted Putin on the arm and later on the back, and both men smiled. Per the Guardian, Trump told Putin, "Mr. Putin, it is an honor to be with you." Putin's reply: "I’m delighted to meet you personally, and I hope our meeting will bring results." The moment took place at an informal meeting of G20 leaders as the summit began in Hamburg, Germany; Trump and Putin are to hold their formal meeting at 3:45pm local time. Read why the meeting could be a "win-win" for Putin here.
– An Australian school teacher says she's had 136 dates over 17 months but never a second date—because the mutual attraction just isn't there, E! News reports. "I know who I am and what I want and I just can't find a man who is worthy of my time and attention," says 35-year-old Belinda Stuckey. "Now that is not meant to sound aggressive. It is more about being confident in who I am and knowing myself." After a four-year relationship, Stuckey says she joined eHarmony and became one of its most popular members, matching with 4,700 men since 2013. But either they don't call her after dates, the Mirror reports, or she's just not interested. "I have found that men here are becoming more and more feminine not just in looks, but in demeanor too," she says. "I need and want a man's man. Someone who can make a decision at least!" Either that, she says, or they just want to fool around: "They are more concerned about finding someone to sleep with than someone to get to know and love. What has happened to society?" she asks. "In Sydney at least." But she seems to be keeping a positive attitude, concluding that "rejection is inevitable and think of each date as a new experience and a learning tool." (Meanwhile, we seem to really love going to chain restaurants on first dates.)
– Warren Buffett says he's looking to pull off another major deal on the scale of last year's big railroad purchase. "We're prepared," he writes in his closely watched annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. "Our elephant gun has been reloaded, and my trigger finger is itchy." (Read the letter in full here.) After a big gain in earnings, Berkshire is sitting on about $38 billion in cash, the highest amount since 2007, reports the Wall Street Journal. Despite his optimism for the US recovery—the report may as well be titled "God Bless the USA," notes the New York Times' Dealbook blog—it wasn't all rosy news: Even though the company's book value increased by 13%, it failed to beat the growth of the S&P (15%) for the second year in a row—a rarity for Buffett. "The bountiful years, we want to emphasize, will never return," he writes. "The huge sums of capital we currently manage eliminate any chance of exceptional performance." Click for one analyst's skepticism that another "megadeal" is in the offing.
– A solar plane made aviation history today, and its historic journey is nowhere near over. The Solar Impulse 2, controlled by Swiss pilot André Borschberg, landed in Hawaii after a five-day, 4,000-mile trip over the Pacific Ocean from Japan, reports USA Today. The feat is just one leg on a planned around-the-world trip, but the non-stop stretch over the Pacific was seen as the most difficult, and dangerous, part of the flight. It set the record for the longest solar-powered flight in terms of both time and distance. Waiting to greet Borschberg at the Kalaeloa Airport were his family and his co-pilot, Bertrand Piccard, who will now fly the plane on its next leg, a 100-hour trip to Phoenix. The 62-year-old Borschberg had to make do with 20-minute naps in the cramped cockpit over his five-day trip, and at times, he sweated through 100-degree temperatures, reports the Guardian. He tweeted along the way, crediting yoga for helping his mental and physical stamina, especially yesterday, when he “climbed the equivalent altitude of Mount Everest four times." CNN explains that the aircraft is covered in 17,000 solar cells, which collect the sun's rays during the day and allow the plane to fly through the night on battery power.
– Multiple people are dead and others wounded after a shooting at a Rite Aid distribution center outside Baltimore, reports the Baltimore Sun. The AP says three are dead, but authorities have not confirmed. Police say the shooter is in custody and has been taken to a local hospital in critical condition. WBAL-TV reports that the suspect is a woman. The shootings occurred at a warehouse complex in Perryman, near Aberdeen, about 30 miles from Baltimore. Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said he doesn't think officers fired any shots at the scene, and they recovered a handgun, believed to be the only weapon used. The sheriff's office says deputies responded a little after 9am, getting there within 5 minutes of the first call. "We were like two blocks over when we got completely bombarded by—I'm not exaggerating —20-30 cops, and then ambulances and everything started pouring in," a witness tells the Baltimore station.
– Exonerating women who are wrongfully convicted of violent crimes is no easy task—just ask Kristine Bunch. She got 60 years for supposedly setting the fire that killed her 3-year-old son in 1995, and struggled to find anyone who could help, Mother Jones reports. Finally, lawyers at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's law school exposed a glaring hole (and possibly corruption) in the arson investigators' case. That evidence got Bunch released in 2012 after 16 years in prison, USA Today reported at the time. Then two lawyers from the Center, Karen Daniel and Judy Royal, began helping wrongfully convicted women based on a shocking statistic: Women constitute roughly 11% of violent-crime convictions but only 6% of overturned cases. But why are women's cases harder to overturn? Daniel and Royal give their reasons: Women are usually convicted of violent crimes against people close to them (like a husband or son) so DNA evidence won't help; the suspect's DNA is already spread around the crime scene. By contrast, men usually assault or kill strangers. An incredible 63% of women's exoneration cases turn out to be accidents or suicides rather than crimes. So instead of finding a "real culprit," Daniel and Royal may have to laboriously dismantle the prosecutors' case, perhaps with new science on arson or shaken-baby syndrome that not everyone accepts. Sexist stereotypes are used against women in court. In the case of a woman wrongfully convicted of murdering her son, the prosecutor implied she did it to pursue a modeling career. "That was based on one tiny conversation expressing slight interest in maybe having a nice photo taken," says Daniel. "Almost every case has something like this." Click for Mother Jones' full article.
– Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has become well-known for appearing to sleep through conferences and meetings, but his spokesperson insists the 93-year-old is not actually asleep when he's pictured in repose. "At 93, there is something that happens to the eyes and the president cannot suffer bright lights," the rep explained to a local radio station, per Quartz. "If you look at his poise, he looks down, avoids direct lighting." The aide noted that Nelson Mandela suffered from a similar problem and that photographers were not allowed to use camera flashes around him. Quartz has a series of photographs showing Mugabe "not sleeping" that date back more than a decade. Per the BBC, Mugabe is reportedly getting medical treatment for his eyes in Singapore. (Mugabe's wife says he should still lead the country even after he's dead.)
– The age of uber-quick "hyperloop" transportation had a milestone Wednesday: One of the companies hoping to turn the idea into reality successfully tested its propulsion system in the desert near Las Vegas, Mashable reports. So what's a hyperloop? It's the brainchild of Tesla's Elon Musk, and the general idea is to move people in above-ground tubes traveling about 750mph. A six-hour drive from LA to San Francisco would be cut to 30 minutes, though we're still at least a few years away from reality. Some essentials: Hold the champagne: NPR explains that Wednesday's demo by Hyperloop One focused "on only one piece of a very complicated system." Forget the technology—the real problem would be passengers' vomit, explains a post at Inverse. The Verge has an "everything you need to know" audio explainer here. "The lack of air resistance and friction of traditional transportation are what would allow it to achieve such high speeds." The Wall Street Journal has some more basics on the science. USA Today looks at two other startups in the "hyperloop wars." One of those companies, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, plans a "magnetic levitation system," and Business Insider has the nitty gritty on how it would work. One huge hurdle: Obtaining land rights for such a system. Gizmodo digs in. A new video game is based on the concept, notes SlashGear.
– "Why are our lives so different, just because of where we are born?" That's the question posed to the Washington Post by Suh, a 30-year-old North Korean woman now being held in a Bangkok detention center after being busted by local cops while trying to cross from Laos to Thailand. And this is only her most recent travail: Suh and two other women interviewed by the Post were trying to flee their lives as sex "video chatters" in China, an online profession many women are sucked into after first escaping North Korea—either by willingly getting sold to Chinese men to get out of their home country, or after being tricked into thinking they were being hired for jobs in China, only to end up as human trafficking victims. Purchasing North Korean women is big business in China for men who can't find wives any other way: The asking price for women between 15 and 25 can near $12,000. Life in China is impoverished and dangerous for these North Korean nationals: They can be deported back to their home country if they're caught, per Radio Free Asia. North Korean women trying to survive there often fall into the online "video chatting" business, allowing them to bring in some extra cash from the safety of their own homes. But it's a demeaning, demoralizing trade. "I felt so disgusting," Suh says. And it's what led Suh (who brought her 18-month-old daughter with her, but had to leave her 5-year-old daughter behind) and the two other women to try to escape once more—this time to Laos, then to Thailand, where they wouldn't have been able to be repatriated back to North Korea. The two women being detained with Suh want to eventually make it to South Korea, but Suh is applying for asylum instead in "the strongest country on Earth": the United States. (Their sad story here.)
– The Taliban today admitted to kidnapping a female Scottish aid worker in Afghanistan, and offered to trade her for the release of Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani ex-MIT student sentenced to 86 years in prison last week for trying to kill FBI officers. Siddiqui’s sentence set off a wave of protests in Pakistan, with the prime minister calling her a “daughter of the nation” and vowing to bring her home, according to Aol News. “We are lucky that we abducted this British woman so soon after the ruthless ruling by an American court on Aafia Siddiqui,” a Taliban commander told the Afghan Islamic Press, according to the Daily Mail. “We will demand the release of Siddiqui in exchange for her.” The Scottish woman was abducted yesterday morning when gunmen intercepted her convoy. Local tribal elders are helping to organize a large search operation. For more on the mysteries surrounding Siddiqui, click here.
– Following her first trip outside yesterday, Gabrielle Giffords today departed on an even bigger one: She left her Tucson hospital for a rehabilitation center in Houston. Crowds saw her off holding “Get well” signs and flags as an ambulance carried her to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, MSNBC reports. Giffords was escorted by motorcycle riders from a Veterans of Foreign Wars post, and was then taken via medical flight to a Houston airport. From there, a helicopter will carry her to the rehab hospital. Giffords’ husband, mother, and staff members were expected to ride alongside her in the air ambulance, the Arizona Republic reports. US Capitol police put extra security in place at the Houston facility, where she will remain until she no longer requires 24-hour care. First order of business: Check her vitals and give her a number of tests to determine what she can and cannot do, from walking and swallowing to brushing her teeth and combing her hair. Click to see what else might be in store for Giffords.
– Another day, another politician who cannot keep his clothes on around cell phones. This time, the exhibitionist seems to be Puerto Rican conservative Sen. Roberto Arango, who had several anatomically vivid pics show up on popular gay cruising app Grindr, reports Gawker. When asked about the photos by a Puerto Rican TV station, Arango responded with an Anthony Weiner-esque non-denial: "You know I've been losing weight. As I shed that weight, I've been taking pictures. I don't remember taking this particular picture but I'm not gonna say I didn't take it. I'd tell you if I remembered taking the picture but I don't." Even more damning than the initial photo, which showed a shirtless man with his face covered (but wearing a necklace similar to one Arango commonly wears), was a second pic apparently found on the same Grindr account, showing a nude man bent over, from behind. Several prominent Puerto Rican politicians, including the governor, called on Arango to resign if the photos are of him. Arango, who was vice-chair of George Bush's re-election committee in Puerto Rico in 2004, is known for opposing gay rights legislation.
– For many, 2016 can't end soon enough. For everyone, though, it's actually going to last one second longer than usual. With New Year's Eve approaching, outlets such as Phys.org are reminding people that an extra "leap second" will be added to the final day of 2016 in order to keep our earthly time-keeping measures in sync. No, this won't affect countdowns to ball drops—the second is incorporated into the day in far more subtle ways—but if you happened to watch the online clock counting Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, you'd see the quirk of it going from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60, instead of flipping to 00:00:00. A more technical explanation: "Leap seconds are added in order to keep the difference between UTC and astronomical time (UT1) to less than 0.9 seconds," per the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Wonky, yes, but for companies such as Google that operate Network Time Protocol servers, the leap second is indeed a big deal—and a post at Popular Mechanics praises the company's "extremely elegant solution" to the issue. Google will "smear" that extra second, as it explains in a blog post. "Instead of adding a single extra second to the end of the day, we'll run the clocks 0.0014% slower across the ten hours before and ten hours after the leap second, and 'smear' the extra second across these twenty hours." Other cloud companies such as Akamai use a similar approach but over 24 hours, notes PCWorld, which expects this longer "leap smear" to be standard when the next leap second rolls around, probably in 2018. (If you're planning a trip to ring in 2017 somewhere, this list might help.)
– The first trailer for the latest remake of Hollywood classic A Star Is Born, starring Lady Gaga as the singer discovered by Bradley Cooper's fading country music star, was released Wednesday and the internet approves. Twitter was going nuts for the trailer—Katy Perry, for example, simply tweeted, "IM SCREAMINGOSBEJRMF$&2@!K." Media outlets are calling Gaga "unrecognizable" in the trailer; the New York Times went with the headline, "Yes, That Really Is Lady Gaga in the Trailer for A Star Is Born." The film, out Oct. 5, is Gaga's feature film debut and Cooper's directorial debut, Consequence of Sound reports. The soundtrack features all original music written by Gaga alongside Cooper and other musicians including Lukas Nelson, Jason Isbell, and Mark Ronson.
– Setting your iPhone's date and time to Jan. 1, 1970, will instantly make you experience what life in the '70s was like—because you'll no longer have a cellphone. "I changed the time to January 1st 1970," NBC News quotes one poor iPhone user's complaint to Apple. "I shutdown my phone and restarted it, the result is a bricked iPhone. I've tried restoring, updating, but nothing seems to be working." Wired reports it's a bug that appears to be affecting 64-bit iOS devices, such as the iPhone 5S, iPad Air, and other newer models. Moving an iPhone's date setting back by 46 years isn't something most people would do without some prompting. So, of course, there's been some prompting. An official-looking promotional image popped up on the 4Chan forum on Thursday before spreading to Facebook and Reddit, Business Insider reports. The image instructs people with iPhones to change the date to Jan. 1, 1970 for a fun "easter egg": a rainbow-colored retro Apple logo when the phone is rebooted. Instead, the phone refuses to start back up and requires either a physical fix or complete replacement. So what's causing this odd bug? "It’s almost certainly related to the same Unix glitch that caused Facebook to wish people a happy 46 years on the service," Wired states.
– After rigging emissions tests to fool regulators, Volkswagen appears to have belatedly decided that honesty is the best policy. Michael Horn, the chief of the German automaker's US business, told an audience at an event in New York last night that the company had cheated, the BBC reports. "Our company was dishonest with the EPA, and the California air resources board and with all of you, and in my German words: We have totally screwed up," he said, promising that the company would "make this right" and "will pay what we have to pay." The company will face around $18 billion in fines in the US alone, and countries such as South Korea are now also investigating emissions from Volkswagen's diesel vehicles, the AP reports. Volkswagen may be punished with more than fines: Sources tell Bloomberg that the Justice Department—which recently launched a push to go after individuals as well as corporations in cases of corporate wrongdoing—is considering criminal proceedings, which could involve executives in both Germany and the US. The scandal has already wiped more than $16 billion off Volkswagen's share price and the fallout could just be beginning. Experts tell the Guardian that the use of software to cheat emissions tests could be widespread in other countries and with other manufacturers. (Some 500,000 diesel Volkswagen vehicles in the US have been recalled, and Consumer Reports has yanked its favorable ratings.)
– 50 Cent might have stretched the truth a bit in court when he told a lawyer all his Lamborghinis, Bentleys, and Rolls Royces were rented. New bankruptcy filings show he actually owns seven cars, including a Rolls Royce and three Chevy Suburbans, worth $500,000, report People and Page Six. But apparently he still doesn't have a ton of cash to throw around—relatively speaking, anyway. The AP reports the rapper pulls in about $185,000 per month but has $108,000 in monthly expenses, including $72,000 a month for the utilities, mortgage, property tax, and insurance on his 50-room Hartford mansion. Where else is his money going? He spends $9,000 on security, $5,000 on gardening, $1,000 on grooming, and $3,000 on his wardrobe each month. Another $5,745 goes toward a car lease, while $14,600 is used to support his two children and grandfather. On top of all that, he reportedly owes his stylist $5,245 in back pay, as well as unspecified debts to his barber and personal trainer. His biggest debt of all: $18 million to electronics company Sleek Audio—the result of a lawsuit over a failed headphones deal—in addition to the $7 million 50 Cent has been ordered to pay in a sex-tape lawsuit. The rapper is due back in court tomorrow.
– Paul Ryan looks to be backing off his controversial plan to scrap Medicare entirely—the one Newt Gingrich famously derided as "right-wing social engineering," reports the Hill. Instead, the GOP congressman and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden will unveil a new strategy tomorrow that would allow the program to remain but force it to compete against private plans. Seniors would have the choice of which route to take. But even if it manages to get through, the proposal would not take effect until 2022 or affect any seniors currently in the program, notes the Wall Street Journal. “We want to demonstrate that there is an emerging consensus developing on how to preserve Medicare," Ryan tells the Washington Post. "This program’s got to be reformed to be saved. The country's at stake." The shift will complicate Democratic plans to go after Republicans as Medicare-killers in the upcoming election, notes the Hill.
– After just short of 20 years, the murder of JonBenet Ramsey is as much of a mystery as ever—especially in light of a new examination of DNA evidence. A joint investigation by the Boulder Daily Camera and 9News calls into question former District Attorney Mary Lacy's decision to exonerate the Ramsey family. At the time, Lacy concluded that DNA evidence found on JonBenet's underwear and long johns belonged to a male intruder who was not part of the Ramsey family. But now three forensic experts who examined the DNA test results and lab reports used by Lacy say they do not support her conclusion. For one thing, a sample on her underwear identified as coming from "Unknown Male 1" may in fact be a composite from multiple people and thus "worthless as evidence," says the news report. Another revelation that further muddles the picture: DNA samples on her long johns appear to come from JonBenet and at least two other people, not one, a fact that has never been revealed before. What's more, the independent experts say all of the unknown DNA may be the result of "inconsequential contact with other people," reports the Camera. With the exoneration, "I was trying to prevent a horrible travesty of justice," Lacy tells ABC. (The interview was done before these latest revelations.) "I was scared to death that despite the fact that there was no evidence, no psychopathy, and no motive, the case was a train going down the track and the Ramseys were tied to that track." Comparison to the DNA profile now in doubt was used to exonerate dozens of other potential suspects. (JonBenet's older brother is suing a pathologist who accused him of the killing.)
– Sharon Rocha was sitting on the couch next to her pregnant daughter, Laci Peterson, when the 27-year-old said the baby was kicking. "I put my hand on her stomach, because I’d never felt him kick," Rocha says in a new ABC documentary about her daughter's murder, per People. "She leaned over to me and she said, 'Mom,' she said 'Scott doesn’t like to do this.' She said, 'I’ve asked him about, you know, feel my stomach when the baby kicks, and he never wants to touch my stomach.' That really, really bothered me. And that was the last time I saw her." Peterson, eight months pregnant, disappeared soon after on Christmas Eve in 2002; her body and that of the son she was carrying washed ashore in California four months later and her husband, Scott, was eventually convicted of her murder; he is still fighting his guilty verdict and death sentence. In the documentary, which debuts Sept. 14, Rocha says the realization that Scott may have had something to do with her daughter's disappearance was a difficult one to accept. "It’s not like this is a total stranger that you might be suspecting," she says. "This is somebody that’s been a member of your family for several years now, and it’s really, you know, the back and forth and the guilt about feeling this way, and how it may have an effect on the relationship with my daughter if I’m wrong." She adds that Scott had been a member of the family she "loved and cared about," and that knowing how Laci felt about him made her not want to consider him a suspect. A&E is also currently airing a series on Laci Peterson's murder; People reported last week that in that series Scott Peterson was recently heard describing the "terrible physical reaction" he claimed to have upon finding out his wife and son were dead.
– Under circumstances that sound straight out of a Le Carre novel, Mohamed Morsi has met with an outsider for the first time since being dumped by Egypt's military, holding a midnight meeting with the European Union's top diplomat at an "undisclosed location" last night, the Wall Street Journal. Though many have feared for Morsi's well-being after almost a month in captivity, Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign affairs and security policy chief, reports that he is well and has access to TV and newspapers, Reuters reports. The pair had a "very long and in-depth conversation," Ashton says. Ashton, who has met with several other Egyptian political figures while in the country, says she wasn't there to help Morsi break out, but rather to facilitate discussions toward a peaceful end to the country's political unrest, the Washington Post reports. "First of all, we are here to help. We are not here to impose," she says. "The people of Egypt will determine their own future." But will Morsi play ball? "He's a very proud man," says a source close to the former leader, per the Journal. "I think the idea of doing anything on (the) army's terms will not work with him."
– After being denied an abortion despite serious health concerns, a Salvadoran woman known only as Beatriz has undergone a cesarean section to save her life, the AP reports. The baby girl was born without a brain 27 weeks into the pregnancy and died five hours later, the Guardian reports. El Salvador's health ministry was able to circumvent its strict anti-abortion laws and allow the C-section because the pregnancy had passed the 26-week mark. Beatriz, who had suffered from lupus and kidney failure, is now in stable condition, says the health minister. "She's in good hands, being looked after well." A rep for an abortion rights group says she faced unnecessary suffering, reports Reuters. Last week, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruled that the abortion should be allowed, but that ruling came as El Salvador settled the issue with the C-section plan.
– Russia is staging war games in Belarus in September, but US officials and US allies in the area are concerned the country's real aim is to bring military equipment into the country and leave it there. "People are worried this is a Trojan horse. They say, 'We're just doing an exercise,' and then all of a sudden they've moved all these people and capabilities somewhere," the head of US Army forces in Europe tells Reuters. He says NATO officials will be watching the Zapad 2017 exercise closely for that reason. Some allies think the exercise will involve nuclear weapons training and could utilize more than 100,000 troops, which would make it the largest such exercise since 2013, the Guardian reports. The official did note that there are no indications Russia really is planning such a "trojan horse," but called for more transparency from the country as to the size and scope of the war games in order to ease concerns. A senior Russian diplomat says Moscow has no plans to leave military equipment in Belarus, and says the concern from NATO is just "artificial buffoonery" over routine war games that is "aimed at justifying the sharp intensification of the NATO bloc (activities) along the perimeter of Russian territory." NATO is also keeping a close eye on war games in the Baltic Sea taking place July 24-31; Chinese warships were to join the Russian navy there Friday.
– A Texas family knew they had a new addition on the way, but they had no way of knowing where the baby girl would make her first appearance: in a Chick-fil-A bathroom. Per KENS5, Robert Griffin and his wife were on their way to the hospital in San Antonio when they stopped at a Chick-fil-A to drop their kids off with a friend in the parking lot. Falon Griffin was already in labor, but she told her husband she desperately needed to use the restroom. In order to do so, they had to bang on the Chick-fil-A door, because it was already closed for the night. Employees let them in and, before long, they alerted her husband that something seemed wrong. "The manager said 'she’s in the restroom and she’s screaming,'" Griffin wrote in a Facebook post about the whirlwind delivery. "So there we were.....my wife and I in a tiny stall in the bathroom." As the baby's head crowned and the delivery showed no signs of slowing down, Griffin described how he had to calmly ask his wife to stop pushing for a moment when he realized the umbilical cord was wrapped around the infant's neck. "I was somehow able to unwrap the (cord) from the baby’s neck. With two more strong pushes, and using my shirt for a towel, out came Gracelyn Mae Violet Griffin," Griffin wrote. As the Star-Telegram notes, Griffin suggested there was also someone else in that bathroom, at least in spirit. “I think it’s pretty ironic that a proud conservative, Christian family would have a baby in a Chick-fil-A, and wrapped in a Trump 2020 T-shirt! BOOM #maga," he wrote. The chain has promised Gracelyn free Chick-fil-A for life and a job when she turns 16. (The company's politics have stirred up controversy.)
– What's said to have been the biggest child-pornography production case in Minnesota history ended Tuesday in a St. Paul courtroom, and two of the victims faced down their tormenter there. "We all can now be given freedom from this," one of the unnamed victims, now a young man, said after Anton Martynenko, 32, was sentenced to 38 years in prison for what the Minneapolis Star Tribune calls a "massive sextortion scheme." How that scheme worked: Martynenko would set up fake online profiles (often as teen girls) to lure teen boys into sending him nude pics, which he'd then post online. All told, he tricked more than 155 boys, mainly between 14 and 16, in multiple states, KMSP reports. Martynenko, who pleaded guilty in January, "delighted in the humiliation, embarrassment, and potential negative consequences his actions caused his victims," prosecutors said, per court docs. Once Martynenko had the boys' photos, he'd threaten to post the pics online, and he'd often follow through. He also managed to persuade three boys into committing sexual acts on him, and two of his victims ended up killing themselves. One of the victims who appeared in court, now 21, said "my life has become a living hell" from the experience, while the other, who's around 19, noted Martynenko was "a terrible human being who spent years of his life making hundreds of teen boys miserable." Side note: Martynenko had two years lopped off his sentence for helping investigators on the Jacob Wetterling case. He'd shared a jail cell with Danny Heinrich, Jacob's killer, at one point and had apparently procured information. (The break in the Wetterling case came in September after 27 years.)
– When Adam Seger was brought on as head of restaurant operations at the storied Seelbach Hotel (now the Seelbach Hilton) in downtown Louisville, Ky., he announced that he'd stumbled upon the recipe of a pre-Prohibition drink that used to be the hotel's signature drink and that he tried it, he enjoyed it, and he was putting in back on the menu. But as the New York Times reports, the "rescued classic" that gained fast notoriety and established Seger as a brand name was in fact Seger's own creation, a "ruse" as the Louisville Courier-Journal calls it. Now Seger, who "carried this around" for 21 years, has decided to finally come clean. "I was nobody," says Seger, who left the hotel in 2001, is now 47, and recently helped open the Tuck Room in Manhattan. "I knew I could make a great drink. I wanted it to be this promotion for the hotel, and I felt the hotel needed a signature cocktail. How could you have a place that F. Scott Fitzgerald hung out in that doesn’t have a damn cocktail?" Everyone bought the story (even the historian known as Dr. Cocktail who wrote a book about vintage spirits) and loved the drink, which is made with bourbon, triple sec, bitters, sparkling wine, and garnished with an orange twist. Even the hotel is sticking with the drink as its signature cocktail, saying it's become a hotel tradition and "will remain part of its future." (This is Obama's cocktail of choice.)
– As everyone wonders whether Conan O’Brien will stay at NBC or move to Fox, the Tonight Show host offered up a few more novel ideas yesterday: Perhaps he’ll “pretend to put my son in a giant foil balloon, then sit back and watch the offers come pouring in!” Watch him deliver the rest of his options on the video above—then check out Jay Leno, who also addressed the drama last night on his show. “NBC says the show performed exactly as they expected it would, and then they canceled it,” Leno said. “Now don’t confuse that with when we were on at late night and we performed better than expected and then they canceled us. That was totally different!” Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times takes a closer look at Fox’s early talks with Conan—who “would be a very compatible fit for our brand,” says the president of Fox Entertainment.
– People often try to tell Charlotte Alter that she shouldn't celebrate Christmas because she's Jewish. Her response? "First, mind your own business and leave my gingerbread house alone," she writes at Time. For many, this holiday is about Santa, not Jesus—and who's to say he's not Jewish? "Santa doesn't wear a cross around his neck, but he does have a beard that could rival Tevye's." He wouldn't be the only one; Jews are all over Christmas, from Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, to Irving Berlin and Jule Styne, who wrote "White Christmas" and "Let it Snow" respectively. Alter even talked to a rabbi who said celebrating was "not in itself a transgressive act," for Jews, as long as they're not celebrating Christ as the Messiah. That's good, because 32% of Jews have a Christmas tree, a recent Pew survey revealed. Christmas has become a secular American holiday, like Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. That's true even for religious Jews like Dennis Prager at RealClearPolitics, whose Orthodox family nonetheless watched the Vatican's mass every year. "The notion that non-Christians are excluded is absurd," he argues; those who argue otherwise are, in his mind, secular liberals trying to divide America. "The entire society—Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists as well as Christians—all benefit from the goodness and joy that the Christmas season engenders." Click for Alter's full column, or here for Prager's.
– The disappearance of another jet in Southeast Asia while the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 remains a mystery comes as a shock to the aviation world, but experts stress that the two cases are very different. The New York Times runs through some of the differences with AirAsia Flight 8501: Unlike with Flight 370, there has been no sign that anybody on Flight 8501 intentionally disabled any onboard systems, meaning that investigators should have the normal automatic transmissions from the flight to help the search. Flight 370 disappeared on a clear night, while Flight 8501 was believed to have encountered stormy weather, with weather agencies having reported lightning strikes along its route. The AirAsia pilot's last communication with air traffic control was a request "to avoid clouds by turning left and going higher to 38,000 feet." Flight 370's pilot was very experienced, with more than 18,000 hours of flying time, while the combined experience of Flight 8501's pilot and co-pilot is believed to be less than half that. Neither Flight 370 nor Flight 8501 issued an emergency distress call, but, as the AP notes, "pilots are trained to focus first on the emergency at hand and then communicate only when free," and there's no sign that the AirAsia flight diverted sharply from its intended course the way the Malaysia Airlines flight did. Another major difference is the search area for Flight 8501, which is much smaller and shallower than the vast area that has been searched for Flight 370. "We are not talking about the deep Indian Ocean here," says CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest. "We are talking about congested airspace around Southeast Asia. There will be much better radar coverage. There's certainly better air traffic control coverage."
– Some 53% of American citizens broadly support deportation for illegal immigrants, a Reuters/Ipsos poll finds, with 30% saying most should be deported and 23% saying all should be sent away. Meanwhile, 31% of citizens say the US should let most illegal immigrants stay, and just 5% say all illegal immigrants should be allowed to remain, Reuters reports. The figures mirror similar polls in the past, despite talk of immigration reform in Washington. Still, most Americans back immigration reform, polls have revealed. "It's not Americans' views that are shifting. It is that the political climate is ripe for this discussion" following the election, says a pollster. Meanwhile, senators working on an immigration bill are floating the idea of a "biometric" ID card for federal workers, containing personal information like a fingerprint. All workers in the US, regardless of their citizenship, would have to carry one, the Wall Street Journal reports. But privacy groups are already up in arms about the notion—which hasn't yet made it past the idea stage.
– Just days after retiring from 60 Minutes, Morley Safer is dead at age 84, reports CBS News. No word yet on a cause of death for Safer, who had worked on the show about half a century. His retirement, however, was attributed to unspecified health issues, notes CNNMoney. Prior to his work on 60 Minutes, the Canadian native made his name as a reporter covering the Vietnam War for the network. As part of its going-away tribute surrounding Safer's final show Sunday, CBS had posted videos celebrating his work here. "Morley was one of the most important journalists in any medium, ever," says CBS chief Leslie Moonves.
– A major Idaho potato producer has won some love from the FDA for its genetically modified spud, but don't look for the "Innate" potato in the deep fryers at McDonald's anytime soon. As the Idaho Statesman reports, the fast-food giant—a longtime major buyer of Boise-based JR Simplot Co.—is taking a pass. "McDonald's USA does not source GMO potatoes, nor do we have current plans to change our sourcing practices," it says in a statement. The Innate potato, which got the FDA OK earlier this month to begin planting commercially, contains fewer sugars and asparagine—which can convert to acrylamide, a carcinogen—than normal potatoes; it also bruises less easily, notes the AP. It's not the first time a GMO spud hit the fast-food industry with a thud, notes the Statesman; Monsanto suffered a similar fate a decade ago with a bug-resistant potato it ultimately yanked over lack of demand. Meanwhile, Food & Water Watch calls the move a "major victory for consumers," with director Wenonah Hauter adding that "while we cannot speak to the rest of McDonald's practices, this decision marks a milestone in the movement to protect consumers from the potential dangers of GMO foods." Hauter urges Mickey Dee's competitors to likewise snub the Innate potato.
– A sinkhole that started out the size of a small swimming pool and continued to grow in Florida swallowed a boat, destroyed two homes, and prompted officials to evacuate residents from 10 other homes on Friday, the AP reports. Dramatic video showed the home, north of Tampa in Pasco County, collapsing into the hole on Friday morning. The hole quickly grew to 200 feet wide—about two-thirds the length of a football field—and 50 feet deep. Pasco County Fire Chief Shawn Whited told reporters that no one was at the home when crews arrived just after 7:30am. Someone had called about a "depression" under a boat parked in the backyard of a home in Lake Padgett Estates in Land O'Lakes. Within minutes, he said, "the hole opened up," and the boat fell in. Firefighters were able to get two dogs out of the home and retrieve some belongings before the first home started collapsing into the quickly-expanding hole. By early afternoon, the home next door also had been destroyed by the sinkhole. No injuries have been reported. Kevin Guthrie, Pasco County's assistant county administrator for public safety, said 10 other homes in the neighborhood have been tagged unsafe and the residents have been voluntarily evacuated. He said firefighters and deputies helped people get some of their belongings out of their homes. "It was frightening," Guthrie said. "The people coming out of those houses were frightened. Mother Nature is going to take what Mother Nature takes." Officials say Duke Energy cut power to about 100 homes in the neighborhood. The American Red Cross is assisting residents who've been displaced.
– A 31-year-old Texas man has died from flesh-eating bacteria, the third reported victim to be infected with the rare bug linked to Hurricane Harvey. Josue Zurita, a carpenter helping repair flooded homes, died on Oct. 16, six days after he went to the hospital with a serious infection to his upper left arm, KHOU reports. Necrotizing fasciitis had already claimed the life of a 77-year-old Houston-area woman; a man who'd kayaked through floodwaters to check on neighbors and contracted the bacteria survived, per CNN. Dr. Philip Keiser, the local health authority for Galveston County, which announced Zurita's death on Monday, says the risk of contracting necrotizing fasciitis is "well within what we would expect" given the amount of construction and resulting injuries after the storm. "You get some kind of break in the skin, and ... it's a fairly open space where the bacteria can grow," he notes. The infection can "spread over hours," Keiser adds. Several types of bacteria can cause necrotizing fasciitis, which kills the body's soft tissue. The risk of disease following a flood is usually short-lived, per the Washington Post. But to prevent infection, it's important to treat even minor wounds by cleaning them thoroughly, then covering them with clean, dry bandages. Tetanus shots can prevent infection. Zurita was remembered in an obituary as a "loving father and hardworking carpenter" who moved to the US from Mexico to support his wife and daughter back home. "He's a very caring person," a relative tells KHOU. "He was very young and always smiling." (Sewage in floodwaters was a prime culprit for spreading infection.)
– Ford has made another big bet on the future of self-driving cars, investing $1 billion in previously unknown startup Argo AI. "The next decade will be defined by the automation of the automobile," Ford CEO Mark Fields said in a statement, per Ars Technica, predicting that self-driving technology will change the world as much as the Ford assembly line did a century ago. The investment buys a lot of self-driving know-how for Ford: Argo AI CEO Bryan Salesky worked on Google's self-driving car program for years, while co-founder Peter Rander spent years with Uber's program, CNN reports. Ford is now the majority stakeholder in the startup and Fields says that while it is now a subsidiary "from an accounting standpoint," Argo will be given a lot of independence. Equity in the firm will be offered to tempt engineers away from other companies, the Verge reports. Salesky tells the Detroit Free Press that they spoke to several possible partners and decided they were most impressed by Ford's vision for self-driving vehicles. "When we talked to others, it was very clear that Ford was one of the few manufacturers that really understands the full ecosystem that needs to come together for self-driving cars," he says.
– Willie and Carol Fowler were prepared to lose their deposits. Their daughter canceled her Georgia wedding with just 40 days' notice, and the venue, food, and entertainment were already paid for. Then Willie had "a vision," his wife tells ABC News. "I was in the process of canceling out the venue and he said, 'No, what we'll do is donate it to Hosea Feed the Hungry.'" Their daughter had volunteered for the organization, which helps homeless people in the Atlanta area, when she was younger. And that's how, on Sept. 15, the Fowler Family Celebration of Love was born. Two hundred guests were bused to Villa Christina for a four-course meal complete with coconut shrimp and salmon (the 50 kids in attendance got chicken fingers). The family hopes to get sponsors and make it an annual event, Carol tells WBUR. A rep for Hosea Feed the Hungry said the nonprofit initially thought the Fowlers were pulling their leg: "It's a very creme de la creme wedding venue, so to say that you're going to host 200 homeless individuals at Villa Christina—it sounds like a prank call." The Fowlers' daughter attended the event, and her dad says it was a "bittersweet but rewarding" experience; her mom tells Today Tamara found it "surreal but incredibly rewarding." Carol has this advice: "If you have canceled an event, do not walk away. Pick up the phone and call your favorite charity and offer it to them. We're regular, working people and anybody can do this. This is not star stuff." (In Boston, a homeless man who did a very good deed is being handsomely rewarded.)
– Addressing high-profile GOP donors, Mitt Romney predicted Thursday that President Trump would slide smoothly into a second term in 2020. "I think President Trump will be re-nominated by my party easily, and I think he'll be reelected solidly," he told business and political leaders including Blackrock CEO Stephen Schwarzman, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Ryan, and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz at the Romney-hosted, invite-only E2 summit in Park City, Utah, per the AP. And while he cited the "strong economy," Romney said Democrats "are likely to nominate someone who is really out of the mainstream of American thought and will make it easier for a president who is presiding over a growing economy," per Politico. Romney, who is expected to win a Senate seat in Utah, also predicted Republicans would hold the House and Senate come November. "I know a lot of pundits don't believe that. I think we will," he said.
– Last Friday, Jason Garnett greeted a new day, as many men do, with an erection. But 17 hours later, doctors were stabbing the British man's penis with needles in order to end his member's persistent salute, UPI reports. The 23-year-old North Yorkshire man didn't worry when his erection stuck around the morning after a night of love-making, reports Northern Echo. He changed his tune around lunch time and tried to tame it with an ice bath and a jog, but after a stiff eight hours, he finally asked his roommate for help. "You should have seen the look on his face … he was in hysterics at first, but then he realized how serious the situation was," Garnett says, according to Huffington Post. Garnett's erection wasn't a blessing, but a serious medical condition called priapism. The rare malady has nothing to do with arousal or desire and can cause permanent damage if left untreated, reports News.com.au. The "most embarrassing day" of Garnett's life got worse when doctors drew two pints of blood from his penis and injected it 24 times with erection-reducing meds. "Seeing them stab my penis with a needle was … like something out of a horror film. The pain was a 10 out of 10," he says. Garnett says his penis now "looks like it's been through a war. It's all a bit black and blue." (Read about a woman whose medication caused "unwelcome" orgasms.)
– The 10-year-old son of a Kansas lawmaker died on the world's tallest water slide this summer, and that ride is now closed for good. Caleb Schwab, the son of state Rep. Scott Schwab, suffered a "fatal neck injury" Aug. 7 on the 168-foot Verruckt slide at the Schlitterbahn Kansas City water park; the slide has been closed as investigators look into Caleb's death, the Kansas City Star reports. Once the probe is done and the park gets the legal go-ahead, the slide will be "decommissioned," with the ride permanently shuttered and the slide taken down from its tower, per a Schlitterbahn statement released Tuesday. "In our opinion, it is the only proper course of action following this tragedy," the park says, adding it remains "heartbroken" over Caleb's death. It's not clear whether the Schwab family will sue or settle with the park, or if criminal charges will be filed, though the Kansas City PD tells KSHB charges aren't likely. In Kansas, permanent amusement park rides have to undergo yearly inspections, but they can be done by private firms rather than the state, the AP reports. In Schlitterbahn's case, all of its rides received a thumbs-up in June after they received private inspections. But some people who had ridden the slide, operational since 2014, spoke out after Caleb's death and noted they'd had uneasy experiences on the ride, including shoulder harnesses coming loose and rafts flying into the air when they shouldn't. The park notes in its release that it will eventually announce what attraction will be built in Verruckt's place.
– An inexplicable one from the Boston area: Police think a 36-year-old woman drowned in a public pool on Sunday and was not pulled from the water until Tuesday night, reports the Boston Globe. Nobody noticed the body in the interim, apparently. The victim is 36-year-old Marie Joseph, who went to the Fall River pool with a neighborhood group on Sunday, reports the local News Herald. A 9-year-old boy, her neighbor, tells police that Joseph went down a pool slide, landed on top of him, and went under. He never saw her surface. Somehow, Joseph's body was not spotted until Tuesday night, when passersby saw her floating in the water. The pool had been open on Monday, too. "We’re not certain about anything, other than the fact that we have a death and that this person was at the pool, and what took place with respect to the slide," says an assistant district attorney. "Everything beyond that is absolutely under investigation."
– Federal agents have been watching websites where hackers illegally distribute credit card data—and their work has paid off. Today, they arrested 11 people in the US and 13 overseas, reports Reuters. Under the two-year sting, agents set up a fake online forum of their own where people could trade stolen account numbers. The arrest foiled about $200 million in bogus purchases involving more than 400,000 compromised cards, authorities say. All of the suspects are males between the ages of 18 to 25, which might have been apparent by screen names like “JoshTheGod" and “IwearaMAGNUM.” Some of those charged face 40 years in prison if convicted. Their arrests will cause a "significant disruption to the underground economy," an FBI spokeswoman tells the New York Times.
– The Aug. 14 execution of Carey Dean Moore in Nebraska garnered national attention because authorities used a heretofore untested cocktail of four drugs to end the life of the convicted killer. But now, another aspect of the execution is attracting attention: the fact that authorities at Nebraska State Penitentiary closed curtains for some 14 minutes, preventing observers from seeing the execution from start to finish. According to observers, about 15 minutes after authorities began to administer the drugs to Moore via IV, Corrections Director Scott Frakes—in the same room as Moore—spoke into his radio and the curtains closed the Lincoln Journal Star reports. Some say closing the curtains "hindered transparency" because observers—and, by proxy, other states looking for new execution methods—were not able to see the full effect of the drug combination. "Speculation cannot help but be rife, state Sen. Ernie Chambers, a death penalty opponent, wrote to Frakes days after the arrest, saying that witness reports of the events before the curtains closed "only tantalized." Those reports include accounts of Moore's face turning red, and then purple, the Omaha World-Herald reports, as well as Moore taking rapid, heaving breaths and coughing, per the Journal Star. However, a corrections spokeswoman says the curtain closing wasn't unplanned, telling the Journal Star that it "is consistent with past practice. Frakes says the execution was performed with "respect for the process and dignity for all involved," per the World-Herald.
– Eric Cantor confirmed this afternoon that he won't be launching a long-shot bid to remain in Congress with a write-in candidacy in Virginia's general election. He told his GOP colleagues behind closed doors that he will serve out his term but will step down as majority leader at the end of next month. “It doesn't have to be a bad day," he said at the GOP meeting, reports Politico. "Suffering is part of life, misery is a choice." He reiterated his decision at a news conference later, reports the Washington Post. “While I may have suffered a personal setback last night, I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future of this country,” Cantor said. So what's next for him? "That's probably between my wife and me," he said. Meanwhile, the House will have elections to pick a new majority leader on June 19, with the leading candidates being majority whip Kevin McCarthy of California and Pete Sessions of Texas. Sessions may have rankled colleagues by waiting only 20 minutes after Cantor's defeat was announced to start pushing his own candidacy, reports the Hill. (Click to read about the candidate who stunned Cantor in the primary, David Bratt.)
– Acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie is President Trump's pick to permanently lead the beleaguered department. Wilkie is a former Pentagon undersecretary for personnel and readiness, and a former adviser to GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. He's led the agency for two months, ever since Trump fired David Shulkin amid an internal revolt and questions about his compliance with ethics rules, reports the AP. Wilkie appeared in the White House press briefing room Thursday to accept a check for the amount of Trump's first-quarter salary, which he donated to the agency. Trump revealed his decision during a prison reform event at the White House. Trump previously nominated White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson for the job, but Jackson withdrew last month. Politico sees Wilkie's path to confirmation as much smoother than Jackson's, though it points out one potential wrinkle: Wilkie was one of three congressional aides present when Trump's campaign supported ditching a provision in the GOP's 2016 platform that called for tough action against Russia. Robert Mueller's team is reportedly looking into that campaign decision.
– The Secret Service prostitution scandal dominated the talk show air waves today, with a pair of female legislators openly questioning whether more women in the elite guards' ranks could've averted the scandal. "It defies belief that this is just an aberration," Sen. Susan Collins told This Week. "I can't help but wonder if there'd been more women as part of that detail if this ever would’ve happened." Where are the women?" concurred Rep. Carolyn Maloney, noting that only 11% are female. "We probably need to diversify the Secret Service." Elsewhere on your Sunday dial, as per Politico: Tom Coburn on the scandal: "You know, I'm not critical of what the administration has done thus far. I think what we're seeing is an aberration." Marco Rubio on the VP selection process: "It'd be wise for all Republicans to respect that process, myself included, and say moving forward, we're going to let his process play itself out. He's been a great decision maker throughout his career in both the private sector and in politics and he's going to make a great choice." As for his pick? "I hope (Jeb Bush) will say yes if future President Romney asks him." David Axelrod on President Obama's reaction to the GSA scandal: "He was, I think it’s fair to say, apoplectic. We made a big effort to cut waste, inefficiency, fraud, saved tens of billions of dollars on just this very kind of thing. And so this was very enraging to him, and, of course, he acted quickly, and changed the management there." Joe Lieberman on Election 2012: "I'm going to try something different this year. I'm going to try to stay out of this one. I'm enjoying not being involved in the nastiness of campaigning in America these days."
– Hillary Clinton's team has—somewhat belatedly—clarified that every one of the approximately 32,000 emails deemed "private" and deleted was opened and read before being chucked. The clarification comes a few days after a Time story claimed that the review involved searching by keywords and not checking every email. A Clinton spokesman blames the confusion on a fact sheet provided after a press conference last week, which mentioned keyword searches. "We simply took for granted that reading every single email came across as the most important, fundamental, and exhaustive step that was performed," he said in a statement to Fox. "The fact sheet should have been clearer in stating that every email was read." But while the 31,830 emails appear to be gone forever, it doesn't look like the controversy for Clinton is going to go away anytime soon. House Speaker John Boehner plans to announce a new probe this week into Clinton's email use, including the deletions, according to ABC News, which cites "top House Republicans." And it's not just Clinton's emails that are gone: The State Department has admitted that routine archiving of the inboxes of senior officials only began last month. "It's very troubling," a spokesman for the National Security Archive group tells Politico. "People in the community of record-keepers and historians had known that our history was at risk for a long time."
– A suicide bomber on an explosives-laden motorbike rammed the car of Kandahar's deputy governor today as he was on his way to work, killing him and wounding three of his bodyguards. The Taliban have claimed responsibility, reports the AP, but the Los Angeles Times notes that Abdul Latif Ashna's slaying raises the specter of last year's wave of political assassinations around Kandahar. The province is seen as vital in the Afghanistan war. "The enemies of Afghanistan cannot stop the Afghan people from development and progress by killing such personalities," said President Hamid Karzai in a statement condemning the attack. "There are thousands of other brave Afghans who will stand against the enemy and serve the people."
– Using methods borrowed from Google, a group of researchers has analyzed all Wikipedia pages and determined that, at least on the English language version of the site, Frank Sinatra is the world's most important person. Second place goes to Michael Jackson, and third to Pope Pius XII. When factoring in all 24 language editions of the online encyclopedia, the team found that Adolf Hitler ranked the most important person, while Michael Jackson was again second and Madonna third, reports the Guardian. "Our analysis shows that most important historical figures across Wikipedia language editions are born in western countries after the 17th century, and are male," the authors write. The researchers combined two algorithms to reach these conclusions. First, Google's PageRank algorithm, which determines a page's importance based on how many other pages link to it. In using PageRank on Wikipedia, the most important person in the world was 18th-century Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, likely because the pages of organism after organism link back to the "father of taxonomy." So the researchers added an algorithm called CheiRank, which determines importance based on the number of outgoing links, the thought being that an important person would himself be connected to other important people, things, and events. Using the two together—an approach they dubbed 2DRank—no one beat out Frank Sinatra on English pages or Adolf Hitler across all language versions. Last year, in a separate study analyzing academic references, one team deemed Karl Marx to be the world's most important scholar, according to the Smithsonian. (Click to read about one of Sinatra's quirks.)
– It's been awhile since "Brian Williams" and "controversy" have been uttered in the same sentence, but might as well take a crack at it again now that we're solidly in 2017. The MSNBC newscaster was among those providing commentary Thursday night after the US launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield, and while responses to the strike ran the gamut from "decisive" to "unlawful," Williams used a descriptor that few (if any others) did, per Adweek. "I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: 'I am guided by the beauty of our weapons,'" Williams waxed poetic (Variety notes it's a line from Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan"), as a video in the background showed the missiles hurtling from the US warships toward land. "They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them what is a brief flight over to this airfield," he continued. But instead of swooning over his lyrical analysis, most of the internet came down on Williams for what appeared to be a glamorization of a wartime maneuver. One commenter called it "obscene enjoyment," while Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times called the segment "surreal." Others called Williams a "dope" or said he should be fired again. One person who didn't seem to mind Williams' take: Malcolm Nance, the intel expert who was on air with Williams during his soliloquy-like sermon. "He has an extremely calming effect in serious crises," tweeted Nance. (Congress members are split on how they feel about the strike.)
– A Rolling Stone report on an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity has prompted the school's president to suspend all frats until the spring semester. In an open letter to students and staff today, president Teresa Sullivan calls for "the collective strength of the members of our community" to fight sexual assault, the Washington Post reports. Before the spring term begins on Jan. 9, "we will assemble groups of students, faculty, alumni, and other concerned parties," including school officials, to address the issue. "I write you in great sorrow, great rage, but most importantly, with great determination," Sullivan writes. "Meaningful change is necessary, and we can lead that change for all universities." She also directs a message to those "individuals in our community who know what happened that night … I am calling on them to come forward to the police to report the facts. Only you can shed light on the truth, and it is your responsibility to do so." She adds: "There is no greater threat to honor than secrecy and indifference." Police are investigating the case, and another campus protest is planned for tonight following a football game, the Daily Progress reports.
– Think you're soooooo clever naming your baby after a Duck Dynasty star? Think again: Korie and Silas are some of the trendy up-and-comers on BabyCenter's annual baby names survey, along with other pop-culture-inspired names like George (after the royal baby), Kanye (we wish we were joking), and Marnie and Shoshanna (after the Girls characters). Korie's popularity, for example, was up 89% this year, Kanye was up 38%, and George was up 37% ... as a girl's name, NBC News reports. Salon notes that the names Jesse and Skyler were also up in popularity, presumably thanks to Breaking Bad. But none of the above made it into the top 10. For boys: Jackson Aiden Liam Lucas Noah Mason Jayden Ethan Jacob Jack For girls: Sophia Emma Olivia Isabella Mia Ava Lily Zoe Emily Chloe Amusing sidenote: The name Paula went down in popularity by 20%. Thanks, Paula Deen?
– Some 640,000 kids in the nation's second-largest school district won't be getting a second terror-related day off from school. Officials in the Los Angeles Unified School District say all 900 schools have been inspected following an emailed threat that has now been discredited by the FBI and they plan to reopen for classes Wednesday morning, reports the Los Angeles Times. A similar threat, supposedly from Islamic radicals, was received by officials in New York City, who rejected it as a hoax almost immediately. Gawker reports that both emails, which threatened attacks involving bombs, guns, and nerve gas, came from a profanely named server associated with the message board "8chan." Officials trying to trace the emails say they were routed through Germany but probably didn't originate there, the Times reports. School board officials, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck defend the decision to close down schools, saying the threat was specific enough to be taken seriously, KTLA reports. "When parents make their determination about the decisions that were made today," Beck says, "I would ask them to look at it this way: If you knew what the superintendent and the school board knew at 5:30 this morning, when the decision had to be made, would you have sent your child to school? Every parent I've asked said, no, of course not."
– Tennessee Virtual Academy, a for-profit, online public school heavily supported by state Republicans, has found a novel way of boosting student performance—just delete bad grades, reports News Channel 5 in Nashville. A leaked December email from the school's VP appears to tell its middle-school teachers to erase some scores that don't measure up. "If you have given an assignment and most of your students failed that assignment, then you need to take that grade out," it reads. "To me, this appears like it's grade fixing," said one Democratic state representative. Virginia-based parent company K12 is refusing to talk, but the TVA principal said the deletions were intended to "more accurately recognize students' current progress." But as the two-year-old school will receive $7.5 million in funding from the state this year, many Tennessee lawmakers are outraged. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that a House bill that proposed shutting the school altogether was killed yesterday; a second was passed by the House Education Subcommittee. It would allow the state to shutter a virtual school that records sub-standard student performance two years in a row. (Meanwhile, a Lehigh University student is suing over a bad grade.)
– Houston Texans fans who have been holding their breath since their superstar defensive end JJ Watt went down with an injury in the first quarter of the team's 42-34 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday had their collective hearts broken on Monday, per Bleacher Report. After the Texans tweeted Sunday evening that Watt, a three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year, had suffered a tibial plateau fracture in his left leg, head coach Bill O'Brien confirmed that the injury had ended Watt's season. Early Monday morning Watt tweeted, "I can't sugarcoat it, I am devastated. All I want to do is be out there on that field for my teammates and this city. I'm sorry." Watt's injury occurred at the seven-minute mark of the first quarter. While attempting to work his way around the Chiefs' offensive line he appeared to have his leg run into by his own teammate, causing him to fall to the ground. Watt was escorted to the sideline by Texans staff and eventually put into an ambulance and taken to a hospital, ESPN reports. Making matters worse for the Texans, Watts' teammate Whitney Mercilus was also forced to leave Sunday's game with a season-ending injury. Watt, 28, sat out most of last season with a back injury.
– The military-grade nerve agent that left former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter near death appears to have been left on his front door in Salisbury, England, police say. Investigators say the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent at Skripal's home, and the highest concentration of it was found on the door, the Guardian reports. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious on a bench at an outdoor shopping complex on March 4. Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was hospitalized for more than two weeks after the incident, is believed to have become sick after visiting the Skripal house, where he was one of the first on the scene, reports the Telegraph. Police say residents of Skripal's neighborhood can expect more searches in the area, but "the risk remains low." Britain blames Russia for the attack. It has expelled 23 Russian diplomats and numerous other countries, including the US, have followed suit. In a speech late Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson thanked Britain's allies "from the bottom of his heart," CNN reports. "I believe that these expulsions represent a moment when a feeling has suddenly crystallized, when years of vexation and provocation have worn collective patience to (the) breaking point, and when across the world—across three continents—there are countries who are willing to say enough is enough," he said. (A relative says there is almost no chance the Skripals will survive.)
– It seems to be a rite of passage that "young adults" in the US (classified as those between the ages of 18 and 34, per the US Census Bureau) take a bit of guff from the generations that preceded them. Millennials, ID'd by Pew Research as those born between 1981 and 1997, haven't escaped this fate, but while many label the current younger set as simply hanging out "in the basement playing video games," as USA Today notes, that's not quite the case. The Census Bureau released a population report Wednesday that looks back at the 18-34 demographic over the past four decades, comparing today's young adults to those going back to 1975. "If one theme describes how adulthood has changed over the last 40 years, it is growing complexity," the report notes. A few notable trends stand out, and the internet is buzzing about them: Parents who dread an empty nest can relax, because the Kansas City Star notes your millennial boarders may not be going anywhere anytime soon. In 2005, just 26% of young adults still shacked up with Mom and Dad, but that number settled in at around 34% in 2015—a 30% spike in just 10 years. Per the Miami Herald, millennials seem to look more highly upon a good education than their predecessors, with 37% boasting at least a bachelor's degree in 2016, compared with 23% in 1975. The extra schooling likely explains a drop homeownership among millennials, from 52% in 1975 to 29% today. You won't find millennials starting families as soon as they're done with that schooling, and women especially aren't as eager to be relegated to homemaker roles as past generations, NBC Washington reports. Economic security comes before marriage—and while about 84% of young men are in the workforce (a number that's stayed constant this whole time), that percentage has jumped from 50% to 70% for women since 1975. A separate study finds that the most popular brands among millennials are Victoria's Secret, Sephora, and Nike, reports Bloomberg. Pew Research dispels the myth that millennials are flakes when it comes to holding down a job, pointing out that millennials in 2016 stayed at their jobs for five years or longer at around the same numbers as Generation Xers did when they were the same age—and actually outpaced Gen Xers by a few percentage points when it came to sticking it out with an employer for 13 months or longer. Adulting classes for millennials might not be necessary after all, then?
– Four people have been arrested and charged with a hate crime in the beating of an 18-year-old with mental disabilities that was broadcast on Facebook Live in what a police rep is calling a "reprehensible" 30-minute video. The man's parents had dropped him off at a McDonald's in Streamwood, Ill., on Saturday, and police believe acquaintances took him to Chicago in a stolen vehicle. His parents reported him missing on Monday and subsequently began receiving text messages from someone "claiming to be holding him captive," police say, per the Chicago Tribune. Officers soon after found the video showing people cutting the shirt of a white man with tape over his mouth, cutting into his scalp, kicking and hitting him, forcing him to drink from a toilet, and yelling "f--- Trump" and "f--- white people," reports Fox 32. The man, found wandering a Homan Square neighborhood on Tuesday, was "traumatized" after at least 24 hours in captivity and taken to a hospital for treatment. Two men and two women—including one individual who went to school with the victim—have now been arrested, reports CNN. "It's sickening. It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that," says Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson. The group in the video had expressed hope that it would go viral. Charged with a hate crime, as well as kidnapping, unlawful restraint, and battery with a deadly weapon, per WLS: Tanishia Covington, 24, and Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, and Brittany Covington, all 18. Cooper and Brittany Covington were also charged with burglary, while Hill got hit with that plus a robbery charge, NBC News reports. All four are expected in court on Friday.
– There's science behind the plump dad bod: A new study that tracked the weight of 10,000 males over 20 years from adolescence into their early 30s finds the average 6-foot tall, first-time father gains 4.4 pounds if he lives with his child after birth and about 3.3 pounds if they live separately. That equals a 2.6% and 2% jump in a man’s BMI, respectively, according to a Northwestern University release. And men, don't try to pass off the weight as a side effect of marriage. Though a recent study found marriage does add a little to your waistline, the fatherhood weight gain is a separate issue "above the already known effect of marriage," says lead author Dr. Craig Garfield. Regardless of marital status, childless men actually lost weight in the same period: about 1.4 pounds. So why are men gaining weight while chasing after little ones? It likely comes down to a change in eating habits and lifestyle, researchers say. "You have new responsibilities when you have your kids and may not have time to take care of yourself the way you once did in terms of exercise," Garfield says. While many men quit smoking or cut back on alcohol when they have children, there may be more snacks and leftovers lying around, he tells Time. "We all know dads who clean their kids' plates after every meal." As first-time fathers often feel they're too young to have their own doctor, Garfield suggests pediatricians strike up conversations with child-accompanying dads about their own health, since "the more weight the fathers gain and the higher their BMI, the greater risk they have for developing heart disease as well as diabetes and cancer." (Here's how much weight marriage packs on.)
– The inspector general's IRS report is out (read it in full at the Washington Post, if 54 pages of dry analysis and liberal use of the underline function sound like your thing), and some pundits say it's not exactly as jaw-droppingly scandalous as it was made out to be. The delays for organizations seeking tax-exempt status caused by the IRS heaping extra scrutiny on them is certainly unacceptable, writes Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, but there's "no allegation here of politicization," he writes. Just confusion and incompetence. "The most hotly anticipated IRS probe since Watergate didn't exactly live up to the hype," write Kelsey Snell and Lauren French at Politico, offering some takeaways from the report: First, they agree IRS agents weren't motivated by partisanship, but asking organizations for donor records was burdensome and unnecessary. And the IRS has more work to do to fix the problems: The report makes nine recommendations, but the agency has agreed to only seven. One it hasn't agreed to is drafting new guidelines for how it should investigate politically-oriented groups. But given how touchy the subject is right now, it may not be able to for some time, say Snell and French—and that means it may now be impossible to actually police which groups really are crossing the line.
– Attempted suicides, drug overdoses, cutting, and other types of self-injury have increased substantially in US girls, a 15-year study of ER visits found. It's unclear why, but some mental health experts think cyberbullying, substance abuse, and economic stress from the recent recession might be contributing, the AP reports. The sharpest increase occurred among girls aged 10 to 14, nearly tripling from 2009 to 2015, from about 110 visits per 100,000 to almost 318. Older teen girls had the highest rates—633 visits per 100,000 in 2015, but the increase after 2008 was less steep. The rising rates "should be of concern to parents, teachers, and pediatricians," says Dr. Mark Olfson, a psychiatry professor not involved in the CDC study published in JAMA. "One important reason to focus on reducing self-harm is that it is [a] key risk factor for suicide." Researchers analyzed 2001-2015 data on nonfatal self-inflicted injuries treated in ERs among ages 10 to 24. Nearly 29,000 girls with self-inflicted injuries and about 14,000 boys were treated in ERs during the study years. Rates among boys didn't change much; rates in girls were stable until around 2008. The results underestimate the problem, though, since they don't include self-injuries treated in doctors' offices or elsewhere, says lead author Melissa Mercado. Drug overdoses and other self-poisonings were the most common method for all, followed by intentional cutting with sharp objects. All injuries were intentional, but not all were suicide attempts, says Mercado.
– Madison, Wis., saw peaceful protests yesterday in the wake of the shooting death of 19-year-old Tony Robinson by a police officer, with both Robinson's family and police urging non-violent demonstrations and the police chief vowing to "defend, facilitate, foster those First Amendment rights of assembly and freedom of speech." Robinson "was unarmed," says chief Mike Koval. "That's going to make this all the more complicated for the investigators, for the public to accept." The police response marks what the AP calls a "stark contrast" to Ferguson. "Our community has many questions, questions that I share. There will be answers," said Madison's mayor. "When the answers come, we will be open and transparent in communicating them." A 2014 state law mandates such cases be investigated by an outside agency, notes the AP. Officer Matt Kenny, a 12-year veteran who Koval said was injured in the struggle that ended in Robinson's death, has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation. He had been involved in a 2007 shooting death of a suspect, reports NBC; that case was later ruled to be "suicide by cop" and he was exonerated. As for Robinson's criminal history, "I'm not here to do a character workup on someone who lost his life less than 24 hours ago," said Koval. The AP, however, checked state records and found that Robinson pleaded guilty in October to felony armed robbery in connection with a home invasion; he was sentenced to three years' probation. A neighbor says she asked him about the robbery, which she deemed out of character. "He felt he was under a lot of pressure from the others to do what he did," she says. "He told me he would never do anything like that again."
– Mass shootings in America aren't a gun problem, they're a mental health problem, according to Donald Trump. He told a rally in Nashville on Saturday that "it's not the guns, it's the people. It's these sick people," the AP reports. "Many states and many cities are closing their mental health facilities and closing them down, and they're closing them because they don't have the funding. And we have to start looking much stronger into mental health," he said. On NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Trump explained that gun control wouldn't help because "they can be sick as hell and they’re geniuses in a certain way. They are going to be able to break the system.” He also told NBC that to avoid copycat killings, the media should have followed the local sheriff's advice and refused to name the gunman after the mass shooting in Oregon. At the Nashville rally, Trump spoke against "gun-free zones," saying people "would have been a hell of a lot better off" if there had been "teachers with guns in that room" during the Oregon shooting, and said that since he has a handgun carry permit in New York, anyone who attacks him is in for a surprise, CNN reports. He brought up Charles Bronson's Death Wish, got the audience to chant the name of the movie, and said: "Today you can’t make that movie because it’s not politically correct," reports the Guardian. (Jeb Bush took a lot of heat for saying "Stuff happens" after the Oregon shooting.)
– Anthony Weiner has an unfortunate new title to go with "disgraced congressman." From now on, he'll also be a registered sex offender. Weiner appeared in federal court on Friday and pleaded guilty to a charge of transmitting sexual material to a minor, reports the New York Daily News. "I have a sickness, but I do not have an excuse," Weiner said in confessing to sending sexual images to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. While reading his statement, he "quickly dissolved into tears," reports the New York Times. And he might yet end up in jail. Related coverage: Divorce: The New York Post reports that Huma Abedin also filed for divorce from Weiner on Friday. It's uncontested, suggesting no fight is expected over assets or custody of their son. What he said: CBS News has the full text of his court statement here. Prison: Weiner faces up to 10 years when he is sentenced in September, but don't bet on it. Prosecutors said 21 to 27 months would be "fair and appropriate," and the AP notes that Weiner agreed not to appeal any sentence of that length. He also could be spared jail altogether. Keeping track: Having trouble remembering all the Weiner scandals? This timeline of his career from the AP might help. Affecting an election: If Hillary Clinton blames James Comey for her loss, then she should be blaming Weiner, too. CNN lays out how his sexting got tangled up in her email trouble. How sad: Amber Phillips assesses it all at the Washington Post, including the question of why on earth Weiner and Abedin allowed a documentary to be made about them. The "sad" Weiner story is not just "one of the weirdest political stories of the social media age," she writes. It's "guffaw-worthy. Cynical. Just plain puzzling. Gross. Criminal. And somehow totally impactful." Moving on: At CNN, Chris Cillizza makes a plea likely to have plenty of support: "Now, can we please agree to just stop talking about Weiner?"
– It's official: Arizona State University has given Tau Kappa Epsilon the boot, expelling the fraternity after it hosted a racist party last weekend—apparently to "commemorate" Martin Luther King Jr. Day. ASU says the frat violated at least four school rules—including engaging in discriminatory activities—and has permanently revoked the university's recognition of the 65-year-old local chapter, meaning the group won't be able to hold meetings or recruit members on campus, the Arizona Republic reports. In a statement per ABC15, ASU's president quoted MLK, saying, "We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education." According to local civil-rights leader, Rev. Jarrett Maupin, "They did the right thing to defend the legacy of Dr. King and to say to the nation and to the state, and everyone who is watching, that there is a zero-tolerance policy for racism and discrimination at Arizona State University." ASU says student cases are still being decided, while TKE's national head says its own investigation will be released "shortly."
– The US has imposed new sanctions on North Korea over the Sony hack, and Slate writer Anne Applebaum finds it strange that a screwball comedy forced the hand of the White House, while "multiple reports of massive human rights abuse over many decades never had the same effect." This is a country that sends political foes—and their families—to labor camps for life and that lets its own people starve. And yet it took the hacking of a movie studio to trigger penalties. The problem is that "we can comprehend Sony," writes Applebaum, but we can't seem to comprehend the rest of what's going on there. "There is something about the harshness and the evil nature of the North Korean regime that defies imagination: It’s so bizarre that it makes us laugh rather than cry." But maybe there's hope from an unexpected source? At Vox, Alex Abad-Santos is glad that for all its crudeness and slapstick comedy, Seth Rogen's movie The Interview avoids portraying Kim Jong-Un as a "clownish Asian stereotype." Perhaps it's a sign that we're moving away from the representation of "goofballs" toward something more honest. Click for the full column, or for Applebaum's full column.
– The first case of many? A man brought to the US from Mexico as a child is being detained by immigration authorities despite having been granted a work permit under President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals plan, Fusion reports. Daniel Ramirez Medina, 23, was arrested when Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived at his Seattle home to detain his father for undisclosed reasons, the Guardian reports. He is believed to be the first of around 750,000 "DREAMers" brought to the US illegally as children to be detained in recent immigration raids, and lawyers have filed a petition in federal court seeking his release. Lawyers say Ramirez has been in the country since he was 7 years old and accuse the government of breaking a promise not to target DACA recipients for deportation, the Seattle Times reports. "Trust in our government depends upon the executive branch keeping its word," says Mark Rosenbaum, director of the Public Counsel Law Center, who's representing Ramirez. An ICE spokesperson describes Ramirez as a "self-admitted gang member" who's being detained "to await the outcome of removal proceedings" because he is a risk to public safety, though Rosenbaum says his client denies being in a gang, CNN reports. He says Ramirez was pressured to "falsely admit affiliation" while in immigration custody.
– Nearly 250 years after the Boston Tea Party, we could have a Salem Coffee Party on our hands. The Oregon Legislature is weighing a tax of 5 cents per pound on wholesale coffee, including coffee beans and ground coffee. KOIN reports that no revenue projection was given in House Bill 2875, but the Willamette Week's math suggests it could bring in about $2 million a year. (The state's budget gap stands at $1.8 billion.) The money would be earmarked for the Oregon National Guard Youth Challenge Program, alternative high school programs, and primary school reading programs. Willamette Week sees a disconnect there, reporting that lawmakers typically try to "establish a clear connection" between the tax and what the revenue will do, like property taxes paid by homeowners covering fire services. "The relationship between coffee consumption and alternative education is less clear," it writes. That said, the bill will go into effect on July 1, 2018, if it receives a three-fifths majority in the state House and Senate. A rep for House Republicans says "a tax on coffee is clearly not a proposal Oregonians would support, and we hope Democrats will disavow it just as quickly as they introduced it."
– How many black forest lattes can the Chinese drink? Starbucks is hoping the answer is a lot. CEO Howard Schultz tells CNNMoney the coffee giant is planning to open more than one new store each day in China over the next five years. The projection to have almost 5,000 stores across the country by 2021 comes despite the fact that growth in China has slowed to its lowest levels in a quarter-century. Unphased by that economic forecast, Schultz says Starbucks is looking far into the future. "I think if you look at the 45-year history of our company ... one of the things that we've done really well is that we've always played the long game," Schultz says. He adds that tourists and expats made up the majority of Starbucks customers in China only five years ago. "Today," he says, "it's mostly Chinese. " China is the chain's second-largest market, after the US. Schultz says he expects that standing to flip as more Chinese discover menu items like cranberry white chocolate mochas. When the first Starbucks opened 17 years ago in China, the locals had no idea the addictive value of a cup of Joe—or how much better one could be topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. "We had to educate and teach many Chinese about what coffee was—the coffee ritual, what a latte was," Schultz said. "So in the early years, we did not make money." Other businesses like KFC and McDonald's haven't fared as well in recent times in the world's second-largest economy, and both have sought outside investors, per CNNMoney. (A class-action lawsuit says Starbucks lattes lack milk.)
– If anyone understands what it's like to be a first child living in the White House, it's Chelsea Clinton. So it's not surprising she was one of many who came to Barron Trump's defense after a conservative website dressed him down—for wearing khaki shorts and a red T-shirt with a shark logo and slogan when he hopped on Air Force One on Sunday to return to DC with his parents. A reporter for the Daily Caller was insulted, Washington Post reports. "It's High Time Barron Trump Start Dressing Like He's in the White House," read the headline on an article by Ford Springer, who took the 11-year-old to task for dressing like he was going on "a trip to the movie theater." This was especially egregious, Springer writes, since the president is "always looking dapper" and Melania Trump has become a "worldwide fashion icon." Monday night, former first daughter Chelsea, who's come to Barron's defense before, spoke up. "It's high time the media & everyone leave Barron Trump alone & let him have the private childhood he deserves," she tweeted Monday night. Others joined the Team Barron chorus, including journalist Kurt Eichenwald, who tweeted, "FORD! Kids are OFF LIMITS!" Comedian Chelsea Handler simply noted: "Poor Barron." Meanwhile, the Post reports that the J. Crew website sells a green version of Barron's T-shirt, though as of this writing a note on the site read: "We're sorry. This item has been so popular, it has sold out."
– Last week, NASCAR's chief said he didn't want his sport associated with the Confederate flag. Today, the tracks on which the cars race seconded that by asking fans not to display the flag during races, reports NBC Sports. The joint statement is issued as a "request" to fans in the spirit of "providing a welcoming atmosphere free of offensive symbols." And though it's not laid down as a rule, Yahoo Sports says it amounts to one: "If you're a fan wanting to bring in a 15-foot Confederate flag to fly on track property while at a race or are planning to use the symbol as a way to make a boisterous statement, you're likely going to be asked to not do so and possibly escorted out of the track premises. " Meanwhile, those who attend this weekend's race at Daytona speedway can exchange a Confederate flag for an American one, notes USA Today. (The Dukes of Hazzard is also caught up in the controversy.)
– It's "a particularly heinous case," says the sheriff in California's Monterey County. Police rescued three young children who showed signs of starvation and abuse from their home in Salinas, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Their mothers, who lived together as domestic partners, are in custody. The oldest child, an 8-year-old girl, had been chained at times to keep her from getting food, and she looked like a "concentration camp victim," says Sheriff Scott Miller. The girl was hospitalized for four days and is now recuperating in a foster home. The other two children are boys ages 3 and 5, and they, too, were malnourished, bruised, and showed signs of emotional abuse, reports AP. But the girl apparently bore the brunt of the abuse, with investigators saying she was shackled at the ankle or by a collar at times, and may have been held in a closet. Eraca Craig, 31, and Christian Deanda, 44, are accused of felony child cruelty, false imprisonment, and other charges, reports the Monterey Herald. They home-schooled the kids and were scheduled to be married next week.
– A judge who asked a 19-year-old woman why she couldn't have just kept her legs together to prevent being raped has quit rather than be forced out. Justice Robin Camp resigned from the Federal Court of Canada Thursday after members of the country's judicial watchdog voted 19 to 4 in favor of removing him, the CBC reports. In widely condemned remarks during the 2014 rape trial, Camp repeatedly referred to the complainant as "the accused" and wondered why she hadn't done more to fight off the 240-pound defendant. When she testified that the incident had been painful, Camp, who acquitted the defendant, said, "Sex and pain sometimes go together, that's not necessarily a bad thing." Camp, after admitting that his thinking was "infected" with "stereotypical beliefs and discredited myths," fought hard to keep his job, attending counseling classes and publicly apologizing to the defendant, but the Canadian Judicial Council determined that his conduct had undermined public confidence so much that he was "incapable of executing the judicial office," the Globe and Mail reports. "I would like to express my sincere apology to everyone who was hurt by my comments," Camp said, per CTV News. The rape complainant, who told a hearing last year that she hated herself and considered suicide after Camp's comments, said the council's decision made her feel a lot more hopeful about the justice system.
– "Chilling," "unsettling," and "manipulative" is what critics are saying about Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as Nick and Amy, a husband and wife trying to make it in a small town in Missouri—just the type of descriptors you probably want for a mystery-thriller about what happens when Nick becomes a suspect in Amy's sudden disappearance. Here's what the critics have to say: For Mick LaSalle at the San Francisco Chronicle, the movie starts off "brilliant, not just a triumph of story but of strategy," and maintains that momentum throughout … until the last 20 minutes. That's when LaSalle says the movie "frays"—a "Swiss watch of storytelling [that] turns into a bad digital clock circa 1986, flashing the wrong numbers." He praises the acting, especially that of Pike, proclaiming that "everyone who sees Gone Girl will walk out raving about" her. Manohla Dargis is similarly thrown off by the shift midway through the film, writing for the New York Times that "by the movie's second half, you may wish that Amy would stay gone." Although Dargis concedes that David "Fincher's compositions, camera work, and cutting are, as always, superbly controlled," she adds that the film "plays like a queasily, at times gleefully, funny horror movie about a modern marriage." But evenutally, "dread descends like winter shadows, darkening the movie's tone and visuals until it's snuffed out all the light, air, and nuance." James Rocchi writes at The Wrap that Fincher's humor is "the spoonful of sugar that helps the malevolence go down in his films," and Gone Girl is no exception, with "top-notch suspenseful storytelling" and "razor-edged wit." He also lauds the supporting cast (including Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry) as "a thing of wonder" and praises the movie overall as "that rare entertainment that rewards your intelligence instead of insulting it, that rare thriller interested in emotional wounds as much as physical ones." But Gone Girl isn't as alluring as Fincher's The Social Network, laments Anthony Lane in the New Yorker, asking: "Who could have predicted that a film about murder, betrayal, and deception would be less exciting than a film about a website?" The film that Lane at first calls "natural Fincherland" soon devolves into a movie that "lacks clout." He also can't help but note that Gone Girl is "meant to inspire debates about whether Amy is victimized or vengeful, and whether Nick deserves everything he gets, but, really, who cares?"
– Which are you more afraid of: giant rats or dying of tuberculosis? Hopefully you chose dying of tuberculosis, because Reuters reports a Belgian organization called APOPO is training dozens of African giant pouched rats to sniff out TB, starting with at-risk populations in the crowded prisons of Tanzania and Mozambique. "This program is very important as the rats will enable … early detection of TB in risk populations such as prisoners and prison staff," an APOPO doctor tells the Independent. According to NPR, the 3-feet-long rats are quicker, better, and cheaper than lab technicians when it comes to screening for TB. It takes one lab technician four days to screen 100 samples; a rat can screen that many in 20 minutes. And all it wants in compensation is a bit of banana. Baby rats start their training as soon as their eyes open. They're socialized to humans (trainer "Uncle Albert" takes them on motorbike rides in between copious petting) and taught to sniff out the presence of TB in mucus samples. Once fully trained at nine months, they have a nearly 100% accuracy rate in detecting TB. Then it's off to work. One rat named Chewa does two 40-minute screening sessions per day with a break for napping and playing in between. And the usually enthusiastic rats are allowed to retire when they no longer appear to enjoy smelling mucus samples. "They can live out their days lounging with their friends, snacking on watermelon, running on wheels, chasing their tails, whatever they want to do," an APOPO community manager tells NPR. "The life of a retired rat is especially blissful."
– Dozens of rescuers have made their way to the mountainous area where an Indonesian passenger plane crashed on Sunday, but they haven't found anybody to rescue. Officials say all 54 people on board—44 adult passengers, five children, and five crew members—were killed when the Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 crashed in Papua province, Reuters reports. "The plane was totally destroyed and all the bodies were burned and difficult to identify," Indonesia's top search and rescue official tells the AP. He says all 54 bodies have been recovered, along with the plane's black boxes, which are in good condition. The turboprop plane crashed into the mountain around 30 minutes into a 42-minute flight without making a distress call, CNN reports. The cause of the crash hasn't been determined, though officials believe the rugged terrain may have played a role. "There's a possibility the aircraft hit a peak and then fell into a ravine because the place that it was found is steep," a search and rescue official tells Reuters, which notes that Trigana has a very patchy safety record, with 14 serious incidents since it started flying in 1991, including 10 in which the aircraft was destroyed. The plane was also carrying $468,750 in cash, which was to be distributed to poor families.
– If the election were determined by Twitter, the Democrats would be hard to beat. As night one of the DNC wrapped up, 3 million convention-related tweets had entered the Twitterverse ... compared to the 4 million the GOP racked up over three days last week, reports Mashable. And the tweets were truly flying during Michelle Obama's speech, clocking in at a high of 28,203 tweets-per-minute. Romney's acceptance-speech high last week? 14,289. Meanwhile, the energy level seems to be higher on the ground level, too. Members of the media (including CNN, the Washington Post, and NBC) who found Tampa a drag say the same isn't true in Charlotte, Politico finds. "Just a huge difference in energy between convention halls," wrote Politico's Alexander Burns. "Makes it easier for non-primetime speakers to sound strong." But the buzz may be in the eye of the beholder: "The DNC is VERY low energy, not the vibrant, youth allure of 2008," tweeted conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. "I feel the whiff of death and decay … government is the father figure here."
– Captain America has found a worthy competitor in a bunch of flightless birds. The Angry Birds Movie soared to $39 million in its debut weekend, reports the AP, knocking Captain America: Civil War off its first-place perch, according to comScore estimates Sunday. This despite reviews that were lukewarm, reports USA Today, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 42% positive. Civil War earned an additional $33.1 million for a second-place spot, bringing its domestic total to $347.4 million. Even in its third weekend in theaters, the superhero proved mightier than a batch of new adult comedies, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and The Nice Guys, which took the third- and fourth-place spots. Neighbors 2 brought in $21.8 million in its debut weekend—less than half of the first film's $49 million opening in 2014. The '70s throwback buddy comedy, The Nice Guys, meanwhile, grossed $11.3 million.
– Tech reviewers are seeing the light when they check out the eye-popping high-definition display of the new iPad. Lucky columnists with preview models of the iPad's third version are gushing about the screen's brilliant display—with a million more pixels than HDTV—and its processing speed. "These upgrades are massive," writes Walter Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal. "Using the new display is like getting a new eyeglass prescription—you suddenly realize what you thought looked sharp before wasn't nearly as sharp as it could be. It has the most spectacular display I have ever seen in a mobile device." The new iPad even manages to keep its long battery life despite the upgrades. Some of the tradeoffs? The new iPad weighs about 8% more, and is about 7% thicker than the last version. And the high-def displays eat up lots of storage. But it hardly seems to matter. "The display is spectacular. Apple also improved the camera, added dictation and, on some models, the ability to tap into the speediest available cellular networks," notes Edward Baig for USA Today. If you still don't get the picture, here's what the New York Times' David Pogue says: "It's a very, very sharp screen, four times as sharp as the iPad 2," making maps, photos, videos, and text in apps rewritten for the new device look "jaw-droppingly good." The public was sold even before the reviews: Apple expects to sell at least a million new iPads the first day.
– A man who ditched work for 24 years has finally lost his job—apparently a sign that India is cracking down on government bureaucrats who avoid office time, Reuters reports. AK Verma, a senior engineer at the Central Public Works Department, last showed up for work in December 1990. The Hindu describes him as being "on furlough," but an inquiry ruled against him in 1992, and delays and inaction ensued for 22 more years until Verma eventually got fired. "He went on seeking extension of leave, which was not sanctioned, and defied directions to report to work," officials said in a statement. Civil servants in India are infamous for showing up late, taking lengthy lunches, and hitting the links during work hours, the Guardian reports. Prime Minister Narendra Modi says he was shocked by bureaucrats' behavior when he took power last year, and has tried cracking down. He's known to play office monitor, showing up in the halls of power unannounced, and now makes civil servants sign in with fingerprint scanners (the results can be seen online). Attendance has gone up since, the Guardian says, and Delhi's main golf course is now mostly empty during the week. (In the US, a worker got in trouble with the boss for using his robot voice on the phone to callers.)
– Kim Jong Un's New Year's Day speech is being widely described as an "olive branch"—despite the fact that he warned the nuclear button is "always on his table" and bragged that the entire US is now within the range of his country's nuclear weapons. "This is reality, not a threat," the North Korean leader said, though he also said he was "open to dialogue" with South Korea and suggested his country might send a delegation to the Winter Olympics being held in the South next month, the BBC reports. He said North Korea will focus on mass-producing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in 2018, but these "weapons will be used only if our security is threatened." "We should melt the frozen North-South relations," Kim said, adding that the "Winter Games will be a good opportunity to show unity of the people, and we wish the Games will be a success." John Delury at Seoul's Yonsei University tells the Washington Post that Kim's words "should give hope to those in the South who are trying to get something going and open a channel at least." He says Kim may be trying to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, though the fact that the North Korean leader refrained from insulting President Trump may be a good sign. Asked about Kim's "nuclear button" remarks by reporters at the Mar-a-Lago New Year's Eve party, Trump said "We'll see."
– If you think it takes a liter of water to fill a liter water bottle, the International Bottled Water Association has news for you: It takes more than that. NPR reports on the group's first look at the topic, which found that 1.39 liters (or 47 ounces) are needed to make a one-liter bottle (that's about 34 ounces of water); this includes product water and the water needed for things like cleaning and bottling. It arrived at that figure by asking its members to submit three years of detailed data, touching on factors like total water use and the type of treatment used. Writes IBWA, "The study represents 14.5 million liters of bottled water production, an impressive 43% of total 2011 United States bottled water consumption." That figure applies to US and Canadian companies, and a rep for the group actually calls that "extremely efficient." NPR explains why: A liter of soda demands 2.02 liters of water, while the same quantity of wine requires 4.74 liters. The IBWA chose to stop there in its calculations, but the truth is that the actual "water footprint" is much larger: For instance, oil is needed to make plastic, and drilling for it requires, yep, water—in some cases as much as seven times what the plastic bottle ultimately contains.
– Madonna's week hasn't gotten much better since news broke that she's being sued for using a swastika image during her concerts: The Daily Mail reports that hundreds of fans walked out of her gig last night in London, with some deeming it the worst concert ever. The Hyde Park show—which did not sell out, despite it being Madge's first London gig in four years—suffered from bad sound quality, rain, a curfew, and the Material Girl's refusal to perform many of her classics. (Although she did perform "Like a Virgin," and stripped while doing so, prompting one concertgoer to tweet, "When Madonna has concerts in her 50s where she strips herself on stage, you know her career is as dead as MySpace.") Bizarrely, at one point Madonna yelled, "We love you, Poland." Maybe it was a joke, the Daily Mail hypothesizes. But Poland is exactly where Madge is seeing yet more trouble: Her planned show there faces a protest because it's scheduled on Aug. 1, Warsaw's World War II Remembrance Day. A Catholic youth group wants the show canceled, WENN reports. Meanwhile, Australia is feeling snubbed by Madonna, who recently ditched plans to do shows in the country for the first time since 1993, Australia's News Network reports. And, on a more personal front, Madge was possibly betrayed by good pal Demi Moore, who had dinner with Madonna's ex Alex Rodriguez Sunday night, according to the New York Daily News. Feeling brave? Click to see pictures of the Material Girl's Hyde Park striptease.
– US missile launchers and other equipment needed to set up a controversial missile defense system have arrived in South Korea, the US and South Korean militaries said Tuesday, a day after North Korea test-launched four ballistic missiles into the ocean near Japan. The plans to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, within this year have angered not only North Korea, but also China and Russia, which see the system's powerful radars as a security threat, the AP reports. China firmly opposes the deployment and it responded quickly, saying it will take "necessary measures" to protect itself and warning that the US and South Korea should be prepared to bear the consequences. Washington and Seoul say the system is defensive and not meant to be a threat to Beijing or Moscow. The US military said in a statement that THAAD can intercept and destroy short and medium range ballistic missiles during the last part of their flights. "Continued provocative actions by North Korea, to include yesterday's launch of multiple missiles, only confirm the prudence of our alliance decision last year to deploy THAAD to South Korea," Adm. Harry Harris, head of the US Pacific Command, said in the statement. The BBC reports that there is also opposition within South Korea, with those living near missile sites fearing that the system itself could become a target.
– Drinking a glass of wine a day may cut your heart disease risk, help you lose weight, or just make you generally healthier. But if you're a woman who hasn't had kids yet, it might also give you breast cancer, a new study suggests. The study found that women who had at least one drink a day between their first menstrual cycle and their first pregnancy were at significantly higher risk of eventually developing both benign and malignant breast cancer, HealthDay reports. "The risk increased by 11% for every 10 grams a day of intake, about six drinks per week," the study's author says. Previous research has suggested the alcohol-cancer link, and that waiting to have kids could increase your risk. But this is the first study to focus on alcohol in the pre-pregnancy period. Breast tissue is especially vulnerable to carcinogens during that window, Science Codex explains.
– President Trump praised Anthony Kennedy during a rally in North Dakota Wednesday evening and said he is "honored" the Supreme Court justice made his bombshell retirement decision when he did. "I'm very honored that he chose to do it during my term in office, because he felt confident in me to make the right choice and carry on his great legacy," Trump said in Fargo, reports Politico. Trump didn't go into detail on potential successors, except to say the person would need "intellect." And he emphasized the ramifications: "We have to pick a great one that is going to be there for 40 years or 45 years." (The pick is expected to come from this list, notes Time.) As NPR reports, Trump also has begun casting the issue as an crucial one in the 2018 midterms, arguing that it's more important than ever that the GOP retain its grip on the Senate. "Justice Kennedy's retirement makes the issue of Senate control one of the vital issues of our time—the most important thing we can do," Trump told the crowd. He was there stumping for Rep. Kevin Cramer, the GOP challenger to Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable incumbent Democrats given that she represents a red state. "Heidi will vote no to any pick we make for the Supreme Court," he said, though NPR notes she was one of three Democrats to vote in favor of Trump's first pick, Neil Gorsuch.
– The FBI is reportedly investigating a sophisticated—but unsuccessful—attempt to hack into the Democratic National Committee's voter database. The DNC learned of the attempt on Tuesday, CNN reports. The attack, which was detected by a cloud service provider and a security research company, involved a fake login page intended to gather usernames and passwords for a service called Votebuilder, which hosts the DNC's voter database. It's a method called "spearphishing," according to the New York Times. "It was very convincing," Mike Murray of the cybersecurity firm Lookout tells CNN, adding that it would be tough to tell the real page from the fake one, even if they were side-by-side. The fake login page was ultimately removed by the cloud hosting company DigitalOcean. The company's chief security officer says the threat was identified before the attack was launched. "We see no evidence that any sensitive data was stolen," he says. A DNC official tells the Times that it is not clear who the hackers were in this case. But, the paper recalls, a 2016 hack of the DNC was ultimately traced to Russia. This latest attempt, DNC Chief Security Officer Bob Lord tells the Times, "is further proof that there are constant threats as we head into midterm elections and we must remain vigilant in order to prevent future attacks." Earlier this week, Microsoft reported that it had uncovered new Russian hacking attempts targeting conservative organizations in the US.
– A tourist boat packed with about 160 passengers capsized Sunday on a reservoir near the Colombian city of Medellin, leaving at least six people dead and 31 missing, officials said. Rescuers including firefighters and air force pilots in helicopters searched for survivors at the Guatape reservoir where El Almirante ferry sank. A flotilla of recreational boats and jet skis rushed to the scene, pulling people from the boat as it went down and avoiding an even deadlier tragedy, the AP reports. Dramatic videos circulating on social media show the party boat rocking back and forth as people crawled down from a fourth-floor roof as it began sinking into the water. "Those on the first and second floors sank immediately," a female survivor told Teleantioquia. "The boat was sinking and all we could do was scream and call for help." Survivors described hearing a loud explosion near the men's bathroom that knocked out power a few minutes after the boat began its cruise around the lake. It's unclear what caused the boat to sink, but survivors said that it appeared to be overloaded and nobody on board was wearing a life vest. After arriving at the scene, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said 122 people were either rescued or found their way to shore, but six had died and another 31 were missing, he told reporters.
– What began as a largely peaceful protest in Oakland ended up being marked by the following: shattered windows, graffiti, fires, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, stitches, and arrests. Things didn't get ugly until after midnight, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Most of the day's approximately 7,000 protesters headed home around 11pm, but a remaining group overtook an empty building two blocks from Occupy Oakland's tent city. They reportedly barricaded both ends of the block the building sits on; started a massive fire whose flames reached heights of 15 feet; hung banners from its roof; and graffitied its exterior. Police told the crowd to disperse and fired flash-bang grenades and tear gas canisters after an officer was reportedly hit with a bottle. They say protesters threw metal pipes, hammers, molotov cocktails, and more. The AP reports that at least four protesters were hospitalized, with one, who tussled with a cop, needing stitches. "Dozens" were arrested.
– A man wrongly convicted of rape is finally free after spending nearly half his life in prison. After hugging his lawyers from the Innocence Project, Illinois' Angel Gonzalez left Dixon Correctional Center yesterday with his arms raised, saying simply, "the past is the past." A day earlier, a judge threw out Gonzalez's conviction for the abduction and rape of a woman in 1994 at the request of state attorney Mike Nerheim. Though NBC News reports the victim identified Gonzalez, new DNA tests show bodily fluids related to the crime came not from Gonzalez but from two still-unidentified men, the Chicago Tribune reports. Yesterday, a judge waived Gonzalez's conviction and three-year sentence for property damage—the 41-year-old broke a sink while in solitary confinement, his lawyers say—allowing for his release. Nerheim apologized outside court, though it was prosecutors under his predecessor, Michael Waller, who secured Gonzalez's wrongful conviction, as well as three others that have since been overturned. Nerheim told the Chicago Tribune that the victim was "devastated" to learn Gonzalez would be cleared. The then-35-year-old victim was taken from her Waukegan home, put in a sedan, and driven to a location where she was raped by two men. Gonzalez was stopped the next day while behind the wheel of a car similar to the one she had described. In 1994, Gonzalez, who speaks little English, gave a statement to police admitting to taking part in the assault but said he didn't ejaculate; he has since maintained his innocence, and testified he was with his girlfriend at the time. A Mexican national, Gonzalez's visa expired after his arrest, but he's gotten the OK to stay in the US while he pursues citizenship, one of his lawyers says.
– As the UK has alleged, Ruslan Boshirov is not who he says he is, at least according to an online investigative group. The Guardian reports Bellingcat and investigative partner the Insider say they have identified one of the men accused of poisoning the Skripals with novichok as a colonel with Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU. That man is Col. Anatoliy Chepiga, who fought in the war in Chechnya and in 2014 received the state's highest award: Hero of the Russian Federation. The BBC notes the award is generally given by Vladimir Putin, who has previously stated that Boshirov and companion Alexander Petrov are merely civilians; the men have said they traveled to Salisbury as tourists to see a well known cathedral there. Bellingcat suspects the mission that spurred that honor was a secret one; while most recipients' heroics are described in detail, Chepiga simply received his award "by decree from the Russian president." As for how the alleged identification came to be, Bellingcat explains a source suggested it look at whether the men could have attended the Far Eastern Military Command Academy, which had "the best reputation for foreign-language training and overseas clandestine operations." It came upon a photo that it thought could be Boshirov and continued its web searching, which ultimately led it to Chepiga's name and passport file. A 2003 photo in the file "strongly resembled a younger 'Boshirov.'" The BBC had this to say: "British officials have not commented. The BBC understands there is no dispute over the identification."
– The Fourth Kind attempts to combine dramatization of true events and fake-documentary alien abductions in Alaska, and falls horribly flat. Here's what critics are saying: The ludicrousness of the grainy archival footage, presented as "real," and a lousy performance by Milla Jovovich, whose "notion of serious acting seems to be speaking very slowly in a halting monotone," make it hard to suspend your disbelief, writes Stephen Holden for the New York Times. Luke Thompson of E! Online finds the film's framing device peculiar: "Every so often, we go back and forth between the dramatization and the 'real' people being interviewed. Sometimes there's a split-screen and both are shown at once. It's hard to relate to actors when the movie keeps reminding you that's what they are." "Without the true-story conceit," writes Linda Barnard for the Toronto Star, "the Fourth Kind would be just another formula horror flick with a couple of passable jolts trying to hold a flimsy story together."
– The wife of an Alabama state senator helps run his Facebook account, so she's plenty familiar with all the women sending her husband come-hither photos and messages. "NO MORE!" wrote Heather McGill on Facebook on Monday night, in a diatribe spotted by Gawker. "It is a shame that people are so heartless that they would try to split up families," wrote McGill, who warned that she's going to start publicly naming people if it continues (though she noted that these women "may not even be real"). Husband Shadrack says he supports his wife's post and tells Al.com that it also stems from some real-life incidents during his last campaign—including one in which two strippers showed up at the family's home late one night. He also says his Facebook page got "hijacked" more than once, and "women sent me pictures of themselves half-naked, saying, 'I had a great time last night with Shadrack McGill.' That sort of thing." His wife wants to put an end it to it all, he says. (The last time the lawmaker made headlines was when he cited "Biblical principle" to argue against giving raises to teachers.)
– And there was much joy in Michigan: Five Ohio State Buckeyes—including star QB Terrelle Pryor—have been suspended by the NCAA for the first five games of next season for selling rings, jerseys, and other goodies to make a buck, reports the Columbus Dispatch. They will, however, be able to play in this year's Sugar Bowl. The school plans to appeal. Some of the players also received what the NCAA deemed improper discounts from a tattoo parlor. All have to give between 1,000 to $2,500 to charity to make up for their profits. Pryor sold his 2008 Big Ten championship ring and his 2008 "gold pants," which the AP describes as "a trinket" given to players on a team that beats Michigan.
– Ariel Castro has been sentenced to life without parole for kidnapping and other charges related to the three women he held captive in his home for 10 years, the AP reports. Castro spoke at his sentencing hearing today, insisting that "these people are trying to paint me as a monster and I'm not a monster. I'm sick," CNN reports. "I believe I am addicted to porn to the point that it makes me impulsive and I lost it." He also described himself as "a happy person," a "very emotional person," and said he's "not trying to make excuses." (Click for the heartbreaking testimony of Michelle Knight, one of the victims.) More of the testimony coming out, per the AP: A letter left behind by Castro and found in his house read, "I'm a sexual predator," an FBI agent testified. It was titled "Confession and Details." A Cleveland police officer says two of the women rescued from Castro's house jumped into her arms, crying "Save us, save us!" and that one of the victims was reluctant to leave her room at first while another had difficulty breathing. A Cleveland police detective said all three women were abducted after Castro offered them a ride and that each was chained in his basement and sexually assaulted within a few hours of being kidnapped. The FBI agent testified that Castro created a makeshift alarm system and removed doorknobs, among other things, to turn his house into a prison. He also testified that Castro would occasionally pay his victims after raping them, but he then would require them to pay him if they wanted something special from the store. In a court filing, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor said Castro chained his captives by their ankles, fed them only one meal a day, and provided plastic toilets in their bedrooms that were infrequently emptied. At one point, he locked all of them in a vehicle in his garage for three days while he had a visitor, according to the filing. Details also came out of how Castro used his own children to lure the victims into his car and home.
– During the nine years Osama bin Laden spent in hiding in Pakistan after 9/11, he made his way between five different homes in the country and fathered four children, according to his youngest wife. As recounted by a Pakistani police report, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah revealed that two of the children were born in government hospitals, and these new details have the New York Times wondering how her husband was able to traverse the country with family in tow without being caught by Pakistani's powerful security forces. The bin Laden family split up after 9/11, but Abdulfattah joined her husband in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in 2002, she said. The family hid in rural northwest Pakistan, not far from Islamabad, though not in the tribal regions where Western authorities were searching. In 2003, they moved to Haripur, nearer to Islamabad, where Abdulfattah had two children in government hospitals, apparently under a fake name. They moved to Abbottabad, where bin Laden was killed, in 2005. Two more children were born there. Click for the full account of bin Laden's movements, including a near miss by US forces.
– Picture the average American couple in the 1960s. Now picture the average American couple today. Something more than questionable fashion should stand out, according to new data from the CDC, which finds the average weight of a US woman is now 166.2 pounds—about the same weight as the average man in the 1960s—up from about 140 pounds during that time, reports the Washington Post. That's an increase of 18.5%. Men, who weighed 166.3 pounds in the 1960s, now tip the scales at an average of 195.5 pounds, for a 17.6% gain. Is it as bad as it seems? Essentially, yes, though the typical height of men and women has grown by an inch, which at least accounts for something. But the main reasons for our growing bellies are no surprise: Americans are eating more food, but less health food, and are exercising less. The data shows 35% of Americans over 20 are considered obese, while 69% of adults are either overweight or obese, reports CBS Atlanta. As for children, one in five between 12 and 19 and 18% between 6 and 11 are obese. A 2012 study found Americans were the third-heaviest people on the planet behind residents of Tonga and Micronesia. The average American was 33 pounds heavier than a Frenchman, 40 pounds heavier than a citizen of Japan, and 70 pounds heavier than a person in Bangladesh, adds the Post. Dying to get back to that 1960s frame? It's actually more important to watch what you eat rather than exercise constantly, though exercising and eating healthy together is obviously beneficial. The New York Times notes that 30 minutes of jogging achieves the same calorie reduction as cutting back on two 16-ounce sodas. (Click to read why we weigh less on Fridays.)
– Noah Thomas' mother says her 5-year-old was watching cartoons in his Pulaski County, Va., home on Sunday when she took a two-hour nap. She woke up and he was gone. Yesterday, his body was found in a septic tank on his parents' property, USA Today reports. Investigators have yet to determine what happened, and this morning the sheriff's office called for a focus on "facts and physical evidence" rather than "speculation or rumors." The investigation is currently framed as a "death investigation, with WDBJ noting "crime scene" tape wasn't used at the scene. Authorities should know more when a cause of death is determined, though it's not clear when that will be. Investigators haven't answered questions about how the septic tank can be accessed and whether it's possible the death was an accident, but at least some family members have their suspicions. "You don't get in a septic tank by accident," an uncle tells the Roanoke Times. "Somebody's going to pay." Neighbors say septic tanks in the area are typically four to five feet underground; Noah's body was found just hours after a $5,000 reward was announced. As for his parents, they are cooperating with authorities, and the sheriff, who describes them as "living a nightmare," asked that the public refrain from rushing to judgment. Says the uncle, "No one loved Noah more than Paul and Ashley." The search for the boy began within half an hour of his mother realizing he was missing, WDBJ reports.
– An eager 12-year-old experienced the techno-shock of a lifetime when Apple's Siri voice system told him to "shut the f*** up" the other day. His question: "How many people are there in the world?" The boy, Charlie Le Quesne, had grabbed a demo iPhone while shopping with his mom in Coventry, England. The phone even cursed him a second time when he posed the question again, the Huffington Post reports via the Sun. "I thought I must be hearing things," his mother said. Why the bad attitude? Maybe Siri "finally lost her temper," muses Chris Matyszczyk on CNET. A more likely explanation was offered by store managers: that a prankster had tricked the phone into thinking the insult was the user's name. Siri has been known to sport a dry sense of humor, however. One user who told it "I need to hide a body" was given a list of grisly locales, including reservoirs, swamps, and metal foundries, TheVerge reports. (See Apple's response to Siri's "blind spot" on abortion queries.)
– A coalition of Shiite groups supported giving Nouri al-Maliki another term as prime minister, the Washington Post reports. The rare sign of progress came as the country achieved the dubious record of the longest time between an election and the formation of an actual government. Much uncertainty remains, however, and it could take weeks or even months for Maliki to get things in place, notes the New York Times. Today's progress may not be great news for the US because it would give much political clout to an old nemesis, Moktada al-Sadr, adds the AP. It was his followers, known as Sadrists, who reversed themselves and backed Maliki in a bid to get a share of power in the new government.
– The father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan in June says he was "floored" when President Trump promised to write him a check for $25,000—but it never arrived. Chris Baldridge tells the Washington Post that when Trump called a few weeks after his son, Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge was killed, he told the president that he and his wife were struggling to deal with the fact that their son and two others were killed by a rogue Afghan police officer instead of in battle. Baldridge, a construction worker in North Carolina, says Trump offered him $25,000 after he complained that his son's $100,000 death benefit would go to his ex-wife instead of his parents, even though he can "barely rub two nickels" together. "He said, 'I'm going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,' and I was just floored," Baldridge says. "He said, 'No other president has ever done something like this.'" But no check arrived in the following months, and Baldridge says Trump also failed to follow through on a promise to have his staff set up an online fundraiser. CNN reports that when asked about Baldridge's case Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the check "has been sent." "It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the president, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda," she said. (Trump is feuding with another Gold Star family.)
– A Virginian man charged with animal cruelty for allegedly shooting his dog of 15 years says it was an act of kindness, not abuse, WTKR reports. Michael Whalen says his dog Allie was one of his best friends. "We did everything together," he says. Last year, Allie was diagnosed with Cushing's disease. Whalen says a vet offered to put her down, but neither he nor Allie were "ready" for that. Instead, he put Allie on medication. But early one morning in late January, Allie started having intense seizures, according to the Virginian-Pilot. Whalen says he didn't think he could get Allie to a 24-hour vet safely, so after 40 minutes he decided to end her misery. Whalen tells WVEC he thought shooting Allie would be a "painless, instantaneous" way for her to go. He says shooting his dog was "so emotionally disturbing" he still cries when he thinks about it. He buried Allie's body at a beach nearby because he says she used to like watching him surf, and he would wave to the spot when he walked by in the coming days. But a few weeks later, a passerby spotted Allie's partially buried body. Whalen was charged with animal cruelty and burying trash. Vets don't consider a gunshot an appropriate form of animal euthanasia. But Whalen says he's no animal abuser. “If your animal needs you, you gotta be there for her," he says. "You have a duty and obligation." A court date is set for June.
– CNN aired a documentary about campus rape Sunday night—and this one came with the threat of a lawsuit ahead of time. The network ran The Hunting Ground, a documentary first seen at the Sundance Film Festival, reports NPR. The most controversial part includes an interview with Erica Kinsman, who accuses football star Jameis Winston of sexually assaulting her while at Florida State. Winston, a Heisman winner who is now a quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, never faced criminal rape charges, and the school cleared him of misconduct, notes the New York Times. Kinsman is suing Winston, however, and Winston's lawyers now may do the same to CNN, reports the Hollywood Reporter. "We are writing to formally caution CNN that the portions of the film 'The Hunting Ground' pertaining to Mr. Winston are false and defamatory to Mr. Winston," says a letter to CNN obtained by the site ahead of Sunday's airing. But CNN shot back in a statement that it is "proud to provide a platform for a film that has undeniably played a significant role in advancing the national conversation about sexual assault on college campuses." Winston's legal team says the film “manipulates, misstates or simply omits facts to present a false narrative," but filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering say "the truth is on our side."
– A San Diego weatherman is suing CBS for sex and age discrimination. Kyle Hunter, who works for Fox 5, claims his job applications have been ignored by KCBS and KCAL in Los Angeles because he's not a 20-something female, reports the Daily Mail. Hunter, 40, is seeking unspecified damages for being passed over, despite his meteorology degree and years of experience. Two women with no significant weather experience were hired instead of Hunter, who wasn't even interviewed for the jobs for which he applied, according to his complaint. He's arguing that CBS wants young sexy women in weather spots to lure more male viewers. CBS calls the suit "frivolous." There was "no need for the stations to interview someone we were already well aware of," said a network statement.
– Each time a new edition of the World Whisky Bible comes out, you can expect to see a Scottish distillery at the top—but the 2015 version is full of firsts. A Japanese whiskey has stolen the No. 1 rank for the first time, while no Scottish whisky even made it into the top five, the Independent reports, noting that "to add insult to injury," Europe's best whiskey hailed from ... well, England. Japan's Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013 shows "near incredible genius," says expert Jim Murray, adding that it's "a single malt which no Scotch can at the moment get anywhere near." Murray, who sampled some 1,000 whiskies, says this should be a "wake-up call" for Scotland. The US, meanwhile, boasts the runner-up position, the Whisky Exchange reports: William Larue Weller Bourbon, from Kentucky, took the No. 2 spot.
– Excited to head back to your school reading days with the new flick The Giver? You may not be after reading what the critics have to say. Despite big names like Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges, the film adaptation of Lois Lowry's classic 1993 novel has just a 29% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's why: "Another week, another movie about a special adolescent who saves society from the forces of darkness," writes Liam Lacey at the Globe and Mail. The Giver is too much of "the same old, same old" in which "Lowry’s serious but simplified ideas get reduced to a barrage of visual kitsch." "The Giver was ahead of its time as a book. But as a movie, it’s too late," writes Joe Neumaier at the New York Daily News. He's one of several critics to note the similarity to recent flicks like The Hunger Games and Divergent. He acknowledges, however, "young audiences may become aware of touchstones" like Nelson Mandela or Tiananmen Square "that they might normally have tuned out." Oh, and Taylor Swift appears in "an unnecessary cameo." "The cast is good" and there are strong scenes when the Giver, played by Bridges, passes his knowledge on to Receiver Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites. But the movie "just falls flat, in almost every way. It exists and not much else," writes Bill Goodykoontz at the Arizona Republic. "It's all too predictable, and way too heavy-handed." Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post apparently didn't get the memo. Lowry's novel "comes to life," she writes. It's "handsomely directed" with "an appealing, sure-footed cast," including strong performances from Alexander Skarsgard and Katie Holmes, who play Jonas' parents. Overall, it "perceptively caters to its teenaged fans' own cardinal desires and anxieties," she writes.
– A 39-year-old Jacksonville man is in custody in connection with the bomb scare that closed Jacksonville International Airport for five hours, jail records show. Zeljko Causevic has been charged with manufacturing, selling, or delivering a mail hoax bomb, and making a false report about a bomb, the Florida Times-Union reports. He was booked into jail at 1:30am, two and a half hours after the airport reopened, and will make his first court appearance this afternoon at 1pm. The airport was evacuated shortly after 6pm when police found one suspicious package in the terminal and another in a nearby parking garage. A sheriff's office spokesman said one of the packages "had some destructive nature that it had to be taken offsite" but did not elaborate, the AP reports. The closure left incoming planeloads of passengers stranded on the tarmac, and has led to the cancellation of more than 20 flights.
– Venomous spiders have swarmed the Indian town of Sadiya, killing two people and flooding hospitals with spider bite victims, the Global Post reports. The previously unknown species, which resembles the tarantula, crawled in about a month ago and wreaked havoc at a Hindu festival. A man and a schoolboy have already died—apparently from the bites, if not from dubious treatment at the hands of witch doctors, reports the Times of India. "All the bite patients first went to witch doctors, who cut open their wounds with razors, drained out blood and burnt it," says a medical doctor. "That could have also made them sick." A team of scientists has arrived at the small town in north-east India, hoping to find an antidote and identify the mystery species. Whatever it is, one scientist says it's a "highly aggressive spider" that "leaps at anything that comes close" and remains "latched onto them after biting." (For a less scary story, see what musical silk one spider can spin.)
– France's foreign minister is optimistic about the campaign it started in Mali Friday, saying it will be over within "weeks." He rejected a comparison to the Afghanistan war, adding, "we have no intention of staying forever," the BBC reports. The country's defense minister was also positive, saying the mission is "developing favorably," even as Islamist fighters today seized Diabaly, a government-controlled territory 250 miles from the capital of Bamako. A Malian intelligence agent tells the AP that French pilots launched a raid near Diabaly this morning, which marks an expansion of the conflict—until now, raids were occurring in the distant north. The defense minister says Islamists are retreating in the east, but still causing France difficulty in the west. Aides to French President Francois Hollande say they are better trained and better armed than had been expected. More from the conflict: Mali rebels have sworn to take revenge; one leader for al-Qaeda offshoot Mujao tells AFP, "France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France." French authorities are on high alert for retaliatory attacks on home soil. The European Union will send military trainers to the Malian army late next month or early in March, Reuters reports, but the EU does not plan for those trainers to have any combat role in the country. And NATO says France has not asked it for any help, Reuters adds. A spokesperson says the organization is "concerned" about the situation in Mali and welcomes France's efforts, but "there has been no request, no discussion [within NATO] on the situation in Mali, the alliance as such is not involved in this crisis." Hollande is holding a cabinet meeting to discuss the crisis today, and the UN Security Council will also meet today at France's request. The New York Times takes an extensive look at the crisis and its background, noting that the US for years attempted to stop the Islamic militants from gaining a foothold in the region. But last year, many of the commanders trained by America defected. "It was a disaster," says a senior Malian officer. It was also an American-trained officer who led the coup that eventually overthrew Mali’s elected government. Meanwhile, a west African intervention force is putting together the promised troops who will be sent to Mali though it's not clear when they will arrive.
– The Huffington Post thinks it looks like "a cross between a Pac-Man ghost and a Pokemon creature." But it will be a researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institution who will get the honor of bestowing a name on the little octopus with huge eyes. (Or "puppy dog eyes" as the San Francisco Chronicle puts it.) And don't underestimate the cuteness factor: “As someone that’s describing the species, you get to pick what the specific name is,” Stephanie Bush tells Science Friday. “One of the thoughts I had was making it Opisthoteuthis adorabilis because they’re really cute.” (A newly discovered frog looks very, very familiar.)
– A Republican made his way onto the speakers' roster Thursday night at the Democratic convention, but it soon became clear why. Former Reagan administration official Doug Elmets explained that he'll be voting Democratic for the first time in his life, and he used his own version of a now-famous political quote to do so, notes the Atlantic: "I knew Ronald Reagan. I worked with Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump, you are no Ronald Reagan.” He also said of Trump: "I shudder to think where he'll lead this great nation."
– A 19-year-old college student was flunking English again, so he did what any struggling student fearful of mom and dad's wrath would do: faked his own kidnapping, police say. Aftab Aslam's parents got a text saying the Georgia Gwinnett College student had been kidnapped; if they called police, he'd be killed, the message said. Turns out the text came from a phone Aslam himself had bought at Target, according to police, who were in fact told of the text by Aslam's parents right after they received it on April 27, reports Johns Creek Patch. Aslam surfaced at his home eight days later, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. At first, he told police he'd been taken and drugged, but eventually he retracted the story, and the truth came out. He had actually camped in a tent in an undeveloped section of Forsyth County but returned when the weather got bad, police say. He turned himself in last week and now faces a slew of charges, including three felony counts each of false statements, tampering with evidence, and terroristic threats.
– As the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continues, an "object of interest" has turned up in southwestern Australia—but officials are cautioning that it may not offer much of a breakthrough. "It's sufficiently interesting for us to take a look at the photographs," says an Australian official. But "the more we look at it, the less excited we get." An insider tells CNN the object's size is unclear based on photos, but it's "kind of rectangular" with rivets and an apparent fiberglass coating. Meanwhile, the Bluefin-21 underwater robot has completed more than 80% of its planned search without finding anything, the AP reports. But the overall investigation won't stop anytime soon: Indeed, it could continue for years, CNN notes. "The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water," says Australia's defense minister. Adds Australian PM Tony Abbott. "We are not going to abandon ... the families of the 239 people who were on that plane by lightly surrendering while there is reasonable hope of finding something."
– New research suggests it's possible ancient humans are responsible for killing off Indonesia's hobbits (an urge no doubt felt by modern humans who sat through the extended edition of The Hobbit). Starting in 2003 when their remains were first discovered on the island of Flores, scientists believed Homo floresiensis—who averaged 3.5 feet tall and 75 pounds—lived until as recently as 12,000 years ago, National Geographic reports. But a new study published this week in Nature found they actually died off sometime between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago—right around the time humans showed up in the area. "The exact cause of the demise of the hominids … is not yet understood, but in my view, may be related to the appearance in the area of the most aggressive of all hominin species, Homo sapiens, modern humans," one expert tells Discovery. Discovery calls the timing of the hobbits' disappearance "suspicious," but the study found no proof they were wiped out by humans, and further excavations on Flores are needed. Other possible causes for the extinction of Homo floresiensis include volcanoes, overhunting of pygmy elephants, and climate change. But it's not just their death that is mysterious. Scientists still don't know why these real-life hobbits were so small, how they got to Flores, or if they're even a different species. Some experts have posited they are actually humans suffering from dwarfism or Down syndrome. (Meanwhile, ancient humans having sex with Neanderthals may be why we have allergies.)
– Quick, how many Super Bowls have there been? If you don't know, it's probably because this year's game was promoted as Super Bowl XLVIII—and you'd be forgiven if your Roman numeral skills are rusty. Well, good news, my ancient-number-system-challenged friends: In 2016, the NFL is ditching the letters, ABC News reports. The game's logo will simply say "Super Bowl 50." This is a one-time thing, however. "When we developed the Super Bowl XL logo, that was the first time we looked at the letter 'L,'" explains the NFL's VP of branding. "And, at that moment, that's when we started to wonder what will happen when we get to 50?" After much consideration, the brand team decided that "Super Bowl L" would look dumb, and so decided to give us a brief Roman numeral reprieve. It will be the first Super Bowl without Roman numerals since 1970's Super Bowl 4. But 2017's game will be Super Bowl LI, notes NBC Sports.
– A former Massachusetts state senator was arrested Friday on charges he accepted about $1 million in bribes and kickbacks, laundered through his law firm, between 2010 and 2016, the Boston Globe reports. Part of those bribes and kickbacks? Hundreds of pounds of free Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Brian Joyce has been charged with more than 100 criminal counts, including federal charges of money laundering, corruption, mail fraud, and embezzlement. "Joyce's objective ... was to secretly profit from his position as State Senator," WBUR quotes the indictment as stating. Or, as FBI agent Harold Shaw puts it: "We believe Mr. Joyce was greedy, plain and simple." As for the coffee-related part of Joyce's alleged schemes: The former Democratic senator is accused of receiving the coffee and more than $125,000 in fake legal fees from "major" Dunkin' Donuts franchisee Carlos Andrade. Joyce allegedly got 504 pounds of coffee worth more than $4,000 on just one occasion in 2015. CBS Boston reports prosecutors say the money and coffee was in exchange for unspecified legislative action beneficial to Andrade. Joyce allegedly told Andrade to tell the Ethics Commission that the coffee was in exchange for legal services. It's reported that Joyce gave pounds of coffee to his colleagues in the Senate while gunning for a Senate leadership position. Joyce has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
– Monica Thompson tried for 12 years to get pregnant, so when she had her first child, Jacob, she called him her "miracle baby." Tragically, he didn't live past day 10. Now the mother of a toddler girl, Thompson is suing Portland Adventist Medical Center in Oregon for $8.6 million, faulting the hospital for negligence and a lack of clear policies, reports KATU. That's because Thompson, who gave birth to a healthy boy on Aug. 2, 2012, was on Ambien and Vicodin when hospital staff brought 4-day-old Jacob to nurse in the hospital bed with her, unsupervised, at 3am. When she woke up groggy an hour later, he was unresponsive. "She called for a nurse while she tried to get him to respond," her lawsuit, filed last Friday, states. "When no nurse came to help, [she] carried her son to the hallway and frantically yelled for help." He was quickly stabilized, but doctors determined he had suffered severe hypoxia and permanent brain damage. He was taken off life support on Aug. 12, reports the Oregonian. While Thompson is suing the hospital for negligence and relief for the emotional distress of "unintentionally killing her firstborn child," her attorney tells People that her "biggest hope" is for hospitals to "set clear policies for their nurses to avoid something as senseless as dropping off a child for breastfeeding to a mom loaded with narcotics and painkillers." The hospital says it is reviewing the claims and that "our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the family." (This mom sued a hospital over a breastfeeding mix-up.)
– If you're yawning a lot, check the temperature: Researchers say we may yawn when it's warm out because that cools down the brain. In the study, which agrees with earlier research, experts at the University of Vienna showed pictures of yawns to pedestrians in Austria and Arizona, ScienceDaily reports; they aimed to induce contagious yawning, ninemsn explains. After the study was conducted in both summer and winter, researchers found that such yawns occurred most often at temperatures around 68 degrees Fahrenheit. The scientists argue that there's a "thermal window for yawning," and it opens when we're warm but the air is cool enough for a yawn to lower our temperatures, Time reports. Previous research has indicated that we yawn after our body temperatures rise. The study found that people's age, sex, and previous night's sleep, on the other hand, didn't have much of an effect on our yawning patterns. All this talk of temperature still fits the idea that we yawn when sleepy, ninemsn notes. Tiredness, stress, and a lack of stimulation can have an effect on our brain temperatures.
– The first national convention by the organizers of the DC Women's March will be held in Detroit starting Oct. 27, but there's already a bit of turmoil over one of the scheduled speakers. The Washington Post reports that Bernie Sanders is set to make remarks on opening day of the three-day Women's Convention, with the Vermont senator writing on Facebook he's "honored to join the women at the front lines of our struggle for economic, social, racial, and environmental justice." But some think that, at a convention dedicated to women's issues and rights, those front lines should be reserved for women only (at least when it comes to prime podium time), and they're grumbling about a selection they don't think should have been made in the first place. "This choice sends the wrong message," tweeted the head of the Emily's List PAC, one of the convention's sponsors. There's even a Change.org petition seeking to remove Sanders as an opening-day speaker, while still acknowledging he's been a "[long-time] champion for progressive values" for which women are "grateful." But Tamika D. Mallory, one of the event's organizers, points out on Twitter that Sanders—just one of two men among the 60-plus scheduled speakers—isn't the day's headliner (Rep. Maxine Waters is), and she points out to the Detroit Free Press that Sanders is an expert activist mobilizer. As for why someone like Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, or even Hillary Clinton wasn't helping to lead opening-day honors, Mallory adds in a statement that "many elected officials" were invited, but that their schedules didn't permit them to attend, per CNN.
– You know that scene in the movies, where the husband drives his wife to the hospital in the nick of time to deliver their baby? Try this for a plot twist, from Iowa's WHO-TV: Cop follows speeding car with lights flashing, but husband doesn't pull over because wife is thisclose to giving birth. Cops lay tire spikes that stop the vehicle, then order both occupants to the ground at gunpoint—before realizing what's going on. Luckily, all ended well, and police got Rachel Kohnen to the hospital in time to deliver 10-pound Hazel. "I did tell him not to stop," Rachel says of husband Ben. At one point during the chase, she tried to call 911 to let police know what was happening, but it didn't work in time. "I know I was crazy lady screaming it into the phone," she recalls. Police in Fort Dodge haven't filed charges, though it's ultimately up to the county attorney. In fairness to the original cop who tried to stop them, the Kohnens blew by him at 85mph at 4 in the morning, notes the Daily News. (Another recent crazy pregnancy story: This woman gave birth hours after finding out she was expecting.)
– The Vatican is doubling down on its anti-gay marriage stance, which today had the unlikely result of a group of women ripping their shirts off as Pope Benedict gave his Sunday address, reports Reuters. Four members of the Ukrainian Femen group screamed "homophobes, shut up!" and shed their shirts to reveal slogans including "In Gay We Trust," but were quickly carted away by police. The Pope didn't appear to notice. "Today we are here to protest against homophobia," one of the women tells the AP. The women were responding to a Vatican editorial in response to a gay adoption case. It read: "The human is the masculine and the feminine ... the monogamous family is the ideal place to learn the meaning of human relations and is the environment where the best form of growth is possible."
– The State Department was accused of "negging its own citizens" Wednesday after telling Americans that they should beware of foreigners who find them attractive. "Not a '10' in the US? Then not a 10 overseas. Beware of being lured into buying expensive drinks or worse—being robbed," the Bureau of Consular Affairs tweeted as part of its #SpringBreakingBadly series of warnings. The department deleted the tweet after complaints that it was sexist and patronizing, the Hill reports. The department tweeted that some "have been offended by our earlier tweet and we apologize that it came off negatively," adding that it sees "many Americans fall victim to scams each year & want all to be careful while traveling." The warning was widely mocked online, with parody account Travel Gov issuing warnings like "If you are a '3' in the United States you must carry a 'hand-written' letter of apology with you in order to travel," NBC News reports. (The State Department says that with delays looming, people should renew aging passports as soon as possible.)
– The top suspect in the brutal killing of a Bangladeshi-American blogger has been apprehended, Reuters reports. Farabi Shafiur Rahman, who was arrested at a bus stop in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has confessed to threatening blogger Avijit Roy, officials say. "It's a holy duty of Bangalee Muslims to kill Avijit," he wrote on Facebook last year, according to police. Farabi was jailed in the past in connection with an Islamic extremist organization; Roy battled extremism in his writings. Farabi was also arrested last year over social media comments backing another blogger's death, though he was released in that case. That blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was similarly hacked to death, CNN reports.
– Cyber-spying, trade, North Korea, US military maneuvers—there's no shortage of big issues for President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping to tackle tonight and tomorrow during their informal summit in Southern California. But the biggest emphasis is on establishing "personal chemistry," reports the Wall Street Journal. The leaders will have six hours of talks, a private dinner, and walks around the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage to try to achieve it. As the summit opened this evening, Obama said he hoped it would establish a "new model of cooperation" between the nations, and Xi used the phrase "a new model of major country relations," reports Politico. China's alleged cyber-spying is likely at the top of the US agenda, and the Guardian reinforced the point earlier today with a story saying that Obama ordered up a list of potential overseas cyber-targets last year. It doesn't include specifics, but any such list would likely have plenty of Chinese targets. (The AP doesn't think the story is bombshell material—it notes that the White House released a declassified version of the president's directive in January.) As for the summit, the New York Times has the unusual detail that while Obama will be sleeping on site at the estate in Rancho Mirage, Xi and his officials will bunk at a nearby hotel, apparently worried about their rooms being bugged.
– Barack Obama appears to be shifting into campaign mode. In an interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News last night, the president wasn't afraid to call out his would-be challengers by name, saying, "We've got a test of Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Santorum's theories. We tried it for 10 years. It resulted in a huge crash." He also directly took on Newt Gingrich's assertion that he is a "food stamp president." "I don't put people on food stamps. People become eligible for food stamps," he said, pointing out that eligibility was expanded under George W. Bush, and that "when you have a disastrous economic crash … more people are going to need more support." Asked how much he wanted another term, he replied, "Badly. Because I think the country needs it." He also brushed off his "tense" tarmac showdown with Jan Brewer. "I'm usually accused of not being intense enough, right?" he said. "I think it's always good publicity for a Republican if they're in an argument with me. But this was really not a big deal. I think this is a classic example of things getting blown out of proportion."
– Back in 1988, Mark Wahlberg was just a 16-year-old troublemaker, and after trying to steal two cases of beer from Thanh Lam outside a Massachusetts convenience store, he beat the man with a 5-foot stick and screamed racial slurs at him. The attack left Lam blind in one eye, NECN reports. Wahlberg was convicted of assault and served 45 days, and now, more than 26 years later, he'd like the conviction erased from his record, the Boston Globe reports. "Since that time, I have dedicated myself to becoming a better person and citizen so that I can be a role model to my children and others," Wahlberg wrote in his application to the state's Board of Pardons. "I have not engaged in philanthropic efforts in order to make people forget about my past," he continued, mentioning his own charity, as well as his support of the Dorchester Boys and Girls Clubs. "To the contrary, I want people to remember my past so that I can serve as an example of how lives can be turned around and how people can be redeemed. ... Receiving a pardon would be a formal recognition that I am not the same person that I was on the night of April 8, 1988. It would be formal recognition that someone like me can receive official public redemption if he devotes himself to personal improvement and a life of good works." He does note that a pardon would also allow him to get a concessionaire's license, which would help in terms of his Wahlburgers restaurant chain. (Wahlberg's latest good deed: He'll go bald for a cancer charity.)
– It started with a candy wrapper and ended (for now) in a courtroom. Nestle's attempts to trademark the shape of its "four-fingered" KitKat have been rejected by the European Court of Justice, which ruled that shape alone isn't enough to recognize it as a KitKat, the BBC reports. The decision was a setback for Nestle—which manages the brand overseas; Hershey is licensed to sell the brand here in the US—and a victory for Cadbury, which was trying to block the trademark. The ruling means that, for now, other candy companies can make similar-looking chocolate bars. Nestle, which reaped more than $60 million a year from 2008 to 2010 in the UK from KitKat, argued that the four-fingered design has become inextricably associated with the KitKat brand over the past eight decades, Bloomberg notes. But Cadbury said the shape wasn't enough to make a consumer automatically think "KitKat," and the court agreed. The BBC even notes that in Norway, a lesser-known chocolate bar called Kvikk Lunsj ("quick lunch") has been around for nearly as long as KitKat. The fight between the two confectionary giants is the second major brouhaha they've had in recent years: In 2013, Nestle managed to block Cadbury's attempts to trademark its signature purple-colored chocolate wrappers, per Bloomberg. KitKat case now heads back to the UK High Court, which will render a final decision. (Claims of excess lead in Nestle noodles led to a major recall in India.)
– At a nuclear summit attended by more than 50 world leaders Friday in Washington DC, President Obama called the possibility of ISIS getting its hands on a nuclear weapon "one of the greatest threats to global security," the BBC reports. “There is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material, they would certainly use it to kill as many innocent people as possible,” Obama said, per Reuters. “It would change our world.” It was part of Obama's pitch to world leaders to better secure their nuclear materials, which he said is the most effective way of keeping them from falling into the hands of terrorists. He also called on countries to stop stockpiling nuclear weapons. Obama said both al-Qaeda and ISIS are still seeking nuclear material for weaponizing, and the risk of nuclear terrorism remains very real. He pointed out recent news that ISIS members had been following a Belgian nuclear plant's senior manager and secretly recording his daily activities. "We cannot be complacent," he said. In addition to ISIS and al-Qaeda, world leaders also expressed concern with North Korea's nuclear weapons program. US officials estimate there is approximately 2,000 metric tons of material worldwide that could be used to build a nuclear weapon, NBC News reports. The US and Russia (Putin refused to attend the summit) account for 90% of the world's nuclear weapons with more than 14,000 nuclear warheads between them.
– That infamous privacy button that Matt Lauer had under his desk was an “executive perk” rather than a “nefarious thing” used to trap women in his office, Katie Couric told Wendy Williams on Williams' show Tuesday. “A lot of NBC executives have those buttons that open and close doors. It was really just a privacy thing,” Couric said, per Page Six. "A lot of stuff gets misreported and blown out of proportion." Lauer's former longtime colleague is struggling to reconcile her own experiences with the disgraced NBC host and what others have said about him. Couric said that Lauer always treated her "respectfully and appropriately," but added that it would likely be "challenging" for Lauer to experience a comeback. “I think it depends on ... how he decides to handle what has happened. And the full extent of what has happened, I don’t think has been truly revealed," she added. Later Tuesday, she went on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live and cleared up another misunderstanding related to Lauer. For the record, she was joking when she told the show in 2012 that Lauer "pinches me on the ass a lot." "I was joking! It was a total joke," she told host Andy Cohen.
– Michael Bay's latest movie is a bit of a shift from Transformers—it's a smaller-budget film based on a true story about bodybuilders who get involved in kidnapping. Critics offer mixed reviews: At Salon, Andrew O'Hehir calls Pain & Gain "a thoroughly reprehensible and frequently hilarious satire that depicts American life as a circus of stupidity, artificiality, and self-regard." Bay, he notes, "sends a clear message to those of us who've been making fun of him: He's been in on the joke the whole time." "Compared with Armageddon or the Transformers series," this is "a stripped-down, modest enterprise in which no major American city is reduced to rubble," notes AO Scott in the New York Times. It "leaves you pondering whether you have just seen a monumentally stupid movie or a brilliant movie about the nature and consequences of stupidity." But "why choose?" "The combination of the words 'Michael Bay' and 'steroids' should be enough to give any moviegoer pause," observes Liam Lacey in the Globe and Mail. The film "plays like Goodfellas as performed by the Three Stooges. As a genre-mashing exercise it’s almost interesting, but, really, why bother?" "Pain & Gain is arguably too much of everything—everyone jabbers on incessantly, and the movie is in love with its own outrageousness," writes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News. "But its biggest lift comes from the pumped-up (Mark) Wahlberg and (Dwayne) Johnson. They manage to find the humanity in all the adrenalized muscle."
– Another horrific gang-rape story is emerging out of India, this time involving a 22-year-old Japanese woman who police say was held for at least 12 days, reports the New York Times. Police have arrested five men, including two brothers, reports the BBC. Authorities say that the young academic was staying in Kolkata when a man who speaks fluent Japanese lured her away by posing as a tour guide. He and other accomplices then allegedly held her in a village near Bodh Gaya, a popular destination because of its Buddhist pilgrimage center, and repeatedly raped her, reports the Guardian. Details of the case are still coming together, and reports differ substantially. Most accounts say she eventually escaped and reached authorities in Varanasi, for example, while the Times of India says her captors put her on a bus. Some reports say she was held 12 days, some three weeks, and others (including the BBC) for more than a month. All seem to agree, though, that gangs are preying on female Japanese tourists. The men have been charged with gang rape, wrongful confinement, kidnapping, molestation, and criminal conspiracy.
– A drug-sniffing Colombian police dog with nearly 250 arrests under her collar recently tracked down more than 10 tons of coke from a major drug gang. The gang's reaction: a bounty on the pooch's head that may be up to $70,000. The Telegraph reports that Sombra (Spanish for "shadow") has had to be moved from the drug-trafficking hot spot of Turbo, in Colombia's Uraba region, to the relatively safer El Dorado International Airport in Bogota after what the BBC calls the country's "most powerful criminal organization" decided she should be killed. The 6-year-old German shepherd also now has a dedicated security detail, with extra officers keeping her and her handler safe from the Urabeños, aka the Gulf Clan. The Washington Post notes Sombra, who has been with the National Police of Colombia since she was a puppy, is "something of a folk hero" in the country due to her legendary drug busts, with local media dubbing her "the terror" of narcotics traffickers. The "friendly, calm canine" often shows up on TV and in pictures with fans, and the police boast about her on Twitter. Which is why Urabeños members were enraged enough to offer the bounty, which police intelligence reports note could range anywhere from $7,000 to $70,000. "The fact they want to hurt Sombra and offer such a high reward for her capture or death shows the impact she's had on their profits," a police rep tells the Telegraph. (Sometimes drug-sniffing dogs face danger from the drugs themselves.)
– The shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott last week hit hard in Charlotte, NC. But someone who's feeling particular distress over it is young Zianna Oliphant, who spoke at a Charlotte City Council meeting Monday evening, addressing a hushed room with tears streaming down her cheeks as she spoke of the black experience and police brutality, New York reports. "I come here today to talk about how I feel," Zianna started off. "I feel like … we are treated differently than other people. … We are black people and we shouldn't have to feel like this." What especially drew the crowd's attention, in addition to Zianna's words and how emotional she was: the fact that she's a 9-year-old fourth-grader who spontaneously took the podium, per NBC News. "I decided to just go up there and tell them how I feel," she says. "I've been born and raised in Charlotte and I never felt this way till now," she said, breaking down. "And I can't stand how we're treated. … It's a shame that our fathers and mothers are killed and we can't even see them anymore. … We need our fathers and mothers to be by our side." Her mom, Precious Oliphant, tells NBC both Zianna and her brother, who also spoke at the meeting, are involved in a police youth league with cops who serve as "role models," showing them the ropes of "responsibility, dedication, and commitment." But Oliphant adds she's been pulled over by police for what she thinks were trivial things, and she doesn't want her kids to have that same experience, or to face danger. As for Zianna, she's not afraid to forge her own path for the future. "I'm not shy to tell them how I feel about it," she says.
– A free Willie Nelson concert in the heart of the Lone Star State seems like something that would attract fans of all political stripes, but there's a good chance the Sept. 29 event will feature a largely left-leaning crowd. That's because the country crooner is headlining a "Turn Out for Texas" rally in Austin for Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic challenger to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, and many of Nelson's fans aren't happy about it, KTRK reports. Per Austin360, it's "the first public concert Nelson has held for a political candidate," the singer's publicist says in a release, though Rolling Stone notes he's put on private concerts for politicians in the past. "My wife Annie and I have met and spoken with Beto and we share his concern for the direction things are headed," Nelson says in the release. "Beto embodies what is special about Texas, an energy and an integrity that is completely genuine." The site notes Nelson even brought O'Rourke out on stage during his Fourth of July concert. None of this pleases Nelson's more conservative fans, who see his ties to O'Rourke as a "breaking point," per the Washington Post. "I am certain you've lost your mind," one commenter wrote on Nelson's Facebook page, while another noted: "Willie's position is proof positive that marijuana use over time kills brain cells." Still others are dumping already purchased tickets to future Nelson shows. Many, however, applauded Nelson's decision. "So glad you are involved in this good cause. I have always been a fan, and am now a bigger fan," noted one well-liked post. The Post notes Nelson has long been politically active, throwing his support behind Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders, and advocating for pot legalization, gay marriage, and the environment.
– Aung San Suu Kyi visited the UN's European headquarters in Geneva today, and amidst pleasantries, made a serious call for the world to boycott Burma's state-run oil and gas companies. "The Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise … lacks both transparency and accountability at present," she said, speaking before the UN's International Labor Organization. Burma currently has contracts with several foreign firms, including Chevron, Total, and China's CNPC. "Quite frankly, none of us know what's in those contracts," Suu Kyi said, according to Reuters. Suu Kyi did, however, allow that, despite having struck a deal with the junta, Total "is a responsible investor in the country" and was "sensitive to human rights and environmental issues." She also called for a "democracy-friendly development policy" coupled with various business reforms. "No country can claim genuine development until all its peoples can enjoy the basic freedoms. Freedom from want, and freedom from fear," she said, according to this video. The visit is part of Suu Kyi's first trip to Europe in decades.
– A 54-year-old man in, of course, Florida is accused of trying to perform an exorcism on his 80-year-old girlfriend, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Police say David Edward Benes held down his live-in sweetie of three years while trying to "exorcise her and get the devil out of her." He also removed the batteries from the house phone, took her car keys, and monkeyed with the garage door so it wouldn't open. The woman is OK, save for some bruises and scratches on her arms, and Benes faces a slew of charges, including battery on a person 65 or older and false imprisonment. The Smoking Gun has a copy of the complaint affidavit, though it doesn't explain why Benes thought an exorcism was necessary. One clue might be that police found him passed out and drunk on the couch.
– Arizona's new law banning abortions beginning at what the state defines as 20 weeks of pregnancy is constitutional, a US district judge has ruled, setting the stage for the law to go into effect this week. The new law may force some pregnant women to opt for an abortion earlier, but the measure is constitutional because it doesn't ban abortions outright, determined Judge James Teilborg. He also said the state provided "substantial and well-documented" evidence that a fetus can feel pain by at least 20 weeks gestation, reports AP. The ban is set to go into effect for all women except in cases of medical emergencies on Thursday. The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights has filed a notice that it plans to appeal the decision to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, but it's not clear if that will hold up the law. The law will complicate "fetal defect" cases in which a number of babies with fatal problems must now be carried to term but will likely die in minutes or days after birth, reports the Arizona Republic. The new law forbids doctors from aborting most fetuses with a gestational age of 20 weeks or older, even in situations where the doctor discovers the fetus has such a defect. But the law defines gestational age as beginning with the first day of a woman's last period, which means most fetuses will typically have an actual gestational age of 18 weeks when abortions can no longer be performed. That's about the time ultrasound tests are conducted to detect abnormalities, notes the Republic.
– For anyone who carefully tracks bitcoin, Tuesday brought the good with the bad. On a positive note, the cryptocurrency's value topped $9,000, up from a weekend low of $7,335, reports CNBC. On a more dour note comes the news that child abuse photos are lurking within its blockchain. The Guardian offers a primer on the technology: The blockchain is the open-source ledger that keeps track of every bitcoin trade; it has the ability to store additional data, say, a note or file on what the transaction was for. Fortune says "benign" messages are also present, and it gives the example of a Nelson Mandela tribute (indeed, the study found six wedding-related images). But German researchers discovered there are more than financial notes and sweet memories being parked within the blockchain. They looked at the 1,600 files that have been uploaded to it and found eight were sexual in nature. One they suspect may depict child abuse; two compiled 247 links to child abuse content (Fortune reports such links were identified as far back as 2013, but this is "perhaps the first time" such content has been quantified). And that "endangers the multi-billion dollar markets powering cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin," say the researchers. Their reasoning is simple: If bitcoin contains content that is illegal to possess, then it's possible that downloading and storing the bitcoin's blockchain is "illegal to possess for all users." But Fortune reports people don't seem spooked: It notes bitcoin hit $9,000 as the reports on the study were coming out. (Read about an "intensifying guerilla warfare" over bitcoin.)
– Police in two states are looking for a 56-year-old woman accused of a bizarre double slaying. Authorities say that Lois Riess first shot to death her husband in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, last month, reports WBBH. Riess than allegedly fled to Florida, where she was hiding out in Fort Myers Beach. There, police say she killed 59-year-old Pamela Hutchinson on Monday solely because Hutchinson bore a resemblance to her, and Riess wanted to assume her identity. Riess allegedly ransacked the woman's apartment and stole her cash, credit cards, and forms of ID. Riess is believed to be on the run again—in Hutchinson's white Acura with Florida plates—and authorities suspect she's on her way to Texas. "Riess's mode of operation is to befriend women who resemble her and steal their identity," says Lee County Undersheriff Carmine Marceno, per the AP. She's considered armed and dangerous.
– At 5pm yesterday, Buzzfeed published a report claiming supporters of Al Gore were "getting the old gang together" to discuss a possible run for the White House, chatter that Andrew Kaczynski wrote signaled some Democrats' doubts about their frontrunner. Kaczynski's report was certainly restrained. He writes, "A member of Gore's inner circle asked to be quoted 'pouring lukewarm water'—not, note, cold water—on the chatter." But that didn't stop the avalanche of follow-up reports. Politico's report throws that cold water: "There's no truth to it. He's laser-focused on solving the climate crisis," Gore's rep tells the site.
– Having their tonsils or appendix removed might result in an unexpected benefit for young women who hope to become pregnant someday: New research suggests they might be more fertile as a result. A 15-year study of half a million British women finds that a woman who has undergone a tonsillectomy or appendectomy has a 49% and 34% higher chance of getting pregnant, respectively, than a woman with her appendix and tonsils intact, reports the Telegraph. A woman who's had both procedures has a 43% higher chance of getting pregnant. One of the researchers says the study "confirms beyond doubt that removal of inflamed organs or organs likely to suffer from repeated inflammation, in women, improves their chances of pregnancy" rather than reduces those chances, as some doctors believe. It isn't clear why the procedures are linked to increased fertility—doctors previously suggested scar tissue around the fallopian tubes after an appendectomy reduced the chance of pregnancy—but it may simply be that women who have more sex are more likely to develop an infection. However, inflammation in the body can affect a woman's ovaries and womb, per the BBC, and it's possible that "the removal of these tissues makes an alteration to their immune system" that affects reproduction, says a scientist not involved in the study. "If true, this may ultimately give doctors and scientists some new ideas for novel drugs or therapies to enhance women's fertility." The researchers stress they're not advocating that otherwise healthy women have the procedures, notes CNN. (This procedure may double a woman's chance of conception.)
– President Trump thinks Tiger Woods' interviewing skills are as good as his golf ones, or so he suggested in a Monday tweet. After finishing up the Northern Trust tourney Sunday, the golfer was asked by the press about his relationship with Trump, whom he has golfed with on several occasions. Woods said simply, "I've known him pre-presidency and obviously during his presidency," adding that they've both golfed and dined together. ESPN reports he was then "pressed" about what appears to be a warm relationship. His response: "Well, he's the president of the United States. You have to respect the office. No matter who is in the office, you may like, dislike personality or the politics, but we all must respect the office.'' He was finally asked if he had comments about race in America, and said, "No. I just finished 72 holes and am really hungry.'' Trump's Monday reply on Twitter: "The Fake News Media worked hard to get Tiger Woods to say something that he didn’t want to say. Tiger wouldn’t play the game - he is very smart. More importantly, he is playing great golf again!" The great golf part is debatable: The AP reports he tied for 40th place, 14 shots behind winner Bryson DeChambeau. (Though he did come close at the British Open.)
– President Obama didn't mince words today when asked at his end-of-the-year news conference about Sony Pictures: "Yes, I think they made a mistake," he said of the company's decision to pull the movie The Interview, reports NBC News. "We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship in the United States," he said. Obama added that he was "sympathetic" to Sony's concerns as a corporation, but he said the precedent set over a "satirical movie" is a terrible one. "I wish they would have spoken to me first." Of the hackers: "They caused a lot of damage, and we will respond." Of the movie's star, Seth Rogen: "I love Seth." Other topics: Black America: It is better off "in the aggregate" than when he came into office, said Obama, but work remains. He spoke of a "growing awareness" that law enforcement isn't always "applied in a colorblind fashion." Cuba: "Change is going to come to Cuba. It has to." Fidel: Obama said that when he was on the phone to President Raul Castro about renewing relations, he apologized for talking at length. Castro replied that his famous brother once spoke for seven hours' straight and that Obama was a young man who still had a chance to beat that record. 'Resurgence': Obama opened the news conference by ticking off improvements in the economy, job creation, and health care, and asserted that "America's resurgence is real. We are better off." Congress: Obama said he "sincerely" wants to work with the new Congress, citing areas such as simplifying the tax code, boosting US exports, and rebuilding infrastructure, reports CNN. Keystone: Construction of the pipeline from Canada would create some jobs, but the pipeline in general would not make "even a nominal" difference for US consumers.
– James Cameron's trip to the world's deepest spot sounds a wee bit like something of a disappointment. The six hours he intended to spend at the bottom of the sea—filming and gathering geology samples—was cut in half when hydraulic fluid started leaking in his submersible. As for his time at the bottom, "I didn't see a fish ... I didn't find anything that looked alive to me, other than a few amphipods in the water," he says. "I didn't feel like I got to a place where I could take interesting geology samples or found anything interesting biologically," he noted, according to the New York Post. It took him 156 minutes to go down, but only 70 minutes to come back up after he spotted the leak. "The port got coated" with oil, he said, noting that he lost control of the starboard side of the sub. "That's when I decided to come up. I couldn't go any further—I was just spinning in a circle." But it sounds as though he's planning to go down again: "Next dive. I gotta leave something for the next one," he said. (But hey, at least he's alive. Gizmodo rounds up five ways he could have perished, and they don't sound fun.)
– See, this is why all those Twitter profiles are sure to note that retweets do not equal endorsements. CBS News reports the Pentagon's official Twitter account on Thursday retweeted a tweet calling for President Trump's resignation. "GOP: Stop making sexual assault a partisan issue," tweeted "Proud Resister" while calling for Roy Moore, Sen. Al Franken, and Trump to all resign or step aside due to allegations of sexual misconduct. The tweet was retweeted—and then soon deleted—by the Department of Defense Twitter account. According to Politico, Pentagon spokesperson Col. Rob Manning confirmed the retweet was made by the "authorized operator" of the department's Twitter account. In her own tweet, Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said the call for Trump's resignation was "erroneously retweeted" and contained "content that would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense."
– The AV Club loves the obituary for an 85-year-old woman in Wisconsin named Mary "Pink" Mullaney. Why? Maybe because her family filled it with lessons imparted by Mullaney in life, including, “Never throw away old pantyhose. Use the old ones to tie gutters, child-proof cabinets, tie toilet flappers, or hang Christmas ornaments.” Explains Mullaney's daughter to WAOW: "We said, 'How can we be like her and carry her pinkness across?'" Some other gems: "Go to a nursing home and kiss everyone." "Put picky-eating children in the box at the bottom of the laundry chute, tell them they are hungry lions in a cage, and feed them veggies through the slats." "Never say mean things about anybody; they are 'poor souls to pray for.'" "Make the car dance by lightly tapping the brakes to the beat of the song on the radio." "If a possum takes up residence in your shed, grab a barbecue brush to coax him out. If he doesn't leave, brush him for twenty minutes and let him stay." Read the full obituary here. Or read a moving, self-written obit from a Seattle writer.
– It's not a good Saturday night buffet until someone loses a tooth and the pepper spray gets used—all in an argument over crab legs. This was the case at the Royal Buffet in Manchester, Conn., on Saturday when a fight broke out and a 21-year-old man lost the aforementioned tooth, his mother pepper-sprayed his attackers, and a married couple was arrested, NBC Connecticut reports. Clifford Knight, 46, was arrested on suspicion of third-degree assault and disorderly conduct, FOX 61 reports, while his wife, 38-year-old Lataya Knight, was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and threatening. Released on $5,000 and $2,500 bail, respectively, both are due in court April 14. The woman who used the pepper spray wasn't charged, because police say she acted in self-defense. But firefighters did respond to vent the restaurant from the pepper spray fumes, and the health department temporarily closed the restaurant to assess the air quality. However, the Royal Buffet tells NBC they were open for business as usual by Sunday. Details of the argument were unclear.
– Think you look better in your latest selfie than in real life? Then beware of "Snapchat dysmorphia," a newly dubbed term for people seeking plastic surgery to mimic their appearance in filtered selfies, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "Sometimes I have patients who say, 'I want every single spot gone, and I want it gone by this week or I want it gone tomorrow,' because that's what this filtered photograph gave them," dermatologist Neelam Vashi tells the Washington Post. "They check off one thing, and it's gone. That's not realistic. I can't do that." Researchers say the fixation may be a new version of body dysmorphic disorder (or BDD), a mental ailment that makes people obsess over any perceived flaw in their appearance. A 2017 survey of plastic surgeons first spotted the trend, which is fueled by photo-filtering and editing technology once available only to celebrities. "This is an alarming trend because those filtered selfies often present an unattainable look and are blurring the line of reality and fantasy for these patients," according to an article in the JAMA medical journal co-written by Vashi. What's more, BDD is a serious mental disorder that can require cognitive behavioral therapy and medication—and lead to suicidal thoughts in 80% of sufferers, per a 2007 study. Just seeing an unfiltered image of oneself "can bring feelings of sadness" for some people, says Vashi, "and then if one really develops this disorder, that sadness clearly progresses to something that can be dangerous and alarming."
– The Baltic Sea's trove of shipwrecks has preserved all kinds of history—much of it about war—and recently sparked fears of a fresh conflict in Europe. Bordered by Scandinavia, Finland, the Baltics, the North European Plain, and accessible by Russia, one sliver of the sea contains about 1,000 known shipwreck objects, maritime expert Thomas Dehling tells Deutsche Welle. He's referring to what slumbers in 6,000-square-miles of "German waters," which he says represent not even a tenth of the full sea. "Many of the objects aren't large shipwrecks, but much smaller, or partially submerged [ones]," he says. "We still find 10 to 15 objects every year that we didn't know about before." Most are from World War I and II, but not all: A Swedish three-masted warship called the Mars went down in 1564 while battling the Danes and may have been cursed by its own cannons, National Geographic reported last year. Discovered in 2011, the warship sank when its cannons overheated and exploded during battle; legend says it was cursed because Swedish kings repurposed church bells to build the cannons. In another Baltic find, 168 bottles of perfectly preserved 19th-century French champagne were discovered on a sunken schooner near Finland, Smithsonian reports. "It was incredible," says a scientist of the bubbly that later sold for up to $100,000 a bottle. Then last year, Sweden saw its Cold War fears revived—and concerns about modern Russia heightened—when said it spotted a foreign sub in its waters. Sweden now says a Russian sub may have indeed been found in the Baltic ... but the wreckage is thought to be that of a WWI vessel that likely went down almost 100 years ago. (Read about a "sickening" shipwreck find in the Arctic.)
– It looks like the Boy Scouts of America may be ready to end its ban on openly gay scouts, but not on gay leaders. The organization today proposed doing away with the longstanding and controversial ban, which would mean that in the future, "no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone," a spokesperson tells Reuters. However, the proposal would continue to exclude gay adult leaders, the AP reports. The policy won't become official, however, unless the organization's National Council, which has 1,400 voting members, approves it at its meeting in Texas the week of May 20. This proposal comes on the heels of three months of research the Boy Scouts did, including surveys sent to members.
– His job is literally a fantasy: Drew Dinkmeyer makes his money by betting on fantasy games, and he's not exactly struggling. The 31-year-old quit his work as an investment analyst in June so he could concentrate on fantasy sports, and he's making comparable money. "After a few years of playing, I started to have income levels that were commensurate with what I was making in the financial world," he tells NPR. But Dinkmeyer may not be playing what you're playing: He plays "daily fantasy sports," where instead of being stuck with a team for a season, the action is compressed into a single night. So instead of laying down one bet per season, he makes daily bets. (The Wall Street Journal has a good rundown on how it works, and how "advanced statistics" play a part.) Being a "daily fantasy" player is like day-trading, Dinkmeyer says. "What you're doing is you're trying to find a company that is trading for less than it's really worth." Fantasy players get a football-player price list, for instance, "and they have to figure out which ones are worth more than those actual prices to compile the best team that can put together the most points." The Journal reports that of the 30 million fantasy players in America, experts believe no more than 100 earned at least $40,000 last year. NPR notes that Dinkmeyer pads his income by writing about fantasy sports online and hosting a satellite radio show, and has a wife who "does very well in the financial industry."
– Rush Limbaugh may be bleeding sponsors—one count now has the number fleeing his show up to 98—because of his "slut" comment, but Saturday Night Live had some suggestions last night about who might fill the advertising void. A few of the highlights, as per Mediaite: Misaki Dolphin Poppers: "Start your day off right, with bits of dolphin." Depends for Racists: "If you pee a little every time you see a Mexican, you need Depends for Racists." Schoder's fake rape whistles: "Help is not on the way." Syria Tourism Board: Because, "Ah! No! There's nowhere to hide!"
– Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader is quite popular—but apparently, just the WiFi-only version. The bookseller is discontinuing the model with 3G, reports Engadget, and apparently will continue sales only until the current stock runs out. The move makes sense, writes Will Shanklin on AndroidCentral.com: Because e-readers require data connections only when the user is downloading books or syncing, "it makes perfect sense that more customers opt for a cheaper wi-fi model." But CNET cautions that other so-called scoops about the Nook turned out to be false.
– Poor Kim: Not only have her fairy tale dreams been shattered … now she also has to deal with a joyfully pregnant sister while she goes through divorce proceedings. Yep, Kourtney Kardashian and boyfriend Scott Disick are expecting again. "Now I'm nine weeks along. You're supposed to wait 12 weeks to tell people, but I feel confident," says Kourtney, who was apparently confident enough to announce her plans in an Us cover story. The couple already has a son, Mason, who is almost two. "It wasn't like we weren't trying," says Disick, who apparently doesn't have a firm grasp on either the specifics of procreation or double negatives. "We kind of just said, 'If it's meant to be, it'll be.'" Meanwhile, rather than signing the divorce papers, Kris Humphries is seeking a legal separation from Kim Kardashian, People reports. His plan is to get an annulment rather than a divorce. In more fun Kardashian news, the Daily Mail has a spectacular rant against the whole clan from Daniel Craig's recent GQ interview. "Look at the Kardashians, they're worth millions," says the James Bond star. "I don't think they were that badly off to begin with but now look at them. You see that and you think, 'What, you mean all I have to do is behave like a f***ing idiot on television and then you'll pay me millions?'"
– A "savvy" 25-year-old gamed the Dallas school system and posed as a high school student, all apparently so he could play some basketball, officials say. The Dallas Morning News reports Sidney Bouvier Gilstrap-Portley was arrested Friday after authorities say he pretended to be 17-year-old "Rashaun Richardson" and enrolled at two high schools—first Skyline in August, then Hillcrest in October, where he joined that school's basketball team and was voted District 11-5A's offensive player of the year. The Dallas ISD superintendent says the "perfect storm" that led to this involved an actual storm: Gilstrap-Portley reportedly said he'd been left homeless by Hurricane Harvey and came to Dallas alone. More: The district tells WFAA students who've been through a natural disaster or are homeless aren't asked for the same documentation that's typically required, per federal law. Gilstrap-Portley may have scammed his way in with just immunization and physical records, a district rep says.
– The Bank of England introduced a five-pound note Thursday that marks the beginning of the end of a three-century run for paper money in the UK, reports the Guardian. This particular note is made of a thin plastic and designed to last more than twice as long as its paper counterpart. It features the queen on the front and Winston Churchill on the back, and it goes into circulation in September. The current five-pound paper note will remain in use for another year. Next up comes up a 10-pound plastic note featuring Jane Austen in 2017 and a 20-pound note featuring painter JMW Turner by 2020. The unveiling comes ahead of Britain's crucial vote on whether to exit the European Union, and Bloomberg notes that both sides of the debate have claimed none other than Churchill to be in their camp. Asked on Thursday about how Churchill might view the question, Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney opted to play it safe. “It’s not for me to make any inference about that,” he said.
– Amazon has an open secret that few pay heed to: a "nearly invisible workforce" that works to get consumers their packages on demand, per Gizmodo. Bryan Menegus dives into the company's Flex program, responsible for the firm's "last-mile" service, which involves getting ordered goods to a customer from the last local shipment site on the delivery chain. But while the driving program is described online by Amazon as letting those interested "be your own boss, set your own schedule, and have more time to pursue your goals and dreams," Menegus—who chatted with 15 current or ex-drivers from nine states and two countries, as well as with three contractors from local courier companies tied to Amazon—instead paints it as an exploitive system that considers its drivers "utterly expendable" and offers them little recourse to address issues or unfair practices. What he found is that getting into the Flex program can be simple: Entry criteria are "modest" (e.g., being over 21, having a smartphone with the Flex app), as is training. One UK driver says: "Honestly, it seems they take on anyone." But once on board, drivers say they face faulty data systems, altercations between drivers vying for prime routes (and high-tech cheating to claim those routes), and a lack of support from "hot-headed warehouse managers" who take a "customer is always right" attitude. And one labor attorney thinks not everything is on the up-and-up when it comes to how the company handles its drivers: considering them contractors, but treating them like employees, with all of the responsibility and few benefits. "I think it's breaking the law in a pretty widespread way," she says. More on the Flex program, part of the "constantly shifting, secretive nature of Amazon," here.
– He was a victim of Hurricane Irma, and then allegedly a victim of something much worse. Police say William Reiss, 68, was murdered on Jan. 3 by the FEMA contractor who compiled the damage estimate of his Polk County, Fla., home in September. The New York Daily News describes Reiss as having "befriended" Gerjuan Jackson. The two reportedly discussed Reiss' gun collection, and the 18-year-old Alabama man purchased two handguns from Reiss weeks after they met for $800. The Miami Herald reports Jackson lost possession of those guns during a subsequent marijuana bust and allegedly decided to replace them via Reiss' stash. Police say he drove to the home with two accomplices who waited in the car. Jackson allegedly shot Reiss and his roommate Kenneth Maier, who initially managed to flag down help from his driveway but died of his injuries Friday, reports WFLA. Police say Jackson took roughly two dozen guns, a TV, and Reiss' truck, which was found burned in Alabama. He has reportedly confessed to the killings, and he and Kenley Campbell and Darril Rankin have all been charged with first-degree murder and other offenses. As for the FEMA connection, the agency says two private-sector companies provide the subcontractors who handle damage assessments, noting, "Questions about individuals employed within those contracted companies, or those companies' hiring practices, must be pursued through their individual contractors."
– There have been more than 160 drug-related deaths in Milwaukee County, Wis., this year, 70 of them in the last seven weeks, and that is more than just a grim statistic for Chief Medical Examiner Brian Peterson. His own son, Adam Peterson, a 29-year-old with a history of drug use, was found on the floor of a friend's apartment Monday and was pronounced dead after failing to respond to anti-overdose drug Narcan, WISN reports. Brian Peterson, who has asked for privacy, told a conference earlier this month that his office was dealing with more overdose deaths than murders, car accident deaths, and sleep-related infant deaths combined, the Journal Sentinel reports. "We had a 1-year-old found dead on a mattress of methadone poisoning," Peterson told the round table. "Unfortunately, that's not uncommon either." He described medical examiners as "kind of the last responders," whose job it is "to help with clean data to help everybody understand." "I was sitting at the same table as Brian two weeks ago in Milwaukee discussing the trail of tragedies and heartbreak that addiction leaves in its wake," Sen. Ron Johnson tells the Journal Sentinel. "No family is immune. My prayers go out to Brian and his family at this time. I will continue to fight this fight for all those who have lost loved ones." (This small city in West Virginia had to deal with 27 overdoses in less than five hours.)
– A day after sentencing 529 people to death, Egypt launched another mass trial today, this time accusing 683 Muslim Brotherhood members—including the Brotherhood's top spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie—of crimes including murder and inciting violence in connection with a riot at a police station in Minya. Only 68 defendants were actually in court, the AP reports. Most of the rest are being tried in absentia, though some jailed Brotherhood honchos, including Badie, were kept out of court for security reasons. Also absent: Many defense lawyers, who are boycotting the trial in protest of yesterday's sentencing; the judge who handed out those death sentences is presiding today. By law the lawyers' absence should have halted the trial, but the judge forged ahead. "This judge smashed the rock of justice with his own hands," one said. "He is inventing new law." The 683 are accused of killing two policemen, though according to the BBC no one was actually reported killed in the Minya attack—which followed police raids that killed almost 1,000 protesters in Cairo.
– To Mandy Patinkin, it's inconceivable that Ted Cruz has been uttering lines from The Princess Bride along the campaign trail—and the actor, who played Inigo Montoya in the 1987 cult film, has had enough. "How can I stop this?" was Patinkin's reaction when friends started emailing him about images online that featured Cruz's face Photoshopped onto his character's body, he tells the New York Times. Cruz has long said the movie is his favorite, and he's committed a good portion of it to memory (including Patinkin's famous line: "Allo, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die"). But Patinkin isn't sure Cruz understands the film's subtext: namely that, despite the film focusing partly on his character's mission for vengeance, the real meaning revolves around the movie's hero rescuing his true love. "[Cruz] is not putting forth ideas that are at the heart of what that movie is all about," Patinkin tells the Times in a tone the paper describes as "increasingly vexed." Patinkin cites one of his character's final lines in the movie as one that should stand out more to Cruz: "I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life." The 63-year-old actor's beef with Cruz is that he's too focused on that revenge, preying on voter anxiety by, as the Times puts it, "exploiting fears about immigrants and Muslims." Says Patinkin, "Open your arms to these people, these refugees trying to get into our country, and open your hearts." A spokeswoman for Cruz's campaign told the Times in an email that "having some fun with a cult classic … should be something we can all get behind, politics aside." In other words, no "as you wish" from Cruz. (Will Cruz pull out a Princess Bride quote during Tuesday night's debate?)
– If you thought the recent clip of President Obama singing was a fluke, think again: "He does have a beautiful voice, and he sings to me all the time," Michelle Obama told Jay Leno last night. Her husband often sings that very same song (Al Green's "Let's Stay Together"), she said, adding, "He sings a lot of Al Green, Marvin Gaye, a little Stevie [Wonder]. He likes the classics." As for Mitt Romney's rendition of "America the Beautiful"? A diplomatic first lady said, "It's ... a beautiful song. It is America's song. And it's a song that's meant to be sung by every American." Obama, who is in California to promote her Let's Move healthy eating campaign, also convinced Leno to eat some nutritious food including apples, honey, and some veggies. Leno once told a magazine that 1969 was the last time he ate a vegetable, the AP notes. Click through to the Huffington Post for another clip from the interview.
– A Louisiana rapper was sentenced to six months in jail Wednesday for kicking a female fan during a concert last year in Florida, WFLA reports. A video of the incident went viral. Kevin Gates admitted he kicked the woman—19-year-old Miranda Dixon—but claimed she left him no choice. Gates, attempting to use the Stand Your Ground defense, said Dixon kept grabbing his legs while he was on stage and ignored him when he told her to stop. According to Complex, Gates said he needed to use "necessary force" to protect himself. Dixon admitted to pulling on Gates' pants because she was "trying to get his attention for my friend." Her friend told the court she wanted Gates to notice her "because he is a famous rapper." Dixon said she only grabbed Gates twice before he kicked her, Fox 13 reports. She testified that she blacked out after being kicked and that her stomach hurt for a month. But Gates' attorney said Gates' foot didn't even make contact with Dixon, who he said is lying in order to get money in a separate civil suit. A jury—all white women, Complex notes—found Gates guilty of battery. Prosecutors were only asking for two months in jail, but the judge tripled Gates' punishment.
– By now, everyone should know not to get too close to hippos in the wild or in captivity, but a California man didn't get the memo. Officials at the Los Angeles Zoo tell the Los Angeles Times they've recruited the LAPD to help look for a most unusual sort of trespasser: a man caught on tape scaling a barrier and slapping one of two hippos in the pen below. The now-viral video, recorded from the other side of the enclosure by what sounds to be a young woman, shows the man slowly climbing over a railing, then reaching down to slap the butt of 4-year-old Rosie, who appeared to be snacking alongside her mother, Mara. Mara looks up briefly, and the person shooting the video can be heard giggling as the man lifts his arms up in an apparent victory stretch and runs off. But zoo officials warn that what happened was anything but funny. "Any unauthorized interaction with an animal is unsafe for the animal and potentially unsafe for the patron," a zoo spokeswoman says, noting something like this also breaks down the animals' trust that zookeepers have worked so hard to instill. The BBC notes hippos are responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other big animal. The suspect could be hit with a misdemeanor charge or other infraction—California law bars anyone from climbing into zoo enclosures—but the case is being investigated as a trespassing violation, not an animal cruelty one, as the animals didn't seem particularly fazed by the incident.
– It has been almost exactly three years since Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, but she is still essentially a prisoner, one of her lawyers says. Anthony, now 28, lives in an unnamed location in Florida and remains afraid to go out in public because of death threats, Cheney Mason tells CNN. She does clerical work at home for various clients, but "she hasn't been freed from her incarceration yet 'cause she can't go out," the lawyer says. "She can't go to a beauty parlor, she can't go shopping to a department store, she can't go to a restaurant, she can't even go to McDonald's. She can't do anything." The Orlando Sentinel notes that Mason says Anthony doesn't live alone, and isn't romantically involved with anyone. Anthony—who accused her father of sexually abusing her—"does not have any blood family anymore" and the family she has now consists of members of her defense team. Mason says he thinks she "wants to speak out"; Anthony declined CNN's request for an interview, however. "I know she has very strong feelings for what has happened to her. I also know she's very saddened by her loss and she will never forget her daughter Caylee, ever," Mason says. His book, Justice in America: How Prosecutors and the Media Conspire Against the Accused, will be released this summer. Mason—the third attorney associated with the case to write a book—says it will include information never revealed before, and will go beyond the Anthony case to explore broader legal issues.
– I Love Cate doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but no matter: Cate Blanchett has signed on to play Lucille Ball in an authorized biopic following the actress' 20-year marriage to Desi Arnaz, reports the Hollywood Reporter. The couple's children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr., will produce the flick, likely to be written by Aaron Sorkin. Given Sorkin's recent criticisms of female actors including Blanchett, per E!, Twitter users aren't exactly pleased. He'll "write a well-meaning but ultimately condescending portrait of Lucille Ball," just as he's done for "any actor with a vagina he's written for," writes one user.
– Politico is out with a damning report about the Obama administration's dealings with Iran last year in the lead-up to a nuclear arms accord. The story by Josh Meyer alleges that former President Obama gave up more than he acknowledged publicly, particularly in regard to a prisoner swap ahead of the deal. The Obama White House released seven prisoners it characterized as non-dangerous businessmen, neglecting to mention that three of them had been deemed a threat to national security by the president's own Justice Department. (They'd been accused of illegally shipping US macroelectronics to Tehran for use in surface-to-air and cruise missiles.) What's more, Politico found that the US also quietly dropped criminal cases against 14 fugitives, including Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who allegedly procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran by way of China. "They didn’t just dismiss a bunch of innocent business guys," one former federal law enforcement supervisor tells Politico. "And then they didn’t give a full story of it." In fact, Meyer writes, the White House actions "derailed" its own successful investigations into Iran's proliferation network, angering Justice Department prosecutors. A senior Obama official acknowledges that anger but says such compromises are necessary and pale in comparison to the greater good of a nuclear deal. Here's one sample of early reaction, from the conservative Hot Air site: "Barack Obama and John Kerry desperately needed a win on foreign policy in 2015-6 after seeing its 'smart power' approach turn the Middle East and Caucasus into flames," writes Ed Morrissey. "They didn’t care if it was a short-term win that sacrificed long-term national security." Read the full Politico piece here.
– Scientists are now saying there may have been "a more colorful Jurassic World than we previously imagined," thanks to the recent discovery of a fossil in China's Hebei province. Reuters reports that a closer look at the "exquisitely preserved," almost completely intact fossil of a crow-like dinosaur that lived about 161 million years ago revealed that Caihong juji had luminous, brilliantly hued feathers that closely resembled those of hummingbirds. The study in the journal Nature Communications documenting the find explains that "Caihong" means "rainbow" in Mandarin. Scientists think the colorful plumage, which appeared to have covered the bony-crested creature's head, neck, and chest areas, may have kept the dinosaur warm, as well as attracted potential mates; National Geographic compares it to peacock feathers. So how were researchers able to tell what color feathers the creature had from preserved bones? They used high-tech microscopes able to home in on 66 sites on the fossil, detecting tiny cell structures called melanosomes, which underlie pigmentation. Which colors they led to can be found by their shapes, and the melanosomes in Caihong were long and flat like pancakes—similar to those found in hummingbirds, which boast iridescent plumage. Although they can't pick out from the Pantone wheel Caihong's exact colors, researchers say the creature likely sported feathers with a "rainbow glimmer." Study co-author Xing Zu tells National Geographic that Caihong was a predator that spent its days gliding from tree to tree. And "glide" is the operative word, as this dinosaur likely didn't fly: Its feathers were located on its tail, not on its wings like birds, Discover notes. (A study postulated that nearly all dinosaurs had feathers.)
– A Texas inmate who escaped from prison nearly 16 years ago has been caught in Mexico, reports the Houston Chronicle. Juan Salaz, a 37-year-old US citizen, climbed a 16-foot fence outside a San Antonio prison in 1997 and made his way to a new life in Mexico. It's not clear how he got caught, but authorities in both countries were on the case. Salaz was serving a 35-year sentence for, among other things, trying to kill a police officer, reports Fox News. His capture leaves Texas with one remaining fugitive inmate: Convicted murderer Jose Fernando Bustos-Diaz, 24, busted out in 2010.
– A 25-year-old German skier survived an avalanche that buried him without oxygen for 15 minutes, thanks in no small part to his paramedic ski buddy, who rescued him and started CPR immediately. But the lack of oxygen to his body tissues and brain (called hypoxia) took a toll, notes Live Science, and University of Munich researchers report in JAMA Neurology that it manifested in a quite unusual side effect. First, he developed muscle jerks brought on by walking and talking, and at one point in the hospital he started a Sudoku puzzle, and the muscles in his left arm—which was not injured—began to spasm in what the doctors called "clonic" seizures, reports CBS News. "We can look at the brain as a network system," says Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr. Elson So, who was not involved in the research. "There are some centers for mathematical concepts and others for language. The authors have shown with some evidence that the fibers connecting the centers were damaged." Thanks to this damage, the fibers that control excitation for mathematical concepts and 3D thinking were essentially hyper-activated, and because the patient visualized solutions to Sudoku puzzles in 3D, the activity triggered epilepsy. Five years later, physical therapy improved the twitches brought on by walking and talking, and he's steered clear of seizures altogether thanks to epilepsy meds—and avoiding Sudoku completely. (Epilepsy may have fueled Chopin's hallucinations.)
– A Texas newspaper just did something it hasn't done since before World War II: recommended a Democrat for president, the Los Angeles Times reports, noting the Lone Star State is a "must-win" for Donald Trump. In a Wednesday editorial, the Dallas Morning News says it had no choice but to throw its support behind Hillary Clinton, calling her the only "serious candidate" on the ballot. "If you're counting, that's more than 75 years and nearly 20 elections," the paper notes about the end of its streak (it endorsed FDR in 1940, per Vox). The paper adds it still has beefs with the Democratic Party and a wariness regarding Clinton, but that its endorsement comes because "unlike Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton has experience in actual governance, a record of service, and a willingness to delve into real policy." The paper cites how Clinton reached across the aisle in the Senate and wielded her authority as secretary of state to make "tough calls" about the Middle East and in the "complex struggle against radical Islamic terrorism." The paper acknowledges Clinton is still dealing with controversy regarding her emails, the Clinton Foundation, and a general perception by many that she's not honest and trustworthy. But it says those who are lobbing charges of "treason" and "murder" are just "political hyenas" bent on seeing nothing but "conspiracies and cover-ups" and that her mistakes "are plainly in a different universe than [Trump's]." Meanwhile, the GOP nominee is labeled as unprepared, lacking in judgment and impulse control (as evidenced by his often-ranting "midnight tweets"), and someone who "[exploits] base instincts of xenophobia, racism, and misogyny." Clinton "has spent years in the trenches doing the hard work needed to prepare herself to lead our nation. In this race, at this time, she deserves your vote." (Trump's latest endorsement came from 88 retired military officials.)
– Good news for the fair-skinned among us: Scientists in Massachusetts have developed a drug that darkens and protects human skin without the damaging effects of ultraviolet (UV) light. Dr. David Fisher, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells the BBC the drug initiates a series of chemical reactions that enables skin to produce sun-blocking dark melanin without exposure to dangerous UV light—which initiates the same chemical reactions, but only after damaging the skin. "Under the microscope it's the real melanin,” Fisher says. “It really is activating the production of pigment in a UV-independent fashion." The drug could be a good thing even for people who don't crave a tan: Dark pigment provides a protective barrier against UV radiation, reducing the risk of skin cancer. In an interview with STAT, Fisher says the next step will be to test the drug’s safety, with the first test subjects most likely being "individuals who are at the highest risk for developing skin cancer.” If further tests prove successful the new drug could prove to be a substitute for other self-tanning activities, like lotions, which essentially paint the skin but provide no melanin protection, and tanning beds, which expose the skin to harmful UV rays and can thus be risky. Still, according to Science News, the drug would not, on its own, be considered a substitute for sunscreen, which blocks UV rays but has the counteractive effect of leaving skin pale and vulnerable. Ideally, Dr. Fisher says, the drug would be combined with sunscreen in a single product.
– Stephon Clark was killed by California police in his own backyard when officers fired 20 rounds at him, striking him multiple times, CBS Sacramento reports. According to the Sacramento Bee, police in Sacramento were responding Sunday night to reports of a man breaking car windows when they found Clark in his backyard. Police say the 22-year-old man at first fled before approaching officers while holding an "object" that he "extended in front of him." Police say the officers thought it was a gun and, fearing for their safety, opened fire on Clark. Police initially said the object turned out to be a "tool bar" of some kind only to later revise that: Clark was apparently holding only a cellphone. No gun was found at the scene. “I know there could have been another way. He didn’t have to die,” Clark's older brother tells CBS. "He didn't deserve it." Clark's grandmother, who lives at the home, says neither she nor her husband heard officers give Clark any orders before opening fire. Police say Clark used an object, possibly a cinder block or piece of aluminum, to break a neighbor's glass door and the windows of at least three cars in the area before he was killed. Police say they will release body camera and helicopter footage of the shooting within a week. Salena Manni, Clark's girlfriend of five years and mother of his two young children, tells KXTV he wouldn't have threatened officers. "He had too much to lose," she says. "He would never want to leave his kids."
– Winter storm Hercules continues to flex its muscles, dumping well over a foot of snow in places, sparking states of emergency, and bringing with it freezing temperatures and the threat of hypothermia. Experts warn that even shoveling your driveway can be dangerous. The latest: It seems the warning of up to a foot of snow might have been wishful thinking for some: Nearly two feet fell in some areas, including 21 inches in Boxford, Mass. (that's about 30 miles north of Boston), and 18 inches near both Gurnee, Ill., and Rochester, NY, as of early this morning, Weather Underground and the AP report. NBC News notes winter weather and wind chill warnings have been in effect in at least 22 states, affecting more than 100 million people from Chicago through the New York tri-state area into New England. Both New York and New Jersey have declared states of emergency. Along with the 2,000 flights cancelled yesterday, another 1,350 have been grounded today, according to NBC News. JFK Airport this morning suspended flights because of zero visibility; Boston's Logan is effectively non-operational as well. A meteorologist told NBC that some areas in the Midwest could see chilling temperatures not recorded since the mid-1980s. "People that are vulnerable are really going to be hurting," added one. The cold could be bad news for road crews and homeowners: Snow-melting salt stops working between 10 and 20 degrees. And a second icy wave is coming, expected to hit the Midwest on Sunday and Monday then move east. It's going to be seriously cold, with an expected high in Chicago on Monday of -8. Plenty of kids are getting an extended holiday today, with schools, including all public schools in Boston and New York City, closed throughout the region. But Pennsylvania saw a storm-related tragedy: A salt yard worker prepping for the storm was killed when a 100-foot pile of rock salt buried him.
– A Michigan woman gave birth in her work bathroom on Tuesday to a baby that she then hid in her cubicle, police say; the newborn was later pronounced dead. Employees of CEVA Logistics in Redford called paramedics after they heard moaning coming from a bathroom, where blood was on the wall and floor of a stall, Fox 2 Detroit reports. A woman, aged 25 or 26, who has not been identified, was found with blood on her body as she worked at her desk. She initially refused medical treatment and said she was only lightheaded; she didn't indicate she had given birth and previously told coworkers she wasn't pregnant, USA Today reports. Police eventually found the baby, who appeared to be full-term, though reports differ on whether the child was beneath the woman's desk or in a drawer. Fox 2 reports the baby was dead when it was initially found, but was pronounced dead at a hospital after failed resuscitation attempts. The mother was also taken to the hospital. The woman was an employee of temp agency Level Professional Services, which has worked with CEVA Logistics since October. A CEVA rep tells the Detroit News that the company "is cooperating fully with the authorities in their ongoing investigation and is providing counseling to its employees at the facility." An autopsy was performed by the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office on Wednesday and the results should be available in two weeks, Redford police say. The results will inform whether any charges will be filed.
– When Roberto Livar's wife picked up their son Wednesday from Great Hearts Monte Vista charter school in San Antonio, Texas, the 8th-grader was "distraught" over an assignment in history class, Livar tells KABB. The worksheet he completed was entitled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View," per WMUR, with two empty columns for students to fill in: one labeled "Negative Aspects," the other "Positive Aspects" (Livar's son crammed all the cons in the former and wrote "N/A" in the latter). "What the hell is this revisionist history lesson trying to achieve here?!?," Livar wrote on Facebook, with a photo of the worksheet. "What positives??? This is unacceptable and gross." Among those in agreement: Rep. Joaquin Castro, who tweeted the assignment was "absolutely unacceptable" and noted the teacher was working from a text by publishing giant Pearson. Pearson, however, says in a statement to Newsweek the worksheet didn't come from its book, Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States, and that "we ... strongly condemn the implication that there was any positive aspect to slavery." On Facebook, the school addressed the matter, saying the assignment was "very inappropriate and entirely inconsistent with Great Hearts philosophy and culture." "To be clear, there is no debate about slavery," the statement added. "It is immoral and a crime against humanity." It went on to note that only this particular teacher had used the worksheet, that the teacher has been placed on leave during the fact-gathering process, and that the school would review the text and dump it if it's found to be "imprudent." A "follow-up communication" is set for May 9. (A New Jersey school held a mock slave auction.)
– First WW, now another high-profile name change. Dunkin' Donuts will as of January be known simply as Dunkin', in what NBC News reports is a rebranding designed to reflect its broadened focus on coffee and other beverages and up its appeal to a younger audience. CNN describes it as wanting to be seen as a "beverage-led" company. The logo may be down a word, but the company says it won't otherwise look different: It will still use orange and pink and the rounded font it has had in use since 1973, with the pink part now becoming the apostrophe. And yes, stores will still serve doughnuts.
– The US team won the America's Cup in sailing today, and this is pretty much all you need to know about how huge of a comeback it was: It's a best-of-17 series, and Oracle Team USA trailed 8-1 just last week. Do the math, and you'll see why AP calls the victory by skipper Jimmy Spithill's crew over the New Zealand boat "one of the greatest comebacks in sports history." Spithill steered Oracle's space-age, 72-foot catamaran to eight straight wins on San Francisco Bay to keep the oldest trophy in international sports in the US. Sailing fans can head to Bleacher Report for more details and reaction.
– Michael Moore and MoveOn.org put together a pro-Obama ad, and it’s predictably controversial. It features a message from the Greatest Generation to the GOP and Mitt Romney: “If your voter suppression throughout this beautiful country enables Romney to oust Barack Obama, we will burn this motherf***er down,” promises one seemingly sweet elderly woman. Some none-too-pleased reactions: “Suffice it to say, the ad is more Michael Moore than Greatest Generation,” writes Eliana Johnson in the National Review. PJ Gladnick calls it “the most vile campaign video ever made” on Newsbusters, and dubs both Moore and MoveOn “definitely deranged.” On Herman Cain’s CainTV.com, Robert Laurie agrees it is definitely the “most base, unpleasant campaign ad ever,” calling Moore “America’s premiere hack propagandist” and congratulating him for “dragging the election down to his bottom-feeding standards.” In other celebrity-political news, Essence reports that Mary J. Blige, Q-Tip, and Julianne Moore star in another new pro-Obama ad. This one is from Planned Parenthood, and features the tagline, “Yes We Plan.”
– This generation's wanna-be Mata Hari appears in all her blazing hotness in Russian Maxim in what officials hope might be a morale-booster for their spooks. "Anna Chapman has done more to excite Russian patriotism than the Russian soccer team," the mag sniggers about the nearly-total-boob-baring shot of the pistol-packing spy deported from New York. The bodacious former spy has fast become the poster babe of the seductive spy operation the Russians wish they had, Reuters notes. Though loudly hailed by the Kremlin and Russian press, the years-long spy operation in the US including Chapman and nine compatriots is widely considered an embarrassing flop.
– Perhaps because no one has been paying attention to her lately, Tila Tequila recently decided to convert to Nazism. The reality star has posted a number of questionable pictures on her Facebook page, including one (apparently since removed) of herself wearing an SS cap and swastika armband while standing in front of Auschwitz, Animal New York reports. She also refers to herself as "Hitila" in a new song she posted online, according to the Raw Story, and has been posting entries on her blog like, 'Why I Sympathize With Hitler Part 1: True History Unveiled." (Making this even weirder: She publicly converted to Judaism less than two years ago.) Why does she sympathize with Hitler? We'll let her explain it to you: "Here is a man who was not a coward, stood up for his country in a DESPERATE TIME OF NEED (unlike all of our cowardly leaders), and yet not only did he try his best to help his country and people get out of what was a time of depression, economic collapse, high unemployment, amongst many other things… he lost the war AND was painted out to be a monster after his death." As if all of the above was not insane enough, she's also created a goddess alter ego for herself called "Tilisis," is into the Illuminati, and thinks Paul Walker was murdered.
– The daughter of a man who died of lung cancer after smoking for 60 years has been awarded $80 million by a Florida jury. The jury decided that tobacco giant RJ Reynolds was 90% responsible for the man's death at the age of 76, and ordered the company to pay $8 million in compensatory damages and $72 million in punitive damages, BusinessWeek reports. The woman's lawyer expects the appeals process to last up to 3 years if the company appeals to Florida's Supreme Court, which he fully expects it to do. "Tobacco always appeals," he said. More than 7,000 smoking-related lawsuits are pending in Florida, and the verdict against RJ Reynolds marks the end of an 8-case winning streak for the tobacco industry, the Wall Street Journal notes.
– Thousands of inmates will soon be moved out of solitary confinement in California, after years of court battles and hunger strikes against the controversial practice. The state's decision was revealed in a legal settlement filed today—which still must be accepted by the court—with a group of inmates who have been isolated at Pelican Bay State Prison for 10 years or more, the Los Angeles Times reports. The settlement applies to a class-action federal lawsuit covering almost 3,000 inmates, a lawsuit originally filed in 2009 by Todd Ashker and Danny Troxell, two murderers serving sentences in Pelican Bay. California has agreed to stop using solitary confinement as a means of controlling prison gangs; instead, the most dangerous prisoners will be held in a group setting and will have many of the same privileges as other inmates. As the AP notes, California's previously unlimited isolation of gang leaders had been used to keep hundreds of prisoners segregated (often in soundproofed, windowless cells of just 80 square feet, for all but an hour and a half per day, with no access to visitors, communication, or even reading materials) for 10 years or more. Now, California will release many of the affected prisoners back into the general prison population and will limit the amount of time prisoners can spend in isolation. New "restrictive custody units" will be used for inmates who commit new crimes while in prison, refuse to participate in rehab, or who may be in danger from other inmates, but those units will allow prisoners more personal contact and other privileges. The union that represents most prison guards has expressed safety concerns, with the spokesperson noting that the state could "return to the prison environment of the '70s and '80s, when inmate-on-inmate homicides were at the highest levels and staff were killed."
– The controversy over separating immigrant children from their parents continues, this time thanks to words from a Fox & Friends co-host. Per Mediaite, Brian Kilmeade took to the airwaves Friday morning, staunchly defending President Trump's moves on dealing with immigrants trying to enter the US. "He's trying to send a message to the other countries: This is not the way you do it, because this is a country that has rules and laws," he said to co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt and Steve Doocy. But it was his remarks on the separations specifically that raised the ire of many. "Like it or not, these aren't our kids," he noted. "Show 'em compassion, but it's not like [Trump] is doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country." Twitter erupted in slams, while, per HuffPost, MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle addressed any insinuation that those opposed to Trump's moves care more about migrant kids than US kids: "Please … your propaganda, that anyone is putting the life of a migrant child ahead of the life of an American child, is simply nonsense. It's ignorant. It's stupid. It's wrong." Kilmeade later clarified his comments on Twitter, tweeting, "Of course-I didn't mean to make it seem like children coming into the U.S. illegally are less important because they live in another country. I have compassion for all children, especially for all the kids separated from their parents right now." He also said he was pleased kids were "on their way" to being reunited with their parents and put up a clip from his Fox News Radio show, where he reiterated, "All kids are important. All kids are special."
– The US intends to step up its "non-lethal" aid to the Syrian opposition, John Kerry announced after a meeting of the "Friends of Syria" group in Rome today. The Obama administration will ask Congress for $60 million in aid, along with food rations, and medical supplies, the BBC reports. "The US decision to take further steps now is the result of the brutality of superior armed force propped up by foreign fighters from Iran and Hezbollah," Kerry said. But the move doesn't go as far as reports yesterday indicated it might, NPR points out—there was no mention of body armor, armored vehicles, or military training, for instance. US officials say the opposition has brought up "other needs," and that it is "keeping that under review." In the meantime, Britain and other nations are likely to provide such equipment, the Washington Post reports. But despite the caution, one Syrian leader expressed optimism, Reuters reports. "We heard today a different kind of discourse," he said.
– An emoluments lawsuit against President Trump is moving forward after a federal judge ruled Wednesday that attorneys general from Maryland and Washington DC have legal standing to proceed, the AP reports. According to the Washington Post, it's the first time such a lawsuit has ever made it past its first legal test. Two other emoluments lawsuits were tossed by a judge in New York in December, CNN reports. Attorneys general Karl Racine and Brian Frosh accuse Trump of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by receiving illegal gifts from foreign governments via the Trump Organization. While Judge Peter Messitte of the US District Court of Maryland is allowing the lawsuit to move forward, he's limiting its scope to just the Trump International Hotel in DC, excluding Mar-a-Lago and other properties. The lawsuit accuses Trump International of getting special tax concessions and having a competitive advantage over other hotels. Messitte noted that foreign governments have moved their business from other DC hotels to the "President's Hotel." He ruled that Trump's other properties are too far away to have any financial impact on Maryland or DC. While Messitte did not rule on the allegations themselves, he did reject an argument from the Trump camp that only Congress can decide if a president has violated the Emoluments Clause.
– Officials say three anti-government protesters have been killed in the southern Egyptian city of Assiut, after suspected Islamists riding a motorbike fired on protesters outside a local government building. One was killed and seven injured, prompting protesters to march on the local office of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party, where at least two more were shot by gunmen inside the building, the AP reports. Another protester was killed outside Freedom and Justice party headquarters in Beni Suef. The country is gripped with anti-government protests today, with hundreds of thousands massing in Cairo's Tahrir Square and other cities around the country to call for the removal of President Mohamed Morsi, the AP reports. "Today is the Brotherhood's last day in power," says one protestor at Tahrir. "I came here today because Morsi did not accomplish any of the [2011] revolution's goals ... the needs of the poor were not met." But Morsi, who has three years left in office, remains defiant in the face of growing opposition and calls for an early election. "If we changed someone in office who [was elected] according to constitutional legitimacy—well, there will be people opposing the new president too, and a week or a month later they will ask him to step down," he told the Guardian.
– A Maine candidate's attack on an outspoken survivor of the Parkland school shooting angered so many people that he ended up having to drop out of a race in which he had been running unopposed. Leslie Gibson, a Republican who had been running for a state House seat in the 57th district, tweeted that Emma Gonzalez was a "skinhead lesbian" with nothing to say "unless you’re a frothing at the mouth moonbat." In another tweet from his now-deleted account, Gibson rejected Gonzalez's claim to be a survivor of the mass shooting, saying she had been in a "completely different part of the school," BuzzFeed reports. He also called David Hogg, another survivor, a "bald-faced liar," prompting Hogg to ask whether anybody would run against him, the Washington Post reports. After the tweets—which were denounced by several Republican state lawmakers—28-year-old Democrat Eryn Gilchrist announced her candidacy, saying she would be "horrified and embarrassed" to have Gibson represent her. Thomas Martin Jr., a Republican, also announced his candidacy, saying he represented "real Republican values," the Portland Press Herald reports. Gibson, who apologized to Gonzalez earlier in the week for the "wrong and unacceptable" way in which he addressed her, dropped out of the race Friday, saying he had made the decision after speaking to family members, friends, and Martin. "I am not walking away with my head hung low. I am walking away with my head held high," he said. (After the Parkland shooting, Gonzalez called out President Trump and the NRA.)
– More bad news for San Francisco's Millennium Tower. This time, it's a crack in a window on the 36th floor of the 58-story building, SFGate reports. It happened Saturday around 2:30am when residents heard "creaking noises" and a "loud pop," per NBC Bay Area. Later, a resident found a crack in his window. San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin tells SFGate that if the window, which is designed to withstand hurricane-force winds, were to fail completely "it would rain shards of glass hundreds of feet below onto one of the busiest, most congested parts of the city." Opened in 2009, the 645-foot-tall Millennium Tower has reportedly sunk some 17 inches and is tilting (by 14 inches per SFGate, by 18 inches per NBC). In an email to residents, per Peskin, building management confirmed the window crack and said it was related to "ongoing problems with the building—i.e., the settling, sinking of the building." Other issues, according to NBC, include cracks in the basement wall and "strange odors" in some units. Units in the building sold for between $1.6 million and $10 million, per SFGate.
– They volunteered to fight fires, but authorities say they were also purposely setting fires over a period of almost two years. After a tip led to a yearlong investigation, 10 volunteer firefighters in North Carolina's Robeson County were arrested Tuesday and charged with arson and related crimes, ABC 11 reports. So far there are 90 charges involved in the case, which involves firefighters from the Fairmont Rural Fire Department and the Orrum Fire Department, and officials say more charges are expected and more arrests could be made. "I don't understand that. I mean, the job might be boring at times, but you don't go creating fires just to have something to put out," a local, who lives near the Fairmont firehouse, tells WRAL. The firefighters are accused of setting fires in woods and at abandoned structures; WRAL and ABC 11 both have the names of those accused—among them are a police officer and a Department of Corrections officer—and specific charges. Authorities say the alleged crimes cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.
– We humans consume a lot of antidepressants, and that means birds inadvertently do the same while feeding at sewage plants. Now researchers in the UK suggest that it's taking a toll on the birds' libidos, making them—or at least the females—less attractive to prospective mates. In their study, researchers at the University of York focused on starlings in captivity. They fed the birds worms laced with Prozac, on par with what their counterparts in the wild might pick up while eating worms and insects at sewage plants, and then watched what happened. Dosed males didn't change much, but dosed females suddenly seemed less attractive to the boys. Male starlings sang less frequently to them and treated them more aggressively—pecking, tugging at feathers—than is typical in the wooing phase. It's "the first evidence that low concentrations of an antidepressant can disrupt the courtship of songbirds," says study co-author Kathryn Arnold in a release. "We're definitely not saying that it's bad to take antidepressants, but certainly there is a greater need for new technologies to clean out sewage," she elaborates to the Washington Post. Presumably, the same type of behavior occurs in the wild, but researchers note that it's hard to replicate for a not-so-great reason: Wild birds are dining not just on Prozac but on a whole cocktail of pharmaceuticals, and the study adds to evidence that growing concentrations of them "can alter important traits related to individual fitness and population dynamics," per the study. (Drawings of a cockatoo revealed a medieval surprise.)
– While investigating samples of toxic levels of heavy metals found in sperm whales, researchers stumbled upon a surprising discovery: All of today's sperm whales appear to have descended from the same female, reports Hakai magazine. They've named her Eve and say she lived between 10,000 and 80,000 years ago. In the journal Molecular Ecology, the researchers explain that the genetic diversity of the whales, one of the planet's largest animals, turns out to be even lower than previously thought. The key was locked away in the species' mitochondrial DNA, a type of DNA passed down through the generations from mothers, not fathers. Conducting genetic tests on 542 samples collected over the past six years by Ocean Alliance and comparing them to another 1,000 whales analyzed in the past 15 years, they found that a single female whale left her thumbprint on all of them. Which doesn't quite make sense given that mothers tend to dominate certain areas without moving around, so the spread of one set of genes across the globe would be unusual. Somewhere along the line one mother whale and her descendants were able to out-compete all other females alive at the time—perhaps there was a sudden global population decline, or female whale behavior was dramatically different then—and their genetic lineage took off. One drawback is that this lack of diversity makes the whales more susceptible to things such as climate change, notes Smithsonian, suggesting that "today’s moms will need to get out more for the sake of their species." (Check out what one diver was sprayed with when encountering a diving sperm whale.)
– Some 150,000 gallons of water contaminated by toxic firefighting chemicals were discharged from a Colorado Air Force Base into a city sewer system, and authorities can't explain why. Peterson Air Force Base has confirmed that water containing perfluorinated chemicals—PFCs—flowed through Colorado Springs Utilities wastewater treatment plant before ending up in Fountain Creek, which leads to the Arkansas River. PFCs, which have been linked to health problems such as liver and kidney damage, had already been found at up to 20 times safe limits in the area south of the base, the Denver Post reports. A base spokesman tells the Colorado Springs Gazette that the discharge, which was discovered Oct. 12. came from a tank that held outflow from training exercises from as far back as 2013. He says the tank is designed to be difficult to discharge, suggesting the release was an intentional act. The Air Force says it has stopped using firefighting foam containing PFCs, except in emergencies. The Post notes that PFCs have been found at levels deemed dangerous in 63 areas nationwide, with the area south of Colorado Springs among the worst. The Air Force, which has contributed $4.3 million to help area communities deal with the contamination, plans to put out a report on the issue next year.
– George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were best buds again today, giving each other high praise as they shared a stage for the first time since their final tense days in office, reports ABC News. The groundbreaking at Bush's presidential library at SMU also marked a rare appearance by Cheney since his heart trouble earlier this year. He appeared "much thinner" and used a cane, and didn't stick around long after the ceremony, reports the New York Times. Cheney on Bush: “Two years after you left office, judgments are a little more measured than they were. When times have been tough or the critics have been loud, you’ve always said you had faith in history’s judgment, and history is beginning to come around.” Bush on Cheney: "As I stand here, there is no doubt in my mind he was the right pick then, he was a great vice president of the United States, and I’m proud to call him friend."
– It was just a matter of time: The company behind SkyMall, the inflight magazine that pitched air travelers stuff they didn't need, has filed for bankruptcy. It could go no longer compete now that people are allowed to fire up their smartphones and tablets on the plane, especially against the likes of Amazon. Xhibit Corp. has suspended the catalog but hopes it might survive in a bankruptcy deal. Business writers can't resist picking out their favorite items for sale: Wall Street Journal: "If a bankruptcy deal doesn’t happen, some flyers will be sad to see the seller of Bigfoot Garden Yeti statues (which retails for $2,250 for the life size model) and Litter Robots (a robotic self-cleaning cat litter box for $359.99) go the way of other now-defunct retailers." MarketWatch: "There’s still time to get that special tortilla baby blanket from SkyMall, of course, but ..." Reuters: "(N)ovelty items ranging from personalized socks to dog beds to a $2,499 football helmet signed by Notre Dame players and coaches." New York Times: Its story mentions "a Santa Claus Sculptural Glass-Topped Holiday Table for $129; and $1,000 Serenity Pods for cats and dogs, fitted with a wireless sound system and LED lights, which promised to gently rock them to sleep." USA Today: The company "that entices airline travelers with offers for iFetch ball launchers for dogs and mini clap-on alarm clocks, is ..." Wired: This is more of an ode, and apology, from SkyMall adorer Emily Dreyfuss. "I’m sorry I paid $7 for inflight Wi-Fi instead of reading you, little shopping catalog. Forgive me. "
– The discovery of 12 Thai boys and their coach still alive after 10 days trapped in a flooded cave has brought massive relief to their families and an anxious nation—but the military warns that their ordeal could be only just beginning. The group, discovered by two British divers late Monday, are on a dry rock ledge around 2.5 miles from the mouth of the cave, and the Thai military says it could be months before it can get them out, unless the boys learn to dive, the BBC reports. The cave in northern Thailand often remains flooded until the end of the rainy season in September or October, meaning the youth soccer team and their coach may need to have food and other supplies sent in for the next four months. Experts warn that it could be very difficult to get the boys, ages 11 to 16, to safety through miles of dark, narrow, flooded tunnels. "Trying to take non-divers through a cave is one of the most dangerous situations possible, even if the dives are relatively easy," US National Cave Rescue Commission coordinator Anmar Mirza tells the AP. Thai officials say they're committed to "100% safety" and will continue to explore their options, including draining water from the cave system and searching for shafts that could provide an alternative escape route. Officials say the boys are hungry and weak but in stable medical condition with only minor injuries. They have been provided with high-protein liquid food and will be given more supplies and visited by doctors in the days to come.
– An estimated 8% to 13% of pregnant woman are on antidepressants, and not without warning: The FDA in 2005 amended antidepressants' labels to indicate that babies born to moms taking them could suffer an increased risk of heart defects. But causation hadn't been proven, and the latest study on the topic indicates those warnings may be baseless. The latest study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed 949,504 pregnant women, 64,389 (6.8%) of whom used antidepressants during the first trimester—the period of the most rapid cell division, when the risk of developing such defects is highest, WebMD explains. What Krista Huybrechts of Brigham and Women's Hospital did differently: She and her team took into consideration factors that could lead to heart defects, like the mother's age and whether she had diabetes. The Boston Herald reports that among babies whose mothers did not take antidepressants, 72.3 per 10,000 were born with a cardiac defect, compared with 90.1 per 10,000 infants whose mothers did. After controlling for risk factors, "there is no evidence to support a substantial increased risk of cardiac malformations overall," says Huybrechts. Still, she cautions that antidepressant use during pregnancy poses a "whole range of other potential adverse outcomes." To wit, one expert pointed to "serious flaws" with the study. For one, it didn't flag miscarriages, which are linked to antidepressants. "It may be that the most severely affected pregnancies are miscarrying," he noted.
– Howard Stern goes back a ways with President Trump, who has been a regular guest on his show for decades. On Thursday, Stern generated headlines for voicing a concern about the man he considers a friend: Becoming president "is something that is gonna be detrimental to his mental health, too, because, he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved," Stern said, per Entertainment Weekly. "All of this hatred and stuff directed towards him. It's not good for him. It's not good." Also of note: Stern says he thinks Trump ran only as a contract ploy. "I think it started out as like a kinda cool, fun thing to do in order to get a couple more bucks out of NBC for The Apprentice, I actually do believe that," Stern said, per CNN. He added that Trump always liked Hillary Clinton and thinks the "new Donald Trump" merely latched onto a conservative base because it was the most effective route to victory. “I don’t believe that, for example now, that he’s had some sort of rethink on abortion and all this." No response, at least yet, from Trump himself.
– A 3-year-old girl who was sent outside in the wee hours of Saturday morning as punishment for not drinking her milk has not been seen since. Police say Wesley Mathews, 37, told them he sent his toddler daughter Sherin out of the family's Richardson, Texas, home around 3am and told her to stand outside near a tree about 100 feet from the house. He told police he returned for her 15 minutes later but she was gone; the family reported Sherin missing around 8am. An Amber Alert was issued for her, but has since timed out and was discontinued Monday afternoon due to a lack of new information in the case, NBC DFW reports. Wesley Mathews was arrested Saturday on a charge of abandoning or endangering a child. Texas Child Protective Services removed Sherin's 4-year-old sister from the home Monday and placed her in protective custody. CPS says it has had past "contact" with the family but would not divulge details. Sherin has "developmental issues and ... limited verbal communication skills," per police. She was adopted from an orphanage in India two years ago. One member of the family's church calls the little girl "the cutest baby in our church," and a church elder says the girl's mother, who is not currently facing charges, is "very much worried and depressed." The tree where Wesley Mathews allegedly sent his daughter is behind a fence and across an alley from the family's home, the Dallas News reports. Per a police report cited by CBS DFW, "Wesley Mathews ... told [the detective] he knew coyotes had been seen in the alley where he left his daughter."
– The push for a higher minimum wage just got a major boost courtesy of Los Angeles. The city council has approved raising it to $15 an hour by 2020, reports the Los Angeles Times. Under the plan, the rate will rise from $9 to $10.50 in July 2016, then tick up annually to $12, $13.25, $14.25, and $15. Businesses with 25 or fewer workers will get an extra year to phase it in. Though a handful of other cities have voted for a $15 rate, including Seattle, Los Angeles is the biggest city to do so. The move doesn't become official until the city attorney's office drafts an ordinance and sends it back to council members for their approval, but once it does, it's going to affect a lot of people, notes the New York Times. The newspaper cites one study showing that about 40% of workers in the city make less than $15 an hour. The city's chamber of commerce predicts layoffs as a result. "It's simple math," says one official. "There is simply not enough room, enough margin in these businesses to absorb a 50-plus percent increase in labor costs over a short period of time." But one longtime McDonald's worker, a mother of two now making $9.05 an hour, tells the Guardian that the move is overdue. “My life would be completely different if I were paid $15 an hour," she says. "I could afford groceries without needing food stamps, my family could stop sharing our apartment with renters for extra money, and I’d be able to provide my daughters with some security.”
– The New England Patriots overcame a 21-point deficit today with 49 unanswered points to rock the Buffalo Bills 49-21, the AP reports. The win earned the Pats home-field advantage and the AFC's top seed. Tom Brady threw for 338 yards and finished with the second-most passing yards in NFL history, 5,235—behind only Drew Brees, who threw for 5,486 this year with the New Orleans Saints. More NFL action, from USA Today: The Miami Dolphins knocked the New York Jets out of playoff contention with a 19-17 win, burying coach Rex Ryan's pledge to win the Super Bowl this year. The Jets reached the AFC championship game each of the past two years. The Atlanta Falcons scored a team-record 42 first-half points against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and cruised to a 45-24 victory, securing the No. 5 seed in the NFC playoffs. The San Diego Chargers ended the Oakland Raiders' playoff hopes with a 38-26 victory. The Raiders' 8-year playoff drought continues. The Baltimore Ravens clinched the No. 2 seed in the AFC and a first-round bye by holding off the Cincinnati Bengals, 24-16. Backup quarterback Matt Flynn set Green Bay Packer records with 480 yards passing and 6 touchdowns, out-dueling Detroit Lions QB Matthew Stafford in a 45-41 victory. Stafford threw for 520 yards and 5 touchdowns. The Houston Texans botched a 2-point conversion and saw their rally fall short against the Tennessee Titans in a 23-22 loss. The New Orleans Saints set several club and NFL records in a 45-17 rout of the Carolina Panthers. Drew Brees threw for 389 yards and 5 touchdowns. The San Francisco 49ers locked up the NFC's No. 2 seed and a first-round bye with a 34-27 victory over the St. Louis Rams. Michael Vick tossed three TDs as the Philadelphia Eagles thrashed the Washington Redskins, 34-10, in a fourth straight victory. The Indianapolis Colts secured the top 2012 NFL draft pick by losing to the Jacksonville Jaguars, 19-13. Hello quarterback controversy? Maybe so, if the Colts draft Andrew Luck, USA Today reports. Click here for more NFL updates.
– What started as a snow-filled trip for seven schools in Japan has ended in tragedy. The BBC reports that eight high school students are believed to have been killed in an avalanche that hit a ski resort 90 miles north of Tokyo on Monday. Some 70 students and teachers were believed to have been present, with about half those who survived suffering injuries. The incident occurred near Nasu, which has seen about a foot of snow fall since Sunday. That snow "condensed [with the warmer weather], and then once you have somebody on top of that, that creates a trigger," a meteorologist tells the Guardian. "These are all a recipe for avalanche creation." Indeed, an avalanche warning was in effect at the time. The Japan Times and Guardian report the ski season had closed last week at the Nasuonsen Family Ski Resort; the students who arrived Saturday were about two-and-a-half hours away from the conclusion of Monday's climbing event when the avalanche struck near the upper part of the slope. NBC News specifies that the weekend event was a "mountain climbing safety training exercise."
– The deputy director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy admitted yesterday—only after much prodding—that pot is less dangerous than alcohol and other drugs. Michael Botticelli was questioned at a House Oversight Committee hearing by Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, who first asked how many people die from marijuana overdoses per year, the Raw Story reports. Botticelli said he didn't know, but that it's "very rare." Botticelli then admitted there's no comparison between the volume of marijuana deaths and deaths from prescription drugs. But when Connolly turned the line of questioning to alcohol, Botticelli deflected the question—twice. Connolly finally ordered him to answer: "When we look at deaths and illnesses, alcohol, other hard drugs are certainly—even prescription drugs—are a threat to public health in a way that just isolated marijuana is not. Isn’t that a scientific fact? Or do you dispute that fact?" Responded Botticelli, "I don't dispute that fact." Connolly used that to argue that President Obama wasn't being reckless when he said he doesn't think pot is more dangerous than alcohol. Botticelli went on to clarify that despite that comment, the White House opposes states legalizing marijuana, CBS News reports. He added that Obama thinks pot "is a public health challenge and that we need to deal with it as a public health challenge."
– Technophobes may be alarmed to learn that new sperm-like robots could soon be performing many activities—including fertilizing human eggs. Researchers say the tiny bots, dubbed "MagnetoSperm," were inspired by the shape and movement of sperm cells and can "swim" to their target with incredible accuracy, LiveScience reports. They believe the sperm bots could be useful in nanomanufacturing as well as for medical uses including unclogging arteries, drug administration, and in vitro fertilization. The robots have a metal head and a body of flexible polymer, and are steered through a field produced by electromagnetic coils. "The magnetic head is used to orient it in a certain direction and then, just by flapping its tail, it starts to move forward," the lead researcher explains to the BBC. "The flapping happens because we change the current in the coils," he says, predicting that the tiny bots will prove useful where it is necessary to reach "precise locations." The bots are still a lot slower—and around six times bigger—than human sperm, but the MagnetoSperm team says it is working on creating smaller, faster versions. (Meanwhile, scientists have recently found the world's oldest sperm.)
– A treatment featuring horse placenta is becoming all the rage for injured European soccer stars, with two Liverpool players just the latest to seek treatment. The procedure, performed by a Serbian woman, sees the placenta—a leftover of the breeding process—injected into the hurt area, then massaged further into the tissue. Marijana Kovacevic emphasized the “alternative” aspects of the procedure, the Independent notes, using candles and darkened rooms. Kovacevic is said to charge about $4,500 for the six-hour procedure, about which a number of teams are skeptical. And, the Daily Mirror adds, there have been reports in Serbia that Kovacevic in fact uses human placentas, not horse. Still, Arsenal star Robin van Persie is hot to trot after suffering ruptured ankle ligaments: “The treatment is going well,” he tells Serbian TV. “I hope it will help.”
– Jet Airways workers in India made a million-dollar discovery in the most of unusual of places—two dozen gold bars stuffed into a plane's toilets, reports AFP. Smugglers apparently hid the bars in two boxes and jammed them in there, but the cleaning crew in Kolkata got to them first. India is a major buyer of gold, and a steep hike in taxes has led to a rise in smuggling, explains Reuters. Its story includes this quote from an investigator: "We are also asking the aircraft crew to tip us off about people who spend slightly more time in toilets."
– A British teenager accused of wasting police time with a complaint about her ex-boyfriend was murdered by the same man less than six months later, prosecutors say. Shana Grice, 19, was found dead with her throat cut in her Brighton home in August last year, the Independent reports. In March, she had been charged with "having caused wasteful employment of police by making a false report" after she accused 27-year-old Michael Lane of assaulting her but failed to tell officers that they had an on-and-off relationship. A month before that report, she had complained to police that Lane was stalking her and left a note on her new boyfriend's car saying, "Shana will always cheat on you." Lane is now on trial for the murder. The jury was told last week that the month before the killing, he received a caution from police after stealing a key and letting himself into Grice's home to watch her sleep, the BBC reports. A few days later, she told police that Lane was following her, but the incident was classed as "low risk." Prosecutors say Lane was obsessed with Grice and became murderous after she decided to go back to another ex-boyfriend. He denies killing her, though he has admitted fitting a tracking device to her car. He told the court that he found her body after entering Grice's home through the open front door, then fled in panic and went home to shower instead of calling police. (A Tennessee woman found her ex hiding under her bed.)
– Frank Lucas only looks like he won an Oklahoma congressional primary by a landslide, according to a contender who got thumped at the polls. Tim Murray says he'll contest the primary because Lucas was actually hanged in Ukraine and replaced with a body double, THV 11 reports. "It is widely known" that Lucas "is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike," Murray writes on his website. "Rep. Lucas’ look alike was depicted as sentenced on a white stage in southern Ukraine on or about Jan. 11, 2011." But he doesn't stop there: "I am contesting that this matter has happen [sic] since his election was blocked, because of the US Defense Department’s use of Mr. Murray’s DNA. ... Congress is likely wanting me to state that all my DNA used will not result in benefits to people I have never had relations with of a family nature." Murray's reaction? "It does come as kind of a shock to read that you’re not you," he told KFOR. "I’ve never been to Ukraine." The GOP congressman even had a rep say that he's not dead and hasn't been to Ukraine, the Washington Post reports. At least one analyst isn't too surprised: "A lot of stupid things happen in Oklahoma politics," said Keith Gaddie of the University of Oklahoma. "But this may be the stupidest I've ever heard. Welcome to Oklahoma." Murray—who won 5.2% of the vote to Lucas' 82.8%—has until today to officially contest the primary.
– Herman Cain's new campaign video is generating lots of attention, but not because of 9-9-9 or 9-0-9 or anything remotely related to policy. It's all about a cigarette: The video (it's in the gallery at left) features chief of staff Mark Block praising his boss for about half a minute. Then the camera moves in for a slow close-up of Block smoking a cigarette and exhaling, which fades into a profile of Cain. All in all, it's "one of the most bizarre 5- (to) 10- second chunks of film in some time," writes Frances Martel at Mediaite. What gives? At Salon, Steve Kornacki suggests it might be Cain's defiant response to a New York Times article that noted he buddied up to the tobacco industry when he led the National Restaurant Association. (But if Cain is actually serious about winning the nomination, it's a "baffling" video, adds Kornacki. Read his full post.) One thing is clear, however: "Block is the newest YouTube star of the 2012 presidential campaign," writes Alexander Burns at Politico. He's even got a fake Twitter site now. And real Mark Block isn't a fan. Click for more theories on why the cigarette shot was included.
– Authorities have finally made arrests in the death of two girls in California more than 40 years later. Police say 65-year-old cousins Larry Patterson and William Harbour murdered Doris Derryberry, 13, and Valerie Lane, 12, after they vanished from a shopping mall in 1973. The girls were found dead, each shot by a shotgun, beside a dirt road in Marysville hours after they were reported missing, per the AP. Doris had been sexually assaulted and semen was collected from her body. However, it was only sent for testing in March 2014 by an investigator who "had a bit of free time and really looked very closely at this case," Sheriff Steve Durfor tells the AP. The semen matched DNA samples taken from Patterson and Harbour during previous arrests, police say. Patterson—convicted of rape in 1976 and wanted for failing to register as a sex offender, per Reuters—was arrested Tuesday in Oklahoma. Harbour, who has felony drug convictions, was also arrested Tuesday in the girls' hometown of Olivehurst, Calif. The men were 22 at the time of the murders. After "decades of suffering and grief," Durfor says the girls' families can finally have some closure. They "have waited ... for 43 years for an answer as to what happened to their kids," adds a Yuba County DA. (This missing woman could be buried on the Cal Poly campus.)
– Electronic Arts is launching a brave new world of gay relationships in online role-playing games, and that's sparking an Internet armageddon. EA has been lambasted by religious right-wingers who fear the dangerous influences of an imagined transgendered "Darth VaPaula" in a Star Wars game, and have begun a boycott against the company. They're being slammed in turn by gay rights activists. Now AllOut.org has yanked its anti-boycott petition off the Web because the petition itself had become a target of an army of spambots apparently launched by anti-gay forces. Complicating matters are suspected PR stunts by EA itself to apparently inflate the war. But that's not the case now, an AllOut spokesman tells Forbes. “We are not arguing that Electronic Arts is a perfect company,” he explained. "But we know that today, on this issue, they are taking an important stand that should be supported. Anti-gay groups are the dark-side here. The Family Research Council is telling this company, and many others, that gay people have no place in our games, in our media and in our lives. That is unacceptable." Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect 3 will allow role-playing participants to not only choose what kind of character they'll play, but for the first time they'll also have an option to engage in a same sex romance.
– A gun found in the left hand of a right-handed suicide victim. A secret married lover. And a $1 million inheritance. These are all clues in the mysterious July death of Sarah Catherine Long, 41, who police in Davidson, NC, at first believed killed herself, People reports. But now, they say she was murdered. Long's married lover, William Becker, tipped off police, claiming not to have seen her in four days, the New York Daily News reports. She was found dead in her condo on July 23 with a gun in her left hand and a gunshot wound above her left ear. But Long was right-handed and that hand wasn't bloody. Days after her death, Becker came forward claiming Long left him a $1 million fortune in her will. He also said she was depressed because she had cervical cancer, which her doctor refutes, WBTV reports. Meanwhile, Becker's wife told police he gave her a smoothie in May that tasted of medicine, which she says he dumped in the toilet when confronted; she thinks he was trying to poison her. Investigators are awaiting results that will determine if Long was drugged. Neighbors saw Long enter her house with a man at about 10:20pm on July 19, the night police think she died. Police are now analyzing Long's texts, four laptops, wireless router, Yahoo account, and financials, the Charlotte Observer reports. They're hoping that the router might have linked to the cellphone of the man she was with the night of her death. (In North Carolina, a sinister mystery surrounds the hanging death of a teen whose family says he didn't kill himself.)
– Sarcasm doesn't always translate well. When satirist Andy Borowitz wrote this column at the Huffington Post headlined "In Latest Compromise With GOP, Obama Agrees He Is a Muslim," the Saudi media utterly missed the joke. A respected newspaper, Al-Hayat, and website, Sabq.org, reported it as straight news, notes AFP. "Obama doesn't mind coming out as a Muslim if that will satisfy the Republicans," read the newspaper's headline, while the website went with, "Obama: 'I'm ready to announce that I am a Muslim.'" If only they'd read to the bottom of Borowitz's column, the "quote" attributed to Julian Assange after his arrest—"I knew I shouldn't have signed up for Foursquare"—might have tipped them off that the whole thing was joke. Or maybe not.
– We're going to say what should be unnecessary: You cannot charge your iPhone in the microwave. Or, as victims of the latest scam from the darlings at 4Chan have found, you can try, but the results won't be much better than sticking it in your pocket and sitting on it. The hoax is billed as "Wave," reports Mashable, an apparent "iOS8 exclusive" in which you purportedly charge your phone "wirelessly through microwave frequencies ... using any standard household microwave." The slick-looking ad for Wave, which has been making the rounds on Twitter and Reddit, helpfully recommends "60 seconds at 700W or 70 seconds at 800W." It's completely unknown how many suckers fell for Wave, but Mashable notes that "photos of fried iPhones and burned microwaves" are circulating. And apparently enough of them that the LAPD got in on the action, reports the LA Times. "This #Wave capability is a #hoax. Don't be fooled into microwaving your #iPhone6. #Apple #Smartphone," they tweeted. Meanwhile, angry Apple users with crispy iPhones aren't the only ones torqued at 4Chan: Celebrities are apparently firing back, too.
– On at least one aspect of health care, the world's most advanced nations can now take a back seat to Cuba. The World Health Organization says Cuba has become the first country to eliminate mother-to-baby transmissions of HIV, reports NBC News. The same holds true for syphilis. Cuba did so not through some experimental treatment but through rigorous prenatal screening of pregnant women. Those who tested positive were given HIV drugs before and after giving birth, and their newborns were treated as well. When that happens, the percentage of infected babies falls to under 1%. "Eliminating transmission of a virus is one of the greatest public health achievements possible," says WHO chief Margaret Chan. "This is a major victory in our long fight against HIV and sexually transmitted infections, and an important step towards having an AIDS-free generation." Cuba's policies didn't completely wipe out such transmissions—two babies were born with HIV in 2013, and five with syphilis—but the numbers met WHO's criteria for certification, reports Reuters.
– Prince was seeking medical treatment right up until the day before his death, according to court records. A court document filed in connection with a search warrant for the star's medical records reveals that Prince saw local physician Dr. Michael Schulenberg on April 7 and on April 20, the New York Times reports. The day after the latter appointment, the doctor, who had prescribed medication for Prince and ordered tests, turned up at the star's Paisley Park compound to discover that his patient was already dead. Court documents state that Schulenberg gave Prince a prescription that was to be filled at a Walgreens, though it's not clear whether the singer ever did so, reports the Los Angeles Times. Schulenberg, 46, was employed at North Memorial Medical Center in a Minneapolis suburb at the time of Prince's death, but the health system now says he no longer works there, the Star Tribune reports. Prince's cause of death has yet to be established, but investigators suspect a prescription drug overdose is to blame, and they want to speak to an addiction specialist who sent his son to Prince's house on an overnight flight the day before he died. The search warrant for North Memorial sought "all medical records, documents, reports, charts, photographs, prescriptions, doctor notes, and medical images for Prince Rogers Nelson," the AP notes. (Gene Simmons calls Prince's death "pathetic.")
– Robert Wang has a simple goal: "an Instant Pot in every kitchen." And CBC reports the Canadian inventor is poised to make significant strides toward that goal this Black Friday. Wang invented the Instant Pot in 2008 after getting laid off from his software engineering job, according to NBC News. The device is essentially an electric pressure cooker that also serves as a rice cooker, steamer, slow cooker, and more. It has sensors to prevent burning and make sure everything's cooking properly and Bluetooth for remote monitoring. Now, seven years after the Instant Pot hit the market, Wang has a legitimate phenomenon on his hands, selling nearly 250,000 units on Amazon's Prime Day. "To sell 250,000 units in 24 hours is close to a miracle," Wang tells CBC. "It's like that saying about when the time for an idea has arrived, nothing can stop it." And the Instant Pot's popularity is still growing. It's predicted it will be Amazon's biggest seller during the company's Black Friday sales event in the US and Canada this week. Wang thinks he'll move 500,000 units on Amazon alone. He chalks the Instant Pot's popularity up to people's growing desire to make healthy, home-cooked food while avoiding fast food—and because "everything is better with Bluetooth." The Inquirer states the Instant Pot's biggest innovation is "taking the fear out of pressure-cooking." Whatever the reason for its popularity, Instant Pot owners are fanatical. The Instant Pot community on Facebook has 750,000 members, and a chef who teaches an Instant Pot cooking class describes some fans as "cult-like worshippers." But they probably said the same thing about all those people buying Tickle-Me Elmos.
– An ex-boyfriend has been arrested in Nicaragua over the killing of college student Haley Anderson in New York. Anderson, 22, who hails from Long Island, was found dead in an off-campus house at the State University of New York at Binghamton in upstate New York Friday, WABC reports. The exact circumstances of the nursing student's death have not been revealed, but police consider it a homicide. Police said the suspect, Orlando Tercero, fled to Nicaragua before Anderson's body was found. He was arrested Tuesday and, for now, remains in Nicaragua. Tercero, also 22 and a nursing student, is reportedly from Nicaragua and apparently holds dual citizenship, per CBS New York; ABC News reports he still has family there. "The victim and male student had a previous domestic/romantic relationship," police said in a statement prior to his arrest. A friend of Anderson's tells the New York Post Tercero was "obsessive and crazy." "She was such a bubbly person, opened up to anyone," a co-worker says of Anderson, per CBS. "She was literally like the greatest person ever. She never didn't have a smile on her face."
– Indian diplomats say they are disturbed by reports that one of their nationals working in Saudi Arabia had her arm cut off by a vengeful employer. The family of 58-year-old Kasturi Munirathinam says that when Saudi officials conducted a routine check of the home where she was working as a maid, she complained of mistreatment, which led the woman of the house to attack her after officials left, the Times of India reports. Indian officials say Munirathinam is recovering in hospital. They have complained to the Saudi government about the "very unfortunate and most condemnable incident" and have asked for the attacker to be severely punished, reports CNN. Munirathinam's son tells the BBC that she had been harassed and "tortured" by her employers. "Ever since she went to work with this family in July, things were not all right. My mother was not even allowed to speak to us over the phone, she was not given proper food, and was forced to work long hours," he says. Her sister tells CNN that Munirathinam, who went to Saudi Arabia after the family faced financial difficulties, had complained to officials about mistreatment and not being paid. The employer has been arrested and Indian officials, who have vowed to pursue justice for the victim, want the Saudis to charge her with attempted murder, the BBC reports. (A Saudi wife who posted footage of her husband sexually harassing their maid could go to jail for "defaming" him.)
– Electronic construction signs in the Dallas area appear to have been hacked, displaying messages calling Donald Trump a reptile and imploring early morning commuters to take a day off work, the AP reports. The portable signs along Interstate 30 and elsewhere flashed various messages early Tuesday, including "Donald Trump is a ... shape shifting lizard!" Another message read, "Bernie for president," while still another sign said: "Work is canceled. Go back home." The signs appear to be ones used by the Texas Department of Transportation, and it wasn't the first time they were hacked: CBS-DFW notes that sometime over Memorial Day weekend, one of the signs had been changed to read "Party Hardy Yall." That message was removed by Monday, and the sign was ostensibly secured by the contractor against further vandalism, a TxDot rep says—but the new hacked messages popped up after someone again broke into the system late Monday or early Tuesday. And it's not a snap-your-fingers task to fix, per NBC-DFW: The signs can't be operated remotely, so any modifications have to be done manually via the control panels. TxDOT tells Dallas-Fort Worth broadcaster KRLD that there's no humor in what the hackers did. The agency says the messages bumped warnings to motorists about nearby construction zones.
– Hopes are fading for people still believed to be trapped under mud and debris after a massive landslide in Washington state. At least eight people have now been confirmed dead from the mudslide that destroyed dozens of houses in a neighborhood along the Stillaguamish River, the Seattle Times reports. At least a dozen people are still missing, but rescue workers say they didn't see or hear any signs of life after working throughout the day. But despite the lack of signs of life in the debris field, the operation is still in "search and rescue mode," a local fire chief says. "It has not gone to a recovery mode at this time." Rescuers had to pull back early yesterday until geologists told them it was safe to return, the AP reports. "We have this huge square-mile mudflow that's basically like quicksand," the fire chief says. At least eight people were injured in the slide Saturday morning, which officials describe as a "a big wall of mud and debris" caused by ground made unstable by recent rainfall.
– One person is dead and five are injured after ice caves on Washington state's Big Four Mountain collapsed yesterday for the second day in a row. A hiker's body has yet to be recovered from the caves—formed in snow mounds that end up sliding down to the base of a cliff—because of the "fragile nature of the ice," a Snohomish County rep says. Two men, 25 and 35, and a woman, 35, were airlifted to a hospital with serious injuries, including leg and pelvis fractures, reports NBC News. A boy and girl were also admitted with minor injuries but have since been released, reports the Seattle Times. "There was a loud pop above us," Chloe Jakubowski says. "Once I saw the ice chunks falling, I ducked for cover and held my hands over my head." She says a woman standing next to her was knocked unconscious by falling ice. "As soon as it stopped, I looked ... around me and it was extremely gruesome, honestly," says Jakubowski, 18. She didn't have cell service and had to drive 15 miles to a campsite to call for help. Rescuers say the call came in about 45 minutes after the collapse. "There was a large pile of ice and rock that came down," says the county rep. "In many ways, it was similar to an avalanche." A day earlier, a visitor to the caves, popular among hikers and only accessible by a narrow, 26-mile road, captured a partial collapse on video, but no one was injured in that case. Authorities have long considered the caves to be dangerous, particularly in warm weather—temps hit 80 degrees in the area yesterday—and signs warn of the risky conditions. They were installed after the last death at the caves, that of an 11-year-old girl hit by falling ice in 2010.
– A comatose woman who roused to deliver her baby and a Holocaust survivor who gets a special night are among the week's most uplifting stories: Woman Emerges From Coma, Delivers Baby: Jenny Quiles was 33 weeks pregnant when she was hit by a truck as she crossed the street. Two weeks later, the Florida woman emerged from a coma, and on Wednesday, she began having contractions. Four hours later, she gave birth to a "miracle" baby girl. Her daughter is fine, while Quiles is in critical condition but "improving every day," says her doctor. Holocaust Survivor to Play Lincoln Center: A musician makes her solo debut in a Lincoln Center concert next week, but it's a safe bet you've never heard of her. Emily Kessler, a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor who now lives in New York City, will strum her mandolin and sing folk songs to help raise money for other survivors. She was picked for her amazing story of bravery as a teen evading the Nazis. Widower's Dinner Date: Photo of Late Wife: Determined not to forget his true love after her death five years ago, an elderly man has been bringing along a photo of her during his outings to a California burger joint. Patrons have noticed, and photos of the loving husband have gone viral. Off-Duty Cop Finds $120K, Returns It to Owner: It could have been easy money. But when an off-duty sergeant with the California Highway Patrol found two bags on the road stuffed with $120,000 in cash, she reported the find instead of helping herself. Turns out, it was apparently someone's life savings. University's Plan: Help Sex Slavery Survivors: A Christian university in California has launched what it says is a first-of-its-kind scholarship to help survivors of sex trafficking start new lives. Point Loma Nazarene University has started a crowdfunding campaign and a longer-term donation page. Click for more uplifting stories.
– The US launched airstrikes against Iraq's Islamic State militants this morning. "US military aircraft conduct strike on ISIL artillery," tweeted Rear Adm. John Kirby. "Artillery was used against Kurdish forces defending (Irbil), near US personnel." He confirms that F/A-18 jets dropped a pair of laser-guided 500-pound bombs on militants towing artillery at about 6:45am Eastern, reports the AP. US military trainers are stationed nearby. More: The F/A-18s were based on the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush in the Persian Gulf and took off on the orders of the commander of US Central Command, CNN reports. (President Obama authorized airstrikes last night.) It's unclear how many militants were killed in the strikes. John Kerry, speaking today in Afghanistan, echoed Obama's language, saying the Islamic State's "campaign of terror against the innocent, including the Yazidi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque targeted acts of violence show all the warning signs of genocide." Meanwhile, the AP reports that Iraqi and Kurdish officials are welcoming last night's humanitarian aid drops for Iraqis trapped by the militants in the mountains. "We thank Barack Obama," said one Kurdish official in northern Iraq, while a rep for the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement said the drops were "just in time."
– Buffalo Bills player Stevie Johnson would really like North Korea to "chill out with that nuke talk." But if it doesn't, the wide receiver has suggested a target for Kim Jong Un's agression: "War is nothing to be played with. I apologize North Korea........but if y'all do bomb 1st... Bomb Foxboro, Mass. Sincerely, # BillsMafia " he tweeted to his 122,000 followers yesterday. Foxboro, Mass., is the home of the New England Patriots, where the Bills haven't had a victory in 13 years, says Yahoo! Sports. Unsurprisingly, the online backlash to the joke came thick and fast. A few hours later, Johnson tweeted something akin to an apology: "i know some of yall took it too serious.. but i have Much Respect for The Pats along with Every other NFL Team. Gonna to be a Great #NFL2012." Then something not so akin to an apology: "PatsFans i lo...like yall also. ask any1 in my fam. ive said TheBoro is my fav place to play-bkuz you Pats fans are Live! BUT not for long.."
– Infidelity isn't always the stuff of illicit affairs. A new survey shows that 31% of Americans who combine their finances with a spouse have lied about money to said spouse. "Financial infidelity may be the new normal," writes Jenna Goudreau at her Forbes blog. The most common misdeeds were hiding cash (58%), hiding minor purchases (54%), and hiding a bill (30%). But a decent number admitted to hiding major purchases (16%), keeping a secret bank account (15%), and lying about debt or earnings (11%). “Betrayal regarding money can be just as painful and damaging as other kinds of cheating," says a psychotherapist. It, too, can lead to "total loss of trust, feelings of betrayal and destruction of the relationship." For those feeling a little suspicious, Forbes has a list of 10 red flags (defensiveness, insistence on handling bills alone, etc.) to look for.
– Watch what you tweet: A diner was kicked out of a Houston restaurant for calling the bartender a “twerp” on her Twitter feed, the establishment’s owner tells KPRC Houston. When a manager with the night off saw the comment, he called the restaurant and asked the woman to leave. “Any business is allowed to set the tone of their establishment,” says the owner. “If you go to someone's house and start calling them names, I wouldn't really expect to stay too much longer after that." For her part, Allison Matsu tweeted: “Left Down House in tears after the GM called up and asked the bartender to hand me the phone. He proceeded to curse at me and ask me to leave.” Now, Twitter is all a-twitter about the incident. “I think Down House owes Allison Hiromi a big apology. Welcome to a PR nightmare,” noted one user. But a PR expert says the discussion will put the restaurant on the map. See HoustonPress for more.
– The latest prank that all the kids are into is a little more destructive than the toilet paper of yesteryear: Called "Put 'em in a coffin" and based on a Vine video from May that's gone viral, it involves throwing yourself back-first onto the tops of cars (and grocery displays, and classroom desks, and one another, etc.). And for at least one Houston man and his wife, the damage is into the thousands. Last Friday, James McHugh, 28, found both his BMW and his wife's car seriously dented across the hoods, reports KPRC-TV, and a home security camera caught grainy footage of seven young men approaching his property. He says it'll cost about $4,000 for the repairs. "You work hard, and then to have that much money washed away for 10 seconds of laughter—it's very frustrating," McHugh says. People have been posting videos on YouTube, Vine, and other social media sites since rapper VonMar of the group ThotBoyz posted the original back in May, reports the Houston Chronicle. Since then, his video has been viewed more than 3 million times on Vine. As for McHugh, there's no word yet on whether his own security footage will help identify the vandals. (This high school prank resulted in 62 arrests.)
– He might have been the most famous American in North Korea. But now James "Joe" Dresnok, a US soldier who defected after fighting in the Korean War, is dead, reports the Guardian. His two Korean-born sons made the news public in a government video, saying their father had suffered a stroke and died at age 74. Dresnok was one of a few American soldiers to cross into North Korea in 1962, and he went on to star in propaganda films, generally as the evil American. The BBC made a documentary about him in 2006 called Crossing the Line in which he said he had no regrets about his defection. "I wouldn't trade it for nothin,'" the native of Richmond, Va., says in the video. (The film is on YouTube. CBS' 60 Minutes also did a feature on Dresnok, which can be seen here.) The few other Americans who defected are believed to have died or left the country. Dresnok, who crossed a minefield into the North, had faced a court-martial for leaving his base without permission for a night on the town. "I was fed up with my childhood, my marriage, my military life, everything," he said. Sons Ted and James Dresnok, aka Hong Soon-chol and Hong Chol, spoke of their father in the new state video. "Our father was in the arms of the republic and received only the love and care of the party until his passing at age 74," said Ted Dresnok. Though half-American himself, Ted Dresnok showed where his loyalties lie, warning that if war breaks out, "we will not miss the opportunity and wipe the land of the US from the earth for ever." His brother had a similar sentiment, saying: "We have our dear supreme commander Kim Jong Un. If he is by our side, our victory is certain." (You can see the two of them in this video from about a year ago.)
– It was only a matter of time. Scientists, following up research showing tiny particles of plastic in everything from bottled water to salt, say they've found "the first evidence for microplastics inside humans." All stool samples taken from eight participants of a small study by Environment Agency Austria were found to contain plastic particles ranging in size from .002 to .02 inches, with 20 particles per 10 grams of excrement on average, report the New York Times and Guardian. Up to nine varieties of plastic were identified, with types used in bottles and caps (polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate) appearing the most often. The participants were as varied. Hailing from eight countries including the UK, Japan, and Russia, all ate food wrapped in plastic or drank from plastic bottles. Six consumed sea fish. This suggests plastic contamination during food processing or packaging and "indicates a high likelihood that also many other people involuntarily ingest microplastics," Philipp Schwabl, lead author of the study yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, tells Live Science. Indeed, study authors say "more than 50% of the world population might have microplastics in their stools," per the Guardian. While further research will explore what this means for human health, researchers say microplastics could transmit toxic chemicals and pathogens and affect the digestive system's immune response. "The smallest microplastic particles are capable of entering the bloodstream, the lymphatic system, and may even reach the liver," says Schwabl, mentioning particular concerns for people with gastrointestinal diseases. (Proper contact lens disposal may help.)
– One of the world's weirdest bromances appears to be alive and well: Dennis Rodman has returned to Pyongyang for his first visit to North Korea since his former Celebrity Apprentice boss became president, the BBC reports. Rodman, who has described dictator Kim Jong Un as a "friend for life," told reporters he was "just trying to open a door" and he is sure President Trump will be "happy with the fact that I'm over here trying to accomplish something that we both need," the AP reports. In a tweet, Rodman thanked Potcoin, a cybercurrency used in marijuana transactions, for sponsoring his trip. He wore a Potcoin T-shirt at the airport. Rodman's visit, the first since early 2014, comes at a time of growing US-North Korea tensions. "I know the Trump administration has been trying half-heartedly to start a dialogue with the North Koreans," analyst Joel Wit tells the Los Angeles Times. "It would be strange to use Dennis Rodman as an intermediary," he says, "but under the Trump administration a lot of things are possible that wouldn’t have been with other administrations." When Rodman suggested in 2014 that Trump was interested in visiting Pyongyang, Trump tweeted: "Dennis Rodman was either drunk or on drugs (delusional) when he said I wanted to go to North Korea with him. Glad I fired him on Apprentice!"
– Over the next two days, Washington will be a study in contrasts. Today, President Obama and two key advisers will push for a diplomatic means of avoiding a nuclear Iran; tomorrow, in a controversial speech to Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will push back against the plan, the New York Times reports. To set the scene: Netanyahu left Tel Aviv yesterday for what he called "a fateful, even historic, mission" for which he is "an emissary of all Israel's citizens, even those who do not agree with me, and of the entire Jewish people," Reuters reports. His speech will likely call for boosted sanctions against Iran, but Obama has suggested he would veto any bill giving Congress a chance to legislate on the matter. This weekend, Netanyahu offered conciliatory words, saying he "respected" Obama and that "strength will prevail over differences of opinion." Obama will meet Reuters for an interview this afternoon, while National Security Adviser Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power speak to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group Netanyahu will also address, the Times reports. The paper sees the meetings as a chance for the administration to reaffirm its support for Israel. Indeed, John Kerry yesterday noted on ABC's This Week that Netanyahu "is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously. And we have a closer relationship with Israel right now in terms of security than at any time in history," Reuters reports. Kerry tomorrow will join international officials in Switzerland as they look to outline an Iranian deal by the month's end, the Washington Post reports. Kerry has been working closely—too closely, according to some Iranian lawmakers—with Iran's foreign minister to hammer out a deal, the Times reports. "He has made a huge investment of his time and energy in the talks, and his personal, hands-on involvement in recent months has been crucial to building momentum toward a deal," says an analyst. But some worry that Iran could read Kerry's "eagerness" as an opening to seek more concessions. Meanwhile, the UN's nuclear agency says Iran is coming up short on providing essential information, Reuters reports. "The (IAEA) is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," the agency's chief says.
– Mexican President Pena Nieto has promised sweeping reforms to the country's police amid nationwide outrage over the massacre of 43 students abducted by a local police force working with gang members. "Mexico must change," he said yesterday, unveiling plans to dissolve all 1,800 of the country's local police forces—many of which are notoriously corrupt and infiltrated by gang members—and replace them with state-wide forces, the BBC reports. The president's proposal would also allow the federal government to take over town governments corrupted by cartels. Most of Mexico's police officers belong to local forces and most of them make less than $500 a month, encouraging the corruption Pena Nieto aims to stamp out. But critics say the president is merely repacking initiatives already in progress and trying to repeat a few failed ones, and question is whether things will be any better if the police are put under unified control. "The root problem is the quality of the police, not who commands them," a public security expert tells the Wall Street Journal. "Many state forces are also a disaster." The president's plan will focus on four of the most violent states at first, including Guerrero, where the students were kidnapped and where 11 decapitated bodies were found dumped by a road yesterday, the AP reports.
– Former model Christina Estrada made history Friday when she received a stunning $97 million divorce settlement from a British court, the Telegraph reports. And even that was less than half what she was asking. The settlement includes cash and assets from her ex, Saudi businessman Walid Juffali, and is the largest in English history. “This is what I am accustomed to," the Guardian quotes Estrada as telling the judge. "It is difficult to convey the extraordinary level of luxury and opulence we were fortunate enough to enjoy.” Estrada's initial request included annual payments of $152,000 for handbags, $780,000 for renting private jets, $107,000 for cocktail dresses, and more. The court says the final settlement meets Estrada's "reasonable needs." Estrada, a US citizen, says she knows how all this is "perceived in the wider world." “Having grown up in a middle-class family … I am fully aware that the spectacular life Walid and I led was immensely fortunate and rarefied," the Guardian quotes the former model as saying in a statement. In 2012, Juffali secretly married a 25-year-old model with whom he started a family (Islamic law allows Muslim men to have multiple spouses). Two years later, he divorced Estrada, again without her knowledge. Estrada's lawyers had argued Juffali is worth $10 billion, but the 61-year-old businessman, who is currently being treated for terminal cancer, claims it's more like $147 million, the New York Daily News reports. (A US divorce settlement dwarfs the amount involved here.)
– Maybe this classic Austin Powers scene has affected chess championship rules? Whatever the reason, the European Chess Union has ruled that female players will have to button their shirts from now on, Time reports. "Décolletés [the French word for cleavage] are partly covered in our regulations, which state that in respect to shirts the second from the top button may also be opened, in addition to the very top button," says ECU general secretary Sava Stoisavljevic. In an interview with ChessBase.com, Stoisavljevic adds that the union may follow other companies in restricting the shortness of skirts—to two or four inches above the knee, for example: "I can see that there are many players here who wear very short skirts. It's nice to see chess players with short skirts—they are very pretty girls. But I believe there should still be some limit."
– Michael Flynn's Russia headache just got worse: The two heads of the House Oversight Committee say the erstwhile national security adviser probably broke the law in regard to his foreign business dealings, reports the Washington Post. GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings say they reviewed classified military documents and found that Flynn never received the proper permission to accept payments for a speech in Russia and for lobbying on behalf of Turkey. That means Flynn could face criminal prosecution and may have to surrender any money received, reports the AP. "As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey, or anybody else," said Chaffetz of the former general, per the New York Times. “"And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate, and there are repercussions for a violation of law." Added Cummings: "He was supposed to get permission, he was supposed to report it, and he didn’t." The White House has denied the panel's request for more documents related to Flynn's hiring and subsequent departure, reports the Hill. Flynn resigned in February over phone calls he made to the Russian ambassador before assuming office. (His lawyer has floated the idea of immunity in exchange for testimony.)
– People who stand on glass bridges shouldn't swing sledgehammers, right? Not so, says the Chinese government, at least when it comes to the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon bridge—the highest, longest glass bridge in the world, according to Mashable. In fact, the operators of the bridge allowed Dan Simmons of BBC Click to take a sledgehammer to the glass-bottom bridge that, per the China National Tourism Office, spans more than 1,400 feet (it points out the Grand Canyon Skywalk measures only 69) and is suspended some 1,000 feet above the ground. Simmons' first whack resulted in cracking to the top of a glass panel. But after a dozen blows, the lower two layers were unscathed. The stunt was an attempt to prove the safety of glass bridges after a glass-bottom skywalk in China was closed last year due to cracking that had tourists scrambling to get off of the more than 3,280-foot-high structure. The cracks to a glass panel were caused by a dropped thermos, per the South China Morning Post. The new bridge, which is 20 feet wide and capable of holding up to 800 people at once, is set to open to the public in July, per ABC, which adds that "those wishing for an even more terrifying adventure" may someday be able to bungee jump from the structure. (This fright-inducing glass tourist attraction is located in LA.)
– A massive 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck in the Caribbean Sea Tuesday night—but there were no immediate reports of injuries or major damage after what was one of the strongest earthquakes on record in the region. The US Geological Survey says the quake hit 25 miles off the coast of Honduras' unpopulated Great Swan Island at a relatively shallow depth of 6.2 miles, Weather.com reports. Tsunami warnings were issued for the Caribbean coasts of Mexico and Central America as well as islands including Puerto Rico and Cuba, but they were called off after about an hour, the AP reports. The quake—stronger than the 7.0 quake that devastated Haiti in 2010—could be felt more than 300 miles away in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, but officials haven't reported more damage than cracks to homes in northern provinces. "It felt like a bulldozer was driving past," Rodrigo Anaya Rodriguez tells the Guardian from his home in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. "It didn't last long but was very violent." CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe says the quake hit an "amazingly good spot" in the sea between Honduras and Cuba. Given its size, she says, there would have been a lot more damage if it had been closer to either country.
– It's been 40 years since Roman Polanski set foot on the US mainland, but the disgraced director is said to want to square things up and come back to America without facing jail time, TMZ reports. What needs squaring: his punishment for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977 at Jack Nicholson's house. Lawyer Harland Braun reportedly wants long-sealed testimony in the Polanski case opened to prove that Polanski had cut a deal to spend just 48 days behind bars for the sexual assault. But when the director of Rosemary's Baby was released after serving 42 days, which included psychiatric evaluation, the judge (now deceased) who'd reportedly signed off on the deal allegedly had a change of heart and decided 50 years in prison was a more just punishment. Polanski fled to Paris, where he's been living as a fugitive since, shortly after he agreed to plead guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse and right before his sentencing, per Page Six. A Polish court ruling in a recent Polanski extradition case said Polanski, now 83, had honored his punishment with his original stint behind bars, prompting Braun to call for a Los Angeles County Superior Court to do the same. (Polanski was picked to lead the jury for France's equivalent of the Oscars this month—and women's rights advocates aren't happy.)
– Could it be? A Chinese ship searching for Flight 370 has picked up a ping in the southern Indian Ocean, reports CNN and the BBC. Both cite a report in China's Xinhua news agency. The pulse is 37.5 kHz, the frequency for the Malaysian plane's black-box data recorders, says the president of the beacon's manufacturer. All the reports caution that it could turn out to be yet another false hope, however. "This could be a variety of things," says one oceanographer, noting that the frequency is used by lots of instruments. For the record, the Chinese ship detected the signal at 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude, says the state-run Xinhua. "It is yet to be established whether it is related to the missing jet," the report says. The development comes as dozens of ships and planes intensify their sweeps in the search zone, given the finite battery life of the data recorders.
– Who says America is losing its touch? Well TheStreet did earlier this year, listing 10 iconic American brands now made overseas—like Levi's Jeans, Converse sneakers, and even American Girl dolls. But things aren't all bad, and it is Independence Day. So in the spirit of patriotism, TheStreet decided to list some iconic brands still made in the US of A. Like: Louisville Slugger: As the name implies, MLB's most popular bats still hail from Kentucky. Indian Motorcycles: This century-old company recently moved its factory—from North Carolina to Iowa. Slinky: Still ambling down out of Pennsylvania, as it has been since 1945. Gibson Guitars: The original Kalamazoo plant closed in 1984, but Les Paul is still all-American. The guitars are hand-crafted in Nashville. Kohler Fixtures: Did you know the name "Kohler" refers to Kohler, Wisconsin? Or that the company's products have been made there since 1912? Now you do. Weber Grills: While Weber's gas models are made overseas, its classic black-domed charcoal grills are still made in Palatine, Illinois. For the full list, click here, or to jump to where we've left off, click here.
– Ready, aim—shoot and kill a friend who's wearing a bullet-proof vest. Police say that very tragedy unfolded in Baltimore on Wednesday when Mark Ramiro, 30, shot Darnell Mitchell, 28, with a .22-caliber bullet, Reuters reports. A third friend apparently recorded Mitchell on video boasting that he was going to take a "deuce deuce in the chest" to test his bulletproof vest. But Ramiro aimed too high, the video ended, and Mitchell was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Ramiro now faces first- and second-degree murder along with two gun charges, the Baltimore Sun reports. Why first-degree? A veteran defense attorney told WBAL-TV that he questioned the charge, but added, "Premeditation—this computer (points toward the brain) works very rapidly. Premeditation can happen in a split, split second."
– "He was singularly focused and obsessed with mass murders," the FBI writes about Adam Lanza in a newly unsealed interview. The New York Daily News reports the FBI released more than 1,500 pages of documents on the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting Tuesday. Most of the heavily redacted files consist of grand jury subpoenas and interviews with neighbors and others regarding the shooter, Adam Lanza, who killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders, according to the Hartford Courant. Lanza, 20, killed himself during the 2012 shooting. Here are some of the details revealed in the unsealed documents:
– Some intriguing details about the role of cell phones in yesterday's dual raids in France that killed three suspected terrorists: Hidden helper: When Cherif and Said Kouachi holed up in a building outside Paris, they were unaware that a man identified as Lilian Lepere, 26, was hiding inside. He was reportedly under a sink but close enough to hear the brothers talk, and he began texting police information about their whereabouts, his whereabouts, and the building itself, reports Sky News. The dialogue lasted three hours, and a police official says it gave authorities crucial help ahead of the raid, reports the Wall Street Journal. Didn't hang up: The hostage-taker at the kosher market in Paris, Amedy Coulibaly, called a TV station at one point but failed to properly hang up the phone after talking. "This allowed police to hear him saying a final prayer before his death, perhaps suggesting that this prompted the police raid," reports AP. Hostage location: Several people at the market hid in a refrigeration unit, including a father and his toddler-age son. When the man's mother realized they were trapped inside the market, she opted not to call in case they were hidden. Instead, she gave the phone number to police, who were able to track the location of the hostages inside the store, reports AFP. The information may have helped them survive when the raid took place.
– More than two years after she was declared brain dead, Jahi McMath is as "healthy and beautiful as ever" and is "proving naysayers wrong," according to family members. In a March 15 Facebook post on the "Keep Jahi McMath on life support" page, family members shared a recent photo of the girl, who is now 15, NJ.com reports. The post continued, per NJ.com, "A fighter, A warrior, A blessed child, Gods got your back little girl, keep fighting. Your testimony will be a great one." The post is no longer publicly accessible (the Facebook link returns the line: "The link you followed may have expired, or the page may only be visible to an audience you're not in"), and a fresh post to the page made late Sunday night asks anyone "here to spew your negative thoughts" to "remove yourself." The former Oakland, Calif., resident, who went into cardiac arrest after routine tonsil surgery in late 2013, has been on life support at a facility in New Jersey since early 2014. McMath's family—who moved to New Jersey because the state accommodates people who object to brain death declarations on religious grounds—has been seeking to have her death certificate revoked. Declaring her alive would allow them to move back to California, where she is considered legally dead, and would require insurance companies to cover the cost of her care. Fox 29 reports that in an earlier Facebook update, Jahi's mother, Nailah Winkfield, thanked those who shared their opinions about the case, even negative ones. "Hopefully my daughter can change some of the ways brain death is viewed in today's society," she wrote. "Honestly, I think she already has."
– Hatchimals, the hottest toys of the holiday season, laid an egg with many expectant kids Christmas morning when their furry hatchlings refused to come out of their shells. Now the manufacturer, Spin Master, is facing a class-action lawsuit from a California mom who alleges her child's egg was a dud. The lawsuit, filed by Jodie Hejduk of Bakersfield, Calif., on behalf of what the suit says could be millions of consumers, claims Spin Master ran "a bait-and-switch marketing scheme." Hatchimals are plush animals stuffed into plastic eggs that, when the egg is rubbed and cuddled for about half an hour, should begin to peck their way out. While Spin Master acknowledges some of the toys didn't work as intended, the company tells CNBC it "provided troubleshooting support and where required immediately made available replacement products." The toy cost about $50 in stores, but it was so popular it spawned internet bidding up to $350—only to leave many buyers disappointed. One customer wrote on Amazon.com that she "watched every YouTube video we could for help, but to no avail," the lawsuit says, per NBC News. Others complained that calling Spin Master had done no good because the company was "impossible to contact," or that when they got through they were told to open the egg themselves. Spin Master blames the toy's popularity, saying the company "experienced a higher than anticipated number of calls" over the holidays, and that the lawsuit's allegations are "not based on actual facts." But an attorney on the case tells Courthouse News that the toy's failure rate is "exceptionally high," and that the company knew the product wasn't ready for market. Hejduk's lawyer, Mark Geragos, tells ABC News his client was never offered a refund for her defective Hatchimal.
– The good news is that scientists now think they know why so many dead dolphins are washing up on shores along the East Coast—it's a virus akin to measles, reports Wired. The bad news is that they can't do anything but let it run its course. So far, about 330 dolphins have washed up, mostly in Virginia, a figure 10 times higher than normal. (And, of course, hundreds, perhaps thousands, more likely never reached shore.) A similar outbreak of this morbillivirus in 1987-88 caused 800 dead dolphins to wash ashore, and if the new outbreak follows the same pattern, the virus will probably remain in play until next spring. It's expected to move south along the Atlantic Seaboard. “At this point, there isn’t anything we can do to stop the virus,” says an official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We don’t have a vaccine that is developed that could be easily deployed in a wild population of bottlenose dolphins.” The dolphins probably lost their immunity since the last outbreak, a vet tells NBC News. It's not clear how the outbreak started, but scientists figure the coastal dolphins picked up the virus from some other marine mammal. It's all but impossible this strain could spread to humans, notes ABC News.
– Saturn's moon Titan, which happens to be larger than the planet Mercury, is cold. Very cold. As in -290 degrees Fahrenheit is not out of the ordinary. These super low temps, combined with an atmosphere roughly 1.5 times as dense as Earth's, have resulted in a few extraordinary bodies of liquid methane and ethane, reports Extreme Tech, and scientists are anxious to explore their depths. (In fact, Titan is the only body aside from Earth to boast liquid lakes on its surface.) So NASA is working up a (very early) model of a submarine drone that could do just that—one that CNET reports will likely be nuclear-powered, weigh a ton, and come equipped with a seafloor camera, sampling system, and other fancy futuristic robotic accoutrements. But don't get too excited just yet. First, this is a fully automated mission: "Even if it were possible for humans to go swimming in Titan's seas," notes CNET, it "would be something like swimming in a freezing ocean of liquefied natural gas." Hence, NASA's goal of sending the "highly capable science craft" to Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare, around the year 2040, in what it calls "an unprecedented planetary exploration mission." Many details remain to be sorted out, including how to get the craft to Titan (Boeing's X-37 is a possibility), how to land it (parachute drop), and while there, how to communicate with Earthlings (planar phased-array antenna). (Something else on Titan has been stumping NASA.)
– The effort to identify all of John Wayne Gacy's victims has solved another decades-old disappearance, and while it isn't exactly a happy ending, Andy Drath's relatives now know that he wasn't murdered by the notorious serial killer. Drath was 16 when he was last heard from in Illinois in 1978, and DNA submitted as part of the Gacy probe helped investigators discover that he was "John Doe No. 89," who was shot dead in San Francisco in 1979, CNN reports. His half-sister, Dr. Willa Wertheimer, submitted her DNA to the Gacy investigation because he fit the profile of the Chicago killer's dozens of victims. "You should never lose hope in finding your loved one," Wertheimer said in a release issued by the office of Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, per the Los Angeles Times. "He could still be living, or at least your heart can know the peace of bringing him home." John Doe No. 89, she says, "now will come home to his kid sister with his own name—Andy." Now that Drath has been identified, authorities in San Francisco are taking another look at the cold case in the hope of finding the killer, CNN reports. The identities of seven of Gacy's 33 known victims are still unknown. (The probe has found five missing people alive, including a man in Montana who lost touch with his family after getting "caught up in the '70s lifestyle.")
– Charlo Greene made headlines in 2014 when the then 26-year-old memorably quit her TV reporting gig on air while announcing her intention to push for the legalization of marijuana in Alaska: She said, "F--- it, I quit," before walking out of view. But as the Guardian reports, her ensuing off-screen plight has been largely ignored, even though she faces more than a half-century in prison. That's because Greene, whose legal name is Charlene Egbe, isn't just a cannabis advocate but the owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club, which she created on April 20, 2014, a full six months before Alaska voted to legalize the adult use of cannabis. In other words, she was receiving "donations" for marijuana through club "memberships" before it was legal to do so. Police raided the club twice and detectives made several undercover purchases, and though Greene wasn't directly involved in them, state prosecutors are charging her because the club is registered under her name. She's pleaded not guilty to charges of "misconduct involving a controlled substance," and the original indictment listed eight offenses that amounted to a possible 24 years in jail. The Guardian broke the news to Greene that six offenses have since been added, raising the total to 54 years. In the Weed Blog, Greene calls this a "modern-day lynching," and tells High Times that she hopes the cannabis community rallies behind her. "I need help more than ever," she says. "Now that I could lose the rest of my life because of cannabis, it feels like the people I fought for have abandoned me." (Alaskans can't smoke weed in public.)
– It was almost a good idea. Above the Law takes note of a video making the rounds of a bank robbery suspect in Ohio. When an officer finds the alleged note to the teller and dumps it on the hood of the cruiser, the man eats it without the cops noticing. Too bad for him, a dashboard cam captured it all. ''He grabbed it in his mouth, just like Pacman,'' an officer tells the Akron Beacon Journal. ''He just ate it right there.'' Lucky for police, they also found a pistol and ink-stained cash in the suspect's car.
– Would you pay $200,000 for an old white jumpsuit with sweat stains in the armpits? No? What if said jumpsuit (and sweat) belonged to none other than the King himself? One of Elvis Presley's suits—featuring, in addition to the sweat, a bejeweled peacock and worn during his Las Vegas performances—is going up for auction tomorrow at Sotheby's, where it's expected to fetch between $100,000 and $200,000, Time reports. Presley considered the blue and green peacock—adorned with rhinestones and gold lame and stretched across the front, back, and sides of the suit—to be good luck, CNBC reports. Why the sweat stains? The suit is understandably difficult to clean. Also up for grabs at the "A Rock & Roll History: Presley to Punk" auction: Bob Dylan's original handwritten "Like a Rolling Stone" lyrics on hotel stationery; a piano played by John Lennon, Elton John, and David Bowie; and Jimi Hendrix's infamous $1 contract.
– Going scuba diving specifically to spot great white sharks maybe already didn't sound like a super safe idea, and after watching the terrifying video captured by a California man on vacation in Mexico, you may take it off your bucket list once and for all. The man captured the moment a great white shark managed to break into, and then quickly out of, a cage that had a diver inside at the time. The diver emerged unscathed, and the man who shot the video explains to ABC News that the shark was not being aggressive. "These awesome sharks are biting at large chunks of tuna tied to a rope," he explains. "When a great white shark lunges and bites something, it is temporarily blinded. They also cannot swim backwards. So this shark lunged at the bait, accidentally hit the side of the cage, was most likely confused and not able to swim backwards, it thrust forward and broke the metal rail of the cage." So go ahead and put shark viewing back on your bucket list, we guess.
– Harvey is getting its proper attention in the US, but another devastating flood is unfolding in a different part of the world. Monsoon rains have triggered flooding and mudslides that have left more than 950 people dead in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, reports the AP. In all, about 40 million have been affected by the disaster, with most of the deaths coming in the northern Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Assam. The UN foresees a humanitarian disaster with hunger and disease to follow. Click through the photo gallery for a sense of the devastation. BuzzFeed also has images.
– Just as exciting as a Maury paternity test, but slightly more stomach-churning: The DNA test results are in for a KFC meal a California man claimed was a deep-fried rat. And those results show that it's definitely, absolutely, without a doubt nothing other than a fried chicken tender, just as the restaurant chain has insisted from day one, ABC News reports. The company had commissioned a lab test after 25-year-old Devorise Dixon posted a photo earlier this month to his Facebook page that showed a breaded, fried piece of … something that looked disgustingly like a rat had fallen into the batter vat. The photo soon went viral, and Dixon claimed on Facebook that when he went back to the restaurant, a manager admitted it was a rat and apologized. KFC decided to call Dixon's bluff. "Recently, a customer questioned the quality of a KFC product, and this received considerable publicity given the sensational nature of his claim," the company said in a statement given to ABC. On June 19, "the customer's attorney turned over the product in question for testing at an independent lab, and the results officially confirmed what KFC knew all along—the product was chicken and not a rat as he claimed." ABC couldn't reach Dixon for comment, but KFC has the obviously simple explanation for the oddly-shaped repast: "Our chicken tenders often vary in size and shape." The company also wants Dixon to say he's sorry and "cease making false claims," per Fox News. (We had a feeling fried rat wasn't part of KFC's $185 million plan to win customers back.)
– A new children's book isn't just written for kids—it's written to make them fall asleep, and fast. Author Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin, a Swedish behavioral psychologist, says he filled The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep with psychological reinforcement techniques to make young listeners doze off in minutes, the Independent reports. "These [techniques] are formed in a way to help the child relax, fall asleep faster and sleep calmer every night," Forssen Ehrlin says. "The tale gives suggestions to the child's unconscious mind to sleep." Not only does protagonist Roger The Rabbit encounter characters like Sleep Snail, Heavy-Eyed Owl, and Uncle Yawn, but parent-readers are instructed to yawn often and speak italicized words in a calm and slow manner, the Telegraph reports. Think it's bizarre? Well, it's the first self-published book to top Amazon's best-seller list. Forssen Ehrlin says he got the idea on a long road trip when his mom dozed off, and he realized the power of his techniques. He devised a story within three years, and saw the Swedish version published in 2011; the English translation appeared last year. In the story, Roger The Rabbit "is just like the child" in needing to fall asleep, a doctor tells CBS News. "So the whole time, you're talking about sleep, you're trying to solve a problem about sleep and you see how the character falls asleep." But while Amazon reviews are mostly glowing, Imogen Williams at the Guardian considers the book's manipulation "sinister" and "terrifying": "Bedtime stories are not, to me, about deceiving your child into conking out," she writes, and vows to continue her "bedtime pilgrimages up and down the stairs. After all, there’s always gin." (See 15 sad, strange things that keep us awake at night.)
– Archaeologists think they've found the first evidence of prisoners trying to dig their way out of a Nazi death camp. The find comes after more than a decade of excavations at the Sobibor camp in Poland; Nazis leveled the place after its prisoners revolted in 1943, LiveScience explains. In the course of their work, the team last month "came across two rows of barbed wire," one archaeologist tells the Telegraph. "Digging down we found the traces of the tunnel. It was about as wide as a human, and we were 99% certain that it was an escape tunnel." The tunnel, found 5 feet below ground, runs an astonishing 32 feet, from under where one of the barracks once stood to the other side of the barbed wire. The Telegraph explains that the barracks in question would have housed the sonderkommando: prisoners tasked with bringing victims to—and bodies out of—the gas chambers. Having avoided an immediate death, archaeologists speculate they would have had time to work on the tunnel. There's no evidence of whether it was actually used.
– Like a strong, simple letter of recommendation? Well it helps if the subject is a genius. Mathematician Richard Duffin wrote a letter to Princeton University for John Forbes Nash, Jr., who became an esteemed mathematician and the subject of the film A Beautiful Mind, Mashable reports. Dated Feb. 11, 1948, the letter reads: "This is to recommend John F. Nash, Jr. who has applied for entrance to the graduate college at Princeton. Mr. Nash is 19 years old and is graduating from Carnegie Tech in June. He is a mathematical genius. Yours Sincerely, Richard J. Duffin." The letter was successful, notes Vox, and Nash went on to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994, the Star-Ledger reports. Nash and his wife died in a taxi crash last month, but weren't supposed to be in that taxi.
– Ariel Sharon's death has brought on a bout of hagiography. The American and Israeli media will call him "controversial," but then call him a hero. Joe Biden praised him for his pursuit of peace yesterday, while Henry Kissinger terms him a "peacemaker" in today's Washington Post, noting his late-life willingness to pull out of Gaza. It's a "grotesque" characterization, Rashid Khalidi argues at Foreign Policy. "It is hard to imagine this kind of kid-glove treatment of anyone else with such a list of atrocities to his name." Khalidi was living in West Beirut during Sharon's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and it was obvious Israel "had no qualms about killing large numbers of civilians" to get at the PLO. "A building that housed refugees located several blocks from my home … was entirely destroyed from the air, killing dozens," he writes. Soon after, a car bomb went off, presumably "in order to kill those trying to rescue survivors," nearly killing one of Khalidi's friends. Sharon characterized all Palestinians as terrorists, and did more than anyone to prevent a contiguous Palestinian state. "In a more just world, he would have ended up facing the International Criminal Court in The Hague." Click for the full column.
– A New Orleans judge officially approved Robert Durst's February plea deal on a gun charge and sentenced him to seven years in prison on Wednesday, Reuters reports. For more than a year, the real estate heir has languished in a New Orleans prison after being nabbed with a handgun in his hotel room. He was busted for that felony just one day before the series finale of HBO's The Jinx, in which he famously appeared to confess to three murders by saying, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." US District Judge Kurt Engelhardt also agreed that Durst can be transferred to a low-security prison with medical facilities in San Pedro, Calif., where the 73-year-old's attorneys say his "advanced age and poor health" can be better addressed, per the Advocate. In California, Durst will face a murder charge in the 2000 death of friend Susan Berman, the AP reports. (A Texas judge believes Durst once dumped a cat's head on her doorstep.)
– Sometimes dogs save humans, sometimes humans save dogs. The latter was the case in Canada last week when a man punched a cougar that had a death grip on his 80-pound husky's neck, reports Reuters. Will Gibb, a 31-year-old technician from Red Deer, had pulled up to a Tim Hortons for coffee and let his dogs Sasha and Mongo out of his truck for a quick run around the parking lot, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. When he heard Sasha yelping in pain seconds later, he "went running" to save her, he tells the CBC. But it wasn't until he "punched it in the side of the head" that he saw the animal was a cougar. (Sightings are common but attacks rare, says an RCMP deputy.) The cat ran into the woods, but the punch proved insufficient. As Gibb tried to pick up Sasha's twitching body, the apparently confused dog bit him and the cougar reemerged, so he had to throw punches with his right arm while trying to protect his dog and his hurt left arm. "She was fighting for her life," Gibb says of Sasha, who ran to safety. When the cougar went for Mongo, Gibb grabbed a big stick and got in its way before chasing it off into the woods again. With a vet clinic just a block away, Sasha was tended to quickly, while local police found and killed the cougar. The vet says Sasha had to be sewn up in her chest and had deep bites around her neck, but she survived thanks to her owner. (And you thought the guy who punched a kangaroo was brave.)
– President Obama wasn't the only show on the Sunday dial today: On the eve of the fiscal cliff, Lindsey Graham was upbeat about the chances of a deal, telling Fox News they were "exceedingly good." "Hats off to the president," said Graham, according to Politico. "He stood his ground. He's going to get tax rate increases. It will be a political victory for the president." John Barrasso wasn't nearly so positive, saying, "We’re trying to line up a Rubik’s cube right now, and we're not there yet." He blamed Obama for "outsourcing" negotiations to Congress, calling it "a monumental failure of presidential leadership." Elsewhere on your Sunday dial, as per Politico: Chuck Schumer on the cliff: "I've been a legislator for 37 years, and I've watched how these things work. On these big, big agreements, they almost always happen at the last minute. Neither side likes to give up its position. But then, each side, realizing that the alternative is worse, comes to an agreement. So while an agreement is hardly a certainty, I certainly wouldn't rule it out at this last minute." Dianne Feinstein on gun control: "America has to bite the bullet of what these incidents mean to our people, to our nation and our nation's standing in the world. When you have someone walking in and slaying in the most brutal way, 6-year-olds, something is really wrong." Tom Vilsack on that other (farm bill) 'cliff:' "Consumers are going to be shocked when instead of seeing $3.60 a gallon for milk, they see $7 a gallon for milk. And that’s going to ripple throughout all of the commodities if this thing goes on for an extended period of time."
– The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in a death row case, but this one has an unusual element. The case involves Robert McCoy, who is currently on Louisiana's death row after being convicted of a triple homicide back in 2011. McCoy has always maintained his innocence, but his attorney, Robert English, defied McCoy's wishes during the trial and told the jury that McCoy was guilty—figuring it was the only hope of avoiding a death sentence, explains NBC News. The gambit didn't work, however. McCoy was convicted and sentenced to death, and now McCoy is arguing that his constitutional right to mount a defense was violated. More background and developments: The crime: McCoy is accused of killing his estranged wife's teenage son, mother, and stepfather, while searching for his wife, and the Washington Post reports that prosecutors had compelling evidence. On a 911 call, McCoy's mother-in-law could be heard saying, "She ain’t here, Robert. I don’t know where she is," before a gunshot rings out and the call is disconnected. Witnesses saw McCoy's car leaving the area, and cops later found the phone his mother-in-law used to call 911 in the vehicle.
– A Dutch report on the MH17 crash concludes the plane was shot down by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile that struck the front left side of the plane near the cockpit, Dutch Safety Board Chairman Tjibbe Joustra said at a press conference on Tuesday. The report, the result of a 15-month-long investigation, notes the explosion sent thousands of metal objects in all directions and hundreds hit the plane with "tremendous force," Joustra said, per the Guardian. He added shrapnel from the Buk missile was found inside the bodies of the pilots, who died instantly, along with traces of paint from a Buk missile. The BBC's Anna Holligan, who spoke to relatives briefed on the report, says all passengers and crew would've lost consciousness immediately as the plane broke apart in the air. A 65-foot reconstruction of a portion of the plane, revealed at the press conference, showed holes perforating the upper part of the cockpit, according to reporter Luke Harding. "We can't be 100% sure" that no one suffered, "but we've got to sort of think that was the case," a relative says. The report mainly focuses on the cause of the crash and avoids "blame and culpability"; a separate criminal investigation will point fingers, reports AFP. The report at least rejects Moscow's claim that the Boeing 777 was downed by a missile fired by Ukrainian troops on July 17, 2014, on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. But about 30 minutes before the report's release, Moscow had dismissed it. "It's always special when people already know that they don't agree with a report that's not even published yet," Joustra said.
– Port Authority Police Officer Jesse Turano was patrolling the George Washington Bridge Tuesday night when he got a call about a man who had entered a closed walkway, even after a security guard ordered him not to. When he got there, Turano "could just tell by his mannerisms" that the man "was possibly emotionally disturbed," he tells the Star-Ledger. When the man put his hands on the outer railing and braced himself to kick off, Turano sprang into action. "Officer Turano grabbed him around the waist while the man was airborne [and] pulled him back onto the walkway," a Port Authority rep tells NJ.com. All of which might be amazing for some people, but not for Turano—it was the fifth time this year he has stopped a would-be jumper, says the rep. Turano shrugs off any suggestion that he is, in the Star-Ledger's words, a "superhero." "I guess it's always good if you save somebody's life," he says. "But I don't really think about it too much." The jumper, at least, seemed appreciative. "He kept thanking me and I said the best thanks you can give me is if you get yourself some help." The New York Post reports that 2012 saw a record number of suicides on the bridge: 18, as well as 43 attempts.
– There's a disclaimer at the bottom of the News Nerd site clarifying that articles found therein "are purely satirical," but the thousands of people who shared one of the stories on Facebook and Twitter this weekend may not have noticed said disclaimer. The satirical article in question, published April 11, claimed that Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle got into a fistfight at an Atlanta concert in March. But people seemed to believe it when it went viral, Gawker reports, and now Franklin is suing News Nerd—for $10 million. Franklin tells the Detroit News, through her publicist, that the News Nerd article was "not presented as satire or humor. It was presented as a serious news story intended to depict me in a slanderous and derogatory way—defamation of character." Here are a few lines from the "serious" story: "Onlookers say LaBelle quickly removed her wig and earrings as she approached Franklin. Aretha, knowing that the removal of earrings is a tell-tale sign that a fight is about to ensue, attempted to prepare herself for the confrontation. Franklin was quickly struck with a Mayweather style right and left and stumbled backwards, landing awkwardly." Franklin had on Tuesday issued a rather amusing statement after the article started to pick up steam: "I've never heard anything crazier ... On March 20, I was in New York City readying for my birthday patty (Sorry. LOL. Laughing at my typo error). I meant PARTY, which we all had one fabulous time. Patti and I are cool and we always have been."
– A 59-year-old woman in Ireland paralyzed with severe multiple sclerosis has lost her court fight against the nation's ban on assisted suicide, reports the Irish Times. Marie Fleming sought permission to end her life with the help of her partner of 18 years, but Dublin's High Court rejected the request, reports Reuters: "There are no words to express the difficulty we had in arriving at this decision," wrote one judge. "Yet the fact remains that if this court were to unravel a thread of this law by even the most limited constitutional adjudication in her favour, it would—or at least might—open a Pandora's box which would be impossible to close." The judge called Fleming "in many ways the most remarkable witness" he and his fellow judges had ever encountered, and the court ordered the state to pay her legal costs. Fleming's lawyer read a statement on her behalf, saying she was "very disappointed and saddened" at the ruling. She can still appeal.
– A West Virginia Pentecostal pastor who used poisonous snakes during religious services has died of a rattlesnake bite. Mack Wolford, who just turned 44, was killed by a snake he had owned for years, reports the Washington Post. He was bitten during an outdoor service at a state park he had hoped would be a "homecoming like the old days," filled with people speaking in tongues, handling snakes and having a "great time," he said on his Facebook page. “Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother,” he wrote last week. Wolford was bitten on the thigh when he sat next to the rattlesnake during the service. He was taken to a relative's home to recover, but was rushed later to a local hospital where he was declared dead. Wolford believed that the Bible requires Christians to handle poisonous snakes to test their faith in God, and remain steadfast in their belief that they will not be bitten or will be healed if they are attacked. Death by rattlesnake is "excruciating—the venom attacks the nervous system, and it's vicious and gruesome when it hits," a snake expert told the Post. Wolford was the son of a snake-handler preacher who died of a snake bite when Wolford was 15.
– The death of a 4-year-old girl from malaria on Monday in Italy has local health authorities searching for answers and worrying about a resurgence of the deadly disease, NPR reports. Italy was declared malaria-free in 1970, and the mosquito that carries the disease no longer lives in the country. "It baffles us how she could have been infected,” NBC News quotes a doctor at a hospital in Trento as saying. Sofia Zago was brought to the hospital on Saturday with a high fever and quickly fell into a coma. Tests showed she had cerebral malaria, the deadliest form of the disease, and she died Monday after being moved to a hospital in Brescia. A doctor says it was the first case of native malaria he's seen in Trento in 30 years. "It's a mystery, almost impossible," the general manager of the provincial health service says regarding the case. Doctors believe Sofia may have been infected during a trip to a beach resort near Venice. It's possible she was infected by a mosquito that had managed to travel to Italy inside of luggage. It's also possible, though very unlikely, Sofia contracted the disease a few weeks ago when she was hospitalized for childhood diabetes. The BBC reports there were two children at the hospital at the same time recovering from malaria they picked up in Africa, though they were in a different ward and Sofia received no blood transfusions. Italy's health ministry has ordered an investigation, according to the AP. While Europe was declared malaria-free in 2015, there have been several individual cases of locally transmitted malaria in recent years, including one in Rome in 2009. (After decades of work, a malaria vaccine is finally here.)
– There's plenty of speculation in DC about whether President Trump might fire special counsel Robert Mueller. But Mike Allen of Axios reports on another strategy being explored by the president's legal team: Appoint a second special counsel to investigate Mueller's investigation. The story suggests that Trump's attorneys trust Mueller himself but not others in the Justice Department. For example, they point to a Fox News story Monday detailing how the wife of a Justice Department official named Bruce Ohr worked for the company behind the infamous anti-Trump dossier that emerged during the election. Ohr was recently demoted for concealing his own meetings with the company, Fusion GPS. "The Department of Justice and FBI cannot ignore the multiple problems that have been created by these obvious conflicts of interests," Trump attorney Jay Sekulow tells Axios. "These new revelations require the appointment of a special counsel to investigate." It's not clear how likely this is to happen, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions has previously floated the idea of a second special counsel to cover a wide range of GOP concerns. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has a profile of Trump's legal trio: Sekulow (the TV presence), Ty Cobb (a White House attorney), and John Dowd (Trump's personal attorney). They "serve not only as Trump's lawyers but also as his strategists, publicists, therapists—and, based on Dowd's claim that he wrote a controversial presidential tweet, ghostwriters," per the Post.
– An eBay merchant who sued two customers over negative reviews in 2013 was ordered this week to pay more than $19,000 in legal fees by an Ohio judge, ABC News reports. Two years ago, Amy Nicholls bought a microscope from eBay seller Med Express. When the microscope arrived, she had to pay an extra $1.44 in postage despite already paying a $12 shipping fee. Med Express apologized for the mistake and offered to reimburse her, but she left a negative review on eBay anyway. Med Express claimed Nicholls' bad review hurt its reputation and sued her for libel. ABC reports the company filed a "nearly identical" suit that same day against a second customer, Dennis Rogan, for leaving a "neutral" review. The lawsuits, understandably, brought negative attention onto Med Express, and the company withdrew them, ABC reports. Regardless, Nicholls counter-sued Med Express with the help of two lawyers working for free. According to Ars Technica, Med Express agreed to pay $5,500 in legal fees during a trial in 2014 but never did, leading to a second trial. The judge found the company changed its testimony and wasn't credible, ordering it to now pay $19,250 to the two lawyers representing Nicholls. "We were obviously happy to see that the Magistrate recognized the frivolous nature of the claims," according to a statement from the lawyers, who credited Nicholls and Rogan for striking "a blow in favor of the First Amendment rights of all online commenters." (The first item ever sold on eBay was broken.)
– A surprise announcement out of India Tuesday night is being called by local media a "surgical strike" against currency corruption that's infiltrated the nation, the BBC reports. Per CNNMoney, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the country's two largest current bank notes—the 500-rupee note and 1,000-rupee note (equivalent to about $7.50 and $15, respectively), which equal about 85% of the cash currently moving around India—were taken out of circulation in their current incarnation as of midnight Tuesday, which the government hopes will lure people out of hiding who've been stockpiling money without paying taxes on it. The idea is to force them to swap the cash for legit replacement money at banks and post offices before the 50-day deadline for such trades arrives on Dec. 30. Experts say there's a preponderance of this so-called "black money" in India, and by drawing it all out in droves, banks will be able to send up a red flag if people come in with large amounts, possibly helping the government catch tax evaders. There are about 16.5 billion of the 500-rupee bills and 6.7 billion of the higher denomination now in circulation (ATMs will be shuttered Wednesday and Thursday so more notes won't be introduced into the flow). In place of the now-almost-worthless notes, the government will issue new 500- and 2,000-rupee notes with images of Gandhi on them, the Wall Street Journal reports.
– Donald Trump's lawyer has apparently decided that it's his turn to make the gaffes. In an interview with CNN Wednesday, notoriously combative Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen interrupted host Brianna Keilar when she said that the campaign was "down," Politico reports. "Says who?" he asked. "Polls. Most of them. All of them?" she replied. "Says who?" Cohen asked again. When she repeated it was polls, he responded, "OK, which polls?” and Keilar said: “All of them." USA Today reports that Twitter users were quick to mock Cohen and are now replying "Says who?" to all his tweets. Cohen, in what Law Newz calls "typical lawyer fashion," also took issue with Trump's overhaul of campaign staff being called a "shake-up," insisting it was actually a "change-up." Cohen also raised eyebrows when he told Kielar that Trump knows about "the African-American problem in this country," the Independent reports. "What I meant to say is the problem that exists in the African-American community," he later said. (Michael Moore says he "knows for a fact" that Trump never really wanted to be president.)
– Mitt Romney has been doing his opponent some serious favors during his trip to London. He's managed to offend the British public with remarks about Olympic preparedness, prompting a witty comeback from David Cameron. He let slip that he'd met with the boss of MI6. And he called the leader of the opposition Labor party "Mr. Leader," not the norm in the UK. It's "almost too embarrassing" to compare Candidate Obama's Europe trip with Romney's, writes Nicholas Watt in the Guardian. "Obama wooed a quarter of a million people in Berlin while Romney was mocked by the British prime minister," Watt notes. Here's a tip for the candidate: "Try not to offend your host, particularly when he is the leader of your closest sister party in a country that is meant to enjoy a 'special relationship' with the US." Another Romney gaffe, picked up by Gawker: He said he was looking "out of the backside of 10 Downing Street," which sounds even worse in Britain than it does in the States.
– A Connecticut-sized swath of oxygen-deprived waters off the Gulf Coast is a "poster child for how we are using and abusing our natural resources," says one researcher in Louisiana. In its 30th annual survey, the Louisiana Marine Consortium shows the dead zone has shrunk to about 5,000 square miles and may have stabilized, reports Reuters. (It previously measured as many as 8,200 square miles.) Still, the Gulf Coast dead zone remains second in size only to one off Finland; it extends along the Louisiana coastline from the Mississippi River Delta to the border with Texas. Since the 1960s, nitrogen fertilizer, mostly from Midwest cornfields, has been drawn into streams and rivers by rainwater and poured straight into the Gulf via the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, the Times-Picayune explains. There it feeds algae blooms that turn oxygen into carbon dioxide when it decays—poor conditions for fish and shrimp. Nitrates and nitrogen levels continue to increase, the scientists say. The EPA has tried to shrink the dead zone to 1,991 square miles since 2001 and isn’t making progress. Environmental groups have sued the agency to force its hand in adopting needed regulations to reduce harmful runoff. "We keep being told by both regulators and industry that a hands-off approach … is working just fine, but the Dead Zone is clearly not going away," one attorney tells the Times-Picayune. Louisiana legislators claim the dead zone is natural and want to remove its Gulf waters from the "impaired waters list," reports Nature World News. Activists say similarly harmful algae blooms in both Ohio and Florida prove current efforts aren’t working. (In other bad news about algae blooms, toxic blooms are so common in Ohio that summertime swimming bans are "routine.")
– On a November 2004 morning in Texas, Candice Anderson was driving her fiance, Mikale Erickson, to pick up his car from a friend's house when her Saturn Ion failed to negotiate a slight curve, went off the road, and hit a tree. The airbags did not deploy and there were no skid marks; Erickson was killed, and Anderson barely survived. She had a trace amount of Xanax in her system at the time, and though there were no other drugs nor alcohol present, authorities charged her with intoxication manslaughter. She ultimately pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and served five years' probation, though she always wondered what caused the accident—she has no memory of the day. Late last month, she found out: Erickson's death is one of the 13 GM has linked to its faulty ignition switches; the car had lost power, which would have also disabled the airbags. "It's been a question if I was at fault for his death, and I've carried it for so long," Anderson tells CBS News. "Every part of my life's been affected from it." Last month, Erickson's mother, Rhonda, explained to the New York Times that she had initially been angry with her son, who was 25 at the time, and Anderson, who was 21, assuming their recklessness (they had both experimented with recreational drugs, possibly as recently as the night prior to the accident) was the cause of the accident. But now she knows the truth—she wrote to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to have it confirmed—and she believes Anderson's record should be cleared. Both women also want an apology from GM, which never contacted the Erickson family to assume responsibility for the crash.
– This story likely won't do much to raise Comcast's popularity—or lack thereof. A Washington state woman on Tuesday reached out to consumer advocate Christopher Elliott with a problem. She needed to change the name on her Comcast bill, and after phone calls and an in-person visit to a Comcast location, remained unsuccessful. The bill continued to read: "A--hole Brown." Yes, you read that right. The bill had previously been addressed to "Ricardo Brown" (her husband's name) but was apparently changed by a Comcast employee. Brown suspects the alteration occurred after she called to cancel her cable services. Wired points out that Comcast makes it "frighteningly difficult" to ax services, and Brown was indeed redirected to a retention specialist during her call. She says she was "never rude," but was firm: She wanted to pay the $60 termination fee and pare down her services. Elliott dove in, first verifying with Comcast that the bill hadn't been altered by Brown and did indeed contain the unfortunate first name. Verification made. (Wired verified the story as well.) A regional VP of communications then called Elliott to express that the company has "zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior"; a Comcast director vowed to fire the offending employee. The company's initial offer to Brown: waiving that $60 fee. Brown expressed to Elliott that she thought she deserved more, saying, "I am requesting everything back I paid Comcast for doing this to me"—everything meaning two years' worth of bills. Yesterday afternoon, Comcast agreed to that. (This remains perhaps the most memorable Comcast customer horror story.)
– A journal called Aggressive Behavior has published research disputing the widely-held theory that boys will beat you up, whereas girls will talk behind your back. Actually, the study suggests, boys do both: In scientific terms, they are both "physically" and "relationally" more aggressive than girls. The study followed 620 students of both sexes through middle school and high school in six Georgia districts, Time reports. Results came from regular surveys asking students about their behavior over the past 30 days. Unfortunately, "almost all of the students surveyed, 96%, had passed a rumor or made a nasty comment about someone over the course of the seven-year study," a researcher says. But physical and relational aggression were both more common in boys. Middle school, the study says, is the worst for meanness both physical and relational: It's most common between sixth and eighth grade. But middle schoolers can look forward to high school, when it begins dropping toward a senior-year low. The researchers aren't the first to point to boys' emotional cruelty, the New York Times reports: The author of the book on which the movie Mean Girls is based wrote a sequel focusing on boys. "The reality is that most boys’ days are filled with many of the same social challenges that girls face, and what they learn from those experiences matters now and for their futures, as it does for girls," writes Rosalind Wiseman. (That advice could be handy for this family, whose first 12 kids were boys.)
– The Los Angeles Times took home the coveted public service Pulitzer Prize this afternoon for its exposé of widepsread corruption in the city of Bell, Calif. The piece eventually led to the arrests of eight city officials, including the city administrator, who was pulling down $800,000 a year. The Times took home a second Pulizter for feature photography. A look at some of the other winners: Investigative reporting: Paige St. John of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune Explanatory reporting: Mark Johnson, Kathleen Gallagher, Gary Porter, Lou Saldivar, and Alison Sherwood of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel National reporting: Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica International reporting: Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry of the New York Times Commentary: David Leonhardt of the New York Times Criticism: Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe Editorial writing: Joseph Rago of the Wall Street Journal Editorial cartooning: Mike Keefe of the Denver Post Breaking news photography: Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn, and Ricky Carioti of the Washington Post Look through the gallery for more winners, or click for the complete list of Pulitzer Prize winners.
– A flight from Beijing to Melbourne, Australia, turned terrifying last month when a woman's headphones exploded midflight, burning her hands, face, and hair, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The unidentified woman had dozed off a couple of hours into the Feb. 19 flight while wearing the headphones, and per an Australian Transport Safety Bureau warning issued about the incident, she awoke to a loud bang and a burning sensation on her face. She was able to gather her wits, grab the headphones, and hurl them to the floor, where she says they were "sparking" and "had small amounts of fire." Flight attendants came running with a bucket of water to douse the device, part of which had melted and stuck to the floor of the plane. The ATSB release shows images of the woman's face and neck covered in black soot and with burns and blisters on her hand. "People were coughing and choking the entire way home," one passenger says about the cabin's acrid smell. An ATSB rep tells ABC Australia that although this is the first report in the country about a pair of headphones exploding, other devices—including phones and a personal air purifier—have gone up in smoke. An Australia Civil Aviation Safety Authority rep tells CNN they'll be looking more into what happened to see if the headphones themselves were damaged, sparking the explosion, or if the blame falls on the batteries. In the meantime, the ATSB, which has declined to say what battery brand was involved, reminds travelers that extra device batteries should go in carry-on bags, not checked luggage, and that if a phone or other device falls between the seats, one should dig the device out or call for the crew's help before moving the seat. (Exploding e-cigs have also been an issue.)
– One of the more widely used images from today's shooting spree near the Empire State Building shows a wounded man on the street being being tended to by a woman. Turns out it was shot by local photographer Muhammad Malik, who immediately uploaded it to Instagram with this not-so-sensitive caption, a play off of lyrics by Nas: "They shoot, aw made you look! No really tho. Dude got popped!" That drew plenty of online criticism, as did his Facebook boasts (complete with hashtag #chaching) about cashing in on the photo. "Let's be clear everyone, I didn't shoot anyone, I just took a photo, don't hate me, hate the actions that caused me to get a picture like that," he wrote in response. "It's cameras that allow all of us to see what's going on in parts that we would never venture into or otherwise wouldn't think twice about." When Daily Intel caught up with him, a "more subdued" Malik said he would "probably not" make any money from the image. "I don't think it was insensitive," he said. "It's New York, I just took a photo." As for that caption, "it was just a comment."
– Mickey Rooney may not have left a celebrity-sized fortune behind, but his estranged widow wants a cut of it anyway. Janice Rooney is challenging the late actor's will, which leaves his entire $18,000 estate to stepson/caretaker Mark Aber, omitting Janice Rooney and other children, CNN reports. Her lawyer will appear in court today to challenge the assertion, made in court documents, that she signed an agreement waiving her right to her husband's estate when the couple separated in 2012. "There is NO provision in either of the two settlement agreements ... that terminates or in any way affects (her) rights as surviving spouse," Janice Rooney's lawyer said. Court-appointed conservator Michael Augustine has dismissed the claim as "totally without merit," accusing Janice Rooney of pursuing it because "she cannot resist her additional five minutes of fame." Mickey Rooney's eight biological children are also contesting the will, Radar reports. In court documents, they claim Augustine conspired with Aber to manipulate the actor.
– "Go buy Ivanka's stuff." That was Kellyanne Conway's message to viewers during an interview with Fox & Friends on Thursday after Nordstrom pulled Ivanka Trump's clothing line from its stores. The problem? She might have violated federal ethics rules with the plug. Government workers aren't supposed to endorse products, and Conway not only did so, she wasn't shy about it: "I'm going to give a free commercial here," she said. "Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.” Per the Hill, this is the rule from the Office of Government Ethics she appears to have run afoul of: "An employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives." It's not clear whether the OGE will investigate, but someone who violates this rule can be suspended or even fired, though the person is likely to receive only a warning for a first offense, reports Politico. "This is jaw-dropping to me," a former acting director of the office tells the Washington Post. It "would seem to be a clear violation." President Trump, of course, has also addressed Nordstrom's move, tweeting, "Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom." White House spokesman Sean Spicer says Trump's tweet "was less about his family's business and an attack on his daughter," per CNNMoney. Nordstrom has said the decision was about declining sales, not politics.
– Las Vegas police have confirmed the legitimacy of photos circulating the internet showing guns, ammunition, and the corpse of Stephen Paddock inside a Mandalay Bay hotel room, LawNewz reports. The next step is finding—and punishing—whoever leaked the gruesome crime scene photos. The New York Times has stitched together some of the non-graphic leaked photos to give a complete view of the inside of Paddock's hotel room and its contents, which included more than 20 guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition carried up to the room inside 10 suitcases. According to the Independent, some people online believe one of the photos shows a note left behind by Paddock, but that appears to not have been the case. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department undersheriff says the department has "opened up an internal investigation to determine the source of the leaks." While whoever leaked the crime scene photos would face consequences, it's unclear what those consequences would be. LawNewz notes a Los Angeles Police Department officer who leaked photos of Rihanna following a domestic violence incident in 2009 was fired from her job but didn't face criminal charges. Crime scene photos leaked from the terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert last year in England resulted in British intelligence cutting US intelligence off from certain information.
– Edward Snowden's latest revelations target New Zealand: The country's leaders repeatedly told the public that they weren't working on a domestic spying program, the whistleblower says, when in fact they were doing just that. "The Prime Minister’s claim to the public, that ‘there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance,' is false," Snowden writes in a piece for the Intercept. "If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched." He cites his NSA work, during which he "routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders." Snowden has revealed top secret documents that appear to point to an effort to intercept communications via an undersea cable that's responsible for most Internet traffic to and from New Zealand, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher write at the Intercept. Ahead of the report, Prime Minister John Key acknowledged this weekend that a surveillance program had been planned, though he says he nixed it before it got under way, the Intercept adds. The country will hold an election Saturday, and Key holds that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, who paid for Greenwald's trip to the country, is trying to sway the election, Reuters reports. Dotcom, a New Zealand resident, is facing extradition.
– Three women dining out in Santa Monica, Calif., Thursday night apparently spotted a guy slip his table-mate a "roofie"-style drug—and rushed to prevent the woman from being raped, Jezebel reports. As Sonia Ulrich writes on Facebook, she and her friends Monica Kenyon and Marla Saltzer were enjoying happy hour at FIG restaurant when Kenyon saw the guy pull out a small black vial, hide it under his cell phone, and put something in his female companion's wine while she was in the restroom. "After a few 'Oh god. What do we do's,'" writes Ulrich, she went to the restroom and informed the woman. "Oh my god," the woman said, adding that "he's one of my best friends." As she explained, they worked together and had known each other for a year and a half. The woman returned to her table as Ulrich's pal Marla notified the manager, which led to a server walking over and the woman ordering sparkling water. "Marla noticed him several times chinking his glass to hers to get her to drink [the wine]," per Ulrich. "She played it cool." With the pair about to leave, Santa Monica PD showed up and arrested Michael Hsu, 24, on charges involving rape and drugging to commit rape, the Huffington Post reports. Restaurant video backed Ulrich's accusation, ABC News reports, and other women dining at FIG walked over to share their own horror stories. "It happened to my roommate," said one, while another said that "it happened to my sister." As one woman put it, "Some heroes don't wear capes. Thank you. It happened to me. Thank you."
– Lindsey Graham has drawn a potentially formidable primary challenger. Nancy Mace, the first woman to ever graduate from the Citadel, plans to throw her hat in the ring, she tells the Daily Caller. Mace, 35, graduated from the military college back in 1999, and has since written a memoir and founded a PR firm. She'll officially announce her candidacy tomorrow, but she's already been raising money in preparation, the Washington Times reports. Mace has gotten a head start attacking Graham online; in a Red State column last month she savaged him at length for supporting the NSA's phone surveillance programs. In another on the Caller she sounds like she's trying out campaign language, with a series of "South Carolina needs a senator who..." statements as she blasts him for backing immigration reform. But Mace will also have to beat two other libertarian-leaning challengers who could split the Tea Party vote, the State points out.
– Liquor heiress Clare Bronfman was among four people arrested Tuesday as part of an investigation into what prosecutors say was a sex trafficking organization masquerading as a self-help group. Bronfman, the 39-year-old daughter of late billionaire philanthropist and former Seagram chairman Edgar Bronfman Sr., pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges and was freed after agreeing to pay $100 million, which is half of her estimated $200 million fortune, the AP reports. She is accused of using her fortune to assist and protect the NXIVM group and leader Keith Raniere, the BBC reports. Prosecutors say female recruits were expected to have sex with Raniere and were branded with his initials. Bronfman and other members of the group's inner circle "committed a broad range of serious crimes from identity theft and obstruction of justice to sex trafficking, all to promote and protect Raniere and NXIVM," US Attorney Richard Donoghue said Tuesday. Bronfman has described the group as a "sorority" that truly benefits its members. Her lawyer, Susan Nechele, described the charges as "overreach" from a government that disagrees with the group's teachings. Organization co-founder Nancy Salzman, her daughter Lauren, and bookkeeper Kathy Russell were also arrested on racketeering charges and released on bail Tuesday. Raniere and Smallville actress Allison Mack were indicted on sex trafficking charges in April.
– What moments are engraved most profoundly into the minds of television viewers in the past 50 years? Sony Electronics and Nielsen surveyed more than 1,000 adults and found that the 9/11 attacks are the easy No. 1, though OJ Simpson has the distinction of cracking the top 10 twice. The top vote-getters, from AP and the New York Post. 9/11 attacks Hurricane Katrina (2005) OJ Simpson verdict (1995) Challenger shuttle explosion (1986) Death of Osama bin Laden (2011) OJ Simpson's white Bronco chase (1994) Japan's earthquake and tsunami (2011) Columbine school shooting (1999) BP oil spill (2010) Princess Diana's funeral (1997)
– Let the Katie Couric bidding war begin in earnest: Couric confirmed to People that she is indeed leaving her job as anchor of CBS Evening News to focus on "multidimensional storytelling" elsewhere. Exactly what that means is unclear, but TV Guide quotes sources as saying she's close to a deal with ABC, where she'd have a big presence on its network news programs and prime-time specials. TMZ, meanwhile, says she's in talks to stay at CBS with a syndicated talk show. And rumors of a reunion with Matt Lauer remain in the mix as well. Her contract isn't up until June, so don't expect to know much for sure before then. "I have decided to step down from the CBS Evening News," Couric says. "I'm really proud of the talented team on the CBS Evening News and the award-winning work we've been able to do in the past five years in addition to the reporting I've done for 60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Morning. In making the decision to move on, I know the Evening News will be in great hands, but I am excited about the future." Click for more.
– "Happy," is how soccer star Abby Wambach put it on Instagram, tacking on an #iseethemoonnow." The photo was one posted a day earlier on Facebook by prominent Christian mommy blogger Glennon Doyle Melton, who wrote "Abby and I decided to hold hands forever. Love wins." The image shows two hands, each featuring a diamond ring. The engagement announcement came just three months after Melton went public with her relationship with the 36-year-old, which came about three months after she announced she was separating from husband Craig Melton in a lengthy post on her Momastery blog. Wambach's own marriage unraveled following an April DUI arrest. People describes Melton as a long-time same-sex marriage supporter, and cites this 2013 post: "Figuring out my stance on homosexuality felt like a life and death decision. I know my Jesus, I love Him, and I think if he needed me to believe that homosexuality was a sin, He would have mentioned it." Melton has three kids—son Chase and daughters Tish and Amma—and People quotes her speaking on her own same-sex relationship. "When Craig and I sat them down to tell them about Abby I started by saying: 'In our family, we live and tell the truth about who we are no matter what, and then love each other through it—and I'm about to show you how that’s done.'"
– A pretty dismal number on today's jobs report: Just 74,000 jobs were created in December, the smallest monthly increase in three years; economists had expected 200,000. And while the unemployment rate fell to 6.7% from 7.0%, it was "for all the wrong reasons," writes Steven Russolillo at the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, the big drop can be explained by the fact that the participation rate fell to a new low of 62.8%, meaning fewer people were looking for work. The AP reports that cold weather could have played a role in the poor numbers, noting that construction firms cut 16,000 jobs—the largest drop in 20 months. One silver lining from the report: November's new jobs were revised upward to 241,000 from 203,000. And Russolillo writes that the same could happen here. "Something doesn’t smell right. This jobs number is so far out of whack from the recent economic data that have come out. Jobs data have been getting stronger for months, not to mention improvements in growth, housing, and manufacturing figures. Don't be surprised if this report gets revised higher in the coming months."
– "For whatever reason, they decided Xavier Davis was the guy." That from the lawyer for 31-year-old Davis, arrested in January as the suspect in a sexual assault in Grand Rapids, Mich. The problem: DNA evidence and Uber and phone records showed Davis wasn't the guy, and charges against him were dropped in July, per MLive.com. Before that, though, he was in prison for 129 days, then attached to an e-tether for two months, and now he's suing the City of Grand Rapids and three cops for false imprisonment and defamation, among other allegations, per WOOD. "I'm telling them, 'You have the wrong person,'" Davis says of his arrest, which he says was based on a sketch that doesn't even look like him; WZZM has a picture of it. It gets a bit complicated: Davis was already under investigation for a burglary and arson when he was arrested for the rape of a woman in her car in late December. At his January arraignment, Davis—who was sent to prison for more than a year in 2012 for a home invasion and also has been convicted of window peeping—was then charged with another sexual assault at his workplace, though his lawyer says he started working there after the assault report. In both cases, Davis contends police led the victims to believe he was their attacker, and that even after the DNA and other evidence started to surface in February showing he wasn't in the car case, he was still incarcerated for months. He also says his face and name were plastered everywhere after his arrest, and he lost his two jobs and was evicted from his home after he got out of jail, per WOOD. He said he told cops during his initial questioning: "You guys are gonna be sued after this if you don't fix this." Charges in both cases were dropped, and WOOD notes Davis has since secured a new job and place to live. (Cops hope DNA will lead them to the Zodiac Killer.)
– A Georgia teen who failed to return home from school nearly two years ago has resurfaced in the state with a new look. Aubrey Jayce Carroll, who turned 17 in January, appeared alongside Spalding Sheriff Darrell Dix in a video posted to Facebook Tuesday, sporting long hair and a beard, reports the Macon Telegraph. Though the formerly well-groomed teen didn't detail where he's been since leaving his Griffin home in May 2016, Dix says Aubrey "traveled extensively on the West Coast and Midwest" after joining a group of people who barter and use only cash. "They basically looked like a group of people from the Woodstock era in their clothing and lifestyle," Dix notes in a press release, per 11Alive, adding Aubrey encountered police, including in Alabama and Alaska, at least five times during his travels. Just last year, Dix said Aubrey's family was "tortured by the lack of information" about the missing teen. That changed last Tuesday, when authorities met with his parents and showed them a Facebook page Aubrey was using under a different name, reports NBC News. The group decided not to contact the teen for fear he'd go dark again (due to his age, he couldn't be forced to return home), opting to wait until he had another encounter with police. But one relative "went out on a limb" and messaged him anyway and apparently convinced Aubrey to contact his mother. He told her he was ready to come home so long as certain conditions were met regarding who he saw and where he went. Though much of his time away remains a mystery, Dix says Aubrey's "tale was absolutely amazing. He has seen and done things that make your jaw drop." (Another missing Georgia teen was found using Snapchat.)
– Oops: Observers at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade were surprised to discover that the confetti landing on their coats contained confidential information including social security numbers and banking info. One paradegoer tells WPIX his friend first noticed a Social Security number on one piece of confetti, then found more with "phone numbers, addresses, more social security numbers, license plate numbers," and police incident reports including arrest records and information about Mitt Romney's motorcade. Turns out the confetti was made up of Nassau County Police Department documents that "were shredded, but clearly not well enough," WPIX notes. Some of the documents even identify undercover police officers by name, and give out information including dates of birth, social security numbers, and more. The police department says in a statement that it is "very concerned" and will be investigating the matter, and Macy's says it uses "commercially manufactured, multicolor confetti, not shredded paper" in the parade. (Click for more on how shredded documents can be reassembled.)
– Earthquake survivors desperate for food broke into a UN warehouse in Port-au-Prince today, a sign of the growing frustration at delays in relief. UN officials say they've recovered nearly all of their stocks, however, and pledged to hand out 6,000 tons of food shortly. But with necessities such as water, medical supplies, and heavy moving equipment slow to arrive, anger and despair are rising among the tens of thousands of survivors in the capital. "We're all aware that the situation is getting more tense as the poorest people who need so much are waiting for deliveries," a Brazilian peacekeeper tells the Guardian. "They are slowly getting more angry," a UN official tell the New York Times. In other developments: Cuba gave the US permission to use its airspace for relief flights. About 4,000 inmates who escaped from the main prison remain at large. About 7,000 bodies have been buried so far in a mass grave. Two big aftershocks rattled the capital again today.
– A journalist working for a far-right TV station is out of a job after she was unable to resist her urge to become part of the story she was covering. The Hungarian camerawoman was filmed kicking and tripping refugees as they tried to get past police at an overcrowded camp in southern Hungary near the border with Serbia yesterday, the New York Times reports. A German journalist filmed Petra Laszlo of N1TV as she tripped a man carrying a young child, causing him to fall on the boy, the Guardian reports. Laszlo was also filmed kicking two children as they made their way past the police line. N1TV, which has close links to the far-right Jobbik party, says she has been let go for "unacceptable behavior." The Washington Post reports that many commentators describe her shocking behavior as more evidence that the Hungarian media is strongly biased in favor of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has stepped up the construction of a border fence and says the influx of people needs to be blocked to "keep Europe Christian."
– From the White House to the Big Brother house: Omarosa Manigault, who rose to fame on The Apprentice before a year in President Trump's White House, will return to her reality TV roots with a stint on Celebrity Big Brother, the first celebrity edition of the long-running CBS show. The new season, running from Feb. 7-25, will see 11 celebrities locked in a house as they battle for $250,000. Though Manigault is "the biggest name in the new cast," per the Hollywood Reporter, she'll be joined by other familiar names including Sugar Ray lead singer Mark McGrath, American Pie actress Shannon Elizabeth, and former UFC fighter Chuck Liddell. Rounding out the cast is Brandi Glanville of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, former Cosby Show actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, former NBA star Metta World Peace, Marissa Winokur of Broadway musical Hairspray, former Nickelodeon star James Maslow, TV personality Ross Matthews, and former Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez. Still, it's Manigault who's created the most buzz, with fans hoping she'll dish about her time in the White House while monitored 24/7 by cameras and microphones. Big Brother fan Andy Cohen, however, predicts Manigault won't be around for long. "Brandi is going to eat her for lunch," he says in a tweet, per Us Weekly.
– Russian commandos rappelled from helicopters to storm a hijacked oil tanker off the coast of Somalia at dawn today, freeing the ship's crew of 23 Russians and capturing the pirates. One pirate was killed in the operation, but there were no other injuries aboard the SS Moscow University, the AP reports. The ship's owner says the decision to strike was made with the knowledge that the crew had locked themselves in a safe room and were not at risk. A Kremlin spokesman praised the "excellent job" done by both the crew and the commandos, noting that the crew had been well prepared for an emergency. A spokesman for Russia's Foreign Ministry told Reuters that the captured pirates will be probably be handed over to regional authorities.
– One of Israel's biggest sports teams has given itself a new name in honor of the opening of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem—and the man who made it possible. Soccer club Beitar Jerusalem says it is now called Beitar Trump Jerusalem and the change will be permanent. "President Trump has shown courage, and true love of the Israeli people and their capital," the team said in a statement. The team, which is in second place in Israel's top soccer league, is notorious for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment, according to the Times of Israel. In other developments: Deadly violence: Israeli soldiers killed 16 protesters near the Gaza border and injured hundreds more ahead of the opening, say Palestinian health authorities, per the AP. That makes Monday the deadliest day of protests since they began six weeks ago, reports the Washington Post. Mitt Romney speaks out. Romney said Sunday night that a Dallas minister shouldn't deliver the embassy's opening prayer because he is a "religious bigot," the AP reports. "Robert Jeffress says 'you can't be saved by being a Jew,' and 'Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.' He's said the same about Islam," Romney tweeted. In response, Jeffress said it isn't bigoted to teach that "salvation is through faith in Christ alone."
– Allegations of illegal wood imports prompted the Justice Department to raid Gibson Guitar facilities in Tennessee last week. NPR aired the complicated story involving the 100-year old Lacey Act, which prohibits imports of endangered species, including plants, into the US. No formal charges have been pressed, but it appears the issue lies with Gibson possibly importing banned Madagascar ebony. Gibson insists the wood confiscated by marshals was legally acquired rosewood from India. Adding some gusto to the story, right-leaning sites assert that Gibson rival CF Martin uses the same wood in some of its guitars, but the company was never investigated. The Landmark Report thinks that's fishy, given that Martin's CEO is a Democratic donor and Gibson's CEO is a GOP backer. Raising the octave even higher, it is possible Michelle Obama ran afoul of the Lacey Act when she presented France's Carla Bruni with a Gibson guitar that may have contained banned wood. However the story plays out, many are frustrated with the retroactive aspect of the law. "It's a nightmare," says a dealer. "I can't help it if they used Brazilian rosewood on almost every guitar made prior to 1970."
– Jonah Hill returned to Saturday Night Live last night with an opening monologue that attempted to separate from Wolf of Wall Street co-star Leo DiCaprio, and somehow ended with "the thing that made me feel safe"—both actors wrapped in a Titanic-esque embrace as that migraine-in-your-eye-inducing music played. That wasn't the show's only highlight, with Gizmodo hailing Hill's Her spoof—featuring Michael Cera—as simultaneously "hilarious" and "super weird." Rolling Stone notes that Justin Bieber's brush with the law got two mentions, with Kenan Thompson appearing on "Weekend Update" as the cop who arrested the Biebs, and Cecily Strong and Vanessa Bayer getting in a little yellow Lamborghini reference in a sketch called, well, "Lamborghini." Over at Huffington Post, Mike Ryan names "Lamborghini" the sketch of the night on his scorecard.
– Lady Gaga's new album has had insane sales, but apparently not in Lebanon, the Sun reports. The Middle Eastern country banned Born This Way from its stores and impounded a shipment of the album. The government, which had already banned her song "Judas" from the radio, reportedly finds the album "offensive to Christianity" and in "bad taste." Click for more, including another country that isn't a Gaga fan; or click to watch her "Judas" video.
– Mired in an ever-deepening phone hacking scandal, Rupert Murdoch's 168-year-old News of the World will fold after Sunday's edition, reports the Wall Street Journal. "If recent allegations are true, it was inhuman, and has no place in our company," James Murdoch said in a statement announcing the closure of the vaunted British tabloid. The younger Murdoch said that the paper had now "voluntarily given evidence to police" of widespread wrongdoing, and that "those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences."
– Nine-year-old James Savage may have a new Guinness World Record under his belt. The California boy swam from the shore of San Francisco to Alcatraz Island and back on Tuesday, becoming the youngest swimmer to complete the two-mile trip, per NBC News. A 10-year-old boy previously held the record after completing the swim last year. Savage—whose swim was streamed online—says he wanted to give up 30 minutes into the two-hour swim as the waves kept hitting him in the face. But his coach and a fellow swimmer who kayaked alongside him "kept yelling, 'I believe you can do it,'" James tells KSEE. "I was so happy for him," James' mom says. "I'm most proud of what it took for him to get here." James had previously completed one leg of the journey but trained six hours a day to complete the full swim. His dad promised him $100 when it was all over, but handed over $200 because of his son’s effort. "The waves were a lot bigger than I expected," James says. "At first, I was kind of scared." A Guinness World Records rep says there's no official world record for the swim but the group will review James' feat, per the Merced Sun Star. Meanwhile, James' next swim will be easier, but only slightly. He plans to swim the 1.7-mile length of the Golden Gate Bridge.
– Andrew Young, who also once pretended to be the father of Rielle Hunter's baby to cover for former boss John Edwards, took the stand at Edwards' campaign finance trial yesterday—and he was a mess. He got flustered, gave conflicting (and at least once, wrong) answers, and constantly asked for questions to be repeated—and this was while being questioned by his own side, the prosecution. After a performance like that, the Washington Post's Melinda Henneberger predicts that "he stands a very good chance of being ripped apart by the defense" during cross-examination today. Highlights from his testimony, via the Post, the AP, and the News-Record: The night Edwards announced his 2008 campaign, he, Young, and Hunter passed around a bottle of wine in the car as Young drove to the kick-off event, Young said. When Edwards first learned of Hunter's pregnancy, "he said she was a crazy slut and there was a 1-in-3 chance that it was his," Young said. When heiress Rachel "Bunny" Mellon started funneling money to Hunter—the central issue of the trial—"we were scared," Young said. "It was a truckload of money, more money than had ever flowed through our accounts. ... It was crazy." In order to phone Hunter without his wife finding out, Edwards often used staffers' phones … as well as a secret cell phone he, Young, and Hunter referred to as "the bat phone," Young said. When Edwards came up with the idea of using Young as a cover, he gave Young what the aide referred to as a "campaign stump speech" explaining that the issue "was bigger than all of us," and that voters "don’t give a s--- about you. They want me." Why did Young agree to it? "I wanted my friend to be president," he admitted. "Being friends with the most powerful person on Earth, there are benefits to that."
– It's a Christmas miracle: Justin Bieber told an LA radio station yesterday that he's retiring after his new album comes out next week, the Huffington Post reports. "I'm actually retiring, man," Bieber said. "I'm just gonna take some time. I think I'm probably gonna quit music." But, bah humbug, members of his entourage tell TMZ the singer was joking. "The kid's got ambition," says one of Bieber.
– Did a now-viral video of a man punching a kangaroo come out of Australia? Yes, of course. Should we be judging him for it? It depends on how you feel about dogs. The video, which has amassed more than 4.1 million views so far, was first posted on Facebook Saturday by Steven Stubenrauch, who said he got it from a buddy from Down Under. But while the shot to the 'roo's face is indeed cringeworthy, Mashable explains there's a "saga behind it," and it's "very intense." The man in the video, IDed by News.com.au as Greig Tonkins—nicknamed "Goo," meaning this fight could be deemed "Goo vs. 'Roo," as NineNews.com.au astutely notes—was part of a hunting trip in June for a friend named Kailem, who was in bad shape from cancer and wanted desperately to go on a boar-hunting trip with friends. And so Mathew Amor invited Kailem and some other friends, including Tonkins (who it turns out is a zookeeper), to his New South Wales property for the hunt, and while they were gallivanting about, the featured kangaroo reached out, grabbed Tonkins' dog Max, and put the pup in a headlock. And so Tonkins jumped into action, throwing the punch now seen 'round the world. Everyone turned out to be fine: Amor says Max was startled but OK, the kangaroo was simply "stunned," and Tonkins came away unscathed because he didn't throw that hard of a punch. "It was funny because the guy who did it is the most placid bloke," Amor says. "We laughed at him for chucking such a s--- punch." Sadly, Kailem died last week, but Amor says he'd "be looking down from up there [heaven] and laughing because it was the highlight of the trip." (A cyclist says a kangaroo ruined her breast implants.)
– A report today that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has the inside track to replace Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary is getting mostly guffaws online, with even the conservative Wall Street Journal admitting that Dimon’s way too much an insider for the job just now. Indeed, chuckles Daniel Indiviglio, the New York Post story is “amusing” because, “for starters, Geithner isn’t going anywhere. Anyone who thinks he might be is nuts.” Politicians’ wariness of the “well-trodden” Washington-Wall Street path is likely the overriding factor, Indiviglio concludes for the Atlantic, while, Grace Kiser notes, Dimon differs with the Obama administration on a list of consumer-protection issues, siding with big banks in a way that Michael Corkery, in the Journal, says “would expose him to criticism that he was ‘talking his book’ or pushing a self-serving agenda.”
– The US speedskating team is still without a medal after an awful start in Sochi, and the squad hopes it can turn things around by changing suits. The team has officially sought permission from the Olympic powers-that-be to ditch their fancy "Mach 39" suits made by Under Armour and revert to older suits when competition resumes tomorrow, reports the Wall Street Journal. The Mach 39 suits, never before used in competition, were supposed to have a whiz-bang design that would boost speeds, but now many think they're actually slowing the skaters down, reports the Chicago Tribune. The blame-the-suit sentiment apparently isn't unanimous among team members, but if the switch is made, all members would have to abide. The official word from US Speedskating chief Ted Morris avoids blaming Under Armour but suggests the issue is in skaters' heads: “We don’t think (the suits) are having any impact but at the same time we want to make sure when our athletes get on that start line they have confidence and are ready to go." Under Armour, meanwhile, can at least take solace in that it also makes the older suits.
– Reality Winner was charged Monday with leaking a document about the Russian hacking of US electoral systems. One of the most surprising things, according to NBC News, was that a 25-year-old had top-level security clearance. But apparently it's not that unusual. Most people who do NSA work involving intercepting communications and translation are just out of high school. "There are thousands and thousands of 18- to 21-year-olds doing critically important and secret work around the world," an expert on the NSA says. Many of them, like Winner, are young members of the military. She served six years in the Air Force. A high security clearance is needed to listen in on terrorists or members of foreign governments. Intelligence officials are concerned that Winner is part of a growing number of American intelligence employees leaking state secrets not for money but because they feel the public has a right to know the information. The election of President Trump is making people feel like they need to take action. CNN details Winner's anti-Trump comments on social media. And ABC News has more information on the 25-year-old, including that she speaks Pashto, Farsi, and Dari and had recently worked as a yoga instructor, where she was known as a "reliable" employee. Winner's mother says her daughter is "very passionate about her views."
– A young Bay Area financial trader traveling abroad on his own for the first time has disappeared in London, where he told family he had a potential job interview, NBC News reports. According to the Guardian, Josh Sanchez-Maldonado, 24, was last seen leaving his hotel in west London on the afternoon of Oct. 22, the day after he arrived from Japan. His father, Jose Sanchez, got worried when Sanchez-Maldonado missed his Oct. 23 flight home and called his son's hotel only to discover he never checked out and all his belongings were still there. His family flew to London after he went missing and are publicly asking him to contact them. "He has always kept in close communication to us," the family said in a statement released Thursday. The Guardian reports Sanchez-Maldonado told his father he had a job interview in London but didn't give any details. According to NBC, London police have been unable to uncover any evidence or details of a job interview. "His dream is to visit the financial area in London," Sanchez tells the Guardian. "That's where he always said he would love to work." His father says his son would have little interest in nightlife, as he was more focused on his stocks and making money, and police are currently searching the city's financial areas. ABC News reports Sanchez fears his son is lost somewhere in the city. According to NBC, Sanchez-Maldonado had been speaking to his father every day during his trip. They last spoke the day before he disappeared.
– There's a new addition to the Anne Hathaway-Adam Shulman household, and his name is Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman, E! News reports. The 33-year-old actress gave birth to her first child on March 24 in Los Angeles, as confirmed by Hathaway's rep. "The baby is extremely healthy and is surrounded by friends and family in LA," a source says. "Anne and Adam are ecstatic to be parents." And Twitter was apparently ecstatic that the couple went "traditional" with the baby's moniker, per the Mirror, with one commenter noting, "Shout out to Anne Hathaway for giving her baby a normal name!" Us notes that Hathaway had expressed her desire to be a mom since the age of 16, saying in 2012, "Look, I'll start with one healthy kid, but I'd like to have a few naturally and adopt. … I'd like to have as many as I can afford, not just financially but in terms of time, because you want to make sure each one feels special." (Long before she became a mom, Hathaway was laughing it up with Jon Stewart.)
– Cats will need leashes just like dogs if a proposal before the Kenai council in Alaska wins approval, the AP reports. Kenai Mayor Pat Porter and council member Tim Navarre have proposed a cat leash law after complaints from residents about roaming felines. According to the Peninsula Clarion, current city code does not include cats on its list of animals that need to be restrained. The proposed ordinance also cites complaints about the impact of a growing cat population on the Kenai Animal Shelter's resources. Kenai City Manager Rick Koch says shelter resources are sufficient. Some residents are concerned about compliance and whether the law will tax animal control resources. A hearing and vote is set for Oct. 5.
– Supporters of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick are demanding he be signed by a team before the National Football League season starts next month. ESPN reports that thousands gathered outside the NFL's New York City headquarters on Wednesday to show their support for the free agent, who once played in the Super Bowl but opted out of his contract and hasn't been signed. Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem before games as a protest of police brutality targeting blacks. His supporters say he's being blackballed, per the AP; but critics point to his playing ability as the reason, while others say he should have stood for the anthem. The NAACP sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday, saying it's "no sheer coincidence" Kaepernick is unsigned. The civil rights organization has noted it wants a meeting with the NFL to discuss the situation. Derrick Johnson, the NAACP's interim president and CEO, says "no player should be victimized and discriminated against because of his exercise of free speech." Meanwhile, the Rev. Jamal Bryant says the league doesn't mind if black players get concussions, but "they just got a problem if black players get a conscience." Goodell has insisted the league isn't blackballing Kaepernick.
– Gallup is out with its annual poll trying to rank that most intangible of factors—a sense of "well-being"—in the US states. To do so, it questioned more than 177,000 people on topics ranging from having a sense of purpose to community to physical and financial health. Your winner? Yes, Hawaii. Generally speaking, the West is the most fulfilled region, claiming eight of the top 10 spots, while the South has seven of the bottom 10, notes the Washington Post. Here are the top and bottom five performers in the State of American Well-Being: Top five (in order): Hawaii, Alaska, Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming. Bottom five: Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Dig in to more results here.
– The super-secret Joint Special Operations Command first came to most people's attention when its members killed Osama bin Laden. The Washington Post provides new details on the group it calls "America's secret army" and its explosive growth in size and importance since 9/11. For one thing, JSOC has gone from 1,800 troops prior to 2001 to about 25,000 today, with much of its transformation coming under Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It has killed more al-Qaeda leaders and soldiers than CIA operatives, and it has jailed and interrogated 10 times more suspected terrorists than the agency. “The CIA doesn’t have the size or the authority to do some of the things we can do,” one JSOC operator tells the Post. As one Navy SEAL who belongs to the unit puts it (in a quote that wouldn't be out of place in a Tom Clancy novel): “We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen." The group has its own drones, recon planes, satellites, and cyberwarriors, along with the "rare authority to select individuals for its kill list—and then to kill, rather than capture, them," write Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. Click to read the full article, which comes from a new book (Top Secret America) written by the two reporters.
– Two Wisconsin girls who allegedly stabbed a classmate 19 times to please the "Slender Man" fictional online character are competent to stand trial, a judge has decided. Both girls, who were 12 when they allegedly tried to kill another 12-year-old girl after a sleepover, have been charged as adults. Morgan Geyser, who is still 12, was ruled incompetent in August after a psychologist testified that she was delusional, but at a hearing yesterday, her lawyer decided not to dispute a state psychiatrist's finding that she is now fit for trial, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. The attorney told the judge that Geyser is being treated for schizophrenia. In a separate hearing, Anissa Weier, now 13, was also deemed competent after the judge decided that "issues of age and maturity do not override her competency," the AP reports. Psychologists who testified for the defense argued that although she is intelligent and articulate, she has trouble making decisions and understanding issues like the risk of turning down a plea bargain. Lawyers for both girls are trying to have the case moved to juvenile court. The judge decided to allow Geyser to remain at the mental health institute where she has been for months after her lawyer argued that returning her to the juvenile detention facility where Weier is still being held could lead to her becoming unfit for trial again. (The sinister Slender Man character was created by an online forum user in 2009.)
– Rasheen Rose died while being restrained at Fineson Developmental Center, a state institution in Queens, on August 6, 2012—a death that was ruled a homicide by the New York medical examiner, and into which the district attorney's investigation is still open. Shaneice Luke, Rose's sister, filed a lawsuit accusing the staff of killing her brother, who "became unresponsive" after at least three staff members allegedly threw him to the ground and put him in a "prone position" for as long as 30 minutes; one 275-pound worker sat on him, while others, including doctors and nurses, stood by, the New York Daily News reports. Rose, who had severe autism and could not communicate verbally, "was basically crushed to death," says Luke's lawyer. But now, New York officials are billing Luke for $11.67 million, the AP reports. The claim against Rose's estate cites his total Medicaid assistance over a period of 10 years, up until the day he died at age 33. Medicaid doesn't typically demand reimbursement, but an attorney who has worked with others who've received similar bills after suing the state says officials have recently begun this "problematic" practice. A spokesperson for the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, which runs Fineson, says officials are simply following federal Medicaid obligations so that they don't lose their Medicaid funding, but an assemblyman who advocates for people with disabilities calls it "retaliation." Last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to close Fineson in 2017.
– Actress Salma Hayek has delivered sad and surprising news to her fans on Instagram: Someone shot and killed her 9-year-old dog, Mozart. "He was found in my ranch last Friday with a shot close to his heart," she writes. It's not clear what happened, and Hayek says she hopes authorities in Washington state can track down the shooter. Mozart had never attacked or bit anyone, writes Hayek, who adds that she "personally delivered" Mozart from his mother's womb. ETOnline notes that Hayek regularly fills her Instagram account with loving shots of Mozart and her other animals.
– One word keeps showing up in coverage of the first day of Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing: "chaos." (See here, here, and here.) Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas had a stronger phrase: "mob rule," while Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois heard the "noise of democracy." Democrats were staging a unified front to try to keep the hearing from proceeding, angry about withheld documents from Kavanaugh's past, including his tenure in the George W. Bush White House. The release of more than 40,000 documents Monday night seems to have only made things worse, with Democrats arguing that it was humanly impossible to review them in time. Despite the Democrats' protests, Senate Judiciary Committee Charles Grassley says he will not stop the hearing, which is expected to last four days, reports Politico. Other developments: Arrests: Capitol Police arrested 22 protesters on disorderly conduct charges during the morning, reports the Washington Post. Handmaid's Tale: Women dressed as characters from the Handmaid's Tale were among the protesters outside the hearing room, notes the Huffington Post. See an image here. The costumes illustrate their concerns that Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court will be a setback for women's rights. Roe v. Wade: When the direct questions finally begin, Democrats are expected to press Kavanaugh on whether he'd be willing to overturn the ruling that legalized abortion, reports the New York Times. The question, said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is not whether he believes that Roe v. Wade is “settled law,” but “whether you believe it is the correct law.” The judge's views on executive power and gun control also were expected to be examined. 2 views: The interruptions and chaos are about "Democratic senators trying to re-litigate the 2016 election and just as importantly, working to begin litigating the 2020 presidential election," said Republican Ted Cruz, per the AP. But Democrat Patrick Leahy wondered, “What are we trying to hide? Why are we rushing?” Excerpts: Read excerpts of Kavanaugh's eventual opening statement here via MarketWatch. "A good judge must be an umpire—a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy," Kavanaugh is to say. "I don’t decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. I am a pro-law judge."
– Mild-mannered BBC political editor Nick Robinson was transformed into a ball of rage by an anti-war sign being waved in the background as he broadcast from Westminster. Robinson delivered his broadcast calmly, then turned around, grabbed the sign from the protester, tried to rip it apart, and stamped on it, the Independent reports. Robinson later wrote on his BBC blog that he regretted losing his temper and erupting in "sign rage." However, he wrote, "as I explained afterward to the protesters who disrupted my broadcast, there are many opportunities to debate whether the troops should be out of Afghanistan without the need to stick a sign on a long pole and wave it in front of a camera."
– It's a miserable day on Wall Street so far, with the Dow plunging more than 370 points about an hour after the open. MarketWatch says one of the driving factors is a weak report on durable-goods orders, which suggests that businesses are worried about a slowdown rather than investing in growth. Also not helping: disappointing quarterly results from a slew of blue-chip companies, reports the Wall Street Journal. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 were down 2.2% and 1.7% respectively.
– After hearing about the Detroit man who walks 21 miles to work, a Des Moines Register reporter was told about "a guy in southern Iowa who walks even farther" and discovered resolute pedestrian Steven Simoff. The 61-year-old regularly walks 35 miles from his home in the small town of Davis City near the Missouri border to his job as a casino janitor in Osceola, setting off at 3:30pm to start the night shift at 11pm. He says he makes the trek to support wife Renee, who has suffered serious health problems, and grandson Steven III, whom the couple has adopted. "First of all, when you got a family, and you've got a job, you've got to be able to support your family," he tells the Register. "And you've got to keep your job—the most two important things I can think of." Simoff, who earns $9.07 an hour at the casino and lives in Davis City because rent is cheap there, has a 2002 minivan but can't afford to fill it up very often. But he does get plenty of help from the community, the Christian Science Monitor reports. He often gets rides home from work from colleagues who live in nearby towns, and he has a network of "road friends" who give him rides at least part of the way to the casino most days. Still, Simoff says he averages around four hours of walking a day, much of it on Interstate 35. "If I don't get to work, bills don't get paid," he tells the Register. "As long as my two feet are good and my health is good, I don't think I'll change." (A Canadian city is considering freezing an old rail line so commuters can skate to work in winter.)
– Michael Vaudreuil first made headlines in May when the custodian received a degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts-based Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the very school the 54-year-old had spent the past decade cleaning. Now he's got another big announcement: a dream job with multibillion-dollar aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, where he'll work as an engineer with the Production Integrated Product Team, reports the Washington Post, which notes the job offers "poured in" following news of his graduation. "I feel like I won the lottery," he tells the school's Daily Herd. But he's got a message, too: Never give up. "Nobody's going to question my work ethic, my energy level, or my desire," he says. Vaudreuil's story of hard work paying off has resonated with many, but it's also the tale of a circle completed—he earned an associate degree in aeronautical engineering in 1982. He ended up working as a plasterer, but in 2008 his business folded and he lost just about everything, including his home. When he found himself scrubbing toilets and chalkboards at WPI, he decided to make use of the school's free tuition for employees. "The thought process was: This is it for me," he told the Boston Globe in May. "Your back's against the cliff. You either jump off, or you fight for your life." And fight he did. It took him almost 10 years to finish his degree, and even though his new gig requires a move to Connecticut in advance of his July 11 start date, he's still finishing the month as a custodian. (This teen was in a coma during his graduation, but his classmates made sure he didn't miss it.)
– Despite once expressing a desire to punch him, Robert De Niro now says he's open to working President Trump—at least indirectly—on exploring the debunked link between autism and vaccines, the Washington Post reports. "If he does the right thing, he does the right thing," the actor said following a panel Wednesday at the National Press Club. The panel was led by Robert Kennedy Jr., chairman of the World Mercury Project. According to BuzzFeed News, Kennedy believes journalists are working with the CDC to bury the truth about a vaccine ingredient called thimerosal causing autism in children, and he offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who can produce a study that finds vaccines with the ingredient are safe for kids and pregnant women. De Niro, who was mostly quiet during the panel, did speak up to say he agrees with Kennedy "100%." Science, on the other hand, does not. Doctors, medical organizations, and the CDC say Kennedy's beliefs are unequivocally false. The director of a vaccine education center says seven studies published between 2000 and 2007 alone show that. Furthermore, thimerosal hasn't been used in children's vaccines since 1999 and is barely used in flu vaccines anymore, but autism rates are rising anyway, notes BuzzFeed. Kennedy met with Trump in January about heading a commission on vaccine safety. He says he's spoken to aides three times about the commission since then and expects it to happen, Stat reports. With that on the horizon, 350 medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, sent a letter to Trump last week reasserting the safety of vaccines.
– Republican Rep. Aaron Schock has already been named the "hottest freshman" in Congress—and now Men's Health declares that he's also the fittest. The Congressman from Illinois flaunts his abs on the magazine's June cover, and can brag that he's the first politician to appear shirtless in the mag—though President Obama has appeared in it, fully clothed, twice, the Chicago Tribune reports. Schock, who at nearly 30 is also the first US Congressman born in the 1980s, has already found himself featured on TMZ wearing only a bathing suit. A desire to use that chiseled-chest notoriety for a positive purpose led him to Men's Health, which dubbed him "pretty fly for a Republican from Peoria" and noted that "he looks more like a hit man from a European spy thriller than a boring politician." His appearance is meant to promote Fit for Life Summer Challenge, a healthy lifestyle campaign that urges Americans to lose 30 pounds by Labor Day.
– Three Marines accused of hazing a fellow Marine so harshly that he committed suicide are to be court-martialed, the Marine Corps says. Harry Lew, a 21-year-old from Hawaii, shot himself in a foxhole in Afghanistan earlier this year after he was allegedly attacked and humiliated by the trio. The three Marines face charges including hazing, assault, cruelty and maltreatment, and dereliction, the San Jose Mercury News reports. At a hearing last month, Marines from the same unit testified that the three accused punched and kicked Lew, forced him to do push-ups and other exercises in full combat gear, and poured sand in his face. The accused Marines argued that they were angry with Lew because he had fallen asleep on guard duty at a remote base in Afghanistan four times in 10 days, endangering the unit. After Lew's death commanders said that the sleeping may have been a sign that he was suffering from depression or some other medical condition, AP notes.
– No word on whether Meryl Streep is crying in five different accents, but Joan Rivers' funeral is under way at Temple Emanu-El in New York, and the private event is basically one rather large name-drop. Luminaries including Howard Stern, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Griffin, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Kelly Osbourne, Diane Sawyer began lining up this morning, reports the AP. Stern paid tribute to Rivers, notes People, calling her "the best friend in the world … a big sister ... a crazy aunt at Bar Mitzvah." Fans also turned out, with one telling Page Six, "I used to see her walking around Manhattan. She was so real. What you saw was who she was." The back of the program read thusly, as per People: "Can we talk?" "Who are you wearing?" " ... Because I'm a funny person ... " – JOAN RIVERS
– Critics did not enjoy Seth Rogen's last movie, Guilt Trip with Barbra Streisand, and it sounds like Rogen didn't, either. "We shot that movie in the format that plays on airplanes only," Rogen said on comedian Doug Benson's podcast last week, according to E!. "They were like, 'Talk loud because the engine will be roaring. You've got to talk over the engine; there's announcements early on in the flights. You've got to take that into consideration.'" He also sort-of dissed the poorly reviewed The Green Hornet, in which he not only starred but also co-wrote. "We were making it for America and China at the same time," and it ended up being the "perfect storm of bad s--- happening," he said. Lesson learned? Rogen says he should stick to movies involving "a million" penis jokes. "That's our strength. Play to your strengths." (Click to read about 10 other actors who have slammed their own projects.)
– We all know you shouldn't drink and drive. Kenneth Bachman is living proof you probably shouldn't drink and Uber either. He was hit with a $1,635.93 Uber fare after accidentally taking the ride service from near the West Virginia University campus, where he was partying with friends last Friday night, to his home in New Jersey, CBS Philadelphia reports. “We went to a frat party and then went to the bar. I was getting drinks all night; I probably spent like $200 at the bar after already drinking all day,” Bachman says. “Basically, I kinda just blacked out." Needless to say, Bachman doesn't really remember calling himself an Uber. He says he woke up to the driver telling him they were about an hour away from New Jersey. “I was just like, that’s crazy. Why did you agree to take me to New Jersey from West Virginia?” Bachman says. Five hours and 300 miles after ordering the Uber, Bachman was home, the Washington Post reports. The ride would have been a good deal cheaper if Bachman hadn't drunkenly treated himself to a more expensive UberXL. According to NJ.com, surge pricing also doubled the cost. Bachman challenged the fare, arguing he would have told the driver to take him to his friends' place near the university campus—not all the way to New Jersey. "I know I wouldn't send it to my house," Bachman says. "I knew where I was." Uber states Bachman did indeed give the driver his home address, and Bachman agreed to pay the fare after the company contacted him. He gave the driver five stars and cash for paying tolls on the way back to West Virginia.
– An 11-year-old boy is being called a hero after he died trying to save a friend from a frozen pond Tuesday in New York City. CBS New York reports 11-year-old Anthony Perez and a 12-year-old friend were walking in a park in Queens around 4pm when the friend ventured out onto a frozen pond only to fall through the ice about 50 feet from the shore. Police say Anthony rushed to help his friend and fell in, too. "[Anthony] was able to push him out to safety, but he fell through ice and he couldn’t get out,” a law enforcement source tells the New York Post. The friend immediately ran for help. But by the time firefighters and police officers arrived, Anthony had been underwater for about 30 minutes and wasn't breathing, the New York Daily News reports. Multiple rescuers fell through the ice while trying to get to Anthony. “They had to—physically with their hands—break through the ice and chop through the ice so that they could get to the area where they knew the child would most likely be,” CBS quotes FDNY Deputy Chief George Healy as saying. Rescuers provided CPR at the scene and on the way to the hospital, but Anthony was pronounced dead. Two firefighters had to be treated for hypothermia. A neighbor says it doesn't surprise her that Anthony risked his life to help his friend. "He’s got a good heart that little boy," Angela Vargas says. “I’m going to call him a hero: He’s a hero,” neighbor Carmen Rivera tells the Post. (In Utah, a deputy with no protective gear rescued a boy from a frozen pond.)
– Add Ozzy Osbourne to the list of people who are not happy with the Westboro Baptist Church. The group, infamous for staging anti-gay protests at military funerals and chanting things like “You’re going to hell,” played one of Ozzy’s songs on the steps of the US Supreme Court. “I am sickened and disgusted by the use of 'Crazy Train' to promote messages of hate and evil by a 'church,'” Osbourne said in a statement. The group seems to like singing, “You're going straight to hell on your crazy train," E! reports, but PopEater notes that such a line doesn't actually exist in the song—although, ironically, the line "Learn how to love, and forget how to hate" does. Click here for more. Want to see a softer side of Ozzy? Watch him cover a John Lennon song here.
– Little relief for the Northeast after a snowstorm Monday: Today, it's facing another winter storm, one that's already canceled some 2,400 flights, Fox News reports. Snowfall will range between a few inches in some areas, including New York City and Pittsburgh, to more than a foot in the Catskills and parts of New England. The "norm," per CNN, will be eight to 12 inches, with snowfall slowing in the afternoon. Ice is also expected in many areas, with New York City facing half an inch. In the Philadelphia area, more than 500,000 are without power, Philly.com reports. Areas across New England are closing schools. More snow could also hit Illinois and Iowa, with ice and freezing rain in Mississippi. Some 120 million people may be affected, CNN notes. "A little bit of everything for everybody, it seems like," says a Pennsylvania meteorologist. "About the only thing we probably won't have is locusts." And today's not the end of it: Another winter storm is due this weekend, and it could be the worst of a bad week, AccuWeather reports.
– Leonardo DiCaprio almost played Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, he revealed in a recent Shortlist interview. "I did have a meeting with George Lucas about that," he says, but he didn't want the role: "Just didn’t feel ready to take that dive. At that point." It's the same reason, he explains, that he met with Joel Schumacher about playing Robin in Batman Forever but didn't actually take the part. "As I recall, I took the meeting, but didn’t want to play the role," he says. "Joel Schumacher is a very talented director but I don’t think I was ready for anything like that." And the same thing happened again with Spider-Man, a role Tobey Maguire eventually took: "That was another one of those situations, similar to Robin, where I didn’t feel ready to put on that suit yet. They got in touch with me." In other revealing, Star Wars-related interviews, George Lucas let slip in a recent interview with Charlie Rose what he really thinks about the new movies, Business Insider reports. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 partially because there were three more Star Wars movies he felt should be made, and "to do it right would be 10 years, and I said, 'I'm 70—I don't know whether I'll be here when I'm 80' ... and I want to do [other films], so I have to make the decision on my own that it's time for me to move on." He did have ideas for Episodes VII, VIII, and IX—but Disney "looked at the stories and they said, 'We want to make something for the fans.' I said, 'All I want to do is tell a story.' ... They decided they didn’t want to use those [my] stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing. They weren’t that keen to have me involved anyway." He also added, offhandedly, that he sold the franchise "to the white slavers." He's since apologized for that.
– A new investigative report in Rolling Stone reveals that while Urban Meyer was head coach at the University of Florida, Meyer may have helped to cover up a drive-by shooting, an assault, and failed drug tests for Aaron Hernandez. Meyer has long denied that he enabled Hernandez's misbehavior, Fox News notes; just last month, Meyer insisted to the Columbus Dispatch that Hernandez had to submit to the same drug tests as his teammates. The article, previewed on Rolling Stone's website today, also alleges that the former NFL star, now a murder suspect, was a heavy PCP user. His heavy use of angel dust allegedly made him so paranoid that he carried a gun everywhere, the magazine says.
– Sarah Palin has been granted a restraining order against a Pennsylvania man who sent her a gun receipt and told her he was buying a one-way ticket to Alaska. Shawn Christy, 18, has been banned from contacting Palin and her family and has been ordered to stay at least a mile away from the Palin home. Palin’s friend, Kristan Cole—who Christy called this week to tell her his plane had landed in Alaska—has also been granted a protective order, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reports. "Bottom line is, he is crazy and could kill me," Palin testified. "He wants me dead." The court heard that Christy—who claims to have had a sexual relationship with Palin—sent her a letter saying "he is trying to follow God but has evil in him, and that he is going to sell everything and come to Alaska with his shotgun." Christy, with his persistent efforts to contact Palin and her associates, has "risen to the top of the dozens and dozens of people" who have threatened Palin over the last couple of years, Palin's attorney told AP.
– Alan Thicke's kids are fighting with his third wife over the late actor's estate. Robin Thicke and brother Brennan, the oldest of Thicke's three sons, say that Tanya Callau—who wed Thicke in 2005—is threatening them with bad publicity unless they give her more of Thicke's estate. Thicke left much of his estate to his three children, but Callau still inherited a significant amount (the Hollywood Reporter has the exact breakdown) and was allowed to continue living on his Carpinteria, Calif., ranch. Thicke's sons say their father acquired most of his wealth before meeting Callau, and that she signed a prenup prior to marrying Thicke. They also say she had no issues with the prenup or the estate plan the last time Thicke updated his trust, in February 2016. (He died in December.) But now, Thicke's sons claim, Callau is claiming the prenup is invalid and there are problems with the trust. Per a petition the brothers filed in a Los Angeles court this week, the brothers say Callau also claims she has community rights to more of Thicke's assets, she should be reimbursed for any improvements she makes to the ranch while living there, and that she took a step back from her own career to support Thicke and help raise his youngest son. The brothers' attorney says in the filing that Callau has "threatened to make her claims fodder for 'tabloid publicity' unless the Co-Trustees agreed to participate in a mediation and succumb to her demands," leading the brothers to ask a court to enforce the prenup and Thicke's will, TMZ reports. Callau's rep says in a statement, "Tanya Thicke has never threatened to take private family matters public."
– It's been more than a year since author Amy Krouse Rosenthal died of ovarian cancer shortly after writing a viral essay in which she encouraged readers to consider marrying husband Jason after her passing. Now Jason Rosenthal is speaking out, in a TED talk he gave at the TED 2018 conference as well as an interview with Today. Asked whether he'll remarry, he said, "I have no idea. I don’t know." But he says several women did reach out after reading his late wife's column. "A group of women reached out to me and professed their commitment," he told Today, per People. "Some of it provided a nice bit of levity and some humor." He says one of the women even promised to outlive him. As for the TED talk, Rosenthal recounted his grief and said he's learning to smile again after losing his partner of 26 years, Today reports. His father also died just four months after Amy, leading him to wonder, "How much can the human condition handle? What makes us capable of dealing with this intense loss and yet carry on? Was this a test? Why my family and my amazing children?" But Amy had made it clear to the world at large that he needed to persevere. "Because Amy gave me very public permission to also find happiness, I now have experienced joy from time to time," he said in the talk.
– President Trump's first budget proposal was officially unveiled Thursday morning—and it delivers exactly what he promised. The proposal—titled "America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again"—contains cuts that the Washington Post says could be the biggest reduction in federal programs since the post-World War II drawdown. The Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department are the hardest-hit agencies according to budget previews, with cuts of around 30%. Military spending would be beefed up by $54 billion under the proposal, $1.5 billion is earmarked for a border wall, and Homeland Security would get a 6.8% funding increase. A roundup of coverage about the $1.15 trillion spending plan: The document is here. Politico reports that the budget is "red meat" for Trump's base, with deep cuts to their most disliked government agencies and programs, though it is also what's known as a "skinny budget" because it is so short on details. A more detailed budget will be out in May. The AP lists winners and losers. The latter group includes the departments of Energy, Labor, and Transportation, along with after-school programs and many independent agencies supported by tax dollars. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney acknowledged that the cuts would lead to job losses, Reuters reports. "You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it," he said during a budget preview Wednesday. He said that White House officials had looked at Trump's campaign speeches, and "turned those policies into numbers." The New York Times reports that congressional Republicans have already declared parts of the plan dead on arrival. "The administration’s budget isn’t going to be the budget," Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters. "We do the budget here. The administration makes recommendations, but Congress does budgets." The Hill notes that such proposals tend to be "little more than guidance" for lawmakers—and that the Senate shot down Obama's 2015 budget 98 to 1. The AP reports that the budget funds Trump's boost for the Pentagon, the biggest since Ronald Reagan's, with cuts to conservative targets including the National Endowment for the Arts, legal aid for the poor, and the AmeriCorps national service program. NBC notes that Trump's proposal, which makes cuts to 12 out of 15 Cabinet agencies, only covers the "discretionary" quarter of the $4 trillion budget for the fiscal year that starts in October. The portion dealing with issues including taxation, Social Security, and Medicare is due in mid-May. The Washington Post reports that the budget proposal's elimination of funding for public broadcasting means that Big Bird's doom has been predicted once again, though public broadcasting has survived previous "zero funding" proposals all the way back to Richard Nixon.
– Sad news out of Pennsylvania, where a biopic about Fred Rogers (aka "Mister Rogers") is filming. WPXI and the AP report that a 61-year-old crew member for You Are My Friend has died after falling off a second-story balcony at a Mount Lebanon apartment building. Police say James Emswiller, described as a sound mixer on his IMDb page, had gone out onto the balcony for a smoke in between shooting scenes for the film and apparently plummeted over the balcony's brick wall about 7:30pm Thursday. No one saw him fall, but others nearby heard a sound and soon discovered Emswiller on the ground below. "He appears to have suffered from a medical emergency while on the balcony," Mount Lebanon Chief of Police Aaron Lauth tells People. Emswiller was initially listed in serious condition, but he soon deteriorated and was pronounced dead at a local hospital about an hour after the fall. He had previously done work on The Avengers and Jack Reacher, per his IMDb creds; the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review notes he won an Emmy for the TV movie Bessie in 2015. "This is a devastating tragedy and the studio is investigating the matter," Sony Pictures/TriStar Pictures said in a statement to USA Today. Tom Hanks, who stars as Rogers, was reportedly on the set Thursday and left after the incident.
– He's OK now, but a toddler in China went 10 days with part of a chopstick in his brain. It seems young Hanhang tripped and fell with the chopstick in his hand, and it went straight up his nose, according to a report by Central European News spotted by Fox. His parents saw it happen, removed the chopstick—or so they thought—and took him to the hospital to be safe. Unfortunately, doctors sent him home without realizing that about 2 inches of the chopstick had broken off and was still inside. “When we got home after our first visit to the hospital, my husband broke all the chopsticks in half and threw them away as we were worried something like this could happen again,” says his mother, Yu Liao. When the boy grew increasingly lethargic and sick, his parents brought him back, and only then did an X-ray reveal the reason. Hanhang showed immediate improvement once it was removed. The Mommy Files blog at the San Francisco Chronicle rounds up two similar stories and concludes, "Note to parents: Chopsticks are to only be handled by children sitting at the dinner table." (The X-ray calls to mind another strange case, this one involving a nail gun.)
– A sad day for the Ben Carson campaign: The GOP candidate canceled Tuesday and Wednesday campaign events after the death of a volunteer in a car crash in western Iowa. Braden Joplin, a 25-year-old from Midland, Texas, was fatally injured and three other campaign workers were hurt Tuesday afternoon when their van flipped over on an icy road and was hit by another vehicle, reports NBC News. Joplin was flown to a hospital in Nebraska, while the other three were treated locally and released. Politico reports that Carson, who was in South Carolina at the time, flew to Nebraska when he heard the news and paid for a private jet to bring Joplin's family out from Texas. "One of the precious few joys of campaigning is the privilege of meeting bright young men and women who are so enthusiastic about their country that they will freely give of their time and energy to work on its behalf," Carson said in a statement. "America lost one of those bright young men today. I had the privilege of knowing Braden Joplin personally, and am filled with a deep and profound sadness at his passing." Other candidates, including Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton, tweeted their condolences, while Bernie Sanders mentioned Joplin at the start of a rally in Iowa City, the AP reports. "I have a lot of respect for any young person who gets involved in the political process," Sanders said. "Our hearts go out to the family of the young man."
– Xeni Jardin, a co-founder of the Boing Boing website, had her first mammogram on Dec. 1, and she live-tweeted the whole process, as noted by Jezebel at the time. Jardin stunned her fans, however, when the results came in later that day: "I have breast cancer. I am in good hands. There is a long road ahead and it leads to happiness and a cancer-free, long, healthy life." Today, Jardin takes to Boing Boing to write of the diagnosis and what lies ahead, at one point likening the experience to being on a "cold planet" where the gravity is different. "The thing about this thing, or, at least, this first week of this thing, is how it takes you out there to the cold planet again and again and again, when you aren't expecting it," she writes. "Long, undulating waves of fear pull you out to where you are alone and unreachable, even by words sent from the strongest satellite. The thing that brings you back is love." The full column is well worth reading here.
– After suffering painful red rashes on their backsides, a husband and wife were left red in the face—so much so that a case study of their ordeal has now been pulled from the prestigious British Medical Journal. As BMJ tells the Washington Post, the British pair whose bottoms became infested with hookworm larvae on a beach in Martinique initially agreed to the Jan. 13 publication of their case, as well as photos of "red pinprick marks" on their backsides. Though their names were never mentioned, the pair "indicated their understanding that complete anonymity could not be guaranteed" and were warned journalists might pick up the story, BMJ says. But when that happened—with headlines like "His and Her Hookworm: Same Rash Strikes Couple on the Rear"—the pair had a change of heart. With the spread of photos and case details—including the woman's age, the couple's Caribbean destination, the cruise line on which they traveled, and the Cambridge hospital they visited—one of the pair asked that the article be withdrawn over concerns "about being identified by close friends and/or colleagues," BMJ says. In what the Post calls a "highly unusual 'correction,'" the journal then announced it was pulling the article despite standing by its content. As the Independent reports, the article was meant to helpful in combating a lack of familiarity in the medical community with hookworm infections. According to the CDC, such infections can be passed through contact with soil or sand contaminated with feces. As the BMJ study explained, the British couple were infected when they sat on a sandy, and apparently unsanitary, beach.
– There's been lots in the news about Russia lately, and a high-ranking US Army general just added to the mix—this time regarding the country's involvement with the Taliban. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the supreme allied commander of Europe for NATO, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday that he's noticed an uptick in Russian influence on the insurgent group in Afghanistan, and he raised the possibility that Moscow is giving the group supplies, reports Reuters. Russia and the Taliban deflected any insinuation that their relationship has ventured into equipment provisions, with Taliban officials telling Reuters that Russia has offered only "moral and political support." As for Russia's take on a possible supply chain: "Absolutely false," a Russian Foreign Ministry rep told RIA Novosti, via the Tasnim Iranian news agency. As Stars and Stripes notes, Russia has tried to evade full-on criticism for its Taliban rapport by claiming the militants are going after ISIS, not Afghani forces. However, Army Gen. John Nicholson, in charge of US forces in Afghanistan, has said he rejects the "public legitimacy" that Russia tries to impart on the Taliban. NBC News reports that Scaparrotti's theory comes just hours after reports that the Taliban had taken hold Thursday of the district center of the "hotly contested town" of Sangin, although that hasn't been confirmed. Scaparrotti didn't offer any elaboration on what provisions he thinks may have been offered by the Russians, or when this supposed handover may have taken place.
– The FCC released the final draft of its proposal to end net neutrality on Wednesday, and the Verge reports it gets rid of "nearly every net neutrality rule on the books" while allowing for "blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization" on the part of internet service providers. The proposal will allow ISPs to create fast and slow lanes, give preference to certain customers, and stop people from accessing apps and services at will. The one net neutrality rule the proposal leaves in place is that ISPs must publicly disclose when they are doing those things. The FCC says removing net neutrality rules will "facilitate critical broadband investment and innovation." Here's what else you need to know:
– "A move on straws" is afoot across the pond, and McDonald's is driving the push. The fast-food chain is nixing plastic straws and moving to paper in all of its Ireland and United Kingdom restaurants in what the UK's environment secretary calls a "significant contribution" to going green, the BBC reports. Those locations currently use 1.8 million plastic straws per day. The straw switchover will start in September and be fully in place by 2019. The initiative comes after a trial run there, and new paper-straw trials are set for some McDonald's locations in France, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and the US, CNBC notes. CNNMoney notes that, per trash-mapping app Litterati, plastic straws are the sixth most common type of litter in the world. Only about 1% of plastic straws are recycled, and, because of their combination polypropylene-polystyrene makeup, they can take hundreds of years to decompose. Some advocates say plastic straws are safer for certain customers with disabilities, but McDonald's says the plastic versions will still be available upon request "for those that require it."
– Imprisoned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was granted his first family visit yesterday, 43 days after he was taken into custody, reports the BBC. Ai's wife, Lu Qing, was brought to a secret location to meet with him for about 20 minutes, under the condition they did not talk about sensitive issues, only family and health. "He seemed conflicted, contained, his face was tense. I could see redness in his eyes. It was obvious that without freedom to express himself he was not behaving naturally even with me," says Lu, who adds that Ai otherwise appeared to be in good health. "We could not talk about the economic charges or other stuff," she says, and tells the AP that others were present when they met, and some of them were taking notes. "We were careful, we knew that the deal could be broken at any moment, so we were careful." Lu says Ai was not handcuffed and was wearing his own clothes instead of a detention center uniform. His trademark beard had not been shaven. Chinese authorities have not specified the charges against him, except to say he was being investigated for "economic crimes," but it is generally believed Ai is actually being investigated for his criticism of the government.
– A Texas woman passed out at a red light, awoke as her husband tried to rouse her, then drove off dragging him along outside the car, KDAF-TV reports. Police suspect 50-year-old Mary Jane Lane (yes, her real name) passed out while under the influence of prescription drugs at the stop light. Her husband exited the SUV from the passenger side, opened her door, and tried to undo her safety belt, presumably so he could take over driving. That’s when she “came to” and hit the gas. The husband got dragged along but eventually fell from the car, receiving head and leg injuries. Lane kept on driving, police report. They arrested her later for something called intoxication assault, notes the Dallas Morning News, but the charge was reduced to driving while intoxicated. Now, she’s in a Dallas jail on a $20,000 bond; her husband’s condition isn’t known.
– With the revival of The X-Files already proving to be one of 2016's most popular shows, everyone's jumping on the bandwagon, including the CIA. Fox News reports the CIA recently drew attention to some of the documents related to UFOs it first declassified in 1978. A blog post by the CIA highlights "five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity" and "five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings." The "Mulder" documents include 1952 UFO sightings in East Germany—a father and daughter spotted a UFO in a field accompanied by two men in shiny suits (PDF here); Spain—a newspaper office was "flooded" with calls about a smoke-trailing UFO (PDF here); and the Belgian Congo—a fighter plane chased after two UFOs making inhumanly abrupt changes in course (PDF here). Most of the CIA's declassified UFO documents come from the 1940s and 1950s, and Live Science notes that this isn't a surprise as the imaginations of people at the time were running rampant with sci-fi movies, the space race, and the Cold War. In most of the reported cases, it adds, "expert investigators uncovered reasonable explanations for the sightings," such as missile tests or cloud formations. Scully would be proud. (Now about those weird space balls in Vietnam.)
– One potentially tragic consequence of the government shutdown: With 16 employees of Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho now on furlough, the search for a missing woman last seen there has slowed dramatically. Jo Elliott-Blakeslee, 63, went hiking with Amy Linkert, 69, on Sept. 19; they were reported missing last Monday when Elliott-Blakeslee didn't arrive at work. The body of Linkert, who is believed to have died from exposure, was found last week, CBS News reports. Now Elliott-Blakeslee's family is asking experienced hikers to help search for her, KBOI reports—the station notes that federal workers can't even volunteer to do their jobs during a shutdown. More unfortunate consequences: Children with cancer are being blocked from starting clinical trials, officials say, since federal health employees are also on furlough. Each week of the shutdown, 200 patients won't be able to start their clinical trials; 15% of these patients are expected to be children, and 33% of those children (or 10 per week for as long as the shutdown lasts) have cancer. Ongoing clinical trials will continue, however, ABC News reports. The CDC has also furloughed employees, so it can't track multi-state disease outbreaks. And its seasonal flu program will be halted, which might hinder its ability to create next year's flu shot, a spokesperson says. The Washington Post has a list of the nine most painful consequences. Among them: Of the more than 2 million federal workers whose paychecks might be delayed, 800,000 might never actually get paid. If the shutdown lasts more than a couple of weeks, veterans may not receive pension payments or see their disability claims paid. Disability benefits for non-veterans could also be interrupted. The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutritional program could keep running through October in many states, but could shut down after just one week in some. And Head Start programs, which provide health, nutrition, and other services to low-income kids, will gradually start closing. NPR runs down the shutdown's many impacts on science and health. Workers are furloughed and programs are being shut down at the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, the FDA, NASA, the US Geological Survey, NOAA, the EPA, the Forest Service, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (And as you probably have heard, the National Zoo turned off its "panda cam.") One other impact? A planned Ku Klux Klan rally at Gettysburg won't be happening.
– The USPS isn't the only woebegone postal service. Things are bad enough in Finland that the state-owned Posti is getting into ... lawn care. Under the new program, which begins next month, postal workers will mow residents' lawns each Tuesday, when mail volumes are typically lower, broadcaster Yle reports. Interested Finns can go online to order the service, which will run from May 17 through August. A weekly 30-minute cut will cost about $74 a month, and homeowners must provide the mower. In a press release, Posti head Anu Punola says she anticipates that people will be "happy to outsource lawn mowing," adding that the idea came from the mail carriers themselves. Last year, Posti reported losses of about $85 million, per the Atlantic, with delivery volumes down to 1960s levels. Nonetheless, Posti says, mail service is provided to 2.8 million households and "new home services will see it transform increasingly into a service company." Indeed, the Atlantic notes Posti launched a 12-month pilot program in February where, in partnership with a health-services company, postal workers will visit the homes of people with disabilities and do light chores, like warming up meals and helping with eating. "Posti's network of professionals reaches both densely and sparsely populated areas every weekday," points out a press release. As for the mowing, some are grumbling. The BBC reports a group that represents property maintenance companies is concerned postal workers don't have the "expertise" to operate lawnmowers, adding, "It is hard to believe that just anyone can start to cut lawns."
– Greg Hardy is the Carolina Panthers' franchise player, a Pro Bowl defensive end who will make $13.1 million this season. He will also sit out today's home opener after the Panthers abruptly reversed course and deactivated him this morning, reports ESPN. The reason? Hardy was convicted in July of assaulting and threatening the life of an ex-girlfriend; he's currently appealing that conviction, and is likely to return to court in November. Both the NFL and the Panthers had opted not to punish Hardy while he appealed, notes TMZ, a decision that was reinforced by the Panthers' head coach as recently as Friday, when he confirmed that Hardy would start today. "We are in a process and we're letting the process play its way out," Ron Rivera said Friday. Hardy's deactivation occurs after the Ravens released Ray Rice and the Vikings deactivated Adrian Peterson.
– Authorities say a 2-year-old boy in Missouri died after being left alone in a room with a running space heater for 38 hours straight while his parents did meth, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. "They heard the child's cries and did nothing," a county prosecutor says. The body of Braydon Barnes was discovered in his crib by his mother, 22-year-old Kathleen Peacock, on Sunday morning, per KTVI. A neighbor who ran to help after hearing Peacock's screams says it felt like it was more than 100 degrees in Braydon's room. Authorities say the boy had been dead for a while before he was found, CNN reports. It was determined that Braydon died of hyperthermia—or overheating—which likely "caused extreme discomfort and difficulty breathing as he died." Peacock and 25-year-old Lucas Barnes allegedly admitted to making meth the week before Braydon died in the mobile home where the boy was found, the Post-Dispatch reports. They're facing decades in prison for child abuse and drug manufacturing. In addition to hyperthermia, Braydon was found to be suffering from malnutrition and likely hadn't eaten in days. Their mobile home. which had "feces in places where it shouldn't be," was declared unsafe "for any human being" and condemned, the prosecutor says. Peacock, who is currently pregnant, was already facing charges for allegedly driving drunk with Braydon in the car. According to KTVI, relatives are "devastated," with at least one expressing hope that both Peacock and Barnes receive the harshest punishment available.
– A month after confirming Zika causes birth defects, CDC researchers say there is a "substantial" risk that a pregnant woman will have a baby with a birth defect if infected with Zika during her first trimester. More specifically, the risk for microencaphaly is 1% to 14% depending on the scenario, reports the AP. The range is wide given that research into the disease is relatively new. For the study, scientists analyzed data from 400 babies diagnosed with microcephaly—in which babies are born with abnormally small heads—in the Brazilian state of Bahia between July and February. Because the study focused exclusively on microcephaly in a single Brazilian state, "these numbers are probably only the tip of the iceberg," says a UCLA professor. One notable quirk: the bigger the outbreak, the better the odds are of having a healthy baby—because more women would be exposed before becoming pregnant and perhaps develop immunity. When the outbreak is small, the risk rises to the 14% level. An earlier study out of Brazil put the risk of Zika-related birth defects and fetal death at almost 30%, though one based on a Zika outbreak in French Polynesia put the risk of microcephaly at 1%. But even a 1% risk could be devastating in developing countries, where there are limited care options for disabled children, a health expert tells USA Today. A separate study published Wednesday notes three Brazilian infants with microcephaly showed eye problems not linked to Zika before, including retinal lesions, hemorrhaging, and abnormal blood vessel development, per a release. (The number of pregnant women with Zika in the US has nearly tripled.)
– Chelsey Ramer, a member of the Poarch Creek Band of Indians, wanted to wear an important symbol of her Native American heritage when she graduated from her Alabama high school last month: an eagle feather. But the principal of Escambia Academy denied her request; soon after the school distributed a dress code contract (which prohibits "extraneous items" worn during graduation) that seniors had to sign in order to walk during the ceremony. Chelsey didn't sign, walked anyway—feather attached to her cap's tassel—and now she's been fined $1,000, which she must pay if she wants to get her diploma and transcripts. "I don't think it's fair at all. I feel like it's discrimination," the 17-year-old says. Her tribal teacher points out that though the school is private, it is still required to follow the federal American Indian Religious Freedom Act, reports Indian Country Today Media Network. Chelsey tells Local 15 the principal was fired after the incident, thought it hasn't been confirmed that the departure is related to the feather issue. She says she's waiting to see if the school board reverses the decision and is also seeking legal counsel.
– Is President Obama facing a revolt from his Democratic generals? Nancy Pelosi certainly doesn’t seem happy. She offered a surprisingly blunt critique of the president and his team recently, buried within this Howard Kurtz Newsweek piece on Obama’s newfound populist punch. “I think you need to talk about how poorly they do on message,” Pelosi grouses. “They can’t see around corners; they anticipate nothing." Rumor has it that Harry Reid isn’t happy, either. Take this one with a grain of salt, but conservative Washington Times columnist Joseph Curl writes today that there’s a “story making the rounds in Washington” that Reid and Obama have been on the outs ever since Obama, in a secret meeting, nixed a debt ceiling deal that both the House and Senate thought could pass. “I’m not going to do anything for that [expletive] again,” Reid is rumored to have declared afterward. Curl does not cite any sources.
– A car plowed into a crowd of children outside a primary school in northeastern China on Thursday, killing five people and injuring 18, a local government spokesman said. The driver was taken into custody after the crash around noon in the coastal city of Huludao in Liaoning province, the spokesman said. He described the crash as "a major traffic accident" and that the cause was under investigation. Disturbing security camera footage showed a line of children crossing the street in front of their school when a car approaches, which then changes lanes and swerves into the crowd of children, the AP reports. It wasn't clear if the crash was a deliberate attack or whether the driver was swerving to avoid obstacles in front of him. (Last month, 14 children were injured in a stabbing attack in Chongqinq.)
– Teachers and librarians have the lowest suicide rate while farmers and fishermen have the highest, according to a CDC study of 12,300 suicides in 17 states in 2012. Why the discrepancy? Researchers say "job-related isolation and demands, stressful work environments, and work-home imbalance, as well as socioeconomic inequities" likely play a role, per the AP. Here are the 10 fields as grouped by the CDC with the highest rates, based on the number of suicides per 100,000 workers: Farming, fishing, and forestry: 84.5 Carpenters, miners, electricians, construction trades: 53.3 Mechanics and those who do installation, maintenance, repair: 47.9 Factory and production workers: 34.5 Architecture and engineering: 32.2 Police, firefighters, corrections workers, others in protective services: 30.5 Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media: 24.3 Computer and mathematical: 23.3 Transportation workers: 22.3 Corporate executives and managers, advertising, and PR: 20.3 Click for the full list.
– The Mummy marks a return to the past and a nod to the future for Universal: Taking inspiration from its 1932 and 1999 films of the same name, it's the first installment of a new "Dark Universe" franchise that is set to include flicks like Jekyll & Hyde and Bride of Frankenstein. Tom Cruise stars as an antiquities hunter who disturbs an Egyptian sarcophagus and awakes an evil spirit. Here's what critics are saying: Peter Travers calls The Mummy "a monster fail" that kills anticipation for future franchise flicks. It has too much CGI, and director Alex Kurtzman "can't seem to make sense of a script by numerous writers clearly unashamed of hack work," he writes at Rolling Stone. He adds Russell Crowe appears as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for no good reason. Crowe is "surprisingly fun" in this role, but the film's attempts to make him into "head honcho, superhero, and mad scientist all at once" may be its "worst conceptual misfire," Rafer Guzman writes at Newsday. But then, "virtually everything in this movie seems like the wrong decision." It's a "massive mess of a movie" that "seems doomed to repulse anyone who comes across it," he writes. Glenn Kenny was also thrown off by the Jekyll character, but that's just one reason he's warning that the "Dark Universe" franchise might be a "grievously ill-advised" one. Its first installment has "plenty to get irritated about," including some "very old-school sexism," he writes at RogerEbert.com. It's "amazingly relentless in its naked borrowing from other, better horror and sci-fi movies" to boot. It's not all bad, though, writes Stephanie Merry at the Washington Post. "Some of the action is thrilling, especially a brilliantly choreographed plane crash," and there are a "few genuinely funny moments." But those moments "are no match for the cumbersome, convoluted story, not to mention the nonexistent chemistry between Cruise and [Annabelle] Wallis," she notes. Not a good start, Universal.
– All new lawyers in California will soon have to make an added promise when joining the bar—to be nice to one another, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Beginning May 23, the oath one takes to "faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney" will be joined by language stating the lawyer "will strive to conduct myself at all times with dignity, courtesy, and integrity." The added language was OKed Thursday by the California Supreme Court at the urging of a former state bar president, who over his 45 years in the industry has found lawyers' bad behavior—swearing at peers, attacking each other in court filings, and bullying judges—on the rise. The civility oath will remind lawyers that the profession isn't just about winning cases, says Patrick Kelly. But as there's no penalty for breaking said promise, legal ethics experts wonder if it will deter such conduct at all. "It’s a reminder of positive professional behavior, rather than a stick," says a court rep. The pledge may not be unique to California for long. The American Board of Trial Advocates is campaigning to take the oath nationwide, the Los Angeles Times reports.
– Sally Struthers—known to most as either Gloria Stivic from All in the Family or as a TV spokesperson for kids' charities—was arrested and charged with DUI yesterday while on Maine's US Route 1, reports TMZ. The 65-year-old actress is free on $160 bail and denies the charges through her publicist, reports AP. Struthers has been in the resort town of Ogunquit appearing in the musical 9 to 5.
– No modern candidate can run a legit campaign without help from a super PAC with deep pockets, yes? The New York Times reports that Bernie Sanders is providing a real test of that accepted wisdom. He's managed to build a "formidable" sum of $15.2 million while eschewing super PACs, with the average donation to his campaign at $31.30. The vast majority of that total comes from small donations routed through the ActBlue website, which handles donations for Democrats. Sanders knows he will still be widely outspent, but thinks he'll have plenty of money to run a smart, frugal, and "winning" campaign. Some other political stories from the wires today: 'Not himself': A Politico story on Joe Biden quotes a longtime friend as saying that "he's just not himself" as he considers a run. "He’s sort of all over the place. He’s engaged but not in that child-like, manic way he usually is. He’s taking it all in and soaking up information, but he’s hard to read. And Joe Biden isn’t usually that hard to read.” 'Out of line': After his run-in with Univision reporter Jorge Ramos last night, Donald Trump tells Today.com that Ramos was "totally out of line" when he began calling out questions and deserved to be ejected. "I would have gotten to him very quickly." Ramos tweets that it was Trump who was out of line. Unwanted endorsement: Former KKK grand wizard David Duke has weighed in on the 2016 race, and he thinks Trump is the only candidate who "understands the real sentiment of America," reports BuzzFeed. Trouble for the Ricks: The AP reports that Rick Perry and Rick Santorum are having serious trouble keeping the donors who supported them in the last presidential race. Most of those 2012 donors have defected to other candidates.
– Indian police say they've arrested one of the masterminds behind 2008's dramatic Mumbai terrorist attack. Delhi police tell the BBC that Abu Jindal, aka Sayed Zabiuddin, was the "handler" of the 10 gunmen, and that his voice can be heard on recordings of conversations between the gunmen and their leaders in Pakistan. Sources tell the Times of India that he was nabbed last week while entering India from a "Gulf country"; an IBNLive report says he was deported from Saudi Arabia. "As long as you have hostages, the police can't do anything," Jindal allegedly advised the gunmen. But "if there is any problem, if the pressure builds up, shoot them." Jindal was originally from India, but allegedly was among five Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives who directed the attack from Karachi, Pakistan. He was also the one who allegedly gave the terrorists their weapons training, and taught them Hindi.
– Bragging rights for the world's most valuable brands are usually controlled by US companies, but in this year's ranking by BrandZ, one of China's own cracked the top 10, CNN reports. Tencent, which makes online games, apps, and other digital add-ons, rode on the coattails of its WeChat app to make the list, which saw the familiar names of Google, Apple, and Microsoft dominate the first three slots, respectively. The top 10 brands, along with brand value: Google, $246 billion Apple, $235 billion Microsoft, $143 billion Amazon.com, $139 billion Facebook, $130 billion AT&T, $115 billion Visa, $111 billion Tencent, $108 billion IBM, $102 billion McDonald's, $98 billion See the entire list here. (Do we even care about brands anymore?)
– Sad news in the world of comics: Joan Lee, the wife of industry legend Stan Lee, is dead at age 93, reports Variety. She had a stroke last week and never recovered. Lee himself is 94 and had been married to Joan for 69 years. Her death prompted the Hollywood Reporter to recount how Stan Lee met his future wife, then a British hat model living in New York, back in the 1940s. A friend had told him about another hat model, but when he went to ask her to lunch, Joan answered the door. "I took one look at her—and she was the girl I had been drawing all my life," he once recalled. "And then I heard the English accent. And I’m a nut for English accents! She said, 'May I help you?' And I took a look at her, and I think I said something crazy like, 'I love you.' I don’t remember exactly. But anyway, I took her to lunch. I never met Betty, the other girl. I think I proposed to [Joan] at lunch.” The two married Dec. 5, 1947, in Reno, Nevada, roughly an hour after Joan obtained a divorce. The Hollywood Reporter has the full story.
– If convicted again of murder, Amanda Knox says she won't willingly return to Italy to face punishment; instead, she told an Italian journalist, "I will be—how do you put it?—a fugitive," the Guardian reports. The reporter, Meo Ponte, who interviewed her over Skype, has previously called Knox innocent of the murder of former roommate Meredith Kercher; he says her "fugitive" comment was likely a joke, the Daily Beast notes. But in a statement to the Today show, Knox was clearer: "(If convicted), legally I'll be defined a 'fugitive,' but I will continue to fight for my innocence," she said. "I will not willingly submit myself to injustice." Such a verdict would need to be upheld by the country's top court, and even then it's not clear whether Italy would ask the US to extradite her, or how the US would respond (double jeopardy could be at play, but it's complicated). Still, such a comment may not serve her well, the Daily Beast points out: US officials may now have to keep her on their radar in case she is found guilty. The verdict is due Jan. 30.
– In possibly the weirdest news you’ll hear all day, sex-and-drug-scandal-plagued Ted Haggard is going on the celebrity edition of ABC’s Wife Swap reality show … and will swap partners with Gary Busey. Yes, in case you’d forgotten, Haggard still has a wife—despite the fact that he admitted paying for meth-fueled sex with a male masseuse in 2006. The probably-bisexual pastor now runs a nondenominational church in Colorado, and Busey is apparently a good match for him: The born-again actor is involved with Christian men’s organization Promise Keepers. However, Busey bizarrely has no wife, just a girlfriend with whom he has a child. Producers haven’t said whether she’s the swapee or not, People notes, but the Colorado Springs Gazette reports that she is. Busey, of course, has slightly more experience than Haggard with reality TV, having already appeared on Celebrity Rehab and Celebrity Apprentice. But Haggard, who is apparently trying for a second career in entertainment, has appeared in a Christian “sex comedy.”
– A tree beloved by Anne Frank is gone, toppled by a storm today in Amsterdam. The chestnut tree stood outside the window of the attic where Frank hid, and she often wrote about it in her diaries. In the years since her death, the 150-year-old “Anne Frank Tree” became rotted and diseased; city officials ordered it felled, but a 2007 campaign managed to save it. Its trunk was encased in a steep support system, but even that failed to protect it from today’s strong winds, the AP reports. No one was hurt, and the nearby Anne Frank House museum was unharmed. The tree lives on through more than 160 clones planted in Amsterdam and the US. “From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind,” Frank wrote in 1944. Pieces of the tree are now for sale on a Dutch auction site, Reuters adds.
– Israel soldier Gilad Shalit is home and “happy,” but he’s still recovering from five years’ imprisonment, his father says. “In isolation,” Gilad “had no connection with his people, with his own language,” Noam Shalit told members of the media, including the Jerusalem Post. Lack of sunlight and mistreatment in captivity have contributed to health problems, Shalit said, though he noted that prison conditions improved over the years. Before Gilad’s release, he was interviewed by Egyptian TV, and speaking seemed difficult for him, CBS News notes. Media attention has been difficult for Gilad, his father said. “Naturally he can't be exposed to so many people because he was in isolation so many days and years.” Noam Shalit thanked supporters and acknowledged “the price we are paying for Gilad’s release,” an exchange of some 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. One freed prisoner said Palestinians should kidnap "another Shalit" every year until all Palestinians are released, notes the New York Times. For video of the release and homecoming, click here.
– If Hillary Clinton's going to win over New Yorkers before the state's April 19 primary, first she's got to prove she can master the NYC subway system. And she had a little trouble Thursday in the Bronx when, just like nearly every other Big Apple commuter has experienced, she tried to swipe her MetroCard to get through a turnstile and failed not once, but four times, reports BuzzFeed. The site has an animated GIF display of Clinton's persistence in all of her in-vain attempts, finally making it through on the fifth swipe. But as Politico points out, Bernie Sanders doesn't exactly have this in the bag, either. When he sat down with the New York Daily News on Friday, his interrogators asked him if he knew how to ride the subway. The Brooklyn native seemed confused as to what the reporter meant at first, then replied, "You get a token and you get in." (Tokens were discontinued in 2003.) When he was told he was wrong, he recovered with: "You jump over the turnstile." (Too bad Hillary wasn't on the subway when Improv Everywhere pulled off its latest prank.)
– More details are emerging in yesterday's deadly attack on a luxury hotel in Tripoli. Four or five gunmen are believed to have entered the Corinthia in the early morning, shouting "God is great" as they fired at guards and civilians. Ten people were killed, including American David Berry, an ex-Marine and contractor with security company Crucible, and four Europeans, the New York Times reports. The AP adds the "Islamic State in Tripoli Province," a Libyan affiliate of ISIS, has claimed responsibility for the assault, seen as retaliation for the death of alleged al-Qaeda leader Abu Anas al-Libi in US custody. Al-Libi, seized by US forces in Tripoli in 2003, died earlier this month of complications from liver surgery. Five guards were also killed in the chaos, which the Times calls the "deadliest attack on Western interests in Libya since the assault on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi." A hotel employee tells the AP that British, Italian, and Turkish guests fled out a back entrance to a parking lot, where a car bomb exploded 100 yards away. No hostages were taken. Two of the assailants were killed after an hours-long standoff with police loyal to the Tripoli government; one is believed to have killed himself with a grenade or suicide vest. "The operation is not the last one on the lands of Tripoli," a post on jihadi forums today reads. "Let the enemies of God, the crusaders, and their allies await what would harm them."
– A fiery car wreck on Memorial Day has left five California teens, including two sisters, dead and the city of Newport Beach in shock over what authorities say is the worst solo crash in memory, reports the LA Times. Police say a 17-year-old student was speeding when he swerved off the road, hitting a tree. The car split into two and burst into flames, scattering bodies across the pavement. "When we arrived, we found what we thought were two vehicles," says a fire captain who responded. "One was on fire." Several bodies had to be identified through fingerprints. "There are simply no words to convey the sorrow felt by our students and staff, nor are there answers sufficient to explain why five vibrant teenagers who were with us on Friday are gone today," says the local school district superintendent. A schoolmate of driver Abdulrahman M. Alyahyan said he "loved cars. He took care of his car as if it was a human being," the AP reports. The Times adds that someone of the same name was cited last month for improperly modifying a car exhaust system and violating his provisional driver's license, but police would not confirm if it was the same person.
– It might be something like War & Peace or The Call of the Wild, except with more dancing and belated abstinence, but a new literary Wasillan has gone rogue. Amazon has a pre-order page for a 304-page Bristol Palin memoir, set to be released in September by HarperCollins. Gawker's Jim Newell takes a stab at the plot: "Part One: I was born. Part Two: I got pregnant. Part Three: I went dancing on teevee. Part Four: ??" Click for more on the book ... like its price tag.
– Three-term Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl will not seek re-election next year, sources tell Politico and Fox News. The 68-year-old is expected to announce his retirement at a press conference today. Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, was elected to the Senate in 1994 after four terms in the House, and would have been expected to win a fourth term. He is the fifth senator and second Republican to announce a departure from Congress next year. Gabrielle Giffords has already been mentioned as a possible contender for his spot, along with Janet Napolitano and Republican Rep. Jeff Flake.
– Google will no longer offer a search suggestion for "are Jews evil" which directs users to anti-Semitic websites. The search engine says it has removed offensive autocomplete results initially spotted by Carole Cadwalladr at the Observer, reports the Guardian. Cadwalladr explained how Google suggested a search for "are Jews evil" when "are Jews" was typed into its search box. Typing "are women" and "are Muslims" returned "are women evil" and "are Muslims bad," Cadwalladr said. Clicking those suggestions took her to page results that would lead one to conclude that "Jews are evil. Women are evil. Islam must be destroyed. Hitler was one of the good guys," Cadwalladr added. An answer box highlighted by Google even explained that "every woman has some degree of prostitute in her." A data scientist urged Google to take action, noting it had "clearly become a conduit for right-wing hate sites" and a victim of "the troll army," per the Guardian. "It is clearly very frightening what is going on here." Most of the offensive autocomplete results spotted by Cadwalladr have since been erased—"are women equal to men" was among them, per CBS News—though "are Muslims bad" is still a suggestion. Google says it tries "to prevent offensive terms, like porn and hate speech, from appearing," but "autocomplete predictions are algorithmically generated based on users' search activity and interests" and "may be unexpected or unpleasant." That said, "we acknowledge that autocomplete isn't an exact science and we're always working to improve our algorithms." (Google previously suggested Wisconsin was "stupid.")
– What does Kobe Bryant have to do with the possible discovery of a "lost" Jackson Pollock painting? Something, it turns out. An Arizona auction house says it was contacted by a Sun City resident who wanted someone to take a look at a 1992 LA Lakers poster signed by Bryant. "We ended up signing a contract to auction the contents of the estate, and that's when we found many of the paintings," among them one that Josh Levine of J. Levine Auction & Appraisal believed to be a Pollock. The Arizona Republic reports Levine was so intrigued by the potential Pollock that he spent more than $50,000 over 18 months in an attempt to establish it was done by the artist's hand. "I'm brave enough to call it a Jackson Pollock and put my entire reputation on it," he says. Still, Levine acknowledges potential Pollocks have long been a source of art-world consternation; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation does not authenticate Pollock paintings. But in a press release, the auction house describes the painting's provenance as "strong": The man who owned it—he had never heard of Pollock—was given the gouache painting by his half-sister, who was a longtime friend of an art critic who knew Pollock. The auction house further explains forensic tests established "the dating of the painting to the mid-twentieth century ... as no pigments or binding media introduced in the late 1950s and 1960s have been detected." The work, which measures 22.5 x 32 inches, will be auctioned June 20; Levine expects it will fetch $10 million to $15 million. (A painting made by a 21-year-old in 1982 recently sold for $110 million.)
– A 5-month-old born using a "revolutionary" genetic technique is said to be the world's first baby created using DNA from three parents since the technique was banned about two decades ago, New Scientist reports. The boy, IDed by the International Business Times as Abrahim Hassan, was born in Mexico to Jordanian parents, and embryologists are hoping his successful birth will hasten using the procedure elsewhere. Abrahim's mother, Shaban, carries the gene for Leigh syndrome—a severe neurological condition that decimates mental and physical capabilities and often results in a child's death before kindergarten. Although Hassan herself is healthy, her first two children died from the disease. That's when she and her husband looked for assistance from NYC's New Hope Fertility Center, where a team led by Dr. John Zhang started them off on an alternative way to parenthood. There are a couple of different ways to pull off the three-parent technique, but the one they chose to go with is called spindle nuclear transfer, in which the nucleus from the mother's egg is placed in a donor egg whose own nucleus has been taken out; that egg, which then contains nuclear DNA from the mom and mitochondrial DNA from the donor, is fertilized with the father's sperm. Five embryos were created in this case, and when just one "took," it was implanted into Hassan, who delivered Abrahim nine months later. This all had to be done in Mexico, where Zhang says "there are no rules" (the Times labels it "relatively flexible legislation"; the procedure isn't approved in the US). One concern scientists are keeping an eye on: faulty mitochondria that could replicate, a problem that may have occurred when the technique was last tried in the '90s. (The UK has OKed a controversial gene-editing method.)
– Good news for older Americans: A new study suggests that their odds of getting dementia are shrinking despite predictions to the contrary. While standardized tests showed 11.6% of Americans 65 and older had dementia in 2000, only 8.8% did in 2012, reports NBC News. What's more, people are getting dementia later, with the average age at diagnosis increasing from 80.7 to 82.4 over the same period, reports the New York Times. One possible factor: A person's average education increased during that period from 11.8 years to 12.7 years, say University of Michigan researchers. "Education might actually change the brain itself," lead author Kenneth Langa tells NPR. "We think that it actually creates more, and more complicated, connections between the nerve cells so that you're able to keep thinking normally later into life." Another potential factor: While health ailments linked to dementia such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol increased, people were treating them with better medications. The study draws on long-range data about 20,000 Americans from all kinds of backgrounds, and Langa says it suggests that dire predictions about the nation's dementia problem might have been been overstated. The Alzheimer's Association isn't so sure: Though dementia rates may be falling, "the total number of Americans with Alzheimer's and other dementias is expected to continue to increase dramatically" as the number of older adults climbs," it says. In the US, the number of people 65 and older is projected to double by 2050, notes NPR. (A game could reduce your dementia risk.)
– Like low-status Neanderthals, contemporary men who aren't exactly winners—literally, when it comes to playing video games—are more likely to harass women online, new research cited in the Washington Post finds. Scientists who conducted the study published in Plos One played 163 games of Halo as either male-voiced players or female-voiced players (82 female, 81 male) with remote teammates and opponents. The study gauged a remote player's skill by measuring such factors like kills and deaths. Researchers found men were typically cordial to players they believed to be male, and that more skilled men who kicked first-shooter butt were less likely to direct negative comments toward female-voiced players than their less skilled male counterparts. But lamer players tended to take their frustrations out on female players with more frequent, caustic comments. A lead author notes that gaming provides the perfect breeding ground for this kind of behavior: After all, the Post notes, players can remain anonymous, they may never run into an online teammate or opponent again, and it's a significantly male-biased recreation. Females threaten gamers' "pre-existing social hierarchy"; the guys at the bottom of the virtual totem pole feel threatened and therefore become more threatening to those they think they can quash the easiest. "As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female's performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank," the study notes. Such gamer communities mirror male-dominated industries—such as engineering or the tech field—and may promote sexist actions in real life, scientists warn.
– Facebook has begun rolling out an important new protection, and Gawker's Ryan Tate says users should "jump on this" as soon they can. It's an encryption tool called Facebook HTTPS that will "keep any random jerk in the café from hijacking your account." Unfortunately, users have to opt-in to the service, at least for now, and Tate offers a walk-through of how to do it under Account Settings. (Facebook does, too, in its blog post.) You may not be able to make the switch immediately, but keep checking back. "Switching to HTTPS is important because a browser extension called Firesheep has made it especially easy for anyone sharing your open wireless network—at cafe or conference, for example—to sniff your credentials and freely access your account," writes Tate. Also note that this protection doesn't apply to the Facebook iPhone app.
– A waitress is being called a hero after helping point parents and police to two girls who vanished in Maine last month. Lisa Stephenson was waiting tables at the Blue Crab Grill in Newark, Del., when two young girls came in asking for jobs. "They said they were traveling and their phones and wallets were stolen in New York," she tells the Bangor Daily News. They left job applications noting neither had finished high school, but no address or phone number. "It didn't add up," says Stephenson, 26. “It seemed odd for teen girls not to have cellphones, nowadays,” she tells Yahoo. When Stephenson got home, she searched their names on Facebook and found the girls, 14 and 16, had disappeared in Maine a day earlier on Oct. 25, along with a car belonging to the younger girl's mother, and may have been heading for South Carolina. Stephenson reached out to the older girl's mother and then to local police. The next day, after receiving other concerned calls, authorities found the girls panhandling in front of a strip mall about 100 miles away in Waldorf, Md. An officer took them to a district station where a social worker picked them up. They were reunited with their mothers on Oct. 28. While the younger's girl's mother drove her car back home, the other woman took the girls to the Blue Crab Grill, where they thanked Stephenson in person. On Facebook, the mother praised Stephenson as "a hero—a person who trusted her gut when she saw two young girls all alone and helped." But Stephenson is rejecting the title. “I don’t feel like a hero,” she tells Yahoo. “I just feel like a normal person who needed to speak up and did." (This teen just discovered that he'd been "missing" for 13 years.)
– Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will have a May wedding at Windsor Castle's St. George's Chapel, Kensington Palace announced Tuesday. Windsor Castle, west of London, is one of Queen Elizabeth II's main residences. The 15th-century chapel is as historic but more intimate than Westminster Abbey, where Harry's older brother, William, married Kate Middleton in 2011. Tuesday's announcement said that the queen would attend the wedding, which will be paid for by the royal family. The exact date was not revealed, reports the AP. The announcement added that Markle, who CNN notes attended Catholic school but isn't a practicing Catholic, will be baptized in the Church of England prior to the wedding. The church allows divorcees—Markle is one—to remarry. She'll also become a British citizen, though a rep for Markle wouldn't say if she would retain her American citizenship after the years-long process is complete. Prince Charles' wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, said she was "delighted" her stepson was marrying the US actress. "America's loss is our gain," she said. (Read the story of Harry's proposal here.)
– Kristina Chesterman, 21, was studying to be a nurse when she was killed by a suspected drunk driver last year—but she managed to save lives anyway. A registered organ donor, Chesterman gave five people, including a baby, new life, and now the woman who received her heart wants to do something in return. Susan Vieira, 64, has vowed to check off everything on Chesterman's bucket list—written down on a piece of paper her mom only recently found. (One of the items? "Save someone's life." Another? "Be in four places at once.") Vieira had completed several of the tasks already, including learning to fly a plane and riding a camel, ABC News reports. And now, "together, we will finish her bucket list," Vieira says. Other points on the list include running through a poppy field and riding in a hot-air balloon, the San Jose Mercury News reported earlier this year. "I'd like to think all the things I continue to accomplish in my life, I’m taking Kristina with me," Vieira continues; Chesterman's mom adds that she "felt an instant connection" to the woman she just met. Chesterman's friends are also helping to complete the bucket list, including one who took Chesterman's picture along for a first-class flight and another who went skydiving in her honor. "You wonder why someone like that is taken so young, but I believe Kristina was one of those very rare people who was so complete as a person already," says one friend. "The rest of us are just a work in progress."
– The tear-jerker Christmas ad of the year has arrived from Poland. The ad from auction website Allegro shows an elderly man using the site to search for "English." A package soon arrives on the man's doorstep with learning materials titled, "English for Beginners." We watch as the man slowly begins to learn a few words, from "toilet" to "dog," before picking up more—including a curse word—from English movies. Soon, he's loudly reciting phrases like "I love you" and "you are perfect" on a bus. Why all the effort? It soon becomes clear as the man packs his "toothbrush" and "passport" in a "suitcase" and boards a plane to England, where he visits his son for Christmas. Then a face peeks out from behind a door. The man approaches the little kid, crouches down, and says in perfect English, "Hi. I am your grandpa." A rep tells BuzzFeed that the ad and Allegro have the same goal: to "bring joy, touch the heart, and cause a [smile]." In only a week, the ad has been watched more than 2.7 million times on YouTube, and at least some viewers were left blubbering. "That was a beautiful ad ... I got tears in my eyes," says a commenter, per the Telegraph. "I'm not crying. Dust in my eye. You're crying. Shut up," adds a Twitter user. In a real-life equivalent, the Huffington Post reports a 75-year-old grandfather living in Brazil joined Instagram so he could share his daily drawings with his grandchildren, who live in the US and Korea. He now has 151,000 followers.
– President Obama wants to put off the dreaded sequester just a little while longer. In an address this afternoon, Obama called for a handful of small budget cuts to justify pushing the automatic spending cuts back again, this time until after Congress has crafted a new federal budget, the Washington Post reports. The extra time could be used, Obama said, to come up with a "balanced" long-term deficit fix. "There is no reason that the jobs of thousands of Americans … not to mention the growth of the entire economy should be put in jeopardy just because a few folks in Washington couldn't agree to eliminate a few special interest tax loopholes," he said. But before Obama had even spoken, John Boehner issued a statement dismissing the idea of any deal including more tax revenue, accurately predicting that Obama would call for it, Politico reports. "President Obama first proposed the sequester and insisted it become law," Boehner said. "We believe there is a better way to reduce the deficit, but Americans do not support sacrificing real spending cuts for more tax hikes."
– The drug company CEO called the "most hated man in America right now" by the BBC says he's misunderstood—but that he'll lower the price of Daraprim in response to the firestorm of criticism. "There were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action," Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin Shkreli, who raised the price of the toxoplasmosis drug from $13.50 a pill to $750, tells NBC News. "I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people." The 32-year-old former hedge fund boss says it's "very easy to see a large drug price increase and say, 'Gosh, those people must be gouging,'" but that drug pricing is "very hard stuff" for people to understand. Shkreli admits that the drug is cheap to make, but he says the price has to cover "the quality control, the regulatory costs, and all of the other things that come with having a drug company." Shkreli is an "odious pharma executive straight out of central casting," but his company is far from the only one buying up relatively obscure drugs and massively increasing the price, writes Dan Diamond at Forbes. The same thing has happened to dozens of other drugs over the last year, and while media attention forced Shkreli to back down, "the hard part is achieving lasting reform," he writes. (A huge increase in the price of a tuberculosis drug has also been rolled back.)
– If you do the crime, you gotta pay the fine. Unless you're a huge Borat fan and the actor who plays him happens to get wind of your overseas transgression. Such is the fate of a half-dozen Czech tourists, who were detained earlier this month for running around the Kazakh capital of Astana, sporting the barely-there swimsuits known as "mankinis" made famous by Baron Cohen's alter ego. Late Monday, the actor took to social media to show his appreciation (or guilt?) for their stunt. "To my Czech mates who were arrested. Send me your details and proof that it was you, and I'll pay your fine," he posted on Facebook. Per the BBC, local media note the fine for each "indecent" mankini perp was $67. The email Baron Cohen provided (arrestedforwearingyourmankini@gmail.com) appears to be a working one—or at least, it isn't getting bounced back as of this writing. Mashable promises to stay on top of the story for updates.
– If it seems like it's already gone on for years, we are currently 596 (five hundred ninety-six) days away from the election that will determine the next president of the United States of America. But we are only one day away from the first official hat getting tossed into the 2016 ring by one of the many who been circling it, and the Houston Chronicle reports that it belongs to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Unnamed senior advisers say the Republican will announce his candidacy tomorrow, skipping right past the exploratory committee fun (looking at you, Jim Webb) and going right for the hat-tossing. More unnamed sources confirm the pending announcement to the AP, which notes Cruz will likely be soon joined by the likes of Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio. And if 2016 doesn't work out for Cruz, he'll keep his current day job until 2019.
– Greek workers launched a 48-hour general strike today to protest government austerity measures as 20,000 demonstrators headed to Parliament and another 7,000 marched in the country’s second-biggest city. Some 5,000 police guarded Athens, and while the initial protests were peaceful, things are heating up. Young people threw rocks near Greece’s finance ministry, prompting tear gas from police; in central Athens youths burned garbage bins. Strikers range from actors to casino workers to doctors, the AP reports. With lawmakers considering a $40 billion austerity program, including new taxes on minimum-wage earners, “the government has declared war and to this war we will answer back with war,” said a protester. Meanwhile, the debate continues in Parliament as European officials push for the plan. "To those who speculate about other options,” noted one, “let me say this clearly: There is no Plan B to avoid default," the New York Times reports. But protesters argue the country’s debts aren’t theirs to cover. “We don't owe any money, it's the others who stole it,” said one.
– Is Russia's leader glowering over America? A YouTube video purporting to show Vladimir Putin's face forming in a flock of birds above New York City has gotten a lot of online attention—especially in Russia, UPI reports. Posted under the name Sheryl Gilbert, it was aired last week by Russia's state-owned and "strictly patriotic" Zvezda news station, notes the Washington Post. Russian users quickly weighed in, posting comments like "It's a warning to the US that they shouldn't start a war with Russia" and, from a Ukrainian, "Putin bribed American birds." Many say the 11-second video is fake, Australia's News Network reports, but no one has described the alleged fakery in detail. Gregory West, whose Twitter account describes him as a "Patriot," "Conservative," "Political Blogger" and "Proud Husband of @ _SherylGilbert," tweeted, "Saw it several days ago during a trip and that's amazing! Can you see the face? Who is it?"
– What happens when humans abandon 1,600 square miles because of radioactivity? Wildlife runs rampant, apparently. A new study on animals in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone shows what once looked something like a wasteland is now packed with elk, roe deer, red deer, wild boar, and wolves. Researchers conducted aerial surveys in the zone during winter months between 1987—a year after the Chernobyl disaster—and 1997 and estimated animal populations based on tracks in the snow, reports the Guardian. They found the number of animals in the area was actually on par with those in four uncontaminated nature reserves nearby; but the number of wolves was more than seven times greater than in reserves. The numbers of elk, roe deer, and wild boar also jumped at a time when elk and wild boar populations were sliding elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. "It's very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are much higher than they were before the accident," a researcher says in a release. "This doesn't mean radiation is good for wildlife, just that the effects of human habitation, including hunting, farming, and forestry, are a lot worse." But another researcher who has studied birds in the zone tells the BBC the research "only applies to large mammals under hunting pressure, rather than the vast majority of animals—most birds, small mammals, and insects—that are not directly influenced by human habitation." And since the study didn't look at radiation exposure, it "does not address the issue of whether radiation has effects on reproduction, survival, longevity, or general health of the animals surveyed." While scientists found Chernobyl's wild boar population dipped in 1993, they say hungry wolves and a disease outbreak were to blame. (There's something wrong with Chernobyl's forests.)
– An elderly couple was killed and their son injured when they messed with a swarm of bees at their Texas ranch. William Steele, 90, was spraying to kill bees that had built a hive in the fireplace of a small house he owned in a remote area of the ranch when they swarmed and attacked him, his wife, and his son, reports the Valley Morning Star. Steele tried to run from the cabin but collapsed and was stung hundreds of times. The couple's 67-year-old son was also stung but he managed to escape and get to the nearest phone to call authorities. Deputies without any protective equipment braved the swarm to rescue Myrtle Steele, 92. She had been stung some 300 times and died several days later in a nearby hospital. "It was a terrible thing," an investigator with the Jim Hogg County Sheriff's office tells Reuters. "You don't prepare for something like that. "
– Everyone hopes for a caring and compassionate nurse when they're ailing, but one Michigan woman's caretaker went "above and beyond the call of duty," per Becker's Hospital Review. For more than 15 years, nurse practitioner Iris Zink has treated Ginny Holcomb at Lansing Rheumatology, and the two have become close friends. Then Holcomb found out she had kidney cancer, and Zink "didn't think twice" about what she had to do, per FOX 47 News. She decided to donate one of her own kidneys to her longtime friend. "There was just no hesitation," Zink says. "I didn't want to see her die. I couldn't watch it." The women went through a battery of tests that took a year to complete, and Zink found out she was a perfect match. Holcomb initially balked at taking Zink's kidney, but she finally acquiesced. "I just started crying," Holcomb says of that phone call from Zink. "It was, I think, a God moment." The pair underwent surgery in July to complete the transplant; Zink is already completely recovered, while Holcomb is still recuperating. In the meantime, they sport matching kidney-shaped necklaces to commemorate their shared experience, and organ. "It's a beautiful thing to have someone else's body part in you," Holcomb says. (A kidney transplant patient in Indiana married his donor.)
– Research in Motion is announcing its earnings today, and they're "going to be terrible with a scoop of worse for August," an analyst tells CNET. How did things get so bad for the BlackBerry maker? It started at the top, the Wall Street Journal says in a lengthy piece detailing RIM's woes: For years, the company had two CEOs, each pulling the company in different directions. Their offices were a 10 minute drive apart, and they rarely attended the same meetings. RIM insists the two-CEO structure worked fine, though both have since been replaced. But that wasn't the company's only woe: Analysts and ex-executives alike say the company put too much faith in its core BlackBerry product, and resisted innovations that didn't fit its paradigm. At an investor meeting 10 years ago, for instance, an investor asked founder and then-co-CEO Mike Lazaridis if the BlackBerry would get a color screen, then just emerging on phones. Lazaridis replied, "Do I need to read my email in color?'
– Santa Fe police say three thieves made off with more than $1 million in goods from a jewelry store while employees were distracted by a holiday celebration. A rep says two men and a woman took 11 items from an unlocked case inside Diva Diamonds & Jewels on the Santa Fe Plaza between 5:15pm and 5:30pm on Friday while crowds gathered for an annual holiday lighting event, per the Albuquerque Journal and KOAT. Authorities say the heist was likely planned since the suspects were spotted at the store previously. They're sharing surveillance photos of the suspects in the hope that the public will help identify them. "We’ve certainly had theft down there, but the anomaly is the dollar amount," says the rep. "We hadn’t had anything that high in a while."
– So long as Gov. Pat McCrory puts his pen to it, a bill allowing North Carolina residents to carry concealed handguns into bars and on playgrounds will soon be law, reports the AP. The Republican-backed bill was approved by both the House and Senate yesterday, and would give concealed-carry permit holders the right to take their gun into any place where alcohol is served—this includes restaurants—as long as the owner doesn't expressly forbid it. WRAL reports on two other expansions: Such weapons could also be kept in a locked car that's parked at a public school or university, and can be carried in funeral processions. Republican Sen. Thom Goolsby pointed out that concealed handgun permit holders undergo additional training and background checks. "They're the people we don't have to worry about," he tells WRAL. On the flip side, the bill also beefs up the penalties levied on those who violate gun laws, and didn't include a contentious provision that would have repealed the need for gun purchasers to submit to a background check, notes ABC 11.
– A notorious hit man in Mexico known for beheading his victims and displaying them in public is a US-born kid all of 14 years old, reports AP. Mexican authorities arrested the youth identified only as Edgar—who they say goes by "El Ponchis," or the cloaked one—as he tried to leave the country by plane. He said he's worked for a cartel since he was 11, after being kidnapped. "I participated in four executions," he said, "but I did it drugged and under threat that if I didn't, they would kill me." He carried two cell phones with photos of tortured victims, say police, who also arrested an older sister accused of helping him dispose of corpses. Mexican authorities say the youth is a native of San Diego, though his US citizenship remains unconfirmed. Rumors of the young hit man emerged about a month ago with a YouTube video that showed teens mugging for the camera next to corpses. One of them named "El Ponchis" as an accomplice. Click here for more.
– Bethany Townsend thought her modeling days were done for good three years ago when she got fitted with two colostomy bags, a result of her lifelong fight with Crohn's disease. But after a hiatus as a makeup artist, that modeling career might just be getting started, thanks to a viral photo of herself posing in a bikini with those colostomy bags in full view, reports People. The 23-year-old shared the photo with Crohn's and Colitis UK Facebook page after deciding that "my colostomy bags shouldn't control my life," she explains in the post. Townsend tells the Huffington Post that she has been floored by the global reaction and hopes she can inspire others in similar positions to "feel a little bit more comfortable in their own skin." She's going to do that and more, writes Marie Southard Ospina at Bustle. "In a world so focused on aesthetics, where differences and 'flaws' are rejected rather than embraced, Townsend is the type of person really making a change." Her decision to share the photo "isn't just brave; it's beautiful." Agreed, writes Heather Cichowski at the Gloss. She's "already a role model, and soon she will be a successful model too."
– Between 30 and 50 members of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in support of controversial Confederate statues on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., but the Washington Post reports that their shouts of "white power" were drowned out by more than 1,000 counterprotesters. More than 100 cops in riot gear escorted Klansmen to and from the 45-minute rally, held in protest of the city's plan to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. Police later declared an "unlawful assembly" when counterprotesters refused to leave, reports the Daily Progress, and used tear gas to make their point; 23 were arrested. "It is important for me to be here because the Klan was ignored in the 1920s, and they metastasized," says a protester. "They need to know that their ideology is not acceptable." (Here's why Charlottesville is the latest flashpoint in alt-right wars.)
– "It's definitely made me reconsider everything. Who was I before? Who was I then—is that part of me? Who am I now?" The New York Times reports Hannah Upp, a 32-year-old teacher in St. Thomas, disappeared Sept. 14, a week after Hurricane Irma hit the Virgin Islands. Her clothes, car, keys, cellphone, passport, and wallet were found at a beach where she had gone for a swim. Upp was still missing five days later when Hurricane Maria battered the Caribbean. Upp is far from the only person missing in the wake of the storms, but her case is unique in that she may not even know she's missing. Upp has dissociative fugue, a very rare type of amnesia made famous by the fictional Jason Bourne. "Normally, we forget things in little pieces," Dr. David Spiegel says. "These people forget things in large pieces that involve what they've done for the last year or two years." In 2008, Upp was found floating face down in New York Harbor by a ferry captain. She had been missing for three weeks at that point and remembered nothing of that period. "I went from going for a run to being in the ambulance," Upp said after her rescue. Newsweek reports Upp disappeared again in 2013 in Maryland—this time for two days. Now friends and family are hoping Upp has once again entered a fugue state and didn't drown or fall victim to a crime. "My hope is that she found somewhere safe to hide," friend Maggie Guzman says. Official resources are stretched thin responding to the two hurricanes, so Upp's friends have been searching for her and putting up posters, hoping she sees one. "If she’s in her fugue state, it would at least get her to the point where she realizes something’s wrong," friend Jake Bradley tells the Virgin Islands Daily News.
– The Federal Election Commission is stuck in partisan gridlock—so states are taking nonprofit donor disclosure into their own hands. California this month called on an Arizona group to uncover the source of $11 million used for ballot measure fights; recent court cases in Idaho and Minnesota have forced political organizations to reveal their backers; and Maine is investigating a secretive group opposed to gay marriage. "The fact that federal campaign laws are deficient or you've got a deadlocked Federal Election Commission—that doesn't mean the states are powerless," says Idaho's secretary of state. "Frankly, if we didn't take a stand on this, we might as well just pack up our campaign disclosure law and send it away," he adds. While political action committees are required under federal law to reveal their donors, nonprofits aren't subject to those rules, the Los Angeles Times notes. Meanwhile, Democrats are looking a lot less concerned about super PACs after their successes this time around, and party leaders are already preparing for 2014 and 2016, Politico reports. A secret three-day donor meeting convened just after the election, aiming to trump a big financial advantage on the Republican side.
– Authorities resumed searching the Connecticut River today for a 7-month-old baby who they think went off a bridge with his suicidal father. The father—22-year-old Tony Moreno—survived the 120-foot plunge and was pulled from the water by firefighters Sunday night, reports NBC Connecticut. But there's still no sign of his son, Aaden. Meanwhile, the Hartford Courant reports that the boy's mother had sought a restraining order last month because she feared for her child's safety and her own. "He has told me he could make my son disappear any time of the day," wrote Adrianne Oyola about Moreno in court documents. "He told me how he could make me disappear, told me how he could kill me," she added, along with, "I feel that he is a danger to my child and me and would like to leave with my child and get full custody." A judge denied the restraining order after a hearing on June 29. Family members called police late Sunday because Moreno was threatening to kill himself and had the baby with him. He then jumped off the Arrigoni Bridge in Middletown. He remains hospitalized and is expected to face charges.
– A strong smell outside a California supermarket turned out to be someone who had decomposed in one of the store's entrance columns, ABC 7 reports. Police were called Saturday to the WinCo Foods in Lancaster after a plumber, told it was likely a septic problem, helped knock brick from the column and saw a shoe and a leg inside. "It's been over 100 degrees up here every day," says LA County Sheriff's Lt. John Corina. "I can't imagine being inside that column and just baking. It's a strange development, and if he died that way, it's a horrible way to die." Police say the victim may be a man who was stopped for a fake license plate Monday night, NBC Los Angeles reports. He crashed the vehicle, ran away from deputies, and got into the supermarket. The man "ran up the steps where the managers [are]," an eyewitness tells CBS Los Angeles. "And somehow he got on the roof. Last I heard, he got away." From up there, he could have reached the store fascia and descended into the column. Whether he died from the fall or baked inside is unclear; he was found on his feet with an arm stuck behind his head. "I saw some gooey liquid and it smelled really foul ... it was oozing out of the pillar onto the pavement," says a witness. "It smelled like death."
– Workers in Australia's Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services were saved some work Wednesday morning, and they've apparently got a young humpback whale to thank. Responding to help an adult whale beached on a sandbar, the workers found that she had managed to free herself before they got there. The incoming tide surely helped, but both the BBC and Australia's ABC report that her young calf appeared to be trying to nudge her off the sandbar near North Stradbroke Island, about 60 miles south of Brisbane. (See this video.) "The mother was a bit tired and distressed," says a QPWS spokesperson. Whales are a common sight off the Queensland coast this time of year, as they migrate north from their Antarctic habitats to give birth to new calves. Australian scientists have been using drones to study the migration, mating, and behavioral patterns of whales, the West Australian reports. (Humpbacks have been known to save other animals from killer whales.)
– CNN's Chris Cuomo is tired of hearing the phrase "fake news" tossed around constantly, but he's apologizing for an analogy he made about it. In an interview with Michael Smerconish on SiriusXM Thursday, Cuomo said, "I see being called 'fake news' as the equivalent of the n-word for journalists," per Mediaite. (President Trump had accused Cuomo of being a purveyor of "fake news" earlier in the day.) Cuomo's analogy drew quick condemnation online, and he soon walked it back in a tweet: "I was wrong. Calling a journalist fake (is) nothing compared to the pain of a racial slur. I should not have said it. I apologize." Meanwhile, a blogger at the Washington Post makes the case that the charge of "fake news" has lost all meaning because it is used so often by politicians who simply dislike a story.
– The Cardinals needed help. They got "Rally Cat"—and now baseball has a new hero and meme. MLB.com explains: The St. Louis Cardinals trailed the Kansas City Royals 5-4 in the bottom of the sixth in a crucial playoff-race game Wednesday, but they had the bases loaded. Let Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch set the stage further: "There for a brief moment, before rally cat came into their lives, Yadier Molina paused at the plate, stood tall, and pointed his bat toward left field, appearing as if he were calling his shot." As it turns out, he was pointing to a cat in the outfield that went on to interrupt the game for a few entertaining minutes. When the game resumed, Molina hit a grand slam on the very next pitch, and the lead held for a St. Louis victory. "I'm not a cat person, but I sure like that one," Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said after the game. The MLB site has video of the cat (immediately dubbed "Rally Cat" in the game's broadcast) scampering around and either biting or scratching the St. Louis field crew member who finally corralled it. Others are posting YouTube clips. It's not clear whether the cat is a stray, but if so it would surely find a home quickly given the fans' reaction. The incident calls to mind a similar one involving a squirrel in the 2011 playoffs. In fact, as the Post-Dispatch notes, the Cards etched a silhouette of "Rally Squirrel" on their championship rings that year.
– At least one of the women allegedly involved in the prostitution scandal swirling around Sen. Bob Menendez denies the whole thing, Politico reports. Yaneisi Fernandez was allegedly hired by Dr. Salomon Melgen, who has ties to Menendez, but she says she's never participated in prostitution and she's never seen Menendez in person or on TV, according to Univision. Menendez and Melgen have been accused of patronizing prostitutes, some underage, in the Dominican Republic. Despite the fact that the controversy continues to grow, Politico reports that Menendez could weather the storm. First of all, it takes a lot to sink a New Jersey politician, the site points out, particularly in Menendez's neck of the woods. Plus, he was easily re-elected last year. "I think Bob Menendez is a very tenacious person, and he has the advantage of six long years and a fairly forgiving political environment in New Jersey," a former senator says. "I wouldn’t be wasting time on a Bob Menendez political obituary."
– A month after three women and a young girl were found captive in a Cleveland home, Reuters checks in on the victims' situation, or at least their financial state. The Cleveland Courage Fund, a tax-free trust set up in their name, has been flooded with donations and now totals $825,000. The victims have begun dipping into the money, which will be split evenly among Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Berry's six-year-old daughter. "The outpouring of public support has been nothing short of remarkable," the victims previously said in a letter via ABC News. "The community is acting in a way you would hope they would act," the fund's co-trustee told Reuters, adding the money will help the women with whatever they need. "Ten years out of society means not finishing school, no job training, and not learning how to drive." It's not only money that's being offered up. Doctors and dentists have volunteered their services, while others have donated the use of vacation homes and cars. Meanwhile, Reuters reports neighborhood residents have talked about tearing down Ariel Castro's now boarded-up house and planting four oak trees in its place.
– The Israeli military says it is ordering Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate the area "for their own safety." In a statement today, the military said it would send messages to residents overnight to leave the area. Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz, the chief military spokesman, said Israel planned to hit the area with heavy force in the next 24 hours as it steps up an offensive against Gaza militants. Officials say the area has been used to fire rockets at Tel Aviv. The death toll in Gaza has hit at least 135 and more than 920 have been injured after five days of airstrikes, the Hill reports. Meanwhile, more than 200 rockets fired from Gaza have gotten through Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, and rockets are coming from southern Lebanon as well. Also today, the UN Security Council called today for a cease-fire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict centered on the Gaza Strip. A council statement approved by all 15 members calls for de-escalation of the violence, restoration of calm, and a resumption of direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians aimed at achieving a comprehensive peace agreement based on a two-state solution. The statement calls for "the reinstitution of the November 2012 cease-fire," which was brokered by Egypt, but gives no time frame for when it should take effect. (Click for more on that.)
– A Florida landscaper faces prison time after he mowed down a family of ducklings. Jason Falbo, 24, claims it was unintentional, but a couple and their young son who watched the scene unfold aren't buying it, and, so far, neither are police, reports the Palm Beach Post. It happened in Wellington, as Falbo mowed the back yard of Boyd Jentzsch and Laura Gontchar. The husband and wife had put food out for the ducklings and were watching with their 7-year-old son as the mother duck led them out of a lake to feed. That's when they say Falbo deliberately headed for the ducks on his riding mower, ran them over, and hit them again in reverse. Seven died instantly, and two more made it back to the water and drowned, say police. Only the mother and two ducklings survived. "We were horrified," Jentzsch tells the Sun Sentinel. He, his wife, and their son, Kai, ran after Falbo as he neared the ducks screaming for him to stop, to no avail. The family says Falbo was laughing on his second pass over the ducks. They booted him from the property and called animal control, and Falbo was charged with nine counts of animal cruelty. His employer tells CBS12 that Falbo is "kind-hearted" and wouldn't have run over the ducks on purpose. He says Falbo didn't see them in the tall grass and backed up after the first pass only because he wanted to avoid hitting more ducks in front of him. He is being held on $27,000 bond. (Elsewhere in Florida, a woman faces animal cruelty charges over goldfish.)
– Using a smartphone to look a map while driving is allowed under the California law that bans motorists from talking or texting on a handheld phone, an appeals court has decided. The court sided with Steven Spriggs, who was fined $165 after a highway patrol officer spotted him looking at a map on his iPhone while stuck in freeway traffic, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The court noted that the law was enacted in 2006, a year before the first iPhone came out. The judges decided that the law only applied to conversations, and interpreting it otherwise would make it illegal to look at the time on a phone "or even to move it for use as a paperweight." Spriggs says the law should be written more clearly, adding that his son suffered a broken leg from a driver who was chatting on his phone and he definitely doesn't approve of distracted driving. "We're distracted all the time," he tells the AP. "If our distractions cause us to drive erratically, we should be arrested for driving erratically."
– A group of bus drivers in Paraguay is going to extreme measures to get back the jobs they lost: They crucified themselves—three weeks ago, reports the BBC. The men (some media reports say five, other say eight) used 15-inch nails to affix their hands to crosses that have been laid on the ground, and they've been in that position since losing their jobs (media reports again differ, with some saying the men were laid off, and others saying they were fired) after clamoring for better pay and conditions. Their wives are taking turns, too, the Telegraph reports. "I am joining in today. Tomorrow it will be another mom," said one, who asked that the country's president come and see the "inhuman situation." Some of the men are suffering fevers as well as stomach and chest pains, while four other unions members have been on hunger strike for 36 days, the Daily Mail reports. The bus company has said it will rehire five of the workers and help the other three find new jobs, but the group says it won't budge. "Our position is clear: we want the eight drivers to be reinstated with all employee benefits," the union leader said. "Otherwise the strike is not lifted."
– The 2007 Corvette has an emergency door-release handle on the floor by each seat, according to the manual—and if he had known that, 72-year-old Texas man James Rogers would probably be alive today. The Port Arthur resident died along with his pet Shih Tzu in a Waffle House parking lot on Monday after becoming trapped in the car, apparently because of an electrical problem, KHOU reports. Police believe the vehicle lost power to the locks and horn because of a loose battery cable and that Rogers and his dog died of heat exhaustion after he was unable to escape the vehicle or attract the attention of passers-by, reports the Beaumont Enterprise. Rogers, who had recently purchased the vehicle, left his cellphone charging inside the restaurant while he went to check on his dog and was unable to call for help, police tell the Enterprise. After he was noticed inside the car, firefighters broke in but found Rogers and his dog were already dead, 12 News reports. His daughter tells KHOU that the Corvette was her father's dream car. She says she believes her father made every possible effort to escape and may have died while reading the car's manual. (A Utah woman who had a premonition found her husband trapped under a car.)
– Forty-three days after the election, all the votes have finally been tallied and certified. History will show Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump by a final count of nearly 3 million votes, the Hill reports. According to a tweet Tuesday from the nonpartisan Cook Report, Clinton received 65,844,610 votes (48.2%) to Trump's 62,979,636 (46.1%). However with the Electoral College officially making Trump the 45th US president on Monday, history will also show Clinton as the second Democrat in the past five elections to win the popular vote but lose the presidency. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post reports Trump had the third worst popular-vote performance by a winning candidate on record.
– One of the 33,000 jobs now at risk with Toys R Us shutting or selling more than 700 US stores is that of mascot—and Geoffrey the Giraffe is not taking the news well. A "drunk" Geoffrey turned up on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday, asking the audience, "Do you guys like toys? Well, I don’t have any because we're bankrupt!" Breaking into sobs, the giraffe complained, "All of you b----es bought toys on Amazon! Now I'm out of a job!" Geoffrey then broke into song, with Kimmel calling his rendition of an old Toys R Us jingle "the saddest thing I have ever seen," per Mediaite. Kimmel added, "Maybe Target has something for you."
– Mitt Romney has long been vocal about his distaste for the Confederate flag flying on South Carolina Capitol grounds, saying in a 2007 presidential debate, "That's not a flag I recognize. That flag, frankly, is divisive, and it shouldn't be shown." He refueled that fire Saturday when he tweeted in response to the Charleston church shootings, writing, "Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims." Other Republican POTUS contenders are now offering their own take, per the AP and the Washington Post.: South Carolina's own Sen. Lindsey Graham insists the flag "is a part of who we are" and that we shouldn't be blaming what happened in Charleston on it: "We're not going to give this a guy an excuse … . It's him … not the flag." Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says via a statement, "In Florida we acted, moving the flag from the state grounds to a museum where it belonged," but "following a period of mourning there will rightly be a discussion among leaders in the state about how South Carolina should move forward, and I'm confident they will do the right thing." One person who wants to table the discussion: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who says, "I fully expect the leaders of South Carolina to debate this, but the conversation should wait until after the families have had a chance to bury and mourn their loved ones." Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is trying to see both sides, saying he understands "those who see a history of racial oppression and a history of slavery" embedded in the flag, but that he also gets "those who want to remember the sacrifices of their ancestors and the traditions of their states, not the racial oppression." Sen. Marco Rubio, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, and expected presidential candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich are taking a non-interventionist approach (though Fiorina and Kasich say they agree personally with taking the flag down), stating it's up to the people of South Carolina to decide what to do—not "outsiders," as Rubio puts it. Still silent on the matter: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Rand Paul, and the latest GOP contender, a surprisingly quiet Donald Trump.
– As the initial autopsy results for Casey Johnson came back inconclusive but with no evidence of suicide, a slew of news—and opinions—about the heiress’s tragic final days also emerges. The latest: Johnson was living in a house filled with garbage and rats in the pool, but with no electricity, water, or gas, friends tell the New York Post. “There are dirty dishes everywhere and rotting food,” one source says. “There is graffiti on the walls. The pool looks like a swamp.” TMZ details the financial problems Johnson was having, including losing her Porsche in December for failing to make the lease payments, and owing a nanny service $20,189.35. Her diabetes was getting worse—a family source says insulin was becoming less effective—and another source says she had been “rushed to the hospital three or four times in the last six months.” One friend says Casey would never have gotten involved with Tila Tequila “had she been in her right mind,” and that the reality star “was taking advantage of a sick girl.” The Huffington Post has an extensive look at model Jasmine Lennard, with whom Johnson was famously feuding before her death—Lennard has now, of course, done a 180 and is offering to take care of the daughter Johnson left behind. Gawker, meanwhile, offers a detailed timeline of Johnson’s quickie romance with Tequila, as well as the various troubles both women were going through as their relationship ran its course.
– The next Star Wars movie has an official title. Episode VII of the classic franchise will be titled Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Disney announced today on Facebook. The post also revealed that principal photography is now complete. The movie opens Dec. 18 of next year, USA Today reports, and very few other details are officially known other than the fact that it reportedly takes place three decades after Return of the Jedi. The cast was announced earlier this year, and in addition to old favorites (Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew), the movie will star Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings), Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), Max von Sydow, and Lupita Nyong'o, plus a number of young, little-known actors. The original movies, of course, also featured a trio of relative unknowns, and USA Today speculates on the meaning of the title: "The fact that [the force is] 'awakening' could refer to the new characters the film will introduce." Entertainment Weekly notes that the title raises a question: "Has the Force been … slumbering? ... Maybe this energy that binds the galaxy together has only been visible to a select few, while the denizens of the galaxy put their faith in the science and technology of interstellar travel?" OK, so that may not tell us much, but at least one important person has high hopes for the new film: Daniels, perhaps better known as C-3PO, tweeted Sunday: "'No movie sequel is better than The Empire Strikes Back.' You might eat those words for Xmas dinner in 2015. Joy & Indigestion to the world!"
– Astronaut Peggy Whitson returned to Earth late Saturday, wrapping up a record-breaking flight that catapulted her to first place for US space endurance. Whitson's 665 days off the planet—288 days on this mission alone—exceeds that of any other American and any other woman worldwide. She checked out of the International Space Station just hours earlier, along with another American and a Russian, reports the AP. Their Soyuz capsule landed in Kazakhstan shortly after sunrise Sunday. The journey back to Earth took three hours and 24 minutes, notes Space.com. Besides duration, Whitson set multiple other records while in orbit: world's oldest spacewoman, at age 57, and most experienced female spacewalker, with 10. She also became the first woman to command the space station twice following her launch last November. Returning cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin logged even more time in space: 673 days over five missions. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer returned after 136 days aloft. The station's newest commander, Randy Bresnik, called Whitson an "American space ninja." Yurchikhin is now No. 7 on the world's all-time endurance list, followed by Whitson at No. 8. Whitson, a biochemist, set a breakneck pace on all three of her space station expeditions, continually asking for more—and still more—scientific research to do. Scientists on the ground said it often was hard to keep up with her. She even experimented on food, trying to add pizazz to standard freeze-dried meals. Except for the past week, Whitson said her mission hurried by. She's hungry for pizza and eager to reunite with her husband, Clarence Sams, a biochemist who works at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
– "When a call comes into the White House at 3am, will Donald Trump's tiny baby hands be able to lift the phone receiver?" Henry Kraemer asks the Hill. "This is something Americans should know before voting." Kraemer, an Oregon resident, is the founder of the Trump Has Tiny Hands political action committee, which filed its FEC paperwork on Monday. Kraemer, who hasn't decided who he's voting for, says he decided to start the PAC when Trump started "to deny he has tiny baby hands" following attacks from Marco Rubio. Politico reports that Yelp is also mocking Trump's hand size with a new release about its latest update announcing that it "easily trumps our old version" and is "usable no matter how small your hands are." (Trump addressed the size of another body part at the start of last week's GOP debate.)
– Two Vermont lawmakers fed up with delays to legalize marijuana in the state introduced a headline-grabbing measure this week designed to move things along: one that would outlaw alcohol. Legislators Chris Pearson and Jean O'Sullivan admit they have no interest in reinstating Prohibition, but they want to make a larger point, reports Vermont Public Radio. In their eyes, marijuana is safer than alcohol, so why ban that drug and leave the other untouched? "The object was to basically embarrass leadership to say that we have [marijuana legalization bills] in front of us, and they're going absolutely nowhere," O'Sullivan tells the Huffington Post. Their bill would make those found in possession of small amounts of alcohol subject to fines of up to $500, and anyone caught selling or distributing it faces 30 years in prison and $1 million in fines. (A drug that's been around a while shows promise as a substitute for medical marijuana, without the stoner side effects.)
– More bad public relations for the Ferguson police department, this time from its PR officer: The force's chief spokesman has been suspended indefinitely without pay after calling a memorial to slain teenager Michael Brown "trash," reports KMOV. The memorial, in the middle of the street where Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson, was destroyed by a driver on Friday night, apparently intentionally. When the Washington Post asked Officer Timothy Zoll about the destruction, he said, "I don't know that a crime has occurred. But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?" City officials initially backed Zoll, a 12-year veteran of the force, but they changed their position after determining he had falsely claimed to have been misquoted by the Post, reports the New York Times. Zoll "misled his superiors when asked about the contents of the interview," the city said in a statement, adding that it wants to "emphasize that negative remarks about the Michael Brown memorial do not reflect the feelings of the Ferguson Police Department and are in direct contradiction to the efforts of city officials to relocate the memorial to a more secure location." The memorial, including flowers, notes, and stuffed animals, was quickly rebuilt after Friday's destruction.
– Facials, mani-pedis, and massages are so passé for the insanely rich—or the insane and rich, Cracked reports. Here's the new normal among bizarre spa treatments: A plant farm in northern Israel offers the full-body snake massage for $70. Bigger snakes will knead the belly or back while smaller ones wiggle around your face. (Time offers a video.) The Chiang Mal Women's Correctional Institution in Thailand offers a massage—from a fully trained inmate. "In this case, 'happy ending' means nobody got murdered," quips Cracked. A wine spa in Japan allows you to swim in hot booze, tea, or coffee. The spa's website notes that green tea is an effective antioxidant, and Cleopatra bathed in wine. As for the coffee spa, it will "perk up your senses." Chinese "fire cupping" is said to alleviate many physical problems, including congestion, bad circulation, and menstrual pains. Only problem: It involves lighting fires inside glass bulbs and sticking them to your back. The result resembles a minefield of red bruises. For more spa freakiness, click here.
– President Obama today began his campaign to convince Congress to back his Iran nuclear deal with a major speech in which he characterized the upcoming vote as one about war or peace. If the deal falls through, opponents can expect a likely outcome, he said at American University: “Another war in the Middle East.” Obama added that “I am not saying this to be provocative,” reports the Washington Post. “I am stating a fact ... the choice we have is some kind of war, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in three months, but soon.” In the speech, Obama also drew a parallel with the vote to authorize the Iraq war. “Many of the same people who made the case for war with Iraq” oppose the Iran deal, he said. They need to “worry less about being labeled weak [and] worry more about getting it right," because that war "did more to strengthen Iran and more to isolate the United States than anything we have done in the decade since," reports Politico. The Iraq message seems to be aimed at Democrats who voted in favor of the war and now regret it, because Obama will need their votes to sustain any veto, reports USA Today. The speech kicks off "a campaign of private entreaties and public advocacy over the next several weeks" to win approval of the deal, notes the New York Times.
– In the soon-to-be published contents of a decade-old letter, Harper Lee accused her "oldest friend," Truman Capote, of being an inveterate liar who destroyed their friendship with his jealousy. Wayne Flynt, an Alabama historian and longtime friend of Lee's in his own right, is publishing a book next week about his quarter-century relationship with the To Kill a Mockingbird author, the New York Times reports. According to AL.com, Flynt was one of a handful of people still allowed to visit Lee after she moved into a nursing home in the final years of her life. Flynt tells the Times that Lee, who removed herself from public life in the 1960s, only told him not to write about her while she was alive. Capote and Lee had been writing partners for years, and she even based a character in To Kill a Mockingbird on him, Bustle reports. But in a 2006 letter to Flynt, Lee said of Capote: "His compulsive lying was like this: If you said, 'Did you know JFK was shot?' He'd easily answer, 'Yes, I was driving the car he was riding in.'" She also said that while their friendship was strained by Capote's drinking and "misery," it was ultimately ruined by jealousy. "I did something Truman could not forgive: I wrote a novel that sold," she wrote. "He nursed his envy for more than 20 years." To Kill a Mockingbird has sold more than 40 million copies. Flynt's Mockingbird Songs: My Friendship With Harper Lee will be released May 2.
– A former kindergarten teacher last heard from more than two weeks ago has been found in Central California, and she told authorities she survived by eating two grasshoppers and a fly and drinking water from a dirty cattle trough, the AP reports. Rescuers who found Jamie Tull emaciated, dehydrated, and severely sunburned on Friday morning called it a "miracle" they spotted the 33-year-old lying in a field, too weak to walk. "That girl has a will to live," Robert Carpenter tells the Modesto Bee. "Anyone who can survive out here for 17 days is an amazing gal, to me." Friends and family had been searching for the Modesto woman in a desolate cattle ranching area near Le Grand since her car was found in a ditch; she called her husband while driving on July 17 and then reportedly crashed. Her car was found shortly after. Searchers were set to scale back the effort when they spotted her less than a mile from the crash site in tall grass. Lynn Garber was one of the searchers who found Tull, and says Tull told them she had been praying throughout her ordeal and was glad to be found. Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke tells things differently, saying Tull asked for food and water but then told searchers to leave her. "She hunkered down. She didn't want to be found," says Warnke. Tull's family tells Fox40 she suffers from bipolar disorder but stopped taking her medication at the urging of a pastor and his wife, who associated the pills with demons. Tull is recovering at a burn unit at a Fresno hospital. (Dramatic rescue saves stranded cable car passengers.)
– Another black eye for the Veterans Health Administration? A 71-year-old veteran died on Monday after waiting up to 30 minutes for an ambulance—while already at a Veteran Affairs hospital. Officials say the man collapsed in the Albuquerque hospital's cafeteria, which is around 1,500 feet from the emergency room, about a four-minute walk, the AP reports. By the time medics arrived, loaded him into the ambulance, and drove him around the building, it was too late to save him. A VA spokeswoman says staff followed policy by calling 911 when the man collapsed, but that "policy is under expedited review." The man's family has asked that he remain unidentified because they are considering legal action, KOAT reports. The case comes after a long series of reports of serious deficiencies at the VA, including dozens of veterans dying while on "secret waiting lists," the Albuquerque Journal reports. Rep. Michelle Grisham says her office has been trying for days to get the VA to answer "whether its policy may have contributed to the delay in care." In any case, she says, "the inability of officials to answer basic questions in a timely fashion is yet another reason the public has lost faith, and why we are demanding an outside investigation and immediate reform at the Albuquerque VA."
– The US teen diagnosed with "affluenza" will now be represented by a lawyer described as a "rock star." CBS DFW reports Mexican attorney Fernando Benitez will be representing Ethan Couch as he attempts to avoid deportation back to the US. Benitez is looking into whether Couch's human rights or due process were violated when he was detained in Mexico last week, according to Fox News. He says it could be months before Couch's return to the US is even a possibility. "He hasn't committed a crime in Mexico," Benitez tells WFAA. "Why would Mexico go along with this idea of locating someone and summarily kicking them out of the country so the marshals can grab him across the border? I don't think that's okay." Benitez says Couch's past—in which his family's wealth allowed him to avoid jail after killing four people while driving drunk—is irrelevant, and that this is "an international law case only," Fox reports. The lawyer says the legal treatment Couch gets in the US "may not be up to Mexican constitutional standards." According to CBS, Benitez denies earlier reports Couch was in possession of a gun while in Mexico. Couch is currently being held in an immigration facility in Mexico City, WFAA reports. His mother was deported last Thursday. Benitez is well known for a previous case in which he got a former US Marine out of jail after the Marine "accidentally" entered Mexico with three guns.
– You can't make this stuff up: The Daily Caller is giving away handguns engraved with the Bill of Rights. To enter to win a gun, just sign up for one of the right-wing news site's four email newsletters; it's giving away one gun per week until Election Day. (Note: Winners will have to pass a background check.) Media Matters spotted the contest, and notes that the Caller first launched a Guns and Gear news section in December, concerned that gun owners "are currently without the sort of daily news coverage that is allotted to most other American interests."
– Both of TV's "Fat Ladies" have sung. Clarissa Dickson Wright, one half of the BBC's "Two Fat Ladies" cooking duo, died in Edinburgh Saturday at age 66, the BBC reports. Wright was a former lawyer who filmed four of the "Fat Ladies" series, going on food-related road trips across the UK in a motorbike and sidecar with Jennifer Paterson, before Paterson died in 1999 from cancer. The New York Times describes Wright as a "rebel," both hosts as "irreverent and eccentric," and the recipes as "sometimes confounding." Wright's eclectic working life also included stints as a cook, an author, and a cookbook shop manager; she also ran a catering business, was a guild butcher, and once worked on a yacht in the Caribbean. In fact, she recently said, "I've had a fantastic life and I've done everything I could have wanted to do and more." It wasn't until her 40s, after she'd recovered from alcoholism, that she got into cooking seriously. As for the perhaps-controversial title of the show that brought her fame? "If you're fat you're fat," she once said. "I hate this modern-day political correctness, that you don't call things by their proper name." Her agent remembers Wright similarly in a statement: "Loved dearly by her friends and many fans all over the world, Clarissa was utterly non-PC and fought for what she believed in, always, with no thought to her own personal cost." There's no word on Wright's cause of death, but the Guardian reports that she had been undergoing treatment at a hospital since the beginning of the year.
– CDC officials say a woman with an extremely rare form of tuberculosis came to the US from India and traveled to three different states before being diagnosed with an active case of the disease. Now she's isolated at a National Institutes for Health clinic in Maryland, and authorities are trying to track down "hundreds of people" who may have come into contact with her, NBC News reports. If it were just a simple case of TB, there wouldn't be such a brouhaha—but the unnamed patient has extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR TB, which doesn't respond to some of the most powerful anti-TB drugs, per the World Health Organization. Although the disease is rare—the CDC says only 63 cases of it were noted between 1993 and 2011—TB bacteria can enter the air via coughs or sneezes and remain there for several hours, the agency notes. After spending time in India—the country with the largest number of TB cases in 2013, according to WHO—the woman flew back to Chicago in April, then traveled to Missouri and Tennessee over the next seven weeks, notes NBC. CNN points out as many as 8 weeks can pass between exposure and a positive TB test. A spokeswoman for the McHenry County Health Department in Illinois tells the Chicago Tribune it's keeping an eye on some people the woman was in close contact with and that the general public is likely not at risk. An NIH statement says the patient is being treated in a room "specifically designed for handling patients with respiratory infections, including XDR-TB," per NBC; the CDC says she's in stable condition. The CDC reports only 30% to 50% of XDR TB cases can be cured, and treatment can take years, with doctors even performing surgery to remove infected areas.
– The US military is trying to reclaim signing bonuses and student loan compensation it says it improperly awarded to 9,700 California soldiers during the mid- to late 2000s, at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The LA Times reports that soldiers who served their six-year contracts to completion are now being placed in debt collection for failing to return their bonuses, which in many cases were as high as $25,000. The soldiers, understandably, are less than thrilled that a government they put their lives on the line for is now trying to walk back on its promises. "I signed a contract that I literally risked my life to fulfill," says former Army sergeant first class Robert Richmond, one of the soldiers from whom the government is trying to reclaim money. "They’ll get their money, but I want those years back," says former Army master sergeant Susan Haley. The issue, NPR reports, stems from a 2010 discovery that California's National Guard office had misspent up to $100 million. Independent audits revealed the money had gone to signing bonuses for soldiers who shouldn't have been eligible for such compensation. (It was meant to be limited to "soldiers in high-demand assignments ... [or] noncommissioned officers badly needed in units due to deploy," per the Times.) A years-long review of the program revealed almost 10,000 incidences of improperly awarded bonuses—bonuses the military say it's legally required to recoup. No one, from soldiers to military leadership to lawmakers, is happy about the situation. The military says it would happily defer the debts if Congress would legalize it. As the story gains more media traction, the California House of Representatives on Sunday condemned the Pentagon's effort to recoup the money, and pledged to do what it could to help the veterans.
– A plane en route from New York to Seattle had to make an emergency landing Monday so that an unruly passenger could be arrested, KOMO reports. Alaska Airlines Flight 7 was diverted to Minneapolis-St. Paul after a man in his 20s started acting strangely, other passengers tell KIRO. One passenger saw him take a pill of some sort out of his luggage, but she says he didn't cause any trouble until the flight attendants started taking drink orders. At that point, he said he needed "to cancel his flight and get off the plane and just was kind of speaking a little gibberish," she says. Ultimately, crew members say, he tried to open one of the plane's doors—fortunately, a physically impossible feat when the plane is in flight. "The air marshals were there quick," says another passenger. "The flight attendants were sort of surrounding him and I felt more sorry for him than anything." Passengers were told there had been a medical emergency and the plane had to be diverted. "I think someone may have been a little bit stressed out about flying and took too much medication, honestly," says the first passenger. Police questioned the passenger and took him to a Minnesota hospital after it was determined that he was a danger to himself; it's not clear if he will face any criminal charges. No injuries were reported, and the flight was delayed about two hours, the Pioneer Press reports.
– Chicago will soon be home George Lucas' collection of art, film memorabilia, animation, and more—though the city wasn't necessarily Lucas' first choice for his private museum. The filmmaker proposed a $700 million plan earlier this year to build the museum in San Francisco, but his chosen bayside location was rejected, the New York Times reports. The city's Presidio Trust suggested he put the museum near his former film studio. Instead, he opted for Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reports. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel had battled to win the museum for the city, where Lucas lives part time; his wife is from Chicago. "I am humbled to be joining such an extraordinary museum community and to be creating the museum in a city that has a long tradition of embracing the arts and architecture,” Lucas says. “Choosing Chicago is the right decision for the museum, but a difficult decision for me personally because of my strong personal and professional roots in the Bay Area." The museum, set to open in 2018, will display items as varied as Norman Rockwell paintings, a Darth Vader suit, movie posters, and special-effects technology, the Tribune notes. The Chicago Sun-Times calls it a $1 billion project, noting that it will be built on the city's lakefront. (It's not the first time Lucas has had to retool a massive building project.)
– One Life to Live fans are waking up to devastating news Thursday morning: Nathaniel Marston, the star who played Michael McBain on the long-running ABC soap opera, has died at the age of 40, People reports. Mom Elizabeth Jackson posted a heartfelt tribute to her son on Facebook Wednesday evening, informing readers that "my beloved and cherished son, Nathaniel Marston, who was putting up the good fight until last night was not able to continue due to the traumatic and devastating nature of his injuries. Nathaniel passed away peacefully as I held him in my arms." Jackson also noted doctors had done the best they could to save her son after the Oct. 30 car crash near Reno, Nev., that threw him from the car. "Had Nathaniel lived he would have required a ventilator and would never have been able to utter one more word and would have been sentenced to life as a quadriplegic. A condition that Nate would have never have been able to tolerate," she wrote. "By Gods [sic] love and mercy Nathaniel was spared this living hell and has traveled on to be with God." Jackson noted that memorial services would be held in NYC, Hawaii, and Nevada.
– Saturday Night Live covered a lot of ground in its most recent episode, from President Trump and Paul Manafort naked together in the shower to Larry David making ill-received concentration camp jokes. Alec Baldwin kicked off the show as Trump talking to Manafort in the wake of his disastrous week, heading to the shower as a way to ensure that Manafort isn't wearing a wire, notes Mashable. Joining them are Kate McKinnon as Jeff Sessions ("I’m wearing a bathing costume that I got from my favorite place—the 1890s," she drawls. "Plus I thought we should get all used to wearing stripes.") and Beck Bennett as VP Mike Pence. Meanwhile, at the SNL version of the White House, Aidy Bryant brought back her impersonation of Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that Slate says "singlehandedly saved the day." But guest-host David is taking some heat over his monologue, notes People, in which he cracked that “I’ve always been obsessed with women, and I’ve often wondered: If I’d grown up in Poland when Hitler came to power and was sent to a concentration camp, would I still be checking out women in the camp?" he wondered before musing about flirting. "The problem is, there are no good opening lines in a concentration camp."
– Womp womp. According to critics, the Transformers franchise should have been kept to a trilogy. The fourth installment of this robot-smashing series, Transformers: Age of Extinction, is getting the nod from just 20% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The upside? It has a 74% approval rating from audiences. Here's what the critics had to say: "Do you ever think to yourself, gee, I wish someone would beat on my skull with a hammer today? If so, you're in luck," writes Tom Long at the Detroit News. Essentially, it's two hours and 45 minutes of "absolute garbage." It's "repetitive beyond belief, soulless, and shamelessly, endlessly chaotic." "To give Bay his due, Transformers is a testament to advances in CGI," David Hiltbrand explains at the Philadelphia Inquirer. But the stunning moments are "drowned out in the excessive uproar of this clanking cinematic claptrap," he writes, adding the noise itself "may cause hearing damage. ... Go if you must, but bring earplugs." How does Mark Wahlberg do in the starring role? Well, he's "an upgrade on Shia LaBeouf, although it hardly matters," writes James Berardinelli at ReelViews. "People in Bay films are as interesting and important as background decor." However, "Stanley Tucci manages to rise above the material and leave an impression." Bay doesn't seem "to understand or care where this noise goes anymore," writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. He sums up Transformers: Age of Extinction thusly: "It's long, it's loud, and it's really stupid." He even feels the need to repeat that sentence twice. He then adds it's not even "mildly tolerable as time-wasting trash."
– South Korea has taken the unusual step of publicly speaking about plans to assassinate Kim Jong Un and other North Korean leaders in the event of conflict. After North Korea's latest nuclear test, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young Moo told lawmakers that he was speeding up the creation of a "decapitation unit" capable of crossing the border for nighttime missions against North Korean facilities and its "wartime command," the New York Times reports. Officials say the special forces unit, which will apparently be comprised of members of the "Spartan 3000" unit, will be capable of striking anywhere in the Korean Peninsula within 24 hours. Song has said he wants to have the unit ready by the end of the year. The creation of the unit is part of South Korea's "Massive Punishment and Retaliation" plan for possible war with the North, Vox reports. Analysts say that by disclosing facts about the "decapitation unit," Seoul appears to want to make Pyongyang nervous enough to think twice about its nuclear program and return to the negotiating table. "The best deterrence we can have, next to having our own nukes, is to make Kim Jong Un fear for his life," says retired Gen. Shin Won Sik, formerly the South Korean military's chief strategist. President Trump, meanwhile, said Tuesday that tough new sanctions are "no big deal" compared to "what ultimately will have to happen" to North Korea, CNN reports.
– Reince Priebus is out as White House chief of staff, the AP reports, as President Trump announced in a tweet Friday: "I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff. He is a Great American...." Trump continued, "...and a Great Leader. John has also done a spectacular job at Homeland Security. He has been a true star of my Administration." Kelly, a retired general and the current Homeland Security secretary, was named in a New York Times report last night as Trump's preferred replacement for Priebus, and CNN reports that Priebus resigned privately Thursday. Trump also spoke about the change Friday after Air Force One landed at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, calling Priebus a "good man" and saying Kelly "will do a fantastic job."
– Trenton Lewis has never missed a shift and never been late for his 4am shift at a UPS facility in Little Rock, Ark., a dedication driven by his love for his 14-month-old daughter, Karmen, per CNN. His attendance is even more impressive when you consider his wakeup time and commute: Lewis rolls out of bed at midnight and then, as ABC News notes, "in the rain or cold, through some rough areas of town—he walks." And it's a 5.5-mile journey one way for the 21-year-old single dad, reports KXAN, adding that Lewis has been doing this now for seven months. Lewis tells KATV he didn't have a job when Karmen was born, but when she entered his life, "I knew I had to step up." His pride kept him from mentioning his daily walk to co-workers, but Patricia Bryant, known as the "queen bee" of the UPS site, discovered Lewis' secret—and then, along with her husband, Kenneth, set out to find a way to make things easier for Lewis. They did so by pooling together nearly $2,000 from colleagues and using it to purchase a used Saturn for Lewis, which they presented to him at a gathering they told him was a "union meeting." "Those keys cannot be mine," he recalls thinking when they revealed the surprise, per KATV. His new leave time from home each morning: 3:30am, giving him a few more hours to sleep in. "I knew things were going to get better if I kept coming to work so, that's just what I did," Lewis tells KXAN.
– Another fatal police shooting from last month is getting attention, and the police department involved released body camera video footage from the incident Wednesday, the Fresno Bee reports. Dylan Noble, 19, was killed in Fresno, Calif., on June 25 after police responded to a 911 call about a man walking around with a rifle. While in the area, officers pulled over Noble's pickup; they say Noble was "peeling out" and continued to drive after they signaled him to stop. After pulling into a gas station, Noble got out of his truck and walked toward the officers. The video shows him repeatedly ignoring officers' commands to stop and to show both his hands. Officers believed Noble, who repeatedly reached toward his waistband, was armed; they ultimately shot him twice after he yelled "I [expletive] hate my life" and continued toward them. After "pleading" with him to show both hands, officers shot him two more times while he was already on the ground. It was ultimately determined that what Noble had in his hand was a 4-inch-by-4-inch piece of clear plastic with something resembling gray clay inside; the Department of Justice is analyzing it. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says the department is investigating and that he will focus on whether the third and fourth shots were "absolutely necessary." As the Washington Post reports, soon after Noble's death, people pointed out on social media that the shooting wasn't getting as much attention as the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, presumably because Noble was white. (At a vigil the day after his death, there were Confederate flags and a "White Lives Matter" sign present.) Now Noble's father tells the Guardian the new video shows police were "trigger-happy," and his mother has started the process of suing the city, the Bee reports. In addition to the internal investigation and the DOJ, the county DA's office and the FBI are also investigating.
– The blizzard barreling toward the Northeast is still on track to bury New England and New York City later today, reports AP. The big airlines have canceled nearly 3,000 flights so far, reports CNN, and that number is only going to grow. Boston could get three feet of snow and New York City could get a foot and a half, according to the latest forecasts; both cities and other surrounding areas are bracing for the storm. Boston's Logan Airport and transit system will shut down this afternoon, the Globe reports; Amtrak and Greyhound routes between NYC and Boston are being suspended; schools have been closed; utility companies are prepping. The snow is expected to start in the morning, get heaviest at night, and continue into tomorrow morning. Weather Underground's liveblog reports that light snow has started falling in upstate New York; residents of that state and New Jersey were filling up their tanks last night, reports the New York Times, which notes this could be the biggest blizzard in a century for some areas. "This is going to be a dangerous winter storm," says a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. "Wherever you need to get to, get there by Friday afternoon and don't plan on leaving."
– We've had "Cornerstone Caroline," "Pool Patrol Paula," and "BBQ Becky." Now: "Golfcart Gail." That's the nickname given by Ginger Williams to a woman she says was at her son's soccer game in Ponte Vedra, Fla., this weekend, harassing a black dad cheering his son on. Williams' Sunday Facebook post—titled "Soccer While Black"—shows a pic of the unnamed woman, on her phone in a golf cart, allegedly making a call about a man Williams says was simply shouting out instructions to his son. The dad simply "yelled 'The ref is right' when he saw his kid out there getting frustrated after a call," Williams notes. That apparently set "Gail" off, and she told the dad "harassment won't be tolerated" and "continued to harass and beleaguer him." NBC News explains talking to the ref in a game isn't permitted, but Williams writes the man explained he was talking to his own son. He finally offered to just leave to defuse the situation, Williams adds, at which point "Golfcart Gail" said she was still calling the cops "because she no longer felt safe with his threatening behavior." (NBC News also has some video.) A rep for the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office says the woman in the golf cart is an athletic association field marshal, and the head of that group says the cops were called not just because of that dad, "but as a result of a culmination of several immediate prior incidents" at the game, including a mom who was cursing and another dad who'd been ejected for being verbally abusive, per WTLV. Deputies didn't detain the father from Williams' post, IDed as Gerald Jones. He's not so sure it wasn't a racially spurred incident and says the field marshal and the soccer club owe him an apology, reports WTLV. (Remember "Permit Patty"?)
– President Trump paid his respects Monday after George HW Bush arrived at the Capitol for the final time. The 45th president—who skipped an earlier service—visited the 41st president as he was lying in state, the AP reports. The president, who traveled down Pennsylvania Avenue in a motorcade, saluted the flag-draped coffin and Melania Trump put her hand over her heart. They turned and left after the brief visit. "In all, the president was away from the White House less than half an hour, without a word to the public or press," says Anthony Zurcher at the BBC. The former president died Friday at age 94. Trump is expected at his state funeral Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral. (Bush will be buried in a very fitting pair of socks.)
– A star high school athlete is dead in New Jersey after being injured in a football game last night, reports Lehigh Valley Live. It's not clear exactly what happened to Evan Murray, the quarterback for Warren Hills Regional High School. Witnesses say the 17-year-old took a hit but walked off the field under his own power, reports the Daily News. He reported feeling groggy, however, and was put on a gurney to head to the hospital. "He tried giving a thumbs-up to the rest of the team, and all of us cheered," says a 16-year-old cheerleader at the school. "Our coach was telling us he was going to be all right." Murray was taken to a local hospital, where he died after being treated. An autopsy was scheduled for today. Meanwhile, the Warren Hills community is devastated, reports NJ.com. Murray had been the starting QB for three years, and he also played baseball and basketball. “It was complete shock,” says a classmate. "He’s one of the greatest kids in this whole community. It’s unbelievable. I still don’t believe it.”
– Egypt's new president arrived in Iran today for a historic visit, the AP reports—and he promptly sparked a walkout at the Nonaligned Movement Summit. Mohamed Morsi, the first Egyptian leader to visit Iran since Tehran cut diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1979 over its peace treaty with Israel, praised the Syrian rebels—thus angering the Syrian delegation, which left the meeting. Morsi called the Syrian uprising a "revolution against an oppressive regime," the BBC reports, and called for the Nonaligned Movement to support it. More from the summit: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, whose presence at the summit is bugging the US, met with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday to ask that Iran, one of the Syrian regime's last remaining allies, try to get the Syrian government to end the violence. But Khamenei insists the government should continue to be armed while the rebels should have no weapons, reports the AP. Khamenei also insisted Iran is not interested in developing nuclear weapons, but will continue to pursue nuclear energy, Reuters reports. "Our motto is nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none," Khamenei said, calling nuclear weapons "a major and unforgivable sin." But the Wall Street Journal reports that an Iranian scientist considered to be a nuclear weapons guru a la Robert Oppenheimer has resurfaced after a few years off the job. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is back at work, UN investigators find, prompting more concern over Iran's nuclear agenda. Fakhrizadeh's work had been frozen in 2006; he is believed to be running a nuclear weapons-minded research facility in the suburbs of Tehran.
– The man accused of trying to blackmail David Letterman has raised $100,000 for his defense fund ahead of tomorrow’s first hearing in the case, and some experts think Robert “Joe” Halderman won’t accept a plea bargain despite his reported money woes. “This lawyer is a real litigator,” a Halderman friend tells the New York Observer of Gerald Shargel, “and Joe is paying the full boat to go to trial.” Adds an NBC analyst: “Don’t expect any grand revelations, but based on the way Shargel has behaved already, I would not be surprised to hear some theatrics from the defense.”
– Few things are more Italian than baking pizza in a perfectly smoldering wood-fired stove, so San Vitaliano's move to ban the beloved practice comes as a surprise. The town of 6,000 north of Naples has some of the worst air pollution in Italy—Il Mattino says its air quality is worse than Beijing's, while Naples is "a perfumed garden" in comparison—but environmental tests have failed to identify the source. In an effort to "take maximum precautions to ensure the problem doesn't deteriorate," Mayor Antonio Falcone has banned "agricultural, artisanal, industrial, and commercial producers … from burning solid biomass such as wood, woodchips, coal, and charcoal," unless filter systems are in place to eliminate 80% of pollutants, reports the Local. The rule will be in place until at least the end of March, reports the BBC. The Local reports the plan is to relieve the rule in July, August, and September—the situation is poorest in winter, Falcone says—but most pizzerias and bakeries will be forced to change their fuel sources, buy expensive filters, or face fines up to $1,100. "Shocking, it's so ridiculous," a rep from a local pizzeria tells Il Mattino. "We make about 34 pizzas a day, how do they think we are responsible for the pollution problems around here?" "We can't be the cause of the smog," a local who protested outside San Vitaliano's town hall on Sunday adds, per Corriere della Sera. "Naples has many more pizzerias than San Vitaliano but doesn't have the same pollution levels. It's clear that they don't want to pinpoint the real cause. This order is a very costly mistake for us." The BBC reports San Vitaliano residents saw 114 days of unsafe air levels in 2015, compared to Naples' 86.
– Think Wendy Davis' 10-hour filibuster was impressive? That was nothing compared to what dozens of lawmakers in South Korea just accomplished in the country's first filibuster in 47 years. For 192 hours and 25 minutes—or almost nine days—beginning Feb. 23, opposition Members of Parliament rambled on in an attempt to block an anti-terror bill proposed by a member of the governing party, report the BBC and Korea Times. The goal was to get to the end of the parliamentary session on March 10, but the filibuster came to a close Wednesday after attacks by the country's leaders. The bill passed hours later. At least the lawmakers still have something to show for their efforts: They smashed the world record for filibustering set in 2011 when Canadian lawmakers delayed proceedings for 57 hours. The last speaker alone spoke for 12 hours and 31 minutes to claim the record for longest individual filibuster in South Korea. Speakers wore running shoes, thumbed through huge stacks of documents, read academic articles and online comments on privacy infringement in their entirety, and recited sections of George Orwell's 1984, per Yonhap News. It was unsurprising, then, that the parliament chair was caught sleeping. The lawmakers argued the anti-terror bill—allowing for the collection of data, including phone records, on people considered security risks—would violate privacy rights, but President Park Geun-hye said the filibuster was "nothing more than a dereliction of duty." The public was also peeved that the stunt held up bills regarding North Korean human rights and an upcoming election.
– Sisters Nia and Lahtifa Wilson were headed home from a family gathering Sunday night when the unthinkable happened: Police say 27-year-old paroled felon John Lee Cowell fatally stabbed 18-year-old Nia in a "prison-style attack" on an Oakland train station platform; her 26-year-old sister was injured. Police have framed the attack as random, though many have speculated over whether there was racial motivation involved. And in the aftermath of Nia's death, a national conversation has emerged around race that has reeled in some big-name celebs and brought a thoughtful post from Anne Hathaway that's generating headlines. The timeline: Outrage erupted and F-bombs got lobbed over Oakland news station KTVU's coverage of Wilson's death. Its report featured a photo of Wilson from her Facebook page; in it, she appears to be holding a gun. The Daily Dot notes Wilson's page featured "tens of other photos" that could have been used in place of that image. Many said the choice fueled a larger trend involving the criminalization of black victims. And it wasn't even a gun. As Shaun King explains in a lengthy Facebook post, it was just a cell-phone case with a gun handle, "basically a gag– and the local news showed it like it said something about Nia’s character. ... Even in death, local news media finds a way to demean us."
– House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has attempted to preempt any members of his party tempted to pull a "Joe Wilson" during the president's State of the Union address. "I hope there are no outbursts tonight" Cantor said, but added that he hopes Obama has "listened and learned" that the American people do not agree with his agenda. As for Wilson himself, the South Carolina congressman said he would be "a gentleman" during the speech and refrain from anything along the lines of "You Lie!" again, reports Talking Points Memo. He also promised to offer his response in full afterward on his Facebook page.
– Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign is brash and boisterous—and increasingly rough with the reporters covering it, reports Politico. In less than two months, there have been at least five incidents reporters have called unusually hostile, including a Norwegian reporter who says an aide threatened to break his arm. Bachmann's campaign says security is just doing what it needs to keep their candidate safe, but veteran reporters say her security is going too far, well beyond the norms for bigger and more controversial candidates' security. Bachmann's spokeswoman defended one guard, a retired Secret Service agent, who has particularly come under criticism for his rough style. “He’s guarded presidents and vice presidents and knows exactly what needs to be done,” she said. “When he gives a warning to whoever it may be, the person needs to heed the warning.” On the other hand, with celebrities calling Bachmann a "bigot" to her face—as Kathy Griffin recounted on her Monday appearance on Conan—perhaps her security feels the need to stand up for their candidate.
– Two years after the disaster that killed 32 people, captain Francesco Schettino today returned to the Costa Concordia wreckage in the course of his manslaughter trial. Schettino went aboard in order to help court-appointed experts inspect generators, which the captain claims were partly to blame for the incident, the AP reports. Judge Giovanni Puliatti was careful to qualify that Schettino was on board the ship "as a defendant, not a consultant," reports the BBC. "They want to show that I am weak, just like two years ago. It's not true. I want to show I'm a gentleman, not a coward," Schettino told Italian media. Standout detail from the BBC: It was quite the safe morning for Schettino, who participated in a health-and-safety briefing before donning a life vest and heading to the ship. (The tragedy actually claimed a 33rd victim this month.)
– Is the grass always greener on the other side of the fence? If you find yourself plagued by the question, thank the lateral frontal pole behind each of your eyebrows, says Oxford researcher Matthew Rushworth. The lateral frontal pole is a newly identified part of your brain which, scientists believe, helps us recognize when we've made poor decisions. "There are a few brain areas that monitor how good our choices are, and that is a very sensible thing to have. But this region monitors how good the choices are that we didn't take," notes Rushworth. Researchers zeroed in on the lateral front pole by scanning 25 people's brains using two imaging techniques. Putting the scans together helped the scientists learn about connections between the ventrolateral frontal cortex—which deals with language and cognition—and the rest of the brain, the Guardian reports. From there, the experts divided the ventrolateral frontal cortex into 12 regions, and then scanned monkeys' brains looking for those same regions. The scans indicate that monkeys have 11 of them—but only humans have the lateral frontal pole, Science 2.0 reports. In other words, the site notes, it's part of "what makes us human." (More brain news: Older brains aren't weaker.)
– The door was locked around 8:40am yesterday when a few students arrived at Jillian Jacobson's photography classroom at El Dorado High School in Placentia, Calif. "That's not normal for that hour of the day," a police lieutenant explains to the Orange County Register. The students found another teacher to open the door and were met with a horrific scene: Jacobson, 31, hanged from the ceiling. A student in the other teacher's class says they could hear "screaming, crying," and their teacher yelling, "Oh my God, oh my God!" after the door was opened. That teacher and Jacobson's students lowered Jacobson to the floor, and paramedics tried to revive her, but she was pronounced dead at the scene, the Los Angeles Times reports. Jacobson was a popular teacher—and her own father had committed suicide, according to several students who say it was not uncommon for Jacobson to speak out against such an action, advising students that "suicide was not the answer," as KTLA puts it. No suicide note was found, but the preliminary investigation indicates she did take her own life, the lieutenant says. "She gave no signs of being depressed or sad," says one of her former students. Another student at the school, one of many who mourned Jacobson on Twitter, said she remembered the teacher often "really brightened up everyone's day." But others say she was struggling with "personal issues." The students who found Jacobson were taken to crisis counselors immediately, and grief counselors were made available at the school.
– Today is the 20th anniversary of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, and Jennifer Allyn at the Christian Science Monitor says it's time to declare mission accomplished and refocus on a bigger goal. Two decades ago, it was enough to get young girls in the workplace and "demystify" the whole concept of women getting a job. Now it's time to introduce girls to the executive suites, to give them role models of women as decision-makers. Girls still tend not to see themselves getting leadership positions as adults, and that's because they don't get to see enough real-life examples. "Simply showing our daughters what an office looks like is no longer enough," writes Allen. "Real breakthroughs will come when we bring girls inside the halls of power. We need to take our daughters into the C-Suite now so they can lead in the future." Click to read her entire column.
– President Obama didn't exactly return from the G20 summit with a ringing international endorsement to take action against Syria, but he continued making his case before his own nation this morning via his weekly radio address. Obama hit familiar themes, ones he will surely revisit in his speech to the nation Tuesday night, reports Reuters. "This would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan." "Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope—designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so." "I know that the American people are weary after a decade of war, even as the war in Iraq has ended, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down. That's why we're not putting our troops in the middle of somebody else's war." As for the G20 summit: Obama got the backing of 10 countries for a statement that says Bashar al-Assad should be held accountable for using chemical weapons, but the statement pointedly fell short of calling for military action, notes the Los Angeles Times, which concludes that the president "fell well short of an international coalition that might help persuade reluctant lawmakers."
– Article after article has made mention of the fact that Sen. John McCain's wishes were that President Trump not be invited to his funeral. Sarah Palin apparently didn't make the cut, either. People reports the Palin news by way of several unnamed sources and quotes family friend Carla Eudy, who had a hand in planning the memorial services, as confirming "invitations were not extended" to either the president or McCain's 2008 running mate—who, Axios notes, was featured in the New York Times' lead story exactly 10 years ago Thursday. The headline: "Alaskan Is McCain's Choice; First Woman on GOP Ticket." (Palin was named as his running mate the day prior, on Aug. 29, 2008.) NBC News White House correspondent Kelly O'Donnell tweeted a sort of confirmation of the report, writing that Palin "is not expected to attend memorial. The McCain family has not commented on the invitation guest list." She went on to quote a Palin family source as saying, "Out of respect to Senator McCain and his family we have nothing to add at this point. The Palin family will always cherish their friendship with the McCains and hold those memories dear." Palin herself had this to say upon the announcement of McCain's death: "Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life—and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self. John McCain was my friend. I will remember the good times."
– Taylor Swift had the internet buzzing about what she might be up to after her social media accounts recently went dark and then came back to life with snakes (lots of snakes). And on Wednesday, she revealed the answer: She's releasing another album, Reputation, due out Nov. 10. The first single will be released Thursday, E! reports. Reputation will be Swift's sixth studio album and her first release in three years. As for the title, it probably has to do with those aforementioned snakes; BuzzFeed delves into how the snake emoji, as used by her critics, has become inextricably intertwined with Taylor—and why she might now be attempting to "reclaim" it.
– Human rights groups are condemning President Yahya Jammeh for his vow to execute every death row prisoner in Gambia next month, breaking an almost 30-year hiatus on executions in the country. "All those guilty of serious crimes and are condemned will face the full force of the law," Jammeh said in a Sunday speech, reports the LA Times. Gambian trials are notoriously unfair, and death sentences are often handed out for "treason," meaning any opposition to Jammeh, CNN reports. Cocaine and heroin possession were also reportedly made capital crimes in 2010. It's unclear how many people are on death row; the AFP counts 47, but Gambian authorities say the number is much higher. "Any attempt to carry out this threat would be both deeply shocking and a major setback for human rights in Gambia," an Amnesty International official said. Gambia last executed a prisoner in 1985. Jammeh announced a similar mass execution in 2009, but never followed through.
– Chanel's show at Paris Fashion Week yesterday had a somewhat pedestrian theme: The Grand Palais, where the show was held, was turned into a Chanel supermarket. There were rows of food and household items, all with Chanel-branded names like Coco beer and Tweed cola, and models pushed shopping carts or carried baskets through the aisles while music and fake announcements played ("the young Marine is waiting for her parents at the cashiers," for example); signs advertised "sales"—like "1 for the price of 2" and "50% markup." Altogether, more than 100,000 items were displayed with more than 500 different labels; some will be donated to charity, Reuters reports, but others were grabbed by audience members after the show ... and things got so crazy that security guards had to intervene, with the AP noting fashionistas' bags were actually searched upon exit, with stolen goods removed, though one apparently made off with a Chanel doormat. "For me the supermarket is the pop art of today," said designer Karl Lagerfeld ... though of course he also said he himself rarely actually visits supermarkets. Chanel last made headlines for featuring models in sneakers.
– After being jailed for more than two years, American hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal walked out of Evin prison free men this morning, confirms Iranian state television. Their lawyer had said earlier that they would be released within hours, after a vacationing judge returned and the second signature needed to free them on $1 million bail was secured. In a statement quoted on a semi-official Iranian news agency, the country’s judiciary confirmed the bail request had been “accepted,” reports the Washington Post.
– Americans are generally pretty positive, or at least indifferent, about these United States. Public Policy Polling asked 1,200 people how they felt about each of the 50 states, and only five were viewed more unfavorably than favorably. America's favorite state, by an overwhelming margin was Hawaii, while its least favorite was California. Here are the top and bottom five, along with their favorable/unfavorable split: Most popular: Hawaii—54-10 (+44) Colorado—44-9 (+35) Tennessee—48-14 (+34) South Dakota—42-8 (+34) Virginia—45-13 (+32) Least popular: California—27-44 (-17) Illinois—19-29 (-10) New Jersey—25-32 (-7) Mississippi—22-28 (-6) Utah—24-27 (-3) Of course, most people are indifferent about most states, the Houston Chronicle observes, with an average of two-thirds of respondents saying they were "not sure" for each. But some states were quite polarizing; Democrats like California 91 points more than Republicans do, while Republicans like Texas 82 points more than Democrats.
– Critics are generally won over by Babies, a documentary that follows four infants' first years in San Francisco, Mongolia, Tokyo, and Namibia. Some samples: Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: "As an advertisement for the wonders of figuring out how to be alive, the movie is an engaging proposition." Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: "The 'awww' without the 'shock' definitely makes Babies a very huggable movie experience, just not a primer on parenthood." Claudia Puig, USA Today: "The photography is stunning," she writes. "The procession of youthful behavior is almost hypnotic, but Babies is delivered with refreshing immediacy and joyful humor." Eric D. Snider, Film.com: "There is almost literally no difference between watching Babies and just watching a baby. Alfred Hitchcock said drama is 'life with the dull bits cut out.' Babies is life with the dull bits intact."
– Two videos circulating on social media showed a Georgia man being assaulted by two cops during a traffic stop this week, and now those cops have been fired, the AP reports. Robert McDonald was canned Thursday after the first video came to light involving motorist Demetrius Bryan Hollins, the Gwinnett County PD says. Michael Bongiovanni was let go later that day after a second video emerged, per the Washington Post. "The revelations uncovered in this entire investigation are shocking," read a Gwinnett PD statement tweeted Thursday night. Hollins, 21, had been pulled over in Lawrenceville around 4pm Wednesday by Bongiovanni, the police say, and as shown in a video that appeared on the Everything Georgia Twitter feed, Bongiovanni punched Hollins in the face after Hollins came out of the car with his hands up. The other video shows McDonald rushing over as Hollins was lying in the street and slamming his foot into Hollins' head. Hollins' lip and nose appeared to be bloodied in his booking photo. Bongiovanni's incident report said he had pulled Hollins over for a busted brake light and a lack of signaling while changing lanes. The officer said Hollins had started to "act strange," yell, and resist directions, and he remembered similarly disruptive behavior from a previous arrest. Hollins was released on bond Thursday after he was charged with the original citations, in addition to driving with a suspended or revoked license and registration and possessing less than an ounce of pot. (A California cop has been accused of pummeling a pedestrian—an incident that was also caught on video.)
– YouTube is on the verge of a $1 billion-plus deal to buy Twitch, sources tell Variety. If you're not nerdy enough to know, Twitch is a popular destination for video game fans, where top players (or anyone, really) stream video of their play sessions. The company boasts that it has more than 45 million monthly users, more than 1 million of whom stream content. During one week in April, it accounted for 44% of all US streaming traffic, according to Qwilt. Just how close the deal is to done is unclear; Variety says it "is expected to be announced imminently," but the Wall Street Journal characterizes talks as "at an early stage." YouTube is bracing for anti-trust objections, given how large its lead already is in the online video space. The Google unit has more than 1 billion monthly users, but its streaming service, YouTube Live, actually lags behind Twitch. Basically, Twitch users are engaged, while YouTube's aren't, a Qilt VP says, "and engagement is what drives advertising."
– It was a slowww reaction. When she was 14, a girl in Thailand got bit in the leg by a poisonous snake called the Malayan pit viper. A half-century later, she showed up at the doctor with a painful mass in that same leg, reports LiveScience, picking up on a writeup in the Journal of Medical Case Reports. Doctors first diagnosed the mass as calcific myonecrosis, the result of the venom destroying muscle tissue, when the woman was 66. Five years later, the still-growing mass actually came through her skin, and doctors surgically removed it without further complications. (Click to read about the discovery of a snake long thought extinct.)
– Pope Francis is days away from releasing what the Guardian predicts will be "his most radical statement" yet, and he says it isn't just for Catholics. Francis will be accompanied by an atheist climate scientist and a Greek Orthodox theologian, as well as a Vatican cardinal, when he releases his long-anticipated letter on the environment on Thursday, the AP reports. The encyclical, a rare papal "teaching letter," is expected to focus on climate change, humanity's role in causing it, and its devastating and disproportionate effects on the world's poor, reports the New York Times, which notes that Francis has long been outspoken on environmental issues and told reporters earlier this year that "man has slapped nature in the face." In a recent speech seen as a preview to the encyclical, Francis made it clear that he believes climate change and the suffering of the poor is the result of capitalism and overconsumption, the Guardian reports. "Much of the world remains in poverty, despite abundant resources, while a privileged global elite controls the bulk of the world's wealth and consumes the bulk of its resources," he said. Climate scientists say since the issue has become an ideological and partisan one as much as it is a scientific one, the papal letter could do more than international negotiations this year to reduce emissions, USA Today reports. (A US conservative group claims Francis has been "misled" on the issue, and staunch Catholic Rick Santorum says he finds the church leader hard to listen to.)
– Madonna doesn’t mind criticism of her new movie, WE—a good thing, since it bombed at the Venice Film Festival and, Reuters notes, subsequently received a one-star review in the Guardian—as long as that criticism is directed at the movie, and not at the Material Girl. "I can tell when people are reviewing my film and when they're reviewing me personally," Madonna said yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival, where WE is screening. "So when they stick to the film, then I do care" what critics think, she explained. She also described King Edward VIII, whose romance with Wallis Simpson is depicted in the film, as “very punk rock,” the Telegraph reports. That’s why she put the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” on the soundtrack, she explained: “I thought [the king] was quite rebellious and cutting edge in his point of view about life and about how to run the empire and using the Sex Pistols was a perfect marriage.” (She also, the Telegraph adds, broke into song at one point during the Q&A session—watch at left.) Click for another story coming out of the film festival—apparently, Madge doesn't like to be looked at by volunteers...
– Indonesia is home to 7 million transgendered people who face ongoing harassment, rape, and murder—and Barack Obama's former nanny is among their ranks. Following years of abuse, Evie, born a man, decided to leave cross-dressing behind after a friend was brutally murdered in 1985, the AP reports, in an exclusive look at her predicament and the situation in Indonesia at large. Though the lifestyle is very much in the public eye—a major talk-show host is transgendered—attacks have mounted in recent years, and the country's top Islamic organization has condemned the transgender lifestyle, the AP reports. "They must learn to accept their nature" or "accept their fate to be ridiculed and harassed," says a top cleric. As a child, Evie dropped out of school and pursued a career in cooking, eventually finding work as a cook for Obama's mother in 1969. During that time, she became a de facto nanny to an 8-year-old Barack and sister Maya. And though she often went out at night dressed as a woman, "I never let him see me wearing women's clothes. But he did see me trying on his mother's lipstick, sometimes. That used to really crack him up." But after the family moved away, Evie fell on hard times and ultimately became a sex worker. Today, she says she doesn't "have a future anymore" and is simply counting down the days until she dies. Still, when she found out that Obama had become president, "I couldn't believe my eyes," she notes. "Now when people call me scum, I can just say: 'But I was the nanny for the president of the United States!'"
– The Texas Board of Education says it's trying to "streamline" the social studies curriculum in its public schools, and one way it plans on doing so is by getting rid of two big names from the required learning plan. The Dallas Morning News reports that on Friday, the board held a preliminary vote and decided to nix Hillary Clinton from high school history class. As the first woman to nab a major political party's presidential nomination, Clinton appeared alongside Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O'Connor, among others, in a "citizenship" section of the curriculum in which students were tasked to "evaluate the contributions of significant political and social leaders in the United States." A work group made its recommendations to the board based on a rubric it created on how "essential" it was to learn about certain historical figures. Also cut, but from the elementary school curriculum: Helen Keller. "Helen Keller does not best represent the concept of citizenship," the group wrote. "Military and first responders are best represented." By the group's gauge, Clinton received just 5 points out of 20; Keller got 7. Some wonder how much time will really be saved by nixing these notable figures. "It won't take that long to teach about either woman. they happen to be part of history," tweeted pundit Greta Van Susteren. The work group estimates cutting Clinton will save about 30 minutes of teaching time, while yanking Keller will free up 40. What the BOE voted to keep in the state curriculum: references to "Judeo-Christian values" and "a requirement that students explain how the 'Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict' in the Middle East," per the Morning News. These decisions aren't set in stone: There's still a chance for the BOE to make changes before a final November vote.
– "I found paradise and it's called Isla Ina," wrote Catherine Johannet on Jan. 28 on Instagram of an island off Panama's coast. It would be the 23-year-old's final post. The 2015 Columbia University grad was found dead Sunday afternoon on the country's Bastimentos Island. Now the New York Daily News cites Panama's La Prensa in reporting an initial autopsy suggests she was strangled. The Edgemont, New York, native was last seen Thursday morning. The Briarcliff Daily Voice reports she had planned to leave Colon Island, where she was staying, to go to Red Frog Beach on Bastimentos for the day; authorities were alerted when she didn't return to her hostel, and her body was found by a police officer days later in a wooded area near Bastimentos' shore. The Daily News calls Johannet a "globetrotting Scarsdale woman," and her brother Paul elaborates on that in a Facebook post. "She was a world traveler—by the age of 23, she had already visited 6 continents and innumerable countries, including a recent 18-month trip to Vietnam where she taught English Literature to local students." Panamanian investigators, in concert with the FBI, on Tuesday conducted raids on the area as part of their investigation, though no details have been given regarding them or whether there are any suspects. Adds brother Paul, "She was cheerful, adventurous, thoughtful and warm—all qualities I strive towards. I'll always look up to my youngest sister." (A teen confessed on Monday to killing an American tourist in London.)
– John Kerry supports daughter Alexandra after her recent DUI arrest, he says in a statement, adding that she was originally pulled over for expired registration and was released after a breathalyzer test found she was under the legal limit. But a police officer tells People Alexandra was stopped “for a DUI investigation,” and TMZ points out that she also failed the field sobriety test. Her hearing is Dec. 10, but sources maintain she most likely won't be charged.
– An Arizona father of three plunged to his death from a bridge during a 206-mile bike race Saturday. Robert Verhaaren, 42, veered to avoid a pothole and catapulted over a guardrail over the Snake River in Wyoming, falling 35 feet into shallow water just eight miles from the finish line in the LoToJa race, reports the Cache Valley Daily. It was the first death in the history of the 30-year-old race. "it's the worst thing that can happen," a member of the race support team told the Jackson Hole News & Guide. “It’s always our greatest fear.” It "was devastating for us to lose a member of our LoToJa family," said race spokesman Dave Bern. "Unfortunately, these things go along with bicycle racing. Cycling is not for the risk averse." To date, "we've been fortunate," he told the Deseret News. "People have been careful, motorists have been careful." The contest, the longest single-day bike race in the country, starts in Logan, Utah, and ends in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Two other racers ended up in the hospital after serious accidents in Idaho and Wyoming.
– A councilwoman in Tempe, Ariz., thought her dog fell off the bed Sunday night—but the cause of the rumble and thud she heard turned out to be more earthshaking than that. At least three earthquakes startled the Grand Canyon State Sunday night, with the largest weighing in at a 4.1 magnitude, the Arizona Republic reports. The tremors, a relatively rare occurrence in Arizona, were all near Black Canyon City, about 45 miles north of Phoenix, notes CNN. Even though a US Geological Survey rep says the 4.1 quake was "relatively small," two things made it stand out, per the Republic: the fact that a 3.2-magnitude temblor came right before it, and that the quakes hit close to the Earth's surface. "This is definitely not common," he says. (Meanwhile, the Bay Area has been shaken by 408 quakes in two weeks.)
– Sony is advising many PS3 owners not to use their consoles for 24 hours while the company fixes a massive bug affecting consoles around the world. Older versions of the system have been unable to log on to the Playstation Network, and in some cases even unable to play games, thanks to a quirk in the system’s clock. Developers tell Kotaku their PS3s have fallen into “a rebooting cycle, due to an endlessly-looping error message.” “Rest assured, we’ve many people working on fixing this issue,” Sony’s European arm tweeted this morning. The company later released a full statement outlining the problems, which you can read here. The bug affects only the older, “fat” versions of the system, not the newer “PS3 Slim,” the company is quick to point out.
– It seemed a good idea at the time, but China's propaganda officials are now reportedly walking back one particular attempt to paint President Xi Jinping as the "people's president" by asking state media to stop referring to him by his nickname, per the Guardian. That nickname is "Xi Dada," or "Big Daddy Xi," and while the intent of the moniker was, as another Guardian article frames it, to "craft the image of an approachable public servant," it seems to have instead created a cult of personality that some fear is reminiscent of Mao Zedong. Sources tell Bloomberg that both the Xinhua News Agency and the 21st Century Business Herald were "cautioned" last month about using "Xi Dada," even though the name doesn't appear to have been blocked from online searches or scrubbed online, and no explicit written ban seems to have been issued. The nickname got its start after a fan club started circulating it in 2012, per the People's Daily, and Xi himself gave it the thumbs-up in 2014. There's even a series of songs that have been dedicated to Big Daddy Xi, including "Our Xi Dada" and "Xi Dada Loves Peng Mama" (referring to his wife). "I thought the Chinese system had moved beyond one-man-rule and personality cults," noted Chinese scholar David Shambaugh scoffs to the Guardian. "I do not think it is good for China. This is not the 1960s." Experts speculate it's that sort of thinking that may have caused officials to try to pull back the name, even blocking the Economist website for posting a cartoon Xi in a Mao-style getup next to the headline, "Beware the cult of Xi." Some say Xi is likely not pleased. "That's a big-time propaganda failure," the author of a book on Xi's rise tells the Guardian. "I can imagine that in their five-minute-a-month meeting with Xi Jinping, the head of publicity got told: 'Whose bright idea was that [nickname]? Send him or her to Gansu [in China's far west]!'" (Did Taiwan's president call him "Big Daddy Xi" during their historic handshake?)
– Sacha Baron Cohen has been told he's not welcome at this Sunday's Academy Awards unless he promises he won't arrive dressed up as a Middle Eastern military dictator. Oscar tickets are in jeopardy for the creator of Borat and Bruno because of fears that he will arrive on the red carpet in character as the "sex-crazed Gadhafi-meets-Hussein" title character of his latest spoof, The Dictator, reports the New York Daily News. Baron Cohen had been invited as one of the stars of Best Picture contender Hugo, "but our red carpet is not for stunting," an Academy official tells Reuters. With most of this year's Oscar winners looking like a foregone conclusion, "the prospect of Baron Cohen’s red carpet walk was the closest thing to drama" viewers could expect this year, notes Nikki Finke at Deadline. Maybe the Academy feared a repeat of the funnyman's 2009 MTV Awards stunt, when Bruno descended from the ceiling in angel wings and landed butt-first on Eminem.
– Now even the great apes are getting in on debunking "fake news"—or, to be more specific, fake beliefs. German researchers have found that the primates can tell when a human is wrong about something, and can even help to remedy the situation, which in this case was assisting a human in finding an object mistakenly believed to be in one location but actually in another, AFP reports. The study published in the PLoS One journal, which revamped a test usually administered to 18-month-old human babies, sought to see if the 34 chimps, bonobos, and orangutans at Germany's Leipzig Zoo could understand if a human was harboring a false belief, believed to be a sign of advanced social cognition apes weren't previously believed to possess. A press release lays out the experiment, which involved the apes watching while Person A put an object under one of two boxes, then either stayed in the room and watched (the "true belief" part of the experiment) or left the room (the "false belief" part) while a second person then moved the object to the second box. In both cases, Person A then went to the original box to try to open it, ostensibly not knowing in the false-belief cases the object had been moved—and in those false-belief cases, the apes, who'd been observing the whole thing and had been trained to unlock the boxes, tried more often than would be attributed to chance to guide the humans to where the object really was. These results are said to be the first to show that apes can use this "mind-reading" and apply it to their social interactions, the researchers write. (An animal expert says it's moral to keep apes in a zoo.)
– Unnamed officials say TSA officer Gerardo Hernandez lay bleeding for 33 minutes at LAX before being taken to an ambulance. For 28 of those minutes, alleged shooter Paul Ciancia was in police custody, though officers hadn't yet declared the area safe to enter. Officers checked on Hernandez, who was just 20 feet from an exit, then moved on while paramedics waited 150 yards away, the AP reports, noting it's not clear if immediate attention might have saved Hernandez's life. Now under review: the conversations took place between police and fire commanders to determine when it was safe enough to enter, and whether paramedics could have gone into the terminal earlier. While an officer who checked on Hernandez about 5 minutes after he was shot told numerous officers he was dead, the AP reports that it's not known whether that officer had the training needed to make that determination; no first-aid was administered. "I basically think there's a lack of coordination between entities at this airport. That lack of coordination may have led to something that shouldn't have happened," an LAX employee says. "We may be talking about Officer Hernandez as a survivor." The results of the investigation could be months away, the AP adds. Ciancia was on Tuesday upgraded from critical to fair condition at UCLA Medical Center.
– More trouble for Takata: A truck carrying Takata airbag parts and explosives crashed in Texas last week, exploding and killing a woman and injuring four others. Authorities say the truck left a highway in Quemado before dawn on Aug. 22, caught fire outside Lucila Robles' home, then violently exploded after the two drivers were able to escape. Both drivers were injured, along with a couple in a nearby car. The force of the explosion was such that officers searched for the 69-year-old Robles for two days before finding her bones and teeth in the rubble of her destroyed house, a Maverick County sheriff tells the New York Times. Ten other homes were damaged, while debris was found a mile away, per Conexion Del Rio. Takata says the truck contained ammonium nitrate and inflaters—which, combined, allow an airbag to expand. The products were believed to be headed to Takata's distribution center in Eagle Pass, Texas. A Takata rep tells Jalopnik that "the accident caused a fire, which led to an explosion," noting the company "has strict safety procedures relating to the transportation of its products that meet or exceed all regulatory requirements." The Department of Transportation says it is investigating "the safety compliance of the motor carrier, the handling of the cargo by the shipper, its packaging, how the truck was placarded, as well as the truck's routing." (Takata is accused of manipulating testing data.)
– After Sony's U-turn on releasing The Interview, the controversial movie played in 331 independent cinemas across America on Christmas Day, often to sellout crowds. Many moviegoers made it clear they were there to take a political stand, with one ticket seller in California dressed as "Uncle Sam-ty Claus," the New York Times reports. "We are taking a stand for freedom," the manager of the Cinema Village East in Manhattan tells the AP. "We want to show the world that Americans will not be told what we can or cannot watch. Personally, I am not afraid." Security was light at most theaters, though some had police officers standing by. Co-directors Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen made a surprise appearance at a screening in Los Angeles, where they thanked moviegoers for their support, reports Reuters. A North Korean diplomat, meanwhile, called the release an "unpardonable mockery" of the "dignity of our supreme leader," but said there would probably be no "physical reaction" from Pyongyang. In a first for a major studio, the movie had a simultaneous release online. The groundbreaking release strategy is being closely watched by the industry, although Sony says it won't release any immediate data on the number of sales or rentals, CNN reports.
– The toddler in the extra-large T-shirt was sitting between sliding glass doors at Amarillo Airport when a security guard found her late one night in September 1977, clasping a bottle of spoiled juice. Faded bruises signaled a troubled past, one from which the blonde, brown-eyed girl, aged 16 to 18 months, had been abandoned. Dubbed Jane Doe 927, the toddler was adopted by a loving family and rechristened Shelley Schooley. Her past would remain a mystery for four decades. Now the Amarillo Globe-News reports a DNA test could unlock those secrets. That is, if the mother of two decides to take it. Until now, Schooley says, she never wanted to pursue her "missing link." In a 2015 YouTube video, Schooley explains, "It's never mattered to me. I have my family and I wouldn't trade them for anything." Meanwhile in 1998, a woman named Pattie Whitaker posted on a genealogy forum that she "will not give up" searching for her niece, Bonnie Lee Webster, who disappeared in 1977. The 18-month-old was apparently abandoned by Whitaker's late sister, who never explained what happened to the child. Genealogy sleuth Rona Randall saw the post and found an old newspaper photo of Jane Doe 927—a "perfect match" to baby Bonnie. Last month, Randall found Schooley and put her in touch with Whitaker. Schooley tells the Globe-News she can't justify the expense of the DNA test with two sons to raise. But, she adds, she may do it if the truth provides "closure" for Whitaker, her probable aunt. "That would be the only thing I feel I have to offer," she says. (Parents held out hope their missing daughter was still alive. She wasn't.)
– President Trump's national security adviser said the US is "officially putting Iran on notice," without specifying exactly what that means, Reuters reports. According to NBC News, Michael Flynn made the remark during a "surprise appearance" at a White House press briefing Wednesday. It was spurred by a recent Iranian missile test that Flynn characterized as "destabilizing activity." While Flynn didn't offer specifics on how the US may respond, three senior administration officials tell CNN they are "considering a whole range of options," including everything from economic sanctions to military action. Iran's defense minister says the test doesn't violate the nuclear agreement or a UN resolution. Iran has tested multiple missiles since the nuclear deal in 2015. It says they are "solely for defensive purposes" and not designed to carry nuclear warheads. Trump promised during the campaign to end Iran's missile program. The National Iranian American Council called Flynn's remarks "reckless" and said they may set the US on the path to war.
– A pretty big oops in Lima, Ohio, this week: Markelus Carter is charged with murder, and during a break in his trial Wednesday, a guard accidentally put him in the same holding cell with another inmate who was set to testify against him. Neither man was handcuffed, and a fight broke out, but "within minutes we were able to go in and break up the two," the local sheriff says, adding that there will be an investigation into the misstep. Carter walked back into the courtroom "visibly shaken" and with red marks on his face, the Lima News reports; the sheriff described the injuries to both men as "minor." The judge wouldn't grant a mistrial, but allowed the jury to watch video of the fight, Your News Now reports; the witness testified the next day.
– Osama bin Laden didn’t die after a 45-minute gunfight, according to a new book—he died 90 seconds into the raid, according to SEAL Target Geronimo. The new book is by former SEAL Team Six leader Chuck Pfarrer, who says he interviewed the team that killed bin Laden. The book says SEALs landed on the roof, not the ground floor, bursting right into Osama’s bed chamber, according to advance looks from the Daily Beast and Telegraph. Only 12 bullets were fired in the entire raid. But team members confirm there was no kill order, and that they would have captured bin Laden if possible. Perhaps more damaging for the Obama administration is the assertion that the SEALs resent the president for announcing bin Laden’s death so quickly. If he hadn’t, they believe they could have used intelligence from the raid to launch surprise attacks on al-Qaeda leaders—potentially rolling up the organization in six months. US officials, however, have dismissed the book as “plain wrong.”
– The Italian-born author and conservationist Kuki Gallmann was shot at her Kenyan ranch and airlifted for treatment after herders invaded in search of pasture to save their animals from drought, officials said Sunday. Gallmann, known for her bestselling book I Dreamed of Africa, which became a movie by the same name starring Kim Basinger, was patrolling the ranch in Laikipia when she was shot in the stomach, says a local police chief. The 73-year-old Gallmann had been with rangers assessing damage done to her property; lodges belonging to Gallmann were burned by the herders last month. She was airlifted to the capital, Nairobi; a family member reportedly said Gallmann is in stable condition after surgery but had serious injuries. The AP reports the East African nation is facing a drought that has affected half the country and has been declared a national disaster. The BBC reports it's believed tens of thousands of cattle have been pushed onto private lands; Laikipia's roughly 4,000 square miles are home to some of Kenya's biggest white landowners. NPR's Eyder Peralta described the situation like so: As nomadic herders have moved in, "the Kenyan government launched a military-style operation to push the herders out. But what we've seen is an escalation of violence. Police have killed lots of cows. And the herders have responded by burning tourist lodges on the properties."
– Violent protests in Cairo have reached a pitch not seen since the days of Egypt's recent revolution, the Wall Street Journal reports: Tens of thousands of demonstrators battled on the streets yesterday, with the AP reporting five dead and more than 600 injured as some threw rocks and Molotov cocktails. The Egyptian army deployed tanks outside the presidential palace today, as Mohamed Morsi conducted business as usual inside. The AP notes that all appeared calm this morning, with thousands of Morsi supporters camping outside the palace after driving away opposition activists. The fighting had centered around the palace, where police established a barrier between the groups. Supporters of Morsi stormed an encampment of 200 protesters, ripping down their tents, the Los Angeles Times reports. "The problem is that these people could say no" in an upcoming constitutional referendum, "but they don't want a referendum," said one Morsi backer. "They don't want a democracy." Meanwhile, three of Morsi's non-Brotherhood aides have quit: "Egypt is bigger than a narrow-minded elite," said Seif Abdel Fattah. "We can no longer stay silent because (the Brotherhood has) harmed the nation and the revolution."
– Pretty soon, one lucky American will get to come home to naked Donald Trump every night. The San Francisco Chronicle reports one of the explicit Trump statues that made headlines when they popped up around the country last month will be auctioned off on Oct. 22. The statues created by an anarchist artist collective and dubbed "The Emperor Has No Balls" were erected in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Seattle, New York, and San Francisco, according to Reuters. But the Los Angeles statue was the only one not seized or destroyed by authorities. "The explicit statue quickly became a symbol of political protest art," CNBC quotes Julian's Auctions as stating. Julian's Auctions expects the surviving Los Angeles statue to go for between $10,000 and $20,000 at auction. A portion of those proceeds will go to the National Immigration Forum. The immigrants rights organization will use the money to "advocate for the value of immigrants and immigration to the nation," LA Weekly reports. Hundreds of other pieces of art will be auctioned off alongside naked Donald Trump, including the famous "Hope" portrait of President Obama and a portrait of Hillary Clinton in a tuxedo called "Hillary Clinton Cojones."
– UC Davis continues to try to make amends for its pepper-spray YouTube sensation. The school says it will pick up any medical bills incurred by the students who got doused, along with dropping the misdemeanor charges against them, reports CNN. The university also is setting up the obligatory review panel, as Chancellor Linda Katehi insists that officers defied her orders not to use force, notes the Sacramento Bee. The main officer, involved, meanwhile faces the wrath of Anonymous.
– A 12-year-old Pittsburgh girl died on her first date last night when her father's car dragged her about 50 feet and slammed into a tree, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports. The girl, Shamera Harris, got out of her father's SUV so her parents could snap a photo of her and her date, but the vehicle began rolling backwards. Shamera's dad, 53-year-old Richard Benton, was "messing around with the gear shifter" before exiting the vehicle, according to the girl's mom, Carla Harris. "He thought the vehicle was in park," said a police sergeant. "In fact, it must have been out of gear and went over her, dragging her down the hill and then crashing into a yard." Shamera's parents had picked up her and her date at Waterworks Mall and drove them back to the boy's place when tragedy struck. Paramedics arrived and tried to resuscitate the girl but she "wasn't moving," a neighbor told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Police say Benton, who was charged with a DUI, smelled of booze and had "slurred speech and glassy, watery eyes." He refused a field sobriety test on the scene and a chemical test of his breath while in custody, and asked to see an attorney. "If there's reason to believe he's responsible for this girl's death, then there will be charges," said a lieutenant. "It's one of those things where you have to wait and see."
– A homeless San Francisco man who calls himself a "news junkie" might be able to get off the streets because of his news habit: He will receive the lion's share of a $150,000 reward for helping recapture two escaped inmates in January, the Los Angeles Times reports. Matthew Hay-Chapman recognized the inmates' stolen van in a Whole Foods parking lot on Jan. 28 and spotted fugitive Hossein Nayeri emerging from the vehicle. He says he found a police officer and led him to the van, leading to the capture of Nayeri and fellow escapee Jonathan Tieu. A third man had surrendered a day earlier. Hay-Chapman, 55, was living in Golden Gate Park at the time of the arrests but says he still kept track of the news every day by going online or reading newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The Orange County Board of Supervisors decided to award him $100,000 of the $150,000 cash reward for the inmates' recapture, with $20,000 going to the owner of the stolen van, and two employees who spotted the escapees acting suspiciously at a Target store receiving $15,000 each. A cab driver kidnapped and almost murdered by the escapees, however, won't get a share of the reward money because the supervisors decided that he had not provided information that led to the men's recapture.
– History is written by the winners, and in this case by the winner of the 2008 presidential election: Take a gander at almost any presidential biography on WhiteHouse.gov from Calvin Coolidge on up, and you'll find a "Did You Know?" section that somehow, some way, links their achievements to President Obama's, USA Today reports. Coolidge, for instance, was the first president to make a public radio address; but Obama was the first to hold "virtual gatherings and town halls on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc." These, er, helpful additions were first spotted by the Heritage Foundation, and conservatives are having a field day with them. "No wonder he always seems so proud of himself," quips Sean Mandel of Commentary, who was the first to blog about the insertions. The RNC, meanwhile, has set up a fairly hilarious "Obama in History" Tumblr account, photoshopping the president into everything from the moon landing to Washington's trip across the Delaware.
– Psychopaths just don't grasp punishment the way normal people do. So say researchers who used MRI scans to analyze the brains of 12 violent psychopathic criminals, 20 violent criminals who are not psychopaths, and 18 healthy controls who are not criminals. It turns out that the psychopath cohort had a much harder time changing their behaviors and choices when playing an image matching game, as well as adapting when the rules of the game changed, reports Time. Abnormalities were seen in brain regions that process things like moral reasoning, guilt, and embarrassment. This may explain why previous research has shown that rehabilitation using negative reinforcement like punishment rarely works on psychopaths. "Psychopathic offenders are different from regular criminals in many ways," one researcher tells LiveScience. "Regular criminals are hyper-responsive to threat, quick-tempered, and aggressive, while psychopaths have a very low response to threats, are cold, and their aggressive behavior is premeditated." On the plus side, researchers hope that earlier behavioral interventions in young kids could potentially change actual brain structure and function, though not much is yet understood about how one's genes and upbringing contribute to the making of cold-blooded, psychopathic killers. (Psychopaths also seem to have a terrible sense of smell.)
– Serena Williams' loss to Naomi Osaka over the weekend at the US Open continues to generate headlines beyond the world of sports. One of the buzzier stories Monday concerned a cartoon—see it here—that it appeared in the Herald Sun of Australia, reports Business Insider. It depicts Williams, with exaggerated features, throwing a tantrum. In the view of TMZ, "it looks like a Jim Crow-era, Sambo-style caricature of a black person—not Serena Williams," and plenty of people agreed, including JK Rowling. "Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop," she wrote. Others found it strange that the cartoonist made Osaka and the ump white, when neither are. Related coverage: Catching up: If you missed it, Williams accused ump Carlos Ramos of being a "liar" and a "thief" for docking her a point after what he deemed to be illegal communication between Williams and her coach. As she criticized him and demanded an apology, he penalized her a full game. Williams was ultimately fined $17,000. Lost in all this: The controversy has overshadowed the win by Osaka and the 20-year-old's remarkable journey. Her mother is Japanese and her father Haitian, notes the Washington Post, which makes her Japan's first Grand Slam champ. The New York Times recently profiled her, wondering whether she can "burst Japan's expectations of what it means to be Japanese."
– With fighting rattling Damascus, a leading voice in Syria says Bashar al-Assad can't win the war. But neither side will see a victory, says Farouk al-Sharaa, who has kept a low profile in the conflict and isn't involved in running the government's efforts. Sharaa's comments came in an interview with a pro-Assad newspaper, al-Akhbar. He says the only solution is a "historic settlement" forming a national unity government, with help from neighboring countries and the UN. "Change is inevitable." "We should be in a position defending the existence of Syria. We are not in a battle for an individual or a regime," Sharaa said. Government insiders say he has long opposed the government's military action. Meanwhile, central Damascus—which had been relatively quiet in the conflict—is hearing shelling as the military and fighters set up checkpoints. Residents say a Palestinian district has been told to evacuate, pointing to a coming government offensive, Reuters reports. It was reportedly shelled by regime jets yesterday. For their part, rebels say they're planning to take the central Hama province. "Then we will have the area between Aleppo and Hama liberated and open for us," says a spokesman.
– Ever wonder what a psychological breakdown looks like up close? See for yourself in Queen of Earth from Alex Ross Perry. It follows two friends, one of whom has recently lost her father to suicide and her lover to another woman. Here's what critics are saying: Queen of Earth is a "startling, razor-sharp thriller" that might solidify Perry as "the most skillful young writer-director working in the United States today," writes Calum Marsh at Village Voice. "Largely a chamber piece for two women—Katherine Waterston and Elisabeth Moss, both excellent in hugely demanding roles—the film also welcomes, and indeed earns, Persona comparisons. This is vigorous, frightening, electrifying stuff." Scott Tobias at NPR was rapt all the way through. The film focuses on the "thorny relationship" between Catherine (Moss) and Virginia (Waterston) over a week. It "isn't a thriller per se, but it has the tension and atmosphere of one, only with emotional violence substituting for the physical kind," he writes. "Catherine's deterioration feels dread-soaked and dangerous, and it happens with the agonizing deliberateness of a suspense director pulling the strings." Waterston "easily holds your attention," but it's Moss, "with her intimate expressivity, who annihilates you from first tear to last crushing laugh," writes Manohla Dargis at the New York Times. She's "sensational," and "brings tremendous depth of feeling" to her difficult role, Dargis adds. As for the movie, it's "alternately mesmerizing and suffocating … bringing you uncomfortably close to the action ... only to shove you away." Joe Neumaier agrees "this is Moss' show." She's "excellent as a woman whose mind is unraveling" in a film that "burrows so deep into a psyche that it's scary." The "intense" work "may seem minor but is more than memorable" as it explores "memory, relationships and codependency, between both friends and lovers," he writes at the New York Daily News.
– There is no shortage of reflections on the life of Christopher Hitchens today, filled with memories and anecdotes that all seem to include the word "cocktail." Writing for Slate, David Corn recounts his "Hitchens tale," one that occurred some three decades ago while the two shared a tiny, windowless office at The Nation. It seems that Corn spent most of his day taking phone messages for Hitchens. In the morning, they'd be along the lines of "'Tell him, that was a wonderful dinner last night.' Or, 'Mick was so pleased to meet him.'" Then they'd shift to invitations for lunch, afternoon drinks, dinner, and an 11pm cocktail date, with Hitchens popping in just long enough to get those messages, then depart for said restaurant or watering hole. At some point, an editor would stop by to double-check that Hitchens would have, say, the review of a biography ready for her tomorrow. He'd say yes, then slip an 800-page book that clearly "had yet to be opened ... into his bag and say goodnight." What he somehow turned in the next day was—"you know the punch line—brilliant. Next, it was off to lunch." Corn writes that he learned many lessons from Hitchens, but "never how to function in quite this manner. What allowed him to live such a packed life was a trait that any of us would relish: He never forgot what he had ever read or learned." It's not a skill that could be taught, but watching Hitchens "practice his craft and thrust and parry with intellectuals almost as sharp as him was as valuable an experience as I could have imagined."
– Former Japanese Imperial Army soldier Hiroo Onoda has died at the age of 91—roughly 40 years after he stopped fighting World War II. Onoda, the last Japanese soldier to surrender, hid out in the jungles of the Philippines for almost 30 years after 1945, only coming out of hiding in 1974. The straggler formally surrendered—still wearing his uniform—to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos after his former commander flew out to rescind his 1945 order that Onoda stay there and spy on American forces, the AP reports. The New York Times reports that Onoda was with three comrades on Lubang Island when the war ended; believing leaflets attesting to the war's end to be Allied propaganda, they lived off bananas, coconuts, stolen rice, and cows they killed, and constructed bamboo huts. One of the men surrendered five years later; the others were shot and killed by police, the last just two years before Onoda emerged. The Guardian reports that he "wept uncontrollably" when he eventually gave up his rifle—still "perfectly serviceable" after all those years, and one he may have used to kill as many as 30 locals that he mistook for enemies. A Japanese government spokesman praised Onoda for his unbreakable spirit: "After World War II, Mr. Onoda lived in the jungle for many years and when he returned to Japan, I felt that finally, the war was finished. That's how I felt." After the war finally ended for him, Onoda bought a ranch in Brazil before returning to Japan to run a children's nature school. "I don't consider those 30 years a waste of time," he said in a 1995 interview. "Without that experience, I wouldn't have my life today." (In other WWII news, the game Monopoly actually helped POWs escape.)
– Well, it appears the Secret Service has pried Donald Trump's beloved Android phone from his tweeting fingers. An unidentified friend of Trump's tells the AP the new president handed over his phone Thursday on the advice of security advisers. The New York Times reports Trump's Android was replaced by an encrypted device that received Secret Service approval. Barack Obama, the first president to use a mobile device in office, started with a "heavily modified" Blackberry before moving to a mostly disabled iPhone. The devices were used to check email and news sites but rarely—if ever—for phone calls. This is all likely to cramp Trump's style. A Republican senator says the president was known for answering his phone even if he didn't recognize the number. He would even call back strange numbers that didn't leave a message. A former Secret Service agent tells Cnet Trump is unlikely to be able to use his new device for phone calls because they are way too easy to intercept. Trump's aides—some of whom are excited journalists and others won't have direct access to him—say he's likely to instead go office to office in person to get his "gossip" fix. It's possible he'll still be able to tweet. The Newseum in Washington DC has asked Trump about getting his Android to put on display.
– Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs isn't in a position to boycott the Oscars—but she wants Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee to know that she is "heartbroken and frustrated" by this year's lack of diversity and there are big changes ahead. "This is a difficult but important conversation, and it's time for big changes," she said in a statement Monday night, per the Hollywood Reporter. "The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership," she added, promising a "review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond." Smith and Lee announced their boycott after the Academy released an all-white acting nominee list for the second year in a row. Boone Isaacs noted that the Academy worked hard to stay relevant by recruiting younger members in the '60s and '70s, and the goal now is "inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation." Insiders tell the Wrap that Academy governors and board members received an email Monday asking them to make a push for more diversity in each branch of the organization. In its most recent report on the issue, UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African-American Studies found that senior management at movie studios is 92% white and 83% male, reports the Los Angeles Times. If black stars stay away from the Oscars, "the image of Hollywood that the academy presents is at stake," researcher Ana-Christina Ramon tells the paper. (The Oscars were recently defended by one perhaps surprising person.)
– Cementing her role as a powerful White House influence, Ivanka Trump is working out of a West Wing office and will get access to classified information, though she is not technically serving as a government employee. Jamie Gorelick, an attorney and ethics adviser for Ivanka Trump, said Monday that the first daughter will not have an official title or receive a salary, but will get a West Wing office, government-issued communications devices, and security clearance to access classified information, the AP reports. Gorelick says Ivanka Trump will follow the ethics rules that apply to government employees. Since President Trump took office, his eldest daughter has been a visible presence in the White House, where her husband, Jared Kushner, serves as a senior adviser. Her role has already come under scrutiny because there is little precedent for a member of the first family with this kind of influence. "Having an adult child of the president who is actively engaged in the work of the administration is new ground,” Gorelick tells Politico. "Our view is that the conservative approach is for Ivanka to voluntarily comply with the rules that would apply if she were a government employee, even though she is not." (Ivanka Trump's clothing brand has had a surge in sales so far this year.)
– Kids playing in the woods Friday stumbled on a body near the home of a missing Maine schoolteacher, the Portland Press Herald reports. A search team was scouring the area around the house of Kristin Westra—who apparently vanished Monday, leaving behind her car and cellphone—when children made the find within 1.5 miles of her house. Police are waiting for the Medical Examiner's Office to make positive identification, but husband Jay Westra didn't hold back: "My heart was crushed today," he posted on Facebook. Jay says his 47-year-old wife was under considerable stress from renovations at home and at Chebeague School, where she taught, and had undergone a safety "assessment" the day she disappeared. "Sunday morning, Kristin was experiencing what I would call some anxiety and she expressed that she had some sleepless nights and was worried," says Jay. A team of police, volunteers, and wardens had searched a 1.5-mile radius around the Westras Lufkin Rd. home on Tuesday and Wednesday, reduced the team size Thursday, and added K-9 teams Friday—but may have missed the body in their sweep. Asked how, Capt. Craig Smith says, "That question has been asked and it is being researched." The body was found 500 to 600 feet from a rural road, per ABC News. Meanwhile, locals tell WGME they're having a tough time over the elementary school teacher's disappearance. "Just kinda be there," says a woman who visited distraught students at Kristin's school. "I brought bagels."
– Two skydivers were killed and another injured last night in a midair collision involving members of a group trying to smash formation skydiving records in Arizona. Witnesses say the skydivers were 200 to 300 feet above the ground when they collided, causing them to fall to the ground as their canopies collapsed, a police spokesman tells ABC15. Officials say the two people killed were not American but they have not disclosed their nationalities. The skydivers were part of a 200- to 250-member group taking part in a week-long effort to break as many records as possible, reports the Arizona Republic. The collision happened at the Skydive Arizona facility where the world record for an all-female mass-formation jump was broken just a few days ago.
– Tonight’s the night! At 7pm CT, Iowa Republicans will gather to cast the first votes in the Republican nominating season. Consider this your pregame report, with info from Politico, Mother Jones, and the Des Moines Register: The frontrunners: Polls show Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum are poised to grab the proverbial “three tickets out of Iowa.” Romney doesn’t need to win to remain the favorite for the nomination, but anything less than a respectable second will be damaging. Turnout is everything: If it’s high, that’s probably a good sign for Romney. If it’s low, it’s a good sign for Paul and/or Santorum—depending on where it’s concentrated. Bad weather is thought to favor Paul’s band of enthusiastic supporters. Location, location, location: Romney’s support is strongest in eastern Iowa, Santorum should fare well in the northwest, and Paul is hoping for turnout in college towns such as Ames. Politico highlights 10 counties to watch here. The battle for fourth: If either Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry can pull out a closer-than-expected fourth, they might be able to stay in the race. Last-minute campaigning: Romney held rallies in four cities yesterday, his most since 2008. Paul held forth in a hotel full of journalists in Des Moines, hoping to grab media buzz. And Santorum appeared with the cast of 19 Kids and Counting, the TLC reality show beloved by Iowa homeschoolers. Some intriguing numbers: Paul’s favorability has fallen 21 points in the past week. Only 76% of Santorum’s supporters say they’ll definitely caucus for him. Romney, meanwhile, has at some point trailed five different candidates in Iowa—and is now polling at exactly the same 18% he was at in January.
– On Friday, Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a bill requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals within a half-hour of their practices. Now a federal judge has temporarily halted the measure, citing "a troubling lack of justification for the hospital admitting-privileges requirement." The US Supreme Court says measures like this one must be "reasonably directed to the preservation of maternal health"—and "it appears that no medical purpose is served by this requirement," Judge William Conley wrote, per CNN. His move, following a Planned Parenthood suit, bars the measure until July 18, a day after another hearing on the measure, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes. Another part of the law, requiring pre-abortion ultrasounds, is untouched by Conley's move. It was thought that the admitting-privileges portion of the law would halve the number of abortion clinics in the state, leaving just two.
– The truck driver who left a bride-to-be critically injured and killed four of her friends in a horrific car crash yesterday has pleaded not guilty to drunk driving. Steven Romeo, 55, made the plea today from a Long Island hospital bed where he's recovering from injuries sustained in the crash, the New York Times reports. His bail is set at $1 million bond or $500,000 cash. "Right now, we’re continuing the investigation and looking into upgrading the charges significantly," says assistant DA Elizabeth Miller, who adds that the limo driver won't be charged. Meanwhile, Romeo's lawyer denied media reports that Romeo was driving drunk or fled the scene, but said little else. Details are emerging about the accident, in which a bride-to-be and seven of her friends were riding in a limousine just after 5pm on Route 48 in Cutchogue, NY. "I don’t believe it was a bridal party, but they were celebrating," Miller tells the Suffolk Times. The limo was negotiating a U-turn at a crossroad that has two flashing yellow lights going west and east to caution drivers, Newsday reports. That's when Romeo's pickup slammed into the limo with such force that it tore almost totally through the vehicle. An eyewitness says Romeo sat there, bloodied and incoherent, holding a water bottle. Dead in the crash are Lauren Baruch, 24, Stephanie Belli, 23, Amy R. Grabina, 23, and Brittney Schulman, 23. A local boat repairman, Romeo was involved in another fatality last year when a bucket fell off a skid-steer loader he was operating at a construction site, killing a 30-year-old worker—but while citations and fines were issued, Romeo wasn't charged, partly because he hadn't been trained to operate the equipment.
– Actress Heather Lind accused former President George HW Bush of sexual assault in a now-deleted Instagram post Tuesday, saying the former president "touched her from behind" during a photo-op in 2014. The Turn: Washington's Spies star said the inappropriate behavior occurred during a special screening before the AMC historical drama's debut, Deadline reports. "He touched me from behind from his wheelchair with his wife Barbara Bush by his side," Lind wrote. "He told me a dirty joke. And then, all the while being photographed, touched me again. Barbara rolled her eyes as if to say 'not again.'" Lind said a security guard told her she "shouldn't have stood next to him for the photo." Lind said that judging from comments from people around her, Bush had behaved the same way with "countless other women." "My fellow castmates and producers helped me that day and continue to support me," she wrote. Lind said she decided to come forward with her story after seeing a recent photo of the 93-year-old Bush with former President Obama. Bush issued an apology through a spokesman. "President Bush would never—under any circumstance—intentionally cause anyone distress, and he most sincerely apologizes if his attempt at humor offended Ms. Lind," the spokesman said in a statement to the New York Daily News.
– After anecdotal warnings circulated on social media, Disney has issued an official seizure warning for Incredibles 2. Both the film and the trailer contain flashing or strobe light effects, which can cause seizures for some epileptic viewers; the Epilepsy Foundation spoke out about the issue, and a petition called for Disney to include a visual warning about the lights. On Friday, Disney asked theaters showing the movie to include such a warning, reports CNBC, which calls it an "unprecedented" move by the company. The lights can also affect people who suffer from migraines or have other conditions causing them to be photosensitive. Disney's official memo reads, "Incredibles 2 contains a sequence of flashing lights, which may affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or other photosensitivities."
– The first full trailer for the all-female Ghostbusters reboot is here, and the feedback is good: io9 calls it "perfect," and Deadline reports that Sony's official unveiling event Wednesday was attended by a number of "mega-fans" who gave it a standing ovation and "shouted for it to play again." The movie, out July 15, stars Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. "It looks pretty damn good," declares MoviePilot.com. Engadget's take: "Oh boy, does it have us intrigued."
– Kate Middleton turned 30 on Monday, so of course Kim Kardashian got her a present. If by "got her a present," you mean "designed an unfortunate-looking pair of shoes and then named it 'The Duchess' in an effort to pump up sales." Glamour points to a video of Kardashian presenting the quilted heels to Kate, and at least one blogger agrees with us that the shoes' namesake "wouldn't be caught dead" wearing them. In other Kardashian news: Rumors have long swirled that Khloe, aka the least offensive Kardashian, is not actually a Kardashian. Today, Robert Kardashian's ex-wife and widow come together to tell the world that, yes, those rumors are true. Of course, the whole thing goes down in a Star interview. "Khloe is not his kid—he told me that after we got married," says one. The other adds that Robert Kardashian and Kris Jenner weren't sleeping together when Khloe was conceived, and that Jenner cheated. In the same interview, one of the ladies also claims that Kris' new husband, Bruce Jenner, likes to wear women's clothing, a weird fact she apparently knows because she once had drinks with Bruce's ex. And finally, Kris Humphries—remember him?—was apparently not happy with the fact that his then-wife Kim often spoke to her family disrespectfully, sources tell Radar.
– Geneva talks on Syria's future have been tense—and new US support for rebels isn't helping. On Monday, Reuters reported secret Congressional approval of funding to lightly arm "moderate" Syrian rebels through September. An opposition adviser reported an "outburst" by the Syrian government's lead negotiator, Bashar al-Jaafari, after which the UN's leading mediator called off the day's discussion, the New York Times reports. Talks resumed today, the BBC reports. Syrian officials say the US is backing terrorists—which the US calls "ludicrous"—and that its support for the rebels conflicts with its diplomatic efforts in Switzerland. The Times reports yesterday's afternoon session was axed to give the government time to come up with a transitional blueprint of its own. The BBC adds government reps did share a "declaration of basic principles," but absent from it was any statement on a political transition. And negotiators haven't even been able to achieve the basic goal of suspending fighting in Homs to bring in humanitarian aid. If talks don't move forward soon, the Times notes, Western officials may seek help from the UN Security Council, hoping that an image-conscious Russia won't exercise its veto ahead of the Olympics. Meanwhile, in Syria itself: Various rebel groups—including al-Qaeda-linked extremists—have gotten hold of the lion's share of oil and gas supplies, US officials tell the Times. Extremist groups are actually selling the resources to the government, with some getting electricity or a break from airstrikes as payment, opposition activists say. They're using the resulting cash to support clashes not just with Bashar al-Assad's forces, but with each other. Syria is poised to miss a chemical weapons deadline next week, insiders tell Reuters. By then, the country is supposed to have sent all such weapons abroad to be destroyed. But so far, just 4.1% of some 1,300 metric tons of chemical agents have been sent to the relevant port in Latakia, the sources say.
– An ordinary house in a California subdivision concealed a bizarre and disturbing case of torture and child abuse, police say. In a press release, the Riverside County Sheriff's Office says a 17-year-old girl called 911 early Sunday morning after escaping a home in Perris and told police her 12 siblings were being held captive by their parents. Police say that inside the residence, they found several malnourished and dirty children "shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings"—and parents David and Louise Turpin were "unable to provide a logical reason" why they were restrained. Investigators initially thought the couple's 13 children were all juveniles, but they were shocked to discover that seven were adults and the oldest was 29. David Turpin, 57, and Louise Turpin, 49, were arrested on charges of torture and child endangerment and are being held on a $9 million bond each, the Los Angeles Times reports. The 13 victims—the youngest just 2 years old—were hospitalized. Police say they gave them food after they said they were starving. Horrified neighbors tell the Press-Enterprise that they had no idea what was going on. Some didn't even know there were children in the house. A joint Facebook page shows the Turpins, accompanied by their children, renewing their wedding vows in Las Vegas. A 2011 bankruptcy filing seen by CNN states that David Turpin made $140,000 per year working as an engineer at Northrup Grumman. He is listed as principal of the Sandcastle Day School, a private school with just six students, at his Perris address, KTLA reports.
– A Texas family says they are trying to "make sense of the senseless" in the tragic death of their 10-year-old daughter, who was electrocuted in their home. Greenlee Marie Buckley's mother says the girl, who loved animals, died while trying to rescue two kittens that had become trapped behind their dryer on Saturday night, People reports. Police say the family has told them they previously complained about electrical issues in the rented home in New Boston, around 20 miles west of Texarkana, though Chief Gary McCrary says it's "too early right now to start placing blame and responsibility." Police and power company investigators have visited the house, which the family had lived in for around 15 months. Experts say that when a dryer gives off an electrical shock to the touch, it is a sign of one or more common but potentially lethal electrical issues, the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram reports. Greenlee's grieving parents say there's no reason their daughter should be gone. "Landlords need to be held accountable for the conditions of the homes that they let people live in," mother Shelby Roos tells KSLA. "All we want is a voice for our daughter who left us over a senseless act." Greenlee always "enjoyed helping those less fortunate than herself, and had always planned when she was older to become a veterinarian and to help rescue more animals," the family says in a GoFundMe campaign to honor her memory by helping animals in the community.
– Around 20 MLB players—including stars Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun—could soon be suspended for their ties to the Miami clinic at the center of a long-brewing performance-enhancing drug scandal, inside sources tell ESPN's Outside the Lines. Clinic founder Tony Bosch is reported to have reached an agreement with the league to verify the names of the athletes to whom the now-closed Biogenesis of America supplied PEDs; he'll also reportedly provide supporting documentation. In response, sources say, the MLB will drop its lawsuit against Bosch, indemnify him against any liability, and even provide him with personal security. Bosch's cooperation has been corroborated by the AP. Bosch, who previously denied any knowledge of the PEDs, is reportedly set to begin sharing info with lawyers and investigators on Friday; assuming the league gets the evidence it needs, the suspensions announcement could come within two weeks. The suspensions may be for as long as 100 games, says ESPN, the penalty generally reserved for second doping offenses. The argument is that the players' connection to Bosch is an offense in and of itself, and their previous denials of that connection to league officials is the second.
– American Airlines has apologized to two black professional basketball players who were kicked off a plane in Dallas after a flight attendant accused them of stealing blankets. Airline spokesman Joshua Freed said Tuesday that Memphis Hustle guard Marquis Teague and forward Trahson Burrell boarded the flight bound for Sioux Falls, SD, on Sunday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, reports the AP. Two first-class passengers gave the players their blankets as they headed to their seats in coach. But a black flight attendant accused them of theft and forced them off the plane. Freed says an airline manager apologized to the players and that they later flew first class to Sioux Falls, but the Undefeated reports they didn't arrive in time to make their team holiday dinner. CEO Doug Parker told employees last month that American Airlines will implement implicit-bias training.
– Progressives are issuing a challenge to incoming Republican House members: If they are so dead-set on repealing health care reform, they shouldn't accept the taxpayer-funded congressional health plan. The fracas started when newly elected Rep. Andy Harris made a fuss during an orientation because his coverage didn't begin right away, notes the Huffington Post. If all Congressional Republicans declined, it would save an estimated $2.4 million. "Chump change? Yes, it is," writes Sam Stein at HuffPo. "That said, chump change seems to always at the heart of the most provocative political battles." Others: The issue may be opening for Democrats to "create tension between the newly elected officials and the Tea Partiers who put them there by highlighting the disconnect between the freshmen Republicans' rhetoric and their actions," writes Tom Jensen for Public Policy Polling. Republicans, however, say Democrats are distorting the issue—they want employer-based coverage to be the dominant system, and members of Congress are employed by the government, notes the Wall Street Journal. "Still, the issue has become a rallying cry for liberal activists," writes Danny Yadron.
– One of the women arrested in the airport slaying of the North Korean leader's half-brother says she thought she was smearing baby oil on her victim's face as part of a reality-show stunt. Siti Aisyah, who is being held in Malaysia, met with officials from her home country of Indonesia Saturday and told them she got paid $90 for what she thought was a harmless prank, reports the BBC. "She only said in general she met with some people who looked Japanese or Korean," says Indonesian Deputy Ambassador Andreano Erwin. "She only said she was given a kind of oil, like baby oil." On Friday, Malaysian officials announced that Kim Jong Nam was killed with a deadly nerve agent called VX. Authorities think Aisyah and another woman wiped it on his face in the crowded airport in Kuala Lumpur, perhaps as a kind of one-two punch—one woman smeared one compound, the other a second, and they combined to create the nerve agent. For the record, Malaysian officials have said they're not buying Aisyah's story that she was duped, notes the Guardian. One other person is in custody, a North Korean male who lives in Malaysia, and authorities say seven other North Korean suspects are being sought, reports the Wall Street Journal.
– Jim Vidmar has rather unusual job: He oversees 10,000 fake Twitter accounts. And the Las Vegas man has been at it for six years, using a dozen computers and a slew of accounts to help beef up the followings of his 50-or-so clients, who pay him to help them seem more popular and important, reports the Wall Street Journal. And the accounts have gotten more sophisticated: In April, a tough new filter was applied, and the majority of Vidmar's accounts were wiped from the site. And so the vendors that sell the fakes to Vidmar put a little more work into them: The fakes now feature photos, profile details, and tweet a number of times before he buys them; he got 1,000 for $58 from a Pakistan supplier this month. From there, he has the accounts tweet, retweet, follow, and message—all in the name of clients like "Rapper/Singer/Producer/Guitarist/Fitness Model" Dave Murrell aka @Fyrare (number of Twitter followers: 238,360). Murrell has tried Twitter ads, but says he gets more bang for his buck with Vidmar. Murrell doesn't exactly express any qualms: "If you're not padding your numbers, you're not doing it right. It's part of the game." And it's not just follower count that can be affected: Client Tony Benson (aka rapper Philly Chase) says Vidmar's fake accounts pushed him onto the "trending topics" list and eventually sparked the noticed of Philadelphia media. Buying and selling both accounts and followers is, of course, barred by Twitter's terms of service, but Vidmar notes he has never been contacted or threatened with legal action by Twitter.
– Skeletons dug up in London last year are indeed the remains of people who died from the Black Plague—and who suffered a tough life before falling ill, the BBC reports. Forensic analysis shows that teeth taken from at least four of the 12 corpses discovered during excavation for a rail line contained trace amounts of plague DNA, indicating exposure. Early burials found at the site, from the late 1340s, are nice and orderly, with bodies wrapped in white shrouds, but skeletons from a second outbreak in the 1430s are tossed in with what appear to be upper-body injuries—evidence of "a period of lawlessness and social breakdown," Phys.org reports. Among other significant details: Several skeletons suffered from malnutrition and 16% had rickets. Many had back damage, signalling stressful manual labor. Analysis of one victim is amazingly detailed: He was born outside of London, breastfed, had bad tooth decay as a boy, and worked in manual labor before dying as a young man of the Black Death. Archaeologists suspect that thousands more Black Death victims lie nearby, and a dig is planned for this summer. DNA experts are analyzing the plague genome in victims' teeth in case there's more to learn about the disease, which still kills 2,000 people per year (when antibiotics aren't applied within four days). "It is useful information that could warn and avert potential epidemics and pandemics," says a London scientist. In a similar vein, see why it's bad news that the Plague and Black Death were quite different.
– A Buffalo bus driver is getting the hero's treatment after stopping his bus to get a suicidal young woman off a bridge overpass, reports WIVB-TV. Darnell Barton, who had just picked up about two dozen high school students, spotted the woman on the wrong side of the ledge, seemingly about to jump into traffic, reports the Buffalo News. He stopped his bus, asked her if she needed help, then slowly made his way toward her. "She was distraught, she was distant, she was really disconnected," he recalls. "I grabbed her arm and put my arm around her and said, 'Do you want to come on this side of the guardrail,' and that was actually the first time she spoke to me. She said yes." He then sat down with her on the sidewalk until authorities arrived. “Darnell won’t tell you this, but when he went back on his bus, the McKinley students gave him a round of applause,” says a spokesman for the local transit agency.
– The Ebola outbreak gripping western Uganda spread widely at the funeral of the first known victim, a 3-month-old girl whose mother also died, according to Doctors Without Borders. Of the 65 people who attended the baby's funeral, 15 contracted the deadly disease and at least 11 of them have died, AP reports. The outbreak has killed at least 16 people so far, and the hospital at the center of the outbreak is now dealing with 30 more suspected cases, including five from a prison, reports CNN. The government has urged Ugandans to avoid handshakes, casual sex, and home funerals, Reuters reports. People in western Uganda have been warned to avoid public gatherings and public transportation unless absolutely necessary. Health officials, hoping to make this outbreak less deadly than one in 2000 which killed more than 200 people, are isolating suspected victims and monitoring people they came into contact with.
– The fallout from Chris Brown's throwdown with Drake's entourage continues: Now Tony Parker is suing the New York City nightclub where it happened for a cool $20 million. The NBA star says the club, WiP, should have known that allowing Brown and Drake—who've both been involved with Rihanna—in at the same time was a terrible idea. Thus, the lawsuit claims, the club owners are responsible for the injuries he suffered in the fight. Those injuries include a "corneal laceration of the left eye," the lawsuit claims, and Parker's lawyer notes that eye injuries "certainly don't improve your outside shot." The lawyer also, amusingly, says of Rihanna: "She’s been known, like Helen of Troy, to cause trouble." The brawl started after Drake sent the following classy note to Brown's table, sources tell the New York Post: "I am f***ing the love of your life." Neither Brown nor Drake are named in the suit. TMZ has photos of Parker at the club moments before the fight.
– With prosecutors saying President Trump arranged illegal payments during the 2016 campaign, Rep. Adam Schiff adds a thought: "There's a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him," he says on CBS' Face the Nation, per Slate. "That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time." The Democratic congressman—who's likely the next House Intelligence Committee chairman—says the next president could face a big decision: "The bigger pardon question may come down the road, as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump." For more Sunday chatter: Meng Wanzhou: "He did not know," White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow says on Fox News Sunday about Trump's knowledge of the Huawei CFO's arrest, per the Hill. "Regarding the Huawei prosecution, let me just say that's a law enforcement action, primarily Department of Justice."
– A former head of lottery security tied to potentially rigged drawings in five states is facing new charges in Wisconsin, NBC News reports. According to the Des Moines Register, six charges were filed against Eddie Tipton on Thursday. They include racketeering, theft by fraud, and computer crimes, Fox 6 News reports. Tipton used to be the director of IT security for Multi-State Lottery Association, which handles lottery picks and security in 37 states. Authorities allege Tipton meddled with the code for the association's number-generating machines to cause them to pick certain numbers on certain days. Last year, he was charged with messing with the number generators to win a $14.3 million drawing in Iowa in 2010. Now Tipton is being charged with doing the same thing three years earlier to win more than $783,000 in Wisconsin. Tipton's alleged accomplice, Robert Rhodes, is also facing charges in Wisconsin and Iowa. Authorities say Tipton would provide Rhodes with rigged numbers and have him buy the tickets. They would allegedly split the winnings. Investigators in Iowa have also linked Tipton, Rhodes, and Tipton's brother to lottery wins in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado.
– Three years ago, Mitt Romney wrote that President Obama should "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," instead of bailing out the struggling auto industry, in a famous New York Times column. And today? Even with the American auto industry on the rebound, Michigan's GOP primary looming on Feb. 28, and Rick Santorum breathing down his neck in the polls, Romney still thinks bankruptcy would have been better than the president's "crony capitalism," he writes in the Detroit News. "I believe that without his intervention things there would be better," he writes. Romney's big complaint with the bailout? That "secured creditors" got screwed and non-union employees had their benefits slashed while a union-controlled trust got 55% of Chrysler and the unions had their pensions saved. "It is not the American way of making cars," writes Romney. None other than former President George W. Bush is taking the opposite side in the post-mortem, saying that he was responsible for the first $25 billion bailout, and it was definitely a good thing. “I didn’t want there to be 21% unemployment,” Bush told the National Automobile Dealers Association last week, reports the Washington Post. "Sometimes circumstances get in the way of philosophy.”
– A prehistoric fortress is home to a much later structure: what may be one of the biggest medieval palaces ever discovered, one whose remnants remain buried beneath the ground, the Independent reports. The site in southern England is surrounded by huge earthworks that date to the Iron Age. Researchers used ground-penetrating radar and other technology to investigate what's under the grass within the inner and outer baileys of the former fort, the BBC reports. Without doing any digging, they found a large complex that leading medieval-building expert Dr. Edward Impey believes is an early 12th-century castle. It measures about 560 feet by 210 feet and features 10-foot-thick walls and what appears to be a 200-foot-long great hall, the Independent notes. "The prime candidate for constructing it is perhaps Henry I," says Impey. "Archaeologists and historians have known for centuries that there was a medieval city at Old Sarum," notes survey leader Kristian Strutt, "but until now there has been no proper plan of the site." The archaeologists' survey uncovered residential areas, evidence of kilns or furnaces, and an open area—"perhaps for mustering resources or people"—near some large structures, per a press release. "From this we can piece together a detailed picture of the urban plan," says Strutt. The Iron Age fort at the site was likely built around 400 BC and taken over by Romans in 43 AD, the BBC notes. But by the onset of the 13th century, the city built in the same place became too tight and weather-beaten for habitation and was abandoned in favor of today's Salisbury, which is located roughly two miles away. (Another 'lost city' was recently investigated using similar techniques in Cambodia.)
– A wedding planned for Saturday in Sweden was called off after the groom was arrested for assaulting and threatening to kill his bride-to-be. The engaged couple joined the wedding party at a pub for a few drinks Friday evening...and that's when the trouble began. A disagreement turned into an argument that continued at home, leading the bride to call the police, reports The Local. The groom allegedly punched the bruised-not-blushing bride and threatened to kill her in front of police officers, who intervened and took him into custody. He was arrested and charged with multiple offenses. Officers said they were most surprised at what they found in his pocket, a first in their professional police careers; click here to find out what that was.
– An aide to Rep. Louise Slaughter says the 88-year-old Democratic congresswoman from upstate New York has died. Slaughter was serving her 16th term in Congress and was the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, per the AP. She was the first woman to chair that committee when she led it from 2007 through 2010. Liam Fitzsimmons, Slaughter's chief of staff, said in a statement she died early Friday at George Washington University Hospital after injuring herself in a fall in her area home. Fitzsimmons said on Wednesday that she'd sustained a concussion but no broken bones, and her office had expressed hope for her recuperation. "The congresswoman is tough as nails and she will bring that same spirit to this recovery," he said at the time, per the Democrat & Chronicle. Slaughter was originally from Kentucky and had a bachelor's degree in microbiology, as well as a master's degree in public health. She was repeatedly re-elected, sometimes narrowly, and was the longest-serving member of Congress from New York. Per the Democrat & Chronicle, she'd just announced last month she was planning on a 17th term. CNN notes she was also known for her efforts in fortifying military body armor after an Iraq War report cited all of the casualties linked to inadequate equipment. Both sides of the aisle offered their condolences upon hearing of her death. "Congresswoman Slaughter embodied the very best of the American spirit and ideals," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, while the head of the House Rules Committee, the GOP's Pete Sessions, called Slaughter "a fearless leader, deeply committed to her constituents, and a dear friend."
– China has resumed its shipment of rare earth minerals to the United States, after cutting us off early last week, the New York Times reports. Shipments to Japan, which have been suspended since September due to disputes involving the arrest of Chinese fishermen, also resumed, though they are facing some delays. The decision came hours after an announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that she would travel to China tomorrow to discuss the matter. She called the suspension a “wake-up call,” saying the US and Japan need to find alternate supplies of these materials. China, which produces 95% of the world's rare earth minerals, has repeatedly downgraded its export levels of these materials over the last five years; what it currently ships is well below world demand. Read the full article.
– Earlier this year, President Trump noted "I just don't want a poor person" in charge of economic posts in his administration, then touted Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross as "a very rich person" who was up to the task. But just how rich Ross really is is now up in the air, Forbes reports, noting it's yanked Ross off its billionaires list after a one-month probe revealed that $2 billion or so or Ross' alleged fortune "never existed," and that Ross had engaged in an "apparent sequence of fibs, exaggerations, omissions, fabrications, and whoppers" with the magazine going back 13 years. The discovery came when Ross, 79, contacted Forbes in October to refute his ranking: Last year he was listed with a net worth of $2.9 billion on the Forbes 400; he claimed he was worth closer to $3.7 billion. Then Forbes talked with 10 of Ross' ex-employees at his private equity firm, who noted a "penchant for misleading" that affected fellow workers and investors and spurred big fines, suits, and refunds to backers. "Wilbur doesn't have an issue with bending the truth," one longtime colleague says, while another is more blunt: "He's lied to a lot of people." The magazine delves into Ross' back story, including how, when he first made the Forbes billionaires list in 2004 with a net worth of $1 billion, "everyone that I knew that worked with Wilbur knew it wasn't true," per a former colleague. When Forbes told Ross he was being removed from its billionaires club, Ross retorted the magazine wasn't counting family trusts that he wasn't obligated to inform the feds about—in the amount of "more than $2 billion," assets Ross said he put into the trusts sometime "between the election and [my] nomination." When Forbes asked to see a paper trail proving that, Ross cited "privacy issues"—and the magazine lays out other problems with Ross' story on the supposed $2 billion transfer. Read the in-depth findings here.
– The world's deadliest cat is no leopard or tiger—in fact, it's the size of a house cat and appears just as cuddly. But the black-footed cat of southern Africa can hunt the grasslands like no other, Live Science reports. The PBS series Super Cats follows them on nightly forays, showing how they hunt and explaining why they kill more prey in a night than a leopard does in half a year. German zoo curator Luke Hunter helped by fitting several black-footed cats with radio collars, enabling the crew to track them in tall grasses. "If you're a gazelle or a wildebeest, a black-footed cat isn't at all deadly," says Hunter, who has studied the cats since the 1990s. "But those success rates make them the deadliest little cat on Earth." And the black-footed cat has tricks. It can hunt by bounding randomly through grass, sneaking up on prey in a weaving pattern, or waiting patiently by burrows for a meal to emerge. They can "wait for up to 2 hours, absolutely immobile, just silently waiting at the burrow for a rodent to appear," Hunter says. "And then they nab it." They kill 10 to 14 small birds and rodents nightly, or about one every 50 minutes—a constant hunt necessary to supply their active metabolisms. Like most felines in the series, the black-footed cat is endangered, but Hunter accentuates the positive: "I believe it's mostly not doom and gloom," he says, but "if we don't work to reduce those threats, then we could lose some of these animals." See the episode at PBS. (Or see why a judge has halted grizzly bear hunts around Yellowstone National Park.)
– Chicago authorities are scrambling after 74 heroin overdoses were reported in the 72 hours between Tuesday and Friday afternoon, more than double the overdose rate during the same time last year, NBC Chicago reports. Police suspect an "extremely strong batch of heroin" that's been laced the powerful painkiller fentanyl. They are currently hunting for the source of the drug, which appears to have been sold at two locations on the city's West Side. "We suspect what is happening is the same thing that happened in 2006," Mount Sinai emergency room director Diane Hincks tells the Chicago Tribune. Between 2005 and 2007, more than 1,000 people around the country died from fentanyl-laced heroin. The Tribune reports there have been no deaths during the rash of overdoses this week that can be definitively traced to heroin laced with fentanyl, though authorities are waiting on toxicology reports from a 49-year-old man who died of an apparent overdose Thursday. Hospitals are supplying paramedics with extra doses of Narcan, a heroin antidote, due to the strength of the current batch. "They're taking double and triple the doses of Narcan in order to bring them out of their stupor," Hincks tells the Tribune. The DEA issued a nationwide warning about fentanyl-laced heroin in March. A recent study show Chicago has more heroin-related ER visits than any other US city.
– You know those copies of USA Today that sometimes get left outside your hotel room door? Apparently they're not free, at least not at the Hilton Garden Inn Sonoma County Airport, which one guest learned to his dismay. Now Rodney Harmon has filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Hilton chain over the 75-cent charge, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Harmon says he stepped over the paper as he left the room. But a few days later, he noticed a small warning on his key card pouch informing him of the charge, according to the New York Times. "He did not request a newspaper and assumed it had been placed there by hotel staff," reads Harmon's suit, which adds that the hotel allegedly tried to hide the charge by listing it in an "extremely small font which is difficult to notice or read" on the key sleeve. Further, the suit accuses the hotel of an "offensive waste of precious resources and energy," since newspaper readership is down and most of the papers left for guests probably don't get read. Though the 75 cents is "a piddly sum," writes Ben Popken at the Consumerist, "the case could have big implications if it becomes the impetus to sue other hotel chains, since many hotels do just the same thing."
– Margot Wölk spent two and a half years tasting Adolf Hitler's food, living in fear that one of the delicious dishes might be poisoned. Now 95, Wölk—who, with time, learned to take pleasure in eating again—just started talking about her experiences. "There was never meat because Hitler was a vegetarian," Wölk tells der Spiegel. "The food was good—very good. But we couldn't enjoy it." As Germany went hungry, Wölk tasted things like white asparagus in sauce made with real butter, noodle dishes, and exotic fruits. She was ordered into the food-tasting service by the SS after she fled Berlin for the East Prussian village of Gross-Partsch, located less than two miles from Hitler's "Wolf's Lair," at age 24. She and 14 other young women made sure the Allied forces hadn't poisoned the food; then it was served to Hitler. A lieutenant ultimately saved her life when the Soviet army was closing in, sending her on a train to Berlin. She later learned the other food tasters were shot by the Soviet soldiers; she herself was eventually caught by the Soviet army, and raped repeatedly. In 1946, she was finally reunited with her husband, who had been at war and imprisoned. She finally decided to talk about her life because, she says, "I just wanted to say what happened there. That Hitler was a really repugnant man. And a pig." Hers is not the only fascinating World War II story to emerge this week: The AP reports that a Virginia farm, used during the war as a refuge for Jews escaping Germany, has been added to the state's Landmarks Register.
– A member of the official commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks is ratcheting up pressure on the White House to make public 28 pages of a congressional report dealing with suspected Saudi involvement. In an interview with the Guardian, former Navy secretary John Lehman lays it out in blunt terms: “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he says. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.” Lehman adds that he's not implicating members of the Saudi royal family or top civilian officials, but rather lower-echelon employees, perhaps in the Saudi ministry of Islamic affairs. Last month, the leaders of the commission—former GOP Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana—cautioned against releasing the 28 pages and noted that just one Saudi official had been implicated in the plot. (That was diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy, who was deported and remains a "person of interest," notes the New York Times.) But Lehman says he knows of at least five other Saudi employees who were under suspicion. “They may not have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated,” he says. “There was an awful lot of circumstantial evidence.”
– Congress' $1.1 trillion spending bill contains a secret provision torpedoing President Obama's plans to pass the drone program from the CIA to the Pentagon. In a classified annex, the bill specifically prohibits any funds being used to facilitate such a transfer, the Washington Post reports. Obama wants to shift the CIA from its paramilitary footing back to an intelligence one, and perhaps bring greater transparency to the drone program. But lawmakers don't trust the military with the keys. One source said the provision was more complicated than simply withholding money for the switch, and former officials said it could contain language forcing the military to demonstrate its targeting procedures were up to CIA standards. Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein last year said she'd "really have to be convinced" that the military could exercise as much "patience and discretion" as the CIA in avoiding civilian casualties, statements she says she stands behind. The military didn't help its case last month either by hitting a wedding party in Yemen; in an op-ed yesterday, Yemen's minister for human rights said that strike had sent a "wave of outrage" across the country. Yesterday also saw a drone strike kill a Yemeni farmer.
– Jerry Sandusky and his wife, Dottie, blamed his victims for his sex abuse conviction in letters written to the judge before his sentencing earlier this week. Instead of expressing regret, the Sanduskys labeled the young men ingrates and liars in the letters, which have now been made public, CNN reports. Sandusky pointed out that the boys came from unstable homes. "Nobody mentioned the impact of abandonment, neglect, abuse, insecurity, and conflicting messages that the biological parents might have had in this," he wrote. The couple, echoing a recording Sandusky made before sentencing, blamed his downfall on a vast conspiracy involving police and the media. In one letter, Dottie describes the couple's adopted son, Matt, who accuses Sandusky of molesting him, as a liar and a thief, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. A spokesman for the state attorney general's office describes Sandusky's behavior as "banal, self-delusional, completely untethered from reality. It was entirely-self-focused, as if he himself were the victim." Sandusky was sentenced to between 30 and 60 years in prison and Pennsylvania's public employee pension system says it is revoking his $59,000 annual pension, the AP reports.
– Millions of people pay for the privilege of leaving their shoes and belts on and their laptops in their bags during airport security screenings. But a study out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says by making the TSA's PreCheck program free—it's currently $85 for the regular background check and a five-year membership—lines will be made shorter, the TSA will save money, and everyone's life will be a whole lot easier at our congested airports, the Los Angeles Times reports. The problem is hitting the sweet spot of having enough travelers going through the expedited PreCheck lines to justify the cost expended on staffing those dedicated lines. The original goal by this point was to have 25 million signees in the program and others like it (such as Customs and Border Protection's $100 Global Entry program), but by May, per Bloomberg, not even half that number had come aboard. The study published in the Journal of Transportation Security checks out different scenarios to see which would end up paying off for both the TSA and consumers, per a release. Although getting rid of the five-year fee of $85 for 25 million travelers would result in losing $425 million a year, if every traveler who signed up went through PreCheck at least six times a year, the cost savings would amount to $459 million annually from decreased staff and equipment costs—a net savings of $34 million per year. "It will facilitate more people going through checkpoints more quickly, make the system more secure, and produce a cost savings for the TSA," Sheldon Jacobson, the study's lead author, says in the release. "It's a win-win-win situation." A noted drawback: If the fee were waived only for frequent fliers, occasional travelers might be miffed at having to pay, as would those already paid up.
– A 15-year-old Chicago teen was shot to death last week, but the police and his family have very different accounts of what happened. Police say they spotted Steven Rosenthal with a gun Friday evening and gave chase on foot, reports the Chicago Tribune. During the chase, the teen used the gun to shoot himself in the head, police say. However, Rosenthal's family say he would never kill himself and accuse police of shooting him. "My nephew would never commit suicide, ever," says Terinica Thomas, his legal guardian, per the Chicago Sun-Times. The family is demanding that police turn over bodycam footage in the case, but a department spokesman says no decision has been made about that yet. "Steven was on the stairwell of his grandmother's house on the West Side of Chicago when police officers stormed up the stairwell chasing," family attorney Andrew Stroth said Sunday, prior to a march in the teen's name, per the Tribune. "Within moments, these officers, without cause or provocation, shot and killed 15-year old Steven," he said, citing eyewitness accounts. The Cook County medical examiner, however, has ruled the death a suicide, and police insist that no officers opened fire. Rosenthal played basketball at Crane Medical Prep High School. His coach there tells the Sun-Times the teen's mother died earlier this year and his father died when he was 6.
– Your iPad or smartphone could well be hurting your sleep patterns, even if you're getting in a full eight hours of shuteye, researchers say—and the effects could be long-term. Over a five-night period, researchers in Boston had some subjects read for four hours a night on an iPad; others did their reading on printed books, with the lights low, the Washington Post reports. Among members of the iPad group, levels of melatonin, a chemical behind sleepiness, decreased. It took them longer to drift off by an average of 10 minutes, the Wall Street Journal reports. And once they did, their periods of rapid eye-movement sleep were shorter. The effects weren't limited to the nighttime. Their circadian rhythms were affected, and the next day—even if they'd slept eight hours—they reported being more tired. And in the long term, reduced melatonin may boost the risk of various forms of cancer (prompting the rather frightening headline "Reading an iPad in Bed May Increase Cancer Risk," the Atlantic notes). At issue is what's known as "blue light," the kind often given off by backlit gadgets, the Journal adds. "We introduce these devices that have medical and biological effects without requiring any health studies on their impact ... They don't have to go through any evaluation like a drug would, for safety and efficacy," says a researcher. "I think it's time to rethink that." (As far as sleep goes, here's your "optimal" amount.)
– A missing teenager managed to a flee an Illinois home where she told police she had been held captive for as long as three years and sexually abused almost daily, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She directed police back to the location, where a SWAT team arrested a 24-year-old man and his mother, and retrieved a toddler the teen said had been fathered by her rapist. The young woman ran away from her home in Missouri at the age of 15, says the Washington Park police chief, who added that police believe the man's mother aided the crimes. The teen told police she tried to escape several times that her captor chased her down each time and forced her back to the home at gunpoint. She says a relative finally helped her flee on Tuesday, reports the AP. Police said the teen also told them she was forced by the man and his mother to give a false name in medical records during her pregnancy and when the child was born.
– An outfielder for the Detroit Tigers was arrested in New York City early this morning and could be charged with a misdemeanor hate crime. Delmon Young, 26, was involved in the incident outside his hotel around 2:30am. The New York Post reports that a panhandler wearing a yarmulke was asking a group of people for change when Young, who was standing nearby, started yelling, "F--king Jews! F--king Jews!" Another group of friends reportedly confronted Young and a fight ensued. Young allegedly scratched one of the men in the face and shoved him to the ground during the scuffle, which spilled into the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in midtown. The man then called 911. The Post's sources described Young, who has a one-year contract with the Tigers for $6.75 million, as "highly intoxicated." He faces a charge for an “aggravated harassment hate crime,” said a detective, reports the Detroit Free Press. “Basically, there was an incident at the hotel (and) some anti-Semitic remarks."
– Electronic waste is growing at a staggering rate—Americans alone chucked an average of 65 pounds of old electronic goods each last year—and it is set to surge another 33% within five years unless consumers and producers change their ways, LiveScience reports. Most of the waste ends up in developing nations, and those countries plus the former Soviet bloc now produce more electronic waste of their own than Western nations, according to a new map that tracks the problem worldwide for the first time. The world produced around 54 million tons of electronic waste in total last year, researchers found, and though it can be valuable—a million old cell phones can yield 53 pounds of gold and 550 pounds of silver, Reuters notes—recycling rates remain low and where e-waste is recycled, it is often done so in a way harmful to both the environment and workers' health. The rate of waste is so high because engineers are constantly creating innovative designs to lure people to buy more, an earth sciences professor tells the Toronto Star. "Why won’t these same smart people also find a way that electronics can be used longer or reused in the best way, too?”
– It's well established through previous research that sleep after learning is best for many memory-related tasks, including word lists, mazes, auditory tones, and so on. Sleep seems so vital to recall that some speculate it is directly responsible for, not just supportive of, learning, reports Scientific American. So researchers out of the University of Lyon chose to investigate another aspect of learning—not recall but relearning, where something previously learned has been forgotten and must be re-acquired. Reporting in the journal Psychological Science in August, they wroite that, coupled with practice, "Sleep makes perfect," and that "sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy, but sleeping between two learning sessions is a better strategy." The team tested 40 French-speaking adults tasked with learning 16 Swahili words. Some learned them at night, slept, and relearned them in the morning, while others learned the words in the morning, didn't sleep, and relearned them at night. The group that slept between sessions performed so much better that even those who forgot the most words relearned them faster during their morning session than the least forgetful members of the group relearning the words at night. The results don't clarify which is at play—sleep boosting learning, which helps improve later relearning, or sleep simply allowing for uninterrupted learning processes to speed up relearning—but either way, sleeping between studying seems worth a shot. (This woman only sleeps three hours a night.)
– Two North Carolina police officers who investigated a noise complaint decided to let it slide—and then they slid down the street along with neighbors who were enjoying a makeshift water slide, the AP reports. The Asheville officers got national media attention, including nods from CNN and Good Morning America, after their trips down the slippery slide were captured on video and shared by the department. Police spokeswoman Christina Hallingse said the officers were responding to a noise complaint Sunday morning when they arrived at the holiday block party. Hallingse said the noise of children playing turned out to be at an acceptable level, so the officers issued no citations. They also determined the slide laid out along the street allowed cars to pass, so they joined in the fun.
– The man behind a "revenge porn" site—which encouraged people to post naked photos of their exes to get back at them—allegedly obtained his nude content a second way: via a hacker who grabbed photos from personal email accounts. FBI agents yesterday arrested Hunter Moore, who ran the now-defunct IsAnyoneUp.com; he was charged with conspiracy, hacking, and identity theft. (In case his name sounds familiar, NBC News notes his site once earned Moore the title of the "most-hated man on the Internet.") Charles Evens, the man who allegedly did the dirty work, was similarly arrested and charged. Wired reports the two allegedly began emailing about the idea in late 2011. Evens allegedly sent Moore an email asking for $250 for nude pictures of "6 guys and 6 girls" in December of that year; a month later, Moore allegedly replied with, "hack all week for me." Prosecutors say the hacking ended May 2, 2012. The two face up to 7 years in prison. Wired shares this 2012 quote, from Moore to a woman whose picture reportedly appeared on his site: "I don't know how you can point a finger at me; you took the picture. I'm sure you're smart and go to school. I mean, it's 2012, what do you expect to happen? Somebody's going to monetize this and I was the person to do it."
– Honduran police have apprehended four people in the case of a beauty queen who went missing mere weeks before she was supposed to compete for the Miss World title, the Telegraph reports. Maria Jose Alvarado, the reigning Miss Honduras, hasn't been seen since attending a party in Honduras on Thursday. She went with her sister, Sofia, to celebrate the birthday of her sister's boyfriend at a spa near the town of Santa Barbara, the AP reports. The two women reportedly got in a vehicle afterward and disappeared. Among those under arrest are the sister's boyfriend, Plutarco Ruiz, and the owner of the venue where the party was held. "They are being investigated," says a police chief. The vanishing is a hot topic in Honduras, which the Telegraph calls "notoriously violent" and "home to the most dangerous city on the planet." That city is San Pedro Sula, which logs more than 1,200 murders annually among a population of 1 million. It's also about 30 miles away from Santa Barbara. "Open your hearts and understand my pain," says Alvarado's mother. "There is an all-powerful God that sees everything and I hope you set them free." Alvarado, who was supposed to fly to London Sunday and try on her Miss World dress, says on her pageant profile that she likes playing sports and hopes to be a Honduran diplomat one day, Yahoo reports. (This beauty queen was accused of stealing a $100,000 crown.)
– Harry Reid says he's ready—no really, he means it this time—to use the so-called "nuclear option" to reform the filibuster. Reid says that unless Republicans allow him to move forward on a host of Obama administration nominees, he'll use a parliamentary maneuver to change the rules allowing them to block the nominees in the first place, the New York Times reports. The threat sent a jolt through the Senate yesterday. Some highlights from the fracas: "The place doesn't work," Reid said of the Senate in a floor speech justifying the move. "The American people know the dysfunction we have here. And all we're asking is let the president have his team." Mitch McConnell was apoplectic. "This will kill the Senate," he declared at one point, saying Reid would go down as "the worst leader of the Senate ever." "Please. Please," Reid rejoined. "If anyone thinks ... the norms and traditions of the Senate have been followed by the Republican leader, they’re living in Gaga Land." That back and forth followed a closed-door heart to heart with Democrats in which Reid apologized for past deals to avoid the nuclear option (particularly this one) and lamented all the Bush nominees he'd let through after relenting in a similar 2005 filibuster showdown. "I ate sh-- on some of those nominees," Reid said, according to Politico. Republican Bob Corker wants to mend fences. "We need to understand your grievances more," he told Reid. Roger Wicker, meanwhile, has asked Reid to hold a bipartisan meeting in the Old Senate Chamber on Monday. The change Reid is proposing is actually pretty modest, New York explains, saying he's killing only "the newest and most abusive use of the filibuster." McConnell and Co. have been blocking any nominees necessary to enforce laws Republicans disagree with, but can't change. But many worry the change could signal the doom of the filibuster entirely. Asked if Democrats were stepping on a slippery slope, Barbara Mikulski quipped, "Every slope is slippery. That's why they call it a slope."
– A Massachusetts college president is apologizing after campus police were called to investigate an undergraduate black student quietly eating her lunch in a common room. Smith College President Kathleen McCartney says in a letter Thursday the college is hiring a "third-party investigator" to review the incident and that every Smith staff member will undergo mandatory anti-bias training. Officials say an employee at the Northampton college called 911 Tuesday to report someone appeared "out of place" in the building, the AP reports. The school says there was nothing suspicious. The New York Times identifies the student as Oumou Kanoute, who says she was on break from work when she was approached by a campus police officer, who quickly surmised nothing was amiss. "I am blown away at the fact that i cannot even sit down and eat lunch peacefully," Kanoute wrote on Facebook, including two short video clips of her interaction with the police officer. "I did nothing wrong, I wasn't making any noise or bothering anyone. All I did was be black." Kanoute adds she had a "complete meltdown" following this "wrong and uncalled for" incident. "No students of color should have to explain why they belong at prestigious white institutions," she noted. "I worked my hardest to get into Smith, and I deserve to feel safe on my campus." Kanoute also tells CBS Boston she wants the person who called to report her—she says police told her it was an employee at Smith—identified and fired. McCartney has apologized to Kanoute, a rising sophomore who's spending the summer as a teaching assistant working with high school students in a Smith STEM program.
– The headmaster of a Connecticut high school has apologized after its football team named one of its plays "Hitler." The AP reports Chris Winters, of Greenwich High School, issued the apology Friday. He called the designation offensive and said the practice has been stopped. A Trumbull mother tells the Connecticut Post her son's freshman football team was playing Greenwich on Thursday when the players charged onto the field shouting "Hitler." Debbie Levison said the signal for the play was an index finger laid across the upper lip. The football team and coaches met with the Connecticut Anti-Defamation League to make sure they understand why it was offensive. The group's executive director told the newspaper he did not see intent to intimidate or anti-Semitism. He called it a teaching moment.
– A New Jersey police officer has resigned after saying that he can ignore a citizen's Constitutional rights—because President Obama has already "decimated the friggin' Constitution." Special Police Officer Richard Recine made the heated remark Monday in a confrontation with a resident of Helmetta, NJ, who had been seen taking photos inside a municipal building, My Central Jersey reports. The resident, Steve Wronko, told Recine he had a constitutional right to snap the shots. "Obama has decimated the friggin' constitution, so I don't give a damn," said Recine. "Because if he doesn't follow the Constitution we don't have to." What's more, Recine's comments were all captured on video (WARNING: foul language). An internal affairs investigation quickly followed, and Police Director Robert Manney called Recine's words an "embarrassment." Manney said the probe should wrap up "very swiftly" since "the evidence is right there." Recine, a 59-year-old part-time officer, told My Central Jersey why he resigned: "I don't want to give a black eye to law enforcement," he said. "I don't want all officers painted with the same brush." Wronko's wife said the whole thing started because she and her husband were trying to reform the borough animal shelter, which had given them a sick puppy that ended up costing thousands of extra dollars in veterinary services.
– A nice bit of schadenfreude for Twilight haters: Breaking Dawn Part 2, the merciful final installment in the vampire saga, leads this year's nominations for the Golden Raspberry Awards (aka Razzies), which honor the year's worst films. It managed to grab a nomination in each of the 10 categories, plus an 11th nomination because it was nominated twice in the Worst Screen Couple category, E! reports. Lead actress Kristen Stewart scored a second Worst Actress nomination too, for Snow White and the Huntsman. Other much-dishonored films: Adam Sandler's That's My Boy, with nine nominations, and Rihanna's Battleship, with seven. Awards are handed out the day before the Oscars, Feb. 23. On a more serious note, BAFTA nominations also came out today, and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln dominated that field with 10 nominations, the Los Angeles Times reports. Tom Hooper's Les Miserables and Ang Lee's Life of Pi came in second with nine nominations each, followed by James Bond flick Skyfall with eight. All of the above except Skyfall were nominated for best film, along with Ben Affleck's Argo and Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. Those five best film nominees also made up the five Director's Guild of America Award nominees that were announced yesterday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The DGA Awards will be held Feb. 2; the BAFTAs are Feb. 10.
– The future is now! Or, at least, by the end of the year, according to the CEO of Airbus. Reuters reports Tom Enders announced Monday that the company plans to test a prototype self-piloting flying car by the end of the year. He says Airbus has the "technological wherewithal" to make it happen and that they are currently in the "experimentation phase." Enders says the vehicle could be used like a ride-sharing app, help people avoid traffic, and save municipalities money on roads. Sounds pretty cool, but a number of naysayers are putting the brakes on our flying car fantasies. Slate points out Airbus admittedly hasn't figured out "sense-and-avoid technology"—or, in other words, how to keep its flying cars from smashing into stuff. And Jalopnik notes that current designs look less "flying car" and more "flying helicopter," which is slightly less exciting. Also, the whole flying car thing still needs FAA approval to become a reality, and that's probably not going to happen any time soon.
– A 600-pound man escaped the possibility of a jail term because his weight and related illnesses would have made it too expensive to put him on trial. Instead, he struck a deal to plead guilty to scamming several fast-food restaurants for meals and to pay fines, reports AOL News. George Jolicoeur, 38, lives in a nursing home. "He's in his prison cell," a state attorney tells the Orlando Sentinel. "He's not getting out of that bed."
– Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner is expected to end up with an influential White House role, and pundit Mike Allen's new Axios newsletter says lawyers have figured out a way around nepotism rules that will result in a title as "senior adviser." The latest cover of New York magazine has a different title: "President In-Law." The story provides perhaps the most in-depth look so far at Ivanka Trump's 35-year-old husband, and it throws a bit of cold water on the notion that Kushner will act as a "force for moderation" on the new president's most controversial ideas. While Kushner has become one of Trump's most trusted advisers, "there’s little evidence that anyone can moderate Trump, other than Trump himself, and there is little doubt where Kushner’s ultimate loyalties lie," writes Andrew Rice. As Kushner himself has put it: "family first." The story details what seems to have been a profound change in Kushner over the past year, as he surprised those in New York's elite circles who knew him, or thought they knew him, by embracing his father-in-law's campaign so strongly. "Some of the same Manhattan liberals who ostracized [Kushner] during the campaign were rattled afterward, and they sent him emails, trying to offer healing words of congratulations and conciliation," writes Rice. "These went right in the trash." And while Kushner is described as soft-spoken, that is true only in the most literal sense: His voice is, in fact, soft, but Kushner himself is described as aggressive and driven. In fact, he "is more like father-in-law than anyone imagines," declares the piece. Read it in full here.
– While snorkeling on vacation in the Bahamas, a North Carolina woman survived a terrifying ordeal when she encountered the one creature most swimmers never hope to see up close: a shark. Tiffany Johnson, 32, was snorkeling with her husband, reports the NY Daily News, when she felt something bump her from behind. When she turned around, she saw what is believed to be a tiger shark, which promptly clamped onto her limb, biting off part of the mother of three’s arm. “He had my whole arm in his mouth, and he was just floating there staring at me,” she says in an interview with WSOC. Her husband jumped into the water to help after hearing her screams. "I kept trying to yank my hand back and the last time I yanked he had cut it clean off so I was able to actually get free," she says of the June 2 ordeal. A GoFundMe page has raised more than $18,000 to help with Johnson's medical expenses.
– Israel broke the laws of war by targeting media facilities and journalists "that were making no apparent contribution to Palestinian military operations" during its November offensive against Gaza, Human Rights Watch argues in a statement released today. The group recorded four attacks by Israeli forces over the eight-day conflict that killed two Palestinian cameraman, injured 10 media members, and destroyed four media offices; a 2-year-old living adjacent to a targeted building died as well. "Just because Israel says a journalist was a fighter or a TV station was a command center does not make it so," says the Mideast director of HRW. The Israeli military insists all of its attacks were "in accordance with the laws of armed conflict," reports the AP. The journalist advocacy group Reporters Without Borders yesterday reported that 2012 has been the deadliest year on record for journalists, with 88 killed around the world, largely because of conflicts in Syria, Pakistan, and Somalia. That's up by a third over last year, notes al-Jazeera.
– "We are in a war with terror, and these savage minority groups will not frighten us," Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi vowed in the wake of a terrorist attack that has now killed 18 foreign tourists and three Tunisians, plus the two gunmen. "The fight against them will continue until they are exterminated," he said in a speech last night, per the Guardian. He promised that "democracy will win and it will survive" as large numbers of demonstrators gathered in Tunis to protest the attack, reports Reuters. Meanwhile, ISIS militants today claimed responsibility for the attack, reports the BBC. But in a bright spot, two Spanish tourists who hid in the museum all night have now been found safe; Juan Carlos Sanchez tells the AP that "we thought the terrorists were still outside. But it was simply the police who were searching for people." Cristina Rubio is four months pregnant; both are fine. In other developments: Prime Minister Habib Essi says one of the two gunmen, Yassine Laabidi, was known to authorities, but security services were unaware of links to militant groups, the BBC reports. Both gunmen were killed by security forces, and authorities say they're still hunting several accomplices. Tunisia has now detained a total of nine people. Officials say tourists from Japan, Italy, Colombia, Australia, France, Poland, and Spain were killed in the attack, according to the BBC. Poland, which has sent a plane with doctors to help treat the injured, says two of its citizens were killed, two are missing, and nine are among the 40 or so wounded, the AP reports. Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab Spring, is the "Arab world's most successful democracy," which may have made it more of a target, but there are fears the attack could lead to greater authoritarianism, reports the New York Times. ISIS supporters are praising the attack online, as per the Times. The Telegraph reports that Tunisian media are speculating that Ahmed al-Rouissi, the country's most-wanted terrorist, may be involved. The Tunisian government says he became a senior ISIS leader in Libya and was killed in fighting last weekend. Tunisian officials have speculated that the adjacent Parliament building may have been the attackers' initial target, and that they may have switched to the museum because it had less security, the New York Times reports.
– Sorry to ruin your afternoon, but that PIN number you picked—probably a birthday, month/day combo, or year in the 1900s—is among the easiest for thieves to guess. And if you chose "1234," "1111," or "0000," consider your bank account a slush fund for anyone who steals your card. The firm Data Genetics looked through a database of stolen passwords—mostly for websites—and ranked the popularity of PIN codes, Slate reports. A few tidbits: The least popular PIN is 8068, used in less than 0.001% of passwords. But with that information now public, it may not be the best choice. The next four least-chosen codes are 8093, 9629, 6835, and 7637. People tend to like using even numbers rather than odd. 22nd-most popular is 2580. You can figure out why by looking at your phone keypad and seeing which numbers run down the middle. Click for the full article, or go straight to the research.
– Chris Dodd is preparing to introduce a sweeping bank reform bill on Monday in the Senate without any Republican support. The move comes after months of negotiations with the GOP's Bob Corker, who said the two were on the "5-yard-line" before Dodd got pressure from the White House to push a bill out of committee before a health care vote. Says Dodd: "There isn't a lot of time left to complete bank reform this year. The real problem I'm facing is that clock." Corker said "there's no question that White House politics and health care have kept us from getting to the goal line," reports MarketWatch. Assuming Dodd and Corker don't patch up remaining differences quickly about the legislation, which is to include tougher consumer protections, Democrats could face a filibuster on the Senate floor, reports the Wall Street Journal.
– Federal officers recently seized nearly 2,400 counterfeit—and possibly prone to explode—hoverboards in shipments that arrived at South Carolina's Port of Charleston, the Charleston City Paper reports. The hoverboards, which were made in China, would have been worth more than $1.6 million retail, according to US Customs and Border Protection. In addition to being a fire risk—possibly due to faulty lithium ion batteries—the counterfeit hoverboards also run afoul of US trademark law. "Remember next time you go down to the docks to get your hands on a fresh shipment of hoverboards, you’re not only putting yourself in danger—you’re putting America in danger too," the City Paper states. Counterfeit hoverboards have been an ongoing problem since the holidays, with more than 50,000 seized around the country.
– A devastated mother took to social media to discuss the painful details surrounding her baby's death after critics began speculating that vaccines were to blame, Good Housekeeping reports. "To those who keep commenting and messaging trying to blame vaccines for our sons death—stop," Jordan DeRosier wrote on Facebook Tuesday, the day after the 7-month-old's death, which she had posted about on social media. "Initially I had not wanted to explain the detailed circumstances of his death because of my guilt and the fear of condemnation from others. But I will not allow anyone to try and place blame where it does not belong." DeRosier, who is well-known in the handmade and small shops communities, went on to explain that little Sloan was put to bed for the final time with two blankets. He somehow pulled one of those blankets through the rails of his crib and got stuck in it, leading to his death. In another gut-wrenching post, DeRosier told the story of how she found Sloan, who was the family's rainbow baby after two miscarriages and fertility treatments, the following morning when she went to wake him up, one of the blankets wrapped around his head. Paramedics couldn't save him, but DeRosier decided to share the details in an effort to save other parents the same grief: "Please do not put your babies to bed with a blanket," she writes. "I thought because he was crawling, standing on his own, and climbing, that he would be fine with a blanket. ... I will NEVER stop feeling responsible. I will relive this for the rest of my life knowing EXACTLY what I could have done differently." The post has been shared more than 13,000 times, and the story is being picked up widely in the media, with many outlets pointing to the AAP's safe sleep guidelines for infants in an effort to spread awareness. A YouCaring fundraiser has been set up for the family.
– No kegs, strictly enforced guest lists, and at least three "sober and lucid" monitors is the new normal for fraternity and sorority parties at the University of Virginia. President Teresa Sullivan yesterday announced the changes to the university's Fraternal Organization Agreement and said the school would lift a ban on social events—but only if groups agree to the new safety regulations, the AP reports. Each chapter has until Jan. 16 to sign off on the new regulations, adds the Washington Post.The university had instituted the ban after a November Rolling Stone article (since found to have "discrepancies") alleged that a student had been raped at a 2012 frat party and that university response had been lacking, Reuters notes. The new rules maintain that one of the sober monitors—all of whom must wear a label identifying them as such—must be posted where alcohol is being served, while another is required to keep tabs on any staircases leading to bedrooms and have "immediate key access to each room" of the fraternity house, the Post notes. Premixed drinks or any other "common source of alcohol" (including kegs) is prohibited; beer can be doled out in unopened cans, but wine can be poured and served only by a sober monitor. And that's if guests make it into the party: Under a section titled "Eliminating Discomfort and Chaos: Entry Management" is a mandate for a hired security guard at the entry door to check guest lists during "Tier I" events (larger parties); a frat member can monitor the list during smaller "Tier II" events. (A Slate columnist came under fire for linking rape to women's drinking.)
– Tim Pawlenty released a statement today saying he wouldn’t be signing the “Marriage Vow” that got Michele Bachmann in so much trouble, the AP reports. Pawlenty said he supports “the core principles of the Family Leader’s Marriage Vow Pledge,” but that “rather than sign onto the words chosen by others, I prefer to choose my own words, especially seeking to show compassion to those who are in broken families through no fault of their own.” (Time has the statement here.) He joins Mitt Romney in refusing to sign. Pawlenty released a six-minute video (left) in which he and his wife discuss their faith, and run through a host of socially conservative talking points, saying that God “values traditional marriage as between one man and one woman,” that the founders would want us to be pro-life, and that separation of church and state was “intended to protect people of faith from government, not government from people of faith.”
– She probably didn't make $17.9 million doing it, but country crooner Chely Wright has gotten married to girlfriend Lauren Blitzer a year after coming out on the cover of People magazine. The pair wed yesterday in Connecticut, and Wright's Twitter account was abuzz with photos of the two women in their dresses and congratulations from fans. Wright has said that admitting she was gay "didn't help my career," and the LA Times notes that sales of her most recent album had dropped by two-thirds over its predecessor.
– A government backed by Russia is accused of killing its own civilians. That applies not only to the current situation in Syria but to the 1999 situation in Kosovo. And as the New York Times reports, top US officials are keeping Kosovo very much in mind as they weigh their options. President Obama would likely never get the approval of the UN Security Council for a military response because of Russia's veto power. When Bill Clinton was in the same boat in 1999, he turned to NATO and got its blessing for 78 days of airstrikes. “It’s a step too far to say we’re drawing up legal justifications for an action, given that the president hasn’t made a decision,” a government official tells the Times. “But Kosovo, of course, is a precedent of something that is perhaps similar.” Obama was meeting today with national security aides to determine next steps if the US concludes that Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons. (Assad in turn accused the rebels of doing the same today.) Meanwhile, the US Navy is keeping two destroyers positioned in the Mediterranean in case the green light is given for a cruise-missile attack, reports the Wall Street Journal.
– The nanny who allegedly murdered two of the children in her care is awake and talking, the New York Post reports. Yoselyn Ortega already has a lawyer and won’t answer investigators’ questions about the deaths of Lucia Krim, 6, and brother Leo, 2, one source says. But she did ask about her family, the source adds. Investigators have searched her apartment, which she shares with her teenage son, sister, and niece, but found no hint of a motive. Toxicology tests found Ortega was not under the influence of narcotics or alcohol at the time. Ortega, who broke a vertebrae in her attempt to commit suicide, was still intubated yesterday. And as of yesterday, she had not been charged, since investigators had not been able to talk to her. “We wouldn’t charge a hospitalized suspect under these circumstances until an interview was conducted after consulting with doctors on the subject’s condition,” a police rep tells the AP. But investigators say they have much evidence, and there is very little doubt Ortega stabbed the two children. Click for more on the heartbreaking case.
– Chelsea Clinton is the latest target of internet shaming—for skipping her daughter's first day of preschool. In what Slate is calling a "side-eyed takedown," the Daily Mail published a series of photos of Clinton's husband, Marc Mezvinsky, and nanny with 2-year-old Charlotte. "It takes a village!" blared the Mail's headline. "Chelsea Clinton's husband Marc and their nanny take Charlotte to her first day of preschool—which mom misses to campaign for her sick mom." That would be grandma Hillary Clinton, who was recovering from pneumonia, and who the paper noted also missed the tot's big day. Baby brother Aidan was "presumably home with another nanny," the paper speculated, while publishing a photo of Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner walking daughter Arabella to her first day of kindergarten. The Mail goes on to chronicle Mezvinsky's day, noting that he was on his phone while with Charlotte and that he later "enjoyed lunch for an hour-and-a-half" with a friend, suggesting that dads can't quite cut it while filling in for moms. Slate's Elissa Strauss calls the article a "remarkably unselfconscious example of mom-shaming." Maria Guido fumes on Scary Mommy: "The whole purpose of this article and subsequent coverage is to remind women that they are somehow going against nature by not being a mom first, all the time." A Chicago TV station invited readers on its Facebook page to "sound off" on whether it was OK for Clinton to skip the drop-off. But after comments like, "Your coverage of Chelsea Clinton not taking her child to school is appalling," the post came down.
– Cousins Elizabeth Collins, 8, and Lyric Cook, 10, said goodbye to their grandmother and set off on bicycles for an Iowa lake Friday afternoon, and they haven't been seen since. More than 900 volunteers had joined search efforts by yesterday, CNN reports, but after finding no trace of the girls, authorities have suspended the volunteer effort. "It's like they vanished," an official says. "There's just nothing." The girls' bikes were found near the lake hours after they were reported missing, but authorities have found no sign of foul play, nor any hint of domestic issues. A purse and cell phone belonging to Collins were also found near the bikes, the AP adds. An aunt notes that the area is full of "brush" and "somebody could have pulled up—maybe had been watching them for a little bit of time." Says Elizabeth's mother: "Positive thinking is all we have right now and our faith that God will bring them back."
– Not content to let those tea-sippers across the pond hog the spotlight, Baltimore just announced its very own "fatberg." CBS Baltimore reports the "congealed lump of fat" was found between Baltimore Penn Station and the 1700 block of Charles Street. The fatberg is comprised of fats, oils, and grease that hardened and collected other things that don't break down in the sewer, such as wet wipes, according to the Baltimore Sun. Authorities say it was blocking up to 85% of a 2-foot-wide, 100-year-old pipe. London recently made international news when a fatberg weighing more than 140 tons was discovered lurking in its sewer. Authorities found the fatberg while looking for the source of two sewer overflows in recent weeks, including one on Sept. 21 that sent 1.2 million gallons of sewage into the Jones Falls. While the main fatberg has already been largely broken apart and shipped to a landfill, authorities found a number of smaller fatbergs throughout Baltimore's sewer system. Restaurants and residents alike are advised to avoid putting fats, oils, grease, and wet wipes (even if they're technically "flushable") into the sewer system. "The only items that should be considered flushable are poo, pee, and toilet paper," WBFF states. (Part of London's fatberg may find an unusual home.)
– The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in ABC v. Aereo, a much-watched case that could have big implications for both cloud computing and broadcast television—implications the justices didn't seem comfortable with. Aereo allows users to record broadcast TV online and watch it at their leisure. The major broadcast networks are suing it for copyright violation, and stand to lose billions in fees cable companies pay to carry their programming. Aereo says it's simply renting users the equipment to do online what they can legally do at home. Here's how the arguments went: "If you're comfortable with the Supreme Court resolving disputes over technology, the transcript of Tuesday's oral arguments … should change your mind," writes Jon Healey at the LA Times. Stephen Breyer at one point made an analogy to "what used to be called a phonograph record store." He also worried that Aereo's antennas could "pick up every television signal in the world," which isn't true, Healey pointed out, "because the world isn't, you know, flat." The justices seemed skeptical of Aereo's business model. "It's not logical to me that you can make these millions of copies and essentially sell them to the public," Sonia Sotomayor said. John Roberts said the company was only using thousands of small antennas, instead of a few big ones "to get around copyright laws," the Wall Street Journal reports. But the justices also seemed genuinely worried that their decision could stifle innovation. Sotomayor asked what effect this would have on "the Dropbox and the iCloud." When the broadcasters' lawyers told them to "just be confident" that Aereo's service was different, Samuel Alito said, "I don't find that very satisfying. … I need to understand what effect it will have on these other technologies." Aereo's best hope is that the justices adhere to a lower court's Cartoon Network vs. Cablevision ruling, which held that customers could make DVR recordings on Cablevision's hard drives, writes Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog. At one point, Anthony Kennedy suggested lawyers pretend that decision had come from the high court. Ultimately, the justices didn't seem to like their options. "This is really hard for me," Sotomayor confessed. "I don't see how to get out of it," Breyer agreed.
– The final surviving member of the singing von Trapp family that fled the Nazis in World War II and inspired The Sound of Music has died at the age of 99 in Stowe, Vt. Maria von Trapp was the third of seven children of Georg von Trapp and his first wife; she was the inspiration for Louisa in the famous musical and film. "She was a lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people," said brother Johannes von Trapp, a son born later to Georg von Trapp and his second wife, also named Maria. "There wasn't a mean or miserable bone in her body. I think everyone who knew her would agree with that." After escaping Austria, the von Trapps settled in Stowe, eventually opening a ski lodge, where Maria von Trapp played accordion and taught Austrian dance with a younger sister. She recalled, well, the sounds of music surrounding her early years in an online biography, notes the AP. "Father played the violin, accordion, and mandolin. Mother played piano and violin," she wrote. "I have fond memories of our grandmother playing the piano for us after meals." She also served as a missionary in Papua, New Guinea. The family was fairly long-lived: Maria's older sister, Agathe, died three years ago at age 97.
– John Travolta is one randy (and rather rude) massage client, according to a new Hollywood lawsuit. A masseur hired by Travolta claims the movie star took him to a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, stripped to nothing, appeared semi-erect, and touched the masseur's scrotum and penis during the massage, TMZ reports. When the masseur declined to fool around, Travolta cried, "Come on dude, I'll jerk you off!" Travolta then completed that very deed, but on himself. Travolta allegedly said he had achieved fame "due to sexual favors he had performed when he was in his 'Welcome Back Kotter' days," adding, "Hollywood is controlled by homosexual Jewish men who expect favors in return for sexual activity." He even invited the masseur to have sex with a starlet who wanted to be "double-penetrated," reports Rumorfix. But Travolta's lawyers deny the entire incident, notes E! Online, calling it "complete fiction and fabrication." Hat tip to Huffington Post for the roundup. (Now check out Carrie Fisher's call for Travolta to come out of the closet.)
– Barack Obama’s approval rating took a pretty significant jump overnight after the killing of Osama bin Laden, with 56% now saying they approve of the job he’s doing overall, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted last night. That’s a 9-point increase from Obama’s April rating. He also notched a career high 69% approval rating for his handling of terrorism, and a 60% approval rating for his work in Afghanistan. Obama’s boost is nearly identical to the one Bush got after Saddam Hussein’s capture in 2003. In both cases, independents moved the most, improving their view of each president by 10 percentage points. But it wasn’t all good news for the White House: The public is as skeptical as ever of Obama’s handling of the economy, with an unchanged 40% approving. That could make sustaining the Osama boost a challenge. (Meanwhile, a Daily Beast/Newsweek poll finds little change in his overall approval rating before and after the raid.)
– Casey Kasem's children have decided to remove life support for their father, allowing him to die at a hospice facility in Washington state with them by his side. They tell TMZ Kasem's health directive document says that he does not want "life-sustaining procedures, including nutrition and hydration," if "the extension of my life would result in mere biological existence, devoid of cognitive function, with no reasonable hope for normal functioning." And a judge in the contentious conservatorship case surrounding Kasem yesterday reversed a ruling requiring doctors to keep the 82-year-old alive, so Kasem's kids have decided to withhold food, fluids, and medications. The judge said he received medical records showing that Kasem was not responding to the nutrition and fluids he's been receiving, that painful complications have resulted, and that doctors recommend the nutrition and fluids be withheld, the New York Daily News reports. He upheld daughter Kerri Kasem's conservatorship over her father, despite the fact that Kasem's wife, Jean, with whom the children have been feuding over his care, insisted Kasem told her last week, via eye and eyebrow movements, he wants to live. She said as she left the court hearing that Kasem's kids will have their father's blood on their hands, but Kerri Kasem insists to the Daily News they've done all they can: "We had to take him off [fluids] because his lungs were filling up. It sounded like he was drowning," she says, and "the feeding was backing up because he can’t digest."
– Scientists at UC Berkeley have made a major advancement in the field of mind reading, reconstructing YouTube videos based on brain scans from people who’d seen them. Researchers would put subjects into an MRI machine and track their brain activity as they viewed videos. Once they’d build a model of how a subject’s mind processed the video, “we could read brain activity for that subject and run it backward … to try to uncover what the viewer saw,” one study coauthor tells ABC News. Using the scans they were then able to reproduce the videos—though they’re blurry. “This is a major leap,” the co-author says. He thinks the technique could eventually be used to reconstruct dreams or memories, if it turns out the brain processes those things similarly to how it processes movies. “It’s our next line of research.” (More details on how the experiment worked, along with a video, at PC Magazine.)
– North Korea says it has detained an American student from the University of Virginia who visited the country as part of a "New Year's Party Tour." A rep for Chinese travel company Young Pioneer Tours says undergraduate commerce student Otto Frederick Warmbier, 21, was arrested at Pyongyang airport on Jan. 2 after a five-day tourist trip. North Korea's official news agency says he visited with the "aim to destroy the country's unity" and "was caught committing a hostile act against the state," which was "tolerated and manipulated by the US government," per Reuters. The US Embassy in Seoul says it's aware of Warmbier's arrest, per CNN. The tour group says it's working with the State Department and the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which represents US interests there. "We would appreciate Otto's and his family's privacy being respected and we hope his release can be secured as soon as possible," a rep tells the BBC. Reuters notes about 6,000 westerners travel to North Korea each year; the "New Year's Party Tour" Warmbier was participating in promised a fireworks display in Kim Il Sung Square. One other American citizen is being held in North Korea. Kim Dong Chul, who says he's a naturalized US citizen who used to live in Virginia, was arrested in October.
– He's known for his humility, his down-to-earth nature, his personal phone calls to the flock, and even his selfies. But is Pope Francis actually a "political genius"? Yes, writes Candida Moss at Politico Magazine. "Herein lies the genius of Pope Francis’s papacy: He has persuaded the world he isn’t a politician and, in doing so, has become arguably the most politically influential man in the world." The thing is, predecessor Benedict said many of the things Francis is saying. But with Francis, because of how he leads his life, more people listen. President Obama would do well to pay attention to this pope, writes Moss. "What other world leader has such clarity of message?" Maybe Obama can't literally get as close to the public as Francis can, but he can take a larger lesson: Francis "shows that even in the informational deluge of the modern age, it’s possible to hold to and embody a few big ideas and persuade people to rally around them," writes Moss. "What American president couldn’t benefit from a reminder of that?" Click for the full piece.
– Framing the state of the economy in personal terms, referring to "my numbers," President Trump blasted Fed chief Jerome Powell and the central bank itself in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Trump called the Fed the "biggest risk" to the economy, due to the three times it's raised interest rates this year; it will likely do so a fourth time in December. Trump lamented Powell "was supposed to be a low-interest-rate guy. It's turned out that he's not," adding that Powell "almost looks like he's happy" when he raises the rates. Trump also seemed irritated that during former President Obama's tenure in the White House, interest rates hovered near zero. The Journal explains the Fed has been increasing the benchmark rate as a move to control inflation and keep financial bubbles at bay. CNN, meanwhile, notes the "historically low" interest rates under Obama were needed to jump-start a post-recession economy. Still, Trump told the Journal that while it's "too early to say," he "maybe" isn't so sure he should have nominated Powell. "I don't know," he said when asked in what scenario he'd remove his Fed head, a move for which NBC News notes there's no precedent. "I'm just saying this: I'm very unhappy with the Fed." Both former Fed chief Janet Yellen and ex-Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn say the president should ease up on the central bank, traditionally an independent entity, per CNN. More from Trump's Journal interview here, including his take on his former attorney, Michael Cohen. (Cohen just made a big political move.)
– Three years after dropping her Grammy-winning album 1989, speculation over when fans will get a new record from Taylor Swift has reached a fever pitch. According to Pitchfork, the pop star mysteriously blacked out her online presence—all photos and posts on Swift’s Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts have been removed, leaving her profiles completely blank. Meanwhile, visitors to the musician’s official site will find a blank, black screen. Per CNN, the “purge” arrived three years to the date of the release of her chart-topping hit, Shake It Off. The move also comes ahead of the MTV Video Music Awards (airing August 27), where Swift is rumored to make an appearance and squash her beef with host Katy Perry. (Swift recently made headlines after winning a groping case against a former DJ.)
– Ted Cruz found himself fending off some embarrassing questions from the press corps Tuesday regarding porn. He blamed a late-night Twitter "like" of a risque clip from his official feed on a "staffing issue," reports NBC San Francisco. "There are a number of people on the team that have access to the account and it appears that someone inadvertently hit the like button," he said. Then somebody asked directly if he was the one who hit the like button. "It was a staffing issue," he replied, adding, "We're dealing with it internally, but it was a mistake. It was not malicious conduct." Cruz also tried to make light of the gaffe and all the attention it was getting. "If I had known that this would trend so quickly ... perhaps we should have posted something like this during the Indiana primary," he said. The Washington Post, meanwhile, can't resist digging into Cruz's memoir, specifically the part where he wrote about watching hard-core porn with Supreme Court justices back when he was a 26-year-old law clerk. (They were looking into whether online porn should be subject to regulations.) In the book, he recalls Sandra Day O'Connor muttering, "Oh my."
– It's a gruesome way to go: A 30-year-old mother was killed in central China over the weekend when the metal floor panel that sat between the top of a mall escalator and the floor beyond gave way as she and her son exited the escalator. But as the woman, identified as Xiang Liujuan, fell halfway through, she pushed her toddler son to safety. The South China Morning Post reports a woman standing nearby caught him, moved him to the side, then managed to briefly grab Xiang's hand. But seconds later she was gone, pulled in by the machinery. Most details come from outlets citing the Wuhan Evening News, as well as an extremely graphic video of the incident. The Hong Kong Free Press reports by way of the Evening News that Xiang's entire body was "sucked into" the escalator's treads. Those treads had to be cut in order for her to be removed, in a process that took roughly four hours. Her husband was reportedly on the scene; he had apparently been with his wife and son but hadn't gotten on the escalator yet. AFP cites an anonymous Evening News source who claims work had recently been completed on the escalator and that the maintenance workers failed to properly screw in the access panel. The incident occurred at the Anliang department store in Jingzhou, Hubei province, and public opinion seemed to be split between faulting store management for not immediately turning the escalator off and praising the mother's dying act of love. (A woman was killed last year after her scarf and hair became caught in a Montreal subway.)
– You know that ancient iPhone 4 from 2011 that you're still saddled with? Well, multiple sources tell Bloomberg that you'll soon be able to trade it in for a discount on the shiny and (relatively) new iPhone 5. It's the first time Apple has allowed such a thing, notes Rebecca Greenfield on the Atlantic Wire; she thinks it's a result of just how much Apple's market positioning has dropped lately—and how scared it is of Samsung. Under the program, said to launch this month, Bloomberg predicts that customers with working iPhone 4 or 4S models may be able to get a basic iPhone 5 for no money down.
– Comedian Patton Oswalt hasn't said much online about the sudden death of his wife, true-crime writer Michelle McNamara. But when he posted, People reports, it was a doozy: "When your mom dies you're the best memory of her," Oswalt quotes his 7-year-old daughter Alice as saying. "Everything you do is a memory of her." In another tweet, 47-year-old Oswalt says "she wrote lines that stung & hummed. 13 years in her presence was happily humbling. #RIPMichelleMcNamara." Oswalt also retweeted a link soliciting donations to the arts organization 826LA, which encourages young writers to improve and teachers to get students excited about writing, ABC News reports. McNamara, 46, died of unknown causes in her sleep on April 21 at home in Los Angeles.
– A Spanish bullfighter was gored to death Saturday on live television in a horror not seen in the ring in more than three decades, reports the AP. Victor Barrio, 29, was pronounced dead late Saturday by a surgeon at the Teruel bullring. Barrio was first gored in the thigh by the 1,166-pound bull's left horn and his body was flipped over. He was gored a second time in the chest and the blow penetrated a lung and his aorta as the matador was on the ground. Medics were at his side almost immediately, but attempts to save his life were unsuccessful. The goring of Barrio was broadcast live on television and news of his death stirred widespread reaction ranging from the bullfighting community to well-known politicians. "My condolences to the family and colleagues of Victor Barrio, the deceased bullfighter this evening in Teruel. Rest in Peace," Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy tweeted. Prominent bullfighter Enrique Ponce said he was "deeply saddened by the death of my colleague in the ring. Let God embrace him in all his glory. Great matador." Participants at the famed running of the bulls at the San Fermin festivities in Pamplona—which also suffered two non-fatal gorings on Saturday, reports NBC News—wore improvised black armbands in honor of the fallen matador while dashing along the streets on the way to the bullring Sunday morning. Festivities in Teruel were immediately suspended following Barrio's death, and Las Ventas, the Madrid bullring were he debuted in 2010, posted a heartfelt remembrance of the young bullfighter. He was the first professional matador to die during a bullfight in Spain since 21-year-old Frenchman Jose Cubero Yiyo was fatally gored in 1985 in Madrid.
– Two Republican representatives who announced earlier this week they wouldn't support the GOP bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare have done a 180, giving new hope to the American Health Care Act, the Hill reports. Fred Upton of Michigan and Billy Long of Missouri switched to "yes" votes after meeting with President Trump on Wednesday and successfully adding an amendment to the AHCA. According to Politico, the amendment puts $8 billion in federal funding toward helping people with pre-existing conditions get insurance. "They need to be covered. Period," Long says he told Trump. Upton says he thinks the AHCA now has enough votes to pass the House. With the addition of Upton's amendment, at least two other Republican representatives say they'll consider voting for the bill. There was some concern Upton's amendment would scare off the more conservative members of the House, but that doesn't appear to have been the case. Upton says a House vote on the AHCA is possible as soon as Thursday. CNBC reports one ObamaCare advocate says Upton's amendment won't actually do anything to help people with pre-existing conditions afford the increased cost of insurance under the AHCA; it amounts to an extra $62 for each American with a pre-existing condition.
– Nearly three weeks after North Korea pulled its 53,000 workers from the Kaesong Industrial Complex—a jointly managed industrial park just inside the North Korean border—the South Korean government is ordering its remaining citizens out, reports the Wall Street Journal. Despite the virtual shutdown of the complex, one of the last symbols of North-South cooperation, about 175 South Koreans had remained behind to ensure North Korea would not unilaterally confiscate the goods and machinery left there. But the AP reports Seoul was worried about its workers not having access to food and medicine; North Korea hasn't allowed supplies or workers to cross the border since early this month. Seoul had given Pyongyang 24 hours to agree to restarting talks, warning of serious consequences if the North said no, reports Voice of America. But the North let the deadline pass then issued a "no", along with a threat: If the South "pursues the worsening of the situation, we will be compelled to first take final and decisive grave measures," reads a statement issued today. "The government has made an inevitable decision to bring back home all of our citizens left behind in Kaesong for their protection," said South Korea's Unification Minister. "Their hardship is growing due to North Korea's unfair measures in Kaesong."
– "I went to the bathroom, and I was like, I know what to do," Tom McDonald tells the New York Daily News. Roy Riegel, McDonald's childhood friend and fellow New York Mets superfan, died in 2008 at the age of 48. McDonald kept Riegel's ashes in a peanut can wrapped in Mets ticket stubs next to his collection of baseball autographs and World Series highlights, but he wasn't sure exactly what to do with them, the AP reports. According to the New York Times, the answer presented itself after a trip to a bar's men's room: flush his friend's ashes down the toilet. Since McDonald's stroke of genius, he's flushed scoops of Riegel's ashes at 16 Major League stadiums around the country. McDonald calls it the "perfect tribute" to his friend, "the best plumber you ever saw" who "walked that tightrope between genius and insanity." Hank Riegel agrees, saying his brother "would definitely approve of it." There are rules to McDonald's tribute to Riegel: a baseball game must be in progress when the ashes are flushed, and if McDonald also has to use the facilities, "I always flush in between." McDonald has flushed Riegel's ashes in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago (though not at Wrigley Field due to the Cubs' rival status), to name a few. McDonald says he has enough ashes left for one final flush, which he plans to do at North Carolina's Durham Athletic Park, where the movie Bull Durham was filmed.
– A Montana beekeeper has recovered hives that were stolen from him in California, thanks to what the AP is calling an agricultural "sting" operation. Lloyd Cunniff of Choteau reported 488 hives stolen in January, after he had transported them to California for the almond pollination season. A tip led Fresno County authorities to find stolen hives worth $170,000 in a rented bee nursery space, a cow pasture, and hidden in a drainage along a freeway. Fresno County Detective Anders Solis, a member of the county's agriculture crimes task force, says there were 10 victims in seven California counties in all. Bee theft is "kind of new to us, too. This has been going on for about three years," he says. Cunniff got most of his bees back last Sunday, reports the Great Falls Tribune. He says he is keeping the recovered hives in a separate field in case they are infected with disease or mites. (Yes, stealing thousands of dollars worth of bees is apparently a thing.)
– A top fundraiser for President Trump has resigned from the Republican National Committee following a report that he paid $1.6 million to a Playboy playmate he had an affair with. Elliott Broidy told RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel Friday that he was resigning immediately, an RNC official familiar with the discussion tells the AP. The resignation comes after the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen helped negotiate a non-disclosure agreement between Broidy and the model last year. The unidentified playmate elected to have an abortion after discovering she was pregnant. “It is unfortunate that this personal matter between two consenting adults is the subject of national discussion just because of Michael Cohen’s involvement,” Broidy said in a statement. Broidy, who is based in Los Angeles, had been deputy national finance chairman for the RNC, reports the Washington Post. Under the deal negotiated by Cohen between the married Broidy and the Playmate, the woman agreed to never discuss the relationship or she would have to forfeit the money. Cohen reportedly struck the deal in late 2017, about a year after paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 not to talk about her alleged affair with Trump. Broidy says Cohen approached him about the matter after the Playmate's attorney contacted Cohen. In the current campaign cycle, Broidy and his wife have donated more than $600,000 to the RNC and GOP campaign committees, per the Post. (Cohen is under criminal investigation following this week's FBI raids.)
– Ashley Judd made a TV appearance last month looking larger than normal and with a puffier face, and the ensuing criticism of her appearance led her to write a scathing but eloquent response in the Daily Beast. Judd was on steroids due to an illness (leading some to assume her puffy face was the result of having had work done) and had gained a little weight over the winter (leading some to joke that her husband must be looking for a new woman). "The conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle," Judd writes. Particularly worrisome is the fact that women themselves jumped right into the objectification. "Patriarchy," she writes, "is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate." Her piece (worth a read in full here) garnered quite a reaction. Samples from both sides: "Like it or not, Hollywood actresses are ... thinner than normal, less wrinkly than normal, and they are paid more than normal to look that way," writes Lindsay Ferrier on The Stir. "Any woman who chooses to be a movie star also chooses to take the media knocks that come with the job." Full piece here. Judd is "a smart, bold, kickass feminist," declares Lindy West on Jezebel, noting that the older she gets, the more she rejects "the notion that when you profit from being a public figure you become public property." As for West, she's done with covering "the flavor-of-the-week's gaping coke nostril. ... My feminism doesn't end where your celebrity begins." Full piece here.
– New York City opened an old time capsule today that turned out to be ... kind of boring. Boston, on the other hand, has itself a mysterious red book, reports WBUR. Historians today removed a copper box that was placed inside the lion atop the Old State House back in 1901 and were surprised to find the hard-cover book on top, apparently in great condition. The curious will have to wait a little longer, however, because officials didn't open the book or anything beneath it inside the box—they'll do that later in a controlled environment to make sure nothing gets ruined. Expect old photos, letters, newspapers, and similar memorabilia. But as for the book, no mention of it was made in a newspaper article of the time about the time capsule. An official with the Bostonian Society guesses that it might be a family history of a carpenter named Samuel Rogers, reports the Boston Globe. Rogers worked on the building and helped prepare the time capsule, notes a separate Globe story. And while he did reportedly pop a family history inside, there's no account of it being in a red book. Eventually, all the items will go on public display, and a new time capsule will go back inside the lion. One thing for sure that will be included: a medal from the 2013 Boston Marathon, the one hit by bombs, reports AP. (Click for more on a time capsule that was opened 40 years late.)
– So much for speaking up: Richmond police have fired a whistleblowing cop for claiming that two officers chatted about shooting and bombing President Obama while protecting him, Raw Story reports. The officer, who wasn't named, told WTVR last May that a supervisor had said to a police sharpshooter, "You’re down there right? So, you can take a couple of shots, you might have to kill yourself, but you can take a couple of shots." The supervisor allegedly discussed planting a bomb under the stage and dissed Michelle Obama, who was also there: "Nobody wants to see her anyway—unless she gets undressed or get [sic] naked." The whistleblowing cop said he was fired for ignoring department policy and giving the TV station an interview. But the two officers involved also lost their jobs: "Their careers were ended and they have gone through eight months of hell" over "false allegations," their lawyer tells WTVR.
– The late Sen. Daniel Inouye's seat has been filled—although his replacement goes against Inouye's "last wish," the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie today chose Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz, a former leader of the state Democratic Party, to take Inouye's vacant seat in Washington. Schatz described himself as "honored" and "humbled' by the position. But Inouye—before dying of respiratory complications last week—had asked that Abercrombie choose US Rep. Colleen Hanabusa. Hanabusa was in contention along with other state officials, but Abercrombie picked Schatz after hearing from more than 12 candidates this morning. "Sen. Inouye conveyed his final wish to Gov. Abercrombie," said Inouye's chief of staff, the AP reports. "While we are very disappointed that it was not honored, it was the governor's decision to make." Schatz, 40, will serve at least until 2014, when voters will elect a senator to complete Inouye's six-year term ending in 2016. Schatz said he will be sworn in tomorrow so he can join Democrats on votes regarding the fiscal cliff.
– Public opinion is firmly behind having more surveillance cameras in public places in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, according to a new CBS/New York Times poll. Some 78% of people called the cameras—which helped identify the suspects—a good idea, and only 20% said the government had gone too far in restricting civil liberties to fight terrorism, the poll found. "There are cameras in stores and supermarkets," one respondent, a saleswoman in Florida, said in a follow-up interview. "Our families would be safer and surveillance cameras would provide evidence to help agencies pursue people, like they just did in Boston." The poll found that 66% of Americans believe another terrorist attack is at least somewhat likely in the next few months, up from just 37% at this time last year, according to the poll, which also found that the public gave law enforcement agencies high marks for their handling of the bombings. Some 84% approved of how law enforcement dealt with the attacks, and 68%—including 47% of Republicans—approved of President Obama's response.
– The world's earliest known navigational tool used by Vasco da Gama's fleet was discovered in a shipwreck off the Oman coast, NPR reports. Called a marine astrolabe, it's believed to date from 1495 to 1500. Unlike the Game of Thrones intro astrolabe, sailors used this one to figure out where they were on the high seas. It was found in the wreck of the Esmeralda, part of the Portuguese explorer's armada. Da Gama, who discovered the first sea route from Europe to India, was returning home from his second trip there when he left some ships in the Indian Ocean to "disrupt maritime trade," meaning pillage. Several of the ships sank during a fierce storm in 1503. The Esmeralda was discovered in 1998. Since excavations began in 2014, University of Warwick researchers have recovered 2,800 artifacts, the jewel of the cache being the astrolabe, a bronze disc measuring 7 inches in diameter. Emblems depict the Portuguese coat of arms and the personal stamp of King Dom Manuel I. "It was like nothing else we had seen, and I immediately knew it was something very important because you could see it had these two emblems on it," team leader David Mearns of Blue Water Recoveries tells the BBC. "It's a great privilege to find something so rare, something so historically important." At first, the team wasn't 100% sure it was an astrolabe, but laser scans revealed navigational marks around the edges every 5 degrees, which sailors would have used to calculate their location by measuring the sun's position above the horizon at noon. (A ship that sank in 1BC may hold priceless treasures.)
– As the aftermath of George Zimmerman's acquittal continues to unfold—the Washington Post reports protests across the nation with more planned for the future—Obama has issued a statement, asking for Americans to "respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son," but also to ask themselves "if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence." The full statement, per CNN: "The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities. We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin." Earlier today, Republican Rep. Steve King accused Obama of politicizing the case on Fox News Sunday. "The president engaged in this and turned it into a political issue that should have been handled exclusively with law and order," he said, USA Today reports. But others are asking the Justice Department to get even more involved.
– Bob Dylan delivered what was described as an "eloquent" lecture this month as part of his Nobel prize requirements—but one writer says he may have approached the task like a high school student with an overdue project. Dylan discussed three favorite works from childhood and Andrea Pitzer at Slate suspects the Nobel Prize winner for literature may have cribbed much of the Moby Dick portion from SparkNotes. She says at least 20 of the 78 sentences involved strongly resemble SparkNotes passages and compares several of them side by side. Multiple phrases, including "Ahab's lust for vengeance," appear both in SparkNotes and Dylan's talk, but not in Moby Dick itself. He had to give the talk to collect $922,000 in prize money. "Some men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness," a quote that one blogger thought Dylan had invented, appears to be based on SparkNotes. Pitzer suggests that Dylan donate some of the prize money to the SparkNotes writer, though others are more forgiving. University of Minnesota music professor Alex Lubet tells the Star-Tribune that Dylan's lecture shouldn't be treated like a classroom assignment. "His lecture is wild and strange," Lubet says. "It’s meant to be a post-modern work of art. Any kind of a collage technique is fair game." In a 2012 Rolling Stone interview, Dylan addressed claims he had lifted lyrics, saying that in songwriting, "You make everything yours. We all do it."
– Today's vote in the Senate to make Loretta Lynch the next attorney general was 56-43. So who was the lone missing senator out of 100? Ted Cruz, which is generating some head scratches considering that he spoke for 10 minutes on the floor of the Senate prior to the vote pleading with his colleagues to reject her. It turns out that Cruz had to catch a flight back to Texas for a fundraiser before the final vote, reports the Dallas Morning News. His spokesperson is downplaying the move, noting that Cruz voted against the procedure for ending a filibuster that cleared the way for a final vote. "He voted for cloture, that was the vote that mattered," says Rick Tyler. "He made the case against her, he voted against her in cloture, and he didn’t prevail." Still, the unusual combination of the presidential candidate blasting Lynch and then being the only senator to skip the vote is making headlines at Politico, BuzzFeed, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. As for Cruz's objection to Lynch, he says she "embraced the lawlessness" that marked the tenure of Eric Holder.
– Boil-water advisories aren't all that uncommon, but this one might have Flint residents feeling like they're the butt of a cosmic joke: A water main break has prompted the city to warn people to boil their water before drinking it. As CNN notes, this mostly applies to those using city water through filters installed on their taps in the wake of the lead crisis. But "residents not using a filter are asked to flush the water for at least seven minutes before collecting to boil," adds the Detroit News. The break resulted in a drop in water pressure that may have allowed bacteria into the system. As a headline at Fark succinctly puts it, "residents are being told to boil the water before they not drink it." (The mayor is promising that new pipes are in the works.)
– The automated photo-tagging on the Google Photos app introduced in May isn't perfect, Google admits. Sometimes it gives a photo a wrong or irrelevant tag—and, on at least one occasion, an extremely offensive one. The company had some groveling to do after the app labeled a photo of two black people as "gorillas," the Guardian reports. The man in the photo, software developer Jacky Alcine, complained to Google, where exec Yonatan Zunger told him the mistake was "100% not OK" and "high on my list of bugs you 'never' want to see happen," the BBC reports. He thanked him for helping Google fix the problem. "We're appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened," a Google spokeswoman tells the BBC. "We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing. There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we're looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future." Algorithms caused similar problems at Flickr a few months ago, where some pictures of people, both black and white, were labeled "apes" or "animals," and a picture of the Dachau concentration camp was labeled "jungle gym," CNET notes. (Apple Watch gets confused by tattoos.)
– The Shroud of Turin is supposedly the burial cloth that was wrapped around Jesus after his crucifixion; bloodstains on the linen shroud, which are said to have been transferred to it during the three days Jesus was in the tomb, form the image of a crucified man. But a new study reported in the Journal of Forensic Sciences finds the bloodstain image was likely faked. Researchers looking at the blood spatter found that the stains appeared to come from someone standing up, rather than someone who was flat on the fabric, Science Alert reports. As the researchers put it, the stains are "totally unrealistic" when compared to what they should look like. The shroud, which is held in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Italy, is considered an icon, as opposed to a genuine religious relic, by the Vatican; Fox News notes "the church has never weighed in on its authenticity." "This is the kind of forensic work done all the time in police investigations," the forensic scientist who conducted the analysis tells BuzzFeed News. "Even a crucified or hanging person should leave a distinct blood pattern on the cloth, which would be fascinating information to have." The study found inconsistent staining, with researchers concluding multiple poses were used to create the bloodstains—a standing model was likely used to imprint patterns on the cloth at various angles for various body parts. Another bloodstain pattern expert notes that more research could be done to see whether cleaning a body or preparing it for burial might account for the inconsistent staining, though he notes that the stains do appear to have come from flowing blood, meaning a heart that was beating at the time the stains were made. (See previous stories in the real-or-fake debate here.)
– It was initially reported that the first same-sex couples to wed after Australia legalized gay marriage last year did so on Dec. 16—but it has now been revealed that Jo Grant and Jill Kindt were actually the first couple to marry under the new legislation, on Dec. 15. Grant was receiving palliative care for cancer at the time, and Queensland's state attorney general says officials went to "extraordinary lengths" to make sure the couple was granted a waiver to skip the official 30-day waiting period most couples in the country had to undergo, with one official staffer driving 60 miles to deliver necessary paperwork to the couple. Their marriage was approved, they were married in their garden, and registered all within a day; it was just six days after same-sex marriage became legal. Grant died Jan. 30, the BBC reports. "Jo and I got to be legally married for 48 days—I'll take that," says Kindt. The couple had been together eight years, and considered themselves married ever since a 2013 commitment ceremony. "I know there are other couples that were married that weekend, and for different reasons. They are among the first … and the reason we did is a tremendously sad one, and I'd trade everything for not having to stand here and talk about this story," said the attorney general when revealing the historic marriage to Queensland's parliament, per ABC. "I'm glad the story's been told for Jo, and I loved hearing her name being said in Parliament today," said Kindt, adding that the wedding "was great, it was really good. It was legal … Jo very much wanted it to happen, as I did."
– Workers were just trying to fix an old water main this week in New York's Greenwich Village and ended up with their hands full of old bones instead, Newsday reports. According to WPIX-TV, workers found the roofs of two burial vaults less than 4 feet below the street. The tombs, which are approximately 18 feet by 15 feet, were likely built in the late 18th century or early 19th century and contained the bones of at least 12 people, NBC New York reports. A pile of skulls was found in a corner in one of the vaults, while the other had a stack of a dozen wooden coffins. "You never know what you can find beneath the city's streets," one of the project heads tells NBC. "You bury people to memorialize them and these people were forgotten." Newsday reports archaeologists and anthropologists will be checking out the tombs to find out more information. But right now officials believe they're probably part of a Presbyterian church cemetery, according to NBC. Experts will be examining old documents and records in an attempt to figure out who is buried there. Meanwhile, workers are planning a new route for the water main, as it's city policy to leave burial sites be whenever possible. (Elsewhere, Israeli archaeologists just found a "dream come true" under a parking lot.)
– The Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for promoting girls' education rights is in stable condition at a military hospital, the AFP reports. Malala Yousufzai, 14, moved her limbs yesterday but is still unconscious on a ventilator. Doctors had reduced her sedative to let neurosurgeons assess her, "and as a result of it Malala responded and moved her hands and feet," said a military spokesman. "It is a positive development." In other developments: Tens of thousands today marched through Karachi, Pakistan's most populated city, in Malala's name—bringing public outcry to the level of protests over Innocence of Muslims, the AP reports. Pakistan's right-wing Islamic parties may be responsible for the delay; they have shied from criticizing Malala's shooting because they share the Taliban's desire for Islamic law. In Swat Valley, where Malala lived, one of her classmates promised she will return to school with Malala one day. "She will recover and we will go back to school and study together again," Shazia Ramzan told the Daily Mail. In trying to kill Malala, the Taliban turned her into a global icon for the girls' education movement, writes Scott Gold at the LA Times. "The idea has been flourishing in some of the world's most destitute and volatile places," writes Gold. "Today, courtesy of the Pakistani Taliban, it has a face." Click for his full article.
– Even as he continued to insist that addressing the rumors surrounding him only strengthens them, New York Gov. David Paterson continued to address those rumors last night on Larry King Live. He told King “clearly, somebody is” after him, though he wouldn’t speculate who is behind the gossip; he then blamed this “Kafkaesque scenario” on Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal. As he has done all week, he also vowed not to resign and called on the Times to set the record straight. Unfortunately, the two segments released on CNN’s website (watch both in the gallery) don’t include the arguably most awkward portion of the interview. “Do you think your eyesight has an effect on the way you can challenge some of this? The fact that you can be, not a pun intended, blind to this? People have to read these headlines to you, right?” King asked. Watch that question, and Paterson’s deflection, on Gawker.
– Former Army Capt. Will Swenson received the nation's highest military honor today for rescuing fellow soldiers under heavy fire in Afghanistan a few years ago, reports CNN. And in a rare move, the 34-year-old has formally asked the Army to return him to active duty, reports AP. Generally speaking, Medal of Honor recipients are out of action, but it looks like Swenson will be back in uniform fairly soon. Swenson left the military in 2011, two years after the actions during a firefight in Afghanistan's Ganjgal valley that earned him his medal. "In moments like this, Americans like Will remind us of what our country can be at its best," said President Obama at today's ceremony, as quoted by Fox News.
– A crash that killed 32 tourists from North Korea's chief ally brought "bitter sorrow" to the heart of leader Kim Jong Un, according to Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency. The agency—in a rare admission of bad news—said the Chinese tourists and four North Koreans were killed when a tour bus plunged off a bridge in North Hwanghae province, south of the capital, the BBC reports. Kim "couldn't control his grief at the thought of the bereaved families who lost their blood relatives," KCNA said. The AP reports that China, source of the vast majority of foreign tourists to North Korea, has sent diplomats and a medical team to assist.
– A purported organized-crime incident in Japan put the emphasis on "organized" in a crime that RT.com is labeling "Ocean's 100." Cops believe that more than 100 thieves took part in a spree in Tokyo and 16 other prefectures on May 15, cleaning out 7-Eleven ATMS of nearly $13 million in less than three hours, the Guardian reports. Just after 5am that day, the mass withdrawals started, with the meticulous money-nabbers making a total of 14,000 or so transactions, each one reaping about $915 (the maximum allowed per ATM), before wrapping things up right before 8am. Investigators think the suspects, believed to be part of an international gang, were able to access customer accounts by using fake credit cards with account details stolen from a South Africa bank. No suspects have been caught, and officials fear they may have all fled the country. (A $1 billion bank heist was thwarted by a typo.)
– Volkswagen's troubles continue after its record-breaking $14.7 billion emissions-scandal settlement last week, with the controversy now swirling around a historian who helped uncover the company's Nazi past. The New York Times dives into the sudden end of Manfred Grieger's contract with VW, now being criticized for "disposing of an enlightener" by other historians, including 75 academics who penned an open letter railing against what they insinuate was Grieger's dismissal for historical whistleblowing. "Transparency in reacting to the public is not really the strength of VW," Hartmut Berghoff, the Georg-August University professor who spurred the letter in Grieger's defense, tells the Times. Both VW and Grieger are mum about the circumstances surrounding his abrupt departure, but the Times notes it seems to be tied to a 518-page 2014 study of the labor practices of VW subsidiary Audi. Grieger reviewed that study last year and apparently didn't think it went far enough in exposing how VW had relied on forced labor from concentration camps for its factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, which produced weapons and military gear. A 1996 book co-authored by Grieger had already delved into those uncomfortable facts, as well as embarrassing info about the Porsche and Piech families, still majority VW stockholders. Both the study and review were mentioned in August in a German business journal, which then "led to talk that Grieger be put on a short leash and limited in his academic freedom," the historians' letter claims. Europe Online Magazine says a German paper reported Grieger's criticism had put him "in hot water with VW senior management," but a Tuesday VW statement denied Grieger had been dismissed and said VW "has examined its history as an enterprise consistently, honestly, and strongly, and will continue to do so," per the Times.
– Jon Stewart is retiring from the Daily Show later this year. He reportedly revealed the big news during the taping of tonight's episode, reports the AV Club. In a statement to Politico, a Comedy Central exec confirms that Stewart will step down at a still-unspecified date after more than 15 years. "Through his unique voice and vision, the Daily Show has become a cultural touchstone for millions of fans and an unparalleled platform for political comedy that will endure for years to come," says network chief Michele Ganeless, which seems to suggest that the show will go on with a new host. This is one of those rare cases when a network's official statement is right in line with what most others are writing: "To a younger generation of viewers who stopped watching the news, his late-night 'fake' news show—which skewered politicians and the media—made him a trusted messenger to millions," writes Emily Yahr at the Washington Post. Business Insider: The show is a "cultural force." NPR: A "hugely influential figure in American politics." New York Times: A "nightly home for sharp-edged political satire and up-to-the-moment commentary on the news." (Stewart, of course, is a movie director now, too.)
– Dining out anytime soon? True/Slant blogger (and former waitress) Susannah Breslin has a little advice on how to treat your server. Check out the full list here. A sampling: Eye contact: Too many people treat servers like they’re invisible. Don't be one of them. “Look your server in the eye. The goal of dining out is great service. Treating your server like a human being is one way to get it.” Tip: At nice spots, it’s 20%, so deal with it. “If I just spent several hours running around … and basically acting like your personal slave for the evening, I’d like to be reimbursed for it.” Speak up: If you don't like something, say so. Competent servers will deal with it because it's in their interests to keep you happy. Don’t make a mess: You may think you’re helping by piling up your scraps and dishes. "You are not helping. You are sabotaging. ... Leave it. Let us get it.” Stay out of the kitchen: Self-explanatory. Don’t be like this guy, who Breslin thinks is both "self-indulgent" and "arrogant."
– Two twists in the China scandal involving ousted political leader Bo Xilai and wife Gu Kailai: Confession? A Japanese newspaper reports that Gu has confessed to killing British businessman Neil Heywood, apparently because she was worried he knew too much about her illegal financial dealings. The report quotes anonymous Chinese sources as saying an indictment is near, notes the Telegraph. The sources also say that Gu smuggled somewhere around $6 billion overseas. Cambodia arrest: A Cambodian official says a French architect with strong business ties to Bo and Gu will not be extradited to China or anywhere else, at least for now, reports Reuters. Police in Phnom Penh arrested Patrick Devillers earlier this month at Beijing's request but haven't disclosed much else, including why he got detained in the first place. "We don't know the reason," said the minister. "We are waiting for further investigation."
– The Trump attorney who says he penned the "sloppy" tweet that some say indicates a possible obstruction of justice isn't done making headlines. John Dowd spoke to Axios' Mike Allen, scoffing at criticism of the tweet regarding Mike Flynn, which suggested Trump knew the former national security adviser had lied to the FBI before Trump canned James Comey. "The tweet did not admit obstruction," Dowd says. "That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion." Plus, the Constitution has Trump's back, per Dowd. "[The] president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," he claims. Newsweek notes it's not clear which section of Article II Dowd refers to, though it speculates on one part involving the president seeking the opinion "of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices." Allen notes that with this pronouncement, Trump's legal team is "setting the stage" to keep Trump insulated from obstruction of justice or collusion charges in the Russia probe—meaning, Allen speculates, that his lawyers may be nervous charges are coming down the pike. But one of Barack Obama's former counsels notes "it is certainly possible" for Trump to have obstructed justice, and Allen points out Richard Nixon's Articles of Impeachment were jump-started with the assertion that Nixon "has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice." But whether Trump can or can't be held responsible for such a transgression may be moot, Allen adds. "The one thing everyone agrees on is that the House of Representatives, with its impeachment power, alone decides what is cause for removal from office," he writes. "For now, at least, the House is run by Republicans."
– Tavi Gevinson became a fixture in the fashion world at age 11, thanks to her blog Style Rookie. Today, she's 17 and running Rookie, an online magazine delving into everything from pop culture to feminist issues to love to body image to celebrity interviews. Tavi and Rookie have come a long way since the magazine launched in 2011. Tavi now oversees an 80-person staff; the magazine's 43-year-old editorial director quit her job at the New York Times to come work for the teen. "My rule for bosses and therapists is they have to be smarter than I am—and Tavi completely fits that bill," Anaheed Alani tells the Los Angeles Times. Tavi also does book signings (Rookie puts out a print anthology of its best work, plus new content, each year), speaking engagements, and photo shoots; she's been interviewed by Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon; she even had a role in the film Enough Said. But she's also a senior at a public high school in suburban Illinois who has to get by on a $25-a-week allowance. (She's not yet drawing a salary from Rookie, though it gets more than 4 million page views a month and features jewelry and makeup ads; her dad says she may start getting paid soon.) Of the magazine, she says, "The goal has become more to make people feel included, that they're cool enough or smart enough." The Times' full profile is worth a read.
– It's official: Keith Olbermann is headed to Current TV. The announcement on the Current TV website calls the former MSNBC host a "great provocateur" and says he'll bring his "slashing wit, analytical eye, and distinctive commentary" to a nightly primetime news and commentary show. Olbermann will also be Chief News Officer for the company. His new show starts at an undisclosed date later this year. Insiders had previously told the New York Times that Olbermann, who abruptly left MSNBC last month, would make the move. He'll also have an equity stake in the channel founded by Al Gore and other independent backers. The five-year-old channel, which is only available in some 60 million homes, consists largely of YouTube-style submissions and would receive a major boost from the presence of Olbermann, whose exit deal from MSNBC requires him to stay off TV for an agreed-upon length of time, believed to be close to six months. In a statement, Olbermann calls Current TV "the model truth-seeking entity" and calls this opportunity "the most exciting venture in my career."
– In May, a Canadian dog walker claimed six dogs in her care were stolen from her truck at a dog park in Vancouver—the dogs were found in a ditch a week later. CBC now reports that Emma Paulsen has been charged with dumping the dogs in the ditch herself after they died in her truck; a necropsy confirmed heatstroke, adds the Vancouver Sun. "I know they suffered, and that's the part that, to this day, I still get sad about," one owner, whose dog Buddy died, tells CTV News. Paulsen now faces six "charges under pretty much every single possible section of animal cruelty that could have been in this particular case," an SPCA official tells the Global News, including two counts of causing an animal to continue to be in distress—which has never been charged in British Columbia. She could face jail time and stiff penalties; the distress charges carry a $75,000 fine each.
– Authorities say a quick-thinking driver thwarted a car-jacking by a jail inmate in South Carolina, reports the AP. Arrest warrants say Ezekiel Stevenson yanked a driver from his car during a hospital visit on May 13. But the driver kept his key fob, shutting the engine down before the car could leave the lot. (This is thanks to a "proximity key," explains Jalopnik.) That led to a standoff with the 18-year-old inmate, who kept trying to lock the doors. Each time, the driver used the fob to unlock them for officers. Stephenson then managed to flee into the woods, dodging an officer's gunshot (no details are provided about why the officer opened fire), but he was found within the hour. He had been in the Darlington County Jail on a hit-and-run charge. Now he's back there facing escape, carjacking, and resisting arrest charges. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
– If I Stay tells the story of a teen girl with a big future who's nearly killed in a car crash. Informed by out-of-body experiences, she must decide whether to stick around on Earth or head to Heaven. It'll make you cry, but it doesn't offer much otherwise, critics say. (Audiences, however, seem to disagree: 80% like it at Rotten Tomatoes, twice the figure for critics). Some examples: It's up to audiences "whether the movie's many moments of genuine sweetness and affecting tenderness can survive the persistent silliness of Mia's out-of-body excursions," writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. "At its best, If I Stay evokes the primacy of friendship, the warmth of family … and the urgency of adolescent love. But the production as a whole is awfully clumsy." "Full disclosure: I went through half a pack of Kleenex watching If I Stay," writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. "But know this: Those tears are no more honestly earned than if director RJ Cutler had merely been chopping onions in front of me. … The movie is designed not to explore the experience of illness, or first love, or adolescence, but merely to make us swoon, sigh, and sob." The movie "hews largely to the same formula as The Fault in Our Stars," another book-based film dealing with teens facing death, notes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post. But If I Stay offers "the perfect bookend to a tear-stained summer": "Even at its most wrenchingly painful, the film readily delivers generous dollops of pleasure." In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan calls the film "a flat-out, all-in fantasy romance, an unashamed tear-jerker that is unafraid of glossy emotions." Sure, "every moment in If I Stay is not all that it might be"—but when its leads "are looking into each other's eyes, you are not going to care."
– Kim Jong Un was up bright and early New Year's Day to make his first announcement of 2017: that North Korea is in the "final stages" of development of a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile and a test launch is imminent, ABC Australia reports. In his address on state TV from Pyongyang, Kim said his country would keep ramping up its nuclear weapons program until the US backs out of holding yearly military exercises in South Korea, and he reiterated previous claims that preemptive nuclear strikes were on the table, per the Wall Street Journal. "Research and development of cutting-edge arms equipment is actively progressing and ICBM rocket test launch preparation is in its last stage," Kim said, per ABC. Mixed with this ominous message was Kim's revelation that "I have spent the whole year with regrets and a guilty conscience" for not reaching certain goals, spurring a promise to "devote all of myself to the people," per NK News. Although CNN notes Kim's speech was "full of the North's usual self-congratulatory, lofty proclamations and anti-Western rhetoric," it also adds there may be reason to pay closer attention to Kim's words this time around. North Korea stayed busy on the weapons experimentation front throughout 2016, despite 10 years of UN sanctions: It test-launched ballistic missiles at what ABC calls an "unprecedented rate," put a satellite into space in February (believed to be a test of long-range ballistic missile capabilities), and pulled off its fifth nuclear test in September. Experts have estimated that North Korea's timeline for being able to mount a weapon on an ICBM that could reach US shores is probably still two to three years away, but per CNN, a "high-profile North Korean" defector has said Kim is set on developing nukes by year's end "at all costs."
– For some, Black Friday will actually begin tonight. "I leave the house at 9:30pm on Thanksgiving," one serious shopper tells the New York Daily News. "Everything used to open at 6am, but every year it gets even earlier." With 138 million Americans expected to be out shopping for deals, how can you snag what you want? Some tips: "You gotta pack light, get your coffee and go," says the aforementioned shopper, who recommends—along with many of her seasoned peers—shopping alone, and organizing flyers and credit cards beforehand. Or bring a shopping pal ... and a strategy. "We tag-team," says one shopper. "My friend or I will stay in line while the other person runs to get their stuff." "Outwit, outlast, outplay," says another Black Friday veteran who befriends managers for "insider information" and cases each store beforehand so he'll know where to find products. He also recommends talking to other shoppers in line to make sure you're not missing any great deals—but, of course, don't give away any of your own secrets. "It's all mind games before the doors open, and then it's WrestleMania!" Sites like BlackFriday.info can help, but there's nothing like the time-honored just-grab-it technique: Says one shopper, "I usually spot what I want and get it before anyone else sees me or the product." Click here for five more tips from a pro.
– Bowe Bergdahl will be back in the US late tonight. Both AP and CNN quote defense officials as saying he will be transferred overnight from a military base in Germany to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. The reports offer no more details on Bergdahl's recuperation after being held five years by the Taliban. The issue of his return came up publicly yesterday when defense chief Chuck Hagel testified before Congress, and Republican Jeff Miller pressed him on why Bergdahl was still in Germany, notes the Idaho Statesman. “Why hasn’t he been returned to the United States?" asked Miller, who seemed to be suggesting that the Pentagon was keeping Bergdahl overseas to shield him from questions. "We have seriously wounded soldiers that have returned to the United States almost immediately after they are stabilized. ... You’re trying to tell me that he’s being held in Landstuhl, Germany because of his medical condition?” Hagel: “Congressman, I hope you’re not implying anything other than that. The fact— Miller: "I'm just asking the question." Hagel: “I’m gonna give you an answer too. I don’t like the implication of the question. He’s being held there because our medical professionals don’t believe he’s ready ... to take the next step to rehabilitation.”
– Bernie Sanders didn't lose the Democratic race on Tuesday night, but with big wins for Hillary Clinton in Ohio and at least three other states, he lost the momentum from his surprise win in Michigan and fell further behind in the delegate count. Analysts say that although the senator plans to keep his campaign going, Clinton could now be impossible to catch. A roundup of coverage: Sanders is now more than 300 pledged delegates behind Clinton, which may be an insurmountable margin, reports Politico, which describes his candidacy as a "teetering Jenga pile of youth support, momentum, and access to online millions"—now minus the "buttressing block" of Ohio. Tuesday night's results were a huge setback for Sanders, who had been counting on wins in the Midwest to keep his candidacy viable, reports the New York Times, which notes that Clinton's delegate lead over Sanders is about triple the size of the lead Obama had over her at this stage in 2008. The Washington Post also declares the race all but over for Sanders, calling Ohio a "back-breaking blow" that makes it nearly impossible for him to catch Clinton—though he clearly "has both the determination and the resources to keep fighting," and his campaign has already "accomplished far more than almost anyone anticipated." Sanders would need a "series of very big victories in big states" to catch up at this point, the Los Angeles Times reports, but because of how delegates are allocated, Clinton is still unlikely to clinch the nomination before California votes in June. In her primary night speech, Clinton praised Sanders' "vigorous campaign," but her focus was Donald Trump. "When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn't make him strong, it makes him wrong," she said, per the Hill. "We should be bringing down barriers, not building walls," she continued. "You know, to be great, we can't be small. We can't lose what made America great in the first place." Sanders probably can't win, but he should definitely stay in the race, writes Timothy Egan in a New York Times op-ed, praising the Vermont senator for energizing young voters, forcing the Democratic party to pay attention to the "angry millions in the margins," and pulling Clinton to the left on issues like trade deals and Wall Street. By staying in the race, Sanders' ideas "will shape every part of the party platform, which will give Clinton what she lacks: a clear message," Egan writes. "Eventually, he'll endorse the woman he influenced, and Democrats will be the better for it."
– Out of all the things that could go wrong with armed citizens guarding military recruitment centers, this was pretty minor, but it was enough to have the volunteers ordered away. Police told a group of volunteers to stop guarding a recruitment center in Lancaster, Ohio, after one of them accidentally fired a shot into the pavement, reports the Columbus Dispatch. Christopher Reed, 28, told police that his AR-15 rifle went off while he was taking ammunition out so he could show it to somebody who asked to look at it, the Dispatch reports. He was charged with discharging a firearm within city limits after somebody from the recruitment center called police. Similar groups have turned up at recruiting centers across the country in the wake of last week's Chattanooga shootings, though the Army has ordered recruiters to treat the "alleged concerned citizens" as a security threat and avoid interacting with them, Stars and Stripes reports. A Marine Corps Recruiting Command spokesman tells Marine Corps Times that while volunteers may have the "best intentions," they're not welcome, and Marines have been told to call police if they turn up. In Spanaway, Wash., volunteers guarding a recruitment center were told to leave a few hours after the Ohio incident, reports Q13 Fox. One volunteer says they were told that the landlord was worried about insurance issues.
– Three years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP has launched a suit of its own—against a plaintiffs' lawyer who, the company says, has represented tens of thousands of "phantom" clients in the case. BP says part of its settlement over the spill, worth $2.3 billion, was calculated using figures from lawyer Mikal Watts. "The facts of this case shout fraud," says a BP rep. "Tens of thousands of Mikal Watts’ clients have proved to be phantoms," and the "false representations improperly inflated the value of potential claims" in the seafood industry, Businessweek reports. Watts has said he was fighting for some 40,000 deckhands affected by the disaster, but half of them aren't real, according to BP, which found that 45% of their supposed social security numbers actually belonged to others, living or dead; others had made-up numbers. A lawyer for Watts says he "never committed identity theft and did not defraud BP or anyone else," and claims were reviewed by an independent body. He calls BP's move "another of a series of efforts to walk away from the settlement to which it agreed," the New York Times reports. In other BP news: An exploration well off Brazil turns out not to have commercially-viable amounts of fuel; the company will write off more than $1 billion in related costs, the Wall Street Journal reports. But BP says it has made a major oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, adding to a big year for the company's exploration efforts.
– The search for Flight 370 in its new search zone continues to produce tantalizing sightings, but no links to the plane so far. The latest comes from a Chinese military plane that spotted three suspicious objects today with colors that were at least a rough match for those of the Malaysian jet, reports AP. Australian and Chinese ships were retrieving those and other pieces of debris as quickly as possible for analysis, but it's no easy feat. "It’s an inaccessible place," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told the media, reports the New York Times. "We are trying to find small bits of wreckage in a vast ocean, and while we are throwing everything we have at it, the task goes on.” NBC News, meanwhile, offers a glimmer of hope in regard to figuring out what happened: The plane's black boxes should be able to survive about two years even if submerged in salt water 20,000 feet deep, it says. The deepest part of the new search area is about 13,000 feet.
– Star magazine weighs in today with a juicy rumor grabbing all kinds of attention: Al Gore broke up with Tipper because he was having an affair with Larry David's ex-wife. The tabloid says Al has been having a fling with Laurie David—an environmental activist who co-produced An Inconvenient Truth—for two years. It quotes an "insider" as saying, “Al and Laurie went from friends to lovers. It couldn’t be avoided." No word from the Gores, but a family friend tells the Daily News the story is "complete crap." The Davids have been divorced since 2007.
– An Arizona mom wants answers as to why her 5-year-old kindergartner now has a "sexual misconduct" stamp on his permanent school file. Erica Martinez says her son, Eric Lopez, pulled down his pants and exposed himself when another student at Ashton Ranch Elementary School "intimidated" him on the playground. The superintendent of the Dysart Unified School District says administrators labelled the event as "sexual misconduct" per school policy, but Martinez argues her son doesn't even know what that means and his actions were far from sexual, the Arizona Republic reports. Eric was asked to sign a "sexual misconduct" referral without Martinez present, CBS News previously reported—though school officials say the signature only indicates he received due process. Eric spent a lunch period in detention, but the referral will stay in his school record while he remains in the district. "This is a child's school record, and it's not something to be taken lightly," an expert notes. Labels like "sexual misconduct," another adds, could hurt a child this age if they're internalized. Kids need to be "put back on the right path ... rather than adults using adult words with kids that don't even really apply," that expert says, but the school says it's just following state guidelines for defining certain types of misbehavior. The status of Lopez's case is unclear—CBS reported last month that his mother's appeal to have the mark removed from his file was denied, but the Republic says she has not yet formally appealed.
– A long-awaited report on allegations of bullying in the NFL is in, and the main headline-grabbing point is that Richie Incognito (and others) did indeed harass Miami Dolphins teammate Jonathan Martin (and others), reports the Miami Herald. But the report by attorney Ted Wells also gets a little squishy on the subject. For instance, it concludes that Incognito didn't intend to cause "lasting emotional injury" or drive Martin to quit the team—Martin left in October over the abuse, but remains under contract—and it cites a range of factors that make this case unique. Some of the highlights: 'Was indeed harassed': "To be candid, we struggled with how to evaluate Martin's claims of harassment given his mental health issues, his possible heightened sensitivity to insults and his unusual, 'bipolar' friendship with Incognito. Nonetheless, we ultimately concluded that Martin was indeed harassed by Incognito, who can fairly be described as the main instigator, and by (teammates John) Jerry and (Mike) Pouncey, who tended to follow Incognito's lead." Other victims: Incognito, Pouncey, and Jerry also repeatedly harassed a member of the team's athletic training staff and another unnamed lineman, reports USA Today. Calls for new guidelines: "As all must surely recognize, the NFL is not an ordinary workplace. Professional football is a rough, contact sport played by men of exceptional size, speed, strength, and athleticism. But even the largest, strongest, and fleetest person may be driven to despair by bullying, taunting, and constant insults." The report encouraged new "workplace conduct rules" for the league. 'Breaking Jmart': One of the more damning points cited against Incognito is that he fined himself $200 for "breaking Jmart" in a notebook kept by the team's offensive linemen, reports CBS Sports. When the story broke, he asked teammates to destroy the notebook, but that didn't happen. Coaches didn't know: The report says coach Joe Philbin and staff were unaware of the abuse. It also says that "Incognito and his teammates may not have been clearly notified that they were crossing lines that would be enforced by the team with serious sanctions." Read the full report here. The NFL and the Dolphins say they'll respond after a thorough review.
– The mother of all teacher-student sex scandals is returning to the national spotlight—just ahead of the 10th wedding anniversary of the two people involved. That would be Mary Kay Letourneau and husband Vili Fualaau, whose interview with Barbara Walters airs on ABC tomorrow night. Letourneau is 53 and Fualaau 31, but their relationship made national headlines when Letourneau became pregnant with Fualaau's child when he was all of 13. She had been his sixth-grade teacher. Letourneau spent nearly eight years in jail, but the couple stayed together and now have two teenage daughters, Audrey and Georgia. ABC is providing a few teasers, including the nugget that Letourneau wants to teach again, presumably only after getting her status as a sex offender lifted. Fualaau, meanwhile, will discuss his struggles with alcoholism and depression, notes Us Weekly. "It was a huge change in my life, for sure," Fualaau recalls of the scandal. "I don't feel like I had the right support or the right help behind me ... from my family, from anyone in general. I mean, my friends couldn't help me because they had no idea what, what it was like to be a parent, I mean, because we were all 14, 15." Letourneau says they did the interview in part because they figured they'd be deluged with attention ahead of their May 20 anniversary, like it or not. "So it's about doing the most responsible thing to protect our girls for the inevitable."
– Will it be 53-47 or 52-48? The last election of 2018 will determine the Republican advantage in the Senate next year. GOP incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith is trying to fend off Democratic challenger Mike Espy in Mississippi in Tuesday's special election. As Politico reports, Hyde-Pierce has never trailed in the polls and continues to be the favorite to win, but a string of controversies—starting with her joke about a public hanging—has given Espy a bigger-than-expected shot at becoming the state's first black senator since Reconstruction. "A wounded front-runner" is how a political science professor in Jackson describes Hyde-Smith to Reuters. President Trump easily won the state in 2016, and he held two rallies there Monday for his fellow Republican. "Her heart is good," Trump said of Hyde-Smith, per CNN. Trump called her controversial joke "sad and a little flip," but he defended her explanation that it was meant as a good-natured way of praising a supporter. "When I spoke to her—she called me—she said, 'I said something that I meant exactly very different,' and I heard an apology loud and clear," Trump said. As for Espy: "How does he fit in with Mississippi?" the president asked, as noted by CNBC. "I mean, how does he fit in?" The website FiveThirtyEight reports that a survey last week had Hyde-Smith up 54% to 44%. (Major League Baseball was among those to ask for its donation back from Hyde-Smith.)
– If elected, Hillary Clinton vows to "put forward the biggest investment in new jobs since World War II" while Donald Trump promises to repair a "rigged system in which political insiders can break the law without consequence," the candidates write in dueling op-eds at USA Today. They mostly stick to their usual scripts, per CNN, which means hurling insults at each other. The highlights: Trump: He promises to repeal ObamaCare, fix "our terrible trade deals," "create 25 million good paying jobs," and "cut taxes on middle-class Americans by 35%." He also lays out his plan to "immediately secure the border, stop illegal immigration and keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country." We must drain "the swamp of corruption in Washington," he adds. "Hillary Clinton has been the subject of an FBI criminal investigation into many crimes against this nation. Were she ever to be elected, it would trigger an unprecedented constitutional crisis—Hillary is likely to be under investigation for a long time, grinding our government to a halt." The op-ed, published online Sunday evening, makes no mention of the FBI clearing Clinton of wrongdoing on Sunday afternoon. Clinton: Her priorities for her first 100 days in office include investing in jobs, renewable energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing; overturning Citizens United; and introducing "comprehensive immigration reform legislation" and "end-to-end criminal justice reform." "I'll never, ever quit," she writes. "I want to be president for all Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents; Americans of every race, faith and background. My opponent has run his campaign on divisiveness, fear and insults, and spent months pitting Americans against each other. I've said many times that Donald Trump has shown us who he is. Now we have to decide who we are." Read Trump's full piece here, and Clinton's here.
– Chloe Kabealo unbuckled her seatbelt after the car her mother was driving slid off a muddy Australia road into a flooded river and tried to "go up for air," then "just kept floating up out." That's how the 8-year-old survived the crash as the car sank, a harrowing experience she relived at a fundraising event this week, the BBC reports—but her mother, 11-year-old sister, and 7-year-old brother all drowned. "I'm not holding up," Chloe's dad, Matt, who was not in the car, said at the event. "I'm just being strong for my daughter." Chloe ran to a nearby farmhouse to get help, but rescuers couldn't save Stephanie King, 43, who was found to have died while trying in vain to save her other two children. "The mother was trying to get one of her children out of the car when she passed away," the local police superintendent told 7 News after the crash three weeks ago. "She was with the child, holding the child. I have no doubt she would still be alive if she wasn't trying to save her children." The fundraising event raised more than $10,000 for the family, news.com.au reports.
– Sarah Palin has already offered an explanation for the reportedly booze-fueled brouhaha in Anchorage her family was involved in last month, but now there's apparently audiotape to supplement that account. TMZ has released what it says is a copy of Bristol, Willow, and Sarah Palin's complaints to police outside a Sept. 6 party that got out of control (Radar and Extra also posted portions of the audio). The woman on the tape alleged to be Bristol "hysterically" tells cops that sister Willow had come up to her at the bash and said, "‘Some old lady just [expletive] pushed me. She just hit me." Bristol then adds that when she went to confront the alleged pusher, "some guy gets in my face, pushes me down on the grass, drags me across the grass! [Says to me], 'You sl-t, you f---ing c-nt." (Willow says on the tape that that guy was Korey Klingenmeyer, the host of the party.) Bristol then expands her litany of injustices: "They took my $300 sunglasses. They took my f---ing shoes and I’m f---ing left here? … Where is my s--t? I have a 5-year-old in the car!" The police report indicates Klingenmeyer asked Bristol to leave because he didn't want her to pick fights with anyone. Sarah Palin—who can allegedly be heard on the tape advising her progeny not to use obscenities and saying, "But they let the bad guys go!"—posted support for Bristol on Facebook on Sept. 19, raving, "I love my Bristol! My straight-shooter is one of the strongest young women you'll ever meet. I have to say this as a proud mama: … my kids' defense of family makes my heart soar!"
– Looks like a teenager's online petition has induced Coca-Cola to remove an ingredient from Powerade. The Mississippi teen, Sarah Kavanagh, led the charge with two Change.org petitions against brominated vegetable oil—one targeting Powerade, the other Gatorade—that gathered nearly 260,000 supporters in all, the AP reports. PepsiCo agreed to pull BVO from Gatorade last year, and now Powerade bottles in strawberry lemonade and fruit punch flavors in several cities don't have the ingredient listed. Some bottles still list it, and Coca-Cola said today that Powerade is "BVO-free," so it seems the company is phasing it out. Just what is BVO? According to the FDA, it's used in fruit-flavored drinks as a stabilizer for flavoring oils. But Bromine is a patented flame retardant that's banned in the European Union and Japan, and may be harmful to anyone who drinks it in large amounts, the Telegram reports. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo aren't the only companies under pressure from petitions: Subway yanked an FDA-approved ingredient known as the "yoga mat chemical" from its breads earlier this year when a petitioner at FoodBabe.com challenged the company's healthy-food image.
– An escaped lion, a taunting crowd, and an ill-prepared first-response team came together in Kenya to cause what some are saying was the unnecessary, senseless death of the lion, the country's Star reports. Mohawk, a 13-year-old lion who was one of Nairobi National Park's most well-known creatures due to his trademark mane and rep as somewhat of a "ladies' lion," had escaped from an unfenced section of the park and ended up in the town of Isinya, where he was promptly surrounded by a jeering group of men, the Washington Post reports. Mohawk became upset by the noise and the growing crowd—Kenya Wildlife Service officials tell the AP about 400 had surrounded him—and lunged at a 27-year-old man, who was sent to the hospital with bruises and severe lacerations on his back. The wildlife service already had an animal management team on the scene, but those rangers had only rifles, not tranquilizers. After Mohawk pounced on the bystander, the rangers felt they couldn't wait for a second team on its way with tranqs—so they unleashed what the Star says was nine bullets, leaving the animal "roaring and writhing in pain" as he died. "If the rangers had the right equipment, this lion would not have died," a local resident tells the paper. "You can't keep a lion in the midst of people for so many hours without stressing it. We blame them for this heinous act." The shooting has prompted plenty of backlash on social media, including a #JusticeForMohawk hashtag, but the wildlife service says it had no choice once the lion started attacking humans. "This action was taken as a last resort after an escalation of the situation and a concern for public safety," the Kenya Wildlife Service says, per CNN. A bunch of lions have busted out of the park lately, driven by what conservationists say is the noise from development projects, including a highway being built through the park. (Same ending, different means for Cecil the lion.)
– The Peruvian cop who claimed to have busted a crime ring that killed dozens of people to harvest their fat has been suspended for lying. Felix Murga, the country's top organized crime investigator, said that a gang had killed 60 people to sell their fat at $15,000 a liter. Investigators now believe there was just one victim and his murder was linked to drug trafficking, the BBC reports. Murga appears to have revived an ancient Andean legend of killers who roam the mountains extracting fat from travelers, say authorities, who blame him for damaging the police force's reputation and scaring tourists away. "This has been a ruse of bad taste," a local politician tells Reuters.
– An elderly woman, knowing she was suffering from dementia, chose to leave the world on her own terms this week—and she left behind a website calling for the right to physician-assisted suicide. Gillian Bennett, of British Columbia, wrote on the site that she didn't want to end up a "carcass" living with "no one inside," the Vancouver Sun reports. In dying, she said, "all I lose is an indefinite number of years of being a vegetable in a hospital setting, eating up the country's money but not having the faintest idea of who I am." So she took a combination of whiskey and sleeping pills Monday. Bennett, who was in her 80s, called for a legally-required living will for everyone age 50 and over, saying she hoped that views toward assisted suicide would change, CTV News reports. She and her husband were aware that legally, no one else could contribute to her dying process, the Sun notes. "Gillian and I both disliked and disapproved of the laws making it impossible to help a loved one with something as important as death," he says. Bennett died on a mattress in a favorite outdoor spot as her husband sat beside her. As they sat together, "she was absolutely not frightened … She was as calm and peaceful as you could imagine," her husband says.
– George Zimmerman is making headlines again, and these ones aren't good, either. A man in Lake Mary, Fla., says Zimmerman threatened to shoot him in a road rage confrontation, then showed up two days later near the man's work site, reports the Orlando Sentinel. Though he called police, who arrived and confirmed that it was indeed Zimmerman, the other man declined to press charges and Zimmerman wasn't arrested. Officers briefly confiscated a handgun from Zimmerman, who was acquitted last year in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, but returned it to him, shook hands, and sent him on his way. The incident began Tuesday morning, when 35-year-old Matthew Apperson made a U-turn on Lake Mary Boulevard and a truck soon pulled up alongside. He recognized the driver as Zimmerman, who reportedly said, "Do you know who I am? I will kill you," reports AP. When Apperson pulled off at a gas to phone police, Zimmerman followed but left before officers arrived. Two days later, Apperson called 911 again when he spotted Zimmerman in his truck, near Apperson's place of work. Zimmerman told officers he had a doctor's appointment nearby.
– Crimea first, eastern Ukraine next? Pro-Russia protesters last night seized government buildings in the cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk in Ukraine's largely Russian-speaking east, waving Russian flags and demanding a referendum on joining Russia, reports Reuters. In Donetsk, separatists have dubbed the region an independent republic, and have called for the sovereignty referendum to be held by May 11, the AP reports, noting that Crimea did much the same before Russia annexed it. These self-proclaimed lawmakers have also asked Vladimir Putin to send peacekeeping troops, according to Russia's state-run ITAR-Tass news agency. Acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov has canceled a trip abroad to deal with the unrest, and the country's interior minister, who blames the protests on Vladimir Putin and ousted Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich, says the turmoil will be dealt with non-violently. He added that "separatists" had been removed from one building in Kharkiv as of today. More: Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk today emphasized those Russian fears, saying that country's troops were roughly 20 miles from the border and asserting that "an anti-Ukrainian plan is being put into operation ... under which foreign troops will cross the border and seize the territory of the country." Reuters reports that in Luhansk, protesters occupying the state security building have reportedly taken hold of weapons. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that a Ukrainian military officer in Crimea was last night killed by a Russian soldier who fired an automatic weapon at the unarmed man. The death apparently resulted from a confrontation between a number of Ukrainian and Russian troops, and occurred in a military dorm. Some Ukrainian military personnel remain in Crimea to facilitate the transition, notes the Times.
– Scientists have discovered a new virus apparently transmitted through blood transfusions. Little else is known about human hepegivirus-1, or HHpgV-1, besides that it looks a bit like hepatitis C and the harmless and perhaps beneficial human pegivirus. "It is the first transfusion-associated virus that's been described in a long time," a researcher tells NBC News. He adds "we don't know if it is going to be a significant cause of human hepatitis," but scientists say it's unlikely. In fact, "it may be good for you." They first found the virus in blood samples from two volunteers, part of a study of 46, who received blood transfusions to treat hemophilia between 1974 and 1980. The virus only appeared after transfusions, but both patients cleared it and showed no sign of disease. Two more cases were found among 106 who'd received plasma, per mBio; both cleared the virus, though one was infected for five years. Even if the virus is harmful, researchers say there's no need to panic. "This is not SARS. This is not MERS. This is not HIV," says an expert. Whereas blood transfusions were once performed solely with human blood products, they now use genetically engineered products. Plus, blood is screened more carefully and stricter policies better control who donates blood compared to 25 years ago. "Does it cause trouble that would justify any response with blood safety? I don’t think we're at that level," a pathologist at the Blood Systems Research Institute tells Science. Scientists have yet to isolate the virus but say the next step is to develop an antibody test to find HHpgV-1 in a larger population. Afterward, experts can determine whether those with HHpgV-1 antibodies appear less healthy than those without the virus and look for links to disease. (A study suggests the seeds of Alzheimer's may pass through blood.)
– What kind of porn might be classified? The stuff watched by Osama bin Laden. A blogger at the men's website BroBible filed a, er, colorful Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA to get the details on the "pornographic material" found among bin Laden's stuff. (The request is here, and the language is a little graphic.) David Covucci got his formal answer this week from the spy agency: No dice. “With regard to the pornographic material Osama bin Laden had in his possession at the time of his death, responsive records, should they exist, would be contained in operational files,” and such files are exempt from FOIA requests, says the letter. Even if they weren't in the operational files, it seems that Covucci would have been out of luck: "To the extent that this material exists, the CIA would be prohibited by 18 USC Section 1461 from mailing obscene matter," adds the letter. Intelligence chief James Clapper confirmed the porn's existence last month, notes Death and Taxes, which finds it odd that the agency is keeping it wraps given the potential for embarrassment to al-Qaeda. Maybe it's a job for WikiLeaks, suggests Reason. And as for Covucci, "hold your head up, bro," writes Peter Holley at the Washington Post. "Now you’ve got a cool letter you can frame."
– She may have an almost impossible task ahead of her at Yahoo, but at least Marissa Mayer will be well paid for her efforts. Very well paid. Kara Swisher of All Things D reports that Yahoo could end up shelling out at least $60 million over five years, more than the company paid its previous bosses. Mayer's annual salary is a par-for-the course $1 million, but then come the extras. "The big number is a huge one-time retention award, vesting over five years, of $15 million in stock and $15 million in options," writes Swisher. But even $60 million might be undershooting it. The Wall Street Journal says Mayer will get $100 million over five years—if the company hits all its performance targets.
– Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, once described by a cybersecurity expert as the "most prolific bank robber in the world," ended up on a different list altogether in December: as one of the individuals noted in then-President Obama's sanctions against Russia for trying to influence the election. As Garrett M. Graff explains in his Wired piece, Bogachev is an FBI "most wanted" poster boy who developed a malware "masterpiece" under the screen name "Slavik," known for pulling off extensive financial transgressions around the globe. Now, however, Bogachev has become known as his homeland's "most notorious hacker," and he's still on the loose, despite the US government's multi-year battle to flush him out and haul him in. Graff's article details how Bogachev was constantly able to elude authorities where others couldn't, from the early days of the malware and ransomware projects he ran to the present. It also reveals the FBI's unceasing efforts to take down the botnet-driven schemes, a probe that eventually uncovered Slavik's real identity (Bogachev) and that he'd moved on from banks to government "espionage commands." The FBI finally launched Bogachev's day of reckoning: May 30, 2014, when the feds would take down his whole operation. It was an "amazing" day of "cyber-hand-to-hand combat," one witness, a Pittsburgh US attorney, says of the attack, which was a success. Bogachev, however—named on Obama's sanctions list not for election hacking (the US government doesn't think he was) but to pressure Russia to turn him over in "good faith"—may never be caught. "Bogachev and other Russian cybercriminals lie pretty far beyond America's reach," Graff laments. More on this thrilling cybercrime story at Wired. (A Hollywood hospital paid a computer ransom to hackers.)
– Snowboarders in Sochi have been raising serious concerns about the state of the Olympic halfpipe, the scene of actual competition today: "Everyone is not happy right now," 2006 US gold medalist Hannah Teter told the Washington Post after yesterday's practice. But that hasn't stopped the event from going forward, the New York Times reports. Qualifying rounds have begun, and officials will decide, based on conditions, whether semifinals and finals should take place tonight as planned. Yesterday, officials were working to improve the halfpipe. Yesterday's practice—postponed from the morning for improvements—didn't inspire confidence among the athletes. "I saw everyone take a hard fall today. That never happens," Teter said. Is it dangerous? "It's just not as fun," says teammate Danny Davis. Athletes said the halfpipe, which Shaun White calls "disappointing," was bumpy, its curvature was off, and the snow was loose; and those who avoided falling yesterday struggled to maintain speed, leading to less aggressive tricks. But the Times notes that halfpipe quality can fluctuate wildly depending on weather conditions and how it's maintained. Still, "this is going to be showcased to billions of people, and we want the best representation of halfpipe snowboarding," Teter says.
– Two ships have begun a race against time to try to find the black boxes of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 before the data recorder's battery-powered pinger ceases transmission. An Australian navy ship towing a pinger locator and a British survey vessel are searching a 150-mile track where the plane could have gone down, reports Reuters. "The area of highest probability as to where the aircraft might have entered the water is the area where the underwater search will commence," search chief Angus Houston told reporters. "On best advice the locator beacon will last about a month before it ceases its transmissions so we're now getting pretty close to the time when it might expire." The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8, so the search teams may now have just a few days to locate the signal, the BBC notes. Some 14 planes and nine ships are still searching an area of the southern Indian Ocean for floating wreckage, and Houston says there is still a strong possibility of finding debris like lifejackets. "This is a vast area, an area that’s quite remote, and we’ll continue the surface search for a good deal more time," he says. "If we find a piece of wreckage on the surface ... that gives us a much better datum to start the underwater search than we’ve currently got."
– Consumer Reports offers some age-old advice the next time you're cruising the grocery aisle: Don't pay for the brand name. It recently sampled 21 food products and found that generic brands beat or tied the brand-name version in taste on 14 of them. Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, for instance, lost to Food Lion's Lotsa Noodles, while America's Choice hot dogs outdid Oscar Mayer. Bonus: A family that spends $100 a week on groceries will save $1,500 a year by buying generic. More details here and at SlashFood.
– It's one of the more horrific allegations of a child abuse to come along for some time: Florida police found the corpse of a 10-year-old girl, covered in acid, in the back of her adopted father's truck. Her twin brother was in the front seat, nearly overcome by toxic fumes, and is recovering in intensive care from previous injuries including a broken arm and collar bone. Their adopted father, 53-year-old Jorge Barahona, was found outside the truck and has been charged with aggravated child abuse for now, reports CNN. The story coming together suggests the twins were adopted by Jorge and his wife and subjected to systemic abuse, including being bound by their hands and feet and forced to stay in the bathroom, reports the Miami Herald. State authorities had two previous reports of something amiss, including one on Feb. 10, but took no action against the parents. A heart-wrenching detail from the Herald: An investigation finally began when the couple's biological granddaughter told her therapist she wanted to break open her piggy bank to help the twins escape. Click for more.
– Cops in Philadelphia have vowed to track down the vandals who toppled large numbers of headstones in a Jewish cemetery over the weekend. Initial estimates put the number of graves vandalized in the Mount Carmel at around 100. CBS Philadelphia reports that the estimate has risen to 300. "It's criminal. This is beyond vandalism," Northeast Detectives Capt. Shawn Thrush tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It's beyond belief." Police say the damage was discovered Sunday morning after a man called to report that three of his relatives' headstones had been knocked over, the AP reports. The Anne Frank Center said it was "sickened, sickened, sickened" by the vandalism and urged President Trump to deliver a nationally televised speech outlining how he plans to fight anti-Semitism, as well as "Islamophobia and other rising forms of hate," the New York Daily News reports. Mayor Mike Kenny offered condolences to affected families. "Hate is not permissible in Philadelphia," he said. "I encourage Philadelphians to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters and to show them that we are the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection." (After a similar attack in Missouri last week, Muslim-Americans started a fundraiser.)
– President Obama was greeted with some unexpected spice at the end of his town hall meeting in Iowa last night, when the founder of the Iowa Tea Party confronted him about Joe Biden's alleged remark that Tea Party members acted like "terrorists" (the VP denies saying it). Obama didn't directly respond in public, but did tell Ryan Rhodes that "as someone who’s been called a socialist, not born here, taking away freedoms for providing health care, I’m all for lowering the rhetoric." The two then apparently held a brief but "animated" private conversation, reports Greta Van Susteren's GretaWire. In a subsequent interview with Fox News, Rhodes said of his encounter with Obama, "He just denied it, he said the vice president didn’t make any of those assertions. He doesn’t want to even admit what was on TV nationally." Audio of their discussion was not available. Some attendees at the Iowa meeting disapproved of Rhodes' questioning, with one woman telling him it was "extraordinarily rude." Unapologetic, Rhodes said of the exchange, “I said my piece."
– The actress who plays Miss Claudette on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black emerged from a medically induced coma yesterday after 16 days, reports Us. Doctors put Michelle Hurst in the coma after a bad car accident, and supporters set up an online fundraising page for her medical bills, notes E! Online. Thanks to public tweets from the likes of Piper Kerman, whose memoir about prison life is the basis of the series, and actress Taylor Schilling, who plays the role of Piper in the show, the page has raised more than $14,000 toward its $20,000 goal. Hurst's condition isn't clear, but the page says she is "responsive" and "progressing slowly."
– When covering the story four years ago, Newser's headline read, "$7.5M Bitcoin Fortune Buried in Landfill." That fortune ended up in a Welsh landfill after James Howells threw out a hard drive over that summer while cleaning up his workspace. On it was the cryptographic "private key" he needed to access his 7,500 Bitcoins—which are now worth far, far more. With bitcoin valued at roughly $17,000 as of Wednesday, those 7,500 lost bitcoins are worth more than $127 million, reports CNBC. He tells the Telegraph that he hasn't "sat here crying about it, accidents happen." But that hasn't deterred him from hoping he'll one day get to go searching at the Newport landfill, something the Newport City Council currently won't allow. It would be a novel undertaking: "A landfill has never been excavated in the UK before" for non-criminal reasons, he says, "so we’re in uncharted territory with regards to regulations, local authorities and environmental agencies." And there are plenty of risks, from deadly gases to the possibility of landfill fires, not to mention the cost. But "the higher the value goes, the more chance I have to recover it," he says. Wired spoke with a rep from the city council, and the upshot isn't too optimistic, with the rep citing the huge costs of doing the excavating and storing the waste, plus the "huge environmental impact on the surrounding area"—and after all that, the hard drive might not be found or usable, though Howells has brushed off naysayers who argue the drive would be destroyed by corrosion at this point. (Read about a bitcoin crime.)
– President Obama has officially entered the 21st century: He has his very own Twitter account, @POTUS. As of this writing, there's only one tweet on it: "Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account." As for the bio section of the account, it describes him as a father first: "Dad, husband, and 44th President of the United States." Meanwhile, @WhiteHouse features a picture of Obama with his phone, captioned: "President Obama. In the Oval Office. Tweeting." He's also been welcomed to Twitter by his wife and his VP, among others. The White House says the account "will serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him."
– The heart attack that ultimately killed Michael Clarke Duncan happened in July, the AP reports. The gentle giant of an actor "suffered a myocardial infarction on July 13 and never fully recovered," reads a statement from Duncan's fiancée, Apprentice-star-turned-minister Omarosa Manigault. Duncan was still being treated at LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center when he died yesterday. The AP notes that Duncan became a vegetarian three years ago, and just this spring did a video for PETA saying he was "a lot healthier" since giving up meat. Duncan and Manigault were planning to wed in January, reports TMZ. Wedding preparations had just begun when Duncan went into full cardiac arrest. Though doctors were flown in to help him, he never left the hospital. Tributes to the actor are rolling in from all corners of Hollywood, but one of the most touching comes from Tom Hanks, Duncan's co-star in The Green Mile. "I am terribly saddened at the loss of Big Mike," Hanks tells Entertainment Tonight. "He was the treasure we all discovered on the set of The Green Mile. He was magic. He was a big love of man and his passing leaves us stunned."
– The Keystone State, which set sail in 1849 as one of the largest and most luxurious steamer ships of its time, sank during a November storm in 1861 with 33 people aboard. No one knew its fate for more than a week, until debris was spotted, and it's been lost since then—until now. A shipwreck hunter found it at the bottom of Lake Huron, 40 to 50 miles from where it was last seen and far from where David Trotter expected to find it. Some historians say the ship may have been secretly hauling Civil War supplies when it sank, the Detroit Free Press reports—and there are even rumors it may have been carrying gold, according to Michigan Live. By 1857, after an economic downturn and the rise of the railroad, many ships like the Keystone State were considered too pricey to operate. By 1861, however, thanks to the Civil War, the Keystone State had been taken out of storage and refurbished. It picked up its cargo in Detroit—officially, farm implements, hardware, and grain, but "it was an emergency shipment," a historian explains; he adds that typically a ship wouldn't have made a trip like that so late in the year. Also suspect: The ship wasn't carrying any lifeboats (everyone aboard died in the wreck), which could indicate it left in a hurry. Trotter's team found her using side-scan sonar in July, and has since made 30 dives at the site—which turned up no gold or cargo. Some speculate that the crew dumped the cargo in a bid to save the ship. (Another ship was found this year in Lake Superior.)
– The families of Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos are living a nightmare—the 14-year-old boys are missing at sea and their capsized boat was found on Sunday—but they believe the teens have the skills to survive. As the search off the coast of Florida continues, family members say the boys may have crafted a flotation device using items including life jackets, an engine cover, and a cooler that were missing from their single-engine fishing boat, USA Today reports. Relatives and neighbors say the boys, like others in their Palm Beach County neighborhood, are experienced sailors and have been around boats their entire lives, reports the Palm Beach Post. A Coast Guard spokesman says the search is continuing "aggressively" and the water is warm enough that the teens, who were last seen on Friday, could survive for four or five days, the Post reports. Because of currents, search efforts are focusing on the area north of where the boat was found near Daytona Beach, though they could be hard to spot, the spokesman says. "When a person is in the water, you're basically looking for the chest up, so it's a relatively small object you're looking for," he says. "It's a challenging environment." The families have urged people from Palm Beach to the coast of Georgia to look for clues that might have washed up, especially the Yamaha engine cover and YETI cooler, NBC News reports.
– The media gave us plenty of predictions for 2010, and plenty of them simply didn’t come true. AOL News lists some of the most glaring: Job growth will begin again. Newsweek predicted it unemployment would fall “below 9%,” but it was never less than 9.5%. Republicans won’t storm the midterms. The National Review foresaw “good, though not great, gains.” The GOP won 63 House seats. Twitter will fizzle. Tell that to the 100 million new users this year, CNBC. We’ll start riding Google Wave. Or so thought CNN. Google shut it down within a year of its debut. Netbooks will be hot. CNBC was wrong here, too: sales sunk. The iPad won’t sell. More than 4 million buyers proved Infoworld.com incorrect. Americans will use mobile devices like credit cards. So said reichental.com. Swiped your smartphone lately?
– NFL players' reaction to President Trump in regard to the national anthem was, not surprisingly, a big topic on Monday's op-ed pages. Here's a sampling: Wall Street Journal: The newspaper's editorial sounds fed up with everybody involved, blaming the left for initially exploiting the Colin Kaepernick situation, then Trump for exploiting the blowback. It adds that players who kneel shouldn't be surprised to hear boos, because "disrespecting the national anthem puts partisanship above a symbol of nationhood that thousands have died for." But ultimately, the real losers in all this "are the millions of Americans who would rather cheer for their teams on Sunday as a respite from work and the other divisions of American life." Daily Caller: In a column, Scott Greer writes that Trump seems to be relishing his role as an "Oval Office culture warrior," perhaps because his legislative agenda keeps hitting roadblocks. This fight may pay off: "In the fight over kneeling, Trump is facing off against out-of-touch athletes who appear to be opposing the flag and the troops. ESPN and most political pundits may think he is a dummy for engaging in this fight, but if [the] NFL continues to lose fans over it, Trump will come out as the victor." New York Times: Its editorial pits Trump as the villain here and Kaepernick as the hero of sorts. The QB still can't find a team, but the weekend protests "might well have been a huge victory for free speech and the cause of racial justice he has so bravely espoused." The editorial gives the last word to LeBron James, who tweeted of Trump that "going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!” Washington Post: The editors don't care what Trump thinks of Kaepernick. But "when his response to protest is to question patriotism rather than engage on the issue of unequal policing—then it is Mr. Trump who 'disrespects our Flag & our Country.'" USA Today: Its editorial faults Trump as "divider in chief" and says his use of the presidential bully pulpit to fault those exercising their right to dissent is "simply indecent." But an op-ed at the newspaper by former Nebraska Congressman Jon Christensen praises Trump's move. "When millionaire athletes refuse to honor America and pay homage to the men and women who died for our freedom, and instead, choose to use their field of occupation to make a statement, then I can choose to turn the channel." They do indeed deserve to be fired, he adds.
– In a case of life imitating Seinfeld, a 23-year-old guy in South Carolina thought it would be a great idea to play a real-life version of Frogger—and got hit by an SUV for his trouble. The man was talking about the video game with friends—it involves navigating frogs across a busy road—before shouting “go” and running into traffic Monday night, the AP reports. He was hospitalized, but was set to be released yesterday; the driver will likely not be charged. The police chief, not surprisingly, suspects alcohol may have been involved. “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” he tells the Independent Mail. “I had to ask questions to even find out what Frogger is.”
– Marking an anniversary by sharing a photo on Twitter is a pretty routine thing to do, but Suicide Squad director David Ayer did just that in a pretty atypical way yesterday. He marked the Joker's April 25, 1940, comic book debut by tweeting the first image released of Jared Leto as Joker, the role he's playing in the film. It's a Joker complete with green hair, crimson lips, nasty teeth, and a tattoo-heavy body. Among the ink: "HA" repeated over and over, and a cursive "Damaged" on the forehead. Rolling Stone reports the look was inspired by Batman: The Killing Joke, and points out that it's not the first time Ayer has referenced Alan Moore's graphic novel. That leads the magazine to speculate that Leto's turn as the Joker in the film—due Aug. 5, 2016—will hew closer to Moore's Joker, a bust-of-a-stand-up comic who is disfigured and goes crazy in the span of a single day. USA Today also calls out a harlequin skull tattoo on Leto's chest, which it sees as "most likely an ode to his Suicide Squad girlfriend Harley Quinn." She's played by Margot Robbie. The rest of the big-name cast includes Will Smith as Deadshot, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, and Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg. What they'll be doing, per the IMDB description: "A secret government agency recruits imprisoned supervillains to execute dangerous black ops missions in exchange for clemency."
– The man who authorities say shot to death 12 people at a California bar on Wednesday was posting to social media during the attack, according to NBC. TMZ reports that sources say that Ian Long, a 28-year-old former Marine who also died in the attack, had a gun in one hand and his phone in the other during his rampage at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks and posted a message to Instagram and Facebook, writing in part: “I hope people call me insane .. wouldn’t that just be a big ball of irony.” Facebook, which owns Instagram, declined NBC’s request for a comment, but did say that it had taken down Long’s accounts “and will remove any praise or support for the crime or the shooter as soon as we’re aware.” A law enforcement official tells the AP that investigators still haven’t determined a motive for the attack, adding that they are looking onto whether Long, who they believe killed himself, thought his ex-girlfriend would be at the bar. TMZ sources say that the attack was motivated by revenge, with one saying that Long had been bullied in high school and many of those former classmates often spent Wednesdays at the bar, where Long was reportedly a regular.
– Last night, British PM David Cameron enjoyed his very first taste of March Madness, compliments of President Obama. At tonight's state dinner, he'll likely enjoy some American wine as well—but don't expect too many details about the winery, year, or appellation. That's because Obama put a stop to the tradition of revealing said info after his third state dinner ... following a brouhaha over the price tag. In honor of Hu Jintao's visit, the Chinese president was served a 2005 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington state that garnered a 100-point Robert Parker rating. The White House didn't say how much it paid per bottle, but it originally retailed for $115, and was selling for $300 and up by the time of the Jan. 19, 2011, dinner. So when Angela Merkel was honored at a state dinner in June, the released menu said nothing more than "an American wine will be paired with each course." Ditto for South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak's Oct. 13 menu. And while the move may ostensibly make sense ("they’re probably sensitive to displays of wealth at a time when the economy is not firing on all cylinders," says one wine expert), many argue the move hurts, instead of helps. Promoting top winemakers "is good for America," says one wine editor, and Bloomberg notes that state dinners provide a prime opportunity to show China and other new big wine importers what the US has to offer. To wit, Quilceda Creek saw a "pretty significant" uptick in Asia after Hu's dinner.
– "Pachyderms have lost a great champion." That's the tribute of one elephant expert for Esmond Bradley Martin, one of the world's most well-known ivory investigators, who was found killed in his home in Nairobi, Kenya, per the Telegraph and BBC. The 75-year-old had a stab wound to his neck, and investigators believe his death was the result of a robbery gone wrong. His wife says she went out for a nature walk and discovered his body upon returning home around 4pm Sunday, per the Star. Bradley Martin, identifiable by a colorful handkerchief he often had peeking out of his jacket pocket, was a major figure within the wildlife conservation movement who'd risen to prominence by going undercover, usually posing as a buyer, to expose the illegal market for ivory and rhino horn. A former UN special envoy for rhino conservation, Bradley Martin began his efforts in earnest in the 1970s, when the number of elephants being slaughtered for their ivory spiked. That's when he left the US for Kenya, and his work helped put an end to the sales of rhino horn and ivory in China. His travels also took him to Vietnam and Laos, where last year he and another researcher revealed the latter country's ivory trade was the fastest growing in the world. Their work there involved the dangerous ploy of pretending they were buyers and staying in a casino frequented by organized-crime members and traffickers, all so they could find out what the going price for ivory was. Local police say they've already questioned a cook and gardener at Bradley Martin's home and have come up empty so far on suspects.
– Facts and numbers were flying in last night's debate, and President Obama and Mitt Romney agreed on so few of them that "the two men seemed to be inhabiting two parallel universes," Politico observes. Thankfully, a swarm of fact-checkers have been poring over the candidates' statements to sort things out. Here are some of the more egregious fibs: Romney: "I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit." Independent analysis indicates that Romney's tax plan would add $5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. Romney says he'll pay for that by reducing deductions and credits, but the Tax Policy Center concluded that was "mathematically impossible." Obama: "We've made some adjustments" to Simpson-Bowles. Obama's plan is not, as he implied, comparable to Simpson-Bowles. It's much less aggressive, doesn't touch Social Security, and, while it too reduces the deficit by $4 trillion, it takes an extra year to do it. Romney on green energy loan recipients: "I think about half have gone out of business." Try three out of 26. Romney: Dodd-Frank "designates a number of banks as too big to fail." The law designates some banks for special treatment, but that treatment involves extra regulation and a way to liquidate them if they run into trouble; they are not, as Romney argued "effectively guaranteed by the federal government." Romney: "Pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan." Romney's health care plan only covers people with pre-existing conditions if they "maintain continuous coverage," which was more or less the situation before ObamaCare. Obama: "Under Governor Romney's definition … Donald Trump is a small business." Romney's plan doesn't actually define small businesses. But the federal government does, and under its guidelines, Trump is a small business, because he owns some businesses with fewer than 500 employees, according to CNN. Obama: "I've put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan." True, but that plan counts savings already agreed on during the debt ceiling debate. Romney: "The president said he'd cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it." When Obama took office, the projected deficit for 2009 was $1.2 trillion. For fiscal 2012, the deficit is expected to be $1.1 trillion, the New York Times reports.
– Authorities in New York and New Jersey have arrested a trio of scofflaws for allegedly racking up more than $130,000 in unpaid tolls and fines, the New York Daily News reports. Denise Simien was the most recent suspect to be nabbed. Authorities say she took the Holland Tunnel more than 500 times without paying the toll (though WABC puts the number closer to 250), racking up more than $16,000 in unpaid tolls and fees. The 55-year-old New Jersey woman allegedly added one more to her tally, attempting to flee police through the Holland Tunnel on Wednesday…without paying the toll, the Jersey Journal reports. Earlier this month, authorities arrested 34-year-old Willie Reyes and 45-year-old Spirdon Fragoulis for racking up unpaid tolls and fees on their E-Z Passes. Authorities say Reyes owes more than $37,000. Tow-truck driver Fragoulis allegedly failed to pay his tolls 850 times and owes more than $78,000. "These motorists are the most prolific that we have seen at this time," a spokesperson for the Port Authority tells the Daily News. "When we have repeat offenders the Port Authority makes even greater effort to crackdown."
– A French town is being terrorized by a serial killer—but humans aren't the target. The Telegraph reports that someone in the village of Minihy-Treguier has so far slaughtered more than 100 rabbits, slipping into residents' yards, yanking rabbits out of their hutches, and either stomping them to death by foot or murdering them with a sharp tool of some kind. "The cages are opened, then the animals are killed in cold blood and left at the scene," a police statement notes, per the Sunday Times. The town's mayor says there've been 15 attacks in all, starting in March, with some homes getting hit more than once. "He returned to one home four times, killing 20 rabbits there in all," the mayor notes. One woman who lost six adult rabbits—as well as some of their babies, which died after the mothers were killed—tells local media she once surprised a man she though was the rabbit murderer, wearing a black hat and a long raincoat, one morning, "but he had the time to make his escape." Oddly left alone in these murderous rampages: chickens and geese that often cohabitate with the bunnies. (Authorities don't think foxes or other animals are killing the rabbits, as was the case with a slew of mysterious cat deaths in the UK.)
– Two and a half years after the execution-style slayings of eight members of the Rhoden family in Ohio, another family has been arrested. Four members of the Wagner family were arrested Tuesday, and authorities say a custody dispute played a role in the murders, the AP reports. Edward "Jake" Wagner, now 26, was the ex-boyfriend of Hanna Rhoden, 19, who was killed while lying in bed with her 4-day-old baby girl. Wagner was not the newborn's father, but shared custody of another daughter, Sophia, now 5, with Rhoden. Sophia was not with her mother when she was murdered; the newborn as well as two of her young cousins who were present were not hurt. (This chart shows how all the victims were related.) Also arrested, per Cincinnati.com: Wagner's parents George "Billy" Wagner III, 47, and Angela Wagner, 48, and his brother George Wagner IV, 27. All four have been charged with eight counts of aggravated murder and also face a slew of other charges. The mothers of both elder Wagners were also arrested and accused of forging custody documents in an alleged cover-up of the crimes. Citing a "fixation" and "obsession" the Wagner family allegedly had with the custody situation, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Tuesday the situation is "the most bizarre story I've ever seen. It's just amazing." Authorities say the Wagners knew the Rhodens well and spent months studying their routines and the layouts of their homes. But the Wagners have long denied involvement and insisted they were close friends with the Rhodens; they moved to Alaska after the killings due, they said, to intense speculation over their possible involvement in the case. "Sophia is getting older," Jake Wagner (who also set up a GoFundMe for custody-related legal bills in the wake of the massacre) said at the time, so they moved "so she wouldn’t hear it." They were arrested, however, in Ohio and Kentucky. (See all our previous coverage of the massacre.)
– A psychedelic brew from the jungles of Brazil shows promise as a treatment for depression—in fact, as a treatment for those who don't respond to more traditional medication. Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo have just published the results of the first clinical trial involving the anti-depressant effects of ayahuasca, a centuries-old drink made from jungle vine and shrubs long used in religious ceremonies in South America, reports Scientific American. Patients began to feel better within a couple of hours—conventional medications can take weeks to kick in—and the beneficial effects lasted for three weeks. The "psychedelic" part wore off after about five hours. "This is an area that really does merit further work and serious consideration," a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, not involved with the study tells the Huffington Post. "There's a need for effective treatments that can work in the short term." Like conventional anti-depressant medications, the chemical compounds in ayahuasca seem to alter the brain's level of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that regulates mood. Popular Science highlights one "grain of salt" aspect of the study: It was small, with just six participants, and it did not have a placebo group. But more studies are under way, and a much larger one at at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte should wrap up this year. (Another study finds that talk therapy is effective at preventing suicides.)
– Previous studies have documented that scarfing down peanuts or nuts every day can lead to better cardiovascular health. But now research is suggesting that eating peanuts and tree nuts like almonds, cashews, and walnuts are linked to lower mortality rates, per a Maastricht University press release. The study, published online today in the International Journal of Epidemiology, found that both men and women who ate at least 10 grams of peanuts or nuts daily saw a reduced risk of dying from not only heart disease, but also from respiratory illnesses, cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases. The only disappointing result, expressed in the saddest sentence you may read all week: "[The study] finds no protective effect for peanut butter." The press release notes that the health benefits of peanuts and nuts are probably due to what they're harboring inside their shells: an amalgam of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (the so-called "good" fats), fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, and other compounds. And it's not like you have to go overboard in your nut-eating habits: Researchers in the Maastricht University study found that eating more than an average 15 grams per day—or half a handful—didn't confer any lower mortality risk. So what gives with peanut butter, which ostensibly contains those same ingredients? Researchers speculate it's all the other stuff peanut butter has added, such as salt and vegetable oils, that may prevent the tasty spread from being more healthful. (Peanut butter may be able to help in the fight against Alzheimer's.)
– Despite reports Thursday that they wouldn't be charged with a crime, the five teens who allegedly laughed and filmed a man as he drowned in Florida earlier this month could now face misdemeanor charges. ABC News reports police have recommended charges for "duty to report" against the unnamed teens, who range in age from 14 to 16. News 13 explains that while Florida doesn't have a law requiring bystanders to report someone dying, it does have a law that requires people to report someone has died. Jamel Dunn, 31, drowned earlier this month. Cocoa Police Chief Mike Cantaloupe says it's the first time the law would be used in this manner, and the teens would serve as a "test case." News 13 reports the statute is most typically applied to medical examiners. The State Attorney's Office worked with police to come up with the charges, but the office will determine whether to prosecute the case. Cantaloupe previously called the teens' actions "utterly inhumane and cruel."
– One of roughly 10 employees at Yarrabee Farms in rural Poweshiek County, Iowa, the 24-year-old lived in a mobile home on the property, always showed up for work, and got along with his co-workers as he took care of the cows over the course of four years. It was only Tuesday that his employers learned his real name. Cristhian Rivera, accused of killing 20-year-old University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, used a different name associated with an out-of-state government ID and matching Social Security card when he got a job at the dairy farm through a former girlfriend in 2014, reports the Des Moines Register. When the information was run though the Social Security Administration's verification service, everything checked out, farm manager Dane Lang tells the AP. But "our employee was not who he said he was," adds Lang, son of farm co-owner and prominent Republican Craig Lang. "This was shocking to us." Immigration officials now suspect Rivera was in the US illegally. Per the AP, a Facebook page in his name gives his hometown as Guayabillo, Mexico, a community of less than 500. The AP adds Rivera's attorney, Allan Richards, on Wednesday said he might argue his client was here legally, saying Rivera had been in the US since he was a minor and paid taxes. But Richards did say he hadn't verified Rivera's immigration status. At a vigil at the University of Iowa where Tibbetts would've started her sophomore year on Monday, her brother had one request for the hundreds gathered: make a friend. "You can always attribute that friendship … to my sister, and that would mean the world to her," he said, per the Register.
– It was a dramatic stunt straight out of a movie, but it ended disastrously for members of Russia's notorious Grand Theft Auto Gang. Three of them are dead and two others wounded after a failed escape attempt from a courthouse in Moscow, reports Reuters. In addition to the gang members, one law-enforcement officer was shot and two others suffered lesser injuries, though the details were still firming up. The drama began when the five handcuffed men were being escorted to their courtroom in an elevator by two guards. They managed to overpower the guards and take their weapons, but all five were subsequently shot as they attempted to escape the building. The men were among nine being held on robbery and murder charges over a spate of fatal carjackings in 2014. Authorities say they would place spikes on roads, then kill drivers who got out of their cars to investigate. More than a dozen motorists were killed in that fashion, and Russian media dubbed the assailants the Grand Theft Auto Gang after the video game, reports the AP.
– An Italian WWII pilot who died battling US pilots 70 years ago has been found 13 feet underground, his remains still at the controls of a fighter plane armed with machine guns and cannons, Discovery reports. Lt. Guerrino Bortolani went down in a losing battle against Allied planes on March 11, 1944, and hit the ground so hard that he literally vanished into the countryside outside Padua in northern Italy. "The crash site is now a cornfield," says a member of the wreck-hunting crew that found Bortolani. "We were able to find the remains with the help of an elderly man, who on that day witnessed the fighter going into a nosedive and hit the ground." Bortolani was flying the best Italian fighter plane (the Macchi C.205) in a squadron led by the renowned Italian ace Adriano Visconti. But they went up against a daunting strike by the Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force—which had sent 111 B-17 planes over Padua to drop more than 300 tons of bombs. Allies said the Axis defense was "aggressive," but five German planes and four Italian planes went down. Bortolani was "dutiful until the end," the Week notes, sitting on his closed parachute and wearing a ring given him by a fighter pilot academy. Wreck-hunters found several parts of the plane as well, including the tail wheel, control stick, and pieces of the engine. Bortolani is expected to have a proper burial once relatives are found. (Read about a German U-boat found off North Carolina.)
– A tsunami warning has been lifted and residents of Okinawa are breathing a sigh of relief after an earthquake rattled the southern Japanese island early Saturday morning. " First there was a strong vertical shake, then sideways," an official of the city of Naha tells Reuters. "The strong quake lasted for about 10 seconds ." There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties on the eight American military bases in the area, CNN reports.
– After two decades of "don't ask, don't tell," the social networking website Out Military is saying: "Do ask, do tell," reports Reuters. Out Military has only 53 members so far, but its backers say that will change as the US military implements the policy repeal. The military is still drafting new regulations, and a date for implementation has not been set yet. "I joined, more than anything, so that I could maybe help someone else," said one Vietnam veteran. But Out Military founder John McKinnon advises new members not to post revealing information before the ban is lifted. The site "might be a little bit early, but it's not too early to join," he said.
– A police officer near Boston was killed with his own service weapon Sunday morning, CBS Boston reports. Weymouth Police Department officers were responding to a call about an erratic driver around 7:30am and found a crashed BMW. While searching for the driver, officer Michael Chesna, a married Iraq and Afghanistan veteran with two kids ages 4 and 9, found Emanuel Lopes, 20, allegedly vandalizing a home. Chesna drew his gun and ordered Lopes to stop, but, police say, Lopes threw a rock at Chesna, hitting him in the head and knocking him to the ground. Lopes then allegedly took Chesna's gun and shot him multiple times in the head and chest. Officers fired on Lopes and gave chase as he allegedly continued to shoot, CNN reports. One of Lopes' alleged shots killed Vera Adams, 77, who was sitting inside her home nearby. Lopes had been arrested in September for allegedly throwing a rock through the bedroom window of a home he'd been asked to leave; he was charged with property damage and released on pre-trial probation. He was arrested again in October on charges of dealing cocaine and resisting arrest, the Boston Herald reports; he was freed on bail in November and was due in court July 30 for those charges. He had entered an addiction treatment center sometime after posting bail in November, court papers show, but it's not clear when he left. As a condition of his probation he was required to remain free of drugs and alcohol, but he allegedly failed to appear for a random drug screening in February; at a pre-trial probation violation hearing in April, he was allowed to remain free with the same conditions. He is currently hospitalized for a non-life-threatening gunshot wound to his leg.
– Beard hygiene is important unless you want to have the equivalent of a dirty toilet seat growing out of your face, according to a microbiologist who swabbed a bunch of beards and was shocked by the results. "I'm usually not surprised and I was surprised by this," Quest Diagnostics expert John Golobic tells KOAT, explaining that some samples yielded the "types of things you'd find in" fecal matter, signaling a "degree of uncleanliness that would be somewhat disturbing" even if the beard matter probably won't make people sick. Golobic says that similar results in a public water system would close it for disinfecting. He urges the bearded to keep their beards—and hands—clean, and "to keep your hands away from your face, as much as possible." Nick Evershed at the Guardian, however, notes that this wasn't exactly a scientific study—and even if it was, the diversity of microbes found on human skin means it wouldn't have to be cause for concern. Evershed checked out a few more serious studies on beard bacteria, which were conducted in hospitals, and found that while bearded workers do appear to shed more bacteria than others, even clean-shaven workers shed enough to show the importance of "face coverings for sterile procedures, regardless of your facial hair situation." (A bank robber in Pittsburgh disguised his beard with another beard.)
– Two Tennessee high school girls' basketball teams have been chucked out of the playoffs after a farcical game that the referee says both teams tried to lose. According to the referee's report from the Saturday game between Riverdale and Smyrna, players "missed 12-16 free throws intentionally," "wouldn't get the ball across the half-court line to get a 10-second count or to make us call an over and back violation intentionally," and one player "looked at one of the officials and gave the official a 3-second signal, wanting him to call three seconds on her," the Daily News Journal reports. The ref says the last straw was when a Smyrna player was about to shoot at the wrong basket. Both teams were trying to avoid facing top-ranked Blackman High School in the tournament, reports USA Today. After the referee ordered both coaches not to make a "travesty or mockery of the game," Smyrna ended up winning, but the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association decided to pull both teams from the postseason, fine the schools $1,500 each, and put them on probation for a year, ESPN reports. Smyrna's principal tells the News Journal that he and his counterpart at Riverdale failed to convince the TSSAA to allow both teams to stay in the playoffs with both coaches suspended. (During the 2012 Olympics, eight badminton players went home early after playing to lose.)
– After offering a Gitmo compromise to President Obama, Lindsey Graham got called everything from a "cretin" to someone making a "deal with the devil" this week by his fellow Republicans. That's just business as usual for Graham, whose designation may as well be "R-No Man's Land," writes Dana Milbank. Graham seems genuinely concerned with getting things right than with blindly sticking to some ideological purity test, and that, sadly, makes him an "oddball" on Capitol Hill. "Though Graham doesn't have to face primary voters until 2014, his defiance of the GOP purity police is still courageous," writes Milbank in the Washington Post. "His Republican colleagues in Congress, wetting their pants out of fear of the tea party movement, show no sign of joining him."
– Matt Berical noticed that his restless nights always ended with him facing right, while his girlfriend mostly reported nightmares after waking on her left. "Is there, I wondered, a correlation between bad dreams and sleeping position?" writes Berical at Van Winkles. He dug up a 2004 study that asked 45 men and 18 women to sleep on one side or the other and fill out a popular sleep questionnaire called the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (which evaluates sleep using seven factors, including "subjective sleep quality," sleep duration, and use of sleep drugs). The study found that just 14.6% of right-side sleepers reported bad dreams, compared to 40.9% of their lefty counterparts. Right-side sleepers also reported more dreams with feelings of safety or relief, but had worse-quality sleep than left-siders. Berical also found a 2012 study that analyzed the sleep positions and dreams of over 670 students. The study found that face-down sleepers had more positive and vivid dreams, which were more often about "sex," "being unable to move," "being tied up," or "being locked up," Van Winkles reports. The researcher behind that study, Calvin Kai-Ching Yu, concluded that "the brain during sleep is not at all totally detached from the external world," adding that "the unconscious brains of the dreamers try to make sense, and even make use of, the external stimuli." Berical's conclusion? "It can’t hurt to roll your loved one over when you sense a nightmare coming on," he writes. "Assuming you can avoid the flailing arms, that is." (It turns out that humans are incredibly good at sleeping.)
– A researcher at Russia's remote Bellingshausen station allegedly stabbed a colleague earlier this month, the Guardian reports, citing the Russian-language Interfax news agency. Investigators say that the researcher, identified as Sergey Savitsky, wielded a knife on Oct. 9 and "deliberately struck [his colleague] at least one blow to the body" in the station's dining room. The injured man has been hospitalized in Chile, while Savitsky is on house arrest facing an attempted murder charge, per Business Insider Nordic. Bellingshausen station is located in the Antarctic on King George Island, some 500 miles from Argentina, according to Newsweek. A source tells Interfax that Savitsky may have snapped after living in such close quarters for such a long time (reportedly more than six months), per Business Insider. Some 30 countries have research teams in Antarctica, per Newsweek, which notes that investigating crimes there can be tricky since, based on a 1961 treaty, no country has a claim on the continent. (NASA captured an image of an unusual iceberg.)
– It's a bleak start to the new year on Wall Street Monday morning: The Dow fell more than 360 points at the open after China's stock market suffered a huge plunge of its own. Chinese stocks fell 7%, spooking US investors worried about a global slowdown, reports the Wall Street Journal. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 were down similar percentages. "The rout in China is placing pressure on markets more globally, although it remains to be seen how long the hit to market sentiment will persist," says a note at Investec, per MarketWatch.
– CNN's Piers Morgan thinks gun-rights proponent Alex Jones's memorable appearance on his show last night made a fine case—for his opponents. "He was the best advertisement for gun control you could wish for," Morgan tells Politico, referring to the conservative radio host. "That kind of vitriol, hatred, and zealotry is really quite scary." Jones is the guy who started the White House petition to get Morgan deported because of the CNN host's push for stricter gun laws. The White House last night promised to respond to the petition because it easily surpassed the threshold of 25,000 signatures, notes the Daily Caller. But "it is worth remembering that the freedom of expression is a bedrock principle in our democracy," said spokesman Jay Carney, suggesting Jones better not hold his breath. Jones himself, meanwhile, posted a video after his CNN appearance, telling supporters that "if something happens to us, or we’re killed by crackheads, it was the NYPD or mafia they hired," reports Mediaite. Yeah, that's right: “If you don’t know that (Mayor) Bloomberg is total mafia, you’re on another planet."
– When do you get paid six figures to write a party planning book? When you’re Pippa Middleton, of course. Her Royal Hotness has officially signed a book deal worth more than $620,000 to write the guide, which will be out by next Christmas, the Telegraph reports. She was originally rumored to be in talks for a deal worth more than twice that amount, which, of course, led to some uproar. Hilariously, the Telegraph notes that Middleton’s book will be released after the Queen’s summertime Diamond Jubilee celebration so that Pippa “is not seen to be cashing in on her royal connections.” To be fair, she does have professional party planning experience, and she regularly contributes to her parents’ online party planning newsletter. That would totally get most normal people a book deal! The guide will reportedly include recipes and stories, as well as instructions for hosting many different events.
– A woman who was taking photographs over the weekend of a steam locomotive was struck and killed after getting too close to the tracks in north suburban Denver. The Union Pacific locomotive—the AP says it was a 15-car train; the Denver Channel says it had 21 cars—was returning to Denver on Saturday evening from a daylong trip to Cheyenne Frontier Days in Wyoming when the woman was hit at a crossing in Henderson about 7:45pm. The victim was among several people taking photos of the train as it traveled back to Denver; her name hasn't been released. "We are working with local authorities to see what happened leading up to the crash," a Union Pacific spokeswoman says. About 700 passengers were on the train, whose annual trip to Cheyenne for the parade and rodeo is sponsored by the Denver Post Community Foundation. No other injuries were reported. The passengers on the UP 844 train, said to be the nation's most famous steam locomotive, were bused back to Denver.
– Investigators are re-examining overheard conversations in which Russian government officials discuss dealings with Donald Trump's associates, given confirmation of Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer, US officials say. Though the conversations were recorded by US intelligence in early 2015, months before Trump announced his campaign for the presidency, investigators are interested in mentions of meetings between Russian officials and Trump associates, some of which reportedly occurred outside of the US, the Wall Street Journal reports. It isn't clear if the associates referred to were involved in Trump's business interests in Russia or later became part of his presidential campaign. Officials say it's commonplace for Russian officials to discuss players with major business interests in the country, Trump among them. Indeed, intelligence agencies initially took little from the conversations. But Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton has since renewed interest. President Trump said Wednesday he only became aware of the meeting with the lawyer "a couple of days ago," per Reuters. Hours after Trump Jr. confirmed the meeting on June 7, 2016, however, Trump promised in a speech to address Clinton's "corrupt dealings" to give "favorable treatment" to "the Russians," in what the White House is calling a coincidence, reports the New York Times.
– Chris Brown was kicked out of a Malibu rehab facility last week, and TMZ says it knows why. First off, he violated a rule specifically imposed on him because he assaulted Rihanna: to keep at least two feet away from all women (he touched a woman's hands and elbows). The other violations? He went on an unauthorized outing last week and refused a drug test when he returned, and disrespected a group-rehab session by making "harsh comments." Now, because rehab was a mandatory part of his probation in the Rihanna case, the singer is back in jail—and MTV reports that a judge today ordered him to stay there for a month due to his "inability to stay out of trouble."
– Fans of Goosebumps author RL Stine—and the Bustle thinks this includes "every teen, twentysomething, and thirtysomething"—will want to tune in to his Twitter feed. Stine today promised this: "For Halloween, I'll be writing a story live on Twitter this evening. Hope you'll join me." He offered no other details, including what time the story-tweeting begins. For those unfamiliar with Stine, Mashable explains that the prolific 71-year-old is referred to as the "Stephen King of children's literature."
– Doctors must have been shocked when they pulled a small octopus from the throat of a 2-year-old boy who arrived at the hospital not breathing. The boy's 21-year-old mother arrived home from work Tuesday night to find her 36-year-old boyfriend, Matthew Gallagher, giving CPR to her son, according to KSNW. The boy was rushed to a hospital in Wichita, Kansas, where doctors removed the octopus from his throat. The AP reports the octopus's head was about 2 inches across. It was likely meant to be used in sushi. The boy, who also showed evidence of facial injuries, was upgraded from critical to good condition on Wednesday. The Wichita Eagle reports he's showing no signs of permanent damage from oxygen deprivation. Gallagher was arrested on suspicion of child abuse when his explanation for the octopus and facial injuries didn't match up with what doctors observed. An expert will interview the boy when he's ready, and an investigation into the incident is continuing. Police say it's a "very delicate situation."
– Given the recent Equifax security breach—alongside a 630% increase in data breaches in the past year, according to one report—identity theft is bound to be a concern for many Americans. But it turns out the state you call home has a lot to do with your risk. WalletHub reviewed identity theft and fraud complaints and policy across the US to come up with the most vulnerable states.
– A mother in Chile claims a local hospital is keeping her away from her newborn daughter simply because she smoked marijuana a few days before giving birth, the AP reports. "They have violated my rights as a mother," the BBC quotes Sindy Ortiz. "I use this drug only for the pain in my arms, it was recommended by a medical professional to me, and I am absolutely not a drug consumer." According to the AP, Ortiz says the hospital is only letting her see her infant for two hours per day and won't allow her to breastfeed her. This is all standard protocol, according to the hospital. The hospital states it was required to alert a local court when Ortiz tested positive for substances that could be harmful to her baby, the AP reports. The hospital is maintaining custody of Ortiz's daughter, at least until a hearing scheduled for Thursday. According to the BBC, Chile's congress easily approved a bill to decriminalize the personal use of marijuana earlier this year. But it could still be years until the law is put into place.
– Lots of people are trying to lose weight—24% of American men and 38% of American women—but most who succeed also gain it back quickly, reports Medical News Daily. This so-called "weight cycling" or "yo-yo effect" could end up being quite hard on the hearts of both men and women, and is significantly more common an effect in women. So report researchers at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2016, where they've presented their findings. They followed 153,063 post-menopausal women for more than a decade and found normal-weight women who said they'd weight-cycled were 3.5 times more likely to die from a heart attack than women whose weights were stable. They were 66% more likely to die from coronary heart disease, reports Crossroads Today. "Weight cycling is an emerging global health concern associated with attempts of weight loss," the study's lead author says in a press release. "But there have been inconsistent results about the health hazards for those who experience weight cycling behavior." While this study has a few limitations—including that people self-reported their weight fluctuations, and that normal-weight people suddenly losing or gaining weight may be suffering from other conditions—researchers say it lays the groundwork for future research into the effects of yo-yo dieting on cardiovascular health. "You should never lose weight in a drastic fashion," the lead researcher adds. "If someone is a normal weight, keep it stable." (Here's why one woman says 'no thanks' to Oprah's latest weight loss pitch.)
– More time for the Donald to voice his views: Mitt Romney says he will skip the GOP debate to be moderated by Trump later this month, notes the Political Wire blog. He joins Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul in turning down the event, though they did so with more fireworks. Romney announced the move on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox, saying he couldn't cram it in on top of two other debates in December and a heavy campaign schedule, notes Mediaite. "I spoke with Donald Trump earlier today and indicated that we just can’t make this debate," he said. "We're going to focus on the other two we’ve got and on some campaigning." Romney said Trump understood and "wished me well." So far, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have accepted the invitation.
– Anonymous is following through with its promise to target ISIS in a cyber war after the Paris terror attacks. Operating under the hashtags #opISIS and #opParis, the group has begun leaking the personal details of alleged ISIS recruiters, reports the Independent. Anonymous also has compiled lists of social media accounts linked to extremists in an attempt to have them removed, and at least one post reveals the physical address of a suspected recruiter in Europe. Another list, spotted by Tech Insider, includes more than 80 names, though the site notes that Anonymous has wrongly identified extremists before. The group is also working to take down ISIS-affiliated websites using denial-of-service attacks to overload servers. ISIS, however, seems unperturbed. "All they can do is hacking (sic) Twitter accounts, emails etc.," the terrorist group said in a statement Monday, calling Anonymous a bunch of "idiots." Still, ISIS shared tips with supporters about how to avoid cyberattacks, including altering email addresses, changing a computer's shared location, and ignoring suspicious links, per Newsweek. While Anonymous' attacks could hinder communications between ISIS supporters, analysts tell the Christian Science Monitor that they're unlikely to do much good. "What they are doing is more of simple harassment," one says. "In the end it is not going to help law enforcement to prevent an actual physical attack like what happened in Paris." (ISIS has a 24-hour help desk for jihadis having tech trouble.)
– It turns out being an ex-president pays pretty well. In the 10 years since leaving office, Bill Clinton has made $75.6 million from speaking engagements, with last year standing as his most lucrative yet, according to disclosure forms Hillary must file as secretary of state. Bill earned $10.7 million over 52 appearances last year, which, CNN observes, is a substantial increase over the 36 gigs he took on in 2009. Almost two-thirds of Clinton’s haul over that 10-year span comes from speeches delivered overseas; he’s delivered 215 addresses across 48 foreign countries. He charges an average of $181,000 per speech, though some come in much higher than that. In 2010, for example, he received a combined $1 million from a gig in Moscow for Renaissance Capital and another in the United Arab Emirates for Novo Nordisk. And that's not even counting the $30 million he's received in book sales, notes Politico.
– If you're a commoner who wants to get Queen Elizabeth II's attention, apparently it is possible, but it will take decades of work. In a touching Facebook post pointed out by Mashable, Andrew Simes writes that his grandfather had always made it a point to send a Christmas card to his king or queen. Elizabeth had been getting the cards since 1952, and happened to meet Simes' grandpa at a reception in Turkey in 1972—whereupon she told him, "so it's you who keeps sending me those lovely Christmas cards," Simes says. The queen later sent a note on Simes' grandpa's 100th birthday. The older man died at age 102 in 2011, and Simes took over sending the Christmas cards that year—which is where the story gets really poignant. In January 2012, Simes got a letter from Buckingham Palace. "In it was written: 'When I received a letter from a different Simes this Christmas, I instructed my office to research your grandfather's whereabouts. Therefore it is with much sadness, I have learned of his passing and extend my condolences to you and your family,'" Simes writes. "I couldn't fight back the tears then, nor can I fight them back every time I remember this story of two people who left a lifelong impression on each other." He's still sending Her Majesty the annual holiday greeting; see an image here.
– Volusia County, Fla., was declared the "shark bite capital of the world" this year by the International Shark Attack File, according to NBC, and it doesn't seem to be in danger of losing the title. A 10-year-old boy was in chest-deep water at Daytona Beach Shores yesterday when he was bitten on the calf by a shark, WESH reports. Officials say the boy was treated for lacerations at the scene and didn't need to go to a hospital. He was the county's fourth shark victim of the year and the second in the space of a week: Another 10-year-old boy was severely injured last week in a shark attack at Cocoa Beach, around 60 miles south of the latest attack, NBC reports. This is the 11th attack in the state so far this year, which isn't an exceptionally high number, shark expert Dr. George Burgess tells WESH, noting that "the number of humans that are killed by sharks versus the number of sharks killed by human beings is 10 million to one." He advises swimmers worried about sharks to stay in groups and avoid areas where fishermen put out bait. Two young people lost limbs in shark attacks in Oak Island, NC, on Sunday and the town is considering banning shark fishing to protect swimmers from sharks attracted by the bait, the AP reports. (A 16-year-old boy who lost his left arm in Sunday's attack says he won't let it ruin his life.)
– It’s not a good week for celebrity relationships: After three years together, New York Yankee Derek Jeter and actress Minka Kelly are splitting up. “The split was amicable,” sources tell Just Jared. “But they remain friends. They still really care for each other.” Kelly’s rep confirmed the break-up to Popsugar. Guess this means all those engagement rumors weren’t true…
– In the midst of a bitter custody battle, Genevieve Kelley took her 8-year-old daughter and vanished in November 2004. Over the past decade, the US Marshals Service followed up on tips that had them looking for the New Hampshire woman—along with new husband Scott Kelley, daughter Mary Nunes, and two horses that also disappeared—in the US, Canada, and Central and South America (Kelley, a one-time flight surgeon with the Air Force, is fluent in Spanish). Then, in March of this year, Kelley made contact through her lawyer, who told the New Hampshire prosecutor that Kelley was prepared to face her charge of custodial interference. The 50-year-old turned herself in Monday. Says her lawyer per the AP, "She wants to be vindicated. She wants a trial." Mary turned 18 in February, meaning she is no longer under the purview of family court. In 2009, the AP categorized the girl's vanishing as "the climax of a long, acrimonious tug of war." Kelley and Mark Nunes divorced in 1998, with Kelley retaining primary custody of the girl. The ensuing years were not exactly smooth, and in late 2003, Kelley told police that Nunes had sexually abused Mary; those allegations were determined to be unfounded. Roughly a month after the trio disappeared, Mark Nunes was awarded legal custody of the child. Mary's current location remains unknown, per CNN, though Kelley says she is safe. The Find Mary Nunes website has a phone number in the right rail of every page, along with this message: "Mary, here is a number so you can talk to your daddy. It is on 24 hours a day. We love you and miss you."
– A teenage girl celebrated her prom night by partying in a hotel room with her date, and ended up dead the next morning—possibly from a mix of alcohol and prescription painkillers, KHOU reports. Jacqueline Gomez, 17, was excited about her MacArthur High School prom in Houston, showing her dress to friends and asking for advice on doing her nails, reports the Houston Chronicle. And once the event at a Hyatt Hotel was over, she went upstairs with her date. "I told her right before left—she left early—I told her, 'Come here,'" said a friend, who whispered in her ear: "'Just please be safe, Jackie.' And I gave her a hug, and she left." A woman staying down the hall tells ABC13 she heard partying in the room all night and knocked on the door "to see if anything was going on, but they didn't answer." The next morning, Jacqueline's date frantically called 911 saying she wasn't breathing. He later told police they had been drinking, and police suspect painkillers were involved too. "We have no reason to believe that he at all contributed to this death," said a detective. "But in my line of work, you have to be absolutely sure." A friend of Jacqueline's said her "heart sank" when she heard the news: "I hoped it really wasn't her. I didn't want to believe it. She was an amazing girl."
– Scary story breaking out of DC: A letter addressed to Republican Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker tested positive for the poison ricin, reports Politico. The envelope never got to him, reports CNN, which says it was intercepted at an off-site facility that sorts mail for the Capitol. Three separate tests turned up positive for the highly toxic poison. Authorities have identified a suspect, said Sen. Claire McCaskill, adding only that it was someone who writes lots of letters to lawmakers. It's not clear why the apparent target was Wicker, described by the Washington Post as a "low-profile senator in his second term." (He replaced Trent Lott in 2008.) The envelope got detected at a facility set up in 2001 after some senators were sent letters tainted with anthrax. "The bottom line is, the process we have in place worked," said McCaskill. FBI chief Robert Mueller and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano briefed senators today, though it's not clear when the letter was received.
– When Germany invaded Norway in 1940, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler endorsed the concept of German soldiers hooking up with Norwegian women, as that would help bring the Nazis closer to the Aryan master race they wished for. Per the BBC, about 50,000 Norwegian women ended up in relationships with the Germans, and they became known as the "German Girls"—a label that led to harsh punishments after WWII ended when their country turned on them for what was viewed as a betrayal. Now, Norway's prime minister is officially offering an apology to those women, calling them "victims of undignified treatment" and noting that Norwegian authorities back then acted outside of usual conventions in punishing these women and the children they bore. "For many, this was just a teenage love," Norwegian PM Erna Solberg said Wednesday at a UN human rights event. "For some, the love of their lives with an enemy soldier or an innocent flirt ... left its mark for the rest of their lives. Today, in the name of the government, I want to offer my apologies." Punishments included getting fired from their jobs, detentions, being stripped of their nationality, and even expulsions to Germany. Meanwhile, many of the more than 10,000 children who came out of these relationships were sent to foster homes or "special institutions," Deutsche Welle notes. A historian says that Norwegian men who married German women during the same period weren't similarly punished. "[The women's] only crime was breaking the unwritten rules," he says. (As one woman headed to the Auschwitz gas chamber, she wrote this.)
– An FBI agent was shot Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn and did like in the movies—pursued his alleged attacker and opened fire, NBC New York reports. The agent was performing surveillance for a drug probe when a BMW drove by and the suspect apparently shot him in the shoulder. Sources say the agent went after his assailant by car, jumped out at a corner, and fired off more than 10 rounds. The suspect, shot in the hand, abandoned his car at an auto body shop and had a friend take him to the hospital. He and his acquaintance are both in custody. The agent went into surgery at Kings County Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, per CBS New York. (In related news, a shootout with bank robbers left 12 dead.)
– People in Napa Valley, Calif., are picking up the pieces after Sunday's 6.0 earthquake wrecked scores of homes and businesses, and they're getting plenty of help from outside. Volunteers have flocked from across Northern California to assist in any way they can, reports the Los Angeles Times. The helpers include scores of Home Depot workers and an engineer from the Czech Republic who was on vacation in San Francisco when the quake struck and drove out to offer his services. "When you meet people who are helping each other, there's no difference between religions or between colors," he says. More: The damage is estimated at up to $1 billion, but wineries say they will pull through and they hope tourists won't stay away, the New York Times reports. "In the end, people who are growing grapes are farmers," says an official of an organization that represents 500 local vintners. "This is a particularly strong expression of Mother Nature, but they deal with Mother Nature every day, and they are very resilient." Dozens of homes have been declared uninhabitable and more than 250 people are recovering from injuries, but there have been no fatalities from the area's worst earthquake since 1989, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The two most seriously injured victims, one of them a 13-year-old boy hurt by a falling chimney, are both expected to survive. Seismologists are still working to determine the exact cause of the quake, LiveScience reports. It was initially believed to be connected to the Franklin Fault—which has been dormant for thousands of years—but researchers now believe it was the West Napa Fault, part of a wide network of faults around the San Andreas Fault, which lies 31 miles away.
– US employers notched another solid month of hiring in March by adding a higher-than-expected 215,000 jobs, driven by large gains in the construction, retail, and health care industries, the AP reports. Despite the jump, the Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate ticked up to 5% from 4.9%. But that increase includes some good news: More Americans came off the sidelines to look for work, though not all found jobs. The figures suggest that employers remain confident enough in their business prospects to add staff, even as overall growth has slowed since last winter. Steady hiring is also contributing to higher pay, which rose a modest 2.3% from a year earlier to $25.43. That figure has increased since the early years of the recovery but is below a peak of 2.6% reached in December. Sluggish wage growth has been a weak spot in the economy and a source of frustration for many workers since the Great Recession ended in 2009. Paychecks typically grow at a 3.5% pace in a strong economy. Construction firms added 37,000 jobs, likely aided by warmer weather. That helped offset another month of job losses in manufacturing, which has been hit by slower growth overseas, and mining, which includes the oil and gas drilling sector. Low oil prices have cost that industry 185,000 jobs since September 2014. Meanwhile, the MoneyBeat team at the Wall Street Journal has deemed Friday "datageddon" for all of the additional info scheduled to be released, including manufacturing data from the US, China, and Europe and an update from the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index.
– Pepsi has given up trying to defend what some people are calling the worst ad of all time. The company has pulled its widely ridiculed ad featuring Kendall Jenner as a model who joins a protest and hands a can of Pepsi to a riot cop, the AP reports. "Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace, and understanding," the company said in a statement. "Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize." Pepsi also apologized to Jenner for putting her "in this position." The ad, which showed protesters with signs like "Join the Conversation," was strongly criticized for hijacking the imagery of real protest movements like Black Lives Matter to sell soft drinks. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., delivered one of the most powerful criticisms, tweeting a photo of her father being pushed back by police at a protest march and quipping: "If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi." Stephen Colbert was among the late-night hosts poking fun at the ad on Wednesday, the Independent reports. "We have a deeply divided nation," said the Late Show host. "But today, it seems that everyone has come together to join the protest against the new protest ad from Pepsi." He described the "Join the Conversation" banner as "the most corporate message ever."
– Gretchen Carlson will take $20 million off Fox News' hands, settling on Roger Ailes' behalf in response to Carlson's sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuit, reports Vanity Fair. Included with the settlement is what the magazine calls an "unprecedented" public apology for Carlson, an apparent effort by Fox to show its commitment to cleaning up the unpalatable culture allegedly rampant under Ailes' reign. "21st Century Fox is pleased to announce that it has settled Gretchen Carlson's lawsuit," a Fox statement read, per Politico. "We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect that she & all our colleagues deserve." Vanity Fair notes that while Carlson's lawsuit was technically against Ailes, Fox serves as his insurer, and conversations between the Fox and Ailes camps about how much Ailes will have to pony up himself were said to be "tense" (there's no official word yet on what that figure will be). Sources tell Vanity Fair that two other women were also granted settlements, and that as part of Carlson's settlement, she's agreed not to take any more legal action against Fox or its execs. Carlson issued a statement saying she's "gratified" the company has taken "decisive action" regarding her suit. In related news: Ailes defender Greta Van Susteren abruptly left the network Tuesday, per Politico. No official word on why, though a source tells Politico it was for financial reasons. Meanwhile, Ailes' legal team has been threatening legal action against New York magazine and reporter Gabriel Sherman for what Deadline calls a "damning" article about Fox's sexual harassment issues.
– "Many in legacy media love mass shootings," NBC News quotes NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch as saying Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "You love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold." A week after 17 people were killed at a school shooting in Florida, the NRA went on the defensive in speeches, videos, and statements targeting gun-control advocates, Democrats, the media, and even some ideas put forth by President Trump, the Washington Post reports. In his own speech at CPAC, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre warned citizens to be "frightened" of any Democratic election victory. "What they want is more restrictions on the law-abiding," CNN quotes LaPierre as saying. "If they seize power ... our American freedoms could be lost and our country will be changed forever." Following in Trump's footsteps, LaPierre called for more armed security in schools, including arming teachers. "Evil walks among us," he said, adding, "God help us if we don’t harden our schools." However, the president has also suggested increasing the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 in opposition to the NRA. An NRA spokesperson says such a law would deprive young people "of their constitutional right to self-protection." LaPierre spent most of his time at CPAC railing against what he says is a "socialist" agenda pushed by Democrats in the wake of the Parkland shooting. "Opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain," he said. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer responded: "The NRA is once again spewing pathetic, out of touch ideas, blaming everything but guns."
– A double murder in the world of volleyball is dominating the news in Spain and the Netherlands, and Spanish police say the whole affair could be business-related. Dutch volleyball star Ingrid Visser and her partner, Lodewijk Severein, went missing shortly after arriving in Murcia, Spain, earlier this month. On Sunday their bodies were found in a lemon grove, buried in a shallow grave. Three suspects were arrested the previous day; among them: Juan Cuenca Lorente, the 36-year-old former director of Murcia's volleyball club, which Visser, a popular Dutch player, played for from 2009 to 2011. Police say Lorente and the couple had some sort of business disagreement, though no specifics were released. As for what Visser, 35, and Severein, 57, were doing in Spain, the BBC reports that they were supposed to see a doctor there on May 14 but never showed up for the appointment; the Telegraph and Dutch News report that they were to undergo fertility treatment.
– Rupert Murdoch has taken a step toward convincing the world he is, in fact, a human being. The embattled media mogul has apologized to the family of Milly Dowler, the schoolgirl murdered in 2002 whose phone was allegedly hacked by Murdoch's News of the World. He met with the family in a London hotel, and will also publish an apology to all the phone hacking victims in British newspapers this weekend, reports CBS News. "I don't think somebody could have held their head in their hands so many times and said that they were sorry," says the family's lawyer of Murdoch. After Dowler went missing, the tabloid allegedly broke into her voicemail, mistakenly leading her family to believe she was still alive, Sky News reports. The family "told him that his papers should lead the way to set the standards of honesty and decency in the field, and not what had gone on before," the lawyer continues. "At the end of the day, actions are going to speak louder than words."
– Here's a sign that your disquisition on race didn't go very well: You wind up apologizing to Trayvon Martin's family. That's the position Mark Cuban found himself in yesterday, after a perhaps-too-candid talk at Inc. magazine's GrowCo conference the day prior. Asked about the Donald Sterling controversy, the Dallas Mavericks owner said he was worried about being a hypocrite. The money quote, which he said in roughly these terms at the conference and reiterated in this video interview with Inc.: "I know I'm bigoted in a lot of different ways. If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it's late at night, I'm walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there's a guy that has tattoos all over his face—white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere—I'm walking back to the other side of the street." "I'm a bigot," Cuban said at the conference. "I think we're all bigots." Then he predicted, "I'm sure that'll be all over the place," and, lo, that prophesy came true. Critics and supporters have been vigorously decrying and defending Cuban's remarks (there's a good sample at the Dallas Morning News). Many, including ESPN commentator Bomani Jones and CNN commentator LZ Granderson, jumped on Cuban for making a false equivalency between black men in hoodies and white men with tattoos. "One has history and the other doesn't, or the same sort of emotional response," Granderson said. Later Cuban conceded that point at least, in a series of tweets: "In hindsight I should have used different examples. I didn't consider the Trayvon Martin family, and I apologize to them for that. Beyond apologizing to the Martin family, I stand by the words and substance of the interview."
– "Whip It" fans, sorry for the news: Devo guitarist Bob Casale died yesterday of heart failure at age 61, Rolling Stone reports. He helped form the New Wave band with his brother Gerald in 1973 and stayed on board for decades: "Bob Casale was there in the trenches with me from the beginning," said Gerald in a statement. "He was my level-headed brother, a solid performer and talented audio engineer, always giving more than he got." Gerald said Bob was excited about performing with Devo again, and his death "came as a total shock to us all." The original Devo members, who grew up in Akron, Ohio, formed the band after personally witnessing the 1970 Kent State Massacre. "We came of age in the middle of a huge cultural war," said Bob in an Under the Radar interview two years ago. "This country was basically in the midst of a new civil war—the lines were drawn very clearly." The band had a hit in 1980 with "Whip It," broke up in 1991, got back together five years later, and toured for years after. Their name was based on the idea of "de-evolution"—that people were devolving into a mass-herd mentality. "De-evolution happened and now everybody agrees," Gerald told CNN. "They don't think we're crazy. They know that it was true."
– A 21-year-old former Stanford student killed his 19-year-old ex-girlfriend and then himself with a "ghost gun," say police. That phrase refers to a firearm that has no serial number, and the two "ghost guns" found on the scene in Walnut Creek, Calif., were homemade firearms built with parts bought online, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Police say Scott Bertics shot and killed Clare Orton on July 21 at her home; the 19-year-old was on summer break from San Diego State University, the Mercury News reports. There was no serial number on either gun found at the scene. (The Chronicle notes that lower receivers on homemade guns normally bear the numbers, though "incomplete ones can be bought as just simple pieces of metal.") Yesterday police revealed the firearms had been built by Bertics—an engineering major who took a leave of absence from Stanford in the fall—using parts he ordered off the Internet. A person "can buy 80% of a gun" online, says Lt. Lanny Edwards, who added there is no evidence Bertics did anything illegal to get the parts. The Chronicle points out that California Gov. Jerry Brown last year vetoed a bill that would have required any gun part sold online to have a serial number and background checks for anyone buying those parts, saying he didn't believe the bill would "significantly advance public safety." Police have so far not identified a motive in the killing of Orton; the two last dated in 2013, the Mercury News reports.
– A school teacher has launched a personal campaign against what she calls "whale bone porn"—etchings of naughty acts on whale teeth and bone on display at a Vancouver museum, the National Post reports. The Vancouver Maritime Museum has "a new exhibit called Scrimshaw which features numerous images of inappropriate nature (oral sex, sex, nudity, male anatomy etc.) on tusks," writes Ann Pimentel on Tripadvisor. "As a mother and a teacher I was extremely disturbed and believe these pieces of ‘art’ should be removed." But her campaign—which she took to the Vancouver Sun and Yelp—has only aroused greater interest in the scrimshaw, a 19-century art form practiced by lonely whalers in the South Pacific. They vented their frustrations by using hand tools to engrave tobacco juice on whale leftovers. The museum's curator says she won't remove the display, but admits there are raunchier scrimshaw works in the basement that she'll never bring up—because they depict a candlestick being used in what she politely calls "the act."
– A 14-month-old girl fell out the fifth-story window of her family’s Bronx apartment yesterday, and her father didn’t realize it until at least seven minutes later—but miraculously, doctors are hopeful the tot will survive. There are no window guards in the apartment where Xania Samuels lives, and at the time of her plunge, her father was bathing her twin brother and her mother was at a Laundromat. She was found “laying lifelessly” on the ground underneath the apartment by a passing EMT, the New York Post reports. He first thought Samuels, surrounded by blood, was a doll but quickly called 911. Her father looked out the window soon after and discovered what had happened. The infant was rushed to the hospital with head trauma and was in critical condition as of yesterday afternoon. Fox News reports that her father believes a winter coat may have saved his daughter’s life: She insisted on wearing the heavily cushioned pink coat, her favorite, even though it was the hottest day of the year. (Click to read the tragic story of a model who died after plunging through a hotel window Saturday.)
– Pittsburgh International Airport is bringing back a tradition that was banned after 9/11: letting people without tickets go through security to the airside part of the terminal. The airport will allow non-flyers airside to shop, dine, or say goodbye to loved ones at the gate as of Tuesday, with the approval of the Transportation Security Administration, reports NBC. Pittsburgh is the first airport to allow this since 9/11, and non-flyers will have to go through the same security checkpoints as travelers. They will also have to go to a special desk to get a "myPITpass," which will involve producing a photo ID and being checked against no-fly lists, reports the New York Daily News. Christina Cassotis, CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, says people have been asking about access to shopping and dining at the airport for years. Bob Ross, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, however, says the change will lead to longer security lines and decreased safety, reports the Tribune-Review. "Allowing the non-flying public to go through security ... for the sole purpose of shopping is a terrible precedent and an ill-conceived decision," he said in a statement. The TSA says there are no plans for similar programs at other airports.
– No contest: Cory Booker won the Democratic primary for a Senate seat in New Jersey so easily tonight that the AP called it just 45 minutes after the polls closed and with just 7% of returns in, reports the Star-Ledger. The Newark mayor beat two congressmen and the state Assembly speaker. Booker hopes to serve the final 15 months of the late Frank Lautenberg's term. On the Republican side, former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan easily won his race as well. The special election is Oct. 16. New Jersey voters have elected Democrats to the Senate for the last four decades, and the New York Times has Booker as the "heavy favorite." Quotes from the winning candidates: Booker: “Make me your senator, New Jersey, and I will be unwavering in my focus on finding common ground. I will not be concerned with right or left but going forward.” Lonegan: “I intend to run a line-in-the-sand campaign between a conservative and an extreme liberal. The differences could not be clearer.”
– A Finnish-Canadian billionaire says scientists have found a way to make him younger. Fashion designer Peter Nygard claims he is getting more stem cell treatment than anyone else is currently receiving, and scientists have found "my markers have shown exactly that I have been actually reversing my aging and getting younger," the BBC reports. The 70-year-old says he has been undergoing stem cell treatment for four years, and that the University of Miami is currently studying him. Nygard lives in the Bahamas, where he is an advocate for stem cell research and wants to open a $50 million stem cell clinic. He says his interest in the subject is about more than just a desire to be younger. "I started stem cells when I wanted to find a cure for my mother who I loved very much and Western medicine was not able to cure her, he tells the Freeport News. "If I had discovered stem cells a year before, I think that she would still be here with me." The Winnipeg Free Press notes that Nygard has released a 10-minute YouTube video ("Bahamas Stem Cell Laws: The Peter Nygard Breakthrough") that shows him "dancing with young women in a nightclub" (with a Will.i.am and Britney Spears song playing in the background), "leaning out of a sailboat, playing volleyball," and living what the narrator describes as "a life that most could only dream of." (Harvard scientists recently said they were able to reverse part of the aging process ... in mice.)
– Louisville guard Kevin Ware is recovering from what commentators say is the most horrific injury they've ever seen in a basketball game. Ware snapped his right leg in two places as he landed from a jump in the first half of the Cardinals' Midwest Regional final against Duke, leaving his broken tibia bone sticking six inches out of his skin, USA Today reports. Surgery last night was successful, but Ware is expected to be out for at least a year. Ware's teammates went on to beat Duke, 85-63. Before Ware was stretchered out of the stadium, he called his teammates over and urged them to win the game. "The bone's 6 inches out of his leg, and all he's yelling is, 'Win the game, win the game,'" Louisville coach Rick Pitino tells the AP. "I've not seen that in my life." Louisville will pay for Ware's surgery, but he was playing for no pay beyond a scholarship and NCAA regulations shield the organization from compensation claims, Forbes notes.
– The 20th anniversary of JonBenet Ramsey's murder has led to all kinds of renewed speculation about the case, but now comes an actual development in the criminal investigation: The state plans to conduct new DNA tests on the panties and long johns the 6-year-old was wearing when she was killed on or after Christmas night 1996, reports the Daily Camera and 9News. A previous investigation by the two news outlets suggested that former District Attorney Mary Lacy erred when she exonerated members of the Ramsey family in 2008 based on her interpretation of earlier DNA tests. Lacy concluded that those tests revealed that an intruder killed the girl, but outside forensic experts have since disputed that, asserting that the DNA was a mishmash of multiple people and not that of the single person referred to as "Unknown Male 1." "If you're looking for someone that doesn't exist, because actually it's several people, it's a problem," explained a former US attorney for Colorado. The new, more sophisticated tests could provide an answer to which view is right. They could also reveal the DNA is worthless in terms of tracking down the killer, and merely the result of "inconsequential contact with other people," per the Camera. One of the most high-profile anniversary stories about the case came via CBS, whose expert panel concluded that JonBenet's brother, Burke, killed his sister. Burke has since sued, but the forensic pathologist he's going after argued in court documents this month that his view on the case was mere "speculation" about "one of the major unsolved crimes" of the 20th century and thus should be protected speech, reports People. No word on when the new DNA tests will be conducted. (Burke also talked to Dr. Phil.)
– With 23 Palestinians now dead in the latest Gaza conflict, the Middle East Quartet is meeting for the first time in six months in New York. Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and EU diplomat Baroness Ashton will discuss the growing violence after Israeli air raids killed five more people, including three civilians and a pair of militants. Israel yesterday sought UN Security Council action over rocket attacks from Gaza. China has also weighed in on the situation, calling on Israel to halt its air raids, the Telegraph notes. Iran has labeled the raids "war crimes," urging international condemnation against the "abhorrent violation of human rights." Among the reported dead today was a 15-year-old boy, CNN reports, though Israel said it did not bomb the area where he was killed. For its part, Israel says its attacks "destroyed launching pits" for Iranian-built rockets. Some 31 more rockets were launched from Gaza today, bringing the total to more than 200, according to the Jerusalem Post.
– Five more bodies have been pulled from the rubble of today's building collapse in downtown Philadelphia, bringing the death toll to six, reports AP. The collapse happened when a building under demolition unexpectedly came crashing down this morning, destroying an adjoining Salvation Army thrift shop and crushing some who were browsing in the store, reports the Inquirer. Another 14 people were injured, including one woman who was found 12 hours after the collapse. It's still not clear what caused the collapse, or what stage the demolition process was at when it occurred, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Police used the term "industrial accident," and an OSHA spokesperson says the agency was told it was an accident at a demolition site, reports CNN. "There are demolitions taking place on a daily basis," says Mayor Michael Nutter. "So it's not unusual that there would be people in a store or building next to where a demolition is taking place." The buildings were located in a heavily-trafficked part of the city, near the popular Mutter Museum.
– Reclusive heiress Huguette Clark's life was shrouded in mystery—and now, more intrigue. A New York City judge yesterday suspended her lawyer and accountant from administering her $400 million estate—taking away the $8 million payday they'd each receive as executors. Though both deny wrongdoing, the surrogate court judge pointed to claims made by the New York public administrator's office earlier in the week: It found evidence that the pair engaged in tax fraud that led to $90 million in unpaid federal gift taxes and penalties. Attorney Wallace Bock and CPA Irving H. Kamsler should be removed "by reason of their dishonesty, improvidence, waste, and want of understanding," read the office's court filing, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Among the allegations made by the public administrator—who was court-appointed to serve as a third executor—as reported by MSNBC: That Bock and Kamsler charged Clark for filing tax returns they never filed; didn't file federal gift tax returns between 1997 and 2003, and paid only $7.5 million of the $41.5 million in taxes due on the gifts made during that period; and never told Clark about the unpaid taxes, or the penalties and interest that were accruing (her tax bill was jumping $9,000 per day) ... among other lies made to the IRS and the public administrator. Kamsler (who MSNBC notes is a registered sex offender) resigned as executor on Wednesday.
– It's the first day back at Sandy Hook Elementary for survivors of last month's shooting—and its new campus, guarded by law enforcement, is "the safest school in America," police tell the AP. Police are checking every car that enters campus, and there are unspecified "security devices" on site, NBC News reports. Still, Superintendent Janet Robinson is trying to make today as "normal" as possible, and says the students will follow their regular schedule. Much work was done on the new school, a former middle school in a neighboring town, to make the students feel at home. Chalk Hill Middle School was renamed Sandy Hook Elementary School; bathroom floors were raised so its new, younger inhabitants can reach the toilets; and some of the familiar furniture from the old school was brought in, the Hartford Courant notes. That includes their old desks and other items to make the classrooms look the same as the ones students are used to; backpacks, lunchboxes, coats, and other belongings left at the old school were also waiting for students at the new one. Signs welcoming the students were posted along the road leading to the school, and the halls were decorated with snowflakes sent from all over the world and other "cheerful" decor. Former Sandy Hook principal Donna Page, who retired in 2010, returned; her successor, Dawn Hochsprung, died in the shooting. "The main thing it means ... is that they are getting back to their normal structures and routines," a psychiatrist who counseled survivors tells the Wall Street Journal. It's "the right time for them to essentially to step back on the path." Counselors are on hand at the new school for anyone who needs them.
– Another bodybuilder has suffered an untimely death, just days after Dallas McCarver apparently choked to death at 26. Rich Piana, 46, collapsed while his girlfriend was cutting his hair at his Florida apartment Aug. 7. He was rushed to a hospital and placed into a medically induced coma, but never recovered; he died early Friday, TMZ reports. In its initial report on the incident, TMZ Sports reported that Piana's girlfriend, Chanel, said that he hit his head when he fell. She also told authorities that he at one point in the past had a slightly enlarged heart. His cause of death is not yet clear, but TMZ notes that in a search of his apartment, authorities found not only steroids but also a crushed-up white powder near a credit card and a straw. Emergency responders gave him two doses of Narcan in an attempt to revive him, though his girlfriend told authorities she believed Piana, who did struggle with opiate addiction in the past, was currently clean. Piana had won several bodybuilding competitions, including Mr. California, and was a hit on Instagram. Both his girlfriend and his ex-wife have posted remembrances on social media.
– Female runners are making half-marathons the sport's most popular distance race, reports Runner's World. It takes note of new stats from Running USA showing that a record 1.95 million people finished a 13.1-mile race last year, which marks a 6% increase from the previous year and an astonishing six-fold rise since 1990. Of last year's finishers, 61% were women, up from 53% in 2004. "Runners, it seems, are divided between people committed to running for maybe 40 minutes and people ready to hoof it for more than two hours," observes Rose Eveleth at Smithsonian. "If you fall somewhere in between, well, maybe it’s about time you try for 13.1 miles. Everyone else is."
– Portland police say they reopened the Al Gore case because they found "procedural issues" with the 2009 investigation, reports the Oregonian. In a statement, the chief says detectives who dismissed the allegations should have consulted with higher-ups before doing so. "There should have been command level review at the time on the specifics of this case and decisions on whether the investigation should go forward." The full statement (read it at Talking Points Memo) notes that the masseuse first contacted police in 2006 but then called off three subsequent scheduled meetings. The department dropped the case, deeming it futile without her cooperation. The woman, Molly Hagerty, then contacted the department again in 2009, but police (apparently below "command level") opted not to pursue the case after questioning her.
– "This is supposed to last for eternity," says the operator of the so-called Doomsday Vault, which since 2008 has been tucked within a mountain on a Norwegian island 800 miles from the North Pole where the soil is always frozen—or is supposed to be. The Guardian reports the Global Seed Vault "has been breached," with meltwater pouring into its entrance. This though Reuters in 2015 reported that the location on the island of Spitsbergen was supposed to be so cold that in the event of power failure the nearly 1 million packets of crop seeds within the vault would be preserved for at least 200 years. The issue now is skyrocketing temperatures (roughly 45 degrees above normal in late 2016) that replaced light snow with rain and melting, and their effect on the permafrost that surrounds the vault. "It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there," explains Norwegian government rep Hege Njaa Aschim. Also not in the plans: watching the vault 24/7, as they are doing now. But now all the reasons not to panic: That water didn't make it to the vault, and new waterproofing work is underway. One of the vault's creators (who wasn't present during the incident) tells Popular Science "in my experience, there’s been water intrusion at the front of the tunnel every single year." He explains the protective mechanics of the path to the seeds: a 330-foot tunnel, two pumping stations, and a brief uphill slant before the vault, whose 0.4-degree Fahrenheit temperature would freeze any water that made it that far. (The vault saw its first withdrawal in 2015.)
– At least 99 people have been quarantined in four different locations in Uganda so far after State House Uganda confirmed a man died this week of the Marburg virus—a type of hemorrhagic fever that's strikingly similar to Ebola, CNN reports. Many of the individuals now in isolation are health workers, as the deceased was a radiographer in a Kampala hospital and another health center and had contact with multiple colleagues. So far 11 of the quarantined have tested negative for Marburg, though they may be retested in a few days if the symptoms they've developed don't disappear. And those symptoms might sound familiar if you've been following the Ebola situation: Both viruses are members of the Filovirus family and manifest in similar ways, including fever, severe headache, and major bleeding, the Washington Post reports. Although many of the outbreaks recorded since Marburg was IDed in 1967 have been single cases, the fatality rate ranges from 23% to 90% (if you discount those single-case years), the CDC notes. Perhaps to mitigate increasing concern over Ebola after Thomas Duncan's death in Texas this week, CDC Director Thomas Frieden has been talking up efforts the CDC has undertaken in Uganda and emphasized that no further Marburg cases have been documented. "That may not make headlines, but it does give us confidence that we can control Ebola in West Africa," he says, per CNN. Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, Uganda's prime minister, seems to share Frieden's optimism, posting a series of tweets this week that indicate the country's success rate and experience in dealing with hemorrhagic fevers.
– A 42-year-old police constable came into an Indian hospital complaining of stomach pain, the Times of India reports. According to the Telegraph, an ultrasound showed a mass doctors believed to be cancer. The reality was much more disturbing. An endoscopy revealed the mass to be a whole bunch of knives. On Sunday, doctors performed surgery, removing 40 knives from the man's stomach, News 18 reports. Dr. Jitinder Malhotra calls the five-hour operation the "most dreadful surgery" he's ever performed. The unnamed man had apparently been eating the knives for two months because he felt like it and enjoyed the taste. Doctors say he's suffering from some sort of psychological problem. "This was very unnerving," the Telegraph quotes Malhotra as saying. "I have not witnessed something like this in my career as a doctor." Despite recently having 40 knives of various sizes piling up in his stomach, the man is expected to be OK.
– Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah may be dead, but French authorities are eying complicity charges for his brother, Abdelkader, reports Sky News. "Police inquiries have produced grave and matching pointers that suggest his (Abdelkader's) participation as accomplice in crimes relating to a terrorist enterprise is plausible," says a statement from the Paris prosecutor's office. The elder Merah, 29, has been in custody since Wednesday, and will be detained indefinitely as charges are weighed, notes the BBC. Abdelkader Merah's companion, variously described as his wife or girlfriend, had also been held since Wednesday, but was released earlier today.
– The US men's soccer team stunned Mexico Wednesday night by beating them on their home turf for the first time. Going into the game at Mexico City's Estadio Azteca, one of the game's most intimidating and highest-altitude arenas, America's record against Mexico in 75 years of games was 23 losses, one tie, and zero wins. The Americans were dominated by Mexico for most of the game but won the friendly 1-0 with a late goal from Michael Orozco Fiscal, the AP reports. Mexico scrambled to get back in the game but were defeated by a pair of remarkable saves from goalkeeper Tim Howard. "The goal was for the US fans and the whole US. We made history," said Orosco Fizcal, a defender from Orange, California. "It's important to us to understand that we can compete with big teams at their stadiums," US coach Jurgen Klinsmann told Sports Illustrated. "With Azteca it's like when you play at Wembley in England or the Stade de France or in Berlin. Those are very special locations, and I want the players to appreciate that. I want the players to understand and take it all in, because you never know if you'll get another occasion like that. We told the players: You have nothing to lose here. Give it all you have." The team is back in action for a pair of World Cup qualifiers against Jamaica next month.
– In an attempt to cut down on the number of transient sex offenders wandering around without a place to call home, California state prison officials announced yesterday they'd be relaxing rules that ban all registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will now review each parolee's case individually, and a spokesman for the CDCR says "high-risk" offenders who've been convicted of sexually abusing a child under the age of 14 still won't be allowed within a half-mile of any K-12 school. California residents had voted for the "Jessica's Law" residency legislation in 2006, but the state Supreme Court ruled March 2 that the law was unconstitutional in San Diego County, the Los Angeles Times reports. While "the court’s ruling is specific to San Diego County, its rationale isn't," explains the spokesman. Those who opposed the law have pointed out that the restrictions had kept parolees from finding a place to live in urban areas, where employment and rehab services are more plentiful, per the Chronicle. The more stringent housing rules will apply while the cases of some 6,000 California sex offenders are reviewed, which should take about two months, the paper notes.
– China is ramping up its military presence on its 880-mile border with North Korea in case a nuclear, economic, or military crisis sends millions of North Koreans fleeing in search of greener pastures, according to government websites. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, that might not be all China is preparing for. China's Defense Ministry hasn't referred to North Korea as the reason for a new border defense brigade along with a 24-hour video surveillance system, unit upgrades, new shelters and command posts, and recent live-fire and special forces drills in border regions; but experts say China could be preparing to intervene should the US attempt to seize nuclear weapons from its ally on the Korean Peninsula. Some aren't so sure China would be keen to take on the US and stress that recent enhancements at the border were first discussed last year. However, "once you start talking about efforts from outside powers, in particular the United States and South Korea, to stabilize the North ... you’re starting to look at a much more robust Chinese response," argues a former US defense official for East Asia. "If you’re going to make me place bets on where I think the US and China would first get into a conflict ... it’s the Korean Peninsula." Others note China will want to prevent US influence there to retain its regional power. In a column in May, retired Maj. Gen. Wang Haiyun wrote China should not only intervene in a Korean conflict but demand no US occupation of North Korean territory, though he said he did not speak for the government. He made similar comments in an op-ed in the state-owned Global Times in March, CNN reports.
– Less than a third of political donations come from women, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed the money given to candidates, political action committees, and party committees in 2010 and discovered that only 26% of federal contributions came from female donors, a dip from 31% in 2008, and 27% in 2006, reports the Daily Caller. “Women are far more motivated to want to see changes in their neighborhood and city on a social level than men are, but they have not yet made that connection [with politics],” says the president of the group She Should Run, which co-released the study. “In fact, women, far more than men, see the hard, sausage-making dimension of politics as something they are not willing to be engaged in. They find it distasteful.”
– Jon Krakauer takes to the pages of the New Yorker to weigh in on the latest tragedy on Everest (the author was, of course, part of the 1996 disaster that saw eight climbers killed). His piece makes plain the imbalance between the dangers faced by Sherpas and the climbers they shepherd to the mountain's peak, but before arriving at that point, he shares a fascinating backstory: That of Himex, a New Zealand-based company that Krakauer calls the most "lucrative commercial guiding operation" on Everest—one that on May 7, 2012, packed up shop after 18 years on the mountain and headed home, taking its guides, members (aka paying climbers, who didn't see their $60,000 refunded), and Sherpas with them. The much-assailed decision was one made by owner Russell Brice, who had grown fearful of a 900-foot-wide overhang of glacial ice set directly above the main route on the mountain's Nepal side, an overhang that his members were directly under for as long as an hour while traversing the route. As Krakauer writes, the "wedge of ice the size of a Beverly Hills mansion" that broke free and caused last week's avalanche came from "that same ice bulge" and killed 16 Sherpas. As for the outsize dangers Sherpas face, some standout points: Between 1921 and 1996, the mountain's death ratio was a treacherous one death for every four completed ascents. Between 1997 and present, the death ratio was one for every 60. Among the reasons it's gotten safer: Climbers tend to pack and use more bottled oxygen, and some take the robust steroid dexamethasone once they hit 22,000 feet, which pares down the risk of developing the often fatal high-altitude cerebral edema and high-altitude pulmonary edema. Sherpas typically have less of the former and none of the latter (and are, of course, the ones lugging those extra oxygen bottles up the mountain). Krakauer points to an Outside piece that shares the professions with a lower calculated fatality rate than that of Sherpas: US soldiers stationed in Iraq between 2003 and 2007, miners, and commercial fishermen.
– Newt Gingrich’s website proudly displays a 2012 catchphrase: “Win the Future.” That's right, the same phrase President Obama has been using since his 2011 State of the Union address. Did Gingrich steal it? Nope, discovers the Atlantic: The ex-speaker registered the political organization "American Solutions for Winning the Future" with the IRS in 2006, many moons before Obama uttered those three words. Now Gingrich is stealing the phrase back, though it has hardly been a sweeping success for the Obama administration, notes Fast Company. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert relentlessly made fun of it, even prompting stifled laughter from an Obama advisor. But Gingrich’s team thinks it's “great” that both campaigns have employed the slogan: “We intend to have a head on debate of whose policies will actually win the future and whose policies will lose the future,” said a rep. (In other Gingrich news, he grumbled about Obama last night.)
– Bill Cosby's trial for allegedly assaulting Andrea Constand begins Monday, and at least one member of his former TV family will reportedly be watching from the sidelines, per NBC News. Keshia Knight Pulliam, 38, who played little Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show, is expected to be in the Norristown, Pa., courthouse to watch the proceedings against her 79-year-old former boss, with Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt telling People that Pulliam won't be there to "proclaim guilt or innocence," but simply "to finally hear the truth for herself." Wyatt says Cosby's wife on the show, Phylicia Rashad, will also appear in the courtroom at some point, though the New York Daily News says it has been told that a Rashad appearance Monday is "unlikely" because she's working. Reports of Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played son Theo Huxtable, attending are similarly being bandied about. The New York Times offers an overview of what to expect during the trial—"perhaps America's highest profile celebrity trial since that of OJ Simpson"—including expected lines of evidence, the Cosby legal team's anticipated strategy, and some juror information. CNN says the trial has come down to a "he said-she said" scenario, with one other alleged victim expected to testify against Cosby in addition to Constand. "What Cosby is hoping for is that the jury forgets about the other 48 [alleged victims]," a Fordham criminal law professor notes. Meanwhile, Constand herself is reportedly ready to face intense grilling on the witness stand. "There's no trepidation, no fear," a close friend who's also one of Cosby's alleged victims tells NBC. "She used to play basketball and she prepared for those games like nobody else and that is what she has done here." (Vice calls the trial a "test for America.")
– One lucky New York family sold a tiny Chinese bowl this week for $2,224,997 more than they paid for it: $3, at a garage sale six years ago. The bowl, which measures roughly 5.5 inches in diameter, sat in the unnamed family's home for years; eventually, a quest to see what it was worth took them to Sotheby's, which identified it as a "Ding" bowl from the 10th or 11th century. Making their windfall even sweeter: Sotheby's had anticipated it would sell for up to $300,000, reports the New York Post. It's one of only two known bowls of its kind. (And it's not the only great buy in the news: A cottage purchased in 2007 was found to contain $30 million worth of art.)
– After more than 45 years, time is up for one of Japan's most-wanted criminals. NBC News reports Masaaki Osaka was arrested Wednesday in connection with the 1971 murder of a police officer; he's accused of killing officer Tsuneo Nakamura during a street protest in Tokyo in November of that year. A member of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League (JRCL), Osaka was protesting the continued American military presence in Okinawa, an island 400 miles south of the mainland. Authorities say Osaka, now 67, assaulted Nakamura with a steel pipe before lighting him on fire with a Molotov cocktail. The BBC reports Osaka was first arrested last month for allegedly obstructing police during a raid on an apartment in Hiroshima. The JRCL was reportedly using it as a hideout, and police were in search of someone other than Osaka. Although Osaka refused to give police his name, he was recognized, and his identity was eventually confirmed through DNA testing; the Japan Times explains a new warrant on the murder charge was served Wednesday. Osaka has since been moved from Hiroshima to Tokyo for further questioning, though the BBC says he has yet to say anything. Osaka's time as a fugitive—aided, authorities say, by the JRCL—was the longest among major-crime suspects being sought by Japan's National Police Agency.
– It's a convoluted story and, it turns out, a "diabolical" one. A California woman arrested over the summer and charged with posting "rape fantasy" ads on Craigslist that invited men to violate her ex-fiance's new wife has been cleared. It turns out the wife was allegedly behind the twisted caper, and now she's in jail, the Los Angeles Times reports. Michelle Hadley, 30, "is an innocent victim of a diabolical scheme," Orange Country DA Tony Rackauckas said Monday. The case made national headlines after Hadley was accused of posting ads urging men to rape Angela Maria Diaz, the pregnant wife of her ex, and ignore Diaz's screams and protests. Last June, Diaz called 911 tearfully telling cops that a man tried to rape her in her garage. Cops busted Hadley, who spent 88 days in jail, but now say Diaz, 31, was behind it all. The break in the case came when authorities were able to determine the IP addresses associated with the ads led to Diaz's and her father's homes; Diaz allegedly used software that made the emails look as if they were sent by Hadley. The Daily Beast reports the emails contained links to images of aborted fetuses and headless humans; one email allegedly read, "I am his treasure princess, you are nothing." Another member of the DA's office calls Diaz a "serial con artist" who allegedly faked being pregnant and having cervical cancer. Authorities don't believe Diaz's husband—an unnamed US marshal who married Diaz in February after meeting her via online dating the month prior, per KTLA—was in on the plot. Now Hadley, who once faced life in prison, says she'll go back to her MBA studies. Diaz faces up to 12 years, 8 months in prison and 11 years in county jail if convicted. (This woman was cleared in a zookeeper love triangle.)
– Jodie Foster is reportedly dating Ellen DeGeneres' ex, photographer Alexandra Hedison—and sources say the relationship is getting so serious that Foster has given up alcohol, because Hedison is a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for more than 10 years. Foster "joined Alcoholics Anonymous and has embraced a 12-step program," one source tells Star, according to Radar. "Now they are both sober ... Alex has no reservations about spending their lives together." But she wants Foster to be sober for at least a year before they get married, the source adds. Hedison, 44, who dated DeGeneres from 2001 to 2004, reportedly had a hard time watching Ellen drink as she tried to resist the temptation. Foster "refuses to make the same mistake," the source says. "She’s finally found the woman of her dreams, so giving up alcohol was nothing for her. ... They're crazy in love." But last month, the National Enquirer reported that DeGeneres warned Foster off of marrying Hedison, over fears Foster would be taken advantage of, according to Celeb Dirty Laundry and the International Business Times. But "Jodie could not care less," says one source. "She thinks Ellen is a fool for letting a good catch get away."
– Playboy magazine has decided it no longer makes sense to try to compete with an Internet full of photos of naked women. The 62-year-old magazine is undergoing a major revamp and will dispense with nude photos when it relaunches in March, the New York Times reports. "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passe at this juncture," Playboy CEO Scott Flanders tells the paper. The change apparently has the approval of 89-year-old founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner, the BBC reports. The magazine will still feature racy photos of women, but analysts say the removal of nudes will be a big boost for its articles, including serious journalism and interviews, CNN reports. Flanders tells the Times that the target audience will be young, urban men. "The difference between us and Vice is that we're going after the guy with a job," he quips. The Playboy company now makes most of its money from licensing its brand, and Flanders tells the Times that the magazine loses around $3 million a year in the US, which is a cost the firm sees as an expense for their "Fifth Avenue storefront." The Times notes that the Playboy website became SFW and got rid of nudes last year, which execs say caused traffic to quadruple to 16 million users a month. The age of the average user dropped from 47 to 30. (A major porn site is offering a $25,000 college scholarship.)
– Restaurant servers who give customers plastic drinking straws they haven't asked for will have to suck up a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine or six months in prison under a controversial bill in California. The bill was introduced in the State Assembly by Majority Leader Ian Calderon last week, and the Democrat says it will eventually be amended to drop the harsh penalties, 10News reports. "The penalties are attached to the code section the bill is currently in," he said when asked about the fines. "That will change. Amendments are part of the legislative process." The proposed ban on handing out straws without being asked will apply only to sit-down restaurants, not fast-food outlets or bars. In a tweet, Calderon said the "Straws Upon Request" bill "is (a) NOT a ban; (b) should it become law, it will NOT make it a crime for servers to provide plastic straws. My intention is simply to raise awareness about the detrimental effects of plastic straws on our environment." Calderon, whose office noted in a press release that some 500 million plastic straws are thrown away in the US every day and that they're one of the most common items collected in coastal cleanups, says the bill is part of wider efforts to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in waterways and the ocean, KTLA reports. (California banned single-use plastic bags in 2014.)
– A grieving father who lost his daughter on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 has written to Vladimir Putin, and he doesn't mince words. "Thank you very much Mister Putin, leaders of the separatists, or the Ukraine government for murdering my loved and only child, Elsemiek de Borst," writes Hans de Borst in a letter posted on Facebook and printed in a Dutch paper, reports People. His 17-year-old daughter planned to do her final exams next year, he writes, then go to a technical university and study engineering. "She was looking forward to it. She is suddenly no more." He adds: "Aforementioned misters, I hope you're proud of including her and her young life ... and you will be able to look at yourselves in the mirror tomorrow morning. Thanks again. Sincerely, Elsemiek's father, Hans de Borst from Monster, whose life is ruined." Worse, Elsemiek's mother was killed on the flight too; they were traveling to Malaysia for a holiday, the Telegraph reports.
– Kentucky has another high-profile official taking a stand against homosexuality. Two years after county clerk Kim Davis made headlines by refusing to issue marriage licences to gay couples, a judge has declared that he won't preside over adoption cases involving gay parents. Judge Mitchell Nance announced last week that he would recuse himself from such cases because of his "conscientious objection to the concept of adoption of a child by a practicing homosexual," reports the Glasgow Daily Times. The move shouldn't have too much of a practical effect: Nance's 43rd Circuit Court has two divisions, and the judge who presides over the other division will handle all the gay-adoption cases. Nance says he has no choice because his personal objection constitutes a bias that requires him to recuse himself, per the Washington Post. Nance's decision has set off a debate similar to the one that arose when Davis made her own controversial announcement. Two quotes illustrate the opposite sides: Pro-Nance: "When adoption agencies abandon the idea that it is in the best interest of a child to grow up with both a mother and a father, people can't expect judges who do believe that to be forced to bow the knee," says Family Foundation spokesman Martin Cothran. "Judges have a right of conscience like everyone else.” Anti-Nance: If he "can't perform the basic functions of his job, which are to deliver impartiality, fairness and justice to all families in his courtroom, then he shouldn't be a judge," says Kentucky Fairness Campaign Director Chris Hartman.
– A Michigan conference called to discuss a possible "honor killing" and women in Islam has triggered an uproar from local Muslims and civil rights groups who say it's an excuse to bash Islam. The "Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference on Honor Killings" in Dearborn—home to a thriving American Muslim community—was immediately countered with a "Rejecting Islamophobia: A Community Stand Against Hate" town hall meeting in Detroit, notes MSNBC. Both meetings took place yesterday. Mokdad, 20, was killed last year by her Muslim stepdad, according to police. Though initially reported as a suspected honor killing, investigators now believe Mokdad was killed because she was about to tell police her stepfather was sexually abusing her, according to the Detroit Free Press. "The evidence shows the motive really was not a cultural issue," said a lead investigator. "It's about power, control, and rape." The honor killing conference immediately raised suspicions because it was organized by Pam Geller, critic of Islam and nationally known foe of the proposed Ground Zero Mosque. Geller insists Mokdad's death was an honor killing, and one more example of "stealth enforcement" of Islamic shariah law. Geller's group Stop the Islamization of America has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Organizers of the rival meeting said in a statement it's time for "our community to take a stand, along with those who value America's commitment to diversity and freedom of religion." Said a female speaker at the town hall meeting: "As a Muslim woman, I stand with pride in my faith."
– A visit by George W. Bush to Switzerland later this month has been called off because the host charity says it feared leftist protests would get out of hand. Human rights groups, meanwhile, say the real reason is because they planned to lodge a criminal complaint against Bush accusing him of sanctioning torture, reports Reuters. Bush had been scheduled to speak to a Jewish group Feb. 12 in Geneva, and an attorney for the group says the potential legal action played no role in the decision to cancel, notes the Hill. "We didn't want to put people and property in Geneva at risk," he said, citing plans by protesters to arrive en masse. A spokesman for Human Rights Watch had a different take: "He's avoiding the handcuffs." Noting that Bush acknowledged in his memoir that he approved waterboarding, "authorities would have been obliged to open an investigation and either prosecute or extradite" him, said the spokesman.
– The horrific toll civil war is taking on the children of Syria is laid bare in the first major report to focus on the issue. At least 11,420 children, more than a tenth of the conflict's casualties, have been killed since the conflict began in March 2011, including hundreds who were shot dead by snipers or summarily executed, the report from a London think-tank finds. Teenage boys were the most likely to be killed but children as young as just a year old have been tortured and executed, reports the BBC. Bombing and shelling were the cause of most deaths and the report's authors have urged both sides to stop targeting civilians. More than 2.1 million refugees have now fled the conflict and the United Nations, which says this is the worst refugee crisis in a generation, warns that there could be 3.5 million refugees by the end of the year, reports the New York Times. To make matters even worse for internally displaced Syrians, al-Qaeda fighters have been making major gains in northern Syria in recent months, displacing more moderate opposition groups and imposing strict Islamic law in areas under their control, CNN finds. The jihadist groups are even more dangerous in Syria than they were in Iraq, and are "more likely to sustainably control territory, project power around the region, possibly sponsor global terrorist attacks, and catalyze a new generation of jihadist insurrection," a counterterrorism expert warns.
– Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards has decided that neither age—nor his status as an ex-con—is a barrier to a run for Congress. The 86-year-old Democrat, who was released from federal prison in 2011 after serving eight years on fraud and racketeering charges, has entered the race for the state's 6th congressional district and says he's convinced he can win, the Times-Picayune reports. The four-term governor has always maintained his innocence on fraud charges connected to state licensing of riverboat casinos, the Los Angeles Times notes. "I acknowledge there are good reasons I should not run. But there are better reasons why I should," said Edwards, who starred in a reality TV show after getting out of prison. He says he'd really like to run for governor again, but because of his conviction, state law bans him from doing so until he's 101 years old. Analysts say that while Edwards certainly has name recognition on his side, he will struggle to make headway in the heavily Republican district centered on Baton Rouge. "This changes the race. It’s sure to stir up some notoriety ... but I don’t think he has a chance of winning," a political scientist tells the Baton Rouge Advocate.
– If Frank Lasee ran for office using his wife's house as his primary residence, he'd have to run against incumbent Paul Ryan—which the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says would be "political suicide." Instead, the GOP state senator looking to fill a soon-to-be-vacant congressional seat says he mainly lives in a De Pere apartment in a different district. Only problem: He's listed out the place on Airbnb, Roll Call notes. The listing has since been taken down, but a cached version shows a $210-a-month offering for the "luxury apartment," which Journal Sentinel reporters actually tried booking in April. They dealt with Amy Joy Lasee, Frank's wife, who asked why they wanted to stay there and ultimately denied their request. Why did they pull the listing? "Because we wanted to," says Lasee, who adds that they didn't want "everyone in the world looking at it." He then described a "crazy living arrangement" involving him mostly shacking up at the apartment and sometimes in Racine. This isn't new for Lasee, who had to produce a lease in 2014 when pressed by Democrats wanting evidence that he wasn't subletting the apartment. In a response to the state's Government Accountability Board, he said custody arrangements and the challenges of a "blended family" forced him to retain both residences. Yet he has switched his official residence a few times between Racine and De Pere during various divorce and child custody proceedings. Lasee chalks the whole hubbub up this time around to "a campaign issue."
– An 86-year-old Indian activist died Thursday during a hunger strike to protest pollution in the Ganges River, Reuters reports. G.D. Agarwal was more than 15 weeks into a fast that he began on June 22. He was demanding a law to protect the Ganges—India's largest waterway, sacred to Hindus, which is filthy with domestic and industrial waste—as well as the discontinuing of construction of hydroelectrical projects. Another activist tells Reuters that Agarwal's death "has shut one of the leading voices of criticism of the government on the Ganga pollution." The day before he died, Agarwal was forcibly taken to the hospital after refusing to drink water. Officers reportedly picked him up in the chair he was sitting in as he kicked his legs in protest. He later died of cardiac arrest, per Reuters. Another activist, 36-year-old Sant Gopaldas, was hospitalized Saturday after starting a hunger strike on June 24, NDTV reports. Gopaldas was protesting mining operations along the Ganges. Authorities have reportedly given hospital staff the OK to force-feed him.
– Before being hunted to near extinction for their pelts in the 18th and 19th centuries, sea otters littered the Pacific coast. Today the biggest threats to the 3,000 that remain are oil spills and tankers, reports the Guardian, and now a shooter on the loose near Santa Cruz, Calif. Authorities have found in just a matter of days four male sea otters washed ashore, though the fourth body was so deteriorated it's not yet been determined whether it was also shot, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The endangered furry marine mammals are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, California state law, and the Endangered Species Act, and the killer could face fines up to $100,000 and jail time. "Finding several gunshot sea otters at the same general location during such a short time frame is very unusual," says a Fish and Wildlife Service rep. "They’re a keystone species.... With the loss of these sea otters, we also have the loss of their benefit to the ecosystem." Almost exactly three years ago, three sea otters were found dead near Asilomar state beach in Pacific Grove, Calif., in what the FWS rep says is now considered a "cold case." The recently found otter carcasses are undergoing necropsies at a FWS lab in Oregon. (One famous sea otter who survived an oil spill was ultimately nabbed by another ocean dweller.)
– The horror in South Carolina, where authorities last week rescued a woman chained to a storage container before finding the body of her boyfriend, is only deepening. Suspect Todd Kohlhepp has now admitted to killing at least seven people over the course of a decade, reports WLTX, including an unsolved shooting rampage at a motorcycle shop that killed four 13 years to the day ago on Sunday. "God answered our prayers. If it wasn't for Him answering our prayers and Todd talking to us, I don't know that we'd ever solve that case," said local sheriff Chuck Wright, via the AP. "He told us some stuff that nobody else ought to know." Kohlhepp, a registered sex offender, was spotted on Saturday leading authorities around his rural 95-acre property near Woodruff; he apparently showed cops the locations of two bodies he'd buried there. Law enforcement is continuing to search the property, says Wright, who adds, "this is one of the biggest crime scenes I've been involved in." Says the widow of one of the victims of the motorcycle shop shooting: "It isn't closure, but it is an answer. And I am thankful for that."
– The illness and death of Fiat Chrysler's fast-charging, unconventional CEO may have seemed sudden and surprising to many, but Sergio Marchionne was apparently sick for longer than anyone—even his employer—knew. That news comes to the Wall Street Journal from University Hospital Zurich, which notes Marchionne had a "serious illness" for which he sought treatment at the hospital for more than a year. In a statement issued to get ahead of "further speculation," UHZ says it gave the ailing Marchionne "all the options offered by cutting-edge medicine," though it didn't detail what exactly he was being treated for. And because of patient privacy rules, Fiat Chrysler says it was in the dark about Marchionne's issues. "The company had no knowledge of the facts relating to Mr. Marchionne's health," a company spokesman says, per Reuters, adding it wasn't until July 20 that it "was made aware with no detail by Mr. Marchionne's family of the serious deterioration in Mr. Marchionne's condition." The reason that's important is because "material" information about a company is required to be divulged to shareholders under securities laws. Whether a high-level exec's health counts as "material" can get murky, but a company can get itself into trouble if it puts out "half-truths or inconsistent statements," a Northwestern University professor tells the Journal. In February, Fiat Chrysler's annual report noted that Marchionne's hands-on involvement in the company was "critical to the execution of our strategic direction and implementation of our business plan," reports CNNMoney.
– Furious French workers at a Goodyear tire factory have revived the practice of "boss-napping" and seized two managers amid a dispute over the plant's closure. The site's director of production and human resources chief are being held at the factory and union leaders say they won't be released until workers get a satisfactory response to their requests, which include more generous severance packages, the Wall Street Journal reports. The bosses were held overnight at the plant and refused offers of mattresses and blankets, the AP reports. "Things were sometimes animated, sometimes calm, but without any meanness," one captive plant manager told reporters, while the other said he would not give any statements under duress. Boss-napping was more common during the height of the financial crisis and while it is punishable by up to five years in prison, workers are rarely prosecuted for holding managers captive, the BBC notes.
– Jodie Foster may have come out as gay only last year, but today she's a married woman. The 51-year-old Oscar winner married photographer girlfriend Alexandra Hedison, 44, over the weekend, reports E! Online. The two had been dating almost a year, notes People. Earlier this month, a report surfaced suggesting things were serious: Foster reportedly gave up booze because Hedison is a recovering alcoholic. Foster has two sons from her previous relationship with ex-partner Cydney Bernard, while Hedison previously dated Ellen DeGeneres for three years.
– It's 2018, which means that when a 21-year-old and a 22-year-old who have become YouTube stars together break up, they don't—they can't—do so privately. And that's how a six-minute video in which popular comedy vloggers David Dobrik and Liza Koshy tearfully discuss their split became, on Wednesday, the top trending content on YouTube. As the Verge (which calls Koshy and Dobrik "one of the most visible power couples on the platform") explains for those unfamiliar, Koshy rocketed to YouTube stardom thanks to prank videos often filmed at stores, while Dobrik's popular video blogs often featured him and Koshy goofing around. Thanks to the intensely public nature of their relationship, it was necessary to come clean to fans about their breakup, which happened six months ago but about which they didn't feel ready to vlog until now. They had been together since 2015 and have a combined 20+ million YouTube followers, the BBC reports. Their breakup video, appropriately titled "we broke up," has received more than 22 million views so far. The coverage is fascinating:
– A study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found men with beards—or any other type of facial hair—were more likely to hold sexist attitudes. Australian researchers gave online surveys to more than 500 men between the ages of 18 and 72 from the US and India, Psychology Today reports. After controlling for everything from nationality to education level to sexual orientation, researchers found men with any type of facial hair scored "significantly higher" in hostile sexism. A hostile sexist would agree with statements such as "Women are inferior to men" and "Women want to keep men on a leash," per Psychology Today. That's opposed to a benevolent sexist, who would agree with statements such as "Women should be protected" and "Men should always pay for dinner." Researchers found no connection between beards and benevolent sexism. Researcher Julian Oldmeadow theorizes "hostile sexist men" grow beards because of what they represent, the Independent reports. “Men holding more patriarchal views may be inclined to reinforce their masculinity and dominance by growing facial hair,” he says. Only one-third of respondents in the study didn't express any sexist attitudes. (But how sexist are men who get a beard transplant?)
– Mark Salling, who played Puck on Glee from 2009 to 2015, was arrested Tuesday morning for alleged possession of child pornography, an LAPD officer confirms to People. Crime Watch Daily first broke the story. Law enforcement sources tell TMZ authorities found more than a thousand images showing "child sexual exploitation" on Salling's computer, and that the images featured children "significantly younger" than 15 or 16. Salling, 33, lives alone. Sources say his ex-girlfriend tipped off police and that the actor was "shocked" when they arrived at his house; he's said to have already hired a lawyer. In 2013, the actor was sued by an ex for allegedly forcing her to have sex without a condom; he denied it, but ended up paying her more than $2.7 million when the case was settled.
– A rogue gray squirrel has been terrorizing a neighborhood in Vermont. One resident says he was shoveling snow when the squirrel jumped onto his back three separate times, scratching and clawing him before he finally managed to chase it away. At least two other people on the street have been attacked as well, reports the Bennington Banner. One victim is being treated for exposure to rabies, although Vermont's chief veterinarian says there's never been a case of a squirrel passing rabies to a human. He says that it's likely that the squirrel isn't rabid, but may have been kept as a pet and lost its fear of humans. The squirrel might "go ballistic" when it meets people it doesn't recognize, the vet tells the AP.
– A government pamphlet's advice for pregnant women in India isn't going over well. The booklet titled "Mother and Child Care" tells the women to "detach themselves from desire, anger, attachment, hatred and lust," spurn "impure thoughts," look at "beautiful pictures" to benefit their fetus, and avoid meat and eggs, per the AP and Hindustan Times. According to one gynecologist in India, the advice isn't just "unscientific and irrational," but it's "a national shame" in a country where 174 of every 100,000 pregnancies resulted in the mother's death in 2015, due in part to malnutrition and anemia. That's compared to 14 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies in the US, according to UNICEF. Since women are typically the last to eat and receive medical care in Indian households, the government should be "ensuring that poor pregnant women get to eat a nutritious, high-protein diet," says gynecologist Arun Gadre. This would also help prevent stunted births; some 48% of Indian children under 5 have not grown to the proper height and weight. But "if the calories of expectant mothers are further reduced by asking them to shun meat and eggs, this situation will only worsen," Gadre says. With its advice against lust, the pamphlet also suggests that engaging in sex is dangerous for pregnant women, contrary to medical evidence. A government minister charged with promoting traditional and alternative medicine says the booklet contains "wisdom accumulated over many centuries" from "the fields of yoga and naturopathy."
– We're surrounded by toxic chemicals, and even holing up in our meticulously kept homes may not save us, Time reports. Ten chemicals that may be hazardous to our health were found in over 90% of indoor dust samples taken for a study published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal. And these chemicals are found in everyday items, including ones you may suspect (e.g., cleaning products, cellphones) and ones that may surprise you (toys, pizza boxes). Two of the most common toxins are phthalates—chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and thought to be linked to harmful effects on the endocrine system, which can lower IQ and lead to breathing troubles—and highly fluorinated chemicals, or HFCs, used to make items nonstick or waterproof but which are also tied to testicular and kidney cancer, thyroid issues, and liver malfunction, among other problems. In what the study's authors say is the first mega-study of its kind, they scrutinized data from 26 past studies and one unpublished one, with dust containing 45 chemicals collected from homes, schools, and workplaces in 14 states, per Scientific American. The Toxic Substances Control Act was updated earlier this year, per the Atlantic, but the law only requires new chemicals get a green light from the EPA—leaving about 1,000 examination-worthy chemicals already on the market that the agency doesn't have the resources to study. "We think our homes are safe havens, but … the surprising reality [is] that our homes are being polluted by the products we have every day," co-author Veena Singla tells CBS News. How you can decrease your risk, the authors say, per CNN: Wash your hands regularly and use a strong vacuum with a HEPA filter. (Arkansas prisoners fear they were exposed to toxic dust.)
– In an interview recorded two weeks before his death, a former CIA agent claimed he had prevented a war by giving South African authorities a tip that led to the arrest of the "Black Pimpernel"—better known as Nelson Mandela. In March, 88-year-old Donald Rickard told film director John Irvin that when he was the US vice consul in Durban in 1962, African National Congress informants told him Mandela was visiting the city and he shared that information with police, leading to Mandela's arrest at a roadblock as he tried to return to Johannesburg, the Times of London reports. The ANC leader spent the next 28 years in prison. An unrepentant Rickard said he and his CIA handlers saw Mandela as "a toy of the communists" who was completely controlled by the Soviet Union. Rickard—who retired in 1978 and died on March 30, according to an obituary in the Pagosa Springs Sun—claimed Mandela was preparing to incite a communist rebellion against apartheid, which could have led to Moscow's involvement. "If the Soviets had come in force, the United States would have had to get involved, and things could have gone to hell," he said. "We were teetering on the brink here and it had to be stopped, which meant Mandela had to be stopped. And I put a stop to it." Irvin's movie about the months before the arrest, Mandela’s Gun, will debut at the Cannes Film Festival this week, the Guardian reports. An ANC spokesman called the news "a serious indictment" and accused the agency of interfering in South African politics to this day, reports the Telegraph. The CIA has declined to comment. (President Obama toured Mandela's former prison cell in a 2013 visit to South Africa.)
– Even rose-colored glasses can't make Nokia's situation look any brighter. The company today announced that it would cut another 10,000 jobs, which Reuters points out is one out of every five slots at its once-formidable global cellphone business. The news was accompanied by the warning that its main mobile devices unit would post an even bigger operating loss than expected, as Nokia faces competition from Apple and Google that it admits affected it "to a somewhat greater extent than previously expected," reports the Wall Street Journal. The cuts will be made by the end of 2013, and will add up to $2 billion in cost reductions by the end of that year. The overhaul, CEO Stephen Elop's biggest to date, extends to the top, with the company's CMO and heads of markets and mobile phones to step down by month-end. Bloomberg reports that sites in Finland, Germany, and Canada will also be shuttered, and notes that the stock has hit its lowest price since 1996. Since Elop took over in the fall of 2010, nearly 40,000 jobs have been eliminated; Nokia currently employs 122,000, some 53,000 of which work in its mobile devices unit.
– The Victoria's Secret fashion show airs tonight, and the New York Daily News is here to tell you that—believe it or not—getting into those $3 million bras and humongous angel wings isn't as easy as it looks. "People don't realize that there are about 20 layers of makeup on my butt alone," says one model, adding that one of her "looks," a 30-pound lightning bolt with sharp edges, required adding a 15-pound sandbag on her hips. The 38 models spend three to five hours getting hair and makeup done—at the hands of five stylists each. One of the models using her share of the 100 pounds of body glitter on hand is Liu Wen, Victoria's Secret's first Asian model. The 21-year-old entered a modeling contest in her native China four years ago, trying to win a computer, and was plucked from a casting call by the Angels. "Of course I had seen the show on television. I watched it every year," she tells CNN. "But it was so different when I got here and got to meet the other girls."
– Mitt Romney's lead over President Obama stands at 3 points in today's Gallup tracking poll, and among registered voters Obama actually leads 48-47. The poll is noteworthy, the Hill explains, because Gallup has lately been much higher on Romney than all the other polls; he was ahead by 3 yesterday, too, but for most of last week, he was up between 5 and 7 points. The results back up a trend Nate Silver has been seeing: It appears Romney's rise has stalled. Yesterday he lost ground in five out of six daily polls. "This is the closest we've come in a week or so to one candidate clearly having 'won' the day … and it was Mr. Obama," Silver writes. "It's improbable that Mr. Romney would have a day like this if he still had momentum." Romney still has a slight edge in RealClearPolitics' polling average, but Silver's prediction model still has Obama as a 71% favorite to win.
– Imagine you're so obsessed with fortune cookies, and the destinies they claim to foretell, that you order more than 1,000 of them to "unlock their mysteries." That's exactly what data journalist Walt Hickey did for FiveThirtyEight.com, picking through the prognostications (676 unique ones among his 1,035-cookie sample), the "lucky numbers" included on each slip of paper, and even the Mandarin vocab printed on the reverse sides. Despite his inventory being 15 cookies short of what he ordered (did anyone really think someone in love with data wouldn't count every single cookie?), he made some fascinating and surprising finds. Here, a sample: Those lucky numbers aren't not lucky. Hickey calls this discovery "weird as hell," but he admits that, after comparing the numbers on the fortunes to winning Powerball numbers over a nearly 20-year stretch, the value of playing the fortunes' numbers over that time period would have left a hypothetic gambler with a slight profit (just under $175), while playing random numbers would leave that same gambler with a $2,540 deficit. He's got some common-sense explanations for why that may be. What do the fortunes really tell us? They don't so much tell our fortunes as appeal to our egos and sense of good citizenship, apparently. Only 22.3% of the themes enclosed within the cookies actually dabbled in prophesy: The vast majority (52.9%) included the word "you" and spit out praise or criticism of one's strengths and weaknesses, while others included basic life advice and well-worn wisdom like "Do onto others as you wish others do onto you." Hickey even built his own online bot to see what randomly generated fortunes it would churn out. Check it out here. Break open the steamed dumplings and read more on what the FiveThirtyEight analysis turned up.
– A decades-old murder mystery has finally come to some sort of an end. Following a judge's Wednesday ruling, a death certificate has been issued for Lord Lucan, who the New York Times recounts as "a dashing British aristocrat" last seen on Nov. 7, 1974—the day that his children's nanny was found dead, allegedly by his hand. The BBC recalls the crime: Sandra Rivett was beaten to death in the family's London home and her body left in the basement; Lord Lucan's estranged wife was also attacked but got away, fleeing to a neighboring pub and yelling "He’s in the house! He’s murdered the nanny!" per the Times. Lady Lucan named her then 39-year-old husband as the attacker, saying he had thought she was Rivett, reports USA Today. A June 1975 inquest named him as Rivett's murderer, except the man born Richard John Bingham was never officially seen again after that night; a car he had borrowed from a friend was later found, blood-stained and abandoned. The sightings and theories kept flowing, though: in Melbourne, Australia, and France within the first year; employed as a waiter in San Francisco; backpacking on Mount Etna; dying in Goa in 1996. Just last Saturday came a story from an old gambling friend, who says he was told that the lord shot himself and had his body fed to a tiger. Lucan was declared dead in 1996, but the rub was that son George Bingham was unable to take on his title, preventing him from assuming his father's seat in the House of Lords. The death certificate now allows for that.
– We knew Michael Jordan and his new wife were expecting a baby—but it turns out they're expecting two. Jordan and Yvette Prieto's identical twin girls are due in April, E! reports, just about a year after the couple wed. Another celebrity baby coming soon: Bruce Willis' second child with wife Emma Heming, sources tell Us and People. Their daughter Mabel Ray is 20 months old.
– Police may have cracked the murder of a 30-year-old jogger in Queens last summer. Detectives have a suspect in custody after finding a DNA match with evidence at the scene of Karina Vetrano's killing, reports the Daily News. NYPD Chief Robert Boyce identified the suspect on Twitter as Chanel Lewis, 20. Boyce says the Brooklyn man made "incriminating statements" upon his arrest Saturday night, and that the encounter that ended with Vetrano's death looks to be a random one, the AP reports. Vetrano went out for a run on Aug. 2, and her father found her body that night as part of a search team. Lewis reportedly has no criminal history and voluntarily supplied his DNA to investigators. Genetic material was found under Vetrano's fingernails and on her phone and neck, notes the AP. (Vetrano was seen on videotape shortly before her killing.)
– The "last of the Cocaine Cowboys"—on the lam for almost exactly 26 years—was finally arrested Wednesday while on a 40-mile bike ride with his wife, the Miami Herald reports. During South Florida's "Miami Vice era," Gustavo Falcon allegedly helped his brother, kingpin Augusto Falcon, smuggle tons of cocaine into the US via speedboat, according to the AP. The so-called Cocaine Cowboys, apparently unworried about drawing attention to themselves, lived large in fast cars and oceanfront mansions. Gustavo Falcon disappeared in 1991, just before indictments that would land his brother in prison. A warrant was issued for his arrest on April 10 of that year, NBC News reports. Twenty-six years and two days later, Falcon and his wife were stopped at an intersection on their bikes when they were confronted by a gaggle of armed US marshals. Falcon, 55, was arrested without incident. "Nobody thought he was in the United States," says Barry Golden, a spokesperson for the US Marshals Service, which believed Falcon was living out his days in Mexico or Colombia. Instead, he was renting a forgettable home in a suburb near Disney World. Authorities were tipped off by a fake driver's license used by Falcon during a 2013 car accident. "We figured this all out a month ago," Golden says. Falcon is facing charges of conspiracy to import cocaine. His brother, the former kingpin, is scheduled to be released from prison in June.
– Turkey and Japan today joined a number of nations who have given Syrian diplomats within their borders the boot, as the head of the UN observers in Syria revealed that 13 bodies had been found with their hands tied in the country's east, reports Reuters. But the developments are unlikely to chip away at Russia and China's resistance to taking tougher steps against Syria. To wit, Russia's deputy foreign minister today announced that Russia is "categorically against" military intervention in Syria and noted that it would be "premature" for the UN Security Council to take any fresh steps. The BBC notes that, in light of Russia's veto power on the council, the latest remarks indicate there's little hope for new initiatives. And the overall lack of progress is only underscored by the fact that Kofi Annan this morning left Syria—without getting the government to agree to take any of the "bold steps" he was pushing, reports Voice of America. Writing for the Washington Post, David Ignatius thinks the answer is easy—Bashar al-Assad needs to go—and the reason why that's not happening is obvious: Vladimir Putin, who is "playing a cynical game of power politics." The focus shouldn't be on pressuring Assad, but on turning "up the heat on Putin," he writes.
– In the wake of Brittany Murphy’s death, her latest film roles take on an especially creepy symbolism. The Frisky points to the just-released trailer for her upcoming movie Abandoned, in which she plays a woman under psychiatric care—and E! notes that the box art for another recent film, Deadline, shows Murphy’s character, lifeless, in a bathtub. The Frisky looks back at the final roles of others who died young: Heath Ledger: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is about traveling performers who make deals with the devil—and let’s not forget his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. River Phoenix: He was 90% done filming a movie called Dark Blood before dying of an overdose on the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room nightclub. Aaliyah: The singer died in a plane crash before her last movie, Queen of the Damned, was released. For the complete list, click here.
– Janice Duffner is allergic to grass, so she and her husband, Carl, have no lawn—only flowers are planted in their Missouri yard, which also includes ponds and pathways. They bought their St. Peters home in 2002, and in 2008, the Board of Aldermen adopted a city ordinance requiring 50% of residents' yards to be made up of grass turf. Someone eventually filed a complaint about the Duffners' yard; the couple requested an exemption, but it was denied. In 2014, they were granted a variance, but were still required to plant grass on at least 5% of their property. After various court and administrative battles, in 2016, the Duffners filed a civil rights action in federal court, saying they faced up to $180,000 in penalties and 20 years in jail for their refusal to comply. Last week, a federal judge ruled in favor of the city, the Kansas City Star reports. US District Judge John A. Ross ruled that the Duffners "have failed to identify a fundamental right that is restricted by the Turf Grass Ordinance," have failed to show that the penalties for noncompliance with the ordinance are excessive, and that the Supreme Court has held that "aesthetic considerations constitute a legitimate government purpose." He also said the complaint was too general and if a court accepted it, it could place "many, if not all" such zoning laws under scrutiny, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The couple's lawyer, who says "this is one of the most important property rights cases in the country right now," says the couple will appeal. He tells the Riverfront Times the case could go to the Supreme Court. "This is a couple with health problems facing gross penalties for what they've chosen not to plant on their personal property."
– Jerry Sandusky will likely face six of his accusers at an open hearing Dec. 13, their first public confrontation with the former Penn State coach. Despite claims from Sandusky's defense team that some would recant their allegations, an attorney for "Victim One" tells Fox News that all six of the alleged victims who have been identified are expected to testify. Two other victims remain unidentified. "Victim One," who initiated the investigation in 2008 and is now 18, is being prepared for the hearing, his attorney says. But Sandusky's attorney downplayed the testimony, telling Fox News, "We believe there's a significant possibility at least one and perhaps two of the alleged victims may testify no sexual contact occurred between them and Jerry Sandusky." Sandusky could still waive his right to an open hearing, the Wall Street Journal notes.
– Two brothers playing with their dad's handgun ended with the younger accidentally dead at the hands of the older in a game of "cops and robbers" gone horrifically wrong. As the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports, 13-year-old Suhayb Jamal Hassan, his 15-year-old brother, and an 11-year-old sister were at their home in the Minneapolis suburb of Eagan on Sunday morning when the boys found their dad's unloaded 9mm pistol, with ammunition nearby. "They began to play with the gun and sometime during the incident the gun was loaded and then believed to have been unloaded by one of the boys," an Eagan detective says, per KARE. The 15-year-old boy pretended to shoot Suhayb, but the gun was loaded and went off, striking Suhayb in the chest. The older boy called 911, telling them at first that Suhayb had accidentally fallen on a knife; he later admitted that he'd accidentally shot Suhayb. Emergency responders pronounced the boy dead at the scene. "We do not anticipate any future arrests," says the city of Eagan in a statement. It adds that while an investigation is being conducted, the case "appears to be a horrible accident." "It's so sad," says a neighbor. "You hear about this happening a lot ... kids playing with guns."
– A 36-year-old California man who boasts he's an "organic" sperm donor and has fathered 14 children through his free donations, has never had sex, he has revealed. Silicon Valley computer security specialist Trent Arsenault tells Anderson Cooper today that he's a "donorsexual" who has committed "100% of my sexual energy for producing sperm for childless couples to have babies. So I don't have other activity outside of that." An incredulous Cooper asks: "So you do not have sex?" Arsenault responds: "I will probably be the 40-year-old virgin—except I'll have 15-plus kids." Arsenault's free sperm bank, operated out of his home, has been ordered to shut down by the US Food and Drug Administration for possible health violations. The FDA alleges that Arsenault hasn't taken the legally required precautions to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, reports the Mercury News. Arsenault claims the FDA is opposed to his one-man shop because the sperm is "fresh" instead of frozen, and hasn't been quarantined. "I'm helping people in need," he told the Huffington Post. "I'm not running a business here." To make everything a tad weirder, Arsenault touts the importance of "abstinence" during sperm production on his website. To top that, Gawker has dubbed Arsenault an "amateur porn star" for the explicit videos he has posted of him "donating sperm" (yep, into a cup) on the web. The program airs today.
– Declared a public health emergency on Sept. 1, a hepatitis A outbreak in California is only getting worse, the Los Angeles Times reports. There have been 421 confirmed cases of hepatitis A in San Diego County, and 292 people have been hospitalized. Sixteen people have died. The county has vaccinated 19,000 people, and on Monday workers started spraying sidewalks and and streets in downtown San Diego with bleach-infused water to kill the virus, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Hepatitis A can be spread when people don't wash their hands properly after going to the bathroom. The current outbreak has hit San Diego's homeless population hardest. The county is installing 40 hand-washing stations where homeless people congregate and is making some public restrooms available 24 hours a day. KGTV reports San Diego will be opening three temporary homeless shelters that, along with beds, will have restrooms and showers. Officials warn it could be months before these new measures show any positive effect on the outbreak.
– Florida's Alan McCarty has made clear he does not like judges, and he will spend the next 20 years in prison as a result. The 36-year-old received the 20-year sentence this week—along with an extra 10 days for contempt of court, a penalty more serious than it sounds—for calling 911 last year and promising to kill a judge he mistakenly believed had ruled against him in a custody case, reports the Daytona Beach News Journal. During Wednesday's sentencing in front of a different judge, Matt Foxman, McCarty had to be removed from the courtroom as Foxman listed his offenses. “What a bunch of (expletive) lies you stupid piece of (expletive),” McCarty yelled. “You threatened my life, (expletive, expletive). (Expletive) you, you (expletive, expletive).” Foxman explained that he was tacking on the 10-day contempt of court sentence for a variety of reasons, including one particular McCarty outburst during the trial. “You also offered me to perform a sex act upon you, which I politely declined and still do to this day for whatever that’s worth,” Foxman said. The extra 10 days will be served when the 20-year sentence is done, and it's no small thing, explains the News Journal. It means that McCarty won't be able to participate in a work-release program while in prison. McCarty also was convicted of threatening 911 dispatchers, reports GateHouse Media Florida, which notes that because of his courtroom behavior, McCarty had to observe most of his trial from behind one-way glass.
– Google's plan to build a giant digital bookstore is in limbo after a federal judge rejected a proposed settlement between the search giant and an alliance of book publishers and authors, MarketWatch reports. Judge Denny Chin said the $125 million settlement, which gave Google approval to digitize all books except those actively withdrawn by copyright holders, "would simply go too far." Chin said he would be satisfied if Google switched from an "opt-out" to an "opt-in" model. That would keep so-called "orphan books," or those whose copyright holders can't be found, out of Google's library, notes the New York Times. A company spokesperson called the ruling "disappointing" and said Google was considering its next move. A lawyer for the Open Book Alliance, which includes Microsoft and Amazon.com, said the settlement was "everything we were asking for.”
– An extremist Muslim website has published a "kill list" of hundreds of British members of parliament who voted for the war in Iraq. The site, Revolutionmuslim.com, urges readers to follow the example of a young "holy warrior" Muslim woman who stabbed former British Labor Minister Stephen Timms and was sentenced this week to life in prison for attempted murder. “We ask Allah for her action to inspire Muslims to raise the knife of Jihad against those who voted for the countless rapes, murders, pillages, and torture of Muslim civilians as a direct consequence" of the politicians' vote, says the message. The site links to a place where readers can buy a kitchen knife like the one used by Roshonara Choudhry on Timms, and also offers instructions on how to track a politician's activities, the Telegraph reports. Revolutionmuslim.com is hosted in the US; the White House is being pressured by the British government to take action against such sites. "These sites are extremely dangerous, and this one must be taken down immediately," said the former chairman of Britain's homeland security.
– Hoping scientists will find a brilliant alternative to oil and coal? How about a thermonuclear reactor that will hit temperatures ten times hotter than the sun and "could solve the world's energy problems for the next thirty million years," writes Raffi Khatchadourian in the New Yorker. The project—called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, in France—only needs to overcome rock-bottom morale, constant delays, tensions between engineers around the world, grumbling politicians, and a multi-billion-dollar budget that's never quite high enough. "There is a lot of anxiety here that it is all going to implode," says a physicist. Scientists have long dreamed of such a reactor to harness power by nuclear fusion, a cleaner process than fission that produces almost no radioactive waste. First proposed in 1985, ITER relies on an oft-squabbling, international cadre of experts who vie for the spotlight and struggle to convince politicians that it's still viable. The US has yanked and recommitted funding over the years, and a family-owned company in San Diego is building the all-important solenoid—in this case, a 20-mile-long cable wrapped around a metal column—to harness the plant's plasma in a "magnetic bottle" (because no physical material can contain it). But engineering challenges remain, and parts made around the world may or may not all fit together. If they do, Earth could have a new energy source in about 10 years. "I think ITER is an absolute necessity for the world—otherwise I wouldn't put up with the frustrations," says a top ITER official. Click for the full article, or see a Science Insider report on a damning assessment of ITER's management.
– A Detroit man who long pondered the fate of his old Army buddy found him in the oddest of places: living practically next door for the last 18 years. Dave Brown heard that his basic training buddy Roger Watson had been wounded in Vietnam, which was true—Watson lost a kidney and suffered other organ damage after being shot early in his tour in 1968, the Detroit Free Press reports. Brown even checked the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to see whether his fellow combat engineer demolition specialist, who trained with him at Ft. Hood in Texas, had died. Then Brown's wife, Peggy, befriended a kitty-corner neighbor over the back fence, chatting with him about their mutual interest in birds. She was also intrigued by the Purple Heart license plate on his car, and 9th Infantry Vietnam Veterans cap in his car's rear window. So she asked about them in an email. Soon, the exclamation points were flying: "Small world!!!!!!" and "Wow!!!!" are among the words in their email exchange as they figured out who was who. A backyard meeting was quickly arranged, and Brown "came running out of the house, over to the corner, had to beat back the brush, we just shook hands and couldn’t believe it," Watson tells WXYZ. "It was just an incredible feeling, just amazing." Reclaiming their friendship after nearly half a century, they plan to "share a beer every now and then" and see "a lot more of each other," says Watson. "Grow very old and watch our grandchildren grow up," adds Dave. "It's just great to see him alive. It makes me happy." (Read about a guy apparently outed as "fake" Army veteran.)
– After Angela Lansbury said this week that women need to "sometimes take the blame" for sexual misconduct because they make themselves attractive to men, the backlash was fast and forceful. "It is a deeply unhelpful myth that rape and other forms of sexual violence are caused or 'provoked' by women's sexuality or 'attractiveness,'" ABC News quotes Rape Crisis England & Wales as saying. Actress Patricia Arquette added: "It doesn't matter how young or old, how beautiful or homely. Rapists rape. End of story." Lansbury has now responded to her critics. "There is no excuse whatsoever for men to harass women in an abusive sexual manner," Entertainment Weekly quotes the 92-year-old Murder She Wrote star as saying. "And, I am devastated that anyone should deem me capable of thinking otherwise." Lansbury says she's "a strong supporter of women's rights" and is "troubled by how quickly and brutishly some have taken my comments out of context and attempted to blame my generation, my age, or my mindset, without having read the entirety of what I said." To which the AV Club quips: "Welcome to the internet, Dame Angela."
– Police have released surveillance video of Kenneka Jenkins, the Chicago teen whose death in a walk-in hotel freezer after a party last weekend has led to protests and theories that she was murdered. The footage, which appears to be from a motion-activated camera at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Rosemont, Ill, doesn't capture the moment the 19-year-old entered the freezer, but it shows her walking, alone and apparently disoriented, through a disused hotel kitchen on the way there, reports the Chicago Tribune. The video shows that nobody else entered the kitchen area until her frozen body was found early Sunday morning, almost 24 hours after friends said she was missing. Video from early in the evening shows Jenkins with friends, but a later clip shows her emerge from an elevator alone and so unsteady that she had to hold on to a wall, the New York Daily News reports. Another shows her wandering down a hotel hallway. Police say they have interviewed 25 party guests and they have no reason to believe Jenkins was murdered, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Sam Adam Jr., an attorney for the Jenkins family, says lawyers will carry out their own investigation. The hotel "never searched, they never did anything while a young, 19-year-old disoriented girl was sitting in their freezer," he told reporters Friday. "Now there has to be an answer to how that happened. Better yet, there has to be an answer to why that happened."
– The US is putting some muscle behind its promise to help find the kidnapped girls of Nigeria. The White House told Congress today that it has sent 80 troops to neighboring Chad to help track down the girls and their Boko Haram captors, reports the Washington Post. The statement didn't spell out specifics except to say that "these personnel will support the operation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft for missions over northern Nigeria and the surrounding area." The White House letter adds that they will remain there until no longer needed. And that could be a while, as a Pentagon spokesman made clear yesterday. “We’re talking about an area roughly the size of West Virginia, and it’s dense forest jungle," he said of the search. Also today, Nigeria asked the UN to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization, a move that would give nations the power to freeze the group's assets and impose embargoes, reports CNN. Nigeria blames the group for yesterday's car bombings that killed more than 100.
– It turns out missing people are pretty easy to find when they appear every week in your living room. The San Francisco Chronicle reports a 22-year-old woman reported missing in November in California was found this week—because she's a current contestant on The Bachelor. The strange story started when Bekah Martinez's mom reported her missing to the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office on Nov. 18. According to BuzzFeed, Martinez's mom said her daughter had gone to the area to work on a marijuana farm and she hadn't heard from her in a week. The Sheriff's Office was unable to find Martinez or contact anyone who might know her, so Martinez was added to the California Department of Justice's list of missing people. That list was the basis for a story in the North Coast Journal about the high number of missing people in Humboldt County. The newspaper shared the story Thursday on Facebook and asked readers if they recognized any of the missing people. Amy O'Brien did. "I was like wait a minute, she looks so familiar," O'Brien tells the Chronicle. "I instantly thought of The Bachelor." The Journal informed the sheriff's office, which contacted Martinez and removed her from the list. "MOM. how many times do I have to tell you I don’t get cell service on The Bachelor??," Martinez tweeted after learning she was a missing person. The Bachelor started filming in September, and it's unclear if Martinez was still filming when she was reported missing. She tweets "the scariest thing" about being a missing person "is that my efforts to conceal The Worst Drivers License Photo Of All Time have been thwarted"
– JPMorgan is staring down a lawsuit over Bear Stearns' alleged mortgage-backed securities misconduct. The National Credit Union Administration, the federal regulator that oversees credit unions, has sued the big bank, alleging that Bear Stearns misled the credit unions it sold $3.6 billion in securities to, causing many to collapse, Reuters reports. JPMorgan, which bought Bear Stearns when it was on the brink of collapse in 2008, has declined to comment. In other regulatory-actions-against-banks news, Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay Massachusetts a $5 million fine for its widely-criticized handling of Facebook's IPO. Massachusetts' Secretary of the Commonwealth said Morgan Stanley had engaged in "dishonest and unethical practices" in influencing research analysts before the offering, Bloomberg reports.
– With accused cop killer Eric Frein still on the loose and presumably holed up in the nearby woods, a town in rural Pennsylvania has taken the unusual step of canceling Halloween festivities this year, reports ABC News. That means no trick-or-treating and no annual parade for Barrett Township. It's not just that residents fear for the safety of kids—they're also worried that Frein could take advantage of the night to grab a costume and escape the area. The town will instead organize an event at the local high school where people can hand out candy, reports NBC Philadelphia. Frein is accused of shooting to death one state trooper and wounding another on Sept. 12. Authorities tracking him have found various items in the woods, including a journal in which the shootings are discussed in "chilling" detail.
– It might not be the first thing that comes to mind after the word "hackathon," but organizers of an upcoming one at MIT say the world is long overdue for a better breast pump. Engineers, designers, moms, and health experts will gather later this month for reasons spelled out by organizers at their website: "The motor is loud. There are too many parts. They are hard to clean. You can’t lay down and pump. There is no good space to pump. It’s hard to keep track of what you pump. Your colleagues think pumping is weird. People are skeeved out by breastmilk. People are embarrassed by breasts." The Sept. 20-21 hackathon is an offshoot of a smaller brainstorming session in May that was in itself prompted by this article in the New York Times lamenting the baffling lack of progress on breast pumps. By and large, they remain complicated and sometimes painful. It's about time, writes Melissa Malamut at Boston Magazine. "Let’s not forget that you just pushed a baby out of your body. You’d think that would be the hardest part of being a new mom. But no, then you also have to deal with the annoyances of pumping." Business Insider calls it "one of the biggest issues for working mothers," and NBC News notes that half of all new mothers breastfeed for six months, meaning that most require pumps for at least parts of that stretch. The public health benefits of breastfeeding are "huge," say organizers, making the current pump designs all the more frustrating. Hackathon participants will split into teams and pitch prototypes at the end of the session. (A new issue: Moms who breastfeed while using medical marijuana.)
– A beautician who splits her time between Russia and Texas has emerged as America's latest sexy spy since she was busted for trying to smuggle high-tech night vision scopes to Moscow, according to the FBI. Federal officials acting on a tip confiscated the scopes from Anna Fermanova, 24, at New York's JFK Airport earlier this year. She was arrested this month when trying to return to the US, and is being held under house arrest, the Telegraph reports. Fermanova, a Latvian-born US citizen, has been charged with "knowingly and intentionally" trying to export the items without the necessary State Department approval, and faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted. Her lawyer calls the charges "silly," and says the scopes were for her husband, who planned to sell them to hunters. "She is quite sexy, you could say, but she is not a spy," he tells the Dallas Morning News. Fermanova was arrested just two weeks after femme fatale Anna Chapman was sent back to Russia after the feds busted up her spy ring.
– A lost hiker in Maine starved to death after waiting for rescue and then accepting her fate, heartbreaking journal entries have revealed. Geraldine Largay, a 66-year-old from Tennessee, disappeared while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Maine on July 22, 2013, and the newly disclosed journal shows that she survived for at least 26 days, the Portland Press Herald reports. "When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry," she wrote in an Aug. 6 journal entry. "It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me—no matter how many years from now." The final entry was dated Aug. 18. Her skeletal remains were discovered in a tent 3,000 feet from the trail more than two years later. Largay, who was trying to complete a "bucket list" hike from West Virginia to the trail's end solo after a friend left for a family emergency, was reported missing by her husband after she failed to make it to a rendezvous point. A huge search and rescue effort followed, but it was suspended after a week. According to a 1,579-page Maine Warden Service report, Largay became lost after leaving the trail to go to the bathroom, the Boston Globe reports. She tried to text her husband at least a dozen times, but she was unable to get a signal even after moving to higher ground. She then set up a campsite on a knoll, where authorities found a handmade flag and evidence she had tried to start a signal fire. On Oct. 18, 2015, a week after a forester found her body, her husband of 42 years and other family members joined wardens in a hike to the site, where they left a cross and family mementos. (Two "lost" hikers in North Carolina were found in a town 30 miles away.)
– Things got ugly in the streets of Athens today, as Greece’s parliament began voting on austerity measures—needed to keep the nation out of default—that looked increasingly likely to pass. Police firing tear gas fought what Reuters describes as “running battles” with protesters, who threw firebombs, rocks, and firecrackers, and knocked over barricades. Other protesters remained peaceful—one group broke into a traditional dance in front of police lines. One of the two remaining members of the ruling Socialist Party publicly opposing the austerity measures changed his mind today, as did one opposition legislator. That stoked expectations that the bill will pass and had European stock markets climbing, the New York Times reports. Protesters, naturally, were less enthused. “They’ll be the worst criminals in history” if the vote passes, one 57-year-old pharmacist opined. “We want to see them hanged.”
– The 115th Congress will be sworn in at noon Tuesday, per WXYZ, which anticipates "an aggressive campaign" by Republicans to take down eight years' worth of President Obama's policies. The station adds that Democrats are ready to fight back by "swaying public opinion" and using their filibuster in the Senate. What else to look for Tuesday: Both the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe predict an easy re-election of Paul Ryan as speaker of the House. Once Ryan retakes the helm, he'll oversee the oath administration to House members. The vetting process will begin in the Senate for some of President-elect Trump's more eyebrow-raising administration picks, including "foreclosure king" Steve Mnuchin, tapped as Treasury chief, and Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil CEO with questionable ties to Russia in line to be secretary of state. One confirmation expected to sail through: retired Gen. James Mattis for defense secretary. The biggest hunk on the legislative chopping block: ObamaCare. But the Times notes any immediate moves against the health care law would be "largely symbolic" as the GOP scrambles to work out the details and come up with their own alternative—which means a full repeal might not happen until after midterm elections. Blocking or pulling back on regulations will be another priority of the Congress, per USA Today, with a bill expected that would give the GOP-controlled Congress approval power over any new federal regulations, as well as a "Midnight Rules Act" that would give Congress sway to nullify in bulk any rules passed during a president's final year in office. Citizens are nervously watching the outcome for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, with MinnPost noting that "any movement from the GOP" in terms of entitlement reform "could bring some of the messiest politics of 2017." Also on deck: a major tax revamp, the dismantling of Obama-placed environmental regulations, and the nomination of a Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, per the Independent. "It's a big job to actually have responsibility and produce results," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday, per the New York Times. "And we intend to do it." Not that the Republicans' hold on Congress guarantees a unified GOP front: The Times notes "internal disputes" have resulted in no "clear plan yet for Trump's first 100 days, or an endgame for the two years of the 115th Congress." Also complicating matters for the GOP: the president-elect's "often shifting views" on big issues and a "willingness to skirt ideological rigidity." (Also on the Congress itinerary for Tuesday: a vote on a proposal to "effectively kill" the Office of Congressional Ethics.)
– Harvard researchers say five things will help you live longer, and the list isn't all that surprising: exercise, eat a healthy diet, maintain a healthy body weight, don't drink too much, and don't smoke. More surprising is just how much of an effect those five combined factors have on longevity—an extra 14 years for women and 12 for men, according to the study in Circulation. Researchers looked at about 30 years of data on more than 78,000 women and 44,000 men and found that those who were five-for-five on the aforementioned list had a significantly better life expectancy at age 50 than those who didn't abide by any of the healthy habits. For women, it meant an additional 43 years for the healthiest group, compared to 29 years. For men, it meant an additional 37.6 years, compared to 25.5 years. “When we embarked on this study, I thought, of course, that people who adopted these habits would live longer," says co-author Meir Stampfer, per the Guardian. "But the surprising thing was how huge the effect was." The two big factors: Those with the healthiest lifestyles were less likely to get cancer or heart disease, notes CNN. The Harvard Gazette provides some specifics: Researchers defined regular exercise as 30 minutes or more per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity; moderate drinking is roughly one 5-ounce glass of wine per day for women and up to two for men; and the target body-mass index is between 18.5 and 24.9. Scientists say they undertook the study to better understand why the US has a shorter life expectancy (79.3 years) than most high-income countries. (Another study says it's all about eating smaller portions.)
– A San Francisco official looks to be the first public figure in the country to "come out of the PrEP closet," as he puts it in a piece for the Huffington Post. Scott Wiener—who represents a district he calls "ground zero for the HIV epidemic"—says he takes the daily antiviral pill Truvada to lower his risk of contracting HIV. He's urging other gay men to do the same. "A much larger segment of gay men should be taking a close look" at what's known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, Wiener tells the New York Times. Truvada as PrEP has been very slow to catch on across the country, which Wiener writes sees 50,000 new HIV infections each year. Researchers say PrEP could reduce the risk of HIV infection by up to 99% if taken as prescribed. The World Health Organization made a similar case to Wiener's this summer, but the San Francisco Chronicle calls Wiener's announcement "significant because so few people have been willing to talk openly about their use of Truvada." Though the drug's list price is just over $1,000 a month, Wiener says PrEP is covered by most health insurers (he personally pays $15 a month). For the uninsured or those with high-deductible plans, however, the price can be a problem. Wiener's colleague, David Campos, says he will ask the city's health department to develop a strategy that "addresses the educational and affordability issues" by December. "We have to start somewhere," says Campos, who adds that every prevented infection saves $355,000 in treatment costs.
– Elon Musk's dream of building a hyperloop that can move people between Washington, DC, and New York City in 29 minutes may be a small step closer to becoming a distant reality. A Nov. 29 permit issued by DC's Department of Transportation allows Musk's Boring Company to dig at an abandoned lot beside a McDonald's in northeast Washington that the company says might eventually become a station on a hyperloop connecting NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. The system would speed up travel times, using electricity and electromagnetic levitation to send people and cars whipping through tunnels in pods. But before you ditch your car, the Washington Post points out the permit is only for "some preparatory and excavation work" at the site, and more permits are needed before any real construction begins. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has visited a test tunnel Musk is constructing under Los Angeles. But though "we're open to the concept of moving people around the region more efficiently ... we're just beginning, in the mayor's office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop," says Bowser's chief of staff, John Falcicchio. Still, the permit "is comparable to an athlete stretching before a race" and shows Musk is serious about moving forward with his plans for high-speed travel since claiming "verbal" government support for an East Coast hyperloop last July, reports TechCrunch. He's also received a conditional permit to build a tunnel beneath Maryland Route 295 in Hawthorne, per the Post, with Maryland officials saying a leg linking Washington and Baltimore will come first. (Read about the hyperloop pod's first test.)
– A dozen children were hospitalized yesterday after a swing ride malfunctioned at a festival in Connecticut, sending children crashing into each other and the center of the ride in front of their horrified parents. One adult was also injured as the ride at Norwalk's Oyster Festival lost power, the AP reports. Witnesses saw bleeding children with injured necks and legs and the most seriously injured child, an 8-year-old boy, is still in the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. "It was just injured kids everywhere. The parents ripping out the gate just trying to get to their kids," a witness tells CNN. "It was just horrible." The owner of the ride, which spins swings attached to metal arms, says his company is cooperating with state investigators.
– Fans of a British soccer club in the Premier League may need to take their zeal down a notch after an incident over the weekend that reportedly ended up costing their own team nearly $50,000, reports the Telegraph. Crystal Palace devotees determined to make a literal mark on rival team Middlesbrough the night before the two teams faced off descended early Saturday upon what they believed to be the Middlesbrough bus parked at a hotel in a London suburb. The vandals spray-painted "Crystal Palace FC" on the side of the vehicle in red, white, and blue—a move that did little but serve as an ownership tag, because the bus was actually Crystal Palace's. A groundsman for the CP team grumbled about the incident on Twitter in a now-private tweet, noting, "£40,000 worth of damage on our coach thinking it was the Boro coach. Nice one!" The Sun notes that the hotel where the bus was parked, near Crystal Palace's home stadium, is often frequented by visiting soccer teams. Despite an assertion by Sky Sports that the vehicle was on loan to Middlesbrough from Crystal Palace because they'd flown to the match, the BBC reports that was not the case. The Guardian notes the CP team had to arrange for another bus to take the players to their Middlesbrough matchup, which they won 1-0. A Crystal Palace rep says the cops have been notified. (This soccer player's national anthem protest was foiled—by the opposite team.)
– George Zimmerman is on the run: Trayvon Martin's killer attracted an angry crowd while hanging out at a beach in Miami last week and ended up fleeing the city with a bounty on his head, TMZ reports. As the story goes, Zimmerman gave an interview on Tuesday with Univision and Fusion (saying he's homeless and has PTSD) before catching rays with his brother, girlfriend, and her child. Then an angry crowd forced them back to the hotel with someone yelling about a $10,000 bounty on his head. The next day Zimmerman gave an interview with CNN and fled the city. Is there a real threat? In this Black Panthers video, one leader claims the bounty runs to $1 million. And Time reports that in his CNN interview, Zimmerman said he has "a lot of people saying that, you know, they guarantee that they’re going to kill me and I’ll never be a free man. I realize that they don’t know me. They know who I was portrayed to be." (See more on the CNN interview, in which Zimmerman says he was afraid he had missed Martin and shot a neighbor.)
– Those who complain baseball is too slow may be heartened to hear a quicker pace is on its way. Based on a Tuesday evening tweet from ESPN's Howard Bryant, Sports Illustrated reports that, starting with the 2017 season, MLB pitchers will no longer have to waste time lobbing four pitches at batters they plan to intentionally walk. Instead, teams can now simply signal the ump that a walk is in the works, and the runner can immediately saunter over to first. This change could shave 14.3 seconds off of each game, per estimates by the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Post notes "not everyone is thrilled" with the change, including those who enjoy watching what happens when intentional-walk pitches go wild or batters go for them anyway. Others wonder if the time savings is worth the effort, with one commenter noting: "Is the automatic IBB really gonna fix pace of play?" (Start reading about baseball's "most interesting pitcher" with all that time you just gained.)
– An arrest has been made tied to the mail bombs being sent around the nation. Multiple sources tell CNN a man was taken into custody Friday. He has been identified as 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc Jr. of Aventura, Florida, and DNA evidence helped lead investigators to him, per NBC News and the AP. A white van believed to be linked to Sayoc, which was reported to be adorned with Trump pictures and the presidential seal, was impounded by law enforcement officials and taken to a "secure facility." The New York Times reports the arrest in Florida came just hours after two more devices had been intercepted by the FBI: one meant for New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and another for ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Law enforcement officials say Sayoc is a store manager in Florida, per the Wall Street Journal. Online court records show Sayoc was arrested in Miami in 2002 for making a bomb threat and received a year's probation; court records tie at least two other criminal cases in the Miami area to Sayoc. A DOJ spokeswoman announced that a press conference regarding the arrest will be held Friday at 2:30pm EDT.
– Dinosaurs may have been much more like modern birds than we knew—and not just because some had feathers. A new study suggests that mighty dinosaurs of yore didn't roar, contrary to every dinosaur movie you've ever seen. Instead, they made a decidedly less scary sound called a "closed-mouth vocalization." Think of a dove cooing or perhaps an ostrich doing this grunting thing. As the scientists explain in the journal Evolution, per UT News, the sound actually comes out of the neck area after air is pushed through an esophageal pouch. In fact, the animal's mouth is shut the whole time. Lots of birds do this today, and because birds descended from dinosaurs, scientists suspect they may have communicated in a similar way. The fossil record can't prove it, though the Washington Post notes that previous research meshes with the idea, including the belief that dinosaurs had air sacs instead of vocal chords. “A cool thing about this work is the demonstration that closed-mouth behavior evolved many times,” says the lead author. “That suggests it can emerge fairly easily and be incorporated into mating displays" among different types of animals. A co-author says the study gives the impression of "a very different Jurassic world. Not only were dinosaurs feathered, but they may have had bulging necks and made booming, closed-mouth sounds." But if so, the makers of Jurassic Park didn't get it all wrong: The hiss of the film's velociraptors came from a goose, per Vulture. (Scientists have grown chickens with dinosaur legs.)
– The Red Hot Chili Peppers weren't playing their instruments when they joined Bruno Mars for a Super Bowl halftime show watched by a record 115 million people, bassist Flea confirmed after photos surfaced on Vulture of him onstage with an unplugged guitar. In an open letter, he explains that the band has always been firmly against miming, but the NFL made it clear that the "vocals would be live, but the bass, drums and guitar would be pre-recorded"—and there was no room for negotiation, the Los Angeles Times reports. "I understand the NFL's stance on this, given they only have a few minutes to set up the stage, there a zillion things that could go wrong and ruin the sound for the folks watching in the stadium and the TV viewers," Flea writes. The band gave it a lot of thought and "eventually decided, it was a surreal-like, once in a lifetime crazy thing to do and we would just have fun and do it," he writes, promising that in future, the band will "continue to play our guts out live onstage for anyone who wants to get their brains blown out."
– And then there were 14 ... on the GOP side only, a presidential field that NJ.com reports was last this big when Abraham Lincoln won in 1860. Chris Christie today threw his hat into the ring by way of an announcement made at Livingston High School, his alma mater and the town where "everything started ... for me." Politico reported that Christie's announcement would be made telepromter-free, as befitting his "Telling it like it is" campaign slogan. He kicked things off with stories of his roots—hard work, not much money—and what his mother told him: "God's given you so many gifts. If you just work hard enough, you can be anything." Ten standout lines from there: "Both parties have failed our country." "I wake up every morning knowing I have the opportunity to do something great. That's why this job is a great job, and why president of the United States is an even greater job." "America is tired of weakness in the Oval Office ... and that is why today I'm proud to announce my candidacy." "The lying and stealing has already happened. The horse is out of the barn. We've got to get it back in and you can only do it by force." "After seven years I heard the president say the other day that the world respects" America more "because of his leadership. This is confirmation that Obama lives in his own world, not ours." "We better not turn [this world] over to his second mate Hillary Clinton." "I am not running for president of the United States as a surrogate for being prom king of America. I mean what I say and I say what I mean and that's what America needs right now." "And unlike some people who will offer themselves for the presidency, you're not going to have to wonder if I can do it or not." He promised a campaign "without focus-group-tested answers. A campaign when I'm asked a question I'm going to give an answer to the question that's asked, not the answer my political consultants told me to give backstage." "We are going to tell it like it is today ... the truth will set us free, everybody."
– Dinosaurs were scaly old things, right? Not so much, apparently. A Science study of 150-million-year-old fossils uncovered in Siberia is playing a big role in flipping that perception on its head, suggesting that nearly all dinosaurs actually sprouted feathers. At least five species of feathered dinosaurs have turned up in China over the last 20 years, all belonging to the theropod group of raptors. The latest fossils, however, come from a two-legged dinosaur in the ornithischian group, which National Geographic says accounts for about half of all dinosaurs. "Probably that means the common ancestor of all dinosaurs had feathers," the study author says. The fossils have "completely changed our vision of dinosaurs," he adds, per the BBC. A paleontologist not involved with the study calls it "fantastic" and says it revealed three types of feather imprints different from those of other feathered dinosaurs as well as those of modern birds: "I don't know" why they had feathers, he says. "These animals couldn't fly, that's all we can tell you." (Read about a dinosaur that did fly—with four wings.)
– Zachary Reyna, the 12-year-old Florida boy who was battling a brain-eating amoeba, has "passed," according to his family, and will be taken off life support later today. Reyna has shown negative brain activity for days, but is being kept on a ventilator so his organs can be donated, reports the Huffington Post. " Even though Zac has passed, he will still be saving many lives," his family wrote on his Facebook page. The boy had fought off the infection with antibiotics, but was left with brain damage. In happier news, the 12-year-old girl battling a brain-eating amoeba in Arkansas, is doing better, reports the AP. Kali Hardig has now recovered some speech, according to her parents. "She's not speaking normal, but she is doing wonderful trying to pronounce stuff," says her mother. Hardig can reportedly say "yes," "no," "hi mama," "daddy" and "nanny." "It's still a concern that she could certainly have some deficits long-term and not function entirely as she would have if this had never happened," says one of her doctors, but, she adds, "She's up and participating in all her therapy. ... She's saying more, and things are basically looking good."
– One common sentiment among political pundits is that Democrats are on track to deliver a political shellacking to Republicans in the 2018 elections. At Fox News, however, Newt Gingrich is predicting the "great political surprise" of the new year: Republicans will not only win, they'll win big. "After members of the elite media have spent two years savaging President Trump, lying about Republican legislation, and reassuring themselves that Republican defeat was inevitable, the size of the GOP victory in 2018 will be an enormous shock," writes the former House speaker. One key reason for his prediction is the newly passed Republican tax plan. Ordinary Americans have been told in the press over and over that the changes will hurt them and benefit the rich, he writes. But when people actually receive fatter paychecks next year, Gingrich argues, they'll see the truth. "In fact, the tax cuts will be the 2018 proving ground of media liberal bias and dishonesty," he writes. What's more, he predicts that Democrats who voted against the measure will pay the price in the midterms, particularly the 10 Senate Democrats up for re-election in states won by Trump. Click for the full column, in which Gingrich references another by Dilbert creator Scott Adams that offers up a list of 20 doomsday political predictions about Trump that Adams says failed to materialize.
– New York state's attorney general apparently is a little skeptical about the wonder claims of three popular energy drinks. Eric Schneiderman issued subpoenas to three big players—Monster Beverage; PepsiCo, maker of AMP; and Living Essentials, maker of 5-Hour Energy drink, report the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. The subpoenas request information about how the companies market the drinks, which are carbonated and high in caffeine. Critics say the drinks provide all their boost thanks to that caffeine, even if advertisements would lead you to believe it's a result of added vitamins and other healthy-sounding ingredients. Energy drinks are big money-makers for the soft-drink industry, but they're also more loosely regulated than traditional soda, notes the Journal. "You're better off drinking a cup of coffee," says one analyst of the beverages at ConsumerLab.com.
– When young adults in the US reach the age of majority, they take on full legal responsibility for themselves and can do fun things like vote, sign contracts, and open bank accounts. In Japan, the same milestone means they get hit with rent charges and manifestos from their parents on how they're pretty much on their own now. At least, that's the case for Japanese Twitter user @zamayuma1004, who tweeted photos last week of the special gift his mom and dad presented him on the occasion of his 20th birthday (the Japanese age of majority). Beautifully wrapped in an envelope tied with red and white string was a letter titled "Notice of Expiration of Child-Rearing Services," and its contents proved the parents weren't messing around, RocketNews24 reports via Curazy, Japan's BuzzFeed-style site. "As of October 4, 2015, your father, Yoshikazu Hasegawa, and mother, Chiaki Hasegawa, have completed their duties of raising their child: you, Yuma Hasegawa," the letter reads, per a RocketNews24 translation. "Going forward, please become a proper and responsible member of society, like your father and mother." It then offers a bulleted list of advice for the new adult, including that Yuma pay into his pension, "not drive while intoxicated," and discuss any future possible wife with them or they "may not emotionally accept" her. They also mention the $168 they expect for rent and other household expenses and note that "should you ask for a loan from your parents, interest will be charged." "Please enjoy your life as an adult," the note ends. Meanwhile, Yuma insists his parents are just joshing (kind of) and that he's been contributing monetarily to the household since last year. (Centenarians probably won't be getting fancy birthday gifts in Japan anymore.)
– Twitter's 140-character limit is all but sancrosanct, as Slate's Farhad Manjoo discovered a while back when he suggested doubling it. Diehards were horrified, and company honchos ridiculed the notion. But what's this? Twitter has just unveiled "expanded tweets" that allow a lot more characters and "interactive experiences" in tweets that link to material at certain partner sites—the New York Times, BuzzFeed, and TMZ to name a few, but expect the list to grow. (Manjoo's piece at Slate shows an example of what one of these looks like.) Add up all those extras, and "expanded tweets" come in at up to 410 characters, even if the original technically remains 140 or less. Blasphemy? Nope, these "are a great development for Twitter, a way to add depth to the service while still clinging to its hyperabridged roots," writes Manjoo. Tiny text blocks just don't cut it anymore given all the photos, videos, songs, blogs, etc., out there. "Twitter’s purpose is to reflect everything that’s going on in this crazy ecosystem. If it takes a few hundred more characters to do so, what’s so bad about that?" Read the full piece here.
– The blackface controversy may have sealed the fate of Megyn Kelly Today. Sources tell Variety that Megyn Kelly has been in talks with NBC execs about abandoning the 9am morning show for a possible new role at NBC News. An insider close to Kelly says both sides are ready for a change and discussions about ending the show began even before the latest controversy. "Where do you think Megyn Kelly would be happier, as part of big breaking news or forced to cover light-hearted stories that traditionally work at 9am?" the source says. CNN, citing "two people familiar with the matter," reports that Kelly's show is definitely ending, and probably soon: The sources say Kelly will not be hosting Thursday's show and might not return at all. In another setback for Kelly, she has parted ways with talent agency CAA but a planned move to UTA has fallen through because of the controversy, Deadline reports. She has instead hired Hollywood attorney Bryan Freedman for expected settlement talks with NBC. Sources tell Variety that NBC News chairman Andy Lack, who hired Kelly away from Fox in early 2017, addressed the issue in a town hall meeting with staffers Wednesday, saying: "There is no other way to put this but I condemn those remarks, there is no place on our air or in this workplace for them. Very unfortunate." (On Wednesday's show, Kelly said that she had learned blackface is not OK as part of a costume, "Halloween or otherwise.")
– San Diego's city council has closed a loophole that allowed partygoers to dodge a ban on drinking on the beach by boozing just offshore instead. Wording in the original ban defined beach as land only, leading to "Floatopia" parties which saw thousands of people drinking on rafts and inner tubes just a few feet offshore, the Los Angeles Times reports. The updated law now says "bathers" need to be one marine league—around 3.5 miles—offshore before they can drink alcohol. City leaders say the floating parties were a disaster waiting to happen, and even partygoers say the law probably isn't such a bad idea. "Unfortunately, it makes sense," a college student taking to his air mattress for a final few beers told the Wall Street Journal. "Floating? Drinking? That's just not going to work out."
– Britain's Roger Bannister, the first runner to break the 4-minute barrier in the mile, has died at age 88. Bannister's family said in a statement that he died peacefully on Saturday in Oxford. On a windy late afternoon in Oxford on May 6, 1954, Bannister ran four laps on a cinder track in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds to crack the mythical 4-minute mile—a feat many had thought humanly impossible, reports the AP. "There is not a single athlete of my generation who was not inspired by Roger and his achievements both on and off the track," said Lord Sebastian Coe, the holder of a 3:47:33 mile he ran in 1981. Indeed, Bannister's record stood for just 46 days, but as the BBC puts it, "his place in athletics history was assured." A medical student who went on to have a long and distinguished career as a neurologist, Bannister viewed running as more of a hobby, but used his medical knowledge to inform his training and break down the mechanics of running. A few months after his record in 1954, Bannister beat Australian rival John Landy in the "Miracle Mile" or "Mile of the Century" at the Empire Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, as both men ran under 4 minutes.
– Officials say several people are dead after a new pedestrian bridge collapsed onto a road near the Florida International University campus Thursday in Miami, CBS Miami reports. According to the Miami Herald, the 950-ton bridge was installed Saturday to provide pedestrian access between FIU's main campus and an area where students live in off-campus housing and new dorms. The Florida Highway Patrol says five to six vehicles were crushed under the collapsed bridge, ABC News reports. The highway patrol says several people were killed, but an exact number of injuries and fatalities is unknown. It's also unknown why the pedestrian bridge collapsed. The bridge was built using a new method meant to reduce risks to workers and traffic impacts during construction.
– Playing pranks on your successor is a tradition among Virginia governors. When Mark Warner moved out of the governor's mansion in 2006, for example, he left a life-size cutout of himself in the shower for the recently elected Tim Kaine, the Washington Post reports. Kaine paid that favor forward four years later when he occasionally called cell phones he'd left in the elevator shafts to irk his successor, Robert McDonnell. But outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe may have taken the cake Saturday night, greeting new Gov. Ralph Northam and his wife, Pam, with pillowcases on their new bed plastered with McAuliffe's image. And right above the image was one of McAuliffe's favorite lines: "Sleep when you're dead." Northam took his hazing in stride, spending his first night in office with his head rested on the portrait of his predecessor. He also showed a picture he had taken of the pillowcases to reporters at a brunch the next morning. But McAuliffe's mischief didn't stop there, CBS News reports. He also left pictures of himself throughout the governor's mansion. And, according to Northam, an alarm went off at 3am that first night, an alarm Northam has yet to find. "I texted him and thanked him," Northam said, "and he said there was more to come."
– The year's top travel writer is a familiar face, but more so for acting than writing. Andrew McCarthy of Brat Pack fame (yes, Molly Ringwald's true love in Pretty in Pink) has won the 2010 Lowell Thomas award for Travel Journalist of the Year, notes Jim Romenesko's blog at PoynterOnline. McCarthy's freelance articles have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Bon Appetit, Afar, and the Atlantic, among others. (His piece on Ireland in the latter is here.) "Word by word, paragraph-by-paragraph, entry-by-entry, McCarthy earns the gold the old-fashioned way—by treating readers to excellent writing and poignant stories," declared the judges.
– Wealthy Americans are on the move, largely to the low-income-tax havens of the Sunbelt. A new Forbes analysis of IRS data from 2008 shows Collier County, Fla., at the head of the pack, picking up 15,150 new residents with an average income of $76,161—compared to $26,128 for the people moving away. A nifty feature on the Forbes website illustrates the migration and breaks it down by average income, county-to-county. For instance, click on New Orleans (Orleans Parish, La.) and you see graphics showing not just migration in and out but the number of people moving and their average income: to Seattle (King County, Wash.), 56 people, $36,200; from Seattle, 41 people, $25,000. To get the details on migration in and out of the county of your choice—fair warning: it's addictive—click here. To see a slideshow breaking down the most popular destinations, click here.
– Fox Sports Radio host Clay Travis, ostensibly appearing on CNN Friday afternoon to discuss the White House calling for the firing of ESPN's Jemele Hill, instead informed a perplexed Brooke Baldwin that he only believes in two things: "the First Amendment and boobs," Mediaite reports. The understandably confused CNN host first asked Travis to clarify whether he was saying "booze" or "boobs," Entertainment Weekly reports. “Boobs. Two things that never let me down: the First Amendment and boobs,” Travis responded. “Those are the two things I believe in absolutely in the country.” Asked why he would say something like that to a female host on national TV, Travis reiterated, "Because I like boobs and the First Amendment." At that point, Baldwin cut the interview short. Later on Twitter, Travis accused Baldwin of having "lost it." In her own Twitter reaction, Baldwin said, "Note to men -- that is never okay." She expanded in an opinion piece on CNN: "This is not okay. Speaking to women like this is unacceptable." She remembers thinking at the time, "It is 2017, and this grown man is on my show talking with me—a female host—about boobs. Is this seriously happening?" CNN has canceled another scheduled interview with Travis and won't book him again. Sportswriter Keith Reed, who appeared alongside Travis during the Friday panel, said Travis' comments were an excellent example of the kind of sexism Jemele Hill has had to deal with being a woman in the sports world.
– The Salt Lake City police detective who arrested a nurse for following hospital rules may be losing his job on the force as well as his paramedic job. An internal affairs report released Wednesday is extremely critical of both Detective Jeff Payne, who carried out the arrest, and watch commander Lt. James Tracy, who ordered it, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Investigators said the men, who were placed on administrative leave Sept. 1, violated five departmental policies, including courtesy in public contacts and conduct unbecoming of an officer. Payne's behavior was "inappropriate, unreasonable, unwarranted, discourteous, disrespectful" and showed "extremely poor professional judgment," investigators wrote. Payne and Tracy have 20 days to respond to the report, after which Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown will decide on possible further action, which could include firing both men. At a press conference Wednesday, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski said the incident, which has led to a change in policies, is not "reflective of who we are as a city or as a police department," the BBC reports. A separate report from the Police Civilian Review Board also found that Payne and Tracy violated policies in the arrest of nurse Alex Wubbels, who refused to let Payne draw blood from an unconscious patient without a warrant or consent. The FBI is involved in a criminal investigation of the July 26 incident.
– Count Rick Perry among those "taken aback" at the reaction of some in the crowd during a debate question about health insurance last night. (A handful shouted "Yeah!" and cheered to a hypothetical question about whether someone who forgoes insurance should be allowed to die. See the video here.) Asked about it today, the Texas governor replied, "I was a bit taken aback by that myself," reports NBC News. "We're the party of life. We ought to be coming up with ways to save lives." He made clear, however, to draw a distinction with the death penalty, which he supports as a matter of "justice," he said. "But the Republican party ought to be about life and protecting, particularly, innocent life," he added.
– Thomas Kinkade's wife doesn't want his girlfriend dishing dirt on the recently deceased artist. Wife Nanette has filed a restraining order against live-in girlfriend Amy Pinto-Walsh, designed to stop her from saying or doing anything that would cast a negative light on Kinkade, the Los Angeles Times reports. This in the wake of Pinto showing a family friend personal documents of Kinkade's that would be damaging—and a report that she was "gathering evidence" to "tear down" his family and businesses. Whatever Pinto has on him "would be personally devastating not only for Mrs. Kinkade, but also for the family's four daughters, who are grieving the sudden loss of their father," wrote Nanette's attorneys, according to the Los Gatos Patch. Kinkade has already faced criticism for allegedly nasty business practices that drove former gallery owners to financial ruin. With all this meanness swirling around, the Times notes that Kinkade's family may have attributed his death to natural causes too hastily; autopsy results aren't out yet. Kinkade reportedly drank heavily the night before and was $9 million in debt at the time.
– Jeff Sessions may not be the only Cabinet member whose days are numbered. Multiple reports say Secretary of State Rex Tillerson isn't destined for a long tenure. The latest is Reuters, whose source says Tillerson was "very upset at not having autonomy, independence and control over his own department and the ability to do the job the way the job ... is traditionally done." It says Tillerson has told friends he likely won't last a full year, a sentiment echoed in an earlier CNN story. That one quotes two insiders who say a "Rexit" is possible before the end of the year, adding that Tillerson has been especially unhappy with President Trump's public criticism of attorney general Sessions. The story adds, however, that Tillerson might just have been "venting." Tillerson had previously signaled that he intended to see through a restructuring of the State Department through 2017, but that now seems to be in doubt, reports Newsweek. It runs through his past frictions with the White House, including not being consulted on major issues such as the travel ban. The speculation has been circulating for weeks now, notes US News & World Report, and it isn't helped by statements from Tillerson himself, who said in March that he "didn't want this job." It's reached the point where Tillerson's spokesman addressed the subject, though in the form of a denial that his boss is on the way out. Tillerson, he said, had "plenty of reasons to stay on the job, and all of them are important to America."
– Snoop Dogg got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Monday, and the final person the rapper thanked in his speech wasn't God, his wife, or his parents—it was himself. "Last but not least, I want to thank me for believing in me. I want to thank me for doing all this hard work, I want to thank me for having no days off, I want to thank me for never quitting, I want to thank me for always being a giver and trying to give more than I receive," the 47-year-old said, per People. "I want to thank me for trying to do more [right] than wrong, I want to thank me for just being me at all times. Snoop Dogg, you a bad motherf-----." Of course, he did also thank all of those aforementioned people and entities, plus colleagues including Dr. Dre and Quincy Jones, KTLA reports. And on Instagram, he thanked his fans. "Blessed," he captioned a photo of the star on Twitter. NBC Los Angeles notes the tribute came four days before the 25th anniversary of his debut album, Doggystyle. Snoop, born Calvin Broadus, is "the Susan Lucci of the Grammys," per the AV Club, having racked up 17 nominations since then with no wins. "Snoop Dogg is one of those people who can do anything. He raps, he acts, he hosts a television show, he cooks, and helps community kids with his philanthropic work," the producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame said in a news release. "He is a man of the ages and we welcome him to our Hollywood Walk of Fame." (He's also into weed.)
– Earthquakes in Oklahoma are up more than a hundredfold in recent years, and a new study spies a pretty clear link between the shaking and the fracking that has given the state's economy a huge boost. Researchers took a close look at four specific sites where wastewater from oil and gas extraction was injected into the ground and found that the process could be linked to swarms of quakes in areas up to 20 miles away from the sites, reports the BBC. The four wells examined have been pumping four million barrels of water a month to a depth of around two miles underground. At one site linked to the wells, a small town called Jones, there have been more 2,500 earthquakes greater than magnitude 3.0 since 2008—a fifth of the total in the central and western US during that period. "It really is unprecedented to have this many earthquakes over a broad region like this," a study co-author tells Scientific American, explaining that wastewater injection can cause quakes by sending out waves of fluid pressure, causing faults miles away to slip. "Most big sequences of earthquakes that we see are either a main shock and a lot of aftershocks or it might be right at the middle of a volcano in a volcanic system or geothermal system. So you might see little swarms but nothing really this distributed and this persistent," he says. (In Texas, several small towns troubled by quakes are considering banning fracking.)
– Wine has been used as a "social lubricant, mind-altering substance, and highly valued commodity" throughout the ages. Now, a discovery just south of Tbilisi details just how far back through the ages the beverage has existed, the BBC reports. Per a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, archaeologists found 8,000-year-old pottery shards in the nation of Georgia indicating wine was once made there in earthenware jars, the earliest evidence ever of grape-based wine production. Before the discovery of the fragments from eight jars (the oldest from circa 5980BC) in the Neolithic villages of Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, the most ancient proof of grape winemaking came from Iraq, dating between 5000BC and 5400BC. Testing of the Georgian pieces showed evidence of a slew of acids from wine that had been made inside the erstwhile vessels. The jars also featured images of grapes and a man dancing, and National Geographic notes the presence of grape pollen in the soil. Scientists believe the jars may have been stored underground during the fermentation process and, based on an intact jar found at a site nearby, were so large they could fit about 400 of today's wine bottles, per a release. There's even a link to modern-day vino production: The old-time jars are strikingly similar to the large qvevri jars used today in Georgia. Because wine wasn't crucial to living in Stone Age times, one scientist not involved in the study tells National Geographic that the find shows "far greater sophistication" during that time period than previously suspected. China still holds the overall wine record, however: Evidence there for a boozy rice-and-honey based concoction dates back to 7000BC. (Archaeologists found a tiny stone that holds unparalleled ancient Greek art.)
– When it comes to rules about posts on Facebook, there's a fair bit of subtlety. Rather than electronically identifying offensive images, for instance, the company says it has actual human beings assess context, the New York Times reports. Today, the site is posting a more thorough explanation of its policies, which also address matters ranging from hate speech and nudity to issues of intellectual property. It encourages users to flag content that concerns them. Among its examples: Nudity: Genitals are a no-no. But while, for example, some images of breasts won't be tolerated, pictures of breastfeeding or mastectomy scars are allowed, as is artwork showing nudes, a spokeswoman tells the paper. Violence: The site has gone back and forth on beheading videos, finally settling on a ban, the Times reports. But images of violence may be allowed if they're aimed at sharing "information about atrocities in the world." Hate speech: Race-, gender-, and religion-based attacks won't be tolerated, the site says. But "people can use Facebook to challenge ideas, institutions, and practices," the site notes. "Such discussion can promote debate and greater understanding." International differences: The laws of different countries can change what's acceptable where. Facebook points to its Global Government Requests Report as a source of information on how official policies affect content and privacy. In the second half of 2014, the site notes, 9,707 pieces of content were restricted by governments, up 11% from the first half of the year. The site offers a clickable map showing different countries' records. Click for the full policy page.
– The latest in airport security: Get ready to have your face scanned if you're flying into or out of Florida's Orlando International Airport on an international flight. Other airports already use facial scanning for some departing international flights, but Orlando will be the first airport to require the scans for all passengers on all arriving and departing international flights. The image from a facial scan is compared to a Department of Homeland Security biometric database containing images of those who should be on the flight. At all the airports that use facial scanning, US citizens may opt out, but privacy advocates say not enough has been done to make Americans aware of that fact, the AP reports. Plus, a notice about a possible rule change for the program says US citizens "may be required to provide photographs upon entering or departing the United States." They are also concerned about how any data gleaned from the facial scans will be used, and some are raising concerns about the possibility someone will be mistakenly barred from boarding a flight. "We're not talking about one gate," says one privacy expert. "We're talking about every international departure gate, which is a huge expansion of the number of people who will be scanned. Errors tend to go up as uses go up." He points out that some research shows the accuracy of the facial scans goes down for racial minorities, women, and children. Two US senators have urged DHS to implement formal rules and ensure a full vetting of the facial scanning program before it's expanded. The scanner works by comparing a passenger's image to their passport photo, which is stored in the database, CBS News explains.
– The echo chamber that is the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has yet to yield much in the way of definites, but the focus continues to remain on the pilots and the theory that the jet's disappearance was not an accident or mechanical failure. This "was an intentional, deliberate act to bring down this airplane," House Homeland Security chief Michael McCaul said today. "Something was going on with the pilot. This all leads toward the cockpit." Former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz seconded that, reports Politico, saying that the intentional shuttering of the plane's communications equipment "is damning evidence that indicates something was going on in the flight deck." Meanwhile, House Intel chair Mike Rogers wants to know "if there was some terrorist nexus" involved, adding that while many theories on the plane's fate abound, it "still may be at the bottom of the Indian Ocean." A look around at the latest: The AP delves into the relatively rare occurrence of pilot suicide, which was a factor in .3% of plane crashes in the decade ending in 2012. The possibility that the plane was hijacked has given hope to some passengers' families, reports the LA Times. "My gut feeling is that it landed. I still feel his spirit. I don’t feel he is dead," says the partner of American passenger Philip Wood. Pakistan says the plane never registered on its radar, reports CNN—and if it had, it would have been treated as a terrorist threat. India today called off search efforts for the jet pending "a strategy for further searches" from Malaysian officials, reports the AP. Slate runs down the 634 runways where the missing plane could have landed.
– The latest disturbing Hollywood sexual misconduct allegation involves Tom Sizemore, an actor who has already faced drug and domestic violence charges. Multiple cast and crew members tell the Hollywood Reporter that Sizemore, best known for roles in war films including Black Hawk Down, was kicked off a Utah movie set in 2003 for allegedly touching an 11-year-old girl's genitals. They say the day after a Born Killers scene in which the girl sat on Sizemore's lap, she told her parents that he had touched her inappropriately, possibly putting his finger inside her. "At one point her eyes got just huge, like she could've vomited. I was watching her," co-star Robyn Adamson says. "Later, when I was told about what happened, I knew exactly what it was." "There was never any doubt. He was this guy who was already known for making inappropriate comments, being drunk, being high," says production assistant Roi Maufas. "Then this happens. Guys reached for hammers," he says. Producers say Sizemore, who was ordered to leave the set, denied the allegations. Crew members say the girl's parents spoke to police, but ended up not pressing charges, possibly out of fear of ruining her film career. She is now 26 and says she is considering legal action against both Sizemore and her parents. Sizemore, 55, was dropped by his management firm soon after the incident. Former manager Charles Lago tells USA Today that he is "not surprised" by the allegations. "He's the most abhorrent person I've ever met in my life," Lago says.
– After a season of untimely deaths at Yosemite comes an amazing survival story—starring a thumb. A climber was scaling the park's El Capitan granite monolith Monday afternoon when he fell, causing a climbing rope to sever his right thumb and send it bouncing down the rock face, the Los Angeles Times reports. Luckily, the severed digit landed on a small ledge 80 feet below, where the climber's buddy retrieved it. Rangers suspended by rope from a helicopter managed to reach the climbers and get the injured man—along with his thumb—to the hospital in time for it to be reattached. "This was an incredibly technical and complex rescue mission with a lot of inherent risk," their commander says, according to the National Park Service website. "I was relieved, and thrilled, that this ended successfully."
– Ewan McGregor and his wife of 22 years have split, People reports. The news came Sunday after the Sun published photos of McGregor, 46, kissing his Fargo co-star Mary Elizabeth Winstead, 32, in a busy London café. A customer tells the tabloid the pair seemed "relaxed" together and were "deep in conversation" for more than an hour. "As they left she got on to the back of Ewan’s motorbike and they sped off together," the customer says. The US actress split from her husband of seven years, Riley Stearns, in May, per The Sun. That was the same month a family source tells People the Star Wars star split from French wife Eve Mavrakis, 51, a production designer. The pair met on the set of the British TV series Kavanagh QC and have four daughters, Clara, 21, Jamyan, 16, Esther, 15, and Anouk, 6. The splits follow other high-profile breakups: Fergie and Josh Duhamel called it quits in September, weeks after Amber Heard and Elon Musk.
– Carson Daly apologized last night for implying that gay people wouldn't have been able to take down the JetBlue pilot who melted down on a recent flight. On his show yesterday morning, Daly noted how lucky it was that many of the passengers on the flight were "well-trained dudes" on their way to a security conference. Unfortunately, he went on: "With my luck, it would be like, 'This is the flight going to [the gay pride parade] in San Francisco. I mean, that would be my colleagues." Then, making his voice sound—as TMZ puts it—"like a gay stereotype," Daly continued, "Uh, we're headed down to Vegas for the floral convention." He later apologized on Twitter, posting, "This morning on my radio show I attempted to make fun of myself & offended others by mistake. I sincerely apologize." He also gave a statement to GLAAD, reiterating that he is "an ally of the LGBT community" and that that community is full of courageous individuals. The Huffington Post notes that Mark Bingham, one of the United 93 passengers who stormed the cockpit on 9/11, was openly gay; Bingham's mother responded to the controversy, telling TMZ in no uncertain terms that her son was a tough rugby player who ran with the bulls in Pamplona. Click to hear Daly's original comments.
– "Mama’s done playing games and being a doormat." That was an Australian mother's message to her 13-year-old son when she decided to charge him more than $700 a month for rent, electricity, Internet, and food, Kidspot reports. According to CBS News, it all started when the single-mother's son told her she couldn't control him and bragged, "At least one of us is making money," during a fight over homework. She's unemployed, and the teen apparently makes a small income from his YouTube channel. Deciding her son was acting more like a bad roommate, the woman—going by Estrella Havershim—wrote a letter to him outlining his new bills and shared it on Facebook, where it went viral, Seventeen reports. It's been shared more than 160,000 times as of this story. In addition to the above bills, the letter and its accompanying Facebook post assigned the teen chores in lieu of a $30 maid's fee and a $3 per day charge for renting his clothes, Kidspot reports. "If you decide you would rather be my child again, instead of a roommate, we can renegotiate terms," the letter concludes. Though she took flak from people calling the letter too harsh, she also drew support from people around the world, with one Facebook comment reading, “Kids these days need a hard lesson so that they become better adults." CBS notes another stated, "We need more parents like you." The tough-love letter apparently worked, with the rebellious teen eventually paying with chores and an apology instead of money. (For parents with bratty kids, there's hope on another front, too.)
– North Korea has within its borders one Arturo Pierre Martinez, and both are currently making some noise, with the latter slamming the United States' human rights record at a press conference this morning. The 29-year-old is an American from El Paso, and he says he's in the country illegally, having crossed over via its border with China, reports the AP. Martinez says he's not being detained and that he's seeking asylum in Venezuela. Complicating matters is his apparent mental health status: His mother tells CNN that he is bipolar and that an earlier attempt to cross over into North Korea ended in Martinez being returned to the US and placed in a California psych ward. "Then he got out," she says. "He is very smart and he got the court to let him out and instead of coming home to us he bought a ticket and left for China. He took out a payday loan online and left for China." In a lengthy and rambling statement, Martinez says he's "extremely grateful for having been pardoned ... and for the most generous reception I have received." He goes on to address a laundry list of injustices, ranging from the American electoral system to its prison system and its billionaire "sociopathic megalomaniacs on the path to absolute world domination." Then, as CNN puts it: "He also talked about unidentified flying objects, CIA involvement in the cocaine trade, 'ultrasonic' devices that cause people to hear voices and experience bodily discomfort and how the Western news media unfairly portrayed North Korea." It's the latest salvo since the UN last month said Pyongyang's leaders should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
– A baby born yesterday probably has more frequent-flier miles than any other newborn alive. A Southwest Airlines flight bound for Phoenix from San Francisco made an emergency landing in LA not long after takeoff yesterday when a woman on board the plane went into labor and produced an addition to the passenger manifest, the AP reports. A Southwest spokeswoman says the flight crew, as well as a nurse and doctor on the flight, helped usher in the new neonatal nomad, and the unidentified mom and baby were whisked off to the hospital by paramedics when the plane landed and were said to be in good condition. If all follows the usual protocol, the baby will likely be given a birth certificate from California, the state in which the plane landed, ABC News reports. It was a somewhat confusing moment for some of the passengers. "All of a sudden I heard a baby cry like a gurgling sound, like a baby that had too much milk or whatever, and I'm like, 'There's no babies on this flight,'" a passenger who had been seated near the mother tells the AP. Another passenger experienced relief upon finding out what the in-air request for a doctor was all about: "The captain announced congratulations for the arrival of this new baby boy, so we all started applauding. … It was confusing because we thought someone was going to die, not be born." The other 111 passengers were redirected onto another plane to Phoenix, and the birthing plane was removed from service for cleaning. (Click to read about how a baby born to a Ugandan woman who resides in the US ended up a Canadian citizen after being born on a flight from Amsterdam to Boston.)
– The man who police say killed five people in Manchester, Ill., yesterday turns out to have been the one who helped save the 6-year-old girl he shot, reports the Chicago Tribune. Officials don't know why Rick Odell Smith carried the bloodied girl to a neighbor's house after his shooting spree, but he reportedly told the neighbor to take her to a hospital. She had been shot several times and is now in critical condition with facial injuries. "It's devastating, simply devastating," says Manchester Mayor Ron Drake—who happens to be Smith's uncle. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Drake hasn't talked to Smith in two years, and notes the impact the murders are having on this tiny town, home to just 300 people—and not a single stoplight.
– Plenty of Senate Democrats have announced their support of gay marriage in recent weeks, but so far only Rob Portman has done so on the Republican side. That might soon change: Alaska's Lisa Murkowski tells the Chugiak-Eagle River Star that her view is "evolving." Murkowski has voted in the past to define marriage as a union of man and woman, notes Politico, but like many of the other politicians having second thoughts, she cites the influence of her kids: "I've got two young sons who, when I ask them and their friends how they feel about gay marriage, kinda give me one of those looks like, 'Gosh mom, why are you even asking that question?'" She says she's still not ready to declare a flip in position, however. "It may be that Alaska will come to revisit its position on gay marriage, and as a policy maker I am certainly revieiwing that very closely."
– Guards at Rikers Island don't just neglect the mentally ill or let them bake to death, they also routinely brutally beat them, often without suffering any repercussions, a New York Times investigation has discovered. The Times uncovered a secret report compiled by a city department this year that found that 129 Rikers inmates suffered "serious injuries" in altercations with staff members over an 11-month span last year; 77% of those inmates had a mental health diagnosis. In most cases, the inmates were beaten while handcuffed. The Times investigated the incidents individually, and offer some disturbing details: When guards found Jose Bautista trying to hang himself, they saved him, but then allegedly threw him to the ground and punched him with such force that they perforated his bowel. It was one of five beatings noted in the report that followed a suicide attempt. Bautista needed emergency surgery, but guards took nine hours to drive him to the hospital—which is only 15 minutes away. When Andre Lane threw water or urine at guards, they allegedly handcuffed him to a gurney, wheeled him to a clinic that wasn't monitored by security cameras, and beat him so violently that the walls and cabinets were covered with his blood. After Brian Mack complained that guards were stealing inmates' food, a guard captain allegedly hit him in the eye with his radio, while another officer punched him in the jaw. He came away with a broken eye socket and jaw. Correction officials said he'd been in a fight with another inmate, but investigators noted no such fight was logged in prison records. None of the guards involved in any of the cases have faced criminal charges—or even administrative ones. Rikers has been under pressure to reform its treatment of mentally ill inmates—in January, for example, it announced it would stop putting the "seriously mentally ill" in solitary, though the Times notes that classification applies to a small segment of the population. Last week an oversight board said the newly-appointed city jail commissioner had in June illegally sent as many as 47 mentally ill Rikers inmates to solitary without consulting clinicians, the AP reports.
– Two horrified anti-abortion county commissioners in Oregon have ordered a waste-to-energy plant to stop burning any medical waste until it can be sure that no fetal tissue is being incinerated. The Marion County plant burns large amounts of biomedical waste from British Columbia, and the commissioners say they were disgusted to learn from a report in a Catholic newspaper that some of the 14,000 fetuses aborted in the Canadian province every year are "incinerated to provide electricity to the people of Marion County," the National Post reports. The commissioners say there has to be "a process to figure out how we can accept legitimate medical waste," including amputated limbs and cancerous tissue, but accepting fetal tissue is out of the question, reports the Oregonian. "It's inappropriate to put them in the trash," one commissioner says. A spokeswoman for the incinerator firm says that while the medical waste may have contained fetal tissue including umbilical cords or placentas, it did not contain whole fetuses. She says the company is cooperating with the order to stop accepting medical waste while new procedures are put in place, the AP reports. Last month, the UK banned the incineration of fetal remains after learning that thousands of fetuses had been burned for power.
– Yahoo is confirming what Recode describes as a "widespread and serious" data breach affecting 500 million users. Yahoo blames "state-sponsored actors" for the personal data that was stolen in 2014 but only recently discovered to have been stolen, the AP reports. Yahoo had previously been expected to confirm an estimated 200 million users were affected. Motherboard spoke in August to a hacker known as "Peace” who claimed to be hawking data from 200 million Yahoo accounts on the dark web, per Business Insider. The hacker said the data—which includes usernames, passwords, security questions and answers, birth dates, phone numbers, and email addresses—was likely stolen in 2012. No such breach was ever made public. However, Yahoo said at the time that it was "aware of the claim" and was investigating. Confirmation of such a breach—which Hacked.com says could be "the largest data breach on record"—could now affect Yahoo's $4.8 billion sale to Verizon. Not only is it a pain for Verizon, but Yahoo shareholders will be concerned about a possible drop in the company's sale price. The sources tell Recode that government investigations and legal action in regards to breach are expected. In its confirmation of the breach, Yahoo suggested users change their passwords, assuming they haven't already done so since 2014.
– A Florida woman who stopped to help car accident victims got the surprise of her life when three men involved in the crash carjacked her convertible. WFLA News reports that the 34-year-old woman spotted the crash on an interstate near Daytona Beach. When she pulled over to assist, three young men believed to be in their teens or early 20s jumped out of their car, which was involved in the crash, and stole her dark blue 2012 Ford Mustang convertible. The suspects are said to have transported an unresponsive woman who was bleeding from her head into the woman's stolen car before driving away. According to Fox 35, the suspects were described as two thin African-American males and one heavy-set African-American male dressed in a striped shirt and jeans. The unresponsive female is also believed to be in her teens or early 20s and was described as having short dreadlocks, wearing a red hoodie, brown jeans, and black shoes. The initial crash is being investigated by Florida Highway Patrol. Deputies say the car involved in that crash was also reported stolen, and ask that anyone with information call 911, but say not to approach the suspects.
– Republicans in Congress might still be smarting over the fallout from the shutdown, but the New York Times reports that another potential "schism" for the party is right around the corner—immigration reform. Conservatives vow to block any legislation from passing the House, while John Boehner and others support the idea of getting at least piecemeal measures through. Things might come to a head next week when a wide range of groups—from the US Chamber of Commerce to FWD.us, the group set up by Mark Zuckerberg and tech leaders—descends on Capitol Hill to pressure GOP lawmakers to get something done. That doesn't look likely anytime soon, however. Fewer than 20 legislative days are left this year, Politico notes, and next year is dicey because it's an election year. Further complicating things is that some Democrats are not agitating for a vote because they see political benefit in the issue, reports Bloomberg. As the leader of ImmigrationWorks USA puts it, “There are some Democrats who would rather get it done, and others who would rather have the issue” linger. "Either way they win." (The Senate passed its reform bill in June, with a 13-year pathway to citizenship for current immigrants a central part of it.)
– Lane-splitting—where motorcycles pass other cars in traffic by cruising in between—might soon be legal in at least one state: California. The state's Assembly unanimously passed a bill Thursday giving the California Highway Patrol authority to create guidelines for the practice, reports the Los Angeles Times. The bill, which would make California the first state to give the official OK to lane-splitting, has kept things vague, simply defining what a "lane" is and directing the CHP to fill in the blanks. The bill's original wording would've allowed the practice only if a motorcycle was going less than 50mph and not more than 15mph faster than traffic, but the specifics were later removed before passage. While critics say lane-splitting is dangerous for all involved, advocates cite several reasons for why zipping between cars is desirable: It saves fuel for bikers, cuts down on traffic congestion, and even keeps motorcycles from overheating, as the bikes aren't designed to sit in traffic, one biker tells KCRA. "It definitely makes a motorized two-wheeler the second fastest way around the city in rush hour by a long shot," Andrew Collins writes for Jalopnik. And it could even spare motorcyclists from injury: NJ.com says motorcycle groups and a University of California at Berkeley study point out that stop-and-go traffic can be dangerous for bikers because drivers in big cars may not spot them.
– Under a pending merger, VCA Animal Hospitals will come under the ownership of Mars, Inc. Not only is it a bit strange for a chain of veterinary care facilities to be owned by a candy and packaged foods company—it's more than a bit concerning for pet owners, the Consumerist reports. Mars already bought the Banfield Pet Hospital chain back in 2007, and big problems have been reported with those veterinary offices, which are connected to PetSmart stores. Most troubling is Banfield's practice of selling pet owners pricey "pet wellness plans," which sound like pet health insurance but aren't. Owners are charged a monthly fee in exchange for receiving discounts on veterinary services, and are often told by Banfield representatives that they can cancel at any time after the first year without incurring a fee. The problem? That's not exactly true. Once the plan renews, members are on the hook for another full year of monthly payments—or, yes, a fee if they cancel, as one angry plan owner once explained to the Consumerist. Other pet owners have been distressed to learn that, should their pet die mid-plan year, they're also still on the hook for the rest of that year's monthly payments. There's also the fact that, as Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently revealed, those same wellness plans include services that not all animals need—and even some that could put them at risk, like annual teeth cleanings under general anesthesia. Mars will be adding 800 VCA hospitals to its 900 or so Banfield locations, and will also be merging with another large veterinary chain, BluePearl Veterinary Partners, meaning a huge number of veterinary facilities could soon be adopting similar practices. As for why Mars is getting into the vet care industry? It's becoming a huge moneymaker, with pet owners willing to put out big bucks for their animals.
– TMZ is venturing well off the Justin Bieber beat with a potentially serious story about the behavior of Marines during the Iraq war. The site has published eight grisly photos that it says show US troops burning the corpses of Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah in 2004, rifling through pockets, and mugging for the camera. It turned over the full set of 41 photos to the US military last week, and a Pentagon spokesman says an investigation is under way, first to determine the veracity of the images and then to possibly identify any of the Marines. If true, the behavior would violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice on the handling of bodies. "We have no details beyond the photos themselves," a Pentagon spokesperson tells the Wire. In a fuller statement, the spokesperson says "the actions depicted in these photos are not what we expect from our service members." Charges could still be filed, even if any of the Marines are no longer in the military. You can see the images at TMZ, but, be warned, they are graphic. (The development comes as Fallujah continues to fall under the sway of al-Qaeda.)
– InterContinentalExchange Inc. has agreed to buy NYSE Euronext, the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, for $8.2 billion, the two companies announced this morning. ICE, an Atlanta-based commodity exchange, says it intends to leave the NYSE's branding alone, and would explore an IPO for Euronext, spinning it off into a continental European entity, the Wall Street Journal reports. It will pay $33.12 a share for the elder exchange, or about a 37% premium on yesterday's close. You might remember ICE from its last attempt to buy the NYSE, which failed thanks to antitrust concerns from regulators. While the 12-year-old company may lack the name recognition of the iconic NYSE, it's much larger in terms of market capitalization, at $9.3 billion to NYSE Euronext's $5.8 billion—a sign, the New York Times observes, of how completely commodity trading has outpaced stock trading in relevance.
– The friend in the car with Walter Scott right before Scott's police-shooting death on April 4 says he'll "never know why he ran." But Scott's family says it's because he was afraid of being thrown in jail again for not paying child support, according to the New York Times—and based on the Times' report, he may have had ample reason for that fear. The paper notes challenges faced by supposed "deadbeat" dads who are actually living in poverty, running up their support tabs because they couldn't afford them in the first place, then getting thrown in jail and losing their jobs—all while the debt builds. "Parents who are truly destitute go to jail over and over again for child support debt simply because they're poor," a lawyer for the Southern Center for Human Rights tells the Times. Part of the problem right from the start: Support orders are often crafted using not a parent's actual income, but what's called "imputed" income, which gauges how much the parent would earn at a full-time job that made minimum wage. Indeed, a 2007 Urban Institute study cited by the Times notes that 70% of child support debt in nine states was owed by individuals who reported $10,000 or less in income (some didn't report any income). The commissioner of the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement tells the Times that jail time was originally intended for people purposely hiding funds—not parents who couldn't afford the payments. Even a Supreme Court ruling from 2011 meant to prevent this from happening can prove futile, because some defendants can't afford lawyers to help them out, advocates say. In Scott's case, it was a cycle he apparently couldn't break. In a 2003 article on a new program in the Post and Courier, Scott noted he had enrolled in the program, meant to help dads catch up on payments, and voluntarily turned himself in for more jail time. "This whole time in jail, my child support is still going up," he said at the time. "I said, 'Man, you got four kids depending on you. … You got to get it together."
– Relax, girls. Not a hair on Justin Bieber's head is out of place, even though a Honda Civic collided with the black Ferrari he was driving in Los Angeles yesterday. Neither driver was injured and Bieb's assistant, who was a passenger in his car, was similarly unharmed; no damage was reported, according to Access Hollywood. Maybe he didn't get out of the way fast enough because he was dreaming about winning the award for best male video at the MTV Video Music Awards—and punking pal Taylor Swift while filming the first new episode of Punk'd last week.
– So what does the killing of Hamid Karzai's powerful half-brother in southern Afghanistan mean for the war effort? Such is the contradiction of Ahmad Wali Karzai that the only answer seems to be "stay tuned": Mark Thompson, Time: The killing of the "godfather of Kandahar" is horrible timing for the US military, which needs stability from the Karzai clan to shore up fragile gains. "Or— if you buy into the notion that Wali Karzai was a corrupt warlord whose presence reduced the chance for progress in southern Afghanistan—his death could turn out to be a bloody blessing. No one knows yet." Max Fisher, Atlantic: He personifies the US entanglement in the war itself. "The things that make men like Ahmed Wali useful in the particular also make them burdensome in general. His power (is) inextricably linked with his corruption ... He was part of a system that fueled the war, and he helped us navigate that system while simultaneously worsening it." Reuters: The killing will likely set off a bloody power struggle to fill the leadership vacuum in Kandahar. "Regardless of whether they had a hand in the killing, the Taliban are likely to benefit from his death ." New York Times: The killing is bad news for Hamid Karzai, "who depended on his half brother’s unchallenged influence in southern Afghanistan to maintain the Karzai family’s nexus of connections to power brokers across the region, including tribal leaders, elected officials, narcotics smugglers and insurgents."
– ObamaCare needs those wild and crazy millennials to get on board if it's going to work, and a Colorado ad campaign that previously drew scorn over ads featuring kegstands and urging young men to get "brosurance," is now taking fresh abuse over a racier ad. As the Denver Post reports, the ad, accused of demeaning women, features a young woman holding pills next to a young man. Her thoughts: "OMG, he's hot! Let's hope he's as easy to get as this birth control." "ProgressNow Colorado and Colorado Consumer Health Initiative"—the groups behind the ads—"are demeaning and belittling women with shallow sexual caricatures and making light of serious women's health issues," says a GOP strategist. Talk-radio host Dana Loesch referred to the "'you’re a whore' ad for ObamaCare," calling it "basically 'hosurance,'" the New York Post notes. The Daily Caller opted for the same term. Says ProgressNow Colorado's director: "The whole intention of these ads is to raise awareness, and that's what we're doing. "
– It's an odd tale of vests, venture capitalists, and San Francisco: Start with this Business Insider story in 2016 declaring that the vest had "become the most quintessentially-VC item in an investor's wardrobe" in Silicon Valley. Flash forward to a different BI story from last week, taking note of a vending machine in San Francisco's airport that dispenses, yes, vests, and the social media jokes that revelation has generated. ("SFO has a down vest vending machine for visiting VCs," wrote one; "automatic vesting" wrote another.) And finally, a followup story at the site that the vendor is surely laughing all the way to the bank—with $10,000 in sales per month. The vests cost about $50, meaning that the machine from third-party vendor Uniqlo is dispensing about 200 of them per month at San Francisco International Airport. "This is the first time we've had clothing available for sale from a vending machine, which we thought was very unique," says an airport spokesman. Turns out, it's one of the most profitable machines at the airport.
– It pays to know who your social media friends are: Sarah Palin's spokeswoman and perhaps fiercest defender has egg on her face today after a former Palin supporter leaked a series of not-so-subtle Twitter direct messages to the Daily Caller. Rebecca Mansour savaged top Republicans in the private messages—and even Palin's own family, notes Politico. A sampling of the highlights: On Bristol Palin's former plans to marry Levi Johnston: “I wish they were the Cleavers too. But it’s life. Two words: Patti Davis. Okay three more: Ron Reagan Junior. Two more: Billy Carter. Doesn’t your family have one?" Then: “She will hold her at arm’s length. Even Thatcher was never able to disown her screw up son Mark. It’s a Mom thing." On Joe McGinniss: “Time to find a way to go medieval on this McGinniss. Don’t be fooled by the light tone of the [Facebook] post. The BigBoss is so upset by this.” Then, in response to an unknown message: “I was thinking more along the lines of mailing him a dead fish." On endorsing Nikki Haley: Palin “took a big risk in endorsing Nikki. You don’t pick a loser in SC. Very important state. Mitt has no hope of winning it, so…he could endorse a 4th place underdog ‘cuz his strategy for ‘12 is ignore the South. SC is crucial to someone like the Gov. She took a risk." To supporters: “Hey can you remember to send BigBoss some love @SarahPalinUSA. She reads her RTs (now that she has the new BB Twitter app) & haters spam her." Mansour's Twitter account is here.
– A 15-year-old Kansas City girl has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder after allegedly killing her parents, prosecutors announced Monday—and police allege they found some damning content on her phone. WDAF reports Daejona Holmes placed a 911 call on April 9 saying her parents—Kinderly Holmes, 37, and Brian Starr, 38—had been killed in a robbery. But during two interviews with investigators, the story shifted: Per court documents, Holmes first said she was at home heating up pasta as her parents argued, heard a shot, walked past her father and saw her mother's body, then grabbed a gun and killed her father downstairs. During the next interview, she allegedly added details: She said she entered the home a second time to get her mom's phone, changed her clothes, and moved her dad's body. After securing a search warrant for Holmes' phone, investigators say they discovered a web search for "scary movies where kids kill parents," rap lyrics expressing a desire to see her dad dead, and a Feb. 15 video of a dancing, gun-toting Holmes in her bedroom. They also allegedly uncovered a stick-figure drawing in a backpack featuring "me" and "dad"; "me" held a gun. The Kansas City Star reports Kinderly Holmes' body was found with a fatal gunshot wound to the stomach in an upstairs bedroom; Starr was near the front door and had been shot in the mouth and torso. KMBC reports Holmes will be tried as an adult, which is why her name has been released.
– Rudy Kurniawan wanted to be a big name in the world of wine, and on Wednesday he achieved that dream: He became the first person ever convicted in the US of concocting and selling counterfeit wine, reports Wine Spectator. The 37-year-old native of Indonesia duped scores of millionaires—including Bill Koch, brother of the political Koch brothers—and other wine aficionados over the years until his scheme unraveled. He now faces up to 40 years in prison on fraud convictions, including one for using his fake wine as collateral to get a $3 million loan, reports the Wall Street Journal. Kurniawan, who has lived in Los Angeles for several years, knew his stuff. He didn't pour two-buck-chuck into fancy bottles and try to pass it off. Instead, prosecutors say he blended young wines with older French vintages to produce wines sophisticated enough to pass for some of the rarest known to collectors, explains NPR. His big stumble came in 2008, when renowned French winemaker Laurent Ponsot spotted, up for auction, counterfeit bottles created by Kurniawan that had supposedly come from Ponsot's own vineyard. The bottles were from the years 1945 and 1949, except "it is an appellation we started in 1982," Ponsot explained to the jury, per the AFP. "I feel no pity for him," said Ponsot after the verdict in Manhattan. "It's good justice." (Click for the story of an elaborate wine heist that fell apart.)
– If you're worried about the people in the path of Hurricane Irma, perhaps you should also worry about the segment of them that thinks shooting at the storm will make it go away. As the AP reports, the following is an actual tweet from the Pasco County Sheriff's Office: "DO NOT shoot weapons @ (hashtag) Irma. You won't make it turn around (and) it will have very dangerous side effects." The sheriff's office, which is in the Tampa Bay area, was responding to a Facebook event page created by two Florida men inviting people to shoot at Irma. The page reads: "YO SO THIS GOOFY ... LETS SHOW IRMA THAT WE SHOOT FIRST ..." The invitation presumably was a joke, but 80,000 people indicated they were "going" or "interested" in the event. In another tweet, the Sheriff's Office also had another suggestion for the thousands who shared the page. Irma hit Key West early Sunday.
– A 73-year-old black soul singer in California got roughed up Saturday by a woman in the audience who rushed the stage after he dedicated a song to Trayvon Martin, say police. Lester Chambers was talking about the George Zimmerman trial and about to play "People Get Ready" when a white woman leaped at him, shouting, "It's your fault," witnesses tell the San Jose Mercury News. Dinalynn Andrews Potter, 43, was arrested on suspicion of battery, and the Chambers family is pushing police to file hate-crime charges, too. "She had a crazed look in her eye," says one of the musician's friends who rushed to help him. Chambers suffered a bruised rib and nerve damage and is "sore all over," according to a Facebook post by his son. "People Get Ready" is a Curtis Mayfield song written after MLK's march on Washington, and Chambers' old group, the Chambers Brothers, recorded a version in 1967, notes Firedog Lake. In his dedication to Trayvon, Chambers had said Mayfield would have written the line "there's a train comin'" as "there's a change comin'" had he penned it today.
– Colin Kaepernick, still unsigned six weeks into the NFL season, believes he is being blackballed for his role in protests during the national anthem and has filed a grievance against NFL owners. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback became a free agent at the end of last season and has failed to land a contract despite impressive statistics and injuries to other quarterbacks. His complaint accuses team owners of collusion, which Sports Illustrated defines as what happens when "two or more teams, or the league and at least one team, join to deprive a player of a contractually earned right," including the right of a free-agent player to negotiate a contract. Last year, Kaepernick was the first player to protest racial injustice by refusing to stand for the anthem. If the NFL is to remain a meritocracy, "principled and peaceful political protest ... should not be punished," his attorney, Mark Geragos, said in a statement, per Bleacher Report. Kaepernick's grievance was filed under the latest collective bargaining agreement and the NFL player's union says it is supporting him. Former 49ers teammate Eric Reid, who started kneeling during the anthem soon after Kaepernick began his protest, tells the AP that it "sure seems like he is being blackballed." "I think all the stats prove that he's an NFL-worthy quarterback," he says. "So that's his choice and I support his decision."
– Saudi Arabia's 30-year-old deputy crown prince is looking toward the future with his new "Vision 2030" plan—a plan that includes pulling the kingdom out of its overreliance on oil and leaning more on non-oil investment to transform it into a global power, Reuters reports. "We will not allow our country ever to be at the mercy of commodity price volatility or external markets," Prince Mohammed bin Salman told reporters gathered at a Riyadh palace Monday. Per Gulf News, he had earlier appeared in a televised al-Arabiya interview, noting, "We have developed a case of oil addiction in Saudi Arabia. … I think by 2020, if oil stops we can survive." Also part of his new blueprint: including women more in the economy and appealing to young people who face the prospect of not finding jobs. The BBC notes that more than 70% of the kingdom's revenue came from oil in 2015, but oil prices continue to plummet and Saudi Arabia's economy is suffering, per Al Jazeera. In broad terms, the prince would like to bring up its Public Investment Fund (PIF) capital to $2 trillion from $160 billion. Prince Mohammed says 5% of shares in the Aramco oil company would be sold to fund this $2 trillion nest (which he thinks could even rise to $3 trillion). Also part of the prince's game plan: setting up a "green card" system in five years' time to expedite Muslim and Arab expatriates' long-term residency, as well as boosting affordable housing and getting more women into the workforce. The founder of the DC-based Saudi American Public Relations Affairs Committee tells Al Jazeera this a "visionary move," but another Saudi expert says he's seen similar changes proposed before. "To implement some of these, you need the collaboration of society," he notes. "For example, if you want to increase the empowerment of women, you need to liberalize your society." (What the prince didn't bring up: The kingdom's possible ties to 9/11.)
– A woman is accused of using children's drawings to smuggle prescription drugs to her boyfriend in a New Jersey jail. Somerset County Sheriff Frank Provenzano says staff noticed something strange about mail addressed to inmate Michael Gill on June 15, the AP reports. A K-9 unit was called and alerted on what turned out to be the opioid Suboxone concealed in the drawings, authorities say. The prescription drug, which usually comes in patch form or as a film that can be placed under the tongue, is used to help people addicted to heroin or other opiates avoid withdrawal symptoms, but can produce a high of its own when abused. The sheriff says another letter with children's drawings addressed to Gill arrived June 20 and more mail was sent to the jail eight days later. Again, suspected Suboxone was found hidden in the drawings, authorities say. The sheriff tells the Courier News of Bridgewater that to to prevent copycats, he won't disclose how the drug was concealed in the drawings. Authorities charged 37-year-old Casey Giles, of Bridgewater, with possession with intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance. She was jailed on $20,000 bail. Gill was charged with attempting to possess a controlled dangerous substance, and his bail was set at $10,000.
– Hillary Clinton is now, officially, at long last, Ready for Hillary. She jumped back into presidential politics today as a top adviser announced her much-awaited second campaign for the White House. The adviser, John Podesta, told alumni of her first presidential campaign in an email: "It's official: Hillary's running for president." Clinton followed with a video released on YouTube that depicts people going through life challenges like moving, job-hunting, and starting a family, the New York Times reports. "I'm getting ready to do something too," Clinton says, appearing a minute-and-a-half in. "I'm running for president. ... Everyday Americans need a champion. And I want to be that champion." Clinton is expected to face pressure from progressives to adopt a more populist economic message focused on income inequality. The GOP, meanwhile, has already started attacking her, jumping on Clinton's use of a personal email account and server while secretary of state. Clinton is the first Democrat to get into the race and is not expected to be seriously challenged, the Times notes, but there are some lower-profile Democrats who may toss a hat in the ring, including former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee. If elected, Clinton would become the first woman to serve in the Oval Office. (Meanwhile, Kate McKinnon's version of Hillary Clinton made her announcement last night on Saturday Night Live.)
– Orrin Hatch is taking grief for his choice of words in describing the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford on Thursday. During the lunch break, the Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee referred to Ford as an "attractive" and "pleasing" witness, reports Roll Call. "I don't think she's uncredible," Hatch told reporters. "I think she's an attractive, good witness." When CNN pressed him on what he meant by "attractive," Hatch responded, "In other words, she's pleasing." The remarks have prompted criticism, and USA Today rounds up examples, including one tweet that pretty much summarizes the negative sentiment: "I can’t believe it seemed appropriate to Orrin Hatch to comment on the attractiveness of a woman testifying about her sexual assault." But Hatch's spokesperson has an explanation: “Hatch uses ‘attractive’ to describe personalities, not appearances,” he said. “If you search his past quotes you’ll see he’s used it consistently for years for men and women he believed has compelling personalities.”
– The tiniest thing in the universe is not a grain of sand, as people once thought, nor a proton or neutron, or even a quark or electron—as small as they all are. In fact, experts today balk at naming any point-like object "the smallest" because of a theoretical conundrum: When you're infinitely near any point, the forces that act on it turn infinitely huge. Hoping to duck the whole "infinite" thing, scientists have invented novel theories around it, physicist Andy Parker tells Space.com. Among the work-arounds: Superstring theory, which posits that particles are like loopy strings rather than points. This would enable scientists to get infinitely close to something but always remain further from another part of it. "Space-time foam," the theory that space is made of pixels or grains. This would keeps particles from being infinitely close to each other, because the grain create a natural distance. One candidate for "smallest" that Parker discounts is black hole singularities, although he concedes that "they are maybe a million million times or even more than that smaller than the distances we've seen so far." See excerpts of Parker's BBC show on the subject.
– The death of a Muslim teenager in Virginia whose body was found in a pond some 12 hours after she and a group of friends got into an altercation with a driver while walking back to a mosque from an IHOP is "NOT" being investigated as a hate crime, per a tweet from Fairfax County police on Monday. No elaboration was given. But that hasn't kept a religious bent out of discussion of and reactions to Nabra Hassanen's killing. As the Washington Post puts it, "the issue was on the minds of many Muslims on Sunday." The latest: A police press release on the arrest of Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, says that as Nabra and her friends were walking "they got into a dispute with a man in a car." Torres allegedly exited his car and assaulted Nabra. "Her friends could not find her and police were called to help." The Washington Post talks to Nabra's mother, who says a detective said her daughter was beaten with a metal bat. "I lost my daughter, my first reason for happiness,” she said Sunday night. WUSA9 reports police did recover a bat. "What investigators told the father and the mother, he hit her in the head and put her in the car and he threw her in the water," the Richmond Times-Dispatch quotes a rep for the family as saying. It reports Martinez Torres directed officers to the pond, which it says is near the apartment he lives in. The Post fills in some details on the girls' movements, reporting that during the final 10 days of the holy month of Ramadan, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) in Sterling, Va., holds extra prayers at midnight and 2am. The mosque is one of the largest in the US, and ADAMS' co-chair says it is commonplace for members to have a meal at McDonald’s or IHOP in advance of the day's fast, which runs from sunrise to sunset. Nabra, a rising high school junior, was not particularly religious and did not usually wear Muslim dress, according to her mother, who lent Nabra an abaya to wear to the mosque Saturday night. She tells the Post a detective told her that during the fateful encounter, Nabra tripped over the long garment and fell. Bustle reports that while this may not be a hate crime, the number of anti-Muslim hate groups did spike in 2016 to 101, about triple the number the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded in 2015. Mindy Kaling was one of the celebrities to post about Nabra (in this case, before police specified it was not a hate crime investigation), writing on Facebook, "Nabra Hassanen, I won't forget you and what happened to you. Another innocent Muslim person targeted for their faith. Please read about her if you can." A crowdfunding campaign for Nabra's family has raised more than $178,000 as of this writing.
– News that Donald Trump has settled on Rick Perry to run the Energy Department prompted a slew of stories Tuesday with one common refrain, and the former Texas governor must be thrilled with it. Here's a sampling: NBC News: "President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Texas Gov. Rick Perry—who famously once forgot that he wanted to abolish the Energy Department—to be secretary of energy ..." New York Times: "Trump plans to name former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas to lead the Energy Department, elevating a man who once could not remember the name of the agency he wanted to eliminate to the cabinet post, secretary of energy, that will run it." Washington Post: "Trump has picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department, said two people familiar with the decision, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it." Politico: "On a presidential debate stage five years ago, Rick Perry blanked on the Energy Department's name when trying to include it in a list of agencies he promised to abolish—memorably concluding with 'oops.' Now Trump has chosen the former Texas governor ..." ABC News: "Trump is expected to choose a man to lead the Department of Energy who infamously forgot its name." BBC: "Trump is expected to pick ex-Texas Governor Rick Perry as his energy secretary, a department whose name he famously forgot in a TV debate." NPR: "It's a good thing former Texas Gov. Rick Perry once forgot he wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy, because President-elect Donald Trump is nominating him to lead the agency. That's according to reports by multiple news outlets." And so on, even here.
– A 17-year-old kid who returned Thor's missing wallet is an even bigger Boy Scout than Captain America—literally. Mashable reports actor Chris Hemsworth was eating with his family in a "rough" area of Los Angeles when he forgot his wallet. "I left my wallet on the table and thought, 'I'm never going to get it back, I'm never going to see it again,'" Hemsworth said on Monday's episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. But he didn't count on Tristin Budzyn-Baker, who found the wallet. "I looked up at my mom and was like, 'Ma, do you know who this is?' We found Thor's wallet,'" Budzyn-Baker told Ellen. Budzyn-Baker wrote a letter to Hemsworth's management, asking only for tickets for his mom to see Hemsworth on Ellen's show. He got that and more, USA Today reports. "I expected it was going to be empty, and all the cash was in there, so I want to give you the cash—there's a little extra in there," Hemsworth told Budzyn-Baker during Monday's show, handing the teen a wad of cash. It didn't stop there. Budzyn-Baker got $10,000 from Ellen for being "such an honest guy," and Hemsworth wrote the Boy Scout a letter of recommendation for the Eagle Scout award. It seems it pays to be a hero's hero.
– A Louisiana father who was trying to fix his handgun accidentally killed his kids' 13-year-old babysitter, the Advocate reports. Adonis Forbes, 25, and his wife were out for their anniversary on Saturday when they came home for a quick check on their kids. That's when Forbes, of Baton Rouge, noticed his gun wasn't working right, police say. He tried to correct the problem, and the gun went off, hitting Murrain Hawkins in the abdomen, the Advocate notes. Forbes was trying to save Murrain when police showed up; the boy was pronounced dead at a hospital. Forbes, who is out of jail on a $10,000 bond, faces a negligent homicide charge, WAFB reports. (Meanwhile, Florida won't be charging a gun-twirling man who killed a pregnant woman.)
– Did Nickelodeon cheat Dora the Explorer? Caitlin Sanchez, the 14-year-old who voiced the Nickelodeon cartoon character, says it did. She's suing the network for exploiting her by way of a “bizarre, impenetrable, unconscionable” contract and for failing to adequately compensate her to the tune of millions, the New York Daily News reports. Sanchez claims she worked more than 100 events promoting the $11 million Dora brand for free, and had to spend her own money to cover her expenses while traveling across the country since she was only given a $40 per diem. Nickelodeon shot back with a statement that “unfortunately, Caitlin's voice changed and she was no longer able to portray the Dora character, as happened with the actress who originated the role,” but Sanchez’s lawyer points out, “We are not suing because they claim her voice changed. She is not suing to stay on as Dora.” Click here for more.
– A police officer and national guardsman from Colorado is missing on Russia's tallest mountain, the Denver Post reports. Steven Beare, attempting his first solo climb without a guide, was due at a checkpoint June 16 but never arrived. "We know that there was a really bad storm that came in really quick out of nowhere," his wife Olivia Beare tells ABC 7. "We're thinking that's when he got lost." According to Russian media, an eight-person rescue team tried to follow Beare's route on Mount Elbrus but gave up the search Sunday. Olivia Beare is currently paying a private rescue team $2,500 an hour to continue looking for her husband. The Colorado Police Officers Foundation is collecting donations. Beare, an Army veteran with a young child and another on the way, has been climbing for five years, KDVR reports. His goal was to summit the world's seven highest peaks; he had already climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Olivia Beare, who hasn't spoken to her husband since he arrived in Russia on June 12, says he has the skills to survive a blizzard but may be injured. "I'm really scared," she tells ABC 7. She adds to KDVR: "I can’t raise two babies by myself." Littleton Police Chief Doug Stephens says cops "fight through and win" when things seem hopeless, and he's sure Beare is doing just that.
– It's been 43 years since Gilbert Hyatt applied for a patent on a machinery-control system, and 35 years since he sought a patent related to liquid crystal displays. It takes an average of about two years to get patent approval—but Hyatt hasn't received it on either invention, Bloomberg reports, meaning his could be the oldest pending applications in existence. The 76-year-old inventor filed a lawsuit in January to push for official action. The problem, according to an outside patent lawyer: The patent office fears embarrassment. Officials worry they "might issue a broad patent that would have a sweeping impact on the technology sector. Rather than be embarrassed, they’re just bottling it up." It's unclear how much such patents could cost technology companies. A previous patent Hyatt received—which took a mere 20 years to be granted—shocked the tech industry by initially offering him a claim on most microprocessors. The patent was later partially revoked, but Hyatt still made a likely $150 million after a deal with Dutch firm Royal Philips NV to license that and other patents, Bloomberg notes. Now he says he's getting the "runaround" from the patent office. At the Huffington Post, an economist puts him among "the fathers of the microcomputer" and calls him a prime example of the challenges faced by independent inventors. But a tech historian notes that "innovations are more than ideas ... If Gilbert Hyatt had never existed, I believe the microprocessor would have developed in the same way that it did."
– Police near Baltimore say they may have stopped a mass shooting modeled on the Dark Knight tragedy, reports the Baltimore Sun. Authorities arrested a 28-year-old man in Crofton who phoned his former employer, threatened to "shoot the place up," and referred to himself as the "joker," reports AP. Police found nearly two dozen guns in his home, including assault rifles. Neil Prescott is being held at a medical facility in Annapolis, where he is undergoing a psychological exam. He had apparently just lost his job at Pitney Bowes.
– A double tragedy in Harrisburg, Pa.: A 3-year-old girl died in a house fire believed to have been caused by a recharging hoverboard Friday night, and a firefighter was killed on his way to the scene by an allegedly drunk driver in a stolen car. Consumer Products Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson tells NBC that the agency has investigated more than 60 fires linked to hoverboards in the last 18 months, and Ashanti Hughes is believed to be the first fatality. Two other children were critically injured in the Harrisburg blaze, PennLive reports. Witnesses say they saw one little girl jump from a second-story roof after flames engulfed the first floor. Another girl crawled onto the same roof and was rescued by firefighters. More than 500,000 hoverboards were recalled due to fire risk last year and fire officials say people should avoid using any of the recalled models. They also warn against leaving the self-balancing devices to charge overnight—and against charging them without having a fire extinguisher nearby. Khanyae Kendall, 19, has been charged with crimes including aggravated assault by vehicle while DUI in the death of firefighter Dennis DeVoe. Police say she was driving a stolen car when she T-boned the father of four at an intersection as he was on his way to the blaze. (This family sued Amazon after a faulty hoverboard burned their home down.)
– Rupert Murdoch's shamed and now shuttered News of the World tried to pay a New York City police officer for phone records on British victims of 9/11, Reuters reports. The police officer, who now works as a private investigator, turned down the offer because it would "look bad," a source told the Daily Mail. Other substantial sums were apparently paid to British cops for information on a number of other news stories, reports the BBC. Emails dated 2007 indicate that then-editor Andy Coulson authorized payments to cops for inside info, according to sources. That email evidence, uncovered by a law office, was not turned over to investigators until last month. Coulson, who has been arrested in connection with the News of the World's burgeoning phone hacking scandal, was subsequently hired to be Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications—but stepped down early this year.
– Rupert Murdoch, who yesterday shut down the 168-year-old News of the World, faces the worst PR crisis of his six-decade career, reports the Washington Post. So far, the scandal is threatening to derail Murdoch's $12 billion bid for British Sky Broadcasting. It could even force Murdoch to testify before the British Parliament under oath. But as bad as things are, could Murdoch himself end up in jail? One analyst, writing in the Independent, thinks so. Andreas Whittam Smith explains that phone hackers were convicted under Britain's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and he points readers to Section 79 of the act, which states that when a corporate body commits "an offense under any provision of this act ... with the consent or connivance of ... a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offense and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly." Perhaps Murdoch is a stretch, but observers think Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International and former editor at News of the World, could be in danger of criminal charges. Just like this former editor.
– A sad development in the case of a missing University of Minnesota student last seen around 1am Friday at the Blarney Pub & Grill: CBS Minnesota reports that police last night secured video footage that apparently shows Jen Houle entering the Mississippi River via a bridge located a few blocks from the bar, which is located in the Dinkytown neighborhood. Police are apparently not looking for suspects, and the investigation has shifted to a water recovery mission. KSTP notes that officials didn't specify whether she may have jumped or fallen; it earlier reported her purse was found in the street around three blocks away from the bar and a block away from her sorority house. Pi Beta Phi members previously issued a plea online and plastered a Minneapolis neighborhood with fliers seeking help finding Houle, a business student who had been due to graduate in May. The 22-year-old had been out with a friend, but they became separated at the off-campus bar, according to the New York Daily News. Reads a Minneapolis Police Department statement: "We extend our deepest condolences to the Houle family and all of Jennifer's many friends. The Minneapolis Police Department and the family of Jennifer Houle wish to thank the many people who provided support, assistance, and information since Jennifer's disappearance." Counseling is being offered to students at the school.
– Newt Gingrich got more airtime than usual in last night's national security-focused Republican debate, and most pundits agree that his performance was good enough to win over plenty of undecided voters. "Gingrich showed that he has been thinking about these issues for decades," writes Corbett B. Daly at CBS News. Jon Huntsman showed his competence, and Mitt Romney did well despite turning in one of his weakest debate performances so far, while Herman Cain and Rick Perry floundered, he writes. Gingrich showed that he's a skilled debater, but "his refusal to back away from his belief that we shouldn’t throw out all 11 million people here illegally could come back to bite him in a party that is vehemently opposed to anything that looks or sounds like amnesty," notes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post. Gingrich's "snappy comebacks and ferocious defenses of tough security positions" will have impressed many GOP voters, but his argument for immigration reform will make the debate "a double-edged sword" for him, concludes Molly Ball at the Atlantic. His history of moderation on immigration might serve him well in a general election, but it won't do him any favors in the Republican primaries, she writes. Romney "made no real miscues," but he had "no breakout moments at a debate that was about an issue where he is supposed to be far ahead of the field," notes Maggie Haberman at Politico. Michele Bachmann "made her points clearly and succinctly, and seemed like she belonged on the stage," and while Ron Paul performed strongly "within his predictable boundaries: fewer wars, less government intrusion, and less aid to foreign nations," he did nothing to show that he can broaden his support, she writes.
– The fight for the Alabama Senate seat previously vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions looks poised to go to a Sept. 26 runoff election. But the path there officially kicks off Tuesday with a special election primary in which three candidates will be weeded down to two. President Trump and Mitch McConnell are backing former Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, who was temporarily appointed to the seat after Sessions left it. But it's former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore who's the apparent front-runner, with Strange and US Rep. Mo Brooks trailing behind, reports Politico. More: A candidate needs 50% of the vote to take the seat, which most news outlets agree is unlikely to happen. Moore leads in some polls at around 35% support, with Strange and Brooks in a close race for second. Should Trump's favorite be eliminated, it "will call into question the influence of Trump's support in a reliably Republican state," per Politico. Not that Trump should be too disappointed with Brooks or Moore. Both are "Trumpian candidates," reports Axios. McConnell has a huge interest in the race, though. He and his allies have invested millions in Strange's campaign. Also key: Brooks has said he wants McConnell "fired." Not helping Brooks, however, is a controversial campaign ad he aired that included audio from the shooting of Steve Scalise, reports NBC News. Strange is likewise plagued by his appointment by former Gov. Robert Bentley in what some suspect was "a corrupt bargain to end the state's criminal investigation of Bentley," the New Republic previously reported. Reuters mentions the candidates' stances on issues like gay marriage and illegal immigration. The winner of the runoff election is likely to face one of two Democrats in December: either former US Attorney Doug Jones, backed by Joe Biden, or Robert Kennedy Jr., a Navy veteran with no relation to the famous Kennedy family, per Politico. Either way, the Republican winner will be sitting pretty. Alabama hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992, per the New York Times. Polls close at 8pm EDT.
– Snow White and the Huntsman, the latest take on the fairy tale starring Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron, is an impressive spectacle, featuring all kinds of brooding visual effects. But critics are sharply divided as to whether the film is an overall success: "There is nothing cute about this movie. And that feels right. There is something exciting about how seriously Snow White and the Huntsman takes its themes," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. The movie is "an absolute wonder to watch and creates a warrior princess for the ages," writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. "But what this revisionist fairy tale does not give us is a passionate love—its kisses are as chaste as the snow is white." But at Slate, Dana Stevens calls the film "increasingly incoherent" and feels like it "squanders the dramatic potential inherent in the ancient fairy tale" by keeping Snow White and the queen separate for all but two scenes. "As Snow, Stewart gets to swing a sword, but don't be fooled," notes Rafer Guzman in Newsday. "She spends so much time waffling sullenly between two warrior-suitors that Snow White feels like little more than Twilight in chain mail."
– More than 340 newspapers published editorials Thursday decrying President Trump's repeated attacks on the media, and now Trump has responded. "The Boston Globe, which was sold to the the Failing New York Times for 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS (plus 800 million dollars in losses & investment), or 2.1 BILLION DOLLARS, was then sold by the Times for 1 DOLLAR. Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press. PROVE IT!" Trump tweeted Thursday, adding, "There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!" Earlier Thursday, he had tweeted, "THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY. It is very bad for our Great Country....BUT WE ARE WINNING!" The New York Times notes that Trump's first tweet contained a factual error; the Times Company paid $1.1 billion for the Boston Globe and other properties decades ago, then sold them for $70 million in 2013. But an editorial at Investor's Business Daily Wednesday was on Trump's side, and even used the same charged c-word in its headline: "Editorial Collusion By Dozens Of Newspapers Proves Trump's Point: The Media Are Biased." It calls the move by the newspapers (CNN lists some of those that participated) a "political stunt" that shows the papers are more interested in pushing a left-wing agenda than actually informing the public. And at Politico, Jack Shafer says the plan "played right into Trump's hands" and will surely backfire, despite Trump's attacks on the press being truly "alarming" and deserving of a rebuttal. At NOLA.com Tim Morris echoes that, noting that the Times-Picayune editorial board did not participate because "we believe a local news organization's voice should be independent. ... Having 350 editorial voices saying the same thing on the same day just seems to prove Trump's point."
– A 68-year-old British man was walking his dog in a Birmingham park last week when the German shepherd suddenly ran over to the bushes and refused to return. Owner Roger Wilday walked over to find her lying down next to what looked like trash ... but as he got closer, he realized it was actually a newborn infant. "I saw it move," Wilday tells the Birmingham Mail. "I thought it was a bag of kittens, but then I saw her little arms and a head, and the baby started to cry." The six-pound baby girl was brought to the hospital and named Jade, after the dog. She's "alert, happy, and contented" while recovering, and police are looking for her mother. Canine Jade "must have heard the baby crying as these dogs have very good hearing, plus she’s very keen on our grandchildren," Wilday says. "Whenever she hears their names she whimpers. She just loves kids." He and his wife are hoping they'll be allowed to see the little girl, who, police say, could have died had she been left outside even a few more hours. She was just a few days old when found, the Mirror notes.
– National Rifle Association members have been told they won't be allowed to pack heat when Mike Pence speaks at its national convention this week—and the irony was not lost on Parkland school shooting survivors, among others. "You're telling me to make the VP safe there aren't any weapons around but when it comes to children they want guns everywhere? Can someone explain this to me?” tweeted former student Matt Deitsch, who helped organize the March for Our Lives rallies. The NRA says "firearms and firearm accessories, knives, or weapons of any kind will be prohibited in the forum" during the vice president's Friday appearance at the Dallas event because of Secret Service regulations, Slate reports. An NRA spokesman tells the Washington Post that even in open-carry states like Texas, it is against the law to bring firearms into areas being visited by Secret Service protectees. Parkland student David Hogg has circulated a petition that urges Pence to cancel the appearance, calling it a "slap in the face" to Americans hurting from gun violence. A similar gun ban was in place when President Trump spoke at the NRA's convention in Atlanta last year. The Hill reports that White House officials have confirmed that Trump also plans to speak at this year's convention, which is being held from Thursday to Sunday and will feature more than 20 acres of firearms exhibits, according to organizers. (In his 2016 speech to the convention, Trump promised to ban gun-free zones nationwide if elected.)
– Parkinson's drugs are known for a range of side effects, including hallucinations, psychosis, and extreme drowsiness. But researchers say there's also a clear link between the use of some of these drugs and impulse control issues that result in hypersexuality, compulsive gambling, and uncontrollable spending, reports LiveScience. Looking at 1,580 reports of people in 22 countries, including the US, who'd experienced these abnormal behaviors after taking meds between 2003 and 2012, they identified 710 cases that involve dopamine receptor agonists, drugs often used to treat Parkinson's disease. (The other 870 cases accounted for all other types of drugs combined.) "Physicians have overestimated the benefit and underestimated the risks associated with the use of dopamine receptor agonist drugs in patients with [Parkinson's] disease," the researchers write in JAMA Internal Medicine. One of the writers says three of his patients have lost their homes because they went bankrupt after taking the drugs, reports NPR. The link was strongest for pramipexole (brand name Mirapex) and ropinirole (Requip). Because people taking this type of drug were 277 times more likely to report these impulsive behaviors than those taking other drugs, the researchers are calling for black-box warnings—reserved for the most extreme cautions—detailing the risks involved. (One woman has even reported her Parkinson's meds give her three to five unwanted orgasms daily.)
– Writer Salman Rushdie was furious at "moronic" Facebook yesterday after the network took down his profile because operators thought it was fake. To start it up again, he was ordered to send in a copy of his passport—then told to use the name Ahmed because that's what appears on his passport. "They insist I call myself by the first name I have never used," he complained. "What a bunch of morons." Real first names are required by Facebook policy, even if you've used your middle name your entire life. “Dear #Facebook,” he tweeted, “forcing me to change my FB name from Salman to Ahmed Rushdie is like forcing J. Edgar to become John Hoover.” After much writerly moaning and groaning by the author of Satanic Verses, the profile page was reinstated with the name Salman Rushdie. Facebook said the takedown was all a misunderstanding and apologized. "Victory. Salman returns," crowed Ahmed.
– An estimated 2.5 billion people saw the image: a starving polar bear struggling across an Arctic landscape. "The mission was a success, but there was a problem: We had lost control of the narrative," writes Cristina Mittermeier in National Geographic. Accompanied by a photographic team, she snapped shots of the dying bear last year while colleague Paul Nicklen shot video—all part of their "mission to capture images that communicate the urgency of climate change," she writes. "When Paul posted the video on Instagram, he wrote, 'This is what starvation looks like.'" He also wondered if all 25,000 polar bears would die like this and urged people to reduce their carbon footprint. But he didn't say climate change had killed this bear. That nuance vanished when National Geographic posted the video with the subtitles "This is what climate change looks like" and the Washington Post ran a dramatic headline about "gut-wrenching" images. People also responded dramatically, expressing gratitude for validation of climate science, anger the crew hadn't fed the bear, or a stubborn refusal to acknowledge global warming. "Perhaps we made a mistake in not telling the full story—that we were looking for a picture that foretold the future and that we didn’t know what had happened to this particular polar bear," she writes. Yet a fast-warming Arctic means bears will be stranded on land, unable to pursue prey, so the photo makes sense. The trick for next time? Make sure "our intentions are clear and the narrative remains our own."
– Hilary Duff is officially off the market. The 22-year-old married Canadian hockey player Mike Comrie yesterday in Santa Barbara, Calif. The bride wore a mermaid gown by Vera Wang, and tied the knot in front of 100 friends and family members—including mom Susan, who walked her down the aisle, and sister Haylie, her maid of honor, reports OK! The pair began dating in 2007, after meeting at a resort in Idaho. Click here for more wedding tidbits.
– The Danish inventor charged with manslaughter in the death of a Swedish journalist aboard his submarine had videos of women being tortured and murdered on his computer, a police prosecutor told a Copenhagen court Tuesday. Jakob Buch-Jepsen testified that the video footage, "which we presume to be real," showed women being strangled or decapitated. Peter Madsen, who appeared in court via video link, said the computer police searched was not his, but was used by everyone in a laboratory he ran. Madsen claims journalist Kim Wall was killed in August when she was accidentally hit by a hatch cover while researching a story on Madsen onboard the submarine he built. New postmortem evidence was also presented in court; it shows that Wall was stabbed in her ribcage and genitals "around or shortly after her death." Fifteen stab wounds were found on her body. Citing Buch-Jepsen's testimony, Reuters reports that DNA taken from Madsen's nails, face, and neck matched Wall's DNA, while the Guardian reports that traces of Madsen's DNA were recovered from Wall's body. Her cause of death remains undetermined. The court extended Madsen's detention as the investigation continues; he is due back in court Oct. 31.
– The co-founder of annotation service Rap Genius has been turfed out after making stunningly tasteless remarks on the manifesto of Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger. Mahbod Moghadam called the 141-page document "beautifully written" and speculated that the shooter's sister is "smokin hot." Rap Genius CEO Tom Lehman said Moghadam had resigned over the annotations, which "didn’t attempt to enhance anyone’s understanding of the text, but went beyond that into gleeful insensitivity and misogyny." Sources, however, tell Re/code that the co-founder was asked to leave by Lehman and also faced pressure from investors. Before the resignation, Moghadam apologized, saying: "I was fascinated by the fact that a text was associated with such a heartbreaking crime, especially since Elliot is talking about my neighborhood growing up." His departure appears to be a sign that the company, which has expanded from rap lyrics into crowdsourced explanations of things like legal documents and classic literature, wants to distance itself from "swaggish" behavior, reports Valleywag, which notes that Moghadam has blamed previous outbursts on a brain tumor.
– The federal government closed up shop today, shutting offices in anticipation of a looming snowstorm that blanketed Chicago with snow yesterday, the AP reports. (The six inches logged at O'Hare best a 1999 record for the date—by more than two inches.) The National Weather Service is predicting six to 12 inches of heavy, slushy snow in DC, though there's a chance the snow could turn to rain as it nears the Atlantic, CNN reports. "We're in our mobilization level 5, which is our highest mobilization level," says one Virginia Department of Transportation employee. Airlines have already cancelled hundreds of flights in the storm's projected path, and at least 4,723 Virginia residents have lost power. Ohio is getting its taste of the storm as well, and schools in Columbus have closed; DC kids are off, too.
– A Danish historian has found what he believes is an early Hans Christian Anderson manuscript buried at the bottom of a box in the National Archives of Funen. "I was ecstatic," the historian says. "I had never imagined this." The handwritten story, titled "Tallow Candle," tells the story of a neglected candle that can't light itself until its inner beauty is recognized, the BBC reports. The dedication reads, "To Mme Bunkeflod, from her devoted HC Andersen." Andersen had a close relationship with a widow named Mme Bunkeflod. "I often get calls about stuff thought to have been off Andersen's hand. Most of the time, it is not," the senior curator at Odense's Hans Christian Andersen museum tells the AP. " This time I was thrilled." Experts say the piece lacks the grace of Andersen's later work, and was likely written around 1823, while he was still in grammar school. "This is a very early attempt at prose by Andersen, who was then 18," the curator says. You can read an English translation here.
– Senate Republicans on Thursday finally unveiled their answer to the House bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and Vox has an explainer of what's in it. Some major sticking points: The Better Care Reconciliation Act will ask poor and middle-class Americans to pay more for less coverage, and Medicaid would be cut after expansions are rolled back. Medicaid patients would be unable to get treatment at Planned Parenthood, which would be defunded for a year. The bill also includes a tax break for the wealthy. Here's what else you need to know: First, Politico has the full text of the 142-page document Republicans are calling a "discussion draft." Three Republican senators can defeat the bill by joining Democrats to vote against it. FiveThirtyEight reports the most likely candidates are Rand Paul and Mike Lee (who don't believe it goes far enough; Paul recently said he doesn't want "ObamaCare lite") and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (who want more protections for Medicaid and pre-existing conditions). ABC News reports four Republican senators have already said they won't vote for the bill without more information and negotiation: Paul, Lee, Ron Johnson, and Ted Cruz. They released a joint statement saying the bill doesn't do enough to repeal ObamaCare. The bill's writing was cloaked in such secrecy that the Week reports as of Thursday morning quite a few Republican senators still had not seen it; Murkowski, for example, told a reporter, "I am not a reporter, and I am not a lobbyist, so I've seen nothing." President Trump had called the House bill "mean" and in need of "more heart." So Scientific American takes a look to see if the Senate version fulfills that requirement. When asked by a reporter if the Senate bill had enough heart, Trump called it "very good" but in need of "a little negotiation," CNN reports. According to People, police dragged protesters—some of them in wheelchairs or wearing medical devices—away from Mitch McConnell's office and arrested them. The protesters, members of a national disability rights group, say people with disabilities are threatened by the bill. Finally, USA Today reports Senate Democrats plan to fight the bill through procedural requests to slow down the process. They called for any changes to the House's bill to be made public for at least 72 hours and be subject to CBO analysis.
– A Norwegian ship captain says it was an incredible "stroke of luck" that he discovered the boat of two teenagers lost at sea last July, the AP reports. Havard Melvaer was in his office aboard the huge Edda Fjord supply ship last month when he stepped outside for fresh air and spotted the 19-foot boat, the Palm Beach Post reports. Nobody else on the 16-person crew spotted the boat, and Melvaer says he would have missed it if he hadn't stepped out at that exact moment. "You kind of think a little bit and try to understand the concept of how big it really is," he said. "It's amazing. We kind of felt like it wanted to be found." The captain says that after the boat was hoisted aboard, he Googled "missing fisherman" and was stunned to discover that it belonged to Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, both 14, who left Jupiter Inlet, Fla., in it and never returned. Melvaer tells the Post that he and his crew treated the boat, which is being shipped to Florida, as very precious cargo. "I'm a parent myself, so I can identify with the situation," he says. "I've been boating since I was a kid as well." Items found inside the boat, including Austin's iPhone, have been returned to the US. Austin's father, Blu Stephanos, said in a statement that he received a heartfelt message from the captain, explaining that he's the father of three boys and was deeply affected by the story of Austin and Perry. "He went on to say that, since recovering the boat, his entire crew had thought a lot about the boys and said, 'I think they will follow us in our hearts and minds for the rest of our lives,'" Stephanos said.
– It's a gimme: A fugitive who authorities say evaded capture since 2013 has been arrested after he flagged down a deputy in Louisiana looking for a ride. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office says 30-year-old Jansen Simon was walking down Louisiana Highway 182 on Sunday when he flagged down the officer, per the AP. Simon told the deputy he was traveling with his friends, but they had left him on the side of the road. News outlets report the officer verified Simon's identity and took him into custody. In 2013, authorities say Simon struck another man with a hammer during an argument outside a bar, resulting in a fractured skull. "It’s not clear whether he knew he was flagging down a deputy," says LPSO Public Information Officer Brennan Matherne, per Fox2Now. "Although it was a fully marked patrol car it was also 1:30 in the morning." Simon faces charges of aggravated second-degree battery and two counts of contempt of court.
– Liberals have been accusing recent GOP-led voter ID laws of aiming to disenfranchise minorities, who tend to vote Democrat. Now former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer is saying on record that, yes, those laws are actually about stopping black people from voting, reports Salon, picking up on a story in the Tampa Bay Times. “I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting,” Greer said, recalling a 2009 meeting with party officials. Greer also said the party's budget committee had been taken over by "whack-a-do, right-wing crazies." Greer is hardly without an axe to grind, though. His statements came from a 630-page deposition made in May as part of his trial on corruption charges. Greer paid a company he owned nearly $200,000 from GOP coffers while he was the chairman, although he contends it was authorized and made for services rendered. Florida state Sen. John Thrasher, who succeeded Greer as party chairman, called Greer's comments about voter suppression "baseless accusations on other people in an effort to divert attention from himself.''
– As President Trump exited the White House for a flight Tuesday, he spoke with reporters on the South Lawn about the topic you'd expect: Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the allegations against him. Some standout lines, per Time, the AP, and the Hill: "You can be an exemplary person for 35 years and then somebody comes and they say 'you did this or that,' and they give three witnesses, and the three witnesses at this point do not corroborate what she was saying. It's a very scary situation where you're guilty until proven innocent. ... That is a very, very difficult standard." "It is a very scary time for young men in America, when you can be guilty of something you're not guilty of." "What's happening here has much more to do than even the appointment of a Supreme Court justice. ... You could be somebody that was perfect your entire life, and somebody could accuse you of something. Doesn't necessarily have to be a woman ... but somebody could accuse you of something and you're automatically guilty, but in this realm you are truly guilty until proven innocent. That's one of the very, very bad things that's taking place right now." As for what kind of a time it is for women, "Women are doing great," he replied when asked if he had a message for them. CNN sees parallels between Trump's statements and comments Donald Trump Jr. made in a Monday interview with the Daily Mail in which he said that, in light of the Kavanaugh allegations, he is more afraid for his sons. "I mean, right now, I'd say my sons. I've got boys, and I've got girls. And when I see what's going on right now, it's scary."
– Neither snow nor rain can keep most mail carriers from their duties, but a too-taxing workload apparently derailed ex-Indiana mailman Kristopher Block. He's now charged with misdemeanor theft and felony "official misconduct" after allegedly not delivering 17,000 pieces of mail, the Indianapolis Star reports. What the former La Porte mail carrier is accused of doing with the backlogged mail: hoarding 6,000 pieces of it in his home, as well as paying an accomplice $50 per bundle to dispose of about 11,000 pieces of mail by burning it in Michigan. The still-unnamed helper, however, reportedly instead dumped the mail in a Michigan ravine, where it was found in February 2017. The USPS traced the mail back to Block, and he's said to have feigned ignorance when first approached about it. But court documents note that once some of the recovered mail was shown to him, Block said: "Looks like I'm going to jail." He then admitted he'd fallen behind on his shifts and started taking undelivered mail home. One La Porte resident tells WSBT 22 it was a "crapshoot" on whether he'd get his mail or not during the six-month period in question—late 2016 to the time of Block's resignation in February 2017—and that he finally just got a PO Box. A statement from a USPS Office of Inspector General spokesman notes that "the vast majority of US Postal Service personnel are ... hardworking public servants dedicated to moving mail to its proper destination who would never consider engaging in any form of criminal behavior." Meanwhile, a La Porte post office rep says they're trying to figure out which customers would have been affected, per WLS.
– A 23-year-old man beheaded his mother with an axe on New Year's Eve and explained to investigators that he was fed up with her nagging him to put some boxes away, authorities in Oldsmar, Fla., say. Cops were called to the Tampa-area home after the older brother of Christian Gomez discovered his mother's decapitated body near garbage cans outside, CNN reports. The younger Gomez had already fled the scene but he was captured a few blocks away after police received a call about a suspicious person riding a bicycle. The local sheriff says Gomez, who has a history of mental illness, confessed to the killing and said he had planned it for two days. "In a very calm, cool way he explained what he did, why he did it, what happened, and by talking to him you wouldn't know he had any mental illness, he had any trouble at all. And you know that's very scary," the sheriff tells WFTS. Gomez, who has been charged with first-degree murder, was arrested in 2009 for resisting an officer without violence and disorderly conduct and in March 2014 for loitering and prowling, reports the New York Daily News.
– An airline nearly had one of its jets, worth "tens of millions" of dollars, impounded Friday because it wouldn't pay a customer the $680 it owed her for a delayed flight, NBC News reports. The EU requires airlines to reimburse travelers for delays depending on their length. A German woman's flight from Austria to the Caribbean was delayed 22 hours for mechanical issues, earning her a $680 payout. But four years later, Thomas Cook Airlines still hadn't paid up. So the woman went to a claims company called FlightRight and took the airline to court. On Friday, an official armed with a court order warned Salzburg Airport that Thomas Cook was about to have one of its jets impounded, affecting flights, unless it ponied up the woman's money. The $680 was immediately paid by Condor, a Thomas Cook-affiliated airline. "We are very sorry that it took this long," a Condor spokesperson says. FlightRight says airlines will sometimes drag their feet when paying out compensation in the hopes travelers will give up, but this was probably an honest mistake. "The claim probably just got lost on somebody's desk," a FlightRight spokesperson says. The regulations behind this "ultimate revenge" exacted by the customer require that passengers be compensated when flights are three hours late or more, notes News.com.au. Protections for travelers aren't as strong in the US, so don't expect this to happen here, adds a post at Conde Nast Traveler, "but we still love the visual of a woman towing a jumbo jet home with her behind her car or spray-painting 'Property of Disgruntled Customer' on the side." (This woman sued an airline after being told to switch seats for a man.)
– It's not much of a surprise that Travis Kalanick was left off Glassdoor's list of the top 100 CEOs, based on opinions from the employees they manage. But what may come as a surprise are those on the top of the list, who inched past Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. The 10 highest rated CEOs and their approval rating: Benno Dorer, Clorox Company: 99% Jim Kavanaugh, World Wide Technology: 99% Michael F. Mahoney, Boston Scientific: 99% Craig B. Thompson, Memorial Sloan Kettering: 99% Martin Rankin, Fast Enterprises: 99% Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA: 99% Bob Bechek, Bain & Company: 98% Elon Musk, SpaceX: 98% Brian Halligan, HubSpot: 98% Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook: 98% Click for the full list or see which executives pull in nine figures. (Compare to last year's list here.)
– When we want to be perceived as powerful—think parents scolding misbehaving kids or shoppers haggling with car dealers—we tend to focus not just on our words, but the way we deliver them. Researchers at San Diego State University report in the journal Psychological Science that when people want to portray themselves as powerful or authoritative, their voices go up in pitch, become more monotone, and exhibit more variation in loudness. What's more, listeners hear and identify these differences as powerful, reports Medical News Today. The researchers were inspired to study vocal volume and inflection because of the oft-told story of Margaret Thatcher's vocal coaching when she became prime minister of the UK, reports the Association for Psychological Science. "It was quite well known that Thatcher had gone through extensive voice coaching to exude a more authoritative, powerful persona," one researcher says. "Amazingly, power affected our participants’ voices in almost the exact same way that Thatcher's voice changed after her vocal training," another says. (By this logic, these people are probably speaking pretty quietly.)
– South Korea's Kim Jong Yang was elected Interpol's president on Wednesday, reports the AP, edging out a longtime veteran of Russia's security services who was strongly opposed by the US, UK, and other European nations. Kim's surprise election was seen as a victory for the White House and its European partners, who had lobbied until the final hours against Alexander Prokopchuk; the BBC notes that a bipartisan group of US senators said electing Prokopchuk would be "akin to putting a fox in charge of the henhouse." Russia accused critics of running a "campaign to discredit" Prokopchuk. Critics say countries like Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and China use Interpol's red notice system to round up political opponents, journalists, or activists, even though its rules prohibit that. The US and others expressed concern that the Russian's election would have led to further Kremlin abuses of the system. Groups working to clean up Interpol celebrated, as did South Korea—which called Kim's election a "national triumph." Financier and Kremlin critic Bill Browder, who says Russia used the diffusion system against him, celebrated the vote, saying, "This is a real humiliation for Putin, who thought he'd get away with it." Kim will serve until 2020, completing the four-year term of his predecessor, Meng Hongwei, who was detained in China as part of a wide anti-corruption sweep there. Kim, a police official in South Korea, was serving as interim president after Meng's departure. Russia's Interior Ministry said after the vote that Prokopchuk, who is one of three vice presidents at Interpol, will remain in that position.
– Georgia's Senate has voted 48-2 to shift the state's northern border to include a sliver of land it says was wrongly given to Tennessee by a surveyor's blunder in 1818. Georgia says the "mismarked boundary lines" have denied it access to the Tennessee River as a source of water and it says it will take its northern neighbor to court if it doesn't agree to surrender a slice of land big enough to allow it to do so, reports the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal would have to sign off on any border change, as would Tennessee and the US Congress, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution adds. "It is not something that would negatively impact the water supply of Tennessee," Deal says. The border dispute isn't likely to spark war between Georgia and Tennessee—but Alabama sits just downstream from the disputed area and, since it has suffered from drought as much as northern Georgia in recent years, it is unlikely to give up its water without some kind of fight, the Atlantic notes.
– An AirAsia plane with 162 people on board lost contact with ground control today while flying over the Java Sea after taking off from Indonesia for Singapore, initiating a massive search for the third possible aviation disaster to affect the region this year. AirAsia, a regional low-cost carrier based in Malaysia, said the missing Airbus A320 was on its submitted flight plan route. However, it had requested permission to deviate because of weather. "We don't dare to presume what has happened except that it has lost contact," said Indonesia's acting director general of transportation. He said the last contact between the pilot and air traffic control was at 6:13am local time when the pilot asked to go up to 34,000 feet, apparently to avoid stormy weather. It was last seen on radar at 6:16am, and a minute later was no longer there, he said. Darkness has fallen in the region, reports the BBC, and the search has been called off for the night. It will resume in the morning. He said there was no distress signal from Flight QZ8501. The contact was lost about 42 minutes after the single-aisle jetliner took off from Indonesia's Surabaya airport. It still had about an hour to go before arriving in Singapore. The plane had seven crew and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, said the general manager of Surabaya's Juanda airport. There were six foreigners—three South Koreans, including the infant, and one each from Singapore, Britain, and Malaysia. The rest were Indonesians. The 6-year-old plane is believed to have gone missing somewhere over the Java Sea between Tanjung Pandan on Belitung island and Pontianak, on Indonesia's part of Kalimantan island. The AP has a list of key developments in the plane's disappearance here.
– After a woman wound up in the hospital in the UK last year after ingesting a medley of herbs for a New Year's "detox," doctors are issuing a warning: There is such a thing as too much water, and people need to be careful with supplements, even if they are all-natural herbs. In this case, the 47-year-old woman said that aside from mood issues she was healthy when she upped her fluids and use of herbal remedies, including milk thistle, molkosan, l-theanine, glutamine, vitamin B compound, vervain, sage tea, green tea, and valerian root. Doctors in September reported in the British Medical Journal Case Reports that she suffered from acute severe "hyponatremia," which occurs when there is abnormally low sodium in one's blood. She had gone to the ER after suffering a seizure. Most cases of hyponatremia occur after someone consumes a ton of water—more than 2.5 gallons in a day—but this woman's fluid intake wasn't that high. Then, a possible clue: Doctors found a similar case of a man with the same condition who also hadn't hit that intake level but had ingested valerian root. The doctors note that two case studies are insufficient evidence, but suggest it's possible the root "altered this threshold [of fluid intake], allowing severe hyponatremia to develop at an earlier stage." The British Dietetic Association tells the BBC that the whole notion of detoxing is without merit, as many of our organs (even our skin) regularly detoxify the body. It may sound less sexy, but they add that for most people "a sensible diet and regular physical activity" is best. (Experts are also rolling their eyes at the souping trend.)
– Sherri Shepherd must still pay child support to her ex-husband for a one-and-a-half-year-old boy her lawyer says Shepherd has never met, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined Tuesday to hear her case. An appeals court ruled in November that Shepherd is the legal mother of the child, named LJ, despite the fact that she has no genetic connection to him, People reports. Shepherd and her ex, Lamar Sally, had the baby—conceived using Sally's sperm and a donor egg—via a surrogate who delivered in August 2014, after the couple had separated. Sally is raising the boy. Shepherd, 48, has said that she and Sally were already having marital problems when the baby was conceived, and she only agreed to the surrogacy because she was afraid Sally would leave her if she didn't. "I was scared to say, 'That's not going to work for me. I don't want that,'" she told People in August. But in November, Sally said Shepherd "lies" and added, "If she won't be there for LJ emotionally, I'll be parent enough for the both of us." He says he's filming a reality show about the surrogacy drama, Radar reports. Shepherd attempted to void the surrogacy contract as the couple was breaking up, the AP reports. She pays $4,100 per month in child support. (Click for more of Shepherd's thoughts on the battle.)
– Nearly one-quarter of the House of Representatives is opposed to Susan Rice replacing Hillary Clinton as the secretary of state. In a letter to President Obama yesterday, 97 House Republicans said Rice's "misleading statements" in the wake of the Benghazi attack "caused irreparable damage to her credibility," Politico reports. The letter goes on to claim that Rice "is widely viewed as having either willfully or incompetently misled the American public." But only the Senate has the power to block administration nominees, and so far only Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have announced any plans to block Rice. Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn sees a race flap in the words being thrown around to describe Rice. "These are code words," he tells CNN. "We heard them during the campaign. During this recent campaign, we heard Sununu calling our president 'lazy,' 'incompetent.' These kinds of terms that those of us—especially those of us who were born and raised in the South—we’ve been hearing these little words and phrases all of our lives and we get insulted by them. ... Say that she was wrong, but don’t call her incompetent."
– A tour helicopter carrying seven people crashed in the Grand Canyon, reports the AP, killing three people and injuring four others. Six passengers and a pilot were on board the Papillion Grand Canyon Helicopters chopper when it crashed around 5:20pm Saturday on the Hualapai Nation near Quartermaster Canyon, Hualapai Nation Police Chief Francis Bradley said. The four who were injured were level 1 trauma patients and were being treated at the scene. "We are having difficulties getting the four people out of the crash site area to the hospital," Bradley tells CNN. "It is too windy and it's dark and the area is very rugged." The company's website says it flies roughly 600,000 passengers a year on Grand Canyon and other tours. It also notes that it "abides by flight safety rules and regulations that substantially exceed the regulations required by the Federal Aviation Administration." Longtime helicopter crash lawyer Gary Robb represented a woman badly burned in a deadly Papillion crash at the Grand Canyon in 2001. He said the company has made big improvements since that crash. "They've improved their piloting qualifications as well as their maintenance over the last 10 years and as far as I know they've not had a crash since 2001," he said. He said flying in the Grand Canyon can be treacherous simply because of the number of helicopters there. FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer said the Eurocopter EC130 crashed in unknown circumstances and sustained heavy damage. Robb said his heart went out to the victims. "This is not just the fact that a helicopter crashed, this is a human tragedy. People died and were horribly injured. It's a tragedy for human beings," Robb said.
– Another year, another election, and Florida still continues to be one of the most influential states in the Electoral College. Political pundits have paid special attention to this swing state after its unique role in determining the winner of the 2000 election, and the story isn't any different this cycle. Polling and statistics site FiveThirtyEight—which correctly predicted the entire Electoral College map in 2012—estimates Florida is the most likely "tipping point" state for the 2016 election. Currently, Hillary Clinton holds a 1-point lead in Florida. Florida's large allotment of 29 electoral votes means Clinton could afford to lose several other states if she was able to hold on to Florida. Trump, data shows, does not have that luxury. The businessman needs Florida to put together any sort of plausible electoral win—at least according to current polls. Trump has made no secret that he doesn't trust the polls, and according to the AP, neither do his supporters. So at least in Trump-land, there may be more paths to victory that don't include Florida. But for now, experts say Trump and his campaign should be spending a lot of time down South in the sun. Read FiveThirtyEight's full post here.
– His words may seem cheerful, but his actions have been anything but. A California bank robber now called the "Keep Smiling Bandit" is being sought in two Orange County robberies in which he verbally instructed the likely terrified tellers to keep grins on their faces as they handed the cash over to him, the Los Angeles Times reports. In both instances—one at a Citibank in Tustin on Saturday, the other at a Citibank in Costa Mesa on Oct. 12—the thief passed a note to the teller that said, "Keep your hands away from the alarm or I'll shoot," KTLA reports. No weapon was spotted in either case, an FBI spokeswoman tells the Times; the robber, who can be seen wearing a baseball cap and eyeglasses in both surveillance videos, was described as appearing "nervous," KTTV reports. He's said to be a white man in his early 30s, between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighing around 150 pounds with a "thin build." Anyone with info should call 911 or the FBI's LA office at 310-477-6565. (A 55-year-old man was accused last year of stealing 37 bank rugs.)
– Everyone from the left to the right thinks Mitt Romney smoked President Obama in last night's debate, but how will that translate to the polls? Nate Silver of the New York Times says it's possible he could see a gain of about 3 points, about as high as these things get. He likens it to Romney kicking a field goal, which makes more sense when you recall that Silver had Romney down by a touchdown before the debate. Romney hasn't tied the game, but he's set "himself up in such a way that his comeback chances have improved by a material amount." A sampling of other opinions today: Roger Simon, Politico: "It’s not that Romney’s performance was perfect or polished—it wasn’t—it’s just that Obama’s was so mediocre. ... I think he was just overtired or over-distracted or over-something. But he sure wasn’t over-energetic." Ben Smith, BuzzFeed: Romney's biggest task was to prove "he could stand on stage with President Barack Obama as an equal and a plausible president of the United States." Check. Matt Miller, Washington Post: Well played, Romney. Miller expected him to track to the middle more quickly after the primaries, but maybe this is better. "If he wins, of course, Romney and his advisers will be hailed as geniuses for their timing, for bonding the party faithful to the ticket with the choice of Paul Ryan and a conservative-themed convention, and then dashing to the center for the home stretch."
– With the death toll now at 282 and the hope of finding survivors diminishing, anger over yesterday's mine disaster in Turkey is spiking fast—and some aren't hesitating to point fingers. "WHAT HAPPENED IN SOMA IS NOT FATE, IT IS MURDER," a branch of the Chamber of Electrical Engineers wrote yesterday, claiming the cause of the fire was negligence, not "an electrical situation as presented to the public." The group said, per CNN, "the investigation revealed that the systems to sense poisonous and explosive gases in the mine and the systems to manage the air systems were insufficient and old" and air fans actually pushed flames farther through the mine; ventilation wasn't righted until "much later." A video, obtained by the Telegraph, isn't helping the government's standing after news that an opposition motion to inspect the mines was shot down last month. It appears to show an aide to PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan kicking a grieving protester, held down by paramilitary police in Soma, where protesters have vandalized a local ruling party office. Erdogan has said the opposition motion had "nothing to do with the Soma mine." Already Turkey's worst ever industrial accident, the death toll could reach 400 as 150 miners are still underground and no survivors have been found since yesterday morning, the Guardian notes. CNN adds the bodies of 200 miners have been returned to their families, while the AP reports on the songs of heartbreak being sung as backhoes dig rows of graves and funerals begin en masse.
– Where's Ted Striker when you need him? Probably not at the helm of a commercial flight, according to a new Department of Transportation report. It finds that automation has driven manual flying mostly out of the cockpit, leading to concerns that pilots may not be getting enough training to take the controls in emergencies, Gizmodo reports. "The agency is missing important opportunities to ensure that pilots maintain skills needed to safely fly and recover in the event of a failure with flight deck automation or an unexpected event," the report reads, per Reuters. Pilots usually fly planes manually during takeoffs and landings, but the aircraft is then placed into autopilot for about 90% of the flight, the news agency adds. While these technological advances have improved safety in many areas, the report warns that pilots aren't getting sufficient training to monitor the automated systems and that they're not keeping their manual skills sharp. Investigators visited nine airlines and found two of them discouraged pilots from taking over the plane during normal flying conditions, reports AP. Two recent high-profile accidents blamed on inadequately trained crews—Asiana Airlines Flight 777, which crashed in San Francisco and killed three, and Colgan Air Flight 3407, which crashed near Buffalo in 2009, killing all 49 on board and one person on the ground—have heightened the conversation. The DoT's no-brainer recommendation: have the FAA make sure pilots receive sufficient training and then check up to make sure they retain what they've learned.
– John Podesta continued his assault on the FBI on Sunday, telling Meet the Press that he only heard from the bureau once about his hacked emails—and that was two days after WikiLeaks started dropping them. The timeline, per Podesta: On Oct. 7, the controversial Access Hollywood tape depicting Donald Trump dropped; "One hour later, WikiLeaks starts dropping my emails into the public," Podesta says. "One could say that those things might not have been a coincidence. Two days later, the FBI contacted me, and the first thing the agent said to me was, 'I don't know if you're aware but your email account might have been hacked.' I said, yes, I was aware of that." That, he says, "was the last time I'd heard from the FBI." “I think the Russians clearly intervened in the election and I think now that we know both the CIA and the FBI agree the Russians intervened to help Trump and Vladimir Putin was personally involved with that," Podesta continued, per Politico and Newsday. "It was distorted by the Russian intervention. A foreign adversary directly intervened into our democratic institution and tried to tilt the election to Donald Trump." Podesta contends that while "the Russians were trying to elect a lapdog," it's unclear whether Trump himself knew what was going on, but that "I think the electors have the right to know what the answers are."
– India has earned a reputation as a place that's dangerous for women and girls, underscored by the story of a 10-year-old rape victim now in the news for trying to get permission to get an abortion. Another shocking story from 2012 set off a series of protests across the country after a young woman was fatally gang-raped on a public bus, and—along with many other high-profile sexual assaults—has prompted countries like the US to caution women not to travel alone in India. Now the Indian airline Vistara has taken matters into its own hands, offering a free service called Woman Flyer, which it describes to Bloomberg as a "sincere effort to ensure peace of mind of our women customers." The free service, which launched in March, is used by between 75 and 100 women every day, according to Vistara. Women who sign up for the service will get help with their bags, be guaranteed a window or aisle seat, and be escorted to a pickup point by airline staff, reports Emirates Woman. While this is thought to be the first airline anywhere to offer this kind of service, Air India began providing female-only rows earlier this year in response to assaults in the air. In 2015, researchers in the UK noted that in places with gender equality, separating women "reinforces a message that women must be contained and segregated in order to protect them," but many who are hailing Vistara's new service says safety comes first. (That 10-year-old mentioned earlier is being made to deliver her baby.)
– Some media outlets might want to evict Donald Trump from their politics sections, but he appears to be doing pretty well among Americans surveying the political arena. As CNN reports in a new CNN/ORC national poll, Trump is polling at the top of the considerable heap of Republican presidential contenders, at 18%. Jeb Bush comes in second at 15%, Scott Walker at 10%, and no other GOP candidate cracked double digits. Of note: The poll was conducted after Trump started swinging at John McCain's war record, indicating he's emerged unscathed; the new poll puts Trump up 6 points over a similar poll at the end of June. "There's a movement going on," Trump told CNN this morning in response, per the Hill. "People are tired of these incompetent politicians in Washington ... I'm just not that surprised." Trump is racking up similar numbers in Iowa, per an NBC/Marist poll out today: He's at 17%, though he's trailing Walker's 19% in that state, reports Politico. Bush has 12% there. The story is a little more marked in New Hampshire, where Trump is pulling down 21% to Bush's 14% and Walker's 12%. And Trump's divisiveness shows in his unfavorability ratings: 53% of New Hampshire Republicans view him unfavorably, notes Politico, while that number is 44% in Iowa, and what CNN calls a "sky high" 59% of all registered voters in its poll.
– Ron DeSantis swears he meant nothing racist by his "monkey this up" comment, but a new robocall in the Florida gubernatorial race definitely did: Set to the background of jungle music and screeching monkeys, the New York Times reports that the minute-long audio clip begins with a man saying, "I is Andrew Gillum. We Negroes . . . done made mud huts while white folk waste a bunch of time making their home out of wood an stone." The call, which went out to an unknown number of recipients, is apparently the work of an Idaho-based white supremacist, anti-Semitic group called the Road to Power. The group is also behind an effort in Iowa to drive anti-immigration policy in response to the killing of Mollie Tibbetts. A rep for DeSantis called the ad "appalling and disgusting. Hopefully, whoever is behind this has to answer for this despicable action." The Gillum camp called it "reprehensible," while asking the Washington Post to "Please don't give it undeserved attention." Current Gov. Rick Scott joined the men seeking to replace him in denouncing the ad in a tweet: "There is no room for any racial politics here in Florida — none. Florida is a melting pot of people from all over the globe, and we are proud of it. No attempts to divide people by race or ethnicity will be tolerated, from anyone. THIS. STOPS. NOW."
– "I am CRYING." That was just one online reaction to an ill-fated photo shoot that was meant to capture a planned stadium implosion. Photographers gathered near the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta on Monday, waiting to snap a shot of the controlled destruction of the 71,000-seat structure, and among them was the Weather Channel's James Crugnale, who arrived nearly an hour ahead of time to nab his "perfect" vantage point across the street and livestream the gathering crowd, per the Washington Post. Except that it was also the perfect pull-over spot for a city bus, which pulled up right in front of Crugnale at the exact moment black smoke started to spew from the top of the dome to mark the beginning of the implosion. "Get out of the way, bus! What the f---?!" an incredulous Crugnale can be heard saying, in between frustrated yells, in the now-viral video of his experience. The bus lingered for less than 20 seconds, but by the time it pulled away, the dome had already disappeared into a massive cloud of white dust. "TFW you stream the #GAdome being demolished for 40 minutes and a bus stops in front of the camera at the exact moment it implodes," Crugnale lamented on Twitter.
– German police searched for a Syrian terror suspect for almost two days—and found him Sunday night tied up in another Syrian national's apartment. Jaber Albakr, 22, came to Germany last year as an asylum seeker. After German officials got a tip from the country's intelligence service, they zeroed in on his apartment in Chemnitz Saturday morning. Albakr escaped, but authorities found several hundred grams of explosives and started a manhunt, NBC News reports. Albakr reportedly approached another Syrian national at a train station Sunday night and asked to stay overnight at the man's home. But the man recognized Albakr from news of the manhunt and called police, who found the suspect tied up at the man's apartment and arrested him. The Good Samaritan told police that he, with the help of two flatmates, "overpowered Albakr and tied him up," an investigator says, per the Local. Indeed, one of the flatmates was reportedly kneeling on Albakr to keep him on the ground when police arrived. No less than Chancellor Angela Merkel thanked the men who caught Albakr via her spokesperson. Investigators say they found the same homemade explosives that were used in the Paris and Brussels attacks last year in Albakr's apartment, and that they were "almost ready, or even ready for usage." He is accused of working with ISIS, and his own flatmate, another Syrian refugee, was also arrested as a suspected co-conspirator. Police are also questioning a third man.
– Maddy Wilford was shot multiple times in the Parkland school massacre and was near death as first responders tended to her after the shooting. But an observant Coral Springs Fire Department lieutenant asked the teen an important question as they prepared to whisk her away, and it was one that ended up saving her life. Per CNN, Maddy was in such bad shape when she was brought to Lt. Laz Ojeda and his rescue team that they initially thought she'd already died. "Signs of life," however, soon emerged, and after a Broward County Sheriff's Office SWAT team member sealed up a chest wound, they readied her to go to a children's hospital 30 miles away, where they'd been instructed to take the 15-year-old. Except Ojeda wasn't convinced she was only 15. And so, as Ojeda tearfully relayed at a Monday presser, he asked the girl twice how old she was; she finally answered she was 17. Based on that info, Ojeda, who thought she'd die before they got her to the children's facility, made the call to take her to a hospital just 10 miles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. There, operating surgeon Dr. Igor Nichiporenko quickly did "damage control" on the badly injured teen, who'd been shot in the abdomen, chest, and upper sternum, with tendons "shattered from gunshot wounds." Astonishingly, Wilford was out of the hospital in less than a week. "Young people have a tendency to heal very fast," Nichiporenko says, per the New York Times. "She's very, very lucky." He adds that Ojeda's decision saved Maddy's life. Ojeda is just glad he was there to make the call. "I thank God for allowing us to be an instrument in this miracle," he told CNN Tuesday. As for Maddy? "I'm so grateful to be here," she said at the news conference, per CNN.
– Twitter is finally cracking down on abuse after a number of incidents in the UK where high-profile women were threatened via tweet. Both a feminist activist and a politician were threatened with rape last month, while several female journalists were tweeted bomb threats, reports USA Today. After an online petition garnered 125,000 signatures calling for Twitter to take "a zero tolerance policy on abuse," and criticism from British journalists and politicians, the social media service has announced it will change its rules and add a "report abuse" button for tweets, the Guardian reports. The new rules state that users "may not engage in targeted abuse or harassment," especially if "the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats," CNET reports. In a blog post by Twitter UK, the service says it will also add extra staff members to handle abuse complaints, and will work with the UK Safer Internet Centre "to expand our user resources on digital citizenship and staying safe online."
– Federal investigators are probing a near-midair collision of three commuter jets at Washington's Reagan National Airport that was averted at the last minute. The jets were seconds away from crashing after air traffic controllers launched two outbound flights directly into the path of a third plane coming in to land on Tuesday, reports the Washington Post. The three planes, all operated by US Airways, were carrying 192 passengers and crew. No one was injured. The misdirections occurred as controllers changed flight paths to avoid an incoming storm. The planes were some 12 seconds from impact when an air traffic controller spotted the impending crash and redirected the planes. The FAA is investigating. The error was one of several thousand made by controllers across the nation in several years, notes the Post, with the National airport being the site of some of the worst.
– The co-founder of the hugely popular hip-hop and skateboarding clothing brand LRG has been found dead in his Laguna Beach home. Jonas Bevacqua was 34. There was no obvious cause of death, and an autopsy will be conducted, AP reports. LRG, which the designer founded when he was barely out of his teens, branched out from clothing into music and other items, which supported up-and-coming recording artists. Bevacqua, who grew up in a multi-racial California family, said he founded LRG because no other company was creating clothing that reflected his and co-founder Robert Wright's interest in surfing, skateboarding, and hip-hop. "I grew up in a pretty unique environment and was exposed to a lot of different things," Bevacqua told the Orange County Register in 2009. "I didn't feel there was a clothing company to bridge the gap among all these different things that we were into—that spoke for that melting pot of what was going on. That's what LRG was all about."
– Matt Damon is being heaped with Internet love after a video from the weekend's Save Our Schools march went viral. Damon, interviewed by the libertarian Reason.tv, took issue with the reporter's view that "job insecurity" is what causes him to work hard as an actor—and that more job insecurity could motivate teachers to work hard, too. Watch his smackdown in the gallery, and make sure to stick around til the end for arguably the best line, which he hurls at the cameraman. (When you're done, click to watch fellow actor Mila Kunis engage in her own reporter smackdown—in Russian.)
– The wife of Korn lead singer Jonathan Davis died Friday—the same day Davis issued a domestic violence restraining order against her, People reports. "The Davis family is brokenhearted over the devastating loss of Deven Davis," says the family in a statement. "We ask that you respect their privacy." The cause of death is unknown, but TMZ reports that 39-year-old Deven had lifelong substance abuse problems and had gone to rehab six times. Jonathan, who had two children with the former porn star, doesn't hold back in his court declaration: Deven "is constantly under the influence of ... nitrous oxide, cocaine and Norco," the document reads. Jonathan adds that when she got high, she would "routinely bring home unsavory characters, including strangers. Some of these people are random fans of my music who she allows to come into the house, go into the master bedroom closet and try on my clothes." He also accuses her of having a drug-dealer boyfriend who was recently unconscious on her sofa when Jonathan brought over the kids. Jonathan, 47, had filed for divorce in 2016 and the pair remained estranged. Deven apparently went missing from a sober home last week and hadn't been in contact with Jonathan since. Sources tell TMZ she never even saw the restraining order.
– The presidential candidates took a break from the campaign to poke fun at themselves and each other last night during the annual Alfred E. Smith charity dinner in Manhattan. Some highlights, from the New York Times and Washington Post: Romney: "As President Obama surveys the Waldorf banquet room with everybody in white tie and finery you have to wonder what he’s thinking: ‘So little time, so much to redistribute.’” Obama: "Earlier today, I went shopping at some stores in Midtown. I understand Governor Romney went shopping for some stores in Midtown." On themselves: Obama: "Some of you may have noticed, I had a lot more energy in our second debate. I felt really well rested after the nice long nap I had in the first debate.” Romney, commenting on the fancy dress code: "It’s nice to finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the house.” Odds and ends: Obama asked everyone to “please take their seats. Otherwise Clint Eastwood will yell at them.” Romney tweaked the press, saying he had seen early reports from the dinner. "Headline: ‘Obama Embraced by Catholics, Romney Dines with Rich People.’” On the VP: Obama: "I've heard some people say, 'Barack, you're not as young as you used to be. Where’s that golden smile? Where’s that pep in your step?' And I say, 'Settle down, Joe, I'm trying to run a Cabinet meeting.'" Romney: "I was actually hoping the president would bring Joe Biden along this evening because he will laugh at anything.” See The Week for more highlights.
– Actor Randy Quaid was arrested—along with his wife Evi—Friday night while trying to cross the Canadian border into Vermont, the CBC reports. According to the AP, the Quaids were detained by US Customs and Border Protection agents because they're still wanted on felony charges from 2010 in California. The couple had been hiding up north since then, but the Canadian government recently gave them until next Wednesday to get out of the country. This isn't Randy's first arrest this week. He was detained last Tuesday by Canadian officials, who thought he might try to flee rather than leave Canada, the CBC reports. The Quaids first fled to Canada in 2010 after being accused of vandalizing and squatting in the guesthouse of a home they once owned in California, the AP reports. They also claimed they were being targeted by the "Hollywood star-whackers," who they say killed their friends David Carradine and Heath Ledger. According to the CBC, Randy was denied permanent resident status in Canada in 2013 because of the California charges. Following his detention last Tuesday, he told the AP he was finally ready to return to the US to settle the vandalism charges and move on with his life. While he was unavailable for comment following his arrest in Vermont, we imagine Randy's long-awaited return to America went a little something like this.
– Authorities in Mexico Beach, Florida, estimate that 285 people decided to stay home and try to ride out Hurricane Michael, reports the AP. As has been well reported by now, the coastal community was decimated by the storm, and authorities are now trying to figure out how many of those 285 survived. Similar situations exist elsewhere in the state, and Florida officials are fielding scores of calls from worried loved ones. Still, with cellphone service down throughout wide areas, rescue officials are holding out hope that the missing are fine and simply haven't been able to get in touch yet. As of Friday afternoon, CNN had the death toll at 13: Five in Virginia, four in Florida, three in North Carolina, and one (an 11-year-old girl) in Georgia. “Unfortunately, I think you’re going to see that number climb,” said FEMA Administrator William “Brock” Long Friday morning. “I hope we don’t see it climb dramatically.” As for the storm itself, the Washington Post notes that Michael is now Post-Tropical Cyclone Michael and has moved out to sea. However, communities from New Jersey to Massachusetts could still get 3 to 5 inches of rain through Friday. More than 1 million people were without power in the affected states.
– The same day seven were shot dead in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and just weeks after 12 were killed in a Colorado movie theater, shooting victims are appearing in a moving advertisement demanding that President Obama and Mitt Romney come up with a strategy to reduce gun violence. Three survivors of last year's Tucson mass shooting that killed six people and critically injured Rep. Gabby Giffords "demand a plan" from the candidates. "Our leaders gave us a moment of silence, but they haven't given us a plan," they note. "President Obama, Governor Romney: We demand a plan because 48,000 Americans will be murdered with guns during the next president's term. That's three Aurora shootings every day. We need less less silence and more courage." The ad is sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and is part of the "Demand a Plan" campaign and petition drive. No word from the candidates.
– Angry streaming customers in Chicago are fighting back against the so-called "Netflix tax," filing a lawsuit against the city last Wednesday that could have national implications, the Daily Dot reports. The plaintiffs—including Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify customers—allege the 9% tax on streaming services (an extension of Chicago's amusement tax) announced in June violates the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which outlaws discrimination against Internet businesses. According to Fortune, the lawsuit claims streaming customers now face a higher tax rate than if they were watching a DVD, going to the theater, or attending a concert. If the suit succeeds, it could hamper local governments' ability to tax Internet services at a time when increased online commerce is shrinking tax revenues around the country. The lawsuit also alleges the streaming tax is essentially a new one, not an extension of the amusement tax as Chicago's city comptroller claimed. New taxes, unlike changes to existing taxes, require a vote of city officials. "If the city wants to tax Internet-based streaming media services, then it should put the measure through the political process and let Chicagoans have their voices heard through the democratic process," an attorney for the plaintiffs says in a press release. The Chicago Tribune reports the city has vowed to fight the lawsuit. The "Netflix tax," part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to make up the city's budget gap through new fees, is set to go into effect in January.
– As one New York City institution wrestles with high-profile molestation accusations, another finds itself the target of outcry over the "sexualization" of a young girl—in a painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says it will not take down the 1938 painting "Thérèse Dreaming" by the French artist Balthus, though 7,000 people have asked that it do so via the petition site care2. The petition started by Mia Merrill describes the work as "an evocative portrait of a prepubescent girl relaxing on a chair with her legs up and underwear exposed," and calls it "disturbing" that the museum would knowingly display such a sexualized image in our "current climate." As for the knowingly part, she notes that the Met paired a 2013 exhibit of Balthus' work with a sign explaining some of the pieces could be "disturbing" to viewers. A 2013 Guardian article indicates "Thérèse Dreaming" was part of that exhibit. Merrill writes that "if the Met had the wherewithal to reference the disturbing nature of Balthus, they understand the implications of displaying his art." The New York Post reports the museum on Sunday said the painting would remain hanging, with a rep saying, "Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation." The museum's description of the piece notes that Thérèse Blanchard, Balthus' neighbor in Paris, was 12 or 13 when she was painted. The Paris Review reports the late Balthus was asked about the "provocative poses" he painted young girls in, and replied, "It is how they sit." In his review of the 2013 exhibition for the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl had this to say: "I kept thinking of a line by Oscar Wilde: 'A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence.'" (A US couple has been forced to give up their $1.75 million painting.)
– Australian police shot and killed a terror suspect after he stabbed two officers yesterday, officials say. The suspect has been identified as Numan Haider, an 18-year-old Australian whose passport had been canceled amid terror concerns, the AP reports. Officers were concerned he was planning to behead police, cover their bodies in a flag, then post pictures online, following ISIS instructions, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Police asked him to come to a station in Melbourne for questioning after he'd been on their radar for three months; he'd recently been reported displaying an ISIS flag at a shopping center. Officers met him outside the building at his request, Australia's ABC News reports; when one tried to shake his hand, he stabbed the officer, police say. Both officers are in stable condition. A search of Haider revealed another knife, as well as an ISIS flag, the Morning Herald notes. Haider's family, from Afghanistan, had recently been worried about his behavior, a family friend tells ABC. He had been linked to a radical Melbourne-based group known as al-Furqan that has previously been raided by police, but he had reportedly drifted from the group.
– It's been a week since 21-year-old San Antonio native Drake Kramer was spotted at the Bright Angel Lodge on the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Last Monday, the avid hiker and aspiring geologist texted his father that he was at the Grand Canyon and "needed to be back with Mother Earth and set his soul free," his father tells ABC News; then he disappeared. "At that point we really started getting worried and started calling and trying to get people to look for him," his dad says. Kramer had visited the area with his aunt, and he posted "wish I could stay" on Facebook. "We're focusing on the positive by trying to believe that him saying he needed to be with Mother Earth and set his soul free that he was talking about being out in nature and being one with nature," says his dad. Because a week has gone by with no clues, efforts are now being scaled back to rangers and pilots looking for clues when they're in the area, reports San Antonio Express-News. Kramer is described as 5 feet 7 inches tall, 140 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. He was last seen in blue jeans and an olive-green sweatshirt. "We don't know what his plans were. He may be hiking, we just don't know," says a Grand Canyon National Park spokeswoman. (A group of 15 hikers was found in California's wilderness just last fall.)
– Batten disease, a rare and fatal genetic brain disease marked by blindness, seizures, dementia, and loss of motor skills, gained attention earlier this year when Hollywood producer Gordon Gray and his wife Kristen learned that both their young daughters have it, reported Deadline in June. Now another California couple, Bekah and Danny Bowman of Orange County, have learned that not just their 5-year-old son Titus but also their 2-year-old son Ely have the disease, reports People. "The amount of publicity from the Grays has been a silver lining in the midst of tragedy," says Bekah, noting that they decided to share their story after watching the Grays, who are trying to raise $10 million to $12 million in a race to help find a cure, go public with their own struggle. Worries about speech and mobility issues and seizures led to Titus' diagnosis in April. Because the disease is genetic, there was a 25% chance his little brother would have it. Ely took a test in June, and the family's worst fears were confirmed. Both boys have late-infantile CLN2 and will face dramatic declines before dying young. Titus is already suffering the effects. "When we got the diagnosis, [Titus] was still talking, walking and eating," Bekah says. "Within a month ... he lost all of those abilities. He's blind, he cannot walk anymore, he's in a wheelchair, he's eating through a GJ tube and he doesn't talk anymore." Still, the Bowmans are finding a way to be thankful for every day they have with their boys. Bekah had this to say in an April blog post: "This week I’ve become broken. More broken than I knew I could be. So broken that I can’t fix it and I’m overcome by it. But ... out of the broken comes love. An authentic, new eye-opening kind of love." A GoFundMe campaign has been started for the family. (This rare disease could turn this boy into a mannequin.)
– Court records say a Colorado inmate, mistakenly released from jail, enjoyed less than two hours of freedom before his wife made him turn himself in. James Rynerson was in custody late last month at the Mesa County Jail on a $2,000 cash bond while awaiting prosecution on menacing, disorderly conduct, and trespass charges, reports the AP. Rynerson, 38, was released after Mesa County sheriff's deputies at the jail mistook him for another inmate, Marvin March, who was awaiting release. Rynerson's wife was surprised to find him in her garage shortly after. "(Rynerson's wife) told Inmate Rynerson he needed to turn himself in after he informed her he had been released under another person's name," the court report said, per the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. She "convinced Inmate Rynerson to go back, and personally drove him back to the Mesa County Detention Facility." Mesa County Sheriff's Sgt. Henry Stoffel said Wednesday that jail employees broke procedure when they failed to check Rynerson's wristband and picture, and that an investigation is ongoing to determine whether jail policy needs to be updated. He credited Rynerson's wife for his return. "We appreciate that she recognized his error and recommended that he turn himself in before it became something more significant," he said. Rynerson, meanwhile, faces new charges for his efforts, including escape, forgery, criminal impersonation, and theft.
– A heartbreaking story out of Kentucky, where a father and his 3-year-old son died of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning Wednesday morning; the man's 7-year-old daughter is in critical condition. Juvenal Garcia Mora, 39, was found unresponsive inside his garage but not in his car; the children were inside the car. "It appeared to be that he had warmed the car up while it was in the garage, and trying to get the kids out the door to school and start the day," a police rep tells Fox 19. The children's mother had already left for work at the time. Relatives, concerned when Mora didn't show up at work and his daughter didn't arrive at school, went to the house and then called police. The police rep, who said the situation appears to be a "horrific accident," notes that it's a sad "reminder in the cold months to be cautious of running vehicles inside of closed, indoor areas, specifically garages," as that can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. In high concentrations, the colorless, odorless, tasteless gas can be fatal in five minutes, WLKY reports. "This could happen very, very quickly, and it did, in this case," the police rep says. (Carbon monoxide was also suspected in the deaths of six teens in a garden shed.)
– At least three lucky (and still anonymous) souls have winning tickets in the $640 million Mega Millions jackpot, reports AP. The winners were sold in Illinois (in Red Bud, near St. Louis); Maryland (in the Baltimore suburb of Milford Mill, reports the Baltimore Sun); and somewhere in Kansas. California struck out but had lots of close calls, notes the Los Angeles Times: Twenty-nine tickets there matched five of the six numbers, and each should be worth in the "high hundreds of thousands." For the record, the lucky numbers were 2-4-23-38-46, with the Mega Ball of 23.
– A final season of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown is set to air this fall. CNN says it will air seven episodes in the 12th season of the series, reports the Los Angeles Times. A single episode completed before Bourdain's June 8 suicide in France finds him exploring Kenya alongside comedian W. Kamau Bell. Four other episodes will show footage of Bourdain's trips to Manhattan, Texas, Spain, and Indonesia, with his usual narration "replaced by other voices of people who are in the episodes," a CNN rep explains. They're to be followed by an episode offering a behind-the-scenes look at filming, and another paying tribute to Bourdain. Per Eater, the exact premiere date is not yet known.
– The rock world is mourning Lemmy Kilmister, the hard-living Motörhead frontman who once seemed almost indestructible. Lemmy, as his legions of fans knew him, discovered he had cancer on Saturday—just two days after his 70th birthday—and died on Monday, the BBC reports. The British-born rocker, a former Jimi Hendrix roadie, formed Motörhead in 1975 when he was kicked out of Hawkwind after a drug bust in Canada. "Our mighty, noble friend Lemmy passed away today after a short battle with an extremely aggressive cancer," the band said on its Facebook page. "We will say more in the coming days, but for now, please ... play Motörhead loud, play Hawkwind loud, play Lemmy's music LOUD. Have a drink or few." Lemmy, who made a total of 22 albums with Motörhead, including the 1980 classic "Ace of Spades," rocked—and partied—as hard as anybody in the business, though despite the band's massive influence on thrash metal and other genres, he never cared for the term "heavy metal," feeling more kinship with punk bands like The Damned, reports the CBC. Health problems didn't slow him down much in later years: The band completed a North American tour in September and was due to begin a European one in January. In August, he told the Guardian that death was the only thing that could stop him. "As long as I can walk the few yards from the back to the front of the stage without a stick," he said. "Or even if I do have to use a stick." (We also lost "Louie Louie" singer Jack Ely this year.)
– An incident that "deeply disturbed" Baltimore's interim police commissioner has led to one police officer's resignation and another being put on administrative duty. CNN has bystander video of a man shouting at one officer as another stands nearby; the first starts throwing punches and 10 seconds later both men are on the ground, with the officer on top and blood from the civilian streaked across the sidewalk. The second officer is seen trying to get his hands into the tussle but doesn't appear to try to stop the first officer's punches. Neither officer has been identified, but Warren Brown, an attorney repping the civilian, identifies his client to the Baltimore Sun as 26-year-old Dashawn McGrier. Brown says the cops stopped his client without offering a reason; witnesses tell the Sun the officer who threw the punches knew McGrier and may have targeted him. In a statement, the Baltimore PD says the cops stopped McGrier as part of a crime probe; they say McGrier refused to provide ID for a citizen's contact sheet, said to be required when cops talk to a citizen during an investigation. After initially being suspended, the punch-throwing officer resigned, per the Baltimore PD; the second officer is still on administrative duties pending an investigation. McGrier wasn't charged, police say. Brown says McGrier suffered jaw, rib, and nose fractures, per the Washington Post. "I have zero tolerance for behavior like I witnessed on the video today," Gary Tuggle, the PD's interim commissioner, said. "Officers have a responsibility and duty to control their emotions in the most stressful of situations." Brown says McGrier will sue, per WBAL. Baltimore is still haunted by the 2015 death of Freddie Gray.
– Amid allegations that he groped a stylist, E! host Ryan Seacrest was sure to have an awkward time attempting to interview celebrities at Sunday night's Academy Awards. Mashable says "practically no celebrities" talked to him and the Kansas City Star, which rounds up social media reactions to Seacrest's evening, says E!'s coverage "flopped." None of the five actresses nominated for Best Actress spoke to him, the Wrap notes. Still, Deadline reports Seacrest was "not exactly snubbed"; he did score interviews with 21 people—and Entertainment Weekly has a list of names. Among them was Taraji P. Henson, who, Fox News reports, appeared to slam Seacrest to his face during their interview. "The universe has a way of taking care of taking care of good people," she said, while reaching out to touch Seacrest's chin. "Know what I mean?" She reportedly told the next person who interviewed her, "I'm great now that I'm in your company."
– Politicians are getting behind Ted Cruz ... sort of: In a conference call to Minnesota supporters Wednesday that was mostly focused on explaining why he dropped out of the presidential race, Marco Rubio said that he hopes one of the GOP candidates still in the race will keep Donald Trump from becoming the nominee, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. He also said that Ted Cruz is "the only conservative left in the race" ... but he didn't actually endorse Cruz. (John Kasich is the only other non-Trump contender left.) Another senator and former 2016 presidential contender offered a similar non-endorsement of Cruz: Lindsey Graham tells CNN that he'll headline a fundraiser for Cruz on Monday, a meet-and-greet event during the AIPAC conference in DC. Why? "I think he's the best alternative to beat Donald Trump. I'm going to help Ted in any way I can," Graham explained. Buuuuut, "He's certainly not my preference," Graham added of Cruz. "But he's a reliable Republican, conservative, which I've had many differences with. John Kasich is the most viable general election candidate. I just don't see how John gets through the primary. This is an outsider year, and he is an insider." Graham, who has previously joked about how unpopular Cruz is among his fellow senators, added that Cruz is indeed "not well-liked," but said that even though "Senator Cruz would not be my first choice, I think he is a Republican conservative who I could support."
– Patricia Heaton apparently agrees with Rush Limbaugh when it comes to Georgetown student and birth control advocate Sandra Fluke. The Everybody Loves Raymond actress tweeted a series of attacks aimed at Fluke last week, then deleted her Twitter account, Mediabistro reports. Some of the highlights, as preserved for posterity by Crooks & Liars, Angry Black Lady, and Fanity: "If every Tweaton sent Georgetown Gal one condom, her parents wouldn’t have to cancel basic cable, & she would never reproduce – sound good?" "G-Gal: you’ve given yer folks great gift for Mother’s/Father’s Day! Got up in front of whole world & said I’m having tons of sex- pay 4 it!" Hey G-Gal! Change major to Health Sciences, then look at pix of people w/syphilis, gonorrhrea [sic], herpes, and chlamydia! Instant birth control! "Hey G-Town: stop buying toothpaste, soap, and shampoo! You'll save money, and no one will want to sleep with you!" "Hey G-Town Gal: Plz let us also pay for your Starbucks, movie theater tickets, and your favorite hot wings combo deal at KFC! Anything else?" Want more on the topic? Click to read six questions for Limbaugh on sex and contraception.
– What's a fitting way to execute a man labeled "worse than a dog"? If an unconfirmed newspaper report is to be believed, by stripping him naked, throwing him in a cage, and feeding him alive to 120 hungry hounds. NBC News picks up Hong Kong-based paper Wen Wei Po's account of how Kim Jong Un did away with his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, last month. Its report claims Jang and his five closest aides were set upon by a pack of hunting dogs that hadn't eaten in days as Kim and his brother, flanked by 300 officials, watched; the report hasn't been verified. Wen Wei Po, which has close ties to China's Communist Party, added Jang and his allies were "completely eaten up" in the "quan jue," or execution by dogs—a break from the usual execution by firing squad—over the course of an hour, the Straits Times notes. Though Kim has championed the execution, there's been no official word from Pyongyang on how it was carried out. The Times sees the publication of the account as an indication that Beijing is none too pleased with North Korea in the wake of the execution and "no longer cares about its relations with the Kim regime." This follows a previous report that claimed that two of Jang's top men who were killed prior to his own death were executed using antiaircraft machine guns.
– Prominent Christian blogger and author Glennon Doyle Melton is dating soccer star Abby Wambach just three months after divorcing her husband, Jezebel reports. Melton revealed the relationship in a Facebook post Sunday night, in which she declared her love for Wambach and acknowledged their relationship has moved quickly. "How is Craig?" she wrote of her ex-husband. "He’s his beautiful, kind, brave self. He’s dating too—and we are both supportive of each other’s relationships. After I told Craig, the first thing he said was: Holy s---. Is this what all the Indigo Girls has been about? I said, WHOA. I DON’T KNOW...MAYBE?" The Washington Post notes that Melton has long supported same-sex marriage.
– There's another reason for you to love Kenny G. Not only does he provide the world with smooth saxophone jazz, he also helped provide the world with the Starbucks Frappuccino, at least according to the musician himself. He was an early Starbucks investor, he explained this week in an interview with Bloomberg, and he noticed that "Starbucks didn’t have anything but coffee" while another coffee chain, Coffee Bean, "had something called 'blended' that was a sweet drink, and people were lined up around the block. I would always call [Starbucks CEO] Howard [Schultz] and say, 'Howard, there’s this thing that they do there that's like a milkshake or whatever.' ... So I'd like to think that I was partially responsible" for the drink. And, of course, now, the Frappuccino is his favorite Starbucks beverage, he says. And, though Eater cites Wikipedia in pointing out that Starbucks may actually have bought the rights to the Frappuccino when the chain bought another chain, the Coffee Connection, in 1994, a Starbucks rep tells ABC News, "Kenny has been a dear friend of Starbucks since the beginning of the company and we are very appreciative of everyone, including Kenny, who've been a part of the success of Frappuccino." (The rep also says two Starbucks partners began working on what would be the Frappuccino in 1993; it launched nationally two years later.) As for how he became a Starbucks investor, Kenny said his uncle—possibly Schultz's first investor, per Kenny—suggested he invest and also try to sell his CDs there. And in 1994, one of his albums became the first CD Starbucks ever sold. "That was the experiment, to see if they could sell music at the counter, and it worked really well." (Here's what a Starbucks does to the neighborhood.)
– A paratrooper training exercise went terribly wrong at Fort Bragg in North Carolina today, leaving one paratrooper dead and seven others injured, Army Times and WRAL report. Five of those injured were treated for minor injuries at Womack Army Medical Center and then released, but the other two were seriously injured. So far no details about the accident have been released. "We offer our heartfelt prayers and condolences to the families of the paratroopers killed and wounded in this tragic incident," the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division said in a statement.
– Maybe Jamie Dimon will go on trial after all? That's getting way ahead of things, but the Justice Department has opened an inquiry into the JPMorgan trading scandal, sources tell the Wall Street Journal. It's currently unclear what legal violations it's looking into, but the probe will be separate from the SEC's investigation, which is looking at the company's accounting and disclosures. But there is good news for Dimon: Shareholders today rejected a motion to oust him from his post as chairman, though there was serious support for it; 40.1% of votes were cast in favor of splitting up the jobs of chairman and CEO, Reuters reports. The AP adds that he also won a shareholder endorsement of his 2011 $23 million pay package, but notes that most of the shareholder ballots were cast weeks ago.
– An Air Force ritual devolved into an all-out melee last week that left 30 cadets injured and six hospitalized—with concussions, cuts, and an arm bite, NBC News reports. It was all part of the unauthorized "First Shirt/First Snow" ritual, in which cadets toss a sergeant into a snow bank at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. Not too surprisingly, the rite has led to melees and injuries the past couple of years. "Obviously, this has gotten out of hand and cannot be repeated," wrote Brig. Gen. Dana Born to school administrators. Just how does the ritual turn into a massive melee? When "upperclassmen defending the first sergeant" begin brawling with "the four degrees trying to capture the first sergeant," wrote Born, according to the Air Force Times. But a new commander at the school says he may allow the sergeant-tossing to continue if cadets can do it nicely. "Our Air Force expects better," says Brig. Gen. Greg Lengyel. "I expect better, and I’m confident the cadets will learn and grow from this."
– Today's key phrase on the Russian-Ukraine situation is the "point of no return." The leader of the European Commission warned today that Moscow has brought the world to the brink of that point with its aggression toward its neighbor, reports the BBC. Jose Manuel Barroso spoke as EU leaders gathered in Brussels. With Russia showing no sign of letting up, or even admitting that it's helping pro-Russian separatists despite mounting evidence to the contrary, it's not clear what happens after the point of no return, though European leaders are threatening more sanctions. Also: Ukraine leader Petro Poroshenko used similar language to Barroso, reports the New York Times. "We are too close to a border where there will be no return to the peace plan," he said, asserting that "thousands of foreign troops and hundreds of foreign tanks are now on the territory of Ukraine, with a very high risk not only for the peace and stability of Ukraine but for the peace and stability of the whole of Europe." (Russia says any of its troops there are fighting of their own accord while on leave.) Lithuanian leader Dalia Grybauskaite said this, in English, reports AP: "Russia is practically in the war against Europe." Jet shot down: The Ukraine military said one of its fighter jets was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian missile yesterday, reports the Guardian. The pilot ejected safely. Marching on: Pro-Russian rebels backed by Russian soldiers made more gains in the east, reports Reuters. Ukraine's military said tanks entered the small border town of Novosvitlivka and opened fire on houses.
– One of the surviving passengers from the limo fire that killed five women disputes driver Orville Brown's version of events and says he could have done more to help. Gloria Arrellano says she was the first to crawl through the partition after Brown stopped the limo on the San Mateo Bridge. "When he stop the car, he get out from the car, he just get out from the car," she said. "When he get out from that car, he just opened the door, that's all he did. I even ask him, 'Help me, help me,' because I bring out my head from that compartment and say help me, so I could squeeze myself over there and slide myself," she tells ABC7. Arrellano says that after she escaped, she ran back to the vehicle and managed to pull one more friend to safety. After that, "I tried to check if I can pull out one more, but it's already too dark and I can't see anything anymore," she says. Authorities are still investigating how the fire erupted and why the women were unable to escape out the rear doors. Brown speculates that it may have been an electrical problem, reports the San Jose Mercury News. "There are lots of things in limousines that are flammable, from the extra foam to the extra vinyl, wood paneling, all the lighting systems," he says. Officials say the limo had one more passenger than the eight it was authorized to carry, but it's too early to tell whether overcrowding was a factor, the AP notes.
– The Minnesota teenager accused this week of planning a school massacre didn't just make a few offhand remarks. He laid out his plan in methodical detail in a notebook he kept locked inside his guitar case, and police are convinced that John David LaDue was poised to strike within weeks, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The 17-year-old had a three-stage plan: He would kill his parents and sister at home with a .22-caliber rifle, go to a rural spot to start a fire and draw first-responders, and finally head to Waseco High School to kill as many people as he could with guns and homemade bombs. He planned to be killed himself by police. “LaDue planned on setting off pipe bombs and throwing Molotov cocktails down the main wing corridors in the school, and then shooting and killing students as they rushed out of the corridors,” says the criminal affidavit, reports NBC News. Police found an assault rifle with 400 rounds of ammo, a 9mm handgun, and at least a half-dozen bombs at the teen's storage unit and home. When officers confronted him in the storage unit, they say he basically taunted them by making them guess what he was doing before answering any questions. When an officer guessed he was making bombs, the teen agreed to go to the station. The plot unraveled thanks to a 21-year-old who called police when she saw LaDue cut through her yard on his way to the storage unit and then act suspiciously outside it. "The flowers I received today—they say, 'Thank you, from a grateful parent,'" Chelsie Schellhas tells NBC.
– Incoming House speakers have a long tradition of overreaching in their opening speeches, writes Ezra Klein at the Washington Post. John Boehner took the opposite approach today with his themes of "humility and comity," and that's why Klein loved it. Boehner didn't gloat on behalf of himself or his party, and he didn't set himself up as the savior of conservatives or the "foil" to the White House. He even pledged to try to heal the "scar tissue" between the parties with more openness. "It was, I think, as smart a speech as I've seen a politician give—in part because it was savvy about what it didn't say, which is a rare virtue in Washington," writes Klein. Time will tell whether he can follow through, "but thus far, Boehner's political instincts have been quite impressive. The White House may have a more able opponent in him than they thought." Click here to read the full text of Boehner's speech.
– The "tipping point" that led Jennifer Garner to stage an intervention and get estranged husband Ben Affleck into rehab came from a photo. That's what sources tell TMZ, which reports the 46-year-old actor left his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., on Wednesday with Garner and an unidentified woman and headed to a rehab facility somewhere in Los Angeles County, where he's reportedly staying for an "extended period of time." Per People, which notes this would be Affleck's third time in rehab, Garner was "upset and shaken" and behind the wheel as the trio drove away from the home. TMZ notes a picture of Affleck earlier this week meeting a delivery man with what appeared to be a box filled with hard liquor and beer seems to have concerned Garner and led her to intervene. A source tells People that Affleck "is seeking treatment. He knew he needed help and was vocal about it." The couple, who have three kids together, have been separated since 2015 but haven't yet divorced, and Harper's Bazaar notes Affleck's struggles to stay sober may be keeping Garner from making a final split. "Jen is hesitant to sign off until she's certain that the kids will be in the best hands at all time," a source in July told Us Weekly, which notes Affleck was spotted earlier this month going to an AA meeting. Affleck is said to have recently split with girlfriend Lindsay Shookus and has been seen of late around town with 22-year-old Playmate Shauna Sexton, who tells People her drink of choice is "whiskey all day." "I have completed treatment for alcohol addiction; something I've dealt with in the past and will continue to confront," Affleck posted on social media in March 2017. "I want to live life to the fullest and ... my kids to know there is no shame in getting help when you need it."
– A Reddit user living in Toronto better be kissing up to his momma for quite a while: The 23-year-old student, who goes by Chalipo on Reddit, recently got into an argument with his mom about how much it had cost her to support him over the last 13 months, reports ABC News. The pair clearly disagreed, so his mom drew up an invoice—including $23,550 for college tuition, $1,200 for specialty meals, an $187.20 share of the cable bill, and $1,000 "for being an a--hole and not appreciative of your mother's support financially or otherwise"—adding up to $39,254.17 after she applied 13% tax. As Mic.com puts it, "Hell hath no fury like the mother of an entitled, lazy, narcissistic millennial." "I just looked at it and thought, 'This is golden Reddit material,'" Chalipo, who shared the invoice on the platform on March 1, tells Today.com. The post quickly went viral. "I thought it was one of those things that everyone would appreciate and get a good laugh out of it ... but I didn't know that it would make international headlines," Chalipo adds. His mom admits she never expected her son to pay the bill. "It was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, although obviously I was a little annoyed by him," she says. "It was really just to prove a point and to make him wake up." It worked. "This was a very effective parenting technique and it has helped me to realize what an entitled little s--- I have been," Chalipo writes on Reddit. He also plans to make it up to his mom eventually. "My mom will get old one day and I'll take care of her and spend years and years repaying her, even changing her diapers," Chalipo says. Mom's response: "That's a really morbid thought, but thanks." (This mom billed her son as a roommate.)
– When a 68-year-old man visited a clinic in Asan, South Korea, on May 12, and again two and three days later, doctors were stumped by his coughing and wheezing. He was referred to a larger hospital in Pyeongtaek, then a smaller one in Seoul before X-rays on May 17 suggested he had pneumonia, reports the New York Times. Still, he was referred once more to one of the country's largest hospitals, the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul. There, doctors learned he hadn't just visited Bahrain on a recent trip as he had previously disclosed, but also the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal reports. (The patient's wife says he had trouble communicating with a high fever.) A test confirmed on May 20 he had the highly contagious MERS virus. Since then, 37 people at the Pyeongtaek hospital have tested positive. "It must have been a period when the virus was most active in him and he was coughing out a lot of virus droplets," a doctor says of the man considered the first patient in South Korea's outbreak. One of the sick from Pyeongtaek spent days in the Samsung Medical Center's ER, where another 35 were infected. South Korea has so far identified 95 total cases at 29 hospitals, including eight new cases today, reports Yonhap News. Seven have died, though all had preexisting health issues. Almost 3,000 are under quarantine, including 700 who were in the crowded Samsung Medical Center ER when the carrier arrived, while 2,200 schools have been closed, the AP reports. Authorities, however, say the virus may have peaked. Its incubation period—between five and 14 days—for the first patient has ended, meaning no other cases should arise in connection with that patient. The incubation period for the other carriers ends around Friday. "This week may be very crucial to overcoming MERS," the prime minister says. "The government will mobilize all available resources and necessary budget to help eradicate the disease."
– Agnes Nixon, the woman who helped create the soap opera as we know it, is dead at age 93. Nixon rose to prominence during the '60s and '70s, and NPR describes her as one of the only powerful women in the entertainment industry during that era. Just like Nixon herself, two of her more famous creations were well-loved and and long-lived: All My Children ran for over four decades, while One Life To Live aired for 44 seasons. Both ended in 2011. Nixon was well-known for using her shows to draw attention to controversial social issues. Her plots addressed everything from cancer to abortion to homosexuality, issues often elided by many TV shows of the era. As the New York Times notes, Susan Lucci's character on All My Children was the first on TV to have a legal abortion—in 1973, just after Roe v. Wade. "I wasn't trying to change the genre, I was just trying to write what I thought, what was interesting to me," Nixon told NPR in 2010. The Washington Post asserts that she "quietly made soap operas relevant," noting that a story line she wrote about a Guiding Light character's uterine cancer in 1962 is considered the first health plot in a daytime drama. Alumni of her shows have responded to Nixon's death with an outpouring of love, support, and admiration, notes the Los Angeles Times, which rounds up examples of the tributes to the woman known as "Amazing Agnes." Lucci, for instance, writes that she is "devastated" but "forever grateful." Nixon died of pneumonia, a complication of her Parkinson's disease.
– The Army Corps of Engineers has a helpful program in place called Operation Blue Roof in which Florida residents hit by Hurricane Irma can get sturdy tarps to protect their belongings until their roofs get fixed. Those interested can go to the website or call 1-888-ROOF-BLU. They should not, however, call the 1-800 version of that number inadvertently tweeted by FEMA—unless they'd prefer to talk to "hot ladies" on "America's hottest talk line" who presumably know little about roof tarps, reports Consumerist. The tweet is now down and a corrected version is up.
– Owen Labrie, the prep school graduate found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old classmate, has been given another shot at remaining free while he appeals the verdict, the New Hampshire Union Leader reports. The 20-year-old, whose bail was revoked two months ago when authorities discovered he had repeatedly violated his curfew, will be freed on bail again after he's fitted with a GPS monitor this week, reports the Boston Herald. Labrie's lawyer, Jaye Rancourt, says he has been frightened and sad during his time in prison, most of which was spent on administrative segregation, and he plans to abide by bail conditions, including living at his mother's home in Vermont under a 5pm to 8am curfew. After his conviction last year, Labrie was sentenced to a year in jail. Rancourt says Labrie will be working in manual labor while out on bail. The curfew violations that sent him to jail were exposed by a reporter he chatted to on a train. "I think a regular person wouldn't have had his bail revoked," Rancourt says. "I think he's been under intense scrutiny and probably treated more strictly than some." At Monday's hearing, Rancourt told the judge that jail time had been a "life-changing" experience for Labrie, though a state prosecutor argued that the only real change is that Labrie has discovered he doesn't like jail, reports WCVB. (Labrie's arrest and trial exposed the "Senior Salute" tradition of sexual conquest at the elite St. Paul's school in New Hampshire.)
– In a sad but all-too-common postscript to someone's life cut short, Robin Williams' children and wife are locked in a bitter dispute over his estate. In court papers filed in December and January, the comedian's three adult children say they are "heartbroken" that widow Susan Williams is "challenging the plans he so carefully made for his estate" by trying to keep personal effects she's not entitled to, reports the New York Times. The children—Zak, Zelda, and Cody—are from two previous marriages, and they note that Susan was married to their father for "less than three years." They accuse her of adding "insult to a terrible injury" and say she refused to allow them in his Tiburon, Calif., home in the days after his death. Williams, who committed suicide in August, specified his estate go to his three children, but the dispute centers around a provision that the home, its contents, and enough cash to cover "all costs related to the residence" go to Susan Williams. The children accuse her of wrongly interpreting this to mean she can keep belongings she was never meant to have and of "greedily" trying to claim extra funds. Sources tell TMZ that the widow, who refers to Williams' collections of things like action figures and movie posters as "knickknacks," also argues that "jewelry" doesn't include things like watches. Her lawyer tells the Times that his client doesn't have "sticky fingers" and "compared to what the Williams children were set to receive from their father, this is a bucket of water in a lake."
– In what may be the best French innovation since kissing and/or toast, the country has given its workers the right not to check work emails while at home. The Independent reports the new "right to disconnect" law takes effect Sunday for companies with more than 50 employees. The law requires those companies to clearly define the hours when employees aren't required to check or reply to work emails, according to the BBC. Supporters of the law say employees feel obligated to deal with work emails after hours but aren't being paid for that overtime. France's labor ministry says it wants to stop citizens from working these "hidden hours." Prior to the new law, many French workers weren't sure when they were legally allowed to ignore work emails. The resulting obligation to constantly deal with work emails could lead to increased stress, problems sleeping, relationship troubles, and more. “What we find is that people who feel they have to respond to emails on their off hours become emotionally exhausted, partially because they can’t detach from work,” the New York Daily News quotes a professor involved with a US study that found checking work emails at home kept people from recharging at the end of the day. The right to disconnect law was the only new labor law passed in France this last May that didn't lead to strikes and protests.
– Justin Bieber and Usher might be on the hook for $10 million after being accused of ripping off a song. An appeals court in Virginia today ordered the pair to stand trial over "Somebody to Love." An R&B singer named De Rico claims that he and his songwriting partner played their version for Usher, and then Usher took it to Bieber, and the pair stole it, reports Reuters and TMZ. A lower court dismissed the case, but the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals today put it back in motion. "After listening to the (De Rico) song and the Bieber and Usher songs as wholes, we conclude that their choruses are similar enough and also significant enough that a reasonable jury could find the songs intrinsically similar," wrote Judge Pamela Harris. She added that the lyric "somebody to love" has an "almost identical rhythm and a strikingly similar melody."
– The daughter of the man seen as second only to Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany has died at age 88. Gudrun Burwitz, the oldest child of Heinrich Himmler, was famous in her own right, however. When she was a child, Himmler frequently brought her to public events "as a blond, blue-eyed symbol of Aryan youth," in the words of the Washington Post. In her later years, she was believed to have been a member of the group Stille Hilfe (Silent Help), which provides assistance to former SS members and their families. Gudrun, who was detained temporarily after the war and testified at the Nuremberg trials, never denounced her father or the Nazi regime, reports the BBC. With her death, the German newspaper Bild has uncovered a nugget that has caused a stir in Germany: For about two years in the 1960s, Gurdrun worked for what was then West Germany's spy agency. "The BND confirms that Ms Burwitz was a member of the BND for a few years until 1963 under an assumed name," says an official with the agency. She worked there while the agency was run by a former Nazi military intelligence commander. The BND still exists as the unified Germany's foreign intelligence agency, and Deutsche Welle notes that its use of former Nazis in Eastern Europe after the war remains controversial. One item in wide circulation in Gudrun's obituaries is a diary entry she wrote at the age of 12 after her father took her to the notorious Dachau concentration camp. "We saw everything we could," she wrote. "We saw the gardening work. We saw the pear trees. We saw all the pictures painted by the prisoners. Marvelous." (Himmler's own diaries were found a few years ago.)
– The NSA is poring over pretty much all emails and texts sent across the border by Americans to look for information that might raise red flags, the New York Times reports. The revelation means that the NSA's surveillance of Americans is broader than was previously known: It's not just direct communication between an American and foreign targets that will be intercepted; it's any email or text about a such a target. As New York puts it, "If you mention a terrorist's email address or phone number to a friend overseas, the NSA intends to find out." The NSA temporarily copies most cross-border communications, the Times notes, and scans them. The expanded surveillance was mentioned, but largely overlooked, in information released by Edward Snowden in June. The ACLU calls it "dragnet surveillance" that will cause ordinary people to hesitate before discussing sensitive topics or visiting controversial websites for fear they will be monitored. “Individually, these hesitations might appear to be inconsequential, but the accumulation of them over time will change citizens’ relationship to one another and to the government.” A former NSA general counsel cites an example of how it could be useful: Say intel officials knew al-Qaeda was using a particular phone number for a specific plot. “If someone is sending that number out, chances are they are on the inside of the plot, and I want to find the people who are on the inside of the plot."
– Astronomers have discovered a planet where a certain red guy with horns could make himself right at home. It's a planet much like our own Earth—about the same size, with the same mixture of rock and iron, and it orbits a star like our sun—except that Kepler 78b is an infernal ball of fire. Located less than a million miles from its host star—that's 1% of the distance between Earth and our sun—its temperature ranges between 3,500 and 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's "well above the temperature where rock melts," an astronomer tells the New York Times. "This is probably one of the most hellish planets that have been discovered yet." At 400 light-years from Earth, the exoplanet was first spotted by the Kepler spacecraft but astronomers on Earth took a closer look at its light frequency to discover its orbit and mass. The findings, published in two studies in Nature, show a planet that tightly orbits its sun—which from the surface would look 80 times larger than our sun—in just eight and a half hours. Adds an expert, per LiveScience: "This planet is an enigma. It couldn't have formed in place because you can't form a planet inside a star." But while astronomers are baffled as to how the planet got there, they're fairly certain it shows friendlier Earthlike planets are still out there.
– Greek astronomer Hipparchus is known as the father of trigonometry. But the Guardian reports Babylonian mathematicians may have gotten there 1,000 years earlier. Ever since the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones discovered a 3,700-year-old clay tablet called P322 in what is now Iraq, historians and mathematicians have debated the meaning of the rows and columns of numbers on it, according to Science. In 1945, mathematicians realized those numbers contained the Pythagorean theorem for deducing the sides of a right triangle a millennium before Pythagoras had coined it, ABC reports. And in a study published Thursday in Historia Mathematica, Australian researchers believe they finally know what those mysterious numbers are: a trigonometric table more accurate than any we have now. “It took me two years of looking at this and saying, ‘I’m sure it’s trig, I’m sure it’s trig, but how?’” mathematician Daniel Mansfield tells Science. One breakthrough came when Mansfield realized the Babylonians had a completely different way of looking at trigonometry than we do, one "based on ratios, not angles and circles." He calls it "fascinating" and evidence of "undoubted genius." And fellow researchers Norman Wildberger says P322 represents a "simpler, more accurate" version of trigonometry. While Mansfield and Wildberger say the Babylonians could have used the tablet to build pyramids and palaces, critics say there's no evidence for that and call the study's conclusions "highly speculative." (Those fortune cookie "lucky numbers" are definitely not unlucky.)
– Yet another bloody battle in Mexico's drug war has left at least 29 bodies in fake military uniforms lying dead among more than a dozen bullet-riddled vehicles in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit. Investigators believe the highway battle between members of the Zetas and Sinaloa cartels began when gunmen ambushed a convoy of gang vehicles, AP reports. In the nearby state of Michoacan, up to 2,000 people were forced to flee their homes this week by days of fierce fighting between cartel factions, the BBC reports. Officials say the refugees have begun to return their homes after spending several nights in shelters. The conflict between rival factions of the La Familia cartel began Monday but news of the fighting was slow to leak out because local media, on the orders of drug cartels, have largely ceased to cover drug violence, the Wall Street Journal notes.
– Investigators carrying out the grim task of recovering wreckage and human remains from the Germanwings crash say they have not found an intact body—or the flight data recorder. To aid the search, an access road is being built to the remote site in the French Alps, where forensic teams have so far recovered DNA belonging to 78 of the 150 people killed, the Guardian reports. Investigators say that so far, only the empty protective casing of the black box has been found. In other developments: Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz is believed to have deliberately crashed the plane, but with the failure to find the flight's second black box, some in the aviation world are saying it is too early to rule out other causes. Airbus chairman Tom Enders slammed TV coverage of the crash in an interview published yesterday, Deutsche Welle reports. "Sometimes people there speculate, fantasize, and lie with no basis in fact," he said, calling some of the reporting "outrageous nonsense" that was a "mockery of the victims." The cockpit voice recorder was recovered soon after the crash, and German newspaper Bild has published what it says is a leaked transcript. Capt. Patrick Sondenheimer (also spelled Sonderheimer or Sondheimer, depending on the source) can be heard pleading for Lubitz to let him back in the cabin, shouting, "Open the goddamn door!" as passengers scream minutes before impact, according to the transcript. A spokeswoman for France's accident investigation agency tells CNN that investigators are "dismayed" by the leak. Over the weekend, there were reports that Lubitz suffered from a psychomatic illness that may have been linked to a vision problem. German newspapers, including Bild, also reported that Lubitz's girlfriend, a teacher, was pregnant and the couple had planned to marry, according to the Independent. In Lubitz's hometown of Montabaur, the local Lutheran pastor tells the AP that despite mounting evidence that Lubitz caused the crash, he was still part of the community and the church is standing by his family. He says Lubitz's mother is a part-time organist for the church and he knew the co-pilot as a teenager. "This does not make sense. It is incomprehensible for me, for us, for everyone who knew her and the family," he says.
– With an even more brutal group of Islamic extremists capturing the world's attention, is al-Qaeda feeling neglected? In what analysts see as an effort to grab the spotlight from ISIS, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has announced the formation of an Indian branch of the terror network that will "raise the flag of jihad" across the region, reports Al Jazeera. In a 55-minute video posted online, Zawahri called the new entity the "fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian subcontinent" and vowed to bring Islamic law to the entire region. Al-Qaeda disowned ISIS early this year, and while Zawahri didn't mention the former affiliate by name, he appeared to be taking swipes at it with comments like "Discord is a curse and torment, and disgrace for the believers and glory for the disbelievers," reports Reuters. Three Indian states with high Muslim populations have been placed on alert, though it's not clear how much of a threat the new entity is. Al-Qaeda "is struggling for its legitimacy in the eyes of the radicalized Muslim world," a top Indian security analyst tells the AP. Osama bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda's "entire top leadership, apart from Zawahri and a few others, one by one have been decimated by the American drone attacks," the analyst says.
– A Texas amusement park enthusiast who was born without hands is suing Six Flags for refusing to let him onto a ride. Clint Bench alleges that last May a Six Flags Over Texas employee wouldn't let him on the Aquaman Splashdown (a variation on the classic log flume). When he complained, management told him Six Flags policy required riders to "have at least one fully formed arm all the way down to the fingers" to ride, according to the Dallas Observer. Bench was chagrined, given that he'd ridden the ride before. According to the Observer, Six Flags didn't have any such published policy at the time; it showed up in an updated riders' guide four months later. The old policy only required a rider to be able to grasp, which Bench is capable of—he can even do pull-ups, shoot a gun, and ride a mountain bike. He's asking for unspecified damages, saying he was discriminated against under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
– The impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, and the scandal surrounding it, all comes down to a canine. Park's downfall started over ties with Choi Soon-sil, a close friend for decades embroiled in criminal controversies and secretly advising Park—and who got into an argument with the eventual whistleblower over her daughter's pup, the New York Times reports. Ko Young-tae relayed his story at a parliamentary hearing last week, noting he and Choi got into a tiff after she discovered the dog, which he'd been asked to walk, alone in his apartment while he was out golfing. He says that after they exchanged words, he decided to come forward with what he knew about Choi and Park. Ko, 40, an ex-member of the nation's fencing team and called Choi's "boy toy," had worked at a Seoul "host bar," where male workers entertain female customers with conversation and sexual services. The Korea Times says he reportedly met Choi at one of those bars in 2006, though he testified last week he'd been introduced to her by a pal in 2012 (and he denied at last week's hearing they were ever a couple, per the BBC). Regardless of how they met or their official status, their relationship allowed him to reportedly get his hands on Park's clothing choices for a trip overseas, as well as videotape of Choi ordering two presidential aides around; he turned that footage over to a Korean cable network, which aired it in October. "She insulted me and acted as if her underlings were subhuman," he said in his testimony, adding that after the dog fight, she "treated me like a slave, swearing at me many times," per the BBC. Some of his compatriots say Ko is a national hero for his revelations. "You opened Pandora's box," one lawmaker said during the hearing.
– Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff had some amusing tidbits to share about the VP during an appearance at the Cannes Lions advertising festival Monday, Quartz reports. While President Trump sells books—Fire and Fury, which details his first nine months as POTUS, is still a bestseller after being released in January—Mike Pence, not so much. "When Mike Pence becomes the president—which I believe that he will become—the media business goes into a deep depression," Wolff predicted. "Mike Pence is literally the most boring man on earth." Wolff predicts Pence will get a job promotion due to Trump being booted from office, the New York Post reports. Wolff went on to say that Pence is "faceless" even at work: "Even in the White House they only talk about Pence’s wife. Mother, she is called." Jeff Goodby, the ad agency cofounder onstage with Wolff, asked whether Pence really calls his wife "Mother." Wolff's response: "Everyone in the White House calls her Mother." Rolling Stone first reported back in 2017 that Pence refers to wife Karen as "Mother." Politifact has since spoken to a number of people who say they've witnessed him calling her that, but since the site couldn't find "video or other documentary evidence," it has not rated the claim as true.
– Former President George HW Bush has been hospitalized in Houston but the 92-year-old is "fine" and is expected to go home in a few days, his chief of staff says. Bush chief of staff Jean Becker tells the Houston Chronicle that the 41st president was recently admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital after becoming ill. "He's there. He's fine and he's doing really well," Becker says. Becker did not specify the reason the oldest living US president was hospitalized, the AP reports. Bush has a form of Parkinson's disease and uses a motorized scooter or a wheelchair for mobility. His office announced earlier this month that Bush and his wife, Barbara, would not attend Donald Trump's inauguration this week due to the former president's age and health.
– The public isn't just unhappy with President Obama, it has him pegged as the worst president of the modern era, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Asked to pick the worst president since World War II, 33% said President Obama, pushing him ahead of George W. Bush, who got 28%. Ronald Reagan was deemed the best post-war president by 35%, followed by Bill Clinton (18%) and John F. Kennedy (15%). What's more, by a 45-38 margin, the public said it would have been better off electing Mitt Romney—mirroring this earlier poll. But Philip Bump at the Washington Post thinks that if you dive in, the poll reveals a more pressing concern for Obama. Look at the demographics, and you'll see that on almost every question—including the "worst president" ones—people under 50 still support Obama, while older people vehemently don't. There are two notable exceptions: Younger voters don't approve of Obama's handling of healthcare or the economy. "That's what's a problem for Obama, not people thinking he's the worst president or wishing they'd elected Mitt Romney."
– He's twice her age, but when has that ever mattered in Hollywood? Ryan Phillippe, 36, is apparently hooking up with troubled Disney starlet Demi Lovato, 18. The two have been secretly dating for months, a source tells E!, adding that "it was really hot and heavy" until Phillippe's daughter with an ex-girlfriend was born two weeks ago, which "kind of threw [Lovato] for a loop." Another insider tells Us the two "were just hooking up," not engaging in anything "serious." TMI alert: Phillippe's eldest, daughter Ava, is just seven years younger than Lovato.
– The Book of Eli is almost certainly the best post-apocalypic Christian action movie you'll see this year, say critics, although many were put off by the preaching. The directors scored with the casting—Denzel Washington as a grizzled gunslinger protecting the world's last Bible—the fight scenes and the explosions, Derek Malcolm of the Evening Standard writes in a spoiler-laden review. But the message is overkill. "The result is like The Road rewritten by Sarah Palin for the greater good of Alaska and mankind." Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic was more tolerant, with the over-the-top violence putting him in mind of the film version of a never-written graphic novel. "If one must wander a barren, post-apocalyptic landscape with somebody," he asks, "who better to wander with than Denzel Washington?" Claudia Puig at USA Today agrees about Washington, but finds poetic psalms uttered amid stylized violence disconcerting. Religion and bloodshed." she writes, "make queasy entertainment partners." And Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly thinks the post-apocalyptic road movie genre, now about 35 years old, is showing its age. Eli is a "ponderous dystopian bummer that might be described as The Road Warrior without car chases, or The Road without humanity," he writes.
– Cary Heath was arrested Monday at the Texas middle school where he teaches eighth-grade science a day after police say he murdered two of his neighbors, NBC DFW reports. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, shots were fired shortly before 4am Sunday at a home down the street from where Heath lives. Police arrived to find two men dead in the home's driveway. "From my understanding, the guy had an assault rife," a neighbor who woke up to gunshots tells NBC. "From the looks of it, due to the shell casings, he unloaded the whole clip." Police aren't discussing a motive for the killings, though the first 911 call from the scene was regarding a robbery. The 35-year-old Heath is being held on $1 million bond and has been placed on administrative leave. The school notified parents of the situation via automated phone messages, WFAA reports. One mother says "it's very scary" that someone suspected of murder was teaching children. "They should be safe over there to get their education and come home," she says. Heath served in the Air Force for 13 years before recently becoming a teacher.
– Aren't Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren supposed to be debating the social contract and other lofty things? Their Senate race just took a low detour: Warren made a point during a debate Tuesday to take a jab at Brown's old Cosmo cover, saying that when she was a college student, she took out loans to pay the bills and kept her clothes on. "Thank God," Brown told a local radio station in response, reports the Hill. He and the host then laughed. "I went to the school of hard knocks," Brown said. "I did what I had to do, and but not for having that opportunity, I never would have been able to pay for school, and never would have gone to school, and I wouldn't probably be talking to you, so whatever." The Warren camp did not respond today to his retort. Click for more details on Brown's back and forth with the host on WZLX.
– No sadder news emerged in the aftermath of the Townville school shooting last month than the death of 6-year-old Jacob Hall. But though his family and friends lost the South Carolina first-grader much sooner than they should have, they didn't lose his spirit—which is why a variety of superheroes flooded Oakdale Baptist Church Tuesday to mourn Jacob and celebrate his life, CNN reports. The Tuesday visitation was the prelude to Jacob's Wednesday funeral, where his mother, Renae Hall, said she wanted everyone to pay tribute to her son in the way he would've wanted it. "I don't want suits and ties and all that," she told reporters Saturday, per Fox Carolina. "There will be a lot of children there and I don't want it to be scary for them." The AP notes Jacob was dressed as Batman in his tiny blue casket during Wednesday's service. The superhero theme was also dominant at Tuesday's visitation, which CNN notes more resembled a child's birthday party than a memorial service: There were balloons, flowers filled with stuffed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and family members in their own superhero attire greeting visitors in front of Jacob's coffin, which the AP notes was adorned with Ninja Turtle stickers. One man even drove his Batmobile from West Virginia to pay his respects at the funeral. "Jacob Lee Hall, Townville's very own superhero, was … given to us as a gift, and through those six years up until the very last moment of his life with us, God was and still is today accomplishing his purpose with Jacob," said the reverend who spoke to the gathered well-wishers Wednesday.
– This may not displease Donald Trump, but he has most definitely drawn the ire of two media establishment heavyweights over recent comments on three issues in particular—his claim that big crowds were cheering the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey, that President Obama plans to bring in at least 200,000 Syrian refugees, and that African Americans are behind most white homicides. All are lies, say the newspapers, and both back up their use of that word. A sample of their scathing editorials: Washington Post: "The growing ugliness of Donald Trump's campaign poses a challenge to us all," write the editors. Trump is deliberately spreading lies and appealing "to the basest instincts in supporters," as "narcissistic bullies" always do. It's time for the virtual silence from his fellow candidates and GOP leaders to end. "The only way to beat a bully is to stand up to him." Full editorial is here. New York Times: The editorial draws comparisons between Trump's "racist lies" to statements uttered by the likes of Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace. "His right to spew nonsense is protected by the Constitution, but the public doesn’t need to swallow it," write the editors. "History teaches that failing to hold a demagogue to account is a dangerous act. It’s no easy task for journalists to interrupt Mr. Trump with the facts, but it’s an important one." Full editorial is here.
– In what Burger King says is a move to "be connected to pop culture," the chain is ditching its 40-year-old "Have It Your Way" slogan in favor of "Be Your Way," which will be rolled out across the US in the weeks ahead. "We want to be an iconic brand way beyond quick-service restaurants," a Burger King exec tells USA Today, which notes that previous BK slogans have included "Aren't you hungry," "We do it like you do it," "Get your burger's worth," and "Where's Herb?" The switch to the "grammatically-questionable" slogan comes amid other odd fast-food marketing moves, including Happy, the anthropomorphic "living nightmare" that is McDonald's new Happy Meal character, writes Mark Berman at the Washington Post. But marketing experts aren't sure whether Burger King's attempt to be hip will do much to boost sales. "The problem is that people don't see themselves as living the Burger King lifestyle," the chief of brand consulting firm Ries & Ries tells the AP. "You've got to be realistic with the place that your brand holds in real life." (One part of that "Burger King lifestyle" appears to be the chain's new breakfast offering—burgers.)
– The California resort town of Big Bear Lake has had a rough night. Los Angeles police officers have visited more than half the area's homes as they search for ex-cop Christopher Dorner; they're telling locals not to answer their doors unless they're sure who's knocking, ABC News reports. Meanwhile, surveillance aircraft are patrolling the skies and fleets of SUVs are keeping watch on the roads as the town is in lockdown, the Los Angeles Times reports. Police say they found Dorner's pickup truck torched on a forest road, with footprints trailing away through the snow. That snow could help hide Dorner, but could also make any movements on foot difficult, the Times notes. More details about Dorner's past are emerging: While longtime acquaintances recalled a "typical guy" who was "never disgruntled," police had long been concerned about him. Four years ago, when he faced a disciplinary hearing the day he was fired from the department, armed guards were on hand, the Times adds. "It was clear ... that he was wound way too tight," an officer says. Click to read about the bizarre package Dorner reportedly sent Anderson Cooper.
– Australian divers got up close and personal with a grey nurse shark that was in desperate need of saving last week in a "first-of-its-kind" rescue caught on tape, via 7News Sydney, picked up by GrindTV. Somehow the young female shark—spotted breathing heavily in a shark habitat off Sydney—had managed to get an elastic band wrapped around her body. The band acted like a noose, slowly killing the shark as it pressed in on her gills. That's when a vet team swam into action, wrestling the shark into a clear plastic "sock" that could bring her to the surface—"the first time that we've run this kind of operation in the wild," a SeaLife sanctuary worker said. "When you're dealing with a wild animal like this anything can happen," he added, noting, "Their teeth are always on display and they are very sharp." At the surface, however, a vet was able to cut the cord, which left a nasty wound and had probably been there for some time. After an antibiotic shot, the shark went freely on her way and should be fully healed in a month or so, 7News reports. "If we hadn't intervened, I have no doubt it would have died, the elastic would have kept cutting deeper and deeper into the neck," the vet said. Click to read about another shark rescue; this one was choking ... on moose.
– President Obama today signed legislation to honor Japanese-American soldiers who fought on behalf of the Allies during World War II—even as some of their families were kept in confinement in the US. This long-awaited bill will open the door for more than 6,000 soldiers known as Nisei veterans to collectively receive the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal. For more on the vets, see the Digital Journal or Oregon Public Broadcasting.
– On some 20 acres of the 164-acre University of Mississippi Medical Center campus, there's something unexpected underfoot: bodies. The Clarion-Ledger reports there are as many as 7,000 bodies buried on the campus, and they likely belong to patients of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, which in 1855 opened as the state's first mental institution. During the course of 2012 road construction, 66 bodies were uncovered on campus. "In size, they are fairly uniform," wrote the school of the pine coffins that were discovered, "about six feet long but alarmingly narrow, as if each held a pair of stilts instead of a human skeleton." The newspaper in 2014 reported a subsequent 1,000 were found when the school did radar testing in preparation for the construction of a parking garage in a wooded area near the dental school. The number of coffins verified by radar is now double that figure, with estimates topping out at 7,000. The number is the problem: Engaging an outside company to handle the exhumations and reburials would cost $3,000 each, or up to $21 million. So UMMC is weighing doing it itself in an 8-year effort that would cost closer to $3 million. It's possible that in addition to a memorial, a lab would be created that would allow researchers to study the remains and gain insight into asylum living; the asylum was operational until 1935, and the school opened 20 years later.
– The world's least shocking quote: A British man's admission that his fairly miraculous swim across the Hoover Dam reservoir was "drink fueled," per the Guardian. Arron Hughes speaks to the Daily Post about his Aug. 10 experience, which came after what he says was a 37-hour bachelor-party bender with friends in Las Vegas. He describes it as a brutally hot day and says that as they stood under the 726-foot-tall structure, he decided, "F--- it! I'm going for a swim." What he didn't know then that he knows now: Some 275 people have died at the dam over the last decade, and no one has successfully made it across the full width of the Colorado River there. But he apparently had luck on his side: Only one of the 10 hydroelectric turbines were powered on during his swim. "I swam from Arizona to Nevada," he tells the Post. "I went across first and then swam back. ... It took about 30 minutes to do. Even though I was knackered half way across I knew I had to get to the other side." He reportedly told the Sun that he was about 160 feet from the dam and felt a strong tug. "I was sucked towards the wall and had to swim hard." He says police were waiting for him and handcuffed him for what he didn't realize wasn't permitted, as he says there aren't any "no swimming" signs posted. "You're just expected not to." He says he ended up getting fined about $330, but, as the tattoo on his body reads, per the Times of London: "No regrets." (This bachelor party ended up being a scam.)
– A potential school shooting in Michigan was thwarted with the help of New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman—and a fan who alerted him to a disturbing message on his Instagram page. Edelman tells the New York Times that he received a direct message late last month warning him that somebody in his comment section had posted: "I'm going to shoot my school up watch the news." "I said, holy Toledo, what is going on?" Edelman says. He spoke to assistant Shannon Moen, who found the message among hundreds of comments on one of Edelman's posts and called 911. Police were able to track the message to a home in Port Huron, Mich., where a 14-year-old boy was arrested. Police say the teen, a Central Middle School student, admitted making the threat. WDIV reports that two rifles belonging to the boy's grandfather were found at the home. The boy, who is now being held in a juvenile detention center, has been charged with making a false report of a terrorist threat, a felony that could get him up to four years in prison. Edelman says he wants to thank the person who alerted him, who has the Instagram handle jesseyi3. "Thankfully, this kid said something," Edelman says. "We're going to send him something, a care package, just for his work. He's the real hero." (Police say this would-be school shooter in Ohio changed his mind at the last second.)
– Starbucks will shift its bottled water operation out of California as the state's lengthy drought intensifies. The coffee chain says it will move production of its Ethos water to Pennsylvania for six months while it searches for an alternative West Coast source, NBC News reports. "We are committed to our mission to be a globally responsible company and to support the people of the state of California as they face this unprecedented drought," the company said in a statement. The announcement follows a critical report in Mother Jones that revealed Ethos water came from private springs in Baxter, an area deemed to be in "exceptional drought." Asked by Mother Jones about concerns surrounding a dwindling water supply for residents, a company rep said Ethos' source "is not used for municipal water for any communities." However, the spring water got bottled in nearby Merced, also under severe drought conditions, and the company used city water as part of the process. The article described how the brand has become a favorite among Hollywood celebs because 5 cents from every bottle goes to the Ethos Water Fund, which works to improve access to water and sanitation abroad. Other bottled water brands, including Nestle, also get their water from California.
– This year will see almost 10,000 deaths in the US from melanoma, with nearly 74,000 new cases diagnosed. But most skin cancers, including melanoma, are curable if caught and treated early, which is why doctors are anxious to ID them ASAP. Researchers at King's College London say they've found a way to simplify counting one of the disease's prime markers—moles on the body—by using a "proxy site" that would allow physicians to more quickly pinpoint individuals who might need follow-up. Instead of going through the laborious process of counting moles on the entire body, doctors can count moles on the right arm, then use that figure to extrapolate to the number of moles on the body overall, per a press release. And there's a specific number that could serve as a warning sign: Find more than 11 moles on that arm, and your risk of melanoma could be higher. Researchers looked at data from nearly 4,000 female Caucasian twins who were studied between 1995 and 2003. They counted the number of moles on 17 body sites and found women who had at least seven moles on their right arm were nine times more likely to have at least 50 moles all over their body, and that when they had more than 11 moles on their right arm, they were likely to have more than 100 moles—signifying "a drastically increased risk of skin cancer," per Live Science. The scientists then replicated the link between arm mole count and total body mole count using another study that included both males and females. "The findings could have a significant impact for primary care, allowing GPs to more accurately estimate the total number of moles in a patient extremely quickly via an easily accessible body part," the study's lead author says. Two other proxy sites that may prompt a doctor visit: above the right elbow and the legs. (Downing a few cups of joe may help fend off malignant melanoma.)
– Nelson Mandela is out of the hospital and recuperating at home after his latest health scare, but that doesn't mean the fight over the 94-year-old's money can't begin in earnest. Daughters Makaziwe and Zenani Mandela have sued to oust the directors of two companies that pull in boatloads of money from the sale of Mandela's handprints, reports the Star of South Africa. (Headline: "War over Madiba millions.") The daughters say the three men controlling the companies—including Mandela attorney George Bizos—were never properly appointed but have refused to step down. Bizos, though, who defended Mandela in court during the apartheid era, says that Mandela himself appointed them five years ago, reports AP. The daughters are just trying to "get their hands on the money," he said, which is a little confusing because the companies were set up to funnel money to Mandela's family in the first place.
– Another Olympic gold-medal gymnast has joined former teammate McKayla Maroney in the #MeToo movement, alleging in a 60 Minutes interview to air Sunday that USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar also sexually abused her, USA Today reports. Per ESPN, Aly Raisman, who's now 23, started seeing Nassar when she was 15. Raisman, who says she's "angry" and "really upset" about what happened to her and others, originally addressed in August the many accusations against Nassar, but at the time she didn't get into her own history with Nassar. She said then that she preferred to shine the spotlight on the overall scandal and to get more people "to talk about it." Per the Lansing State Journal, more than 140 women and girls have filed suits related to his alleged sexual misconduct, with nearly as many reporting him to the cops. Now, however, Raisman is talking about her own experience, telling 60 Minutes: "I just want to create change" so other young girls "never, ever have to go through this." She says she met with the FBI after the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Nassar, who was USA Gymnastics' team doctor for almost two decades, was fired in 2015 and is facing nearly two dozen sexual assault charges against him; he's also set to be sentenced next month on three federal child pornography charges. The multiple lawsuits involving accusations against Nassar name as defendants USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University (where he worked as a doctor for decades), and Nassar himself, among others. Via a statement to 60 Minutes, USA Gymnastics said it was "very sorry that any athlete has been harmed" and that "we want to work with Aly and all interested athletes to keep athletes safe."
– It wasn't the koala's fault, says an Australian woman who was savaged by one of the planet's cutest and most cuddly-appearing creatures. According to 7News Adelaide, Mary Anne Forster was walking her two dogs a couple of weeks ago when they dragged her toward a koala at the bottom of a tree; she got caught in the middle when the koala attacked the dogs. "Obviously the koala felt very threatened because it attached itself with its mouth, jaws, to my leg and bit very hard, bit very deeply," she says. Forster, who had to put her fingers in the koala's mouth to make it let go, needed 12 stitches and spent four days in the hospital after the attack. The bite "became very infected, it was very swollen and painful," she says. The koala had good reason to feel threatened, Mashable reports: Australian authorities estimate that 110 koalas are killed in dog attacks every year, and an environmental department spokesperson warns that people who see them in the wild should "just leave them alone—certainly don't let dogs go near them because they will fight back, they've got big claws and big teeth." (Scientists using thermal cameras have discovered why koalas hug trees.)
– China is demanding that Canada free Meng Wanzhou immediately or pay a "heavy price," but the Huawei CFO and her lawyers are trying to make a case for release that isn't based on threats, according to court documents released Sunday. In a bail application, Meng states that she suffers from hypertension and was treated in a hospital after she was detained Dec. 1, reports Reuters. The court documents state that Meng's family gave assurances that she would remain in Vancouver, where they own two homes, if she was granted bail while fighting proceedings to extradite her to the US. She was detained at the request of US authorities, who accuse her of violating sanctions on Iran. Meng says she has longstanding ties to Vancouver and still spends at least a few weeks there every year. Court documents note that Meng would surrender her travel documents if granted bail. "The applicant cannot board an airplane without a passport, and the only country to which she could flee via car is the very country that seeks to extradite her," the bail application states. The court documents describe the US fraud case against Meng, which involve her "control" of an entity called Skycom, which allegedly broke sanctions between 2007 and 2013, as resting "wholly on her reliance on a PowerPoint presentation prepared by others," Global News reports. Canadian prosecutors are arguing that Meng is a flight risk with "virtually inexhaustible resources." The hearing resumes Monday. (The Meng arrest could throw a wrench in US-China trade talks.)
– Authorities are combing through more than 1,200 leads in a desperate search for a 9-year-old girl they say was abducted by her uncle May 4, WATE reports. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, 57-year-old Gary Simpson picked Carlie Trent up from her Tennessee school, telling staff her father had been in an accident. Shortly before, he purchased a child's nightgown, bikini, girls' underwear, lipstick, and nail polish at an area Walmart. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has pictures of those items. Carlie's mother Shannon Trent tells People she felt "sick to my stomach" when she heard about those purchases. "I don't know what he's done to her," she says. "I don't think he would hurt her, but if he's capable of kidnapping a child he's capable of anything." Authorities believe Carlie is in "imminent danger." Simpson also purchased camping supplies and nonperishable groceries, and authorities think he may be hiding with Carlie in an isolated area. The TBI says there have been rumors online that Simpson is trying to protect Carlie, but it says that couldn't be further from the truth. "This was not an innocent camping trip, this was a crime," a spokesperson tells WATE. Simpson, Carlie's uncle by marriage, and his wife once had custody of Carlie, but her father James Trent had custody at the time of her abduction. Shannon Trent, who hasn't had custody of Carlie in two years, says she "always had a bad feeling" about Simpson. "I should have stuck with my gut," she tells People. (This boy's summer with his dad turned into his kidnapping.)
– Texas likely won't be forced to redraw electoral districts a court found were intentionally designed to weaken the influence of minority voters before the 2018 midterm elections. In a 5-4 decision along partisan lines Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted a request from Texas that it keep its congressional map, instituted by Texas Republicans in 2013, until the Supreme Court reviews a lower court's decision, reports the Washington Post. In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel ruled in August that two Texas congressional districts and state house districts in four counties discriminated against minority voters, who typically vote for Democrats, and therefore violated the Constitution and Voting Rights Act, per CNN. The Supreme Court gave no reason for its Tuesday decision as is normal in such cases, per Politico. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had argued a different outcome would've put "the electoral process in disarray" since districts must be decided by Oct. 1. A voting rights attorney representing the case's challengers says she is disappointed by the decision but hopes the court later "realizes that Texas sought to purposefully minimize the political power of voters of color." One law expert tells CNN, however, that "the 5-4 split indicates that the map's challengers may have a tough time before the Justices when the (Supreme) Court eventually hears this case." Texas must first file an appeal to the August ruling.
– A man who was arrested June 9 in the Boston area had the necessary materials for building a pressure-cooker bomb like the kind used in the marathon attacks, according to recently unsealed police documents. And according to Daniel Morley's mother, he'd had the materials prior to the April marathon bombings. Now the FBI is investigating him and any possible links between the two cases, Reuters reports. Wicked Local reports that the 27-year-old was taken into custody after police responded to a domestic disturbance; Reuters reports he allegedly assaulted his mother and her boyfriend and threatened to blow up a plane. After Morley's arrest, police found weapons including an assault rifle and a handgun, a pressure cooker and other bomb materials, several hundred rounds of ammo, a black duffel bag, and some even weirder items (a bird's head in a shoebox, a burned and stabbed stuffed animal, a drawing of what appears to be the Boston skyline and a plane) in his home. Morley's mother also said her son told her that his best friend boasted of knowing Tamerlan Tsarnaev. And according to the affidavit, that friend "was attempting to have him do something really bad, but Daniel did not want to do," or so Morley told his mother. Morley is currently at a state hospital undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
– The White House on Friday declassified a partisan and bitterly disputed memo on the Russia investigation, and a House committee immediately made it public. Media outlets were just beginning to assess it. You can read the document here, via the Washington Post. The White House move came over the fierce objections of the FBI and Justice Department, which have said the document prepared by Republicans on the House intelligence committee is inaccurate and missing critical context, per the AP. The memo alleges that the FBI abused US government surveillance powers in its investigation into Russian election interference. Trump, who has called the investigation a "witch hunt," has supported the release of the memo in the apparent hopes that it could help undermine the probe being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. The president, dogged by the unrelenting investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia, lashed out anew Friday at the FBI and Justice Department as politically biased against Republicans. "The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!" Trump tweeted.
– The death of Prince has opened up an ugly feud between Sinead O'Connor and Arsenio Hall that is now in the courts. In a Facebook post Monday, the Irish singer accused Hall—"AKA Prince's and Eddie Murphy's bitch"—of supplying Prince with hard drugs over many years, adding that she had reported him to authorities and that "anyone" who thought Prince "was not a long time hard drug user is living in cloud cuckoo land." In a later post, she accused Hall of spiking her with drugs at Murphy's house. Hall fired back with a $5 million lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Thursday, accusing O'Connor of telling "despicable, fabricated lies" in a bid for attention, CNN reports. "Hall will not stand idly by while O'Connor attempts to get attention for herself by recklessly spreading malicious, vile lies that he engaged in egregious criminal conduct which falsely links Hall to Prince's death," the lawsuit states. Hall denies ever supplying drugs to Prince and says he has had no contact with O'Connor for 25 years. TMZ reports that Hall says O'Connor, whose biggest hit was a cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U," only met the star a couple of times, and she "detested" him. (Prince was reportedly set to meet with an addiction specialist just before he died.)
– The technician accused of stealing data from Tesla's battery factory in Nevada is countersuing his former employer and CEO Elon Musk for defamation. "Tesla has made several false and defamatory statements about [Martin] Tripp in an effort to discredit him," a lawyer says. The Guardian specifically mentions Musk claiming on June 20 that Tesla "received a call at the Gigafactory that he was going to come back and shoot people." Per CNBC, a Tesla rep added "a friend of Mr. Tripp" claimed he would "shoot the place up." Tripp—who's painted himself as a whistleblower concerned by Tesla's "dangerous" practices, including alleged use of punctured battery cells repaired with glue, per Business Insider—described the claim as "insane." A day later, the local sheriff's department announced "there was no credible threat." That's because there was no phone call, and if there had been, Tesla acted with "at least negligence" in publicizing the information before investigating, reads Tripp's lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Nevada, per Ars Technica. It further notes Tesla seemed to know Tripp's location during the law enforcement investigation and "provided false information" to authorities when claiming it could "verify" the 40-year-old was "armed." "We're … interested in getting to the bottom of how the story was concocted," a lawyer for Tripp tells the Guardian. Tripp, who denies Tesla's claim that he wrote software used to lift data from factory computers (he says he can't even code), is seeking at least $1 million plus punitive damages for alleged defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. His lawsuit notes he's received "numerous threats" to his safety.
– Phyllis Lee was shocked to learn her 20-year-old son, a University of Richmond football player, had killed himself by asphyxiation in his car just off campus, where his body was found early Tuesday, per USA Today. "I just wonder if something happened … because what he did was so out of character," she tells the Washington Post. "If something had taken over him, maybe it's his own brain that’s working against him." She'll now find out. The brain of Augustus "Gus" Lee of Fairfax, Va., will be donated to the concussion research program out of Boston University, which has linked football to degenerative brain disease CTE. "We hope the information we're able to provide is helpful to [Lee's family],” says Chris Nowinski of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, which is involved in the research. "It's certainly going to be helpful to the athlete community." Lee, the MVP of the team's 2018 spring game, had suffered concussions in the past, and was sidelined for months in middle school after he was knocked unconscious during a lacrosse game. But it was only after Lee joined the football team at Richmond that his mother noticed his behavior change. "He was a little fried. Even though he played sports all his life, he was playing football five days a week," she tells the Post. After Thanksgiving, the defensive back called his parents in tears to say he was headed home, complaining of loneliness. He saw a mental health professional, who planned to set up a neurological screening during winter break, and returned to school. His last two exams were Monday, the same day he was reported missing. (Brain trauma was found in another college footballer who died by suicide.)
– More than 1,000 police officers moved in late last night to clear out the Occupy LA encampment on the lawn of City Hall. Police swarmed into the camp from several directions and began dismantling tents as protesters chanted, reports the Los Angeles Times. By early this morning, the site was in shambles, with police dragging out the few remaining protesters by their arms and legs. Some protesters also remained in trees, but police were working to remove them—with the assistance of a cherry picker. The AP reports that more than 200 were arrested; police loaded them onto buses headed to jail. No injuries were reported and the arrests were mainly peaceful. Police also stormed Occupy Philadelphia in the wee hours of the morning, razing the camp and arresting about 50 some 56 hours after the city ordered them to clear out of Dilworth Plaza. Officials in Los Angeles and Philadelphia had hoped to avoid the violent confrontations happening in other cities. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that at least three police officers suffered minor injuries in that city’s raid.
– Robin Thicke is not messing around when it comes to winning estranged wife Paula Patton back: Asked about Patton in Washington, DC, yesterday, he told a TMZ photographer, "I'm just trying to get her back." He also denied that his raunchy VMA performance with Miley Cyrus had anything to do with the split, despite the fact that TMZ's sources say Patton felt "utterly disrespected" by it. Then, last night at his concert in Fairfax, Va., Thicke dedicated a song to Patton, TMZ reports. Thicke, who was wearing his wedding ring, told the audience, "For y'all that don't know, me and my wife separated, but I'm trying to get my girl back. She's a good woman." He said he wrote "Lost Without U" for her, and that it's her favorite song of his. He had to turn away from the audience at times and "even messed up on some of the words because he was crying," a concertgoer tells People. Also yesterday, someone sent a bunch of huge, pricey floral arrangements to Patton's home—TMZ has pictures, and assumes the flowers are from Thicke. But another source tells Us that whole Miley thing may have been a bigger deal than Thicke is letting on: "The Miley Cyrus fiasco was a big test of their relationship. He asked her to help him out as a friend and a wife, and defend him and the performance. He begged her to speak out for him and be there for him," the source says. "She agreed to be the good wife after he begged and pleaded. Then he asked her to stick with him through awards season, and she agreed. She attended the Grammys with him as a favor." Patton's 3-year-old son with Thicke was involved in a minor car accident yesterday while photographers were following Patton's car, which her mother and assistant were also in, ETOnline reports. No injuries were reported. (Patton, for what it's worth, hasn't been wearing her wedding ring.)
– Some users of LSD like taking tiny amounts of the hallucinogenic drug—often by drinking acid-laced water—to experience subtle benefits like increased focus, creativity, or friendliness toward people, LiveScience reports. "It's like the coffee to wake up the mind-body connection," says former poker player Martijn Schirp, who now writes for HighExistence.com. "When I notice it is working, depending on the dosage, time seems to be slowing down a bit, everything seems covered with a layer of extra significance." Schirp says he embraced the practice, called "microdosing," because it gave him a chance "to get a taste of this without [the experience] completely overwhelming me." But any possible long-term risks are unknown because, as Medical Daily notes, LSD remains an illegal drug that's rarely tested. "The unintended consequence is they've really impeded research and development," a psychopharmacologist told LiveScience a couple of years ago. "We cannot understand the brain if we're not studying drugs." According to one psychologist, LSD does mimic antidepressants like Prozac by freeing up the brain's "feel-good" chemical, serotonin, so microdosing may work as advertised. It's been around for years, too: LSD inventor Albert Hofmann microdosed in his old age, and the practice is described in James Fadiman's 2011 book The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide. Yet even Schirp admits it's not always positive: "At times, the experience was still too overwhelming to be productive—I just wanted to lay down or take a walk," he says. (Recent studies on psychedelic drugs downplay the risk of psychosis and note possible anti-depressant effects.)
– A Connecticut man has pleaded not guilty after being charged in his wife's murder of nearly three decades ago. The remains of Elizabeth Heath were discovered two years ago in a well below a barn that once belonged to her husband. John Heath, 68, who used an oxygen tank in court, reported his wife missing in 1984, days after filing for divorce. He told friends and family she had left him and their daughter with no explanation while he was asleep, the Danbury News Times reports. But her dogs and most of her things—including her car—remained. Her body was discovered by a father and son who were renovating the barn in 2010, after John Heath lost it in a 2005 foreclosure. The body's left arm was broken; when police told Heath the bone had been smashed, he reportedly said, "Smashed like a..." and waved his arms up and down without finishing his sentence, NBC Connecticut reports. Heath was traumatized by his experience fighting in Vietnam, according to friends, who said he had a temper.
– Hope Hicks has landed her post-White House gig. President Trump's former communications director, who left the administration earlier this year, is now the head of corporate communications for Fox. Hicks will assume the role for the new version of the company that will emerge after Disney purchases 21st Century Fox's assets next year; Disney is buying the entertainment-focused assets, leaving behind a streamlined company "rooted in television," as Variety puts it, and revolving around Fox News, Fox Sports, and Fox Broadcasting Co. (Variety says this new company will be called New Fox, though CNN says it will be renamed FOX from Fox, and NBC News explains that "New Fox" is simply how the company has become known in media circles.) Hicks, whose official title is executive VP and chief communications officer, succeeds Julie Henderson, who decided not to transition from 21st Century Fox. Rupert Murdoch will be co-chairman of the new company, it was announced last week, while his son Lachlan will be CEO. Also Monday, Danny O'Brien was named executive VP and head of government relations. "Hope and Danny are proven leaders and world-class public affairs professionals. Together they will define and project Fox’s voice to our relevant communities," said Fox’s chief legal and policy officer, Viet Dinh, in a statement.
– Grim news from Belize: Searchers say they have found the bodies of missing Canadian woman Francesca Matus and her American boyfriend, Drew DeVoursney. According to Breaking Belize News, the bodies were found Monday evening in Corozal District, near the border with Mexico. "They were both found ... they are dead," says Nancy Rifenbark, a friend who joined a search party, per Global News. Matus' vehicle was found abandoned in a sugarcane field on Sunday around 15 miles from where they were last seen leaving a bar last Tuesday night. It isn't clear how the couple died, though foul play is widely suspected. Matus, 52, who spent winters in the Central American country, was supposed to fly back to Canada last Wednesday, the CBC reports. DeVoursney, a 36-year-old former Marine who had been with Matus for a few months, was scheduled to return to Georgia this week. "Drew is no longer with us. Someone had killed a United States Marine, my brother in arms, who survived Fallujah, Iraq, and Afghanistan," said friend Brandon Barfield, per the New York Daily News. Barfield says DeVoursney signed up after the 9/11 attacks and served two tours in Iraq. Police have not released any official comment on the deaths.
– JPMorgan's $2 billion trading loss has become a $3 billion-and-counting loss with dizzying speed, insiders tell the New York Times. CEO Jamie Dimon predicted that the loss could double within a few quarters, but the extra billion in trading losses has come in just four trading days as hedge funds and other investors smell blood and bet against the positions the bank is believed to have held to hedge against defaults. JPMorgan's "London whale" trader was such a big player on the obscure indexes at the heart of the bank's problems that other traders are finding it easy to identify his trading positions, Reuters notes. "When someone is that big in the market, anonymity really goes out the window," notes a debt trader. The Justice Department and Federal Reserve are probing the losses, which experts say should never have been allowed to happen at a bank with government-backed deposits. But JPMorgan remains relatively healthy, despite the losses. The $3 billion loss would need to double to wipe out its profit from the second quarter of this year.
– Just when you thought the Republican presidential contest couldn’t get any stranger, we have breaking news: Herman Cain has a gospel album. That’s right, the Daily Caller today discovered an album online bearing the GOP hopeful's distinctive baritone. Cain's camp hasn’t commented, but Dave Weigel of Slate has confirmed that “it’s real, it was published 15 years ago … and it is not being distributed now by the Cain campaign.” The six-track offering is entitled Sunday Morning, and believe it or not, it’s actually pretty decent. “It’s mostly standard gospel fare,” says Frances Martel of Mediaite, but it has “one standout single: ‘This is the Day,’ a fast-paced track reminiscent of 'Footloose' that certainly wins the prize for funnest danceable track on the album. … Really, give ‘This is the Day’ a listen!”
– The gist of the articles coming out of Washington this evening suggests that lawmakers will manage to strike a spending deal before tomorrow's midnight deadline to avoid a shutdown. Also looking up are prospects for deals to extend the payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits, say the Washington Post, AP, Politico, and the Hill. Much of the optimism stems from the fact that lawmakers are managing not to snarl at each other in public, unlike yesterday. Some examples: Harry Reid: "We've done enough back and forth. ... We hope that we can come up with something that would get us out of here at a reasonable time in the next few days." John Boehner: "We can extend payroll tax relief for American workers, help create new jobs and keep the government running. And frankly, we can do it in a bipartisan way." Mitch McConnell: Pronounced himself "confident and optimistic." House Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers, R-Ky: "Things are looking up and I am looking up."
– In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is challenging special counsel Robert Mueller's authority to investigate crimes and seeking to have the indictment against himself thrown out, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to the Washington Post, the lawsuit calls the actions of Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and the Department of Justice "arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with the law." At issue is what the lawsuit claims was overly broad authority granted to Mueller by Rosenstein, CNN reports. Mueller was given orders to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government, as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from that." Manafort has been charged with money laundering, fraud, and more as part of Mueller's investigation. But the lawsuit claims those charges have nothing to do with the Trump campaign, instead arising from lobbying work Manafort did on behalf of Ukrainian groups. The lawsuit states that work ended in 2014. The lawsuit—which seeks to have Mueller removed as special counsel and prohibited from similar investigations against Manafort—states the indictment against Manafort "is completely unmoored from the special counsel's original jurisdiction." A spokesperson for the Department of Justice says Manafort's lawsuit "is frivolous, but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants."
– A former Auschwitz guard being tried on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder has testified that it was clear to him Jews were not expected to leave the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland alive. "I couldn't imagine that" happening, former SS Sgt. Oskar Groening told the Lueneburg state court today during the third day of his trial, the dpa news agency reported. Groening earlier described a veritable traffic jam of trains arriving at the Nazi death camp, reports the BBC. "For the sake of order we waited until train one was entirely processed and finished," Groening testified; that processing involved marching most passengers directly into the gas chambers. The charges against him span from a May-to-July period of 1944 in which some 425,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz. Most were immediately killed. "Someone said that 5,000 people were processed in 24 hours but I didn't verify this," he said. "I didn't know." The 93-year-old's testimony came in response to questions from attorneys representing Auschwitz survivors who have joined the trial as co-plaintiffs, as allowed under German law. Yesterday saw testimony from Eva Kor, now 81, who arrived at Auschwitz as a 10-year-old. As a twin, she was experimented on by Dr. Josef Mengele, reports NBC News. "On alternate days—Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays—[she and sister Miriam] were brought to a lab. ... They took blood from my left arm and gave me at least five injections into my right arm. Those were the deadly ones." NBC reports Groening was expressionless throughout her testimony. He faces three to 15 years in prison if found guilty.
– Honolulu police have apparently relented: They have agreed to give up the legal exemption that allows them to have sex with prostitutes. State Sen. Clayton Hee tells the AP that he and police came to a compromise in a meeting yesterday: "Sexual penetration" will be a no-no, but police working undercover will still be able to solicit sex with prostitutes, in order to make arrests. A Honolulu police rep says officers have never had their department's blessing to have sex with prostitutes, and that this whole to-do started because the department was just trying to remove a vague clause from an anti-prostitution bill. "I suppose that in retrospect the police probably feel somewhat embarrassed about this whole situation," Hee said. Hee tells KHON2 that "there are other parts of the exemption that will remain and that includes sexual contact," but that "HPD agrees that the sexual penetration language in the law that they are exempt from should no longer be an exemption for police officers." As to KHON2's assertion that "some people might think sexual contact might include touching some areas of the body that shouldn’t be touched. What would you say to that?” Hee apparently had no reply, with a police official just saying "we have strict policy" that he couldn't go into. And the woman who drafted the initial language change to the exemption expressed surprise: "In all of the versions of the language, never did it exclude their ability to solicit verbally," she notes.
– The Rachel Dolezal story got even stranger during an NBC interview last night in which, as Raw Story puts it, she went "full-scale birther" on herself. Asked by Savannah Guthrie whether she thought it was misleading to identify as black, Dolezal responded, "I haven't had a DNA test. There's been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne [Dolezal] are my biological parents." When reminded that her name and their names are on her birth certificate, Dolezal said she couldn't prove they're not her parents, but "I don't know that I can actually prove they are. I mean, the birth certificate is issued a month and a half after I'm born. And certainly there were no medical witnesses to my birth." "I definitely am not white," Dolezal continued. "Nothing about being white describes who I am. The closest thing that I can come to is if—if you're black or white, I'm black. I'm more black than I am white." Dolezal said she hasn't changed her skin color, but she does spray on bronzer some days. It isn't clear whether there were any "medical witnesses" to her birth, or whether she really believes her parents may not be her parents. Dolezal has claimed to have been born in a tepee, but her uncle tells the New York Times that isn't true. "Larry and Ruthanne were kind of the quintessential Jesus people, hippies, back to nature, and they set up a tepee and lived in it for a year," he says. "Drove my parents crazy, but nobody was born in the tepee."
– It must be pretty embarrassing to find yourself rejected by Playboy, but that's just what happened to these 10 celebrities rounded up by Fox News: Farrah Abraham: The Teen Mom star has been the source of many unspeakable headlines thanks to her recent sex tape, but multiple requests to appear in Playboy were turned down. So she did what any normal human would do and released her own nude pictures. Bridget Marquardt: Bizarrely, even one of Hugh Hefner's own girlfriends couldn't get her own solo spread in the magazine. After she failed her test shoots, Hef invited Marquardt to become one of the Girls Next Door, and she did at least end up in a group spread with her co-girlfriends. t.A.T.u.: If you've forgotten who this duo is, just recall 1990s hit "All the Things She Said." They got rejected from not one, but two editions of Playboy, the American one and the German one. LuAnn de Lesseps: She definitely seemed upset when fellow Real Housewife of NYC Kelly Bensimon was asked to pose in the mag, and responded with, "No one asked me!" She later claimed she didn't really want to be in Playboy anyway (and you'll notice she never was). Audrina Patridge: The Hills reality star reportedly had topless pictures taken to submit to Playboy, but got turned down ... and somehow, the photos were "accidentally" leaked. Click for the complete list.
– An ex-cop already serving life for 22 murders has been charged with 47 more killings and another 12 are under investigation, which would make Mikhail Popkov the worst serial killer in Russian history and the third-worst in world history. Law enforcement sources tell the Siberian Times that Popkov, who targeted women he thought were immoral because they were out late at night, has been providing investigators with information including the locations of bodies. He claims to have started his killing spree, which stretched across a large area of Siberia, after he began suspecting that his wife had cheated on him. Popkov, who resigned from the force in Angarsk in 1998, per the Washington Post, was arrested in 2012 after investigators got a tip-off and checked the DNA of thousands of current and former police officers, the Times of London reports. Police sources say he has claimed to have killed at least 81 women with axes, knives, and screwdrivers, a total that exceeds the 52 killed by "Butcher of Rostov" Andrei Chikatilo between 1978 and 1990 and the 48 murdered by "Chessboard Killer" Alexander Pichushkin between 1992 and 2006. (Here's why he was called the "Chessboard Killer.")
– Popular figure skater Gracie Gold is taking time off from her sport "to seek some professional help," she announced in a statement Friday. Gold is a two-time US figure skating champion, was a member of the 2014 US Olympic team that won the bronze medal, and is an expected member of the 2018 US Olympic team, per the Washington Post. But she has been on what USA Today calls "a precipitous and alarming 17-month-long slide" since she fell from first place to fourth at the 2016 world championships; she continued to flail at competitions, and in appearances this spring and summer, she found it difficult to land simple jumps. She ultimately finished sixth at the 2017 national championships, missing this year's world championships. Her statement does not specify what sort of help she's seeking but only mentions "recent struggles on and off the ice." The 22-year-old has spoken in the past about her struggles with her weight, saying last October that she didn't currently have the "lean body" required for her sport. Longtime US Olympic coach Frank Carroll coached Gold for four seasons, but the two "abruptly" split after the 2017 national championships; he tells USA Today he wonders "what happened" to Gold's "joie de vivre" and hopes she "can find happiness." Her announcement comes four months before the 2018 US Olympic figure skating trials; Gold will skip the Japan Open on Oct. 7 but said in her statement she plans to be back in time for her Grand Prix assignments in China and France in November.
– Flags were at half-staff across Maryland Sunday night after what authorities say was the totally unprovoked killing of a police officer outside a police station in Prince George's County. Undercover narcotics officer Jacai Colson, who would have turned 29 in a few days, was killed in a firefight after a suspect arrived outside the District III station in Landover and opened fire, the AP reports. The alleged shooter was wounded by police fire and taken into custody. A second man, who police say is the shooter's brother, was also arrested. A nurse who lives in a nearby building tells the Washington Post that she saw a man in black firing a handgun at the station. "He fired one shot, and then he started pacing back and forth, then fired another shot," she says. "Just looking outside, I'm like, 'Oh my God, look at all these police officers running out, putting their lives really in danger.'" Prince George's County Police Chief Hank Stawinski says officers are devastated by the death of Colson, a four-year veteran of the force. The incident "wasn't about anything," the chief says. The gunman "opened fire on the first police officer he saw." Charges against the two suspects are pending, the New York Times reports.
– His movies were groundbreaking—and that ground was over a grave. George Romero, the director known as the "Father of the Zombie Film" for 1968's Night of the Living Dead and its follow-ups, died of lung cancer on Sunday, CNN reports. He was 77. Romero, who grew up in the Bronx, used money from directing commercials to make Night of the Living Dead, which, per the BBC, was the "first film to depict cannibalistic reanimated corpses." It made $30 million on a budget of $114,000 and spawned five sequels, including 1978's mall-set Dawn of the Dead, which is widely considered to be one of the best horror movies of all time. Romero also directed non-zombie horror movies, including 1982's Creepshow. Romero spent most of his life in Pittsburgh, which now hosts an annual Zombie Fest and is sometimes called the "Zombie Capital of the World," the Hollywood Reporter notes. The director, who mixed social commentary with the gore, most recently returned to the zombie genre with the Empire of the Dead graphic novel. "I used to be the only guy in the playground, I was the only guy doing zombies," he said in a recent Timeline documentary. "Then all of a sudden The Walking Dead happened and it became mainstream. And now they're all over the place." Family members say he died peacefully, listening to the score from one of his favorite movies: 1952's The Quiet Man.
– Jeanette Epps was to make history when she set foot on the International Space Station in June, as the first African-American astronaut to do so. Emphasis on "was." NASA on Thursday announced a shake-up to its crew assignments, stating Serena Auñón-Chancellor would be bumped from her scheduled Expedition 58/59 to Expedition 56/57, where she would take Epps' place. Instead of Epps flipping to the later mission, she'll "return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to assume duties in the Astronaut Office and be considered for assignment to future missions," and Anne McClain will join the Expedition 58/59 crew. Newsweek reports that NASA doesn't elaborate on "personnel matters," but notes someone is floating a theory. "My sister Dr. Jeannette Epps has been fighting against oppressive racism and misogynist in NASA and now they are holding her back and allowing a Caucasian Astronaut to take her place!" brother Henry Epps posted on Facebook on Saturday. Mashable notes it's hardly unprecedented for an astronaut to be pulled from a mission, and outlines the reasons that have surfaced in past instances, including medical issues. A former NASA administrator tells Syracuse.com that the likelihood is high Epps will make it to space. "When [crew changes] do happen, the reassigned astronauts almost always fly on a later mission. The exceptions are very few and far between." Sean O'Keefe further speculates that Auñón-Chancellor's medical background might be better suited to the mission's human research experiments than Epps, who is an engineer. (An astronaut who made history died last month.)
– A 10-year-old California girl died on Saturday, a day after losing consciousness while at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Jasmine Martinez rode the Revolution roller coaster, exited the ride, and then collapsed near the ride station Friday afternoon. She was airlifted out of the park and ultimately brought to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, per the LA Times. A cause of death has not yet been established, and "we do not know if there was a pre-existing condition," the park said in a statement. NBC Los Angeles reports that the steel coaster, which features a vertical loop and hits speeds of 55mph, was temporarily shut down after Jasmine collapsed; it reopened only to be closed again upon her death as the park investigates. "There is no evidence to suggest that this was in any way ride related," Six Flags notes. Further, more than 45 million people have "safely ridden" Revolution since 1976, per the park. How dangerous are amusement park rides? The Times cited its own analysis of more than 2,000 reported injuries at Southern California theme parks between 2007 and 2012. It found that 18% of the injuries involved symptoms of motion sickness: nausea, fainting, and dizziness. Injured patrons were most likely to be female, with roller coasters and water slides being the most common culprits. Older attractions also caused more problems than newer rides.
– Lady Gaga getting diamond tooth implants? It might be hard to believe—if the singer wasn’t already known for her avant-garde fashion decisions. “She's still deciding how many to get done. Her dental bill will be as expensive as her jewelry bill,” a source tells the Sun; her designer confirms the plan. Gaga has reportedly already ordered the marquise diamonds, and will have them in for the Thierry Mugler fashion show this month in Paris. In other Gaga news: She nearly had a meltdown in Las Vegas when she realized her room at the Cosmopolitan hotel didn’t come with its own private pool, a source tells the New York Post. She did move to The Palms, but a Cosmopolitan spokesperson and Gaga’s own rep deny there was any drama involved. While in Vegas to perform at the iHeartRadio music festival, Gaga dedicated her song “Hair” to Jamey Rodemeyer, the teen who killed himself after being bullied over his sexuality, E! reports. “I lost a little monster this week and I'd like to dedicate this song to him,” she said. “Tonight, Jamey I know you're up there and looking at us and you're not a victim. Bullying is for losers.” A big Gaga fan got good news last week when National Arbitration Forum panelists ruled that she can continue running LadyGaga.org, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Gaga had submitted a complaint to the forum alleging that the site violated her trademark, but the site owner insisted that because her site is a non-commercial, unofficial fan site basically giving Gaga free publicity, it should be allowed to continue. For more Gaga, click to find out about the pricey West Coast fundraiser for President Obama she attended this weekend.
– A suspect was shot several times and arrested last night after a car chase that was wild even by Los Angeles standards. Police say that after the armed man they describe as a "maniac" was spotted driving a suspected stolen car east of downtown, he sped through traffic, sometimes on the wrong side of the road, and hit at least four other cars as he was pursued through southeast Los Angeles County, the AP reports. With the chase being broadcast live on TV, the suspect crashed the first vehicle and carjacked another before speeding off. After becoming trapped in traffic, cameras captured the man fleeing on foot and attempting to hijack two more vehicles before he was shot by officers pursuing him, reports the Independent. "This individual acted with a complete disregard for other people's lives," a police spokesman tells the Los Angeles Times. "He callously put innocent people's lives in danger, even after the police backed off the pursuit and tracked with the helicopter. Thank God no one was killed by this maniac." Another police spokesman says the suspect is in the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. The 22-year-old woman who was carjacked says she's thankful her children weren't in the car. "He just came up to me and pointed the gun at me and told me to get out [of] my car. I unbuckled ... and opened the door and ran out," she tells CBS 2. "It was horrible." Police say that if the suspect survives, he'll be charged with multiple felonies.
– If you've been endorsed on LinkedIn for your three-dimensional thinking skills, spatial reasoning, or ability to stay calm under the pressure of missing plastic bricks, you might want to take a shot at the latest opening at Cambridge University, which Metro has labeled "dream job alert." The Guardian reports on the institution's latest employment opportunity for a Lego "Professorship of Play," which will involve advising students on the value of "play and playfulness" if you get the gig, as well as leading the new Center for Research on Play in Education, Development, and Learning, or PEDAL. The interim director of PEDAL says the importance of play often gets short shrift and that the new center and director will lead research into how students can benefit from "playful learning." The Lego Foundation has contributed a nearly $5 million grant toward the university's push toward play, which will require a scholarly type (namely, aces in educational and developmental psychology) with a "childlike mindset," an active imagination, and a high level of curiosity, among other desirable traits, says Bo Stjerne Thomsen, the foundation's head of research. Because of the job's uniqueness, the person hired will be expected to become "world-renowned" in that genre, he adds. If that alone isn't enough to coax you, perhaps the six-figure salary will: The job pays nearly $104,000 per year. Time's running out, though, with an application deadline of Friday. (Experts in Lego fighting need not apply.)
– After being rebuffed by Scott Brown, Tagg Romney, William Weld, and Kerry Healey, Massachusetts Republicans finally have at least one candidate for Senate. State Rep. Daniel Winslow, who had previously said that he was "99% certain" he'd run, yesterday told the Boston Globe he was "going to be 100% running for the US Senate." Winslow chipped in $100,000 of his own money to start the campaign, but that's a fraction of the $4 million to $6 million he estimates the venture will cost. Before becoming a state rep, Winslow served as chief legal counsel to Mitt Romney and as a district court judge. He'll fly to Washington on Monday to meet with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, presumably in the hopes of securing more funding. At least three other Republicans are also publicly considering runs, but every day they delay getting in will make that prospect harder, the Boston Herald points out, because candidates need 10,000 signatures by Feb. 27—and generally shoot for 20,000 in case some are challenged.
– A part of North Carolina came dangerously close to being obliterated in 1961. A newly declassified report discusses a US bomber that broke in half while flying over the state in January of that year, causing the two nuclear bombs it was carrying to plummet to the ground near Goldsboro—and reveals that those bombs came much closer to detonation than was previously known. A parachute opened for one of the bombs, which landed intact; the safing pins that conducted power from a generator had been pulled, preventing a blast. Still, it completed five of the six steps to detonation, Fox News reports. Had two cockpit wires touched as the plane disintegrated, it could have exploded. As for the second bomb, it landed in a freefall, which caused the switch to flip to the "armed" position, RT reports. What kept it from going off? "The shock also damaged the switch contacts, which had to be intact for the weapon to detonate," the National Security Archive's Bill Burr explains. The incident was first mentioned in a book by Eric Schlosser last year, but the report confirms just how close the US came to devastation. As CNN points out, the MK39 bombs had an explosive yield of 3.8 megatons; the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 0.01 and 0.02 megatons, respectively. "There would have been a 100% kill zone for 8.5 miles in every direction," said the Air Force weapons specialist tasked with disarming the bombs. "By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted," Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said at the time. (This scientist's mathematical model could help you survive should a nuclear bomb strike.)
– Waterbeds were all the rage back in the 1970s before all but disappearing the following decade. Now the original inventor plans a big comeback in the new millennium. Fittingly, he sees millennials as the key to that revival, reports the Seattle Times. “I don’t think a millennial has ever seen one,” 71-year-old Charlie Hall tells the newspaper. Hall is betting that a slew of improvements—temperature control, calmer waves, etc.—will once again make the beds a must-have for the younger generation when they hit the market later this year, initally at the City Furniture chain in Florida. King- and queen-sized mattresses will be available, and those looking to indulge can expect to pay about $2,000, reports KREM2. “I think that some people will have a memory of it and want to revisit it just because they remember waterbeds and want to see how different they are,” says Hall. “And then there’ll be a generation, it’ll be a total novelty for them.” Both stories recount the colorful history and risque marketing that helped make the original waterbeds popular 50 years ago. Consider that the first one was called "The Pleasure Pit," and came with a not-too-subtle slogan: “Two things are better on a waterbed, and one of them is sleeping.” Hall does indeed own the patent for the waterbed, and he's had other successful inventions over the years, including a solar-heated shower for campers.
– In America, he was William Morgan, a high school dropout from Ohio who worked for the mob. But in Cuba, he was the Yankee Comandante who fought the revolution alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara; as a biographer puts it, the "ne’er-do-well who found his cause, his love, and his redemption in Cuba. He became something he never was in America. He becomes a hero in Cuba." The Daily Beast takes a look at the curious and fascinating case of Morgan, whom a New Yorker profile once celebrated as "Holden Caulfield with a machine gun;" executed in 1961 after a failed counterrevolution against Castro's turn toward Communism, Morgan is buried in an unmarked grave in Havana. Now, with US-Cuba relations warming, his widow hopes that Cuba will at last return his remains to American soil. "For me, he is a hero," she says. "For the Cuban people, he is a hero. He gave his life for my country. I promised I would do this." Morgan's story is the stuff of movies (and has in fact been optioned by George Clooney): He became the only foreigner other than Che to reach the Cuban army's highest rank, comandante; fell in love with and married Olga Rodriguez; and reportedly told the firing squad that executed him, "I kneel for no man." But "once he died, much larger events eclipsed his story," says Michael Sallah, the author of The Yankee Comandante. "He kind of got lost in history." Havana scrubbed mention of him, and his American citizenship was only restored in 2007, notes the Beast. But now, says a lawyer in Ohio, where his widow wants to bury him, "we're more optimistic because of recent developments." Says Sallah: "No one should ever doubt his love of America. This is where Morgan was from. This is where he learned freedom and democracy." Click for the Beast's full piece.
– American Olympic superstar Simone Biles added her name to the list of women who say they were molested by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar Monday, CNN reports. In a statement released on her Twitter account alongside the hashtag "MeToo," the four-time Olympic gold medalist wrote, "I, too, am one of the many survivors that was sexually abused by Larry Nassar … For far too long I've asked myself 'Was I too naive? Was it my fault?' I now know the answer to those questions. No. No. It was not my fault. No, I will not and should not carry the guilt that belongs to Larry Nassar, USAG, and others." Biles' revelation comes one day before Nasser begins a weeklong sentencing hearing. In November he pled guilty to seven counts of criminal sexual misconduct, but the judge has decided to let all of his accusers speak, NBC News reports. Nearly 100 women are expected to speak or deliver audio recordings. Biles did not say if she would attend the hearing. Biles is the fourth member of the triumphant "Fierce Five" 2016 women's Olympic gymnastics team to make allegations of abuse against Nassar. Hearing her teammates' stories, she wrote, inspired her to come out with her own: "After hearing the brave stories of my friends and other survivors, I know that this horrific experience does not define me."
– Denver Broncos wide receiver Kenny McKinley has been found dead at his home from what police believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The 23-year-old athlete, who had been on the team's injured reserve list since early August with a knee injury, had recently returned from a visit to family in Atlanta with his young son, an NFL source tells the the Denver Post. McKinley had also recently been in South Carolina, where he was the Gamecocks' all-time leading receiver. "Kenny was certainly one of my favorite all-time players,” South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier told the Post and Courier. “He was one of them. He was a wonderful guy. It’s hard to figure out how, or why, this happened." McKinley is the third active Broncos player to die in the last four years.
– Carrie Fisher died at the age of 60 Tuesday, four days after suffering a major heart attack. Here's how the world is saying goodbye to the writer, actress, and mental-health advocate who will always be Princess Leia to millions: Calling it the "best morning show interview you'll ever see," Digg shares a clip of Fisher appearing with therapy dog Gary on Good Morning America to promote The Force Awakens. "Even the film crew can't stop laughing." Us Magazine remembers Fisher through photos from her life. Vanity Fair remembers when Fisher, in her one-woman show Wishful Drinking, explained why she's not wearing underwear in A New Hope, the answer to which explains why she wanted her obituary to read: "I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra." Celebrities of all stripes are eulogizing Fisher, and io9 is updating a massive list of their tributes to her, including the following from Steven Spielberg: "She didn't need the Force; she was a force of nature." Meanwhile, Jezebel argues Fisher was an unexpected style icon, who recently angered the French by wearing flats and bringing Gary on the Cannes red carpet. "She dressed for the part of herself exclusively, and it was wonderful." Speaking of Gary, NPR says "it's impossible to miss the buoyant personalities of both Fishers" in a recent interview. "He sits with me on the plane," Fisher says. "Frequently, he sits in the chair, and I sit on the ground." CNN has a list of seven things you didn't know about Fisher, including that she's a prolific and well-regarded script doctor, having improved the scripts for Sister Act and Hook, among many others, while also punching up her own Star Wars dialogue. Time has a short piece on Fisher's position as a highly visible advocate for destigmatizing mental illness, having openly discussed her struggles with depression and bipolar disorder. “No motive is pure. No one is good or bad—but a hearty mix of both. And sometimes life actually gives to you by taking away," USA Today quotes Fisher as saying in a list of her best quotes. Finally, Cnet has a personal remembrance of Fisher from a former Lucasfilm employee: "One of my favorite memories of Fisher is the time a twentysomething hipster came up to her at one of her Comic-Con signings and demanded she write something unique and personal on a photo of Fisher dressed in her iconic Slave Leia metal bikini. She winked and wrote, 'Bite me.'"
– Jar Jar Binks is one of the most hated, and almost certainly the most widely ridiculed, character in the Star Wars universe. But there was an actor behind the character, Ahmed Best, who was just 25 at the time—and he recently revealed on Twitter that the negative reaction to Jar Jar led him to a very dark place. "20 years next year I faced a media backlash that still affects my career today," he tweeted alongside a picture of him and his son looking out over the ocean. "This was the place I almost ended my life. It’s still hard to talk about. I survived and now this little guy is my gift for survival." Last year, Best told Wired he got death threats and people told him he had destroyed their childhoods. He's now planning a one-man show for the 20th anniversary of The Phantom Menace, and wondered on his tweet if the effect of the character might be good subject matter for it.
– Have masculine or feminine features? A big smile? Characteristics like these, it seems, are central to our snap judgements of people's faces. Using a computer model, researchers have figured out how different features affect our first impressions, the BBC reports. The system is based on 1,000 pictures of different faces gathered online. In a study, researchers had respondents give opinions of these faces, focusing on approachability, dominance, and attractiveness. Researchers then created a mathematical model that translated those opinions into distinct facial measurements—an effort to "crack the code of first impressions," notes Smithsonian. The result was a computer program that generates cartoon faces intended to be dominant or submissive, approachable or off-putting. Another batch of study subjects offered their opinions of the cartoons—and they fit the computer's assessments. Masculine features and a good tan were apparently tied to the perception of dominance, while smiles were associated with approachability, LiveScience reports. Knowing how first impressions work may be particularly important these days: "Whereas in the past, we got to know people through meeting them in the flesh, increasingly, our first contact is online, and our first impressions are based on the images we provide on social media profiles," says the study's lead author. Of course, what's attractive could change a lot in the next century.
– Groupon is having a big debut as a public company. The stock was selling for about $30 a share at the market's open today, way above the $20 IPO price the company set last night, reports the Wall Street Journal. Which means that, on paper anyway, the company is valued at about $20 billion. Part of the surge: Institutional investors who got the stock early are flipping it for profit just as fast as they can, notes Henry Blodget at Business Insider. You won't catch him on the bandwagon: "There is NO WAY I would own Groupon's stock for the next few quarters at this price, given the business transition Groupon is currently undergoing," he writes. Sure, it's possible the stock might double, but from the looks of things, it could easily drop to $12 a share in the near future.
– "Lucky" Whitehead's first name hasn't proved prescient lately, though he doesn't bear any fault in the most recent matter. Whitehead (whose real first name is Rodney, per NBC News), who used to be a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, was cut from the team Monday during training camp after a case of mistaken identity in a Virginia shoplifting incident—and Prince William County cops there now admit they've discovered he had nothing to do with the crime. A man busted at the scene for stealing items at a Wawa convenience store on June 22 was questioned by police and verbally provided his name, date of birth, and Social Security number, as he didn't have ID on him—all of which matched Whitehead's. The suspect was released, but when he blew off a court hearing for the case, an arrest warrant was issued, with Lucky Whitehead's name on it. After the news came out, Whitehead was released from his employer, with a team exec alluding to past incidents: "We just decided it was time to go in a different direction." At a Tuesday presser, Cowboys coach Jason Garrett was asked about the mix-up and release—Prince County Police now say they "regret the impact" of their error, though they add they acted in "good faith" based on their information—but Garrett simply repeated 10 times, in different variations, per ESPN: "We made a decision we felt was in the best interest of the Dallas Cowboys." Meanwhile, Whitehead tells the Dallas Morning News he was "blindsided." "Let's not sugarcoat anything. I was pretty much … called a liar," he adds, though he notes his teammates believed him. "He deserved better from law enforcement. We all do," Whitehead's agent tells NBC, demurring when asked if they would try to get his job back.
– Google handed out more than $2 million to more than 300 people in 2015 who spotted bugs and security issues, but one award in particular stands out, reports Beta News. The odd sum of $6,006.13 went to Sanmay Ved, a former Google employee and current MBA candidate at Babson College in Massachusetts. Why the weird amount? It kind of spells "Google" numerically. "Squint a little and you’ll see it!" says Google's Online Security Blog in a post on the 2015 awards. It seems Ved was messing around with the Google Domains interface late one night in September (because don't we all?) when to his surprise the domain name Google.com appeared as available for purchase. For $12. So he found himself buying—with a credit card and all—one of the world's most famous domains. His moment of glory was quite literally just that—within a minute Google canceled the transaction, which Google can do because it owns the registration service itself. Ved says he doesn't know exactly what caused the glitch on Google's end, but he details the geekily sordid affair on his LinkedIn account. CNET speculates that Google missed a renewal deadline, and Ved was able to capitalize. A nice footnote: When Ved elected to donate his award to charity—it went to this education foundation—Google doubled it. Microsoft ran into a similar problem back in 2003 but did not immediately cancel the sale of Hotmail.co.uk. Fortunately for Microsoft, the buyer returned it that same day, the Register reported at the time. (Speaking of domains, Google has bought the entire alphabet.)
– Muslim families won't be offered any treats at the Treats Family Restaurant in Lonsdale, southern Minnesota: Owner Dan Ruedinger has arranged the sign board outside to read "Muslims Get Out." The sign says it is in "suport" of St. Cloud, where a Somali-American man stabbed nine people in a mall last weekend. Despite what his sign says, Ruedinger says he's not against all Muslims, only extremists. "It’s time that people started standing up, not worrying about the PC crowd and do what is right,” he tells CBS. "And I feel what we’re doing is right." Ruedinger, whose Yelp page has been inundated with negative reviews, says putting up the sign is his First Amendment right. Ruedinger says Islam is a "religion of hatred that preaches violence"—and the Muslims who are "good people" should "hold the others accountable." The Lonsdale News-Review reports that Muslim leaders, including Jaylani Hussein of the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, met Ruedinger for what Hussein describes as a "short conversation." A witness says Ruedinger became agitated and started shouting about his son's service in Iraq. Hussein says thousands of Muslims were "shocked and appalled" by the St. Cloud attack and they will continue to try to reach out to Ruedinger.
– The judge who overturned California's ban on gay marriage acknowledged in an interview for the first time that he's homosexual and that he never considered recusing himself from the case. "If you thought a judge's sexuality, ethnicity, national origin (or) gender would prevent the judge from handling a case, that's a very slippery slope," retired federal Judge Vaughn Walker tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "I don't think it's relevant." The Chronicle actually reported on Walker's sexual orientation during the Prop 8 trial, prompting critics, like this one, to stay he should have stepped down because he had a conflict of interest. ("He and his partner are now permitted to marry!") Nope, says the gay blog Queerty after the Walker interview. "Immutable characteristics like sexuality, race, and gender are not judicial conflicts of interest."
– Some big news in America's public health arena: The number of new cases of diabetes is clearly falling for the first time in 25 years, reports the New York Times. Stats released Tuesday by the CDC show a nearly 20% drop from 2008 to 2014 in what the newspaper calls "the first sustained decline" since diabetes began booming in the 1990s. Specifically, the US saw 1.4 million new cases in 2014, down from 1.7 million in 2008. There's still plenty of major trouble spots: The decline is pronounced among white people and less so for AfricanAmericans and Hispanics, and a notable gap remains in regard to education levels. "It's not yet time for a parade," says the head of the diabetes program at Massachusetts General Hospital. But, he adds, "It has finally entered into the consciousness of our population that the sedentary lifestyle is a real problem, that increased body weight is a real problem." CBS notes that 10% of adults in the US are believed to have type 2 diabetes and that more than a third have prediabetes—a condition that can lead to the full disease—which makes any sign that the numbers have peaked welcome. A CDC researcher calls the results "a little surprising" given the decades-long increases. But "it seems pretty clear now that incidence rates have actually started to drop." (Meanwhile, a novel new treatment could one day make daily insulin injections a thing of the past.)
– Bill Gates recently offered to donate 100,000 hens to poor countries around the world, but one South American nation looked his gift chickens in the mouth and began squawking. "How can he think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle not knowing how to produce?" Cesar Cocarico, Bolivia's development minister, told reporters, per Reuters. "Respectfully, he should stop talking about Bolivia." Cocarico also described Gates' poultry philanthropy—mainly extended to impoverished nations in sub-Saharan Africa—as "offensive," saying Gates should "apologize" once he's done a little more research into how well Bolivia does on the chicken front by itself, the Financial Times reports, via the Verge. He has a point: The country produces about 197 million chickens annually, with the ability to ship about 36 million of them to other nations, a local poultry group says. And data from the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade notes the country saw a significant increase in the production of chicken meat and eggs from 2008 to 2013. Gates announced his "Coop Dreams" program earlier this month, noting he'd met, through his work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, plenty of poor people who raised the birds and that "it's pretty clear to me that just about anyone who's living in extreme poverty is better off if they have chickens." He goes on to say that chickens are a cheap investment with easy maintenance and decent ROI, the eggs they pop out help keep kids healthy, and they "empower women" (a belief his wife apparently shares). "It sounds funny, but I mean it when I say that I am excited about chickens," his post concludes. An enthusiasm obviously not shared (at least when it comes to his donation) by what Gizmodo labels Bolivia's "leftist, anti-imperialist government." Bolivians "do not need any gifted chicks in order to live—we have dignity," Cocarico sniffed. (But what about chickens with dinosaur legs?)
– It's been nearly a week since an "apocalyptic" bridge collapse in Italy, and the death toll has climbed for perhaps the last time. Reuters reports the bodies of three family members—the last three people believed missing—were pulled from a crushed car over the weekend in the rubble of Genoa's Morandi Bridge, bringing the count of people killed in Tuesday's catastrophe to 43. Via the Washington Post, the ANSA news agency reports the family, which included a child, had been headed on vacation. Nine people remain hospitalized, four of them critically, per Genoa's prefecture. A fire brigade official says the wreckage will continue to be searched to be doubly sure there isn't anyone they missed, though rescuers believe everyone who was on the bridge has been accounted for. The BBC reports that Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte presided over a state funeral for nearly 20 of the victims over the weekend, though some families rejected the public overtures, either wanting to mourn privately or because they were fuming at the government for the tragedy. "We do not want farcical ceremonies," one family member told a local newspaper. "Our children are not a tool for public parades." Meanwhile, via the Independent, a 1979 report has emerged from the bridge's engineer that warned about deterioration risks. Riccardo Morandi noted the salty ocean air and pollution from a neighboring factory had led to a "well-known loss of superficial chemical resistance of the concrete," and that the bridge would need constant upkeep to get rid of rust and other vulnerabilities. The cause of the collapse is still under investigation.
– Inmates at a California women's prison are finding that being locked up with Lindsay Lohan is cruel and unusual punishment, according to a relative of one of Lohan's fellow prisoners. "All the inmates are sick of Lindsay," she tells People. Like if she even moves, they put the whole facility on lockdown. If they even want to bring her new clothes or bring her anything, they put the whole facility on lockdown. It happens all the time." Jail officials, however, say Lohan isn't getting star treatment. "It's business as usual," a spokesman said. "Lindsay's getting no special treatment." Lohan—who was placed in isolation after being taunted by prisoners chanting "fire crotch" at her, according to the New York Daily News—may be freed as soon as today, less than a week into a sentence that was originally 90 days.
– Until now, the public debate of work-vs-family has focused more on female workers than male ones. So Max Schireson's decision to demote himself at a major software company and move back home with his family is turning a few heads, Jezebel reports. "Friends and colleagues often ask my wife how she balances her job and motherhood," wrote Schireson in a blog post. "Somehow, the same people don't ask me." His 19-month stint at the helm of MongoDB in New York City has been successful—he helped turn it "into a billion-dollar business," Fortune notes—but the time away from his wife, children, and puppy in Palo Alto, Calif., has proved just too hard. Among his reasons: "I have 3 wonderful kids at home, aged 14, 12 and 9, and I love spending time with them." His "amazing wife" has "an important career" as a doctor and Stanford professor. "I love her, I am forever in her debt for finding a way to keep the family working despite my crazy travel. I should not continue abusing that patience." "On pace to fly 300,000 miles this year," he's missed a lot of family fun plus his son's minor surgery and the puppy being hit by a car. A turning point came when his plane made an emergency landing in Tucson and he slept through the whole thing, he tells Forbes: "In that moment, I realized, 'What am I doing?'" "Will that cost me tens of millions of dollars someday?" he writes. "Maybe. Life is about choices. " Reactions on his blog are mostly enthusiastic, but Jezebel notes that a woman couldn't do this without people getting concerned. On a positive note, Fortune says it may be a "step towards leveling the playing field for top executives, regardless of their gender." One reaction was definitely favorable—a blog comment from Schireson's daughter: "I'm glad you will be able to spend more time with us at home. yayyyyy."
– There's another GOP debate on Tuesday, and the stage will feature fewer candidates—though not because anyone has dropped out. Host Fox Business on Thursday announced the lineup, and Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee have been relegated to the early debate. The criteria the decision was based on: a minimum polling average of 2.5% in four recent polls. The Hill reports the two finished at 2.25%, with Rand Paul barely making it in at the 2.5% cutoff. Seven will be joining Paul in Milwaukee, per NBC News: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. The early debate will also feature Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum; Lindsey Graham and George Pataki didn't make the cut, having failed to grab at least 1% in any of the four polls.
– "It was almost like everybody wanted to exhale tonight, and it was good," LA Clippers coach Doc Rivers said last night when the team soared to a 113-103 victory over the Golden State Warriors just hours after the NBA banned owner Donald Sterling for life over racist remarks. With the cloud of controversy lifted, the Clippers "played as if on wings, flying around with hustle and heart" before ecstatic fans who gave a standing ovation when two fans wearing T-shirts with Sterling's face crossed out appeared on the video screen, writes Bill Plaschke at the Los Angeles Times. More: If the NBA hadn't chucked Sterling, the game would never have happened, because both teams had planned to walk off the court in protest moments before it was supposed to begin, Sports Illustrated reveals. "It was a real option," says Warriors coach Mark Jackson. V. Stiviano, the woman Sterling was recorded making racist remarks to, is "saddened" by the owner's lifetime ban and is "devastated" that the recording was released, her lawyer tells the Los Angeles Times. He says that his client wasn't Sterling's girlfriend and never had a romantic relationship with him. The lawyer says she was hired as an "archivist"—an archivist who received $1.8 million in gifts from Sterling, according to a lawsuit filed by his wife of more than 50 years. What now for Sterling? NBA Commissioner Adam Silver plans to push him to sell the team, and fellow team owners appear willing to follow the recommendation to force him out. He could fight back in the courts, but his chances of success are "basically zero," a CNN legal analyst says. If he does sell, it will be for a huge profit: He bought the team for $12 million in 1981 and it is now valued at $575 million, though some experts believe it could sell for closer to $1 billion.
– A California mother is outraged over what she claims is a racist toy her 5-year-old son received for his birthday, the Washington Post reports. Ida Lockett says she was helping her son put together a Playmobil pirate ship set when she came to instructions to put a shackle around the neck of one of the dark-skinned pirates. “It’s definitely racist,” she tells CBS Sacramento. “It told my son to put a slave cuff around the black character’s neck and then to play with the toy.” The boy's aunt, who purchased the pirate ship set, posted on the Playmobil Facebook page that she was mortified. "Would it be too much to ask for you to just create a regular old black pirate?" she asks. Playmobil issued a statement defending the toy as a portrayal of life on a 17th-century pirate ship. “If you look at the box, you can see that the pirate figure is clearly a crew member on the pirate ship and not a captive,” the statement reads. “The figure was meant to represent a pirate who was a former slave in a historical context." But not everyone was mollified by the statement: The Post reports the president of the Sacramento NAACP is calling for the toy to be removed from shelves. In her Facebook post, the boy's aunt claims the pirate ship was the only Playmobil set she could find with a black figure. (Playmobil once demanded a pastor stop crucifying toys.)
– "They went through a pure hell, no doubt," says an Arkansas sheriff's detective about the ordeal two small children somehow managed to survive—all thanks to the eldest of them, a 3-year-old named Kylen. The boy was found wandering alone on a state highway near Camden, Arkansas, on Monday, CNN reports. He was scraped up and "extremely traumatized," says Ouachita County Sheriff's Detective Lt. Nathan Greeley, per CNN. It was upon trying to reconnect the child with family that they learned his mother, Lisa Holliman, had last been seen going to the grocery store on Thursday; she also had a 1-year-old son. A search led to Holliman's overturned car in a ravine, apparently the result of a single-car crash and not visible from the road. The infant was found strapped in his car seat alive; Holliman, 25, had been ejected and was dead. "We're still trying to determine the timeline, but the mother was last seen Thursday," Greeley said. "This is one of the most remarkable things I've ever experienced in my 11 years at this department." Holliman's father, James, tells KARK that Kylen was able to unstrap himself and exit the car through the sunroof. "When he climbed out of that car, seeing his mother dead like that like she was, he tried to wake his mom up," he says. The boys survived without food and water; the temperatures were high and thunderstorms came through the area. "It's nothing short of a miracle," says Greeley. But still, a tragedy: Holliman's family learned she was four weeks pregnant at the time of her death. The crash remains under investigation.
– If the Internet seems a little slow to you lately, that's because it's in the midst of what is being called the biggest cyberattack of all time, reports the BBC. The fight is between a spam-fighting group, Spamhaus, and a web-hosting company, Cyberbunker, but it has grown to the point that it's affecting the entire Internet and its infrastructure. Millions of users are experiencing delays while trying to reach websites or while using services like Netflix, and experts fear that if the attacks continue to grow in power, people may not be able to access things like email or online banking. It all started when Spamhaus, which publishes a blacklist that email providers use to weed out spam, put Cyberbunker on its list of spammers. Cyberbunker retaliated, but its attack on Spamhaus ended up having a much larger impact. One architect at a digital content provider likened it to, as the New York Times puts it, using a machine gun in an effort to assassinate one person. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks "are essentially like nuclear bombs" that exploit the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), says an exec at a group that tried to defend against the attacks and ended up becoming a target. "It's so easy to cause so much damage." And, notes the architect, this is "the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet." Cyberbunker says Spamhaus is a vigilante group "abusing [its] influence," but the architect notes that Cyberbunker is "just mad" that it got caught spamming. One security researcher says the only way to stop the attack is to arrest the people responsible. Five cyber-police forces around the globe are investigating.
– After two decades of searching, archaeologists have finally discovered the location of a Spanish fort missing for 450 years: a golf course in South Carolina, the Beaufort Gazette reports. According to the AP, Fort San Marcos—built in 1577 and occupied for five years—was discovered last month under a golf course on Parris Island by two researchers. They used improving technology, included radar and magnetic waves, to succeed where years of old-fashioned hole digging had failed, the Post and Courier reports. While the remains of Fort San Marcos are still buried, the location in itself is a hard-won and important find. “This work will allow us to tell the story of the land that would eventually become the United States,” one of the researchers says. Fort San Marcos was built more than 100 years before English settlers arrived in what is now South Carolina. Spanish documents give a description and drawing of the fort, but not its location—that was finally given away by the fort's old post holes. Fort San Marcos was built in the settlement of Santa Elena, which was discovered in 1979—nearly 100 years after it was abandoned in the midst of attacks by the English. It consisted of barracks, storerooms, and 11 cannons. Researchers employed the same method used to discover the location of Fort San Marcos to learn a little more about Santa Elena, mapping its shops, taverns, a church, and more.
– Lethal injection is just such a pleasant way to die. At least according to Florida state Rep. Brad Drake, who wants to put an end to the execution method in the state. He argues that Death Row killers shouldn't be allowed to "get off that easy"; the electric chair would be more appropriate he says—as would a firing squad. Drake this week filed a bill that would put an end to lethal injection and give convicts facing death the choice of the latter two, reports the AP. "I think if you ask a hundred people, not even talking to criminals, how would you like to die, if you were drowned, if you were shot, and if you say you were put to sleep, 90% of some of the people would say I want to be put to sleep," says the Republican, who apparently equates lethal injection with taking a permanent nap. "Let's put our pants back on the right way," Drake urges, adding that his proposed switch would force death row inmates to think about their punishment "every morning." And they'd be getting off easy, because, as reported by the Florida Current, if it were up to Drake, "we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it." Mediaite notes that Keith Olbermann is not a fan of the idea. (Click for another odd political push in Florida.)
– Two officials in southern China offered up a pretty bizarre explanation after being arrested for allegedly purchasing dug-up corpses, according to local media: They needed to meet their cremation quotas. The official Xinhua news agency reports that the case had its beginnings in June, when a resident of Beiliu City in south China's Guangxi region reported that his dead grandfather's body was taken from its grave; police investigated and ended up arresting an alleged grave robber surnamed Zhong the next month. Zhong confessed to stealing more than 20 corpses under the cover of night—and then selling them to two officials from neighboring Guangdong province. The suspects, officials surnamed He and Dong, were then arrested. China has been encouraging cremation as a way to preserve more land for farming and development, reports the BBC. Some residents have been burying family members in secret to sidestep the new policy, and in May, Shanghaiist reported that six elderly residents of Anhui, a town that banned burials outright, killed themselves before the change went into effect in order to secure a burial. In Gaozhou City and Huazhou City, the local governments had set cremation quotas based on the previous year's deaths, and He and Dong were charged with implementing the funeral changes. They allegedly told police they bought the bodies in order to hit their quotas; Dong is said to have spent nearly $5,000 on 10 corpses, while He allegedly bought an unspecified number for about $250 each. Elsewhere in China, 11 have been arrested for their alleged connection to a "corpse bride."
– ObamaCare is still going into effect in 2014, but one key component of it is being temporarily shelved. The White House today postponed by one year a rule requiring employers to either provide coverage to employees or face hefty fines, reports the Wall Street Journal. The rule will take effect in 2015, instead of 2014. "We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively," writes Treasury official Mark Mazur in a blog post. The Journal explains that while most employers already provide such coverage, restaurants and retail companies in particular—both of which rely on low-wage workers—were resisting. The rule affects businesses with more than 50 workers. The Hill calls the decision "stunning" and says it "represents an enormous victory for businesses that had lobbied against the healthcare law." It also notes that the move pushes back the start of the controversial provision until after the 2014 midterms, which should be good news for vulnerable Democrats. The New York Times reports that other key parts of ObamaCare, including the establishment of "exchanges" where people can buy insurance, will take effect as planned in 2014. But "it will be difficult for officials running the exchanges to know who is entitled to subsidies if they are not able to confirm whether employers are offering insurance to their employees," writes Jackie Calmes.
– Rates of interracial marriage are increasing—and you might have online dating to thank, according to a new study. The MIT Technology Review calls the results of the study a "profound revelation" and signs of an improving society. Researchers Josue Ortega and Philipp Hergovich found online dating has completely upended how society is formed. People have strong links to family and friends and weak links to a bunch of other people they're connected to through those strong links. Traditionally, it was those weak links that provided a romantic partner—think a friend's coworker or something. Then Match.com and other dating sites arrived in the mid-90s. Online dating is now the most common way homosexual couples meet and second most common way heterosexual couples meet, and 15% of Americans say they've tried online dating, according to Science Alert. Suddenly, people were forming strong links with complete strangers, ignoring those weak links altogether. Hergovich and Ortega developed a model to see how the rise of online dating affected interracial marriage. A lot, it turns out. “Our model predicts nearly complete racial integration upon the emergence of online dating," the researchers tell the Technology Review. And data from the real world supports their hypothesis. While the rate of interracial marriage has been increasing for decades, the rate notably jumped in the mid-90s, again in the 2000s when online dating got more popular, and once again in 2014 when Tinder took over the dating world. Hergovich and Ortega's model—and real-life data—also shows online dating is making marriages stronger.
– North Korea's state-run news agency reported Sunday that Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is interested in visiting North Korea and meeting leader Kim Jong Un. The KCNA report said Assad made the comments May 30 while receiving the credentials for the North Korean ambassador, reports the AP. "I am going to visit the DPRK and meet HE Kim Jong Un," Assad was quoted as saying, using the acronym for the North's official name. There was no indication that such a trip had been planned. "The world welcomes the remarkable events in the Korean peninsula brought about recently by the outstanding political caliber and wise leadership of HE Kim Jong Un," Assad said, according to KCNA, via Reuters. "I am sure that he will achieve the final victory and realize the reunification of Korea without fail." Syria's government did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday. The report comes as international attention is focused on a summit between Kim and President Trump scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.
– Telling the same tired joke over and over again is arguably just as bad as telling a "too soon" joke in bad taste. Ted Cruz earned the distinction of doing both yesterday in Michigan after he regurgitated a wisecrack he's used before about Joe Biden, just days after the vice president's son, Beau, died of brain cancer. Speaking in Howell at a GOP dinner, Cruz said, "Vice President Joe Biden. You know the nice thing? You don't need a punch line," NBC News reports. "I promise you it works. The next party you're at, just walk up to someone and say, 'Vice President Joe Biden' and just close your mouth. They will crack up laughing." Except no one was really cracking up (Detroit News reporter Chad Livengood tweeted there was "faint laughter" in the audience), and Cruz was quickly taken to task on social media for mocking the VP while he's grieving, Politico notes. Livengood tweeted that when he asked Cruz after the event about the ill-timed joke, Cruz simply walked away (Livengood also retweeted a video of the brief encounter). Cruz issued an apology last night on both Twitter and Facebook, USA Today notes, which read, "It was a mistake to use an old joke about Joe Biden during his time of grief, and I sincerely apologize. The loss of his son is heartbreaking and tragic, and our prayers are very much with the Vice President and his family." Saul Anuzis, Cruz's campaign manager in Michigan, told Livengood, "Timing could have been better," per the Detroit News.
– Get ready to tune your eyes on the sky: The annual Leonid meteor shower will hit its peak overnight on Tuesday, sending shooting stars above the eastern horizon around midnight local time on both coasts. Unfortunately, clouds will cover much of the skies across the US, but those in areas with a clear forecast will enjoy a dark backdrop for the colorful meteors thanks to a crescent moon. NASA predicts there will be about 15 meteors per hour, or one every four minutes, at peak time. If you can't make it until midnight, some meteors will also be visible to the east after sunset, reports Popular Science.
– Gigantic gemstones don't typically emerge out of Canadian mines like they do in South Africa, but a big find in the Northwest Territories has just smashed that stereotype. Bloomberg reports a 552-carat yellow diamond the size of a chicken egg (picture here) was found there in October, and it's now said to be the largest diamond ever unearthed in North America. The "astonishing gemstone" was discovered at the Diavik mine, owned by the Rio Tinto Group and Dominion Diamond Mines, about 135 miles south of the Arctic Circle, per a press release. In addition to its North American honors, the diamond, which measures 33.74mm by 54.56mm, would rank among the 30 biggest stones ever discovered, per Bloomberg estimates, as well as the seventh largest this century. The scratches on the diamond indicate it had a "difficult journey," and that it remained intact during the recovery process is "remarkable," the release notes. Also noteworthy is the fact that it came out of a mine in Canada, which is known for having tough terrain to penetrate due to the sub-Arctic conditions and dearth of access. "It's very unusual for a diamond of this size in this part of the world," Dominion Chief Executive Officer Shane Durgin tells Bloomberg. He adds that it's hard to say yet how much the diamond will ultimately be worth; it needs to be seen how it ends up once it's cut. Dominion will select a partner to do that job, and polish the stone to finish it off, in the next few weeks. (A 163-carat white diamond went for $33.7M last year at auction.)
– Friends driving by your house and honking a friendly hello: cool. City and county officials and employees honking for almost 10 years as they drive by to get back at you for placing a bid on a house: not so cool. Per Courthouse News Service, that's the claim of Ohio resident Garrick Krlich's lawsuit filed Thursday against the city of Hubbard, Trumbull County, and Hubbard's police chief, all of whom Krlich says "intentionally turned a blind eye" to an orchestrated campaign to "harass, intimidate, terrorize, and retaliate against him," mainly via the car-honking. Why Krlich says he's the object of retaliation: In 2007, he tried to buy at an auction a neighboring property that for nearly a century had been in the family of the town's fire chief at the time. Krlich says when he put in the highest offer, then-Fire Chief John Clemente Jr. told him he'd better take it back or risk being "bitter enemies." Krlich kept his bid in, though for unspecified reasons, the property "did not pass to him as it should have"—and, he says, the harassment started anyway. Described on the Krlich.com website (subtitled "Small Town Terrorism") as "undeserved, uninterrupted, unyielding spite," the subsequent actions Krlich says have been directed toward him—the relentless honking, an unsympathetic police department, a 911 service that hangs up on him—have been carried out by various Hubbard firefighters driving city trucks, members of Police Chief James Taafe's family, city councilmen, and others, per the suit. In a 2014 20/20 interview, Krlich says the honking peaked at 100 times a day (it's since died down to just a couple per day); Clemente and his wife noted in the same interview that Krlich was simply litigious. "If you beep your horn one time, he'll take you to court," Marlene Clemente said.
– North Korea-watchers say Kim Jong Il has sent his clearest signal yet that he intends for his youngest son to lead the country after his death. State media announced the promotion of Kim Jong Un to four-star general today as the country's biggest political summit in 30 years began, the BBC reports. Dear Leader also made his sister a general, a move observers say suggests he feels his Swiss-educated son, believed to be around 27, needs a mentor. The younger Kim had never before been officially mentioned in North Korean state media. The promotion "is clearly the biggest news we've had from North Korea since the death of Kim Il Sung," a Council of Foreign Relations analyst tells the AP. "I think it clearly demonstrates that Kim Jong Il is committed to maintaining control of the country within his family."
– There's been a wave of new developments this morning regarding Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz and the downed flight. German prosecutors say that it appears Lubitz researched both suicide methods and cockpit door security during the period from March 16 to March 23, reports the AP; the crash occurred on March 24. The announcement stems from prosecutors' discovery of an iPad in Lubitz's apartment and a review of its browser history, report the New York Times, which has this statement: "During this time the user was searching for medical treatments, as well as informing himself about ways and possibilities of killing himself. On at least one day the person concerned also spent several minutes looking up search terms about cockpit doors and their safety measures." The revelations come along with the news that the second black-box recorder has been found, reports the AP. Meanwhile, CNN talks to a law enforcement source who says Lubitz went doctor-shopping in advance of the crash: The source says Lubitz saw five to six doctors—including a sleep specialist—and frames that as reflective of his fear that his medical woes would end his career and his desire to find a doctor who could help.
– President Trump unleashed a Twitter attack on Mexico over the weekend, and he picked up right where he left off on Monday morning. In multiple tweets, Trump said Mexico must do more to stop "caravans of people" heading into the US, blasted Democrats for weak border laws, and again demanded his wall. In regard to those "caravans," a reference to reports about a large group of Central Americans working their way northward through Mexico: "They must stop them at their Northern Border, which they can do because their border laws work, not allow them to pass through into our country, which has no effective border laws," Trump wrote. The president made a point to include Democrats in the blame game. "Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation, use Nuclear Option if necessary, to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People," he wrote. "Border Patrol Agents (and ICE) are GREAT, but the weak Dem laws don’t allow them to do their job. Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!" He again brought up the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and reiterated that he was through trying to resurrect it. "DACA is dead because the Democrats didn’t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon," he wrote. "No longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!"
– Mel B filed last month to divorce husband Stephen Belafonte, from whom she's been separated since December; now the Spice Girl has leveled serious abuse allegations against him. She got a restraining order against Belafonte on Monday that bars him from her and their three children, TMZ reports, and in the declaration, she says he's been physically abusing her, including choking her and punching her, since at least 2007. She says he also sexually abused her, forcing her to participate in three-ways that he sometimes taped, and that he has threatened to release the tapes to hurt her career—or to release them to Children's Services in an attempt to get her parental rights taken away. She says that in 2014 she attempted suicide by taking a bottle of aspirin, but then tried to call emergency services. Belafonte blocked her from doing so, she says, and locked her in the bedroom while telling her to die. She claims that every time she tried to leave, he threatened to destroy her life and take the children. She says that he got their nanny pregnant and suggested all of them live together, though ultimately, she claims, Belafonte demanded the nanny terminate the pregnancy. She says multiple people saw evidence of the physical abuse over the years, but never reported it. Belafonte denies the allegations.
– After 27 years in prison, Krishna "Kris" Maharaj may finally get a chance to prove what he's been claiming for years: that he was framed for a pair of murders actually ordered by infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. CNN has a profile on Maharaj's case detailing how, in 1986, he was arrested for the Miami murders of his business partners Derrick and Duane Moo Young—even though he had an alibi. Police said the Moo Youngs had cheated the former millionaire out of $400,000. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. That sentence has since been reduced to life in prison, but in April a Florida judge scheduled a November hearing to determine if new evidence could undermine the verdict. Maharaj's lawyers have 53 witnesses and 498 documents on tap, according to the Guardian. "We've got several Colombian cartel people to say, 'We did the murders,'" one lawyer says. These cartel witnesses say that the Moo Youngs were money launderers for the cartel, and were killed because they lost some of the money. The lawyers also say they can prove that prosecutors hid evidence that would have proved Maharaj's innocence. But in court filings, prosecutors say the evidence is all "hearsay and inadmissible." (Click to read about how Escobar's hippos are causing problems in Colombia.)
– In posters near the 20th Century Fox studio lot, the actors' union headquarters, and her home, Meryl Streep is accused of allowing Harvey Weinstein to allegedly prey on women for decades, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The posters feature a picture of Streep with Weinstein; a red bar across Streep's face reads "She Knew." CBS News reports it's unclear who is behind the posters, which went up in various locations around Los Angeles on Tuesday. The appearance of the posters follows allegations made against Streep by Rose McGowan over the weekend. McGowan, who says Weinstein raped her, claims Streep knew about Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct and did nothing. McGowan called Streep a hypocrite over reports Streep plans to wear black to the Golden Globes in support of sexual assault victims, USA Today reports. In a statement Tuesday, Streep says she "did not know about Weinstein's crimes" and "wasn't deliberately silent."
– Two workers at a Chicago day care were fired and arrested after a disturbing incident that left five toddlers injured. Police say surveillance video captured one of the workers burning the 2-year-olds with a hot glue gun while the other woman watched and laughed, People reports. Lizandra Cosme, 32, has been charged with five counts of aggravated battery of a child causing great bodily harm, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Susana Gonzalez, 27, faces five misdemeanor charges of causing the circumstances of child endangerment over the Dec. 1 incident at the Children's Place day care. It's not clear how seriously the children were injured. Prosecutors say Cosme, who brought the glue gun for a Christmas project, was captured on video applying the hot glue directly to the hands and arms of the three girls and two boys. "Each of the child victims winced and some whined at the hot glue gun application," a prosecutor said during a Monday court appearance. Prosecutors said Cosme tried to cover up the incident, asking a father whether his child had been burned at home, ABC7 reports. They said her actions were discovered when one child's mother, an ER physician, saw the burns and demanded to see surveillance footage. Cosme's lawyer said his client "screwed up" but did not mean to hurt the children.
– Luxury fashion label Burberry is conceding to environmental activists: The brand will stop using fur in its products, phase out existing fur items, and put an immediate end to its practice of destroying unsold items. It was that practice that drew attention in July, as an earnings report revealed that $37 million in Burberry clothes, accessories, and perfume were burned in 2017 to prevent them being stolen or sold at a discount, per the BBC. "Modern luxury means being socially and environmentally responsible," CEO Marco Gobbetti says in a release, which cites a new strategy of "helping tackle the causes of waste," per CNN.
– In the 1980s, the University of Houston's Cougars basketball team—aka the Phi Slama Jamas—made their way into three Final Fours. The player described by the Houston Chronicle as "one of the more flamboyant members" has now been found in the Detroit area by a filmmaker, three decades after he disappeared from the public eye. Sports Illustrated reports on Benny "the Outlaw" Anders, the subject of an ESPN "30 for 30" documentary directed by Chip Rives to come out later this fall, and it's such a shocking development that the SI headline reads: "Benny Anders is alive!" Anders was one of college basketball's "enduring mysteries" after he was benched in 1985, quit the team, came back a few weeks later, and then fell off the map after whipping out a gun during a fight with a classmate; he was sentenced to three years' probation for that incident, per a 2013 SI article. And as the current SI article notes, he didn't go back to his hometown of Bernice, La., or keep in touch with teammates or relatives. Instead, he became what SI says was "a jheri-curled version of a phantom." "It's like he turned the lights out on his existence," an ex-Houston player says in the documentary. But Rives, with the help of former teammate and ex-Chicago cop Eric Davis, followed a bunch of leads until they tracked him down in a rental apartment outside of Detroit. The SI reveal doesn't tell much about Anders' current state of affairs, other than noting he works in a local restaurant and "looks good … weighing far less than 350 pounds, as was rumored." Fans will have to wait for the ESPN movie to find out more. (No good news for this former college basketball coach.)
– President Trump says he wants Congress to have a deal on immigration and the border ready by the time he returns from the Davos forum in Switzerland—and he says he is open to the deal including a path for citizenship for DACA recipients. "We're going to morph into it," Trump said of citizenship for the Dreamers on Wednesday, per the Washington Post. "It’s going to happen—over a period of 10 to 12 years. If somebody's done a great job and worked hard, it keeps the incentive to do a great job," he said. "I think it's a nice thing to have the incentive, after a period of years, of being able to become a citizen." Trump stressed, however, that the deal for roughly 700,000 Dreamers would depend on securing $25 billion to build a border wall and $5 billion for other immigration-related spending. He said reporters could tell Dreamers they had "nothing to worry about." The proposal Trump outlined sounds similar to one that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said was "off the table" after the shutdown ended, the Hill notes. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has been pushing for a bipartisan deal—and using the hashtag #TrumpDreamers—called Trump's remarks a "breakthrough." "I truly appreciate President Trump making it clear that he supports a path to citizenship for DACA recipients," said Graham, whose own proposals have been called "unacceptable" by the White House. Advocates for restricting immigration say they could support a pathway to citizenship, depending on how many people it applies to and whether it is combined with other measures to limit immigration, the Los Angeles Times reports.
– It's legendary, supposedly cursed, admired daily by thousands, and the star of a video game—and yet we don't know all there is to know about the Hope Diamond, or so a recent discovery indicates. The 45.52-carat diamond has given up one of its secrets to French mineral scientist François Farges and Jeffrey Post, the Smithsonian's curator of minerals. Their detective work involved computer modeling and a 17th-century lead replica that Farges found in 2009 among the National d'Histoire Naturelle's collection, and led them to an intriguing conclusion: When King Louis XIV possessed the diamond, it was mounted on a gold background and cut in a way that could cause a sun to appear at the blue stone's center—all too appropriate for the Sun King, whose colors were blue and gold, reports Smithsonian Magazine. Louis XIV bought the originally 112 3/16-carat, crudely cut diamond in 1668 from a French merchant who obtained the jewel somewhere in India. Five years later it was recut to its 67 1/8-carat size, according to the Smithsonian Encyclopedia, at which time it became known as the French Blue. In the years between its theft (in 1792, during the French Revolution) and reappearance (in 1812, in Britain), it was again cut to its current size, obliterating those former dimensions—until Farges uncovered the replica, which would have been used by jewelers in need of a stand-in for the actual diamond while creating settings. But the replica made clear that the French Blue was cut in an unusual way, eschewing the sharp angles that maximize the reflection of light. In exploring the reasoning behind the cut, Farges and Post arrived at their conclusion. Interestingly, it was only with the discovery of the replica that it was conclusively proven that the French Blue and the Hope Diamond were the same stone. (Click for another fascinating story about diamonds.)
– Right-leaning websites such as Conservatives4Palin are jumping on a 2008 video they say shows Katie Couric "mocking" Sarah Palin. In the footage, taken the day Palin was picked to be the VP candidate, Couric struggles off air with the names of the candidate's kids. "Where the hell do they get these names," she asks after reading off "Trig" and "Track." The site also accuses Couric of being generally dismissive of Palin throughout her initial coverage, with a focus on "moose burgers and beauty pageants." Some other reactions: "The comments themselves aren’t an indictment," but the video does allow us to watch the seeds of bias get planted in Couric’s mind, "to such an extent that she felt it necessary to share them with her co-workers," writes Ed Morrissey for Hot Air. "The McCain campaign bet badly on having Palin give her first major interview to CBS News." The criticism is off base, writes Colby Hall at Mediaite. Keep in mind that Palin was virtually unknown at the time, "and regardless of where one finds his or herself on the political spectrum, Palin’s kids DO have unique names." And any other "bullet points" about Palin's life highlighted by CBS undoubtedly came from the McCain campaign. "To call this proof of her mocking Palin just falls way short of its mark." Still, it will be interesting to see if Palin seizes on the tape, notes Ben Smith at Politico. Given her "fixation" on the media in general and Couric in particular, "it would seem quite tempting."
– The Air Force is testing a new stealth drone at Area 51 that's designed to penetrate "contested" areas—in other words, countries where the US is not at all welcome, Aviation Week reports. Dubbed the RQ-180, the unmanned Northrop Grumman plane is thought to have better stealth design and aerodynamics than the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel that often flew out of Afghanistan (one was apparently captured by Iran). The Air Force won't confirm, but Northrop Grumman's financial reports and Area 51's big new hangars suggest that RQ-180 testing is underway. This explains how the Air Force is planning to improve its ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) in "contested" areas—a problem they have admitted to before. "The mix is not where it needs to be," said an Air Force ISR official three months ago. "We are over-invested in permissive ISR and we have to transform the force to fight and win in contested environments." In other words, "permissive" areas like Afghanistan and Iraq are considered a thing of the past. So how many will the Air Force buy? Maybe just a few, since they'll be expensive and harder to keep under wraps if purchased in bulk. Hat tip, Wired. (See Iran's claim to its "biggest drone yet.")
– Imagine life without electricity or running water, and you'll understand what nearly befell our planet two years ago. Scientists say that on July 23, 2012, the sun belched its biggest solar flare in more than 150 years and barely missed us, CBS News reports. A week earlier and the storm would have struck Earth on its orbit with "catastrophic" effects, NASA says, blacking out radios, damaging satellite communications and GPS, and "disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket." Such a flare wouldn't hurt human life directly, and the Southern and Northern Lights would be gorgeous, but the blast's mix of X-rays, extreme UV radiation, energetic particles, and massive clouds of magnetized plasma would cause an estimated $2 trillion in damage. It would also leave "large parts of society" crippled for months or years while workers replaced major transformers and substations, ExtremeTech reports. The sun, on an 11-year solar-storm cycle, has nearly done this before: A massive storm called the "Carrington Event" struck Earth in 1859 but couldn't inflict much electrical damage in the age of steam engines (telegraph lines did spark and set fire), and a pretty powerful storm caused blackouts across Quebec in 1989. One physicist says there's a 12% chance of a big solar blast hitting us over the next decade, which he calls a "sobering figure." Another is quoted in the Guardian saying how lucky we are that the blast wasn't in sync with our orbit: "Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did," he says. "We'd still be picking up the pieces." (Read about the sun's newly discovered "long-lost brother.")
– They set sail aboard the Carnival Fantasy, but a Florida couple's experience aboard the cruise ship was less fantasy, more creepy nightmare. While some couples find towels adorably folded into the shapes of animals in their cabins, Chris and Dana White say they instead stumbled upon a hidden camera pointed at their bed, ensconced in TV wires in their room on Carnival's Fantasy, which was sailing out of Mobile, Ala., last October. The couple tell Inside Edition in an interview that aired Monday that they were "flabbergasted" to spot the camera, and that their "privacy had been invaded." "I was thinking, 'I can't believe this is actually happening to us,'" Chris White says. They're talking to the media now because they don't think the cruise line properly dealt with the issue when they reported it, saying a rep for Carnival initially told them the device wasn't a camera. In a statement to USA Today, Carnival calls the incident with the Whites a "unique and unusual one" and says that while a "video transmitter" was indeed found after a full probe, the transmitter "was not connected to an electrical source and not capable of recording." Chris White shakes his head at that, saying the device was "wired up … working … [and] warm to the touch." Newsweek notes one other "bizarre" cruise ship incident that took place in September, this time involving a Royal Caribbean ship out of Australia. In that case, about 1,300 employees from an Indian tobacco company booked a vacation on the Voyager of the Seas and basically ran "amok" with women they brought aboard dressed as Playboy Bunnies. (Passengers say there was a "bloodbath" on a Carnival ship earlier this year.)
– DUI charges are bad enough. DUI charges while driving a state snow plow are liable to make a few headlines. That's the predicament for 56-year-old Thomas Henderson of West Virginia, who got pulled over by a deputy atop a mountain late one night this week, reports WOWK-TV. The deputy stopped the plow because one of its headlights was out, but then he smelled alcohol. Henderson failed a field sobriety test, then blew a .09, which is above the state's regular limit of .08, let alone the stricter limit of .04 for commercial drivers, notes AP.
– A battle over an ant-covered crucifix has moved to New York City. The Smithsonian bowed to pressure by top Republicans John Boehner and Eric Cantor, and dumped an art exhibit video showing ants crawling over a crucifix. The "Fire in My Belly" exhibit, by artist David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS, is now on display at the New Museum. "I think that in the artistic community, directors, curators are tremendously insensitive to Christians," complained Catholic League President Bill Donohue. "You can't make fun of the Holocaust, you can't make fun of black slavery, and you can't even depict anything about Mohammed." The "New Museum has always defended freedom of expression and continues to oppose censorship," responded director Lisa Phillips. "We cannot afford to take hard won civil liberties for granted and need to remain vigilant and protect artistic freedom." Dozens of galleries and museums offered to display the video, which also includes nudity and masturbation, after it was axed by the Smithsonian, reports CNN.
– There were two men at the top of this year's Simon Wiesenthal Center most-wanted Nazi war criminal list—and there is now no chance either one will face a court. No. 2 on the list, Ukrainian-born Vladimir Katriuk, has died in Quebec at the age of 93, the Toronto Star reports. Katriuk, who moved to Canada in 1951 and worked as a beekeeper for more than 50 years, was accused of being a "particularly active participant" in a massacre in what is now Belarus in 1943, when he was a member of an SS battalion that allegedly carried out many atrocities, the Guardian reports. Russia charged Katriuk with genocide last month, but Canadian authorities refused a request to send him to Moscow, citing Russia's actions in Ukraine, reports the Globe and Mail. Katriuk had long been under suspicion, but the wheels of justice did not move quickly: In 1999, Canadian authorities concluded he had entered the country under false pretenses, but in 2007 a decision to cancel his citizenship was overturned due to lack of evidence, the Star reports. The man at the top of the most-wanted list is also 93 years old. Gerhard Sommer is still alive in a Hamburg-area nursing home, but German prosecutors say they've dropped their investigation because he suffers from dementia and isn't fit to stand trial, the AP reports. In 2005, he was one of 10 former SS officers an Italian court found guilty of taking part in a massacre of 560 civilians in 1944, but German law didn't permit his extradition.
– Montana's attorney general is fighting to preserve his state's ability to curb corporate political spending, and almost half of America's states are backing him. Some 22 states and the District of Columbia have filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to use its Citizens United decision to strike down Montana's law limiting corporate money in politics, reports the Guardian. Montana's century-old Corrupt Practices Act, which was introduced to curb the power of copper barons, has been upheld by the state's highest court, putting it in conflict with Citizens United. The states, led by New York, argue that laws like Montana's are needed to prevent corruption at the state level. They say the court should reconsider some of its findings in the Citizens United case, arguing that the court was wrong when it claimed that unlimited independent political spending does not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption," AP reports. Experts say that while it is highly unlikely that the court will reconsider Citizens United, it may clarify the ruling to allow Montana's law to stand—or simply issue a ruling reversing Montana's decision to uphold its law.
– If you were concerned that Michele Bachmann's Swiss citizenship meant she'd given up on America, worry no longer: She's getting rid of it. "Today I sent a letter to the Swiss Consulate requesting withdrawal of my dual Swiss citizenship, which was conferred upon me by operation of Swiss law when I married my husband in 1978," she said in a statement, according to Minnesota Public Radio. "I took this action because I want to make it perfectly clear: I was born in America and I am a proud American citizen." Bachmann hopes to put an end to the story that surfaced earlier this week. At the time, her spokeswoman described the situation this way, notes the LA Times: "Congresswoman Bachmann's husband is of Swiss descent so she has been eligible for dual citizenship since they got married in 1978. However, recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual citizenship so they went through the process as a family." Her opponent in November, Jim Graves of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, has called the Swiss story a "distraction." He has confirmed that he and his family are also "proud to be Americans."
– His name is Isaiah Thompson, but based on all the headlines coming out of New York City, he may as well go by "subway surfer" from here on out. Police arrested the 22-year-old and accused him of (calmly) riding on the outside of a subway car, a stunt that was captured in an Instragram video by a rider inside the car, reports Gothamist. Even more remarkable: This is at least the fourth time that Thompson has been arrested for the same offense, reports the New York Post. “I just wanted to take the video because I thought it was awesome and also scary as hell," Matthew Beary, the man who filmed last week's risky ride, tells the Post. The city's transit chief has a different view: "This young man is lucky he ended up in police custody and not in a hospital or worse," says Andy Byford. (The Washington Post rounds up two deaths and one serious injury since 2016 alone for other subway surfers.) Thompson faces charges of reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct, and creating a hazardous condition.
– The Physical Activity Council has a list of 104 physical activities—which do not include lifting 12 ounces of Bud Lite but do include table tennis, golf, and walking—in its annual survey of our activity habits, released yesterday. And the number of Americans who engaged in not a single one of those 104 activities in all of 2014 is more than one in four of us: That's 83 million people, or 28% of the US population over the age of 6, reports the Wall Street Journal. "We feel confident, in a sad way, that this is the largest number we’ve ever seen," says PAC member and Sports and Fitness Industry Association exec Tom Cove, who adds it's the most dismal result he's seen in 24 years. The number of completely sedentary Americans increased by 18% since 2007. That's not to say we don't like the appearance of fitness, just the actuality of it: The Journal notes the rise of "athleisure" apparel; such footwear saw sales jump 8% in the year ending April 11, while performance shoes took an 18% dive. The PAC traces the decline to our schools, which help form our lifelong fitness habits and where kids are spending less time in gym class and recess. Another problem? The increasingly cutthroat nature of sports is forcing more casual athletes to the sidelines. Says Cove: "There are way too many kids who leave sports at age 9, 10, 11, because they simply have to make a decision: Am I going to be a travel soccer kid and devote my life to this, or are there other things that I want to do?" (An editorial argues that it's not lack of exercise causing an obesity epidemic, it's the food industry's unhealthy products.)
– A stampede at the "stoning the devil" ritual has become the hajj pilgrimage's worst disaster in a decade. Saudi authorities say at least 717 people were killed; previous reports said at least another 450 were injured in the crush of people at Mina, near the holy city of Mecca, the AP reports. The BBC explains that the hajj is "the fifth and final pillar of Islam"; every adult Muslim who can physically and financially manage to do so is expected to make the pilgrimage once in their lives. Two million people are this year participating in the annual five-day pilgrimage, which started Tuesday. One of the final major rites of the hajj involves casting stones at pillars that signify the devil. After numerous similar disasters at the ritual, including a 2006 stampede that killed 345 people, the Saudis spent $1.2 billion on measures to reduce congestion at the site where pilgrims hurl stones at three pillars, CNN reports. Read about other hajj-related tragedies, the worst of which happened in 1990, here.
– Guess who’s back in the news: Everyone’s favorite golfer…and his love children. Yes, another mistress has come forward claiming to have given birth to Tiger's child in 2001. This time it’s porn star/escort Devon James—whose son, Radar notes, looks an awful lot like the golfer. As if that’s not bad enough, a new documentary airing Thursday in the UK will delve into the mystery of Tiger Woods’ first purported love child, the Sun reports. Tiger Woods: The Rise and Fall includes interviews with journalist Neal Boulton, who says he knows someone who has DNA evidence that backs up the secret-baby claim and adds, “Tiger will eventually admit to fathering a child.” If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because alleged mistress Theresa Rogers—who reportedly gave birth to Tiger’s daughter in 2003 and is the subject of the documentary’s claims—has been crying love child for months.
– From 1988 to 1990, California was slammed with a measles epidemic that affected at least 16,000 people, per the Western Journal of Medicine. Now public health officials are trying to avoid a similar scenario, encouraging people in the Golden State to a) get vaccinated, and b) stay away from Disney parks where the current outbreak started if they're not. Although a Disneyland spokeswoman tells the AP "it's absolutely safe to visit if you're vaccinated," a state epidemiologist warns that those who haven't received the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) shot should keep away for "the time being." Seventy people—the "vast majority" of them unvaccinated, notes the AP—have reportedly been infected so far in the outbreak. Measles has officially been eradicated since 2000 in the US; California officials speculate the current outbreak was caused by a foreign visitor or a resident who traveled overseas. The vaccination debate has been renewed, with many health officials lambasting those who refuse to get their shots due to fears about risks. "[These cases] wouldn't have happened otherwise. … There are some pretty dumb people out there," an infectious disease specialist tells the New York Times, while a deputy director at the California Center for Infectious Diseases urges "unvaccinated Californians to consider getting vaccinated against measles." Even Bill Gates, who has lobbied for vaccinations around the globe, tells Wired, "It will take cases like this Disneyland thing to remind people how irresponsible [not being vaccinated] is." The head of the National Vaccine Information Center, however, says it's all overblown. "Fifty-seven cases of measles coming out of Disneyland in a country with a population of 317 million people is not a lot ... . We should all take a deep breath," she says.
– Paul Ryan, a man who is not running for president and swears that he doesn't want the job, continues to get about as much press about it as the official remaining candidates. In his Politico Playbook on Monday, Mike Allen talks to a Republican in the know who "sees a 60% chance of a convention deadlock, and a 90% chance that delegates turn to Ryan—ergo, a 54% chance that Ryan, who'll start the third week of July as chairman of the Republican National Convention, will end it as the nominee." Ryan, meanwhile, tells the Times of Israel while on a visit to Jerusalem that he's not interested. "No, I've already said that that's not me," he tells the newspaper. Of course, as Allen and Steve Benen at MSNBC point out, Ryan said much the same thing about becoming House speaker before accepting the job as John Boehner's successor. Saying he doesn't want the job gives him "maximum leverage" and sets up a scenario in which he's "begged to do it," writes Allen. Benen thinks those in the GOP hoping for just this scenario should be careful: "The Republican Party would find itself in late July with a presidential nominee who has no campaign infrastructure, no platform, no stump speech, no staff, and no money."
– Severe weather is being blamed for what could be America's deadliest "duck boat" disaster. Authorities in Branson, Missouri, have confirmed that at least 13 people, including children, died Thursday night when an amphibious boat carrying tourists capsized and sank in Table Rock Lake. Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Jason Pace said Friday that four people remain missing, reports the AP. He added that 14 people survived, and that seven of them were injured. Stone County Sheriff Douglas Rader said the boat apparently sank due to intense winds and thunderstorms in the area, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Rader said some of the 31 people on the boat were rescued by an off-duty deputy who was in the area. National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Lindenberg says a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the area Thursday evening, the AP reports. Eyewitness video shows the boat being struck by huge waves. "Duck boats," originally used by the military in World War II, have been involved in several other deadly accidents nationwide, including a sinking in Arkansas that killed 13 people in 1999, though a Ride the Ducks spokeswoman says this is the first accident in more than 40 years of operation in Branson. "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the captain did his best," Roger Braillier, captain of another duck boat, tells the Washington Post. "All of our hearts are completely broken right now."
– Two alleged burglars essentially directed police to their apartment in New Jersey when they failed to pay their taxi driver, authorities say. Kenneth Burke, 46, and Timothy Foote, 38, took a taxi to a home in Deal on Friday, went inside, then emerged with a TV and liquor bottles, police tell the Philly Voice. The taxi driver then dropped the men at an apartment in Asbury Park, but they refused to pay, police say. When the driver alerted police, officers checked the home in Deal and found it had been burglarized, per NJ.com. Burke and Foote now face burglary, theft, and other charges, and are held on $20,000 bail.
– A blustery day on a Virginia bridge led to a truck driver's death Thursday, the AP reports. Joseph Chen, a 47-year-old employee of Evans Transport, was crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in his tractor-trailer around 12:30pm, shortly after weather reports had indicated a Level 1 wind advisory, meaning winds were clocking in at over 40mph, the Virginian-Pilot reports. The North Carolina man was driving his truck southbound when his vehicle went over the side and into the 45-degree Chesapeake Bay. As his truck began to sink, Chen was spotted standing atop it, offering hope he'd survive the freak accident. But after a Navy chopper pulled him from the water, he died en route to the hospital. Just 30 minutes after Chen's truck was swept off the bridge, the wind advisory was raised to a Level 2, which means winds had crept up past 47mph. Between 1964 and 2011, 10 vehicles driving over that bridge have met similar fates, with only one survivor out of the bunch, per Virginian-Pilot records. A truck driver who crosses the bridge a couple of times a week tells WAVY "on a windy day, you can feel it" and that his truck will sway from left to right, depending on the wind's direction. Meanwhile, Chen's wife, Billie Jo, tells the Virginian-Pilot her husband "was off the chain." They would've marked their 10-year anniversary in April. She added her husband, whom she said was "awesome," had two kids from a previous marriage. (A truck fell from the sky in San Diego.)
– Today was a lousy one to be a tourist in Europe. Taxi cab drivers in Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin, Milan, and elsewhere clogged the streets in front of major attractions to protest what they see as unfair competition from the US ride-sharing service Uber, reports Bloomberg. Uber users can summon a taxi with their smartphones, and cabbies think drivers who participate should be subject to the same regulations they are—including pricey licenses. "This about an all-out assault on our profession, our livelihoods," a driver of one of London's "black taxis" tells Reuters. "These big companies are coming in, not playing by the rules." Uber has run into similar friction in various US cities, though nothing on the scale of today's coordinated protest in Europe. Executives for Uber, which last week announced $1.2 billion in new funding and a valuation of $18.2 billion, didn't seem fazed. "If anything, it's going to make Uber even more visible, and make a lot of people realize that they now have choices that they didn't have before," one tells the Wall Street Journal. (Of course, not all publicity is good publicity.)
– Charles Darwin's finches of the Galapagos Islands—renowned as a poster child for speciation (that's "the process by which new species arise," explains Smithsonian)—may not be able to evolve fast enough to stave off extinction, according to a study published last week in the Journal of Applied Ecology. The medium ground finches of Santa Cruz Island are having their newly hatched babies decimated by Philornis downsi, a parasitic nest fly humans brought to the islands half a century ago. The flies lay their eggs inside the birds' nests, and the hatching maggots feed on the young birds. "This is like a really bad horror flick," study author Dale Clayton says. "The babies can't withstand even one night with these parasites." According to Discovery News, the flies were first spotted in the finches' nests in 1997. Since then, the population has been growing, and none of the Galapagos Islands is free of the flies. Researchers looked at five years of field research on the medium ground finches specifically on Santa Cruz and came up with three scenarios—good, bad, and neutral—based on breeding, weather, and food supplies, Discovery News reports. In both the bad and neutral scenarios, the finches have less than 100 years before they're extinct. According to Smithsonian, the same fate is likely facing some of the other 14 species of Darwin's finches. "If Darwin's finches go extinct, it will be because people brought this fly to the islands," Clayton says. "If the fly had gotten to the island more gradually, perhaps, maybe the birds would have had more time to adapt." Researchers believe a 40% reduction of nest infestations could save the finches and are looking at options to accomplish that, Discovery News reports. (A frog named for Darwin has already gone extinct.)
– So much for sharing the good news about a newborn calf named Pitcher Diego. A New Hampshire farm that posted a video of the Scottish Highland calf is coming under fire from animal rights supporters who don't want the animal to be slaughtered, the AP reports. The video, posted on Facebook, has gotten nearly 13 million views and sparked a heated debate about eating meat. Many of the comments against the video are from people angry because they think the calf will be slaughtered or had been ripped away from its mother. The Concord Monitor reports Yankee Farmer's Market posted the video of Pitcher Diego, who was born during a snowstorm. The calf—tied up with a red rope—stares into the cameras as he is warmed by an off-screen hair dryer. Some people are trying to drive down the farm's reviews using Facebook's rating system. Several also have offered to adopt the calf. "I'm not sure how you get that much negativity out of a picture of a baby cow," said Farm owner Brian Farmer. Farmer said he was taken aback by the negative reaction, given his animals roam and graze freely in pastures and are raised without antibiotics or hormones. "We are trying to give them the best life possible," Farmer said. "When you raise them that way, they are healthy and happy." He says Pitcher Diego has been returned to its mother, and its thick neck, strong body, and gentle disposition make it a good candidate for breeding—rather than a trip to the butcher.
– In what the Cumberland County, Penn., coroner is calling a "freak accident," an 86-year-old woman was strangled to death by a device that was intended to save her life. Roseann J. DiFrancesco apparently tripped and fell, causing her medical alert necklace to become caught on her walker, the Patriot-News reports. The result, says Coroner Charles Hall, was that her upper torso was suspended above the floor, creating pressure on her neck that cut off air and blood flow. Relatives had last spoken to DiFrancesco on Feb. 12. A visiting nurse found the woman dead in her bathroom Feb. 15, when the nurse entered DiFrancesco's home after unsuccessful attempts to summon her by knocking on the door. It is unclear when DiFrancesco died. Her death was ruled an accident, Fox 43 reports. The device (similar to the ones popularized by "I've fallen and I can't get up" commercials) did not have a breakaway lanyard, as some do, per the Patriot-News. The FDA has warned of potential choking with such devices, which typically include a pendant with a button to call for help, saying the agency is aware of at least six serious injuries or deaths related to their use between 1998 and 2009. "Risks are greater for those with mobility limitations or for those who use wheelchairs, walkers, beds with guard rails, or other objects that could entangle with a neck cord," the FDA says in a press release. DiFrancesco, who was retired, had worked for 25 years for the federal government and 18 years for the state, according to an obituary. (A freak accident claimed the life of a pregnant woman in Oregon this week.)
– The rapidly disappearing "bird language" that is spoken—or whistled, actually—by about 10,000 residents in the mountains of Turkey is changing the way scientists think about language and the brain. The left hemisphere has always been dominant when interpreting language, be it spoken, written, signed, or even clicked, explains New Scientist. But that changed when German researcher Onur Güntürkün decided to study the whistled version of Turkish. Güntürkün wanted to see if its musicality might require the brain's right hemisphere, which handles frequency, pitch, and melody. His study of 31 whistled Turkish speakers showed the left hemisphere was 75% dominant with spoken Turkish, but the split between hemispheres was even with the whistled language. "We’ve shown for the first time equal contributions from both hemispheres," says Güntürkün, whose study was published in Current Biology. He tells the New Yorker that this suggests our brain structure "is not as fixed as we assume" and that the way information is delivered changes it. The language developed because whistles carry further than spoken words, and its messages can be understood across mountains and valleys. (The New Yorker offers an example of a whistle that means, "Do you have fresh bread?") It's lucky Güntürkün got his study in when he did, as modern technology is killing off whistled Turkish. "You can gossip with a mobile phone, but you can't do that with whistling because the whole valley hears," he says. (But, how does any of this explain how one man could lose most of his brain and not even notice?)
– It's a long way from the hotel suites he's used to, but Dominique Strauss-Kahn still has plenty of space to himself. The IMF chief is being held at Rikers Island on sexual assault charges in an empty 14-cell wing of the massive jail, reports AP. He has been placed on suicide watch and issued a medical device to make sure he doesn't stop breathing during the night. The suicide watch was ordered as a precaution, not because Strauss-Kahn seems likely to harm himself, a source tells NBC. Because of his status, the Frenchman was assigned to a facility usually used to house inmates with extremely contagious diseases. Officials say Strauss-Kahn is free to leave his cell and wander the wing from time to time. He is allowed to go outside for recreation for an hour once a day, accompanied by guards, in a spot where he won't encounter other inmates. As a pre-trial detainee, he is not required to wear a prison uniform.
– A new study on psychology research is essentially bashing all other psychology studies. The research area has gotten a bad rap recently thanks to retracted research papers, so psychologists set out to discover what was going on. When research is valid, others should be able to duplicate the study and come up with the same results. But when more than 250 scientists tried to re-create 100 studies from three respected psychology journals—working closely with original researchers—the results matched in just 39 cases. Even among those, 83% were found to have smaller effects than first reported, reports the Verge. The studies covered topics like personality, relationships, learning, and memory, and were the kind trusted by therapists and educators, reports the New York Times. A scientist argues the reproducibility issue could apply across other fields, too. "To see it so clearly, on such a large scale—it's unprecedented," adds another. "There is little known about the reproducibility of research in general," says study author Brian Nosek. "And there has been a growing concern that reproducibility may be lower than expected or desired." He adds that scientific journals tend to focus on new research, so those hoping to get published don't waste time testing older studies. Nosek doesn't consider the results "negative or pessimistic," but he hopes they'll lead to self-correction and replication standards. So are these results reproducible? "Even this project itself is not a final word, a last word, a definitive word about reproducibility," Nosek says.
– Those who follow the University of Cincinnati's president on Twitter may have been thrown by a tweet he posted over the weekend, as well as by a speech he made at a local event. "My message tonight: There should be no stigma for those with mental illness. I tried to take my own life 2X. We need to support each other," Santa Ono tweeted Saturday night. Earlier that day, Ono had told 200 or so people attending a fundraiser that he attempted to OD on cold meds and beer when he was 14, and that he tried to kill himself once more in his late 20s, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. The 53-year-old says his revelations, which came during a week when the university was remembering Brogan Dulle, a student who hanged himself in 2014, were his way of shattering the mental illness stigma and supporting others with similar struggles. "I felt that if I really wanted to break the silence, the right thing to do was to take advantage of the fact that I communicate with a lot of people over Twitter and social media," he says. "I wanted to get that message out to a broader audience." Ono's message was lauded online and by colleagues like Dr. Phil Diller, head of the college's Department of Family and Community Medicine, who says Ono was particularly affected after Dulle's death and helped lobby for resources so the school could offer more mental health services, including five free counseling sessions to which every student is now entitled. Meanwhile, Dulle's mom says Ono has become a family friend. "It's amazing that he was willing to share that to help other people," she says. "It's not easy for people to talk about things like that." Ono says he's now been free of symptoms for 25 years and that although he would've been "petrified" to talk about his struggles during his younger years, "now I'm speaking from a much stronger station in life, and it's important for me and others to speak about this to encourage legislators to support more programs." (The suicide rate has jumped for most Americans.)
– Well, that didn't last long. Three judges and a sloppily filled-in ballot have erased Shelly Simonds' dramatic one-vote Virginia House win that made headlines Tuesday, the New York Times reports. Republican incumbent David Yancey held a 10-vote lead after Election Day for Virginia's 94th House District. But a recount Tuesday gave challenger Simonds a one-vote win and Democrats a 50-50 tie in the Virginia House. The recount ended 17 years of Republican control in the Virginia House, the Washington Post notes. But on Wednesday, Republicans took the recount result to court over a ballot that had been discarded by election officials during the recount, the Virginian-Pilot reports. The problem: Bubbles for both Yancey and Simonds had been filled in. Judges on Wednesday ruled the ballot should be counted as a vote for Yancey. Simonds' bubble had a strike through it, and all other votes on the ballot were for Republicans. Yancey and Simonds are now tied at 11,608 votes each, and Republicans hold a 50-49 majority in the Virginia House. The next representative of the 94th House District will now be chosen "by lot," as per state law. The chairman of Virginia's board of elections says this will most likely involve picking a name out of a bowl. Whoever loses the drawing can still petition for a second recount. "I'm really grateful that every vote has been counted," Yancey says. But Democrats are upset the ballot wasn't challenged until after Republicans had approved the recount results and congratulated Simonds on her victory.
– By the time an Avicii concert at Boston's TD Garden ended around 11pm last night, a staging area had been set up nearby to deal with all the concertgoers requiring medical attention—a total of more than 80, about 50 of whom were treated by paramedics at the scene and 36 of whom were hospitalized. "There was a lot of drinking and some drugs. It was really hot in there," one attendee explains to WHDH. An EMS official confirms they mostly saw "heat- and alcohol-related symptoms," and none of the patients were in serious condition. Still, dozens of ambulances were called. "Everyone was having a good time but then when we left there was ambulances and police officers," another concertgoer says. Another adds, according to CNN, "These concerts should be outside ... I think it was a combination of heat and drugs, more of the latter." But Live Nation, the concert promoter, says most of the people hospitalized were actually stopped before entering the venue. "When you have this type of a concert, this techno-rave type thing, we kind of know it may be coming," the EMS official explains. Avicii tweeted afterward, "Just hearing the awful news abt tonight. Its a terrible thing, I rly hope everyone is ok! My thoughts go to those affected & their families."
– Today under the heading of "Why, God, why?": Burger King has introduced a new menu item called the Whopperito. As you might expect, it's made up of the Whopper ingredients (beef, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, onions) but inside a tortilla instead of on a bun. Grub Grade spotted an ad for the Whopperito at a Pennsylvania Burger King, and it's not yet clear whether the product will get a wider release. Some reactions: Consumerist's headline: "The End Is Nigh: Burger King Is Testing Something Called The Whopperito" Most reactions on Twitter are along the lines of "WTF?!" Sample: "There's nothing in the world I want less than a 'Whopperito.'" But one Twitter user points out: "dont act like yall are too good to eat a whopperito yall would f---in do it ironically and enjoy it but never admit it." How does it actually taste? A Grub Grade commenter writes, "It has spicy cheese sauce instead of actual cheese. The whole thing is too 'wet'—the cheese sauce mixed with the vegetables ... is a lot of moisture. The proportion of burger to the rest of the ingredients is way off and the cheese sauce is too spicy. And it’s hard to get all of the ingredients in one bite. I won’t order it again." As Consumerist points out, a Twitter user actually described something he called a "Whopperito" back in 2012: It involved getting a Whopper from Burger King and a Burrito Grande from Taco Bell, "and fold the whopper into the burrito. Whopperito."
– A tense political triangle just got even stickier in advance of Donald Trump's inauguration. China's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday the US shouldn't allow a Taiwanese delegation to attend Friday's ceremony, Reuters reports. This request was passed to both the Trump transition team and to President Obama's people, a Foreign Ministry rep said, per the AP. Taiwan's own Foreign Ministry announced earlier this week that, as per usual protocol during US presidential inaugurations, it would be sending a delegation, including ex-Premier Yu Shyi-kun, a national security adviser, and a sprinkling of legislators. China hasn't been happy with the incoming administration since Trump spoke on the phone with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in early December. A Tsai rep tells Reuters no delegation members are scheduled to meet in any official capacity with members of the Trump administration during their trip.
– The Pacific island nation of Palau boasts some stunning sights—but they don't want just anybody coming to check them out. The country's president, Tommy Remengesau, is planning to introduce legislation restricting hotel development to five-star chains, a move that would effectively make Palau a "luxury only" nation, the Telegraph reports. Remengesau says mass tourism is damaging the environment of Palau, which is made up of around 250 islands, and he wants to pursue a "quality not quantity" strategy. "There's a right way to do things and there's a wrong way to do things," says the president, per the BBC. And when it comes to development, he adds, "the best spots around the world have blended in with the environment." Radio New Zealand notes that the proposal comes after massive growth in tourism over the last couple of years, most of which involved package tours from mainland China. Remengesau says tourism spending actually went up after steps were taken to reduce the number of charter flights from China. (A tourism slogan in Australia is pretty darn explicit.)
– Clarence Thomas broke a decade of silence when the case was being heard, and now, a ruling: The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that even those convicted of reckless, rather than intentional, domestic abuse can be denied gun-ownership rights under a federal ban. The case involved two Maine men who said their guilty pleas for hitting their partners (which led to misdemeanor abuse convictions, per the AP) should not disqualify them from owning a gun. In a 6-2 opinion by Elena Kagan, the justices rejected their claims. The Wall Street Journal reports that the case's notoriety ratcheted up after Thomas' questions, and he issued what USA Today calls a "blistering dissent" (he was joined by Sonia Sotomayor). It reads in part: "In construing the statute before us expansively so that causing a single minor reckless injury or offensive touching can lead someone to lose his right to bear arms forever, the court continues to relegate the Second Amendment to a second-class right."
– Nigeria's military says it has arrested a businessman who belonged to a vigilante group fighting Boko Haram but was secretly a member of the extremist group himself—and "participated actively" in the kidnap of more than 200 schoolgirls in April. The military says the businessman was part of a Boko Haram intelligence unit and coordinated attacks that have killed hundreds of people, the BBC reports. Two women from the intelligence unit have also been arrested. It's not clear whether the arrest of the businessman will help rescue the girls, at least 219 of whom are still believed to be in captivity: Nigeria said a month ago that it knows where the girls are, but fears trying to free them with force could get them killed. Boko Haram, which says it won't free the schoolgirls until captured fighters are freed, has killed more than 2,000 people so far this year, including dozens killed Sunday in attacks on churches just a few miles from where the girls were kidnapped, the AP reports. Vigilante groups say the militants gunned down worshippers before torching at least four churches, killing more than 30 people.
– In what the New York Times calls "an extraordinary punishment that might be without precedent in Olympics history," the Russian track and field team has been banned from competition at the Summer Olympics. Seven months ago, the World Anti-Doping Agency published a scathing report accusing Russia of a doping scheme involving the government, law enforcement, athletes and coaches, and even doctors, a lab, and Russia's anti-doping agency. Since then, the nation's track and field athletes have been suspended from international competition; Russian authorities did not fight that suspension, though Russia has denied the allegations. The IAAF, track and field's global governing body, made the decision about the Rio Games Friday. USA Today says it will almost certainly be challenged, naming one pole vaulter who has threatened to file a discrimination case. Russian officials had volunteered to send only athletes who had never been disciplined for drug use. But, per a source familiar with the IAAF's decision, officials say Russia hasn't done enough to convince the world its athletes are clean. The International Olympic Committee will discuss the IAAF's decision next week, but the Times says it would be unusual for the IOC to amend the ruling. Whistleblowers have alleged that Russia's doping scheme has allowed athletes to appear clean even when they're not. Before the IAAF's vote Friday, Russia's sports minister released an open letter insisting that the country was fighting doping and noting that UK authorities recently conducted independent testing of Russian athletes. But WADA had earlier alleged that many Russian athletes evaded that testing and that Russian officials threatened the testing authorities.
– As the US considers what to do about Syria, there's no shortage of advice on the pros and cons: Pro-strike: Nicholas Kristof is generally wary of the "military toolbox," but it's important here to "reinforce the international norm against weapons of mass destruction," he writes in the New York Times. "For all the risks of hypocrisy and ineffectiveness, it’s better to stand up inconsistently to some atrocities than to acquiesce consistently in them all." Ditto: "Deepening American involvement in yet another Middle East conflict goes against President Obama’s instincts—and ours," write the editors at the Miami Herald. "Unemployment should be his principal focus. But events have a way of intruding on presidential agendas. In this instance, it’s unavoidable. Syria’s brazen disregard for humanitarian norms cannot go unanswered." Bad idea: Just what the world needs, yet another western military intervention in an Arab or Muslim country, writes Seumas Milne at the Guardian. Too many questions persist about the alleged chemical weapons attack, he writes, adding that military strikes would only escalate the war. "The risk is that they will invite retaliation by Syria or its allies—including against Israel—draw the US in deeper and spread the conflict." Better for the West to use its leverage with the rebels to try to force cease-fire talks. Slow down: This is remarkably similar to the run-ups to both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, writes Patrick L Smith at Salon. "Make that tragically similar. History proceeds, we Americans insist on the virtue of ignorance, on learning nothing and knowing nothing. And what we are about to get is what we get, predictably and always." Give the UN investigators the time they need, he urges. Ask Congress: Whatever the final decision, President Obama must consult with Congress about it, writes Amy Davidson at the New Yorker. "Having people, representatives, raise their hands before you do something is not an empty ritual, even when they don’t vote the way you want them to," she writes. The White House can't just ignore the War Powers Act whenever it's convenient. "The Administration needs to be interrogated, sharply, about just what it thinks is going to happen after the two or maybe three days of missile strikes that leaks tell us to expect."
– There are many variations of Christmas carols, but worshipers in Sri Lanka were stunned to find an R-rated version of a classic prayer in their holiday program. Andrew Choksy knew immediately the "Hail Mary" he was reading with references to female genitalia, drugs, guns, and the N-word was penned by rapper Tupac Shakur. "A lot of people were in shock as whether it was a joke or someone would actually rap the song," he tells CNN. "A few of the older ladies in front of us could not stop looking at the printed booklet. Instead of "Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with you," Tupac's version asks the Virgin Mother, "Do you wanna ride or die? I ain’t a killer, but don’t push me. Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin’ p----." Pictures of the explicit lyrics went viral on social media, reports the Guardian. The mistake marred the Joy to the World service, an anti-poverty fundraiser, held earlier this month in Colombo's Nelum Pokuna Theater. A priest from the Colombo Archdiocese tells CNN a "young boy" erred by downloading the wrong version of the prayer in a booklet of Christmas carols. "When people looked at this page, they saw it before the start of the show," he says. "Two people saw it and alerted us to it." Tupac was killed in a still-unsolved Las Vegas shooting in 1996. He is due to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year. (These rappers have a bigger vocabulary than Shakespeare.)
– A young man who went for a pre-Christmas haircut got a disorderly one, while his barber got slammed for disorderly conduct, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Per Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain, the 22-year-old patron headed over to Ruby's Salon on Friday and asked for an inch off the top and the sides shaved, and his stylist, 46-year-old Khaled A. Shabani, set to work. The police report notes the customer asked for a No. 2 buzzer for the sides and that scissors be used to trim the top. The customer soon realized things were "not going well," however, when Shabani started chastising him for not keeping his head still, which earned him an ear-twisting, per the report. The situation got worse when Shabani allegedly "snipped" his ear with the scissors, drawing blood, and used a "zero" buzzer (which provides the closest cut) to swoop right down the middle of his head. The result? The customer got a buzz that left him "looking a bit like Larry from the Three Stooges," DeSpain says. Which is when the customer says he got up to leave, with Shabani allegedly yelling after him, "You want a zero, right?" Shabani was cited for mayhem and disorderly conduct while armed, which the Journal notes is not a criminal charge but a county ordinance violation. "While it is not a crime to give someone a bad haircut, you will get arrested for intentionally snipping their ear with a scissors," DeSpain says. The customer had another stylist elsewhere shave his head all the way to rid himself of the Stooges look. Per a police report, Shabani told cops the ear-snipping was an accident, but BuzzFeed reports on Yelp reviews that note other bad experiences at the salon, including one ex-patron that says his visit felt like it "[bordered] on assault."
– Colorado Rockies rookie Trevor Story is socking dingers and mashing taters at a historic rate through the first four games of the baseball season. ESPN reports the 23-year-old is the first major league rookie to homer in each of his first four professional games and only the fifth player since 1900 to homer in the first four games of the season. He's also the first player ever with two multi-homer games in the first four games of the season. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like it, let alone a rookie," Rockies manager Walt Weiss says. With six home runs through four games, Story is on pace for 243 on the season, Fox Sports reports. The record is 73. "It's legendary what he's doing," ESPN quotes Rockies outfielder Carlos Gonzalez as saying. "He's playing like a Hall of Famer right now.'' In fact, Story's batting gloves and helmet have already been sent to Cooperstown due to his historic start. Story, who only hit 20 home runs in all of last season in the minor leagues, is modest about the whole thing. "I'm not trying to hit home runs," he says. "Sometimes it kind of happens." The Rockies gave Story his chance after the team's starting shortstop was suspended over domestic abuse allegations.
– It's not entirely clear what a country run by Donald Trump might look like. But as Mashable points out, "it's hard to deny just how well the would-be president might fit into the ruthless world of The Seven Kingdoms." See for yourself in a new YouTube video from Huw Parkison of ABC Australia's Insiders program. "Winter is Trumping," spotted by BuzzFeed, drops Trump into scenes from HBO's Game of Thrones where he complains about Pope Francis and smirks at those trapped on the wrong side of The Wall. An unsympathetic Trump also turns away Daenerys Targaryen and her starving Dothraki followers from Qarth, negotiates with Littlefinger, refuses an order from Jon Snow, and promises to "bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding" if he wins the Iron Throne. In King's Landing, at least, that vow leads to the use of wildfire during the Battle of the Blackwater. The video has been viewed more than 415,000 times in just three days. (Trump admits he needs to act more presidential.)
– A large military convoy consisting of 200 to 250 vehicles entered Niger from Libya yesterday, leading many to speculate it might include Moammar Gadhafi or one of his sons, reports the AFP. One report claimed the convoy was heading through Niger on the way to Burkina Faso, a country that has offered Gadhafi asylum. The convoy was reportedly carrying large amounts of cash taken from the Central Bank of Libya in Sirte. Other sources claimed that senior Gadhafi officials also crossed into Niger on Sunday, and Tuareg rebels close to Gadhafi were seen with Libyan forces. But a Gadhafi spokesman was defiant, reports the AP: The longtime dictator is “in excellent health, planning and organizing for the defense of Libya,” where both Gadhafi and his sons remain, the rep told Syrian TV. “We are still strong and capable of turning the tables on NATO."
– A US balloonist who was trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean using hundreds of helium-filled balloons has landed short of his goal in Newfoundland. With sense of humor intact: "This doesn't look like France," he posted on Facebook. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported today that it used a helicopter to retrieve Jonathan Trappe from the remote area where he landed a night earlier. "It's not the destination I set out for, but it's kind of the way with real adventure," Trappe told the CBC. "Adventure isn't what you planned on, it's what you find, and that's what we have today." Trappe landed safely in a rugged area near York Harbour after reporting that he was having trouble controlling his balloons yesterday evening, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Instead of using a conventional hot-air balloon, Trappe was using more than 300 colorful helium-filled balloons, like those used in the animated movie Up. He said his calculations indicated he wasn't going to make it to Europe, so he decided to set down on land before crossing over open ocean.
– Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago police officer charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of black teen Laquan McDonald, has a new gig with the police union: janitor. The AP reports Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police hired Van Dyke—who is on unpaid leave from the police department—about three weeks ago. The Chicago Sun-Times describes him as a "jack-of-all-trades" making $12 an hour. “He might be on the roof, he might be in the office, he does anything we need,” union president Dean Angelo says. According to the union, Van Dyke has been unable to hold a job due to bad publicity, and threats forced his wife to close her business. "This officer is in a very difficult situation financially," Angelo tells the AP. "He has a family, and we would do it for anybody that works as a Chicago police officer." The announcement of Van Dyke's job with the police union on Wednesday sparked immediate criticism, and protesters were outside the Fraternal Order of Police Thursday, NBC Chicago reports. "If I killed someone, I wouldn't get bail," one protester says. "If I killed someone, I don't have a union to make sure that I'm employed." Van Dyke posted bond on $1.5 million bail, which the prosecution was against. The protester calls his hiring by the union a slap in the face to Chicago residents. In a Facebook post, a Catholic priest and social activist calls Van Dyke's hiring a "disgrace" and says "every union member should demand he be fired." Video released last year shows Van Dyke firing 16 shots at the 17-year-old McDonald, who was holding a knife, as McDonald walked away from officers in October 2014.
– Oliver Stone's The Putin Interviews, a four-part documentary for which the director got "extensive access" to the Russian president between July 2015 and February 2017, airs on Showtime June 12-15, and Bloomberg got early access to the first two episodes. Bloomberg notes that they offer "little that's new" about Putin, but that doesn't mean there aren't interesting moments, such as Putin being shown working out on an exercise machine, feeding a horse, or playing ice hockey. Three notable quotes: No bad days: "I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days. I am not trying to insult anyone. That’s just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles." On whether he'd shower in a submarine next to a gay man: "Well, I prefer not to go to the shower with him. Why provoke him? But you know, I’m a judo master." On the prospect of a war between nuclear superpowers: "As of today a missile shield would not protect the territory of the United States. Nobody would survive." Reviews for the documentary are varied, with many criticizing Stone for seeming to encourage Putin instead of challenging him. Foreign Policy says the documentary "somehow manages to both spout the Kremlin line and fall back on the laziest American clichés about Russia," while the Daily Beast calls it a "wildly irresponsible love letter" to Putin. But other outlets are not so critical; Variety, for example, says it's "a surprisingly intimate set of conversations" that creates "a destabilizing portrait" of Putin. (Putin was also recently interviewed by Megyn Kelly.)
– The Clarion nightsnake is hard to spot, so hard to spot that for decades, the only sighting of the species native to one of Mexico's Revillagigedo Islands—the original sighting—was assumed to be a mistake. A joint US-Mexico team, however, managed to rediscover the species found by American naturalist William Beebe in 1936 by using his original field notes to retrace his steps and search for the nocturnal snake, which blends in with the island's rock formations, the AP reports. The expedition found 11 of the snakes, and DNA tests confirmed that the Clarion Island snake is a unique species, reports the BBC. The snake is related to snakes found on part of the Mexican coast more than 500 miles away, and researchers believe its ancestors may have arrived on a tree trunk washed out to sea long ago. Beebe returned from a visit to the island, located 400-plus miles off Mexico's Pacific coast, nearly 80 years ago with a snake preserved in a jar, but his sample had long been considered a labeling error and his find was largely struck from taxonomic registries. The National Museum of Natural History praised the team's work, describing the snake as the "only species ever to be discarded due to a presumed locality error." The rediscovery "is an incredible story of how scientists rely on historical data and museum collections to solve modern-day mysteries about biodiversity in the world we live in," the museum said in a statement.
– New Jersey authorities say a driver fled the scene of an accident with a fire hydrant stuck to his car and then tossed it in the trash. Parsippany police say the motorist drove off after his car struck the hydrant and a mailbox Tuesday. Police followed a trail of water from the scene to a township home, where they found the car and the hydrant. The driver was found in a nearby diner, reports NJ.com. Police say 27-year-old township resident Domingo Moreno has been charged with criminal mischief, hindering apprehension, and tampering with evidence, and was turned over to federal immigration officials, reports the AP. It wasn't known Saturday if he's retained an attorney. Police are investigating the cause and other details of the crash.
– It's another uncanny story about an elderly couple dying just hours apart: In this case, 88-year-old Gene Warrington died on Dec. 27, and his wife of 69 years, Pat, followed eight hours later, reports the Advertiser-Tribune of Tiffin, Ohio. Both had been in hospice, and son Phil tells AP that Gene visited his 86-year-old wife a few days before their deaths, held her hand, and realized she was near death. "He said, 'Life's not going to be fun anymore.'" Phil Warrington thinks his dad willed himself to die because "they did everything in their life together—they were never apart." (Two sisters who were 90-year-old twins died on Christmas Day.)
– Saxby Chambliss will announce today that he doesn't intend to run for re-election when his Senate term ends in 2014, sources tell the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Chambliss reportedly told his senior staff about the decision this morning. Chambliss was considered one of the Republicans most ripe for a primary challenge, the Washington Post observes, thanks to his track record of bipartisan compromise and recent break with Grover Norquist. Potential successors are sure to come out of the woodwork now. Two House members, Paul Broun and Tom Price, had already been considering primary challenges, and more, including Phil Gingrey and Tom Graves, are likely to consider throwing their hats in now. But there are also some bigger name possibilities: A recent poll, for instance, shows that Herman Cain would have trounced Chambliss in a primary, meaning he would be an early favorite if he decided to run.
– A tough-as-nails Cajun star of the History Channel's Swamp People dropped dead in his boat yesterday. The cause of death was not immediately known, but witnesses said Mitchell Guist, who would have turned 49 on Friday, appeared to suffer a seizure shortly after launching his boat for another day of plying the Louisiana bayous for food. Paramedics responding to the scene on Belle River near Baton Rouge were unable to revive him, reports WBRZ-TV. Guist and his brother, Glenn, became unlikely reality stars of the Swamp People series, which follows alligator, snake, frog, squirrel and catfish hunters in Louisiana's Atchafalaya swamp country. "We are extremely saddened to report that our friend and beloved member of the Swamp People family, Mitchell Guist, has passed away," said a History Channel statement. "Mitchell passed on the swamp, doing what he loved."
– Interim Tunisian President Foued Mebazaa has appointed a new prime minister following the resignation of Mohammed Ghannouchi, who bowed to protesters' demands and stepped down yesterday, the BBC reports. Former foreign minister Beji Caid-Essebsi will take Ghannouchi's place, although it's not clear whether the appointment will be enough to mollify the protesters who have returned to the streets of Tunis in large numbers, AP notes. Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri has recorded a message urging Tunisians and Egyptians to rise up against their interim governments.
– Authorities are ready to release Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body to his family, but family members—so far—have nowhere to hold the funeral. The Boston-area mosque the family attends declined a request to hold the suspected Boston bomber's burial and funeral there, Tsarnaev's aunt tells NBC News. And over the weekend, the leader of an organization that arranges Islamic burials and funerals in the Boston area told the Huffington Post, "I would not be willing to do a funeral for him." "This is a person who deliberately killed people," says the aforementioned leader. "There is no room for him as a Muslim. He already left the fold of Islam by doing that. In the Quran it says those who will kill innocent people, they will dwell in the hellfire." Dozens of other Islamic organizations and mosques have distanced themselves from the Tsarnaev brothers, but an imam from Boston's biggest mosque says that while he wouldn't feel ethically comfortable leading a prayer for Tamerlan, "I would not stop people from praying upon him."
– On Wednesday, Oklahoma state Sen. Ralph Shortey was suspended for "disorderly behavior." On Thursday, more details emerged as Shortey was charged with three felonies involving child prostitution, the Oklahoman reports. The charges came out of a police bust on March 9, when cops say they found Shortey at a Super 8 motel in Moore with a 17-year-old boy in a room stinking of pot. An investigation was kicked off after the boy's girlfriend called his dad, who in turn contacted the authorities, per the Tulsa World. Police say they came across a text on one of the teen's devices that indicated the boy was looking to make money for spring break, to which they believe Shortey, using a screen name, responded, "Would you be interested in 'sexual' stuff?" Cops say they also found an open pack of condoms with Shortey's belongings; the teen told them he'd known the senator for a year or so and that they'd hooked up through a Craigslist personal ad, per the court affidavit. A judge has set bail for the 35-year-old Shortey, who's married with children, at $100,000, though he hasn't yet turned himself in. (Cleveland County prosecutors say he'll be arrested if he doesn't.) Shortey has been charged with engaging in child prostitution, engaging in prostitution within 1,000 feet of a church, and transporting a minor for prostitution. Meanwhile, Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb is asking for the GOP senator's resignation, noting that "Oklahomans deserve to be represented by those above reproach." (Some think child prostitutes are the ones who should be arrested.)
– More than 900 students were absent from Orlando-area schools on Thursday after authorities say a man on Twitter threatened to shoot students and put pipe bombs inside campuses, per the AP. There were reportedly 379 absences at Orange's Liberty Middle School, 357 at Orlando's Boone High School, 174 at Orlando's Edgewater High School, and an undisclosed number at Orlando's Colonial High School. The FBI said Wednesday it was looking into the threats, but didn't think they were credible. Authorities are searching for a 23-year-old transient named Jesus Henry Kong (aka Jessie Eloah Calix and Jesus Matute) they say is responsible. "Although the FBI does not believe that the threat is credible, as the subject does not reside in Florida, we will continue to work with local partners to locate the subject," said an FBI special agent on Wednesday, per the Orlando Sentinel. Kong has lived in Florida, California, Virginia, and Maryland.
– A new study says America's wealthy live longer than its poor, which is hardly surprising. But it also says low-income people live longer in certain places—like affluent cities including New York and San Francisco, NPR reports. Why isn't clear, but lead study author Raj Chetty of Stanford University was surprised. "I would have thought these very expensive big cities ... for most poor would be stressful and would be places with poor health among the poor, but that's not at all what these data suggest," he tells CBS News. Media reports note that local health policies may have an effect (New York City and San Francisco banned trans fats and restricted tobacco use early on), and Chetty agrees that "thinking about policies that change health behaviors at a local level is likely to be important." The study's other findings highlight the crushing effects of inequality. By analyzing over a billion tax and Social Security records, the Stanford researchers found that the richest 1% of men live roughly 15 years longer than the poorest 1% of men. And in the 21st century, life expectancy has risen 2.3 years for the richest 5% of men and 3 years for the richest 5% of women, while the poorest 5% of Americans saw hardly any improvement. An overall three-year boost in lifespan, the Washington Post notes, is about the difference we'd expect to see from curing cancer. As Chetty puts it, "The poorest men in America have a life expectancy comparable to those living in Sudan and Pakistan." (One study says that eating like the Japanese will make you live longer.)
– The Conservative Party swept to power today in Britain's Parliamentary elections, winning a wholly unexpected and resounding victory and bringing the election to a much-quicker-than-expected conclusion. Polls ahead of Election Day showed Conservatives locked in a tight race with the opposition Labour Party, raising the possibility of days or weeks of negotiations to form a government. Instead, the party won an outright majority, taking 326 of 650 seats. But as Prime Minister David Cameron returns to 10 Downing Street in a stronger position than before, a trio of big names are out: Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, and Independence Party leader Nigel Farage have resigned in the election's wake. More: Line of the night, from Cameron: "I want my party, and I hope a government that I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost—the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom." CNN runs down the implications of the Conservative Party win. Two big ones: Expect to start reading the word "Brexit" much more often, with Cameron having vowed to hold a 2017 referendum on whether the UK should remain a part of the EU. And could Scotland leave Britain? CNN presents the possibility, noting that the Scottish National Party's victory was a staggering one, with it taking 56 out of the 59 UK parliamentary seats in Scotland. CNN points to "rumblings in the British press" that such an SNP victory could spur yet another referendum, this one in 2016, on a split. The view from Michael Wolff: "It might be argued that the Cameron government's campaign last year to defeat the referendum for Scottish independence helped propel the popularity of the SNP, which in turn undermined the Labour Party's traditional strength in Scotland, thereby helping to [ensure] the Tory victory," he writes in USA Today. Interesting side-reading: The biggest loser of the night? Russell Brand. Among the night's most fascinating victors: Mhairi Black, who becomes the UK's youngest lawmaker since 1667.
– Australian DJs Michael Christian and Mel Greig have broken their silence on their royal prank call gone horribly wrong, reports the Guardian, tearfully telling an interviewer that they're "shattered, gutted, heartbroken" over the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha. "No one could've imagined this to happen," Christian said. "Naturally, we're shattered. We're people, too." "There's not a minute that goes by that I don't think about what (Saldanha's) family is going through, and the thought that we may have contributed to it is gut-wrenching," says Greig. The DJs meant no harm, adds Christian: "At every single point it was innocent on our behalf." Innocent or not, Greig and Christian "will not return to the airwaves until further notice," says parent company Southern Cross Austereo, which has also axed their show, halted all prank calls, and nixed ads amid an internal review, CNN reports. But the station is doubling down on its decision to air the prank, saying that it had tried to contact King Edward VII's Hospital no fewer than five times to talk about the recording before airing it. "It is absolutely true to say that we actually did attempt to contact those people on multiple occasions," says Southern Cross' CEO. It's not clear if the hospital responded, notes the AFP, but it has mounted a withering assault against the station in the aftermath of Saldanha's death.
– In 2011, White House speechwriter Jon Favreau penned some ominous words predicting the disastrous effects of a failure to raise the debt limit, including indefinite delays on Social Security checks and halted troop pay and veterans' benefits. President Obama never had to give the speech, because the debt ceiling was raised "at the last possible moment," Favreau recounts in the Daily Beast—but the showdown still caused serious issues like the downgrading of the US credit rating. "The obvious lesson from this entirely self-inflicted fiasco is never, ever to treat America’s bill-paying authority as a bargaining chip in political negotiations," Favreau writes. But House Republicans haven't learned the lesson, and once again they're holding the economy hostage to their demands. Because of the language we use to discuss it, many people think that raising the ceiling is "a green light to pile up more debt," while "breaching the debt limit would trigger an economic shutdown of epic proportions." So let's call Republicans what they are, says Favreau: "Hostage takers, unrepresentative of the once-proud Republican Party, and unfit to govern the greatest nation on Earth." Click for his full column. Meanwhile, in the New York Times, Paul Krugman agrees: Failure to hike the limit would be a "financial catastrophe," not only returning us to a likely recession but also shaking faith in US bonds—the "bedrock on which the world financial system rests."
– The criminal charges were dropped last year; now, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo are settling her lawsuit over claims he tried to rape her, a source tells the AP. The settlement, whose terms are likely to be kept secret, is poised to mark the end of a long legal battle. A Bronx Supreme Court justice oversaw the settlement, as well as another deal centered on Diallo's lawsuit against the New York Post, which labeled her a prostitute. The parties will likely appear in court next week in the Bronx, insiders tell the New York Times. Meanwhile, charges remain against Strauss-Kahn for alleged involvement in a prostitution ring—but French judges are mulling whether to drop those charges, a decision that would come by Dec. 19. August saw a separate rape case against the former International Monetary Fund chief dropped.
– A British marine killed in Afghanistan left 32 of his closest friends a hefty parting gift: $150,000 for a Las Vegas vacation, reports the Huffington Post. Before David Hart left for duty, he took out a life insurance policy for roughly $400,000, and gave strict instructions that a portion of that money should send his friends and their girlfriends to Sin City, saying ‘Go and have a good time and spend all this money.” Hart was a big fan of holidays himself, a friend remembers, saying their "lad's holidays" were “always the best two weeks of the year.” The remainder of his policy will go to charity for injured Marines, and to his family, who isn’t at all put off by their late son’s support for a good time. Hart, described by his fellow officers as ‘the perfect Marine,’ was killed in Afghanistan after a Taliban bomb explosion, on the day before his 24th birthday, reports the Daily Mail.
– Thailand's prime minister has canceled an appearance at the annual Southeast Asia summit as rioters threaten to topple his government. Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency yesterday hours after anti-government protesters stormed the country's parliament in Bangkok. The decree bans spreading information that threatens national security and allows authorities to arrest, detain and search people without court order, CNN notes. "The situation in Bangkok is worrying, and it's a somber backdrop to our discussions," Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo said as the summit opened today in Vietnam. Last year's summit was hijacked by the same red-shirted Thai protesters, forcing some visiting leaders to be airlifted out by helicopter, notes AP. Protesters have vowed not to disperse until Vejjajiva dissolves parliament. The group, known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, supports former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
– Seven years ago, an 8-year-old girl was pulled from her mother's arms by the tsunami in Indonesia; now, word is she's been discovered alive. An acquaintance brought a 15-year-old girl to her grandfather's home this week; his name—Ibrahim—was the only one she could remember, state news reported. The acquaintance had found the girl in a nearby coffee shop, where she'd been taken for a beggar. Ibrahim was sure the girl, who was reportedly seeking her old home, was his missing granddaughter Wati, the Huffington Post reports. Her parents later recognized a mole and scar on her face. The rest of her story remains a mystery so far, MSNBC notes. It's a storybook tale—let's hope it isn't too good to be true.
– It is one of the craziest custody disputes you could imagine. A city in Oklahoma wants the state to give it back "Old Sparky," an electric chair last used about 50 years ago. McAlester officials want to put it on display as a piece of history. But the state says it's keeping Old Sparky in storage, just in case the relic needs to be fired up again. "That would be possible," a state DOC spokesperson tells the McAlester News-Capital. Old Sparky had its heyday from 1915 to 1966, when it was used to execute 82 inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. It now sits mothballed in a state facility, as the city and the DOC bicker over who owns it. The newspaper has a letter from the DOC to the city in 2010 in which it explains why the state needed to keep the chair. “In the event our lethal injection protocol is ruled unconstitutional, the electric chair must be used by the state as the back-up method of execution." That might have seemed far-fetched at the time, but the state's lethal injection policies are now, in fact, under review after the botched execution of an inmate last month. Tennessee, meanwhile, just brought back its electric chair. All that is understood, says McAlester's mayor, but ... Old Sparky? “That chair has not been used since 1966,” Steve Harrison tells the Guardian. “My assumption would be if it ever got to the point the electric chair was needed again they would start with a new one." (Click to read about how lawmakers elsewhere prefer the return of the firing squad.)
– Two Nebraska children may have saved their own lives and the lives of others when they texted 911 from inside their allegedly drunk father's car, WKBN reports. Fourteen-year-old Mackenzie and 12-year-old Ethan were driving through Nebraska with their 44-year-old dad, Jason Behrens, on the way to a vacation in Colorado. But they say Behrens was drunk, swerving all over the road and nearly crashing. "When a car passed, you could hear how close it was, you could hear the metal," Ethan tells NTV. "I got really, really scared, and I just started praying a lot." Mackenzie says they had told their father multiple times they didn't want to go with him because he was "really drunk" and they didn't "want to die." The children say they begged Behrens to pull over, but he ignored them. Then, after barely escaping a head-on collision, they started texting 911. Fortunately, they were in one of only two Nebraska counties that allow people to do that. They convinced Behrens to stop at a Burger King, and police caught up with them there. Police say Behrens was three times over the legal limit, and he was arrested. Ethan and Mackenzie say it was hard to call the police on their dad, but they had no choice, and this wasn't the first time he's driven drunk with them. The New York Daily News reports the incident happened last month, but the kids are speaking out now to thank police. "They, really, really, really saved our lives,” Ethan tells WKBN.
– One thing you'll want to avoid on Thanksgiving—or at any time in the near future—is romaine lettuce. The CDC issued an alert two days before the holiday warning that no romaine is safe to eat as an E. coli outbreak spreads, reports NBC News. It doesn't matter where the romaine is from or even if you or a loved one has eaten some and not gotten sick. The advice from the CDC is the same: Toss it. A bag of mixed salad that includes romaine? Toss it. In fact, the alert includes advice on how to clean your refrigerator if romaine has been inside it recently. So far, 32 people in 11 states have gotten sick, and 13 required hospitalization. No deaths have been reported. "This advice includes all types or uses of romaine lettuce, such as whole heads of romaine, hearts of romaine, and bags and boxes of precut lettuce and salad mixes that contain romaine, including baby romaine, spring mix, and Caesar salad," the CDC said. "If you do not know if the lettuce is romaine or whether a salad mix contains romaine, do not eat it and throw it away." (Tainted water was blamed in a different outbreak involving romaine earlier this year.)
– Robert De Niro is set to play NFL coach Vince Lombardi, but—in more casting news from a different film—the role of Captain America is still up for grabs. Though a Marvel insider told Fox, "We are bracing ourselves for 'that guy from The Office' to land Captain America," Deadline reports John Krasinski is out of the running, and only two original contenders—Mike Vogel from Cloverfield and Garrett Hedlund from Tron: Legacy—are still under consideration for the superhero role. Meanwhile, ESPN announced De Niro will play the title role in Lombardi, tentatively scheduled for 2012, the AP reports. The film will focus on the Hall of Fame coach transforming the NFL's worst team, the Green Bay Packers, into league champions.
– The world's biggest cigarette consumer is taking steps to stamp out smoking in indoor public spaces—and unlike earlier anti-smoking measures in China, officials say this one will be strictly enforced with clear penalties put in place, CNN reports. A third of all smoking worldwide takes place in the country, and "unless there is change in China, we won't proceed further in reducing the tobacco epidemic in the world," a senior adviser at the World Lung Foundation says. Smoking rates in China have dipped a little over the last few decades, but population growth means there are now more smokers in the country than even before, the New York Times finds. The average number of cigarettes smoked daily per smoker has actually risen since 1980, from 15 to 22. Unlike in other countries, however, greater independence has not caused an increase in smoking among Chinese women: Only around 4% of the country's smokers are female, down from 8% in 1980.
– A University of Virginia sociologist who's not convinced that liberal families are better off than conservative ones has what he says is more data to back up his theory. W. Bradford Wilcox says that not only do families who live in "red" conservative counties "enjoy somewhat stronger families" than those who live in "blue" liberal counties: He's also analyzed data about individual families, not just geographical areas, and finds that self-identified Republicans are more likely than self-identified Democrats to be married and less likely to be divorced, the New York Times reports. And of married people between the ages of 20 and 60 polled in the survey on the Institute of Family Studies website, Wilcox found that 67% of GOPers reported they were "very happy" in matrimony, while only 60% of Democrats were, and 60% of independents. The gap did shrink to three percentage points once certain other demographic factors were taken into account (e.g., whites and religious people were more likely to say they have happy marriages). However, Kevin Drum writes for Mother Jones that we should probably "call it a tie" instead, since the study was done for a right-wing website—"You have to figure it's as friendly toward Republicans as possible," he notes—and because Republicans may simply be less likely to admit when their marriages are rocky. "As Wilcox says, 'Perhaps Republicans are more optimistic, more charitable, or more inclined to look at their marriages through rose-colored glasses,'" Drum points out. But David Leonhardt writes for the Times that "it also seems possible that the more respect and even reverence for the idea of marriage in conservative communities affects people's behavior and attitudes toward their marriages," adding that, "given the widespread anxiety right now about upward mobility … it's worth looking for potential lessons from any political ideology." (A stunning 99% of evangelical Christians said they were happy a few years back.)
– Big news in the fight against HIV: Kaiser Permanente, San Francisco's biggest private insurer, says that over a 32-month period, not a single one of its clients taking Truvada contracted HIV. Truvada is the name of the daily pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, pill that the CDC recommended for use in at-risk populations earlier this year. The new study followed 657 San Franciscans (all but four of them gay men) who asked their doctors for Truvada, and found that while condom use did decline—a major fear of PrEP critics—no one contracted HIV between mid-2012 and February of this year, the New York Times reports. More than 40% of the subjects said they used fewer condoms after starting Truvada, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, and while half of the subjects got syphilis, gonorrhea, or chlamydia within a year of starting PrEP, the Times notes most sexual infections other than HIV can be cured with antibiotics. And rates of those infections were already climbing among gay men before PrEP came on the market, a doctor notes. This was an observational study of the $50-a-month drug; a clinical trial last year actually gave some participants a placebo instead of Truvada. That study, however, was stopped early—because it became so obvious that Truvada worked that it was unethical to keep some of the subjects on a placebo. This new study "takes it out of the realm of clinical trials and into the real world," one doctor and infectious disease expert says. An AIDS activist echoes that, noting the study "fills in a critical gap by showing that PrEP can prevent infections in a real-world public health program." "This is very reassuring data," adds the lead author of the new study. "It tells us that PrEP works even in a high-risk population." According to ABC 7, the study population also included "injection drug users."
– An animator who helped bring lovable creatures to life in movies like Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar 2 has been arrested for what Humane Society workers describe as one of the worst cases of animal abuse they've ever seen. DreamWorks employee Young Song is accused of shooting his neighbor's muzzled German Shepherd puppy with a pellet gun and then beating it to death with a hammer, reports the New York Daily News. Song has pleaded not guilty to a felony count of animal cruelty that carries up to four years in jail, though the incident was captured on surveillance video. "When our officers first viewed the videotape, one of our officers had tears in his eyes. He'd never seen anything like this before," the head of the Pasadena Humane Society tells the Los Angeles Times. "In my 31 years at this animal shelter I've never seen anything like this."
– Syria is being flooded by al-Qaeda fighters crossing in from Iraq "to help, to liaise, to carry out terrorist attacks," according to "solid information and intelligence" obtained by the Iraqi government, reports Reuters. Further, Iraq's foreign minister today noted that the warning about the al-Qaeda flow is nothing new—Baghdad has apparently been telling Damascus about it for years, reports the AP. In other Syria news: Don't expect to see UN monitors back in Syria anytime soon. The New York Times reports that the officer in charge of the observers today explained that the violence had hit "unprecedented levels," and that until there is an actual cease-fire, it will be impossible to restart the mission, which was put on ice in mid-June. Following yesterday's news that the bodies of the pilots flying the Turkish jet downed by Syria had been found: Al-Jazeera adds that the US deep-sea exploration vessel that found them was the E/V Nautilus, owned by explorer Robert Ballard ... who discovered the Titanic's wreck in 1985. And WikiLeaks is once again making waves for something other than Julian Assange's legal mess: It today started releasing some 2.4 million Syrian emails.
– Canada is still getting the hang of this legal marijuana thing, and one 9-year-old girl seems to be ahead of the curve. Elina Childs, who belongs to the Canadian version of the Girl Scouts, called Girl Guides, set up her wagon outside an Edmonton pot store and unloaded all 30 boxes of her cookies in just 45 minutes, reports CTV News. "They sold out very quickly," she says, giving her dad credit for the idea of pitching to customers who might soon have the munchies. Elina has cystic fibrosis and cannot be around smoke, but "this was one day she could benefit from smoking," dad Seann Childs tells the Canadian Press. (After just one hour of legalization came a milestone ticket to a driver.)
– British police have arrested a 19-year-old that they believe is involved with LulzSec’s recent wave of “AntiSec” digital attacks—though the group seems to be denying it. Investigators found the teen with help from the FBI, and have charged him under the Computer Misuse Act and the Fraud Act, ZDNet reports. But LulzSec’s official Twitter account chimed in, saying, “Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now... wait... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?” Some tweets from LulzSec’s new ally, Anonymous, might shed some light on that. “The good news everybody: Ryan has little to do with #LulzSec besides running IRC,” one Anonymous member tweeted, according to Gizmodo. Another member identified the Ryan in question as Ryan Cleary, a hacker who last gained notoriety for, of all things, attacking Anonymous. Cleary lived in Wickford, Essex, the same location as the man arrested today. “If it is Ryan then they’re alright. lol,” another Anonymous member tweeted.
– The US rebuffed Iraq's request for airstrikes as insurgents gained strength, but American drones were already collecting intelligence on the militants. The secret drone program, carried out with the consent of the Iraqi government since last year, failed to predict the rapid advance of militants who have now seized several cities, officials tell the Wall Street Journal. "It's not like it did any good," one US official says. President Obama says "all the options" are being considered to help Iraq and while the use of ground troops has been ruled out, officials are considering expanding the drone program. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants have vowed to take the fight to Baghdad, and although the capital is not expected to fall, Americans in Iraq are keeping an eye on the exit. Officials say they have stepped up plans for the evacuation of the US Embassy in Baghdad, and the BBC reports that American defense contractors working with the Iraqi military are being shifted to safer areas. Hundreds of contractors "are being temporarily relocated by their companies due to security concerns in the area," according to a State Department spokeswoman.
– A new timepiece the size of a dining-room table is being hailed as perhaps the world's most precise: It's "like measuring time over a hundred years to a precision of several nanoseconds," says Andrew Ludlow, co-author of a study behind what's being called the ytterbium optical lattice clock. Until now, the standard for time precision in the US has been a cesium-based clock. Some 9.19 billion oscillations of its electromagnetic signal defines a second. But the ytterbium clock oscillates about a quadrillion times per second, allowing observers to "divide time into finer and finer intervals," Ludlow notes. Those intervals are extremely regular; indeed, two of the clocks have set a record for stability, Science Daily reports. Their timing would be perfect for about as long as the universe has existed. Experts must measure the cesium clock across five days for the most precise readings, whereas the ytterbium clock requires just a second to offer the same level of precision. Why would we ever need such a thing? It could mean better GPS, for example: Because the navigation systems are in space, their time perception isn't quite the same as ours on Earth. Scientists could better correct for that using a more precise clock, CNN notes.
– A Texas woman was caught on surveillance video stealing a wedding ring off the finger of a dead woman Friday, the Odessa American reports. The body of Lois Hicks, 88, was in an open casket at Odessa's Sunset Funeral Home. The woman's family had just left the funeral home after a visitation service when a stranger parked outside, came in, and asked to use the restroom. Instead, the funeral home's manager says, she walked into the room with Hicks' coffin, grabbed the ring off her finger, and left. Hicks' daughter says some of her mother's skin was actually torn off during the theft. "I can't believe someone would be that low," she says. The surveillance video captured the alleged thief's license plate, and the family is pressing charges. The incident is being investigated as a felony, KOSA reports. The suspect is described as a heavy-set white woman who was wearing a brown long-sleeved sweater, black sweat pants, and black sandals at the time; she drove off in a red or maroon four-door Saturn.
– It's all up to President Trump now. The House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines Monday to release a controversial memo that alleges wrongdoing on the part of the Justice Department and the FBI in regard to the Russia investigation, reports Politico. Democrats are fuming over the decision. Trump now has five days to decide whether to allow the memo to be released; his approval is necessary because it's a classified document. The memo alleges that the FBI and the Justice Department improperly used government surveillance during the investigation into Russian election interference and contacts with Trump's campaign, per the AP. The vote to release the memo comes after committee Republicans, led by chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, pushed for its disclosure. The memo addresses a dossier of allegations against Trump compiled by a former British spy, and questions over whether it was improperly used to obtain surveillance warrants. The panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, announced the vote results Monday while criticizing the Republicans' decision. Democrats generally say the memo cherry-picks facts and presents a distorted view of things.
– Lawmakers from both parties have been criticizing the Justice Department's tough new policy that requires immigrant children to be separated from their parents at the border. On Friday, President Trump joined the critics, with a familiar caveat. "I hate it," he said. "I hate to see separation of parents and children." But he suggested the administration had no choice, asserting that "the Democrats forced that law upon our nation." A host of outlets, including BuzzFeed, CNN, and the Washington Post say Trump is incorrect about that. Under the administration's new zero-tolerance policy, every adult caught crossing the border illegally is being prosecuted, and the children are being separated while their parents await their legal cases to play out. Related coverage: Compromise in peril: House Republicans were poised to float two immigration plans, the more moderate of which would hit many of Trump's wishes (including $25 billion for border security) while ending the separation policy, reports the Hill. (See below for more on the latter.) However, Trump may have torpedoed its chances Friday when he told Fox that he wouldn't sign it, reports the AP, which now sees "eleventh-hour confusion" on the issue.
– About a dozen sites worldwide can boast that they have been validated by the Catholic Church as being sites where the Virgin Mary has appeared—and for the first time, that list includes a US location. A tiny chapel 17 miles northeast of Green Bay, Wisc., called Our Lady of Good Hope joins the likes of Mexico's Our Lady of Guadalupe and France's shrine at Lourdes, both of which draw millions each year. In 1859, a Belgian immigrant named Adele Brise said Mary—a dazzling white figure with cascading blond hair and a crown of stars, hovering between a pair of trees—appeared to her three times and instructed her to spend her life teaching Catholic beliefs to children. A two-year investigation that concluded on Dec. 8 found no evidence of fraud or heresy, but did find a long history of shrine-related conversions, cures, and other indications of divine intervention, leading Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay to declare “with moral certainty” that Brise had encounters “of a supernatural character” that are “worthy of belief.” The Vatican, wary of fraud, gives local bishops the primary responsibility of evaluating apparitions, in part by using guidelines set by the Vatican in 1978. The New York Times notes one "striking sign of a divine presence:" During 1871's Great Peshtigo fire, which killed 1,200 and destroyed the surrounding lands, the shrine's grounds and the people gathered there were spared.
– Police are no longer seeking the whereabouts of a blue Porsche after a quadruple murder in an upscale Washington, DC, neighborhood—but they've released video of a "person of interest" who may have been driving it before it was found burning behind a church. In surveillance video, a hooded figure in dark clothing can be seen moving outside the house where Savvas and Amy Savopoulos were found dead after a fire on Thursday, NBC Washington reports. Two other bodies found in the home are believed to be the couple's 10-year-old son, Philip, and Veralicia Figueroa, one of their housekeepers. Their other housekeeper, Nelitza Gutierrez, tells the Washington Post that she thought something odd was going on Wednesday when she received messages asking her not to come in the next day. Gutierrez says Savvas Savopoulos gave conflicting information in different messages and sounded unlike himself. "It was something very suspicious because I felt his voice was really tense," she tells the Post. "And it was different than what he had said to me before." She says she also found it strange that Savopoulos said Figueroa was spending the night at the home, something she had never known to happen before. Deepening the mystery, police documents seen by the Post detail some strange events in the surrounding area that week, including reports of a possible prowler, a man banging at the door of a home, and an "aggressive vacuum cleaner salesman" at another home.
– Now that he's out of the White House, lost his main financial backer, and been ousted from Breitbart News, what comes next for Steve Bannon? That remained very much unclear on Wednesday, although one thing was clarified: "Fox News will not be hiring Steve Bannon," a network spokesperson tells the Hill. That's not a huge surprise, notes Adweek, which points out a passage in the new book by Michael Wolff (a co-founder of Newser) that makes clear Bannon and Fox honcho Rupert Murdoch are not on great terms—"not least because Murdoch had Donald Trump's ear." Bannon reportedly doesn't think Murdoch understands US politics and told Trump as much. More on the Bannon fallout: The midterms: Bannon had vowed to lead a slate of anti-establishment candidates into office this year, "but it's unclear—and unlikely—that Bannon could continue to be a player in politics during this year's midterms without major donors behind him and after being disavowed by the president, writes Rosie Gray at the Atlantic. What's more, Bannon also has lost his radio show on SiriusXM, because the company's contract was with Breitbart, not Bannon. His mistake: At CNN, Chris Cillizza thinks Bannon made one huge mistake in regard to Trump, who brought him from the political fringe to the White House. "Somewhere along the way, Bannon forgot that Trump was the boss and he was the underling," writes Cillizza. "Everything that happened after that was sadly predictable."
– Name your favorite culprit for the mass extinction that wiped out nearly every life form on Earth 250 million years ago. A spectacular asteroid, perhaps? Massive volcanic eruptions? Both are popular theories, but a new study encourages sleuths of the Permian era to think much, much smaller, reports the Guardian. As in microscopically smaller. MIT scientists propose that a microbe called Methanosarcina proliferated in the oceans, disgorging huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere and making life in the water and on land all but impossible for most species. "In short, a microbial innovation may have tipped over the balance to cause the Great Dying," explains Ars Technica. So what caused the microbes to explode in numbers? That's where those volcanoes may have played a role, though a lesser one than has been long surmised. Scientists think a flurry of eruptions in Siberia resulted in a huge increase in nickel, upon which Methanosarcina happens to thrive. An estimated 90% of marine species were wiped out in the changed atmosphere, along with 70% of land vertebrates. It took millions of years for both to recover, with the first dinosaurs showing up about 20 million years later, reports Reuters. (Scientists recently determined that the Permian mass extinction happened really, really quickly.)
– US District Court Judge Ann Donnelly issued an injunction barring the government from deporting anyone during an emergency hearing Saturday night in Brooklyn, and her court was not the only one to do so. Reuters reports that judges in three additional states—Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington state—have since followed suit. Reuters points out that these legal moves are curbs that do not eradicate President Trump's executive order that severely limits immigration, but observes "the growing number ... could complicate the administration's effort to enforce it." The former is exactly what an unnamed senior White House official pointed out, reportedly telling NBC's Kelly O'Donnell such rulings do "not undercut the President's executive order." The official continues, "All stopped visas will remain stopped. All halted admissions will remain halted. All restricted travel will remain prohibited. ... The order remains in place." But the pressure shows no sign of easing: The AP reports that the attorneys general of 15 states and the District of Columbia will issue a joint statement branding Trump's ban as unconstitutional and at odds with "a bedrock principle" of the US: religious liberty. The states: Washington, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Virginia, Oregon, Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois, New Mexico, Iowa, Maine, and Maryland. What Trump had to say Sunday morning on Twitter: "Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world - a horrible mess!"
– In what the UK's Civil Aviation Authority says would be "a totally unacceptable" first, a British Airways plane landing at Heathrow appears to have been hit by a drone on Sunday, the BBC reports. The Airbus A320 coming into London from Geneva had 132 passengers and five crew members aboard, a BA spokesman tells CNN; the incident was reported after the BA pilot touched down. "Our aircraft landed safely, was fully examined by our engineers and it was cleared to operate its next flight," the rep says. No arrests have been made (it's unclear whose drone it may have been), and the aviation security arm of the Metropolitan Police is looking into the matter. Police note that flying a drone too close to a plane is illegal, NBC News reports, with punishment including up to five years in prison. Specifically, drones over 15 pounds can't fly higher than 400 feet and aren't permitted to fly "beyond the direct unaided line of sight" of its operator or near crowds or buildings. Not that the incident came as a total surprise: The head of the International Air Transport Association had previously noted the "real and growing threat" of a drone-plane hit, while a British Airline Pilots Association rep says it was "only a matter of time." A recent study by Bard College's Center for the Study of the Drone underscores the danger in US airspace, with 327 "close encounters" of drones flying within 500 feet of manned aircraft between December 2013 and September 2015, and at least 28 pilots "[maneuvering] to avoid a collision with a drone." Frighteningly, aviation experts say they don't really know what would happen if a drone got sucked into a plane's engine, a Civil Aviation Authority rep tells NBC. (A drone recently came within 200 feet of a plane at LAX.)
– David Petraeus will indeed testify on Capitol Hill about the Benghazi attack, reports AP. The former CIA chief will appear before the House Intelligence committee on Friday, though the hearing will be closed to the public. Petraeus visited Libya secretly last month, and lawmakers are antsy to hear his own report about the trip. CNN, meanwhile, quotes one of the general's former aides as saying Petraeus is largely avoiding the media coverage of his affair and resignation, and instead focusing on his family. "He describes it as putting one foot in front of the other, and then repeating the process," says retired Col. Peter Mansoor. "So it's going to be a long, long road of healing for them. He understands that and he's focusing on it."
– When asked Friday if Tampa has a serial killer on the loose, police chief Brian Dugan didn't deny the possibility. "We can call it what we want," the Tampa Bay Times quotes Dugan as saying. "If that brings attention to it, that's fine." Three people have been killed in the Florida city's Seminole Heights neighborhood over the past 11 days. The victims aren't connected to each other and none were doing anything wrong when they were killed, but Dugan says there's "no doubt" the murders are related. Police say all three victims were shot while they were alone at night. And all three were regular bus riders shot at or near bus stops. The three murders happened within a mile of each other. Benjamin Mitchell, a 22-year-old believed to be the first victim, was shot and killed Oct. 9 while waiting for a bus. The body of the second victim, 32-year-old Monica Hoffa, was found in a vacant lot Oct. 11. And on Thursday, 20-year-old Anthony Naiboa, who was autistic, was killed after accidentally taking the wrong bus home from work and ending up in Seminole Heights. Dugan says police, who had "blanketed the area" after the first two killings, heard the shots that killed Naiboa, but the shooter still managed to escape. He says from now on anyone walking alone in Seminole Heights will be considered a potential victim or suspect, WTSP reports. Police have no motive or suspect, though they are attempting to identity a person seen in grainy surveillance footage. A $25,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to an arrest or conviction.
– A 75-year-old Michigan woman has been found guilty of the second-degree murder of her teenage grandson last year. The jury rejected Sandra Layne's claim that she shot Jonathan Hoffman, 17, in self-defense. The teen was shot multiple times and jurors were played a harrowing 911 call in which he pleaded for help, the Detroit Free Press reports. "My grandma shot me. I'm going to die," he said, before being shot again in the stomach. Layne, who appeared shocked by the guilty verdict, claimed she had been afraid of the grandson sent to live with her to finish his last year in high school and she shot him after he hit her during an argument over money, the AP reports. Layne's daughter says her mother is a "monster" who fully deserves to be in prison for the boy's death. She described the guilty verdict as "a final vindication for my son, to restore his good name and reputation."
– The Florida teen accused of killing his parents with a hammer before throwing a party told his best friend that he was possessed by the devil and had taken three ecstasy pills before the murder. The friend says Tyler Hadley, 17, confessed to the killings and showed him the bodies after the last guests had left, the New York Daily News reports. "I opened the door," says the friend. "I saw bloody sheets piled everywhere. I looked down and I saw his dad's leg there." The friend tipped off police, who found the bodies in the home's master bedroom under a pile of furniture. Ecstasy doesn't usually cause violent reactions, but the teen "could have been having a first episode psychotic break that was made worse or triggered" by a large dose of the drug, a neuropharmacologist tells ABC. The friend also told police that Hadley's plan was to commit suicide by taking 10 Percocet pills "once he got caught, but that failed." Hadley, who is on suicide watch in jail, has been charged with second-degree murder. His attorney entered a not guilty plea on his behalf yesterday.
– There's no end in sight to the horrific tit-for-tat Mexican drug cartel murders. In the latest atrocity, some 18 decapitated and dismembered corpses were found dumped in two cars near a lake in Guadalajara popular with tourists and retired Americans, reports ABC. The bodies, which were so badly mutilated that investigators have not been able to determine the gender of all the victims, appeared to have been refrigerated after death. Police believe the slaughter was the work of the Zetas cartel, which is waging a bloody turf war against the Sinaloa cartel in the area. The killings have been linked to the attempted kidnap of 12 people in the area earlier in the week, AP reports. A woman arrested after the victims escaped told investigators the kidnappings where "a repercussion of what happened in Tamaulipas" state, where the corpses of nine men and women were found hanging from a Nuevo Laredo bridge last Friday and the heads of another 14 people were dumped in front of city hall.
– Your best pal may have come a long way to curl up at your feet: A new DNA study of more than 5,000 dogs from 38 countries finds they probably originated in Central Asia, or Mongolia and Nepal more specifically, at least 15,000 years ago, reports the BBC. Cornell researchers drew blood from 4,676 purebred dogs—making up 161 breeds typically created in the last 200 years—and 549 street dogs with older lineages to study chromosomes inherited from the male and female line, reports New Scientist. The data showed genetic diversity is highest in Central Asia, then in surrounding areas like Afghanistan, Egypt, India, and Vietnam, reports Popular Science. That suggests the most recent common ancestor of "all the dogs alive today" came from that region, says lead author Adam Boyko. "It mirrors what we see in humans and how they spread out of East Africa." It's possible some dogs were domesticated elsewhere but diversified in Central Asia. But "we found no evidence" of multiple domestication events, Boyko says. "It looks like there's a single origin," though there appears to have been "a little bit of gene flow between wolves and dogs post-domestication." Boyko's team suspects higher human population density, better hunting techniques, and climate change pushed gray wolves toward scavenging, which led to domestication. But as similar studies suggest dogs originated in the Middle East, East Asia, and Europe, some scientists are treating the results with caution. One tells the New York Times that only a study of ancient and modern DNA could provide definitive results. Among difficulties researchers faced: "We showed up in Puerto Rico at a fishing village and the dogs turned up their noses at roast beef sandwiches," says Boyko. "They were used to eating fish entrails." (Genetically, house cats are basically wild animals.)
– A restaurant on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince is taking up the slack left by still-incomplete relief efforts and feeding 1,000 hungry and homeless Haitians a day—for free. Before the earthquake, Muncheez was a pizza joint too expensive for most people in the area. But after the quake, its owner realized all his supplies would soon spoil. “So instead of losing the food,” he tells NPR, “we said let's cook the food and give it away.” The story of neighborly generosity in the face of disaster continues. “Two days after, we were running out of diesel, running out of gas, running out of food,” the owner continues. But others “started to bring food to us. And we are doing that since.” To supplement the home-cooked meals of spaghetti and rice and beans, an aid group is using the restaurant as a distribution point for dry goods. Muncheez has also set up a Facebook page to keep donations rolling in.
– There will be no free ice cream for the 2,000 employees set to fill Facebook's new office in Mountain View, Calif., later this year. Like many other tech companies in Silicon Valley, Facebook fills the bellies of its employees with free food, from oven-baked pizza to hand-rolled sushi. But that appears to be changing: In an effort to lend support to local restaurants, the city of Mountain View has blocked Facebook from subsidizing cafeteria meals by more than 50%, though it can fully subsidize meals had at outside restaurants. "We wanted to make sure businesses that were there were successful," councilman John McAlister tells the San Francisco Chronicle of the 2014 agreement, which he says came in response to complaints that Google's free employee meals were hurting local businesses. The goal was "to make sure we didn't have 400,000 square feet of office space with people that never left the building" to visit a local business, says former Mountain View mayor Michael Kasperzak. It's an idea that caught officials' attention in San Francisco. Though it "could mean losing well-paid [cafeteria] jobs to minimum-wage jobs in nearby restaurants," per the Guardian, two city legislators on Tuesday announced a proposal that would ban workplace cafeterias in new developments. "You get more foot traffic, restaurant and retail patrons, and overall vitality in the streets," says a rep for the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which is in support of the proposal. "If people are bussed in, go to work and never leave the building, the effect isn't felt."
– A simple mispronunciation possibly cost a teenager her life in a bungee jumping accident, a Spanish appeals court ruled this month. The Independent reports 17-year-old Vera Mol of the Netherlands died in 2015 after jumping from a bridge in Spain before her cord was secured to anything. According to the New York Times, court documents state an unnamed Spanish instructor told Mol in English: "No jump, it's important, no jump." The appeals court ruled it's clear Mol could have heard "now jump" due to the instructor's "incorrect use and pronunciation of English" as she immediately leaped from the bridge. The court ruled the instructor should have said "don't jump." The Daily Mail notes protocol called for the instructor to say exactly that. The ruling clears the way for the instructor to face criminal charges, including accidental homicide, should prosecutors choose to bring them. The Telegraph reports the director of the company that employs the instructor will face prosecution for homicide through negligence. The court found a number of faults with the company beyond ruling the instructor didn't speak English well enough to instruct foreigners in something as dangerous as bungee jumping. It states Mol was not attached to a safety line on her way to the ledge, the instructor didn't check for parental consent as Mol was a minor, the company didn't have proper permits to jump from the 130-foot-high bridge, and more. (Girl survives 3,500-foot fall, wins $760,000.)
– A family of three was murdered in their Santa Barbara County home this week, and authorities don't think the slayings are random. Authorities responded to a request for a welfare check at the upscale Goleta Valley home Wednesday and found the bodies of Dr. Weidong "Henry" Han, 57, his wife Huijie "Jennie" Yu, 29, and their daughter Emily Han, 5, in what law enforcement describes as a "horrific" scene, KEYT reports. A family friend who used to pick Emily up from kindergarten says the family had stopped responding to phone calls and texts before authorities went to check on them. Han, an author of several books, ran the Santa Barbara Herb Clinic, a Chinese medicine practice and Chinese herbal pharmacy, the Los Angeles Times reports. He was "a healer in the truest sense of the word," his co-author tells the Santa Barbara News-Press, per the AP. Details are scant, but the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's office says the investigation so far indicates "this was not a random attack." "Our neighbors and the entire Foothill community are in shock," an editor of the Santa Barbara Independent says.
– A petsitting company's attempt to sue for $1 million over a one-star Yelp review got zero stars from a Dallas County district court, which firmly rejected the lawsuit. The court also decided that Michelle and Robert Duchouquette, the couple being sued by Prestigious Pets, "would be awarded their reasonable attorney fees as well as sanctions to deter future such lawsuits," according to Public Citizen. The Duchouquettes posted the bad review after hiring the company to look after their two dogs and betta fish during a trip to Texas, and returning to find that the betta fish had apparently been overfed. The company initially sued for nearly $7,000, but later filed a suit for the higher amount, claiming the couple had violated a non-disparagement clause in their agreement. The Duchouquettes filed an anti-SLAPP—Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation—motion, which allowed the court to strike down what it viewed as a frivolous lawsuit aimed at quashing the couple's right to free speech, the Dallas Morning News reports. "We are so grateful for the attorneys who have supported us through the case," the couple said in a statement, per Consumerist. "It took lots of hours and many smart minds spending too much time talking about Gordy the betta fish. Thank goodness they did not lose sight of the real issue: the threats posed by non-disparagement clauses to our right to free speech." (This woman was sued after posting a bad review about a law firm.)
– A 21-year-old college student in Seattle allegedly killed his girlfriend after getting high on LSD over the weekend, the Seattle Times reports. According to the Tri-City Herald, police say the suspect, identified as Casey Henderson, and 22-year-old Katy Straalsund took LSD Saturday and walked around the University of Washington, where they were both students. Things apparently took a turn when they returned to Straalsund's nearby apartment. “He did say that they never slept,” a Seattle Police Department detective wrote in the police report. “He states (that) after a while things ‘started to get weird.'" Henderson allegedly later told police he got paranoid and convinced that Straalsund was plotting against him, KOMO News reports. Police say a neighbor called 911 Sunday afternoon after hearing a man yelling "You wanna die?" and "I will kill you." Officers broke into the apartment and reportedly found Henderson strangling Straalsund. Police say he had already attacked her using techniques he learned in tae kwon do before they got there. Straalsund had no pulse when officers arrived and had no brain activity when she got to the hospital, where she later died. Henderson, who appears to have no criminal history, is being held on $1 million bail. He was expected to be charged with homicide Wednesday.
– Victims of the Target hack were hit as they slid their payment cards through point-of-sale terminals, says the company's CEO: That's where hackers placed their malware, Gregg Steinhafel tells CNBC. On Sunday, Dec. 15, the company recognized "we had an issue," and "by six o'clock at night, our environment was safe and secure. We eliminated the malware in the access point." Steinhafel explained why it still took a few days to alert customers, CNET reports: "Day two was really about initiating the investigation work and the forensic work," while "day three was about preparation" of stores and call centers. After Neiman Marcus revealed that it, too, was hit with a data breach, Reuters reports that three other top US retailers were also victimized, though on a smaller scale. Insiders say the people behind the scam may have been the same ones who hit Target. Details remain hazy, but Reuters' sources say the other retailers had mall outlets. Earlier attacks may have worked as trials ahead of the Target hack, notes a security expert. One technique hackers may have used is called RAM scraping, during which hackers collect encrypted data when it's in plain-text form in a computer's memory.
– Jennifer Lopez went from superstar to has-been … and has now apparently swung back to superstar. The American Idol judge tops the latest Celebrity 100, Forbes’ annual list of the stars with the most money and fame, with $52 million in earnings over the past year. In addition to her new Idol gig, she’s gotten quite a bit of publicity thanks to her divorce, big endorsement deals, a clothing line and fragrance, and tons of fans and followers on social media. Last year’s No. 1, Lady Gaga, is all the way down in fifth place, while Oprah Winfrey—who was No. 1 the year before Gaga—is No. 2 this year. (But Oprah didn’t make it on Time’s Most Influential People list for the first time ever this year.) Here’s the full top 10, which may make you a little bit sad if you're not 13 years old: Jennifer Lopez Oprah Winfrey Justin Bieber Rihanna Lady Gaga Britney Spears Kim Kardashian Katy Perry Tom Cruise Steven Spielberg See Forbes for all 100.
– Three wildfire cleanup workers in California have been fired for clowning around in the ruins of people's homes and posting what the town of Paradise calls "reprehensible" photos on social media. One photo shows the burned remains of a pet cat with a bottle near its mouth and the caption: "Dude… I was just chilling with my homies, having a couple of cold ones, and BAM… damn fire breaks out," NBC News reports. Another shows a worker jumping on burned trampoline, with the caption: "Trampolines are stupid. (By the way), it used to be called a Jumpoline until your mom got on it." The town recently began allowing residents to return after the devastating Camp Fire, which killed at least 88 people. The town of Paradise shared the photos in a Facebook post and promised that Rob Freestone, the worker seen in many of them "will no longer be working in our town." Bigge Crane and Rigging Co., which had been subcontracted by the PG&E utility for Camp Fire cleanup, says Freestone and two other workers have been fired. In a statement, the company said it regrets that residents have suffered an "egregious insult" at an already difficult time. Paradise police spokesman Matt Gates says the department is looking into filing charges, the Redding Record Searchlight reports. "It's shocking. It’s disheartening," Gates says. "It’s the type of thing no one needs to see right before they come into town." (A dog guarded the ruins of a Paradise home for weeks.)
– Stormy Daniels is again making serious public allegations, but this time they're against her own attorney. In a statement to the Daily Beast, Daniels goes after Michael Avenatti on two main fronts. The biggest beef is about money, specifically the cash raised for Daniels on a crowdfunding site. She alleges that Avenatti refuses to provide details of how the money is being spent even after her repeated demands. "Instead of answering me, without my permission or even my knowledge Michael launched another crowdfunding campaign to raise money on my behalf," she wrote. "I learned about it on Twitter." Avenatti insists that everything is aboveboard, with the money going toward legal fees as agreed, but another allegation made by Daniels might be more damaging for him. In her statement, Daniels alleges that Avenatti filed a defamation suit against President Trump in her name but against her wishes. (A judge ended up tossing the suit.) "If he filed the case with her name when it was clear that she told him not to, then he could be sued for that," New York University Law School prof Stephen Gillers tells the DB. "If true, she has a malpractice case against him. I emphasize if true." As of now, Daniels is still represented by Avenatti, though she says she's considering whether to sever ties. Avenatti, meanwhile, still has two other suits against Trump pending, notes the New York Times. (The attorney faced negative headlines earlier this month on a different matter.)
– "I choose to go to the moon," Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaka Maezawa declared at an event at SpaceX's California headquarters Monday night. SpaceX founder Elon Musk revealed Maezawa as the company's first paying passenger on a voyage around the moon scheduled for 2023, reports Reuters. Maezawa, who will become the first person to travel that far into space since the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, has signed up for the voyage in SpaceX's still unbuilt Big Falcon Rocket spaceship. Musk, who described the 42-year-old Mawzawa as "very brave," admitted it is not "100% certain we can bring this to flight." Musk said the BFR launch vehicle, which he envisions carrying passengers and cargo to the moon and Mars, will be ready for orbital flights in two or three years. SpaceX did not disclose how much Maezawa is paying for the out-of-this-world trip, but he tells Reuters it's more than the $110 million he famously paid for a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting. The tycoon said he would invite six to eight artists to travel with him on the spacecraft, which will loop around the moon without stopping, the BBC reports. "They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth," he said. "These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us." (SpaceX's earlier plan to fly two people to the moon this year has been shelved.)
– Legal marijuana is taking tourism in Colorado to new highs, if a new study is to be believed. The Denver Post reports a study commissioned by the Colorado Tourism Office found nearly 49% of Colorado visitors between April and September came at least in part because of pot. "I think it is rearing its head as a significant travel and tourism amenity for visitors coming to Colorado," a former tourism office head says. The survey also showed 20% of potential tourists were more likely to visit Colorado because of legal weed compared to 15% who were less likely. Somewhat surprisingly, only 8% of tourists surveyed admitted to actually visiting a marijuana dispensary while in the state. A smaller study out of Fort Lewis College found most tourists come to Colorado for other reasons, but legal marijuana is "the icing on the cake," the Durango Herald reports. According to the Post, Colorado has welcomed a record number of tourists in the past two years. Prior to the study, tourism officials had been crediting that increase solely to "savvy marketing." The Colorado Tourism Office spent more than $5.3 million on a new advertising campaign, which doesn't mention pot at all, Colorado Public Radio reports. But it shouldn't be that way, the owner of one pot tourism company tells the Post: "The state of Colorado has had an amazing opportunity to embrace this industry. It is a complete advantage for Colorado to become the Napa Valley and Sonoma County of cannabis."
– Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews showed up to protest a prayer gathering by the "Women of the Wall" at Jerusalem's holy Western Wall today, hurling chairs, water, and garbage at the women and stones at their buses, Reuters reports. In a reversal, police held back and clashed with the protesters and arrested five of them; in the past, they've detained Women of the Wall worshipers instead. The changed police response follows a court ruling that stated women shouldn't be arrested for wearing prayer shawls there; in Orthodox tradition, only men are permitted to wear the shawls. Sarah Silverman's sister, Rev. Susan Silverman, was among the Women of the Wall contingent. "SO proud of my amazing sister @rabbisusan & neice @ purplelettuce95 for their ballsout civil disobedience," the comedian tweeted. "Ur the tits!" There were many women among the Orthodox protesters as well, including a contingent of Haredi school girls, in a move dreamed up by the United Torah Party, the Jerusalem Post reports. Politicians are lining up on each side of the dispute, with some decrying the protesters' aggression and others, like the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, calling the Women of the Wall "the women of provocation," according to Ynetnews.
– It's enough to make Einstein's hair stand up: Physicists at CERN think they've spotted neutrinos traveling faster than light, reports AP. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity—his E=MC2 equation—nothing should be able to go that fast. At Wired, Adrian Cho doesn't mince words: "If it’s true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century." It's so jarring in the world of science—the BBC explains that modern physics depends on the notion that the "the speed of light is the universe's ultimate speed limit"—that the researchers themselves are asking other scientists to try to duplicate the findings before proclaiming them to be true. "The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," says a CERN spokesman. Chicago's Fermilab says it will begin its own experiments immediately.
– A New Jersey mom is suing a department store for $5 million, claiming she got ripped off 80 cents over a coupon, reports the New York Post. Tova Gerson used the $5 coupon to buy more than $100 worth of merchandise from Century 21, then returned one item. The store refunded her money, minus 80 cents from the pro-rated coupon. Gerson's lawsuit, filed by her lawyer-dad Harry Katz, says the store "unjustly enriched" itself with a coupon "scheme." The Daily News notes that the pair has tried this tack before, suing Modell's sporting goods chain over a $25 coupon and a subsequent return. It's not clear how that lawsuit got resolved. Reached for comment and told a newspaper article was being written, Gerson responded, "I'd really rather you didn't."
– Lula and Simba are headed to a new life in Jordan. The bear and lion, respectively, were discovered in February in the war-decimated Montazah al-Morour Zoo in Mosul, Iraq, apparently the only two animal survivors in the facility, the BBC reports. All of the other creatures had starved to death or were killed during clashes between Iraqi forces and ISIS, and Lula and Simba weren't doing so great themselves: They were found dirty, covered in feces, and suffering from various maladies between them, including bad teeth and malnutrition, Four Paws veterinarian Amir Khalil says. But the Four Paws International charity stepped in to tend to them, and after various paperwork issues, Lula and Simba finally had their big day on Monday: They were crated up and put on a plane to Jordan, where they'll be placed in a "species-appropriate home," per Four Paws' Facebook page. "From now on, they won't have to be part of this war," Khalil told AFP Monday, via the BBC. (These elephants were saved from a muddy demise.)
– The "special relationship" between the US and the UK is still back-slappingly good, according to David Cameron. President Obama has said "the special relationship is stronger than it has ever been privately and in public and I agree," the British prime minister tells the Daily Mail, revealing that Obama sometimes calls him "bro" when they talk on the phone. The term is more commonly associated with frat boys than world leaders, but the Independent has decided it's still "a step forward" from George W. Bush's "condescending" greeting for Tony Blair: "Yo, Blair!" In the Mail interview, Cameron, who faces a tough election battle in May, also discusses gay marriage—he's proud of introducing the legislation and says he will probably attend a same-sex wedding soon—and his own marriage. He says Samantha Cameron is the first person he turns to for advice on difficult decisions like sending in special forces to rescue hostages. "If she'd organized Napoleon’s march on Moscow, they would have reached Vladivostok in good time," he says.
– The messiness continues between Goldie Hawn's oldest children and their father, Bill Hudson. As previously reported, Oliver Hudson lashed out at his dad via Instagram on Father's Day—posting a throwback photo of himself, sister Kate, and their father with the caption "Happy abandonment day." Bill Hudson broke his silence yesterday, saying that he was disowning his famous children. "I would ask them to stop using the Hudson name," he says in what the Daily Mail calls a "searingly raw interview." "They are no longer a part of my life. Oliver's Instagram post was a malicious, vicious, premeditated attack. He is dead to me now. As is Kate. I am mourning their loss even though they are still walking this Earth." The 65-year-old blames his ex-wife for "willfully alienating" Oliver, 38, and Kate, 36, from him, saying Hawn was motivated to present a "perfect family" when she began dating Kurt Russell. "When Kurt came on the scene, the narrative changed and I became the big, bad wolf," he claims. The musician and actor also called out Hawn for allegedly cheating on him during their four-year marriage and using her money and fame to shirk custody agreements. In response to the Father's Day insult, the elder Hudson threw out decades-old photos and mementos. "If what he wanted was me out of their lives, then he's succeeded," he says of his firstborn. "I don't want to see either of my eldest children ever again. It's over." (They're far from the only celebs who are estranged from a parent.)
– Andrew Shirvell is a “concerned alumnus” of the University of Michigan, and oh—he also happens to be the assistant attorney general of Michigan, which makes his extracurricular hobby even more disturbing. For almost six months, Shirvell has been running “Chris Armstrong Watch,” a blog campaigning against Chris Armstrong, the University of Michigan’s first openly gay student assembly president. Samples of Shirvell’s opinions: a picture of Armstrong with a swastika pasted over it, a post calling him a “racist, elitist liar,” and a comment that he’s “Satan’s representative on the student assembly.” Shirvell accuses Armstrong of recruiting incoming students “to join the homosexual ‘lifestyle,’” and even convincing one “previously conservative student” to do just that (by seducing him). He also claims Armstrong hosted a gay orgy in his dorm room, among other things, CNN reports. Shirvell says he writes the blog during non-work hours; even so, the attorney general issued a statement referring to Shirvell’s “immaturity and lack of judgment.” Speaking to Anderson Cooper recently, Shirvell offered no apologies. Watch the interview in the gallery.
– The term "sex addiction" might get tossed around a lot these days as a way to explain some not-so-classy behavior of the Anthony Weiner-Tiger Woods variety, but is it really an addiction on par with drugs or alcohol? The first study to explore brain responses in people who describe themselves as hypersexual suggests otherwise, reports UCLA. Researchers there showed the subjects—39 men and 13 women—sexual images, and discovered that their brains didn't respond in the same way that, say, a cocaine addict would respond to images of cocaine. “Most people describe high-frequency sexual problems as an ‘addiction’—that’s how the public and even many clinicians talk about it," one of the researchers tells Slate. "But this data challenges the addiction model and forces us to reconsider how we think and talk about these problems.” The subjects have higher libidos, or sexual desire, but not necessarily a clinical medical problem. They still need help, but if further studies verify this first one, then the type of help they'll get will be affected. All of which might be OK, writes Jillian Keenan at Slate. "If we turn every single quirk of human sexuality into a 'disease,' after all, then we’re all screwed." The study is in the journal Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology.
– For more than 150 years, researchers have scratched their heads over a Civil War mystery—and now a Navy engineer says she's solved it. Rachel Lance has been diving deep into the 1864 sinking of the Confederate submarine HL Hunley, which mysteriously went down shortly after sinking the Union's USS Housatonic sloop with a torpedo, reports a Hakai Magazine article posted at Smithsonian.com. Over three years, Lance—a Duke grad student with no experience in forensics, no help from experts who'd long been on the case, and no access to the excavated sub itself—carried out what Gizmodo calls an "exhaustive … analysis" and finally arrived at a conclusion published in PLOS ONE: that the torpedo created blast waves that pierced the Hunley's hull and instantly killed the eight crew, whose skeletons were found intact during the sub's excavation near Charleston, SC, in 2000. Lance looked at other theories swirling around the Hunley's fate, including low oxygen or a bullet fired by the Housatonic that punctured the sub. She became obsessed, to the point she'd zone out during meals. "There was something viscerally terrifying about the fact that eight people died that night, and we had no idea how or why," she tells Hakai. Her injury biomechanics background finally led her to her shock wave theory. "When blast waves hit an air space, they slow down like a car hitting a wall," she says. "Except in this case, the wall is the surface of the lungs." A mini replica of the Hunley she dubbed the CSS Tiny and a series of test explosions in a rural pond helped her prove her theory, per CNN. Other researchers remain unconvinced, but Hakai says now Lance's theory is "their theory to disprove." More on her project here. (The Hunley looks a lot better these days.)
– As expected, Barbara Walters today announced the end of a broadcasting career that began during the Truman administration, People reports. "Let me just say I have been on television continuously for over 50 years," Walters said on The View today, adding that she is "perfectly healthy" and this is her decision and she's "very happy" with it. The veteran journalist, who has been at ABC for nearly 40 years and will be 84 this fall, plans to step down from The View next summer, but will stay on as executive producer and will be involved in selecting new co-hosts after Joy Behar leaves the show, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Rumors of Walters' retirement began in March following health scares including a fall at the British ambassador's residence and a bout of chicken pox. "I am very happy with my decision and look forward to a wonderful and special year ahead both on The View and with ABC News," she said in a statement issued by the network. "I created The View and am delighted it will last beyond my leaving it." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made an appearance on The View today, telling Walters she is his hero. As for what she'll do next? She might make occasional appearances on TV, Politico reports, but mostly, she said today, "I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women—and, OK, some men, too—who will be taking my place."
– One person died and at least 83 others were hospitalized after smoke filled a Washington, DC, subway station and tunnel during the afternoon rush hour yesterday. Hundreds of people were evacuated from L'Enfant Plaza station—one of the Metro network's busiest—and from a Yellow Line train that was stuck in a tunnel, the Washington Post reports. At least two of the injured are in critical condition, and officials say the name of the woman who died will not be released until next of kin have been notified. The NTSB's investigator in charge says the cause appears to have been an "arcing event" in which electricity jumped from the system's third rail, reports the New York Times. Water in the tunnel may have been a contributing factor, he says. Passengers who were on the stuck train described scenes of panic as the smoke grew thicker before firefighters arrived to help them escape by walking through the tunnel back to the station. "We couldn't see anything. The visibility was poor," a passenger waiting to be taken to a hospital told NBC. "Everybody got as low as they possibly could to the ground, because that's where the best possibility for oxygen was." One firefighter is among the injured. Meanwhile: The Hollywood Reporter picks up on a social media oops from Netflix series House of Cards. In a nod to a season 2 episode, it last night tweeted, "Consider the slate clean," alongside a photo of an empty DC subway station and a fake news headline reading "Train Traffic Tragedy." An odd coincidence: New York City's Penn Station was forced to delay trains early today on the heels of a three-alarm fire that has been dubbed "suspicious." It occurred at a construction site near the Long Island Rail Road concourse's west end around 2:30am. NBC New York reports service was restored to normal three hours later.
– Emil Skokan III was every bit the doting father-to-be when his fiancee texted him to say she would soon undergo a C-section. "He said, 'Do you need anything?' and that he would come up shortly and that he loved me," Crystal Matrau-Belt, 24, tells ABC News. "It was the last time I talked to him." As Skokan, 34, rushed to Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Mich., on Saturday with Matrau-Belt's mother, Peggy Nichols, he lost control of his vehicle and hit a tree, reports MLive. Both Skokan and Nichols, 53, were killed; police say speed was a factor. Other family members, including Matrau-Belt's stepmother, helped her welcome a baby boy, Jeremiah, before breaking the news. "To have a child but then have two things ripped out of my life, it's just really hard to deal with and even process," the new mom says. "It's like happy and the most heartbreaking thing." Matrau-Belt says both her fiance and mom were so excited to meet Jeremiah. "Their main focus was being able to be here because I didn't want them to miss anything," she says. While Nichols "had big plans to take him to the zoo, to Disney World," Skokan had spent the previous day readying the couple's house for Jeremiah's arrival. He "was trying to do everything right," says Matrau-Belt. "He wanted to step up and make sure he was a good father to him." She now takes solace in seeing Skokan in Jeremiah. "I see Emil in him," particularly when "he gives this wrinkled up nose look" when he's annoyed. "Just to know that I have a piece of Emil, that helps a little bit." Matrau-Belt says she doesn't "really know what to do with myself," but she wants to tell others to appreciate what they have. "You've got to be able to slow down and look at every part of life and cherish it." (Two brothers had babies on the same day, at the same hospital.)
– One person was shot and a police officer was injured as unrest gripped Milwaukee on Sunday for a second night after the fatal shooting of a black suspect. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn says the officer who shot 23-year-old Sylville K. Smith is also black, and that officer is now staying with relatives out of town amid concerns for his safety, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Flynn says Smith had a lengthy criminal record and was shot after fleeing a traffic stop on foot Saturday afternoon. The chief says Smith had a gun that he didn't drop when he was ordered to and, per body camera footage, "the individual did turn toward the officer with the firearm in his hand. You can't tell when the officer discharges his firearm." Flynn says the officer "certainly appeared to be within lawful bounds." Officials earlier said Smith was carrying a stolen handgun with 23 rounds of ammunition, Reuters reports. Before protests turned violent Sunday night, several of his sisters addressed a peaceful vigil. "My brother was no felon," said Kimberly Neal. "My brother was running for his life. He was shot in his back." Sherelle Smith, another sister, condemned the Saturday night violence that left businesses burned and four police officers injured, CNN reports. The National Guard was activated but not deployed during Sunday night's protest. Police say the person shot during Sunday's unrest is an 18-year-old man who was rushed to a hospital with serious injuries. His connection to the protests is unclear.
– Simone Battle, a singer with the group GRL, is dead at 25 of an apparent suicide, reports TMZ. Battle was found in her Los Angeles home yesterday morning, and authorities think she hanged herself. Battle first rose to national fame on the X Factor reality show in 2011. Though she got eliminated in the first live show in competition, she made an impression that helped her land a spot with GRL, a reboot of the Pussycat Dolls, reports the Daily News. "Simone was an exceptional young talent and human being, and we are all devastated to learn of her passing,” said a joint statement from RCA Records and two other music companies. As an actress, Battle appeared in episodes of Everybody Hates Chris and Zoey 101, notes Billboard.
– The Boston Globe printed a satirical front page complete with fake stories that show how "troubling" its editorial board says a Donald Trump presidency would be for America, the AP reports. The newspaper's front page is dated April 9, 2017, and its lead story is about Trump calling for deportations. Another article mentions work being halted on a wall at the Mexico border. There's also a short item about backlash Trump received after tweeting a photo of his new dog he named "Madame Peng," after China's first lady Peng Liyuan, and a piece about US soldiers refusing orders to kill ISIS families. The front page is "an exercise in taking a man at his word," says a Globe editorial. "And his vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page. It is a vision that demands an active and engaged opposition. It requires an opposition as focused on denying Trump the White House as the candidate is flippant and reckless about securing it." The Trump campaign hasn't responded to requests for comment.
– Jane Austen wrote, "To be sure, you knew no actual good of me—but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love." But had she submitted that line to a modern English teacher, she would have gotten docked for grammar. Instead of "when they fall in love," it should be "when he falls in love," or perhaps the clunkier "when he or she falls in love," right? That has long been the prevailing view, but after a slow and steady creep, that view seems to be disappearing. In fact, this year might be the tipping point for acceptance of the "singular they." Quartz, for example, has dubbed singular they its Word of the Year. And earlier this month, the Washington Post changed its style guide to accept it, though the guide still encourages reporters to first try to write around it by recasting the sentence as plural, notes Poynter. So, "All students must complete their homework, not Each student must complete his or her homework," per the guide. But when that kind of rewrite is "impossible or hopelessly awkward," writers should employ the singular they. One big factor behind the shift—not just at the Post but in newspapers, online posts, and English classrooms across the country—is the increasing acceptance in society of those who identify as neither male nor female. The singular they solves the problem. (On a related note, the New York Times now permits "Mx." as a gender-neutral honorific in place of Mr. or Ms., notes Quartz.) Grammatical purists may protest, but they are simply wrong, writes English teacher Anne Curzan at the Chronicle for Higher Education. "There is nothing grammatically wrong with singular they other than the fact that people say there is something wrong with it," she writes, noting the similarity to the outdated rule, still enforced in places, about not splitting infinitives. Adds Anna Walsh at Baltimore's City Paper, "Using language that's more accurately inclusive is something that every grammarian should be able to get behind, regardless of what pronouns they personally use." (The Internet seems to have invented a preposition.)
– A Southwest Airlines plane flying from Chicago to New Jersey was forced to land in Cleveland on Wednesday after one of its windows cracked. The exit-aisle window cracked mid-flight, reports the New York Times, but the cabin never lost pressure as only one of the window's many plexiglass layers was affected. (You can see images here.) There were no reports of injuries after Flight 957 landed safely at Cleveland's Hopkins International Airport, and no emergency was declared. Aviation experts tell the AP the slightest defect or micro-crack in a plane window can cause cracks like this one. Airline consultant Robert Mann says windows are periodically polished to remove the formation of tiny cracks in the acrylic windows from exposure to chemicals and the sun's rays. "The flight landed uneventfully in Cleveland," Southwest said in a statement. "The aircraft has been taken out of service, and our local Cleveland Employees are working diligently to accommodate the 76 customers on a new aircraft to Newark." The incident comes two weeks after a Southwest Airlines plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after an engine explosion and a blown out window. A woman who was partly sucked out of that window was killed.
– The parents of Jared Lee Loughner have released their first statement, and they sound as perplexed as the rest of us. "We don't understand why this happened," says the statement, via AP. "It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events of Saturday. We care very deeply about the victims and their families. We are so very sorry for their loss." Earlier, a neighbor described Amy and Randy Loughner as "hurting real bad," reports the Wall Street Journal. "They are devastated." The same neighbor—like others, he described the Loughner family as extremely private—was the first to break the news of their only child's arrest. He approached when they arrived home from shopping to see police cars and crime scene tape surrounding the house. "She almost passed out right there," said the neighbor. "He sat in the road with the tape up and cried."
– After 27 days starving and injured at the bottom of a well and another three weeks in the hospital, a 7-year-old Labrador retriever finally went home. When Bruno disappeared, his owners, John and Cindy Billesberger, searched their little corner of Canada for weeks, CBC reports. On Oct. 14, the Billesbergers' two other dogs refused to move away from an old well hiding in some grass during a walk, according to the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. Ten feet below, Bruno was sitting in the mud. "He was pretty rough looking," John tells CBC. Bruno was dehydrated and had lost nearly half his body weight. CTV News reports he had severely injured his paws trying to escape. “You’ve got such a feeling of helplessness when you pull an animal out like that, and they’re suffering, and there’s nothing you can do," Cindy says. Over the coming weeks, vets nursed Bruno back to health, monitoring him 24 hours a day. He almost didn't make it. “I don’t think many dogs would have survived this,” Dr. Alison Khoo says. “To continue to see him improve has been so rewarding.” Bruno's recovery will become a case file to help vets save other dogs in the future. Bruno, who still has a cast on one paw, went home Thursday and will continue to require a special diet and physical therapy. But that's not dampening his family's enthusiasm one bit. "He'll be happy," says Cindy. (Fire officials think this dog died a hero.)
– An American gored two times already while running with the bulls in Spain is willing to risk a third time, People reports. Author Bill Hillmann was living his Ernest Hemingway fantasy in northern Spain on Saturday when a bull gored his buttocks and tossed him in the air. The Chicago man hit the ground, looked back, "and he was just on me,” Hillmann tells People. "At the last second, he shot me straight up in the air. The horns just went in in a really weird way." As the 1,200-pound beast named Sentido stormed away along the narrow streets of Pamplona, Hillmann says he didn't feel "piercing pain" and managed to pick himself up and walk to find help. He didn't realize he'd been gored until "the medics pulled my pants down and there was blood everywhere." Hillmann, 35, spent 36 hours in the hospital but vowed to run with the bulls again on Monday. "I’m a daredevil at heart. It’s just who I am," he says. The last time Hillmann, who has run with the bulls at the annual San Fermin festival for 12 years, caught the wrong end of a horn was in 2014. That goring badly tore up a leg. "The first time, I wasn't walking for a week," he tells the AP. There have been five gorings and other minor injuries since the festival began on Friday. One victim, a 22-year-old California man, had his left arm impaled and was dragged for several yards, per the AP. (Hillmann is also the author of a book on how to survive the running of the bulls.)
– The ongoing eruption of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is creating new worries for residents—including the risk of "vog," or volcanic smog. Big Island residents have been warned that a change in the wind is expected to increase the risk of vog, which contains potentially deadly sulfur dioxide gas, Reuters reports. Gov. David Ige has warned that more mass evacuations will be needed as new cracks in the ground send lava and toxic gas into new neighborhoods near the volcano. Ige has asked President Trump to declare a disaster in the state so that federal money can be used in the event of large-scale evacuations by air and sea, the AP reports. Forecasters say Big Island residents are likely to face higher levels of sulfur dioxide Friday, which is especially dangerous for children, the elderly, and those with respiratory conditions, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports. Trade winds are expected to ease conditions by Saturday morning. Amid fears that the volcano, one of the world's most active, could erupt explosively, flammable pentane has been removed from a geothermal plant near two neighborhoods that had to be evacuated because of lava and gas. Kilauea is surrounded by Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which closed Thursday night until further notice. Scientists had warned that if the volcano erupts, park visitors within a mile or so of the crater were at risk of being hit by refrigerator-sized boulders.
– The man who murdered John Lennon will remain behind bars after his 10th unsuccessful parole hearing, reports the Daily News. Mark David Chapman, now 63, was turned down again this week. No reasons have yet been made public, but the newspaper reports that Yoko Ono sent the parole board a letter asking that Chapman remain in the Wende Correctional Facility in upstate New York—not only for the safety of her and her family, but for his own safety. Chapman, who shot Lennon in New York City in 1980, is up again for parole in about two years. Chapman's wife recently told the UK Mirror that he talked of killing Lennon two months before actually doing so.
– Orlando shooter Omar Mateen not only called police during the massacre at Pulse nightclub but also, apparently, a TV station. News 13 producer Matthew Gentili says he was handling the phones just 2 miles from the club around 2:45am Sunday as viewers called in to ask about the shooting when he received a call that changed him, per Fox News. The caller asked if Gentili knew about the shooting, then announced, "I'm the shooter. It's me," Gentili says. The caller began speaking fluent Arabic until Gentili asked him to speak in English. "I will never forget the words he said to me," says Gentili. He said, "I did it for ISIS. I did it for the Islamic State." The caller refused to tell Gentili where he was. When Gentili asked if the man had anything more to say, he said no and hung up. Gentili was interviewed by the FBI, which didn't confirm the call came from Mateen, but News 13 says the number matched the shooter's phone. The timing also makes sense, per the Washington Post. The first shots rang out around 2am. Authorities say Mateen called 911 around 2:30am and eventually had two short conversations with a dispatcher. The call to News 13 would have followed. "I'm never going to be able to answer the phone again without thinking this is the most serious call I'll ever get in my life," Gentili says.
– A Pennsylvania man has agreed to plead guilty to hacking into email and online accounts of several female celebrities and stealing private information including nude photos and videos, the AP reports. The US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles announced Tuesday that Ryan Collins of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information. Prosecutors say the 36-year-old was charged as part of an investigation into the posting of nude photos of numerous celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence and model Kate Upton, but the he is not suspected of being involved in releasing those images. Per NBC News, Collins got victims' usernames and passwords for Apple and Google accounts by sending them fake emails that claimed to be from Apple or Google; once in, he grabbed information including nude photos. Prosecutors stated they do not have any evidence Collins posted any of the images he stole from more than 100 Google and Apple accounts, but his is the first arrest connected to the 2014 hack, which affected at least 50 iCloud accounts and 72 Gmail accounts. Prosecutors will recommend an 18-month sentence.
– Calvin and Hobbes fans have a little something to celebrate: a rare, new drawing by Bill Watterson, creator of the retired but still beloved cartoon. Watterson agreed to make the poster for a new documentary about the cartoon industry called Stripped, reports the Washington Post. "It sounded like fun," says Watterson, who is among those interviewed in the film, though his appearance is brief and in voice only. As for the resulting image: “Given the movie’s title and the fact that there are few things funnier than human nudity, the idea popped into my head largely intact,” he explains. “The film is a big valentine to comics, so I tried to do something really cartoon-y." Watterson did a painting for charity in 2011, and this new drawing is being breathlessly hailed as his "first cartoon" since the end of Calvin and Hobbes. At Sploid, Jesus Diaz wonders if the adult in the movie poster might be a grown-up Calvin.
– Influential White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigned Wednesday in the wake of reports he physically abused two ex-wives, reports that he maintains are "vile" and "simply false." The claims come via Colbie Holderness (who married Porter in 2003) and Jennifer Willoughby (who married him in 2009). The Washington Post reports White House staffers knew vaguely of the situation as of late 2017, but only heard the alleged details when contacted Tuesday by a reporter from the Daily Mail, which first reported the women's story. But Holderness and Willoughby say they did tell the FBI what happened in January 2017. "I thought by sharing my story with the FBI he wouldn’t be put in that post," Holderness says, explaining that she voiced concerns he could be blackmailed because of the number of people who knew about her situation.
– Swaddling is by all accounts on the rise among new parents, but a pediatric orthopedic surgeon thinks it's a bad trend, reports the BBC. Wrapping a baby tightly with blankets restricts the infant's hips from moving freely and raises the risk that they won't develop properly, the UK doctor writes in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. "In order to allow for healthy hip development, legs should be able to bend up and out at the hips." In other words, "the babies' legs should not be tightly wrapped in extension and pressed together." Swaddling is thought to work because it mimics the feel of the womb and thus calms the baby. Great, writes James Norton at the Christian Science Monitor, this is yet more conflicting advice for confused parents. Controversy over swaddling isn't new, he adds, and his blog post provides a link to techniques that he says avoid most or all of the risk to infants.
– The survival rate of a gunshot wound to the head, as Arizona Rep Gabrielle Giffords suffered yesterday, is about 5%, and 3% of those who do survive carry lasting neurological deficiencies, such as loss of memory loss or motor skills, reports Fox News. The next three to four days are most critical, says a Fox News doctor. Doctors first open the skull, look for bleeding, and cauterize blood vessels. "Patients are kept under anesthesia for three to four days to monitor brain swelling, which is one of the complications of this surgery," explains the expert. If the bullet grazes the tip of one of the brain lobes, the victim has the greatest chance for survival, and a bullet through one hemisphere still offers a reasonable chance. "[T]he farther from the center of the brain, the greater the chance of survival," reported Slate in a 2007 article about a slaying in Wisconsin. "The gravest bullet trajectories cross from one side of the head to the other, striking the center of the brain along the way." Doctors said yesterday they were "optimistic" about Giffords' chances for recovery.
– An alert customer at Starbucks may have saved lives by derailing an alleged plot to poison orange juice sold there. Police say Ramineh Behbehanian, 50, put two bottles of juice spiked with a lethal amount of rubbing alcohol into the display case of a store in San Jose, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. A customer saw her put the bottles inside the case and told a store employee, who followed Behbehanian out of the store and jotted down her license plate. Police tracked her down and charged her with attempted murder after determining that the bottles had enough rubbing alcohol to kill someone who drank it, reports Inside Bay Area. "We don't know if she has done this before or if she had plans to do this again," a police spokesman tells AP. "We have no reason to believe that there are other coffee shops with similar dangers."
– San Francisco-area cops have arrested three more young men in the savage gang rape, beating, and robbery of a 15-year-old girl outside her homecoming dance while dozens more watched. Five youths are being held, ranging from a 15-year-old boy who knew the victim to a 21-year-old. The girl was drinking outside the dance Saturday night, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, and the group turned on her when she became drunk. Charges are expected today. "This was a barbaric act. I still cannot get my head around the fact that numerous people either watched, walked away or participated in her assault," a Richmond cop tells the AP. "It's one of the most disturbing crimes in my 15 years as a police officer." Some students began transferring out of the school. "It's not safe there at all," said a 16-year-old girl. "I'm not going back."
– Call it the road to nowhere. Scores of wood ants living near an old nuclear weapons bunker in western Poland plunge seemingly to death each year—and their descendants follow them—in a bizarre ritual that has amazed scientists. The story begins with hard-working ants that built a colony atop a defunct Soviet-era bunker, reports ArsTechnica. When metal covering a ventilation pipe rusted way, the ants began tumbling down. What sounds like a death sentence (they can’t climb out, there is no food, and it is very cold) has turned into a survival story because these worker ants keep doing what they always do: building until they die. And when they do? "A younger generation is on its way, ready to cart off the fallen to a two-million-strong ant cemetery beyond the mound and continue their endless, pointless labor," reports Inverse. Researchers write in the Journal of Hymenoptera that a million or so trapped ants have managed to carry on in a virtual Cold War nightmare, living in a near-starvation state and total darkness. The colony rests atop a thick cemetery of ant ancestors, indicating this has been going on for quite some time. Zoologists who stumbled upon the odd discovery in Templewo while counting bats doubted cannibalism was keeping the insects alive, suggesting bat excrement could be doing the trick. The ants produce no offspring, and so the colony's survival depends on surface ants making the same mistake they did. Wood ants are known to be resilient, though, with one colony surviving on a barren islet for nearly 30 years with only pine trees to munch, the researchers write. (A historian thinks a $500 million treasure hides in an old Nazi bunker.)
– People are outraged after video surfaced Sunday night showing a passenger being forcibly and violently removed from a United Airlines flight that had been overbooked. As the Courier-Journal reports, four seats were needed on the Chicago-to-Louisville flight so that crew members could get to Louisville for a flight assignment Monday morning. Passengers were told that volunteers were needed to give up their seats and that they would receive $400, a hotel stay, and a flight the following day. They were told the flight wouldn't take off until four people had given up their seats, but no one volunteered. The airline then doubled the offer to $800 and still no one volunteered. A manager then came on board and used a computer to randomly select passengers who would need to leave the flight. A couple was selected and left, and then the man in the video was selected. He explained that he's a doctor and had patients he needed to see Monday morning, but was told that security would be called if he didn't exit the flight voluntarily. He said he would be calling his lawyer, and eventually, three security officials came onboard, pulled him from his seat, and dragged him down the aisle and off the plane. Passengers say everyone on the flight was appalled, and children onboard were scared. The man got back on the plane, reportedly "disoriented" and with his face bloodied, and ran to the back of the plane. A medical crew came aboard and passengers were asked to return to the gate while the plane was "tidied up." Eventually the plane departed two hours late. United has since apologized for overbooking, the Week reports, but no update has been given on the passenger who was removed. Video of the incident from two different angles is here and here.
– The name of Apple’s new tablet is already inspiring jokes, eye-rolling, and fretting among the business class, reminding many of a certain, umm, feminine product. Business Insider immediately declared the name “terrible,” and the Internet soon filled with snark. “How will it stand up to other tablets if I pour a test tube full of blue water on it?” asked one blogger. “Are there NO women in the Marketing or Biz Dev department of Mac?” wondered one user, and indeed, no women were present at the tablet’s unveiling, the Washington Post notes. MadTV even coined the term iPad in a 2007 parody about—you guessed it—an Apple brand maxi pad (see story). Then again, people bought something called the “Wii” in droves, so maybe all bets are off.
– It's no secret that most married couples have less sex as the years go by, but those who stick it out tend to see something of a romantic renaissance—it just takes five decades to get there. Researchers looking at 1,656 married adults ranging in age from 57 to 85 have found there is eventually an uptick in the frequency with which couples have sex. What's more, those in first marriages are having more sex than those who have remarried, report researchers from Louisiana State University, Florida State University, and Baylor University in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. However frequently or infrequently couples were engaging in sex, marriage order didn't appear to influence emotional satisfaction or physical pleasure. "Growing old as a couple, with the experience and knowledge that come with that, may play a part," one researcher said in a Baylor University news release. "The expectation that the relationship will continue may give you more reason to invest in the relationship—including in sexual aspects of [it]." While the results about the sex lives of one of the fastest growing groups in the US proved "intriguing," particularly because it's a topic that has yet to be studied extensively, the researchers did point out that the 50-year second wind was a slight one, and that relatively few couples make it to 50 years to begin with, thus the sample size was small. (Some research has found that couples who are more equal tend to be happy but have less sex.)
– From the front, a half-million-dollar home on the Re/Max website looks like a quaint Spanish Revival in the heart of Seattle. Head to the side for a different perspective, and you'll see appearances are deceiving. You're looking at what Yahoo says locals call the "Montlake Spite House," an 860-square-foot sliver of a house that's legendary even among tiny houses. The front of the pie-shaped home built in 1925 is just 15 feet wide, while the back comes in at under 5 feet wide, KOMO reported in 2013, the last time the house was up for sale. Eugene Smith, a retired professor at the University of Washington who wrote a book on area history, says the wedge-like residence "was certainly the oddest of all the bungalows" in the area. "It was the smallest, most peculiar shape," he told KOMO. And the story behind its supposedly spiteful construction is just as strange as its shape. Yahoo dug up a few origin tales, including that it may have been built by an enraged landowner to spite a neighbor for a lowball offer on the land, per the Stranger. It also may have been a revenge move by a long-ago owner, said to have given permission for someone to build a home while he was traveling, as long as there was room left for his own house, which … there wasn't, really, Quirksee has reported. But one of the catchiest stories, offered by the Oregonian, claims a divorce judge awarded the original, larger home to the husband, and a tiny portion of land to the wife, who then built this minuscule abode to be up in her ex's face. These days there's a law on the books against such a "malicious erection," which involves building a structure to purposely "spite, injure or annoy" neighbors by blocking their view, access, or light. (A secret of the "tiny house" movement.)
– Two years after protests began in Cairo that would lead to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, protesters are once again gathering in Tahrir Square, reports the AP. Led by liberals and secularists, the protesters are now demonstrating against President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which they accuse of threatening Egypt's young democracy. Hundreds of thousands are expected to march in protests across Egypt today. Police and protesters clashed yesterday and early this morning in Cairo, with demonstrators throwing Molotov cocktails and firecrackers and police responding with tear gas, reports Reuters. Egyptian officials said 25 people had been hurt since fighting flared yesterday. The Muslim Brotherhood says it will not stage counterprotests in order to avoid increasing the unrest.
– A US Air Force pilot has died of injuries suffered in an aircraft crash at a training range about 100 miles northwest of Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada, base officials say. A brief statement released Friday by Nellis officials said the crash that killed Lt. Col. Eric Schultz occurred during a training flight Tuesday evening at the Nevada Test and Training Range, the AP reports. The statement didn't provide a hometown or age for Schultz (Military.com lists his age as 44) or details on the crash, but it said the aircraft was assigned to the Air Force Materiel Command. The Materiel Command's website says it conducts researches and tests weapons systems. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the type of aircraft is classified, per a 99th Air Base Wing spokeswoman. The crash, which happened around 6pm Tuesday, was the first of two consecutive-day crashes: Two fighter jets crashed on Wednesday, the base announced. The two pilots in that incident reportedly ejected from their aircraft and were released after being examined by medical staff. The Capital Gazette reports Schultz was a 1991 graduate of Annapolis High School in Maryland and that his parents, Linda and Larry Schultz, live in Annapolis. Schultz joined the Air Force in 2001 with multiple college degrees under his belt—a YouCaring page set up to help his family says there were six, including a PhD in aerospace engineering. His parents reportedly traveled to Nevada on Wednesday to be with his wife, Julie, and other family members. Schultz is also survived by five children.
– The Brigham and Women's Hospital cardiovascular surgeon shot twice yesterday by a lone gunman who police believe was upset by his mother's death has succumbed to his injuries, reports the Boston Globe. Dr. Michael Davidson died late yesterday, roughly 12 hours after police say 55-year-old Stephen Pasceri walked into the Boston hospital, asked to see Davidson, and shot the 44-year-old in an exam room. Pasceri, who was found dead of a gunshot wound believed to be self-inflicted, "had some issue" with the treatment of his mother, says the head of the Bureau of Investigative Services. Pasceri's mom, Marguerite Pasceri, died in mid-November. "There was a particular reason he targeted this doctor," says Boston's police commissioner. Pasceri owned the weapon legally, and the dad of four was mostly known in his Millbury neighborhood for raising money for his church. "They are a very good family," says a Millbury cop, who tells WFXT that "they were shocked, [this was] nothing they anticipated." His family issued a statement last night, saying, "Our hearts go out to Dr. Davidson, his family, and friends. We are praying for them. ... No words can truly express how heartbroken we are by this tragedy." Davidson is survived by his three kids and wife, who is a plastic surgeon. He was hailed as "a wonderful and inspiring bright light and an outstanding cardiac surgeon" by the Brigham and Women's Hospital president last night. The hospital, like many, does not have metal detectors; the Globe notes that hospital shootings are rare enough to be compared to lightning strikes.
– Researchers experimented with LSD in psychiatric treatment until such research was effectively banned in the US in 1966—but now a Swiss psychiatrist has conducted the first controlled trial of the hallucinogenic drug in more than four decades, with US FDA approval. Dr. Peter Gasser's study involved 12 people who were dying, most of terminal cancer, and suffering from "deep anxiety," the Seattle Times reports. After undergoing talk therapy, eight of the patients were given a 200-microgram dose of LSD designed to "produce the full spectrum of a typical LSD experience" on two occasions; the other four received a 20-microgram "active placebo" that wasn't expected to have an impact. They took their 10-hour "trips" in Gasser's office, and, he says, "Their anxiety went down and stayed down." Specifically, subjects who received full doses of LSD saw a 20% improvement in their anxiety symptoms, and for those who were still alive a year later, the improvement had lasted, the New York Times reports. Those who took the placebo reported increased anxiety. It doesn't sound like a comforting experience at first: The Verge says the purpose of administering the psychedelic drug was to "facilitate discussions about the patients' fears of dying," and one patient reports that "the major part was pure distress at all these memories I had successfully forgotten for decades. These painful feelings, regrets, this fear of death." But he talked about all that with Gasser, something he'd found difficult prior to the trip; the Times refers to such distress as "therapeutically valuable," and many subjects had similar experiences. Other than that, no serious side effects were seen.
– Not long after 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by police in Cleveland in November, a group of students in nearby Akron decided protests weren't enough. So the Akron PeaceMakers, an anti-violence youth group, brainstormed with the local PD to come up with a double-sided crib sheet of tips for kids to follow when interacting with cops, NPR reports. The "You and the Law" cards, set to be doled out to all Akron middle school and high school students—and possibly to adults, and internationally, in the future—feature 15 bullet points outlining "basic rights and responsibilities," as well as suggestions to ensure safety during an encounter. "Do not 'bad-mouth' or walk away from the law-enforcement officials," "control your emotions," and "do not resist arrest for any reason" are some of the tips. The top of each card mentions the "easiest way to avoid conflict with law enforcement officials is simply to stay out of trouble." The cards have sparked a debate over whether the police are escaping their own responsibility in confrontations, NPR notes. But the kids involved say the point is to de-escalate the situation, not let cops off the hook—and there are phone numbers on the back to report police misconduct. "Instead of cussing [a police officer] out, I can just say, 'OK. Let me calm down,' and then at a later time, call the police station," one student tells NPR. Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic says the cards serve as a common-sense refresher. "Some people don't think about 'Oh, what happens when I reach in for my license,'" he said at a presentation of the cards, per Cleveland.com. Billy Soule, whose son was stopped by cops years ago with a toy gun, works with the youth group as a city rep. "Officers surrounded the boys with guns drawn and told them to go down to the ground," he says, per the site. "My son is alive today because he listened."
– The Alexandria shooter carried a list bearing the names of some Republican congressmen when he went on his early-morning rampage on Wednesday. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama confirms to CNN that he was on the list as was his office number. Reps. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina and Trent Franks of Arizona were also on it, per CBS. (A Fox News reporter puts the number of names on the list at six, tweeting they are all Freedom Caucus members, though most other reports still specify three.) The note is not considered an "assassination list," per CBS, but indicates that shooter James Hodgkinson, 66, was eyeing a specific group of lawmakers. Franks declined to talk about the list but tells CNN "it's clear that [the attack] was premeditated." Hodgkinson, an anti-Republican activist and Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who was shot dead by cops, had two photos of the field on his cellphone, per the New York Times. For some time before the attack, Hodgkinson used a YMCA next to the ballpark, where he was frequently seen tapping on his laptop in the lobby. Duncan and Brooks were among the reps on the baseball diamond, though Duncan left early. Brooks was uninjured. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the only rep who was shot, remained in critical condition after two operations to stop internal bleeding and repair a leg bone, per the Times. He will likely undergo further surgeries. Police are probing Hodgkinson's motives, including his social media posts in which he railed against Republicans and President Trump, per CBS. (Threats to reps of both parties increased last week.)
– The womb protects a developing fetus, but it might not be able to fend off air pollution. Researchers have presented a small study suggesting for the first time that air pollutants can make their way from a pregnant woman's lungs to her placenta, reports the Guardian. Because the placenta allows nutrients and oxygen to flow from the woman's blood stream to her fetus, that means it could similarly allow pollutants into the womb as well, per CNN. "Our evidence suggests that this is indeed possible," says Norrice Liu, a pediatrician who led the research at Queen Mary University in London. "We also know that the particles do not need to get into the baby's body to have an adverse effect, because if they have an effect on the placenta, this will have a direct impact on the fetus." The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Paris, was indeed small, involving just five women. But researchers found "black sooty" particles, believed to be carbon, in the placentas of each one, says another of the researchers, Lisa Miyashita. Further analysis is in the works to confirm, but the results mirror similar ones in animals. Given previous research laying out the potential dangers that air pollution can cause to babies, the scientists say the study should factor into the advice given to pregnant women, even if it's as simple as wearing a mask or avoiding especially busy roads when out and about. The good news: All five of the women gave birth to healthy babies. (Air pollution might be the world's greatest killer.)
– Decades after they were leaked, the Pentagon Papers are finally being released on Monday by the federal government—which originally said 11 words would remain censored. Officials have since changed their minds, and we may never know what 11 words they intended to keep quiet. Not even leaker Daniel Ellsburg or Leslie Gelb, whose task force wrote the report, have a clue. (Though Gelb guesses they might deal with peace negotiations.) The New York Times asked Twitter users to take a shot. A sampling, along with their Twitter handles: “Newspapers will be dead by the time we declassify this stuff.” (@Katz) “The President requires dry-cleaning for his silken undergarments once a week.” (@jendeaderick) “Justin Bieber was 'born' in Area 51; let mass testing begin.” (@Alphey) “The giant radioactive lizard is available for counterinsurgency purposes, McNamara said.” (@thesobsister) “Rosebud is the sled. Soylent Green is People. Kristin Shot JR.” (@FasterthanShaun) Visit the Twitter feed for more.
– One cafe owner in Adelaide, Australia, is playing around with the world's most popular drug, and experts aren't feeling terribly perky about it. Steve Benington, owner of Viscous Coffee, has created the Asskicker, a drink consisting of four shots of espresso, four 48-hour brewer cold drip ice cubes (each containing a bit more caffeine than is found in two shots of espresso), 120ml of 10-day brewed cold drip, and another four of those cold drip ice cubes to finish it off, reports Adelaide Now. All told, it has 5 grams of caffeine, about 80 times as a typical espresso, and it provides 18 hours of "sustained up time," as Benington puts it. "Some people love it and some are broken by it, but it’s all in the name of fun," he says. Benington developed the drink after an emergency room nurse asked for something that would get her through a long shift. It comes with a warning for people with heart or blood pressure issues, and he has "quite a detailed talk" with anyone who orders it because "if I can talk them out of it, they're not ready," he tells CNN. One area dietitian is not amused. "Caffeine is a drug, not a game or a toy," she says. The author of a book espousing the benefits of caffeine also chimes in that this drink goes too far. "I would be very wary of consuming it." Mashable notes that Benington does suggest people sip the drink over three to four hours to "lift you up and keep you there." It also notes that a fatal dose of caffeine is generally considered to be 18 grams over one or two hours. (There is such a thing as fatal caffeine intoxication.)
– Just in time for Halloween, a Belfast man has posted a video on YouTube with a somewhat spooky claim. A Charlie Chaplin fan, George Clarke has spent more than a year studying a scene from the 1928 film The Circus—convinced it shows a woman holding a cell phone to her ear ... meaning she must be a time traveler. In the footage, which has garnered a million and a half views to date, a woman walks across the shot holding a device to her ear and seems to be engrossed in conversation. "I kept rewinding it and zooming in to try and work out what was going on," says Clarke. Those who have commented have come up with all sorts of explanations, but the answer still remains a mystery. Read the full article. (Click here for more on the mysteries of time travel.)
– A group of friends enjoying a morning in NYC's Central Park stumbled onto misfortune Sunday when one apparently stepped on an explosive, severely injuring his leg, the New York Post reports. The FDNY says the explosion happened around 11am at 68th Street and Fifth Avenue, per NBC New York, and a senior law enforcement official tells the station a bag of fireworks was found near the scene, though it's not clear it was a firework that caused the explosion. The Post IDs the 18-year-old who was injured as Conner Golden, who was climbing on rocks in the park with some other pals, all said to be visiting from the DC area. Golden was whisked to Bellevue Hospital and is currently undergoing surgery, with sources saying an amputation looks likely. 1010 Wins reports Golden is in critical but stable condition, via CBS New York. According to John Murphy, another visitor to the park who came upon the scene, it looked like Golden's foot was missing below the ankle. "His left leg was severely damaged, all bone and muscle," he says. "He was in shock. I don't think he even realized what had happened." Cops are trying to determine if the explosion, which witnesses tell the Post could be heard from outside where Elie Wiesel's funeral was being held, was caused by a firework or what the Post calls a "more sinister" device, and if the DC buddies were the ones who may have brought fireworks into the park. "I said, 'Come on, guys, were you carrying fireworks?'" Murphy says. "And they said no. And I believed them. … This wasn't an M80 or a cherry bomb. [This was] something much more serious." NBC notes that section of the park was cordoned off, but the park wasn't evacuated or closed due to the incident.
– George W. Bush made a rare public appearance today—next to Barack Obama, no less. And he'll be appearing at the White House every day going forward in at least one form: The 43rd president's official portrait was unveiled in an East Room ceremony replete with jokes and laughs, reports the AP. Bush quipped that the presidents' portraits are now bookended by his own and that of George Washington, noting, "It now starts and ends with a George W." Wife Laura, George H.W. Bush, and Barbara Bush were in attendance. The Christian Science Monitor shares a bit of interesting presidential portrait trivia: Presidents pick the artist who will depict them after sorting through the avalanche of portfolios that are sent to the White House; Lyndon B. Johnson had a second painting done by a new artist after declaring his first portrait "ugly"; and you're not stuck footing the bill for these works of art—donations made to the nonprofit White House Historical Association currently fund the paintings. Click to read about "the irony lurking in Bush's portrait."
– The man accused of abducting and murdering a University of Virginia sophomore will now face the death penalty. Prosecutors today announced a charge of capital murder against 33-year-old Jesse Matthew in the death of Hannah Graham last year, reports the Daily Progress. Prosecutors initially didn't seek the death penalty, but the state attorney for Albemarle County said today that there is "compelling evidence from the lab that capital charges are now appropriate." Denise Lunsford didn't offer specifics, but the Washington Post notes that capital charges can be brought when "aggravating factors" such as sexual assault are present. As a result of the capital murder charge, Matthew was appointed new attorneys because his previous defense team did not have experience with death-penalty cases. Matthew also is a suspect in a 2005 sexual assault, and his DNA has been linked to the body of a young woman found outside Charlottesville in 2009.
– Washington is still putting the finishing touches on tomorrow's every-four-years inauguration party, but it'll be a day late: President Obama will quietly be sworn in for a second term today, due to a Constitutional quirk that mandates that the commander in chief be sworn in at noon on January 20. Because that fell on a Sunday, when inaugurations aren't held, Obama will take the oath at the White House today and tomorrow's ceremony is essentially a re-enactment, reports the AP. Chief Justice John Roberts—who famously flubbed the oath four years ago—will swear the president in both times, notes Politico in a look at the at-times tempestuous relationship between the two men. Joe Biden was also sworn in this morning in a small ceremony at the Naval Observatory, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor administering the oath. Roll Call notes that he used a 5-inch-thick Bible that had been in his family since 1893; Sotomayor is the first Hispanic justice to swear in a president or vice president, reports the Washington Post. "Above all, I’m happy for the chance to be sworn in by a friend—and someone I know will continue to do great things," said Biden.
– A Cincinnati woman is suing the University of Cincinnati Medical Center after an employee allegedly posted her medical records—including her name, personal information, and diagnosis for syphilis—to a Facebook group called "Team No Hoes," WLWT reports. The lawsuit alleges that the woman's ex-boyfriend, Raphael Bradley, convinced two hospital employees to post the records. "That's a problem, and that's a problem that UC's responsible for," the woman's lawyer says. The suit names Bradley, the hospital, an employee named Ryan Rawls, and another unnamed employee believed to be a nurse—the plaintiff says the hospital hasn't done enough to identify that second employee. The hospital sent a memo to its staff yesterday urging them not to talk about the case, and reminding them that unauthorized sharing of medical records would be "cause for immediate termination," the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. Team No Hoes is a closed Facebook group with 65 members as of this writing. Its cover image is a pair of shorts bearing the phrase, "Trust No Hoe!" (Click for another unusual STD story involving crickets.)
– One of four American soldiers killed in Niger last month may have been kidnapped by ISIS-linked militants before he was executed, sources say. A village elder in northern Niger tells CBS that a battle raged for more than two hours after a group of Green Berets was ambushed by attackers on motorbikes. He says after the battle was over, he saw three American soldiers dead in a truck, stripped of their uniforms. The body of Sgt. La David Johnson, however, was not found for two days and military sources tell CBS that they believe he was taken prisoner by militant who later shot him and dumped the body around half a mile away from the battle site. The military is investigating how the four soldiers became separated from their unit during the Oct.4 attack while seven other American troops were reportedly evacuated. Five Nigerien troops were also killed in the attack, though sources tell the Guardian that the Nigerian forces fled soon after the ambush, leaving the Americans to fight alone. The sources say the trapped American troops struggled to call in an attack from nearby French forces, who complained about bad weather and rough terrain. (The attack has been called a "massive intelligence failure.")
– Tiger Woods may be back in the game, but he’s not on his game. Woods suffered his worst round ever at the PGA Championship, struggling to 7-over-par 77. Much of his game was spent in water and on sand, with three double-bogeys and five bogeys, the AP reports. “I'm not down," he said afterward. "I'm really angry right now." The struggle came after a strong start: After the first five holes, Woods was tied for first. But double-bogeys at the 15th, 18th, and 6th holes helped leave him with the fifth-worst score. Now, his PGA Tour season could end tomorrow; it would be the first time he’d ever missed the PGA cut, ESPN notes. (Maybe he's still adjusting to his new caddie?) In front, meanwhile, was Steve Stricker, who ended up 7 under par with birdies at the 15th and 18th.
– A former police officer accused of raping more than a dozen women while on patrol will spend the rest of his life behind bars after being sentenced to 263 years in prison on Thursday, NBC News reports. Daniel Holtzclaw, 29, was charged in 2014 and found guilty on 18 of 36 counts last month. According to CNN, Holtzclaw found his victims—ranging in age from 17 to 57—in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Oklahoma City and targeted them for their histories with drugs or prostitution, believing that would protect him from accusations. During the trial, 13 women—all black—testified that Holtzclaw threatened to arrest them if they didn't have sex with him, NBC reports. According to the BBC, they felt their lives were in danger. Holtzclaw's attorney had petitioned for a new trial on Wednesday, claiming his client didn't get a fair trial due to evidence being withheld from the defense, NBC reports. That request was denied by the judge when Holtzclaw was sentenced. During the trial, Holtzclaw's attorney claimed his client was trying to help the victims, according to the BBC.
– We can thank Thomas Edison for plenty of things, but the world had little use for one of his inventions. Edison's talking dolls were among the first of their kind, NPR reports. But even in the 1890s, they scared kids—and were expensive—and only about 500 of them were built and sold. (Edison reportedly later referred to the failed dolls as "little monsters.") Some still exist, but they've been silent for years. Robin and Joan Rolfs, owners of two dolls, feared that operating the cranks on their backs could break them, the New York Times reports. Their voices came from recordings on wax cylinders, but if a doll's phonograph needle hit the cylinder again today, it could ruin it. The good news, at least for fans of extremely creepy 19th-century recordings, is that we can finally hear them again. That's thanks to the work of a physicist and an engineer, who developed a technology that uses a microscope to study the grooves on the cylinders before they are re-created as computer images and, ultimately, extremely accurate sounds. The cylinders don't have to be touched at all, the Times notes. "We are now hearing sounds from history that I did not expect to hear in my lifetime," the curator of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park tells the paper. The recordings feature what are supposed to be the voices of little girls reading nursery rhymes. But the curator tells NPR that they more likely contain recordings of factory workers mimicking little kids. "Edison himself thought they were unpleasant," he notes. PBS NewsHour calls them "nightmare fuel." (But is it enough to knock Edison off the list of the 10 most popular Americans?)
– The death of Otto Warmbier is a mystery and it will probably stay that way unless somebody from North Korea comes forward with information, Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco says. At a press conference in Cincinnati Wednesday, the coroner said the American student's death was caused by complications from brain-damaging oxygen deprivation around six months into his imprisonment in North Korea, but the cause of the initial "insult" could not be determined, reports Reuters. "We don't know what happened to him, and that's the bottom line," she said. Warmbier's family declined an autopsy, but Sammarco said a CT scan served as a "virtual autopsy." Sammarco, whose report stated there were no signs of torture on Warmbier's body, said he had apparently been well cared for during the year or more he was bedridden, the AP reports. Sammarco said she decided to speak to the press after Warmbier's parents told national media he had been tortured and "destroyed," the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. She said a forensic dentist found no damage to the 22-year-old's teeth, which father Fred Warmbier said looked like they had been rearranged with pliers. "They're grieving parents. I can't really make comments on their perceptions," she said. "But we here in his office, we depend on science for our conclusions. If we don't have the science, we don’t conjecture."
– It could be a $6.5 million hat—but it might also not be. WBEZ reports that the crown jewel of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum's collection, Lincoln's stovepipe hat, one of just three thought to still exist, may not have belonged to the 16th president after all. Two reports obtained by the station found insufficient evidence to tie it to Lincoln. One was a 2013 report penned by top curators with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and Chicago History Museum who sought to establish its historical provenance: The Springfield, Ill., museum had maintained that Lincoln gave the hat to an Illinois farmer in 1858, though a century later a descendant said the hat was given in 1861 during a visit to DC. The report found "the current documentation is insufficient" to support either story and suggested the museum "soften its claims" or even try to return the hat. It was acquired in 2007 as part of a mammoth $25 million purchase of Lincoln items by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, which runs separately from the museum. The foundation in 2014 asked the FBI to see if DNA analysis could establish a tie to Lincoln. It relied on DNA from Lincoln's hair and blood-spattered items from his assassination but found a "limited quantity of remaining DNA data" in the hat; most of what it recovered "was consistent with being contemporary DNA from an individual who had recently handled the item." The story gets thornier: Alan Lowe—the museum's executive director since July 2016, per the Chicago Sun-Times—only recently learned about the reports, a timeline that he called "unacceptable" in a letter to the foundation. The foundation itself is mired in financial troubles tied to its 2007 buy, which currently has it $9.7 million in debt.
– Richard Grenell's job as Mitt Romney's foreign policy spokesman lasted all of about two weeks. Grenell had been a source of controversy on two fronts: He was openly gay, which rankled some conservative commenters, and he had issued a long trail of tweets before taking the job that mocked not only Callista Gingrich but prominent Democratic women, including Rachel Maddow and Hillary Clinton. The Right Turn blog at the Washington Post broke the news and says Grenell was "hounded" from the job "by anti-gay conservatives." (It cites this National Review column as an example.) But Politico says Grenell's "off-color and massively off-message tweets" also played a role, as does CNN. Grenell statement: "... my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign." But he made a point to thank Romney for his "clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team." Romney camp: “We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons. We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.”
– The investigation into the mysterious deaths of a billionaire and his wife is now being led by homicide detectives, police say—suggesting the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman were either murder-suicide or a double murder. Police, who have described the deaths as "suspicious," revealed Sunday that the cause of death for both Shermans was "ligature neck compression," a form of strangulation, the CBC reports. Sources have told the media that the couple were found hanging near an indoor pool in the basement of their Toronto mansion. Police say they haven't found any sign of forced entry, or a note that could explain what happened to 75-year-old pharmaceutical tycoon Barry Sherman and his 70-year-old wife, both renowned philanthropists. The couple's four children have rejected what they say are "rumors" that the deaths are being investigated as a murder-suicide, and many of the influential couple's friends agree. "There is absolutely zero debate in my mind, this was a double homicide," says Canadian Sen. Linda Frum, a longtime friend of the couple, per the New York Times. The Globe and Mail reports that just days before the bodies were found, Honey Sherman was enthusiastically making plans for their annual trip to Florida, emailing friends that she would be traveling to the state on Dec. 18 and Barry Sherman would join her a week later. The couple also sent out invitations last week to a dinner party at their winter home in Palm Beach.
– Mike Pence promised NATO allies Saturday that they had the "unwavering" support of the US, while also making it clear that the administration considers most of them to be freeloaders. The vice president, speaking to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, said European countries are failing to "pay their fair share" on defense, the BBC reports. Pence said only four other NATO countries—the UK, Greece, Estonia, and Poland—met a commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. "The time has come to do more," Pence said, echoing President Trump's campaign rhetoric. Pence said the US plans to boost military spending and will "hold Russia accountable" for its actions in Ukraine. "Peace only comes through strength," Pence said, per the Wall Street Journal. "President Trump believes we must be strong in our military might." German Chancellor Angela Merkel also addressed the conference and said Germany will increase its spending to meet NATO's target, but it won't be rushed into it, the Guardian reports. She added that it would be a mistake to believe that defense spending is the only way to boost security. "Security is ensured just as much by increasing one’s development spending," she said. Merkel said the US was a valuable partner in the fight against terrorism, along with Islamic nations who can show "that a misguided Islam, rather than Islam itself, is the cause of terrorism."
– No one used to pay much mind to the giraffes that roamed Africa. But new numbers from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature show a significant decline in their population over the past three decades and have conservationists worried that the elegant creature is falling victim to what one IUCN expert calls a "silent extinction," the BBC reports. In 1985, there were between 152,000 and 163,000 giraffes, but that number dropped to 97,000 by 2015—a "devastating decline" of nearly 40% that now moves the animal from the "least concern" category into the "vulnerable" one on the group's Red List. "While there [has] been great concern about elephants and rhinos, giraffes have gone under the radar," says Dr. Fennessy, co-director of the IUCN's Giraffe Conservation arm. The updated Red List, released Thursday at a biological diversity conference in Cancun, Mexico, points to man as the main driver of the declining stats, with poaching, habitat loss, and local unrest all assuming partial blame. A Duke University conservation biologist says the IUCN is partly to blame, too, for not considering more species threatened. "There's a strong tendency to think that familiar species [such as giraffes, chimps, etc.] must be OK because ... we see them in zoos," he tells the AP. "This is dangerous." Some good news, at least for some long-neckers: Of the nine giraffe subspecies, three of them are experiencing increasing populations; one is stable. A resolution passed in September at the IUCN's World Conservation Congress hopes to reverse the falling numbers of "Africa's iconic megafauna." (Three rare giraffes were killed for their tails.)
– The White House is changing its posture in the ongoing saga of the Mueller probe. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani tells the New York Times that the president will sit for an interview with Robert Mueller only if the special counsel can show evidence that Trump committed a crime. "If they can come to us and show us the basis and that it’s legitimate and that they have uncovered something, we can go from there," Giuliani said, acknowledging that it's not likely Mueller will agree to the new conditions. However, as the Times notes, it remains possible for Mueller to subpoena Trump in his bid to uncover any links between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign. According to Vox, Giuliani's move is part of team Trump's increasingly combative stance against the special counsel. Part of that strategy involves a PR campaign to paint the investigation as an unfair assault on Trump. Should such a campaign successfully sway public opinion, congressional action against Trump would be less likely should Mueller's report cast the president in an unflattering—or, possibly, impeachment-worthy—light. To the Times, Giuliani openly admits this strategy. “Nobody is going to consider impeachment if public opinion has concluded this is an unfair investigation, and that’s why public opinion is so important,” he said.
– Michael Bay's own rep calls it "bizarre": While filming the latest Transformers flick in China today, the director had what the rep describes as "a bizarre encounter with a man (allegedly under the influence of a narcotic substance) who was wielding an air conditioning unit as a weapon." After accosting a few crew members, he swung the AC unit at Bay's head, the New York Times reports. In true action hero style, Bay ducked and then "wrested the air conditioner from his attacker," the rep's statement continues. The suspect and two companions were arrested. Some reports said Bay was injured, but his rep says no one was hurt. On his website, Bay describes the suspects as "drugged up guys" and "belligerent asses." He says the crew paid local vendors for their inconvenience during filming, but the suspect "wanted four times that amount." After Bay fought him off, security stepped in: "But it took seven big guys to subdue him. It was like a Zombie in Brad Pitt’s movie World War Z—he lifted seven guys up and tried to bite them. He actually bit into one of the guards Nike shoe, insane," Bay writes. "Then it took 15 Hong Kong cops in riot gear to deal with these punks. In all, four guys were arrested for assaulting the officers."
– Think you're a happy drunk, a real life of the party? Well, allow science to be your buzzkill. A study out of the University of Missouri published in Clinical Psychological Science finds there's a big difference in the personality you think you take on when you're drinking and the one your friends see. "We were surprised to find such a discrepancy between drinkers’ perceptions of their own alcohol-induced personalities and how observers perceived them," says lead author and psychological scientist Rachel Winograd in a release. Researchers rounded up 156 subjects, quizzed them on their "typical" sober or drunk personalities, then fed some enough vodka to jack their BAC to about 0.09%; others were given Sprite. Participants measured their personalities at two points in the session that followed, as did outside observers. Those imbibing reported differences in all five personality factors: lower levels of conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness, and higher levels of extraversion and emotional stability. The kicker? Observers only noticed the extraversion, per the Telegraph, specifically gregariousness, assertiveness, and levels of activity. "We believe both the participants and raters were both accurate and inaccurate—the raters reliably reported what was visible to them and the participants experienced internal changes that were real to them but imperceptible to observers," says Winograd, though she adds that you, dear reader, might have to conduct further research: "We also would love to see these findings replicated outside of the lab—in bars, at parties, and in homes where people actually do their drinking." (Winograd previously concluded there are four kinds of drunks.)
– A drunk 18-year-old urinated on an 11-year-old girl's leg on a JetBlue flight Wednesday ... and it turns out that drunk 18-year-old is a member of the US Ski Team. Robert "Sandy" Vietze was removed from the team's developmental roster yesterday in the wake of the incident, and the New York Post speculates he may have lost his shot at the 2014 Winter Games. Vietze was on his way back to New York from an Oregon training camp when had had a bit too much to drink (eight alcoholic beverages, to be exact), stumbled a few rows forward from his seat, and mistook the girl's leg for the urinal. Flight attendants separated Vietze and the girl's furious father. "I woke up to this man yelling and literally looking like he was about to punch this kid in the face," a fellow passenger tells the Post. Police took the teen into custody after the plane landed in New York; he was issued a federal summons for indecent exposure and released. Federal prosecutors decided not to pursue the matter and dropped the case, CBS reports. "I was drunk, and I did not realize I was pissing on her leg," Vietze told police. The Post notes that he has not apologized to the girl.
– Critics agree: The visuals in Ridley Scott's Prometheus are stunning. As for the story—about a space crew tracking the aliens who may have created us—it's a little too heavy for its own good. "Prometheus could have been an elegant, moody sci-fi actioner if only it didn't strain so hard for weighty existential meaning," writes Dana Stevens at Slate. The film "is more interested in piling on big questions than in answering them. It’s deep without being particularly smart," though its design and effects are so "dazzling" you won't realize "that basic flaw until at least an hour in." Joe Morgenstern echoes Stevens in the Wall Street Journal. "This tale of an interstellar search asks cosmic questions about the meaning of life, but comes up with lame answers in a script that screams attention-deficit disorder," he notes. Still, it's "worth seeing for the quality of its sci-fi sights." In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan notes that the movie "pushes too hard for significance," which "contrasts badly with the standard nature of some of the story's plotting." For "its wizardly director, it's something of a disappointment." But at the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert raves that Prometheus is "a seamless blend of story, special effects, and pitch-perfect casting, filmed in sane, effective 3-D that doesn't distract." And Ebert finds it "all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers."
– Django Unchained actress Daniele Watts says she was handcuffed by police for kissing her white boyfriend in a car, but the responding officer says that's simply not true. "She is lying," LAPD Sgt. Jim Parker tells the Hollywood Reporter, adding that he recorded the entire incident. He says police received a public-nudity complaint; the caller said Watts and Brian James Lucas were having sex in a car near CBS Studios. "[Lucas] was in the passenger seat with his legs outside," according to the caller, an Art Directors Guild office employee, Parker says. He claims that at least one person took a picture, and TMZ apparently got its hands on that picture—and the gossip site notes that it certainly does look "like sex." Parker says Watts and Lucas were no longer doing whatever it was they had been doing by the time he arrived—Watts was on the phone, standing outside the car. "People having sex in the car, no biggie. No one wants to arrest anybody," Parker says, but he did ask Lucas for Watts' ID. "And he [Lucas] said, 'Oh, I have her passport,'" which is when Watts started getting upset, Parker says, adding, "Quite frankly, I don't need to see her ID, but she does have to ID herself." He says Watts walked away, and he didn't want to engage in a physical confrontation, so he requested a female officer to come and bring Watts back. That's when the two officers he sent after her brought her back in cuffs, saying, "She's being difficult." As for Lucas, he was never cuffed, Parker points out. "I asked her, 'Why are you in handcuffs? He's [Lucas] been here this whole time not in handcuffs.'"
– A California Ku Klux Klan rally on Saturday ended with three anti-KKK protesters stabbed and five KKK members arrested. But Anaheim cops now say those five have been released after evidence shows they acted in self-defense, the Los Angeles Times reports. "The totality of the evidence, including videos, still pictures, and interviews, paints a pretty clear picture as to who the aggressors were," an Anaheim police sergeant says. The demonstration, which the Chicago Tribune says was meant to be an anti-immigration rally, turned violent from the get-go after six KKK members showed up around noon. Witnesses say some of the anti-protesters—who the Washington Post says numbered in the "several dozen"—started kicking a Klansman wearing a "Grand Dragon" shirt, and soon the stabbings began, including one by a KKK member using the decorative end of a flagpole. "[The counter-protesters] were so angry, they would have torn these folks limb from limb," Brian Levin, the director of Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, tells NBC Los Angeles. Levin, who was there to record the rally for research purposes, says he ended up shielding KKK members until police could get there. "I was afraid for their lives." Levin later posted on Twitter a video of him asking one of the KKK members: "How do you feel that a Jewish person helped save your life today?" (The Klansman thanked him.) "Regardless of an individual or group's beliefs or ideologies, they are entitled to live without the fear of physical violence and have the right, under the law, to defend themselves when attacked," a police statement read, per NBC. The seven counter-protesters who remain jailed are being held on charges of assault with a deadly weapon or elder abuse for attacking a Klan member older than 65. The three people stabbed were in stable condition at a local hospital.
– It's not just municipal police forces that have obtained military-style weaponry through a federal program: Modified grenade launchers and M-16 rifles are on college campuses, too, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. The publication finds that 117 colleges have received equipment thanks to a federal system called the 1033 program. The program, which lawmakers and President Obama are reassessing following events in Ferguson, Mo., provides the equipment to colleges for free; the educational institutions just have to pay the shipping costs, the Chronicle notes. The University of Central Florida has a modified grenade launcher intended to shoot tear-gas canisters; Hinds Community College, in Mississippi, also has a grenade launcher. At least 60 schools have M-16 assault rifles, and Ohio State has an armored vehicle. The 1033 program "is a force multiplier for us," says the head of both Florida State's police and an international campus police group, citing understaffing. "We are not given budgets comparable to some large cities and municipalities, so we need to find ways to make it reach." But other campus figures question the system; click for the Chronicle's full report.
– On Wednesday, Rose McGowan commemorated the anniversary of #MeToo, "one of the hardest years of my life" and "a year of triggering for so many." As for the movement itself, an interview in the Sunday Times Magazine over the weekend painted the 45-year-old actress as coming down on it altogether as she called the people now pushing the #MeToo campaign "douchebags" and "losers." "It's all bulls---. It's a lie," she says. "It's a Band-Aid lie to make them feel better. I know these people, I know they're lily-livered, and as long as it looks good on the surface, to them, that's enough." The magazine cited her beef that she isn't asked to attend survivors' events or other campaign promotions, even though she's been one of the most outspoken people in speaking up about sexual misconduct since she revealed she was a victim of Harvey Weinstein. Now, however, McGowan says her words were twisted, and that she wasn't trashing the #MeToo movement itself, per USA Today. "I never said #MeToo is a lie," she tweeted Sunday evening. "Ever. I was talking about Hollywood and Time's Up, not #MeToo. Ugh. I'm so tired of erroneous sh*tstorms. #MeToo is about survivors and their experiences, that cannot be taken away." In two follow-up videos Monday morning, McGowan added, "I'm just here to say that #MeToo is important, it's honest, and it's ... simply our shared experience. That is what #MeToo is. And it's beautiful." Also told with "cold, controlled fury" to the Times, McGowan reveals she spent 20 years strategically "plotting her revenge" against Weinstein—she says she only took on the role on Charmed to become more famous so that when she exposed him it would definitely make headlines. More from her scathing interview here.
– Men with low sex drive might try switching on a light, a new study shows. Taking a cue from depression treatment, researchers at the University of Siena in Italy found that bright light stimulates testosterone levels and led to better results in the bedroom, reports the BBC. Using a light box lined with fluorescent tubes, researchers tested the effects on 38 men diagnosed with low libidos. One half were exposed to bright lights, and the rest to lower doses of light. Those who received the brighter lights for 30 minutes daily over two weeks tripled their rate of sexual satisfaction.The amount of testosterone in the control group didn't change, but the bright-light group saw their levels rise to 3.6 nanograms per milliliter from 2.1. "The increased levels of testosterone explain the greater reported sexual satisfaction," said lead author Andrea Fagiolini, per the Independent. He said testosterone production among men in the northern hemisphere declines naturally from November through April (peaking in October). "The use of the light box really mimics what nature does," Fagiolini said. He said light therapy "inhibits the pineal gland in the center of the brain and this may allow the production of more testosterone, and there are probably other hormonal effects." Light box therapy is commonly used to treat depression caused by Seasonal Affective Disorder. Although researchers cautioned that more research was needed, light therapy could be a promising hope for men whose sex drive is off, particularly during the winter months. A quarter of men over 40 report lagging libido and other problems, reports the Independent. (Women with low libido should check their heart rate.)
– A missing statue of the Virgin Mary stolen from a Vermont nativity scene more than two years ago has been found unharmed and returned to its owner, the AP reports. The statue was stolen from Lyndonville in January 2016 and it was recently discovered in an apartment house storage area by Lyndonville Police Chief Jack Harris acting on a tip. It was returned to the Lyndon Ecumenical Council. The Caledonian Record reports Municipal Administrator Justin Smith recognized the missing statue in photos of the building's interior taken by the town health officer during an inspection. Police say mostly college students live in the building and it will be impossible to determine how it got there. A statue of the baby Jesus that was stolen at the same time remains missing.
– Papillion Sophie has lived a pampered life, but that doesn't have to end now that her famous owner—Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall—has died. According to estate papers filed last week, Bacall left $10,000 to her son Sam Robards for Sophie's care and upkeep, Page Six reports. This bequeath isn't a surprise, considering Bacall called herself a "dog yearner" in a 2008 interview, Us reports. "I didn't have a dog growing up in the city with a working mother. As an only child, I yearned for someone to talk to," she said. She gave Sophie quite a glitzy life attending book signings and film festivals. Bacall didn't ignore her human family: The New York Daily News reports her $26.6 million estate was mostly split among her three children; her grandkids reportedly got $250,000 each. And two of her employees also received $20,000 and $15,000, respectively. Considering other famous four-legged heirs, Sophie's 10 grand isn't shocking: Leona Helmsley left $12 million to her Maltese and Alexander McQueen left $82,000 to his three dogs. But the oddest may be Dusty Springfield, who gave orders that her cat be serenaded with her own music and "marry" another cat.
– Malcolm Harris doesn't have a problem with more bars—he just thinks those bars should sell pot, not alcohol. In an opinion piece for Al-Jazeera America, Harris offers his take on how marijuana bars would give Americans more palatable gathering spaces with fewer health risks, creating an "urban-planning win-win" and possibly even saving lives. Some highlights: Harris points out the 88,000 deaths annually from excessive alcohol use as noted by the CDC and the "hundreds of billions of dollars a year in lost productivity, health care, and property damage" that the National Institutes of Health has researched. Citing another NIH study, Harris says that pot would serve as an acceptable "substitute medication" for booze: "From a public health perspective, every drink we can replace with a toke is a victory." There are few places these days that resemble the famous bar from Cheers. "Fewer and fewer people have a third place (not work or home) where everyone knows their name," Harris writes. Because so many people have migrated to the suburbs and holed up with their cable TV and Internet, not as many people are heading out to congregate. "These spaces [would] promote community integration, friendship, and extrafamilial networks of support," Harris notes. Although he's optimistic that "eventually Americans will have public places to go and get high with their friends," Harris thinks government should ease up on strict regulations. "Not one Amsterdam-style coffee shop has managed to keep its doors open," he writes. "Though owners seem willing to conform to whatever guidelines they're given, so far, no locality wants to be the first to host an American marijuana bar." Harris also acknowledges some of the logistical hurdles that businesses may have to overcome. "One problem with weed bars is employees' right to a smoke-free workplace; even if cops allowed indoor marijuana smoking, no one would be allowed to work there," he writes. Click for his full piece.
– When you live near a major dam, the last thing you want to hear is that the integrity of it has been "compromised" by landslides. But that's exactly what residents living below North Carolina's Lake Tahoma were told late Tuesday in a tweet from a local National Weather Service account. "MANDATORY EVACUATIONS," the post read, with specifics on who exactly in McDowell County should be getting out. "ACT NOW TO PRESERVE YOUR LIFE!" NBC News reports the flash-flood emergency warning to thousands came after an engineer checked out the dam, and after heavy rain had caused "significant and life-threatening flooding" throughout the county, per the NWS. Weather.com says there were two landslides reported in the area, with local authorities noting the dam is in "imminent danger" of failing, per CBS News. Water was reported spilling out from the sides of the dam early Wednesday. "Floodwaters have reached levels not seen since the September 2004 floods associated with Hurricanes Frances and Ivan," the NWS says, per NBC. The communities of Marion and Old Fort are among those most severely affected. Heavy rainfall throughout several Southern states is linked to the storm Alberto, which took the lives of two South Carolina journalists Monday when a tree fell on their SUV. (A "once in 1,000 years" flood slammed a Maryland city—twice in two years.)
– This might not bode well for President Obama's chances of getting Republicans to go along with his jobs plan: The two sides can't even agree on when he should unveil it. In response to Obama's request to address a joint session of Congress on Sept. 7, John Boehner has asked him to postpone the speech one night, reports the Hill. Boehner noted in his letter that the House isn't scheduled to reconvene until 6:30 on the 7th, which would raise "logistical impediments" in getting the chamber ready for a speech 90 minutes later. He did not mention what everyone else has noted: that Obama's speech would conflict with a GOP presidential debate—Rick Perry's first one—at the same time. White House spokesman Jay Carney called the timing a "coincidence," but that didn't stop critics such as Rush Limbaugh from piling on, notes Mediaite. "This is intended to disrupt the Republican debate," he said on his show today. "It’s intended to make Obama look bigger than the Republicans." Another thing Boehner didn't mention: Postponing the speech by one night would pit the president against the NFL's opening night, notes the National Journal.
– A 54-year-old man is accused of planting three inert bombs around Staten Island in order to frame the husband of a neighborhood woman he liked, reports the Staten Island Advance. Police say the man left his homemade devices in residential areas over the last month, reports the Daily News, which describes them as "propane cylinders duct taped to vials filled with gasoline attached to a container of nails and screws." As constructed, they apparently wouldn't have been able to explode, say police, though it's not clear whether that was by design or ignorance. The man was reportedly smitten with a 32-year-old woman in his neighborhood—the Advance says he was her ex-boyfriend—and apparently none too happy that she recently got married. With each device was an angry note that implicated her husband, says the Daily News. The suspect was being questioned this afternoon, and charges are pending. "He, we believe, is the person responsible for the three incidents on Staten Island,” says an NYPD spokesperson.
– The parents of a 15-year-old who killed himself in 2013 after years of "unremitting bullying" have sued their Connecticut town and its board of education, accusing them of ignoring the problem and their own anti-bullying policy, NBC New York reports. According to the Greenwich Time, Bartlomeij "Bart" Palosz shot himself with his father's hunting rifle after his first day as a sophomore following a failed attempt to kill himself with pills a few months earlier. Bart's parents are seeking an unspecified amount greater than $15,000 in their lawsuit. The family's lawyer tells the Time that recently revealed documents compiled on Bart by his middle school and shared with his high school are a "smoking gun." In these documents, staffers are quoted as saying "everyone" was mean to Bart because he "pushes people's buttons" and that he wanted to be liked but was "very socially awkward" and "annoying to peers," according to NBC. The Time reports the documents show incidents of verbal and physical bullying—one resulted in stitches—and include the phrase "social work needed." The lawsuit claims this proves the schools knew about the bullying but didn't protect Bart or punish his tormentors as required by their anti-bullying policy.
– The French economist whose 685-page Capital in the Twenty-First Century became a surprise 2014 bestseller has rejected the country's top honor, saying the government should concentrate on fixing the economy instead of giving out awards. "I refuse this nomination because I do not think it is the government's role to decide who is honorable," Thomas Piketty tells AFP, which notes that he supported the Socialist Party in the 2012 election but has since been a fierce critic of President Francois Hollande's policies. Piketty, who wants a complete overhaul of the tax system to reverse inequality, says the government's priority should be reviving the French and European economies. He had been nominated for the Legion of Honor by the country's education ministry, reports the Wall Street Journal. "We take note of his decision to refuse the distinction," the minister in charge of universities and research says. "The excellence and the visibility of his work remain." It is rare for a nominee to reject the award, although Jean-Paul Sartre and Pierre and Marie Curie also turned it down, the BBC notes.
– Whoever said no good deed goes unpunished probably never got six figures out of the act. But turning in a lost backpack with $42,000 in cash and traveler's checks inside has paid off for Glen James, who's raked in more than $130,000 in donations from across the country as of this writing. It all comes from an online fund, set up by a stranger touched by the Good Samaritan and homeless Bostonian, the BBC reports. "The fact that he's in the situation he is, being homeless, it blew my mind that he would do this,'' Ethan Whittington tells the AP. Whittington, 27, says the crowdfunding campaign on gofundme.com "caught on like wildfire" and he's talked with James on the phone about visiting Boston to hand over the money. Since hitting his $50,000 goal, the marketing accounts manager has bumped that number up to $250,000—so James can buy a house, CBS Boston reports. "After all the stuff you hear on the news, you wonder about people," Withington says. "If we can get more people to do this we could completely change the world, one person at a time."
– Google gave the public its first taste of how it would feel to strap on its much-anticipated digital glasses, releasing photos and a video showing off the system's capabilities and user interface. Users are shown taking video and photos, performing searches, and overlaying directions, weather, and flight info over their field of vision. The system is voice-controlled, activated with a cheerful, "OK Glass," Mashable reports. The device will consist of a single, small screen, positioned over the user's right eye and visible via a mirrored glass block. Google also started taking applications for civilian beta testers, the New York Times reports—until now only developers could get their hands on it—though it will cost $1,500 and be available only to a select few. To apply, would-be early adopters need to post a 50-words-or-less application on Google+ or Twitter with the hashtag #ifihadglass. Those selected will have to pick up their headset in person at events in New York, LA, or San Francisco.
– Theresa May predicted that ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia may never fully recover after being poisoned with a nerve agent March 4 in Salisbury, England. Now a family member tells the BBC, via the Guardian, that the outlook for the pair "really isn't good" and that her family has kept news of what happened from Skripal's own mother. "I have maybe 1% of hope," Viktoria Skripal, the ex-spy's niece, says. "Whatever it was has given them a very small chance of survival." And if they do make it, she adds, "they're going to be invalids for the rest of their lives." Still, she says that even though "we are all grown up and … don't believe in miracles," her family is still hoping for one, per Sky News. (The UK believes the poison path leads right back to the Kremlin.)
– An Indiana mom made a heart-wrenching choice, and now her community is rallying around her. Dozens showed up for a candlelight vigil Sunday in Richmond to support Mary York, who called 911 Thursday to warn that her son was going to Dennis Intermediate School with a gun, per ABC News and WTHR. Police confronted 14-year-old Brandon Clegg at the school and engaged him in a shootout before he took his own life. Clegg's family says he had been bullied at school, which they say is no justification—just an explanation of what happened. "It destroys me to think that a kid would have to go and show his anger at a school and that he would go as far as shooting at people..." says his cousin, Thomas York. "It sucks." But most of the attention is going to Brandon's mom, 42, who made a difficult phone call that almost certainly saved lives. "She's a human. She's a mother," says vigil organizer Shawn Wright. "She lost her child." As an Indiana state police superintendent tells WCPO: "If [York] hadn't made that call, we'd be having a much different conversation right now." (On the sixth anniversary of Sandy Hook, there was a nerve-wracking morning.)
– Supporters of Ron Paul continue to prove their savvy at winning straw polls. This time, Paul walked off with the today's Values Voter Summit straw poll in Washington, DC, taking 37% of the vote, Politico reports. The event for social conservatives gave Herman Cain 23%, Rick Santorum 16%, and Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann both 8%. It seems pro-Paul voters signed up en masse yesterday to ensure a winning vote, Slate reports. Given Paul's last-minute turnout, what does the poll really mean for Republican presidential contenders? Social conservatives are liking Santorum and have lost interest in Bachmann, Politico notes. Plus, Perry lost ground for calling critics of his immigration policy "heartless," while Cain swept up the crowd with a moving speech, says McClatchy. “Those results probably aren’t accurate,” said one voter. “Cain wowed everybody. He’s good.”
– After tackling issues including the Vietnam War, the assassination of JFK, and the presidency of George W. Bush, Oliver Stone says he's taking on another of the "greatest stories of our time": Edward Snowden's National Security Agency whistleblowing. Stone will write and direct an adaptation of Guardian journalist Luke Harding's The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, with Harding and other journalists working as production and story consultants. Stone, who has previously described Snowden as a hero, says making the film is a "real challenge." The New York Times described Harding's book as "a fast-paced, almost novelistic narrative that is part bildungsroman and part cinematic thriller," and filming is likely to begin before the end of the year, reports Variety. But Stone's film will have some serious competition, the AP notes. Sony Pictures has bought the rights to former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State and signed up James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson for the project.
– Weird news from the land of Charlie Sheen: The troubled actor has managed to irk a group of 9/11 truthers, which is now threatening to protest in front of his live shows. Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, who believe 9/11 was a conspiracy, feel Sheen has betrayed them. Sheen was once very vocal about his belief in the truther movement (he said the World Trade Center collapse looked like a "controlled demolition"), but instead of "asking hard questions about what happened on 9/11 and the resulting wars," a member tells TMZ, Sheen has been "bragging about smoking crack and sleeping with hookers." In other Sheen-related news from TMZ, ex Brooke Mueller is back in rehab after a weeklong binge, having refused a drug test and engaged in some other strange behavior—click here for more.
– Earlier this month, Puerto Rico announced its first death from Guillain-Barre syndrome, a condition causing temporary paralysis that, in this case, was linked to the Zika virus. Now incidences of Guillain-Barre are said to have risen in seven countries in tandem with outbreaks of Zika, per a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. The New York Times notes that while the CDC remains wary of saying Zika can cause GBS (it simply says GBS is "strongly associated" with Zika), this research offers further evidence that Zika may indeed be responsible—worrisome news, as about 500 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are vulnerable to becoming infected with it. "It's pretty obvious that in all seven sites there is a clear relationship," says lead author Dr. Marcos A. Espinal of the Pan American Health Organization. The study found nearly 165,000 cases of Zika virus (some confirmed, some suspected) between April 2015 and March 2016, as well as almost 1,500 cases of GBS, reported in the Brazilian state of Bahia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Suriname, and Venezuela. During the weeks of Zika outbreaks in these areas, the incidence of GBS cases spiked compared to pre-Zika baseline numbers—jumping as much as 877% in Venezuela. Women had a 75% higher reported incidence rate of Zika than men, but men had a GBS incidence rate 28% higher than women's, and incidence rates also climbed with age, NBC News reports. (The CDC's Zika funds are almost gone.)
– The new year brings with it minimum wage increases—from as little as 10 cents to as much as 35 cents—in 10 states, helping almost one million workers, NPR reports. Nine of the hikes were part of automatic cost-of-living adjustments, but in Rhode Island, the wage was upped for the first time in five years thanks to a new law. The increases also mean that the minimum wage gap is growing, the AP points out: Washington state, for example, bumped its minimum up to $9.19 per hour, while in neighboring Idaho, the lowest wage is almost $2 per hour less.
– JK Rowling makes the case today that millions of kids around the world are living in appalling conditions—the stuff of Grimms' fairytales—in institutions that are supposed to be caring for them. Rowling wants to change that, not by improving these orphanages with "pretty murals" or teddy bears, but by eliminating them altogether, she writes in the Guardian. The big challenge is providing support for often-poor families who think they have no choice but to place their child in such an institution. If a child's biological family isn't up to the task, then foster families can step in. But Rowling argues that institutions are absolutely the wrong answer. Rowling has started a charity called Lumos (yes, after one of her Harry Potter spells), and writes that it has made genuine progress in reducing new placements in countries such as Bulgaria, Moldova, and the Czech Republic. She wants to raise awareness and donations with campaigns like this one. "I recently committed to becoming president of Lumos for life," writes Rowling. "It is my dream that, within my lifetime, the very concept of taking a child away from its family and locking it away will seem to belong to a cruel, fictional world." Click for her full column.
– With 20 million Americans using online dating sites, how can you be sure that your prospective date isn't married? Or, say, a mass murderer? New online security services—such as MyMatchChecker.com, Date Check, and the Instant National Criminal Search—are offering background checks on people using the nearly 1,500 dating websites in the United States, reports the New York Times. New York and New Jersey are the first two states to offer some regulations on Internet dating sites, such as requiring sites to post safety tips and to say whether they require background checks of their members. Experts say that many more states will soon follow. Although some sites like True.com insist on background checks for all members, other dating sites say this is a false sense of security because criminal screening databases are imperfect. But with online dating a billion-dollar industry, increasingly government officials and public safety advocates are calling for better safeguards. Failing that, there's always a healthy sense of skepticism: “Don’t give up your heart so fast,” cautions one safety expert.
– Fans mourned Aretha Franklin all around the world Thursday—including in a barbershop in Suffolk, Va., where a discussion of the Queen of Soul turned violent. Witnesses say that after an argument over whether Halle Berry had played or was going to play Franklin in a biopic turned violent, Michael Jermell Hatton, 44, pulled a gun and shot another patron, WTKR reports. Police say the victim, 47-year-old Tony Lundy, is in critical condition. The New York Daily News reports that Franklin repeatedly said she wanted Berry to play her in a movie due to start filming next year—but the role went to Jennifer Hudson after Berry said she couldn't sing anywhere near well enough for the role.
– A Texas woman fell into Hurricane Harvey floodwaters at her son's home and ended up dead from flesh-eating bacteria. Nancy Reed, 77, is the second known person to contract flood-related necrotizing fasciitis after Harvey, the Houston Chronicle reports. She died Sept. 15, but the Harris County medical examiner's office just ruled on her cause of death. The quick-spreading infection, which can cause organ failure and death in a short amount of time, also hit rescuer JR Atkins while he was helping his neighbors; he contracted it through an insect bite but survived. "This is one of the things we'd been worrying about once the flooding began, that something like this might occur," says the director of the city's emergency medical services. "It's tragic." When Reed fell, she broke and cut her arm, and the injury got infected, a family friend says. The medical examiner's office concluded the infection caused complications related to "blunt trauma of an upper extremity," the Dallas News reports. A doctor warns KTRK that even after floodwaters recede, the dangerous bacteria can remain on anything floodwaters touched.
– Tensions in the Ukraine just keep escalating. Although President Obama warned Russia not to send troops, Vladimir Putin today got official permission to do just that. The Russian president asked parliament to let him send forces to the "territory of Ukraine" to protect ethnic Russians in the region of Crimea and possibly elsewhere, reports AP. And in a not-so-surprising development, lawmakers agreed unanimously, reports CNN. Earlier, the pro-Russian prime minister of Crimea had made a formal request of his own for Putin's help. The Ukraine government in Kiev, meanwhile, says Russia already has sent 6,000 troops to Crimea, even if it hasn't acknowledged as much, reports the BBC. The upshot is that "the Black Sea peninsula appeared to slip beyond Kiev's control," says Reuters. And it quotes one political analyst who says "the scenario of Crimea's withdrawal (from Ukraine) has been accelerated." Soldiers presumed to be either part of the Russian military or at least backed by the military control the airports, government buildings, and the main communications center in Crimea. Airspace around the main airport in Simferopol has been shut down.
– Students are in an "uproar"—in the words of one parent—after a middle school principal in California forced a 13-year-old to change his clothes Thursday. When students at Ethan Chase Middle School were given the opportunity to dress as a Disney character for spirit week, eighth-grader Austin Lacey went "all out," KTLA reports. "I'm just one of those people," he says. Austin showed up to school in a sparkly blue dress and long blonde wig, unmistakably the trademarks of Elsa from the popular film Frozen. But he was almost immediately told to take the costume off by his principal. "The principal's action was based upon the need to stop a general disruption to the school environment," KTLA quotes a statement from the district's superintendent as saying. But BuzzFeed reports that's not what Austin's mother, Brooke Francey, heard. Lacey "was informed the principal does not agree with boys dressing like girls," she writes on Facebook. And she says the principal told her the same. "The statement made to me was, 'It is not okay for boys to dress like girls or girls to dress like boys.'" Austin, who was told to remove the costume before school even started, says classmates were cool with it and were posing for photos with him. "It wasn't a disruption," a fellow student tells the Press-Enterprise. "Nobody had a problem with it." According to a second Facebook post from Francey, students are passing out flyers encouraging everyone to cross-dress next week to support the LGBT community. "This is a real problem, and as students it is our job to fix this," the flyer states. (These boys were asked to leave school after dressing as Nikki Minaj and Miss America for spirit week.)
– The National Corvette Museum is eight vehicles short thanks to yesterday's amazing car-chomping sinkhole, and now security video shows the first moments of the collapse in Bowling Green, Ky., reports NPR. Things are still a mess inside the museum, and there's no word yet on when workers will be able to retrieve the cars and assess the damage, reports the Louisville Courier-Journal. You can see more images at the museum's YouTube channel.
– Parisian streets have been paved with stones since the 12th century, and while asphalt now covers large swaths of the city, the cobblestones still adorn squares, boulevards, and alleyways. For years as the city dug them up (about 10,000 tons a year) to continue building or repaving, it paid to haul them to the dump, reports the New York Times. No longer. It finally occurred to officials last March to salvage these rare gems of Parisian history and sell them to contractors so that they'd have "a second life," say the head of the city maintenance yard that stores them. "They are cheap and have some charm," he tells Bloomberg. In September, one enterprising woman bought five tons for $215 and set up a souvenir shop of sorts, where her team polishes, weighs, and hand-paints the stones. She sells them online for between $60 and $160, plus $15 to $40 in shipping fees. Tourists from as far afield as China and Oklahoma have paid for what entrepreneur Margaux Sainte-Lagüe calls enduring little pieces of history. (Not bad, considering the stones are worth maybe 8 cents as raw material.) For her, they bring a bit of nostalgia, reminding her of when youth threw them at police during national strikes in 1968. (This happened in 1848 as well.) Even the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has one of her decorated stones, notes Architectural Digest. (Paris is designating a wooded area for nudists.)
– The woman accused of driving into an Oklahoma State University homecoming parade is clearly mentally ill and has no memory of the crash that killed four people and injured dozens more, her lawyer says. "I have deep concerns about her competency at this point," attorney Tony Coleman tells the Oklahoman. "I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I can tell you she's suffering from mental illness." Coleman says he believes 25-year-old Adacia Chambers suffered some kind of blackout because of her illness and has no memory of the crash or of the hour leading up to it, during which she left her job at a fast-food restaurant soon after arriving. Three adults and a 2-year-old boy were killed in the crash, and four of the 47 people injured are in critical condition, CNN reports. Chambers has been charged with four counts of second-degree murder. She also faces a DUI charge, but Coleman says nobody saw her drink or take drugs before the incident and she showed no sign of having been under the influence when he first saw her on Saturday, though he says he wasn't satisfied he was dealing with "a competent person," KFOR reports. The lawyer says he has spoken to her boyfriend, who told him she has diabetes but isn't being treated for it, and that she also suffers from insomnia and didn't sleep for three days before the crash, per the Oklahoman. Coleman says the boyfriend has told him Chambers has attempted suicide before, but he doesn't believe she was trying to kill herself when she allegedly plowed into the OSU crowd.
– Bill Maher is right to call for an end to political groups' "phony umbrage" at every potentially offensive remark. But the comedian's argument is "obviously self-serving," write the editors of the Washington Post. They note that in his New York Times editorial, Maher didn't mention the furor over his own comments—calling Sarah Palin a "vile" name and her family "inbred weirdos," for instance. "This is rhetoric that goes beyond ridiculing or satirizing political adversaries to dehumanizing them." Yes, Maher and Rush Limbaugh deserve the right to free speech, but some of us are looking for a conversation in which "not every opponent is seen as an enemy." Language like theirs prompts us to despise or just ignore each other. Yes, "incivility is subject to partisan manipulation. But that doesn’t make it a phony issue," the editors write. There's a difference between "the merely risque and the corrosively hateful"—one that even those who occupy the dual worlds of politics and entertainment should observe. Click through for the full editorial.
– A lengthy legal battle between Donald Trump and Trump University students, who say they paid thousands of dollars for real estate "secrets" they never received, is finally over. On Tuesday, an appeals court in San Francisco approved a $25 million settlement reached last year while rejecting an appeal from a Florida woman who hoped to opt out of the class-action lawsuit and pursue a separate case against Trump, reports NBC News. Sherri Simpson, who says she paid $19,000 for Trump University classes, argued a notice sent to students early in the litigation progress promised they could opt out at the time the notice was sent or after a proposed settlement. But judges said the notice gave "only one opportunity to opt out." They added "among over 8,000 class members, Simpson is the only one advancing this understanding of the notice," per Politico. The decision also referenced claims that Simpson's challenge was politically motivated to hurt the president. Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump vowed to fight allegations that students paid up to $35,000 for Trump University programs based on false promises they'd reveal Trump's "secrets of success," per the Los Angeles Times. Though Trump quickly agreed to the $25 million settlement after his election victory, his lawyers said he'd back out if Simpson were granted a trial. Though "we are disappointed … all of the lurid facts about the fraud won't receive the public hearing they deserve," her lawyer says Simpson will end her fight so that 4,000 students can receive payments. In what the appeals court calls a "highly favorable" deal, students are expected to get 80% to 90% of what they paid to the school while it was open from 2005 to 2010.
– Flint, Michigan's water woes are officially a federal emergency—nearly two years after the city took the money-saving move of switching from using Lake Huron water treated in Detroit to water from the Flint River. That water was found to be highly corrosive to lead pipes still in use in the city, causing lead to leach into residents' drinking water. On Saturday President Obama declared a federal emergency in the city of 100,000, thereby unleashing federal funding and authorizing FEMA to provide water, filters, cartridges, and other items for 90 days, per the AP and Detroit Free Press. Gov. Rich Snyder puts the cost of the aforementioned water distribution and filtering items at $41 million. More: Sanders vs. Snyder: Speaking of Snyder, Bernie Sanders called for his resignation Saturday. "The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint's water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned." Timeline: The AP has a timelines of the crisis, which dates to the April 2014 switch. Notable: In October 2014, a GM engine plant stopped using Flint's water, stating that it was rusting parts. Visualized: The Washington Post has a jarring and informative series of graphics that illustrate "how toxic Flint's water really is." One family's water tested at a level that the EPA considers to be "toxic waste." Every kid: The state's chief medical executive, along with the doctor who publicly called for Flint to stop its use of Flint River water, this week said all 8,657 kids under age 6 in Flint should be considered exposed to lead and treated as such, reports USA Today. The residents' ordeal: The AP speaks with some locals. Rabecka Cordell and her 5-year-old son have lead poisoning; she also has leukemia, he has learning and speech disabilities. She refuses to even use the water to bathe.
– Researchers have used data harvested from Wikipedia and DBpedia to create a map of all the wars—at least those that have been documented—since 2500 BC. That's 12,703 battles, Sputnik News reports. Variously colored dots on the map represent battles from different time periods. Clicking on a dot yields available information about the conflict, including the name of the battle and its location. Check out the map here.
– People in other parts of the world are being treated to a solar eclipse this week, but Americans get a consolation prize with a terrific view of Jupiter in the night sky. Earth is passing between the sun and Jupiter, making the planet as bright as it will be for the entire year, reports Smithsonian. In fact, only the moon and the International Space Station will be brighter, notes Space.com. You'll find Jupiter in the constellation Leo, and the website has a diagram and more specifics of where to look. The best part is you can catch a glimpse of Jupiter at pretty much any time, adds a post at EarthSky.org: "You can see it in the east at nightfall and early evening [starting Tuesday]. Around midnight, when the sun is below your feet, Jupiter appears high overhead. At dawn tomorrow, you’ll see Jupiter low in your western sky." The planet will be easily visible for several days. As for that solar eclipse, if you don't happen to live in Indonesia, CNN notes that you can watch it via a NASA livestream here, beginning at 8pm Eastern Tuesday.
– First it was a couple of US mayors, now it's the entire United Kingdom: Scottish activist Suzanne Kelly created a request on the British government's petitions website demanding that Donald Trump be denied entry to the UK, CNN reports, and the document has already received more than 236,000 signatures—far surpassing the 100,000 needed to get Parliament to consider the issue for debate. "The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech," the petition reads. "The same principles should apply to everyone who wishes to enter the UK. If the United Kingdom is to continue applying the 'unacceptable behaviour' criteria to those who wish to enter its borders, it must be fairly applied to the rich as well as poor, and the [powerful] as well as [weak]." This Scottish David has taken on the American Goliath before. Kelly, a citizen journalist for the Aberdeen Voice, gave Trump a hard time when he was building his Aberdeen golf course a few years back; she's also tried to get the real estate mogul stripped of an honorary degree at a local university, CNN notes. "The petition will allow all UK residents who want to stand up against … Donald Trump's hate speech specifically the opportunity to do so," Kelly tells the Voice. "People have been barred from the United Kingdom for less." The Metro backs up that claim, citing the banning of both rapper Tyler the Creator and anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller. Meanwhile, a counter-petition entitled "Don't Ban Trump From the United Kingdom" has emerged, calling Kelly's arguments "illogical"—but that petition had just over 1,600 signatures as of this writing. The House of Commons tells CNN a committee will decide Jan. 5 how to handle Kelly's petition.
– Death row inmates in Texas can no longer request special last meals, and they can blame racist killer Lawrence Russell Brewer. Before he was executed this week, Brewer ordered up a Texas-sized feast, according to the Austin American-Statesman: "Two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelet, large bowl of fried okra, 3 fajitas and a pound of barbeque with a half-loaf of white bread on the side." Plus a pint of ice cream for dessert. The problem: He barely touched it. When that tidbit surfaced, a state lawmaker complained: “Enough is enough. It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege … one which the perpetrator did not provide to their victim.” State prison officials quickly announced the end of the program: Those about to die will get what all the other prisoners are getting. Daily Intel has more on the fascination about last meals.
– Sweden may not condone file-sharing—it's still illegal—but the country is officially OK with belief in the practice. Some 3,000 passionate file-sharers have gotten their beliefs recognized as an official religion. The Missionary Church of Kopimism—as in, "copy-me-ism"—has sought official status in Sweden since 2010, and it's finally won the battle, TorrentFreak reports. The decision follows a pair of rejections; authorities wanted Kopimism to define its prayer practices. "Our main ritual is the act of copying and connecting with each other by sharing information," the church's founder tells Wired. Now, Isak Gerson says, "more people will have the courage to step out as Kopimists. Maybe not in the public, but at least to their close ones." He hopes that the recognition will have an effect on future legislation surrounding file-sharing. Meanwhile, he has some advice for fellow believers: "Keep copying. Maintain hardline Kopimi."
– The skateboarding world is mourning a man who played a major role in creating the huge subculture that exists today, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Thrasher magazine co-founder Eric Swenson shot and killed himself in front of the Mission police station in San Francisco. Friends believe the 64-year-old could no longer cope with the pain from a debilitating motorbike injury he suffered years ago, and chose the police station to spare loved ones from finding his body, reports the San Francisco Examiner. Swenson, an accomplished mechanic, helped revive the skateboarding scene in the late '70s with a company making skateboarding equipment, clothes, and accessories. He founded Thrasher in 1981 with his friend Fausto Vitello. "Before Thrasher, skateboarding was just another trend like yo-yos, rollerblades and hula hoops. But now it had its own music, dialect and its own fashion style," the magazine's ad director tells the Examiner.
– In what appears to have been a spelling error and not a play on words, Donald Trump slammed China's "unpresidented" seizure of a US underwater drone in a tweet Saturday morning. "China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act," he tweeted. He eventually corrected the spelling to "unprecedented." The AP, which describes the Thursday incident in the South China Sea as one of the most serious encounters between the US and Chinese militaries in years, reports that China announced earlier on Saturday that it is in talks with the US about "appropriately handling" the issue. Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters Friday that the drone was seized while collecting scientific data near the Philippines. "It is ours. It's clearly marked as ours. We would like it back, and we would like this not to happen again," Davis said. The Guardian reports that in his Friday press conference, Obama warned Trump against letting relations with China enter "full conflict" mode with a belligerent stance on Taiwan and other issues. "The idea of 'One China is at the heart of their conception as a nation," Obama said, "and so if you are going to upend this understanding, you have to have thought through what are the consequences."
– Reactions to the biggest political upset in recent memory are pouring in from around the globe, and if any world leaders are shaking in their boots, they aren't showing it. A look around: Mexico: "I'm in shock, my stomach aches, I can't believe it. This is like watching the Titanic sink," a woman told the Los Angeles Times late Tuesday from Mexico City, where a thunderstorm was viewed as an omen of tumult. Mexico's peso hit a record low overnight but has recovered slightly, per Reuters. "I'm seeing my savings reduced," said one man. Canada: While some Canadians are ready to welcome Americans into their "igloos," others fear Trump will tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement, putting a dent in the Canadian economy, reports CTV News. If Trump approves the Keystone XL pipeline, however, it would be considered an economic win. Cuba: A political scientist says Cuba's leaders "must be worried." Based on his campaign remarks, Trump is likely to reverse Obama's course of a stronger relationship. Without US tourism dollars, Cubans may suffer. But some who were hesitant that the two countries would become too cozy might actually be pleased. Indonesia: Some in the world's most populous Muslim country believe they won't be able to set foot on US soil for the next four years, per the AP. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, however, expects "no change" in Indonesia's "good relations" with the US. China: President Xi Jinping says he's "looking forward to working with [Trump]" and expects they can "manage differences in a constructive way," stressing the countries' "special and important responsibility in upholding world peace," per the AP. Russia: With Trump, Vladimir Putin says he hopes to restore relations with the US. "We [are] aware that it is a difficult path, in view of the unfortunate degradation of relations," but "it is not our fault that Russian-American relations are in such a state," he said. Israel: Israeli leaders are among the most jubilant. The country's education minister says Trump's victory means "the era of a Palestinian state is over." Benjamin Netanyahu says Trump is a "true friend of the State of Israel." Iran: The country's foreign minister appears less pleased, stressing that America must "implement the nuclear deal" reached last year. Trump has said he would renegotiate it.
– The Chicago police officer charged with killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald has paid his $150,000 bond and walked out of jail, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. A judge set bail for officer Jason Van Dyke at $1.5 million earlier in the day. Meanwhile, authorities have released the dashcam video that shows Van Dyke repeatedly shooting McDonald on Nov. 24 on the southwest side of Chicago, the AP reports. And in related news, the University of Chicago will re-open tomorrow after police arrested 21-year-old Jabari Dean with allegedly threatening to murder 16 white male staff or students at the school. The school had shut down after an online threat was posted Sunday night. (A Burger King manager says 86 minutes of the "Laquan video" have gone missing.)
– It could have been easy money. But when an off-duty sergeant with the California Highway Patrol found two bags stuffed with $120,000 in cash, she reported the find instead, reports UPI. The unidentified 20-year veteran says she had to swerve to avoid hitting the bank-deposit bags while driving in a personal car, reports KTVU. She made a U-turn, opened them up, and saw they were packed with $100 bills. Police in Concord were able to track down the owner and say the money turned out to be the life savings of a man who had reported the loss. "There was no one on that street," she tells ABC7. "Nobody would have known. But that's what determines a person's integrity—it's what you do when nobody is looking."
– The immediate effects of Hurricane Harvey on Texas are starting to show. The AP reports nearly 300,000 people lost power as some areas of the state received nearly 20 inches of rain. Some communities near the coast where Harvey made landfall Friday night are reporting damaged or destroyed homes, businesses, and schools and loss of cell service. Coast Guard helicopters were sent to rescue the crews of three tugboats that were in distress near Port Aransas on Saturday morning. And multiple cruise ships with thousands of passengers are currently stranded in the Gulf, unable to return to Galveston, according to Reuters. Two Carnival cruise ships were rerouted to New Orleans for additional supplies. Hurricane Harvey was downgraded to a Category 1 on Saturday morning, and CBS News reports it was expected to weaken to a tropical storm by the afternoon. But that doesn't mean the danger has passed. Some areas of Texas are expected to receive up to 30 inches of rain by Wednesday, and "catastrophic" flooding is still a possibility in the coming days. It's also possible Harvey moves back out to sea and gains strength before hitting Texas a second time.
– King Harold II's death is immortalized in the Bayeux Tapestry, which shows England's final Anglo-Saxon king taking an arrow to the eye during the Battle of Hastings on Oct. 14, 1066; Norman knights then were said to have hacked him to pieces. Now, a team is tugging on the tapestry's threads to see if that story holds. The same geological survey company that unearthed Richard III under a parking lot will tomorrow (that's the 948th anniversary of the death) scan the ground where Harold is supposed to be buried in an investigation of an alternate tale: that the king actually survived and lived another four decades as a hermit. That theory was penned in a document called the Vita Haroldi in the 12th century, and amateur historian Peter Burke believes it to be true, so much so that he's funding the scan at Essex's Waltham Abbey Church. King Harold is said to be buried in a tomb at the High Altar there, but Burke suspects he's actually interred about 45 feet away, near the east wall. "We have the Norman story put through the Bayeux Tapestry—the English story is a different one," he tells the Independent. As the Telegraph reports, Burke hopes the scan will reveal Harold's body—and that it will prove to be the remains of an elderly man, indicating the king did indeed regain health and then fled to Germany two years later. Should the scan surface "old man, 6 foot 1, with scarring to his temple and cheek ... then we will need a DNA test," Burke tells Culture24. Who would be in the tomb then? The Hertfordshire Mercury reports Harold's wife, Edith, could have IDed a headless knight as her husband in order to hide the truth. (Another big discovery relates to Alexander the Great.)
– Kim Kardashian is "badly shaken but physically unharmed" after being held up by robbers disguised as police officers Sunday night, a spokesperson says. Police in Paris are searching for the robbers, who tied up Kardashian and locked her in the bathroom of a private residence, not a hotel room as initially reported, per the Guardian. Officials tell the AP that five attackers overpowered the building's concierge and two of them entered the apartment. They stole a jewelry box containing valuables worth $6.7 million and a ring worth $4.5 million, police say. Sources tell People that Kardashian's two children, 3-year-old daughter North and 10-month-old son Saint, were not present during the robbery. Police say that after the incident, Kardashian's family was placed under police protection at a Paris hotel. Kanye West abruptly ended his Sunday night concert at the Meadows Festival in New York after learning that his wife had been robbed. CNN reports that he left the stage mid-song after somebody ran on stage to talk to him. He told fans: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Family emergency, I have to stop the show."
– Did a brain-damaged American help turn the Boston bombing suspects against the US? The far-right and conspiracy theorist publications found in Tamerlan Tsarnaev's apartment appear to have been supplied by an elderly man befriended by the brothers through their mother's job as a home health aide, the Wall Street Journal finds. A lawyer for the family of Donald Larking, a 67-year-old who suffered brain damage when he was shot in a robbery 40 years ago, says Larking was obsessed with conspiracy theories and shared publications with the brothers that questioned the Holocaust and accused the US or Israeli governments of being behind 9/11 and the Newtown school shooting. Larking also supplied the brothers with copies of a white supremacist newspaper published in Alabama. He became so close to Tamerlan that he converted to Islam and began attending the local mosque with him, says the lawyer, who stresses that the shooting badly impaired the elderly man's "awareness of the realities of the world" and his ability to make decisions, the AP reports. Larking, who still attends the mosque, has sunk into "depression and anger" since the Boston Marathon bombing and believes his friends were the victims of another conspiracy, the lawyer says.
– Anyone hoping to fly into or out of Chicago could be in for a delay today along with numerous others. More than 850 flights have been canceled out of Chicago's O'Hare International and Midway International airports after an employee allegedly set a fire in the basement of a major Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control center around 6am local time. The FBI is on the scene after the man was found with self-inflicted cuts to his wrist, also in the basement, WLS reports. Sources say the fire, now extinguished, was intentional and that the employee "used accelerant to start the fire near sensitive flight equipment." He also may have revealed his plan online, a source says. Authorities were seen confiscating a car at the facility hours after the fire began. All employees were evacuated. Another man was treated for smoke inhalation. Apart from flights into and out of Chicago, the incident at the Aurora, Ill., center could also delay thousands of "long-distance routes to other regions" as the center "controls air traffic for a giant swath of the Midwest," CNN reports. But the ground stop was recently lifted, and FAA officials say flights have resumed at a "reduced rate." Even so, travelers are urged to check their flight status, as many flights were delayed or re-routed.
– The "angst" travelers feel at overcrowded gates may soon be eased at United Airlines terminals, an exec for the airline says. That's because United just began a new initiative designed to relieve that particular "passenger pain point," as CNBC puts it, by changing up its departure protocol: The number of boarding lines has been cut from five to two, and overeager customers are now asked to stay out of the boarding area until their boarding group (one of six in total, including pre-boarders) is announced. "It's too congested," a UA rep says of the current procedure, which often results in arriving fliers having to push their way through throngs of departing ones. Forbes notes customers can also opt in to receive push notifications via the mobile app, meaning they can hang out in nearby restaurants or shops until they receive an alert on their cellphones that it's time to board. Over the past year, United test-drove a variety of boarding options on about 12,000 flights, ending up with this system, which is similar to the way American, Delta, and Southwest queue up. United has been using the procedure at LAX since winter and will now implement it at all locations, per USA Today. It's also spreading passengers around more equitably within its six boarding groups, which includes pre-boarders (e.g., families with young kids, service members), first-class passengers and frequent fliers in groups 1 and 2, and then everyone else in groups 3, 4, and 5. "The boarding process was one of the top areas customers told us they wanted improved," another UA rep says in a statement, noting customer and employee feedback guided the airline on the enhancements. (United had some "unfortunate dog incidents" earlier this year.)
– The world is about to have its first country to accept gay marriage through a popular vote. Though final results aren't expected for hours, both sides say the "yes" side has won an easy victory in yesterday's referendum, reports the Irish Times. One of the main opponents conceded as much in a tweet: "Congratulations to the Yes side," wrote David Quinn of the Iona Institute, a Catholic think tank. "Well done." It's not a huge surprise given that all major political parties backed the idea, and massive turnout boded well for proponents. "The numbers of people who turned out to vote is unprecedented," says the nation's equality minister. "This has really touched a nerve in Ireland today." Reuters is typical in its coverage in describing the result as a "dramatic social shift" in the predominantly Catholic country, one in which homosexuality was still illegal just two decades ago.
– A California fish-market owner bought an octopus and set it free because he feels a certain affinity with cephalopods, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Giovanni DeGarimore, owner of Giovanni's Fish Market in Morro Bay, bought the 70-pounder earlier this month for a couple hundred dollars from a local crab fisherman who'd caught it by mistake. DeGarimore then named it Fred and released the creature in a secure area without sea lions or other potential risks, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reports. So why this octopus love when DeGarimore makes a living selling fish? "It's just been a culmination of events through the last 10 years," says DeGarimore, who recalls how a cousin once bought a live octopus from a sushi restaurant and set it free. "She was kind of my inspiration." DeGarimore also encountered an octopus while scuba diving in Fiji and marveled at its intelligence. "Essentially, we played a game of hide and seek for 15 minutes under the ocean," he says. (Scientific American has reported on octopuses' smarts and the Tribune on their ability to wiggle away.) DeGarimore says he didn't intend to attract all this attention, but will be pleased "if my little contribution can make a bigger difference in the world." (See Fred on Facebook or watch a video of an octopus being born.)
– Now that the Justice Department has decided not to file criminal charges in the IRS scandal over the scrutiny of conservative groups, House Republicans have moved to take action of their own: impeachment. A powerful House committee has advanced a measure to impeach IRS chief John Koskinen, reports the Washington Post. Koskinen took over after the scandal broke, but Republicans say he lied to Congress in the subsequent investigation. "Commissioner Koskinen violated the public trust," says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform panel. "He failed to comply with a congressionally issued subpoena, documents were destroyed on his watch, and the public was consistently misled." At issue are 422 backup tapes that might have contained emails from the IRS figure at the center of the scandal, Lois Lerner, explains the Hill. Koskinen not only failed to preserve them, he didn't notify Congress they were missing, says Chaffetz. Democrats say it's all political theater. "Calling this resolution a ‘stunt’ or a ‘joke’ would be insulting to stunts and jokes," says Elijah Cummings. Still, the long-shot bid now moves on to the House Judiciary Committee.
– A giant python's reign of terror may be over. A Port St. Lucie, Florida, police officer found the 12-foot, 120-pound creature two days ago—at the scene of one of its alleged crimes. The snake was discovered in brush not far from a dead cat, WTSP reports. Locals and police believe the cat was one of several feline victims whose disappearance has been blamed on the alleged cat-eating snake, Fox News reports. Though Burmese pythons were banned in Florida two years ago, this snake's owner had a license, police say, per Fox. Experts think pythons have been eating mammals native to the area, WTSP notes, and though this python scare is over, there could be more to come, CBS 12 reports.
– A doctor who appears to have been the target of a former physician who started shooting at a hospital, killing one person and injuring six, says he has no idea why he would have been singled out. Dr. Kamran Ahmed tells the New York Post he wasn't the only one Dr. Henry Bello had a problem with. However, "he never argued with me," Ahmed says. "I don't know why he put my name." A law enforcement official tells the AP that Bello arrived at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in the Bronx on Friday with an assault rifle, which was bought in upstate New York about a week earlier, hidden under his lab coat and asked for a doctor he blamed for his having to resign (presumably Ahmed), but the doctor wasn't there at the time. Authorities say Bello went to the 16th and 17th floors and started shooting anyway, killing Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, who, like him, was a family medicine doctor. Hospital officials say that Tam normally worked in one of the hospital's satellite clinics and was covering a shift in the main hospital as a favor to someone else. Before the shooting, Bello sent an email to the Daily News, blaming colleagues he said forced him to resign two years earlier. "This hospital terminated my road to a licensure to practice medicine," the email said. Bello's former co-workers described a man who was aggressive, loud, and threatening. Bello had warned his former colleagues when he was forced out in 2015 that he would return someday to kill them. Ahmed says Bello "had a problem with almost everybody" and "that's why they fired him, because so many people complained." Bello died from a self-inflicted gunshot. The six injured people were hospitalized.
– More than three months after gunmen kidnapped a 70-year-old American development worker in Pakistan, some news has finally emerged: al-Qaeda says it has Warren Weinstein, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Weinstein, who has a home in Rockville, Maryland, was captured at his residence in Lahore. In a new video, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri says he won't be released until the US stops airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, and releases terror suspects, notes AP. "Just as the Americans detain all whom they suspect of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, even remotely, we detained this man who is neck-deep in American aid to Pakistan since the 1970s," says al-Zawahri in the video. Weinstein ran the Pakistani office of the consulting firm JE Austin Associates, which worked on USAID projects, notes the Monitor.
– A church-sponsored Boy Scout troop in Washington state has had its charter revoked for refusing to fire its gay scoutmaster. The decision bars the Rainier Beach United Methodist Church from using the Scout name or logo as long as Eagle Scout Geoff McGrath, 49, remains in charge, the New York Times reports. Boy Scouts of America—which voted last year to allow gay scouts but not gay leaders—says it is "saddened by this development," but the church is no longer allowed to offer the scouting program because it is not following BSA policies. BSA lawyers say the church's 15 scouts will have the opportunity to transfer to another troop. The church's Rev. Monica Corsaro says the organization never consulted the church about the move. "Breaking us up like this seems to go against everything the Boy Scouts is about," she tells NBC. "It seems to me that when you are in a dispute with a partner you try to work it out with the partner. It’s very clear we’re not viewed as an equal partner." She says the church plans to stand by McGrath, who is married to his partner of 20 years, and the youth program will continue under a different name. "We’re going to stand firm," she says. "Geoffrey attends our church, and this is a way to support our youth in the neighborhood."
– Looks like there are teeth to the rumors that the Secret Service's Colombian sex adventure wasn't a one-time thing. The Service is investigating reports that its agents were serviced by prostitutes on a trip to El Salvador in March of last year, according to the Hill. A government subcontractor told KIRO-TV that he visited a strip club with about a dozen Secret Service Advance Team members, and that most got "wasted" and paid the strippers for sexual favors in the VIP section. A couple of agents also brought women (possibly the aforementioned strippers, possibly not) back to their hotel rooms. The source says he warned them that it was a "really bad idea" but they replied that they "did this all the time" and "not to worry about it." The club's owner confirmed the story, saying agents showed up at least three nights that week, though he noted that he did not allow prostitution on-premises. He said the visit was "no surprise to me" because his club was popular with "those who want to be discreet."
– President Trump knew that Mike Flynn had misled VP Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador weeks before Pence was informed, it emerged Tuesday as the national security adviser's resignation continued to rock the administration. Pence spokesman Marc Lotter tells the Washington Post that the vice president "became aware of incomplete information" on Feb. 9 following a Post story on the issue. The White House, however, says Trump and other top administration officials were briefed on the Justice Department's concerns about Flynn at least two weeks earlier. "It's not that he was being left out. It was a legal review," an administration source tells CNN. In other developments: The FBI interviewed Flynn in late January after it warned the Trump administration that he could be blackmailed, the New York Times reports. If authorities determine that he lied during that interview, he could face felony charges. In an interview with the Daily Caller hours before his resignation, Flynn insisted there were "no lines crossed" in his conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. "It wasn't about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out," Flynn said, referring to former President Obama's expulsion of Russian diplomats in December. "It was basically, 'Look, I know this happened. We'll review everything.' I never said anything such as, 'We're going to review sanctions,' or anything like that." Legal experts tell Politico that Flynn faces a real risk of prosecution if he wasn't truthful with the FBI, and claiming to have forgotten parts of the conversation probably won't work. Lawyer Mark Zaid says a puzzling aspect of the case is that, as a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn must have known that conversations with ambassadors from countries like Russia would be under surveillance. Republican senators are among those calling for a full investigation of the Flynn affair, but he still has his defenders, including Rush Limbaugh. On Tuesday, the radio host described pressure on Flynn as a "political assassination" by the media, the Hill reports. "They think they have blood in the water, they've got a scalp, and they think they can get another and then another and then another and then another until finally they get Trump," he said. The BBC reports that Pence and other top US officials will be in Europe later this week to reassure American allies—though NATO allies will apparently be untroubled by the departure of Flynn, who was seen as "a bizarre and destabilizing appointment."
– In what Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro called a "terrorist attack" by people seeking to overthrow his government, a police helicopter attacked government buildings in Caracas on Tuesday with bullets and grenades. Officials say the stolen helicopter fired 15 shots at the Interior Ministry before launching four grenades at the Supreme Court building, Reuters reports. There were no reports of deaths or injuries. In a statement posted online, the police officer believed to have piloted the helicopter, flanked by armed men, said he was part of "a coalition of military employees, policemen, and civilians who are looking for balance and are against this criminal government," the BBC reports. The officer, who identified himself as police pilot Oscar Perez, called for new elections to be held and said the coalition was fighting "tyranny," not security forces. Maduro, whose government has been targeted by violent protests that have left at least 75 people dead over the last three months, said the attack could have "caused a tragedy with several dozen dead and injured," the AP reports. He said the armed forces had been placed on alert. "I have activated the entire armed forces to defend the peace," Maduro said. "Sooner or later, we are going to capture that helicopter and those who carried out this terror attack."
– The trial of the captain who ran the Costa Concordia aground is under way, and the early testimony suggests that 32 people died because Francesco Schettino wanted to make good on a favor to a crew member and perhaps impress his lover at the same time. The two big developments: Crew member: Ship maitre'd Antonello Tievoli told the court that he asked the captain to sail close to the Tuscan island of Giglio because Tievoli had family there, reports AP. Schettino did so on Jan. 6 but didn't think he got close enough. He ordered his crew to make a closer pass the following week, and that's when the ship hit the rocks and sank. Lover testifies: Domnica Cemortan, a 26-year-old Moldovan dancer, confirmed to the court, reluctantly, that she was indeed Schettino's lover, reports the BBC. The two dined together before the crash, and she said the captain asked the crew to slow down so he could have dessert before taking the helm for the pass-by of Giglio. Cemortan accompanied him to the bridge and was with him when the ship crashed. She had two memorable quotes today: "When you are someone's lover, no one asks you for a ticket," and, outside court, "Today, I died a second time."
– What would you do if you had a tongue as long as a playing card? For 18-year-old Adrianne Lewis, making YouTube videos showing off the various tricks she can do with her estimated 4-inch-long tongue seemed like a great way to gain some Internet fame. The Michigan teen uploaded her first video two years ago. Since then, she's uploaded about a dozen videos showing off all she can do with her quirky mouth feature, including licking her nose, touching her tongue to her elbow, and, with a little help from her hand, even licking her own eyeball. Speaking to Barcroft TV, her mom says they realized Lewis' tongue was unusually long when she was about 10, and notes that her daughter comes from a long line of long-tongued people: Her great-grandfather, grandmother, and mother share the trait. While Lewis is psyched about the hundreds of thousands of views her YouTube videos have amassed, boyfriend Tim Hegedus notes, "It's the Internet, so there's a lot of weird people there. I've seen some comments that make me uncomfortable." More fame could come: The length of Lewis' tongue might just be enough to get her into Guinness World Records. While she hasn't had it officially measured by the Guinness folks, she estimates her tongue measures at least 4 inches, which Mashable reports could be enough to beat the 3.97-inch-long tongue (as measured "from its tip to the middle of the closed top lip") currently holding the record.
– Roseanne's return to TV has been confirmed, 20 years to the week after the beloved sitcom's final episode aired. ABC, the show's original network, announced Tuesday that it has ordered an eight-episode run of the revived show, which will air mid-season, E! Online reports. The network says the reboot will feature Roseanne's original cast, including Roseanne Barr, Sara Gilbert, and John Goodman, despite the fact that Goodman's character, dad Dan Conner, died during the show's final season. Barr and Gilbert will be among the executive producers of the show, which won 17 Emmys during its nine-season run. Laurie Metcalf, Michael Fishman, and Lecy Goranson will also be back as Jackie, DJ, and Becky. "The Conners' joys and struggles are as relevant—and hilarious—today as they were then, and there's really no one better to comment on our modern America than Roseanne," ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey said in a statement. The Hollywood Reporter notes that the revival comes amid a push by networks to find shows that appeal to working-class Americans like the just-getting-by Conner family depicted in Roseanne.
– John Oliver ignored Donald Trump for a long time, then devoted a whole show to ridiculing his candidacy. Now he's specifically going after Trump's plans for a big border wall. In the latest episode of his HBO show, Oliver delivered "what might be the most thorough takedown yet" of Trump's idea to keep out immigrants from Mexico, observes Slate. (See the video here.) Among Oliver's arguments, as rounded up by Time and Vox: It would cost about $26 billion, not $4 billion to $12 billion as Trump says; Mexico wouldn't pay for it; the wall would be a nightmare to build and would likely have to be on private property; and it wouldn't work anyway. Oliver's counterproposal: Buy every American a waffle iron. Says Oliver: "Because this waffle iron plan will cost less, it'll do nearly as much to keep out immigrants and drugs, it won't harm our relationship with our third-largest trading partner, (and) if it is racist it's only toward Belgians ..."
– A police lieutenant in Georgia who was recorded on video during a traffic stop saying "we only shoot black people" is being fired, the police chief said Thursday. Dashcam video from July 2016 shows a car stopped on the side of a road and a woman can be heard telling Cobb County police Lt. Greg Abbott she was scared to move her hands in order to get her cellphone. Abbott, who is white, interrupts her and says, "But you're not black. Remember, we only shoot black people. Yeah. We only shoot black people, right?" Announcing his decision to fire Abbott, Police Chief Mike Register remarked that "there's really no place for these types of comments in law enforcement," the AP reports. "No matter what context you try to take those comments in, the statements were inexcusable and inappropriate." Register said he learned of the comments after television station WSB-TV obtained the video through an open-records request and made the department aware of it. Abbott, who had been an officer for 28 years, was placed on administrative leave while the department investigated the video. The report from the internal review indicates that Abbott was trying to be sarcastic and to address the situation as he perceived it, Register said, continuing, "I don't know what's in his heart but I certainly know what came out of his mouth. It's inexcusable." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that as plans to fire Abbott were being announced, Abbott sent an email to the county saying he was retiring. Commission Chairman Mike Boyce told the paper he wasn't sure how the email would affect the department's plans.
– Officials in Cyprus are baffled by reports that a meteor streaking across the nighttime sky exploded overhead with a thunderous bang. Police say eyewitnesses reported seeing a blue glow emanating from the object that raced over the east Mediterranean island's Troodos mountain range shortly before midnight Thursday, per the AP. "We have yet to confirm that it was in fact a meteorite but it is more than likely that it was," says police spokesman Andreas Angelides, per AFP. A Cyprus Geological Department official says that there's no indication the object struck the ground and that it probably "exploded in the sky." The police official says numerous reports spoke of "a loud explosion" followed by "the ground shaking." (This YouTube video shows a bright flash.) Authorities are looking for possible remnants of the object.
– Four Japanese tourists were reportedly taken to the cleaners by a Venice restaurant, and now authorities are looking into the meal. ANSA reports the tourists ordered four steaks and a platter of grilled fish—no wine, just mineral water. The spot near St. Mark's Square reportedly charged them $1,350 for the meal; they paid the tab then filed a complaint Monday. Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro pledged to get to the bottom of the matter: "If this shameful episode is confirmed, we’ll do all we can to punish those responsible. We are for justice, always!" he said, per the Guardian. But ANSA notes the story gets a little mushy, with other reports claiming the group ordered hearty "Fiorentine" cuts of beef, that the fish dish was sized to serve four, and that they drank aperitifs and pricey Amarone wine. A rep for the unnamed restaurant is said to have told local media that he had "no recollection of any problems with Japanese customers." The BBC reports the four males are studying in Bologna, and complained upon their return to that city. It's a bit of a changed tune for Brugnaro, who the Local reported in November labeled a British family of three "cheapskates" for complaining over a $650 lunch they had in the same area; they alleged the restaurant took advantage of their inability to speak Italian and brought them pricey dishes they hadn't said they wanted. "What they paid was fair," Brugnaro said. "If you come to Venice, you should know that you're Venice, you have to spend some money." He added, "You should learn Italian, a bit of Venetian wouldn’t hurt either." (This tourist died after a "foolish" move in Australia.)
– The United Nations' cultural body is on the trail of Christopher Columbus' flagship—and it says the wreck that an expedition identified as the Santa Maria earlier this year is a different, much younger ship. As predicted by authorities in Haiti, UNESCO experts say there is "indisputable proof" that the wreck found off the country's north coast is from a much later period than 1492, reports the BBC. UNESCO says the wreck is further from shore than accounts of Columbus' first voyage, and bronze or copper fasteners found at the site are evidence of shipbuilding techniques that date the ship to the late 17th or 18th century at the earliest. UNESCO says it believes the wreck may lie "under coastal sediment" in what is now marshland and has called for further investigation of the area. Marine archaeologist Barry Clifford, who first investigated the wreck 11 years ago, says Columbus-era lombard cannons spotted in the area are crucial pieces of evidence that now appear to have been looted from the site, the Independent reports. "The lombards are the smoking guns and, in my view, the most important pieces of evidence in the search for the Santa Maria," he says. (Columbus wrote about the 1492 sinking of the Santa Maria in his journal, but one historian believes that the explorer lied about the ship's fate as part of a spy plot.)
– Having the president-elect as a neighbor isn't all sunshine and roses, according to Tiffany, which appears to partly blame Donald Trump for its poor US sales over the last three months. Tiffany actually saw a 1% boost in worldwide sales to $949.3 million in Q3—the company's first positive in two years—thanks to a strong performance in Japan and China, per Reuters. But US sales fell 2% compared to the same period last year. In explaining the figures, Tiffany notes its flagship store happens to sit on the same block as Trump Tower, where protesters gathered both before and after the election, per the Guardian. "With respect to the impact of recent election-related activity near the company's New York flagship store, management has noted some adverse effect on traffic in that store and a continuation of sales softness relative to prior year and to the company's other US stores this year," the company says. In other words, protesters scared away customers from what Tiffany calls "simply the most famous store there is." However, Q3 ended on Oct. 31, more than a week before the largest protests outside Trump Tower followed Trump's election win. With that in mind, Tiffany notes such adverse effects could continue in Q4 and beyond.
– Weapons supplied by the US and Saudi governments to Syrian rebel groups landed in the hands of ISIS fighters, in some cases in a matter of just weeks, according to a Conflict Armament Research study. The organization's study of more than 40,000 items retrieved from ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria, including guns and ammunition, found that many weapons the US government bought from European suppliers were diverted to ISIS, including an anti-tank missile component that was found with ISIS fighters in Iraq just 59 days after it left a Bulgarian factory and was sold to the US, NBC News reports. CAR says around a third of ISIS' weapons were made in the EU. More than half came from China and Russia. "International weapon supplies to factions in the Syrian conflict have significantly augmented the quantity and quality of weapons available to IS forces—in numbers far beyond those that would have been available to the group through battlefield capture alone," CAR said in its report. The report also detailed unusual finds, including a German rifle from 1941 found with fighters in Baghdad, and a cache of 122 Chinese-made machine guns found near Mosul, each with a pouch of amphetamines attached. CAR warns that even though ISIS has now lost most of its territory, it now has the ability to manufacture its own weapons and remains a worldwide threat, Deutsche Welle reports.
– Think the CIA played a role in covering up the John F. Kennedy assassination? Now an important source agrees with you: the CIA. According to an article written by the agency's senior in-house historian, the CIA purposely held back information from the Warren Commission, Politico reports. John McCone, then the agency's director, apparently failed to tell the commission about agency plots to murder Fidel Castro (including ones involving the Mafia). So the commission never knew to ask whether Lee Harvey Oswald had Cuban comrades dead-set on retaliating against the US president. The commission famously concluded that Oswald acted alone, spawning decades of conspiracy theories involving Castro, the Mafia, the CIA, the Soviets, and even President Lyndon B. Johnson. Seems the White House nudged McCone along: He "shared the administration’s interest in avoiding disclosures about covert actions that would circumstantially implicate [the] CIA in conspiracy theories and possibly lead to calls for a tough US response against the perpetrators of the assassination," reads the article, which was published in a CIA internal magazine in 2013 and declassified (with 15 redactions) last fall. McCone also apparently didn't reveal that the CIA may have been communicating with Oswald before the killing, and was illegally reading his mail after he tried defecting to the Soviets in 1959. The article, by CIA historian David Robarge, calls McCone's actions "benign" but says the cover-up played a big role in "undermin[ing] the credibility of the commission." (Click for a list of the most pervasive JFK conspiracy theories.)
– Rosie O'Donnell had a life-threatening heart attack last week and didn't even know it, TMZ reports. The comedian describes the incident as a poem on her blog, saying she had chest pains, vomited, and gobbled an aspirin, but never called emergency services. A cardiologist told her the next day that she'd suffered a "widow maker" heart attack. A few lines from Rosie's poem: my LAD was 99% blocked they call this type of heart attack the Widow maker i am lucky to be here know the symptoms ladies listen to the voice inside the one we all so easily ignore CALL 911 save urself See more about Rosie's health scare.
– Neal McDonough is no longer part of the ABC cast of the new Scoundrels because the script called for him to do a sex scene. The devout Catholic and father of three balked, and he got replaced three days into filming for his trouble, reports Radar. McDonough, 44, is best known for his roles on Desperate Housewives, Band of Brothers, and Boomtown. Plenty of big-name female actresses refuse to do love scenes, notes Margaret Eby at Salon, but it's rare to find a guy who draws the line. "It’s easy to dismiss McDonough as out of touch with the industry or perhaps even a religious nut, but the more I thought about it, the more I admired the guy. Given the constant turmoil in most stars’ love lives and how difficult it seems to be to stay married in Hollywood, maybe McDonough’s move isn’t so much self-defeating as it is smart."
– If you had to name two banks guilty of selling lousy mortgage packages during the financial meltdown of 2008, it's doubtful you'd tick off the names Nomura Holdings of Japan and the Royal Bank of Scotland. But as Reuters reports, a federal judge yesterday declared that both lied through their teeth when selling their deals to the government-owned entities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. US District Judge Denise Cote of Manhattan, who decided the case on her own, framed it in straightforward terms in a line that Wall Street critics will love: “The magnitude of falsity, conservatively measured, is enormous.” Other banks such as Goldman Sachs and Bank of America opted to settle rather than go to trial, with Nomura and RBS the first two to do so. Legal experts tell the New York Times that they might have been less worried about their reputations taking a hit in the US because they were foreign banks. Nomura plans to appeal, with no word yet from RBS. The ruling puts the banks on the hook for about $500 million in penalties, though that's only about half of the original claim by the government, reports Bloomberg.
– A judge on Tuesday allowed a man charged in freeway shootings that rattled Phoenix last year to be released from jail amid questions about evidence authorities say links him to the crimes. The judge overseeing the case of Leslie Merritt Jr. reduced his bond to zero and said he can return to his home under electronic monitoring, the AP reports. He was expected to be released later in the day. The reduction of the bond—once $1 million—was a major victory as defense lawyers contend that ballistic tests cast doubt on the claim by authorities that Merritt was behind four of the freeway shootings. "With all due respect your honor, there's no evidence against him to show he's responsible for this," defense lawyer Jason Lamm said. "He is no more the I-10 shooter than, respectfully, you are." Merritt lifted up his shackled arms in celebration as he walked from the courtroom. After the hearing, family members hugged and shook the hands of defense lawyers. Merritt has pleaded not guilty to drive-by shooting, aggravated assault, and other charges. The shootings caused panic on Phoenix-area freeways, where 11 vehicles were hit in August and September. Detectives took Merritt into custody on Sept. 18; in court the next day, Merritt adamantly denied shooting any cars, telling the judge, "I'm the wrong guy." His lawyers immediately began raising questions about the evidence, citing ballistics information and phone records they say provided an alibi for their client. (Also Tuesday, a motorist suspected of shooting at other vehicles on an Alabama highway died after a shootout with officers.)
– Troops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi massacred some 150 detainees last week, according to volunteers who cleared charred bodies from the warehouse that had apparently served as the detainees’ prison. An escaped prisoner told his story to CNN: He and his brother were handcuffed and blindfolded for no apparent reason while out walking earlier this month. They were thrown into the warehouse with 60 others ages 17 to 70. The number inside quickly reached 175 as loyalists continued to imprison people. The detainees were given no food or water for days, said Muneer Own. Finally, the troops said they would set them free—but instead hurled a grenade at them and opened fire. About 25 people were able to escape, Own said; his brother apparently was not one of them. The mass of bodies was discovered when rebels eventually took over the area. Many remain unidentified, part of a growing number of prisoners whose whereabouts remain unknown, notes the Washington Post. Thousands—some of whom have been jailed for decades—could be in underground prisons or mass graves, rebels fear. Click through for one family’s story.
– In Moammar Gadhafi's Libya, the only protesters are a few al-Qaeda-backed, drug-addled Libyans, the rest of his people love him, and he in fact can't step down—and certainly has no intention of doing so. The Libyan leader sat down with ABC's Christiane Amanpour and the BBC's Jeremy Bowen for an hour-long interview today. Some highlights: "They love me. All my people with me, they love me," he said. "They will die to protect me, my people." For world leaders who accuse him of hiding assets abroad, Gadhafi says he'll "put two fingers in their eye." Gadhafi strongly denies that government forces have used violence against Libyans, insisting that government airstrikes destroyed only barracks and ammunition depots. He insists that he cannot step down, as he has no formal position—Gadhafi says that the will of the people, alone, keeps him in power. Given his al-Qaeda theory, Gadhafi is taken aback by the US support for the demonstrators. "I'm surprised that we have an alliance with the West to fight al-Qaeda, and now that we are fighting terrorists they have abandoned us," he said. "Perhaps they want to occupy Libya." US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said in response that the interview proves Gadhafi is "delusional." "When he can laugh in talking to American and international journalists while he is slaughtering his own people, it only underscores how unfit he is to lead and how disconnected he is from reality."
– If the Syrian regime falls, the US plans to deploy troops to stop its chemical weapons from becoming a first-come, first-served bonanza for insurgent groups, senior officials say. Plans are in place to secure the sites if necessary, a move that would probably involve teams of special forces operatives entering the country to guard sites as well as precision airstrikes to incinerate other locations without releasing poisons into the air, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Pentagon fears that stockpiles left unguarded could fall into the hands of rebels linked to al-Qaeda or other Islamic extremists. American satellites and drones are already watching the sites, which are believed to hold hundreds of tons of sarin gas and other nerve agents. Earlier this week, President Obama warned Bashar al-Assad's regime that the US considers the using or moving of chemical weapons a "red line" beyond which military force could be used. Activists say hundreds of people have been killed in continued fighting this week, including many civilians in army shelling of southern Damascus, Reuters reports.
– Did the death of her Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor trigger Demi Moore's downward spiral? The New York Daily News thinks so, pointing to a People report from December claiming Moore was "noticeably upset" at Pattsy Rugg's funeral, which occurred less than two weeks after Moore and Ashton Kutcher announced their split. Rugg had apparently become a mother figure for Moore, who doesn't have a great relationship with her real mom, the Daily News notes. Before being rushed to the hospital Monday, Moore was hosting a birthday party for a friend, E! reports. Moore was "pretty hyper," says one source; another says she was "acting crazy." It was after most of the guests left that Moore started to convulse, and a friend who was still there called 911. Another source tells Radar Moore "has been taking Adderall and drinking energy drinks and starving herself. ... She’s constantly jacked up on Adderall." As for Kutcher, a source tells People he is "deeply concerned" about his ex. Click to see who has replaced Moore in the Linda Lovelace biopic.
– "The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," says Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, and he has teamed up with some equally huge names in an attempt to go after said tapeworm. Amazon.com, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday announced that they'd be creating a company tasked with coming up with technological solutions that can cut health-care costs for their hundreds of thousands of US employees. "Our group does not come to this problem with answers," Buffett notes—nor, reports the Wall Street Journal, with details on how much it plans to spend, where the company's HQ will be, or how many of its own employees would be impacted—"but we also do not accept it as inevitable." What the companies' leaders did reveal is that the new company will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints." "The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," says Jeff Bezos of Amazon, per CNBC, which notes the three companies employ a total 1.1 million workers, though that figure is not exclusive to the US. The AP reports it's unclear whether the trio would welcome other companies into the effort, but it does flag this line from JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon: "Our goal is to create solutions that benefit our US employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans." But they're not exactly benefiting Wall Street at the moment: Pre-market trading was unkind to health care companies, with the AP noting they represented eight of the 10 down companies on the S&P 500.
– "I'm going to go on camera and say George is not a racist" are words that Frank Taaffe now regrets saying about former pal George Zimmerman. Just two years ago, when the media frenzy was at a fever pitch following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, Taaffe made an aggressive showing in front of the cameras, defending his neighbor and saying "[Zimmerman] became the victim," as reported by News 13. Now, as a grand jury hears a case this week to decide whether Zimmerman will face federal charges for violating Trayvon's civil rights, Taaffe—who testified before the grand jury yesterday—is saying that Zimmerman was probably in the wrong and just might be a racist after all, based on a mysterious phone call he received shortly after Martin's death, Raw Story reports. Taaffe didn't recognize the number, and the caller, who said his name was "George," made a racially charged comment about Martin, Taaffe says. At first Taaffe thought it was a prank—"People knew my phone number, so it could've been anybody," he tells WFTV. He's not sure if it was Zimmerman, but he finally told investigators about it in June to make "amends to the Martin family" after his own two children and a brother died recently, and to mend things with his surviving child, who was "ostracized" for his Zimmerman advocacy. (Taaffe's somewhat-confusing explanation of all this is shown in the video here.) He now thinks Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon, saying, "In my heart of hearts, I do believe that." Even more bizarre: his own reported racist rantings and criminal rap sheet, according to a 2013 Mother Jones article.
– Doctors say Yulia Skripal, daughter of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, is "improving rapidly" and is no longer in critical condition after being poisoned with a nerve agent alongside her father, the BBC reports. "I’m pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal. She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day," said the medical director for Salisbury district hospital Thursday. The 33-year-old is now listed as being in stable condition, the Guardian reports. Her father, 66, is still in critical but stable condition. Just this week, a relative said the father and daughter likely wouldn't survive. Authorities revealed Wednesday that the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent at Sergei Skripal's home, where it was found on the front door. It was also found in lower concentrations in other areas around town. Now, Scotland Yard says police have cordoned off a children's play area near the home, but they say it's simply a precautionary measure. "I would like to reiterate Public Health England’s advice that the risk to the public is low," said deputy assistant commissioner Dean Haydon, noting that officers would be searching the play area. The chemical has been identified as part of a group of nerve agents developed by Russia that are known as Novichok.
– A southern Utah county isn't taking the government shutdown lying down: It's threatening to reopen its national parks to breathe life back into the area's struggling economy, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. With help from firefighters, EMTs, and search and rescue volunteers, San Juan County—where 70% of businesses rely on visitors to parks, monuments, and public lands—says it will remove barricades, bring in staff, public toilets, and other resources to operate. "How do we let local businesses starve to death?" the fire marshal asked. One wrinkle: The move is against the law. It will be "civil disobedience" done peacefully, the county commissioner says. "We’re watching one of our prime months fade away from us," he says. "It’s really painful. What's happening to us is wrong." Though the costs of the operation haven't been tallied up, the county, the fifth in Utah to declare a state of emergency due to closures, has appealed to the state for funding, NPR reports, adding that barricades could be down as early as today. It's not clear how the feds will respond, but these trespassers at national parks are now headed to court.
– When William McCormack went into a medical center in the Adirondacks last month with severe stomach pains, he ended up getting an emergency appendectomy ... which came as quite a surprise to him, considering he thought he'd already had his appendix removed in Bronxville, New York, last year. The 43-year-old is now suing Lawrence Hospital and Dr. Michael Kerin, the surgeon who claimed to have removed McCormack's appendix in January 2013, the Journal News reports. McCormack was on vacation near Lake Placid in early March when he had to undergo emergency surgery, during which surgeons "discovered that (McCormack's) appendix was never removed and was still inside him," according to his lawsuit. Also included in the suit: a copy of the post-op report from Lawrence Hospital, which is signed by Kerin and claims McCormack's appendix had indeed been removed. It's not clear how exactly the hospital failed to alert McCormack he was still in possession of the body part, as a report from the pathology department states, "there is no evidence of appendix" in the specimen marked "appendix." So what was removed from McCormack's body? A "yellowish mass," according to News 12.
– George Takei is usually the one doling out criticism for those who step out of line on matters of race or equality. This time, he's the one catching flak from critics. It's over an interview the actor gave to Fox 10 Phoenix in which he called Justice Clarence Thomas a "clown in blackface." Takei, a gay-rights advocate, lit into Thomas because of his dissent in the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling. Yesterday, Takei posted a message on Facebook addressing those who think he went too far, thought he didn't actually back down. He explains the theatrical origins of blackface as a white actor portraying a "black buffoon" and adds: "In traditional theater lingo, and in my view and intent, that is not racist. It is instead part of a racist history in this country." Then he goes after Thomas anew, saying he "has abdicated and abandoned his African American heritage by claiming slavery did not strip dignity from human beings." Thomas "made a similar remark about the Japanese American internment, of which I am a survivor," writes Takei, who thinks that "a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court ought to know better." He's still catching flak, though. "Where in the world does George Freaking Takei get off deciding that he’s the new arbiter of American blackness?" asks Sean Davis at the Federalist. And at Mediaite, Alex Griswold has a scathing critique that, among other things, describes Takei's it's-not-racist explanation as "literally nonsense. I honestly don't even know what he's getting at."
– A Florida mother says she brought her then-6-year-old daughter in for a dental appointment to get a tooth extracted with Dr. Howard Schneider in 2014—but, instead, she came in to the procedure room to find her daughter "face-first" on the bloody floor with scratches, bruises, and all eight of her front teeth extracted. When Brandi Motley couldn't get an attorney to take her case, she "turned her minivan into a rolling billboard attack on Schneider," ABC News reports. Then, in April 2015, she posted about her experience on Facebook, and the post went viral. She found other parents who said they'd had similar experiences—they allege Schneider, who catered to children in low-income families, performed unnecessary procedures, harming their kids in the process, in order to collect millions in Medicaid funds—and they started protesting outside Schneider's clinic. Ultimately, the attorney who'd at first refused the case took on 131 individual lawsuits against Schneider, settling 104 of them thus far, but Schneider continues to insist he's done nothing wrong. After the protests had been going on for weeks, Schneider shut down his clinic after more than 50 years of practicing dentistry, and voluntarily gave up his dental license—which meant he avoided a full investigation by the dental board. In November 2015, he was arrested and charged with 11 counts of Medicaid provider fraud; he pleaded not guilty and may go to trial, although his defense team is seeking to have the 78-year-old declared mentally incompetent in order to avoid a trial, News 4 Jax reports. In May, USA Today reported that some parents accuse Schneider of going so far as to choke his patients into unconsciousness rather than using anesthetic.
– Bad: Getting arrested on suspicion of DUI. Worse: Getting arrested on suspicion of DUI at 10:30 in the morning. That's what happened yesterday to Samantha Ronson, DJ and Lindsay Lohan ex extraordinaire. Ronson was pulled over on her way home from Las Vegas, where she DJed Sunday night, when cops spotted her speeding in her black Porsche at 10:30am. Sources tell TMZ she didn't do well on her field sobriety test, then refused to take a breathalyzer and was arrested. At the station, she allegedly was found to be over the legal limit. Radar notes that she was released from jail last night.
– The Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris has long been rumored to be getting tired of its most famous American resident—and the tributes his fans leave behind—but a fan in Jim Morrison's Florida birthplace says he has a new home for the the Doors singer. John Tice, a city councilman in Melbourne, Brevard County, operates the Brevard Hall of Fame and he tells Florida Today that he plans to talk to officials in Paris about bringing Morrison's remains back to the US. Morrison "was the most popular public figure from this area, in my opinion," Tice says, adding that he "can see the Morrison display morphing into something much bigger." Tice plans to hold a fundraising drive if he gets permission to move the remains from the city where Morrison died in 1971. Tice tells WKMG that he's waiting to hear from officials that he contacted after hearing that the lease on Morrison's Paris grave may be up soon. He says he expects controversy if the singer, who was born in Brevard Hospital 72 years ago, is moved to Melbourne. "I think it's going to be mixed reviews," he says. "I think some people will say, 'I can't wait.' I think other people will say, 'Shame on you.'" Florida Today notes that Morrison didn't linger in Melbourne for long: Baby Jim and his mother moved elsewhere in Florida after six months when his father, a Navy pilot who later became an admiral, graduated flight training and left to serve in the Pacific theater of World War II. (In 2010, Florida pardoned Morrison for a 1969 indecent exposure conviction.)
– A woman accused of suffocating her newborn baby in a plastic bag at work is facing charges of child abuse and murder. A judge made the ruling today after hearing testimony in a Detroit suburb, the Detroit News reports. Kimberly Pappas, 26, allegedly gave birth in her office bathroom on March 31, put the baby in one bag, placenta in another, and placed them in her desk. Her sister, Cassandra Pappas—who worked in the same office—says Kimberly texted her asking for a set of fresh clothes and looked really sick. "She said she had an accident," says Cassandra. Kimberly said she "had a heavy period," says a first responder, but she later said she'd miscarried and put the baby in her desk, Hometown Life reports. A medical examiner says the baby lived for several minutes before dying of asphyxiation—but admits CPR efforts may have created a false positive by putting air in the newborn's lungs. Other evidence still indicates homicide, the examiner testified. Kimberly's attorneys argued that she was in shock at the time and may have been confused if the baby was born "flaccid," or not moving. But apparently she'd always denied being pregnant: "She just said she was gaining weight," says Cassandra. Kimberly now faces arraignment on Aug. 31, People reports: "Then we can ... see if there might be some sort of a resolution short of trial," says one of her lawyers. "But I don't know where it's going at this point in time."
– With the first of his two days of congressional testimony in the books, Jared Kushner made a rare public statement Monday afternoon to reaffirm his main point: "I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so," he said, per the AP. Kushner spoke outside the White House after meeting behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence Committee. While he largely reiterated points made earlier in an 11-page statement to Congress, Kushner also suggested that the Russia investigation has political undertones. "Donald Trump had a better message and ran a smarter campaign, and that is why he won," he said, per NBC News. "Suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him." Kushner has said all of his actions related to four meetings with Russian nationals were aboveboard, per CNN. He added during his speech that he had "no improper contacts" and has "not relied on Russian funds for my businesses." Kushner is back on Capitol Hill Tuesday, when he again testifies behind closed doors, this time with the House Intelligence Committee. As for that 11-page statement, an analysis by Zack Beauchamp at Vox finds the carefully worded descriptions of the Russian meetings to be incomplete. "The whole thing reads like it was put together by a very talented legal team," he writes. Judge for yourself here.
– The highlight of Did You Hear About the Morgans? for most critics is their own joke that Sam Elliott's mustache deserves separate billing. Some reactions: The film is so "lumpish and crude" that Colin Covert saves most of his ire for a geographical offense. "The landscape around Yellowstone, where the film is supposedly set, is one of America's great scenic wonders," he writes in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "The movie was actually filmed in tax-break haven New Mexico, and it looks blah. Inexcusable." If you enjoy silence, Michael Phillips writes in the Chicago Tribune, then this is for you. "Each of its theoretical punch lines is preceded by an eerie second or two of dead air, followed by the jokelike 'payoff,' guiltily delivered by one of its game cast members, followed by a longer awkward pause." Oh, come on, Robert Wilonsky writes in LA Weekly. This "multiplex meringue" is a "thoroughly delightful throwaway," and Hugh Grant is "the most reliable deadpan smart-ass this or that side of the Atlantic." No, really, this is unbearable. Sarah Jessica Parker wears a look of "Dostoevskian unhappiness," while Grant acts as though "he just pulled an all-nighter in an emergency room," Michael O'Sullivan writes in the Washington Post. "If they're not having fun, how the heck are we supposed to?"
– Long before he was fired by Jeff Sessions for an alleged "lack of candor" under oath, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe authorized a criminal investigation of the attorney general for allegedly lying to Congress about his Russia contacts, sources tell ABC and NBC. The sources say Sessions was unaware of the federal perjury investigation when he decided to fire McCabe two days before his scheduled retirement date. Then-Sen. Al Franken was among those who called for a perjury investigation last year after it emerged that Sessions had failed to disclose talks with Russia's ambassador during his confirmation hearings. Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation because of the talks. In November, Sessions told a House panel that he hadn't lied about a meeting in which a Trump aide boasted about Russian contacts—he had only forgotten about it. The Sessions investigation was eventually handed over to special counsel Robert Mueller, who interviewed the attorney general earlier this year. Sessions' lawyer says the FBI investigation ended without criminal charges and Sessions is no longer being investigated. "The special counsel’s office has informed me that after interviewing the attorney general and conducting additional investigation, the attorney general is not under investigation for false statements or perjury in his confirmation hearing testimony and related written submissions to Congress," attorney Chuck Cooper said in a statement to the New York Times.
– She is arguably the most famous shark in America, but Mary Lee has gone silent. After being tagged with a transmitter by research organization Ocearch back in 2012 off the coast of Cape Cod, Mary Lee gained a legion of loyal followers tracking her ocean journeys. (She has nearly 130,000 Twitter followers.) However, no ping has been registered since June, reports the Post and Courier of Charleston, SC. The good news is that this doesn't necessarily mean the end of Mary Lee: Chris Fischer of Ocearch tells Jacksonville.com that it's more likely the batteries in her transmitter, designed to last about five years, have finally given out. Fischer hopes to see Mary Lee again, but is OK if that never happens. “I feel like she’s done so much, it’s hard to ask for anything else,” he says. “For any individual shark, she’s undone more of the damage from Jaws than any shark in history, and she’s the most famous shark in history.” Mary Lee was 40 or 50 years old when first tagged, so Fischer figures she has another 20 years of life. Meanwhile, boaters and fishermen are being asked to keep an eye out, particularly off the coast of South Carolina. The 16-foot shark just happens to have a distinctive bite mark in her dorsal fin, raising hopes that if she is still swimming around out there, somebody will spot her.
– Hillary Clinton proposed making a public option insurance plan available to residents in every state and doubling funding for community health centers in an announcement Saturday, USA Today reports. Reuters calls the move evidence as to how much influence the campaign of Bernie Sanders has had on her positions. Clinton campaign aides tell the Huffington Post both proposals are ones that had been pushed for by Sanders. On the heels of Clinton announcing a college tuition plan similar to that of Sanders, Saturday's announcement is expected to clear the way for Sanders to endorse her Tuesday. "It’s fair to say that the Clinton campaign and our campaign are coming closer and closer together," Sanders said Saturday. "[We] will have more to say in the very near future." Clinton's proposal for a public option would create a government-run insurance plan to go up against private insurance plans available through ObamaCare. She supported a public option when she ran for president in 2008, and Sanders fought for one in 2010. Sanders also won $11 billion in funding for community health centers in 2010. A third proposal from Clinton announced Saturday would allow people to enroll in Medicare at 55. The proposals expand health care funding by $40 billion over the next decade. Sanders says Clinton's healthcare plan “will save lives, it will ease suffering, it will improve health care in America, and it will cut health care costs." He had implied in the past that he wouldn't endorse Clinton until her policies got more liberal.
– Republicans officially kicked off their convention today, but only officially. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus gaveled the convention to order before dozens of delegates in a mostly-empty hall today, the AP reports, but 10 minutes and a giant debt clock later he'd adjourned the proceedings thanks to Tropical Storm Isaac. Still, Republicans did their best to carry forward the day's agenda—namely bashing President Obama—in other ways, CNN reports. "What we would want to do is define what President Obama has done over the last four years, how and why he's failed," one strategist told reporters. Right now, Republicans still plan to go ahead with the remaining days of the convention, he said, weather permitting. But many Republicans are worried about the "optics" of celebrating Mitt Romney while the storm rages, Politico reports. Romney and Paul Ryan each said today that the focus should be on the storm's victims, first and foremost. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's hopes of dropping a "big surprise" on the convention are officially rained out, reports the Huffington Post.
– You think Stonehenge is impressive? Archaeologists in Britain are excavating a monument ten times larger than the iconic structure, though it appears to the naked eye to be little more than farmland. A henge is a circular earthwork, and the one in question is Marden Henge, which sits a few miles north of Stonehenge in Wiltshire. National Geographic reports that roughly 4,500 years ago it featured 10-foot-tall earthen berms that encompassed some 40 acres. The Guardian writes that the henge was "far larger than the Avebury or Stonehenge circles, and too large for any imaginable practical use." But over the ages Marden Henge's berms have "slumped" and farmers have worked the land, and archaeologists have gravitated to the more breathtaking Stonehenge. Until now. Jim Leary of the University of Reading has just kicked off a three-year study of the site; his excavations (he worked at the site in 2010, too) are the only ones to have occurred there in nearly 50 years. He hopes the berms will help explain the "insane, utterly unsustainable" construction boom that led to Marden Henge and four other nearby Neolithic monuments, including Stonehenge. "Not nearly enough attention has been paid to the archaeology of the fertile valley in between these places," says Leary. So far he's found the remains of a 4,000-year-old teen wearing an amber necklace just outside Marden Henge, per the BBC; fancy arrowheads; and a stone building within the henge containing the bones of at least 13 pigs, suggesting a huge feast was held there. "For all the attention that has been lavished on Stonehenge over the years, we may well find out that Marden was where it was really at during the Neolithic," he says. (There's a giant "super henge" under Stonehenge.)
– A go-to builder for celebrity Hamptons getaways is feared dead after a plane went down off the coast of Amagansett, Long Island on Saturday. Ben Krupinski, whose clients included Martha Stewart and Billy Joel, was aboard the Piper PA-31 Navajo along with his wife, Bonnie, and grandson Will Maerov, 22. The pilot was 47-year-old Jon Dollard, who authorities say flew the Krupinski's plane into an unexpected storm, per ABC 7. However, the NTSB has not yet determined the exact cause of the crash. Two bodies were recovered and the Coast Guard on Sunday resumed the search for the other two people before suspending it, the AP reports. It was not immediately clear which of the four passengers had been recovered. Bernard Krupinski grew up in East Hampton before starting his business, Ben Krupinski Builders, there. He and Bonnie were prominent members of the community, where they were beloved for their well-known philanthropy. According to the New York Post, the couple owned a real-estate empire worth some $150 million. Eastern Long Island is known for its celebrity presence, with many wealthy and prominent individuals spending time there, particularly in the summer months. Small planes and helicopters are popular, as a way to avoid the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Long Island Expressway.
– A 17-year-old high school student in Idaho signed out of his senior prom at exactly 9:32pm Friday, but he never returned home—a lone shoe, his tux jacket, and a busted cellphone were found near the car he came in, KREM reports. Kristian Perez's family says no one's heard from him since he left the event Friday night, and local police say in a statement in the Idaho County Free Press that they've obtained a search warrant for his phone and are now scouring his call and text logs for possible clues. Cops say Kristian's mom reported him missing when he didn't come home after the prom, which was held at the National Guard Armory in Orofino. Per KLEW, a police dog-sniffing team tried to follow Kristian's scent, which apparently led west from the armory, but the scent vanished right at the entrance to a parking lot along the same highway the armory is located on. Investigators speculate Kristian may have gotten into a vehicle at that location. Cops say in the statement that a possible sighting of Kristian in Lewiston, about an hour away, came up empty after they reviewed a surveillance tape and concluded the person seen in the video wasn't the missing teen. (The wife of a teacher who's gone missing with a Tennessee teen has filed for divorce.)
– Ben Affleck is still a box office draw outside of the bat suit. His new thriller The Accountant opened to a chart-topping $24.7 million this weekend, reports the AP, according to studio estimates Sunday. Gavin O'Connor directed the R-rated thriller, starring Affleck as an autistic mathematician. Audiences were 58% male and gave the film an "A'' CinemaScore. "The marketing for this movie showed it to be a smart action movie with Ben Affleck," a comScore analyst tells USA Today. "That combination worked for audiences this weekend." The comedy concert film Kevin Hart: What Now? debuted in second place with $11.98 million, marking a minuscule edge over last week's champ The Girl on the Train, which netted $11.975 million. The films could easily switch places when final numbers come in on Monday. Holdovers Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children and Deepwater Horizon rounded out the top five. The weekend's other new opener, the Mattel-inspired Max Steel, bombed with only $2.2 million.
– You think fining people $500 for a crummy hotel review is bad? OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com will take $250 from your pocket if you even threaten to leave a less-than-stellar review. Customers "agree not to file any complaint, chargeback, claim, dispute, or make ... any public statement regarding the order," or threaten to do so, within a 90-day period after their order, or they'll be fined the $250 "plus any additional fees [and] damages," according to the site's terms of sale, spotted by Consumerist. That's right: Tell the website you'll post about a late order on Facebook—even if you don't actually do it—and you're out hundreds of dollars. One Wisconsin customer, however, is fighting the fine. Cindy Cox was fined after informing the retailer she'd be requesting a chargeback when an iPhone case she ordered didn't seem to have shipped after the retailer said it had. When she refused to pay the fine, the retailer sent it to a collections agency and allegedly informed her, "This will put a negative mark on your credit for seven years and will also result in calls to your home and/or work." The site allegedly added, per Ars Technica, "You are playing games with the wrong people." Cox wasn't deterred. She filed a suit, which notes the "terms are unenforceable, both because they are unconscionable as a matter of law and because [the plaintiff] never agreed to them." Consumerist adds that, as far as it can tell, at no point during the purchase process are the site's terms even mentioned. (Click to read about a customer who was fined $3,500 three years after complaining online about an order that never arrived.)
– It's Doug Jones. The Democrat won election to the Senate from Alabama on Tuesday, dealing a political blow to President Trump, reports the AP. Jones narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore, a one-time GOP pariah who was embraced by the Republican Party and the president even after facing allegations of sexual impropriety. An attorney and former prosecutor, Jones rallied voters on a message of moving past the Moore controversies. He was buoyed by an influx of national Democratic cash and endorsements. Jones' victory is set to narrow the slim Republican majority over Democrats in the Senate to 51-49. His win in the Republican stronghold energizes the Democratic Party as it looks to build on anti-Trump sentiment to mount a challenge next year to Republican control of Congress. With 92% of votes counted, Jones had 49.5% of the vote to Moore's 48.8%, per CNN, which also called the race for Jones.
– It probably didn't bode well when Ryan Adams hung up on an Australian interviewer in September who wouldn't stop asking about his marriage to Mandy Moore. Or when Adams' self-titled album from last year turned out to be "one of the more downcast, melancholic LPs in the singer-songwriter's vast catalog," in the words of Rolling Stone. This might be why: Radar reports that Adams, 40, and Moore, 30, are divorcing after six years. Moore cited irreconcilable differences when filing the papers. They have no kids. In other celeb divorce news, Patrick Dempsey—aka "Dr. McDreamy"—is splitting with his wife of 15 years, Jillian Fink, reports Page Six. They have a 12-year-old daughter and 7-year-old twins.
– Although it was "very sad," the breakup of Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson at least seemed to be civil. Apparently that tenuous detente has ended, at least per the buzz around the 25-year-old singer's recent tweets. People reports on an SNL promo that dropped this week featuring her former fiance, as well as actor Jonah Hill and singer Maggie Rogers, in which Davidson introduces himself to Rogers, then immediately asks, "You wanna get married?" After Rogers rejects his "proposal," Davidson deadpans for the camera: "0 for 3" (ostensibly referencing his failed relationships). Shortly thereafter came the already-deleted and somewhat confusing Grande tweets, which many are taking to be jabs at Davidson. "For somebody who claims to hate relevancy u sure love clinging to it huh," was her first one, followed by, "thank u, next." USA Today notes Davidson had previously poked fun of his whirlwind-romance-gone-south during a comedy show last month, in which he quipped: "Well, as you could tell, I don't want to be here. There's a lot going on." Grande didn't seem to get (publicly) peeved at that joke. (Grande has been having a tough time after ex Mac Miller died.)
– Each day, more than 3,000 children under age 5 die from preterm birth complications—meaning that, for the first time ever, premature birth is the biggest killer of young children around the globe. A new study in the Lancet finds that of the 1.1 million such deaths in 2013, 965,000 of them were a direct result of being born too early, with the child dying within 28 days of birth. But another 125,000 deaths happened between the age of 1 month and 5 years, according to a press release. Meanwhile, the overall mortality rate for children under 5 has declined since 2000, as vaccines, antibiotics, and other advances have reduced deaths from pneumonia, measles, and other causes. "The success we've seen in the ongoing fight against infectious diseases demonstrates that we can also be successful if we invest in prevention and care for preterm birth," says a researcher. The first step, which is already underway with $250 million in new funding: Figure out what causes preterm births. Obesity, high blood pressure, and later-in-life motherhood are all risk factors, but the exact trigger for premature labor remains a "mystery," the Telegraph reports. The countries most affected are often poor: India has the highest number of deaths from preterm birth complications, followed by Nigeria and Pakistan. But even in the US, 28% of under-5 deaths are caused by such complications, which is above the global average of 17.4%; the US has "one of the worst preterm birth rates of any high-resource country," the press release notes. Among the new research initiatives: identifying the electric signals that trigger labor and figuring out whether that process is initiated by the mother or the fetus. (A dad singing to his premature baby boy recently went viral in a heartbreaking video.)
– Another Ikea dresser has apparently toppled over and killed a young child. Theodore "Ted" McGee was 22 months old when the unstable dresser fell and crushed him while he was napping on Feb. 14 in Apple Valley, Minn., his family's lawyers tell the Philadelphia Inquirer. His parents "didn't hear the dresser fall," says attorney Alan Feldman. "They didn't hear Ted scream." The accusation is swinging a spotlight back on Ikea, which started a program last July to help stabilize 27 million dressers after a toddler and a 2-year-old were crushed to death under similar circumstances. Under the "repair program," Ikea issued warnings and offered to send anchoring kits to customers who requested them, USA Today reported at the time. But Ted McGee's parents had never heard about the danger or Ikea's program, their lawyers say. Janet and Jeremy McGee bought the dresser specifically for Ted, their first child after each had kids in earlier marriages. On the day Ted died, Janet was checking on him and noticed his empty bed, but figured he was just hiding somewhere during nap time. That's when she found his lifeless body under the fallen six-drawer dresser. Now the family's lawyers—who have already sued Ikea for the other two families and started a website about the crisis—are readying a lawsuit for the McGees. Ikea has offered the McGee family condolences but reminds them that anchoring the product "is an integral part of the product's assembly instructions." Federal safety regulators are investigating the case.
– A private banquet dinner, a reality-TV star, and a tweet showing a Nazi salute have placed a DC Italian restaurant in the center of controversy. Maggiano's Little Italy hosted a dinner Friday for a group that had a conference in DC the next day, apparently without knowing the group was the National Policy Institute, known for its white nationalist members, Washington City Paper and the Washington Post report. How the restaurant became clued in: a protest against NPI that formed at the eatery, followed by dinner attendee Tila Tequila sending out a tweet showing herself and two men performing the Nazi salute along with the caption "Seig [sic] heil!" Tequila's Twitter account was suspended Monday, Twitter confirmed to BuzzFeed, though it didn't elaborate. Maggiano's posted on Facebook Monday the dinner had been a "last minute booking" and that NPI had used a different name on the reservation. The restaurant also railed against Tequila's tweet, saying, "This expression of support of Hitler is extremely offensive to us, as our restaurant is home to Teammates and Guests of every race, religion, and cultural background." It says it's donating all profits from Friday's sales—$10,000—to DC's Anti-Defamation League. The Tab caught up to Tequila at the airport, where she claimed she and her photo mates were "just trolling everyone," adding, "I think it's so funny to get a rise out of people who are so easily triggered by things like that."
– Last time George Talley saw his beloved 1979 Corvette, it was parked on Jefferson Avenue in Detroit in the summer of 1981, reports WXYZ. He'd long ago given up hope of ever getting the stolen car back, but then came a call out of the blue from authorities in Mississippi who found it via a false VIN number. Better yet, it seems to be in decent shape, with only 47,000 miles. Talley, now 71 and still the rightful owner, told the tale on a Detroit radio station today, his only lament being that he had to figure out how to get the car shipped to Michigan. Enter GM exec Mark Reuss, who happened to catch the show, reports the Detroit Free Press. The company is going to pick up the car for its former employee and ship it back free of charge. (A 1957 Chevy stolen 30 years also recently made its way home.)
– Most people don't keep the same spouse or home for nearly half a century, much less the same job, but veteran newsman Bob Schieffer has stuck it out with CBS News for 46 years. That's a run that will end this year, he announced at alma mater Texas Christian University yesterday. "And because that is where it all started for me, I wanted this to be the place, and I wanted you all to be the first to know: This summer I am going to retire." Acknowledging the network's "ups and downs," Schieffer said one of the factors driving his decision "is that I am so proud of where CBS News is now." The 78-year-old has held the moderator job at Face the Nation since 1991; Politico has a short list of who might replace him.
– A woman visiting a nature reserve in Wales over the weekend accidentally took home an estimated 20,000 bees. Carol Howarth, 65, stopped in Haverfordwest to do some shopping on her way home from the reserve when a swarm of bees descended on her car. "I have never seen that many bees in one spot," local park ranger Tom Moses tells the Guardian. "They were packed in quite tight and covered a couple of square feet." Fearing the bees or a person might get hurt, he called the Pembrokeshire Beekeepers' Association and watched for three hours as beekeepers gathered the bees in a cardboard box, reports the Telegraph. "It's safe to say I got stung quite a few times," Moses tells the Milford Mercury. But the bee tale wasn't over. By the time Howarth had finished her shopping, the issue seemed resolved and she drove home. The next day, however, the swarm returned. Howarth called the beekeepers for backup and the bees were cleared away for a second, and, so far, final, time. The leading theory is that the insects were only following their queen, who may have gotten stuck in Howarth's Mitsubishi Outlander at the nature reserve. "We think the queen had been attracted to something in the car, perhaps something sweet, and had got into a gap on the boot’s wiper blade or perhaps the hinge," a beekeeper tells Metro, though a queen bee was never found. "It is natural for them to follow the queen but it is a strange thing to see and quite surprising to have a car followed for two days." (A swarm of stinging bees descended on a mosque.)
– America's Dad wants to make sure America's Fourth Estate doesn't run out of steam. Members of the White House press corps arrived in the press area break room Thursday morning to find a brand new espresso machine courtesy of Tom Hanks, the Hill reports. The actor left behind a note reading, “Keep up the good fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Especially for the Truth Part.” According to Variety, this has actually become a bit of a tradition for Hanks, starting when he was at the White House for a film shoot during the Bush administration. He saw the press corps getting their coffee from a vending machine and bought them their own coffee machine. He later replaced it during the Obama administration when he noticed it was getting a bit rundown while at the White House for a screening of The Pacific.
– JPMorgan reported a $4.4 billion trading loss this morning, a figure far worse than analysts were expecting, in the wake of the "London Whale" fiasco. That drove the bank's earnings down 8.7%, but still left it with $4.96 billion in profit for the second quarter, down only a bit from its $5.43 billion mark a year ago, the Wall Street Journal reports. "We are not proud of this moment, but we are proud of the company," Jamie Dimon said. "We're not making light of this error, but we do think it's an isolated event." At the same time, however, the bank said it would soon revise its first-quarter results southward, thanks to "recently discovered information that raises questions about the integrity of the trader marks and suggests that certain individuals may have been seeking to avoid showing the full amount of losses." Analysts tell Bloomberg that the larger-than-expected losses will leave the bank struggling to restore investor confidence. "The reputation problem will just get worse," one analyst said.
– Fox & Friends rounded up all the celebrities who've said they plan to move out of the US if Donald Trump becomes president, Fox News Insider reports: Whoopi Goldberg: "I don't think that's America. I don't want it to be America. Maybe it's time for me to move." Rev. Al Sharpton: "If Donald Trump is the nominee, I'm open to support anyone, while I'm also reserving my ticket to get out of here if he wins." Raven-Symone: "My confession for this election is if any Republican gets nominated, I'm going to move to Canada with my entire family. I already have my ticket." Jon Stewart: He actually said he'd prefer to leave the planet Earth entirely if Trump is elected, the Inquisitr reports. Samuel L. Jackson: In a sketch, he told Jimmy Kimmel last year, "If that motherf---er becomes president, I'm moving my black ass to South Africa." Cher: Last year, she tweeted, "IF HE WERE TO BE ELECTED,IM MOVING TO JUPITER." Jennifer Lawrence: Fox claims Rosie O'Donnell also threatened to move to Canada were Trump to be elected—but though their long-running beef is well-documented, we could find no official evidence of such an ultimatum. Lawrence, however, can perhaps be added to the list: She told Entertainment Weekly that "if Donald Trump becomes president, that will be the end of the world." Bonus: It goes both ways. Bill O'Reilly said in January that he's moving to Ireland if Bernie Sanders becomes president, according to the Huffington Post. Click to see how Trump and his sons responded to the celebrities.
– Ben Affleck knows a little something about rehab, so he decided to show his support to Lindsay Lohan during her most recent stay. While she was at Cliffside Malibu, Affleck met with her secretly to give her some tips on staying sober in Hollywood—and making a successful comeback. Sources tell TMZ that Affleck also told LiLo she's talented and has the support of others in the entertainment industry, and that LiLo was moved by his words. (Some outlets reported Affleck was offering Lindsay a role in his new movie, but TMZ says that's not the case.) Meanwhile, Lohan's much-anticipated sit-down with Oprah Winfrey airs on OWN Sunday at 9pm, and previews have been trickling out. In the latest, E! reports, Lindsay tells Oprah, "I'm my own worst enemy, and I know that." This and previous promos have shown Winfrey interrogating Lohan with questions including, "Do you think you can turn it around?", "What is it that you are addicted to?", "What's going to be different this time?", and "When you get the first DUI, is that a wake-up call?" Winfrey said last week that Lohan's responses seemed "honest" and "authentic."
– A former cop who paid underage girls for sex is facing a harsher sentence over his brand of condom, the Chicago Tribune reports. William Whitley, 61, pleaded guilty this week in federal court to sex trafficking of a minor and will likely serve 10 years to life. Prosecutors leveled federal charges partly because his condoms—LifeStyles and Trojan Magnums—were manufactured outside of Illinois, meaning he engaged in interstate commerce, the Kansas City Star reports. His use of a cellphone to snap sexually explicit photos of two girls and paying them with money also hit the "federal nexus," prosecutors say. The condom brands were included in the FBI's criminal complaint the way guns often are. "The gun traveling is analogous to the condom traveling," says a law professor and former federal prosecutor. "The person who pulled the trigger may not have traveled, but the gun did. This police officer may not have traveled, but an aspect that he used to commit the crime did." Whitley claimed he didn't know one of the girls was 14 when they had sex over a four-month period in 2015, but investigators suggested that her braces could have tipped him off. He met the other girl, a 16-year-old runaway, at a party where runaways prostituted themselves to older men. She says she gave him oral sex five times for $60 to $65 each. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Whitley, a 20-year veteran of the Chicago PD, will be sentenced in September.
– President Obama asked White House lawyers last month to come up with ways to reform the National Security Administration's phone-surveillance program and they have delivered four options, insiders tell the Wall Street Journal. One option—and probably the least likely to be adopted—is scrapping the program altogether, while the other three involve taking the vast amount of phone data currently being gathered out of the NSA's hands. Sources say the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department have presented Obama with the following options for shifting the phone data: Having phone companies retain the data. Under this option, the NSA would contact phone companies when it needed specific searches of phone records. Telecommunications firms, however, are firmly opposed to this plan. Having another government agency retain the data. The FBI has been spoken of as a possibility for this role, though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is also being considered. Having a non-government, non-phone company agency retain the data. This option is also seen as unlikely. Privacy groups say any such agency would become a mere extension of the NSA. Obama said last month that any such third party would be carrying out "what is essentially a government function with more expense, more legal ambiguity, and a doubtful impact on public confidence that their privacy is being protected," the Wire notes.
– Washington is braced for the first government shutdown in 17 years, which will happen at midnight tonight unless lawmakers manage to break the deadlock over funding and hammer out a deal. Here's what to expect from a day of drama in DC: The House has passed legislation to delay ObamaCare for a year and repeal a tax on medical devices, so the measure will return to the Senate this afternoon, just hours before the shutdown is due to kick in. Harry Reid is expected to table the anti-ObamaCare amendments with a simple Democratic majority and quickly send it back to the House—but if any opportunity arises for Senate Republicans to use delaying tactics, expect Ted Cruz to lead the way, the Wall Street Journal predicts. There's a chance of a straight up-or-down vote in the House, but if it becomes clear that it will be impossible to break the deadlock by midnight—which appears to be the likeliest scenario—the partial shutdown could still be averted if lawmakers pass a short-term funding bill to buy another week or so of debating time. So who will blink first? Neither Reid nor John Boehner appears likely to give way. Reid is determined to play hardball and not give an inch on ObamaCare, Politico reports. Reid and his allies believe that giving any concessions now will only lead to bigger concessions to avoid a debt default next month—and they think the backlash from a government shutdown will hit the GOP hardest. Boehner, meanwhile, will face the wrath of his party's conservatives if he gives way too soon—but polls show the public will blame his House Republicans if there is a shutdown. If there is a shutdown, it won't be an abrupt halt to government, but more "like a spending freeze that will gradually spread through the government like ice forming in water," Quartz explains. Federal employees, 800,000 of whom will be sent home without pay, will be the first affected, and the shutdown will also affect scientific research, trade negotiations, and the federal programs that guarantee home loans and provide capital to business. Air traffic controllers will still be at work, however, and agencies that deal with national security and law enforcement are exempt from the shutdown. A shutdown of a few days might not do too much damage, but experts warn that the national economy will take a serious hit if it is prolonged. In Washington, DC, however, even a brief shutdown will cost the district an estimated $200 million a day—and affect basic services like trash collection. "This is serious," the director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis tells the Washington Post. "The national economy may not notice a shutdown much unless it lasts three or four weeks. But for the Washington area, this is a tsunami."
– It's time for authoritarian North Korea to let in some free markets, urged Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao today, following a rare meeting with a high-ranking North Korean official, reports Reuters. Wen and President Hu Jintao met yesterday with Jang Song Thaek, the powerful uncle of North Korea's young leader Kim Jong Un, encouraging North Korea to improve its laws, reform customs services, and encourage business investment. The two countries announced the creation of two special economic zones near the China-North Korea border earlier in the week. Jang is widely considered one of the top forces for reform in the North, so getting strong support from China is vital for the new regime, notes the AP. China may consider North Korea a vital buffer between it and South Korea, Japan, and the United States, but Pyongyang has often been a difficult ally, with its bellicose rhetoric, missile and nuclear weapons programs, and ravaged economy. China's exports to North Korea totalled just $2.28 billion in 2010, while South Korea is China's third-largest trading partner. China's GDP reached $7.3 trillion in 2011, South Korea's $1.1 trillion, and North Korea's an estimated $40 billion.
– Dove's latest ad idea doesn't appear on its bottles—it is the bottles. The company has rolled out "limited edition" body wash in the UK packaged in bottles of various shapes, the idea being that women come in various shapes, too. "Every woman’s version of beauty is different and, if you ask us, these differences are there to be celebrated," says a company statement on the Real Beauty Bottles campaign. (See a company video.) Unfortunately for Dove, reaction has been less than kind. At the Atlantic, Ian Bogost digs into the nuances of advertising to point out the campaign's failings. Among the points: Imagine a pear-shaped woman in a drug store having to choose between the bottles. "She must also present this proxy for a body—the one she has? the one she wishes she did?—to a cashier to handle and perhaps to judge," he writes. "What otherwise would have been a body-image-free trip to the store becomes a trip that highlights body image." Ditto the general sentiment at Quartz: This type of "empowering advertising" just winds up "exploiting the very female insecurities that it claims to destroy," writes Annalisa Merelli. "Well-intentioned or not, the message behind all of these campaigns is the same we’ve always heard: Be beautiful." At AdWeek, however, Tim Nudd thinks it's an "inspired packaging stunt," one in sync with Dove's theme of celebrating "body-diverse beauty." The post includes a quote from creator Ogilvy UK saying it's "one of those rare ideas which condenses decades of a brand’s legacy in two seconds." And a post at Creativity has the ad among its top five "brand ideas of the week." But that's the minority view. A Jezebel blogger puts the problem in question form: "What doorway would you walk through if one was labeled 'Beautiful Bottle' and the other was labeled 'Average Bottle'?" writes Aimee Lutkin. "Until every woman sees herself as a beautiful bottle, Dove’s lessons on #RealBeauty aren’t over." Mashable blogger Alex Hazlett has some questions, including, "Do the body-positive bottles cost the same as normal ones, or will we pay a premium for our empowerment?" It's "silly at best, condescending at worst," writes Kristen Bellstrom at Fortune. Companies that champion messages like this might occasionally do some good, but this is a reminder that these campaigns have but one real purpose: "to sell you their stuff." New York rounds up mocking memes with a common theme: People choosing a different bottle that captures their essence, like one of those bear-shaped honey bottles. And Twitter is on fire with put-downs, including this gem: "Can someone come over and help me measure my butt so I know which dove body wash to buy"
– A disturbing video shot Friday in Texas appears to show the fatal police shooting of a suspect while his arms are raised in surrender. The KSAT video, which runs more than four minutes and was shot from a distance, shows two Bexar County Sheriff deputies, Greg Vasquez and Robert Sanchez, approach Gilbert Flores in a San Antonio neighborhood after a call about a domestic dispute. Around the one-minute mark, Flores raises his arms and the officers appear to fire at least two shots from about 10 yards away. Flores appears to slouch forward before falling to the ground. An officer approaches Flores' seemingly lifeless body 30 seconds later, grabs his arm, and drags him along the ground. An ambulance arrives just before the video ends. Police say they first tried to subdue Flores, 41, with a Taser and shield before shooting him, per the San Antonio Express-News. It isn't clear how many shots were fired or how many times Flores was hit. Police say the 20-minute encounter began when officers visited a home in the area to find a bleeding woman with a cut on her head, holding a baby who may have been injured, per KSAT. They say Flores, who had a criminal record, was there holding a knife. "Certainly, what's in the video is a cause for concern," a sheriff tells the New York Daily News. "But it's important to let the investigation go through its course." A district attorney agrees the video is "troubling," telling KSAT, "There's actually another video with a better view that is very close." He adds, "There's a lot of information before, including 911 calls and information from different witnesses inside the house." On Facebook, Bexar County police slam KSAT for posting the video, calling the move "unethical and sad" and "sensational behavior," noting it has resulted in "physical threats toward our deputies." Vasquez and Sanchez are both on administrative leave.
– For more than 40 years, Deborah Giannecchini used Johnson & Johnson baby powder and other talcum powder products—and on Thursday, a St. Louis jury awarded more than $70 million in damages on her claim, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The 63-year-old Californian said those J&J products contributed to her developing ovarian cancer. The jury voted against J&J 10-2—one of the dissenters actually didn't think the award was enough—with an award of $575,000 in medical damages, $2 million in compensatory damages, $2.5 million in compensatory damages against Imerys Talc (the producer of the talcum powder), and $65 million in punitive damages against J&J. About half of the punitive damages will go to the Missouri Crime Victims' Compensation Program, per Jim Onder of Onder Law, which has handled all three cases with awarded damages so far. Memos from inside J&J show the company knew for decades about research tying the use of talc powder to ovarian cancer, Onder says—though CNBC says "much" of that research has been "weak." Giannecchini, however, had no clue of possible risks. "There isn't a way to describe how you feel ... when you're told you probably won't make it beyond the next year," she says of receiving her stage 4 cancer diagnosis in 2012. Per her lawyers, Giannecchini has about an 80% chance of dying within the next two years, Bloomberg reports. Not that Onder expects J&J to cede to the nearly 2,000 state and federal complaints against it; instead, he believes the company will take a "scorched-earth legal policy" and not settle "until they absolutely have to." In a statement, a J&J rep says the company will appeal because it's "guided by the science, which supports the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder."
– For years, campaigns such as Nothing But Nets have been trying to control the scourge of malaria—a blood disease spread by mosquito bites—by sending insecticide-laced nets to hard-hit regions (mostly in Africa). But a University of California-Davis study has some bad news: Researchers have discovered a hybrid "super mosquito" that seems to be resistant to the treated nets. The study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that Anopheles coluzzii mosquitoes in Mali that cross-bred with the A. gambiae variety created the superinsect—"'super' with respect to its ability to survive exposure to the insecticides," says Gregory Lanzaro, the study's lead author, in a press release. Although he's not surprised insecticide resistance is rising, it's still worrisome: "It is resulting in the failure of the nets to provide meaningful control." There were about 584,000 deaths from malaria in 2013, 90% of them occurring in Africa, according to the World Health Organization; every 60 seconds a child there dies from the disease, Nothing But Nets adds. But inroads have been made: Intervention tactics, including insecticide-treated nets, helped cut the mortality rate 54% in Africa between 2000 and 2013, the WHO notes—and in 2013, 49% of all African residents at risk for the disease (up from a mere 3% in 2004) had access to insecticide-laced nets. This new finding could throw a wrench in that progress, and new preventative measures will need to be explored. (Another study: Pantyhose help reveal why mosquitoes prefer humans.)
– With a $140 million budget and an opening weekend take of only $24 million, The BFG is poised to be Steven Spielberg's biggest flop in 37 years, Rolling Stone reports. That's left people wondering if the man who essentially invented the summer blockbuster with Jaws has lost his summertime feeling. Here's what some of the experts are saying: Slash Film argues you can't blame Spielberg for the failure, as he's far from the first director to flop when adapting a story by Roald Dahl. In fact, only one film based on a Dahl book—Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—has made more than $34 million in US theaters. The Wrap has a list of seven reasons The BFG bombed, from "Roald Dahl is no JK Rowling" to a lack of stars and a confusing title. The BFG might be proof it's time for Spielberg to step away from family films, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which points out the director hasn't had a hit family film since Hook a quarter of a century ago. He's had better luck with recent grown-up fare like Lincoln and Bridge of Spies. The Wall Street Journal details Spielberg's history of being able to "bounce back" after cinematic disappointments, something he should have a good chance of doing with his next three films currently including a historical drama, a science-fiction movie based on a popular book, and an Indiana Jones sequel. But the "reason this stings" is because every other time Spielberg disappointed at the box office, it was with a "good for you" film, according to Forbes. Whereas The BFG was intended as a money-maker for the studio. Finally, Movie Pilot argues that the failure of The BFG shouldn't count against any future Spielberg or Dahl movies. "The main issue of the movie is more about being unremarkable than disastrous.”
– If all conflicts could be solved through dance-offs, the world would be much less violent (and Channing Tatum would probably be president, or something). Thankfully it's a world we're one step closer to after a Washington, DC, police officer and Iraq War veteran was caught on camera defusing a situation with some local teens through the undeniable power of the Nae Nae, the Washington Post reports. After an unnamed officer broke up a fight between some teens and ordered the crowd to disperse Monday, 17-year-old Aaliyah Taylor instead started playing the song "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)" on her phone and dancing. The officer's reaction was a breath of fresh air, to say the least. "I started to dance and then the cop was like, 'I could do better,'" Taylor tells NBC Washington. "I was in shock." Taylor shared the video of the ensuing dance-off on Facebook, where it's been viewed nearly 700,000 times as of this writing. She tells the Post all seven of her siblings have been roughly handcuffed or arrested in the past for nonviolent crimes. That's why she's usually afraid of cops, according to NBC. That changed Monday. “Instead of us fighting, she tried to turn it around and make it something fun,” Taylor says. “I never expected cops to be that cool." The Hill reports even Obama is a fan, with the president tweeting: "Who knew community policing could involve the Nae Nae? Great example of police having fun while keeping us safe." For her part, the officer tells the Post she's embarrassed the video is getting so much attention because it's the kind of good policing officers do every day.
– People at the Toronto Zoo want to talk to somebody who got too close for comfort to one of their Sumatran tigers—for the sake of a hat. A video that surfaced over the weekend shows a woman hopping a fence at the tiger enclosure to retrieve a fallen hat, the CBC reports. The tiger can be seen lunging at the woman, who is behind a second fence. "You're a moron," a man can be heard shouting after she climbs out of the area. "You're a bad example to everyone else's kids." CityNews reports that if the woman, who ignored warning signs, is identified, she could face a maximum $2,000 fine and a long-term zoo ban. (A keeper nicknamed the "tiger whisperer" was killed by a tiger in a Florida zoo.)
– The owner of a pack of pit bulls that mauled a 63-year-old woman to death this month has been charged with murder, in a case that has rocked the town of Littlerock, California. Alex Jackson, 29, was yesterday charged in the death of Pamela Devitt, who died after suffering as many as 200 puncture wounds while walking near her home on the morning of May 9. Though the Los Angeles Times reports such a charge is extremely rare in connection with a dog attack, "we believe there was evidence that [Jackson] was aware the dogs were vicious and they have attacked before and he knew of the danger they posed," says a rep for the DA. Police found eight dogs in Jackson's home—six pit bulls and two mixed-breeds; four had Devitt's blood on them. "There's no way I can get the brutality of this out of my head," Devitt's husband tells the Times. Jackson faces an array of charges in addition to murder, including an assault charge tied to a separate dog-related incident: He's alleged to have on Jan. 13 heaved a rock at a rider whose horse was attacked by his dogs. One witness to that event tells ABC News that Jackson "encouraged" the dogs, saying that when the man on the horse "tried to stop the dogs, [Jackson] threw rocks at him, and said to leave his dogs alone." Jackson's bail is set at $1.05 million.
– Almost a year after his acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman doesn't seem to have much in the way of a life, according to paperwork filed this month as part of his divorce case. The 30-year-old says he has no home, no job, no income, and nearly no assets apart from his 2008 Honda pickup, the Orlando Sentinel finds. But according to his financial affidavit, he still spends $3,304 a month, including $200 for psychological counseling—and $100 on vacations. He currently pays no rent. Zimmerman, who owes his lawyers $2.5 million, has just $650 in the bank, according to the court filing, which makes no mention of the $100,000 he made by selling a painting on eBay earlier this year. Meanwhile, at Florida Memorial University, Trayvon's parents were at a ceremony late last week to welcome the Trayvon Martin Foundation they founded to its new home, reports the Miami Herald. The foundation focuses on helping families affected by violent crimes. The teenager's death "galvanized the nation," his father said at the ceremony. "It’s just proof that positive things come out of tragedy. Even though he’s not here, we know he’s looking down on us," he said.
– Irony alert: A billionaire accused of worsening the opioid crisis just won a patent for a drug to treat opioid addiction, Stat News reports. Richard Sackler, whose family owns OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma, is one of six inventors behind a new medication that could help people get off drugs including opioids. It would be a new kind of buprenorphine—a gentle opiate that curbs drug cravings—which is already FDA-approved in film-strip or tablet form and now would come in wafers disintegrating quickly under the tongue, per the Financial Times. The best-selling version of buprenorphine, Suboxone, made $877 million in US sales for the British pharmaceutical company Indivior. The patent application says the new drug would help ease crime caused by addicts, but doesn't mention the thousand-plus lawsuits filed against Purdue Pharma for allegedly spurring the opioid epidemic. "It's reprehensible what Purdue Pharma has done to our public health," says the director of an addiction treatment center in Staten Island, New York. He adds that Sackler's family "shouldn't be allowed to peddle any more synthetic opiates—and that includes opioid substitutes." The Sacklers, known mostly for philanthropy before the opioid epidemic, deny fueling a crisis that killed 42,000 people in 2016. In related news, Julia Roberts is starring in the new film Ben Is Back about a mother dealing with an opioid-addicted son who comes home for Christmas, per USA Today.
– Does your toilet paper seem smaller to you these days? Well, you're not crazy: It is. As the Washington Post reports, toilet paper squares used to be 4.5 inches by 4.5 inches. Nowadays, they're up to a half-inch narrower, shorter—or both. (Apparently, it's enough of a difference to be noticeable to the naked eye: Last week, a reader wrote in to the Los Angeles Times complaining about a "26% reduction in surface area.") And, as Consumer Reports noted last year, the cardboard tubes are also increasing in diameter as the number of sheets per roll decreases. But the price is not falling: In 2012 and 2013, the unit price rose about 2% per year. (In 2013, the Wall Street Journal explained that the process of selling less paper for the same price is known as "desheeting.") "A standard roll is much smaller than it used to be, so now they're selling double rolls. So, without being scientific, I think a double roll is pretty well equivalent to what a standard roll was perhaps a decade ago," a research analyst tells NPR. One not-as-obvious reason for the TP trend is that companies that make toilet paper also make products like paper towels and napkins. Though toilet paper is essential—Americans are estimated to use an average of 46 sheets per day, and that's probably not set to change any time soon—paper towel and napkin sales are falling. In particular, large companies, like offices and restaurants, are moving toward things like air dryers or, the analyst explains, rationing how many napkins they dole out to customers. But they'll never cut down on their TP orders in an attempt to ration that particular product, so orders will remain steady. (As for those hand dryers, you might not want to use them.)
– An iguana wandered onto a power line and knocked out electricity to a Florida nursing home, sending 20 patients to the hospital, the AP reports. Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue Spokesman Michael Kane says the iguana was electrocuted and set off a fire on the power pole, which knocked out electricity to The Palms Care Center in Lauderdale Lakes on Friday afternoon. Kane told the South Florida Sun Sentinel the facility was running on generator power but only half of it was being cooled effectively. Residents who lost air conditioning were moved to parts of the facility where cooling units were working. Kane said 20 patients were moved to hospitals as a precaution. Electricity was restored throughout the nursing home late Friday. State records show the facility is licensed for 120 beds.
– The first speech by Hillary the 2016 candidate? The former secretary of state yesterday lit into voter ID laws springing up across the nation as well as the Supreme Court's decision in June to defang the Voting Rights Act, reports NBC News. The big quote in her speech to the American Bar Association: "Now, not every obstacle is related to race, but anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention," she said, calling on Congress to step forward. It sure sounded like a candidate's speech, writes Sean Sullivan in the Washington Post, who says Clinton must "get in the game" on key issues if she does indeed plan to run. On this issue in particular, Clinton can "make her case as the heir apparent to Obama and try to persuade parts of his coalition—minorities and liberals in particular—to back her." (She spoke on the same day that North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed into place a law requiring voters to have a photo ID, reports the News & Observer.) Over at CBS, Anthony Weiner offers up a maybe-hint that Clinton will run when asked last night if he knows what wife Huma Abedin's role would be in a campaign. "I do," he said. But, "I'm not telling you." In the coming months, Clinton plans speeches on national security and America's standing in the world. Much of her public presence in this "next phase of life" will come through the family foundation she is co-running with Bill and Chelsea Clinton, notes Politico. It's the first time since the 1992 campaign that she and Bill are essentially working together.
– Alaska yesterday became the third state to legalize marijuana for recreational use, and now a country where you would have thought that was the case already is moving closer to that goal itself. Jamaica's parliament last night approved a law decriminalizing small amounts of pot, the AP reports. People found with 2 ounces or less of marijuana will now simply receive a ticket—not a crime on their record—and cultivation of five plants or fewer is now allowed. A licensing agency was also established to oversee pot cultivation and distribution for medical and scientific efforts. Rastafarians are rejoicing, because the bill also grants them the legal right to use cannabis for sacramental purposes, while tourists who have medical marijuana prescriptions elsewhere can pay for permits to buy a bit of ganja on the island. Jamaica has shied away from decriminalization because it didn't want to risk violating international treaties and provoking US sanctions, the Guardian reports. The process for the new law was described by National Security Minister Peter Bunting as an "elephantine," nearly 40-year effort, ABC Australia reports. "[The law] eliminates an unnecessary source of friction between police and citizens, and ensures that our young people are not gratuitously shackled with criminal records," he said in a statement. Jamaica also hopes to boost its health tourism and medical marijuana industries and make it a major player in the pot product market, the Guardian notes. International exporting, however, remains a no-no. A US counternarcotics official told the AP in an email that "Jamaican law is of course Jamaica's own business," but warned that drug trafficking into the US is still illegal.
– Beyonce will not be adding "basketball team owner" to her impressive resume, at least not yet. The singer was rumored to be part of an investment group looking to buy the Houston Rockets, but the group lost out to billionaire restaurateur Tilman Fertitta, TMZ reports. Fertitta will reportedly buy the team from current owner Leslie Alexander for $2.2 billion (a record price for an NBA team, ESPN reports); Alexander originally bought the team for $85 million in 1993. Fertitta, who stars in the CNBC reality series Billion Dollar Buyer, is reportedly worth $3.1 billion.
– You'd think a DUI arrest would be a wake-up call. Apparently not for everyone. Pennsylvania State Police say they arrested 47-year-old Michele Leonard for driving under the influence on Saturday after Leonard crashed her car near an intersection in Somerset County, per KDKA. She was then released, but instead of heading home, Leonard paid a stranger $3 to drive her back to her vehicle, police tell WTAE. Was she just going to pick up her purse? Um, no. Police say Leonard got behind the wheel and starting driving down the road before she lost control again, sideswiped a parked car, and crashed into a man's shed around 6pm. "I looked out my window and saw a car fly down my driveway, past my truck, heard a big crash ... She slammed into my shed," says Stanley Fisher. "She tried to back up. I stopped her, took her keys from her. She said, 'I can't get another DUI.' I said, 'What do you mean?' She said, 'I already have one today.'" Police have charged Leonard over the second incident; her blood-alcohol test results are pending. (This guy was arrested for DUI in a motorized wheelchair.)
– Politico has an interesting article on what it's calling "the Democrats' wage problem," a major takeaway of which is that the average American income has actually gone down during Obama's years as president. The median household income in 2014 was more than $1,600 lower than it was in January 2009, according to Census data. And while a recent survey says median household income is finally above its 2009 level this year, it's barely 1% above it. Politico calls this "one of the biggest weaknesses in the Obama economic recovery" and says it could be a big problem for Hillary Clinton since she was part of the administration. However Politico reports none of that is to say Republicans know how to fix stagnant wages or have even shown themselves able to capably address the issue. “It’s a bit awkward if Republicans are talking about the need for wage growth and opposed to a minimum wage increase," one political scientist tells Politico. Only one GOP presidential candidate—Rick Santorum—has a proposal to raise the national minimum wage, and it's more modest than similar proposals from any of the Democratic candidates. The majority of the other Republican candidates favor fixing stagnant wages through tax cuts and deregulation, policies that only exacerbated the problem under George W. Bush. Read the full story here.
– The Washington Redskins are having a rough time of it today: Things started with a crash this morning involving two of the team's buses, which were en route to play the Vikings in Minneapolis, reports the AP. A police escort in Minnesota crashed into a guardrail around 8:30am; the team bus immediately behind it braked to avoid hitting the cop car, but second bus rear-ended the first. No injuries. Arriving in Minneapolis, the team was met with chants of "Who are we? Not your mascot!" from some 3,200 protesting Native Americans who were none too happy with the "Redskins" moniker. "My Hubby Did Not Fight in Iraq To Be Called A 'Redskin,' read one sign. The protest raised familiar arguments, with one Redskins fan calling the name a "respectful" one in which Native Americans should "take pride." The name is nothing more than "a racial slur," counters one Democratic rep at the protest, citing Minnesota's "11 proud tribal nations. This was a government-funded policy of genocide." Indeed, as the Washington Post reports, Minneapolis is home to a sizable Native American presence, perhaps contributing to the size of the demonstration. The issue is compounded by the University of Minnesota, which currently leases its football stadium to the Vikings for a hefty $300,000 per game. With 1,100 students who identify as Native American, the university had in August demanded that the Redskins limit use of the mascot, logo, and team name during today's game.
– Apple presented its new smartphone Wednesday, and nestled in with the iPhone 7's much-ballyhooed features was the disclosure that the company is getting rid of the phone's headphone jack—news that wasn't exactly met with universal acclaim, or much acclaim at all. Chris Taylor is one detractor of the headphone ditch, writing for Mashable that, in nearly 20 years of attending Apple product launches, he's "never heard anything as ridiculous emanate from that stage as I did Wednesday." Apple marketing head Phil Schiller used the word "courage" to describe Apple's innovation, but that's not how Taylor sees it. "Courage is marching across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma in 1965 [or] facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square," he writes. "Courage, by definition, involves doing something that makes you afraid." Apparently Taylor doesn't think Apple was quivering in its workboots when it came up with this plan. He's got plenty of other words instead of "courage" in mind, including "hubris," "arrogance," "greed," and his personal favorite, "stupidity," which he attributes to Apple for taking "one step forward, two steps back" both technologically ("wired almost always sounds better than wireless") and logistically (no more plugging in other peripherals like credit card readers, for example). Meanwhile, although much of the other feedback online is similarly cranky about the headphone jack's demise, Quartz notes that Apple is actually late, not early, in making this move: A handful of Chinese smartphone brands have been fiddling around with the idea for years, and some have already sent these phones, sans jacks, to market.
– Wells Fargo is guilty of gouging and profiteering and needs to return $203 million in overdraft fees to customers, a San Francisco judge ruled yesterday. The bank's practice of processing transactions from the largest to the smallest instead of in the order in which they occurred is clearly designed to maximize the number of overdrafts and "squeeze as much as possible" out of customers, the judge wrote in his sternly worded decision. The judge ordered the bank to change its "unfair and deceptive" practices, which in some cases caused customers to be charged 10 $35 overdraft fees for going just a few dollars over the limit, the AP reports. Wells Fargo says it is disappointed by the decision and plans to appeal. If the decision stands, it could be just the tip of a very costly iceberg for Wells Fargo, the San Francisco Chronicle notes. The $203M million only applies to California customers, and a similar class-action suit representing customers in other states will go to trial next year.
– President Trump laced into FBI leadership Friday, while proclaiming his loyalty and support for law enforcement in an address at the agency's training academy. "It's a shame what's happened" with the FBI, the president said as he left the White House for a speech at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia. He called the agency's handling of Hillary Clinton's email investigation "really disgraceful" and told reporters "we're going to rebuild the FBI," per the AP. Shortly afterward, Trump lavished praise on graduates of a weeks-long FBI National Academy program and their families, touting their accomplishments and pledging his unwavering support. Trump told law enforcement leaders he is "more loyal than anyone else could be" to police. Trump used the speech to promote his administration's tough-on-crime policies, delivering a stern warning to members of the international gang MS-13 that his administration will root them out and arrest them. He also celebrated his decision to make it easier for local police forces to purchase surplus military equipment, and questioned rising violence in Chicago. "What the hell is going on in Chicago? What the hell is happening there," he asked. In his comments before the speech, Trump also mentioned former national security adviser Michael Flynn. "I don't want to talk about pardons with Michael Flynn—yet," Trump said, per NPR. "We'll see what happens. Let's see."
– Donald Trump isn't the only person making recent claims of phony news stories. Vladimir Putin says an explosive dossier on Trump published by BuzzFeed last week, which included allegations Russia had compromising information on the president-elect, is an "obvious fake" and "nonsense," Russia's Interfax and TASS news agencies report, via Business Insider and the AP. Not only that, but any individuals behind the claims in the dossier are "worse than prostitutes," Putin said at a Tuesday press conference in Moscow. Speaking of prostitutes, Trump "has been with the most beautiful women in the world, so why would he need prostitutes in Moscow? Trump organized beauty contests. I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world." He further said that Russian spies "don't chase every American billionaire." Putin called Trump's win in November a "convincing victory" and added that the Obama administration is behind the "ongoing acute political struggle … whose task is to undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect." He also emphasized that he doesn't know Trump personally and so wouldn't have a motive to make moves for or against him.
– Southwest Airlines has apologized and offered to refund a woman who was told she couldn't fly without covering her "inappropriate" cleavage, the New York Daily News reports. The woman—who gives her name as Avital—says she was boarding a flight from Las Vegas to New York earlier this month when the agent said her bosom was far too visible. Wearing a cotton dress, flannel shirt, and scarf, Avital got on board anyway. "I didn't want to let the representative's Big Feelings about my breasts change the way I intended to board my flight," she told Jezebel. "And lo and behold, the plane didn't fall out of the sky... my cleavage did not interfere with the plane's ability to function properly." She also accused the airline of "slut shaming," saying the man sitting in front of her "was wearing a shirt with an actual Trojan condom embedded behind a clear plastic applique," but still boarded no problem. See a pic of Avital's outfit at Jezebel.
– Andre Johnson, the Wu-Tang Clan-affiliated rapper who severed his own penis in April before jumping off a building, has explained his actions ... sort of. "I cut it off because that was the root of all my problems," the 41-year-old rapper, who also uses the name Christ Bearer, tells E!. "My solution to the problem was the realization that sex is for mortals, and I am a god. ... Those kinds of activities got me into trouble, and I came here to be a god." He also spoke to the New York Daily News, noting that he had been reading about monks and vasectomies at the time. Oh, and probably coincidentally, he admits he was on drugs, too. "But I was in complete control," he insists, and "I didn't want to kill myself." He also notes, contrary to some media reports, that doctors couldn't re-attach the member. "But, it still gets hard, the little bit that I got. I still got some penis that works," he says. "I definitely still get extremely aroused if I see a beautiful woman." But, despite his previous remarks, he adds, "I wasn't having that much sex up to that point anyways. My days of reproducing are over. But now I'm a reborn man." As for why he jumped, "That was just my response to the demons. They were doing their best to get to me, but being alive solidified my thoughts," he says. "I'm alive, penis or no penis." He's speaking out for the first time since the incident because "the truth must be told," he says. What's next for him? "I love comedy," he says. "I'm going to do stand up along with making music."
– About six years ago, scientists discovered a huge ring around Saturn that also happened to be invisible to the naked eye. Now, they've learned that it's much bigger than they thought, and their theory on how it came to be might change some thinking about planetary rings and moons. Scientists previously estimated the ring to be about 200 times the radius of Saturn, but now they say it's 30% larger, or about 270 times the radius, they write in Nature. It stretches more than 10 million miles, which a post at Phys.org puts into perspective: "If Saturn were merely the size of a basketball, this new outer ring would extend nearly two thirds the length of a football field away from it." Or as lead author Douglas Hamilton puts it in the Los Angeles Times: “It is 10 to 20 times larger than the second-biggest ring, so this thing is absolutely gargantuan.” Researchers also found that the ring is made of up surprisingly small particles, with only about 10% of them larger than a soccer ball. They suspect the material, which is quite spread out within the ring, comes from the Saturn moon Phoebe, but it was previously believed that debris ejected at such a distance would form a moon rather than a ring. "Now it appears such theories will have to be rethought," says the Phys.org post. The ring can be detected only in infrared wavelengths. Based on all this, it's possible that Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have similar rings, reports Wired. “Maybe ring isn’t even the right word anymore," says Hamilton, "Maybe we should call them clouds. Those are much harder to detect and convince yourself that they’re real.” (Another of Saturn's moons might be able to support life.)
– The Tea Party is mad as hell and ... that's about it, writes Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. Beyond anger, the Tea Party "has no leader. It has no address, no phone, and no Washington headquarters. It is everywhere and nowhere." When a Post posse tried to track down 2,300 local tea-drinking groups, it could verify only 647. Cohen writes that "the Tea Party exists in the vapors," bound only by anger and the Internet. The latter eliminates the middleman—"in this case an actual political party, which was once called the organization because it actually organized." "Now that's done laptop to laptop so like-minded people can get together, even if they do not actually get together." This creates an "asymmetrical," impossible-to-nail-down enemy for Obama, but it's an enemy who is seeking change—which is exactly what pushed Obama into the presidency. "The Tea Party is here to stay if only because the Internet is here to stay. But its emotions and its grievances can be co-opted, engulfed, absorbed and made part of the engine of change that Obama himself once both personified and promised. As I recall, the original Tea Party was open to anyone. All you needed for admittance was anger."
– Those traveling in Bolivia can forget about a Big Mac. McDonald's has closed its eight restaurants there because of weak sales, making Bolivia the only nation in Latin America without the golden arches, reports the Hispanically Speaking News blog. The chain tried without success for 14 years to gain a foothold in the nation. The blog's take: "Fast-food represents the complete opposite of what Bolivians consider a meal should be. To be a good meal, food has to have be prepared with love, dedication, certain hygiene standards and proper cook time." Ouch. Treehugger loves the development and wished the rest of the world valued meals as much as Bolivians apparently do.
– It's been more than half a century since Francis Tully found the monster that has since defied classification. Now, scientists say they know where the prehistoric oddball that lived some 308 million years ago fits on the Tree of Life: "The Tully monster is a vertebrate," according to research published Wednesday in Nature. That's a big step for the creature Tully discovered when he was hunting for fossils in the Mazon Creek geological deposits southeast of Chicago in 1955. Previously the Tully monster, with its torpedo body, hammerhead-like eyes, and long proboscis filled with sharp teeth, had been categorized as "problematica"—"creatures that defied ready classification," the Chicago Tribune reports. Some have speculated that Tullimonstrum gregarium—which, despite its name, is only about a foot long—was related to snails, worms, or insects and crabs, reports the New York Times. "If you put in a box a worm, a mollusk, an arthropod, and a fish, and you shake," one paleontologist tells the Tribune, "then what you have at the end is a Tully monster," Some have even floated the idea that the Tully monster was a tiny version of the Loch Ness Monster, per Smithsonian. However, the researchers found that Tully is related to the lamprey, an "underwater bloodsucker," as the Times puts it. Using a synchrotron X-ray machine, researchers were able to determine that what was previously thought to be the creature's gut was actually a notochord, "the primitive backbone," study lead Victoria McCoy tells the Times. "The coolest thing is finding out that as weird as it looks it is part of a familiar group of animals." Check out a graphic of the Tully monster. (A 90 million-year-old fossil indicates T. rex got smart before it got big.)
– Student protesters chanted “Shame on you! Shame on you!” on the UCLA campus today as the University of California board of regents approved a whopping 32% tuition hike. A year at a UC school—not including room and board—will now cost $10,300, three times the price in 1999. The moves comes as the university system struggles with draconian cuts in funding from the state's strapped government. After the demonstrators learned of the decision, many told the LA Times they worried about having to drop out. “I’m on my own,” said one student. “I can’t ask my family. In this economy, no one is stable.” The state cut its funding for the 10-campus system by 20%, or $813 million, this year, notes the New York Times.
– Australian sports are besieged by performance-enhancing drugs and organized crime, according to a year-long government investigation, reports the Wall Street Journal. The report didn't name names, but it indicated illegal hormones and other performance enhancers are widespread in Australian sports, facilitated by coaches and trainers. "The findings are shocking and will disgust Australian sports fans," said Australia's Justice and Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare. "It's cheating, but it's worse than that. It's cheating with the help of criminals." The probe also found criminal networks growing increasingly involved in Australian sports, partially because of the PEDs and partially because of the growing popularity of betting, especially in rugby and Australian rules football, with at least "one occasion" of match fixing. "This is not a black day in Australian sport, this is the blackest day in Australian sport," the former head of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority told USA Today.
– Let's hope Snooki sorta planned that baby she's reportedly carrying (stop giggling). Because if she didn't, that fetus has to be nearly swimming in booze by now. While Forbes is concerned about what's to become of the diminutive reality star's "brand," others are worried about the drinking habits of the pregnant 24-year-old, who seems to spend very few minutes sober on Jersey Shore. "Is there a test for fetal alcohol syndrome at three months in utero?" wonders crabbygolightly.com. "Quick, word association test," demands studybreaks.com, "because all that comes to mind" for the pregnant "diva of debauchery" is "fetal alcohol syndrome"—a leading cause of mental retardation. The reported pregnancy poses problems for Snooki and JWoww's spin-off, and for Jersey Shore, where the cast spends "approximately 97.2% of their time being absolutely trashed," notes studybreaks. Snooki has some qualms about her hard-partying ways, once telling Ellen DeGeneres: "I want to remember my night, and sometimes I just don't. It sucks. You're like, 'What did I do? Why did I wake up in a garbage can?'"
– Since July, Hillary Clinton's team has been fighting findings by the intelligence community's inspector general that she housed classified information on her private email server. But a special intelligence review by the CIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency just bolstered the original proclamation, finding that two emails she received in 2009 and 2011 via that server were considered "Top Secret," including an email about North Korea's nukes, the New York Times reports, citing senior intelligence officials speaking anonymously. Clinton's campaign is doubling down, however, with a rep accusing the discovery process of being tainted by "bureaucratic infighting" and a State Department spokesman proclaiming that "classification is rarely a black and white question. … At this time, any conclusion about the classification of the documents in question would be premature." The "Top Secret" designation, signed off on by President Obama in a 2009 executive order, is bestowed on info that, if revealed, "could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to … national security." But Clinton herself backed up her rep's assessment, telling the AP yesterday in Iowa that "there is always a debate among different agencies about [whether] something should be retroactively [marked classified]." When asked why she isn't offering up any direct apologies, she added, "What I did was allowed. It was allowed by the State Department. The State Department has confirmed that. I did not send or receive any information marked classified. I take the responsibilities of handling classified materials very seriously and did so." (Clinton did recently apologize for this matter being "confusing to people.")
– Philippides, who? Pete Kostelnick has just made the Greek legend's marathon race look like a quaint sprint. Keeping an average pace of 73 miles per day, the Nebraska ultrarunner, 29, landed at New York City Hall on Monday having raced 3,100 miles from San Francisco in just 42 days, six hours, and 34 minutes, reports the New York Post. He smashed the previous record time for the trek, set by Frank Giannino in 1980, by four days, though Guinness World Records has yet to confirm the time. Kostelnick, who started running several years ago to lose weight, fell twice, per ESPN, but the only real casualties were the eight pairs of shoes he burned through running 15 hours per day, starting at 3:30am, with two 15-minute breaks. A financial planner and two-time winner of the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon, per Competitor, Kostelnick drew comparisons to Forrest Gump, not only because of his Bubba Gump hat. Like the fictional character, he was joined by fans—"awesome people ... [who] drove 10 hours to run with me for 5 miles," he says. When he reached Manhattan on Monday to chants of "run, Pete, run," a crowd of 25 was running with him, including men in business suits. "As with [Tom] Hanks' character, when Kostelnick stopped for a minute, such as to retrieve a dropped water bottle, the crowd stopped. When he moved, they all did," per the Post. "Well, I'm definitely not going to run back," Kostelnick said at the finish line. "All I want is a beer and my wife." (A runner just set an Appalachian Trail record.)
– Neuroscientists working with rats have pulled off a feat raising hopes that paralyzed people might someday be able to regain control of their bladders and ditch the catheter. The scientists grafted nerves from elsewhere in the rats' bodies to their severed spinal cords, and the rats eventually were able to pee again almost as well as healthy rats, reports Science News. The rats were not able to walk again, and while they didn't regain full control of their bladders, the study is still "an astonishing breakthrough for the field," writes Liat Clark at Wired. Any similar research on humans is still years away because the results must first be replicated on animals bigger than rats, reports the BBC. Previous attempts to regenerate nerves on damaged spinal cords were stymied by scar tissue at the site of the original injury. The scientists were able to overcome that by using an enzyme to break down the scar tissue, in tandem with a growth factor that helped the transplanted nerves grow. "This is one of the most important steps that I have seen in recent years,” says an Oslo neuroscientist not involved with the study.
– How convinced may Robert Monroe have been that his vote in the 2012 presidential election mattered? So much so that the Wisconsin man allegedly cast an in-person absentee ballot in Shorewood on Nov. 1 then rented a car and drove some 250 miles to Lebanon, Ind., five days later, using his driver's license from that state (he owns a home there) to do so. And that's not all: When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker faced a recall vote, Monroe voted five times, per a criminal complaint filed Friday. The 50-year-old has been charged with voter fraud after allegedly voting multiple times in a series of elections, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. He also allegedly voted multiple times in contests in April and August 2011 and illegally voted in a 2012 primary. In order to reach their conclusions, investigators tested DNA on absentee ballot envelopes, finding Monroe's DNA on envelopes that appeared to be from others; the complaint says he cast votes under his son's name and that of his girlfriend's son. Each of his 13 felony charges carries up to 18 months in prison. Monroe has claimed that he has no memory of the elections, and that his Attention Deficit and Obsessive Compulsive medications weaken his mental sharpness, WISN reports. No word on who he voted for, though he donated to a Republican state senator ... and allegedly voted twice in her recall election.
– The TSA is loosening up a bit on what passengers can carry with them onto planes. Starting April 25, it will once again be OK to bring small pocketknives (with blades no more than 2.36 inches long and a half-inch wide), along with some kinds of sports equipment—including golf clubs, hockey and lacrosse sticks, pool cues, and plastic wiffle bats, reports Bloomberg. The federal agency says those are among the items commonly confiscated that are no longer perceived to be a security threat. It wants to focus instead on items that can cause "catastrophic damage." The rationale isn't sitting well with flight attendants, reports the Los Angeles Times. "While we agree that a passenger wielding a small knife or swinging a golf club or hockey stick poses less of a threat to the pilot locked in the cockpit, these are real threats to passengers and flight attendants in the passenger cabin," says one union leader. The only thing this change does is make things easier for TSA screeners, she adds.
– The mayor of Florence says some tourists have no "decorum" these days—something he hopes to fix with a water hose. Mayor Dario Nardella says a small number of the Italian city's 12 million annual tourists—particularly day-trippers from cruise ships—have taken to "camping out" on church steps at lunchtime. They "sit down on church steps, eat their food, and leave rubbish strewn on them," with no respect for "our cultural heritage," Nardella tells the Guardian. He says city officials thought about handing out fines to such tourists, but they decided instead to get creative. The plan: Use water hoses to soak church steps. That way, if tourists sit down, "they'll get wet," Nardella said in announcing the strategy Wednesday. Shortly after the announcement, the steps of both the Basilica of Santa Croce and the Chiesa di Santo Spirito were doused. In the future, this will be a daily occurrence, reports the Telegraph. "Instead of imposing fines, we thought this measure was more elegant," Nardella tells the Guardian, adding other areas might eventually get a wash as well. While some social media users joked that a free shower might be nice in the heat of summer, others have accused city officials of being "elitist" in targeting tourists who choose not to eat in Florence's restaurants, per the Local. Nardella counters that the city has plenty of outdoor seating for tourists. Churches, however, are no place for a picnic, he says. (Barcelona has an issue with its tourists, too.)
– Syria's civil war raged on today, without the slightest pause of acknowledgement for yesterday's rare Bashar al-Assad speech. It was billed as the unveiling of a "peace plan," but Assad offered essentially no concessions and spent much of the speech justifying his bloody crackdown. And there may be repercussions: In it, he dismissed the work of UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, saying, "Everyone who comes to Syria knows that Syria accepts advice, but not orders," and the New York Times predicts such remarks might cause Brahimi to wash his hands of the conflict. That would present the US and other "Friends of Syria" with a quandary: Get more involved, or potentially watch the conflict continue indefinitely. And though celebratory gunfire rang out afterward, even some loyalists were unimpressed. "It sounded more like gloating than making promises," one Assad supporter tells Reuters. "Everything he suggests now, it is too late. The rebels aren't going to stop." Indeed, hours after the speech, fresh clashes broke out along the road to Damascus' international airport, and regime artillery reportedly hit a district just three miles from where Assad spoke. One Assad critic in a hard-hit district agreed that the speech meant little. "Here, no one cares about this speech. They care about food and electricity."
– A controversial bill in Kansas that gives individuals and businesses the right to refuse service to gay people on religious liberty grounds looks to be doomed, reports the Kansas City Star. The measure—read it in full here—passed the Republican-controlled House and immediately triggered howls of protest from around the nation. In the Daily Beast, for example, Jamelle Bouie writes that it's not a stretch to liken it to Jim Crow laws. "Like its Southern predecessors, this proposal is meant to isolate and stigmatize a despised minority, under of the guise of some higher priority ('religious liberty')." But the measure doesn't appear to have a chance in the state Senate. Its Republican president, Susan Wagle, said that while her members "support laws that define traditional marriage," they "don't condone discrimination." What's more, the state's business community also sided with opponents, reports the Topeka Capital-Journal, which says the legislation will have to be "substantially reworked." (In Virginia, meanwhile, a judge struck down the state's ban on gay marriages.)
– A UK hospital made an "appalling" error right before a 68-year-old died there, says his daughter, and now she and her family are suing the hospital for it. William Hannah passed away in September 2017 at Salford Royal Hospital while being treated after a car accident that had left him with several broken bones and serious head injuries, the BBC reports. Hannah also developed a lung infection, and it was while trying to ease his breathing that hospital staff made the mistake that has spurred the Hannah family's complaint. Per a release from their lawyers, a doctor went to flush out one of Hannah's lungs with saline solution, but an assistant accidentally passed him a bottle of cleaning detergent instead, which the doctor then "unknowingly" used to rinse Hannah's lung, People reports. The doctor realized the mistake afterward and tried to get as much of the detergent out of Hannah's lung as he could, but Hannah's lawyers say the grandfather's condition deteriorated and he died the next day. In a statement to People, the hospital's medical director acknowledges that Hannah "did not receive the high standard of care we always pride ourselves on." The BBC cites an internal hospital report that found what happened to Hannah was due to various factors, including poor communication and staff training, a container without a label, an equipment cart that wasn't adequately stocked, and "distraction by other life critical tasks." An inquiry into the exact cause of Hannah's death will take place in early 2019. (Glenn Frey's widow says Mount Sinai caused his death.)
– "We're surrounded by balloons, and there's not a party in sight," says a resident of Ellis Avenue in Irvington, NJ, to the New York Times. The memorial balloons he's referring to are for victims of the ongoing violence in his neighborhood—including 15-month-old Sania Cunningham, who died Saturday when a stray bullet from outside pierced the wall of her apartment while she was bouncing on a bed with her parents, CBS New York reports. Police are now seeking out a group of men (some reports say three were involved, others say five) who allegedly infiltrated the community in "black hooded sweatshirts" and went on a shooting spree that hit at least two houses and a car. Residents tell the Star-Ledger that there was a "chaotic shootout," with the suspects "hiding behind cars, shooting back and forth," according to one witness. A woman whose Lexus ended up with a bullet hole in the trunk says the violence is nothing new in the neighborhood, adding, "It’s like the OK Corral around here." Essex County authorities are offering a $10,000 reward for info leading to an arrest for Sania's death, while Irvington Mayor Tony Vauss stresses that the township has a recent $1 million influx to put toward hiring additional police officers, notes the Times. In the meantime, neighbors of the Cunninghams—who had just moved in two days before the shooting—remain disturbed about the incident that took place in the middle of the day. "This is sickening—if you can't actually be safe in your home, where [can you] actually be safe at?" one resident says to CBS New York. (A Philly woman and her unborn child were killed by a stray bullet last month.)
– Iranian hackers who targeted American financial institutions two years ago were also apparently curious about a small dam in upstate New York—and officials are worried what this means for the security of US industrial infrastructure overall, the Wall Street Journal reports. The hackers reportedly infiltrated the controls for the facility—IDed by Journal sources as the Bowman Avenue Dam near Rye—in 2013 through a cellular modem, per an unclassified Homeland Security document. And while the interlopers didn't wrest control of the dam, it appears they poked around quite a bit—underscoring how easy it is to break into the more than 57,000 systems for US power grids, pipelines, bridges, and dams, many of which are antiquated and virtually unprotected, the Journal notes. In fact, per a separate AP investigation, "sophisticated foreign hackers" have accessed about a dozen power networks here, attacks that the AP says the US public is rarely informed about. US infrastructure is often run by creaky systems that were previously offline, which kept them relatively safe. But, "against the advice of hacking gurus," as the Journal notes, many companies started connecting their systems to the Internet without adequately securing them. And the number of such hacks has been creeping up since. Per Homeland Security data, over the 12 months ending Sept. 30, it took in and responded to 295 incidents, up from 245 the year before, per the Journal. Possible consequences: hackers causing a flood, explosion, or even bumper-to-bumper traffic, either by accident or intentionally. A Homeland Security official recently told energy execs at a conference that even ISIS "is beginning to perpetrate cyberattacks," per the Hill. In the Bowman Dam incident, the White House was informed because officials initially thought the hack was against Oregon's larger Arthur R. Bowman Dam, per the Journal. (The AP investigation chillingly reveals how hot a target the US power grid has been.)
– The most recent Planet of the Apes trilogy started with a bang. It's going out the same way. Critics are raving about War for the Planet of the Apes, directed and co-written by Matt Reeves; it currently has an impressive 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what they're saying: It's a "consistently intelligent, morally thoughtful and often beautiful picture" with a "coherent and credible" story that's just as impressive as the action, writes Charles Taylor at Newsweek. He adds the "special effects are used to support the story rather than supplant it." One downside: each scene featuring Woody Harrelson's colonel "feels strained, not least because this usually terrific actor has been saddled with one of the film's few caricatures." But Brian Lowry says Harrelson "is at his wild-eyed best" in what he calls "the summer's best sequel," and "a stirring, soulful conclusion to a trilogy that has brilliantly evolved from its original source." This is "one of those rare instances of a movie billed as a 'climactic chapter' that actually possesses the feeling and majesty of one," he writes at CNN, also commending Andy Serkis' intense portrayal of the ape Caesar. Serkis is not only "brilliant" but his appearance is "so lifelike that you forget you're looking at a visual-effects triumph," writes Chris Klimek at NPR. The film itself, wrapping up a "shockingly good series of prequels," is "suspenseful, mournful, grand," with "gravitas and commitment" that give it "a place of pride in our current apocalyptic renaissance," Klimek adds. Sara Stewart feels "the imagery and the nonstop horror are a little too heavy-handed." But the flick still shines with "an epic and heartbreaking second half that broadly references the Holocaust, internment camps, refugees and even the Bible," she writes at the New York Post. "Apologies to Charlton Heston loyalists, but War for the Planet of the Apes is a good example of how today's movies sometimes beat the hell out of the oldies," she adds. "It seems wrong to even group them in the same franchise."
– Some Apple users are sick of the company's new iOS 7 operating system. Literally. The new zoom and slide animations, and the 'floating" icons on the home screen, are causing motion sickness in many people with vestibular disorders—conditions that affect balance and vision, the Guardian reports. "I now have to close my eyes or cover the screen during transitions, which is ridiculous," says one app developer, who reports headaches and other symptoms associed with motion sickness. "Tap an app and it's like flying through the icon and landing in that app's micro world—and I'm getting dizzy on the journey there." Other symptoms from exposure to this kind of animation can include "intense nausea, dizziness and vertigo," says a spokesperson for the Vestibular Disorders Association. One developer affected by motion sickness has already built an app to disable the offending features, reports Stuff. But others say Apple itself needs to step up. Tech writer Kirk McElhearn says Apple was once "at the forefront of providing accessibility options," but now needs to demonstrate more sensitivity to users like him. "Their apparent disregard is disturbing, and shows a trend toward paying lip service to accessibility, but not thinking it through," he writes on his blog Kirkville.
– Former teen tennis star Jennifer Capriati is recovering from an apparent drug overdose after paramedics rushed her to a local hospital from a Florida hotel room, reports TMZ. Her dad said she's doing well. Capriati, 34, earned $1 million in winnings at the age of 16, and won 3 Grand Slams and a gold medal in the 1992 Olympics. She took a break from competition the following year, and was later busted for marijuana possession and shoplifting, and spent at least two stints in drug rehab. She won the Australian and French Opens in 2002, but hasn't competed since 2003.
– American diplomats treated after a series of unexplained incidents in Havana had health problems including mild traumatic brain injury and central nervous system damage, according to medical records seen by CBS News. The diplomats, some of whom ended up having to leave Cuba, were treated by an American doctor after complaining of symptoms including hearing loss, headaches, and loss of balance. Sources say the diplomats, who lived in homes provided by the Cuban government, began experiencing symptoms in the fall of 2016 after their residences were targeted with what American officials believe was some kind of advanced sonic weapon. Officials say at least 10 diplomats and embassy employees were affected. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Wednesday that the "unprecedented" incidents "caused a variety of physical symptoms." She said some diplomats were treated in Miami and others were treated by American medical personnel who traveled to Cuba. "What has happened there is of great concern to the US government," she said. "Let me just reassure you that this is a matter that we take very seriously." Officials tell ABC News that the FBI and the State Department are investigating in Cuba. Cuban authorities are assisting the investigation, the officials say. (At least one Canadian diplomat was also targeted.)
– Cruz Riojas came from a troubled home: He was reportedly beaten by his stepfather, lived in a decrepit one-room lean-to with six other family members, and wore the same clothes to school every day, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. He also caused trouble in school and was known as a “holy terror,” says Linda Hooper, a teacher who first encountered Cruz in the early ‘80s, when he was 12 years old. But then an amazing thing happened: He started spending more time with Hooper, who would give him tasks to do around the classroom. He eventually began coming for visits at her home, where she lived with her husband and four daughters, often running the nearly eight miles between their two houses to get away from his stepfather. After an incident with his stepfather in 1983, Cruz’s mother asked if he could stay with the Hoopers for a few days till everything blew over. "He never left" after that, Hooper says. "I had him from then on." He became a part of the Hooper family, taking on a paper route to make money and doing better in school, placing out of special education classes by the time he graduated. More than a decade later, he was still part of the Hooper family—but he wanted to make it official by asking the Hoopers to adopt him right before his 30th birthday. “He said he wanted to honor us, and it was a big honor," Hooper tells Today. "I’ve always known he loved me, but this really showed he loved us.” The adoption went through in 1998, but Cruz "was my son from the day I kept him,” Hooper says. The family is just now telling their story for the first time. (Click for the full article, or read the story of a police officer who found a baby alive at a murder scene—and adopted her 30 years later.)
– The latest celebrity in trouble with the IRS: Melissa Gilbert. The agency says the former Little House on the Prairie star owes $360,551 in federal income taxes. "Like so many people across the nation, the recession hit me hard," the 51-year-old actress tells the Detroit News. "That, plus a divorce and a dearth of acting opportunities the last few years, created a perfect storm of financial difficulty for me." Her current husband, Timothy Busfield, adds—in a quote that will remind you celebrities are not exactly just like us—that the debt is "not a big deal" and is simply "a product of what happened with the economy"; it dates to the 2011-2013 period. Gilbert says an installment payment plan is in place. California, where the current Michigan resident previously lived, has also filed $112,527 worth of tax liens against Gilbert in recent years. (She's not alone; check out more stars with tax troubles.)
– The man accused of murdering nine people in a church in South Carolina got busted because of a woman who was leaving church in North Carolina. As ABC News explains, Debbie Dills was leaving church this morning when she noticed that the driver in the car next to her matched the description of the shooting suspect in Charleston. His bowl haircut was one giveaway. She called 911, and cops soon pulled over Dylann Roof in Shelby, NC. He had made it about 250 miles from the scene of the crime. Roof, 21, has waived extradition and was being returned to South Carolina. A friend tells AP that Roof, who wore a jacket that bore the flags of the former racist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia, had been spouting racist talk lately. "He said blacks were taking over the world," recalls Joseph Meek. "Someone needed to do something about it for the white race." Meek says he was with Roof yesterday morning, but Roof opted not to go to a local lake with friends and said he would go to a movie instead. The next time Meek saw him was on surveillance photos released by police. "I didn't think it was him. I knew it was him," says Meek, who called police.
– America's close-knit team of Antarctic researchers is mourning a colleague who died in one of the continent's most dangerous areas. Climate scientist Gordon Hamilton, a 50-year-old Scotsman, died Saturday when his snowmobile plunged into a crevasse in an area known as the "Shear Zone," 25 miles south of the McMurdo research station, according to the National Science Foundation, which describes the area as a "three-mile wide and more than 125-mile long swath of intensely crevassed ice" where two ice shelves meet. Hamilton and his colleagues spent years trying to map the region, using robots and ground-penetrating radar, the Washington Post reports. Hamilton fell 100 feet into the ice after hitting a crevasse that may have been covered in snow and hard to spot. When he wasn't carrying out research in frozen parts of the world, Hamilton was a research professor at the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, specializing in glaciology. His work, which focused on the contribution of ice sheet shifts to sea level rise, "was second to none," university president Susan Hunter said Sunday in a statement, per the New York Times. Hamilton's body was recovered and will be returned to his wife and two children in Maine. Kelly Falkner, director of polar programs for the NSF, called the death a "tragic reminder of the risks we all face" in field research. (A worker at the South Pole needed to be rescued a few months ago.)
– A Florida police union is calling for a national boycott of Arby's after one of the restaurant's employees allegedly refused to serve an officer this week, CBS Miami reports. According to Local 10 News, 19-year-old Kenneth Davenport failed to serve Sgt. Jennifer Martin, who was in uniform and driving a patrol car according to USA Today, after she ordered in the drive-thru. Davenport's manager allegedly told Martin that Davenport didn't want to serve her because she was an officer and laughed while telling her Davenport had the right to not serve her, but then gave her the food himself. She was ultimately given a refund, though, after deciding she didn't want to eat the food. “I am offended and appalled that an individual within our community would treat a police officer in such a manner," the Pembroke Pines chief of police tells CBS. "It is unacceptable." In response to the alleged slight, officers' wives protested outside the restaurant today, and the Dade County Police Benevolent Association called for a boycott of Arby's until the employee or employees responsible are fired, Local 10 reports. "This is yet another example of the hostile treatment of our brave men and women simply because they wear a badge," according to a statement from the union president, who tells Local 10 he blames Obama for the lack of respect shown officers. Arby's executives have apologized to the chief of police.
– Author and newspaper columnist Jeffrey Zaslow is dead at age 53 after a car accident in Michigan today, reports the Detroit Free Press and Wall Street Journal. Zaslow is perhaps best known for his book Last Lecture, about the final lecture of the late Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, but he first gained fame in the late 1980s as a writer for the Journal. He wrote a first-person article about the Chicago Sun-Times' search for a replacement for Ann Landers—and ended up getting the job himself over 12,000 applicants. He wrote the advice column until 2001. Zaslow, who had returned to the Journal as a columnist, also co-authored the recent biography of Gabrielle Giffords (Gabby) and wrote a bio of Hudson River hero Sully Sullenberger (Highest Duty). The Free Press recounts Zaslow talking about Pausch's advice to him to hug his three daughters. “What a gift it is to be able to do that. And that’s sort of the story I’m telling in this book,” Zaslow said of his latest, The Magic Room. "We’ve got to hug our kids and make the most of each moment, because you never know.”
– Peter Fedden was picked up by police the night of July 30, 2013, after drunkenly plowing his car through a fence, across a couple of lawns, and into the side of a house in Commack, NY. It's at this point that Fedden's mom, Kathi Fedden, thinks police should have arrested her 29-year-old son for DWI, according to a $30 million wrongful-death lawsuit she filed Monday against the police, Newsday reports. But instead, cops dropped a "severely intoxicated" Peter off at home, where he got right into his mother's car sitting in the driveway and crashed it minutes later into the side of an industrial park building. He died from injuries sustained in the second crash. Kathi Fedden says the police let Peter off the hook the first time because of his rapport with them at the deli he owned in Commack. "Peter served many Suffolk County police officers at his deli, and it was known throughout the local officers that Peter charged only $1 for officers to eat at the deli no matter what they ordered," the suit says. Because of this relationship, Kathi Fedden claims, the police "conspired to avoid charging Peter with any crimes" and "carelessly disregarded Peter's safety ... and actually created the events leading to Peter's wrongful death." Also named in the suit: Ruby Tuesday, which reportedly served Peter two drinks—10 ounces of Jack Daniel's whiskey over soda and ice—the night he died, Newsday notes. While sympathetic to the Fedden family, the owner of the building Peter crashed into tells NBC New York, "He put the community in harm's way. He decided to take the law into his own hands by getting into a second car that evening." (One drunk driver made an impact with this powerful confession.)
– Ken Mehlman sent pundits chattering when he came out of the closet to support gay marriage yesterday. Here's what they're saying: “Honestly, I thought the guy came out years ago,” writes Hot Air blogger “Allahpundit,” recalling Bill Maher’s outing of him on Larry King in 2006 (see video). Still, “this is a bracing reminder that an openly gay RNC chief probably would still be a problem.” William Saletan of Slate thinks it’s great that Republican bigwigs have an extra gay friend. “Homosexuality is becoming normalized,” he writes. “In fact, it's becoming Republicanized.” Mehlman’s pitch for gay marriage is downright socially conservative, arguing that it is an institution that promotes and solidifies monogamous commitment. “My sense is that it’ll be a lot less of a big deal to conservatives than it might be to liberals …for whom the political is also the personal,” writes Peter Wehner in Commentary, adding that he knows and likes Mehlman. “I hope some measure of grace and understanding are accorded to him.” But Evan Hurst of Wonkette isn't ready to forgive Mehlman for his anti-gay campaign tactics, especially because he’s still giving money to anti-gay candidates. “He should probably be punched on live television by Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.”
– Afghanistan has roiled with violence for the past week over the Koran burnings at Bagram, leading to questions of whether the American exit strategy will actually work as planned. The US, Britain, Germany, and France temporarily removed hundreds of advisers from Afghanistan over the weekend in the wake of several retaliatory attacks—four US troops have been killed by Afghan comrades since the protests began—and some fear that Afghan security forces will not be able to protect the few Western advisers who will remain in Afghanistan after the withdrawal is complete. One adviser says he expects that upon their reinstatement, shifts will have to be shortened for the advisers' protection. Recent months have seen a number of incidents involving Afghan security forces turning on NATO personnel—and only some out of those incidents arose out of loyalty to the Taliban, the Washington Post notes. Most involved Afghan troops who felt insulted in some fashion, such as after the Koran burning came to light, and military experts think there could be an even higher risk of such attacks after the military withdrawal. A former US Army Ranger tells the Wall Street Journal that Americans are wary of sending advisers "to a country where those trainers and advisers are liable to be targeted by the very people they are training and advising."
– A federal advisory panel has delivered its assessment on climate change, and it's not pretty. Expect hotter temperatures and more "extreme weather events" across the US in coming decades, says the panel of 240 scientists and other experts, reports the Hill. “These changes are part of the pattern of global climate change, which is primarily driven by human activity,” says the draft report of the National Climate Assessment. (Read it in full here.) Some other highlights: It's a problem now: "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," says the report. "Americans are noticing changes all around them. Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer." Severe weather: “Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense, including heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts. Sea level is rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and arctic sea ice are melting." How much hotter? Most of the US will be 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit hotter over the coming decades, says the report. Under current emissions, temperatures could rise a staggering 5 to 10 degrees by 2100. The report does not make recommendations on how to fix things, notes the LA Times, but environmentalists and their legislative backers hope the forecast will prompt the White House to move. "The findings in the report are a three-alarm fire," says Democratic congressman Henry Waxman. The last assessment came out in 2009, and "evidence for a changing climate has strengthened considerably" since then, say the authors, reports NPR.
– Closer American ties with one of the world's major cigar exporters could actually be good news in the fight against lung cancer. Cuba has developed Cimavax, an effective lung cancer vaccine, and American researchers can now finally get their hands on it, reports Wired. After New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited Cuba for a trade mission last month, the Buffalo-based Roswell Park Cancer Institute struck a deal with Havana's Center of Molecular Immunology to develop a vaccine, allowing clinical trials involving Cimavax to begin in the US, Bloomberg reports. Cimavax, which stops tumors from growing, was 25 years in the making and has been available for free to Cuban patients since 2011, Wired reports. So how did such a small and poor country create a world-leading therapeutic vaccine? Roswell Park CEO Candace Johnson, who hopes to start clinical trials in the US within a year, tells Wired that the country's biotech industry has thrived despite—and perhaps even because of—the US embargo. "They've had to do more with less, so they've had to be even more innovative with how they approach things," she says. "For over 40 years, they have had a preeminent immunology community." Experts say they're excited not just by the potential of Cimavax, but by other novel Cuban cancer treatments that could now be available to US researchers. (The US has approved the first ferry service to Cuba in 50 years.)
– What's a newly divorced Russian strongman to do when most of the world wants to throttle him and he's getting no respect from his own supporters? Play a little hockey, that's what. And pretty badly, reports the Week in a look at Vladimir Putin's foray onto the ice yesterday at something called the "All-Russia Festival of Amateur Teams of the Night Hockey League" in Sochi. Even with a less-than-motivated opposition goalie and near-assists from NHL players, Putin choked several times. Yet somehow, reports the Daily Mail via the Voice of Russia, Putin managed to score six times and had five assists. Despite his, er, heroics, Putin's team eventually lost, but no hard feelings, says the president: "There are no winners or losers here. This is a friendly game." Click for the Week's GIF of Putin attempting to put his helmet on—backward.
– Snapchat found itself with a marketing sensation on its hands late last year when it began selling funky-looking sunglasses called Spectacles. The trick is they allow users to record quick videos and photos and send them directly to their Snapchat accounts, but the catch was they were available only through vending machines that would turn up in random locales or through a now-shuttered pop-up store in Manhattan, notes New York. Now, however, parent company Snap is selling them online at Spectacles.com for $129. Just how crazy did demand get? CNBC notes that the glasses were selling for up to $5,000 on secondary markets, adding that its own reporters stood in line for 18 hours to get them. (There's a limit of six per household for the new online purchases.) Snap has said the glasses haven't been big money-makers, but TechCrunch thinks the new move is designed to show prospective IPO investors that they could be. The vending machines will go on hiatus for awhile, but they're expected to resurface eventually.
– Facebook plans to join forces with Spotify, MOG, and Rdio to launch its long-rumored music service later this month, sources tell Mashable. Facebook won’t unveil the project until the Sept. 22 f8 developer conference, but it’s been a poorly kept secret—evidence of it was found hidden in the code for Facebook’s video chat. Unlike Apple, Google, and Amazon, Facebook won’t actually host any music, one source said—it’ll just be a platform for the aforementioned partners. While Mashable reports it's not clear if other music purveyors will be included at launch, one source noted that Facebook doesn’t like to play favorites, and will likely open the music platform to third parties, much as it does with applications and games. To wit, Reuters adds that Rhapsody and Slacker are also involved. Another rumor: that the platform could one day be expanded to stream video as well. Facebook, however, wouldn’t confirm the report, saying, “There’s nothing new to announce.”
– Russian hackers' apparent infiltration of the White House computer network in October wasn't exactly confidence-inspiring, even though it was the unclassified portion of the system that was breached. Now US officials say some of the unclassified information that made its way onto hackers' screens was related to President Obama's itineraries—not classified knowledge, but not exactly public knowledge, notes CNN. The Hill points out that although the press has access to "a general outline" of Obama's daily routine, there are still phone calls and meetings that aren't made public, and that foreign spies would apparently love to know about. Obama's exact location at any given point during the day is also often kept on the down-low, and certain parts of the White House are off-limits to the press, the Hill adds. Besides the White House scheduling and press offices, others who use the hacked system include the general counsel's office and the budget and legislative liaison offices, ABC News reports. The hackers are believed to have accessed the White House network by first hacking State Department files, according to investigators, which leads to the fear that hackers have gotten back into the State Department system. One official tells CNN that the hackers have "owned" the network "for months." "There's always vulnerability," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes noted at a press conference, per CBS News. "The fact is that's why we have a classified system because there's less risk in the classified system, and that is secure." (The FBI is going after one Russian hacker in particular.)
– A cool, spaceship-like catamaran dropped anchor in Monaco yesterday after completing the first-ever round-the-world trip by a solar-powered vessel, the LA Times reports. The MS Turanor PlanetSolar left Monaco in September of 2010 with the goal of showing "that we have the technologies as well as the knowledge to become sustainable and safeguard our blue planet," said Raphael Domjan, a Swiss engineer who dreamed up the project. Now, he might just rent it out as the world's biggest solar-powered battery. Other uses are being discussed: "We are considering renting out the boat for scientific or commercial uses or even selling it," says Immo Stroeher, Domjan's partner on the project. "We are open for ideas and in talks with interested parties," who might use the vessel "as a 'green' luxury yacht." No plans are brewing to mass-produce the PlanetSolar—it cost $12.5 million—but the project jibes with current thinking in the shipping industry, which is looking for ways to cut back on high fuel costs, notes the New York Times.
– "No president has ever visited the homelands and holy sites of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths all on one trip," says National Security Adviser HR McMaster—and President Trump's critics say there are probably good reasons why. Trump departs Friday for an ambitious first foreign trip as president that will include Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican, a NATO meeting in Belgium, and the G7 summit in Sicily. A roundup of coverage: Trump's first stop on the nine-day trip will be Saudi Arabia, where he is expected to address the leaders of 50 Muslim countries, CNN reports. McMaster says Trump's goal is "to unite peoples of all faiths around a common vision of peace, progress, and prosperity," and his speech in Riyadh will focus on the need to "confront radical ideology" and allow a "peaceful vision of Islam" to dominate. Trump's second stop will be Israel, where his plans include visits to the Western Wall and the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Newsweek reports that the president had to call off a planned speech at the ancient hilltop site of Masada after Israel declined to allow a helicopter landing. A source tell the Jerusalem Post that Trump will not propose a peace plan at this point, though he may state his opposition to Israeli settlement expansion. The president's European stops will include meetings with Pope Francis and dozens of other leaders and heads of state, Time reports in a detailed look at his itinerary. Among them will be new French President Emmanuel Macron, who will meet Trump for a working lunch May 25. Sources tell the New York Times that Trump has complained to friends that he doesn't really want to go on the trip. His critics, fearing the possibility of monumental gaffes, would also like him to stay home. Stephen J. Hadley, George W. Bush's national security adviser, however, says such trips are tightly controlled and Trump will probably be at ease on the world stage. "Remember, Trump is a nothing if not a showman," Hadley says. “He’s been very public for decades and very conscious about how he comes across in the media." Heritage Foundation foreign policy expert James Carofano tells the Washington Post that the trip abroad will be an opportunity for Trump to have a fresh start after his troubles in DC. "The great thing about a trip, they control the environment, you control the interaction, you control the agenda and you control the press access," he says. "If you fumble on one of these trips, it’s nobody’s fault but your own." Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, disagrees. He tells the AP no other president has made a first foreign trip amid so much controversy. "He's already a president viewed skeptically by much of the world. And while the pictures from the trip may be great, the White House can't change the headlines that will follow him wherever he goes," he says. Melania Trump will be accompanying her husband on the trip, and her itinerary includes G7 and NATO spousal programs as well as speaking to American military families in Italy, Politico reports. "This will not just be an opportunity to support my husband as he works on important matters of national security and foreign relations, it will also be my honor to visit and speak with women and children from different countries," she said in a statement Thursday. (Trump is rumored to be planning to appoint Callista Gingrich as the US ambassador to the Vatican.)
– Jeb Bush has not yet announced his presidential candidacy, but some critics contend that his campaign is already struggling—and in a front-page piece, the Washington Post delves into why that might be. One of the first blunders may have been allowing his political consultant, Mike Murphy, to hold senior staff meetings in a hotel inside the Dallas/Fort Worth airport—odd for an almost-campaign that's technically based in Florida. The awkwardness that created is just one example of the splintered nature of the upcoming campaign: There have been conflicts, for instance, between longstanding staffers and newer ones, and disagreements over dividing funding between Bush’s super PAC and the campaign itself. “These things are always tug of wars,” Bush ally Thomas D. Rath says. “It’s almost like the first day of school, everyone trying to get to the right place and find the right seats.” The first day of school may have been more like musical chairs, as Republican Party strategist Danny Diaz was named campaign manager earlier this week over the more expected choice—David Kochel. The selection of Diaz just a week before Bush declares his candidacy Monday is evidence that his team is still working out serious kinks, write Ed O'Keefe and Robert Costa; their piece traces Bush's other apparent problems, including shortfalls in both fundraising and the polls, and of course, that Iraq blunder. "In interviews this week, dozens of Bush backers and informed Republicans ... described an overly optimistic, even haughty exploratory operation," they write. "Strategic errors were exacerbated by unexpected stumbles by the would-be candidate and internal strife within his team." As for Bush, he appears unconcerned. “It’s June, for crying out loud, so we’ve got a long way to go,” Bush said of the staffing swap at a news conference yesterday, per the New York Times. “I just urge everybody to be a little more patient about this.”
– Yesterday's terror raids in Belgium stopped, at the last minute, a terrorist plan to kill police officers in the street, officials say. Two suspected terrorists were shot dead in the series of raids, and another 15 were arrested in Belgium and France, the Guardian reports. Authorities were working to take down what they say was an active terror cell rooted in the two countries; the two gunmen killed in Verviers—and a third one who was wounded and among those detained—are believed to have been part of a "homegrown cell of jihadists" just recently back in Europe from Syria. Police found ammo, weapons including explosives, police uniforms, communication devices, and cash; they say the terrorists' plan also targeted buildings in Belgium, and several Jewish schools have been closed after warnings they could be targets. More: The Gare de l’Est train station in Paris was also evacuated after a bomb scare today, and Europe is on high alert for potential attacks. Officials say there is no link between the Belgium raids and last week's Paris terror attacks, but one notes that "a second potential Paris has been averted" with these raids. (Another 10 suspected terrorists allegedly linked to the Charlie Hebdo attacks were arrested in Paris today.) A Western intelligence source tells CNN that as many as 180 people in as many as 20 sleeper cells are primed to attack France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. And European security services have gotten tips that ISIS may be telling Europeans who have joined up in Syria and Iraq to launch attacks on their home soil; security agencies are investigating people recently returned from those countries. Separately, Germany arrested three men suspected of being involved with ISIS, but none appear to have been planning attacks.
– Hundreds of people are missing, more than 6,000 have been left homeless, and an unknown number are thought dead after a portion of a still-under-construction hydroelectric dam in Laos' Attapeu province reportedly collapsed Monday night, per the AP. The country's KPL news agency, via the BBC, reports that the collapse of an auxiliary dam attached to the main Xepian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower dam led to flash floods in the southeastern Laos province, sending locals to the roofs of their houses and boats out to rescue survivors. The New York Times notes that 175 billion cubic feet of water gushed out and flooded the area; Sky News notes that's about the amount that would fill 2 million Olympic-size swimming pools. The dam, which was on schedule to open in 2019, is a joint project run by two South Korean companies, including SK Engineering and Construction, as well as Thai and Lao lenders. An SK E&C official quoted by the Yonhap news agency says a deluge of rain that's about three times more than usual had flooded the auxiliary dam. Yonhap says officials are still trying to figure out if the dam overflowed or simply gave way. The dam in Laos, one of Asia's most poverty-stricken nations, was set to bring in billions of dollars for the country by helping to generate electricity that would mostly be exported to Thailand.
– Golden Globe nominations were announced Thursday, and along with a surprise frontrunner, there were a number of snubs. USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair are among the outlets running them down: Ryan Gosling was not nominated as best actor for his role as Neil Armstrong in First Man—which was also not nominated as best drama. Black Panther was nominated for best drama, but stars Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan were denied best actor and best supporting actor nods. Atlanta, Donald Glover's FX series, won best comedy series at last year's Golden Globes, but wasn't even nominated this year.
– Police have charged a 16-year-old boy as an adult and are scouring a Baltimore suburb for three other suspects involved in the "shocking" death of a police officer on Monday. Dawnta Anthony Harris is awaiting a bail hearing. Amy Caprio, a four-year veteran of the Baltimore County Police Department, was responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle in Perry Hall when she stumbled on what police think was a burglary. Witnesses describe seeing police encounter a black Jeep down a dead end street, per CBS Baltimore. "I heard, 'Get out of the car!' ... and then a pop," a man tells the AP. A neighbor says his son also heard a pop after seeing the officer confront the Jeep's occupants with her gun drawn. He says the Jeep then hit her, throwing her about 20 feet, per the Baltimore Sun. Caprio was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly before 3pm; the Sun has more on her here. An autopsy and body camera footage will provide more details, say police, who launched a manhunt after recovering a Jeep they believe was involved in the crime, reports the Sun. On Tuesday, officers said that the land and air search continues for three suspects considered armed and dangerous. A local councilman describes the search zone as "a densely populated area with a lot of stream valleys and places where people can hide," per the Sun. Nearly 2,000 students remained at area schools into the evening Monday before an order to shelter in place was lifted. Cpl. Shawn Vinson said Monday the investigation would continue "throughout the night" and "all day tomorrow."
– President Trump ripped into the "dishonest" and "out of control" media during his press conference Thursday—and it didn't take long for the media to fire back. Fox News anchor Shepard Smith was among those who criticized the president, saying he "keeps repeating ridiculous throwaway lines that are not true at all and sort of avoiding this issue of Russia as if we're some kind of fools for asking the question," the Hill reports. Smith said Trump "owes it to the American people" to answer legitimate questions liked the ones about Russia that he dismissed as "fake news." But not all the reviews were so negative. A look at coverage: Yes, he was "combative," observes Mara Liasson at NPR, "but he was also funny and charming like he was with the press during all those years in New York as a fixture in the tabloids. ... I think that he will get a lot of credit for doing this. I think it will thrill his supporters." The Washington Post fact-checks what it describes as 15 "dubious claims" from the conference, including Trump's claim that he had the "biggest electoral college win since Reagan." Trump had a total of 304 electoral college votes, which ranks sixth in the eight elections since Reagan's 525-vote 1984 landslide. Only George W. Bush won with fewer than Trump. "I was given that information," Trump said when a reporter challenged him on the statement. The AP takes a close look at Trump's "I inherited a mess line" and decides the claim itself is messy. CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord, reacting to scathing reviews: “Lord, I think we saw two different press conferences," he said, per Raw Story. "From my perspective, I thought he was relaxed, he was funny, he was on point. He took the whole issue of the media, and he had a very candid conversation." Politico has an exhaustive list of the topics Trump covered during the 77-minute presser, ranging from nuclear holocaust to CNN, which he downgraded from "fake news" to "very fake news." BuzzFeed has video of one of the conference's most heavily commented upon moments: when Trump asked a black reporter if she could set up a meeting between him and the Congressional Black Caucus. Presidential historians tell the AP that no president, including Nixon during the Watergate scandal, has publicly turned on the press the way Trump did. "It was bizarre theater," says Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley. "He turned a presidential press conference into a reality-TV show in which he can be the star and browbeat anyone who objects to him with the power of his office." GOP strategist and CNN contributor Alice Stewart also found a few things to praise in Trump's performance. "You can't say he's not responsive to the press," she tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "He answered all the questions from all over the press corps and put to rest the long-standing dialogue that he shuts down certain news outlets." Vox lists nine moments that it suggests back up Jake Tapper's description of the press conference as "wild" and "unhinged," including Trump's claim that "the leaks are real" but "the news is fake." Late-night hosts approached the press conference as gleefully as a kid unwrapping Christmas presents, and the Washington Post rounds up some of their best lines. "My guess is he did it because he's mad and he just wanted to blow off some steam," Jimmy Kimmel said. "The tone of the press conference was like if your dad found a pack of cigarettes under your mattress." David Graham at the Atlantic looks at the continual theme of complaint in the conference and wonders: Does Trump hate his new job?
– "Why do sheep get frisky in winter?" isn't the beginning of a bad joke, but rather the question that jump-started a joint study by researchers at the University of Nottingham and the University of Bristol. The Guardian reports that scientists may now have an answer, one that could help farmers better control the breeding season. That answer, laid out in the journal PNAS, is a bit complicated. It's been known for some time that sheep's fertility is tied to production of the hormone melatonin, but how melatonin communicates with the pituitary gland, which shoots off sex hormones, has been a mystery. "No one has been able to find what the link is," says co-author David Bates. Until now, perhaps. Press releases from Nottingham and Bristol explain what may solve this 30-year-old puzzle: a protein made in the pituitary gland called vascular endothelial growth factor. It's made in two different forms, and scientists say melatonin controls which one surfaces. In the summer (when melatonin is in shorter supply), VEGF makes blood vessels grow and serves as a sheep-sex buzzkill of sorts. But in the winter, VEGF blocks blood vessel growth—and also appears to trigger a sex hormone spike. “Now we know what that link is we can start to understand how it can be controlled,” says Bates. In addition to helping farmers, the study could lead to developments in studying hormonal and seasonal patterns in humans in regard to endocrine diseases. (Using your smartphone right before you turn in could mess with your melatonin levels.)
– JCPenney, drunk tweeter? Nah, it turns out the company's retail Twitter account was just pulling our collective leg—and attracting a little attention—by tweeting silly things, AdWeek reports. But it's kinda funny to see how the tweets drew the Doritos and Kia social media teams into taking potshots: JCPenney: Who kkmew theis was ghiong tob e a baweball ghamle. #lowsscorinh 5_0 JCPenney: Toughdown Seadawks!! Is sSeattle going toa runaway wit h this??? Kia: Hey @jcpenney need a designated driver? Doritos: Slow down, @jcpenney. Have some #Doritos . JCPenney: Oops...Sorry for the typos. We were #TweetingWithMittens . Wasn't it supposed to be colder? Enjoy the game! #GoTeamUSA. Yes, it was all to promote mittens. Very clever, JCP. But they're not always so funny: The Twitter stunt comes right after the retailer raised prices just to lower them for Valentine's Day, reports Latin Times. JCPenney has been accused of such "price anchoring" several times over the years.
– Jane Austen is going on Britain's 10-pound note in 2017, reports the BBC. And the guy she's replacing is no slouch—Charles Darwin. Along with her image will be a quote from Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!" The Guardian calls the decision "surprisingly apt" given how frequently the theme of money comes up in Austen's novels, even if it finds the choice of quote a little "safe." So why the move? The push began earlier this year when the Bank of England announced that Winston Churchill would replace prison reformer Elizabeth Fry on the 5-pound note. Critics pointed out that would leave no women on the nation's currency, except for the queen. And as the LA Times notes, this week's birth of a certain royal baby means that Britain will be ruled by kings for decades after the 87-year-old queen dies. Austen's presence means at least one woman will remain on the money.
– Before his second inauguration, President Obama enjoyed a 55% approval rating—but thanks to concerns over the economy, the figure has dropped again to 50%, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds. Following Obama's reelection, Americans trusted him over congressional Republicans on the economy by 18 points; now the gap is just four points in Obama's favor, 44% to 40%, the Post reports. Obama's 50% mark puts him behind most modern presidents at this moment in their second terms—with the exception of George W. Bush, who also had a 50% approval rating. As for the sequester, a slight majority opposes it, but some three-quarters say it hasn't had an effect on them. On the other hand, most believe it will eventually hurt the economy. Some 47% say congressional Republicans are to blame for it, while 33% say Obama is to blame. But 68% say they want the two sides to cooperate to end the cuts. Click through for more from the poll.
– By the time he was 18, London native Joshua Browder had already racked up 30 parking tickets, the Guardian reports. That's even more impressive considering the legal driving age in the UK is 18. “I decided that instead of paying for them, I should try and fight," Browder says in a blog post. Less than two years later, the 19-year-old Stanford student's artificially intelligent chatbot—"the world's first robot lawyer"—has successfully appealed 160,000 parking tickets in London and New York. “I created it for a few family and friends and could never have imagined that in a few short months it would have appealed over $4 million [in parking tickets]." Browder's DoNotPay guides people through appealing tickets with simple questions, such as whether parking signs were clearly visible, at no charge. In 2015, New York City issued a record $1.9 billion in traffic fines. “I think the people getting parking tickets are the most vulnerable in society,” Browder tells Venture Beat. “These people aren’t looking to break the law. I think they’re being exploited as a revenue source by the local government.” With a success rate of 64% so far, DoNotPay is cutting into that revenue stream. “The government don’t like me very much, but people with parking tickets do," Browder says in the blog post. DoNotPay is scheduled to expand to Seattle next, but Browder isn't stopping there. He hopes to launch robot lawyers for refugees, people who are HIV positive, and more. (Busted on Facebook, a police chief issued himself a parking ticket.)
– In what some conservative commentators are calling a major snub, President Obama will not be attending Antonin Scalia's funeral on Saturday. Instead, Joe Biden will attend the service at Washington DC's Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, NBC reports. "The president will pay his respects at the Supreme Court on Friday and he'll be joined with the first lady when he does that," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. Earnest didn't take the bait when he was asked whether Obama plans to go golfing on Saturday, but said the president "believes it's important for the institution of the presidency to pay his respects to somebody who dedicated three decades of his life to the institution of the Supreme Court." The decision surprised some Obama allies, who said skipping the funeral will do nothing to reduce partisanship, reports Politico, which notes that Obama has praised Scalia as one of the "most consequential judges and thinkers to serve." Some of those close to the Scalia family don't have a problem with Obama being a no-show. "I wouldn't have expected President Obama to attend the funeral Mass, and I see no reason to fault him for not attending," former Scalia clerk Ed Whelan says. "The ceremony at the Supreme Court seems the most apt opportunity for the president to pay his respects, but he obviously might have severe competing demands on his time." (Obama says he plans to nominate an "indisputably qualified" candidate to replace Scalia on the court.)
– It's been a year since Katie Holmes filed for divorce from Tom Cruise, and apparently Cruise is feeling sentimental. A source tells UK magazine Look the actor sent Holmes an "emotional letter" looking to, at the very least, be friends again, Australia's News Network reports. "It's like he's finally recognized that Katie will always be the love of his life," the source says. Even so, "It won't have been an over the top letter—it has been a year and I'm sure Tom will have been aware that Katie wouldn't be interested in running straight back into his arms." Sources close to Holmes say she was "touched" by the letter, which doesn't sound promising for Cruise. "Tom would no doubt take her back in a second, but I don't think that's what Katie wants," says one. (Just to keep things in perspective, we'll point out that Look is the sort of magazine that also runs headlines like, "Royal Bodyguard Warns: 'Kate Middleton's Baby Is In Danger!'") In other news, Huffington Post notes that it's Cruise's 51st birthday.
– It wasn't a great day for George Zimmerman yesterday, as a series of stories raised fresh doubts about his tale of killing Trayvon Martin in self-defense. First, the funeral director who prepared Martin's body for burial said he observed no signs of a struggle, reports CBS News. Aside from the gunshot wound to the chest, "We could see no physical signs like there had been a scuffle," he explained. "The hands—I didn't see any knuckles, bruises, or what have you. And that is something we would have covered up if it would have been there." Also: The mother of a key 13-year-old eyewitness in the case says that police pressured her son to tell them details he hadn't seen, reports the New York Daily News. He saw just one person in the grass, she says, and couldn't tell who it was "because it was too dark." But the police persisted, giving the boy a multiple choice question about the color of the sweater he saw. Of the three options, he told them he thought it might be red—the color Zimmerman was wearing. "I believe he felt pressured to give the color," says mom. An anonymous eyewitness spoke to Anderson Cooper last night. He says Zimmerman didn't seem injured as he walked away. More news from the past: Zimmerman was fired in 2005 from an under-the-counter security guard job because he "had a temper and he became a liability," a former co-worker tells the New York Daily News. The man described Zimmerman as "like Jekyll and Hyde," saying, "When the dude snapped, he snapped. He definitely loved being in charge. He loved the power. Still, I could never see him killing someone. Never," he said.
– It's long been known that the predecessors of modern humans and Neanderthals lived side by side, but it wasn't until 2010 that it was discovered the two species interbred. In fact, as much as 4% of the DNA of modern humans with European or Asian ancestry comes from Neanderthals, reports the Guardian. That intermingling is bound to have consequences, but researchers who've been looking for them were surprised to find a dozen traits specifically linked to Neanderthal genetic variants—including risk for nicotine addiction, artery thickening, heart attack, and depression. Researchers arrived at their conclusions, published in the journal Science, after cross-referencing Neanderthal DNA with a database of 28,000 people of European ancestry that pulls together biological samples and electronic health records. "The brain is incredibly complex, so it's reasonable to expect that introducing changes from a different evolutionary path might have negative consequences," lead author Corinne Simonti says in a Vanderbilt News statement. Case in point: The researchers found Neanderthal DNA increases blood clotting, which would have helped seal wounds more speedily; but for modern man, hypercoagulation ups the risk of miscarriage, stroke, and more, reports Live Science. Oh, and the popular idea that Neanderthal DNA influences skin tone is probably bunk, the researchers add, noting skin color differences likely emerged much more recently. (Sex with Neanderthals may also explain modern allergies.)
– The spacecraft that landed on a comet yesterday is still talking to scientists, but its battery is expected to conk out soon. In what could be a last-ditch effort to save the mission, scientists with the European Space Agency say they'll try to make the Philae lander essentially hop to a different spot—one in which it might get more juice in the form of sunlight for its solar panels, reports the Guardian. Researchers still don't know exactly where the lander is, only that it's surrounded by rocks blocking most sunlight, perhaps next to a cliff, reports the BBC. In the meantime, the lander has begun drilling about 10 inches deep into the comet to collect samples that scientists would love to analyze, given that they are presumably billions of years old, reports the AP. The question is whether the battery will hold out long enough to transmit any data, while the very act of drilling is draining it further. "Maybe the battery will be empty before we contact again," says Stephan Ulamec, head of the lander mission. The battery isn't expected to last beyond tomorrow, but if ESA is able to shift the lander to a sunnier locale, the data collection could go on for months. (The landing hit a few glitches, including anchoring harpoons that didn't fire.)
– Can we get an "all right, all right, all right" for the University of Texas at Austin's new film instructor? The college announced Thursday that Matthew McConaughey will team up with Gary Ross, the director of his new film, Free State of Jones, and a university instructor to teach a film class at his alma mater this fall, Us Weekly reports. "He's in the movies. He's on the field. Now, Matthew McConaughey is in the classroom," says a post celebrating "Professor McConaughey" on UT's Facebook page. His instruction, however, will be provided via recorded videos, though with at least one on-campus visit. Thirty juniors and seniors will get a "behind-the-scenes" glimpse at how the movie was made, with McConaughey and Ross, who also directed The Hunger Games, showing clips from the movie and then delving into why certain scenes were shot the way they were, per the San Antonio Express-News. It's McConaughey's second stint at UT for this class, which he also taught in the spring amid lots of nondisclosure forms because the movie hadn't come out yet. (McConaughey does pretty well with higher-learning institutions.)
– An 81-year-old woman is in prison without bond for feeding bears vast quantities of dog food—and refusing to stop, officials say. Mary Musselman, a retired gym teacher, allegedly fed bears when they visited her property in Sebring, Florida. "We are talking about putting out as many as 17 or 18 bowls of dog food," a Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission rep tells WFTS. Apparently the bears were big fans: They kept returning, CNN reports.Officials, who last year had to euthanize a bear Musselman was feeding, told her she had to stop. "Feeding bears results in bears losing their fear of people," a Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission rep tells WFTS. But "she told us she wasn't going to stop." She reportedly kept feeding them despite repeated visits from wildlife officials carrying informational videos and brochures. Even a judge's warning wasn't enough to stop Musselman; apparently, she believed the bears would starve if she didn't feed them. Finally, officers arrived to arrest her—and she fought them, threatening to kill them, they say. She's charged with feeding wildlife, battery against an officer, and violating probation that had required her not to feed animals, per Highlands Today. Now her former students are coming to her aid, calling the arrest "outrageous" and looking for a mental health worker to join her in court. They say she needs to be released to continue to care for her husband, who has terminal cancer.
– Remember the hubbub over this trailer with NSFW puppets? Well, The Happytime Murders is out Friday, starring Melissa McCarthy as a detective probing a series of puppet murders with her puppet partner. Critics, meanwhile, are busy investigating why the R-rated film is, in their opinions, downright awful. (The film has a 26% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) What they're saying: While "there's a cheeky freshness in the early scenes," the film "too often comes across as a skit that runs for too long … probably because the plot is nonsensical and pointless," James Berardinelli writes at ReelViews. McCarthy surprisingly doesn't help, he writes. She "has the life of a piece of background furniture." Brian Truitt argues "McCarthy is as sharp-witted as ever," but his praise basically ends there. With gags that "make Fozzie Bear a comedic genius by comparison," this "scattershot comedy isn't nearly as clever or subversive as it thinks it is," he writes at USA Today, adding "there are much better uses of your time than this travesty." "There's more fun to be had watching a kid play with some socks," Johnny Oleksinski writes at the New York Post, noting the film is "as stale as a neglected saltine." The prevailing problem: "It's not funny," Oleksinski writes. In fact, "the only cast member who earns some giggles is Maya Rudolph." Mara Reinstein is just relieved her viewing experience is over. "The Happytime Murders simply goes for the lowest common denominator of comedy from beginning to end. And those 90 minutes in between are excruciating. Let me put it in italics for emphasis. Excruciating," she writes at US Weekly, calling out the "lazy use of gross-out humor."
– Emma Stone ruled the roost last year, but this time around she's lost the No. 1 spot on the highest-paid actress list to the Black Widow. That would be Scarlett Johansson, whose annual paycheck is leaps and bounds ahead of the runner-up by more than $12 million, per Forbes: The Avengers star brought in $40.5 million pretax between June 1, 2017, and June 1 of this year. Forbes notes that the combined pay of the 10 top-paid actresses grossed $186 million, as well as another interesting tidbit on these high-paid Hollywooders: A full 60% of the women on this list are over the age of 40, turning the tables on the "young ingenue" routine that often relegates older women in Tinseltown to less-palatable roles. Rounding out the top five after Johansson: Scarlett Johansson, $40.5M Angelina Jolie, $28M Jennifer Aniston, $19.5M Jennifer Lawrence, $18M Reese Witherspoon, $16.5M See who else made the list here. (There are zero women on this highest-paid athletes list.)
– California's attorney general will investigate accusations that Arnold Schwarzenegger used state-funded security personnel to help arrange and cover up his extra-marital activities, according to Radar. William Taylor, a former law enforcement officer who claims to have been head of security at the Sacramento Hyatt Regency, has told the National Enquirer that he witnessed Schwarzenegger using California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles to ferry scantily clad young women to and from the suite where he often stayed. "They'd hurriedly escort the women through the service entrance on the second-floor parking garage to the elevator that went to the governor's private wing," Taylor told the tabloid. Schwarzenegger's attorney Martin Singer, however, tells Entertainment Tonight that the Enquirer story is "totally and completely false." Former CHP officers who served with Schwarzenegger's protective detail have also branded the Enquirer story a fake, and the hotel's general manager says he's never heard of Taylor.
– Dawn Wells is not doing so well, according to the friend who launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign for the Gilligan's Island actress. Wells, 79, who played Mary Ann on the show, lost almost everything in the 2008 financial crisis, the friend tells TMZ. This year, while already recovering from a major surgery and complications resulting from it, she broke her knee. She now needs to move to an assisted living facility, but it won't take her because she's nearly $200,000 in debt, the friend says. "Dawn needs $194,000 to alleviate penalties by the IRS (which are compounded daily) and to pay her hospital costs," the GoFundMe campaign says, though it's seeking to raise just $180,000. In a campaign update, the friend quotes Wells as saying, "I just don’t know what happened! I thought I would be just fine, but apparently I’m not. I’ve found myself with no home, husband, or kids. I thank god every day that I have friends and fans who care or this whole thing would be too overwhelming." The campaign asks the public to help "YOUR favorite castaway," noting that she is "a woman who gave so many people Joy over the years." As of this writing, it has raised more than $46,000. People notes that the campaign is run by someone calling himself Dugg Kirkpatrick, and points to a Twitter photo seeming to indicate he is a hairstylist who has worked with Wells.
– A ceasefire in Ukraine didn't stop fighting in the rail hub of Debaltseve, which links two rebel strongholds. Now, government troops are withdrawing from the area in what the Wall Street Journal calls a big setback; Ukraine had previously said it would hold the town as it grappled with losses elsewhere, and the move may weaken President Petro Poroshenko while affirming the separatists' power, the Journal notes. Some 80% of units in the town have departed. "The priority must be saving the lives of the Ukrainian troops," said Russia's foreign minister; the BBC reports that he called on rebels to feed surrendering Ukraine troops.
– If it hadn't been for a New York City couple, the world might never have seen To Kill a Mockingbird. Its author, Harper Lee, was a ticket agent for British Overseas Airways in 1956, and it was difficult for her to find time to write with a separate full-time job, Ozy reports. She discussed this concern with her friends Michael and Joy Brown, a couple her friend Truman Capote had introduced to her. Michael, who died this year, worked as a writer of industrial musicals—performances, often with big budgets, that US corporations would produce to inspire their workers, the New York Times reports in his obituary. Michael Brown's work included, for example, a "Love Song to an Electrolux" and a DuPont musical called Wonderful World of Chemistry. The work brought in plenty of money, and at Christmas 1956, Lee found an envelope for her in the Browns' Christmas tree. "I opened it and read: 'You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas,'" she wrote in the 1960s, as the New York Daily News reported. Though she was reluctant to accept the gift—which she eventually repaid—the couple supported her during the period, allowing her to quit her job and write To Kill a Mockingbird. That gift's impact continues to reverberate, as the book still sells more than 750,000 copies per year, Ozy notes. (Lee, now 87, has had her fair share of trouble in recent years: She recently sued her agent as well as a museum in her hometown.)
– Dick Clark will be in his usual New Year's Eve spot tonight, in front of the cameras for his New Year's Rockin' Eve show on ABC, notes the Huffington Post. As has been the case since 2005, Ryan Seacrest will co-host and handle most of the duties for the 82-year-old Clark, who has been slowed by a stroke since 2004. This year is the 40th anniversary of the show, which will feature a Lady Gaga performance just before midnight. (AP has more details on the show and what else is on.) Clark does all his interviews via email these days because of his speech difficulties, and the New York Times broaches some touchy topics, like whether this might be his last show. "I hope not," came the reply. Clark also said he hopes his hosting "may serve as an inspiration" to viewers who have physical disabilities. Click for more.
– A Michigan man with a rare genetic disorder is seeking more than $25,000 in damages from Shaquille O'Neal, NBA player Trey Burke, and rapper Waka Flocka for making fun of his pic on social media, reports the Detroit Free Press. Jahmel Binion has ectodermal dysplasia, a condition that can cause facial deformities and an inability to regulate body temperature, among other symptoms, according to the National Institutes of Health. Shaq did apologize with a repentant tweet and phone call, according to TMZ, but Binion isn't buying the good-guy act. "When they said sorry, I felt like they were saying it to get the pressure off of them for being considered ‘bad people,'" he tells the Macomb Daily.
– There's no Olympics this winter, but the US still managed to claim two bronze medals in figure skating yesterday—from the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics. Siblings Vivian and Ronald Joseph came in fourth place in pairs figure skating but were given bronze medals a couple of years later after the West German pair who won silver were disqualified for signing a professional contract before the Games, violating then-strict rules about amateurism, the Chicago Tribune reports. The Canadian pair who had won bronze were awarded silver—but the German pair were reawarded their silvers by the International Olympic Committee in 1987, and it later emerged that the Americans had never made it into the official record books as medalists. US Figure Skating—along with US and Canadian Olympic associations—urged the IOC to clear up the confusion after it was highlighted by a New York Times story last year, and the records were finally changed yesterday to show that the Josephs were bronze medalists and the Canadians and Germans both won the silver; a Soviet pair won gold. "I am ecstatic," says Vivian Joseph, who's now 66. "I am sorry it wasn't done sooner, but I am happy it is finally done." She says that after somebody she met at a party years ago looked at the records and disputed her claim to be an Olympic medalist, she stopped talking about the medal in case she was accused of lying. "It's very strange, isn't it," says her 70-year-old brother, now an orthopedic surgeon. "This is typical of the politics of sport."
– The big question in Iraq today: Will Nouri al-Maliki go quietly? As expected, President Fouad Massoum snubbed the two-term prime minister and said he must step down to make way for someone new. Massoum picked deputy parliament speaker Haider al-Ibadi to be the next PM and gave him 30 days to form a government, reports the AP. "Now the Iraqi people are in your hands," said Massoum. The move comes after Maliki addressed the nation at midnight and insisted that he be allowed to remain in office because his is the largest bloc in parliament, reports the New York Times. He even deployed troops in the capital as a show of force. But those actions may have only hurt his cause further, reports the Washington Post. It quotes a Kurdish politician who says the speech triggered a "major defection" today against Maliki within his Shiite coalition. "We have passed the stage of military coups and taking power by force," says Hoshyar Zebari. The US, which has long seen Maliki as too polarizing, has already made clear that it expects Maliki to abide by Massoum's decision and warned against any use of force. (Meanwhile, Iraq is still battling militants from the Islamic State.)
– It turns out the Nazis' vision of the ideal Aryan baby—one that was slapped on the cover of a magazine, on postcards, and disseminated in party propaganda—was a Jewish baby. The Telegraph resurfaces the remarkable story of Hessy Taft (born Hessy Levinsons), a now 80-year-old who in 1935, at just six months, was taken by her mother to a Berlin photographer to have her baby photo taken. Months later, Pauline Levinsons spied her daughter's photo on the cover of the Nazi magazine Sonne ins Hause. Worried their Jewish identity would surface as a result, she hurried back to Hans Ballin, who explained to her that he "wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous"—and so the photographer intentionally entered the young Hessy into a contest looking for the most beautiful Aryan baby, one thought to be judged by Joseph Goebbels himself. The truth of the baby's identity never came to light, though Hessy was kept out of public sight by her parents, who feared she'd be recognized. A short time later the family fled Germany for Latvia, then Paris, Cuba, and finally the United States. Haaretz points out that Taft's story isn't an untold one: In fact, it's published on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website. But it's getting a fresh look after Taft recently gave Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial a copy of the magazine cover. "I feel a little revenge," the Telegraph quotes her as saying. "Something like satisfaction." (In other Nazi news: Was Hitler a billionaire tax dodger?)
– A man in Algeria apparently picked a terrible way to get attention on social media—and now he'll pay for it in prison. On Monday an Algerian court sentenced the unnamed man to two years after he posted to Facebook a photo of himself dangling a baby out of a 15th-story window in an attempt to get "likes," reports Al Arabiya English. The photo shows the baby being held by a single hand outside the apartment building in the capital city of Algiers over the caption "1000 likes or I will drop him." The BBC reports that other social media users quickly denounced the photo, and police charged the man with endangering the life of a child when they arrested him on Sunday. The man, who is a cousin of the baby's, swears the whole thing was a misunderstanding. The Independent reports he told Algeria's Ennahar TV the photo was manipulated by Facebook users to make it look worse than it actually was, claiming the "protective barriers" that were present were digitally removed. The boy's father also said he believed the man was just being playful and asked the court for mercy. Last week another man was jailed over photos shared to Facebook.
– Valentina Maureira's brother died from cystic fibrosis when he was 6. The 14-year-old has the same inherited disease and was told she has a life expectancy of 17, reports CNN. Except Valentina doesn't want to live that long. The Chilean teen posted a now-viral video to Facebook late last month, a plea to President Michelle Bachelet that she be allowed to end her life. "I am tired of living with this sickness," which causes damage to the lungs and digestive system, Valentina explains. "Please authorize an injection so I can sleep forever." But a rep for Bachelet on Thursday explained "it's impossible to grant her wish" due to Chilean law, which bars euthanasia and doesn't allow a government official to circumvent that. Still, the president herself, who is also a pediatrician, did visit Valentina for more than an hour last week; the two posed for a selfie. The president's rep explained "we will provide all the emotional and psychological support and medical treatment to improve her living conditions." As for her medical condition, the Universidad Catolica clinic in Santiago describes it as stable and notes she is not facing, as Reuters puts it, any "immediately life-threatening conditions." But her father described a painful existence: "She has already had five operations ... which have caused her a lot of suffering. It was promised that things would get better, but for her it was worse." She suffers from persistent headaches and vomiting as well. In an interview with the AP, he says he "cried through the night" after learning what Valentina wanted, "but I have to respect her decision because she's the one who's suffering this illness." (One country has made euthanasia legal for kids.)
– Minnesota couple Pete and Alisha Arnold say they're letting the Internet decide whether or not they get an abortion. The couple—who have been posting ultrasound pictures at birthornot.com—say the move is an exercise in democracy. They plan to keep the poll open for as long as Alisha, now 17 weeks pregnant, can legally get an abortion, and claim the results will be the deciding factor in whether they keep the fetus or not. "Give Birth" has 46% of the vote at the moment, with "Have an Abortion" at 54%. There seem to be three possibilities here, Alicia Chen notes at Gawker. This could be an "idiotic prank" by a couple intent on becoming famous. It could be a pro-life stunt and the site is "a confused parable to illustrate the peril of putting an unborn baby's life in the hands of voters." Or, thirdly, the couple are really planning to have an abortion based on the results of an Internet poll. All three options plainly "suggest these people should never, ever raise a kid," Chen writes. Click here for another reaction.
– Donald Trump isn’t content with questioning Obama’s citizenship—now he’s questioning his authorial accomplishments, too. In an interview with Laura Ingraham yesterday, Trump espoused the theory that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s memoir, Dreams of My Father, Aol News reports. Obama is only the president “because he wrote a book that is supposed to be a great genius book,” Trump said. “But now it’s coming out that Bill Ayers wrote it.” Trump’s repeating a rumor that’s been circling in right-wing media. Ayers himself said that he had written the book at a speaking appearance last week, though as Allahpundit at the conservative blog Hot Air notes, it sounded a lot like he was being sarcastic. “Would you believe that I wrote it?” he said when asked about the book. “And if you can help me prove it, I’ll split the royalties.” At that the audience burst out laughing. Ayers has reportedly used the line, complete with the royalties punch line, in the past as well. Click for more.
– The New York Times has unearthed an artifact from Brett Kavanaugh's youth: A letter preparing for "Beach Week" in the summer of 1983. In it, the 18-year-old Kavanaugh gives seven Georgetown Prep classmates details of a rented condo in Ocean City, Md.—and warns of the dangers of eviction. "Any girls we can beg to stay there are welcomed with open ..." he writes to fellow members of what classmates describe as a hard-partying clique of football players. The first students to arrive should "warn the neighbors that we’re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us," writes Kavanaugh, whose teenage drinking has been in the spotlight amid sexual assault claims. More: No biggie. The conservative Federalist accuses the Times of creating a "hit piece" based on nothing more than Kavanaugh's "party planning." The White House was also dismissive: "It seems the New York Times is committed to embarrassing Judge Kavanaugh with three-decade-old stories of adolescent drinking," said spokeswoman Kerri Kupec.
– President Obama officially unveiled his $3.8 trillion budget today, and as expected it draws a 2012 battle line, calling for higher taxes on the wealthy combined with spending measures intended to bolster the economy, the AP reports. "We built this budget around the idea that our country has always done best when everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules," Obama said, according to CNN. "This is not about class warfare. This is about the nation's welfare." Obama's budget would institute the so-called "Buffett Rule," replacing the Alternative Minimum Tax with a 30% rate on income above $1 million. It would also bump the capital gains tax rate up to 20%, and allow Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy to expire. Obama unveiled the budget in a speech at Northern Virginia Community College, where he focused on a proposal to spend $8 billion boosting community colleges, Bloomberg reports. Obama estimates that under his budget the deficit would rise to $1.3 trillion in 2012, before falling to $901 billion in 2013. But the Wall Street Journal points out that Obama used cautious economic forecasts, ignoring recent employment gains. Republicans naturally bashed the budget for failing to address fiscal issues. "It seems like the president has decided again to campaign instead of govern," said Paul Ryan. For more on the budget particulars, click here.
– For any non-baseball fans out there, this is a huge no-no. Texas Rangers catcher Yorvit Torrealba was playing in the Venezuelan League on Friday when he struck out badly and began yelling at the home plate umpire—probably over a strike call earlier in the at-bat. The two of them jaw for a good 15 seconds before Torrealba smacks the ump flat in the face mask, the Sporting News reports. The blow even sends the umpire stumbling backward. The Rangers say they're looking into it. "(We're) aware, but we haven't got much info yet," Rangers manager Jon Daniels says. Possible disciplinary measures will depend "on circumstances.” Maybe Torrealba is mad because he's in the second year of a $6.25-million contract, and has seen his playing time wane with the rise of red-hot Mike Napoli. One baseball writer can barely disguise his contempt on Yahoo: "Whatever explanation and apology Torrealba comes up will simply not be good enough."
– Allison Williams is delaying her wedding to CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, but don't blame dad Brian. The brouhaha that led to his suspension from NBC News is just one reason, she explained to Seth Meyers during a Q&A Wednesday night at New York's 92nd Street Y. "It's been a very full year," the Girls star said, according to E!, when explaining her reasons. "You sort of think, 'What could possibly come along that would make me not think about [wedding planning]?' And then I got cast as Peter Pan and I think, 'Okay, I will think only about Neverland and then we'll go back to talking about our wedding.' Then current events started happening, so that derailed it a little bit, but it has been this really beautiful through line in our lives." She spoke more about her father, saying the situation has been tough, but "one thing the experience has not done is shake my trust and belief in him as a man. He's a really good man. He's an honest man. He's a truthful man. He has so much integrity. He cares so much about journalism. And yes, he's a really good dad. I know you can trust him because, as any good daughter does, I've tested him on that." In other Williams family news, Stars and Stripes reports Brian Williams yesterday stepped down from the board of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation; he joined the board in 2006. (Meanwhile, Williams' wife has stepped out for the first time since his suspension.)
– That everyone aboard survived a plane crash in Mexico on Tuesday afternoon was news that emerged quickly; what's taking shape now is just how the 103 people managed to do so. The Aeroméxico flight went down shortly after taking off in Durango, bound for Mexico City. The BBC reports a gust of wind may have been a major contributing factor, causing the plane to plunge. The left wing scraped the ground and two engines tore off, with Reuters reporting the plane came to rest about 1,000 feet from the runway. The plane then caught fire, but most were able to exit it before that occurred. A young girl who was burned is one of two seriously injured people, with the pilot being the other. Reports on how many were injured in total range from "dozens" to 97. Passengers describe the crash to the AFP and CNN, which reports the crew was able to activate the evacuation slides. "The second impact was a lot stronger. This is when I jumped and hit my head against the ceiling. After the second impact, I saw flames in the cabin ahead of me." "When we were already aloft, up high, it felt like the plane was going to level out but just then it plunged to the ground. I think we fell back on the runway because it was a hard surface, then we skidded on the ground until it stopped. I undid my seatbelt and saw flames, and realized we had to jump. There was a hole right next to us where the plane had broken up. I told my girl, 'We have to jump over here', and we jumped."
– The CIA decided to relive one of its greatest hits on Sunday by "live-tweeting" the raid that killed Osama bin Laden to mark its fifth anniversary—but social media users turned out to be a tough crowd. "Stop trying to be cool on twitter and get.on with your job," tweeted "Lame Monk" as the CIA tweets began, the Telegraph reports. "2 helicopters descend on compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. 1 crashes, but assault continues without delay or injury," read a typical entry as the CIA recounted the 2011 raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, starting with its approval by "POTUS, DCIA Panetta, & JSOC commander Admiral McRaven" and continuing until the body was identified. The agency, which calls the al-Qaeda leader "Usama bin Ladin," used the hashtag #UBLRaid. "This is grotesque and embarrassing. You should fire your web team," tweeted another user, per the BBC. Others described the effort as "unprofessional" and "totally unnecessary." The CIA rejected suggestions that the "victory lap" was inappropriate. "The takedown of bin Laden stands as one of the great intelligence successes of all time. History has been a key element of [the] CIA's social media efforts," a CIA spokesman tells ABC News. "On the fifth anniversary, it is appropriate to remember the day and honor all those who had a hand in this achievement." (Recently released documents include bin Laden's will and letters about his fear of drones.)
– Bryan Singer, the director who faced allegations of sexual assault before the dawn of the #metoo movement, has been fired from Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. In announcing the dismissal Monday, 20th Century Fox blamed the "unexpected unavailability" of Singer, noting production had come to a halt on Dec. 1. Sources tell the Hollywood Reporter that Singer was absent from the London set several times prior to December, leading actor Tom Hollander to temporarily quit. There was also reportedly an altercation between Singer and Rami Malek, who plays Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, in which Singer is said to have thrown an object. But sources say the dispute had been resolved and Hollander had agreed to resume his role as Queen manager Jim Beach when Singer failed to return to set after the Thanksgiving break. Singer says there was a very good reason he didn't return: he was caring for an ailing parent in the US. "I asked Fox for some time off ... to deal with pressing health matters concerning one of my parents ... which ultimately took a serious toll on my own health," Singer said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the studio was unwilling to accommodate me and terminated my services." He also confirms he had "creative differences" with Malek but the pair "put those differences behind us and continued to work on the film together until just prior to Thanksgiving." With only two weeks left of filming, 20th Century Fox says it will name a new director to the film, which will keep its December 2018 release date, per the BBC.
– Donald Trump's lawyer seems pretty ignorant of the law—at least as it pertains to marital rape. The Daily Beast reports that when Michael Cohen, special counsel for the Trump Organization, was asked about an alleged incident from 1989 involving Trump's ex-wife Ivana, he claimed "that by the very definition, you can't rape your spouse"—and then threatened reporter Tim Mak, allegedly telling him to "tread very f---ing lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be f---ing disgusting." "You write a story that has Mr. Trump's name in it, with the word 'rape,' and I'm going to mess your life up ... for as long as you're on this frickin' planet," Cohen warned, per the Beast, which notes that New York outlawed marital rape in 1984. The alleged incident Cohen was asked about was described in the 1993 Trump biography Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, reports the New York Daily News. The book, citing a divorce deposition, describes an incident in which Trump allegedly forced himself on Ivana as revenge for her having talked him into failed scalp-reduction surgery, though the book contains a statement from her saying that while she referred to the incident as "rape," she doesn't want her words "to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense." A Trump spokesperson tells Business Insider that the incident is "old news and it never happened" and that Ivana made it up to "exploit" Trump during divorce proceedings.
– Historians in Poland have put online what they say is the most complete list of Nazi SS commanders and guards at the Auschwitz concentration camp in hopes that some of them can still be brought to justice. The state-run Institute of National Remembrance said Monday that the SS KL Auschwitz Garrison list is based on data from archives in Poland, Germany, Austria, the United States and, to a limited extent, Russia, where archives remain mostly inaccessible. The work of historian Aleksander Lasik, the institute, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, it has more than 8,500 entries. Most include the date and place of birth, nationality, education, military service, and party affiliation. Some have a photo attached. Judicial documents are included when the person stood trial in Poland. It is based on a list that Lasik built during more than 30 years of archival research. "The world justice system has failed and I'm doing what a historian should do: expose the responsible individuals as war criminals," Lasik says. He believes up to 200 former guards at the German death camp could still be living. Historians estimate that some 12% of Auschwitz guards were tried by courts in Poland and elsewhere. Lasik's full database includes more than 25,000 names of guards from various German-run camps. The list is not complete and his search continues, Lasik tells the AP. Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff says the publication of the names is "very important" and can have "practical implications" if Nazi crime investigators in Germany were unaware of some of the names.
– With protests gaining steam, the city of North Charleston is trying to stay aggressive in its reaction to a white police officer's fatal shooting of an unarmed black man: Officer Michael Slager, who already has been charged with murder, has been fired from the force, the mayor said today. Mayor Keith Summey also announced that every police officer in the city will wear body cameras from now on, reports the Post and Courier. "I have watched the video and was sickened by what I saw," said Police Chief Eddie Diggers of footage of the shooting taken by a bystander. As he spoke at a press conference, the AP reports that protesters interrupted him with chants of "no justice, no peace." "It looked like he was trying to kill a deer or something, running through the woods," Walter Scott Sr., father of the slain Walter Scott, tells NBC. Though Slager has been fired, the city will continue to pay his health insurance for a while because his wife is eight months' pregnant. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast reports that the attorney who initially represented Slager dropped him as a client as soon as video emerged of the shooting—but he's leaving it for others to connect the dots. "I can't specifically state what is the reason why or what isn't the reason why I'm no longer his lawyer," says David Aylor. "All I can say is that the same day of the discovery of the video that was disclosed publicly, I withdrew as counsel immediately."
– A Navy helicopter went down this morning about 18 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, reports the Virginian-Pilot. The Navy confirms that the chopper, a Sea Dragon, was one of two on a training mission and had to make an emergency landing in the water. Four of the five crew members were rescued, but two died later at the hospital. Another is in serious condition. The last member of the crew still has not been found, and the Navy and Coast Guard planned to search through the night. Sea Dragons are used mainly in heavy-lifting operations and in clearing mines from shipping lanes, notes the Pilot; the Navy has only 29 left, as they had been scheduled to be eliminated in the mid-2000s. Meanwhile, NBC reports that yesterday's helicopter crash in England, which killed four US servicemen, spread hazardous debris across "difficult terrain" in an area the size of a soccer field.
– Want to know what's wrong with the corporate publishing industry? Take a look at Lena Dunham's insane book deal, which Rob Spillman pegs at $3.7 million on Salon. Random House will need to sell at least 500,000 copies to break even, which Spillman thinks is a long shot. But even if the company pulls it off, "is this any way to run a publishing company?" Spillman wonders. "Put aside the cultural impact question for a second. The whole approach seems short-sighted at best." Imagine if Random House had taken that $3.7 million and instead given $10,000 advances to 370 writers—or even $100,000 advances to 37 writers. Surely a few of the resulting books would have been better and more successful than Dunham's book, and a few of the writers would have outsold her over time. But "this argument presumes time. Which is what corporate publishers don’t have," Spillman explains. "They have shareholders, and/or parent companies, and must justify their quarterly earnings." That's why small publishers are increasingly winning the big literary awards after taking chances on books that the major houses won't touch. "Random House’s rash deal with Dunham is … why the corporate publishers are losing cultural relevance, and why they might soon lose solvency as well." Click for Spillman's full column—or a column in defense of Dunham's massive deal.
– If you've ever thrown out good food, Pope Francis says you're a thief. "Throwing away food is like stealing from the table of those who are poor and hungry," he said during an audience at the Vatican this week, in which he blamed a "culture of waste." He's got a point, since one study says as much as half the planet's food ends up in the trash. The United Nations' food agency has a more reserved figure, noting that one-third of human food is wasted, according to Reuters. Since becoming pope, Francis has made defending the poor a priority, calling for global financial reform, but yesterday he said people are "insensitive even to the waste and disposal of food," according to the Telegraph. "[It's] even more despicable when all over the world, unfortunately, many individuals and families are suffering from hunger and malnutrition... In this way people are discarded as if they were garbage."
– Amtrak is taking its lumps after a Twitter misfire. In response to a woman's tweet about being stuck in an Amtrak elevator at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Amtrak tweeted on Wednesday, "We are sorry to hear that. Are you still in the elevator?" Well, no. Amanda Carpenter's plea for help had actually gone out seven months earlier, and Amtrak failed to notice the elapsed time. Carpenter, who is Ted Cruz's former communications director, responded, "Oh, my thank you for this but I was trapped months ago. Like last February. Thanks for checking...? Ha." The gaffe has brought all kinds of ridicule and memes down upon Amtrak, as rounded up by Mashable. "Not our finest hour," acknowledged the company in a followup tweet. It seems that Carpenter's original tweet resurfaced all these months later because somebody retweeted it for some reason, and whoever responded on behalf of Amtrak simply didn't see the date. In fairness to the company, it responded to the original tweet just 16 minutes after Carpenter sent the request for help, telling her that "BWI agents are aware of you, and are working to get you out." Amtrak has now offered Carpenter a free train ride over the mess, but that didn't stop Twitter users from poking fun at what one guy calls "the worst customer service response time ever." Another used a gif of a skeleton holding a telephone.
– Two prisoners were beheaded and at least another one died after being thrown off the roof in a riot that erupted yesterday in a prison in southern Brazil, authorities say. Inmates of the penitentiary in the city of Cascavel took at least two agents and several other inmates hostage in the uprising, said military police Capt. Ricardo Pinto, who added that negotiations for better conditions in the prison were still under way last night. The BBC and AFP say the riot was still ongoing this morning, and that a fourth prisoner had been killed after also being pushed from the roof. The revolt began before sunrise yesterday when a prison guard was captured during breakfast. Prisoners set some objects on fire and were using metal poles to cause damage to the 928-bed prison that housed more than 1,000 inmates. Dozens of the prisoners climbed onto the building's rooftop, with their faces covered with white fabric. Local media images showed at least 30 rebellious inmates shouting while they beat men held with ropes around their necks, or whose hands were tied behind them. The rioting inmates waved banners emblazoned with the initials PCC for a criminal prison gang formed in the 1990s. Jairo Ferreira, a lawyer for the prison guards' union, said the prisoners rioted to demand better food and medical care.
– A renowned "TED-talker" and ER doctor at New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital who served in Iraq and who advocates for improved doctor-patient relationships was arrested Tuesday and charged with sexually abusing two patients, the New York Times reports. David H. Newman, said to be in his 40s (the Times and New York Daily News note he's 45) first came to the attention of police when a woman in her 20s called them Jan. 12 and said Dr. Newman assaulted her the night before. She says Newman entered the private room in the ER where she was being examined for shoulder pain, injected her with morphine even after she told him nurses already had, then groped her and masturbated on her face while she was incapacitated, sources tell the Daily News. After that story broke, a second woman, 22, came forward Sunday and told authorities that during a September visit to the ER for a bad head cold, Newman had groped her breast, the paper notes. An assistant DA said that Newman—who CBS New York said "showed no emotion" as he entered the NYPD's Special Victims division Tuesday with his lawyer—must have been carrying around his own supply of morphine, as only nurses are typically given access to the drug, per CBS. "[Dr. Newman] has been suspended from Mount Sinai pending the outcome of the investigation, and we continue to cooperate fully with the appropriate authorities," a statement from the hospital says, per the Times. Authorities want a court order for Newman's DNA to compare to DNA on the hospital gown the shoulder pain victim wore; she says she used the gown to wipe his semen off her face, then stashed it as evidence, the Daily News notes. "That's horrifying," a South Bronx woman who says she's had multiple surgeries at Mount Sinai tells CBS. "To hear something like that is very scary … how many other women has this happened to?" A judge Tuesday night set Newman's bail at $50,000 cash or $150,000 bond, the Times notes. (Jezebel has received multiple emails of support for Newman.)
– The Missouri Supreme Court is helping with the housecleaning in Ferguson: The court says that to "restore public trust and confidence" in the municipal court division, it's taking the "extraordinary action" of reassigning all municipal court cases to a state appeals court judge, reports the New York Times. Ronald Brockmeyer, the Ferguson judge who doubles up as a prosecutor, resigned from both roles yesterday. The 70-year-old tells the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he doesn't agree with a Justice Dept. report on the biased and "abusive" practices he allegedly played a key role in, including the "creative" use of fines and fees to raise money for the city, "but it's not worth fighting." The top Missouri court says it's assigning Judge Roy L. Richter to hear pending and future cases in Ferguson, and the appeals court judge will also have the power to "restore the integrity of the system" with a revamp of municipal policies, reports the AP. The court says it is also looking at statewide reforms. St. Louis University law professor Brendan Roediger tells the Times that this is the first case he knows of where a state court has taken over an entire municipal docket. "It's a very big deal because it actually is the solution," he says. "It puts the cases in front of full-time professional courts with no conflicts of interest."
– A new alternative to cow milk comes from a source you wouldn't expect: peas. Ripple Foods is about to roll out the product nationally, first at Whole Foods and then at Target, reports VegNews.com. "It's creamy, sweet, and—don't worry—tastes nothing like peas," says a post at Co.Exist. The idea is attracting plenty of buzz because of a slew of positives, the notable one being that the drink has 8 grams of protein per serving, the same amount as milk from cows and eight times the amount of almond milk. "As many non-dairy beverages lack protein, this fact alone may draw consumers," observes a post at Berkeleyside.com. It also has 50% more calcium than dairy milk, and a much smaller carbon footprint than either dairy or almond milk. "The primary challenge is one of flavor," says Ripple co-founder Adam Lowry. "If you just make pea milk the way that you make almond milk, with regular yellow peas, you can get a very high-protein beverage, but it frankly tastes terrible." The company says it has patented a system to keep the nutrients but ditch the pea flavor and color, a method that involves blending it with water, sunflower oil, and stabilizers. If this system proves legit, it could open up all kinds of plants to the process and "disrupt an already disruptive plant-based dairy industry," notes a post at Food Dive. Consumers can get their first taste at Whole Foods starting May 2, with a price of $4.99 for a 48-ounce bottle. (One judge says skim milk isn't really milk.)
– The 15th man to succeed Joseph Smith as chief of the Mormon church has died. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says 90-year-old church president Thomas Monson died at his Salt Lake City home Tuesday evening, the AP reports. Monson—who was ordained as a bishop at the age of 22 and became one of the church's apostles at 36—had led the church for almost a decade and largely remained behind the scenes during a tumultuous 10 years for the church, though he was well-known for helping the needy and often turned up unannounced at funerals or at the bedsides of the ill, reports the Salt Lake Tribune, which describes him as an "affable leader" and a "folksy preacher." Monson, who was born in Salt Lake City and served in the Navy during World War II, was president of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for 13 years before becoming church leader. The AP reports that he's likely to be remembered for his humanitarian work, for lowering the minimum age for missionaries to 18 for men and 19 for women—and for leading his church's support of California's same-sex marriage ban in 2008. The Deseret News notes that Monson also, as chairman of the Missionary Executive Committee, assigned the first black Mormon missionary. No successor has been named yet, but under church protocol, the next president will be 93-year-old Russell Nelson, who is now the longest-serving member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
– Good news for those with paraskevidekatriaphobia: It's the last Friday the 13th of the year, and if you learn to say that word—meaning fear of Friday the 13th—you'll get rid of your fear, according to a superstition relayed by NPR. But is there any truth behind the fear? A study in the early 1990s suggests so: Researchers found that "the risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52%" on a Friday the 13th, according to Life's Little Mysteries. That study, however, was "written with tongue firmly in cheek," notes an author, although authentic data were used. Later studies have been mixed, with some data suggesting women experience more accidents on the date, and others rejecting the idea entirely. Ridiculous or not, the superstition certainly has real-world effects: Many avoid the date for weddings, prompting some wedding-related businesses to give Friday the 13th discounts, notes ABC News. And one stress-management group figures that up to $900 million may be lost because of people's avoidance of flying and other normal activities on the date, LiveScience reports.
– Two sisters who run a day care in California have posted a total of $680,000 bail on charges that they endangered the lives of infants under their care, reports NBC Bay Area. The case is drawing national attention for the unusual nature of the charges—Nazila and Lida Sharaf are accused of wrapping the babies too tightly in swaddling blankets. They have pleaded not guilty to felony charges of child abuse. "They basically restrained these children, almost like a boa constrictor," a police officer tells the Bay Area News Group. "All of these children could have died in the process of binding these extremities." The investigation began after social services officials received complaints, though doctors who examined the infants found no sign of injuries. Lida Sharaf lost a license to run a preschool in 2010 on similar swaddling charges. Both sisters are mothers themselves, and both are pregnant, notes AP.
– If idle hands are the devil's hands, Greece is finding out the hard way: Gunmen this morning stormed Microsoft's Athens headquarters, ramming the building with a gasoline-laden van before setting fire to it. The attack injured no one, but heavily damaged the building's first floor and shut the office for at least the day, in what Reuters notes is the latest in a series of arson hits on banks and foreign companies as anger simmers over high unemployment and austerity measures in the financially strapped nation. No one has claimed responsibility for the Microsoft attack, but the AP notes that anarchist or radical left-wing groups are usually responsible.
– A judge on Friday tossed out a $417 million jury award to a woman who claimed she developed ovarian cancer by using Johnson & Johnson talc-based baby powder for feminine hygiene, the AP reports. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Maren Nelson granted the company's request for a new trial, saying there were errors and jury misconduct in the previous trial that ended with the award two months ago. Nelson also ruled that there wasn't convincing evidence that Johnson & Johnson acted with malice and the award for damages was excessive. The decision will be appealed even though Eva Echeverria has died, said her attorney, Mark Robinson Jr. "We will continue to fight on behalf of all women who have been impacted by this dangerous product," he said in a statement. Echeverria alleged Johnson & Johnson failed to adequately warn consumers about talcum powder's potential cancer risks. She used the company's baby powder on a daily basis beginning in the 1950s until 2016 and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007, according to court papers. Her attorney contended that documents showed that Johnson & Johnson knew about the risks of talc and ovarian cancer for three decades. But a company rep says in a statement, "Ovarian cancer is a devastating disease—but it is not caused by the cosmetic-grade talc we have used in Johnson's Baby Powder for decades. The science is clear." Similar allegations have led to hundreds of lawsuits against the New Jersey-based company. Jury awards have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars. However, a $72 million award was also thrown out Tuesday.
– Protesters gathered in North Carolina tore down a 97-year-old Confederate statue in front of a cheering crowd of more than 100 people Monday. Activists used a ladder to put a rope around the statue's neck before a group of people pulled it to the ground, the News & Observer reports. Protesters, who had gathered outside the old courthouse building in Durham in response to the weekend violence in Charlottesville, then kicked and spat on the statue. The bronze statue of a soldier holding a muzzleloading rifle was erected in 1924, with the words "In Memory of the Boys Who Wore the Gray" engraved on the pillar, reports CNN. Police officers filmed the toppling of the statue. No arrests were made, though North Carolina brought in a law in 2015 banning the removal of monuments to the Confederacy from public property without permission from state officials, the AP reports. Police say they didn't arrest anybody because the toppling took place on county property. "The racism and deadly violence in Charlottesville is unacceptable, but there is a better way to remove these monuments," tweeted Gov. Roy Cooper. Protesters called for the removal of other monuments to the Confederacy, including the "Silent Sam" statue on the University of North Carolina's Chapel Hill campus.
– Amid huge riots over poverty, Tunisia’s president has decided to dismiss his government, the AP reports. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali intends to call legislative elections in 6 months, earlier than planned. Meanwhile, thousands of protesters calling for Ben Ali’s resignation continued to demonstrate in the capital, prompting police to fire tear gas and lash out with clubs. Twelve were killed in riots last night, NPR reports. Thousands of tourists have been evacuated. Ben Ali has said he’ll quit, but not until 2014; and in a speech last night, he promised to stop using live ammunition against the demonstrators. But these pledges haven’t soothed protesters in the biggest riots since Ben Ali took power 23 years ago, notes the New York Times. Instead, they seemed invigorated by the pledge. Today’s demonstration was the first to include many women, very few of whom wore veils, the Times reports.
– At this rate, Greek banks may soon start to look like a canny investment. The Athens Stock Exchange had its worst drop on record yesterday when it reopened after being closed for more than a month, and things have not improved in early trading at the main Greek stock market today, reports Reuters. The index as a whole is down 4%, but the four main banks are down almost 30%. That is the maximum single-day fall allowed, and comes on top of a 30% fall yesterday. But US investors don't have too much to worry about, reports the AP: There is a good chance your mutual fund includes some Greek holdings, but even funds that specialize in emerging markets typically have only around 0.5% invested in Greece.
– It's the kind of art project that even people who hate art projects can love: A German artist has hidden about $16,000 worth of gold bars on a beach in Folkestone, England, reports the Guardian. Lucky treasure hunters can keep any they find. Artist Michael Sailstorfer calls the project Folkestone Digs, and the curator of the Folkestone Triennial art festival, of which the project is a part, says he's interested in seeing what people do with the gold. "Do you take it to the pawnbrokers or do you take it to Sotheby's?" he asks. "Or do you keep it on the mantlepiece because you think it is going to be worth more later?" It's likely too late for any curious Americans to take up the hunt. The art project was unveiled Thursday, and about 150 people began digging for the 30 gold bars when the tide went out, reports the BBC. It's not clear how many have been found, however, because participants don't need to report in. "We will never know if the gold has been found or not," says the curator. He adds that organizers are hoping diggers will create art—in the form of sandcastles—while searching. "It is a participatory artwork," he says. "Some people will get lucky, some people will not get lucky—and that's life." (Americans who want to search for hidden treasure should check this mysterious book out.)
– If President Trump thinks the Iran nuclear deal should be scrapped, the ayatollah seems happy to oblige. "If the US tears up the deal, we will shred it," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday in a speech to students, per Reuters. He was referring to President Trump's decision last week not to recertify the deal struck under the Obama administration. Trump's move doesn't mean the US is withdrawing—instead he essentially turned that decision over to Congress. In his own speech, Khamenei unleashed a torrent of criticism against Trump. "I don't want to waste our time to respond to the rants and whoppers of the foul-throated president of the United States," the Guardian quotes him as saying. (Translations differ slightly in various accounts.) "Everyone should know that once again America will receive a slap in its mouth and will be defeated by the people of Iran." The AP's account has the ayatollah referring to the Trump administration as "mentally retarded." Other nations are part of the nuclear accord, but Khamenei suggested that a US withdrawal would effectively kill it. And he seemed to be urging other parties, especially in Europe, to stand up to the US. "European states stressed their backing for the deal and condemned Trump," he said, per the Hill. "We welcomed this, but it is not enough to ask Trump not to rip up the agreement. Europe needs to stand against practical measures (taken) by America." The next big move may be up to Congress, which has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions that were lifted by the agreement.
– "Get Lucky" could very well be New Zealand's theme song, at least when it comes to its national airline. CNN reports that for the fourth time, Air New Zealand has captured first place in AirlineRatings.com's 2017 Airline Excellence Awards, which rated airlines around the world on criteria including safety, environmental leadership, financials, and in-flight innovations. "Air New Zealand came out number one in virtually all of our audit criteria, which is an exceptional performance," site editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas says in a release. Here, others in the top five: Air New Zealand Qantas Singapore Airlines Cathay Pacific Airlines Virgin Australia/Virgin Atlantic More that earned top honors here.
– It wasn't quite death-by-selfie, but it wasn't far off. Peru This Week reports that a German tourist died Wednesday while posing for a photo at Peru's famed Machu Picchu site. Oliver Park, 51, went into a restricted area of the mountainous tourist locale in the Andes, despite warning signs and instructions from wardens, reports the BBC. The news agency says that while posing for a photo at the edge of a ravine, Park apparently decided to jump in the air to make it look like he was flying. Instead, he ended up falling off the cliff. A witness gives a slightly different take to TV station Canal N, as translated by the Washington Post: "He asked a man who was there to take a photo of him," recounts the Peruvian tourist. "The man came over to take the photo and in the moment he was handing him the camera, he lost his balance and fell.” Both accounts agree that Park had ventured into an area of Machu Picchu, home to an ancient Incan citadel, that's supposed to be off limits to tourists. His body was recovered Thursday. (In 2014, Machu Picchu was plagued by streakers.)
– Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is raising a lot of eyebrows today with his latest column, which is about Iowa's conservative Republicans and includes, well, this: "People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York—a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts—but not all—of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all." "Cohen hilariously poses as a 'liberal' columnist at the Washington Post, despite being ... how can we put this gently ... a power-worshiping bigot," writes Hamilton Nolan at Gawker. At Salon, Alex Pareene takes issue with Cohen's use of the word conventional: "What kind of mind, and person, just automatically thinks of 'conventional' 'people' as reactionary, racist whites? Neutral, normal people, for Cohen, are always reactionary whites," and Cohen himself is "terrified of black people." Two other writers—Matthew Yglesias at Slate and Ezra Klein at Cohen's own paper—point out recent Gallup polls finding that the conventional view, actually, is very much in favor of interracial marriage. Nolan and Yglesias both seem to think Cohen should be fired, and Twitter definitely wants to see him get the boot. "Obviously eliminating Cohen-related expenditures would not, on its own, bring the [struggling] Post to solvency," Yglesias writes. "But every little bit helps." Indeed, Cohen has a history of sparking outrage with his columns. See: The time he finally realized slavery was actually pretty awful, and Wonkette responded gloriously. The time he sympathized with George Zimmerman and noted that Trayvon Martin did, after all, appear to be "wearing a uniform we all recognize." The time he linked Miley Cyrus' twerking to the Steubenville rape case.
– What started out as fun playtime between a 4-year-old Ohio boy and his 3-year-old sister ended horrifically after the boy accidentally shot his sister with a gun, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. The children were playing in a room by themselves in a Lorain home yesterday morning when the boy found the .40-caliber handgun in a dresser and accidentally pulled the trigger, shooting his sister in the head, according to cops. When police arrived at the house, they found the father of the kids cradling his daughter; the 4-year-old was crying and told police multiple times that he was sorry, the AP reports. Three other people in the home at the time of the shooting were interviewed by police and the gun was recovered. The injured girl is reported to be in critical condition at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. (A 5-year-old Kentucky boy accidentally killed his 2-year-old sister with his "My First Rifle" last year.)
– With an official count of 7,041,000 signups under ObamaCare—a number expected to grow as final tallies are made—President Obama enjoyed what both ABC and NBC called a "victory lap" in the Rose Garden today. "Many of the tall tales have been debunked," he said. "There are still no death panels. Armageddon has not arrived." The president said he doesn't understand why so many were "so mad about the idea of people having health insurance," but they better get over it, because the law is working "and it's here to stay." Another person who used the term "victory lap" was John Boehner, but he did so in criticizing Obama for celebrating a law that "continues to harm the American people," reports the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, Dave Weigel at Slate dubs "Confused Arkansas Guy" as the newest ObamaCare victim. That's thanks to a new ad funded by the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity group in which a man complains not that his policy has been canceled, but that it's now surrounded in a confusing "haze" because of the new law. "It was taken away from us, or it was given back to us, or it was taken," he says. A main target is Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor.
– Voters have approved same-sex marriage in Washington state after a tight vote, meaning marriage-equality advocates won all four of their Election Day battles: Maine and Maryland backed gay marriage, while Minnesota nixed a constitutional ban on such unions. Opponents conceded yesterday in Washington: "With additional results showing that we have not closed the gap, it now appears clear that Referendum 74 will be narrowly approved," says the head of one activist group. "But while we are disappointed, we are not defeated." As of mid-afternoon yesterday, Referendum 74 was leading with 51.96% of the vote, compared to 48.04% against it. The majority of counties voted against the measure, but King County, home to Seattle, helped push it through, the Post-Intelligencer reports. Noted Gov. Christine Gregoire: "Voters stood up for what is right and what is just and said that all Washington families are equal under the law." Nine states now recognize same-sex marriage, though Washington, Maine, and Maryland are the only states where it was won via ballot measure, the AP notes.
– Police this week found the body of Johnny Cash's great-niece stabbed to death and stuffed in a cedar box in the Tennessee home where she lived with her boyfriend and their young daughter, the AP reports. Courtney Cash, 23, and boyfriend William Austin Johnson met up with a friend, Wayne Gary Masciarella, Tuesday night; an altercation reportedly took place in the house. Johnson fled with the 20-month-old baby girl, WSMV reports, and was hospitalized with stab wounds; police found Cash's body Wednesday morning. The scene was "somewhat bloody," the sheriff says. "There was a struggle." Cash's body was inside a chest just inside the front door, and the sheriff says the suspect may have been attempting to hide her body. Masciarella, 27, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder; no motive has been released, but the sheriff says the stabbings were likely "a direct or indirect result of drugs." Courtney Cash was the granddaughter of Johnny Cash's brother Tommy. Her baby was unhurt, the Tennessean reports.
– If misery and politics make strange bedfellows, their Election 2016 love child in the Fourth Estate is a nascent project called Electionland. As Politico reports, major media outlets are abandoning the time-honored practice of scooping each other in order to combine reporting forces in the name of making sure Election Day is as clean as possible. "It’s an entire national newsroom, essentially only looking at problems facing people who vote," says a senior reporting fellow at ProPublica, the nonprofit which gave birth to Electionland earlier this year and was quickly joined by the likes of the New York Times, USA Today, and Google News Lab, as well as scores of more regional media outlets like the Arizona Republic, Miami Herald, and the Virginian-Pilot. Notable among those who declined to partner up: CNN and the Associated Press. Yet it's what Quartz calls "an unprecedented gathering of journalists," and includes newsrooms set up at City University of New York and at 13 journalism schools. On Tuesday, Electionland will watch social media, Google search trends, and data from the Election Protection project, as well as receive reports from reporters on the ground. "This is a really interesting experiment," says a politics editor at USA Today. "I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work. I don’t think any of us do. It seems like the right thing to do." Adds Snopes' managing editor: "It's going to be a sh-- show."
– This has to rank among the best opening statements ever in a study abstract: "Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation." And so researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario set out to study "pseudo-profound bullshit," and who believes it. Reporting in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, the researchers asked subjects to rate quotes that are philosophical, mundane, or simply BS—the latter consisting, in their words, of "seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous"—on a profundity scale. The team also tested participants' cognitive and reasoning ability. The researchers found that those who are "more receptive" to BS have lower "verbal and fluid intelligence" and are more likely to believe in the paranormal, conspiracy theories, and alternative medicine. For actual examples of readily propagated BS, Forbes reports PhD candidate Gordon Pennycook and his team turned to the Twitter feed of Deepak Chopra, highlighting tweets such as "Attention and intention are the mechanics of manifestation." The Telegraph reports the researchers also used this website, which composes made-up pseudo-profound statements like this one: "Growth is the richness of life, and of us." The researchers found that participants assigned the website-generated BS and Chopra's tweets similar profoundness ratings. As for who was good at sniffing out BS, Forbes reports it was those who tend to "have an analytic cognitive style and be skeptical about paranormal phenomena." Chopra's response to it all? He tweeted, "I thank the authors for the study. Their # bullshit is getting me more speaking engagements & new book offers." (Read about another unusual study: Scientists have decided there are 4 kinds of drunks.)
– Doctors Without Borders isn't letting the deadly airstrike on a hospital in Afghanistan slip quietly away. The group Wednesday called the US bombing that killed 12 of its staffers and 10 patients "an attack on the Geneva Conventions" and called for an unprecedented independent investigation, reports Voice of America. "Even war has rules," said its president, Joanne Liu. Her group wants the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission—a panel set up under the Conventions in 1991 but never used—to launch an inquiry. It takes the request of one its 76 signatory nations to launch one, reports CNN. "Governments up to now have been too polite or afraid to set a precedent," said Liu. "The tool exists, and it is time it is activated." The group has called the airstrike a war crime, and Liu says internal investigations by the US or Afghanistan aren't enough. “If we let this go as if it were a nonevent, we are basically giving a blank check to any countries at war." Only when the investigation is complete will the group decide whether to pursue criminal charges, reports Reuters. (On Tuesday, a US general called the airstrike a mistake.)
– Another fatality in the Boston bombings has been identified: The family of 29-year-old Krystle Campbell says she was killed as she and a friend were cheering on another friend who was racing, reports WCVB. "This is just a waste," says her mother. “Everyone that knew her loved her. She was always smiling. You couldn’t ask for a better daughter. She was the best.” Campbell was a restaurant manager, reports the Boston Herald, which notes an especially wrenching detail: Her father was initially told she was alive, but when he got to the ICU, he realized it was his daughter's friend who had survived. Campbell is the second of the three people killed to be identified. The first was 8-year-old Martin Richard, and his father, Bill, released a statement today thanking supporters and asking for privacy, reports WBZ. "My dear son Martin has died from injuries sustained in the attack on Boston. My wife and daughter are both recovering from serious injuries. We thank our family and friends, those we know and those we have never met, for their thoughts and prayers. I ask that you continue to pray for my family as we remember Martin. We also ask for your patience and for privacy as we work to simultaneously grieve and recover. Thank you." The third victim was a grad student at Boston University, but the person's identity is being withheld until the family says it's OK to release, reports USA Today.
– Family members are demanding answers after they say a police officer fatally shot an unarmed 73-year-old man with dementia in Bakersfield, Calif., on Monday. Authorities say they were responding to a call about a man brandishing a gun outside a home around 12:30am when a witness on the scene pointed to Francisco Serna, standing in a neighbor's driveway, reports the Los Angeles Times. Police say an officer opened fire after Serna failed to comply with requests, per KGET; family members tell KERO that eight shots were fired. Serna was pronounced dead at 1:15am, per the AP, but investigators say a search turned up no gun. "My dad did not own a gun," says Serna's son. "He was a 73-year-old retired grandpa, just living life." Rogelio Serna adds his father had been showing signs of dementia since last year and police had previously visited his home—on the same block where the shooting occurred—at least twice when a disoriented Serna activated a medical alarm. His condition appeared to have worsened in the last month, Rogelio Serna says. His father had difficulty sleeping and sometimes walked late at night to fatigue himself before bed. "He should have been surrounded by family at old age, not surrounded by bullets," his son says.
– Lawmakers in Washington state are floating a controversial idea to let sports fans bring guns to the stadium. Under the proposed amendment to state code, private entities that operate stadiums would not be able to prevent people with licenses for concealed guns from entering while armed, reports CBS Sports. In this case, the law would cover CenturyLink Field, where the Seattle Seahawks play, and Safeco Field, where the Mariners play. Not on board with the idea? The NFL. “We haven’t seen the proposed legislation but we have a policy forbidding carrying a weapon into NFL stadiums,” the league's vice president of communications tells the Washington Post in an email. As the Guardian notes, "there would be obvious concerns about allow firearms into venues with alcohol and where passions can ignite."
– It hasn't been a good week for the man who calls himself the "eGovernor." First former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush accepted the resignation of PAC CTO Ethan Czahor after a series of offensive tweets by Czahor were uncovered. Now he's under fire for revealing personal info—names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers—of at least 12,000 Floridians, the AP reports. On Tuesday, Bush posted online between 275,000 (the number Bush's spokeswoman provided) and 330,000 (the number an independent audit found) emails he received during the eight years he was governor in what he says was "the spirit of transparency." "Some are funny; some are serious; some I wrote in frustration," he writes on the site. "But they're all here so you can read them and make up your own mind." But a portion of those emails contained the unredacted personal info—as well as intensely personal anecdotes and even requests not to publish the correspondence. Gizmodo notes an email (which contained the sender's full name and email) that said, "Please do not make this email public to anybody. I do not want my privacy violated, especially by the media"; another citizen whose email was posted tells the Daily Dot she was "embarrassed" about an email she had sent about "illegal immigrants." Here's where Florida freedom-of-information laws get tricky: According to the Verge, Bush noted in his emails that "Florida has a very broad public records law" and "your email communications may therefore be subject to public disclosure." But a Florida attorney tells the Verge that SS numbers are "both confidential and exempt" from public disclosure. A spokeswoman for Bush, meanwhile, said in a statement that "this set of emails on our website is an exact replica of the public records on file with the Florida Department of State and are available at anyone's request under Chapter 119 sunshine laws," as per the Washington Post; she also tells BuzzFeed that they're filtering through the emails and redacting personal info.
– With a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it's safe to say that Baby Driver was worth the many years director Edgar Wright put into crafting it. The film focuses on the best getaway driver in Atlanta, who goes by Baby, and happens to want to leave his life of crime behind. The problem is that the crime bosses he runs with aren't keen to let that happen. Some reviews: It isn't just a "brilliant, pulse-quickening gem," but "one of the most entertaining thrill rides of this year, this decade. This century," writes Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times. It features "perfectly timed" action sequences, "one of the most creative and exhilarating car chases you'll ever see," and "spectacular" acting from Jamie Foxx, Kevin Spacey, and Ansel Elgort. Plus it's "crackling with originality," he raves. Moira Macdonald agrees it's a "zippy thrill ride of a movie" and "just what you want a summer movie to be." The highlight is "the way the film marries sight and sound," she writes at the Seattle Times. It's "uncannily choreographed, with gestures and movements timed precisely to the soundtrack's beat" and "dances" in front of your eyes. Wright "turns every one of his protagonist's actions into a signifier of mood, thought and character," writes Justin Chang at the Los Angeles Times, referring to one scene in which Elgort displays "the woozy grace of an under-caffeinated Gene Kelly." Eventually there's a "dark turn" that puts a damper on the fun, but it doesn't take away from the fact that "this is movie craftsmanship and showmanship of a very high order," he says. "Baby Driver has it all: thrills, laughs, sex, nonstop action, a killer soundtrack,” and the list goes on," writes Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. He was especially impressed with the performances. Jon Hamm delivers one "of bracing, nutty perversity," while Elgort gives a "star-making" turn in a "challenging beast of a role." Still, it's Wright who "tops himself with this start-to-finish sensation," he writes.
– Even Conal O'Rourke knows his story might sound convoluted. But the California man hopes documentation and an in-person interview provided to Ars Technica will help prove that Comcast had something to do with him losing his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers after a lengthy battle with the cable company over billing and service issues. O'Rourke has hired a lawyer and has issued an Oct. 14 ultimatum to Comcast—a PWC consulting services client—that requests "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50." His lengthy timeline begins in 2012, when he says he moved to the Golden State and signed up for Internet and TV with Comcast—and everything started going wrong almost immediately. Among O'Rourke's numerous allegations: late bills; charges for and shipments of equipment he didn't order; not receiving the right promotional items; "unworkable" Internet speed; and not hearing back from Comcast employees when he tried to resolve issues. They never even got his name right on the bill, he adds. But the worst repercussion, according to O'Rourke, was getting fired from his job after he started calling Comcast's controller's office. He says via a letter written by his attorney that he was called in to a PWC partner's office and told that Comcast, a "very valuable" client, "was very angry as a result of Mr. O'Rourke’s complaints, and that Mr. O'Rourke was not to speak with anyone from Comcast." O'Rourke alleges after that meeting that he endured a PWC internal investigation and then was fired on Feb. 18. His attorney's letter says O'Rourke was "shocked, humiliated, and ashamed based on the unjustified loss of his job. He sought counseling and was prescribed medication to address his emotional distress." He now has AT&T service at home, and is threatening to sue Comcast if the company does not comply with his demands. (Follow the entire Ars Technica timeline for further details.)
– A Journal of Medical Toxicology study of calls made to poison control centers over the past 12 years finds one herbal supplement to be particularly concerning. Of those calls, the ones with the biggest proportion of serious medical outcomes had to do with yohimbe tree bark extract, NBC News reports. The extract, which comes from an evergreen tree found in Africa, has been used there for centuries to treat various maladies, but it's most popular as a libido booster for both men and women—though there's little evidence of its efficacy. It can cause changes to heartbeat rhythm and even kidney failure in kids. Overall, the study found that between 2005 and 2012 there was a 49.3% increase in calls to poison control centers related to dietary supplements, including vitamins, energy drinks, homeopathic products, herbal medicines, and some hormonal treatments, Ars Technica reports. The senior author of the study notes that products classified as supplements aren't considered drugs, and thus don't go through the FDA approval process (and may not be stored in childproof containers). In the case of yohimbe, the FDA doesn't recommend its use, as it's easy to overdose. Even the recommended dosage can lead to problems such as high blood pressure and rapid heartbeat, and overdose can lead to seizures and even death. The study found 1,818 cases of yohimbe exposure reported between 2002 and 2012, 78% of them in children. Of all the cases, 512 were serious; 3.2% of patients were admitted to a critical care unit, and one died. "Sometimes, parents don't think of keeping dietary supplements away from their kids, because they're not medicines prescribed by the doctor. People think of them as natural," another lead author tells CNN. "But they need to be treated as if they were a medicine. Don't leave them out on the counter. Keep them out of reach." (This herbal "detox" sent a woman to the ER.)
– It's hard to imagine an attempt at heroism going worse than the one Kristopher Oswald attempted Sunday. The 30-year-old Walmart employee was taking a lunch break in his car at around 2:30am (he worked as an overnight stocker), when he heard a woman screaming for help and saw a man on the hood of her car. He approached and asked if the woman needed help, and the man lunged at him, he tells WXYZ. Oswald got on top of his attacker, only to be jumped from behind by two other men. Police came to his rescue soon thereafter. But the last blow landed later when Walmart fired him over the incident. A company spokesman tells the AP that they fully understand that he was trying to help, but that he violated Walmart's anti-violence policy. Oswald was stunned. "The last thing I expected was to not have a job," he says. "I don't even know what to put on an application about all this. How do I say this ended?"
– Positive news is hard to come by when it comes to the mudslide that wiped out a Washington state community, but footage is making the rounds today of a helicopter crew rescuing a 4-year-old boy from the muddy wreckage. Jacob Spillers was home with his two sisters, age 5 and 2, his stepfather, and his 13-year-old half-brother when the slide hit. The home was destroyed, and all were trapped inside, according to the Seattle Times. Everyone except Jacob is still missing; the boy escaped because he was on the second floor. "Jacob told me he got out when nobody else was able to get out," his half-brother's father says. Jacob's mother, however, is alive and well, because she wasn't home at the time. The footage was shot Saturday, the day the slide hit; no survivors have been found in the days since. Other heartbreaking tales from survivors: Gary "Mac" McPherson, 81, survived the landslide—even as it claimed his wife of 46 years, Linda, who was sitting right next to him, the LA Times reports. McPherson says he awoke sitting in the same chair, now crushed, with a ceiling beam across his lap, his house having been pushed 150 yards away. "He was able to dig a hole and see the sky," his daughter says. "The whole time, he was calling for my mom ... but she never responded." US Navy Cmdr. L. John Regelbrugge III's body was found by his two brothers yesterday morning, his sister-in-law tells the Seattle Times. The 32-year veteran's remains were alongside his dog's. "His brother Greg put a work shirt over him. They said he had massive injuries, so at least he didn't suffer." His wife was found a short time later.
– Sarah Palin yesterday vehemently reiterated her controversial criticism of "death panels" that she is convinced are part of health reform, reports Huffington Post. "If we have our health care paid for by the bureaucracy, depending on our health condition, depending on our age, we're going to be subject to bureaucrats deciding, in panels and commissions—just like they do overseas—who will be worthy of receiving the health care that government is going to provide," Palin says in the first of a two-part interview with Sean Hannity. "That is the death panel that I've referred to, and I won't back off on criticizing that aspect of the health care bill. It's a scary situation for us to be in. We can't give up. We have to be more vigilant than ever." Palin surmised the existence of "death panels"—a phrase coined by her—from optional end-of-life counseling to be paid for by Medicare mentioned in versions of the health care bill. The creation of death panels was recently named the No. 1 lie of the year by the St. Petersburg Times.
– Donald Trump is set to take the oath of office Friday, but the AP reports that on Sunday, an Army band member stood in for the soon-to-be 45th president during an inauguration dress rehearsal at the Capitol. Band vocalist Greg Lowery—a 53-year-old sergeant major—says his role was to "look the part as much as possible," and he says he bought a red tie for his assignment. "I believe he's much handsomer than I but, I'm honored to be a part of this," Lowery told WUSA9 earlier. Another band member, Sara Corry, was standing in for Melania Trump, a native of Slovenia. The Army specialist is from Capistrano Beach, Calif. The goal of the rehearsal was to practice events so everything goes off as flawlessly—and on time—as possible for the real thing Friday. The military foursome chosen to stand in for Trump and Pence and their respective wives weren't picked so much for their looks as they were for their height, notes WUSA9. "It's crucially important because the escorts to the president and first lady will need to know their route. So they'll need to rehearse escorting someone and they'll need to set the heights of the microphones and the lighting, the camera angles to make sure that everything's perfect for the day of the inauguration so that all goes without a flaw," says Neil Ewichiw, who's standing in for Mike Pence.
– A Boston park ranger suffered life-threatening injuries after being stabbed on the Boston Common this afternoon, reports the Boston Globe. Another ranger was injured in the attack inside what the AP calls the nation's oldest public park. Police say a homeless man with a "very violent, assaultive" history lunged at the pair with a knife when they approached him as he sat by a statue. Authorities identified the suspect as Bodio Hutchinson, 34. The rangers haven't been identified. The more seriously injured one, who was stabbed in the abdomen, is 46. The other is 23. Police said witnesses followed the suspect and helped identify him with cellphone video. Officers found the knife believed used in the attack in a pond.
– A Muslim man beaten by a mob that accused him of transporting cows for slaughter has died in western India, police said Wednesday, in the latest violence by Hindu vigilante groups enraged over treatment of the animal they consider sacred. Pehlu Khan died late Tuesday of injuries sustained when he and 14 other men were brutally beaten three days earlier in Rajasthan state, police said. The men had bought the dairy cows at a cattle fair and were taking them home in neighboring Haryana state when the mob stopped the trucks, pulled out the men, and beat them, said the duty officer at the police control room in Behror town, where Saturday's attack took place. Indian television channels broadcast video of the men being beaten with sticks and iron rods, the AP reports. No arrests have been made. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, took office in 2014, hard-line Hindus have been demanding that India ban beef sales—a key industry for many within India's poor, minority Muslim community. There has also been a sharp rise in the activities of self-styled Hindu cow-protection groups that stop trucks on highways and attack anyone transporting bovine animals. Rumors of beef eating by Muslims have sparked violence in several places in northern India. About two years ago, a man was beaten to death by a mob over rumors his family had eaten beef, and two others were killed for allegedly transporting cows for slaughter. In many Indian states, the slaughtering of cows and selling of beef is either restricted or banned. The BBC reports that Gujarat state recently enacted the nation's toughest laws on the matter—slaughtering cows there is now punishable by life in prison.
– Facebook held a major press event today, but kept the media guessing about what it would be unveiling. The answer was what Mark Zuckerberg described as the "third pillar" of Facebook: Graph Search. Basically, the idea is to allow people to search for people, places, and things to do through their networks, the official announcement explains. For example, if you were trying to set up a Game of Thrones viewing party, you might search for "friends in [your town] who like Game of Thrones." Going out? Search "movies my friends like." Dating? Search "friends of friends in [your town] who are single." The system will be "privacy aware," Zuckerberg said, so "you can only search for content that has been shared with you." It will also integrate Bing results, broadening the kind of information it can find—though at one point Zuckerberg added that he "would love to work with Google." The system is being rolled out as a limited beta release starting today. Right now, Zuckerberg says there are no plans to monetize the feature, though he said it "could potentially be a business over time." Some instant reactions: Farhad Manjoo: "This is the most natural-language search I've ever seen. It's a completely different paradigm from searching Google. Phrases, not keywords." Mike Isaac: "Google built web search first, then tried to slap Google+ on top of it for personalization. Facebook taking the backwards approach." (See more from Isaac here.) Henry Blodget: "I don't see how Facebook cashes in with this thing. Search could coin it for them. This, as executed, is just another feature." The stock market: Shortly after the rollout, Facebook's stock was down 2%, according to the Wall Street Journal.
– Derrick Deanda saw a van on its side after a rollover crash in Elk Grove, California, broke windows to free the father and three kids trapped inside, and then ... got billed $143. "I pulled up right as it happened," Deanda recalls to CBS Sacramento of the September 2015 incident. "There was a guy standing inside the van, because it was on its side, holding a 2 year-old infant." After paramedics arrived, they briefly checked over Deanda, who had a small cut from breaking the glass, checking his pulse and giving him a bottle of water. That's why, weeks after the crash, he got a bill in the mail for a "first-responder fee." "We’re obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing, the same everything, for every patient we encounter," explains deputy fire chief Mike McLaughlin. "I asked the paramedics for a bottle of water to clean my hand off because I had a small scrape on my hand they ask me questions and they consider that an assessment on me," Deanda wrote on Facebook, per the Daily Mail. McLaughlin says the fire department wants to "make it right" and waive the fee, but that hasn't happened yet, and Deanda plans to formally appeal. He also says the fee sends the wrong message: "Why would I want to stop to help somebody if I’m going to get a bill for $150?" The family members he helped are all OK.
– Scientists monitoring ice loss in Antarctica have chilling news: The melting rate has accelerated alarmingly and the ice sheet is now shedding more than 200 billion tons a year, according to a study involving 88 scientists published in the journal Nature. The researchers say the rate of ice loss has tripled over the last decade and the melting ice sheets are now pushing up sea levels around the world by around a half-millimeter every year, reports the BBC. Antarctica was losing around 49 billion tons of ice a year in the mid-1990s, which went up to an average 219 billion tons a year between 2012 and 2017, the study found. The researchers, who used satellite data going back more than 25 years, say most of the melting ice comes from the West Antarctic sheet, parts of which are in a "state of collapse"—and modest ice growth in the East Antarctic is nowhere near enough to offset it. "The increasing mass loss that they’re finding is really worrying, particularly looking at the West Antarctic, the area that’s changing most rapidly," University of Waterloo glaciologist Christine Dow tells the Washington Post. "And it’s the area that we’re most worried about, because it’s below sea level." Antarctica has lost a total of around 3 trillion tons of ice since 1992 and will be contributing more and more to sea level rise if the current trend continues, warn researchers, who say climate change is the only plausible explanation for the ice loss. "I think we should be worried. That doesn't mean we should be desperate," says study co-author Isabella Velicogna of the University of California Irvine, per the AP. "Things are happening. They are happening faster than we expected."
– Police are searching for a man who killed a Texas woman in an apparent road-rage shooting in Arlington on Wednesday. Police say Brittany Daniel, 26, was shot while driving on Interstate 30 about 7pm, reports the Dallas Morning News. Daniel's father tells WFAA that his daughter was dropping off coworkers from her housekeeping job when a car began swerving around her. A passenger in Daniel's vehicle says a male passenger in a small car with tinted windows then opened fire. It isn't clear whether Daniel had any interaction with those in the other vehicle before she was shot, but her father says she would likely speak up in such a situation. Police describe the shooter as "a light-skinned black or Hispanic male with dark hair, possibly in his mid-20s," per WFAA. The incident marks the second road-rage-related death of a young Texas woman in the past month. On New Year's Eve, a 20-year-old University of North Texas student was shot and killed while driving in Denton. A 20-year-old US Marine has been arrested in that case.
– Several top executives of a French telecom are slated to stand trial for employees who killed themselves in what prosecutors have called a culture of "moral harassment," the BBC reports. France Telecom's former CEO, Didier Lombard, and six managers are facing $35,000 fines and two years in prison if found culpable of workplace bullying. The alleged harassment occurred after France Telecom was privatized and executives tried restructuring the company in 2006, partly by slashing 22,000 jobs and retraining thousands of others. "I'll get them out one way or another, through the window or through the door," Lombard told top managers in 2007. The apparent fallout was brutal, with at least 19 workers killing themselves (union reps say it was 35) and one taking his life during a staff meeting, Sky News reports. One employee fatally set himself on fire in an office parking lot in 2011, the BBC reported at the time, and a female worker attempted suicide after hearing she would be transferred for the third time. But French Telecom, now called Orange, plans to dispute the charges. "I forcefully reject that plans that were essential to the survival of the company could have been the cause of the human tragedies cited by the complainants," Lombard wrote when the harassment probe began in 2012, reports the Financial Times.
– A former Indiana University student charged with raping two women will get off with a year of probation and one day in jail, WXIN reports. John Enochs took a plea deal and was sentenced Thursday, pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery. According to the New York Daily News, it's unclear why prosecutors decided to drop the rape charges—felonies punishable by up to 16 years in prison—against Enochs. But that didn't stop the sentence from immediately being compared to the infamously lenient one issued against Stanford swimmer Brock Turner earlier this month. A woman says she was at an April 2015 party at the Delta Tau Delta fraternity when she went inside to use the restroom, WISH reports. She says the next thing she remembers is being naked and alone with an unknown man having sex with her. She says she told him to stop multiple times, but he wouldn't. She suffered a laceration to her genitals in the attack. Authorities say security video showed Enochs enter the room with the victim and leave 24 minutes later. Police found a similar case from 2013, and that victim agreed to work with authorities; DNA evidence, eyewitness statements, and IDs from the women led in September to the two rape charges against Enochs. Indiana University has been criticized for how it handles sexual assaults on campus and currently has three Title IX complaints against it. (Some Aussie cadets claim they were forced to rape each other.)
– It was a mission-critical element: the size of NASA astronauts' manhood. Seriously. The Houston Chronicle resurrects the fascinating historical tidbit by way of the Science Channel's Moon Machines documentary series, in which engineer Donald Rethke explained the very precise nature of early space diapers. The Maximum Absorbency Garment system, donned by Gemini and Apollo astronauts, featured one very specific element: a sleeve likened to a condom with a hole at the tip that enabled the men to urinate into a pouch with a one-way valve in their suits. Three sleeve sizes were available, small, medium, and large. And astronauts couldn't fib, explains Rethke. If they decided to order the next size up, the sheath wouldn't fit snugly, and liquid could potentially leak out, causing damage. To make the process a little less embarrassing, the sizes were later renamed: large, gigantic, and humongous. Motherboard notes that the urination issue was first brought to the fore by Alan Shepard, who spent hours in the Freedom 7 capsule in advance of a quick 15-minute "suborbital hop." Denied permission to leave the capsule, he opted to pee in his suit—forcing Mission Control to turn off his biomedical sensors until the flow of oxygen in the suit dried the pee, allowing the sensors to be switched on. Today's astronauts enjoy actual restrooms, though MAG systems are provided to astronauts who are operating outside space vehicles. (Other unusual NASA history: A scientist "stole" a satellite from the agency in 1983—and is ready to give it back.)
– South Korea welcomed Pope Francis today with flowers and a red carpet, as the pontiff kicked off a five-day visit in which he called for peace on the divided peninsula. North Korea, on the other hand, shot off rockets. Pyongyang fired five short-range projectiles off its east coast, including three around the time of the pope's arrival—though none endangered his plane, the Wall Street Journal reports. On his first Asian tour since becoming pope, Francis also marked another first: He made a speech in English, the AP notes. "Quiet listening and dialogue" must replace "mutual recriminations, fruitless criticisms, and displays of force," he said. Though 10 North Korean Catholics were invited to attend Pope Francis' upcoming "reconciliation" mass in Seoul on Monday, the invitation was declined, officials say. Then again, a UN Human Rights Council report this year said Christians "were prohibited from practicing their religion and were persecuted," the BBC notes. The Vatican didn't extend an olive branch only to North Korea, however. In what the Church called "a sign of detente" with Beijing, Francis was allowed to fly through Chinese airspace on his way to South Korea and sent a telegram of prayers to President Xi Jinping as he did so.
– General Mills is voluntarily recalling 10 million pounds of flour after 38 people across 20 states contracted E. coli, Food Safety News reports. The E. coli cases were reported between Dec. 21, 2015 and May 3, 2016. The recall includes Gold Medal, Signature Kitchens, and Gold Medal Wondra flour sold at Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Shaws, Jewel, United, Randalls, and Acme. According to Reuters, about half of those diagnosed with E. coli reported cooking with flour before becoming sickened. About half of those people said they'd used a General Mills brand of flour. It's possible some of those diagnosed with E. coli had eaten raw batter or dough, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. General Mills says it's recalling the flour "out of an abundance of caution." No E. coli has been found in any of its products or facilities. And the company hasn't had any consumers contact it directly about its products making them ill. “We felt it was important to not only recall the product and replace it for consumers if there was any doubt, but also to take this opportunity to remind our consumers how to safely handle flour,” the Star Tribune quotes the president of General Mills’ baking division as saying in a statement. Specifics of the recall can be found here.
– The drama over Taco Bell's meat-or-not just keeps getting better and better. After issuing a statement arguing that its meat was, in fact, meat, it has released another statement that attaches a number to that proclamation: "Our seasoned beef recipe contains 88% quality USDA-inspected beef." And that approach is just like mom's! Writes President Greg Creed, "When you make chili, meatloaf or meatballs, you add your own recipe of seasoning and spices to give the beef flavor and texture, otherwise, it would taste just like unseasoned ground beef." And he breaks down the remaining 12%, notes the Consumerist: 3%-5% each of water, spices, and "other ingredients" like oats, starch, and sugar. Click for more fast-food-ingredient drama—did you know McDonald's Fruit and Maple Oatmeal contains no maple?
– NYPD cops better watch it when they get tough with Occupy Wall Street protesters from now on, because the Marines are coming—to help protect the demonstrators. "I'm heading up there tonight in my dress blues," announced a Marine veteran in a message reposted by another anti-war vet on his Facebook page. "So far, 15 of my fellow Marine buddies are meeting me there, also in uniform. I didn't fight for Wall Street. I fought for America." The vet adds that his "true hope is that we, as veterans, can act as a first line of defense between the police and protesters. If they want to mace them, they will have to get through the effing Marine Corps first. Let's see a cop mace a bunch of decorated war vets." Marines and other vets have already been spotted in the growing movement. A photo posted on a protest tweet shows two Marines recently in an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. One holds a sign reading: "Second time I've fought for my country. First time I've known my enemy." The 1971 Army Infantry vet who reposted the Marine's message said he plans to be at the anti-corporate demonstration planned in Washington with "hundreds of my fellow veterans." Protests are planned throughout the week in New York and several other cities. (Click to see which celebrities are voicing their support.)
– It’s a thankless job adapting a literary darling like The Road, and, sure enough, director John Hillcoat hasn’t gotten much thanks. Critics have mixed feelings about the bleak post-apocalyptic film. Here’s what they’re saying: Despite good acting, the film is merely adequate, “an honorable attempt at filming an unfilmable book,” writes Kenneth Turan of the LA Times. “To do more than horrify and depress us, The Road is in need of a finer sensibility.” A devoted Cormac McCarthy fan, Roger Ebert wrestles with his review. “It is powerful, but for me lacks the same core of emotional feeling,” he writes. “I'm not sure this is any fault of the filmmakers.” The movie can only “dully visualize horrors the best writers hint at,” says Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. Still, it’s a “welcome rebuke to the happy-face apocalypse of 2012.” “The Road isn't a masterpiece,” writes Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer. But it stuck with him, “its images of dread and fear kicking around like such a terrible dream.”
– President Trump was pleased with his Supreme Court nominee's performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, tweeting that Brett Kavanaugh "showed America exactly why I nominated him." Politico described the mood of Trump and his aides as "ebullient." Trump watched Kavanaugh's opening statement (which Politico calls "combative") and was pleased, an official said. "I think [Kavanaugh] studied the way people around Donald Trump have been treated, and he figured out a way to prevail," the official said. A source speaking to CNN during the hearing summed it up: "The only way to earn respect in Trumpworld is to brawl. And [Kavanaugh] is brawling." Following the hearing, three Republican senators (Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Jeff Flake) and a Democratic one (Joe Manchin) met privately in an office at the Capitol, CNN reports, noting that the three Republicans are the wildcards for whether Kavanaugh will be confirmed.
– Wired says it has uncovered "the strongest evidence yet of Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity." Nakamoto, the alias for the creator of Bitcoin, has never been unmasked publicly, but Wired's Andy Greenberg and Gwern Branwen name Australian Craig Wright, 44, as the most likely candidate. "Either Wright invented Bitcoin, or he's a brilliant hoaxer," they write. Australian police seem to be believers: They raided Wright's home in Sydney on Wednesday, reports the New York Times. Wired notes that Wright—founder of supercomputing firm Cloudcroft, per Gizmodo—blogged about releasing a "cryptocurrency paper" a few months before the Bitcoin white paper was revealed in November 2008, though that post was edited in 2013. He also used an encryption key linked to satoshin@vistomail.com. Nakamoto used satoshi@vistomail.com to introduce the white paper. Wright, who owns at least $60 million in Bitcoin, also has access to 1.1 million Bitcoins worth $605 million—the same amount attributed to Nakamoto. "I am not from the bloody USA! Nor am I called Dorien [sic]," Wright wrote in a leaked email sent the same day Newsweek claimed American Dorian Nakamoto as Bitcoin's inventor. Leaked transcripts from meetings with Wright's attorneys in February 2014 also quote him as saying: "I did my best to try and hide the fact that I've been running Bitcoin since 2009 … By the end of this I think half the world is going to bloody know." Then, in an odd interview at the Bitcoin Investor Conference, a moderator asked Wright how he first learned about Bitcoin. "Um, I've been involved with all this for a long time," he said after a long pause. "I—try and stay—I keep my head down." After sending an encrypted email to Wright suggesting he was Nakamoto, Wired received this response: "You seem to know a few things. More than you should." With a verified identity, Nakamoto could be nominated for a 2016 Nobel Prize, per CoinReport. (Click for more from Wired.)
– A big court ruling this afternoon sets up Michigan to become the 18th state to allow gay marriage. A federal court judge struck down the state's 2004 ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, reports the Detroit Free Press. The judge sided with lesbian plaintiffs April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, who want to marry and adopt each others' children. (All three are adopted kids with special needs.) The couple filed suit in 2012, and today's ruling also strikes down the state's ban on adoption by same-sex couples, reports the Detroit News. Unlike judges in similar cases, US District Judge Bernard Friedman did not stay his ruling pending appeal. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette filed an emergency request to have the ruling put on hold, and he's still awaiting a decision on that from the 6th Circuit Court. In the meantime, gay couples are free to wed. (Update: Some have begun doing so already.)
– All flights to Libya's main international airport have been suspended while rival militias battle for control of the facility. In Tripoli's worst violence since November, at least seven people have been killed and dozens injured in battles between militia members from the Zintan region, who have controlled the airport since the fall of Moammar Gadhafi, and fighters believed to be from the city of Misrata, Al Jazeera reports. Witnesses reported hearing explosions and anti-aircraft gunfire coming from the airport early yesterday. According to witnesses, Libyan troops fighting with the Misrata militia surrounded the airfield and fired rockets at buildings inside. Civilian aviation authorities say the airport will be closed for at least three days, the AP reports. The latest violence between the militias that fill many security functions in Libya comes as the country waits for the results of last month's elections, which the US fears could lead to more fighting. The US "is deeply concerned by the ongoing violence in Libya and dangerous posturing that could lead to widespread conflict there," a State Department spokeswoman said yesterday.
– LeBron James is taking plenty of flak over tonight's big announcement in the who-does-this-guy-think-he-is vein. (Witness Drew Magary's rant at Deadspin, where he refers to James as a "self-aggrandizing sack of shit" and doesn't think much better of ESPN.) But Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune thinks James hasn't milked this enough. There's clearly a public appetite for this, he argues, but the James camp mobilized too late to truly capitalize on it. Haven't they ever watched The Bachelor? This is like showing only the final rose ceremony. "If James and company had been on top of this, his web site would have tracked his whole courtship process. He could have kept an ad-supported video diary, including behind-the-scenes video of meetings with franchises." Let people scoff. "If news consumers are interested demonstrably in something, far be it for media hoping to remain viable to tell them to go look for it somewhere else."
– After her comments about getting dissed by a racist saleswoman at a chichi Swiss boutique, Oprah Winfrey is, well, trying to be Switzerland—sort of. "I'm really sorry that it got blown up," she said last night. "I purposefully did not mention the name of the store. I'm sorry that I said it was Switzerland." But, while she says "it's not an indictment against the country or even that store," she's not walking back her contention that racism was involved, reports the AP. "It was just one person who didn't want to offer me the opportunity to see the bag." The aforementioned saleswoman denies that racism was even in the same room, reports the Daily Mail. "It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds. I even asked her if she wanted to look at the bag." Further, she says that the brouhaha, which she likens to a "cyclone," has made her feel "powerless." Over at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto dismisses the whole thing, saying, "What Winfrey construes as a racial episode is actually a story about class—a wealthy, privileged celebrity aggrieved by a lowly saleswoman's lack of deference."
– Women aren't the only people who should be doing Kegel exercises, experts say. Studies have found that pelvic floor exercises—long known to help women with childbirth and recovery as well as prevent incontinence—can also help with incontinence, recovery from prostate surgery, and other issues in men, including, possibly, sexual dysfunction. How should men do the exercises? Focus on "the area you sit on when you’re sitting on a horse," one doctor explains to the New York Times, and tighten the muscles you would typically use to stop urinating mid-stream or keep yourself from passing gas. Contract for a few seconds, release, and repeat 10 to 15 times per "workout." Another doctor who wants to convince men to start doing the exercises has gone so far as to help create a pelvic floor exercise system, Private Gym, which includes an instructional DVD and a band with ultralight weights that goes around the penis, in case men want to add a "resistance training" aspect, as the Times puts it. "People do cardio exercises for their heart, and they do strength training and work on their six-pack, but the pelvic floor is neglected," the urologist explains. Though there's little evidence that male Kegels can enhance erections, one doctor calls the exercises "as good as Viagra," and clinical trials have shown they can help prevent premature ejaculation and may help with erectile dysfunction. In other Kegel news, there is now an "activity tracker" meant specifically to keep track of how many Kegel exercises women do, ABC News reports. Yes, the kGoal Smart Kegel Trainer is inserted exactly where you'd assume it would be. (In other male anatomy news, this man claims a hospital shortened his penis.)
– Search teams in Indonesia may have found the main fuselage of the AirAsia plane where most of the remaining victims and the plane's black boxes are expected to be. Authorities found "four big parts of the plane we're looking for," says the official in charge of the search in the Java Sea, reports Reuters. The biggest of the pieces is about 59 feet long and 18 feet wide, reports AP. The pieces have only been detected, not recovered, and divers hope conditions will permit them to reach the objects tomorrow. So far, only 30 of 162 bodies have been recovered, and most of the victims are believed to be still strapped in their seats. Authorities also said today that AirAsia was in violation of its license by flying to Singapore on a Sunday, the day of the crash, reports the Telegraph. As a result, the airline might have its license revoked in Indonesia. There's still no conclusions yet in what caused the crash, but theories continue to center on stormy conditions. "Flight 8501 appears to have been trapped in bad weather that would have been difficult to avoid," says a report by Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency.
– A massive cleanup effort has been ordered on a quietly devastating oil spill that's been contaminating the Gulf of Mexico for 14 years. The Washington Post reports the US Coast Guard has mandated Taylor Energy "institute a … system to capture, contain, or remove oil" from the affected site off the Louisiana coast, infused with up to 30,000 gallons (about 700 barrels) of oil a day since Hurricane Ivan destroyed a company oil platform in 2004, per DOJ estimates. Contractors commissioned by Taylor Energy had previously said the oil spill was minimal, at the most around 2,000 gallons a day. If the company doesn't comply with the Coast Guard's new decree, it could be hit with a fine of up to $40,000 per day. To put it in context, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill dumped 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf before it was capped after 87 days in July 2010; the Taylor spill could be at 3.5 million barrels. The Taylor spill remained hidden from the public by both the company and the Coast Guard for six years after the hurricane. It was discovered only when nonprofits and environmental groups investigating the BP spill came upon oil slicks that didn't appear to be related to that particular incident. Taylor Energy—which contends the oil "sheens" on the surface of the water aren't from leaking wells, but from oil and gas floating up from the oil-heavy seafloor—says full containment of the leak could cost more than $1 billion, the Times-Picayune reports. Still, "the time to clean this up was 14 years ago," a rep for the Gulf Restoration Network says. "Taylor Energy has shown nothing but negligence all this time." (The largest tanker oil spill in three decades happened earlier this year.)
– Kathleen Dawn West described herself as a full-time wife and mom on Facebook but lived another life on other social media platforms, calling herself an exhibitionist and posting risque photos with a chance for subscribers to see sexier images for $15.99 a month. The 42-year-old's partially nude body was found dead outside her Alabama home, and authorities are now faced with a question: Did West's online activities play a role in her death? Police have classified West's death as a homicide, but they haven't said how she died. No charges had been filed by Friday, six days after she died. But the mysterious nature of West's death—she was found dead early Jan. 13 in the quiet bedroom community of Calera, a town of 14,000 people about 35 miles south of Birmingham—has people buzzing. At least two Facebook groups with more than 2,200 members total have been created to discuss the case (Gizmodo digs into their theories). West posted photos of her husband and daughter on her own Facebook account, but seemed like a different person on other online accounts, reports the AP. With a personal description that included "exhibitionist," West had a private Instagram account under the name Kitty Kat West, reports Al.com, with nearly 52,000 followers that linked to a paid site that featured adult content and "naughty fun." Some of the images were included on a site for "mature hotties." Initially, West just tweeted links to a site where she sold clothing items, including dresses, coats, shoes, and kid's clothing. The feed took a sharp turn Aug. 11, when she tweeted: "Happy Frisky Friday - Let's get this party started," with a link to the pay-per-view site. The posts continued until the morning before her death. The AP has more.
– As the US wound down its operations in Iraq this week, it transferred its last remaining detainee over to Iraqi authorities, reports the Los Angeles Times. The move was a controversial one because Ali Musa Daqduq is accused of being a Hezbollah operative behind a 2007 Iraqi raid that resulted in the deaths of five US soldiers. Critics—especially Republicans—wanted him transferred to Gitmo, but Iraqi authorities refused to let him out of the country, explains the Hill. "This failure to keep a committed murderer of Americans in US custody sends exactly the wrong message to our allies and enemies in the region,” said a statement from John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham. Their fears that he'll get soft treatment may come true: The AP reports today that he will be prosecuted in Iraq only for the relatively minor charge of using a forged passport to enter the country. However, the US promises to press the case, and it's possible further charges could come.
– British police have warned about people in clown outfits acting suspiciously and sometimes wielding knives as they follow people. The warning Saturday follows a string of incidents in recent days in an apparent effort to copy clown-related threats in the United States, the AP reports. Police in Gloucestershire said there have been six reports of clowns acting suspiciously and sometimes in a threatening way. Police say no arrests have been made because the people dressed as clowns have left the scene before police arrived. The incidents in Gloucestershire followed earlier reports of clown-related disturbances in other parts of Britain. Police said a masked man with a knife jumped out and threatened children in Durham on Friday and that several people dressed as clowns chased a young boy the day before in Suffolk. "We are aware of the current trend in America of people dressing up as clowns, which has reached the UK and received some publicity in the media," a Cheshire police spokesperson tells the Manchester Evening News. "While we appreciate Halloween is just a short time away, scaring people—especially children and vulnerable people—in this way is completely unacceptable and could constitute an offense." (Police in Utah say you can't shoot clowns just for being dressed as clowns.)
– Chelsea Lately ended its seven-year run last night, and Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Aniston, and Mary McCormack stopped by to stage an "intervention" for their close friend, E! reports. Ever since becoming friends with Handler, "the closest I get to a vegetable is the potato, in potato vodka," McCormack said, while Aniston complained about Handler's "foul-smelling body." And then Bullock, reading from a letter: "Dear George, your practical jokes are annoying. Oh sorry, I copy-and-pasted this format from my Clooney intervention." Also on hand were Ellen DeGeneres—who, like Bullock once did, confronted a naked Handler in the shower—and even Handler's ex, 50 Cent, who performed his new song. At the very end of the show, dozens of stars came onstage to sing "Goodbye to E!," People reports. Over at the Daily Beast, Kevin Fallon calls Handler's final moments onscreen "one last middle finger": "'I'll see you on Netflix!' she bellowed, plugging her new outlet while still on-air on the one that made her a star."
– Advertisers aren't flocking back to Rush Limbaugh since he apologized to a Georgetown law student for calling her a "slut." In fact, another company is yanking its commercials from the right-winger's radio program. "Mr. Limbaugh’s recent comments went beyond political discourse to a personal attack, and do not reflect our values as a company," said a statement from online florist ProFlowers, which became the seventh advertiser yesterday to yank its ads. ProFlowers was the target of a petition drive urging the company to stop advertising with Limbaugh after he called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute when she spoke out in favor health coverage for birth control, reports the Los Angeles Times. Quicken Loans, Sleep Train, Sleep Number, Citix Systems, Inc., Carbonite, and LegalZoom also yanked their ads. The CEO of Carbonite, a company that provides backup systems for computer files, said the firm would not renew its advertising, despite Limbaugh's apology. “No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady," said CEO David Friend. "Mr. Limbaugh overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising. We hope that our action will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”
– There's not fact checking, and then there's ... not even using your brain. A newscast on Bay Area Fox affiliate KTVU apparently fell for a (racist and offensive) joke, incorrectly reporting that the pilots of the plane that crashed at San Francisco airport were named "Sum Ting Wong," "Ho Lee Fuk," "Bang Ding Ow," and "Wi Tu Lo," SF Weekly reports. The network later apologized, but said an NTSB official in Washington had "confirmed" them. It wasn't exactly an official. Per the NTSB: "Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft." The kicker, as Mediabistro notes, is that KTVU had just been boasting about its "100% accurate" coverage of the disaster earlier this week.
– A court case out of England is pretty awful on all fronts: A judge sentenced a 23-year-old woman to 14 weeks in jail because she put her kitten in the microwave as punishment, reports the BBC. The 4-month-old cat initially survived the minute-long ordeal but died what vets said was probably a terrible death within two hours, reports Metro. And what did it do to deserve the punishment? The cat's owner, Laura Cunliffe, found her goldfish on the kitchen floor in pieces. "This was an act of utterly horrendous cruelty on your part on an animal that, as far as I could see, had come to trust you and rely on you," said the judge in Barnsley. What's worse is that Cunliffe has a history of "psychotic depression," and a family member shouted, "She hasn't a clue," as she was being led away. Cunliffe set the microwave for 5 minutes but realized her mistake after a minute, removed the cat, and tried unsuccessfully to cool it down with water, reports the Irish Independent. The judge banned her from having pets for the rest of her life.
– There’s a new public option in town: free wireless from Google for the holidays. The search giant has partnered to provide WiFi gratis in 47 airports nationwide from now until the middle of January; the generosity even extends to in-flight access on continental Virgin flights, PC World reports. Google would probably like to spread its beneficence across the entire nation, but its partnership with the likes of Time Warner and Boingo doesn’t allow universal coverage. That’s all well and good, but careful readers note that some pretty important national hubs—New York, DC, Chicago—fall outside Google’s range. Enter Microsoft. The software giant and Google nemesis is also in the free-holiday-wireless business, teaming with JiWire to cover an estimated 70% of airports, according to the Atlantic. All you have to do is perform one Bing search for the goodies. Give a hand to the rivals for turning even snow delays into an ad war.
– An ex-money processing manager for Brink's Company in Alabama who had access to bags and bags of quarters swapped out coins for beads and made off with nearly $200,000 in 2014, per the FBI. Stephen Dennis, 49, has agreed to plead guilty and pay Brink's back for the money he's accused of stealing from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta while he was working in the armored transport service's Birmingham branch (Brink's has already paid the bank back), NBC News reports. Per a Justice Department press release, Dennis allegedly entered Brink's on a day he wasn't scheduled to work in February 2014, took four of the empty ballistic bags in which quarters are stored (each bag holds $50,000 in quarters), and filled them mostly with beads, as well as with just enough quarters so the coins could be seen in a see-through window on each bag. He's then said to have put the four bags in the coin room and, at some point, stolen 784,000 quarters—about 10,000 pounds' worth, or the weight of a large hippo, per AL.com—worth $196,000. An audit in April of that year found the bags only contained $1,000 each in real currency. "What Mr. Dennis may have thought was a nickel and dime theft was, in the end, the equivalent of a major bank heist," the FBI agent in charge of the case says in the release. "Now, he will be a convicted felon who must repay all the stolen money." The US attorney for the Northern District of Alabama piles it on with coined phrases, adding, "This defendant may have thought he had quite a haul … but now he carries a heavier load." That load would normally include the maximum penalty for bank theft, which is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, though it's still unclear how Dennis' plea deal will affect his punishment. (A New York parking cop swiped $89,000 in coins from parking meters.)
– Paul Ryan evoked boos and jeers from an audience of retirees in New Orleans today when he promised to repeal ObamaCare—but he continued his argument apparently unfazed, Raw Story reports. "The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal ObamaCare," said Ryan at a meeting of the American Association of Retired Persons, where people reacted by booing and shouting, "No!" Ryan said he "had a feeling there would be mixed reaction,” and went on to claim that ObamaCare would drain Medicare of $716 billion and put seniors at risk. But that only elicited more boos and cries. On a happier note, he earned applause when he talked about his family and mentioned that his 78-year-old mother, Betty Douglas, was in attendance, the Washington Post reports. Ryan's speech was round two of a debate that began earlier in the day when President Obama addressed the crowd by video, reports CNN. "Contrary to what you've heard and what you may hear from subsequent speakers, ObamaCare actually strengthened Medicare," said Obama, who called the $716-billion-cut claim "simply untrue."
– Police in Vermont say a car ended up almost vertical when the driver swerved quickly in response to her GPS ordering her to "turn around." The car was suspended almost vertically on guide wires attached to a utility pole (see a photo here) in Mendon on Wednesday night, reports the AP. Police say 30-year-old Nabila Altahan of Dorchester, Mass., was headed west on US Route 4 when she passed her intended destination and reacted quickly to the instructions, leaving the road at a significant enough speed to propel the vehicle up the wires. She wasn't injured. (This driver followed her GPS into a lake.)
– Round two of the Solar Impulse's toughest leg is under way. After the solar plane's first attempt to cross the Pacific was interrupted a month ago, flight engineers spotted what the Japan Times calls a "possible cloudless stretch." That allowed pilot Andre Borschberg to take off from Japan's Nagoya Airfield at 3:04am local time bound for Kalaeloa, Hawaii. The team announced the plane was to depart only an hour before it did so. Borschberg has since "passed the point of no return," meaning he can't return to Japan if he encounters bad weather, according to the project's website, per the BBC. If successful, the leg will be the longest-duration solo flight in aviation history at 120 hours and the furthest distance flown by a strictly-solar aircraft at 4,900 miles. Prior to starting this leg on a trip around the world, the Impulse 2 had flown about 5,000 miles. Co-pilot Bertrand Piccard is next set to fly the plane from Hawaii to Phoenix before the plane eventually arrives on the eastern seaboard. The Impulse 2 will then attempt an Atlantic crossing, though any further delays could seriously hamper the trip. The team optimally needs to traverse that ocean before the peak of hurricane season in August. The plane had been scheduled to take off from Japan last week, but had to cancel at the last moment due to weather. (Discover how Borschberg will cope during the lengthy Pacific flight.)
– The latest political skirmish over ObamaCare comes in the unlikeliest of places: the world of sports. As in, the NFL has found itself compelled to issue a statement saying it doesn't plan to help the White House promote the plan. How did it come to this? As Talking Points Memo explains, it started when health chief Kathleen Sebelius suggested earlier this week that the Obama administration would enlist the help of the NFL and its star athletes to spread the word about the coming changes. That prompted top Senate Republicans to write a letter to the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NHL, and other leagues strongly suggesting that they butt out because ObamaCare is characterized by such "divisiveness and persistent unpopularity," reports the Washington Post. The NFL's response? "We currently have no plans to engage in this area and have had no substantive contact with the administration" about the new law, says a spokesman. The NHL and MLB also said they had no plans to help. The flap speaks to the coming PR war ahead of the law's 2014 rollout, notes the Post.
– Chris Christie may have a pretty irate nurse taking the Garden State to task over the execution of his mandatory-quarantine policy toward Ebola, but he's standing by it. "I think this is a policy that will become a national policy sooner rather than later," he told Fox News Sunday today, as per Politico. "It was my conclusion that we needed to do this to protect the public health of the people of New Jersey. We have taken this action, and I have no second thoughts about it." Fellow Republican Darrell Issa, meanwhile, says that New Jersey's quarantine—like those in Illinois and New York—is an attempt to compensate for the White House's lack of leadership on Ebola, but probably not the best course. "Science has told us that if someone doesn’t have an elevated temperature or the other later symptoms, that we can rely on them not being contagious," he said. "If that’s true, then immediate isolation of people for 21 days is not the answer. Again, trust matters." Elsewhere on your Sunday dial: National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci: "Asymptomatic (people) do not transmit. That doesn't mean we're cavalier about it, but that means there are other steps (to avoid the) unintended consequences of disincentivizing health care workers." Per the AP: "The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power: Returning American health care workers need to be "treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatized for the tremendous work that they have done."
– The MLB player with the most hits in the league's history should be a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, but that's hard to do when you've been permanently banned from baseball—again. Commissioner Rob Manfred was reportedly set to tell Pete Rose on Thursday he won't lift the permanent ban against Rose that's been in place since 1989, but queries by the New York Times appeared to expedite Manfred's announcement, which he made Monday instead. MLB.com notes Manfred informed Rose, both verbally and in writing, of his decision. The "stark language" of the league's rules dictates "that the penalty for a player or manager who bets on a game in which he has a duty to perform is mandatory, permanent ineligibility," Manfred says in his announcement accompanying the MLB press release. He adds he had instructed staff to gather any new evidence that may have emerged since the 1989 Dowd Report that helped place Rose on the league's ineligible list, based on evidence Rose bet on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds—including bets on his own team. In addition to a polygraph test and a private meeting between Rose and Manfred in September, that new evidence included an incriminating notebook revealed in a June ESPN report that indicates Rose also bet while still playing for the Reds. Manfred notes that during that conversation, Rose had inconsistent stories, made contradictory statements, and couldn't remember important facts from the Dowd document. Another nugget came to light during Manfred and Rose's meeting that appears to have influenced the decision. "Significantly, [Rose] told me that currently he bets recreationally and legally on horses and sports, including Baseball," Manfred notes. Interestingly, Manfred says that while Rose won't be reinstated, that's an entirely different issue than whether he should be eligible for the Hall of Fame, a debate he says "must take place in a different forum."
– What do you do if you're a federal agent who's part of an undercover operation to bust up a booming black-market drug-dealing website? One thing you don't usually do is skim a goodly portion of said site's digital currency into your pockets, but two former federal agents are accused of doing just that during their investigations that eventually led to the 2013 Silk Road sting, USA Today reports. Ex-DEA agent Carl Force and ex-Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges were charged with wire fraud and money laundering in a complaint unsealed today, the New York Times reports. The document for the recent bitcoin probe mentions that both agents were part of a Baltimore-based task force that ended up securing an indictment for Silk Road's "Dread Pirate Roberts," aka Ross Ulbricht. Force, a 15-year DEA veteran who resigned in 2014 when his alleged actions came to light, "stole and converted to his own personal use a sizable amount of bitcoins," the complaint notes, per the Times; he allegedly did so by fabricating online personas, adds USA Today. Bridges allegedly took $800,000 of the investigation's bitcoin under his jurisdiction, dumped it into a Mt. Gox account, then withdrew the funds from the Japanese currency exchange right before he went after the exchange with a seizure warrant; he had been with the Secret Service as a special agent for six years before resigning on March 18. Meanwhile, 25-year-old BitInstant co-founder Charlie Shrem became the first bitcoin felon to report to prison, starting his two-year sentence today at Pennsylvania's USP Lewisburg facility, Fortune notes.
– Heavy shelling was reported today in Aleppo and Damascus, as government forces and rebels both gear up for a major showdown, reports Reuters. The Syrian military is sending convoys of tanks, troop carriers, and other hardware to the vital central cities, leaving rebels in control of much of the countryside. Activists claimed that rebels controlled about half of Aleppo, and, outgunned by the military, they doubt rebels can hold the city, reported the New York Times. Other developments: Rebels are rushing to stockpile munitions in Aleppo, reports the BBC, and setting up checkpoints and snipers even as thousands of residents flee the city. One resident in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus reported heavy shelling in the south of the city, beginning around 7am and continuing for three hours. As government forces pull out of the Kurdish parts of Syria to prepare for the large offensive against the rebels in Aleppo and Damascus, Kurds are using the withdrawal to fly the Kurdish flag, asserting their independence, reports the Guardian.
– The new film Selma avoided quoting Martin Luther King's civil-rights speeches because his family owns the copyrights and has sued over them—and it's all perfectly legal, Politico reports. The MLK estate has successfully sued USA Today, CBS News, and the Emmy-winning documentary series Eyes on the Prize, keeping it out of circulation for years. The Kings also raked in $700,000 over the MLK Memorial in Washington, DC, and have licensed King's speeches for ads by Apple, Mercedes, Chevrolet, and Alcatel. "We never even asked" for the rights, Selma director Ava DuVernay tells the Washington Post. She knew DreamworksSKG owns them for a future Steven Spielberg film, and that "with those rights came a certain collaboration"—ie, estate influence over King's portrayal. Why is it legal? Because King was a private citizen, not a government official, so his speeches and writings were his and passed onto his estate. What's more, Congress has extended copyright protection to the author's life plus 70 years (matching international standards), so MLK's work will become public domain on Jan. 1, 2039. The family has mostly kept quiet about all this, USA Today reports, but one of King's sons, Dexter, has written that "people don't want us, as the heirs, the estate, to benefit ... or for my family to be in any way comfortable." Yet the estate does have limits: It initially demanded $20,000 from Clarence Jones, King's personal attorney and speechwriter, for including the "I Have a Dream" speech in a book—but Jones published anyway, and the estate backed off, the National Review reports.
– Last Tango in Paris was released in 1972 to critical acclaim, but people are now "sick" and "enraged" after a 2013 interview resurfaced in which director Bernardo Bertolucci admitted the infamous rape scene in it was a little too real. In the interview, which was uploaded to YouTube on Nov. 23, Bertolucci said he and Marlon Brando, then 48, decided a stick of butter should be used as lubricant to rape the character of Jeanne without telling actress Maria Schneider, who was then 19. "I had been, in a way, horrible to Maria because I didn't tell her what was going on," Bertolucci said, per the Hollywood Reporter, noting he wanted Schneider to react "as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated." Bertolucci also made similar comments to the Telegraph in 2013, only to then be described as "charming." This isn't exactly breaking news: Schneider, who died in 2011, recounted the scene to the Daily Mail in 2007, saying "even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears" and felt "a little raped both by Marlon and Bertolucci." Brando and Bertolucci were later nominated for best actor and best director Oscars, respectively, for their work on the film, reports USA Today. "I feel sick," Jessica Chastain tweeted Saturday, per the Guardian. Evan Rachel Wood said the admission was "heartbreaking and outrageous," while Chris Evans said Bertolucci and Brando "should be in jail." Anna Kendrick said she "used to get eye-rolls" when she mentioned Bertolucci's comments to people, particularly men. Added Ava DuVernay, "As a director, I can barely fathom this. As a woman, I am horrified, disgusted and enraged by it."
– Republican Rick Scott declared himself the victor in Tuesday's Florida race for a US Senate seat, but it looks like people may have to bite their nails on this one a little longer. Politico reports that the team of his Democratic opponent, incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, sent out an early morning statement noting the vote tally was "not the result Senator Nelson and his campaign had worked so hard for." But the campaign also said that statement didn't mean Nelson was conceding, and later Wednesday morning came another statement from Nelson's camp: "We are proceeding to a recount." Per WESH, Scott's lead was 38,717 votes out of more than 8 million cast—which comes out to a margin that's less than one-half of 1%. In Florida, once the margin dips below that benchmark, a recount is automatically triggered. State officials will reportedly order the recount on Saturday. Scott, currently the governor of Florida, reacted via his spokesman, per Politico: "This race is over. It's a sad way for Bill Nelson to end his career. He is desperately trying to hold onto something that no longer exists."
– For a news report last night commemorating Yom Kippur, a Chicago TV station selected a Star of David as accompanying artwork—except someone picked the absolute worst one possible, USA Today reports. As the anchor talked about the holiday during the broadcast, a graphic appeared of a yellow star with the word "Jude" ("Jew" in German) against a blue-and-white-striped background, which resembled the badge Nazis used to separate Jewish people from the rest of society, the New York Times notes. About half an hour later came the station apology on Twitter: "We are truly sorry for inadvertently using an offensive image in our story. We apologize and deeply regret the error." The station's "extremely embarrassed" GM and news director also posted a statement online noting they "failed to recognize that the artwork we chose to accompany the story contained an offensive symbol" and that they'll be reviewing the graphics-selection process. "Ignorance is not an excuse," they wrote. (Hallmark had to yank "swastika" Hanukkah wrapping paper last year.)
– For 40 days and nights, Noah's ark was said to have housed all variety of creatures—but probably not one like this, who just became the first of its kind to live past a similar 40-day mark, per National Geographic. Lucky the two-faced calf, who lives on a Campbellsville, Ky., farm, is the result of a rare genetic mutation that at first had owners Brandy and Stan McCubbin doing a double-take when she was born in mid-September. "From a distance, I thought I had twins lying together," Stan told WDRB at the time. "Then when I saw her, I was just completely blown away." The McCubbins' 5-year-old daughter named the calf after she heard her mom say the baby was lucky to alive. The BBC explains that two-headed animals like Lucky—a condition called craniofacial duplication, or diprosopus— can be produced in a variety of ways: They can come from a single fertilized egg that never fully separates, be the result of a developmental anomaly in which the head keeps growing until it breaks into two new ones, or emerge when cells that set off head development somehow get moved to the wrong part of an animal's body. Lucky's two middle eyes don't work, she can only walk in circles, and she tends to fall down a lot. She also needs assistance when chowing down—and both her mouths move when she's chewing—but she seems healthy otherwise. "It's something I've never seen before, and I think it's amazing," Stan tells WDRB. Check out a video of Lucky on the move via Caters News. (What appeared to be a two-headed dolphin washed up on Turkey's shores.)
– It has been a bad month to be a train commuter: Canada, France, Spain, and now ... Switzerland, where two commuter trains collided head-on today, injuring 44, four seriously, reports CNN. Local TV says one person is yet to be recovered from the wreckage, the AP reports. The crash happened between the cities of Moudon and Payerne. "We don't know why this crash happened," says a Swiss Federal Railways spokesman, per CNN. "There is currently no train service between these two cities until midnight tonight at least."
– The mysterious explosion at an Iranian military base west of Tehran earlier this month was far more devastating than initially reported, reports the New York Times. Satellite images of the site reveal destruction across a sprawling complex of some dozen buildings. “It was pretty amazing to see that the entire facility was destroyed,” said the author of a report by the private Institute for Science and International Security. “There were only a few buildings left standing." The explosion killed at least 17 servicemen. Iran's military chief of staff said that the blast occurred while researchers were working on weapons capable of delivering a “strong punch in the mouth" to Israel. ISIS experts believe the explosion occurred during a "volatile procedure" involving a new missile.
– Jay Leno has long said he lives off his standup money and takes the millions he gets paid for hosting the Tonight Show and sticks it right in the bank. So the news that Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood broke last night might not sting quite as much for him: One source tells her that Leno took a "tremendous" pay cut, and the LA Times confirms it was indeed "significant." The numbers require some guesswork, but the LAT thinks he went from somewhere between $25 million and $30 million down to about $20 million. Finke's numbers are higher. According to both accounts, Leno volunteered to take the cuts to save jobs, though at least 20 people got layoffs. Why the downsizing? Finke says it's not because of concerns about ratings or ad revenue, but because parent company Comcast is demanding cuts all around. She says the show is still a "cash cow." The LAT, meanwhile, says Leno's prime-time budget never got shaved when he moved back to later hours.
– Michael Cohen's legal woes appeared to deepen Tuesday night with a bombshell release from Stormy Daniels' attorney. According to financial records reviewed by the New York Times and NBC News, a company linked to a Russian oligarch targeted by US sanctions deposited around $500,000 into an account controlled by Essential Consultants, the shell company Cohen used to pay hush money to Daniels before the 2016 election. Michael Avenatti alleges that funds from oligarch Viktor Vekselberg may have "replenished the account" in a series of payments in 2017 after the Daniels settlement, though Columbus Nova, a US affiliate of a Vekselberg company, denies that he was involved in its payments to Trump's personal lawyer, the Washington Post reports. The purpose of the company's payments is unclear. Sources tell CNN that Robert Mueller's investigators have already quizzed Vekselberg about the payments to Cohen's company. Records reviewed by the Times show that around $4.4 million flowed through the Essential Consultants account between its creation weeks before the 2016 election and January this year, including hundreds of thousands of dollars from pharmaceutical firm Novartis, AT&T, and Korea Aerospace. AT&T confirmed the payments late Tuesday, saying Cohen's firm was among those it "engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration," the AP reports. Cohen isn't a registered lobbyist, and while the unusual payments may not have broken any laws, Trump and his attorney "have a lot of explaining to do," Avenatti said in a tweet Tuesday.
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg is going to make some history tonight: She will become the first Supreme Court justice to preside over a same-sex wedding. Ginsburg will conduct the ceremony of her friend, Kennedy Center chief Michael Kaiser, and his partner, economist John Roberts, reports AP. (Yes, she's heard the jokes about the latter's name.) The wedding will take place in a high-profile locale familiar to the opera-loving justice: the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in DC. “I think it will be one more statement that people who love each other and want to live together should be able to enjoy the blessings and the strife in the marriage relationship,” Ginsburg tells the Washington Post. She plans to perform another gay wedding next month. The 80-year-old justice also made headlines recently by making clear that she has no plans to retire anytime soon.
– As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan kicked off over the weekend, so, too, did an ad by a telecom company in Kuwait tackling terrorism. CNN reports on Zaid's three-minute music video, which has so far amassed more than 3.6 million views, showing a suicide bomber being confronted by victims (some of them actual victims of past terror attacks) in the wake of a bus bombing. "You've filled the cemeteries with our children and emptied our school desks," a child's voiceover notes as the man works on his weapon, while others refute him after the act has been carried out. "I bear witness that there is no God but Allah," he tells a busload of dust-covered passengers, to which one man responds, "You who comes in the name of death, He is the creator of life." The terrorist is then driven out by a crowd, with one man singing phrases such as, "Let's bomb delusion with the truth." The Guardian notes TV viewing spikes in Arab communities during Ramadan, as people hunker down at home to fast. The video is earning praise, with one prominent Emirati commentator calling it "a beautiful ad on counter violence and extremism" on Twitter. Yet others were rankled by the fact that terrorism victims were featured (some say it's exploitative) and that an actor played the part of Omran Daqneesh, the child in a now-famous photo out of Syria after his home was hit in an airstrike. "Part of justice for any victim is to expose his killer," one writer notes, pointing out the real Omran wasn't attacked by extremists but by the Syrian regime. Still others say the ad just preaches to the choir and doesn't get to the heart of what drives terrorism. "What's the ad saying? … The criminals … will laugh at us," a Syrian communications expert says. (A US airport's anti-terror efforts.)
– The Washington Post takes a look at the country's surging heroin epidemic by zeroing in on Pennsylvania’s Washington County, a place one local detective refers to as "ground zero" for heroin in the area. Last Sunday, in less than 70 minutes, eight heroin overdoses were recorded in the county of about 200,000 people. By a day later, that number had jumped to 16; by two days later, 25—three of which were fatal. As the Post notes, this period of time wasn't an isolated case but rather "an extreme example of what communities in parts of the country are enduring." In a Florida community earlier this month, 11 people overdosed on heroin in a 24-hour span, WKMG reported; this year, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had seen 44 heroin overdoses by June 5, the Gazette reported; New Jersey saw 781 overdose deaths related to heroin last year, 101.5 reported. Just yesterday, NPR ran a story on Marion, Ohio, a small town whose police chief says that his team sometimes responds to as many as three overdoses in just one hour. One of the reasons heroin is booming: It's cheap—cheaper than the prescription drugs that, for some, start them down the road of addiction. And one of the reasons there are so many overdoses? Nowadays, the drug is even more potent. The US attorney for western Pennsylvania is one of a growing number of prosecutors who aren't interested in jailing users, the Post reports: "If they're using and trafficking, I prosecute them. If they’re just using, they need help," he says. But finding dealers—including any linked to fatal overdoses, who will be charged with homicide—is no easy task, as these days drugs are sold via cellphone or even, with more middle-class people addicted now, in unlikely locations like homes. The county's supervising detective sums up the "out of control" heroin problem: "I'd be glad to have the crack epidemic back." Click for the full Post article.
– Barbies and board games will always have a place in the family rec room, but it's Legos that rule the roost. The Danish toymaker now ranks as the largest toymaker in the world in terms of revenue, beating out competitors Hasbro and Mattel for the top spot with an 11% jump in the first half of the year, reports CNNMoney. The net profits for the company—which once said it has sold about 86 bricks for every person on Earth—were also up 14% compared to the same period in 2013, reports the AP. So why the sudden brick-loving boom? Lego honchos say the wildly successful Lego Movie and related merchandising helped: The movie had grossed nearly $470 million by the end of August, reports the Wall Street Journal. And while competing manufacturers are probably hoping to play catch-up in the months leading up to year's end, execs in the family-owned business are confident they can keep, ahem, building on their momentum. "The majority of Lego sales ... [happen] in a short timespan of a few weeks leading up to the holiday season," the company's CFO says per CNNMoney—right before stating a reminder about the "highly anticipated launch" of the Lego Movie DVD in the second half of 2014. A sequel to the movie is set to hit theaters in 2017, notes the Journal. (Check out the world's largest Lego tower ever built.)
– Fast food isn't making your kids fat—not really. What's truly behind the trend of childhood obesity are the sodas, frozen pizzas, and cookies consumed at home, school, and whenever kids aren't in a McDonald's or Burger King booth—a "Western diet" high in saturated fats and added sugars, according to a new study. Researchers looked at the eating habits of 4,466 American kids, aged 2 to 18, and grouped them based on what they ate when they weren't eating fast food. What they found: Those with the highest rates of being overweight or obese ate a Western diet—even if they ate no fast food; on the flip side, those who were high fast-food consumers but otherwise ate a "prudent" diet were much less likely to be overweight or obese, the Los Angeles Times reports. The more often a child ate at fast food spots, however, the more likely he or she was to follow a similar diet at home. But "just because children who eat more fast food are the most likely to become obese does not prove that calories from fast foods bear the brunt of the blame," one author says, per Red Orbit. In fact, health campaigns targeting fast-food restaurants may be "overestimated" in that they are "not sufficient to reduce child obesity if the remainder of the diet is not addressed."
– Researchers think they've at long last solved, at least partially, the mystery of so-called "flying snakes." The five species of Chrysopelea don't actually fly, but they're impressive gliders, capable of sailing up to 100 feet through the air. Until now, scientists didn't know how they managed it, but now they think they do: As the snakes jump, they flatten out their ribs and contort themselves into an S-shape that sorta kinda resembles a flying saucer, LiveScience reports. "You never find this kind of shape in any other animal flyer; you don't find it in engineered flyers," says one study co-author. "We didn't know if that was a good shape to have." The snake's body develops a curve a little like an airplane wing, the BBC explains, which coupled with its undulating movements generates lift. Researchers hit on the discovery using 3D-printed models in tanks of water, National Geographic reports. But observations of real snakes indicate that they're even better gliders than the model suggested, meaning some aspect of their prowess remains unexplained. (In another recent animal-kingdom discovery, meet the world's new toad.)
– The tax overhaul in the works has drawn controversy over possible changes to 401(k) plans and deductions for homeowners, but another, lower-profile topic has emerged as a sore point. The House plan unveiled last week would eliminate a one-time tax break for families that adopt children. The break can be a substantial one—it's $13,570 in 2017, which can take the sting out of adoption costs that can approach $40,000 if done through an agency, per the Hill. The issue has become a flash point on the right because conservatives equate the credit with supporting pro-life, pro-family values. "Being pro-life means being pro-adoption," tweeted GOP Sen. Ben Sasse. "Congress must remember this as we work through the details of tax reform." Now the Washington Post highlights a different wrinkle: The House's top tax writer has two adopted sons. Rep. Kevin Brady, chair of the House Ways and Means panel, has called his adoptive kids the "biggest blessing," but he defends the credit's elimination. It's "not working," he tells the Post, saying that some families can't claim it because they don't pay enough in taxes or don't itemize. A piece at Vox notes that the credit is indeed "nonrefundable," meaning that parents who don't make enough to owe federal taxes aren't eligible. Those in the middle or upper-middle class, making between $100,000 and $200,000, claim the credit the most. Brady argues that tax overhaul will help all families in a more general sense by, say, increasing the child tax credit. Still, expect the issue to remain contentious. Congress "may end up funding Planned Parenthood while abolishing the adoption tax credit," writes David French in the conservative National Review. "That’s intolerable."
– A couple who spent 17 years trying to conceive finally managed the feat—six times over. A Virginia hospital says sextuplets born May 11 to Ajibola Taiwo, a native of Nigeria, are "thriving." The three boys and three girls were born via C-section, and weigh between 1 pound, 10 ounces, and 2 pounds, 15 ounces, each. It's the first set of sextuplets born at Richmond's VCU Medical Center, which employed a 40-person team in the birth. And it wasn't just an extremely rare occurrence for the hospital: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logged only 24 births involving quintuplets or more among the US' almost 4 million live births in 2015, reports the AP. The Times-Dispatch reports Taiwo was 30 weeks and 2 days along at delivery and was released after a week in the hospital. "I hope for the smallest of my six children to grow up and say, 'I was so small, and look at me now,'" she says. A hospital press release explains that four heartbeats appeared during the couple's first ultrasound in November; it wasn't until January that they learned the four heartbeats were actually six. (This birth story garnered extensive press coverage this month, but for tragic reasons.)
– Rose McGowan has been among the most vocal in speaking up about Harvey Weinstein. Now she's raising her voice about some trouble she's in with the law, and she's amplifying her outspokenness with a sprinkling of profanity. "Are they trying to silence me? There is a warrant out for my arrest in Virginia. What a load of HORSES---," she tweeted Monday, referencing what a Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police Department spokesman tells Deadline is a felony charge against her. That charge apparently involves some of her personal items left behind at Dulles International Airport on Jan. 20 after she flew in from Los Angeles—items cops say contained traces of drugs. "Her personal belongings … tested positive for narcotics," says MWAA rep Rob Yingling. Yingling adds that airport cops have been given a bench warrant for McGowan and that it has been plugged into "a national law enforcement database." The AP notes the MWAA received the warrant on Feb. 1, and cops say they've been trying to touch base with McGowan since so they can get her to make an appearance in Loudon County, Va., to answer the charge. The Washington Post notes that while McGowan hasn't clarified who the "they" is in the alleged silencing attempt, others are piling onto the conspiracy, with one radio host calling it "shockingly transparent retaliation." When writer Ashlee Marie Preston suggested on Twitter that headlines about McGowan's arrest would never have emerged had McGowan taken the $1 million in hush money she alleges Weinstein offered her, the actress retweeted that comment with her own one-word response: "FACT."
– Katy Perry gave a "Roar" to Hillary Clinton in a pre-election concert, and Tuesday night Clinton returned the favor. The ex-presidential candidate showed at UNICEF's Snowflake Ball in New York City, serving as a surprise presenter for the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award bestowed upon Perry, per the Hollywood Reporter. "I cannot tell you how delighted I am to be here to help celebrate … a global megastar, a social media queen with the most Twitter followers in the world—although she's getting some competition—and someone whose powerful voice and creative lyrics remind us when you get knocked down to get back up," Clinton said in a speech that left Perry asking the crowd for a tissue. The Twitter remark seemed to refer to tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump, whom Perry also slightly riffed on when she noted, "I'm happy I've helped highlight the effects of climate change, which is real." The Telegraph notes this is only the second public appearance Clinton has made since the election (the first was at a Children's Defense Fund event in mid-November). And Clinton made it a memorable one, noting "I've gotten to spend time with [Perry] and I know how deeply she cares about making our world a better place" and that "we need champions like Katy now more than ever." Perry, a vocal Clinton supporter in the presidential race and a UNICEF ambassador since 2013, returned the compliment as Clinton left the stage, saying, "I've always had a voice—a singing voice—but I've never had a voice like I've had before. Hillary has lit that voice inside of me, and that light will never go out." The crowd apparently agreed, as it gave Clinton a long standing round of applause, the New York Post reports. (Fans in China blame Clinton's election loss for a canceled Perry concert.)
– The recommendation from the US Preventative Services Task Force that women in their 40s should not get mammograms is not government policy, said the secretary of Health and Human Services. Kathleen Sebelius tried to tamp down some of the controversy that has followed the panel’s decision, asserting that government insurance policies “remain unchanged. I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action," she said. "My message to women is simple. Mammograms have always been an important life-saving tool in the fight against breast cancer, and they still are today," Sebelius said. Her attempt to distance the administration from the task force comes amid criticism from the American Cancer Society and even opponents of Democratic health care reform, notes CNN. "This is how rationing begins," said one Republican congresswoman.
– It's official: NBC has confirmed that it has given Brian Williams "the chance to earn back everyone's trust," but his days as Nightly News anchor are behind him. Instead, Williams will head to MSNBC, reports CNN, where he'll anchor breaking news and special reports, while Lester Holt's interim role on Nightly News will become permanent. Williams faces a challenge with the struggling network, and the New York Times notes that in the months after the Iraq controversy, Williams went from being the 23rd most trusted US celebrity to No. 3,352 in rankings published by research firm Marketing Arm. Insiders tell the Times that it wasn't easy to find a new role for Williams—especially since his interviewing skills are not his strongest point—but the network didn't want him to end up at a competitor. The anchor's tall tales lost him the trust not only of the public, but of many NBC staffers who didn't want him to return at all, sources tell the New York Daily News. The sources say NBC's internal investigation uncovered several other dubious claims from Williams, including a 2011 Daily Show appearance in which he said he was on the ground in Cairo's Tahrir Square during protests—instead of on a balcony overlooking them.
– Hillary Clinton spoke with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at Recode's CodeCon on Wednesday, and she did not hold back. In Vox's view, she spared her campaign but heaped plenty of blame on others, including Russia, the media, and the DNC. "I get the nomination, I'm now the nominee of the Democratic Party," she explained. "I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party," she says, emphasizing the word "nothing." Asked Mossberg, "What do you mean, nothing?" She continued, "I mean, it was bankrupt; it was on the verge of insolvency; its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it, the DNC, to keep it going." Donald Trump, on the other hand, did nothing himself related to data, she said, but inherited a $100 million "tried-and-true, effective" data foundation from the RNC. More: "I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that's not why I lost," Clinton said, per CNBC. "I was the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win." But that's not all. Politico reports she made the case, as she has done in the past, that former FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress was part of her undoing. "The overriding issue that affected the election that I had any control over—because I had no control over the Russians—was the way the use of my email account was turned into the greatest scandal since Lord knows when. This was the biggest 'nothing burger' ever." And yet the media covered it "like it was Pearl Harbor," she said. As for the Russians, "If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to—as we now know—the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages. They were connected to the bots that are just out of control." Vox points out that much of that statement is based on unconfirmed reports. Speaking of the Russians, "I thought it was a hidden message to the Russians," Clinton quipped about President Trump's "covfefe" tweet, reports Politico. "You’ve got all kinds of stuff happening. Why? To divert attention. It’s like 'covfefe'—trending worldwide. Maybe for a minute you'll forget the latest accusations about them conspiring with Russia or their trillion-dollar mathematical mistake in their budget or depriving 23 million people of health care." Mossberg asked Clinton why, if she knew she was going to run, she took on paid speaking engagements from Goldman Sachs. She shot back, "Why do you have Goldman Sachs here?" Replied Swisher, "Cause they pay us." Said Clinton, "They paid me."
– Some thought Serena Williams was being coy when she posted the image last week that announced her pregnancy to the world, then soon after deleted it. But it turns out the tennis star had simply never meant for the picture to go public at all, People reports. The tennis star sat down Tuesday with Gayle King at the TED conference in Vancouver, BC, and revealed, as E! Online puts it, that she's "just like us, well, sorta" when it comes to messing up on social media. "It was an accident," Williams confessed about the baby bump reveal now seen 'round the world. She explained how she's been regularly taking pictures of her pregnancy's progress and saving it for herself, except this time around she hit "Send" instead of "Save." "You press the wrong button and…," Serena explained. Williams isn't taking the goof-up too hard, though, noting that she'd planned on sharing the big news in "five or six more days" anyway. (Williams' note to her unborn baby.)
– Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have become official residents of Splitsville. A New York judge has signed off on the couple's divorce, and the papers ending their five-year marriage have been sealed, meaning any juicy details won't be reaching the public, reports the New York Daily News. "Tom is very happy and relieved that he is moving forward," a source close to the actor tells E! News. "His priority is being a good father, and this settlement will make sure that continues." The deal, reached soon after Holmes left Cruise in June, is believed to include restrictions on their daughter Suri's exposure to Scientology.
– Scientists studying the calls of adult Argentine horned frogs were amazed to discover that the species' larvae also make sounds—screams even, reports the Independent. The tadpole's scream is a "brief, clear and very audible metallic-like sound," say researchers. They believe the distress calls save the tadpoles from being cannibalized by adults of their species, which is known for its willingness to eat anything it can, including other kinds of frogs. This is the first time underwater larvae or any vertebrate larvae have been known to make sounds, the BBC notes. The researchers believe the discovery has wide-reaching implications for the understanding of amphibian behavior. "We have definitely underestimated their abilities," says the lead researcher, who now plans to study how other tadpoles respond to the sound.
– Love Actually fans went nuts when it was announced that a 12-minute sequel would air during the UK's Red Nose Day as part of its Comic Relief special last Friday. The spot doesn't officially air in the US until May, but this being 2017 and all, video snippets and recaps abound. And, well, bad news for those aforementioned fans—many people say the Love Actually bit was not so great. Spoilers ahead: On Cracked, Amanda Mannen writes that the sequel "destroys" the original movie. You find out that Mark apparently hasn't seen his one-time best friend Peter at all in the 13 years since he declared his love for Peter's new bride in the film, then-little-boy Sam never did move on from Joanna and may in fact have creepily followed her to the United States, and Jamie and Aurelia still don't speak one another's languages. Bottom line? "Love actually is more complicated than a slightly overlong Christmas movie, and that's kind of terrifying." At the Mirror, Adam Postans describes the sequel bit as "a poor man’s Four Weddings and a Funeral that ­delivered precisely nothing." At the Guardian, Barbara Ellen suggests the sequel should have been named Guff Actually. "It was all lousy jokes and texted-in performances and looked as though it had been cobbled together by fourth formers as an end-of-term project," she writes. Another Guardian reviewer, Peter Bradshaw, calls the spot "bafflingly weak." He does note that, as to the inevitable question of who aged the best, it's clearly Martine McCutcheon, who played the prime minister's wife—"she genuinely doesn't look any different from 2003." The sequel has taught us that "if you get together in Christmas 2003, you will stay together forever. It’s just science," writes Anna Leszkiewicz at the New Statesman. "Even if you’ve spent nearly 14 years clinging onto public office. Even if you were a literal child when you met. Even if you hate your wife so much you refuse to learn her first language." But not everyone was disappointed. Radio Times calls the sketch "funny" and "poignant," the Telegraph calls it "winningly nostalgic and a triumphant return," and Vanity Fair and RTE round up tweets from satisfied viewers (who especially loved Hugh Grant dancing again).
– Jimmy Kimmel referenced Harvey Weinstein in his opening monologue for the 90th Academy Awards, but it got more personal when three of Weinstein's accusers stepped out onto the stage Sunday night to introduce a video montage on gender equality in Hollywood, per People and E! Online. "It's nice to see you all again, it's been a while," said Annabella Sciorra, who was joined onstage by Ashley Judd and Salma Hayek. "This year, many spoke their truth and the journey ahead is long, but slowly a new path has emerged." Judd added, "The changes we are witnessing are being driven by the powerful sound of new voices, of different voices, of our voices. Joining together in a mighty chorus that is finally saying time's up." And Hayek: "We salute those unstoppable spirits who kicked ass and broke through the biased perceptions against their gender, their race, and ethnicity to tell their stories." The video montage included Weinstein accuser Mira Sorvino, who noted that "everyone is getting a voice to express something that has been happening forever, not only in Hollywood, but in every walk of life." Also speaking out in the segment (and attracting online attention): Big Sick star Kumail Nanjiani, who said, "Some of my favorite movies are by straight white dudes about straight white dudes. Now you can watch my movies and relate to me. It's not that hard." Also making waves with a dramatic moment: Frances McDormand, who won best actress for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and had every female nominee stand up in the audience before leaving with two words: "Inclusion. Rider."
– You probably can already identify the contents of most of your photos, but this is still fun. A new website from Stephen Wolfram, whom you may know from the search tool WolframAlpha, lets you drag and drop any photo; it will then in theory identify what's in it. Right now, ImageIdentify manages some impressive feats, the Verge reports: For instance, it was able to tell that a picture of a cow was a black angus. On the other hand, it thought a cupcake was a bottle cap. The Wolfram Language team is happy to acknowledge the mistakes. In a blog post, Wolfram notes that "somehow the errors seemed very understandable, and in a sense very human. It seemed as if what ImageIdentify was doing was successfully capturing some of the essence of the human process of identifying images." In the meantime, it does have some practical uses: At PC World, Jared Newman writes that "using the site, I was able to figure the breed of dog that kept following my wife and I around on our honeymoon (miniature pinscher) and the exact type of flower from a hike in Los Angeles (larkspur)." And we can expect ImageIdentify to get better at its job, since it keeps copies of the images you post and learns from them; its abilities come from the study of tens of millions of pictures, Wolfram says. You can also tell the site whether its analysis was correct. It's not the only such system, the Verge notes, pointing to efforts like Google Goggles. (What would it say about this smiley face in space?)
– The Syrian boy who drew worldwide attention last August after he was bloodied by an airstrike in Aleppo has resurfaced looking like any other healthy 5-year-old. But some are cautioning that looks can be deceiving. In interviews with pro-government outlets—including reporter Kinana Allouche, who once shared a selfie with the bodies of rebel fighters—Omran Daqneesh is seen next to his father as the older man accuses rebels of using Omran as a propaganda tool. "They wanted to trade in his blood and published his photos," he says, per the BBC. Mohamad Daqneesh, who lost an older son in the airstrike, adds he refused rebel offers to leave Aleppo because the rebels only seek to hurt the reputation of the Syrian Army, per Mashable. Allouche notes "those who tried to shed Syrian blood mislead the news that he was hit by the Syrian Arab Army. Here he now lives in the Syrian state with its army, its leader and its people." The interview marks a decided turn for the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who last year said the photo of Omran in an ambulance was "forged." But a rep for the Syria Institute suspects a propaganda campaign has only just begun and says the family was "probably" coerced. Since rebels withdrew from Aleppo in December, "they are under government control now and this is a government that we know arrests and tortures anyone that speaks out against it," the rep tells Reuters. The Assad regime is known to offer incentives to those who speak out against rebels, reports the Guardian.
– Just what did Ron Paul mean when he finished third in Iowa and said, "We are all Austrians now"? Republican candidates don't often celebrate European economic policies, but this is different, Matthew Yglesias writes in Slate. Those familiar with the inside baseball of libertarianism know that Paul is referring to two thinkers, Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard, whose idea of capitalism "is even more libertarian and anarchic than that espoused by many libertarians," writes Yglesias. "Austrian economics" rejects all government regulation and intervention to help the poor, and considers the tweaking of short-term interest rates a mistake that lures investors into doomed enterprises. Yglesias mounts a counter-argument, noting that the "Austrian" view doesn't explain the effectiveness of post-Great Depression fixes or the spending habits that fuel recessions. Yglesias sees an economic recovery around the corner, but if there isn't one, "these faddish views may gain more steam and perhaps we really all will be Austrians someday soon. But let’s hope not."
– A fundamentalist Mormon church faces legal action from the Department of Labor after allegedly using young children to harvest pecans. Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints members Dale Barlow and Brian Jessop, and Paragon Contractors were fined $1.9 million yesterday for violating federal child labor laws, reports the Hill. Bishop Lyle Jeffs and Barlow also face a lawsuit for back wages, and Jessop and Paragon face contempt of court charges after violating a 2007 order regarding the use of child laborers. The men allegedly shut down schools in Utah and Arizona to supply workers on pecan farms. “For years, these employers have trampled on the rights of workers, both children and adults, and violated our child labor laws forcing minors to work for them,” says the Labor Department's David Weil. The feds say at least 175 kids under the age of 13 were put to work during the 2012-2013 harvest, as were about 1,200 adults, with no compensation, reports the Deseret News. The kids performed various jobs, "including but not limited to: pruning trees, mowing fields, maintenance duties, picking and bagging pecans, shaking trees, driving equipment, cleanup work, and preparing pecans for commerce," says the federal lawsuit.
– The other seven members of the G8 are calling off the meeting Russia was supposed to host in Sochi in June, David Cameron revealed today. Cameron, President Obama, and the other leaders of the G7 nations—which is to say the G8 minus Russia—are holding an emergency meeting at the Hague today, on the sidelines of a nuclear summit. "There's not going to be a G8 summit in Russia," Cameron said, according to the BBC. "That's absolutely clear. … Frankly, it is Russia that needs to change course." If Russia doesn't change, the nations have hinted that more sanctions could be on the way—and that could be bad news for Russia. Some banks are predicting that the sanctions already have Russia headed toward recession. The Russian bank SMP has seen $258 million withdrawn since the US sanctioned it, according to Voice of America. Ordinary Russians feel it is they, not Vladimir Putin or his inner circle, who will be hurt most, USA Today reports. But the US might have a secret weapon; Bloomberg has a fascinating piece on a Russian billionaire currently being detained on a US warrant who might fork over crucial information on Gazprom that could really hurt Putin's inner circle.
– A Canada college student who met a woman at a bar but somehow screwed up taking down her phone number still managed to connect using a nuclear option. Carlos Zetina, a first year student at University of Calgary, knew the woman he'd met was also a student. He also knew her first name: Nicole. Armed with these modest facts, Zetina soberly made his way to the school directory, searched for the name Nicole, then proceeded to email all 246 coeds who share the name, the Calgary Herald reports. “If you (sic) name is Nicole and you’re from Holland and you think Nietzsche is depressing then text me,” Zetina wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Star. “I’m Carlos btw I’m the guy who took you and your friend home last night... if you are the one and just don’t want to talk to me that’s ok as well.” Many of the Nicoles (and variations Zetina looped in, including Nicolettes and Nikkis) who received the email Friday were so taken aback by Zetina's gesture that they couldn't help but poke fun at him to one another. Nicole DuGraye even started a Facebook group for all the women called "Nicole From Last Night," thereby turning Zetina's email into a way to make new friends. Ironically, the intended recipient Nicole reportedly didn't receive the email and only learned of it through social media. Lucky for Zetina, she wasn't pulling a fast one with a fake phone number and believes he just got a digit wrong. She not only wants to meet up with Zetina, but intends to hang out with all her fellow Nicoles, too.
– No firefighters around when your boat goes up in flames? How about hiring this freethinker to douse it with a speedboat "and look like a badass doing it," reports Gizmodo. Bystanders with a video camera recorded the flaming boat at Lake Lyndon in New Zealand but apparently just stood around and watched. One of them even dissed the boater's makeshift firefighting technique, saying, "F--k that" and "What are you doing?" But by the look of it, the boater's four passes did accomplish something: putting out the fire.
– A man in India has been arrested for trying to sell his newborn grandson online. Feroz Khan, 47, is alleged to have kidnapped the baby shortly after his birth in Ludhiana, reports the AFP, telling his daughter the infant was stillborn. He reportedly sold the baby for $830 to a nurse, who sold him to a hospital lab assistant for about $5,500, who in turn sold him to a New Delhi businessman for almost $15,000, the Hindu Business Line reports. Police recovered the baby from the businessman's home. Five people have been arrested over the deals, and the baby was returned to his mother.
– Dating for dogs? An app to time pee breaks? Among the multitudes of clever mobile apps come plenty that are duds from the start. Developer Fueled shares some of the most ridiculous pitches it has received, via Business Insider: Shock treatment: Linked to an electric bracelet, this app is all about self-punishment. It would help you out by shocking you when you're doing something unhealthy—for instance, spending too much time sitting at your desk without moving around. Communal urination: If you want buddies in the bathroom, this is for you. The app would inform your friends that you're planning a trip to pee; it would, theoretically, be handy when you can't tell them yourself because you're in a club or a movie theater. Parking-spot dealer: This would apparently be a combination of eBay and airBnB—for public parking. Users would have to hold a spot as others bid on it, and the pay would be meager. A dog-dating app: From the message Fueled received, it's unclear whether this involves dating other dog owners, or just dogs dating dogs. The pitch: "an iOS APP (Identical) to Tinder. Except with Dogs. Purpose. So Dogs/Owners can have MeetUps at the local dog park." Click for the full list.
– The unrelenting protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the police shooting of Michael Brown clearly have the full attention of Washington now. Both President Obama and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill weighed in today, while Anonymous claimed to ID the officer who did the shooting. Details: McCaskill: Speaking at a local church, she got a standing ovation when she said St. Louis County must "demilitarize the police response," reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Afterward, she told reporters that the "police response has been part of the problem." Obama: The president called for "peace and calm" and a transparent investigation, reports USA Today. He said there's no excuse for police to use excessive force against protesters, but nor is there "an excuse for violence against police or those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting." He also criticized police for arresting journalists at the protests. Gov. Jay Nixon: Speaking after McCaskill at the same church, he promised an "operational shift" in police tactics. "You will see a different tone," he said, promising details later. Anonymous: The hacker collective claimed to identify via Twitter the officer who shot the unarmed Brown last weekend, though police say the name is wrong, reports Reuters. Anonymous is standing by its post, while authorities are standing by their decision to keep the officer unidentified for safety reasons. "We can't let anonymous groups or even public groups pressure us into doing anything we don't think we should do," said a spokesman for the St. Louis County prosecutor's office. (Anonymous previously released police audio from the night of the shooting.)
– Vladimir Putin got to sound off against the US in a New York Times op-ep this week, so now a Russian news site is offering the same opportunity to John McCain. Joking about Putin's op-ed on CNN last week, McCain said, "I would love to have a commentary in Pravda." Foreign Policy asked Pravda for comment. "If John McCain wants to write something for us, he is welcome," says the English editor of the website Pravda.ru. "Mr. McCain has been an active anti-Russian politician for many years already. ... But we would be only pleased to publish a story penned by such a prominent politician as John McCain." McCain says he really would like to write something for Pravda, and will get in touch. But Slate suggests that McCain should actually check out the news outlet he has agreed to write for. There are two Pravdas: Pravda the newspaper, a Soviet-era relic which McCain probably remembers from the Cold War; and Pravda.ru, a tabloid news site that features headlines like "Russian children get gay love books from the West," and "SOS signal from UFO sows panic in Siberia." So ... not quite Russia's answer to the New York Times after all.
– The FBI hopes new surveillance footage released today will aid in the recovery of 13 priceless artworks stolen 25 years ago and help put to rest one of Boston's greatest mysteries. In the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as cops were let into the Gardner Museum, where they tied up two security guards and absconded with the artwork and the museum's security footage, the Boston Globe reports. But the thieves, who have never been identified, may have missed one key thing. According to the FBI, surveillance footage from the day before the robbery shows a security guard letting a man into the museum—against protocol—through the same door later used in the robbery. The Globe reports it's unclear why this footage wasn't viewed by law enforcement earlier, but it could show a "dry run" of the heist. The newspaper identifies Richard Abath as the security guard in the footage, and the FBI is hoping the public can help identify the mystery man he lets in. Abath, a rock musician at the time who now lives in Vermont, has claimed he had no part in the robbery, but this new footage appears to contradict a number of his statements. No one has ever been charged with stealing the art—for which there is a $5 million reward—and no one ever will, as the statute of limitations has expired. Someone in possession of the paintings, however, could face charges. Their total value exceeds $500 million, reports AP.
– America can once again boast that it is home to the world's fastest supercomputer. IBM's Sequoia system knocked Japan's K Computer into second place after clocking in at a staggering 16.32 "petaflops"—that's 16 quadrillion calculations per second, reports the Wall Street Journal. The supercomputer—which takes up 96 racks, each bigger than a fridge, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California—can compute in one hour what it would take everybody in the world 320 years working non-stop using hand calculators to compute, the BBC notes. This is the first time an American computer has taken top spot since 2009, and Sequoia also won praise for energy efficiency: It consumes 7.9 megawatts compared to the K Computer's 12.6 megawatts. The Department of Energy will use Sequoia to run simulations designed to help extend the life of aging nuclear weapons, eliminating the need in these cases to run underground nuclear tests. Quips Engadget's Sean Buckley, "More computers, less explosions. We can't think of a better thing to do with 98,304 compute nodes, 1.6 million cores, and 1.6 petabytes of memory spread across 96 racks—can you?"
– Politics can be rough stuff, but for one West Virginia Senate candidate it got downright violent. Authorities say retired Army officer Richard Ojeda, a Democrat running in Tuesday's primary, was brutally beaten by a man wearing brass knuckles at a political cookout on Sunday, the AP reports. Per the Washington Post, Jonathan Porter, 41, was arrested and charged with malicious assault for the attack, which left Ojeda—who's known Porter since they were kids—with multiple head and face fractures and a concussion. And while officials aren't sure what the motive was, Ojeda thinks he knows. "This was premeditated and there was a reason the guy did this," he wrote Sunday on his campaign's Facebook page. Ojeda, who has been campaigning against the region's corruption and poverty, adds, per NBC News, that "the moment you start asking questions, you become public enemy number one." Per the State Journal, Ojeda says Porter approached him at the cookout, asked for a bumper sticker, then attacked. "As I'm kneeling down putting the bumper sticker on [Porter's truck], that's the last thing I remember, other than … coming to where my head's on a tree stump and I'm spitting blood," Ojeda says. Witnesses say after the beating, Porter hopped in his truck and tried to run Ojeda over before bystanders stopped him; Porter then fled, surrendering a few hours later. Ojeda, 45, tells the State Journal he'd received menacing phone calls recently, including one that said, "You're going to wind up dead floating in the Guyandotte River." But the man described in a Facebook post as "tough as woodpecker lips" says he's dealt with al-Qaeda and the Taliban and writes he's "now even more dedicated to the cause. This doesn't scare me." Porter has also been charged with malicious attempted assault and felony destruction of property. (Voting in West Virginia? No selfies in the booth.)
– The writ of habeas corpus lets prisoners appear in court to make their captors justify why they're being held. Until now in the US, those who've used this legal tactic have been human. But a New York judge yesterday ruled that the writ may be used by two lab chimpanzees at Stony Brook University, Science magazine reports. NY Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe ordered a university rep to address a suit filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project by appearing in court May 6 to argue why the college is holding Hercules and Leo. The group, which says the animals are being detained for biomedical experiments, says its ultimate goal is to have the animals released to the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Fla., per the NhRP's website. "This is a big step forward to getting what we are ultimately seeking: the right to bodily liberty for chimpanzees and other cognitively complex animals," Natalie Prosin, the project's executive director, tells Science. The case kicked off in December 2013 with lawsuits that also included two chimps held on private property; each case was struck down, sending the NhRP down the appeals path. Not everyone's convinced the upcoming hearing will mean liberation for the chimps. A Pepperdine University law professor tells Science that the judge likely just wants to hear both sides of the story: "It would be quite surprising if the judge intended to make a momentous substantive finding that chimpanzees are legal persons" without doing so, he notes. Prosin, meanwhile, says her group isn't stopping with the chimps and will also target the release of other animals. (Click to read about what chimps talk to each other about.)
– It could finally be tunnel time at Stonehenge. NBC News reports that the 1.3 million annual visitors to the famous landmark have been dealing with increasing traffic on a nearby highway for years. Officials first proposed a tunnel to cut down on noisy and unsightly traffic yards away on the A303 nearly 30 years ago, but it never materialized. Now the British government has finalized plans to build that tunnel, according to the BBC. The 1.8-mile tunnel would include four lanes and cost an estimated $1.7 billion. The secretary of England's Department of Transport says the tunnel will reduce traffic and travel times near Stonehenge. But the tunnel remains controversial, with Stonehenge fans weighing in on both sides. One supporter says tourists will "once again be able to hear the sounds of skylarks" instead of traffic. And UNESCO, which lists Stonehenge as a World Heritage Site, is in favor of the tunnel. But the Council for British Archaeology is against it, the Guardian reports. The council's president says the area around Stonehenge is the "world's most significant and best-preserved stone-age landscape." That's why the Stonehenge Alliance also opposes the current tunnel plan. The group wants the tunnel length increased to at least 2.7 miles to reduce disruption to the immediate area. Officials are accepting public comment on the tunnel through the beginning of March.
– YouTube channels are facing a reckoning: As it seeks to make the site more television-like, Google is launching a second round of investments in YouTube channels—but only 30% to 40% are likely to get a new installment of cash, an exec tells Advertising Age. At the moment, YouTube has 160 channels. But a year after beginning the funding process, the site now has a clearer sense of which ones are on the road to success. The new funding will be based on viewership hours, as opposed to number of views or how much cash a channel is generating, Fast Company notes. "Our biggest objective was to kick-start the ecosystem, to bring in great creators, to deepen our relationships with advertisers and to grow viewership," says content exec Jamie Byrne, who's helming the process. If channels don't get funding, it's not the end: They can stick around, and YouTube bosses are hoping content makers will keep at it, AllThingsD reports. Channels that do get funding are looking at similar figures to those in the first round of investment: between $1 million and $5 million. It's a tough gig for the channel's producers, notes Ad Age: Before they start selling their own ads, they have to pay back YouTube's investment.
– House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday rejected the idea of paying for President Trump's border wall in exchange for helping hundreds of thousands of young immigrants avoid deportation. Funding for the wall—a top Trump priority—and legal protections for so-called Dreamers, a key Democratic goal, should not be linked, Pelosi said. "They're two different subjects," and most Democrats consider the wall "immoral, ineffective, and expensive," Pelosi said. Her comments came as the House and Senate approved a stopgap bill Thursday to keep the government funded through Dec. 21, the AP reports. The measure, approved by voice votes in near-empty chambers, now goes to the White House. Trump has promised to sign the two-week extension to allow for ceremonies this week honoring former President George HW Bush, who died Nov. 30. But he wants the next funding package to include at least $5 billion for his proposed wall, something Democrats have rejected. Trump is set to meet Tuesday at the White House with Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. Schumer said Thursday that a bipartisan Senate plan for $1.6 billion in border security funding does not include money for the 30-foot-high concrete wall Trump has envisioned. In a tweet late Thursday, Trump warned of the potential for "Big danger" at the US-Mexico border in Arizona, demanding, "Nancy and Chuck must approve Boarder Security and the Wall!" (Trump says he is "totally willing" to shut down the government if funding for the wall is not approved.)
– During a White House meeting on Oct. 2, a day into the shutdown, John Boehner slipped out for a smoke. Barack Obama followed him, demanding a private explanation for the shutdown. "John, what happened?" he asked. "I got overrun, that's what happened," Boehner replied. That anecdote kicks off Politico's behind-the-scenes look at the crisis. The Wall Street Journal has one too—with different bits of insider gossip. Here are the most interesting tidbits from both: Obama and Harry Reid decided on their no-negotiation strategy over the summer, believing that Boehner could never unite his fractured caucus behind anything. Republicans never believed the pair would stick to it. Boehner and Reid initially struck a deal in which Boehner would pass a sequester-level budget with an ObamaCare-defunding rider that the Senate could simply strip out. Boehner assumed—incorrectly—that his caucus only wanted a show vote. Boehner's former chief of staff was feeding the White House intelligence, telling it that Boehner would have to fight up until the debt ceiling deadline. Reid also took to monitoring Twitter for hints on the GOP's next move—a sign of how badly communication was flowing. Many Republicans turned to Joe Biden, hoping he would intervene. Biden told them he'd been "sidelined … at the direction of the president," one rep says. Reid, bitter about the fiscal cliff deal Biden negotiated, had wanted him out. At one point, Boehner brought up the idea of a "grand bargain" at a White House meeting; Reid laughed in his face. When Paul Ryan joined the fray at an Oct. 10 meeting, he told Obama that he would "miss his moment" and derail his whole term if he didn't strike a deal. But he also made what White House aides called a "Freudian slip," saying, "We’re going to have six weeks to negotiate the debt limit." That night, aides to Boehner, Cantor, and Obama began talking about a broader budget deal, and agreed to talk more in the morning. The White House never called. When Mitch McConnell finally decided he had to broker the deal, he partnered with Lamar Alexander—angering Susan Collins, who had worked far harder on the process, only to see her own deal torpedoed. McConnell picked Alexander because he had better conservative credentials, and was pals with Reid confidante Chuck Schumer. Alexander and Schumer brokered the deal behind the scenes, then passed it off to Reid and McConnell. McConnell tells the Washington Post that he saw himself as a backup quarterback thrown into the game. "I felt like I was on the two-yard line, I had a pretty weak offensive line, and the best I could hope for was to try to punt." Boehner made one last-ditch attempt to pass an alternative. "We're running out of time," he told his caucus. "Your 'no' vote has consequences." But as Reid and Obama had predicted, he couldn't convince them. With the ball back in McConnell and Reid's court, McConnell made a few last-minute demands. Reid rejected them. It took all of 15 minutes for McConnell to call back and accept Reid's terms.
– The destruction of Syria's chemical weapons continues to hit delays—but a secret effort to rid Libya of chemical weapons has been a success, the New York Times reports. The US and Libya have been destroying what was left of Moammar Gadhafi's stockpile, including hundreds of weapons containing a mustard agent. The three-month project, which wiped out two tons of arms using what the Times calls a "giant, high-tech oven," ended last week. "It’s a big breakthrough," says an expert, noting that the process—a basis for the much larger effort in Syria—"was very difficult because of weather, geography, and because it's a dangerous area with warring tribes, increasing the risks of theft and diversion." In 2004, Gadhafi had provided some 24.7 metric tons of chemical weapons to the West for destruction, but only half were gone by the time civil war began in 2011. The post-Gadhafi Libyan government sought to rid itself of the remainder, as well as almost two tons of additional material it had found—agents already installed in bombs and artillery, the Times notes. The destruction effort, which used funds from the Pentagon as well as Canada, saw the weapons vaporized in an oven created by Swedish firm Dynasafe. Meanwhile, the BBC is airing old Gadhafi secrets in a special tonight; among them, a former ally who says the strongman ordered a plane shot down near Tripoli in 1992, killing 157 passengers in a demonstration against sanctions.
– Katie Couric will have a syndicated daytime show on ABC sometime around the fall of 2012, the Wall Street Journal reports. The two sides are expected to announce the deal as early as Monday. A source tells the newspaper it will be "Oprah-esque," though the exact format is still under discussion. One sign of Couric's clout: She will reportedly own the show and thus reap bigger profits. The Wrap also has the deal close, noting that Couric's contract with CBS officially ends this weekend. Check out her CBS Evening News sign-off here.
– Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly made her debut Monday as a morning-TV host, declaring that she's "kind of done with politics for now" and instead focusing on more lighthearted fare, reports Variety. (See video here.) Kelly is hosting the 9am slot of the Today show on NBC, and Monday's show included the cast of the rebooted Will & Grace and a feature on a nun fighting gun violence in Chicago. So how did show No. 1 go? A sampling of reviews: Warm and fuzzy: Episode No. 1 "felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly," writes Jeremy Barr at the Hollywood Reporter. Especially when her husband emerged to give her flowers. Kelly also spoke emotionally about the death of her father when she was a teenager, notes People. Better balance? At USA Today, Kelly Lawler writes that the episode was a "bit awkward" as Kelly, who displayed "some stiffness" at times, transitioned into her new role. "There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues," she writes. "Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance." Questionable strategy: Brian Lowry at CNN also found the debut a little awkward. He cautions that it's too early to draw conclusions, but writes that it seems NBC landed Kelly without a clear sense of how to make use of her talents. What's more, "it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it." Harsh take: At the Washington Post, Hank Steuver delivers a particularly negative review. "The debut was like watching a network try to assemble its own Bride of Frankenstein, using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa and whatever else it can find," he writes. Kelly "moved stiffly" and "interviewed people nervously and so awkwardly that they were cowed into giving monosyllabic answers. She also never missed an opportunity to talk about herself." Ouch.
– Reese Witherspoon never regrets becoming an actress, but she does miss one thing: her privacy. "I parted with my privacy a long time ago," she tells Vogue in a new profile. "We went different ways. And sometimes I mourn it. Sometimes I will sit in the car and cry. Because I can’t get out." More from the interview, given a few months before Witherspoon's March 26 wedding: On the increased amount of attention she's been getting from the paparazzi: "It usually heats up during, like, pregnancies or babies or marriage. It’s the drama of real life. ... Readers want to know!" One good thing about all the attention: "I get hugged a lot. Which is fun." On her then-fiance, CAA agent Jim Toth: "He’s wonderful. He’s just a really great guy ... I just feel really lucky to be with someone who cares so much and is so kind and loving. You know? It’s a really nice thing to finally have that." On her current emotional state: "Even though I am nervous and excited and all those things people feel when they are about to get married, I think I am mostly very calm right now. Usually, I’m a little bit of a squirrel. I have a squirrelly energy." On turning 35: "I’ve had some really kind of sad moments lately. You don’t go backward! And I think 35 for a woman is a big thing. ... You can’t pretend you are an ingenue. You can’t pretend you are wide-eyed and innocent. It’s on your face! It’s in your body. It’s in your voice." Click for the full piece, or check out a picture from Reese's wedding or gossip about her honeymoon.
– He who pays the piper calls the tune, and it looks like the military-industrial complex is going to be dancing to Donald Trump's tune for years to come. Trump shook up the defense industry once again on Thursday when he tweeted about negotiations for fighter jets, pitting Boeing and Lockheed Martin against each other, reports Reuters. "Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!" tweeted Trump, who has been holding meetings with aerospace execs at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Lockheed shares, which went down 4% after an earlier Trump tweet, dived 2% in after-hours trading, while Boeing was up 0.7%. A roundup of coverage: Politico takes a close look at the implications of Trump involving himself so closely in the federal procurement process and turning it into a "$440 billion weapon." Presidents including Obama have used the process to advance their agendas, but experts say it's unprecedented for one to target individual companies and contracts the way Trump is doing—and his approach is likely to create great uncertainty for defense companies. Business Insider looks at the F-35's capabilities—and the $379 billion contract for Lockheed to supply 2,443 of them to the military. Pentagon officials involved with the F-35 says the fifth-generation jet is far ahead of the Boeing plane, meaning it would take years of redesigning and testing for the Super Hornet to have the same capabilities. The AP reports that Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher said: "We have committed to working with the president-elect and his administration to provide the best capability, deliverability, and affordability," while Lockheed declined to comment. Bloomberg reports that Trump's action "sidelined decades of policy and practice in how the government spends billions of dollars annually on military hardware." A Teal Group military aircraft analyst tells Bloomberg that Trump's tweet was "bizarre," especially since only the Navy uses the Super Hornet, while the Marines are "completely dependent" on F-35Bs and the Air Force is sticking with the F-35A. "Thus, Trump's tweet is both late to the game and completely irrelevant." Retired Rear Adm. Dave Oliver tells Politico that Trump's attempt to bring the tactics of the New York real estate market to military procurement will probably just drive prices up. "He will scare the bejesus out of some fifth-level auditor who is going to say, 'Goodness gracious, maybe I ought to look at whoever he is attacking at the moment,' says Oliver, who was a top Pentagon acquisition official in the 1990s. "Whether the president has any legal standing of any kind in this doesn't matter. That’s what the bully pulpit is all about. He is going to be heard and he is going to have an impact."
– If his House censure is still stinging, Charlie Rangel would do well to pick up today's Washington Post. Columnists Dana Milbank and David Broder don't exactly make the case he's innocent (not even Rangel does that), but they lend sympathetic voices: Milbank: He belittles the House ethics panel, calling it rank hypocrisy that Rangel got singled out for common behavior. "If it's any consolation, Rangel should know that however harmed he was by the censure, the entity that was really disgraced was Congress itself. This is because Rangel's two-year battle with the House ethics committee exposed the woeful state of lawmakers' abilities to police their own."  Broder: He likens Rangel's case to that of Dan Rostenkowski's in the late '80s. "He and Rosty had the same view of the hometown patronage games that brought them down. They wanted the perks that went with their positions of power. But they used them more often to help others along than for themselves, and they weren't greedy. Often, they were just sloppy about the demands of the new era of politics."
– Michael Richardson says he was heading to the car wash with his son in Quincy, Mass., on Saturday when he turned right on a red light. "I told him to stop, but he didn't listen," says 6-year-old Robbie, who knows "a red light makes you stop." His dad tried to explain that turning right on a red light is sometimes allowed, but Robbie promised to call the police when they got home, reports the Boston Globe. He wasn't joking. "I know how to call the police," he tells the Globe. "Easy peasy." While his parents were outside, he dialed 911, telling the operator, "Um, Daddy went past a red light." The operator eventually asked to talk to Robbie's dad, who was so shocked that he couldn't properly remember his son's age. He then apologized for allegedly running the light and for his son calling in a non-emergency. Police say no ticket was issued to Richardson, per CBS News. And after his parents explained he should only call 911 in an emergency, Robbie says he won't make the same mistake again. "When my daddy goes past a red light again, I'll call the eye doctor so he can fix his eyes," he says.
– The CIA's Inspector General is calling for the Justice Department to look into allegations that the agency illegally spied on aides to the Senate Intelligence Committee as they gathered information for a potentially contentious report on the CIA's torture program, McClatchy reports. The CIA had insisted that the Intelligence Committee staffers use computers at Agency headquarters to review millions of documents related to its interrogation program. The committee believes the CIA monitored those computers, despite a specific agreement not to, according to McClatchy sources. The 6,000-page report remains classified, but the New York Times notes that it is a "withering indictment" of CIA tactics and results. Mark Udall yesterday sent President Obama a letter saying that, "As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee," without specifying what that action was. Committee chair Dianne Feinstein would confirm only that "there is an IG investigation." The committee has been battling to release its unflattering report, which the agency wants to keep classified. Udall accused the agency in December of withholding an internal review from the committee—and that apparently led the CIA to accuse the committee of gaining unauthorized access to agency databases, leading to this current dispute.
– The utility that cut off power to a Maryland home days before Rodney Todd and his seven children were found dead says it didn't cut him off for not paying bills—because it never sent him any. Delmarva Power says it shut off power to the rented home in October; Todd moved there in November and it says there was no request to have it reconnected. The utility says it cut off electricity for safety reasons when workers discovered a stolen meter on March 25, reports the Baltimore Sun, which notes that state law makes it difficult for utilities to cut off service for unpaid bills between Nov. 1 and March 31, but service can be cut off without notice in the case of hazardous conditions or illegal connections. Police believe Todd, 36, and the children were poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator. "It appears as though they were sleeping," Princess Anne Police Chief Scott Keller tells the AP. "Probably it was bedtime and they decided they needed some light and probably some heat. Even though it was spring, we were having some pretty chilly nights." Todd was a kitchen worker at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where his supervisor tells the Sun he was a private man who didn't ask for help. "He was just low-key. Took care of his kids," she says. "I'm just numb. Like it's a nightmare, but it's not," the children's mother, whose divorce from Todd was finalized last fall, tells the AP. "If I had known he was without electricity, I would have helped." She says she paid child support until she lost track of the family when Todd last moved.
– Boris Becker's claim of diplomatic immunity in an ongoing bankruptcy case just went from odd to bewildering. Though the former tennis champ claims his April appointment as a Central African Republic attache to the European Union means he's immune from bankruptcy hearings in the UK, the CAR appears to be balking. Becker's claimed post of attache for sports, culture, and humanitarian affairs "does not exist" in CAR records, meaning he's not an official diplomat, says Foreign Ministry chief of staff Cherubin Moroubama. What's more, the diplomatic passport issued to Becker in March, listing his post as "financial charge de mission," is phony, with a serial number matching one of several stolen under a transitional government in 2014, Moroubama says, per the BBC and Guardian. CAR Foreign Minister Charles Armel Doubane calls the passport a "clumsy fake," per ABC Australia. "To be recognized as a diplomat, it would require not just [the] president's nomination but also my signature as foreign minister," he adds, per the Guardian. That leaves plenty of questions for CAR's ambassador to the EU, Daniel Emery Dede, who reportedly signed Becker's passport, and for the CAR embassy in Belgium, which confirmed the issuance of it and featured a photo of Becker on its website, per the BBC. Becker, who met with CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera in Brussels in April, is maintaining his diplomatic status amid the confusion, reports Deutsche Welle, which has a certificate a lawyer says confirms Becker's position as attache for finance, as well as for sports, culture, and humanitarian affairs.
– Reviews of Justin Timberlake's halftime show Sunday have generally not been kind, and Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times delivers a particularly devastating line: "This guy has nothing to say and just won't stop saying it." The sentiment applies not just to the halftime show but to Timberlake's new release, Man of the Woods. About the best that can said of Timberlake's Super Bowl performance is that "the tightly choreographed production was impressive from a logistics standpoint," writes Wood. Beyond that, there was almost nothing to enjoy. "The performance lacked soul, meaning, humor; it had no message, nor was it taking any stand—soft, hard or otherwise." At least Timberlake didn't go ahead with rumored plans to perform with a hologram of Prince. Instead, he settled for a lesser version of the late superstar projected on a screen. But even that is inviting unfavorable comparisons to Prince's 2007 show, "which eclipses Timberlake's in every way," writes Maeve McDermott at USA Today. Prince actually sang, "while Timberlake let his backing tracks and background singers do the heavy lifting." Both reviews cite the kid with whom Timberlake took a selfie, though not in a positive light for the singer, because the teen seemed kind of uninterested in Timberlake himself. Meanwhile, Chris Willman at Variety finds better things to say of the show. "If it was more a feat of athleticism than aestheticism, you can’t say that’s entirely inappropriate for the occasion."
– Another Bain Capital controversy for Mitt Romney: He may have still been involved with the private-equity firm when it invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal company that disposes of aborted fetuses, thus making it a target of anti-abortion activists. The Huffington Post first revealed the Romney-Stericycle connection, but Bain kept it from blowing up into a controversy by claiming that Romney left the firm in February 1999, before the deal was made. But SEC documents obtained by Mother Jones list Romney as "sole shareholder, Chairman, CEO, and President" of Bain and as a definite participant in the deal—a deal that made him and his partners millions; one document even includes his signature. The documents are relevant not only because of the abortion controversy, but because of Romney's departure from Bain. He has used the official account of the timing of his exit to defend himself—not just with regard to the Stericycle deal, but also with regard to the recent article about Bain's connections to major job outsourcing. In that case, the Romney campaign noted that his February 1999 exit came at least a month before Bain acquired two of the companies that outsourced jobs. But these documents indicate Romney was still playing a role at the company until the end of that year. Mother Jones has a detailed look at the documents—as well as Stericycle's troubled safety record.
– The 2016 Olympics came to an end when Rio officially handed things over to 2020 host Tokyo Sunday night in a jubilant closing ceremony that featured, among other things, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rising from a pipe dressed as Super Mario. A look back at some of the best moments from Rio: Usain Bolt's triple-triple. "I am the greatest," the Jamaican runner declared after winning gold in a third race at a third consecutive Olympics. Few would quibble with that statement. Michael Phelps' swim into history. He took another six golds in Rio, giving the "once in 10 generations" swimmer a staggering 23 golds over his career—14 more than any other athlete has ever scored. Team Refugee. For the first time, the Olympics featured a team made up of refugees from the world's conflict zones. "You have inspired us with your talent and human spirit," IOC President Thomas Bach said in his closing address. Simone Biles' amazing performance. She won a record-tying fourth gold in one of the greatest Olympics a gymnast ever had, displaying what Penelope Blackmore at the Guardian calls "jaw-dropping power, laser precision, and pure dynamism." Almaz Ayana's record-breaking run. Some 27 world records were broken in Rio. The first to fall inside the Olympic Stadium was the women's 10,000-meter record, which the Ethiopian runner beat by more than 14 seconds. Liina, Lily, and Leila Luik. The Estonian women set a different kind of Olympic record by becoming the first triplets ever to compete in the marathon. Helping hands. America's Abbey D'Agostino and New Zealand's Nikki Hamblin showed true Olympic spirit—and won Fair Play Awards—by helping each other after a tumble in the women's 5,000 meters. The Brits who are being called the best couple. Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh not only became the first same-sex married couple to compete in the Olympics, they won the field hockey gold. Changing of the guard. Phelps had an Olympic swimming career that might never be matched unless dolphins start competing—though he was beaten in the 100-meter butterfly by 21-year-old Singaporean Joseph Schooling, who grew up idolizing Phelps. Soccer gold. Brazilians breathe soccer, and they got what the AP calls a "perfect finish to an imperfect Olympics" when their team beat Germany to take the gold.
– Twenty-five seniors at a university in Pennsylvania must prove they've lost weight in order to graduate this spring. The unusual requirement stems from a policy Lincoln University put in place fours ago: Incoming freshmen with a body mass index of 30, the threshold for obesity, must take a nutrition class or shed the weight on their own to get a diploma, reports the Lincolnian student newspaper. Most of the 92 students at the black university who had BMIs over 30 took the class, but the 25 who didn't were notified they'd have to undergo a physical exam before graduating. “No student should ever be able to leave Lincoln and not know the risks of obesity,” a school official tells Inside Higher Ed. Says one angry student: "I came here to get a degree and that's what the administration should be concerned with."
– Sean Spicer may have laughed off Melissa McCarthy's portrayal of him on Saturday Night Live, but the White House is in fact "rattled," reports Politico, noting "it was Spicer's portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president's eyes." As one President Trump donor puts it, "Trump doesn't like his people to look weak." Some say Trump's silence on the skit on Twitter suggests it hit a little too close to home. And though Spicer described it as "cute" and "funny," sources say he actually found it upsetting. But "it doesn't really matter what I think," Spicer tells Politico. "I would much rather have the focus be on the president's agenda and the success he's having. That's all I'm saying on it." Steve Bannon should perhaps prepare for a similar portrayal. After Saturday's skit, a fan on Twitter suggested Rosie O'Donnell should dress up as Trump to get under his skin, reports Vanity Fair. O'Donnell responded that Alec Baldwin portrays Trump and McCarthy does Spicer, but she later agreed she'd like to play Bannon, whom Mikey Day has portrayed as the Grim Reaper on SNL. "If called, I will be ready," O'Donnell tweeted. "I am here to serve." The show hasn't said if O'Donnell is likely to appear, but support is growing on Twitter, with one user suggesting such a skit would let O'Donnell "have the last laugh on Trump" after a decade-long feud, per the Huffington Post.
– "Thank you. Thank you." Those were the first words Gregory Jean Jr. spoke to police on Saturday when they peeled back a wood panel in an upstairs closet and found him crammed in the space between the garage and attic, WXIA reports. But the officers had help from Gregory himself, because it was the texts and photos he sent to his mom that helped police track down where the missing 13-year-old was hidden in his father and stepmother's house, the AP reports. And although Gregory Jean Sr., 37, and Samantha Joy Davis, 42, didn't bar police from searching the home, "there was a lot of deception," Clayton County Police Sgt. Joanne Southerland told reporters, as per CNN. In fact, the first officers on the scene—sent after a 911 call from the boy's mother—came up empty-handed and left after Jean and Davis said they knew nothing. After the police left, young Gregory contacted his mom again through the magicJack app and she redialed 911; when Southerland, who had worked in a Crimes Against Children unit for several years, heard that call, she made police go back and search again. "We weren't going to leave until we found him," she tells WXIA. The space Gregory was crammed into had nothing but wooden beams and insulation—"a space where no person should be living," the local police chief told reporters. The next court appearance for Jean and Davis, who have been charged with false imprisonment, child cruelty, and obstruction of justice, is scheduled for Dec. 9, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. (A girl missing for 12 years was recently found in Mexico.)
– After more than two weeks of controversy, the Associated Press has deleted an Aug. 23 tweet about the Clinton Foundation that critics—including Hillary Clinton—said was misleading. "More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation," read the tweet. Politico notes that the tweet failed to mention that the AP's analysis of Clinton meetings looked only at discretionary meetings and not meetings with federal officials or representatives of foreign governments, which tend to make up the majority of any secretary of state's meetings. "The tweet fell short of AP standards by omitting essential context," AP VP for Standards John Daniszewski writes in a blog post, setting out a new policy for removing tweets, an action that the AP used to see as "retroactively editing a conversation." Clinton and her campaign slammed the tweet and the Clinton Foundation story soon after it appeared, USA Today reports. "It draws a conclusion and makes a suggestion that my meetings with people like the late, great Elie Wiesel or Melinda Gates or the Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus were somehow due to connections with the foundation instead of their status as highly respected global leaders," Clinton told CNN last month.
– A nude painting considered too obscene to display in Paris a century ago sold at an auction in New York City for $157.2 million Monday night, setting a new record for Sotheby's auction house but not for artist Amadeo Modigliani, the Guardian reports. Nu couche (sur le cote gauche), the Italian-born artist's largest painting, is one of only five of his nudes ever to hit the auction block. When it was first displayed in Paris a century ago, in Modigliani's first and only solo show, police immediately shut the exhibition down, the AP reports. The artist died three years later at the age of 35. (Another Modigliani nude sold for $170 million in 2015.)
– We'll start by tempering expectations: The breakthrough you're about to read about has "no direct link" to a human treatment, reports AFP, but it's noteworthy nonetheless. Scientists say they've identified a molecule that "reverses" the effects of Down syndrome in mice. The molecule is called sonic hedgehog pathway agonist, and it was administered to mice who were genetically altered to have characteristics akin to those of Down syndrome. The molecule, which is not approved as safe for humans, spurs a gene to make a protein tied to development. "Most people with Down syndrome have a cerebellum that's about 60% of the normal size," says one of the Johns Hopkins researchers. Science World Report notes that the mice were injected on the day they were born, at which point their cerebellums hadn't fully developed. The single injection appeared to normalize the cerebellum's growth. In an added surprise, memory and learning, "which are generally controlled by the hippocampus, not the cerebellum," were also positively affected. But the researcher explains that applying the treatment to humans is a tricky proposition, and could have unintended consequences, like raising cancer risk.
– Rodney King drank all day yesterday and smoked marijuana for hours before dying at the bottom of his swimming pool early this morning, TMZ reports. Sources close to King say his fiancée, Cynthia Kelley, tells them she went to bed at 2 a.m. and was awakened at 5 a.m. by his screams in the backyard of his Rialto, Calif., home. She saw him naked, banging to get in, and she asked, "What's wrong, Rodney?" When she went for her phone, she heard a splash. So she ran outside and, seeing him at the bottom of the pool, called police. But paramedics couldn't revive him when they showed up. In another story, TMZ reports that King was in good spirits about fighting Jose Canseco in a celebrity boxing match in August. King's friend Damon Feldman says King was excited to be working again and looking forward to the fight. (See his pool and videos from his past at TMZ.)
– A New Jersey psychotherapist was being extorted, and when one of her patients revealed in a session that he used to be in an organized crime gang, she allegedly hatched a plan for revenge. Police say Diane Sylvia, 58, asked her patient to get her in touch with a hitman so she could have the blackmailer murdered. Instead, the patient got in touch with the FBI in September and told the bureau what was going on, the New York Times reports. He pretended to get her in touch with a hitman, but the hitman was actually an undercover FBI agent. By the time Sylvia met with the agent in October, she had allegedly downgraded her plan from murder to assault. She allegedly worked with the agent for a month to put together a plan, NJ.com reports. "He needs his pretty little face bashed in, that’s what I really want," Sylvia, a licensed social worker, allegedly told the agent. "A broken arm would help, too. Something so he can’t do push-ups, so he can’t work out." According to court documents, she made similar requests multiple times, explaining that it would make her "feel better" after being blackmailed by the man for years. She told the agent the man had information on her that he was threatening to report to the licensing board, causing her to lose her job. After allegedly paying the agent $5,000 to beat up the man and disfigure him, she was arrested by the FBI Friday and charged Monday with solicitation to commit a crime of violence. She faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. As for her patient, he canceled the rest of his sessions with her after cooperating with the FBI. (A teen allegedly hired a hitman to kill his jeweler dad.)
– Humans were thought to be unique as a species in that we use both halves of our brains to "distinguish different aspects of sound," as Georgetown neuroscientist Stuart Washington puts it. Turns out we're not as special as we thought. A type of bat also displays this hemispheric specialization when it comes to sound processing, Washington has discovered. In both humans and Parnell's mustached bats—a species that lives in an area ranging from Mexico to Brazil, RedOrbit reports—the left hemisphere handles quicker sounds, while the right deals with slower ones, a press release reports. For humans, the right hemisphere "may allow us to identify who is speaking, to gauge their emotional state via tone of voice, and to tease out pitch in music," Washington notes. As for the left hemisphere, "men largely use just the left hemisphere" to process language, while women use both hemispheres to do so, Washington says. In mustached bats—named based on the hair springing from the sides of their snouts, Animal Diversity Web explains—the right hemisphere's slower processing is used for sonar, "which relies on detecting small changes in frequency," says Washington, senior author of the study in Frontiers in Neuroscience. The left is used "to distinguish communication sounds from each other, because (the bats') communication sounds have rapid changes in frequency." All this is more than just a matter of interest: The findings could help study human language disorders, especially since some study techniques "can only be permitted in animals," Washington adds. (Researchers are also learning more about how porpoises use sound—a lot like a flashlight.)
– A Texas businesswoman has been unmasked as the Good Samaritan who saved a distraught father in a bind. The man was checking in for a flight earlier this month at Omaha's Eppley Airfield with his toddler when he hit a snag. CBS News reports the agent asked him the girl's age and when he replied "she just turned 2," the agent told him she could not fly without a ticket. (The cut-off is age 2, and he had bought his ticket a while back.) In a Facebook post by Love What Matters that went viral, fellow traveler Kevin Leslie described what happened next: "The man was confused because he was under the impression she could ride for free. ... He mentioned he couldn't afford to rebook this flight or get her the ticket with such short notice. He stepped aside and tried to make a few calls. Hugging his daughter ... you could tell he was heartbroken." That's when a woman stepped up, asked him what was wrong, and told the agent she wanted to purchase the ticket. The agent questioned whether the woman realized just how expensive the ticket was. "Seven hundred something?" she replied, as she handed over a credit card and paid the $749 fare. The father hugged her, offering to pay her back. "Don't worry about it," she replied. The hero has been revealed as Debbie Bolton, co-founder and global sales chief at Norwex, a company that makes chemical-free home and personal care products, reports the Omaha World-Herald. Workers there praised their boss, with one calling Bolton "a humble person who really cares about people." The chief marketing officer says Bolton's act wasn't surprising. "She’s kind, caring, and generous." (This woman was hailed as "epitomizing the true Good Samaritan.")
– Perhaps you expected bad reviews. After all, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a mockumentary about a ridiculous Bieber-like rapper whose star is fading. But you're in for a nice surprise. Critics are raving about this spoof on celebrity culture, starring Andy Samberg and a sea of music-industry celebs. Here's what they're saying: It has all the makings of an "easy-to-watch and enjoyable film. But Popstar is smarter than that," writes Anne T. Donahue at the Globe and Mail. "It's a legitimate look at celebrity culture delivered in a way that's as funny as it is thought-provoking." Yes, there are dick jokes—which are "great"—but it effectively "holds a magnifying glass up to the culture that we've all had a hand in creating." Fans of the Lonely Island, the name given to the comedy trio of Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, are in for a "nonstop party time," writes Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. The flick isn't just funny—it's "insanely funny" and comes "with a surprising amount of heart," he says, noting "everyone from Bieber to Kanye gets ribbed in this hilarious mockumentary." It's "a pitch-perfect take satirizing modern-day pop stardom" and "front and center, carrying the film, is Samberg in what is easily the most winning film performance of his career," writes Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times. "It's funny because it gets it RIGHT without ever being too mean-spirited. Even the jokes referencing Anne Frank and Osama bin Laden are good-natured and almost sweet. Almost." Ty Burr, however, gives it a 6 or 7 out of 10. He enjoyed the "sneaky wit of its take on celebrity culture" and the "patented Lonely Island music numbers," but he found Popstar to be "genial, silly, and instantly forgettable," he writes at the Boston Globe. He was particularly bummed to see Sarah Silverman, Tim Meadows, and Joan Cusack "get lost in the shuffle."
– The latest Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act may very well be dead after Sen. John McCain announced his opposition to it Friday, the AP reports. "I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal," CNN quotes McCain as saying in a statement. "I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried." This would be the second time McCain has put a nail in the coffin of Republican efforts to end ObamaCare. McCain said he couldn't vote for the Graham-Cassidy bill without a CBO score, which wouldn't be available until later this month, to let him know "how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it." Republicans could only afford to have two senators side with Democrats in opposition to the bill. Sen. Rand Paul was already opposed and Sen. Susan Collins was leaning that way. A recent poll found only 24% of Americans support the Graham-Cassidy bill and 50% disapprove of it, the Hill reports.
– The 51st annual Country Music Awards was a "politics-free zone," hosts Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley said Wednesday night—before they launched into a song poking fun at President Trump's Twitter habit. "In the middle of the night, from the privacy of a gold-plated White House toilet seat he writes Liddle Bob Corker, NFL, and covfefe," they sang in "Before He Tweets," sung to the tune of Underwood's "Before He Cheats." The hosts joked about Democrats and Republicans alike, making up song titles including "Harper Valley DNC," "Hold Me Closer, Bernie Sanders," and "Stand By Your Manafort," Rolling Stone reports. The hosts were joking about politics because of the Country Music Association's decision last week to ban journalists from asking about the Las Vegas massacre, political affiliations, and other issues, which it later rescinded, USA Today reports. "Our music lifts people up, and that’s what we’re here to do tonight," Paisley said, per Deadline. "So this year's show is dedicated to all those we lost and to all those who are still healing. We love you, and we will never forget you." The night's big winners included Garth Brooks, who was voted Entertainer of the Year, Miranda Lambert, who was Best Female Vocalist, Chris Stapleton, chosen as Best Male Vocalist, and Taylor Swift, who won Song of the Year for "Better Man." A full list of winners can be seen here.
– Having already killed everything from golf to Applebee's, it looks like millennials have their sights set on the 30-second ad spot. AdvertisingAge reports Visa ran two six-second ads during an NFL game on Fox last Sunday. And T-Mobile will follow suit during this Sunday's Dallas Cowboys game on Fox, according to USA Today. The six-second spots, which Fox first experimented with during the Teen Choice Awards last month, "appear similar to online pre-roll ads." And one Fox executive says they're about to be commonplace on the network: "This is a new opportunity for advertisers, since it changes how ads can run in games. We are going to expand this to Major League Baseball broadcasts and every single NFL game starting next week." Six-second ads were first pushed by YouTube before being adopted elsewhere on the web. A Visa executive says research has shown viewers remember the messaging better in short bursts, and that Fox executive says the six-second ads could appeal to millennials and their shorter attention spans. "We know that short-form videos perform better in digital and that consumer attention spans are increasingly shorter," a T-Mobile executive adds. Thanks to cord-cutters and DVR's ability to fast-forward through commercials, Fox had little choice but to try something new, Fortune reports. Fox has said it may insert the six-second ads into down moments of the games themselves, which could make them both harder to skip and allow the actual commercial breaks to be shorter—a bonus for viewers.
– The latest census figures on the housing market make for grim reading for homeowners. Some 18.4 million homes are vacant—11% of the nation's housing supply—and home ownership rates are dropping rapidly, CNBC reports. Prices are down year-over-year in all 28 major metropolitan areas tracked by the Wall Street Journal, and conditions look set to get even worse. Real estate agents expect many more foreclosed homes to hit the market this year, sending prices down further. Buyers are demanding discounts because they are "convinced prices will drop further, and they don't want to feel like suckers six months later," says the chief executive of Redfin Corp., a real-estate brokerage that operates in nine states. The result, he says, is that "it's high noon at the OK Corral on every single transaction."
– Ted Cruz sold nearly 12,000 copies of his biography A Time for Truth in its first week (it was published June 30), which in terms of raw numbers would make him No. 3 among this week's best sellers in the New York Times. But you won't see Cruz's name anywhere on the list, reports Politico. The Times told HarperCollins it wouldn't be including the book; it cites concerns about "strategic bulk purchases," suggesting the Cruz campaign is buying as many books as it can to goose the numbers. The newspaper has long kept its exact formula for determining which books make the cut under wraps, in part so people can't "rig the system," notes New York. Conservatives are lighting up Twitter with accusations of liberal bias, but New York says the Times has used this "bulk" rule previously—and it adds that Ann Coulter and Fox's Dana Perino are represented on the list.
– Tough talk as NATO-Russia relations continue to deteriorate: NATO leaders, who meet in the UK later this week, are planning a "rapid reaction" force that can deploy to Russia's worried Eastern European neighbors within 48 hours, reports the New York Times. The "spearhead" force would have a permanent command center to allow it to respond swiftly to threats, the Globe and Mail notes. "This spearhead ... could include several thousand troops, ready to respond where needed with air, sea, and special-forces support," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. The NATO summit in Newport, Wales, is especially important because "Russia thought it can change the borders of a sovereign European country by force, and this is happening not very far from NATO's borders," says Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas, calling for fresh plans to ensure all members of the alliance are "equally and strongly protected." Russian defense chiefs, meanwhile, say NATO's actions are "evidence of the desire of US and NATO leaders to continue their policy of aggravating tensions with Russia" and that Moscow plans to craft a new military doctrine in response to NATO plans and the Ukraine crisis, the BBC reports. In Ukraine, President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia of "direct and undisguised aggression" yesterday as government forces continued to suffer reverses, including a retreat from the Luhansk airport, where the Ukrainian military says a Russian tank battalion supported pro-Russia rebels, Reuters reports.
– A 7-year-old boy was shot dead and his body apparently hidden in a home where three adults were found fatally shot and a fourth was stabbed, a sheriff said Thursday as a manhunt for the suspect focused on a wooded area near Ohio's southern tip. Authorities had issued a missing-child alert after the slayings and spent hours searching for Devin Holston only to find the child dead Thursday at the same house trailer where the bodies were found, the AP reports. The suspect, 23-year-old Aaron Lawson, is being sought on warrants for charges including aggravated murder, Lawrence County Sheriff Jeffery Lawless said. Deputies spotted Lawson around 12:30am Thursday in a blue Chevrolet truck in Ironton, about 15 miles south of where the victims were found, but they lost him after a brief chase when he crashed into a ditch and ran into the woods, Lawless said. The sheriff told the Ironton Tribune that all those involved were somehow related. The three adults were found dead in a house trailer in an unincorporated area further north on Wednesday evening, and a fourth adult, who went to the scene after work looking for his relatives, was stabbed there after encountering Lawson and fled to another home to seek help, the sheriff said.
– Funding for research included in the explosive dossier on President Trump's Russia connections came from none other than the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, per reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times. A letter filed in court Tuesday details how research firm Fusion GPS began working in April 2016 for a law firm employed by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to gather damaging information on Trump. According to the letter, Fusion GPS had already been doing research on Trump on behalf of one of the Republican's primary opponents before it was hired by Perkins Coie, the firm of Clinton campaign lawyer Mark Elias. Trump has long slammed the dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele as politically motivated "fake news." In a tweet last week, Trump wondered whether the FBI, the Democrats, Russia, or all three had funded it. He's now expected to repeat conspiracy allegations, though sources tell the Post and the Times that Clinton and DNC officials were unaware of the role of Fusion GPS. The AP reports the FBI has corroborated parts of the dossier, which alleges Russia worked to help the Trump campaign and amassed compromising information on him. Former Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted that if he'd known about Steele's role, he would "have volunteered to go to Europe and try to help him." He added that if the information compiled by Steele helps Robert Mueller's investigation, anything paid to him and Fusion GPS would be "money well spent."
– JPMorgan is moving to help a bankrupt city get back on its feet. The bank is putting $100 million, divided between loans and grants, toward Detroit's revitalization, the New York Times reports. The money is intended to help the city with an array of projects, including housing improvements, the demolition of some 70,000 empty buildings, and job training. "I think we can make this our finest moment," CEO Jamie Dimon told the Today show. Dimon rejects the idea that the bank's move has anything to do with a $13 billion settlement last year tied to the financial crisis. "We invest and develop communities around the world … That's what banks do." The effort began several months ago when Dimon contacted Quicken Loans boss Dan Gilbert, who has a large stake in downtown buildings, the Detroit Free Press reports. "No one’s forcing them to do this by any means," Gilbert says. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, for his part, calls the money a "significant start." Dimon's goal with the funding: "If it works, you'll have a healthy and vibrant economy, jobs and population, businesses will beget home ownership, better schools, and a completely revived city."
– The coelacanth doesn't just look like a prehistoric fish, it was believed to be one, extinct for some 70 million years—until one turned up at a South African fish market in 1938. Now, scientists have decoded the endangered species' genome, and they say they've found some clues as to how today's land animals evolved from a fish ancestor, reports the New York Times. First, some fascinating backstory: The Times explains that the coelacanth and lung fish—both "lobe-finned fish"—have been duking it out for the title of the closet relative to that first ancestral fish that used its fins to walk on land. Post-decoding, the lungfish emerges as the closer relative, but in the Times' telling, the "coelacanth may have the last laugh"—that's because the lungfish genome is too long to decode using current technology. What scientists learned from the coelacanths' DNA: Even though coelacanths don't have a placenta, they have a gene related to one that allows land animals to grow a placenta. A DNA sequence found in coelacanths, but not ordinary fish, bolsters the genes that helps an embryo grow limbs. Researchers actually injected the coelacanth's sequence into mice; "it lit up right away and made an almost normal limb," says one. You can check out the original article at Nature.
– Investigators believe an ex-con in an Oklahoma City suburb murdered his 8-year-old neighbor and got away with it for 18 years. Kirsten Hatfield disappeared from her bedroom in Midwest City on the night of May 14, 1997, and Anthony Palma, who lived two houses away, was arrested this week on charges of kidnapping and first-degree murder, KOCO reports. The breakthrough in the cold case came after a new investigator took over in June and discovered that key pieces of evidence—including bloodstains on the girl's bedroom window sill and on her underwear, found in her backyard—were never tested for DNA, reports NBC News. Palma, who was released from prison in 1986 after serving time for assault with a dangerous weapon, still lives in the same home, and an arrest warrant states that he probably stayed there "to conceal evidence of the crime and/or the location of [Kirsten's] body," reports NBC. Fox 25 reports that the 56-year-old was interviewed after the 1997 disappearance and provided a DNA sample this year when investigators finally tested the evidence and spoke to 10 suspects in the case. Court documents state that the DNA match to the evidence was 293 sextillion to 1. Police believe Palma targeted the girl for sexual assault and killed her soon after her abduction, reports KOCO. Her body has never been found. (A woman thought to have been murdered in 1984 was found alive and well in Dusseldorf.)
– Ben Affleck is done being coy about his political ambitions, and is joining the growing list of people who won't be running for John Kerry's Senate seat, reports Politico. "I love Massachusetts and our political process, but I am not running for office," Affleck wrote on his Facebook page. "Right now it's a privilege to spend my time working with Eastern Congo Initiative, supporting our veterans, drawing attention to the great many who go hungry in the US everyday and using filmmaking to entertain and foster discussion about issues like our relationship to Iran." Affleck joined the ranks of Ted Kennedy Jr., who yesterday made a similar announcement, reports Politico. Kennedy said that while he's “extremely grateful for all the offers of support,” uprooting his family from Connecticut wasn't in the cards—though he did leave open the idea of a run for public office: “Although I have a strong desire to serve in public office, I consider Connecticut to be my home, and hope to have the honor to serve at another point in my future."
– The New York Times has a deep dive on how Walmart bet big on its business by investing in its employees. In 2015 the retailer quietly implemented a new focus on employee welfare, increasing pay across the board and developing programs to make the management track more accessible to employees. Although the program hasn't helped Walmart's struggling stock price, it has allowed Walmart to increase sales, increase employee satisfaction, and claw back some trust and loyalty from consumers. According to its official fact sheet, Walmart pledged $2.7 billion over two years to increasing employee pay and benefits. The NYT reports that so far, the initiative has raised the average pay for a full-time non-managerial employee to $13.69 an hour, a 16% increase since 2014 and above average pay for retail employees. However, some business leaders and analysts remain skeptical. Writing for Bloomberg, columnist Megan McArdle notes that for a large, publicly held company like Walmart, profitability looms above all. If the company's renewed focus on worker welfare doesn't start paying real, quantifiable dividends, shareholders will push for it to return to a cheaper business model, even if that means relying on fewer workers.
– Fresh off his loss to Mitt Romney at CPAC, Rick Santorum hit the talk shows this morning, and he's downplaying the victory, reports Politico: "You have to talk to the Romney campaign and how many tickets they bought—we've heard all sorts of things," Santorum told CNN. "Ron Paul has won those (straw polls) because he trucks in a lot of people, pays for their ticket, and they come in and vote. I don't try to rig straw polls." Elsewhere on the Sunday dial, as per Politico: Santorum on his chances: "I think we can do well (in Michigan). I think we can do reasonably well in Arizona, and really make this a two-person race." Sarah Palin on Romney: He's "a great candidate," but "his idea of conservatism is evolving, and I base this on a pretty moderate past that he has had, even in some cases a liberal past. Now that’s a problem. He’s still in the 30 percentile mark ... because we are not convinced." Obama chief of staff Jack Lew on the birth control ruckus: The Friday "accommodation" is as far as the White House will go. "There are others who don't have the same objective, they will have to speak for themselves, (but) this is our plan." Ron Paul on 'severe conservative' Romney: "That was the first time I’ve heard that definition, so I guess Mitt will have to tell us exactly what it means. Obviously, he means he’s a serious conservative, and he was trying to defend himself, or portray himself as such, but I don’t know exactly what he was meaning by that."
– Following the headline-grabbing death of a woman denied an abortion in Ireland, the country has passed a planned measure to allow emergency abortions, the Guardian reports. Women will be allowed to undergo the procedure in cases where the mother's life is at risk, including through potential suicide. Abortions due to rape, however, remain banned. The country's parliament voted 127 to 31 to support the new law, which was pushed by prime minister Enda Kenny amid excommunication threats from Catholic leaders. Kenny kicked 74 lawmakers out of his Fine Gael parliamentary group after they voted against the measure, the AP reports. But with some 4,000 Irish women traveling to Britain last year for abortions, critics say the move isn't nearly enough. "Women pregnant as result of rape, women with fatal fetal anomalies, couples who simply can't afford to care for a (or in most cases, another) child, will still be left behind," says an activist. With the penalty for seeking an abortion 14 years in prison, the tough rules are likely to face court challenge, says a Sinn Fein MP.
– Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood promises not to run a candidate for president in the fall elections, but it made clear today it wants a voice in the new Egypt by announcing plans to form a political party, reports CNN. That's certain to get a charge out of the Brotherhood's worst critics in the West, who fear the rise of a virulent anti-American Islamist party. But as the Wall Street Journal explains, the same kind of youth movement that upended the old guard of the ruling party might have the same kind of effect within the Brotherhood. It contrasts two members of the group, one a 29-year-old pro-democracy activist named Moaz Abdel Karim who worked with other opposition leaders to coordinate the Tahrir Square protests. His focus is on human rights, not jihad. The other is a 66-year-old Brotherhood leader from the group's conservative wing named Mohammed Badi who rails against Israel and American imperialism. The once-banned Brotherhood is destined to play a sizable role in the nation's future. "The question for many," writes Charles Levinson, "is which Brotherhood?"
– Iconic DJ Casey Kasem, who left show business in 2009 at age 77, has just months to live, according to legal documents obtained by TMZ. Kasem and wife Jean were sued by a former caregiver who says Jean mistreated her, and the case was heard (and thrown out) yesterday. A rep who appeared on Jean's behalf revealed Kasem is dying, according to TMZ. Jean herself submitted legal documents that say Kasem "is terminally ill and unable to leave home." TMZ has obtained other legal documents regarding Kasem this month; his kids say stepmom Jean has blocked them from seeing their father, and they're fighting her. Among the revelations: Kasem has advanced Parkinson's disease; may have early dementia and can only "shuffle short distances"; and suffers hallucinations and major impairment to his memory and ability to communicate, among other things.
– A jawbone found in Romania more than a decade ago provides the first genetic evidence that humans and Neanderthals knocked boots in Europe before the latter disappeared between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago. Scientists who came across the bone of one of the earliest modern humans in Europe in a cave known as Pestera cu Oase noticed it had both modern human and Neanderthal traits. Now, a study of the bone's DNA—made possible by recent technological advances—explains why. "The sample is more closely related to Neanderthals than any other modern human we've ever looked at before," Harvard researcher David Reich explains in a press release. "We estimate that 6% to 9% of its genome is from Neanderthals. This is an unprecedented amount." In comparison, all people except sub-Saharan Africans share 1% to 4% of their DNA with Neanderthals today. DNA in the fossil, which is 37,000 to 42,000 years old, suggests the Oase individual had a Neanderthal ancestor four to six generations back, reports Reuters. In other words, a great-great-grandparent might've been a Neanderthal, notes LiveScience. That shows interbreeding occurred far more recently than scientists had guessed; they initially thought interbreeding took place only in the Middle East between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. "It's an incredibly unexpected thing," Reich says. "In the last few years, we've documented interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans, but we never thought we'd be so lucky to find someone so close to that event." You aren't likely to share any DNA with the jawbone's owner, however. Reich says the hunter-gatherer was from a "pioneer population" that entered Europe but "didn't give rise to the later population." (The oldest Neanderthal DNA is some 150,000 years old.)
– Florida authorities have let the imagined voice of an 8-year-old girl who went missing on Memorial Day Weekend in 1984 take over the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department Twitter account. Through a series of tweets with the hashtag #Justice4Luna, they led a social media campaign that included the tweets "HELP!!!" and "Why are you taking me? Why are you doing this? Nothing will ever be the same after this." The Washington Post calls it "an eerily unorthodox campaign to resurrect the girl’s story—by resurrecting the girl." And while many seem to agree that the tweets are disturbing, the social media response has been largely positive, with people thanking the department for trying to revive interest in the 33-year-old case. The last time anyone saw her, Marjorie "Christy" Luna had slipped out of her house in a turquoise swimsuit and walked to Belk's General Store to buy cat food while her mother napped, reports the New York Daily News. The Post reports that authorities suspect one Victor Wonyetye is responsible. He was at a party in her neighborhood the day she went missing and soon moved to New Hampshire, where an 8-year-old girl went missing while walking to school. He died in 2012 after being released from prison for indecent exposure and burglary, and inmates claim he admitted to killing both girls. Canadian authorities used a similar social media campaign in the hopes of finding a girl who went missing in 1986, and say it brought information that made it "absolutely worthwhile." (This cold case has had numerous twists.)
– From the annals of classy guys: A Tennesee man is accused of stealing a woman's car to use on a date with her godsister that same night, the Commercial Appeal reports. Kelton Griffin, 21, allegedly took out Faith Pugh last weekend in her black Volvo because he had no wheels himself. "He just out of the blue texted me and asked me to go out," Pugh tells WREG. And when they did, she says, "he asked me could I go in the gas station for him to get a cigar." Emerging from said station, she saw no Griffin and no car. Picked up by her mother, Pugh says she got a text from her godsister—saying Griffin had asked her on a date. Pugh and her mom apparently followed them via GPS on her godsister's phone, and found the pair watching a movie at a drive-in. "He let her drive," says Pugh, "so she drove him to the drive-in. He didn't even have any money. She actually paid their way to get in the drive-in just so I could get my car back." Griffin was soon arrested by Memphis police and charged with property theft, per Lex 18. Police say he's been arrested before, for robbing a restaurant with two other men in 2016. Seems Pugh isn't exactly waiting for his call: "I hope he's in jail for a long time," she says. "I never want to speak to him ever again."
– Own a Samsung smart TV? Then take note: Your television is not only listening, it's sending your data to a third party, the Independent reports. The TV's voice-recognition software lets you give it orders, but the product's privacy policy warns that "personal or other sensitive information ... will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition." Samsung tells the BBC that the third party is Nuance, the company that does Samsung's speech-to-text conversion. But intellectual property lawyer Corynne McSherry says it would be nice to see that clarified in Samsung's policy, the Daily Beast reports. "And I’d definitely like to know whether my words were being transmitted in a secure form," she says. An activist tweets that Samsung's policy sounds a lot like the description of "telescreens" in George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984—which reads in part, "Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by [the screen]." Unnervingly, it wasn't clear how often "the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork." Samsung, however, says it doesn't keep voice data, and customers can opt to turn off voice-recognition or even unplug the TV from Wi-Fi. And Samsung isn't alone: the Verge reports that XBoxes already use voice recognition while being connected to the Internet. "Samsung's privacy policy is not unique; its rhetoric just happens to be similar to that of a well-known sci-fi novel," the Verge says.
– President Trump's proposed solution after the failure of the GOP health care bill Friday: Change Senate rules so that only 51 yes votes, not 60, are needed for legislation to pass. Trump has made this pitch before, though it would not have saved the GOP's health care bill overnight—it managed only 49 votes, with three Republicans joining Democrats in voting no. Trump followed up his initial tweet to acknowledge that fact, Politico reports: First tweet, 9:46am: If Republicans are going to pass great future legislation in the Senate, they must immediately go to a 51 vote majority, not senseless 60... Second tweet, 10am: ...Even though parts of healthcare could pass at 51, some really good things need 60. So many great future bills & budgets need 60 votes.... As CNBC explains, the Senate was using the budget reconciliation process to pass the repeal bill, which is why it only required a 51-vote majority. Trump has called repeatedly for the Senate to change the filibuster rules for all bills, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far disagreed.
– A video of defense chief James Mattis giving an off-the-cuff pep talk to US troops is gaining traction online. In the clip—see it here—Mattis asks the troops to "hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it," per the Guardian. It's not precisely clear where or when Mattis was speaking, but the best guess is that the impromptu speech was delivered in Jordan during Mattis' trip there last week, reports the Hill. The video was posted to a Facebook page called “US Army WTF Moments," apparently because it's seen as a veiled criticism of President Trump and the turmoil generated in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville. “The only way this great big experiment you and I call America is gonna survive is if we’ve got tough hombres like you," Mattis tells the troops. "You’re a great example for our country right now. It’s got some problems. You know it and I know it. It’s got problems that we don’t have in the military." At another point, Mattis suggested that America had lost its "power of inspiration," but would get it back. He added that the US has a second power—"the power of intimidation, and that’s you, if someone wants to screw with our families, our country and our allies.” The video was shot before Trump signed a memo blocking transgender enlistments but also giving Mattis leeway on how to deal with transgender troops currently serving.
– At least eight people were arrested yesterday in Detroit for protesting water shutoffs in a city where almost 40% of residents live below the poverty line. Dozens picketed in front of a facility affiliated with the city's Water and Sewerage Department to try to stop what activists call a “human rights violation,” reports Al Jazeera America. Police tell MLive that the individuals charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct range in age from 58 to 70 and include members of the clergy. (Watch video of the protest and arrests here.) The Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann, one of the arrested protesters, tells the Detroit Free Press that police tried to "move us forcibly, and we sat down. … We [were] here to appeal to the workers to stop shutting off the water." The coordinator of a local activist group says "police officers should be arresting rapists and murderers instead of arresting peaceful people." A Detroit Police rep counters that protesters still have to follow rules: "You cannot impede pedestrian or vehicle traffic." The Free Press counts 7,210 shutoffs in June, up from 7,556 in April and May combined, as part of what Al Jazeera reports is an effort to recover $175 million in unpaid bills. As of March, nearly half of the city's 323,900 DWSD accounts were delinquent; activists have asked the UN to intervene.
– Authorities in Canada think Sunday night's mosque shooting that left six people dead is a "lone wolf situation," reports Reuters, and they think they've got their shooter: Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, appeared in court Monday and was charged with six counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder, reports CBC News. So far, he does not face any terrorism-related charges. Bissonnette attended Laval University, near the Quebec City mosque, and studied political science and anthropology. The AP reports that he was known to espouse "far-right nationalist views" online, and the Toronto Globe and Mail reports that this didn't begin until March when nationalist leader Marine Le Pen visited Quebec City. "I wrote him off as a xenophobe," says a fellow Laval student. "He was enthralled by a borderline racist nationalist movement." A member of a refugee advocacy group says Bissonnette had become a familiar name to those who monitor extremist groups. He was "unfortunately known to many activists in Quebec for taking nationalist, pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions at Laval University and on social media," François Deschamps wrote on the Facebook page of the group Welcome to Refugees, per the Montreal Gazette. Five victims of the shooting remained hospitalized as of Monday evening.
– The FDA made history Thursday when, for the first time ever, it approved a genetically altered animal for human consumption, the Washington Post reports. After two decades of what the FDA calls "exhaustive and rigorous scientific review" the AquAdvantage salmon will be hitting supermarket seafood cases. According to ABC News, the AquAdvantage is an Atlantic salmon with a Chinook salmon growth hormone that allows it to grow all year and a gene from the eel-like ocean pout to activate that growth hormone. Basically this means the AquAdvantage will be big enough to eat in a year and a half instead of the three years required for a normal Atlantic salmon. The AquAdvantage is a "game changer"—nutritious food that's environmentally responsible, says Ron Stotish, CEO of AquaBounty, which makes the genetically altered salmon. The Post reports the approval of the AquAdvantage was opposed by everyone from food-safety activists to the salmon fishing industry. "I think it is a grave mistake we will come to regret," says one environmental group representative. Opponents call the AquAdvantage a "frankenfish" (though technically it would be a "Frankenfish's monster," but that's neither here nor there) and worry it could get loose and destroy the wild Atlantic salmon population. AquaBounty assures opponents that all its salmon are bred female and sterile, making their survival in the wild impossible (which sounds ominously familiar). According to ABC, laws don't require stores to label the AquAdvantage, and it's likely consumers won't even know they're eating it. Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Target, and others have already vowed not to sell the genetically altered salmon, the Post reports.
– During his speech to young Israelis today, President Obama started getting heckled in Hebrew. As the crowd booed, Obama handled it lightly, notes Raw Story. “This is part of the lively debate that we talked about,” he said, which prompted a standing ovation. " I have to say we actually arranged for that because it made me feel at home," Obama added. "I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I didn’t have at least one heckler.” The man apparently shouted something about Jonathan Pollard, currently serving a life sentence in the US for spying on behalf of Israel, reports Talking Points Memo, citing a White House pool report.
– How long will Sean Penn’s work in Haiti go on? Forever, he tells the Hollywood Reporter. “There’s no end point,” he says. “This is where I’ll be when I’m not working, for the rest of my life.” Penn was there on Christmas Eve, kissing young students on the cheek at a newly built school despite fears of cholera, nearly a year after he first arrived. The extensive article reveals the constant struggle Penn endures to keep his camp—which costs $450,000 a month—running. Why does he do it? “I didn’t have commitments, except for way in the future; I had nothing pressing,” he says of the period leading up to his work in Haiti. “I got practical issues, like everybody. I had two federal cases against me at the time, and one criminal one.” (Illegal trips to Cuba and allegedly assaulting a paparazzo, specifically). But, he adds, “I had just got taken for one half of everything I had in the divorce, so it’s not like I don’t have to work.” Click for more from the interview and his comments about his divorce.
– Despite the fact that anyone from the UK could have gone to TMZ.com and seen the naked pictures of Prince Harry, the snaps were kept off British media websites and newspapers—until now. The Sun went ahead and published the photos, even though the royal family's lawyers specifically asked it not to. The paper likes Harry and "is NOT making any moral judgment" about his behavior, it explains. It simply believes "Sun readers have a right to see them." Why? Because the photos have sparked a debate about Harry's lifestyle, considering he officially represents Britain, and thus any Brits without Internet access could not fully take part in that conversation. "There is a clear public interest in publishing the Harry pictures, in order for the debate around them to be fully informed." More on Harry: The prince was pictured hugging an also-naked woman … because he's so chivalrous. "He hugged her to cover her up. He went over to be the gentleman and said, 'I’ll shield you. I’ll protect you. I won’t let them see you,'" says a witness, adding, "She seemed to like that very much." We bet. Not surprisingly, Playgirl has now come a-knocking. The magazine wants Harry to pose for a centerfold, and though the publisher acknowledges that there's no way the prince would agree, he tells E!, "I think a million dollars is not out of the question." Harry might need to learn a little something about people with cameras … and Facebook. Before his trip to Vegas, the prince went to a private island for yet more partying, and pictures of the alcohol-fueled weekend were posted on the Facebook page of one of Harry's friends. Unfortunately, that Facebook page was not private—leading the Telegraph to publish the pictures, including one that appears to show Harry passed out in the sand. And there may be more pictures coming. A PR guru tells the AP two women, who claim to have been inside Harry's hotel room, approached him to sell more pictures and video of the prince. Though the PR guy didn't bite, he bets someone else will.
– An initiative to raise the minimum wage in Oklahoma City has been thwarted by a new law banning cities in the state from setting their own minimum wages or requirements for vacation days. A petition being circulated in the city called for raising the local minimum wage to $10.10—the level President Obama is pushing—from the current federal requirement of $7.25, the Oklahoman reports. The coalition behind the petition says it is considering a constitutional challenge to the new law. Gov. Mary Fallin, who signed the bill into law, rejected the argument that allowing cities to raise the minimum wage would bring people out of poverty, saying having different minimum wages across the state could scare off businesses and a higher minimum wage would cost jobs. "Most minimum wage workers are young, single people working part-time or entry-level jobs," she said. "Many are high school or college students living with their parents in middle-class families." Numerous studies, however, have found this to be untrue, Al Jazeera notes. A recent Economic Policy Institute report found that almost 90% of minimum wage workers are over 20, a quarter have children to support, and more than half work full time.
– You can whittle Donald Trump's long list of Secretary of State candidates down a bit: Rudy Giuliani has pulled his name out of contention, per Trump's transition team. "Rudy Giuliani is an extraordinarily talented and patriotic American. I will always be appreciative of his 24/7 dedication to our campaign after I won the primaries and for his extremely wise counsel," Trump said in a statement Friday. "He is and continues to be a close personal friend, and as appropriate, I will call upon him for advice and can see an important place for him in the administration at a later date. ... Rudy would have been an outstanding member of the Cabinet in several roles, but I fully respect and understand his reasons for remaining in the private sector." Giuliani will stay on as vice chairman of Trump's transition team, per CNN. As Politico puts it, the former New York mayor "had previously publicly campaigned for the post," and it's unclear why he's pulled out of the running for not just Secretary of State but any position in Trump's administration, a move the transition team said happened on Nov. 29. Reince Priebus, who will be Trump's chief of staff, said Giuliani had been fully vetted for any potential conflicts of interest and "passed with flying colors," and that his business ties had nothing to do with his withdrawal. Giuliani said in a statement that he still "[looks] forward to helping the President-elect in any way he deems necessary and appropriate." His biggest rival for the Secretary of State post was thought to be Mitt Romney; other possibilities include Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, retired Adm. James Stavridis, Sen. Bob Corker, and former Ford CEO Alan Mulally.
– Smoking costs the global economy an eye-popping $1 trillion a year, and despite anti-tobacco efforts, deaths are rising, Reuters reports. Tobacco-related illnesses will claim 8 million lives per year by 2030, up from the current 6 million, warns a new study by the World Health Organization and the National Cancer Institute. There are more people lighting up in middle- to low-income countries, which is where 80% of projected smoking deaths will occur in the coming years. Lost productivity and health care costs top $1 trillion per year (that's 12 zeros), a figure that dwarfs that $1 billion governments spent on anti-tobacco measures in the 2013-14 year. Governments could do more to curb smoking and reduce their health-care costs, the authors say. Smoking is the single largest preventable cause of death, notes Reuters. Global efforts to curb tobacco use have fallen short, the study says. "Government fears that tobacco control will have an adverse economic impact are not justified by the evidence," the authors write. "The science is clear; the time for action is now." They suggest boosting tobacco taxes and the price per pack along with better anti-smoking policies, warning labels and a total ban on marketing tobacco. Australia's strict plain-packaging laws banning cigarette company logos have been praised by health experts as a model for other nations, though the policy has sparked legal challenges. Australia won a legal fight against Philip Morris in 2015 to keep cigarette packs there as drab as possible, per the Guardian. (Smoke just a little bit? It'll still kill you.)
– Cats aren't dogs, and they'd like us to remember that, an animal behavior expert tells the Telegraph. We stress them out by expecting them to be as sociable as our canine friends, happy to be petted and hang out in the same space as other cats. But that just doesn't fit with how cats think, says Dr. John Bradshaw. "Dogs were sociable before they were domesticated," he says. "Unlike dogs, the cat is still halfway between a domestic and a wild animal, and it’s not enjoying 21st-century living." And when a cat is stressed, it can develop dermatitis and cystitis, he notes. In the past, "with cats, all we wanted was for them to keep our houses and farms and food stores free of rats and mice, and they got on with that," Bradshaw says. “It’s only in the last few decades that we have wanted them to be something else." That's not to say your cat doesn't love you, he adds. It's just that they "have their own lives" and interests. (And, as he told the Huffington Post earlier this year, your cat probably also thinks you are a very large cat; that's why, he theorizes, they communicate affection with humans the same way they do with other cats.) Some tips: Cats are likely to spend more time with you if they approach you, rather than if you approach them first, according to research, he notes. And if you're planning to get a second cat, you might want to bring its smell home first on a handkerchief: "It’s the cat equivalent of exchanging photos before a blind date." (Read about a cat who lived secret lives with two families.)
– Winemakers have long understood that things like the soil in which grapes are grown can affect the flavor of the grapes and, ultimately the wine. Now scientists have proof that a microbial component of "terroir"—wine lingo for the individual regional conditions—has an impact, too. Reporting in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers say they isolated the six major related strains of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast is a microbe, which the AFP describes as a "brainless, single-celled organism") found at all six of New Zealand's wine-producing regions and inoculated those 36 strains into sterilized Sauvignon Blanc grape juice to begin the process of fermentation. "We controlled for absolutely everything else other than these microbes," one researcher tells The Scientist, "and then we asked: What are the wines that result from those strains?" The intention was to see whether the genetic differences in the strains had an impact on the wine's taste and smell, but instead of using subjective taste testing, the researchers chemically profiled the resulting wines. And while these signatures showed tons of overlap, they also betrayed regional distinctiveness, with the profiles of wines produced by yeast strains from the same region clustering together. It wasn't the result study co-author Matthew Goddard was expecting. "The idea that microbes might play a role in terroir is new," he tells AFP, "and we think this is the first time that it has been experimentally shown that this is the case." The researchers further determined that "most of the 'fruity' notes in wine are in fact derived from yeast not the fruit." (Read about three really detestable wine habits.)
– Steve Jobs revolutionized Apple in his second go-round with the company, taking the stock from a split-adjusted $6.05 per share in 1996 to $376 today. But with Jobs resigning as CEO, everyone is wondering what the future holds for Apple. Some reactions: What will change? Not much, write Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Thomas Suh Lauder for the LA Times. In his role as CEO, Jobs had to answer to two groups: shareholders, and the board of directors. Now he's at the helm of that board. It was the perfect time to go, writes Brian Barrett for Gizmodo, noting that the coming release of the iPhone 5 and more affordable iPhone 4 should buoy the company and give CEO Tim Cook a chance to step into the spotlight. "If they'd waited any longer, the iPhone 5 announcement would've been fully shrouded in memories of Jobs. ... This feels calculated, in the best possible way, to happen at the best possible time. Now." Apple has lost its core, writes Rupert Goodwins for ZDNet, and only time will tell how this plays out. The iPhone and iPad can only be updated so many times, and with Jobs "there was always a 'next.'" But "Apple as innovator without Jobs is Apple unknown." Its future "depends on the new next, and the longer we have to wait to see what happens, the less likely it will happen at all."
– A few Twitter users lost the coveted blue tick on Wednesday after Twitter released new guidelines regarding verified accounts. The move came after the company was attacked for granting verified status to Jason Kessler, who put together the white nationalist rally that rocked Charlottesville in August (and issued this "vile" tweet about victim Heather Heyer). In a series of tweets, Twitter explained that "verification was meant to authenticate identity & voice ... [but] verification has long been perceived as an endorsement. We gave verified accounts visual prominence on the service which deepened this perception. We should have addressed this earlier but did not prioritize the work as we should have." General verification requests had been put on ice as of Nov. 9 pending a review of the program, and the Guardian reports that Twitter's new policy specifies that accounts that promote hate, support hate groups, or harass users will see verification revoked. Among those to immediately lose the check, per the Washington Post, were Kessler, white nationalist Richard Spencer, and far-right activist Laura Loomer (known for rushing the stage during Julius Caesar and being banned from Uber and Lyft after anti-Muslim tweets). Loomer's response to her notice of verification removal including tweeting "Translation: I'm a conservative" and, per Splinter, comparing her situation to that of Jews during the Holocaust.
– McDonald's is apologizing after one of its commercials that aired in the UK caused an uproar for exploiting childhood grief. The ad shows a young boy asking his mom to describe his late father, and being disappointed at every turn when he doesn't see any similarities between himself and his dad. That is, until he's eating with his mom at a McDonald's and his mom mentions that he and his dad share the same favorite McDonald's food item, a Filet-O-Fish. If the first word that comes to mind isn't "touching" or "moving," you're not alone. Fortune rounds up the appalled Twitter reactions, with users calling the ad "vulgar" and "trashy beyond belief." McDonald's UK is replying to a host of complaints on Twitter. In a statement, the company responded by apologizing for the "upset" it caused, saying that was not its intention and, per a spokesperson, "we wanted to highlight the role McDonald's has played in our customers' everyday lives—both in good and difficult times." The BBC reports that a UK bereavement charity says it has received numerous calls from parents of actually bereaved children, who say their kids were upset by the commercial. One critic notes it's particularly upsetting that the ad features no advice for parents and children dealing with the loss of a loved one: "What are children supposed to think after watching it? That a simple meal can solve their emotional pain?" McDonald's says it will pull the ad, but that it may still air through Wednesday, Metro reports.
– Capitol Hill has been without a Kennedy a full year now after a six-decade run, but that has a decent chance of changing in September: Joseph P. Kennedy III is formally "exploring" a run for Barney Frank's House seat. "A hail and hearty 31, JPK3 has got the smile, the jawline, the shoulders," writes Michelle Cottle at the Daily Beast. "(Although, good Lord, could that hair be any brighter orange?)" He's also a decent orator, and has a Harvard Law degree and experience as an assistant DA under his belt. This race, though, is about more than recharging the Kennedy dynasty, writes Cottle: It's part of what could be a comeback year for Democrats in Massachusetts. They're still smarting over losing a Senate seat to Scott Brown, but Elizabeth Warren offers a chance to correct that. "This year offers a shot at redemption, if only Dems can fire up their voters. And what better way to do so than with a Kennedy on the ticket?" Maybe, but a skeptical Peter Gelzinis at the Boston Herald warns that plenty of "Kennedy fatigue" still exists in the state.
– The Time 100—Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world—has just hit the interwebs, and as usual, the names range from obvious to head scratching. The names you expect are there—Barack Obama, Oprah, Steve Jobs—as are some you might not, or that seem to be in an odd category. Glenn Beck, for example, makes the list as a “Leader.” The “Heroes” category, meanwhile, contains a bunch of sports stars and entertainers—Phil Mickelson, Ben Stiller, and Serena Williams—alongside the likes of Bill Clinton or Mir Hossein Mousavi, the winner of Time's reader poll. Ashton Kutcher makes the “Artists” list, presumably because he has a Twitter account, as does Conan O'Brien, presumably for being fired. You can see the whole list here, or, for extra fun, check out Joel Stein's Least Influential list.
– At first, it seemed like 4-year-old Laura Carson was suffering from a simple headache. Then came rapid shallow breathing, a tremor, double vision. Within days in August 2014, she was "a limp rag doll," reports Today—but it took doctors some time to diagnose her with acute flaccid myelitis, a rare disease the CDC warns is becoming increasingly more common. Not much is known about the polio-like disease that plagues mostly children, including what causes it. What is known is that AFM affects the spinal cord and causes weak limbs or paralysis, drooping in the face, and slurred speech or difficulty breathing. About 200 kids have been diagnosed since 2014, and this year's figures are especially troubling. The CDC reports 121 cases of AFM were confirmed in 2014, but that was followed by just 21 cases in 2015, reports Fox News. From January to August of this year, however, there were 50 confirmed cases in 24 states. Among that first spike of cases in 2014, the Washington Post reports that 85% of kids recovered partially, but only three recovered fully. A CDC study found 68% of patients had a fever and 81% had a respiratory illness before AFM symptoms appeared. Some had been diagnosed with the West Nile virus, and others with an enterovirus. "August to October is typically when enteroviruses circulate" and "we see more acute flaccid myelitis during that season," a doctor tells NBC News. Washing your hands and covering your mouth when coughing or sneezing are among the ways suggested to help. (Four siblings suffer from a mysterious disease.)
– As doctors shift away from drawing vials of blood from patients and rely on lab-on-a-chip diagnostics that identify a myriad of conditions using a single drop of blood, there's now concern that not all of your blood is equal. A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology suggests "caution when using measurements from a single drop of fingerprick blood," write researchers at Rice 360° Institute for Global Health: Our blood can change rather dramatically from one drop to the next. Researchers tested seven drops of blood from each of 10 participants and analyzed them for basic health metrics such as platelet counts and hemoglobin, and found a pretty wide range of results—so much so that they had to average the results from six to nine drops to rival the accuracy of a larger blood draw from a vein, reports the New York Times. "If you’re going to take a fingerprick stick to get your measures, you need to be aware that you’re sacrificing some accuracy," one of the researchers warns. The results have implications for startups like Theranos and Genalyte, which hope to diagnose diseases using only one drop. Unlike Theranos, however, Genalyte has produced results via peer-reviewed studies on tests to find autoimmune diseases such as lupus, reports Fast Company. (The Theranos founder dropped out of college at 19 to start the company.)
– A dispute over a marriage proposal in Pakistan resulted in a staggering body count, according to police in Khyber Pakhtunkwha province. Police say Gul Ahmed, enraged by a failed engagement to his cousin Naveeda Bibi, killed his uncle, aunt, and eight cousins, including Naveeda, yesterday morning, the AP reports. The 25-year-old escaped after the mass shooting in Charsadda district, and police sources tell the Nation that he was already a fugitive for killing his parents and two brothers in November last year in what is believed to have been a dispute over a dowry settlement for the proposed marriage to his cousin. Dawn has a slightly different take on events before the massacre: The newspaper's sources say Ahmed allegedly killed his parents, a brother, and his sister-in-law on the orders of his uncle, then killed the uncle and his family after he kept delaying the wedding for assorted reasons. Ahmed reportedly had accomplices when he carried out the pre-dawn shooting, and entry points to neighboring regions to which he might try to flee have been tightened. (An engagement in neighboring India came to a less bloody end last month when the groom failed a math test.)
– A Wisconsin man has lost his hands and legs after he likely received "the lick of death" from a dog, People reports. Per a GoFundMe created for Greg Manteufel, the 48-year-old house painter from West Bend started feeling sick on June 27; he and his family initially thought he had the flu, FOX6 notes. His symptoms soon worsened, however, and his wife, Dawn, rushed him to the ER, where they noticed his body was covered in bruises, "like somebody beat him up with a baseball bat," she says. Blood tests soon revealed the cause: Manteufel had gone into septic shock from the Capnocytophaga canimorsus bacteria, which Live Science notes is found in the mouths of nearly three-quarters of dogs and 57% of cats, though the animals themselves don't get sick from it. In humans, however, the bacteria can cause a blood infection, or sepsis, which can lead to organ failure and even death. Doctors had to amputate Manteufel's legs at the knees; he also lost his hands, and his nose has to be reconstructed. "He told the doctors, 'Do what you have to do to keep me alive,'" Dawn Manteufel tells the Washington Post. She adds they don't know which dog infected her husband: They counted eight dogs he'd been around at the time he fell sick, including his own. The Manteufels will have to sell their house and look for a one-story home now, and Greg Manteufel will no longer be able to work as a house painter or cruise on his Harley. Still, Dawn Manteufel says, "There's no negativity from him so far." A Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin doctor tells FOX6 what happened to Manteufel was a fluke and that "more than 99% of the people [who] have dogs will never have this issue." The GoFundMe for Manteufel has raised more than $28,000. (Snoozing with your pet can be risky.)
– Kevin Curran might not have been a household name, but there were few Americans he didn't get a laugh out of during a decades-long career in TV comedy writing and producing. Curran, a six-time Emmy winner who has died from complications from cancer at the age of 59, joined the producing team of The Simpsons in 2001 and wrote a dozen episodes, Deadline reports. He won three of his Emmys with The Simpsons and three with Late Night With David Letterman, where he was part of the writing team from 1985 to 1987, reports Variety. He came up with the show's first Top Ten list: "'Top Ten Words That Almost Rhyme with ‘Peas.'" Curran's other TV credits included Married With Children, where he was a producer from 1990 to 1993—and provided the voice of Buck the Dog. His comedy career started at Harvard, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon. "Kevin Curran was a sweet, brilliant man who said many hilarious things, some unprintable, others which will live forever in a children’s cartoon," Simpsons showrunner Al Jean, who first met him at Harvard, said in a statement. Curran is survived by a son and daughter from his long relationship with Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding. (We lost Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon last year.)
– The White House wasn't exactly resounding on Sunday in its defense of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. "That's the question that I think you should ask the president, the question you should ask Reince [Priebus], the chief of staff," senior policy adviser Stephen Miller told Meet the Press on Sunday, per the Los Angeles Times, when asked if the White House still had confidence in Flynn. "So the White House did not give you anything to say," asked Chuck Todd. "They did not give me anything to say," Miller confirmed, which the Times notes is ominous given that he was the only White House rep made available to the Sunday talk shows. Miller calls it "an important matter" and "a sensitive matter," reports the AP. At issue is whether Flynn discussed US sanctions in calls with Russia's ambassador while President Obama was still in office. The conversations may have broken US law aimed at barring private citizens from conducting diplomacy. A Washington Post report last week contradicted Flynn's previous denials. Elsewhere on the Sunday dial: Miller says that Immigration and Customs Enforcement's emphasis is on deporting those he calls "criminal aliens" and who "pose a threat to public safety." Miller says "we're going to focus on public safety and saving American lives and we will not apologize." President Trump tweeted that "Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!" Miller says the White House is exploring "all of our options" after a federal appeals court handed the administration a legal setback on Trump's executive order on immigration. Chuck Schumer had succinct commentary on the travel ban, per Politico: "I think he ought to throw it in the trash," Schumer said. "I think this executive order is so bad and so poisoned and its genesis is so bad and terrible that he ought to just throw it in the trash can."
– A Florida police chief got arrested Friday for allegedly soliciting a prostitute and was promptly fired just 10 months into his tenure, NBC Miami reports. According to an arrest report, Miami Gardens Police Chief Stephen Johnson called a number in a "two-girl special" prostitution ad and negotiated a $100 deal for two women for 30 minutes. Only problem: The woman he allegedly paid at a motel was really a sheriff's detective. "The stress overwhelmed me, and I made a very bad decision," Johnson tells the Miami Herald in his apology. He was hired last May to repair community relations after former top cop Matthew Boyd resigned amid allegations of harassment and illegal tactics. "It was one of the most painful things I've ever heard as a manager," says the city manager who fired Stephens, the Sun-Sentinel reports. "It's like a punch in the stomach."
– Catherine Hardwicke’s take on Red Riding Hood, the classic story doused in teen angst and good looks, is certainly riding the zeitgeist—but it never really enters the woods, critics say: The film is “gorgeously shot, smartly conceived, cleverly cast, badly executed—the lush medieval beauty here is at best only skin deep,” writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. “Sometimes, it's literate and lofty. More of the time, it's mind-numbingly simplistic and served up on a platter like leftovers.” Imagine the story conference, suggests Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Hey! Let's switch the vampires with a werewolf and recycle the theme of a virgin attracted to a handsome but dangerous hunk, only let's get two hunks!” Plus, it’s “dreadfully serious about a plot so preposterous, it demands to be filmed by Monty Python.” In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis is fairly positive, calling the film a “goofily amusing screen fairy tale.” But when it comes to the darker themes, “what sharp teeth Ms. Hardwicke doesn’t have.”
– At a reflecting pool at the 9/11 Memorial, Pope Francis prayed and laid a white rose before leading a multi-faith service for peace today. "Francisco, Francisco," the crowd chanted after he placed the rose on the pool's edge, according to AFP. The pontiff met with 9/11 families and responders, including two widows, before the service; he blessed a wheelchair-bound NYPD detective who helped catch Osama bin Laden's brother. The service included a prayer of remembrance: "We ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here," he said, per the New York Daily News. Also at the service: Mayor Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Sen. Chuck Schumer, former mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and representatives of other major religions.
– Jeb Bush, having apparently remembered that women make up half the electorate, has walked back comments he made yesterday suggesting that too much money is spent on their health. "I'm not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues," he told a Southern Baptist convention yesterday as part of a discussion on defunding Planned Parenthood and spending the money elsewhere, reports the New York Times, which notes that the $500 million he was talking about is a small fraction of the roughly $1 trillion the federal government spends on health care every year. Bush issued a statement last night saying he "misspoke" and "there are countless community health centers, rural clinics, and other women’s health organizations that need to be fully funded." But if Bush becomes the Republican nominee, video of the remarks "could be used to devastating effect in television ads against him next fall," notes Eli Stokols at Politico. Hillary Clinton quickly attacked the remarks, tweeting "You are absolutely, unequivocally wrong," CNN reports. "He's got no problem giving billions of dollars away to super wallet and powerful corporations but I guess women’s health just isn’t a priority for him," she told an audience last night.
– At least 68 people were killed when fire swept through the cells of a police station in Venezuela early Wednesday—and relatives demanding answers later in the day were given tear gas instead. Tarek William Saab, chief prosecutor in the city of Valencia, says 68 people—66 men and two female visitors—died in "dramatic events" at the police command and detention center, and four prosecutors have been appointed to investigate the incident, CNN reports. "We will deepen the investigations to immediately clarify these painful events that has dozens of Venezuelan families in mourning," Saab says. Desperate families waiting for news outside the police station were tear-gassed and dispersed after fights with police, Sky News reports. The nonprofit group A Window to Freedom, which monitors conditions at detention facilities in Venezuela, says there are unconfirmed reports that the fire broke out during unrest that began when an armed detainee shot a guard in the leg, the AP reports. Inmates, some of them badly burned, had to be rescued through a hole made in the station wall. The group says severe overcrowding in police station jails is common in Venezuela. "It's grave and alarming," says Carlos Nieto Palma, the group's director.
– Speaking at the final resting spot of thousands of America's servicemembers, President Obama paid tribute to Veterans Day today with a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and a vow to do more to take care of those who have served. "No ceremony or parade, no hug or handshake is enough to truly honor that service," Obama said, adding that a grateful nation must commit "to serving you as well as you've served us." Obama spoke with an eye on veterans of more recent wars, notes Politico, particularly the September 11th generation, "who stepped forward when the Towers fell, and in the years since have stepped into history, writing one of the greatest chapters in military service our country has ever known." Vowing to tackle a backlog in veterans' benefits, he said, "as they come home, it falls to us, their fellow citizens, to be there for them and their families, not just now but always."
– A shooter who opened fire in a high school near Seattle is dead, police say. He reportedly shot other students at Marysville-Pilchuck High School before taking his own life, but the details are still firming up. The Seattle Times reports that one of his victims is dead and that four other students are injured. A student at the school says the gunman, reportedly a freshman, walked up to a table in the cafeteria with four to six people and opened fire. Police say they are confident the gunman acted alone, reports CNN. A lockdown at the school, located in Washington state's Marysville, was being lifted. “Everyone just started running," recalls 14-year-old Adam Holston. "I could hear the gunshots, and my heart was racing and we didn’t know what was going on.”
– The 20-month-old boy whose mother allegedly tossed him over the side of a Pennsylvania bridge into the Lehigh River, then followed him in, has died after six days, reports NBC Philadelphia. Police had previously charged 19-year-old Johnesha Perry with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, and endangering the welfare of a child; the Morning Call reports that while those charges haven't been upgraded in light of the death of Zymeir Perry yesterday morning, the Allentown DA says he plans an update tomorrow. An autopsy on Zymeir is also set for tomorrow. Perry, who sustained minor injuries in the jump, has since been released from the hospital and is in the Lehigh County Jail under $100,000 bail.
– The White House hosted a "Made in America Product Showcase" Monday, and one of the attendees was Matt Roberts, president of the last US manufacturer of forks, spoons, and knives. That his Sherrill Manufacturing from upstate New York snagged an invite to the event wasn't a surprise—but Syracuse.com reports that Roberts soon spotted an anomaly in the State Dining Room. Everybody had just eaten with flatware made from China. The utensils were made by Oneida Ltd., which once manufactured its products in New York, but no more. In fact, Roberts' company now uses a former Oneida plant. "With all of the things going on in the world, forks and spoons in your kitchen are not exactly the top priority at the White House," says Roberts. But the story suggests that might soon change. It notes how New York Congresswoman Claudia Tenney has been pushing for the White House to make the switch, once even getting an assurance of it from President Trump himself (see the video). While Trump wasn't at Monday's event, two of his top economic advisers, Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, were in attendance, as was Tenney, who was making sure they knew the full story.
– The pleas for mercy weren't enough, apparently. Despite uproar from several foreign governments, Indonesia is readying for the executions of eight foreigners and one local man convicted of drug trafficking. A dozen ambulances—nine of which were carrying coffins—boarded a ferry to Besi prison on Nusakambangan Island today, while inmates' family members made what are now considered last visits, the AP reports. One relative described the goodbye as "torture," while another collapsed in agony, reports the BBC. Though it was believed Frenchman Serge Atlaoui would be executed, Indonesia's AG says an outstanding appeal will save his life for now. It isn't clear when the executions will occur, but protocol suggests the inmates could be shot by a firing squad just after midnight local time. Some in Australia, including actor Guy Pearce, have criticized Prime Minister Tony Abbott for failing to visit Indonesia and bring home its two nationals, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, who were caught trying to smuggle heroin out of the country in 2005. Chan married his Indonesian Christian pastor yesterday. "Clearly if traveling to Indonesia would make a difference, we would have gone there," Australia's foreign minister says, adding "while they are still alive, there is still hope." The BBC reports Indonesia indicated it would not stay the two inmates' executions despite a corruption investigation into the case. Meanwhile, a friend of Sukumaran says the inmate will choose not to be blindfolded before 12 gunmen, three of whom will have live rounds, reports the Guardian. "Myuran always said to me that he would never take this lying down; that he would stare them down, that no one would cover his eyes, that he would face it with dignity."
– Thanks to the Cassini spacecraft, we already knew that one of Saturn's moons has a big ocean. Now things have gotten more interesting on Enceladus. It turns out that the ocean is not only warm, it seems to have the same kind of hydrothermal activity going on as oceans on Earth, reports NASA. Bottom line: "This may be the place to go look for life in the outer solar system," says a Cornell scientist not involved with the new study in Nature. That would be microbial life, under conditions similar to those in a network of hot springs under the Atlantic Ocean known as the "Lost City," reports AP. Some scientists think that ancient hydrothermal field yielded the first life on our planet. Some extra-terrestrial sleuthing resulted in the Enceladus discovery: Knowing that a geyser shooting up from the moon's south pole sends up dust particles that settle on Saturn's outer ring, researchers analyzed the outer ring. They discovered that the dust particles were mostly silica, explains Popular Mechanics, and the makeup of that silica yielded details about the ocean in which they were formed. "We think that the temperature at least in some part of the ocean must be higher than 190 degrees Fahrenheit," team member Sean Hsu tells NPR. "If you could swim a little bit further from the really hot part then it could be comfy." The only way to "nail the habitability question" is to send up a new spacecraft to Enceladus with more modern instruments, says the Cornell researcher. He's already working on the proposal. (Read about how Pluto might rejoin the planet club.)
– A long Washington Post article on David Gregory and the troubles he faces as moderator of NBC's Meet the Press has quite a few people wondering what's going on at the show. As the Post explains, the longest-running television program has been declining in the ratings for three years, and is currently the No. 3 Sunday talk show. Last year, the network brought in a psychological consultant to talk to friends and family members of Gregory, who took over the gig after Tim Russert's death in 2008. As the Post puts it, that seems "odd" to some, considering Gregory has been at NBC almost two decades. Multiple blogs picked up on that tidbit, and NBC quickly gave Poynter a statement insisting it actually hired "a brand consultant," not a psychological one, "to better understand how its anchor connects." The network also says the move is "not unusual." But the article's writer tells Politico he checked the term "psychological" with the network twice, and it had "no objections then"—and it remains in the Post story as of this writing. As for Gregory's job, Post reporter Paul Farhi writes that it "does not appear to be in any immediate jeopardy, but there are plenty of signs of concern."
– An Arizona teen charged with plotting terrorist attacks in his home state was attacked in jail earlier this month, NBC News reports. Eighteen-year-old Mahin Khan suffered minor injuries when he was attacked by fellow inmates July 2—the day after his arrest. According to KNXV, Khan was being held in medium security at Maricopa County Jail at the time of the attack, which was only revealed Friday. Following his arrest, Khan was offered "voluntary segregation," which he turned down. He's now been moved to segregated housing. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says all inmates facing terror-related charges will be automatically isolated from the general population in the future. Khan, who's from Tucson, pleaded not guilty to terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism on Tuesday, KPHO/KTVK reports. The FBI says Khan contacted terrorist group Terik-e Taliban Pakistan. He was allegedly planning bomb attacks at government buildings in Arizona. Khan's public defenders want his future hearings made off limits to the media, blaming previous coverage for the jail attack and expressing concern for his family's safety.
– Wondering how Lady Gaga would ever top her meat dress or egg transport system? Well, she found a way last night, when she arrived at the launch party for her new album via ... flying dress. The dress, which she calls "Volantis," is by TechHaus, part of the singer's Haus of Gaga, Fast Company reports. The dress' flying apparatus is attached to a platform, on which Gaga stood, clad in a fiberglass bodice and skirt. It's powered by 50 volts of batteries, Complex reports. ARTPOP is out today.
– Three female Ukrainian activists drove into Crimea just before its referendum and ended up kidnapped, beaten, and tossed in the same jail, they tell the Daily Beast. They were driving into Crimea—one on her own, and two together—to spread their views when Cossacks, Russian militia, and Ukrainian "Berkut" riot police dragged them onto a road near Armyansk. "I could not believe that Berkut was beating us, humiliating us, cutting our hair off and threatening to kill us in broad daylight," said Kateryna Butko, 25. It was bad for their male friends, too, who were stripped down to their underwear and had guns fired beside their heads. All were taken to a Russian navy base in Sevastopol, where Russian military questioned them about their activities. "I was having long political discussions with my polite interrogators," said Butko. The Russians even let her go out with Russian journalists, hoping she would speak well of Russia later, but the trio seemed unconvinced after being freed: "I would not advise any activists to go to Crimea these days," said one. Makes sense, considering that Crimea has seen more than 20 kidnappings lately, the Guardian reports, and KyivPost says kidnappings and assaults of Ukrainian activists and journalists "have become the norm" since Russia invaded.
– Danielle Fishel, better known to people of a certain age as Topanga from Boy Meets World, got married Saturday and released a picture to Us. And because we live in an age of Internet trolls, she was immediately hit with cruel comments about her weight, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. But Fishel was quick to hit back at the critics, tweeting from her honeymoon: You know what makes dealing with rude comments easy? Love & happiness. I’ll just keep being the happiest me & you keep being the rudest you. Ppl saying I was FAT @ my wedding: u r the worst kind of ppl on the PLANET. I weigh 107 pounds & am 5’1″. YOU are the reason anorexia exists. I hope you’ll look at your own miserable lives and learn to stop judging others on their weight and looks. Love and happiness wins again. And the kicker: "Side note, I plan on coming home from this honeymoon weighing 299 pounds."
– Prince William and his wife Kate have released a photo of Princess Charlotte ahead of her 2nd birthday, which People reports will be spent "privately" at home. The photo taken by the Duchess of Cambridge was distributed Monday, one day before Charlotte turns two. It shows Charlotte on the grounds of Anmer Hall, the family's country home, wearing a yellow cardigan sweater decorated with images of sheep, reports the AP. The family is expected to spend more time in London in the coming years. Their London base is at Kensington Palace. Charlotte's older brother, Prince George, 3, plans to attend a London school in September. As for the next big thing for Charlotte, the BBC notes she'll be part of the wedding party for Pippa Middleton's May 20 nuptials.
– Current and former black employees of CNN and Turner Broadcasting filed a class action lawsuit against the companies and their parent company, Time Warner, this week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The employees allege racial discrimination. CNN producer DeWayne Walker sued the network individually in January, claiming he was skipped over for promotions for more than 13 years because he's black. "As a result of the current discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of DeWayne Walker ... we have uncovered stories involving abuse of power, nepotism, revenge, retaliation, and discrimination," says Walker's lawyer, Daniel Meachum. Walker is not a plaintiff in the class action lawsuit; just two plaintiffs are named in the lawsuit, but Meachum says 20 to 30 other unnamed people told him of their experiences, which prove "a company-wide pattern and practice" going back more than two decades, he says. The lawsuit alleges that black employees receive "disproportionately lower scores on evaluations" and are also discriminated against when it comes to compensation, promotions, and terminations. It also alleges that black employees have been subjected to racial slurs from their superiors. Two other black CNN employees have sued the network for discrimination this year, the Hill reports. Meachum tells LawNewz that since his lawsuit was announced, 20 to 30 additional people have requested to become part of the class.
– Australian officials have sounded a fresh note of confidence in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, saying they've reacquired underwater signals following a lapse into silence. Search chief Angus Houston says an Australian navy vessel detected two sets of pings yesterday in the same area that signals were detected over the weekend, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. "I'm now optimistic that we will find the aircraft, or what is left of the aircraft, in the not too distant future—but we haven't found it yet, because this is a very challenging business," Houston told reporters. The signals are getting weaker, which could be a sign that searchers are getting further away, or, more likely, a sign that the data recorder batteries are starting to fade, explained Houston. He says they have delayed deploying the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 to search for wreckage because with time running out, they don't want anything to get in the way of the signals. In another promising development, authorities have analyzed the pings detected over the weekend and confirmed that they came from electronic equipment, with signals consistent with those of flight data recorders, CNN reports.
– Making a movie isn't always all fun and games. Pixable rounds up nine film locations that were extremely hazardous for cast and crew: The Conqueror, St. George, Utah: The 1956 John Wayne flick was filmed near a government nuclear test site in Nevada. Nearly 100 cast and crew members ultimately got some form of cancer, including Wayne (though he attributed his cancer to his six-pack-a-day smoking habit). Noah's Ark, Chatsworth, Calif.: The 1982 short film used so much water for the flooding scene the set actually flooded and people were injured. Thirty-five ambulances responded to the emergency. Roar, Acton, Calif.: While making the 1981 movie about a family living among wild animals, cast and crew members (including Melanie Griffith) were actually mauled by wild animals. The Exorcist, New York, NY: The set was so cold (sometimes below zero) that snow sometimes built up on set and sweat froze on cast and crew members during filming of the 1973 movie. The African Queen, Belgian Congo, Africa: Most of the 1951 film's cast and crew got dysentery from drinking the local water—but not Humphrey Bogart or John Huston, because they mostly drank whiskey. Click for the complete list.
– Love at first sight may actually be a warning sign. That's according to experts cautioning people in new relationships about so-called "love bombing." Not familiar with the term? Elle UK "delve[s] into the worrying behaviors of a 'love bomber,'" explaining that it takes time for people to truly get to know each other as their relationships deepen. When someone is over-the-top awesome in the beginning of a relationship—always sending flowers and offering up compliments and affection—it could actually be a "conditioning tool (otherwise known as a form of abuse)." PsychCentral calls it a "process of grooming." Constant flowers themselves aren't the worrisome sign—the shift is; ie, if the attention goes from positive and affectionate to controlling and cruel. If the person being "bombed" falls fast and hard it can be harder to see that shift. Love bombers, by the way, are narcissists, and they're usually men. In Psychology Today, psychiatrist Dale Archer dates the term "love bombing" to the 1970s, when Unification Church of the United States (aka the "Moonies") first used it. Cult leaders like David Koresh and Charles Manson would employ this tactic to woo followers and then con them into nefarious acts. Archer argues that idealization isn't necessarily harmful when it grows over time, but that the "common thread" in love bombing is intense courtship and idealization over just a matter of days or weeks. Soon, "love bombers exploit the natural human need for self worth, and turn it into shame, regret, and self-loathing." (One study finds that men tend to feel more entitled and be more narcissistic than women.)
– New York City cops have literally turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio and jeered him in public, and, as the New York Post reports, they now seem to be engaging in a "virtual work stoppage" in terms of arrests. Some critics, however, say it's the NYPD that's in the wrong. At Gawker today, Andy Cush delivers this scathing assessment: The department "is too childish and entitled to deserve its privileged status, and too aggrieved and resentful to be called 'New York's Finest.' The New York Police Department is an embarrassment to the city of New York." De Blasio's main offense in the eyes of the NYPD came after the non-indictment in the Eric Garner case, when he said that his son needs to be especially careful around police because he's black. After the police union blamed the mayor for the subsequent murder of two officers, the New York Times made the case that rank-and-file officers deserve better from their union reps. "Mr. de Blasio isn’t going to say it, but somebody has to: With these acts of passive-aggressive contempt and self-pity, many New York police officers, led by their union, are squandering the department’s credibility, defacing its reputation, shredding its hard-earned respect," it says in an editorial. "They have taken the most grave and solemn of civic moments—a funeral of a fallen colleague—and hijacked it for their own petty look-at-us gesture." On the flip side, a New York Post editorial says de Blasio still owes the city an apology for "his public insinuations that the NYPD is a racist force." The mayor was meeting today with leaders of the five police unions to try to calm things down.
– The Detroit father whose missing son was found behind a barricade in his own basement could face charges, police say, but it's not clear whether they will be related to the 11-day disappearance of 12-year-old Charlie Bothuell. Sources tell Fox that the boy was home-schooled under a strict regimen that included beatings with a PVC pipe, and investigators have removed evidence including bloodied clothing from the home. Investigators say the boy didn't appear to be captive behind the barricade, but they don't believe he could have erected it himself. Police didn't find him on four previous searches of the home and it's not clear if he was in the basement during those visits. His father—who was being interviewed by Nancy Grace when he was informed his son had been found—says he had no idea that Charlie was in the basement. Sources say the boy has told investigators that it was his stepmother, Monica Bothuell, who helped him hide out in the basement—and in another twist, she was arrested yesterday on an unrelated weapons charge, CNN reports. Two other children, a 4-year-old and a 10-month-old, have been removed from the home, and Charlie has been released to his mother's custody. WXYZ has uncovered another twist: The basement unit where Charlie was found is connected by an underground hallway to the home of his stepmother's uncle: Detroit attorney Godfrey Dillard, who recently announced a run for Michigan Attorney General.
– Did Shia LaBeouf's crazy night on Broadway last week finally convince him it's time to get help? Maybe: After he was kicked out of a theater and arrested Thursday night, LaBeouf checked into rehab in LA yesterday, x17 reports. LaBeouf was also seen toting Alcoholics Anonymous literature, Radar notes, adding that this isn't LaBeouf's first experience with AA: He reportedly celebrated 60 days of sobriety at an AA meeting in 2008, and in 2011 he admitted he was an alcoholic publicly and was seen attending meetings. As TMZ points out in numerous articles, the Broadway incident was just the latest bit of misbehavior from LaBeouf: Last month he was banned from an LA restaurant for peeing on its outside wall; earlier this month he was recorded trying to fight outside a New York strip club; and hours before his arrest Thursday, he chased a homeless man after a weird argument over a hat the guy was wearing. And then, of course, there was his 2011 bar brawl, his 2014 bar brawl, that whole debacle with Alec Baldwin, the paper bag incident, and his bizarre plagiarized apology tour.
– A day after the US flew two bombers over the Korean peninsula in a training exercise with South Korea and Japan, North Korea's foreign minister made incendiary comments promising "a hail of fire" against the US, USA Today reports. "With his bellicose and insane statement at the United Nations, Trump, you can say, has lit the wick of a war against us,” Reuters quotes Ri Yong Ho as telling Russian state media. “We need to settle the final score, only with a hail of fire, not words.” In the speech mentioned by Ri, President Trump vowed to "totally destroy North Korea" if necessary, the Independent reports. Ri also called the North Korean nuclear program a "sword of justice" that ensures the safety of North Korea and the rest of the region. He said the nuclear program is not up for debate or negotiation with the US. “We have almost reached the last point on the journey toward our final goal—to achieve a real balance of power with the United States,” he said. Ri said North Korea has “inexhaustible power that won’t leave aggressor state America unpunished."
– Details of alleged sexual assaults by Bill Cosby just keep on coming. Today five women describe his purported attacks in blood-curdling detail to the Washington Post, with some saying they were drugged before the encounter and others claiming they screamed, tried fighting him off, or said they would fight him to the death (in that case, he allegedly threw two hundred-dollar bills at model Tamara Green and walked out). Victoria Valentino—an ex-Playboy Playmate speaking up for the first time—says he drugged her and a friend with red pills in 1970. Then he "opened his fly and grabbed my head and pushed my head down. And then he turned me over. It was like a waking nightmare." But she never pressed charges: "What kind of credibility did I have?" Denials by Cosby lawyers pepper the article, as do quotes from a friend, a writer, and a district attorney who say they heard the women's accusations years ago. The Post also looks at Cosby's marriage to Camille Cosby, saying "it’s unclear how much Camille knew about her husband’s activities" since six of the alleged sexual assaults occurred at his house. She was reportedly aware of his "selfish" behavior in Los Angeles, which contrasted with his upstanding life on the East Coast as a man studying for a PhD and sitting on a board at Temple University. Yet even there, a Temple employee accuses him of drugging her with blue pills and sexually assaulting her. In other Cosby news: Ex-NBC employee Frank Scotti tells the Daily News that during the Cosby Show's heyday, he guarded Cosby's dressing-room door while the comedy star hosted young models. Scotti says he then paid off the women with money orders using cash provided by Cosby (he produces the money orders). "He had everybody fooled," says Scotti. "Nobody suspected." When Cosby appeared on the Late Show With David Letterman, he asked female staffers to do an odd thing: watch him eat curry, Gawker reports. A source says staffers hated it but still obliged: "No one would say anything, and he would sit silently eating and make us watch and want us to watch," the source tells the Daily News. Click to read about accusations from Carla Ferrigno, Lou Ferrigno's wife.
– On Jan. 23, 2013, less than three months before the Boston Marathon bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was ready to reinvent himself. He applied that day to change his first name to "Muaz," in honor of a rebel from Russia's Dagestan republic who was killed by Russian forces in 2009. Muaz was also the nickname bestowed upon Tsarnaev when he visited Dagestan in 2012, officials say. The previously unreleased name change application was recently obtained from the Department of Homeland Security by the Los Angeles Times. The reason Tsarnaev gave for changing his name, according to an official who spoke to the Times: "He said, 'The Russian people have been terrorizing my home country for all these years.' This is why he needed to come back to America and help." This detail, and others that are emerging, paint the elder Tsarnaev as more radical than he was originally believed to be—and defense attorneys for younger brother Dzhokhar are likely to use that picture in court, to argue that Tamerlan was the leader and coerced his brother to participate. Dzhokhar's lawyers have argued that Tamerlan may have become increasingly "distressed" after the FBI interviewed him about the trip to Dagestan, possibly believing the bureau was pressuring him "to be an informant, reporting on the Chechen and Muslim community," the Boston Globe reported last month.
– Could a cure for peanut allergies be close? Australia's ABC reports that in a new study, 82% of participants saw their peanut allergies cured within the first 18 months of treatment. Four years later, 80% of the participants still showed no signs of an allergy, and 70% passed a further test meant to confirm long-term peanut tolerance, the Guardian reports. The research out of Australia's Murdoch Childrens Research Institute involved 48 children, some of whom were given an immunotherapy treatment and some of whom got a placebo. The children who still appeared to be cured four years later "had been eating peanut freely in their diet without having to follow any particular program of peanut intake," says Mimi Tang, the lead researcher. Tang, an immunologist and allergist, combined a probiotic with a method known as peanut oral immunotherapy—a high dose of the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus was combined with peanut protein in increasing amounts. The probiotic is known to calm the immune system and reduce allergic reactions; the idea is to "reprogram" the way the immune system reacts to peanut intake, Tang explains. She hopes to have a product to market within five years, the Age reports. "For the first time, we could have products on the market that provide meaningful and long-lasting treatment benefits, which allow sufferers to eat peanut products without thinking about it, as part of a regular diet," says the CEO of a biotech firm working on a treatment doctors will be able to prescribe, per 9News. (Here's when and how you should feed your baby peanuts.)
– Chicago will hold its very first mayoral runoff election, because incumbent Rahm Emanuel failed to win the 50% of the vote that he needed in yesterday's election to secure a second term. He got just 45.4%, and Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia got 33.9%; they'll face off on April 7. How it's being framed: The Chicago Tribune notes that Emanuel suffered "a national political embarrassment," calling Garcia "little-known" and "lesser-funded." It notes Emanuel's problems with voters: his closure of 50 schools and "standoff" with teachers during a strike in 2012 (their first in a quarter-century, USA Today notes), plus his "struggles" to decrease violent crime. Reuters calls it a "surprise result," noting that Emanuel "hugely outspent" his four opponents and had support from VIPs involved in everything from Hollywood to hedge funds—the president even backed him, and visited the city last week. In fact, the result is "disappointing" for Obama, who recorded radio ads for his former chief of staff and even appeared in one of Emanuel's TV ads, Politico says, but notes that "there is nothing to suggest that Obama is at fault for Emanuel’s showing." Politico also says Emanuel will "start as the heavy favorite" in the runoff campaign.
– An Atlanta private school principal who dissed "all the black people" during a graduation ceremony last week is unsurprisingly out of a job. "In light of recent events, the board of directors of TNT Academy has moved to dismiss Nancy Gordeuk as principal," the board says in a statement, per USA Today. After mistakenly dismissing students at the ceremony, Gordeuk said, "Look who's leaving—all the black people." She later apologized and told NBC News, "I didn't know 'black people' was a racist term. I didn't say the N-word or anything like that 'cause that isn't in my vocabulary." Friends of Gordeuk's son, who reportedly posted racist comments online, say his accounts were hacked, per Q13 Fox.
– A Utah woman owes big thanks to Taylor Swift and her two cats. Over the weekend, Swift fan Sadie Bartell tweeted a link to a GoFundMe page raising money for her mother, Lauriann Bartel, who's been in a coma for three years since suffering brain damage linked to a bleeding ulcer, per Fox 13. "I'm grateful to Taylor for keeping me afloat through it all," wrote 19-year-old Bartell, who has five siblings being cared for full-time by their father, per CNN. Prompting disbelief, Swift not only saw the tweet, but donated $15,500 to the campaign, which has now raised $26,714 of a $40,000 goal. "Love, Taylor, Meredith and Olivia Swift," signed the singer, giving the names of her two cats. Billboard lists more generous acts by Swift, like this $1 million donation.
– "If only they could just hug it out," laments the New York Daily News in the case of Connell v. Tarala—Connell being 54-year-old Jennifer Connell, Tarala her 12-year-old nephew Sean, who she claims was so excited at his birthday party four years ago that he broke her wrist, the Connecticut Post reports. The New York City woman, who's suing Sean for $127,000, testified in court Friday that when she arrived at her nephew's birthday party in Westport, Conn., on March 28, 2011, Sean was riding his brand-new bike outside. When he saw Connell, she said, he ran toward her yelling, "Auntie Jen, Auntie Jen!" and then flung his 50-pound body at her, knocking them both to the ground and breaking her wrist. "I remember him shouting, 'Auntie Jen, I love you,' and there he was flying at me," she testified. Connell told the jury she didn't complain about her injury at the time because "it was his birthday party and I didn't want to upset him," but she noted that the broken wrist upended her busy life. "I live in Manhattan in a third-floor walk-up, so it has been very difficult," she said. "And we all know how crowded it is in Manhattan." Not to mention how it affected her in social situations: "I was at a party recently, and it was difficult to hold my hors d'oeuvre plate," she noted. Even though Connell says Sean—who the Post notes listened with his dad to his aunt's testimony looking "confused"; his mom died last year—has always been "very loving" and "sensitive" toward her, she thinks he should still be liable and understand that his actions have consequences. (These parents got an invoice after their son was a no-show at a birthday party.)
– A televised Mexican presidential debate looked more like an episode of Wheel of Fortune thanks to a babealicious production assistant's cleavage-baring gown. She was so eye-popping that Mexico's election commission apologized. "We are sorry about the production error associated with the clothing of one of the assistants, and want to apologize to the citizens and candidates," said a commission statement. An independent production company hired the former Playboy playmate—who held a box with paper slips for the candidates to pick from that determined who would go first—and she was allowed to choose her own dress, reports the BBC. In fact, such women are fixtures in many political, entertainment, and business events in Mexico, and are considered a nod to the machismo culture, notes the Los Angeles Times. Known as edecans, they're frequently long-haired, beautiful women in sexy dresses and heels who serve as hostesses. An election commission member blasted the "outrageous stereotype" that overshadowed the presidential debate. The tight-fitting gown was "not in keeping with the seriousness of the debate," added presidential candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota.
– In direct contrast to the "delirious joy" in Bahrain, the death toll keeps climbing in Libya's protests. Moammar Gadhafi's minions killed another 20 people today, bringing the five-day total to at least 104, says Human Rights Watch. Gadhafi has effectively shut off Internet service and forbid media coverage, but witnesses told AP of attacks by police and government loyalists wielding guns, knives, and even anti-aircraft missiles. While the accounts are impossible to verify—and at least one puts the death toll closer to 200—a grim cycle has emerged, reports the New York Times: "Security forces fire on funeral marches, killing more protesters and creating more funerals." In Yemen, meanwhile, President Ali Abdullah Saleh's forces also opened fire on protesters, killing at least one, reports AP.
– Author Ursula K. Le Guin, known best for her "Earthsea" series of fantasy novels, has died at age 88. Le Guin died Monday, her agent confirmed to NPR. Le Guin "brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy," the New York Times wrote in its obituary of the author, whose books have been translated into some 40 languages and sold millions worldwide. In an early exploration of gender identity, one of Le Guin's most popular works, The Left Hand of Darkness, takes place on a planet where inhabitants are neither male nor female. The novel was among some 20 of the often femininist-leaning books Le Guin authored over the course of her career. According to EW.com, Le Guin also penned short stories, poetry compilations, and children's books. She was the recipient of a National Book Award, a Hugo, and a Nebula Award. Born in 1929 and raised in Berkeley, Calif., Le Guin was the daughter of anthropologists. She would carry on the academic tradition after undergraduate studies at Radcliffe College, when the LA Times notes she pursued graduate studies in French and Italian literature at Columbia University. Le Guin, née Kroeber, left Columbia after being awarded a Fulbright to study in France, where she would meet her future husband. The two would go on to settle in Portland, Ore. "The family of Ursula K. Le Guin is deeply saddened to announce her peaceful death yesterday afternoon," reads a message on the writer's official Twitter account, which had been active up until this month. Le Guin is survived by her husband, Charles Le Guin, their two daughters, and their son. The family did not confirm a cause of death, but said Le Guin had been ill for the last several months.
– The final round of voting began in Egypt today, and it looks like the Muslim Brotherhood could walk off with a controlling majority of seats in Parliament's lower house. The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, the country's mainstream Islamist party, had already won a high percentage of the seats awarded in the first and second rounds of voting. Two of the nine provinces voting today are Brotherhood strongholds, where some of the party's most well-known candidates are running, the New York Times reports. A plurality, not a majority, was originally predicted for the Freedom and Justice Party. A majority would allow the party to govern alone, but the Brotherhood has repeatedly said it plans to form a coalition government, and has aligned itself with more liberal parties rather than the ultraconservative Salafis, who are in second place with up to 25% of the seats so far. Also today, prosecutors began presenting their case against former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Bloomberg notes. His trial resumed last week after a two-month break; state TV today showed Mubarak being carried to and from the courtroom on a gurney. "He deserves an end of humiliation and indignity," said the chief prosecutor, according to the AP.
– A 51-year-old California woman who climbed up a steep slope behind her house to rescue one of her cats ended up needing to be airlifted off the cliff, CBS Los Angeles reports. The cat, meanwhile, made it down safely on its own. While attempting to retrieve the cat yesterday, Sara Beebe slid about 50 feet and twisted her ankle, according to the Orange County Register. Too hurt to climb the rest of the way down, Beebe started yelling for help, and eventually a neighbor called 911. Firefighters used a helicopter to airlift Beebe to safety, and she appeared to have learned her lesson. "I am going to have to start letting the cat be a little more independent," Beebe tells CBS.
– The Federal Reserve Bank of New York knew something fishy was going on with the Libor rate as far back as August 2007, it has revealed. "We received occasional anecdotal reports from Barclays of problems with Libor," a spokesman said in a statement. The following spring, before any media reports on the matter had broken, it "made further inquiries of Barclays" about its Libor submissions, and even submitted ideas to reform the system to the British government, Reuters reports. The Fed is likely to face criticism that it didn't do more. "Obviously they considered this to be within their orbit," says one Yale scholar. Barclays today released documents showing it contacted the Fed about Libor a dozen times. "This chronology shows clearly that our people repeatedly raised with regulators concerns," it said. Barclays remains under intense political pressure. In a bid to ease it, ex-CEO Robert Diamond today announced that he would voluntarily forfeit about $31 million in bonuses, the Wall Street Journal reports.
– Turkey is in the midst of what Vocativ calls its murder trial of the century. Kenan Oner is accused of murdering his parents, chopping them up, and burying them in their yard, all so he could get his inheritance early, police believe. Still missing is his wife, who hasn't been seen since 2005; police believe he killed her, too, hiding her remains in his apartment walls. He had recently discovered she was having an affair. And all this was after his murder conviction in the 1990s for killing a friend in France, also allegedly for money; he was sentenced to life but got out on parole after seven years. Oner, 56, was arrested in April, years after his parents disappeared in 2008 while he was living with them. When police arrived at his apartment, he was sitting in the dark, they say. His question to them: "Did you dig the garden?" Despite long suspecting Oner, police couldn't find evidence to lead to charges—until they discovered the buried remains. They got help from Oner's own careful notes: For decades, he's recorded his actions by the hour, including a note around the time of his parents' disappearance that he had dug up their garden—and he also drew a map of the garden with an "X" marking one spot. Last year, Oner's son blamed his father for all three murders, per Turkish News Tuhaf. In Turkey, such calculated murders are rare, adding to the press fascination with the story, Vocativ notes. "I have not seen a similar criminal profile before," says an official. (Click to read about a Turkish killer who went on a TV dating show looking for love.)
– If Manti Te'o really was an innocent dupe, tricked into believing he had a girlfriend with a tragic story, he's going to have some explaining to do, reports the AP. Two holes in Te'o's story so far: Even though Te'o says he learned on Dec. 6 that "Lennay Kekua" never existed, he perpetuated the story at least twice after that in interviews. Te'o claimed to have met Kekua in person, including once in a September interview with Sports Illustrated. "We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin," he said of their first supposed encounter. "And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular." As for who "Lennay Kekua" really was, the New York Post reports that the woman seen in the fake Twitter account is Diane O’Meara, a 23-year-old marketing rep from California. “Somebody stole her identity,” a relative says. O'Meara is lawyered up and keeping quiet at the moment. "Te'o's story that he is completely innocent in this does not really ring true to us," said Timothy Burke, the Deadspin editor who co-wrote the original story, on CNN.
– An EgyptAir plane with about 60 people aboard was hijacked Tuesday while flying from the coastal city of Alexandria to Cairo, and then forced to land in Cyprus, reports the AP. Fortunately, it appears to have ended without violence after hours of negotiations, with all aboard freed and the hijacker arrested. Details were still emerging about his motivation, but Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades previously said it was "not something that has to do with terrorism," reports the AP, and a Cyprus government official said the man "seems (to be) in love." A civil aviation official said the man gave negotiators the name of a woman who lives in Cyprus and asked to give her an envelope. It's unclear what relationship she and the man have, but some reports say she is his estranged wife. Asked whether the hijacking involved romance, the Cyprian president laughed and said, "Always, there is a woman involved." However, much confusion surrounded the incident, with the BBC citing reports that he had asked for the release of female prisoners in Egypt. There was also some confusion about the identity of the hijacker, who reportedly claimed to have explosives on him and had allowed most of the passengers to leave the plane upon landing. At a news conference prior to the arrest, Egypt's Civil Aviation minister refused to identify him. Earlier, an Egyptian government spokesman offered up a name, but an Egyptian woman who identified herself as his wife said her husband is not the hijacker and was on his way to Cairo so he could fly to the US to attend a conference. Flight MS181 took off from the Mediterranean city of Alexandria with at least 55 passengers, including 26 foreigners, and a seven-member crew.
– An Allegheny General Hospital nurse who treated Robert Bowers, the man suspected of killing 11 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, after the shooting has stepped forward via a public Facebook post, and he clarifies his identity: "I am The Jewish Nurse." His name is Ari Mahler, and per TribLIVE, he and an ER doctor were two Jewish medical professionals who tended to Bowers, even after he was reportedly wheeled into the hospital yelling, "Death to all Jews." In his post, Mahler doesn't get into too many specifics about his interaction with Bowers, citing privacy laws, but he reveals how as a kid—he was one of four children of a rabbi, per Heavy.com—he dealt with anti-Semitism, and that even as an adult he plays his religion down as a deflection. He notes he didn't tell Bowers he was Jewish, instead choosing to "show him empathy." And also "love." "I could care less what Robert Bowers thinks, but you, the person reading this, love is the only message I wish [to] instill in you," he writes. Mahler, who initially worried his own parents could've been among the synagogue victims, says what happened didn't shock him and that "it’s only a matter of time before the next one happens," adding although "my heart yearns for change … today's climate doesn't foster nurturing, tolerance, or civility." He also notes he didn't see "evil" when he looked into Bowers' eyes, but "something else." Hospital President Jeff Cohen, who said Mahler came to him in tears after treating Bowers, concurs. "He's a very lost guy," Cohen says of Bowers, per TribLIVE, but "he's not the face of the devil. He's just a guy who committed a very heinous act." Read Mahler's post here. (Also working off of love: Muslims raising money for victims of the shooting.)
– "I said, 'Well damn … wait, where is my belly button?'" That's Lori Jones describing her reaction to her post-surgery discovery that her navel was no more. Hoping to don a two-piece bathing suit this summer, the 45-year-old Houston woman in December underwent the removal of an umbilical hernia and had a tummy tuck to get rid of her C-section-related "baby pooch," KTRK reports. A month later it was time to remove the surgical tape. Jones, "thinking my belly button is there," found out that it was not. And she has questions for renowned plastic surgeon Younan Nowzardan, who performed the surgery: "What happened to it? Did you throw it in the trash?" Nowzardan, however, tells KTRK he informed Jones that, because of a preexisting scar, the belly button was going to go. "We can call Hollywood and get an Oscar nomination for her," he says, adding that he can go back in and give Jones a new belly button. But Jones says she has contacted an attorney and wants to settle the issue in court. Her displeasure notwithstanding, Jones is not alone in being belly-button-less. Fashion model Karolina Kurkova, for instance, is lacking a navel because of a surgery she had as an infant, the New York Daily News noted when this odd fact made headlines a few years ago. The BBC also looked into the issue, explaining that in addition to surgery, another factor sometimes at play is a "lotus birth"—in which the umbilical cord and placenta are left to drop off on their own. (Cosmetic surgery turned this woman into a kleptomaniac.)
– Israel has paid its final respects to divisive former leader Ariel Sharon, who died over the weekend after eight years in a coma. World leaders and Israeli officials gathered for a state memorial service in Jerusalem, which will be followed by a second funeral service at the Sharon family ranch near the Gaza border where he will be buried next to his wife, reports the Guardian. The Israeli military says two rockets were fired from Gaza just before the service but they do not appear to have landed in Israel, the AP reports. Critics denounce Sharon as a war criminal but funeral speakers including Joe Biden and Tony Blair were full of praise at the Jerusalem service, reports Reuters. Biden paid tribute to Sharon's decision to pull out of the Gaza Strip, while acknowledging that he had serious differences with US leaders. "The security of his people was always Arik's unwavering mission—an unbreakable commitment to the future of Jews, whether 30 years or 300 years from now," Biden said, describing Sharon as a complex man who lived in complex times. "Arik was never uncertain. But there were times when he acted, and those actions earned him controversy and even condemnation," he said. "And in certain instances American leaders, American presidents, had profound differences with him. And they were never shy about stating them. Nor was he ever shy about stating his position."
– A police officer in Ohio got a lesson the hard way on just how potent the opioid fentanyl can be. The East Liverpool department says officer Chris Green got some of the powder on his skin after a drug bust and suffered an accidental overdose, reports WFMJ. He ended up in the hospital but is OK after multiple doses of the overdose-reversal drug Narcan. Green had participated in the arrest of two men Friday night who were suspected of conducting a drug deal inside a car. When cops blocked their vehicle, police say the men began trying to dispose of the evidence, and white powder ended up all over the inside of their car. Officers donned protective gear in collecting evidence from the scene, and accounts differ on how Green got some of the powder on his skin. The best guess is that some ended up on his shirt and he wiped it off with his bare hand, reports WKBN. "Just out of instinct, he tried to brush it off—not thinking," says a police captain. Fentanyl can be absorbed through the skin, and Green quickly began suffering the effects. Meanwhile, Justin Buckle, 25, and Cortez Collins, 24, face drug charges after their Friday night arrests.
– Swedish doctors are advancing in their quest to implant embryos in women who have received pioneering womb implants, the Guardian reports. A medical team in Gothenburg has successfully transferred embryos to four of nine women with implants, a major advance after transferring just one embryo in January. Mats Brannstrom, who leads the team, wouldn't say if any of the women are pregnant, and a study by the group said four women experienced "mild rejection episodes"; in fact, two had their uterus removed due to complications. "One or two more will perhaps get pregnant and miscarry, and one or two won't be able to get pregnant," said Brannstrom, the AP reports. Other doctors say the women must be carefully watched to see how well a transplanted uterus functions. "It is a good sign they have done the transfers," said a doctor. "But a live birth will be the best validation that this works." Controversy has surrounded the Swedish project because it accepted wombs from live women who are friends or family of the patients, creating possible health risks for the donors. Two other womb transplant attempts, in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, failed to produce a child; only the Turkish donation was from a dead donor.
– A group of monks in Louisiana is heading to federal appeals court in a battle against the state. The monks want the right to sell their handcrafted caskets, but the state has demanded they cease and desist because of regulations regarding "funeral merchandise"—which the monks say were enacted to unfairly protect the state's funeral industry, reports the Washington Post. "Really, it's just a big box," says the abbot. The monks were victorious their first time in federal court, but the State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors appealed, and the next round will be heard early next month. St. Joseph Abbey, located an hour's drive outside of New Orleans, entered the casket business in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina destroyed an income-generating section of forest owned by the monastery. Before they even sold their first coffin, the state ordered they either stop or take the obstacle-filled path of becoming a licensed funeral establishment. A group of what the Post calls "libertarian lawyers" took up the monks' case and are hoping it makes it all the way to the Supreme Court as an example of government interference in free enterprise. Read the full story here.
– In Seinfeld's seventh season, George Costanza's fiancee, Susan, was killed by toxic glue on their wedding invitations—and the man who played Costanza has now revealed that the cast had plotted to have her killed. Jason Alexander told the Howard Stern Show yesterday that while Heidi Swedberg, who played Susan, is a "terrific girl," there was a serious lack of chemistry between her and other cast members, Mashable reports. "I couldn't figure out how to play off of her," Alexander explained. "Her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine were always misfiring." Alexander says he complained about Swedberg and discussed her character's fate at dinners with show co-creator Larry David and other cast members who were finding Susan scenes difficult, ABC reports. Julia Louis-Dreyfus said, "I know, don't you want to just kill her?' And Larry went, 'Kebang,'" Alexander recalled. "Every time I tell this story, I cringe. Heidi is the sweetest." After her character's cruel death, Swedberg had roles in shows like Bones and is now a ukulele teacher, reports ABC. In the same interview, Alexander said other actors up for the Costanza role included Chris Rock, Paul Shaffer, Steve Buscemi, and Danny DeVito, who was offered it but turned it down, reports Entertainment Weekly.
– Oscar Pistorius returns to court next month for his murder trial, notes the Huffington Post, and anyone interested in the case should make a new Vanity Fair piece required reading. The article by Mark Seal doesn't have any bombshell revelations on the main question—did the amputee Olympian murder girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in a rage or, as he insists, mistake her for a burglar?—but it paints a more complete portrait of all the main players, including the detective convinced of the athlete's guilt, and recounts the night of the killing. Pistorius in particular comes off as an egomaniac with long-standing anger issues. "When Pistorius competed at the London Olympics, last summer, (a radio host) interviewed the athlete’s roommate at the Olympic Village: ‘What is it like to sleep in the same room with a superstar?’ And he said, ‘I moved out. Oscar is always shouting at people on the phone.’" A "former confidant" tells Seal that the Olympics changed Pistorius for the worse. “He was bragging about his adventures in the good life. He was like, ‘I’m the man, I’m Oscar. The world owes me.’ That sense of entitlement. He wasn’t like that; he was made into that." In subsequent training sessions at a gym, his “swearing would astonish the mothers and children also using the gym," says a reporter. “He would storm out of the gym midway through a workout. He would be surly, rude. It seemed as though he survived on energy drinks and caffeine pills.” Here's one assessment of the six-page article: "After reading Seal’s piece, I’m convinced that Oscar Pistorius is kind of a jerk," writes Justin Peters at Slate. "But while the piece definitely nudges the reader toward the conclusion that he murdered Steenkamp, it hasn’t cleared up all reasonable doubt." Read the Vanity Fair piece in full.
– Renowned German art dealer Alfred Flechtheim had been named part of the "Jewish world conspiracy" in the Nazi press even before 1933, so when Adolf Hitler came to power, he chose to flee, and died 4 years later in London, reports Courthouse News. His art collection remained in Berlin and at least eight paintings are now part of the Bavarian State Paintings Collection, reports the Art Newspaper. They should instead be with Flechtheim's heirs in the US and England, per a lawsuit filed against the state of Bavaria in US District Court in Manhattan on Monday. The widow of Flechtheim's sole heir (his nephew) and the nephew's son cite "a presumption of international law" that sales of Jewish property after Jan. 30, 1933, aren't legitimate because they were made under duress. And so in the case of the six paintings by Max Beckmann and two others by Juan Gris and Paul Klee, timing is the issue. The Bavarian State Paintings Collection argues the paintings, worth up to $20 million, were sold by Flechtheim in 1932. Penny Hulton of England and stepson Michael Hulton of San Francisco—who've been locked in a years-long battle with Bavaria over what Deutsche Welle calls "one of the world's most disputed estates"—say the paintings were sold after he left the country in May 1933. They "would have remained accessible to Flechtheim but for the climate at the time," their lawyer tells Reuters. "The state-level program of Aryanizing Jewish businesses made the confiscation possible." (These Jewish heirs want back their gold and jewels.)
– A Bible verse is getting heavy quotation today in a Supreme Court decision seen as a big victory for the EPA and the White House on air pollution. In her majority opinion, Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the Gospel according to John, notes the Washington Post: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” In this case, she was talking about the wind that bloweth air pollution from coal-fired plants across state lines, and her ruling upheld the EPA's authority to regulate it. The New York Times calls it "a major environmental victory for the Obama administration," and SCOTUSblog agrees that it's a "clear victory for the EPA." The result is that about 1,000 power plants will have to put into place new pollution controls to limit nitrogen and sulfur emissions, reports the Guardian. The problem of air pollution blowing from coal-burning states into states downwind—think Ohio and Kentucky vs. Connecticut and New York—is a complex one, Ginsburg wrote, and the EPA must have the leeway to deal with the "vagaries of the wind." She thinks the EPA got it right with its current formula, though Antonin Scalia disagreed in his dissent. The case, he wrote, underscores "the major problem that many citizens have with the federal government these days: that they are governed not so much by their elected representatives as by an unelected bureaucracy operating under vague statutory standards.”
– A BuzzFeed investigation this year found at least 29 US police dogs had died of heatstroke in their handlers' cars over the past seven years. But a new analysis of 619 deaths since 2011 by the Green Bay Press-Gazette raises that number to at least 46 dogs, with 18 others succumbing to heatstroke during other activities (e.g., training exercises, being tethered outside in the sun), putting heatstroke as the No. 1 cause of police dog deaths for non-medical reasons. Failures in the cars' AC or other equipment were factors in 19 of the 46 cases, while officer negligence was blamed in 26. One especially egregious case in 2013 involved 10 US Customs and Border Protection dogs who died after the AC failed. "Those dogs were essentially in an oven," a rep said at the time. "You don't have to be an animal lover to be sick about this." It's unclear exactly how many police dogs die this way, since agencies don't have to report it, the Press-Gazette notes; instead, stats are typically culled from memorial websites and other sources. "It is a painful, horrible death," a veterinary specialist told BuzzFeed. Departments are taking measures including replacing faulty heat-alarm units, mounting fans in car windows, and inspecting AC units more regularly. But advocates say it comes down to human diligence. "It's not a matter of changing policy," the director of a Wisconsin canine handler group tells the Press-Gazette. "Check on your dog." An Animal Legal Defense Fund director puts it in harsher terms: "An officer who allows a dog to die of heat exhaustion on duty is as neglectful as leaving a service revolver on a school playground." (A Florida officer was "distraught" after two police dogs died in his car.)
– A sea change in CVS policy: By October 1, America's biggest pharmacy chain will no longer sell any tobacco products, parent company CVS Caremark announced today in what CEO Larry Merlo calls the "right thing for us to do." "We’ve got 26,000 pharmacists and nurse practitioners who are helping millions of patients each and every day," explains Merlo. "They manage conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes—all conditions that are worsened by smoking. We’ve come to the decision that cigarettes have no place in an environment where healthcare is being delivered." CVS is the first retailer ever to drop tobacco, Forbes reports—a move that will cost the company $2 billion in annual sales. CVS, as well as other pharmacies, is looking to get more involved with healthcare; it already offers flu shots and Minute Clinics, where nurse practitioners can prescribe medications. Selling cigarettes just doesn't fit with that plan for growth, Merlo says. And CVS' chief medical officer thinks that dropping tobacco will give CVS an advantage over rival pharmacies when making deals with healthcare providers. Ex-smoker President Obama wasted no time in supporting the move, the Weekly Standard reports: He "applauds" the news and calls it "a powerful example."
– Have you been Yo'd yet? If the question makes no sense, you've missed the buzz around a new app called Yo that allows people to send a message of "Yo" to their friends. That's it. (Unless you double-tap the name and make it "YoYo." Before laughing it off, note that the creators are dead serious about its potential and have already raised $1 million from investors led by Mobli CEO Moshe Hogeg, as the Financial Times reported in the story that set off a flurry of coverage. Inventor Or Arbel tells ThinkProgress that the promise of Yo centers around what he calls "context-based communications." Users generally understand what the Yo means based on who sends it and when it arrives. (Yeah, the app is drawing its fair share of ridicule.) "People don’t get it," Arbel tells Mashable. "They think that it's just an app that says 'Yo.' What we see is a whole new way to get notifications—life notifications—from friends, family." Or from businesses: Arbel floats the idea of Starbucks customers getting a Yo when their drink is ready. And the New York Times notes that users can get a Yo every time a goal is scored in the World Cup—thanks to a part-time employee who is charged with watching every game. All the stories relay the genesis of the idea: Hogeg asked Arbel for a simple app that would allow him to summon his personal assistant with the press of a button. After eight hours of work, Yo was born.
– Election results are still trickling in in Washington state (it's a vote-by-mail-only state, KOMO News reports), but it looks like voters are giving Democratic Rep. Roger Freeman of Federal Way a second term with about 53% of the vote, NBC News notes. There's just one problem: The 48-year-old Freeman died last week after a long battle with colon cancer, the Seattle Times reports. Many voters either didn't know Freeman had died or had already sent in their ballots, the Washington Post reports. "I did not know that. When did he pass away?" one voter told KVAL. "This is extremely rare," a spokesman for Washington's secretary of state tells NBC. "But there are protocols in place." Those protocols would be much simpler if voters had simply elected the very much alive Republican candidate, Jack Dovey. However, since Freeman is apparently the victor, Democrats in the district will pick three names to serve as his temporary replacement; the county councils will then vote one of those candidates in to serve for one year, with a special election next year to pick someone for the final year of the two-year term, NBC notes. Dovey, now known as the challenger beat by a deceased candidate, simply tells KVAL, "It's a tragic thing that happened." (This county candidate dropped out of the race after his dead friend supposedly voted for him.)
– The solution to America's endless economic woes is apparently the Olsen twins' $39,000 backpack. In a Women's Wear Daily interview from last week just getting some attention, Ashley explains why she and her sister thought extreme luxury might sell: "During our last economic crisis in the US, the only thing that went up was Hermès." And their plan worked: The alligator backpack, part of The Row handbag collection, "was the first thing that sold off the shelf," Ashley says. Gawker has a picture, and snarks that it is "made exclusively from the skin of the mysterious fourth Olsen sister, who lives in a cage in their basement."
– If the new 50 Shades of Grey trailer was too much for your innocent eyes, studio Freestyle Releasing has just the flick for you come Valentine's Day: Old Fashioned. In case you couldn't guess by the title, the premise of the flick is "chivalry makes a comeback" (the movie's tagline) as a "former frat boy" and a "free-spirited woman" embark on a "faith-based romance," as Variety puts it. So hot, right? "I wanted to tell a love story that takes the idea of Godly romance seriously," writer, director, and lead actor Rik Swartzwelder says. "A story that, without apology, explores the possibility of a higher standard in relationships; yet, is also fully aware of just how fragile we all are and doesn’t seek to heap guilt upon those of us that have made mistakes." Or, as Jezebel puts it, "they just want to provide a Christian alternative to a smutty film about people getting tied up and getting it on. Understandable." In reality, the film's synopsis, per MTV News, describes a couple attempting "the impossible: an 'old-fashioned' courtship in contemporary America," so you're probably looking at zero sex scenes. Freestyle's co-president explains Old Fashioned will cater to the "underserved" demographic of Christian singles—an audience that helped the studio bring in $60 million with God's Not Dead earlier this year. Despite opening the same weekend as the far-smuttier 50 Shades, "we're hopeful that we are not alone in our belief that there are others out there who desire more from love—and the movies—than objectification or domination," Swartzwelder says.
– The tackler who wrestled down the Rand Paul protester for a head stompin' was not part of a campaign security detail. He was just an American voter who believes in open carry gun laws and, it seems, using force when ... necessary? Tea Partier Mike Pezzano, sporting a "Don't Tread on Me" pin, held Lauren Valle down on the sidewalk while comrade Tim Profitt stepped on her head Monday night. Pezzano was "outed" by an increasingly disenchanted Tea Party supporter and blogger, notes Gawker. "Rand Paul isn't going to do anything to me, but his supporters might. I'm afraid of them," said Lisa Grass on her website after she IDed Pezzano. Valle now tells the Washington Post that she suffered a concussion and trauma in the "premeditated" attack. Profitt has apologized, saying he's "sorry it came to that"—but that he was concerned about Paul's safety. Paul's campaign has since dumped Profitt, and he's facing charges. Newser readers, meanwhile, have erupted in a searing debate on whether Valle was stomped or merely restrained to protect the candidate.
– We get it. You've always dreamed of owning Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted human skull, or maybe his diamond-encrusted baby skull, but you just don't have the scratch. Well if you swing by Damien Hirst's new exhibit at the Tate Modern, you can now have the next best thing: a plastic skull doused in "household gloss" paint. Dubbed Hallucinatory Head, the skulls are supposed to reference both Hirst's famous skull and his spin paintings, and they're on sale in the gift shop for just $58,370, the Telegraph reports. There are 50 "unique multiples" of the head to choose from, which you can see at the website of Other Criteria, the company that makes all of Hirst's limited edition souvenirs (others available include a $16,660 set of plates, a $761 spotted skateboard, and a $1,110 roll of butterfly wallpaper). Hirst co-founded Other Criteria, but Time points out that it's unclear how much influence he has in making these items.
– Just what Los Angeles County police need: 500 snowshoes and 1,600 parkas. Need aside, that's what they were handed by the Defense Department in March, according to a breakdown of $4.3 billion in surplus military supplies sent to police departments across the country since 1997. Think that's bizarre? Some other strange deliveries, per the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post: 86 M14 rifles to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife; grenade launchers to small California communities; French horns for Ohio's North Kingsville Police Department and Michigan's Clayton Township Police Department; a $4.4 million boat to Alameda County police; and 372 TVs, designated "for personal/home use."
– After expanding the search to Vermont, authorities hunting escaped prisoners Richard Matt and David Sweat have descended on a village just a few miles from the prison. Police have closed a stretch of State Route 374 and ordered residents of Cadyville, NY, to stay inside and keep their exterior lights on, residents tell WPTZ. In other developments: Timothy Vail was the last man to escape from a New York prison, according to the New York Daily News, and he says he hopes Matt and Sweat can avoid capture. He tells the Daily News that he hopes they "stay out of sight and don't commit any new crimes." Vail, who raped and murdered a pregnant woman in 1988, injured himself while escaping from the Elmira Correctional Facility in 2003 and was recaptured within two days after he and a fellow fugitive stole a van. Police officers who've dealt with Matt say he is the most evil criminal they've encountered, and he was trouble from a very early age, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports. The former chief of police in North Tonawanda, near where Matt grew up, says he's around the same age as the 48-year-old and that long before Matt's first arrest, he had a "fearsome" reputation and was known for terrorizing other kids on the school bus. An officer in Tonawanda tells the paper that in 1986—11 years before his arrest for a gruesome local murder—Matt broke out of a correctional facility and was recaptured a few days later. Early reports described the pair as among the first to escape in the Clinton Correctional Facility's long history, but dozens of men have made it out in various ways since the forbidding Dannemora, NY, institution opened in 1845, the New York Times reports. In 1860, a fraudster known as the "Gay Deceiver" put on civilian clothes, strolled out the gate, and wasn't recaptured for a year. A history professor tells the Times that the first escapes happened just weeks after the prison opened. The reform-minded warden decided not to punish the two men after they were recaptured, the professor says, but it wasn't long before a new warden installed a dungeon for solitary confinement, where punishments included waterboarding.
– Critics are not sold on Wonderful World, a creaky indie starring Matthew Broderick as a misanthropic children’s folksinger. Here’s what the critics are saying: World is “a checklist-indie that offers up clichés with gusto,” even flirting with Magical Negro stereotypes, writes Nick Schager of Slant. “Broderick mopes and grouses admirably,” but this treacle is still “pretty close to the bottom of the barrel.” Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York agrees, crediting the cast with giving a “committed, nearly convincing effort” in what’s ultimately “fey Indiewood bullcrap.” The script, a “shopworn tale of redemption,” is atrocious, writes Melissa Anderson of the Village Voice, and it’s heartbreaking to see talented female lead Sanaa Lathan in “such a ridiculous, implausible role." Broderick, meanwhile, “looks as if he wants to hide behind his three-day growth.” Indeed, Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times wonders what the heck happened to Broderick. “One looks at the guy and he seems miserable,” he writes. “Is adulthood that dreary? Is there something else we should know?”
– What is believed to be the world's oldest library is set to reopen to the public in the coming months, and the architect behind its restoration can't wait to share its "magical aura," the Guardian reports. “One of the startling aspects about restoring a building this old is that you never know what’s behind a wall," Aziza Chaouni tells the National. "You could scrape it and find a painting, take out the painting and find a door." One such door at Morocco's Khizanat al-Qarawiyyin library—founded in 859—is made of iron and has four locks, the keys for which were held by four separate people. The ancient library was committed to protecting its most valuable works. That spirit of protection continues on in the restoration of Khizanat al-Qarawiyyin. Chaouni and her team have added underground canals and temperature controls to keep unwanted moisture from the ancient texts, some of which date back to the 600s. They've also added a machine to keep the works just moist enough to prevent cracking. Of the 4,000 or so books the restoration is protecting, the most valuable is a copy of the Koran written on camel skin from the ninth century, Bustle reports. The library is scheduled to reopen by 2017—five years after the restoration project began. Chaouni hopes it will be embraced by the people "like a second home." (Researchers made a "fantastically exciting" Koran discovery at a library last year.)
– Roughly 27% of people worldwide have paid a bribe to a government agency in the last 12 months, according to the latest Global Corruption Barometer report from Transparency International. The survey covered more than 114,000 people across 107 countries, the Wall Street Journal reports, and on the bright side, two-thirds said they refused to pay up when asked for bribes. "Bribe-paying levels remain very high worldwide," the group's chair said. "But people believe they have the power to stop corruption." Of course, the numbers are skewed by the most corrupt nations; Sierra Leone took the cake with 84% of people paying up, while upright Japan, Australia, and Denmark each had only 1%. The US came in at 7%, but all is hardly hunky dory here, with 76% saying they believed the political parties were affected by corruption.
– Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is battling a rare and aggressive form of cancer, but he says he's trying to stay optimistic, even though doctors have given him a 50/50 chance of survival. "Some nights I just cry myself to sleep, but what can you do, there's only that many tears that can be shed," he told reporters yesterday, saying the hardest part was telling his two children about it, the Globe and Mail reports. "The kids, it's ripping my heart out," said Ford, who began chemotherapy for liposarcoma last month and whose brother Doug has taken his place in the city's mayoral race. Ford, whose father died of cancer in 2006, describes the disease as the "worst event" in a turbulent life. "A lot of the stuff that I've gone through, most of it's been self-inflicted, but when you get hit by cancer, that's not self-inflicted," he said. But Ford is still running for the city council seat he held for 10 years before becoming mayor, even though he might be too sick to take part in any debates. One of his 13 rivals for the seat, financial planner Andray Domise, tells the Toronto Star that Ford is being "highly irresponsible" by staying in the race when he is too ill to campaign. "He's put his name on the ballot and asked to be treated as a serious candidate, so the least that I can do is respect that wish. Which also means holding him accountable," Domise says. But Ford has a big lead, and another opponent, community developer Luke LaRocque, tells the Star he has no problem with Ford staying in the race as long as people want to vote for him. "Because I believe strongly in democracy, I would have a difficult time saying he shouldn't run until he gets well. It's a personal decision of his," he says.
– Lauren McCluskey's killer was a master manipulator who penned messages under various names—even posed as a police officer—in an effort to lure and extort the 21-year-old University of Utah student before her death, according to police. Nine days before she was fatally shot on campus by an ex-boyfriend later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, McCluskey told university police she'd wired $1,000 to an account to prevent the release of "compromising" photos of her and the killer, 37-year-old Melvin Rowland, says University Police Chief Dale Brophy, per Fox News and ESPN. McCluskey had ended her relationship with the registered sex offender days earlier after discovering he'd lied about his background. "If his lips were moving, he was lying," Brophy says of Rowland, who described himself as a manipulator of women at a 2012 parole hearing. Rowland told an acquaintance, for example, that he needed a gun because his girlfriend wanted to learn to shoot, reports CBS News. After shooting McCluskey multiple times in the backseat of a car he’d driven to campus, Rowland was picked up by a woman he'd met online. Before she recognized him as the murder suspect and called police, the pair went to dinner and back to the woman's apartment where Rowland showered before leaving, Brophy says. Meanwhile, the investigation into McCluskey's extortion complaint had been delayed by workload issues, and the Utah Department of Corrections had yet to be notified. Gov. Gary Herbert announced an investigation into the handling of the case on Thursday. Hindsight is 20/20, but "you never know when these things are going to occur," he said. (McCluskey was on the phone with her mom at the time.)
– The information is readily available online: The mugshot of a female inmate, the charges she was convicted on, and her release date. And predators are using it, finds the Guardian in an investigation. It reports that sex traffickers are both wooing "potential victims while they are still behind bars" and even preying on them before they get there by manipulating the bail bond system. The Guardian found cases where pimps paid women's bail—alerted to their situation, again, by online records or nefarious bondsmen—only to force them into sex work to "pay off" that debt in Florida, Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, and Mississippi. And it's not occasional, according to a former Florida prosecutor who tells the Guardian that all but about 20% of the sex trafficking cases she handled in 2016 involved these bondsmen working with traffickers. For the women already in prison, the traffickers use letters and calls to reel them in. In a companion piece, the Guardian shares Kate's story: While incarcerated at Florida's Lowell Correctional Institution, a stranger named Richard Rawls began to write to her, saying he saw her mugshot online and that it stuck with him. He knew she'd be out soon. He told her to "come on home to your daddy," that he would provide a comfortable home and all the love she needed. Instead, she was taken to a roach-infested house guarded by pit bulls; inside were other former inmates from the same prison. Rawls fed her drugs then demanded she pay him back for them by working as a prostitute. Four months later, she was freed by a SWAT team. Read the full investigation here, or more on Rawls here.
– Some 30 large whales have been found dead in the western Gulf of Alaska since May and the NOAA wants to know why. The agency says it is opening a scientific investigation into what is calls an "unusual mortality event," with the number of whale deaths at three times the historical average for the area, reports the AP. The NOAA describes the event in a release as "a significant die-off" involving 11 fin whales, 14 humpback whales, one gray whale, and four unidentified whales. A rep suggests the deaths could be tied to algae bloom toxins, but there's no evidence for that yet. The NOAA notes the investigation could take months or even years. Officials have only been about to nab a sample from one of the 30 whales and it was labeled "less than ideal," reports the CBC, which notes the sample contained no presence of one strain of algae toxins. Getting to more whales is difficult: Parts of the coastline can be tough to get to, floating carcasses are hard to access as well, and beached whales can be magnets for bears, a coordinator says. Scientists will thus study environmental factors, historical data, and deaths among seabirds and other creatures to help shed light on the issue. "Our investigations will give us important information on the health of whales and the ecosystems where they live," the coordinator says. Researchers will also work with colleagues in British Columbia, where five large whales have been found dead this month; necropsy results on two are pending.
– Fraternity members from the California State University's Chico campus are facing federal criminal charges after they allegedly cut down dozens of trees in Lassen National Forest during a camping trip as part of a pledge-initiation ritual, CBS San Francisco reports. Per the Los Angeles Times, at least 32 trees were cut down at the Deer Creek Trailhead campground in late April, and members of Chico State's Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, including President Evan Jossey, now face counts of vandalism, possessing firearms, and degrading US territory. The US Forest Service tells CBS the fraternity left the campsite in disarray, and it has publicized surveillance pics showing college-age students buying tools that may have been used to cut the trees down. The trees that were felled included Douglas firs, white firs, and cedars, a Lassen rep tells the Sacramento Bee. Per the Times, camper Jon Elam told federal authorities he ran into 80 or so of the frat's members at the campground, including Jossey and three others who identified themselves as part of a Chico State fraternity that would be taking part in an initiation ceremony; Elam says he heard gunfire and trees being felled that night. He told the feds he saw the downed trees the next day and left, returning almost a week later to find a huge mess at the campsite. Elam filed a police report on April 28. In a Facebook post, the fraternity denies the charges and says it has filed its own police report, apparently against Elam. Pi Kappa Alpha's national organization says the Chico chapter has been suspended until the probe is done; a university rep says the frat has been suspended from campus. (The parents of a deceased frat pledge say he was treated like "roadkill.")
– Authorities are still keeping quiet about just how they managed to find a kidnapped girl "at a residence" in Conyers, Ga.; they're calling it "hardcore police work," WSB-TV notes. In the meantime, however, new information is emerging about the circumstances of the kidnapping. One of the suspects had previously been arrested along with victim Ayvani Hope Perez's mother, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Juan Alberto Contreras-Ramirez—called as Contreras-Rodriguez in the kidnapping arrest—was nabbed in a 2012 drug trafficking case involving the seizure of 500 pounds of marijuana; Perez's mom, Maria Corral, and several others were also busted. Corral's charge was quickly dropped; in January, charges against Contreras-Ramirez were, as well, following a home search deemed unconstitutional. As for Corral, "I think she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Contreras-Ramirez's lawyer in the drug case. She was "talking in the driveway" with Contreras-Ramirez when the arrests occurred. As for Perez, "she looked tired, but not shaken up" upon arriving home, says a neighbor. "She was smiling. A look of relief was all over her."
– Sienna Miller is set to join the growing list of outraged public figures taking legal action over phone-hacking by reporters at Britain's News of the World. Lawyers for the star say she plans to add her name to those seeking a review of how the police handled the case and sources at the Rupert-Murdoch owned paper say she's taking steps toward suing it because reporters allegedly listened to her voicemails, the Guardian reports. (For background and opinion on the scandal, click here.) Miller's friends say she changed her number after noticing signs that somebody else was listening to her voicemail, but jailed reporter Glen Mulcaire appears to have obtained her new number as well, although police didn't notify her when they found her PIN code in his possession. A former News of the World reporter who says his editor asked him to hack phones was interviewed by British police last night, the BBC reports.
– California Gov. Jerry Brown made history today, but not in a way he's happy about: He ordered the state's first-ever mandatory water restrictions amid a brutal drought, reports CBS Local. A slew of new rules will aim to curb water use by 25% over nine months. "It's a different world," said Brown. "We have to act differently." He emphasized the point by making the announcement from the Sierra Nevada on bare ground—at a spot that normally would be covered in several feet of snow this time of year. This year's Sierra snowpack is about 5% of the state average, the lowest since record-keeping began in 1950, meaning it won't be able to provide needed runoff in the spring and summer, reports the Los Angeles Times. Among other things, the state will team with local governments to replace 50 million square feet of lawn with more drought-tolerant landscaping; golf courses and cemeteries will have to scrimp on watering; and residents and farmers will be encouraged through rebates, new pricing models, and penalties to install more efficient systems. If it all works, the savings would amount to 1.5 million acre-feet of water by the end of the year. “This is sort of unchartered territory,” says a spokesperson for the state Department of Water Resources. It's "dismal."
– Photographers were out in force last night to capture a rare blue moon. No, blue moons aren't actually blue (although there have been moons that were blue, most recently in 1950); rather, the term refers to the second full moon in a month, USA Today reports. But wait, you exclaim! Last night was August's first full moon, so something must be amiss, right? International Science Times clears things up: The first (and, in its telling, "most valid") definition of a blue moon is the third of four full moons that occur in a single season. A season would typically have only three, and this extra moon comes about every two to three years. The next will be in 2015.
– If you thought the twisted details of the Cleveland case ended with yesterday's news of reported sightings of naked women in Ariel Castro's backyard, well, steel yourself: New reports reveal Castro bizarrely and brazenly inserted himself into the search for one of the missing girls. The latest: The AP reports that Castro physically aided in the search for Gina DeJesus, going so far as to hand out fliers with the 14-year-old's photo and perform at a musical fundraiser held in her honor. (DeJesus' uncle played in bands with Castro over the last two decades.) As previously reported, Castro attended a 2012 vigil for DeJesus; the AP now reports that a witness saw him comforting the girl's mother. A neighbor tells the AP he was with Castro the day investigators dug up a yard looking for remains. Castro reportedly told him, "They're not going to find anyone there." Brother Pedro reportedly took things even further: He spoke to Fox 8 in 2012 after the crews excavating a lot in search of a body found nothing. The line from its report at the time: "Cleveland resident Pedro Castro said, 'That’s a waste of money.'" But Fox 8 also reports on Ariel Castro's bizarre connection with another one-time suspect: Fernando Colon, who the FBI questioned in 2004 about DeJesus' disappearance, after it was determined that he and his stepdaughter were the last ones to see her. And here's where it gets weirder: His stepdaughter, Arlene, is Castro's daughter. Colon was convicted that same year of molesting two of Castro's daughters; Castro himself testified for the prosecution, and Colon now says he plans to appeal his conviction, asserting that Castro was attempting to keep the spotlight off his own crimes. Further, he says he told the FBI to look into Castro in connection with the missing girls. Odder still, Arlene actually appeared on America's Most Wanted to discuss the case in 2004. She says that she was with DeJesus on the day she went missing, and borrowed 50 cents from her to call her mom to ask for permission to go to DeJesus' home, reports the Plain Dealer. Her mom said no and the two went in different directions; but DeJesus no longer had enough money for bus fare, so she began to walk, then vanished.
– There are 48 million Americans who, at some point each year, may be unable to get enough food. Meanwhile, a third of the country's food goes to waste. This isn't as easy an issue to solve as it sounds—something Maria Rose Belding realized while volunteering at a soup pantry as a teen. At one point, the pantry received 10,000 boxes of mac 'n cheese, but couldn't find enough people in need before the stuff expired, reports Quartz. "We were throwing away all of this food just because we couldn't communicate," Belding tells the Washington Post. Now a 20-year-old American University student, Belding hopes the app and website she co-created can help: Overflowing pantries list what extra food they have available on the MEANS (Matching Excess and Need for Stability) Database, and neighboring pantries get notifications, Belding writes at the Huffington Post. Grocery stores and restaurants with food to unload can make use of the site, too. Belding remembers watching the first donation of canned beans pop up after MEANS launched in February. "We were all anxiously sitting by our computers hitting refresh," she says—the anxiety intensified by the fact that beans are donated so regularly they aren't a hot commodity. Suddenly, "it just disappeared." Since then, the database has kept 4,000 pounds of food from the trash. While a similar service saved 50 million pounds of food in New York in 2015 by matching donations with food kitchens, MEANS allows smaller organizations to do the ground work themselves, and currently has 200 accounts across 27 states. While grants and awards keep the site running for now, Belding has plans: to track large retailers' donations from a tax-benefit perspective, something most don't currently do since those donations are made on such a local level. MEANS would charge a small fee for doing all the tracking. (On the food front, this young chef has left one of the world's best restaurants to try to save America's school lunch program.)
– Imagine having Paris Hilton as your aunt. That will be real life for the forthcoming child of Nicky Hilton, 32, who is expecting her first baby with husband James Rothschild, whom she married in July. "They are so excited!" says one source. The news has been confirmed by unnamed insiders to Us, People, and E!. "They’ve just begun telling close friends and family," says another anonymous source (or maybe the same anonymous source, for all we know). "Nicky and James are over the moon!" (This is quite possibly the best photo from Hilton's wedding.)
– A sheriff's deputy who gunned down a 13-year-old carrying a BB gun in Northern California last year won't face criminal charges, but still has a civil suit coming down the pike, the Press Democrat reports. Deputy Erick Gelhaus "fired his weapon in response to what he honestly and reasonably believed was an imminent threat of death," said Sonoma County DA Jill Ravitch of Andy Lopez's death. "As such, he was lawfully acting in defense of himself or others." The finding followed a five-month investigation and protests around California, including a "National Day of Action for Andy Lopez" organized by a statewide group opposing police brutality, CBS San Francisco reports. Andy was walking through rural Sonoma County last October, holding a BB gun resembling an AK-47, when deputies on patrol saw him and told him to drop the weapon. Ten seconds later, Gelhaus had put seven bullets in the boy. "The family and my office are greatly disappointed with the decision," said the Lopez family's attorney. "If there was ever a case where charges were warranted, it was this one." But Ravitch said her office pored over more than 1,000 pages of reports and spoke to numerous experts to consider "every interpretation of the facts." Now the Lopez family's civil suit, held up by the criminal probe, will "have to run through the legal process," an official said. (Gelhaus, a firearms expert and instructor, had never fired on a suspect before.)
– Bad news, Louisiana. The state is the most violent in the country, according to a 24/7 Wall St. ranking, based on violent crimes, homicides, incarceration rates, the number of police officers per 100,000 residents, and estimated small-arms ownership. The top 10: Louisiana Alaska Tennessee Delaware Nevada Arkansas Missouri Florida South Carolina Arizona Click for the full list or the states with the most violent crimes.
– As the government shutdown enters its third week, Senate leaders appear to be waiting for world financial markets to give them a jolt before they make a deal, the Washington Post reports. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell had a conversation yesterday that Reid says left him "optimistic about the prospects for a positive conclusion." But there's no indication of what a compromise might look like, and Democrats are now pushing for a deal that would lift the sequester budget cuts, showing what the New York Times calls a "newfound aggressiveness." The sequester demand has Republicans frustrated. "The Democrats keep moving the goal posts," complains Sen. Susan Collins, the centrist GOP senator whose plan to resolve the crisis was rejected. Bob Corker agreed, saying of lifting the cuts, "I just can't imagine how that has any possibility of becoming law." The Post worries that the increasingly bitter McConnell-Reid feud could deep-six the deal. Things have gotten so bad that their colleagues recently held "the equivalent of an intervention," the paper says. World Bank and International Monetary Fund leaders urged the US to hurry up and forge a deal, with IMF director Christine Lagarde warning that "massive disruption the world over" looms. A foreign ministry spokesman in China called for American lawmakers to "shoulder their responsibilities," Reuters reports, and a scathing editorial in China's Xinhua state news agency called for politicians to end the "pernicious impasse"—and for everybody else to "start considering building a de-Americanized world." Claims that America has never defaulted on its debt are part of every debt-limit battle but the US has stiffed its creditors at least twice, the AP finds. In 1814, the government ran out of gold and silver to pay interest to bondholders in New England after setbacks in the War of 1812, and in 1979, a technical glitch that followed a long debt-limit squabble caused a delay in redeeming maturing T-bills that ended up adding about $12 billion to the cost of servicing the national debt.
– President Obama looks genuinely worried about the fate of ObamaCare: He will meet Wednesday morning with House and Senate Democrats to plot strategy on how to prevent Republicans from killing it, reports Politico. The problem for Democrats is that there may not be much they can do in the near future. As both Politico and the Hill point out, Republicans can pass a repeal measure without any Democratic support through a legislative maneuver known as a reconciliation vote. The procedure requires only a simple majority, not 60 votes, and the GOP has promised to move on it immediately in the new year. The caveat is that, assuming repeal passes, Republicans are expected to delay the actual dismantling of the law for quite a while to give them time to craft a replacement. That delay could be as long as three years, reports Time. So what can Democrats do? For one thing, raise political pressure. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart, Nancy Pelosi, plan rallies next month, and ObamaCare advocates promise to flood the airwaves with ads in states such as Arizona and Nevada, where they think GOP senators might be swayed. The idea is not only to try to block repeal itself but to keep as much of the law in place as possible if repeal passes. President-elect Trump, for example, has said he would like to keep parts of ObamaCare intact, notably protections for those with pre-existing conditions. The White House said this month that 6.4 million people had signed up for ObamaCare before a Dec. 19 deadline, up 400,000 from the previous year.
– Jack McAtee crashed his car into a reservoir in the mountains of Colorado on Sept. 18, 2014. He survived with only a scratch and told a police officer he'd fallen asleep at the wheel. The officer suspected the crash might've been intentional and the 27-year-old spent a night at a mental health facility in Frisco. A day later, the Breckenridge man was released and disappeared, reports the Washington Post. His family told the Summit Daily News McAtee had 10 days earlier stopped taking his medication for bipolar disorder, just as he had done a few times before when he dropped out of sight, but he always resurfaced. Over the next year, they scoured the country in search of him, thinking perhaps he'd gone off the grid like Chris McCandless, the subject of his favorite book, Into the Wild. They reached out to contacts in Alaska, where McAtee had flown planes, and homeless shelters, where they thought he might volunteer, but found no sign of him. In July, McAtee's father wrote online that "there is a 50% chance that Jack wandered off into the wilderness and attempted to survive." But a month later, two hikers found a skull near the top of the Peak One, immediately south of Frisco; DNA confirmation that the skull was McAtee's came earlier this month. "Our search has come to fruition," McAtee's family wrote. "Our closure is at hand, albeit we acknowledge it will be a lifelong process." It's still not clear how or when McAtee died. His skull was all that was found of his remains, reports the Denver Post. What is certain: "A person, an irreplaceable person, is gone," his family says. But "the story's not over," McAtee's father adds. The family is hoping to raise $50,000 to build wells in Kenya in McAtee's memory. Nearly $15,000 has been raised so far. (The Into the Wild author has revised his McCandless death theory.)
– Caitlan Coleman hailed from Stewartstown, Pa., a "land where bad things aren't supposed to happen." And yet a gripping Philadelphia magazine story describes how something bad did happen to the 26-year-old and her husband—Canadian activist Joshua Boyle, once married to the sister of Gitmo prisoner Omar Khadr—in 2012: They were kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan during a hike across Central Asia. The story by Holly Otterbein (an acquaintance of Coleman's from the same town) documents the disbelief the pair's loved ones felt when they first heard they were missing, the horror when they heard in 2013 the Taliban was holding them captive, and the panic when a series of proof-of-life videos of the two emerged, the third one in August. "We never think that someone we love will end up in a video released by the Taliban," Otterbein writes. But the American public at large is "grotesquely indifferent" to the fate of the couple and their two kids, since born in captivity. Officials believe the couple were taken hostage near Kabul by a Taliban affiliate known as the "Sopranos of the Afghanistan war" and are now being held in Pakistan. They've been in captivity for four years—just one year shy of the five years US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was held captive. The Taliban told the AP this summer the family was in good health, but in the August video, Coleman and Boyle said they and their kids would be executed unless Kabul officials stop killing Taliban prisoners. Otterbein notes their story has barely made a blip with the media, the US government has remained mostly tight-lipped, and online commentary about the disappeared pair can be cruel: "If we get them back, they would probably travel to Syria for their next little getaway," one poster noted. "Caitlan, like the war in Afghanistan and the fight against the Taliban, has been forgotten," Otterbein writes. (The chilling Philadelphia magazine story is worth the full read.)
– An 89-year-old Philly man suspected of Nazi war crimes died last night in a local hospital, the AP reports—the same day a judge issued an order to have him extradited to Germany. Former toolmaker Johann Breyer had been arrested in June, and German prosecutors wanted to try him for his role in the murder of more than 200,000 Jews at Auschwitz. The extradition order had been awaiting a final stamp of approval from the US government. Breyer was a US citizen (his mother was born here), and he had repeatedly tried to deflect blame for the death-camp killings, saying that he was forced to be a guard as a teen and that he wasn’t in the section of Auschwitz that murdered prisoners, reports Sky News. The judge who issued the extradition order wasn't buying it, declaring that “no statute of limitations offers a safe haven for murder." Breyer had mild dementia, heart problems, and a past history of strokes.
– Claims are coming in from multiple European countries that television manufacturers are pulling a Volkswagen and installing software to cheat energy-efficiency tests, the BBC reports. An EU-funded lab presented findings Tuesday that showed televisions manufactured by Samsung—the largest television manufacturer in the world—cut their energy consumption nearly in half during efficiency tests through their "motion lighting" feature, which would activate under test conditions but not under normal viewing. Critics are comparing it to this month's Volkswagen scandal, in which the company installed software to fool emissions tests, according to the Guardian. “There is no comparison,” a Samsung spokesperson says. “This is not a setting that only activates during compliance testing." Earlier this year, the Swedish Energy Council complained to the European Commission that another, unnamed television manufacturer had sets that recognized the standard test video and immediately dimmed to cut energy use when the video started, the BBC reports. And the United Kingdom complained about similar "defeat software" in televisions three years ago, according to the Guardian. Televisions in Europe account for the equivalent of the total electrical consumption of Sweden and Portugal every year. If televisions are cheating efficiency tests, that means energy consumption, electricity bills, and carbon emissions are all higher than advertised. The European Commission says it will be investigating the claims.
– Now that Perez Hilton's days of tweeting upskirt photos of underage celebs are apparently over, he's totally ready to be a dad. The acerbic gossip blogger posted a note to fans on his website yesterday announcing that his first child, "a beautiful and healthy baby boy," was born earlier this month. He also said he's looking forward to "guiding" his "little man" through life (and, we guess, reading him a children's book penned by none other than Perez Hilton). No word on how this all came about, although the LA Times notes that Hilton has discussed surrogacy in the past.
– Jake Raak calls himself "probably the luckiest person in the whole thing"—the "whole thing" being the New Year's Day massacre at a Turkish nightclub. The Greenville, Delaware, resident tells NBC News the shooter walked within inches of the bench he was under, and that when he was shot in the hip, he made no sound or movement so as not to alert the gunman he was still alive. It may have been a life-saving choice: Reuters reports the gunman, who ultimately killed 39, specifically went after the wounded at the Reina club in Istanbul. Raak says that among his group of nine, all but two were shot. The State Department has confirmed he was the only American injured. The bullet that struck him ended up in his knee. His mother tells the AP that her 35-year-old son had traveled to Istanbul to celebrate his birthday, which was last Wednesday. ISIS on Monday claimed responsibility for the massacre. While eight people have been detained, the gunman remains at large.
– President Trump's intervention in Joe Arpaio's fate dates back well before he announced the controversial pardon of the former Arizona sheriff on Friday, reports the Washington Post. Citing White House sources, the Post reports that Trump reached out to AG Jeff Sessions this past spring to see if the government could drop the criminal case against Arpaio, but "was advised that would be inappropriate." Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed Trump's inquiry, calling it "only natural the president would have a discussion with administration lawyers about legal matters." Trump acquiesced, but planned to issue the pardon in the event of a conviction, which came at the end of July. "We knew the president wanted to do this for some time now," one White House staffer tells the Post. Another adviser tells Politico it wasn't a "matter of if he was going to do it, it was a matter of when." Despite his earlier inquiry, Trump issued the pardon without telling the Justice Department, which had no comment; Politico characterizes top officials there as surprised by the move. A former Obama counsel calls it "his backhand way of doing what he wanted to do at the front end," and a "vivid demonstration of how far removed from an appropriate exercise of the pardon power this was." Republicans including Arizona's senators have condemned the pardon, and Paul Ryan has joined their number, reports Politico, saying via a rep that he "does not agree with the decision." As for Arpaio himself, whom the Post characterizes as Trump's brother in arms in birtherism, "I didn't ask for the pardon," he says. "He wanted to do it because I think he understood what I was going through."
– Scientists have seen a tendril of dark matter for the first time, and all it took was a "cosmic flashlight." Using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, a scientific team spotted the dark matter in a gas cloud illuminated by the radiation of a distant quasar, the BBC reports. "The light from the quasar is like a flashlight beam," said Sebastiano Cantalupo, lead author of the report. Lit by that beam, the glowing hydrogen of the gas cloud traced out the dark matter lying behind it. This all supports a theory that galaxies are wrapped up in filaments of gas that stretch across space like a web, National Geographic reports. About 85% of the web is said to be dark matter, Nature World News explains, and galaxies sit like spiders on intersections of the web. Gravity is what keeps us, and all matter, sitting on these filaments, and now one has actually been observed. It's "giving us the first picture of extended gas between galaxies," co-author J. Xavier Prochaska tells The Space Reporter. "It provides a terrific insight into the overall structure of our universe."
– Archaeologists in Greece are nearly ready to enter what they say is the biggest ancient tomb ever unearthed in the country. The tomb at the ancient site of Amphipolis in the Macedonia region, around 65 miles northeast of Thessaloniki, dates from around 300 BC—the time of Alexander the Great, though experts don't believe it belongs to the warrior-king, who died in what is now Iraq, the Telegraph reports. Two carved sphinxes flank the entrance to the tomb, which is surrounded by a 540-yard marble outer wall. "It looks like the tomb of a prominent Macedonian of that era," a culture ministry official tells Reuters. Archaeologists have spent the last couple years excavating the ancient burial mound under which the tomb was found, and they plan to enter the tomb within the next two weeks, reports NBC, which adds that there is one clue to its possible occupant: Researchers believe a 16-foot stone lion unearthed in the area a century ago and associated with Laomedon of Mytilene, one of Alexander the Great's military commanders, once stood atop the tomb. (Click to read about an "evil eye" box uncovered in an ancient cemetery.)
– Explosions have hit Gaza City's main hospital and a nearby park, killing at least nine children and an adult in the latter, reports the AP. But the source of those explosions is anybody's guess: Hamas claims they were Israeli airstrikes, while the Israeli Defense Force says they were misfired Hamas rockets. Camera crews were prevented from filming the area of impact at Shifa Hospital, but CNN notes that Hamas-run television is showing live images that reportedly show at least one dead body in what appears to be an emergency room. The report follows a UN Security Council call for an "immediate" ceasefire, the BBC notes. Hamas also managed to briefly infiltrate an Israeli village today, reports Reuters. Hamas says it killed 10 Israeli soldiers in the incursion; Israel claims it killed five militants.
– Those hoping to avoid the world's biggest sharks would do well to stay away from Portugal's Azore Islands. That's where whale sharks—the biggest fish in the sea—are making a new home, likely due to climate change, a study finds. The creatures have a very specific set of temperatures they can tolerate, ranging from 78.8 degrees to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, Discovery notes. The Azores are currently fulfilling the needs of the animals, which, LiveScience notes, can be up to 41.5 feet long and weigh a whopping 47,000 pounds. The temperatures around the Azores, off western Europe, appear to be linked to higher amounts of a favorite whale shark food: chlorophyll-a. Researchers in the area came to their shark population conclusions by assessing 16 years of data from tuna fishermen who've spotted the animals. Indeed, so many sharks have headed there that the region, previously in the northernmost part of the sharks' territory, is experiencing a boom in tourists' "whale shark watching." These tourists, it seems, needn't fear: Whale sharks are by no means ferocious, LiveScience points out. Great whites are a little scarier.
– The AP reports that President Trump hit the links on his Florida golf course the day after Thanksgiving, but before he did, he rehashed a topic that's long been on his mind, with seeming impatience. "Republicans and Democrats MUST come together, finally, with a major Border Security package, which will include funding for the Wall," he tweeted, referring to the border barrier he wants erected between the US and Mexico. "After 40 years of talk, it is finally time for action. Fix the Border, for once and for all, NOW!" The Hill notes there's a Dec. 7 deadline Congress must meet to fund the remaining parts of government that are still not funded, and Trump has said he'd be OK with shutting down the government if the wall isn't included in any upcoming funding packages. "Could there be a shutdown? There certainly could, and it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part," the president told reporters Thursday, per Reuters, which notes Democrats, who just gained control of the House in the midterms, may now be less amenable to giving in to Trump on this matter. (Trump also threatened he could shut down "the whole border" if he had to.)
– Starting next week, you'll be able to nosh on a croissant-donut hybrid if you live near a Dunkin' Donuts—but don't call the delectable dessert a Cronut. The chain says that starting Nov. 3, it will churn out a limited run of its "Croissant Donut," which some are already comparing to the now-trademarked Cronut treat first made famous by New York City's Dominique Ansel Bakery, the AP reports. The new offering will have the same glaze as Dunkin's Glazed Donut, won't have filling (for now), and will sell for $2.49—more than twice what the chain's regular donuts go for, making it more profitable for a company that's seen flagging sales, the AP notes. DD won't cop to any Cronut copycat crime, though. "Are we copying a specific bakery in New York? The answer is no," Dunkin's president of global marketing and innovation says. So what's the difference between the actual Cronut—which comes with a caveat on Dominique Ansel's website that the "creation is not to be mistaken as simply croissant dough that has been fried"—and DD's version? Dunkin's executive chef tells the AP, "I've tried the product that you mention. As the executive chef of Dunkin', I like ours better." Others might agree: The owner of a rival NYC bakery tells the New Yorker that Dominique Ansel makes a "lousy croissant" anyway. (Election time's coming—if you like Dunkin' Donuts, you might be a Republican.)
– Some of Syria's most powerful rebel groups have disavowed the Western-backed National Syrian Coalition's government in exile, in a move that may further complicate efforts to find a diplomatic resolution to the country's civil war. Thirteen groups, spearheaded by the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, released a statement last night declaring that the newly-formed interim government "does not represent or recognize us" and urging their fellow rebels to make Sharia law "the sole source of legislation." Three of the signatories control large amounts of territory, CNN reports. The jihadis aren't the only ones dismissing the opposition government, either. Syria's deputy foreign minister yesterday dismissed the coalition as having little influence, the New York Times reports. He further dimmed the prospect of peace talks by saying the regime wouldn't negotiate with anyone who'd taken up arms against it, though it might talk to religious leaders "who have influence on the ground." Russia, meanwhile, said a peace deal could only be reached if the US stopped calling for Bashar al-Assad's ouster, Reuters reports.
– A beautiful sunny day in Tampa, Fla., turned tragic on Wednesday when Jessica Raubenolt, 24, who was visiting from Ohio, went out for a walk with her 21-month-old daughter, Lillia. While pushing the toddler across scenic Bayshore Boulevard, Raubenolt and her daughter were struck by a black Ford Mustang, police say. Witnesses say the car had been racing side-by-side with a gold Nissan. One witness described hearing the sound of a roaring engine, then seeing the two cars speeding with the Mustang in the lead before the fatal collision, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Raubenolt was taken to Tampa General Hospital where she was pronounced dead, and Lillia died a day later. The driver of the 2018 Mustang has been identified as Cameron Herrin, 18, according to a police report. His brother Tristan, 20, was a passenger. Police say the Nissan was driven by John Barrineau, 17. Cameron Herrin and Barrineau face two counts of street racing and vehicular homicide. Tristin Herrin faces a misdemeanor charge of racing. In the face of tragedy, her uncle offered words of kindness. "We’re praying for those young boys and their families," John Reisinger, 62, told the Times, and that the biggest tragedy was that more people didn’t know Raubenolt. "She made a mark on this world," he said. A GoFundMe account that has been set up for the family has raised more than $58,000, reports People.
– Argentina is the third-largest soybean producer in the world, and also grows a lot of cotton and corn. Nearly all of it is now genetically modified, since Monsanto convinced farmers to switch to its seeds and chemicals in 1996. But the agrochemicals the country's farmers use to keep up with demand, and fight off resistant pests could be making the country seriously sick, an investigation by the AP has found. In some areas where the chemicals are used, birth defects and cancer rates have spiked up to four times the national average. Though the chemicals are said to be safe when used properly, the people handling them often have no training or the right protective equipment. "I prepared millions of liters of poison without any kind of protection, no gloves, masks or special clothing," says one farmer, now near-death due to a neurological disorder. "I didn't know anything. I only learned later what it did to me, after contacting scientists." Argentine farmers use twice as much pesticide per acre as US farmers, and often spray close to homes, despite bans on doing so. A study in one area found high levels of agrochemical contamination in the soil and drinking water, and 80% of the local kids had traces of pesticides in their blood. Of course, it's nearly impossible to prove a link between the chemicals and individual's diseases, but doctors are calling on the government to open an investigation. Click to read the full report here or just the main finding here.
– Have some hot beverage with your sugar. That's the roundabout finding of a UK health advocacy organization that discovered hot flavored drinks served by chains like Starbucks, McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts can contain a "shocking" amount of sugar—sometimes up to 25 teaspoons per serving, or more than three times the recommended daily amount for adults, per CNNMoney. The Action on Sugar report analyzed 131 hot flavored drinks from UK chains—CNN points out nutritional info on company websites would make results similar in the US—and found that 98% of the tested beverages would get slapped with a "red" label for excessive amounts of sugar, with 35% of them boasting at least the same amount of sugar as a can of Coke (9 teaspoons). "These hot flavored drinks should be an occasional treat, not an everyday drink," an Action for Sugar researcher warns. Starbucks claimed the worst of the bunch with its hot mulled fruit grape drink with orange, chai, and cinnamon—the 25-teaspoon suspect mentioned earlier. A Starbucks rep says it is committed to cutting down by a quarter the amount of added sugar in its "indulgent" beverages by 2020 and notes that it "also [offers] a wide variety of lighter options, sugar-free syrups, and sugar-free natural sweetener" and makes all of its nutritional data public. That doesn't sweeten the results for the Action on Sugar chairman, who says it's "yet again another example of scandalous amounts of sugar added to our food and drink," per CNBC. (No one can figure out what Starbucks' newest drink even is.)
– Based on the breathless commentary after the Supreme Court's oral arguments today, it might have seemed as if the court had already decided to rule against health care reform. Sorry to spoil the fun, but it's way too early for either side to think this is a done deal, writes Steve Kornacki at Salon. "All of this alarmism may well amount to nothing." Yes, Anthony Kennedy sounded skeptical about the individual mandate, for example, but Kornacki points to a detailed recap of arguments by Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog suggesting that Kennedy's opposition isn't as solid as thought. "That is where Tuesday’s argument wound up—with Kennedy, after first displaying a very deep skepticism, leaving the impression that he might yet be the mandate’s savior," writes Denniston. And don't be shocked if John Roberts ends up agreeing with him, he adds. "The court isn’t expected to rule for months, maybe not until late June," adds Kornacki in his post. "It’s entirely possible that the mandate will be thrown out, but it’s all still guesswork until then." Read his full column here. Or check out the audio recordings of the arguments for yourself here.
– What was supposed to be a joyous occasion turned into a bloodbath last night as two armed groups at an Afghan wedding got into a gunfight, killing 21 people—including two teen boys—and wounding at least eight others, an Afghan official says, per CNN. The shooters, most of whom were guests at the wedding in Baghlan province, were believed to be members of illegal local militias, not the Taliban or al-Qaeda, NBC News reports. Although CNN says the cause of the fight was "unclear," the police chief of the Dih Salah district of Baghlan tells the AP it appears the fight broke out after a relative of a provincial police officer was killed during the celebration for a local mullah's son, for which 400 or so people had gathered at a private house. Meanwhile, the police chief tells the Guardian that " a local security official fired in the air after the verbal exchange heated up … and then both sides started trading fire." The paper notes that "celebratory gunfire" and fatal shootouts are "woefully common" in the region. The paper cites a December wedding in which 17 women and children were killed after Afghan army soldiers heard such celebratory gunfire and blasted mortars at the wedding party by mistake. The AP notes that Baghlan and other northern Afghan provinces have been riddled with insurgent attacks since the 2001 US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban, but it adds that local feuds and other criminal activity still proliferate under the cover of war. (The Taliban attacked the Afghan Parliament just last month.)
– Backstreet's back for the first time in five years. The Backstreet Boys, who just celebrated 25 years together, released their first new single since 2013 on Thursday, along with a music video featuring plenty of five-person dance formations. "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," not to be confused with 1997's "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)," follows up the 2013 album In a World Like This. "The minute we heard this song, we knew it was special," band member Kevin Richardson says, per the Daily Beast. "Just makes you wanna listen over and over again." The single will appear on the band's yet-untitled 10th studio album, due for release later this year, to coincide with 21 new dates for the band's Las Vegas residency, reports Billboard.
– Appropriate parenting or criminal behavior? That's the question being asked across the US in regards to the case of a Louisiana woman arrested Monday for whipping her young sons after they burglarized a neighbor's house. Among the people speaking up for Schaquana Evita Spears, a 30-year-old single mom of six, is Lisa Nicholson—the woman whose Baton Rouge home Spears's sons, ages 13, 12, and 10, broke into. "I would prefer for her to spank her own kids than for them to come into someone's house and for [the homeowner] to kill them," Nicholson tells the Advocate. The fate they faced instead after allegedly stealing what the Advocate reports was $1,700 in goods, including a computer and hoverboard: Per the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office report, the oldest boy's wounds were bleeding, and the 12-year-old's skin was broken by the lashes. WBRZ reports the 13-year-old's injuries were on his arms, with marks on his body, and he told police an RCA cable was used; the youngest boy had a small scratch on the hand. In a statement, the District Attorney Hillar Moore said the case is under review and noted "the law does not allow excessive pain or cruelty but does allow physical parental discipline." But some experts, referencing a 2016 study, tell the Advocate that corporal punishment is not effective and can actually lead to worse behavior. "It's been hell," Spears—whose kids were, as of Wednesday, in the care of a grandmother—tells WBRZ. "I never could imagine trying to be a good mother would end me up in jail." A GoFundMe page set up for Spears says she lost her job over the incident. "Jus [sic] want my life back," she wrote on Facebook on Friday. (These bank workers were publicly spanked for "not exceeding themselves.")
– The story of Safyre Terry, an 8-year-old who lost her entire family in an arson fire more than two years ago, touched the world. After the little girl's request for Christmas cards went viral—more than 300,000 letters have flooded her mailbox since—she got another surprise Monday: a visit from the founder of a nonprofit that will be sending her and her relatives to Disney World in February, Today.com reports. Baking Memories 4 Kids will be sending Safyre and her aunt, uncle, and four cousins to Florida, per ABC News, and founder Frank Squeo tells Today.com that presenting the New York girl with the news was "absolutely amazing." "There are no words to describe how many people were there supporting the family, or how beautiful Safyre was," he says. "She gave me the biggest hug." As for those cards, ABC News notes that 195,000 of them came in a single day, and delivering them required two 2-ton mail trucks and a cargo truck. "We got the most mail we’ve ever gotten for a single person in Schenectady," says the local post master. A YouCaring page set up for the family has also amassed more than $342,000 to date; Safyre suffered burns on 75% of her body and lost her right hand and left foot. Today.com has this detail: "Her father died cradling Safyre in his arms, which protected her from breathing in hot air and allowed her to survive." (Read how a Mississippi firefighter got another man's face after being burned in a horrific house fire.)
– In January, President Obama handed the reins to Joe Biden to head a "moonshot" initiative to cure cancer, and a major step toward that end has just been made. Per Fortune, IBM will donate its Watson supercomputer technology—the same technology that beat humans on Jeopardy!, CNET notes—to Veterans Affairs hospitals and doctors' offices, offering precision genomic treatment to the largest cancer demographic (3.5% of all US cancer patients) in any one health-care group. At the National Cancer Moonshot Summit on Wednesday, the VA Department and IBM Watson Health said they hope to use this tech to scale up doctors' access to such treatment programs and help 10,000 or so veterans over the next two years, per a press release—about 30 times more than the current number in VA facilities using these treatments. "By applying Watson … we see an opportunity to scale access to precision medicine for America's veterans, a group most deserving of the best care in the world," the VA's undersecretary for health says. How this "Watson for Genomics" will work: After DNA sequencing on cancer patients, that info will be plugged into Watson, which will analyze and cross-reference existing medical data and then spit out what's probably causing the cancer mutations and what precision treatment is likely the best option—a task that was previously extremely time-consuming due to the volume of data and not very scalable. Plus, physicians in any part of the country—not just those near urban centers with top cancer facilities—will have access. Forbes notes the project won't do much to help patients outside the VA system and that no one knows yet exactly how effective Watson will be at pulling off this ambitious job. But it says while "efforts like the Cancer Moonshot have trouble living up to their own hype … they can grease the wheels of progress a little bit." (Watson released its own cookbook last year.)
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg is "notorious" for, among other things, her killer workouts, which is maybe why the fit 85-year-old justice brushed off a tumble she took Wednesday evening at her office. However, the Supreme Court issued a statement Thursday noting that after she went home, Ginsburg had "discomfort overnight," and a visit to George Washington University Hospital early Thursday revealed she broke three ribs on her left side, USA Today reports. Ginsburg was admitted for "observation and treatment," the statement says. CNBC notes that Ginsburg's health has been under the microscope of late, due to both her age (she's the oldest Supreme Court justice) and the fact that she's one of just four liberal justices on the court's bench. Six years ago, she suffered a similar health scare and broke a couple of ribs then, too—and didn't make it public until months after the fact. (Over the summer, RBG predicted she had at least five years left on the court.)
– Breitbart's temporary press credentials to cover Congress won't be extended, and its application for permanent credentials is no longer being considered, Politico reports. The secretary for the Capitol Hill Standing Committee of Correspondents, which oversees credentialing, tells USA Today that Breitbart simply is "not ready." The committee only gives congressional access to news outlets it considers "legitimate." Its concern about Breitbart is that several editors are also employed by the Government Accountability Institute, which Steve Bannon used to run and which is funded by a major Republican donor. It also takes issue with Breitbart's lack of office space. Breitbart's temporary credentials expire at the end of May. It can reapply for access if it addresses the committee's concerns.
– Freewheeling speech on Twitter isn't the same as protected speech, a judge has ruled. In a decision with major repercussions for social media communication, a Manhattan criminal court judge has ordered Twitter to turn over tweets sent by a New York writer during Occupy Wall Street protests last fall. Judge Matthew Sciarrino said that while private speech is protected, the writer's communication doesn't merit the same treatment because his tweets were public, reports the New York Times. The case involves writer Malcolm Harris, who was busted while Occupiers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. Prosecutors demanded two days of Harris' tweets in a bid to contradict his expected defense that it was police who led protesters off the bridge walkway and into the road. Twitter fought the request, and the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that prosecutors should be required to obtain a search warrant in such a case, and that the process shouldn't skip over the writer of a tweet to go directly to Twitter. While the prosecution was delighted with the ruling, a Twitter statement expressed "disappointment," adding: "Twitter’s terms of service make it absolutely clear that its users own their content. We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights." That's a surprise, given that Twitter itself has just revealed that it complied with 63% of 849 requests from law enforcement authorities to turn over tweets in the first six months of this year, reports the Los Angeles Times. American law enforcement made up 80% of those requests.
– Read it into what you will, 2016 prognosticators: Mike Huckabee appears to be launching a news website called the "Huckabee Post," reports Mashable. The development actually surfaced a few days ago when Mediaite spotted this Craigslist ad seeking reporters for “a new and exciting online news publication covering news on politics, US, international, media, sports and other general news.” What's more, Huckabee has given a slew of interviews to big-name media outlets of late to say he's at least considering a run. “I didn’t want any misinformation that I’ve told people I’m running—that’s not the case,” Huckabee tells Howard Kurtz at Fox News. “I wanted to be honest and say, sure I’m looking at it.” Besides, it may be December 2013, but that hasn't stopped the Des Moines Register from publishing a poll of Iowa voters this week, and Huckabee finished second (66%) in favorability ratings to Paul Ryan (73%). For the record, Hillary Clinton trumped them both with her 89% rating among state Democrats. Joe Biden trailed her at 71%.
– The tsunami that killed hundreds, possibly thousands of people after an earthquake in Indonesia on Friday was much bigger and more devastating than would normally be expected after that kind of quake, scientists say. "We expected it might cause a tsunami, just not one that big," geophysicist Jason Patton tells the New York Times. Tsunamis like the 18-foot monster wave that wrecked cities on Sulawesi island are usually caused by "megathrust" earthquakes that move land vertically, not "strike-slip" quakes like the 7.5-magnitude one Friday, which moved the earth horizontally, Patton says. The Sulawesi event was, however, localized, unlike the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It may have been the case, Patton says, that massive undersea landslides created the tsunami, or that the narrow bay that Palu sits at the end of concentrated the wave's power. Indonesian authorities have been strongly criticized for apparently canceling the tsunami alert too early, though expert Adam Switzer at the Earth Observatory of Singapore tells the AP that this is unfair. "What it shows is that the tsunami models we have now are too simplistic," he says. "They don't take into account multiple events, multiple quakes within a short period of time. They don't take into account submarine landslides." The official death toll now stands at 844, though authorities, who have been preparing mass graves, have been unable to access some hard-hit areas, the Guardian reports.
– Scrabble players, time to rethink your game because 300 new words are coming your way, including some long-awaited gems: OK and ew, to name a few. Merriam-Webster released the sixth edition of "The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary" on Monday, four years after the last freshening up. The company, at the behest of Scrabble owner Hasbro Inc., left out one possibility—RBI—after consulting competitive players who thought it potentially too contentious. There was a remote case to be made since RBI has morphed into an actual word, pronounced rib-ee. But that's OK because, "OK." "OK is something Scrabble players have been waiting for, for a long time," says lexicographer Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster. "Basically two- and three-letter words are the lifeblood of the game." There's more good news in qapik—a unit of currency in Azerbaijan— adding to an arsenal of 20 playable words beginning with q that don't need a u. "Every time there's a word with q and no u, it's a big deal," Sokolowski tells the AP. "Most of these are obscure." There are some sweet scorers now eligible for play, including bizjet—a small plane used for business and some magical vowel dumps, such as arancini, those Italian balls of cooked rice. Yowza is now in play, along with a word some might have thought was already allowed: zen. Other newcomers Sokolowski shared are aquafaba, beatdown, zomboid, twerk, sheeple, wayback, bokeh, botnet, emoji, facepalm, frowny, hivemind, puggle, and nubber.
– A woman in her 80s who lives alone in Pennsylvania wasn't actually living alone, it turns out. Police in Bedford say that a 49-year-old man had secretly moved in and was living on her second floor for several weeks, reports WJAC-TV and the Bedford County Free Press. His rent-free living came to an end when the woman's daughter paid a visit, and she and her mom heard a noise upstairs. A quick investigation turned up Mark Allen Potts hiding in a closet. “When police searched the upstairs room, they found several suitcases, a duffel bag, and other personal items belonging to Potts," says county DA Bill Higgins. "He was taking up residence there." Authorities say Potts, who faces charges of criminal trespassing, also had a handgun. The homeowner had once met him—he was the boyfriend of her caretaker. "Locking your door isn't always a safeguard against intrusion," observes a post at Philly Voice. "Neither is a caretaker, apparently." (Another alleged home intruder got caught after logging into Facebook.)
– If it's been tough to gauge how much risk is posed by Japan's damaged nuclear plants, it's because officials have given what the New York Times describes as "confusing accounts" of exactly what's going on. Safety officials say the explosion at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant destroyed walls of the building where the reactor is located, but not the metal housing enclosing the reactor, notes AP. The blast released radioactive material, but officials say the amounts are so small the public isn't endangered. Nevertheless, they widened the evacuation zone, warned people to stay inside, and prepared to distribute iodine tablets. Reuters rounds up assessments of experts, but the bottom line seems to be that more information is needed. "We don't know enough about what the status of the fuel is in the reactor core," says one. "The issue is whether the core is uncovered, whether the fuel is breaking up or being damaged, or whether the fuel is melting." The Washington Post talks to one doctor who arrived from Germany to provide relief, but is curtailing plans to go too far north. "I'd rather be working with a pocket knife in Haiti than worrying about the danger of a radioactive cloud."
– Leonardo da Vinci used oil-based paint to create his Mona Lisa. The folks at Georgia Tech used ThermoChemical NanoLithography to create their version, dubbed the "Mini Lisa," reports the Christian Science Monitor. The result? An almost indescribably small gray-scale copy. Think one third the width of a human hair, or .0001 inches wide. The idea here wasn't so much to create art as to demonstrate the potential of nanotechnology, says Popular Science. "This technique should enable a wide range of previously inaccessible experiments and applications in fields as diverse as nanoelectronics, optoelectronics, and bioengineering," says a physics professor at the school. The process involved a microscopic beam and the meticulous application of heat to create lighter or darker shades of gray. Gizmag has a detailed description with illustrations. (Is this better than beaming the Mona Lisa to the moon?)
– NASA will be studying how Scott Kelly's body reacted to almost a year in space, using his twin brother Mark Kelly, who stayed on Earth, as a control. One big difference to note right away: The brothers will no longer be the same height, as they were before Scott went into space, because he grew 2 inches while aboard the International Space Station, CNN reports. "Astronauts get taller in space as the spine elongates," NASA's Jeff Williams explains. That's because "without the full strength of gravity pressing down on gel-filled discs between the vertebrae, they expand and lengthen the spine," the Washington Post explains. But Scott won't be able to lord it over Mark for too long: Astronauts "return to preflight height after a short time back on Earth," Williams says.
– The man charged with murdering a 9-year-old boy in Chicago allegedly "laughed and bragged" about the killing while in jail, DNAinfo reports. Prosecutors say 22-year-old Dwright Boone-Doty lured fourth-grader Tyshawn Lee into an alley in November and shot him as part of an ongoing gang feud. According to the Chicago Tribune, an informant in jail while Boone-Doty was being held on an unrelated gun charge was wearing a wire while Boone-Doty discussed the shooting. "Shorty couldn’t take it no more," prosecutors quote Boone-Doty, allegedly describing Tyshawn during the shooting. Tyshawn was shot in the head, back, and arm; part of his thumb was also shot off. Evidence from the scene indicates Boone-Doty likely failed to kill Tyshawn with his first shot, the Chicago Sun Times reports. Prosecutors say Boone-Doty was writing a rap song about killing Tyshawn while in jail and was sorry he didn't go back to the park where he found Tyshawn to kill more kids. Authorities also claim Boone-Doty—along with two alleged accomplices—at one point planned to kidnap Tyshawn and cut off his ears and fingers. Tyshawn was a backup target after killing his grandmother didn't work out, prosecutors say. A second man has been charged in the killing; a third is still wanted. Boone-Doty was charged with Tyshawn's murder—as well as the murder of a 19-year-old woman weeks earlier—on Monday. The father of three was ordered held without bail. Police say Tyshawn's father belongs to a rival gang.
– Joan Fontaine, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 1941 for her role opposite Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, died peacefully in her sleep at her Carmel, Calif., home yesterday at age 96, the AP reports. Fontaine was also nominated for Oscars for her lead roles in The Constant Nymph and Hitchcock's Rebecca; played Jane Eyre opposite Orson Welles; appeared in films by Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, and Nicholas Ray; played opposite stars including Bing Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Crawford; and was nominated for an Emmy in 1980. She was also involved in what the AP calls "one of Hollywood's legendary feuds" with her own older sister, Olivia de Havilland, who lost out on the Best Actress to Fontaine in 1941. "I felt Olivia would spring across the table and grab me by the hair," Fontaine later wrote, according to the Washington Post. Fontaine later wrote in her memoir about a rivalry that had existed since childhood, and once told a reporter, "I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!" (De Havilland, who ended up besting Fontaine with two Oscars, is currently living in Paris, age 97, the Hollywood Reporter notes.) When de Havilland won her own Oscar in 1947, Fontaine tried to congratulate her and was rebuffed. Fontaine ultimately left Hollywood after being asked to play Elvis Presley's mother, explaining that the role simply "wasn't my cup of tea." She spent 25 years in New York, appearing in dinner theater plays and on Broadway, and appeared on TV quite a bit in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. She was married four times, and had two children. Click for more on her 71-year feud with de Havilland.
– Some six in 10 Americans say they would support a strike against ISIS, as President Obama appears to be moving toward such a hit. The figure comes from an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that also finds Americans feeling unsafe: Some 47% of the country now feels the US is less secure than it was before the 9/11 attacks. Just a year after those attacks, NBC notes, only 20% shared that feeling; last year, it was 28%. One news item fueling the fear: US journalists' beheadings, which 94% of Americans are aware of. That's the highest level of awareness of any story in the past five years, according to the poll. A day before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Obama is preparing for a tough speech. Tonight in prime time, he'll discuss the US plan against the group, an initiative that will start small and expand; eventual airstrikes in Syria are possible, Politico reports, while the AP notes that major troop action on the ground is unlikely. Meanwhile, a generation has come of age as the post-9/11 conflict has continued, the AP notes. In an earlier vision of the future, Iraq was supposed to be fending for itself by this point, with US troops largely leaving Afghanistan combat behind; instead, we're preparing for further action in the region. "The Cold War took 45 years," says a former George W. Bush adviser. "It's harder to see how this ends."
– A recent essay on Quartz by Kristi Coulter has been making waves on social media, with a (now-sober) Coulter saying she thinks 21st-century women guzzle too much hooch to forget about the sexist world we live in. Ann Friedman offers her own take, writing for the Washington Post that even though she takes some of Coulter's "well-written" points to heart, she's not completely on board with Coulter's conclusion, noting it's "difficult to separate what is and isn't related to the patriarchy." "Did I get drunk last night because of the patriarchy? Who knows," she says, listing other woman-related issues (e.g., a penchant for short hair, picking at one's cuticles) that could theoretically be linked to a male-dominated society. Friedman lays out why she's reluctant to fully toast Coulter's thesis, noting many men also drink to deal with the day-to-day, and that pop culture—especially via boozy women protagonists on TV and in the movies—has much to do with it, too, presenting alcohol "as both a coping mechanism and a bonding tool." And she cites her own personal imbibing, relaying how her boozing sessions tend to serve a more active "plotting" purpose to direct her "outrage," with her drinking buddies serving as sounding boards. "Maybe patriarchy does drive us to drink, just as patriarchy drives us to shave our legs and wear bright lipstick," she concludes. "Or maybe it doesn’t, and we get drunk for the same reasons that men do. Either way, I'm less concerned about what draws women together over a bottle of wine, and more interested in what we do once we get there." (Her entire essay here.)
– An estimated 200,000 Salvadorans and their 190,000 US-born children aren't the only people stressed out about the administration's decision to withdraw Temporary Protected Status: The government of El Salvador, which estimates 95% of TPS holders are employed or own businesses in the US, says it will "face a great challenge" if tens of thousands are deported after Sept.19, 2019, when the protection from deportation introduced after two deadly earthquakes in 2001 expires. But Salvadoran officials don't think it will come to that. Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez tells the Washington Post that the government will lobby Congress to find a way for people losing TPS status to remain legal US residents. "We think we have sufficient time and will work hard for this alternative," he says. Congressional Democrats support finding a way for the Salvadorans to stay, though they have multiple other immigration issues to deal with, Reuters reports. Advocates warn that El Salvador has one of the world's highest murder rates, making it a dangerous place to deport people to—and that its economy will be devastated if it loses billions of dollars in remittances from the US. "This is really bad news for our country," Nayib Bukele, the mayor of San Salvador, tells the Los Angeles Times. "Our country doesn't create opportunities for the Salvadorans who live here. Imagine what we're going to do with 200,000 more coming in." Experts say that if there are mass deportations, many former TPS holders are likely to try to move to the US illegally—as will some Salvadorans displaced by the skilled and bilingual new arrivals.
– If your chosen candidate doesn't win on Nov. 8, there's perhaps no need to decamp to Canada or Russia: Become a citizen of Asgardia instead. That's the name of the newly proposed "first nation state in space." Named after a world in Norse mythology that's located in the sky, the would-be extraterrestrial state stems from a project led by Russian scientist Igor Ashurbeyli, who heads UNESCO's Science of Space committee, reports the Telegraph. There's no terra firma for Asgardian citizens to travel to: The Guardian reports Asgardia appears to "consist of a single satellite," planned to be launched by the project next year. Ashurbeyli explains "physically the citizens of that nation state will be on Earth," meaning they'll be a citizen of their own country and Asgardia simultaneously. CNET frames Asgardia as a "scientific, legal, and technological experiment," with Ashurbeyli planning to petition the UN for the status of state once 100,000 people have applied to be citizens on the Asgardia website, which launched Wednesday. Among the project's ambitious goals: to create a state-of-the-art protective shield to keep space debris and asteroids from reaching Earth's surface. Space regulation is another focus: Since the late 1960s, the Outer Space Treaty has assigned liability for objects sent into space on the nation launching them. Asgardia could in theory "do an end-run around government regulations that are a key part of making the treaty work by forming a new government accountable to nobody but the space enthusiasts that formed it," observes CNET. (See what NASA did in space earlier this year.)
– How much should you get paid for handling the estate of a dead billionaire? Apparently $100 million—or more than $6,400 per hour—If that estate belongs to Leona Helmsley, the Wall Street Journal reports. “By any definition, this hourly rate is exorbitant, unreasonable, and improper,” states a filing from the New York Attorney General's Office. The executors of Helmsley's will—two grandchildren, a lawyer, and a business advisor—defended their request for the "astronomical" fee stating they "faced enormous risks" while increasing the estate's value. Helmsley—a famous New York City property owner who KCCI points out was known as the "Queen of Mean"—was worth $4.78 billion when she died in 2007, the Journal reports. Helmsley left most of her wealth to charity, the Journal reports. And the Attorney General's Office has the power to make sure charities aren't getting fleeced by "excessive and unreasonable expenses," such as the fees being demanded by her estate's executors. The state is hoping to cut the requested fee by up to 90%. This isn't the first controversy surrounding Helmsley's estate. Her will left $12 million to her dog—more than two of her grandchildren got. And two other grandchildren who were left out of her will entirely are challenging it. While Helmsley's executors fight for $100 million, Iowa announced this week that $6.3 million from her estate will be going to pay for automated chest compression systems to give cardiac arrest victims around the state a better shot at survival, according to KCCI.
– The 111th Congress adjourned last night, after passing more key legislation that affected more Americans than any since Lyndon Johnson’s 1960s “Great Society,” Bloomberg reports. That included $1.67 trillion spent to save the economy, health insurance for 32 million people, and new regulations on Wall Street; in the lame-duck session alone, there was the tax cut deal, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal, START treaty ratification, and 9/11 health bill. Yet all this occurred in “most dysfunctional political environment that I have ever seen,” says an analyst. Republicans won sweeping victories in the midterm election, and a recent Gallup poll found an 83% disapproval rating for Congress, its highest since the poll began, the Washington Post notes. “What we did was work, and our reward was, ‘Get out of here,’” said a House Democrat. Not everybody's happy with the progress: "I think it was a disaster,” says a GOP senator.
– Have a great idea about how to map the ocean floor? It could be worth millions. The X Prize Foundation, which two years ago asked for a way to gauge ocean acidification, is offering $7 million to teams able to develop high-resolution maps of the seafloor over the next three years. The latest competition meant to better humankind aims to hurry "innovation to further explore one of our greatest unexplored frontiers," X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis tells NBC News, noting "95% of the deep sea remains a mystery to us." In truth, we have better maps of the moon and Mars than of the seafloor, per National Geographic and Live Science. The foundation will accept submissions for robots capable of creating high-resolution maps, identifying geological and archaeological features like volcanoes and shipwrecks, and taking photos until September 2016. The devices will be tested at 6,500 and 13,000 feet about a year later. "This competition is technically challenging, but it is also very interdisciplinary," says X Prize's senior director. "It involves underwater robotics, it involves computer science, there is a digital imagery component to it. We want to help spur unparalleled ocean exploration through innovation and radical breakthroughs to find all the different wonders in the deep sea." The team that claims the top prize will take home $4 million, the second-place team will get $1 million, and an additional $1 million will be divided among other teams in the top 10. There will also be a $1 million award funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for any device that can follow a chemical or biological signal to detect "sources of pollution, enable rapid response to leaks and spills, identify hydrothermal vents and methane seeps, as well as track marine life for scientific research and conservation efforts," per an NOAA scientist.
– After five years of tracking Saint Nick, Google and NORAD are going their separate ways. The North American Aerospace Defense Command announced this week that it was now working with Microsoft Bing to follow Santa's worldwide progress, the Guardian reports. Google has launched its own "Santa tracker" including games and personalized calls from Saint Nick to children. But NORAD's tracking system will be no slouch, with data on Santa's elevation, photos of his journey, weather, and Wikipedia information on his various stops. And NORAD will offer updates on Santa's trip via Twitter and YouTube. Twenty-five million people will likely use NORAD's tracker this year via Bing Maps and apps for Windows 8, Windows Phones, and Android phones, reports Business Insider. NORAD began tracking Santa when a misprint in a 1955 department store ad led a child to call the agency for information on Santa's latest stop. The NORAD employee who took the call made sure to answer, and the agency has maintained the tradition ever since.
– A New York woman has, according to police, gotten married a few too many times, and she's now facing felony fraud charges. Authorities say Liana Barrientos, reported as being 38 or 39, has gotten married 10 times in 11 years, the New York Daily News reports, with six of those marriages allegedly occurring between February and August of 2002. She's never gotten divorced, according to the Daily News and ABC 7, though others report differently: The New York Post holds that at least one husband filed for divorce and a second "dumped her," placing her number of concurrent marriages at eight; the New York Times reports she's actually divorced from her first two husbands and two others, but that those splits happened "long after marrying 3 through 9." The latest alleged nuptials were in 2010, when Barrientos is said to have married a man named Salle Keita. The changes are in connection with that marriage. "The defendant ... stated in sum and substance that she did marry Mr. Keita and that was her first and only marriage," says the legal complaint. Officials haven't suggested a motive in the case, the Daily News notes, though a source tells the Post that "the motive was definitely not love." While the Post reports that she varied the spelling of her name in different marriages, the Daily News reports that she allegedly used the same Social Security number. A man at one of Barrientos' previous homes tells the Daily News she's now living in a homeless shelter. She faces two counts of filing a false instrument, each of which carries a four-year sentence. She was arrested last fall and will be arraigned today. (It's far from the only unusual crime to grab headlines this week.)
– The Texas woman who inspired the 1958 Buddy Holly song "Peggy Sue" has died at a Lubbock hospital. Peggy Sue Gerron Rackham died Monday at University Medical Center, per a UMC spokesman. She was 78, the AP reports. The family gave the hospital permission to confirm the death but asked that no additional information be released, the rep notes. In 2008, Peggy Sue Gerron released her autobiography Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue? to mark the 50th anniversary of the song. While promoting her book, Gerron said material for it came from about 150 diary entries she made during the time she knew Holly. Gerron attended high school in Lubbock, where she met Holly and his friends. "I wanted to give him [Holly] his voice. It's my book, my memoirs," she said, per a 2008 AP story. "We were very, very good friends. He was probably one of the best friends I ever had." Gerron married drummer Jerry Allison, from Holly's rock 'n' roll band The Crickets. The couple later divorced. On Monday, her son-in-law, Tom Stathos, told KCBD that the song "Peggy Sue" initially had a different name: "It was originally going to be Cindy Lou (Holly's niece) ... [but] he (Allison) wanted to impress Peggy Sue, so he got Buddy to change the name." Holly, who died in a Feb. 3, 1959, plane crash in Iowa that also killed Ritchie Valens and JP "The Big Bopper" Richardson, also penned the song sequel "Peggy Sue Got Married." A 1986 movie called Peggy Sue Got Married featured actress Kathleen Turner as a character also named Peggy Sue who faints during her 25th high school reunion, then believes she's gone back in time and reconsiders how her life turned out.
– On Friday, two friends became the proud new owners of a California ghost town. Cerro Gordo, a 300-acre town nestled in the Inyo Mountains not far from Death Valley, has a "Wild West" history thanks to the discovery of silver there in 1865; within four years, mining operations made it the largest producer of silver and lead in the state, and it later became the largest producer of zinc carbonates in the entire country. But that era ended, and by 1950, Cerro Gordo was basically abandoned. The previous owners, brothers who inherited the town from their family—the property listing says the town had been owned by the same family for decades—decided to sell it while attempting to keep its history intact, and received a dozen serious offers after announcing the sale in June. The original asking price was $925,000, but Brent Underwood and Jon Bier ended up purchasing it for $1.4 million, the New York Times reports. The entrepreneurs' plan is to revive the town, developing it into a destination while preserving its history. There are nearly two dozen buildings on the property, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, including a church and theater, a general store, a museum, a two-story hotel, an eight-bed bunkhouse, and of course a saloon; in addition to its iconic swinging doors and two pianos, the saloon features a bloodstain underneath three bullet holes on one wall. (The real estate agent tells CNN the town "averaged a murder a week" at the peak of the mining era.) Its caretaker—he's been there 21 years, NBC LA reports, and is currently the only person living in the town—will stay there as buildings are restored. Underwood and Bier plan to move there in August, the Sacramento Bee reports. Among other things, they plan to build an observation deck; Mount Whitney and Death Valley National Park can be seen from parts of the town. "You very much feel like you’re back in time," Underwood says.
– A young black man ventures to white suburbia to meet his girlfriend's parents but soon realizes he better Get Out in the first feature film from director Jordan Peele of comedic duo Key & Peele. (He also wrote the script.) The satirical horror film with its fair share of funny moments currently has a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics explain why: It takes "a promising idea—a black man's fear as he walks at night down a street in an affluent white suburb" and "delivers on that promise with explosive brilliance," writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. "It's creepy, funny and scary—truly scary" and "the horrors of racism lurk in every gleefully lurid frame," adds Morgenstern, who was left wondering how Peele showed "such confident technique" in his directing debut. The main character, Chris, played by Daniel Kaluuya, comes to recognize the "uncanny subservience of the only other black people he encounters" during his weekend away in this "instant comedy-horror classic about the hilarious nightmare that is existing while black," Aisha Harris writes at Slate. She won't give too much away but says the film, with inspiration from The Stepford Wives and Night of the Living Dead, is "darkly relevant." It's just "so truly, madly, mercilessly entertaining, even when it makes you want to jump out of your skin," Chris Klimek writes at NPR. He agrees "it's rare to find a first-time director so fully in command of his tone," but he also commends a "top-to-bottom great" cast. Kaluuya is "especially magnetic, letting us see the grinding gearworks behind his eyes without speaking a word." Peele said he wanted to make a movie he'd never seen before. "Mission accomplished," writes Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. "For a first-time director, working from his own script, Peele comes up aces … juggling horror and laughs to skewer the hypocrisies of race in America," he writes. He adds Allison Williams is "dynamite," but Kaluuya "is a star in the making."
– No, Doritos and Skittles haven't made a baby. Doritos is declaring its support for the LGBT community with its new bag of chips, Doritos Rainbow. The chips are actually Cool Ranch-flavored but in the colors of the Pride flag: green, blue, purple, red, and orange, reports Yahoo. Don't go looking for them on store shelves, though. The limited-edition bags will be shipped free of charge only to those who donate at least $10 to the It Gets Better project, which supports LGBT youth around the world. "There's nothing bolder than being yourself," reads the chip package. (Then there's Doritos-flavored soda.)
– If it works, it could be an air-traveling perk to trump all others: no more jet lag. Airbus is making the bold claim that it can at least reduce the malady for those aboard its new A350 XWB line of jets. The main tool is a set of LED lights within the cabin that mimics natural shifts in sunlight and theoretically keeps people's natural circadian rhythms in sync, reports Fast Company. Another factor: Because of the planes' relatively light frames, they can be pressurized to 6,000 feet, which the airline says allows for more humidity and makes the air pressure inside the aircraft closer to the pressure on the ground than is the case with most jets, per Quartz. A third factor is the jet's filtration system, which replaces the air in the cabin in its entirety every two to three minutes. The idea there is that, if nothing else, the improved air quality should help people sleep better on long flights. And the big question: Has it worked? It's a little too early to tell. The first such jet landed in the US only earlier this month via Qatar Airways, though other airlines plan to add the jet to their fleets, notes a post at Science Alert. (This protein might provide another way to fight jet lag.)
– Just weeks after France unveiled a plan to ban sales of gas and diesel cars by 2040, its neighbor to the north is following suit. Britain's government on Wednesday unveiled a nearly $4 billion plan to improve air quality that would see sales of new gas and diesel cars end by 2040. "Poor air quality is the biggest environmental risk to public health in the UK and this government is determined to take strong action in the shortest time possible," a government rep says, per the Guardian. The plan, which includes few concrete promises, sets aside $1.3 billion in funding for ultra-low-emission vehicles, plus more for low-emission taxis, and nearly $1.6 billion to promote cycling and walking. Money is also designated to retrofit public transport and improve air quality on roadways. Poor air quality, worsened by rising levels of nitrogen oxides from car exhaust, is tied to an estimated 40,000 deaths in the UK each year, including some 9,000 in London, plus billions in lost productivity, per the BBC. "We can't carry on with diesel and [gas] cars," UK environment secretary Michael Gove told the BBC, via CNNMoney. "There is no alternative to embracing new technology." But meeting the government's goal won't be an easy feat. Demand for electric, fuel cell, and hybrid cars spiked 40% in the UK in 2015, but those cars only made up less than 3% of the market. The CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders notes consumers still have "concerns over affordability, range, and charging points" for low-emission vehicles.
– "I opened the outer door and almost passed out." It was then that Columbia University professor Elizabeth Midlarsky saw the two large swastikas spray-painted in red on the walls of her office (photo here), along with an offensive term for Jewish people. Wednesday's scene was deja vu for the ailing 77-year-old, a longtime Jewish activist who's published numerous articles related to the Holocaust during her 28 years as a psychology and education professor at Columbia's Teachers College. A swastika was spray-painted on Midlarsky's office door in 2007 and she was mailed an image of a swastika in 2009, CNN reported at the time. "I feel very, very vulnerable," though "I haven't done anything, said anything," Midlarsky now tells CNN, connecting the latest incident to "a trend and upsurge in anti-Semitism that we've seen in recent years." The incident comes weeks after a Brooklyn synagogue was defaced on the same day that two swastikas were found on Manhattan's Upper West Side, per the New York Times. Days before those events came the fatal shooting of 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. On Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the State Hate Crimes Unit would assist the NYPD in investigating the graffiti, which he called an "abhorrent act of anti-Semitism and hate." It's believed to have been painted between 11:47am, when a staff member came into the room, and 1pm Wednesday when Midlarsky arrived, per the Columbia Spectator. The student-run paper reports ID cards from affiliated Columbia schools are required to access all academic buildings on the Teachers College campus. (A flight passenger was arrested after trying to identify Jewish people on board.)
– Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is stepping up his official thoughts on Roy Moore. "I think he should step aside," he said of the GOP Senate candidate during a presser Monday, the Hill reports. Asked more specifically about allegations that Moore, running in a special Dec. 12 election in Alabama, had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old when he was 32 and that he attempted to romance three other teens around the same time, McConnell said, "I believe the women." The last time McConnell offered his thoughts on Moore, he qualified them by saying Moore should exit the race "if these allegations are found to be true." Many GOPers who initially qualified their remarks on Moore are also retreating since he told Sean Hannity last week he may have dated teen girls around that time. McConnell is the highest-ranking GOPer in DC to officially call on Moore to step down, per the Washington Post. McConnell also said the GOP is exploring a possible write-in bid, though he didn't name names. The deadline to remove Moore's name from the ballot passed in October. Republicans have also discussed the possibility of getting the election date moved back, and CNN reports the National Republican Senatorial Committee has cut its fundraising ties with Moore. But many Alabama Republicans are still backing him, concerned that a write-in campaign would ensure a Democratic win, and Moore himself shows no signs of willingness to back down. "Apparently Mitch McConnell and the establishment GOP would rather elect a radical pro-abortion Democrat than a conservative Christian," read an email sent to his supporters Sunday night. He also tweeted Monday that "the person who should step aside is @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell. He has failed conservatives and must be replaced." Recent polls show the margin between Moore and opponent Doug Jones is razor thin.
– Donald Trump believes in free speech and that flag-burning should be illegal. In what the Washington Post is calling "Donald Trump v. the First Amendment, part five," the president-elect decried flag-burning in a tweet on Tuesday, noting those guilty of the practice should perhaps spend a year in jail or even lose their US citizenship. "Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag—if they do, there must be consequences," Trump said. Though flag-burning remains controversial, the Supreme Court declared the practice to be a protected form of free speech in 1989 and 1990, reports CNN, which Trump bashed Monday night. Even conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—whom Trump has called "one of the best of all time"—believed flag burning should be protected based on a "textual" reading of the First Amendment. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Sean Duffy expressed similar sentiments Tuesday. A Trump transition rep notes "the President-elect is a very strong supporter of the First Amendment, but there's a big difference between that and burning the American flag." Though flag-burning is legal, Trump's desired punishment is not. A 1958 Supreme Court decision banned the stripping of US citizenship as a criminal penalty, reports Politico.
– Being rich doesn't always accompany being famous, especially when living a rock star lifestyle, but a handful of A-list musicians have managed to turn their celebrity into successful business ventures: Jessica Simpson: You wouldn't expect a pop singer/reality star who didn't know the difference between chicken and tuna to morph into a fashion mogul, but that's the case of Jessica Simpson. She recently sold a 50% stake in her empire of clothing, shoes, and bags that's said to be worth more than $1 billion. Jay Z: The music mogul once rapped: "I’m not a businessman / I’m a business, man!" The rapper now can count clothing, sports bars, liquor, fragrances, a basketball team, and a music streaming service among his many ventures. Gwen Stefani: The No Doubt vocalist once sang of being "just a girl," but in addition to her solo career and gig on The Voice, she has managed to create a fashion company reportedly worth more than $90 million. Justin Timberlake: The former boy band singer has his hand in many businesses including a clothing line, record label, restaurant, basketball team, and most recently, his own brand of tequila. Gene Simmons: The KISS singer and bassist is reportedly worth more than $300 million, thanks to his role as the band's finance manager and his idea to license tons of merchandise. "Life is business, and I approach life the way sharks approach life—they must keep moving or else they will drown," he recently said in an interview. Click to read about 15 celebrity businesses that went belly up.
– President Trump spoke to 6,000 supporters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Wednesday night at a gathering that strongly resembled one of his raucous campaign rallies—right down to whistle-blowing protesters and chants of "Lock her up" when Hillary Clinton's name was mentioned. In what is being widely described as a "victory lap," Trump, making his first trip west of the Mississippi since becoming president, spoke for more than an hour and unveiled policy proposals including a plan to ban immigrants from receiving welfare for their first five years in the US. A roundup of coverage: Trump said he will ask Congress to pass a law ensuring new immigrants "support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years." The rule already exists as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, though large parts of the act were rolled back under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Fox reports. Trump plans to expand the list of benefits that new immigrants will not be eligible for. In one of his most controversial remarks, Trump defended his choice of billionaire investor Wilbur Ross as commerce secretary, explaining that he doesn't want poor people to hold economic roles in his administration, the Guardian reports. "I love all people, rich or poor, but in those particular positions I just don’t want a poor person," he said. The AP reports that Trump made no mention of the assorted scandals he is dealing with in Washington, apart from a brief reference to the "witch hunt" Russia probe. "All we do is win, win, win," Trump said, boasting of the GOP's 5-0 winning streak in special elections and slamming "unbelievably nasty" Democrats and the media. "The truth is, people love us ... they haven't figured it out yet," he said, per the Hill. Trump said he has come up with a plan to put solar panels on his proposed border wall, but dismissed wind energy, the New York Times reports. "I don't want to just hope the wind blows to light up your house and your factory as the birds fall to the ground," he said. The president said he has been calling for a healthcare plan "with heart," but complained that he would get no help from Democrats in getting it through Congress, reports Reuters. "If we went and got the single greatest healthcare plan in the history of the world we would not get one Democrat vote because they’re obstructionists," he said.
– Chris Kyle's book calls him the US military's deadliest sniper—but is he the world's? Not according to a British report that credits a Royal Navy sharpshooter with tallying the most kills, the Sun reports via the Telegraph. Unnamed sources say the British corporal is still serving and has 173 confirmed kills, most of them during Britain's deployment in Helmut province in 2006 and 2007. He is said to have killed 90 enemies in a single day. Kyle, whose story is told in the film American Sniper, officially had 160 kills but guessed his true total was about 250. British armed forces refuse to name their guy for fear of revenge attacks. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter says American Sniper banked a stunning $30.7 million this weekend, nearly breaking a Super Bowl-weekend record.
– Prosecutors are recommending felony charges against David Petraeus for allegedly divulging classified information to an old mistress, unnamed officials tell the New York Times. Now it's Eric Holder's call to either heed the FBI and Justice Dept advice or risk the perception of special treatment for the retired four-star general. The story goes back to 2012, when Petraeus retired as CIA director in the wake of his affair with Army Reserve officer Paula Broadwell. An investigation found classified documents on her computer and evidence that she had access to his private CIA email account. Petraeus denies divulging any classified information, and says he would refuse a plea deal. As the case dragged on, FBI and Justice officials questioned whether Petraeus was getting special treatment. A federal official tells NBC News that the Times leak is meant to pressure Holder, who was expected to decide on charges by the end of last year. President Obama has supported the ex-general, saying in 2012 that there was no proof Petraeus had leaked information "that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security." So will the storied military man, who commanded US forces in Iraq in 2007 and again in Afghanistan in 2010, go on trial? So far, it's hard to get quotes on the record. "I can't say," said FBI Director James Comey when asked about the investigation. "I mean, I guess I could say, but I won’t say."
– In a move that's being called "outrageous" and "luxury on steroids," Ford has debuted a new pickup truck ... that costs $94,445. To be fair, you don't have to spend nearly $100,000 to get your hands on a 2018 F-450 Super Duty Limited truck, but should you "check every option box," as Ford puts it in a press release, that is how much you'll spend. Starting prices for the trucks in the F-Series Super Duty line, which debuted Thursday at the State Fair of Texas and also includes an F-250 and an F-350, range from $80,835 to $87,100. So what do you get for that amount of money? Well, the F-450 can tow trailers weighing upwards of 30,000 pounds (CNET calls it "a luxury condo that can tow a jet"); standard features on the line include 360-degree camera coverage, a panoramic moon roof, heated and ventilated seats, and a leather-trimmed heated steering wheel, among other things, USA Today reports. "I know it’s tempting for us to laugh at a solid-axled, body-on-frame pickup that pushes six-figures, but there are rich folks out there who make a living by doing honest, hard work," writes David Tracy at Jalopnik. "And if they want to treat themselves with a bit of supple leather rubbing against their butt-cheeks, who are we to judge?"
– President Trump's deputy assistant was a wanted man during his seven-month stint in the White House, the Guardian reports. A warrant out of Hungary states Sebastian Gorka has been wanted on charges for "firearm or ammunition abuse" since September 2016. According to BuzzFeed, the warrant is still active. It's unclear what Gorka did to earn the warrant, though he has boasted in the past of regularly carrying two pistols and was stopped trying to carry a pistol through an airport in 2016. A Hungarian news outlet reports the warrant could be from an incident in 2009. Gorka, a former Breitbart writer, tells the Guardian the warrant is "more #FAKENEWS." On Twitter he responded to coverage of the warrant by saying he moved to the US in 2008. New York notes Gorka didn't necessarily have to be living in Hungary to have been there at some point in 2009. Gorka's actual role at the White House was unclear before he left in August (he claims he resigned, but reports say he was fired by new chief of staff John Kelly). However, it does appear Gorka was wanted by Hungary at the same time he met with that country's foreign minister as a White House adviser, which is, if nothing else, slightly ironic.
– If only Target had top-notch security software in place to prevent last year's disastrous hack. Oh wait, it did. In fact, a report by Businessweek/Bloomberg says the software was essentially screaming that something was amiss well in advance of any actual theft of customers' credit card data. Target had plenty of time to react—but did nothing. The $1.6 million software program from security firm FireEye detected the installation of malware on Nov. 30 and multiple times afterward, before hackers started stealing data, but the urgent alerts went unheeded. Why didn't the software kill the malware on its own? "The system has an option to automatically delete malware as it's detected. But according to two people who audited FireEye's performance after the breach, Target's security team turned that function off," says the story, which follows a two-month investigation. "It's possible that FireEye was still viewed with some skepticism by its minders at the time of the hack ..." The story points to "inaction on the part of Target and a clear effort by FireEye to shore up its reputation," writes blogger John Biggs at TechCrunch. "If Target couldn’t be bothered to delete the malware, this piece suggests it’s not FireEye’s fault." Click for the full story, which, as Mashable points out, speculates that the mastermind of the Target hack might be a 22-year-old Ukrainian.
– Samantha Anderson figured she had a work-packed weekend ahead when something happened at breakfast: The then-39-year-old couldn't swallow a single bite. "I went to swallow and I couldn’t," says the Australian jewelry maker. "It didn’t happen. I choked." The mother of three dismissed it until she couldn't eat anything that day and went to a doctor, who diagnosed stress and prescribed Valium, then anti-depressants, Australia's News Network reports. Then, after six months of weight loss and ravenous hunger, an answer: dysphagia—an unusual condition that prevents people from swallowing. "My days became solely about survival," she writes for the Swallowing Disorder Foundation. "I would set goals for myself—a whole tub of yogurt, a glass of water and two whole strawberries to be consumed by the end of the day. I rarely met them." Doctors told her a bout of shingles had damaged cranial nerves V, VII, IX and X, which triggered her swallowing issue. (Mosaic Science notes 7 of our dozen cranial nerves have a role in swallowing.) More than 18 months later, she had a feeding tube inserted; it provided a welcome relief from the 13 drinks she had been tasked with trying to choke down each day. The Brisbane resident and her husband then contacted US expert Peter Belafsky, whom she credits with understanding and helping her. "It’s like being constantly waterboarded," Belafsky says of dysphagia, which can render patients unable to swallow even their own saliva. Some 3.5 years after her fateful breakfast, Anderson's diet has expanded to include mashed potatoes, blueberries, oatmeal, and bread. "I am determined to eat," she writes, "even though it’s a long and arduous battle to get through each and every meal." (In another case, a teenager's bleeding eyes are ruining her life.)
– The military isn't quite ready to recruit transgender troops. A new policy allowing the Pentagon to do so was supposed to begin on July 1, but defense chief Jim Mattis said Friday night that it would be delayed six months, reports USA Today. A Pentagon statement said Mattis had approved a request by the military's branches to postpone the change in policy so they'd have more time to assess its impact on the "readiness and lethality of our forces." An estimated 15,500 transgender troops are currently serving, per Politico, and Mattis' decision does not affect them. Critics of the move said it would force transgender recruits to lie if they want to join the military, just as Don't Ask, Don't Tell had forced gay recruits to hide their sexual identity. But Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., applauded the move, asserting that the idea of transgender recruitment is “ill-conceived and contrary to our goals of increasing troop readiness.”
– To call it controversial is putting it mildly: Harvard professor Karen L. King in September 2012 debuted an ancient papyrus now known as the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" at a conference in Rome. The papyrus makes an explicit reference to the woman's existence with the line, "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'" Now, extensive testing by professors from Columbia, Harvard, and MIT in the fields of electrical engineering, chemistry, and biology has found no indications that it is a modern forgery, per an article by King published today in the Harvard Theological Review. The Boston Globe says it most likely dates to eighth-century Egypt, and the chemical composition of its ink is in line with the carbon-based inks the people of that country used at the time. But the Globe cautions that a master forger could have accessed the proper materials, and that traditional ink-dating methods couldn't be used because the papyrus is so small: a fragment roughly 1.5-by-3 inches in size bearing just eight incomplete lines (translation here). The Review also published a rebuttal by Brown Egyptology professor Leo Depuydt, who points to "gross grammatical errors" he says no native speaker of Coptic would make, the New York Times reports. (More criticism of the papyrus here.) The new findings certainly don't prove that Jesus was married, a point that King has never challenged; she'd like to see the debate shift to discussions of the document's significance, and "questions like, 'Why does Jesus being married, or not, even matter?'" King was in 2011 asked to review the fragment at the request of its anonymous owner, who says he bought it more than a decade earlier from a collector who said he purchased it, along with five others, in East Germany in the '60s.
– It may be true that people are a bit more generous around the holidays, but Mark Zuckerberg is taking that to a whole new level. Facebook's founder is once again making a hefty donation to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation: a block of Facebook stock worth $1 billion. He gave the foundation roughly the same amount of stock last year, but it was worth only half as much at the time. It's "by far the largest gift in our history," the foundation's CEO told the San Jose Mercury News, without providing any specifics on how the donation will be used. But it won't be the only stock to soon escape Zuckerberg's hands. CNBC reports he's selling off 41.4 million Facebook shares worth $2.3 billion ... to pay his taxes. Last year Zuckerberg's tax bill rang in at $1 billion, but this year's tab could be closer to $2 billion, an astounding sum considering that the top 400 earners in 2009 paid a total of $16 billion. Still, even after the tax man takes his due, Zuckerberg will have plenty of cash left to roll around in. He'll still have 444.2 million Facebook shares, worth around $24 billion, which give him about 62.8% of the voting power of Facebook shareholders, down from 65.2% before the sale and donation.
– The race between Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke in Texas is emerging as one of the must-watch races of the midterms. Cruz, of course, is the Republican incumbent hoping to keep his Senate seat, while O'Rourke is a 45-year-old three-term congressman mounting a surprisingly strong challenge. A new poll by Emerson College out this week has the race in a statistical dead heat, reports the Hill, which notes that Texas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in three decades. Here's a look at the latest, including O'Rourke's growing national profile: Rock star: The Texas GOP tweeted an old photo of O'Rourke this week showing him back in the '90s with his old punk band, Foss. The photo was meant to mock O'Rourke, and some Republicans think it did just that. "Wearing a dress?" tweeted one strategist. But an analysis at the Washington Post thinks the photo actually endeared O'Rourke to far more people than it alienated. His "rock-star status is cemented by Texas GOP, handing Dems an icon they desperately need," reads the headline. Oh, he skateboards, too.
– It's probably just like your first house: 57,000 square feet, double staircase inspired by Gone With the Wind, parking for 100, bowling alley, beauty salon, flower-cutting room, gift-wrapping rooms, etc. But all this can no longer be yours for the paltry price of $150 million, as the iconic home—the highest-priced in the country—of late television producer Aaron Spelling and his wife, Candy, has gone under contract. Candy Spelling had signaled her intent to sell in 2008, and officially listed The Manor, as it's known, in 2009. The sale price is unknown until the deal closes, but Spelling had stuck to her $150 million mark even as the LA real estate market took a drubbing in the housing crisis. The buyer is Petra Ecclestone, the 22-year-old daughter of the founder of Formula One racing, notes the Wall Street Journal. She'll live there part time. Click for more on The Manor and its 27 bathrooms.
– President Obama's commencement address at Howard University on Saturday is still reverberating, with some ranking it among the best speeches he has ever delivered. Black Lives Matter activists are among those praising Obama, who spoke about being "comfortable in your blackness" and of the importance of compromise and bringing about change through the political system, the Guardian reports. "To bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough," Obama said. "It requires changes in law, changes in custom." More: Activist April Reign, originator of the #oscarssowhite hashtag, says that while they may disagree a little on tactics, she was pleased he wasn't holding back. "Now that he's got his second-term swag on, he's able to let loose a little bit," she says. "I think he hit a lot of the right marks and I think it's one for the ages." Obama—who told the crowd that now is the best time in history to be "young, gifted, and black"—also praised Black Lives Matter activist Britanny Packnett for joining the White House's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. If she had "refused to participate out of some sense of ideological purity," he said, "then those great ideas would have just remained ideas. But she did participate. And that's how change happens." This was one of the best—and blackest—speeches of Obama's career, writes Mathew Rodriguez at Mic, who praises the way Obama encouraged graduates to be black any way that they wanted to be, "to embrace their own style and sexuality like the late musician Prince," and reminded them "that their blackness gives them unique insight into the struggle against inequality and racial injustice." In what Janell Ross at the Washington Post calls the most interesting line of the speech, Obama told the audience to expand their "moral imagination" to identify not just with struggling black folks, but with refugees, transgender people and "the middle-aged white guy who you may think has all the advantages but over the last several decades has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change and feels powerless to stop it." Ross sees this as either a call for disaffected white men to join a new political coalition—or concern about the "tangle of fear, anxiety, and anger" gripping many voters this year.
– In a season of seemingly endless snow, New Jersey towns are running out of rock salt—and 40,000 tons of the stuff is supposed to be on its way. Trouble is, the shipment is stuck in Maine because the vessel that would carry it doesn't have an American flag, as is required by the 1920 federal Maritime Act, which states that any shipment from one US port to another must be on a US-made ship piloted by a US crew, to help ensure a thriving merchant-marine fleet, New York Times reports. "We were pursuing a waiver" to the law, "but we've been advised we wouldn't get one," a rep for New Jersey's transportation department tells the Washington Free Beacon. The Maine shipment may now arrive in several installments, the transportation spokesman says. One possibility would see a pair of barges carrying the salt in a weeks-long process, says the head of the department, per New Jersey 101.5. Meanwhile the East Coast has been hit by three winter storm systems in one week, and New Jersey officials have barely enough salt for one more storm, the Morning Call reports. The situation is "as frustrating as frustrating can be. People aren't getting the services they need," Jersey City's mayor tells the Daily News. "We need salt and some help with Mother Nature."
– A legal product that can be purchased online or at a sporting goods store was used in the bomb that went off in Manhattan Saturday, USA Today reports. Tannerite is a product typically used for target practice; it is placed on targets and explodes when struck by a bullet from a high-powered rifle. It's sold in two inert parts (ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder), neither of which is regulated by the ATF. Once those two parts are mixed together, it only explodes if a bullet hits it and is considered very stable, a corporate investigator for Tannerite says. Tannerite residue was found inside the bomb that exploded in Chelsea, a federal law enforcement official tells USA Today. A post on the company's Facebook page Monday reads, "The entire staff of Tannerite stands together in the abhorrence and unintended use of all products that are misused for violence and hate." It goes on to note that its investigator is working to verify that Tannerite was indeed used in the bomb. A former FBI agent tells CBS News Tannerite appears to be "on the defensive." "It’s just something we have to be aware of that these terrorists are very clever at finding out what components can come together and make an improvised exploding device," he says. Forbes has more on the science behind Tannerite.
– OK, sure, reports of a failed drug test or two are true, Lindsay Lohan tweeted last night, but she's taking responsibility and is "prepared to face the consequences." Those consequences might be pretty grave, notes TMZ: Not only is there a chance of a repeat performance in jail, but Lohan's judge is likely to yank her travel privileges, meaning she won't be able to shoot SNL or movie project Inferno. While acknowledging "this was certainly a setback for me," Lohan thanked fans for understanding she's "a work in progress, just as anyone else." For more LiLo than you can possibly stomach, click here.
– It's a 26-year tradition now in Meriden, Conn., and one with a somber start: On Jan. 2, 1988, police found a newborn boy frozen to death outside. He had been wrapped in a blanket, but the full-term baby with blond hair and blue eyes stood no chance in the frigid weather. Police took up a collection and paid for his burial, reports WTNH, and members of the local clergy named him David Paul. Today, as they have on every Jan. 2 since then, police and others in the community gathered at the cemetery where the baby is buried. "The Meriden Police Department unofficially adopted this child and cared for this child's burial," says a retired detective sergeant, "and we think David Paul represents all the children who are abused, neglected, or abandoned." The local Record-Journal notes that Connecticut has since passed a Safe Haven law that allows a mother to leave her baby at a hospital within 30 days of birth, no questions asked.
– Dave Mirra, the legendary BMX star who killed himself in February, had chronic traumatic encephalopathy—a disease more commonly seen in football players and boxers, ESPN reports. He's believed to be the first action sports athlete to be diagnosed with it. "The key is brain injury," says the neuropathologist who diagnosed Mirra. "Regardless of how you get it, through BMX or hockey, you are at risk for this." Mirra suffered numerous concussions throughout his BMX career. He once described a 2006 crash to the Washington Post by saying, “I basically fell 16 feet straight to my head.” “This is a young man that had a pretty rugged sports career and took a lot of injuries," USA Today quotes a friend as saying. Mirra's diagnosis of CTE was confirmed by multiple neuropathologists, though it's unclear what stage the disease was in. Scans of Mirra's brain showed the same tau protein deposits as those in the brains of former football players. CTE, which is only able to be diagnosed after death, can cause depression, dementia, and memory loss. Mirra's wife Lauren says Mirra underwent major mood and personality changes in the year before he killed himself at 41. “We ask for your continued support in honoring Dave’s legacy and for your patience as we plan to create a platform for CTE awareness and research," reads a statement from Lauren, per USA Today. Mirra, who "was the face of his sport," will be inducted into the National BMX Hall of Fame next month. (Also on Tuesday, Bubba Smith was announced as the 90th former NFL player to be diagnosed with CTE.)
– The former Los Angeles County prosecutor who failed to convict OJ Simpson of murder in 1995 says she would probably fail to convict now, for the same reason: Jurors who didn't care whether he was guilty or not. In an interview for an NBC Dateline special, Marcia Clark says some of the nine black jurors "came in for the purpose of payback" amid a similar climate of "racial mistrust" of the police as exists today. "They didn't care whether he was guilty or innocent," Clark says. "They were going to use this case for payback." There was plenty of evidence pointing to Simpson's guilt, but it "didn't wind up mattering because there was a fundamental large issue standing in the way of seeing the evidence," she says. "You had this enormous mistrust of everything LAPD, everything officer related." "There was no way to reach that jury. There was no way to make them believe. There really wasn't," Clark says, per the Hollywood Reporter, which notes that interest in the case has surged during the airing of the FX series The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story. Clark says the infamous decision to have Simpson try on a glove found near the murder scene wasn't hers. She says co-counsel Christopher Darden came up with the idea and apologized after it backfired. She says she told him it was OK. "If that lost the case for us, we were never going to win anyway," she says. (A knife allegedly found nearly two decades ago on Simpson's former estate is now being tested by the LAPD.)
– A now-under-control forest fire that had threatened to encroach upon the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant may have created a lot of smoke and charred debris, but one thing it did not do is mess up one Ukrainian fox's sandwich-making skills. A radio crew in the Pripyat exclusion zone spied the little guy wandering around and laid out some bread and meat for him, ABC News reports. Before they could say "Carnegie Deli," the fox had deftly combined the disparate parts of his soon-to-be lunch into a five-layer sandwich, as seen in the video here. Also notable in the video: the animal's nonchalant attitude about his repast preparation and his admirers. The BBC points out the fox likely didn't seem fazed by the humans because it probably didn't know what to make of them either way: The disaster zone has been more or less abandoned by people since the 1986 explosion. Radio Free Europe adds there's apparently been a recent uptick in foxes, wolves, and bears in the area. (Meanwhile, wild boars affected by Chernobyl have been deemed radioactive.)
– "They just ran me over, bro." Those words are echoing across social media today after a Border Patrol vehicle was caught on video apparently striking a Native American man and driving away, the New York Times reports. Shot by the man on his phone, the video shows him approaching the SUV on a dirt road in Tohono O'odham Nation, roughly 60 miles southwest of Tucson, Arizona. Instead of slowing or stopping, the vehicle knocks him over. Paulo Remes says he was bruised and taken to hospital, the Arizona Daily Star reports. "I'm doing all right, I'm just a little sore, really," he says. The 34-year-old says he noticed the SUV and walked onto the road, figuring he knew what would happen. "I ran into the dirt road in front of my house, because I know they’ll try and hit me," says Remes. "I think he saw me on the landline and didn’t think I was recording." The FBI, the US Attorney's Office, and the tribe's police department are now investigating. And Indivisible Tohono, an organization that sheds light on border policies, is posting the video on Facebook and Twitter. "This is an example of the fear O’odham have to face everyday because BP ravage our communities & are careless with our lives," the group says in a tweet. Tensions have risen since tribal leaders opposed letting President Trump build a border wall there, and the land became a transit hub for drug traffickers and illegal immigrants.
– Police in Stanislaus County, Calif., say a 20-year veteran of the force was "executed" early Sunday after investigating a stolen van and a suspicious person outside Modesto. Sheriff's Deputy Dennis Wallace was shot twice in the head. Police say a suspect was arrested more than 150 miles away later in the day after allegedly carrying out a carjacking, an armed robbery at a convenience store, and an attempted purse-snatching, the Los Angeles Times reports. David Machado, a 37-year-old described by police as a "known criminal," was connected to the Wallace killing after police in Tulane County recognized his tattoos. Wallace, who was married with children, "was executed," Sheriff Adam Christianson told reporters. "We believe that Dep. Wallace was killed outside of the car and we know for a fact that the gun used in this crime was in direct contact with his head when the trigger was pulled twice." He said Wallace, 53, had been involved in programs including youth soccer and early intervention, NBC News reports. "We need to keep the Wallace family in our thoughts and prayers. We need to keep law enforcement in our thoughts and prayers," he said. The Bradenton Herald reports after a knee injury in 2007, Wallace was off for two years without pay and fought a long legal battle to get his job back.
– Sarah Palin is looking like one of the biggest non-Democratic losers in the midterm elections, according to some analysts. High-profile losses among the candidates she endorsed, especially in Alaska, where Lisa Murkowski appears bound for victory as a write-in candidate, are likely to undermine her credibility, the Economist notes. It predicts that we'll be hearing less from Palin—at least until she makes her 2012 ambitions clear—as the spotlight turns to rising stars who have actually been elected, like Rand Paul and Marc Rubio. GOP strategists, however, say that while Palin's "Mama Grizzlies" may not have been big winners, the Palin brand definitely came out ahead. "She's got the most valuable asset anybody can have in politics, and that's name ID," Republican campaign consultant Ed Rollins tells Politico, comparing Palin's efforts in 2010 to Richard Nixon's campaigning on behalf of GOP candidates in 1966 ahead of his successful bid for the White House in 1968 . "No one remembers who won or lost, only that he was out there," Rollins says.
– If Facebook or Apple ever turns truly evil, we might be in big trouble, apparently. A study published last week found that almost nobody reads online terms of service agreements—and even fewer understand them. Ars Technica reports 543 college students signed up for a fake social networking site called NameDrop, believing they were helping with a "pre-launch evaluation." They were actually agreeing to hand over their first-born child to NameDrop—enforceable through 2050—as well as have their data and information shared with the NSA, foreign security agencies, and all manner of third parties, according to Consumerist. But, of course, only 2% of participants realized they were agreeing to any of that. The study found 399 participants didn't read any of the 12,000 words comprising NameDrop's terms of service and privacy policy. The other 144 spent an average of 73 seconds reading the privacy policy and 51 seconds reading the terms of service. Based on average reading speed, it should have taken 30 minutes and 16 minutes respectively. In the end, 98% of participants didn't notice any of the onerous clauses in NameDrops's terms. The study concluded that people "view policies as nuisance" and that "I agree to these terms and conditions" is the "biggest lie on the internet." (Amazon will void its terms of service if the zombies come.)
– Tokyo, rated the world's most expensive city last year by the Economist Intelligence Unit, has dropped out of the top five thanks to the soaring cost of living in other cities, including the new No. 1, Singapore. The city-state was sent to the top of the list by its strong currency and the sky-high cost of running a car, reports the BBC, which notes that Singapore is also the most expensive place in the world to buy clothes. Paris, Oslo, Zurich, and Sydney also made the top five out of 131 cities ranked, with Tokyo falling to sixth place. Researchers say Singapore's rise to the top from 18th most expensive a decade ago has been "steady rather than spectacular," the Straits Times reports. The cheapest cities included major Indian cities like Mumbai and New Delhi, as well as Damascus, Syria, where civil war has apparently caused prices to plunge.
– The GOP convention's main order of business is in the books: In the state roll call late this afternoon, Mitt Romney claimed the magic number of 1,144 delegates to secure the nomination, reports AP. For the record, New Jersey put him over the top. Romney is in Tampa to watch wife Ann's speech tonight, but the candidate himself isn't scheduled to address the convention—and accept the nomination—until Thursday night. After the roll call, Republicans nominated Paul Ryan by acclamation to be Romney's VP candidate. The final presidential tally, from CNN: Romney: 2,061 Ron Paul: 190 Rick Santorum: 9 Michele Bachmann: 1 Jon Huntsman: 1 Buddy Roemer: 1 Abstain/uncommitted: 20
– Employees at a California Burger King responded less than ideally to a prank call Saturday night, causing $35,000 in damage to the restaurant, KSBY reports. According to the San Luis Obispo Tribune, someone called the Burger King in Morro Bay pretending to be with the fire department. They told employees there was a gas leak and they needed to break out the restaurant's windows immediately for ventilation. The employees apparently did as they were told, with the shift manager going so far as to ram a car into the restaurant. The manager has been suspended, and police are continuing to investigate the incident. Officials remind residents that the fire department will rarely call you directly about an emergency.
– Bill Clinton gave one of the finest speeches of either convention—and of his career—in Charlotte last night, making the case for Obama more effectively than the Obama campaign has managed most of the time, pundits say. He won praise from Democrats and Republicans alike, although fact-checkers found plenty to take issue with. Clinton's "detailed and passionate endorsement" made a more comprehensive case for Obama's re-election in 49 minutes than the rest of the DNC speakers could manage in the previous 11 hours, writes Andy Sullivan at Reuters. Clinton explained tough topics and dismantled Republican arguments masterfully, writes Sullivan, who calls Clinton "Obama's most valuable weapon." "This will be the moment that probably re-elected Barack Obama," GOP commentator Alex Castellanos tells CNN. "Bill Clinton saved the Democratic Party once. It was going too far left, he came in as the new Democrat and took it to the center. He did it again tonight," he says. There was even praise from Fox, notes Politico. "Nobody does it better," gushed Brit Hume. "He’s the most talented politician I ever covered and the most charming man I’ve ever met. And no one in my view can mount an argument more effectively than he can." He added, however, that the speech was "self-indulgent" and about half an hour too long. The fact-checkers at the AP were among the few not swooning for Bill. Clinton "cherry-picked facts or mischaracterized the opposition" several times, they declare. Among other things, he ignored the Democratic contribution to political gridlock and credited ObamaCare instead of the poor economy with keeping health care costs down.
– A Florida court has struck down the state's 33-year-old ban on gay adoptions, ruling that the law is unconstitutional and there is "no rational basis" for it. Gov. Charlie Crist says the state will stop enforcing the ban immediately, although he hasn't commented on whether the state plans to appeal the ruling to the Florida Supreme Court, the Miami Herald reports. "Given a total ban on adoption by homosexual persons, one might expect that this reflected a legislative judgment that homosexual persons are unfit to be parents,'' stated the court, which noted that the law was the only remaining one of its kind in the country. "No one in this case even hinted at any such argument. The parties agree 'that gay people and heterosexuals make equally good parents.'" The case was a hard-fought battle by plaintiff Martin Gill and his partner, who have been foster parents to two brothers, now 6 and 10, but were blocked from adopting the boys. "I'm going to get their birth certificates with me listed as their father. That will be a thrilling thing for me," Gill told AP.
– The US has "no intention" of dispatching troops to Yemen or Somalia but will more than double the funding it allots for security aid in Yemen, according to the president and rthe head of Central Command. It's "quite clear that Yemen does not want to have American ground troops there," Gen. David Petraeus told Christiane Amanpour of CNN in an interview that aired today. "And that's a good—good response for us to hear, certainly." President Obama went further, describing Somalia as " another country where there are large chunks that are not fully under government control and al-Qaeda is trying to take advantage of them ." In an interview with People, which made a transcript available but has not reported the interview on its website, he said the US has " partnered with the Yemeni government to go after those terrorist training camps and cells there in a much more deliberate and sustained fashion. "
– A California man whose life was forever altered by donning a chicken suit for a high school pep rally has been awarded a lot more than chicken scratch in a lawsuit against Kern High School District. Mitch Carter was a 17-year-old student at Bakersfield High School in 2010 when he dressed up in the suit to mock the Golden Hawk mascot of arch-rival Golden West High School for an ill-fated skit, the Los Angeles Times reports. Students—including plenty of football players—piled on top of him, delivering kicks and punches in a beating that lawyers said left Carter with a traumatic brain injury. After a jury found the district liable for his injuries, it decided to settle with him for $10.5 million, most of which will be covered by insurance. Lawyers said Carter, once an honor roll student, has struggled with depression and poor grades in college since the beating. His future medical care costs will be more than $5 million, according to the lawyers. "I would trade everything just to have a full functioning brain," he said after the award was announced. The Bakersfield Californian recaps the wild trial that was brought to an end by the settlement. It included accusations of conspiracy and cover-up from Carter's lawyers, who brought in students to testify that the high school was obsessed with football and protected star players. During closing arguments, attorney Nicholas Rowley donned a chicken costume to make a point.
– Texas women came forward earlier this month to tell their miscarriage and abortion stories to fend off proposed new funerary rules for embryonic and fetal tissue, but sharing their experiences apparently fell short of the mark. Per state health officials, starting Dec. 19, hospitals, abortion clinics, and other facilities will be banned from disposing of fetal remains in sanitary landfills, the Texas Tribune reports. Instead, they'll be required to bury or cremate the remains, no matter the gestational age—a move spurring "intense outcry" from reproductive rights advocates, as well as from medical providers. "The state [Health and Human Services Commission] has once again ignored the concerns of the medical community and thousands of Texans by playing politics with people's private health-care decisions," Heather Busby, director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, says in a statement. But health officials say they've addressed the major concerns brought up during what the Washington Post calls "months of controversy" since the initial July proposal. In terms of privacy, birth or death certificates aren't required, and miscarriages or abortions at home don't have to comply. As for the costs, the medical care facilities will pay, with costs "offset by the elimination of some current methods of disposition," per the health department. The commission notes the rules will lead to "enhanced protection of the health and safety of the public," but women's rights advocates say it's nothing more than a veiled attempt to restrict abortion access, per the Dallas Morning News. "These new restrictions reveal the callous indifference that Texas politicians have toward women," a Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer says, adding the rules will "almost certainly trigger costly litigation," per the Tribune.
– A little bit of American history looks to be destined for the rubble heap. A developer in Rosslyn, Virginia, has submitted plans to tear down the parking garage where "Deep Throat"—aka FBI agent Mark Felt—told his secrets to Bob Woodward, reports the ArlNow blog. Unless preservationists make a strong case, the garage will be turned to dust in 2016 or 2017, reports the Washington Business Journal. A historical marker already marks the site that launched the Watergate scandal, and developer Monday Properties says it will make sure that some kind of marker adorns the eventual new office building. It's just that "the garage is at the end of its useful life," says one of its execs. For the record, it was parking spot 32D that led to Nixon's downfall.
– Relations between Eric Holder and House Republicans have been testy for a while, but the attorney general made the case yesterday during a civil-rights speech that he's being treated worse than any of his predecessors. In the speech to Al Sharpton's National Action Network, Mediaite reports that Holder went off script with these lines: “The last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms even in the face, even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity. If you don’t believe that, you look at the way—forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee—has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?” Holder was apparently referring to a heated exchange he had with Republican Louie Gohmert of Texas as he testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Real Clear Politics has the transcript: Gohmert: “I realize that contempt is not a big deal to our attorney general. But it is important that we have proper oversight ..." Holder: “You don’t want to go there, buddy. You don’t want to go there, OK?” Gohmert: “I don’t want to go there? ... About the contempt?” Holder: "No. You should not assume that that is not a big deal to me. I think it was inappropriate. I think it was unjust. But never think that that was not a big deal to me. Don’t ever think that.” The Washington Post notes that Holder also muttered, "Good luck with your asparagus" to Gohmert, a reference to yet another nasty exchange between the two last year. Back then, an annoyed Gohmert apparently misspoke, asserting that "the attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus.” Gohmert wasn't Holder's only critic at yesterday's hearing. Rep. Blake Farenthold said he would ask no questions because Holder should "be in jail." Gohmert, for his part, tells Fox News that he has no personal enmity toward Holder, reports Politico. "It’s a matter of proper oversight and … I don’t think he’s doing his job."
– Unbelievable as it may sound, authorities in northern India say they've rescued a young girl who appears to have been living with monkeys. Villagers first spotted the naked child looking "very comfortable in the company of monkeys" in January in the Katarniya Ghat forest range, a police officer tells the AP. They tried to approach but the monkeys chased them away, reports the Deccan Chronicle. Police were later able to seize the girl, though monkeys also chased an officer as he "sped away with her in his police car," the officer says. The "highly aggressive" girl was then taken to a hospital in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, where doctors say she initially walked on all fours, ate off the floor with her mouth, and ran from humans, per the Telegraph. She's described as being wound-covered, with long hair and nails. She is now walking upright, eating with her hands, and responding to humans, authorities say. She doesn't appear to speak any language (the Telegraph says she makes only "unintelligible muttering[s]"), but is warming up to her doctors and nurses—a possible sign that she retains memories of living with humans, a doctor says. A psychological assessment also indicates she likely had human contact before her time with monkeys, according to doctors. Though media outlets are calling the child Mowgli in a nod to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, doctors have given her the name of Durga, after the Hindu warrior goddess. Doctors believe she is 8 to 12 years old. Officials say they're reviewing missing child cases in the hope of identifying the girl, per the BBC. (Kipling admitted something about his book in this 1895 letter.)
– The Tea Party failed to claim another victim in Utah after Sen. Orrin Hatch easily won the state's Republican primary. Hatch—facing his first primary challenge since taking office in 1976—beat former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist after spending close to $10 million on advertising, and building one of the biggest campaign operations Utah has ever seen, reports AP. Mitt Romney, to nobody's surprise, scored upwards of 90% in Utah's Republican presidential primary, the final primary before the convention. In New York, Rep. Charles Rangel survived a tough re-election fight to win the Democratic primary, despite concerns about his age and ethics, reports Politico. The 82-year-old Harlem politician, who was censured by the House 18 months ago for ethics violations, was more than 5 points ahead of state Sen. Adriano Espaillat with 85% of precincts reporting. In another House race in New York, state lawmaker Hakeem Jeffries scored a resounding win over New York City Councilman Charles Barron, a former Black Panther who received a controversial endorsement from David Duke.
– Bob Dylan opened up about his music and songwriting and discussed his relationships with Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and others in a rare and lengthy interview posted to his website Wednesday, the AP reports. In the Q&A with author Bill Flanagan, Dylan recalls Sinatra telling him, "You and me, pal, we got blue eyes, we're from up there ... These other bums are from down here." Of the many superstars who died last year, including Muhammad Ali and Merle Haggard, Dylan said the deaths hit him hard: "We were like brothers ... It's lonesome without them." When asked about why Presley didn't show up for a recording session with Dylan and George Harrison, an old story Flanagan had once heard, Dylan replied: "He did show up—it was us that didn't." Full interview here.
– Cleveland police use unnecessary force so often that the department must let an independent monitor make sure reforms are put into place, reports NBC News. That's one result of a Justice Department investigation of 600 incidents between 2010 and 2013 that faults the department for poor training and a "pattern and practice of using excessive force." The investigation began well before the recent police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a city recreation center, and it's the same kind of federal investigation now underway in Ferguson, Missouri, notes CBS News. "We saw too many incidents in which officers accidentally shot someone either because they fired their guns accidentally or because they shot the wrong person," says the report. In one incident, officers fired 137 shots at a car with two unarmed civilians inside who were fleeing police. Both were killed. In another, officers kicked and punched a man who was restrained and on his stomach, reports AP. He was hospitalized for a broken bone near his eye. (The officer in the Eric Garner case maintains that his chokehold was a wrestling move learned at the police academy.)
– Chicago police said charges could be announced soon in the fatal shooting of an Illinois congressman's grandson following an argument over a pair of basketball shoes, reports the AP. "First-degree murder charges are expected," a police rep tells the Chicago Tribune. Officer Michelle Tannehill said two juveniles are in custody and are considered suspects in the killing of 15-year-old Javon Wilson, who was shot in the head at his home in Chicago on Friday. Javon is the grandson of longtime US Rep. Danny Davis. Police earlier said the shooting stemmed from a dispute over basketball shoes. Javon knew his attackers and they may have been friends at some point. Davis said he was told that a 15-year-old boy had traded slacks for shoes with Javon's 14-year-old brother, but thought better of the trade and went to Javon's house with a 17-year-old girl. He said the pair forced their way in the house and argued with Javon before the boy pulled a gun and fired. "It's almost, just the way it is. People think nothing of it," Davis said. "Youngsters invariably say, 'I know a lot of guys who've got guns. I know a lot of girls who've got guns.' It becomes a part of the culture of an environment that has got to change." Davis, who was re-elected this month to his 11th term in the 7th Congressional District, wondered how the shooter obtained the gun and said he'd continue to try to combat gun violence. Davis said his grandson was "a pretty regular kid" who loved playing basketball and knew all the pros and their stats, who also loved music and whose grades were improving after a rough patch. "The question becomes where does a 15-year-old obtain a gun? Who let the 15-year-old have a gun and under what circumstances?" Davis asked. "There's no answer for that except that the availability of guns is so prevalent in America to the point where you almost can't tell who has a gun" anymore.
– As expected, Bill de Blasio will easily finish first in New York City's Democratic primary for mayor, reports the AP. What's unclear is whether he will get the necessary 40% to avoid a runoff with the second-place finisher. With 97% of returns in, de Blasio had 40.02%, Bill Thompson 26%, and Christine Quinn 15%. Trailing those three were city comptroller John Liu (7%) and, yes, Anthony Weiner (5%). The eventual Democratic winner will face former MTA chief (and Rudy Giuliani deputy) Joe Lhota in the general election in November. He won the GOP race over billionaire John Catsimatidis. There will be a recount of yesterday's ballots, and some 30,000 votes, including absentee ballots, still need to be counted a first time. A final result may not be known for 10 days and Thompson has made it clear that he won't drop out in the name of party unity: He chanted "Three more weeks!" at his election night event, referring to a time before a potential runoff, which polls show he would lose. Exit polls showed that de Blasio, the city's public advocate, did well with a wide swath of voters from different ethnic groups and locales, reports the New York Times. More so than the other candidates, he advocated a clean break from Michael Bloomberg, making a particular issue of Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy. The mayor interjected himself into the campaign when he accused de Blasio of running a "racist" campaign—in part because the candidate featured his Afro-sporting teen son in a TV ad. De Blasio is white, his wife is black, and he would be first city mayor with an interracial family, notes the Times.
– China will up its defense spending by 11.2% in 2012 to $106.4 billion, citing its unhappiness with the US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, reports the AP. China has made double-digit increases to its military spending in all but two of the years since the early 1990s, although this year's increase is down slightly from the 12.7% rise in 2011. Despite the seemingly dramatic rise, China's economy has also grown quickly over the past two decades, and military spending as a percentage of GDP has stayed relatively low, officially 1.3% last year. “Our defense spending is relatively low compared with other major countries,” says one Chinese official. However, security experts think China's true spending is likely much higher (the CIA estimated 4.3% of its GDP in 2006). With maritime disputes with Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines and rough relations with India, China faces an array of security threats. “China lives in a neighborhood where it doesn’t have any natural allies or friends," a former Australian ambassador to China tells Bloomberg. “China’s got a lot of things that require a state to have military hardware for."
– Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry have long stood as models of how not to treat the person with whom you're co-parenting a child (see: brawl, citizen's arrest, insane child support), but they've taken their bickering over daughter Nahla to a new low: As TMZ reports, Berry hauled Aubry back into court on Monday, and the subject of contention was Nahla's hair, which Berry claims Aubry has been straightening and lightening in an apparent attempt to make the 6-year-old look less African American. (Aubry is white and Berry is biracial, notes E! Online). The judge ruled that neither parent can alter Nahla's hair. Berry identifies both herself and her daughter as black, notes the LA Times, saying in a 2011 interview that "I feel like she's black. I'm black and I'm her mother." Berry last month sought to reduce her child support payments to Aubry, adds the Times; she currently pays $16,000 a month and reportedly wants it cut to less than $4,000 to prompt the unemployed model to get a job.
– President Obama arrived in Jamaica last night, and his first stop was the Bob Marley museum, the BBC reports. Obama is the first US president to visit Jamaica since Ronald Reagan did so in 1982, and he's apparently a big Marley fan: During his 20 minutes spent touring the Victorian-style house where the musician lived from 1975 to his death in 1981, he told the guide, "I still have all the albums." The stop was an unscheduled one, the AP reports. Of course, Obama is technically in Jamaica not as a tourist, but to discuss energy and security issues with representatives of the 15-country-strong Caribbean Community group. He'll spend three days in the Caribbean and Central America. The AP notes that while there was great excitement in the region when he was first elected, Obama's arrival was greeted with "mostly quiet, empty streets," with locals having the feeling that the president's "interest in the region has failed to materialize." He has not been in the Caribbean since 2009.
– President Trump's relationship with the media is very much front and center again, most notably after three CNN journalists resigned over a retracted story. Trump himself went after the network on Twitter—"What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!"—and a White House spokesperson on Tuesday pushed an anti-CNN video by right-wing provocateur James O'Keefe. Meanwhile, the president also is publicly feuding again with the New York Times. Here's the latest: CNN mess: The network yanked an online article alleging that Trump confidante Anthony Scaramucci had ties to a Russian investment firm, and the New York Times has more details on what happened and on how the network's respected "Triad" vetting system for sensitive stories failed. (Here is CNN's apology note, which does not specify what was incorrect.) Awful timing: It couldn't come at a worse time for CNN in the "fake news" wars, observes Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi. Despite Trump's suggestion to the contrary, Farhi writes that CNN is not looking at "big management changes." Interesting nugget: He notes that CNN investigations editor Lex Haris, one of the three to resign, was away at a conference when the story ran. O'Keefe video: In a press briefing, White House deputy press chief Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushed an undercover video by O'Keefe showing a CNN producer seeming to question the network's Russia coverage, reports the Hill. "Whether it’s accurate or not I don’t know, but I would encourage everybody in this room, and frankly, everybody across the country to take a look at it." You can see it here. Another coming: O'Keefe tells the AP that another video involving a second CNN employee is coming. Meanwhile, CNN stood by John Bonfield, the producer in the first video: "Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong, we welcome it and embrace it." Times feud: After the New York Times ran an article suggesting that Trump was not hands-on during the Senate's health bill talks, he tweeted that it was another "false story" about him. "They don't even call to verify the facts of a story," he complained. To which reporter Glenn Thrush responded, "Call your office, sir. @nytimes spoke to many, many, many members of your staff yesterday - & ran everything by your team." 'Nice smile': Trump's relationship with the media isn't all adversarial. While on a call with Ireland's new leader on Tuesday, Trump called over Irish RTE reporter Caitriona Perry and complimented her "nice smile." The BBC has video, and it notes that Trump critics are calling out the move as sexist.
– Two people from Syria were arrested on terror charges Friday in Geneva and traces of explosives were found in their vehicle, AFP reports. The arrests come after Swiss authorities received a tip from US intelligence that indicated an ISIS cell was active in Geneva, according to the BBC. ABC News reports Geneva raised its terror threat level Thursday in response to the tip. According to AFP, the arrested men have been accused of the "manufacture, concealment, and transport of explosives and toxic gases" and of supporting "groups like Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and similar organizations." The arrests were announced as part of a "terror probe" by Swiss authorities Saturday, AFP reports. Police have been deployed around Geneva as the city remains on alert. In addition to being the UN's European headquarters, many international organizations active in Syria—including the International Organization for Migration and UN High Commissioner for Refugees—are also based in Geneva, according to ABC. The BBC reports the same source who claims US intelligence found an active ISIS cell in Geneva also states two more were identified in Chicago and Toronto.
– A 20-year-old autistic man won a $2.5 million lawsuit against a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson Tuesday after his family and doctor say he developed 46DD breasts after taking an antipsychotic drug, the Philadelphia Daily News reports. Austin Pledger, from Thorsby, Ala., was first prescribed Risperdal, manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, in 2002 when he was 8; at the time, the drug wasn't FDA-approved for kids, and its label said risk was "low" for gynecomastia (the condition in which men's breasts grow larger), Thomas Kline, one of Pledger's attorneys, tells the Daily News. But when the FDA gave the green light in 2006 for the drug to be used as a schizophrenic aid for kids, new labels said the drug contained high levels of the hormone prolactin, which spurs breast growth, Kline adds. Pledger had started growing breasts by then—and now, the only way he can get rid of them is through a mastectomy, Kline says. A Janssen spokeswoman sent a statement to People noting the company is "disappointed" in the decision and that the drug's side effects were clearly spelled out for Pledger's family and prescribing physician. The spokeswoman also argued that Pledger's "quality of life was significantly improved during the time he was taking Risperdal," per the Daily News. But Stephen Sheller, another Pledger attorney, says "there was grave mistreatment of children" and that Johnson & Johnson "hid data from the FDA, prescribing doctors, and parents. Documents showed they knew there was much [a] higher percentage of children getting gynecomastia than they admitted," reports the Wall Street Journal. Still waiting to be settled in the Philly court system: more than 1,200 other cases against Risperdal, says Kline. (Another strange medical lawsuit: This man says his insurer is responsible for ruining his penis.)
– In 2015, Australian 6-year-old Aidan Fenton attended a controversial week-long "self-healing" workshop meant to treat his diabetes. After attending a course and returning to a nearby hotel, the boy collapsed in his family's room; his parents' screams got the attention of staff, who called police, but Aidan died at the scene, the Washington Post reports. Now, nearly two years later, his parents, ages 56 and 41, have been arrested and charged with their son's manslaughter. Police say Aidan was denied food and insulin, and they say his parents were complicit in that denial; their "gross negligence" caused his death, police say, per the Sydney Morning Herald. If convicted, they face 25 years in jail. The workshop was run by Hongchi Xiao, a Chinese man who describes himself as a "healer" and practices what he calls "paidalajin" therapy. It involves fasting, stretching, and slapping the skin until it bruises in order to release "poisoned blood." He has not been charged in Aidan's death, and in a Facebook post shortly after the incident he denied responsibility. But he was arrested in November in the UK on suspicion of manslaughter after a 71-year-old woman with diabetes died during one of his retreats. He's currently out on bail. Xiao insists that a study shows his paidalajin therapy can "cure" diabetes, though he notes that during a "healing crisis" while undergoing the therapy, patients needed treatment including "rapid action insulin to prevent ketoacidosis," a medical emergency that can lead to death. (A family faces charges in the death of a teen after a 68-day fast.)
– Tired of wimpy cappuccinos and limp lattes? Now you can jump-start your day with the "world's strongest coffee." At least that's the claim of the not-so-subtly-named Black Insomnia, which contends it has scientific proof its brew packs multiple times the punch of a normal cup of Joe. The South African newcomer boasts it has achieved "dangerously high levels of caffeine" by harvesting only Robusta beans, rather than the tamer Arabica variety. As for taste, which seems beside the point, the brand promises "a nice walnut and almost sweet taste profile," with nary a trace of "a burnt and high acidic flavor." You can be the judge (kind of): The company announced its beans went on sale in the US via Amazon last Friday, but it's currently listed as unavailable. It's apparently a hot contest for the global title of strongest coffee, with companies such as Death Wish in the running. Food & Wine gives context with this math: Caffeine Informer lists 351mg of caffeine in a 6-ounce cup of Black Insomnia, compared with 330mg for Death Wish. That's skirting the maximum 400mg per day that the Mayo Clinic recommends for "healthy adults." A normal cup packs a relatively paltry 70mg. Founder Sean Kristafor claims to have essentially reached the upper limit, with a press release warning competitors against attempting to "surpass this content in the interest of public health and safety." Further, he notes that while developing his coffee, "any blend that resulted in a higher caffeine content than 702mg [per 12 ounces] adversely affected the flavor and thus was rejected." (These students were given potentially lethal doses of caffeine.)
– Most of the national attention in Tuesday's election is focused on GOP gains in the Senate, but Roll Call points out that Republicans also are poised to hand President Obama a milestone he'd rather avoid in the House. Consider that Democrats lost 63 seats in the 2010 midterms are expected to lose five to 12 (or maybe more) seats on Tuesday. No president has lost as many in back-to-back midterms since Harry Truman lost 83 in 1946 and 1950, writes Stuart Rothenberg. Dwight Eisenhower managed to lose a total of 66, but Obama seems on track to top him. More typical is the pattern of Bill Clinton, who lost 54 in 1994 but bounced back with a gain of five in 1998. Still, if Tuesday is shaping up to be a night of celebration for the GOP, Politico offers a reality check, at least in the Senate: Several first-term Republicans in vulnerable states will be up for re-election in 2016. So even if Republicans win a small majority this year, they might have to give it right back two years later.
– On Saturday night, 17-year-old Hillary Kate Kuizon was reported missing. By a few hours after midnight Sunday, both she and a friend, 17-year-old Ritu Sachdeva, had both been found dead by suspected suicide in Murphy, Texas. "If ... there was some sort of pact, we need to know that because it may lead to further tragedies such as this one," a city spokesman says, per the Dallas Morning News. "We don’t know if it was but we don’t want to discount the possibility offhand." Relatives found Ritu's body in her home, and within just a few hours, police found Hillary's body in a wooded area. The medical examiner has yet to release the causes of death of the Plano East High School students—who were friends, police tell CBS DFW. "Both deaths occurred within hours of each other under circumstances that have led investigators to presume they were both self-inflicted," says the Murphy Police Department in a statement. "No motives have been identified, and no evidence of foul play has so far been detected." Friends of the girls tell Fox 4 they didn't seem depressed, and were well-liked. (An Alaska village recently experienced a suicidal domino effect.)
– Mr. Reggie’s Lawn Cutting Service is booming—and it's all because of a viral video made after the cops were called on the company's namesake. That would be 12-year-old Reginald Fields, who WEWS explains runs a summer landscaping business in Maple Heights, Ohio, that cuts people's lawns and cleans up their yards, tapping into his siblings and cousins for help. Some trouble arose recently, however, when Fields was mowing the lawn of Lucille Holt and mistakenly ended up on a portion of Holt's neighbor's lawn where the two yards overlap. Instead of informing Reggie of the mistake, the neighbor instead called the cops, Lt. Joe Mocsiran from the Maple Heights Police Department confirmed to Fox News. Holt was outraged, and posted a video on Facebook showing the kids working hard in her yard, as well as the parked police car. She called the whole situation "ridiculous." "Who does that?" she says in the clip, before turning to one of the four children and telling him, "I'm so glad you're out here doing something positive." Mocsiran tells Fox no action was taken against the kids, and Reggie says the police never even talked to him or the other children. "[The neighbor] said I was cutting their grass," he tells WEWS. "I didn't know it." A silver lining in this story: Once Holt's video spread, Reggie—who Holt says started the business to raise extra money to help his mom, who cares for his disabled grandfather, per the Hill—started getting flooded with requests from other locals to tend to their lawns. Reggie says he'll invest whatever money he rakes in to buy more equipment for his business. "Just give me a call. I will be there. On time," he tells WEWS.
– "A man getting out of the car to go to the toilet led to the discovery of one of the most important sites in Australian pre-history," archaeologist Giles Hamm tells ABC News. Hamm was surveying a section of Australia's Flinders Ranges when his partner, aboriginal elder Clifford Coulthard, had to go to the bathroom. "Nature called and Cliff walked up this creek bed into this gorge and found this amazing spring surrounded by rock art," Hamm says. At the time, Hamm thought the newly discovered human settlement, a site called Warratyi, was only 5,000 years old. It turns out it's closer to 49,000 years old, and that has huge ramifications for our knowledge of ancient Australian civilization, Sky News reports. Hamm and his team published a study on Warratyi this week in Nature. The discovery of Warratyi in the arid interior of the continent means humans either arrived in Australia up to 10,000 years earlier than previously believed—or they expanded across the continent at a much quicker rate, Science Alert reports. Researchers at the site found 4,300 objects, including tools, and 200 bone fragments from multiple animals, including a 5,500-pound marsupial. The bones help explain how early Australians interacted with megafauna, including hunting them. The tools show Australians were using bone and stone axes earlier than believed and are evidence that early Australians developed some technologies on their own rather than adopting them from other peoples as previously believed. (Ninety rocks in Australia could rank up there with Stonehenge.)
– Strange enough that a would-be robber of a small-town store in Washington state used a sword as his weapon of choice and a bicycle as his getaway vehicle. But what truly elevates the story is that the store's owner, an 89-year-old widow, just wasn't having it, reports USA Today. Miyo Koba of Moses Lake tells KREM-TV that she refused the robber's demand to open the register and instead threatened him with scissors. When he pushed her away and she fell, she spotted a golf club. "I ... tried to swing this club at him and I tried to hit his head a couple times but I couldn't reach it,” she says. She then started bashing him in the legs, rattling him enough that he fled with the register. Or tried to anyway. It's apparently difficult to ride a bike while carrying one, not to mention a sword, and police recovered it near the scene, still full of money. (Click to read about a rowdy rodeo attendee who ended up getting lassoed, then arrested.)
– George W. Bush left Iraq in pretty good shape, only for President Obama to mess it all up, according to Jeb Bush. The candidate, speaking at a national security forum in Iowa yesterday, continued to defend his brother's war record, arguing that "taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal," Bloomberg reports. He blamed the rise of ISIS on Obama's failure to strike a deal for US troops to stay in the country after 2011 and said that under the Bush administration, the "mission was accomplished" regarding Iraq's security. "That is a fact," he said. "You can't rewrite history in that regard." Bush said the 2007 troop surge was a courageous move but that chaos occurred when the next administration "declared success" and washed their hands of the effort, reports Politico, which notes that 17 of his 21 foreign policy advisers served under George W. Bush. The candidate, who admitted months ago that he wouldn't have invaded Iraq knowing what we know now, said mistakes were made after the invasion and that he and his brother now believe disbanding Iraq's military was an error. He also refused to rule out lifting Obama's ban on torture, telling the forum he didn't want to make a "definitive, blanket kind of statement," the AP reports. (This week, Bush used Iraq to attack Clinton.)
– Ryan Gosling, a hero? Only if heroes break up fights and save women from oncoming taxis. Oh, and rescue dogs that stray onto California highways. The 35-year-old actor was driving with Eva Mendes to celebrate her 42nd birthday in Palm Springs, Calif., this weekend when they nearly hit a dog—so the "human angel" got out of his car, grabbed the dog, and gave it back to its owner, Mashable reports. Photos in this tweet and this tweet seem to establish all this as fact. Gosling and Mendes spent much of their Palm Springs trip at Frank Sinatra's former estate, which cost them $10,400 for a four-night stay, Entertainment Tonight notes. Their one-year-old daughter Esmeralda also tagged along for the getaway. (On a more activist note, Gosling has shamed Costco over its eggs.)
– Jamaican lawmakers have apparently had a lot on their minds lately, as per the government's just-released 2016-2017 legislative agenda, with proposals including amending the country's constitution to dump Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state and make Jamaica a republic, scheduling fixed election dates, ensuring term limits for the PM, revamping the tax and pension setup—and (in what may be of most interest to those stateside) making marijuana legal for "specified purposes," Bloomberg reports. Whew! These measures and others, announced in a speech to Parliament by Governor-General Patrick Allen on the government website, would need to get Parliament's OK before becoming the law of the land. As the Jamaica Observer explains, making the nation a republic would involve putting in place a non-executive president, who would be more of a figurehead and wouldn't play a policymaking role. But "he or she could use discretionary powers for extraordinary political intervention, based on the Constitution." As for the pot proposal, no word on what exactly those "specified purposes" would entail. (A Bob Marley-inspired novel won the Booker Prize for Fiction.)
– Julie Marburger had had it—and then she reached a new level of fed-up. The 45-year-old Texas middle school teacher has decided to give up teaching at the end of the school year, but in a March 28 Facebook post, she writes that she didn't know if she would "make it even that long." She explains she had to leave work early that day "after an incident with a parent left me unable emotionally to continue." And it wasn't an anomaly. "Parents have become far too disrespectful," their kids are worse, and administrators just want to keep parents happy. Yet Marburger, who teaches in Cedar Creek, anticipated dealing with more super unhappy parents soon. Reports cards were being issued later in the week, and almost half her students are failing because of missing assignments. She called and emailed parents to try to turn things around, to no avail. "Now I'm probably going to spend my entire week next week fielding calls and emails from irate parents, wanting to know why I failed their kid." The root of the issue is that parents are "coddling and enabling their children," and it has to stop. Ditto the disrespect. "Most parents can't stand to spend more than a couple hours a day with their kid, but we spend 8 with yours and 140 others just like him. Is it too much to ask for a little common courtesy and civil conversation?" Her post has been shared more than 420,000 times, and she tells Good Morning America she was worried people might take offense. Instead, she's found "more support," as says she's exploring her options in terms of her teaching future. (This teacher's post about a broken chair also got a big reaction.)
– It usually carries very tall men from city to city across the continental US, but the Dallas Mavericks team plane made an important detour to Puerto Rico ahead of the team's first day of training camp Tuesday. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban gave the thumbs up for the plane to fly food, water, and other supplies to the hurricane-ravaged island Monday at the request of Mavericks point guard and native Puerto Rican JJ Barea, who also made the trip, reports ESPN. It came only a day after Barea was able to communicate with his family on the island for the first time since Hurricane Maria wrought havoc last week. Barea, 33, told the Dallas Morning News Monday that his family is safe, "but it's still rough there." Barea—who has already raised $140,000 for recovery efforts together with his wife, Viviana Ortiz, a former Miss Universe Puerto Rico—planned to return to Dallas with his mother and grandmother on Tuesday, said Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle. "That's a situation that he's got to take care of," Carlisle told ESPN. "I was really proud of JJ and how quickly he got involved and how hard he worked to make all of this happen," Cuban added. In a similar move, rapper Pitbull used his private plane to get cancer patients out of Puerto Rico so they could undergo chemotherapy, reports the New York Daily News. "Thank God we're blessed to help. Just doing my part," Pitbull said Tuesday. (Jennifer Lopez is also helping out.)
– A Baltimore woman who reportedly saw a young man she knew (some speculate it's her son) on TV throwing rocks at police during city protests took matters into her own hands—literally, per WMAR. A video shows her yesterday dragging a teen sporting a face-covering sweatshirt away from the crowds, hitting him in the face, and yelling, "Take that f---ing mask off!" and "You wanna be out here doing this stuff?!" The kid skulks away with her hot on his tail, and the video—shown from various angles at Independent Journal Review—went viral on social media, with some, like Fox News contributor Charles Payne, calling her the "mom of the year," per WGN. "My mother would have done the same thing," Payne tweeted. Meanwhile, at a press conference last night, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said, per the Washington Post, "She started smacking him on the head because she was so embarrassed. I wish I had more parents who took charge of their kids tonight." (The Orioles COO has his own controversial take on the protests.)
– Molly Wei admitted her role in the cyberbullying case that led fellow Rutgers student Tyler Clementi to kill himself and agreed to cooperate with authorities. She will likely avoid jail as a result, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Wei must complete 300 hours of community service, attend counseling on cyberbullying, and testify against the student accused of setting up the hidden camera that snooped on Clementi and another man, reports CNN. After that, the invasion-of-privacy charges lodged against her for watching the video with Dharun Ravi will be dropped. Wei's attorneys have argued that she played only a minor role in the case and that Ravi is the real culprit. He faces 15 charges on everything from invasion of privacy to tampering with evidence. Clementi's parents seem satisfied with Wei's penalty. "Based on the information supplied to us, we understand that Ms. Wei's actions, although unlawful, were substantially different in their nature and their extent than the actions of Tyler's former roommate," they said in a statement. Click to read about the resolution of the Phoebe Prince case, another high-profile suicide linked to bullying.
– If you've recently spotted the hashtag #savetheunitedstates, it's not an offshoot of Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign: It's a last-ditch effort to keep the SS United States—once the fastest ocean liner on Earth—afloat instead of becoming scrap metal, the AP reports. And it looks like the Cold War-era ship is indeed getting a temporary stay, with the nonprofit conservancy that oversees it announcing Monday it's raised $100,000 from supporters around the world determined to keep the ship, currently moored in Philly, out of the hands of a metal recycler. Even this new cash influx, though, can't maintain the ship forever; the conservancy's board will be meeting later this week to talk about what comes next. "The destruction of the United States would be tantamount to destroying other national monuments like the Liberty Bell or the Statue of Liberty … we must maintain what is good and constant in our past if we are to imagine a better future," says one writer on the ship's testimonials page. That writer's name: President William Jefferson Clinton.
– The UN has unfrozen $1.5 billion in frozen Libyan assets to be used as humanitarian aid as it called on both sides of the conflict to avoid revenge killings, the BBC reports. The money had been seized by the US in the spring. It won’t go straight to the rebels, notes the New York Times: Instead, the US and international agencies will direct it toward humanitarian efforts. The head of the Transitional National Council pledged to “favor the countries which helped us” in accordance with “the support which they gave us.” With about half the Council in Tripoli, the city is largely in rebel hands—but fighting has continued, including reports of summary killings by both rebels and loyalists. Meanwhile, rebels have met opposition in their struggle to reach Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown, Sirte, which British planes bombed last night, hammering what Britain called a “large headquarters bunker,” CNN reports. Meanwhile, an empty hospital in the Abu Salim area—which has seen vicious fighting—held dozens of decomposing bodies, notes CBS News.
– It's one of the stranger outcomes of election night: The race for Vermont governor is so close that the state legislature might have to decide the winner, reports AP. More precisely, the state constitution stipulates that if no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, lawmakers must pick one. That applies here, with Democrat incumbent Peter Shumlin at 46.7% and Republican challenger Scott Milne at 45%, a difference of about 2,500 votes. NECN points that in in modern political history, the second-place finisher has generally conceded rather than send the vote to the Legislature, but Milne has shown no sign of doing so. Last time this happened? In 2010, when lawmakers picked Shumlin for his first term.
– A Japanese mathematician swears he's solved one of the biggest problems in the world of math. The problem is, nobody, not even fellow mathematicians of the highest caliber, can understand Shinichi Mochizuki's proof of something called the ABC conjecture, reports New Scientist. It doesn't help that the proof itself is 500 pages long or that Mochizuki developed his own set of mathematical principles called the Inter-Universal Teichmuller Theory that must be mastered first. (Those who don't are "simply not qualified" to weigh in, says Mochizuki.) Mathematicians aren't saying that Mochizuki's resolution of the theory is wrong, but they're not saying it's right, either. As a result, it's been in a kind of math limbo since 2012, despite attempts by the Kyoto University professor as recently as last month to shed light on it. As for the ABC conjecture, it's a longstanding math problem that also happens to be "deceptively complicated," explains ZME Science. "It roughly states that three numbers a, b, and c, which have no common factor and satisfy a + b = c cannot be too smooth. ... In number theory, a smooth number is an integer which factors completely into small prime numbers." Got that? The upshot, according to both sites, is that the theory raises fundamental questions about the "nature of numbers," and thus its proof would be a major milestone. "It's a bit disappointing that no one has come out and said it's right or wrong," says Oxford professor Minhyong Kim. (Elsewhere, a beating seems to have turned this man into a math whiz.)
– A classy move by a Florida cop is making headlines: Laurie Graber, an officer in Plantation, got the call for a particularly low-level crime—someone had ripped the engagement ring off the finger of an 87-year-old woman bedridden with Alzheimer's in a hospital, reports Fox News. By the bruises on Betty Wagner's finger, it wasn't an easy job, and no wonder—the ring had been there for 67 years. "I just couldn't imagine what kind of depravity you would have to have to take something off of someone so vulnerable," Graber tells WSVN. Upon leaving the hospital, Graber went to JCPenney and shelled out for a replacement ring with her own money. She brought it back to the nurses' station with a note, reports AOL.com: "It's not much, it's not the same. But 67 years of a promise kept should be recognized." Husband Arthur, who placed the original on his soon-to-be wife's hand in 1946, says the gesture has helped him deal with the theft. (Another Florida officer bought groceries for a mom caught shoplifting.)
– Remains found in a wheat field near a southern California town have been identified as those of a missing teenage girl police believe was abducted after a summer school program. Norma Lopez, 17, vanished a week ago after a biology class at Valley View High in Moreno Valley. Police have no suspects, but a green SUV was seen speeding from the spot where Lopez tried in vain to fight off her attacker, reports the Los Angeles Times. Investigators found some of Norma's belongings and signs of a struggle just blocks from the school. “We haven’t caught the suspect who killed Norma so obviously there is a murderer out there, so I would be vigilant, I would be aware," said Riverside County Sheriff Sgt. Joseph Barja. "If I were a parent I would keep track of my children. I would do everything to ensure their safety.”
– In a candid conversation with Marc Maron on the comedian's WTF podcast this week, David Harbour revealed he was once committed to a mental asylum. The actor, now 43, said that when he was 25, about a year and a half after he got sober, he got involved with mystical Catholicism and had a manic episode. "“I really had like, a bit of a break where I thought I was in connection to some sort of God that I wasn’t really in connection to. It was like I had all the answers suddenly," said Harbour, who plays Sheriff Jim Hopper on Stranger Things. He noted that he wasn't on drugs and that his parents were the ones who took him to the asylum, People reports. He was ultimately diagnosed with bipolar disorder. "That’s actually when the drugs came in," he noted. "I’ve been medicated bipolar for a long time. And I’ve had problems going on and off. I’ve had a struggle, going on and off the medications." He added that every time he's had a similar episode, "it’s always coupled with spirituality," which is why, for his mental health, he needs cheeseburgers and video games more than yoga and meditation. "Because like the minute I get close to that—what I consider a flame—of like 'the answers' and the mysticism … it’s like I’m out of my mind." On Tuesday he tweeted a link to the podcast along with the note, "If someone you love still suffers shame about a diagnosis, or a fellow parent worries that their bipolar kid won’t be able to make it, our @WTFpod could soothe." Listen here; the conversation starts around the hour-and-seven-minute mark.
– Soon, you could see MTA buses in New York with the words "Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah" on the side. That's because a controversial pro-Israel group wants to run the ads—they show a man with a Palestinian keffiyeh covering his face alongside the aforementioned quote, which is attributed to "Hamas MTV," plus the slogan, "That's his Jihad. What's yours?"—and this week a federal judge decreed that the MTA must comply in order to abide by the First Amendment, Courthouse News reports. (There is no "Hamas MTV"; the ad is actually referencing a music video militants broadcast in the Gaza Strip.) The decision won't take effect for a month, in case the agency wants to appeal, the New York Times reports. The pro-Israel organization in question is Pamela Geller's American Freedom Defense Initiative, which has previously brought us anti-Islam ads in New York and Chicago, ads comparing jihadists to "savages," and ads showing a plane about to hit the World Trade Center. (The Southern Poverty Law Center labels the AFDI a hate group, Raw Story notes.) The group sued the MTA after the "Killing Jews" ads were initially rejected. Though the MTA says it fears the ads could be seen as calling for harm to Jews, the judge noted that similar ads in Chicago and San Francisco in 2013 did not result in violence. The ad is a parody of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' "My Jihad" campaign, which seeks to frame jihad as a "personal struggle against sins or temptations" rather than holy war, the Washington Times notes.
– Lindsay Lohan is accused of stealing a $2,500 necklace, and now the jewelry store accusing her says the troubled starlet also tried to walk out with a diamond earring just four days prior. La Lohan allegedly tried on a pair of diamond earrings on Jan. 18, and only removed one—then, after looking around a bit more, started to leave the store with the other one still on, that ear covered by her hair. When confronted by a clerk, LiLo “laughed, admitted to her mistake, and removed the earring.” TMZ notes that this little anecdote could actually help Lindsay, proving that she’s simply absentminded—because it turns out the actress actually left her own earrings, a more expensive pair, on the counter as she walked out. There are other inconsistencies in the police report that could also help, including details of the store owner’s story that have changed. Even so, the gossip site reports that Lohan is scared of going to jail and may plead guilty simply so she can get a plea bargain and avoid prison. (For more, check out her perhaps-inappropriate court outfit.)
– The Algerian hostage standoff appears to be over after four days, but the end came with more bloodshed: The government says kidnappers executed seven hostages during this morning's "final assault." That brings the death toll to at least 32 "terrorists" and 23 hostages, including one American, report AP and CNN. No details are out yet on nationalities of the latest victims. "In principle, it's over," a government official tells the New York Times. Only a "clean-up process" remains. A Turkish official says two remaining American hostages were found "safe and sound." Algeria's state news agency reports that another 11 of the al-Qaeda-linked militants were killed in the raid, but it did not say whether any remained alive. As for that "clean-up process": The militants reportedly booby-trapped the entire gas refinery with explosives, and Algerian troops had begun the painstaking task of clearing them.
– Sad news from one of America's great newspapers: The New Orleans Times-Picayune has announced that it will cease daily publication this fall. The paper, founded as the Picayune in 1837, will now offer print editions just three days a week, on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, while continuing to offer daily reporting online at Nola.com, reports the Washington Post. The move is expected to cost close to a third of the paper's 150 reporters their jobs, and will leave New Orleans as the biggest American city without a daily paper. Analysts say the move will leave the paper's future uncertain and—since the Times-Picayune was widely seen to have done an admirable job of moving its operations online—raises questions about the future of the entire newspaper industry. "A city like New Orleans, with its rebuilding challenges, its violence, its rich culture, the odd mix of civic virtue and corruption, and its long-term existential risks from hurricanes and rising seas, deserves a first-class news gathering operation," writes former Times-Picayune journalist John McQuaid at Forbes. "One that gets the city, but also gets that news is changing."
– Talk about a surprise: Two years ago, scientists researching avian malaria happened to learn that two strains of the parasite are infecting white-tailed deer—possibly 25% of those living on the East Coast, Smithsonian reports. Until then, no endemic malaria had been seen in North or South American mammals. "You never know what you're going to find when you're out in nature—and you look," says lead study author Ellen Martinsen, per a press release. "It's a parasite that has been hidden in the most iconic game animal in the United States. I just stumbled across it." Her team was screening mosquitoes for avian malaria at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, DC, when they stumbled across some surprise DNA and found that the insect had fed on white-tailed deer. Researchers then screened more than 300 white-tailed deer and found the parasite in 41 of them, in roughly half the states studied, Science reports. None were in the west, but it was common in the east, particularly in West Virginia and Virginia. Seems the two malaria species pose little risk to deer or to people: Though humans haven't been tested for the strains yet, co-author Robert Fleischer says "if it’s getting into humans, which it probably is, it probably isn’t able to reproduce. ... This is not Zika virus." The deer's ancestors may have brought the parasite into North America by way of the Beringia land bridge millions of years ago, researchers say. So how is it no one noticed malaria before in the much-studied deer? "This story suggests there is still much we don’t know about the natural world," says a biologist not involved in the study. (Meanwhile, Lyme disease is spreading across US counties.)
– How are your reflexes after you've been awake for 28 straight hours? The NTSB says the driver of the truck that smashed into Tracy Morgan's limo was in that exact predicament, reports ABC News. Kevin Roper, 35, drove 800 miles from his home in Georgia to Delaware, where he got into his Walmart truck and embarked on a 14-hour trip, say NTSB investigators. In the 13th hour of that trip, Roper hit Morgan's vehicle on the New Jersey Turnpike, killing one passenger and injuring Morgan and three others. In addition to driver fatigue, the NTSB also notes that Roper was doing 65 in a construction zone, 20mph over the limit, reports AP. “Had the truck driver been traveling at the posted work zone speed limit of 45mph, it could have been stopped before impact,” says NTSB investigator David Rayburn. The agency also says that neither Morgan nor the other passengers in the limo van were wearing seatbelts, which likely made their injuries worse. (Walmart has settled with Morgan, who vows to make people laugh again.)
– People in Britain are drinking a lot more alcohol than they care to admit, say researchers at the London's University College. They compared the amounts that people say they drink with actual alcohol sales and found that about 40% of the booze sold is mysteriously unaccounted for, reports the Telegraph. The study's authors estimate that 44% of men and 31% of women were exceeding government guidelines for weekly consumption, notable jumps in both categories. “Particularly at home, people underestimate how much they drink," says one of the authors. British government guidelines say men should drink no more than four units of alcohol a day, which equates to two pints of beer; for women, it's three units per day, the equivalent of three small glasses of wine. The weekly limits are 21 units for men and 14 for women, reports the BBC.
– The FDA is getting even more serious about stopping the spread of Zika, recommending Friday that all blood donations in the US be screened for the virus, USA Today reports. Previously, it had recommended screening donations only in areas where Zika was spreading—mostly Florida and Puerto Rico. According to NPR, none of the more than 2,000 Zika cases in the continental US have come from tainted blood transfusions, but at least one unit of donated blood in Florida tested positive for the virus. “At this time, the recommendation for testing the entire blood supply will help ensure that safe blood is available for all individuals who might need transfusion," says an FDA statement. Eleven states are asked to start testing their blood donations within the next four weeks. Those are: Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. The rest are asked to start testing within 12 weeks.
– Lindsey Buckingham's exit from Fleetwood Mac is official—legally speaking—and he sounds like a man who's getting close to acceptance: "I'm happy enough with it," the guitarist tells CBS News, saying the band has settled their lawsuit. "I'm not out there trying to twist the knife at all. I'm trying to look at this with some level of compassion, some level of wisdom." But he admits "it hurt for a while. I did walk around for a few months with a visceral reaction to that." The 69-year-old, who helped forge Fleetwood Mac's unique sound, says he was kicked out of the band earlier this year for smirking when frontwoman Stevie Nicks spoke on stage. Band manager Irving Azoff "called me up and he was basically screaming at me," says Buckingham. "He was screaming at me on the phone saying, 'You've really done it this time.' And I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, 'Stevie never wants to be on stage with you again,' and I'm going, 'Why?'" The band blamed the breakup on Buckingham's disinterest in touring again: "This team wanted to get out on the road," says Nicks. Buckingham kept mum about their settlement terms and dismissed the prospect of rejoining the group, per ABC News Australia. "I'm pretty much figuring that I won't," he says. (A metal band broke up in an "epic way.")
– Jeb Bush has abandoned his trademark for "Jeb!," Mother Jones reports. Perhaps it was getting harder to muster the enthusiasm necessary for an exclamation point when your polling numbers suggest something closer to Jeb? or Jeb[shrugging emoticon]. According to the Washington Post, Bush is currently sitting around seventh in the Republican presidential field. Mother Jones reports Bush's BHAG LLC—it stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal—filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office to use Jeb! on "leather key chains, stadium cushions, stemware, stuffed toys, hair bands, and other cool stuff" last winter. But Bush failed to give written permission to the Patent and Trademark Office to use his name for the trademark, and Jeb! was considered abandoned last month, Mother Jones reports. That means anyone is free to start selling Jeb! brand merchandise, though the Post certainly wouldn't recommend it. "The trademark wasn't terribly valuable anyway because there's not really any money to be made from selling anything with Jeb! on it," the paper states. "This ain't Nike." Meanwhile, Mother Jones points out Bush's personal Blofeld, Donald Trump, not only renewed his trademark on "Trump" but took out a new trademark for the use of his name on books about how to succeed in politics.
– Robert De Niro says he's not anti-vaccination—he's just in favor of screening an anti-vaccination documentary made by a disgraced medical researcher. The actor is defending his decision to include Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe at New York City's Tribeca Film Festival, which he co-founded, Rolling Stone reports. The film is directed and co-written by British anti-vaccination activist Andrew Wakefield, who was stripped of his medical license for ethics violations, reports the New York Times. Wakefield was behind a controversial 1998 study linking vaccines to autism, which was later discredited and retracted by the medical journal that published it. "Grace and I have a child with autism and we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined," De Niro said, per Variety. He said that in the 15 years since he founded the festival, he has never been involved in programming, but "this is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening Vaxxed. I am not personally endorsing the film, nor am I anti-vaccination; I am only providing the opportunity for a conversation around the issue." In an open letter in Filmmaker magazine, documentary maker Penny Lane urged the festival to reconsider its decision to spread "dangerous misinformation."
– Amy Schumer has been hit with backlash since the announcement that she'll be playing Barbie in an upcoming movie about the iconic toy, and on Tuesday, she hit back at the haters on Instagram. Next to a picture of herself in a bathing suit, she wrote that it shouldn't really be called "fat shaming" because she knows she's not fat and has "zero shame." "When I look in the mirror I know who I am," she continues. "[I'm] a great friend, sister, daughter and girlfriend. I'm a badass comic headlining arenas all over the world and making tv and movies and writing books." She ends by thanking the trolls, because they actually made it "so evident that I am a great choice" for the role of Barbie: "It's that kind of response that [lets] you know something's wrong with our culture and we all need to work together to change it." There's quite a bit of support for her out there: As the Guardian points out, were the producers to attempt to cast someone with the Barbie toy's actual dimensions, that person "would be unable to lift her head or stand." And, as the Washington Post pointed out before Schumer's Instagram post, the comedian is self-confident, hilarious, smart, successful, and self-made—"who better to recalibrate the image and message of Barbie?"
– Donald Trump's campaign may be about to hit its first big test. Club for Growth will drop $1 million on anti-Trump ads in Iowa, to begin airing tomorrow, reports the Wall Street Journal. The anti-tax, anti-spending group has already aired one ad that attacks Trump's "very liberal" record and labels him "just another politician." Why the hate? Vox explains the group, which falls to the far right on economic issues, has been feuding with Trump since he announced his run. Though Trump's views on immigration make him seem like a far-right candidate, his promises of "no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid" and higher taxes on the wealthy place him closer to the left. "When Republicans run in primaries with a platform like Trump's, the club tries to take them down," reports Vox. "That's its whole reason for being." The Club's president David McIntosh wasted no time in attacking Trump back in June, noting he was "not a serious candidate." But things heated up weeks later when Trump shared a letter from McIntosh asking for a $1 million contribution. Trump has suggested the "phony" group is attacking him because he refused to comply. "He'll say anything to get elected, and then he'll do just the opposite when he's in office," a Club for Growth rep says, adding the group may team with other conservative or Republican groups against Trump. "This is the beginning." "If nothing else, the ads will provide the latest test case for whether the former reality TV star is really as immune to the laws of politics as he currently appears to be," notes Slate. "For Republicans and their conservative allies who worry that Trump is inflicting daily damage to their eventual nominee's 2016 chances, $1 million is small price to pay to find that out."
– Scientists hoped they'd find some exotic creatures burrowing through some of the deepest caves in Croatia, and they did not come up short. Meet Geophilus hadesi—or "Hades," named for the Greek god of the underworld—a subterranean centipede discovered in the Velebit mountain range by the Croatian Biospeleological Society, per a press release. The carnivore eats other invertebrates and also shows some longer-than-average legs and antennae (which help it find prey in total darkness, LiveScience notes), as well as jaws filled with poison. But what really makes this "centipede from hell" unique is that it's one of "only two remarkably troglomorphic geophilomorphs hitherto known," per the study in ZooKeys. Translation: It's one of only two centipede species that never leaves its cave dwellings, earning it its alternate title of "king of the underworld." And Hades has a queen, too, who never leaves her own underground domicile: Geophilus persephones, or "Persephone," named for the Greek goddess of the underworld, per LiveScience. That species was discovered in southern France in 1999, the study notes. Hades has a couple of features that scientists believe emerged as evolutionary adaptation traits, including long claws at the end of its 33 pairs of legs (perhaps so it can cling to rocks) and the ability to withstand the caves' chilly temps, which can hover in the 30s. How they migrated to these underground dwellings in the first place isn't certain, but the lead author of the study tells LiveScience that it could have been "a dramatic change in the outside temperatures and overall conditions that forced less-adaptive organisms to seek shelter underground where the conditions are more stable and less dependent on the outside fluctuations." (A centipede bite could provide more pain relief than morphine.)
– The dozen Republican members of Congress who gave John Boehner a public rebuke this week don't have to worry about payback, he says. "I'm not a retribution kind of guy," he told a closed-door conference meeting yesterday, reports the Hill. "I don't hold grudges." Boehner got re-elected to a second term as speaker, but the vote was unusually close thanks to the largely conservative gang of 12 who either voted for someone else or abstained. Boehner will need all the unity he can get for his next task—getting a bill passed that raises the debt ceiling. He told Republicans that he will insist any such action be paired with spending cuts, a move he says the public supports. But President Obama reiterated today in his weekly address that Congress must raise the ceiling without negotiations, reports AP. It's a "dangerous game," he said. "If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic."
– Anchorman 2 brings the "legendary" Ron Burgundy into the 1980s and a new medium: 24-hour news. The sequel brings back the absurdity of the first and even takes a few swings at satire, and while it may not equal its predecessor, critics say it's worth a watch. "It's not unusual for comedies to sink to silly-stupid depths. A rare few are bona fide silly-funny. Anchorman, and now its follow-up, fall into the latter category of inspired lunacy," writes Claudia Puig in USA Today. "The chemistry and improvisational energy of this comic quartet"—Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and David Koechner—"fuel the comedy." Meanwhile, "nearly anyone who is anybody in contemporary comedy ... makes an appearance." Anchorman 2 "recaptures the silly, sloppy spirit of its predecessor, minus the crucial element of surprise. It’s a frequently amusing, occasionally hilarious, rarely unpleasant grab bag of mild mockery and inspired lunacy," observes AO Scott in New York Times. The film "manages to make some smart satirical hay in the course of its stupidity," writes Chris Vognar in the Dallas Morning News. "At times, Anchorman 2 blurs the line between depicting stupid and being stupid. At other times, it’s a spot-on parody, not just of cable news’ dawn but also its current incarnation." "While I'm glad Anchorman is back," notes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times, "I do wish it were better. With so many sight gags and nearly every living comic in the world making an appearance at some point, the entire operation, like Ron's ego, feels a bit bloated." But Carell and Kristen Wiig "create some of the strangest romantic chemistry the big screen has seen in a while—maybe ever."
– Columnists on both the right and left are fuming about reports of secret Veterans Affairs hospital delays said to have resulted in 40 deaths. Both Ron Christie and Eugene Robinson note that while issues like Benghazi and IRS targeting may have been "witch hunts," this is a genuine scandal, and President Obama needs to take action. Writing at the Daily Beast, Christie points to a year-old letter from the House VA committee chair warning Obama of the problem. If the president is "madder than hell" over the crisis, as his chief of staff says he is, then why aren't we seeing that anger? Robinson, writing in the Washington Post, believes the president is privately angry—after all, he rarely shows anger publicly. But Robinson also believes that "more heads need to roll—and a criminal investigation should be launched." Obama may be a loyal boss, but VA head Gen. Eric Shinseki hasn't even shown real "comprehension" of the issue, and it may be time for him to go. Meanwhile, officials need "outside help, such as the FBI," to take a look at the situation and determine "not just whether rules were broken, but whether crimes were committed." Click for Robinson's full piece; Christie's is here.
– Some children dream of being astronauts. Others of winning the World Series. But little Frank Giaccio just wanted to mow President Trump's lawn, the Washington Post reports. “Even though I’m only 10, I’d like to show the nation what young people like me are ready for,” Frank wrote in a letter read by Sarah Huckabee Sanders during a press briefing last month. “I admire your background in business, and I’ve started my own.” On Friday, the now 11-year-old owner of FX Mowing got his wish, USA Today reports. “That’s the real future of the country right there—we’re lucky,” Trump said while watching Frank mow the White House lawn in gloves and safety goggles. “Maybe he’ll be president someday.” Frank, who is foregoing his normal $8 lawn-mowing fee in this instance, was supervised by a US Park Service employee, CBS News reports. The president gave the young Virginian multiple pats on the back and high fives and then took Frank and his father on a tour of the Oval Office.
– A coastal virus that can cause a rash and mild fever has officially infected a person for the first time, NPR reports. Scientists say it took 18 months to figure out that a Florida teen who got sick during the Zika outbreak of 2016 actually had the Keystone virus, which is carried by mosquitos. "We couldn't identify what was going on," J. Glenn Morris, head of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, tells WUSF. "We screened this with all the standard approaches and it literally took a year and a half of sort of dogged laboratory work to figure out what this virus was." There wasn't even a test to detect Keystone virus in humans. The 16-year-old boy had a fever and a bad rash, but not the encephalitis (or brain inflammation) that a group of viruses including Keystone can cause in animals. First seen in America in 1964, Keystone is known to infect "animal populations along coastal regions stretching from Texas to the Chesapeake Bay," per a University of Florida Health statement. Scientists have long suspected there are human cases, but the new study in Clinical Infectious Diseases confirms it. "The infection may actually be fairly common in North Florida," says lead study author John Lednicky. "It's one of these instances where if you don't know to look for something, you don't find it."
– Last week it was apparent that there's no love lost between Donald Trump and New York Times columnist Gail Collins, but this week it's all-out war. Seems the Donald responded to Collins' column, which tweaked him as a loopy birther, with a letter to the editor tweaking her in turn as a no-good hack for writing "nasty and derogatory articles about me." "Actually," Trump writes, "I have great respect for Ms. Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level." Snap! This week, Collins slaps back, noting that the bestselling author himself once sent her an "aggrieved message ... in which he misspelled the word 'too.'” Further, she runs down his birther allegations, dismissing his doubts about President Obama's birth certificate, his grandmother, and his authorship of Dreams From My Father as all but absurd. "Recent polls have shown Trump running second among potential Republican primary voters," Collins concludes. "I believe this is not so much an indication of popularity as a desperate plea to be delivered from Mitt Romney."
– Three inmates who famously escaped from Alcatraz prison in 1962 may not be so dead after all. In fact, new evidence that they survived has spawned a History Channel special and inspired a retired US marshal to revive the investigation, the New York Post reports. "This is absolutely the best actionable lead we’ve had," says the ex-marshal, Art Roderick. To recap, three Alcatraz inmates—Frank Morris along with brothers John and Clarence Anglin—escaped by chiseling a hole into a prison wall and jumping into the cold San Francisco Bay, with homemade paddles and a raft made from raincoats. Never found, they were presumed dead. But two nephews of the Anglins have produced evidence to the contrary: They have Christmas cards signed in the names of John and Clarence Anglin, and Roderick matched the handwriting. But the cards are neither stamped nor dated. A photo that will be seen on the show, Alcatraz: Search for the Truth, "proves the Anglins may have been alive in the 1970s," says the Post. And DNA from the dug-up remains of another Anglin brother, Alfred, does not genetically match a set of bones found on a shore near San Francisco in 1963. In a letter, former Boston mobster Whitey Bulger says he met the three men in Alcatraz and gave them advice about navigating currents in the bay. "He taught them that when you disappear, you have to cut all ties," says one of the nephews, Ken Widner. "He told me, 'These brothers undoubtedly had done exactly what I told them to do.'" Sadly, Variety didn't think much of the History Channel special, calling it "overproduced, from the pounding music to the dramatic recreations." (A study found that the inmates might have survived if they plunged into the water between 11pm and midnight.)
– A suspect who killed himself as police closed in Monday is now believed to have killed six people in the Phoenix area, police say—and at least four of them were linked to his bitter 2010 divorce. Police believe 56-year-old Dwight Lamon Jones, who shot himself at a Scottsdale motel early Monday, killed all six people in around 96 hours starting early Thursday, the New York Times reports. Police say Jones started the spree when he killed prominent psychiatrist Steven Pitt, whom he'd been required to see as part of divorce proceedings. On Friday, he allegedly killed Veleria Sharp and Laura Anderson, two paralegals at the firm his wife used during the divorce. Hours later Jones allegedly killed Marshall Levine, a marriage counselor who used the same office as a counselor Jones' son saw during the divorce. Police believe Jones also killed Mary Simmons, 70, and Bryon Thomas, 72, in Fountain Hills, around 15 miles away from the other shootings, but their connection to him is still unclear. Jones left around 10 hours of YouTube video in which he outlines an alleged conspiracy to steal custody of his son, who's now 21 years old, the Arizona Republic reports. Ex-wife Connie Jones says Jones was a "very emotionally disturbed person" and she divorced him after he hit her and threatened to kill her. She was granted sole custody of their son. The AP reports that Jones says her new husband, a retired police detective, was the one who made the connection between the divorce and the shootings and told police of his suspicions.
– A leading white supremacist has been shot to death at his California home and his 10-year-old son has been booked on suspicion of homicide. Jeff Russell Hall, 32, was the regional director of the National Socialist Movement and came to national attention last year when he ran for a post on the local water board. The son was taken into custody after police interviewed Hall's wife and four other children, the Los Angeles Times reports. Police say the shooting was intentional, but a motive hasn't been determined, reports the Daily Bulletin. Neighbors complain they were verbally abused and felt threatened by the family, who held a Halloween party last year where a swastika flag was flown from the house and guests wore KKK hoods. "Honestly, I feel like it's over," Juan Trejo, who lives across the street from Hall's home, tells the Press-Enterprise. "It was scary here. Hopefully, we'll never see any of them again."
– Experts have long suggested that fiber keeps us feeling full because it takes a long time to digest, but new research challenges that notion—and may point the way to a new anti-hunger pill. The key is a short-chain fatty acid called acetate, which emerges as fiber is digested. Acetate then makes its way to the brain's hypothalamus, where it builds up and triggers chemical reactions that tell us we're full, Time reports. Researchers reached this conclusion by scanning the progress of a dietary fiber called inulin through the bodies of mice. Those mice who ate fatty diets rich in inulin gained less weight than mice who didn't eat inulin. But one electrophysiologist not related to the study points out that the mice were fed dietary fiber levels of about 11%. He tells Nature that at such a level, "the room would be full of mouse farts"—and perhaps the mice were eating less because they felt gassy. The researchers plan to next test the idea in humans. So could we eventually see an acetate-based diet pill? It's possible, the Telegraph suggests: "The major challenge is to develop an approach that will deliver the amount of acetate needed to suppress appetite but in a form that is acceptable and safe for humans," a researcher says.
– North Korea has apparently kicked off a new propaganda war ahead of planned war games between the US and South Korea next month. South Korea says its military found hundreds of propaganda leaflets floating down a river near the border last week, boasting that the North won the Korean War and threatening missile attacks, reports the AP. Some 200 flag-shaped lapel pins featuring a photo of Kim Jong Il were also discovered in a hotel flowerbed near Incheon International Airport on Thursday, reports Stars and Stripes. These are no ordinary pins: As Atlas Obscura explains, they're a patriotic symbol distributed by North Korea's Workers' Party to be worn by all adults on the left side of the chest. Some say Kim Jong Un's wife disappeared after failing to wear one in public. Other versions feature Kim Il Sung, and a rare few show both former leaders. These are only given to high-ranking government officials and military leaders, though ordinary citizens can get a knock-off version from China on the black market. North Koreans were even using the pins in place of cash before the Workers' Party made it illegal. Police are investigating how the pins got into the flowerbed as possession of such items is illegal in South Korea, but say they may have arrived via a propaganda balloon. Meanwhile, Pyongyang accuses the South of releasing snakes across the border "as part of a 'cunning scheme' to challenge our unity," reports the Guardian. A diplomat also promises action if the war games go ahead as planned, noting the US "crossed the red line" when putting Kim on a sanctions list.
– President Trump on Sunday addressed the devastation wrought by the latest California wildfires, the Hill reports. "California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren't allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized," he tweeted. "It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!" But MarketWatch says his tweet "befuddled experts," noting that the state's water supply and how it's used isn't to blame for worsening blazes. For one, the water isn't being dumped into the Pacific, and firefighters do appear to have plenty of water, per a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection rep—but trees and brush have become more flammable due to the state's years-long drought. "We do manage all of our rivers in California, and all the water is allocated many times over," wildfire expert LeRoy Westerling tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "So I'm not sure what [Trump] was recommending. … It boggles the mind." Westerling points the blame for making the fires worse at "ongoing warming and accelerated climate change."
– Among lactose-intolerant people—who make up some 30% of Americans, according to Medical Daily—raw milk has become a popular alternative to the pasteurized stuff. The FDA says it's no better for them, and it warns that raw milk can actually be fatal, Time reports. Are raw-milk advocates right? A new study says no. Researchers had 16 self-identified lactose-intolerant subjects drink three kinds of milk: raw, pasteurized, and soy. All were vanilla-flavored so participants couldn't identify them, the Los Angeles Times reports. Over an eight-day period of consuming the milk varieties, subjects were tested for malabsorption; they also reported their allergy symptoms, Time notes. After a weeklong break, they tried another type of milk for eight days. In the end, there was "no evidence that raw milk is better tolerated by adults positive for lactose malabsorption, either objectively or subjectively," researchers say. They acknowledge, however, that more than eight days might be necessary to account for adjustment to raw milk. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail points to the genetics behind lactose intolerance, noting that it was found in a 7,000-year-old man.
– Repo Men, a sci-fi thriller about men who repossess organs, is probably supposed to be biting commentary on divisive issues like health care, but critics are united in shouting it down: “Let the 2010 Razzies race begin!” declares Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter. “Blood soaked, derivative and increasingly ridiculous,” Repo Men is an “in-your-face mess that never knows what it wants to be when it grows up” and telegraphs its plot twists “a century in advance." On paper, the cast—Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber—looks great, but this “heartless piece of hack work” demeans them, writes Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal. “Note to studio: get a soul transplant.” The movie “sacrifices subtlety for the obvious, and originality for the tried-and-true—or, more often, the tried-and-trite,” writes Stephen Whitty of the Star-Ledger. “It’s a film to be endured more than experienced.” Roger Ebert can’t figure out if the film’s supposed to be a comedy. When Law decapitates three people with one swing of a hacksaw, he writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, “what are people supposed to think? Is this an action scene, or satire? Does it make any difference?”
– She tried porn, stripping, and pleading for cash. Now Octomom is auctioning off ... herself ... to make a few extra bucks so she won't get booted from her California home, reports TMZ. "You can date me if you pay me," says Nadya Suleman on What'sYourPrice.com. She reminds anyone interested that she's a "media personality," and a single mom with 14 kids, who's "attractive, athletic, a hard worker, and loves to laugh." Her ideal date? She'd like to "work out or do something athletic, and then have a nice dinner." She started the bidding at $500. Her latest attempt at begging for cash on GoFundMe has raised $2,600—but she needs $150,000 to fend off foreclosure or pay for a new house.
– A man found himself in the middle of an unexpected science experiment in Sweden after he set his bowl of grapes in the sun. Richard Walter says he was outside near his Blanda Blank stainless steel serving bowl from IKEA when he noticed his grapes were on fire. "'How is that possible?' I thought. Then I saw there was one intense point where [the sun] hit the twigs, and that's where it started." His friends wanted proof, so Walter posted a video on Facebook of a piece of paper starting to burn after he placed it in the bowl in direct sunlight. For its part, IKEA tells the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet that it's taking the information "very seriously" and investigating how this could happen. But a statement to The Local suggests that the fiery mishap is indeed possible, with an IKEA rep saying "it has been established that many different parameters would have to converge" for fire to occur, and the risk is "very low. The round design of the bowl further contributes to a very low risk of spreading, in case of any overheated material in the bowl." Business Insider notes that no one has made any fire-related complaints on the US product page, where the bowl is described as a "great size for serving or prep cooking." (IKEA is also doing its best to preserve marital bliss.)
– Pregnancy affects not only a woman's body: It changes parts of her brain, too, a new study published in Nature Neuroscience says. The study includes data on 25 Spanish women scanned before and after their first pregnancies, along with 20 women who didn't get pregnant during the study. The brain changes in the pregnancy group emerged from comparisons of those two groups. The results were consistent: A computer program could tell which women had gotten pregnant just by looking at results of the MRI scans. And the changes, first documented an average of 10 weeks after giving birth, were mostly still present two years after childbirth. (Based on prior research findings, the researchers think the brain changes happened during pregnancy). No brain changes were seen in first-time fathers, reports the AP. What's going on? Elseline Hoekzema, a study author at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and colleagues think the differences result from sex hormones that flood the brain of a pregnant woman. In 11 places in the brain, the MRI data indicate reductions in volume of the brain's gray matter, but it's not clear what that means. For example, it could reflect a pruning of the places where brain cells communicate, called synapses. Losing some synapses is not necessarily a bad thing. It happens during a hormonal surge in adolescence, producing more specialized and efficient brain circuits. The researchers suspect that could be happening in the pregnant women, perhaps to prepare a woman for motherhood. One analysis linked brain changes to how strongly a woman felt emotionally attached to her infant.
– Sinead O'Connor married on Dec. 8 and announced the end of said marriage to the world 18 days later—so what the heck happened? Well, things may not have gotten off to a great start when she spent their wedding night on a desperate hunt for cannabis, especially considering then-hubby Barry Herridge is a drug counselor. "We ended up in a cab in some place that was quite dangerous," she tells the Sun. "Then I was handed a load of crack. Barry was very frightened—that kind of messed everything up a bit really." "I wasn't scared—but he's a drugs counselor. What was I thinking?" she continues. But apparently she wasn't happy either, adding that the marriage "felt like I was living in a coffin. It was going to be a coffin for both of us and I saw him crushed. The whole reason I ended it was out of respect and love for the man." She says she's now sworn off marriage forever, and adds, "I don't think I will even date anyone." (At one point post-split, O'Connor talked to the media—but forgot to get dressed first. Click to see the pictures of her in a towel, or here to see O'Connor's truck-humping ad, to which Herridge responded.)
– IMF chief Christine Lagarde probably wants this one back: She infuriated Greeks last week by asserting that a big part of the nation's financial crisis is "all these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax." It's time for this nation of tax-dodgers to pay up, she declared. After getting bombarded by critics on Facebook, Lagarde walked back the criticism a bit, notes the New York Times. But today, the Guardian follows up with more fodder for her critics: LaGarde has to pay no taxes at all on her own $468,000 salary. "I suppose we can have a discussion about why international organization employees shouldn’t pay taxes," writes David Dayen at Firedog Lake. "But the bigger issue is that Lagarde surely knew at the time of making comments about evil tax evaders that she paid no tax on her salary. This reeks of the attitude of one system for the little people, and one for the elites, which characterizes elite discourse in this day and age."
– For the bulk of the time Larry Nassar worked for Michigan State University's osteopathic medical school, William Strampel was the dean of that school. Now, another shared experience for the men: Strampel, 70, was arrested Monday on charges that have not yet been made public. A press conference is scheduled for noon Tuesday, reports the Lansing State Journal. The attorney who represents scores of women who are suing MSU praised the Attorney General's action, saying "it demonstrates that he is serious about investigating the systemic misconduct at MSU that led to the largest child sex abuse scandal in history." Strampel stepped down in December citing medical issues; two months later the school initiated the process of firing him. ESPN details alleged grievances about Strampel that are unrelated to Nassar—per MSU performance reviews it viewed, he was accused of regularly making sex-related remarks—and also documents his timeline with Nassar. Though Strampel became dean in 2002, he says his only true interaction with Nassar began after a complaint was lodged against the doctor in 2014. No wrongdoing was uncovered by Michigan State's Title IX office, and so Strampel reinstated Nassar so long as he followed a new protocol that included stipulations like having a chaperone present during any treatment that occurred near a young patient's genitalia. Strampel says he did not verify Nassar was adhering to the rules, and fired him in 2016 after learning he wasn't. MLive reports 20 women accused Nassar of abusing them during that period.
– In October 2007, a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped while looking for a pay phone in the Beacon Hill section of Seattle and repeatedly raped by her abductor over the next couple of days before escaping. Now, 11 years later, police may have their man—but they may have had him much sooner if there hadn't been a massive backlog in testing a pile of rape kits. KOMO News reports that, among the more than 1,000 kits stockpiled by the Seattle Police Department, was the one that made a DNA match to Darin Bolar at the end of last year, leading to the 52-year-old's arrest on Sept. 26. Bolar, a Level III sex offender, already had a rape conviction under his belt from 25 years ago after assaulting another 14-year-old at a theme park. In the Beacon Hill case, the suspect had first grabbed the girl and raped her in some nearby bushes, then forced a garden hose into her vagina to try to clear out any evidence of the assault, per police reports. He then allegedly took the girl back to his home, where she was beaten, raped, and made to clean his house for the next two days. She finally said to have escaped while the suspect was at work and another man slept on the couch. She was tested immediately for forensic evidence, but that kit wasn't tested until December 2017. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes that a $3M DOJ grant was given to the state's AG office in 2017 to help start testing the more than 6,400 untested rape kits across Washington. Bolar has been charged with first-degree kidnapping and second-degree rape.
– We can only assume the apocalypse is nigh: A Florida judge yesterday ordered the release of all the video clips from Justin Bieber's time at the Miami Beach Police Department after his drunk drag racing arrest, which means you will soon get to see the singer taking a urine test for drugs. In what might come as sad news to Beliebers everywhere, however, his private parts will be blacked out: "Mr. Bieber's right to privacy is paramount," the judge said. "He has not lost his right to privacy, and that is what is important here." The ruling came about after the AP and other news outlets requested the videos be released under the state's open records law. Initially, just the less sensitive footage was released, including video of Bieber stumbling a bit during a sobriety test and randomly doing push-ups in his jail cell. The five as-yet-unreleased clips will be out within a few days (TMZ offers up some TMI, noting that police are having a hard time blurring Bieber's genitals because they move too much in the video). For now, you'll just have sate your curiosity with the many, many close-ups of Bieber's tattoos that were made public by the Miami Beach Police Department yesterday.
– HUD proposed a federal mandate Thursday that has some smokers fuming: a ban against lighting up in public housing nationwide, the New York Times reports. If the law passes, more than 3,100 public housing agencies would prohibit smoking in all living units, indoor common areas, administrative offices, and outdoor spaces near those other areas, the Washington Post notes. The reason: to keep residents safe from secondhand smoke, cut down on fire risks, and curb building maintenance expenses, per the Times. "The argument about secondhand smoke is over," HUD Secretary Julian Castro tells the paper. "It's harmful." Since HUD started encouraging public housing groups to implement bans in 2009, more than 600 agencies with at least 228,000 units have gone smoke-free, per the Post—but now the federal housing department wants to make it universal. A study by the CDC backs up the economics, predicting that a nationwide ban would result in annual savings of $153 million. The group that would feel the biggest burn: the NYC Housing Agency, the nation's largest public-housing group, with more than 400,000 residents in about 178,000 apartments, per the Times. But some worry that, without community support, it will be difficult to enforce, and they don't think the cops should be involved. "It should be resident-led," the chairwoman of the NYCHA tells the Times. HUD says it will listen to public comments on the potential law before making a final decision.
– Hail the size of golf balls and softballs pummeled a Colorado zoo on Monday, leaving 14 people injured and two animals dead, including one of roughly 20 endangered vultures known to be in the US. The 13-year-old female Cape vulture, dubbed Motswari, arrived at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs from South Africa as part of a breeding program. "It's a massive loss," a conservationist tells the Washington Post, noting Motswari was in her breeding prime and the species has declined by up to 94% in three generations. A Muscovy duck was also killed, while five people were sent to the hospital, per CNN. The zoo tells CBS News that up to 400 vehicles were damaged.
– The swelling tide of well wishes for the Cosby Show actor who was job-shamed by multiple media outlets may have just turned into something more lucrative. Sources tell TMZ that Geoffrey Owens has accepted a job offer by filmmaker and producer Tyler Perry, who tweeted earlier this week that the 57-year-old actor should "join us" on OWN's The Haves and the Have Nots, which Perry writes for and directs. TMZ reports that Owens is said to be slotted into a recurring role and will appear on 10 episodes, and that he's set to fly to Atlanta next week to begin filming. Owens had previously spoken on Perry's offer, though he simply called it a "generous" one and didn't indicate whether he'd take it, per People. In fact, Owens tells the Hollywood Reporter he's considering "a whole handful" of TV offers. "It's been a real generosity of spirit and a generosity of action," he says. Owens, who has since spoken on the "honor of the working person and the dignity of work," says his first concern when the photo of him broke was his 19-year-old son, People notes. He says he texted his son, who's away at school, to warn him and to apologize for the embarrassment—but his son texted right back to say how proud he was of Owens. "I cried, I just broke down," Owens says. "It was beautiful." One other person is stepping up to do right by Owens: Nicki Minaj, who told Entertainment Tonight she wants to donate $25,000 to the actor. "Some people are on the internet and seeking attention, and he's just the antithesis of that," she says. She notes she's having her rep reach out to Owens' people so he "doesn't take it the wrong way." (The woman who took the Owens photo is now speaking.)
– Don’t count Arizona Rep. Trent Franks among those calling for increased gun control in the wake of Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting. "I wish there had been one more gun there that day in the hands of a responsible person, that's all I have to say," said the Republican, in an annoyed response to a question about gun control. He made the comment during an FBI security briefing of GOP lawmakers, Politico reports. Rep. Steve King is another Republican arguing that more civilians with guns could have decreased the “carnage,” the Huffington Post notes. Click for more, including a counter-argument to Franks and King.
– Congress gave final approval early Friday to a giant $1.3 trillion spending bill that ends the budget battles for now, but only after late obstacles skirted close to another shutdown as conservatives objected to big outlays on Democratic priorities at a time when Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House. Senate passage shortly after midnight averted a third federal shutdown this year, an outcome both parties wanted to avoid. But in crafting a sweeping deal that busts budget caps, they've stirred conservative opposition and set the contours for the next funding fight ahead of the midterm elections, the AP reports. "Shame, shame. A pox on both Houses—and parties," tweeted Sen. Rand Paul. "No one has read it," he added of the 2,200-page bill that was released the night before. "Congress is broken." The House easily approved the measure Thursday, 256-167, a bipartisan tally that underscored the popularity of the compromise, which funds the government through September. It beefs up military and domestic programs, delivering federal funds to every corner of the country. But action stalled in the Senate as conservatives ran the clock in protest. Then, an unusual glitch arose when Sen. James Risch, an Idaho Republican, wanted to remove a provision to rename a forest in his home state after the late Cecil Andrus, a four-term Democratic governor. Once the opponents relented, the Senate began voting, clearing the package by a 65-32 vote a full day before Friday's midnight deadline to fund the government. (A deal to help "Dreamers" didn't make it into the bill.)
– It turns out there were even more reasons the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shouldn't have picked the free-wheeling and allegedly shady CGI Federal to build HealthCare.gov. When CGI was vetted back in 2007, it didn't have any obvious black marks on its record, the Washington Post explains. But CGI is a "roll-up" company formed by acquiring other companies—one of which, American Management Systems, was one giant black mark. AMS projects have hit trouble in at least 12 states as well as at the federal level, including a much-publicized 2001 failure to automate federal retirement benefits. The company went $60 million over budget on that one, yet produced nothing useful. More than 100 AMS alumni are now CGI executives or consultants. "Should CMS have recognized that ‘OK, here’s CGI Federal. It’s a new company, but, oh, my God, it looks a lot like the AMS from yesterday’?" asked one ex-CMS official. "Yes. I would consider that dropping the ball." But it didn't come up in 2007, and CMS never re-vetted the company, the Post's review of internal documents reveals. On the bright side, the review also reveals that the decision was politics-free, made purely because officials considered CMS' bid "technically superior." Vanity Fair, meanwhile, has an in-depth piece today on what many suspect is an accounting scandal brewing at CGI. It looks a lot like the company is using its acquisitions to mask financial problems, a quasi-legal practice known as creating a "cookie jar."
– The State Department's unusually strong warnings this week about a possible terror threat—it announced that 21 US embassies would be closed tomorrow and followed that up with a global travel alert for Americans—came after authorities intercepted communications among what the New York Times calls "senior operatives" of al-Qaeda, a rarity. And this was apparently no idle chatter: CNN reports that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was in the "final stages of planning for an unspecified attack," with particular concern about the US embassy in Yemen between today and Tuesday. The timing dovetails with the end of Ramadan. “There is a significant threat stream and we’re reacting to it,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells ABC News for its This Week program. He says it is “more specific” than usual, though the exact target is unspecified. “The intent is to attack Western, not just US interests." Rep. Peter King made a similar point to CNN: The information is "the most specific I've seen," he says, adding, "We are focused on the Middle East, but it's a potential series of attacks that really could be almost anyplace."
– The first new spider species discovered in North America in more than 110 years has been found in the caves of the Pacific Northwest, reports the Telegraph. The Trogloraptor, or "cave robber" spider, measures about three inches long when outstretched and is seen as a "fierce, specialized predator," according to the Los Angeles Times. "For a spider, this is a pretty big one," says arachnologist Charles Griswold, who compared the discovery to finding a spider Bigfoot. "It has remarkable claws and feet which are like scythes or hooks. We think these work to snap and trap their prey." Much is still a mystery about these newly discovered spiders, although scientists think the Trogloraptor evolved separately from more commonly known spiders thanks to their remote cave locations. "If such a large and bizarre spider could have gone undetected for so long, who knows what else may lurk undiscovered in this remarkable part of the world," says the study. You can read the original journal article at ZooKeys.
– A man and two children are dead in India after a kite flying tradition on Independence Day went horribly wrong. Two children, aged 3 and 4, had their throats slit by kite strings covered with powdered glass or metal—a coating used to cut down competitors' kites—while riding with their heads out of car sunroofs in separate incidents in Delhi on Monday, reports the BBC. A 22-year-old motorcyclist suffered a fatal fall when he became entangled in a string, per the Indian Express, while a police officer was also injured. The Delhi government has since banned the sale of the sharp strings.
– Think a mother's age at childbirth plays any role in her child's intelligence? According to data on British kids, it sure does. Using information on 18,000 children gathered over "an extended period of time," researchers from the London School of Economics say kids born to first-time moms in their 30s have better cognitive scores and "behavioral outcomes" than first-born children with mothers in their 20s, the Independent reports. "First-time mothers in their 30s are, for example, likely to be more educated, have higher incomes, are more likely to be in stable relationships, have healthier lifestyles, seek prenatal care earlier, and have planned their pregnancies," lead author Alice Goisis tells the Times of London. These kids also outperformed children whose moms were in their 40s. Published in Biodemography and Social Biology, the study also found that children born to women in their 40s are more often obese because their moms don't play with them as much. This despite the fact that moms that age typically smoke less and breastfeed their kids, Marie Claire notes. But researchers acknowledge they culled data from only 53 mothers in their 40s. There's also the question of what defines intelligence: "Of course kids who have parents with more resources to offer (i.e., good schools, tutors, even high-quality nutrition) are going to do better when it comes to school and tests. But are book learning and intelligence really the same thing?" asks Jacqueline Cote at Cafe Mom. "And I'm not saying that simply because the two children I had in my 20s are honor students! Really, I'm not." (In the US, more women are waiting until their late 30s to have kids.)
– When an 18-year-old arrived at a London emergency room with severe abdominal pain, no appetite, and a fever, doctors recognized the symptoms of appendicitis and scheduled an emergency surgery. They were in for a shock. Once the teen had been cut open, doctors at North Middlesex University Hospital were "very surprised to see blood coming from the liver," while his appendix seemed just fine, Dr. Joshua Luck tells Live Science. They were so surprised, in fact, that they thought they might have nicked a blood vessel. What the teen had failed to mention: Two days earlier he'd been hit in the abdomen by two paintballs during his first attempt at the sport, reports ABC News. Though the paintballs—which can travel up to 300 feet per second—didn't leave a bruise near his liver, it's not uncommon for "seemingly innocuous events to cause internal injuries," Luck says. The August 2015 incident "represents the first report of paintball-related blunt traumatic injury to the liver," researchers explain in BMJ Case Reports. While eye injuries are from paintball are "well recognized," solid organ damage from paintballs has only been reported in three prior cases: one involving the kidney and two involving the penis/scrotum. Doctors were able to stop the bleeding and confirmed weeks later that the teen's liver was functioning well. "Whether he'll try (paintball) again is yet to be decided," Luck says. (This guy burst his bladder in an odd way.)
– In the wake of Harvey Weinstein news, NPR's news chief is the latest to come under fire for alleged past sexual misconduct—and he's now stepped down from his post. Michael Oreskes, 63, resigned Wednesday, per the AP, after two women told the Washington Post about incidents in the late 1990s when he was the DC bureau chief at the New York Times. Both women say while talking to him about possible jobs at the Times, he suddenly planted a kiss on their lips and put his tongue in their mouths. When one woman confronted him about it months later, calling it "totally inappropriate," she says he replied: "I was overcome with passion. I couldn't help myself." Neither woman was hired; they say they were spurred to come forward by the Weinstein allegations. In a statement, NPR notes, "We take these kinds of allegations very seriously," though it wouldn't comment on specifics. Meanwhile, NPR reports on a current employee now making public her own complaint. Science reporter Rebecca Hersher says she filed a grievance against Oreskes in October 2015 after he turned what was supposed to be a career discussion into a "three-hour-long dinner that delved into deeply personal territory." At that meeting, Hersher says, Oreskes steered their talk to relationships and sex, even calling one ex-partner his first "sex girlfriend." Hersher says Oreskes never touched her inappropriately, and she believes he was held "appropriately accountable" after her complaint. But she notes the talk made her uncomfortable and "undercut my confidence in a way that was surprising to me." In a statement Wednesday, Oreske said, "My behavior was wrong and inexcusable, and I accept full responsibility." NPR CEO Jarl Mohn has appointed Christopher Turpin as NPR's temporary news chief, per CBS News. More at the Post and NPR.
– She's blabbed about everything from Erin Andrews' outfits to her own nipple, and now Elisabeth Hasselbeck is sharing her theory of lesbianism. The conservative View co-host says older women become lesbians simply because they just can't land a man, reports the New York Daily News. "All the older men are going for younger women, leaving the women with no one," she says. Hasselbeck told viewers that lesbians link up for companionship, not sex—a claim which her co-host, Joy Behar, called "ridiculous." "Being gay is not just holding hands and walking through the tulips," Behar says. "Oh Elisabeth," quips Pop Crunch, "it takes real work to make Sarah Palin look like the smartest Republican with a vagina."
– Following up on a promise made while in Europe, Burma's president is reportedly setting 73 political prisoners free today, adding to hundreds already let go. "The total number of remaining political prisoners has now dropped to lower than 100 for the first time in many years," says an official. President Thein Sein has pledged to release all the country's political prisoners by year's end. Different organizations offer different figures as to how many remain, Reuters notes; the AP puts the number at around 200 before today's releases, with 69 released today, according to an official. The country has a 19-member committee to determine which prisoners are in jail over politics and which have committed non-political crimes. The committee includes 10 ex-political prisoners. But activists say the president is releasing people too slowly and for image reasons—and protesters are still getting arrested. "It's important to remember that many still remain in prison and all the repressive laws that put them there are still in place," notes one.
– With more paint and a couple of horses, they could have had zebras, too: A pair of chow chow puppies dyed black and white looked enough like pandas to fool visitors to a traveling circus near Milan, officials in Italy say. Forestry officials—who investigate many animal cases in Italy—uncovered the ruse after a tip-off and have charged the owner with having false documents for the dogs, which had been imported from Hungary with false pet passports, the Guardian reports. The circus may also be charged with fraud and cruelty to animals, though the dogs' owners were able to hold on to the animals, so long as the dogs never masquerade as pandas again. Circus-goers had been charged to have their photos taken with the "pandas"; the Local reports one dog was male and one was female. Investigators say that while the dogs were in generally good health, they had watery eyes that could have been caused by continuous exposure to camera flashes. A circus spokesman denies trying to trick the public, telling the Independent it was "obvious they are dogs." "No animal was mistreated," he says. "They are like children to us." (Meanwhile, this year saw a real panda with a fake pregnancy.)
– If you happened to stumble across a photo of someone named Nolan Daniels today, here's why: Last night, he posted a picture of himself on Facebook with what he claims is a winning Powerball ticket, explains the Christian Science Monitor. Then he asked people to share the photo, promising $1 million to a random person who did so. As of this afternoon, more than 200,000 hopeful souls had done so. Alas, Adrien Chen at Gawker points out that if it were a real Powerball ticket, the numbers would be in numerical order, unlike the one in the "poorly photoshopped" image. It just goes to show that "like-addled Facebook users will share anything no matter how obviously untrue it is," he writes. So far, then, we know only the identity of one of the two winners. (Click to read about the lucky Hill family of Missouri.) But many think this store video from Maryland shows the other. The unnamed man celebrating reportedly told people in the store that he bought it in Arizona.
– It was just another day of typical garden work at a Polish museum when a worker's shovel clanked against something hard buried in the ground. The find: a 20-inch-high marble sculpture of the head of one Adolf Hitler, AFP reports. "Somebody made an effort to properly hide it, it was buried some [2 feet] underground," Lech Lopuski, a curator at Gdansk's National Museum, tells the Dziennik Baltycki website, via the BBC. Inscribed on the bust is "Thorak 1942," designating it as the work of Josef Thorak, who was known as one of the Fuhrer's favorite sculptors, per AFP. "It's an important sculpture because we didn't know it existed," Lopuski notes. "Thorak was a gifted sculptor, and we can see that he did a good job." Thorak's works were known to be monumental, designed for use in official buildings and public spaces, per the BBC. While museum officials still aren't sure how this Hitler head ended up in the garden—and remained hidden for 70 years, even when work was done to install a new fountain and flower beds, Lopuski says—there's been speculation it was buried in 1945, just before the Soviet army infiltrated Gdansk. Lopuski theorizes the sculpture may have been part of the furnishings for the office of the museum director at the time, per AFP. But just because the Hitler head was found on museum grounds doesn't mean it will be up for display anytime soon. "For the time being, it goes to a warehouse," the museum's director says, per the BBC. "It needs to be studied scientifically to find out who ordered it, where it stood, and how it ended up in the museum." Lopuski adds, per AFP: "It's a delicate issue." (Hitler's long-lost bronze horses were just found in May.)
– Juan Williams says he didn't misspeak when he talked of getting nervous when seeing Muslims in airports, comments that got him fired from NPR. "I said what I meant to say," Williams explained on Fox News today, "which is that it is an honest experience that when I'm in an airport and I see people in Muslim garb who identify themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I do a double take. I have a moment of anxiety or fear given what happened on 9/11. That's just a reality." Williams described how an NPR executive fired him by phone after he told her just that, reports the Huffington Post. "I said, 'I don't even get the chance to come in and we do this eyeball to eyeball, person to person?'" he said. "She said, 'There's nothing you can say that will change my mind, this has been decided above me and we're terminating your contract.'" Separately today, NPR chief Vivian Schiller said Williams should keep his feelings about Muslims between him and "his psychiatrist or his publicist," reports AP. Click here for more.
– If you thought Katherine Heigl's career was suffering because she's difficult to work with, well, allow the actress to set the record straight: It was actually doing too many romantic comedies that was the problem. "I had an amazing time. I love romantic comedies," she explains in a new interview with Marie Claire UK. "I was so stoked to be doing them. But maybe I hit it a little too hard. I couldn’t say no. There’s nothing wrong with them, but maybe I overloaded my audience. I should have done a superhero movie or a psychological thriller." That's when things changed for her. "This thing that was my best friend for a long time suddenly turned on me," she says, referring to the biz. "And I didn’t expect it. I was taken by surprise and angry at it for betraying me." But that's not the only reason she took a five-year hiatus from the limelight, she explains: Thanks to the plethora of rom-coms, "I stopped challenging myself. It became a bit by rote and, as a creative person, that can wear you down. That was part of why I took that time off, to ask myself, 'What do I want? What am I looking for?' and shut down all the noise." She's back now, with a new TV show. (Speaking of movie romances, a shocking interview out yesterday revealed that Ryan Gosling wanted Rachel McAdams kicked off The Notebook set.)
– Two crew members had to be rescued when flooding in Texas overturned a 64-car Union Pacific freight train on its way to Houston early Saturday morning, NBC News reports. Navarro County, where the train was derailed around 3:30am local time, had received nearly 2 feet of rain in 24 hours, and more was expected with what's left of Hurricane Patricia heading into the area. According to the AP, a creek overflowed and washed away the train tracks. "[The crew] escaped the train after it stopped and swam to high ground," a Union Pacific spokesperson tells the AP. "A Navarro County rescue team was able to get in and pull them to safety. They are back safe on dry ground." Despite several rail cars and a locomotive ending up partially underwater, no injuries were reported in the train crash, NBC reports. The train—which is carrying cement or gravel—was still on its side hours later, with crews waiting until water levels drop before they attempt to remove it. After three days of heavy rains, Navarro County has carried out five dozen water rescues. According to the AP, only one person is missing so far in the recent Texas flooding. A man walking his dog in San Antonio fell into a flooded draining ditch and was swept away. His dog was later found safe.
– Bernie Sanders rolled out his vision to overhaul the health care system on Wednesday, one in which everybody would get their insurance from the government through Medicare instead of through their jobs or a private insurer. Sanders calls it the Medicare for All Act of 2017, but you'll also hear phrases such as "single payer" and "universal health care" used to describe it. One key part missing: details on how to pay for it, though Sanders plans to release a separate paper on that, reports the Wall Street Journal. Coverage: The basics: Per CNN, everybody gets a "Universal Medicare card," which would be used to cover all health bills, from surgeries to dental care to substance abuse treatment. Co-payments would go away, and people would pay premiums based on their incomes, reports the AP. Private insurers would still exist, but for things such as elective plastic surgery or, sometimes, to act as middlemen between the government and hospitals or doctors. A 'right': Sanders makes his case in an op-ed in the New York Times. "Guaranteeing health care as a right is important to the American people not just from a moral and financial perspective; it also happens to be what the majority of the American people want." 'Single payer': David Leonhardt of the New York Times has a Q&A on the fundamentals, including the basic question of what the term "single payer" means. In short, it "describes a system in which only one entity—the government—pays medical bills. If all Americans had Medicare rather than insurance through their jobs, it would be a single-payer system." Vox says Sanders' system is far more generous than single-payer plans in Canada and elsewhere. The cost: This could cost hundreds of billions of dollars more per year, per the Journal. Details are yet to come, but Sanders envisions a progressive tax increase, with the wealthy paying more income, capital gains, and estate taxes, reports Newsweek. The senator says higher taxes for families would be offset by the fact that they no longer have to buy insurance. Still, in regard to single-payer systems, "no one—including Sanders—has truly reckoned with how to pay for whatever system they might support," writes Mike Allen at Axios. Litmus test? By all accounts, the chances of it passing a GOP-controlled Congress are precisely 0%. But it's turning into a political litmus test of sorts for Democrats, reports the Washington Post. Sanders has the support of 15 Democratic senators so far, including all of those seen as potential 2020 presidential candidates. Co-sponsors include Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris. But many prominent Democrats are not on board, at least yet, including Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and those in tough re-election fights, reports Politico. The politics: No, this isn't going to pass, "but here's the big question," writes Perry Bacon Jr. at FiveThirtyEight. "Is it going to become one of the central goals of the Democratic Party and a defining feature of the campaign of whichever Democrat is the party's nominee in 2020?" As of now, this "seems very likely," as the Democratic party seems to be gravitating to the left. But Bacon lays out the political and policy reasons why Democrats might avoid "becoming the party of single payer." Relishing the fight: Republicans see a chance to pounce. "We welcome the Democrats' strategy of moving even further left," says Katie Martin, spokesperson for the Senate GOP's campaign organization, per the AP.
– Looks like David Oliver Relin's grief over Three Cups of Tea may have led to his suicide. Relin, who co-authored the book, was suffering from depression and experienced financial and emotional strain over allegations that the book contained lies, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Relin didn't deny the accusations publicly, but did hire a lawyer to defend against a lawsuit that claimed Relin and co-author Greg Mortenson had defrauded readers. A judge threw out the lawsuit last year. But Relin and Mortenson always had a strained relationship, and Relin never thought Mortenson deserved co-author credit, reports the New York Times. Last year, reports emerged that the authors had fabricated elements of the book, like an opening anecdote about Mortenson being rescued by villagers in Pakistan. Despite all this, NPR reports that Relin has a new book coming out next year: Second Suns, Two Doctors and Their Amazing Quest to Restore Sight and Save Lives, about doctors who perform cataract surgery in Third World countries.
– Uber and Lyft have made good on their threat to terminate operations in Austin as of Monday morning after a referendum didn't go their way. The companies spent more than $8 million—more than 50 times what their opponents spent—in a failed attempt to overturn the Texas city's requirement for fingerprint-based background checks, reports Reuters. Despite blanketing the area with ads, the companies lost Saturday's vote on Proposition 1 by 56% to 44%, reports Engadget, which notes that the companies were also fighting to be able to pick up passengers in traffic lanes. Mayor Steve Adler says he wants Uber and Lyft to stay in Austin, but the companies say they are "disappointed" and they need to "take a stand." Uber says the withdrawal will leave around 10,000 people out of work. The Uber and Lyft spend on the campaign worked out to around $223 for every vote they received, making it the most expensive campaign in city history. The previous record, Adler's 2014 election campaign, cost only a seventh of what they spent on the Proposition 1 fight. Uber and Lyft "decided they were going to make Austin an example to the nation," political consultant David Butts, who led the opposition campaign, Our City, Our Safety, Our Choice, tells the Austin American-Statesman. "And Austin made Uber an example to the nation." After the Austin vote, other cities are now expected to target Uber on the fingerprinting issue. (The company's drivers are now allowed to encourage tipping.)
– The ATM is getting a lesson in self-defense—from a bug. Researchers in Switzerland were inspired by the bombardier beetle, which shoots out a gas that can burn skin, the Atlantic reports. The beetle's mechanism works by mixing two chemicals normally kept separate in its abdomen. When under attack, the beetle combines the hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone to spray its attack gas. The researchers copied this system by putting hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide side-by-side, separated by only a lacquer. Break that lacquer, and you get the reaction. ATM makers could employ the principle in their machines by rigging them to ooze foam if someone begins tampering, say the researchers. Instead of burning acid, the ATMs could cover bills with dye and DNA, making the cash hard to use and easy to track. "Thieves may be able to run," notes Gizmodo, but "it's getting much harder for them to hide." In fact, the mechanism "could be used anywhere you find things that shouldn't be touched," a researcher tells ETH Zurich—whether to fight vandalism or keep animals off crops. (Click to read about another odd method of self-defense in the animal kingdom.)
– "I don't really remember the wedding part at all," says Briggs Fussy of his first trip down the aisle with Brittney Husbyn some 20 years ago. "I didn't even talk to her." Sound like your average Vegas wedding? It wasn't: They were just 3, serving as ring bearer and flower girl to Fussy's godmother in Minnesota. Now 22, the couple walked down the aisle a second time this weekend—this time as bride and groom—and Fussy's godmother couldn't be more pleased, reports ABC News. "Everybody loves it—especially my godmother, she takes all the credit," Fussy says. And this time around, the event was a little more memorable for the duo: "It was wonderful," Husbyn tells CNN. "As close to perfect as you can get." Husbyn was a bit of a stand-in at that 1995 wedding—"She needed a flower girl," Fussy says of his godmother, who worked with Husbyn's mom. The two didn't meet again until 2007, when "she sat in front of me in government class," says Fussy, and something about his unique name rang a bell from long ago. She asked her mom, then showed up with a photo from his godmother's wedding. "I started to laugh because it was the same one we had hanging in the hallway at home," says Fussy, "but I never knew who she was." Within two years they were dating, and the rest is the stuff of fairy tales. "I knew I was going to marry her," Fussy says. (This couple first kissed in 1938 but didn't marry until 2013.)
– "I believe you!!!" Mira Sorvino writes in an open letter to Dylan Farrow published by the HuffPost. The actor reached out to Woody Allen's daughter Wednesday to apologize for starring in her father's Mighty Aphrodite—for which she won an Oscar—while ignoring Farrow's claims of sexual abuse against Allen. Farrow was 7 when she said Allen sexually touched her, and a judge later found her claims credible, though Allen has continually denied the allegations, Vulture reports. Sorvino says she was aware of Farrow's claims when she made Mighty Aphrodite but dismissed them "as an outgrowth of a twisted custody battle" because of her lifelong love of Allen's work. "It is difficult to sever ties and denounce your heroes, your benefactors, whom you fondly admired and felt a debt of gratitude toward for your entire career’s existence," she writes. Sorvino says her experience opening up to Farrow's brother, reporter Ronan Farrow, about Harvey Weinstein made her want to learn more about Dylan Farrow's allegations, which led to her taking those allegations seriously. Sorvino says her love of Allen's work "does not excuse my turning a blind eye to your story simply because I wanted desperately for it not to be so." She says she won't work with Allen again, writing: "We are in a day and age when everything must be re-examined. This kind of abuse cannot be allowed to continue. If this means tearing down all the old gods, so be it." Sorvino isn't the first actor to denounce Allen. Greta Gerwig and David Krumholtz recently said they regret working with him. And Vanity Fair reports Ellen Page in November called doing an Allen movie "the biggest regret of my career."
– It seems Americans are safest from gun-related injuries and deaths when thousands of gun owners are busy attending the NRA's annual convention, Ars Technica reports. An analysis published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine found gun-related injuries dropped 20% nationwide during annual NRA conventions between 2007 and 2015 and 63% in the states hosting the conventions. These reductions were seen despite no corresponding reduction in crime rates. The biggest drop in gun injuries was for men living in states with high levels of gun ownership in the South and West. "The drop in gun injuries during these large meetings attended by thousands of well-trained gun owners seems to refute the idea that gun injuries stem solely from lack of experience and training in gun use," analysis author Dr. Jena Anupam tells CNN. Jennifer Baker, the director of public affairs for the NRA, says the analysis "is another example of when data and numbers fly in the face of logic and common sense." But the chair of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin tells Reuters it "passes the sniff test." "It makes sense that decreased exposure and decreased usage would result in fewer events," says Dr. Stephen Hargarten, who wasn't involved in the analysis. Anupam says it's possible NRA conventions have an outsize impact on gun injuries and deaths because attendees are the most intense users of guns. So it's good news for the safety of Americans then—at least for the few days of the year when there's an NRA convention—that Time is reporting a spike in NRA memberships in the wake of the Parkland shooting and ensuing conversation about gun control.
– The gunman who was killed—possibly by his own hand—at a Houston airport yesterday left a number of chilling posts on Facebook the day before, prompting CBS News to suggest he was planning a mass shooting. But a note he was carrying, discovered after he was shot, said he'd opted to drop a larger plot and kill himself, KHOU reports; the note cited a "monster within." Suspect Carnell Moore, 29, entered Bush Intercontinental Airport's Terminal B yesterday, where he sat down and shot two rounds at the ceiling with a pistol, CBS reports. That's when a Homeland Security special agent told him to drop his gun. Moore didn't, says a Homeland Security spokesman, per the Houston Chronicle. He turned to face the agent, who shot Moore just as he was shooting himself, CBS notes. A suitcase next to him held a loaded AR15 assault rifle; his car contained more ammunition. Among his earlier Facebook posts was one on Wednesday: "I recently had the chance of staring death in the face, and she was beautiful." Later that night, he wrote, "This Life Will Crash Tomorrow!"
– Just like a Starbucks customer can match her perc to her personality via a customized coffee, company baristas can now also "shine as individuals" thanks to the java giant's updated dress code. Per a company release posted Monday, baristas are now allowed to diverge somewhat from the black, white, and khaki attire that's been the Starbucks standard. Although the green aprons aren't going anywhere, baristas can now wear navy, brown, and gray clothing underneath, as long as it presents a "clean, neat, and professional appearance." Wild hair hues, previously forbidden, are also now welcome—though it has to be permanent or semi-permanent color and can't have glitter or spray in it for health reasons, Fortune notes—and employees can top off their tresses with beanies, fedoras, or other "suitable" headwear within the same color approved color scheme. The new dress designation, which will take effect in all stores in the US and Canada, offers "more of a hipster, average Joe coffee shop feel," US News reports—and it notes the chain could harness that feel to "broaden its fast casual, basic appeal." Business Insider notes that employees had long asked for similar concessions, especially regarding hair color, including via a petition with nearly 15,000 signatures that says, "Starbucks is [a] place where partners are unique and should be able to show their true selves." The code is expected to affect some 150,000 workers in the US. "This new dress code is what partners have in their closets," a Starbucks store manager in Manhattan says in the release. "It just makes it so much easier." Check out the company's new acceptable color palette here. (Starbucks also recently announced it will raise workers' wages.)
– Some men want to save our souls through religion. Two Georgia men arrested last week allegedly wanted to save them by shooting up an Alaska research facility that has been at the center of multiple conspiracy theories. Det. Michael Vickers tells the Alaska Dispatch News the men—30-year-old Michael Mancil and 22-year-old James Dryden Jr.—claim "that God told them to go and blow this machine up that kept souls, so souls could be released." Some conspiracy theorists believe the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, can control people's minds and the weather. Vickers tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mancil believes it keeps people's souls from getting to heaven. Last week's arrest of Mancil and Dryden started with an investigation into Mancil for allegedly dealing drugs, WALB reports. Georgia authorities believe the men were bound for Alaska when they were arrested last Thursday in South Georgia. Sheriff Doyle Wooten says the men had an "arsenal": four AR-15 rifles, four handguns, another rifle, thousands of rounds of ammo, and two flak jackets. Vickers tells the Dispatch News the men planned "to try to find a scientist, to steal his car and ID badge to gain access." A spokesperson for the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which took over HAARP from the government in 2014, says they've had threats before but nothing "quite this extreme." HAARP researches Earth's ionosphere, which has an impact on communication and navigation systems.
– The bodies of those who succumb to the Himalayan mountains likely stay on the slopes forever—it's often too difficult, dangerous, and costly to retrieve them. That fact didn't stop Steve Aisthorpe of Scotland from his recent mission on the Nepal-Tibet border: to get "closure" on the fate of Kristinn Runarsson and Thorsteinn Gudjonsson, friends and fellow climbers who vanished during a 1988 expedition with him. Aisthorpe, who the Guardian notes found out just a few weeks ago his friends' bodies had been seen at the end of a glacier on Pumori mountain, recalls on the Church of Scotland's website how his group started as four climbers in October of that year, though one of the men fell ill early on and dropped out. Aisthorpe, then 26, came down with the flu, and so he climbed back down on Oct. 16, 1988, to seek medical attention. When Aisthorpe realized he was in no condition to attempt the climb, he sent a message back to Runarsson and Gudjonsson, both 27 and from Iceland: "Feel free" to go for the summit without him. The two men were never seen alive again after Oct. 18. When Aisthorpe finally felt well enough to head back to the last camp where he'd left his friends, "my calls echoed from the rocks and ice before fading. … the silence was palpable." Fast-forward 30 years, when an American climber spotted their bodies just last month; a group of local climbers brought the remains down. Among those at the cremation ceremony in Kathmandu for the men was Runarsson’s 30-year-old son; Runarsson’s fiancee had been pregnant when the father of her child was lost to Pumori. More on their tale here. (Two highly experienced climbers died on El Capitan over the summer.)
– President Trump probably won't be sending out celebratory tweets about this: Alec Baldwin says he will indeed be back on Saturday Night Live in the fall to reprise his presidential impersonation. "Yeah, we're going to fit that in," he tells CNN. "I think people have enjoyed it." However, Baldwin says a busy schedule means he won't be appearing as Trump as frequently as he did last season. He likened it to viewers getting "celery sticks" instead of a full meal. Some thought his last appearance was a retirement of sorts from the SNL impersonation. The news comes after Spike TV taped a tribute to Baldwin on Sunday featuring some big names. Two notable samples, via Vanity Fair: Bill Clinton: "I wouldn’t know an alternative fact if it hit me in the face. But I do know this: I first met Alec Baldwin more than 20 years ago. Even before that, I was a huge fan of his work in the movies." Ireland Baldwin, daughter: "I’m here to roast this big old ham I call my father. Speaking of pigs, some of you may remember me as that thoughtless little pig that you read about. That was a decade ago, but my dad and I are in a much better place now. He would never say something like that because I’m 6-2 and I would kick his ass."
– The family of an unarmed black motorist shot in the back by a South Carolina police officer has been given a settlement that lawyers say is "historic"—and the biggest in recent cases of its kind. North Charleston's city council voted unanimously on Thursday to settle with Walter Scott's family for $6.5 million, the New York Times reports. A city attorney tells the Post and Courier that they're proud they could "settle a case of this magnitude without a brick being thrown, without a fire being set, and without a lawsuit being filed." He says the city took the $6.4 million settlement in the Freddie Gray case and the $5.9 million settlement in the Eric Garner case into account during negotiations. As part of the settlement, Scott's family has agreed not to sue the city or its employees, the Times notes. The city lawyer says that while the payment is large, there was the potential for "a very large verdict" if the case went to court because there's video of the shooting and former officer Michael Slager has been charged with murder. "It's historic," an attorney for the Scott family tells the Washington Post. "It sets a good precedent for a city not tolerating this sort of behavior from police officers." Anthony Scott, Walter Scott's brother, says the settlement ensures that Scott's four children will be taken care of financially, and a portion of it will be donated to the Red Cross to help flood victims in the state, the Post and Courier reports. (Slager is in jail awaiting trial for the April 4 shooting, and he says video of the incident doesn't tell the whole story.)
– Its website proclaims Kennywood "Pittsburgh's best amusement park." Robert Trostle would likely append "for contracting an eye-eating parasite" to the end of that. That's what the Squirrel Hill man is claiming happened to him during a July 2 visit to the Pennsylvania park, per a negligence lawsuit filed Tuesday. It says Trostle and wife Krystsina opted to ride the Raging Rapids water ride, which is supposed to mimic a white-water rafting trip, even after noticing the ride's water was "dirty, stagnant and sludge-like" and its waterfall wasn't running. The ride typically splashes riders at the end, reports TribLive, and in Trostle's case, he said the water hit his left eye—and then the trouble allegedly began. Per the suit, the eye reddened, became sensitive to light, and itchy and painful, reports the Post-Gazette. He was initially diagnosed with acute conjunctivitis. Antibiotics didn't rectify the situation, and on July 14 he was diagnosed with microsporidia keratitis. The suit says microsporidia is a "harmful parasite that eats away at the cornea of the eye," and alleges it was in the ride's water. It's also still in Trostle's eye, he says: Though he underwent an "extremely painful" surgery that involved scraping the parasite out with a scalpel, he claims the parasite reached a "second level" of his eye where surgery can't reach it, leaving him with vision problems and discomfort. A rep for the park wouldn't comment on the suit directly but says, "Safety is the top priority of everything we do." WTAE reports Trostle is seeking at least $35,000 in damages. (This 18-year-old died after being exposed to an amoeba on a rafting trip.)
– As Texas still deals with the devastation from Harvey, another weather system churning in the Atlantic, and moving west toward the US, has some worried. CNN reports on Irma, currently a Category 3 hurricane that experienced "rapid intensification" from Wednesday into Thursday, meaning its wind speed ramped up at least 35mph in that period—though the National Hurricane Center on Thursday noted the "remarkable" increase measured 58mph. A National Hurricane Center alert issued early Friday pegs maximum sustained winds at 115mph, with higher gusts. The storm is expected to approach the Caribbean by Tuesday or so as a Category 4 storm, then possibly the US—though meteorological models with wildly different scenarios show it's too early to make any definitive predictions on where the storm will land. Irma is what's called a "Cape Verde" hurricane, meaning one that forms off the coast of Africa then shoots across the Atlantic; CNN notes these storm systems can turn into particularly powerful ones (Hurricane Hugo is one example). What's emboldening Irma is a lack of the "hurricane kryptonite" known as wind shear, which often acts to tamp down hurricanes. A powerful high-pressure ridge is pushing Irma westward and keeping wind shear low. What one of the models is showing that has some concerned, per Reuters: Irma could head straight into the Gulf of Mexico, which could be bad news for areas still struggling after Harvey. "All interests in the eastern Caribbean will need to monitor the progress of this evolving and dangerous hurricane," an AccuWeather hurricane expert notes, reiterating he can't say "with certainty" how the US will be affected.
– Conservationists are expressing outrage after an official in Germany ordered hunters to shoot the first wild bison seen in the country in more than two centuries. Calling the killing a criminal offense, the World Wildlife Fund says it will file charges against the official who gave the order, the Local reports. “After more than 250 years a wild bison had been spotted again in Germany and all the authorities could think to do is shoot it," says Chris Heinrich, a WWF board member. The bison was seen by the river Oder near the eastern town of Lebus on Wednesday. Thinking the beast was a threat to public safety, a local official sent a pair of hunters to take care of it. It was unclear if any of them knew the European bison is classed as a "vulnerable" species and on Germany’s list of "strongly protected animals." The victim was likely a bull that had wandered across the border from Poland from its home in a national park. While they may be the continent's largest land mammals, weighing up to 2,200 pounds, the bison are not considered dangerous. If they were, says the local environmental minister, then "half of Poland, where the animal is a national symbol, would have to be declared a danger zone." Hunted to near extinction in Europe in the early 20th century, the bison are making a comeback thanks to conservationists, with more than 1,200 now roaming around Poland, per the Telegraph, which published a video showing bison fleeing, then standing up to, a pack of wolves. (The US bison is the country's first national mammal.)
– Earlier this month, AOL agreed to sell Microsoft 925 patents and patent applications for just north of $1 billion; now another tech giant is getting a piece of the action. Facebook has pledged to buy some 650 of those patents, or $550 million worth. In the deal, Facebook also gets a license to Microsoft's portion of the portfolio. According to Facebook's announcement, Microsoft ends up with 275 AOL patents, plus licenses to Facebook's AOL patents and the 300-ish patents AOL didn't sell. "Today’s agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction," says a Microsoft rep. For Facebook, it's "another significant step in our ongoing process of building an intellectual property portfolio to protect Facebook’s interests over the long term," says a spokesman. What do outsiders say? "The deal is a further sign of the growing importance of stockpiling patents in the arsenal of any big technology company," writes Nick Wingfield for the New York Times. "It also shows how Microsoft and Facebook have gravitated increasingly closer to each other in large part because of a common enemy: Google." Writing for ZDNet, Emil Protalinski says it's actually all about Yahoo, not Google. "With public companies like Yahoo targeting it for patent infringement, the social networking giant has stepped up its game. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that AOL and Yahoo are such similar companies. This is exactly why Facebook is so interested in AOL’s patents: a lot of them cover technologies that Facebook uses, as well technologies used by companies that want to sue Facebook."
– It's going to be harder to salivate over the precious hijinks of My Little Pony for a weird conglomeration of "Bronies"—men addicted to the exploits of the syrupy animals. Hasbro has shut down the website that offered downloads of My Little Pony cartoons, featuring the exploits of the tricked-out ponies based on the company's classic toy. "If you think bronyism sounds like something only a serious pervert living in his mother's basement would be into, you're only about 30% correct," nickers Gawker. Some bronies do enjoy seeing their favorite characters in a pastel sex haze. But others are actually drawn to the heartwarming messages of the stories, and bridle at any suggestion they might be pony-kinky. Sweden-based PonyArchive.org was kind of the bible of bronies everywhere, offering high-quality online episodes, but Hasbro has now succeeded in shutting it down. Operators were stunned. "Since we are merely spreading friendship and magic, we feel that we're protected by princess Celestia herself," noted one operator on Brony News. Neigh.
– A Canadian man who smuggled $145,000 in gold out of the country's mint is on his way to prison—and will probably be searched extremely thoroughly on the way in. Leston Lawrence, found guilty in November of smuggling 22 gold "pucks" out of the Royal Canadian Mint in his rectum, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay his former employers the full market value of the stolen gold, the CBC reports. Ontario Judge Peter Doody ruled that if the 35-year-old can't come up with the money within three years of getting out of prison, he'll have to go back behind bars for another 30 months. Lawrence—who set off metal detectors at work many times but always passed searches with a handheld wand—was convicted of conveying gold out of the mint, breach of trust by a public official, and possession of property obtained by crime, reports the BBC. Prosecutors said he used the $100,000 or so he made from selling the gold to Ottawa Gold Buyers to buy a house in Jamaica and a boat in Florida. Investigators, first alerted by a suspicious bank teller, found Vaseline and rubber gloves in Lawrence's work locker. In his safe deposit box at a bank, they discovered four unsold gold pucks, which had about the same diameter as a golf ball and matched the size of the ladle Lawrence used to test gold at the mint, Radio Canada International reports. (You'll never guess how this teen tried to smuggle a gun.)
– A group of men in their 20s in Washington state has posted a Craigslist ad seeking a generic dad to grill burgers and hotdogs for a gathering set for the Saturday of Father's Day weekend in mid-June, the AP reports. Qualifications include a minimum of 18 years of experience as a dad and 10 years of grilling experience. The successful dad must bring his own grill, but burgers and hotdogs will be provided. Dane Anderson tells KHQ-TV that the young men in Spokane don't live with their fathers and, the ad says, none are prepared to fill the role of barbecue dad. Additional requirements include talking about dad things like lawnmowers, building your own deck, and musician Jimmy Buffett. Payment is food and beer. Anderson says several potential barbecue dads have responded.
– Some 110 years after the first Model T rolled off the line, Ford has decided to start phasing out car sales. The company announced Wednesday that it "will not invest in next generations of traditional Ford sedans for North America." In a financial release, Ford said that it plans to transition to just two cars over the next few years: the Ford Mustang and the new Ford Active, a "crossover" vehicle to be released next year. Ford currently sells the Fiesta, Focus, Fusion, C-Max, Mustang, and Taurus sedans and coupes in North America reports TechCrunch, which notes that the Lincoln sedans are also expected to vanish. Ford hasn't said exactly when the Taurus and other models will be phased out, but the company's statement says almost 90% of its North America portfolio will be trucks, utilities, and commercial vehicles by 2020. Auto industry experts say the move is a bold one, but not totally unexpected, given the continuing shift among consumers away from cars and toward SUVs. " Ford’s announcement to pretty much get out of the car business ... comes as no surprise," says analyst Michelle Krebs, per the Detroit Free Press. "Ford’s car sales have been dismal for the past couple of years, and there’s no end in sight to the decline of traditional cars."
– Troops headed for the US-Mexico border aren't just aiming to help prevent migrant entry—they have unregulated militias and criminal organizations on their minds, too. According to planning documents obtained by Newsweek, the Department of Defense is aware of nearly 200 armed militias already operating along the southwest border. "Reported incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments," reads an intelligence assessment for the Pentagon by the Joint Force Land Component Commander Threat Working Group. "They operate under the guise of citizen patrols supporting CBP [Customs and Border Protection] primarily between POEs [Points of Entry]." The documents analyze four points of entry including one in Brownsville, Texas, and another in the San Ysidro district of San Diego, Calif. The assessment jibes with media reports that militia members are already heading for the border, the Washington Post reports. They include the Texas Minutemen, who apparently have 100 armed volunteers going to the Rio Grande. "I can’t put a number on it," says Shannon McGauley, who leads the group. "My phone’s been ringing nonstop for the last seven days." Meanwhile, members of another group—the Patriots of the Constitution militia—arrived last week in Columbus, New Mexico, per the Albuquerque Journal. Yet the military planners expect the migrant caravan to reduce in size and contain "no terrorist infiltration," per the documents. They also say the migrants could trigger a "balloon effect" on smuggling if traffickers take advantage of the diversion. (While providing troops, the Pentagon refused one request from Trump.)
– Slimming down didn't lead to longevity for Manuel Uribe: The Mexican, who topped the scales at 1,230 pounds in 2006 when he was the world's heaviest man, has died at the age of 48, the AP reports. He had slimmed down to around 867 pounds in recent years but remained bedridden at his mother's home in Monterrey. Officials say he was taken to the hospital—by crane—earlier this month because of an abnormal heartbeat. Uribe made the news in 2008, when he got married for the second time. He left the house—but not his bed—for the ceremony, which he was transported to in a flatbed truck. He got married for the first time in 1987, when he was living in Dallas and selling tacos on a street corner, Fox reports. Uribe said he had always been chubby, but his weight began to balloon in 1992 and he had been bedridden since 2002. No cause of death has been confirmed, but he is believed to have suffered from liver problems as well as heart trouble.
– Paul Ryan is making not running for president look a lot like running for president. Time reports the speaker of the House released a 45-second video Friday that "plays like a campaign ad." In the video, titled Politics These Days, Ryan gives a speech lamenting that the GOP—and politics in general—is currently trying to divide people rather than unite them, according to ABC News. Rumors that Ryan will seek the Republican presidential nomination at a contested convention have dogged him for months, and Time states "this quasi-campaign video from Ryan will only add fuel to the fire." Ryan says he isn't interested in being the Republican nominee, even going so far as to threaten legal action against a group that sought to get him the nomination. "I think you need to run for president if you’re going to be president," Time quotes him as saying. He says even if offered, he won't accept the nomination at the convention. But he's said something similar in the past. A month before he was sworn in as speaker of the House, he said he wouldn't even be a candidate for the position. Ryan, one of the most popular figures the party has, will also chair the Republican National Convention.
– A bright spot in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence: A dog name Soshe will be reunited with her owner after being trapped in a flooded house in Pender, NC, for almost a week, People reports. Soshe's owner, stuck in another city, got in touch with the Humane Society of Missouri's Disaster Response Team, which was on the scene in North Carolina, asking for help, per KHOU. Twice, traveling by boat, a Humane Society team attempted to locate Soshe's house, but the floodwaters were too high. On the third attempt, they located the house late last month, having to paddle half a mile after their boat's engine broke down. They heard a dog barking inside the house. Two rescuers forced the door open and found Soshe sitting on a couch that was floating in the living room. In addition to saving Soshe, according to KHOU, the Missouri Humane Society team rescued several other dogs, chickens, and horses during its 10-day deployment. Check out video of Soshe's rescue. (One woman helped save 27 animals after Florence and got busted.)
– Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will plead guilty to the murder of 16 Afghan villagers, his lawyer tells CNN, in a move to dodge the death penalty. Lawyer John Henry Browne says military prosecutors have approved the plea, but a rep for Joint Base Lewis-McChord wouldn't say whether the matter was settled, the New York Times reports. A plea hearing is set for Wednesday, the rep said. Browne says Bales was "crazed" and "broken" at the time of the attack, but he didn't qualify for a legal insanity defense, per the AP. Afghan villagers are furious at the possibility Bales might not face capital punishment. "A prison sentence doesn't mean anything," says a relative of several victims. "I know we have no power now. But I will become stronger, and if he does not hang, I will have my revenge." Added a man who had 11 relatives killed in the attack: "For this one thing, we would kill 100 American soldiers."
– Emerging from a mountainside 4,600 feet above sea level, two giant hands appear to hold a thin gold thread. Only it's not a thread at all, but a nearly 500-foot-long bridge. Cau Vang or the Golden Bridge, which recently opened in Vietnam's Ba Na Hills after about a year of construction, is the latest architectural feat to make waves around the world. As Reuters reports, it's "as if the mountain itself has sprouted limbs" of weathered stone, dotted with what appears to be green moss. They were designed to mimic the "hands of Gods, pulling a strip of gold out of the land," says Vu Viet Anh of TA Landscape Architecture in Ho Chi Minh City, which designed the new pedestrian bridge in Thien Thai Garden. Per the BBC, a second, connecting bridge of silver, to resemble a god's strand of hair, is also in the works. The stone-colored hands made of steel mesh and fiberglass appear to hold the golden pedestrian bridge, whose supports are painted green to blend in with the treetops. "It creates a walkway in the sky, among the foggy and fairy-like lands of Ba Na mountain," says Anh, who was nonetheless surprised by the international response. Per Reuters and My Modern Met, the bridge lined with purple flowers has already hosted "scores of tourists" and a bridal fashion show since opening in June. Many more visitors are expected, as the Ba Na Hills area drew more than 2.7 million visitors last year. The attraction, which offers majestic views of Da Nang, is apparently worth the trip. "It makes me feel like humans can do anything," one tourist tells Reuters. The Guardian has photos of other unusual pedestrian walkways. (Another modern marvel: the largest cruise ship to ever set sail.)
– Got the blues? You probably aren't seeing blues clearly. That's the takeaway from a new study that finds how a person views the color blue may actually depend on mood, reports Medical Daily. Not all colors were affected in the same way. Researchers at the University of Rochester asked 129 college students to watch either a stand-up comedy clip or the scene from The Lion King in which Mufasa dies, then recorded the participants' moods, per the Washington Post. Next, participants took a color accuracy test in which they had to look at 48 color patches that had been desaturated to look nearly gray, then identify whether each was red, yellow, green, or blue. People who were feeling down in the dumps performed worse than those who were amused. In other words, the data supports "the conventional wisdom that people's emotions influence how colorful the world looks to them," the researchers say. However, the sad group performed poorly only when quizzed about colors on what researchers call the blue-yellow axis. They could identify colors on the red-green axis just as well as others—perhaps due to the evolutionary need to see red as a sign of anger, reports Time. The results are "a reminder that our experience of the world is not as immediate and objective as we’d like to believe," observes the Post. Researchers suggest a sad mood messes up the ability of the neuron transmitter dopamine to process information about blue-yellow colors. (This woman sees 100 times more colors than you.)
– When officials decided to vent radioactive steam from one of the damaged nuclear power plants in Japan, they knew it could result in a hydrogen explosion. And, even though an explosion is exactly what happened, the decision was still the best option for avoiding a total meltdown, the AP reports in an interesting piece that traces the chain of events from Friday, when the earthquake damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, to this morning, when a total of six reactors were placed under a state of emergency. More from Japan: The estimated death toll is more than 10,000 as of today, with the prime minister calling this disaster Japan’s worst crisis since World War II, the AP reports. The confirmed dead number more than 1,800. Nuclear plant operators dumped sea water into two reactors in a last-ditch attempt to keep temperatures down, as officials warned a second explosion could occur, but would not pose a health threat. Experts confirm to Reuters that “this is not a serious public health issue at the moment,” and that the winds will likely carry contamination to the Pacific, where it will not threaten any other nations. The next crisis facing Japan could be an economic one, Reuters reports. Automakers, electronics firms, and oil refineries have been forced to suspend operations at some of their factories, and many companies are not sure how soon they will be back up and running. Even so, experts say the economy could bounce back in months. Click for more on Japan.
– As lawmakers scramble to strike a last-minute deal that would allow the government to keep borrowing money, Fitch Ratings issued a shot across the bow this afternoon: It put the nation's AAA on a "negative" watch, reports MarketWatch, meaning a downgrade is possible unless things get resolved soon. "The prolonged negotiations over raising the debt ceiling (following the episode in August 2011) risks undermining confidence in the role of the US dollar as the preeminent global reserve currency, by casting doubt over the full faith and credit of the US." (Full text here.) The nation hits its debt-ceiling limit on Thursday. For the record, Fitch and Moody's still have the US at the highest AAA rating, though Standard & Poor's downgraded its rating during the 2011 crisis, notes Business Insider.
– To mark her move to a new studio, Chelsea Handler last night … got naked in a shower with Sandra Bullock. Bullock took the opportunity to slap Handler around a bit, give her some career advice, and chide her for peeing in the shower. "We don't make pee pee in showers anymore," Bullock informed her. "We make pee pee in the potty." But, the Sun reports, Handler later revealed that Bullock didn't go totally nude for the sketch, and only Handler was "really naked." Handler had earlier expressed her excitement that the new studio includes a shower in her office, the New York Daily News reports. "I’m most excited about having a shower in my office, so that I no longer have to shower downstairs and then walk by the audience lineup in a robe," Handler said. "Yeah, I’m not joking, that’s what happened." Later on the last night's episode of Chelsea Lately, Jennifer Aniston appeared and actually teared up a bit while talking about her engagement to Justin Theroux, the Sun adds. "I just got verklempt," Jen said. Handler is apparently a Theroux fan—she called him "the greatest guy ever." (She also teased Aniston about showing her nipples, noting, "Every time Jen comes on the show there's always something when her nipples are very, very pronounced.")
– First, the words of caution: "There is absolutely no evidence at this point in time that the child is Madeleine McCann," says an Australian police commissioner. But the body of a child, found near the South Australia town of Wynarka and thus far unidentified, has led the detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine to reach out to their Australian counterparts. Here's why: The remains, contained in a suitcase that also held a quilt and some clothing, are thought to be those of a fair-haired girl, between the ages of 2 and 4, who was killed some time after the beginning of 2007. Madeleine vanished at age 3 on May 3, 2007. NBC News reports police said the child was likely white, with hair about 7 inches long. The Australian Associated Press reported the skeletal remains were found on July 15; it's thought the suitcase had been left along the rural highway four to six weeks prior, with the child having been killed before that. British law enforcement officials confirm they have made contact, but neither side sounds overly optimistic. It's "highly unlikely" the remains are those of Madeleine, says Detective Superintendent Des Bray, per the Guardian. Adds the commissioner, to suggest the child is Madeleine "at this point in time would purely be speculating to get attention." What they are zeroing in on, per the Advertiser: that homemade quilt. "The quilt is really important to the investigation," says Bray. Investigators believe a portion of the quilt fabric, which shows colored musical notes against a black background, was made in New York around 2008.
– William Hager watched his 78-year-old wife, Carolyn, suffer from medical problems, including arthritis, for 15 years. But when the couple could no longer afford her medication, an ominous idea popped into his head, per CNN. Authorities say Hager, 86, called police around 1pm Monday, allegedly telling responding deputies, "I have bad news. I shot my wife at 7:30 this morning. I want to apologize I didn't call earlier. I wanted to tell my kids what happened first," reports WPBF. He said he shot his wife in the head as she slept because she previously said she wanted to die, was in pain, and couldn't afford medication, per an affidavit. "He felt that he was at a point that this was his only course of action," says the chief deputy in Port St. Lucie, Fla. Hager was booked in St. Lucie County Jail and charged with first-degree premeditated murder. A neighbor tells WPTV that Carolyn Hager had complained about "excruciating" back pain a few days earlier, but "they seemed like such a nice couple … so it was quite a shock." Another neighbor says she faced a similar situation when her husband couldn't afford his medication and asked her to shoot him, but she couldn't. "He suffered so badly and there's nothing you can do," she says, noting prescription medications should be more affordable. The Hagers filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and William took a job at Sears to help pay for Carolyn's medications; it isn't clear if he knew a local clinic helps people pay for medications not covered by insurance.
– As far as discoveries go, this one is literally huge: An aquifer holding more than 100 billion tons of water that covers an area larger than West Virginia has been discovered beneath Greenland's snow-covered ice sheet. And it caught the researchers who stumbled on it in 2011 off-guard, with lead study author Richard Forster telling LiveScience, "We thought we had an understanding of how things work in Greenland, but here is this entire storage system of water we didn't realize was there." As for the "where," the aquifer was identified in the southeast part of the country, ranging from 15 to 160 feet beneath the surface, whose snow acts as an insulator, keeping the water liquid year-round. Forster gives this great description of how the water is stored, per the BBC: "in the air space between the ice particles, like the juice in a snow cone." But the find has raised plenty of questions, like: How old is the water? Does it stay where it is, or trickle to the sea ... or rush toward the sea in a flood? In a separate study, the team determined that if released, the aquifer's water could push global sea levels up 0.015 inches. And in terms of sea level rise, LiveScience explains that scientists have long assumed that most of the water produced in the country's annual surface melt streams toward the ocean, or eventually refroze; the aquifer is essentially a "new hiding place," one that researchers can study to get a better grasp on the annual melt. Says Forster, "We need to understand it more completely if we are to predict sea level rise."
– Democratic operative Hilary Rosen set off a Twitter tempest yesterday when she said on CNN that Ann Romney has "actually never worked a day in her life," making her a poor adviser on women's economic issues. The backlash was fierce, Politico reports. Ann Romney joined Twitter to respond, using her first tweet to say, "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work." But the condemnation was bipartisan; Obama campaign director Jim Messina said he "could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly," while David Axelrod said he was "disappointed" by her comments. But Rosen hasn't backed down. "Spare me the faux anger," she wrote on the Huffington Post. She explained that she had nothing against stay-at-home moms, but "that is NOT a choice that most women have in America today."
– A 10-pound tumor with the potential to suffocate or break the neck of the Cuban 14-year-old whose face it was covering was successfully removed in Miami, but then things took a turn. The Miami Herald reports Emanuel Zayas died Friday night due to kidney and lung complications at the Holtz Children's Hospital. Emanuel suffered from polyostotic fibrous dysplasia, which USA Today reports spurs the body to grow something akin to scar tissue instead of bone; his family initially thought the growth, which the Washington Post reports surfaced when he was 11, was a pimple. His parents sought help for years, but Cuban doctors were too skittish over the risks of surgery. The family finally secured a humanitarian visa. It allowed him to fly to Miami on Nov. 27 and undergo surgery Jan. 13 at the hands of Dr. Robert Marx, who heads up maxillofacial surgery at the University of Miami Health System and had once removed a woman's 16-pound facial tumor. Said Marx in a statement: "After visiting Emanuel last night and observing a ray of hope from his pupillary reflexes and the muscle tone of his face, I was informed this morning that his condition had turned grave. ... The physiological stress of the surgery was apparently too much for his compromised anatomy. Our hopes of saving his life, and with that allowing him a better quality of life, were not realized." Marx says the teen's body will be donated to science by the family, in hopes of learning more about the condition.
– An anonymous couple in Minneapolis just raised the bar in a big way for all those dropping spare change into Salvation Army kettles. They quietly dropped in a check for $500,000 outside a Cub Foods store, reports the Pioneer Press. "The check did clear and was deposited in the bank,” a Salvation Army spokeswoman tells Reuters. “They feel very strongly about the gift being anonymous.” It shatters the previous record for a local kettle donation of $25,000, notes the Minneapolis Star Tribune. No word yet on whether it's a national record as well. “You get to a point in life where it’s time to take care of others, the way you were taken care of,” explain the donors in a statement released by the charity. In it, they spoke of relying on discarded grocery store food in their younger days. Also, one of the pair's fathers served in World War I and spoke fondly of the Salvation Army's delivery of coffee and doughnuts to the troops. "We are simply stunned and honored to have received such a generous gift," says Maj. Jeff Strickler, the charity's commander in the Twin Cities. (A nonprofit for the blind got a surprise $125 million gift from a recluse.)
– Florida is facing a "running nightmare" with two people on a killing spree that has so far left three women dead and another in critical condition. William "Billy" Boyette and Mary Craig Rice are wanted in the Jan. 31 murders of 30-year-old Alicia Greer—who was in a relationship with Boyette—and 39-year-old Jacqueline Jeanette Moore at a hotel in Milton. Police believe the suspects then drove to Lillian, Ala., killed 52-year-old Peggy Broz in her front yard, and fled with her vehicle on Friday. In the latest incident, the pair are accused of shooting 28-year-old Kayla Crocker and stealing her vehicle in Pensacola on Monday. Crocker was taken to a hospital in critical condition but is expected to survive, reports the Pensacola News Journal. Authorities say Boyette, 44, and Rice, 38, have managed to elude capture by staying "very mobile." They're believed to have camped in wooded areas; two photos circulated by police show the pair walking in woods with supplies and an apparent handgun, reports WKRG. "What we are experiencing is a running nightmare, quite honestly," a police rep says, noting all victims apart from Greer appear to have been selected at random. Another adds Boyette—accused of stabbing and strangling a girlfriend in 2015—has told "many, many people that he will not be taken alive." Authorities "take those threats and those admonitions very seriously," the rep says. Police say the couple are armed and dangerous and should not be approached.
– Seth MacFarlane won't be back at the Oscars next year for an encore: Instead, Ellen DeGeneres is returning as host for a second time, reports the Huffington Post. DeGeneres herself confirmed via jokey tweet: "It's official: I'm hosting the #Oscars! I'd like to thank @TheAcademy, my wife Portia and, oh dear, there goes the orchestra." DeGeneres hosted previously in 2007 and earned an Emmy nod in the process, notes the Academy's news release via the Hollywood Reporter. The show airs on March 2. (IndieWire is already getting a jump on predictions.)
– "We will take revenge for each and every drop of our children's blood," Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed as funerals began for 132 children slaughtered in a Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar yesterday. Sharif said there would be three days of national mourning for the massacre at a military-run school, in which 10 staff members were killed, as well as all seven attackers, the BBC reports. Sharif also said he would reinstate the death penalty for terrorism. More: The attack was condemned worldwide, with Pakistan's archrival India, whose president called the attack "a senseless act of unspeakable brutality," observing two minutes of silence in schools, reports the AP. Even the Taliban in Afghanistan spoke out against the atrocity, calling it "un-Islamic." There are signs that the attackers—some of whom reportedly spoke in Arabic to each other—had intended to stay for a long siege, with some of them carrying stores of food, the New York Times reports. A security official, however, says they never attempted to take any hostages. "They were there to kill, and this is what they did," he says. One official tells the Guardian that the attackers accessed the school via an unguarded back wall. They may have parked their vehicle next to it and then just climbed on the roof of the vehicle and over the wall. A Pakistani Taliban spokesman says the attack was revenge for a military offensive against the militants in areas including North Waziristan, where he says hundreds of innocent people have been killed. The country's defense minister tells CNN that the country will not back off from the offensive, but that the slaughter is another example of the sacrifices Pakistan has made in its battle against the militants. "The smaller the coffin, the heavier it is to carry," he says. "It's a very, very tragic day."
– It's got to be better than smoking in public, but President Obama's gum-chewing habit keeps getting him in trouble. The latest kerfuffle came in India, where Obama was watching a parade; reports noted his chewing of what was likely Nicorette. That incident has now made a number of headlines, with Politico reporting that the chewing occurred multiple times during the event as well as when Obama greeted PM Narendra Modi; the Times of India called it an "ungainly sight." The gum prompted some commentary on Twitter, noted by the Times. "Seriously—gum during a formal parade?" asked author Shobhaa De, while filmmaker Shekhar Kapur posted: "Glad to see @BarackObama is so human." Previous such moments have occurred in France and China, Vocativ reports, pointing to a Washington Post article from last year which noted, per earlier reports, that it was a doctor-recommended activity. Amid Obama's "lifelong struggle" to get off cigarettes, his physician recommended he stick with the chewing.
– Pope Benedict XVI begins a trip to Mexico and Cuba today, but Mexicans searching for information about his visit may find Anonymous standing in the way. The Mexican branch of the hacking collective has crashed at least two websites for the papal visit, claiming that the visit is a political ploy to win support for the conservative National Action party ahead of the July 1 presidential election, the AP reports. The hackers released a video saying the visit is costing Mexicans money that should be spent on the poor. In Rome, the pope was seen using a cane in public for the first time as he boarded his flight to Mexico this morning. This is his first visit to the country and he is widely expected to address its brutal drug war, NPR reports. In the city of Guanajuato, his first stop, the local archbishop has urged people not to fear drug violence during the visit. An offshoot of the La Familia cartel hung welcome banners displaying a friendly message: It won't attack rivals while the pontiff is in town.
– The female member of the fugitive siblings glorified as the Dougherty Gang doesn't sound too upset she caught a bullet in the thigh: "I pointed the gun at the cop," Lee Grace Dougherty told authorities, according to KMGH in Denver. "I deserved to get shot. The cop said drop the gun." The comments were revealed in court affidavits as she and brothers Ryan and Dylan made their first court appearances by video. They are each being held on $1.25 million bond and will eventually face a long list of charges from their cross-country dash. As for firing at pursuing Colorado troopers with an AK-47: "We weren't trying to hurt anyone, we just wanted them to get back," she told investigators. "They were way back, and we could barely see them. We were getting shot at, then we wrecked." An investigator inserted a note in the file saying police never fired at the car and suggesting that Dougherty confused the sound of the car running over spiked speed sticks with gunfire, notes CNN. She claimed she didn't do the shooting (at least in Colorado) and that Ryan was driving, and "a person can't drive and shoot at the same time." Which means big sis ever so tactfully pointed the finger at Dylan. (Click to read what mom thinks about the whole ordeal.)
– Synthetic pot is causing a bloody mess in the Chicago area. "What we are seeing is people are coming in with various types of bleeding,” CBS Chicago quotes the chief medical officer of the Illinois Department of Public Health as saying. “Whether it’s nose bleeds, bleeding from their gums, bleeding in their urine. Very severe bleeding that’s prompting them to go to the emergency room.” Officials have reported 22 people taken to the ER with severe bleeding connected to synthetic cannabinoid products since March 7, the Chicago Tribune reports. In addition to the above symptoms, fake weed users are bleeding from their eyes and ears, as well as coughing up blood. Officials say there have so far been no deaths connected with the synthetic pot. While synthetic pot can present a host of health risks, severe bleeding is not a known side effect. “This bleeding is not expected, at least in such a significant population so quickly,” says one area ER physician. The director of toxicology for the NorthShore University HealthSystem tells NBC Chicago the tainted synthetic pot—which is typically made of hundreds of chemicals—could contain some sort of blood thinner or anticoagulant. Patients have reported getting synthetic pot from dealers, friends, and convenience stores, and officials are trying to identify a single product linking the cases. Officials seized some synthetic pot—also known as K2 and spice—from a Chicago mini-mart, but no arrests have been made. Officials warn that while most of the bleeding has been in the Chicago area, the tainted synthetic pot may have spread throughout the state.
– Score one for CNN over the White House. A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to immediately return the White House press credentials of reporter Jim Acosta, per the AP. US District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, an appointee of President Trump, announced his decision following a hearing in Washington. CNN had asked for Acosta's credentials restored while a lawsuit over his credentials' revocation goes forward. “I just want to thank all my colleagues in the press who supported me this week," said Acosta, per the Washington Post. "I want to thank the judge [for this ruling]. And let’s go back to work.” The White House revoked Acosta's credentials after he and Trump tangled during a press conference last week. The judge said the government could not say who initially decided to revoke Acosta's hard pass. The White House had spelled out its reasons for revoking his credentials in a tweet from White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who accused Acosta of "placing his hands" on a female intern trying to take away his microphone. But the judge said those "belated efforts were hardly sufficient to satisfy due process." The judge also found that Acosta suffered "irreparable harm," dismissing the government's argument that CNN could just send other reporters to cover the White House in Acosta's place. (Video of the dispute was controversial, too.)
– Google Earth can be used for more than peeking into your neighbor's backyard: Archaeologists have discovered more than 50 geoglyphs in Kazakhstan, thanks to images from the virtual geographical and map service, reports the International Business Times. Geoglyphs are large designs on the ground, usually created out of mounds of dirt and other natural elements, that can be seen from above. Scientists from Kostanay University, who made their announcement about the structures at an archaeology meeting in Istanbul, say the geoglyphs range in size from 295 feet to 1,312 feet in diameter and come in the shape of squares, circles, crosses—and even a giant swastika, LiveScience reports. (Click to a photo slideshow.) Geoglyphs like these that resemble Peru's famous Nazca Lines have been found all over the world, including giant "wheels" in the Middle East and an elk-like structure in Russia. It may seem surprising at first that a swastika is one of the Kazakhstani creations—and it was made of timber, not dirt, LiveScience notes—but many ancient cultures and religions used the swastika long before Hitler appropriated it. "Swastika" is derived from the Sanskrit term for "good fortune" or "well-being," and the symbol itself is believed to show the sun's movement in the sky, notes the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. "As of today, we can say only one thing—the geoglyphs were built by ancient people. By whom and for what purpose, remains a mystery," two of the project's scientists said in an email to LiveScience. (See what was revealed when sandstorms blew over the Peruvian desert last month.)
– Someone flying above the Amazon in a plane would see nothing amiss, but scores of small, slow-moving fires beneath the canopy of trees are destroying more land than deforestation, reports LiveScience. New satellite imaging from NASA has revealed these so-called "understory fires." Flames are only a few feet high, and the fires themselves move only a few feet per minute, but they can last several weeks, reports Nature World News. The culprit? Careless humans, apparently. These fires generally occur near populated areas, and they're often set off by campfires or discarded cigarettes—aided and abetted by low humidity. NASA researchers say the discovery of the fires will affect climate models. "We don't yet have a robust estimate of what the net carbon emissions are from understory fires, but widespread damages suggest that they are important source of emissions that we need to consider," says one.
– Michael Douglas has backtracked after hitting the headlines by saying his throat cancer was caused by oral sex instead of smoking and drinking. The actor's publicist now says that he wasn't talking about his own cancer being caused by the human papilloma virus, the BBC reports. The reversal prompted the Guardian to release audio of its interview with Douglas, in which the actor says he doesn't regret his years of smoking and drinking, because "this particular cancer is caused by something called HPV, which actually comes about from cunnilingus." At an American Cancer Society event in New York last night, Douglas said he had been trying to raise awareness of the link between HPV and throat cancer, the New York Daily News reports. "I've become, I think, in the past 24 hours a sort of poster boy for oral cancer, and just so you all understand, I think we would all love to know where our cancer comes from," he told the audience. "I simply, to a reporter, tried to give a little PSA announcement about HPV, a virus that can cause oral cancer, and is one of the few areas of cancer that can be controlled and there are vaccinations that kids can get."
– Dealing with death is difficult enough, but when a loved one takes his or her own life, it becomes even more complex—and it may up the risk of suicide for those left behind, a new study finds. In their findings published in the BMJ Open journal, researchers from University College London studied 3,432 adults ages 18 to 40 who'd been bereaved by a sudden death of a friend or family member. They found that individuals whose deceased loved ones had killed themselves were 65% more likely to attempt suicide themselves (what NDTV refers to as the phenomenon of "suicide contagion") than those affected by a loved one's sudden death by natural causes—or 1 in 10 people in that segment, per a press release. And having someone close to you die by suicide was found to have other repercussions, too: The study discovered that those affected by suicidal deaths were 80% more likely to leave a work or educational situation, per the release. "Our results highlight the profound impact that suicide might have on friends and family members," study author Dr. Alexandra Pitman says in the release. And the social stigma around suicide may be a significant factor affecting a mourning person's outlook. "Suicide in particular is often perceived as a taboo subject," Pitman notes. "Avoiding the subject can make a bereaved person feel very isolated and stigmatized, and sometimes even blamed for the death." That's not to say, though, that having such a tragedy afflict a family member or close friend dooms a person to a similar sad fate. "These outcomes are by no means inevitable," Pitman says. "If you have been bereaved by suicide, you should know that are not alone and support is available." (A Marine unit has lost 14 members to suicide.)
– The cause of Jane Austen's death at age 41 in 1817 has been an enduring mystery of the literary world. The legendary author's own letters complain of ill health, and experts have used them to suggest a number of possible culprits, from stomach cancer to Hodgkin's lymphoma, the Washington Post reports. Now, a trio of eyeglasses found in Austen's desk could hold a more intriguing answer. The spectacles of increasing strength indicate Austen suffered from progressive eye problems; indeed, the Pride and Prejudice author notes her "weak" eyes in her missives. Austen may have suffered from an underlying health problem that attacked her vision, writes British Library curator Sandra Tuppen, who theorizes slow-growing cataracts might have been caused by accidental arsenic poisoning. The toxic metal was common in 19th-century England, tainting medicine, water, and even wallpaper. Other causes such as diabetes would have killed Austen more quickly, says Tuppen. The debate over Austen's death dates back to 1964, when an English doctor argued the culprit was the adrenal disorder Addison's disease. Then crime writer Lindsay Ashford floated the arsenic theory in a 2011 novel, citing the skin discoloration that Austin notes late in her life. "I think it’s highly likely she was given a medicine containing arsenic," says Ashford. "When you look at her list of symptoms and compare them to the list of arsenic symptoms, there is an amazing correlation." But Austen scholar Janine Barchas, who has her own forthcoming report on the glasses, calls the arsenic theory "reckless," per the New York Times. "We look forward to further discussions and debate on this topic," writes Tuppen. (An unfinished Austen manuscript sold for $1.6 million.)
– The planes carrying the bodies of some of the first victims recovered from the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash site have landed in the Netherlands, Sky News reports. The two military aircraft, one Dutch and one Australian, contain a total of 40 bodies in wooden coffins; they took off from Ukraine's Kharkiv Airport and landed at Eindhoven Airport, where the Dutch prime minister, members of the Dutch royal family, and hundreds of relatives of the victims were waiting, the BBC reports. Bells were tolled for five minutes before military personnel carried the coffins off the planes and put them in hearses; they'll be taken to a military barracks for identification. Click for the poignant stories of the final hours of some of MH17's victims.
– The Met Gala was last night, meaning celebrities had a chance to dress up in totally crazy outfits and vie for headlines the next day. Six of the most talked-about costumes: Beyonce showed up—two hours late—in a mostly see-through (with the exception of some well-placed ... confetti?) dress, prompting USA Today to declare, "Beyonce has a rare (but epic) fashion fail," even referring to it as a "Kardashian-like moment." Sarah Jessica Parker wore a headdress that was supposed to look like flames, and People notes that it's already a meme—people are comparing it to a flame emoji, the Human Torch, the hair of the Heat Miser from classic cartoon The Year Without a Santa Claus, and even the hat Jafar wears in Aladdin, among other things. Bey's sister, Solange Knowles, wore her own bizarre dress. It's difficult to describe, but People notes that the printed dress with mini-pleats "looks like two paper fans on top of each other." Vanity Fair declares that Rihanna "won" the red carpet with her insane yellow dress, complete with fur cape dragging an enormous train behind it. "I can’t really walk in it without any help," Rihanna explained. "But it’s so worth it. I love this dress so much!" Jennifer Connelly wore a Louis Vuitton sheath dress with puffy sleeves, and Perez Hilton complained that "that leg-of-mutton sleeve made the ensemble look far too big for her tiny frame. And as if that wasn't enough, her hands were practically swallowed up in that dress," making her look like "a little girl trying on mommy's clothes." As for Anne Hathaway, she looked vaguely like a Star Wars character in her gold, hooded ensemble, a not-uncommon observation. E! also notes that it "somewhat resembles a metallic boxing robe a pro athlete might wear." If you don't fully understand the Met Gala, the Washington Post's amusing FAQ may help. It reminds us, for one thing, that this happened after last year's event.
– A British man who hacked his way into Pentagon computers looking for information on UFOs has lost his final appeal against extradition. Gary McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, is now expected to be sent to the US for trial within weeks, the Independent reports. The 43-year-old Londoner could face up to 60 years in jail if found guilty of what US authorities call the biggest military hack in history. Opposition lawmakers and McKinnon's supporters slammed the decision to reject the appeal, citing medical reports that said deportation was likely to make him suicidal. "To force a peaceful, vulnerable, misguided UFO fanatic like Gary thousands of miles away from his much-needed support network is barbaric," his mother told the Telegraph. "This is a cruel and miserable decision."
– Move over, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The FAA has approved a small plane that can also double as a car. Drivers can zip down the road in the two-seat Terrafugia Transition, wings folded, at a respectable 30 miles per gallon. Upon arrival at an airport, the "roadable light sport" aircraft, weighing in at just over 1300 pounds, can be transformed into a flying machine. In the event of inclement weather, it can simply be driven back home. Some 70 customers have already ordered the $194,000 craft, and production will begin soon, reports the Telegraph.
– Iran has been making increasing noises about its drone program, and Tehran's latest sabre-rattling says that it now has an advanced drone that can take off vertically, ie, without a runway. As Reuters reports by way of Iranian state media, a lead researcher claimed that the drone would be tested yesterday and "unveiled" next year, adding that the drone "enjoys ultra-advanced technology and has been built for the first time in the world." The drone is reportedly also capable of hovering in mid-air, and is silent, adds the AP. Iran earlier this week claimed it had drones far more advanced than Hezbollah's.
– The Portland teen accused of peeing in a city reservoir on Wednesday insists he didn't do it—in a relatively NSFW defense. "Yeah, it's f---ing retarded, dude," 18-year-old Dallas Swonger tells Vocativ in what the site calls an "expletive-filled interview" given as Swonger smoked a Newport cigarette. "I didn't piss in the f---ing water." He explains that he did urinate, after a night of skateboarding at Mount Tabor Park, but he did so against the wall of the reservoir, not into the reservoir. "I was like, 'Dudes I have to piss so bad.' So I just went over to the wall. I leaned up against the wall and pissed on it. Right there on the wall, dude. I don’t know else how to describe it." Officials beg to differ (a Water Bureau official got very specific about it, saying that surveillance video showed Swonger making sure "to get his little wee wee right up to the iron bars"), and thus decided to dump 38 million gallons of water, but Swonger notes that even if his urine had made it into the water, he doesn't see what the big deal is. "Dude, I’ve seen dead birds in there. During the summer time I've see hella dead animals in there. Like dead squirrels and s---. I mean, really, dude?" Vocativ also got amusing quotes from Swonger's mom ("I’m sorry, he just graduated from high school. He’s trying to get his stuff together") and one of the friends skateboarding with him that night ("He just doesn’t make the best decisions. Honestly, he has the potential to do really good"). Possible criminal charges are still pending, the Oregonian notes. The paper also reports that the water tested clean of urine-related toxins, but all 38 million gallons will still be dumped.
– Police in Britain, angered by repeated leaks of sensitive information, have decided to stop sharing information on the Manchester terrorist attack with American authorities. The decision came after photographs believed to show bomb debris appeared in a New York Times report, sources tell the BBC, which calls the step a "hugely significant" move that shows just how angry British authorities are about leaks that could hinder the investigation. Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to raise the issue with President Trump at a NATO meeting Thursday, though the leaks are believed to have come from US law enforcement agencies, not the White House. In other coverage: The Times report that infuriated British police has photos of the remains of a backpack and a battery found at the scene, along with detailed analysis of the blast site. Analysts say the bomb, powerful enough to embed shrapnel in metal walls, appears to have been made with "forethought and care." Two more men in Britain have been arrested in connection with the Monday night attack, bringing the number of people in custody to eight, including one woman, reports Reuters. Suicide bomber Salman Abedi's father and brother have been detained in Libya. British authorities say the leaking of information provided under a long-standing cooperation deal is unacceptable. "These images from inside the American system are clearly distressing to victims, their families, and other members of the public," a government source tells the Guardian. "Protests have been lodged at every relevant level between the British authorities and our US counterparts." Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, says the device detonated at the end of an Ariana Grande concert shows a "level of sophistication" that suggests the involvement of foreign terror cells, the AP reports. "It looks like we're not dealing with a lone wolf situation. There's a network—a cell of ISIS-inspired terrorists," the Republican says. Sky News reports that German intelligence services say Abedi was in the country around four days before the Manchester attack. Security camera footage obtained by Sky shows a man suspected to be Abedi in Manchester's Arndale shopping center on Friday with what may be the backpack used in the bombing. One of the latest of the 22 victims to be identified is 14-year-old Eilidh MacLeod, who had traveled from the Scottish island of Barra to Manchester with her mother and a friend for the concert, the Telegraph reports. "Eilidh was vivacious and full of fun. She loved all music, whether it was listening to Ariana or playing the bagpipes with her pipe band," her family said in a statement.
– There's a new flavor of debate regarding President Trump's alleged "shithole" comment: whether he actually said a different word that begins with s-h-i-t. Rich Lowry of the National Review appeared on ABC's This Week on Sunday and said his sources say Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as "shithouse countries" on Thursday. "My understanding from the meeting is he used a different but very closely related vulgarity," Mediaite reports Lowry as saying, and it suggests that the GOP senators who have issued denials around Trump's use of "shithole" are "hanging their hat" on the technicality. Mashable points out that Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post tweeted much the same thing Sunday night. "White House official told me tonight there is debate internally on whether Trump said 'shithole' or 'shithouse.' Perdue and Cotton seem to have heard latter, this person said, and are using to deny," he wrote. Whatever the word, South Africa is not pleased. CNN reports that the country will issue a diplomatic protest Monday, and Under Secretary of State Steve Goldstein confirmed that high-ranking diplomats in South Africa and Ghana had been called for government meetings Monday. Reuters reports the No. 2 US official at the embassy will be asked to "explain the statement," per a statement given to the media Sunday that also noted "South Africa aligns itself with the statements issued by the African Union." Meanwhile, Trump on Sunday told reporters he is the "least racist person you have ever interviewed."
– Move over, Tiger Woods, a new mistress count has been established: It’s for Jesse James, and he’s already up to No. 3. First to follow Michelle “Bombshell” McGee was Melissa Smith, another heavily tattooed stripper who claims a two-year affair. Classy: They met on MySpace. Classier: “We ended up having sex on his couch, and he didn't use a condom,” she tells Star. Classiest: She’s been arrested twice, reports TMZ. For more on her, click here. Alleged mistress No. 3 is Brigitte Daguerre, a California photographer who says she only slept with James four times. She saved 195 text messages the two sent each other, including one from James that says, “I’ll be your monkey,” TMZ reports. Apparently James’ cheating—with as many as 11 women during his marriage to Sandra Bullock—was an open secret that everyone (except a blinded-by-love Bullock, apparently) from his ex-wife to his employees knew about, according to the New York Post, which rounds up several recent tabloid articles.
– Chelsea Manning believed she had a "responsibility to the public" and didn't think she was risking national security when she leaked a trove of classified documents, the soldier said in her first interview since being released from a military prison last month, per the AP. The 29-year-old formerly known as Bradley Manning said in a pre-taped interview broadcast Friday on ABC's Good Morning America that she was prompted to give the 700,000 military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks because of the human toll of the "death, destruction, and mayhem" she saw as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq. She told ABC that she has "accepted responsibility" for her actions. "No one told me to do this. No one directed me to do this. This is me. It's on me," she said. Manning was released from a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on May 18 after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence, which was commuted by former President Barack Obama in his final days in office. Obama said in January he felt justice had been served. She hasn't spoken to Obama since her release, but emotionally thanked him in the interview for giving her "another chance." Manning also touched on her struggles dealing with her gender transition while in prison. She says she tried to kill herself twice behind bars and fought for the hormone treatments she says keep her alive. Manning remains in the Army, but is off duty while she appeals her court-martial conviction. "I have nothing but utmost respect for the military," she said in the interview, per ABC.
– On June 5, Swiss voters will weigh in on a measure that's never been implemented in any country: make sure every citizen and legal resident gets $2,600, every month, tax-free ($650 for kids)—no matter what their employment situation or income level, USA Today reports. What Gawker says is perceived as the "utopian idea" of an unconditional basic income has been bandied about by individual cities in countries such as the Netherlands and Canada, but Switzerland would be the first nation to go for it. A group of Swiss intelligentsia was able to cull the 100,000 signatures required under the Swiss system to get it on the ballot. "It would lead to a more motivated workforce and [a] more humanized, stable, and productive economy," the initiative's co-founder says. The estimated $200 billion-a-year plan would be funded in part by raising the country's value-added tax (currently at 8%), its supporters say. Critics, however, say other taxes would have to rise, too, and fear the plan would sap people's motivation to work. Someone with no income would reap the full $2,600 a month tax-free, while others making some money would have their income supplemented to reach that cap (so if you already make $1,000, the government would fork over $1,600). And if you already bring in more than that $2,600 limit? That amount of your monthly income wouldn't be taxed. USA Today spells out what that would mean for two parents who didn't work with two kids at home: a combined family income, tax-free, of $78,000 a year. It doesn't appear likely the vote will go the initiative's way.
– Expect more servicemen and women to take their own lives in the months ahead, Admiral Mike Mullen warned today, in the wake of four such suicides over the weekend. “I think we are going to see a significant increase in the challenges that we have in terms of our families,” Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said at a press breakfast this morning, reports the Boston Globe. “The emergency right now is suicides.” Troops are returning rapidly from Iraq, but many will have difficulty returning to civilian life, Mullen explained. The weekend saw a glut of such tragedy, with a 24-year-old accounting specialist who’d served in Iraq killing himself Friday, followed by a mechanic and an artillery specialist on Saturday, and an Army sergeant on Sunday. The latter also appears to have shot his wife in a murder-suicide, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
– President Trump apparently no longer believes that climate change is a "hoax"—but he does believe it will somehow change back, and he doesn't want to spend too much money dealing with it, despite dire warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "I think something's happening. Something's changing and it'll change back again," Trump said in a 60 Minutes interview that was broadcast Sunday night. "I don't think it's a hoax. I think there's probably a difference. But I don't know that it's manmade. I will say this: I don't want to give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don't want to lose millions and millions of jobs." He added that he's not "denying climate change," but it "could very well go back ... millions of years," the AP reports. When interviewer Leslie Stahl asked Trump about climate change creating more powerful hurricanes, the president, who will visit hurricane-hit parts of Florida and Georgia on Monday, seemed doubtful. "You'd have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda," he said when Stahl told him scientists had determined that hurricanes were worse than ever. More from the interview: Putin "probably" behind assassinations. Trump said Russian leader Vladimir Putin was "probably" behind the assassination of diplomats, but it didn't seem like he was losing sleep over it, the Washington Post reports. "It's not in our country," he said. Trump also told Stahl that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, but said China had done the same. "I think, frankly, China is a bigger problem," he said. "We won" on Christine Blasey Ford. Trump said the speech in which he mocked Ford help secure Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court, MarketWatch reports. Asked whether he believed Ford's accusations, Trump said: "I'm not going to get into it because we won. It doesn't matter. We won." Kim Jong Un is what he is. Asked about his professed "love" of North Korean dictator Kim despite human rights abuses including the use of gulags and slave labor, Trump said: "I get along with him, OK?" He added: "Let it be whatever it is. I get along with him really well. I have a good energy with him." "Nobody treats us worse." Trump was harder on the European Union, saying nobody treats the US worse than the trading bloc. "The European Union was formed in order to take advantage of us on trade, and that’s what they’ve done," he said. No chaos here. Trump rejected suggestions that there was chaos inside his administration, but admitted that figures including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis could soon be leaving, the Post reports. "I think he’s sort of a Democrat, if you want to know the truth," Trump said. "But General Mattis is a good guy. We get along very well. He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody."
– Had Kanye West canceled his tour on a whim, he would have been on the hook for a massive amount of money owed to venues and anyone else with whom he broke a contract. But since he was taken to the hospital with a psychiatric emergency soon after canceling, his insurance policy may have saved him millions of dollars, TMZ reports. The policy covers him in the event an "accident or illness" prevents him from performing, so now he can file a claim to collect. It's not a slam dunk, as coverage can be denied if an undisclosed pre-existing condition is discovered—or if the insurance company finds that the cause of his illness is his own "unreasonable or capricious behavior," a category that would include things like excessive partying, per Billboard. Though it was reported that West was placed on a 51-50 psychiatric hold and committed against his will, a source tells People that's not the case. "He went freely" and "was not restrained," the source says. "There was a small altercation at the gym but he was deemed medically stable and decided to seek medical help at his doctor’s request." The source also echoes previous reports that West is simply dealing with exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Wife Kim Kardashian is by his side at the hospital, a source tells E!. "Their time together was just about support. Kanye will be OK. He has a good set of doctors."
– Here's an unfortunate hypothetical: An earthquake strikes along the San Andreas fault, damaging three aqueducts that cross it some 32 times. Those aqueducts supply Los Angeles with all but 12% of its water—meaning a serious quake could ultimately leave 22 million people without water. (There would be about six month's worth of water stored on the LA side of the fault, but fixing busted aqueducts could take more than twice that long.) Officials have been aware of the potential for a single quake to hit all three aqueducts since 2008, but as the Los Angeles Times reports, they're now moving to do something about it for the first time. But any solution is pretty far off, in terms of time and money—in terms of the latter, the LAT uses the word "billions." None of the aqueducts has yet had to deal with the scenario; the last huge quake (magnitude 7.9) along the fault was in 1857. The Los Angeles aqueduct travels across the fault under a mountain, by way of the five-mile-long concrete Elizabeth Tunnel. Building a brand new tunnel is the priciest option; sending water over the mountains via an electric pumping mechanism is another idea. In the case of the Colorado River Aqueduct, a quake could raise a section of the pipe by 13 feet, and there aren't any pumps in place to ferry the water to LA. The mayor last week requested that proposals on the issue be submitted by July. Meanwhile, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that there may be another fault to fear: It points to new research that shows the San Jacinto fault could generate an earthquake as powerful as what the San Andreas fault is capable of.
– British student Joanna Parrish disappeared in France after posting an advertisement for her services as an English teacher in a local newspaper, the Telegraph reports. A day after she was reported missing, her naked body was found in a river; she had been raped and strangled to death. That was nearly 30 years ago. This week a French serial killer known as the Ogre of the Ardennes is said to have confessed to the crime, according to AFP. Didier Seban, a lawyer for Parrish's family, tells the BBC that 75-year-old Michel Fourniret confessed to the 1990 murder of Parrish—as well as the 1988 murder of Marie-Angele Domece, whose body was never found—to judges "two to three times" over the past week. The Press Association reports Parrish's family was shocked by the confession. Fourniret was given life in prison in 2008 after being found guilty of raping and killing seven women between the ages of 12 and 21. His wife, Monique Olivier, was also given life in prison for picking up a number of his victims while driving around with their baby. Fourniret was charged with the murders of Parrish and Domece in 2008 after Olivier said he was responsible for them, only to have the cases dismissed in 2011 after Olivier recanted. A court of appeal later cancelled that dismissal and ordered investigations into new leads. Now Seban says a trial should go forward after Fourniret "made detailed and repeated confessions." Parrish's father says he hopes the family will have "closure at last." (It seems an infamous serial killer couldn't cheat death after all.)
– Police say an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert in northern England has killed at least 19 people and injured about 50, the AP reports. Billboard has confirmed that the American singer herself is OK. Police suspect a suicide bomber set off the blast, which is being treated as a terrorist attack unless new information emerges, NBC News reports. A statement from Manchester Arena said the explosion took place outside the arena just after the concert, as people were exiting. "A huge bomb-like bang went off that hugely panicked everyone and we were all trying to flee the arena," concertgoer Majid Khan, 22, tells Britain's Press Association. "It was one bang and essentially everyone from the other side of the arena where the bang was heard from suddenly came running towards us as they were trying to exit." Video from inside the arena showed concertgoers screaming as they made their way out amid a sea of pink balloons. Authorities say most of those being taken to the hospital had shrapnel injuries. "Praying for everyone at Ariana Grande's show," tweeted Katy Perry, one of the many celebs taking to Twitter to voice support, per CBS News. Britain's terrorist threat level has been set at "severe" in recent years, indicating an attack is highly likely. Reuters reports Manchester Arena is the biggest indoor arena in all of Europe, and can hold 21,000. The concert was part of the 23-year-old Grande's Dangerous Woman Tour. After Manchester, Grande was to perform at venues in Belgium, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, and France, with concerts in Latin America and Asia to follow.
– Charlie Sheen's former assistant Rick Calamaro has been found the way some people feared Sheen himself might end up during his meltdown last year—dead and surrounded by drugs and alcohol. The 46-year-old club promoter had been dead for a few days when police found him in his Los Angeles apartment, close to "numerous pain medications and an open bottle of alcohol," sources tell TMZ. Calamaro, one of Sheen's closest friends, was his personal assistant from the summer of 2010 until November 2011, and is believed to have been present during the actor's notorious drug-fueled hotel-trashing rampage in 2010. Some insiders blamed Calamaro for Sheen's wild behavior, and suspected that he had been supplying the actor with drugs, notes the New York Daily News. Sheen, whose new comedy Anger Management set a cable ratings record with its debut Sunday night, has yet to comment on the death.
– Hard-line Iranian students stormed the British embassy in Tehran today, surging past riot police, scaling the compound’s walls, and pelting the buildings inside with rocks and petrol bombs. They then pulled down the British flag, burned it, and replaced it with an Iranian one, the semi-official Mehr News Agency reported. Security forces “appeared to do little to stop them,” according to Reuters, though within less than two hours they had restored order. It’s unclear what happened to the embassy staff—Mehr said they’d fled “by the back door,” but it also at one point said students had taken six staffers hostage, according to the AP. The state-run IRNA news agency also reported roughly 300 protesters breaking into the British ambassador’s residence elsewhere in the city, and again bringing down the Union Jack flying there. The episode comes two days after Iran downgraded diplomatic relations with Britain over its endorsement of tougher Western sanctions.
– Heather Locklear had a tumultuous June, with an arrest and a hospitalization. She already faced charges of battery and obstructing an officer as a result, and now TMZ reports that a paramedic on the scene will file suit this week. The EMT says the 57-year-old actress deliberately kicked her as the actress was being placed on a gurney, causing head and neck injuries that forced the paramedic onto desk duties. On a better note, Locklear posted an Instagram video from rehab last month, showing photos of her with her now 21-year-old daughter. Locklear checked into the facility in July and is undergoing long-term treatment, per People.
– Julius Rosenwald is well known as the 20th-century American businessman who co-founded what we now call Sears. But a new documentary by Aviva Kempner explores Rosenwald's lesser-known role as a Jewish philanthropist who brought education to thousands of African-American children at a time when most had no schools to attend, reports the Root. "It's a wonderful story of cooperation between this philanthropist who did not have to care about black people, but who did, and who expended his considerable wealth in ensuring that they got their fair shake in America," civil rights leader Julian Bond explains in Rosenwald, out next month. It tells of Rosenwald's rise from the son of a peddler to a clothing manufacturing apprentice to CEO of the largest US retailer, Sears, Roebuck & Co., in 1908, reports the Times of Israel. It was around that time he began to see similarities between the treatment of blacks in America and pogroms against European Jews. When his rabbi became an NAACP leader, Rosenwald sponsored meetings. Soon after, he donated $25,000 to Alabama's Tuskegee University, led by Booker T. Washington, whose writings on racial equality and education had piqued his interest. Washington suggested the money go toward building six schools for black children, but Rosenwald contributed just a third of the funds and pushed the black and white communities to raise the rest. He went on to give $62 million to various causes, including the Rosenwald Fund, which created 5,300 schools in the South, attended by prominent African-Americans like Maya Angelou, George Wolfe, and Eugene Robinson. It "was the single-most important funding agency for African-American culture in the 20th century," poet Rita Dove says. More than 80 years after his death, Rosenwald still inspires. "Not all of us can be Julius Rosenwald," says Kempner, but "we can all do something."
– A horrifying incident is becoming somewhat of a trend in India, where a third teenager has reportedly been raped and then burned alive, with all the incidents happening in the span of one week. The BBC reports the 16-year-old was allegedly killed after informing her attacker, a man police have named as 28-year-old Ravi Chadhar, she wouldn't stay mum about the rape. She was reportedly doused with fuel and set on fire in her Madhya Pradesh home. CNN reports that the girl's cousin allegedly told her attacker she was home alone; both the cousin and Chadhar have been arrested. The other attacks occurred in Jharkhand, with one of the girls, 17, surviving in critical condition with burns to 70% of her body. Her attacker allegedly had wanted to marry her but had been denied. The first case involved a 16-year-old who was killed after her parents reported her rape to village leaders. Enraged by the punishment the elders imposed—100 sit-ups and a fine of roughly $750—police say Dhanu Singh Bhuiyan stormed into the girl's house in the village of Chatra, attacked her parents, and fatally set the girl on fire.
– Most of the water that fills the world's oceans—and makes up more than half of the human body—may have started out as comets, not asteroids as current theories hold, according to new research. Scientists using the Herschel telescope found that unlike other comets studied, the comet Hartley 2 contains water with the same chemical signature as water on our planet, suggesting that cometary impacts brought the water that covered the rocky and dry early Earth, the BBC reports. Hartley 2 is believed to have formed in the Kuiper belt, not far outside the solar system. Comets studied earlier came from the much more distant Oort cloud and had a different chemical composition, leading scientists to believe only 10% of Earth's water could have come from comets. "It was a big surprise when we saw the ratio was almost the same as what we find in the Earth's oceans," the lead researcher tells Reuters. "It means it is not true any more that a maximum of 10% of water could have come from comets. Now, in principle, all the water could have come from comets."
– The Washington Post takes a deep dive into the field of selfie research, and it's come up with a disturbing number: The paper says 27 people died while taking selfies in 2015, and in some countries, it's become a major headache. Nearly half of those deaths occurred in India, which has started imposing "no-selfie zones" in places where the activity "can be dangerous," the BBC reports. Russia's not far behind, with the Guardian noting it's become a "matter of national concern" there. "Since the beginning of [2015], we are talking about some hundred cases of injuries for sure," a Russian interior minister aide said last year. And the UK's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents in November warned locals not to take "storm selfies" during some particularly bad weather, Sky News reports. Some of the more bizarre or notable selfie cases last year: A Japanese tourist suffered fatal head injuries after tumbling down the steps of the Taj Mahal. A man was gored to death in Spain taking a photo during his run with the bulls. A Russian teen plummeted from a nine-story building while trying to bulk up his compilation of pics taken in dangerous places. (By mid-September, more people had died by selfie than shark in 2015.)
– For more than four months, 21-year-old Matthew Lindquist was considered a suspect in the murders of his parents, found inside their burned-out home in Griswold, Conn., on Dec. 20. All the time, he was lying dead 1,500 feet away, a third victim of what police describe as a fake robbery turned real. According to an arrest affidavit released Tuesday, Lindquist had offered his father's guns to a man in exchange for drugs, so long as the man staged the scene to look like a burglary. That's not what happened. Now charged in the case, 23-year-old Ruth Correa reportedly told police her brother, Sergio Correa, hit Lindquist in the head with a machete after Lindquist panicked, per the Washington Post. The siblings then stabbed Lindquist, leaving his body in the woods near his parents' home, which they entered through a basement door they knew to be unlocked, per the affidavit. When Kenneth and Janet Lindquist appeared, 26-year-old Sergio hit Kenneth, 56, with a baseball bat while Ruth told Janet that "her son had set her up," the affidavit states, per NBC Connecticut. The document says Sergio then choked Janet, 61, and hit her in the head with the bat before he and his sister set the house alight and took off with stolen goods and Matthew Lindquist's car, later found burned. After reportedly telling police that her brother might be planning to kill her, Ruth Correa was arrested on charges of murder, home invasion, arson, and robbery on May 12, a week after Matthew Lindquist's body was found. At the time, police said additional arrests were expected. Sergio Correa has yet to be charged, though. He's in police custody following a February arrest for probation violations and "maintains he had nothing to do with this," his lawyer tells the Hartford Courant.
– A Connecticut couple in their mid-50s has been missing for two weeks now, and police are investigating whether their financial troubles—including $2.2 million in debt—may have something to do with it, reports CNN. Their families, however, aren't buying it. Police found the pickup belonging to Jeffrey and Jeanette Navin in a commuter parking lot by the exit of a local expressway on Aug. 9 but say there's no sign of foul play. The Easton police chief says it's possible the Navins are on vacation somewhere safe and sound, but acknowledges that suspicion is mounting the longer they remain out of touch. Money problems had been piling up for the Navins, last seen Aug. 4 at a garbage company they own. Jeffrey took out a $1.3 million mortgage on a six-bedroom-five-bathroom house in 2005 and stopped paying it in 2007. He lost his third appeal over the $2.2 million he owes in the foreclosure case in July. He also racked up six-figure debt to the power company. The Hartford Courant reports the couple sold another of their homes for $900,000 in June and moved to a rental house. Family members object to the focus on finances and point out that the couple, who earned up to $216,000 a year, haven't touched their bank accounts in this "overwhelming and troubling time," the Daily News reports. Jeffrey's attorney can't shed any light: "I'm in the dark just like everybody else is," he tells the Courant. "I just hope that they're all right." (In Florida, a female firefighter who has been missing for 9 years was just declared dead.)
– More than 300 text messages exchanged between two FBI agents who used to work for Robert Mueller's Russia probe were delivered to Congress this week, riling Republicans who didn't like how some of them had ripped into Donald Trump during the presidential campaign and shortly after he was elected. But per the Wall Street Journal, Trump wasn't the only target of the insults and snark lobbed between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who reportedly were having an affair during the period when the texts were exchanged, per Politico. Bernie Sanders was one notable who caught some flak. "I just saw my first Bernie Sanders bumper sticker. Made me want to key the car," Page wrote. Strzok replied: "He's an idiot like Trump. Figure they cancel each other out." Page also seemed worried in July 2016 that Bernie Sanders supporters, whom she called "sanderistas," would sabotage Hillary Clinton's chances. Others who were verbally flayed in the texts: Page on Mitch McConnell: He looks like "a turtle." Strzok, apparently on Hillary Clinton: "I'm worried about what happens if HRC is elected." (No elaboration on why.) Page on Jeff Sessions, after learning he'd become AG: "Good god." Page on Ohio Gov. John Kasich: "long suspected of being gay." Strzok on Chelsea Clinton: "Self-entitled." Strzok on former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley: "a freakshow" and "a douche." Strzok on Paul Ryan: "a jerky." Strzok on Democratic National Convention speech by former AG Eric Holder: "Oh God, Holder! Turn it off turn if off!!!" Meanwhile, a DOJ spokeswoman says that some members of the media received copies of the texts before they were supposed to, and Democratic lawmakers aren't happy about it, Politico reports. "Those disclosures were not authorized by the department," she said in a statement. Read more of the texts here.
– Here's a story about a former child star who grew up to be a talk show host with apparently poor impulse control: Susan Olsen, better known as Cindy Brady of the eponymous Brady Bunch, is out of a job after a feud with actor Leon Acord-Whiting, who is gay. How it went down, via US Magazine and Fox News: Acord-Whiting appeared on an LA Talk Radio politics show co-hosted by Olsen, then took to Facebook to complain that "Susan Olsen spreads outrageous misinformation & it is dangerous and unprofessional." Apparently one does not cross Cindy Brady, because Olsen posted this to her own Facebook page: "This is the little piece of human waste. He blocked himself from me before I could even get one hit in. If you can find him, please send him my love." From there, it was war: Acord-Whiting then posted a screenshot of a less-than-Brady-like personal message allegedly from Olsen, reading thusly: "Hey there little p--sy, let me get my big boy pants on and Reallly take you on!!! What a snake in the grass you are you lying piece of s--t too cowardly to confront me in real life so you do it on Facebook. You are the biggest f----t ass in the world the biggest p--sy! My D--k is bigger than yours Which ain't sayin much! What a true piece of s--t you are! Lying f----t! I hope you meet your karma SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY." And per LA Talk Radio, as of Friday: "We will not tolerate hateful speech by anyone associated with our radio station and have severed our ties with a host that veered off the direction in which we are going."
– Security has been beefed up at federal buildings across the country—not because of any specific threat, but because of "world events," the Department of Homeland Security says. The Federal Protective Service, which guards more than 9,500 federal courthouses and other buildings nationwide, boosted security measures over the weekend, days after a gunman made it into Canada's Parliament building, reports the Washington Post. "The reasons for this action are self-evident: the continued public calls by terrorist organizations for attacks on the homeland and elsewhere, including against law enforcement and other government officials, and the acts of violence targeted at government personnel and installations in Canada and elsewhere recently," DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement. The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security hailed the move, while Johnson urged state and local security officials to also prepare for "potential small-scale attacks by a lone offender or a small group of individuals," USA Today reports.
– The US military may be rolling out of Iraq, but American civilians are not. To protect its outposts, the State Department plans to double the number of private security guards on the ground, finds the New York Times. As many as 7,000 guards will search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones, and continue training Iraqi police. “We need strategic patience here,” says a former US ambassador to Iraq. “Our timetables are getting out ahead of Iraqi reality." "I don’t think State has ever operated on its own, independent of the US military, in an environment that is quite as threatening on such a large scale,” said another former ambassador. But, notes Fox News, the contractors won't be entirely on their own—some 50,000 US troops are staying behind through the end of 2011 to train Iraqi forces. (Click here to read about al-Qaeda in Iraq's post-withdrawal plans.)
– Hollywood has been responding to the Newtown tragedy with a slew of cancellations, postponements, and other changes to movies: Tonight's LA premiere of Django Unchained, the latest violent film from Quentin Tarantino, has been canceled. "In this time of national mourning we have decided to forgo our scheduled event," says a Weinstein Company rep, according to the New York Times. A private screening will be held instead of a big red carpet gala. Two events related to Tom Cruise's new movie, Jack Reacher, have been postponed: last Saturday's Pittsburgh premiere as well as a Film Society of Lincoln Center screening involving Cruise. Paramount is also tweaking the marketing materials for the movie, according to the Hollywood Reporter. A source says a scene in which Cruise's character, a former military cop, uses a semiautomatic weapon is being removed from promos. Even a comedy, Parental Guidance, saw its red carpet premiere and after-party canceled over the weekend "in light of the horrific tragedy," AFP reports. The film stars Bette Midler and Billy Crystal. Also over the weekend, episodes of Family Guy and American Dad were yanked.
– When Harvard suspended its men's soccer team last week for the rest of the season due to an "appalling" system of ranking female players, one of the reasons the school gave for its harsh punishment was the fact that team members weren't exactly communicative and cooperative at first (the team as a whole has since apologized). Per Inside Higher Ed, the men on the school's cross-country team were obviously paying attention to the smackdown: Now members of that roster have come forward to admit to their own past spreadsheets (some containing "sexually explicit" remarks) describing female athletes and compiled each year before a dance held with the women's cross-country team, the Harvard Crimson reports. The cross-country team's documents included speculation as to which guys would get an invite to the dance from which girls, with some comments referring to the women's weight or other physical attributes. And per correspondence between alumni seen by the Crimson, even former and current team members acknowledge how bad past spreadsheets were, with one noting, "Hahaha dude 2012 was the absolute worst." Team captain Brandon E. Price, who on Saturday emailed the team to "come clean" about any female rankings, says the team has tamped down the lewdness since a 2014 spreadsheet the team was "particularly ashamed of." The school's athletic director says in a statement: "Harvard Athletics does not tolerate this sort of demeaning and derogatory behavior, and we will address any credible information we receive." (A response from some of the former female soccer players.)
– The allegations were both graphic and specific and, says Jose Baez, completely untrue. Private investigator Dominic Casey alleged in just-revealed court documents filed earlier this year in connection with a bankruptcy case that, among other things, Casey Anthony offered sex to Baez, her lawyer, in exchange for his legal services. Dominic Casey worked with Anthony's defense team after she was accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, in 2008, and he alleged that after Baez got Anthony out of a September 2008 TV interview she didn't want to do, Baez "said to [Anthony], 'You now owe me 3 blow jobs.'" Dominic Casey also claimed he encountered a "naked" Anthony during an unannounced visit to Baez's office. Baez "unequivocally and categorically deny exchanging sex for my legal services with Ms. Anthony," he says in a statement to People. "I further unequivocally and categorically deny having any sexual relationship with Ms. Anthony whatsoever." Baez referred to but did not detail other "outrageous" claims put forth by the PI; People points to a 2011 deposition in which Dominic Casey suggested Caylee's remains perhaps weren't actually Caylee's as a past "eyebrow-raising" allegation. The Orlando Sentinel notes Dominic Casey has written two books on the case that feature "unsubstantiated claims," and reports that Baez and his team have been trying to have a deposition Dominic Casey gave in the bankruptcy case excluded. Baez also suggests he may sue, writing, "Legal action is forthcoming."
– Kisspeptin, a naturally occurring hormone that kicks off puberty and is thought to fuel what the Telegraph describes as the "voracious sexual appetites of young people," could well be a sort of "mental Viagra" for people with psychosexual disorders—that is, disorders that are psychological as opposed to physical. And because these disorders can occur in patients who are infertile, researchers from Imperial College London report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that kisspeptin could even play a role in helping couples struggling to conceive. The early-stage study began to lay the groundwork for that theory by testing how kisspeptin affects the brain's responses to sexual situations. To achieve this, researchers injected kisspeptin or a placebo into 29 healthy young men, explains a press release. When shown arousing images, MRI scans of the kisspeptin group revealed enhanced activity in brain regions associated with arousal compared to the placebo group. There was no such activity observed when non-sexual romantic images were shown. The lead author notes that most research and treatments for infertility focus on important biological factors, but that emotional processing is also key and "only partially understood." Next up, they plan to expand the study's size and include women. Bonus trivia: Kisspeptin's name comes from Hershey, Pa., which is home to both Hershey’s Kisses and the lab that in 1996 discovered the KiSS-1 gene that encodes kisspeptins, reports the New Statesman. (After the most extreme tragedy, this couple is pregnant with twins.)
– The mayor of Juneau has been found dead in his home less than two months after he was elected. The body of Greg Fisk, 70, was found by his adult son on Monday afternoon and police, who have not released a cause of death, have been searching the area and interviewing neighbors, the Alaska Dispatch reports. Juneau police are "aware of rumors that an assault occurred in connection with Fisk's death. Those rumors are speculation," police said in a statement Monday night. "Detectives are actively investigating facts of the incident and all evidence is being preserved and documented." Fisk, a former state fisheries specialist, easily beat incumbent Merrill Sanford last month to become mayor of Alaska's capital, the Dispatch reports. Deputy Mayor Mary Becker, who says Fisk was an old family friend, will now become acting mayor. He was a "wonderful person and a friend and from the calls I've been receiving tonight, I'm not the only one who felt he was a wonderful person and a good friend to Juneau," she tells KTUU. "It's so devastating to have this happen, it's basically unbelievable."
– Lady Gaga is following in the footsteps of Britney Spears, Celine Dion, and Cher. The singer is the latest to secure a Las Vegas residency, and will be belting out tunes at the 5,200-seat MGM Park Theater at the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino beginning in late 2018. She'll be making a ton of money, but exactly how much is unclear. A source tells Variety Gaga will take home more than $1 million for each of at least 74 performances over two years, but the Las Vegas Review-Journal has her doing 36 shows for $400,000 apiece. "It's been my lifelong dream to be a Las Vegas girl, I'm so overjoyed!," the singer tweeted Tuesday.
– The can has been kicked a little farther down the road. When President Trump in October approved the release of previously classified or redacted documents on the JFK assassination, he blocked the release of others over national security concerns and gave federal agencies 180 days to re-review the withheld documents. The review in some cases turned up "identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns," per a memo written by Trump, who on Thursday said some files would now be kept under wraps until Oct. 26, 2021. He wrote that some files are "of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure," per the AP, but he ordered that they be reviewed over the next three years, and that any that can be released be made public immediately. The Dallas Morning News reports roughly 19,000 documents were released Thursday by the National Archives—the largest batch thus far, notes the Hill; 520 remain fully sealed. In his memo, Trump included a hopeful note for the curious: "The need for continued protection can only grow weaker with the passage of time from this congressional finding." (Some were hoping files would be released this week that would shed light on a 1971 suicide.)
– A "possible terrorist threat" shut down Rock am Ring, one of Germany's biggest music festivals, Friday near Nuerburg, AFP reports. Police say they have "concrete elements, in the light of which a possible terrorist threat cannot be ruled out." But no other details were released. According to the Guardian, thousands of people were asked to leave the festival calmly "in order to help police investigations." It's unclear how many people were in attendance Friday, but about 90,000 were expected over the three-day festival. Organizers hoped the festival would resume Saturday. Rock am Ring had already increased security, adding 1,200 additional staff, after the recent Manchester bombing at an Ariana Grande concert. (Rock am Ring was also suspended last year after dozens were injured by lightning.)
– Man, isn’t the plight of the Tibetan people hilarious? Groupon hit a real nerve last night with a Super Bowl commercial that seemed to exploit said plight for yucks. “The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their culture is in jeopardy,” says narrator Timothy Hutton. “But they still whip up an amazing fish curry.” The ad—part of a whole series of mock-PSAs—generated an instant backlash on Twitter and YouTube for its insensitivity, the Huffington Post reports. To be fair, the company has offered to match donations to the causes it parodies. But at the same time, even jokingly referencing the Tibet situation has infuriated China, and may throw a monkey wrench in the company’s expansion plans, the Wall Street Journal reports. “Can anyone be more stupid than Groupon?” asked one Chinese blogger. “Made its first TV commercial as controversial as possible. Good job!” Other ads generating buzz included: Chrysler’s cinematic 2-minute “Imported from Detroit” spot starring Eminem was “the big story of the night,” a company that tracks online buzz tells the AP. Volkswagen’s young Darth Vader ad went viral before it even aired. “It really wasn't selling a car,” says one communications professor. “It was selling a feeling." GoDaddy also made waves with its Joan Rivers commercial… but perhaps the less said of that, the better. Click here for a complete rundown of the best and worst Super Bowl ads.
– A strange turn of events for the "Dog Whisperer": Police say they're investigating Cesar Millan for alleged animal cruelty after Millan's Nat Geo Wild show Cesar 911 featured a dog attacking a pig during a training exercise. "There was a complaint that we received and we are investigating the matter," an LA County Animal Control rep tells TheWrap. TMZ reports officials visited Millan's Dog Psychology Center in Santa Clarita on Thursday night to check on the health of the pig after receiving "numerous complaints." However, Millan was out of town on a business trip at the time, reports NBC Los Angeles. Officials say Millan was then given 24 hours to get in touch with investigators. It isn't clear if he has now done so. The episode showed a French bulldog/terrier mix named Simon, who had previously attacked its owner's potbellied pigs, biting the ear of a pig when introduced to the animal. "It was really difficult to watch," says a professional dog trainer. "It's not the way to rehabilitate an animal that is fearful and aggressive to pigs." A pair of Change.org petitions are calling for the show to be cancelled. Nat Geo Wild, however, says viewers "did not see or understand the full context of the encounter." It adds "Cesar took precautions" and the pig "was tended to immediately afterward, healed quickly, and showed no lasting signs of distress." A clip from the same episode shows Simon calmly interacting with the pig after the attack.
– Is it football season already? It must be, based on President Trump's tweets from Friday morning. After reports filtered out about some NFL players kneeling, raising their fists, and taking part in other forms of protest during preseason games on Thursday evening, Trump once more railed against those who did so. "The NFL players are at it again - taking a knee when they should be standing proudly for the National Anthem," Trump tweeted. "Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their 'outrage' at something that most of them are unable to define. They make a fortune doing what they love......" He continued in a second tweet: "Be happy, be cool! A football game, that fans are paying soooo much money to watch and enjoy, is no place to protest. Most of that money goes to the players anyway." And a final warning: "Find another way to protest. Stand proudly for your National Anthem or be Suspended Without Pay!" Politico and the Washington Post take issue with Trump's assertion that the players haven't been able to define what they're protesting, with Politico noting the players are pushing back against "racial injustice and police brutality." The Post goes even deeper, compiling very specific statements from the players themselves. In May, the NFL banned players from sitting or kneeling during the anthem, but that policy was put on hold in July and won't be enforced as the league and players union try to hash things out on the sidelines.
– Today, being the seventh day, presumably Kim Jong Un is resting. But yesterday, the North Korean despot was busily scaling the snowswept 9,000-foot tallest peak in his kingdom, and state media is reporting everything but that he did it in a single bound, reports the BBC. "Climbing Mount Paektu provides precious mental pabulum more powerful than any kind of nuclear weapon," gushed Rodong; the BBC helpfully notes that "The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'pabulum' as 'bland or insipid intellectual matter, entertainment.' " Kim is pictured with dozens of members of the military atop Paektu. It's the latest heroic exploit for Dear Leader, who last week was reported as having learned to drive by the tender age of three. Mount Paektu is significant to the Kim dynasty, adds Sky News: The regime has long claimed that Kim Jong Il was born on the mountain, giving them a "Mount Paektu bloodline." Others more rooted in things like history and reality say he was born in Russia. The BBC has all the photos here.
– The co-founder of an online music streaming service has mysteriously died just months after the company was forced to shut down, the Gainesville Sun reports. Josh Greenberg, who helped start Grooveshark in 2006 and inspired fellow startup pioneers, was found dead by his girlfriend last night in Gainesville, Fla. His mother, Lori Greenberg, told police the 28-year-old wasn't sick and says their initial investigation found no evidence of drugs. "It looked like he was sleeping," she says. Police added on Twitter, "No evidence of foul play or suicide." Lori says he wasn't even depressed after record companies sued Grooveshark, forcing it to shutter and settle on April 30. Josh "was excited about potential new things that he was going to start," Lori says. Variety notes that Escape Media Group, Grooveshark's parent company, agreed it would pay $75 million if Grooveshark violated the settlement. But Josh was known for more than Grooveshark, which had 145 workers and up to 40 million monthly users at its peak. He also mentored computer programmers and pioneers in Gainesville, offering guidance through programs like Grooveshark University and Summer with the Sharks internships. Now accolades are pouring in, including words from a colleague who describes Greenberg's death as "terrible news": "With Josh it always felt like sitting in the presence of a much deeper, loving intelligence," blogs Ben Erez at Viabilify. "It felt like witnessing true leadership." An autopsy today found no cause of death, Lori tells the Sun, and toxicology results should arrive within two to three months.
– A 20-year-old man streamed himself hanging his 11-month-old daughter on Facebook Live before killing himself Monday evening in a vacant hotel in Thailand, the AP reports. According to the New York Times, a four-minute video shows a crying Wuttisan Wongtalay tying a noose around his daughter's neck and dropping her over the side of the hotel in Phuket. Family members—including the baby's mother—saw the video and called police, the BBC reports. Officers arrived to find Wongtalay having hanged himself as well. Police say Wongtalay was jealous and upset with his wife, who he had accused of being with another man. The video of Wongtalay killing his daughter was on Facebook for about 20 hours before the company removed it. Facebook sent condolences to the family, calling the incident "appalling." "Our hearts go out to the family of the victim," Facebook said in a statement. The company had already promised to review its Facebook Live procedures this month after a man in Cleveland streamed himself killing an elderly man. Facebook Live has also seen live-streamed sex abuse, rape, suicide, and child abuse this year.
– How do you mend a broken heart? Stem cells. Or at least that's the hope after scientists successfully used lab-created heart muscle cells to partially repair damaged hearts in monkeys, Live Science reports. The healthy stem cells were easily absorbed into the damaged hearts and allowed the organ to pump blood more easily. The procedure could lead to a new way to treat heart attacks and at least partially repair heart damage, the Guardian reports. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the US. Scientists are intrigued by the idea of treating damaged hearts by using a patient's own skin cells to create healthy heart cells, which are less likely to be rejected since they don't come from a donor. In the latest study in the journal Nature, the team at Shinshu University induced heart attacks in five macaques and then injected them with heart cells made from the skin of a healthy macaque who was a close genetic match. To avoid rejection, they ensured the donor monkey had a type of protein similar to the recipients' and they gave the sick monkeys anti-rejection drugs. After studying the macaques for three months, researchers found their immune systems tolerated the new cells, which replaced about 16% of the damaged heart tissue. In the end, the monkeys' heart muscles contracted better, pumping blood more efficiently. Human trials are not coming anytime soon, though, after the macaques developed irregular heartbeats. Still, doctors said the findings raise the possibility of treating damage caused by heart attacks. "Currently, the only long term option for these patients is heart transplantation, but there are not enough donors to meet the current demand," heart researcher Sam Boateng told the Guardian. (Monkeys on a strict low-calorie diet lived much longer.)
– President Trump made headlines Monday when he delivered a slam to ABC News journalist Cecilia Vega. Then the White House kept the story alive with a controversial official transcript—one that toned down Trump's remark—before fixing it after an outcry. You can watch the original back and forth for yourself in this video. Trump selects Vega to ask the first question at a news conference, then jokes that she is shocked at that. "I'm not, thank you, Mr. President," Vega responded. Trump, apparently mishearing her, then says, "I know you're not thinking. You never do." However, Politico reports that the first version of the White House transcript, out later Monday, quotes Trump as saying: "I know you're not thanking. You never do." The transcript was spotted by Voice of America journalist Steve Herman, who tweeted the pertinent section and said he wasn't buying it. "I was sitting just behind her in the Rose Garden and we all clearly heard him say: "I know you're not thinking. You never do.” As critics accused the White House of whitewashing the exchange, a revised transcript appeared Tuesday morning, reflecting that Trump did indeed say "thinking," reports NBC News.
– Killing off millions of users is as bad as a mistake as a website can make—but luckily for Facebook, it was reversible. The company apologized for a "terrible error" Friday that caused the profiles of many users—including Mark Zuckerberg—to be switched to the "memorialized" version used after people die, the BBC reports. "We hope people who love Mark will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate his life," said the message under the "Remembering Mark Zuckerberg" banner. Pages are usually only memorialized after a user dies and friends or family request the change and provide proof of death. Affected users scrambled to reassure friends and family that they were still alive, CBS reports. "Having a tough day today, but not dead, just in case Facebook tries to claim that I am," one user posted. Facebook said it had introduced a new message for memorialized pages and accidentally displayed it on the accounts of around 2 million living users. "We are very sorry that this happened and we worked as quickly as possible to fix it," a spokesman said. The Guardian notes that the blunder happened just two days after Zuckerberg insisted that fake news on Facebook played no role in people's voting decisions.
– Having tried out mid-range ballistic missiles in recent weeks, North Korea said today it may conduct a "new form" of nuclear test, the New York Times reports. Pyongyang officials didn't clarify, but the US and its allies have long thought North Korea wants to build small, sophisticated nuclear devices that can ride piggyback on its new missiles. A spokesman for South Korea's foreign ministry said North Korea "will have to pay a price" if it ignores international concerns and carries out the test. For its part, North Korea accused the UN of "turning a blind eye" to "US madcap nuclear war exercises" while denouncing North Korea's, Reuters reports. North Korea also said it wants the ability to hit medium- and long-range targets "with a variety of striking power." Tensions between North and South Korea eased last month, when elderly people separated by the Korean War were allowed short reunions, but the North has since returned to harsh rhetoric—and a paper by a nuclear expert cited the "disquieting possibility" that North Korea is building a network of tunnels to carry out regular nuclear tests with highly enriched uranium.
– Here's Mitt Romney's assessment of the Dark Knight massacre that claimed 12 lives: Different gun laws would not have made any difference. Even though the candidate has supported stricter gun controls in the past, he said on CNBC yesterday: "I still believe that the Second Amendment is the right course to preserve and defend, and I don't believe that new laws are going to make a difference in this type of tragedy." He called Colorado's gun laws "very stringent," adding: "Our challenge is not the laws. Our challenge is people who, obviously, are distracted from reality and do unthinkable, unimaginable, inexplicable things." Romney backed a ban on assault weapons—including the AR-15 used in the Aurora rampage—when he was governor of Massachusetts. The weapons are legal in Colorado, where few modifications have been made to gun laws since the Columbine massacre. “I believe the people should have the right to bear arms, but I don’t believe that we have to have assault weapons as part of our personal arsenal,” Romney said on Fox News in 2004. He won't get much push-back from President Obama, who also plans not to take any action on stricter gun control laws in the wake of the bloodbath.
– Colombia's worst air crash in two decades snuffed out a storybook run by a Brazilian soccer team, and authorities are digging in trying to figure out why a chartered jetliner crashed in the Andes, killing all but six of the 77 people now reported to have been aboard; 20 journalists were among the dead. The latest: The AP reports the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are already being examined in an attempt to get at the cause of the crash, which was originally attributed to an electrical failure. But a flight attendant who survived reported the plane ran out of fuel just before it was to land at Jose Maria Cordova airport outside Medellin. The British Aerospace 146 Avro short-haul jet had a maximum range of around 1,600 nautical miles—about the distance between Santa Cruz, where the plane departed from, and Medellin. An aviation expert tells the AP that air distance between cities is usually measured by the shortest route but planes rarely fly in a straight line, with pilots steering around turbulence, for example. There was also heavy rain when the crew declared an emergency Monday night. ABC News reports it may have been a "nightmare scenario": Flight data indicates the plane circled three times just outside Medellin. The airport it was headed to is an infamously challenging one, located in a mountainous region at 7,000 feet, an elevation that necessitates a high-speed approach. Three players from the Chapecoense team survived the crash but sustained serious injuries, reports Reuters: Goalkeeper Jackson Follmann has had his right leg amputated; defender Helio Neto suffered severe trauma to the skull, thorax, and lungs; and Alan Ruschel underwent spine surgery. A heart-wrenching final statement, per the AP: Moments before the plane took off, the team's coaching staff gave an interview to a Bolivian television station in which they praised the airline, saying it brought them good fortune when it flew them to Colombia last month for the championship's quarterfinals, which they won. "Now we're going to do this new trip and we hope they bring us good luck like they did the first time," athletic director Mauro Stumpf told Gigavision TV.
– Police in a Massachusetts town are showing residents how not to transport their holiday trees. Sudbury police posted a picture of a vehicle with an enormous tree on top of it, per the AP. In fact, it looks more like a tree on wheels than a standard motor vehicle. "Sudbury PD would like to remind you to transport your Holiday trees responsibly," reads the post. "One of our Officer's stopped this vehicle on Route 20 today!" Boston.com fills in some details: It was only one (giant) tree on top of the vehicle; the officer helped secure it more safely, then let the driver off with a warning.
– Consider these two numbers: 5.57 inches and 6.69. The first is the average erect penile length, according to a study of 1,661 American men. The latter is the minimum length that standard condoms have been required to be. If that seems like a disconnect, well, it is, and change is coming—though not without some difficulty. In a look at the condom industry, the New York Times explains that revolution is challenging in large part because of the Food and Drug Administration. It classifies condoms as medical devices, which means any new product has to go through pricey clinical trials to gain approval. Case in point: The Gates Foundation gave Mark McGlothlin $100,000 to pursue his idea of making condoms from things like cow tendon, but he's far short of the $2 million he says the trials would cost. And the makeup of the tests themselves have been problematic. One is called the "hang-and-squeeze," and it's much like it sounds like: A condom is filled with water and then squeezed to look for leakage. But make a condom for the 5.57-inch—or less—man, and filling it with the required water volume doesn't work. The FDA and two standards organizations have started to acknowledge the limitations and tweak the requirements and tests, and that's opened the door for Boston-based Global Protection Corp. to begin selling condoms that come in 60 sizes. Per a press release, 28 of those sizes are larger than the length, width, or both of the "leading XL condom," while 27 are smaller than the typical one. (This study found a slightly different average penile length.)
– On the verge of the Oreo's 101st anniversary, physicist David Neevel has created a futuristic machine designed to undo Nabisco's great mistake—it separates and removes the icky creme from the otherwise wonderful Oreo. "Once every several generations, an invention comes along that fundamentally alters the course of human civilization," declares the Christian Science Monitor, which likens Neevel's "Oreo Separator Machine" to Gutenberg's printing press and the steam engine. Neevel stars in a humorously dry video demo (Yahoo News likens it to a Portlandia sketch) in which he shares that he worked on his Rube Goldberg-style machine for "0.04 years"—aka, "two weeks"—during which he faced major struggles, like how to keep the back of his neck warm. "It was a big time commitment," he notes, saying he spent "hours at a time" away from his dog and girlfriend, and that he "had to try to find, like, a good sandwich in this part of [Portland, Ore.] and stuff. There were a lot of sacrifices I guess." But jokes aside, the machine, which employs a hatchet and floss, is pretty nifty, and Geekosystem notes that videos of more Oreo-separating machines may be coming.
– Is Trent Hills, Ontario, really that bad? A 15-year-old girl “forced” to go to the Canadian vacation spot by her parents last week apparently thought so—and called 911 with her emergency, the CBC reports. Police who responded to the cottage the family rented were not amused. “This appeared to be a case of a teenager being a teenager,” local Constable Stephen Bates tells the Toronto Star. “Although she perceived this as a real issue, it was not an appropriate use of 911.” The girl was given a warning about misusing police resources, Bates says, "which could impact the safety of others in the community who are in real need of assistance." That may be true, observes a post at New York sympathetic to the teen, "but if you've ever been on a family vacation, you can understand where she was coming from." Death and Texas imagines the reaction: "Teens across Canada collectively sighed, rolled their eyes, and put their headphones back on." (This 911 dispatcher handled a very real call about her own kid.)
– Mise-en-scène is super important in Facebook photos, you guys. It's a lesson one couple learned the hard way when attempting to announce their engagement via the social media platform, WGN reports. According to Yahoo, the couple posted a photo of themselves sitting on the couch, with wife-to-be Miranda Levy pointing to the ring on her finger. "He wasn't able to give me a real ring yet, but what matters is what's on the inside," she wrote below the photo. Her family and friends soon learned just how true that was. For those who looked closely, the bottom corner of Levy's engagement photo included an open pregnancy test box. E! Online reports eagle-eyed Facebook friends soon started leaving comments like "Is that what I think it is in the corner?" and "Yo lmfao, gotta crop this guys…" and "Honey, you should call us. Your mother is confused." Having been caught, WGN reports Levy amended the photo to announce their pending baby as well as their pending nuptials: "Hey guys, we're having a baby too." (The wedding-to-be made news because of the innovative way he proposed.)
– "I was scared I was going to witness the death of this guy": That's what one visitor had to say after a man decided to go skinny dipping with the sharks at Ripley's Aquarium of Canada. The man stripped down and then went over a security barrier and jumped, completely naked, into the Toronto aquarium's largest exhibit Friday night. It's called the "Dangerous Lagoon," and a spokesperson for Toronto Police Service tells the CBC the man's stunt was, in fact, "extremely dangerous" to him, the marine animals in the tank, and the staff that tried to get him out of the water. The aquarium was open late at the time for its Friday Night Jazz program. Security personnel asked the swimmer to exit the water but he instead swam to the edge, got out, then did a backward flip right back in. "The guy seemed totally relaxed and there were sharks like everywhere," the aforementioned witness notes. Eventually, the man did get out, put his clothes back on, and slipped into a crowd of onlookers. Security had called police, but the man was gone by the time they arrived; they are currently investigating the incident. They want to speak to the man, and the police rep says he could face charges including trespassing, mischief, and indecent exposure. The aquarium says it will press charges if the man is found, the Toronto Star reports. (This shark likes the taste of plants more than meat.)
– A second inquest into Amy Winehouse's death has ended with the same conclusion as the first: The singer died after drinking too much alcohol. The second coroner also ruled it a "death by misadventure," or accidental alcohol poisoning, and confirmed that Winehouse's blood alcohol level was five times the legal limit for driving, Sky News reports. The second inquest was ordered after the original coroner was found not to have the correct qualifications for her position, but the verdict had not been expected to change. The second coroner noted that "two empty vodka bottles were on the floor" next to Winehouse's bed when the singer was found, the BBC reports. Winehouse's doctor said in a written statement that she'd seen her the night before her death. "She specifically said she did not want to die." But Winehouse "was genuinely unwilling to follow the advice of doctors, being someone who wanted to do things her own way."
– The landmark Berkeley City Club was evacuated yesterday after an 80-year-old resident used a toxic chemical to kill herself in her room. Police in the California city say Hazmat teams and bomb squad technicians were called in after a note was found outside the woman's third-story apartment warning of the danger, the Oakland Tribune reports. Police say a "known quantity of what appeared to be a hazardous material has been removed" and steps are being taken to make the building—which houses both hotel guests and residents—safe, reports Berkeleyside. The woman is believed to have used sodium azide, a colorless salt used as the gas-forming component in car airbag systems. It becomes extremely toxic when mixed with water.
– World-class alpinist Hayden Kennedy and his partner, Inge Perkins, were skiing in Montana on Saturday when an early-season avalanche on Imp Peak near Bozeman took the couple by surprise at 10,000 feet, reports the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. The slide buried Perkins, 23, and partially covered Kennedy, 27. He searched in vain but never found Perkins. Then Kennedy headed home and took his own life, Outside reports; his family says Kennedy was unable to deal with the "unbearable loss." Kennedy didn't call 911 but left "incredibly clear directions for where to find her," Doug Chabot of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center tells Outside. Perkins, also an accomplished climber, was wearing a beacon that could have led rescuers to her, but it was turned off, Chabot says. Her body was recovered Monday morning under 3 feet of snow, per the Post Independent. The couple had moved to Bozeman so Perkins could pursue a degree in math and education at Montana State University. Kennedy, hailed in 2014 as maybe "the best young climber on the planet," was studying for an EMT certification. He wrote recently of the pain of seeing "too many friends go to the mountains only to never return … Climbing is either a beautiful gift or a curse." As tributes flowed to the pair, Kennedy's family says they "sorrowfully" respect his final decision and remembered "an uncensored soul whose accomplishments as a mountaineer were always secondary to his deep friendships and mindfulness." (Another climber survived one avalanche on Everest, but perished on his second ascent.)
– As he came out of an Atlanta gas station Saturday night after paying for his fill-up, Lestor Chaney was overwhelmed with a feeling no parent ever wants to experience: complete fear, ABC News reports. Chaney tells WSB (which spells his first name "Lester") he went inside the Texaco to pay after his card wouldn't go through at the pump, and when he emerged, he saw a man hopping into his Toyota Camry and speeding off. But it wasn't just his car being stolen that stopped his heart—it was the fact that his twin 1-year-old girls, Nadia and McKenzie, were inside. "I ran to unlock the door, but the door was locked or whatever and the guy took off," he says (ABC News has the surveillance footage that shows that terrifying moment). It's not known if the carjacker was aware of the babies snuggled in their car seats in the back when he boosted the Camry, but it would appear not, as the car and the girls were found, uninjured, by cops about a quarter-mile away in the parking lot of an apartment complex. McKenzie was still dozing off in her car seat in the car, and Nadia, who had been taken out of the car and placed in a wooded area, was still snoozing as well. Chaney, who admits he left the car running when he went inside to pay, is now breathing a huge sigh of relief. "I was just hoping they were going to be alright," he says. (This mom made a literal leap of faith when her car was carjacked with her kids inside.)
– In a deeply unfortunate gaffe for Donald Trump on the eve of New York's GOP primary, he managed to get the date of 9/11 wrong. "I was down there and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-11, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I've ever seen in action," he told a Monday night rally in Buffalo, NY, per the Hill. "I saw the bravest people I've ever seen, including the construction workers, including every person down there." Trump—who went on to slam "Lyin' Ted Cruz," "Crooked Hillary Clinton," and "stupid trade deals" like NAFTA—still received plenty of cheers from what the Buffalo News calls an "adoring" and wildly enthusiastic crowd at the First Niagara Center, where he was introduced by Buffalo Bills head coach Rex Ryan. According to a Marist poll released on Saturday, Trump has a 29-point lead in New York, with 54% support to 25% for John Kasich. Ted Cruz is third with 16%. (Cruz was almost completely ignored when he spoke at the New York State Republican gala last week.)
– Beware of pig: Authorities in Indianapolis are crediting a family's full-grown pig with scaring off a burglar or burglars who broke into a home just weeks after the property was purchased. Per Fox 59, the intruder smashed through the back door but left without taking anything, apparently after encountering the pig known as Dumplin, who was adopted from a rescue shelter. "[Police] were guessing whenever the person broke in, they were probably surprised I had a pig, and were like, 'We don't want to deal with this,'" the homeowner, a single mom with four kids, tells WXIN. Though she wasn't home at the time, she adds an officer informed her the intruder had made it as far as Dumplin's location. "He's the perfect animal," she says.
– A serial killer who raped and murdered at least four young gay men in London was sentenced to life in prison on Friday. Now it's the police who find themselves in the crosshairs, the New York Times reports. In 2014 and 2015, Stephen Port used dating apps to lure his victims to his apartment, where he drugged, raped, and killed them. According to the Guardian, Port "had a fetish for sex with unconscious boyish-looking men." Despite the bodies of all four victims turning up near Port's apartment—including three in the same churchyard—in a 15-month span and dying from the same drug, police chalked the deaths up to unconnected suicides and overdoses. Police only started looking into the possibility of connected murders after pressure from one of the victim's families. Police have now admitted they maybe could have caught Port sooner, and 17 officers are being investigated. Port left the first body outside his apartment building and called police. Despite changing his story and admitting the victim was in his apartment and he dragged the body outside, police didn't view him as a suspect, CNN reports. Port left a fake suicide note on one of the bodies that read "BTW, please do not blame the guy I was with last night." Police didn't bother trying to find the "guy." And there was more. The family of one of Port's victims is suing the police, accusing them of not looking into the deaths too hard because the victims were all gay. A formal investigation is attempting to determine if "discrimination played any part" in what happened. (He was an NFL draft pick—and a brazen serial killer.)
– The Miami Dolphins fired offensive line coach Jim Turner and longtime head trainer Kevin O'Neill yesterday, less than a week after the two were called out in the NFL's damning report on bullying in the team's locker room. Turner not only let Richie Incognito and two other linemen harass their teammates, he sometimes joined in, the report said. In 2012, Turner gave all of the linemen female blow-up sex dolls—except Andrew McDonald, a frequent target of homophobic insults, who got a male doll, Fox Sports reports. O'Neill, meanwhile, "laughed along and never intervened" when Incognito and company subjected his Japanese assistant to racial slurs. He was also hostile toward the investigation, cutting short an interview for it. Turner has been with the team for two years; O'Neill for 18. They "are good people," Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said in a statement, "but both exhibited poor judgment." Turner may be replaced by former Texans offensive line coach John Benton, who was hired as an assistant earlier this month, NFL.com observes.
– If you happen to have solar panels on your house, they might need a change of direction. A new study suggests that the standard industry advice (at least in this hemisphere) of having the panels face south is wrong, reports National Geographic. Try west instead. The study by the Pecan Street Research Institute in Texas found that homes with west-facing panels generate 2% more electricity per day, with the biggest benefit coming in the late afternoon—generally peak usage time for utilities, notes Gizmodo. "Quantifying the way that favoring late-day sunlight helps homeowners save money and utilities flatten out demand could lead to a simple but effective hack for the world’s solar installers," writes Christopher Mims at Quartz. "Simply re-orienting solar panels could shorten the amount of time it takes for them to pay for themselves." It's just one study, however, and it would be interesting to see whether the results hold up in winter as well as summer, writes Amanda Miller at the Clean Energy Authority. Still, she adds, "this research has the potential to dramatically change the residential solar market." (Soon, you might be able to pick some up at IKEA.)
– Thursday is the one-year anniversary of the start of Robert Mueller's investigation, and President Trump is among those marking the occasion. His tweet, however, drips with sarcasm. "Congratulations America, we are now into the second year of the greatest Witch Hunt in American History ... and there is still No Collusion and No Obstruction," he writes. "The only Collusion was that done by Democrats who were unable to win an Election despite the spending of far more money!" In another tweet, he calls the investigation "disgusting, illegal and unwarranted" and said his administration has nonetheless had "the most successful" first 17 months of any White House, "by far!" Related coverage: The basics: Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump," explains PolitiFact. Mueller quickly expanded his investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice, notably by firing FBI chief James Comey. The piece hits other nuts and bolts of the investigation.
– Drivers on the Bronx River Parkway were a little surprised to see a 6-year-old driving his miniature ATV beside them last night. The boy's mom was even more surprised to discover him missing. It started on a family trip to a park in Mount Vernon, New York, where the autistic boy rode off unnoticed at around 7pm, the Journal News reports. "They realized pretty quickly he was gone but couldn't lay eyes on him," a police spokesman said. Bystanders say the mother was frantically calling for her boy as kids ran back and forth looking for him, 7Online reports. Soon he had zoomed onto the northbound parkway and was even trying to merge into the middle lane, police and witnesses say. So drivers boxed him in and grabbed him just as police arrived. "He was like, 'I need to go home, mom, mom,' all he kept saying was 'mom,'" said Ana Rubio, one of the drivers. Another was said to be shaking with goosebumps, telling people, "I almost hit a kid." As for the boy, he seemingly "didn't know he was on a highway, he just wanted to go home," said Rubio. He was taken to a hospital first and "found to be OK," reports 7Online, but police are still investigating. (Read about an autistic boy allegedly kept in a cage.)
– The 1967 Ford Mustang is no longer an endangered species. Just in time for classic car buffs' Christmas, Ford has added a brand-new shell for the '67 Mustang convertible to its Ford Restoration Parts line, giving enthusiasts a chance to build their own from scratch, the Los Angeles Times reports. The $16,000 auto part is built with modern techniques that make it stronger than the original, Motor Authority notes. "These days, the chances are fairly slim of finding a restorable, rust-free ’67 Mustang that has never been wrecked,” a Ford exec says. “As the value of classic Mustangs has increased over the years, garages, barns, and scrap yards have been picked clean.”
– Eight animals have now died after a jaguar escaped from its habitat at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. NOLA.com reports an alpaca and fox died Sunday, the day after the male jaguar killed four alpacas, one emu, and one fox Saturday morning. The jaguar was captured and returned to its night house after being sedated by a veterinary team. No people were hurt and the zoo was reopened Sunday. The zoo acquired the alpacas in March from farms in Alabama and Mississippi. The alpaca that died overnight Sunday was the zoo's last living alpaca. One injured fox continues to be monitored. It's not clear how the animal escaped, the AP reports. Zoo officials say inspections found that the roof was "compromised," but initial findings concluded that keeper error was not a factor.
– China on Sunday began a suspension of all coal imports from North Korea for the rest of the year as it increases pressure on its communist neighbor to give up its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, reports the AP. The ban is in line with UN Security Council sanctions imposed in November in response to North Korea's fifth nuclear test two months earlier, the Commerce Ministry said in an online statement Saturday. China had already banned coal imports from North Korea in April last year, but those restrictions allowed some imports for civilian use. "Imports of coal produced in North Korea—including shipments already declared to the customs but yet to be released—will be suspended for the remainder of this year," said a Commerce Ministry statement, per CNN. China is North Korea's largest source of trade and aid and Sunday's suspension will deprive Pyongyang of an important source of foreign currency. Beijing has come under pressure from President Trump to lean harder on Pyongyang, but Beijing says its influence is limited. However, it has grown increasingly frustrated with North Korea's defiance of UN demands that it end missile tests and development of nuclear weapons. North Korea launched its latest ballistic missile test a week ago.
– A decorative poster that would supposedly "make a great addition to your home or office" according to its online listing was quickly pulled from sale by Walmart and other retailers over the weekend after customers pointed out that it featured the front gate of a Nazi concentration camp. Walmart says the poster, featuring the main gate of the Dachau camp with the slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei"—"Work Makes You Free"—was being sold online by one of its third-party sellers. It was "horrified to see that this item was on our site," the company said in a statement, per ABC News. "We have shared our disappointment with them and have learned they are removing the publisher of this item entirely from inventory," Walmart said, though the name of the seller was not disclosed. Sears and Amazon also removed the poster from sale. One Sears customer was shocked to see that a list of "similar products" to the concentration camp poster included double wall ovens, Digiday finds. How Sears explained that one: "Those are special sale items that currently appear on millions of product pages. While clearly unintentional, we sincerely apologize for the proximity of the positioning." (Click to read about another Walmart headache.)
– It's that time of year when financial experts are asked to dust off their crystal balls and tea leaves and offer up their predictions for the economy in 2018. At Yahoo Finance, David Nelson warns that the problem with these predictions is that experts tend to extrapolate, i.e., believing a healthy market will continue to be healthy, and vice versa. That said, he admits he falls "into that same camp as many extrapolating 2017 a very good year into the next. ... Strength in overseas markets means our customers are doing well and that's great news for US multinationals." We round up five predictions from Fortune and WalletHub, which notes its last six years of predictions have been relatively prescient, with an average GPA of 3.56.
– ESPN and Univision have scored with their World Cup coverage: The US victory over Ghana Monday night set World Cup ratings records for both broadcasters, with a total audience of 15.9 million viewers. For ESPN, it was the highest-rated men's soccer game ever. The ratings were way ahead of the 6 million that watched hockey's Stanley Cup final on Friday night, and weren't that far behind the NBA final between the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat, which pulled in 17.9 million viewers, the Wall Street Journal finds. Among English-language viewers, the World Cup so far has the highest average ratings in the Washington, DC, area, with San Francisco, Boston, New York, and Orlando rounding out the top five, the Washington Post reports.
– Lady Gaga was Billboard’s top new artist last year, and this year she’s moved on to snag the top artist-of-the-year honors. That’s the fastest any woman has moved from one category to the other since Whitney Houston managed the feat in 1985-86. (Chris Brown managed to snag both titles simultaneously, in 2006.) The ranking is determined based on chart performance. So who’s this year’s top new artist? Ke$ha. For more on the rankings and to see what happened to last year’s top artist, Taylor Swift, click here.
– Sean "Diddy" Combs took to Instagram on Sunday to comment publicly for the first time on the death of ex Kim Porter, the mother of three of his children. Alongside of video of the two of them that's been viewed nearly 6 million times, the 49-year-old wrote: "For the last three days I've been trying to wake up out of this nightmare. But I haven't. I don't know what I'm going to do without you baby. I miss you so much. Today I'm going to pay tribute to you, I'm going to try and find the words to explain our unexplainable relationship. We were more than best friends, we were more than soulmates. WE WERE SOME OTHER S---!! And I miss you so much. Super Black Love." CNN reports the video features footage from a 2006 Essence shoot that shows a pregnant Porter dancing with Diddy as SWV's "When U Cry" plays. "We don't get a chance to see much" black love, Porter says, in extolling themselves as an example of it. She and Diddy split in 2007; their children are son Christian, 20, and 11-year-old twin daughters, Jessie James and D'Lila, per the New York Post. Porter, 46, was found dead Thursday in her Toluca Lake, Calif., home. No cause of death has been released.
– It's been eight years since Nicholas Kristof last visited Iran, and this time around, people "seem more discontented," he writes in the New York Times. Kristof blames that on economic troubles—and while Western sanctions are partially to blame, a "surprising number of Iranians" hold their own government accountable. Indeed, many are comfortable complaining privately about their leaders. "The biggest factor that has turned people against Islam is this government," said one woman. Despite the anti-government sentiment, Iranians in general now seem "more scared" of activism and don't want to be quoted on their views. "It is not possible to tell the truth in Iran," said one interviewee. And while there are "Death to America" signs to be seen, Kristof argues that "at the grass-roots level, this may be the most pro-American nation in the Middle East." Click here for Kristof's full article, in which he writes of the "warmth" people showed him when they learned he was American.
– The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered emergency inspections of 80 older Boeing 737s similar to the Southwest plane that suddenly cracked open last week during a flight. The order covers aircraft built with a specific process in the '80s and '90s and those that have more than 30,000 flight cycles, ABC News reports. Some 78 of the jets in question belong to Southwest Airlines—which has carried out its own inspections—and two are being used by Alaska Airlines. Inspectors must use an electro-magnetic process that detects cracks invisible to the naked eye. Neither the Federal Aviation Administration nor Boeing currently requires checks to be carried out on the section of aircraft that cracked open. The incident "could change the conversation regarding the risk of aging aircraft," and lead to tougher, more expensive inspections, the president of the Flight Safety Foundation tells USA Today.
– North Carolina passed a controversial voter ID law in July, but if the Department of Justice has its way, the law—said to be the most sweeping of its kind in the nation—may never be enforced. The DOJ will file suit against the state today, a source tells Politico and the Charlotte Observer; Eric Holder is expected to make the announcement later today. The suit accuses North Carolina of violating the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against black voters, and asks that the state be barred from enforcing the law—which was scheduled to go into effect for the 2016 elections. It also seeks to put North Carolina back on a "preclearance" list, meaning all changes to voting laws and procedures would need to first be approved by the DOJ or a federal court. Forty North Carolina counties were subject to preclearance until June, when the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. But the DOJ can use another VRA provision to attempt to put states back under preclearance, as it is also doing in Texas. The problem with the voter ID law, as the DOJ sees it: Just 22% of registered voters in North Carolina are African American, but they make up 34% of the voters who do not have a DMV-issued ID (and thus would not be allowed to vote). The DOJ suit will also take issue with three other parts of the law: the elimination of provisional ballots for voters who go to the incorrect polling place (30% of out-of-precinct voters last year were African American); the elimination of some early voting days (29% of early voters last year were African American); and the elimination of same-day voter registration during early voting (41% of voters using same-day registration were African American).
– Edward Snowden hasn't done great things for US-Russia relations. Now meet the Bloodhound Gang. The American rock band was performing in Ukraine last week when bassist Jared Hasselhoff grabbed a Russian flag thrown from the audience, shoved it down the front of his pants, and pulled it out again from the rear. "Don't tell Putin," he joked before the stunt. Result: The video blew up in Russia, and the government has launched a criminal investigation into desecrating the flag, reports Ria Novosti. The band cut short its tour and returned to the US over the weekend, with conflicting reports on whether it was deported or left voluntarily, reports CNN. Their van got pelted with eggs on the way to airport, and once inside, Russian nationalists roughed up band members and stomped on a US flag. (That video also is making the rounds.) Hasselhoff later apologized and said he wasn't making a serious political statement, reports the Christian Science Monitor. The band might not get a ton of sympathy from Americans, given band leader Jimmy Pop's statement on stage after the flag gag. "Russia is better than America, so I disapproved of that," he said.
– The Supreme Court has refused to block a lawsuit by young Americans seeking to combat climate change, the Washington Post reports. With a trial date approaching in Oregon, the Trump administration asked the high court to intervene—but justices issued a three-page order Friday saying the government could try seeking relief with the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which has already turned them down. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch backed Trump's case, while other votes weren't revealed. "We've been confident throughout this case that we would get to trial, and I believe we will get to trial," says Julia Olson, attorney for the 21 young people who filed suit in 2015. "We have overcome everything the government has thrown at us. It is not luck." Plaintiffs say the failure to address climate change is depriving them of their right to life, liberty, and property, and leaving essential resources unprotected, per CNN. A Trump administration legal brief calls the suit an "invasion of the separation of powers" and questions any "fundamental right" to "a climate system capable of sustaining human life." But with the Supreme Court punting on the issue—at least for now—plaintiffs for Juliana v. United States will likely ask that the case proceed in a federal district court in Eugene, Oregon. Similar lawsuits have failed worldwide, but Nature notes that one succeeded in the Netherlands, forcing the Dutch government to significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020. (An ocean study has horrific implications for the climate change fight.)
– This is either a big fan of the cartoon Rick and Morty, a hopeful collector, or a very brave and nostalgic soul: A packet of 1998 McDonald's Szechuan sauce has sold for $14,700 on eBay, reports Time. The strange background: McDonald's put out the dipping sauce in that year as a publicity tie-in for the Disney movie Mulan, and it received a giant nostalgic push when the character Rick from the popular Adult Swim show pined for it in a recent episode. That led to a viral campaign for McDonald's to bring it back, complete with multiple Change.org petitions. The company has hinted it might do so, and hopeful fans have noted that a remake of Mulan is in the works for next year. But the eBay sale is the strangest component yet. "I just bought a really old car, while cleaning it I found a packet of this sauce," the listing stated. "After watching the recent episode of Rick and Morty I went online to see if it was worth anything. Turns out it was. Also this comes with a packet of wasabi as well." A post at Eater notes that what it calls "nostalgic food" is popular on eBay, "but this is an unusually high price tag." No word yet on the identity of the buyer, or plans for the sauce, but the Daily Dot is issuing a challenge: The character Rick would definitely eat the stuff, "so how about it, new owner of rare McDonald’s Mulan dipping sauce. Are you squanchy enough to be a Rick?" (A brother recently drove his sister to McDonald's, which is notable only because they have a combined age of 11.)
– Anthony Weiner's sexting wrecked his political career, his comeback attempt, his media career, and his marriage—and now even his freedom could be at stake. The AP reports that the former congressman's alleged online relationship with a 15-year-old girl is being investigated by authorities in New York and in North Carolina, where the girl lives. A spokeswoman for the US attorney's office in North Carolina says they've "begun investigative efforts," and sources tell CNN that prosecutors in New York have already subpoenaed the 52-year-old's phone records and other communication. An FBI task force in New York is also looking into the matter, a law enforcement source says. According to the Daily Mail, which first reported Weiner's communication with the underage girl, Weiner's explicit messages included one where he told the high school sophomore he would "make her limp for a week." The girl says Weiner—who allegedly called himself "T Dog" this time instead of "Carlos Danger"—asked her to undress and touch herself, and the New York Daily News notes that encouraging a child under 17 to "engage in a sexual performance" can carry a 15-year sentence in New York. Weiner has admitted communicating with the girl and demonstrating "terrible judgment" online, but he also claims to have been "the subject of a hoax."
– Donald Trump says a meeting with dozens of black pastors at Trump Tower on Monday was "amazing," "inspiring," and "unbelievable"—but he has no intention of changing his campaign's tone. His campaign initially said the summit would be followed by public endorsements from more than 100 clergy members, though it later canceled the public part of the meeting and pastors say there were plenty of disagreements during the talk, Politico reports. "I asked him: 'Are you a racist?'" Bishop George Bloomer tells the AP. "People are saying that about you," Bloomer says he told Trump. "If you are seeking the African-American community to support you, at the least, you're not helping with these kind of things that are going on." Clergy members say the roughing up of a Black Lives Matter protester at a Trump rally was discussed, as was Trump's rhetoric on immigration. Afterward, Trump said, "The beautiful thing about the meeting is they didn't ask me to change the tone," per Politico. Some attendees say he did agree to soften his tone somewhat, though the AP reports that at a Monday evening rally in Macon, Ga., where he was introduced by Herman Cain, Trump repeated the positions on immigration that the pastors had been concerned about. But he has adopted a "newly conciliatory tone on racial matters," according to the New York Times: Trump and the clergy members who met with him were strongly criticized by the Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday, and Trump's only response in a Times interview was, "Deep down inside, Al likes me a lot."
– Killing a bear with a hand-thrown spear isn't an everyday feat—but the government of Alberta, Canada, is not impressed by the prowess of American hunter Josh Bowmar. The government promised to introduce a ban on "archaic" and "unacceptable" hunting with spears after video surfaced of Bowmar, a former javelin athlete, killing a bear from more than 12 yards away with a 7-foot spear that had a GoPro camera attached, the Edmonton Journal reports. The wounded bear, which had been attracted by a bait bin, ran off. In a YouTube video that has now been taken offline, Bowmar says he returned the next day and found the body of the bear around 150 feet from where it was hit. The video sparked controversy—and lurid headlines like "Warped Hunter Kills Starving Bear with Seven Foot Homemade Spear" in British tabloids—not just for the manner of the kill, but for Bowmar's celebration, the CBC reports. "That's going to be some epic footage," he exclaims. "Yeah, I got mad penetration. That's a dead bear." The Humane Society of the US also weighed in, referring to the Ohio man as "this year's version of Walter Palmer," the American dentist who killed Cecil the Lion, notes the Dayton Daily News. Bowmar says he was surprised by the reaction. The kill was "as humane and ethical as one could get in a hunting situation on big game animals," he says, adding that "no one cares more about these animals than us hunters, especially me," and that the bear's hide and meat did not go to waste. (A California woman angered her neighbors by having a bear shot.)
– We haven't seen this many rave reviews since Mad Men went off the air. Samsung's new smartphone, the Galaxy Note7, goes on sale Friday, and tech people are already drooling. Fortunately, the Note7 is waterproof. A "devout iPhone user" at Mashable calls the Note7 "the best smartphone money can buy" and "the most impressive smartphone ever created." Business Insider explains how Samsung's Note phones have gone from terrible to "the most beautiful phone I've ever used" in just a few years. Despite having largely the same specs as other top-of-the-line phones, the Next Web says the Note7 is "possibly the most well-rounded, productive, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink smartphone ever made." The Wall Street Journal reports the Note7 is worth the hefty $850 price tag as long you plan on using the included stylus, which you absolutely should because it allows you to operate the phone underwater. For people who like their raves in numerical form, the Note7 received ratings of 9 out of 10 and 4.5 out of 5 from CNET. Wired lists some of the Note7's many selling points, including an "absurdly good camera," all-time great display, "peppy performance," and eye-scanning technology that allows it to be unlocked just by looking at it. Finally, the Note7 is the first big phone that "feels like a device that was designed to be a big phone from the beginning" and not just a stretched-out smaller phone, according to the Verge.
– "It's just unreal," Sandra Moore tells Fox 5. "I just don't know how much more we can take." Moore's grandson, 7-year-old Ethan Fain, was mauled by two dogs who pulled him out of a tree and attacked him last Christmas Eve in Georgia. Ethan lost his right ear and suffered serious damage to his left ear; his injuries required 300 stitches, the New York Daily News reports. Now another tragedy has befallen the family. On Aug. 7, Ethan was with his mom, Tracy Dowdy Fain, at the hospital getting stitches from a reconstructive surgery removed, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Suddenly, Fain, who had complained of a headache, collapsed. Doctors found Fain suffered a brain aneurysm and stroke. Her daughter, Jessica Dowdy, says she wouldn't have survived if she wasn't already in a hospital when it happened. In the coming days, the swelling in Fain's brain got worse, and she was declared brain dead Tuesday. “Her body is still here, but her soul is gone,” Dowdy says. The family still hasn't told Ethan. “All he knows is mommy is sick and the doctors are trying to make her better like they made him better,” Dowdy says. A GoFundMe account has been set up for Fain, who also lost a nephew last month.
– Progressives are taking off the kid gloves. They've tried dismissing the validity of the tea party movement but now have a new approach: f*ck them. The Agenda Project has launched a "F*ck Tea" project, complete with T-shirts, coffee mugs, and more merchandise to come. The point is simply to "dismiss the tea party and promote the progressive cause," the group's founder tells Ben Smith of Politico. To that end, the F*ck Tea website features polling statistics meant to ridicule tea partiers: 59% like Glenn Beck. 66% think global warming does not exist or will not have a serious impact. 40% think Sarah Palin would be a good president. ...and so on. Click here to read about the Tea Party's fundraising troubles.
– Emerson College will soon offer a degree "for those who want their studies to be a joke," cracks MassLive.com: a bachelor of fine arts in comedic arts. Thanks to the "marked rise of comedy's impact on American culture and its global influence," the Boston school will offer students a chance to learn the history and theory of comedy, traced back to Greeks and Romans, plus comedy performance, production, editing, and writing. "It's not going to be just lecturing," program creator Martie Cook tells the Boston Globe. "I think what this program offers that's unique is that you are going to have to actually do it." She notes former students of the school, including Jay Leno, Denis Leary, Bill Burr, and Henry Winkler, may even pop in as guest lecturers. Officials decided to introduce the four-year program, which begins in the fall of 2016, after offering a minor program in comedy last fall. The response was overwhelming. "Comedy is more relevant than ever," Cook says, per CBS News. "For millennials and Generation Z, it's a second language for expressing and reflecting the world as they understand it." Alum Doug Herzog, the president of Viacom Music and Entertainment Group who oversees Comedy Central, says the program has found a perfect home. "Some schools develop NFL quarterbacks," he says. "We develop great comedic talent."
– The Mormon church's big revelations didn't stop with its sacred undergarments: In an online essay titled "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo," the church for the first time declares that founder Joseph Smith was a polygamist, with a footnote stating that "careful estimates" put his tally of wives at between 30 and 40. The essay explains that Smith was ordered to take multiple wives by an angel who visited him three times between 1834 and 1842; in the last instance, the angel was armed with a sword and threatened a reluctant Smith. The leader, then married to first wife Emma, took his first plural wife, Fanny Alger, in Kirtland, Ohio. Smith and Alger ultimately separated, and the church relocated to Nauvoo, Ill., where he married many more women. The oldest was 56, and the youngest was 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball; some were already married, a revelation the New York Times describes as the "biggest bombshell for some." The essay explains that a number of marriages, including that with Kimball, were sealed "for eternity alone," suggesting sexual relations weren't involved (the ones that did involve sex were "for time and eternity"). What did Emma think of all this? Per the essay, she was none too pleased, though at one time she did accept four of Smith's wives into their home. And what was the reasoning behind what the essay describes as the "wrenching trial" of polygamy? Kimball said Smith told her that "the practice of this principle would be the hardest trial the Saints would ever have to test their faith." Two more essays discuss plural marriage in the church's later years; they're part of an effort the church is making to share "reliable, faith-promoting" info about its past, the church's historian tells the Times. (Part of that effort: an explanation of its undergarments.)
– Kira Kazantsev was kicked out of the Alpha Phi sorority at Hofstra University last year, and it wasn't for banging plastic cups around, a source tells Jezebel. According to the source, the future Miss America and a friend were expelled from the sorority for hazing pledges, who were "called names, berated for their perceived physical flaws and imperfections, and made to perform physical tasks to the point of bruising and exhaustion." Kazantsev, the president of the sorority's recruitment committee at the time, was banned from all sorority-related activities after an investigation, the source says, but sneaked into the end-of-year formal anyway. Pageant officials, however, say Kazantsev has been "fully transparent with the Miss America Organization about her termination from the Alpha Phi sorority" and the "incident has been exploited" to distract from her impressive achievements at the Long Island university, reports the Washington Post. On her website, the beauty queen says she never bullied anybody and the worst hazing she witnessed involved "reciting information, a few sleepless nights, and crafting." She says she was expelled from the sorority after an email in which she joked about hazing was forwarded to the national organization—and says the "nameless source that is saying these things is doing exactly what it is that I was wrongfully accused of." (Click for more about Kazantsev's controversial talent performance.)
– Some people believe Kim Kardashian is a menace to the thinking public, but PETA has stronger words for the reality-TV star: The animal rights group is calling her downright "dangerous" and "intrusive" to animals after Kim K posted an Instagram video of her cruising around on captive dolphins and puckering up for a sea lion during a Mexican vacation, reports Radar Online. "Touch tanks and 'swim-with' programs … invade the animals' already diminished world," says a PETA spokeswoman. PETA's website also notes that "animals in 'petting pools' can become injured and anxious as a result of constant poking and prodding, and exposure to bacteria that they are not immune to can make them ill." It's not the first-time Kim K has had a run-in with PETA: In 2012, the organization railed against her for threatening to sue a woman who tossed flour on her for wearing fur—a move that prompted sis Khloe to snatch her support for the group. PETA doesn't appear to care one iota what Khloe or any of the Kardashians think about its animal advocacy. “Kim is free to leave the pool, but for the dolphins, it’s a lifetime sentence,” the spokeswoman says. (PETA presumably would not be a fan of Kim's face turning up on the $20 bill.)
– The future is now, people! Ever since Marty McFly donned self-lacing shoes in Back to the Future, people have been dreaming about sporting a pair of their own—because, you know, tying laces sucks. Nike has finally brought the dream to life, reports the Verge. The company has announced a power-laced shoe called the HyperAdapt 1.0, which uses a sensor in the sole to read your foot position, then automatically tightens with a series of battery-operated pulleys, per Wired. You can adjust the fit with buttons on the sides of the shoes, which will learn your preferred setting after a few wears. But that's just the beginning. Nike shoe designer Tinker Hatfield suggests a more automatic version of the shoe that uses biometric data to sense the perfect fit could be on the way. "Wouldn't it be great if a shoe, in the future, could sense when you needed to have it tighter or looser? Could it take you even tighter than you'd normally go if it senses you really need extra snugness in a quick maneuver? That's where we're headed," he says on Nike.com. The yet-to-be-priced shoes will be available in three colors around the holidays, but only for Nike+ members. The downside? You'll have to charge them every two weeks.
– Sprint car veteran David Steele has died during a race in Florida, reports the AP, after he locked wheels with another car, went airborne, spun 180 degrees, and hit a retaining wall. Medics attempted to treat him but he was pronounced dead. He was 42. "Desoto Speedway owners and staff are saddened by tonight’s passing of David Steele in the Sprint car feature," per a track statement. "Thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends who were all in attendance," as he tried for his 100th win in Florida, reports the Bradenton Herald. NASCAR driver Kasey Kahne tweeted that Steele was "one of the best and such a good guy to hang out and have a beer with," while Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman wrote: "Man, I love open wheel racing, but something has to change."
– Move over, metadata and voice-call collection: The NSA is also harvesting images and trying to identify them with facial-recognition software, the New York Times reports. According to 2011 agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA grabs "millions of images per day"—about 55,000 of which are good enough for facial recognition. The agency doesn't take them from state databases of US passport photos or driver's licenses, said an NSA spokeswoman, but she wouldn't say whether social media sites or State Department databases were fair game. Law enforcement agencies already create facial-imagery databases—relying on Facebook and driver's-license photos, for example—and the FBI is combining fingerprints with facial imagery and other data. But the NSA can match its images with vast troves of information it has already intercepted. So, is this legal? The NSA would need court approval to snatch images of Americans, the Times notes, unless they contacted someone overseas. The technology isn't foolproof, and gives its share of false positives, but civil-liberties advocates are still concerned. The facial-recognition debate has cropped up before—like in 2011, when Facebook introduced automatic tagging, TechCrunch notes, and later turned off a tagging feature in Europe after an investigation by Irish authorities, reports PC World.
– Queen Elizabeth II is now the longest-tenured monarch in British history, surpassing her great-great-grandmother Victoria's 23,226 days, 16 hours, and 23 minutes as queen sometime around 5:30pm local time, reports the BBC. The time is approximate because no one is actually sure when regular Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth. There are no gaps between British monarchs, so Elizabeth became queen as soon as her father King George VI died. However, he died in his sleep, and no one is quite sure exactly when he passed, explains Time. Maclean's reports Britain rang church bells and lit bonfires to celebrate Queen Victoria's record-setting reign, but Elizabeth's day is being celebrated in more low-key fashion. "The event is important and unprecedented; just don't expect a big party," Maclean's states. Still, a flotilla of boats on the Thames was marking the occasion, and crowds cheered the queen when she appeared in public.
– When Patton Oswalt tweeted on Sunday, "What'd you guys do yesterday?," it was less a call to conversation and more to reveal what he did on Saturday: marry Meredith Salenger, per Page Six. His tweet showed him holding hands with his 8-year-old daughter, Alice, who in turn was holding hands with Salenger on the happy occasion. While Page Six didn't have much in the way of wedding details, which Us says took place at the Jim Henson Company lot in Los Angeles, Oswalt, 48, and Salenger, 47, offered some insight online, including an Oswalt tweet showing Aimee Mann and Michael Penn performing for their first dance. Oswalt also showed off a photo of his smiling daughter, with the caption "World Champion Flower Girl." Salenger gushed about becoming stepmom to Alice ("This little girl is MINE!!!!!!!!!," she tweeted), posted a pic of herself and Alice, and shared a poignant photo of Oswalt hugging his daughter, with the simple caption: "My family." People documents all that's happened since Oswalt's first wife, Michelle McNamara, died in her sleep in April 2016, including his grieving process, his first public appearance with Salenger in June, and their journey toward marriage, with Alice at the top of their priority list. "Creating our family unit while honoring the brilliant gift Michelle has given me will be my life's goal and happiness," Salenger wrote in July. "I am deeply in love with both Patton and Alice and very much looking forward to a beautiful happy life having adventures together."
– John Caltabiano was collecting disability benefits for a 2006 workplace accident that he said left him blind when investigators caught him on video reading, driving, and holding a door open for someone, ABC News reports. The 49-year-old New York man had said in his benefits application that he couldn't do basic things like cook for himself, exercise, shave, or get around the house. "I sit in the dark and listen to TV," he wrote. But based on a tip, US Attorney Richard Hartunian and investigators at the Social Security Administration gave Caltabiano a closer look. He had indeed lost sight in one eye in a workplace accident, they found, but video evidence showed he wasn't homebound. Aired Friday on Nightline, the evidence helped authorities in October convict Caltabiano and girlfriend Colleen J. McCarten, 43, of fraud and theft in faking an on-the-job-injury, the New York Daily News reports. Hartunian says the New York man was on track to steal half-a-million dollars over the course of his life. In April, Caltabiano was sentenced to 57 months and McCarten to three years' probation, per a press release; his lawyer says he plans to appeal. As for his attempted fraud, it's not all that unusual. "It costs the county a lot of money—a lot of money," Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple tells ABC News 10. "And then if you start thinking about having to hire all these investigators to investigate it—paying their salary and benefits—people wonder why their taxes are so high. Well, here you go.”
– Italian officials have begun operations to salvage some 500,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil from the stricken Costa Concordia cruise ship, reports the BBC. Dutch salvage company Smit is performing the operation, which has been delayed by bad weather and the search for survivors; the salvage is expected to take 28 days. "We expect the next five days to be good weather, and we will work 24 hours a day to pump out the fuel," says Smit's salvage master. "Hopefully by the end of the week we will have the majority out." Some 15 tanks are believed to hold 84% of the fuel aboard, notes the AP.
– Are aliens living 95 light-years away reaching out to say hello? OK, probably not, but astronomers are nevertheless intrigued by an unusual signal reported out of Russia, reports the Observer. It seems to be coming from the general vicinity of an ancient star in the constellation Hercules known as HD164595, which has at least one planet in its orbit. The signal was detected by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya on May 15, 2015, but only just made public in a paper, reports the website Centauri Dreams. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has begun looking into it, and "the signal is provocative enough that the RATAN-600 researchers are calling for permanent monitoring of this target," writes Paul Gilster. The reason it's generating so many headlines on science websites is that the signal has the hallmarks of one that would come an advanced civilization. After all, it would take an enormous amount of energy to blast it out deliberately, notes Space.com. Unfortunately for sci-fi fans, the best bet is that the signal is the result of some kind of interference from Earth, reports New Scientist. It might even come from our own military's communications, reports Ars Technica. "Could it be another society sending a signal our way?" asks SETI's Seth Sostak in a blog post. "Of course, that’s possible." But plenty of other explanations exist, and "without a confirmation of this signal, we can only say that it’s 'interesting.'" Astronomers will discuss the signal at a SETI meeting on Sept. 27. (SETI is also looking for signals from another star.)
– It was, writes Kurt Schlosser at Today.com, a "first-class move." Amy Adams gave up her first-class seat to a US serviceman today on a Delta flight from Detroit to Los Angeles. ESPN's Jemele Hill, also on the flight, first called attention to the move via tweet, then elaborated in an email to Today. "When we were waiting to board, I saw her glance the soldier's way and then she said something to the person she was traveling with," recounts Hill. Once on board and seated in first class, Adams spoke to a flight attendant, vacated her seat for the serviceman, and headed back to coach. The five-time Oscar nominee was born on a military base during her dad's stint in the military, notes E! Online.
– The latest attempt to bring peace to Syria has officially begun: A ceasefire brokered last week by the US and Russia went into effect Monday morning, reports the BBC. However, this being Syria—whose civil war is a many-sided conflict—it remained unclear just how effective it would be. The Syrian government and its main allies, Russia and Iran, say they will abide by the weeklong truce, but the country's most powerful insurgent groups have not yet said whether they will, reports AP. If the truce holds for a week, the US and Russia would begin intelligence sharing and target coordination against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda-linked militants. Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad vowed that his government would take back all its land from "terrorists." Assad spoke during a rare public appearance that included attending prayers for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, which had surrendered last month and reverted to government control after a four-year siege. "We call on all Syrians to turn toward reconciliation," he said. Italy, meanwhile, says a Syrian cease-fire could pave the way for political negotiations aimed at ending the long and bloody conflict. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told reporters after talks with his Cypriot counterpart that a cessation of hostilities must happen before talks can begin. CNN has a primer on the truce.
– When first Mississippi responders came upon Jessica Chambers, she had been set on fire and was covered in second- and third-degree burns; she reportedly uttered "Eric did this to me," before dying. Attorneys for Quinton Tellis, the man on trial for her December 2014 death, argued that made for reasonable doubt, reports BuzzFeed. At least some members of the jury apparently had it: A judge on Monday declared a mistrial in the case. Tellis' first trial, in 2017, ended in a mistrial as well. Tellis was arrested in early 2016 after the local DA said a break in the perplexing case came via "technological data" like cellphone records; a DOJ analyst told the court Saturday that Tellis' phone data indicates he was with Chambers the night she died and that he wiped Chambers' texts and info from his phone after her death. BuzzFeed notes that Chambers' father had previously said Tellis' name wasn't known to the family, and the prosecution in this trial described a relationship between Chambers and Tellis that was only a week old. The Clarion Ledger reports the prosecution sought to chip away at the "Eric" detail: The medical director at the Firefighters Burn Center estimated she had been on fire for as long as five minutes, and he and a speech pathologist both testified that they don't believe the 19-year-old was capable of intelligible speech based on the severity of her burns. Tellis' attorney, Alton Peterson, thought doubt remained: "When you have eight trained first responders who were there on the scene ... it's hard to get around her telling them with her dying breaths that someone else did it." FOX13 reports prosecutors plan to "assess things" and then announce if they'll try Tellis a third time.
– Those tabloid rumors that Super Bowl LI viewers would get a "hello" from Adele at halftime appear to have been unfounded. That according to the singer herself, who on Saturday told concertgoers at LA's Staples Center that she's not doing the Super Bowl. Her explanation as reported by Billboard is pretty great: "I mean, come on, that show is not about music. And I don’t really—I can’t dance or anything like that. They were very kind, they did ask me, but I said no." Pepsi and the NFL, however, had a different take on how discussions have gone down.
– Former President Obama told Prince Harry in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday that despite the sense that much important work remained unfinished on the day he left the White House, "there was a serenity there, more than I would have expected." Obama said it's "hugely liberating" to be able to set his own agenda in the morning and have time to talk with his wife, Michelle, in his post-presidency. He spoke with Harry in the prince's capacity as guest editor of the BBC Radio 4 news program, reports the AP. The interview, recorded in Canada in September, was Obama's first since leaving the Oval Office in January. "I miss the work itself because it was fascinating," Obama said of his eight years, citing health care reform as one of his proudest achievements. He did not mention his successor, but did say government officials should be careful in using social media. Harry also focused on climate change, the military, mental health, and asked Obama a "lightning round" of questions. The former president declined to say whether he wears boxers or briefs, but prefers Aretha Franklin to Tina Turner—"Aretha is the best"—and favors basketball star Michael Jordan over LeBron James. Obama also said he is "obsessed" with helping to train the next generation of leaders. As for the elephant in the room—whether Harry will invite Obama to his May wedding to Meghan Markle—Mashable notes that the prince deferred, saying, "Well, I don't know about that. We haven't put the invites or the guest list together yet, so who knows whether he's going to be invited or not. Wouldn't want to ruin that surprise." He did say Markle enjoyed her first Christmas as a guest of Queen Elizabeth II. "She really enjoyed it, and the family loved having her there."
– As the Navy tries to figure out what caused its latest collision, two of the most common theories involve human error or some kind of electrical glitch in the navigation system. But another idea has surfaced as well, and the Navy isn't ruling it out: hacking. "2 clarify Re: possibility of cyber intrusion or sabotage, no indications right now...but review will consider all possibilities," tweeted Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, per Fox News. The idea is that some foreign power, perhaps China or Russia, interfered with the USS John S McCain's GPS navigation, and perhaps did the same before the deadly June collision involving the USS Fitzgerald. Here's a look at what experts are saying: 'Very unlikely': At Popular Mechanics, Kyle Mizokami tosses cold water on the idea that "GPS spoofing" is to blame. For one thing, broadcasting such an interference signal would likely have affected dozens of ships in the area, not just the USS McCain, and there's no indication of that. Plus, Navy ships don't rely solely on GPS: Human spotters should have seen the hazard. It's fishy: "There’s something more than just human error going on," a former information warfare specialist for the Navy tells McClatchy, referring to the string of Navy accidents. The story notes that on June 22, hackers appear to have manipulated the GPS signals of 20 ships in the Black Sea, the first such instance of GPS misdirection, or spoofing. The ships' GPSes actually told them they were on land, and the best guess is that the interference came from Russia. It's fishy, take II: "I don’t believe in coincidence," a former member of Israel's cyber-warfare unit tells news.com.au. In addition to interfering with GPS signals, hackers also could have planted malware in the ships' computer network, he says. "China has capabilities, maybe they are trying things, it is possible." The USS McCain had been returning from a patrol in the South China Sea, where it sailed by one of China's contested man-made islands, when the collision occurred. Remains of some of the 10 missing sailors from the USS McCain have been found on the ship itself.
– The hostages weren't the only Westerners involved in the Sahara gas plant crisis, according to Algerian authorities. Security sources say two Canadian Islamists were among the attackers found dead after the crisis came to a bloody end, Reuters reports. Authorities say the militants, who claimed the attack on behalf of al-Qaeda, included people from other African and Arab countries. At least 37 foreign hostages, hailing from eight different countries, died during the raid, Algeria's prime minister announced today, according to the New York Times. Five more remain unaccounted for. Among the dead are at least two Americans, the AP reports; seven other Americans made it to safety. Twenty-nine militants were also killed in the attack.
– Harry Truman called the 80th Congress "do-nothing" in 1948, but they look like massive overachievers compared to today's crop of lawmakers, a USA Today analysis finds. The 112th Congress has passed just 61 bills out of 3,914 into law this year, putting it on course to be the most unproductive since year-end records began in 1947. Only 90 bills became law last year. One post-World War II year, 1995, had an even lower total than 2011, but the Republican-controlled Congress managed to produce 245 laws the following year with a Democratic president. After two years marked by partisanship and failure to agree on issues including debt reduction and drought relief, the 112th Congress will conclude after Election Day and most people will be happy to see it go, according to the latest Gallup poll. The poll found that just 10% of Americans think members of Congress are doing a good job, tying a record low set in February of this year. The highest approval rating this Congress has received came in May 2011, when it reached the dizzying heights of 24% approval, notes Politico.
– Everybody's talking about the possibility of Oprah running for president, but the man currently in office doesn't think it will happen. "I don't think she's going to run," President Trump told reporters Tuesday, per CBS News. If she did, however, Trump said he'd win. "I'd beat Oprah," he said, before adding that he liked her and once appeared on her show with his family. "It was very nice." Trump does indeed apparently like Oprah, as CNN recounts. He told Larry King back in 1999 that she'd be the ideal running mate were he ever to run for president. "She's popular, she's brilliant, she's a wonderful woman," he said. "It would be a pretty good ticket." More recently, in 2012, he tweeted that "I adore Oprah." (Plenty of columnists have weighed in on why she shouldn't run.)
– The UN's human rights committee says Ireland's effective ban on abortion violated a woman's human rights and must be reformed in what the Guardian calls "a ground-breaking judgment that is expected to set an international precedent." The committee responded to the case of Amanda Mellet, who was denied an abortion during her 21st week of pregnancy in 2011—though doctors said her fetus had a heart defect and would die in the womb or shortly after birth—as a law makes abortion illegal unless a woman's life is at risk, per Reuters. Rather than continue with the pregnancy, Mellet traveled to the UK for an abortion, alone and at her own expense, and returned home 12 hours later, though she wasn't fully recovered, because she couldn't afford to stay longer. The committee says that amounted to cruel and inhumane treatment. "Many of the negative experiences she went through could have been avoided if [she] had not been prohibited from terminating her pregnancy in the familiar environment of her own country," the committee says, calling on Ireland to allow "effective, timely, and accessible procedures for pregnancy termination." Though "the report carries no legal power," per the AP, Ireland must compensate Mellet and move to prevent similar cases under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, per the Guardian. Ireland's government has suggested it won't address the laws directly as a result of the decision—which has infuriated anti-abortion activists, per RTE News—but will ask a citizens' assembly to recommend changes.
– Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are among plants' key needs—and your urine contains all of them. That's why Vermont's Rich Earth Institute is studying the use of human urine as fertilizer, Modern Farmer reports. There's already plenty of evidence that it works. Yahoo cites one study, earlier reported by National Geographic, in which a researcher found that a blend of urine and compost resulted in taller sweet pepper plants with more peppers. A Swedish study, meanwhile, sent urine from housing projects to a farm. Researchers found that one adult's pee provides enough plant nutrients for 50% to 100% of another person's diet, Modern Farmer notes. A farmer working with the Rich Earth Institute also found urine to be highly effective in a 2012 field test, results that helped the group get a $10,000 USDA grant. Last year, the institute collected some 3,000 gallons of pee from 170 people. "When people realize that they produce something every day that can be helpful to the environment and the earth, it’s a very wonderful feeling," says its administrative director. But hurdles remain: For instance, human urine can contain remnants of medications.
– Does everybody's favorite energy contractor, Halliburton, hate procreation? A former Halliburton employee is suing the company for wrongful termination and sex discrimination because, in the words of her lawyer, "she apparently violated the company's policy against procreation." Halliburton said it fired the pregnant administrative associate as part of general lay-offs, but the canned worker points out no one else in her department was fired, including people with less experience. Additionally, soon after the firing Halliburton briefly posted a job listing online for her former position, reports the Dallas Observer. The woman's lawyer, Todd Kelly, has sued Halliburton several times in recent years, including over the gang-rape of a woman at former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, a defense contractor. "I don't believe that Halliburton treats its women as they should," Kelly said. The rape case led Minnesota Sen. Al Franken to sponsor a defense bill amendment stipulating that defense contractors can't bar lawsuits from employees for sex assault.
– James Tumblin's 300,000-piece collection of Gone With the Wind memorabilia started with a single gray dress with black appliques that lay crumpled on the floor of the Western Costume Company in Los Angeles in the 1960s. "A docent told me not to bother to pick it up, because they were throwing it away," Tumblin, who once ran the hair and makeup department at Universal Studios, told the Telegraph last month. But "I had noticed there was a printed label saying Selznick International Pictures, and 'Scarlett production dress' was written in ink," he said. "I asked if he would sell it to me." He ended up paying just $20 for the costume, worn by Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in four scenes of the 1939 film—an incredible bargain considering the dress sold at auction on Saturday for $137,000. The outfit—really a jacket and skirt ensemble—was actually pale blue during filming. But some of the 150 Gone With the Wind pieces sold by Heritage Auctions this weekend remain in pristine condition, including a gray wool suit Clark Gable wore when he kicked down Scarlett O'Hara's boudoir door as Rhett Butler, CNN reports; it sold for $55,000. A straw hat worn by Leigh fetched $52,500, while a black bonnet donned by Leigh and Olivia de Havilland's character Melanie Wilkes sold for $30,000, Reuters reports. Tumblin seems happy to have been able to offer up his pieces, many of which have toured the country. "I am really looking forward to walking through a museum and seeing something that I once owned," he said. He still maintains the largest private collection of Gone With the Wind memorabilia, which includes Leigh's Oscar. (The film almost didn't make it to the screen.)
– A veteran teacher in Florida faces felony charges of battery of a child for meting out an unusual punishment. Police say 58-year-old Jennifer Forshey accused a 10-year-old boy of deliberately clogging a urinal with paper towels, and ordered him to get them out of the drain, reports NBC Miami. She didn't give him any tools or guidance, however, so he used his bare hands and a dry paper towel, and his hands soon reeked of urine—not his own, say police. To make matters worse, that particular bathroom had no soap, which led the kid to go to the principal's office looking for some, which led to the charges being filed. Forshey willingly caused the boy "to project his hands into a urinal with unknown persons (sic) urine expelled in it, causing his hands to absorb the urine," says the police report cited by the Smoking Gun. In other urinal news, a Pizza Hut worker lost his job after using his restaurant's kitchen sink as a substitute.
– George Washington’s name is synonymous with America—and of the people who bear his surname today, 90% of them are African-American, according to the 2000 census. How did “Washington” become, as Jesse Washington, writing for the AP calls it, the “blackest name" in America? It could be that blacks chose the name to honor George himself, an odd prospect when you consider that the first US president, while opposed to slavery on paper, owned 124 slaves and worked them hard. But perhaps not so odd when you realize that Washington also freed all 124 of those slaves upon his and his wife’s deaths; of the eight American presidents who owned slaves while in office, he was the only one to do so. Some of his former slaves may have chosen to take his surname as a mark of their community; others may have wanted to maintain a link to a powerful family after being freed. Or the choice could have been random: Booker T. Washington, for example, has never said why he chose his last name 60 years or so after George Washington’s death. Some may even have picked the name to signal their devotion to their new country: "There was a lot more consciousness and pride in American history among African-Americans and enslaved African-Americans than a lot of people give them credit for,” says one professor and author. But one black genealogy expert, who says 82% to 94% of Washingtons listed in the 1880 to 1930 censuses were black, disagrees. "As far as I'm concerned it's a coincidence." Click here for more from the article.
– Two car bombs rocked Damascus this morning around 7:30 local time, killing civilians and security forces, report al-Jazeera and AP. State media reports 27 dead and more than 100 injured. One bomb hit the criminal security department and the other the aviation intelligence department. The usual blame game unfolded: The government said the explosions were the work of terrorists, but rebel groups said the bombs were the work of the government, done to discredit the opposition. The explosions followed renewed fighting around the capital yesterday, as violence returned to the Damascus suburbs for the first time since early February, according to the AP. The Syrian government had been reporting it was on the verge of crushing the rebels, but the new fighting shows its struggles to conduct offensives in more than one area at a time. "Every time the regime controls a specific area we witness clashes in new regions," said one activist. Syria's foreign minister, meanwhile, sent a letter to the UN Security Council yesterday saying the crackdown would continue.
– The social media platform Tsu.co has garnered more than 4 million users since its 2013 inception, but Facebook would have you believe it simply doesn't exist. Since late September, Facebook has blocked (and retroactively deleted 10 million) mentions of and links to Tsu.co from any of its platforms, including Instagram and Messenger, reports the New York Daily News. "You can post PornHub links on Facebook, but not Tsu.co," Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak says. And while he claims that the reason for the block is having a model that is "dangerous to them," Facebook rep Melanie Ensign says it all boils down to user experience: "We do not allow developers to incentivize content sharing on our platform because it encourages spammy sharing and creates a bad experience for people on Facebook." While Facebook keeps all profits from ad revenue, Tsu keeps just 10%; the remaining 90% is shared between users who've created content and the chain of friends who invited said user. CNNMoney has spoken to a dozen Tsu.co users, most of them artists and models who have yet to make any money on the site, but they overwhelmingly agree that Facebook's block is unfair. "I don't believe that Facebook and Instagram want Tsu to go viral," one user from Colombia says. "It would cost them a lot of money." After posting a link to a Tsu.co video on Facebook, for instance, 50 Cent had his mention removed as well, reports the AP. Facebook, meanwhile, says it will lift the block if Tsu no longer allows its users to post simultaneously to Tsu and Facebook. For now, mention Tsu.co and you'll likely be met with this error: "The content you're trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe." (This model recently quit social media altogether.)
– The ex-professional wrestler known to his fans as "The Hitman" has just taken a hit of his own. Bret Hart has prostate cancer, he told fans in an Instagram post Monday, and he says he'll be having surgery within days, ESPN reports. "Mark Helprin wrote: 'We are all perfect clocks that Divinity has set to ticking when, even before birth, the heart explodes into a lifelong dance.' I've had a great lifelong dance and I'm a survivor of many hard battles. I now face my toughest battle," the 58-year-old Canadian wrote. Hart, who suffered a stroke in 2002 and says he hopes to raise cancer awareness, notes in the Instagram post, "I openly declare myself in my fight against prostate cancer. In the next few days, I will undergo surgery with the hope of defeating this nemesis once and for all. … I will wage my fearsome fight against cancer with one shield and one sword carrying my determination and my fury for life, emboldened by all the love that's kept me going this long already." (The pro wrestling world lost both Dusty Rhodes and Roddy Piper last year.)
– A Marine and his wife were in Australia last week on a trip they won on Ellen DeGeneres' show in January, but it ended in tragedy when the Marine was killed in a skydiving accident. Cherilyn McGraw made a tandem jump in Euroa, north of Melbourne, on Saturday, but husband Brandon had skydiving experience and jumped solo, the Daily News reports. Something went wrong with his parachute 300 feet from the ground, causing him to twist and turn and ultimately crash; he went into cardiac arrest and died at the scene. An employee of Euroa Skydive says Brandon had more than "a few jumps under his belt," as well as training and documentation, and that most of his jump went flawlessly. Australian media have cited high winds as a possible factor. McGraw, 33, had recently come back from a deployment in Afghanistan, and was also an Iraq war veteran, the New York Daily News reports. His wife, a special education teacher in their home state of North Carolina, won the trip by competing in a "Stuff Your Down Under Pants" contest on Ellen, managing to stuff the most balls into a large pair of pants. McGraw's Facebook page shows he was a fan of extreme sports including skydiving, and a Marine Corps captain confirms to confirms to WCTI that McGraw was highly trained. Following his death, Cherilyn posted pictures to Facebook taken moments before her husband's jump, saying he "was happy and doing what he loved" when he died.
– The conservative media have apparently figured out that Newt Gingrich could actually win the Republican nomination, and they are responding with a breathtaking collective attack on the candidate. Politico rounds up the highlights, noting that "this is just a sampling of what's hitting Newt." In the National Review, Elliott Abrams writes that Gingrich often undermined Ronald Reagan, in what Politico calls "a devastating takedown." In another recent National Review piece being circulated by conservatives, the editors ramp up their opposition to Gingrich and urge conservatives not to support him. R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. of the American Spectator compares Gingrich to Bill Clinton, calling them both "1960s generation narcissists" and noting that, for "girl hopping" Gingrich, "there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out." On her website, Ann Coulter minces no words: "Re-elect Obama, Vote Newt!" Her column blasts Gingrich's "hotheaded arrogance." The Drudge Report linked to the Abrams piece with a banner reading, "Insider: Gingrich Repeatedly Insulted Reagan." The site, which has been viewed as pro-Romney in the past, also linked prominently to Tyrrell and Coulter. Tom DeLay told KTRH, "He’s not really a conservative. I mean, he’ll tell you what you want to hear. … When he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined." A top figure in the conservative media tells Politico that Republican leaders and media are beginning to realize, "It could happen, and it would be a disaster. All of us who were around and saw how he operated as speaker—there’s no one who’s not appalled by the prospect of what could happen." Politico notes that dozens of GOP lawmakers, governors, and other VIPs have said the same, privately, in recent weeks. Click for more on why tonight's debate is crucial for Gingrich.
– Friends stars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox have been famous for being real-life friends ever since the show debuted in 1994. So why haven't they been photographed together in almost a year? Sources tell Us "there's tension" between them, and not because Courteney had dinner with Brad Pitt last month. No, it stems from Cox going out on the town with her male costars during her trial separation from hubby David Arquette. "Jen thinks Courteney is acting callous by running around with this guy but refusing to file divorce papers," an Aniston source says. "Like she's playing mind games with David." The source adds that the whole thing reminds Jen of her own ex-husband taking up with Angelina Jolie after they split: "She hates watching Courteney do the same thing." But click here for a report that Jen recently introduced her new boy toy to friends ... including Cox.
– It's just another Sunday teetering on the fiscal cliff, with the Hill reporting that both Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles are indicating that tax hikes for the rich were a foregone conclusion. “I think Erskine and I both agree that if anybody out there who is, quote, rich doesn’t think their taxes go up, the drinks are on me, I’ll cover it,” says Simpson. And even "that alone won't solve the problem," adds Bowles, who nevertheless indicated he was "more encouraged" than a week ago, because the GOP and Dems "have started to tango now." He praised John Boehner as "a speaker who really gets it" for not wrapping his proposal in any deal-breakers, notes Politico. Elsewhere on the Sunday dial: Bob Corker on Obama's tax offer: "There is a growing group of folks looking at this and realizing that we don’t have a lot of cards as it relates to the tax issue. I think [that notion] has merit....I actually am beginning to believe that is the best route for us to take." Christine Lagarde on the fiscal cliff: “The best way out of this will be a balanced solution ... (which) takes into account both increasing revenue … and cutting spending, as well." Failure would mean "markets would react very quickly" with stocks "really taking a hit." Cory Booker on his career prospects: "I am absolutely considering running for governor, as well as giving other options some consideration. I'm going to be focused on that for the next week to 10 days or so." As for a run for Frank Lautenberg's Senate seat: "Yeah, I’m actually looking at that a lot as well." Newt Gingrich on Hillary Clinton's 2016 prospects: It's "virtually impossible" for any Democrat to deny her the nomination, and a Clinton candidacy "clears the field."
– The Miami man shot dead as he chewed off another man's face has been identified as 31-year-old Rudy Eugene. He had a criminal record but nothing on the scale of Sunday's crazed attack, the Miami Herald finds. He was arrested on a battery charge when he was 16, and was busted seven other times between 2004 and 2009 for charges including vending near a school, trespassing, and marijuana-related offenses. He was married for more than a year to a woman who says he became increasingly violent with her. "I wouldn't say he had mental problem, but he always felt like people was against him. No one was for him, everyone was against him," his ex-wife, who filed for divorce in 2007, tells WPLG. At Eugene's former home, a woman says the previous occupants lost the home to foreclosure last year, but Eugene would often turn up unannounced looking for mail. Eugene's victim, who lost most of his face in the attack, is fighting for his life in a local hospital, and police still aren't sure what prompted the horrific attack. They believe it could have been cocaine psychosis or an overdose of "bath salts," a synthetic drug one police spokesman likens to a potent new kind of LSD.
– Sleeping with contacts in or forgetting to swap in a new pair according to schedule may be the unintended result of a harried lifestyle, but it could also lead to long-term eye damage, a new CDC study reports. Researchers looked at 1,075 cases of eye infections reported to an FDA medical device database over a 10-year period ending in 2015, and of those infections, almost 20% of them ended up causing more serious eye injuries, a CDC release reports. Those injuries ranged from scarred corneas and cornea transplants to other forms of vision problems. And of those who reported infections, the issue was bad enough for more than 10% of them to go to the ER or an urgent-care clinic for treatment. Yet most people don't give a second thought to the perfunctory way in which they handle their contacts, a Lenox Hill Hospital ophthalmologist tells WebMD. "Unfortunately, many of the 41 million contact lens users in the United States do not think of a contact lens as a medical device they are placing on the surface of their eye," Dr. Mark Fromer says. In addition to replacing contacts as recommended, users should also follow other recommendations from the American Optometric Association to keep eyes healthy, per CBS News, including not sharing contacts with anyone, not using tap water to clean contacts, and no snoozing with them in, which the CDC says can raise the risk of an eye infection between six to eight times. (And then there are the eyeball-devouring amoebas.)
– Chillicothe was the capital of Ohio some 200 years ago. Things have gone downhill from there. But amid poverty and heroin woes, the city of 21,000 has "turned for the worst," Jessica Sayre tells the Washington Post. Her 26-year-old sister, Tiffany, a sex worker battling a drug problem, went missing from a local motel on May 11. Her naked body was found wrapped in a sheet in a drainage pipe on Saturday, making her the fourth woman to turn up dead near Chillicothe's waterways in the last year. At least two more women have vanished, leading some to fear a serial killer is on the loose. "I don't want to come out and say 'yes, we have a serial killer,'" says an officer, but he admits it's possible. The location of the women's bodies isn't the only evidence linking the cases. Most of the victims had drug issues and some were prostitutes; some even knew each other, reports the Post, which rounded up coverage from the Columbus Dispatch and Huffington Post. Friends Charlotte Trego, 27, and Tameka Lynch, 30, were the first to disappear, separately, on May 3, 2014. Lynch was found dead of a suspected drug overdose in a creek weeks later; her mom told the Dispatch she was afraid of water. Wanda Lemons, 38; Shasta Himelrick, 20; and Timberly Claytor later vanished; the bodies of the latter two were ultimately found. Himelrick was pregnant; the five other women all had children. Sayre's death, ruled a murder, helped launch a task force now investigating all six cases; the cases of three missing women from nearby Portsmouth and Columbus may also get a look. For more, head to the Post.
– Learning you have gonorrhea is bad; learning officials consider your case of gonorrhea the "worst ever" is something else entirely. The Press Association reports a man in the UK was diagnosed earlier this year with what is believed to be the first strain of gonorrhea to be resistant to the main antibiotic treatment. Public Health England says the man contracted this super-gonorrhea during a sexual encounter with a woman in Southeast Asia. His symptoms appeared about a month later, according to CNN. As is usual with gonorrhea, doctors attempted to treat it with the antibiotics azithromycin and ceftriaxone. Unusually, the antibiotics didn't work. "This is the first time a case has displayed such high-level resistance to both of these drugs and to most other commonly used antibiotics," Dr. Gwenda Hughes with PHE says. The World Health Organization and the European Centres for Disease Control agree that it's a global first, the BBC reports. The man's antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is a major concern for experts, who fear the STD becoming untreatable. "The bacteria that cause gonorrhea are particularly smart," Teodora Wi at WHO said last year. "Every time we use a new class of antibiotics to treat the infection, the bacteria evolve to resist them." Health officials are going back through the man's sexual history to keep the gonorrhea from spreading. So far no other cases have appeared, including in the man's regular female partner in the UK. Doctors are trying a final antibiotic on the man and will know if it worked next month.
– There’s nothing quite so heartwarming as the story of a man who cheats on his universally beloved wife with a tattooed stripper, but turns it all around and gets engaged to yet another tattoo enthusiast. Yes, those crazy kids Jesse James and Kat Von D are betrothed. Despite the aforementioned hardships, “2010 was actually the best year of my life because I fell in love with my best friend,” James tells People. “An amazing woman who stood behind me when the world turned their backs.” The lovebirds go on fawning with such touching sentiments as, from James, “Growing old with her is going to be a f***in' blast!" Click for Sandra Bullock's reaction.
– Hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail can expect to encounter harsh-but-beautiful landscapes, extreme fatigue, and—these days, at least—traffic. "You can’t talk about the Pacific Crest Trail without mentioning the crowds," Pete Brook writes for Outside. He should know: Brook currently is trekking the 2,650-mile PCT, which runs from the Mexican border through California, Oregon, and Washington to the border with Canada. But don't take his word for it: The Pacific Crest Trail Association so far this year has issued more than 4,000 permits to people planning on tackling at least 500 miles of the trail. To put things in perspective: 300 people attempted to complete the entire PCT in 2006, according to the AP, with about 120 of those making it. In 2014, 1,000 people set off and about half completed the trail. More traffic means more stress on the land, more improperly disposed of poop, and more inexperienced hikers requiring rescue. So what's with the increase in traffic over the past few years? You can thank Cheryl Strayed and her enormously popular memoir-turned-major-motion-picture Wild. After the book came out in 2012, there was a small increase in interest in the trail, the PCTA's Jack Haskel told the AP in 2015. But after the movie, starring Reese Witherspoon, was released in 2014, interest in the PCT exploded. "Millions are hearing about it now and are being inspired," Haskel said. Strayed, more or less unprepared for the journey, hiked 1,100 miles of the trail as a form of therapy as she grappled with personal demons. "However for others that follow her strategy of deliberate ineptitude, things might not turn out so well," writes DontHikeLikeWild.org. "Our advice to would-be hikers: Grow a spine first. Then get out there and hike the PCT." (This female hiker is the "biggest badass you've never heard of.")
– Conspiracy theorists, take a deep breath: A Texas judge has officially deemed Antonin Scalia's death a natural one, WFAA reports. Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara says the Supreme Court justice died of a heart attack. Guevara says she heard about Scalia's death from a sheriff, and was planning to travel to the luxury ranch where Scalia died, when a US Marshal called her. "It's not necessary for you to come, judge. If you’re asking for an autopsy, that’s what we need to clarify," the marshal told her, per Guevara. She goes on: "As part of my investigation, one of the things I did ask the sheriff and the US Marshal: 'Were there any signs of foul play?' And they said, ‘Absolutely not.’ At that time, I still wanted to be careful, and asked them if [Scalia’s] physician would call me." Scalia's doctor did call her Saturday night, saying Scalia had a shoulder injury and several chronic health issues. Guevara decided the death was natural and no autopsy would be needed, ABC News reports. Meanwhile, Scalia's body was transported overnight by van—with a procession of US Marshals Service vehicles and Texas Dept. of Public Safety troopers—to Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso. The funeral home manager says Scalia's remains were embalmed, a legal requirement before moving a body out of the state. The leading conspiracy theory was that President Obama himself had Scalia murdered, a notion the New Republic puts down to "some paranoid people on Twitter."
– A third teacher has been implicated in the burgeoning child sex scandal at Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles. A lawyer said two victims were regularly escorted by a female teacher to the classroom of Mark Berndt, 61, who has been charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct, reports the New York Daily News. “I believe she aided and abetted him in carrying out abusive acts. I believe she worked in concert with Mr. Berndt,” said Brian Claypool, who is representing five possible victims in the case. “They had adjoining classrooms, and he’d come in every other day in the middle of the day, and he’d go up to her and whisper in her ear. She’d start giggling and then pick out two pretty girls and walk them over to the door," added Claypool, who did not name the teacher. Miramonte, one of the nation's biggest elementary schools, remains closed today following major protests after the arrest of two teachers charged with sex abuse and the announcement that the entire staff will be replaced. Investigators are also now looking into a "love letter" written by a school aide to an 11-year-old boy describing her "chills" when she was close to him, and telling him to throw the letter away so it wouldn't be found by the boy's brother or mother, reports the Los Angeles Times.
– Is Donald Trump running for president simply as a means of launching his own cable news network? That's the theory put forth by Vanity Fair, quoting anonymous sources close to the situation. Trump is reportedly "irked" that he's bringing in big ratings for other networks without getting any of the profits himself. “He wants to figure out if he can monetize it,” a source says. He's allegedly consulting with daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner on a "mini-media conglomerate." His reasoning, according to a source: “We’ve triggered a base of the population that hasn’t had a voice in a long time.” A Trump spokesperson denies Trump is even thinking about such a thing. But immediately after, Trump tweeted: "The press is so totally biased that we have no choice but to take our tough but fair and smart message directly to the people!” New York Magazine says the theory makes sense. This is the first time it's unclear whether a presidential candidate actually wants to be president. Trump is historically unpopular and shows little interest in changing that, and he's half-assing basic tasks of running for president, such as calling donors. Trump TV would be the "logical end" of his campaign, according to New Republic. “If Trump’s TV station gets 30% ratings, it’ll be doing fantastically well," the website states. "But if that’s his share of the vote, then his candidacy will end in failure.” Transitioning from presidential candidate to media baron wouldn't be easy. Trump would still need a partner for funding and would likely need to buy an existing cable channel. “It’s a fool’s errand,” an entertainment executive tells Vanity Fair. “But then again, we are talking about Donald Trump.” (Did this 1992 movie predict Trump's campaign?)
– A Georgia widow confronted the woman responsible for her husband's death in a fatal car accident in court yesterday—and gave her a hug, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I know she is going through as much pain as I am feeling,” Sandra Walker told WSB-TV of her encounter with Tamara Matthews. "I wanted her to know that I forgive her for what she did." In the 2011 crash, Matthews' van hit the Walker family's van, killing both Walker's 35-year-old husband and Matthews' 16-year-old son. Sandra Walker suffered life-altering brain trauma; her two young children, who were also in the car, escaped serious injury. Matthews pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and failure to maintain lane, but she avoided jail time at yesterday's sentencing. Walker, who didn't want Matthews to be separated from her remaining children, had wanted it that way, WBTW reports. Instead, the judge gave her 36 months of probation and 500 hours of community service.
– Before dropping the ball in Times Square, Sonia Sotomayor dropped yet another problem on ObamaCare, many key provisions of which kick in today. The Supreme Court justice granted a last-minute temporary exemption to a group of Catholic nuns who object to providing contraceptive coverage for employees, reports the Los Angeles Times. The government has been given until Friday to file a response in the case, which applies to the nuns and other Roman Catholic nonprofit groups using the same health plan. Lawyers for the nuns argued that they would face "draconian fines" if they didn't start complying with the law today. Churches have been exempted from providing contraceptive coverage, but the nuns' suit is among several from religious organizations and private corporations who are also pressing for exemptions, NBC notes. The Justice Department says that to opt out, all the nuns need to do is "certify that they are nonprofit organizations that hold themselves out as religious," though the group representing the nuns says ObamaCare rules still require them to violate their beliefs by dealing with an insurer covering "sterilization, contraceptive and abortion-inducing drugs and devices," the New York Times finds.
– The "Atlantification" of the Arctic Ocean is underway. And no, that doesn't mean we're about to get the polar bear version of Outkast, but rather that the Arctic Ocean is rapidly becoming more like the Atlantic Ocean, according to new research published Thursday. The Arctic Ocean has historically been separated into two layers: a cold, less salty layer on top with a salty, warmer layer of Atlantic water underneath, Scientific American reports. The barrier between the two is called the cold halocline layer, and it's been responsible for preserving Arctic sea ice, according to Science. But the separation between the layers has been quickly breaking down over the past decade or so. The temperature difference between the two layers has lessened by 2 degrees since 2002, and the top layer of cold water has gotten thinner in the past decade—possibly by as much as 180 feet. From 2013 to 2015, the layers merged completely in some areas. The loss of the cold halocline layer means sea ice in the Arctic is getting attacked from both sides. Warming air and warming surface ocean temperatures are creating a "positive feedback loop" that is decimating the ice. Sea ice in the Arctic is decreasing by 13% every decade, and soon the Arctic Ocean could be entirely ice-free during the summer. Between warmer water with more nutrients and no more ice to block the sun, it's unclear what will happen to the Arctic's ecosystem, Inverse reports. (One woman's desperation advanced Arctic exploration.)
– Early yesterday, the CBC announced that it was terminating the employment of Q radio host Jian Ghomeshi, explaining somewhat vaguely that "information came to our attention recently that ... precludes us from continuing our relationship with Jian." The details didn't remain vague for long. The 47-year-old took to Facebook last night, writing that "I was given the choice to walk away quietly and to publicly suggest that this was my decision. But ... that would be untrue." Ghomeshi's version of the truth is that an unnamed "jilted" ex has launched a smear campaign against him, centered around his bedroom activities, which he writes "may not be palatable to some folks." Ghomeshi describes "a mild form of Fifty Shades of Grey": rough sex that was consensual and involved safe words. The Toronto Star tells it quite differently: It says it has heard allegations from three women (none willing to go on the record) who describe incredibly violent and non-consensual sex. One told the Star that Ghomeshi had expressed that he would be aggressive, which she took to mean "he would want to pull my hair and have rough sex. ... [Later] he attacked me. Choked me. Hit me like I didn't know men hit women. I submitted." The women told the paper they have not gone to police, reportedly over concerns their names would leak or that sexual texts they sent Ghomeshi would be used against them; they cited the case of Carla Ciccone, who was lambasted online after publishing a story on XOJane about a date she had with a popular radio host and "repulsive sexual predator." Ghomeshi plans to file a $50 million suit against the CBC today; Q is one of the most successful shows the network has ever run.
– "He lived to make other people laugh," says an Indiana woman of her father, who died last Tuesday after suffering a stroke. Terry Ward is now generating plenty of chuckles thanks to the obituary daughter Jean Lahn wrote for the Army veteran. Fox59 reports she's a little more familiar with obits than most, as she works at a funeral home where she comes across plenty of routine and formulaic remembrances. The 71-year-old doesn't get that from the get-go. His obit kicks off by saying Ward "escaped this mortal realm ... leaving behind 32 jars of Miracle Whip, 17 boxes of Hamburger Helper and multitudes of other random items that would prove helpful in the event of a zombie apocalypse." She charts his progress from high school ("only three of his teachers took an early retirement after having had him as a student") to marriage ("in the fall of 1969, perfectly between the Summer of Love and the Winter of Regret") to his 39 years of work with telephone companies, during which "he accumulated roughly 3,000 rolls of black electrical tape." Lahn wrote that he "despised 'uppity foods' like hummus, which his family lovingly called 'bean dip' for his benefit, which he loved consequently." Speaking of loves, his included "shooting guns, Bed Bath & Beyond, starlight mints, cold beer, free beer, The History Channel, CCR ... and above all, his family." As for those who loved him, they're invited to make donations in his name to "your favorite watering hole, where you are instructed to tie a few on and tell a few stories of the great Terry Ward." Read the obit in full here, or read some more tales about him, courtesy of the Post-Tribune.
– Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has singled out Facebook as an "appalling spying machine" in an interview with Russia Today. Assange warned in an earlier speech at Cambridge University that information gathered on the Web could be used by governments to spy on its citizens. But this time he called "Facebook in particular the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and their communications, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo—all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence," he added. "Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook they are doing free work for the US intelligence agencies," he warned. He conceded that Facebook isn't working for or following orders from US intelligence, but said that the government is "able to bring to bear legal and political pressure" on the company. In response to Assange's interview, a Facebook spokesman told the New York Daily News that the company only turns over information when "legally required to do so." The "legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard," the spokesman noted.
– Facebook isn't always used for good, but a Connecticut woman whose puppy fell overboard is now giving the social media site a giant "like" after what happened over the weekend. Clare Shaw and her family were out on their boat Sunday outside of Noank when Ryder, their 8-month-old Shiba Inu, somehow broke free of his harness and plunged into the water, per Fox 61. The panicked family, which was under the impression Ryder couldn't swim, called the Coast Guard and backtracked for hours looking for their pup, to no avail. "We felt defeated," Shaw says. "We packed up his things and lit a candle in his cage and assumed our boy lost his life drowning." But Shaw obviously didn't give up hope completely, because she decided to put up a now-deleted post on her Facebook page asking if anyone had seen her precious pup, the Epoch Times reports—and it was after 100 shares or so of that post that the best news ever came her way. A horse vet saw her post, as well as a post in a local lost-and-found group, and put two and two together. Phil Bigelow and Patrick Jullarine, friends since they were 9 years old, had been out boating themselves on Sunday and spotted a "shaking and scared" Ryder in the sea, scooped him out, and nicknamed him Nemo. Bigelow says once he got home, he and his girlfriend picked up some snacks, a collar, and toys for their newfound furry friend "to make him feel loved" until his owners could be tracked down. Shaw calls Ryder's save a "true miracle" and expressed her gratitude on Facebook, via People. "The power of social media is out of this world," she says. (A mom found her long-lost son thanks to Facebook.)
– Yet another ruling in the Amanda Knox case is coming from Italy's highest court today. Knox and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher in 2009, acquitted on appeal in 2011 (at which point Knox returned to the US), had that acquittal overturned in 2013, and were then found guilty again last year. As the New York Times and the AP report, Italy's top court, the Court of Cassation, has a number of options: Confirm the convictions: That would mean Italy would likely attempt to extradite Knox, who has maintained her innocence and vowed not to return to the country willingly, though there is a chance the Justice Ministry would decline to do so. Sollecito, who is still in Italy, would go to prison immediately to serve his sentence. Order new appellate trials for Knox and/or Sollecito: Yes, you read that right: This saga may still not be over. If this court decides to throw out all or part of the appeals court's guilty verdict, it will likely order a third trial. (To give you an idea of how long this could go on, one 1972 murder case went to the Court of Cassation nine times before a final verdict was issued, 28 years later.) Throw out the guilty verdict without ordering new trials: This would amount to an acquittal, leaving Knox free to visit Italy without fear of arrest, but the AP notes that "such a decision is rare." If an extradition request is made for Knox, a professor of international law tells the Times the US will likely grant it, though it would be a "hard" decision. The two countries do have an extradition treaty, and another expert tells the AP there is no formal reason—though there are a number of political ones—for Italy to not bother asking in the first place. (Some have argued the concept of "double jeopardy" could be used to block Knox's extradition, though others have debunked that idea.) It's not clear when the ruling is expected, but the BBC's live updates noted that the hearing was "underway" as of 7am Eastern time.
– Critics are divided on Everybody’s Fine: Some think the family drama is okay because of Robert De Niro, and others think it’s awful despite him. What they’re saying: It’s “a thoroughly fake movie that is about, of all things, the need for truthfulness,” writes Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter. “Characters have no depth, and all emotions get ladled on via a syrupy score and De Niro's strenuous acting.” Rooting for these characters “requires saintly moviegoing patience I clearly don't have,” says Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, adding that the script was written “under guidance, apparently, from Dr. Phil.” De Niro is “very good,” says Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic, but the film doesn’t trust its audience, and the ending is “pure sap.” It “may well be fine, but it could have been a lot better.” You may feel as if you’ve “been run over by the pathos van,” because the movie borders on “emotional fraud.” But it’s such a relief to see De Niro "in a project that does not stink” that Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune liked it anyway.
– Twitter has sued the federal government after US Customs and Border Protection demanded user information for an account critical of the Trump administration, the Verge reports. Multiple Twitter accounts claiming to be run by disillusioned members of various government agencies sprung up following Trump's inauguration. One of them, @ALT_uscis, claimed to be run by one or more federal immigration employees, according to Reuters. CNN reports @ALT_uscis regularly accuses ICE agents of impropriety, such as taking bribes. Last month, Twitter received a fax from CBP demanding the login information, phone number, and mailing address of the user behind the account. In its lawsuit, Twitter says it and its users have a First Amendment right to "disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech." It claims releasing user information would have a "chilling effect" on other accounts critical of the government. The actual user behind @ALT_uscis is being represented by the ACLU, which says the government usually only asks for social media account information for a criminal matter or pressing national security concern. The CBP's request was based on a statute that mostly deal with taxes on the importation of goods. An attorney for the ACLU says the ability so speak anonymously against the government is a "bedrock American value." The government isn't commenting on the lawsuit.
– A 33-year-old British man who allegedly hacked into the FBI, NASA, and Federal Reserve and did millions of dollars worth of damage as a form of protest in 2012 and 2013 won't be stepping foot on US soil anytime soon. The High Court of London decided against extradition on Monday, with the Guardian reporting that it agreed with the two arguments his lawyers put forth as part of Love's appeal against extradition: That he could be prosecuted in the UK, and that Love, who has Asperger's and depression, could end up killing himself while in US custody. The AP reports the judges felt his suicide risk would be lessened if he was jailed in England, where family and friends would be accessible to him. The BBC and Wired quote Love as saying "the reason I have gone through this ordeal is not to just to save myself from being kidnapped and locked up for 99 years in a country I have never visited," but that he hoped his case set a "precedent so this will not happen to people in the future. ... I'm hoping that this outcome can contribute to the discussion we are having as a society about how to accommodate people that have neuro-diversity, whose brains are made up in a slightly different way." Wired notes that Love would have faced up to 99 years and a fine of up to $9 million were he convicted in US courts. As for prospects of being tried on his own shore, the judges in their ruling "emphasize ... that it would not be oppressive to prosecute Mr. Love in England for the offences alleged against him."
– Starting next summer, licensed gun owners will be able to carry concealed weapons into buildings at public universities in Texas; in 2017, the same will be true at community colleges. And at least one professor is not happy about the prospect of guns in his classroom: He's resigning over the "campus carry" gun law passed earlier this year, Inside Higher Ed reports. "As much as I have loved the experience of teaching and introducing these students to economics at the university, I have decided not to continue," Daniel S. Hamermesh wrote in a letter to University of Texas at Austin administrators this week. "With a huge group of students my perception is that the risk that a disgruntled student might bring a gun into the classroom and start shooting at me has been substantially enhanced by the concealed-carry law." Hamermesh is a Sue Killam Professor Emeritus of economics at the university, and he continues in the letter that he "cannot believe that I am the only potential or current faculty member who is aware of and disturbed by this heightened risk." But, as Inside Higher Ed notes, supporters of the new law say it will make campuses safer, because those carrying guns could defend against an active shooter. Seven other states have similar "campus carry" laws, including Oregon, where a shooter recently killed nine people at a community college. Since that shooting, other Texas faculty members have voiced their opposition to the state's new gun law, including a UT El Paso lecturer who's been protesting the law (including with a "no guns" sign outside his classroom) and another UT Austin professor who gave an interview warning that the law could "shut down free speech" in classrooms. Yet another wrote a Time op-ed on the subject this week; that professor is a member of UT Gun Free, an organization that is circulating an anti-campus carry petition and has held several anti-campus carry forums.
– Syria descending into civil war, the Arab Spring, instability in Egypt—the Middle East is full of uncertainties that threaten Israel, but all of them are "dwarfed" by Iran's nuclear threat, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night, reports Reuters. Netanyahu's comments were broadcast live by Israel's media, and published in both right- and left-wing newspapers, as debate grows in Israel over whether the country needs to go to war with Iran. "I say again that Iran must not be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said. Pressure is building in Israel to take action, especially with yesterday's disclosure that a new intelligence report presented to President Obama shows that Iran's nuclear program has made developments "far beyond the scope known" by UN inspectors, according to the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz. Washington officials would not comment on whether such a report even exists, but they maintain that Iran is undecided about its nuclear weapons program and remains years away from having nuclear capability. Some analysts think Netanyahu's talk is posturing designed to keep the pressure on for sanctions against Iran, while others see it largely as a domestic political strategy.
– The latest accusations against Kevin Spacey bring the timeline of alleged sexual assault and harassment up to the present: No fewer than eight current and former House of Cards employees tell CNN that the star's behavior, including groping and crude comments, made the set of the Netflix show a "toxic" working environment. The show halted production earlier this week. The workers—who asked to stay anonymous out of fear of ruining their careers—say Spacey targeted young male staffers in a "predatory" manner. One former production assistant says he was in a car on the way to the set with Spacey when the actor suddenly put his hands down his pants. The worker says the nonconsensual touching from someone in a "very powerful position on the show" left him "in a state of shock." The production assistant says after arriving on set, Spacey cornered him in his trailer and made "inappropriate contact." He says after he told Spacey what he was doing wasn't OK, Spacey became "flustered" and left for the rest of the day. House of Cards producer Media Rights Capital says Spacey was reported for sexual harassment in 2012 and it is "deeply troubled" by the new allegations, per the Hollywood Reporter. MRC says it has set up a complaint hotline and legal assistance for workers. In a separate allegation, a man who is now 48 tells Vulture that he had a sexual relationship with Spacey when he was 14 and the actor was 24. He says they met around five times and there was a lot of "physical activity"—but Spacey then tried to rape him. He says he fought the actor off and fled, and Spacey later broke off contact with him.
– See you in court, eh? TransCanada, a Canadian company hit hard by President Obama's rejection of its Keystone XL pipeline project, has filed twin lawsuits seeking $15 billion in damages and a reversal of the US decision, the New York Times reports. One lawsuit, filed under the North American Free Trade Agreement, seeks damages because the permit rejection was "arbitrary and unjustified," reports Reuters. The suit claims that Obama overstepped his authority because of his "unprecedented and symbolic grounds" for turning down the project, which he argued would bring "dirtier crude oil into our country" while doing little to boost the American economy. The second lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Houston, calls for a reversal of Obama's "unconstitutional" decision and a ruling that no future president can block the pipeline project, reports Reuters. A Canadian trade lawyer tells the Globe and Mail that it's tough to predict how these kinds of lawsuits will go, but that TransCanada's argument that it was treated unfairly because the issue had become politicized appears solid. The Times notes that a win for the Canadian company would be unprecedented: In the 22 years of the NAFTA agreement, the US has won all 12 of the challenges it faced from Canadian firms, while US firms have prevailed in trade agreement cases in Canada.
– Amid shortages of drugs used in lethal injections and controversy over a botched execution in Oklahoma, Tennessee has become the first state to revive an older method of execution. Gov. Bill Haslam yesterday signed a bill allowing the state to use the electric chair if execution drugs are not available, the AP reports. State lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the bill last month. Other states allow condemned inmates to choose the chair, but Tennessee is the first to reintroduce it without giving prisoners a choice, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Wyoming, meanwhile, says it's all out of execution drugs, and lawmakers are drafting a bill to bring back the firing squad—though the ABA Journal points out that the state has but a single inmate on Death Row (that would be 69-year-old Dale Wayne Eaton, who was found guilty of the 2004 murder of an 18-year-old woman). State law currently permits death-by-gas-chamber, but the state doesn't actually have a gas chamber. (A recent poll found that one in five Americans supports bringing back gas chambers.)
– A blueprint outlining the path toward a final deal between Western countries and Iran on its nuclear program was drafted yesterday, and Politico notes "there was much for Obama officials" and their partner countries to "be happy about," such as more centrifuge disassembling than previously anticipated. But there are still tenuous points that need to be fleshed out and an American public that needs convincing, and a congressional committee intends to create a bipartisan bill on April 14 that would demand congressional review of any deal, the New York Times notes. An aide for Speaker John Boehner tells ABC News that "a wait-and-see until June 30" (the deadline for a full agreement) approach isn't in the cards, while Sen. Bob Corker tells the Times "we want the right to go through the details of the deal and to decide whether we believe congressionally mandated sanctions should be alleviated." Keeping the agreement's framework shaky is the lack of detailed schedules and logistics on certain key points, including nuclear R&D and a uranium-reduction program, Politico notes. The bill would insist on a full review of all agreement text, ban the removal of sanctions for 60 days after a final deal is reached, and mandate that the president check up on Iran's compliance every 90 days, the Times notes. But while lawmakers on both sides are touting compromise, there are still the hardballers. "I plan … to stop this deal from going forward," Sen. Tom Cotton, author of the recent open letter to Iran, tells ABC. Meanwhile, Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff says, "The last thing we want is for the international community to think that we came this close to a negotiated end to Iran's nuclear program and the United States Congress got in the way."
– Extreme drought conditions in California have caused residents to face government fines, paint their lawns, and stress about their beloved giant sequoias. Now the whole country might be joining in the state's water woes: Production of the special rice used in sushi, grown mainly in California, is set to decline by 25% in 2014 because farmers were limited to how many acres they could adequately water, Politico reports. Translation for the rest of us—sushi restaurants are going to have to decide whether to take the financial hit themselves or ask customers to pay higher prices for their tempura, tuna, and Tijuana rolls, according to a California Restaurant Association spokeswoman. Most of the state is high and dry, categorized as being in "exceptional," "extreme," or "severe" drought conditions, the United States Drought Monitor indicates. A California Rice Commission spokesman says rice production could be down by more than a billion pounds, as per Politico, affecting restaurants and even schools that train sushi chefs. Rice is thriving in other parts of the country—overall rice production will be up 21% this year, according to AGWeb.com—but chefs are partial to the short-grain Japonica rice typically used in sushi dishes. Still, one general manager of a California rice co-operative worries, via Politico: "If the price gets too high, does the end user start going to substitute products or maybe an inferior rice?"
– The drama of 2016's final moments continues to spill into 2017 in the form of an ongoing battle over just went wrong with Mariah Carey's New Year's Eve performance. Carey herself tweeted "S--- happens" to fans, alongside a GIF of her shaking her head, after an appearance on ABC's New Year's Rockin' Eve that included bungled renditions of "Emotion" and "We Belong Together" in which the Carey sang only small portions of the songs as a pre-recorded track played in the background. Carey's rep tells Billboard that the singer took the performance "very seriously," so much so that she rehearsed for three hours on the 30th and again at 3pm on the big night, with no sound issues surfacing on either occasion. "A shame that production set her up to fail," rep Nicole Perna concludes. Carey's manager Stella Bulochnikov tells Billboard stage managers were alerted that the "in-ears" weren't working four minutes before showtime; reassurances the ear pieces would function once live were bogus so Carey "pulled them out but could not hear the music over the crowd." Bulochnikov suggests production "just want[ed] eyeballs at any expense." Dick Clark Productions swung back in a statement released to the AP Sunday night: "To suggest that dcp (Dick Clark Productions) ... would ever intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous, and frankly absurd." It said its initial investigation found no evidence of technical errors. An unnamed production source counters Perna's rehearsal claims, saying Carey used a body double during Saturday's rehearsal. (Josh Groban tweeted, then deleted, a diss about Carey.)
– President Obama may be stuck between a melting icecap and a hard place. Environmental groups have grown weary of the administration's "all of the above" energy strategy—which has seen it hold tight to domestic natural gas, oil, and coal production even as it works to limit coal-fired power plant pollution—and the fossil-fuel industry is just as peeved. "You can't have it both ways," an environmentalist tells the Washington Post. In a letter sent to Obama yesterday, some 18 groups have announced their displeasure, showing the administration could "risk losing support from a critical part of its political base during an already difficult election year," the Post notes. "An 'all of the above' strategy is a compromise that future generations can't afford," the letter reads, per Bloomberg. It suggests what the Post calls a "strict climate test" be applied "to all decisions regarding new fossil fuel development," from ocean drilling to the Keystone XL pipeline. Yesterday was a sort of double whammy for Obama, with the American Petroleum Institute announcing a new ad push that will champion domestic oil and gas production, and with Mitch McConnell tasking the Government Accountability Office with figuring out whether the Senate can reverse these emissions limits. This, as a UN report finds our carbon emissions rose slightly last year (though they still fall below 2005 levels) and notes that governments worldwide are spending more money subsidizing fossil fuels than moving toward cleaner energy, the New York Times reports.
– Thor: the Dark World ruled the weekend box office again, banking $38.5 million, but more exciting may be The Best Man Holiday—a black-American release that took second with a stunning $30.6 million debut, the LA Times reports. "There’s no crystal ball in guessing this stuff," said an exec at distributor Universal. "It was fair to think this film ... would open in the high teens." Also generating buzz is the Alexander Payne-directed Nebraska, which raked in a notable $140,000 at four locations. Wrapping up the top five are Last Vegas ($8.9 million), Free Birds ($8.3 million), and Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa ($7.7 million), reports Entertainment Weekly.
– Recent news on the Ebola outbreak paints a bleak portrait of the disease by numbers: 70%: The current death rate from the disease, the World Health Organization again confirmed today. That's an increase from the initial 50% cited by WHO, the AP reports. 10,000: The number of new Ebola cases WHO says are possible each week, starting at some point in the next two months. In other words, the effort to grapple with the disease needs a big boost within 60 days, says an official. 9: The number of workers for another health organization, Doctors Without Borders, who have died fighting the outbreak, the AP reports. An additional seven have been infected. 70: The number of health workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who took care of the first US Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of the virus. One of them is the nurse who's now suffering from the disease. $500,000: The potential cost of care for Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance cameraman who picked up Ebola in Liberia. His friends set up a crowdfunding campaign last week to help pay his bills, the Fiscal Times reports; you can contribute here. $32.6 billion: The possible economic toll the disease could take by the end of next year, the New York Times reports. The number comes from the World Bank and refers to a situation in which "the epidemic spreads into neighboring countries" around its center in West Africa. 4,447: The total number of deaths from the disease, per WHO, which says the total number of likely cases is 8,914. There's one non-grim number to add to the mix: $25 million, which is what Mark Zuckerberg and his wife are donating to the fight.
– "Prankster" may not be the first word that comes to mind when describing a scientist, but a group of them at Switzerland's European Organization for Nuclear Research (aka CERN) may have just elevated the term in an odd and creepy way. The Guardian reports the research organization is looking into a video that popped up online last week showing what appears to be a mock human sacrifice, filmed in the dead of night at CERN's Geneva headquarters (where the Large Hadron Collider is housed). The Blair Witch-style tape, shot from the POV of a person watching from a window above one of the lab's main squares, shows a woman in white being pretend-stabbed amid a group of black-cloaked mysteriosos (the Independent notes one appears to be wearing hiking boots) in front of a statue of the Hindu deity Shiva. "These scenes were filmed on our premises but without official permission or knowledge," a CERN rep informed AFP via email, adding the organization frowns upon such a "spoof" as it can "give rise to misunderstandings about the scientific nature of our work." Snopes notes CERN and the Large Hadron Collider have become "conspiracy magnets" because of the complicated research there, with some even insisting that scientists are plotting to take over the Earth or open a portal to hell. Although the video raises concern about campus security, the lab's rep stresses that entry to the campus is secure and that the disguised occult wannabes must have had access badges. "CERN welcomes every year thousands of scientific users from all over the world, and sometimes some of them let their humor go too far," she says. (CERN has been trying to keep Satan at arm's length.)
– Thanksgiving dinner will cost you a little less this year—44 cents less to be exact—according to a 34-state survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, picked up by Business Insider. A 10-person feast with turkey and all the trimmings—including stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls, veggies, cranberries, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream—plus enough for leftovers, costs about $49.04 this year, a drop from 2012's $49.48. At about $5 per serving, it's "an excellent value for consumers," AFBF's president said. The most expensive buy is of course the turkey, which averages $1.36 per pound—down three cents from last year—or $21.76 for a 16-pounder. Newser points out that wine and other alcoholic libations aren't included in the grand total. Don't have time to dress a turkey? And more penny-wise news: Assuming you're not the host, driving to Thanksgiving dinner will be a little cheaper, too: The Los Angeles Times reports national gas prices are down 16 cents per gallon over last year, to an average $3.27 a gallon.
– The Australian twins who shot themselves at a Colorado firing range may have been obsessed with the Columbine school shootings, which happened just 20 miles from the shooting range where one sister died. Investigators found that Kristin Hermeler, the twin who died, wrote letters to a former Columbine student in 1999, and they found a magazine cover related to the tragedy in the twins’ belongings, CBS 4 reports. Investigators determined that no crime was committed since each twin shot herself. Kristin’s letters were to Brooks Brown, a student who received so many threats from Columbine gunman Eric Harris a year before the shooting that his parents contacted the police—but who then forgave and befriended Harris, telling his parents just weeks before the shooting he was "a new Eric." “As someone who has been rejected, victimized, and ostracized in their life, I would like to thank you for giving [Eric] that chance,” she wrote. Brown tells the Denver Post he and Kristin went on to talk via phone and email, but hadn’t spoken in years. Surviving sister Candice was “somewhat defensive” while being questioned, a police officer says; she reportedly said, “I don’t give a [expletive]. It happened a long time ago,” when asked about Columbine.
– The author of the explosive dossier dogging Donald Trump less than 10 days before his inauguration has been named as a former British intelligence officer—but the investigative firm he co-directs won't confirm or deny his involvement. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that the document was prepared by Christopher Steele, a former Russia expert in Britain's spy service who founded the Orbis Business Intelligence research firm in 2009. The New York Times, in a look at how the dossier came to light, reports that Steele was hired by Washington research firm Fusion GPS, which was hired by a wealthy GOP donor in the fall of 2015 to compile anti-Trump material. After Trump became the presumptive nominee, the GOP donor no longer needed the research firm's services, but wealthy Democratic donors stepped in, and Steele continued to send monthly memos detailing alleged Russian efforts to both compromise Trump and assist his campaign, per the Times' sources. In other coverage: The Guardian looks at John McCain's involvement, which apparently included clandestine efforts to obtain the dossier after hearing about it from a diplomat during a conference in Canada. "Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the director of the FBI," McCain said in a statement Wednesday. The AP reports that it has been unable to contact Steele. A neighbor of the former spy, who lives outside London, says Steele and his family are away and it's not clear when they will return. Intelligence chiefs are defending their decision to take the very unusual step of attaching a summary of the unverified dossier to last week's briefing on Russian hacking, the Washington Post reports. "Part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Wednesday. He said he spoke with Trump and expressed dismay at the "extremely corrosive" leaks in the press. Early Thursday, Trump tweeted that Clapper had called him "to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated." He added: "Made up, phony facts.Too bad!" Politico looks at how Democrats are dealing with Trump's Russia troubles. So far, senators have been more restrained than House members, some of whom have started referring to Trump as "Moscow Donald." The New York Times reports that Trump is facing a backlash from Jewish groups for wondering if we "are living in Nazi Germany" when he was criticizing intelligence agencies' handling of what he called "fake news." At the Intercept, Glenn Greenwald calls the dossier "farcical" and warns that this episode could backfire badly for Democratic operatives and others treating the dossier as gospel. He warns that if it is proved false, it will "forever discredit ... future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing."
– Bill Maher opened his mouth on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night and added his ever-controversial two cents to the discussion of yesterday's deadly shooting at Charlie Hebdo. While "most Muslim people" wouldn't carry out such an attack, Maher said "hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this." Maher continued, per Raw Story, "When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off." The Daily Beast reports an apparently stunned audience was noticeably subdued throughout his rant, in which he said all religions are "stupid and dangerous." "It's not my fault that the part of the world that is most against liberal principles is the Muslim part of the world," he said. Asking the audience to "turn toward the truth," he proceeded to attack how Muslim countries treat women, gay people, and those who leave Islam. "They chop heads off in the square in Mecca. Well, Mecca is their Vatican City. If they were chopping the heads off of Catholic gay people, wouldn't there be a bigger outcry among liberals?" Maher said. America's politically correct liberals weren't free from his critique, either. The Daily Beast notes Maher said those who argue for sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities have transformed the US into "Pussy Nation."
– Some passengers were hurled to the ceiling Monday when an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Bangkok hit a patch of turbulence so severe that dozens of passengers were injured. The Boeing 777 hit what's known as "clear air turbulence" around 40 minutes before landing in Bangkok, where 27 passengers were hospitalized, some with broken bones, the Guardian reports. The airline is paying for their treatment, though it says the injuries were definitely not its fault. "The reasons behind the injures were that some of the passengers had not had their seatbelts fastened," Aeroflot said in a statement. Passenger Rostik Rusev tells CNN that it lasted for 10 terrifying seconds. "There was blood on the ceiling, people with broken noses, babies who were hurt. It was horrible. It came out of nowhere. It was like driving a car and a tire suddenly bursts," Rusev says, adding: "The aircraft personnel couldn't have been more professional and courageous. They were heroes in everything they were doing." There are hundreds of cases every year—usually milder ones—of aircraft encountering clear air turbulence, which is caused when masses of air moving at different speeds meet, the BBC reports. Pilots rely on each other to report turbulence pockets they encounter in skies that appear clear and calm.
– Miley Cyrus was hospitalized yesterday after having a bad allergic reaction to antibiotics—but TMZ reports that it's actually the death of her dog earlier this month that's behind it all. Since Floyd's death, Cyrus has been "an emotional mess," and the only way she's found to deal with her crying jags and inability to sleep has been to party way too much, sources say. "She's been off the rails," adds another; both alcohol and drugs are reportedly involved. Worn out, she got sick, went on the antibiotics, and the rest is history. Miley tweeted today that she'll likely have to cancel tonight's concert in St. Louis, as she probably won't be released today, E! reports. Cyrus has made no secret of the fact that she's despondent over Floyd's death—in fact, she's posted about it so often on social media (and even sang a tribute to a huge inflatable version of the Husky at one of her concerts) that Gawker ran an explainer on Monday. It's not clear what happened to Floyd (there are reports he was killed by a coyote), but he was apparently Miley's favorite of the five dogs she had. After his death, her mom got her a new dog named Moonie, but she ended up giving the puppy away due to a concern about having small dogs—because in 2012, another dog of Miley's died after being grabbed by yet another dog of hers (who was also subsequently re-homed). (For slightly "happier" Miley news, click to watch a video of her teaching her 14-year-old sister how to twerk.)
– The jurors who cleared Casey Anthony of murder now might have to explain the verdict to their neighbors. Florida today released the jurors' identities, reports the Orlando Sentinel. Normally, the names are made public immediately after a trial, but the judge ordered a three-month delay given the public outrage over the verdict. Click for specifics on the panel, which has rejected requests to speak collectively about the decision.
– A 33-year-old woman could face criminal charges after police say she threw her newborn baby—complete with placenta and umbilical cord—out the window of her New York City apartment Monday, the New York Daily News reports. She reportedly told police the baby had died before she threw it, according to the newspaper. The wife of the building's superintendent found the body while cleaning a concrete courtyard behind the building, reports the New York Times. She called 911, and the baby was pronounced dead at the scene, the AP reports. "I've never seen something so unhuman like that," the son of the woman who found the baby tells WABC. "I don't know what kind of mother would be to do that." The baby's mother, Jennifer Berry, allegedly told police she gave birth in the shower Monday, the Daily News reports. Police say Berry originally denied the baby was hers. According to the Times, police are continuing to investigate the incident, and at least part of the baby's fall was captured on surveillance video. Berry hasn't been arrested, and charges against her are pending an autopsy and cause of death, the Daily News reports. "Oh, it just broke my heart," a neighbor tells WABC. "Just broke my heart."
– A security researcher has earned the equivalent of a first-class, round-the-world trip after he submitted what he thought were a couple of "lame" bugs to United's new bug bounty program. In an industry first, United announced a bounty in May that rewards miles to anyone who identifies a bug on its website. There are 10 bug classes eligible: Cross-site scripting bugs, for example, are worth 50,000 miles, while authentication bypass bugs earn 250,000. While "passively poking the site," Jordan Wiens, founder of a Florida security company, says he found what he thought were two remote code execution bugs, which allow a hacker to run their own potentially dangerous code on a site. "I also thought they were lame and wasn't sure if they were on parts of the infrastructure that qualified," he tells Threatpost. "I figured they'd award me 50,000 miles or something smaller." It turns out RCE bugs earn the highest payout: a maximum 1 million miles. After making his submission to United—his first to a bounty program, he says—Wiens got an email asking for confirmation that he was a US citizen and that his six hours of research was completed in the US. "Two hours later, I got a message to check my account that I had gotten my million miles," he says. Wiens, who can't share details of the bug, says the miles are worth $25,000 and could take him on a first-class trip around the world or on 40 domestic round-trip flights in coach. His plan is to use the miles on coach trips for his family, plus one luxurious flight with his wife, he tells Fox 13. Wired reports Wiens' award is the program's first major payout. Other security researchers have since shared their awards on Twitter. One says he nabbed 500,000 miles. (Speaking of planes, a "horrible" and "evil" new seat design has been revealed.)
– A prospective student at a community college in Baltimore says his outspoken religious beliefs ruined his application—so he's suing the school and its president, Opposing Views reports. Brandon Jenkins interviewed for the Community College of Baltimore County's radiation therapy program, and was asked, "What is the most important thing to you?" His answer: "My God." According to his lawsuit, filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, the program's director later told him that his answer didn't help his application. "This field is not the place for religion," she allegedly said, and advised him against emphasizing religion in future applications because school patients come from various faiths or "believe in nothing at all." A senior counsel at ACLJ tells the Christian Post that Jenkins' rejection is "every bit as unlawful as singling out his race, or singling out his gender," but a school spokeswoman denies the accusations, the Baltimore Sun reports. A letter from the school's attorney, included in the lawsuit, says Jenkins' comment about God "was not a good answer" because the school seeks people driven by a "passion in the field"—but adds that Jenkins has a criminal record and would have struggled to find work in Maryland.
– There are only five dogs in America trained to sniff out electronic devices, and one of them played a major role in Jared Fogle's downfall. Bear, a 2-year-old black Labrador, was able to sniff out a thumb drive that human investigators missed during a search of the former Subway spokesman's home last month, reports NBC News, which describes Bear as a "porn-sniffing dog." He can detect tiny memory cards easily and was trained with methods associated with "any other K-9 training, like with the narcotics or explosives or anything," his trainer tells WISH-TV. "You get the dog used to the odor and reward them as they indicate on it." The lead prosecutor on the Fogle case tells NBC that Bear is a "key part of the team," though he doubted the pooch's abilities at first. "I thought I was being punked, but it does work," he says. The evidence, along with that gathered by an FBI informant, helped secure Fogle's guilty plea on child-porn and underage sex charges. Bear has been a busy dog: NBC reports that he also played a role in the arrest of Olympic gymnastics coach Marvin Sharp. Bear's trainer, a deputy fire chief, sells dogs to law enforcement agencies when their training is completed, and Bear will soon be on his way to Seattle, where the police department contacted the trainer after hearing about the Fogle case. (Fogle's charitable foundation appears to have been a sham.)
– Donald Trump's antics last week, including attacks on a disabled reporter and questionable recollections of 9/11, may have been the last straw for some supporters, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests. The poll put his support at 31% for the week ending on Nov. 27, down from 43% a week earlier, marking Trump's biggest poll drop since he became the front-runner in July, though Ben Carson isn't closing the gap: His numbers have also dropped and he is now a distant second at 15%, according to the poll, with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz tied for third at 8% apiece and Jeb Bush fifth at 7%. But even with the latest fall, Trump's staying power has surprised Republican insiders, who now admit that he could win early voting states including Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. "I do not think the media or the party establishment have a real grasp on how deep the anger and frustration is around the country," a South Carolina Republican tells Politico. "I still do not know if he can sustain it into the New Year—but after the Paris attacks, his stance on illegal immigration and unverified people coming into our nation has real impact." (Four GOP rivals are getting equal time from NBC for Trump's Saturday Night Live appearance.)
– Wet weather and hailstorms combined to make this year's Champagne harvest—the real capital C stuff from France—the worst in 40 years, reports BloombergBusinessweek. Damaged vineyards in the Champagne region yielded 40% fewer grapes this year, says an industry spokesman in Paris. The only good news is that this New Year's Eve won't be affected because bottles typically age 15 months. Generally speaking, it's been a lousy year for grapes all across Europe, notes the Huffington Post.
– Secret Service agents played dirty when a congressman criticized the agency, according to a government watchdog report. During Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz's investigation of the service, top agents dug into his files and decided to leak information about the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman, including the fact that he had unsuccessfully applied to join the service in 2003, reports the Washington Post. "Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out," Assistant Director Edward Lowery wrote in an email on March 31 this year. "Just to be fair." Within days, a news website reported on Chaffetz's failed application, the Post reports. The Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General found that in the space of a few days, 45 Secret Service agents accessed Chaffetz's confidential file, Politico reports. Only four of the agents could claim to have a legitimate need to see the information and the others violated federal privacy laws, according to the report, which stresses that Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy wasn't aware of the behavior, NBC News reports. The agency has apologized and Chaffetz has issued a statement slamming the agency for using "a tactic designed to intimidate and embarrass" him. "Certain lines should never be crossed," he said. "The unauthorized access and distribution of my personal information crossed that line."
– When an iceberg the size of Delaware separated from the Larsen C ice shelf last July, it uncovered an Antarctic marine habitat that had been hidden from the rest of the world for over 120,000 years, Quartz reports. Now scientists are racing to study the 3,600-square-mile ecosystem before it's forever changed by its sudden exposure to sunlight. "The calving of A-68 provides us with a unique opportunity to study marine life as it responds to a dramatic environmental change," marine biologist Dr. Katrin Linse tells the Guardian. A-68 is the trillion-ton iceberg—the largest in the world—that broke away from the ice shelf last summer. Linse says it's a "very exciting" opportunity for scientists, but they have to hurry because new species will quickly enter the ecosystem now that it has been exposed to sunlight, USA Today reports. British Antarctic Survey scientists led by Linse were scheduled to arrive in Antarctica on Wednesday. Over the next three weeks they'll explore 2,200 square miles of the newly exposed area while observing marine mammals and birds near the surface and taking samples of microbes and other life at the seafloor. It won't be easy. The average temperature in the area is 15 degrees, and it's full of large hunks of sea ice. But David Vaughan, science director at the British Antarctic Survey, says studying the area is important for learning about the potential impacts of climate change on Antarctica. "How fast species can disperse, and how fast ecosystems can colonize new areas, is key to understanding where the Antarctic is likely to be resilient, and where it is vulnerable," he tells the Guardian. (This Antarctic explorer turned back, but his decision came too late.)
– Myrna Arias didn't like the GPS app on her phone that constantly tracked her, so she uninstalled it. The problem: Arias' iPhone was issued by her employer, which required her to run the app constantly, and after she removed it, the California woman was fired. Now she's suing her former employer, money transfer service Intermex, for invasion of privacy, unfair business practices, and retaliation, among other things, Ars Technica reports. Arias started researching the app, then called Xora—its website touts the app's ability to let employers "instantly see where their employees are and where they have been"—and eventually she and some of her colleagues asked a trainer from the app company to clarify. Boss John Stubits then, per the suit, "admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments." Arias says she has no problem being monitored while at work, but she complained to Stubits about being tracked in her free time; he was unsympathetic and said she should have no problem because of how much she was being paid by Intermex. "Her manager made it clear that he was using the program to continuously monitor her, during company as well as personal time," the complaint states, noting that he told Arias she needed to keep her phone on at all times in case a customer called. Arias' attorney tells Courthouse News that there was no way to turn the app off, as it would constantly run in the background. "She found it very offensive that they were treating her like a felon," the attorney says. Arias says her boss "scolded" her for uninstalling the program last year, and fired her soon after. (Elsewhere, a woman got fired over a text mistakenly sent to the boss.)
– Add two more senators to the list of gay-marriage "evolvers"—North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp and Indiana's Joe Donnelly said today that they support same-sex marriage, reports the Huffington Post. Both are Democrats from conservative states and both are safe from re-election campaigns until 2018. "The makeup of families is changing, but the importance of family is enduring," said Heitkamp in a statement. Together with yesterday's flip by Florida's Sen. Bill Nelson, the moves leave only four Democratic senators who have not publicly voiced support for gay marriage. If you're a bit amazed by how quickly senators have been "evolving" on this issue, you're not the only one. But Nate Silver decided to take things a step further, as usual, and try to come up with a mathematical model to explain why, for his latest blog post in the New York Times. The key, says Silver, is public support for gay marriage in many states growing from a slight majority to a clear one. But he expects the pace to slow down greatly at this point. "The remaining senators who have not taken the opportunity yet may have good political reasons for it, and may wait some time before they do," he writes.
– Wesley Snipes enters prison in Pennsylvania today to serve a three-year sentence for tax evasion—and though the minimum-security McKean prison camp isn't exactly a five-star resort, it's not as bad as it could be. The AP gives details on what his life will be like: No fences: But he will submit to five daily head counts, three of which are overnight. Living quarters: He'll have a two-man room in the barracks, where the other 300 nonviolent inmates live. Daily schedule: Wake-up time is 6:35am, and jobs are performed for seven hours per day. Conjugal visits: He'll have to limit himself to just a kiss in the visitors room. Money: He can earn pennies an hour by doing laundry or other chores, and is allowed to spend $290 a month at the commissary. Entertainment: Double-feature movies are shown Friday through Sunday, but no R-, NC-17-, or X-rated films are screened. Exercise: Sand volleyball, indoor basketball, exercise machines, badminton, bocci, and bridge will be available to him. Medical facilities: The copay at the infirmary is only $2. Church: Almost any group you can think of, including Wiccans, hold weekly meetings. Click for more, including why Snipes failed to pay taxes—or watch his Tuesday night appearance on Larry King Live.
– Seems Robin Roberts is as good as her word: She's back on Good Morning America this morning following a nearly six-month absence for a bone marrow transplant. "I keep pinching myself and I realize that this is real. This is really happening," Roberts said. "Faith, family, and friends have brought me to this moment and I am so full of gratitude." Ahead of her return she thought, "All is right in the world. It's gonna seem like no time has passed at all." Industry analysts had questioned whether she'd ever return to the job, but she's back in time for the Oscars. Last year's awards marked the beginning of her feeling unwell, and she hoped to be back in time for the 2013 edition. Roberts is the best-loved of all the morning news hosts, according to industry data, and her return could help GMA stay ahead of Today in ratings, the New York Times notes. And even while she was gone, she was far from forgotten: GMA hosts referred to her at least once each half-hour, the Times adds.
– In May of 2014, Willow Short received a heart transplant when she was just six days old. On Saturday, she was found shot to death along with the rest of her family in what police believe was a murder-suicide. The bodies of Mark Short, 40, Megan Short, 33, and children Willow, 2, Mark Jr., 5, and Lianna, 8, were found in their home in Sinking Spring, Pa., on Saturday afternoon when a relative called police after Megan didn't show up for a lunch date. Cops haven't revealed which parent they believe was responsible for the unfathomable crime, but they say a handwritten suicide note was found in the home and a handgun was found near the body of one of the adults, NBC Philadelphia reports. Police say the couple had "domestic issues," and a friend in the neighborhood tells the Reading Eagle that Megan was planning to leave Mark and had been open about it, posting on Facebook that she needed people to help her move out on Friday. In 2014, the Eagle reported on Willow's struggle to survive her first week of life. In 2015, the Shorts and their struggle to obtain anti-rejection medicine for Willow were featured in a New York Times story. In April, Megan wrote a blog post about dealing with PTSD after Willow's illness, saying she still suffered from anxiety and nightmares and it had taken her two years to realize how badly she had been impacted by the ordeal, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
– A massive child-porn bust has led to 245 arrests and the identification of 123 exploited children, some as young as two, reports the Contra Costa Times. The crackdown, dubbed Operation Sunflower, began Nov. 1 and ran for five weeks, and extended to 46 states and six countries, officials revealed yesterday. Of the 123 children, 44 were living with their alleged abusers. Five of the children were three or younger, and 41 were between the ages of four and 12. California led the way with 37 arrests, and all but 23 of those arrested were in the United States, reports CNN. "Whenever our investigations reveal the production and distribution of new child pornography online, we will do everything we can to rescue the victim and prosecute the abuser, even if takes us years or (going) around the world to do it," said ICE's director. Investigators say the are continuing to make arrests and attempting to identify further victims. The operation's name is a nod to the impressive 2011 rescue of an 11-year-old in Kansas; click for the fascinating story of how ICE agents tracked her down.
– Ken Bone and his bright red sweater became Internet famous Sunday night when he rose to ask a question on energy policy of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. (The "real hero of the debate," pronounced Quartz, which rounds up some of the social media love.) Bone, for his part, seems to be taking it with a dose of good humor. He appeared on CNN Monday morning, deliberately re-wearing his now-famous sweater. “I had a really nice olive suit that I love a great deal and my mother would have been very proud to see me wearing on television, but apparently I have gained about 30 pounds, and when I went to get in my car the morning of the debate I split the seat of my pants all the way open,” he explained. “So the red sweater is plan B," he said, per Politico. "I’m glad it worked out." As for the debate itself, Bone said it got "very uncomfortable" at times because of the personal digs, almost "like watching mom and dad fight." He added that he's more confused than ever about who to vote for, though he chided Trump for dredging up Bill Clinton's scandals, which "has very little to do with Hillary Clinton's ability to be president." Bone is evidently a former Domino's Pizza manager from Missouri and a classic-car enthusiast, reports Slate. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has you covered if you want to buy a similar sweater.
– Feeling upbeat? Enough of that: Planet Earth is undergoing a sixth mass extinction that will likely annihilate the human race unless we can curb the trend, scientists say. According to a new paper, the current rate of species extinction outpaces the natural rate far more than anyone knew, NBC News reports. The analysis "employed better knowledge" of Earth's natural extinction rate, the Guardian reports, upping the number from one extinction per million species annually to two extinctions. It then compared that to a current extinction rate that study authors consider conservative. Presto, they got a rate since 1900 that's eight to 100 times worse than the natural one. "We were very surprised to see how bad it is," says study leader Gerardo Ceballos. "This is very depressing." "If it is allowed to continue, life would take millions of years to recover, and our species itself would disappear early on," says Ceballos. But nations can reverse the crisis—which has been linked to deforestation, industrialization, and other human factors—by conserving threatened species and lowering pressures on their populations, the paper says. So far critics seem to buy the paper's basic math but doubt that species extinction will continue at this high rate for centuries. "It is likely the problem will decline rapidly because most countries will be rich and care much for the natural world," writes one environmentalist. Earth has seen five other mass extinctions, including one 443 million years ago that killed off 83% of sea life, and the most recent, which wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the Telegraph notes.
– Police are investigating a pair of blasts that rocked two New Mexico churches where parishioners had gathered yesterday morning, though there were no injuries and damage was "relatively minor," authorities tell NBC News. One explosion came from a mailbox outside an administrative entrance to Calvary Baptist Church in Las Cruces at about 8:20am local time, reports the Washington Post. About 30 people had gathered inside and witnesses say they felt the building shake. Twenty minutes later, the pastor at Holy Cross Catholic Church, three miles away, said he heard a "pow" while passing out communion. "I didn't know if it was a shotgun blast…but it was very loud," he tells the Las Cruces News. The bomb exploded in a trash can outside the church's glass front doors, which shattered. "I'm just thankful to God nobody was standing by the door, because there's usually always somebody standing there," the pastor says. "Ten minutes later we would have been leaving and standing around that space." A churchgoer at Calvary Baptist—which is on the same street as several other churches that weren't targeted—says he recognized bomb parts at the scene, including an Eveready battery. A police rep says only that the two devices "were not fireworks" and "were intended, I believe, to do harm and could have done harm to people." Police add the blasts are considered related and authorities have warned other nearby churches "to be on the lookout for anything suspicious." Both churches remained closed yesterday afternoon, while classes at Holy Cross' adjoining school were canceled today.
– Your Instagram account may know you're depressed before you do, according to a new study out of Harvard and the University of Vermont. The Daily Dot reports researchers taught a computer to analyze aspects of Instagram photos, such as colors, brightness, and faces, then set in to analyzing nearly 44,000 posts from 166 people. The Instagram users in the study took a clinical depression survey and were asked about any history of depression, according to Fortune. CNN reports the computer program was able to correctly detect depression from a person's Instagram account 70% of the time. That's better than humans looking at Instagram photos and better than the success rate of general practitioners diagnosing depression. Researchers found the Instagram posts of depressed people tended to be less saturated, darker, and more blue. Depressed people tended to use the Inkwell filter most often (non-depressed people preferred Valencia) and got more comments on their posts (non-depressed people got more likes). Depressed people also posted more photos of faces but had fewer faces per photo. Because the computer program was able to detect depression in Instagram users before the were even diagnosed with it, researchers believe it could be a new way to screen people for depression before they start showing more serious symptoms and get them help earlier. (This party drug may soon treat depression.)
– The suicide of a far-right writer/activist at Paris' Notre Dame yesterday is being hailed as a "political act" by other far-right leaders. Dominique Venner, who shot himself in front of an estimated 1,500 people inside the vaunted cathedral, had posted a final essay on his website decrying both the country's recent legalization of gay marriage and immigration from Africa, reports the AFP. The 78-year-old left a letter containing similar statements at the altar before killing himself, says a police source. Venner also left a message that a friend read on a conservative radio station. A sample: "I believe it is necessary to sacrifice myself to break with the lethargy that is overwhelming us. ... I am killing myself to awaken slumbering consciences." On Twitter, National Front party leader Marine Le Pen praised Venner. "All respect to Dominique Venner whose final, eminently political act was to try to wake up the people of France," she wrote. Another senior National Front figure and member of the European Parliament also hailed the "dramatic gesture," and called Venner an "extremely brilliant intellectual," France 24 reports. He noted the death was likely inspired by that of right-wing Japanese author Yukio Mishima, who committed ritual seppuku in 1970 as an act of political protest.
– It still isn't clear what James Howell was doing en route to an LA Pride event with weapons and explosives in his car—police say he had no connection to the Orlando shooting—but we now know more about him: The 20-year-old Indiana man was charged with child molestation Wednesday after allegedly having sex with a 12-year-old girl on May 31. A Clark County prosecutor—who plans to have Howell extradited back to Indiana—tells the AP that Howell and the girl's brother are members of the same car club and that the girl attended a car event with Howell. Afterward, Howell offered to drive the girl to the home of a family friend but first stopped at a forested area, where Howell molested her, the prosecutor says. The girl's mom went to police two days later and Howell was interviewed on June 7. Police say he admitted to fleeing Indiana "due to his concerns over existing or pending criminal charges" after he was found early Sunday with a loaded assault rifle, Taser, hood, magazines, handcuffs, and 15 pounds of explosive chemicals that "posed a grave danger to both persons and property," per the Los Angeles Times. He faces up to 16 years if convicted of child molestation, and more than nine years if convicted of felony weapons charges, including possession of explosives on a highway, possession of an assault weapon, and possession of high-capacity magazines. Howell—who friends describe as a gun enthusiast—was convicted of misdemeanor intimidation in April after allegedly pulling a gun on a neighbor and wasn't allowed to have weapons or leave Indiana. His bail is set at $2 million.
– One of Jerry Sandusky's six adopted children is following in his father's footsteps—and it's not as a football coach. Jeffrey Sandusky is on his way to a Pennsylvania state prison after pleading guilty to 14 counts of child sexual abuse, reports CNN. Under a plea deal, the 41-year-old will spend between three and eight years in prison. Prosecutors say Sandusky pressured a teenage girl under 16 to send him nude photos, the New York Times reports. After her father reported messages from Sandusky to police last year, investigators discovered that he had asked the girl's sister to perform oral sex on him in 2013, when she was 13. He pleaded guilty to charges including soliciting sex from a child younger than 16. Authorities say Sandusky, a former state prison guard who knew the girls through dating their mother, tried to persuade them that what he was doing was normal, saying "it's not weird because he studied medicine," but asking them not to show his messages to anybody. Sandusky, like his mother, Dottie, loyally supported his father through his trial for the sexual abuse of 10 boys, the Times notes. Sandusky will now be classed as a Tier III sex offender, Pennsylvania's highest level, meaning he will have to register with state police for life and verify his information four times a year. (In June, three Penn State officials went to prison for failing to report allegations against the elder Sandusky.)
– Bill Cosby was labeled a "violent sexual predator" by the judge who sentenced him to three to 10 years in prison on Tuesday, but his publicist had a different description: one of the "greatest civil rights leaders" in history and one of the "greatest educators of men and boys." Outside the courtroom in Norristown, Pa., publicist Andrew Wyatt claimed the 81-year-old Cosby had faced the "most racist and sexist trial" in American history, the New York Times reports. Wyatt claimed that three psychologists who testified against Cosby in the sexual assault trial were trying to "make money off of accusing black men of being sexual predators." He also read a statement from Camille Cosby, the disgraced entertainer's wife, alleging that an audio recording played in the trial had been doctored. Wyatt, who previously called Cosby's trial a "public lynching," accused Judge Steven O'Neill of being part of a "sex war" and linked the sentencing to the treatment of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Vox reports that the strangest moment came when Wyatt likened his client to Jesus. "They persecuted Jesus, and look what happened," he said. "Not saying Mr. Cosby is Jesus, but we know what this country has done to black men for centuries." Cosby, who left the Montgomery County Courthouse in handcuffs, spent his first night behind bars at SCI Phoenix, a state prison that opened two months ago in suburban Philadelphia, reports WPVI. (Cosby's mug shot was released Tuesday afternoon.)
– Those who like chicken might have noticed a seemingly weird quirk in the grocery store: It's generally cheaper to buy a fully cooked rotisserie chicken than to buy a raw chicken and prepare it yourself at home, writes Megan McArdle at Bloomberg View. Cooking food yourself is typically cheaper, so why the exception here? McArdle cites a post at KCET that explains what's going on: Supermarkets use chickens that are about to hit their sell-by expiration date for those rotisseries. In fact, they do it not just with chicken but with many of the offerings in the prepared-food department. Underhanded? No, writes McArdle. It's actually kind of brilliant. Instead of taking a loss on the still-fine food, the stores cook it up and serve it hot. "This is the sort of thing that no one talks about when they talk about innovation—and yet, it’s a major way in which our economy has become more efficient over the last few decades," she writes. The practice benefits both the store and the consumer, and it reduces spoilage to boot. Click for her full post.
– US intelligence has determined that ISIS likely has the ability to produce fake Syrian passports, reports ABC News. The network cites a 17-page Homeland Security Investigations Intelligence Report that states ISIS probably has at its disposal both a passport-printing machine and blank passport books; there's some additional fear that ISIS isn't being blocked from government buildings that house Syrian identification records that could be put to nefarious use, reports CNN. Reuters spoke with a rep for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement who confirmed the report's existence. This alleged ability is apparently not a new one, per the report, as ISIS seized Deir ez-Zour, which is home to a passport office, last summer. "Since more than 17 months [have] passed since Raqqa and Deir ez-Zour fell to ISIS, it is possible that individuals from Syria with passports ‘issued’ in these ISIS controlled cities or who had passport blanks, may have traveled to the US," per the report. The information was labeled as coming from a source who was assigned a "moderate confidence" rating, the second-highest level available. That source added that "fake Syrian passports are so prevalent in Syria that Syrians do not even view possessing them as illegal"; they reportedly cost as little as $200. (Stolen passports are turning up, too.)
– Burglars who knew their wine made off with nearly 80 bottles from a high-end California restaurant. How high-end? Figure at least $300,000 worth of vino, reports the Los Angeles Times. The break-in occurred Christmas Day at the Michelin-starred French Laundry in the Napa region, and some of the bottles taken—specifically those from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti—are worth around $15,000. Chef and proprietor Thomas Keller asked the wine community via Twitter to keep an eye out for the stolen bottles. The restaurant had closed the previous night ahead of a renovation that's expected to take about six months, and thieves simply jimmied open the door to the wine room to collect their loot. You can see the full list of the 76 bottles stolen at the San Francisco Chronicle's Inside Scoop blog.
– Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, lately the very high-profile suspect in a 1972 murder, will go free without charge, Northern Ireland police officials tell the BBC. Adams has been questioned since Wednesday in County Antrim over allegations that he, as an IRA commander ordered the murder of a 37-year-old widow and mom of 10, Jean McConville. The AP confirms the report, saying that Adams will likely be freed today, but notes that police say they'll send an evidence file to their British counterparts.
– Compared to last month's CNBC debate, Tuesday night's GOP debate in Milwaukee was long on policy and short on "gotcha" questions and clashes between candidates and moderators, though analysts say the scorecard isn't that different from last time around, with front-runners Donald Trump and Ben Carson both failing to shine. A look around at the chatter: Winners. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were widely seen as the night's standouts, with Politico describing them as "the two strongest candidates" after "showcasing their mastery of the facts and ease under the bright lights." Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post deems Cruz, after his attacks on DC's "crony culture, to now be the "outsider" candidate most likely to succeed. Honorable mentions. Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul both had praiseworthy moments, with Fiorina once again demonstrating a strong command of the issues and impressive debating skills. Paul managed to get his message on fiscal policy across, and, "at this stage of his candidacy, that amounts to a win," per the Post. Carson's performance was seen as middling, with policy answers lacking in substance, though he did ably deflect a question about the recent controversies over his life story. Jeb Bush. He needed a good night after a dismal performance last month, and opinions are split on whether he delivered. It "was Bush's best performance in any of the debates so far," according to the Hill—but "unfortunately for him, that's a rather low bar." He was more assertive than in previous debates, though it's "uncertain" whether that will be enough to give his campaign much of a boost, notes a New York Times assessment. Still, it adds that "he no longer seemed as desperate to be somewhere else," while a Politico analysis has a "Bush stops the bleeding" headline and theme. Losers. John Kasich was more of a presence in this debate, but it was not a presence many people liked, with the National Review calling him "angry, condescending, and unprincipled" and likening him to "the drunk, obnoxious uncle everyone wishes hadn't accepted the invitation to Thanksgiving dinner." Trump's performance was seen as his weakest yet, and Politico says he "committed perhaps the biggest gaffe of the night" by suggesting wages in America are too high. Fox Business Network. Unlike CNBC's widely criticized debate, Fox's debate was seen as "fair and balanced," with candidates receiving a roughly equal amount of speaking time, ranging from 13 minutes 35 seconds for Cruz to 9 minutes 22 seconds for Carson, according to Politico. "And that @CNBC is how you run a debate," tweeted RNC chairman Reince Priebus. Click for some of the biggest moments and best lines from the debate.
– Shia LaBeouf was set to make his Broadway debut in Orphans, but the actor has walked away from the production less than a month before previews were set to begin. The initial news release cited only "creative differences" for LaBeouf's departure, the Los Angeles Times reported. But LaBeouf quickly took to Twitter last night, posting details involving a disagreement with Alec Baldwin, who also stars in the play. In an email to Baldwin that LaBeouf posted, LaBeouf mentions "bickering" and "a disagreeable situation," but a source tells the New York Post that the actor is just using his incompatibility with Baldwin as an excuse. The truth is LaBeouf "was fired because he wasn’t good in the role," the source says. As of now, the play is still set to open April 7. In happier theater news, Tom Hanks makes his Broadway debut in Lucky Guy, a play written by Nora Ephron, next week, the New York Times reports.
– Afghanistan today told foreign powers to take a back seat in talks with the Taliban and let Kabul lead the way, Reuters reports. Afghanistan's High Peace Council put its foot down after the US, Qatar, and Germany secretly set up an office for the Taliban in Qatar to continue negotiations. “Afghans must be in the lead in the talks,” an Afghan rep tells the AP. Afghanistan also wants the Taliban to sever ties with al-Qaeda and enact human rights reforms before talks continue. The council will consent to the Qatar office, however, and approves the US giving up Guantanamo Bay prisoners for Taliban concessions. "In fact we have been demanding this for a while," an Afghan official says. "These are Afghan prisoners." The council also wants Pakistan's support because members of the Taliban reside there. The tensions between Washington and President Hamid Karzai highlight the difficulty of reaching a settlement with the Taliban before the West is scheduled to pull out most of its troops in 2014.
– Sometimes Goliath beats David—or Vernon, as the case may be. Seventy-six-year-old farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman has lost his Supreme Court battle with Monsanto over his use of patented soybean seeds, the New York Times reports. The court upheld an $84,000 lawsuit brought against Bowman by the agribusiness giant for growing and saving its seeds without paying a fee. Bowman had obtained the seeds from a grain elevator intended for animal feed, and argued that a doctrine called "patent exhaustion" allowed him to do as he pleased with the grain once he had purchased it. This may be true if he wanted to eat the seeds, but Justice Elena Kagan ruled that it does not extend to growing more seeds and replanting them without paying Monsanto for their use. But this case was about more than a few soybeans. Other industries with self-replicating products—from biotechnology to software—were paying close attention to see if their patents would remain safe, USA Today reports. But Kagan warned the outcome of this one case did not necessarily assure their futures. "Our holding today is limited," she wrote. "We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article's self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose."
– You can learn a lot when you’re listening to 550 million people. Using linguistic software, Facebook analysts investigated what people were saying in status updates, and came up with a number of interesting trends, Business Insider reports: The oldsters chatter quite a bit: Status update length was the best way to predict age. Older people also tend to talk more about religion and family. The young, meanwhile, leave out articles and prepositions, tend to curse more, and use the word “I” frequently. Those who use “you” a lot tend to have more friends. People have positive outlooks in the morning, the time of more upbeat statuses. After 10pm, there’s a negativity surge. Negative status updates garner more comments than positive ones. Friends use similar vocabularies, especially when discussing family and religion or using swear words.
– As the Sochi Olympics kick off, Google has taken a swipe at Russia's record on gay rights with its latest doodle. The doodle features images of winter athletes on the rainbow colors of the gay pride flag, along with a pointed quote from the Olympic Charter, Business Insider reports. "The practice of sport is a human right," the quote reads. "Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity, and fair play." The doodle appears on Google homepages in every country, including Russia, Mashable notes.
– There was no heartbreaking visit from police. Instead, Nicole Bahret learned of the death of her son when she unknowingly came upon the scene of the crash in which he'd died. While driving home from running errands in Forsyth County, Ga., Bahret immediately recognized one of three vehicles at the scene. "That's how I found out," she tells WSB. "I knew when I saw his car." Bahret's son, 18-year-old MacKean Robertson, had died when a 17-year-old driver failed to yield at an intersection and collided with Robertson's 2005 Honda Accord, sending it into the path of another car on July 14, according to police. He was the sole fatality, though others were taken to hospitals with non-life threatening injuries, reports the Forsyth County News. "You never think it's going to be you and everything changes," says Bahret, who'd spoken to her son just an hour before the crash. "In time you deal with it better but the pain doesn't go away." Still, she takes solace in the fact that Robertson was happy. "The day he died was probably one of the happiest days of his life because everything was going his way," she says. The recent high school graduate "had just started a job that he was very excited about," adds his aunt. "He had his whole life ahead of him." Natalie D'Allen, 17, surrendered to police on July 23 and has since been charged with vehicular homicide, per WSB and Fox News. Meanwhile, a YouCaring page has raised $15,000 to pay for Robertson's funeral expenses. (Cops say this teen driver livestreamed the crash that killed her sister.)
– There is now one less giant panda in the world. China Central Television reports that police have arrested 10 people suspected in the killing and dismemberment of a protected wild panda, including two brothers said to have been the ones who actually killed the animal. Acting on a tip, police in Yunnan province raided a home and found panda meat, bones, and fur. They say the brothers sold about 77 pounds of meat and all four of the animal's paws to one merchant for $800, who then sold the parts to other buyers, reports AP. The brothers told police they were hunting for a wild animal that had killed one of their goats, NBC News reports. After spotting what they claim they thought was merely "a large animal" in a tree, the brothers shot and injured the bear. Police say they then fatally shot the wounded female, despite knowing it was a panda. If convicted, the suspects—both the hunters and the merchants—could face years in prison. Only about 1,800 giant pandas exist in the wild, making the black market for them lucrative.
– You are what you reek? It turns out that we can tell a lot about someone's personality just by their smell, according to the New York Daily News. Sixty people in Poland wore the same T-shirt for three nights, and did not use soap, smoke, drink, or "eat odorous foods" during the study. Those shirts were then sniffed by 200 lucky volunteers, who were asked to judge the smells based on five personality traits, such as extroversion, neuroticism, and dominance. The results weren't perfect, but the smellers' predictions about extroversion and neuroticism were about as accurate as those of raters who made their judgments after watching a video. MyHealthNewsDaily notes that the smell-testers did especially well in detecting dominance in members of the opposite sex.
– First, Taylor Swift blacked out her entire online presence. Then, on Monday, she returned to social media—but all she shared was a mysterious video of a snake. The internet is going nuts trying to figure out what she's up to: CNN speculates the snake video could be some sort of reference to the "Taylor Swift is a snake" meme beloved by her haters. Of course, the most obvious possibility is that Swift is building up hype for a new music release, and one of her collaborators, Joseph Kahn, seemed to confirm that possibility by retweeting her snake video along with a smiley face, Just Jared reports. Kahn has directed music videos for Swift including "Bad Blood" and "Wildest Dreams." Us points out that Swift's social media blackout took place exactly three years after she announced her most recent album, 1989. The gossip magazine previously reported she's been working on an album to be released in the fall. Music lyrics site Genius posted lyrics for a new song supposedly from Swift called "Timeless," but the page has since been taken down. Still, that hasn't stopped multiple outlets including Marie Claire from reporting that must be the name of her upcoming single and/or album. (And this might be the website for it.) The Ringer overanalyzes the snake snippet and offers up ideas for what it could be teasing, including an upcoming "peace summit" with (former?) rival Katy Perry. A number of outlets including USA Today are rounding up fan reactions to the snake video.
– LA residents are planning to flee or hunker down this weekend as a 10-mile stretch of the 405, one of the nation's busiest freeways, shuts down for 53 hours. For non-Angelenos: This is a big deal, hence the nicknames "Carmageddon" and "Carpocalypse." Some of the most amusing developments: Some businesses are offering discounts to woo customers tempted to stay home, the Wall Street Journal reports. A pet photog who makes house calls will give you 20% off with her "4-0-fido" deal. A tattoo shop on a sure-to-be-clogged thoroughfare is offering 15% off. One restaurant will serve a $40.05 four-course meal; a bar is offering $5 Irish Car Bombs and Cadillac Margaritas. JetBlue ran a "Fly Over the 405" special—$4 one-way tickets between Burbank and Long Beach, a 40-mile, 20-minute trip. That sold out in less than four hours, the Los Angeles Times notes, but you can still snag a $150 luxury helicopter ride over the traffic snarl, the WSJ adds. Best tweet? @latimestot quotes Jay Leno: "2 days til Carmageddon closes the 405 freeway & u wont be able to go anywhere. As opposed to when the 405 is open & u cant go anywhere." In truth, the Los Angeles Times notes, the 405 has been under construction for centuries, and it traces its evolution dating back to a Spanish explorer who rode through in 1769. Is there mayhem in the works? The LA Weekly seems to think so. One "after-hours bicycle mob" may be planning a "4PACOLYPSE" ride on the empty freeway, while officials are also worried about skateboarders. And one group says it's filming a "top secret" flash mob publicity stunt. That's not all: Watch two of the best viral videos, in the gallery.
– Days after being removed from Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street is launching its biggest day of protests yet, and the arrests are already piling up: Daily Intel reports that about 60 people have been arrested after clashing with police in their attempt to reach the New York Stock Exchange. Thousands marched toward the NYSE shortly after 7:30am in an attempt to block it on the movement’s two-month anniversary. Protesters chanted "Get your corporate ID out. This is a police state" and "God Bless America" at Wall Street workers as they passed through police checkpoints, notes DNAInfo. Though some workers had difficulty getting in, the stock exchange opened at 9:30am per usual; protesters rang a "people's bell" outside. Later in the day, protesters plan to head to subway stations to “listen to a singular story from one of our hardest-hit and most inspirational neighbors,” fliers for the event say. Next, it’s a march to Manhattan’s Foley Square, where a protest is backed by major unions; then on to local bridges to “demand that we get back to work rebuilding our country's infrastructure.” Officials say they expect “tens of thousands” of protesters. Police plan to bring “hats and bats”—riot gear—to the events, one tells the Wall Street Journal. Still, “we'll continue to accommodate peaceful protest,” says a rep for the NYPD.
– A camping trip turned quite unpleasant for a man on Catalina Island, off the coast of Southern California, when he was gored by a bison Saturday evening. The animal was grazing near a log upon which the man was sitting at Little Harbor Campground, authorities tell the Orange County Register. As the man saw the bison coming closer, he tried to leave the area, but the animal charged him and gored his left arm, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sergeant. The man was treated at the scene, then airlifted to a medical center on the mainland; he was said to be in stable condition, CBS Los Angeles reports. Bison roam the back side of the island, but the sergeant says attacks are "very rare." (The island's bison have been put on birth control in the past.)
– Twenty years later, the man found guilty of murdering Michael Jordan's father may get a fresh trial. Attorneys for the convicted gunman, Daniel Green, say the original trial was rife with problems that only now are coming to light, the Charlotte Observer reports. To recap, Green and Larry Demery were teenagers when they were tried for murdering 56-year-old James Jordan—whose son was an all-time great NBA player—during a 1993 carjacking in South Carolina. In the high-profile trial, Demery became a witness for the state and accused Green of pulling the trigger. With physical evidence apparently supporting Demery, both were found guilty and eligible for parole in 20 years, but Green got an added 10 years for conspiracy. Now Demery is up for parole consideration, and Green's attorneys are claiming that: The trial's jury forewoman broke the rules by conducting her own investigation of the murder. Other jurors may have violated orders by reading or seeing accounts of the case. A state forensics expert admits that her testimony about blood in the car (which supported Demery's version of events) was shaky, and she destroyed the only existing blood sample from James Jordan on a supervisor's orders. The editor of a local Native American newspaper said that during a jail interview, Demery admitted to pulling the trigger. The first person the killers called from James' car phone was a cocaine dealer who happened to be Robeson County Sheriff Hubert Stone's out-of-wedlock son, but the jury wasn't allowed to hear about the sheriff's connection. Details about that could undermine "the entire Jordan investigation," the attorneys say. A judge is likely to rule on the attorneys' request sometime after the end of April, says Bleacher Report.
– One of the most renowned hairstylists in Los Angeles was murdered on Monday by intruders who made their getaway in his Porsche, police say. Fabio Sementilli was stabbed several times and was found on his home's patio by his wife and daughter, CBS Los Angeles reports. Paramedics were called but the 49-year-old was bleeding profusely and died at the scene. Police say the Canadian-born hairstylist's 2008 Porsche 911 Carrera was missing from the scene and they believe it was stolen by two men who broke into the upscale Woodland Hills home and attacked Sementilli. Police aren't sure whether the murder was random or a targeted attack, the AP reports. Sementilli gained international recognition during his 30 years as a hairstylist and also served as an exec at companies including Wella, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. He was "recognized as an exceptional stylist, educator, and visionary," Wella said in a statement that describes him as "an icon in the hairdressing industry." A post at Modern Salon says he was a VP of education for cosmetics company Coty, adding that he "mentored tens of thousands of hairdressers with a hands-on approach either on a one-to-one basis or on a grander scale." (This man was murdered just two months after President Obama commuted his sentence.)
– Lincoln Chafee is saying what everybody was thinking: He's out of the race for president. The former Rhode Island governor made it official Friday morning in an address to the Women's Leadership Forum. "As you know I have been campaigning on a platform of 'Prosperity Through Peace,'" he said, per CNN. "But after much thought I have decided to end my campaign for president today. I would like to take this opportunity one last time to advocate for a chance [to] be given to peace." Two big reasons he dropped out: He was somewhere between 0% and 1% in the polls, and he'd raised only $30,000, reports the New York Times. Unlike Jim Webb, Chafee isn't interested in an independent bid, and his departure leaves Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley in the Democratic contest. (Clinton seems only to have strengthened her campaign after Thursday's marathon grilling over Benghazi.)
– There's a whiff of desperation in the air over tonight's vice presidential debate—and a hint of controversy, too. The desperation, of course, comes from the blue team, which is desperate to halt the momentum Mitt Romney gained in the first debate, and expects Joe Biden to be especially aggressive in attacking Paul Ryan. The controversy? A conservative site has dug up evidence that President Obama may have attended moderator Martha Raddatz's wedding. Here's what you need to know: The Daily Caller has found that Obama had attended the first of Raddatz's three weddings, back in 1991—he was a Harvard Law classmate of groom Julius Genachowski, who he later named to head the FCC. But the LA Times is not impressed, writing snarkily that "most of us in the political press have become far too complacent to backtrack even one wedding into the past of the debate moderators." Everyone is expecting Biden to come out swinging. One Biden staffer tells Politico that the VP is "eager to draw the contrast—and very capable of doing so." Ryan himself told a radio station yesterday that he expects Biden to come at him like a "cannonball," according to USA Today. Expect Biden to go on the attack when it comes to Ryan's Medicare plan in particular. CNN also wonders if Biden will bring up Social Security. Ryan has advocated moving the funds into private investment accounts, an idea Democrats usually attack profitably—but Obama appeared to take it off the table in the first debate, saying he suspected he and Romney had "a somewhat similar position." Ryan's team also expects Biden to bring up Romney's 47% gaffe, and they tell the Wall Street Journal that they've specifically been prepping a response to it. On Ryan's end, everyone's wondering just how wonkish he'll be. CNN worries he'll get "bogged down in arithmetic," but Politico suspects it could be his "greatest asset, a rope-a-dope tactic that will take voters into the policy weeds." Of course, all this sound and fury might not signify much. "By tradition, the vice presidential debates have been like the vice presidency itself: well-publicized but largely inconsequential," quips the Washington Post, noting that Gallup studies found they'd never had a significant impact on the race.
– It was snowing on Feb. 24, 1944, when Jewish children in the French town of Gemeaux were rounded up at their school. Two sisters, Denise and Micheline Lévy, aged 10 and 9, clutched dolls—one pink, one blue—as they were led away to Auschwitz. A gendarme grabbed the dolls and flung them to the ground, Le Parisien reports, via the Telegraph. A shopkeeper picked them up and gave them to the grandmother of Frédérique Gilles, a 38-year-old schoolteacher, who has now donated them to the Shoah Memorial, the Holocaust museum in Paris. The dolls were among 200 items put on display Sunday, out of 19,000 objects collected by volunteers. In many cases like the Lévy sisters, they are all that remain of the deported. For two generations, Gilles' family minded the dolls. "But nobody ever played with them," she told the paper. "We knew their history." They tried to find out what happened to the Lévy sisters, but turned up no clues. Gilles said it seemed wrong to keep the dolls. "We wanted to give them to a museum, or a place of memorial." It was difficult to let them go, she added, "but it was the best thing we could do for the memory of those little girls." Over the past two years, volunteers for the Shoah Memorial criss-crossed France collecting a trove of objects belonging to those deported, including photos, a jersey emblazoned with a Star of David, a violin case, and fading slips of paper noting the Jews in hiding stacked in a little red box, reports Telerama. "Some preferred that we borrow the objects … so they could pass them on to their children," Shoah curator Lior Lalieu-Smadja told Telerama. "We understand their choice but, unfortunately, we know that quite often this evidence will be lost."
– The Nebraska Cornhuskers lost punter Sam Foltz in a car accident in July, and the football team paid him tribute in its first game of the season on Saturday: After their first drive ended with a fourth and four, the team lined up solemnly in punt formation with just 10 men and stood without a punter for a minute as the crowd cheered, reports Sports Illustrated. The Cornhuskers took a delay of game penalty for their tribute, notes Deadspin. Foltz was the Big Ten Punter of the Year last season.
– Global Road Entertainment has announced that it is re-editing the film Show Dogs to delete two scenes that parents and others said portrayed sexual abuse followed by inappropriate handling of the abuse, reports USA Today. In both scenes, a Rottweiler named Max has his testicles inspected by dog show judges, which is standard at a dog show. The parents’ main issue was with the way Max was told by another dog to handle the uncomfortable inspection by going to his “Zen place.” As one parent in Arizona wrote on the family-friendly website Macaroni Kid: “The day of the finals comes and if Max doesn’t let his private parts be touched, he may lose the competition,” Terina Maldonado wrote. “It all rests on his ability to let someone touch his private parts,” and pretend it wasn't happening. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation agreed with the parents and said in a statement that Show Dogs includes scenes that normalize "unwanted genital touching to its child audience," reports CNN, and sends a troubling message “that grooms children for sexual abuse.” Global Road Entertainment apologized for the deleted scenes in a statement to Deadline: “The company takes these matters very seriously and remains committed to providing quality entertainment for the intended audiences based on the film’s rating.” The revised version of the film will be released this weekend. In the PG-rated film, Ludacris (who voices Max) and Will Arnett, as Max’s human partner, are undercover officers who must infiltrate a dog show in order to crack the case of a kidnapped panda.
– American Sniper didn't just set a box-office record this weekend. It also triggered debate among Hollywood honchos apparently offended by the flick—who then said they really weren't, USA Today reports. Seth Rogen, for one, tweeted yesterday that the film "kind of reminds me of the movie that's showing in the third act of Inglorious Basterds," a reference to Nazi propaganda of a German sniper shooting Allied soldiers. But Rogen today tweeted, "I just said something 'kinda reminded' me of something else. I actually liked American Sniper." Enter Michael Moore, who posted: "My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes. And invaders r worse" That inspired tweets from Newt Gingrich ("Michael Moore should spend a few weeks with ISIS and Boko Haram") and Rob Lowe ("He's kidding, right?"). So Moore wrote a Facebook post in which he blamed Deadline Hollywood and the Hollywood Reporter for making it seem like "I don't like" the film. He goes on to laud Bradley Cooper, the costumes, hair, makeup, and editing, but adds: "Oh... and too bad Clint [Eastwood] gets Vietnam and Iraq confused in his storytelling. And that he has his characters calling Iraqis 'savages' throughout the film." Fox News reports on an "odd source" of American Sniper support—Jane Fonda—who tweets: "Powerful. Another view of 'Coming Home.' Bradley Cooper sensational. Bravo Clint Eastwood." (See how many calories Cooper ate per day to play the part of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.)
– After Russell Armstrong's suicide, one question is apparently on everyone's mind: Is Real Housewives to blame? The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and two separate Daily Beast stories all delve into that question, noting that Armstrong's marriage troubles were splashed all over television during the first season of the franchise's Beverly Hills version. Sources say the show pressured the Armstrongs to live beyond their means—they were actually millions in debt and being sued by investors—and also pressured them to ramp up the drama in their relationship. Radar reports that Armstrong told a friend, days before his death, that reality TV had ruined his "entire life." But Armstrong's ex-wife blames estranged wife Taylor, from whom Armstrong was getting divorced. "She's bad news and she drove him into this," the ex tells Radar. "I don't think it was the show. I think she drove him into financial stress and it just ruined him." Radar offers up another possible reason: A tell-all was about to be published, and would reveal that he was bisexual and may have had affairs with men. As for the second season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, no word yet on whether its Sept. 5 premiere date will be pushed back.
– Here's something else not to like about lice, mosquitoes, and fleas. An insecticide used to kill them—pyrethroids—might be linked to behavior issues in children as young as 6, a French study suggests. The researchers, noting the effects the chemical had on the nervous systems of insects, wondered how it affected humans, notably children. They tested the urine of about 300 pregnant women and, six years later, their children, according to the study published in Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Children with the highest levels of pyrethroids in their urine were three times more likely to have behavioral problems than kids with lower levels. The problems might be external (kids being defiant or disruptive) or internal (a reluctance to ask for help) depending on the specific type of pyrethroid they were exposed to, the study said. "The pesticide class studied are considered 'safe' pesticides and this study is cause for concern as to how safe it really is," says a child psychatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City who reviewed the findings, per HealthDay News. But he cautions that the study finds only a correlation, not cause and effect. Along those lines, a doctor at Johns Hopkins characterizes the study as preliminary and says it should be followed up by further research, reports Yahoo. Still, a pediatric behaviorialist not involved with the research recommended that pregnant women use "common sense" when using insecticides and look for products that don't contain pyrethroids. (In an awful story out of Massachusetts, police say a homemade lice remedy proved fatal for a girl.)
– Superbugs such as MRSA are already bad enough. But it turns out that something can make them even nastier: cigarette smoke. Researchers found that antibiotic-resistant bacteria exposed to the smoke became more aggressive and far more difficult to kill, they explain at Eureka Alert. It's almost as if the smoke sets off an alarm that causes the bacteria to strengthen its defenses, explains the Union-Tribune of San Diego. Scientists made the discovery by exposing immune cells to two different batches of MRSA, one normal and one treated with cigarette smoke extract. The bigger the dose of smoke, the bigger the effect, notes Medical Daily. "We already know that smoking cigarettes harms human respiratory and immune cells, and now we've shown that, on the flipside, smoke can also stress out invasive bacteria and make them more aggressive," says lead author Laura Crotty Alexander of UC San Diego. It's a double-whammy: Smokers already have weakened immune systems that make them more susceptible to infectious diseases, and the smoke they inhale seems to make invading pathogens even more dangerous. In this study, the smoke helped MRSA survive longer and kill more mice with pneumonia. (The latest antibiotic-resistant bug to make headlines is a nasty stomach virus.)
– A newborn baby boy is lucky to be alive this morning after being found yesterday near death in a garbage can in Greenville, SC. He was put there, police say, by his mother, who has since been charged with attempted murder and child abandonment. NBC News reports he was found in a can in the backyard of the home occupied by Sharon Lenise Ferguson, 28, and her family. The home is a rental, and the owner happened to be there doing maintenance work—and spotted a trail of blood. He looked inside the can around 4:30pm and saw the infant among bloody towels. Ferguson told police she had placed the child in a plastic grocery bag and wrapped him in a pink blanket after giving birth "on or about April 21," reports WYFF. He was listed in stable condition last night; Ferguson spent the night in Greenville County jail. Her bond has been set at $125,000. FOX Carolina points out that the state's safe haven law protects parents who leave a child up to 30 days old at a hospital, police or fire station, or place of worship.
– A spokesperson for Sen. David Perdue insists the Georgia lawmaker wasn't praying for President Obama's death during a Faith and Freedom Coalition event on Friday, ABC News reports. While speaking at the event, Perdue said we need to pray for all leaders, even Obama. He continued: “But I think we need to be very specific about how we pray. We should pray like Psalms 109:8 says. It says, 'Let his days be few, let another have his office.’” The Huffington Post notes the line got a laugh from the audience at the conference. It didn't go over so well elsewhere. The next part of Psalm 109 reads: “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.” In its Biblical context, the psalm is a "death wish," according to the Huffington Post. And a Harvard Divinity School professor tells ABC it's “one of the best examples of…calling upon God to punish or curse one’s enemy.” It's even used later in the Bible in reference to "the ruin of Judas," the Atlantic reports. It's also been used by conservatives against Obama since 2009. A Florida sheriff was suspended in 2010 when he labeled the psalm "The Obama Prayer." Amidst accusations that he was wishing a sitting president dead, a spokesperson clarifies that Perdue "in no way wishes harm towards our president.” She says the media is twisting Perdue's words.
– Despite the many, many, many times he has said he's not running, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spent the weekend considering whether he should. He discussed the logistics of a late entrance to the race with his aides as well as his family, sources tell the Wall Street Journal, and he is expected to make an announcement within days. Filing deadlines for New Hampshire, Florida, and South Carolina all loom less than a month away, and Christie would have just three months to launch his campaign, since Florida's primary is now set for Jan. 31 and other primaries could also be pushed to early January—or even late this year. Because of the tight timeline, sources say Christie's aides have become more daunted in recent days. "The afterglow of Nancy Reagan's flattery" at an event last week "has been replaced with the reality of building a state-by-state organization and the abdication of his day job to do this," says one operative. And unlike Bill Clinton, who launched his campaign at a similarly late date but who had already put out feelers and formed an exploratory committee, Christie has apparently not reached out to Republican leaders in the key early states. Says one prominent New Hampshire GOP strategist, "All that I can deduce is he's not running."
– Before they were suspects in the deadliest attack on French soil since WWII, brothers Brahim and Salah Abdeslam owned a bar called Les Beguines in Brussels, the Wall Street Journal reports. "I used to go there every day after work," a neighbor tells the Telegraph. "We would go there to smoke hashish, drink alcohol, no problem." A friend tells Reuters he would see the brothers at Les Beguines everyday. They would play cards and talk sports, he says. But Brahim and Salah sold the bar Sept. 30 for what locals say was "a lot of money," the Telegraph reports. Six weeks later, Brahim blew himself up outside a Paris cafe and Salah is on the run from a continent-wide manhunt. Authorities shut down Les Beguines, located in a heavily Muslim area of Brussels, on Nov. 5 after a police raid in August found patrons selling drugs and smoking marijuana, Reuters reports. And a neighbor tells the Journal the bar was "a rough hangout with regular fights and frequent visits by police." Brahim and Salah were reportedly known to police for drug violations despite the use of drugs—in addition to alcohol and tobacco—being banned in Islam. "The history of the two fits a pattern in which many Islamist terrorists in Europe have been radicalized from the ranks of petty criminals and drug users," the Journal states. And Reuters notes attacks are often carried out by people who were seemingly fully assimilated into the culture of Europe.
– More bad news for President Obama on ObamaCare today: The House passed legislation widely seen as undermining the health-care law, and 39 Democrats joined Republicans in favor, reports the Washington Post. The bill from Michigan Republican Fed Upton would guarantee that people whose policies got canceled under ObamaCare would be able to keep them. President Obama addressed the problem yesterday with an administrative fix, but Upton's bill goes further. While the president's fix says the plans can remain available for only another year, Upton's measure seeks to keep them around permanently, reports the Hill. (The White House has promised a veto if the bill gets through the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain.) Some dueling quotes, as noted by the New York Times: Upton: "Cancellation notices are now arriving in millions of mailboxes across the country. It’s cancellation today, sticker shock tomorrow.” Democrat Mike Doyle: “Don’t pretend you care about the American people’s health care here. You just want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Democrats are not going to let you do that.” Most of the Democrats who voted with Republicans face tough re-election fights in which ObamaCare is expected to play a big role. Politico sees their votes as a "major show of disloyalty," though it says the number of defections surely would have been higher had Obama not acted yesterday.
– The App Center Facebook announced last month is open for business. The phased rollout will ultimately give all its US users access to 600 apps, like Pinterest and Draw Something, reports TechCrunch. Unlike Apple's App Store and Google Play, though, Facebook's App Center is more of a discovery hub, taking users to Apple or Google or elsewhere to download the apps. And, of course, Facebook's App Center puts the emphasis on sharing, recommending apps based on what your friends are using. Some early reaction: "In a sense, it’s a defining moment in the world of apps," writes Mike Isaac at All Things D. "Unlike the Google Play app repository or Apple's App Store, Facebook’s App Center relies in part on social discovery. And it’s in line with Facebook’s overall philosophy: Everything should be social." While noting the App Center should spur Facebook users to spend more time using the social network, "the focus on mobile apps is likely to attract criticism from those who see them as harmful to the future of the open web," notes Josh Halliday for the Guardian. "Conceptually, App Center seems like a winner to me," writes Jaymar Cabebe at CNet. "I found its recommendations helpful and the Friends' apps list very interesting, to say the least. On the other hand, the interface still has some kinks to work out, especially on mobile devices."
– Police arrested six students from a prestigious private all-boys Catholic school in Toronto on Monday and charged them with sexual assault related to a video that was posted on the Internet. Toronto Police Inspector Dominic Sinopoli said the teens, who are all 14 and 15, are from St. Michael's College and were charged with assault, gang sexual assault, and sexual assault with a weapon. The high school is known for its sports programs and has produced many National Hockey League players over the years. Sinopoli said the school failed to notify police immediately and police became aware of the sexual assault through the media. Police are investigating at least three other hazing incidents, including another alleged sexual assault, the AP reports. A 22-second video reviewed by the Toronto Star shows a boy being held down in a locker room and sexually assaulted with what appears to be a broomstick. The six students arrested appeared in court Monday and received bail. St. Michael's has expelled eight students and suspended another in connection with at least two other incidents that allegedly took place on campus and were captured on video. "The incidents of sexualized assault that happened to our students and on our school grounds are simply horrific," the school said in a statement. "These incidents are clearly indicative we have a problem. We need to do much better at our culture and our (students') ability to talk to us." The school's principal did not attend a police press conference because of a bomb threat at the school which caused students and faculty to be evacuated.
– Dallas won a laugher over Philadelphia, and the Jets took down Cincinnati on the road to advance in the playoffs. Tony Romo (2 TDs, 244 yards) and the Cowboys put up 27 points in the second quarter and cruised to a 34-14 win. Dallas Morning News coverage here. On the schedule Sunday: Ravens-Patriots and Packers-Cardinals. In the Jets game, QB Mark Sanchez (1 TD, 182 yards) showed no rookie jitters in leading New York to a 24-14 win. He got help from fellow rookie Shonn Greene, who ran for 135 yards, and from Bengals kicker Shayne Graham, who missed two critical second-half field goals. Daily News coverage here.
– Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder admits he lost the public's trust in failing to respond quickly to concerns about Flint's drinking water. "I'm sorry I let you down," he said during his State of the State address on Tuesday. "Your families face a crisis—a crisis you did not create and could not have prevented," he added, per ABC News. "I'm sorry, and I will fix it." Almost two years after corrosive drinking water from the Flint River was contaminated with lead in April 2014, Snyder says he's asking legislators for $28 million to replace water supply pipes in Flint's schools, daycares, and hospitals; treat children with high lead levels; conduct environmental assessments; and more, per CNN. However, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver says the costs to fix the water issues and address health concerns could reach $1.5 billion. "We will provide resources to help anyone and everyone [affected]," Snyder said, noting he takes "full responsibility" for fixing this "catastrophe." He also vowed to release all of his emails relating to Flint from 2014 and 2015. Though some residents claim the state ignored the water issues for months, "we took action … as soon as I became aware of elevated lead levels in blood" on Oct. 1, 2015, Snyder told Time last week, noting bottled water, water filters, and water testing kits were handed out. Snyder lays blame on the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, which told residents the water was safe to drink, though some homes showed toxic lead levels. The department admitted it didn't get the necessary chemicals to treat the corrosive water. Residents have now filed three lawsuits at the federal, state, and municipal levels.
– Indonesian authorities arrested a woman Saturday for allegedly lacing her friend's coffee with a lethal does of cyanide, Australia's News Network reports. Investigators say Jessica Kumala, 27, arrived early at a cafe in central Jakarta and ordered an iced coffee for friend Wayan Mirna Salihin, 27—who soon showed up to join Kumala and a friend. Mirna apparently took a sip, complained it tasted bad, fell over convulsing, and later died at a hospital. "Jessica’s statement is highly inconsistent with the facts we have gathered," says chief detective Krishna Murti. He added that police have assembled 20 witness statements and re-enacted the crime. "We can ignore the suspect's testimony in this case according to the Criminal Code," he tells the Jakarta Post. But Kumala reiterated her innocence this week after being grilled by police for the fifth time, the Jakarta Globe reports. "I do not know where the cyanide came from," she says. "I just want to help police and Mirna's family reveal who was behind all of this." Her uncle and lawyer, Yudi Wibowo, says his niece is innocent and doubts Mirna died from cyanide poisoning. He adds that Mirna tasted the coffee herself, something Kumala denies: "I suffer from a stomach disorder and the coffee is too strong, thus I did not taste it," she says. Wibowo also denied rumors that his niece was having an affair with Mirna's new husband. Mirna and Kumala had studied together in Australia, apparently at a college of design in Sydney.
– Insiders are beginning to open up about how they chose Jorge Bergoglio as the new pope. For one thing, he wasn't part of the Vatican's troubled Curia hierarchy, but it was believed he could help heal it, the New York Times reports. It also helped that he didn't stake out a high public profile and project himself as a candidate beforehand, which can backfire in the world of Vatican politics. "He is not part of the Italian system, but also at the same time, because of his culture and background, he was Italo-compatible," says the archbishop of Paris. "If there was a chance that someone could intervene with justice in this situation, he was the man who could do it best." Among the questions cardinals asked themselves: "'Is he a man of the faith who connects us to Christ?'" said Chicago's archbishop. "Next, 'Can he govern?'" Lastly, he won points for "the fact that he has a heart for the poor." Bergoglio's pre-vote speech to the private conclave helped his selection, the Los Angeles Times notes; he offered a succinct call for a streamlined church free of corruption. But his selection was by no means a foregone conclusion; indeed, Cardinal Angelo Scola, described as a favorite of reformers, received a mistaken email of congratulations from Italian bishops shortly after Bergoglio's selection. Bergoglio reportedly led after the first round of voting, with Scola and Canada's Marc Oullet behind him. He gradually built his lead in subsequent rounds until reaching the threshold of 77 votes.
– It was inevitable: A purported photo of Anthony Weiner's naughty bits (this time sans underwear) is now on the Internet, courtesy of radio hosts Opie and Anthony of Sirius, reports Mediaite. How it came to be: They had Andrew Breitbart on this morning, and he showed them the photo (yep, the one he said he wouldn't release) on his phone. As it made the rounds, a video camera captured an image, according to these tweets. If you must see, you can get an uncensored look here. "It will be interesting to see how much this picture affects the story," writes Mediaite's Jon Bershad. "The photo doesn’t add any new indiscretions. However, it’s quite possible that seeing an actual pornographic, fully nude image will be enough to put the final nail in the coffin."
– Sad news out of Nashua, NH, after police say they believe a body found floating in a river is that of a high school student who likely plunged 20 feet into an open sewer. Jacob Goulet, 16, was last seen Friday night after he left a friend's house during a torrential rainstorm, WMUR reports. His family reported him missing Saturday morning. A Massachusetts State Police helicopter spotted a body floating in the Merrimack River in neighboring Tyngsboro on Sunday morning. A positive ID is pending, but cops said they believe the body is Jacob's. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Jacob’s family, friends, classmates," Nashua Police wrote on Twitter. Cops were investigating why the sewer cover was open. They described a steep drop into a storm drain that links to a water treatment plant. During heavy rains an overflow system discharges water directly into the river. A frantic search began Saturday morning after a passerby spotted the open sewer and beside it a baseball cap and umbrella believed to be Jacob's. Surveillance video confirmed the teen was in the area, WMUR reports. Jacob's family searched storm drains across the city, hoping perhaps he was trapped inside one and would hear their shouts. "Maybe he might have fallen in and he’s just hanging on, and maybe he’s too cold to yell," his uncle, Darren Blouin, told WMUR. Devastated family and friends recalled Jacob, who recently turned 16, as a good kid who avoided trouble and liked video games. "Jacob is a sweet boy with a great heart,” family friend Lauren Comeau told the Boston Globe. "He is his father Billy’s whole world." (A freak hammock accident killed this teen.)
– Might John Kerry's offhand comment lead to a genuine resolution of the Syrian mess? Some of the opinions: It's a 'sham': That's the view of Michael Doran of the Brookings Institution as quoted in the Washington Post. "This is a dishonest ploy by Russia and Syria that boxes in the Unites States and, more importantly, makes any relief for Syria’s civil war far less likely," writes Max Fisher, summing up Doran's view. The worst part is that President Obama must now rely on Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. "He is their partner in this sham process," says Doran. Later, he asks: "When we rush to embrace rivals and enemies, what signal does that send, around the Middle East, about our resolve and reliability?" Worth pursuing: Be skeptical, yes, but the US "should pursue this potential solution," write the editors at the New York Times. Done right—which means requiring Assad to allow monitors in immediately—this "could mean that the United States would not have to go it alone in standing firm against the Syrian regime. And it could open up a broader channel to a political settlement between Mr. Assad and the rebels—the only practical way to end this war." Desperate times: "It is a long-shot proposal started perhaps by accident, promoted by parties who have regularly lied, and cautiously embraced by a US administration whose policies in Syria have been incoherent by any measure," writes David Rothkopf at CNN. "Regardless of whether it amounts to anything or not, it speaks volumes about how bad our options are." Hail Putin: It's Putin, not Obama, who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, writes KT McFarland at Fox News, who expects Obama to take full credit for the proposal when he speaks tonight. "It turns out that leading from behind left a big opening up front. Putin stepped right in. And Obama still hasn't figured it out."
– A Virginia community is imploring anyone with information about the disappearance of a young mom to come forward after she vanished while getting ready to go to work Tuesday. ABC7 reports that 23-year-old TerriLynn St. John never showed up to her job that day, and when her father was notified, he went to her home in Wake and found a disturbing sight: the front door open, St. John's 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son alone inside the house, and no sign of St. John, per Maj. Michael Sampson of the Middlesex County Sheriff's Office. "You could definitely tell there [had] been a struggle beside my daughter's car," Terry St. John tells WTVR. "Jewelry was all around, like it had been broken off, her cellphone was found in the bushes." Her car was still in the driveway. The younger St. John, last heard from around 7:30 that morning, was going to drop her kids off at day care before heading to work, Sampson says, per ABC7. Although he notes it's too soon to say if St. John was abducted, Sampson says at least four persons of interest have been questioned. "This is a missing person, under suspicious circumstances," he said Wednesday, per WTVR. St. John is described as 5-foot-6 and 130 pounds, with blond hair, blue eyes, and several tattoos, including "RJM" on her right wrist. She's believed to have last been wearing a blue Outer Banks hoodie. Wesley Moody, IDed by WRIC as the father of St. John's children, has his own theory on her disappearance. "There's no way it was just one person," he says. Meanwhile, her dad clings to hope. "Hold on, girl, we're going to find you," he says, per the Rappahannock Record. (Read about the mysterious disappearance of a CDC doctor.)
– Yet more high-profile terror attacks: Suicide bombers struck three cities in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, including in Medina near one of the holiest sites in Islam. In the latter incident, the explosion took place outside the mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried, reports AP. Several cars caught fire, and local media showed images of what appeared to be a fire outside one of the buildings overlooking the Prophet's Mosque. The number of casualties was unclear, though Reuters reports three bombers and two security forces officers were killed. The sprawling mosque is visited by millions of Muslims from around the world each year during pilgrimages to Mecca. The area would have been packed with pilgrims for prayer during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the kingdom on Tuesday. Also Monday evening, a suicide bomber and a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, several hours after another suicide bomber carried out an attack near the US Consulate in the western city of Jiddah. Neither of those two attacks killed anyone but the bombers. The possibility of coordinated, multiple attacks across different cities in Saudi Arabia on the same day underscores the threat the kingdom faces from extremists who view the Western-allied Saudi monarchy as heretics and enemies of Islam. Saudi Arabia is part of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The violence follows attacks in Iraq, Bangladesh, and Turkey.
– A nonprofit group is throwing in $10,000 to sweeten the deal for potential voters in Philadelphia for whom the joy of taking part in democracy might not be enough. Voter turnout in the city has been declining for a long time and sank to just 27% in a mayoral primary this May, according to the Philadelphia Citizen, which is offering the prize in its "2015 Philadelphia Municipal Election Voting Lottery." The group says it will randomly select one of Philadelphia's 1,686 voting divisions when the city votes in local elections on Nov. 3, and will hand a $10,000 check to the first voter who emerges at a selected time, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The Citizen says the funds will come from the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation civic group—and the giveaway is completely legal. On its website, the Citizen, which was co-founded by former Philadelphia Daily News editor Larry Platt, admits that the plan is "sorta icky"—and that a similar giveaway in a Los Angeles school district was condemned as a "superficial pseudo-solution" to civic malaise—but says "desperate times call for desperate measures," and the lottery isn't the only scheme underway to try to boost voter turnout. "It's kind of a cockamamie scheme," Platt tells the Daily News. "I want to give away money to see if we can get people to vote." (Low turnout isn't just a Philadelphia problem: The "abysmally low" turnout nationwide last year was the worst since World War II.)
– A 63-year-old postal carrier was found dead in her mail truck Friday amid a record-breaking heat wave in the Los Angeles area, CBS LA reports. Peggy Frank was found unresponsive in the Woodland Hills area, where temperatures had reached 117 degrees that afternoon, by a neighbor. Paramedics called to the scene could not revive her. Frank, who had worked for the US Postal Service for 28 years, was close to retirement. Friday was her first day back on the job after months off due to a broken ankle, KTLA reports. An autopsy has been completed, but her cause of death has been "deferred pending additional tests" and may not be determined for weeks, the coroner's office tells People. Frank's family believes the heat may have played a role in her death, and a colleague tells the Los Angeles Daily News that in such high temperatures, it can be as much as 15 degrees hotter inside the mail trucks, which do not have air conditioning. "They make us lock them and seal them for safety of the mail, but it’s horrible in there," she says. But a USPS rep, while expressing sympathy for Frank's family, says that mail is delivered in "all kinds of weather, including high temperatures" and that "the Postal Service strives to ensure that [carriers] have the tools and training to do so safely," including by reminding them to keep hydrated, have water and ice available for their entire route, stay in the shade when possible, and wear appropriate clothing.
– The man shot to death yesterday in Boston with a military-style knife originally planned to go after activist Pamela Geller, reports CNN. (She was the organizer of the Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas that drew an attack claimed by ISIS.) CNN quotes law enforcement sources who say that Usaama Rahim planned to behead Geller but got impatient and decided to go after local police because he saw them as an easier and quicker target. Authorities say that Rahim had been discussing his plans with a relative named David Wright, who has been arrested on charges of obstructing a federal investigation, reports AP. It's not clear how the men are related. "Yeah, I'm going to be on vacation right here in Massachusetts," Rahim says in a recorded conversation with Wright, according to a court affidavit. "I'm just going to, ah, go after them, those boys in blue. Cause, ah, it's the easiest target."
– In the second massive US vehicle recall in the space of a week, General Motors is recalling around 1 million pickups and SUVs because of a power-steering software defect that causes a crash risk. The recall affects the 2015 models of the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, GMC Sierra 1500, Chevy Suburban and Tahoe, GMC Yukon, and Cadillac Escalade, reports the Wall Street Journal. The company says the glitch, which can cause the vehicles to briefly lose electronic power steering, has been a factor in at least 30 accidents and two injuries, but no deaths that it is aware of. When the steering assist is lost and suddenly returns, "the driver may have difficulty steering the vehicle, especially at low speeds," according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration release. GM says dealers will update the power steering module software free of charge, reports Reuters. The Journal notes that software glitches, while generally easier to fix than mechanical ones, are rapidly rising as a source of recalls—increasing an average of 30% every year between 2013 and 2016, according to one study. (Ford recalled around 2 million pickups this week because of a seat belt problem.)
– The Obama administration’s last-ditch attempt to stop WikiLeaks from releasing its latest batch of documents didn’t work: More than a quarter-million American diplomatic cables will be made public beginning today, and the New York Times has already seen some of them. It offers a preview of what the cables reveal: A standoff between the US and Pakistan over nuclear fuel, dating back to 2007 when the US began attempting to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor since it could be used in a nuclear device. Discussions between America and South Korea over what would happen if North Korea implodes and the Koreas are unified. Suspicions of Afghan government corruption, based on the fact that Afghanistan’s VP was found with $52 million in cash on a visit to the United Arab Emirates last year, and was never required to disclose where he got it or what it was for. A coordinated campaign by the Chinese government and other experts to hack Google’s systems in that country. They have also broken into other systems including American government and business computers. A close relationship between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, including gifts exchanged and energy contracts. Berlusconi is once called “the mouthpiece of Putin” in Europe. Click here for the full article, which gives an extensive preview, or click here for more from the Telegraph, which discloses that the US once referred to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "Hitler."
– Greenland isn't just losing Manhattan-sized chunks of ice from its huge glaciers. A heat-dome that moved over Greenland on July 8 caused surface melt to soar from 40% to an unprecedented 97% in just four days, reports Live Science. Typically, just half of Greenland's surface ice melts during the summer. "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: Was this real or was it due to a data error?" said one researcher. There were even signs of ice melt at Summit Station in central Greenland, a point two miles high and near the thickest part of the ice sheet. "Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average," said one glaciologist. "With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time." However, she cautioned that such a wide-ranging melt was rare and a potential warning. "If we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome," she told the Guardian.
– News that's kind of, well, awesome: Research suggests that the feeling of awe offers a health boost, and it actually happens quite frequently. "Some people feel awe listening to music," University of California, Berkeley, researcher Dacher Keltner tells the New York Times, "others watching a sunset or attending a political rally or seeing kids play." When a moment has "passed the goosebumps test," his team finds, it has a physical effect that can be detected in your saliva. Based on two sets of surveys of and saliva samples from freshmen at the school, Keltner's team found an apparent link between low levels of the molecule interleukin-6—associated with inflammation, and thus unhealthiness—and positive feelings. In the study, published in January in the journal Emotion, researchers note that "awe was the strongest predictor of lower levels of proinflammatory cytokines." And students actually experienced it fairly frequently: at least three times weekly on average, the Times reports. Awe itself is the subject of increasing scientific interest, Slate notes; indeed a 2012 study found that after experiencing awe, participants felt "like they had more time available" and were in turn more patient and willing to help others. Writing for Slate, Keltner himself recommends that we "seek more daily awe," noting that researchers have linked it to a sense of community and even more kindness. And he drives home the idea that awe can be found in moments as simple as "after the perfect burrito." (Optimism, meanwhile, may have other benefits.)
– The pilot and co-pilot of a UPS cargo plane are dead after the plane crashed near the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport this morning, the mayor's office says. The Airbus A300 went down before dawn in calm weather as it approached the airport, report AP and CNN. The pilot and co-pilot were the only people aboard, says a UPS spokesperson. It went down in a field owned by the airport, reports WVTM, about a half-mile away from one of the runways. The plane had taken off from Louisville, Ky.
– You've probably heard the song—"I Fought the Law"—but maybe not the story of the singer who made it famous in 1966. Bobby Fuller had just struck it big with his cover of the song when his body was found in a parked car. The 23-year-old had died of asphyxiation, his body doused in gasoline and seemingly beaten, recounts the Los Angeles Times; he reportedly died due to inhaled gasoline. It was officially ruled a suicide, and now a new biography of Fuller co-written by his brother revisits the case, which the LAT calls "one of rock's strangest deaths." Randy Fuller, who played in Bobby's band, never believed the suicide story, and few others who knew him well did, either. The LAT says various theories, including one involving the mob, have surfaced over the ensuing decades without verification. ("Who would pour gas on himself in a hot car?" Randy Fuller said in 1998. “I just think he got in a bad situation that night, met the wrong dude and couldn't get out of it.") The book, I Fought The Law: The Life and Strange Death of Bobby Fuller apparently doesn't try to solve the mystery as much as resurrect it. Fuller died just a few months after recording his big hit, notes LA Magazine. (Click for more unsolved Hollywood mysteries.)
– An elderly man who's wanted kids his whole life just learned that he's had one—for 61 years. Tony Trapani and his wife tried for years to have their own children, and when he was cleaning out her filing cabinets after her recent death, he discovered a bombshell of a letter from another woman mailed in 1959: "I have a little boy. He is five years old now. What I'm trying to say Tony is he is your son," the woman wrote. Now Trapani, who's 81 and lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., has met his 61-year-old son, Samuel Childress, who grew up in Pennsylvania assuming his father didn't want to know him, reports the New York Daily News. "He's my full son that I've had my whole life, but why my wife hid that letter is beyond me," Trapani tells Fox 17. "I don't know. She wanted children. She couldn't have any. She tried and tried." Chimes in Childress, "Just to know him now is so important to me—it's going to fill that void." They do, however, plan to perform a paternity test to be sure that the big news is more than just a good story. (Speaking of long-lost relatives, this 18-year-old plans to marry her father, with whom she recently reunited.)
– The "tech surge" to fix HealthCare.gov includes some names from the industry's biggest players. Among them, per a Health department blog post, is Michael Dickerson, on leave from his job as a site reliability engineer at Google. He'll be "leveraging his experience stabilizing large, high throughput applications to improve HealthCare.gov's reliability and performance," says the post, as noted at the Verge. Software engineer Greg Gershman will also be a "key player." As a former Presidential Innovation Fellow, he focused on improving the user experience at government websites; he'll be "helping ... release improvements more rapidly." Also onboard are tech firms Oracle and Red Hat. "Most of us want to see our government operating efficiently and effectively, and it is incumbent upon us to help them do that," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told shareholders, per USA Today.
– Lady Gaga lays to rest rumors that she's mixed gender and replaces them with visions of masochistic lesbian love in her latest eye-popping music video. "I told you she didn't have a dick," one buff female prison guard tells another after stripping Lady G in a cell in the video (watch it here) for Telephone. "Too bad," remarks the other. Gaga then struts her stuff in a barely-there thong (or just evidence tape) with little space to hide anything along with a chorus of cons and later Beyoncé, who kills off a male lover with the help of an über-vamped-up Gaga. MTV dubbed the high-budget, 9-minute extravaganza a "hyperkinetic pop-culture joyride" with homages to films like Caged Heat and Kill Bill. In fact, Bill director Quentin Tarantino acted as a kind of consultant on the video. "There certainly is a Tarantino-inspired quality in the video," Gaga explains to E! Online. "I was telling him about my concept for the video and he loved it so much he said, 'You gotta use the Pussy Wagon'"—which is what Beyoncé uses to whisk Gaga out of prison.
– Legal troubles for accused sex attacker Dominique Strauss-Kahn may be just beginning. French police are questioning the writer in France who is suing Strauss-Kahn for attempted rape. The interview will help investigators determine if there's enough evidence to go ahead with a full-scale French criminal case against the former head of the IMF for the alleged attack on Tristane Banon, reports EuroNews. Stateside, a hearing for his sexual-assault case has been delayed two weeks, from July 18 to Aug. 1, reports the Wall Street Journal. In a letter filed yesterday, Strauss-Kahn's lawyers and the DA's office explained that they had agreed to the delay "to facilitate both parties' continued investigation in this matter."
– An Ohio man warning drivers about a looming DUI checkpoint would have avoided a ticket if not for the last two words on his sign, reports Raw Story. "Turn now!" Doug "Deo" Odolecki got the citation Friday night while standing on a street corner with his sign that began, "Check point ahead!" Police, who are obligated to make such checkpoints public in Ohio, were OK with the sign in general but told Odolecki to remove the advice to "turn now," reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer. When he refused, officers gave him the ticket on the grounds that he was obstructing police business. (Ohio is poised to let drivers flash their lights at one another to warn of police, and judges elsewhere in the country have blessed that move in the name of free speech.)
– Two Valentine's Day extremes, with a law-enforcement theme: The dedicated: An Arizona inmate scaled a 12-foot fence, crawled through razor wire, and climbed yet another wire-topped fence to escape from jail and visit his girl yesterday, reports the Arizona Republic. Joseph Dekenipp, 40, made it to the Gallopin' Goose saloon—10 miles from the Pinal County Adult Detention Center—and did indeed reunite with his girlfriend. Trouble is, police got there soon after she did and hauled Dekenipp back to jail, where he faces vehicle theft charges. The not-so-dedicated: The sheriff in Oconee County, Georgia, caused quite a buzz when he declared that Valentine's Day was canceled because of the region's weather, reports Fox News. Men "are exempt from having to run out and buy lottery scratchers and Hershey bars from the corner stores until February 18, 2014, due to ice, snow, freezing rain," wrote Scott Berry. The jokey post drew attention from around the world, as seen on the department's Facebook page.
– It's game over for Flappy Bird. At midnight, the Vietnamese creator of the hugely popular mobile game made good on his threat to pull the game from app stores, saying the attention from its instant success had become too much and he couldn't take it anymore, reports Mashable. Dong Nguyen, who had been making an estimated $50,000 per day from the game, says he plans to keep making games and the decision had nothing to do with legal issues, though friends say he received a warning letter from Nintendo over the game's similarity to Mario Bros, Reuters finds. "I can call 'Flappy Bird' is (sic) a success of mine," tweeted Dong. "But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it." His creation—described as an "almost sadistically difficult game with crude graphics and laughable sound effects" by Nick Wingfield at the New York Times—can still be played by people who have already downloaded it, which should keep Dong's income from ads on the free game rolling in. The developer says that despite all the hard-to-handle attention, he plans to keep making games and might even create a Flappy Bird sequel.
– The Ice Bucket Challenge is now claiming former heads of state as victims. But former President George W. Bush didn't really want to have a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. "I do not think it's presidential," he says in a video posted today on Facebook. He opts instead to write a check, but Laura Bush had other plans. She sneakily arrives on camera with a bucket in hand, and … well, you can guess what happens next. "That check is from me. I don't want to ruin my hairstyle," she quips. Bush was challenged to join the cause by several people, including daughter Jenna Bush Hager, CNN reports. Dubya passes on the challenge to Bill Clinton, saying "yesterday was Bill's birthday and my gift to Bill is a bucket of cold water." President Obama has apparently agreed that getting splashed with water isn't presidential—he's written a check to an ALS charity. The Ice Bucket Challenge has raised $22.9 million, reports NBC. Meanwhile, someone who might be looking to win the Oval Office in 2016 has already taken the plunge.
– A chartered plane with a Brazilian first division soccer team on board crashed in a mountainous area near Medellin while on its way to the finals of a regional tournament, killing 76 people, Colombian officials say. Five people survived, including three players, reports Reuters. Aviation authorities say the British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane, operated by a charter airline named LaMia, declared an emergency at 10pm because of an electrical failure, the AP reports. The aircraft, which had departed from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, was transporting the Chapecoense soccer team to Medellin's Jose Maria Cordova International Airport. The team started the journey in Sao Paulo. A Reuters photographer described the tail section as having been severed from the plane and totally destroyed. The team, from the small city of Chapeco, was in the middle of a fairy-tale season. It joined Brazil's first division in 2014 for the first time since the 1970s and made it last week to the Copa Sudamericana finals after defeating two of Argentina's fiercest squads, San Lorenzo and Independiente, as well as Colombia's Junior. "What was supposed to be a celebration has turned into a tragedy," Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez said from the search-and-rescue command center. "May God accompany our athletes, officials, journalists, and other guests traveling with our delegation," the club said in a brief statement on its Facebook page. The Guardian reports Brazilian President Michel Temer has declared three days of mourning.
– A passenger who apparently believed she was some kind of deity was restrained by fellow fliers after trying to open an airplane cabin door during a flight from San Francisco to Boise, Idaho, on Monday. In video of the incident on United Express Flight 5449, the woman can be heard screaming "I am God" repeatedly as other passengers tie up her feet, reports CBS News, which notes that it would have been impossible for her to open the door in the pressurized cabin. The flight landed safely in Boise, where the woman was taken into custody. Police say the woman is being medically evaluated and the prosecutor's office is reviewing possible charges, KTVB reports. The FBI is also investigating. (This Alaska Airlines flight had to return to Anchorage on account of nudity.)
– A video released online appears to show a Mexican soldier executing a suspected oil thief at point-blank range as he lays defenseless on the ground. The heavily edited video, taken from a surveillance camera, shows a car coming under fire during what the military describes as a series of ambushes that left four soldiers and six suspects dead in Palmarito on May 3. As soldiers surround the vehicle, its occupants exit and are forced to lie down in front of the car. Soldiers are then seen dragging a suspect to the same spot. He appears injured but rolls from his back onto his front. Six minutes later, a soldier appears at the side of the frame and appears to shoot the man in the back of the head, per the AP. A dark stain spreads around him, reports Reuters. "There was already concern about the use of excessive force by the military. Now this video seems to give us the proof," says the chairwoman of Mexico's Senate Commission on Human Rights, per the Washington Post, which identifies the man shot as Raul Jimenez Martinez, 46. Mexico's defense ministry, however, says it will cooperate fully with an investigation launched by the attorney general's office on May 4. "Under no circumstances can conduct contrary to the law and human rights be justified," the ministry says. Residents of Palmarito have already taken to the streets to protest the deaths of the suspects, placing the blame on the army, though the defense ministry previously claimed the suspects used residents as human shields.
– How do you get rid of a population of bugs destroying your crops? Scientists are trying out a controversial method: spreading a gene that prevents females from reproducing. Males can live with the lab-inserted gene, but females die in the larval stage—which doesn't leave a lot of options for reproduction or the future of the species, New Scientist reports. In a lab experiment, this decimated the population in 10 weeks. Scientists at English firm Oxitec want to try their method in Spain, where they're awaiting the OK from Spanish authorities to kill off certain fruit flies that destroy some 15% to 30% of the olive tree crop each year. But genetic science watchdogs have concerns about the method, fearing, for instance, that altered populations could affect creatures outside their own species, Mashable reports. A similar experiment is already happening in the wild in Brazil, where the Oxitec team has altered males of a population of dengue-carrying mosquitoes. Some 96% of dengue mosquitoes around the city of Mandacaru have been destroyed, the company says.
– "Four trapezoidal bars aligned on a rectangular base" may not be instantly recognizable. Put that setup in chocolate form, however, and many people would be able to distinguish it as a KitKat. Even if that's the case, the European Union's highest court just ruled that the shape of the sweet treat isn't unique enough to merit trademark protection, meaning other confectioners can potentially produce KitKat knockoffs, the Guardian reports. Nestle, which makes KitKats, has been fighting Cadbury (and then Mondelez, which ultimately bought Cadbury) in the courts for more than a decade on this issue. The BBC notes that Nestle first applied for trademark protection for the candy's shape in 2002, and it was granted that protection four years later. Cadbury's pushback began in 2007, and Wednesday's decision by the European Court of Justice essentially tells the EU trademark office it now has to "reconsider" its original decision. What that means, however, is that if the EU Intellectual Property Office finds, based on more recent evidence, that the KitKat bar's shape is recognizable in enough countries, it can retain the trademark protection, per Reuters. The brand name itself of "KitKat" is not being contested. (Atari accused Nestle of ripping off one of its popular video games in an ad for KitKat.)
– Five siblings may have found their long-lost older brother thanks to a Facebook post. Their mother, 72-year-old Geraldine "Jerri" Kramer, gave birth to a baby in 1963, when she was 19 and unwed, but the Indiana woman's parents and priest made her give the boy up for adoption. Still, she bonded with the infant as soon as she held him, and never stopped thinking about him, she tells ABC News. Kramer, whose maiden name was Hummel, called the baby Jack, Fox News reports. He remained a secret from much of her family, even the husband she married in 1966. But in 1988, when her oldest daughter was considering giving up a child for adoption, Kramer told her the story and warned her daughter she'd regret parting with the baby. Then, as her health started to decline, Kramer asked her kids to help her find her own lost child. The five of them took a group photo on Thanksgiving and added the words, "You were born 6-10-63. You're our older brother, we're looking for you." They posted it on Facebook, where it's been shared nearly 45,000 times. "You were born June 10, 1963 in the wee AM hours, at Marion County General Hospital, in Indianapolis, Indiana. You were placed for adoption through Catholic Social Services," reads the post. "It has been Mom's decades-long wish to find you, and we would love to meet our big brother." In an update Monday, Marie Henson added, "I THINK WE FOUND HIM!! He saw the article, and DNA tests are our next step!" No further updates have been posted yet, but should Kramer—who also has eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren—find her long-lost biological son, she says she'll tell him "that I’ve loved him for years and years and years." (When these two long-lost siblings met, they realized they'd known each other for years.)
– A California woman whose kidnapping and rape were dismissed by police as a hoax akin to Gone Girl has settled with the City of Vallejo and its police department for $2.5 million, her family tells KGO. In 2015, Denise Huskins and boyfriend Aaron Quinn were drugged inside their home by a masked intruder, who kidnapped the then-30-year-old woman. Huskins was released outside her family's home two days later after being sexually assaulted. At the time, their claims were dismissed by police, who accused Huskins of making up the kidnapping. They only came around after the kidnapper, Matthew Muller, a Harvard-trained attorney and former Marine, was implicated in a different crime. He claimed to be part of a gang of "gentlemen criminals." While police eventually apologized to Huskins and Quinn, a federal judge rejected the city's effort to toss the couple's lawsuit. The settlement was reached Thursday, the AP reports. An attorney for Huskins and Quinn says the couple is "grateful." "One can only hope that the message of this settlement will be that victims are to be believed and that the police will accept a woman’s highly credible report that she was kidnapped and raped," KTVU quotes James Wagstaffe as saying. As part of the settlement, the City of Vallejo admits no wrongdoing. Muller, who pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and even criticized police for not believing Huskins, is serving a 40-year prison sentence.
– Muhammad Ali died Friday at the age of 74, likely from complications related to Parkinson's disease. The death of the Greatest led to an outpouring of tributes and memorials from those who knew him and others who admired him from afar. Here are 13 of those reactions from athletes, celebrities, and politicians: “It's been said it was Rope a dope, Ali beat me with no his beauty that beat me. Most beauty I've know loved him," George Foreman tweeted. “Thinking of #MuhammadAli and remembering a man who was not afraid to take a stand and who was committed to being his authentic self," Billie Jean King tweeted. "Ali shook up the world—and the world is better for it," the BBC quotes President Obama as saying in a statement. “The greatest man I have ever known," Billy Crystal tweeted. “The Greatest made the world a better place. His work is done. We are better for it," Carl Weathers tweeted. "Ali exemplified courage—he never took the easy route, something to be admired in and outside of the ring," the Los Angeles Times quotes Oscar De La Hoya as saying. “Boxing benefited from Muhammad Ali's talents, but not nearly as much as mankind benefited from his humanity," the Times quotes Manny Pacquiao as saying. “His may be the Greatest of 20th century American stories," Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted. “We will NEVER forget your courage, standing up to those in power. You gave up your title & your career rather than kill Vietnamese," Michael Moore tweeted. "From the day he claimed the Olympic gold medal in 1960, boxing fans across the world knew they were seeing a blend of beauty and grace, speed and strength that may never be matched again," ABC News quotes a statement from Bill and Hillary Clinton as saying. “Muhammad Ali was the greatest, not only an extraordinary athlete but a man of great courage and humanity," ABC quotes Bernie Sanders as saying in a statement. “Muhammad Ali is dead at 74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. He will be missed by all!” Donald Trump tweeted. “God came for his champion. So long great one," Mike Tyson tweeted. (Click here for the best quotes from Ali himself.)
– A shooting in the French city of Strasbourg killed at least three people and wounded 11 others near a world-famous Christmas market Tuesday, sparking a broad lockdown and a search for the suspected gunman, who remained at large, the AP reports. French prosecutors said a terrorism investigation was opened, though authorities did not announce a motive for the bloodshed. The city is home to the European Parliament, which was locked down after the shooting. It was unclear if the market—which was the nucleus of an al-Qaeda-linked plot in 2000—was targeted. The prefect of the Strasbourg region said the suspect was previously flagged as a possible extremist. The gunman has been identified and has a criminal record, according to Interior Minister Christophe Castaner; one official says he was wounded by soldiers guarding the market. Gendarmes went to the suspect's home to arrest him earlier Tuesday, before the attack, but he wasn't there, Morisse said. They found explosive materials, he said. French military spokesman Col. Patrik Steiger said the shooter did not aim for the soldiers patrolling in and around the Christmas market, but targeted civilians instead. Several of the people wounded were in critical condition, the interior minister said. President Emmanuel Macron adjourned a meeting at the presidential palace Tuesday night to monitor the emergency, his office said, indicating the gravity of the attack. In multiple neighborhoods of Strasbourg, the French Interior Ministry urged the public to remain indoors. Local authorities tweeted for the public to "avoid the area of the police station," close to the city's well-known Christmas market, which is set up around the city's cathedral during the holiday season and is a popular gathering place. (More on the thwarted 2000 plot here.)
– The War on Christmas existed long before Fox News. In the 17th century, it was an indisputable fact: Boston Puritans canceled Christmas for 22 years, and those caught celebrating were hit with a fine, Mental Floss explains. A court order in 1659 warned against "observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way"; the ban remained until 1681. Working was required, and concerned Puritans actually sent out town criers to yell, "No Christmas! No Christmas!" At the time, however, holiday celebrations were quite different from today's. For instance, the practice of "wassailing" saw less-wealthy colonists seeking food and drink from their richer counterparts—and when they didn't get it, things could get violent. The Rev. Increase Mather, meanwhile, was troubled by holidays spent "playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in Mad Mirth," he wrote in 1687, as Slate and the Massachusetts Travel Journal have noted. In 1681, governor Sir Edmund Andros ended the ban—but it wasn't until the late 19th century that Christmas celebrations got popular in the area.
– Archaeologists have in the last two months uncovered the unmarked graves of as many as 40 Confederate soldiers in Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, Va. That adds to the tally of about 50 unmarked Confederate graves found in the same part of the cemetery last year—a section known as Yankee Square that was originally created as a place to bury Union soldiers, though their remains were exhumed and moved in 1866, Fox News reports. The team's goal is to match up the graves with the "detailed" undertaker's notes that were made at the time, allowing the archaeologists to identify the soldiers buried there with markers noting each man's military unit and when he died. “It’s always been an unsatisfying answer for me to say, 'We know your ancestor is here somewhere, but we don't know exactly where,’” the cemetery’s assistant director told the News & Advance earlier this month. The graves are shallow ones, and the team has only needed to dig about 10 inches below the surface—not to the point of reaching a body, but until a red clay patch appears amid the orange dirt. The red clay indicates the presence of a body, as the deeper, darker dirt that was dug out to create the graves was often used to cover the body. "We can see any time that a hole or disturbance is put in the ground because the soil’s not the same," says one team member. The team has also determined that that crisp outlines of the graves indicate that they haven't been disturbed since they were made. But it did make two mysterious discoveries: some graves were placed perpendicularly over older graves, and others had a circle-shaped brown patch on top of them—perhaps the remnants of a patch of flowers. (Read about how archaeologists managed to uncover graves the Nazis tried to hide.)
– Figures from the worlds of politics and sports took to the Sunday talk shows to weigh in on President Trump's call for NFL players who protest during the national anthem to be fired. Steve Mnuchin told ABC's This Week that NFL owners should create a rule forcing players to stand for the anthem and that athletes "can do free speech on their own time," Politico reports. The Treasury secretary said the issue isn't race or free speech but "respect for the military and first responders." “I wish that some of these players that get on one knee to protest this country and all the sacrifices that make it great would get on both knees and thank God that they live in the United States of America," Mediaite quotes Mike Huckabee as saying on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures. The former Arkansas governor said liberals only defend athletes attacking the country, not those praying for it. Karl Rove told Fox News Sunday that Trump should have picked a better battle or at least a better tactic, Mediaite reports. "He could have come away the winner," the former White House adviser said. "Instead, he is walking away from this a loser in the minds of the American people." A better move would have been to be an "aspirational figure" reminding people what's good about the country, Rove said. Rex Ryan, who introduced Trump during a rally last year, said on Sunday NFL Countdown that the president's comments are "appalling." "Lemme tell you: I'm pissed off. I'll be honest with you. Because I supported Donald Trump," CBS Sports quotes the former NFL coach as saying. Ryan said he's proud of the players he's known and they aren't "SOBs." "I'm not sure if our president understands those rights, that every American has the right to speak out and also to protest," Sports Illustrated quotes Terry Bradshaw as saying on Fox NFL Sunday.
– Secession is all the rage these days, and the latest movement is taking shape in Maryland. The Western Maryland Initiative, a group led by Scott Strzelczyk, is looking to break off the five western counties from the rest of the state, the Washington Post reports. Garrett, Allegany, Washington, Frederick, and Carroll counties are more rural; their residents are mostly white, earn less than their fellow Marylanders, and are largely Republicans in a very blue state. With about 650,000 residents, they make up just 11% of the state's population; that's about the size of DC, notes Think Progress. Strzelczyk envisions a state—called Western Maryland or West Maryland, reports the Sentinel—with more "personal liberty, less government intrusion." He's personally pro-gun, anti-Department of Education, and OK with medical marijuana. "If you don’t belong in [the Democratic] party, you’ll never have your views represented" in Maryland, says Strzelczyk. "If we have more states, we can all go live in states that best represent us, and then we can get along." (He doesn't want to move to another state, however.) But secession is notoriously difficult to achieve, and the Sentinel points out that the 3,000 people who have "liked" the group's Facebook page make up fewer than 1% of the area's 407,000 registered voters. Political experts say the effort isn't likely to see results, and Strzelczyk knows he has a ways to go—his effort doesn't even have a website yet. (When it comes to possible secession, Northern Colorado's attempt is currently the furthest along.)
– Think carbs are a dieter's enemy? It turns out restricting one's fat intake leads to a 68% greater loss of body fat than restricting the same amount of calories through carbohydrates in obese adults on strictly controlled diets—and this is in spite of the fact that a low-carb diet reduces insulin and increases fat burning. So says a physicist turned metabolism researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases who wanted to test a mathematical model he devised that projected similar results. Reporting in the journal Cell Metabolism, Kevin Hall says that while many believe that cutting carbs reduces fat faster, none had actually tested the impact of cutting carbs while keeping fat at a base line or vice versa. So he checked 19 consenting non-diabetic adults with obesity into to a metabolic ward for two 2-week periods, controlling and accounting for every single bite they ate. As his model predicted, people lost more body fat when their dietary fat was restricted than when carbs were, even though a low-carb diet does indeed burn more fat. But his model also predicted that in the long term, these differences would become less pronounced for diets that have the same number of calories, according to the press release. "Over the long term, it's pretty close," Hall says. He used data from dozens of controlled feeding studies from decades of nutrition research to develop the model, but he cautions that the study is both small and highly controlled, meaning people's unrestricted diets may cause them to eat differently. "The real world is more complicated than a research lab, and if you have obesity and want to lose weight, it may be more important to consider which type of diet you’ll be most likely to stick to over time," he tells the National Institutes of Health. (See how carbs mess with our metabolism.)
– It was a quiet 2015 after dozens of people, mostly children, fell gravely ill in 2014 from a mysterious condition called acute flaccid myelitis, which first presents as a cold but quickly escalates to polio-like symptoms, including paralysis. It is quiet no longer as the Centers for Disease Control confirms what appear to be about 90 cases across 33 states so far this year, and three of them are in Oregon, home to the first case in 2014, reports the Oregonian. Washington, which saw only a couple cases in 2014, appears to be suffering from something of an outbreak, with nine cases so far this year including the first suspected fatality; a 6-year-old boy is believed to have died from the illness, reports MyNorthwest.com. The illness is not contagious, according to doctors, but it's not clear how people contract it. Little is known about AFM, though it's been linked to enteroviruses as well as West Nile and related viruses, and there is no treatment other than comfort care. It affects the nervous system, particularly the spinal cord, and telltale symptoms include weakness and paralysis. "If a child or adult is experiencing any kind of weakness at all, they should see their health care provider immediately," Oregon's public health division spokesperson tells KATU. Aside from Daniel Ramirez, the 6-year-old taken off life support last week, most kids appear to make partial to even full recoveries. KOMO News reports that a teenager afflicted in Washington in 2014 still needs a wheelchair but continues to improve and hopes to go to college soon. (Ramirez went from healthy to dead in two weeks.)
– Predicting earthquakes is shaky business at best, but that detail isn't stopping Italian officials from prosecuting a group of prominent scientists over their failure to do exactly that. Six scientists and one government official face charges of manslaughter for allegedly failing to provide adequate warning of imminent disaster to locals after the region was struck by more than 400 low-magnitude tremors in the months preceding a major quake. The group of experts met in 2009 to analyze the risk posed by the seismic activity, but didn't find cause to raise alarm. Six days later, a major quake devastated the central Italian city of L'Aquila and killed 309 people, reports the AFP. Among the defendants are some of Italy's top scientists in the field. "You cannot put science on trial," says a defense lawyer, citing his client's statement during the expert panel meeting that "one cannot rule out a major quake." The group has gained the wide support of the scientific community. But "no one expected to be told the exact time of the quake," says a doctor who lost his wife and daughter in the quake. "We just wanted to be warned that we were sitting on a bomb." The trial opened today, and the BBC notes that seven defendants face up to 15 years in jail.
– A Pennsylvania woman successfully concealed five pregnancies from both her husband and the man she was having an affair with before killing the infants and hiding their bodies, say prosecutors. Nurse's aide Michele Kalina has been charged with criminal homicide in the deaths of the babies, whose remains were found in her home and in a landfill site, CNN reports. DNA testing has established that she is the mother of at least four of the infants, and her boyfriend is the father of at least three. All five of the babies were born during the 14 years Kalina was having an affair. She was arrested in August after her teenage daughter found the remains of an infant in a closet in the family's home. "Nobody knew she was pregnant," the district attorney told the Reading Eagle. "I've been involved in the criminal justice system for 25 years and this is the most bizarre thing I've heard." He says pathology reports show that four of the deaths are "consistent with asphyxia, poisoning, or neglect."
– A Facebook warning from emergency management officials in Texas' Tyler County shows just how dire the effects of Harvey continue to be. Citing rising flood levels, the post late Wednesday warned everyone in affected areas to evacuate immediately. "Anyone who chooses to not heed this directive cannot expect to be rescued and should write their social security numbers in permanent marker on their arm so their bodies can be identified," the message read, per the Houston Chronicle. "The loss of life and property is certain," it continued. The final words read, "GET OUT OR DIE!” though they have since been removed. In Fort Bend County, officials also announced mandatory evacuation orders near Buffalo Bayou early Thursday, per the AP. Harvey, downgraded from a tropical storm to a tropical depression late Wednesday, is still expected to deliver 4 to 8 inches of rain into parts of Texas and Louisiana as well as Tennessee and Kentucky through Friday. The death toll continues to climb and now stands at 38, reports the New York Times. "The sad thing is, of the deaths we've seen, we're going to see more," the deputy director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness tells the AP. "That number doesn't stop moving up until we're well into the recovery phase." With floodwaters receding in Houston, officials have begun searching thousands of flooded homes for bodies. The effort could take up to two weeks with 911 centers still fielding more than 1,000 calls per hour, the AP reports.
– Lee Daniels' The Butler might have fared very poorly in one Kentucky theater, but it was the winner nationwide for a second week in a row, pulling in $17 million on a sleepy end-of-summer weekend. We're the Millers also held steady, with a $13.5 million haul that gave it the No. 2 spot; the Hollywood Reporter notes that the surprise hit has now earned $91.7 million in a "major victory" for New Line Cinema. Rounding out the top four were Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, with what the AP calls a "tepid" $9.3 million, and The World's End, with $8.9 million. Down in the basement: Ashton Kutcher's Jobs, which came in No. 12 in its second week out, with $3 million. It's earned $12.1 million thus far.
– A senior Chinese official warned today that the US is in for a “trade war” if it enacts a Senate bill that would punish China for artificially keeping its currency low. The bill “in no way represents the reality of the economic and trade relationship between China and the US,” a Chinese foreign minister tells Reuters. “The only result would be a trade war … that would be a lose-lose situation for both sides." The bill, which seems all but certain to pass the Senate, would place a tariff on imports from countries that purposely hold down their currency—something China has long been accused of doing to give its manufacturers a competitive edge overseas. But the White House says the bill may violate international trade rules, and John Boehner called it “dangerous,” even as pressure mounts for him to bring it to the floor, the Hill reports.
– Banks loaned Ted Cruz as much as $1 million during his first Senate campaign in Texas back in 2012, but you wouldn't know it from campaign finance reports. While Cruz eventually disclosed the loans from Citibank and Goldman Sachs—each valued at $250,000 to $500,000—to Senate officials, he failed to inform the Federal Election Commission as required, reports the New York Times. At the time, Cruz spoke of how he and his wife put "our entire net worth" into the campaign. NBC News reports he used $1.43 million in personal funds. But "a review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign," per the Times. A Cruz rep admits the Goldman Sachs loan was used for the Senate race and a failure to disclose it was "inadvertent." She didn't comment on the Citibank loan, which the Times notes would have freed up other assets even if it wasn't used on Cruz's campaign. The Times notes, too, that disclosing the loans might have hurt Cruz's campaign, given that he was criticizing Wall Street bailouts and big banks. Cruz, who says the loans were borrowed against the couple's own assets, cites a "filing error," per NBC. "Those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings," he adds, per the Wall Street Journal. "If it was the case that they were not filed exactly as the FEC requires, then we'll amend the filings."
– Betsy Davis spent the last years of her life losing control of her body as her illness worsened—but she could still control how she died, and she "turned her departure into a work of art," friend and cinematographer Niels Alpert says of the California artist's death. The 41-year-old, who in 2013 was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, threw a party for more than 30 friends and family that lasted through the weekend before her doctor-assisted suicide late last month, People reports. Davis, a painter and performance artist who invited guests from across the country to what she called a "rebirth," died under the state's physician-assisted suicide law, which took effect on June 9. "You're all very brave for sending me off on my journey," she wrote in her invitation, which warned guests that "emotional stamina" would be required, the AP reports. "There are no rules," she wrote. "Wear what you want, speak your mind, dance, hop, chant, sing, pray, but do not cry in front of me. OK, one rule." After a weekend that included music, pizza, cocktails, individual chats with every guest, and a screening of favorite movie The Dance of Reality, most guests departed and Davis' bed was wheeled out to a hillside at sunset. Accompanied by her sister, her doctor, her massage therapist, and her caretaker, she took a lethal combination of drugs and died around four hours later. (Assisted suicide is legal in four other states and Canada, where the law won't cover American visitors.)
– Let it be said that Tom Hardy is a man of his word. A 2016 Esquire UK profile opened with an anecdote about how he had to add a fresh tattoo to his tattoo-heavy body because of a bet he made and lost with Leonardo DiCaprio. His Revenant co-star thought Hardy would walk away with an Oscar nomination, Hardy disagreed, to his eventual peril. He got the nom, lost the bet, and had to get a tattoo of DiCaprio's design. And as MTV News reports, there's now photo proof that he did. In the Esquire interview, Hardy hinted at the eventual inking, saying, "He wrote, in this really sh--ty handwriting: 'Leo knows everything.' Ha! I was like, 'OK, I'll get it done, but you have to write it properly.'" But, he added, "I haven't got it yet because it sucks." That's apparently changed, as evidenced by a photo posted to Instagram of Hardy posing with a photographer in San Francisco. On Hardy's right bicep you can make out the words "Leo knows all."
– Does prayer have the power to help recovering alcoholics squash temptation? A small new study out of the NYU Langone Medical Center finds that at least among 20 long-term Alcoholics Anonymous members who reported no cravings in the week leading up to the test, prayer reduced cravings that arose when shown images of alcoholic drinks or people drinking. To perform the tests, the researchers report in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, participants were asked to read the newspaper or pray after being shown the images. Participants reported some craving following seeing the images, but less so after having prayed, while MRI data showed changes in parts of the prefrontal cortex that controls attention as well as in regions thought to control emotion. "This finding suggests that there appears to be an emotional response to alcohol triggers, but that it’s experienced and understood differently when someone has the protection of the AA experience," says senior author Marc Galanter, who published a book on Alcoholics Anonymous earlier this year. He goes on to suggest that the reduction in cravings in AA members correlates to the amount of time that has elapsed since one's so-called "spiritual awakening," which AA describes as taking a different attitude toward drinking. In previous research, participants asked to pray every day for four weeks drank about half as much as those who were not. (See why some have been challenging the 75-year hegemony of AA.)
– The third time was not the charm for Aslan Usoyan, a prominent Russian mob boss who was assassinated today after surviving two previous hits. Officials say "Grandpa Hassan" was killed by a single bullet fired by a sniper as he was leaving a Moscow restaurant. The 75-year-old last survived a 2010 attempt on his life in which he was shot in the abdomen, and a police source says the group that injured him then is believed to be the same one that succeeded in killing him today, reports RT. Usoyan was suspected to be at the helm of criminal organizations that stole natural resources, trafficked drugs and weapons, and was mired in illegal gambling. MSN NZ calls him "the most influential criminal in the former Soviet Union," and reports that a Russian tabloid referred to him as the "king of the Russian mafia." A female passerby was injured by the sniper.
– It's not only the Rockettes who were upset to learn they'd be performing for the 45th US president. Thousands of people have signed a petition asking the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to rescind its acceptance of an invitation to perform at Donald Trump's inauguration next month, and now a singer says she's opted to quit the choir in protest, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. In a resignation letter posted to Facebook, Jan Chamberlin says she weighed the decision over "several sleepless nights and days [spent] in turmoil and agony" but determined "I could never look myself in the mirror again with self-respect" if she agreed to perform. "I only know I could never 'throw roses to Hitler.' And I certainly could never sing for him," she writes. Just as the Rockettes aren't required to perform, neither are the 360 choir members, only 215 of whom will perform based on a lottery system; it's up to members to submit their names. But Chamberlin—who's received hateful messages since her resignation, per KIFI—says "it will appear that [the] choir is endorsing tyranny and facism [sic] by singing for this man." The petition, signed by more than 20,000 so far, adds that the move "does not reflect the values of Mormonism and does not represent its diverse 15+ million members worldwide." A rep for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, however, says the performance is "a demonstration of our support for freedom, civility, and the peaceful transition of power" and "not an implied support of party affiliations or politics."
– Two lawsuits claiming director Bryan Singer sexually assaulted teenage boys have been dropped, but that doesn't mean Singer's troubles are over. The director of X-Men: Days of Future Past is now being investigated by New York police regarding an alleged "forcible sexual assault" in March 2013, BuzzFeed reports. While Singer hasn't been charged with any crime, an NYPD rep says he is a suspect in a case involving a male in his 20s that "is open and being investigated by our Special Victims Squad." The complaint was filed in May of this year. Singer did not "engage in any criminal or inappropriate behavior," says his lawyer, adding that "neither my client nor any of his representatives have been contacted by the NYPD or anyone else about an alleged criminal investigation." The NYPD rep says that is "not necessarily" unusual "if you're building a case." The lawyer also calls BuzzFeed's reporting "a witch hunt against my client because he is gay." (The Wire has a chronology of the allegations against Singer here.) In dropping his case against Singer, alleged victim Michael Egan has retained the ability to re-file at a later date.
– The reclusive Harper Lee reportedly wrote to friends a lot in her younger days, but few letters have "trickled out" because of her desire for privacy, as the New York Times puts it. That changed today when six she wrote to friend Harold Caufield between 1956 and 1961—before and after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird—went up for auction at Christie's. It turned out that the letters, now in the possession of a book collector, failed to sell, reports AP. (The expected price was $250,000; the bidding didn't hit the reserve price.) But we still get to read snippets, from AP, the Times, and the Los Angeles Times: 'Mockingbird success: "We were surprised, stunned & dazed by the Princeton review. The procurator of Judea is breathing heavily down my neck—all that lovely, lovely money is going straight to the Bureau of Internal Revenue tomorrow." On her dad, the model for Atticus Finch: "Daddy is sitting beside me at the kitchen table. ... I found myself staring at his handsome old face, and a sudden wave of panic flashed through me, which I think was an echo of the fear and desolation that filled me when he was nearly dead. It has been years since I have lived with him on a day-to-day basis." Small-town life: “I don’t trust myself to keep my mouth shut if I feel moved to express myself, thereon it will get out all over Monroeville that I am a member of the NAACP, which, God forbid. They already suspect this to be a fact anyway.” She also complains of the town's "ecclesiastical gloom." The lot included an inscribed 35th anniversary copy of the book: "Hal: Can you believe it?? You've lived to see this, and still have all your teeth and gumption. You will always be my beloved friend, hairless though you are." Lee's controversial second novel, Go Set a Watchmen, is out next month.
– US Marines are in Yemen as protesters continue to throng around the US embassy there, the AP reports. An elite Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team arrived today, as security forces continued to fire live rounds and tear gas into a crowd numbering around 2,000. The same type of team was also sent to Libya in the wake of violence there that ended with US Ambassador Chris Stevens' death. Protests over an anti-Islam film are heating up throughout the Muslim world today: Thousands of protesters are outside the US embassy in Tunis, and some are climbing the walls to raise a Muslim flag. Police have been firing into the crowd, and a large, black smoke cloud was recently seen rising around the US embassy. Protesters also surrounded the German and British embassies in the capital of Sudan, angry over anti-Muslim graffiti that allegedly appeared on Berlin mosques. Some stormed the German embassy, burning cars and setting fires; part of the building was in flames, but the employees are safe. The Atlantic Wire is keeping track of the protests on a useful interactive map.
– A clinic run by Michele Bachmann's therapist husband has collected $137,000 in payments from a program lashed by the GOP presidential candidate: Medicaid. Those payments are on top of an additional $30,000 in government grant money for employee training at Marcus Bachmann's clinic. The clinic, which advertises "quality Christian counseling" for a range of mental health issues, also participates in a state subsidized health insurance program, notes MSNBC. Revelation of the health care payments—in addition to some $260,000 in subsidies for a Wisconsin farm owned in part by the Bachmanns—is proving an embarrassment to the Tea Party candidate who rips such "big government" aid on the campaign stump. When Minnesota's governor signed a law earlier this month expanding Medicaid coverage to more state residents, Bachmann railed that "even more welfare recipients" would be added to the "welfare rolls at a very great cost." She's "giving hypocrisy a bad name," says the executive director of health care advocacy organization Families USA. "It's clear when it feathers her nest she's happy for Medicaid expenditures. But people that really need it—folks with disabilities and seniors—she's turning their backs on them." Bachmann was not immediately available for comment, but has insisted neither she nor her husband have personally benefited from government subsidies going to the clinic or family farm.
– The Simpsons character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, who has been criticized for promoting negative stereotypes about South Asians (and is voiced by white guy Hank Azaria), may be getting cut from the show. "I got some disheartening news back, that I’ve verified from multiple sources now: They’re going to drop the Apu character altogether," producer Adi Shankar tells IndieWire, claiming he heard the news from two people who work on the show and a third person who works directly with creator Matt Groening. "They aren’t going to make a big deal out of it, or anything like that, but they’ll drop him altogether just to avoid the controversy." Shankar was talking to IndieWire about Apu because he recently held a spec script contest for an episode dealing with the show's "Apu problem" and had been hoping Fox would agree to produce the script. Reached for comment, a rep for the show told IndieWire simply that "Apu appeared in the 10/14/18 episode 'My Way or the Highway to Heaven.'" IndieWire notes that the only shot Apu appears in during the episode is one in which dozens of characters are gathered around God. Comedian Hari Kondabolu, who made a recent documentary about Apu, responded to the news by tweeting, "There are so many ways to make Apu work without getting rid of him. If true, this sucks." The Daily Dot rounds up other critical and mournful responses on Twitter. Shankar, producer of films including Dredd and The Grey and co-showrunner of Castlevania on Netflix, plans to produce the winning script (which sees Apu going from Kwik-E-Mart owner to thriving businessman) himself on his Bootleg Universe YouTube page. (Here's what Azaria thinks should happen with Apu.)
– Time to nix that belief you've been clinging to that snakes are "mostly solitary and stupid," Vladimir Dinets tells Gizmodo. The University of Tennessee researcher has found one particular Caribbean species that apparently hunts together. Dinets' study in the Animal Behavior and Cognition journal details his research on Chilabothrus angulifer, or the Cuban boa, which Tennessee Today notes is the country's largest resident predator on land and which apparently hunts fruit bats in sinkhole caves in a coordinated way. Dinets observed the snakes for eight days in the caves of Desembarco del Granma National Park, where he had noticed they would hang from the ceiling near the entrance at dawn and dusk, ready to pounce when the bats flew in and out of the caves. But it wasn't just random positioning. The snakes hunkered down in close proximity to each other, in seemingly strategic locations, so when the bats tried to pass, they were trapped by a "hissing, snapping curtain" of boas, as ScienceAlert puts it. What signified coordination and not just a shared preference for one location: No snake positioned itself in the same "segment" twice. Dinets also notes that one to three snakes were present for each hunt; only two boas failed to catch a bat, and both were hunting solo. When successful, it took one boa an average of 19 minutes to catch a bat, but three only 6.7 minutes. What's unclear is how rare this is: There are 3,650 snake species, but the natural hunting habits of just a handful have been studied. "It will take a lot of very patient field research to find out" if others hunt like this, too. (Here's how boa constrictors actually kill their victims.)
– Amy Schumer took the long way around to announce she's pregnant with husband Chris Fischer. The comedian and actress broke her baby news Monday on the Instagram stories of friend and journalist Jessica Yellin, the AP reports. Yellin, of the site NewsNotNoise.org, showed at the end of a list of Schumer's recommended congressional and gubernatorial candidates the line: "I'm pregnant-Amy Schumer." Schumer had teased the announcement on her own Instagram page, captioning a photo of hers and Fischer's heads atop Prince Harry's and Meghan Markle's bodies, "About to announce some exciting news on @jessicayellin insta page. Please follow her for up to the minute #newsnotnoise she breaks down what’s really going on. She agreed to post a lil noise today for me! Follow her and VOTE!!" "We are 15 days out from the midterms and there is a lot going on," Yellin explained before going into Schumer's "lengthy" list of recommendations, per Bustle. "I wanted to share some news from our community. Maybe it's noise, but it's happy noise," Yellin continued. "These are the recommendations of Amy Schumer, one of the most consistent and early supporters of #NewsNotNoise. Now, read all the way to the bottom. You'll see there's some news down there. Congratulations, Amy." Schumer is known for her liberal politics: She was recently arrested protesting the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. The 37-year-old married Fischer, a chef, in February. (Here's why Schumer won't appear in any Super Bowl ads.)
– The first lady offers her thoughts on the #MeToo movement in a new interview with ABC News' Tom Llamas set to air in its entirety Friday night. "I support the women and they need to be heard. We need to support them, and also men, not just women," Melania Trump said in a preview of the sit-down shown on Good Morning America Wednesday. Asked if she thinks some accused men have been treated unfairly, Trump, who was in Kenya while on her tour of Africa when the interview was filmed, responded, "We need to have really hard evidence that, you know, that if you accuse [someone] of something, show the evidence." Asked to clarify, she continued, "I do stand with women but we need to show the evidence. You cannot just say to somebody, I was, you know, sexually assaulted or you did that to me—because sometimes the media goes too far and the way they portray some stories, it's not correct. It's not right." Per the Evening Standard, the full interview also delves into such touchy subjects as allegations that President Trump has not been faithful to her ... and that controversial jacket she once wore.
– Today’s the big day: The 24,199-page, 275-pound trove of emails from the first two years of Sarah Palin’s stint as governor of Alaska is almost here. The state will release them at 9am local time (1pm ET), reports Mother Jones, which requested the emails back in 2008. Reporters began arriving in Juneau, which is only accessible by air or water, yesterday, the Anchorage Daily News reports. They will pick up six boxes’ worth of documents and a hand truck (which they have to bring back), and immediately start a mad scramble to report on what they find. Click to see how you can help the Washington Post do just that.
– Mitch McConnell has been calling the White House daily, and not to discuss President Trump's golf game. McConnell has been carefully explaining—without explicitly telling Trump what to do—which Supreme Court nominees would get faster approval before the November elections arrive and make everything dicey, insiders tell the New York Times. McConnell prefers Raymond Kethledge and Thomas Hardiman and warns that reported front-runner Brett Kavanaugh poses two problems: too long a paper trail from his 12 years on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and too much political baggage from his years as assistant to Kenneth Starr and staff secretary to President George W. Bush. McConnell has also told Trump he could lose two Senate votes (Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins) with another apparent contender, Amy Coney Barrett, who has trumpeted socially conservative views and may be more likely to overturn Roe v. Wade. McConnell is also aware that with John McCain away fighting brain cancer, the GOP has only 50 votes, and libertarian-leaning Rand Paul could be a wild card. The Times describes Kethledge as a "strongly conservative" Midwesterner who hasn't spent much time in Washington, and Hardiman as a "reliable conservative" who served with Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, one of Trump's sisters, on the federal appeals court in Philadelphia. Check out the Hill to see which contenders are being pushed by other top conservatives.
– Kaden, Hunter, and Jackson Howard were born newsworthy—the Long Island triplets were conceived without fertility drugs, and Hunter and Jackson are identical while Kaden is fraternal. But not long into their young lives, the happy news took a turn. Their heads became noticeably misshapen. Kaden had a pointy forehead and Jackson and Hunter sported protrusions in the back, reports Today. All three were diagnosed with craniosynostosis, a rare birth defect in which a newborn's skull fuses together early, which can impede brain growth. The triplets, born in October 2016, underwent a set of surgeries at just two months of age in January and are all thriving back at home, apparently not even minding their helmets, which they must wear 23 hours a day for the next six to nine months. “Your skull is made up of plates, it’s not a single bone,” says operating surgeon David Chesler of Stony Brook Children's Hospital. If the plates fuse too early, it can "detrimental to the brain, the vision, the life of the child. It’s not imminently life-threatening, but it can cause real consequences down the road.” It occurs just once in every 2,000 births, but doctors put the odds of it occurring in triplets—particularly a set that isn't identical and thus not prone to the exact same malformations—at one in 500 trillion, reports CBS Local. Mom Amy calls their progress "amazing" and their father, Mike, says that while life with three boys and three cats is "crazy," he "wouldn't change it for the world." They say they'd love to have a girl, but aren't planning to try. "With our luck, we would have another set of triplets," Mike says. (One mom ran a half marathon pushing her triplets in a stroller.)
– A murder suspect and the detective who was questioning him were both found dead at police headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi. As detective Eric Smith, 40, interviewed Jeremy Powell, 23, other officers heard gunshots. They entered the room to find the men dead, CNN reports. Police haven't offered a sequence of events in the shooting, the AP notes, though both men suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Powell was being questioned in the process of being arrested in the murder of Christopher Alexander, 20, who was stabbed in the neck. Smith had begun homicide work fairly recently, said a city councilman, who noted that "there may have been more than one police officer in the room." The effects of the shooting rippled through Jackson, with police cars parked across major streets and officers comforting each other, the AP notes. "The entire city of Jackson and the Jackson Police Department family are all hurting," said a police spokesman.
– A former Boston TV news anchor says that last year, when her son was 18, he was at a bar in Natucket, Mass., when he met Kevin Spacey. The actor "bought him drink after drink after drink and when my son was drunk, Spacey made his move and sexually assaulted him," said Heather Unruh at a press conference Wednesday. She says Spacey stuck his hand down her son's pants and onto his genitals, and tried to convince him to go to a party where they could continue to drink, USA Today reports. A bystander asked the teen if he was OK and the teen said no, at which point the woman urged the teen to flee and he took her advice, Unruh said. Unruh, who appeared with an attorney, says her son filed a police report last week and handed over evidence; she says a criminal investigation has been opened but the Nantucket Police Department has not confirmed that. The attorney with Unruh noted that her son's accusations are "well within" both the civil and criminal statutes of limitations. USA Today has a list of the 14 people so far accusing Spacey of sexual assault or harassment. Meanwhile Jon Bernthal, who worked with Spacey on Baby Driver, told a SiriusXM radio show Tuesday that he lost respect for Spacey while working on the film. "I thought he was a bit of a bully," Bernthal said, per People. "I didn’t really care for the way he was behaving toward some of the other people on set."
– Police in Anchorage, Alaska, have been shaken by a horrific and apparently random attack on an elderly couple and the great-granddaughter they were babysitting. Investigators say registered sex offender Jerry Active murdered Touch Chea, 73, and his wife, 71-year-old Sorn Sreap, and sexually assaulted the 2-year-old girl in their care, the AP reports. The elderly woman was also sexually assaulted. Says a police department rep, "They said this was the worst thing they had ever seen in their lives, and these are seasoned detectives." Active, 24, was arrested after family members came home and apparently found him in the house in his boxer shorts; the child's father reportedly ran after and punched Active, who was apprehended by police one block away, the Anchorage Daily News reports. Police say the couple were killed by "blunt force trauma" after the suspect broke into the apartment through a window. A 90-year-old woman who was also in the apartment was apparently unharmed, but has been unable to communicate with police due to her dementia. The toddler has had surgery. A judge, calling the crime chilling "beyond words," set bail for Active at $1.5 million.
– You can expect your waiter to ask all kinds of questions when he approaches the table, but, "Can I see your proof of residency?" is not among them. Nevertheless, that's what four female diners experienced at the upscale Saint Marc restaurant in Huntington Beach, Calif., earlier this month, reports the Orange County Register. One of them, 23-year-old Brenda Carrillo, recalls to the Los Angeles Times that she was dumbfounded as the waiter elaborated, "I need to make sure you're from here before I can serve you." The four women complained to a manager and left the restaurant, and Carrillo's sister, Diana, then posted about their treatment online. After the post began drawing reactions, the restaurant apologized online and said the waiter had been fired. "In no way are the actions of this former employee representative of the Saint Marc brand nor are they reflective of the opinions of anyone else on our team, including executive management," said a restaurant statement. A Saint Marc exec says the waiter explained that he meant the question as a joke, but the women say he clearly did not. Saint Marc offered to bring the women back for VIP treatment and donate 10% of the night's proceeds to a charity of their choice. They declined the first but asked that the money go to a group that helps undocumented immigrants. The Carrillo sisters, described by Brenda as "light-skinned Latinas," do not fall into that category, for the record. They were born and raised in California. "It sends a chill through your entire body," says Diana of the incident. (Read another story of dining-gone-wrong in California.)
– A New York City hotel security director didn't want to have to work so hard—so fire department sources tell the New York Daily News that he set fires to close down the very buildings he was protecting, so he could hang out in a comp room and drink. Mariano Barbosa, 30, has been arrested for alleged arson; court papers say Barbosa set his first fire at the Soho Grand Hotel, using bedding to fuel the fire. That was one of eight fires he allegedly set in four years of work at the Soho Grand and the Yotel, the New York Times reports; the fires were reportedly in halls, stairs, and exits, boosting damage. Fire officials tell the Times that Barbosa wanted to cut business at the hotels, thus making his job easier. "He desired that the incidents would be blamed on the clientele, and if that was the case maybe they would curtail the parties, and the venues would be more manageable," one official says. Interestingly, just last year, he got an award from the Yotel: a four-day trip to Las Vegas, his wife says. She says he would sleep in complimentary rooms in order to be there for the next shift. "This is a slap in the face," she says. "I don’t understand how all of the sudden he’s the bad guy."
– A romance that enchanted Russia may be over: As the AP reports, Timur the goat and Amur the tiger have had a fight and aren't together anymore. In November, the goat was placed in the tiger's compound in a wildlife park near Vladivostok with the expectation that the big cat would eventually kill and eat him. But the two not only tolerated each other, they appeared to become friends. The odd couple became a popular topic on social media, and T-shirts celebrating them went on sale. But Timur started pushing it, constantly annoying and butting the tiger. "Finally, the tiger couldn't hold back, grabbed the goat by the withers and tossed him," park director Dmitry Mezentsev told state news agency Tass on Friday. "We decided to put them in different enclosures for a while," he said. But the split certainly isn't without its humor: "Timur is currently in good health, he says hi and promises to be less cocky from now on and advises other goats to keep it smart," Mezentsev says, per RT, which has video and a still-by-still breakdown of the goat getting the tiger's, er, goat.
– Richard Grenell's first day on the job may not have gone exactly how he imagined it. The brand new US ambassador to Germany arrived in Berlin on Tuesday, and in the span of little more than an hour, three things occurred: Grenell handed his credentials to Germany's president, President Trump announced the end of America's participation in the Iran nuclear deal, and Grenell raised some German ire. It's all due to this tweet, made shortly after Trump spoke: "As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately." Reuters notes Grenell has himself long-opposed the nuclear deal. That sentiment aligns with the White House's—indeed, Grenell, a former Fox News contributor who Page Six notes had an "A-list" going away bash, subsequently tweeted that he directly lifted the language from documentation provided to him by the administration. But the Washington Post observes that "the timing and tone struck some German politicians, journalists and businessmen as offensive and inappropriate." It characterizes the tweet as coming off as a threat and rounds up plenty of reaction, including this from the leader of the country's Social Democratic party: "It’s not my task to teach people about the fine art of diplomacy, especially not the US ambassador. But he does appear to need some tutoring." Grenell, the administration's top-ranking openly gay official, fills an ambassadorship that has been empty for 16 months.
– About a year after Hollywood Reporter journalist Gary Baum profiled Angelyne, the mysterious billboard bombshell he describes as LA's "modern myth," a hobbyist genealogist contacted him claiming to have proof of a compelling back story: that she was born in Poland to Holocaust survivors. Now, also for the Hollywood Reporter, Baum unravels what he believes is likely the iconic blonde's true identity, publishing yearbook photos, marriage certificates, and more. The woman who's adorned hundreds of billboards across LA since the 1980s under the one-name pseudonym Angelyne—she's been called a precursor to other "famous for being famous" celebrities like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian—appears to have started off as Ronia Tamar Goldberg. She came to California in 1959 by way of Israel, and her mother died of cancer at the age of 44 when Goldberg, who upon arrival to LA became Renee, was just 14. Baum reached out to Goldberg's alleged younger sister, now Annette Block, and her husband, as well as an ex-husband and a stepsister, all of whom are generally hazy on details if willing to talk at all. Angelyne, for her part, has gone on AirTalk with host Larry Mantle to claim that the story contains "a lot of inaccuracies" and that the "vindictive" piece can never change the fact that she is "not a woman" but "an icon." Indeed, she ran for mayor of Hollywood in 2008, per the Washington Post, and came in 28th out of 135 candidates; she also ran for governor of California in 2003 and, of course, has made numerous paid appearances at events and is the subject of a documentary. For now, the legend and sometimes-actress/singer who says she was orphaned at a young age and whose Hollywood start traces back to a 1974 porno tells Baum she wants to save her story for a memoir for "my own financial interest." (The Kardashians have erected an elaborate and bizarre business empire.)
– Medical firm founder Roger Williams owned private planes, flashy cars, and a yacht dubbed "Spare Change"; he had courtside seats to see the Lakers and enjoyed spending thousands at strip clubs. But an investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting suggests his $18-million-a-year California company, Spinal Solutions, made its money in part through counterfeiting expensive screws used in spinal surgeries and then distributing the knockoff screws to surgeons. Williams allegedly wooed doctors via lavish vacations, Lakers seats, and containers full of cash. There's no evidence doctors were complicit in the reported counterfeiting, but plenty of them used the screws. A machinist, now 85, tells CIR that he made copies of screws for the company for $65 each, which is about half of their typical price—and far, far less than the $12,500 hospitals once billed for them. Other companies' logos were also falsified on the screws. A whistleblower finally told the FDA about the alleged counterfeiting in 2011, but the company was allowed to continue operation until debts ruined it in 2013. The losers in all this, of course, were the patients, who could face dangers thanks to the substandard equipment. "This has been terrible, worst thing that’s ever happened to me … not knowing if the stuff still in me they couldn’t get out will one day kill me," says one patient. As of last month, 32 lawsuits sought to address the matter, CBS 2 reports; one has more than 20 plaintiffs. (In happier spinal news, a paralyzed man's nose helped him to walk again.)
– The two Cleveland police officers involved in the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice are telling their side of the story for the first time. In two statements, officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback say they were investigating a report of a "guy with a gun" in a park outside a recreation center on Nov. 22, 2014, when they saw Tamir pulling what they believed to be a real gun from his waistband, per Cleveland.com. Garmback, 47, says he drove over a curb and across a lawn because the park's main entrance blocked cars from entering. Loehmann, 27, says he yelled "show me your hands" three times, then opened fire on Tamir—who the officers believed was an adult, per the AP. "Even when he was reaching into his waistband, I didn't fire,'" Loehmann says, per NBC News. Then "I saw the weapon in his hands coming out of his waistband and the threat to my partner and myself was real and active." Loehmann's lawyer says his statement was given "against legal advice" since the officer is the target of a criminal investigation and evidence is now being presented to a Cuyahoga County grand jury. She adds, however, it was "in the interest of the investigators having the facts." The statements were read to grand jurors on Tuesday, per the Guardian. Lawyers for the Rice family accuse the local prosecutor of allowing the officers to give "unsworn statements" so as to avoid the "vigorous cross examination" that comes with testifying before the grand jury. "No regular target of a criminal investigation would be afforded this opportunity," they say. They add Loehmann "is suggesting that he observed things and took action that would have been physically impossible for any human being to do in the less than two seconds it took him to shoot this 12-year-old boy." (Read Loehmann's comments from the scene.)
– A day after debris was first spotted, Indonesian searchers have confirmed that sonar equipment has detected wreckage from AirAsia Flight QZ8501 at the bottom of the sea—though whether the plane is in one piece or broken up remains to be seen, reports CNN. The wreckage was found between 60 and 120 miles from the plane's last known location over the Java Sea, and the bodies of six more men and women—one of whom was wearing a flight attendant's uniform—had been recovered as of late yesterday, officials said. Other news: Though the wreckage has been located, victims' grieving families are growing frustrated with the recovery and identification process, reports Sky News. "I have so many precious memories that are gone," says one woman who lost five family members. "But I cannot start to grieve properly until we can hold proper funerals." AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes told reporters he hoped that the families would have "at least some closure." In spite of heavy winds, rain, and 6-foot waves, searchers are continuing to look for more bodies and plane parts. But the weather is causing the wreckage to drift—by a lot, reports the AP. "It seems all the wreckage found has drifted more than 30 miles from yesterday's location," says the search and rescue coordinator on Borneo island in the closest town to the site. "We are expecting those bodies will end up on beaches."
– Disney isn't winning points for cultural sensitivity this month after trying to trademark the phrase "Dia de los Muertos," reports the Arizona Republic. The company is working on a film inspired by the centuries-old Mexican holiday, which translates to "Day of the Dead" and celebrates the spirits of ancestors. Disney filed for the trademark on May 1, standard practice ahead of a movie to protect merchandising rights, but pulled the bid this week amid the ensuing outcry. (Exhibit A: This Change.org petition.) “How can you trademark a cultural tradition?” asks one Phoenix artist, her question summing up the common reaction. In its explanation for why it is pulling the trademark bid, Disney didn't exactly acknowledge the criticism: "It has since been determined that the title of the film will change, and therefore we are withdrawing our trademark filing.” Disney also once tried to trademark the phrase "Seal Team 6," but pulled the application after the military raised objections, notes the LA Times.
– Facebook plans to begin a roadshow to pitch its stock to investors on Monday, clearing the way for an initial public offering on May 18, sources tell the Wall Street Journal. Mark Zuckerberg plans to appear at some meetings but other top Facebook execs will be handling most of the roadshow, the sources say. The closely-watched IPO is expected to value Facebook at up to $100 billion and raise up to $10 billion, making it the biggest in Silicon Valley history. "I have not seen as broad-based interest in an IPO since Google. Investor demand is immense," an analyst at research firm IPO Boutique tells Reuters. "I expect a roadshow that will rival all roadshows where investors will be turned away at the door." But the timing has mystified some analysts, including Darcy Travlos at Forbes, who believes Facebook should wait a few months to show investors that slowing revenue growth can be turned around and the company's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram was a wise move. "Going public now raises the question: Is this as good as it gets?" she notes.
– Justin Timberlake rocked the vote Monday in Memphis, but he could soon be rocking a prison cell thanks to a Tennessee law that prohibits taking pictures or videos inside polling stations, TMZ reports. According to CNN, the superstar flew to his hometown Monday to vote, taking a selfie in front of the Diebold voting machine in the process. Timberlake posted the photo to Instagram with the caption: "Choose to have a voice! If you don't, then we can't HEAR YOU! Get out and VOTE!" Now he could face 30 days in jail and/or a $50 fine. The local district attorney's office says the incident is "under review." The Tennessee legislature passed the law banning the taking of photos and videos in polling stations in 2015, the Commercial Appeal reports. Timberlake would be the first person prosecuted under the new law. In addition to voting and possibly breaking a law, Timberlake posed for photos outside the polling station at the New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. Local school board candidate Suzanne Jones posted hers to Twitter. "I said, 'I know you’ve done it a lot, but I’d appreciate a picture with you,'" Jones tells the Commercial Appeal. "Someone was going to take it for me. But he said, 'No, I can take it. I do have gorilla arms, since I do this a lot.'" Timberlake lives in Los Angeles and owns property in Nashville but is still registered to vote in Memphis. The local election commission chairman says that's not really a problem. The selfie, on the other hand...
– 50 Cent, once at the forefront of rap music, returns with Before I Self Destruct—but his fourth solo effort isn’t impressing the critics. “Though packed with tough beats, dense production and 50's most ferocious delivery in years, the gloats about shootings, drugs and bloody 'hoods feel about as fresh as a Saw sequel,” writes Edna Gundersen in USA Today. The album “isn't likely to renew 50 Cent's currency.” Fitty’s ferocity is refreshing when you consider “the current hip-pop landscape where meat'n'potatoes gangsta is actually kinda novel,” writes Ian Cohen for Pitchfork, “but the fun of talking about the record overstates its actual quality. After initially promising a return to form, 50 doesn't have the ability or initiative to hold the listener's interest over the long run.”
– Looks like there's still some life in the 84-year-old media tycoon the Brits know as the "Dirty Digger." Rupert Murdoch announced his engagement to 59-year-old former supermodel Jerry Hall in a discreet advertisement in the Times, reports the Guardian, which notes that the ad would have cost him $436 if his News Corp. company didn't own the newspaper. "Mr Rupert Murdoch, father of Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, James, Grace, and Chloe Murdoch, and Miss Jerry Hall, mother of Elizabeth, James, Georgia, and Gabriel Jagger, are delighted to announce their engagement," the notice reads. Murdoch and Hall—who was in a long relationship with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger that ended in 1999—started dating around four months ago and he proposed after the Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday, according to the Times. This will be the fourth marriage for Murdoch, who split up with third wife Wendi Deng in 2013 amid rumors that she had been having an affair with Tony Blair, reports the New York Daily News. (After her split from Jagger, Hall said her daughters wouldn't end up dating womanizers like their rock star father.)
– The beef industry realizes it's taken a beating in the public relations department from the likes of Michael Pollan, and it's attempting to lay the groundwork for a comeback. An industry-funded online program called the Masters of Beef Advocacy has trained 3,000 students and farmers in the art of spreading a "positive beef message" since last year, reports Mother Jones. Of late, its focus is on college students at big agriculture schools. "Pollan is really our enemy right now," says a 26-year-old grad student in veterinary medicine who's taken the MBA course and maintains it's not a defacto PR campaign. "We're just worried about our futures in agriculture." Asked for response by MJ, Pollan acknowledged the genuine disagreements on beef production and agriculture that exist, but was wary about the industry's funding of the program. He noted that McDonald's reportedly paid a PR firm to discourage schools from allowing Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser to speak.
– Today is the 7th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and for residents of Plaquemines Parish, it's deja vu all over again, according to the parish president. Billy Nungesser tells NPR that the parish, located some 95 miles from New Orleans, has already seen damage that rivals, and could even surpass, that heaped upon it by Katrina. With the levee overrun, Nungesser says parts of the parish that had escaped unscathed in previous hurricanes now sit under five feet of water. "I don't know who's calling this a Category 1, but this is no Category 1," Nungesser said. "My house has more damage than it did during Katrina." More on the situation in Plaquemines, and beyond: The parish's levees range from 8.5 feet to 12 feet in height. The Army Corps of Engineers estimates the storm surge hit 12.5 feet, but have yet to confirm a breach. This implies the levees, which are not part of the federal levee system, failed, reports the Times-Picayune. While the director of Plaquemines Parish's emergency preparedness says winds may have hit 110mph, CNN reports that Isaac has weakened a bit since, with maximum sustained winds of 75mph (the hurricane threshold is 74mph). As of about 10:30am ET, Isaac's center was located about 50 miles south-southwest of New Orleans. The AP reports that 500,000 are without power in the areas around New Orleans. In Southern Mississippi, a tornado warning has been issued.
– In a tragic turn of events, two English children from the same family have died after contracting E. coli, the BBC reports. The kids, whose names and ages haven't been released, lived in the Charnwood area of Leicestershire. They died from haemolytic uraemic syndrome, a complication of E. coli that affects the kidneys. Public Health England is reportedly searching for the "source of infection" and have taken samples from the family's home. While officials tell the BBC that they are not treating the cases as an E. coli outbreak, the Telegraph notes that there "are fears of a wider outbreak." There are hundreds of E. coli cases across the UK each year, according to the paper, but fatalities are uncommon. "People can be reassured that E. coli is a relatively rare infection, a health official says, adding that "Good hygiene for all and supervised hand hygiene for small children is essential" to prevent infections. In the US, there was a recent E. coli outbreak linked to ground beef. Colorado meatpacker Cargill Meat Solutions last month recalled more than 132,000 pounds of ground beef after one person died and 17 were sickened. And this month, JBS Tolleson recalled 6.5 million pounds of ground beef after at least 57 people in 16 states were contracted salmonella.
– The New York Police Department has a new deputy commissioner, and he's already on a mission. Michael Julian intends to cut down cursing among New York's cops, the New York Post reports. One reason for that: 30% of complaints against cops "involve a curse word," Julian says. "It’s all about a New York attitude. New Yorkers like to curse," he notes. "But you can change. And when we teach them …They will see that they are doing it for effect and they don’t have to do it anymore." Julian, who's the head of police training, says ending cursing is "not that hard," Capital New York reports. "Commanders have done it in their own precincts, so that’s an easy one, the language." Julian is also fighting to reduce the use of "unnecessary force," he says. "New York City cops are not brutal. You don’t see the Rodney-King-type force, (but) you see the extra kick and the punch," he notes. "They have to get in control of their emotions and the adrenaline."
– More legal trouble for the San Francisco 49ers' Aldon Smith: The linebacker-defensive end was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport yesterday for indicating he had a bomb, reports ESPN. Police say Smith became belligerent and uncooperative after being selected for secondary screening and was arrested in the gate area after making a comment suggesting he was in possession of a bomb. Smith—who was busted for drunk driving last September and still faces weapons charges from a party-turned-shootout at his home in 2012—could face up to a year in prison if found guilty of making a false bomb report. Another airline passenger ended up being hauled off a plane in handcuffs yesterday after trying to open a door midair on a Chicago-to-Sacramento flight, forcing it to make an emergency landing in Omaha, reports the AP. Witnesses say the man had been acting strangely throughout the flight and was tackled and restrained by other passengers after attempting to pry the door open. "Some gentleman just decided that he wanted us to visit the Lord today, and decided to open up the back hatch of Southwest Airlines flight while we were already up in the air," one passenger tells KABC.
– The white, reflective surface of Greenland's snowpack is getting darker and less reflective, all thanks to what the Christian Science Monitor calls "positive feedback loops"—the idea that a little bit of melting leads to more and faster melting. "We knew that these processes had been happening," says Columbia professor Marco Tedesco, lead author of a new study in the journal Cryosphere. "What’s new is the acceleration of the darkening, which started in 1996." In fact, parts of Greenland may actually be 10% darker—technically it is losing its "albedo," or reflectivity—by the end of the century, researchers predict. "It's a train running downhill, and the hill is getting steeper," Tedesco says. So what happened in 1996? One likely culprit is the natural change in atmospheric circulation called the North Atlantic Oscillation, in which summer atmospheric conditions "favored more incoming solar radiation and warmer, moist air from the south," Tedesco writes in Columbia's Earth Institute. This melting brought impurities such as soot from previous melts to the surface, making it darker and, in turn, prone to melting even faster. And because individual ice grains tend to get larger when snow melts and refreezes, less light scatters across those larger surfaces and more is absorbed, reports Gizmodo. This effect appears strongest in the infrared range the human eye cannot see but was found in satellite images. When the atmospheric conditions naturally shifted back in 2013, the damage had already been done, with the ice sheet more vulnerable to melting. (Check out how old the soil is under some parts of Greenland's ice pack.)
– George Zimmerman is constantly on the move and in the news. It's been nearly three years since he shot unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin to death in Sanford, Fla., and his speaking engagements and meetings with attorneys afford him no more than a month in any given state. The Orlando Sentinel recently caught up with him at a gun show and reports that the 30-year-old is in debt, constantly under attack on Twitter, and carries a semi-automatic handgun for extra protection but that he refuses to use an alias because, he says, "I'm not able to lie." Zimmerman continues to pop in and out of the news. Late last year he made headlines when bids on eBay for his "first hand painted artwork" hit nearly $100,000, reports the Miami Herald. A few months prior, his estranged wife—who'd just filed for divorce—called 911 saying he'd threatened her with a gun, but she never followed up with charges. Not long after that, he was arrested on domestic violence charges, which his girlfriend ultimately dropped. (Earlier this month, a driver in Florida called police saying Zimmerman had threatened to shoot him dead when overcome by road rage.)
– The bad news about acetaminophen just keeps on coming: A new study finds that use of the drug during pregnancy is linked to "ADHD-like behavioral problems" in children, CNN reports. The Danish study looked at data from more than 64,000 children and found that those who had prenatal exposure to acetaminophen had a 13% higher risk of exhibiting ADHD-like behaviors, a 29% higher risk of being prescribed ADHD medication, and a 37% higher risk of receiving a diagnosis of hyperkinetic disorder, a severe form of ADHD, USA Today reports. The risk increased the later in pregnancy the drug was taken and the longer it was taken. Women who used acetaminophen for 20 weeks or longer had a 50% higher chance of their children being prescribed ADHD medication. But the authors did not find a cause-and-effect relationship, and they note that "exhibiting ADHD-like behaviors" is not the same as actually having ADHD. Right now, doctors consider acetaminophen the "safest" pain reliever for pregnant women, NBC News reports; the study author says pregnant women "shouldn't worry at this point." What could account for the link? The authors think acetaminophen may interfere with key maternal hormones that impact fetal brain development. Another recent study also found that frequent acetaminophen use during pregnancy was linked with a 70% higher risk of behavioral problems in children.
– Parents are often told to swaddle their newborn babies in order to help them sleep, but a new analysis of studies finds that the practice may increase the risk of SIDS, the New York Times reports. Researchers looked at four studies that examined a total of 760 cases of sudden infant death syndrome, and found that swaddling (wrapping a baby tightly in a blanket in order to simulate the feeling of being in the womb, AOL reports) increased the risk for SIDS by about a third overall. Of the babies who died of SIDS, 17% were swaddled. The biggest risk was in babies asleep on their stomachs. It was less risky for those sleeping on their sides, and the least risky for those sleeping on their backs. Swaddling makes it more difficult for a baby to move, so a baby on his stomach may be more at risk if he is swaddled and his face is pushed into the mattress. The current recommendation is for parents to place babies on their backs to sleep, and the researchers say this is even more important if the baby is swaddled. The researchers also found the risk increased as the age of the babies increased, and as the study notes, it was greatest for babies older than six months—"babies start to roll over between four and six months, and that point may be the best time to stop" swaddling, the lead author says. As for babies swaddled and then put to sleep on their backs, researchers did find a "small but significant risk" of SIDS, the Atlantic reports, and that's likely related to babies who were put to sleep on their backs swaddled, but then rolled over.
– Harper Lee is apparently as litigious as she is reclusive. The To Kill a Mockingbird author has, in the Guardian's words, "shocked" her hometown of Monroeville, Ala., by suing its local museum. The 87-year-old's accusation: that the nonprofit is making use of her fame without compensation. The trademark infringement lawsuit, filed Oct. 15, calls out the Monroe County Heritage Museum's website and gift shop sales of Mockingbird-branded goods. The museum says that shop rakes in a measly $28,000 annually, which funds a few "pitifully paid" employees, and that it has sold such goods for two decades, reports AL.com. But the suit accuses the museum of taking advantage of the book, and cites its web URL as example: tokillamockingbird.com. Just 30,000 visitors head to the museum annually, and it warns that the suit could prove its undoing. Making the story even more contentious: Locals aren't sure if Lee is actually the driver of the suit, and the museum suspects her "handlers" are taking advantage of her declining health. More confusing still, the suit suggests the museum is exploiting her health by committing bolder trademark violations, notes AL.com. Lee is deaf and nearly blind, and currently living in an assisted-living facility in Monroeville. The Guardian doesn't exactly make clear who is believed to be the driver, but floats one name: Tonya Carter, a lawyer married to Truman Capote's cousin (a longtime friend of Lee's). Many believe Lee handed Carter power of attorney, though the Guardian could find no paper trail proving that.
– The stat is remarkable: Every three hours in the US, a child swallows a battery and risks potentially lethal consequences, per the Washington Post. Now, however, a clever fix is in sight, thanks to origami. MIT researchers have unveiled a tiny robot that, once ingested, unfolds inside the body to retrieve batteries or other foreign objects. They've demonstrated how it works in a synthetic stomach, with tests on live animals on deck. Research on the device is still in the early stages, but it could theoretically be used to patch wounds inside the stomach as well, the scientists say in a press release. "It's really exciting to see our small origami robots doing something with potential important applications to health care," says MIT's Daniela Rus. The Post notes that the robot's structural material had to be highly safe, meaning "sharp chips" were out. "We spent a lot of time at Asian markets and the Chinatown market looking for materials," says one researcher, and they ended up going with dried pig intestine. (The Verge wonders about a vegan version.) The robot is encapsulated in ice; upon being swallowed and melting, it opens up to move along like an "inch-worm," explains CNET. Scientists are able to control its movement via magnetic fields, and it can "swim" in the stomach's fluids—"20% of [its] forward motion is by propelling water," per the release. In the demonstration, the robot's attached magnet allowed it to latch onto a battery and remove it. (The concept of origami holds the promise of creating inexpensive robots.)
– Starting in October 2016, Ford will no longer produce vehicles in Australia, the company says. "Our costs are double that of Europe and nearly four times Ford in Asia," says Ford Australia CEO Bob Graziano. Facing struggling sales and citing high wages, the firm will close its two plants in Victoria state, Reuters reports. The move will cut 1,200 jobs, the Wall Street Journal adds, noting that the company has made cars in the country since 1925. Last month, a strong Australian dollar pushed General Motors' Aussie operation to announce it would slash 500 jobs.
– Because politics. Because science. Because money. Remember when you'd need an "of" in these sentences? No longer, because Internet-speak, writes Megan Garber in the Atlantic. In short, the Internet has turned "because" into its own preposition (as language expert Stan Carey has pointed out). For example, the sun's turning upside down, but don't worry, "because science," the UK's Metro notes. Or "skipping lunch today because sleep," says a Twitter user. Or a politician will win "because R-Oklahoma," points out Wonkette. There are a number of theories as to how the "prepositional-because" or "because-noun" began. Memes featured it as far back as 2001 ("because f--- you"). It could be derived from the phrase, "because, hey, (insert noun here)," says linguist Neal Whitman. For instance: The politician will win "because, hey, R-Oklahoma." Or maybe it's tied to parents telling their kids no, just "because." What's clearer is why the "prepositional-because" has taken off: It "maximizes efficiency and irony in equal measure," Garber writes. Click for the full piece.
– Prosecutors are out to put Lindsay Lohan back behind bars after she blew off her community service. Lohan has never shown up at an LA coroner's office, where she was supposed to work 120 hours, and rarely appeared at a women's shelter, where she was required to put in 360 hours. The time was mandated as part of Lohan's probation on a drunken driving and theft charge. "She was terminated from the women's center program for failing to show up. This was one of the terms of her probation. So we will seek jail time for her," a spokesman for the city attorney told the Los Angeles Times. As of last week, she has worked only 12 of the mandated 480 hours, according to a spokeswoman. Lohan arranged to switch her shelter service to the Red Cross and she performed community service there "pretty much every day last week," her publicist explained to the New York Daily News. Lohan tweeted just days ago: "I am working hard and fulfilling my obligations every single day, to the court as well as myself. If I travel, it's for work and it's been approved. I'd appreciate it if people will just let me do what is asked of me, so that I can get my life back." Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner today reviews Lohan's probation progress.
– Interviews with Donald Trump and related stories about him and his policies are in full supply two days before he takes office. A sampling: The Washington Post has a feature on Trump's life in Trump Tower: He "rarely leaves, not even for a breath of fresh air," and generally stays surrounded by a close circle of family and advisers. Despite his regular tweets, Trump doesn't use email and almost never surfs the internet, but he does have one unusual access point: He answers his own cellphone, "something that acquaintances and colleagues speak of in almost reverential terms." Read the profile here. Axios has an interview with Trump, and the interviewers write that the president-elect "seemed moved" by his intel briefings. "I've had a lot of briefings that are very … I don't want to say 'scary,' because I'll solve the problems. But … we have some big enemies out there." Read it in full here. The Wall Street Journal also interviewed Trump, and it had real-world implications: "The dollar tumbled to its lowest level in a month after Donald Trump suggested ... he favored a weaker dollar, breaking with decades of tradition and intensifying investor concern over the incoming administration’s capacity to surprise." Read it here. In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times Magazine, Joe Biden sounds worried about Trump's shifting foreign policy pronouncements. "It's like a Rubik's cube trying to figure this guy out," he says. "We have no freakin' idea what he's going to do." Read it in full here. Trump will enter office with only about half of his Cabinet in place. Politico takes a look here. Trump also will enter office as the most unpopular president in at least 40 years (see ABC News), while President Obama exits with his approval ratings at an all-time high (see CNN). The Hill looks ahead and sees five areas where Trump and Democrats can make progress, including a possible boost in minimum wage. The list is here. See Friday's inauguration schedule here.
– Don't like the idea of the NSA spying on your phone calls and emails? In the Washington Post, Timothy B. Lee offers five ways for you to protect yourself: Tor: This Internet browser lets you remain anonymous, and does not reveal your IP address or other identifiers. One fan: NSA whistleblower himself, Edward Snowden. Silent Circle: This Internet phone app is thought to be "impervious to wiretapping, even by the NSA," Lee writes. OTR: Even your chat logs may be available to the NSA via PRISM, but if you use this chat extension (its name is short for "off the record"), the server will only see an encrypted version of your chat. One caveat: Both chatters need to be using software that supports OTR. Click for Lee's complete list. (Or, if you want to anonymously leak to the media, check out a how-to guide.)
– Joe Miller's fight to keep Alaska's Senate race alive ended with 2010. After nearly 2 months of working full-time on legal challenges to Lisa Murkowski's write-in victory, the Republican nominee told supporters yesterday that he plans no further action, Politico reports. Murkowski had been officially certified as winner the day before. Miller said he hadn't conceded to her personally. “I have not called her. In fact, I don't have her number," he told CNN. Miller, whose appeals went as far as Alaska's Supreme Court, says he still disagrees with the rulings against him but he won't appeal the case to federal courts. The time has come "to accept the practical realities of our current legal circumstances," he told supporters. Miller says he doesn't believe the drawn-out battle has hurt him politically and he intends to keep fighting for Tea Party issues, although he has no immediate plans for the future apart from a family trip to Disneyland.
– Standing nearly as tall as an elephant, the aurochs grazed for 250,000 years until its extinction in 1627. But its story may not end there: Scientists say they are close to resurrecting the "supercow," once the largest land mammal in Europe, reports CNN. In search of herbivores to maintain land areas at risk of becoming barren, geneticists began breeding aurochs descendants with similar cattle breeds in 2008 and found they could "produce animals far closer to the aurochs than we would have expected," says Ronald Goderie of the Tauros Project. Fourth-generation beasts have now been introduced in Croatia, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and Romania, with promising results. "We see progress not only in looks and behavior but also in de-domestication of the animals," says Goderie, noting one herd has learned to defend itself against wolves. The hope is that they will become part of the ecosystem to maintain land for other animals. But a rep for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature says it's unclear "whether primarily wetland forests like the aurochs used to inhabit still exist, whether it could negatively impact wild or domestic plants or animals, and if it might endanger people." Indeed, a British farmer had to kill some of his aurochs-descended cattle in 2015 because they tried to kill him, per the Independent. That species, however, came from a Nazi breeding program that used Spanish fighting cattle. (Tinder could save giant pandas from extinction.)
– The Vatican defended Pope Benedict's handling of long-ago abuse cases, lashed out at the New York Times for coverage “deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness,” and said the pontiff actually deserved praise instead of condemnation. “We owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors,” wrote a cardinal in a statement on the Vatican website. In Think Progress, meanwhile, Igor Volsky takes the Catholic League to task for calling the problem a "homosexual crisis" instead of a "pedophilia crisis" in a full-page ad. "What the Catholic League is trying to do is imply that there is a connection between homosexuality and molestation, just like segregationists once accused African Americans of raping white women, and Jews were accused of murdering Christian babies."
– Leigh Ann Arthur taught in Union, SC, for 13 years. Then her decision to leave her unlocked phone on her desk on Feb. 19 put an end to her career. While she was on hall patrol duty for five minutes in between classes, the engineering and computer programming teacher at Union County Career and Technical Center says a 16-year-old student grabbed her phone and found a nude photo she had taken for her husband for Valentine's Day, per NBC News and WSPA. "He took pictures from his cell phone of that and then he told the whole class that he would send them to whoever wanted them," Arthur tells WSPA. After class, the student told her, "Your day of reckoning is coming," Arthur says. It was only later she found out the photo had been seen. The student indeed shared the photo through texts and on social media, superintendent David Eubanks tells WYFF, adding Arthur was given the choice to resign or go through a process for dismissal. She resigned last Tuesday. "I think we have a right to privacy, but when we take inappropriate information or pictures, we had best make sure it remains private," Eubanks tells the State. Arthur says the student hasn't been punished. She plans to press charges and has also complained to the Union Public Safety Department, which is investigating. "The whole premise of my privacy being invaded is being ignored and that's what's wrong," she says. Some 1,000 people have signed a petition to have her job restored, though Arthur says she's not sure if she'd take it. (In neighboring North Carolina, teenagers are the ones facing trouble over racy photos.)
– Keith Papini says his wife suffered "both intense physical agony and severe mental torture" while held captive for 22 days, and anyone spreading "disgusting" rumors "should be ashamed of their malicious, subhuman behavior." In a statement to ABC News, the husband of Sherri Papini—who flagged down a motorist in Yolo County, Calif., on Thanksgiving after disappearing Nov. 2—says he felt "horror and elation" when he first saw his wife at a hospital. "Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see … nor the details of the true hell I was about to hear," he says. Sherri—weighing just 87 pounds—had been branded; was covered in bruises, burns, and rashes; her nose was broken; and her hair was chopped off, he says. Hours earlier, Papini had been "thrown from a vehicle with a chain around her waist, attached to her wrists and a bag over her head," Keith Papini says. She used the bag to flag down a motorist after freeing one of her hands, he adds. Some will believe the abduction was "some sort of hoax, plan to gain money, or some fabricated race war," but "I do not see a purpose in addressing each preposterous lie," he says. Sheriff Tom Bosenko—who has confirmed that disparaging comments about Hispanics were posted online under Papini's maiden name—also confirmed details of Papini's condition to ABC News. He adds interviews with Papini are continuing to gain more information about her captors, described as two Hispanic women in a dark SUV. (Police earlier said Papini's story holds up.)
– President Obama is assuring Americans that there has been "extraordinarily close coordination" between state, local, and federal officials in the response to Hurricane Sandy, he said in a press conference this afternoon. But "millions of people are going to be affected," he cautioned. "The most important message that I have for the public right now is please listen to what your state and local officials are saying. When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate." At the end of the press conference, a reporter asked what impact the storm might have on the election. "I am not worried at this point about the impact on the election, I'm worried about the impact on families," first responders, the economy, and transportation, Obama said. "The election will take care of itself next week." Of course, lots of people are worried about the impact on the election. Slate points to a study showing that the public tends to "punish the incumbent for so-called acts of God." Nate Silver reads the studies differently, saying they indicate that a well-run response can help an incumbent. But the storm, he notes, will also wreak havoc on polling.
– Something to ponder about the origins of your seafood: A new report commissioned by food giant Nestle finds that most seafood workers in Thailand—the world's biggest exporter of shrimp—are migrants from Cambodia or Myanmar brought into the country illegally by traffickers and sold to boat captains, who force them to work 16-hour days, seven days a week, reports the New York Times. As expected with such a schedule, they suffer chronic sleep deprivation. They also work in hazardous conditions and face physical and verbal abuse from captains, who withhold their personal documents, the report notes, per CNNMoney. "Sometimes, the net is too heavy, and workers get pulled into the water and just disappear," a Burmese worker says in the report. "When someone dies, he gets thrown into the water." The revelations don't stop there. The report also finds workers—including child workers—have an inadequate supply of water and limited access to medical care. Some toil for over a year before getting paid, while others are charged fees that leave them in debt. Nestle—which is facing a lawsuit claiming its Fancy Feast cat food comes from slave labor—acknowledges that seafood caught under these conditions ends up in its supply chain. But "virtually all companies sourcing seafood in the Thai seafood sector are exposed to the same risks," it says. The company, which encountered similar labor complaints regarding its chocolate business in 2001, has issued an action plan to cut down on abuse, which includes a way for workers to make complaints and training for boat captains, per Bloomberg.
– President Obama is considering overriding a congressional ban on bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the US in an effort to close the Cuban prison, the Wall Street Journal reports. Lawmakers are strongly against the move, which "would ignite a political firestorm, even if it's the best resolution for the Guantanamo problem," a law professor explains. You might recall that a previous use of executive power could soon see the president sued. But White House officials say Obama is "unwavering in his commitment" to move Gitmo's 149 inmates and close the prison's doors, something the president apparently sees as key to his legacy. What will Obama do? Well, he has two options, the Journal points out. One: He vetoes the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes the ban on transferring detainees to the US, after the midterm elections. Two: He signs the bill but argues the ban infringes on his powers as commander in chief. While officials won't say to which US facilities the prisoners would shift—the Journal reports Charleston's military brig seems likely—Obama will likely lessen the blow by moving some of the 79 detainees cleared for transfer to places outside the US; Estonia, for example, has already agreed to accept one prisoner, and other European countries are willing. That isn't likely to please many, however. The most recent Gallup poll on the issue finds 66% of Americans want Guantanamo to stay open.
– Although high school students in the US might view taking the SAT or ACT as an ordeal, those college entrance exams have nothing on China’s gaokao, a grueling two-day, nine-hour test that Chinese students spend years preparing for. This year, an estimated 9.75 million students will take the test, notes Reuters, and less than 1% will do well enough to earn a spot in one of China’s premier universities, reports the New York Times. Now, the University of New Hampshire plans to cull some of that talent. The school has announced that it will accept scores from the Chinese exam on entrance applications, making it the first "flagship" state school in the US to do so. But submitting the gaokao results will not be the only test criteria. Students will also be required to take an English test, participate in a video interview and send their high school transcripts, reports the BBC, and they may still need to take the SAT or ACT exam. If admitted they would pay out-of-state tuition and housing costs of more than $45,000 a year. A few private institutions in the US as well as dozens of universities in Europe, Australia, and Canada already accept gaokao results on applications. The University of San Francisco has an early admissions program that allows June test takers to enroll in the fall semester, based on their grades, gaokao score, and personal interview in English. Not everyone is a fan of the gaokao. Critics say the test emphasizes memorization over creativity, but University of San Francisco president Paul J. Fitzgerald notes that the gaokao can assess a student’s determination to work “hard and consistently.” (She called a Texas standardized test a "big baloney sandwich.")
– You have one of six possible variations of the APOE gene, having inherited one variant—e2, e3, or e4—from each parent. Reporting in the journal Neuron, University of Hawaii researchers found that the brain development of children as young as preschool age with two copies of e4 or one of e4 and one of e2 seem most adversely affected—an intriguing find in light of previous research that has linked the e4 variant to Alzheimer's. Researchers scanned the brains of 1,187 healthy people between the ages of 3 and 20 and found, for instance, that the size of the hippocampus tends to be smaller in those with the e2/e4 combination. They also found some kids with e4 didn't perform as well on tests of memory, though they caught up with their peers by age 10, reports HealthDay News. And while brain researcher Rebecca Knickmeyer, who didn't participate in the study but wrote an accompanying editorial, says the variants aren't necessarily predictive and people shouldn't start testing their kids, the research suggests that Alzheimer's may in fact be a developmental disorder, not strictly an aging one, reports the Los Angeles Times. That raises the possibility that adjustments to "diet or cognitive training" early on could change someone's "trajectory," per Knickmeyer. Three in four people have at least one copy of e3, which seems to offer a protective effect. About 14% of people have an e4 variant, which has been linked with an elevated risk of Alzheimer's, but Knickmeyer points out that there are many Alzheimer's patients without e4, and many with e4 who never develop Alzheimer's. (Some research suggests that memories lost to Alzheimer's are actually retrievable.)
– Scout Willis spent Tuesday walking around Manhattan, sans top, while a professional photographer followed her around taking pictures, which Willis then tweeted with the hashtag #freethenipple. Why? She's mad at Instagram. Willis, Bruce and Demi's 22-year-old kid, had one of her photos removed by the picture-sharing site last week because it included two topless models, which Instagram said violated its community guidelines. So Willis started sharing all sorts of pictures of breasts and changed her middle name on the site to "Areola" (sic), though you can't see that right now because her account is disabled, the Daily Dot reports. She then took to Twitter, posting pictures of her topless stroll with the captions "Legal in NYC but not on @instagram" and "What @Instagram won’t let you see." It is legal for women to be topless in public in New York City, though the Daily Dot notes that they are still sometimes arrested for it, and Free the Nipple is a documentary about the fight against the city's censorship laws. People notes that Willis' crusade comes after Rihanna's Instagram account was taken down after she posted topless photos from a magazine shoot, and Gawker adds that Willis' current Twitter avatar is one of those photos. Click to see Willis' topless photos.
– A Houston couple was disturbed to hear a stranger in their 2-year-old daughter's room Saturday. The man, who had a European-sounding accent, was making lewd comments ("wake up, you little slut") and called both the toddler and the parents names including "effing moron" and "bitch." But he wasn't actually in the room—he had apparently hacked the wireless IP camera that was being used as a baby monitor, which dad Marc Gilbert quickly disconnected. In what he calls "somewhat of a blessing," Gilbert's little girl is deaf, and never woke up throughout the ordeal. "If she had heard it it would have been a big problem." The hacker appeared to be controlling the IP cam; that apparently allowed him to learn the baby's name (it appears on the wall of her room), which he said aloud, WTVR reports. "I don’t think it ever will be connected again. I think we are going to go without the baby monitor now," her dad tells ABC News, adding that he is publicizing his story so other parents are aware of the danger. Based on ABC's footage, Forbes thinks the Gilberts were using a Foscam wireless camera, which it notes were found to have security vulnerabilities recently. KWCH has some basic security tips for nervous parents.
– It took a while, but presidential son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner has received his permanent security clearance, reports the New York Times. Kushner had been stripped of his top-level clearance in February as the White House tightened policy in the wake of the Rob Porter scandal, notes CNN. But the FBI recently completed its background check into Kushner's financial history and foreign business dealings and found no red flags, reports the Washington Post. "As we stated before, his application was properly submitted, reviewed by numerous career officials and underwent the normal process," says Kushner attorney Abbe Lowell. "Having completed all of these processes, he’s looking forward to continuing to do the work the president has asked him to do.” Lowell also revealed that Kushner has voluntarily sat for two long interviews with Robert Mueller's team, answering questions about Michael Flynn and Kushner's work on the campaign and in the White House.
– French MP Véronique Massonneau was addressing the National Assembly in Paris when she was interrupted by the sound of a colleague clucking like a chicken. Massonneau, a member of the green party Europe Ecology, eventually turned to conservative MP Philippe Le Ray and said, "That's enough. Stop that, I'm not a hen!" according to the International Business Times. But as her speech on pension reform continued, Le Ray kept clucking, and eventually the assembly president had to put a stop to it. The BBC explains that the word "chicken" can be a derogatory term for a female in France. Critics have been railing against the apparent sexism. Le Ray was fined 25% of his monthly salary, and he called Massonneau to apologize, but she did not accept. During the incident, she says, "I think he was drunk."
– Male bass are experiencing unwanted sex changes, apparently thanks to the "chemical soups" that pass for waterways in the Northeast. The Washington Post reports 85% of male smallmouth bass surveyed in the region have "characteristics of the opposite sex"—specifically eggs where their testes should be. The same is true of 27% of area largemouth bass, Vice adds. For a recently published study, researchers tested bass near 19 wildlife refuges in the Northeast, according to a US Geological Survey press release. Researchers didn't do a chemical analysis of the water where the intersex fish were found, so they can't be sure specifically what is causing the sex changes. But they suspect the problem is things that get dumped down drains and into US waters. Researchers believe the likely culprits are birth control pills, pesticides, hormones in livestock manure, and other chemical-heavy products, according to the press release. Vice reports those products contain estrogen, which can produce dramatic effects even at very low levels. But this isn't just a problem in the Northeast. Up to 90% of male smallmouth bass in parts of West Virginia are intersex, and increasing sex changes have been noted in nearly 40 fish species around the world going back 20 years, according to the Post. Study author Luke Iwanowicz calls these fish "the canary in the coal mine." "We are looking at fish but, of course, there is that concern that, if this stuff is in the water, it can be affecting other wildlife," he tells Vice. (A hermaphrodite cat got gender assignment surgery this year.)
– A convoluted story out of New Jersey, where police have charged Paul Caneiro with aggravated arson in connection with a fire at his own home—one that the Asbury Park Press reports occurred seven hours before a fatal fire at his brother's mansion. Around 5am Tuesday, firefighters responded to Paul Caneiro's Ocean Township home and put out flames on the roof. Around 12:30pm, fire broke out at brother Keith Caneiro's home 12 miles away in Colts Neck, where police say a quadruple homicide occurred: Keith Caneiro, 50—found on the front lawn with a gunshot wound that didn't appear to be self-inflicted, per NJ.com—died along with his wife, 45-year-old Jennifer Caneiro, and their son and daughter, who were found inside, a law enforcement source tells the Asbury Park Press. The New York Times describes both children as under the age of 10. The brothers appear to have been close. Born in Brooklyn, they shared a Staten Island address for more than a decade before moving to New Jersey with their wives, per NJ.com. They would take up separate abodes: Paul in a single-family home on Tilton Drive in suburban Ocean Township, Keith in a $1.5 million mansion in upscale Colts Neck, home to celebrities like Bruce Springsteen. But Paul would still work for Keith— owner of EcoStar Pest Management and apparent web development company Square One—who also served as his best man. "They're wonderful people," says a neighbor of Paul, who saw family members Tuesday outside the house believed to have suffered damage to its back and attic, per the Times. "It's pretty shocking stuff." An earlier version of this story erroneously reported Paul Caneiro as being charged in the Colts Neck fire. (More on the case here.)
– A baby boy is reportedly in good condition after he was found, cold, wet, and purple-faced in a Houston apartment building's trash. Maintenance worker Carlos Michel discovered the newborn after hearing sounds coming from a blue Dumpster yesterday morning, the Houston Chronicle reports. "I almost had a heart attack," he says. He stepped on a bucket and looked over the trash bags; the baby was in one, upside down alongside homework and leftover food, Fox News reports. "He was cold. Maybe hours old," Michel says, per MyFox Houston. Michel wrapped the boy in his shirt and warmed him in a pickup truck; the child never opened his eyes before paramedics rushed him to the hospital, Michel says. Child Protective Services will take custody of the baby, born to a 16-year-old girl who acknowledged putting him in the Dumpster, though details haven't been released. She was also hospitalized. Texas, notes the Chronicle, has a "Moses law" that allows parents to surrender newborns without fear of repercussions. It's not yet clear whether the mother will face charges.
– Both Taylor Swift and Katy Perry have had difficult breakups with John Mayer, but Swift insists the story behind a vitriolic song on her upcoming 1989 album "wasn't even about a guy! It had to do with business," she says in an interview with Rolling Stone. Technically, "Bad Blood" might not even be about Katy Perry—Swift demurred from naming names when talking about the song—but by piecing together lyrical and situational clues, BuzzFeed claims "it's not hard to figure out who she's talking about." The song, which Swift tells Rolling Stone wasn't meant "to create some gossip-fest," talks about a fellow female performing artist who for years insulted and sabotaged Swift, including by "[trying] to hire a bunch of people out from under me" and "sabotage an entire arena tour," Swift says. BuzzFeed speculates she could be talking about three backup dancers who reportedly ditched Swift for Perry last year—and E! notes that Perry tweeted today, "Watch out for the Regina George in sheep's clothing...," a Mean Girls reference that could be a hint that Perry is indeed the song's subject. "For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not," Swift says in Rolling Stone of her unnamed colleague. "[Then] she did something so horrible. I was like, 'Oh, we're just straight-up enemies.'" As for why she wrote the song, Swift says, "I'm surprisingly non-confrontational—you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It's awkward." But, she adds, "Sometimes the lines in a song are lines you wish you could text-message somebody in real life. I would just be constantly writing all these zingers—like, 'Burn. That would really get her.'" The album is due out in October.
– Apparently Baywatch should have stayed off the big screen. Though audiences appear to mildly enjoy director Seth Gordon's big-screen revamp, giving it a 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, critics are drowning it in bad reviews for a 19% rating. Here's what they're saying: "A Baywatch movie needn't be high art—its TV inspiration certainly wasn't—but did it have to be this inane?" asks Brian Lowry at CNN. He claims you'd have about as much luck finding a lost item buried in sand as you would finding a laugh in this movie. As for those beach babes, they're "skimpy compensation to justify a water-logged trip back to the beach that, the Rock notwithstanding, sinks like a stone." It works for the first half-hour or so thanks to Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson's "playful chemistry," but then it starts to drown. And sadly, "Baywatch can't rescue itself from a puddle," writes Adam Graham at Detroit News. It "wants to be smart-dumb, but winds up being dumb-dumb … a few funnies, some tanned, toned bodies and a half-baked plot." But then, this is Baywatch. "What did you expect?" Yes, it's "lightweight, a tiny bit crude and a trillion grains of sand away from anything approaching realism. But it's also a lot of fun," Stephanie Zacharek writes at Time. The jokes—which are, perhaps surprisingly, not made at the expense of female characters—are "plain dumb," but still generate a laugh, she writes. Plus, it's hard not to enjoy all the beautiful people. "You could do worse," Zacharek concludes. Bruce Demara wholeheartedly disagrees. This is a movie for "immature, socially maladjusted males." For everyone else, "even sand in your shorts would be less annoying," he writes at the Toronto Star. There's no true connection to the TV series, the plot is ridiculous, the scenes are too long, and the actors … well, Efron "is just plain bad," and even Johnson is "not particularly appealing," Demara writes. "Give this one a pass."
– A 43-year-old car-crash victim in Italy who fell into a "minimally conscious state" to the point where he could no longer speak suddenly started chatting again after receiving a sedative, LiveScience reports. A study published in November in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience said it's the first case showing "the 'awakening' effect of midazolam," a drug typically used to induce sleepiness before surgery. The man was in a coma for 40 days after his accident, then a "vegetative state" for four weeks. He was discharged after 10 months, but his condition worsened: Two years after the accident he couldn't say a single word or respond to simple commands and was performing "aimless repetitive behaviors" like clapping. Doctors treated him with various meds to no avail but then gave him midazolam instead of the usual propofol (the same drug that killed Michael Jackson) before a CT scan. The man suddenly "began to interact with the anesthetist," then with others, the study notes. The effect wore off after two hours, but doctors were able to replicate the results during a second midazolam dosage. The study notes that patients with catatonia (a state of unresponsiveness they're not sure this man suffered from) have responded to this drug before. Because midazolam can only be used in a hospital setting, doctors switched the patient over to carbamazepine (an epilepsy drug), which has since helped the man "maintain the improvement of his ability to interact and communicate with people," a study co-author tells LiveScience. Interestingly, zolpidem (often sold under the brand name Ambien) has been "well documented in literature" as evoking response in similar patients, but it didn't work this time, the study notes. (Midazolam has also been cited in botched executions.)
– Tuesday was "Make America Work Again" day at the Republican National Convention, though there was easily as much talk about Hillary Clinton as there was about the US economy. Still, the convention seemed to run far more smoothly than on Monday—it was as if they "had brought in an entirely new team of organizers," according to Politico—and the GOP was unified enough to deal with the matter of choosing its nominee. Among the winners in another eventful day at the Quicken Loans Arena: Donald Trump. New York state's delegation put Trump over the top, making him the official GOP nominee 13 months after he launched what was seen as a long-shot bid. He "did the unthinkable on Tuesday night. And, whether you like him or hate him, he deserves a massive amount of credit for that," writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post. Donald Trump Jr. He "brought down the house" with a speech that put him on the national stage and added a personal touch to his father's business successes, the Hill reports. It briefly looked like there might be a repeat of the Melania plagiarism controversy, but it quickly emerged that a Francis Buckley line in the speech had been put there by Buckley himself, a friend of Trump Jr.'s who worked on the speech with him. Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor may still be smarting from VP rejection, but the crowd loved how he denounced Clinton from the point of view of a former federal prosecutor. They chanted "Guilty!" and "Lock her up!" as Christie made the case against Clinton. Avocado growers. Discussion of jobs largely fell by the wayside, but soap opera actress Kimberlin Brown, who has an avocado farm in California, managed to deliver both an in-depth discussion of jobs and a passionate call to help US growers by restricting avocado imports, Politico reports. Among the losers: Party unity. Trump won the nomination, but some 721 delegates voted against him in the evening roll call, making it the most divided vote of its kind since the contested convention of 1976, the New York Times notes. Never Trump. The movement "succumbed to multiple causes of death" on Tuesday, with many rebels deciding they had no choice but to support the nominee, the AP reports. The Utah delegation announced that all its 40 votes were going to Ted Cruz, but they ended up going to Trump because Utah GOP rules require ballots to be cast for active candidates only. Paul Ryan. The House speaker has been trying to signal to party elites that he's uncomfortable with Trump and is "still the smart conservative they've come to love," but the balancing act fell apart on Tuesday, according to Dylan Matthews at Vox. "When the chips are down, when the nomination was being decided, Ryan was out there in front, pushing Trump forward," he writes. Ben Carson. He "quickly went off script—and not in a good way," writes Cillizza at the Post. His linking of Clinton to Lucifer via Saul Alinsky was a strange moment, writes Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fair, though since Carson has "accidentally" insulted Trump numerous times over the last few months, the campaign must have been relieved "that Carson's meandering thoughts went straight to hell, and not somewhere closer to home."
– At least 10 US sailors are missing after the USS John S. McCain collided with a tanker early Monday east of Singapore and the Strait of Malacca in the second collision involving a ship from the Navy's 7th Fleet in the Pacific in two months. The Navy says five other sailors were hurt in the collision involving the guided-missile destroyer, the AP reports. The McCain—named after Sen. John McCain's grandfather—was heading to Singapore for a routine port visit, the Navy says. It spent last week conducting a sensitive freedom of navigation operation by sailing near one of China's man-made islands in the South China Sea. It wasn't immediately clear if the oil and chemical tanker Alnic MC sustained damage or casualties. The McCain was damaged on its port side aft, or left rear, from the accident that happened at 5:24am, the Navy's 7th Fleet said, but it was heading to port under its own power. Malaysia's navy chief says two ships as well as aircraft from its navy and air force have been deployed to help look for the missing US sailors. Sen. McCain tweeted: "Cindy & I are keeping America's sailors aboard the USS John S McCain in our prayers tonight - appreciate the work of search & rescue crews." In June, seven sailors were killed when the USS Fitzgerald collided with a merchant vessel off the coast of Japan.
– The wife of Zimbabwe's president handed herself over to police in South Africa on Tuesday after being accused of assaulting a young woman Sunday night at an upscale Johannesburg hotel, South Africa's police minister said. Grace Mugabe was due to appear in court Tuesday afternoon, local news outlet eNCA reported. The 52-year-old is "not under arrest because she cooperated and handed herself over," Minister of Police Fikile Mbalula said in a video posted on eNCA. Gabriella Engels, 20, has accused Mugabe of assaulting her while she was visiting Mugabe's sons in a hotel room. She claims the first lady's bodyguards stood by and watched as Mugabe attacked her. Engels posted several photos on social media showing a gash in her forehead, which she calls a result of the alleged encounter, reports the AP. Engels told News24 she had no idea who Mugabe was when she walked into the room "with an extension cord and just started beating me with it. ... She flipped and just kept beating me with the plug." Engels claims the first lady accused her of living with her sons. "The investigation into this case has already reached an advanced stage," a police statement on Tuesday said. The BBC reports Mugabe was in the country to receive treatment for an ankle injury; she reportedly injured it in July when the presidential limo began to drive away as she was climbing in.
– As expected, murder charges were filed today against five men accused of brutally gang-raping a woman on a New Delhi bus. The sixth suspect, a teenager, will see his case handled separately. The men were also charged with rape and other crimes, a list expected to include kidnapping, robbery, and assault, the New York Times reports. The combination could result in the death penalty, which is rare in India. Also rare in India: The trial will be fast-tracked. (Click for more details that have leaked from the filing.) The father of the victim, who was a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, wants the men responsible—including the teen—to be hanged, Reuters reports. He also wants new sex crimes legislation named after his daughter, who has not been identified in accordance with Indian law. The BBC has a profile of her: She dreamed of building a hospital in her ancestral village to help people in the severely undeveloped region; she had wanted to become a doctor since childhood and saw education as the way to improve her family's situation; she studied at all hours. "She was brave, had no fear, and was full of life," says her father.
– There's a reason we don't typically call Earth's oldest person the oldest woman in the world—the oldest person is pretty much always a woman. In fact, just two of the world's 53 living supercentenarians (people 110 and older) are men, reports IFL Science. But why is the longevity gap so stark, and how long has it been so? An international team of researchers is investigating the lifespans of men and women born between 1800 and 1935 in 13 developed nations in search of answers, reports PhysOrg, and they've found that women's superior longevity only emerged recently. Before 1840, death rates were very similar between men and women. But since those rates began to plummet in 1880 thanks in large part to improved diets, vaccinations, and better health care, female death rates have dropped 70% faster than male ones, and heart disease seems to be holding men back the most, the researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Men may be more biologically susceptible to cardiovascular health problems, and their different weight distribution could play a role here, reports Live Science. The researchers plan to further explore the differences between male and female biology, genetics, and lifestyles to look for answers. (The oldest man in the US says his trick has been to enjoy a can of beer a day.)
– It may be a first-world problem—that little drip of wine that slides annoyingly down the neck of a bottle after it's been poured—but to one scientist, it was simply a physics challenge waiting to be overcome. Biophysicist Daniel Perlman at Brandeis University, an inventor with more than 100 patents under his probably well-designed belt, says he's solved the age-old problem by etching a small groove into the bottle itself, per Phys.org. (You can see a demonstration via this video.) To arrive at his solution, Perlman studied slow-mo videos of wine being poured, then calculated precisely how large of an edge would be required to catch the offending drip. The answer: 2mm wide, 1mm deep. Gizmos already are on the market to stop the spills, while sommeliers might use a napkin to deftly wipe the bottle after a pour, but Perlman wanted to simplify things. "I wanted to change the wine bottle itself," thus avoiding the need for an accessory, he says. Bloggers sound intrigued. The drip issue is a "pretty obvious" flaw that has been allowed to linger for as long as wine bottles have been made, complains a post at BGR. Another at Food & Wine notes that an industry-wide fix would likely raise manufacturing costs. "But innovation has swept through the beverage industry before—remember when not all cans were wide-mouths?—so maybe a drip-free future is within our reach." (How does neon-blue wine sound?)
– The problems with the Affordable Care Act have at least accomplished this much for candidates on the left: They now should know what job No. 1 is going forward, writes Alex Pareene at Salon. "The immediate priority—and progressives running for office in 2014 and 2016 should practice saying this out loud—is fixing Obamacare." He's talking about more than tech trouble, however. They need to address what he sees as other fundamental flaws with the ACA, including "coverage gaps, the ways insurance companies will continue to exploit people and rip them off, and the potential for the cost burden on middle-class people to grow." It's important that liberals acknowledge the problems and propose tangible solutions—like, say, federalizing Medicaid for those who live in states that haven't embraced ObamaCare—rather than simply getting defensive about it, he writes. Along those lines, conservative Rich Lowry writes in Politico that he's already tired of the "whining" he's hearing from Democrats about the new law and why things aren't working. "They insisted on this particular law, at this particular time. They own it. They own every canceled policy, every rate increase, every unintended consequence and every unpopular intended consequence. It is theirs, lock, stock and two smoking barrels." Click for Lowry's full column. Or click for Pareene's full column.
– TMZ has the scoop on why Selena Gomez was largely absent from the public eye over the summer—and it didn't have anything to do with Justin Bieber or any other petty drama that TMZ is often known for exposing. The singer revealed Thursday morning via an Instagram post that she hadn't been out promoting her new music because she was healing after a kidney transplant, which was necessitated by her lupus. The kidney donor shown holding hands with Gomez from their hospital beds in the accompanying pic: Francia Raisa, deemed Gomez's "best friend" by TMZ and other outlets. "There aren't words to describe how I can possibly thank my beautiful friend Francia Raisa," Gomez wrote. "She gave me the ultimate gift and sacrifice by donating her kidney to me." BuzzFeed and People note Gomez has been open in the past about her struggle with the chronic autoimmune disease, which can result in the inflammation of different organs, including the kidneys. That openness carried through on Instagram, where the 25-year-old not only posted the pic of herself and Raisa, but also a couple of images showing her post-surgery, including the scar she now sports across her abdomen. Gomez also included a link to the Lupus Research Alliance for those interested in more information about this "misunderstood" disease. "I am incredibly blessed," Gomez wrote on Instagram, adding to Raisa: "I love you so much sis."
– Google Fiber: It's not just in Kansas anymore. Google has announced 34 cities in nine metro areas—including San Jose, Atlanta, Nashville, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix—as possible destinations to expand its fiber-optic network, offering lightning-fast Internet and cable. "People are hungrier than ever for faster Internet, and as a result, cities across America are making speed a priority," the company says, per the Verge. But while Google notes it "genuinely would like to build in all of these cities," it could choose all, none, or some; teams are first "hitting the road" and "conducting detailed studies" on the local topography and infrastructure, Ars Technica reports. Already at work in Kansas City and Provo, Utah, and with plans for Austin, Texas, and Shawnee, Kansas, Google Fiber's gigabit speeds will likely worry the competition. Plus, a telecommunications analyst tells the Kansas City Star that Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast (the latter two of which plan to merge) dominate all nine markets. But a larger customer base could give Google a leg up on negotiations for its TV lineup, which is still without some popular channels, the Star notes. The chosen cities should be announced at the end of the year. For the full list of those being considered, click here.
– Four days after he entered the hospital rather abruptly with a broken neck bone suffered in a fall, former President George HW Bush—at an apparently sprightly 91 years of age—has left the hospital in Portland, Maine, reports ABC News. "A very grateful President @GeorgeHWBush was discharged today," tweeted a rep. Bush had fallen at his vacation home in Kennebunkport on Wednesday. The injury, a fractured vertabra, is expected to take three to four months to heal, and Bush will be in a neck brace. A full recovery is expected, notes the AP.
– A tense 2016 lies ahead on the Korean Peninsula after a North Korean nuclear test that could mark an alarming leap forward in the country's technology. Pyongyang claims that it successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb for the first time, though experts say the Wednesday morning explosion— believed to have caused a 5.1-magnitude quake—was closer in size to North Korea's three previous nuclear tests than to a hydrogen bomb explosion, reports the Washington Post. Kim Jong Un claimed last month that the country had an H-bomb, a weapon much more powerful and harder to make than an atomic bomb, and a confirmed test would almost certainly lead to tough new sanctions against North Korea, the AP reports. North Korean state media reported that the test of the "miniaturized" H-bomb was a "perfect success." It could be weeks before an H-bomb test can be confirmed by outside experts, who seem skeptical of Pyongyang's claims. "Given the scale, it is hard to believe this is a real hydrogen bomb," a rep from the Korea Defense and Security Forum tells Reuters. "They could have tested some middle stage kind [of device] between an A-bomb and H-bomb, but unless they come up with any clear evidence, it is difficult to trust their claim." The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that the United Nations Security Council plans to hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss the nuclear test. (At the start of 2016, Kim said he was ready for war.)
– It has to rank among the less usual undertakings doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital had attempted: In 2009 they removed a molar from a severed Egyptian mummy's head via an endoscope with grasping forceps they inserted through the neck. The tooth was a hopeful clue in a nearly century-old mystery—one that still wouldn't be solved for years to come. The head (see it here) was discovered in 1915 in Deir el-Bersha, south of Cairo, in a room built for a governor named Djehutynakht and his wife 4,000 years ago. It had been looted by grave robbers, and the identity of the head—was it Djehutynakht's or his wife's?—remained unclear. A DNA test could provide the answer, but no mummy of that age had given up usable, reliable DNA, and "the ancient DNA community had largely given up on the testing" of such remains, per a report in the journal Genes. The molar was their best bet, and scientists tried and failed to get it to give up its DNA. Then, in 2016, the tooth made its way to the FBI's Dr. Odile Loreille, a forensic scientist with a long history of working with old and ancient DNA; the New York Times reports she has identified Korean War victims, a 2-year-old who died on the Titanic, and the remains of two children of Russian Tsar Nicholas II. She managed to retrieve a tiny bit of powder—just 0.004 ounces, per LiveScience—from the tooth's core, and the ratio of chromosomes it contained proved it was male DNA: Governor Djehutynakht. The Times sums up the significance: "In doing so she had help[ed] establish that ancient Egyptian DNA could be extracted from mummies." (This Egyptian coffin is "dowdy," but the inside is astonishing.)
– Even as Penn State took down Joe Paterno's statue this morning, the NCAA is getting ready to levy "unprecedented" penalties against the university, an NCAA source tells CBS News. "I've never seen anything like it," the source says. The NCAA itself confirmed that "corrective and punitive measures" would be announced tomorrow morning, though it had no further details, notes the AP. NCAA President Mark Emmert recently hinted that the so-called "death penalty" is on the table for Penn State's storied football program, saying of the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal, "I've never seen anything as egregious." Paterno's family, meanwhile, said in a statement that taking down his statue "does not serve the victims of Jerry Sandusky's horrible crimes or help heal the Penn State Community."
– A judge has found two boys guilty in the rape of a 16-year-old girl that rocked the small Ohio town of Steubenville, reports the AP. Judge Thomas Lipps ruled that Steubenville High School football players Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'Lik Richmond, 16, are guilty of digitally penetrating the girl after a booze-fueled party in August. A state prosecutor asked for a harsh sentence for the boys, citing an "absolute lack of remorse" the pair had demonstrated. Loud sobs were heard in the courtroom after the verdict was read. Both boys apologized; Richmond broke down sobbing as he stood to approach the victim. Mays will be jailed for at least two years; Richmond will be jailed for one year. Depending on their behavior, they could remain there until they are 21. The verdict comes a day after the girl herself took the stand, reports the New York Times, testifying that she didn't remember what happened in the six hours before she awoke naked in a basement with Mays, Richmond, and another boy around her. “I was embarrassed and scared, and I did not know what to think because I could not remember anything,” she said, adding that the boys put her clothes on a table when she asked for them. In the following days, she says, she figured out what had happened and said that Mays started to get scared, texting her constantly. “He was just, like, freaking out,” she said. “He kept asking, ‘Are you going to tell the police?’ He was trying to get me not to tell anyone.” Another boy testified Friday that he filmed part of the assault on his cell phone, only to delete it the next day.
– As Attorney General Jeff Sessions remains mired in controversy about his contact with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, more info is emerging about the man NBC News refers to as "the shadowy apparatchik at the center of Trump's Russia crisis." Kislyak, who has held his post since 2008, was the same Russian official who spoke with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn—leading to the latter's resignation—and the same one at least two other Trump advisers have admitted to chatting with, per USA Today. More on the 66-year-old Kislyak, who NBC notes has kept a "remarkably low profile" in more than 40 years of service to his country: The Washington Post calls him "quiet, careful, rumpled and portly," and says he "shows up everywhere and tries to talk to everyone." He is not, however, thought to be especially close to Vladimir Putin. Kislyak was even in attendance on Tuesday at President Trump's address to Congress, per the Guardian. Its profile notes that he trained as an engineer and first worked as an envoy in the 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev. The AP tries to reconcile Kislyak's new reputation as the "Kevin Bacon of the Trump White House's Russia imbroglio" with his old one as an under-the-radar diplomat who would be the last person observers would think was involved in controversy. Politico offers a look at "Washington's most dangerous diplomat," noting that Kislyak was front and center at a Trump foreign policy speech last April in which Trump called for an easing of US-Russia relations. And in November, Kislyak accused America of carrying out a "huge propaganda campaign against Russia." A story at CNN takes a look at another accusation often thrown Kislyak's way by US intelligence officials: that he's a Russian spy who tries to recruit others. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, per ABC News, which cites ex-US ambassadors and analysts who take issue with the espionage claims. "If he's a spy, then all ambassadors are spies," one former US diplomat says. One thing he's exceptional at: networking, says the New York Times, revealing details of "over-the-top" dinners he likes to throw for guests at his Beaux Arts mansion in Washington and his ability to entertain, but "always with a political objective," per a former US ambassador to Russia.
– You can fly free in November, if you like surprises. JetBlue plans to fly a plane-load of people to an unknown destination Nov. 27 to volunteer for an unknown cause for three days, USA Today reports. Anyone over 18 can apply here by Oct. 26 if they're willing to answer questions about their philanthropic interests, per People. A sample question: "If volunteer hours were stored in a karma bank, how big would your account be?" JetBlue is saying little else, but participants will leave from JFK Airport in New York and volunteer in three areas championed by JetBlue for Good: the environment, community, and youth and education.
– A genetic study has found a new and dangerous possibility lurking in the DNA of Florida's invasive pythons. Per the Miami Herald, researchers from the US Geological Survey tested hundreds of the Everglades' already worryingly prolific giant snake species and what they found could mean an even hardier invader down the line. Where they expected to find nothing but DNA from the water-loving ancestors of carelessly released pet Burmese pythons, scientists discovered that at least 13 of 400 snakes tested showed signs of hybridization with a relative known as the Indian rock python. Unlike the Burmese, the rock python prefers to live on higher drier ground. It's also faster and smaller. Per the Guardian, this tells researchers that floating somewhere in the gene pool of Florida's estimated 150,000 pythons could be a mix of genes that could lead to a "super snake" with the ability to adapt even better to subtropical conditions in a Florida ecosystem already overrun with exotic and damaging invasives. Because researchers can't tell from their 400 snakes exactly how many of the Sunshine State's pythons are hybrids, they can't say for sure whether the added Indian rock python traits could one day make the population more adaptable to larger swaths of Florida and beyond.
– According to the rumor mill, Kate Middleton could be popping out a royal baby any day now, so of course the gossip pages are already filled with "news" of the as-yet-unborn heir to the throne. You're not going to find out anything really interesting, like the sex or the name, but we do have the baby's official title for you: He or she will be the Prince or Princess of Cambridge, the Daily Mail reports. The first Prince or Princess of Cambridge, in fact, which the mayor of the city says is a "great honor." And there's another royal baby on the way, too: Prince William's cousin, Zara Phillips, who married Mike Tindall in 2011, is expecting her first baby, the Telegraph reports. That little bundle of joy will be 16th in line to the throne. (So, we can apparently assume that whole groping-another-woman thing ended satisfactorily for the couple.) More royal news: Prince Andrew has become the first British royal to start a personal Twitter account, the BBC reports.
– Hate Star Wars spoilers? Click away now ... because five more Star Wars films are coming in what Entertainment Weekly calls "Disney’s not-quite-top-secret plan." Without further ado: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. With a cast including Felicity Jones and Diego Luna, it chronicles a group of Rebel fighters trying to find plans for the Death Star before it's too late. Coming Dec. 16, 2016. Star Wars: Episode VIII. Apparently starring Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac, it's due on May 26, 2017. Star Wars Anthology: Han Solo (tentative title). Written by Lawrence and Jon Kasdan, it will chronicle Han Solo's rise to full-fledged smuggler and scoundrel. Coming in 2019. Star Wars: Episode IX and Star Wars Anthology: Boba Fett are scheduled for 2019 and 2020, respectively, but little else is known. Not too shabby, considering it took 38 years to produce the first seven Star Wars films. As the Independent puts it, "Start sourcing the ultimate Star Wars costume now, because less than a year is not long to wait." (See how George Lucas walked back his "epic slam" on Disney.)
– A renowned Chicago musician is going public with her airline spat over a piece of carry-on luggage—because that piece of luggage happens to be a 1742 violin insured for almost $20 million. Rachel Barton Pine says an American Airlines captain refused to let her bring the Joseph Guarneri "del Gesu" violin aboard a Wednesday flight from O'Hare to New Mexico, where she was scheduled to perform, because he deemed it too big, reports the Chicago Tribune. When Pine, a frequent traveler, pointed out that the FAA—and American Airlines itself—allows instruments such as hers on a first-come basis as long as they fit in the overhead bin or under a seat, he still wouldn't budge. "It is not going on because I say so," she quotes him as saying. Instead of checking it as the crew suggested, she opted not to board at all. "These are so delicate and breakable that if you check your violin, it will get broken," Pine tells KOB 4. "There's no maybe it will get broken. It definitely will get broken." American ticket agents got her on another flight, violin and all, and the airline says in a statement that it "has reached out to Ms. Barton directly to apologize for the inconvenience." She has the violin courtesy of a lifetime loan from an anonymous patron. Last year, Pine spent the night in a Phoenix airport terminal after a similar disagreement with US Airways, notes a post at Violinist.com. In a far more serious incident, back in 1995, the 1617 Amati violin Pine was carrying got trapped in a Metra train door; she was secured to it by its strap and dragged more than 300 feet. She was able to free herself, but the train's wheels took her left leg and mangled her right. (Read the story of how a stolen Stradivarius surfaced after 35 years.)
– Three celebrities have weighed in on the 2016 presidential candidates ... well, mostly Donald Trump: Azealia Banks went on quite a rant Sunday night on Twitter, and though the rapper started off by saying she'd be voting Trump, the whole thing ended up being satire, Salon reports. Sample tweets: "I only trust this country to be what it is: full of s---. takes s--- to know s--- so we may as well, put a piece of s--- in the White House." And: "In conclusion, I think Donald trump is evil like America is evil and in order for America to keep up with itself it needs him." Kid Rock, though, appears to actually like The Donald. "I'm digging Trump," the rocker, who once campaigned for Mitt Romney, tells Rolling Stone. "My feeling: Let the motherf---ing business guy run it like a f---ing business. And his campaign has been entertaining as s---." Add Adele to the list of musicians not in favor of Trump, however—or at least not in favor of him using her music. After Trump played "Rolling in the Deep" at some of his Iowa rallies and Mike Huckabee released a parody of her new single, "Hello" (yes, really), Adele's spokesperson issued a statement noting that "Adele has not given permission for her music to be used for any political campaigning," per the Raw Story.
– If everything goes to plan with China's space program—which so far everything has since the country launched its first astronaut in 2003—it will become the first country to land a probe on the "dark side of the moon," the AP reports. This week, Zou Yongliao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced plans to send a probe designated Chang'e 4 to the moon's far side by 2020, according to the Asia Times. "China will be the first to complete the task if it is successful," Zou said. In 2013, China became the third country to land a probe—Chang'e 3—on the moon, following the United States and Soviet Union. China plans to study the geology of the far side of the moon—which is never visible from Earth—in order to put a radio telescope there. The dark side of the moon would be ideal for studying radio waves because the moon itself blocks any interfering waves coming from Earth. However, that also makes landing a probe on the moon's far side more difficult, according to the International Business Times. Without radio signals from Earth, China will require additional satellite technology to communicate with the probe. In the meantime, the AP reports that China will be sending an unmanned spaceship to and from the moon to collect samples in 2017. (NASA recently captured an amazing shot of the far side of the moon.)
– It's been exactly 35 years since the mysterious March 10, 1981, drowning of a Long Island couple, but their family and community are still calling on somebody—anybody—to come forward with information so they can finally piece together what happened, reports NBC News. The Department of Environmental Conservation officers' union and fraternal organization has even raised $15,000, the largest reward in the department's history, reports Newsday, while homicide detectives say they are "open to receiving any new information." William Becker, who was 43, was a 15-year veteran of the DEC; wife Michelle Becker, 36, owned a beauty salon. Married 17 years, the parents of three had gone to a dinner party in Mattituck that cold winter's night and left shortly before midnight. Police said William's body was found 12 hours later in his forest-green DEC uniform at what was then called Matt-A-Mar Marina with a bump on his head and his arm tangled in electrical cable. By the time Michelle's body was found 40 feet away 20 hours later, her slippers on the dock, police had surmised that the couple had stopped by a friend's boat to "get romantic," Michelle's brother Michael Malkush says, and that William had died trying to save Michelle, who couldn't swim. But many felt this didn't make sense given their fear of the water, the cold, and their home being so nearby. Even an investigator in the late '80s concluded that accidental drowning didn't make sense, reports the Suffolk Times. The Beckers' oldest child says he and his siblings are "so disenchanted" with the police investigation, adding, "It's going to take somebody to talk. Somebody on their deathbed, or somebody who finds religion, or somebody with a guilty conscience." (A man recently confessed to this 1982 cold case.)
– The official government death toll in Puerto Rico from devastating Hurricane Maria stands at 64. A new assessment led by Harvard researchers puts the figure closer to 5,000, reports NPR. More specifically, the researchers calculate that Puerto Rico had 4,645 "excess deaths" between Sept. 20, 2017, and Dec. 31, they write in the New England Journal of Medicine. How they got the figure: Researchers surveyed 3,299 homes in January and February and turned up 38 deaths in the time period after the hurricane, then extrapolated the figure to the island's population of 3.4 million. They concluded with a 95% certainty that the death toll attributable to the hurricane is between 800 and 8,500, with the figure of 4,645 a likely estimate. They also found that when comparing the number of deaths to 2016, the island's mortality rate increased 62% in the three months following the storm. "Our results indicate that the official death count of 64 is a substantial underestimate of the true burden of mortality after Hurricane Maria," the authors write. The toll of 64 mostly counts people killed directly by rising water or wind, and the Washington Post provides an example of a death that went uncounted. Ivette Leon, 54, died at home in November, less than a day after being released from the hospital. As her condition deteriorated, it took family members 20 minutes to get cell reception to summon help, and then nonworking traffic lights delayed the arrival of an ambulance. The new study suggests there are thousands more like her. "That is an astonishing undercount," a Columbia professor who wasn't involved with the study tells BuzzFeed News. "Something has gone terribly wrong here if they have a 70-times-higher death rate."
– They're calling it "the most Cambridge thing ever": graffiti—written in Latin—scrawled across multiple million-dollar homes in the famed UK college town. The Press Association reports the graffiti, which reads "Locus in Domos Loci Populum," appeared Tuesday morning. The words were written on new luxury homes that are selling for more than $1.5 million each, according to the BBC. The homes replaced a pub, and locals believe the graffiti is likely a protest against skyrocketing home prices and the displacement of locals in a city where the average home price is more than 10 times the average salary. "We’ve got incredibly rich people living one street away from incredibly poor people," one resident tells the Press Association. Locals say a vandal scrawling graffiti in Latin is something that could "only happen" in Cambridge. But the reaction to the graffiti may also be Cambridge-specific. For example, it's not the graffiti the Spectator takes issue with; it's the grammar. The blog points out the phrase "Locus in Domos Loci Populum" is complete "gibberish" and "twaddle," likely the result of using Google to poorly translate the phrase "local homes for local people." A Cambridge classics professor gives the BBC her interpretation: "This is a bit hard to translate, but I think what they're trying to say is that a lovely place has been turned into houses." Police are investigating, or as the Romans (by way of Google) would say: vigilum quaerimus. (These recently surfaced Latin words were a more exciting find.)
– A 28-year-old man has been named by authorities in Los Angeles as the gunman in a shootout and kidnapping that ended with an hours-long grocery store stand-off and the death of an employee. Per the LA Times, the LAPD named Gene Atkins as the suspect. Officer Drake Madison told the paper Atkins is being held in lieu of $2 million bail on suspicion of murder. Authorities say Atkins shot his grandmother multiple times and took another woman hostage before driving away in what became a police pursuit and shootout when police located his vehicle hours later. After he's accused of exchanging fire with police, Atkins allegedly drove away before crashing into a pole in front of a Trader Joe's in the Silver Lake neighborhood. Witnesses reportedly said the suspect exchanged fire with police as he ran into the store. Per the AP, a woman was shot and killed when Atkins was entering the store and it remained unclear Sunday evening whether she was hit by police fire or shot by Atkins. The victim has been identified as 27-year-old Melyda Corado. "I'm sad to say she didn't make it. My baby sister. My world," Corado's brother, Albert Corado, has since tweeted. None of the hostages were seriously hurt before cops say Atkins handcuffed himself and surrendered after a 3-hour standoff. A statement from Trader Joe's said the location will be closed for the foreseeable future in order give employees time to personally come to terms with the tragedy.
– Democratic socialism is nothing to be afraid of unless you think of FDR as a bogeyman, Bernie Sanders said in a landmark speech at Georgetown University on Thursday. "Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system [that] is corrupt, that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy," he said, per USA Today, explaining that he doesn't believe that "government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production." He quoted Martin Luther King Jr., who said the US has "socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor." Sanders—who said other countries "have done a far better job" in protecting the elderly, the sick, and the poor—likened the inequality in the US today to that of the Great Depression and noted that FDR was called a socialist for trying to deal with it, CNN reports. "Real freedom must include economic security," he said. "That was Roosevelt's vision 70 years ago. It is my vision today. It is a vision that we have not yet achieved. And it is time that we did." Sanders' plan isn't true socialism, but it "is really framed to try to bridge the gap between socialism and liberalism—to bring back a framework that was operative during the Great Depression and World War II but collapsed soon after," writes Matthew Yglesias at Vox. (Sanders was very pleased when Pope Francis praised a "radical Catholic activist" during his US visit.)
– Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined hundreds of demonstrators last night to protest an opening-night opera performance at the Met, the New York Times reports. Protesters shouted "Shame on the Met!" and sported signs that read "The Met glorifies terrorism," and it's all thanks to The Death of Klinghoffer, the AP reports. The opera, penned by composer John Adams, focuses on the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jewish man in a wheelchair killed by the Palestine Liberation Front during the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship. Some believe the opera makes excuses for terrorism, is too sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, and "humanizes the hijackers," writes Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books. One man inside the theater yelled, "The murder of Klinghoffer will never be forgiven!" a few times before being removed, while a woman cursed loudly and walked out with an usher escort. Even NYC mayors past and present can't agree on whether the opera should be performed. Giuliani—known for previous attempts to shut down art installations he didn't like, according to the Times—told the paper that the opera gives "a distorted view of history," while current Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "I think the American way is to respect freedom of speech. Simple as that." One protester proclaimed, "Go out, murder someone, be a terrorist, and we'll write a play about you," while another person at a "counterdemonstration" held a sign that said, "A work of art about a subject is not a work in favor of that subject." Meanwhile, composer Adams says, "The really ironic and sad fact is that the content of this opera is more relevant in 2014 than it was even in 1991," per Details.
– The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is growing, officials say, as searchers prepare to map a wide swath of the ocean floor in a new phase of the effort. "We know very clearly the area of the follow-up search will be even broader, with more difficulties and tougher tasks," says China's transport minister. "For the next stage involving sonar and other autonomous vehicles, potentially at very great depths, we need to have an understanding of the ocean floor," says Australia's deputy PM, per CNN. The new search area has "never been mapped." Officials will be looking for help from private companies; they doubt firms will need much financial incentive, USA Today reports. "There's no reward big enough," says Malaysia's acting transport minister, but if a company can find the plane, it will win instant worldwide fame, he notes. Search leaders are hoping a single firm will take on the task to avoid continued coordination problems, the Wall Street Journal notes. Officials also plan to go through all existing data once again. "It's very sensible to go back" to be certain "there are no flaws in that—the assumptions are right, the analysis is right, and the deductions and conclusions are right," says search coordinator Angus Houston.
– Manila officials were probably excited to learn that one of the characters in Dan Brown's latest sure-to-be blockbuster visits the city. That is, until they read the descriptions of the child-sex trade, pollution, and poverty, all of which prompted the character in Inferno to declare, "I've run through the gates of hell." Well. Manila official Francis Tolentino has written a strongly worded letter to Brown and his publisher complaining of the "inaccurate portrayal of our beloved metropolis" and demanding a correction of some kind, reports AFP. Tolentino even pored over Philippines travel records and declared that Brown has never visited the country. If he had, says Tolentino, Brown would know that instead of being the "gates of hell," Manila is actually ... wait for it ... the "doorway to heaven," reports ABS-CBN. (And people call Brown a hack.) No word yet in response from the Da Vinci Code author.
– What was once deemed "inconclusive" has now arrived at a conclusion, though that conclusion may be cold comfort to fans, friends, and family. Early autopsy results on George Michael couldn't peg what caused his Christmas Day death, but on Tuesday, a UK coroner announced the 53-year-old singer had died of natural causes, spurred by a fatty liver and "dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis" (a clinical way of saying heart disease), CBS News reports. Michael's partner, Fadi Fawaz, had put up a bunch of tweets insinuating suicide right after his boyfriend's death; Fawaz later said he'd been hacked and took down the posts. A rep for Michael had mentioned heart failure was the cause after the initial autopsy. Per the American Heart Association, dilated cardiomyopathy is caused by an enlarged heart chamber that eventually affects heart contractions and keeps blood from being efficiently pumped out; myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle. A fatty liver could have any of a variety of causes, including drinking too much, a bout with hepatitis C, being overweight, or taking certain medication. "I think his body just gave up," Michael's former partner, Kenny Goss, told the Sunday Mirror over the weekend. Goss adds that now the family can move on with making final arrangements, saying, "We just want closure, we want the funeral to happen." Fawaz, meanwhile, posted a few tweets Tuesday in apparent response to the news, noting, "The Truth is out..." and "Now I hope to receive some real LOVE."
– The tiger that nearly killed Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy in 2003 has died at age 17, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. The tiger, Mantecore, bit Horn on the neck during a show at the Mirage. Following the incident, Horn suffered a stroke and brain swelling that left him partially paralyzed and ended his stage career. But he never blamed Mantecore, refuted reports that the tiger "attacked" him, and allowed the tiger to spend the rest of his days between his own estate and the Mirage's Secret Garden of Siegfried & Roy. After the incident, Horn's only stage appearance has been at a benefit in 2009 that actually featured Mantecore, E! notes. In fact, Horn and entertainment partner Siegfried Fischbacher insist Horn actually suffered the stroke first, and Mantecore was simply trying to drag Horn backstage to protect him. The tiger died last week "after a short illness," according to a press release. Says Horn in a statement, "The world has lost one of its most majestic creatures and I have lost a brother. I will forever believe it was his concern for my safety and well-being that caused him to act as he did on that night long ago." He adds on Facebook, "My lifesaver, 'Mantecore,' ... was the one responsible for pulling me to safety where the Paramedics could help me after my high blood pressure made me dizzy on stage."
– Christopher Kennedy Lawford, an actor, author, and nephew of John F. Kennedy, died of a heart attack Tuesday. The 63-year-old, who became an advocate for sobriety after his own substance abuse issues, was in Vancouver, Canada. He was there working to open a recovery center, his cousin, former US Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, tells the AP, adding Lawford's hot yoga habit "must have been too much for him at that point." TMZ reports Lawford was at a yoga studio at the time of the heart attack. In addition to appearing on General Hospital, All My Children, and Frasier, per People, the oldest child of Patricia Kennedy also wrote several books, including 2005's Symptoms of Withdrawal. The AP reports that in that memoir, he wrote of what preceded his getting sober at age 30: mugging women for money, begging for change in Grand Central Station, and two arrests for possession. "There are many days when I wish I could take back and use my youth more appropriately," he said in 2005. "But all of that got me here. I can't ask for some of my life to be changed and still extract the understanding and the life that I have today."
– One reason it took the women in the Cleveland kidnapping case so long to escape to the world just outside their door? Ariel Castro would "test" them for just such a scenario, reports CNN. According to a law enforcement source, he would pretend to leave the house then return suddenly to check if any of the women had moved, punishing them if they had. Even though the women watched the search efforts and vigils held for them on TV, they eventually "succumbed [to] their reality," says the source. Additionally, Berry's child, Jocelyn, was not told Michelle Knight's or Gina DeJesus' real names, in case she mentioned them when Castro took her out of the house, WKYC reports. When Berry did make her brave escape, she was afraid to break the locked storm door open in case this was another "test." A police report details their rescuers' arrival on the scene: "As we neared the top of the steps, Officer Espada hollered out, 'Cleveland Police,' at which time ... Knight ran and threw herself into (Officer) Espada's arms," says the report. "We then asked if there was anyone else upstairs with her, when (DeJesus) came out of the bedroom." WKYC notes that a public fund has been set up to provide services for the women. Castro, who has been formally charged, is due in court today.
– Casey Anthony's not guilty verdict sparked Facebook outrage, a couple of Nancy Grace rants, and now a fast-growing petition for a new law. "Caylee's Law," thought up by Oklahoma mom of two Michelle Crowder, would require parents and guardians to report a child's disappearance to police immediately. Caylee Anthony was last seen June 16, but was not reported missing for a full month. Crowder, who started a Change.org petition as well as a Facebook page asking Congress to create the law, says she was "sickened" when Casey Anthony was convicted only of lying to the police, and was not "charged with child neglect or endangerment, or even obstruction of justice.” Her Change.org petition is the fastest-growing campaign in the site's history, with nearly 2,000 people signing it each hour, the Washington Post reports. Click for more on the Anthony trial aftermath.
– Another day, another study asserting that vaccines don't cause autism: This time, researchers analyzed 67 different studies and found no evidence that immunizations cause autism. "There is a lot of misinformation out there about vaccines," a co-author tells USA Today. "With the rise of the Internet and the decline of print journalism, anyone can put anything on the Internet." The new report finds "strong evidence" that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, implicated in an increased risk of autism in a since-retracted 1998 study, is not associated with such a risk. The study also found no proof vaccines cause childhood leukemia, the AP reports, and that in general, side effects from vaccines are "extremely rare." While some vaccines, including the MMR vaccine and the flu shot, can cause an increased risk of fever-related seizures in small children, those seizures are typically benign. The most serious side effects (an intestinal blockage caused by the rotavirus vaccine and a blood disorder linked to the chickenpox and MMR vaccines) are both rare, NBC News reports. Ultimately, the study concludes, the benefits of vaccines outweigh the small risks. And, to put those risks in perspective, one expert notes, "The most dangerous aspect of giving your child vaccines is driving to the office to get them."
– The latest US Geological Survey forecast for California doesn't contain much that will reassure people worried about earthquakes—unless they find fatalism reassuring. The report says there is not only a 99% chance of a 6.7 magnitude or greater quake like the 1994 Northridge one hitting the state in the next 30 years, the chances of a mega-quake of 8 magnitude or greater are significantly higher than earlier thought, the AP reports. "California is earthquake country, and residents should live every day like it could be the day of a big one," says lead author Ned Field, a USGS geophysicist. He says that out of the state's hundreds of faults, the "locked and loaded" San Andreas Fault is still the biggest threat. Field says the odds of a mega-quake in the next three decades have risen to 7% from 4.7% since the 2008 forecast because scientists now have a better understanding of the fault system and how quakes can jump from fault to fault, the Los Angeles Times reports. In California, "it has become increasingly apparent that we are not dealing with a few [well-separated] faults, but with a vast interconnected fault system," he says. The USGS still can't predict exactly when an earthquake will hit, but it's testing an early warning system that will give authorities vital seconds to do things like shut off gas lines and slow down trains, the AP reports. (Another federal study warns that small, fracking-linked quakes in Oklahoma and Kansas are making a big one more likely.)
– In what Foreign Policy says could be a "startling development in naval warfare," the US Navy is looking into whether last month's crash of the USS John S. McCain, which killed 10 sailors, may have been the handiwork of hackers. Per the Washington Free Beacon, the Navy has dispatched its Cyber Command 10th Fleet to Singapore—its first time overseas—where the team will "look for and assess any anomalous activity that may exist onboard," Vice Adm. Jan Tighe said Thursday. That investigation could take months. The Navy is taking the possibility of its computers being compromised so seriously, in fact, that looking into cyberattacks will now be standard protocol after accidents, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran told Congress last week, per USNI News. Hacking isn't, however, what investigators are looking into in the crash of the USS Fitzgerald, which ran into a container ship on June 17, killing seven sailors. In fact, no evidence of a cyberattack has emerged for the McCain crash, either—Moran says "just about every three letter agency in … DC" has looked into it. There's also the possibility the McCain wasn't the vessel hacked—it could've been the Alnic MC, the merchant ship it collided with, per Breaking Defense. The Navy simply wants to cover all its bases. What's worrisome is that both Navy ships are considered top of the line—meaning if there are problems with those two vessels, questions are now arising about the fleet's ability in general to face down a litany of possible threats in the Asia region. Tighe noted Thursday that the Navy has allotted $1.5 billion to bolster its defenses.
– Between March and September of last year, four out of five visits to a major part of the Dark Web—the anonymous corner of the Internet—were to sites exhibiting the sexual abuse of children, says a new study picked up by Wired. These sites account for only 2% of the Dark Web, but got five times more traffic (or about 83%) than other sites, like those selling drugs, offering gambling, or providing a haven for whistleblowers. "Before we did this study, it was certainly my view that the dark net is a good thing. But it’s … creating a place where pedophiles can act with impunity," says UK computer science researcher Gareth Owen. The websites studied are part of Tor hidden services—which allows users to surf the web anonymously, BBC explains—and they occupy the biggest chunk of the Dark Web. Owen used relay computers and a web-crawling program to collect his data. Tor executives point out the results could be distorted, and Owen acknowledges that "caution is advised" when assessing them. "We do not know the cause of the high hit count (to child abuse sites) and cannot say with any certainty that it corresponds with humans," he says. It's possible the traffic could be caused by law enforcement groups conducting investigations or hackers flooding the sites with fake visits. And then there's the positive justification for an anonymous web. "There are important uses for hidden services, such as when human rights activists use them to access Facebook or to blog anonymously," says Tor's executive director. Still, law enforcement and politicians are expected to push for a crackdown because of the study, and Owen says there may be ways to block child abuse sites. (A chunk of the Dark Web was shut down in November.)
– Fidget spinners, the hottest toy on the market, may also pose a serious choking risk. So says a mother in a Facebook post that's gone viral with more than 710,000 shares after her 10-year-old daughter swallowed one of the toy's weighted bearings. Kelly Rose Joniec, a Houston-area mom, had been driving home from a swim meet Saturday when her daughter Britton started to make "an odd retching noise in the back seat," she writes. When Joniec saw Britton's red face and drool in her mirror, she pulled over. After futile attempts to dislodge the piece, Joniec rushed her daughter to an urgent-care facility, which then helped arrange for an ambulance to a children's hospital, reports the New York Daily News. Fidget spinners boast nearly silent operation, but their weighted bearings, roughly the size of a quarter, must be cleaned on occasion, reports HuffPost. Britton had popped one in her mouth and it ended up lodged in her esophagus; she had to have it surgically removed on Monday, per the New York Post, but she's now doing fine. While some claim the toys help students with attention disorders, others are skeptical or at the very least annoyed, and the Daily News notes that some schools have banned them at lunch and in some classrooms. Still, versions of the toy fill the top 20 spots on the list of best-selling toys on Amazon. (See why the toy's inventor isn't making a penny off them.)
– Joey Chestnut is only one win away from tying Bill Russell's record 11 championships—granted one played professional basketball and the other just eats a lot of hot dogs. The AP reports Chestnut—who was carried to the stage in a bright-yellow chariot—won the Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest Tuesday for the 10th time, downing 72 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes for a new world record. Despite beating his previous record of 70 hot dogs and buns, Chestnut fell short of his goal of 80, according to CBS Sports. The average American is said to eat 70 hot dogs in a year, and ESPN's Darren Rovell tweets Chestnut consumed more than 20,000 calories and nearly 1,300 grams of fat to earn his Fourth of July victory. Second-place finisher Carmen Cincotti ate 62 hot dogs and buns.
– Remember in June when it got too hot for planes to take off in Phoenix? A new study suggests stories like that will become quite common in the not-too-distant future. Via Reuters, the study published in Climatic Change estimates that rising temperatures could leave up to one-third of planes grounded during heat waves in the coming decades. The problem centers around the wings’ capacity for lift, which is lessened in warmer conditions. By 2100, worldwide average temperatures are expected to rise by 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. To safely take off, airlines would need to make adjustments during the hottest part of the day, with 10% to 30% of planes affected. Full flights will either stay grounded until conditions cool down or lighten their loads by removing fuel, cargo, or passengers, per a release at EurekAlert. Think 12 to 13 people asked to leave a 160-person passenger plane. "Our results suggest that weight restriction may impose a non-trivial cost," one of the study’s lead authors says. Wired reports that among the airports studied, New York’s LaGuardia and Washington’s Reagan-National fared poorly because of short runways, as did Dubai International Airport, where extreme heat could force reduced loads up to 55% of the time during peak temperatures. Better news: New York's JFK wouldn't be much affected. Delayed departures won't be the only hassle. Scientists say severe turbulence would become more common. “I’ve yet to see a benefit of climate change to aviation,” says atmospheric scientist Paul Williams, who believes it’s high time for the airline industry to prepare and adapt. (An essay at New York provided a decidedly bleak outlook on climate change.)
– Condom king Trojan managed to get its new vibrator commercial on TV—and not just during the wee hours—by doing one simple thing: not referring to the product as a vibrator. Apparently referring to it by its proper name (“Vibrating Tri-Phoria”) is OK. Trojan also agreed not to show the actual product: Instead, it shows multiple boxes, all of which vibrate jubilantly as the voiceover promises side effects including “screams of ecstasy, curled toes, a sudden glow, and intense waves of pleasure,” the New York Times reports. “No matter how liberal you are, a little kid doesn’t need to hear the word ‘vibrator,’” says an MTV exec. Really? wonders Adrian Chen at Gawker: “We know kids are dumb, but do they not understand how nouns and verbs work? Can they not comprehend the fact that something which vibrates is, technically, a ‘vibrator’? We are headed down a slippery semantic slope, here. By this logic, Trojan could advertise a new double-headed dildo—the Duojoy—by marketing it as the ‘dual-penetrating Duojoy.’”
– Maybe the final, happy note in the Tiger Mom brouhaha? Amy Chua's daughter was valedictorian of her high school class, reports the Daily Caller. Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld even poked a little fun at the controversy over mom's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother book, joking that she was going to read from it rather than give her own speech. If you missed the fury in January, critics read the book as an indictment of America's lax parenting and as a push for an über-strict alternative. Author Chua said they took what was meant to be a humorous, self-deprecating book way too seriously. Either way, things have worked out nicely for Sophia, who is apparently on her way to Harvard. Her blog is here.
– A man convicted four years ago in the oldest cold case ever tried was freed Friday after an Illinois judge vacated his conviction and subsequent life sentence, CNN reports. According to CBS News, 76-year-old Jack McCullough was convicted of kidnapping a 7-year-old girl, choking her, and stabbing her to death in 1957. The case was reopened in 2008, and McCullough was arrested in 2011 and convicted the following year. After an appeal by McCullough, Illinois state's attorney Richard Schmack launched a six-month investigation that found what he calls "clear and convincing evidence" that McCullough is innocent. While the judge Friday vacated McCullough's conviction, he stopped short of declaring him innocent, and a new trial will be held, the Chicago Tribune reports. McCullough, who lived in the same neighborhood as the kidnapped girl, says he was 40 miles away at an Air Force recruiting center at the time of the kidnapping. It's an alibi that passed a polygraph test in 1957 and made it impossible for him to be the culprit based on the FBI's original timeline for the kidnapping. That timeline was later changed by police, and Schmack says documents—including phone and Air Force records—supporting McCullough's alibi were wrongly not allowed at his trial. A friend of the kidnapped girl picked McCullough out of a photo lineup when the case was reopened. But his was the only non-yearbook photo in the lineup, and she picked a different man out of a photo lineup 50 years earlier. That info wasn't allowed at McCullough's trial either. No physical evidence was ever found to support McCullough's conviction.
– Iran today denied reports that an explosion had ripped through its Fordow nuclear site, which is buried 300 feet underground and considered safe from air strikes, the Telegraph and Reuters report. "The false news of an explosion at Fordow is Western propaganda ahead of nuclear negotiations to influence their process and outcome," state media quoted a nuclear official as saying. Seems the story started on a right-wing website called WND, which attributed it to an unnamed "former intelligence officer" in Iran—but that hasn't quelled speculation entirely. "Any explosion in Iran that doesn't hurt people but hurts its assets is welcome," said Israel's defense minister. And an Israeli foreign policy expert said Iran may have cooked up the story to keep inspectors from entering Fordow. After all, the story broke right after Iranian state media reported that talks could resume between Tehran and Western powers, although the EU quickly said no such agreement existed. Also note that Fordow started making uranium at 20% fissile purity in 2011, far higher than the 3.5% needed at nuclear energy plants.
– Following North Korea's most powerful weapons test yet on Sunday, a South Korean lawmaker tells CNN his country's intelligence service believes the North has an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on the move. Things get pretty vague beyond that: He didn't know the method of transport or when the movement was noticed. But Reuters does pick up some alleged details on those fronts, via an unnamed source quoted by South Korea’s Asia Business Daily. Its source says the ICBM started moving Monday, is only being moved at night, and is headed toward the nation's west coast. Reuters notes there's some likelihood that another test could come on or around Saturday: Sept. 9 is the country's founding day holiday. CNBC notes North Korea conducted a nuke test on Sept. 9, 2016. Two more details that allegedly came from the South's National Intelligence Service briefing: word that additional tunnels have been dug out at the North's nuclear test site that would facilitate future detonations, and suspicions that the next ICBM test firing might be directed toward the North Pacific but aimed at a lower angle, which would in theory allow it to fly further than previous tests, which had more of an upward trajectory. Meanwhile, the White House tells Reuters it has given "in-principle approval" to a request by South Korean President Moon Jae-in to abolish a limit regarding warhead weights, a move that would strengthen the power with which it could attack the North, if necessary. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin on Tuesday gave his take on the situation: North Korea "will eat grass but will not give up the (nuclear) program if they don't feel safe."
– North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appears to share his father's fondness for rockets—but not his aversion to public speaking. Kim spoke to North Korea in a televised New Year's Day address, the first such broadcast in 19 years, the BBC reports. Kim Jong Il almost never addressed the public, and the last such New Year's broadcast in Pyongyang was from Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, in 1994. In the address, Kim called for a "radical turnabout" that would transform North Korea into an "economic giant." He called for unity between North and South Korea, although he referred to agreements signed years ago that new South Korean leader Park Geun Hye may be reluctant to implement, the Washington Post reports. He stressed that military power remains a top national priority. "The military might of a country represents its national strength," he said. "Only when it builds up its military might in every way can it develop into a thriving country."
– Expect gas prices to start falling quickly over the next few weeks, reports USA Today. The national average is about $3.72 a gallon—a record high for this time of year—but it's expected to be about $3.35 by late November, thanks to lower demand and rising inventories typical in autumn. It also helps that producers switch to cheaper winter-blend gas right about now, notes the Christian Science Monitor. Nobody will happier than residents of California, although one analyst notes that the Obama campaign is sure to be pleased, too.
– Anthony Weiner may be moving on from his 2011 sexting scandal—but for the five women on the other end of his raunchy messages and photos, it's not so easy, the New York Times reports. Lisa Weiss, 42, says customers at the casino where she works as a blackjack dealer don't make it easy to forget, saying things like, "Talk dirty to me," and, "We know what you want to do to him," while colleagues refuse to speak to her, and strangers send her disparaging remarks online. "Clearly she’s got mental issues," read a recent one. Gennette Cordova, who was 21 when she received a photo of Weiner's, er, weiner, moved across the country to get away from the scandal, but the press still tracked her down, showing up at her new workplace. And Ginger Lee says his new mayoral campaign is a constant reminder of what happened. "Every new headline and news story about him reminds reporters and bloggers that we exist, and the cycle starts all over," she says. "There will be a new flare-up of jokes, inaccurate statements and hurtful remarks." (Vaguely interesting side-note, Buzzfeed reported earlier today that this story was first published on June 10 then pulled offline. The Times then posted the story hours later, but says it wasn't influenced by the Buzzfeed piece.)
– After the US announced it's flying B-52 bombers over South Korea, the North is issuing its latest warning: US military bases in Guam and Japan are in its "striking range." Said the country's military: "The US should not forget that the Andersen Air Force Base on Guam where the B-52s take off and naval bases in Japan ... where nuclear-powered submarines are launched are within the striking range of (North Korea's) precision strike means." Pyongyang said it would "take corresponding military actions" over US "nuclear blackmail and threat." The bases do seem to be within the North's conventional-weapons range, CNN notes. Meanwhile, the North announced an air raid warning today, calling on military units to be ready, according to South Korea—but the warning was apparently linked to a defense drill, Reuters reports.
– A Pakistani court has sentenced a father, brother, and two cousins to death after they used stones and bricks to murder a pregnant relative who married without the family's consent. The decision came yesterday, months after Farzana Parveen's "honor killing" outside a Lahore courthouse in May drew international attention, the New York Times reports. Another relative was handed 10 years in prison. The BBC reports the death sentences are somewhat unusual, and some suspect the sentences will be reduced on appeal. A lawyer for the men says they will indeed appeal the "politically motivated" sentences. Prosecutors, however, say the men's guilt was proven using DNA evidence.
– Pakistan's army today admitted to "shortcomings in developing intelligence on the presence" of Osama bin Laden, then promptly ordered a reduction in US military in the country to "minimum essential" levels. The reduction is apparently meant to protest the independent US raid on bin Laden's compound, which has been criticized in Pakistan as violating that country's sovereignty, the AP reports. Pakistan earlier warned of "disastrous consequences" if the US carries out other, similar raids in the future. Despite the admitted shortcomings, Pakistan's army says the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency gave initial information to the CIA. In its statement, the first since the raid, the army threatened that if the US carries out more raids like Sunday's, it will review its cooperation with Washington. The Washington Post notes that Pakistan's foreign minister also appeared to question whether the US raid was legal, citing UN Security Council resolutions and suggesting the raid may have breached international law.
– What's in a name? Just a crass term that's endured for centuries, if this holds any water. An English history researcher says he's spotted the earliest-known "f-word" on record in court documents from 1310, the Telegraph reports. Paul Booth came upon a reference to "Roger F***ebythenavele"—likely the guy's nickname, Booth says—while analyzing court records during the stormy rule of Edward II (1307-27). The name is "written clearly, and three times, and I think that shows it's not a joke," says Booth. Looks like F***ebythenavele was summoned twice to court in Cheshire, in December of 1310 and May of 1311, and finally outlawed on September 28, 1311. A court clerk might have altered the guy's name for fun, Booth admits, but short of that he sees two explanations. "First, that it applies to an actual event—a clumsy attempt at sexual intercourse by an 'Inexperienced Copulator' (my name for Roger), revealed to the world by a revengeful former girlfriend," he tells Vice.com. "Fourteenth-century revenge porn perhaps?" Or it might be an "elaborate way of describing someone regarded as a 'halfwit'—ie, that is the way that he would think of performing the sexual act." Before this, the earliest f-word on record was the phrase (translated from a Latin/English mix) "…they f**k the wives of Ely" from the poem "Flen flyys," circa 1475, Medievalists.net reports. The word has Germanic roots and is related to words that have "sexual meanings as well as meaning[s] such as 'to strike' or 'to move back and forth,'" writes Jesse Sheidlower in his book The F Word.
– A Kansas City couple who went to check out a car they saw on Craigslist were shot and robbed Wednesday night, USA Today reports. They had wanted to purchase the vehicle for their 16-year-old son, who was with them but not injured. Police say the 53-year-old dad and his son had test-driven a 2007 Hyundai Sonata and were discussing payment when the seller said he had to call his wife and momentarily walked away, according to KCTV. That’s when two other men reportedly approached the family and demanded cash, then started shooting. As the dad tried to keep his wife and son out of the barrage of bullets, he was shot four times in the chest, stomach, and legs, while his 55-year-old wife took a bullet to her upper right arm, which was “shattered,” reports the TV station. The men took the wife's purse, which had $3,000 in cash for the car purchase, say police. Authorities believe the incident may be related to an earlier armed robbery that day in which a Kansas City man says he tried to sell his Xbox and gaming accessories to a man who saw his ad on Craigslist, reports the Kansas City Star. As the potential buyer was examining the wares, two other men reportedly arrived sporting a gun; the three men then lifted the Xbox and other items and ran into nearby woods, police say.
– A black inmate in North Carolina came off death row today thanks to a controversial new law in the state. A judge reduced the sentence of Marcus Reymond Robinson to life without parole after ruling that prosecutors purposely sought to keep blacks off his jury, reports the News & Observer of Raleigh. The landmark ruling is the first under the state's Racial Justice Act, and about 150 other death row inmates in the state have cases pending, notes AP. Among other things, the law allows the judge to take statistical patterns on race into account. In this case, Robinson's legal team showed that prosecutors rejected about 50% of potential black jurors and only 15% of non-black jurors. The jury ended up with only two black people. That disparity is enough "to support an inference of intentional discrimination," wrote the judge, according to the New York Times. Robinson was convicted of murdering a white teenager in 1994.
– Police who found at least seven corpses in a building in Fort Worth, Texas, yesterday quickly determined there was no serial killer at work—but there were funeral directors who had apparently moved out with work unfinished. Police say the building's owner evicted the Johnson Family Mortuary two weeks ago and he discovered the bodies when he went to check on the building, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. The unattended bodies ranged in age from infants to adults and police say they were in "varying stages of decomposition, some quite advanced." The twin brothers who ran the business could face charges of abuse of a corpse, but they insist it is all a misunderstanding. "We've done nothing wrong," one of the brothers tells the Dallas Morning News. "This is a funeral home. This is where we keep bodies." The electricity and air conditioning in the building were still on, but it did not have a refrigeration system. A spokesman for the Texas Funeral Service Commission says the mortuary's license expires this month, and the business already is the focus of five separate investigations.
– The first snowfall of the season lingered Friday in the Northeast as thousands of exhausted commuters pointed their fingers at politicians and meteorologists for leaving them creeping along highways or stuck in mass transit hubs because of a surprise storm, per the AP. The storm left seven dead as it moved through the Midwest and South. Some students in West Orange, New Jersey, were forced to sleep at their schools after their buses turned back, while others were taken to a diner to eat because snow-covered roads were clogged with traffic Thursday. In fact, State Police in New Jersey responded to 555 vehicle crashes and aided 1,027 motorists, reports CNN. Bridges and major roads in the New York metropolitan area reopened Friday after many closures caused by crashes during Thursday's storm. Some drivers woke up in their cars Friday morning after being stuck overnight on the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx. Accidents on the George Washington Bridge halted traffic on the crossing and led to backups in New York and New Jersey. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he understands people are frustrated that city officials were caught off guard by the storm and promised "a full review of what happened here." A mayoral spokesman said the early storm meant that Metropolitan Transportation Authority didn't have snow chains on its buses. He said many of them had to pull over, "further clogging streets." The delays for buses created a logjam, forcing officials to close the doors Thursday at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal. (The opposite coast is reeling, too. Read the latest on the California fires here.)
– Don't be too nervous if you were in Lithia, Fla., earlier in the week and spotted a UPS truck launching a device from its roof to a nearby blueberry farm. It was all part of a test of a new drone-delivery feature the company hopes to bring to residential areas, Consumerist reports. The Workhorse Group's HorseFly unit—which can buzz along for about a half-hour, carrying packages that don't exceed 10 pounds—traveled a quarter-mile or so from the truck to the farm, dropped off its package, then circled back to find the UPS truck, on its way to a new destination. TechCrunch reviewed the test runs and said the process "still needs work," noting that interference caused one launch to be aborted. Reuters reports the experiment followed on the tail of a UPS announcement that automation and new technology were high on the company's priority list. Mark Wallace, a UPS senior VP, explains to Consumerist that rural areas could be a particularly viable place for the truck-launched drones, as a truck could settle in the middle of a "triangular delivery route" and send the drone to different destinations. Another UPS exec, John Dodero, tells Reuters that there's no set timeline for getting the drones into wider circulation because federal regulations are in flux. FAA rules, for example, currently require commercial drones to stay in operators' view, and they can only buzz over their operators, not other people. (Inc. notes the risk to those below if the drone malfunctions and drops the package.) One thing Dodero can speak clearly to: "UPS is never looking to replace our UPS drivers," he tells Reuters. (Amazon has also been experimenting with drone delivery.)
– That "no animals were harmed" disclaimer that crops up at the end of movies courtesy of the American Humane Association seems straightforward enough. But an investigation by Gary Baum at the Hollywood Reporter finds that plenty of animals do, in fact, get harmed on sets—even for movies that end up with the label. In one of the more buzzed-about pieces from the story, Baum gets hold of an email from an AHA rep on the set of Life of Pi that describes how the "tiger damn near drowned," instructs the recipient to keep it quiet, and adds, "I have downplayed the f--- out of it." (Salon reprints the full email here.) There's also the chipmunk that got stepped on and killed in Failure to Launch, the dog that got repeatedly punched by its trainer in Eight Below, the nearly 30 goats and sheep that died in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and all manners of injuries and even deaths to horses over the years on a slew of films. The examples go on and on—there's all kinds of wiggle room from the AHA, especially if the accident occurred off-camera instead of during filming or was accidental—and Baum's piece suggests that AHA has gotten too "cozy" with the industry to adequately protect animals. It includes this quote from an AHA board member defending the "no animals were harmed" disclaimer: “I think what people think [it means] is that when a horse dies in the movies, it didn’t really die,” she says. "I think that people think [the AHA's monitoring] is just when the cameras are rolling." At Slate, LV Anderson finds that tough to take: By those standards, "no one cares if you punch, step on, or starve animals as long as there’s no camera turned on nearby," she writes. "If that’s the best defense the AHA can come up with, I hope the Department of Agriculture, the governmental agency usually tasked with protecting animals from neglect and abuse, begins sending agents to Hollywood very, very soon." The AHA, meanwhile, calls the piece an inaccurate hatchet job in a statement picked up by the Sacramento Bee. Click to read the THR story in full.
– Queen Elizabeth II's husband, Prince Philip, will stop carrying out public engagements this fall, Buckingham Palace announced Thursday. The palace said in a statement that Philip, who's 95, has the full support of the queen in his decision. He will continue heading numerous charitable organizations but will not play an active role attending engagements, the AP reports. In the past, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, has suffered heart problems but has maintained a vigorous public schedule. The palace did not offer any new details about his health. Earlier Thursday, there was frenzied speculation among palace-watchers as royal staff from across the UK were summoned to a meeting. (Prince Philip was all smiles hours before the announcement was made.)
– We’ve seen the long form certificate, but the birther issue just won’t die. Author Jerome Corsi’s new book Where’s the Birth Certificate? debuts at number six on the New York Times’ Best Sellers list out Sunday, according to CNN. The book argues that President Obama’s citizenship has never been verified by a legal authority. Despite the White House release of the president's Certificate of Live Birth, 17% of Americans think he was definitely or probably not born in the US, according to a recent poll taken after Obama's birth certificate announcement.
– Norm Macdonald posted a very long series of tweets last night about Saturday Night Live's 40th anniversary reunion special, and in it, he explains why Eddie Murphy didn't have a more prominent role on the special. Murphy, who hadn't returned to the SNL studio in more than three decades, only ended up on stage for 70 seconds, and all he did was give thanks for "being remembered for his contribution to the show," People reports. But the writers originally wanted Murphy to play Bill Cosby in a Celebrity Jeopardy sketch that would also feature Macdonald as Burt Reynolds. It was Macdonald's job to convince Murphy, and they talked it over for "a good hour," Macdonald tweeted. The idea was a video Daily Double with the category of "potent potables," Macdonald said, in which "Cosby would be mixing a drink in a video that was taped 6 months ago." So what was the problem? Murphy "knew the laughs would bring the house down. Eddie Murphy knows what will work on SNL better than any one," Macdonald tweeted. But "Eddie decides the laughs are not worth it. He will not kick a man when he is down. Eddie Murphy, I realize, is not like the rest of us. Eddie does not need the laughs." According to the Daily Beast, Cosby responded to the Murphy story by saying, "I am very appreciative of Eddie and I applaud his actions." Over at Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams scoffs at the idea that Cosby is "down," writing, "You don’t want to do a bit, don’t do a bit, but don’t you dare turn it into an 'Aw, shucks, let’s go easy on the guy. Hasn’t he suffered enough?' moment." The skit did go on, with Kenan Thompson as Cosby. As for Murphy, Mediaite reports that his actual appearance on the show was extremely awkward, and NBC edited it to make it appear less so. Watch Celebrity Jeopardy and the edited version of Murphy's appearance in the gallery.
– A member of a French hunting party was killed Monday in what authorities are calling an exceedingly rare accident. Police say the unarmed 62-year-old man was acting as a beater (meaning trying to get game to leave their cover) for a hunting party in Compiègne national park, around 50 miles northeast of Paris, when the animal charged, piercing him with an antler, AFP reports. Regis Levasseur, described as a seasoned hunter, died of internal bleeding before emergency services got there. Authorities say hunting injuries involving wild boar are a lot more common, though ones involving deer are not completely unheard of. "It remains a wild animal, with unpredictable reactions," Guy Harlé, the chief of the regional hunting association, tells Courrier Picard. "It is a dangerous animal, contrary to what people think. The antlers of the stag are like many knives piercing you, there is nothing you can do." As for Levasseur, "For him, hunting was more than a hobby, it was his life," Harlé adds, per the Local. (Scientists have spotted a grisly first among deer.)
– The plot to kill a soldier in the streets of London may have gone deeper than the two men who hacked Lee Rigby to death. Police yesterday arrested two more people, a man and a woman, both 29, as suspected conspirators in the attack, the Wall Street Journal reports. They also searched the homes of six people—including, reportedly, suspect Michael Adebolajo's father's home. Neither these two conspirators nor the wounded alleged killers have been charged yet. Other developments include: Police also haven't identified any of the suspects, but Adebolajo's name was widely reported yesterday, and today the Telegraph has identified the other alleged knife-man as the confusingly similarly named Michael Adebowale, 22. Neighbors identified Adebowale after police armed with submachine guns raided his flat yesterday, emerging with two children, a baby, and two large envelopes. Adebowale was apparently known for distributing radical Islamist leaflets, and his girlfriend had recently converted to Islam. "When you walked past, you would hear them singing Muslim songs," one neighbor says, adding that she "saw the man who was in the video go inside the house. I think he was a boyfriend." Rigby, "was due to come up this weekend," his wife tells the Guardian. "You don't expect it to happen when he's in the UK. You think they're safe." The Daily Mirror has uncovered video that purports to show the two suspects rushing at police and getting shot. There's also been a great deal of hand-wringing over MI5's failure to identify the stabbers ahead of time. David Cameron is calling for an investigation to determine "what went wrong" at the intelligence agency. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has promised just such an investigation. But he also defended the agency to the BBC, saying it was "difficult in a free society to be able to control everyone."
– Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says officials from Saudi Arabia, the United States, Germany, France, and Britain have listened to audio recordings related to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the AP reports. Erdogan's comments on Saturday were the first public confirmation of the existence of recordings of the Oct. 2 killing of the Washington Post columnist at the consulate where he'd gone to get papers to marry his fiancee. "We gave the tapes," Erdogan said Saturday before departing for Paris, where he'll attend events with other world leaders marking the armistice that ended World War I, per Al Jazeera. "They have listened to all the conversations in them. They know." NBC News notes that a State Department rep had previously denied that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had heard any such audio or seen any audio transcript when he visited Turkey last month. President Trump, meanwhile, has said that the US has asked for any audio "if it exists." Erdogan called on Saudi Arabia to rid itself of the "stain" by cooperating with Turkey over the investigation. Erdogan said a 15-member team that Turkey says was sent to kill Khashoggi know who's behind the killing, as well as the location of his remains. (Saudis are boycotting Amazon over coverage of Khashoggi's murder.)
– The winter solstice officially occurred at 6:04pm EST yesterday, marking the first day of winter and the longest night of the year. But all "longest nights" aren't created equal, and the longest night in Earth's history likely happened in 1912. Here's why: The Earth's rotation has been slowing a little bit every year since the planet formed some 4.5 billion years ago, and we have a phenomenon known as tidal acceleration to thank. The moon's gravity pulls on our oceans, tugging the oceans that face it into a "bulge" (LiveScience digs into why there's a bulge on the other side, too). But as the Earth rotates, that tidal bulge is pushed to a position just ahead of the point of our planet that's directly below the moon. That causes the Earth to experience "just a bit of friction from this bulge of water as it rotates, slowing it down slightly," explains Vox. And as a NASA article explains, as Earth slows, the moon is able to inch away from us. The effects of these things are so tiny it takes atomic clocks to spot them, but they're very gradually making our nights longer—mostly. In the long view, we're slowing, but geological factors (like ice melting at our poles, for instance) can impact the rotational speed, and as this University of California Observatories graph shows, the length of our day has gone infinitesimally up and down over the last century, but the peak—and therefore the longest night in our history—occurred in 1912. As far as the length of last night goes, it depends on where you spent it, notes the Washington Post. Washington, DC, saw about 9.5 hours of daylight yesterday, while Miami got almost 10.5, and Fairbanks, Alaska, saw less than four. (The 2010 winter solstice was remarkable for quite another reason.)
– It's been rumored for a few years now; Nautilus' take on the looming "bourbon shortage" is that it already has hit. Though we're awash with Knob Creek and Maker's Mark, high-end and small-batch bourbons are in short supply, spurring well-heeled drinkers to clear the next tier of bourbon from the shelves. As io9 explains, the reason we've arrived at this point can be distilled down to some poor predictions made as many as 20 years ago when the golden liquid filling today's premium bottles started being made. Basically, distillers didn't predict just how much demand would swell in this decade, and the Wall Street Journal reported in September that they've been burned before: They jacked up production in the 1970s, but demand plunged and prices followed. But Nautilus places us in a "Mad Men-inspired mixology epoch," stacking up the 19 million cases of bourbon sold last year to the 13 million sold in 2002. And while actual data detailing the shortage is hard to come by, one independent survey by writer Fred Minnick finds that 82% of 149 "high-end" bourbon drinkers report not being able to get their hands on certain bourbons right now. More on why: The aging process is what takes the edge off bourbon, so much so that anything aged less than 4 years must be labeled as such; many fine bourbons are aged 18 or more years. Nautilus takes a look at how some makers are attempting to hack down that timeline: by using oak barrels much smaller than the standard size or adding oak chips to regular-size ones in order to balloon the "alcohol-to-barrel-surface ratio," for instance. But for those who want the real, decade-aged deal, "there simply isn’t enough of the good stuff to go around," observes Nautilus. (As for whiskey, the world's best is no longer from Scotland.)
– The height and weight of a newborn baby is largely governed by his or her own genes, but it's the height of the mother that's giving researchers a telltale sign, reports the Telegraph. Specifically, shorter women have shorter pregnancies and thus more premature babies, report investigators at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center Ohio Collaborative in the journal PLOS Medicine. The team analyzed 3,485 Nordic women and their babies, and found that a woman's height actually shapes the fetal environment, thereby influencing the length of her pregnancy. This has broad health implications around the world, where 15 million babies are born prematurely every year and more than 1 million of them die due to complications of early birth—which include breathing problems, vision loss, and intellectual delays, report researchers in a press release. "That a woman's height influences gestational length, independent of the genes she passes on that determine fetal size, is a major finding by our research networks, and the first of what we expect to be many genetic contributions," one researcher says. (Premature birth is now the world's top killer of children under 5.)
– Can no one stop the sausage-consuming juggernauts that are Joey Chestnut and Sonja Thomas? Chestnut not only won his seventh-consecutive title today at the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, he set a new world record by scarfing down 69 hot dogs and buns during the ten minutes allotted, SB Nation reports. The total tops his own personal best of 68, a record he shared with absent archrival Kobayashi. Doubting oddsmakers had set his over/under at just 63.5 dogs. Thomas—aka "the Black Widow"—also kept her crown for another year, but just barely. Thomas managed just 36 and three-quarters dogs, narrowly edging out Juliet Lee, who devoured 36 even, the AP reports. Thomas, who has won every year since Nathan began holding a separate women's competition in 2011, ate a record 45 dogs last year.
– Amber Rose confirms longstanding rumors about a Kim Kardashian-Kanye West hookup, telling Star (via Radar), "Kim is one of the main reasons why me and Kanye are not together. She’s a homewrecker!" According to Rose, she was dating West while Kardashian was dating Reggie Bush. Kardashian and West "were both cheating on me and Reggie with each other," she claims, adding that Kardashian sent West racy pictures. (Apparently, the Kim-Kanye romance is back on in the wake of her divorce from Kris Humphries.) If you'd like to further ruin your day, click to read about an upcoming Kardashian magazine.
– Now that the worst of Hurricane Sandy is over, we can focus on some important questions like … what happens to Halloween? Don’t worry, Chris Christie is on it: He has now officially postponed Halloween until Monday, citing safety reasons, NJ 101.5 reports. “I can’t imagine that it’s going to be safe for kids to go around for Halloween tomorrow,” the New Jersey governor said yesterday, reports the Star-Ledger. He had earlier tweeted, “If conditions are not safe on Wednesday for Trick or Treating, I will sign an Executive Order rescheduling #Halloween.” That, of course, led to some amused reactions. (“Uh I don’t think it works that way,” reads one reply.) But the storm’s impact on the holiday is undeniable: Christie's not alone: At least eight Jersey cities and towns have postponed trick-or-treating to Saturday, the Star-Ledger reports. Good Morning America and Today both canceled the traditional Halloween specials they had planned for this morning, the Huffington Post reports. Halloween sales, which had been expected to hit $8 billion, will surely see an impact, USA Today reports. "Small businesses relying on last-minute shoppers will get hit," says a National Retail Federation rep. One such small business reports that the storm will cost it as much as $50,000, a good chunk of its profits for the year. Some Halloween events are still happening tonight, like New York’s Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, but the crowds are expected to be much smaller than those of a normal year. Other festivities have been delayed to this weekend or even next, the Huffington Post reports.
– Authorities were left in disbelief after a man's body landed on top of a freeway sign following a car crash Friday morning in Los Angeles, Fox 11 reports. "I've never seen anything like this or heard anything like this," a highway patrol spokesperson tells the Los Angeles Times. "It's the first time." The highway patrol received reports of a Ford Fiesta driving recklessly around 7am local time. According to Fox 11, the Fiesta hit another vehicle and rolled. The driver, who wasn't wearing a seatbelt, was launched 20 to 30 feet in the air, landing improbably on top of a nearby freeway sign. One witness told police that the driver had been passing cars on the right shoulder of the road, reports KTLA. Police say he eventually clipped the rear of a pickup, which caused his own car to spin out of control. The body of the man was covered by authorities but stayed on the sign for approximately three hours until the freeway could be closed to let firefighters remove it. He has been identified as 20-year-old Richard Pananian of Burbank. (In another car accident tragedy, a woman's husband and child were killed—and she lost all memory of them.)
– Sotheby's is prepping for a children's books and illustrations auction in July, and at the top of the list is what one expert calls "probably the most famous map in English literature." That, per the BBC, would be EH Shepard's original ink sketch of the Hundred Acre Wood from AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, published in 1926. The map—which shows the fictional woodland, as well as depictions of Pooh, Christopher Robin, Eeyore, and Piglet—is expected to fetch up to $200,000. "It's such a valuable piece because it's such an obvious entry into the world of Winnie-the-Pooh," Sotheby's Philip Errington, a senior specialist at the auction house, tells Reuters. Four other Shepard illustrations, which haven't been viewed by the public in nearly a half-century, will also be up for grabs.
– A hearty Vancouver police officer is being hailed as a hero for plunging into a freezing lake to save a dog, the CBC reports. (Police retweeted images here.) The pooch became trapped after he chased a ball onto Lost Lagoon on Friday afternoon and plunged through thin ice. By the time cops arrived, the dog was struggling to stay above water. Constable Peter Colenutt pulled off his coat and shoes and plunged into the frigid lake in short sleeves. "He took hold of one end of a rescue rope, and with his co-workers holding the other end, he made his way to the dog," Constable Jason Doucette tells CTV. Photos posted on Twitter show Colenutt grabbing the black shaggy dog by the scruff and easing him through blocks of ice to the shore. Others show him padding in his bare feet in the snow to a squad car. "The dog and our officer were both pretty chilly, but thankfully okay," Vancouver police tweeted. It's not Colenutt's first water rescue. Last June, the officer raced into the water to save a swimmer in distress, per CTV; he had just been given an award in that case. Photos of the latest heroics unleashed a flood of praise for Colenutt on Twitter. "An officer AND a gentleman," tweeted one user. (A family dog saved a boy trapped in clothes dryer.)
– Since last month's grand jury report describing how the former archbishop of Pittsburgh reassigned priests accused of abusing children, Cardinal Donald Wuerl has had his name scrubbed from a school, been the subject of protests by Catholic schoolteachers, and faced calls from priests and parishioners to resign. Resignation is now on the table, the 77-year-old archbishop of Washington wrote in a Tuesday letter to priests, laying out a plan to discuss the subject with Pope Francis in Rome. Wuerl submitted his resignation at age 75 as is required of Catholic bishops, but the pope kept him on as one of his top US advisers, per the New York Times and CNN. During a meeting two weeks ago, the pope told Wuerl to consult with priests about the best way forward, reports the Wall Street Journal. Amid questions over whether he knew about molestation claims against his predecessor, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, he heard calls for him both to stay and resign. That showed the need for "some decision, sooner rather than later, on my part," Wuerl writes. Noting abuse survivors "have personally suffered so much," his letter adds non-victims "have also been wounded by the shame of these terrible actions and have questions about their bishop's ability to provide the necessary leadership." The letter doesn't say whether Wuerl will ask the pope to accept his resignation, however. (Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican's former ambassador to the US, said Wuerl was complicit in a coverup.)
– President Obama unveiled sweeping actions on immigration reform last night, and while the civil unrest Sen. Tom Coburn warned of hasn't materialized, it's safe to say congressional Republicans are deeply unhappy. Obama criticized Republicans for failing to act and dared them to "pass a bill," but the forceful actions GOP congressional leaders have promised in response are not expected to include immigration reform. More: Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised a tough response when the GOP majority takes office next year, but he didn't spell out any specific actions, Politico reports. Obama needs to understand that if he "acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act," McConnell says. "We're considering a variety of options. But make no mistake. When the newly elected representatives of the people take their seats, they will act." Possible actions include a lawsuit against the White House or choking off funding to federal agencies. House Speaker John Boehner was among many Republicans who warned that Obama's order will make it tougher to reach compromise on other reforms. "By ignoring the will of the American people, President Obama has cemented his legacy of lawlessness and squandered what little credibility he had left," Boehner said in a statement. "His 'my way or the highway' approach makes it harder to build the trust with the American people that is necessary to get things done on behalf of the country." The immigration order not only sets the GOP against Obama, it raises the prospect of yet more intra-GOP conflict, with some conservatives demanding a government shutdown, reports the Washington Post. "The president wants to see an angry and intemperate response, thinking the Republicans will do something that leads to a shutdown," says Rep. Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania. "Don't take the bait, and don't have a hysterical reaction. We can be strong, rational, and measured." Democrats were broadly in support of the move to defer deportation for millions, but many called it just the first step in a process that should be completed by Congress, the Hill reports. The move is "a bold step in the right direction" but "not a permanent solution," says Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez, the new head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Among those affected by the move, there is some joy and relief, but some feel it didn't go far enough and hope for a longer-term solution, the AP finds. "This will definitely help our family no longer live in fear, fear that we will have to drop everything if our parents are deported," says a 20-year-old woman in Portland whose parents lack legal status. "But there is still fear, because this is ... temporary, and we need something permanent."
– During its sixth season in 1995, The Simpsons gazed into the future—specifically, 2010—in the “Lisa’s Wedding” episode. Writing at 11points.com, Sam Greenspan lists 11 things about this year the episode got right: Soy snacks: Not only did the show predict their popularity, it also “nailed their horrible, horrible flavor.” Celebrity arrests: “During Kent Brockman's newscast, he lets viewers know that if they see any celebrities, consider them dangerous”—and today, “celebrities really do get arrested at a prodigious rate.” Rolling Stones still at it: A poster for the “Rolling Stones Steel Wheelchair Tour 2010” is shown, and the band is now “old but still going strong,” Greenspan writes. They “really ignored the whole ‘live fast, die young’ credo of rock-and-roll.” Credit cards everywhere: In the Simpsons episode, plastic is used at a vending machine. And it’s true: “2010 is the time when we'll happily jam our credit cards into anything. We sure as hell aren't going to carry around a bunch of cash anymore. We're not cavemen after all.” Thousands of cable channels: Yep, got that, Greenspan concludes: “And yet we still watch the same Simpsons episodes over and over and over.” For the complete list, click here—or for the follow-up, 11 predictions the show got wrong, click here.
– See if this sounds familiar: The White House and House Republicans appear headed toward a standoff over the debt ceiling this fall, reports NBC News. That's after John Boehner's statement this morning: “We're not going to raise the debt ceiling without real cuts in spending. It's as simple as that.” Democrats such as Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer said last week that Congress should pass an extension of the debt ceiling without strings attached, reports Bloomberg. Both sides appear to be jockeying for public opinion, with Boehner getting out ahead of President Obama's planned speeches on the economy starting tomorrow, reports the Hill. Boehner warned that Obama would be laying the ground for tax hikes. Treasury chief Jack Lew says the nation has enough money to operate without new borrowing until about Labor Day.
– Michael Vickers, a senior Defense official rumored to be a possible replacement for David Petraeus at the CIA, has been referred to the Justice Department after Pentagon investigators concluded that he leaked restricted information about the Osama bin Laden raid to Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers, two senior US officials tell the Miami Herald. Vickers, the Pentagon's undersecretary for Intelligence, gave filmmakers the name of a member of SEAL Team Six who helped plan the raid—though not, ABC News reports, one of the SEALs who actually conducted the raid. But so far, the Justice Department has declined to prosecute. Vickers is Leon Panetta's top intelligence adviser, and it's not clear whether the matter will hurt his shot at the CIA directorship. One senior defense official says it's simply "a routine practice" to refer issues like this to the Justice Department, and adds that Pentagon officials doubt the case "will amount to anything," particularly since a 2011 conversation in which Vickers talked to the filmmakers about the SEAL, mentioning him by name, was deemed unclassified by the Pentagon. The Pentagon says its investigation into possible leaks related to the film is still ongoing. It was launched at Rep. Peter King's request, but his office hadn't been notified of any findings by this week. King says that "raises the question" of whether the delay was for political reasons. The Herald suggests it may have been an effort not to hurt the president's re-election chances, while ABC suggests it was to avoid embarrassing Panetta before he retires.
– A Colorado busboy who's low on cash and dealing with medical issues didn't let his own woes stop him from doing the right thing. Johnny Duckworth found $3,000 Tuesday in an envelope that had fallen behind a booth at Randy's Southside Diner in Grand Junction, the AP reports. But while he could have pocketed the money, Duckworth headed right to owner Randy Emmons. "He ... said, 'Boss, I found this envelope, it feels like it has a lot of money in it,'" Emmons tells KKCO. "And he handed it to me and walked away. … I was shocked." Shocked not only at the 30 $100 bills inside, but also at Duckworth's integrity, considering his own circumstances: On the GoFundMe page Emmons set up to raise money for his star employee, who he says has worked at Randy's for nine years, he notes Duckworth's car is broken down and that he relies on others for housing, lacking the cash for his own place "because of the doctor bills he's [acquired] that garnish his paycheck every week." An ATM slip inside the envelope allowed a local bank to track the $3,000 back to diner regular Darrell Cox, who had no idea he even left the money behind until the bank called. He showed back up at the diner on Thursday to scribble a note to Duckworth that said, "Merry Christmas to a super honest guy," Cox tells KKCO. He also gave Duckworth a $300 "tip" for his honesty. But Duckworth doesn't think what he did was a big deal. "It's not mine," he says, per the station. "I work for a living; I make money." Emmons raves on the GoFundMe page, which has already racked up more than $11,500 as of this publication, that this attitude for the worker nicknamed "Thumper" isn't unusual. "Thumper is a great guy," Emmons writes. "He would give his last dollar out of his pocket to anyone that needed it, even though he doesn't have much himself. … That's the kind of employee I wish all of my employees were." (Similarly honest workers turned in a bag containing $32,000.)
– The escaped prisoner who was shot to death on Friday may have been both drunk and sick when troopers finally caught up with him, reports the Buffalo News. The body of Richard Matt reeked of booze, authorities tell the newspaper. That gibes with the report of a cabin owner who checked his place and found that somebody had gotten into his alcohol, polishing off half a bottle of gin and leaving other bottles on the table. It might have been a birthday bash: Matt had turned 49 the day before he was killed. His final days clearly weren't pleasant, however. The state of his body made clear that he'd been exposed to the elements, and—this part is a little gross—his soiled underwear suggests he'd been sick, maybe the result of consuming bad food or water. What's more, CNN reports that when troopers finally zeroed in on him, after a motorist reported a gun shot, it was a telltale cough that gave him away. They heard the sound in the woods, spotted Matt, and ordered him to raise his hands. Authorities say that while Matt didn't shoot at troopers—he had a shotgun—he also failed to comply with their order, and so they opened fire. (His escape partner David Sweat remains on the run, perhaps more dangerous than ever.)
– A Colorado meatpacker is recalling more than 132,000 pounds of ground beef after a suspected E. coli outbreak killed one person and sickened 17, officials said. The US Department of Agriculture said Wednesday the beef was produced and packaged at Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan on June 21 and shipped to retailers nationwide. The products include 3-, 10- and 20-pound packages of ground beef under the Our Certified, Excel, Sterling Silver, Certified, and Fire River Farms brands with July 11 use or freeze by dates. Regulators warned that people should also check for the products in their freezers. They advise throwing the products away or returning them to the location of purchase, the AP reports. In a statement on Thursday, Cargill said all of the affected products have been removed from supermarkets. Food safety teams are reviewing the Fort Morgan facility and others "to ensure we continue to deliver safe food," the statement said. "We were distressed to learn a fatality may be related to an E.coli contamination of one of our products," it said. "Our hearts go out to the families and individuals affected by this issue." The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service did not release information about the people who died or became ill, including locations. The Cargill plant had a smaller recall of Excel ground beef in August, but no illnesses had been reported at that time. The USDA's recall info can be found in full here.
– Christmas is around the corner but at Yale, they're still dealing with the fallout from a Halloween controversy. Lecturer Erika Christakis has resigned from her teaching position after causing an uproar in October with her response to an email from the campus Intercultural Affairs Committee urging students to avoid insensitive costumes like Native American headdresses, the New York Times reports. "Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?" she asked. "American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition." Christakis, who taught courses on child development, became the target of student protesters amid a wider discussion of racial issues on campus, AP reports. Yale said in a statement that it is disappointed she has decided to not to teach next semester and she is "welcome to resume teaching anytime." Christakis and her husband will remain as "masters" of Silliman College, one of Yale's 12 residential colleges. She tells the Washington Post that while she has great respect for her students, the current climate at Yale is not "conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems." (At Harvard, house "masters" have decided it is time for "a new inclusive title.")
– A Detroit woman faces up to 10 months in prison for fraud after admitting to renting diseased body parts to researchers. Elizabeth Rathburn, 56—to be sentenced in July—also must pay $55,225 to the American Anesthesiology Association, whose researchers were told the body parts were clean, reports the Detroit Free Press. But her estranged husband, Arthur Rathburn, 62, could face more than 20 years in prison if convicted of charges related to his work as a cadaver dealer. The trade of body parts "is not, in and of itself, illegal," but "crimes have been committed," an FBI agent says in an affidavit. Under the Rathburns' company International Biological Inc., Arthur Rathburn is accused of purchasing discounted body parts infected with HIV and hepatitis B, then renting them to unsuspecting customers who could have been exposed to infection, per the Detroit News. Arthur Rathburn worked with the University of Michigan's anatomical donation program for six years until he was fired for selling bodies in 1990. He then worked as a private dealer. Prosecutors say he cut up bodies with chainsaws "without using sanitary precautions," and kept more than 1,000 body parts at a warehouse. He's also accused of selling bodies for $5,000 on the black market. Heads were allegedly sold for $500, while arms fetched $750. In one instance, prosecutors say he shipped fresh heads—which reportedly sat in pools of blood inside coolers—on a commercial plane. Rathburn faces charges including wire fraud, making false statements, and transporting hazardous materials at trial on April 5, per Reuters. His wife "will assist the government with any knowledge that she has," her lawyer says. "Her life has been ruined largely in part because of her association with Mr. Rathburn."
– The race for the White House does indeed appear to be tightening. A new CBS/New York Times national poll shows Hillary Clinton with just a 2-point lead over Donald Trump among likely voters, 46% to 44% in a two-candidate race, with a 3-point margin of error. With Gary Johnson and Jill Stein in the mix, Clinton and Trump are neck-and-neck at 42% each. Among all registered voters, Clinton fares better. She has a 5-point lead over Trump, 46% to 41%, in a two-candidate race, and a 2-point lead, 41% to 39%, with Johnson and Stein included. But her lead is still diminshed, and her recent bout with pneumonia may have played a role. Just 38% of Democrats said they were excited about voting in the poll of 1,753 from Friday to Tuesday, down from 47% in August. That's compared to 64% of Republicans, down from 77%, though nearly all Trump and Clinton supporters said their minds were made up. "Not since Trump's post-Republican National Convention bump has the GOP nominee seemed to be in such a strong position," though he's "still the underdog," writes David A. Graham at the Atlantic. A Quinnipiac University national poll of 960 likely voters shows Clinton with a 5-point lead over Trump in a head-to-head battle, and a 2-point lead in a four-candidate race with a 3-point margin of error, per Politico.
– India today convicted three Nepalese men in the gang rape of an American tourist in a small Himalayan town, reports the Wall Street Journal, with each of the men drawing a 20-year prison term. The woman, then 30, now 31, was assaulted after accepting a ride back to her guesthouse from a truck driver, who, along with two other men, allegedly assaulted her and left her by the side of the road. The verdict comes down one day after the anniversary of the fatal gang rape aboard a New Delhi bus that catapulted rape into a major issue in India—and imposed a 20-year minimum sentence for it. There were protest rallies and candlelight vigils in memory of the event around the country yesterday, the AP reports. One Bollywood actress led a troupe of street performers and performed plays all along the fateful bus route. "I don't think things have changed," one protester told al-Jazeera. "It's just that women are less fearful of saying what's happening."
– Reactions to President Obama's decision not to release the Osama bin Laden death photos are rolling in—and most seem to disagree with the prez: "While gory photographs would have inflamed some jihadists and wannabes, I believe they would have disillusioned and deflated others," writes Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post. "A heroic myth of invulnerability had been built around bin Laden," which the photos would soundly refute. "The reason to display the photos is to show bin Laden for what he really was: not a holy warrior, not a holy anything, but a deluded mass murderer who met the end he so richly deserved." But, writing on Hot Air, Allahpundit disagrees with Robinson. The Zarqawi death photos, not to mention the numbers of al-Qaeda commanders killed by drone strikes, already warned jihadists "of what awaits if they mess with America." Releasing the photos means treating bin Laden "like a big enough deal that the world should gawk at his fate." By not releasing them, he is "reduced to an afterthought." Many have argued that releasing the photos would put American troops in greater danger from al-Qaeda, but the "idea that news should be calibrated by the government to ease the job of the US military makes for a First Amendment loophole you could drive a motorized regiment through," writes Jack Shafer on Slate. "It's hard to imagine that a death photo of bin Laden would elevate al-Qaeda and its supporters to some fury that his killing didn't." In the Wall Street Journal, Alan Dershowitz calls the decision not to release the photos "only the last in a series of terrible mistakes" in handling bin Laden's body. He's more aghast that the corpse was not subjected to routine forensic techniques, which could have answered many of the lingering questions: "Was he shot in cold blood? Was he shot in the back or in the front? Were his hands raised in surrender? Was he actively resisting?" Burying bin Laden at sea "naturally gives rise to suspicions that there was something to hide."
– A vampire hunter on The Lost Boys is now after Hollywood pedophiles. Former child actor Corey Feldman, a star of Stand By Me and The Goonies, has vowed to reveal the names of two Hollywood figures who abused him when he was 14. "These older men were leching around like vultures," Feldman told The Sun. "There are people who have got away with it for so long they think they are above the law. That's got to stop." Feldman and Lost Boys co-star Corey Haim hinted at their abuse on the reality television show The Two Coreys. Haim, who struggled with a drug problem, died of heart disease and pneumonia last year at the age of 38. Feldman has continued speaking out about child abuse in Hollywood since Haim's death. "I stood up and said there is a bigger problem, that I'd lost Corey and that I didn't want to see any more kids lost to these sick perverts," said Feldman. The actor's exposure threat comes as a host of pedophile cases have rocked Hollywood. At least a dozen actors, managers, production assistants, and others have been prosecuted for child abuse on the job in Hollywood since 2000, reports the Los Angeles Times.
– Martin Shkreli's lawyer may think his client is "brilliant beyond words," but the convicted pharmaceutical exec's latest move on social media wasn't exactly a genius one. Per LawNews, the Justice Department filed a motion Thursday to revoke Shkreli's $5 million bail after a now-deleted Facebook post he made earlier this week made weirdly threatening comments directed toward Hillary Clinton. "On HRC's book tour, try to grab a hair from her," he wrote, adding he'd compensate anyone who did so for their efforts: "Will pay $5,000 per hair obtained from Hillary Clinton." The DOJ says his remarks show he's a "danger to the community," per USA Today. The motion notes that a "significant expenditure of resources" now has to be put out by the Secret Service staff tasked with protecting Clinton (she's afforded such protection as a former first lady). Shkreli tried to defuse the situation by posting, "It was just a prank, bro!" on Facebook Thursday evening, followed by an expletive-tinged rant against the "government" and a dare to "come at me with you hardest because I haven't seen anything impressive yet." Shkreli's attorneys need to file a response to the DOJ motion by Tuesday; a Thursday hearing will follow. (It may be hard for him to concentrate on his eBay auction with all of this going on.)
– The state of Louisiana's refusal to install air conditioning on death row has already cost taxpayers at least $1,067,000 in expenses fighting a lawsuit filed on behalf of three inmates with medical problems, according to records obtained by the AP. Meanwhile the state could spend roughly the same money—and possibly much less—on an AC system that would satisfy a federal judge's order to protect death row inmates from dangerous heat and humidity inside Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. This tally, based on state documents provided in response to the AP's public records requests, is the first public accounting of how much the case has cost taxpayers. Most of the money has gone to private attorneys on opposing sides of the case, which US District Judge Brian Jackson says could ultimately cost many more millions of dollars, and expert witnesses and state contractors also have received tens of thousands of dollars. More than two years have passed since Jackson ruled Louisiana imposes unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment once the heat index exceeds 88 degrees. The index routinely crosses that threshold on death row, occasionally exceeding 100 degrees; plaintiff James Magee said it's like a "sauna" in the morning and an "oven" in the afternoon. A plaintiffs' expert estimated it would cost about $225,000—sans engineering fees or operating costs—to install AC on death row's six tiers. A state engineer in 2014 said nine AC units could cool all eight tiers in the 10-year-old building that holds death row, with a state attorney saying each unit would cost "several thousand dollars." State attorneys argue installing AC would spawn more suits from prisoners nationwide demanding cooler cells. Jackson is set to hear testimony Wednesday on whether the state's current heat remediation measures—one cold shower a day, ice chests in the cells, and fans outside—are adequately protecting the plaintiffs as Louisiana's sweltering summer approaches.
– His name is Pizza and he lives in a Chinese mall where visitors pose for selfies next to his glass enclosure and knock loudly to get his attention. Such is life when you're the "world's saddest polar bear," per the Daily Express. Pizza, a polar bear hybrid, is one of 500 animals living at Grandview Aquarium inside a Guangzhou shopping center, where critics say animals are housed in dimly lit rooms with few if any natural surroundings. PETA calls it "the saddest zoo in the world," asserting that animals "suffer from neglect, poor care, lack of stimulation, and lack of natural light." Foxes and wolves have been spotted pacing in their enclosures and scratching at walls, the group says. Animals Asia first drew international attention to the zoo earlier this year when it started a petition calling for the facility to be closed, reports Mashable and the Huffington Post. More than 270,000 people have added their signatures, leading zoo officials to adopt some of the group's recommendations, including putting snow in the polar bear enclosures, per a release. But more "significant changes" are needed, says Animals Asia's animal welfare director, Dave Neale. "Keeping animals in this way is not acceptable." Neale, who recently toured the facility and says Animals Asia has been asked to advise it, notes, "It is difficult for me to work with people that have chosen to house animals such as this bear in such poor conditions." But "if our experience has taught us anything—first you open doors, then you open cages." (A much-maligned zoo in Buenos Aires is shutting its doors.)
– The FBI said Monday it successfully used a mysterious technique without Apple Inc.'s help to hack into the iPhone used by a gunman in a mass shooting in California, effectively ending a pitched court battle between the Obama administration and one of the world's leading technology companies. The government asked a federal judge to vacate a disputed order forcing Apple to help the FBI break into the iPhone, saying it was no longer necessary. The court filing in US District Court for the Central District of California provided no details about how the FBI did it or who showed it how (some reports say the Israeli company Cellebrite hacked the iPhone, CNET reports, and this blog apparently shows how to do it). Apple did not immediately comment on the development. The surprise development also punctured the temporary perception that Apple's security might have been good enough to keep consumers' personal information safe even from the US government—with the tremendous resources it can expend when it wants to uncover something. The FBI used the technique to access data on an iPhone used by gunman Syed Farook, who died with his wife in a gun battle with police after they killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December. "This shows that Apple was right all along that it was not necessary for the government to make it weaken its encryption to get what it needed pursuant to its warrant," a law professor tells Ars Technica. But Apple now has to handle "the inevitable PR debacle" and consider that the hacking method "could be aired in public as court evidence," says Apple Insider.
– In Clash Sam Worthington plays a half mortal hopelessly in love and stuck between two worlds. Sound familiar? This remake aims for Avatar, but falls short. Though it has expensive effects (3D!) and stars (Ralph Fiennes!), it even falls short of the cheerfully cheesy original. This movie manages to make Avatar's plot look sophisticated, writes Dana Stevens on Slate. "Compared with this witless, chaotic mess of a movie, James Cameron's epic looks worthy of the ancient Greek authors." Peter Sobczynski of eFilmCritic says Clash "not only amplifies all of the flaws of the original but even screws up the things that it actually got right the first time around." "It's big, it's loud, and it's filled with meaningless action," says FILMINK's Erin Free. The film "pretty much sums up with what's wrong with Hollywood right now." Ralph Fiennes, does fine, says the Oregonian's Shawn Levy. Worthington, however, projects "the charisma of the young Russell Crowe's lighting double."
– A high school senior says the private Christian school in New Hampshire that he'd attended since kindergarten told him he was no longer welcome because of his gender identity and suggested he get counseling, the AP reports. Stiles Zuschlag, of Lebanon, Maine, tells Seacoast Media Group he'd excelled academically and in sports and had many friends at Tri-City Christian Academy in Somersworth when he made it known in 2015 that he was transgender. He was on track to be valedictorian at the school this year, he says, before he and his mother met with the school administrator in August to talk about his transition from female to male. Zuschlag says the administrator, Paul Edgar, told him he was no longer welcome at the school, that he was "going down the wrong path," and that he should confess his sins and stop testosterone treatments. The teen says he was told he couldn't return to the school campus but could consider options like homeschooling and Christian counseling. Zuschlag decided then to transfer to Noble High School in North Berwick, Maine, where he says he now feels accepted. He was nominated for "Prince of Homecoming" at his new school, and while he misses his old school, he's hopeful he can be who he is at Noble. "It's a big loss, I mean they lost a big student," he says. "[But] I'll just bring my excellence here. ... I'll just excel here." Edgar declined to speak about the ex-student, citing privacy issues. A spokeswoman for the New Hampshire Department of Education says Tri-City Christian Academy doesn't receive federal funds through the state office. A New Hampshire education attorney says religious schools can legally ask a student to leave regardless of whether the school receives federal funding.
– The latest fire on an oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday may not have spilled more oil into the Gulf, but it has further polluted the industry's image. The accident is going to make it harder for the industry to argue that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was a fluke as it fights tighter regulation and a moratorium on deep-water drilling, energy experts tell the Wall Street Journal. The platform engulfed by fire yesterday was in shallow water and it wasn't drilling when the accident occurred, but analysts say the fire adds to perceptions among some lawmakers that the industry is unsafe and under-regulated. The platform has a history of maintenance and repair issues and its owner, Mariner Energy, has been involved in at least a dozen offshore accidents since 2006, including four fires and a minor blowout, the Houston Chronicle reports.
– "Being a part of something is a blessing," former reality TV star Jon Gosselin tells Entertainment Tonight. The "something" he's referring to is a group of people, but not the one he originally became famous for. The 39-year-old confirms that he'll be stripping in Atlantic City's Dusk Nightclub on April 1 as part of its Men Untamed Revue Show. "I'm an integral part of the show," the one-time TLC star says. This is not an April Fool's joke, confirms the New York Post. As for how risque the Saturday show will get, club owner Eric Millstein tells People "it is R-rated, not X-rated." Gosselin already works at the New Jersey club as part of the Senate DJ group and promotions team, and has been rehearsing regularly for his expanded role, says Millstein, who adds that he intends to pull in other celebrities to participate in the Magic Mike-style act. For Gosselin, it's perhaps a step up from this 2013 gig?
– A woman wearing nude-colored flats, a Finding Dory tank top, and cutoff jean shorts was kicked out of a mall in Michigan on Saturday for breaking dress code—even though it was 90 degrees outside. So Hannah Pewee took to Facebook to share her version of what happened at Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids, and her story got noticed, with thousands of shares and likes and hundreds of comments, mostly coming to her defense. "Apparently some anonymous person reported me to MALL SECURITY for inappropriate dress and I was kicked out," she writes. "Never mind that within a one foot radius there were plenty of girls dressed just like me, since it's NINETY degrees outside." She described herself as shaking and on the verge of tears. Mashable calls it "another day, another woman scolded for wearing clothes." Pewee, who People reports studies at Grand State University, says she was enjoying the afternoon at the mall with her sister when she was told to leave. In a Sunday Facebook post she wrote that mall management called her to apologize and will be revising Woodland's dress code, which at the time vaguely stated, "Appropriate attire, including shirts and shoes, is required." In a comment on her post, Woodland Mall apologized, writing, "We dropped the ball on this one," and adding that it never intend to shame or embarrass anyone. Indeed, "slut-shaming how girls are dressed is deplorable and outdated, and it needs to stop," wrote Pewee, who hopes "some good" can come out of her much-publicized experience. (These girls weren't allowed to board a plane because they were wearing leggings.)
– A little girl in Milwaukee is safe after what must have been the most terrifying few hours of her and her parents' lives. Aubri Degeffered, who turned 3 a few weeks ago, was in a Volvo SUV that was carjacked at around 6:50pm on Sunday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. The suspect, who forced the driver out of the vehicle and took off with the little girl still inside, is believed to have tried to rob a gas station in nearby Brookfield, Wis., less than an hour later. An Amber Alert was issued and the suspect was captured in Lake Mills, Wis., around 50 miles west of Milwaukee, after police acted on information from citizens, Fox6 reports. Police announced at 11pm that Aubri was safe. (An Ohio man did more than call 911 when he heard an Amber Alert about the car right in front of him.)
– Gavin Zimmerman promised to take lots of photos from a whale-watching lookout in Australia so he could share them with friends back home in Utah. He won’t get the chance. Before finding a cellphone with photos of Zimmerman close to a cliff edge, authorities pulled the lifeless body of the 19-year-old Mormon missionary from the waves Monday. Halfway through a two-year mission in Sydney, per the Salt Lake Tribune, Zimmerman had been with friends at the popular sightseeing spot of Cape Solander in Kamay Botany Bay National Park when he slipped and fell 100 feet. A lifeguard eventually pulled Zimmerman’s body from 25 feet below the water’s surface, but he could not be revived, reports ABC Australia. Zimmerman's parents call their son a "bright light" who "enjoyed teaching people and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ." Meanwhile, a local mayor is warning people not to climb fences or get too close to slippery rock cliffs at Cape Solander, where a man in his 30s died in a fall six weeks ago, reports Yahoo. "You're putting your life at risk and why—for a photo? It's not that important," Carmelo Pesce tells ABC, noting cellphone images show Zimmerman "extremely close to the edge of the rock." Per ABC, an American friend says Zimmerman "would always write group emails to everyone back home" and had promised to "take lots of pictures [from the lookout] and email me next week to show me." (These tourists suffered a similar fate.)
– After a months-long investigation, an Alabama mom has been charged with murder: Prosecutors in Westchester County, NY, say Lacey Spears poisoned her 5-year-old son through a feeding tube, likely in an effort to gain sympathy on social media. She "was intentionally feeding her son salt in toxic levels," said a district attorney in court yesterday, where Spears pleaded not guilty. Her charges include second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter; prosecutors aren't arguing that she meant to kill her son Garnett, but they say she behaved without regard for his life, the Journal News reports. There was no medical explanation when his sodium levels soared, and prosecutors say Spears had done online research into how salt affects one's health, CBS 2 reports. The case may be among the first to grapple with the psychiatric disorder Munchausen by proxy in the Internet age: Spears posted updates about her son's frequent illnesses on Facebook. She told friends he needed to be fed through a tube, but they regularly saw him eat solid foods. Police believe Spears may have poisoned him more than once, and the investigation began even before he died on Jan. 23. When he did, she initially got sympathy, the Journal News notes. But some who know her now tell the paper they're not surprised at the charges. "I really wish we could have prevented this because there were signs," says one. "She put all over Facebook how wonderful she was. She had us all snowed." The murder charge carries a sentence of 25 years to life. Click for more on the lies Spears reportedly told.
– New York Times reporter James Risen is not a big fan of bloggers. Yahoo News blogger John Cook, formerly of Gawker, learned this when he called Risen to ask about criticism of his recent story on Afghan mineral deposits. (Original story here; sample of criticism here.) "Do you even know anything about me?" Risen asked. "Maybe you were still in school when I broke the NSA story, I don't know. It was back when you were in kindergarten, I think." (Risen shared a Pulitzer in 2006 for a story on secret wiretapping. Cook was age 33.) "The thing that amazes me is that the blogosphere thinks they can deconstruct other people's stories," Risen continued. And while a tamer version of this line appeared on Yahoo News, Cook tweeted that Risen accused bloggers of sitting around and "jerking off in their pajamas," reports New York magazine. Minutes after hanging up, Risen called back. "I was taken aback by some of the criticism, and didn't sleep well last night, and was upset about it. I apologize."
– President Donald Trump has narrowed his list of prospective Supreme Court nominees to five finalists (although the list could change), and plans to announce his pick on July 9, reports Bloomberg. White House officials appear to be focusing on the following federal appeals court judges, all of whom are Republican appointees with conservative records: Amy Coney Barrett, Thomas Hardiman, Brett Kavanaugh, Raymond Kethledge, and Amul Thapar. Kavanaugh and Kethledge were both law clerks to retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. The president told reporters on Air Force One Friday that he may interview one or two picks this weekend at his resort in Bedminster, NJ, and that he doesn’t plan to ask them about Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion-rights decision, reports Politico. The FBI is currently conducting background checks.
– A UK woman got a pretty unexpected Christmas card this holiday season—a response to a 23-year-old message in a bottle she'd dropped in the North Sea as a child. While on a ferry from England to Belgium in 1990, Zoe Lemon—now Zoe Averianov—wrote a note explaining, "Dear finder, my name is Zoe Lemon. Please would you write to me, I would like it a lot." She added, "I am 10 years old and I like ballet, playing the flute and the piano. I have a hamster called Sparkle and fish called Speckle," and dropped it from the boat in a plastic bottle, the BBC reports. Fast forward to today, and Averianov, 33, says she's surprised just how far the message traveled—more than 350 miles. "My parents came to visit on Christmas Day and they had this letter from Europe addressed to my maiden name," she says. It turns out, the note washed ashore in the Netherlands, where Piet and Jacqueline Lateur found it, then returned it with a message of their own. "I know you are no longer a little girl but you asked me to write you so I have," the response read in part, per the Mirror. Piet and Averianov have kept up the communication, though this time, email is their method of choice. (But her note just isn't quite as old as what may be the oldest message found in a bottle.)
– Jeb Bush was asked about his 2012 ambitions yesterday, and he replied in the starkest possible terms. “I am not running for president,” he told a reporter for WHAS11 in Kentucky. The remark seems pretty offhand, but it’s getting national attention, because of recent chatter about a Bush run. Asked why that was, he told the Wall Street Journal, “I haven’t a clue. I have not been running for a while and answer the question the same way every time.” Bush made the remark en route to give a speech about education at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Bush, who’s widely credited with turning around Florida’s education system, said reform has to be done on a state by state level, but with federal help. “This is one place where I think President Obama deserves some credit,” he added. A day earlier he held a fundraiser for Rand Paul, a critic of Obama’s education policy.
– A secret stash of gold coins and bars is the stuff of fantasies. And when three construction workers found $1.2 million worth on the job in Normandy, police say stealing it from the landowner proved too tempting to resist. Several days into their work leveling land, the laborers found 16 gold bars and 600 gold coins from the 1920s buried in glass jars, perhaps during World War II, the BBC reports. Police say the men—ages 20, 33, and 40—sold the loot to a local coin collector, then bought cars and motorcycles and invested the money in their homes or life insurance policies. But when one of the men deposited suspicious checks—one for $360,000 and the other for $40,000—into his bank account, tax officials perked up, Connexion reports. They contacted authorities, and the men reportedly 'fessed up. Their new toys have been seized, and they now face theft charges, while the coin collector is charged with trying to conceal the theft, reports the Local. The homeowner isn't saying much, telling local paper Paris Normandie: "Since the police called me to tell me what happened, I have found it hard to sleep." (Speaking of secret stashes, someone hid coins in a cave 2,000 years ago.)
– If you live and die by food and beverage expiration dates, you might not want to know how old some of our drinking water is. A study finds that 30% to 50% of the water found in our taps and oceans contains molecules created more than 4.5 billion years ago—making them older than our solar system and the sun, the Los Angeles Times reports. The findings from the study, published in Science, indicate that certain water molecules contain a deuterium atom instead of a hydrogen atom (making what's called "heavy water"), which could only be created under very cold, energy-replete conditions—specific conditions that didn't exist before the Earth, sun, and solar system were formed. Earth was actually "born dry," in an extremely hot environment, according to the Times. Scientists believe we eventually received water via comets or asteroids that crashed down on Earth's surface. Figuring out where the water in the comets and asteroids came from, however, is another story, though researchers think they've narrowed it down to two possibilities: that the heavy deuterium water was dispersed among bodies in the solar system during the "violent" process of our sun's birth, or that the heavy water originated from ice found in the gas cloud from which our sun and solar system were born. Either way, researchers say this could indicate that young planets all around the universe contain water: According to scientists, there are up to 11 billion planets outside our own system that could house liquid water and, possibly, life, notes Time. (The amount of water found on Mars surprised scientists around the world.)
– A California man named Jack Yufe died this week at age 82, and his life story is so fascinating that the AP likens it to a Hollywood script nobody would believe; the Los Angeles Times draws a comparison to a "tabloid headline." The reason? Yufe was born in Trinidad along with an identical twin brother, but their parents split after 6 months. Yufe grew up as a Jew, even serving a stint in the Israeli navy. Brother Oskar Stohr, meanwhile, went to Germany with his Catholic mom and grew up as a Nazi, becoming a member of the Hitler Youth. They managed to stay in touch and met again at age 21. The weird part? Despite their incredibly different backgrounds, they were alike in nearly every way. They dressed the same (both showed up to their first meeting in a white sports jacket and wire-rimmed glasses), walked the same, wore the same mustache, and had the same temperament and quirks. They both liked to sneeze loudly to scare people as a joke, and "both used to wash their hands before and after going to the toilet," says Nancy Segal, a professor of psychology who studied the pair as part of a well-known study of separated twins at the University of Minnesota. The brothers' story eventually rose to "the center of discussions about nature and nurture," notes the Washington Post. Though the brothers didn't much like each other at first, that changed over the years. When Stohr died of cancer in 1997, a devastated Yufe didn't attend the funeral, however, notes AP. They looked so much alike he was afraid it would upset loved ones. (A survivor of the Nazi death camps' only mass escape also recently died.)
– Condolences are continuing to pour in over the death of Bobbi Kristina Brown, the 22-year-old only child of Whitney Houston who passed away yesterday in Duluth, Ga., after being unconscious for nearly six months. Brown's father, Bobby Brown, has reportedly found some peace in the midst of his grief. "He is taking comfort in the fact that she's with her mother, and that there will be no more sadness or pain," a source tells People. Singer Monica echoed similar sentiments. "You kept telling me life wasn't the same without Mommy," she writes on Instagram. "In all this pain and every tear shed I find a small bit of peace knowing that your [sic] with her again." Houston passed away in February 2012 after being found in a hotel bathtub. Viola Davis was one of many who offered prayers for the Houston and Brown families. "May #BobbiKristina, rest peacefully with her mother in heaven," she tweeted this morning. Oprah Winfrey, Kylie Jenner, Perez Hilton, Taraji P. Henson, and the Rev. Al Sharpton also offered their condolences. "My prayers are with Cissy Houston, Bobby Brown, and the entire family and love ones of Bobbi Christina," Sharpton tweeted. "So sad. May God grant her peace." The Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office will conduct an autopsy, the AP reports, although the length of time Brown spent unconscious will "complicate" its efforts.
– The Alabama police officer who partially paralyzed an Indian man out for a walk has been arrested and will likely be fired. The Madison police chief says he's recommended Eric Parker be fired because his use of force against someone who was unarmed, had committed no crime, and does not speak English "did not meet the high standards and expectations of the Madison City Police Department." Parker turned himself in yesterday and will face assault charges, AL.com reports. Police have released audio and video related to Sureshbhai Patel's encounter with police, including video showing Patel being thrown to the ground and audio of the initial call to police from a neighbor of Patel's son, who says, "I've lived here four years and I've never seen him before." (Patel had arrived the week prior to assist with caring for his 17-month-old grandchild.) Parker was actually a field trainer for the police department and had his trainee with him at the time of the confrontation. Audio reveals snippets of their conversation with Patel and highlights the communication barrier: When asked for his address, the 57-year-old just points, WHNT reports. At one point, an officer says, "Do not jerk away from me again, or I will put you on the ground. Do you understand?" As another patrol car pulls up and the officers have Patel turned around with his hands behind his back, Parker slams him forcefully to the ground; because of Patel's arm placement, he could not break his fall. As officers try unsuccessfully to get him to stand back up, their conversation reveals their awareness that "he don't speak a lick of English." The FBI is also investigating to see if federal laws were violated. A GoFundMe campaign for Patel has raised nearly $37,000 so far; the family says he remains partially paralyzed.
– The Jackie Robinson biopic 42 slides into theaters today, and it's being greeted by a polite ovation from critics, who for the most part seem to admire Robinson's story more than the filmmaking. Here's what people are saying: If director Brian Helgeland's "intention was to tell Jackie's story in a linear, paint-by-numbers fashion, he has achieved that goal," writes James Berardinelli at ReelViews. "The film takes no chances and does nothing bold." Still, he gives it a decent score, saying it's "a worthwhile sports movie" that "evokes powerful emotions" thanks to its compelling story. AO Scott at the New York Times has a more charitable take, writing that Helgeland "has honorably sacrificed the chance to make a great movie in the interest of making one that is accessible and inspiring." The film is pure hero-worship. "It is blunt, simple, and sentimental, using time-tested methods to teach a clear and rousing lesson." In the process, it gives younger viewers an unflinching look at the ugly "world their grandparents were born into." "Chadwick Boseman is perfect as Robinson," gushes Stephen Whitty at the Star-Ledger. "He captures, in a clenched jaw or a sidelong glance, a lifetime's worth of dearly attained dignity." Harrison Ford, meanwhile, might get a supporting actor nod; "it is the first time in years I have seen Ford have fun onscreen." Sure, the movie is "thick with Hollywood cliches … but that doesn't mean it won't make you feel good." Wesley Morris at Grantland complains that the movie is a little too reverential. Robinson doesn't have to change, "White America does. That's great for messaging, but hell on drama." It's the white characters who evolve, not the saint wearing 42. "Having an actor play Robinson makes sense for realism, but most of the time a piece of cardboard with Robinson's likeness would have done the trick."
– If we're being honest, the selfie is passé. Today's discerning Instagrammers require a new way to document their every waking moment. Enter the Nokia 8 and its "bothie." Nokia's attempt to compete with Samsung and Apple in the high-end smartphone market hits stores in Europe in September. Wired reports the Nokia 8 is standard stuff for a high-end smartphone; it's got 64 gigs of storage, 4 gigs of RAM, a 5.3-inch screen, and so on. And the Verge came away fairly unimpressed by the phone, calling it "average," especially compared to what Apple apparently has planned for its new phone. The one thing the Nokia 8 does have, and what it could live or die on, is the bothie. The bothie uses Dual Sight technology to let users take photos or videos using both the front and rear cameras at the same time, the Guardian explains. The resulting video or image shows whatever is in front of the user alongside the user's reaction to it. Those photos and videos can then be shared directly to Facebook or YouTube. Wired calls the bothie the Nokia 8's "only truly unique feature," meaning the phone was made "for the YouTubers and Instagrammers of the world." And they'll have to embrace the bothie if Nokia has any chance of competing with Apple and Samsung. Meanwhile, the future of the American bothie is unclear, as Nokia has not announced plans to bring the phone to the US.
– A group of female students at Virginia's University of Mary Washington is lodging a Title IX complaint against the school over the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak, reports CNN. The members of the campus group Feminists United say they've received so many abusive threats online that they feel unsafe on their own campus, and they accuse the school of doing too little to protect them. Last month, one of their members was killed, allegedly by a male roommate, though authorities have made no links between the Yik Yak threats and the death of Grace Rebecca Mann. Yik Yak is popular on college campuses because it allows users within a relatively small area to post and receive anonymous messages on their phones. Members of the feminists' group say they've endured cyber-stalking and repeated threats of rape and murder, in particular after two incidents: They spoke out against allowing frats on campus because of concerns over sexual abuse, and they got the rugby team suspended over an abusive chant. (Mann's accused killer is a former rugby player.) Afterward, the Yik Yak threats came pouring in. “It created an increasing level of fear and anxiety,” says attorney Lisa Banks. “They had no way to know if people who were posting messages were sitting next to them in class or walking next to them on campus.” The school says it has investigated all threats of violence, and Yik Yak says it is working to curb hate speech on its service, reports the Washington Post
– The booming fitness-tracker trend is making it easier for people to track their activity and therefore lose weight, which is essentially what Weight Watchers has been trying to do since 1961. The company has encouraged subscribers to use devices like Fitbit and Jawbone—and even has its own ActiveLink device. But while use of such devices soar (VentureBeat in November pointed to research that estimated 19 million trackers were in use in 2014, with that number slated to triple by 2018), Weight Watchers' membership keeps falling. It sank 15% in Q4 to a hair over 2.5 million subscribers, who pay a minimum of $20 for the service; Bloomberg points out that once a user invests in a tracker, the associated tracking apps are free. In early 2013, Weight Watchers didn't seem concerned by wearable devices. It acknowledged a challenge "similar to what we saw back in 2000 with the low-carb diet fad" a few months later. Now it's taking a hit: Revenue slid 10% to $327.8 million in the fourth quarter, and as of yesterday its share price had declined 78% over three years. It expects profit of 40 cents to 70 cents per share in 2015, while analysts had estimated profit of $1.43 per share, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company has announced a deal with Humana to bring discounted diet programs to certain health insurance plans, which an analyst suggests is the company's best option, but it will also undergo cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, to save $100 million. North American President Lesya Lysyj has already been let go.
– Mexico says it is deploying extra troops and federal police to reassert its authority in two states bordering the US. Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon have become a battleground for the Gulf and Zetas cartels, and cities like Monterrey, once considered relatively safe, have seen a huge surge in violence. The government says the mission, Coordinated Operation Northeast, will also seek to prevent cartels from regrouping after the arrest of leaders, the AP reports. One cartel boss, Carlos Montemayor, has been arrested in Mexico City. Montemayor took control of the Beltran Leyva cartel after the arrest of US citizen Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villarreal. Police say he has told them that men under his command were responsible for the murder of 20 tourists near Acapulco last month, the Los Angeles Times reports. The men had been mistaken for members of the rival La Familia cartel.
– There was no shortage of memorable moments at the 74th annual Golden Globes, from Ryan Gosling thanking his partner, Eva Mendes, for handling their family life at home while he was filming his movie La La Land, to Meryl Streep revealing how one recent moment (a moment related to President-elect Donald Trump) "kind of broke my heart." Some other notable quotes and happenings at the Globes: Streep wasn't the only one to call attention to No. 45. Hugh Laurie also jumped on the anti-Trump allusion train, hinting that this may be the last Golden Globes show because of the new administration's distrust of celebrities and noting he was accepting his best supporting actor award for The Night Manager "on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere," the Hill reports. Fallon himself noted, per Mediaite, that "many people [had been] wondering what it would be like if King Joffrey [from Game of Thrones] had lived. Well, in 12 days we're gonna find out." He also announced the night's votes had been tabulated by the "accounting firm of Ernst, Young, and Putin" and told the crowd that the Globes are "one of the few places left where America still honors the popular vote," People reports. The night's host couldn't resist a callback to the show's opening teleprompter issues, incorporating the ongoing Mariah Carey New Year's Eve saga to make his point. "I just got off the phone with Mariah Carey and she thinks that Dick Clark Productions sabotaged my monologue," he said, per Us Weekly. The New York Daily News recaps some of Fallon's other zingers. Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn appeared as the "Golden Globes comedy duo we never knew we needed," per E! Online, to present the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical, or Comedy. Hawn turned on the loopiness while Schumer played the straight one, with Goldie using the word "mystical" instead of "musical" and announcing the "nominees of the five most tainted men" instead of the five most "talented" ones. "Kurt, do you have her glasses?" Schumer asked Hawn's partner, Kurt Russell, who was sitting in the audience. Two other comedians also made an impact at the awards show, but their turn was more of the "hilariously dark" version, per People. Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig presented the award for best animated feature, but not before they revealed the first animated movies they had seen as kids. "As we were leaving the theater, there standing in the lobby was my mom—and that was the moment that she told my dad that she wanted a divorce," Carell said of his (supposed) Fantasia experience. "March 14, 1981: It was the same day we had to put our dogs down," Wiig recalled of her first alleged viewing of Bambi. Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, and Today.com offer their own takes on the best and worst moments of the show. (There was also a pretty hot kiss between Ryan Reynolds and Andrew Garfield.)
– In what police are investigating as a hate crime, a Columbia University professor was badly beaten on a New York City street Saturday by a mob that apparently believed he was a Muslim. Police say Prabjot Singh, a 31-year-old Sikh, was attacked just blocks from his home by a group of more than 20 young men on bikes who called him a terrorist and shouted "Get Osama!" Singh, who was saved when passersby intervened, was left with injuries including a fractured jaw, reports the Columbia Spectator. Friend Simran Jeet Singh describes the attack in the Huffington Post, noting that the professor had been taking an evening walk after dropping his wife and 1-year-old at home. "He couldn't speak because many of his teeth had been displaced, but he waved limply to let us know that he was OK," he writes of seeing Singh at the hospital. "It’s incredibly sad," Singh himself tells the New York Daily News. "It’s not the neighborhood I know. I work in this community. It’s just not American." Gawker points out that Singh himself noted in a New York Times article on anti-Sikh violence last year that the turbans and long beards of Sikh men have often marked them out as targets for discrimination both in India and overseas. (It's not the only alleged hate crime NYC has suffered in recent weeks.)
– The "if-you-touch-my-junk" guy is gaining traction as the poster boy of the anti-body-scan movement. Charles Krauthammer takes up his cause today, declaring that "don't touch my junk" is, in fact, "the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter." It applies to everything from Obamacare to Google Street View. Maybe not as elegant as Don't Tread on Me, but perfect in the "age of Twitter," he writes in the Washington Post. More to the point, it highlights the "idiocy" of the TSA strategy. Until we get over this "absurd taboo against profiling"—especially "when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known"—we're all going to suffer. That includes pilots, who wouldn't exactly need a box cutter to take down a plane, he points out. Robert Poole in the Daily Beast also cites the touch-my-junk guy (real name John Tyner) in calling for an end to the scanner "nonsense." His solution involves "evidence-based profiling" that divides travelers into high, medium, and low risks. Click here for details on that.
– Legendary singer Etta James is suffering from dementia and leukemia, court documents show. The 72-year-old’s illnesses came to light during a civil case involving her husband, who wants control of more than $1 million of her money, and her son, who wants the money to be overseen by a third party. A doctor said James needs help to eat and dress, and can no longer sign her name. She suffered a urinary tract infection, then sepsis, early last year and hasn’t been on stage since, the Press-Enterprise reports. Click for more on her condition and the court case.
– Rupert Murdoch, son James, and News International CEO Rebekah Brooks have been asked to appear before British Parliament. The trio will answer questions about the News of the World phone hacking scandal should they show up one week from today; the summoning is not binding but does ramp up pressure on News Corp, Politico reports. More: The hacking scandal continues to widen. Five senior police investigators discovered their voicemail had likely been hacked in 2006, soon after Scotland Yard began its initial investigation into the matter, the New York Times reports. And the revelation raises some sticky questions, like: Could this have caused investigators to ease up on the tabloid out of fear their private lives would be exposed? Members of Parliament will question several police officials today to determine whether the hacking impacted the police inquiry, which was initially very limited, and whether those hacked experienced a conflict of interest. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown today accused Murdoch's media empire, specifically the Sunday Times, of hiring "known criminals" to gather personal details about his bank account, legal files, and taxes, the New York Times reports. Brown also believes the paper somehow got access to his son's medical records and passed it along to the Sun, a source says. Meanwhile, more reports are emerging that police officers were bribed for information on Brown, the royal family, and others, and that money was spent to secure a copy of the Green Book, which details the queen and Prince Charles' activities. In somewhat lighter Murdoch-related news, the Telegraph reports that the Simpsons episode that aired on Sky1 last night spoofed the scandal. In "Fraudcast News," tycoon Montgomery Burns buys up every media outlet in the town, leading Twitter users to note the parallels between the plot and Murdoch's plan to take over BSkyB.
– Here's a first in the annals of auto recalls: Fiat Chrysler is providing a fix for 1.4 million vehicles because they might be vulnerable to hackers, reports BGR. Owners of the affected cars—which all have 8.4-inch touchscreens—will apparently receive a USB dongle containing security upgrades as part of the "voluntary safety recall," notes Engadget. The automaker also says it "applied network-level security measures" in the wake of a report in Wired that provided a first-person account of hackers gaining control of a Jeep remotely. The vehicles affected, from the automaker's statement: 2013-2015 MY Dodge Viper specialty vehicles 2013-2015 Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups 2013-2015 Ram 3500, 4500, 5500 Chassis Cabs 2014-2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Cherokee SUVs 2014-2015 Dodge Durango SUVs 2015 MY Chrysler 200, Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger sedans 2015 Dodge Challenger sports coupes
– Gap is staying a step ahead of moves to raise the minimum wage by setting $9 as its minimum wage this summer and raising it to $10 in 2015. The company says the move will affect around 65,000 workers at its stores, which include Old Navy and Banana Republic, NBC reports. President Obama—who wants to bring the minimum wage up from $7.25 to $10.10—applauded the move, which Gap CEO Glenn Murphy described as one that will "directly support our business, and is one that we expect to deliver a return many times over. The chief of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union said Gap's move was a step in the right direction, but the biggest problem facing retail workers these days is the struggle to work enough hours to earn a good living. To reduce employee turnover, Gap and other retailers should "give these workers full-time jobs and regular schedules that don’t change week to week," he tells the New York Times. Meanwhile, Walmart—America's biggest employer—denied earlier reports that it was looking at supporting a rise in the federal minimum wage, saying it was "neutral" on the issue and already pays most of its full-time employees more than $10 an hour, Reuters reports.
– "On the face of the evidence, there is concern that is raised about this officer’s conduct," says Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill. Many of the people who have racked up nearly 3 million views of the video that shows Detective Jeff Payne arresting University of Utah Hospital nurse Alex Wubbels would likely agree. Gill on Friday called for a criminal investigation into the encounter, in which Payne handcuffed a screaming Wubbels after she refused to permit a blood draw from an unconscious patient—as she was right to do, according to law, because Payne had neither a warrant nor the consent of the patient, who was not under arrest. The Salt Lake Tribune reports Payne was put on administrative leave Friday afternoon, along with a second unnamed officer connected to the July 26 incident. More: Mayor Jackie Biskupski and Chief Mike Brown both called Wubbels to apologize. Per the city, the Unified Police Department will begin a criminal probe into the matter, and an internal affairs investigation will be conduced as well. The Tribune also offers more background on the patient in question: William Gray, a 43-year-old who was driving a semi when a 26-year-old who was trying to evade the Utah Highway Patrol crashed into Gray head-on. That driver was killed, and a police official explains it's typical to get blood draws of those involved in fatal crashes, even if they aren't suspected of wrongdoing. The AP cites Payne's police report, in which he wrote he was trying to avoid a "scene" by taking Wubbels outside and that this his boss told him to arrest her if she didn't cooperate with the draw. Wubbels' attorney says the nurse was left in a hot police car for 20 minutes before the detective realized the hospital had already drawn the patient's blood as part of treatment. The Tribune notes that while the video may suggest Payne was demanding Wubbels draw Gray's blood, Payne is actually one of a handful of officers certified to draw blood in accident cases, and was looking to draw the blood himself.
– The celebrity hero club just got a new member: The Scottish Sun reports that Brad Pitt saved a woman from being trampled by zombies on Wednesday. Seriously. The rescue happened on the set of World War Z, during a scene in which some 700 extras jammed themselves into Glasgow's George Square and then started to flee the approaching zombies. One extra fell amid the chaos and risked being pounded by the crowd. Cue Brad. "Brad came to the rescue of a woman who slipped," says an insider. "I don't think she could believe it when Brad picked her up. He didn't have time to speak to her as it was mid-shoot. But she said afterwards how grateful she was, despite having a badly-grazed knee." (Ex Jennifer Aniston is also making big news this weekend.)
– The New York City Fire Department is mourning firefighter Michael Davidson, who died fighting a massive blaze that broke out on a film set in Harlem Thursday night. The fire started in a building being used to film Motherless Brooklyn, a 1950s-set drama directed by Ed Norton and starring Bruce Willis, the New York Daily News reports. "This is an awful night. We've lost an NYC firefighter," tweeted City Hall spokesman Eric Phillips. "Sick to my stomach." The FDNY says the five-alarm blaze broke out in the basement of the building around 11pm and was under control by around 2:30am, reports NBC New York. The building where the fire broke out was the former home of the historic St Nick's Jazz Pub, which shut down in 2011, the Daily News reports. Commissioner Daniel Nigro says two other firefighters are in serious condition with burns, and two other people were injured, the AP reports. The FDNY hasn't commented on possible causes. Davidson, 37, is survived by his wife and four children. He is "the 1,150th member to make the Supreme Sacrifice while serving our city," the department said in a Facebook post. It has been a tough month for the FDNY: Two of its firefighters were among seven Americans killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq last week.
– Yuli Gurriel of the Houston Astros hit a home run in the second inning off Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish Friday night, giving him reason to celebrate in the dugout afterward. But Gurriel is now apologizing after cameras caught him taking things too far. The Cuban native can be seen making a slant-eyed gesture in regard to Darvish, who is from Japan. He also acknowledged using the word "chinto," meaning "little Chinese guy," reports USA Today. "At no point did I mean that in an offensive way," he said through an interpreter afterward. “Yesterday I was commenting that I’d never had any success against Darvish, and the gesture was saying that I wish he would look at me like one of them and maybe he’d throw me an easy pitch so I can do something." Darvish, for his part, called the gesture "disrespectful," but wasn't making a big deal about it. "I have a lot of respect for him," he said of Gurriel, who played for a while in Japan, "so I try not to think about it too much against him." Later, the pitcher tweeted: "Since we are living in such a wonderful world, let's stay positive and move forward instead of focusing on anger. I'm counting on everyone's big love." Gurriel could face league discipline, though it was unclear whether that might mean missing a World Series game. "We are aware of the situation and the commissioner intends to speak with the player," says a league spokesperson, per ESPN. The Astros won the game to take a 2-1 lead in the series.
– Just days ago, a boat washed ashore in northern Japan. Aboard were eight men who said they were from North Korea. Now, another boat has been found just 45 miles north of the first, and it also held eight—except all are dead. The 23-foot wooden "ghost ship" was discovered Sunday on a beach near Oga. It had no navigational devices and had lost a rotor blade. Some aboard had been "reduced to bones," and Kyodo News reports that the coast guard suspects it originated in North Korea, which sits about 450 miles away. Sky News reports foreign ships aren't an uncommon occurrence in Japan: 44 have washed ashore this year; 66 did so in 2016. The BBC presents a theory as to why: Some believe North Korea has been calling for more seafood to be fished in order to feed a hungry population. The increased demand may be leading its citizens to take boats that are in subpar condition far off its shores. And as a professor with Japan's Tokai University tells Sky News, the Sea of Japan "starts to get choppy when November comes. It gets dangerous when northwesterly winds start to blow." Kyodo notes the boat that carried the eight live men has vanished; police are reviewing both cases. (This ghost ship was found gutted by fire.)
– Mitt Romney's appearance at the Iowa State Fair today got lively when he sparred with audience members at a Q&A, reports the Hill. "If you don’t like my answer, you can go vote for someone else," he said at one point. "If you want someone who will raise taxes, you can vote for Barack Obama." One person accused him of not asking corporations to kick in their fair share, prompting this response: "Corporations are people, my friend... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings my friend." Democrats already are pouncing, notes the Huffington Post. "This is what Mitt Romney is going to run on? Corporations are people? Really?" said party communications chief Brad Woodhouse. During the exchanges, Romney drew applause from supporters with this line: "There was a time in this country where we didn't celebrate attacking people based on their success."
– President Trump lashed out at Sen. Dianne Feinstein for releasing the transcript of an interview with the co-founder of a political opposition firm that commissioned a dossier of allegations about Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. Trump called the California Democrat "Sneaky Dianne Feinstein" on Twitter Wednesday, the AP reports. He said she released the testimony "totally without authorization" and in "an underhanded and possibly illegal way." He then added: "Must have tough Primary!" Feinstein on Tuesday released the transcript from the Senate Judiciary Committee's August interview with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS. Feinstein had the ability to release the transcripts as the top Democrat on the committee, and her staff helped conduct the interview with Simpson. Trump also noted in a separate tweet that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election is the "single greatest Witch Hunt in American history" and says "Republicans should finally take control!"
– President Trump's feud with Republican Sen. Bob Corker is apparently still on, based on the new nickname the president bestowed upon Corker Tuesday morning. "The Failing @nytimes set Liddle' Bob Corker up by recording his conversation," Trump tweeted. "Was made to sound a fool, and that's what I am dealing with!" Trump was referring to the interview Corker gave to the New York Times in which the senator likened the Trump White House to a "reality show" and suggested that reckless comments from the president could lead to World War III. Developments: Audio, transcript: The Times released excerpts from the interview, as well as audio here. It's not clear what Trump meant in saying that the newspaper set up Corker, but the transcript makes clear that Corker knew he was on the record, notes CNN. He also knew the call was being recorded, telling the reporter that his staff was recording it, "and I hope you are, too." GOP trouble: At the National Journal, political analyst Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report writes that Trump went to a "darker place" in his Corker criticism, and he now thinks the GOP majority is in jeopardy not only in the Senate but in the House. "The party needs to sublimate its divisions, get mainstream Republicans to the polls, and persuade the Trump base to cast ballot for non-Trump Republicans," he writes. "That's a tall order. And it's why last week's news reduced the odds of the GOP retaining its majority from a good bet to even money." Ulterior motives? Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry of the Week calls Corker a hypocrite for his sudden public turn on the president and suggests that the retiring senator is positioning himself to be an "establishment" primary challenger to the president in the 2020 election. Now what? James Fallows at the Atlantic writes that if Corker truly believes Trump might blunder his way into World War III, he has an obligation to "do something about it" by providing a crucial check on Trump's actions through his position as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. "Talk is better than nothing, but action is what counts." WSJ weighs in: The conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal thinks Corker spoke the truth about the president's "lack of discipline, short fuse, narcissism and habit of treating even foreign heads of state as if they are Rosie O'Donnell," and it hopes other top Republicans follow Corker's lead because it might actually help. Little reaction: NBC News rounds up reaction from top Republicans to Corker's statements about the president and finds "silence or a shrug." A typical sentiment, from Marco Rubio: "You'll have to ask Sen. Corker what led him to make that statement. I haven't made that statement." Trump's new criticism comes just a week before a Senate vote important to Trump's tax plan, notes the New York Times.
– Scientists have discovered a talent never seen outside of humans in a small Australian bird: the ability to string sounds together to convey different meanings. Essentially, "it's a very basic form of word generation," researcher Andy Russell tells the BBC. The team started out by listening to chestnut-crowned babbler birds. Rather than sing, they produce "discrete calls made up of smaller, acoustically distinct individual sounds," an expert says in a press release. Two sounds, identified as "A" and "B," kept getting repeated. For example, the birds used an "AB" call to tell other birds where they were while in flight (listening birds would look to the sky), while a "BAB" call told chicks it was feeding time (listening birds would look at nests). Rearranging the sounds of the flight call to produce the latter call showed no alteration in the birds' behavior, and vice versa, proving the individual sounds were in fact the same. "Although the two babbler bird calls are structurally very similar, they are produced in totally different behavioral contexts and listening birds are capable of picking up on this," a researcher explains. Russell adds, per the Christian Science Monitor, the babblers may communicate this way because it's easier to swap existing sounds than make up new ones. What's perhaps most fascinating is that researchers believe the birds' "B" sound differentiates the meaning of the call. In other words, it's the "c" that discerns the words "cat" and "at" in the English language. Such distinguishing elements are called phonemes, and this basic example "might help us understand how the ability to generate new meaning initially evolved in humans," an expert says. "It could be that when phoneme structuring first got off the ground in our hominid ancestors, this is the form it initially took." Russell says the ability likely exists in other animals. (Learn why these "bachelor" birds could save their species.)
– The latest meme to take the Internet by storm also might just indicate a Clinton renaissance: Texts From Hillary features imagined conversations between Clinton and pretty much anyone—other politicians, Sarah Palin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jay-Z—using a photo of Clinton taken last fall on a flight to Tripoli, in which she looks particularly badass in sunglasses while, apparently, texting. Sample line, from Clinton to John Boehner: "Baby in the room next to me at the hotel wouldn't stop crying last night. Thought of you. LMAO." Interestingly, when the now-iconic photo first appeared, a Reuters blogger noted that it was unflattering to Clinton, reports the Boston Globe, making her look tired and overworked. But when Adam Smith saw it recently, he thought she looked "fierce," shared the photo with a friend, and started the Tumblr account. Now, people are sending in their own suggestions for imaginary conversations, all of them featuring a take-charge Clinton. A few reactions from around the WWW: "More than just an image rebound, Clinton is enjoying a genuine resurgence," writes Benjy Sarlin on Talking Points Memo. Four years ago, her "cold, relentless style was considered one of her biggest vulnerabilities," but now people respect it. In fact, this meme "is all about respect," notes Dylan Byers on Politico. "Where Obama, Biden, Gates, Geithner, et al have suffered gray hairs and waning enthusiasm, Clinton … has undergone a reinvention and seems more powerful and unflappable than ever." "Gone are the man’s-world accessories, the pantsuit and masculine haircut," notes Joanna Weiss in the Globe. "Secretary Clinton is a woman, comfortably feminine, with long blonde hair, a chunky necklace, a giant brooch." The popularity of the meme proves that Hillary could be a contender in 2016, adds Marin Cogan in GQ. Check out the Tumblr in full here.
– Bruno Mars owned the Grammys with his R&B-inspired album "24K Magic," winning all six awards he was nominated for at a show where hip-hop was expected to have a historical night. Jay-Z, the leading nominee with eight, walked away empty handed Sunday—a year after his wife lost album of the year to Adele, causing fans and peers to criticize the Recording Academy for not properly rewarding Beyonce's bold "Lemonade" project. And though Kendrick Lamar won five awards, he lost in the top categories, marking another year where rappers were restricted to wins in the rap categories, instead of earning coveted prizes like album of the year, the AP reports. Among the major winners: Album of the Year. Bruno Mars, 24K Magic. Record of the Year. Bruno Mars, "24K Magic," the album's title track. Song of the Year. Bruno Mars, "That's What I Like," shared with seven co-writers. Best New Artist. Alessia Cara. Best Pop Album. Ed Sheeran, ÷ . Best Rap Album. Kendrick Lamar, Damn. Best Rap Song. Kendrick Lamar, "Humble." Best Pop Solo Performance. Ed Sheeran,"Shape of You." Best Country Song. Chris Stapleton, "Broken Halos." Best Rock Song. Foo Fighters, "Run." Best Rock Album. The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding. Best Metal Performance. Mastodon, "Sultan's Curse." Best Music Video. Kendrick Lamar, "Humble." Best Dance/Electronic Album. Kraftwerk, 3-D The Catalogue. Check out the Grammys website for the full list of 84 winners.
– Los Angeles County homicide detectives have reopened an investigation into the 30-year-old mystery of actress Natalie Wood's death. The star's 1981 drowning was ruled an accident. But her last evening, which she spent on a yacht with husband Robert Wagner and movie co-star Christopher Walken, has long been the subject of speculation. Law enforcement officials have now decided to take another look at the case after receiving fresh information, and they plan to interview the boat's captain about comments he made about the case recently, the Los Angeles Times reports. In the captain's book Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour, he recalls that on the night she drowned, Wood was drinking and taking Quaaludes with Wagner and Walken. An argument erupted between the two men, apparently over Wood, followed by shouting between the couple in their room—and thumps, according to the captain. He says he was later told "Natalie is missing" by Wagner, who allegedly refused to let him call the Coast Guard. The captain's co-author, Marti Rulli, has been in touch for months with police, reports TMZ. An investigation at the time determined that Wood apparently fell into the sea after attempting to climb into the yacht's dingy or trying to secure it. Wagner has issued a statement saying he supports the new investigation.
– Wisdom the Laysan albatross is "at least" 63 years old, experts say, making her the oldest known wild bird on the planet. And, amazingly, she's still hatching chicks. Last week, a worker at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge—Wisdom's home in the north Pacific—saw the mother caring for a new chick, according to a press release. And it's a feat she's managed for each of the past seven years, LiveScience notes. For comparison, most Laysan albatrosses live between 12 and 40 years, per the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Wisdom first came to the attention of researchers while incubating an egg ... in 1956. She was tagged then, and has likely raised no fewer than 30 chicks in her lifetime. Wisdom's "ability to continue to hatch chicks during the last half century is beyond impressive" given "the threats that albatross face at sea," says a biologist. Chief among those threats: tsunamis. Battered by five-foot waves in the wake of Japan's 2011 earthquake, some 2,000 adult albatrosses on Midway's islands were estimated to have died; Wisdom obviously survived. And she's racked up many such feats, says the refuge manager. Among them: She's "logged literally millions of miles over the Pacific Ocean in her lifetime to find enough fish eggs and squid to feed herself and multiple chicks." (We noted last year that the second-oldest albatross known to hatch a chick was 61.)
– A Minnesota woman charged with fatally shooting her boyfriend in a failed YouTube video stunt foreshadowed the event when she tweeted that it would be "one of the most dangerous videos ever." Monalisa Perez, of Halstad, was charged Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Pedro Ruiz III. Perez, who is pregnant and faces up to 10 years in prison, was released on $7,000 bail. According to the criminal complaint, the 19-year-old Perez told investigators that Ruiz wanted to make a video of her shooting a bullet into a book he was holding against his chest. Hours before the Tuesday night shooting, Perez tweeted: "Me and Pedro are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever. HIS idea not MINE." The complaint says Ruiz set up one camera on the back of a vehicle and another camera on a ladder nearby. Perez says she fired from about a foot away with what authorities say was a .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol, which the AP reports is described by retailer Cabela's in an online ad as "one of the world's most powerful semiautomatic handguns." Perez died from a single gunshot wound to the chest. Many of the videos on Perez's YouTube channel are of her and Ruiz playing pranks and performing stunts, with the New York Times noting that most were pretty mild; it cites one video were Ruiz eats a doughnut Perez covered not in powdered sugar, but baby powder. The most recent video was posted the morning before the shooting. "Imagine when we have 300,000 subscribers," Perez says during the video.
– The Catholic Church has hired two private investigators to track down a former Dallas priest who disappeared months before sexual abuse allegations against him surfaced. Pastor at St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Oak Cliff for 27 years, Rev. Edmundo Paredes stands accused of molesting three boys in their midteens between 10 and 20 years ago, though the exact period is being withheld to protect the victims’ identities, reports the Dallas Morning News. Paredes, 69, was removed from St. Cecilia in June 2017 after allegedly stealing $60,000 to $80,000 in cash. This February, church officials also learned of sexual abuse allegations, which were reported to police and found to be credible, Bishop Edward Burns told parishioners on Sunday. "I recognize this diocese cannot cover its ears, its eyes, its mouth. We need to look at this head on," Burns said. Still, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests questions the delay in releasing the information. Officials initially said the allegations weren’t disclosed earlier because of a police investigation. Late Monday, however, the Diocese of Dallas said a Pennsylvania grand jury report describing more than 1,000 victims of abuse by clergy since the 1940s had motivated the disclosure after victims objected to an announcement in March, per Fox 4. Officials suspect Paredes is in his native Philippines, which he visited annually, per WFAA. Per the Morning News, authorities there say they are unaware of his location.
– Now that majority leader Eric Cantor is out of the running for the next Congress, who will take his place in the GOP leadership? Politico identifies a number of potential frontrunners, starting with current majority whip Kevin McCarthy of California, who is pretty much guaranteed to seek Cantor's old job, party insiders say. House rules committee chair Pete Sessions of Texas is already looking for allies in a bid to replace Cantor, Politico reports. But Texas' Jeb Hensarling, Ohio's Jim Jordan, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington could offer a conservative-wing challenge. If McCarthy leaves the whip position, get ready for another battle—perhaps between McMorris Rodgers, Pete Roskam of Illinois, and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who has already officially decided to seek the post following colleagues' urging, Politico notes. Conservatives want Cantor to step down now, paving the way to a leadership debate soon. In the coming days, "you’re going to start hearing that people are seriously considering a run. It will be blown up," says an ex-party leadership staffer. "By the end of the week, we’re going to see who is interested and who is not."
– Esquire's "sexiest woman alive" has given birth to her first child. Scarlett Johansson welcomed baby Rose with fiance Romain Dauriac, reports the AP. The 29-year-old Lucy star, who was previously wed to actor Ryan Reynolds, has been keeping under the radar of late and hopes for the same for her little one: Her spokesman says she and Dauriac are fans of No Kids Policy, a celeb-driven initiative to keep their children away from paparazzi. ScarJo's not the only one making maternity news: Alyssa Milano welcomed her second child, Elizabella Dylan Bugliari, yesterday, reports People. The Mistresses star, 41, and her husband, David Bugliari, also have a 3-year-old boy, Milo. Joan Lunden of Good Morning America fame has her own baby news: She's a first-time grandma. Daughter Lindsey Krauss Weinberg gave birth Aug. 30 to her own girl, Parker Leigh, reports People. Carrie Underwood offered up a Labor Day surprise: On Monday, the singer tweeted that her two dogs, Ace and Penny, had an announcement to make and showed a pic of them wearing sweaters that said "I'm going to be a big brother" and "I'm going to be a big sister," respectively. She added, "Their parents couldn't be happier!" It will be the first child for Underwood and husband Mike Fisher.
– To a craft beer aficionado, the only sin worse than drinking a Bud would be if your favorite brewery sold out to the company that owns it. That's the situation that has fans of the Wicked Weed brewery now crying "treachery," per the Washington Post, which reports on the news that the Asheville, NC, institution has teamed up with Anheuser-Busch InBev "as a strategic partner." The reason for the move by Wicked Weed—which the Citizen-Times notes was founded in 2012 by Walt and Luke Dickinson and friends Ryan, Rick, and Denise Guthy—is, as Walt Dickinson explains, to stay competitive. A fellow craft brewery owner in Oregon backs him up, noting that his own brewery's acquisition by AB InBev offered him access to better ingredients and distribution. But the buyout has craft beer fans livid, especially after Budweiser's 2015 and 2016 Super Bowl ads that mocked craft beer drinkers. Wicked Weed's Facebook announcement was met with angry and sad emoji, with "very disappointed" and "disheartened" just a sampling of the negative comments. Some of Wicked Weed's distributors and partners aren't happy, either, with Denver's Black Project brewery cutting its ties to WW—not because it doesn't love the beer, but because it believes AB InBev has "unethical practices" and "intends to systematically destroy American craft beer as we know it." Other commenters on Wicked Weed's Facebook page say they will remain loyal fans. "At the end of the day, great beer will win," Walt Dickinson tells the Citizen-Times. (Walmart recently took heat on the craft beer front.)
– The prosecution is laying out its closing arguments in Oscar Pistorius' monthslong murder trial today, with the defense expected to wrap things up tomorrow. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel, known as "the pitbull," began by ripping into Pistorius' claims that he acted in self-defense when shooting Reeva Steenkamp—who Pistorius says he thought was an intruder—and that he was "not criminally responsible" for the shooting because he was "startled," the AP reports. "It's two defenses that you can never reconcile," Nel said. Pistorius never once said the shooting was an accident because he "intended to kill," Nel said, per the Guardian. Nel noted that given the lack of imminent attack, Pistorius is still guilty of murder even if he did believe Steenkamp to be an intruder. Nel also drew attention to the contents of Steenkamp’s stomach, which indicate she ate hours after Pistorius said the pair went to bed, and other inconsistencies in the runner's testimony. "All these lies caught him up," Nel said. He also noted the defense never tried to disprove the claim that a neighbor heard a woman's raised voice an hour before the gunshots. As to the defense's claim that Pistorius' screams sound like a woman's, Nel said there is a recording of Pistorius screaming but the defense didn't present it because it doesn't support their version of events. Judge Thokozile Masipa will likely inform the court tomorrow of when her decision can be expected.
– You know that person at the top of your contact list, the one most likely to get an unintended call from your butt? Well, if you're the murderous type, make sure that number isn't 911. This lesson comes too late for Scott Simon, who unintentionally dialed 911 while still frothing with rage over a late-night dispute at a Waffle House in Florida. In the recording, Simon is heard saying that he intends to follow the man he was arguing with to his house and shoot him, the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun Sentinel report. That man, Nicholas Walker, was indeed shot and killed mere minutes later, while he was pulling his car onto I-95. Simon was arrested Tuesday over the May 5 incident, and while police don't think he actually killed Walker, he's been charged with first-degree murder because they believe he orchestrated the hit. "This is a first for me," a police spokesman said. "Criminals say crazy things all the time, but I've never seen anyone call a recorded line."
– Scotland Yard is hoping to take the investigation into the tragic royal prank call Down Under: As the BBC reports, UK police have reached out to their Australian counterparts about investigating the radio DJs who prank-called the hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated for morning sickness. "They haven't actually asked us to do anything yet," says a New South Wales police spokesman, "but we've certainly opened up the lines of communication and obviously we're happy to assist in any way we can." DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian wouldn't be likely targets for prosecution because they showed no "guilty intent," but they could be targeted under Aussie law that prevents public airing of private conversations caught on a "listening device." King Edward VII's Hospital has slammed 2Day FM, calling it "truly appalling" that both management and a station lawyer had approved the prank. Greig and Christian, who were suspended and are said to be undergoing "intense counseling," have "expressed a desire to speak," Sky News reports. "We haven't ascertained when they're ready for that and how we're going to organize that, but they certainly want to," says a spokesman for the radio station's parent company.
– Jimmy Fallon devoted an entire episode of The Tonight Show on Wednesday to bidding farewell to First Lady Michelle Obama, whom he called "a strong, smart, independent woman, an activist, a style icon, and a great dancer." Obama was Fallon's sole guest, though Dave Chappelle and Jerry Seinfeld appeared for a game of Catchphrase. Obama even helped Fallon write his usual "thank you" notes, penning "Thank you, Barack, for proving you're not a lame duck but my very own silver fox," per the Washington Post. She was then serenaded by her favorite singer Stevie Wonder, who altered the lyrics of "My Cherie Amour," singing "My Michelle amour, you're the only one that we adore … You'll always be first lady in our lives." There were more serious moments, too. As guests delivered emotional farewell messages to a photo of Obama during one segment, the first lady jumped out from behind a curtain, leaving a few in tears. Obama also told Fallon that the end of her husband's term has "been surprisingly emotional for all of us." She said she felt like crying when thinking "about the fact that some [kids] are afraid of the future, of what is to come. I don't want them to be afraid," but rather "embrace the future … with strength and with hope," per the New York Daily News. Obama added she would return to the White House if invited by the Trump administration, but she plans to stay involved in the initiatives she set up as first lady "as long as I live."
– Uganda's harsh new anti-gay law—which makes "aggravated homosexuality" punishable by life in prison—is costing the country: The US yesterday cut aid to Uganda over it, and didn't stop there. It slapped visa restrictions on Ugandans believed by the US to have been involved in human rights violations or corruption, the AP reports; a planned National Institutes of Health meeting will be moved from Uganda to South Africa; and a planned military exercise with Uganda has been axed. Among the aid cuts: $2.4 million that was meant to fund a Ugandan community policing program has been halted, and $3 million planned to fund a national public health institute will be reallocated to another unnamed African country. The moves "reinforce our support for human rights of all Ugandans regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity," the White House said in a statement, according to Reuters. But a government spokesperson in Uganda was unswayed: "Uganda is a sovereign country and can never bow to anybody or be blackmailed by anybody on a decision it took in its interests, even if it involves threats to cut off all financial assistance," he says. And Uganda has experienced more than threats: Before yesterday's announcement it had already seen $118 million in aid from Western donors pulled. The US will continue its involvement in the hunt for Joseph Kony, CNN notes.
– Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates on Monday testified before a Senate subcommittee looking into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia, and analysts say she provided some key information about the departure of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn—and raised some new questions for the White House. A roundup of coverage: The New York Times lists six takeaways from the hearing. Chief among them: A lot of people, including Barack Obama and Chris Christie as well as Yates, had reservations about Flynn becoming national security adviser. "To state the obvious: You don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians," Yates said in the hearing's most-quoted line. She said she warned that Flynn could be open to blackmail because he had lied about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. Politico lists several key moments from the hearing, including Yates' and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's denial that they were ever anonymous sources for news reports about Trump campaign ties to Russia. Another was when Yates disclosed that she had to learn about Trump's travel ban from media reports. Another takeaway: Some Republicans, including Ted Cruz, are still focusing on Hillary Clinton's emails, with Cruz asking Clapper a hypothetical question about email forwarding that the Times calls a "thinly veiled" reference to Huma Adebin and Anthony Weiner. The Washington Post notes that the hearing didn't explain why the White House waited 18 days to fire Flynn after learning that he had lied to the administration, and it is unclear what administration officials did with the information Yates gave them before she was fired for not defending Trump's travel ban. Trump attacked the testimony in a series of tweets, which CNN considers a sign that Yates may have "put another dent in the administration's defenses." "Sally Yates made the fake media extremely unhappy today," he tweeted. "She said nothing but old news!" The Hill notes that there was no "smoking gun" from the hearing that is expected to damage Trump. His most controversial moment of the day was a tweet saying people should "ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel," which some Trump critics called witness intimidation. The Guardian reports that social media poked fun at Trump after his Twitter header banner was briefly altered to include one of his own tweets: "Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows- there is 'no evidence' of collusion w/ Russia and Trump."
– The journey from Australia's eastern New South Wales coast to Perth on its west measures about 2,500 miles. A 12-year-old boy set off to drive it alone, and got ridiculously far. The Australian Associated Press reports the boy was stopped about 800 miles into the drive around 11am Saturday, having essentially traversed the entirety of New South Wales from his starting point in Kendall, near Port Macquarie, over the course of 24 hours. The New York Times gives some American perspective, saying the distance covered "is about the equivalent of making the long and annoying" round-trip drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, "with a few dozen more miles thrown in for rest stops and food." The child was stopped in Broken Hill due to a dislodged bumper, which was dragging on the ground. Police tell the AAP the damage suggests he was involved in some sort of accident along the way. "He'd taken the family car," police said Monday. "His parents reported him missing immediately after he left home" shortly after 11am Friday. The child is in the custody of his parents, but will likely face charges including driving without a license and not paying for gas; Sky News reports he fueled up around 6am in Cobar. As for how he managed to not raise suspicions for such a long period, Sky News reports the 6-foot-tall boy looks much older than 12. Indeed, the manager of the gas station the child stopped at thought he looked "19 or 20."
– Tragedy in Baltimore, where a 2-year-old girl died yesterday after being left in a hot car. Police say her father, Wilbert Carter, left her in the car sometime Sunday, and WBAL-TV reports that she was inside it for at least 16 hours. Carter, 31, is also reportedly the one who found her the next day around 5pm and ran to call police, who found little Leasia Carter in the locked car. A witness says she saw Wilbert Carter walking down the street, crying. "A lady comes out of the house or walks out the street and they just start screaming." Another witness says Carter was "sitting there like, 'Somebody's dead, somebody's dead,' and we couldn't make out what he was saying, but we know he was saying somebody was dead." He was later arrested on second-degree murder and child abuse charges. Carter told police he had five drinks on Sunday, was drinking into the wee hours of Monday, and couldn't remember what happened, but the Washington Post reports that he said a friend drove his car to the location where the girl was later found. "The father went home at some point in time last night," a police official said yesterday. "This afternoon when he woke up, he discovered that his child wasn't there." Adds a police spokesperson today, "When he woke up around 4pm yesterday afternoon, that's when he began searching for his daughter." He reportedly asked his mother and aunt where she was and they said they saw him come home at 7am and assumed the girl was with his sister, but he found her after a cousin called to alert him to where his car was parked. The child was not breathing when she was found, and she suffered second-degree burns in the 90-degree heat.
– Archaeologists in Bulgaria think they've found ashes belonging to one of the 12 apostles. The team found a small lead container with ashes while excavating a basilica that dates back to the sixth century AD, reports Archaeology in Bulgaria. The markings on the inch-long vessel match those at the grave of St. John the Apostle in what is now Turkey, leading researchers to surmise that a long-ago Christian from Bulgaria traveled to the grave site and returned home with the sample of ashes. Such journeys were common around that time, reports Novinite. “Probably a pilgrim from the Foros Peninsula went on a pilgrimage to Ephesus, and came back here with this relic, which was then donated to the basilica on Foros,” says the director of the Burgas Regional Museum of History in Bulgaria. (The ancient basilica is located in what is now the Black Sea city of Burgas.) Archeologists also found a Bulgarian royal seal from the 10th century at the dig site, which includes a fortress, notes the Week. (Another archaeological discovery: an ancient underground city in Turkey.)
– The study on the Austrian find calls it a "sunken ship of the desert" and an "exotic animal." What exactly was found in a cellar containing centuries-old trash during excavations for a planned shopping center in Tulln: the full skeleton of a 17th-century camel. That a complete skeleton was found is unique, but the presence of camel bones is less so: The Ottoman army used the creatures for transportation and, in some cases, food, and their bones have been found in the region. But the completeness of the skeleton shows "the animal was not killed and then butchered," says archaeozoologist and study author Alfred Galik in a press release. He suggests it may have been traded or left behind by the troops, possibly following their siege of Vienna in 1683, reports the BBC. The locals "did not exploit this alien animal" for food upon its death, as the Ottoman troops "certainly would have done," write the authors in the study, published in PLOS One. "Exploitation of camel flesh especially in times of need was absolutely necessary," and the regularity with which that happened is "a reason for the scarce preservation of camel finds in general." What researchers were able to glean from this find: The male camel was the hybrid offspring of a female dromedary and male Bactrian camel and probably castrated, which would have made him easier to handle. Crossbreeding, which was not unusual for the time, made for larger animals that "were especially suited for military use," Galik explains. To wit, the study points to bone defects that indicate the animal was harnessed and ridden, reports the BBC. (Oil workers recently made a big find in Siberia.)
– A Los Angeles bishop has resigned after he revealed to his superiors that he has a secret family. Mexican-born Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala, 60, is the father of two teenage children who live with their mother in another state, reports the BBC. LA Archbishop Jose Gomez said the archdiocese is offering the family "spiritual care," as well as funding to help with college costs. He called the situation "sad and difficult." Zavala's resignation has been accepted by the Vatican. The popular, influential bishop has been known as a champion of immigration rights and social and economic justice. "He is a wonderful advocate for the marginalized communities—the outcasts," a co-worker told the Los Angeles Times. "It was his understanding of God and our faith—that there is a preferential love for those who are suffering and those who are going through difficult times." His resignation is bound to re-ignite a debate over celibacy for Catholic clerics. "It's self-evident—celibacy does not work," said Father Richard McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.
– Of 11 Colorado counties voting on the question, six—Cheyenne, Kit Carson, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, and Yuma—voted "yes" to consider becoming the 51st state. The ballot measure asked whether county commissioners should "pursue becoming the 51st state of the United States of America." The most populous county addressing the issue turned the idea down, 58% to 42%, in what ABC 7 calls "a sharp rebuke of commissioners" at the forefront of the effort. "Weld County voters said this is an option we shouldn't pursue, and we won't pursue it," said one. "But we will continue to look at the problems of the urban and rural divide in this state." The issue centers on that divide, the Denver Post notes, with new laws—including tougher gun and renewable energy measures—frustrating some in the 51st state movement. "The heart of the 51st State Initiative is simple: We just want to be left alone to live our lives without heavy-handed restrictions from the state Capitol," says backer Jeff Hare. But it's a long shot, requiring state and US congressional approval. Still, Hare says the movement has left a mark: Next year, "people running for office ... must have good information about the urban vs. rural divide."
– A Florida schoolteacher has filed a workplace discrimination lawsuit against her employer for turning her down for a job teaching Spanish—even though she doesn't speak Spanish, the News & Observer reports. Tracy Rosner, who teaches third grade at Coral Reef Elementary in Palmetto Bay, alleges in her federal complaint against the Miami-Dade County School Board that she applied to be reassigned to teach the extended foreign language (EFL) track—one of three tracks the school offers its students, in addition to college prep and gifted, per the Miami New Times—which would require her to teach one hour of Spanish per day. Rosner says her request was denied, even though she's "otherwise fully qualified" for the job, and that after she was rejected, the principal upped her workload in retaliation. How Rosner says she would get around that pesky fluency requirement: She'd have another Spanish-speaking teacher come in for that one hour a day to instruct her students. She notes in her suit that non-Spanish speakers are in the minority in Miami-Dade County, which "disproportionately affects" her ability to find a suitable job. "Ms. Rosner was provided a less desirable position and has damages including emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish, [and] loss of enjoyment of life," the suit states. It's not clear which track Rosner had previously been teaching or why she had asked for the reassignment. (The owner of a Milwaukee frozen-custard stand doesn't want any language other than English spoken at work.)
– If you're eating at McDonald's, you probably aren't counting calories, but you might be surprised at which of the restaurant's menu items are most clogged with calories. Take the Double Quarter Pounder With Cheese, for example. It's one of the more substantial meals at McDonald's, per 24/7 Wall St., but at 780 calories, it doesn't even crack the top 10. Some of the heartiest options: 40 Chicken McNuggets: 1,880 calories Big Breakfast With Hotcakes: up to 1,310 calories with a large biscuit Premium Crispy Chicken Club Sandwich: 990 calories 20 Chicken McNuggets: 940 calories 16oz. McFlurry With M&M's: 930 calories Large Chocolate McCafe Shake: 850 calories Click for the full list or the surprising stats of a McDonald's salad.
– A cautionary tale out of Florida for anyone hosting guests this week or, more to the point, anyone who is a guest: Police say a woman fired a handgun at visitors who wore out their welcome and ended up striking two people in the leg with bullets, reports NBC Miami. Deputies say Alana Annette Savell, 32, of Panama City became annoyed when people who had come over to hang out got too loud after drinking and wouldn't leave, so she grabbed a .22-caliber handgun and began shooting toward their feet, reports WMBB. "The suspect's boyfriend stated to investigators that he has told his girlfriend that once someone is told to leave their property three times, she is to go get the gun and shoot it at the ground," says a police statement. "If that does not work, she is to shoot people in the leg." One of the guests did indeed get hit in the leg—as did Savell's boyfriend. Savell is charged with aggravated battery with a firearm.
– A jaguar is being sent home to Kerala, India, from a New Delhi breeding program after being accused of having a dad bod without the "dad" part. Salman had been borrowed by the Delhi Zoo to mate with Kalpana, its female jaguar, but there were problems: Salman turned out to be too corpulent and lethargic to mate, the BBC reports. Salman has "reached out for its meals more keenly than for Kalpana," a zookeeper complains to the Indian Express, adding that "the female is seen trying to entice him but he lies in a corner and refuses to respond. He is too fat to breed." Salman, who RT.com notes is said to weigh around 220 pounds, does have his defenders, who point out to the Express that two other male jaguars also didn't produce offspring with Kalpana and that breeding cats sometimes just don't feel like mating after being relocated. But workers at the zoo say Salman is a different animal altogether than the previous competition. "He is lazy, a glutton, just loves to eat and relax," one of the caretakers tells the paper. (Maybe Vin Diesel needs to have a heart-to-heart with Salman.)
– There is a gaggle of Americans currently seeking the 2016 presidential nomination, and a fair number of them are using today to talk about Donald Trump. Lindsey Graham led the charge, calling Trump out on his anti-Latino rhetoric and labeling the mogul "a wrecking ball" that could take apart the GOP as it seeks to bring Hispanic voters into the fold in what Graham terms "a defining moment" for the party, reports the Hill. "If we don't reject this way of thinking—clearly, without any ambiguity—we'll have lost our way, [and] we'll have lost the moral authority, in my view, to govern this great nation." Calling Trump's comments "offensive," Graham said, "I'm not going to be part of that." Carly Fiorina was considerably more amenable, saying that Trump was "tapping into an anger I hear everyday ... that a commonsense thing like securing the border or ending sanctuary cities is somehow considered extreme." Democrat Jim Webb, meanwhile, told Fox News, via the Hill, that Trump shouldn't "be throwing these bombs" and that such "divisive, inflammatory rhetoric from people who want to be commander in chief is" less than helpful. (Trump, meanwhile, is showing no signs of letting up.)
– Not a bad Internet success story: Step one: A 22-year-old creates a goofy website that allows you to have glitter sent to "people you hate." Step two: It explodes in popularity, so much so that Australian Mathew Carpenter stops taking orders and pleads with people to please, God, stop asking him to handle glitter. Step three: Carpenter just sold the website, called ShipYourEnemiesGlitter, for $85,000, reports the Guardian. A decent result for sure, though Entrepreneur thinks Carpenter committed the "eighth deadly sin of business" by squandering a genuine opportunity: "With more commitment and seriousness, Carpenter probably could have had an actual successful business on his hands." Before he bailed, Carpenter wrote that he had taken more than 2,000 orders at $7.99 a pop, and he estimated a profit of up to $6.50 on each one, reports CNBC. (A woman is accused of using a glitter bomb, among other things, to get back at her former boss.)
– OJ Simpson's parole hearing in Nevada will be broadcast live at 1pm EDT Thursday and there's a strong chance that his path to freedom will be clear by the end of the afternoon. Nobody has registered to testify against the 70-year-old Simpson, who has been in prison for nine years on 12 convictions related to a Las Vegas robbery and will appear before the Nevada Parole Board via videolink, NPR reports. Thursday's hearing will cover four concurrent sentences for use of a deadly weapon and two consecutive sentences for assault with a deadly weapon, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. Four board members will vote after the hearing and Simpson could be free by Oct. 1 if they are all in favor of parole. If Simpson is indeed released this fall—which appears almost certainly to be the decision—it will "renew the rabid curiosity" in the case and "produce a spectacle unlike anything we’ve seen since he went behind bars," Nancy Armour at USA Today predicts. There has even been talk that Simpson might end up with a reality TV show, but Armour wants Simpson to avoid the spotlight unless he wants to return to the "toxic mentality that landed him in prison in the first place." If the former NFL star does end up with a TV show, the money is likely to go to the families of murder victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, CBS News reports. He will still receive an NFL pension estimated at $25,000 per month.
– As the deluge continues in Houston, one big question being debated is what role, if any, climate change played in the storm. As with most debates on climate change—particularly when talking about a single weather event—the views are all over the map. And some are suggesting that we need to frame the question differently to get the most accurate response. The details: Wrong question: Did climate change cause Harvey? That's not the right question, writes Dino Grandoni at the Washington Post. "The better way to frame thinking about the connection is through the question: Does climate change make storms like Harvey more likely?" This is a theme repeated in multiple posts on the subject, and Grandoni thinks the answer is yes, for reasons spelled out below. 'Worsened': One of the most cited pieces is from Penn State professor Michael Mann in the Guardian. "We can't say that Hurricane Harvey was caused by climate change," he writes. "But it was certainly worsened by it." The three big factors: Higher ocean levels made the storm surge worse, warmer water made the storm more intense, and Harvey stayed "locked in place" thanks to atmospheric changes brought on by humans. (The latter was the subject of a paper by Mann.) Maybe 'slightly': University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass is skeptical the link is that strong. "You really can't pin global warming on something this extreme," he tells Fox News. "It has to be natural variability. It may juice it up slightly but not create this phenomenal anomaly." Link is 'unknown': Texas State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon thinks it's too early to assess any link. "The climate change impact on the strength of Harvey is unknown," he writes to CNN. "Climate change is expected to increase the intensity of the strongest storms, but it's not clear whether Harvey was in that category." Still, he notes that heavier rain in general is a "direct consequence" of climate change, and Harvey certainly fits that pattern. Too 'fussy': David Leonhardt at the New York Times thinks "it's time to shed some of the fussy over-precision about the relationship between climate change and weather." The evidence is overwhelming that human-caused climate change results in storms such as Harvey, he writes, and our timidness in admitting it is holding up solutions. All about the rain: The jury is out on whether climate change increases the frequency of hurricanes, writes David Roberts in a wide-ranging Q&A at Vox. But he, too, says it's clear that heavier rain is an undisputed consequence. "In fact, due to sea level rise and more moisture in the air, I expect flooding to be the most frequent public face of climate change over the next decade or so." Media coverage: You won't hear much about climate change in the current news coverage because reporters don't want to "politicize" the situation, writes Naomi Klein at the Intercept. "But here's the thing: Every time we act as if an unprecedented weather event is hitting us out of the blue, as some sort of Act of God that no one foresaw, reporters are making a highly political decision," she notes. In contrast, panelists on Fox's The Five spotted a CNN banner mentioning climate change and accused the network of pushing a liberal agenda. "It's called the weather," said co-host Jesse Watters.
– The soil under the highest point of the Greenland Ice Sheet, scientists have learned, is 2.7 million years old, LiveScience reports. In other words, the silt buried under thousands of feet of ice "has been preserved from beyond the dawn of humankind," says Paul Bierman, who determined the soil's age through a geochemical dating process. The findings also suggest Greenland wasn't always as frosty as it is today: Instead, it was a tundra for between 200,000 and one million years before it was encased in ice. It was once home to bits of forest, the scientists found using offshore plant DNA. In other words, as the International Business Times has it, "Greenland really was green." The Greenland Ice Sheet that's there now, however, has been remarkably durable: The findings imply that it made it through a strong period of warming some 130,000 years ago. "It's unlikely the ice sheet has disappeared for significant periods of time in the last three million years, at least at this one pinprick on this big island," Bierman says. "Now human activity may spell the end of it." (What else lies under Greenland's ice? A canyon that dwarfs the Grand Canyon, an aquifer holding 100 billion tons of water, and two huge lakes.)
– From the chapel to the clink? A Pennsylvania couple is accused of stealing $1,049.26 of food and other goods from a grocery store on Saturday afternoon—with the intention of serving said food to guests at their 5:30pm wedding reception. Arthur Phillips, 32, and Brittany Lurch, 22, were married two days before they walked into a Wegmans to "shop" for what a source told the Smoking Gun included a shrimp platter, two spiral hams, a veggie tray, and soda, among other edibles. Other crucial reception items included a punch bowl, forks and spoons, and, in a sign that there's nothing like one-stop shopping, a polo shirt and Gillette Fusion razor blades. The most brainiac part? According to the criminal complaint, the duo pushed one cart out of the store ... then went right back in and starting filling up a second cart. The Centre Daily Times reports that when police arrested the pair, they also found a pipe with pot residue in the couple's car. The groom apparently took the fall for his new bride, and was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia; both were hit with theft-related charges.
– A fired Nickelodeon producer facing allegations of sexual harassment is expressing regret over his behavior, the AP reports. Chris Savino, creator of the animated series The Loud House, posted the apology on his Facebook page. Savino wrote Monday that he's "deeply sorry" and ashamed that his words and actions unintentionally created an uncomfortable environment. Savino says he's learned difficult but valuable lessons, adding that he respects the bravery of the women who have spoken out. Savino has been accused of sexual harassment by up to 12 women, according to the website Cartoon Brew, which reports on animation industry news. Last week, Nickelodeon said it took allegations of misconduct seriously and that Savino was no longer working with the children's TV channel.
– The US, France, and Britain together launched military strikes in Syria to punish President Bashar Assad for a suspected chemical attack against civilians and to deter him from doing it again, President Trump announced Friday. The AP reports that explosions lit up the skies over Damascus, the Syrian capital, as Trump announced the airstrikes from the White House. Syrian television reported that Syrian air defenses have responded to the attack. Trump says the US is prepared to "sustain" pressure on Assad until he ends what the president calls a criminal pattern of killing his own people with internationally banned chemical weapons. It was not immediately clear whether Trump meant the allied military operation would extend beyond an initial nighttime round of missile strikes. Trump did not provide details on the joint US-British-French attack, but it was expected to include barrages of cruise missiles launched from outside Syrian airspace. He described the main aim as establishing "a strong deterrent" against chemical weapons use. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied any use of banned weapons. French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed the attack, saying it was launched against a "clandestine chemical arsenal" run by Syria's government, the AP reports. Macron says France's "red line has been crossed" after a suspected chemical attack last week in the Syrian town of Douma. The US decision to strike marked Trump's second order to attack Syria; he authorized a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles to hit a single Syrian airfield in April 2017 in retaliation for Assad's use of sarin gas against civilians.
– In every corner of the world girls do more housework than boys, and this gender gap starts young and only widens with age. So reports UNICEF in a global analysis that finds girls on average spend 40% more time on household chores than do boys, and that this amounts to 160 million more hours of work every day. The gender divide starts by age 5, with girls between the ages of 5 and 9 devoting 30% more time on this unpaid work than boys, and widens to 50% more time for girls between the ages of 10 and 14. The BBC reports that the findings, which include data on violence, child marriage, education, and female genital mutilation, is being formally released on Oct. 11, the UN's international day of the girl. Chores range from cooking and cleaning the house to taking care of family members young and old and collecting water and firewood, reports New York magazine. "As a result, girls sacrifice important opportunities to learn, grow, and just enjoy their childhood," says UNICEF’s principal gender adviser, Anju Malhotra. She adds that the unequal distribution of unpaid labor perpetuates gender stereotypes and in some countries is shown to increase girls' risk of sexual violence. The countries with the highest gender gap are Burkina Faso, Yemen, and Somalia, and girls in Somalia average 26 hours a week on chores, more than any other children anywhere. (Women do the bulk of housework in the US, regardless of how many hours they work outside the home.)
– The first name on your family tree—in fact, on the family tree of every living creature—should technically be LUCA. As the New York Times explains, the acronym stands for the Last Universal Common Ancestor, an organism that lived about 4 billion years ago and became the ancestor of all life forms. Now, a new study in Nature Microbiology provides what its authors say is evidence that settles the debate about where this first life began: near hydrothermal vents, like those found near deep-sea volcanoes. Researchers at Germany's Heinrich Heine University say their genetic sleuthing has revealed that LUCA was tailor-made to live in such an environment—it was essentially "a heat-loving microbe that fed on hydrogen gas and lived in a world devoid of oxygen," in the words of Science. To figure out this genetic profile, the scientists examined 6 million genes associated with two simple and ancient forms of life, bacteria and archaea. After identifying genes that were shared between the two groups, they whittled the figure down to 355 gene families that met their criteria for having originated in LUCA, their joint ancestor. “It was flabbergasting to us that we found as many as we did,” says lead researcher William Martin. This smaller group of genes allowed them to create a snapshot of sorts of LUCA, one hailed as "remarkable" by a UCLA evolutionary biologist. But don't expect the debate to end. The study “is all very interesting, but it has nothing to do with the actual origin of life,” Cambridge chemist John Sutherland tells the Times. (In less ancient but still ancient news, the remains of more real-life hobbits have been found.)
– Microsoft is releasing a patch today to fix a vulnerability in its Windows OS—but not before a cyberespionage campaign against Ukrainian government employees and an American expert on Russia took place. According to the iSight cyberintelligence firm, which discovered the bug last month, hackers sent malicious PowerPoints to users on Windows Vista, 7, or 8, then activated the bug to control users' computers, the Wall Street Journal reports. The hack was part of a larger operation that also spied on NATO, the EU, and energy and telecommunications companies, Reuters reports. iSight doesn't know for sure who's behind the hacking, but it notes that a) one of the hackers is fluent in Russian; b) the Herculean effort suggests a well-supported team (i.e., helped out by a country's government); and c) the targets the hackers went after suggest Russian interests. What worries security experts is that even though there's now a patch to protect against the breach, the hacking world will try to gain access to users' computers before they have a chance to install the fix. "Every criminal and their brother is going to be trying to exploit this flaw in the next few weeks," an ACLU technologist tells the Journal. Perhaps even more mysterious than who's behind the hacking is the information embedded in the software code: iSight says it’s calling the spy operation "Sandworm Team," Reuters notes, because of multiple references found within the hackers' code to Dune—the sandworm was the toothy, desert-dwelling creature featured in the sci-fi movie, book, and TV series. (Chinese hackers accessed personal data for US federal employees earlier this year.)
– Taylor Swift came off the political bench last month to get behind the Democrat running for Senate in her home state of Tennessee, and with Phil Bredesen's loss Tuesday night to Marsha Blackburn there's no shortage of conservatives trolling Swift—and you'd be safe to cue a zillion references to bad blood. Chief among them was Fox commentator Laura Ingraham, reports the Hill, who tweeted "Hey @taylorswift13, haters gonna hate. #shakeitoff." It was a popular theme, notes the Tennessean, as former congressman Joe Walsh can't stop, won't stop urging Swift to "Shake it off, shake it off." Bredesen didn't seem to mind the pop star's thumbs up, fruitless though it may have been, tagging her in a tweet earlier Tuesday urging Tennesseans to vote.
– A Massachusetts judge rule today that Mitt Romney's sealed testimony from the divorce hearing of Staples founder Tom Stemberg can be released, after putting off the decision yesterday, the AP reports. The Boston Globe had argued that the court should reassess the gag order given that Romney is running for president. Stemberg's ex-wife, Maureen Sullivan Stemberg, believes Romney downplayed Staples' value to stiff her, a source confirms for Reuters. "He was stating for his best friend to save money in a divorce that the stock was worth very little." In the year after Romney's testimony, Staples' value almost doubled. Romney doesn't object to releasing the testimony. "From the governor's perspective, the sooner we get at it, the better," his lawyer told the court yesterday. But Stemberg does, and strongly. "This is not an issue involving Governor Romney," his lawyer said. "This is a private divorce matter." Staples also asked for time to make sure the documents didn't contain confidential information that might harm its business.
– "Bob Dylan" was one of the top Twitter trends Thursday thanks to the troubadour taking home the Nobel Prize for Literature. But while most of social media is beaming at his newest honor, Scottish author Irvine Welsh, who wrote the novel Trainspotting, isn't terribly pleased, the AP reports. Welsh spent much of Thursday morning on Twitter retweeting posts that trashed Dylan's win, and tweeting: "I'm a Dylan fan, but this is an ill conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies." His main beef appears to be the separation of a metaphorical church and state—in this case, songs and lit—that he thinks should exist, adding, "If you're a 'music' fan, look it up in the dictionary. Then 'literature'. Then compare and contrast." Other takes on Dylan's new laureate status: The Wall Street Journal lists feedback from major authors, from the gushing—Salman Rushdie writes on Twitter, "From Orpheus to Faiz, song & poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition. Great choice"—to the eyerolling, including satirical writer Gary Shteyngart's take: "I totally get the Nobel committee. Reading books is hard." Jay Perini gives a thumbs-up at CNN, noting how Dylan's songs "speak to our deepest concerns" and how he's "filled our heads with language that both interprets and transforms the realities we confront." At the Guardian, Richard Williams looks at whether music and literature can actually be successfully linked (in terms of a Nobel Prize), and he breaks it down line by line to show the "profound resonance" of Dylan's lyrics. Robert Chalmers makes the slightly uncomfortable observation for GQ that "everything would be so much more simple if he were dead," as Dylan would have ascended to legendary status. But Chalmers still jumps on the pro-Dylan bandwagon, noting, "His voice may, like the Havana cigars and bourbon to which it is often lazily compared, be an acquired taste, but Dylan is responsible, as much as Billie Holiday, for reinventing the whole style of popular singing." Meanwhile, a naysayer singing the Black "Eating Crow" Blues: Alex Shephard, who wrote last week for the New Republic that "Bob Dylan 100 percent is not going to win. Stop saying Bob Dylan should win the Nobel Prize."
– The internet is mourning a woman who danced into the hearts of many when a video of her dancing in a hospital gown went viral. Ana-Alecia Ayala died Wednesday after a yearlong cancer battle, WFAA reports. The Dallas woman gained fame in October after posting a video to social media showing her and a friend, in Ayala's hospital room, dancing to "Juju on That Beat" around medical equipment, Ayala in her hospital gown. It became known as "Juju on That Chemo." Ayala told KVUE at the time that her dance partner was a friend she met through a fitness group the year prior, who often came to her chemo treatments and tried to keep her positive. Ayala, 32, found out she had a rare uterine tumor in Dec. 2015 while trying for a second baby with her husband. It had spread to her ovaries and the lining of her stomach, and though most of it was removed within weeks in a surgery, a new tumor appeared on her spleen in July. When her video went viral, Ayala said she hoped to encourage others fighting cancer to "be silly, have a dance party, be present in the moment, and have a great time. Laughter is the best medicine, and I hope to make people smile, even at the expense of my bad dance moves." She leaves behind a husband and 3-year-old daughter.
– A tragic end for the Georgia couple who vanished while trying to buy a car on Craigslist. Police say two bodies found in the woods outside McRae, near where the couple's 2003 GMC Envoy was discovered submerged in a lake, are indeed those of Bud Runion, 69, and his wife, June, 66. Both were shot in the head with a small-caliber handgun, police say. Ronnie Adrian "Jay" Towns, who grew up 80 miles northwest of McRae in Macon, is now charged with malice murder and armed robbery, the AP reports. Entering a courtroom yesterday, Towns said, "I didn't do it," before a judge denied him bond, the Macon Telegraph reports. His mother seconded that claim, adding "evidence could have been planted" in her son's trailer. Bud Runion posted an ad on Craigslist on Jan. 19 looking to buy a 1966 Ford Mustang convertible, like the one he purchased after returning from the Vietnam War. "He said, 'You can't take money with you when you're gone,' " his daughter says. "You might as well spend and enjoy it." Police now say Towns—who has a wife and young daughter and was recently fired from a landscaping company—answered the ad with the intention of robbing the couple, who set out from their home in Marietta on Thursday. A cellphone used to contact them was traced to Towns, who police say doesn't own a Mustang, CBS News reports. In Marietta, the Runions are remembered as charitable people, who restored bicycles for kids and donated food, household supplies, and coats to the poor.
– Rep. Elizabeth Esty announced Monday she will not seek re-election this year amid calls for her resignation over her handling of the firing of a former chief of staff accused of harassment and violence against female staffers in her office, the AP reports. The Democrat from Connecticut and an outspoken #MeToo advocate was accused of not protecting female staffers from the ex-chief of staff. Esty has said she regrets not moving along an internal investigation into the allegations, which revealed more widespread allegations of abuse, and regrets providing "even the slightest assistance to this individual as he sought a new job." Esty said she determined "that it is in the best interest of my constituents and my family to end my time in Congress at the end of this year and not seek re-election." Her announcement came hours after she asked the House Ethics Committee to review her actions. "Although we worked with the House Employment Counsel to investigate and ultimately dismiss this employee for his outrageous behavior with a former staffer, I believe it is important for the House Ethics Committee to conduct its own inquiry into this matter," Esty said in a written statement, acknowledging "it certainly was far from a perfect process." Esty said she wants the committee to "clarify whether there was any wrongdoing" on her part. A lawyer for the committee said he could not comment on Esty's request for an investigation. It's unclear whether an investigative subcommittee will be created or how long the process might take.
– Much-maligned black rats and their fleas have long been blamed for spreading the Black Death that claimed millions of lives in Europe over the course of a few hundred years, but scientists now have a new critter they think was at fault. By studying tree rings to learn about precise climate fluctuations during the multiple epidemics from 1347 into the 1700s, a team out of the University of Oslo is reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that giant gerbils in Asia were the more likely culprit. The working theory is that wet springs followed by warm summers in Asia prompted gerbil populations to soar, and that within a few years plague bacteria would show up in harbor cities in Europe, sweeping the continent from there. "If we're right, we'll have to rewrite that part of history," a researcher tells the BBC. "Suddenly we could sort out a problem," the researcher continues. "Why did we have these waves of plagues in Europe? We originally thought it was due to rats and climatic changes in Europe, but now we know it goes back to Central Asia." Next up: sequencing plague bacteria from skeletons across Europe. If there's considerable genetic variation in the disease, this will support the theory that new strains kept arriving from Asia, as opposed to persisting in rat reservoirs in Europe. Though not what it once was, hundreds of cases of the plague are still reported annually, with 126 deaths in 2013, reports the World Health Organization. (Check out what some researchers call the plague's silver lining.)
– Always hoped you're mom's favorite? A new study out of Purdue University finds that the favorite child is actually more prone to be depressed as an adult, researchers report in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences. Looking at 725 adult children from 309 families in the Within-Family Differences Study—a longitudinal project documenting various aspects of relationships between parents and their adult children—they say that depressive symptoms were most common in the adult children who claimed to be emotionally closer to their mother than their siblings, reports Medical News Today. That also held true for "the children with whom their mothers had the greatest conflict, and in whom the mothers were most disappointed," write the authors. Interestingly, the study found no difference between male and female children, but it did find a racial disparity, notes Medical Daily. Adult black children felt their mother's disappointment more acutely than their white counterparts. Researchers hypothesize that sibling rivalry may be behind the depression, meaning more attention or support from mom doesn't necessarily beat out the negative attention from jealous siblings. Or that the favorites are more often asked to help the aging mother, which is its own source of stress. (The adult children in the study had mothers who were 65 to 75 when interviewed.) And yet a third possibility is posed by Bustle: A mother's attention may naturally drift toward the weakest or most sensitive child, thus her favoritism doesn't necessarily cause depression. Researchers plan to look at whether similar results play out with fathers, and whether it's possible to predict favoritism. (One study finds that young kids in religious households are less willing to share stickers.)
– If you're one of the people wailing and gnashing your teeth because Apple removed Google Maps from iOS 6, take hope: Google's making it pretty clear it wants to make a standalone map app available. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Google UK's marketing director said iPhone users "can still use Google Maps by downloading them." Of course, that's off the mark, 9to5 Mac points out—there is currently no such download in the app store. You can get to Google Maps via the browser, but it's not ideal. SearchEngineLand asked Google to clarify. "Our goal is to make Google Maps available to everyone who wants to use it, regardless of device, browser, or operating system," the company replied, without elaborating. That seems cagey, so "stay tuned," writes Danny Sullivan. A dedicated app can't come soon enough for many users. Apple's new maps app is so buggy and confoundable that a Tumblr has cropped up for users to post screenshots of its failure, BoingBoing reports. It's derisively titled, "The Amazing iOS 6 Maps."
– Many Americans aren't working on Martin Luther King Day; others are protesting work that they describe as slave labor. The Guardian reports on an "unusual" protest organized by prisoners throughout the state of Florida that kicks off Monday. The primary grievance: that they're forced to work and paid nothing—not even the nominal 15 cents an hour some prisoners see in other states, for instance. They're seeking a fair wage and hope to arrive at that end via the monthlong Operation PUSH, during which they plan to not show up for work assignments. Said the prisoners in a statement, "Our goal is to make the governor realize that it will cost the state of Florida millions of dollars daily to contract outside companies to come and cook, clean, and handle the maintenance. This will cause a total breakdown." As for those millions: The Intercept, which reports at least eight prisons have inmates who plan to participate in the protest, notes that in addition to the work done in the prisons, "community work squads" logged 3.15 million hours of work—worth $38 million, and which included Hurricane Irma cleanup—throughout the state in 2017.
– In the days before his death, Robin Williams "would often sleep a majority of the day and night," a source tells Radar. He was so depressed, "he wasn't eating and was just having problems getting out of bed," the source continues. "He would often complain that he was just so tired, even after sleeping 20 hours." Friends who will actually allow their names to be used tell the Los Angeles Times similar, though not as dramatic, stories. "He started to disconnect," fellow comedian and longtime friend Rick Overton says. "He wasn't returning calls as much. He would send texts and things like that, but they would get shorter and shorter." He was last photographed in public on Saturday night, with his wife at an art gallery reception near his home, TMZ reports, noting that he looked "frail" but seemed happy and was not drinking. He was found dead Monday morning. "You could just tell something was off," says Steven Pearl, another comedian and longtime friend, about the last time he saw Williams last month. "He seemed detached. It's hard to explain. He didn't seem like his usual self. My fiancee and I were like, 'Is he OK?' I didn't know it would get this dark." He also took a hit with the cancellation of his TV show, The Crazy Ones, after just one season, Overton says. And since Williams had spoken last year about needing to take on that gig in the first place thanks to all the money coughed up in his two divorces, some speculated financial problems contributed to his suicide, leading his publicist to explain to The Wrap that the actor "had no financial problems. ... Robin often said things in jest, and sometimes it just doesn't translate in print." He took the job "because of (show creator) David Kelley and the material ... not because he needed the money," she says. The current speculation, ETOnline notes, is whether Williams and his wife frequently slept in separate rooms, as they did on the last night of Williams' life.
– A new development in Ohio: One of the eight family members killed in a horrific mass slaying had already been threatened on Facebook, CBS News reports. The threat was directed at Christopher Rhoden Jr., who at 16 was the youngest of the victims. "I'm aware of the Facebook threat," says Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. "Every piece of information is valuable and our investigators are certainly taking that into consideration." Now Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader has told surviving Rhoden family members to be careful. "I cautioned them, told them we will be there," Reader says. "I told [them] to be armed." One surviving family member says the Rhodens are "torn up" about the killings. "And you know what I mean, kinda freaked out because we don't know," says the relative, who asked not to be identified. "There's still killers on the loose, or killer." The slayings happened in four rural homes near Piketon, Ohio, a town of about 2,200 where the Dogwood Festival on Sunday had a smaller-then-usual turnout. "People are scared to come out," says a resident. "What if that person who shot all those people is running around here." Now autopsies of all eight victims have been completed, News Net 5 reports, and a chart of the Rhoden family relationships can be seen here. (Marijuana-growing was found at three of the four murder sites.)
– Jennifer Livingston, the Wisconsin news anchor who responded on-air to a viewer who criticized her weight, has a Hollywood actor in her corner: Her brother, Office Space and Sex and the City star Ron Livingston. Ron has issued a statement in support of his sister, Radar reports, noting that she "brings an exceptional dedication to her job, her family, and her community, and has been a role model of mine for many, many years." Later on Soledad O'Brien's show, Jennifer Livingston talked about her decision to air her response, Mediaite reports. Seems her husband, also a news anchor, first posted the critical email to his Facebook page and responders were supportive of Livingston, so her news director supported the idea of her going on air. But Kenneth Krause, who originally criticized Jennifer, isn't backing down and instead offered a follow-up statement to WKBT-TV. "Given this country’s present epidemic of obesity and the many truly horrible diseases related thereto, and considering Jennifer Livingston’s fortuitous position in the community, I hope she will finally take advantage of a rare and golden opportunity to influence the health and psychological well-being of Coulee Region by transforming herself for all of her viewers to see over the next year," he said. Jezebel has a picture of Krause, a personal injury lawyer, and notes that he "looks exactly like you'd expect, multiplied by 100."
– An ICE "sensitive locations" directive says federal agents shouldn't try to enforce the law at such locations except under "exigent circumstances." But the family of Rosamaria Hernandez, a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who had gallbladder surgery at a hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, says ICE agents stalked her at the hospital, then took her to a San Antonio detention center for migrant kids—all while her parents, also illegal immigrants, are at their home in Laredo 150 miles away. Arresting a minor already living in the US, especially one with a medical issue, is a move the New York Times is calling "rare, if not unheard-of." It's also one that's prompted Rep. Joaquin Castro to issue a challenge to President Trump and Elaine Duke, the acting secretary of Homeland Security. "Show that this enforcement operation is prioritizing a dangerous criminal," Castro says in a statement. This all started when Rosamaria—brought to the US from Mexico as an infant by her parents, who hoped to get better treatment for her cerebral palsy—was rushed by ambulance from a Laredo medical center to Driscoll Children's Hospital for the emergency procedure. The Corpus Christi Caller-Times notes Rosamaria was with her cousin, a US citizen. The trip Tuesday meant the ambulance passed a Border Patrol checkpoint, and while agents let the ambulance go, they followed it, her family says. ICE agents hovered outside Rosamaria's room until she was released, then took her to the San Antonio detention center, Leticia Hernandez, an attorney for the family, tells Newsweek. Now, while Rosamaria's family and lawyers vie for her release from the center, only US citizens can visit her, per Newsweek. "The only thing this child wants is her mom," Hernandez says.
– In a new Vanity Fair essay, Monica Lewinsky reflects on her scandal with former President Clinton 20 years ago, opening with a chance encounter in late 2017 that rattled her. While at a Manhattan restaurant, she ran into none other than Kenneth Starr, the special investigator who turned her into a household name in 1998. This, surprisingly, was the first time Lewinsky had ever met him, and she describes his demeanor as "somewhere between avuncular and creepy." He asked multiple times if she was "doing OK" and kept touching her arm and elbow, "which made me uncomfortable." Then Lewinsky told him, in what she later realized was an attempt to elicit an apology, “Though I wish I had made different choices back then, I wish that you and your office had made different choices, too." Starr didn't apologize, however. He merely said, "I know. It was unfortunate." The anecdote precedes Lewinsky's revelation that she was diagnosed with PTSD several years ago, and she suggests the nation suffered a similar kind of trauma. "Both clinically and observationally, something fundamental changed in our society in 1998, and it is changing again as we enter the second year of the Trump presidency in a post-Cosby-Ailes-O’Reilly-Weinstein-Spacey-Whoever-Is-Next world," she writes. The nation lost its "capacity for mercy, measure, and perspective," and bitter partisan differences "settled in." Lewinsky adds that while she has previously described her relations with Clinton as consensual, she has come to realize that assessment is "complicated," given the "power imbalances" at play. She also reveals that a leader of the #MeToo movement expressed a sentiment in a private exchange that "undid" her: "I'm sorry you were so alone." (Read the full essay.)
– New Jersey Democrat Rob Andrews made a surprise announcement today that he'll be giving up his House seat as of Feb. 18 to join a Philadelphia law firm, reports Philly.com. And while it's big news in Jersey, Andrews isn't exactly a household name nationally. Still, the Washington Post observes that he's got a legislative track record remarkable in its own way: Over 23 years, not one of the 646 pieces of legislation Andrews authored has become law. All the more impressive is that no representative has introduced more bills than him in that span. Sure, most bills fail in Congress, but "by those numbers, Andrews would be America’s least successful lawmaker of the past two decades," writes David Fahrenthold. Andrews, described as a "semi-liberal back-bencher," defends himself by saying that modern lawmaking these days is done through massive pieces of legislation, not through individual bills. By his own reckoning, Andrews estimates that 110 of his ideas have become law in that fashion. If he wants to eliminate the goose egg, however, maybe he can rename a post office in his final two weeks?
– Scientists say they have the first physical evidence of a grisly truth from Jamestown: Colonists in the brutal winter of 1609 resorted to cannibalism, reports USA Today. Anthropologists studying the partial remains of a teenage girl—including her skull, jaw, and leg bone—say they bear the unmistakable marks of a cleaver and knife, reports the Washington Post. She had been, for lack of a better word, butchered. “Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” says one of the Smithsonian scientists who worked on the project. “I think that it did. We didn’t see anybody eat this flesh, but it’s very strong evidence.” It's not clear whether the girl was a servant or perhaps the daughter of a colonist, or whether she was killed to be eaten or eaten after she died. Forensic scientists have re-created her face, though she will likely remain forever unidentified.
– The coroner in Marin County, Calif., today confirmed that Robin Williams' death was indeed caused by suicide, reports CNN. The 63-year-old had no alcohol in his system when he hanged himself at his home, and the only drugs found were from prescribed medication in "therapeutic concentrations." The coroner lists caffeine, antidepressants, and the Parkinson's drug levodopa. That meshes with reports that Williams had been struggling with anxiety and a recent diagnosis of Parkinson's before his death. The coroner's report also reveals this odd anecdote, as relayed by the Hollywood Reporter: The night before he died, Williams put several wristwatches in a sock and gave them to somebody because he was worried about their safekeeping. TMZ sees that as a sign of paranoia.
– A German dendrochronologist stumbled on something puzzling while gathering wood cores on the Norwegian coast in 2016: some trees were missing rings. "We got back to the lab and measured the tree rings, and saw that they were very narrow—in some cases nearly absent—for 1945," Claudia Hartl tells the AFP. A local scientist had a theory, she explained Wednesday at the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union: that it had something to do with the Tirpitz. The 820-foot battleship was the largest in Hitler's navy, and the BBC reports it spent much of WWII anchored and hiding along Norway's coast, including in Kåfjord, where Hartl observed the tree-ring anomaly. But then Allied forces found it, and that's when the trees suffered, believes Hartl. The Nazi ship released chlorosulphuric acid as a sort of "chemical fog" to try to cloak it from aerial enemy forces, and Hartl now believes the acid caused damage to the trees' needles. "If trees don't have needles they can't photosynthesize and they can't produce biomass," she explains, noting recovery can be a multi-year process as pine trees can retain their needles for as long as seven years. And that jibes with what she found: In one case, a tree had no growth for nine years and took three decades to revert to "normal growth." Near where the ship was stationed all the trees she studied were affected, with more than 60% not growing at all in 1945. She found the impact on the rings diminished with distance, with trees about 2.5 miles away starting to be unaffected. As for the Tirpitz's ploy, it didn't work: It was ultimately sunk. (Using ink and urine, this man recorded Nazi horrors.)
– Smoke was detected in multiple places on EgyptAir Flight 804 moments before it plummeted into the Mediterranean, but the cause of the crash that killed all 66 on board remains unclear, the French air accident investigation agency says. Agency spokesman Sebastien Barthe tells the AP that the plane's automatic detection system sent messages indicating smoke a few minutes before the plane disappeared from radar while flying over the eastern Mediterranean early on Thursday morning. The messages, he says, "generally mean the start of a fire," but he adds: "We are drawing no conclusions from this. Everything else is pure conjecture." The aircraft had been cruising normally in clear skies early Thursday when it suddenly lurched left, then right, spun all the way around, and plummeted 38,000 feet into the sea. Aviation experts have said the erratic flight suggests a bomb blast or a struggle in the cockpit. But so far no hard evidence has emerged. Search crews found floating debris and human remains on Friday, and photos posted on the Facebook page of Egypt's chief military spokesman appear to show the remains of plane seats, life jackets, and a scrap of cloth that looks to be part of a baby's blanket. Search crews from Egypt and five other countries—Greece, Britain, France, the US, and Cyprus—are searching a wide area of the eastern Med for further wreckage.
– Emma Watson didn't even take her top all the way off, and people are freaking out. The Beauty and the Beast star posed for Vanity Fair wearing a sheer top that bared part of her breasts, and as Sky News reports, the backlash was swift. "Emma Watson: 'Feminism, feminism... gender wage gap... why oh why am I not taken seriously... feminism... oh, and here are my t--s!'" tweeted Daily Mail columnist Julia Hartley-Brewer in a typical example of the criticism that arose. In response to Hartley-Brewer's tweet, Times editor Giles Coren wrote (but has apparently since deleted), "That dim-witted, attention-seeking hoyden doesn't just give feminists a bad name, she gives THE HUMAN RACE a bad name." But others were quick to defend Watson. "Your mole would like to point out the irony in attempting to undermine the actor’s feminist credentials by OBJECTIFYING HER BODY AND CRITICISING HER CHOICES," the New Statesman's Media Mole blog states. "As if we needed any further proof of the need for feminism." Over at Metro, Olivia Waring does have a problem with Watson, but it has nothing to do with her choice of attire: "Walt Disney was famously conservative and actually pretty archaic in his views of what women should do with their lives, which was reflected in all of the traditional fairytales his company made." Not much has changed recently, she writes, so if we're going to criticize Watson about anything related to her feminist credentials, it should be her choice to work with Disney. (Here's why Watson won't take selfies with fans.)
– Firefighters at Disney World were warned to stop feeding alligators two months before a gator killed 2-year-old Lane Graves, according to employee emails. Emails from employees of Reedy Creek Emergency Services—which operates inside the park—show firefighters had been feeding at least one of two gators apparently living in a pond near their fire station, less than a mile from where Lane was killed, reports the Orlando Sentinel. One alligator was believed to be four or five feet long, and the other was a juvenile. In one email to the fire station's commanders, a communications rep said an alligator had been spotted near the station where communications staff parked their cars, and some "expressed concern of becoming alligator food. ... (C)ould you ask your crews to stop feeding the gator." A Reedy Creek dispatcher later complained about two gators in the parking lot. "They are not docile gators, they are mean and they are out looking for food because people are feeding them," he wrote. "It's getting uncomfortable." A Reedy Creek district administrator says firefighters received "just a talking to"—though feeding gators is illegal in Florida. It's not clear whether these gators have any connection to Lane's death. The administrator is skeptical because they would have had "to travel across a couple roadways" to get to the Seven Seas Lagoon near the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, where the June 14 incident took place. Still, notes the Washington Post, trying to avoid such attacks is "one reason it is illegal to feed alligators in Florida." The resort area has since added signs warning people about feeding them, reports People. (The June attack was the result of a "perfect storm" of circumstances.)
– More than $1 million has been raised in the name of Donald Trump by a PAC—but zero dollars appear to have gone to help the GOP nominee, and donors are furious with the "registered genius" and "grape soda connoisseur" behind the setup, Politico reports. Ian Hawes is the 25-year-old behind dinnerwithtrump.org, a site not affiliated with Trump's campaign and that offers an exciting opportunity, if you're a Trump fan: a chance to win tickets to a Trump "fundraising event," complete with flight and hotel stay. That contest site, in addition to other fundraising efforts Hawes has made—including nearly $110,000 in Facebook ads, per federal records—has so far brought in $1.1 million from more than 21,000 donors, Hawes says. The issue: Donors say they thought this fundraising effort was part of Trump's campaign, though the fine print on the site notes it's simply giving away two tickets to a "Sponsor-selected fundraising evening event" with Trump in attendance. "I feel ripped off and taken advantage of. … This is robbery," says one donor who ponied up $256 to Hawes' American Horizons PAC, thinking she was donating directly to Trump's camp. Hawes denies he's pulling one over on anyone, noting that interested parties can enter the dinner contest without donating—though Politico notes a "double your chances" promotion is offered via multiple entries if someone contributes—and that the PAC will refund donations to anyone who asks for one. Plus, he adds, Trump's campaign has never told him to cease and desist using Trump's name. The "dinner with the Donald" site isn't Hawes' only moneymaker scheme: He's also launched crookedhillary2016.org—"to fight Crooked Hillary's campaign of lies"—and has registered imwithtrump.org, though that's not live yet. (The real Trump was closing the fundraising gap with Clinton earlier this month.)
– The teenager accused of killing three people at a house party near Seattle bought his AR-15-style rifle so recently he had to study the instruction manual before the rampage, police say. According to court documents, 19-year-old Allen Ivanov has told police that he bought the Ruger firearm just a week ago and carried out the shooting because he was angry that the "dream girl" he split up with two months ago didn't want to get back together with him, NBC News reports. Investigators say Ivanov has told them that on Friday night, he bought another magazine for the gun after leaving his job at an Apple Store early. He drove to the party in the suburb of Mukilteo around 10pm and looked through a window. After spotting his ex with another man, he returned to the car to study the rifle's instructions. Around midnight, he allegedly returned to the party and opened fire. Cops say Ivanov killed his ex-girlfriend, Anna Bui, as well as partygoers Jake Long and Jordan Ebner, all 19 years old. An 18-year-old victim was seriously injured. Ivanov, who fled after the shooting and was arrested more than 100 miles away, is being held without bail on charges including first-degree murder, KOMO reports. Investigators say the teen's recent posts on social media suggest the murders were planned. Tim Leary, a lawyer hired by his parents, tells the Seattle Times it worries him that Ivanov could buy the AR-15 when he is too young to buy beer. The fact that he had to read the manual "speaks volumes to his youth and inexperience and highlights the lethality of the weapon involved," he says. (The family of the AR-15's inventor says he'd be "sickened" by his gun's use.)
– In Internet terms, Facebook is already ancient. Today, the social network marks its 10th anniversary, and it's inviting hundreds of millions of users to share in the fun via "Look Back" videos. The project, overseen by multiple teams within the company, shows about 15 of your "most-liked" posts over music, the Verge reports. They began appearing this morning. "One of the things that motivated us was that there's really only a handful of companies that could take on something like this—that could render videos for as many people as we can," says the project's head. Mark Zuckerberg also offers a note to users: "It's rare to be able to touch so many people's lives, and I try to remind myself to make the most of every day and have the biggest impact I can," he writes. "It's been amazing to see how all of you have used our tools to build a real community." He also addresses the future: "Today, social networks are mostly about sharing moments. In the next decade, they'll also help you answer questions and solve complex problems." Feeling nostalgic? Here's the Harvard Crimson's 2004 report on the "hundreds" joining thefacebook.com, or Slate has its own "look back."
– Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit tells the story of a black singer who takes refuge in a dingy motel to escape the 1967 Motor City riots. Based on real events, the film reunites Bigelow with screenwriter Mark Boal, both of the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker. It's got a strong 89% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what critics are saying: "Bigelow drills down into one of American history's most egregious cases of abuse of police power, bringing it to life with visceral detail and slowed-down meticulousness" in what "feels like her timeliest movie yet," writes Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post. It's "daring, sophisticated and unforgettably disturbing." And "in scale, scope and the space it offers for a long-awaited moral reckoning, it's nothing less than monumental." "It's hard to overstate just how visceral and harrowing an experience it is," writes Lindsey Bahr at the AP, calling Detroit "a well-made and evocative film" jam-packed with "stomach-churning horror." She argues there could be more nuance and perspective. But "maybe anger is all you're supposed to feel when you step outside the theater. Maybe not feeling satisfied with Detroit is the point." Chris Klimek says Detroit is "maddeningly imperfect but still honorable," citing "lightly fictionalized" aspects of the otherwise true story that set it up "for maximum outrage." This is "messy work, even when it’s done in good faith," he writes at NPR. He applauds John Boyega, previously of The Force Awakens. Radiating a "Denzel-like calm," he shows "he's a bonafide movie star," Klimek writes. Peter Howell's main gripe is that the film "tries to tell us everything about the circumstances without telling us much about the people." But Detroit still makes for "urgent viewing," he writes at the Toronto Star. Why? "The injustice and anger behind it all feels like current reality, even a half-century on," when "a person's skin can still determine everything from employment opportunities to treatment by police."
– In case you've somehow managed to erase this detail from memory, USA Today reminds us that exactly one year ago, Dennis Rodman was singing "Happy Birthday" to "best friend" Kim Jong Un. Today is indeed believed to be the North Korean leader's birthday, but it's unclear whether he's 31, 32, or 33. Kim's birth year, per the South Korean government, was likely 1982, 1983, or 1984. And while Yonhap reports that China sent him birthday wishes, USA Today notes there is no elaborate public celebration to mark the day, as was the case with his father's and grandfather's birthdays. "There's a lot of speculation why that's the case," a South Korean professor tells CNN. "Kim could be trying to put out this image as a humble guy," or he could just be trying to downplay the fact that he's young. "When you start marking his birthday, then the whole North Korean people will start to wonder, then what's his age?" USA Today speculates that when his age is finally revealed, 1982 will be the year named, perhaps regardless of whether that's the truth: His grandfather was born in 1912, and his father 30 years later. Forty years after that is ... 1982. (Meanwhile, Kim's eyebrows are shrinking.)
– A new study has the potential to make breast cancer treatment easier for a sizable number of women, the New York Times reports. The study says the removal of lymph nodes from the armpit—a common, painful procedure that carries side effects of its own—isn't necessary for about 20% of patients in early stages of the disease. "The discovery turns standard medical practice on its head," declares the Times. “This is such a radical change in thought that it’s been hard for many people to get their heads around it,” says a doctor at Sloan-Kettering and an author of the study. The hospital has already changed its treatment procedures accordingly. The full study, published in the Journal of American Medicine, is here.
– Police have opened a kidnapping investigation as searches continue for a 9-year-old girl who vanished from a family wedding in the French Alps Sunday. The Local reports that authorities have scoured the area, using helicopters, police dogs, divers, and cavers around France’s southeastern Isère region to track down any trace of Maelys De Araujo. After canines lost the girl’s scent in the venue’s parking lot, police believe kidnapping is a possibility, though they are not ruling out other explanations, “accidental or criminal,” for her disappearance. "Given the time that has elapsed since the disappearance of the young Maelys and given the resources that have sadly been deployed in vain to find her, the criminal possibility can no longer be ruled out," local prosecutor Dietlind Baudoin said during a news conference. Maelys, who attended the wedding with her parents, older sister, and other relatives, was last seen in what the BBC describes as "a children’s room" around 3am local time Sunday morning. "The DJ for the evening announced on the microphone that a child had disappeared,” a wedding guest told Le Parisien. “Suddenly, everyone started searching, in the main hall and outside.” He added, “We initially thought she must be asleep in a corner after a game of hide-and-seek.” Police were contacted an hour later when the search yielded no results, the Guardian reports. All of the 180 wedding guests were interviewed by police, who are now reviewing photos and videos from the celebration and conducting 70 additional interviews of people who attended outside social events at a local bar and community hall around the same time.
– Matt Damon opined this week that the wave of sex harassment and assault claims sweeping Hollywood and society at large include "a spectrum of behavior" and that "none of us came here perfect," and the woman he once dumped on Oprah wasted no time in shutting him down. "Gosh it’s so interesting (profoundly unsurprising) how men with all these opinions about women’s differentiation between sexual misconduct, assault and rape reveal themselves to be utterly tone deaf and as a result, systemically part of the problem," Minnie Driver tweeted. She further unloaded to the Guardian: "I’ve realized that most men, good men, the men that I love, there is a cut-off. They simply cannot understand what abuse is like on a daily level. I honestly think that until we get on the same page, you can’t tell a woman about their abuse. ... It is so individual and so personal, it’s galling when a powerful man steps up and starts dictating the terms, whether he intends it or not.” Damon was also getting zero sympathy from Alyssa Milano, reports USA Today, who tweeted that, "as a victim of each component of the sexual assault spectrum of which you speak," "they all hurt." "We are not outraged because someone grabbed our a---s in a picture. We are outraged because we were made to feel this was normal. We are outraged because we have been gaslighted. We are outraged because we were silenced for so long." (Damon has said he had no idea that Harvey Weinstein routinely sexually harassed and assaulted women; his full interview this week with ABC News is here.)
– After Idaho toddler DeOrr Kunz went missing during a family camping trip in July, his parents said they were holding out hope that the 2-year-old was with someone, and that he would be returned to them. Six months later, the Lemhi County Sheriff's Office says "I don't believe we have an abducted child"—and the boy's mother and father are the top suspects in his disappearance, KBOI reports. "They know something, I just don't know what they know. It causes me alarm. I believe they know where he is absolutely," Sheriff Lynn Bowerman says, adding that DeOrr Kunz Sr. and Jessica Mitchell "are being less than truthful." Mitchell and Kunz Sr. say they left DeOrr with Mitchell's grandfather and went on a walk a short distance away but the grandfather thought DeOrr had gone to his parents. Bowerman says the investigation just recently took this turn, after behavior analysts and the FBI submitted their findings, and detectives brought DeOrr's parents in again for follow-up interviews. "I thought I'd give them another opportunity to tell us what happened," Bowerman says. Per KTVB, the sheriff says the parents "refused to give us any further information to clear up the untruthfulness and they've changed their story on numerous occasions." EastIdahoNews.com is re-running its interview with the parents from three days after their son went missing; the news organization notes it's the only on-camera interview they've given. "He's a goer and a mover but he does not go away from his parents," Kunz Sr. says in the video. "He's very attached to us," Mitchell adds.
– Larry Nassar's victims are continuing to speak out, but the father of three did more than talk in a Michigan courtroom Friday. Following testimony from two of his daughters—including one abused at age 13, per the Detroit News—Randall Margraves took the floor and addressed Nassar as "you son of a bitch," per a CBS News video. Scolded for swearing, he then asked for "five minutes in a locked room with this demon," and when the judge politely declined, asked instead for "one minute." The comment drew laughter from some in the room even as one of Margraves' daughters whispered "stop," reports ABC News. But it quickly became clear Margraves wasn't joking. As the judge again declined the request, Margraves rushed across the room at Nassar. One of Nassar's lawyers, Matthew Newburg, appeared in front of the former USA Gymnastics doctor, seeming to block him from harm, before sheriff's deputies tackled Margraves to the ground, reports USA Today. "I want that son of a bitch. I just need one minute with that bastard," he was heard saying as three deputies held him down. As they helped him up moments later, Margraves looked at the deputies, saying, "What if this happened to you guys' daughters?" He was then led from the room in handcuffs. The scene occurred during Nassar's third sentencing trial, focusing on assault convictions in Michigan's Eaton County. He's already been sentenced to 60 years for child pornography and 40 to 175 years for assaults in the Lansing area.
– Guess who's back? Serena Williams. And she made sure her return to the tennis court Tuesday was a stylish one, the Miami Herald notes, tweeting a picture of herself in a hot pink body suit. "Look who I spotted on the court. Her first day back," Williams wrote. She hadn't played since July thanks to health problems; click here to catch up on what's been going on. Her agent says Williams is "progressing well" and has the OK from doctors to do light cardio, but still has not set an exact date for her return to the WTA Tour.
– Tonight's Mega Millions prize could end up being the biggest US jackpot ever. It's already hit $636 million; by tonight, it could rise past the $656 million record, Reuters notes. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you win it (you won't). When you can breathe again, you'll want to take quick action to ensure that you deal with your newfound millions safely and effectively. At CNN, Steve Almasy offers a checklist: First, sign the ticket. You don't want to risk losing it, or having a "friend" claim it. While you're at it, you might want to take a selfie with the ticket, then drop it in a safe deposit box. Then, seek out financial experts, but not too many—you want to keep the news quiet as long as possible. "Start with one experienced attorney and look for a seasoned certified financial planner," Almasy writes. Big question: Is there any way you can legally remain anonymous? If you live in South Carolina or a handful of other states, the answer is yes, but generally you'll have a tough time hiding. You might want to hire a PR person. In fact, you might want to slip out of the country until the hubbub over the prize has died down. Didn't win? Don't forget to check if you've qualified for runner-up cash. Last year saw $800 million in unclaimed lottery winnings. Click for Almasy's full piece.
– Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald says allegations that he raped Kesha are "horrendous and untrue." In a series of tweets on Monday, the producer denied drugging and raping the star and accuses her of lying to get out of her contract, People reports. "I didn't rape Kesha and I have never had sex with her. Kesha and I were friends for many years and she was like my little sister," he wrote. "Kesha has denied under oath the horrible allegations now being made against me," he added, posting an image of a 2011 New York Daily News story that reported Kesha had testified under oath that the producer "never made sexual advances" toward her. "It's sad that she would turn a contract negotiation into something so horrendous and untrue," he wrote. "Imagine if you or somebody you loved was publicly accused of a rape you knew they didn't do," Gottwald wrote. "Imagine that. I have three sisters, a daughter, and a son with my girlfriend, and a feminist mom who raised me right." Last week, a judge refused to nullify Kesha's recording contracts, prompting Taylor Swift to donate $250,000 "to help with any of her financial needs." The New York Daily News reports that other stars have rallied behind Kesha, including Jack Antonoff of Fun., who has offered to produce new music for her. "Just make something and wait on it till that creep can't block you anymore," he tweeted. (Kesha talked about another struggle with Vogue last year: an eating disorder.)
– Not only did Anthony Weiner lose his own seat, he might have lost it for his party—in a very Democratic district, no less. Republican Bob Turner leads Democrat David Weprin by 47% to 41%, with 7% still undecided, Public Policy Polling finds. Turner’s got a 32-point lead among independents, and he’s even got 29% of Democrats behind him, leaving Weprin with less than 60% support in his own party. The poll ties Turner’s success to anti-Obama sentiment in the area, but the race is also taking a turn for the nasty: ThinkProgress reports that the GOP blanketed the district with a flier portraying a mosque rising from the ashes of Ground Zero, alongside images of Weprin and Obama, with Weprin quoted as saying, "I support the right of the mosque to build." Meanwhile, Politico leaked details of a nasty 1986 custody battle between Weprin and his ex-wife, in which Weprin is described as "heedless" of his toddler's son's welfare. And while Weprin is "something (well) short of a star candidate," writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post, the whole race could soon be a moot point: Many expect the district to disappear in redistricting.
– Court rulings in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are taking texting-while-driving laws down a new road, opening the door to not only holding the offending driver liable for a car accident, but perhaps also the person texting the driver, Consumerist reports. In neither case has anyone (yet) had to legally assume this burden: In the 2013 New Jersey appellate case, the "remote texter" was let off the hook because there wasn't enough evidence to show she knew her friend—who severely injured two people after slamming into their motorcycle—was driving when she texted him, the ABA Journal reports. And in the Pennsylvania case, the judge's ruling didn't hold responsible the two texters who were sending messages to the driver when she crashed into a motorcycle, killing that driver—it was simply determined the texters were fair game for the suit, per the Legal Intelligencer. But the fact that holding non-driving texters liable for car crashes is even being considered is starting to slowly impact the legal landscape on distracted driving. The New Jersey and Pennsylvania cases underscore the challenges in such cases. For instance, it's not enough to hold a texter liable simply because he or she texted a driver: Certain conditions must be met, such as knowing (or having good reason to believe) the driver would pick up the phone to check out texts while driving, as well as proving a "special relationship" exists between texter and recipient to influence the recipient picking up. But these kinds of cases, as well as other proposed crackdowns on car texters (including New York's controversial "textalyzer" bill), show the issue is being given heavier weight. "People often see distracted driving as a socially acceptable sin … an innocuous guilty pleasure in which everyone indulges," a University of South Carolina law professor tells Vocativ. "The same used to be true of drunk driving ... These legal developments could signal that a similar change in thinking is underway regarding distracted driving." (Jenny McCarthy's son called the cops for her texting-while-driving transgression.)
– The Peace Corps is evacuating its volunteers from the three nations in West Africa hit hard by the Ebola epidemic, reports CNN. The 340 Americans will be returning to the US from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea as the outbreak worsens. In fact, two Peace Corps workers must remain behind in isolation because they had contact with an infected person, though neither has shown symptoms, says the group. The move comes as health officials try to contain the disease to West Africa. Today, Liberia shut down all its schools, sent home non-essential government workers for three weeks, and dispatched troops to enforce quarantines in some communities, reports the BBC. "My fellow Liberians, Ebola is real, Ebola is contagious and Ebola kills," said President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. "Denying that the disease exists is not doing your part, so keep yourselves and your loved ones safe." With 670 deaths and counting, the outbreak is now the largest in history, reports the AP. "This epidemic is without precedent," says the director of Doctors Without Borders. "It's absolutely not under control, and the situation keeps worsening."
– Two Tennessee men have been charged with killing a couple over what police describe as a "senseless and stupid" motive: A defriending on Facebook. Marvin Potter, 60, was enraged by the couple's decision to scratch his 30-year-old daughter from their list of friends, according to police. The two were found shot dead in their home, with their 8-month-old daughter lying unharmed in her mother's arms, reports AP. Potter was charged with first-degree murder after an intensive week-long police investigation, reports the Johnson City Press. Investigators found that the couple had complained about Potter's daughter harassing them on the Internet and over the phone. A friend of Potter's, who police said had romantic feelings for his daughter, has been charged as an accessory to murder.
– Arizona is once again at the center of a hot-button national issue, but this time it's gay rights instead of immigration. The state Legislature this week passed a bill that would allow business owners to cite their religious beliefs and refuse service to gay people, reports AP. Now Gov. Jan Brewer must decide whether to sign, and it's anybody's guess whether she will do so, reports the Arizona Republic. She has vetoed similar legislation previously, but she also told CNN yesterday that business owners should be able to "choose who they work with or who they don't work with." Still, business groups such as the Greater Phoenix Economic Council want Brewer to veto the bill because they say it would damage the state's reputation and actually hurt business. Proponents see it as a matter of religious liberty. "In America, people should be free to live and work according to their faith, and the government shouldn’t be able to tell us we can’t do that,” an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom tells the New York Times. Counters an ACLU official: “Religious freedom is a fundamental right, but it’s not a blank check to harm others or impose our faith on our neighbors." Kansas' House recently passed similar legislation, but Arizona is the first state whose full legislature has backed it. (Click to read about a new study that suggests the homophobic live shorter lives.)
– A Florida summer camp ended up falling somewhere between Meatballs and Friday the 13th on Thursday after dozens of kids came down with a mysterious illness. It began with an urgent-sounding tweet shortly after 8pm EDT from Highlands County Fire and Rescue noting a "mass casualty incident" at Lake Placid's Camp Cloverleaf, which belongs to a Florida 4-H group. CBS News and WTSP report that the incident involved 33 kids and three adults falling ill, mainly suffering from nausea, vomiting, and headaches, though one person passing out was deemed concerning enough for a 911 call to be placed, according to Highlands County Public Safety Director Marc Bashoor. The victims were taken to area hospitals to be checked out, though none appeared seriously ill. The fire department says it still doesn't know what caused so many to get sick at once; the health department is looking into it. In the meantime, the area where most of the patients seemed to fall ill has been cordoned off, and although many children were picked up by family, about 50 or so of the 115 attendees remained, per the New York Daily News. The kids at the camp range in age from 8 to 15.
– Tony Dungy says he's not prejudiced, despite his comment a couple days ago that he wouldn't have drafted openly gay player Michael Sam, TMZ reports. "I gave my honest answer, which is that I felt drafting him would bring much distraction to the team," Dungy said in a statement. He added that Sam deserves a chance to play, and Dungy would coach him, but said that "the media attention that comes with it will be a distraction." A few reactions to Dungy's initial comments: "Given Dungy's religious nature, his Indiana Family Institute affiliation and his expressed opposition to gay marriage, I wouldn't expect Dungy to open the door too widely to a gay athlete," writes Bob Kravitz at the Indianapolis Star. "It is, however, disappointing." Slate dug up a tweet Dungy posted about President Obama's support for marriage equality: "What is your take on the President's stance on gay marriage? I was disappointed he veered from biblical view." At Yahoo, Dan Wetzel argues that Dungy may be forgetting how blacks overcame prejudices to play pro ball, or how Dungy advocated for Michael Vick's return after Vick served time on dog-fighting charges. Now, Dungy's "thinking is devoid of courage—in every possible way." Enter Rush Limbaugh, who says that if the St. Louis Rams should cut Sam, people will say it's because he's gay—just as people did when the first black coaches were fired. Dungy is "just saying, if the report is accurate, he wouldn't want to deal with the distraction of it all as a coach," says Limbaugh.
– As predicted, Greece doesn't have the funds to pay back a $1.8 billion euro loan installment by tomorrow's International Monetary Fund deadline, a government official there confirmed today—meaning the country may now be one step "closer to an exit from the euro zone currency," as Reuters puts it. Echoing that: Standard & Poor's today cut Greece's credit rating by one notch further into junk status, and put the chance of Greece exiting the eurozone at 50-50, reports the AP. S&P put out a statement saying that the decision to hold a July 5 referendum suggests the country "will prioritize domestic politics over financial and economic stability, commercial debt payments, and eurozone membership." European leaders are urging Greeks to vote "yes" in that referendum on bailout conditions, the Wall Street Journal reports. "You shouldn't commit suicide because you're afraid of dying," the European Commission president urged Greek citizens, per the newspaper. Although the European Central Bank is expected to cut off the emergency funding required to keep Greece's banks afloat following the missed payment, analysts tell the news agency they think the ECB will keep money flowing at least through this week.
– It will take more than an ISIS video to intimidate New York City, a defiant Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday night after the group released a propaganda video mentioning the Paris attacks and threatening that New York City could be next. "The people of New York City will not be intimidated," de Blasio said in a Times Square press conference, per NBC. "We understand it is the goal of terrorists to intimidate and disrupt our democratic society. We will not submit to their wishes." CNN reports that the NYPD is deploying extra officers out of an "abundance of caution" following the release of the video, which shows footage of sites, including Times Square, and depicts a bomber with a suicide belt. De Blasio was joined in Times Square by NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, who said the "hastily produced" video shouldn't scare away visitors, the New York Daily News reports. "People can feel comfortable coming into the city," he said. "Do not be afraid. The NYPD will protect you." NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo also urged New Yorkers not to give terrorists the reaction they're hoping for, the Daily News reports. "I encourage all New Yorkers to remain alert and report any suspicious activity, while at the same time not letting this disrupt their daily lives," he said in a statement. "Remember that the terrorists' goal is to let fear win—New Yorkers never have, and we never will." (ISIS says it brought down a plane with a bomb in a soda can.)
– It's pretty much unanimous: Critics are in love with Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the documentary produced by Cobain's daughter, which hits theaters today before premiering on HBO next month. With interviews from his parents, Courtney Love, and more, it offers an intimate look at the star who committed suicide at 27. Here's what critics are saying: Director Brett Morgen "gives us the man instead of the myth" in a documentary that makes "Cobain's story feel not only comprehensive and fresh but revelatory," Chris Nashawaty writes at Entertainment Weekly. Some parts, including a home video of Cobain nodding off on drugs, are "uncomfortable," but "Morgen isn't interested in hagiography. He wants to show us the real Kurt Cobain, warts and all." The result is, in a word, "brilliant." "The movie creates a portrait of Cobain that’s more intimate, and more disturbing, than any that fans have witnessed before," writes Jim Farber at the New York Daily News. It "downplays commentary to stress raw evidence drawn from Cobain's deep archives." Viewers will see "a strung-out Cobain struggling to hold his infant daughter," Farber writes, and hear him speak about a high school suicide attempt. The film as a whole leaves "questions, frustrations, and a chill." "Edited from thousands of photographs, home movies, and audio clips" the "source materials alone [make] this film a must-see for any hard-core Nirvana fan," Charles R. Cross writes at the Seattle Times. The highlights come in "segments where noirish animations dramatize stories Cobain himself narrates in audio." Though the "many powerful images on screen ... begin to overwhelm the viewer," most will be left "cheering." Mike Hale describes the film as a "seamless mystery ride" that "concentrates on Cobain the writer, draftsman, and personality." Morgen "finds abundant clues and premonitions in Cobain’s writings" to suggest that "insecurity and shame" played a role in his suicide, though the truth remains elusive, Hale writes at the New York Times. His favorite part? Seeing an "angelic" Cobain as a child in the first half of the two-hour-plus film. Frances Bean Cobain recently spoke publicly about her dad.
– Eating the forbidden fruit of an apple tree may be even racier than the Bible says. Women who eat one to two apples a day experience a better sexual quality of life than women classified as having "no regular apple consumption," according to a new study in the Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Scientists followed 781 Italian women aged 18 to 43 with no history of sexual disorder and who were not taking prescription meds or suffering from depression, and learned that those who eat apples regularly had better "lubrication and overall sexual function." The researchers didn't establish causation—it's possible, for instance, that women who eat more apples are healthier overall, which contributes to better sexual function. But, like chocolate and red wine, apples contain polyphenols and antioxidants, which can increase blood flow to the genitalia, as well as phloridzin, a type of estrogen similar to the female sex hormone estradiol that improves vaginal lubrication, reports the Huffington Post. Some of these benefits may lie only in the peel of the apple, and researchers say it "might be interesting to evaluate" what role apple peels play in female sexuality, reports Salon. (Click to read about another unusual sex-related study.)
– Natasha Exelby lived out every news anchor's nightmare on live TV over the weekend, and to add to that nightmare, some are saying she's been sanctioned for it, per the New York Daily News. A video circulating online shows the Aussie journalist on ABC24 on Sunday, zoning out and staring at a pen while waiting for a prerecorded portion of the show to end, not knowing at first the camera had cut back to her, per the New York Post. Once Exelby realized she was back on the air, she let out a startled gasp, but quickly composed herself and continued with the broadcast. News outlets reported Exelby, a freelance journalist, was yanked from on-air segments for ABC, with some even framing it as a firing. But ABC's news director insists that's not true and that "slip-ups will happen." "Our presenters are humans, not robots," he says, adding Exelby is simply an occasional contributor (not a full-time employee) who only does on-air segments as needed, even though at the moment she hasn't been rescheduled to do more on-air bits, per the Guardian (which cites sources saying Exelby had been "read the riot act" by management). The Australian notes she's been hired to temporarily read the morning news for a Sydney radio station while the regular host is on break. Exelby, who had supporters such as Russell Crowe rushing to her defense, thanked everyone on Twitter, adding, "Not my finest hour. Myself and my mesmerising pen honourably salute you!" (This news anchor reported on horrible news that hit too close to home.)
– And then there were 12: George Pataki is dropping out of the presidential race, reports the New York Times. The reason is pretty clear: The former New York governor was averaging 0% in national polls and never once qualified for the main debate stage, reports Politico. The Washington Post also observes that his big moments—upsetting Mario Cuomo in New York in 1994 and leading his home state after the 9/11 attacks—are well in the past. Also not helping: The 70-year-old hasn't held office since 2006, and he's pro-choice, backs gun control, and champions compromise across party lines, putting him out of step with leading rivals in the GOP. Pataki told his supporters of his decision Tuesday, and made it official in a Tuesday night announcement. "While tonight I suspend my campaign for president, I am confident we can elect the right person," he said.
– Gina Haspel won the endorsement of the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday, with the panel voting 10-5 to advance her nomination as CIA director to the full Senate. Haspel, who would be the first woman to lead the Central Intelligence Agency and the second person to lead the agency after being undercover her entire career, was a controversial pick by President Trump thanks to her role in the CIA's controversial post-9/11 "enhanced" interrogation program, per ABC News. But at least five Democrats in the Senate have said they will back her, "all but assuring" she'll be confirmed, per the Wall Street Journal. Republican Senate leaders want to hold the vote this week, but it could get pushed to next week.
– What does defeat sound like? This: "We have reached the conclusion that this is not a winnable battle at this time." That was the pronouncement of Seattle Councilwoman Lisa Herbold Tuesday in advance of what ended up being a 7-2 vote to reverse a new tax the council had unanimously approved only a month prior. The so-called "head tax" would have generated just shy of $50 million annually to put toward homelessness and affordable housing by charging businesses that generate more than $20 million in revenue a year about $275 per employee. That would have hit about 3% of businesses in the city, one of which is Amazon, which would have contributed about 25% of the expected total, reports NPR. The company was vocal in its opposition. And per SeattlePI.com, the "stunning wealth" of Amazon, Starbucks, and the rest of the opposition drove the reversal. As Councilwoman Lorena Gonzalez explains, "I have been unable to find a way forward that we could out-fund and out-resource the opposition campaign by November" (the opposition was campaigning for a referendum on the tax in the fall). "Money has funded this campaign that put us in a position where we have to repeal this law." The AP characterizes city leaders as having "underestimated the frustration" over not just the tax but the fact that while $68 million was spent on homelessness last year, a January count found the homeless population in the Seattle area up 4%, to 12,000, suggesting to some that the city's current resources weren't being used appropriately.
– David Knowles was leading a class on CPR when he suddenly felt weak and dizzy. As the retired UK nurse lay on the floor, he realized he had little time to tell his students what to do before he passed out, the BBC reports. The group "had asked for a demonstration," Knowles says, and they thought they were getting one. When they learned this was no drill, "the whole group was up on its feet, looking like they weren't doing very well, either," Knowles tells Inside Edition. As the 77-year-old, who took his own pulse during the incident, started to "get a bit foggy," he instructed student Karol Chew to call an ambulance and take out his false teeth. Knowles knew he was having a heart attack and had to stay awake but, he adds, "I couldn't really get stirred up about it." Chew—a former nurse who was taking the class to brush up on her skills—began performing CPR after her teacher stopped breathing. "It really got bizarre, the whole thing," Knowles says. He came to briefly when the paramedics arrived, "but the next thing I remember is waking up in [the] hospital, two and a half weeks later," Knowles tells the BBC. He fell into a coma and later suffered another heart attack, per the Independent. The incident in front of his students took place in February. The local ambulance service for which Knowles volunteers says that if he'd been stricken before his students had arrived, he likely would have died. After five weeks in the hospital, Knowles was sent home to his wife, Nova, and doctors say he's making excellent progress. "I feel a lot better," he tells Inside Edition. (Did workplace bullying trigger a fatal heart attack?)
– Antony Britton's plan: to pull a Harry Houdini and claw his way to the surface after being handcuffed and buried underneath 6 feet of soil. But his charity stunt in West Yorkshire on Saturday took an almost deadly turn when the escape artist was smothered by the dirt and passed out, the Guardian reports. "The soil was … compacting and crushing me," he tells the paper. "I remember then getting my right arm stuck in the soil and I started passing out. At that point … I just remember thinking it's up to the ground crew to do their job." He adds, per the Huddersfield Daily Examiner: "I could feel myself losing consciousness and there was nothing I could do about it. I was pretty much dying." But rescuers came through, nine minutes into Britton's attempt, and cleared dirt from his throat and administered oxygen while spectators watched in tears, notes the Guardian. Britton's minor injuries: some scrapes, bruises, and a cracked rib. The escape, which he was doing to raise money for leukemia and lymphoma research, is only believed to have been attempted (and failed) twice before in the last century, including once by Houdini himself. Even though Britton tells the Examiner he's disappointed he passed out just 2 feet from the surface, he says he won't be trying this trick again. (Then there's the case of Florida's "prison Houdini.")
– A well-dressed tourist visiting Germany from China was robbed in Heidelberg, but he filled out the wrong set of paperwork in an attempt to report the crime. Known only as Mr. L and fluent only in Mandarin, he went to the town hall instead of the police station, signed an asylum application instead of a missing item report, handed over his passport, had his fingerprints taken, and was bused 220 miles away to a refugee shelter in Duelmen. All the while he did his best at charades to communicate that he just wanted his passport so he could visit Italy and France, reports the Local. But the 31-year-old had become entangled in the German asylum system, which has processed 1 million refugees in the last year alone, reports the Guardian. Most have fled Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan; very few have sought asylum from China. "He spent 12 days trapped in our bureaucratic jungle because we couldn't communicate," the head of a Red Cross refugee center tells Reuters. The well-dressed man from Beijing stood out as it was, and he also clearly had a story to tell. But it wasn't until someone went to a local Chinese restaurant for help that it was suggested Red Cross workers use a smartphone app to translate, which did the trick. After more paperwork, which was further delayed by paperwork mishandled when Mr. L first entered the country, the tourist was sent on his way south. The entire ordeal took 12 days, and yet he walked away politely and without anger. "He said Europe was not what he had expected," the Red Cross official says. (Read about another tourist mishap.)
– During some three decades with Justice Department, Eli Rosenbaum has earned a well-deserved reputation as a Nazi hunter. He has worked on 137 cases involving suspected Nazis, and in all but 30 of them, the accused lost citizenship or was deported. Now, CNN reports, just a single active case remains. But when it comes to Jakiw Palij, who lives in Queens, NY, deportation isn’t likely. In fact, a federal judge ordered the 92-year-old deported in 2004, but the European countries he could be sent to won't take him. Palij, CNN notes, will likely die here. "What Mr. Palij did prevented other people from reaching old age," says Rosenbaum, who now also oversees more recent war-related crimes as the DOJ's director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy. Palij is accused of being a guard at the Trawniki death camp in German-occupied Poland—"in the end," Rosenbaum says, "everyone who was held there was massacred." Palij, who, per the New York Times, came to the US in 1949 as a refugee using falsified immigration papers, has denied any wrongdoing. In 2003, he told the Times that the Nazis coerced him into service patrolling bridges and roads at night. "We knew they would kill me and my family if I refused," he says. "I did it to save their lives, and I never even wore a Nazi uniform." The founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center downplayed that line of argument: "To work at those camps, you had to be eager to be there. They only took people they knew were loyal and brutal and not sympathetic to pleas of the inmates." In a 2013 interview with NPR, Rosenbaum described questioning the suspects about their alleged Nazi pasts as "surreal ... these people look close to harmless." (Joseph Goebbels' "love nest" is proving to be a tough sell for Berlin.)
– A sad, strange tale out of Utah: A 54-year-old man who set off from Kansas on an unexplained road trip crashed his vehicle in remote Utah, and it wasn't until seven weeks later that a hiker spotted the wreck with David Welch's body inside, reports CNN. But there's also this detail: Welch survived for days and perhaps weeks while trapped in his van and used the time to write love letters to his wife and four sons, reports the Salt Lake City Tribune. It remains unclear why Welch took off without explanation on Sept. 2. His family notified authorities that very day that he was missing, but subsequent searches turned up nothing. His final notes aren't being made public. Police speculate that Welch fell asleep at the wheel, causing his vehicle to go off a curve and into a ravine below. He was about 900 miles away from home. "It’s a pretty lonely stretch out there," says a Utah Highway Patrolman.
– The man accused of killing four people with a hijacked beer truck in Stockholm Friday is a 39-year-old from Uzbekistan who was a "marginal character" already known to authorities, officials in Sweden say. Police say they found a "suspect device" in the vehicle and they haven't ruled out the involvement of other people, the BBC reports. Ten people, including a child, are still in hospital after the attack on one of the city's main thoroughfares. Authorities believe the device may have burned the suspect instead of exploding when he drove through crowds on a pedestrianized street and crashed into a department store, the Guardian reports. Police say the suspect fled after the attack and was arrested in a northern suburb. The AP reports that Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven made a point of walking through the city's streets and stopping to chat to people before laying flowers at the scene Saturday. " We must get through this. Life must go on," Lofven said. "We in Sweden want an open society." "Terrorists want us to be afraid, want us to change our behaviour, want us to not live our lives normally, but that is what we're going to do," Lofven said. "So terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never." There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack, though ISIS claimed similar attacks in cities including London and Nice, reports Reuters.
– "I'd rather have frozen pizza than racist pizza." So reads a customer tweet about Papa John's, and it's not one the pizza company is shying away from. Quite the contrary, the message is highlighted in the chain's first new ad since John Schnatter was forced to resign last month over his use of the n-word. In the 65-second ad posted to social media Friday, a series of angry tweets are displayed, then the words, "You expected better from Papa John's. So did we." Then, after showing more tweets, the words "Thank you for your anger" appear. That last word is subsequently replaced with "criticism" and "honesty." "It is making us better." CEO Steve Ritchie also posted extensive comments on Twitter, which you can read here, and a letter to customers, which you can read here. CNN reports the company plans to hold mandatory bias training sessions beginning in October at its company-owned stores and is going live with a minority-owned franchise expansion and development program. The ad certainly hasn't abated Schnatter's anger. A rep for the former CEO had this to say, per CNBC: "The video produced by the company represents another example of the company attempting to hide the true facts. It omits the avalanche of comments made by customers, employees, and others who support John Schnatter and feel that the company is wrong."
– After losing his Massachusetts Senate seat to Elizabeth Warren in 2012—and then failing to nab the New Hampshire seat in 2014—Scott Brown appears to have again found a political post. President Trump on Thursday announced his intention to nominate Brown, an early Trump supporter, as ambassador to New Zealand, reports CBS Boston. How is New Zealand taking the news? Its largest paper used the following headline earlier this week as Brown's name started to bubble up: "Man tipped for US ambassador role in NZ a former nude model who supports waterboarding." The nude modeling bit is a reference to this Cosmopolitan spread. As for Brown, it's potentially brought him closer to checking off one bucket list item: The New Zealand Herald article also quotes this line from a 2015 GQ interview with Brown: "I've always wanted to go to New Zealand or Scotland or Wales and just ride 100 miles, hit a pub, drink, eat, sleep, do some exploring, and then get up, ride another 100 miles, do that for a couple weeks." Brown—named as a possible candidate for Secretary of Veterans Affairs before the job went to David Shulkin, per the Hill—has lately been a Fox News contributor and was named in a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former Fox host last year.
– Jennifer Love Hewitt finally has what she's wanted for so long: a husband and a baby. She apparently secretly wed Brian Hallisay before they welcomed their daughter yesterday, People reports. The couple is "thrilled to announce the birth of their daughter Autumn James Hallisay," says a JLH rep. No further details, though a source tells Us Hewitt and Hallisay "got married recently in private."
– December's deadly gang-rape in New Delhi put a spotlight on the country's ugly problem of sexual assault. But India faces another terrible sexual abuse failing—this one involving its children. Human Rights Watch today released an 82-page report on the rampant sexual abuse of Indian children, reports al-Jazeera. Though the report relies on in-depth case studies of 100 abuse victims rather than a "quantitative analysis," it does highlight a 2007 survey of 12,500 at-risk children that found a stunning 53.2% of those questioned had faced one or more forms of sexual abuse; 72% of those victims say they told no one. "Shockingly the very institutions that should protect vulnerable children can place them at risk of horrific child sexual abuse," said HRW's South Asia director. India's poorly trained and poorly paid police often refuse to register complaints; children who do report abuse and are seen by a doctor often undergo traumatic exams. Last year India finally passed its first law banning child sex abuse, but that's not enough, says HRW. "The criminal justice system, from the time police receive a complaint until trials are completed, needs urgent reform." See the full report here.
– Rep. Dennis Kucinich cracked his tooth on an errant olive pit in April 2008, and he’s not happy about it. The Ohio Democrat is now, almost three years later, suing the congressional cafeteria where he bought the sandwich that included the unpitted olive, Gawker reports, citing official documents from Courthouse News. In the paperwork, Kucinich claims the “sandwich wrap” he purchased at the Longworth House Office Building was “unwholesome and unfit for human consumption.” The price tag for his “serious and permanent dental and oral injuries:” $150,000.
– The macabre story of the pregnant woman who was stoned to death by her own family on Tuesday in Pakistan just got far more twisted: Mohammad Iqbal has revealed to CNN that he murdered his first wife so he could wed Farzana Parveen. Officials confirm that his first wife was indeed killed, some six years ago; the Guardian reports she was strangled. Iqbal's 20-something son reportedly went to police after the killing, and Iqbal spent a number of weeks on the run before being arrested. The son says his father served a year in jail; police say he was freed after reaching a "compromise" with his family as allowed by Pakistani law. Iqbal says, "I wanted to send a proposal to Farzana so I killed my wife." The timeline of the events remains a bit murky in terms of when Iqbal met Parveen, with the Guardian previously reporting the two were engaged for nearly two years before marrying this January. CNN does clarify some details about Iqbal and Parveen's involvement, per Iqbal: He says that the woman's mother died in December, and her father and brothers then changed their mind about the agreed-upon marriage, preferring she wed a cousin instead. The two opted to elope on Jan. 7, and her furious family demanded more money on top of what Iqbal had initially paid in exchange for their lives. Iqbal says his refusal to pay led to an abduction charge against him, and Parveen was planning to testify when she was attacked outside the court. According to a preliminary police report, her own brothers bashed her head with bricks.
– Forensic researchers have a royal dispute on their hands: They can't agree on whether a mummified head belongs to France's Henry IV, explains the Los Angeles Times. The question seemed settled in 2010 when a team of researchers used facial-reconstruction techniques to conclude that it was indeed "Good King Henry," who was assassinated in 1610. But now a second team of scientists says it isn't so because DNA tests don't match Henry's living relatives. They wrote this week to the British Medical Journal urging a retraction of the earlier study, and, in fact, two members of the 2010 team agree that their conclusions were faulty. Not so, says the lead researcher from 2010. He explained to phys.org in an earlier story that it's useless to make conclusions based on DNA results in part because the French royals were such philanderers. "It is hopeless to try to match a family tree and a series of genetic links (over) such a long period," he said. Until things get settled, the mummified head is resting in a bank vault in Paris. (In other mummified news, click to read about a big find in Peru's capital.)
– Here's how Guardian writer Oliver Burkeman describes a recent interview given by Will and Jaden Smith: "the most bizarre interview in Hollywood history," and one that "will make your brain hurt." The Q&A in question appeared in New York a few days ago, as the father and son promoted their new movie After Earth. Here's a relevant excerpt: Will: "I’m a student of patterns. At heart, I’m a physicist. I look at everything in my life as trying to find the single equation, the theory of everything." Jaden: "There's definitely a theory to everything. ... I think that there is that special equation for everything, but I don’t think our mathematics have evolved enough for us to even—I think there’s, like, a whole new mathematics that we’d have to learn to get that equation." Will: "I agree with that." Jaden: "It’s beyond mathematical. It’s, like, multidimensional mathematical, if you can sort of understand what I’m saying." Will, later: "And, the things about our family that are mysteries or seem strange, when they’re explained, it’ll be obvious. You know, the forum of media that we’re in can’t really handle the complexity of things that we say all the time." If you're thinking, "Well, what do you expect, they're Scientologists," not so fast. In the same interview, the elder Smith says they're not religious, but are "students of world religion" and "respect all [religions]." He has flat-out denied being a Scientologist in the past. (As for After Earth ... it got hilariously terrible reviews.)
– Authorities say one of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing is dead and a massive manhunt is under way for the other, who has been identified as 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev. Boston is effectively shut down in the meantime: Residents of Boston, Watertown, Newton, Waltham, Belmont, Cambridge, and the Allston-Brighton neighborhoods of Boston were told to remain in their homes; mass transit has been halted; businesses were asked not to open; and the Boston Globe reports that at least 16 area colleges have canceled classes. What we know of what happened overnight, per the AP and the Washington Post: The Middlesex district attorney says the two men are suspected of killing an MIT police officer at the college last night after the officer responded to a disturbance, then stealing a car at gunpoint and later releasing its driver unharmed. (All just hours after police released photos of the bombing suspects.) Authorities say the suspects threw explosives from the car as police followed it into Watertown; witnesses reported hearing multiple gunshots and explosions at about 1am. A transit police officer was critically wounded. The suspects and police exchanged gunfire and one of the suspects was critically injured and later died at a hospital while the other escaped. Doctors at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center say they treated a man with a possible blast injury and multiple gunshot wounds. They wouldn't confirm that the patient, who came in with police, was the suspect in the black hat from marathon surveillance footage. Police say the suspect on loose is a "terrorist" who "came here to kill people." Governor Deval Patrick held a press conference with police this morning extending the shelter-in-place warning to all of Boston. "There is a massive manhunt underway," he assured reporters. "We've got every asset that we can possibly muster on the ground right now." Authorities have identified the MIT officer who was killed as 26-year-old Sean Collier of Somerville, according to the Boston Globe. The MBTA police officer who was injured has been identified as Richard H. Donohue.
– To say North Koreans turned out in droves to vote in state elections yesterday would be an understatement, because state media are reporting 99.7% voter turnout, Sky News reports. That's only the first eyebrow-raiser about the country's electoral process, held every four years so voters can "choose" mayors, governors, and local assemblies. North Koreans over age 17 are not only required to show, they're also told which preapproved candidates to vote for by placing already prepared ballots in the ballot boxes, CNN notes. And according to Sky, it was a "festive atmosphere," with voters "singing and dancing" as they cast votes. "All participants took part in the elections with extraordinary enthusiasm to cement the revolutionary power," the Korean Central News Agency proclaimed. Voting is simple: To vote "yes" for the candidate predetermined by Kim Jong Un's Workers' Party, participants just place their ballot in the correct box; those who vote "no" place their ballot in a separate box, all within view of elections officials, the Economist explained in 2014. Abstaining or voting no is viewed as treason, the BBC notes. The real reason for even having the vote is basically to serve as a census of sorts and to keep track of no-show defectors, NK News notes. A professor of Asian studies explains that this election system makes even more extreme the one used in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, including the ridiculously high turnout rates. "People used to joke that on the day of elections that no one would dare to die in North Korea, let alone lose consciousness," he says. As for that 0.3% who didn't vote this time? KCNA says those individuals either live abroad or work "on the high seas," per Chosun Ilbo.
– In November 2015, police found 47-year-old Victor Collins dead in a hot tub on the back patio of 31-year-old James Bates' Arkansas home. More than a year later, Bates is charged with Collins' murder, and Bentonville police think the data from his Amazon Echo could help them solve the case. The device listens for voice commands but is often triggered into "listen" mode by accident and could, thus, have "overheard" something useful, Engadget reports. Authorities have issued a warrant asking Amazon.com to turn over audio and other records from the device in what The Information says "may be the first case of its kind." Bates says he had Collins and two other friends over to watch a football game and drink on the evening of Nov. 21, 2015, 5 News reported in February, when Bates was arrested. Bates says one friend left, but Collins and the other friend got in the hot tub and kept drinking. He says he left them there when he went to bed, and found Collins floating face down in the hot tub the next morning. (The other friend is not a suspect.) Authorities found the hot tub water tinted red and Collins with a black eye, swollen and bruised lips, a cut on his eyelid, and blood coming from his nose and mouth; it was ultimately ruled that Collins died by strangulation, with drowning as a contributing cause. Detectives learned that 140 gallons of water were used between 1am and 3am on the morning Collins died, and a hose was used. They believe the patio was sprayed down in an attempt to wash away evidence; they found hot tub knobs and head cushions lying on the ground and Collins' blood spattered on the hot tub cover, one of the cushions, and the sides of the tub. Bates was found to have bruises and scratches all over his body, and police found Collins' wedding ring and a broken shot glass at the bottom of the tub, as well as a broken pair of Collins' glasses. So far, Amazon has only turned over Bates' account details and purchases, but police say they have been able to get data that was picked up by the Echo's speaker, the Daily Beast reports. Bates' attorney argues that the request for data from Amazon is an invasion of privacy, and an example of law enforcement using "technology that advances our quality of life against us."
– Jeffrey Michels disappeared from an Air Force base in northern North Dakota on a summer day in 1977—and was found last week in Florida living a double life, Fox News reports. Michels, 64, was arrested Oct. 12 on desertion charges filed against him after he went missing from Minot Air Force Base near the Canadian border. Police say the former airman had taken the name Jeffrey Lantz, married, and had kids, per WFTV. In 1998, "Lantz" applied for a business license and started a construction company, Atlantic Development Corporation. Michels, originally from Ohio, was nabbed after the Facebook group Veteran Doe posted his photo in July, nearly 40 years to the day after he failed to report for duty. (That photo has since been taken down.) The site calls "attention to the many missing veteran/active duty cases and unidentified person cases where there is a possible military connection." The Air Force hasn't explained how Michels was found, per the Miami Herald. But Seminole County authorities identified him by a scar on his left leg near the ankle. There's no statute of limitations on desertion, so Michels will stand trial in a military court, per the IB Times. He was turned over to the custody of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations. Why Michels walked away from the remote base is unknown, but the Herald notes it's known for its nuclear missile silos and hard winters. (One of the first women Army combat engineers was accused of desertion.)
– A symbol of America is once again flying high above one of the nation's most historic cities. “I had never seen one in my life before,” Tom Palmer tells the Boston Globe. “It’s exciting. These are American icons.” Late last month, the 60-year-old Massachusetts resident spotted his first bald eagle. And he's not alone. Reports of bald eagle sightings are pouring in from around the Boston area. "They are too big to escape notice," Palmer says. The AP reports there were 51 confirmed breeding pairs of bald eagles in the state last year. That's the most since the birds were reintroduced to Massachusetts in 1982. And it's part of a trend seen nationwide. There were 10,000 or so pairs of bald eagles in the continental US when they were taken off the endangered list in 2007. That's 20 times as many as in 1963. One ornithologist says the resurgence is partly due to bald eagles getting more used to humans and humans getting more used to not shooting bald eagles. Another says it's a sign that the waters around Boston are getting healthier, providing good fishing for breeding eagles. "Once rare and threatened with extinction, the national symbol can now be seen from the comfort of your car," the Washington Post states. But that can also be its own problem. Bald eagles are increasingly being hit by cars while eating roadkill. Last year, a 38-year-old bald eagle—the country's oldest—suffered that fate. The problem is compounded by eagles getting lead poisoning by eating the remains of deer shot by hunters. "It's like they're flying drunk," one veterinary director tells the Post. (Some eagles may also be making themselves sick by eating euthanized animals.)
– Over the past decade, "Isis" has "become synonymous with 'a better birth experience,'" Georgia's Isis Women's Health Care writes on its website. That's recently changed, for obvious reasons. "One morning we woke up to news of a beheading by a terrorist organization the media chose to refer to as ISIS," the business states. "That meant bad news for us." Since then, Isis Women's Health Care has received dozens of death threats, WSB-TV reports. "I became concerned for me and my staff," Dr. Hughan Frederick tells WXIA. Finally, one caller made it clear it was time for a name change. "This particular individual identified himself as ex-military and indicated for us not to be surprised if someone were to come and shoot up the building," Isis administrator Randy Haviland says. WSB-TV reports Isis Women's Health Care will announce its new name at the end of the month. But judging by its website, it will now be known as Nile Women's Health Care. That's in keeping with its original Egyptian theme—the business was named for the Egyptian goddess of motherhood. Even before a new name was chosen, Isis removed signage from outside its three Atlanta-area offices to head off further threats. “This year marks the 10th anniversary for Isis Women’s Health Care, but instead of hoisting celebration banners, we are taking down the namesake that has proudly delivered thousands of babies,” the business states. (It's not the only business named Isis in America.)
– Many of us may avoid downing hard alcohol, wine, and beer on the same night for fear of a raging hangover the next day. But at the BBC, a review of existing research on the topic suggests the drinks' variety itself isn't the problem. Instead, Claudia Hammond points to other possible factors. For instance, she notes, having several different types of drinks may simply mean drinking more total alcohol. (As for "beer before liquor, never been sicker"? It appears no research has been done to prove or disprove the idea that drink order makes a difference.) "The existing evidence suggests that hangovers can't be blamed on mixing drinks," Hammond writes. But the amount of alcohol may not be the only culprit: Congeners, the non-ethanol products of the fermentation process, also contribute to a hangover. Tannins, for instance, are responsible for the color in darker types of alcohol. There are 37 times more congeners in bourbon than in vodka, and one study found that bourbon drinkers reported worse hangovers than those who drank vodka. So, Hammond writes, people having various types of drinks in a single night may end up indulging in drinks with more tannins. So go ahead and mix types of alcohol if you so desire, but you may want to avoid mixing alcohol with cigarettes: A study last month found that people who smoke and drink are at a higher risk of developing esophageal cancer, Science Daily reported. (If you do find yourself with a hangover, you may want to reach for a Sprite.)
– It seems clear now that Nidal Hasan's decision to act as his own attorney in the Fort Hood shooting trial was really a decision to not act as an attorney of any kind. A day after he rested his case without calling a single witness, Hasan skipped his closing argument, reports the AP. After prosecutors laid out in detail Hasan's role in the 2009 rampage that killed 13 people, the judge told Hasan he could go. "The defense chooses not to make a closing statement," he said. Hasan's decisions over the last two days seem to support the claim made by his defense team earlier in the military trial that he hopes to get the death penalty, notes CNN. He admitted in his opening statement that he was, in fact, the shooter. The jury of 13 officers will now begin deliberations. If they reach a unanimous guilty verdict, the death penalty is possible.
– A grisly and bizarre animal cruelty case has come to a close in San Jose, with a serial cat killer sentenced to 16 years in jail. Police say Robert Farmer killed at least 16 cats after stealing and torturing them in 2015. Prosecutors also alleged that he sexually abused at least one of the cats, but the 26-year-old avoided having to register as a sex offender, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. He had pleaded guilty to 21 counts of animal cruelty prior to sentencing. Pet owners celebrated the maximum sentence, though Farmer's attorney says he could be released in about 4 years. “It’s so hard to grasp I did this,” Farmer wrote in a letter read by his attorney in court, per the Mercury News. "It feels like another man committed these crimes, but I know it was me.” Neighbors in the Cambrian Park community began sharing stories when their cats started disappearing without a trace. Most of the time, the bodies would turn up discarded in dumpsters or elsewhere. Farmer was arrested after being captured on a pet owner's surveillance camera snatching the family's 17-year-old pet from the property.
– Hillary Clinton may say she never sent any classified information using her personal email account, but experts and former government officials aren't so sure. As the New York Times reports, both Democrats and Republicans believe the government tends to err on the side of "overclassification" when it comes to making documents secret—more than 80 million documents were classified in 2013—making it difficult to believe that Clinton somehow managed to avoid sending information considered sensitive. "As a longtime critic of the government's massive overclassification, I thought it was a refreshing touch that the secretary of state conducted all her email in unclassified form," says the director of George Washington University's National Security Archive with what the Times calls "a hint of sarcasm." Clinton's staff has identified more than 30,000 emails as pertaining to government business, and a former senior State Department official says it's "hard to imagine" none of those were classified. By his estimate, he says, “I would assume that more than 50% of what the secretary of state dealt with was classified." And another expert notes that, had a journalist made a FOIA request for all of Clinton's email before news of her personal account broke, "it would have been a real surprise if none of it was withheld on the grounds of classification." But, he adds, "there's zero chance that she'll be charged with unauthorized retention of classified information, because she decides what's classified." Clinton also traveled with aides who could have sent classified material from their accounts on her behalf. Politico reports that about 900 pages of emails relating to Benghazi will be released soon.
– Assuming Paul Ryan doesn't flop over the next three months, then, win or lose, "he could well become the face of Republicanism for a generation," declares a happy Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. Ryan is the natural leader of a "new constitutional conservatism" in America, just as Reagan was in his time. And, oddly, the credit for shaping this "conservative future" goes to none other than Mitt Romney. As for 2012, the success of Romney-Ryan will hinge on which party controls the message on "Mediscare," writes Krauthammer, who wants the GOP to push the theme that Ryan's plan will save it while ObamaCare will gut it. Another prominent voice on the right, Peggy Noonan, suggests a campaign ad showing a "Clark Kent" character—that would be Ryan—saving Granny from going off a cliff. She also thinks that Ryan and Romney should campaign together all the time, against tradition, and that Ryan should do long, substantive interviews frequently. "Romney just threw a long ball," she writes in the Wall Street Journal. "Fine. The GOP will have to play an audacious, longball game." Read Noonan's full column here, Krauthammer's here.
– Critics are calling it "bombshell by the Bay." The pope has sent a strong message to his Left Coast faithful by naming a key backer of Proposition 8 against gay marriage as the new archbishop of San Francisco. Salvatore Cordileone, who officially takes charge next week, is considered an "architect" of Proposition 8, notes the Los Angeles Times. He helped develop the proposition to shoot down the state's gay marriage measure when he was an auxiliary bishop in San Diego. Cordileone's appointment by Pope Benedict "re-emphasizes the Vatican's concern about gay marriage" even in a city like San Francisco, Father Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University, tells the Times. "They're serious, and they're not going to back down." Cordileone, who heads the "defense of marriage" subcommittee for the US Conference of Bishops, has warned that Catholics have to understand the "church is not going to change its teaching," and has said that the sacrament of Communion should be denied to gays and lesbians in a relationship. "Paranoia is very high," says San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose district includes Most Holy Redeemer Church in the Castro, which could be the largest gay Catholic congregation in the nation. "There are a lot of gay people for whom this religion is very important. It's just very, very sad," he tells the San Francisco Chronicle. The archdiocese recently banned drag queens from serving as emcees at charity events at the church. In Cordileone's most recent controversy, he was busted for drunk driving last month in San Diego—and apologized. The 56-year-old archbishop will lead more than 500,000 Catholics in 91 parishes in three counties: San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin.
– Donald Trump was criticized Saturday for taking a "self-congratulatory" tone in the wake of tragedy. Again. NBA player Dwyane Wade's cousin Nykea Aldridge was killed when she was hit by a stray bullet while pushing her baby in a stroller Friday in Chicago, CNN reports. On Saturday, Trump tweeted: "Dwayne Wade’s cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!” Hours later, he corrected the spelling of Wade's name, according to CBS News. An hour after that, Trump tweeted condolences to the family, as well as his "thoughts and prayers." He went on to call Wade a "great guy" during a rally Saturday in Iowa. Trump was widely accused of crassly exploiting a tragedy. Actor Don Cheadle was particularly outspoken, calling Trump "truly a POS" and requesting he "die in a grease fire." Tim Kaine also called Trump out for the tweet, saying sympathy is the "only reaction that is appropriate right now." A recent poll showed Trump with only 1% support among black voters. The New York Times reports he's been trying to change that by talking about how bad life is for black people in the US and asking, "What the hell do you have to lose?" Many saw Saturday's tweet as a sequel of sorts to when Trump tweeted "appreciate the congrats" following the massacre at an Orlando gay club.
– Mitt Romney got booed during his speech to the NAACP yesterday, but many observers on the left are saying that's just what he wanted, reports Politico. "I think it was a calculated move on his part to get booed at the NAACP convention," said Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi would not elaborate, but Lawrence O'Donnell did, wondering if the speech was "an appeal to racism and racist voting," notes Mediaite. Rush Limbaugh, unsurprisingly, said the audience booed Romney simply because he's white. "Romney goes in there today, and he sounded like Snow White with Testicles," said Limbaugh, claiming people in the NAACP don't understand ObamaCare. But Rep. Emanuel Cleaver had a more measured interpretation of the booing, saying Romney just sold his message poorly. "I felt terrible when the booing started, but I also believe that if he's got any African-Americans in and around his campaign—which I don’t know; if he does, I don’t know any of them—if he has staff members who vetted that speech or inserted some of the things that I heard, they should be fired," said Cleaver.
– A disability rights organization that often takes Hollywood to task for casting able-bodied actors to play the physically challenged is slamming the upcoming movie Blind. The Ruderman Family Foundation faulted Alec Baldwin's portrayal as a novelist who loses his sight in a car crash, reports the Los Angeles Times. Calling the casting of a blind character by an able-bodied actor "crip-face," President Jay Ruderman draws a direct parallel to blackface. Baldwin's casting "is just the latest example of treating disability as a costume," he says in a statement. "We no longer find it acceptable for white actors to portray black characters. Disability as a costume needs to also become universally unacceptable." Neither Baldwin nor director Michael Mailer have commented. Blind co-stars Demi Moore as a married socialite who falls for Baldwin after she begins reading to him as part of community service. Vertical Entertainment released the trailer Wednesday, notes Variety, and the film is set for release on July 14. Last July, the Ruderman foundation released a report showing that although disabled people comprise 20% of the US population, some 95% of disabled roles on TV go to able-bodied actors. Marlee Matlin later told a Ruderman-organized conference, "There is something wrong with this picture," she said, per the Times. "We as an industry keep talking about diversity … but, sadly, when we start speaking about diversity, disability seems to be left out far too often." (One very real struggle for Baldwin: Lyme disease.)
– The St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., was the scene of another evening of rioting and unrest last night as largely young, black crowds faced off against a mostly white police force that reportedly responded with tear gas, reports the Los Angeles Times. But the family of slain teenager Michael Brown, 18, asked the community to remain peaceful so that no more lives will be lost. "No violence, just justice," his mother told reporters. While some demonstrators got down on their knees with their hands raised in symbolic surrender, others shouted, "We will stay out here as long as you are!" Some of the police did not appear to respond to the taunts, while others were caught on camera calling the protesters "animals," reports CNN. Two very different stories have emerged surrounding the shooting of Brown, who was set to start technical college yesterday, two days after he was killed, reports CNN in another review of the details. While the police report suggests Brown, who'd been walking with a friend in the street, attacked an officer in his police car and tried to take his gun when the officer told him to use the sidewalk, witnesses say the officer fired after a verbal altercation and that as Brown turned away and fled he was shot once, then at least twice more after he put his hands in the air. Police have not disputed that Brown was unarmed. The police officer who shot him, a six-year veteran of the force, is on paid administrative leave. USA Today reports that one of Brown's last Facebook posts included the words: "if I leave this earth today, at least youll know i care about others more then I cared about my damn self." The FBI, meanwhile, has taken over the investigation.
– Two different views today on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels as a potential presidential candidate: Dana Milbank, Washington Post: He praises Daniels as a "shrewd tactician" who is wisely "portraying himself to moderates as a non-threatening choice" and as the "grown-up in the room" who avoids fringe issues. He's got aw-shucks charm to him and even dares to praise the Obama administration when he sees fit. "So funny, so folksy, and so friendly to the disadvantaged: It is eerily similar to how another Republican governor presented himself to America a dozen springs ago." Gail Collins, New York Times: Forgive her for falling out of her chair. Sure, Daniels famously called for a "truce" on social issues, but he's about to sign into law a bill that "is a compilation of the anti-abortion movement’s greatest hits." Among other things, it strips Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funds and requires doctors to give women information that is "questionable, theological or totally wrong." Daniels "is a real prototype of the peculiar strain in the political right that trusts people to make their own informed decisions without government intervention except when it comes to the most exquisitely personal choice a woman could ever face."
– Roy Moore's Who Is America? segment aired on Sunday night's episode of the Showtime series, and it featured the former Alabama chief justice and failed US Senate candidate storming off the set after supposedly failing a "pedophile detector test," AL.com reports. Sacha Baron Cohen's Israeli anti-terrorism expert character, Col. Erran Morad, told Moore—who has been accused of molesting teen girls—about the newly developed test that detects a hormone from a pedophile's sweat. When waved in front of "Morad" and another man on set, the device didn't go off, but when waved in front of Moore, it beeped every time. "I've been married for 33 years, I've never had an accusation of such things," Moore said. "If this is an instrument, then it's certainly ... I'm not a pedophile, OK? Maybe Israeli technology hasn't developed properly." Moore released a statement in early July explaining he agreed to the Baron Cohen interview because he thought he was receiving "an award for my strong support of Israel"; he said he'd sue if the episode aired. "I don't need Sacha Cohen to tell me who America is," the statement adds. "As an American, I would never hide my identity and deceive others only to mock and ridicule them." Meanwhile, "Morad" posted on Twitter he "was honored that ladies man Roi Moore took time away from his busy schedule of hanging round shopping malls to talk to me." Vulture ranks the segments in this episode from least to most damning: rappers Ness Lee and Bone Crusher, Moore, ex-member of the South Carolina House of Representatives Chip Limehouse, and three "old white conservatives" Baron Cohen duped into thinking they were being trained to "bait and then trap undocumented immigrants."
– One of the buzzier Tumblr entries of late is called "Selfies at Funerals," which compiles teen photos posted to Twitter or elsewhere that were taken at, yes, funerals. The ridicule has been fast and furious—oh, today's incredibly narcissistic and shallow teens—and totally out of line, argues PJ Vogt at OntheMedia. At least consider the possibility that this isn't about narcissism and is instead a classic case of an older generation not getting a younger one. "I suspect that for a lot of young people, a selfie is more like a public diary entry than it is a chance to show your friends how hot you look," writes Vogt. For those doing the mocking, "is this the kind of adult you wanted to be?" he asks. "A person who has no curiosity about why young people might do things in a new or different way from you." Besides, think of how grown-ups act at a funeral. Maybe, Vogt suggests, it's time for a Tumblr called "Adults In Suits Eating Hors d'oeuvres Near A Corpse." Click for the full column.
– A chemist named Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin has died at age 88, notes Gawker, and while that might not be a household name, his nickname explains the attention: "godfather of ecstasy." Shulgin didn't invent the drug otherwise known as MDMA, but he "rescued the circa-1912 pharmaceutical from obscurity by suggesting it would be viable for mental therapy," explains LA Weekly. The rest is rave history. Shulgin did, however, invent somewhere around 150 psychedelic drug compounds with his wife, Ann, using themselves as test subjects. The respected chemist began his career with Dow Chemical and eventually authored two books with his wife titled TiHkal (Tryptamines I Have Known And Loved) and PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved). The Guardian and Vice have resurrected their interviews with Shulgin from years past. In its tribute to this "maverick chemist, psychedelic pioneer, and inspiring human being," Boing Boing quotes Shulgin himself: Everyone deserves "the license to explore the nature of his own soul."
– Iran has executed the so-called “Sultan of Coins” for the crime of “spreading corruption on earth.” Per the BBC, Vahid Mazloumin was convicted of hoarding gold coins to manipulate prices. He and another financial trader, Mohammad Esmaeel Qasemi, were hanged after the Iranian Supreme Court upheld the convictions, the Los Angeles Times reports. A third person, who also was convicted, has an appeal pending. According to state media reports, Mazloumin, 58, amassed two tons of gold coins. He was reportedly arrested in July and later tried by a special court recently set up to adjudicate suspected financial crimes. Several other people, often in televised trials, have also been convicted and sentenced to death, according to reports. Earlier this year, financial traders in Iran did “brisk business,” per the Times, as financial mismanagement by the government and renewed US sanctions decimated the Iranian rial and many people traded their cash for dollars or gold. The Iranian government blamed traders for the currency crisis and shortages of basic items, such as medicine and diapers, leading to police raids and the establishment of the special courts for economic crimes. Amnesty International tells the BBC that the resulting executions are “horrific,” saying that international law forbids the death penalty for “non-lethal crimes, such as financial corruption.” (Iran warns of "war situation" amid renewed sanctions.)
– A Georgia woman who decided she needed to stop drinking was arrested after telling her Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor the reason why. According to an arrest report, the sponsor went to the cops after Rachel Lenhardt confessed to allowing her 16-year-old daughter and her daughter's friends to party at her house, where she supplied weed and alcohol, joined a game of naked Twister, had sex with an 18-year-old, then played with her sex toys in front of the group. The 35-year-old, who lives in suburban Georgia, told the sponsor that because of the party, she had lost custody of the teen and another four children—ages 4, 6, 8, and 10—who were with their father that night, USA Today reports. Lenhardt was charged on Monday with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, reports Augusta Crime. Lenhardt also told her sponsor that she woke up the night of the party to find her daughter's 16-year-old boyfriend having sex with her. He is not being charged because she "refuses to discuss the case," a police spokesman tells the New York Daily News. According to the arrest report, Lenhardt's sponsor said she was put in touch with her by a friend who went to the same sex-addiction group at a local church. A source tells the Daily News that Lenhardt, a former Sunday school teacher who was raised in the Mormon church, didn't start drinking until last fall when she separated from her husband, an Iraq vet who came back with PTSD and anger issues. "People who have never drunk a day in their life tend not to know how to handle their alcohol," the source says.
– After weeks of late nights, House and Senate negotiators believe they have hammered out a bipartisan spending bill that will ensure a year free from government shutdown drama. "There will be no shutdown," says Senate Appropriations Committee chair Barbara Mikulski. "This is a strong bipartisan bill, and it is a bicameral bill." The bill covers discretionary spending throughout fiscal 2014, ensuring the government remains open until at least October 1. The time frame to pass the mammoth $1.1 trillion bill is tight, but both parties are keen to avoid another shutdown, Politico notes. "I'm on board,” says Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee. "It’s not everything anybody wanted, but we’ve been working hard at it, and it will lead us, hopefully, to regular order.” Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, says he expects a majority of lawmakers from both parties to back the measure. "Everybody can find something to complain about—legitimately so," he tells the Washington Post. "But from the Republican standpoint, gosh, this is $164 billion less than Bush’s last discretionary budget, so that’s pretty good progress in cutting spending." The bill eases the sequester spending cuts, providing just upward of $1 trillion to federal agencies and another $92 billion for overseas operations for a total of $1.1 trillion, marking the first time discretionary spending has fallen over four years since the Korean War, according House Appropriations Committee chair Hal Rogers. Federal workers will get a 1% raise under the bill, which provides fresh cash for President Obama's push to expand pre-kindergarten education and contains no language that would block ObamaCare. The measure slashes Homeland Security funding by $336 million, with most of the cuts at the TSA. The measure also contains dozens of policy riders, including a continued ban on transferring Gitmo detainees, prevention of funding for a ban on incandescent light bulbs, and new restrictions on aid to Egypt, the Hill finds.
– A new possible clue in the "extraordinary case of murder" of Queens jogger Karina Vetrano, CBS New York reports. A surveillance video showing the 30-year-old on her run shortly before she was killed last month. The video is being shown with her family's permission on Crime Watch Daily, although dad Phil Vetrano tells CBS it's "very disturbing" to watch his daughter's final moments. The video, which shows Vetrano casually jogging down a street at 5:46pm on Aug. 2 near Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach, doesn't appear to offer any explicit clues as to what happened afterward—"It doesn't show anybody following her," Phil Vetrano says—but police are hoping it opens doors in the case. "Somebody in Arkansas, someplace … may hear something about it and come forward with a piece of information," Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says. Last month, cops released a sketch of a man they want for questioning, per NBC News. A reward worth almost $300,000 is being offered for info leading to an arrest.
– Japan has made the decision to raise the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster severity level from 5 to 7. That obviously means "worse." But what else does it mean? Japan finally has an estimate on how much radiation has been released: The level is an indication of the total radioactive materials emitted. Data has revealed that the cumulative amount of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere had reached levels that apply to a Level 7 incident, reports the AP. So what is that estimate? According to two estimates, the equivalent of about 500,000 terabecquerels of radiation from iodine-131 has been released. The Level 7 threshold is "several tens of thousands of terabecquerels." But all 7s are not created alike: The Wall Street Journal notes that officials were careful to say this this is still not a Chernobyl-size disaster. "The amount of released radiation is about a tenth of Chernobyl"—about 5.2 million terabecquerels—said a rep for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. But it could still top Chernobyl in one regard: TEPCO today warned that the plant continues to release radioactive materials, and that the total levels emitted could eventually top those released by Chernobyl. Level 7 also indicates widespread effects on the environment and health: The Telegraph noted that Japan's safety commission now says radiation in excess of the amount considered safe for humans during an entire year has been found as far as 37 miles from the plant; the evacuation zone is only 18 miles. Is there another big one we haven't been talking about? Sort of. Besides Chernobyl, Time notes that a 1957 accident in Kyshtym, Russia, was the only one that's come close to being a 7; it was a 6. Most nuclear accidents tend to be a 3 or less.
– Details of Keith Olbermann’s abrupt exit from MSNBC—as well as what’s in store for him now—are trickling out. The latest: Olbermann’s exit package was “well in excess” of $7 million, sources tell TMZ. The deal includes a clause that benches Olbermann for a while—at least when it comes to television—but sources claim he’ll only have to sit out for four-and-a-half months or less. The New York Times has a different estimate, citing executives involved in the deal: Olbermann must stay off TV for six to nine months, and can’t talk about his departure, although he can work on the Internet or in radio. His exit comes after years of behind-the-scenes conflict at MSNBC, the Times reports, noting that Jeff Zucker was one step away from firing him during his campaign contributions brouhaha in November. The usually prolific Olbermann has tweeted only once since his departure, and the message—apparently since removed—read “WATCHTHISSPACE MLB.com Baseball Nerd blog returns 2/14.” Of course, that sparked all sorts of speculation that Olbermann may return to his sports roots. But Olbermann has often promoted his Baseball Nerd blog, Mediaite notes, so the message could mean … nothing. Next up for Olbermann: Writing for TV with Aaron Sorkin? A source tells Entertainment Weekly Sorkin has a pilot script about a cable news show in the works—he even shadowed Olbermann while writing it—and he might tap Olbermann to contribute rants. Click for more on what may have been behind Olbermann’s departure.
– "For tireless acts of courage and mercy, for buying the world time to boost its defenses, for risking, for persisting, for sacrificing and saving, the Ebola fighters are Time's 2014 Person of the Year." So concludes editor Nancy Gibbs' piece on why this year's honor goes to a group of people who have "the hero's heart," those who freely put themselves at risk in order to fight the virus. Time shares the stories of a few of the many, some in their own words (Kaci Hickox and Dr. Kent Brantly penned their own stories). One nurse's assistant who survived Ebola describes hurt "like they are busting your head with an ax"—though a hurt perhaps second to watching her parents die. "I went out of my mind for about one week," says Salome Karwah. Time ultimately photographed more than 20 Ebola fighters in a dozen locations around the globe for its story. In Gibbs' piece, she shifts from writing of how the fighters were tested to how we were all tested and, in many ways, failed: On our own soil, a "full freak-out" quickly ensued, with an Ohio school closed because an employee flew on the same plane (not flight) as one of Thomas Eric Duncan's nurses, and with a Maine teacher unable to return to her school for three weeks simply because she attended a conference in Dallas. "The problem with irrational responses is that they can cloud the need for rational ones"—which this honored group of men and women had. This year's runners-up: Ferguson protesters, Vladimir Putin, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, and Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
– Bill Gates recently helmed a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting with staff, and per the Guardian, he offered some anecdotes involving President Trump. In the footage aired Thursday night on MSNBC, Gates noted that when he first met Trump in late 2016, it was "kind of scary" how much Trump seemed to know about his adult daughter Jennifer's appearance. "Melinda didn't like that too well," he said. He also noted that in that 2016 meeting, as well as in a subsequent one in March 2017, Trump threw out a question that actually threw Gates during a discussion about vaccines. "Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV," Gates told his audience. "So I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other." Trump apparently isn't the only one who may have harbored uncertainty about the viruses: The Guardian points out the UK's National Health Service website features a dedicated page with the question "What's the difference between HPV and HIV?" Still, jokes flew online about the president possibly not having a handle on this. "Guys, we could probably get him to stop watching Fox and Friends by telling him it has HDTV," one Twitter user snarked. One other Gates anecdote that drew laughs: "When I walked in, his first sentence kind of threw me off. He said: 'Trump hears that you don't like what Trump is doing.' And I thought, 'Wow, but you're Trump.'" (Where the two men rank on Forbes' billionaire list.)
– An Aussie TV personality has worn the same suit on-air for a full year, and not because he likes the smell. Karl Stefanovic, a presenter on Australia's morning news show Today, says he kept wearing the blue Burberry knock-off to make a point: "No one has noticed; no one gives a s--t," he says. "But women, they wear the wrong color and they get pulled up. They say the wrong thing and there's thousands of tweets written about them." And Stefanovic has seen co-host Lisa Wilkinson—with whom he's had an admittedly rocky relationship—raked over the coals because her outfit happens to offend a few fans, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Unlike Wilkinson, "I'm judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humor—on how I do my job, basically," Stefanovic says. He was particularly offended when the Telegraph ran old photographs of a female co-host on a rival morning show, dressed in comfortable clothes while running errands. "She's a mate and she was hurt by that," says Stefanovic, who offered her his support. "And I can understand." Hundreds of tweets (mostly favorable) reacted to Stefanovic's well-worn suit, The Age reports, with comments like "I loved this so much! Bloody double standards, well played Karl xx" and "absolutely brilliant stuff." Others, not so much: A member of a feminist Facebook page called the suit experiment "superficial," while an analyst on Jezebel saw nothing new: "As hilarious and interesting as this is, he simply proved something we all already know, the double standard women deal with on a day-to-day basis," Isha Aran writes. (Another recent viral video shows a woman getting 108 catcalls in 10 hours while walking around New York City.)
– Jeff Sessions' two-day confirmation hearing came to a close Wednesday with something that's never happened before: a current senator testifying against another current senator up for a Cabinet position. CNN reports Sen. Cory Booker, despite having worked well with the attorney general nominee in the past, said his "conscience" forced him to take the unprecedented step. "The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve toward justice, we must bend it," Booker testified. "America needs an attorney general who is resolute and determined to bend the arc." The senator from New Jersey said Sessions has shown a lack of "commitment"—and has in fact shown "hostility"—toward supporting equal rights for all Americans, according to ABC News. During his five-minute testimony, Booker said he was worried Sessions wouldn't work to reduce mass incarceration, ensure equal rights for LGBT citizens, or protect the voting rights of immigrants. Mediaite reports he said he was also concerned Sessions wouldn't address racial bias in policing. Booker, who admitted his choice to testify wasn't a popular one among fellow senators, was joined by Rep. John Lewis and Rep. Cedric Richmond. Meanwhile, Mediaite states many are seeing Booker's first-of-its-kind testimony as a bid for attention ahead of a run for president in 2020. Supporters continued to deny all accusations of racism against Sessions, who's likely to be confirmed.
– Simon Ostrovsky, the American journalist for Vice News captured in Ukraine this week, has been released, Vice confirms. Ostrovsky is safe and "in good health," according to the statement. He spoke to the BBC, according to a series of tweets captured by Poynter, and said he is free and on his way to Donetsk.
– A half a mile below the surface of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, in a lake that hasn’t been touched by sunshine or wind in millions of years, life goes on. A large US expedition called WISSARD, led by a professor at Montana State University, has unearthed a thriving ecosystem of micro-organisms after drilling through the thick ice to reach Subglacial Lake Whillans in January of 2013, according to a university news release. Considered one of the planet's final frontiers, the subglacial environments below Antarctic ice sheets have long been suspected to harbor life of some kind. Many of the micro-organisms found are single-celled organisms, called Archaea, that survive by converting ammonium and methane into energy in a harsh environment similar to those found elsewhere in our solar system, such as on Jupiter’s moon Europa. That has led scientists to wonder whether primitive (but hearty) life thrives there as well, Forbes reports. "It's the first definitive evidence that there’s not only life, but active ecosystems underneath the Antarctic ice sheet, something that we have been guessing about for decades," the lead author says. "With this paper, we pound the table and say, 'Yes, we were right.'" The findings appear today in the journal Nature. (A group of European scientists is already prepping for a mission to search for life on Jupiter's icy moons.)
– A team of international scientists is going to spend $10 million to try to breed a herd of all-star cows—ones that don't burp a lot. The idea is to cut down on the cows' methane emissions, which would have a two-fold benefit, explains the Verge: It would help the environment by reducing a potent greenhouse gas, and it would help farmers by making the cows more efficient and thus reducing feed costs. The scientists have found that some cows simply belch less than their peers, even when fed the same diet. They're going to start with 25 of these well-mannered dairy cows and expand the herd to 1,400 through selective breeding, reports the University of Aberdeen, which is leading the project. As for the environmental benefits of reducing cow emissions: "It's silly, but it's also a big problem," notes Grist. Some farmers have experimented with special diets, but that gets expensive and ends up reducing beneficial nutrients from the cow along with the methane.
– Janet Killough Barreto, who apparently adopted multiple kids from Central America in the mid-2000s, was ultimately accused of abusing one of them to death and released on bond, reports the Columbian. But she was a no-show at her 2009 trial to face charges of manslaughter, child abuse and neglect, and tampering with a witness, and authorities have been looking for her ever since—until now. The only woman on the US Marshals' "Most Wanted" list was arrested in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday with her husband, notes CNN, and officials say the pair may have been holed up in Vancouver, British Columbia, for at least the past year. Barreto and husband Ramon Barreto allegedly bought several children from a Guatemalan adoption agency in 2005 and 2006, but once they got the kids home, what transpired was "nothing short of horrendous and despicable," the sheriff of Union County, Miss.—where the crimes reportedly took place—tells CNN. The children weren't properly fed and suffered physical abuse that was said to include having their heads pushed underwater, punches to the stomach, and being duct-taped to hard-bottomed beds. In 2008, their 2-year-old daughter died, reportedly as a result of abuse, but the Barretos skipped town before the trial. The couple was arrested Tuesday after someone spotted them outside a Portland Burlington Coat Factory with an 11-month-old baby. The baby was placed with CPS.
– For the special few among us who were breathlessly awaiting the 2014 election so that we could get down to seriously speculating about the presidential election that is now two years away, well, Scott Walker has you covered. The newly re-elected Wisconsin governor is seriously flirting with a run for the White House, and he's not shy about it, reports Politico. Asked whether he'd bow out if fellow Wisconsinite Paul Ryan sought the Oval Office, Walker responded that "governors make much better presidents than members of Congress. I love Paul Ryan. I’ve said many times before I’ll be the president of the Paul Ryan fan club, but I do think if we’re going to beat Hillary Clinton in this next election, we’re going to have a message that says Hillary Clinton is all about Washington." Walker said governors combine "executive experience from outside of Washington" with a "fresh approach," concluding "we need something fresh, organic from the bottom up—and that’s what you get in the states." More from today's Sunday dial: Darrell Issa on ISIS and Iraq: Baghdad is "still quite delusional" in its lackadaisical approach to fighting ISIS. "They're still talking about long-term training before they're ready to fight." Cory Gardner, Republican senator-elect in Colorado: "The mandate was this: People don’t like dysfunction, they don’t like gridlock." The new GOP majority in the Senate, he says, will need to govern with "competence" and "maturity." Meanwhile, former President George W. Bush is handicapping brother Jeb's chances of deciding to make a 2016 run.
– With floodwaters starting to recede, the toll in Australia is at 25 and expected to climb given the dozens of people still missing, reports the AP. As the state's premier put it: "Queensland is reeling this morning from the worst natural disaster in our history and possibly in the history of our nation. We face a reconstruction task of postwar proportions." As the nation assesses the damage, tales of daring rescues and heroism are emerging: In Toowoomba, 13-year-old Jordan Rice is being hailed as a hero for asking rescuers to get his brother to safety first. By the time they returned to the family's submerged car, it was too late to save Jordan and his mother, reports AOL News, which rounds up local coverage. Click for more on Jordan. When a helicopter owned by mining magnate Clive Palmer set out to rescue three employees near Brisbane, it noticed scores of other people trapped on roofs. It went back, again and again, and ended up saving 60 people, reports the Telegraph. A reddit.com photo popular on BuzzFeed shows a man carrying a small kangaroo to safety. Click for image.
– During an extensive cover interview with Chuck Klosterman for GQ, the only time Taylor Swift "appears remotely flustered," Klosterman writes, is when he relays a story to her about meeting a former acquaintance of Swift's a few years back who called her "calculating." Swift "really, really hates the word calculating," Klosterman writes. "She despises how it has become tethered to her iconography and believes the person I met has been the singular voice regurgitating this categorization." Swift's defense: "Am I shooting from the hip? Would any of this have happened if I was? In that sense, I do think about things before they happen. But here was someone taking a positive thing—the fact that I think about things and that I care about my work—and trying to make that into an insinuation about my personal life. Highly offensive. You can be accidentally successful for three or four years. Accidents happen. But careers take hard work." So who are Swift and Klosterman talking about? Dlisted, Celebuzz, and Gigwise think it's likely Edward Droste, member of the indie rock band Grizzly Bear, who earlier this year called Swift not only calculating but frightening, mean, rude, and arrogant (though he at first wouldn't say who he was talking about). As for the rest of the GQ interview, Swift also discusses the rumor that her song "Bad Blood" is about Katy Perry (she basically fueled the rumor because she didn't want anyone to think the song was about one of her exes) and the VMAs moment when Kanye West stormed the stage and interrupted her acceptance speech. "That was the most happenstance thing to ever happen in my career," she says. "And to now be in a place where Kanye and I respect each other—that's one of my favorite things that has happened in my career." Click for the full piece.
– The New York Daily News will this week become half of what it once was, at least in terms of staff. Parent company Tronc, which acquired the paper in September for $1, on Monday announced in a memo that it would be cutting its editorial staff by roughly 50% to focus more on digital news and "address the significant financial challenges we have faced for years." The AP reports revenues sank 22% between 2014 and 2016, and prior cuts had taken place. Those ousted include editor-in-chief Jim Rich, who NPR reports communicated his displeasure on Twitter, where he changed his bio to "Just a guy sitting at home watching journalism being choked into extinction." The New York Times, which reports the newsroom staff had numbered 75 to 100, notes he tweeted the following at 1:40am Monday, "If you hate democracy and think local governments should operate unchecked and in the dark, then today is a good day for you." Robert York, editor of the Tronc-owned Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., will fill the slot. The memo says editorial efforts will be refocused around breaking news, "especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility. ... We will, of course, continue to cover local news, sports and other events, but our approach will evolve as we adapt to our current environment." Those given the boot will receive 90 days of severance. Marcus Baram worked for the paper in the late '90s and reports on how low morale was prior to these cuts in a piece for Fast Company.
– The military operation to wrest Mosul from ISIS could become the single largest, most complex humanitarian operation in the world in 2016, a UN official said Monday. Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said that in the worst case scenario, some 1 million civilians could flee the city, with 700,000 of them requiring shelter—overwhelming emergency sites that currently only have the capacity to hold 60,000 people, the AP reports. It can't be done right now, and even in "the intermediate-term, if they couldn't go back to Mosul quickly, if there was too much damage in the city, then it would test us to the breaking point," Grande said. "In the worst-case scenario, we can't rule out the possibility that there may be a chemical weapons attack," Grande said, warning that ISIS "may try and hold civilian populations either as human shields or forcibly expel huge numbers of civilians in the face of an attack by the Iraqi security forces knowing the Iraqi forces will not fire on their own people." The Guardian reports that American aircraft have started dropping millions of leaflets over Mosul, warning residents to stay in their homes, advising them on how to comfort children and avoid flying glass during bombings—and advising against trying to flee the city.
– Colin Kaepernick may have made himself America's least popular football player with his refusal to stand for the national anthem, but he isn't backing down, ESPN reports. The San Francisco 49er told reporters Sunday that he won't stand for the anthem until America stops oppressing black people. "When there's significant change and I feel like that flag represents what it's supposed to represent, this country is representing people the way that it's supposed to, I'll stand," said the quarterback, who cited recent police killings of black men and his own experiences of prejudice and oppression. He stressed, however, that he has nothing against the military. Asked if he thought he might be cut from the team, Kaepernick said, "I don't know. But if I do, I know I did what's right. And I can live with that at the end of the day." The San Francisco Chronicle spoke to his teammates and found that while some of them are offended by his stance, they respect his right to voice an opinion. "I think everyone has a right to stand up for what they believe in. I respect that, first and foremost, whether I agree with what he did and the way he did it, that's not for me," says wide receiver Torrey Smith. "He has that right. [Soldiers] will die for his right to do exactly what he did." (Some former fans are burning Kaepernick jerseys.)
– "There are no good neo-Nazis," Sen. Mitch McConnell said Wednesday. “We can have no tolerance for an ideology of racial hatred," the Hill quotes the Senate majority leader as saying. "Those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms." McConnell went on to say that all Americans "have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head" and made it clear that the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and KKK members behind the violence in Charlottesville are not welcome in his state of Kentucky or America. The groups behind the Unite the Right rally last weekend in Virginia had been planning an event in Lexington. USA Today notes McConnell failed to mention President Trump by name in his apparent condemnation of the president's comments on Charlottesville. It's possible McConnell—whose wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, was standing next to Trump during the president's Tuesday press conference—was attempting to avoid antagonizing Trump supporters, according to the Los Angeles Times. But a source close to McConnell tells CNN the senator—while privately upset about Trump's comments—didn't want to directly criticize the president because it might look like payback for Trump blasting him last week on the failure of health care. McConnell also still needs to work with Trump next month on a deal to fund the government.
– Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, one of the leading doctors fighting Sierra Leone's Ebola outbreak, died today of the virus in yet another high-profile casualty, reports the BBC. The death of the man hailed by the government as a "national hero" comes as Nigeria, the continent's most populous country, recorded its first case of the infectious disease, reports Reuters. The death was that of a Liberian consultant who collapsed in the Lagos airport on July 20, and health authorities have quarantined the hospital that cared for him. Meanwhile, American doctor Kent Brantly has a "grave" prognosis in Liberia as his family in Texas asks for prayers, reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The 33-year-old tested positive last week. Liberia has closed its border crossings; Nigeria’s airports, seaports, and borders have been on "red alert"; and West African airports are screening passengers for signs of illness. Since February, 1,200 people have been infected with Ebola, and 672 people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have died; the fatality rate in this outbreak is 60%. Here’s what you need to know about Ebola: It's possible that Ebola can jump from animals to humans through "bush meat" such as apes, monkeys, antelope, and porcupines, reports NBC News. Once an outbreak starts, it moves from person to person. The fatality rate is 50% to 90%. Early treatment is vital. The virus spreads through bodily fluids such as vomit and diarrhea; it’s infectious when the victim shows symptoms and remains so after the patient's death. Many have contracted Ebola by preparing a corpse for burial. Up to 60% of patients will bleed from the eyes and skin. There is no cure, and antivirals aren’t effective. The only way to get a diagnosis is with a blood test, adds the Wall Street Journal.
– A former member of OJ Simpson's defense team is now assisting Harvey Weinstein. Alan Dershowitz—a Harvard Law School professor and frequent guest on cable news—is serving as a consultant to Weinstein's effort to obtain emails from The Weinstein Company that he sent and received before he was fired in October. Weinstein, facing dozens of accusations of sexual assault and harassment, apparently believes the emails will exonerate him, the Hollywood Reporter notes. He has been fighting for months to get the emails, and Dershowitz filed a declaration supporting the effort in Delaware Bankruptcy Court on Thursday. Weinstein's lawyer has "a constitutional right to these materials while there are ongoing criminal investigations in order to present prosecutors with exculpatory information that could persuade them not to bring charges," Dershowitz said in the filing, per Deadline. He also stated that if Weinstein —who's being investigated by authorities in two countries—is charged with a crime, "he would of course have a constitutional right to all of his emails and other exculpatory materials." (Ashley Judd is suing the disgraced producer for allegedly "torpedoing" her career after she rejected his advances.)
– Mayim Bialik, perhaps better known as TV's Blossom, recently talked sex on Jewish website Kveller. "Judaism loves love. We love sex. We are told it is a mitzvah to make love and to especially make love on Shabbat, when God’s presence is close," she writes. "It’s all good, it’s all kosher, and it’s a wonderful reminder that Judaism is pleasantly focused on how we live, rather than what happens after we die." Not all celebrities are so religion-focused when talking about getting down and dirty. The Frisky rounds up 11 more pieces of advice: John Mayer: Reportedly told a woman at a bar that she should always remember to talk dirty in bed. Jane Krakowski: But while you're talking dirty, remember to call your partner a whore as opposed to a prostitute, she advises. Spencer Pratt: While we're wary of taking any advice from either half of Speidi, we'll relay it nonetheless: Spence thinks you should go on a sexual shopping spree and buy as much as you can afford from your local adult store. Jada Pinkett Smith: To keep the passion alive in a long-term relationship, do it in sneaky places like on the side of the road. Cameron Diaz: No matter what you do, don't fake it in bed. Click for the complete list, and to find out which star thinks "foreplay" should be called "teaseplay."
– Republicans got back into debate mode tonight, with Rick Perry and Mitt Romney trading a series of sharp and sometimes sarcastic barbs at one another over Social Security, immigration, and other issues, reports AP. No fewer than nine candidates were on the stage, thanks to the invite extended to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. (He got perhaps the biggest applause line of the night with this line: "My neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready projects for this country" than Obama.) But Perry and Romney were the main focus, and their back-and-forth on Social Security typified things: Perry said his position on it isn't as radical as his foes say, adding it was "not the first time that Mitt's been wrong on some issues before," notes the New York Times. Romney responded: "There's a Rick Perry out there that's saying the federal government shouldn't be in the pension business. You better find that Rick Perry and get him to stop saying that." Perry then accused Romney of changing views of his Massachusetts health care law in different versions of his book, and later widened the flip-flopping charges to a host of other issues. (Romney used the phrase "nice try" at different times to deflect Perry criticisms.) Immigration also emerged as a main issue, with Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum criticizing the Texas policy of giving in-state tuition benefits to immigrants' kids, notes Politico. Bachmann called such programs "magnets," but Perry said of his critics, "I don't think you have a heart." Catch up with live-blogging and details on the other candidates here.
– WikiLeaks' founder has a "thermonuclear device" of unreleased files that he says he'll detonate if he's killed or brought to trial. Julian Assange has widely distributed an encrypted 1.3-gigabyte file containing the full versions of all the US documents the site has received, and his lawyer says the encryption key will be released if Assange is forced to appear before Swedish authorities on sexual assault charges or American authorities on treason charges, the Globe and Mail reports. Assange has referred to the file as his insurance policy, claiming it contains names, addresses, and other details that were removed to protect spies, soldiers, and other sources. WikiLeaks "has been subject to cyber attacks and censorship around the world and they need to protect themselves. This is what they believe to be a thermonuclear device in the information age," said Assange's lawyer.
– Sarah Palin returned to the national spotlight at CPAC today to roundly criticize President Obama and fire potshots at the Republican establishment, NBC News reports. In her first major appearance since Fox News, Palin slammed Obama time and again: "Mr. President, we admit it, you won—now step away from the teleprompter, and do your job!" she said. She also dinged him on his golfing, his canceling of White House tours, and his proposal to broaden background checks for gun buyers. "Dandy idea, Mr. President—should've started with yours!" Her talk received the most raucous and frequent ovations of the entire conference, the Guardian reports. She saved some of her folksy (or is it kitschy?) ire for the GOP, calling on the party to embrace a populist vision: "Now is the time to furlough the consultants, and tune out the pollsters, send the focus groups home, and toss the political scripts," she said. And she speared new conservative super PACs designed to weed out more conservative candidates for more electable ones. Her talk had humor, too: She sipped a Big Gulp in a clear jab at New York's anti-soda campaign, and tossed off a line regarding her Christmas gift for husband Todd: "He's got the rifle, I've got the rack." (Business Insider runs down the most "awesome" lines of Palin's speech.)
– An employee responsible for logging changes in address and vehicle ownership at the California DMV slept at least three hours a day at her desk for nearly four years—and still has a job. The woman's 2,200 hours spent napping between February 2014 and December 2017 meant she completed less than half of her expected amount of work and cost the state more than $40,000, according to a worker misconduct report released Tuesday by the state's auditor. Per USA Today, the woman's doctor told the DMV that she was unable to perform her work duties, though a later doctor's note said the opposite. The employee continues to work for the state, per the Sacramento Bee.
– Maureen Dowd has an unlikely admission from Donald Trump, after a bruising week in which the brash candidate took heat for re-tweeting an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz: "Yeah, it was a mistake," he tells the New York Times columnist. "If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have sent it." Of his comments that women who get abortions should be punished, Trump also backtracked, telling Dowd that "this was not real life. This was a hypothetical, so I thought of it in terms of a hypothetical. So that’s where that answer came from, hypothetically." When Dowd wonders whether he was ever involved with anyone who had an abortion when "he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan," he responds thusly: "Such an interesting question. So what’s your next question?" Other un-Trump-like highlights: On his problems with women voters: "Nobody respects women more than I do. I’m just going to be myself. That’s all I can do." On Rosie O'Donnell: "Give me a break, Rosie. I won’t comment on Rosie. I wish her the best. See? In the old days—tell your sister, I’m making progress." (Dowd told Trump he'd lost her sister's vote with the Cruz retweet.) On his hair: It's "phenomenal. My hair is just fine, but I get attacked on my hair. But if I attack someone else on their hair, they’d say, 'Oh, what a terrible thing to do.'" On whether Corey Lewandowski should have just apologized: "You’re right, but from what I understand it wouldn’t have mattered." The softer side of Trump comes as he's campaigning hard in Wisconsin, reports the AP, where he's gotten a rough reception. "This politics is a tough business," Trump told a rally there Saturday. "Because you can say things one way and the press will criticize you horribly. You say it another way and the press will criticize you horribly." The Wisconsin primary is Tuesday.
– Chris Christie may have just become the Republican frontrunner among kids, though he likely irked Michelle Obama in the process. While campaigning in Iowa on Monday, the New Jersey governor fielded a complaint from an 11-year-old boy who said pizza and crispitos, a kind of crispy taco, have vanished from his school cafeteria in recent years, reports USA Today. If Christie is elected president, kids can eat "whatever you want to eat" at school, the governor responded, per ABC News. "I want people to eat healthier … but in the end, it's your choice," he added. "I don't care what you're eating for lunch every day. I really don't." "The first lady has no business being involved in this," he added. "Using the government to mandate her point of view on what people should be eating every day is none of her business." However, CBS News uncovered a quote from a 2011 interview in which Christie said he supported Obama's clean eating initiative. "I think it's a really good goal to encourage kids to eat better," Christie told the Telegraph. "I don't want the government deciding what you can and what you can't eat," but "Mrs. Obama being out there encouraging people in a positive way to eat well and to exercise and to be healthy, I don't have a problem with that."
– Despite efforts to reclassify marijuana down to a Schedule II (read: less dangerous) drug, there are some people who still insist on its dangers—and new research may back those theories up. Scientists at King's College London have discovered that smoking potent, or "skunklike," cannabis was tied to almost a quarter of all new psychosis cases they studied, the BBC reports. The study published in the Lancet compared 410 patients between the ages of 18 and 65 who had experienced "first-episode psychosis" with 370 healthy patients. The results suggest that the development of psychosis—i.e., delusions and hallucinations—is three times greater for skunk smokers than for nonusers, and up to five times higher if they smoked it every day. Hashish, a milder form of cannabis that contains much less THC than the skunk variety, isn't linked to any increased risk for psychosis. English experts say that skunk cannabis is widespread, with one doctor telling the BBC, "In London, it's very difficult to find anything else." Anecdotal stories that back up the study's warnings are worrisome. One woman tells the BBC that, after smoking skunk pot, she "went from someone who had never experienced any mental health issues whatsoever to an absolute wreck." A recovering addict who's now a drug counselor tells Sky News that skunk is the "Incredible Hulk of cannabis [and is] absolutely decimating young people's lives." Still, despite the warnings, study researchers point out that, according to a 2010 study in the Lancet, the three most harmful drugs are alcohol, crack cocaine, and heroin; cannabis falls at No. 8, notes Channel 4 News. (It's not the first time suspicions have been raised linking skunk cannabis to psychosis.)
– An ocean away from the unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan, worried Americans are stocking up on Geiger counters and supplements that can block one effect of radiation exposure. Pharmacies around the country are rapidly running out of potassium iodide, which can protect the thyroid gland from radiation damage, the AP reports. Suppliers say they are receiving calls from panicked customers, but experts say Americans shouldn't worry about being exposed to radiation from Japan, and shouldn't bother buying potassium iodide unless they live near a nuclear plant. "I think it's exceedingly improbable—I'd say impossible—that this accident would deliver any detectable amount of radiation at ground level in the United States," a nuclear expert tells the Los Angeles Times. "It would be barely detectable and have absolutely no health consequences."
– Roger Stone did little to calm America's overheated political climate with remarks to TMZ this week: The veteran GOP strategist said any attempt to impeach President Trump would cause violence like America has never seen before—and any politician who voted for it would "endanger their own life. "The people who are calling for impeachment are the people who didn't vote for him. They need to get over it," said Stone, a personal friend of Trump who advised his campaign in its early days. "They lost. Their candidate had every advantage: They spent two billion dollars, we spent $275 million. Sorry, we whipped their a--. It is over. You lost." "This is not 1974," warned Stone, who served in the Nixon administration, RealClearPolitics reports. "Try to impeach him. Just try it," he said. "You will have a spasm of violence—an insurrection—in this country like you have never seen before... Both sides are heavily armed, my friend." Stone said he wasn't advocating violence, only predicting it. Some House Democrats have been pushing for impeachment, though Democrat leaders have been more cautious, calling for an independent commission to investigate Trump's Russia ties instead, the Hill reports. (Stone has denied accusations that he colluded with Russian agents to help Trump.)
– Players in the Lingerie Football League wear pads on the field, but apparently not in photo shoots—and now two of the best players are on probation for doing exactly that. An LFL rep says Miami Caliente quarterback Anonka Dixon and receiver Tina Caccavale are in trouble for wearing shoulder pads and a Nike wristband on a cover shoot without authorization, but the real problem might be league founder Mitch Mortaza’s unhappiness with the original article. After all, “This is a league where ‘accidental nudity’ clauses are written into every contract and the players are often covered in baby oil before team photo shoots,” writes Michael J. Mooney, who wrote the piece that accompanied the offending cover for the Broward-Palm Beach New Times (and says the league was cooperative) and has since been “banned” from covering future LFL events. The issue? Mooney wrote about Mortaza’s appearance on reality show Blind Date, but “failed to focus on any of Mr. Mortaza’s success,” the rep says.
– Following billionaire investor Carl Icahn's purchase of a 10% stake in Netflix, word is out that he may push the company to sell—so Netflix has opted for the "poison pill" approach. The company is giving shareholders the right to snap up more stock if any single shareholder acquires more than a 10% share of the firm, thus—in theory—diluting the value of shares, the Wall Street Journal reports. The plan would make it very costly to buy up a controlling stake. Also known as a shareholder rights plan, the poison pill is standard practice for companies fighting a takeover, the New York Times notes. "Adopting a rights plan is a very reasonable thing to do in light of the recent, and stealth, accumulation of stock and options by an activist investor," a Netflix rep says.
– So much for peaceful transitions of power in Syria and Egypt, where regime forces brutally cracked down on protesters today. In Syria, the day after officials agreed "in principle" to let the Arab League oversee a peace process, troops invaded a region near the Turkish border and a town in search of government opponents. One civilian was reported killed. Troops also gunned down two army defectors near the Lebanese border, the AP reports. In Egypt, just 9 days before national elections, troops opened fire on thousands of demonstrators in Tahrir Square. Some 500 were wounded with rubber bullets, Reuters reports (see their compelling video here.) The fighting erupted when troops moved in to remove tents set up by protesters, after last night's 50,000-strong rally opposing military rule, the Guardian reports. "We are being hit with showers of US-made tear gas canisters, and I've watched with my own eyes at least five people being struck by rubber bullets," says one protester.
– People have been calling for it for years, and Mark Zuckerberg said at a company town hall meeting today that a "dislike" button is finally coming to Facebook. "People have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it," Zuck said, per CNBC. The concept is tricky, he explained, because "we don't want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people's posts," as they do on, for example, Reddit. "That doesn't seem like the kind of community that we want to create: You don't want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and have someone 'downvote' it." What people "really want is the ability to express empathy," he said, per Mashable. "Not every moment is a good moment. ... If you are sharing something that is sad, then it may not feel comfortable to 'like' that post." Zuckerberg says Facebook expects to start testing soon, then launching a wider roll-out. As Mashable notes, the move could have big implications: "When a Dislike button becomes a reality, companies and users would have to radically shift the strategy of what they post." And as The Verge notes, "Facebook doesn't want people using 'Dislike' as a way to harass or disrespect other people, and—more cynically—you can argue that it certainly doesn't want people Disliking the sponsored posts that companies pay to put in your News Feed." Indeed, Zuck said back in December that any such button would have to be "a force for good, not a force for bad."
– It's Willy Wonka's golden ticket but for adults desperate for a blue-collar job in America. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is holding a drawing for 2,400 part-time jobs loading and unloading shipping containers at ports in the Los Angeles area, the Los Angeles Times reports. While these part-time positions don't come with guaranteed hours or benefits, they do come with the possibility of getting promoted to full-time, unionized longshoreman—a position that had an average salary of $161,000 per year in 2016. It's not a sure thing and it can be a long wait—some workers have been stuck as part-timers for 13 years—but one woman who applied for the lottery calls it a "once in a lifetime opportunity." The ILWU hasn't held this kind of drawing since 2004, the Long Beach Press Telegram reports. Back then, more than 250,000 people entered the lottery; up to a million may enter this time around. The Times says it shows "how desperate" Americans are to even get a shot at a "stable, high-paying career working with their hands." That shot doesn't come without risks. The average part-time longshoreman earned just $31,000 in 2016. And while the ILWU says it's holding the drawing to avoid labor shortages at ports, according to the Journal of Commerce, some long-time part-timers warn of days on end without a shift and a tough lifestyle. The deadline for the entry into the drawing was earlier this month; the drawing is scheduled for Feb. 6.
– Miners have been pulling diamonds from a vast area of Namibia's Namib Desert called the Sperrgebiet (or "forbidden territory") for more than a century. But in 2008, workers hunting for diamonds where the desert meets the Atlantic Ocean found something even more precious: the likely remains of the Bom Jesus, a Portuguese sailing ship that disappeared some 500 years ago on its way to India. It's a discovery, per recent coverage by News.com.au, that solved "one of the biggest maritime mysteries." Also, says archaeologist Dieter Noli, it's the oldest shipwreck ever found in sub-Saharan Africa. And there's treasure as well: Included in the find were some 2,000 gold coins from Spain and Portugal, according to Gainesville News. Upon unearthing the site of the shipwreck, per CNN, workers found pieces of metal, wood, and what looked like pipes. Not sure what they had found, they called in Noli. "It just looked like a disturbed beach," he told CNN earlier this month, "but lying on it were bits and pieces." Among those were a centuries-old musket and an elephant tusk. "I thought, 'Oh, no no, this is definitely a shipwreck,'" Noli says. Ultimately, in addition to the gold, workers recovered cannons (the pipes), navigational instruments, tons of copper ingots, swords, and a lot more—some 5,438 artifacts. Not much of the actual structure of the ship remains. But archaeologists have matched the cargo with that of the Bom Jesus (which means the "Good Jesus") based on details found in a 16th-century book that lists the ship as lost. The stretch of coastline is known for storms. Speaking to CNN, Noli speculates that the Bom Jesus "came in, it hit a rock, and it leaned over." (A famed shipwreck closer to home is getting a closer look.)
– While cops in France crack down on burkinis, police forces in two other countries have decided to embrace the hijab. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have decided to allow female officers to wear a hijab while on duty in a bid to encourage diversity among the Mounties, the Independent reports. Police officers in Scotland were already allowed to wear the hijab, but only with approval from senior officers, the Telegraph reports. The headscarf has now been made an official part of the uniform. "Like many other employers, especially in the public sector, we are working towards ensuring our service is representative of the communities we serve," Scottish Chief Constable Phil Gormley said in a statement. In Canada, officials say they hope the shift in uniform policy will encourage more Muslim women to join the Mounties, the AP reports. They note that hijabs were already allowed by police in Toronto, as well as by forces in Sweden, Norway, and London, which added the hijab to the uniform in 2001.
– The hostility toward women gamers that was laid bare in 2014 during the GamerGate controversy extends to the stereotype that female gamers are inferior to their male counterparts. So researchers at the University of California, Davis, decided to track thousands of players in two multiplayer online role-playing games and compare just how quickly the players advanced to higher levels. And as Cuihua “Cindy” Shen, an assistant professor of communication, reports in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, when controlling for factors such as time devoted to playing, character choice, and membership in a player's guild, "The gender differences disappear." In fact, she goes on to write for the Conversation, "Women advanced at least as fast as men did." Shen says the findings confirm certain differences in style of play, such as that men tend to focus on competing and gaining in-game status while women tend to play more socially and help others. But in terms of the bottom line: advancing to a higher level, the difference was nil among the 11,000 gamers they analyzed playing Everquest II and Chevalier's Romance III. Aside from one study in 2009, Vocativ reports that this is the first to figure out how to go about testing gender differences in gaming performance outside of a lab. Why does it matter? Nearly half the gaming population is now female, yet they are represented at even lower numbers in STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. "The stereotype that women are worse players at games could contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy," Shen says. (Guys who are hostile to girl gamers tend to be poor performers.)
– Kim Kardashian West was excited to attend the Broadway debut of The Cher Show, a musical based on the singer's life. Her husband was apparently less so, and he ended up apologizing for his fascination with his phone during the Monday show, reports USA Today. "Hey @kanyewest so cool that you're here at @TheCherShow! If you look up from your cell phone you'll see we're doing a show up here," Tony-nominated actor Jarrod Spector had tweeted during the performance. "It's opening night. Kind of a big deal for us. Thanks so much." "Please pardon my lack of etiquette. We have so much appreciation for the energy you guys put into making this master piece," West responded hours later, noting he and his wife joined hands and sang "I Got You Babe" at one point. "We had the best time!" Kardashian West added in a Tuesday tweet without mentioning West's distraction. "All of the actors were sooo good!" Spector did particularly well, according to Variety critic Frank Rizzo. "Spot-on as Sonny Bono and capturing the man's charm, calculation and nasal twang," he writes of the actor. (Kim and Kanye recently took flak for an "obnoxious" flight.)
– Amid World Cup fever, a soccer-related tragedy out of Michigan, where a referee died this morning after being punched by a player on Sunday. The Detroit Free Press reports that responding authorities found John Bieniewicz, 44, on the ground and unconscious. Witnesses say Bieniewicz stopped the adult soccer game in Livonia in order to eject Bassel Abdul-Amir Saad, who had gotten his second violation. "The ref did nothing to provoke this attack," says one player. Another tells WDIV that Bieniewicz never saw the punch coming: "He went into his pockets to pull out his red card, he had his head down, and as he came up the guy punched him, hit him kind of in the neck and chin area and then the jaw." Saad allegedly fled the scene, but was yesterday arraigned on a felony charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder; in light of Bieniewicz's death, a rep for the county prosecutor says "the charges will be reviewed and amended when appropriate confirmations are made." A longtime friend describes the married father of two as a true lover of the sport; his qualifications allowed him to referee professional, collegiate, high school, and rec league soccer. He often worked up to three games on a weekend day, and was what the AP describes as a "well-respected" ref for two decades. A GoFundMe account has been set up to support his boys.
– While she may not have been hopping mad, a Wisconsin woman certainly wasn't happy about being told to leave a McDonald's in Beaver Dam with the animal she says is her support kangaroo. According to TMJ4, police told Diane Moyer to leave the restaurant after a customer complained about Jimmy, the 8-month-old kangaroo she had sitting in an infant car seat. She explained that the kangaroo is considered a therapy animal and that she has a doctor's note of approval, but she was still asked to leave by a police officer who told her a customer had said it wasn't appropriate or safe to have the kangaroo in the restaurant. Moyer, who lives on a 70-acre farm with Jimmy, four other kangaroos, and assorted other animals, tells the Daily Citizen that the marsupials are among the "most loving, trustworthy animals that I have ever had" and that authorities have fully inspected her farm to make sure it's suitable for kangaroos. She says she has taken Jimmy to that McDonald's many times before, as well as to the movies and her church, and nobody else has complained. "I wish the person in McDonald's would have just come and talked to me instead," she says. (Last year, an Iraq vet in Ohio was ordered to get rid of his 14 "therapy ducks.")
– A New York police sergeant allegedly tossed semen on a co-worker as way of saying that, gosh, he really likes her. Michael Iscenko, 54, is accused of throwing his spunk on an unidentified woman at the office where they work, the Grio reports. Iscenko had already expressed his interest to the woman and "was apparently so enamored by her that he threw semen on her," a police source tells the Daily News. The substance has tested positive as semen, and the Manhattan DA’s Office has gotten a warrant for Iscenko to supply a DNA sample to see if there's a match. The woman, an administrative aide at the Organized Crime Control Bureau, had allegedly just walked out of the woman's rest room when it happened in January, the New York Post reports. "She suddenly felt something on her leg, looked down, and said to him, 'What are you doing?'" says a source. "The uniformed member then walked away without responding." The 60-some-year-old woman apparently triggered the investigation by complaining to superiors. Iscenko, a divorcee, is currently suspended. "Everyone who has been questioned says [Iscenko] looks very professional; he wears the uniform well," adds the source. "He’s entirely normal looking."
– Florence Henderson, the wholesome actress who went from Broadway star to television icon when she became Carol Brady, the ever-cheerful mom residing over the Brady Bunch, has died. She was 82. She died surrounded by family and friends, her manager, Kayla Pressman, said in a statement late Thursday. Millions loved, and kept on loving, the innocent sitcom about a blended family. The Brady Bunch first aired in 1969, returned to television in various forms again and again, including the Brady Bunch Hour in 1977, the Brady Brides in 1981 and the Bradys in 1990, the AP reports. Henderson studied at New York City's American Academy of Dramatic Arts after graduating from the St. Frances school in Indiana in 1951, People reports. Her pre-Brady career included numerous starring roles on Broadway and appearances in movies and TV shows including the Tonight Show, which she became the first woman to host, in 1962. After the Brady Bunch ended, Henderson appeared on shows including the Love Boat; Murder, She Wrote; Ally McBeal; and 30 Rock, the CBC reports. She also appeared on reality shows including Dancing With the Stars in recent years as well as hosting Retirement TV's Florence Henderson Show. She is survived by four children from the first of her two marriages. (Last year, she revealed that she still liked to date younger men,)
– Police say a man who delivered a bag of marijuana to the wrong car in a northern Ohio store parking lot faces drug trafficking charges, reports the AP. The Sandusky Register reports 18-year-old Anthony Damante, of Milan, was arrested Tuesday in Norwalk and charged with marijuana trafficking, a fifth-degree felony. Police say a woman went into a store Friday afternoon to buy lottery tickets, returned to her car, and found a strange smelling sandwich bag marked "Sour Kush" on the front seat, prompting a call to police. A police report says officers used surveillance camera footage to determine that another woman in the lot gave Damante money, later determined to be $300, and went inside the store while Damante put the 1.4 ounces of pot into the unwitting woman's unlocked car. Court records don't indicate whether Damante has an attorney. Damante reportedly later turned over $240 in cash to the police, which he said was all that was left from the sale.
– The lower chamber of Brazil's Congress has begun debate on whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, with the crucial vote slated for Sunday, the AP reports. The government had carried out an unsuccessful bid before the country's Supreme Court to try to halt the process, but that appeal was lost, Reuters notes. The atmosphere in the lower Chamber of Deputies was electric at the start of Friday's session, with some congressmen chanting "Dilma Out!" before proceedings began. Lawmakers backing impeachment allege Rousseff's administration violated fiscal rules. They say the government used sleight-of-hand accounting in a bid to shore up public support. However, many of those pushing for impeachment face grave accusations of corruption themselves. Rousseff's defenders insist she did nothing illegal and say similar accounting techniques were used by previous presidents. The country's attorney general called the whole procedure "Kafka-esque" and said it meant Rousseff wouldn't be able to fully defend herself, Al Jazeera reports. If 342 of the lower house's 513 legislators vote in favor of impeachment, the process moves to the Senate, which would decide whether to open a trial. If the Senate moves to impeach Rousseff, she would be swapped out with Brazil's vice president, Michel Temer, as soon as May since she would be suspended from office for up to 180 days during the trial.
– Halloween costumes based on popular TV shows usually do well their first year out, but one new getup was nixed before the first pumpkin was carved. The Daily Dot reports Yandy.com, a retail site known for its sexy costumes, yanked one based on the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale after "confusion and disgust" was the main reaction to it online. The costume, labeled "Yandy Brave Red Maiden Costume" and listing for $64.95, consisted of a short red dress, matching red cape, and white bonnet. The sultry-looking blonde model sporting the costume wore black high heels. The accompanying description: "An upsetting dystopian future has emerged where women no longer have a say. However, we say be bold and speak your mind in this exclusive Brave Red Maiden costume." This all prompted an outcry on Twitter, namely because the concept behind the Hulu show, based on the Margaret Atwood novel, revolves around handmaidens who are raped and forced to carry pregnancies to term for elite families. Others tried to make light of it, noting that knockoffs of the handmaiden costumes are often worn at protests advocating for women's rights. And that seems to have been Yandy's original intent, at least according to a statement it put out after the pushback started. "It has become obvious that our … [costume] is being seen as a symbol of women's oppression, rather than an expression of women's empowerment," it said, adding that the costume has been pulled.
– NASA is going to the sun. More specifically, it's launching an unmanned probe next year that will travel closer to the star than any spacecraft has done previously. "It's a spacecraft loaded with technological breakthroughs that will solve many of the largest mysteries about our star," says Nicola Fox of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. In less scientific terms, per the Telegraph: "We will finally touch the sun." The nuts and bolts: The mission: The 10-foot probe will launch in July or August of 2018 and eventually get to within 3.7 million miles of the sun, about seven times closer than any previous spacecraft. Eventually, it will be whizzing around the sun at a speed of 450,000 miles per hour, reports CNN. The mission ends in 2025. Corona: The probe will actually fly into the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere, called the corona, per a mission overview at NASA that touts "humanity's first visit to a star." The heat: The probe will rely on a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite solar shield to help it withstand temperatures up to 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit, reports Orlando's WKMG. Instruments will remain at room temperature. The name: The probe's name has been changed to the Parker Solar Probe to honor astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who's credited with discovering solar wind. Parker, who turns 90 in June, is a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, and the Guardian recounts that the theory he put forward in 1958 about a stream of charged particles flowing from the sun was once thought to be "crazy." A first: This is the first time NASA has named a mission after a living scientist. "I'm certainly greatly honored," said the man himself, per Space.com. Two puzzles: Scientists hope to better understand two things in particular: "How is the solar wind accelerated, and why is the ... corona so much hotter than the solar surface?" (It's 3 million degrees Fahrenheit vs. 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.) Why it matters: Generally, solar storms are relatively harmless when they reach Earth, but these particle bursts occasionally wreak havoc on satellites and here on Earth, and they have the potential to be devastating. "The more we know about how these processes work, the better we can get at predicting when they will happen," writes Loren Grush at the Verge.
– Nothing can put a damper on your July 4th barbecue like rain—except maybe food safety experts, some of whom give USA Today pointers on how to avoid celebrations that end with you running for the bathroom. Doug Powell of the aptly-named barfblog.com starts with a few foods he would never eat: Sprouts: They can carry salmonella, listeria, and E. coli, and require warm moisture to grow—just like bacteria. Raw shellfish: No matter how fancy the restaurant, don’t risk it. Why? Raw waste is in the water they call home. Raw milk: Sure, people say unpasteurized milk is healthy and boosts the immune system. But the CDC says it also contains salmonella, listeria, campylobacter, and brucella. And a few general tips: Take your meat’s temperature: The trick is to insert the thermometer in sideways, and you’ll want to hit a balmy 160 degrees. For fans of medium-rare burgers, Food Safety News has a not-so-gentle reminder about the dangers of salmonella. Don’t trust sliced cantaloupes: The melon’s soft, rough skin love bacteria and washing doesn’t improve matters. And bacteria on the rind can get on the yummy interior when the melon is cut. The solution? Store sliced melon in the fridge. Stay cool: Keep your picnic foods in a cooler, not in the summer sun. Be friends with mayo: It contains pasteurized eggs and lots of vinegar to keep bacteria at bay. The homemade version is riskier. For the full article, click here.
– Move over Honey Boo Boo, a new reality show is coming along to rile up critics. Oxygen is developing one called All My Babies' Mamas, featuring rapper Shawty Lo along with the 10 women with whom he has fathered kids, and, of course, the 11 kids themselves. The Parents Television Council is already threatening advertiser boycotts, and black author Sabrina Lamb has a petition on Change.org calling for its cancellation, reports Fox News. The show has yet to air. Lamb: Oxygen "is saying to these young women, it's OK to have unprotected sex, it's OK to be a 'babies’ mama,' and the other baby mama is your enemy,” she tells S2Smagazine. “You can’t exploit these innocent children and then tell your viewers to tweet and gossip about them. It offers really dangerous stereotypes about us.” Rapper Lo: "You can hate all you want to, I didn't ask for it. It just happened. Now that it happened, I'm supposed to turn my back against it?" he tells MTV News. "If I wasn't taking care of my kids then you would really dog me out, but I'm taking care of my kids, providing for my family. I don't know what else to say." Oxygen spokeswoman: It's "not meant to be a stereotypical representation of everyday life for any one demographic or cross section of society. It is a look at one unique family and their complicated, intertwined life."
– Horrific stories are trickling out from inside Thursday's mass shooting at an Oregon community college: Student Kendra Gordon tells Fox News she was in a classroom next to on where the gunman was shooting. "I was sitting in class when we had first heard the shot. And we didn't think it was a gunshot, we thought it was a firecracker. And then we heard another one," she said. "And so, one of the students in my class, she went out and checked it. She got shot twice, one in the arm, and in the stomach. And she came back and told us to lock the door, shut the lights off. And we sat there for 20 minutes waiting for police to show up. It felt like forever." Gordon said she's not sure how the student who was shot is doing now, Reuters reports. Student Kortney Moore says a bullet came through the window of her writing class in Snyder Hall; she saw her teacher shot in the head. The shooter came inside the room and told people to get on the ground, she tells the local News-Review. She says he then asked people to stand up and say their religion before he started firing. Tweets from @KP_KaylaMarie before she protected her Twitter feed: "Omg there’s someone shooting on campus." "Students are running everywhere. Holy God." And then, later: "Hi guys. I’m ok. Physically. We’re being bused off campus." Multiple witnesses tell the local Register-Guard that only one classroom, a writing and speech class in Snyder Hall, was targeted. Click for more on the shooter and President Obama's response.
– In a major upset, the Thai film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives has won the top honor at Cannes, according to the Hollywood Reporter. "I'd like to send a message home," director Apichatpong Weerasethakul said in accepting the Palme d'Or. "This prize is for you." Mike Leigh's Another Year had been considered a favorite for the top award, but English-language films failed to capture any major prizes, Entertainment Weekly notes.
– Life expectancy is expected to climb dramatically in most developed countries by 2030—just not in the United States. Using 21 mathematical models, scientists at Imperial College London and the WHO predict females born in the US in 2030 will live an average of 83 years compared to 81 in 2010, while males will reach 79.5 years, up from 76.5, per the BBC and the Guardian. That's "similar to the Czech Republic for men, and Croatia and Mexico for women," say researchers, stressing the US will "fall further behind" countries like South Korea due to obesity, homicides, and a lack of universal healthcare, per Vox. South Korea is expected to lead the pack for both sexes in 2030 with life expectancy at 84 for men and 91 for women—a world first. "As recently as the turn of the century, many researchers believed that life expectancy would never surpass 90 years," but this shows "our public health and healthcare successes," says lead author Majid Ezzati. For example, South Korea has seen gains in economy and education and declines in infant mortality, cardiovascular diseases, and stomach cancers. However, the prediction also points to the need to boost healthcare programs to support a population that could live through their 80s. "We should be planning for more life," Ezzati tells CNN. France and Japan are expected to trail South Korea for female life expectancy at 88.6 years and 88.4 years, respectively. Australia and Switzerland would follow for men at roughly 84 years. (This study suggests human life has hit a ceiling.)
– For your average big city mayor, admitting that you bought illegal drugs while in office would be the most damaging thing to happen in a day—but Rob Ford's not your average mayor. Soon after a press conference in which the crack-smoking, binge-drinking Toronto mayor claimed his closet was empty of skeletons, a judge released evidence from witnesses—mainly Ford staffers—who alleged he had abused drugs including cocaine and OxyContin, partied with prostitutes at City Hall, racially abused a taxi driver, and attacked several staff members, reports the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the National Post. Among the partially redacted allegations included in a huge police dossier on Ford's activities: Ford staffers worried about how their boss often drove drunk, sometimes in school zones. One staffer told police he was in the car with Ford when the mayor downed a 12-ounce bottle of vodka in a few swigs, chasing it with Gatorade. He says Ford was frequently so drunk he was "rambling and incoherent"—and he and other junior staff members were often sent to buy alcohol. Staff members told police that some women came to the mayor's office saying Ford had told them they could have a job after they smoked joints with him outside of bars. St. Patrick's Day last year appears to have been a wild night even by Rob Ford standards, the police documents reveal. During celebrations, staffers say Ford drank heavily from a bottle of vodka and was seen at City Hall with a woman believed to be an escort. Against staffers' advice, Ford—who talked about "going out then getting laid"—then took a taxi to a bar, calling the driver a "Paki" and throwing a handful of business cards at him. He later moved on to a second bar, where a waiter says he saw Ford and an unknown woman apparently snorting cocaine. After an intoxicated Ford stormed the dance floor, he was asked to leave. He then returned to City Hall, where he continued to drink, attacked two staffers, and made lewd remarks to a female security guard before staffers managed to get him into a taxi home, according to witness statements. Upon arrival at the residence, a staffer who accompanied Ford says the drunken mayor got in his own car and sped off. Toronto's city council has voted 37 to 5 to ask Ford to step down, at least temporarily, but the increasingly isolated mayor is adamant about staying on. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co. has told the mayor and his supporters to stop using its logo on T-shirts and other items, reports the Detroit News, and organizers of this year's Santa Claus Parade have asked Ford to stay away. Click for a stroll through some of Hizzoner's lowlights.
– More than 40 protesters, including the likes of Robert Kennedy Jr. and Daryl Hannah, were arrested yesterday after protesting the Keystone XL oil pipeline, reports NPR. The event, which saw demonstrators tying themselves to the gates of the White House, was the first act of civil disobedience for the 120-year-old Sierra Club, says its director, who was also arrested. Activists Julian Bond and Bill McKibben were also arrested, the AP reports; everyone was released on $100 bond. And Perez Hilton has a special note for Taylor Swift: Kennedy's son, Conor, was also among the busted environmentalists.
– Prepare for an onslaught of media buzz each time a bit of minutiae about the upcoming Meghan Markle-Prince Harry wedding emerges. Friday's relevant detail: their actual wedding date. It had previously been noted the ceremony would take place sometime next spring, but now an actual date has been announced, and it's a break from convention, per the BBC. The couple will wed in St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle on May 19, 2018, which is unusual for a royal wedding as it falls on a Saturday. Royal couples usually take their vows on a weekday: Harry's parents, Charles and Diana, wed on a Wednesday, for example, while brother William wed Kate Middleton on a Friday. The Telegraph notes the date may have been picked to avoid having to declare a bank holiday, as well as to allow Middleton time to recover from the birth of her third child, due in April. One person who will have to trade in one big event for another: Harry's best man, Prince William, who usually presides over the FA Cup soccer finals and presents the trophy. This year's championship is being held on the same day as Harry and Meghan's wedding.
– The details of Denise Huskins' kidnapping are sketchy, but scary: At some point between midnight and 5am Monday, boyfriend Aaron Quinn says he saw her being "forcibly taken against her will" from a Vallejo, Calif., home. He was given a ransom demand; it's not clear when or how it was delivered. About 12 hours after her abduction, at around 2pm Monday, he reported her missing to police. But police say the 30-year-old Quinn has not been identified as a suspect in the disappearance of Huskins, a 29-year-old physical therapist from Vallejo, the Los Angeles Times reports. Many details are fuzzy, but CBS Sacramento reports that the home from which Huskins was taken is Quinn's, though some outlets reported it was hers. The station also notes that a 2000 Toyota Camry believed to have been used in the kidnapping belongs to Quinn, though some outlets reported it as belonging to Huskins. The Camry was found elsewhere in the city; police believe it was taken from the block where Huskins was abducted, ABC7 reports. The Times says Huskins has lived at her own place in Vallejo since June, while NBC Bay Area speaks to others who also clarify that she didn't live with Quinn, but happened to be there when she was abducted. Both she and Quinn work at Kaiser Permanente. Police are releasing few other details other than noting that they do consider this a "kidnapping for ransom" case, but they say a mysterious "object" was spotted in a nearby waterway; a dive team will investigate, KCRA reports. All police will say regarding Quinn is that he's cooperating and "hopefully we can extract information from him in a way that we can resolve this in a positive manner." The FBI is assisting with the search.
– President Obama isn't aloof, he says—it's just that he and Michelle don't tend to paint the town red. "My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don’t go to a lot of Washington parties and, as a consequence, the Washington press corps maybe just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix enough with them," he tells Time in an interview, noted by Politico. "And they figure, well, if I’m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof." "Michelle and I don’t do the social scene, because as busy as we are, we have a limited amount of time, and we want to be good parents at a time that’s vitally important for our kids." The Obamas' social life has nothing to do with his clashes with Congress, he notes. "John Boehner and I get along fine. The problem was that no matter how much golf we played or no matter how much we yukked it up, he had trouble getting his caucus to go along with doing the responsible thing on a whole bunch of issues over the past year." Click to read the extensive interview.
– The woman whose killing of a famous diet doctor in 1980 became the stuff of made-for-TV movies—two, in fact—has died at 89, reports the New York Times and AP. Jean S. Harris spent a dozen years in prison for shooting her lover, Dr. Herman Tarnowner, creator of the wildly popular Scarsdale Diet of the 1970s. Harris, headmistress of a prestigious girls' school at the time, swore it was an accident and said she intended to kill herself, but was convicted of murder. She was granted clemency in 1993 and devoted herself to a foundation she created to help the children of female inmates. The Times and AP have similar takes on why Harris' case became the sensation it did: Times: Harris' "passionate defenders saw her plight as epitomizing the fragile position of an aging but fiercely independent woman who, because of limited options, was dependent on a man who mistreated her." AP: "They pictured her as a woman victimized by a male-dominated society, adrift because she was getting older and her lover of 14 years was brushing her off in favor of his younger office assistant. In addition, they said, she was in the thrall of antidepressant drugs Tarnower had prescribed for her."
– Even Fox News has started fact-checking Sarah Palin. Last night anchor Bret Baier responded to Palin's claim during a speech Friday that the phrase "In God We Trust" had recently moved from the face to the rim of the new dollar coin: Another case of Obama pushing a secular America, Palin implied. But as Baier joined Politico in pointing out, the coin redesign was actually commissioned in 2005—by a GOP-led government—and approved by George W Bush, TPM reports.
– In Joyce Bruce's mind, Robert Boardwine was just an old friend who helpfully agreed to donate sperm so she could have a child—no parental rights attached. To Boardwine, however, and now according to a Virginia court, he's entitled to see his young son, CNN reports. The Virginia Court of Appeals' decision yesterday came down to semantics: In its judgment, the use of a turkey baster, which how Bruce inseminated herself with Boardwine's sperm in 2010, isn't enough to keep him out of the picture as the dad, per a Virginia reproduction statute, the Washington Post reports. Bruce contended that because the couple never had sex and instead used "noncoital reproductive technology," she was entitled to sole parenthood, per CNN. The court disagreed, writing in its decision: "The plain meaning of the term 'medical technology' does not encompass a kitchen implement such as a turkey baster." After making the conception plan, the couple's friendship started going south in October 2010 (a few months into the pregnancy) when they disagreed over baby names. She didn't call him when the baby was born, but when he found out, he started visiting. Bruce says those visits were "strained," however, and she asked him to stop coming, which is when he sued for parental rights. Boardwine concedes the two agreed Bruce would be the main parent, but he says they also agreed he could see the child as he pleased—all conditions they never agreed to in writing. The court awarded him joint legal custody and visitation. (A twist in a similar case: A Kansas sperm donor was forced to pay child support.)
– Moses Farrow, brother to Dylan Farrow and adopted son of Woody Allen, minces no words when it comes to his sister's allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of their father: "Of course Woody did not molest my sister," Moses, 36, tells People. "She loved him and looked forward to seeing him when he would visit. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him." He goes on to say that on the day in question, everyone who was in the house was in public, and neither Woody nor Dylan ever went off privately. "I don’t know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother," Moses says, claiming that Mia Farrow often hit him when he was a child and went into rages if she was not obeyed. Moses is now estranged from his mother and many of his siblings, but is close to Allen and his wife, Moses' adopted half-sister Soon-Yi Previn. Moses calls the whole fiasco Mia's "vengeful way to pay [Allen] back for falling in love with Soon-Yi." In a piece written last month, Allen documentarian Robert B. Weide noted that while Moses, 15 at the time Dylan accused Allen, initially refused contact with his father, he recently told Weide he's now "finally seeing the reality" of what happened and used the term "brainwashing." Dylan was quick to respond to her brother's public change of heart: She tells People, "My brother is dead to me," adding, "My mother never coached me. She never planted false memories in my brain. My memories are mine. I remember them." She also denies her mother hit anyone. Moses isn't the only one publicly doubting Dylan's story: Stephen King made waves Monday when he responded to a New Inquiry piece on the allegations by saying, "Boy, I’m stumped on that one. I don’t like to think it’s true, and there’s an element of palpable bitchery there, but..." Of course, Salon reports, he followed that up with a tweet: "Have no opinion on the accusations; hope they're not true. Probably used the wrong word."
– Victoria's Secret model and YouTube starlet Kate Upton flashes a wild bikini on this week's cover as Sports Illustrated's much-awaited annual swimsuit babe. Upton, a 19-year-old Floridian, was named the top "rookie" model in last year's Swimsuit Issue by the mag. This time she poses on an Aussie beach in a red-and-brown teeny bikini that makes her feel "sexy but confident," she tells the AP. "In Florida, people walk around in their flip-flops, bikinis, and jean shorts, so I'm very comfortable in a bathing suit," says the 5-foot-11 model. She's a modern girl, who shot to fame thanks in large part to a YouTube video in which she struts her stuff, notes the New York Times. She racked up 3 millions views on a YouTube video of her doing the "Dougie," a dance popularized by Cali Swag District, and has a 170,000-person Twitter following. The video caught the attention of a model scout, and the rest is bikini history. "Social media now creates its own reality,” says Wayne Sterling, publisher of industry site Models.com. “If you become a YouTube star among teenagers, you have even more recognizability than a TV star. Kate Upton is the perfect example of that." Click to read 10 things you probably didn't know about Kate Upton.
– An attempt at "upskirting," an exploding camera, and a guilty conscience led to … no arrest in Wisconsin, but the story is still attracting attention nationwide. The Wisconsin State Journal reports on the unidentified 32-year-old man at the center of it all, showing up Tuesday at a Madison police station to turn himself in for what he'd intended to do: take pictures up women's skirts by using a shoe camera. The Washington Post notes it's not exactly clear what a "shoe camera" is, but the man apparently was able to attach some kind of photographic device to his shoe and was testing it at home when the battery exploded, injuring his foot, Officer David Dexheimer tells the Journal. After getting treatment for the minor burns he received from the mini-blast, the man confessed his unsavory intentions to a clergyman, who encouraged him to turn himself in to police, Dexheimer says. There's a Wisconsin law on the books that outlaws anyone from purposely installing a device to photograph or otherwise record under a person's clothes without that person's consent, but the man in this case caught a lucky break: Per Madison Police Chief Mike Koval's daily "significant calls" blog, "the subject was counseled on his actions and released from the scene as no illicit video had been taken." Koval notes there is an ongoing investigation, however. (In some places, upskirting is legal.)
– David Bowie's latest album—marking his return after a decade—seems to be living up to the anticipation. Sure, it's not 1970s Bowie, but critics are loving the 66-year-old's The Next Day: It "may be the greatest comeback album ever," writes Andy Gill in a five-star Independent review. "It’s certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist’s own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality." In the Telegraph, which also gives the album five stars, Neil McCormick can't restrain himself: It's "an absolute wonder: urgent, sharp-edged, bold, beautiful, and baffling, an intellectually stimulating, emotionally charged, musically jagged, electric bolt through his own mythos and the mixed-up, celebrity-obsessed, war-torn world of the 21st century." If that weren't enough, The Next Day is "thought-provoking, strange, and filled with great songs," writes Alexis Petridis in the Guardian. Full of "inarguable tunes," the album's "success rests on simple pleasures"—though the lyrics are "so dense and allusive" you may wish you had Cliffs Notes. "It’s not Diamond Dogs or Young Americans or Low—get real, this isn’t the seventies," writes Chris Roberts at the Quietus. Still, "it’s not just good, it’s great."
– If you've been pining for Chick-Fil-A but don't want to support its president's anti-gay stance, rejoice: The company no longer donates to the most controversial groups opposing gay marriage, and hasn't since 2011. Rather, the company "focuses on youth, education, marriage enrichment, and local communities," says Campus Pride. The national LGBT campus organization looked at tax documents for Chick-Fil-A's philanthropic WinShape Foundation to make the determination, CNN reports. However, Chick-Fil-A does still donate to some groups that are against gay marriage—just not the most divisive ones. Despite all the uproar that ensued after company president Dan Cathy said last year that he supported traditional marriage, Chick-Fil-A continues to grow: Sales were up 14% in 2012 over a year prior, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, and the chain opened 96 new stores.
– Just how everyone likes their carrots: fake, stuffed with marijuana. Um, maybe not. Authorities say they seized 2,493 pounds of pot hidden inside a shipment of carrots at the Texas-Mexico border on Sunday, reports CNN. While some carrots turned out to be the real deal, nearly 3,000 carrot-shaped packages were found concealing marijuana worth about $499,000, per Fox News. "Once again, drug smuggling organizations have demonstrated their creativity in attempting to smuggle large quantities of narcotics across the US-Mexico border," said Port Director Efrain Solis Jr. Though the imaging inspection system flagged the vehicle, authorities might've had reason to suspect the veggies anyway: In November, some $2 million worth of drugs was also found in packages of carrots and cucumbers.
– The sad and strange tale of the US Army captain who died while Skyping with his wife gets even more mysterious: Army investigators say they found no bullet wound or any evidence of foul play in Bruce Kevin Clark’s death, but wife Susan Orellana-Clark has suggested her husband may have been shot. "Clark was suddenly knocked forward," reads a family statement released yesterday. "The closet behind him had a bullet hole in it.” Others, “including a member of the military, who rushed to the home of Clark's wife, also saw the hole and agreed it was a bullet hole." Orellana-Clark says her husband showed no signs of alarm or discomfort before falling forward onto his desk during their Skype chat, which she kept open for two hours as she tried to get assistance for Clark, 43, who was at his base in Afghanistan. "We can positively say that Captain Clark was not shot," says an Army spokesperson, adding that there was no trauma on the body other than a possibly broken nose from when Clark hit the desk, the AP reports. The Army is waiting on complete autopsy results, but has ruled the death from natural causes, Business Insider adds—but speculation is rampant on Twitter, with some wondering if Clark was killed by a sniper.
– The father of one of the UCLA basketball players freed by China after shoplifting maintains that he's not in a feud with President Trump over the incident, but the president may feel differently. Trump fired off two tweets Wednesday morning critical of LaVar Ball, at times referring to Ball as an "ungrateful fool" and a "poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair." But Trump's first point was to make clear that it was he, the president, who intervened to save the three players. "It wasn’t the White House, it wasn't the State Department, it wasn't father LaVar's so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence - IT WAS ME," he wrote. Trump suggested that without his intervention, UCLA freshmen LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill, and Cody Riley would have spent five to 10 years in prison in China for shoplifting sunglasses while on a team trip. The elder Ball has downplayed Trump's role, but on Monday denied reports of a feud. “Why would I be at war with the most powerful man in the world?" he asked, per ABC News. "What do you mean take on Donald Trump? Take him on for what?" Despite the sniping, the men have something in common: reality show experience. Ball In the Family, chronicling the Ball family, streams on Facebook. (Here's what else Trump has had to say on the matter.)
– If Donald Trump chooses to roast journalists, celebrities, and politicians at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, DC, this year, it'll be with the knowledge that he's being brutally mocked not too far away. Samantha Bee of TBS' Full Frontal says she'll host celebrities, journalists, and comedians at a Trump roast at the Willard Hotel in Washington on April 29. Bee tells the New York Times that the goal of the event, dubbed "Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner," is not to "supersede" the official dinner scheduled for the same night, but simply to "ensure that we get to properly roast the president." She promises "plenty of surprises," per Variety. "If you're not careful you just might learn something. Specifically, you'll learn how screwed we'd be without a free press," she adds. It's not yet clear when or how the event will be broadcast, or even who will attend, but Bee says proceeds will go to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Whether the official Correspondents' dinner will happen is also unclear given Trump's tumultuous relationship with the press, his history with the dinner, and "his oft-demonstrated thin skin," reports the Times. The Independent notes the dinner has been an annual occurrence since 1983.
– Swatting a fruit fly is as tricky as trying to catch a tiny fighter jet with an expert pilot at the controls, researchers say. High-speed cameras captured the insects avoiding threats by executing supercharged, banked turns much like fighter planes, reports the Los Angeles Times. The flies beat their wings 200 times per second and were capable of altering course in a single wingbeat, performing complex calculations incredibly quickly for a creature with only a tiny speck of a brain. The University of Washington team plans further research to determine how the flies are able to perform such amazing feats in the air, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "A fly with a brain the size of a salt grain has the behavioral repertoire nearly as complex as a much larger animal such as a mouse," one of the researchers says. "That’s a super interesting problem from an engineering perspective."
– One of the scientists who helped unfold the structure of DNA is putting his Nobel Prize on the auction block, and James Watson says it's because he's broke after being ostracized by the academic community over racist remarks he made seven years ago, the Atlantic reports. "No one really wants to admit I exist," he tells the Financial Times, labeling himself an "unperson." The remarks were made in a 2007 Sunday Times article, in which he admitted to feeling "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really." He tacked on that even though some would say black people were as intelligent as whites, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." Those weren't the first incendiary statements he's made: As Laura Blue pointed out in a 2007 Time article, Watson has also said fat people don't get jobs because they lack ambition, that sun and dark skin creates a "Latin lover" libido, and that a female colleague widely credited with expediting the DNA discovery didn't dress well. But while Blue writes that it's "hard not to feel a little bit sorry" for Watson, whom she calls "less an arrogant bigot than an enthusiastic if misguided old man," Adam Rutherford says in the Guardian that "no one is interested in his racist, sexist views" and that "it turns out that just like DNA, people are messy, complex, and sometimes full of hideous errors." Meanwhile, his Nobel is expected to net between $2.5 million and $3.5 million when it's up for auction on Thursday, according to a Christie's statement. (Maybe he just needs to watch some Jon Stewart.)
– On Saturday, a Whitney Houston greatest-hits album cost about $8 in the UK iTunes store; but shortly after the singer was found dead, it had jumped to a little more than $12.50. The changed sparked a customer uproar. "It is just a case of iTunes cashing in on the singer's death, which in my opinion is totally parasitic," said one, according to DigitalSpy. But the Guardian reports that it was Sony, not iTunes, that was responsible for the change—which has now been reversed. Sony boosted the wholesale price of Houston's 1997 Ultimate Collection, which iTunes currently says isn't available in its US store. It was the second-bestselling album as of this morning, the Guardian notes. Sony's change wasn't "cynical," said an insider: Sony reviewed Houston's catalog after her death, and found that the wholesale price was simply wrong. Regardless of the controversy, Houston's sales are soaring since her death, ABC News notes, with seven of her records in Amazon's music top 10. (Click to read about an eerie twist in Houston's death, involving her daughter.)
– Paula Patton and Robin Thicke are another step closer to divorce. The actress was granted a divorce Tuesday from the "Blurred Lines" singer in Los Angeles. Their legal split will go into effect April 14. The 39-year-old actress and 38-year-old singer, who have a 4-year-old son, announced they were separating last year after nine years of marriage. Thicke promoted his latest album, the not-so-subtly-titled Paula, last summer with several public appearances accompanied by reconciliation pleas that apparently did not work. In more bad news for Thicke, Marvin Gaye's children filed an injunction in court Tuesday to prevent the copying, distributing, and performing of "Blurred Lines" after a jury determined last week that Thicke and his fellow performers on the song copied elements of the R&B icon's 1977 hit "Got to Give It Up." The injunction against "Blurred Lines" could give Gaye's family leverage to negotiate for royalties and other concessions, such as songwriting credits. (Click to read about 16 of the most expensive Hollywood divorces of all time.)
– Mark Kerrigan—now charged with assault following the sudden death of his father—was sued by his parents over money in March 2008. Daniel and Brenda Kerrigan claimed to have loaned their son—who was in jail at the time on an assault charge—$105,000 for his mortgage and expenses ranging from credit card bills to cat food. He then “failed, refused and neglected to make full payment upon demand,” according to court papers; the parents' attorney said the issue was resolved that December. Mark pleaded not guilty to assaulting his father yesterday and is being held on bail, the Boston Herald adds. Meanwhile, fellow figure skaters are reaching out to Mark's sister, Nancy: Paul Wylie tells People that she's “really struggling," while Kristi Yamaguchi said Kerrigan texted her to thank her for the support. Even Tonya Harding, Nancy’s most infamous rival, released a statement telling the Insider she is “very sad for Nancy. She understands the grief Nancy and her family are feeling at this difficult time. ”
– Ten years before Making a Murderer fans started debating Steven Avery's case at just about every water cooler in the country, Monica Davey was just another reporter covering Avery's arrest on suspicion of the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc, Wis. The news came just as Avery was pursuing a $36 million civil lawsuit against a former prosecutor and sheriff, having recently been acquitted of a sexual assault for which he spent 18 years in prison. "There are 36 million reasons why they should be doing this to him," Davey quoted Avery's brother as saying in a 2005 New York Times article. It caught the eye of two graduate student filmmakers, who would spend the next decade creating Making a Murderer. The series has forced Manitowoc to relive its darkest history and has left the county transformed, Davey writes at the Times following a return visit. While the county tourism office used to field calls about jogging paths and beaches, callers now question why the office would want to draw visitors to such a town. The local police and sheriff's departments, city hall, and even the Manitowoc County Historical Society are forced to listen to "yelling, cussing, and swearing," says an official. As for Manitowoc residents, "the talkative, curious people I had come upon a decade earlier … avoided any talk about Making a Murderer, or simply spotted my notebook and walked away," writes Davey. One, however, said she was fearful of a rally in support of Avery, scheduled for Friday, per WBAY. Even Avery's mother, who ardently defends her son, says the calls for interviews are overwhelming. "I'm too old for this," she says. "It's too much." Read Davey's full piece here.
– The World Health Organization is calling an emergency meeting of health ministers from 11 countries next week in hopes of coming up with a plan to combat the worst outbreak of Ebola the world has ever seen. So far more than 390 people have died in the outbreak, which is stretching across Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, Bloomberg reports. That far exceeds the 280 killed when the disease debuted in 1976. "This epidemic is out of control," a Doctors Without Borders official said this week, according to the Guardian. This outbreak is proving especially deadly because it involves the most devastating of the five Ebola viruses; Zaire ebolavirus kills 79% of those infected, Vox explains. It's also the first major outbreak to hit West Africa, and workers there aren't sure how to deal with it—many hospitals, for example, are releasing infected patients. Among the general populace, education is even worse. In Sierra Leone, for instance, young people have burned drugs and supplies, believing that it was the medicine killing the patients. At its meeting next week, the WHO will seek to form a multi-country team to close that information gap. On the bright side, "the chance of Ebola spreading out of West Africa is very, very low," one specialist tells NPR—although if it did it would likely hit Paris next, because 10% of Guinea's air traffic out of its Conakry airport heads there.
– Cory Monteith's autopsy is in, and his cause of death is what everybody expected: Hard drugs and booze. The coroner in British Columbia lays the blame on "mixed drug toxicity, involving heroin and alcohol," reports TMZ. The 31-year-old Glee actor was found in his Vancouver hotel room over the weekend, and he has a long history of trying to get his substance abuse under control. The results "seem to confirm this was an accident," reports ET Online.
– These are troubling times for parents in Fort Collins, Colo., where two 11-year-old children took their own lives within days of each other. The suicide of a girl in sixth grade at Lincoln Middle School last Monday was followed by the Saturday night suicide of a boy who attended Blevins Middle School. Both schools are in the Poudre School District, and authorities are investigating whether the two deaths are linked, reports the Coloradoan. The girl's family says she suffered from bullying and depression, but one of the boy's friends tells the Coloradoan that he was a well-liked prankster; the classmate doesn't believe the boy was bullied. A police spokeswoman tells the Coloradoan that they have "not received any information that bullying was a contributing factor in either incident." But the girl's older sister tells KDVR that the 11-year-old had been bullied since the second grade and the family didn't discover it until she came home with a broken arm. She says the family wants the death to bring about changes in how schools deal with bullying—and to send the message to bullied children that they should always ask for help. "If they're not going to listen to me, then imagine my little sister dancing in the sky wherever she is looking down on you saying that it's going to be OK. You can make it through this," she says. The Denver Post reports that Larimer County has logged 77 suicides year-to-date, including these two and one more of a child under age 18. The year prior, there were two under-18 suicides in the county. (Read about how a mother survived her son's high-profile suicide.)
– The makers of Cheerios and Grape Nuts hope to win over health-conscious consumers by ditching genetically modified ingredients in their cereals. The problem is that Food Navigator read the fine print on the new boxes and found that each has fewer vitamins. With Cheerios, for instance, the cereal went from providing 25% of the daily value of vitamin B2 (riboflavin) to 2%. Or as a professor of crop science puts it, the cereal "went from being a major source of vitamin B2 to being almost zip." Grape Nuts, meanwhile, no longer has vitamins A, D, B12, and B2. What's going on? Neither General Mills nor Post offered an explanation, "but the reason likely has to do with the difficulty of sourcing vitamins from non-genetically modified sources," says LiveScience. For example, vitamins are often produced using micro-organisms kept in fermentation tanks that are fed "feed stock" that comes from crops such as corn; it's not always easy to certify that the stock is also GMO-free. (In other genetically modified news, click to read about a new potato.)
– The quotes are so incendiary that some are questioning their veracity. But Axios reports Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House author Michael Wolff has "dozens of hours" of tapes to back up statements that appear in the book. And in an excerpt running in the Hollywood Reporter, Wolff (who is the co-founder of Newser) explains just how he got access to them. A June 2016 Hollywood Reporter article may have helped grease things: Hope Hicks emailed Wolff to say Trump was pleased with the cover. Post-election, Wolff says he floated the idea of him coming to the White House "journalistically, as a fly on the wall" to gather information for a future book. Trump seemed disinterested in the idea of a book, but "his non-disapproval became a kind of passport for me to hang around," writes Wolff. And so Wolff writes he spent each week at the Hay-Adams hotel, scheduled appointments with senior staffers, and "plunk[ed] myself down, day after day, on a West Wing couch." The excerpt shares other tidbits—how the Secret Service protested the president's attempts to lock himself in his bedroom; how Trump's post-dinner calls to billionaire pals spurred leaks; how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump thought Anthony Scaramucci would be the White House's saving grace—which Trump's lawyer is now trying to block from release. The Washington Post reports Wolff and his publisher, Henry Holt and Co., have been sent a letter that demands they "immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release, or dissemination of the book" or any excerpts; the lawyer also wants a copy and says a libel suit is being considered.
– Research led by an Oxford scientist has suggested there could be something to legends of the yeti, even if it's not quite the creature legends would suggest. Bryan Sykes has argued, based on genetic analysis, that two hair samples collected by yeti enthusiasts in the Himalayas could indeed point to an animal we didn't know existed today, though it would be something like an ancient polar bear rather than something like Bigfoot. But Eliécer E. Gutiérrez of the Smithsonian Institution and Ronald Pine at the University of Kansas are now raining—or perhaps snowing—on Sykes' parade, NBC News reports. They write in a study at ZooKeys that there's not enough information to suggest the hairs were from an unknown species: "We have concluded that there is no reason to believe that the two samples came from anything other than Brown Bears." Gutiérrez and Pine were bothered by Sykes' use of just a "very short fragment" of the sequenced gene to arrive at his conclusion. LiveScience reports they determined the samples could have come from a brown bear or polar bear; based on the Himalayan location, the brown bear is the likely source, they maintain. Theirs is the second study to question Sykes' findings: The BBC reported in December that another group of researchers found that a brown bear subspecies was the source of the hairs. But Sykes isn't giving up just yet. He calls the new research "entirely statistical," noting "the only way forward is to find a living bear that matches the (genetic material) and study fresh material from it. Which involves getting off your butt, not an activity I usually associate with desk-bound molecular taxonomists," he tells NBC. Read more on where Sykes got his samples.
– Vermont State Police say a 5-year-old boy has died two days after his grandmother died while trying to save him from drowning, the AP reports. Authorities say Jaxon Lawrence was pronounced dead at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Sunday. Police say Jaxon fell off a toy flotation device in the water of Lowell Lake in Londonderry on Friday. His 55-year-old grandmother, Julie Lawrence, tried to save him, but she also started to struggle. Rescuers and officers found Julie Lawrence and Jaxon unresponsive in the water and tried to resuscitate both. Julie Lawrence was pronounced dead at the scene. Jaxon's 9-year-old brother also tried to rescue him. Police say the boy swam for help and is in good health. (In upstate New York, a 3-year-old boy went missing from his family's home Sunday afternoon and drowned in the Susquehanna River.)
– Frilly crib bumpers may add a whimsical touch to a nursery, but they could be dangerous for infants. A study published in August’s Pediatrics journal says that sharing a bed, as well as items left in a baby’s sleep area are risk factors in infant deaths, reports Time. How much of a factor depends on the baby’s age: The study found that 74% of the younger infants who died (ages newborn to 3 months) were sharing a bed with another person or animal, while 39% of the older infants (ages 4 months to 1 year) were surrounded by blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, or other objects. Most of the babies in the study—which was based on information about 8,207 infant fatalities compiled from 24 states by the National Center for the Review and Prevention of Child Deaths—were non-Hispanic whites, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics; 58% were male. As Time points out, the study doesn’t prove any clear cause-and-effect: Researchers say they were simply trying “to determine any associations between risk factors for sleep-related deaths at different ages.” Still, the AAP recommends that parents create a “safe sleep environment,” which includes placing babies on a firm mattress with a fitted sheet in a crib that meets safety standards (not in an adult bed or on a sofa), keeping toys and loose bedding such as blankets and pillows out of the crib, and dressing the baby in sleep clothing (e.g., sleep sacks). (Click here to read about other sudden infant death cases and possible causes.)
– One might expect students taking a class called "Sports, Ethics, and Religion" to know better, but Dartmouth College says that it's uncovered widespread cheating in a class with that title, reports Bloomberg. "I feel pretty burned by the whole thing," says class professor Randall Balmer, who says he found 43 kids were using a clicker to answer questions for absent students. "I’ve never faced anything on this scale before." After he made the bust, and reported it as an honor code violation, another 21 students came forward. The class was aimed at jocks, and many of those accused are student athletes, notes the Valley News. Laments Dartmouth's ethics institute director, the current generation was "raised with the notion that they are the best, not with the notions of integrity, responsibility, and self-sacrifice. It’s a difficult notion for an 18-year-old—self-regulation." Balmer opted to drop students by a letter grade rather than flunk them, in what Gawker says is "the right thing to do, not that any of them would know it."
– Amid President Trump's flurry of actions Saturday was some restructuring at the National Security Council. White House chief strategist Steve Bannon now has a permanent seat on the principals committee of the NSC, reports the Washington Post, which notes that "the changes affirm the ascent of Bannon" in giving a political adviser a seat at the military table. At the same time, Trump ordered that the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former members of the principals committee, would be invited only when "issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed." The move is contrary to former President George W. Bush, reports CBS News, who banned Karl Rove from interactions with the NSC; former President Obama, however, occasionally sent David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs to NSC meetings. Bannon, however, "is a former naval officer. He's got a tremendous understanding of the world and the geopolitical landscape that we have now," says press secretary Sean Spicer, per the AP. Meanwhile, USA Today notes that the shakeup started #StopPresidentBannon trending. (Bannon had some succinct advice for the media on Saturday.)
– The Bourbon virus—so named because it first emerged recently in Bourbon County, Kansas—has puzzled researchers. A man with the first known case of the disease died last year, and since then, experts have been working to learn more about it. A new study outlines findings, NBC News reports. "It took months to find out this a novel virus that belonged to a genus of viruses called Thogotovirus," which have been seen "throughout the world," CDC researcher Erin Staples tells NBC. Just one example of the Thogotovirus has appeared in the US, the researchers write in a CDC publication: Aransas Bay virus, found in ticks in a seabird nest off Texas. Though the Kansas death is the first scientists have linked to the illness, Staples believes it has probably affected others; they just didn't know it. That doesn't mean we should panic, she notes; we should just continue to protect ourselves against ticks, which may be carriers. Mosquitoes and other animals may also be involved, and researchers are preparing to investigate.
– Meryl Streep says she is "truly sorry" that Rose McGowan seems to see her as an "adversary," because they are on the same side against movie industry "bastards" like Harvey Weinstein and other "entitled bosses." In a public statement issued in response to McGowan's attack on a plan to wear black to the Golden Globes in protest, Streep stresses that she was not "deliberately silent" about Weinstein's attack on McGowan in the '90s or his other crimes, Deadline reports. "I don't tacitly approve of rape. I didn't know," she writes. "I don't like young women being assaulted. I didn't know this was happening." She says she has never been to Weinstein's home or hotel room and has only visited his office once. Weinstein, Streep writes, distributed movies she made with other people, and he "needed me much more than I needed him and he made sure I didn't know." She adds that she has been hoping to speak to McGowan to express her "deep respect for her and others' bravery in exposing the monsters among us." She says a legal defense fund is being assembled "to bring down the bastards, and help victims fight this scourge within." In a now-deleted tweet, McGowan called Streep a hypocrite for "happily working" with the "Pig Monster." She has not publicly responded to Streep's statement, though she tweeted Monday that she is sorry about suggesting celebrity protesters should wear Marchesa, the fashion line co-founded by Weinstein's estranged wife, Entertainment Tonight reports.
– Well that was fun. Team USA made a splash at the opening ceremonies of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea on Friday, marching in the Parade of Nations to "Gangnam Style," the 2012 hit from Korean artist PSY. (See a clip here.) Though several other countries walked to the same tune, American athletes stood out in other ways. For one, USA's 242 athletes make up the largest contingent "for any country at any Winter Games," reports the New York Times. For another, they wore what some thought were "horrible" gloves. Despite the cold, the athletes hardly needed them since their Ralph Lauren jackets were heated, per USA Today, which shows off photos of other athletes who stood out. (Kim Jong Un's sister is there.)
– A 300-pound woman in Pennsylvania has pleaded guilty to murdering her boyfriend by stabbing him, hitting in the head with a table leg, and finally crushing the 120-pound man with her own weight. Windi Thomas, 44, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the March 18 death of Keeno Butler in exchange for a recommended sentence of 18 to 36 years in state prison, the Erie Times-News reports. Police say Thomas admitted crushing Butler after a fight at their Erie residence. She told them she positioned herself so that some of her weight would be on his head. The death was ruled a homicide "caused by respiratory insufficiency secondary to blunt force trauma to the neck and thoracic compression, exacerbated by blunt force trauma to the head," court papers state. Sandra Butler, the victim's sister, says Thomas should have gotten life. "My mother, she calls for him every night," she says. Thomas, who had been scheduled to go on trial next week, will be sentenced Dec. 21, the AP reports. (A Fitbit led to this man's arrest after he claimed an obese intruder killed his wife.)
– As an Argentine cardinal, Jorge Bergoglio backed gay civil unions, and Pope Francis is signaling in an interview that the Catholic Church as a whole could tolerate at least some of them. While maintaining the church's position that "marriage is between a man and a woman," Francis nonetheless conceded that "we have to look at different cases and evaluate them in their variety." He says civil unions can be a financial help to couples when it comes to matters like "medical care," notes CNN. Other highlights in his interview with Italy's Corriere della Sera, as per the AP: He's been the subject of comic-book-inspired street art and a fan recently offered him an imitation Oscar, but Francis isn't digging the whole Superpope thing. "I don't like ideological interpretations, this type of mythology of Pope Francis. If I'm not mistaken, Sigmund Freud said that in every idealization there's an aggression. Depicting the pope as a sort of Superman, a star, is offensive to me," he noted. "The pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps calmly, and has friends like everyone else. A normal person." A new magazine looks unlikely to alter that "superhero" perception. Today sees the launch of Il Mio Papa, or My Pope—"a sort of fanzine," says editor Aldo Vitali. The new magazine will cover the pope's pronouncements, offering a weekly papal centerfold emblazoned with a quote. It will take a look at Francis' personal life, "but of course it can’t be like something you’d do for One Direction," Vitali tells the New York Times. "We aim to be more respectful, more noble." Francis is opening up the gardens of Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence, to members of the public, the Telegraph reports. "It was Pope Francis himself" who made the decision," says a Vatican official.
– The internet loves obsessing over Game of Thrones, so Hello Giggles wants to know why more people aren't talking about the fact that "Tommen is also his own cousin." Dean-Charles Chapman currently plays King Tommen Baratheon on the show, a role he took over from a younger actor in 2014. But he also played Tommen's cousin, Martyn Lannister, in a few episodes of the show back in the third season, Mashable explains. Hello Giggles thinks the recasting makes complete sense. “Given the Lannister family’s penchant for incest, having several people in that lineage look the same (like exactly the same) would not be a surprise.” Poor Martyn was killed off after being taken hostage by Robb Stark, and Bustle thinks Chapman better hope for a third role as Tommen is "probably doomed just like his look-alike cousin."
– Rachel Borch was out for a jog in the woods near her home in Hope, Maine, when a "ferocious-looking" attacker with beady eyes and tiny teeth made a beeline for her, reports the Camden Herald. Borch, 21, knew immediately that something was wrong with the raccoon that was charging toward her. "Imagine the Tasmanian devil," she tells the Bangor Daily News of the "terrifying" June 3 incident. Yanking out her headphones, she began "dancing" around the animal on the narrow path, but she tells the Herald she knew that, one way or another, the animal was going to bite her. She figured her hands would be the best spot, so she offered them up. The raccoon chomped down on her thumb and stayed there, scratching at her legs and arms as she screamed. Now on her knees, she spotted her phone lying submerged in a mud puddle, and had an idea: drown it. "With my thumb in its mouth, I just pushed its head down into the muck," she tells the News. When the raccoon finally stopped moving, she yanked out her finger and raced the three-quarters of a mile home. Two days later, the state confirmed the animal was infected with rabies. Borch got rabies shots, and an animal control officer adds an unpleasant footnote: The infected raccoon may not be alone. "Not to scare people," Heidi Blood tells the News, but "when there’s one, there’s typically another." (Normally nocturnal like raccoons, a crazed beaver attacked a woman paddle-boarder.)
– "I want my kids to know there is no shame in getting help when you need it, and to be a source of strength for anyone out there who needs help but is afraid to take the first step," Ben Affleck writes in a Facebook post disclosing a recent stint in rehab for alcohol addiction. Affleck, who also went to rehab in 2001 for alcohol abuse, says the issue is one that he has "dealt with in the past and will continue to confront," Mashable reports. "I'm lucky to have the love of my family and friends, including my co-parent, Jen, who has supported me and cared for our kids as I've done the work I set out to do," Affleck writes. "This was the first of many steps being taken towards a positive recovery." Affleck has three children with Jennifer Garner, whom he separated from in 2015, Variety notes. Sources tell TMZ that rumors the couple plan to call off their divorce are not true.
– It seems becoming a vegetarian and staying a vegetarian are two very different things. A whopping 84% of vegetarians end up eating meat again, and most people shift back within a single year, according to a new study. Specifically, 53% of vegetarians are meat-eaters again within 12 months, while more than 30% go back to meat within three months, the Huffington Post reports. Of the 11,000 people studied, 2% were vegetarians, 10% former vegetarians, and 88% lifelong meat-eaters. A major reason for lapsing, it seems, was social: Those who returned to being omnivorous didn't have enough support among friends for their vegetarian lifestyles. Earlier research points to health issues from staying meat-free, the Smithsonian reports. Some 35% of respondents to a separate survey of lapsed vegetarians said their own poorer health drove them back to animal flesh, Skeptoid reports. "I will take a dead cow over anemia anytime," says one respondent. And in the Guardian, a lapsed vegetarian writes about the inconvenience of avoiding meat, as well as the feeling of "every cell in my body screaming 'protein—that's what you need.'" Perhaps the writer would agree with the conclusions of the new study, as Co.Exist reports them: "A message focused on reduction instead of elimination of animal products may be more effective to create an overall decline in animal product consumption." (Read about a veggie burger that "bleeds" like meat.)
– Jon Stewart took over as host of the Daily Show in January 1999, but when did the program truly start becoming the Daily Show that legions of fans would come to love? Try December of that year, when Steve Carell boarded John McCain's campaign bus "and changed the entire trajectory" of the show, writes Chris Smith at Vanity Fair. The article is a fascinating oral history of the show's beginning that includes interviews with Stewart, Carell, Stephen Colbert, and pretty much everyone involved. The first year was rough for Stewart as he fought with the holdover writing staff from previous host Craig Kilborn and sought to put his stamp on the show. Things came together in that Carell interview, in which he peppers McCain with softball questions, then springs a policy zinger. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Carell says, "I was just kidding! I don’t even know what that means!" And the tense moment subsides. (See the clip.) Carell: "It was making fun of a gotcha moment. And I think that a lot of what we do on The Daily Show is making fun of journalistic tropes, and I think that was one of them." Head writer Ben Karlin: "I remember seeing it in the editing room. I remember Jon called me down, and seeing it and thinking, Yeah, this is what we should be doing. This is the goal. It was one of Carell’s most incredible moments. He asks McCain a question in a way that no journalists were talking to the candidates. And it was like, Oh s---, we are able, in this weird, unintentional way, to add a level of insight to the process that doesn’t exist. That was really, really exciting." Click for the full piece, in which Stewart talks about how that 2000 campaign provided his "aha moment" of how to present the show—by "deconstructing the process."
– The case of the Renoir supposedly purchased at a flea market for $7 in 2009 continues to unspool dramatically: Now the Washington Post finds three witnesses who say On the Shore of the Seine hung in Marcia Fouquet's Virginia home in the 1980s and 1990s. That would seem to dispute the story Fouquet's daughter, Martha (or Marcia, depending on which article you're reading) Fuqua, has given about her lucky find. The painting was discovered to have been stolen from a Baltimore museum in 1951, and now Fuqua is fighting to hold onto it. Robert Musser, who dated and lived with Fouquet in the 1980s, recalls the small, ornately-framed painting adorned with Renoir's name on a small plaque attached to the frame. "She said it came from a museum in Baltimore," he says. "She said it was a real Renoir, that she owned a Renoir. ... She never told me how she acquired it." He assumed it was a fake. An anonymous childhood friend of Fuqua's says the mother and daughter showed her the painting in Fouquet's studio in the 1990s and said it was a real Renoir. "I didn't ask where it came from because I just assumed they were lying," she says, but the "unusual" frame and Renoir plaque stuck in her memory. Bobby J. Fontaine, a former student of Fouquet's who lived with the family for a time, also remembered Fouquet showing him the painting in the 1990s. "She says, 'Do you think it’s real or not?'" he recalls. "I told her, 'I guess it’s real.'" But they spoke no more about it. This follows last month's news that a few months before Fuqua claimed to have found the Renoir at a flea market, she took it to be appraised at an auction house—where she reportedly told an art specialist that she had gotten it from an estate.
– French authorities say a man has been hit with preliminary terrorism charges for plotting an attack on President Emmanuel Macron—at a time when President Trump would be visiting. A Paris prosecutor's office spokeswoman says that the 23-year-old suspect's plans were vague and that he appeared to be acting alone. She said the man was arrested in the Argenteuil suburb Thursday, and told police of a plan to attack Macron on Bastille Day on July 14. Macron will oversee a military parade in Paris that day alongside Trump, per the AP. It wasn't clear whether Trump's presence was a factor in the alleged plot. The suspect was given preliminary charges Saturday of individual terrorist activity. Police found three kitchen knives in his vehicle and said he'd been looking up potential targets on the internet. Police say he also expressed nationalist views, voicing a desire to attack "Muslims, Jews, blacks, homosexuals," per AFP. The man previously spent time in prison for condoning terrorism by praising the 2011 attack by Norwegian Anders Breivik that left 77 people dead.
– Human smuggling is suspected in an early morning crash outside Houston that left six people dead, seven injured, and two arrested, KTRK reports. The incident started when police tried to pull over an SUV for a traffic violation, according to the Houston Chronicle. The driver allegedly sped off, leading police on a nearly 10-minute freeway chase before losing control of the SUV. The vehicle flipped multiple times, ejecting four people, all of whom died at the scene, the Chronicle reports. Two others later died at the hospital. Officers reportedly arrested two suspects who fled from the scene; the extent of their injuries is unknown. According to KTRK, the SUV's middle seats had been removed and the rear seats folded down in an apparent attempt to fit more people inside. Police say 15 people believed to be immigrants were crowded into the vehicle, reports the New York Times. The youngest, age 18, didn't survive. Police say most are from Honduras or Guatemala.
– Papa needs a new pair of … cows? Zynga yesterday filed the first salvo of paperwork necessary to obtain an online gambling license in Nevada, the Wall Street Journal reports. But don't expect to be betting on Farmville (or more likely titles like Zynga Poker) anytime soon. The document filed yesterday was a request for the state to decide if Zynga is even potentially suitable for a license, and that decision alone is expected to take 12 to 18 months. It's unclear how long after that final approval would come. The move comes amidst a rapidly changing legal landscape around online gambling. Nevada became the first state to legalize online poker earlier this year. Though it has handed out a few licenses already, none of the companies' online poker games is up and running yet. And when they are, they'll be limited to state residents. But that could soon change: Harry Reid and Jon Kyl are working on a bill that would legalize online poker nationwide and even create an Office of Online Poker Oversight, the Journal reported yesterday. However, the bill would simultaneously ban most other forms of online gambling.
– "They came to doctors too late. … Only a miracle can save them." Those were the words to the Siberian Times from the Irkutsk region's health minister regarding those sickened from ingesting a deadly bath oil, with dozens already dead from the mass poisoning—said to be the "worst such case in modern Russian history." The BBC reports at least 58 have died, per local media, and notes the death toll is expected to rise, as many of the more than three dozen poisoned are in serious condition. The concoction that caused the deaths was a black-market mixture promoted as a safe, hawthorn-scented alcoholic beverage, with a label that said it contained ethyl alcohol, which is OK to consume. However, it actually was made with methanol, which Live Science notes is a harmful chemical used in antifreeze that (besides death) can also cause a slew of other medical problems, including blindness. A market worker tells Reuters she usually uses the oil to remove grease and remnants of old price tags still stuck on surfaces. The BBC—which notes millions of cash-strapped people in Russia often resort to drinking cheap "surrogate" booze, including perfume and window cleaner—says the owners of the shop where the bath oil was made have been arrested. (Beer wasn't officially considered alcohol in Russia until a few years ago.)
– That triple bogey must have stung: Mitt Romney made a point to call out Rick Santorum by name today. Speaking to reporters in Atlanta, Romney said Santorum and Newt Gingrich were part of the Republican party that "lost its way" by spending too much federal money while in office, reports CNN. "In this race, I'm the only guy that hasn't spent time in Washington," he said. "And Senator Santorum and Speaker Gingrich, they are the very Republicans who acted like Democrats." Santorum, for his part, spoke to a group of pastors in Texas and said he has "no desire to be pastor of this country," notes ABC News. "But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to stand and fight for the things that are consistent with what this country was founded upon, which was a moral foundation." He also alluded to his big night: "The gift of being underestimated is a wonderful gift." Rush Limbaugh, meanwhile, took delight in pointing out how "shocked" the GOP establishment was after Santorum's wins, which he says only proves "how insulated they are," reports Politico.
– When Erin and Marianne Krupa decided they wanted to start a family five years ago, they moved from North Carolina to New Jersey in search of a less conservative environment. Little did they know they were about to hit upon a state insurance mandate from 2001 that they say specifically discriminates against same-sex couples trying to conceive: In New Jersey, most women under 35 must prove infertility by having had "two years of unprotected sexual intercourse" before their insurance providers are required to cover fertility treatments, reports the New York Times. Soon after they visited fertility doctors, Erin learned in 2013 that she is infertile due to endometriosis and benign cysts on her uterus. But their insurance provider has denied coverage of most treatments the couple has gone through, which means they've spent nearly $50,000 so far in their quest to have a child. Now they're suing the state. "It's completely discriminatory," reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Jane Miller tells WABC-TV. And while only two other women are joining the Krupas in the lawsuit, Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights tells the New Jersey Law Journal that "these denials are extremely common" and "we expect to see many more [legal challenges]." One of the plaintiffs' attorneys says that the law in New Jersey is especially discriminatory in its language about exposure to sperm through intercourse. New York and Connecticut, for instance, require exposure but don't specify how, while legislation in California and Maryland requires infertility treatment be covered regardless of sexual orientation. As for the Krupas, Marianne has since gone through her own fertility treatments, but has miscarried twice. Both women are still trying. (These two common surgeries may make women more fertile.)
– Impressed when an FBI forensic expert testifies in court? Jurors likely are too, but the FBI's hair-comparison unit actually gave unscientific testimony against criminal defendants for more than 20 years before 2000, according to the FBI and the Justice Dept. Among the FBI's 28 microscopic hair experts, 26 "overstated forensic matches" to favor the prosecution in nearly all of the 268 cases reviewed so far, the Washington Post reports. "The FBI’s three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster," says Peter Neufeld, who helped found the Innocence Project. The reviewed cases include 32 defendants given the death sentence, 14 of whom have already died in prison or were executed; about 2,500 cases involving hair matches are being looked at in all. Of course, other evidence may have sufficed to convict defendants found guilty. But the FBI, acknowledging the problem, has agreed to work with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project in reviewing cases between 1972 and 1999. Now 46 states and the District of Columbia are receiving information that could lead to appeals, if defense lawyers, prosecutors, or judges are willing or able. Truth is, there's no scientific standard for matching hair, the Post says. Worse, the forensic-hair scandal is only part of an ongoing review of all criminal forensics, which the Post has reported on here, here, and here. "The forensic science system ... has serious problems that can only be addressed by a national commitment to overhaul the current structure," a science panel concluded back in 2009.
– It's long seemed unthinkable, but US military personnel could soon see cuts to their pay and benefits. Top commanders are considering such cuts as they deal with a decreasing budget, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair said this weekend. While acknowledging that "we can't pay [soldiers] enough," Gen. Martin Dempsey added, "We also have an institution to manage." No specifics have been revealed; details will be released along with the proposed military budget in February, the Wall Street Journal reports. Dempsey did say benefits wouldn't be immediately cut, no changes will be made to the retirement system, and that the plan is a multi-year effort to slow down compensation. Pay and benefits will soon make up 60% of the military budget (currently, the cost of military personnel is about 50% of the budget), meaning that if they're not curbed, there won't be enough money for new weapons or training within the decade, Dempsey said. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and President Obama must approve the plan, then Congress, and so far it's not looking too popular with lawmakers. The news comes days after a Congressional Budget Office report that said cutting military pay is one of many options to reduce the budget deficit, Military.com reports.
– Leading Tea Partier Martin Williams labeled President Obama a "half-white" racist in an email to other Tea Party Express leaders unearthed by TPM. Williams appears to be responding to accusations of racism himself in the email, which refers to a CNN interview in which Anderson Cooper made "false allegations" that he had called Obama a Nazi. In the email, Williams claims to have a strong civil rights record and, apparently jumbling his words, writes: "I will defend my record on race to no one under any circumstances." Williams' Tea Party Express branch has been slammed as "astroturf" by other factions of the movement. "Williams is not someone I would want being my spokesman," a leader of the Tea Party Patriots wrote to the Huffington Post. "He comes off as an arrogant, self promoting, egotistical jerk."
– Joy Milne noticed a small difference in her husband just before he turned 40. "His smell changed," the Scottish woman tells the BBC. "It wasn't all of a sudden. It was very subtle—a musky smell." He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease six years later and died in June at age 65. Milne found herself supporting the Parkinson's UK charity, where she noticed others had the same distinct smell. She happened to mention her observation to scientists at a talk, and they later put her to the test, presenting her with T-shirts worn by six people with Parkinson's and six without. "She got the six Parkinson's, but then she was adamant one of the 'control' subjects had Parkinson's," says a scientist. Researchers were impressed and dubbed her a "super-smeller," per AFP. Then eight months later, that one control subject returned to tell scientists he had just been diagnosed with Parkinson's. Because of Milne's sniffer, scientists now theorize that changes in the sebum—an oily substance produced by the skin—may occur in people with early Parkinson's. Now Parkinson's UK is funding a study that will see swabs taken from 200 people with and without Parkinson's and studied by a team of smell experts, including Milne. The swabs will also be studied chemically. A proven link between an odor and the disease could make for an easy and clear way to identify a disease that is "incredibly difficult ... to diagnose," as the Scotland director of Parkinson's UK puts it. "It would be absolutely incredible and life-changing." Currently, doctors diagnose the disease largely as they have for the last two centuries: by observing a patient and his or her symptoms. (The human nose really is amazing.)
– The far-fetched idea of California seceding from the nation took a tiny step forward this week. California's secretary of state agreed to allow a group called Yes California to begin collecting signatures for a ballot measure, reports the Los Angeles Times. If 585,407 are collected by July 25—a high hurdle for the relatively small group—a proposal will land on the 2018 ballot to erase lines in the state Constitution outlining California as "an inseparable part of the United States" and the US Constitution as the "supreme law of the land." If passed, it would set up a 2019 vote on whether California should become "a free, sovereign and independent country." Even if that passed, huge hurdles remain. Secession would require a constitutional amendment, with two-thirds support in both the US House and Senate and ratification by at least 38 states. "It's basically impossible," notes a post at New York. The idea of a "Calexit" has been in the works since 2014, but the Wall Street Journal notes that it got a boost after Donald Trump's election as a mostly jokey way to register opposition. Seems nuts? "I think we'd have the votes today," says a group co-founder, who argues that California gives the federal government more money than it receives and is "culturally" separate from the rest of the country. "America already hates California, and America votes on emotions." Adds a rep for the California National Party, which supports secession in the long-term but not the current effort, "It's certainly as likely as Donald Trump becoming president." (The movement already has a Moscow "embassy".)
– Chris Christie has responded to today's amazing allegations that his aides deliberately caused massive traffic jams on the world's busiest bridge to punish a political rival: The New Jersey governor insists that he had nothing to do with it and suggests that heads will roll, reports Politico. The statement: "What I've seen today for the first time is unacceptable. I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge. One thing is clear: this type of behavior is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it because the people of New Jersey deserve better. This behavior is not representative of me or my Administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions." If you missed it, emails emerged from several media outlets suggesting that Christie aides ordered two lanes shut down on the George Washington Bridge in September, which led to gridlock in the town of Fort Lee—because Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich wouldn't endorse Christie in his re-election campaign against Democrat Barbara Buono. For her part, Buono has called on the Justice Department to look into criminal charges. "It clearly exposes a web of deceit and subterfuge and political retribution leading straight to Chris Christie," she tells the Star-Ledger. Though Christie didn't mention names, the emails show that a top aide, Bridget Anne Kelly, told a Christie-appointed official at the Port Authority, David Wildstein, that it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." The emails do not implicate Christie himself, notes the New York Times, though the governor initially said nobody affiliated with his office or campaign was involved.
– An Indian guru was arrested yesterday after a 10-day standoff during which at least six people died. Police say up to 20,000 followers of the guru Rampal Maharaj, who is wanted in connection with a 2006 murder, battled police at his ashram, a 2.5-acre religious complex in Hisar, the BBC and CNN report. Though police say followers used women and children as human shields, five women and an 18-month-old child "were sick and died because of lack of medical attention on time," authorities add. Rampal, 63, says he "regretted" the deaths but argues his supporters, who believe he can cure illness, "were acting on their own." Some 200 were injured as police used tear gas, water cannons, and bulldozers to penetrate the complex. Police evacuated 16,000 followers, some of whom say they were coerced into fighting, but say several thousand more may remain. "We were separated from our families so that we couldn't leave," one supporter says. Commandos "said they would shoot us if we didn't throw stones to protect the guru." Others threw petrol bombs and fired on authorities, Quartz reports. Some 270 people were arrested and charged with rioting, attempt to murder, and waging war against the state. Rampal, a follower of the Indian mystic Kabir, had repeatedly failed to appear in court after he was accused in the death of a man during a 2006 clash at another ashram. His lawyer said he was too ill to travel. He will now remain in custody until Nov. 28.
– Injury, it seems, is nothing new on and around the Six Flags roller coaster where a woman died last week. Between April 2008 and April 2013, the park reported 14 injuries tied to the Texas Giant, though three occurred before or after patrons rode it, the AP reports. The gravest injuries were apparently concussions and strained muscles—but with the park reporting the data itself, "The numbers that we hear about are typically the tip of the iceberg," says a safety analyst. And while fatal roller coaster accidents are rare, "Most times that you have death accidents, it was something either ignorant or human error," adds a safety inspector for amusement parks. Meanwhile, the coroner says Friday's victim received "multiple traumatic injuries" in her fall, the Dallas Morning News reports. Her name, officials say, was Rosa Ayala-Goana, not Rosy Esparza, as her family had said; Esparza is her husband's last name. Amid word that there may have been a problem with her harness, the inspector notes: "At the end of the day, it comes down to whether or not the person fits ... If the harness locks normally, without forcing it, it's OK. And the final say is up to the ride operator to tell you, 'I'm sorry, you can't ride.'"
– Stephen Allwine allegedly had no moral objection to sleeping with women other than his wife, but he was opposed to divorce—or, at least, his church was. It's for that reason that he tried to arrange his wife's murder through the dark web and finally killed her himself when no other killer appeared, prosecutors allege. At the start of Allwine's murder trial in Minnesota this week, prosecutors claimed the United Church of God elder began having affairs through the Ashley Madison website, which he learned about while counseling married couples at church, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Since his church views marriage as a lifelong commitment, per the Washington Post, prosecutors believe the then-43-year-old Allwine decided his wife should be killed and paid $6,000 in bitcoin to dark web site Besa Mafia, which claimed a link to organized crime. Though law enforcement officials now suspect Besa Mafia was a scam, they warned the couple that user "Dogdaygod" was plotting Amy Allwine's death. Stephen Allwine then bought a gun, which was found next to his wife's body in the couple's Cottage Grove home three months later on Nov. 13, 2016. Prosecutors say Allwine drugged Amy, 43, with scopolamine, shot her in the head, and staged the scene to look like a suicide—failing to erase gun residue from his hand and traces of blood leading from the scene. A computer search also linked him to "Dogdaygod," prosecutors say. Allwine's defense attorney, on the other hand, says the prosecution has only theories and alleges police contaminated the scene by moving the gun before photos were taken, per the Pioneer Press. "Just because he had an affair doesn't mean he killed his wife," he says of his client, per the Post.
– A faith ministry in Nebraska has started a fundraising campaign to buy out four stores that sell millions of cans of beer each year in a tiny village next to a South Dakota Indian reservation plagued by alcoholism. The Lakota Hope street ministry in Whiteclay, Neb., is looking to raise at least $6.3 million to close the stores, which are only about 200 yards from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The officially dry reservation is plagued by high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome and encompasses some of the nation's poorest counties. Whiteclay only has about a dozen residents, yet the four stores sold 3.5 million cans of beer in 2015. The beer stores have remained opened for decades despite state investigations into alleged liquor law violations, lawsuits, and protests that occasionally turned violent, reports the AP. Ministry founder Bruce BonFleur and his wife have lived in Whiteclay for nearly two decades, feeding people on the streets and launching programs designed to help members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. BonFleur said he has talked with the businesses, and "we believe that the beer store owners are ready to sell out." The stores have been facing increasing legal and political pressure, and the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission is set to meet March 7 to discuss the stores' liquor licenses amid complaints that the village lacks adequate law enforcement. Last month, the local county board with jurisdiction over Whiteclay recommended that the state renew the licenses, partially amid concerns that closing the stores would lead to an increase of intoxicated drivers in Nebraska.
– Tales of Amy Schumer's generosity continue: While jogging around Chicago on April 13, Schumer stopped in at the Six Corners Mattress Firm, hoping to find a bathroom, reports People. Employee Sagine Lazarre, not recognizing the visitor, quickly showed her the way. But when Schumer had done her business, she returned to Lazarre and asked which mattress she liked the best. Lazarre pointed to a $2,000 mattress, and Schumer immediately bought it for her, per WGN. Schumer, who identified herself as an actress and comedian, "told me she wanted to buy it for me" as a thank you for letting her use the bathroom, Lazarre says. Mind blown, she adds she Googled the name on Schumer's credit card after the actress left the store and only then realized she had previously seen her stand-up comedy. "I'm still in shock," says Lazarre, who notes the mattress is a perfect fit in her new apartment. (Schumer previously left a massive tip on a $77 bill.)
– A hacker going by The Dark Overlord claims to have stolen and released 10 episodes of the new season of Orange Is the New Black more than a month before its official release on Netflix. Variety reports the hacker was demanding an unspecified ransom from Netflix, uploading the first episode of the upcoming fifth season to a file-sharing site Friday as proof. The next nine episodes were uploaded early Saturday morning after The Dark Overlord claims Netflix refused to pay them. The hacker says they're "quite ashamed to breathe the same air" as Netflix, as they were being entirely "reasonable and merciful" with their ransom offer. Neither Variety nor the AP have been able to—legally—confirm the authenticity of the episodes uploaded by The Dark Overlord. The new Orange Is the New Black episodes were apparently stolen months ago. Netflix says a production vendor "had its security compromised"; Variety identifies that vendor as Larson Studios, a post-production facility. The Dark Overlord says they weren't able to steal the final three episodes of the season because they weren't finished yet. The Dark Overlord told the AP in February they wouldn't release any of the stolen episodes; it's unclear why that changed. The hacker also claims to have stolen TV series from ABC, National Geographic, Fox, and IFC via the hack at Larson Studios. They're reportedly seeking a "modest" ransom for those as well. The leak of new Orange is the New Black episodes could hurt Neflix's subscriber numbers and stock price. The FBI is investigating.
– MarketWatch credits "Trump-induced euphoria" in its headline: The Dow on Tuesday hit 19,000 for the first time at open, a milestone that followed Monday's record close of 18,957. The S&P 500 also passed 2,200. The AP earlier reported that global stocks rose Tuesday, buoyed by hopes that OPEC will support the price of oil with a production cut. The Wall Street Journal reports oil prices continue to hang around a three-week high in anticipation of a possible end-of-month OPEC deal. "Rising commodity prices do help," one senior portfolio manager with Robeco tells the Journal. "But I think there is also a bit of an upbeat mood about the [Donald] Trump election."
– Catch those new photos of Sinead O'Connor performing in Ireland? (See the video in the gallery at left for a sample.) She is, gasp, no longer the slim, bald 20-something who captivated fans, and the Internet has not been kind in pointing this out. Lay off, write Mimi Turner at the Hollywood Reporter and Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. O'Connor, now 44 and the mother of four, "has always turned her back on the conventions of beauty that are apparently necessary for media acceptance," writes Turner. "The prickly distaste that she still manifests for a prototypical feminine style seems remarkably unchanged from the attitudes she held in her youth." O'Connor also has battled bipolar disorder for years, and the antidepressants she takes can cause weight gain. "To be able to grow older is a gift," writes Williams. "To be on medication that can save your life is a blessing. A little thickening around the middle seems like a small price to pay." Besides, O'Connor still has that amazing gift that made her a once-in-a-generation talent: "Tempered by life and experience, that clear, achingly lovely voice has only become more poignantly astonishing," writes Williams.
– A 16-year-old girl in Washington state is bruised and dehydrated but very much alive after surviving a plane crash and a long trek through what authorities describe as some of the state's most rugged terrain. Autumn Veatch was on a small plane with her step-grandparents that crashed after departing Kalispell, Mont., on Saturday afternoon, the Bellingham Herald reports. There was no sign of the plane or its occupants until a motorist found Veatch on State Route 20 yesterday afternoon and took her to a general store, where employees called authorities, the AP reports. She was hospitalized with minor injuries. Her father tells the Herald that after the plane crashed into a mountain, it caught fire and she was unable to get her step-grandparents out. She spent about a day near the plane waiting for rescue before following a stream and then a trail out of the woods, her father says. Friends say both father and daughter are completely overwhelmed. "She did joke that it was a good thing she'd watched all those Survivor shows that she didn't like, but her dad made her watch anyway," a family friend tells the Seattle Times. Authorities are still searching for the missing Beech A-35. (In Colombia last month, a mother and baby survived four days in the jungle after a plane crash.)
– And then there were none: Arizona Senator Jon Kyl is joining Eric Cantor in his decision to skip Joe Biden's deficit-reduction talks, which means no Republicans are left on the panel, reports ABC News. The departures come as Mitch McConnell blasted President Obama on the Senate floor, notes Politico, which sees a "concerted effort" by the GOP to force the president to get personally involved in the talks. They've hit an impasse over Democrats' push for tax increases. "I would expect to hear from (Obama)," said Speaker John Boehner. "I think those talks could continue if they're willing to take the tax hikes off the table." One anonymous Democratic senator views Cantor's move this way: “He’s throwing the hot potato to Boehner because it was too hot for him." Biden canceled today's scheduled meeting after Cantor's announcement, reports the Hill. The remaining Democrats: Max Baucus, Daniel Inouye, James Clyburn, and Chris Van Hollen.
– Americans' level of satisfaction with their new cars is at its lowest point in more than a decade, and experts are blaming a record number of recalls and rising prices. The results of a national survey of more than 4,000 car buyers released today show an overall satisfaction level of 79 out of 100, NBC News reports. That's a 3.7% decline from 2014 and the lowest score since 2004. Of the 27 auto brands tracked by the survey, 15 showed a decline in customer satisfaction. Only two—Acura and BMW—showed any increase in satisfaction. CBS News reports the worst-rated cars—Fiat, Chrysler, and Jeep—are all owned by Fiat Chrysler, which also owns the low-scoring Dodge. The 64 million autos recalled last year appear to have hurt customer satisfaction. The founder of the survey tells NBC it's "alarming that so many [cars] have quality problems." And the increasing cost of cars—the average price is now more than $33,000—is coming as a surprise to people buying their first automobile in a decade. "We really become unhappy when we find any defect or are told we have to take our car in to have some kind of recall taken care of, even if it doesn't cost us anything," the director of the survey tells NBC. Overall, customers tend to be more satisfied with Asian- and European-made cars than their American-made counterparts.
– President Trump has warned senators that he will be "very angry" if they fail to repeal ObamaCare as promised. In an interview with televangelist Pat Robertson, the president said "a lot of people will be very upset" if Senate Republicans don't pass the legislation this summer, Politico reports. "I am sitting in the Oval Office with a pen in hand, waiting for our senators to give it to me," Trump said. "It has to get passed. They have to do it. They have to get together and get it done." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is expected to present a revised version of the bill to senators Thursday morning, "has to pull it off," Trump said. "He's working very hard. He's got to pull it off." McConnell urged senators Wednesday to drop procedural objections to the bill and let a vote move forward, saying, "If we sit on our hands, families will continue to suffer," the Hill reports. McConnell can only afford to lose two Republican votes, and Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday that he can't support the revised bill because it is "the same as the old bill, except it leaves in place more taxes," the Washington Post reports. McConnell also faces opposition from moderate senators and conservatives including Sen. Ted Cruz, who's pushing for an amendment that would allow insurance companies to sell plans that don't meet federal coverage requirements. (McConnell has cut the Senate recess by two weeks.)
– The music world has lost an icon: Merle Haggard died Wednesday on his 79th birthday, reports TMZ. He'd been fighting double pneumonia since last year. Haggard was elected into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994, and as ABC23 notes, he "won just about every music award" over a career that gave him 40 No. 1 hits. Perhaps his biggest, "Mama Tried" from 1968, was added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry earlier this year. Haggard was a big part of the "outlaw" country movement with the likes of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings. The Tennessean has a full tribute to the "working man's poet."
– A battle between the city of San Francisco and companies that rent out motorized scooters has come to a head: On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance seeking to regulate the scooters, TechCrunch reports. At issue is the fact that the companies—LimeBike, Spin, and Bird—started operating three weeks ago without approval from the city, and city authorities say the electric scooters can be dangerous. "We cannot overstate the public safety hazard that operating motorized scooters pose on City sidewalks," said City Attorney Dennis Herrera in a cease-and-desist letter to the companies Monday, per Slate. The letter ordered the companies to stop operating until a plan was in place to make sure customers stop riding on sidewalks and without helmets or drivers licenses, and stop parking in places that block sidewalks, ramps, and transit stops. (They don't require a docking station and can thus be left anywhere when riders are done using them, the AP reports.) TechCrunch says the letter didn't "seem to be making any difference," as scooters from all three companies were spotted on San Francisco streets Tuesday. The Board of Supervisors is looking to put a permitting process in place for the scooter companies similar to the one that exists for bike-sharing companies operating in the city; it hopes to have the process in place by May 1. It also plans to establish fines starting at $125 when scooter regulations are violated.
– James Carville offered an entertainingly disparaging take on the GOP presidential race today, saying that nothing stood in Mitt Romney’s way to getting the nomination—he may be a “serial windsock,” constantly changing his positions, but his opponents are inept. “The best thing Rick Perry can do for himself and his family and his friends is get out of the race and go back to Texas,” Carville told George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America. “This man is evidently not up to this.” As for Herman Cain, Carville said, he “says funny things” but “is not gonna be the Republican nomination for president.” Politico was especially struck by Carville’s reaction to Cain’s bizarre smoking aide ad. “If that guy wasn’t drunk, I haven’t taken a drink in my life!” Carville declared. “He was drunk or stoned. You know, some kind of chemical, I guarantee you that.” Stephanopoulos just laughed—as Mediaite notes, the two were cohorts during Bill Clinton's campaign and administration, so there's a whiff of liberal bias here.
– You put it on hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, and a whole slew of other stuff, but ketchup doesn't even come close to the king of condiments. That would be mayonnaise—$2 billion of which is sold in the US each year, compared with around $800 million of the red stuff, Euromonitor data shows, per Quartz. In fact, ketchup almost missed out on the number two spot to soy sauce, which came in at $725 million, followed by barbeque sauce at $660 million, hot sauce at $550 million, and mustard at $450 million. (If you're wondering about salsa, it was considered a dip in this case, but would have grabbed the No. 2 spot from ketchup.) While one chef tells NBC News that mayo is "fatty—not the good fatty," the condiment's top spot doesn't necessarily show off America's love of fatty foods. Quartz points out that the low-fat mayo market has doubled since 2005 as Americans look for healthier options. Another reason for its peak position? It's in everything from tuna salad to spicy tuna rolls, plus hidden in plenty of restaurant dishes you're probably not aware of. Meanwhile, amid mayo's success, Heinz is trying to boost its ketchup sales with its first Super Bowl ad in 16 years, which Adweek has here.
– For Eli Manning and the New York Giants, Lambeau Field has become a familiar launching pad. After beating the Green Bay Packers at home for the second time in four years, they only hope this trip ends the same way—at the Super Bowl. Manning threw three touchdown passes and the Giants shocked the Packers 37-20 in an NFC divisional playoff game today. Manning threw for 330 yards, sending the Giants to San Francisco for the NFC championship game next Sunday night. More from today's football games: The San Francisco 49ers beat the New Orleans Saints in a thrilling 36-32 game today. With New Orleans poised to score on its opening possession, Donte Whitner delivered a crushing blow that knocked out running back Pierre Thomas and forced the first of five Saints turnovers. San Francisco's hard-hitting, opportunistic defense set the tone the same way it has all season, putting the 49ers back in the NFC championship for the first time since the 1997 season. If style points and offensive fireworks meant anything, the Baltimore Ravens wouldn't stand a chance of making it to the AFC championship. Playing defense and protecting the football are what they do best, and that formula led to a 20-13 victory over the Houston Texans today, putting Baltimore in the AFC title game against the New England Patriots next Sunday, with the winner advancing to the Super Bowl in Indianapolis on Feb. 5.
– Ahh, the ‘90s: a time when Vanilla Ice was still famous … and, apparently, sleeping with Madonna. The rapper reveals to News of the World that they were a couple when he was 24 and she 33, Digital Spy reports. She was “a great lover,” he says, even though she was—and still is—“the oldest person I’ve ever been with.” Alas, their “exciting” relationship had to end when she published Sex, a 1992 book featuring pictures of her with the rapper—and other men. “I was hurt to be an unwitting part of this slutty package,” he says. Click for more, including his stories of Madonna “taking pictures and running round naked” for the “porno” book.
– You can now sing "Happy Birthday" anywhere you like without fear of copyright lawyers pouncing. A federal judge has ruled that Warner/Chappell, which has been making around $2 million a year from "Happy Birthday to You," doesn't have the rights to the song and never did, reports the Los Angeles Times. The judge ruled that a copyright filed in 1935 and acquired by Warner in 1988 only covered specific piano arrangements of the tune and not the lyrics, the BBC reports. The song started out as "Good Morning to All," written by a Kentucky schoolteacher and her sister in the 1890s, and the judge found that there was no evidence that the sisters had even written the better-known lyrics, Ars Technica reports. Warner wasn't in the habit of sending lawyers to raid birthday parties, but it did expect to get paid whenever the song was used in ads, movies, or any other profit-making enterprise. Plaintiffs in the long-running lawsuit included the makers of a documentary about the song and singer Rupa Marya, who had to pay $455 for including it on a live album. "I hope we can start reimagining copyright law to do what it's supposed to do—protect the creations of people who make stuff so that we can continue to make more stuff," she tells the AP. Lawyers say they now plan to make the suit a class-action one to force Warner to pay back some of the royalties, the Times reports.
– Struggling to keep warm this winter? You may want to avoid other people who look cold: A new study published in PLOS ONE suggests humans experience "temperature contagion." Subjects saw their own temperatures sink after watching videos of people putting their hands in chilly water, per a press release from the University of Sussex. Their left hands became colder by an average of 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit, while their right hands' temperatures dropped by an average of 0.1 degrees, Real Clear Science reports. The researchers classified that temperature change as "significant." Such sympathetic coldness could be an adaptive trait, says lead researcher Dr. Neil Harrison. "Humans are profoundly social creatures, and much of humans' success results from our ability to work together in complex communities," he explains. "This would be hard to do if we were not able to rapidly empathize with each other and predict one another's thoughts, feelings, and motivations." When the 36 subjects saw videos of people putting their hands in warm water, however, the subjects' body temperatures stayed the same—perhaps because the cold was more evident than the heat in the videos, Harrison notes. The "cold" clips showed blocks of ice throughout, whereas the "hot" ones only briefly showed steam at their start. "There is also some evidence to suggest that people may be more sensitive to others appearing cold than hot," he points out. Yawning is among other contagious behaviors, as Medical Daily notes—and even dogs are susceptible.
– Looking for the perfect cheese for the ultimately gooey, perfectly melted grilled cheese sandwich? Good news: Scientists with the American Chemical Society have put out a three-minute video from the society's "Reactions" series on YouTube all about that very subject. And the winners are ... gouda, gruyére, or manchego, with mild cheeses melting more beautifully than sharp. It's all about how casein proteins clump together (the resulting spheres are called micelles) when cheese melts. These micelles, which are held together by calcium and are gloriously fatty, are negatively charged, meaning those tiny balls bounce apart. Add lactic acid, however, which goes up the longer a cheese ages, and those micelles smack together, trapping water and getting all gooey, reports Consumerist. But wait, there's more. The older the cheese, the more lactic acid, which in turn lowers the cheese's pH—thus sharper cheeses have a lower pH and mild ones a higher pH. The ideal pH, in fact, is right between 5.3 and 5.5, with cheese of lower pH releasing their oils when heated and getting clumpy. This is why gouda, gruyére, or manchego are ideal but on the milder side; if they age too long and become sharper, the pH dips too low and the cheese breaks down more easily, meaning you could end up with a curdled mess while heating it. (Check out why this cheese tests best for pizza.)
– Ecuador officially granted asylum to Julian Assange today, reasoning that his human rights might be violated if he were turned over to UK authorities. "We can state that there is a risk that he will be persecuted politically," Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said, according to the Guardian. He argued that if Assange were ever to fall into US hands he would not receive a fair trial and could face the death penalty, reports the AP. Patino also harshly rebuked the UK for threatening to raid Ecuador's embassy, which is traditionally considered sovereign territory. Ecuador "is not a British colony," he said, though he did express hope that Ecuador's "friendship with the United Kingdom will remain intact." The UK has insisted that Ecuador's decision is irrelevant; it will still attempt to arrest Assange. "It is too early to say when or if Britain will revoke the Ecuadorean embassy's diplomatic status," a Foreign Office spokesman told Reuters.
– The US Open broadcast on Fox Sports took a strange turn Friday when a microphone inadvertently picked up a guy bragging about rough sex with his "ex," the Sporting News reports. Announcer Joe Buck was setting up a shot by golfer Patrick Reed at around 1:45pm EST when the surprise voices emerged. "Here at one, it's Patrick Reed," said Buck, and a mic picked up a man talking to his male companion, per Awful Announcing. "We were ---ing so hard, and I headbutted her in the head," the man said, among other things, but the other doesn't sound convinced: "Yeah, what actually happened, pal?" The first one protests, "No, straight up..." and his words soon turn indistinct. Buck's voice returned with "second shot," as if all was normal, and the broadcast continued. "From the sound, it seems likely this was a radio conversation that somehow got picked up onto the actual feed, rather than just crowd chatter, but we don’t know for sure," says Awful Announcing. (You can hear the actual exchange at Deadspin.) Now Fox Sports and the United States Golf Association are apologizing for the unexpected interlude. "We deeply regret the inappropriate language and sentiment expressed by a few fans that was unfortunately picked up by a microphone," says a USGA spokeswoman.
– For anyone encouraged by North Korea's slight softening toward the South, Chun In-bum essentially dumps a bucket of cold water it. The retired South Korean general, who the Financial Times reports led his country's special forces, spoke to a London-based think tank Wednesday and outlined exactly what American forces would encounter should we decide to bloody the country's nose—or something more significant. He doesn't mince words: "I try to explain to the Americans—if we have to go into North Korea, ... it’s not going to be like toppling [Saddam) Hussein]. This would be more like trying to get rid of Allah." He describes the country as "one huge barracks" and the population as militarized far beyond the [West's] imagination. "A 14-year-old child in North Korea probably gets more than 100 hours of military training a year," the Times of London quotes Chun as saying. "By age 14, a child knows how to fire an AK47, fire an RPG, throw a grenade, pitch a tent and march 24 hours." And even things that may seem promising on their face—the North's estimated 1,000 fighter jets are aged—aren't, per Chun, who says those planes would be used kamikaze-style, USA Today reports. And there's not just the physical battlefield to contend with, per the Brisbane Times: "North Korean cyber capability is right below nuclear capability in terms of threat," says Chun. He also describes an extreme system designed to root out any dissent, whereby the country's families are grouped in units, and if one person "misbehaves, the entire five or 10 families go to the gulag or are executed. So everybody spies on everybody else."
– Weeks after returning home from the hospital, Nelson Mandela was admitted again last night for a lung infection. South African president Jacob Zuma is calling on the world to offer its support to the 94-year-old icon, NBC News reports: "We appeal to the people of South Africa and the world to pray for our beloved Madiba and his family and to keep them in their thoughts," Zuma said. "We have full confidence in the medical team and know that they will do everything possible to ensure recovery." Mandela, who CNN notes was conscious when admitted last night, was hospitalized for weeks in December with a lung infection and has battled respiratory problems for years.
– GOES-16, the fancy new satellite developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is sending its first photos back to Earth since it lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Nov. 19, and the high-res results are causing astronomers and meteorologists to squeal with delight. One developer compared it to seeing a newborn baby's first pics—"it's that exciting for us," NOAA reports. Space.com calls the super high-res images "jaw-dropping," while NASA reports that the first images, from 22,300 miles up, catch details including dust blowing off the coast of Africa, shallow waters in the Caribbean, and mountain wave clouds in Argentina. (See a gallery here.) The hope is that viewing our own planet and the atmosphere around it in such detail ("high definition from the heavens," per NOAA) will provide data for more accurate weather forecasts that could save lives. AccuWeather reports that the "stunning" images boast resolution that is four times greater than the capability of the best current satellites. NOAA says the second (GOES-S) in a series of four sophisticated satellites is undergoing a year of testing at Lockheed Martin’s Corporation facility in Littleton, Colo., and NASA reports that it is expected to launch in 2018. GOES-16 captures a full image of Earth every 15 minutes and one of the continental US every five minutes, and it can scan five times faster than current GOES imagers. (Here's how NASA scouts asteroids.)
– Singer, Tea Party activist, and birther Pat Boone can add one more title to his long list: wanted man. There's a warrant out for the 79-year-old after he was subpoenaed to appear in court and failed to show up, TMZ reports. It all relates to a luxury cruise ship's condos, the San Jose Mercury News explains. Investors ended up suing the company building the ship, and the company lost; it was ordered to pay $800,000 in legal costs but allegedly never did, so now the investors are going after people who purchased the condos—including, in TMZ's telling, Boone, hence the court appearance. But Boone says he was nothing more than a celebrity spokesman for the would-be ship, and he doesn't seem too concerned about the whole thing, saying he does plan to get himself to court and telling TMZ, "Is this the way Lindsay Lohan and Robert Downey got so famous?"
– Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center is one of America's most storied hospitals when it comes to heart transplants. Or was. Though some of the first heart transplants took place at the Houston hospital, things have disintegrated to the point that it now "has had some of the worst heart transplant outcomes in the country." So write Mike Hixenbaugh and Charles Ornstein in a story co-published by the Houston Chronicle and ProPublica. Their joint investigation found an elevated death and complication count for heart transplant patients there, whose one-year survival rate "now ranks near the bottom nationally" at 85% for those who got a new heart between mid-2014 and 2016; the national rate was 91.4%. Hixenbaugh and Ornstein add a face to those stats via the story of James "Lee" Lewis. Word came on Jan. 1, 2018, that St. Luke's had a heart for Lewis—news that brought hope the 52-year-old would be able to walk his daughter down the aisle in June. But by March 23, he was dead, having never left the hospital. What happened in between is a series of missteps, starting with the Jan. 2 transplant. Two months after the transplant his family learned what went wrong that day: The defibrillator Dr. Masahiro Ono tried to use to "jolt the new heart into rhythm" wasn't working; he said he had to pump it by hand for 10 minutes until a working one was found. The donor heart was damaged and weakened as a result and wouldn't strengthen; it was eventually swapped for an artificial heart. Then came strokes, infection in Lewis' bloodstream, and what the family says was another equipment mishap that left him brain-dead. Read the full story here.
– When you hear hoofbeats, the saying goes, you should think horses, not zebras. In Philadelphia on Sunday, you would have been wrong. A pair of zebras escaped from a circus and went running through the streets of west Philly before they were recaptured, police say. The two animals somehow fled the UniverSoul Circus outside the Mann Center for the Performing Arts at about 2pm Sunday. A circus spokesman told the Philadelphia Inquirer in a statement that the animals "briefly went on the loose." No injuries were reported. Witnesses took to social media to post photos and video footage of the animals running through the streets before police confirmed their recapture at about 3pm Sunday. "Zebras in custody," police tweeted. "They are already sporting old-timey prisoner getup ahead of trial and sentencing. Have faith, fellas." (Three elephants did a lot more damage after escaping from a circus in St. Louis.)
– Marc Anthony has confirmed he's splitting from his wife of two years, 28-year-old model Shannon de Lima, reports Billboard. Rumors surfaced that the pair were done after Anthony, 48, shared an on-stage kiss with ex-wife Jennifer Lopez at the Latin Grammys in November, a few months after Lopez broke up with her boyfriend of four years, Casper Smart. Anthony and de Lima—who began dating months after Anthony and Lopez broke up in 2011, and wed in 2014—only say that they came to the decision "mutually and amicably" after "much consideration," reports Us Weekly.
– XLVI—the number of Sunday's Super Bowl—may be clunky, but at least it doesn't come with baggage. The NFL is preparing for the 50th Super Bowl in 2016, which will be Super Bowl L. Insiders are wary of T-shirts emblazoned with giant Ls: It could look like fans are just big losers, the Wall Street Journal notes. The "L" hand gesture is more recognizable than ever after TV's Glee adopted it in its logo. Maybe 2016 would "be a nice time to switch over to Arabic numerals," says an ad exec. The league, though, also has a few possible marketing options. The game could be held in an L city, like London or Los Angeles, where the first Super Bowl took place. The host city hasn't been announced, but a league spokesman said talks have begun on "those types of details," referring to the L. It's a challenge for the league, but Adidas—whose Reebok brand will soon be replaced by Nike as the NFL's official gear manufacturer—is excited. "L standing for loser with a Nike swoosh right above it—I love that," says a rep. (In more imminent Super Bowl news, click to watch the best Super Bowl ad you won't see in America.)
– California has joined the ranks of states that allow illegal immigrants to legally drive. "When a million people without their documents drive legally with respect to the state of California, the rest of this country will have to stand up and take notice," said Gov. Jerry Brown at yesterday's signing, reports the Los Angeles Times. Some 1.4 million immigrants are likely to apply within three years; the state may set up six temporary issuing offices. The law suggests calling the documents "driving privileges" rather than "driver's licenses," but discrimination over the distinction is banned, the AP notes. The bill was backed by police because drivers "will be more likely to have been tested, to have insurance, or to know the rules of the road," says LAPD chief Charlie Beck. But a note of caution comes from New Mexico, one of 10 states that already issues such licenses. "It's been a disaster," says the state's secretary for taxation and revenue. "We have had a lot of identity fraud."
– If multiple reports are to be believed, Jeb Bush will finally be following in his brother's footsteps—as the owner of a professional baseball team. The presidential also-ran is said to be part of a group—along with former New York Yankee Derek Jeter—that will be purchasing the Miami Marlins for $1.3 billion, Bloomberg reports. Nothing is official—an anonymous source says the sale contract hasn't been signed yet—but the Miami Herald confirmed the report. Bush and Jeter, as well as at least three other investors, are said to have outbid multiple other groups, including one led by Tagg Romney and former ballplayer Tom Glavine. The Kushner family had also reportedly been close to a deal. Bush, who tried and failed to buy the Marlins three years ago, will reportedly be the "control person" in charge of franchise decisions for the Marlins. The deal would need MLB approval and could still take months to finalize. The Marlins are owned by Jeffrey Loria, who paid $158 million for the team in 2002. Despite losing money and having some of the worst attendance in the league, the Marlins are currently valued at $940 million. If the reported $1.3 billion purchase price is accurate, it would be "one of the most lucrative franchise flips" ever, Deadspin reports. Loria is apparently selling the Marlins in order to get his estate in order—and also because he's tired of the team's constant losing and the criticism that has brought on him.
– Apparently, the birds of Gilbert, Minn., can't handle their liquor. Case in point: The police department there has received several reports of birds that "appear to be 'under the influence' flying into windows, cars, and acting confused," according to a police department statement released this week. The culprit? An early frost. Or, more specifically, berries that froze, causing the starch they contain to convert to sugar, which in turn fermented when the berries thawed. "Birds actually do get literally intoxicated when they eat berries that have started fermenting," a bird expert tells the Duluth News Tribune. "And that does lead to drunken behavior." And it's pretty common, reports NPR, which dug up some other instances of boozey birds. In one case, the city of Whitehorse in the Yukon had to set up drunk tanks (modified hamster cages) for the "party fowl." As for Gilbert's winged drunkards, "There's no need to call law enforcement about these birds as they should sober up within a short period of time," per the police statement, which adds that there are some bird-related occurrences that should be called in. Among these are: "The Roadrunner jumping in and out of traffic on Main Street;" "Big Bird operating a motor vehicle in an unsafe manner;" and " Tweety acting as if 10 feet tall and getting into confrontations with cats."
– This year’s Indy 500 found its instant replay moment, and it looks like it could have come straight from a Michael Bay film. Driver Scott Dixon walked away Sunday from the nightmare crash captured in this video. (Replay starts about 47 seconds in.) It also can be seen in this tweeted video. The LA Times reports that the accident began when driver Jay Howard lost control of his vehicle a little more than a quarter into the 200-lap race. He collided with Dixon, whose car was sent flying through the air before smashing into an inner retaining wall. Though Dixon’s vehicle was demolished, both drivers survived the fiery accident and were released after a check-up at the track's medical center. Afterward, Dixon said he was “a little bit beaten up” and “glad everybody was OK," calling the incident "definitely a wild ride.” The race continued on, with Takuma Sato later becoming the first Japanese driver ever to finish first, reports the AP. Sato held off Helio Castroneves, who was going for his fourth Indy win.
– A popular priest who leads a worldwide TV ministry is taking a leave from his California diocesan duties after revealing an affair with a second cousin. Michael Manning 'fessed up after a local newspaper received a series of intimate notes between Manning and his former lover, a schools superintendent from Monterey County. Manning apparently broke off the relationship with Nancy Kotowski three years ago. "I was living two lives: one as a priest who was vowed to celibacy and another life as a sexually active man in our sexual intimacy," Manning, now 70, told the San Bernardino Sun. "It's very hard when you care for someone, but I love my priesthood more. I admit the fact of my sinfulness. I've done wrong. That's why I've stopped." Manning began his Catholic TV ministry 33 years ago. He appears weekly on The Word in the World on the Trinity Broadcast network. He has announced he's taking a leave from his post with the San Bernardino Diocese, but it's unclear if he'll continue on TV. Kotowski, 59, who called Manning her "soulmate," said she hoped the revelation would spark debate. "The reality is we love the church, but I'm hoping a dialogue will open up about the whole question of celibacy," she told the Monterey Herald.
– Vladimir Putin's annual speech to lawmakers Thursday contained what appears to be a jarring threat to the US and the rest of the world: Russia has a new, "invincible" missile that can go anywhere and cannot be stopped, he said. A video graphic behind Putin showed a missile taking off from Russia, zooming across the Atlantic to South America, then turning north toward the US, reports the Washington Post. "I hope everything that has been said today will sober any potential aggressor," Putin said, without naming names. He added that Russia had developed the nuclear-capable weapon, which "missile defenses will be useless against," despite skepticism about Moscow's abilities. "Nobody listened to us," he said, per NBC News. "Well listen to us now." Putin, who asserted that Moscow has "no plans to be an aggressor," also said Russia had a new underwater drone capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, reports the AP. And he declared that any use of nuclear weapons against one of its allies—again, he did not mention specific nations—would be considered a nuclear attack on Russia and that Moscow would respond in kind. All in all, the two-hour speech suggested "a new arms race" between Russia and the West, observes the Guardian. The speech comes less than three weeks before Putin is expected to easily win another six-year term, reports the BBC. He used much of the address to focus on economic reforms, promising among other things to reduce the rate of poverty by half in the next six years.
– A California man imprisoned for 16 years for sexual assault was exonerated Monday after DNA tests showed another man committed the crimes, USA Today reports. Luis Vargas, 46, broke down when an LA Superior Court judge granted a petition to release him from his sentence of 55 years to life for three sex crimes. The move came after DNA evidence linked those assaults to a serial attacker known as the Teardrop Rapist, so labeled for having a teardrop tattoo under his eye, the AP notes. That man, who was never caught, is suspected of having committed about three dozen crimes in the LA area. Vargas had matched assailant descriptions, and he caught investigators' eye because he had a faded teardrop tattoo under his left eye and a 1992 rape conviction involving his girlfriend at the time, reports the Los Angeles Times. "You can sentence me to all the years you want, but ... that individual that really did these crimes might really be raping someone out there," Vargas warned a judge before he was sentenced in 1999. In 2012, Vargas reached out to the California Innocence Project and asked to use DNA techniques to examine samples on the clothing of one of his alleged victims, per the Times. The DNA matched that of the victim and the Teardrop Rapist. The three victims had positively IDed Vargas as the perpetrator, but an Innocence Project attorney tells the AP it was a "shaky witness" case, an assertion the LA district attorney's office backed up in a recent court letter that said there were discrepancies and uncertainties in their identification of the rapist, the Times notes. Vargas still has to clear up some immigration issues before he's fully released, but he hopes to be home by Christmas.
– The group responsible for an armed anti-Muslim protest at a Dallas-area mosque last weekend posted a list containing the names and addresses of dozens of Muslims and "Muslim sympathizers" to Facebook on Wednesday, the Dallas Morning News reports. According to the Huffington Post, the list contained personal information about more than 60 people pulled from an official document of individuals who signed up to speak at a city council debate on "limiting Muslim influence" earlier this year. “This is the first time I’ve been slightly alarmed," the head of a local Islamic group tells the Morning News. "They were just being good citizens to show up and be a part of the democratic process. Now they are targets.” David Wright led the armed protest outside the Irving Islamic Center last weekend and appears to be behind the list, which has since been removed from Facebook, the Morning News reports. While Wright's organization, BAIR, states its intention isn't to intimidate anyone, people whose names were on the list say it couldn't have been meant for any other reason than to put a target on their backs. The Washington Post quotes a number of Facebook posts from Wright this week, including, "We like to have guns designed to kill people that pose a threat in a very efficient manner," and "My gun is an assault weapon ... It's a weapon designed to assault people not animals." The list may have backfired: The Morning News notes RSVPs for a pro-Muslim rally scheduled for Saturday at the mosque had more than doubled in 24 hours.
– Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to think Donald Trump needs a lesson in making friends after the president-elect chose to criticize his Celebrity Apprentice successor. "Wow, the ratings are in and [new host] Arnold Schwarzenegger got 'swamped' (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT," Trump tweeted Friday after the Trump-less show premiered Monday to 4.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen. The last season hosted by Trump averaged 7.6 million viewers, per Fortune. "So much for … being a movie star," Trump continued. "But who cares, he supported [John] Kasich & Hillary [Clinton]." Schwarzenegger offered up a reply on Twitter, tweeting, "I wish you the best of luck and I hope you'll work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings." He next shared a video he made after the election in which he quotes Abraham Lincoln's inaugural speech, beginning, "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies." "Please study this quote ... @realDonaldTrump," he tweeted with the video. "It inspired me every day I was Governor, and I hope it inspires you." (The New York Times is unimpressed with the new season.)
– A small town in Brazil was buried in a sea of mud after a dam burst at an iron-ore mining operation Thursday, killing an unknown number of people. At least 16 people and possibly many more are believed to be missing in Minas Gerais state in the southeast of the country, where the homes in the town of Bento Rodrigues were destroyed by mud and water that had probably been rendered toxic by the mining operations, the BBC reports. Residents in the area downhill have been told to head for higher ground, reports the AP. The chief executive of mine operator BHP says most of the disaster "has been under the cloak of darkness" and "an awful lot more" will be done at daybreak, per the Guardian.
– If Nick Lachey can't put you off marriage, nothing will: Jessica Simpson, who divorced the ex-boy band star in 2005, is headed down the aisle again, this time with a former NFLer. No, not that one. Eric Johnson, former 49er and Simpson's beau of six months, popped the question Thursday—which, UsMag notes, is a mere few days after Lachey proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Vanessa Minnillo. Ah, the coincidence. Johnson "definitely makes me very happy," Simpson told USA Today. "He brings out a lot of light in me and makes me very comfortable being who I am. It's nice to be with somebody who praises you for the right reasons." But, sigh, first the holiday planning: "Having a boyfriend through the holidays, we're going to see how that all splits up," Simpson told Ryan Seacrest last week. For more on the happily betrothed, click here.
– Ryan Gosling is getting a lot of love for his Golden Globes acceptance speech, in which he delivered an emotional tribute to "sweetheart" Eva Mendes. Gosling, who won Best Actor in a Comedy Film for his performance in La La Land, joked about being mistaken for Ryan Reynolds and then got serious, USA Today reports. "You don’t get to be up here without standing on the shoulders of a mountain of people," he said. "While I was singing and dancing and playing piano and having one the best experiences I've ever had on a film, my lady was raising our daughter, pregnant with our second, and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer." "If she hadn't taken all that on so that I could have this experience, it would surely be someone else up here other than me today," Gosling continued. "Sweetheart, thank you." He dedicated his prize to the memory of Mendes' brother, who died of cancer in April last year at the age of 53. Time reports that admirers swooned over the real-life version of the Feminist Ryan Gosling meme. "Ryan Gosling just made my heart burst into a million little love pieces with the speech," tweeted Jade Tolbert. "What a great man and hubby!" (A lot of other Twitter users were busy mocking Michael Keaton's unfortunate mix-up.)
– A federal judge in Virginia has sided with a transgender teen who claims a school board's bathroom policies discriminated against him, the AP reports. US District Court Judge Arenda Wright Allen on Tuesday declined the Gloucester County School Board's request to dismiss the case. Allen found that federal law protects the student, CNN reports. "After full consideration of the facts presented and the compelling scope of relevant legal analyses, the Court concludes that Mr. Grimm has sufficiently pled a Title IX claim of sex discrimination under a gender stereotyping theory," Allen wrote, ordering lawyers for the school board and former student Gavin Grimm to schedule a settlement conference. Grimm identifies as male but was barred from using the boys restrooms in high school before graduating in 2017. Grimm sued in 2015, claiming the policy violated his constitutional rights as well as federal protections against sex discrimination. The Supreme Court last year declined to hear the case and sent it back to a lower court. In September, the school board argued that the case should be dismissed. "I feel an incredible sense of relief," Grimm said in a statement Tuesday. "After fighting this policy since I was 15 years old, I finally have a court decision saying that what the Gloucester County School Board did to me was wrong and it was against the law. I was determined not to give up because I didn't want any other student to have to suffer the same experience that I had to go through."
– A hiker's fatal fall in March has been blamed on using a smartphone app map instead of an actual map. The BBC reports Jane Wilson and her husband Gary were hiking on Tryfan in Wales when it started to get dark and they decided to skip the summit. While attempting to descend the mountain, Gary was looking at an Ordnance Survey app while Jane went a short way ahead to make sure the path was safe, according to the Telegraph. The Manchester Evening News reports Gary heard his wife fall, got to safety, and called for help. Rescuers found the 53-year-old librarian's body at the bottom of a 30-foot cliff with a fractured skull. At a hearing Friday, Jane's was ruled an accidental death due, in part, to using an app instead of a map. "Apart from potential difficulties caused by poor detail on an electronic map, batteries on mobile phones have a nasty habit of running out just when you need them most," the Telegraph quotes a spokesperson for Mountain Rescue England and Wales as saying. A detective says the app map "would have been small and not as detailed" and took the couple on a route that was not the safest. A director with Ordnance Survey says hikers should always use the app in conjunction with an actual map "due to the nature of mobile devices when navigating the real world." Authorities also say Jane wasn't wearing appropriate footwear for the hike. (Go inside the futile search for "Inchworm" on the trail.)
– President Trump assembled a motley crew (though surprisingly no members of Mötley Crüe) for dinner on Wednesday. Time reports the president was visited by a trio of famous supporters: Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, and Sarah Palin, who posed with Trump in the Oval Office and mugged in front of a portrait of Hillary Clinton. While the White House isn't releasing any information about the meeting, Nugent says he met with the president "to make America great again." The rocker's presence in the Oval Office comes just two years after he called then-President Obama a "subhuman mongrel," according to NBC News. Salon notes Nugent has also repeatedly called Clinton a "b----."
– The admiral leading American Naval forces in the Middle East turned up dead at his Bahrain residence Saturday, CNN reports. Vice Adm. Scott Stearney's death is under investigation, but media reports say there's no evidence of foul play. "This is devastating news for the Stearney family, for the team at Fifth Fleet, and for the entire Navy," says Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations. The Fifth Fleet is part of the US Navy's Naval Forces Central Command, which controls operations in areas including the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. America sees those Naval Forces as a deterrent to Iran and Iran-supported Houthi rebels, which are considered possible threats to regional shipping. Stearney, a 36-year Navy veteran, took command in the Middle East in May and led more than 200,000 US service members and civilians, per NBC News. The Navy website says he was a Chicago native who graduated from the University of Notre Dame and in 1982 entered the Navy, where he was an aviator and flew the FA-18 Hornet in strike fighter squadrons. He has served several commands and was chief of staff of a Joint Task Force in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Bahraini Ministry of Interior and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are looking into his death, Reuters reports. (Meanwhile, $7M legwear is supposed to turn US troops into "super soldiers.")
– It was the hug he'd been waiting 70 years for. World War II vet Norwood Thomas, 93, greeted his wartime sweetheart Joyce Morris, 88, in person on Wednesday for the first time since their brief love affair in London in 1944, per NBC News. "This is about the most wonderful thing that could have happened," Thomas said after flying 10,000 miles from Virginia to Adelaide, Australia, where he'll spend the next two weeks. "We are going to have a wonderful fortnight together," Morris added, telling reporters she still remembers when the couple "snogged" decades ago "when it was dark and nobody could see us." On Wednesday, reports ABC News, they shared a kiss on the cheek; they plan to spend Valentine's Day together as well.
– If your kid's favorite pastime seems to be whining to you about the rigors of school, it might be time to call his bluff. A study of questionnaires completed as part of America's largest regular student assessment finds that a huge segment of our nation's kids say school is far too simple. Some stats backing up the "too easy" refrain, per the Center for American Progress: 37% of 4th-graders find their math work too easy 29% of 8th-graders find that subject too easy as well, as do 51% of civics students and 57% of history students And the trend doesn't stop at middle school. In terms of civics and history, 56% and 55% of 12th-graders said the same thing, respectively; 21% said ditto about math And some of the intel gathered on the amount of work kids do seems to back this up: Nearly a third of 8th-graders say they read less than five pages a day ... in school or as homework. A third also say they write lengthy answers on reading tests two times a year—or less. USA Today notes that a fellow at the center says that the results chip away at the "school-as-pressure-cooker" portrait of our kids presented in movies like Race to Nowhere. Click for one take on why we have too many teachers.
– An 8-year-old boy in Canada never had any problems eating salmon or peanuts. Then, within just a few weeks of getting a blood transfusion as part of his treatment for brain cancer, he ate salmon and experienced a severe allergic reaction within 10 minutes. The same thing happened when he ate a chocolate peanut butter cup four days later. Doctors determined he was suffering from transfusion-borne allergies, and wrote about it in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. A piece in Scientific American calls the case "extremely rare." But with allergies so common, why is that, well, the case? Such a reaction can only occur if three factors are in place, explains Scientific American. The donor must first have high levels of the type of immunoglobulin-E (IgE) antibodies that set off allergic reactions. The patient must then receive a significant amount of that blood and, within a few months, be exposed to the allergen the IgE antibodies would react to. That's because—in good news for this 8-year-old and others like him—the IgE antibodies eventually disappear from the blood because the recipients don't produce the same antibodies on their own. In this case, the boy was again eating fish and peanut butter six months later. Scientific American points out that antibody-transfer is usually a good thing, as it helps guard against infection. And avoiding a situation like this is tough, LiveScience reports. Having allergies doesn't disqualify would-be donors (in either the US or Canada), and having a high level of IgE in the blood doesn't always correlate with experiencing allergies. (Last year, a toddler almost died from a nearly unheard-of allergy.)
– President Obama has been publicly sworn in for his second term—though he actually took the oath yesterday. Today the oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, went off a little more smoothly than it did during Obama's first inauguration, though the AtlanticWire points out it wasn't error-free. And the flub this time was Obama's. While reciting the phrase "The office of the president of the United States," he effectively choked on the last word, saying just "Sta—," and making a little face after doing so. In other oath-taking tidbits, the president placed his hand on two Bibles: one Abraham Lincoln's and the other Martin Luther King's. (Prof. Cornel West wasn't thrilled about the latter choice, notes the National Review: West slammed the use of King's "prophetic fire as just a moment in presidential pageantry.") Joe Biden, meanwhile, again took the oath from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Wall Street Journal notes. Among other highlights of the ceremony thus far: The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir performed "Battle Hymn of the Republic," James Taylor sang "America the Beautiful," and civil rights leader Myrlie Evers-Williams offered the invocation.
– Nude dancing is an art and should be tax-free, just like ballet performances, according to a strip club in upstate New York. Lawyers for Albany's Nite Moves will appear before the state's highest court today to argue that it doesn't need to pay sales tax on admission fees or lap dances, reports the AP. The club claims the dances are exempt under part of the tax code covering "live dramatic or musical arts performances"—and it has a cultural anthropologist as an expert witness. Before a lower court, the anthropologist testified that she had observed "choreographic patterns of exotic dance" at the club, noting that one dancer executed 61 moves in the course of three songs, the Wall Street Journal reports. The tax department, however, argued that a nude dancer is not "engaged in a genuine choreographic dance performance when she removes her clothing." Whatever the court decides may not have much impact on other establishments, since Nite Moves only serves non-alcoholic drinks, putting it under a different part of the tax code than most other strip clubs.
– Many more American women are dying from cervical cancer than previously thought, with black women in particular dying at rates akin to those in sub-Saharan Africa, the New York Times reports. Although cervical cancer is highly preventable, African-American women are dying at a rate 77% higher that previously estimated, CNN reports. For white women, the rate was 47% higher. "This shows that our disparities are even worse than we feared,” Dr. Kathleen M. Schmeler tells the Times. New research in the journal Cancer excluded from death rates women who had undergone hysterectomies; previous research had included them even though they were not at risk because their cervixes were removed. Last year, there were 12,990 new cases of cervical cancer in the US, and 4,120 deaths, per the National Cancer Institute. The new study re-examined those figures. For black women, the news was shockingly bad, with 10.1 per 100,000 dying of cervical cancer (compared to 4.7 for white women), a rate seen in underdeveloped countries, per the Times. Reasons for the racial disparity included poor access to screenings and the HPV vaccine. Experts said screening options must be expanded for at-risk women, and warned that the gap could widen if the Affordable Care Act is repealed and women's health clinics shuttered. While screenings work well, "many women in America are not getting them," says Schmeler. Symptoms for cervical cancer do not appear until late, which is why the American Cancer Society recommends screenings and a pap test every three years from age 21, and every five years after age 30. (HPV-related cancer is "epidemic.")
– John Travolta's latest leading role isn't going over too well with Qantas airline's crew. The actor, clad in a pilot's uniform, opens the airline's three-minute safety video, announcing, "This is your captain speaking—well, maybe not today." (Click here to watch the video.) He continues, "But I can guarantee that the guys on the flight deck and the greater team care just as much about aircraft safety as I do. I've been flying over 40 years as a pilot and I can tell you, there's no one I'd rather have at the controls than a Qantas pilot." Among the crew's complaints, as reported by Australia's Daily Telegraph: Referring to flight attendants as "the team:" Says one, "We feel it's demeaning. It makes us feel like we work at McDonald's." Considering the recent safety issues, the tone is too light: "The whole thing seems to make the safety message seem trite." Travolta wasn't the right choice: Some staff felt Captain Richard de Crespigny, who was at the helm of the failed flight from Singapore, would have been the better pick. "Who better than the genuine aviation professionals who saved QF32?" It's just plain lame: Or "corny," "tacky," and "cringeworthy." A Qantas rep called the video "engaging" and said all feedback had been positive.
– The abortion funding ban included in the health-care bill passed by the House Saturday could doom it down the road, as abortion supporters in the Senate threaten revolt, and those who voted for it in the House vow they won't back the final bill if it's still included, the Washington Post reports. The 11th-hour provision, which was pushed through with the help of the Roman Catholic bishops, "is going to make it that much more challenging on the Senate side," the president of NARAL-Pro Choice America tells the New York Times. And even if the bill somehow manages to squeak by in the Senate, a group of House liberals who voted for the amendment just to keep the bill moving has vowed to block its final passage. "We're not going to let this into law," said Rep. Diana DeGette. For those on both sides of the abortion debate, the stakes are high. "This would be the greatest restriction on a woman's right to get an abortion with her own money in our lifetime," the pro-choice activist said.
– If you're hoping to win that $500 million Powerball jackpot tonight, we have bad and less-than-surprising news for you: It ain't gonna happen. But one person ultimately has to defy the stacked-way-against-you odds, and if that happens to be you, do this: Get yourself some good lawyers and financial advisers, one analyst tells CBS News. Actually listen to them. Sign that winning ticket and put it somewhere safe. Take note: "The safe place is not a shoebox in your closet." Keep quiet, and hold your horses. There's no reason to claim your prize immediately, and it's best to get your "team" set up before you come forward. Because once you do, you can expect to be inundated with appeals from cash-seeking strangers. Remember the winning ticket may not be the answer to your prayers. Time lists jackpot winners who would have been better off burning their ticket. Here's one: William Post III won $16.2 million. Three months after his first payout he was $500,000 in debt (buying an airplane and a restaurant may have been a mistake); his brother allegedly hired a hit man to kill him; and Post himself faced jail time after shooting at a bill collector. But that fate won't be yours ... because as CNN sagely points out, you're not freaking winning this thing: You're vastly more likely to get struck by lightning, be attacked by a shark, or die from a bee sting. On the odd chance that you do win (that chance being one in 175,223,510), here are some quirky ways to contextualize your winnings, compliments of HLN: If you counted one dollar per second, it would take you 16 years to finish. Or you could give a buck to every single person in North America and still walk away with a cool $40 million.
– Shia LaBeouf's latest bizarre misdeed: a drunken brawl at a London bar last night, TMZ reports. In video obtained by the gossip site, LaBeouf yells, "What are you saying about my girl's mom? Are you f---ing kidding me bro?" and then headbutts the guy who angered him. But in another video from after the incident, an apparently quite drunk LaBeouf rambles on in what seems to be a remorseful tone. "I'm not trying to have, like, any more problems, you know what I'm saying?" he says as the video starts. "I'm really just trying to make peace." (Another recent and similarly crazy celebrity bar brawl story: Trace Adkins fights ... a Trace Adkins impersonator.)
– Thought Whole Foods founder John Mackey would be an Obama-loving liberal? Not so much. The self-described libertarian, who has compared ObamaCare to socialism in the past, now says "it's more like fascism." The quote comes from a new interview with NPR, and continues: "Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but they do control it—and that’s what’s happening with our healthcare programs and these reforms." But, writes Sy Mukherjee on ThinkProgress, Mackey has apparently forgotten that fascist nations also "usually utilize warfare, forced mass mobilization of the public, and politically motivated violence against their own peoples to achieve their ends." ObamaCare, on the other hand, "regulates some of the insurance industry’s shoddiest practices and imposes a small tax penalty on Americans who refuse to purchase government-subsidized private insurance."
– The suspect behind a deadly terrorist attack on a St. Petersburg subway station was a 23-year-old man from a former Soviet republic in Central Asia who had links to Islamist radical groups, according to reports in the Russian media. Reuters reports that officials in Kyrgyzstan have identified the suspect as Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Russian citizen born in the city of Osh. Officials say the toll from the attack has now hit 14, with up to 50 others injured by a bomb that exploded on a train between Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations Monday afternoon. A second bomb left at a different station failed to explode. Investigators believe Jalilov may have planted that device before blowing himself up on the train. The subway driver is being praised for continuing to the next station after the bomb went off, making it easier for rescuers to reach the wounded. According to Russian reports, the second bomb, which was packed with shrapnel and disguised as a fire extinguisher, would have done more damage than the first. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Vladimir Putin, who was visiting St. Petersburg at the time of the bombing, met with security chiefs Monday night, the Guardian reports. Earlier, he laid flowers at the Tekhnologichesky station. President Trump denounced the attack as "absolutely a terrible thing" and White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the US is willing to provide support, the AP reports.
– If you're on the hunt for children's headphones—so-called because they limit the volume of sound that they emit to protect children's ears—experts are issuing a stern warning: They're not necessarily safe, even if they purport to be. The Wirecutter, a product recommendations site, has just tested 30 sets of children's headphones and found that half of them in fact do not cap volume at a promised limit, and that the worst of the bunch emit such high volumes that damage can occur in a matter of minutes. "These are terribly important findings," one pediatric audiologist not involved in the testing tells the New York Times. "Manufacturers are making claims that aren’t accurate." Meanwhile, the Wirecutter's headphones editor tells Good Morning America that there isn't even a governing board that oversees this. The World Health Organization has deemed sound below 85 decibels to be safe for up to eight hours, but half the headphones went above this level, and in some instances children can even remove the volume limiter. Meanwhile, one in five teens suffers from hearing loss, according to a 2010 report in the Journal of American Medical Association, and some docs blame headphones. "We’re really talking about listening to a rock concert on a daily basis," one otolaryngologist tells ABC News. So which headphone set came out on top? The Wirecutter recommends Puro BT2200, which are Bluetooth wireless headphones that'll set you back $100. (Back in 2008, researchers predicted an 'epidemic' of hearing loss thanks in part to headphones.)
– Karl Smith took the witness stand last week in Illinois and dropped a bomb on a Cook County courtroom as the twin brother he hadn't seen in years looked on: "I'm here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of," Smith said. The part of the story that makes it especially dicey, reports the Chicago Tribune, is that Smith's identical twin, Kevin Dugar, has been jailed for the murder of a rival gang member since 2003. (The brothers have different last names because Smith adopted his mother's maiden name.) Authorities are skeptical, however. They say Smith is falsely confessing because he has exhausted his own appeal of a 99-year sentence for a 2008 home invasion and figures he may as well take the fall for his bother. Smith's "got nothing to lose," an assistant state's attorney says, adding that the confession doesn't mesh with eyewitness accounts. Smith, though, says he let his brother sit in prison because "I didn't have the strength to come forward" and because "I thought it was the job of the police to catch me." He contends that he decided to come forward after a religious conversion. A judge will decide if Dugar will get a new trial. Says Smith's mother: "He wouldn't lie about that." The bizarre nature of the case is drawing widespread attention, with coverage in the American Bar Association's ABA Journal and oversesa outlets including ITV News ("shocking") Australia's Perth Now ("stunning"). (In France, authorities struggled to figure out which twin was a rapist.)
– If you were hoping that the US might someday have a President Michelle Obama, we have bad news for you. The former first lady says she won't run for political office, CNN reports. During her first speech since the Obamas left the White House, Michelle on Thursday told a crowd at the American Institute of Architecture convention in Florida that since exiting political life, it's been "good to not have the weight of the world upon your shoulders." She added that she plans to continue working on behalf of women and girls, but that she can make an impact without being an elected official. "It’s all well and good until you start running [for office], and then the knives come out. Politics is tough, and it’s hard on a family," she said, according to the Orlando Sentinel. "I wouldn’t ask my children to do this again because, when you run for higher office, it’s not just you, it’s your whole family." She added that as a private citizen, she can work for the causes that are important to her without "the burden of political baggage," but assured the audience that public service would always be a part of her and her husband's lives.
– The Zika virus' apparent effect on fetuses is on shocking display in a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine that was rushed to publication given the virus' spread. Though it offers no definitive link between Zika and fetal abnormalities, the study does produce the first evidence of virus transmission from mother to child and "the strongest evidence yet that the virus causes abnormally small heads and incomplete brain development," reports the Verge. The study centers on a 25-year-old Slovenian woman who became pregnant while volunteering in Brazil in February 2015. She developed a high fever and rash during her 13th week of pregnancy, but ultrasounds at 14 and 20 weeks showed no issues. When she returned to Slovenia in October, however, doctors found extensive brain damage in the fetus and the pregnancy was aborted, per NBC News. An autopsy found the full genome of the Zika virus exclusively in the fetus' unusually smooth and scarred brain, suggesting the virus only attacked nerve tissue, per Reuters. The mother had no family history of genetic abnormalities and the fetus tested negative for 13 other viruses known to cause birth defects. "You have a mother who's infected, a fetus that's abnormal, and in the fetus, you have the genetic signature of the virus," says an infectious disease expert. "This is clear data showing Zika can infect the fetus." An epidemiologist adds "it sounds like a pretty clear case of extreme microcephaly." Scientists suspect brain development may have stopped around 20 weeks, leading one doctor to suggest that Zika, like other viruses linked to birth defects, may be most dangerous in the early stages of pregnancy. (The virus has been linked to other health problems.)
– More than 2,500 mourners crowded Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis this morning to lay Michael Brown to rest, reports the AP, with another 2,000 in overflow seating and national television carrying the 18-year-old's funeral. Brown's casket was closed, with a St. Louis Cardinals cap atop it, notes the Post-Dispatch. His uncle, Bernard Ewing, recalled him as a "big guy, but a kind, gentle soul" in a service that the New York Times calls "deeply religious." The overarching message was one of change, with Brown's family members urging mourners to vote, and the Rev. Al Sharpton saying, "We are required to leave here today and change things. Michael Brown must be remembered for more than disturbances." Michael Brown Sr., wearing a tie bearing his son's image, had yesterday pleaded with protesters for "a day of silence so I can, so we can, lay our son to rest." Other highlights: Among those gathered: Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III, Spike Lee, Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. William Lacy Clay; family members of Trayvon Martin and Sean Bell; three White House representatives. Gov. Jay Nixon declined to attend "out of respect for the family." Sharpton on protesters who turned to violence, as per CNN: "Can you imagine, they're heartbroken, their son taken, discarded, and marginalized, and they have to stop mourning to get you to control your anger, like you're more angry than they are, like you don't understand that Michael Brown does not want to be remembered for a riot." The Rev. Charles Ewing, Brown's uncle who eulogized him: "Michael Brown's blood is crying from the ground, crying for vengeance, crying for justice. There is a cry being made from the ground, not just for Michael Brown, but for the Trayvon Martins, for those children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, for the Columbine massacre, for the black-on-black crime."
– Scientists are urging people to watch what they eat—and drink—in a new study linking a pesticide with Parkinson's disease. Researchers note that, for a time, cattle in Hawaii were likely fed a gruel containing traces of heptachlor, used by American pineapple farmers before it was banned in 1988, per Time. The cows' milk was contaminated, but "no one knows how long or how widespread the contamination was before being detected," the Parkinson's Disease Foundation says, per NBC News. To test the possible effects, researchers studied the brains of 116 Japanese-American men in Hawaii who had given information about their milk-drinking habits before they died. They found men who consumed more than two glasses of milk, or 16 ounces, daily had 40% fewer brain cells in the substantia nigra, an area that shows damage in Parkinson's cases, compared to men who drank less than two cups per day. Some 90% of heavy milk drinkers also had heptachlor residue in their brains, compared to 63% of those who didn't drink milk. Researchers dated the cell damage to after the accumulation of heptachlor, which suggests the chemical was responsible for the changes. The team couldn't test milk samples, but they "have no other explanation for how heptachlor epoxide found its way into the brains of men who consumed milk," a study author tells Live Science. He notes "the vast majority of milk consumers do not get Parkinson's disease," but "this adds to the literature that diet may indeed play a role." The study also backs others suggesting smokers enjoy protection against Parkinson's: Milk drinkers who smoked showed no brain cell loss. One critic notes participants divulged how much milk they drank some 30 years before they died, so their consumption perhaps changed. (This pesticide has been linked to Alzheimer's.)
– Police in Missouri have had to give the parents of Jessica Runions the news they dreaded: One of two skulls found outside Kansas City this week is that of their 21-year-old daughter, who disappeared in September. Police say the case is now a homicide investigation, People reports. Authorities say that identifying the other human remains could take weeks or months. The area in rural Cass County is still being searched for additional remains. The family of Kara Kopetsky, a 17-year-old who disappeared in 2007, was notified when the remains were found. Both Runions and Kopetsky were linked to the same man, 28-year-old Kylr Yust, who was charged with "knowingly burning" Runions' car after she vanished. It's not clear whether Yust will face additional charges now that Runions' remains have been found. "Kylr has not been charged with anything, with anything outside of knowingly burning a car, again ... and that we intend to fight," his attorney told ABC News before the remains were identified. Runions was last seen leaving a party with Yust, who was a friend of her boyfriend. Yust was also a suspect after Kopetsky, his ex-girlfriend, disappeared. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to domestic violence after choking another girlfriend. She told police he threatened to kill her, telling her he had "killed people before, even ex-girlfriends, out of sheer jealousy."
– The body of a woman who went missing more than two decades ago has been found—buried under the grave of a World War II veteran. John Sandoval, 52, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder Friday and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 1995 death of his estranged wife, Kristina Tournai-Sandoval. As part of a plea deal, the Colorado man told investigators March 22 her remains were buried at a Greeley cemetery. Sandoval found an open gravesite early in the morning on Oct. 20, 1995, that was scheduled for a burial that afternoon. Prosecutors say he dug about 2 feet below the grave and buried Tournai-Sandoval's body, which was wrapped in several layers of industrial-grade plastic. Cemetery workers then unknowingly buried the veteran over her remains, reports the AP. The Greeley Tribune reports Tournai-Sandoval had planned to meet her husband of three years for one last time before finalizing their divorce, in order to discuss an IRS debt. That meeting was to take place Oct. 19, 1995; it was the last day she was seen alive. Detectives found a muddy shovel in Sandoval's car, muddy clothes inside his home, and noticed scratch marks on his face, neck, and chest. Charges were not filed at the time because authorities could not find the body, any witnesses, or a crime scene. Sandoval was convicted in 2010 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. But an appeals court overturned his conviction last year. Prosecutors had been preparing for a new trial when Sandoval offered to give up his wife's location in exchange for taking a life sentence off the table, reports the Denver Post. He could be up for parole as soon as 2028.
– It's a specific health warning for a specific group of people: If you smoke, drink alcohol, and also happen to drink tea, let the latter cool down before you drink it. Failing to do so might raise your risk of esophageal cancer, suggests a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine by Chinese researchers. The idea is that hot tea (or, presumably, any hot beverage) can damage cells in the esophagus and make it more vulnerable to the damage caused by cigarettes and alcohol, the lead researcher tells the Telegraph. How hot is too hot? The researchers didn't specify, but CNN notes that previous research on hot beverages pegged the danger zone at 149 degrees Fahrenheit and above. "Irritating the lining of the esophagus could lead to increased inflammation and more rapid turnover of the cells," explains a National Cancer Institute investigator who was not involved with the study. "Alternatively, hot liquids may impair the barrier function of the cells lining the esophagus, leaving the tissue open to greater damage from other carcinogens." The observational study was a massive one, following nearly 500,000 Chinese adults ages 30 to 79 for about a decade. Those who drank hot tea and either smoked or used alcohol, but not both, also saw an increased risk of cancer, though it wasn't as great, reports Time. And hot tea alone did not carry a significant risk increase.
– Planned Parenthood got some good news from the Supreme Court on Monday, as new Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court's more liberal judges—as did Chief Justice John Roberts—in deciding not to hear a case involving the group. The upshot is that state court rulings will remain in place; those rulings allow Planned Parenthood to contest laws in Louisiana and Kansas to defund the organization. If either Kavanaugh or Roberts had joined conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, the court would have taken up the case, turning it into the first major abortion test of the new court, reports Politico. Lawmakers in the two states sought to deny public funding to Planned Parenthood because the group provides abortions. However, federal law already prohibits Medicaid funds from being used for abortions, notes NPR. In his dissent, Thomas blasted the decision. "What explains the Court's refusal to do its job here?" he wrote. "I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named Planned Parenthood." He contended that the cases at hand "are not about abortion rights" but "about private rights of action under the Medicaid Act," per CNN. Still, USA Today sees the court's move as a setback for conservative interest groups who have been pushing for action on Planned Parenthood over the issue of abortion. (Abortion rights groups won a reprieve in Iowa earlier this year.)
– "That new soda tax in Seattle is working out about as well as Chicago's," proclaims a headline at Hot Air. It's not a compliment. The tax, which went into effect Jan. 1, slaps an additional 1.75 cents on each fluid ounce of sugar-sweetened drinks, a group that includes soda, sports drinks, and kombucha. That's nearly double the one-cent levy the Chicago-encompassing Cook County tried, a tax it repealed after about two months. The Chicago Tribune reported at the time that Costco's nine affected locations saw their sales of beverages impacted by the tax fall 34%, while sales jumped 38% at locations just beyond the county line. And Costco is again at the fore of what's happening: Because bulk purchases contain significantly more ounces than an individual one, the impact is starker, as KIRO discovered when it spotted an updated Costco sign for Gatorade in Seattle. The sign details Costco's price for the 35-pack of 16-ounce bottles—$15.99—and separately lists the city's $10.34 tax, for a new total of $26.33. But that's not all the sign says: It also directs consumers to nearby locations that are outside city limits and exempt from the tax. The tax is meant to fight obesity and raise funds for worthy expenditures, but the blog for Citizens Against Government Waste sees the ends quite differently: "Let’s be clear. Soda taxes don’t make people healthier. They don't raise revenue—they drive it outside city limits. They don’t help ease inequality—they make the poor poorer." But some in government seemingly remain hopeful: KXLY reports a bill was reintroduced Monday that would push the tax statewide. (Speaking of Seattle and beverages, the world's largest Starbucks is no longer located there.)
– A male who authorities say was wielding a broomstick was shot and critically injured by Salt Lake City officers Saturday night, touching off several hours of unrest downtown as officers donned riot gear and blocked streets and bystanders threw rocks and bottles, the AP reports. The male shot by two Salt Lake City Police officers was in critical condition at a local hospital Sunday morning after being struck twice in the torso, according to Det. Ken Hansen with the Unified Police Department, which is investigating the shooting. Hansen did not have details about the male's identity or age, but said the shooting occurred when two Salt Lake City officers were called around 8pm to break up a fight near a downtown homeless shelter that sits next to a shopping mall and movie theater. When the officers arrived, they found the male in the street, hitting another person with the broomstick, Hansen says. Officers tried to break up the fight, but the male with the broomstick tried to attack an officer and one or both of the police officers then shot the male, hitting him in the upper and lower torso, per Hansen. Selam Mohammad, 19, tells the Deseret News that he was with a 16-year-old friend from Kenya when fighting started and the friend grabbed a broomstick to break it up. Police "ran up with their guns pulled out" and told the friend to drop the stick, Mohammad says. "He barely even turned around, then boom, boom, boom—and he just dropped," he adds. "My friend didn’t do anything." Nearly 100 officers, some with riot shields, responded when rioting ensued, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
– After an outcry, the organization that controls the release of emojis has added two more legs to the forthcoming lobster emoji to make it correct. The Portland Press Herald reports that soon after the Unicode Consortium released proposed images of 157 new emojis, Maine residents took umbrage at the lobster emoji's eight legs instead of the correct 10. Emojipedia Chief Emoji Officer Jeremy Burge wrote in a blog post Monday that the consortium had heard people's complaints and is releasing updated designs for the lobster emoji, alongside updates for a skateboard and DNA emoji. (The post has before and after images.) The lobster emoji is expected to be available later this year, per the AP.
– The US and China rank as the world's two largest polluters, but a surprise deal is turning them into the world's two largest pollution fighters: The nations announced that they'll be working in tandem on long-term greenhouse-gas controls that would cut emissions by nearly a third over the next 15 years or so, CNN reports. "As the world's two largest economies, energy consumers, and emitters of greenhouse gases, we have a special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change," President Obama said in a joint press conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping today at the end of the APEC summit. The move, which was months in the making, came as a surprise to experts expecting a much more limited scope, the Wall Street Journal reports. Calling it a "game changer," Mother Jones notes that it could heavily influence next year's climate talks in Paris. Key mandates include the US reducing emissions by 26% to 28% by the year 2025 (compared to the year 2005), as well as doubling the rate of emissions reduction each year between 2020 and 2025 to an average 2.3% to 2.8%, the AP reports. China is pledging to stop increasing emissions by 2030 (even earlier, if possible), as well as increase energy from zero-emission sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear to 20% by 2030. Although some worry about recent GOP gains in government as a possible roadblock, a senior administration official tells CNN that "we believe we can proceed with the authority we already have." Secretary of State John Kerry writes in a New York Times op-ed that "this is … a milestone in the United States-China relationship," a "fresh beginning," and "the first step toward a world that is more prosperous and more secure."
– Wednesday saw what could be the world's largest-ever pearl; Thursday, a massive gold nugget weighing in at around 9 pounds. Found in central Victoria's Golden Triangle in Australia by an explorer who wishes to stay anonymous, per ABC.net.au, the gleaming chunk of precious metal, estimated to be worth up to $190,000, was found 12 inches below the surface using what Gizmodo Australia calls a $7,600 Minelab metal detector known as the "next level of gold detection." "I thought it was rubbish at first, maybe an old horseshoe," says the prospector, who's been scouting for buried treasure in his spare time for 10 years with a group of friends, per 9News. But as he dug deeper, the finder of the nugget now being called "Friday's Joy" realized he hadn't just stumbled across some junkyard-worthy detritus. The prospector, who had found a 9-ounce gold nugget the previous day, initially wasn't sure what to do with this substantially larger find—discovered, incidentally, in a location that had already been "worked over," a Minelab rep tells AustraliaMining.com—so he rinsed it off with water, wrapped it tinfoil, and stuck it in his oven for the night. For now, the gold piece remains secure in a bank vault until it can be sold at auction, and the prospector, who has promised to split the proceeds with his metal-detecting group, is planning to use his share to buy a van so he can travel around his home continent. His lucrative new lucky charm is still far from being the world's biggest: Per the Discovery Channel, that honor goes to the 158-pound "Welcome Stranger" nugget found in Dunolly, Victoria, in 1869. (Once found in a plane toilet: 32 gold nuggets.)
– Six people died after losing air conditioning at a Florida nursing home whose power was knocked out by Hurricane Irma, Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief confirmed in a press conference Wednesday. Sharief said three people died at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills and two more were declared dead at a hospital, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports. A sixth death was announced in a press release later Wednesday morning. It may have all been due to extreme temperatures at the facility, though the causes of death haven't yet been officially determined. A police rep simply said "a number of people" were "in respiratory distress" at the facility; 115 people were evacuated from it. More on the deaths and other Irma-related news: Hollywood Police Chief Tom Sanchez says precautionary checks are being performed at the other nursing homes in the area, the Miami Herald reports. Sanchez says a criminal investigation into the deaths has been opened. The Airstron employee who had been trying to fix the AC unit tells Local 10 that a fuse needed to cool the unit popped out during the hurricane. He says he's been trying to repair the facility's unit for days, but Florida Power & Light (FPL) has yet to fix the fuse for him despite his phone calls. The Washington Post reports a rep for FPL noted the county didn't designate the facility as "top critical"—meaning a place given priority attention—during a 2017 hurricane planning meeting. The Post separately reported that as of Wednesday morning some 40% of the state was still without power, and that some may not see it for as long as weeks. The mayor of Naples, Fla., put it bluntly: "The biggest issue is power. It’s 92 degrees and the sun is out and it’s smoking out there.” FPL's best estimate at this point for when power will be restored to those along the state's west coast: Sept. 22. Carbon monoxide is also an issue in the wake of the storm: The Los Angeles Times reports that at least five people have died and more than a dozen others have been treated after breathing carbon monoxide fumes from generators.
– President Trump escalated his Twitter war with CNN on Sunday, and in the process sparked more concern that he is advocating the use of violence against members of the media, the Hill reports. The president tweeted a modified video of a 2007 WWE wrestling match he took part in, obscuring his opponent's head with the CNN logo, which he proceeds to beat with his fists. Trump tweeted the video with the hashtags "#FraudNewsCNN" and "#FNN." A CNN spokesman called it "a sad day when the president of the United States encourages violence against reporters." But on ABC News, Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert suggested CNN and other critics were overreacting. "No one would perceive that as a threat," he said, adding that Trump is "beaten up in a way on cable platforms that he has a right to respond to." The new video comes just a few days after Trump posted two tweets in which he talked about MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski "bleeding badly from a face-lift." Those tweets sparked condemnation from all over the political spectrum, with even Trump's fellow Republicans calling them unpresidential. On Saturday, however, Trump took to Twitter once again to address the backlash, writing, "My use of social media is not Presidential – it's MODERN DAY presidential," Politico reports. At a press conference Thursday, Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump "no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence," the Washington Post reports. "In fact quite the contrary."
– An absolutely amazing story out of Oklahoma, where a Texas 16-year-old survived a 3,500-foot fall in a skydiving mishap—and didn't even require any surgery for her injuries. Mackenzie Wethington, who went skydiving Saturday as a birthday present from her parents, slammed into the ground, yet somehow only suffered a lacerated liver and kidney, broken bones, and a broken tooth; she's already communicating with her parents in writing and doctors say she's in good condition and should suffer few long-term effects. "I have no idea how she survived," one tells Today. Experts are calling it a miracle; one suspects the teen somehow decreased her air speed and thus landed somewhat more softly—in other words, she was incredibly lucky. The teen was supposed to do a tandem jump with an experienced skydiver, but was told when she arrived that Pegasus Air Sports Center wasn't doing tandem jumps, so her first jump after six hours of training was on her own—and went horribly awry. It's not clear exactly what happened: According to MyFox DFW, the family says Mackenzie's primary parachute didn't open properly (it was supposed to open automatically) and may have gotten tangled, and Mackenzie couldn't open the emergency chute. Mackenzie's dad (who says the main chute only half-opened, according to CNN) blames Pegasus Air Sports Center, claiming it offered inadequate training and didn't properly maintain its equipment. The owner of Pegasus, however, blames Mackenzie and denies any problem with her equipment: "She didn't do what she was supposed to do," he says, though it's not clear what she did wrong; the owner says she didn't take a "corrective counter action" to make her parachute "stop turning." He claims the chute did open fully but somehow, "maybe ... initiated by her," started a rotation that caused the problem. The family has hired a lawyer, Fox News Insider reports.
– Astronomically inclined conspiracy theorists have long been predicting the Earth's demise in a collision with a rogue planet called "Niburu" or "Planet X" biding its time out of sight somewhere in the solar system, CNET reports. In fact, Niburu was "supposed" to crash into Earth just last month. And while death-by-planet remains unlikely, the existence of an undiscovered planet in our solar system is now almost a certainty, according to NASA. Planetary astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin and professor Mike Brown set out to disprove the existence of a hidden planet a few years ago and, ironically, ended up finding convincing evidence for the existence of what they call "Planet Nine." The main evidence for Planet Nine comes from its "gravitational footprint," but it's convincing enough that Batygin says the solar system makes a lot more sense with the hidden planet than without it, Space.com reports. Planet Nine is believed to be 10 times more massive than Earth and located about 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune. From its position in the far reaches of the solar system, it has tilted and reversed the orbits of objects in the Kuiper Belt, according to Batygin and Brown. It also may be the reason the orbits of the planets are slightly off from the sun's equator. Finally, Planet Nine could be the "super Earth" frequently found orbiting other stars but "conspicuously absent" around ours. Oh, and NASA wants conspiracy theorists to know Planet Nine, if it exists, is staying far away from Earth. (Scientists just found the smallest possible star.)
– The power struggle between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is getting more intense—and a lot weirder. Several people close to Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being magicians and summoning genies, reports the Guardian. Ahmadinejad has faced harsh criticism from religious conservatives since he returned to work after going AWOL for 11 days because of a disagreement with Khamenei. The feud appears to stem from reactions to unrest in the Arab world, notes the Washington Post. Khamenei and other religious leaders favor retrenchment, while Ahmadinejad and his circle are believed to favor outreach. Mashaei, Ahmadinejad's chosen successor, has made efforts to open lines of communication with Washington in recent months, sources say. Tensions have further increased with the release of a documentary that claims that Hidden Imam Mahdi, Shia Islam's savior, is about to return. Senior clerics allege that a "perverted team" among Ahmadinejad's inner circle is responsible for the film.
– And the sure-to-be-constant stream of Brangelina Engagement Gossip continues. The latest, per a "confidante" in Us Weekly: Brad Pitt gathered the whole family together as he presented Angelina Jolie with her brand-new engagement ring, and she "cried and smiled" as he proposed. Their six kids were similarly excited, and "everyone hugged once she put [the ring] on," the source continues. "She went around and showed it to each of the kids." Though the Us article puts the proposal on "a recent spring day," Life & Style claims the pair got engaged over Christmas, and a source tells E! they decided to get hitched "last year." More burning questions: How much will their wedding photos go for? E! shoots high with $10 million, Huffington Post says maybe $5 million, but the Daily and Radar go lower—$2 million. How does Jennifer Aniston feel about all this? She was first said to be so delighted she might actually attend the wedding. Then a source told E! that, believe it or not, "she doesn't care. She really doesn't. She's happy with Justin [Theroux]," while another source tells People, "Jen is not a bitter person and she has always wanted Brad to be happy." And Vanity Fair asks the really important question: "Will Angelina Jolie’s New Job as a UN Special Envoy Put Her Engagement Ring at Risk?" What about a prenup? Click to see what the "experts" think…
– Researchers were perusing an amber market in Myanmar when they stumbled across a truly extraordinary specimen, National Geographic reports. Trapped inside a golden piece of amber—already partially shaped to be sold as jewelry—was a fully feathered section of a dinosaur's tail. According to the Los Angeles Times, the person selling the amber thought it was some kind of plant. While scientists have found evidence of feathered dinosaurs, not to mention feathered prehistoric birds, this piece of amber is the first time feathers have been found perfectly preserved and attached to what is unmistakably a dinosaur. The find was published Thursday in Current Biology. The tail section is believed to belong to a young, sparrow-sized coelurosaur that lived 99 million years ago. Researchers know the tail belongs to a dinosaur because of its articulated vertebrae; birds have vertebrae that are fused together. And because of the way the features are structured, researchers believe they were useless for flight. It remains unclear exactly what purpose the feathers served, though researchers theorize dinosaurs may have used them for camouflage, regulating their body heat, or signaling to other animals. Now that researchers can see how feathers actually appeared on a dinosaur's body, they hope to learn how they evolved for flight in modern-day birds. They also believe that, given access to Myanmar's amber mines, they may one day find a whole preserved dinosaur.
– Female competitive eaters took first, second, and third place at the this year's US Professional Wing Eating Championship yesterday, consuming a total of 500 chicken wings between them, reports Buffalo News. Taking home the title was Miki Sudo, 28, who downed 178 wings in 12 minutes. She was followed by Michelle Lesco with 158, and Sonya "the Black Widow" Thomas close by with 141. Champion hot dog scarfer Joey Chestnut, who won last year's championship with a record 191 wings, did not show up to defend his title, reports the AP. If 178 wings sounds like more than you could eat in a week, chew on this: Sudo also won the Buffet Bowl Contest the day before—a race to eat a five-pound platter of Buffalo-style cuisine, according to Major League Eating. "One contest is exciting as it is, but to have two wrapped up in a two-day period is something else,” says Sudo, who weighs only 115 pounds. “I just can’t wait for next year."
– Audrey Parker used Canada's medically assisted death law to legally end her life—but a provision in that law forced her to do so months earlier than she wanted to. The Guardian looks at the 57-year-old's case and the debate it has generated: Parker's stage 4 breast cancer was painful and advanced enough that she qualified as having a "grievous and irremediable medical condition," as determined by two doctors. But the law requires that one be of sound mind at the time of his or her death—and with the Toronto Star reporting the cancer had moved into Parker's brain lining, she feared that if she held off, her lucidity might erode. "I would have liked to have really lived until Christmas. But I can't take the chance of losing my window," she told the Globe and Mail. So she opted for a premature death on Nov. 1. The Globe and Mail reports the provision was put in as a "safeguard," with the Guardian noting cases of dementia patients who request death but then forget they have done so and happily live out their last days. On the flip side, the provision has also forced others to reel in their painkiller dosage at the end, resulting in increased pain. Before Parker's death, she publicly advocated to have the law changed, and the Guardian reports federal justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould responded in the negative: "We're not considering changing something in the legislation." Parker discusses her experience in a lengthy obituary she wrote herself, which is filled with gratitude, features 10 pieces of advice, and ends with this: "Until we meet again, I leave you with a simple message: Be kind ... because you can." (This man had issues with the way he had to end his life.)
– He might not get a full military funeral, but Parkland school shooting victim Peter Wang will get a nod from the US Army. The 15-year-old old Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps member who held doors open for students and staff fleeing bullets at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last week will be honored with a Medal of Heroism, presented to his family at a memorial service Tuesday, reports the Daily Beast, which notes the medal is given to those whose actions "involved the acceptance of danger and extraordinary responsibilities." A medal was presented to relatives of 14-year-old JROTC member Alaina Petty at a memorial service Monday—the Florida Attorney General's Office is covering funeral costs for all 17 shooting victims—and will be given to 14-year-old Martin Duque's family on Saturday, the Army says. Alex Schachter, another 14-year-old killed in the shooting, is being honored with a scholarship fund totaling more than $125,000 as of this writing. It's designed to "fund increased security at schools" and help students "experience the joys of music," according to a GoFundMe page. Another arranged by the Broward Education Foundation has raised $1.7 million to be used "to provide relief and financial support" to victims and family members, who've received free transportation from JetBlue Airways. "We've all cried a lot—first in horror, but then because of the outpouring (of) generosity and compassion," BEF marketing director PeJay Ryan tells Fox News. Some 18 comfort dogs trained by Lutheran Church Charities are also providing relief. They "are good listeners and have a unique way of knowing when people are hurting," says CEO Tim Hetzner.
– To snip or not to snip? Male circumcision carries "low" risks but has "dramatic" benefits, according to draft guidelines released by the CDC yesterday. The long-awaited guidelines say that the procedure can greatly reduce the risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases for heterosexual men, reports Reuters, which notes that circumcision rates have dropped 10% to 58% over the last three decades. Circumcision is a personal decision, and the guidelines will stop short of recommending all newborn boys undergo the procedure, but "the scientific evidence is clear that the benefits outweigh the risks," a CDC spokesman tells the AP. The CDC says that circumcision can reduce the risk of a man getting HIV or herpes from a female partner by around 50%. It also makes sex safer for female partners, although it doesn't appear to reduce the risk of contracting STDs during anal sex with other men. The draft guidelines—which will face stiff opposition from anti-circumcision groups—say the risk of complications from circumcision is only 0.5% for newborns, reports the Los Angeles Times. That rises to 9% among children, then drops to 5% among adults, though the guidelines—which say circumcised men "generally report minimal or no change in sexual satisfaction or function"—note that waiting for a boy to reach adolescence or adulthood lets him choose for himself. (California has banned attempts to ban circumcision.)
– Lots of schools are using iPads and other gizmos in the classroom, but now a few downsides are surfacing. Widespread hacking might be expected, but teacher assault by a 9-year-old? The Smoking Gun reports that police in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were summoned when a boy erupted into a rage after his 26-year-old female teacher confiscated his iPad in class. After he started to flip chairs, the teacher escorted him into the hallway, where he proceeded to repeatedly stomp her foot, leaving it bruised and swollen. It took four adults to restrain the youth, notes the State. Police released him into the custody of his mother instead of arresting him.
– Religions throughout the world—and throughout history—have put dreams at the center of their belief systems, and researchers say there's a good reason for that. We do much of our intense dreaming during REM sleep, when the highly active brain acts almost like it's awake, writes Ross Pomeroy at Real Clear Science. All that activity can lead to dreamed situations that feel very real—in some cases, even religious. In a new paper in Frontiers in Psychology, a neurologist and theological scholar argue that dreams are well-suited to create experiences in which we believe we've spoken to a deity of some kind. That is in part due to the feeling of an alternative reality we get in dreams, the researchers say. What's more, in dreams, we often ascribe emotions and thoughts to those we believe we're encountering. We give them an "exaggerated degree of agency" because our dreaming brains have trouble understanding our thoughts as our own, the researchers write. The researchers also note that unclear boundaries between REM sleep and wakefulness can be linked to schizophrenia—but at Gizmodo, Annalee Newitz notes that the feeling of "hearing voices" may not necessarily mean a person is dealing with mental illness. A recent survey found that 15% of respondents who say they've heard voices have no diagnosis of disorder, and the "hearing" involved isn't necessarily auditory; the voices may not feel as though they're external at all, researchers say. (Researchers last year described schizophrenia as not one, but eight different illnesses.)
– For the first time in eight years, the staidness of the Supreme Court was shaken up by an outburst from a protester yesterday. During a debate on attorney fees in patent lawsuits, a well-dressed man rose near the back of the courtroom to blast the court's 2010 Citizens United campaign finance decision, CNN reports. He shouted slogans like " Money is not speech," "Corporations are not people," and "Overturn Citizens United," before police removed him after a brief scuffle, reports Reuters. None of the nine justices commented on the outburst, which didn't make it into the official transcript. The last such interruption was during a debate on late-term abortion procedures in 2006, court officials say, and there was another protest in the chamber around 20 years ago. The protester, later identified as Noah Newkirk of Los Angeles, has been charged with making a "harangue or oration, or utter[ing] loud or threatening or abusive language in the Supreme Court Building," SCOTUSblog reports.
– While President Trump was defending his travel ban in Nashville, Tenn., his daughter Ivanka joined Canada's prime minister for a Broadway show with a message of tolerance. Ivanka Trump and Justin Trudeau attended Come From Away, a musical about how the residents of Gander, Newfoundland, welcomed more than 6,000 people stranded in the small town when planes were diverted there after the 9/11 attacks, when US airspace was closed, the New York Daily News reports. The show opened in New York Sunday to rave reviews after runs in cities including Seattle and Washington, DC. Ivanka and Trudeau arrived in the same motorcade and sat next to each other during the play, the Telegraph reports. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was also in the crowd, as were up to 150 other UN ambassadors, reports the Toronto Star, which notes that the musical has a recurring subplot about anti-Muslim prejudice. Trudeau received a standing ovation for his speech introducing the play. He thanked the cast for working "to pull together such an extraordinary crowd to celebrate this story of friendship during extraordinarily difficult times between individuals between countries" and spoke about the close relationship betweeen the US and Canada. "The world gets to see what it is to lean on each other and be there for each other," he said. (Trudeau says Canada will welcome refugees of all faiths.)
– It's a jarring image, and that's before learning that the Army photographer who captured it was killed moments later. The photo shows the first instant of a mortar tube explosion during a training exercise in Afghanistan in 2013, a blast that killed 22-year-old Army Spc. Hilda Clayton, reports Time. The explosion also killed the Afghan photographer she'd been training, along with three Afghan soldiers, reports the Army Times. The Army has published final images from both photographers in its journal Military Review. (The feature on Clayton is on the second last page, while an Army press release has the images here.) A staffer who served with Clayton brought the images to the journal's attention, and they were published with the consent of her family in Augusta, Ga., reports Stars and Stripes. "Not only did Clayton help document activities aimed at shaping and strengthening the (Afghan) partnership but she also shared in the risk by participating in the effort," says the story, adding that Clayton’s death "symbolizes how female soldiers are increasingly exposed to hazardous situations in training and in combat on par with their male counterparts." Clayton was the first "combat documentation and production specialist" killed in Afghanistan, the Army says. Her unit, known as Combat Camera, has created an annual contest in her honor.
– Country singer Jason Aldean returned to Las Vegas on Sunday in an unannounced trip to visit some of those injured in last week's mass shooting. "Feels surreal being back in Vegas today," his wife, Brittany, wrote on Instagram. "Visiting some of the strongest people we have ever met." Aldean, who was on stage when the shooting began, visited University Medical Center, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Photos have surfaced of his visit with patients, and the hospital thanked him on Facebook. The day before, Aldean made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live to sing Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down."
– Amid nationwide protests against police brutality, effigies of three black people hung by their necks turned up on UC Berkeley campus in northern California yesterday—but was it racism or politically inspired art? "We are unsure of the intent," a school spokeswoman tells the AP. The effigies, one female and two male, had the names of lynching victims on them and the dates when they were killed. One effigy with the hashtag #ICantBreathe was named after Laura Nelson, who died by lynching in 1911, Fusion reports. (See a tweeted photo of an effigy here.) "It certainly could have been racially motivated, so we're taking it very seriously and are very interested in finding out who did this," another school rep tells USA Today. No one has claimed responsibility, and police are investigating. Meanwhile, people are debating whether the effigies are designed to support or terrorize protesters. "This is racial terror they are experiencing," an on-campus Berkeley pastor tells the Oakland Tribune. "These images strewed across campus have terrorized my students." But others call it "guerilla art" reminiscent of Public Enemy's 1992 single, "Hazy Shade of Criminal," the cover of which showed two lynching victims. "To me this suggested a really powerful public art installation" that connects lynching, "state violence against black folks," and the "situation that we're faced with around police brutality and these non-indictments," a Berkeley black studies professor tells the San Francisco Chronicle. Hundreds of protesters marched yesterday in Berkeley, without incident, under minimal police presence. (Protests there last weekend led to violence and six arrests.)
– Sun feel a little off to you these days? Congratulations on being finely attuned to the inner workings of the solar system. The sun is in the process of reversing its magnetic fields, and the full process should be complete before the year is out, reports Space.com. It may sound like a doomsday plot twist, but the reversal occurs every 11 years at the peak of the sun's solar cycle, explains the Huffington Post. "The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity," says Stanford physicist Phil Scherrer. In fact, "the sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up." The peak of the cycle usually is associated with an increase in sunspots and solar flares, but this year's peak is relatively tame. The flip, then, should occur with most earthlings being none the wiser.
– A Quinnipiac poll out today brings an unwelcome milestone for Hillary Clinton: She trails for the first time in Iowa to Bernie Sanders, 41% to 40%. That's within the poll's margin of error but still a notable shift from July, when she was way out in front 52% to 33%. Previous polls have shown that Sanders also is leading in New Hampshire, and with all the usual caveats about early-state polls, the two taken together should give the Clinton camp plenty to think about. Here's a sampling of reaction: Time: Sanders' "rapid gain on Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire reflects broader concern among liberal Democrats with economic inequality, college affordability, healthcare and campaign finance reform, issues that Sanders has trumpeted throughout his campaign." Politico: The "shift is a significant one, coming on the heels of polls showing Sanders edging Clinton in New Hampshire, too. Together, the results suggest a candidate reeling from the controversy over her emails and struggling to put down a rebellion on her left flank." CNN: "For Clinton, the poll will come as a sharp reminder of her 2008 race, when she also faltered in Iowa despite her once-inevitable nominee status." Click to read about a plan Clinton endorses—that could actually give Sanders a big edge.
– It's close but no cigar for British Airways. The airline has fully restored all its long-haul services out of Heathrow following Saturday's crippling IT failure, but Monday marks the third day of related delays and cancellations, particularly when it comes to short-haul flights. The AP reports BA axed 27 flights on Monday, and sister airlines Iberia and Air Nostrum cancelled more than 320. The airline didn't offer much in the way of details until Monday when in an interview with Sky News, CEO Alex Cruz faulted a power surge. The Independent reports Cruz also said the backup system didn't kick in as it should have. Cruz brushed away a British union's assertions that the root of the IT issue stretches back a year, when "hundreds" of IT staffers lost their jobs, per the union GMB, with the work outsourced to India. Cruz countered that "they've all been local issues around a local data center who have been managed and fixed by local resources." But that doesn't stop the BBC from speculating that for BA's "Disaster Recovery Plan" to have worked, "veteran staff with knowledge of the complex patchwork of systems built up over the years" would be key, and it's possible some of those people left during last year's shift to India. GMB isn't the only one needling the airline. Mashable reports budget airline Ryanair has been poking fun on Twitter. In one tweet, it proclaims, "Breaking news: BA appoints new head of IT.... #ShouldHaveFlownRyanair"; the picture above features the line "computer says no." See its other tweet here.
– In what's being described as a "horrible accident" by Punta Gorda Police Chief Tom Lewis, a 73-year-old Florida woman was mistakenly shot dead while participating in a citizen police academy designed to better relations between officers and the community they serve. The "shoot or don't shoot" role-playing session was part of Punta Gorda's eight-week academy—a "series of interactive sessions designed to provide insight into city government and to develop ... civically engaged residents." Mary Knowlton was one of 35 participants who was on Tuesday night touring the police station; she was chosen at random to play the victim to an officer's "bad guy" during a session about when officers decide to use lethal force, reports WBBH. The weapon used should have been fake or empty; instead, Knowlton was hit. The Washington Post reports by way of her Facebook page that Knowlton was a long-time librarian in Minnesota who had relocated to Punta Gorda, where she was part of the Friends of the Punta Gorda Library board of directors. The name of the officer who shot her has not been released, but he is on administrative leave pending an investigation. The Post reports that for three decades, citizen police academies have been offered throughout the US; per decade-old Justice Department stats, about 15% of surveyed police departments had such academies. Said Lewis of the "unimaginable event": "If you pray, please pray for Mary's family, and for the officers who were involved. Everyone involved in this accident is in a state of overwhelming shock and grief."
– Benjamin Petty, a cook at a Baptist church camp in Oklahoma, pleaded guilty to tying up a 13-year-old camper, raping her, sodomizing her, and threatening her if she told anyone, the Oklahoman reports. Despite pleading guilty to three felonies, Petty was sentenced to 15 years probation with no prison time earlier this month. While Petty's attorney says his client "certainly is being punished"—he must wear an ankle monitor for 24 months and register as a sex offender—others find the sentence issued by Judge Wallace Coppedge on Jan. 19 lacking, according to the AP. "Failure to hold perpetrators accountable ... sends the wrong message to victims of crime," says the executive director of the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. Assistant district attorney David Pyle says he didn't push for prison time because of the state of Petty's vision. "The big thing is Mr. Petty is legally blind and the parents (of the victim) live out of state and this little girl lives out of state and didn't want to make all the travels back and forth," he says. "The plea was negotiated with their permission." The victim's family has filed a civil suit against three churches involved in the camp—the largest youth camp in the US—alleging they didn't run background checks, KFOR reports. In the civil case, one of the churches is pushing for the victim's "prior history of voluntary sexual activity" to be introduced. An attorney for the victim says they "are saddened to see that the church has stooped to victim-blaming."
– A 91-year-old widow in New York state has been reunited with her life savings thanks to the honesty of three young roommates who found the cash in a beat-up sofa they bought from the Salvation Army. Months after buying the couch, the trio were astonished to discover $40,000 stashed in the arm cushions, the AP reports. After finding a name written on an envelope, they contacted the sofa's former owner and discovered she had stored her savings in it for more than 30 years. While the elderly woman was in hospital after an operation on her back, her daughter unknowingly got rid of the couch her mother slept on and replaced it with a full-sized bed. After the find, "we had a lot of moral discussions about the money," one of the roommates tells Little Rebellion. "We all agreed that we had to bring the money back to whoever it belonged to. It's their money—we didn’t earn it." They say that after they handed the money back, she cried in gratitude, and rewarded them with $1,000. (A homeless man recently did something similar—for a second time.)
– Sony today unveiled its next-generation gaming system, PlayStation 4, saying the console will be part of a new ecosystem focused on hardware, software, and "the fastest, most powerful gaming network." The new console is the Japanese electronics giant's first major game machine since the PlayStation 3 went on sale in 2006. Today's unveiling is Sony's attempt to steal the spotlight, at least until Microsoft unveils its next Xbox in June at the E3 video game expo in Los Angeles. Among the PS4's revisions is an updated controller that adds a touchpad, motion control, and a "share" button. The controller also features a light bar, which means a new PlayStation camera can more easily track the device. Sony has struggled lately to keep up with Microsoft and other rivals such as Apple and Samsung. The company is promising nifty mobile devices, sophisticated digital cameras, and other gadgetry as part of its comeback effort. More details at Gizmodo and TechCrunch.
– Body cam video released by police in Sanford, Fla., after a man allegedly went on a shooting spree last week that killed his girlfriend and her 8-year-old son, shows cops scoffing at the woman's "false accusations" and telling her to "stop calling 911," WESH reports. In the early morning of March 27, police responded twice to an altercation between 35-year-old Latina Herring and 31-year-old Allen Cashe, per an arrest report cited by NBC News. In the first encounter around 3:20am at a gas station, Herring and Cashe are seen screaming at each other about who was holding onto the keys, with Cashe insisting, "I'm not trying to play games" and telling Herring she had an "attitude" after coming home intoxicated after a night out. Less than half an hour later, cops were called once again, this time to a home NBC identifies as Herring's, and they don't appear to be taking Herring seriously. "It's the second time she's done it," one officer is heard saying about Herring's so-called "false accusations," with another telling her that police were going to "handle" the situation but that she should "just stop calling 911." How they handled it: Cashe was cuffed and placed in the back of a police vehicle, but then let go after cops determined the incident was a "civil matter." Just a few hours later, Cashe reportedly opened fire, killing Herring and her son. Herring's 7-year-old son and father were injured in the attack, as were two bystanders; WESH says three are in stable condition, one in critical condition. Cashe is in jail without bond until his first arraignment on April 17 for parole violation, followed by a May 2 appearance on charges of premeditated murder, attempted homicide, and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon.
– President Trump has claimed he would "love to" be interviewed under oath by special counsel Robert Mueller and that he's "looking forward" to it. His lawyers, however, are worried that Trump will make false statements, potentially leading to a charge of lying to investigators, and have urged him to turn down any interview request, the New York Times reports, citing "four people briefed on the matter." Rebuffing the interview might lead to a subpoena and a legal battle that could go all the way to the Supreme Court, but lawyers including John Dowd, who's representing Trump in the investigation, believe Mueller won't be willing to subpoena Trump and force him into a showdown, the insiders say. White House lawyer Ty Cobb supports full cooperation with Mueller's investigation, but he's outnumbered by opponents, the Times' sources say. Newt Gingrich is among those close to Trump who have publicly said that he should reject any request to be questioned. "The idea of putting Trump in a room with five or six hardened, very clever lawyers, all of whom are trying to trick him and trap him, would be a very, very bad idea," Gingrich said on Fox and Friends recently. CNN reports that Trump's team is arguing that Mueller hasn't reached the "high threshold" of evidence he would need to have Trump interviewed. (Trump has to decide whether to release a Democrat-authored memo on the Russia investigation.)
– A 600-year-old scroll describing the wars that inspired Game of Thrones might not be done making its mark on history. For the first time, the Canterbury Roll—detailing England's history until the Middle Ages—is being published online, making it accessible to the world, reports News.com.au. (The first stage is here, and the rest should be out in 2018.) As New Zealand's University of Canterbury celebrates 100 years since it acquired the 16-foot genealogical scroll, British scientists will begin studying the 15th-century manuscript next week in the hope of discovering hidden features. Using specialized equipment, they'll complete “ground-breaking work that has never before been applied to this type of manuscript,” according to a release. Researchers have so far gathered that the manuscript dates to the Wars of the Roses, a series of wars fought for England's throne by two noble families: the Lancasters and Yorks, who became the Lannisters and Starks in George RR Martin's Game of Thrones, per Mental Floss. Created by the Lancaster side, the "visually spectacular" scroll then "fell into Yorkist hands and they rewrote part of it," says researcher Chris Jones. He notes the University of Canterbury acquired it in 1918 from a Canterbury nurse named Sybilla Maude, whose family claimed to have been keeping it since the Middle Ages, per Radio New Zealand. It's now "the most significant and substantial medieval artifact in New Zealand," Jones says, adding that the public can "interact directly with the manuscript." Check out how here.
– You can measure the green-friendliness of a city in many ways—like its average carbon footprint per citizen or the energy efficiency of buildings. But the event-finding app Gravy has decided to measure cities by the number of pro-environmental events each one hosts in a year, the Huffington Post reports. Is this an official barometer? Hardly, but it does reflect people's interest in the green movement. Here are the top five US cities, each with a unique Earth Day activity: Portland: Operation Clean Street San Francisco: Earth Day SF Boston: Earth Day Massive Spin Jam Austin: Annual Earth Day Festival Chicago: Chicago Earth Day 5K Click for more.
– The families of nine Sandy Hook victims and one teacher who survived the deadly mass shooting presented their case to Connecticut Supreme Court justices Tuesday in their lawsuit against Remington, maker of the AR-15 weapon used by Adam Lanza to kill 20 children and six adults in 2012, the Hartford Courant reports. The victims' argument centers around the marketing campaign behind the AR-15, which the mother of one 6-year-old victim tells CBS News was "morally reprehensible." The lawsuit claims Remington linked "the AR-15 to macho vigilantism and military-style insurrection" in order to target a "younger demographic" and increase sales. One AR-15 ad included the tagline "consider your man card reissued." Another ad touted it as "the ultimate combat weapons system," according to Reuters. Josh Koskoff, lawyer for the victims' families, compared it to "the Ford Motor Company advertising a car that can run over people" and said that kind of advertising attracts "dangerous users," including Lanza. "Adam Lanza heard their message," Koskoff told the justices Tuesday. "He idolized the military and Remington advertised the AR-15 as the weapon used by Army Rangers." He says Remington "knew exactly what they were doing" with its marketing strategies. James Vogts, lawyer for Remington, says the company is protected by the 2005 Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that shields gun makers from liability in shootings. "No matter how much we wished those children and teachers were still alive, the law needs to be applied," Vogts told justices. Following Tuesday's arguments, justices will decide whether the families' lawsuit can go to trial.
– No word on whether they kept garlic or a crucifix nearby as they dug, but Polish archaeologists say they've unearthed four "vampire" skeletons. The remains were found with the head placed between their legs; folk tradition held that this burial arrangement would ensure that a possible bloodsucker couldn't find his head and come back to life. Though an archaeologist tells Polskie Radio that "it's very difficult to tell when these burials were carried out" due to their lack of jewelry or other items that could be dated, they likely occurred long before 1914—the date of the last recorded "vampire" burial in the country. The skeletons were found on a construction site near Gliwice, in southern Poland, and tests are being conducted on the remains. The Telegraph goes into greater (and gorier) detail about the ritual, which was said to be common in the Slavic region after the advent of Christianity there: Believed vampires would either be decapitated or hanged until their body naturally fell from the head due to decomposition. LiveScience points out that there were other ways to deal with suspected vampires, like using metal stakes to secure the corpse to the ground. Archaeologists in Bulgaria made just such a discovery last year.
– Spending time in New York City these days? You might peek under the table or bench you're using to see if there's a tape recorder marked "PROPERTY OF NSA"—which was placed there by anti-NSA activists trying to make a point, the Guardian reports. The activists won't identify themselves, but have posted recordings (which they claim are authentic) on WeAreAlwaysListening.com. Some are kinda embarrassing, too, like the students who brag about tricking a roommate into leaving, the Asian men who mock other Asians for speaking in an Asian manner, or the guy whose gay lover liked acting out fight scenes as part of sex. It was "like Batman Returns," he says. "Bam! Boom! Kazam. Ah you got me!” The point, of course, is political: Anyone upset by the tapes can send "their feelings towards their government representatives to respond to the NSA's tactics," one of the activists tells the CBC. Some NSA supporters have said they approve of domestic surveillance because they're not doing anything wrong, he notes, and suggests these recordings will put that to the test. Their website links the word "Angry?" to an ACLU page where people can oppose the renewal of the Patriot Act, which is due to end June 1, Wired reports. For the record: What the activists are doing violates state law, and the ACLU says it isn't affiliated with them, but did allow the link. Meanwhile, "careful what you say in public, New Yorkers—unless, of course, you have nothing to hide," says Wired.
– President Obama gave the green light last night for the US military to launch airstrikes in Iraq, but why now? Some explanations: Twofold mission: The US has already dropped food and supplies to Iraqis trapped on Mount Sinjar by extremist fighters from the Islamic State, or ISIS, and it may drop more. As for the airstrikes, targeted ones may be necessary near the mountain to "break the siege" there, says Obama, and allow more help to arrive and avert a "genocide." The bigger reason for the possible airstrikes, however, seems to be to halt the advance of the extremist fighters in the north. 'Line in the sand': Though the US did not intervene as the Islamic State swept across much of Iraq in recent weeks, the city of Irbil in northern Iraq "appears to be a line in the sand," writes Dan Lamothe in the Washington Post. It's the Kurdish capital, and the US has diplomats and military advisers stationed there among the American allies. (The Islamic State also reportedly controls the country's largest dam, in the northern city of Mosul.) How far? "The question arises: How far is Mr. Obama willing to go?" writes Peter Baker in the New York Times. Obama said "there is 'no American military solution' to the Iraqi insurgency, pointing again to the need for a new politically inclusive government in Baghdad. What he might do if that fails he did not say. And while aides stressed this is a narrow mission, they acknowledged scenarios in which it could expand." Reversal: "The return to military engagement in Iraq is a reversal for Mr. Obama, whose early opposition to the war that toppled Saddam Hussein, and his promise to end it, fueled his long-shot campaign for the White House," write Carol E. Lee and Felicia Schwartz at the Wall Street Journal. "It also puts a spotlight on what has become a familiar feature of the Obama presidency, in which the leader of the most powerful military in the world has become defined by his reluctance to use it." Unity after all? "Ironically, ISIS's campaign against the Kurds may end up helping unify the Iraqi state," writes Joshua Keating at Slate. The Kurds have long been at odds with Nouri al-Maliki's government, but now he's ordering his air force to help them. "Iraq’s various factions, as well as Baghdad’s odd-couple patrons, Iran and the United States, may be forced to work together to confront the most serious threat the country has faced since the worst days of the Iraq war." Full text: Read the president's statement here.
– Some 2.3 million Earthlings who are not Icelandic will trek through Iceland this year, armed with selfie sticks in search of the island's breathtaking fjords, waterfalls, volcanoes, and Game of Thrones backdrops. That's nearly five times the foot traffic Iceland saw seven years ago and it's worth $3.4 billion and one out of every three jobs. But that boon for Iceland's economy comes with a serious drawback, writes Laura Mallonee at Wired, as tourists trample over aforementioned natural beauty, infrastructures groan, and yes, sewers overflow. "Uncontrolled tourism does have negative impacts on the environment," a tourism professors says. "So if tourism is not planned and managed properly we will see some of the natural attractions be damaged." "Nice experience," reads a typical Trip Advisor review, "but there should be less people." It's a problem that Iceland has worked hard for: The Iceland Monitor points out that there's now a guidebook in English that instructs tourists on how to act (hint: don't stick your hand in a geyser to see if it's scalding), while NBC News notes that Visit Iceland put together the "Iceland Academy," which gives visitors tips on gems like "How to Avoid Hot Tub Awkwardness." Add in cheap airfares, and the fact that, as a Frommer's rep puts it, "most travelers are jazzed by the idea of getting to see an additional destination on their way to Europe," and you've got yourself a hot spot. Mallonee cites one French photog who sought to document the tourist clog. The problem, she writes, "is that even as (his work) offers a commentary on all those damned tourists, his photos often look like tourism bureau ads." (Whatever you do, don't sneak your cat into Iceland.)
– The Senate voted to begin debate on a bill based on Barack Obama’s tax cut deal last night, with the final vote expected to be held Monday. The Senate’s version of the bill will add $858 billion to the deficit over 10 years, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though the bill largely follows the White House outline, lawmakers tacked on an extension of subsidies for ethanol and alternative energy sources to sweeten the deal for Democrats. The previously-reticent Harry Reid is now behind the bill, and predicts it'll pass with nearly all Republicans and many Democrats supporting it. The House, on the other hand, is in open revolt; yesterday, in a closed-door session, Democrats were actually chanting “Just Say No,” as they voted against bringing the proposal to the floor. "If it's 'take it or leave it,' we'll leave it," one Democrat told the AP. But a Reid spokesman had this to say about the House: “This vote demonstrates they may be irrelevant to this process."
– A Chechen militant leader has claimed responsibility for the bombing that killed 36 people at Russia's biggest airport last month. Warlord Doku Umarov appears in a 16-minute video posted online in which he says the suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport was carried out on his orders and warns of more attacks to come, AP reports. "You see this special operation carried out by my order. More special operations will be carried out in the future," Umarov says in the video. "Among us there are hundreds of brothers who are prepared to sacrifice themselves" in further attacks. "We can at any time carry out operations where we want," he adds. Chechen rebels, who seek to establish an independent Islamic state in the Caucasus, also claimed responsibility for the Moscow subway bombing last year.
– Details are emerging on the grisly mass murder at an Oregon college—including reports that the shooter gave one "lucky" student a message for authorities before killing nine people and taking his own life, reports the AP. Gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer handed over an envelope and said that student "'was going to be the lucky one,'" according to the mother of a student who was shot and wounded in the spree. A pastor whose 18-year-old daughter wasn't injured told a similar story, with the gunman saying, "'Don't worry, you're the one who is going to survive,'" while the grandmother of a survivor said the "lucky" student was told to stand in a corner with the package. Authorities haven't confirmed, but one law enforcement source says a pages-long manifesto has been found. The pastor, Randy Scroggins, relayed other stories from his daughter—about how Harper-Mercer told one student to beg for her life but shot her anyway, and shot other students after telling them to crawl along the floor. Scroggins says his daughter only survived because another student's blood and body was lying on top of her. "He saved my girl," he said after talking to that student's mother. "I will forever call your son my hero." Other reports have Harper-Mercer targeting students in the writing class for being either Christian or religious. Meanwhile, the gunman's family released a statement saying they were "shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific events," Time reports, and the father said a change in gun laws could prevent future tragedies, the New York Times reports.
– House Republicans officially nominated Paul Ryan as speaker Wednesday, CNN reports. Er, excuse us, Paul D. Ryan. Also Wednesday, the congressman asked the Clerk of the House to formally change his name on all official documents and offices to Paul D. Ryan, Politico reports. His full name is Paul Davis Ryan. The full House is expected to approve Ryan's nomination Thursday morning.
– Melania Trump has kept a low profile since the GOP convention, but she's suddenly taking a more aggressive role on behalf of her husband. In interviews with CNN and Fox News, the wife of Donald Trump said she has accepted his apology over the language he used in his recent hot mic scandal, suggested he was egged on by host Billy Bush, and characterized it as "boys' talk." As for the women accusing her husband of sexual abuse, "they don't have any facts." Some excerpts: "I said to my husband that, you know, the language was inappropriate. It's not acceptable. And I was surprised, because that is not the man that I know." (To Anderson Cooper of CNN.) "Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate. And he apologized to me. ... I accept his apology. And we are moving on." (To Ainsley Earhardt of Fox.) Her husband "was led on—like, egged on—from the host to say dirty and bad stuff." (CNN) She said she'd never heard her husband talk like that. "No, that's why I was surprised, because I said like I don't know that person that would talk that way, and that he would say that kind of stuff in private." (CNN) It's "boys' talk," she said. "The boys, the way they talk when they grow up and they want to sometimes show each other, 'Oh, this and that' and talking about the girls. But yes, I was surprised, of course." (CNN) On the tactic of dredging up Bill Clinton's past: “They're asking for it. They started,” she said. "They started from the beginning of the campaign putting my picture from modeling days." (To Fox News.) Nude images of Melania Trump appeared in the New York Post, and another surfaced in an ad by a super PAC backing Ted Cruz. (Billy Bush has been fired by NBC.)
– President Trump insists that the "terrible and disgusting" n-word is simply not in his vocabulary—but White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she "can't guarantee" that recordings of him saying it will not emerge. "I can tell you that the president addressed this question directly," she told reporters Tuesday, per the Guardian. She denied that Trump's attacks on former Apprentice contestant and White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman, who says she has heard recordings of Trump using the slur, were motivated by racism, reports the New York Times. "The fact is the president's an equal opportunity person that calls things like he sees it," Sanders said. In an interview with MSNBC Tuesday, Manigault Newman confirmed that she'd been interviewed by Robert Mueller's investigators, though she declined to discuss details. Asked about Trump calling her a "dog," she said: "I think that it just shows you that if he would say that publicly, what else would he say about me privately?" Asked if there were more tapes Trump should be afraid of, she said the president should worry about being exposed as the "misogynist, the bigot, and the racist that he is." Manigault Newman, who's being sued by Trump's campaign organization for allegedly violating an NDA, provided a recording to CBS News in which Trump staffers appear to confirm the existence of an n-word tape and discuss the potential fallout.
– "They make fun of my nose, they call me ugly," Tennessee middle schooler Keaton Jones says in a heartbreaking anti-bullying video originally uploaded to Facebook Friday. "I have no friends." But after the video was shared more than 430,000 times and viewed more than 20 million times, his friends now include rappers, Hollywood stars, and football players, CBS News reports. Snoop Dogg shared the video, calling Keaton a "friend for life," while Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, invited him to the premiere of Avengers: Infinity Wars. Tennessee Titans tight end Delanie Walker recorded a video supporting Keaton and offered him tickets, and University of Tennessee wide receiver Tyler Byrd said several players plan to visit the boy at school next week, the Washington Post reports. In the video, which mother Kimberly Jones says she recorded after she picked him up because he was afraid to go to lunch, Keaton sobs as he describes how he's bullied both verbally and physically, KWCH reports. "They pour milk on me and put ham down my clothes, throw bread at me," he says, offering advice to other victims of bullying: "Stay strong, I guess. It's hard. It will probably get better one day." In another Facebook post that now seems to be taken down, Kimberly Jones said the response had been overwhelming and she was "humbled by the voice my boy has been given." Keaton's many other supporters included Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, who tweeted: "I wanna be your friend ( but srsly) ur freakin awesome."
– It's one of the most famous weather forecasts of the modern era, and it came out exactly 13 years ago to the day. That would be Aug. 28, 2005, one day before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Ricks issued a forecast so dire that some news agencies thought it was a hoax, writes meteorologist James Spann in a tweet commemorating the Ricks forecast. As it turns out, Ricks was spot on. "Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks…perhaps longer," he wrote. "At least one half of well constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail…leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed." And this: "Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards." (Spann's tweet includes the full text.) The forecast has been credited with saving lives, and it is now in the Smithsonian Museum of American History, as noted by Slate on the 10-year anniversary. Ricks told Brian Williams of NBC News on Sept. 15, 2005, that he went through the warning line by line to verify each doomsday-sounding statement before making it public. He ended up removing nothing. "I would much rather have been wrong in this one," he told Williams. "I would much rather be talking to you and taking the heat and crying wolf. But our local expertise said otherwise. You know, 'Hey, let's gear up for the big one, this is going to be the big one.'" (Read about what JJ Watt's crowdsourced fundraiser accomplished in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.)
– Water for Elephants, based on the bestselling book, tells the story of a young man who joins the circus during the Depression, working with an elephant and falling for a married performer. Critics are mixed: The film “provides a constant wash of scenic pleasure,” and is true to the book, writes Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter. “But the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen is missing.” Roger Ebert welcomes the film. “In an age of prefabricated special effects and obviously phony spectacle, it's sort of old-fashioned (and a pleasure) to see a movie made of real people and plausible sets,” he notes in the Chicago Sun-Times. Writing in Variety, Peter Debruge cheers the movie. It’s “a splendid period swooner that delivers classic romance and an indelible insider's view of 1930s circus life.” But in the New York Times, Stephen Holden strongly disagrees. The “timid screen adaptation,” he writes, “short-circuits the novel’s quirky charms and period atmosphere by its squeamish attitude toward gritty circus life.”
– Richard Dunn recently found himself stuck, apparently all alone, overnight at Las Vegas' McCarran Airport—so, naturally, he created an incredible music video of himself lip-syncing to Celine Dion's cover of "All By Myself" in various locations around the terminal. It even includes a shot of Dunn re-creating the iconic waterfall scene from Flashdance using a chair and a water bottle, UPI notes. Dunn explains, per Gawker, that his tools were his iPhone, a wheelchair with a tall pole on the back, a roll of luggage tape, his own computer bag, and the airport's escalators and moving walkways. He taped the iPhone to the pole or the extended handle of his computer bag, sometimes tucking "different stuff under the bag to get the right angle," he says, and then placed it wherever he needed it to be, including the aforementioned escalators and walkways. "For the escalator shot I had to sprint up the steps after I got my shot so the computer bag didn't hit the top and fall back down," he says. "Quite fun!"
– US officials have opened a civil rights investigation into the deadly car attack that took place amid clashes of white nationalists and counter-demonstrators, reports the AP. The investigation was announced late Saturday by the US Attorney's Office for the Western District of Virginia and the FBI's Richmond field office. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says US Attorney Rick Mountcastle has begun the investigation and will have the full support of the Justice Department. Sessions says, "The violence and deaths in Charlottesville strike at the heart of American law and justice. When such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated." In other developments: The man who allegedly plowed his car into a crowd of protesters, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old from Ohio, was charged with second-degree murder and three counts of malicious wounding, reports NBC 29. Troy Dunigan, a 21-year-old from Chattanooga, Tenn., was charged with disorderly conduct; Jacob L. Smith, a 21-year-old from Louisa, Va., was charged with assault and battery; and James M. O'Brien, 44, of Gainesville, Fla., was charged with carrying a concealed handgun. White nationalist Richard Spencer accused police of endangering lives in how they handled the rally, saying he "did not attempt to engage in any kind of violence. So the idea that I could be held responsible is absurd. It's like blaming the fire department for a fire." Spencer also said he found President Trump's comments on the violence to be "rather vague and kind of lame." Fields' mother says he told her he was going to the rally and that she told him "to be careful" and peaceful. Rally organizer Jason Kessler said whoever drove a car into counter-protesters "did the wrong thing." He said he was saddened people were hurt and criticized law enforcement's response, saying they did a poor job controlling the chaos to allow free speech.
– The biggest stars of Wednesday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing seem to be an empty chair and Alex Jones of InfoWars. The former was reserved for Google's leadership, which unlike Twitter and Facebook was a no-show. The latter got into it with Sen. Marco Rubio outside the hearing, which Fast Company notes is open to the public; Politico reports Jones sat in the first row just behind Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey. During a hearing recess, Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer tweeted that Jones went into the hallway outside the room and got into a "heated exchange" with Rubio. Video Sommer tweeted of the exchange shows Rubio speaking with reporters as Jones keeps interrupting with questions and statements before moving on to calling Rubio a "snake" and "frat boy." Rubio replies, "I swear to God, I don't know who you are, man." As Jones tries to clarify, Rubio tells him "not to touch me again." Replies Jones, "I'm just patting you nicely," before suggesting Rubio wants to get him arrested. Rubio says, "You're not going to get arrested man. I'll take care of you myself." Jones tells him, "You are literally like a little gangster thug." As Rubio excuses himself to go back to the committee, he refers to Jones as "this clown." Responds Jones, "Go back to your bathhouse."
– With two weeks to go until the midterm elections, passions—and voter turnout—are running high in Texas. In Houston early Monday, thousands of people lined up at a voting location hours before early voting began, the Houston Chronicle reports. Authorities say early voting turnout has been much higher than in 2014 across the state's biggest counties. Renée Cross, senior director for the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston, tells the Texas Tribune that the numbers are "very impressive." "We see so much anger or enthusiasm about candidates in much higher numbers than we’ve ever seen," she says. "From a political standpoint, I think there’s just as much energy that we’ve seen in presidential years." In other election news: Trump praises "Beautiful Ted." President Trump appeared at a Houston rally for Sen. Ted Cruz on Monday, where both men made it clear the bitterness of the 2016 campaign was behind them. Before he flew to Texas, Trump told reporters that he now called Cruz "Beautiful Ted" or "Texas Ted" instead of "Lyin' Ted," reports the Washington Post. At the rally, the two men embraced and Cruz told the crowd that he is looking forward to hitting the campaign trail for Trump's re-election bid in 2020. Trump described Cruz's opponent, Beto O'Rourke, as "overrated." "You know what I am? I'm a nationalist." At the Cruz rally, Trump attacked Democrats as a "big risk to the American family" and accused them of "encouraging millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders, and overwhelm our nation," the AP reports. He also attacked globalists, declaring himself to be a nationalist. GOP may have the edge in early voting. According to data analyzed by NBC News, talk of a "blue wave" may be overstated: In early voting, Republican-affiliated voters have outnumbered Democrats in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Montana, Tennessee, and Texas, while Democrats are ahead in Nevada. Trump "plans to distance himself from GOP losses." Insiders tell Politico that while Trump is currently describing the midterm vote as a vote on his presidency, he plans to break with recent precedent and distance himself from the results if there are serious GOP losses. The sources say Trump is likely to blame losses on House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—as well as the media. One GOP insider says Trump has said of McConnell and Ryan: "These are their elections ... and if they screw it up, it's not my fault." Dems lower "blue wave" expectations. Trump may not have to distance himself from results: With congressional races tightening, Democrats have been trying to lower expectations of a "blue wave," the Hill reports. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez says he believes this year's races will be close and control of the House could rest on just a few votes. (These are the most, and least, political states.)
– Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the 17-year-old suspect in the shooting at Texas' Santa Fe High School on Friday that took the lives of 10 and wounded several others, has been charged with capital murder and aggravated assault of a public servant, CNN reports. Pagourtzis, who once played football on the school's JV team and was described by a classmate as "kind of a quiet kid," has asked for a court-appointed attorney and hasn't yet entered a plea. He's not up for bond. In a probable cause affidavit, an investigator who talked to Pagourtzis says the teen noted he had "spared" people he liked during the rampage "because he wanted his story told," per CNN. More on the shooting and the aftermath: CNN and the AP have the latest on two of the victims so far: Pakistani exchange student Sabika Sheikh, and Cynthia Tisdale, a substitute teacher with a "lust for life." "[I] never met a woman who loved her family so much," Tisdale's niece tells the AP. A heartbreaking clip that's gone viral, via the New York Times, shows Santa Fe student Paige Curry being asked if the shooting had felt surreal while it was happening. "Was there a part of you that was like, 'This isn't real, this … would not happen in my school?" a reporter asked. An emotional Paige replied, "No, there wasn't. … It's been happening everywhere. … I've always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too."
– Too good to be true? A company with just one employee, no assets, and no revenue saw its penny stocks rocket to a $6 billion valuation this summer—enough for the SEC to shut down its trading and launch an investigation, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company, Cynk, runs a website called Introbiz.com designed to help connect people with celebrities and various kinds of professionals. Fair enough—until its stock leaped by 25,000% since June, notes Business Insider. Worse, the company address in Belize City, Belize, is inaccurate (Cynk apologized) and the company's shares have swapped hands three times over six years, always between people who were the CEO and sole employee. More details: Business Insider found someone matching CEO Javier Romero on Facebook and called him up. He answered to Javier until the reporter identified herself, when he said he was really Jason. Javier is "actually out right now," he said. "I don't really want to disclose his business. I can definitely get a number for you guys." Stock manipulation in the penny market is "extremely common" and hard to regulate, an expert tells Bloomberg. Another says that "one percent" of investors would trade in a company like Cynk—but stock promoters hardly helped, raving on Twitter that the stock "keeps surging higher!!" and "this could be EPIC!!" The SEC probe is part of its recent crackdown on penny-stock fraud. Over the past two years, the commission has halted trading in over 1,300 companies. The blog Zero Hodge drew attention to the stock this week, quipping, "Lord Overstone said it best. 'No warning can save people determined to grow suddenly rich.'"
– Tim Geithner today summed up Mitt Romney's contention that women had lost the majority of jobs in the recession: "Ridiculous," the Treasury secretary told This Week. "It’s a political moment. You’re going to see a a lot of politicians choose to campaign in fiction, but we have to campaign in fact." Pressed further, Geithner said the statement had "been largely debunked." "The crisis was a very damaging crisis, hurt everybody, and a lot of the early job losses in 2008 affected men because they affected construction and manufacturing." More from your Sunday morning dial, as per Politico: Darrell Issa on the Secret Service prostitution scandal: “The investigation will not be about the 11 to 20 or more involved, it will be about how has this happened, and how often. Things like this don’t happen once.” And furthermore: "What happens if somebody six months ago [or] six years ago became the victim of their own misconduct and is now being blackmailed? Is the whole organization in need of some soul searching, some changes before the president, the vice president, members of the Cabinet are in danger?” John McCain on Syria: “For the United States to sit by and watch this wanton massacre is a betrayal of everything we stand for and we believe in." The US needs to "lead for a change. Not lead from behind, but lead from in front. We need to get a sanctuary for the Free Syrian Army, we need to get them supplies, we need to get them weapons. It’s not a fair fight.” Reince Priebus on the Buffett Rule: It's "one single tiny alteration" that amounts to nothing more than "a shiny little object. If you add up every dollar of revenue that this little rule will put into place, it would add up to paying for 11 hours of the federal government." Michele Bachmann on Hilary Rosen's comments: "I thought it was shocking and insulting. I think women are going to be very upset." Bachmann on Romney: "I'm very seriously looking" at endorsing him. "I want to unite our party."
– An incredible story of survival out of northwestern Quebec, where a 44-year-old was rescued as few as 24 hours before officials believe he would have likely died. Marco Lavoie set off on July 16 for what he intended to be a two-month spell in the woods, reports the Canadian Press. The timeline of what happened between that date and Oct. 30 is somewhat mushy: About a month after his departure, a bear attacked his campsite, leaving him without food or gear. Sgt. Ronald McInnis tells ABC News, "His dog went between the man and the bear and protected him." Unconfirmed reports say Lavoie was later forced to eat the German shepherd; McInnis wouldn't comment on that detail other than to say the dog did not survive, reports CNN. But the details that have been confirmed are pretty jarring: Lavoie lost nearly half his body weight and had begun to suffer from hypothermia, having weathered snow and temps below freezing. He was essentially unable to eat, drink, or speak when he was found, having been spotted by helicopter along the Nottaway River on Wednesday, nine days after a missing persons report was filed (as an experienced outdoorsman, Lavoie's family wasn't initially concerned when he didn't return as scheduled). Lavoie is expected to recover after what will likely be weeks spent on an IV, and police are waiting to talk to him about his experience. One survival instructor, talking to the Montreal Gazette, had this to say: "Up there, in the Canadian shield, there's little plant life to live off so he would have been slowly, painfully dying when they found him. It's an amazing feat that he was able to keep himself alive this long with almost no equipment." (Click to read about another tale of survival involving a bear.)
– In what Discover calls a "unique and touching paper" published in the journal Neurology Thursday, Robin Williams' widow shares the heartbreaking story of her husband's final 10 months and asks neurologists not to give up in their quest toward brain disease cures. Susan Schneider Williams refers to Lewy Body disease, the neurodegenerative disorder that ultimately led to Williams' suicide in August 2014, as "the terrorist inside my husband's brain." She describes how, toward the end of his life, "Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it." He was struggling with paranoia, anxiety, delusions, insomnia, and other symptoms both physical and mental, and for months, he and his wife could get no answers about what was happening to him. He was ultimately diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, but as his symptoms continued to worsen, he grew "weary" and it felt like they were both "drowning." Then, ultimately, he took his own life. It was only after his death that an autopsy revealed Williams actually had Lewy Body disease—his clinical symptoms mirrored Parkinson's, but his brain pathology showed that almost all of the neurons throughout his brain and brainstem had been besieged by Lewy bodies, Schneider Williams writes. When she found out, she wasn't surprised: "The mere fact that something had invaded nearly every region of my husband's brain made perfect sense to me," she writes. She has spent the time since Williams' death learning all she can about Lewy Body disease, for which there is no cure, and she now serves on the Board of Directors for the American Brain Foundation. Her full piece is worth a read.
– Are you a "digital native" or a "digital immigrant," and does it make a difference? Research recently published in the Teaching and Teacher Education journal indicates the concept of so-called digital natives—aka, those slotted into the "millennials" category and younger, and often thought to be masters of technology and multitasking—is a myth, reports Discover magazine. Why it's important for this myth to be shattered, scientists say, is because companies and educators have been urged to revamp their processes and environments to cater to the supposedly more tech-savvy younger generation, Quartz notes. "The answer is not how we can adapt [to the younger generation]," says lead author Paul Kirschner, an Open University educational psychology professor. "We have to treat people as human, cognitive learners and stop considering one specific group to have special powers." Previous studies have suggested digital immigrants—those born before the early '80s and, as Nature puts it, thought to be "doomed to be forever strangers in a computer-based strange land"—can handle technological tasks as well as the younger set. In fact, every generation has trouble multitasking (think emailing and watching TV at the same time) because our brains just aren't equipped to fully concentrate on multiple tasks at once. Even Marc Prensky, the educator who first popularized the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrants" in a 2001 essay, is now moving away from those labels and embracing the term "digital wisdom," which he says we can all aspire to. "The Digital Natives/Digital Immigrants metaphor is NOT about what people know, or can do, with technology," his site notes. "It's more about culture and attitudes." (Not taking anything away from this 4-year-old, though.)
– The VA is offering free testing to nearly 600 veterans in Wisconsin who may have been infected with hepatitis or HIV by a rogue dentist, Law Newz reports. The dentist providing care at the VA in Tomah was using his own dental instruments. And while the dentist sterilized the tools between uses, VA rules say he was supposed to use disposable instruments and throw them away after each use. Acting medical center director Victoria Brahm tells WEAU that the dentist's actions were "purposeful." "He knew exactly what he was doing and preferred to use his own equipment against procedure," she says. The dentist was using his own tools between October 2015 and October 2016. An assistant subbing for the dentist's normal assistant ratted him out to authorities. On Tuesday, the VA started contacting the 592 vets who received treatment from the dentist, offering free testing for Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV, the La Crosse Tribune reports. There have been no reports of infections stemming from dental work at the Tomah VA. “Out of an abundance of caution it’s still the proper thing to do," a VA spokesperson says regarding free testing. The dentist is no longer treating patients but is still working at the VA; he may face criminal charges. His regular dental assistant is also being investigated. The Tomah VA was recently under investigation for over prescribing painkillers in connection with the deaths of at least two vets. "I don't think they are paying them enough to keep good support staff ... so we suffer," one vet tells WEAU.
– Prosecutors told a London court today that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World hacked the phones of Kate Middleton and Prince Harry, marking the first time the now-closed tabloid has been accused of hacking the phone of an actual member of the British royal family—as opposed to an aide. Voicemails on Middleton's phone were intercepted by the newspaper and heard by the court today, including one from 2006 in which Prince William calls her "baby" and another in which he calls her "babykins," the Daily Beast reports. In one of the messages, William tells Kate he was nearly shot by blanks while going through military training, CNN reports. The court also heard an intercepted voicemail of Prince Harry's, in which William spoke in falsetto, pretending to be Harry's then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy. In total, Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who has pleaded guilty to phone hacking in the case, recorded about eight messages, the prosecution says.
– The hormone oxytocin may improve the social skills of people with high-functioning autism. In a new study, patients who received doses of it in a nasal spray were better able to recognize faces and interact with others in a game. In short, the so-called "love chemical" seems to help those with autism and Asperger's syndrome better able to pick up on social cues, reports Time. The researchers hope oxytocin therapy could become a powerful treatment therapy and perhaps even correct social deficits before they form. "It's possible it can become a cure, if it's given early when the problems are detected in the little kids," the lead scientist tells the Washington Post. "We can change the way these patients interact with people from childhood."
– It's not quite as cheap as Two Buck Chuck at Trader Joe's, but Target is rolling out some cheap wine of its own. Starting Sept. 3, the chain will be selling $5 bottles of a brand it calls California Roots, reports the Orange County Register. Customers will choose from five different blends: chardonnay, pinot grigio, moscato, cabernet sauvignon, and, simply, red. An enthusiastic and downright thankful post at Scary Mommy has specifics on each. The wine will be available nationwide at any Target store that currently serves alcohol, per MLive.com. The chain says in a press release that "wine, beer, and other adult beverages" are among Target's fastest-growing categories," and the inexpensive vino is meant to capitalize on that. The price is a shade more expensive than the Trader Joe's offering, which has risen from its original $1.99 to the current $2.99.
– One of the two Secret Service supervisors to lose their jobs so far over the Colombia sex scandal joked that he was checking out Sarah Palin as he guarded her during the 2008 campaign, the Washington Post finds. Senior agent David Chaney posted at least two pictures of himself with Palin on Facebook, one with the comment, "I was really checking her out, if you know what I mean." Chaney has been forced to resign, and another supervisor has been informed that he will be fired. In an interview with Fox News, Palin said the joke is on Chaney. "Well check this out, buddy—you're fired!" she said, calling the scandal "a symptom of government run amok," reports AP. "It's like, who's minding the store around here?" she added. "The president, for one, he better be wary, there, of when Secret Service is accompanying his family on vacation. They may be checking out the first lady instead of guarding her."
– Riders of Philadelphia's No. 44 bus have been complaining a lot lately of lost cell phone calls, and NBC 10 found out why: A man, whom they identify only as "Eric," is jamming them. Reporters tracked Eric down after an NBC employee saw him using a handheld jamming device on the bus. "I guess I'm taking the law into my own hands, and quite frankly, I'm proud of it," he told them. "A lot of people are extremely loud, no sense of just privacy or anything." Of course, such handheld devices are illegal, and with good reason, experts say: They can block not only cellphones, but radios, GPS devices, and emergency frequencies as well. "You have the potential to cause a public safety disaster," says one expert in electronic crime. But illegal or no, these jammers are catching on; Forbes reports that they're especially common in New York and Washington, DC. "They’re the best thing ever," says one New York commuter and jammer, who says he feels "no guilt, just personal high-fives."
– "Tiger Mom" Amy Chua is in the news again, though not because of her parenting. Rather, she's become ensnared in the latest coverage of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his interaction with women. The Guardian reports that Chua, a Yale professor, "played an outsized role in vetting" the clerks who worked for Kavanaugh, as many of them came from Yale, Kavanaugh's alma mater. The unnamed sources the paper spoke with described receiving advice from Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, also of Yale, about the "look" Kavanaugh favored. There are no allegations of improper behavior between Kavanaugh and his clerks, but some found Chua and Rubenfeld's "counsel off-putting," per the HuffPost's source, who says the advice she received was "phrased as a warning." The Guardian reports the couple's tendency to raise the issue of looks didn't extend to other judges. One student who was advised by the couple says, "I have no reason to believe [Kavanaugh] was saying, 'Send me the pretty ones,' but rather that he was reporting back and saying, 'I really like so and so,' and the way he described them led them to form certain conclusions." Those conclusions allegedly included Chua telling students it was "no accident" the women who clerked for Kavanaugh "looked like models," and Rubenfeld saying Kavanaugh opted for female clerks "with a certain look." Chua, who is reportedly dealing with a serious illness, said in a statement that the only trait Kavanaugh requires in his clerks is excellence. Yale Law School says it will look into the claims, which it says it had not previously heard.
– If there's one thing everyone who's ever had a hangover can probably admit to, it's that they'll try just about anything to minimize the anguish. Now, thanks to The "IV Doctor," a service started in December by New York urologist Dr. Elliot Nadelson and his surgical resident son Adam, one's degree of suffering may be at least marginally reduced—for a price. Ailing partiers in NYC and the Hamptons (and, soon, Chicago) with the right kind of pocket change can for $249 have a nurse come to their homes or offices and administer 200ml of fluid by IV, plus a cocktail of drugs to combat nausea (Zofran), heartburn (Pepcid), and headache/inflammation (Toradol). That particular package, called "Revive," is the most popular, and recommended for those on their "deathbed." "Look, it's not a miracle cure ... but if you go in feeling like a 2, you come out a half-hour later feeling like a 7, that's a game changer," one repeat customer tells CNN Money. A reporter who tried the service for Thrillist—his prep included four martinis and an "indeterminate portion" of a whisky bottle—notes the advantages of the IV: a higher absorption rate, less peeing, and a quicker impact. He says he ended up "achieving a state of heightened alrightness ... a victory." Nadelson says his team has treated European princesses and Olympic track stars, but that his biggest client base works in finance, "burning the candle at both ends." This service isn't the first of its kind. Hangover Heaven opened two years ago in Las Vegas with a 24-hour clinic and nurses who will make hotel-room visits, and Miami and Atlanta are home to REVIV and Hydration Station, respectively. (Hungover? Don't blame it on this mixture.)
– For Robert Schmittner, it was a long time coming. "I didn't rest for 14 years," the diver tells Mexico News Daily. Schmittner is the director of exploration for the Great Maya Aquifer Project, which on Jan. 10 discovered the longest underwater cave on Earth. Divers for the project made the discovery by confirming something that—as per the Telegraph—had been long suspected: the 163-mile-long Sac Actun system and 83-mile-long Dos Ojos system of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula are actually connected. Sac Actun's underwater cave system now absorbs Dos Ojos, becoming the record-setting, 216-mile-long Sac Actun system, Reuters reports. According to National Geographic, it's now 49 miles longer than the previous record holder and could get even bigger as divers continue to seek connections to other flooded cave systems in the area. "This immense cave represents the most important submerged archaeological site in the world, since it has more than a hundred archaeological contexts," the project's director, Guillermo de Anda, says. Those contexts include extinct animals and possibly signs of the first American settlers, but also new information about the ancient Maya civilization. “It allows us to appreciate much more clearly how the rituals, the pilgrimage sites, and ultimately the great pre-Hispanic settlements that we know emerged,” de Anda tells Reuters. Sinkholes leading to underground caves had religious significance to the Maya, and de Anda's project has found ancient walls, staircases, and paintings in some of the caves that aren't completely flooded. (A skeleton found in an underwater cave is one of the oldest in the Americas, so it's too bad thieves stole it.)
– A notable change for working Saudi Arabians: The weekend will now come a day later. Its people had enjoyed a Thursday-Friday weekend, but Oman's recent switch to Friday-Saturday made Saudi Arabia the odd man out among the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. The change to a Friday weekend start, described by Reuters as a "surprise," is effective this week, per an order issued yesterday by King Abdullah. Businesses are pleased: "It will increase interface with the rest of the world," says a former oil exec, and a Riyadh-based strategist notes that the move puts an end to "having just three working days aligned with the rest of the world." Bloomberg sees something more behind the shift: the Saudi stock market. "It’s not official, but this is one of the things [Saudi Arabia] needed to do to open the markets for foreign investors," says a Dubai fund manager. Bloomberg reports that Deutsche Bank and HSBC have previously predicted that foreign investors could be given direct access to the country's $400 billion stock market as early as 2014.
– Police in Britain are investigating the tragic death of an 11-year-old girl on a water ride at the Drayton Manor theme park. Officials at the park say the girl, who was on a school trip, was fatally injured when she fell from the Splash Canyon ride on Tuesday afternoon, CNN reports. The ride, which is billed as featuring "fast-flowing rapids," has 21 boats with a capacity of six riders each, reports the BBC. Witnesses say Evha Jannath, who was on her last ride of the day, stood up to change seats and fell in after the boat hit a rock. A classmate tells the Telegraph that Evha almost missed the trip after turning up in the wrong clothes, but she was allowed to borrow an acceptable outfit from the school.
– Barnes & Noble appears to be admitting defeat when it comes to competing with Apple, Amazon, and Samsung in the tablet market. The company announced today that it will no longer be making its own color Nook tablets, following big losses for Nook in the fourth quarter. However, the bookseller will still manufacture its black and white Nook e-readers, and will sell co-branded color tablets made by other companies, the Wall Street Journal reports. Not only did Nook revenue decline 34%, but declining Nook sales also hurt the retail store results for the quarter. The decision to pull back from the tablet market leads to questions about where the bookseller is headed; CEO William Lynch has been focused on technology for the past three years, as the print book market continues to struggle. But, CNNMoney reports, Lynch insisted today, "We are 100% not exiting the device business."
– When Stefanie Gordon tweeted a picture she took from her airplane window, she never expected it to get her interview requests from just about every major news outlet and a retweet by NASA. But that’s exactly what happened—since Gordon happened to be on a flight to Palm Beach from which the Endeavour launch was visible. Gordon posted a few TwitPics and a video; next thing you know, she was fielding calls from reporters and had 1,000 new Twitter followers in a few hours. She tells Mashable other people on the plane took pictures, but apparently, she was the only one to tweet hers.
– More Robert Mueller moves: Prosecutors have charged an attorney they say lied to federal investigators in the Russia probe, reports the Hill. A document filed in federal court in Washington Tuesday accuses Alex Van Der Zwaan of one charge of making false statements, per the AP. The information was filed ahead of a plea hearing scheduled for later Tuesday. The court filing says Van Der Zwaan lied to investigators about his interactions with Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide who was indicted last year on charges of conspiracy to launder money and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Gates is reportedly planning to plead guilty and testify against former campaign chief Paul Manafort.
– Kathryn Ruemmler is the White House chief counsel (and currently in the middle of the IRS mess), so it totally makes sense that the fourth-most-popular story in the Washington Post's political section right now would be ... an article about Ruemmler's love for flashy shoes. Wait, what? It seems the shoe habit initially got two paragraphs in a more serious profile of Ruemmler and the IRS scandal, but the shoes were just so interesting they ended up getting their own article. This, writes Irin Carmon on Salon, is the perfect "tale of being a woman in public life," and it's just as ridiculous as the time the same paper described a congresswoman as "hectoring" and "pouty," or the time Vogue became obsessed with Kirsten Gillibrand's weight loss, or the time ... well, you get the idea. "The Washington Post is still one of the country’s major papers, there are still far too few women in positions of power in the city it mainly covers, and at a time when Ruemmler is in the spotlight for whether she did her job right, the shoe chatter is simply undermining and trivializing," Carmon writes. Studies have shown that hearing descriptions of a female political candidate's appearance—even positive descriptions—damages the candidate in a voter's eyes, while the same effect is not seen for men. Plus, politics is still a boys' club. "So here is a proposal for the politics reporters who want to add color and 'fabulousness' to their prose: How about we issue a moratorium until there’s more than one woman in the room, and see what happens?" Click for Carmon's full piece.
– The mystery of what happened to a Swedish journalist who vanished after a ride on a Danish inventor's submarine is slowly becoming clearer. Though details are still scarce, Copenhagen police say Peter Madsen, after changing his story, has confessed that Kim Wall died in "an accident" on board his Nautilus sub and that he then "buried her at sea," the BBC reports. Officials have been searching for Wall since her disappearance on Aug. 10, when she boarded Madsen's sub, which then sank off of Denmark's Refshaleoen island. Madsen initially claimed he had dropped Wall off after they'd cruised around for about three hours, but in a police statement cited by the Local, that story has since been modified. "The accused has told police and the court that an accident occurred on board the submarine which caused Kim Wall’s death, and that he subsequently buried her at sea at an unspecified location somewhere in Koge Bay," reads the statement in the closed-door case. Madsen's explanation was released after a defense and prosecution request. Although the statement also notes that "current charges remain in place," it's unclear what those charges are: Deutsche Welle notes that Madsen was originally charged with negligent manslaughter, but it's now reporting a new charge of aggressive manslaughter, which it says can lead to a prison sentence of up to eight years. A search for Wall's body in the newly pinpointed area is now underway.
– Yellowstone National Park usually sees about one bear attack a year, though until this week there hadn't been one since 2015. That changed Thursday, after a 10-year-old was charged at by one, though thanks to his parents' quick thinking and a canister of bear spray, it appears he'll be OK. That's per a press release from the park, which details how a family of four was walking along a trail southeast of Old Faithful Thursday morning when a bear emerged from the vegetation and barreled after the boy as he started to run away. The bear caught up and knocked the boy down, at which point his parents "deployed bear spray about 5 feet from the bear's face." The bear then "shook its head" and retreated. The boy was taken to a local clinic, then to Montana's Big Sky Medical Center, where he was treated for wounds to his buttocks, a hurt wrist, and puncture wounds on his back. Park officials say they're trying to figure out what type of bear attacked him, with Fox News noting both black bears and grizzlies live in the park. The Casper Star-Tribune reports there have been a handful of other animal attacks at Yellowstone this year, including by bison and cow elk. (A man caught on video taunting a bison at Yellowstone just got jail time.)
– People just don't learn, do they? A woman who allegedly stole a high school student's iPhone in California has given police a break in the case thanks to … a selfie—or rather, several of them. Police say an as-yet unidentified woman approached the 15-year-old student in El Cerrito on Nov. 5, demanding that she hand over her phone and backpack, reports the Los Angeles Times. When the girl refused, the suspect allegedly knocked her unconscious with a punch, took the student’s phone, dragged her a short distance, then took the girl's backpack, per the Oakland Tribune. The woman then escaped in a tan Honda or Toyota which was also carrying four males, authorities say. Days later, the student, who had to visit a hospital for treatment, found several smiling selfies of her alleged attacker on her iCloud account and sent them to police. "I don't think she knew it was being uploaded to the cloud. I think they were assuming it was on the factory default settings," an officer tells ABC7. Authorities have released three images of the woman—which show many more selfies were taken—and say tips are pouring in. (Click for more ill-advised selfies.)
– The sheriff of a county about 70 miles north of Seattle says the owner of a Chinese restaurant has asked that law enforcement no longer dine there. Per the AP, Skagit County Sheriff Will Reichardt said on Facebook that after four deputies finished lunch at Lucky Teriyaki in Sedro-Woolley Thursday, the owner asked them not to eat there anymore. Reichardt says the deputies were told that customers didn't like law enforcement there. The sheriff says his chief deputy called the owner later Thursday and says the request was confirmed, along with a request to spread the word among other law enforcement agencies. "I understand a business owner has a right to refuse service if he wants to," Reichardt wrote in his Thursday post, which has since gone viral. "I also understand that as customers we all have the right to find some other restaurant to take our lunch break in." But a slightly different story has emerged on KOMO, which says the owners of the restaurant, through an interpreter, are calling the entire incident a giant misunderstanding that was brought about by a language barrier. They say that during the deputies' lunch, other customers became upset after some soup and water spilled; a worker thought maybe it was because the deputies were nearby and asked the deputies if they were getting ready to leave. An employee then further misunderstood when the chief deputy called to confirm the story, the owners say. A video on Q13 FOX shows the restaurant's owner breaking down while talking about the incident, and his son appears on camera to apologize for his lack of English skills; the owners are also inviting law enforcement members to eat there for free on Monday. The AP's calls to the restaurant for comment were met with busy signals.
– QVC is apparently finished "reviewing" its relationship with Paula Deen in the wake of her n-word controversy, and not surprisingly, that review did not end with good news for Deen. Deen revealed in a statement yesterday that she and QVC have "agreed that it's best for me to step back ... and focus on setting things right," ABC News reports. In its own statement, the company's CEO says QVC is "troubled" by the controversy and has "decided to take a pause" and phase out her products. But could she be back? The statement hints at as much: "People deserve second chances." Sears and Kmart are no longer carrying her products either, they announced today, according to Fox News. Click to see who else has dumped her so far.
– Damascus has been rocked by bombings for the past two days, with at least two large blasts hitting Syria's military headquarters there this morning. The Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the attack, said to be the largest since July explosions killed President Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law and other key aides; the BBC reports that Assad would have been able to hear today's explosions from his palace. Gunfire broke out afterward, and Maya Nasser, a TV correspondent for the Iranian Press TV, was shot dead by sniper fire during a live broadcast, report the New York Times and Press TV. Other government facilities were hit by bombs yesterday, proving the opposition can still get past government security, but the regime is downplaying the scope of the attacks while the opposition says many of Assad's forces have been killed. In other news from Syria: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for international action at the General Assembly yesterday, calling the conflict "a regional calamity with global ramifications," the AP reports. Click for more from the General Assembly on Syria. Clashes have also been reported near Syria's border with Israel, leading the Israel Defense Forces to issue a statement declaring that "fire from Syria leaking into Israel will not be accepted."
– A terrifying chemical-rag attack earlier this year may help police find the killer of a 10-year-old Colorado girl, the Denver Post reports. Still investigating the murder of Jessica Ridgeway, police have released a description of a young man with brown hair who allegedly tried to abduct a Denver-area woman on May 28 by putting a rag with a chemical smell over her mouth. The woman was able to escape and call 911 on her cell phone. Police say they have connected the cases "in an attempt to uncover any lead" in Jessica's abduction and murder about two weeks ago. They are also looking through other attempted abductions in the Denver area. In another development, police have found a small wooden cross with three lines etched into it that could be key to Jessica's murder, Huffington Post reports. Police have uploaded images of the cross on their Facebook site in the hope someone who knows about the cross will come forward.
– Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, an instructor at Lackland Air Force Base, was found guilty yesterday of raping one trainee and sexually assaulting several others, reports AP. Walker faces life in prison and a dishonorable discharge after being found guilty on 28 counts, including adultery, violating regulations, and committing sexual crimes against female trainees, notes the San Antonio Express-News. Thirty-one women have accused Walker and at least 11 other instructors of sexual misconduct over a two-and-a-half year period, which has led to a major policy review across the Air Force. "We're not satisfied that this one unit is all there is," the commander of the Second Air Force, which oversees basic training, tells the New York Times. "We want to assure ourselves through a disciplined approach that we’ve caught everything or everyone involved in this kind of behavior." The Defense Department estimates there may be up to 19,000 sexual assaults a year across the services, although just 3,192 were reported in 2011, with 191 convictions.
– Last year, an American artist living in Germany bought Rosa Parks' dilapidated home in Detroit and reassembled it in Berlin as an art project. Now Ryan Mendoza says it's time for the home to return to the US, per the Detroit Free Press. He cites the recent racial violence in Virginia and the rippling effects of the removal of Confederate statues around the US, making the case that Parks' home would provide a powerful counterpoint. "There are very, very few monuments to the civil rights movement," he tells the Free Press. The big hitch, however, is getting someone, or some institution, to pay for its relocation. Mendoza says that Detroit's cultural institutions don't seem interested, raising the prospect that the home could end up in a museum elsewhere in the country. So far, one group—the Nash Family Foundation in New York—has pledged up to $40,000, but while other institutions have expressed interest in displaying the 21-by-21-foot-long home, actual monetary offers aren't following. Mendoza says he's spent about $130,000 to move and restore the house, though the interior work isn't yet complete. "I'm fond of the house," he tells NBC News, "but this house has to go back to the United States, and now is the time." (The late founder of Little Caesar's quietly paid Parks' rent for years.)
– Cool—and/or creepy—news out of Japan, where researchers at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University have created a human ear ... on the back of a rat. The researchers used stem cells that grew into ear cartilage, shaping the cells into an ear by putting them in "biological tubing," Discovery News reports. More specifically, they used "induced pluripotent stem cells," which the National Institutes of Health explains are "adult cells that have been genetically reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like state." The ear-shaped cartilage was implanted under a rat's skin, where it was allowed to grow for two months; the tubing dissolved and a 2-inch-long ear was left behind. The researchers believe this technology could be used to treat people who are born with no ears or with smaller-than-normal ears, Japan Today reports. It could also be used to repair ears disfigured in accidents, Discovery adds. In the case of a child born with a missing or misshapen ear, the researchers note that the ear they created is "living," and thus would develop and grow along with the child. A clinical trial involving humans is expected to start in five years. In 2013, researchers in Boston used sheep cells, bovine collagen, and an ear-shaped titanium wire frame to grow an ear on the back of another rat, Discovery notes. (These creatures can grow the heads and brains of other species.)
– Just over a week after the murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida Gov. Rick Scott unveiled a plan Friday to keep his state's students safer: a $500 million proposal to ban bump stocks, restrict people under age 21 from purchasing guns, and prohibit the "violent or mentally ill" from buying weapons, NBC News reports. "I want to make it virtually impossible for anyone who is a danger to themselves or others to use a gun," Scott said, per the New York Times. The age restriction would mark Scott's first big rebuff of NRA policy, per the Washington Post. "I'm an NRA member (and) a supporter of the Second Amendment," Scott said. "I'm also a father and a grandfather and a governor. We all have a difficult task in front of us balancing our individual rights with our obvious need for public safety." Among the initiatives included in Scott's plan are revamping building security to include metal detectors, better locks, and bulletproof glass; placing a "law enforcement officer in every public school"; and working more on "mental health initiatives." What Scott isn't pushing for: banning the AR-15 rifle, which was the type of weapon used in the shooting, and arming teachers, as President Trump and others have called for (to much criticism) in recent days. "Banning specific weapons … is not going to fix this," Scott said. He also said he'd rather see "well-trained" members of law enforcement brought in to protect schools than hand weapons to educators. "We must take care of our kids," he said, per CNN. On Wednesday, the NRA said it will fight any attempt to raise age limits, saying that move would "[punish] law-abiding citizens for the evil acts of criminals."
– The seven men accused of the 2014 hazing of a SUNY Albany student that caused his death are already in trouble with the school and the police. Now they've got a new problem on their hands: a lawsuit set to be filed by the fraternity whose name they apparently appropriated. Zeta Beta Tau's national office says the "rogue" group of SUNY Albany students charged in the death of 19-year-old Trevor Duffy used the frat's name without authorization and isn't linked to the actual recognized chapter on campus, NBC News reports. "Zeta Beta Tau is retaining counsel for the purposes of filing suit against these individuals who falsely represented themselves, deceiving the public and damaging the otherwise exceptional reputation of our Fraternity," a fraternity statement reads, per News10. Duffy died after allegedly being made to consume nearly half a gallon of vodka in a case that made headlines; his BAC was seven times the legal limit, notes NBC. The national fraternity says its intellectual property—including its name, the ZBT initials, and other materials—are protected under copyright rules, WRGB reports. That means anyone who falsely claims to be affiliated with the frat is fair game for legal action, a move the attorney for one of the accused says he's baffled by. "It's certainly novel, and I'm not sure why they'd take that step," the lawyer for Joseph Angilletta, one of two men arrested just last week in the case, tells the station. "Clearly one aspect here is they seem to want to distance themselves from this tragic event." (Five Baruch College frat members may face up to 20 years behind bars for allegedly taking part in the "glass ceiling.")
– Way to go, humanity. For the first time in history, human-induced climate change has been found "solely or primarily" responsible for the extinction of a mammal species, according to a new study. The Bramble Cay melomys, or mosaic-tailed rat, was found by Europeans on a tiny coral cay off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in 1845 and became known as the only mammal species endemic to the Great Barrier Reef, reports the Guardian. But though there were hundreds still in existence on Bramble Cay in 1978, the last were spotted by a fisherman in 2009, reports AFP. Researchers from the University of Queensland and the Queensland government—who traveled to Bramble Cay in 2014 and laid 150 traps for six nights to no avail—say "the only known population of this rodent is now extinct." Researchers found the cay, which sits about 10 feet above sea level, had flooded several times, wiping out the animals and their habitat. Just 2.5 hectares of land remained above high tide, reports Newsweek. "Significantly, this probably represents the first recorded mammalian extinction due to anthropogenic climate change," the researchers say—though they hope the animals reached the island on debris from Papua New Guinea and still survive there. Researchers say extreme weather was a factor in the extinction of the Little Swan Island hutia, a rodent once found on an atoll off Honduras, but cats were also to blame. "If this is one of the first" extinctions solely linked to humans, "it is more than likely not going to be the last," says an ecologist. "Species restricted to small, low lying islands, or those with very tight environmental requirements are likely to be the first to go." (Five islands have already vanished.)
– Will Steven Miller be next? Controversial Trump aide Sebastian Gorka, an ally of Steve Bannon, is out of the White House. He appears to have been ousted as part of chief of staff John Kelly's push to clean house, reports the New York Times. "Sebastian Gorka did not resign, but I can confirm he no longer works at the White House," a White House official tells Politico. Even if the 46-year-old Gorka didn't officially resign, he was clearly preparing to do so—the conservative Federalist ran portions of his resignation letter in which he expressed disappointment over what he sees as the White House's new direction. "It is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are—for now—ascendant within the White House,” Gorka wrote. “As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.” In the letter, Gorka took particular exception to the new Afghanistan strategy unveiled by the president. Like Bannon, Gorka opposes sending new troops. And “the fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost." Gorka had focused on national security issues in his role as deputy assistant to the president and had plenty of critics. In fact, two House Democrats recently unveiled legislation seeking to bar Gorka and Miller from collecting White House salaries, reports the Hill. The lawmakers accused the pair of encouraging white supremacy. Gorka had been a contributor to Breitbart News before joining the White House, and it wasn't clear whether he would rejoin Bannon there now that he's out.
– The Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state Monday morning, killing at least three people, was speeding, officials say, and not by a trivial amount: The train was going 80mph in a zone where the limit was 30mph when it came off the tracks on an overpass between Tacoma and Olympia, spilling cars onto Interstate 5, National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr said Monday night. She said it was "too early to tell" why the train, which was making its first run on a new route, was going so fast, the AP reports. Washington state transportation department spokeswoman Barbara LaBoe says the train was supposed to slow down dramatically as it entered the curve, and speed-limit warnings were posted two miles ahead of the zone as well as just before it, reports the Seattle Times. Amtrak President Richard Anderson says positive train control, a system that can slow down speeding trains, was not in use on the stretch of track where the accident occurred. More than 70 people were injured in the crash, at least 10 of them seriously, authorities say. It's not clear yet whether the three people killed were motorists or people from the train, which carried 80 passengers, five crew members, and a technician, the Oregonian reports. State police say 19 uninjured people from the train were reunited with their families. President Trump tweeted that the accident showed why his infrastructure plan "must be approved quickly," though the New York Times notes that the accident happened on brand new tracks that were part of a state-funded infrastructure investment program.
– Last Friday was a normal "mommy-daughter" day for Tracy Anderwald and her 5-year-old daughter, Allison. The two were playing Marco Polo in a backyard pool in Portland, Texas, but the next thing Anderwald knew, she was waking up in a nearby hospital without a clue as to how she got there, reports the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Home surveillance footage on YouTube and the shy voice of little Allison tell the story of a close call—Anderwald had suffered a seizure in four feet of water and, after a few minutes lying motionless on the bottom of the pool, Allison knew it had been too long and dragged her mother to the shallow end, where she rolled her body over. Anderwald's sister, Tedra Hunt, was walking to the house as Allison pulled her mother to the shallow end, and footage shows the girl running for help as soon as her mother's face was out of the water. "The doctors explained to us that had Tracy been underwater any longer, she probably wouldn't be with us right now," Hunt, 32, tells ABC News. "It is truly amazing that this little girl, who’s actually also pretty small for her age, was able to save my sister." Hunt says their father, who died two years ago, was a "guardian angel;" Anderwald, 34, will undergo neurological tests to figure out what caused the seizure, which she'd never had before. The sisters are sharing their story in the hopes of demonstrating the importance of teaching children to swim. Allison, their "little mermaid" and "little hero," has been swimming since she was a toddler. (This skilled Dartmouth swimmer drowned.)
– The US ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa is blaming the "blood sport" of politics for the kerfuffle he's in over comments he made while visiting the latter islands. Per the New York Times, witnesses told local media that former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown acted "obnoxiously" at a July Peace Corps event in Apia. Brown confirmed Wednesday to New Zealand's Stuff that there had indeed been an "administrative inquiry" by the US State Department into his behavior and that he'd been warned to be more "culturally aware." The Guardian reports the complaints apparently came from two female Peace Corps members. The remarks revolve around him telling guests at the event they looked "beautiful," as well as noting to a waitress she could make "hundreds of dollars" if she were a waitress in America. But while Brown says he did compliment guests on their appearance, he says he'd seen them before the event looking "dirty and grungy" and that they'd cleaned up so nice he felt compelled to compliment them. He also says he made comments about both women and men, and that his wife, Gail Huff, made similar remarks. As for the waitress, he says he was simply noting she was doing a "great job," per the Times. Why he thinks the complaints against him are politically motivated: He's a Trump supporter said to have the president's ear. "At this event there were a lot of people [who] didn't like [Trump]," he told Stuff. "Sadly, it's politics, and it is what it is." He did note, however, he'll try to be more culturally sensitive in the future. Huff says the experience "has been a real learning curve" and that she was by her husband's side at all times and "literally saw nothing. It's absurd."
– Written motions finally evolved into verbal arguments this morning in Baltimore, where defense attorneys for two of the six officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray tried to have said charges dismissed and the office of State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby recused from the case—attempts that were both rejected by Judge Barry Williams, the Baltimore Sun reports. The defense attorneys argued, among other things, that Mosby had influenced the jury pool by "[adopting] and [encouraging] the public's cry of 'no justice, no peace'" when she publicly announced the charges against the officers in May. Another complaint by the defense: Mosby's judgment was influenced by her husband serving as councilman for a local district that saw a "disproportionate amount of violence" in the days after Gray's death, the AP reports. Williams called that assertion "condescending" and said while he was "troubled" by some of Mosby's comments during her May 1 news conference, the defendants' right to a fair trial wasn't compromised by her statements, per the AP. The hearing is expected to continue this afternoon to determine whether the trial for the six officers should be split up. (In a unrelated story, members of Freddie Gray's family, including Gray himself, were victims of lead poisoning and may have been misled by a settlement company.)
– A recent New Yorker essay about online laughter prompted Facebook to crunch data on how people actually express a chuckle in the ether. It's probably not a big surprise to find out that LOL is no longer the phrase of choice, but it might be surprising at just how far the old standby has fallen. In a week's worth of posts in May, just 1.9% of people who expressed laughter did so via LOL. Meanwhile, the undisputed the champion is "haha" (including variations such as "hahaha") at 51.4%, followed by the use of emoji at 33.7%, and "hehe" at 13.3%. Some other takeaways: 15% of people indicated laughter in at least one post or comment Residents of Chicago and New York prefer emoji, while those in San Francisco and Seattle like "haha" More men use "haha" and "hehe," while more women use emoji So what's going on? It's not too complicated. "Only old people are using LOL these days, presumably because it was popular in the internet’s early days but is now falling out fashion as emoji becomes the universal language of youths," observes Adam Clark Estes at Gizmodo. Dig into more charts at Facebook.
– US consumers throw out or otherwise waste 1.3 billion pounds of edible seafood every year—that's more than a quarter of the country's annual supply, according to a press release from John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Those numbers come from a new study published in Global Environmental Change that found up to 47% of the US' edible seafood supply goes uneaten every year. Some of that is the fault of fishermen catching the wrong species or product lost during distribution and retail. But the majority of the waste—51% to 63%—is squarely the fault of consumers. The 2.3 billion pounds of edible seafood that goes uneaten is enough protein to sustain more than 10 million people for a year. The findings are especially important now, with experts encouraging US residents to eat more seafood in lieu of chicken, beef, or other meats, according to the researchers. Unfortunately, a number of factors—including overfishing and climate change—are destroying the world's seafood supply. "If we're told to eat significantly more seafood but the supply is severely threatened, it is critical and urgent to reduce waste of seafood," the study leader says in the press release. Researchers suggest packaging seafood in smaller portions or encouraging consumers to buy frozen seafood. Time reports the new study fits with the federal government's plan—announced last week—to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. “Let's feed people, not landfills,” the EPA said at the time.
– The Critics' Choice Awards are generally a good barometer for the Oscars, which makes Ben Affleck's night a bittersweet one. He took home honors for best director and best film last night for Argo, hours after failing to even get nominated in the directors' category for an Academy Award. "I would like to thank the academy," he said upon winning. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. This is the one that counts." Winners in the big categories, from USA Today and AP: Best film: Argo Best director: Ben Affleck (Argo) Best actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) Best actress: Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) Supporting actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master) Supporting actress: Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables) Original screenplay: Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained) Click for the full list of winners.
– Real-live winter in the South? You bet: Unlikely ice storms hammered southern states yesterday, depriving thousands of power, forcing hundreds of flight cancellations, and killing at least five people, CNN reports. It's not over, either: Storms are poised to strike regions from Dallas to Memphis until tomorrow and Arkansas through Monday. The north will also get its share, with sleet or snow hitting central New England through the central Appalachians into today, and blanketing the nation's capital tomorrow. In other details: Dallas/Forth Worth had it worst, canceling nearly 700 flights and the downtown Dallas holiday parade for the first time in 26 years. The storm cut out power for more than 200,000 customers. Temperature swings were shocking: In Hot Springs, Arkansas, a temperate 75-degree day on Wednesday turned into an ice storm yesterday. Most fatalities occurred on icy roads, including the death of Granby, Missouri, Mayor Ronald Arnall, whose car veered off a state highway in southern Missouri and hit a tree, Reuters reports. Oklahoma alone has recorded about 116 storm-related injuries. A new storm struck the Pacific Coast yesterday, dropping pretty heavy snow on Portland. Even Las Vegas might see snow today—up to 2 inches. But it's not so bad by comparison: In northern Europe, a powerful storm with hurricane-force winds kicked up a huge tidal surge and killed 8 people, CBC News reports.
– If Blue Ivy Carter raised your eyebrows, you obviously have not met the other 28 celebrity babies who made it onto the Huffington Post's list of weird Hollywood baby names: Audio Science: Shannyn Sossamon's son Kyd: The, well, kid (har, har) of David Duchovny and Tea Leoni (he's a boy) Jermajesty: Jermaine Jackson's son Pilot Inspektor: Jason Lee's son Sage Moonblood: Sylvester Stallone's son Blue Angel: The Edge's daughter Bluebell Madonna: Geri Halliwell's daughter Moxie Crimefighter: Penn Jillette's daughter Rocket: Robert Rodriguez's son Click for the full list—trust us, you'll think some of the names are jokes. (We're looking at you, Rob Morrow's daughter...)
– A Tucson firefighter may have slowed down his unit’s response to the Jan. 8 shooting spree targeting Gabrielle Giffords—because he refused to go out on the call. According to city memos, Mark Ekstrum, a 28-year veteran, “mentioned something about 'political bantering' and he did not want to be part of it” when he refused, and said he was acting "for the good of the crew." Upon being told that wasn’t a valid reason for refusing a call, Ekstrum "started to say something about how he had a much different political viewpoint than the rest of the crew" then told his captain he was going home sick. As supervisors considered how to discipline him, he retired two days later, the Arizona Daily Star reports. Ekstrum’s refusal caused “confusion and delay” during the preparatory process, and one fire engine had to stop along the way to pick up a replacement, but his crew was not one of the initial teams on the scene; they responded in a support, not emergency, fashion. Ekstrum later apologized and explained in a statement that he doesn’t have any problem with Giffords and even voted for her in the last election, but that he was distraught over the shooting and thus “distracted to the point of not being able to perform my routine station duties to such an extent that I seriously doubted my ability to focus on an emergency call.” In lighter Giffords news, the Star notes that she sang “American Pie” over the weekend, and knew all the words.
– No surprises from the Fed today: Rates are staying low, and its $600 billion bond-buying program remains on track to end in June, reports MarketWatch. The Fed sees the economic recovery moving at a "moderate pace" and downplayed the risks of inflation. Far more interesting will be Ben Bernanke's first-ever press conference at 2:15pm EST to explain the Fed rationale. David Leonhardt at the New York Times says business reporters "shouldn’t let him get away with the evasions and half-answers that members of Congress too often allow Fed chairmen during their appearances on Capitol Hill." A big one to ask: "Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?"
– Oscar Pistorius' defense team is launching its case, and yet again, the testimony seems to have been too much for the athlete to take. Pistorius threw up multiple times—now a frequent occurrence—into a bucket as a forensic pathologist discussed the bullet wounds that killed Reeva Steenkamp, Reuters reports. The pathologist, Jannie Botha, agreed with the state pathologist regarding the sequence of shots that hit Steenkamp. A sobbing Pistorius and others in the court couldn't bear to look at graphic photos displayed, NBC News notes. Next, Pistorius himself took the witness stand and began by apologizing to Steenkamp's family. "There is not a moment and there hasn't been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven't thought about your family," he said, struggling to speak clearly through emotion. Other noteworthy moments, via the Guardian: Pistorius said he has trouble sleeping. "I have terrible nightmares about what happened that night. I wake up and I can smell blood." He often calls his sister for help, once doing so from inside a cupboard, he said. He added that he never wanted to touch a gun again. He discussed his close relationship with his mother and her sudden death when he was a teenager. As for his physical abilities without his prosthetics, a question central to the shooting: "I don't have balance on my stumps. I can stand on my stumps. I can't stand still on my stumps."
– Hopes that a booming Chinese economy might give the moribund West a boost have taken a hit with the release of figures showing the country's growth is at its slowest since the financial crisis. The Chinese economy has slowed for the sixth quarter in a row, with last quarter's 7.6% GDP growth rate representing a three-year low. While 7.6% would sound pretty sweet to most Western countries, the figure is just one of many signs that the Chinese economy is struggling—export growth in the first half of 2012 is down steeply from a year earlier and the People's Bank of China has cut interest rates for the second month in a row in its first reductions since 2008. China is also embroiled in a fierce crackdown on real estate speculation, further reducing demand. Most analysts expect the Chinese economy to rebound later this year, although the situation may be worse than official figures show: Electricity consumption has slowed much faster than growth in official GDP, leading some to suspect that the figures are being skewed ahead of the once-in-a-decade leadership transition this fall, Bloomberg notes. Still, "China's economy survived a period of much slower growth in 2009, where there were massive layoffs, without social unrest or serious problems," an analyst at CLSA tells the Guardian.
– The pilgrims may not have eaten any turkey at the "First Thanksgiving" in 1621—no mention of turkey is specifically mentioned in Edward Winslow's account of the feast, but he does mention that a lot of venison was eaten, and they probably ate fish and shellfish as well—so why is it the traditionally accepted main course for Thanksgiving today? Well, the Week explains, William Bradford's journals were rediscovered and reprinted in 1856, and he wrote about the wild turkey hunts the colonists engaged in in 1621. Plus, turkey is a very American bird, and a large enough one to feed a table full of people, so when Abraham Lincoln officially made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, that's what was on the menu. The pilgrims didn't eat cranberry sauce, either, considering sugar was a luxury at the time and it's kind of an integral ingredient in the sauce. (They may have eaten plain cranberries, though; National Geographic notes that the fruit was a sort of Native American "superfood.") And neither sweet potatoes nor white potatoes were around in America quite yet, so those weren't on the menu either, nor was pumpkin pie—since the pilgrims probably didn't have the butter or flour they would have needed to make the crust. If you'd like to be historically accurate at least when it comes to the beverages, the pilgrims probably drank hard apple cider, the Daily Beast reports.
– Start digging around in the backyard and you're liable to unearth rusted bottle caps, utility pipes, or maybe a long-forgotten toy. Luke Irwin, on the other hand, discovered the remains of a lavish Roman villa on his property in Wiltshire, England, the Independent reports. The residence, built nearly 2,000 years ago, "was the country house of a powerful, rich Roman," archaeologist David Roberts tells the Guardian. Irwin and his wife, who recently moved to the property with their children, had decided to add lights to their barn so they could play table tennis at night. Though electricians suggested overhead lines, the couple opted to bury them, and workers hit a hard layer about 18 inches down. It proved to be pieces of mosaic. Irwin, who designs "luxury rugs for the Roman aristocrats of today," says he knew right away it was a significant find. "Fortunately," he recalls, "we were able to stop the workmen just before they began to wield pickaxes." Irwin contacted Historic England, and archaeologists rushed to the property to begin an excavation. Calling the site "hugely valuable," Roberts tells the Guardian the discovery "is unparalleled in recent years and it gives us a perfect opportunity to understand Roman and post-Roman Britain." It's not just the size of the building, believed to be three stories, that indicates it was the home of an important Roman: It's the stuff scientists have found along with the house—discarded oyster shells, for instance, which would have been imported from the coast. "High-status pottery," coins, and the mosaic flooring itself all point to wealth. Also discovered was a child-sized coffin made of stone. (Remains unearthed in Germany point to a massive Bronze Age battle.)
– Nikki Haley came out strong against Russia and in support of the United Kingdom on Wednesday following the nerve agent attack that left a former Russian spy and his adult daughter in critical condition in England, CNN reports. "The United States believes that Russia is responsible for the attack," the US ambassador to the UN told the Security Council, adding the White House "stands in absolute solidarity with Great Britain." "Time and time again, member states say they oppose the use of chemical weapons under any circumstance," Haley said. "Now one member stands accused of using chemical weapons on the sovereign soil of another member. The credibility of this council will not survive if we fail to hold Russia accountable." It was by far the most forceful statement out of the Trump administration. Rex Tillerson had said Russia was "clearly" responsible for the attack on Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia but was shortly fired by Trump, NBC News reports. When asked about Tillerson's firing Tuesday, Trump said "as soon as we get the facts straight" the US would "condemn Russia or whoever it may be." According to Business Insider, former US diplomats have expressed confusion about why the White House hasn't done more to back its ally Great Britain, which has expelled 23 Russian diplomats. Nicholas Burns calls it "judgment day" for Trump. "Will he support Britain unequivocally on the nerve agent attack?" the former US ambassador to NATO says. "Back NATO sanctions? Finally criticize Putin? Act like a leader of the West?"
– "To be circumcised should be an informed, personal choice," or so thinks the Danish Medical Association, which on Friday issued its recommendation that no boy under age 18 in the country be circumcised. Going that route then leaves the door open for the male to make a decision of his own "when he has come of age," says Lise Moller, the head of the association’s ethics board. That's not to say the doctors' group is calling for a ban, which it says it weighed and decided against due to cases where male circumcision is medically necessary and for the potential for clandestine botched procedures, says Moller. Had they wanted a ban, they'd possibly face a steep slope. In a June report to the UN, Denmark agreed with Egypt's stance that it is a parental right to circumcise one's male child, reports the Copenhagen Post. Still, the Local reports that 74% of respondents to a 2014 survey said they'd support a full or partial ban. An estimated 1,000 to 2,000 circumcisions take place in Denmark each year, and the country should have a firmer idea of that number as of Jan. 1, after which all circumcisions must be logged in Denmark's national patient registry, reports the Local. Doctors who fail to do so will be fined, reports the Post. The CDC reports that in 2010, an estimated 58% of male newborns were circumcised in the US. (This mom went into hiding and then to jail in an attempt to avoid circumcising her son.)
– With Election Day less than a week away, President Obama and Mitt Romney are preparing to get back on the campaign trail—or at least those parts of it not flooded by superstorm Sandy. Romney resumes his campaign schedule today with three rallies in Florida, while Obama will start campaigning again tomorrow after spending time in Washington and viewing storm damage in New Jersey today, reports the Wall Street Journal. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he turned down Obama's request to visit the storm-battered city, but he stresses the move was not a "diss," reports Politico. The mayor praised FEMA's response and the level of cooperation between city, state, and federal governments. But Obama's visit to New Jersey could pay political dividends, the Hill notes. Republican Gov. Chris Christie has praised the president's handling of the disaster, saying the president "has been all over this and he deserves great credit." Asked whether Romney would also visit the state, Christie said he had "no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested," adding that "if you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me." In Ohio, the swing state considered most likely to decide the election, fears that the storm would seriously disrupt early voting have not come to pass, the Washington Post reports. Only one county reported a power outage at its early-voting site yesterday, and several key counties say that as the storm approached, early voting was at its busiest since voting began.
– President Trump was on Twitter Sunday morning defending his eldest son and taking aim at two of his favorite targets: Hillary Clinton and the media. In a series of posts starting around 6am, Trump wrote, "HillaryClinton can illegally get the questions to the Debate & delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media?" And: "With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!" Donald Jr. came under scrutiny last week after releasing emails confirming he took a meeting last year with a Russian lawyer promising damaging information about Clinton, Politico reports. That meeting has raised more questions about collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. President Trump also tweeted a "thank you" message to former campaign adviser Michael Caputo "for saying so powerfully that there was no Russian collusion in our winning campaign." On Friday, Caputo told CNN that he "never once" heard anyone in the campaign discuss Russia. "No one ever breathed the word 'Russia' to me," he said. "The idea that somebody at that campaign would have had the forethought and the treachery ... or the resources to go out and do this is laughable." Caputo, who resigned from the Trump campaign last June, has strong ties to Russia, advising then-President Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign and doing PR work for a media company owned by Vladimir Putin's government. Caputo's interview was conducted before Donald Jr. released his emails.
– In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Howard Stern says former sidekick Artie Lange may return to the air for the first time following last year’s suicide attempt. “He said to me recently that he would be willing to come on the air and explain what happened and stuff," says Stern, but adds that he wants to make sure “I’d be doing the right thing by him … I just want Artie to stay alive." More from the interview: On Charlie Sheen: "I sort of admire Charlie Sheen's ability to say f*** you to the world. It's a fascinating car wreck because, you know, how many people are in Hollywood dying for a hit television show? I don't know whether to give him a medal or to throw him in a loony bin.” On the wild days following his divorce: "After my divorce, I realized, ‘Oh, wow, I can go have sex.’ And I was running around, picking up women. Then all of a sudden, it dawned on me that I really didn't need that much sex.” Why he’ll never hire a prostitute: "I'm too germ-phobic." Why he’s not a Rush Limbaugh fan: “Wouldn't he be a lot more interesting if once in a while he was for something that the Republican Party was against? I thought he had a real opportunity with that whole drug-addiction thing to maybe open up and say, ‘Man, I'm as confused as all of you.’ But, no, he has to keep the persona.” Click for more from the interview.
– Republican lawmakers have nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Eighteen House members penned a letter Wednesday to the Nobel Prize Committee praising the president’s efforts to broker peace in the Korean Peninsula, reports the Hill. "President Trump has worked tirelessly to apply maximum pressure on North Korea to end its illicit weapons program and bring peace to the region," the letter says. The lawmakers credit the president for the recent historic meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in which the leaders agreed to rid the Peninsula of nuclear weapons and bring a formal end to the countries’ 68-year-old war. Although the countries entered into an armistice in 1953, they never signed an official peace treaty. If the two countries can resolve their differences, Trump deserves the prize, Sen. Bob Corker told CNBC Wednesday, but the senator issued a caution. The Foreign Relations Committee chair said that North Korea has made several overtures in the last two decades, only to reverse course. In a separate interview with CNBC, retired Gen. Michael Hayden credited progress with North Korea to four things: "The president squeezing the [North] Koreans, the economic sanctions, the diplomatic isolation, the military demonstrations.” He added, though, that Trump's earlier tweets about Kim, in which he famously called him “Rocket Man,” were not helpful. Trump plans to meet with the North Korean leader in the next month or so. If the meeting takes place, it would be the first time a sitting US president has met with a North Korean leader. (South Korean President Moon Jae-in says Trump deserves the prize.)
– Eat, Pray, Love looks lovely but lacks both the spice and the depth of the best-selling memoir it's based on, say critics. Julia Roberts stars as a jaded New York divorcee traveling the world to seek enlightenment. Roberts' Liz says she wants to move outside her comfort zone, writes Kirk Honeycutt at the Hollywood Reporter, but as she journeys through Italy, India, and Indonesia, "the film never ventures, even once, into a situation that does not reek of comfy familiarity." The movie "is shameless wish-fulfillment, a Harlequin novel crossed with a mystic travelogue," complains Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times, though he notes that the overwhelmingly female audience he watched it with appeared quite moved. Roberts manages to make the "2 hours and 15 minutes of eating, praying and loving pleasant enough," writes Roger Moore at the Orlando Sentinel, who decides Eat, Pray, Love "isn’t a bad movie, just a spiritually dead one." Roberts is a great choice to play Liz but "her warmth, coupled with Javier Bardem's scruffy sexiness" as love interest Felipe, aren't enough to compensate for "the folded-map flatness of this production," writes Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly.
– James Comey has been fired as FBI director by President Trump, the AP reports. ABC News tweeted a copy of the White House statement on the matter, which says that Trump acted "based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions." Trump says the move will mark "a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement." Senior government officials tell the New York Times that Sessions was given the job of coming up with a reason to fire Comey last week. Democratic leaders point out that Sessions had recused himself from the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign—an investigation Comey was leading, the New York Daily News reports. Rosenstein says Comey was fired for his handling of the Clinton email situation, saying he "cannot defend" Comey's behavior, the Times reports. Both Sessions and Trump had previously praised Comey's actions leading up to the election. According to Talking Points Memo, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer wonders if the Russia investigation was "getting too close to home" for Trump and calls for a special prosecutor to continue the investigation. CNN has a copy of Trump's termination letter to Comey, in which Trump says he "greatly appreciate[s]" Comey assuring him, "on three separate occasions," that he is not under investigation, but nonetheless he does not believe Comey can effectively lead the FBI. Comey, who was only three years into a 10-year term, learned of his firing from television reports, which began airing on screens behind him as he spoke to FBI employees in LA. The letter was subsequently delivered to FBI headquarters.
– If you've ever dreamed of being a superhero, there may soon be reason to join the Army. It's developing a "revolutionary" armor that "promises to provide superhuman strength with greater ballistic protection," LiveScience reports. The Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit would include a bulletproof exoskeleton frame; sensors to monitor heart rate and hydration, detect injuries, and even apply foam to seal wounds; and a computer that includes 360-degree night-vision cameras. The Army is calling on multiple industries, government labs, and research organizations to make it happen, reports the BBC. If it sounds to you like the stuff of movies, or perhaps comic books, you're not alone. "It sounds exactly like Iron Man," a professor at MIT told NPR for an earlier story, noting the use of hydraulics on the arms and legs to increase strength and speed. Like most superheroes, however, TALOS has a weakness. "For the Army's TALOS, the weak spot is either the need to carry around a heavy pump for a hydraulic system, or lots of heavy batteries," says the prof. "We don't have Iron Man's power source yet." The Army hopes a prototype will be ready by next year, though an advanced model could be a few years off.
– More details from "one of the darkest chapters of Australia's maritime history" are coming to light, nearly 400 years after they occurred. On June 4, 1629, the Dutch East India ship the Batavia was downed by a reef on its maiden voyage. Most of the roughly 340 people aboard managed to reach nearby Beacon Island, off Western Australia, with the ship's captain setting off in search of help in a longboat. What happened in July of that year was gruesome: The West Australian reports that more than 120 people, among them women and children, were massacred by a group of mutineers led by undermerchant Jeronimus Cornelisz: Some were felled by musket fire or swords, others poisoned or drowned. Upon the captain's return, Cornelisz and many of his men were executed, reports the BBC. The Batavia's wreck was found in 1963, and a mass grave on the island was uncovered in 1999. Australia's ABC reports that the final day of searching the island during a 2013 expedition surfaced a tooth. Upon returning, archaeologists searched the area where the tooth was uncovered and have now found the island's 11th skeleton—with an archaeologist explaining it's the first to have been found using archaeology, while the others found to date were uncovered "by accident." Two musket balls were recovered near the remains, which are believed to be that of a youth. Jeremy Green, the WA Museum's head of maritime archaeology, says it doesn't appear the remains and the tooth are linked, however, indicating there may be another grave nearby. He frames the importance of uncovering more: "This was the first time that Europeans lived in Australia—albeit it wasn't in the mainland but it was here—so it's the oldest known European habitation in Australia." (The tragic story behind three partial skeletons was recently revealed, more than 160 years later.)
– What to do with a spare $34 million? You could buy a private jet, a good-sized Caribbean island—or you could help countless people in one of California's most troubled cities. An anonymous donor went for the latter option, offering the San Francisco Foundation the cash to help "underserved" Oakland residents in areas including education and housing, Inside Bay Area reports. Foundation CEO Fred Blackwell says the donor, who called up out of the blue earlier this year, wanted the money "in the streets" by this summer. The funds will create around 2,500 jobs and more than 700 new affordable housing units, according to Inside Bay Area. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Blackwell told reporters yesterday. "We have never gotten a phone call like that in the past." The money will go to at least 17 nonprofit organizations, including health clinics, early childhood education initiatives, programs that train young people for technology jobs, and programs that help ex-cons back into the work force, reports ABC7. Officials haven't provided any more information on the donor, whom Mayor Libby Schaaf describes as a "generous soul," reports USA Today. (An immigrant couple left their entire fortune to "America.")
– Colorado's Animas River isn't always bright orange, but that's how it looks today after the EPA accidentally spilled a million gallons of mine waste into a tributary. Officials in San Juan County say state officials and the EPA were actually trying to access contaminated water at Gold King Mine in southwest Colorado on Wednesday when they "unexpectedly triggered a large release of mine waste water into the upper portions of Cement Creek," report Time and the Durango Herald. The acidic water—described by one witness as "the filthiest yellow mustard water you've ever seen"—contains sediment and metals that could irritate the skin, reports the AP. There's no risk to drinking water, but residents of communities along the river have been urged to cut back on water usage until the plume moves on. Yesterday the plume reached Durango, Colo., which had stopped pumping water out of the river on Wednesday. "It's really, really ugly," says a La Plata County official. "Any kind of recreational activity on the river needs to be suspended." The waste is now making its way to New Mexico, as the Animas River meets up with the San Juan River in that state before the San Juan joins the Colorado River in Utah. Officials have placed cages of fish in the river to identify any ill effects and are testing the water to identify the specific metals released. An expert guesses the water contains high concentrations of iron, aluminum, cadmium, zinc, and copper, based on previous contamination. It may also contain mercury, lead, and arsenic, he says, "but there's no evidence of that at this point." (One Texas town recently experienced a creepy water problem.)
– A 20-year-old British man who left his job as a chef to fight ISIS ended up killing himself to avoid capture, family members and Kurdish fighters say. Kurdish sources tell the BBC that Ryan Lock and four other fighters died after they were besieged by ISIS militants during an offensive near Raqqa, Syria. The sources say the fighters put up "considerable resistance." After the bodies were retrieved, they saw evidence that Lock had shot himself under the chin. Lock joined the Kurdish militia in August last year after telling his family he was going on vacation to Turkey, the Telegraph reports. Lock's body was handed to British authorities this week after a ceremony attended by dozens of Kurdish fighters. Kurdish commanders described him as a "martyr" who died putting up a brave fight. "ISIS [was] robbed of a predictable macabre propaganda opportunity by Ryan's action," Kurdish rights activist Mark Campbell tells the BBC. "I personally believe he deserves the very highest of military honors for such outstanding bravery in the face of such a barbaric enemy." (In January, ISIS destroyed Roman monuments in a recaptured ancient city.)
– Police on horseback and dirt bikes are searching remote areas for a woman whose disappearance followed a series of violent attacks at Cal State San Bernardino. Sahray Astina Barber, a 22-year-old who studies and works at the Art Institute of California-Inland Empire, lives across the street from the university and was last seen around 6am Monday. The university emailed students about her disappearance, saying that her roommates found her belongings, including her phone and laptop, scattered on the lawn outside her apartment building and called police after discovering that she hadn't turned up to work that day, the San Bernardino Sun reports. "We're covering every road, every trail, and every rabbit path," one of the searchers scouring the hills tells the Press-Enterprise. Police say they haven't found firm evidence of foul play or established a connection between the disappearance and the wave of attacks at Cal State in the last few weeks, which include a carjacking, an attempted rape, and—the day before Barber vanished—an incident in which a female student fought off a man who tried to kidnap her, NBC reports. Police have released a composite sketch of a suspect in two of the Cal State attacks, who is described as a Hispanic male around 20 years old, according to the Press-Enterprise. The university says it has more than doubled its police presence, and Barber's father says, "We just want her back," the Sun reports. (An attempted kidnapping in Washington state was foiled by the snatched toddler's 8-year-old sister.)
– Before last night's live production of The Sound of Music on NBC, Emma Brockes summed up everything that was certainly going to be wrong with it in the Guardian: The original, beloved though it may be, "is basically terrible: too long, too pious, too labored in its point-making." But Julie Andrews managed to find "a little quietness and subtlety in the score," whereas "Underwood, judging by the teasers, will go at it with the pop-eyed mania of someone performing for Simon Cowell," Brockes writes. "There are certain things one doesn't look to winners of American Idol to deliver and guilelessness is one of them." So how did it actually end up? Most reviewers seem to agree Brockes was right: In Time, Charlotte Alter sums things up with her headline: "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Carrie Underwood?" She deems the show "so cringe-worthy that it was at least fun to watch" and rounds up nine things that went wrong, including Stephen Moyer, who played Captain Von Trapp: His "accent was sometimes German and sometimes English, which was weird because Underwood’s accent was always Southern." She also offers up suggestions for actors who would have done a better job than Underwood, including Morgan Freeman. On the Daily Beast, Kevin Fallon feels basically the same way: "Was Carrie Underwood a good Maria? No. Was NBC's decision to do a live staging of The Sound of Music a good one? Maybe not. Was it fun anyway? Actually, kinda," he writes. "To say that Underwood was no Julie Andrews is one of life's greatest certainties, and maybe it's not fair to compare the two stars. But the truth is that millions of people tuned in Thursday night to do just that, compare Underwood to Andrews ... and then throw her off an Alps cliff when she didn't measure up." As for the production itself, it "came off without a hitch," writes Marc Bernardin at the Hollywood Reporter. That's "no easy feat with so many moving parts and opportunities for blown lines or staircase stumbles (oh, how I wished for a staircase stumble to lighten the three hours)." And the non-Underwood cast, with the exception of a constipated-looking Moyer, was very strong.
– Call it the "battle of the beards," suggests Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post: Paul Krugman vs. Ben Bernanke. Both are prominent economists, both have facial hair aplenty, and each has called the other "reckless." Krugman has been lambasting the Fed for not doing enough to help the economy recover—even if it means boosting inflation. Inflation, he argues, isn't so scary. Rising prices would encourage people to buy now, not later, and it would reduce the "real" value of debt. But Bernanke has said that "would be very reckless." He observed that the Fed's inflation goals are a self-fulfilling prophesy—without them, companies would jack up prices. Samuelson sides with Ben, adding that prices could rise faster than wages, hurting spending. "None of this is preordained," Samuelson writes. "Economists have exaggerated their understanding and control of the economy. People don't often act according to academic theories." Krugman actually responded, praising Samuelson for making "a serious effort" to tackle the tough issue. He still thinks he's right, "but then, I would, wouldn't I?"
– The fiscal cliff isn't the only looming financial deadline. Just a few days remain to give to charity in 2012, and Ken Stern would prefer you not make your decision "hastily, based on poor information." Writing for the Washington Post, the former NPR exec and author of this upcoming book dispels five myths clouding the topic: It's not all about the poor: There are 1.1 million charities in America ... including Oregon's Renegade Roller Derby team, the All Colorado Beer Festival, and countless hospitals. Stern explains it's "astonishingly easy" to form a charity, with the IRS OKing 99.5% of applications from would-be charities. Low overhead is a sign of greatness: A number of charity raters favor those who put upward of 85% of their income toward services, with those using just a sliver of cash on expenses often seen as the best. But investing in things like research and training can make for stronger charities. To wit, Stern reminds us that the Red Cross' Hurricane Katrina and Sandy issues stemmed in part from inadequate investment "in the infrastructure necessary to handle complex emergency relief." Picking a great charity to give to is easy: "In fact, it is enormously difficult," writes Stern who, as example, points out that more than 60,000 charities have the word "veteran" in their names. His solution isn't the easiest: Work at it. "On average, Americans spend more time watching television in one day than they do researching charities in an entire year." Put the time in, review studies published by GiveWell, and look beyond famous leaders or catchy stories. Click for two more myths, including the idea that nonprofits aren't profitable.
– Two bodyguards who worked for Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen were sentenced to five years in prison for attempted murder over an incident during the couple's April 2009 wedding, Sky News reports. Miguel Solis and Alexander Rivas demanded two photographers in Costa Rica give up their camera memory cards; as the photographers drove off, at least one of the bodyguards shot at them. Solis and Rivas were also ordered to pay $10,000 to each photographer. Neither was hurt in the incident, of which Bundchen claimed to be unaware back in 2009.
– Hackers got their hands on AP's Twitter feed today and briefly sent blood pressures racing with an afternoon tweet that President Obama had been injured in a pair of White House explosions, reports the Huffington Post. The real AP tweeted minutes later that it was a hoax and suspended the account. Incredibly, the Dow had been up 130 points before the tweet and lost all of it within a minute, reports the Wall Street Journal. Then it bounced right back to where it was when the hoax was revealed. No official word yet on who's behind the hack, though TMZ says it's the same group that has been "swatting" celebs with phony 911 calls.
– A jury has convicted a western Michigan woman of first-degree murder in the shooting death of her husband in a crime apparently witnessed by the man's pet parrot. The Newaygo County jury deliberated about eight hours before finding 49-year-old Glenna Duram guilty Wednesday of killing 46-year-old Martin Duram, reports the AP. He was shot five times in May 2015. Glenna Duram suffered a head wound in what prosecutors said was a suicide attempt, but survived. Martin Duram's ex-wife, Christina Keller, has said that after the slaying, the African grey parrot, Bud, repeated "don't (expletive) shoot" in Martin Duram's voice. Keller took ownership of the bird after Martin Duram's death. MLive reports that police floated money woes as a possible motive, and notes the couple's home was in foreclosure at the time. WOOD reports the pet was not "used" in court. Duram is due to be sentenced Aug. 28 on the murder and a felony firearm charge.
– "Santa Clara residents deserve a judge who will protect victims, not rapists," said Stanford law professor Michele Dauber as the campaign to recall the judge in the Brock Turner case officially began. Dauber and other activists filed a notice of intent Monday to recall Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, WGNO reports. The judge has a "long pattern of bias in cases involving sex crimes and violence against women in favor of white or privileged defendants, particularly college athletes," which came to light after he sentenced Turner to just six months in jail for the sexual assault of an unconscious woman in 2015, the Recall Persky campaign said in a statement. Prosecutors had asked for six years. If campaigners can gather 58,634 voter signatures, the measure to recall Persky will appear on the countywide ballot in June of next year. Recall supporters say it will send a message to the whole country. Persky has already shifted from criminal to civil court, and supporters including District Attorney Jeff Rosen note that the Turner case has led to changes in the law, the San Jose Mercury News reports. "Judge Persky’s sentence in that case was wrong, in my opinion, but he had the right to give it,” Rosen said in a statement. "My focus as we move forward is less about an individual judge than it is to the victims of campus sexual assault." (A state commission cleared Persky of misconduct last year.)
– The US president may not directly control gas prices, but Barack Obama's "disdain" for oil is still hurting Americans terribly, writes Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. Restricting drilling, vetoing the Keystone pipeline, and similar anti-oil moves are killing thousands of local jobs, hurting relations with Canada, and sending billions of dollars to Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Trying to develop alternative fuels of the future is a waste of time and resources. "Drilling is the single most important thing we can do to spur growth at home while strengthening our hand abroad," writes Krauthammer. High gas prices are "a constant reminder of three years of a rigid, fatuous, fantasy-driven energy policy that has rendered us scandalously dependent and excessively vulnerable."  But calls for more drilling are just "intellectual bankruptcy," argues Paul Krugman in the New York Times. America is already in a "hydrocarbon boom," with oil and natural gas production on the rise, but that has not stopped oil prices from soaring. That's because increasing demand from developing countries and Mideast war worries "easily outweigh any downward pressure on prices from rising US production." The hydrocarbon boom has also had little effect on jobs—the 70,000 jobs gained since the middle of the last decade represent just .05% of total US employment. So why the GOP focus on fossil fuels? One, the oil and gas lobby. And, two, conservatives have no other ideas. "And intellectual bankruptcy, I’m sorry to say, is a problem that no amount of drilling and fracking can solve."
– Forget satellite images and aerial searches—the best way to find Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 may be with mathematical techniques dating back to the 18th century, the BBC reports. That's how Air France flight 447 was found in 2009, using "Bayesian statistics" to measure the probability of the plane being in one place or another. Named after Presbyterian minister and mathematician Thomas Bayes, the technique allowed experts to apply several factors to each point on a map: For example, what was the chance it crashed from mechanical failure? How far do planes tend to crash from their last known location? What was the chance that search teams missed debris in various locations? It's like picking a restaurant by balancing how full it is, what your favorite restaurant-review website says, and so on—except that experts hunting for Airbus A330 did that for each point where plane may have crashed in the Atlantic, Five Thirty-Eight notes. It was so hard that the US team of statisticians invited by France gave up, until they de-emphasized one statistic: that a plane's black box emits a signal after a crash 90% of the time. They changed their findings, and presto, the plane was found. Bayesian techniques have helped people find World War II U-boats, men overboard, and sunken treasure, but there's no evidence that Malaysia is employing them now. "I suspect that they just guess, like professional baseball managers used to do before Moneyball," says a biostatistician.
– Are we one step closer to Jurassic Park? Probably not, but researchers do believe they've found the first ever example of fossilized brain tissue from a dinosaur, National Geographic reports. The fossil was found on an English beach in 2004, but its unique trait—mineralized pieces of brain tissue—was announced in a study Thursday. "The chances of preserving brain tissue are incredibly small, so the discovery of this specimen is astonishing," Phys.org quotes study coauthor Alex Liu as saying. Researchers believe the dinosaur, a relative of the Iguanodon, sank upside down into a pond after it died. The pond water "essentially pickled" the dinosaur's brain, and the pickled tissue was eventually replaced by minerals. The outer millimeter of the fossil seems to include mineralized blood vessels and bits of the membrane that covered the brain, NPR reports. Researchers believe it may also contain mineralized pieces of the brain itself. “That is the nearest I suspect we’re ever going to get to the whole [brain],” paleontologist David Norman tells NatGeo. One result of the new discovery: Researchers say it may show dinosaurs were smarter than we've been giving them credit for. In modern reptiles, the brain doesn't take up the entire brain case in the skull. That appears not to have been the case in this dinosaur, meaning it may have had a larger brain than previously believed. Norman says it appears the dino was at least as smart as a modern crocodile. (A bus-sized dinosaur comes with a surprise.)
– Put away the calculator and enjoy dessert: There's no more tipping at Joe's Crab Shack, the first national full-service chain restaurant to test a no-tipping policy, Consumerist reports. In a conference call last week, Ray Blanchette, CEO of parent company Ignite Restaurant Group, told investors that 18 of its 131 units are trying out the no-tipping policy that began in August, making up for lost tips by upping servers' starting minimum wage to $14 an hour from $2.13 (exact pay depends on work performance), Restaurant Business Online reports. The goal: to prevent staff turnover and improve service. "I personally believe tipping is an antiquated model," Blanchette said in the call, per the OC Register. "The no-tipping service model gets us above the fray with regards to the increased minimum wage conversations that seem to be happening all over the country." Blanchette explained that, in addition to servers being more likely to stick around for the long haul with a higher hourly wage, they'd also be guaranteed the same pay whether they worked a dead shift on a Monday afternoon or a busy Friday night, per National Restaurant News. And service would likely improve, too, he noted, especially when servers start sharing table duties for large parties (instead of getting territorial over a table for an anticipated big tip). The wage increase is paid for by raising menu prices 12% to 15%—which could still save customers money if they usually tip 18% or more. Results so far have been positive. "What makes us optimistic is the restaurant that has been in test the longest is gaining the most traction," Blanchette tells NRN. Consumerist notes that the parent company of 13 well-known NYC restaurants has been testing its own no-tipping policy since October, leveling wages between front-house and kitchen staff. (A NYT writer says tipping is "degrading" to women.)
– "Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better." That's the line from the Koran that Dr. Susan Carland says came to mind as she sat one day mulling the best way to deal with online trolls attacking her because she's Muslim. She writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that she endures a regular litany of abuse, including jeers at her hijab and even death threats. "I'd tried blocking, muting, engaging, and ignoring, but none of them felt like I was embodying the Koranic injunction of driving off darkness with light," she writes. Then Carland—who converted to Islam at age 19 and is now considered part of "Australia's Muslim power couple" with TV host husband Waleed Aly, per Australian Women's Weekly—hit on a way she could repel that darkness: give money to others each time she was attacked. "I donate $1 to @UNICEF for each hate-filled tweet I get from trolls," she tweeted on Oct. 21. "Nearly at $1000 in donations. The needy children thank you, haters!" She writes in the Herald that UNICEF seemed like the natural choice as her recipient, since the group often helps kids "in horrific situations that were the direct outcome of hate—war, poverty due to greed, injustice, violence." Many are praising her idea, with Mashable calling her efforts "inspired," and UNICEF Australia tweeting: "You've turned hate into something wonderful: education, health care and protection for kids." Carland's mission has even had an effect on how she responds to nasty postings. "Now when a ghastly tweet comes my way, I barely bat an eyelid," she writes. "It represents nothing more than a chalk-mark on my mental tally for the next [installment] to UNICEF." (A slain Japanese journalist tweeted against hate before he died.)
– Two kids were seriously injured today in a shooting at a middle school in Roswell, NM, and authorities say the shooting suspect—another student—is in custody. A 12-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were airlifted to a Texas hospital, KOB reports. The boy was in critical condition and the girl was upgraded to serious condition. The suspect is a 12-year-old boy, and initial reports suggest that the wounded boy was his intended target. Witnesses say he was shot in the face, reports the Albuquerque Journal. Police haven't speculated about a motive. The AP has this: "Eighth-grader Odiee Carranza said she was walking to the school gym when a boy bumped into her as he rushed past. She told him to be careful, and he apologized and continued on. He ran to the gym, where he pulled a gun out of a band instrument case and fired at the students." She described the suspect as a "smart kid and a nice kid." Gov. Susana Martinez says a teacher at Berrendo Middle School approached the shooter and convinced him to put his shotgun down after the initial shots.
– A Pittsburgh hospital says it is in the midst of "a very active investigation" after two patients died in its cardiothoracic intensive care unit, which was later found to contain mold. UPMC Presbyterian Hospital's quality control chief Tami Minnier says a fungal infection first appeared on the leg of a heart transplant patient last October. A second infection was found on the buttocks of another transplant patient this past June, reports the AP; both patients died, though doctors aren't sure whether the infections caused the deaths. Hospital officials didn't connect the two cases because they occurred so far apart and the molds in each case were different, but related. Only when a third type of fungal infection was discovered in a lung transplant patient two weeks ago did hospital workers connect the dots and the ICU was closed on Sept. 3, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Though investigators found mold in toilets and behind the walls of the unit, per WTAE, experts aren't sure if it played a role in the deaths as it was a different type than those found in patients. "It's just heartbreaking," Minnier says. "I can't tell you how many hours we have already spent trying to understand it." Minnier says a total of 56 patients have stayed in the ICU over the past year. The three patients infected were among eight transplant patients. The unit's remaining 18 patients have been removed to another part of the hospital while a remediation company clears up the mold, per the Gazette. "It's a hospital, and you bring people here to get well, not to get sick and die," says the wife of a patient. A mold expert says it’s "very unusual" to see the types of fungi found in the patients in a hospital, but it's possible recent construction projects at UPMC caused an outbreak.
– A mean-looking cockroach that lived alongside the dinosaurs had a long neck, swiveling head, and elongated legs that enabled it to surprise prey, New Scientist reports via Gizmodo. Found embedded in amber in Myanmar, the 100-million-year-old insect resembles a cross between a roach, a crane fly, and a praying mantis: "After the first look I knew it was something new," Slovak scientist Peter Vršanský tells the BBC. "Nothing similar runs on Earth today." Vršanský and German colleague Günter Bechly, who revealed the appetizing bug together in the journal Geologica Carpathica, say it likely hunted at night. "This little monster was a solitary hunter, able to run very fast, with a body unlike the vast majority of cockroaches living today," explains Vršanský. It "frequently" took flight and grabbed prey "with strong short spines developed on its extremely long feet," he adds. Called Manipulator modificaputis, it also had an extra set of eyes on top of its head, probably to spot predators like feathered dinosaurs. On the stomach-settling side, it measured less than half an inch long. So it's not as scary as other insect predators back then, like the Raphidiomimidae—which were "especially drastic and brutal," Vršanský says. They were bug-eating roaches "with a wingspan up to 20cm [nearly 8 inches] and eyes divided into two parts." But compare that to Aegirocassis benmoulae, a 7-foot "bizarre sea creature" 480 million years ago that is an ancient cockroach relative and caught plankton like a whale, the LA Times reports. (Or read about an ancient, fearsome sea creature with "curved teeth the size of bananas.")
– The big news from the Consumer Electronics Show—where the expected theme is "the connected car"—is a plan to make your new vehicle a little more like your smartphone. General Motors and Audi tell the Wall Street Journal they have plans to give their vehicles built-in 4G high-speed broadband, and the services sound pretty cool: GM says it'll offer weather and music apps, viewable on an in-dash screen, plus a Vehicle Health app for troubleshooting problems with the car itself. But that's only the beginning of what Google calls the Open Automotive Alliance: a teaming with automotive companies to bring Google's Android system to the road, Businessweek reports. Honda and Hyundai are also in on the deal, while Nvidia will make the chips for automotive displays. But you'll have to pay up for the services, expected later this year, and automakers are already being met with grumbling about distracted drivers. "To take mobile technology and give the driver distractions that don't even relate to driving is just not the right direction," a National Safety Council director said, adding, "I don't blame the automakers, but they are now in an arms race to be more connected." With those complaints in mind, automakers are working to integrate technology so as to be "glanceable." As an Nvidia rep says, "Holding a phone and interacting with a phone while driving is just not safe."
– Roy Oliver, the former Texas police officer who fatally shot 15-year-old Jordan Edwards last Saturday night, turned himself in hours after an arrest warrant was issued Friday. Oliver, who was fired from the force in the Dallas suburb of of Balch Springs on Tuesday, was freed Friday night after posting $300,000 bail at the Parker County Jail, the AP reports. According to the arrest warrant, the officer, who is charged with murder, fired a rifle into a car full of teenagers leaving a rowdy party. The teenager's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the officer, the city, and the Balch Spring Police Department. Their lawyers say they are glad to see swift action taken against a white officer who shot a black youth. "I was elated," Edwards family attorney Jasmin Crockett tells NBC 5. "We've seen this play out so many times in so many cities across America. So in less than a week, we have an officer that got fired, we have an officer that has an arrest warrant." Oliver, an Iraq vet who had been with the Balch Springs force since 2011, was involved in another gun incident just two weeks before the Edwards shooting, reports the Dallas Morning News. Monique Arrendondo, 26, says the officer, in plain clothes and off-duty, drew his gun and demanded ID after his truck was rear-ended. "As soon as I put my gear into park, he was already out of his truck, and he was at my window," she says. "He pulled out his gun on me."
– Dick Clark has put his 23-acre mountaintop home in Malibu up for sale for $3.5 million, reports Forbes. This one seems to be drawing lots of attention because the home looks like it's straight out of the Flintstones, notes the Los Angeles Times, which says the interior has the "ambience of a bright cave." It's no joke, though: Those big expanses of glass make for 360-degree views of the ocean, the mountains, and even Los Angeles sunsets. For a slideshow, click here.
– It's difficult to believe that Beyoncé would give her first interview since the birth of her daughter to a UK tabloid, but that exclusive is exactly what the UK's Star claims to have. "Nothing can describe the feeling," the singer apparently told the magazine. "You have the instant connection once you know your child is growing inside you, but when you hold it for the first time, the words can’t be found. … A child is the greatest gift you can receive." She also reveals that "inspirational father" Jay-Z "will change diapers, of course he will," the Huffington Post UK reports. "He's going to be a very hands-on father and he is going to be so good at it." She insists Blue Ivy Carter will grow up in a "normal loving family" and says some of the stories swirling around the birth were exaggerated. Even so, security was "tight," she admits, but "it was for the security of our daughter." In other Babyoncé news, Blue Ivy has apparently convinced dad Jay-Z to give up the word "bitch."
– Bryan Singer has already been hit with two lawsuits alleging sexual abuse of minors—and the lawyer who filed both of them, plus other suits against Hollywood bigwigs, says more are coming. "I’ve heard from victims about very recent claims of being sexually exploited in Hollywood," Jeff Herman said at a news conference yesterday, according to Variety. He said one coming lawsuit involves another Hollywood "sex ring." Herman also shared photos showing the second alleged victim (with his face redacted) and Singer at the London premiere of Singer's Superman Returns in 2006; John Doe, then 17, says Singer abused him after the premiere, the New York Daily News reports. As for the strenuous denials from all the Hollywood VIPs named in the various suits, Herman said, "The pushback I’m getting reminds me of the early days of the clergy sex abuse scandal." Meanwhile, in an interview with the Daily Beast, Herman says he himself has vague memories of being sexually abused as a child. He says he's worked on some 800 sex abuse cases in his career, notably involving the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts.
– President Obama and John Boehner gave dueling speeches last night, and the news was not good. Here's what the pundits are taking away from it all: If people—or markets—were looking for reassurance, “they were out of luck,” observes Politico. Instead, Obama and Boehner “treated viewers to the unsettling spectacle of two leaders talking past, not to, each other,” with Obama even issuing a “stunning” plea for people to call their representatives. Obama’s speech proved this isn’t a left vs. right debate. “It’s center vs. right,” argues EJ Dionne of the Washington Post. “There was nothing remotely ‘left’ in this speech.” With some deft rhetorical touches—like quoting Ronald Reagan— “my hunch is that Obama’s speech spoke more to middle-of-the-road Americans.” But William Kristol of the Weekly Standard thought Obama came across as condescending—especially when he said most Americans had probably never heard of the debt ceiling. “It would be nice to have a president who spoke candidly to his fellow citizens as adults,” he writes. Boehner, meanwhile, went “full-tilt Tea Party crazy,” writes Joan Walsh of Salon. He acted as though he and Obama had never discussed a deal at all, while demanding a balanced budget amendment—which is “extraordinarily apocalyptic and insane,” because Boehner knows that can’t pass. “Hell, he probably doesn’t even want it.” He’s just moving the goal posts on Obama again.
– A 22-year-old golfer headed for the height of her sport was instead murdered on the course. Wrapping up a civil engineering degree at Iowa State University, where she'd been named female athlete of the year, Spain's Celia Barquín Arozamena was found dead a short distance from her unattended golf bag on the Coldwater Golf Links in Ames around 10:30am Monday, reports the BBC. After determining Barquín was assaulted, police by evening had charged 22-year-old Collin Daniel Richards of no known address with first-degree murder, per a release. Details weren't provided, though WOI-TV reports Richards has a history of arrests for intimidation with a dangerous weapon, trespassing, and public intoxication dating back to 2015. "This is a tragic and senseless loss of a talented young woman and an acclaimed student athlete," Iowa State president Wendy Wintersteen says, per ESPN. "She was a player who was heading for the very top, without a doubt," adds the technical director of the Spanish Golf Federation, per the BBC. Ranked 69th in the country by Golfweek, Barquín had secured an invite to next year's Women's British Open with a victory at the European Ladies' Amateur championship in July. Considered one of the most accomplished players in Iowa State golf history, the Puente San Miguel native also became the Big 12 women's golf champion and only the third Iowa State women's golfer to compete in the US Women's Open earlier this year, per the Independent.
– Look up at the sky on Jan. 31 and you may witness a sight unseen for 150 years. For the first time since 1866, a total lunar eclipse will occur with the blue moon, or second full moon of the month, which—like the one visible on New Year's Day—will also be a supermoon. Got all that? When the moon is at or near the closest point to Earth in its orbit (aka, a supermoon), it appears 14% bigger and 30% brighter than full moons that occur at the farthest point in the moon's orbit, though the moon will lose brightness as it enters Earth's shadow, according to NASA. Because of the way Earth's atmosphere bends light, the eclipsed moon will take on a reddish hue, something often referred to as a blood moon, making this rare celestial event "a super blue blood moon eclipse," according to the Miami Herald. The next blue moon eclipse won't occur until 2028. The eclipse will last for 3.5 hours, with the total eclipse stretching for 77 minutes, reports Sky & Telescope. Those along the Pacific Rim from Alaska and northwestern Canada to central and eastern Asia, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia will get the best view of totality during the middle of the night. However, partial phases of the eclipse should be visible under a clear sky in central North America, western Asia, India, the Middle East and eastern Europe, per Space.com. North American viewers should look up as the moon sets on the morning of Jan. 31, while those on the opposite side of the world should see a partial eclipse as the moon rises. Not in an ideal viewing area? The Virtual Telescope plans to livestream the total eclipse from Australia, which you can watch here, per Quartz. (Bogus glasses damaged a solar eclipse viewer's eyes.)
– A California teacher is behind bars with bail set at $100,000 after she allegedly followed through on what students thought was a teasing offer of "free haircuts." Police were called to Visalia's University Preparatory High School on Wednesday in response to an Instagram video that appeared to show science teacher Margaret Gieszinger using scissors to chop off a student's hair during a first-period chemistry class. Hair flew amid the teacher's loud rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," per the Visalia Times-Delta, which adds Gieszinger stopped the male student as he tried to get away. "You're not done," she allegedly said, and continued cutting. Gieszinger then was said to have grabbed the hair of a female student before kids screamed and ran for the classroom door. Two days earlier, Gieszinger had claimed students were responsible for a test that had gone missing, a parent tells the Times-Delta. "They asked for help from administrators on Monday but were told they had to go back to class," one parent says. One student describes the behavior as out of character for the 52-year-old teacher, later arrested at her home on suspicion of felony child endangerment, per YourCentralValley.com. "Loving and kind," she's "usually all smiles and laughs. This is not the Miss G. we know and love," the student tells the Times-Delta. But: "I hope I never have to see her at the school again," another student tells KFSN. "I can never see her as a respectable authority figure in my life." Gieszinger was handed two-week suspensions for unknown reasons in 2007 and 2016. (A Florida teacher was accused of drowning animals in class.)
– Something is turning healthy coral into ghostly skeletons along the Florida Reef Tract. As the third-largest barrier reef in the world, the 360-mile stretch of vitally important sea life provides a buffet of nutrients for plants and animals along the state's Atlantic coast. Now, scientists are racing to find a cure, as detailed in a piece by NPR. To be sure, reefs are struggling worldwide, and coral diseases have been rising over the last decade, per NOAA, probably caused by pollution and rising ocean temperatures, which provide a warm home for pathogens. But growing swathes of coral from as far north as Pompano Beach in Broward County to as far south as Biscayne National Park are turning into watery graveyards, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection says in a report. Since 2015 the department has been working with a team of federal, state, and local groups to identify the likely pathogen, find a treatment, and address underlying problems—but that identification hasn't yet happened. Scientist William Precht, who was hired by the state to monitor the health of reefs off the port of Miami, has watched the disease move from one patch of coral to another. He says that whatever is killing the coral is especially deadly for brain and star coral, which create the underlying structure for many reefs. The death of the coral, he tells NPR, is having a lasting impact. "When you go out and swim on the reefs of Miami-Dade County today, it would be a very rare chance encounter that you'd see some of these three or four species." (There's bad news about the Great Barrier Reef, too.)
– In its confirmation of Verizon's purchase of Yahoo's web assets, announced Monday morning, the Wall Street Journal describes it as a "remarkable fall" for Yahoo, once valued at more than $125 billion and now plucked up for less than 4% of that—$4.83 billion in cash. A rundown of the deal's specifics, and how it's being reported: Read CEO Marissa Mayer's lengthy letter to Yahooers about the "amazing opportunities [Yahoo will realize] in its next chapter" here. Bloomberg explains what Verizon is and isn't getting: yes to Yahoo's real estate, no to Yahoo's cash and its shares in Alibaba Group Holding. Business Insider reports AOL head Tim Armstrong will likely emerge as CEO of an AOL-Yahoo combo (Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion in 2015). It issues a warning: "The siren song of Yahoo has lured others before him. And Armstrong's desire to revive the struggling internet business may leave him blinded to the same trap as his predecessors." The Washington Post points out the Mayer turned down a deal to buy Yahoo two years ago—a deal Armstrong offered. It looks at what Armstrong, and Verizon, want with Yahoo. In her letter, Mayer writes, "For me personally, I'm planning to stay." It's unclear how long she'll stay for, or in what capacity. In a piece heralding the "saddest $5 billion deal in tech history," Forbes reports Mayer is expected to be handed a $50 million-plus severance package when she does go. Quartz looks at how the deal might allow Verizon to "mount a credible challenge to those two giants": Google and Facebook. The giants own about half the $69 billion US digital ad market. Verizon plus AOL plus Yahoo would claim about 5.2%. Recode profiles Marni Walden, the 49-year-old Verizon exec (and Armstrong boss and "rising star") who drove the deal. The New York Times uses a series of infographics to explain why Yahoo sold itself.
– Lady Gaga's performance of her Oscar-nominated song about sexual assault during the Academy Awards on Sunday was a powerful moment for a lot of people. The Los Angeles Times reports two of those people were the singer's own aunt and grandmother, who weren't aware she was a survivor of sexual abuse herself. "My grandmother and my Aunt Sheri both called me the day after the Oscars because I never told them I was a survivor," Gaga posted to Instagram on Tuesday. "I was too ashamed. Too afraid." She first opened up about her abuse at the hands of an older man when she was 19 during an interview with Howard Stern in 2014, according to CNN. Gaga said she blamed herself for her own sexual abuse for a decade, but her grandmother called her after Sunday's performance to tell her she'd never been more proud of her. "Something I have kept a secret for so long that I was more ashamed of than anything—became the thing the women in my life were the most proud of. And not just any women, the ones I look up to the most," she said on Instagram. The singer performed Til It Happens to You—written for The Hunting Ground, a documentary about campus sexual assault—while surrounded by rape survivors and following an introduction by Joe Biden.
– While everyone fretted about the fiscal cliff, thousands of new state laws quietly took effect at midnight. The Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and Mediaite run down a few notable ones, from the weird (feral hogs?) to the more conventional: Caylee's Law: Legislation named after Caylee Anthony took effect in California and Illinois. Parents now face big penalties if they don't report the disappearance or death of a child within one day. Abortion: Partial-birth abortions are now banned in New Hampshire. In Montana, minors wanting an abortion must notify their parents. Illegal immigration: Employers in some states are now required to use the E-Verify system to confirm citizenship of their employees. Facebook: Employers can no longer ask job applicants for Facebook or Twitter passwords. Food safety: In Maryland, it's now illegal to use chicken feed that includes arsenic. Though it's the first state to pass such a ban, the practice is already illegal in Canada and the EU. Driverless cars: Are now legal on California roads, though a human must always be in the passenger seat. Weirder laws: No releasing feral hogs in Kentucky, and no using a dog to chase a bear or a bobcat in California. Strip clubs in Illinois must now charge $3 at the door and donate it to rape crisis centers. Also in Illinois, motorcycle wheelies are now banned. Also today, same-sex marriage became legal in Maryland.
– The Ford family scored its biggest-ever political victory Thursday night—more than two years after the death of Rob Ford. Doug Ford, older brother of the notorious former Toronto mayor, was elected premier of Ontario, Canada's most populous province, the AP reports. Ford, who was narrowly elected leader of the provincial Progressive Conservative Party in March after former leader Patrick Brown stepped down amid allegations of sexual misconduct, won a resounding victory over current Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose Liberal Party had been in power for 15 years. Ford—who, unlike his brother, isn't known for drinking heavily or smoking crack—campaigned on a populist platform that led to comparisons to President Trump. Ford's campaign promises included cutting gasoline taxes, lowering the minimum price of beer to $1, and making marijuana more widely available after it is legalized this year, reports the Toronto Star. "He had a simple product, and he was selling it at a lower price than anybody else in terms of tax cuts and other commitments of reduced prices, whether it was for gas and beer etc.," political science professor Myer Siemiatycki tells the CBC. Days before the election, Rob Ford's widow, Renata Ford, filed a $12.6 million lawsuit against Doug Ford and Randy Ford, another Ford brother, accusing them of mismanaging the family business and cheating her and her children out of her husband's inheritance.
– Christmas isn’t over yet, as these new pictures of a pregnant Rachel Uchitel clad in a candy-cane-striped bodysuit prove. Uchitel, who became famous as the first Tiger Woods mistress to emerge, tweeted the pictures last night and says she is five months along, the Huffington Post reports. She is expecting the baby with hubby Matt Hahn, whom she married in October, according to TMZ.
– More than 6.5 million pounds of ground beef and beef patties have been recalled due to a salmonella outbreak that has so far sickened at least 57 people from 16 states, the USDA announced Thursday. The affected beef comes from Arizona-based meat producer JBS Tolleson, Inc., and was packaged between July 26 and Sept. 7, CNN reports. It was sold nationwide under the brand names Walmart, Cedar River Farms Natural Beef, Showcase, Showcase/Walmart, and JBS Generic. Customers should check for products with "EST.267" inside the USDA mark of inspection, the AP reports. Full recall information can be found here.
– A Danish radio DJ chose a controversial way of drawing attention to what he sees as the flawed debate over animal welfare: He hit a 9-week-old rabbit named Allan three times with an iron bicycle pump while on the air Monday, then wrung its neck. Later, Asger Juhl of Radio24syv ate it for dinner. Angry listeners have since called for a boycott of the station, and much worse for Juhl himself, reports the BBC. "I did it to show the hypocrisy in the debate," he says. "Many people are outraged by what I did, at the same time many of these people will eat meat. And when they eat meat, an animal will die." Juhl says he consulted with Aalborg Zoo on a humane way to kill rabbits and was told it used an "iron stick." The zookeeper "hits several baby rabbits every week [to feed] the snakes," Juhl explains, per the Local. His employer is unapologetic. The New York Times quotes station editor-in-chief Jorgen Ramskov as saying the rabbit "was taken good care of, it had a nice life, and it was killed in a decent way." Animals endure "horrific suffering on their way to our dinner tables … without it invoking any strong reactions or calls for boycott," a station rep tells Sky News. Perhaps fueling the outcry on social media, per the Times: The station posted two videos on its Facebook page: a 20-second clip showing Juhl cradling and petting a very-alive Allan, and a 10-second clip showing what the station described as pieces of Allan, cooking in a pan. Those two parts are important, argued the station in a Facebook post yesterday. "We knew that we would be accused of provocation. But it is not an empty provocation; the presenters of the program ate the animal after killing it." (It's not the first controversial animal killing in Denmark.)
– The experts thought Edvard Munch's The Scream would bring in a princely sum, but not this much: $119.9 million. That's the most ever paid for a painting at auction, reports the New York Times. (The previous record was $106.5 million for a Picasso, notes AP.) No word yet on who bought the 1895 painting at Sotheby's. Five bidders were in contention, and the winning bid came via the telephone.
– O: A Presidential Novel is not the gossipy bombshell one might have expected of a novel, penned anonymously by an insider, depicting the 2012 Obama campaign, writes Ron Charles for the Washington Post. In fact, it suffers a bit in that the fictionalized Obama and his GOP opponent—a flattering blend of John McCain and Mitt Romney, devoid of demagoguery—are relatively respectful of each other. In a way, the book is "an uncanny response to this month's call for a more civil political discourse." All in all, it's like presidential candidates themselves: Not "as good as you hoped or as bad as you feared." So who wrote it? Ben Smith, writing for Politico, notes that the author clearly knows the mechanics of political campaigns well, but mainly from the standpoint of the press, which suggests either a political reporter or a campaign staffer with experience in PR. Another hint: the author seems to hate Arianna Huffington. Check out the Week for 6 theories on the author's identity.
– The sun still is not shining on US-Pakistan relations. A US drone strike targeting suspected militants in northwest Pakistan killed 10 today, a move that will likely further inflame tensions between the two countries, reports Reuters. Pakistan has demanded an end to the strikes, which it considers a violation of its sovereignty—and it's still waiting for an apology for November's deadly strike. Adding to the most recent drama: Sens. John McCain and Carl Levin. McCain and Levin yesterday called the 33-year sentence handed to the doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden "shocking and outrageous." They threatened to end US financial assistance to Pakistan—which had totaled $18 billion since the war in Afghanistan began—if Shakil Afridi is not pardoned and freed "immediately," reports the AFP. "Dr. Afridi's continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will only do further harm to US-Pakistani relations, including diminishing Congress' willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan," they wrote in a joint statement.
– Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted a pair of hashtags last night—#UkraineUnderAttack and #RussiaInvadedUkraine—which appear to sum up the situation on the ground, the Washington Post reports. Pro-Russia separatists backed by Russian troops, artillery, and armored vehicles are now attacking on two fronts, authorities in Kiev say, with fierce fighting along a new southeastern front. The Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers seen in the area—which would give Russia a land bridge to Crimea—appear to have come straight over the border instead of from separatist-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine, the Los Angeles Times reports. President Petro Poroshenko canceled a trip to Turkey, citing sharp aggravation of the situation in Donetsk region, as Russian troops were actually brought into Ukraine," according to a statement. Russia has not acknowledged any troop movements. A rebel commander says there are around 4,000 Russians fighting with the separatists, but they are all volunteers. "Many former high-ranking military officers have volunteered to join us. They are fighting with us, considering that to be their duty," he tells the BBC. "There are also many in the current Russian military that prefer to spend their leave among us." The US has expressed its "deep concern" about Russian involvement in the rebel offensive. "Russia is clearly trying to put its finger on the scale to tip things back in favor of its proxies," a senior American official tells the New York Times. "Artillery barrages and other Russian military actions have taken their toll on the Ukrainian military." After days of fighting, the strategic southeastern town of Novoazovsk now appears to be under rebel control, the AP reports.
– An anonymous person dropped a single gold coin worth about $1,200 in a Salvation Army kettle in South Carolina. The 1-ounce South African Krugerrand was dropped into a Salvation Army kettle during a fundraising drive at a Walmart store in Tega Cay, the Herald reports. The coin will likely be sold to a jeweler's store, with proceeds going to Salvation Army programs. Mike McGee of the Salvation Army in Rock Hill says a typical kettle fundraiser will raise about $300 a day, the AP reports. "We would like to say thank you to the donor who dropped the gold coin into the kettle," McGee says. "Your generosity helps us fight for good in our community all year. God bless you." (Other extraordinary donations have included gold teeth, pot, and a $500,000 check.)
– Just as soldiers were warned "loose lips sink ships" during World War II, modern airmen are being warned "loose tweets destroy fleets" in the social-media age. ABC News reports US Air Forces Central Command sent out a security notice last week warning personnel of the "fine line" between sharing activities with friends and family and providing harmful information to enemies. The military is getting increasingly concerned about tech-savvy terrorist groups. In the notice, one official specifically worried about "ISIS sympathizers" and "lone wolves" using social media to find and harm military personnel and their families. For instance, a group calling itself the Islamic State Hacking Division released a "kill list" of 100 military members and their families seemingly compiled using information readily available on social media in March. In the release, the Air Force warns airmen not to post information about their mission or too many personal details while keeping their social media accounts "friends only." The Navy and Army also are hammering home the "loose tweets" message, notes Stars and Stripes.
– Two years ago when someone stole an infamous iron gate from the former Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, Angela Merkel called the theft "appalling" and the director of the Dachau memorial said it was a "deliberate, reprehensible attempt to deny and obliterate the memory of the crimes." On Friday, police announced the gate bearing the Nazi propaganda slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei"—"Work Sets You Free"—has likely been found in Bergen, Norway, following an anonymous tip, the BBC reports. According to CNN, police haven't given any information about the tipper or where specifically the gate was found. No arrests have been made, Reuters reports. Police say the gate, which appears to be in OK condition, will be returned to Germany "as soon as practical." The Nazis opened the Dachau camp in 1933, and by the time it was liberated by US soldiers in 1945, more than 41,000 people—most of them Jews—had been killed there, the Guardian reports. The 220-pound iron gate was made by inmates at the camp, and its slogan was an attempt by the Nazis to pass off the concentration camp as a "work and re-education camp." The Dachau camp is currently a memorial, and German authorities installed a replica gate there last year. A $10,000 reward had been offered for the return of the original gate. A sign with the same "Arbeit Macht Frei" phrase on it was stolen from Auschwitz in 2009 by a Swedish neo-Nazi, who spent more than two years in jail. (A Holocaust-themed skating number didn't go over well.)
– A narrow escape for a precious historical document: Police in England say a 45-year-old man is in custody after allegedly using a hammer to smash holes in a protective glass case housing the best preserved of the four surviving original Magna Cartas. The Thursday incident at Salisbury Cathedral was part of a suspected effort to steal the prized charter of rights signed by King John in 1215, report the BBC and Salisbury Journal. The document kept at the cathedral was undamaged and has been removed from display temporarily. The unnamed suspect is being held on suspicion of attempted theft, criminal damage, and possession of an offensive weapon. (The four Magna Cartas were united for the first time in 2015.)
– Minnie Driver announced her pregnancy in 2008, and has managed to go all the time since without revealing the baby's father. But now that son Henry is three, "I don't need to protect (the father) anymore," Driver tells the Guardian. "He can fend for himself. He's a grown-up." So who is he? He was a writer on her short-lived TV series, The Riches, she says, and though she doesn't name names, the Mail briefly speculated she's referring to Tim Lea before changing its headline. (Driver and Lea dated in 2009, ninemsn notes.) As for whether Henry's father is a good dad, Driver will only say, "Sort of. He's figuring it out. … I mean, he hasn't been that involved; his choice. But he is now." Click to see what Driver craved during her pregnancy.
– Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report have become a big focus of the Republican race this week. Things really took off Monday when Ted Cruz told a conservative radio host that Drudge's website "has basically become the attack site for the Trump campaign," reports BuzzFeed. Cruz took exception to several headlines on the site suggesting that he had won in Colorado over the weekend thanks only to insider politics by party leaders bent on defeating Donald Trump. "And most days, they have six-month-old article that is some attack on me, and it’s whatever the Trump campaign is pushing that day will be the banner headline on Drudge," said Cruz. He added that "they no longer cover news." As the Hill reports, Drudge has responded by linking to a January story in which Cruz sounded pleased with the site: "We have got the Internet, we have got the Drudge Report," he said at the time. Drudge also linked to an analysis in the Washington Post headlined, "Ted Cruz’s war with Matt Drudge could become a huge problem for his campaign." In that piece, James Hohmann writes that a "word cloud" from social media shows that Drudge is making an impact, with the words "cheating" and "drudge" showing up among mentions of Cruz's Colorado win. This should worry Cruz because it could make his victories seem illegitimate to conservatives. "If Cruz wins the nomination at a contested convention in Cleveland, he will need these grass-roots activists to rally around him," writes Hohmann. "If regular Drudge readers believe he did not win fair and square, they will be less inclined to do so." A blogger at the American Spectator, meanwhile, dismisses the "reprehensible" coverage on Drudge as "cheap tabloid tricks." Trump is looking for a "distraction" from the reality that he was beaten soundly in Colorado, where the rules were clear, writes Ross Kaminsky.
– An Oregon mom is on trial for allegedly beating her son to death, which she did, prosecutors told the court this week, because she believed the 4-year-old was gay. On Wednesday the judge in the case ruled that prosecutors could introduce as evidence a Facebook message in which Jessica Dutro, 25, told her boyfriend Brian Canady, 24, that her son Zachary was "facing the wall" for making her angry, the Oregonian reports. He's going to be gay, Dutro wrote, using a slur. "He walks and talks like it. Ugh." She said the two would have to "work on" the boy. Yesterday, Dutro's 8-year-old daughter testified that facing the wall was a common punishment, the Oregonian reports. Dutro would make the children stand holding their arms in the air, and hit them if they relaxed, she said, adding that Dutro and Canady also often gave her and her brother "lickins." She described the night her brother "got dead" this way, according to Inquisitr: "Jessica and Brian, they kept hitting him and punching him. He didn't listen to them, so they kicked him and punched him and stuff and they kept doing it and doing it." That beating allegedly tore the boy's bowels. Zachary Dutro-Boggess was brought to the hospital on Aug. 14, 2012, and was taken off life support two days later. Canady has already pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault.
– Despite a few reviewers who think it’s basically an extended Saturday Night Live sketch, The Other Guys snagged a high score on the Tomatometer—and some are calling the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg cop comedy the funniest movie of 2010: If you’re tired of Ferrell's typical “clueless blowhard,” never fear: director Adam McKay “shrewdly varies the formula," making Ferrell the “square” and Wahlberg the “aspiring alpha dog,” writes Joe Williams in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “The Other Guys is the funniest movie of the year.” Ferrell and McKay "have collaborated on three other movies, but they've never been so slyly funny as they are in The Other Guys, a buddy-cop satire so hilarious that even longtime Ferrell haters (me) can't resist it,” admits Connie Ogle in the Miami Herald. “The humor is that rare perfect balance of broad and satiric.” Fun cameos include “Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson in a hilarious send-up of badass cops,” and Michael Keaton, who nearly steals the show “as an emasculated police captain moonlighting as a retail store manager,” writes Joshua Katzman in the Chicago Reader. Rather than a full-length film, “the movie’s best bits would stand alone nicely on YouTube, or on Funnyordie.com, the comic video boutique of which Mr. McKay is an owner and where he sometimes dabbles in short-form hilarity,” writes AO Scott in the New York Times.
– If Shyma's music video had aired on MTV in the US, she likely wouldn't be facing jail time. But the 20-something singer, whose star turn showed her stripped down to her skivvies and provocatively eating fruit, lives in Egypt, and the conservative powers-that-be there have sentenced her to prison, the BBC reports. Shyma (real name: Shaimaa Ahmed) was arrested in November, and on Tuesday she was handed a two-year sentence on charges of debauchery and publishing an indecent film, per local media. The New York Daily News says Mohamed Gamal, the director of the video, called "I Have Issues," was also sentenced to two years in prison in absentia. The Telegraph offers more details, explaining that in the video, Shyma appears in her underwear, then noshes on a milk-drizzled banana, licks an apple, and samples cake icing in front of a classroom of beguiled men. The video got her more than 1 million followers, but then came her arrest. The debauchery charge isn't an uncommon one in Egypt, with media reports citing instances of women being thrown behind bars for dancing in music videos (that recently earned belly dancers six months each in prison) and, in the case of a singer who proclaimed on film that sipping Nile River water could get people sick, "spreading provocative publicity." As for Shyma, she noted before her arrest in a Facebook post that's since disappeared that she was sorry for her "inappropriate" behavior and "didn't imagine ... that I would be subjected to such a strong attack from everyone." The South China Morning Post, which says Shyma can appeal the verdict, notes that after her arrest, she blamed Gamal for including the provocative scenes without her consent. (Eight Egyptians were jailed for filming a gay wedding.)
– A New Hampshire woman who became stuck in her swimming pool after the ladder broke turned to the loving arms of Facebook to ask for help getting out. "I had one foot on (the ladder), and when I put my other foot on it, it went down. And I cracked my knee," Leslie Kahn tells WBZ-TV of the Aug. 11 incident. The 61-year-old says she didn't have the upper-body strength to hoist herself out, and "my tenants were out, nobody was home. My phone was inside." With few other options, Kahn used a pool pole to drag the chair her iPad was on toward her and posted in a community Facebook page, asking for help. She said she labeled the post "911" to get people's attention. A woman who lived nearby showed up, followed by police and a neighbor. "Every idea we thought of didn’t work," she says, until her rescuers thought to try a step ladder. "And I just climbed out. Happily ever after at that point." Kahn, whom the AP notes is a breast cancer survivor, is apparently no worse for the wear: "People keep saying, 'I bet you can laugh about it now.' I was laughing about it then. What else can you do!"
– The Federal Reserve released the results of its latest round of stress tests at the nation's biggest banks, and they're generally being received as good news. Fifteen of the 19 banks passed, which is what outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post are highlighting in the the first paragraph. But the AP and Bloomberg opt to focus on the four that failed, and each singles out Citigroup in the opening paragraph. (The three other banks that failed to impress were SunTrust, MetLife, and Ally Financial.) A Barclays Capital analyst sides with the rosier view, especially when the numbers are compared to the dark days of the Lehman collapse: “It is night and day. In 2009, about half the banks failed the stress test. The industry’s capital position is higher today, and better quality. There is a lot less leverage.”
– Cory Booker now looks poised to become Senator Cory Booker in this fall's special election in New Jersey, a feat that would make the high-profile Newark mayor only the fourth black person elected to the Senate. So why are there so many raspberries coming from the left after last night's primary win? Because he "is loathed by some progressives in a way that's only now being noticed," writes David Weigel at Slate. "A Booker victory will mean the replacement of a reliable, plodding progressive with a less reliable neoliberal." Or as Alex Pareene at Salon put it, Booker is "an avatar of the wealthy elite, a camera hog, and a political cipher who has never once proposed anything to address the structural causes of the problems he claims to care so deeply about." He'll follow that same superficial path in the Senate, predicts Pareene. Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly sums up the Booker phenomena thusly: "For admirers, he’s the next Barack Obama, a charismatic African-American pol with possible transpartisan appeal. To detractors, he’s an unholy combination of Harold Ford Jr., and Joe Lieberman, beholden to Wall Street and Silicon Valley." The bigger issue for critics, he adds, is whether Booker has White House ambitions. For more on the liberal unease with Booker, see the Week.
– Colin Kaepernick's protest of the national anthem appears to be snowballing. Two Seattle Seahawks players have insinuated they may do something as a team during the national anthem prior to Sunday's game against the Miami Dolphins. "Anything we want to do, it's not going to be individual," the Big Lead quotes linebacker Bobby Wagner as saying. "It's going to be a team thing." Following teammate Jeremy Lane's solo act of protest during a preseason game, receiver Doug Baldwin says the "locker room has discussed" joining in. According to CBS Sports, coach Pete Carroll is already on record supporting Lane's right to protest, and Wagner isn't worried about reprisals. "Whatever we decide to do, we ain't gonna get into too much trouble," he says. "We're big kids now."
– Belgium's former king has to undergo a paternity test. Per the Telegraph, a mandate just handed down by a Brussels appeals court will force King Albert II, who gave up his crown in 2013 so his son Philippe could sit on the throne, to have his saliva tested to see if he's the father of 50-year-old multimedia artist Delphine Boel. The ex-monarch has denied for more than 10 years that he's Boel's dad, but a 1999 biography on Albert's wife, Queen Paola, tells a different story. That tome alleges Albert had a long-time affair with aristocrat Sybille de Selys Longchamps, a relationship that allegedly resulted in the birth of Boel in the late '60s; the affair reportedly ended in 1976, when Albert chose to stay with Paola so he wouldn't have to abdicate. Albert has admitted his marriage to Paola, which produced three children of their own (all older than Boel), wasn't always smooth, per Reuters. The man Boel grew up believing was her father, Jacques Boel, has already been determined via DNA testing to not be her biological father. The court order, which overturned an earlier ruling and can't be appealed, says Albert has three months to comply with the testing. If he refuses, he'll be legally deemed Boel's father. (Salvador Dali, you are NOT the father of this Spanish woman.)
– The fat lady may have sung on the presidential race last night, but results are still trickling in from some of the country's closest races. So far, everything's coming up blue; Democrats have extended their Senate majority to 53, not counting the two independents expected to poll with them, after winning a pair of nail biters. In North Dakota, former Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp has scored what Politico terms an "upset" win over Rep. Rick Berg to claim the last unsettled Senate seat of the election. Heitkamp won with fewer than 3,000 votes, the AP reports, a margin so small that Berg could have demanded a recount, but he instead conceded late this afternoon. Earlier, Democrat Sen. Jon Tester won an excruciatingly close re-election battle over Rep. Denny Rehberg, after a bitter campaign that dominated Montana politics for two years, the Missoulian reports. Tester likely benefited from a strong performance by Libertarian Dan Cox, who managed 6% of the vote—most of it likely at Rehberg's expense.
– Tsai Ing-wen promised a "new era" for Taiwan on Saturday after being elected as the island's first female president. The 59-year-old, from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, defeated the Nationalist Party's Eric Chu with around 60% of the vote, reports the Los Angeles Times. Tsai will take office in May. Nationalist President Ma Ying-jeou has already served two terms and Taiwan's constitution didn't allow him to seek a third, the AP notes. "We failed. The Nationalist Party lost the elections. We didn't work hard enough," Chu told supporters at party headquarters, announcing his resignation as party chief. The election marks what the BBC calls a "turning point in Taiwan's democracy and relationship with China," which still officially considers the island to be a renegade province. "I am very happy. I feel I have finally accomplished something for Taiwan, so that Taiwan will have great autonomy instead of just following China," a 32-year-old engineer who voted for Tsai tells the LAT. Tsai has said she favors maintaining the status quo, though her refusal to support the principle of reunification between China and Taiwan makes it uncertain whether the closer ties with Beijing that Ma introduced will continue, reports the AP.
– Another deadly train accident is in the news, this time from Spain. A high-speed train in the country's northwest derailed last night; it was reportedly moving at double the speed limit, and Reuters says the driver is under investigation. Officials say at least 77 people are dead, the New York Times reports. At least 100 more were injured, and 20 are in critical condition, CNN adds. Authorities say the train had about 220 passengers and derailed around 8:40pm local time near the station in the city of Santiago de Compostela, 60 miles south of El Ferrol, the AP notes. An official tells CNN more bodies are expected to be found, and some reports now put the death toll at 78. The train, which belongs to the state-owned Renfe company, was on its way to El Ferrol from Madrid. It was going 110 miles per hour in a zone where the speed limit is 50, sources told Spain's El Pais paper, per the Times. According to CNN, the train driver told police he entered a curve too quickly, and the country's transport secretary confirmed the "tragedy appears to be linked to the train going too fast." The BBC says all 13 cars came off the tracks, and it quotes one passenger who says they seemed to "pile up on one another" at a curve in the tracks. "There are bodies lying on the railway track," says one government official. "It's a Dante-esque scene."
– Police have arrested one of Disneyland's own employees after yesterday's dry-ice explosion in the Toontown section of the park, reports the Los Angeles Times. Christian Barnes, a 22-year-old vendor who sold soda and water from a cart, is being held on $1 million bond. Police say he filled a bottle with dry ice and dropped it in a trash can. The ensuing blast caused a lot of noise and chaos, but no injuries or serious damage, reports AP. No word on motive, but police don't think it's related to previous dry-ice bombs in the Anaheim area.
– The Islamic State has "distributed" about 300 Yazidi women to its jihadist fighters as spoils of war, CNN reports. The Islamic State, or ISIS, kidnapped the women when it attacked Yazidi villages and forced tens of thousands to flee earlier this month, according to a British group monitoring the crisis. The group says the Sunni extremists sold off at least 27 of the women to other ISIS members in Syria for $1,000 each. Some of the women converted to Islam for the marriages. In other ISIS news: John Kerry today called for a "world coalition" to defeat ISIS in a variety of ways: "To confront its nihilistic vision and genocidal agenda," the coalition would have to use "political, humanitarian, economic, law enforcement and intelligence tools to support military force," he wrote in a New York Times op-ed. ISIS militants beheaded a soldier in Lebanon and posted the beheading on social media, the New York Times reports. The soldier, also a Sunni, was captured when ISIS temporarily took over a Lebanese border town. ISIS is threatening to kill more captives if Lebanon doesn't release jihadist prisoners. Saudi Arabia's king warns that Islamist extremists are close to attacking Europe and the US. King Abdullah didn't mention ISIS by name, but his words "appeared aimed at drawing Washington and NATO forces into a wider fight" against the militant group, CBS News reports. Foreign Policy says it acquired an ISIS fighter's laptop that contains plans to create biological weapons, including one that spreads the bubonic plague. "The human casualties can be huge," said a 19-page instruction manual. But there was no evidence that ISIS already has such weapons. For more, read about an American woman being held by ISIS.
– Cell phones in theaters: After two high-profile incidents on Broadway, things seem to have reached a "tipping point," observes Variety. The first occurred when 19-year-old Nick Silvestri hopped up on the stage just before the start of Hand to God and plugged his phone into an outlet, not realizing it was a prop. He tells Playbill that it wasn't a joke and that he wasn't acting on a dare. He just needed to charge his iPhone. "I saw the outlet and ran for it," he recalls. "That was the only outlet I saw, so I thought, 'Why not?' I was thinking that they were probably going to plug something in there on the set, and I figured it wouldn't be a big deal if my phone was up there too." Security guards quickly moved in. After talking to Playbill, Silvestri even participated in a press conference and read a statement in which he apologized. "I don't go to plays very much, and I didn't realize that the stage is considered off limits," he said, per Gothamist. (Variety notes that Hand to God, which has been struggling to sell tickets, was happy to capitalize by organizing that press conference.) The second incident occurred when Patti LuPone took the phone from an audience member who was texting during Show for Days. Given that she remained in character the whole time, the New York Post grants her a "standing ovation." Vanity Fair rounds up previous incidents, saying they "offer proof that, even if our movie theaters are slowly succumbing to the inevitability of omnipresent cell phones, the theater community may well choose to die on this hill." Plus, Broadway actors have a big advantage over movie actors: "the ability to fight back."
– Last month, Emerald White's four pit bulls got into a neighbor's yard and killed that Texas family's 10-year-old beagle. "Everyone was telling me to sue her, but I decided not to because it won't bring Bailey back," says Steve Baker, the beagle's owner. So imagine his surprise when he and his wife, Tiffany, were served with a $1 million lawsuit from White on Wednesday. In the lawsuit, White says that when she went into the Bakers' Texas City yard to get her dogs during the Oct. 27 incident, she was "unexpectedly and viciously attacked" and "seriously injured." She also accuses the Bakers of not keeping their dog in a secure enclosure, the Galveston County Daily News reports. White's dogs got into the Bakers' yard through a hole in the shared fence between their yards. But in an interview earlier this month, Baker told the Daily News that each homeowner is responsible for the fence slats that face his or her home, and that "I had replaced all the slats that were my responsibility. I had even replaced a few of [the neighbors']." Baker also now says that before Bailey was killed he tried to speak with the neighbors about fence repairs but got no response. In a report shortly after the attack, the Bakers' daughter told Click2Houston that their neighbor had repaired the fence after the attack. White's dogs were ultimately declared dangerous by the city; they are now required to be in a secure enclosure with a mechanical locking device.
– A detective testifying at a hearing for 18 Penn State fraternity brothers accused in the death of a 19-year-old pledge said Monday the student looked like a corpse in surveillance video from the frat house. "He looked dead, he looked like a corpse," said State College Police Detective David Scicchitano, describing sophomore Tim Piazza's appearance in footage showing frat brothers carrying him upstairs the morning after a pledge event that involved heavy drinking, reports the AP. Scicchitano spoke at preliminary hearing at a courthouse near campus that will determine if there's enough evidence to send the case to court for trial. Video shot inside the Beta Theta Pi house was being shown from the night the pledge was ordered to drink and then fatally injured in a series of falls. The Post-Gazette notes that this is the first time prosecutors showed the video. Piazza consumed what prosecutors said was a life-threatening amount of alcohol during a hazing ritual on Feb. 2 and he died two days later. Fraternity members didn't call 911 until nearly 12 hours after his first fall. Piazza's father, Jim, rocked back and forth quietly in the front row of the courtroom as he heard his son's final hours described. When the video started, he and his wife Evelyn left the courtroom. "The grand jury presentment released last month had described what was on the video in detail, but still it was no match for the actual footage," the Post-Gazette notes. The defendants face a variety of charges, with some accused of involuntary manslaughter and felony aggravated assault. Piazza died at a hospital Feb. 4 from traumatic brain injury and had suffered severe abdominal bleeding. His blood-alcohol measured at a dangerous level. Penn State has permanently banned the fraternity, saying the school found "a persistent pattern" of excess drinking, drug use, and hazing.
– Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has erupted, prompting Gov. David Ige to declare a state of emergency and activate the National Guard. Soldiers have been called in to assist with the mandatory evacuation of the Leilani Estates neighborhood in the Puna district of Big Island, which is in danger of being inundated by lava, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports. The eruption sent lava flowing through the subdivision, where vapor is emerging from cracks, and witnesses say they saw fountains of lava rising around 150 feet from a crack in the volcano, reports the AP. Emergency shelters have been opened for around 1,700 people affected by the evacuation order. The eruption follows hundreds of earthquakes over the period of several days, most of them around 2.0 magnitude, CNN reports. The most severe was a 5.0 magnitude earthquake Thursday morning, according to the US Geological Survey. One local man tells KHON 2 that he flew his drone near a "curtain of fire" moving toward residential areas. "It sounded like if you were to put a bunch of rocks into a dryer and turn it on as high as you could," he says. "You could just smell sulfur and burning trees and underbrush and stuff." Scientists say there's a lot of magma in the extremely active volcano's reservoir and they're not sure how long the eruption will last.
– Jon Gosselin’s quest for fame hit a new low with Hailey Glassman’s Insider interview—the octodad apparently invented Glassman’s claims of emotional abuse. “Jon and Hailey get paid for their appearances on these shows and they need the money,” a source tells Fox News, adding that Jon “really wants a reality show of his own, and he is stretching out every moment of the drama for a dollar.” Speaking of his very own reality show, the source also confirms Gosselin was considering the reality special with octomom Nadya Suleman. “He has to do something and this would have been funny, plus Hailey had no problem going along with the fake dates and pretending to be upset,” the source says. Meanwhile, Glassman tweeted that she is “semi-single,” Us adds—but, tragically, “not yet ready to mingle.”
– The next Mega Millions lottery winner could take home the fourth largest jackpot in its history. No ticket matched Tuesday's six drawn numbers, meaning the jackpot climbs from $458 million to $502 million for Friday's drawing. It's just the fourth time the jackpot—last won by a 20-year-old Floridian on Jan. 5—has surpassed the half-billion dollar mark, per ABC News. The highest ever jackpot was $656 million won by three players exactly six years ago Friday, reports USA Today. (This case offers a lesson, should you win.)
– A US Senate candidate sounded upbeat today after his Chinese-themed ad in broken English triggered accusations of racism, the Huffington Post reports. "I’m excited," Michigan GOP contender Pete Hoekstra told Politico. "It has jump-started the debate.” The ad shows a Chinese woman biking through rice fields and thanking Hoekstra's rival—Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow—for borrowing excessive amounts of money from China. "Your economy get very weak," she says. "Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie 'Spend-it-Now.'" Hoekstra's campaign also launched a website that includes Chinese writing and Stabenow's face on a Chinese fan. Even a GOP consultant lashed out in response, saying "shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement," and a non-partisan Asian group accused him of trying to "encourage anti-Asian sentiment." As for Democrats, they set up a website accusing Hoekstra of hypocrisy.
– Critics agree that Daybreakers is visually inventive, but the B-movie charms of this vampire/oil allegory don't snare everyone. Some opinions: Willem Dafoe "and his Southern drawl goose things up," Joe Neumaier writes for the New York Daily News, and Ethan Hawke "has a greasy romanticism." But directors the Spierig brothers "seem to lose interest in what they've created, a feeling that's infectious." The film "bursts with clever ideas and resonant concepts," Keith Phipps writes at the Onion AV Club. But the "plot digs into a rut," and the "cleverly constructed, uncomfortably familiar world makes a deeper impression than much of what happens within it." "After all the toothless, limp-dick vampire posturing in the Twilight chick flicks, it's a kick to see a balls-out, R-rated movie about bloodsuckers that doesn't spare the gore so little girls won't cry into their Twitpics of Rob Pattinson," Peter Travers writes in Rolling Stone. Yeah, it's a B movie. "I'll take that over pompous any day." The "thin metaphor for our situation with oil" has "promising elements of a socio-satirical horror movie," Owen Gleiberman writes in Entertainment Weekly. But it devolves into a "ponderous apocalyptic chase film," like "Children of Men with exploding-plasma shock effects."
– Ever since Deborah Skouson came home with a pink flowered shirt for her daughter five years ago, Cami, who has autism, has been "fixated" on it. It quickly became her favorite piece of clothing, leading Skouson to scour eBay each time her daughter's current shirt became unwearable. But the fifth time she sought a replacement, eBay's stock had run dry. That's when the Utah mom turned to Facebook, asking friends to share her request for the shirt along with her offer to pay whatever it cost, plus shipping. "It has to be this exact shirt!" Skouson wrote on Aug. 7. "We've tried similar shirts, and they don't cut it with Cami!" As of Thursday, no less than 150 matching shirts have arrived at her door from as far away as Germany, reports the Daily Dot. "At first, my daughter was a little confused to see more than one of her 'pink flower shirts.' I explained to her that people gave them to her because they loved her," says Skouson, a special education teacher, noting people have offered to make teddy bears, pillows, and blankets for her 10-year-old out of any extra shirts. She adds she tearfully accepted an offer from Target—which sells the Circo-brand item and heard about the story—to make larger versions of the shirt so Cami can wear it even when she's an adult. "It's been very, very touching," Skouson tells KUTV. "These are all total strangers," she wrote on Facebook. "People are inherently good and kind, and I'm glad I've been able to be a recipient of that kindness." (A photo of a cake decorated by someone with autism also went viral.)
– Life sentences are unusual in Denmark, even when the crime is murder, but that's what Danish inventor Peter Madsen was handed on Wednesday. Judge Anette Burkoe at the Copenhagen City Court said she and the two jurors—whose opinions all held equal weight in the case—found Swedish journalist Kim Wall was murdered, telling Madsen he hadn't given "a trustworthy" explanation for her death and that "there is clear evidence that the accused has shown an interest in killing and dismembering people." The 47-year-old stood quietly listening as the verdict was read, reports the AP, with the Guardian describing him as "visibly nervous." The paper notes life sentences in Denmark typically average 16 years; Madsen has two weeks to decide whether he will appeal. Madsen had maintained that he did not murder Wall, but did admit to cutting up her body and disposing of it in the sea after what he said was an accidental death. The New York Times reports prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen had argued Madsen was fixated on murdering a woman after a rocket launch was scrapped on Aug. 8, two days before Wall died. Buch-Jepsen said Madsen texted three women an invitation to meet him on the sub but was turned down. Wall boarded the sub on Aug. 10 for an interview that she had tried to secure for months; Madsen had texted her that day with the invite. "It was random chance that it turned out to be Kim Wall," Buch-Jepsen said. Wall skipped her own going away party to head to the interview. More on that here.
– A rush-hour collision between a Chicago Transit Authority bus and several other vehicles yesterday left one person dead and at least eight others injured, one of them critically, authorities say. The accident occurred around 6pm in the north Loop. Authorities say the articulated Route 148 Clarendon/Michigan Express bus collided with at least three other vehicles at Michigan Avenue and Lake Street. The bus went onto the sidewalk, and at one point a pedestrian was pinned underneath. She was taken away covered in a sheet, a witness who ran to help tells the Chicago Tribune. NBC Chicago describes the fatality as a 51-year-old woman. The driver, who was treated for non-life-threatening injuries, was the only person on the bus, and investigators are looking at video from a camera that records the interior of the bus.
– Alaska couple Kelly Tousley and Curtiss O'Rorke Stedman, both 27, vowed at the end of 2014 that they would quit their jobs as a social services worker and English teacher and spend a year traveling the US. "After four years of being 'professional adults,' we realized we wanted more out of life," they write on their blog, Pay Gas, Not Rent. To afford the dream, they sold almost every possession in their more than 1,000-square-foot rental home and spent about $10,000 turning a 98-square-foot trailer into a livable space, complete with toilet, mini fridge, sink, desk, pullout bed, and lots of hooks for storage. They left on May 31, 2015, traveling from Alaska to Michigan and from there to at least 13 more states so far. And Business Insider reports that seven months into their journey the couple is not only surviving but enjoying themselves—and is entirely debt-free. Not every month is equal. Their expenses were low when they spent a good chunk of the fall with family in Colorado, for instance, but they spent thousands getting to and exploring California. Stedman, a musician who goes by the name "Cousin Curtiss," plays two to four gigs a week to support their adventure, and the couple says it helps that they have no space to put new material possessions. Stedman admits that they had to learn as they built their new home, which had to hold their two dogs as well: Before this adventure, "the coolest thing that I built to date was a birdhouse in sixth grade," he told Alaska Public Radio at the start of their journey. Much of what they learned was through YouTube and trial and error, the Grand Valley magazine reports. But while they admit to Business Insider that they're committed to finding real jobs again when the year is up and saving for things like retirement, they'll never stop traveling. (The tiny house movement has a little secret.)
– Though the official death toll in the wake of southeast Turkey's earthquake has hit about 270, officials fear that as many as 1,000 people may have been killed in the 7.2 shaker that toppled scores of buildings yesterday. "We estimate some 1,000 buildings are damaged and our estimate is for hundreds of lives lost. It could be 500 or 1,000," said a spokesman for a Turkish seismology institute, reports the Telegraph. Van, a city of some 500,000, was hit particularly hard; rescuers and neighbors are battling exhaustion to dig out trapped residents, reports the BBC. More than 1,000 tents and hundreds of emergency food packages have been sent to the area by the Turkish Red Crescent humanitarian organization, and offers of aid are pouring in from around the world. "There are so many dead," said the mayor of Ercis, another devastated town. "Several buildings have collapsed, there is too much destruction. We need urgent aid. We need medics. We can hear the screams of people who are under the rubble, in agony."
– Is Mike Tyson actually turning into a comedian? First there was his roast appearance and now this: He’s been cast as Herman Cain in Funny or Die’s new election season parody series “Live Funny or Die." The series launched last week with a video featuring most of the candidates—including Darrell Hammond as Rick Perry and infamous Obama impersonator Reggie Brown as the president, according to the Hollywood Reporter. But it’s this video, a full blast of Tyson, that’s got us in stitches. In a perfect marriage of actor and material, Tyson’s Cain explains his rise in the polls thusly: “The Tea Party loves crazy more than they hate black.” He then lays out campaign promises like “I’m gonna wear a flag pin the size of a fat baby’s head and show off the cool handshake Jesus and I have been working on,” pausing occasionally to randomly shout “Cain!” It must be seen to be believed.
– People already outraged about Stanford rapist Brock Turner's six-month jail sentence aren't going to like this next piece of news: He'll likely go free after only three months. The AP reports Turner, convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman during a frat party last January, was booked at the Santa Clara County Jail on June 2 and is scheduled for release on Sept. 2. As a rule, county jail inmates only serve half their sentences as long as they behave. Prosecutors had asked for the 20-year-old swimmer to serve six years in prison. During his three months in jail, Turner will be under protective custody to keep him safe from his fellow inmates, who frequently target those convicted of sex crimes, according to the Huffington Post. Meanwhile, Turner's father, friends, relatives—and even Turner himself—continue to deflect blame for his crime.
– Four years ago, a chemistry professor got a text from her grad student: If I'm not back in a week, cut me from the doctoral program. Charlotta Turner called him right away: "He was very sad and crying,” the 48-year-old prof at Lund University in Sweden tells NBC News. "I could hear that the situation was hopeless and they had to flee." The student, Firas Jumaah, was visiting his native Iraq to help family members during a brutal 2014 ISIS attack targeting Yazidis—a religious minority that includes his family. The terror group had just enslaved and massacred Yazidis by the thousand in nearby Sinjar. Now Jumaah and family were planning to flee to the mountains. "I had no hope at all," says Jumaah, per the Local. "I was desperate." But Turner took action. She spoke to Lund University's then-security chief, who contacted a company that sent mercenaries into northern Iraq. Only days later, four armed mercs on two Landcruisers blazed into the place where Jumaah was hiding, and rushed him to Erbil Airport with his wife and two young kids. "I have never felt so privileged, so VIP," he says. "But at the same time I felt like a coward as I left my mother and sisters behind me." Seeing his colleagues back in Sweden, he was speechless: "I just cried," he says. Yet Jumaah finished his PhD and found work at a Malmo pharmaceuticals company, and his family survived. The bill: roughly 60,000 kroner ($6,613), which his family has nearly finished paying. “If they told me to pay 200,000 kronor, I would,” says Jumaah. (The UN is finding fresh ISIS horrors.)
– News that Warner Bros. is planning no fewer than 10 DC comics movies in the next six years is great news for superhero fans, yes? No, writes Stephanie Merry at the Washington Post. In fact, the announcement might just herald the end of the genre. "Decades from now, cinephiles will look back on the early 2000s as the Superhero Era—and they’ll be able to pinpoint the moment when the bubble burst," she writes of the studio's announcement. This kind of bubble-bursting happens with any film trend, from film noir to westerns to spy movies, and the move by Warner Bros. seems likely to speed things up. The studio is desperately trying to overtake Marvel (Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy) as king of the superhero flicks, but in doing so it will only worsen the glut of such movies, writes Merry. People are going to get bored. "It looks like Warner Bros. is running hard to catch up when it might be smarter to focus on the next big thing," she concludes. Those looking for antidote to the skepticism can check out Graeme McMillan at Wired, who loves most of the new DC Comics lineup. With Wonder Woman, for example, "Warner Bros. has beaten Marvel to the punch of not only a solo female-led superhero movie, but also superhero movies with non-white leads: Aquaman and Shazam." Taken as a whole, the 10-movie schedule is, in a word, "super," and the heightened competition could lead to bigger, better movies from both studios. Click for McMillan's full column, or for Merry's full column.
– Netflix's latest celebrity collaborator is Leonardo DiCaprio, reports CNN. But instead of starring in something a la Kevin Spacey in House of Cards, DiCaprio is serving as executive producer of a documentary on endangered mountain gorillas in Africa. The film, called Virunga after the park in eastern Congo where it is filmed, will be released Nov. 7 on Netflix, the same day it comes out in theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The film follows park rangers as they try to fend off poachers, says the Hollywood Reporter. "We’ll work with Leo to introduce viewers around the world to an incredible, gripping story," says a Netflix exec. The company also recently signed up Adam Sandler to star in four movies.
– The emails of a former United States secretary of state are again making headlines in the 2016 race, and this time Donald Trump is the one who won't be pleased. Hackers got into the personal account of Colin Powell, and the former secretary of state is revealed to have called Trump a "national disgrace" and an "international pariah" who peddles racist sentiment, reports BuzzFeed. The website says the emails were obtained by the site DCLeaks.com, which is suspected to have ties to Russian intelligence services, per the Wall Street Journal. A June 17 email calling him a "national disgrace" was to a former aide in which Powell adds that Trump was "in the process of destroying himself"—thus sparing Democrats lots of work. In another email to that same former aide on Aug. 21, Powell went after Trump as racist, citing his previous push to try to show Obama wasn't a US citizen. "Yup, the whole birther movement was racist," Powell wrote. "When Trump couldn't keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim." In another, Powell tells CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he's reluctant to call out Trump publicly because it would backfire. “To go on and call him an idiot just emboldens him.” The former secretary of state confirmed the emails' authenticity to NBC News and said the hackers have more to come. In fact, the Daily Caller reports that hackers stole two years of Powell's emails, from June 2014 to August of this year.
– Michael Lohan, that paragon of celebrity fatherhood, is engaged to none other than Kate Major, the former Star reporter who famously—and oh-so-briefly—dated Jon Gosselin. “I'm very traditional, so I wanted him to talk to my father,” Major tells People; Lohan got Kate's dad’s blessing during an Easter visit—in a hot tub, no less. Both say they are “ecstatic,” Lohan in particular because Major “doesn’t come with baggage.” Lohan tells Us he wanted to wait for the “situation with Lindsay to resolve” before making the announcement; no word, though, on said resolution. The wedding will likely be later this year at Oheka Castle in New York, Major says, adding that the couple’s 23-year age difference “has never been an issue.” And no, Gosselin hasn’t sent his congratulations, she says: “Jon and I don’t speak.”
– After actor Anthony Rapp made his explosive accusation that Kevin Spacey attempted to have a sexual encounter with him when Rapp was just 14, Spacey quickly apologized. But that apology itself has been under withering criticism all day, with the main complaint being that Spacey also used his note to come out as gay and, as critics see it, deflect attention from Rapp's allegation. Meanwhile, the upcoming sixth season of House and Cards is still in the works, but it will be the last, a decision that TVLine reports is unrelated to the new controversy. Here's a look at developments:
– John Kerry is off and running on the media blitz known as appearing on all five Sunday talk shows, and—with developments breaking this morning from Israel to the Malaysia Airlines plane crash—he has no shortage of things to discuss. Highlights, as per Politico: On the crash site: "It's been seriously compromised. On Friday, the monitors and the people trying to get in there to secure the site were given 75 minutes. Yesterday, they were given three hours. Drunken soldiers are piling bodies into trucks unceremoniously and disturbing the evidence. Anything that has been removed compromises the investigation. We need full access. This is a moment of truth for Russia." Further, "What's happening is really grotesque." On the Ukraine rebels involvement in the crash: "It's pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia into the hands of separatists. We know with confidence, with confidence, that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point and time so it obviously points a very clear finger to the separatists." His hot mic moment: While talking to an aide ahead of his appearance on Fox News Sunday, Kerry was caught discussing Israel. "It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation, it’s a hell of a pinpoint operation," he said. "We’ve got to get over there. Thank you John. I think John, we ought to go tonight. I think it’s crazy to be sitting around." On a ceasefire in Gaza: "We're hopeful, very hopeful, that we could quickly to try to find a way forward to put a cease fire in place so that the underlying issues, so that we can get to the questions. But you cannot reward terrorism. There can't be a set of preconditioned demands that are going to be met."
– A July report describing near starvation in Myanmar's Rakhine state has been expunged from the UN website—at Myanmar's request. Myanmar was upset with the report's claim that military forces were blocking access to food for the Rohingya even before a government crackdown led 537,000 to flee to Bangladesh, per NPR. But the Guardian reports the UN's World Food Program might have its own reasons for wanting the report erased. According to one source, UN officials knew the report was "potentially damaging," as it suggested WFP food aid cuts to the Rohingya over a two-year period were causing harm, even starvation. "There was a real sense that they had things to hide," the source says. The WFP tells a very different story: The agency "stands by its original assessment" that 80,000 Rohingya children under the age of five were suffering from potentially fatal weight loss in Rakhine in July. However, the food situation will have changed since an "upsurge in violence" in August, "just months before the next harvest," a rep tells the Telegraph. "In a dynamic and evolving situation, it is important to coordinate closely with all partners, including the government," WFP adds, noting its decision to scrap the previous report came "following a request by the government to conduct a joint review." That review has stalled with Myanmar keeping agencies out of the conflict zone, however. The WFP says it's continuing to push for access.
– Police have arrested five suspected gang members in connection with the escape of three prisoners last week from the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. The fugitives, however, remain at large. When announcing the arrests Wednesday, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens did not identify the men or say what charges they face, the Los Angeles Times reports. She did say, according to the Orange County Register, that more arrests were expected overnight and into Thursday, adding that there's a possibility guards or other jail employees may have provided "inside help" to the escapees. Since the Friday escape, deputies have served some 30 warrants, ABC7 reports. A $200,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the escapees. More from Hutchens' press conference: Those arrested in connection to the escape were affiliated with the same street gang as 20-year-old fugitive Jonathan Tieu, knew the escaped inmates, or were arrested on probation violations. Hutchens believes Hossein Nayeri, 37, was the "mastermind" of the escape. Authorities have not recovered the tools used, and Hutchens believes the escapees would have needed help getting their hands on them. ("It's not something we think could have occurred with a jail-made shank, if you will.") "It's every sheriff's nightmare," Hutchens said of the escape, which has sparked criticism over how inmates are housed at the nearly 50-year-old jail. Nayeri, Tieu, and Bac Duong, 43, were not noticed missing for some 16 hours. Hutchens says she has made changes to the way inmates are counted throughout the day, per the Register. She also defended the decision to house the escapees in a dormitory instead of individual cells, the Times reports. "We house based on behavior, and there were no issues … while they were in our custody," she says.
– With dozens of people still missing in Washington state's devastating mudslide, Gov. Jay Inslee tells CBS today that "we're hoping for a miracle, and we're working for a miracle. We're doing everything humanly possible if that opportunity exists." Rescuers are "performing Herculean tasks right now. They're working beyond the point of exhaustion, and we intend to exhaust every possible avenue to look for that miracle. But we do know that these are going to be dark days ahead." Asked if his state missed warning signs, Inslee acknowledged "geologic instability" and said "we are going to get to the bottom" of that question. Elsewhere on your Sunday dial, as per Politico: Dianne Feinstein on the Malaysia jet: "So far, there's been" no indication that terrorism was involved. "There's speculation, but there's nothing." Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on Crimea: "Crimea is a part of Russian Federation. We have said so many times that we have no intent, no interest in crossing the border. We have our forces conducting exercises in the territory of Russian Federation." NJ state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg on Chris Christie: "If Governor Christie comes before our committee under oath and brings all these documents with him, I’d be more than satisfied."
– Being implicated in the contamination of a state's water supply is not so good for business. Freedom Industries, the company whose tank leaked a chemical into the Elk River in West Virginia, filed for bankruptcy today, reports the Charleston Gazette. The move for Chapter 11 protection comes amid of flood of lawsuits from businesses and individuals who had to go without municipal water for several days. Most of the 300,000 affected residents have water again. The company listed its liabilities at a maximum of $10 million, which might be wishful thinking. "I think they underestimated the liabilities just a tad," an attorney who filed a class-action suit against the company deadpans to the Wall Street Journal. In its filing, the company shed a little more light on what it thinks happened: A water line broke during "extraordinarily frigid temperatures," and that made the ground freeze beneath a storage tank. The tank then got punctured by an unknown object, reports AP. "Authorities have taken note of a hole in the affected storage tank that appears to have come from an object piercing upward," the filing reads.
– UK scientists have made a nifty, unprecedented discovery about Scotland's Loch Ness, but prepare to be a little disappointed. They found that tides from the nearby North Sea caused the land underneath the lake to shift ever so slightly, resulting in a change in depth of 0.06 inches at either end, depending on whether the tide was in or out. One professor likened it to a carpenter's bubble level, notes the BBC. "I have described Loch Ness as the largest spirit level in the world," he says. "If you were on a boat in the middle of the loch, you certainly wouldn't notice it," adds another. "But a tide like this has never been observed in a western European lake before." The scientists used underwater pressure sensors at various spots in the lake to get the astonishing accuracy, explains Discovery. The hope is that the method can be used at other lakes to shed more light on how oceans affect the Earth's crust. (The study, here, fails to mention the elephant in the room, but a Fark headline suspects that the lake level changes because Nessie is getting out to towel off.)
– Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice is back in the news again, this time regarding President Trump's wiretapping allegations. On the right, she is being accused of abusing her power while in office to "unmask," for political advantage, the names of Trump associates caught up in intelligence surveillance. Trump critics, meanwhile, say the story doesn't amount to much and accuse the White House of trying to divert attention from the president's wiretapping allegations. A look at coverage: A key story comes from Eli Lake at Bloomberg News. He reported Monday that Rice requested the identities of Trump transition officials who were mentioned, but not named, in US intelligence reports. Those reports were mostly summaries of monitored conversations between foreign officials talking about the Trump transition, but sometimes between Trump associates and foreign officials. (The National Security Council logs of Rice's requests are apparently what Rep. Devin Nunes went to the White House to view.) Lake's piece raises questions about why Rice wanted those names revealed—she didn't respond to the story—but he also notes that her requests "were likely within the law." He adds that the story doesn't "vindicate" Trump's unsupported accusation that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Adam Housley of Fox News also reported on Rice's requests, and his appearance on the network prompted Trump himself to weigh in via tweet: "Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. 'Spied on before nomination.' The real story." A post at Slate notes that Trump associates are under FBI investigation over allegedly improper communications with Russians, "so there may well have been urgent, legal reasons for Rice to have wanted information about the relationships between specific Trump-related figures and foreign individuals." But the editorial page at the Wall Street Journal accuses the media and Democrats of hypocrisy. It wants any Trump-Russia ties investigated, but complains that the "media have been running like wildebeest after that story while ignoring how the Obama Administration might have abused domestic surveillance for its political purposes. Americans deserve to know the truth about both." On CNN, Don Lemon accused the "right-wing media" of helping the White House try to divert attention from the controversy over Trump's wiretapping claims, adding that his show will not "aid and abet people who are trying to misinform you, the American people, by creating a diversion," he said, per Mediaite. The conservative NewsBusters blog accused ABC, NBC, and CBS of covering up the story by failing to report on the "massive revelation" Monday in their evening broadcasts. On MSNBC Tuesday morning, frequent Trump critic Joe Scarborough blasted the New York Times for not having the story on its front page. "What is Susan Rice unmasking names for and spreading them across the government," he asked on Morning Joe, per Mediaite. But the Times story on the subject (inside the paper) generally downplayed the significance of Rice's requests: "Former national security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described the requests as normal and said they were justified by the need for the president’s top security adviser to understand the context of reports sent to her by the nation’s intelligence agencies."
– President Obama addressed the United Nations as president for the final time on Tuesday with a speech that urged world leaders make a "course correction" and be more open to refugees and less authoritarian. And he seemed to be take a shot, more than once, at Donald Trump's vision of a big, beautiful wall. Some lines from accounts by the AP, Politico, Reuters, ABC News and NBC News: "Today, a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself." “The world is simply too small to be able to build a wall and stop it from affecting our own societies.” He also said, apparently in reference to Zika, that "mosquitoes don't respect walls." "We must respect the meaning that people draw from their own traditions, from their religion, their ethnicity, from their sense of nationhood. But I do not believe progress is possible if our desire to preserve our identities gives way to an impulse to dehumanize or dominate another group." "In countries held together by borders drawn by colonial powers with ethnic enclaves and tribal divisions, politics and elections can sometimes appear to be a zero sum game. And so given the difficulty in forging true democracy in the face of these pressures, it's no surprise that some argue the future favors the strongman. A top-down model rather than strong democratic institutions. But I believe this thinking is wrong." "History shows that strongmen are then left with two paths. Permanent crackdown, which sparks strife at home, or scapegoating enemies abroad, which can lead to war." "In a world that left the age of empire behind, we see Russia attempting to recover lost glory through force." "Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel ...(and if) Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land." Watch a video of the speech via USA Today.
– A French gamer got quite a shock when she tried to do at least one too many things at the same time. Mashable reports Twitch user AnaPlaying was playing a game of League of Legends while live-streaming herself, chatting with fans, and flicking a lighter on and off. This, of course, ended with her accidentally lighting her hair on fire while a bunch of strangers watched. In the video, AnaPlaying appears not to notice the flames for a few seconds before quickly putting them out and sheepishly laughing it off. She doesn't appear to have been injured.
– The fallout from Anthony Kennedy's bombshell decision to retire from the Supreme Court continues to resonate, with President Trump saying he's "honored" that Kennedy has given him an opportunity to pick a successor. Of course, getting him confirmed is another issue, and the Hill digs into the political logistics in the Senate. Republicans have the numbers, but two wild cards are Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both of whom support abortion rights and will likely have a big say in who comes next. A remedy: At Vox, Ezra Klein writes that both parties are guilty of turning the nomination process into an "insane" one, given the stakes. At this point, if one party held the White House and the other the Senate, it's unlikely any nominee would be confirmed. His solution? Reduce the stakes by limiting justices to 10-year terms. A big percentage: The Washington Post picks out five times Kennedy cast the deciding vote on big issues, on everything from backing abortion rights to supporting gay rights to curtailing the death penalty. The story notes that of the 276 majority opinions written by Kennedy, 92 came in 5-4 decisions.
– McDonald's employee Pedro Viloria doesn't typically jump through the drive-thru window, but a shocking moment during his Tuesday breakfast shift in Doral, Florida, led him to do just that. Now, he's being deemed a hero for his quick actions. Mashable reports that after handing over an order to an off-duty police officer at the pick-up window, Viloria noticed she was struggling to breathe. She then fell unconscious, causing her foot to slide off the brake, per Fox News. The officer’s SUV then began rolling forward with her two children inside, yelling in the back seat. In one swift motion, Viloria leapt through the window to help. (You can see video at CBS Miami. "In that moment, I thought, I'd rather save that woman's life," Viloria tells WPLG. The SUV narrowly missed colliding with another vehicle before coming to a stop at a curb. Another McDonald's employee, who asked to remain unnamed, administered CPR along with a number of first responders who happened to be at or nearby the scene. The condition and identity of the officer has yet to be released after she was transported to the hospital. “I think I speak for our McDonald’s family when I say how proud we are of Pedro," says a statement from McDonald's that also thanked his co-worker. "Their quick thinking and action were everything in that moment.”
– Hungary is in need of an ark. As the Danube swells, record-high levels of 29 feet are expected, with waters peaking near the Slovakian border tomorrow and in Budapest on Monday. PM Viktor Orban isn't mincing words: He says the nation could see "the worst floods of all time." With a state of emergency declared, the BBC reports volunteers numbering in the thousands worked through the night to build up the banks of Europe's second-longest river, while 400 people have already been evacuated, according to CNN. That follows the evacuation of tens of thousands in Germany and some 20,000 in the Czech Republic, which, along with Austria, have seen deadly floods that have thus far killed 15.
– Kirstin Lobato will be happier than most to leave 2017 behind. Twice convicted of the brutal murder of a homeless man in Las Vegas, the 35-year-old is expected to start a new chapter when she becomes a free woman for the first time since 2001. A judge granted a request from a district attorney Friday that she be cleared of all charges and released "with prejudice," meaning Nevada can never again prosecute Lobato for Duran Bailey's murder, reports the Intercept. The move followed a judge's order vacating Lobato's murder conviction on Dec. 19, based on hours of testimony from pathology and entomology experts. They said Bailey, 44, was killed—his carotid artery was slashed and penis cut off—around 9pm on July 8, 2001, while 18-year-old Lobato was hours away from Sin City, per the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Prosecutors had claimed Lobato killed the homeless man in the morning—based on a rumor that she cut the penis of a man who tried to rape her weeks earlier—but that conflicted with an absence of blowflies, which collect on dead bodies. "Although we fully believe in her guilt … our resources are such that we are electing not to proceed with the third trial of this defendant, particularly considering the more than 15 years she has served in prison," Chief Deputy District Attorney Sandra DiGiacomo said Friday. It's not yet clear when Lobato, who had no connection to Bailey, will walk free. Though the judge said she should be released "forthwith," Lobato was convicted of voluntary sexual conduct in prison in 2007, which added a year to her sentence. Her Innocence Project attorneys say they will push for her immediate release regardless.
– Think of this the next time you slurp a cheap cup of hot ramen noodles: It could be linked to heart disease, especially if you're a woman, the AP reports. A new American study of South Korea's ramen consumption examined the diets of 10,700 people aged 19 to 64. They found both healthy (fish and rice) and unhealthy (meat and fast food) diet trends, but neither was linked to metabolic syndrome and ultimately heart disease, the New York Times explains. When instant noodles were thrown in the mix, researchers saw trouble. Women who ate a cup of them more than twice a week saw a 68% jump in cardiometabolic syndrome. It didn't matter what else they ate. Some South Koreans are a little steamed—and defensive—about the study's findings. After all, South Koreans eat more ramen than anyone else; the sodium-rich 80-cent cup is found everywhere there, from comic book stores to libraries and train stations. One man tells the AP, while guzzling ramen: "There's no way any study is going to stop me from eating this." Love for the instant noodle spans generations—it reminds the elderly of post-Korean War recovery and for the young and busy, it's quick and cheap. For others, "the smell and taste create an instant sense of home," says one Seoul resident. (Here's how ramen got its start)
– The wedding meal in a Virginia park Saturday went off without a hitch, but afterward it turned deadly: Police say 35-year-old caterer Tyonne Johns was loading folding chairs into a company vehicle when 19-year-old park employee Kempton Bonds began arguing that the chairs were the property of the Fairfax County Park Authority, reports the Washington Post. During the dispute, Bonds stabbed Johns in the upper body with a three-inch pocket knife, police tell NBC Washington. She was pronounced dead at a hospital, while Bonds, of Clifton, Md., was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Earlier, around 9:20pm, Bonds had called police to report disorderly conduct and a noise violation, officers say. A friend of Johns says Bonds had cut power to the wedding reception before the bride and groom shared their first dance, possibly because the event extended beyond the park's usual operating hours. It isn't clear how Johns was involved in the dispute, but police say it was resolved when they arrived. Johns was stabbed around 10:50pm. She "was a dedicated friend with a genuine zest for life," a friend writes on a GoFundMe page. A friend of Bonds says the alleged crime is "extremely out of character for him." (In North Carolina, a woman was killed just weeks before her wedding day.)
– Get ready for another Facebook update: Next week, the site will start rolling out new face-recognition technology for photos, the Huffington Post reports. It’s “comforting” to know that the service won’t be automatic, writes Larry Magid. If the site thinks it recognizes someone, it will ask you for confirmation. Ignore it, and no tagging takes place. Privacy settings won’t change—you’ll still be alerted when you’re tagged and able to remove any unwanted tags. You’ll also be able to opt out of the service, meaning the site won’t try to recognize you in your friends’ pictures. Face-recognition technologies are still fairly unreliable, says an expert; perhaps for that reason, Facebook will attempt to identify only those of your friends you contact the most. Meanwhile, the site is expected to generate $2 billion in revenue this year, insiders tell Bloomberg.
– In case anyone wondered whether Seth Rogen could make what amounts to a movie-length penis joke and get people to flock to it, the answer is yes. Sausage Party scored this weekend with a solid $33.6 million debut, reports Variety. That wasn't enough to unseat Suicide Squad, which USA Today notes chalked up a $43.8 million win that was nevertheless "a brutal 67% drop from its August-record $133.7 million opening." Coming in third was Pete's Dragon, with a lackluster $21.6 million debut. And rounding out the top five were Jason Bourne with $13.6 million and Bad Moms with $11.5 million.
– The Curiosity rover landed safely on Mars early this morning, prompting whoops of joy and relief in NASA's mission control center, reports the New York Times. The rover quickly beamed back a picture of its own shadow cast on the surface of the Red Planet. "Touchdown confirmed. We are safe on the surface of Mars!" the team read out after receiving signals from the rover. After a journey of 354 million miles, the rover, which is much bigger and more complex than previous models, had to land in a new way that could never be fully tested on Earth, leading to what control room staff described as "seven minutes of terror" before confirmation was received, notes the Washington Post. As earlier reported, the spacecraft ferrying it had to rely on a supersonic parachute to slow it from 13,200mph to about 1.7mph; with seconds to go, the rover was then lowered to the surface using three nylon tethers and retro rockets.
– Whoa. Medical faculty at the University of Alberta in Canada booked a reiki expert to lead a spoon-bending workshop—and no, this is not a joke. “This experiential workshop will teach a guided meditation/energy transfer technique which will have most participants bending cutlery using the power of their minds," says a poster for the workshop, "Spoon Bending and the Power of the Mind," per the CBC. The poster boasts that "typically 75% or more" of workshop attendees will be able to bend spoons with nothing but their brain. The spoons were to be provided. “Just let that sink in," writes one skeptic at Science Blogs. "Whoever runs the Pediatric Integrative Medicine Rounds thought that it was a good idea to invite an 'energy healer' to demonstrate how to use the 'power of the mind' to bend a spoon!” Unfortunately for aspiring spoon-benders, the workshop was canceled after a law professor at the University of Alberta tweeted a photo of the poster, bringing countless accusations of promoting "medical quackery" against the university. “Bending spoons is a great entry level activity. Sadly my med school taught science," tweeted a New England pediatrician. “Solid skills for every physician to possess. Yikes," added a Canadian researcher and city councillor.
– Authorities may have found Christopher Dorner's burned-out truck near Big Bear Lake in California, but the former cop and suspected murderer remains at large this morning, reports the Los Angeles Times. A storm has brought heavy snow and bitter-cold temperatures to the area, which is both a help and a hindrance to the manhunt. Dorner would need serious survival gear if he is indeed still in the woods somewhere. His mother owns undeveloped land in the region, but a search of it turned up nothing. Of course, given Dorner's boasts of planning to bring "warfare" to the LAPD, authorities have to be on guard that they're not walking into a trap, reports AP. Or that he didn't plant the truck there to divert resources while he heads elsewhere. "It makes you wonder," says a former LAPD official. "What is his plan for the end game?"
– The rebels who yesterday took over the Central African Republic say they're going to share power with the government they ostensibly ousted. In a statement today, the rebel Seleka coalition said it would "respect the Libreville accord," a agreement negotiated in January that would set up a joint government for two to three years prior to elections. "The current prime minister remains in place, and the Cabinet will be slightly reshuffled," a spokesman said, according to Reuters. The African Union today suspended the Central African Republic and imposed sanctions and travel restrictions on it, according to the AFP. Ousted president Francois Bozize has fled to neighboring Cameroon, but will ultimately seek refuge elsewhere, a presidential official announced today. If this whole story has you asking questions like, "What is this conflict about?" or "What do the rebels want?" or "What's the Central African Republic?", CNN has a useful recap.
– Natalie Portman managed to get married very, very quietly Saturday—but details are now trickling out about the Big Sur ceremony, which celebrated the backgrounds of both Portman (Jewish) and new hubby Benjamin Millepied (French). The couple married under a Jewish chuppah overlooking the ocean, wore a Jewish prayer shawl during the ceremony, and ended by smashing the traditional glass as guests cheered, "Mazel Tov!" They also danced the hora as a Klezmer band played, People notes (later, in keeping with Natalie's tastes, the DJ busted into some hip-hop until 2:30am). Guests ate French macarons instead of cake, and left with wildflower seed packets inscribed with "Merci." Those macarons must have been made without eggs, because the entire menu was vegan, in keeping with Portman's diet. The couple also used indigenous wildflowers rather than flying any flowers in for the ceremony, and even Natalie's Rodarte gown had a "hippie" feel, a source tells In Touch. It was tea-length with full sleeves and "not overly showy or revealing," the insider says. Portman wore wildflowers in her hair and Millepied donned a blue tux. The 60 to 100 guests included Ivanka Trump, Macaulay Culkin, Diane Sawyer, and Rashida Jones (but not, notably, Mila Kunis). Click to see pictures of an absolutely beaming Portman on her big day.
– Oscar Pistorius is "so desperate to get his life back on track" that he already has a plan to work with disadvantaged youth when he gets out of prison, the Daily Mirror reports. Which could be soon: The South African commissioner of correctional services says the Paralympian will likely be freed on probation Aug. 21 from the Kgosi Mampuru II prison in Pretoria, the BBC notes. Pistorius' release, recommended by a prison committee for good behavior, would come 10 months into his five-year sentence if the parole board approves, the AP reports; the BBC adds that under South African law, he's eligible for probation after serving one-sixth of his sentence (which would be 10 months) and would be kept under "correctional supervision," or house arrest, during his probation period. Reeva Steenkamp's family isn't pleased with the news. "As her family, we do not seek to avenge her death and we do not want Mr. Pistorius to suffer; that will not bring her back to us," they said in a statement, per the Mirror. "However, a person found guilty of a crime must be held accountable for their actions. … Incarceration of 10 months for taking a life is simply not enough. We fear that this will not send out the proper message and serve as the deterrent it should." His freedom may be short-lived, however: In November, prosecutors will appeal his murder acquittal in court, which could net Pistorius a minimum of 15 years if convicted, the Washington Post reports. (Wonder how his book is coming along.)
– Comments about immigrants that Tucker Carlson made on his Fox News show Thursday have just caused a major advertiser to give pause. The Hill reports that insurance company Pacific Life is, at least for "the coming weeks," yanking its ads from Tucker Carlson Tonight as it "[reevaluates] our relationship with his program," per a statement posted on Twitter. What Carlson said that prompted Pacific Life's retreat: Per HuffPost, the Fox host was taking issue with "previous" US leaders who insisted that Americans "shut up and accept" immigrants. Then, in a continued mocking of those previous leaders, Carlson went on to say that "we have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier and more divided." Pacific Life's ad aired immediately after the opening segment in which Carlson made those remarks. "As a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson's statements," Pacific Life says. "Our customer base and our workforce reflect the diversity of our great nation, something we take great pride in." In its own statement to the Hill, Fox News lamented the "unfortunate and unnecessary distractions" it says were spurred by "left wing advocacy groups [that] under the guise of being supposed 'media watchdogs' weaponize social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech." Newsweek notes that, before this incident, Carlson has never been boycotted by advertisers, though other Fox News hosts like Laura Ingraham and Bill O'Reilly (who's no longer with the network) have.
– Will the third time be the charm for Amazon? Its now-slightly-misnomered Prime Day (it's actually 30 hours long, not 24, this year) kicks off at 9pm EDT Monday. Its inaugural sale in 2015 didn't blow consumers over; in 2016 there were early-morning website issues for some customers. This year, Amazon is ready, at least by USA Today's account, which notes that two floors of conference rooms at HQ have been "outfitted as war rooms" to support the onslaught of shoppers, all of whom must have a Prime membership to get the deals. More: The figures: Prime Day 2016 saw an estimated $500 million to $600 million in sales (Amazon didn't release official numbers). That's a fraction of the $3.34 billion spent on the Black Friday that followed months later, but Amazon said the total was up 60% over 2015, with 2017's Prime Day expected to be even bigger. What does bigger look like? Beating 2016 Prime Day records like these perhaps, per TechCrunch: More than 90,000 TVs, 1 million shoes, 23,000 iRobot vacuums, and 200,000 headphones were sold. It's a win-win for Amazon: There's a big upside involved in reeling in new Prime shoppers (the count has increased about 20 million year-over-year in the US, to 85 million): Their Amazon spending is almost double that of a non-Prime customer: $1,300 a year versus $700. What's on sale? Some 100,000 items, per CNET, but those items don't all go on sale at once. It offers tips on how to be alerted to the best deals (one smart one involves using your Amazon Wish List). Fortune offers some other ways, including a convenient-sounding Alexa tip. So are the deals deals? In some cases. Quartz points out that the Wirecutter gadget-review site examined 8,000 deals last Prime Day and recommended fewer than 1% of them: 64. One handy tool: CamelCamelCamel.com, which prompts you to input a product URL and then lets you know how that stacks up to what Amazon has charged for the item in the past. There's reason to care: ... and also reason to avoid the "rabbit hole" altogether. Rick Broida makes both cases at CNET. One dose of reality: If you've enjoyed Amazon's tax-free shopping in the past, it's, well, a thing of the past. Forbes points out that since April 1, Amazon has been levying sales tax for shoppers in all states with a sales tax (five don't have one: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon).
– "Hello … I just shot my wife." That's how Ernest Chris Chumbley introduced himself to a 911 operator yesterday morning. "Give me police. I'm under arrest," he said, according to a tape obtained by WKYT. Sure enough, police arrived to find his wife Virginia dead, and took a compliant Chumbley into custody. "She died from my shots, but it's not murder," the Kentucky man said, explaining that she'd asked him to shoot her because she was suffering from breast cancer. "She told me she wanted me to end her pain. I said, 'Jay, all I’ve got is what the doctor gave you.' She said 'no, I want you to stop my pain for good,'" Chumbley said. "I just did what she asked. And I would expect no different from her if I was asking." He's been charged with murder anyway, and has pleaded not guilty. He's in jail on a $200,000 bond. Neighbors say the two had a loving marriage, and tell LEX18 that they believe his story. "The only reason I could think he shot her is she probably asked him to, because she was hurting so bad," one said.
– Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's first female president, was removed from office Wednesday, the New York Times reports. The Brazilian senate voted 61-20 to impeach Rousseff, reports the BBC, covering the two-thirds majority needed. Rousseff, who was suspended in May, was accused of illegally moving government funds between different budgets to hide Brazil's growing economic woes and bolster popular social programs. Rousseff denies any wrongdoing and defended herself in front of the senate Monday, calling her ouster a coup. "From the day after I was elected, several measures were taken to destabilize my government," she said. "And you have been systematically making accusations against me." Acting president Michel Temer is scheduled to be sworn in Wednesday to finish Rousseff's term, which lasts through 2018. His center-right PMDB party ends 13 years in power by the left-wing Workers' Party. However, Temer's approval rating is as bad as Rousseff's, and the PMDB party is already beset by scandals. In fact, Temer's anticorruption minister recently resigned. Rousseff is likely to appeal the impeachment vote in court, though NPR reports she's unlikely to be successful. The senate voted 42-36 to allow her to run for office again, but Rousseff has previously said she'll retire to her hometown if successfully impeached.
– An American student has been missing since Saturday night, when she went for a late-night swim in the Mediterranean Sea off Tel Aviv, Israel. Two fellow students who were with 19-year-old TeNiya Elnora Jones say they managed to make it back to shore after being caught in a rip current, NBC 2 reports. Israeli authorities have launched a search and rescue operation for Jones, a University of Kentucky student who had been studying in Amman, Jordan, as part of a summer study abroad program focusing on the Arabic language, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. Jones, a sophomore, is from Fort Myers, Fla. A cousin tweeted recent photos of her on Sunday, urging anybody with information on her to get in touch. University officials are arranging for her mother and grandfather to travel to Israel. Jones, who was majoring in biology and also studying Islamic Studies, was due to enter the University of Kentucky's pre-med program next month. "I hope and pray for her that she’s somewhere fighting," Dunbar High School coach Guy Thomas, who coached her in track for years, tells the News-Press. "If she’s alive, she’s fighting. She’d fight until the end until she couldn’t fight anymore."
– For decades, the human story was one told through signs of modernity—art, tools, burials—found only after Homo sapiens left Africa. Recent discoveries pushing back the date of departure are helping to change that narrative, as are three new studies in Science. Together, they describe the earliest stone tools of their kind in East Africa as well as the earliest evidence for long-distance transport of raw materials in the region, per Science News. Researchers previously believed the Early Stone Age marked by large, primitive tools (hand axes and cleavers) made way for the Middle Stone Age and its smaller tools (spearpoints and blades) around 280,000 years ago. But stone tools found in Kenya's Olorgesailie Basin show hominin groups—it's not clear which species is responsible—had developed these more advanced tools approximately 320,000 years ago. "We see a smaller technology, a more diverse series of stone tools … designed for specific purposes," researcher Rick Potts tells NPR. An expert not involved in the study says the tools are so "prepared and retouched" they suggest the Middle Stone Age likely started even earlier. What drove it? Microscopic and chemical analyses of the region's soil show the landscape was rapidly shifting between wet and dry conditions, meaning hominins might have been forced to adapt. But as the technology also coincides with the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa, it's possible that the human mind deserves credit. The tools themselves suggest the development of trading networks, too. Some were made of rocks carried from 55 miles away, says Potts. Others were made of obsidian from as far as 30 miles away, per the Conversation. (These stone tools are also making waves.)
– It's hard to pinpoint what the absolute "best" job is: Whether a person's time in front of a computer screen, on the floor, or in the field is heaven or hell depends on one's particular interests and talents, and that assessment can be clouded by other factors like how long it takes to get to work or even how much someone likes their co-workers. So 24/7 Wall St. ran through CareerCast's data on various occupations, which pays attention to more objective qualifiers such as salary, environment and safety, stress levels, and industry outlook. You'll need to have an aptitude for data and stats for many of the top jobs on this list, but you'll be paid well for your efforts. Here, the best prospects, along with median annual wages: Statistician, $80,110 Medical services manager, $94,500 Operations research analyst, $78,630 Information security analyst, $90,120 Data scientist, $111,267 Check out the entire list. (If you're just going by pay, see the 10 best US jobs here.)
– Algeria's defense ministry says 257 people died when a military plane crashed soon after takeoff in a farm field in northern Algeria on Wednesday, per the AP. The Soviet-designed Il-76 military transport plane had departed Boufarik air base, 20 miles southwest of the capital Algiers, for a military base in Bechar in southwest Algeria, a civil protection agency rep tells the AP. Another rep, who initially gave the "provisional" death toll as 181, says some passengers were "extracted with deep burns caused by the fuselage catching fire" and more than 300 emergency workers are working at the scene, per the AP. Footage showed thick black smoke coming off the field, as well as ambulances and Red Crescent vehicles at the site. The defense ministry says an investigation is underway.
– It has to rank among the saddest of studies: a new look at suicides among young children. Researchers reviewed two decades of CDC data, from 1993 to 2012. Though they write in JAMA Pediatrics that "suicide is a leading cause of death among school-aged children younger than 12 years," they found that suicides among those ages 5 to 11 are very rare, reports the AP: There were 657 during the period studied, or one roughly every week-and-a-half (per the CDC, the daily average for all ages is 105 suicides). But while the suicide rate remained stable during that time, "that stability obscured racial differences," observes Psych Central. The suicide rate decreased in white children, but increased significantly in black children, from from 1.36 to 2.54 per 1 million between the study's first five years and its last five. (In white children, the shift was from 1.14 to 0.77.) That shot suicide up from No. 14 on the list of causes of death among black kids of this age to No. 9; it's No. 11 for white kids. The researchers noted that 84% of those who committed suicide were boys and just 16% girls, and the rate worsens when viewed through a gender lens as well. For black boys, the rate climbed to 3.47 per million. The findings represent a big shift, per lead author Jeffrey Bridge. "Historically, the suicide rate among US black individuals has been lower than that of white individuals across age groups," reads the study. "To our knowledge, this is the first national study to observe higher suicide rates among US black individuals compared with white individuals." Hanging and suffocation were the main methods for young children. Bridge advises parents to look for warning signs like prolonged unhappiness and withdrawing from favorite activities. (Related: Why men kill themselves more often than women.)
– How do the fish that thrive in the waters around Antarctica prevent their blood from turning to ice? Turns out at least some of them don't. Scientists have long known that the group of fish species known as notothenioids have an antifreeze protein in their blood that prevents them from being frozen to death, but new research has revealed that the same protein keeps ice crystals in their veins, apparently permanently, UPI reports. The crystals melted at a few degrees above freezing, but the fish may spend their whole lives without encountering temperatures that warm, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The antifreeze proteins that prevented the blood from completely freezing also bound itself to the ice crystals, keeping them from getting smaller, the scientists say. Lead researcher Paul Cziko tells the Christian Science Monitor that it's not clear whether the fish have evolved some way of dealing with the ice crystals in their bodies, or if the ice ends up killing them in the long term. "This shows that with every good evolutionary innovation, some potentially bad or unintended consequences come along with that," he says. "Evolution is a stepwise process. You take two steps forward, and take one step back." (Researchers recently solved the decades-old mystery of a quacking noise detected in Antarctic waters.)
– The new jobs report is a case of good news/bad news. The US lost 33,000 jobs in September after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit Texas, Florida, and other Southeastern states, which the AP reports is the first decline in almost seven years. However, the Labor Department says the unemployment rate fell to 4.2% from 4.4%, the lowest level since February 2001. So what's going on? "Friday's report overall sent conflicting signals about the labor market, in part because it's based on separate surveys—one of employers, the other of households—that don’t always align precisely in any given month [but] typically point in the same direction over the longer term," explains the Wall Street Journal. Looking past the hurricanes' impact, the job market and economy generally look healthy, per the AP. Some economists expect job growth to rebound in the coming months as businesses in the area reopen and construction companies ramp up repair and renovation work. "People will write off the weak number because of the hurricanes," one economist tells the New York Times. "The underlying trend is still pretty strong." One good sign was that average hourly earnings, an important barometer, rose nearly 0.5%, though the Journal notes that if the hurricanes temporarily wiped out a lot of minimum wage jobs in the services industry, that would drive the overall number up. Next month will be a truer test.
– French authorities have arrested two more people—a man and a woman—in connection with the Thursday terror attack in which Mohamed Lahaouaiej Bouhlel drove a large truck through Bastille Day crowds in Nice, France. The man, a 37-year-old, is suspected of giving weapons to Bouhlel, 31, who was shot and killed by police during the rampage, the Telegraph reports. Just before the attack, according to reports, Bouhlel sent a text that read: "Bring more weapons, bring five of them to C." In another text, he says: "I've got the material." The latest people arrested were described as an "Albanian couple," per the Telegraph. With the latest arrests, seven people have thus far been detained for having a possible link to the attack, the Washington Post reports, though Bouhlel's ex-wife was released Sunday. As authorities in France investigate the third major terror attack in that country in 18 months, additional details have emerged. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tells a French newspaper, "We now know that the killer was radicalized very quickly." The Los Angeles Times reports Bouhlel started frequenting a mosque just three months ago; prior to that, acquaintances say he did things that don't jibe with Muslim codes, like smoke pot and wear shorts. Footage from security cameras in Nice shows Bouhlel driving along the Promenade Des Anglais on the two days before the attack. Beaches in Nice have re-opened, per the Post, "creating a jarring contrast between the tourists frolicking in the gentle Mediterranean surf and the blood-stained pavement above."
– Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou is out on bail in Vancouver—and whether her next destination is her home in China or a cell in the US could be up to President Trump. In an interview Tuesday with Reuters, Trump said he would consider intervening with the Justice Department in the case it was good for trade deals. "Whatever's good for this country, I would do," he said. "If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made—which is a very important thing—what’s good for national security—I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary." Chinese officials have warned that the US and Canada could face retaliation for the arrest of Meng, who was detained Dec. 1 in Canada at the request of US authorities. If Canadian authorities consent, Meng could be extradited to the US to face fraud charges related to the alleged violation of sanctions against Iran. Trump said that he has yet to speak to China's President Xi Jinping on the matter, but White House officials have contacted Chinese officials and the Justice Department. Trump's claim that he would intervene to help trade deals contradicts statements made by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who called the case a "criminal justice matter" unrelated to trade talks, Politico reports. In China, Trump's remarks have raised suspicions that Meng's arrest was politically motivated, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. (China has reportedly detained a former Canadian diplomat.)
– Roland Bosee Jr., 68, and Nino Esposito, 78, have been inseparable since they first met in 1970. "You meet someone and it just clicks," Esposito told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last month. So with the SCOTUS decision over the summer to legalize gay marriage, the men looked forward to finally tying the knot. But one issue is holding them back: Esposito is technically Bosee's father, because he adopted him in 2012. "We thought never in our lifetime—or in 20 lifetimes—...same-sex marriage [would] happen," Bosee said, adding to CNN that the adoption "gave us the most legitimate thing available to us" at the time. Even though they petitioned to have the adoption annulled, Allegheny County Judge Lawrence O'Toole —known for being progressive on LGBT issues—rejected that plea, noting that adoptions are typically only dissolved when fraud is involved and that nixing theirs "would place in jeopardy and imperil adoption decrees generally." Adoptions of this sort are often sought to cement legal status for financial and other reasons, as well as to strengthen emotional ties. The men said it was both: Esposito told the Post-Gazette "we felt we lacked a family of our own," but they also discovered that any money they inherited from each other would be subject to a much greater inheritance tax if they weren't considered relatives. One person on the couple's side: Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who tells the Post-Gazette, "I wasn't aware that LGBT couples were turning to this method. I can't even imagine having to get an adoption petition approved … to visit a loved one in the hospital." Casey has written a letter of support to AG Loretta Lynch, asking her office to "consider issuing guidance" in cases like this; her office is reviewing it, a rep tells CNN. (The gay marriage decision held up a heterosexual couple's divorce.)
– Help is finally beginning to reach hundreds of thousands of people struggling to survive in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. The USS George Washington and two US cruisers have arrived in the Philippines and will distribute food, water, and medicine, as well as assist search and rescue operations in what the top US commander in the Philippines tells the BBC will be an American aid effort on an unprecedented scale. US planes are bringing in supplies and a medical ship is on the way; Britain is also sending an aircraft carrier, notes the BBC. In other developments: Supplies from the US and other countries are arriving, but some areas are still in desperate need of relief and "the major challenge is logistics," a European Commission spokesman tells the LA Times. "With all this aid arriving and at the same time, the various Philippine authorities—military, civilian structures, the Philippine Red Cross—trying to distribute aid to so many communities ... obviously there are bottlenecks." Lawlessness in the devastated city of Tacloban is also slowing the distribution of aid, the Guardian finds. A Red Cross convoy was allegedly hijacked by armed men and there are rumors that inmates who escaped during the storm have been ambushing people carrying supplies. Communist rebels have declared a ceasefire in disaster areas, but troops say there has been at least one attack. Some 2,357 people have been confirmed dead, but the toll is expected to rise significantly as remote areas hit hard by the storm are reached. In Tacloban, where bodies are being trucked to mass graves, the city administrator says he is sticking by his original estimate of 10,000 dead in the city alone. In a smaller city south of Tacloban, the devastation is even worse and a 16-member medical team from California is laboring in extreme conditions to help survivors, NBC finds. The volunteer surgeons—working by flashlight in Tanawan's ruined town hall—believe the region will need help for months. "I don’t know when or how we are going to be able to leave," one doctor says. "This is just the beginning of a wave of misery." USA Today has more on that front: The few doctors in Manila are already overwhelmed with hundreds of patients—and those are mostly minor injuries. They're soon expecting to see big problems like pneumonia, diarrhea, infections, and dehydration. And the New York Times looks at a hospital in Tacloban that has no power, where victims lay waiting for care. Food, water, and medical supplies are short; one patient interviewed by the Times says he has not received painkillers, antibiotics, or even an antiseptic for his wounds.
– A lot of leading Republicans are planning to skip this year's Republican National Convention, but that won't be a problem for Donald Trump, insiders tell Bloomberg: He was planning to focus on sports figures instead of politicians and has already lined up a few "winners." According to Bloomberg's sources, the sportspeople include boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson, Chicago Bears great Mike Ditka, former Hoosiers coach Bobby Knight, and NASCAR chief Brian France, all of whom have endorsed Trump. Trump has bragged about the Tyson endorsement, though the candidate tweeted Tuesday night that Tyson "was not asked to speak at the Convention though I'm sure he would do a good job if he was." Sports Illustrated reports that Trump named Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and UFC president Dana White earlier this month as supporters that he would like to have speak at the convention, though Roethlisberger quickly announced that he won't be at the convention and has no intention of becoming involved in politics during his playing career. Bloomberg reports that musicians booked by third-party groups to appear in Cleveland during the convention include the Beach Boys, Journey, and former Poison frontman Bret Michaels.
– Joplin officials have released a list of 232 people still unaccounted for in the wake of the deadliest tornado ever recorded in the US. Search and rescue teams haven’t found any new survivors of the disaster since Tuesday, but Joplin officials tell the AP that they don’t think everyone on the list is dead—they suspect many have simply been cut off from communicating with their families because of still-spotty cell phone reception. Indeed, the AP tracked down the first person on the list—75-year-old Sally Adams—and found her alive and well, sitting on a wooden chair and petting her cat. Neighbors rescued Adams after her home was destroyed, but she’s lost her cell phone and had no way to contact her family. Told she was on the missing list, Adams replied, “Get me off of there!”
– How to best learn about the edge of the solar system? Actually go there. NASA says its Voyager 1 spacecraft—which launched in 1977—has entered an area of the solar system that scientists didn't know about, the AP reports. "We do believe this may be the very last layer between us and interstellar space," says chief scientist Ed Stone. NASA is calling the region a "magnetic highway" where particles from inside the sun's magnetic sphere "zoom out, and higher-energy particles from outside to stream in." Scientists based their conclusion on Voyager's instruments, which show a 1,000-fold decrease in low-energy particles from our solar system and a five-fold jump in high-energy particles from interstellar space, reports Huffington Post. Now Voyager 1 may stay in this in-between zone for two or three years, NASA says. Then comes its future in interstellar space, reports Scientific American: powering down around 2025 and passing a neighboring star in about 40,000 years. After that, it will be billions of years before it approaches another star.
– Sean Hannity isn't just feuding with Glenn Beck, apparently. Twitter was in awe Wednesday when the Fox News host slammed fellow host Megyn Kelly with "what he might consider the worst insult imaginable," per USA Today: He accused her of "clearly" supporting Hillary Clinton. Earlier Wednesday on The Kelly File, Kelly had criticized Donald Trump for avoiding tough interviews. "Donald Trump, with all due respect to my friend at 10pm, will go on Hannity, and pretty much only Hannity, and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days," Kelly said. However, she also made the exact same criticism of Clinton. Citing the Democrat's appearance on Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, Kelly said Clinton ensures "she is not in a place where she feels uncomfortable or anything unexpected could come at her." It isn't clear if Hannity saw the whole Kelly segment. In what Mediaite calls "Christmas Day for Media Twitter," several journalists freaked out. "Whoa. Did Hannity really tweet this?" tweeted CNN's Brian Stelter. "Fox News seems like a healthy, functional place these days," said David A. Graham of the Atlantic, while Keith Olbermann added, "Thanks for the entertainment @seanhannity #PassPopcorn." Kelly has yet to respond.
– Determined not to forget his true love after her death five years ago, an elderly man has been bringing along a photo of her during his outings to a California burger joint. Multiple patrons have spotted the widower at an In-N-Out Burger, seated with a photo of his deceased wife in front of him. Photos of the loving husband have gone viral, and folks who've approached him say he has been "happy and excited to talk about her." Madina Bashizadah tweeted a photo of the man last week and emailed the Huffington Post that when she saw him, "I started tearing up because it was such a beautiful moment but heartbreaking at the same time." She says that he told diners that he met his wife when they were both 17, lost touch for 10 years, then married "instantly" once they reunited—they were together for 55 years before she died. Imgur user soulrose spotted the man on an earlier outing, Fox News reports, and wanted to try to "brighten his day," but the diner ended up brightening soulrose's day instead by revealing he still celebrates his wife's birthday and their anniversary. Other sweet revelations from their conversation: "I was a very rich man. Not with money, but with love." "I never had a single argument with my wife, but we had lots of debates." "Tell your wife that you love her every day. And be sure to ask her: Have I told you that I love you lately?" (This man dove deep underwater to leave something special for his deceased wife.)
– Boxer Floyd Mayweather's "get out of jail early" argument wasn't a TKO with a Las Vegas court. He pleaded with a judge to let him finish his domestic violence sentence at home. Being stuck behind bars is leaving him dehydrated and malnourished, threatening his boxing career, his lawyers argued. The judge just scoffed, reports TMZ. Any dehydration and malnourishment is "self-induced" because water is available 24 hours a day, and Mayweather is simply choosing not to eat the "food provided," noted the judge in her ruling denying the champ's request. As for withering away, "while the training areas may not be consistent with his prior regimen, he is indeed provided sufficient space and time for physical activity if he so chooses," she added. In a plea deal last year, Mayweather pleaded guilty to attacking his girlfriend in front of two of their children. He could have been sentenced to up to 34 years in jail, but got three months. His sentence was postponed so he could fight in a Cinco de Mayo match, and just ten days after he started his term in stir Mayweather's attorneys filed an emergency motion to move him to place him under house arrest or into the general population, reports AP.
– Danish divers made a grisly discovery Friday: They found the head and legs of journalist Kim Wall in a bay near Copenhagen, reports Reuters. What's more, the discovery appears to further undermine the unraveling story of inventor Peter Madsen, who has been accused of killing her. Divers in Koge Bay found two bags, one with Wall's remaining body parts—her torso had previously washed up—and another containing her clothes and a knife, per CNN. The bags had been weighted down with pieces of metal. The 30-year-old was last seen alive on Aug. 10 when she boarded Madsen's submarine. Madsen, whose story has changed, maintains that Wall died accidentally when the sub's heavy metal hatch struck her in the head. However, authorities say an autopsy shows no such damage to Wall's head, reports the BBC. Madsen, 46, remains imprisoned as the investigation continues. He has admitted to disposing of Wall's body at sea, but says he did so in a panic because he blamed himself for losing his grip on the hatch. Prosecutors, however, paint a much darker picture. They point to disturbing videos found on Madsen's computer showing the torture and decapitation of women and to a post-mortem examination that revealed knife wounds to Wall's genitals and rib cage "around or shortly after her death." Authorities say they hope the new evidence will help them determine a cause of death.
– Days before Sean Spicer appeared at the Emmys, Stephen Colbert suggested the former White House press secretary shouldn't be forgiven for lying to the public. "He wants to be forgiven, but he won't regret anything he did," Colbert said on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Wednesday. "You got to regret something you did to be forgiven." After a busy weekend in Hollywood, however, Spicer is 'fessing up to one major regret, reports the New York Times. Asked Monday if he regretted blasting journalists for accurately reporting that President Trump's inauguration crowd was smaller than former President Obama's—then claiming Trump's "was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period"—Spicer replied, "Of course I do, absolutely." The comment followed Spicer's much-debated appearance at the Emmys, in which he claimed, "This will be the largest audience to witness the Emmys, period," per CNN. He says he hopes Trump isn't offended. It was "an attempt to poke a little fun at myself and add a bit of levity to the event," says Spicer, who wore a disguise as he traveled from Washington to Los Angeles. The Times points out the appearance was also an opportunity for Spicer "to cultivate a television industry audience that he may need as he seeks speaking engagements and paid television appearances in his post-White House life." So far so good: Guests afterward lined up to get a photo with the former press secretary. James Corden was even seen kissing him, per the Times.
– A student who was stabbed in the liver remains in critical condition following today's rampage at a high school in suburban Pittsburgh that left 23 others injured and a sophomore in custody. The suspect is 16-year-old Alex Hribal, and he has been charged as an adult with four counts of attempted homicide and 21 counts of aggravated assault. The motive remains unclear, but the AP says police are investigating reports of a threatening phone call between Hribal and another student last night. It wasn't clear which of the two made the call. The accounts of exactly what happened at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville are still unfolding, but authorities say assistant principal Sam King and a security guard at the school tackled and subdued the attacker in a hallway. Some other details emerging: The attack began in a classroom when Hribal pulled out two 8-inch kitchen knives and began slashing students, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He reportedly followed them as they fled into the hallway and stabbed others as he ran. During the assault, the attacker "was very quiet," student Mia Meixner tells CNN. "He just was kind of doing it. And he had this, like, look on his face that he was just crazy and he was just running around just stabbing whoever was in his way." A doctor at a nearby hospital said a female student with "an amazing amount of composure" likely saved the life of one of the more seriously injured male students by applying pressure to his wounds. That appears to be junior Gracie Evans, who recounts to the Pittsburgh newspaper: "My friend was on his stomach, and the other kid who was severely injured was told to sit up. I knew that wasn't right. I said to a few students, we need pressure on this wound, and they gave me some paper towels, and I held pressure on that wound for about 10 minutes." Authorities say 22 people were stabbed or slashed, all but one of them students, and two more students suffered other injuries in the chaos.
– Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently meant it when he said, "I'll be back:" The ex-Governator is picking up his old day job, acting, reports the AP. "Exciting news," he tweeted. "My friends at CAA have been asking me for seven years when they can take offers seriously. Gave them the green light today." No word yet on whether any remakes of Terminator or Kindergarten Cop are in the works. Click here or here for more.
– The 2012 crop of GOP presidential candidates got a little smaller today: South Dakota Sen. John Thune announced on Facebook that he's not running. After "lots of prayer," he decided that he'll stay put and "fight for America’s future here in the trenches of the United States Senate." Thune—who defeated then-Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004—had never been among the presidential front-runners, and his Senate career is getting more promising, reports Politico. The conservative scored a spot on the influential Finance Committee earlier this month.
– The News of the World hacking scandal just got even more royal: Kate Middleton was a victim. But it was her bank account, not her phone, that was hacked, so the incident falls outside Operation Weeting, Scotland Yard’s phone hacking investigation. Middleton’s account was allegedly accessed in 2005 by Jonathan Rees, a private detective who had worked for Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, the Telegraph reports. Rees also targeted Tony Blair and other high-profile victims, a member of parliament told the House of Commons yesterday. The MP wants the phone hacking inquiry expanded, and the Metropolitan Police force is considering investigating the new allegations. Rees was hired by NOTW first in the 1990s and again in 2004, after serving prison time for a drug conspiracy charge, but the tabloid’s parent company notes that Rees worked for a number of other newspapers as well. Click for much more on Rees’s alleged crimes in the Guardian.
– Newser Note: For maximum impact, please listen to this song while reading the following story. KREM reports an argument about garbage escalated—as they are wont to do—until one neighbor was threatening another with a weapon straight out of Star Trek. Carlo Cerutti, 50, has been charged with assault after allegedly swinging a Klingon bat'leth—or "a large sword-like weapon with multiple blades" for our non-Trekkie readers—at the victim, according to the Spokesman-Review. Apparently Cerutti's wife had gotten tired of the victim putting his garbage in their garbage can and told him to knock it off, KREM reports. That's when she says the victim hit her with a bag of trash. Cerutti allegedly ran out of the house to defend his wife while swinging his bat'leth around. The victim was able to disarm Cerutti but fell off his porch in the process. Cerutti's wife claims he only unsheathed the bat'leth when the victim entered their house. There is one witness who can illuminate exactly what happened, unfortunately…
– As authorities try to figure out why a Germanwings plane went down in the French Alps—there was no distress call before the pilot's eight-minute descent, reports the AP—details are emerging about some of the 150 people aboard who are now presumed dead. That includes 16 kids, all about age 15, who were returning to Germany from a weeklong exchange program in Spain, reports Reuters. They and their two teachers were from the small community of Haltern am See in western Germany, where, as the New York Times notes, many people either knew the victims or were related to them. “This is the darkest day in the history of our city," says Mayor Bodo Klimpel, who was fighting back tears at a news conference. "A feeling of shock can be felt everywhere. It is about the worst thing imaginable." The mayor of Llinars del Valles, where the teens stayed in Spain, says his "whole village is distraught" as well. "The families knew each other," he says. "The parents had been to see them off at 6 this morning." Also on board were two opera singers, Maria Radner and Oleg Bryjak, who were returning from a performance together. Radner was with her husband and baby, and another baby was reportedly killed in the crash.
– Google has revealed the topic of the year's fastest-rising search request: Robin Williams' suicide. Reaction to his death tops this year's list, the AP reports. Some notable examples: In the first few days after, the number of searches for "carpe diem," a phrase Williams popularized in Dead Poets Society, increased six-fold; searches related to depression tripled; and many people also searched for information related to his movies (especially Mrs. Doubtfire, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Jumanji, and Patch Adams.) The rest of the top 10 topics of worldwide interest on this year's list: The World Cup Ebola The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The Ice Bucket Challenge Flappy Bird ISIS Disney's Frozen Bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst Sochi Winter Olympics If you're scratching your head on those last two, well, neither of them made the top 10 in the US. Replacing them in the US top 10, as TechCrunch reports: Michael Brown and Ferguson, Mo., as well as the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
– Another day, another digital banishment for Alex Jones and InfoWars. This time, it's PayPal, which informed InfoWars of the ban on Thursday, saying the site violated "acceptable use policy" by promoting "hate," The Verge reports. Among other digital platforms that have recently banned Jones—infamous for promoting conspiracy theories, harassing the parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims, and hectoring journalists and politicians—are Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. PayPal has given InfoWars 10 business days to find another payment processing platform before it pulls the plug, according to the New York Times noting that PayPal handles all of the InfoWars store's transactions (it sells things like vitamins and InfoWars merch), including donations from supporters. In a blog post, InfoWars accused PayPal of seeking to "financially sabotage an influential media outlet just weeks before the midterm elections."
– A French court has fined Air France nearly $13,000 for removing a pro-Palestinian activist from a flight headed for Tel Aviv, Israel, UPI reports. The airline was also ordered to pay about $3,900 to the passenger, 30-year-old Horia Ankour, who was trying to attend a "Welcome to Palestine" event in the Palestinian territories. It all started when an employee on the flight last April asked Ankour whether she had an Israeli passport. Ankour said no, and said no again when asked whether she was Jewish. At that point she was escorted from the plane. French prosecutors argued that Air France had discriminated against Ankour, and the court agreed. Following pressure from Israel, Europe's major airlines canceled about 300 tickets surrounding the pro-Palestinian campaign, AFP reports.
– One of the world's top mountain climbers fell to this death today, reports the BBC. Switzerland's Erhard Loretan—one of a relative handful of climbers to have scaled all 14 world peaks above 8,000 meters (26,247 feet)—fell after a climbing accident in the Swiss Alps. Loretan was known for another incident that marred his acclaim: He pleaded guilty to negligent manslaughter in 2001 after shaking his 7-month-old son to stop his crying. The death led to research highlighting the dangers of shaken baby syndrome, notes the Los Angeles Times.
– Looks like Jerry Seinfeld has trumped himself in his quest to make a show about "nothing." His new Web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, has Seinfeld chatting with comedy buddies (like Larry David and Ricky Gervais) while driving, snacking, and—you guessed it—having coffee. Reviews are mixed after the first episode: "If you're a fan of Seinfeld, or its awkward stepchild Curb Your Enthusiasm, you'll be charmed," writes Guy Adams at the Independent. "If not, you may find things meander." Still, "there's at least a whiff of innovation" because the show "can only be watched over the Internet." "The whole aesthetic is a little distancing, and it gives the show a feel of watching a 13 1/2-minute long commercial," writes James Poniewozik at TIME. "But for what? Just for how good a time these guys are having, being themselves, being with each other, having coffee and breakfast at God knows what hour in the day." Seinfeld and David "occasionally graze past weightier topics—David reveals that his decision to stop drinking coffee helped lead to his divorce—but for the most part, the episode feels like Seinfeld boiled down to its essential spirit: Highly entertaining talk about the trivialities of life, with no silly 'plot' to get in the way," writes Adam Vary at Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog. "The first episode has enough for car and comedy fans alike to come back for next week," writes Travis Okulski at Jalopnik. "However, will Seinfeld have the same rapport with comics he isn't as close to he does with David? And will the cars be as interesting? I hope." See the show's first episode on Crackle. (Or see what happened to "Seinfeld the chicken.")
– President Trump took another leap into uncharted territory Sunday with a demand for the Justice Department to investigate whether the FBI infiltrated his 2016 campaign. Trump tweeted that he would officially demand Monday that the department "look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!" In what the Washington Post describes as an effort to avoid a bigger showdown, the Justice Department bowed to the pressure late Sunday, saying its inspector general would investigate whether political motivations had tainted the investigation of alleged Russian links to Trump's campaign, which is now being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. "If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action," said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump's tweet followed reports that an FBI informant had talked to Trump campaign advisers with alleged links to Russia, which the president called a "really big deal" in a tweet Saturday, Politico reports. Analysts described his demand for an investigation of the investigation as unprecedented. "I can't think of a prior example of a sitting president ordering the Justice Department to conduct an investigation like this one," University of Texas School of Law professor Stephen Vladeck tells the New York Times. "That's little more than a transparent effort to undermine an ongoing investigation."
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg would probably need something harder than a bottle of fine California wine to get her to vote for Donald Trump in November—in fact, she doesn't even want to think about him as president, as she told the AP in an interview last week before piling on the Trump disparagement even further with the New York Times and CNN. The jury is now in on her remarks, and she may want to appeal. Some thoughts from around the internet: Mark Joseph Stern writes for Slate that Ginsburg's comments have been called "explosive, unprecedented, and unethical," by both liberals and conservatives, and he agrees that what she did was "dangerous" as well as a breach of ethics. But he says that's exactly Ginsburg's point, and it may be a strategic one in which she's willing to give up her "good name" and "sacrifice some of her prestige … to send as clear a warning signal about Trump as she possibly can." Ginsburg "abandoned judicial propriety to wrestle in the mud with a candidate she detests," he writes. "It is not pretty, it is not pleasant, and it may not even be that smart. But it may be the one thing the justice can do to help prevent a President Trump." His entire take here. The New York Times editorial board notes that Ginsburg has done nothing illegal—but it's sort of siding with Trump on this one. The paper points out that Antonin Scalia's recent death in an election year makes a new president's possible influence in picking a new justice especially critical. It calls it "baffling" that Ginsburg would stoop to his level and "call her own commitment to impartiality into question," adding that DC already has enough partisan issues "without the spectacle of a Supreme Court justice flinging herself into the mosh pit." The Washington Post adds that not only were Ginsburg's remarks not illegal, they weren't surprising, given her feminist history, nor were they necessarily untrue. But it agrees with the Times that her "off-the-cuff" statements were "inappropriate" and probably best never spoken. "Politicization, real or perceived, undermines public faith in the impartiality of the courts," the editorial board writes, citing the Code of Conduct for United States Judges' section on refraining from political activity. "[Her comments] fall into that limited category of candor that we can't admire, because it's inconsistent with her function in our democratic system." Donald Trump himself addressed Ginsburg's shade with the New York Times on Tuesday, but he added more thoughts on Twitter early Wednesday, tweeting, "Justice Ginsburg of the US Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot—resign!"
– What at first appeared to be a tragic accident is now labeled a "coldhearted scheme." Two children, ages 8 and 13, died on April 9, 2015, when the car their father was driving sped off a Los Angeles wharf and sank. Ali Elmezayen, whose window was open, quickly emerged, followed by his domestic partner, Rabab Diab, but their severely autistic children, strapped in the back seat of the 1998 Honda Civic, were pronounced dead once divers freed them. Prosecutors now say it was a double murder planned by Elmezayen, 44, for more than two years, per the Washington Post. In 2012 and 2013, Elmezayen allegedly purchased several accidental death policies providing more than $6 million in coverage for his family, costing him 20% of his annual salary, which was less than $30,000, per a DOJ release. Prosecutors say he even confirmed that claims wouldn't be investigated after two years. The crash allegedly came two years and 12 days after the last policy was bought, per the AP. "The alleged conduct shocks the conscience," says US attorney Nick Hanna. The problem is that the evidence may not prove murder. Elmezayen, who initially speculated about an "evil inside of me that pushed me to go," later said the car's brakes failed, and saltwater corrosion has made it difficult to determine their condition at the time of the crash, per the AP. Citing insufficient evidence of murder, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has instead charged Elmezayen with mail fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft, alleging he posed as Diab in interactions with insurance companies. Held without bail, Elmezayen faces up to 20 years in prison for each fraud count if convicted. (Cops say a mom's "moment of frustration" led to her toddler's death.)
– A newly found creature's name is the hog-nosed rat, and things don't get any more picturesque from there. Reporting on their find in the Journal of Mammalogy, scientists describe the animal, found in 2013 on Mount Dako, on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island: It's a long-faced carnivorous creature with "extremely large ears (~21% of head and body length) [and] very long urogenital hairs"—the latter being pubic hairs. Co-author Kevin Rowe tells Mashable Australia that it's unclear what purpose the hair serves, though "it probably helps it in some kind of reproductive way. Both males and females have those long ... hairs, like whiskers. They're not like human pubic hairs." Among its other features: Rowe explains that the 18-inch-long rat's mouth opening is so narrow that it can't open it much. "It probably eats worms and insect larvae, just kind of slurping them up." (In line with that slurping, it also lacks the coronoid process on the dentary bone, which other mammals rely on to chew.) KNOE reports it's the third genus newly identified by the international team since 2012 (here's another of the team's finds), and recalls the moment the rat was found—twice. Rowe, of Museum Victoria, and LSU Museum of Natural Science Curator of Mammals Jake Esselstyn went to check their respective traps, saw what was clear to them was a new species, "came back to camp and were both surprised that the other one had it as well." The rodent was given the name Hyorhinomys stuempkei, which the Age translates from the Greek as "'hyo' meaning hog, 'rhino' meaning nose and 'mys' meaning rat." (Another unusual animal-related find: a mysterious, giant, jellylike "thing.")
– A 6-year-old California girl whose birth parents were plagued by substance abuse and criminal infractions was taken in at age 2 by a foster family. But Alexandria (aka Lexi) is also 1/64th Choctaw Native American, which means where she ends up is dictated by 1978's Indian Child Welfare Act—a law that "seeks to keep American Indian children with American Indian families." Rusty and Summer Page had long fought to retain custody of Lexi, but on Monday the girl was removed from their home by the LA Department of Child & Family Services, NBC News reports. "Our family is so incredibly devastated," the Pages said in a statement, "but nobody could possibly be more devastated than our 6-year-old daughter." By court order, the Pages weren't allowed to tell Lexi beforehand she'd be taken, the Los Angeles Times reports. Lexi is now with a Utah couple related by marriage to Lexi's biological dad, who has Choctaw blood but has never lived on a reservation himself. The move came after "reunification efforts" with Lexi's biological dad went south, and he, the tribe, and DCFS recommended Lexi go to Utah—even though that couple is "non-Indian" and Summer Page actually does have "American Indian heritage," per the Pages' Change.org petition. The National Indian Child Welfare Association says in a statement that foster care is meant to be "temporary," not to "fast-track the creation of new families when there is extended family available"; a Choctaw Nation statement says the Pages always knew the goal was to place Lexi with "family." On Tuesday, the Pages appealed to California's highest court to reverse the decision, reports the AP. (This London mom sued NYC after her child was put in foster care.)
– Camille Cosby refused to answer dozens of questions about her famous husband during two days of deposition back in February, USA Today reports. According to ABC News, a transcript of the deposition released Friday shows Camille cited "spousal privilege" in her refusal to answer questions more than a dozen times alone. Other times she refused without giving a reason or just left the room, NBC News reports. The deposition was part of a defamation suit against Bill Cosby brought by seven women who accused him of sexual assault and say they were branded liars in response. Bill has countersued them for defamation, as well. The Cosbys' legal team had tried to get Camille out of the deposition, but a federal judge insisted. Among the questions Camille refused to answer: what honesty means, if Bill "acted with a lack of integrity," if it is "dishonest" or "deceitful" to give Quaaludes to someone in order to have sex with them, if Bill used his status to "manipulate young women, and if Bill "betrayed the sanctity of [her] marital home." She did say she had no idea Bill allegedly gave drugs to women and had sex with them throughout their 52 years of marriage. ABC describes the eights hours total of deposition—during which Camille was read parts of a 2005 deposition in which Bill talked about having sex with one of his accusers in the 1970s—as "combative."
– Fascism's shadow hung over Spain Monday as a former doctor was found guilty of stealing newborns for infertile couples—but still went unpunished, the BBC reports. A Madrid court ruled that gynecologist Eduardo Vela, 85, had taken newborn Ines Madrigal from her biological mother in 1969 and gave her to another woman who was wrongly certified as Madrigal's birth-mother. But judges said the 10-year statute of limitations for "unlawful detention" had expired, since Madrigal became an adult in 1987 and only brought the complaint in 2012, per the Guardian. "I didn’t know about any of that in 1987," says Madrigal. "But Vela’s lawyer brought up the statute of limitations again and again during the trial—right from the start." And Madrigal isn't alone: Thousands of similar cases have been reported, since General Franco's fascist regime allowed doctors to take newborns from "left-wing" mothers and give them to pro-Franco families, per the AP. Priests and nuns made lists of parents seeking children while doctors allegedly lied to mothers about what became of their kids. Even post-Franco, Spaniards often kept quiet in a society that respected the Roman Catholic Church and embraced a so-called "pact of forgetting" during the 1970s transition to democracy. But with the European Parliament pressing Spain to take action, this drama appears far from over—except for Vela, who ducked a prison sentence that prosecutors wanted to last for 11 years.
– To get you to come into McDonald's and buy new versions of its Big Mac, the chain is giving away 10,000 bottles of its trademark special sauce for people to use at home, the AP reports. The move is to celebrate the introduction of the Mac Jr. and the Grand Mac, two different-sized variations of the classic sandwich. The giveaway is a first in the United States. The bottles will be available Thursday at participating locations nationwide, and the company tweeted details of the giveaway Wednesday. CTV reports that the launch of the bigger and smaller Macs is an effort to attract millennial consumers. A company memo leaked last year estimated that only around a fifth of millennials had ever tried a Big Mac.
– The worst outbreak of bird flu in US history is leaving farmers with huge piles of dead chickens and turkeys to get rid of—and leaving consumers with less money in their pockets. It's not just cartons of eggs that have gone up in price with the deaths of millions of hens, the New York Times reports, but the liquid eggs used in dozens of products like mayonnaise and ice cream. There are now 15 states with confirmed cases of avian flu, and Iowa, which supplies a fifth of the country's eggs, has been especially hard-hit, with more than 40% of its egg-laying chickens gone, the Times reports. It takes time to build new flocks of laying chickens, and analysts warn that prices are expected to keep climbing, especially for liquid eggs. "We're starting to see some shortages, because for some of the companies that have lost a large number of these birds, there's no fallback," an exec at commodity analyst Urner Barry tells Bloomberg. "You can't just go and say, 'Oh, I need 2 million eggs today, where can I get them?' We're just not able to replace them that easily." In a worrying sign, a major South Dakota farm that had taken extensive precautions confirmed cases of avian flu this week and all of its 1.3 million hens will be euthanized, the AP reports. "As many poultry farms are discovering, even our extraordinary measures proved ineffective in preventing the spread of avian influenza into one of our barns," Dakota Layers said in a statement. (An egg producer in Iowa had to kill 5.3 million chickens last month.)
– Prince will play a concert in Baltimore on Sunday to "promote peace" in the wake of Freddie Gray's death, USA Today reports. He's asking those who attend the "Rally 4 Peace" concert to wear gray "in tribute to all those recently lost in the violence," organizers said, according to CNN. "In a spirit of healing, the event is meant to be a catalyst for pause and reflection following the outpouring of violence that has gripped Baltimore and areas throughout the US." A rep earlier announced that Prince has also recorded a song that is "a tribute to all of the people of the city of Baltimore" and "addresses the unrest in Baltimore and the socio/political issues around the country in the wake of a slew of killings of young black men." The Daily Beast has the lyrics to the new song, which include: "Does anybody hear us pray? / For Michael Brown or Freddie Gray / Peace is more than the absence of war / Absence of war." No release date has yet been announced, but Prince told Fox 9 last week, "We're going to talk to Jay Z and his people about streaming it on Tidal." Tickets for the 5pm Sunday performance at the Royal Farms Arena, which will also feature guests who have not yet been announced, go on sale at 5pm today at LiveNation.com, the Baltimore Sun reports.
– Peter Jackson's crafts a fantastic vision of the afterlife in The Lovely Bones, say critics, but some feel it came at the expense of the human side of the story of a murdered teen, adapted from the book by Alice Sebold. "By turns warmly sentimental, serial-killer sinister, and science-fiction fantastical, The Lovely Bones was an unlikely book to achieve worldwide success," Kenneth Turan writes in the Los Angeles Times. "Those mismatched elements come back to haunt" the film version, "making the final product more hit-and-miss than unblemished triumph." "Sebold's Lovely Bones is fleshed out with the perilous, irresistible power of sex—a real world of extramarital sex and sex between young lovers in addition to the heinous rape from which moviegoers are shielded." But Jackson "shies from the challenge, shortchanging a story that isn't only about the lightness of souls in heaven but also about the urges of bodies on earth," writes Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly. "Through Jackson's art" and the magic of star Saoirse Rogan, Richard Corliss writes at Time, "the obscenity of child murder has been invested with immense gravity and grace." "Some books are not meant to be adapted to the big screen," and The Lovely Bones is one of them, writes Claudia Puig at USA Today. What works in the book, she writes, comes off as "artificial and emotionless on-screen."
– Despite US pleas to rethink proposed legislation regulating Holocaust speech, Poland's Senate went ahead and passed the bill, reports the BBC. The legislation has sparked a diplomatic dispute with Israel, and the US had argued that it could hurt freedom of speech as well as strategic relationships. US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert voiced her government's concerns as the Polish Senate was preparing to approve the bill Wednesday; the bill later passed by 57 votes to 23. The measure next needs to be signed into law by the president, who supports it. Poland's conservative ruling Law and Justice party authored the bill, which calls for up to three years in prison for any intentional attempt to falsely attribute the crimes of Nazi Germany to the Polish state or people, the AP reports. Law and Justice says it is fighting against the use of phrases like "Polish death camps" to refer to death camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. Israel, however, sees the move as an attempt to whitewash the role some Poles played in the killing of Jews during World War II. Nauert said the US understands that phrases like "Polish death camps" are "inaccurate, misleading, and hurtful," but voiced concern the legislation could "undermine free speech and academic discourse." Members of Poland's Jewish community also weighed in Wednesday, saying in an open letter that they strongly oppose usage of the phrase "Polish death camps," but also oppose the law.
– The wait is over, folks: You can finally eat your entire bathroom. British bathroom designers and chocolate makers have joined forces to build a sink, bathtub, and, yes, toilet out of chocolate, the New York Daily News reports. Altogether, the set will cost you about $133,000. But the real cost could be to your health: The Maderno Sweet, as it's called, contains about 9.4 million calories' worth of Belgian chocolate. That would theoretically keep you going for about 12 years, the Daily News notes. The makers say that "one shouldn't attempt to consume the entire suite in one session." The idea for the set came from a spelling mistake. "People are regularly searching for 'bathroom sweets,'" when they (presumably) mean suites, the makers note on the chocolate bathroom's site. "We decided to answer their search, literally," Bathrooms.com CEO Ian Monk notes. His company joined with chocolatiers Choccywoccydoodah to create the set, which should last about six months. They don't actually recommend using it; for one thing, hot liquid will melt it, so "it's not ideal for running that relaxing bath!" Monk notes, via the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, Hershey's is working on 3D-printed chocolate.
– The latest twist in the Manti Te'o saga is that he spoke on the phone for hundreds of hours with a man posing as his non-existent girlfriend. Now Te'o has released three voicemails to Katie Couric's show, and you can grade the apparent falsetto yourself. The voice allegedly belongs to hoaxster Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, and Deadspin also has the audio here. In an interview with Couric, meanwhile, Te'o shot down the rumor that he's gay, notes TMZ. Couric: "One of the many theories making the rounds is somehow you created this whole scenario to cover your sexual orientation. Are you gay?" Te'o: "No, far from it. Farrr from it."
– A holocaust museum in Boston was vandalized for the second time this summer, and this time bystanders tackled the alleged vandal. Boston police say a 17-year-old shattered a glass panel of the New England Holocaust Memorial with a rock, reports the Boston Herald. The panel contained etchings of the numbers that Nazis tattooed on their Jewish prisoners. Witnesses tackled the teen, who's not being identified because he's a juvenile, and held him until officers arrived, reports the Boston Globe. He's been charged with willful destruction of property, and police are investigating his motive to see whether hate crime charges are warranted in the Monday evening incident. "It's incredibly disturbing ... coming as it does two days after Holocaust survivors had to witness people marching through the streets of Charlottesville, Va., chanting Nazi slogans," says Jeremy Burton of the Jewish Community Relations Council, which manages the site, per the Herald. Boston's police chief also drew a comparison to Charlottesville and said it's "sad to see a young person choose to engage in such senseless and shameful behavior." In June, a 21-year-old was charged with breaking one of the memorial's 132 panels, also with a rock. Prior to that incident, the memorial's panels had stood undisturbed for more than two decades.
– Neither Serbia nor Croatia committed genocide in the wake of Yugoslavia's collapse, the International Court of Justice says in a verdict this morning from the Hague, per Reuters. In a case filed in 1999, Croatia had claimed Serbia committed genocide, including during a three-month occupation in Vukovar, during the Balkan Wars from 1991 to 1995. Serbia countered in 2010, alleging that Croatia expelled 200,000 Serbs, the BBC reports. Judge Peter Tomka said both countries were guilty of many crimes, but ruled the intent to commit genocide was not proven in the Serbian case, while the charge against Croatia was "dismissed in its entirety." Tens of thousands of ethnic Croats were displaced when the Croatian town of Vukovar was occupied by Serbs in 1991. Some 260 men were detained and killed. The Croatian military then bombarded ethnic Serbs in Krajina in 1995, displacing 200,000, the BBC notes. The decision "will put an end to both sides' fight to prove who the worst criminal is," Serbia's foreign minister said ahead of the decision. Both sides said they would accept the verdict. If either side had been found guilty of genocide, financial compensation may have been awarded, Reuters reports. (Serbia and Croatia recently teamed up to solve a massacre during the conflict.)
– Dan Adler is campaigning for Jane Harman's vacated House seat, and the California Democrat has an odd, possibly offensive reason certain people should vote for him: His wife is Korean! Oh, and he himself is Jewish, and as his odd campaign ad states, "We minorities should stick together." On Talking Points Memo, Benjy Sarlin notes that the most "patronizing" part of the commercial is the "heavily-accented Korean immigrant woman in a laundromat awkwardly [interrupting] him throughout the ad." And in New York, Dan Amira concludes that if Adler "didn't have a Korean wife, this might one of the most racist campaign ads we've ever seen."
– The 200-year-old Buddhist monk found still seated in the lotus position is not dead, but is rather in a rare spiritual state known as tukdam, Buddhism experts suggest. Dr. Barry Kerzin, a famous fellow monk who is also a physician to the Dalai Lama, tells the Siberian Times that monks in this state go into "very deep meditation" and, if they can stay in such a state for more than three weeks, their bodies shrink until all that remains are "hair, nails, and clothes," he says. "Usually in this case, people who live next to the monk see a rainbow that glows in the sky for several days. This means that he has found a 'rainbow body.' This is the highest state close to the state of Buddha," and someone who remains in the state can even become a Buddha, he says. He adds that over the past five decades, there have been 40 such cases in India. Ganhugiyn Purevbata, founder and professor at the Mongolian Institute of Buddhist Art at Ulaanbaatar Buddhist University, agrees: The monk "is sitting in the lotus position vajra, the left hand is opened, and the right hand symbolizes of the preaching Sutra," he says. "This is a sign that the Lama is not dead, but is in a very deep meditation according to the ancient tradition of Buddhist lamas." But scientists have a different take, theorizing that the cold weather in Mongolia, where the monk was found, helped preserve him, the BBC reports. And the Washington Post notes that such "accidental mummies" have been discovered in freezing climates before, like a 9,000-year-old mummified bison in Siberia. Meanwhile, there is drama of a less spiritual type unfolding: Police say a man stole the monk from a cave in another part of the country and was planning to sell him on the black market, but police learned of the plot, recovered the monk, and arrested the man for smuggling. (Click for more on the spiritual practice of self-mummification.)
– President Obama interrupted a round of golf this afternoon, raising concerns because an ambulance was seen at the home where he is vacationing, but all is well with the first family, the Honolulu Advertiser reports. A child vacationing with the Obamas suffered a "run-of-the-mill beach injury," according to a White House spokesman who declined to name the boy. He is a son of Eric Whitaker, who was golfing with the president, the New York Times reports. A motorcade sped away from the Luana Hills Country Club, where Obama had gone to play after speaking about Friday's attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253, and reporters were told the situation involved neither national security nor Obama's safety. "Nobody saw him playing," said the country club's GM. "All of a sudden they just came and left." The president later returned to the course.
– Florida native Christopher Le Cun was out enjoying a day on the boat with his family and best friend on July 12, 2015, when the two decided to anchor to a buoy and scuba dive down to mysterious structures faintly visible below. Le Cun swam up to one that he likened to a building and felt a sudden, strong current. "He got sucked in like a wet noodle—he just, poof, gone," his diving partner, Robert Blake, tells WPTV. Le Cun says his surroundings instantly dissolved into "complete darkness" and he struggled to hold onto his mask and regulator while he spent roughly five minutes being sucked through a 1/4-mile-long, 16-foot-wide intake pipe that pulls in 500,000 gallons of water a minute to cool the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant's reactors. "You get to do a lot of thinking," says Le Cun, who envisioned a turbine chopping him up on the other end. "Do I just pull the regulator out of my mouth and just die?" Meanwhile, Blake surfaced, horrified, and Le Cun's wife called 911. But Le Cun survived without intervention, having been spat out into the plant's cooling pond. Le Cun, who tells CNN there were no warning signs, is now filing a lawsuit against Florida Power and Light, which issued a statement saying the intake pipe has a protective covering and that Le Cun "intentionally" swam in. An FPL rep also tells CNN the buoy above the pipe tells people to stay 100 feet away. This isn't the first time a diver has survived the journey: William Lamm tells UPI his ride through the dark tunnel in 1989 was "devastating." (Check out why these scuba divers are knowingly risking their lives.)
– Perhaps today's most disgusting news: A sewer main at Valley Forge National Historic Park broke yesterday, sending 5,000 gallons of sewage per minute into the creek at the Pennsylvania park. Crews worked overnight to repair the 30-inch main, which had also broken six weeks ago, NBC Philadelphia reports. A replacement pipe was expected to arrive this morning. At least 5 million gallons of raw sewage have leaked into Valley Creek, WPVI reports. "All the water goes down into the Schuylkill River and then it goes into Philadelphia in the Delaware River. People get their drinking water out of this and there's the health problem," says one state conservation officer; but NBC Philadelphia says officials insist humans are at no risk from the leak. Wildlife, however, could be. All roads running through the park are currently closed, Philly.com reports; they are expected to remain closed for a few days as crews continue to work in the area.
– Mel Gibson has been persona non grata for some time in Hollywood, following a string of headline-making infractions, including DUI troubles and accusations of anti-Semitism and domestic violence. As the Guardian puts it, "There was a time when you would have remarked that Mel couldn't get arrested in Hollywood, except for the fact that arrested was pretty much all he could get." But Gibson showed up on the Golden Globes stage tonight, and that put host Ricky Gervais—who had poked fun of Gibson at the 2010 awards—on the spot. "I like a drink as much as the next man—unless the next man is Mel Gibson," Gervais said six years ago, and he chastised the Globes' network Sunday night for making him face his target, saying, "I blame NBC for this terrible situation" and adding, "Mel blames ... well, we know who Mel blames," Variety reports. Still, he noted, "I'd rather have a drink with him in his hotel room tonight than with Bill Cosby." Gibson, for his part, played the straight man and just introduced clips from Mad Max: Fury Road—though he did say, "I love seeing Ricky every three years because it reminds me to get a colonoscopy."
– ISIS really wants to make sure it covers all its bases: A recruitment video released yesterday stars two deaf and mute fighters using sign language. "We, the deaf and mute, direct our message to the Islamic world," the video begins, per Vocativ. The video, titled "From Who Excused (sic) To Those Not Excused," "represents an attempt by the group to recruit other physically or otherwise impaired individuals, as well as demonstrates the multifaceted responsibilities of those in its ranks," a researcher tells NBC News. Those "multifaceted responsibilities" apparently include directing traffic, as that is what the fighters are doing (while heavily armed) in the video.
– What makes the kangaroo hop? That’s just one of the questions answered by international researchers who’ve decoded the genome of a kangaroo species, the BBC reports. The genome research team—the first to be led by Australian scientists—sequenced the genome in 2008 but finally completed its analysis of it and published those findings last week. "It's been a huge project," says one scientist. "I'm from Australia and it was going on when I was an undergraduate there 10 years ago." The decoding gives scientists a clearer picture of mammalian evolution and could help cure diseases, both in humans and other mammals. Kangaroo milk has antibiotic properties, and researchers have copied it to synthesize a protein that kills bacteria already resistant to antibiotics, the Australian reports. The findings could lead to a vaccine to fend off a facial tumor that has ravaged Tasmanian devil populations—though such a medication could be a decade away.
– Up until last night, Tim Tebow was scheduled to appear at Pastor Robert Jeffress' Dallas megachurch in April, but he announced today that he canceled the appearance after "new information" was brought to his attention. Jeffress is a controversial figure who has called Mormonism a "cult," gays "perverse," and Islam a religion that "promote[s] pedophilia," USA Today reports. Tebow's statement doesn't mention anything about rescheduling, but a rep for First Baptist Church says that when the football star called to cancel last night, he said he wanted to "speak at a future date." Tebow had been criticized for the planned visit, at which he was to deliver two sermons. A rep for the church tells TMZ that Tebow backed out because of "pressure ... from numerous New York and national sports and news media who grossly misrepresented past comments made by our pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress, specifically related to issues of homosexuality and AIDS, as well as Judaism." The rep adds that Tebow told Jeffress he "needed to avoid controversy."
– Mazel tov: Elton John and longtime partner David Furnish are getting hitched in May, Furnish reveals to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The two have been civil partners for eight years, but now that gay marriage is legal in England, they're planning a wedding at a registry office with just a few friends, plus their two children. "We don’t feel the need to take an extra step legally," Furnish says. "But since we’re committed for life, we feel it’s really important to take that step, and take advantage of that amazing change in legislation. We all live by example." John also discusses the upcoming nuptials in an interview airing Monday and Tuesday on Today. "We'll do it very quietly. But we will do it and it will be a joyous occasion and we will have our children," he says. "I'm very proud of Britain and the laws that we've seen come into existence since we've been together. ... For this legislation to come through is joyous, and we should celebrate it. We shouldn't just say, 'Oh, well we have a civil partnership. We're not going to bother to get married.' We will get married."
– "Next to my wife of 32 years, there is no one on this planet that I trust more than [Alfonso] Costa," Ben Carson said at a 2008 sentencing hearing for the man he calls his best friend. "We discovered that we were so much alike and shared the same values and principles that govern our lives." Carson may have to elaborate on those shared values and his loyalty to Costa, a former dentist convicted of charging for never-performed procedures, the AP reports. Records examined by the AP show the men have been entwined for some time, including Costa's ongoing involvement with Carson's children's charity and his son's role in Carson's election campaign. Most notable, though, is the money Carson has made with commercial real-estate investments via Costa, earning Carson and his wife between $200,000 and $2 million a year, per candidacy financial records. The AP notes Costa's ongoing links to Carson—who's always sworn the case against Costa was bogus, notes Mother Jones—are in the spotlight because Carson came out in 2013 with harsh words for those convicted of health care fraud, saying such convicts should go to prison for at least a decade and have to give up "all of one's personal possessions"—what the AP notes he called the "Saudi Arabian solution" in his 2011 book America the Beautiful. Carson's campaign spokesman told the AP Wednesday that he couldn't give any details on specific questions, but he did confirm that Carson and Costa "are best friends and ... do hold business investments together." And where Carson spent his most recent vacation to Italy in September? At Costa's luxury villa on the Amalfi coast, per Mother Jones. Read the full AP report.
– Police yesterday arrested a suspect in the recent road rage slaying of a Las Vegas woman—and the two knew each other. Erich Milton Nowsch was arrested at a home only about a block away from where victim Tammy Meyers lived; he faces charges of murder and attempted murder and is believed to be 19, reports the Review-Journal. Meyers, a 44-year-old mother of four, was shot to death outside her house on Feb. 12. Robert Meyers says his wife knew Nowsch and had previously given him food and money. "We knew how bad he was, but we didn't know he was this bad," he told reporters, per NBC News. "[Tammy] spent countless hours at that park consoling this boy ... and she told him to pull his pants up and to be a man, more times than I can count." "Are you all happy? You made my wife look like an animal ... and my son," Robert Meyers screamed at reporters yesterday, reports CNN. "There's the animal, a block away. Are you happy?" Her husband's outburst of anger stems from a twist in the case: Police revealed that Meyers had actually returned home from an initial encounter with the suspect, picked up her armed 22-year-old son, and drove off again apparently in search of Nowsch. She was killed during a shootout as they returned home from that trip. Robert Meyers says the man threatened to kill his wife and daughter, who was in the car during the first encounter. "Yes, maybe in a make-up world she should have stayed home," he wrote in a text to a CNN producer. "Please remember statement from this animal, 'I'm going to kill you and your daughter.'" Police say they are looking for a second suspect but say that Nowsch was the shooter.
– It's the dawn of a new, uncomfortable day for Dr. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who achieved infamy yesterday when it was revealed he was the hunter who felled the beloved lion Cecil in Zimbabwe. The New York Times and Washington Post today have more on how Palmer and his guides lured the 13-year-old lion out of his sanctuary in Hwange National Park: According to the chair of the non-governmental Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, Palmer's party sighted the lion at night using a spotlight, and affixed a dead animal to their car to lead Cecil from the reserve into unprotected territory. It claims the men scented an area about three-tenths of a mile from the park. Cecil was first injured by a shot from Palmer's crossbow, then killed nearly two days later by Palmer, via gun. Chair Johnny Rodrigues alleges that "the hunters then found that the dead lion was wearing a [GPS] tracking collar, which they unsuccessfully tried to hide." Cecil was skinned and beheaded, and his body "left to rot in the sun," as the Times puts it. Rodrigues yesterday said the head has been tracked down and impounded as evidence, reports the Guardian. The BBC adds that it's thought Cecil was killed July 1, though his corpse wasn't found until days later. Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority and the Safari Operators Association say "ongoing investigations to date suggest that the killing of the lion was illegal since the land owner was not allocated a lion on his hunting quota for 2015. Therefore, all persons implicated in this case are due to appear in court facing poaching charges." Professional hunter Theo Bronkhorst and landowner Honest Ndlovu accompanied Palmer and are making that court appearance today; the poaching charges carry up to 15 years. A parks and wildlife rep told the Post professional hunters and landowners are usually the first to be charged in these instances. Palmer is reportedly being sought in connection with the case. Here's what Palmer has to say.
– A 37-year-old female zookeeper at a so-called "immersion zoo" in Spain was killed by a tiger, reports the AFP. The attack wasn't witnessed, but her body was discovered about 5pm Saturday at Terra Natura animal park. "The tiger was still in the cage with the 37-year-old keeper," says a Red Cross rep. The animal was sedated with darts so that rescuers could enter, but the unnamed keeper was pronounced dead at the scene. "The entire staff of the park is appalled and deeply affected by the tragic news," a zoo rep says, via the Mirror. It's possible that the woman, a veteran employee of eight years, left a gate open as she went about her duties, per local reports. Terra Natura touts itself as a "new generation immersion park," which separates animals from tourists only with a glass barrier so that, as the Mirror puts it, visitors "can watch and be 'at one' with" the animals.
– Yesterday's horrifying car crash near the Bronx zoo occurred at the Bronx River Parkway's "Bermuda Triangle," where accidents have happened before, a lawyer tells the New York Daily News. In fact, Eric Buckvar sued New York state and city for some of the six people who died in 2006 after hitting the median and barreling into oncoming traffic. And just last June, another car struck the median and went airborne, landing at street level—but both driver and passenger survived. “We did a lot of discovery of state records, and we found there was a problem," said Buckvar. "Traffic would slow down very quickly, and sometimes cars would lose control." Officials thought about putting in a new lane, the lawyer said, but other plans interfered. Seven people died in yesterday's crash when an SUV hit the median and plunged off the freeway. But police say the driver, Maria Gonzalez, was speeding when she hit the median, doing 68 mph in a 50-mph zone, the AP reports.
– While a truck driver slept in the cab of his parked vehicle, thieves were up to no good mere feet away. The BBC reports that they cut a hole in the side of the truck on Monday night and made off with some 6,400 cans of Heinz baked beans. Says a police rep in all seriousness: "Police are appealing for information, especially about anyone trying to sell large quantities of Heinz baked beans in suspicious circumstances." One additional identifying note: The variety stolen contained "sausages."
– An operation in London has given 9-year-old Kieran Sorkin a pair of ears—made from his ribs, no less. Born deaf with no ears, Kieran was able to hear because of an implanted hearing aid, but he still wanted ears. "I want people to stop asking me questions," he told the BBC. "I'd like just to look like my friends. I'd also like to be able to wear sunglasses and earphones." So surgeons traced an outline of Kieran's mom's ears, removed cartilage from the boy's ribs, and sliced, contoured, and sewed the cartilage. Then they put it in two skin pockets and vacuumed them into the shape of ears. They don't perform any function, but Kieran's plastic surgeon says they can deliver a huge confidence boost: "If you can change the confidence of a patient at this young age, you can change their whole trajectory in life," he said. The ears should last, too, because they're made of cartilage rather than prosthetics, the Guardian reports. Every year about 100 British newborns lack one or both ears (it's called microtia), and the hospital Kieran went to performs the operation about 40 times a year. Scientists hope to one day make ears from the fat tissue of patients, instead of ribs. Kieran might have liked that, since he got so excited on seeing his new ears that he cried "Wow!" and giggled—which made his ribs hurt from the operation. (Click to read about a man who needed surgery to remove a tooth growing in his nose.)
– Six Americans and a Brit have vanished without a trace on the high seas between New Zealand and Australia, aboard the 70-foot vessel the Nina, CNN reports.The crew was last heard from on June 4 while battling rough conditions—68mph gusts and waves as high as 26 feet—about a week after their historic schooner left New Zealand's Bay of Islands. Friends reported the vessel missing on June 14, and the fact that its emergency beacon was never activated gave rescuers hope. But the picture that's forming of the Nina's last known movements sounds less promising. A woman aboard the 85-year-old vessel called a New Zealand meteorologist via satellite phone on June 3, asking him, "The weather's turned nasty, how do we get away from it?" They spoke briefly, with Bob McDavitt advising the group to sail south. The following day he received the following text: "ANY UPDATE 4 NINA? ... EVI." After that, the boat vanished, with two aerial searches turning up nothing. More foreboding details, per the AP: The rescue coordinator says the boat realistically should have arrived in Australia two days ago, and the Nina dealt with some leaking issues earlier this year after a new engine was installed. He expressed "grave concerns" to the Age.
– Terry Crews testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to advocate for the Sexual Assault Survivors' Bill of Rights, repeating claims he was sexually assaulted at a 2016 party. The outing drew praise from many corners—Esquire's Justin Kirkland described an "impassioned and honest speech"—just not the corner 50 Cent is in. In a clear dig, the rapper shared on Instagram a meme showing a shirtless Crews next to the words, "I got raped. My wife just watched," per Vulture. "What the f--- is going on out here man?" 50 Cent wrote. "Terry: I froze in fear," he added, following that up with a laughing emoji. While some referred to the post as "disgusting," it drew 125,000 likes—and a crying-laughing emoji from accused rapist Russell Simmons, per Fox News—before it was eventually deleted. "I prove that size doesn't matter when it comes to sexual assault," Crews later told TMZ. In his testimony, Crews had gotten emotional claiming he lost out on a film role because of his civil suit against Hollywood agent Adam Venit, whom he accuses of groping his genitals. Crews pursued charges, but the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office rejected the case because it fell outside of the statute of limitations, per TMZ.
– Like earthquakes can unleash tsunamis, strong winds and the California wildfires apparently set loose another type of natural disaster: fire tornadoes. And the San Francisco Chronicle says the fire-filled tornadoes that hit Santa Rosa last week, driven by nearly 80mph winds, wreaked major havoc, tossing cars, pulling trees out of the ground, and ripping the roofs off of houses. "I've been in this business 30 years and it's the worst I've seen," Scott Upton, a chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, says of the tornadoes created during the Tubbs Fire. The Chronicle explains the science behind the tornado formation: As powerful winds drive the fire's flames into neighborhoods, the heat rises and draws those gusts up with it, creating the tornado, or "fire whirl," a vortex of hot and cool air capable of mass destruction. This type of event, also referred to as a "fire devil," can be so strong it's capable of lifting an entire home in the air; the paper notes one such incident that took place in 1926. The location of the neighborhoods affected by the Tubbs Fire also exacerbated things: The wind sped up as it pushed the fire through a valley and toward residences, creating what Ken Pimlott, the head of CalFire, calls "a very different kind of fire." It was "almost horizontal," he says. "When it hit those homes, it was like a blowtorch." The Press Democrat details the Tubbs Fire's 12-mile "deadly march" from its point of origin in Calistoga to Santa Rosa. Curious to know what one of these frightening flame-storms looks like without getting too close? Mashable features a video, in which firefighters filmed a recent fire tornado raging through central Portugal. Newsweek has footage, too, out of California and Texas.
– The leaders of the two Koreas have signed what President Trump calls a "very exciting" agreement on the second day of a three-day summit in Pyongyang. South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced in a joint press conference with Kim Jong Un that they had agreed to turn the peninsula into a "land of peace without nuclear weapons," the Guardian reports. Moon said Kim had agreed to permanently close the Tongchang-ri missile launch facility in the presence of international experts, reports the BBC. The Yongbyon nuclear site could also be closed, depending on "reciprocal action" from the US. The leaders also agreed to file a joint bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics. Trump praised the agreement in a tweet. Kim has "agreed to allow Nuclear inspections, subject to final negotiations, and to permanently dismantle a test site and launch pad in the presence of international experts," he said. "In the meantime there will be no Rocket or Nuclear testing. Hero remains to continue being returned home to the United States." Analysts described the agreement as a small step in the right direction. "Remember that North Korea is still taking baby steps," Melissa Hanham at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies tells Reuters. "We don't have a timeline, and we also don’t have any guarantees about the larger nuclear and missile programs."
– It seems the Dalai Lama has indirectly led to the disappointment of Chinese concertgoers once again. One week before Bon Jovi was to play a three-city tour of China—the band's first-ever shows in the country—two of the shows were mysteriously canceled, the Washington Post reports. This despite Jon Bon Jovi having already recorded a love song in Mandarin for the occasion. Concert promoter AEG Live Asia cited "unforeseen circumstances," but reports are putting the blame on China's Ministry of Culture, which pulled Bon Jovi's permits after seeing a video of the band performing in front of images of the Dalai Lama in 2010 or 2011, reports the Financial Times. However, a 2009 Bon Jovi music video featuring images from the Tiananmen Square protest could also have been problematic, per the Post. Concert organizers are trying to get the decision reversed, but that's unlikely, notes the Times. "No words I've learned could express how crushed I am," one disappointed Chinese Bon Jovi fan posted on social media, per the Post. Chinese Maroon 5 fans know the feeling: Adam Levine and Co. also lost their permits this summer, with a band member's tweet about attending the Dalai Lama's birthday party in California the likely culprit. Taylor Swift likewise ran into trouble for planning to sell merch featuring her initials and 1989 album title; Tiananmen Square took place in 1989, notes the Post.
– From #OscarsSoWhite to #OscarsLessWhite: The 2017 Academy Awards nominations included seven actors of color plus diverse nominees in other categories, CNN reports. That's not to say there weren't any snubs, as rounded up by People, Deadline, and USA Today. Some of the big ones: Taraji P. Henson: Hidden Figures was nominated for Best Picture, but lead actress Henson failed to snag a nomination. Janelle Monáe wasn't nominated either; Octavia Spencer was. Pharrell Williams: His Hidden Figures score was nominated for a Golden Globe, but not an Oscar. The Birth of a Nation: Nate Parker's movie about the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner debuted with Oscar dreams, and Academy Award nominations looked likely at first. But, likely thanks in part to sexual assault allegations against Parker that resurfaced, it was shut out by the Oscars. Denzel Washington. He got an acting nod for Fences, but not a directing one. Amy Adams: The Arrival actress didn't make it into the Best Actress race. Hugh Grant: He received SAG, BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominations for his role in Florence Foster Jenkins, but wasn't able to score his first Oscar nomination. Finding Dory: Despite a massive box office haul and positive reviews, the Pixar flick didn't make it into the Best Animated Feature Film category. Sully: Another movie with a huge box office take and great reviews, the Clint Eastwood flick failed to snag a Best Picture nod. One surprise nominee? Mel Gibson.
– Twitter has promised to take a look at its policies after some sickening abuse over her father's death forced Zelda Williams off the site. After she tweeted a touching tribute to her father, the grieving daughter received messages on Twitter and Instagram blaming her for her father's death, as well as images of her father Photoshopped to show bruises around his neck, Forbes reports. "We will not tolerate abuse of this nature on Twitter," a Twitter exec said in a statement. "We have suspended a number of accounts related to this issue for violating our rules and we are in the process of evaluating how we can further improve our policies to better handle tragic situations like this one." Twitter says the changes will include "expanding our policies regarding self-harm and private information, and improving support for family members of deceased users." An activist who has worked with Facebook to help protect people facing online abuse says the site needs to do more to tackle persistent abusers. "While I am truly sorry for what the Williams family is experiencing during this time, I am concerned that it takes an event like this to bring heightened attention to a problem that so many face every day," she tells the Washington Post. "As is often the case, it is Williams, the target of abuse, and not her abusers, who's left Twitter," she adds.
– Confusion reigns in the aftermath of today's oil platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. This much good news stands: All 13 crew members were rescued from the water. Everything else is changing quickly. The Coast Guard spoke of a mile-long oil slick at the site but now says it can't find evidence of any oil in the water. Early reports said the platform wasn't producing any oil or gas, but Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal now says it had seven active wells. The Coast Guard hasn't confirmed reports that crew members were able to shut them down before bailing. The platform, owned by Houston's Mariner Energy, was producing 59,000 gallons of oil and 900,000 cubic feet of gas per day and could store 4,200 gallons of oil, reports the AP, citing federal figures. If there is a spill of some sort, the relatively shallow depth of 340 feet should make cleanup easier. More coverage in the Times-Picayune and USA Today.
– Seth Meyers is a father for the second time, and new son Axel Strahl made his arrival on April 8 in dramatic fashion. Meyers told his audience Monday the story of how he and his wife, Alexi Ashe, were heading to their Uber to take them to the hospital when his wife informed him that she couldn't make it, reports People. (See the clip here.) Back they went into the lobby of their apartment building. "I called 911 and over the course of a minute conversation, I basically said, 'We're about to have a baby—we're having a baby—we had a baby," Meyers said. New York City police and fire crews arrived soon after the birth and helped cut the cord, and both mom and baby are doing fine.
– The war games may be back on. Just two months after President Trump announced he had "indefinitely suspended" the "very provocative" military drills by the US and South Korea in a move meant to soothe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday there are "no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises," per BuzzFeed. Reuters reports the comments come in the midst of a "breakdown in diplomacy" with North Korea over denuclearization, though Mattis denied any act of bad faith on North Korea's part. Referring to the decision "to suspend several of the largest exercises as a good-faith measure coming out of the Singapore summit," Mattis said "we did what we did at the time for that purpose." He added there's been no decision on the next large-scale military exercise, previously set for next spring. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley was more pointed in her remarks on North Korea Tuesday. "Are [the North Koreans] wishing or maybe changing their minds on denuclearization? It's possible … but we're not changing our minds," she said, per CBS News.
– As new accusations continue to emerge in the Harvey Weinstein scandal, a celebrity-driven hashtag has started a wave of people who are sharing their personal experiences with sexual abuse and harassment, Mashable reports. On Sunday afternoon, Alyssa Milano tweeted: "If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet." This quickly led to the #MeToo hashtag and a tsunami of posts that simply read "Me too" on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as detailed stories from those who felt comfortable sharing more—all messages the Washington Post notes "were striking in their simplicity, and in the sheer number of them." Included among the "tens of thousands" the New York Times says reacted to Milano's message were other names from show biz, including Debra Messing, Anna Paquin, and Javier Munoz, from Broadway's Hamilton. "I don't know if [it] means anything coming from a gay man but it's happened. Multiple times," Munoz tweeted. CNN notes that Milano co-starred on Charmed with Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein's most vocal accusers. Milano also penned an essay last week about Weinstein on her Patriot Not Partisan website, noting she's friends with Weinstein's wife, Georgina Chapman, and that even though she's "sickened and angered" by the specific allegations against him, "we must change things in general. We must do better for women everywhere."
– Sen. Elizabeth Warren went after Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf during a Senate hearing Tuesday with the kind of heat she usually reserves for Donald Trump tweetstorms. "You should resign ... and you should be criminally investigated," NPR quotes Warren as saying. Stumpf was in front of the Senate banking committee after Wells Fargo employees created millions of fake accounts for customers without their permission in order to charge them extra fees. Stumpf said he was "deeply sorry" for what happened, New Republic reports. But—according to CNBC—he maintained it wasn't a "scam"—Warren's word—but a "way of deepening relationships" with customers. Warren accused Stumpf of "gutless leadership" for passing responsibility for what happened away from himself and other senior executives while blaming "thousands of $12-an-hour employees who were just trying to meet cross-sell quotas that made you rich." The employees' cross-selling scheme was at least partially responsible for Wells Fargo stock going up, making Stumpf's shares alone gain $200 million in value. While more than 5,000 Wells Fargo employees were fired, none of the senior executives are losing their jobs. Warren said the only way Wall Street will be reformed is if CEOs like Stumpf start seeing jail time. She's one of only a few members of the Senate banking committee that hasn't gotten money from Wells Fargo's PAC.
– Prince Harry will be missing his mother on his wedding day, just two weeks away, but his aunt will be standing in. Lady Jane Fellowes will represent her sister, the late Princess Diana, at the May 19 ceremony at Windsor's St. George's Chapel, where she'll also do a reading, reports CBS News. Diana's two other siblings also will attend, as will bride Meghan Markle's mother and father, who are divorced. They're to meet the queen, Prince Philip, and the other British royals a week ahead of the wedding, which will see Thomas Markle walk his daughter down the aisle. CNN reports Markle won't have a maid of honor. "She has a very close knit group of friends and did not want to choose one over the other," a rep for Harry says. (Harry's pick for best man is no surprise.)
– The Los Angeles Times sheds more light on how Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis was able to get secret-level security clearance from the Navy, despite the fact that he had been arrested in 2004 for an incident involving a gun. Alexis did not mention the incident on the security questionnaire he filled out three years later, but the Navy's Office of Personnel Management learned about it after doing a fingerprint check. He was asked about it and claimed all he did was deflate a man's tires. In reality, he shot out the man's tires, according to the police report filed in Seattle. Alexis said he did not disclose the incident because the charge was dismissed and his lawyer had told him it would be wiped from his record. Investigators did not interview anyone else about the incident, the Washington Post reports, and Seattle police refused to provide the records related to the incident, according to the personnel office. So the Navy cleared Alexis in March 2008 based on what it knew. (The LAT notes the only red flag was his credit history.) The full picture of the 2004 incident didn't emerge until after the Navy Yard shootings, says a senior Navy official. Now, the secretary of the Navy has recommended to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that security reviews in the future include all police reports—even those that did not result in charges, the New York Times reports.
– An armed group has taken over a federal building in Oregon, and leaders say they're willing to use force to defend themselves if the feds move in. It's getting news coverage, of course, but a post at Vox makes the case that coverage is nowhere near as intense as it would be if this group were largely Muslim or black instead of mostly white. "Media outlets don't seem to consider this an alarming story, instead treating it by and large as a peaceful protest," writes German Lopez. He notes that after terrorists attacks, pundits often ask the Muslim community at large to denounce them, "but there are no comparable cries demanding that all white people apologize for the militiamen." It's a case of "implicit bias," writes Lopez, or "subconscious prejudices that can change how we approach and treat people of a different race, ethnicity, and religious affiliation." It's important that media outlets be aware of the problem, he adds, because the resulting coverage can skew how stories are perceived. Not that everyone's taking the threat all that seriously: A Daily Beast headline refers to "Wingnut Woodstock," while al Jazeera notes that the Internet seems to have settled on the name "Y'all Qaeda" to describe the group. Click to read Lopez's full post.
– The owner of a gun store in Florida who declared his shop to be a "Muslim-free zone" is now the target of a lawsuit. The Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a federal lawsuit calling the policy at Florida Gun Supply discriminatory, reports Reuters. The move comes after owner Andrew Hallinan, 28, posted a video to Facebook announcing his new policy in the wake of the Chattanooga rampage. "I have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety of all patriots in my community," Hallinan says in the video, as quoted by NBC Miami. "So effective immediately, I'm declaring Florida Gun Supply as a Muslim-free zone. I will not arm and train those who wish to do harm to my fellow patriots." But the chief executive of CAIR calls it blatant "Islamophobia" that must be challenged. "Unfortunately, he caved in to a lot of the anti-Muslim pressure and anti-Muslim base that he's pandering to," Hassan Shibly tells USA Today. "When he refused to reconsider his position, when he refused to reconsider to be educated, refused to engage this community, refused to respect American law, we had no choice but to bring forward this lawsuit." Meanwhile, Chris Martin, a US military veteran who converted to Islam, has traveled to Inverness, Florida, from California so he can try to enroll in a training course at the shop to challenge the ban, reports WFTS-TV. Federal agents are reportedly keeping a close eye on the situation.
– Certain heartburn drugs have already been linked to heath woes including heart disease and kidney disease. Now a study in JAMA Neurology says those drugs—proton-pump inhibitors like Prilosec, Prevacid, and Nexium—may also boost the chance of dementia, UPI reports. Analyzing a German health insurer's data on nearly 74,000 customers aged 75 and up from 2004 to 2011, researchers found a 44% higher dementia risk among "PPI" users. The finding also coincides with research showing that mice on PPIs had higher amyloid plaque levels in their brains, which has been linked to dementia. So what to do, when roughly 15 million Americans use prescription PPIs and other patients take over-the-counter versions? For now, nothing. More clinical trials are needed to analyze the possible PPI-dementia link, senior study author Britta Haenisch tells CBS News. For one thing, the JAMA Neurology study didn't account for lifestyle and diet, which can influence dementia risk. But, she adds, "clinicians should follow guidelines for PPI prescription, to avoid overprescribing PPIs and inappropriate use." Up to 70% of PPI prescriptions may be needless reactions to minor cases of acid reflux or heartburn, per a recent study. Big picture: PPIs are being seen in a whole new light. "The teaching for many years was that these drugs were quite safe," a gastroenterologist tells NPR. "But there is data that's emerging that suggests PPIs may not be as safe as we think they are." (Turns out vegetable oils may cause dementia when heated.)
– The fallout from Friday night's "bombshell" report from the CIA that Russian hackers directly interfered with the US election in order to get Donald Trump elected continued Saturday. Here are seven things you need to know: With Trump criticizing the CIA—rather than Russia—in the wake of the report, the New York Times reports he's opening an "extraordinary breach" between himself and the national security establishment he's bound to need during his presidency. While mostly at a loss, Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast has a few pieces of advice for what Democrats should do next: "Demand the release of the information. Demand a real investigation...The media needs to get the message that conservatives aren’t the only people who get pissed off." In a "no-win situation for the GOP," some Republicans in Congress want to investigate Russia's involvement in the election against Trump's wishes. The Washington Post has four ways they could take on Russia, with or without the president-elect. Harry Reid is calling for the resignation of FBI director James Comey, who he compares to J. Edgar Hoover and accuses of covering up information about Russia's activities to get Trump elected, the Guardian reports. Pamela Kruger at Fortune points out that Trump did Saturday what he normally does when faced with a major negative story: spend the morning tweeting about something completely unrelated; Celebrity Apprentice, in this case. Worried Trump will ignore Russian threats to US democracy when he takes office, Quartz reports President Obama is "racing against the clock" to get a full report on Russia's involvement in US affairs before he steps down in six weeks. Meanwhile, John McCain says the close relationship between Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson—Trump's likely secretary of state—and Vladimir Putin "a matter of concern," the Hill reports. With Democrats needing only three GOP senators to vote against Tillerson, a McCain aide says a confirmation is unlikely. "Putin is a thug, bully, and a murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying," McCain says.
– The Summit of the Americas is over, but the prostitution scandal involving Secret Service agents keeps on going, overshadowing what was supposed to be a chance to showcase Colombia to the international community, reports Reuters. "From nearly failed state to emerging global player—in less than a decade" is what Time called Colombia on its latest cover. But because of the scandal, the old Colombia is being broadcast around the world. "The only media coverage of the summit is the scandal of the gringos and the prostitutes," said one Colombian diplomat. "How shameful." As for President Obama, he finally weighed in on the scandal yesterday, calling for a thorough and rigorous investigation into what happened, reports the Washington Post. While defending the Secret Service in general, Obama said if allegations about misconduct prove to be accurate, “then, of course, I'll be angry," he said. That investigation will be expanded beyond Colombia to look at longer patterns of behavior in the Secret Service, said Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of a House panel on government oversight. "Things like this don't happen once if they didn't happen before," said Issa.
– Donald Trump's worst critics won't be happy with this piece of information from ABC News: The candidate will receive his first classified security briefing on Wednesday from the FBI. Trump will visit the field office in New York City and bring Chris Christie and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, two contenders to be in a Trump Cabinet, notes the network. Major party nominees have long gotten such briefings, though critics including Sen. Barbara Boxer say it's too much of a risk in Trump's case. By the same token, Paul Ryan thinks Hillary Clinton ought to be denied them, given her use of a private email server, reports the LA Times. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, however, says both will be briefed if they wish.
– Much like a guy named "John Pirate" probably shouldn't try to make a living terrorizing the high seas, someone with the surname "Crook" raises eyebrows when they turn to a life of crime. California cops say they arrested one Josephine Crook on Friday on suspicion of commercial burglary after she allegedly walked out of her local Kohl's with women's underwear stuffed in her purse, KTLA reports. The 49-year-old was also said to have had wire cutters and scissors on her, NBC Los Angeles adds. Crook's bail is set at $20,000, and she's to appear in court tomorrow. The Alhambra Police Department's Facebook post about the incident pretty much sums it up: "I can't make this stuff up ..." (At least she didn't take a nap in the dressing room.)
– A rash of power line thefts is dogging Britain. An entire English village lost electricity for several hours on Friday after thieves stole some 3,000 feet of cable—and it’s the second such theft in that county alone since August, This Is Lincolnshire reports. It’s a running problem on train lines, too, notes the Telegraph. Cable robbers have been cutting lines and leaving the sparking ends hanging; today, firefighters had to be called out to address the problem. Rail officials found that more than 650 feet of power line had been cut, causing a fire and shutting down train travel into one of London’s major stations. “Yet again, commuters in the capital have had their journeys disrupted by criminals,” said a railway spokesman. “We need to see tougher sentences in the courts for anyone caught stealing cable and new legislation to help crack down on the minority of scrap metal dealers who knowingly profit from rail users' misery."
– Citing interviews with four anonymous sources, Bloomberg reports Russian hackers broke into Dow Jones & Co. servers a year or so ago and stole stock information before it was public. Dow Jones, which is part of News Corp and owns the Wall Street Journal, claims it's unaware of any such hack, despite the FBI confirming the incident to both Bloomberg and CNBC. "We are looking into whether there is any truth whatsoever to this report by a competitor news organization," Dow Jones says in a statement released to CNBC. The FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission have spent months trying to figure out how hackers could profit from what they stole, concluding they were likely looking for stock tips contained in embargoed information and unpublished stories, Bloomberg reports. Dow Jones admitted to another cybersecurity breach last week in which hackers tried to get contact and payment information from around 3,500 customers. According to Bloomberg's sources, this new hack is more serious than the one Dow Jones addressed publicly. It's unclear if the two incidents are related.
– Apparently we've reached the point in the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes divorce where people start coming out of the woodwork with bizarre dirt from the past. In today's edition, a former manager and mentor says Cruise used to strut around the house they shared wearing nothing but a G-string, proud as he was of his muscular body. "I had a mirrored wall and he would stand in front of it, flexing his biceps and admiring himself," she tells the Mail. Another weird revelation: Cruise was a devout Catholic before he became a Scientologist, and as a teen he had a vague interest in becoming a priest, Father Ric Schneider tells the Daily Beast. As for Katie Holmes, she's not letting this divorce get in the way of her career—and her upcoming project seems quite telling. She'll start production on Molly next week, a film she co-wrote and is co-producing about a single mother and her daughter, People reports. As for Holmes' actual daughter, it seems Suri could be a sticking point when it comes to the settlement talks Tom and Katie are starting. Cruise won't make a deal unless it includes "meaningful, significant contact with his daughter," sources tell TMZ. For more, click to see pictures of Katie Holmes in Whole Foods or … Katie Holmes in Whole Foods yet again.
– It isn't a handbag or a pussy bow blouse, but Karl Lagerfeld's latest star turn has design aficionados swooning. There's a waiting list at New York's Museum of Modern Art's shop for Lagerfeld's KARLBOX, a collection of colored pencils, markers, paintbrushes and other artsy doodads, reports Quartz. But the breathtaking part is the $3,000 price tag (sharpeners included). Some 2,500 of the limited-edition sets made by Faber-Castell sold out shortly after going on sale online last month, per the Hollywood Reporter. "What amuses me while drawing is the fact to draw," Lagerfeld, 83, says ponderously on the KARLBOX website. "To me drawing is like breathing and writing. These are things that almost relax me." Although the collection is tagged "Colours in Black," the tools come in every color of the rainbow. Could pencils costing roughly $9 each possibly be worth it? The reviews aren't in, though the design gets raves. Vogue hails the set as "über-chic," while Forbes notes the "elegant" black wood box "resembles a Chinese wedding cabinet." Lagerfield said he's used Faber-Castell pencils since he was a kid and began sketching his own designs. "I wanted to become an illustrator, so I studied every book of costume design from any kind of period," says the Chanel impresario, per Quartz. He tested out his skills for the 2014 Coco Chanel The Allure of Chanel. (What offends Lagerfeld's design sensibilities? Lots of things.)
– It just got a whole lot less fun to be a Catholic in Philadelphia. New guidelines released by Archbishop Charles Chaput last Friday say divorced couples who have remarried must permanently abstain from sex, instead living like "brother and sister," the Guardian reports. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, there are about 4.5 million US Catholics who have been remarried without getting their first marriage annulled by the church. But divorcees aren't the only ones Chaput wants to see living without sex. People in same-sex relationships and straight couples who aren't married must also go sexless. Fortunately, the new guidelines explain that anyone can be in a successful heterosexual marriage with kids even with "some degree of same-sex attraction." The guidelines, which come from one of the most conservative Catholic leaders in the US, also recommend priests try to break up couples who aren't interested in getting married, which shows they're "lacking in maturity," and claims same-sex relationships will "produce moral confusion in the community." Anyone going against the guidelines should not receive Holy Communion and should be barred from positions of responsibility within the church. The six pages of guidelines are a direct response to Pope Francis' Joy of Love document, which many saw as instructing bishops to be more accepting of "irregular" relationships. But one official with the Philadelphia archdiocese says that document "may not have been as well expressed as it should have been." Chaput's guidelines are meant to clarify it.
– Just how far Charlie Sheen veered off the rails before his hospitalization last week has been revealed by yet another porn star pal, who talks of seeing cocaine chunks the size of tennis balls at the star's last bender. "I've never seen someone so self-destructive and able to take in so much at once," says Kacey Jordan, who attended Sheen's party at his LA home. "It was almost like a suicide binge." Sheen asked her to move in to a mansion he planned to turn into a "24-hour party"—then asked if she would babysit his kids, Jordan tells ABC News. "He drinks any kind of liquor or anything like it's water. He can chug it," says Jordan. Sheen also repeatedly smoked chunks of cocaine, lighting up his pipe every few minutes, she adds. When an assistant finally told him he was out of drugs he told her: "'We got to call my boy.' Then a man comes in with a bag of drugs and dumps tennis ball-sized cocaine on the table," Jordan recalls, describing Sheen as "wrecked and in shambles." His TV series Two and a Half Men is on hold. (Click to read what Denise Richards thinks about a porn star babysitting her kids.)
– With the rise of sharing breast milk, a disturbing new study finds that 72% of samples bought online contained bacteria that could cause infections and 21% contained viruses. In 74% of the 101 samples purchased anonymously from two popular websites, the total bacteria count was significantly higher than the level generally considered safe. Bacteria found included E. coli, staphylococcus, streptococcus, and even salmonella, the Wall Street Journal reports. The FDA does not regulate the breast milk market, though it discourages sharing, the New York Times reports. Breast milk can be sold or donated on dozens of websites, and while some suppliers hand off the milk in person, others ship it. Problems during collection (improper hand-washing, dirty breast pumps or containers), improper storage (19% of the samples in the study were not cooled), and long shipping times (some of the samples took as long as six days to arrive) likely contributed to the health hazards. Another potential problem: Researchers say they are "a little suspicious of some of the milk," and are now working to determine if it's authentic breast milk, USA Today reports. In response to the study, at least one site that sells milk will stop allowing mothers to purchase from other mothers; donors will instead sell to a company that processes breast milk.
– Diagnosing Alzheimer's is a guessing game—and many doctors are guessing wrong, according to early results from a new study presented Wednesday in London. The Washington Post reports doctors tested 4,000 Medicare patients with mild cognitive impairment or dementia and discovered many of them definitively do not have Alzheimer's. Using PET scans, the study revealed only 54.3% of mild cognitive impairment patients and 70.5% of dementia patients had brains containing amyloid plaques. These plaques can be a sign of Alzheimer's. The patients who had them may or may not have Alzheimer's; the remaining percentage definitely don't have the disease. "To get that right diagnosis, that's really important," one woman, whose Alzheimer's diagnosis was ruled out by a PET scan, tells the AP. The findings show many people are potentially taking unnecessary Alzheimer's medication, and doctors may want to change their treatment to something cheaper or more effective. Unfortunately, the only ways to test for amyloid plaques while a patient is alive are expensive PET scans, which aren't usually covered by insurance, or invasive spinal taps. Or are they? Another study presented at the same London conference revealed a new blood test that could potentially reveal the plaques, New Scientist reports. The tests are easy and cheap enough that doctors could administer them to patients during regular checkups. Since plaques start showing up 15 to 20 years before Alzheimer's symptoms, patients could use the results to change certain lifestyle habits to decrease their risk. (This startup buys young blood, injects it into older people.)
– A survey that asked fifth-grade students in Vermont about their sexual history, preference, and gender identity has drawn complaints from parents, the AP reports. The survey sent to Windsor Elementary School students was conducted by WISE, a nonprofit domestic violence prevention and advocacy group, WPTZ-TV reported. A notice was sent to parents allowing them to opt their children out of the survey, but parent Vanessa Beach says she never received it. While she doesn't oppose topics on gender identity and sexuality being discussed, Beach says she feels the survey questions were inappropriate for her daughter's age group. "My daughter is 10. So are all the other kids who took this," Beach says. "A sexual partner at 10 years old would be called sexual abuse." A WISE representative says the survey questions were created with University of New Hampshire researchers with whom the group is sharing the collected data. Beach says she told the school and WISE about her concerns. School administrators and WISE officials say they are working to address parents' complaints. Students are told that they are not required to take the test and can choose not to, a WISE official says. Beach says she appreciates other work WISE does to raise awareness about domestic violence.
– Today in Completely Random Celebrity Couplings: Kim Kardashian ex Kris Humphries once went on a date with Jon Huntsman’s daughter, Mary Anne. Her sister, Liddy, reveals that little tidbit in a new GQ profile, to a horrified reaction ("Liddy!" says Mary Anne). Humphries was playing for the Utah Jazz at the time; the two saw Elf, ate popcorn, and never saw one another again. Writes Noreen Malone in New York, “This is not really newsworthy, and yet it somehow blows our minds.”
– The suspect in a triple homicide in northern Ohio is actually believed to have killed a total of five people in a 24-hour period. After allegedly killing a mother and her two daughters in a North Royalton home, police believe 45-year-old George Brinkman Jr. murdered a Lake Township couple he'd been house-sitting for, per the Canton Repository. Stark County Sheriff George Maier says Brinkman's vehicle was seen in the driveway of Rogell and Roberta John's home after they returned from a vacation on Sunday. The next day around 4pm, Rogell John's son called 911 to report that he'd found his father, 71, and stepmother, 64, dead under blankets in their bedroom, their luggage "still by the stairs." Police say they'd been shot to death. Their deaths followed those of Suzanne Taylor, 45, and her daughters Taylor Pifer, 21, and Kylie Pifer, 18, who were found dead in bed on Sunday, though police believe they died Saturday. It isn't clear how her daughters died, but Taylor's throat had been cut, reports Fox 8. Relatives tell the station that Taylor and Brinkman were longtime friends who went to high school together. Brinkman was taken into custody for the triple homicide Tuesday after a standoff with police. Before his arrest, he briefly exchanged Facebook messages with a reporter, denying any involvement in the women's murders, per Cleveland.com. Stark County authorities later described Brinkman as a former boyfriend of the Johns' daughter who worked for a family business.
– A House vote on the American Health Care Act was canceled just before it was scheduled to happen, avoiding what the AP says would have been a "humiliating defeat" for President Trump and GOP leaders while still being—according to Politico—a "staggering defeat" for Trump and Paul Ryan. On Thursday, Trump had demanded a vote on the Republican replacement for ObamaCare despite it appearing primed to fail. On Friday, CNN reports Trump called Ryan and asked him to pull the bill without a vote. Sean Spicer says Trump "left everything on the field" trying to make a deal to get the AHCA approved. Hospital and insurer stocks saw an immediate improvement with the news there would be no vote, according to Reuters.
– Police in Munich, Germany, warned citizens of an "imminent" terrorist attack shortly before New Year's Eve, the AP reports. According to ABC News, there are possible plans to blow up bombs at two train stations: the main Munich station and Pasing station. "Due to existing information, which we take highly seriously, there is an attack planned tonight," NBC News quotes Munich police. Both train stations were evacuated.
– You'd think that much cold, hard cash would make for an uncomfortable night's sleep. The AP reports a 28-year-old Brazilian man was arrested this week in Massachusetts after authorities found about $20 million hidden in a box spring. The arrest of Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha is connected to an investigation into TelexFree, an alleged pyramid scheme, according to Reuters. Authorities say TelexFree was originally created to swindle Brazilian immigrants but ended up taking $1.8 billion from nearly 1 million people around the world. Authorities say Rocha, acting as a courier for the nephew of TelexFree's founder, delivered a suitcase containing $2.2 million to a cooperating witness. They then followed him to an apartment where they found $20 million more under a mattress. He's been charged with conspiring to commit money laundering.
– Walking Dead star Scott Wilson has died of complications of leukemia at the age of 76. Scott's career spanned more than five decades and included 50 movie credits, but he was perhaps best known for his portrayal of Herschel Greene in AMC's zombie thriller. Wilson's rep tells TMZ that he was "a national treasure, a calm voice, and a gentle spirit to everyone who came in contact with him." In an odd turn of events, TWD's showrunner announced Saturday night that Wilson would be returning for its ninth season, reports EW, even though his character was previously killed off. Wilson had already completed that filming; news of his death came just hours later.
– More horror from ISIS' media wing: A boy who appears to be no older than 12 shoots dead an alleged Israeli spy in the latest video released by the militants. The video shows an older, French-speaking militant threatening Jews before the boy shoots a man identified as Muhammad Said Ismail Musallam, a 19-year-old Israeli Arab, in the forehead, the BBC reports. The older militant describes the boy as a "lion cub of the caliphate" in the video, which also shows Musallam confessing to spying on ISIS for Israel, reports Reuters. Israeli authorities say Musallam was not a spy but an ISIS recruit, which his father confirms to CNN from his home in East Jerusalem. The teenager was promised "girls, money, cars, villas, paradise," but tried to leave when he "discovered that there is nothing" and was captured as he tried to return home, the father says. Separately, an ISIS defector now in Turkey has explained why some hostages seem calm in beheading videos the group has released. In an interview with Sky News, the defector claims foreign hostages were subjected to many filmed mock executions before they were finally killed, and part of his job as a translator for ISIS was to convince the Westerners that they would not be harmed and the videos were only to put pressure on their governments.
– Bernie Sanders on Sunday made clear that he has no intention of conceding victory to Hillary Clinton if she fails to reach the number of pledged delegates necessary to clinch the nomination. "She will need super delegates to take her over the top of the convention in Philadelphia," he said, per ABC News. "In other words, the convention will be a contested contest." At the New York Times, Paul Krugman writes that this development is "really depressing." Sanders, he argues, is embarking on "an epic descent into whining." If he were to accept defeat graciously, Sanders could play a big role in shaping the Democratic party's future, but Krugman thinks he's risking that chance—along with his credibility—for a few additional weeks of life in a losing contest. "Can someone tell Bernie that he’s in the process of blowing his own chance for a positive legacy?" Meanwhile, an analysis by Philip Bump at the Washington Post suggests that while Sanders can indeed force a contested convention, he has little if any chance of emerging as the winner: "What's going to happen at that convention is not much of a mystery." Click for the full analysis.
– A military brain-injury testing program has cost $42 million thus far—but hardly any soldiers have benefited from the plan, according to a joint investigation by NPR and ProPublica. Their reports suggest the program has a been a huge waste of money that has fallen way short of its primary mission—diagnosing brain injuries among the troops. “We have failed soldiers,” says a retired colonel who used to run the program. “I can see firsthand the soldiers that we've missed, the soldiers that have not been treated, not been identified, misdiagnosed. And then they struggle.” Congress in 2007 called on the military to test troops’ brain function before and after deployment to help fight the rising number of traumatic brain injuries. One big problem: The test ultimately chosen isn’t the best one available for the job, insiders say. What's more, the people who invented the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metric and stood to gain financially from its use were involved in the military's decision to employ it. The Army thinks it's essentially useless at this point, even though soldiers continue to be tested with it. Read ProPublica's full piece here.
– "Are you kidding? You're about to snort coke on the side of the road?" A routine traffic stop on Tuesday in Seattle ended with one poor police officer getting increasingly incredulous after the 73-year-old man he pulled over allegedly tried to snort some coke in the middle of their interaction, the Seattle Times reports. According to the police, officer Nic Abts-Olsen pulled the man over for driving without his lights on and was about to let him off with a warning when the man started removing some cocaine from a small vial. Easily caught in the act, the man claimed the white powder was "vitamins" before fessing up and complimenting the officer's "keen detection skills," according to police. "What would possess you to do that during a traffic stop with a police officer right behind you? I just don't understand," a frustrated Abts-Olsen can be heard asking on his dashcam video. "I don't understand it either," the man replies. The man was arrested on suspicion of drug possession.
– Note to those wanted by police: If your goal is not to get caught, it's probably not a good idea to "share" your mugshot on Facebook after the police department posts it. That's what Anthony James Lescowitch did Monday, police say; not surprisingly, the move led to the Pennsylvania man's arrest. The Freeland Police Department initially posted Lescowitch's mugshot asking anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts to alert authorities. Lescowitch then shared the mugshot and mocked police on his Facebook page ... and was arrested 45 minutes later. Lescowitch was wanted on multiple charges, including aggravated assault, that date back to the summer, but he's been evading authorities since charges were filed in November. After seeing his Facebook post (which he shared within three minutes of the original post, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune, and which included the commentary "lol i f­--n love it A----E," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer) an undercover officer posed as a "fictitious attractive woman," as the Times Leader puts it, who wanted to meet up with Lescowitch. After about 30 minutes, Lescowitch told "her" where he would be; cops arrived, and he was taken into custody. (Click for another tale of dumb criminals.)
– In the wake of the Orlando shooting one week ago, Donald Trump says the country should do what it has to do to prevent future such attacks, and he's putting racial profiling squarely on the table. "Well I think profiling is something that we're going to have to start thinking about as a country," Trump tells CBS News' Face the Nation on Sunday. "Other countries do it, you look at Israel and you look at others, they do it and they do it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling but we have to start using common sense and we have to use our heads. It's not the worst thing to do." Civil libertarians have decried profiling as discriminatory, notes the AP. But Trump maintains that in the age of international terrorism, it's a matter of choosing "common sense" over "political correctness." Of the Orlando gunman, Trump added, "You look at his past, I've never seen a past quite like that. You look at his record in school, you look at a lot of other things. There were a lot of red flags, this was not a very good young man." He's also proposed a temporary ban on foreign Muslims from entering the United States.
– Derek Benson wore a sweatshirt that said "libre" ("freedom") on it for a 2014 mugshot, but he got quite the opposite after a man contacted police in Glastonbury, Conn., to report he had seen the mugshot and that Benson, 30, was wearing the victim's Coco Libre sweatshirt—which had been stolen from his residence in July 2014, the Smoking Gun reports. The victim works for the coconut water company, a police rep says. A "subsequent investigation" led to Benson's Sept. 16 arrest for that home burglary as well, a Glastonbury Police Department press release notes, and Benson was charged with burglary, larceny, criminal trespass, and criminal larceny, Fox Connecticut reports. (This suspected burglar didn't just take stuff with him—he left stuff behind.)
– Apple is about to get more than a billion new potential customers for the iPhone 4s—but many of them may find it tricky communicating with Siri just yet. The smartphone will be launched in China and 21 other countries next week, and while its voice-activated virtual assistant currently only speaks English, French, and German, Apple says it plans to add Mandarin later this year, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Customer response to our products in China has been off the charts, " Apple CEO Tim Cook said, noting that the iPhone 4S will soon be available in more than 90 countries and regions, making it the fastest-ever iPhone rollout. Apple currently partners with the carrier China Unicom, but insiders tell Computer World that it is close to forging a deal with the country's behemoth carrier, China Mobile, which boasts a whopping 630 million subscribers.
– On the heels of a renewed hunt for treasure in a tiny French village comes the tale of buried treasure in California. The San Francisco Chronicle takes a look back at one of the state's colorful historical figures: Granville P. Swift, the great-nephew of Daniel Boone who came to the state in the mid-1800s with a plan to be a fur trapper. Gold called his name instead. He found it at Bidwell's Bar, with the paper quoting a fellow prospector as saying Swift was an exceptional miner who "must have made $100,000" in one prospecting season. Indeed, reports at the time indicate he arrived in San Francisco with more than $500,000 in gold, which he had minted into octagonal slugs—and began to bury around the Bay Area. The Vacaville Reporter previously reported that Swift reburied roughly $100,000 in gold after building his mansion in 1858, but the Chronicle reports a "scatter-brained" Swift failed to recall where he had put much of it. He died in 1875 with much of his haul secreted away in forgotten locations. Some was found in the early 20th century, including $30,000 found in 1904 while repairing a chimney on his property. But the last big find was in 1914, suggesting, in the Chronicle's view, there's more out there to be found ... and not much more than unhelpful-seeming clues to go on. The Reporter notes a "list in his handwriting miraculously survived," but the clues are of this sort: "1 tin box & 1 Little Bottle Boath in the saim hoal."
– Move over, "Gangnam Style." YouTube has a new top-viewed video of all time. Wiz Khalifa's video for "See You Again" featuring Charlie Puth became the site's most-watched video Monday and has more than 2.897 billion views as of Tuesday, the AP reports. That's about 3 million more than the video for Korean rapper Psy's 2012 smash "Gangnam Style," which held the most-viewed title for five years, YouTube says. Justin Bieber's "Sorry" sits in third place, more than 250 million views behind the leaders. Puth reacted with surprise on Twitter Monday night, noting he had joined YouTube in 2007 hoping to make a video that would hit 10,000 views. Puth also earned a congratulatory message from YouTube star Tyler Oakley, who called the feat "legendary & epic." Wiz Khalifa said in a statement that he's happy the song has been able to "inspire and impact so many lives." "See You Again" was released in 2015 as a tribute to late "Fast and the Furious" star Paul Walker. Check out the new title holder above, or here.
– A funny thing happened as an 11th-grade teacher in Michigan started grading the final exam: Almost everybody aced it with a perfect score, reports WXYZ. Alas, the reason became clear soon enough, and it didn't have much to do with studying. It seems that two students spotted the answer key beforehand, snapped photos, then shared them in a group text, reports CBS Detroit. "Consequences are forthcoming," says the superintendent of schools in Southgate. All of the approximately 30 students in the unnamed class at Anderson High School had to retake a different version of the test, reports the local News-Herald.
– The SEC is finally trying to rein in the robots. Chairman Mary Jo White today announced a massive initiative designed to tame high-frequency traders, the Wall Street Journal reports. These automated trades currently make up more than half of all trading volume, yet they've almost totally avoided direct regulatory oversight because the computers are trading on behalf of their owners, not clients. The rules White is proposing would change that, forcing high-frequency traders to register as broker dealers. White also said the SEC was working on rules to prevent the computers from engaging in strategies that put the market at risk of massive swings, like the infamous flash crash. The SEC also introduced plans to affect how human traders operate, Bloomberg adds—the agency is concerned that the stock exchanges have too many types of orders, adding complexity for no reason, and that some traders are using exchange-sold price feeds that are faster than the ones the general public relies on.
– Police say they removed 10 children from a squalid California home and charged their father with torture and their mother with neglect after an investigation revealed a lengthy period of severe physical and emotional abuse. The children range from 4 months to 12 years old, says Fairfield police Lt. Greg Hurlbut. The mother, Ina Rogers, told reporters that she called authorities in March after her 12-year-old son didn't come home. She said the "squalor" officers saw while investigating came from her tearing her house apart as she searched for her child. "I was afraid I could not find him," she told KGO-TV. "Once that fear sets in you don't know what to do." The investigation began March 31 when police responded to the missing juvenile report in Fairfield, 46 miles northeast of San Francisco. The officers found the boy and returned him to the family home, where they said they found nine other children living in "squalor and unsafe conditions." The father, Jonathan Allen, 29, faces felony charges of torture and child abuse and the 30-year-old Rogers faces child neglect charges, the AP reports. She was arrested March 31 and released after posting $10,000 bail. Allen was arrested Friday after specialists conducted interviews with the children, Hurlbut says. He's being held in the Solano County Jail in lieu of $1.5 million bail.
– Expecting parents wondering which company offers the best maternity and paternity leave in the US need look no further. Netflix announced yesterday that it is upping the ante, offering new parents unlimited, fully-paid maternity and paternity leave for the first year after having or adopting a child. The streaming video company based in Los Gatos, Calif., also offers unlimited paid vacation, and it's all toward fostering "a 'freedom and responsibility' culture that gives our employees context about our business and the freedom to make their own decisions along with the accompanying responsibility," writes Tawni Cranz, chief talent officer. The new policy "deserves high marks for extending leave to fathers," reports Fortune, "as well as understanding that the entire first year after childbirth can be challenging." It's a "landmark perk," reports TechCrunch, noting that Yahoo doubled its maternity and paternity leave in 2013 (to 16 paid weeks for moms and eight paid weeks for dads) to compete with packages offered by Facebook and Google because "the talent is growing up." A decade ago big company perks included free lunch and ping pong tables, but now the major moves are about helping employees balance work and home life because "experience shows people perform better at work when they’re not worrying about home," Cranz adds. Of course, employees will have to plan their leave with managers and coworkers in advance to make sure their absence isn't disruptive—behaving, you know, like adults. (See who beat Netflix to the punch.)
– Steven Seagal spends a lot of time in the nations that used to make up the USSR, but one of them has now declared him persona non grata. Ukraine has slapped the actor with a 5-year ban from the country, labelling him a threat to national security, the Guardian reports. Seagal, who has called Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea "very reasonable" and played at a concert put on by separatists in the region, became a Russian citizen in November with an executive order signed by Vladimir Putin, who personally delivered his Russian passport. Ukraine says Crimea is still part of its territory and anybody who travels there needs to get permission from Kiev. The order from Ukraine's security service states that Seagal has "committed socially dangerous actions" that "contradict the interests of maintaining Ukraine’s security." Other stars banned from Ukraine over the Crimea issue include Gerard Depardieu, who was granted Russian citizenship in 2013. The Telegraph reports that the country has also banned Russian singer Yulia Samoylova, the country's Eurovision Song Contest nominee, meaning she won't be able to compete in the finals in Kiev this month.
– BP has begun using huge amounts of chemical dispersants to contain the oil slick that has tripled in only a day and is now the size of Puerto Rico. (AP has more on the growing size here.) And while those chemicals—being used above and below the surface—will help reduce the amount of oil that makes landfall, they create a whole new set of environmental concerns in the water, reports ProPublica. The makeup of the dispersants is secret under trade laws, but their toxins can kill fish and collect on the seabed to reenter the food chain. "There is a chemical toxicity to the dispersant compound that in many ways is worse than oil,” says an expert on marine biology. “It’s a trade off—you’re damned if you do damned if you don’t—of trying to minimize the damage coming to shore, but in so doing you may be more seriously damaging the ecosystem offshore."
– A hiker exploring California's Yosemite National Park died Monday when he slipped from cables leading to the 8,800-foot peak of its famed Half Dome. The man was climbing the last 400 feet of the summit with the help of installed metal cables when he slipped during a thunderstorm around 4:30pm, reports CNN. His body was recovered Tuesday afternoon, though his identity is being withheld until family members are notified. His lone companion was helped from the trail without injury, per the AP. Noting most park accidents occur in wet conditions, officials say this is the first fatality on the Half Dome cables since 2010 and the first visitor fatality this year, per CNN. Per the Huffington Post, hikers are advised to avoid the Half Dome during storms. "If a storm appears nearby, do not continue to the summit and, if in the summit area, leave the area (while still using caution when descending the cables and steps)," the National Park Service says. A rep adds most hikers don't attach safety harnesses to the cables. (A 2015 rock fall made the route more challenging.)
– Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has been haggling with Robert Mueller about the idea of the president sitting down for an interview, and Giuliani had hoped to have the issue resolved by Sept. 1. That's looking increasingly unlikely now because Giuliani tells CNN he hasn't heard from Mueller's team in about three weeks. The last communication between the two sides is when Trump's lawyers sent their latest counter-offer about the interview on Aug. 8. Since then, radio silence. "I figured we wouldn't hear until after the Manafort trial, but we (still) haven't," says Giuliani. "I have to figure they're planning something." Giuliani professes to have no idea what that might be, suggesting that Mueller might be preparing to issue a subpoena or publish his report, or that the special counsel is simply content to wait until after the midterms to resume negotiations. As Giuliani waits for a response, another member of Trump's inner circle—Roger Stone—predicts that Mueller "is coming for me," reports the Hill. Stone is so sure of it that he sent an email to supporters requesting donations for his legal defense fund. "I’m next on the crooked special prosecutor’s hit list because I've advised Donald Trump for the past 39 years," he wrote. Stone further tells the Guardian that Mueller "may frame me for some bogus charge in order to silence me or induce me to testify against the president." The newspaper notes one potential area of interest: Stone has acknowledged exchanging messages during the campaign with "Guccifer 2.0," and Mueller thinks Guccifer was actually a front for Russian operatives who stole emails from top Democrats then leaked them.
– Bloom Energy's plans to put a zero-emission energy server into mass production is an "exciting development," writes David Coursey, but the company has loads of work to do before the so-called Bloom Box becomes the game-changer the hype suggests. The company is promising miniature $3,000 servers will be on the market in 10 years to power homes, but that's a long way from the big $800,000 device it's currently pitching to companies. The company didn't offer many details on how it will get there, notes AP, and plenty of other companies are at work on the same concept. One fuel cell expert tells National Geographic he's "pretty pissed" at the lack of explanation and dismissed it as "all hype." Coursey is more hopeful at PCWorld. "Who can really say? If I were guessing, I'd imagine Bloom servers might appear to power whole neighborhoods and be operated by traditional power companies before the home server appears. It all depends on how the technology and market place develops over time."
– Netflix has renewed the watercooler hit 13 Reasons Why for a second season. The streaming service announced Sunday that it has picked up the series revolving around the suicide of high schooler Hannah Baker. Season two will debut on Netflix next year, and Deadline reports it will begin "in the aftermath of [Hannah's] death and the start of the characters' complicated journeys toward healing and recovery." The second season will also be 13 episodes long, reports the AP. While Netflix doesn't release ratings information, 13 Reasons Why has proven a conversation-starting drama. Some have criticized the show for glorifying suicide, which led to Netflix adding an additional warning ahead of the series. The Selena Gomez-produced show is based on Jay Asher's young adult best-seller. The show's creators insist it doesn't glamorize suicide; more from them here.
– Scientists trying to better understand the nation's rising opioid addictions have uncovered an interesting wrinkle: A patient's risk of getting hooked might depend on which ER doctor they happen to get. In a New England Journal of Medicine study, researchers found that patients whose ER doctors are more likely to prescribe opioids are more likely to develop an addiction compared to the patients of ER doctors who prescribe less frequently. It may sound like an obvious chain of events, but it remains unclear why two patients given the same opioid prescription after similar complaints have different addiction risks depending on their ER doc. The takeaway is "not that high-intensity prescribers are necessarily irresponsible in prescribing opioids to certain patients," the lead author tells the New York Times. But "their patients have worse outcomes that we weren’t aware of before." After tracking 375,000 Medicare patients in ERs between 2008 and 2011, researchers found that one in every 48 patients prescribed opioids ends up using them long-term, or more than half a year. But when comparing "high-intensity" prescribing docs (who gave opioids to one in four patients) to "low-intensity" prescribers (one in 14), patients of the first group had a 30% greater risk of turning into long-time users. It may be a simple numbers game, as observed in a post at Pacific Standard: "The more prescriptions doctors give out, the more likely they'll end up handing a script to someone who will have a serious problem later." But one doctor sees a larger issue: Among ER doctors, there's no consensus "about when to prescribe opioids and what dose to give." (This is how long it takes to become dependent.)
– After 20 years of selling a dizzying array of products online—including bricks and mortar—Amazon.com may be moving into new territory with plans for its first brick-and-mortar store. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that the New York City store, in a prime 34th Street location across from the Empire State Building, will mostly function as a place where people can pick up goods ordered online, but it will also give people a chance to take a look at Amazon devices like Kindles before buying. Amazon plans to have the store open in time for holiday shopping, and it could be the first of many nationwide if the experiment is a success, the sources say. Retail analysts say the move could help the company take advantage of the growing popularity of ordering things online and picking them up in-store, as well as boost sales of Amazon gadgets. "There's still a segment of the population that's touchy-feely," an analyst at Creative Strategies tells USA Today. "They want to see the product up close and have it shown to them." Amazon, which was rumored to be planning a store in Seattle two years ago, declined to comment on its New York City plans, saying only that it has "made no announcements about a location in Manhattan."
– Mark Sanford appears to be bent on digging himself ever deeper into the hole he's in: The latest headline-getting incident involving South Carolina's ex-governor has Sanford publishing the phone numbers of people who called him ... after he invited people to call him in a full-page newspaper ad. Here's how it went down, per Slate: Sanford's unbelievably wordy ad (which started, "It's been a rough week" and addressed Democratic attacks against him and that whole trespassing incident) invited people to call his campaign office or his cell—and his cell phone number was included—if they had any "further questions." The House Majority PAC, which had already been supporting Elizabeth Colbert Busch in her race against Sanford, then reprinted that number in a fundraising email suggesting people "take him up on his offer" and call Sanford to "ask why he spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on luxury travel!" Sanford then took screenshots of that fundraising email and his incoming call history and published it all. His campaign rep explains why he published the numbers: "Look, if Pelosi and Co. are going to bat this hard for Colbert Busch, there ain't going to be anything 'independent' about her. We're putting it out there to illustrate just how interested Pelosi's allies are in getting Colbert Busch elected." Sanford is clearly not happy with Nancy Pelosi, and he showed it in another odd way Wednesday: by publicly debating a cardboard cutout of the House Minority Leader. He did so, he explained, because Colbert Busch won't debate him publicly, so he decided to debate Cardboard Pelosi instead. (Click to watch the video.) In news that Slate is quick to point out is unrelated, the Cook Political Report recently decided Sanford is not so likely to win against Colbert Busch, deeming the race "lean Dem." (And indeed, he is trailing his opponent by a 9-point margin.) But, hey, at least Ron Paul is endorsing Sanford, Roll Call reports.
– Triple suicide bombers hit a pair of mosques crowded with worshippers in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, today, causing heavy casualties, according to witnesses. The attackers targeted mosques frequented by Shiite rebels, who've controlled the capital since September. A report on the rebel-owned al-Masirah TV channel said the bombers attacked the Badr and al-Hashoosh mosques during midday prayers, traditionally the most crowded time of the week. Casualty numbers differ, with Reuters reporting at least 16 have been killed; CNN says 25, AP says 46, and AFP claims at least 55 have died, according to medics. The attacks come a day after intense gun battles in the southern city of Aden, between rival troops loyal to Yemen's former and current president, left 13 dead and forced closure of the city's international airport. Witnesses said that at least two suicide bombers attacked inside the Badr mosque. One walked inside the mosque and detonated his device, causing panic as dozens of worshippers rushed toward the outside gates. A second suicide bomber then attacked amid panicked crowds trying to escape. One witness at the al-Hashoosh mosque, located in Sanaa's northern district, said that he was thrown 6 feet by the blast. "The heads, legs, and arms of the dead people were scattered on the floor of the mosque," Mohammed al-Ansi told the AP, adding, "Blood is running like a river." Al-Ansi added that many of those who didn't die in the explosion were seriously injured by shattered glass falling from the mosque's windows. The Shiite TV network aired footage from inside al-Hashoosh mosque, where screaming volunteers used bloodied blankets to carry victims. Among the dead: a small child.
– Members of the low-caste Dalit community in India were once known as "untouchables." How times have changed: Two just competed against each other for the largely ceremonial office of president, and 71-year-old Ram Nath Kovind came out on top, reports CNN. In India, the real power is with the prime minister. Kovind isn't actually the first Dalit president, the first coming in 1997, notes NBC News. In fact, one analyst tells the network that the real significance of the election isn't the caste factor but its reflection of the growing power of the ruling BJP Party. Both Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi belong to the BJP (which is why the election was never really in doubt), and Modi's blessing of Kovind is seen as a calculated strategy to woo other members of the 200-million-strong Dalit community. "Dalit politics suddenly has come center stage with a bang," another analyst tells the New York Times. "Every leader is bending over backward to show, 'I am a well-wisher.'" India elects its vice president next month, and BJP is counting on another win to cement its influence over Parliament.
– No danger of this passenger experiencing an episode of nut rage: In what Los Angeles International Airport says is an aviation first, a robot traveled as a paying passenger on Monday, sitting in an economy-class seat of its own on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany, Reuters reports. "Athena," a US-made humanoid robot, was pushed through the airport in a wheelchair by two German researchers who plan to teach it to walk—and, eventually, to perform dangerous tasks like the nuclear cleanup at Fukushima. For now, she can't do much more than move her arms. An airport spokeswoman says the red-sneaker-clad Athena could have made the overseas voyage in a box, but the scientists "wanted to see how humans responded to a robot sitting in a plane." It is fairly common for people with precious cargo to buy a plane seat for it, but "most of that equipment doesn't have a humanoid face," Mashable notes. It doesn't always get special perks, either: Athena didn't have to submit to the metal detector (she got a special pat-down) and got to cut to the front of the boarding line—the first-class one at that.
– Historians have long known that a medieval cemetery existed on the grounds of what is now the University of Cambridge, but until a recent dig they didn't realize just how big it was. Archaeologists uncovered the full or partial remains of about 1,300 people beneath Old Divinity School at the university's St. John's College. The numbers make it one of Britain's largest medieval cemeteries, reports the Guardian. Most of the people were buried between the 13th and 15th centuries, when the cemetery was in operation near the ancient Hospital of St. John the Evangelist. Most were buried without coffins or shrouds, suggesting they were poor, notes the Telegraph. Unusual for cemeteries of this era was the lack of infants and young women, likely because the nearby hospital did not treat pregnant women and instead focused on "poor scholars and other wretched persons," reports the University of Cambridge. Archaeologists also found evidence of gravel paths, seeds, and a water well, meaning that the cemetery seemed to be a place where loved ones would visit and pay their respects. (Click to read about how a medieval potion might help against modern superbugs.)
– Vincent Van Gogh may have cut off his own ear in response to what most people would consider happy news, according to a writer who has taken a fresh look at one of history's famous self-mutilations. Martin Bailey says Van Gogh didn't take a razor to his ear because of an argument with fellow artist Paul Gauguin, though the two did quarrel that day in 1888, the Guardian reports. Instead, Van Gogh cut his ear off because he had learned that his brother, Theo, was going to get married, Bailey says. He says the struggling artist feared that the marriage would end his close relationship with his brother—and that it would cause Theo to cut off the financial support Van Gogh relied on. Bailey says that Van Gogh didn't learn of the engagement while he was recovering in hospital, as previously thought, but in a letter that was delivered to him in Provence just hours before the self-mutilation. "Had Van Gogh been elated by the engagement, it is virtually inconceivable that he would have sliced off part of his ear a few hours after receiving Theo’s news, whatever other difficulties he was facing," Bailey writes in new book Studio of the South, per the Telegraph. Bailey, writing in the Art Newspaper, says his research into Van Gogh's years in Provence has also yielded clues to the whereabouts of Van Gogh's famous bed. He believes it was donated to needy people in a small Dutch town months after the end of World War II. (This museum grew an ear from Van Gogh DNA.)
– The ethics troubles of Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel have led to what both the Hill and Politico call a rare bit of public infighting on the House ethics panel. The Republicans on the panel demanded today that Democrats schedule separate trials for the two Democrats before the November elections. Anything else is just stalling to avoid negative headlines, said ranking GOP member Jo Bonner. “After months of trial preparation—and, in the Rangel matter, two years of investigation—Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren should have already issued notices of public trial schedules in both the Rangel and Waters matters,” said Bonner. Congressional ethics committees general work in bipartisan secrecy to settle such things. Both Waters (earlier stories here) and Rangel (earlier stories here) have fiercely denied any wrongdoing.
– Scott Pruitt is no longer head of the Environmental Protection Agency, but the saga of his $43,000 phone booth isn't quite over. The Washington Post is out with one last financial tidbit courtesy of the Sierra Club, which sued the EPA to access records related to Pruitt. It learned, per Verizon phone logs, that Pruitt made a single outgoing call from the soundproof phone booth. The five-minute call was placed to the White House on Jan. 29. The EPA on Monday said it learned it couldn't provide the incoming call logs without subpoenaing Verizon, so any details on calls Pruitt may have received from the White House in the booth aren't available.
– After a kayaker's close call was followed by Massachusetts' first great white shark attack since 1936, authorities have some advice for Cape Cod swimmers: Stay away from seals. More than 300,000 grey seals now live in the area—30 times more than in the '60s—and their presence has attracted plenty of great whites, notes the Globe and Mail. The seal-hunting sharks lurk offshore as seals leave or return to beaches, making the area where the bottom drops off a very bad place to swim if you don't want to be mistaken for a seal by a hungry shark, experts say. Tourism officials hope the attack won't be too bad for business. "Not to downplay the nasty experience the bitee has had, but there are sharks in the ocean," the director of the state's tourism office says. "There’s a lot of signs and notices about where it is safe to swim and where it is not. People should stay away from seals." The bitee himself, a 50-year-old man from Denver, suffered serious leg injuries but was released from the hospital yesterday—and he isn't holding a grudge against the shark. "I’ll be biting into a nice steak tonight and probably not thinking too hard about it," he told the Boston Herald. "So I can’t get too mad at the shark either."
– A man who urged an end to violence in Oakland after gunfire killed his son and grandson as they slept three years ago became a victim himself this week as he drove near a street memorial for his slain family. Melvin Johnson, 39, was shot and killed Tuesday on the east side of the city, not far from the shrine for his 16-month-old grandson and 20-year-old son, who were fatally shot in August 2013, the East Bay Times reports. Police have made no arrests and released no motive for Johnson's killing. They have not said if the shooting was random or if Johnson was targeted. "In three years and four months, three generations of one family [have] been lost to gun violence in the streets of Oakland," community activist Sherri-Lyn Miller tells the AP. She was a friend of Johnson's. "Melvin Johnson was a giant teddy bear, and the loss has not only devastated the Johnson family, but all that knew him," Miller says. Johnson had moved his son, Andrew "Drew" Thomas, and grandson, Drew Leon Deon Jackson, to the central California city of Fresno to get them away from Oakland's street violence, but they were slain while in town for a birthday party. A shooter fired into a relative's home in the middle of the night, killing the sleeping pair. The slayings are still unsolved. Johnson's mother, Carolyn Smith, spoke of her late son Wednesday as a good person who was committed to his family following a series of tragedies. Another of his sons, 8-year-old Jahmel Johnson, died last month after a battle with lymphoma. Melvin "helped everybody, he loved everybody," his mother said.
– Notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was transferred Saturday from the Altiplano maximum-security prison outside Mexico City to a prison just south of the Texas border, AFP reports. El Chapo arrived in Ciudad Juarez along with 150 federal police officers aboard three planes and was taken from the airport to the prison by helicopter. CNN quotes Mexican authorities who say the move "was carried out with full respect for the human rights of the inmate." Government sources say El Chapo's new prison is "one of the safest" despite not being maximum security. The former head of the Sinaloa drug cartel has broken out of maximum-security prisons twice in the past. It's unclear exactly why El Chapo was moved to a new prison. "I can't say what the government is thinking," one of his lawyers, who says the defense team wasn't notified, tells the AP. CNN quotes a Mexican official as saying the transfer to a prison closer to the border "makes it easier to extradite him" to the US. But the Mexican government has said that process is still a year or so away from being complete. Other authorities say Altiplano needed security renovations. But AFP quotes an official who says the transfer was routine and done "solely by security protocols as part of a rotation of prisoners." Authorities say they've rotated more than 7,400 prisoners since last September.
– With a guilty verdict Thursday, the Grim Sleeper officially became one of the "most prolific and enduring serial killers" in California history, the Los Angeles Times reports. Lonnie Franklin Jr., 63, was convicted of murdering 10 women, one only 15 years old, between 1985 and 2007 in South Los Angeles. A jury will now decide whether Franklin receives life in prison or the death penalty. Franklin, a former garbage collector and police garage attendant, would kill his victims and leave them partially clothed or naked in alleys and dumpsters near his home, according to CNN. He was tied to killings in 2010 using new DNA technology. The AP reports a cop posing as a busboy got Franklin's DNA off pizza crusts and napkins following a birthday celebration. It matched saliva found on the breasts of many of the victims. More than 60 witnesses testified during the three-month trial. A surviving victim (Franklin was also found guilty of attempted murder) recalled Franklin luring her into his car, abruptly shooting her in the chest, then getting on top of her. The last thing she remembered before passing out was a camera flash. She said he pushed her out of the car when he thought she was dead. A number of Franklin's victims were prostitutes or drug addicts; all of them were black. The murders never gained the attention received by other slayings in California, and many blamed police indifference for them going unsolved. Families of the victims, many in tears, were present when the verdict was read. "He doesn't value life," CNN quotes the sister of Franklin's 15-year-old victim as saying. "He doesn't care." Prosecutors believe they have evidence of at least five more victims.
– An absolutely awful story out of Houston, where police say four children were left alone Monday night and their mother came home to find one of them dead. The two 3-year-old siblings of the 19-month-old little girl who died, J'Zyra Thompson, told authorities that one of them put the baby in the oven and the other one turned it on and made it "hot," ABC 13 reports. J'Zyra, they said, kicked the oven door while she was trapped inside. The oldest sibling, 5, was apparently asleep at the time, Click2Houston reports. When Racqual Thompson, the children's mother, returned home from going out with her boyfriend to get takeout pizza and pick up a prescription, she attempted CPR, but it was too late. J'Zyra died of multiple burns. Police say Racqual Thompson had left the children without informing a grandmother who also lived at the apartment complex. The three surviving children are in foster care, as CPS could not find suitable relatives to care for them. Criminal charges are expected, though none have yet been filed. (In Kentucky, an arrest has been made in the killing of a girl who went missing at a football game.)
– In bad news for the Alaskan economy but good news for polar bears, the US government blocked new offshore drilling in Alaska's Arctic Ocean and refused to extend two existing leases for Arctic drilling on Friday, the New York Times reports. The Interior Department cancelled auctions for drilling rights in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas while declining to extend the Arctic leases of Shell (expires in 2017) and Statoil (expires in 2020), according to NPR. "In light of Shell's announcement, the amount of acreage already under lease, and current market conditions, it does not make sense to prepare for lease sales in the Arctic in the next year and a half," Interior secretary Sally Jewell says in a statement. The Shell announcement Jewell is talking about is the oil giant's decision last month to halt its Arctic drilling after accidents, delays, and $7 billion with nothing to show for it, the Times reports. The moves by the Obama administration Friday basically block drilling in the Alaskan Arctic for two years. It's a decision one Alaskan senator calls "stunning," "destructive," and "shortsighted." But Miyoko Sakashita of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity tells the BBC it's great news for the Arctic and its wildlife. "We need to keep all the Arctic oil in the ground," she says. The US Geological Survey believes the Arctic holds about 13% of the world's undiscovered oil, but the Times reports offshore Arctic drilling is declining—due to concerns over safety, cost, and the environment—in the US, Canada, and Greenland.
– President Trump slammed the "disgraceful" verdict Thursday after a Mexican citizen was found not guilty of murder in the 2015 shooting death of Kate Steinle at a San Francisco pier. "No wonder the people of our Country are so angry with Illegal Immigration," Trump tweeted Thursday night, and he kept up his criticism Friday morning. "BUILD THE WALL!" he wrote. Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, a 45-year-old undocumented immigrant who had already been deported from the US five times, was also acquitted by a jury on charges of involuntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon, CNN reports. Steinle was fatally shot on July 1, 2015, as she walked on Pier 14. Zarate's defense attorneys said he found a handgun wrapped in a shirt under a chair and it accidentally went off as he picked it up, NBC reports. The gun turned out to have been stolen from a federal agent days earlier, and prosecutors argued that Zarate deliberately pointed it at the 32-year-old Steinle. Zarate—who was wanted for a sixth deportation when he was arrested for the shooting—was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm and will be sentenced at a later date. Months before the shooting, Zarate was released under San Francisco's "sanctuary city" policy, and Trump complained Friday that he "came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border." He added that the "Schumer/Pelosi Democrats" are weak on crime and "will pay a big price in the 2018 and 2020 elections." Steinle died in the arms of her father, Jim Steinle, who tells the San Francisco Chronicle that the family is shocked and saddened by the verdict. "Justice was rendered but not served," he says.
– Endangered Sumatran tigers got two new additions this week: A female named Damai at the National Zoo in DC gave birth to a pair of healthy cubs on Monday. Only about 500 of the tigers exist in the wild, with 65 in zoos in North America, notes the Washington Post. (That includes Damai's mate, Kavi.) The cubs won't be on exhibit for a few months, but you can check them out via a webcam at the zoo's website. "All I can do is smile because the team has realized our goal of producing critically endangered tiger cubs," says a zoo biologist. "Damai came to us as a young tiger herself, so it's really special to see her become a great mom."
– Imagine you're in the middle of law class lecture on vigilantes, when a man bursts in, jumps on a desk, announces that he's making a "citizen's arrest," and then pepper sprays the professor. Because that's exactly what happened at George Mason University yesterday, and no, it wasn't a planned part of the lecture. The professor, popular libertarian economics blogger and occasional New York Times columnist Tyler Cowen, ran into the hall, and the intruder chased him, ABC 7 reports. Luckily, a student in the class was an off-duty police officer, and chased down the pepper sprayer, catching him at a building exit. Multiple charges are now pending against the sprayer. Twelve to 15 people, including Cowen, were treated for breathing issues, but Cowen was soon well enough to tweet that he was back to work, Raw Story points out.
– Blockbuster ended in-store rentals for good last Saturday night. So what was the final movie rental ever? Incredibly appropriately, it was Seth Rogen comedy This Is the End, checked out at 11pm in Hawaii, according to a tweet by the company. The question now, notes the Verge, is just how the customer will return the DVD. Blockbuster announced last week that it is shuttering its remaining 300 US stores. Meanwhile, over in the UK and Ireland, there are still 264 Blockbusters, but the company has just gone into administration, the BBC reports.
– JK Rowling embarked on quite the flight of fancy when inventing her pseudonym Robert Galbraith—and that might prove controversial. Galbraith's bio claims that he spent "several years with the Royal Military Police" and that the protagonist of his novel—one-legged Afghanistan veteran Cormoran Strike—"grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends." Indeed, Rowling created a full backstory for her alter ego, who apparently eventually found himself in the RMP's plain-clothes Special Investigative Branch, before leaving for the civilian security industry. While so far Rowling's invention appears to be flying under the radar, fake military service claims often prove contentious. In the US, it's even illegal to profit from them, thanks to the new Stolen Valor Act, which was signed into law last month to replace an earlier version struck down by the Supreme Court. Then again, Rowling probably could have profited more without the pseudonym; since the reveal, sales of The Cuckoo's Calling exploded 507,000% at Amazon, reports CNN, and it's now out of stock online at both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. (A rep for the latter told the Wall Street Journal it wasn't a big seller pre-reveal.) A new edition is coming that will acknowledge Galbraith as a pseudonym for Rowling.
– The war of words between Chicago and the federal government over "sanctuary cities" policy is heating up. Attorney General Jeff Sessions slammed the city's leaders Monday over their lawsuit against the Trump administration, saying they "have demonstrated an open hostility to enforcing laws designed to protect law enforcement" and "instead have adopted an official policy of protecting criminal aliens who prey on their own residents," despite a surge in violent crime, Politico reports. Sessions said Mayor Rahm Emanuel has complained that the federal government is demanding a "reordering of law enforcement practice"—but that is what is needed to combat "the culture of lawlessness that has beset the city." "It's this simple: Comply with the law or forgo taxpayer dollars," Sessions said. Chicago is suing over plans to withhold police grant funding from cities that fail to meet federal conditions, including granting immigration officials unlimited access to police stations, the Chicago Tribune reports. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Monday that the federal government's plans will damage public safety and community policing. "Undocumented immigrants are not driving violence in Chicago, and that’s why I want our officers focused on community policing and not trying to be the immigration police," he said, per the Chicago Sun-Times.
– It was supposed to be the event of the summer. Well, OK, an event of the summer—but Michael Phelps fans still had high hopes for the swimming champ's much-hyped race Sunday against a bunch of sharks. They didn't read the fine print, however, and People and the New York Post document their disappointment on realizing the 32-year-old Olympic athlete, as part of the Phelps vs Shark: Great Gold vs Great White special on the Discovery Channel, was pitted against computer-simulated versions of the superfish, whose swim rates had been calculated during previous in-water races. "Disappointed," "letdown," and even "biggest scam of 2017" were just a few of the pejoratives hurled on social media after viewers realized Phelps wouldn't be appearing side by side with his finned foes. "More like Shark WEAK!" complained one fan on Twitter, riffing on Discovery's popular annual event. With a time of 18.7 seconds in the 50-meter preliminary, Phelps—outfitted in a special wetsuit and monofin—"lost" to a hammerhead (time: 15.1), but "won" over a reef shark (18.9 seconds). Phelps lost the 100-meter competition (one of his world-record specialties, per the Independent) against the great white, 38.1 to 36.1, per TMZ. EW.com reports the two early races were in the Bahamas, while the main event was filmed last month in South Africa; the Washington Post notes that swim took place in 56-degree open water. Phelps acknowledged the chilly swim after the special aired, tweeting: "Rematch? Next time..warmer water." (Live Science explains how great whites manage in such frigid temps.) Other fans simply laughed at the outrage. "Wait... people were actually mad that Phelps didn't race an ACTUAL shark?? Come on people.. use your heads," one tweeted.
– Coach Kyle Flood kicked five players—three of them projected starters—off the Rutgers University football team minutes before its season opener today, the AP reports. This week, players Nadir Barnwell, Razohnn Gross, Ruhann Peele, and Delon Stephenson were charged with assault stemming from a fight in April that left a 19-year-old student with a broken jaw, according to NJ.com. The fifth player, Dre Boggs, was charged with home-invasion robbery in connection with two incidents in April and May, reports USA Today. All five players were suspended by Rutgers following their arrests earlier this week. Police say Barnwell, Gross, Peele, and Stephenson—along with two former Rutgers players and a number of others—surrounded a group of four people and attacked them without provocation following a scrimmage in April, reports NJ.com. According to the site, police recently learned that fight was caught on video and seized cellphones belonging to a number of Rutgers players late last month.
– One person we haven't heard from in decades "as controversies tumbled around her": Soon-Yi Previn, wife of Woody Allen and adopted daughter of Mia Farrow. "No more," writes Daphne Merkin in a piece in New York that's attracting plenty of attention—and backlash. Previn details her life, from the time she says she was a 5-year-old runaway in South Korea, up through her adoption by Farrow and headline-making relationship with Allen, who'd been in a long-term relationship with Farrow. "He pursued me," Previn says, revealing she "hated him" at first. "That's why the relationship has worked. ... He's usually a meek person, and he took a big leap." Much of the piece, however, focuses on Previn's thoughts on Farrow and sibling Dylan Farrow, who has stood by her accusations that adoptive father Allen molested her when she was a child. "What's happened to Woody is so upsetting, so unjust," Previn tells Merkin, saying Mia Farrow was an abusive, neglectful mother who "has taken advantage of the #MeToo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim." A good deal of outrage about the interview is driven by Merkin's 40-year friendship with Allen, notes the Hollywood Reporter. Dylan Farrow put out a statement saying Merkin's story was full of "bizarre fabrications." "The idea of letting a friend of an alleged predator write a one-sided piece attacking the credibility of his victim is disgusting," she notes. She also posted a statement from seven of her siblings in support of their mom, as well as one from brother Ronan Farrow, who's been instrumental in advancing the "Me Too" movement with his exposes. New York has "done something shameful here," he writes, calling the piece a "hit job." Full interview with Previn here.
– Greece blinked today: In a showdown with creditors, the crisis-wracked country agreed to find the final $1.85 billion needed to reach the $14.2 billion in cuts required to get desperately needed aid money in September, reports Reuters. Greece had been asking for more time, but fed-up German and EU donors in turn threatened to pull the plug on the whole bailout. Instead, Greece will further cut pensions and wages. Germany's finance minister reiterated today that Greece was out of wriggle room, reports the AP. "The aid program is already very accommodating. I cannot see that there is still scope for further concessions," he said. But Greek unions and labor groups continue to buck hard against the austerity program. "We agreed on one thing—that we disagree on everything," said the head of Greece's leading union umbrella organization, calling the newly elected government "charlatans."
– A Utah bill designed to outlaw do-it-yourself abortions has drawn national attention, with bloggers railing that the law could punish women for accidental miscarriages. The bill, which has already passed both chambers of Utah’s legislature, would allow women to be charged with homicide if they committed an “intentional, knowing or reckless act” that led to a miscarriage. It was created after a woman allegedly paid a man to beat her until she miscarried. But critics warned that the legal definition of “reckless” is so broad that women could be jailed for not wearing a seatbelt, or returning to an abusive spouse, notes Jezebel. It’s also the rare abortion law directly targeting women. “For all these years the anti-choice movement has said, ‘We want to outlaw abortion, not put women in jail,'” one pro-choice group tells RH Reality Check, “but what this law says is, ‘No, we really want to put women in jail.'”
– Lindsay Lohan was in court today, and she continued to escape jail for now. The judge set the conditions of her release (to stay free on bail there's to be no drinking, and weekly drug testing, and she must attend those pesky alcohol classes and wear an alcohol monitoring bracelet) and set July 6 as the date for her formal probation violation hearing, according to TMZ. Her lawyer said evidence would be submitted to show Lohan tried her darndest to get home from Cannes in time for the original hearing date. “I don't see what reason I would go to prison for,” LiLo says in a Hollywood.tv video posted on YouTube in advance of the hearing. "I've been more than compliant with everything having to do with the court system." Predictably, she also denies doing drugs, insists she doesn’t need rehab, calls her father insane…and starts crying when discussing having to miss her brother’s graduation today.
– Just how bad are Pakistan's power grid problems? This bad: The government has ordered civil servants to stop wearing socks, reports Reuters. The weird order goes hand in hand with another edict that forbids government offices from turning on their air-conditioners. That makes things so unbearably hot that the workers are barred from wearing shoes and socks lest they be tempted to reach for the AC. Instead, bare feet in sandals or moccasins are required. If it sounds like desperation, that's because it is. Even in major cities, electricity goes down for 10 hours a day, reports the New York Times, and it's not hard to imagine all the disastrous ways that ripples through society—at hospitals, morgues, factories that can't run their equipment, etc. All kinds of factors are at play, but the Times zeroes in on a surprisingly simple one: "Most Pakistanis will not pay their bills." That includes everyone from rich politicians to police departments to slum dwellers. Incoming Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promised during his campaign to reform the system, but whether he has the political ability to do so remains an open question.
– Two Northwestern University freshmen were arrested Saturday for allegedly spray-painting offensive graffiti in the school chapel—including racist and homophobic messages and the word "Trump," NBC Chicago reports. Anthony Morales, 19, and Matthew Kafker, 18, took a tongue-lashing from Judge Peggy Chiampas when they appeared at a bond hearing in Chicago on Saturday in jeans and T-shirts. "These allegations are disgusting to me," she said, per the Chicago Tribune. "I don't know if any of you know how lucky you are to be at Northwestern University." When Morales' mother broke into tears, Chiampas added, "I don't mean to upset you. I mean to upset them." Police, who saw surveillance video of the alleged incident, say Morales and Kafker spray-painted a slur and expletive against blacks, a swastika, an anti-gay term, several penises, and lines over photos of Muslims students. University chaplain Tim Stevens tells the New York Daily News that he discovered the graffiti, which has mostly been removed. "It's disturbing to think that someone who’s been in this space would be venting some sort of rage that way," he says. About the word "Trump," he adds, "I can’t speculate whatever it was inside them that needed to be expressed through that." The teens were charged with hate crime to a place of worship, institutional vandalism, and criminal damage to property, and held in lieu of $50,000 bail.
– For 71 years, "we didn't even know about her. I'm getting tears now just thinking about it," says Thelma Janes of Canada, days after discovering she has a Belgian sister. Janes' father, Herbert Louis Hellyer, married and had five children in British Columbia before heading off to war in 1939, reports CBC News. He returned from Belgium after six years, having suffered a serious brain injury, and committed suicide in 1948. Unbeknownst to any of his children in Canada, Hellyer also left behind their half-sister overseas, the result of an affair he had while stationed in Ghent. Belgium's Florence Heene, 71, who knew only that her father was a Canadian soldier named Herbert, found his photo in a box of her mother's things and shared it on Facebook recently in an effort to find out more about him. Hellyer's great-granddaughter saw the photo circulating in the media in Canada—a blogger at the Toronto Sun was among those on the case—and thought it looked familiar. In a box of her own mother's items, she found an identical picture Hellyer had sent home during the war, signed, "Love from Daddy." "I'm an elderly woman, I know what went on in the war and it's to be expected," Janes, 79, says of her father's affair. But the discovery of a half-sister left her in "absolute shock," she says. Several family members have since reached out to Heene to share their father's story and to welcome her to the family. Heene, for her part, tells the CBC that "I have the piece [of my life] that I was looking for," she says.
– Outer space may be soundless, but it's apparently not odorless. Life's Little Mysteries recently stumbled upon a 2009 interview with a NASA astronaut that's too good to not resurrect. In it, Kevin Ford spoke of picking up the weird odor while undertaking spacewalks. It's not something he could smell while embarking on them (the plastic odor of the spacesuit delights the nose then), but once back in the International Space Station, the smell is there: a metallic odor that Life's Little Mysteries describes as having the "aroma of seared steak, hot metal, and welding fumes."
– News that a shooting left multiple people dead may sound depressingly familiar, but the one outside Baltimore on Thursday is unique in at least one way: The shooter was female. Police say the 26-year-old woman, who has not been identified, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said she was a temporary employee at the Rite Aid distribution center where the shooting took place, reports the Baltimore Sun. Police say the suspect killed three people, and three others remain hospitalized with wounds not believed to be life threatening. Details and developments: When, where: The Rite Aid distribution center where the shooting took place is at a business complex in Perryman, about 30 miles from Baltimore, reports WBAL. Deputies got there at 9:06am, within 5 minutes of the first call, said the sheriff. He said that deputies fired no shots and that the shooter used a 9mm Glock semiautomatic handgun. Why: Police aren't speculating about a motive. “Normally, she was a nice person, but she came in in a bad mood,” Mike Carre, an employee at a nearby business, tells the Washington Post, recounting what Rite Aid workers told him. "She wanted to pick a fight," he said. "And then she started shooting.” CNN quotes a law enforcement official who describes her as a disgruntled employee; the site says she worked there as a security guard. The woman lived in Baltimore County, and the gun was legally registered to her.
– The Museum of Modern Art has an odd mystery on its hands. First, somebody stole two photos of performance artist Carolee Schneemann worth $105,000 from a museum annex in Queens. Then somebody mailed them back, good as new. Now the NYPD has released surveillance video of the young woman believed to have done the mailing and is trying to track her down, reports People. Police traced the package with the photos back to a shipping store in Brooklyn, and the video shows a woman with a dark cap and glasses carrying the package into the store. Police say they don't know whether the woman was involved in the theft itself, what prompted the change of heart, or how the theft happened in the first place, reports CBS New York. The prints were discovered to be missing on the morning of Oct. 30, though the site's alarm had been set the previous night. Police also say there were no signs of forced entry, and the photos were returned less than a week later. The gelatin-silver prints were made by Alex V. Sobolewski to document Schneemann’s nude performance art and are part of the exhibit “Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting," per artnet.
– Sunday's violence in Berkeley has brought renewed attention to the "antifa" movement, general shorthand for groups of black-clad "anti-fascist" protesters who show up at rallies to confront far-right protesters. In his post-Charlottesville remarks, President Trump blamed the antifa movement for contributing to the violence, and Sunday's confrontation "marked another street brawl between opposing ends of the political spectrum—violence that has become a regular feature of the Trump years and gives signs of spiraling upward," per the Washington Post. So just what is antifa? In a New York Times op-ed, Columbia professor Todd Gitlin offers some insights, describing antifa as the "backlash to the backlash, a defensive response to the growing presence of right-wing extremism." Given antifa members' willingness to use violence, he sees cause for concern. "They do not advocate a positive doctrine, racial or otherwise," writes Gitlin of antifa adherents. "Some supporters consider themselves (as Mr. Trump accurately said) anarchists, some Marxists of different stripes." No national organization exists, and groups (usually all men) spring up locally. Antifa groups typically are unarmed, but Gitlin sees the potential for that to change as confrontations with right-wing groups escalate. "If effectively contained and self-contained, many of its supporters would likely return to the kind of nonviolent left-wing, anti-racist organizing that they were involved in before Mr. Trump rejuvenated the nationalist right with fire and fury," writes Gitlin. But that's not likely in the near future, he adds. "More Charlottesvilles, or worse, may be coming." Click for the full column.
– Wen by Chaz Dean hair-care products are touted as a natural alternative to shampoo and other products, but some angry customers say the downside is hair loss—and lots of it. More than 200 women across the US have joined a class-action lawsuit claiming that the sulfate-free hair products contain an ingredient that "causes a chemical reaction and damages hair and follicles," the Daily Beast reports. Dean is a celebrity stylist who has promoted the products through what Racked describes as "ubiquitous infomercials and marketing promising that his cleanser can replace ordinary shampoo and conditioner." The plaintiffs complain that infomercial giant Guthy-Renker blocked negative reviews online. The plaintiffs say they suffered "hair and scalp damage, hair loss, rashes, scalp irritation, hair breakage," and other woes, reports BuzzFeed, which has some alarming pictures of the damage users say the product has done to their hair and scalps. A lawyer for the plaintiffs says the issue is heading to mediation. "The parties are attempting to settle their differences outside of court and we have agreed to refrain from any extrajudicial statements about the case in the meantime," she tells the Beast, which notes that since the causes of hair loss in women can be very complicated, it could be tough to prove in court that Wen products are responsible for plaintiffs' bald patches. (A man who hasn't showered in 12 years has his own line of shampoo.)
– After 25 years, the final unidentified body from the 1992 Los Angeles riots has a name, the Los Angeles Times reports. The body of 18-year-old Armando Ortiz Hernandez was found in a Pep Boys on May 2, 1992. According to the AP, authorities say he died of "inhalation of smoke, soot, carbon monoxide, and thermal burns." Hernandez's body was so badly burned coroners only had some of his teeth and a partial print from one finger to try to figure out his identity. Authorities continued to try to find a match for the print over the years, and finally an FBI squad that typically focuses on disaster victims found one. Hernandez, who until Friday was known only as John Doe No. 80, was identified thanks to a couple of minor arrests prior to his death. His only known relative, a sister living in Mexico, was notified. Hernandez was buried in a mass grave with other unclaimed bodies. Because the Pep Boys had been set on fire, his death was ruled a homicide. It remains one of the 23 unsolved homicides related to the riots, which left 53 people dead and more than 2,000 injured. The deadliest riots in US history started after a jury acquitted four white police officers accused of beating Rodney King, a black motorist.
– The National Hockey League is being sued by nine of its own, who claim the league "intentionally created, fostered, and promoted a culture of extreme violence" with an eye on profit, the suit reads. Ex-players brought a similar suit against the NHL in November, but the New York Times describes this one as "more graphic." One plaintiff, Michael Peluso—who previously said he suffers from concussion-related seizures—was an enforcer who fought 179 times over nine years. The suit also claims the league stayed mum on the risks of head trauma and kept scientific evidence on that subject from players, Reuters reports. "The NHL has subjected and continues to subject its players to the imminent risk of head trauma and, as a result, devastating and long-term negative health consequences," the suit continues. It also notes recent head trauma-minded rule changes have been "untimely and ineffective." The NHL's deputy commissioner, however, says, "we are completely satisfied with our record on player safety, including as it relates to head injuries and brain trauma." Experts say the players likely want an out-of-court settlement.
– Precious star Gabourey Sidibe is on the new cover of Elle, and her image has set off a tiff in the blogosphere on whether the magazine used digital retouching to "whiten" her. Here's Julianne Hing at ColorLines: "Elle clearly couldn’t handle Sidibe’s real skin color, and traded away her actual color for something dramatically lighter." (See PopEater for comparison photos.) The magazine is also taking criticism for posing her differently than other models (more of a face closeup than a body shot) in an apparent attempt to play down her weight. Elle says this is all crazy: "We have four separate covers this month, and Gabby's cover was not retouched any more or less than the others. ... If you take a look at the portfolio, each of the women were shot in different ways and for different reasons." At Entertainment Weekly, Annie Barrett thinks the criticism is overblown. Elle's explanation on retouching is sound. On the other point, "they constructed the Sidibe cover in a specific way so that she would look her best, and she looks beautiful. Is it really so jarring to see someone heavy on a magazine cover that people need to freak out over how it 'should look' instead? This is how it looks." For other retouching scandals, click here.
– A new Lifetime reality show is raising eyebrows, especially in the medical community: Born in the Wild will feature women giving birth outdoors with no medical assistance. The network says it is taking "extreme precautions" to ensure safety, including having an emergency professional on standby and a hospital within range. First-time mothers won't be allowed to take part, but obstetricians say it still is just too risky. "I understand everybody wants to believe we overmedicalize pregnancy and that it's a natural process. But it's a natural process that historically has caused an extraordinary loss of life," a maternal-fetal medicine specialist tells Entertainment Weekly. A Lifetime exec says the network has set out to document something people are already doing. It's not as if "we're dropping people in the woods and saying 'go have the baby,'" he says. "These are all people who have already had babies in hospitals who had unsatisfying experiences and who are choosing to have different experiences." At Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams isn't impressed by the "completely insane" concept or by Lifetime's press release describing childbirth as the "craziest experience" of a woman's life. "I'm not going to get whipped up over whether a woman wants to give birth in a hospital or a swimming pool or on a pile of leaves, but I do find the premise of having an entire film crew around to document and televise the experience does somewhat undercut the whole 'in the wild' thing a bit," she writes. "And I definitely find Lifetime’s branding of childbirth as an insistently 'crazy' event spectacularly offensive."
– A Nazi drinking game played by students from the London School of Economics sparked a brawl and ended with a broken nose, reports the Guardian. The row occurred during a ski trip taken by 150 members of the school's athletic union to Val D'Isere in France. The confrontation occurred after a Jewish student objected to the drinking game, according to the school's Jewish Society. The game involved playing cards arranged on a table in the shape of a swastika. Players were required to "salute the führer," according to the student newspaper. "Nazi glorification and anti-semitism have no place in our universities," said the head of the Jewish Society. A video of the drinking game was briefly posted on Facebook. The school is investigating. "These are disturbing allegations relating to events which took place on a foreign trip organized by the students' union," said a school statement, which added that officials are "prepared to take disciplinary action. Students must abide by clear standards of behavior. We do not tolerate anti-semitism or any other form of racism."
– Trade disputes generally don't lend themselves to exciting visuals, but the new one between the US and China might be an exception. As the deadline neared for new penalties to take effect, a ship laden with US soybeans raced toward the Chinese port of Dalian, capturing the attention of users on the Chinese social media site Weibo, reports Reuters. "You are no ordinary soybean!" one user wrote in regard to the ship Peak Pegasus, which set out from Seattle last month. "Good luck bro!" wrote another. However, Reuters reports that the Pegasus arrived just a smidge late to beat the deadline, and Bloomberg also reports that the ship "looks to have lost its race"—unless perhaps Chinese officials were feeling generous. Related coverage: Soybeans? They just happen to be the top American agricultural export to China, as an interactive graphic at Reuters reveals. China took in about $12 billion worth last year. US farmers' pain will be Brazilian farmers' gain, reports Fortune. One huge factor: CNBC reports that a major issue behind this trade war is 5G—and whether the US or China will be the nation to dominate the next generation of the mobile internet. This is about far more than faster download times, however. "It is being touted as a technology that could support the next generation of infrastructure, from the billions of internet-connected devices expected to come online in the next few years, to smart cities and driverless cars."
– It lies 230 miles off the coast of Brazil, making Fernando de Noronha a fairly isolated island—so much so that women who become pregnant there are told to go to the mainland to give birth. So amidst what the BBC terms a "ban" on childbirth comes a surprise: a baby, the first born on the island in 12 years. The AFP reports the unnamed mother had previously given birth on the mainland, but told O Globo she was unaware of this pregnancy, as she "didn't feel anything." "On Friday night I had pains and when I went to the bathroom I saw something coming down between my legs. That’s when the child’s father came and picked it up. It was a baby, a girl. I was dumbstruck," she says. The BBC reports the baby was taken to the hospital—which has no maternity ward.
– On CNN's State of the Union, Sen. Lindsey Graham praised Meghan McCain as "her father's daughter" following her headline-grabbing eulogy to her dad that many said appeared to bash President Trump. Former Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on Face The Nation and bashed the country's current leadership while contrasting it to the late Sen. John McCain on the day of the frequently bipartisan Republican's burial. "Right now we have a culture divide that has been accentuated by political so-called leaders,” Kerry said, per the Hill. “They're operating in a fact-less world." Ohio Gov. John Kasich also appeared on Face The Nation and said that, should he choose to run for president in 2020, it would be as a Republican. Over on This Week, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged Dems to hold off on impeachment, per Politico.
– ESPN has indefinitely suspended commentator Rob Parker after his controversial "cornball brother" remarks about Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III yesterday, the network announced in a brief statement today. "Following yesterday's comments, Rob Parker has been suspended until further notice. We are conducting a full review," the network said, according to USA Today. Parker's comments, in which he said that Griffin was only "kind of black," set off a firestorm. The head of the NFL Players Association slammed Parker, telling the Washington Post that players should "never beg for authenticity from someone who can only talk about the things that other people have the courage to do." RGIII's father (who, yes, is named Robert Griffin II), chimed in as well, saying, "I wouldn't say it's racism. I would just say some people put things out there about people so they can stir things up." But Parker remained defiant on Twitter for much of yesterday, calling critical responses "uneducated" and "silly," NBC Sports reports.
– A fireworks display in a Brazilian nightclub went horribly awry last night, spawning a fire that police say killed upward of 233 people, reports CNN. Police on the scene at the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria have already removed 159 bodies, reports Reuters, and rescuers are still looking for more. "People started panicking and ended up treading on each other," the local fire chief tells the BBC, which notes that there was apparently only one exit in the facility. The number of injured is also in the hundreds; local media report that the club had a capacity of 2,000 and was believed to be full on a Saturday night. "It was really fast. There was a lot of smoke, really dark smoke," says survivor Aline Santos Silva, 29. "We were only able to get out quickly because we were in a VIP area close to the door." The AP runs down a list of other deadly nightclub fires here.
– An orca who spent more than a week carrying her calf following its July 24 death now has some help. Other orcas in the pod swimming through Pacific Northwest waters near the US-Canada border are taking turns carrying the corpse after the effort caused the 20-year-old mother known as J35 to fall behind with labored breathing. Trailing the main pod with improved breathing, J35 was seen with the now-decomposing corpse Thursday in the Strait of Juan de Fuca alongside immediate family members who are keeping her fed, per KCPQ. But "because we've seen her so many times without the calf, we know that somebody else has it," Jenny Atkinson of San Juan Island's Whale Museum tells the CBC. The same pod held a similar display 15 years ago, but this is the longest period of orca mourning on record, per National Geographic. Audio recordings indeed suggest the pod is using calls and whistles perhaps related to mourning. They sound "more like a very urgent call," says Atkinson. "I think that what you're seeing is the depth of importance of this calf and the grief of the mother and the family." It's a tight-knit one: There are just 75 orcas in three pods in the southern resident population around Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island, down from 83 in 2016. None have seen a successful birth since 2015. Amid indications a 4-year-old orca might be starving, an expert describes "at most five more years" in which to try to birth viable offspring. Declines in Chinook salmon have hit the population hard, per Nat Geo. Canada hopes to lend a hand by limiting catches of the fish, while experts hope a necropsy will reveal how J35's calf died, per CTV News. Of course, it must be abandoned first.
– A 9/11 first responder with kidney disease close to losing his New Jersey home is taking his plight public in a big way: through his website and a series of tri-state area billboards, the Record reports. "Add Kidney Disease for 9/11 Rescue Workers!" the signs outside MetLife Stadium and the Holland Tunnel and on NYC buses read, referring to the illness 44-year-old Mike Megna says he came down with due to dust at the decimated World Trade Center, where he toiled for three weeks after the attacks. Megna started seeing smaller symptoms, like a constantly runny nose and digestive issues, early on, but in 2006 blood began showing in his urine, and a diagnosis delivered heart-sinking news: He had a "super-rare" form of kidney disease that only 20 people in the world have. And while Megna, who's been disabled since 2011, has applied for compensation cash from the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act of 2010, there's a complication: Kidney disease isn't one of the recognized illnesses covered by the fund. That means the divorced dad of three isn't eligible for any money—even though Mary Ann McLaughlin, a Mount Sinai Medical Center researcher who petitioned the fund two years ago to add the disease based on initial research, has examined Megna's records and believes the WTC toxins "may more likely than not" be tied to his sickness. However, a rep for the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which runs the program, says a disease can be added to the list—and compensation issued—only after "published, peer-reviewed epidemiologic evidence" shows "substantial support" for a direct link between the WTC fallout and the disease. Megna will have to hold tight, per the rep, who says once McLaughlin publishes her study, kidney disease eligibility will be considered. But that's time Megna—$120,000 behind on his mortgage and anticipating dialysis down the road (his kidneys are now functioning at 45%, per the Star-Ledger)—says he doesn't have. "When they asked us to come down to help that day, I didn't wait," he tells the paper.
– Alzheimer's disease is being redefined for the first time in 27 years, with new medical guidelines reflecting the fact that the disease is a "continuum." Growing evidence shows that Alzheimer's starts affecting the brain years before dementia symptoms present themselves, and the new guidelines reflect that by dividing the disease into three stages: end-stage dementia, a middle phase involving mild problems, and a symptomless beginning stage where the brain has already begun to change. "I think we’re going to start to identify it earlier and earlier," says one expert. The new guidelines are concerned with measuring biomarkers, or indicators that a person will likely develop dementia, in clinical trial patients, the New York Times reports. The Wall Street Journal notes that earlier diagnosis of the disease will also allow earlier intervention, and could someday allow patients to take Alzheimer's-slowing drugs earlier.
– Facebook cried fraud last year over the guy claiming he was entitled to 84% of the company—and Facebook might have been right. Paul Ceglia, who sued the company and Mark Zuckerberg in 2010, has now been indicted on fraud charges for allegedly faking evidence, Mashable reports. Ceglia is accused of creating a false contract "in which Zuckerberg agreed to provide Ceglia with at least a 50% interest in Facebook" in return for coding work Ceglia did in 2003. Ceglia is also charged with creating fake emails and destroying evidence; each charge carries a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years. Facebook's appeal to have the lawsuit against the company tossed is pending, and the latest of Ceglia's attorneys is seeking the permission of a federal judge to withdraw from the case, reports AP.
– Afghan police today fired into a crowd of rock-hurling anti-American demonstrators chanting "Death to America," "Death to Christians," and "Death to Karzai" in Kabul today. One was killed and at least five injured, two from gunshots. The US Koran-burning controversy has stirred days of outrage and protests among millions of Muslims and others worldwide, notes the AP; today's protests were the largest so far, Reuters adds. Afghan police say the Taliban are using this anger to fuel anti-government sentiment ahead of elections next week. "There are more than 10,000 of the demonstrators and some of them are waving the Taliban flag," says one officer.
– Frances Bean Cobain made her musical debut yesterday—albeit in cameo form—with the release of Evelyn Evelyn. “She’s got a great voice,” says Amanda Palmer, who put together the concept album with Jason Webley. The 17-year-old is featured on the track “My Space” along with other “really random people,” Palmer says, including Weird Al Yankovic, Tegan and Sara, and Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, People reports. The album has “personality to spare,” writes Laura Studarus on Under the Radar, but as for Cobain, the proliferation of cameos on “My Space” means “it's impossible to pick out individual voices.” A blogger on The Ruckus calls the track a “power ballad” and says the album as a whole is “eccentric.” So will Cobain be following in her parents’ footsteps? Palmer isn’t so sure: “She's a really good visual artist. She's really interested in graphic novels.”
– It's no small prison term: An 18-year-old boy was sentenced Friday to 23 years for a burglary in 2012 during which he shot a retired police dog, the Sun-Sentinel reports. At age 16, Ivins Rosier confessed to breaking into the home of Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Robert Boody in West Palm Beach and shooting the 5-year-old German Shepherd, the newspaper noted in May. Rosier's attorney argued that a detective "hustled" the boy during interrogation by equating the dog's death to the "murder of a law enforcement officer" (which wasn't legally true). Rosier's attorney also wanted his client sentenced as a juvenile with a maximum sentence of 6 years, CBS 12 reports. "I believe this to be sadistic to do this to a child," said Rosier's attorney, who plans to appeal. He conceded that Rosier's crimes were serious, "but when you look at the range of punishments available, that's why they call it juvenile." Ultimately, Rosier's sentence resulted from convictions on three felony counts: cruelty to animals with a firearm, burglary of a dwelling with a firearm, and shooting into a building. "A gun in a 16-year-old's hand can do equally the damage as a gun in an adult's hand," said the prosecuting attorney. "He's not a child." The trooper, Boody, cried when testifying about how he came home to find his dog crippled by gunshot wounds. (In Utah, a 16-year-old boy faces as many as 15 years in prison for taking part in a robbery with friends.)
– In a move that stunned many Republicans, Democratic leaders announced Wednesday night that they had reached a deal with President Trump to protect Dreamers from deportation in return for funding extra border security—but not a wall. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced the deal after a White House dinner, the AP reports. "We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that's acceptable to both sides," they said in a joint statement. A source says the deal also includes a pathway to citizenship for the almost 800,000 young immigrants involved. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that DACA and border security were discussed at the meeting, though "excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to," the Los Angeles Times reports. This is the second time in two weeks that Trump has bypassed Republicans to cut a deal with Democrats and immigration hardliners are furious over what they see as an amnesty, the Washington Post reports. If reports of the deal are true, Trump's "base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair," said GOP Rep. Steve King. "No promise is credible." Breitbart.com called the deal a "full-fledged cave" and dubbed the president "Amnesty Don."
– "They did a very lousy job building their platform," former Ashley Madison chief technology officer Raja Bhatia allegedly wrote to CEO Noel Biderman in 2012. "I got their entire user base." Ironically—considering Ashley Madison is now dealing with its own stolen data being leaked by hackers—Bhatia was referring to a competitor site he allegedly hacked back in 2012, Krebs on Security reports. According to Biderman's leaked emails, Bhatia figured out how to download the user database of Nerve.com (which was starting its own dating site) and manipulate it in ways including changing non-paying users to paying users, sending messages from one user to another, and more. Krebs on Security reports that, per the leaked emails, Bhatia's hack came months after Nerve approached Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison's parent company, about a partnership. In fact, Bhatia offered $20 million to buy Nerve and another site, but Avid Life Media decided not to go through with the deal. Wired reports Bhatia was no longer working for Ashley Madison when he discovered Nerve's security problems, but additional leaked emails show he was also aware of similar security issues within Ashley Madison. Last week's release of stolen Ashley Madison data has already resulted in reports of online blackmailing and possibly two suicides, and more leaks may be on their way.
– Last year, four public university presidents boasted compensation of more than $1 million, a study finds. At the top: Graham Spanier, the former Penn State president driven out by the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal. Spanier made $2.9 million in the 2011-2012 fiscal year; part of that was his $1.2 million severance pay, the New York Times reports. "The fact that Graham Spanier turns out to be the highest paid president in the country says something about the nature of compensation packages for people who leave under a cloud," says a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, which conducted the study. Meanwhile, Jay Gogue, at Auburn University, saw compensation of $2.54 million. Ohio State's Gordon Gee earned $1.9 million—along with his rent-free mansion and private jet. George Mason's Alan Merten received $1.87 million. Compensation has soared in recent years, says the Chronicle reporter; Gogue's pay, for instance, jumped from $700,000 to $2.5 million in a year. And 28 presidents were making between $600,000 and $700,000 last year, compared to 13 the prior year. Median compensation among public research university presidents was $441,392.
– The ancient monument of Stonehenge dates back to between 2500 BC and 3000 BC—but when it was built, people had already been living in the area for millennia, researchers found after a dig. Artifacts from what is now Amesbury, the nearest settlement to Stonehenge, dated to 8820 BC. It's been inhabited ever since, the BBC notes, making it Britain's oldest settlement, something the Guinness Book of Records has now officially recognized. (As such, Thatcham has lost the honor.) The year was established after burnt flints and large animal bones were unearthed; they point to feasts held there, Smithsonian reports. "The site blows the lid off the Neolithic Revolution in a number of ways," says researcher David Jacques, who notes that it provides evidence of "people staying put, clearing land, building, and presumably worshiping, monuments." Experts had believed the stones were erected by European immigrants, notes Culture24, but in fact the area was a hub for people in the region, says Jacques. It "was a forerunner for what later went on at Stonehenge itself," he says. "The first monuments at Stonehenge were built by these people. For years, people have been asking why is Stonehenge where it is; now at last, we have found the answers." Giant pine posts were placed in the area long before Stonehenge was there, sometime before 6590 BC, reports the Guardian; the study offers a "missing link" between the posts and the stone monuments. (Click to read about Stonehenge's sonic secret.)
– Police have uncovered one big clue but no answers in the search for a 31-year-old Virginia woman who was last heard from on Wednesday. Nicole Mittendorff's 2009 Mini Cooper was found Saturday night in what the Washington Post describes as a "remote area" of the Shenandoah National Park; it was left near the Whiteoak Canyon Trail, which is close to Old Rag, described by the National Park Service as Shenandoah's "most popular and most dangerous hike." Some of Mittendorff's family suggested it's possible she was headed to the area to do a trail run, something she reportedly regularly did. Fox 5 DC reports authorities have said that nothing yet indicates something "suspicious in nature" occurred. WUSA9 describes Mittendorff as "extremely dedicated" to her job as a firefighter; her father says she didn't show up for a changeover on Friday morning, and she was reported missing that day. A "Find Nicole" website and Facebook page have been set up. The latter features a Saturday night post from Mittendorff's husband, Steven, who "continues to ask for your prayers for both our family and the many who continue to investigate." As for the search, another post on the page notes the Virginia State Police "do not need volunteers and they've asked to keep away anyone outside the official effort. That will keep any changes, traces or other items undisturbed and prevent distractions."
– Good news: A mathematical model has been created that could help save your life in the event that your city is hit by a nuclear bomb. Scientist Michael Dillon's model, published Tuesday, is about reducing radiation risk from the bomb's fallout, and calculates "optimal shelter exit time." The longstanding advice has been to immediately seek shelter, ideally underground, if a bomb hits. But there is better and worse shelter—the latter being "lightweight" buildings (such as ones made of wood) or ones without basements; the AFP reports more than 20% of US homes fall into the worse category. Here is Dillon's determination for people living within 20 miles of a low-yield nuclear blast, meaning one a bit smaller than Hiroshima: If it would take five minutes or less to reach better shelter (that concrete basement, or the center of a large building, like a big office, reports LiveScience), bypass the more immediate shelter and go there straight away. If better shelter is 15 minutes away, stay in the worse shelter for up to 30 minutes, then head out. As for the transit period, don't waste time worrying about protecting your body from the radiation, he says, which can mostly be rinsed off once you get to your shelter. The findings are actually intended for emergency planning officials, who can make use of the findings when designing "an optimal low-yield nuclear detonation response strategy," writes Dillon, who works at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
– ISIS has killed 1,878 people in Syria—most of them civilians—over the six-month period since it proclaimed a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria in late June, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Among the victims: four children, eight women, members of an opposing Sunni Muslim tribe, soldiers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, insurgents fighting against Assad, foreign activists and journalists, and even about 120 of its own fighters. Although Reuters says it hasn't been able to independently confirm the British organization's numbers, it notes the publicized stonings and beheadings that ISIS has conducted for what it sees as offenses against Islam, ranging from adultery and homosexuality to blasphemy and stealing. By the monitor's count, 1,175 civilians have been beheaded, stoned, or shot; about 930 of those civilians were part of the Shaitat, a Sunni Muslim tribe that fought ISIS in eastern Syria. A mass grave containing 230 Shaitat bodies was said to have been discovered in mid-December, Al Arabiya reports. But the tally may even be on the low side, Al Arabiya notes: The observatory references "hundreds of missing and detainees inside the IS jails, loss of communication with about a thousand men of al-Shaitaat tribe, [and] ... dozens of Kurds who have still been missing since ... September 16." (A recent ISIS execution video is said to have major differences from past videos.)
– With George HW Bush dead at 94, coverage of the life of the 41st president is plentiful. Here are some early highlights: The broad strokes: For a thorough obituary and assessment, start with the Washington Post. Its story notes that while Bush served just one term as president, it was a consequential one. "The Berlin Wall fell; the Soviet Union ceased to exist; the communist bloc in Eastern Europe broke up; the Cold War ended." And Bush's "firm, restrained diplomatic sense helped assure the harmony and peace with which these world-shaking events played out, one after the other." Great detail: In its obituary, the Wall Street Journal notes that Bush flew 58 missions in the Pacific as a Navy pilot in WWII, all with the name of his girlfriend—Barbara—on the side of the plane. He once got shot down, with this video capturing the rescue. Bush is also the only American besides John Adams to be both president and the father of a president. Read his lips: The Guardian recounts some of his Bush's famous quotes, including his "read my lips" pledge to not raise taxes. He also dissed broccoli.
– After the bodies of three kidnapped Israeli teens were found near where they were last seen in the West bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that "Hamas will pay"—and within hours, Israeli jets and helicopters began dozens of airstrikes on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. There were at least 34 airstrikes overnight, reports the New York Times, which calls the strikes an escalation of two weeks of skirmishes that have included the firing of rockets into Israel. More: In the West Bank city of Hebron, witnesses say the Israeli military has blown up the homes of Hamas suspects Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eisheh, in the first punitive demolitions since Israel abandoned the practice in 2005, reports the Guardian. The two suspects disappeared shortly after the abduction. According to reports in the Israeli media, investigators believe the three teens were shot dead within minutes of being kidnapped, after one of them managed to call an emergency hotline. Their bodies were found in a field near Hebron 19 days after they disappeared. A Hamas spokesman says "no Palestinian group, Hamas or any other group," has taken responsibility for the killings. He accuses Israel of using the kidnap to justify attacks on Palestinians, and warns that if Israeli forces "carry out an escalation or a war, they will open the gates of hell on themselves," the BBC reports. One of the teens held American citizenship and President Obama has issued a statement saying "as a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing." He also urged "all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation." A West Bank man shot in the chest early today has become the sixth Palestinian to be killed by the Israeli military since the teenagers' disappearance sparked a huge crackdown, reports CNN.
– A new study finds that following the Mediterranean diet could add about 4.5 years to your life. Researchers found that the diet, which focuses on fruits, veggies, whole grains, and olive oil, is good for our DNA, the New York Times reports. Nearly 4,700 women were followed for more than 20 years, and those whose diets were more similar to the Mediterranean diet had longer telomeres—protective structures found on the ends of chromosomes that "are often compared to the plastic caps that prevent shoelaces from unravelling," as Larry Husten explains at Forbes. Shorter telomeres have been linked to shorter life expectancy and chronic diseases associated with aging. Chromosomes store our DNA code, and telomeres help to prevent the loss of genetic information—so the Mediterranean diet appears to "stop our DNA code from scrambling as we age," thus keeping us "genetically younger," writes Michelle Roberts at the BBC. But Husten cautions that, though the diet has been linked to other health benefits in the past, this study shouldn't be given too much weight. It appears to be "excellent" and "well-performed," he writes, but it was an observational study, and as such has limitations—for example, it's possible that there were already genetic differences between subjects who adhered to the diet and those who didn't.
– Still no winner in the Alaska Senate race, but Joe Miller retains his slim lead and incumbent Lisa Murkowski continues to deflect (but not deny) speculation that she's considering a third-party run. Also, still no love lost between candidates, notes the Hill: Upon hearing that the GOP Senate campaign committee is sending a lawyer to help Murkowski, Miller declared, "It concerns us any time somebody lawyers up and tries to pull an Al Franken, if you will. We are very concerned that there may be some attempt here to skew the results." With about 20,000 absentee or questioned ballots still to be counted, Miller leads by 1,668 votes, reports the Anchorage Daily News. He's confident of victory, as rumors fly in the state that Murkowski could run against him in the fall on the Libertarian ticket. The party's current candidate says he'd be willing to step aside for her.
– There are a lot of cats in the United States. Perhaps close to 95 million live with us as pets, reports the Times-Picayune. But does our affection for these feline friends move in just one direction? New research in the journal PLoS One suggests that domesticated cats are more independent than dogs because they have less "secure attachment" to their owners. In this case, attachment "is not simply an affectionate bond," the researchers write, but relates to "the carer being perceived as a focus of safety and security in otherwise threatening environments." Past research has indicated that some cats whose owners leave them alone display signs of separation anxiety, as dogs do. "But the results of our study show that they are in fact much more independent than canine companions," says lead researcher Daniel Mills. "It seems that what we interpret as separation anxiety might actually be signs of frustration." Behavioral scientists at the University of Lincoln in the UK tested this by observing cats in unfamiliar environments with their owners, with strangers, and alone. They were looking for three distinct characteristics of attachment: the amount of contact a cat sought, its level of passive behavior, and its distress when the owner was absent. Cats were, it turns out, more vocal when their owners left them than when strangers did, but they demonstrated no other signs of attachment, hence the possibility that the vocalization was not one of longing; the researchers posit it could indicate frustration or just be a "learned response." "Our findings don’t disagree with the notion that cats develop social preferences or close relationships," says Mills, "but they do show that these relationships do not appear to be typically based on a need for safety and security." (One woman's attempt to rescue her cat from a cliff didn't go so well.)
– The driver accused of plowing into a crowd at the South by Southwest Festival, killing two and injuring 23 others, has been identified as 21-year-old Rashad Owens of Killeen, Texas, reports the Austin American-Statesman. Police say the tragedy began about 12:30am when an officer tried to pull over Owens for suspected drunken driving. Owens pulled into a gas station parking lot, then gunned it the wrong way down a one-way street, say police. He eventually turned onto Red River Street, crashed through a barricade and struck festivalgoers, say authorities. Killed were Steven Craenmehr, who was riding a bike, and an Austin woman who was riding a moped. She hasn't been identified. Craenmehr worked for Amsterdam's MassiveMusic. Because he is charged with capital murder, Owens faces the death penalty. “That vehicle was used as a weapon, and he will be charged with those crimes,” says Austin's police chief. Two people remain in critical condition with head injuries, and six others are still in the hospital with lesser injuries. A soldier at Fort Hood, meanwhile, has reported that his car was stolen, and it appears to be the vehicle driven by Owens, reports MySanAntonio.com. Owens himself is not a Fort Hood soldier. In 2011, he was charged with driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident in Fairbanks, Alaska, reports a separate American-Statesman story.
– They're calling it "Cameron's Lament"—though some say it was actually a happy tune from a relieved man. British Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Monday that he will resign on Wednesday afternoon, and a hot mic caught him singing a few notes to himself as he walked the few steps back to his No. 10 Downing Street residence after speaking to the press, CNN reports. He can be heard saying "Right" as he steps inside and removes the microphone. Some have said the tune sounded like the start of the West Wing theme, while others believe it sounded more like a Winnie the Pooh-style song, the Guardian reports. After a detailed musical analysis, Classic FM concluded that Cameron's musical notes suggested "Wagnerian fanfare, Beethoven-esque harmonic doubt, and then a strange contemporary flourish at the end," a composition that might demonstrate the "unresolved nature of Cameron's swift departure from office." The prime minister is expected to offer his resignation to the queen on Wednesday. He will be replaced by Theresa May, who prevailed in the Conservative Party's post-Brexit leadership race after all of her opponents dropped out. (Some ill-judged comments about motherhood may have hastened the departure of May's last remaining rival.)
– Leonardo DiCaprio will play to his dark side for a new role as "the 19th century equivalent of Hannibal Lecter," reports Deadline. He'll play serial killer HH Holmes in the film adaptation of Erik Larson's 2003 book, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, And Madness At The Fair That Changed America, which will be directed by Martin Scorsese for Paramount. The book follows Holmes' killing of at least 27 people (mainly women) around the time of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago—though he had as many as 200 victims—combined with the story of fair architect Daniel Burnham, Variety reports. The film has been in the works for more than a decade. (Read about a possible "good guy" role for DiCaprio.)
– On Feb. 26, the day Tim Tebow arrived for the New York Mets' Minor League Baseball camp at First Data Field in Port St. Lucie, Fla., a woman arrived at the stadium early in the morning, hung around all day, and asked lots of questions about Tebow. That prompted staff members to report her to police, but 36-year-old Michelle Marie Thompson had an explanation when they arrived to question her: She told them she's in a relationship with Tebow, TCPalm reports. Making her story even more believable: Police reported that they found a sticker on her driver's license reading, "I [heart symbol] Jesus/Tim Tebow." But, when police asked the Colorado woman to specify what type of relationship she meant, she said it wouldn't be appropriate to say; when asked if it was a friendly, platonic, romantic, or matrimonial relationship, she claimed "all of the above" while giggling. She went so far as to claim that her current address was the same as Tebow's in Jacksonville, because they live together, and she gave police a Jacksonville address, Action News Jax reports. Police told her to leave the stadium and not return, but two days later she allegedly did; she was arrested that time and charged with trespassing.
– Only hours after Motorola rolled out its new Razr, Samsung and Google unveiled a new Android smartphone of their own. The high-end Galaxy Nexus—which is set to retail for more than $700—would have launched more than a week ago, but the companies decided to reschedule after the death of Steve Jobs, the Wall Street Journal reports. The phone runs Android's new Ice Cream Sandwich platform, designed to run on both smartphones and tablets. "We're targeting the premium segment of the mobile handset market with this handset," says a Samsung exec. New features in the latest version of Android include facial recognition software that allows a user to use his face to unlock his phone, although when demonstrated onstage at the Galaxy Nexus launch, the phone failed to recognize its owner, PC World notes. Google says the new phone—which analysts believe will help Samsung in its quest to overtake Apple—also has tighter integration with Google+, allowing users to have video chats with as many as nine contacts.
– You won't see any sex or violence in the new R-rated film Love Is Strange. What you will see is a love story between two men—which has critics wondering whether homophobia might explain the MPAA's rating decision. The movie is about a couple who must live apart after decades together. Yet critics have observed that it's received the same rating as the new Sin City movie, which contains violence, drugs, and nudity, and Jersey Shore Massacre, which is packed with gore, the Guardian notes. "It is very hard to imagine that if it starred, say, Robert Duvall and Jane Fonda as a similar long-time couple suddenly facing homelessness, it would be lumped in with movies crammed full of queasily stylish sexism and sickening torture porn," writes Stephen Whitty in the Star-Ledger. The MPAA tells the Wrap: "The descriptor that accompanies the film's rating notes that it is rated R for language—as is any film that includes the same level of strong language, regardless of subject matter." But the MPAA has been known to show "considerable leeway on language" in other instances, Whitty notes.
– For the last four decades, cobalt mining has been almost non-existent in the US. That's changing now with what the BBC labels a rush for the precious metal recently named as critical to the US economy. With increases in price and demand for the silver-blue mineral—used in everything from the lithium-ion batteries to jet engines to drones—mining firms that have "never actually gone looking for cobalt" are doing so, says Trent Mell, CEO of Canada-based First Cobalt. His is one of several firms planning to dig for cobalt in the US, including in Idaho and Missouri, over the next several years. Along with the risks—there's availability and price volatility to consider, not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to establish a mine—comes the potential for big rewards. Consumption of cobalt—selling for $32 a pound, up from $20 in early 2011—is on pace to rise 8% to 10% a year, per the BBC. Indeed, some analysts expect to see shortages as soon as 2022. American-mined cobalt could ease the burden and might even fetch a premium price as the US looks to ease its reliance on imports and more companies begin to request ethical sources of the metal. ABC Australia reports that more than 60% of the world's supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Amnesty International claims child slaves toil in mines. Some, however, see the rush as coming too late. Tiberius Group CEO Christoph Eibl tells Bloomberg that "the craziness that you see in cobalt will in many ways actually be corrected." For example, future batteries may use less lithium, he says. "There’s so much uncertainty about how future technologies will be applied."
– A #CapybaraWatch hashtag is making the rounds online in the hopes that the public can help track down two giant capybaras that flew the coop of a Toronto zoo more than two weeks ago, National Geographic reports. The aptly nicknamed Bonnie and Clyde made a run for it on May 24 as they were being relocated to a different enclosure at High Park Zoo. Capybaras, native to South America, are known as the world's largest rodents, weighing as much as a grown man (up to 220 pounds in captivity, less in the wild) and reaching a length of 4 feet. What could make finding these two escapees difficult: They adapt well to new environments, can make do with plants that usually aren't on their dinner plates, and can hide out quite well in the water—and the zoo is surrounded by lots of it. What Toronto residents don't have to worry too much about with Bonnie and Clyde, who've already earned their own Twitter parody account, is being attacked: Although there have been occasional reports of the creature biting humans, "when it senses danger, it dashes toward the nearest deep water at a gallop," a capybara expert tells National Geographic. Oddly enough, even though the rodents are huge as far as rodents go, they may not be simple to spot. "They can be deceptive in the proximity of humans," a University of Sao Paulo wildlife ecologist says. Still, rescuers may be getting closer: CityNews notes traps were set out around Toronto after one of the creatures was spotted Sunday, and a CityNews reporter had another sighting Friday morning when he saw one of the animals taking a dip in a pond in High Park. (A worker at a California water-treatment plant ran into a capybara a few years back—and his pics went viral.)
– Is Groupon the future of financial aid? Probably not, but National Louis University is taking the site for a spin, offering prospective grad students almost 60% off its introduction to teaching course, the Chicago Tribune reports. The course is specifically designed for Groupon, and assumes students have no prior teaching experience. It’s open to anyone with an undergrad degree, but if students want to take more courses they’ll have to go through the normal admissions process. “There are all kinds of factors in the K-12 world that are really discouraging,” the school’s VP of marketing says. “We'd like (potential students) to understand what the realities are, whether you are committed to this profession ... and see if you have what it takes.” The Groupon deal goes live today: It offers the $2,232 course for $950 and will run until tomorrow, or until 25 people sign up, according to Mashable. Once students complete the class, they'll have three of the 36 credits they need for a degree.
– It didn't take long for Barack Obama to criticize his successor: The former president issued a statement Monday disagreeing with President Trump's immigration moves and praising those who are protesting them, reports CNN. Spokesman Kevin Lewis said Obama is "heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country.” (Read the statement in full via tweet.) Before leaving office, Obama pledged to remain silent in regard to Trump's policies, except in cases where he thinks "our core values may be at stake," notes the Washington Post. In Monday's statement, Obama made clear he believes this is now the case, saying that the protests around the country are "exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake." The former president took issue with Trump asserting that Obama did something similar in 2011 on Iraqi refugees. “With regard to comparisons to President Obama’s foreign policy decisions, as we’ve heard before, the president fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.” (A post at FactCheck.org digs into the comparison and dismisses it as "faulty.")
– The number of murders in the US rose 11% last year from 2014, while the number of violent crimes saw a modest increase of 4% after two years of decline, per an FBI press release. Rapes rose 6.3%, aggravated assaults increased 4.6%, and robberies rose by 1.4% during the same period. These stats come from the FBI's latest crime report, though NPR notes it's important to put the figures in context: These violent crimes were still way down compared to other recent years, and especially more than 20 years ago, when figures spiked. For instance, despite its 11% increase this year, the number of murders dropped 9.3% from 2006. "The number of rapes is less than in 2009, the number of robberies less than in … 2013, and assaults less than in 2010. Still quite safe," a Fordham law professor and crime expert notes on Twitter. Not that it's all smooth sailing. US Attorney General Loretta Lynch addressed the increase Monday, noting that violence "tears at the fabric of our common life" and that "we still have so much work to do," per the Washington Post. And FBI Director James Comey said in May it doesn't make him feel better that violent crime has risen over the past year, even if it hasn't reached historic low points. In terms of last year's murders, firearms were involved in about 72% of the cases, and seven cities or regions—Chicago, Baltimore, Houston, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Kansas City, and DC—accounted for much of 2015's spurt. Don't be surprised if the crime report comes up in Monday night's debate between Clinton and Trump: A Harvard Law School research fellow said Friday the stats could be turned into a "political football" during their faceoff, per Reuters. (Our most violent states.)
– Uber says it's now making "house calls," at least for one day. The ride-sharing service says that after the success of last year's program, it is offering flu shots to people in 35 cities for $10 between 11am and 3pm on Thursday, Nov. 19, the Washington Post reports. The shot—technically free, as long as a $10 "wellness pack" is purchased—comes with a nurse, who will actually deliver up to 10 shots with the purchase of that single pack, meaning you and your co-workers can take care of business for the low, low cost of $1 each. Of course, there may be a tussle over who gets to keep the pack, which includes an UberHEALTH-branded water bottle and tote, tissues, hand sanitizer, and a lollipop. Those who select the UberHEALTH option via their app are asked to "select a suitable indoor location prior to UberHEALTH arriving," and the shot may be administered to those ages 4 and up. The nurses will be provided by a company called Passport Health, which will share the costs of the program with Uber and health data-mining firm Epidemico, reports the Chicago Tribune. It adds that 10,000 shots will be available; 2,000 vaccinations were given in just four cities by Uber last year. Instructions on how to take part, and a list of all the cities covered, can be found on Uber's "UberHealth" page. (Last month, Uber drivers delivered something soft and fuzzy to cuddle-craving users in 50 cities.)
– Megan Hui is a healthy 18-week-old girl, much to the astonishment of everyone involved. As the Daily Mirror reports, mom Michelle suffered a miscarriage six weeks into her pregnancy in Ireland's County Kildare. Doctors, however, did not know at the time that she was pregnant with twins. They gave her two abortion pills to clear out her uterus and ward off infection, and she returned to the hospital 10 days after the miscarriage to have a surgical procedure to complete the procedure. As it began, Hui recalls hearing this: “You are not going to believe it, we’ve got a heartbeat." Twin Megan had finally made herself known. Medical Daily notes that abortions conducted in this way have a success rate of about 97%, which is why Megan's case has been written up in medical journals. "I have never heard of this happening," says one professional in the field. "I can't think of a medical reason for it to happen—it's just luck." (Click to read about a US toddler whose first steps on a walker have gone viral.)
– The US will formally recognize Syria's opposition as the country's legitimate representative, Barack Obama announced today in an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC. "It's a big step," Obama said. "We've made a decision that the Syrian Opposition Coalition is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population" to be recognized. The move allows the US to work more closely with the rebels, and opens up the possibility of sending them weapons—though one official said that wasn't in the cards yet. "Not everybody who is participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people that we are comfortable with," Obama added. "There are some who I think have adopted an extremist agenda." The announcement comes just ahead of a meeting of Syrian opposition leaders and their supporters in Morocco, the New York Times observes. It also notes that the move doesn't fully confer the legal authority of a state; the opposition can't, for example, access Syrian government money or take over the regime's Washington embassy.
– A Texas man has been arrested for allegedly snatching the MAGA hat right off a Trump supporter's head at a fast-food chain restaurant. Police say 30-year-old Kino Jimenez was arrested Thursday in connection with the incident at a Whataburger in San Antonio, where he's accused of throwing a drink in the face of 16-year-old Hunter Richard before walking off with the hat, the AP reports. The suspect reportedly yelled profanity at the teen and his friends, and video taken during the encounter went viral after it was posted by one of their mothers. The mom took to Facebook asking for help identifying the "scum bag of the year," per KENS 5. San Antonio police say they arrested Jimenez at his home without incident and that he faces a theft charge. Jimenez has reportedly also been fired from his job at a local bar. According to Business Insider, Hunter Richard posted to Instagram following the incident and appeared to have gotten over any trauma it may have caused. "HAD A BOMB A** 4TH OF JULY!" the post reads. "ALTHOUGH MY HAT GOT JACKED BUT ITS ALL GOOD THE LIBTARD WHO TOOK IT CAN HAVE IT." Among the thousands to like the post was the president's son, Donald Trump Jr. The campaign manager for Trump 2020 also spoke out after the controversy. "I would love to send this teenager a signed @realDonaldTrump hat and stand with him in #SanAntonio," Brad Parscale tweeted. "There are hundreds of thousands that will stand with you there. Don’t let a few left bullies stop you from showing your #MAGA!"
– A convicted murderer who escaped prison and made a new life for himself in Florida is back in custody after 37 years, reports AP. James Robert Jones murdered a fellow Army private and got sentenced to 23 years at the military's maximum security prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas back in 1974. Three years later, he busted out and landed in Florida, where he assumed a new identity as Bruce Keith, authorities say. He had been on the Army's "15 Most Wanted" list. Jones' life on the lam began unraveling when US marshals, acting on a tip from Army investigators, used a photo database to find a match between his prison photo and one on a bogus Florida driver's license issued in 1981, reports KSHB. That led to surveillance of "Keith" and his uneventful arrest yesterday in Pompano Beach. "I knew it would catch up to me one day," he reportedly told the arresting officers. It's the second recent story about a fugitive from 1977 being recaptured.
– President Trump's decision to strike a Syrian airbase in retaliation for a chemical attack on civilians has bipartisan support—and bipartisan opposition. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio were joined by Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in voicing their support for what they called an "appropriate" and "proportional" strike, though the Democrats added that Congress will have to approve any further escalation, Politico reports. Republicans including Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee, meanwhile, were joined by Democrats such as Sen. Tim Kaine in slamming Trump for launching the strikes without congressional approval. In other developments: Syria says the strike, which involved around 60 Tomahawk missiles launched from US destroyers in the Mediterranean, killed six people, wounded several others, and caused "significant" damage, the Los Angeles Times reports. A statement from the Syrian military denounced the strike as "blatant aggression" that will be a setback to its "counterterrorist" activity. Deutsche Welle reports that the attack was endorsed by European countries, including the UK, France, and Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Bashar al-Assad bears "sole responsibility" for the strike against his regime's forces. Russia's military says only 23 out of the 59 American missiles reached the Shayrat airbase in Homs province, the AP reports. The military says the attack destroyed six Syrian planes, but left the runway intact. Vladimir Putin has denounced the strike as American aggression, a spokesman says. The New York Times looks at the risks and opportunities the strike has opened up for Trump. There's now an opportunity for the US to demand that Russia help get rid of Assad—but there's the risk Putin might reject any such deal, that the strike could hurt the fight against ISIS, and that Trump's team has no real plan for peace in Syria. Syrian opposition groups welcomed the attack and said they hoped it marked the beginning of a wider campaign against Assad. "For Syrians, any military intervention that will neutralize Assad’s ability to continue his genocide will fall on our hearts like music," a civil defense volunteer in northern Syria tells the Los Angeles Times. The Guardian reports that a monitoring group says that despite the US strike, a warplane believed to be Russian or Syrian carried out an airstrike near Khan Sheikhoun, the town hit by the chemical attack, on Friday.
– A mostly female cast gathers for director Lucia Aniello's Rough Night, which reveals just how bad a bachelorette weekend with college friends can get, especially when male strippers are involved. If this plot seems a bit tired to you, you're not alone. The movie has a lackluster approval rating of about 50% among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, despite big-name stars such as Scarlett Johannson and Kate McKinnon. Samples: Rough Night "offers a few sight gags that are pure, dumb genius" and "is at its best when it catches the precise crosscurrent between sleazy and breezy." But when the movie takes a dark turn, "it starts to fall apart," Stephanie Zacharek writes at Time. "As Hangover-style dumb entertainments go, it's certainly good enough," she adds, but she isn't sure this is "anything close" to what women want to see. Owen Gleiberman, on the other hand, says Rough Night is "a perfect example of why Hollywood needs (many) more women filmmakers." Though its formula is quite "derivative," its female perspective makes it fresh, he writes at Variety. The best elements: "the feisty, claws-out spontaneity of its competitive banter between 'sisters' who love and hate each other" and Jillian Bell, "the film's comic spark plug." Leah Greenblatt was less tickled. Rough Night is "a raunchy, wildly off-the-rails farce" that "feels like the summer-movie equivalent of a fidget spinner: shiny, manic, and spiraling to nowhere," she writes at Entertainment Weekly. She does commend the casting—naming Ty Burrell and Demi Moore, who play a swingers couple—but adds the actors have to deal with a "loose cannon of a script." "Well, at least they got the title right," begins Adam Graham at the Detroit News. The rest of his review is no less harsh. "Rough Night is a dismal, excruciating experience, a tired retread of raunchy comedy tropes that can't be bothered to come up with any funny or original bits," he writes. Like one of its characters on cocaine, "it's frantic, scattered and convinced of its own greatness," then "empty and rather sad."
– There's quite a difference between making $58,000 a year and $270,000, and that huge gap is why some are now poking around to see how a San Francisco janitor has been pulling in the latter. The San Francisco Chronicle reports on Liang Zhao Zhang, who cleans the BART system's station at Powell Street and has a base salary of $57,945, per public records culled by Transparent California. But thanks to about $162,000 in hefty overtime pay and other compensation and benefits, Zhang raked in what amounts to $271,243 in 2015. Robert Fellner, a research director for the watchdog group, tells KTVU he's been keeping an eye on public employee salaries for years and has never seen a janitor get paid such an "obscene" and "unconscionable" amount. Nearly 50 other unaudited BART janitors also earned in the six figures in 2015. Fellner wants to know, for instance, how the "superhuman" Zhang worked 17-hour days for 18 days in a row during July 2015, a fact found during an analysis of Zhang's timecards, which turned up several "discrepancies and questions." Roy Aguilera, BART's chief transportation officer, says Zhang just grabs extra hours no one wants. But when KTVU gained access to video on BART's security cameras for two random days, it witnessed Zhang head into a storage closet and hole up there for hours (on one day he was in the closet for 90 minutes, then later on for another 78). A BART rep says Zhang may have been fixing equipment or taking a break, though Aguilera tells KTVU there's a dedicated break area elsewhere. Fellner says the situation is a "catastrophic management failure" that should've been audited long ago. (The worst-paying jobs you have to go to college for.)
– The gay rights battle is now running the retail gamut. Following the uproar over Chick-fil-A and same-sex marriage, gay rights advocates are pushing for a boycott of cleaning and beauty products company Amway and its affiliates, which include the Orlando Magic basketball team. The boycott call is in response to a $500,000 donation to battle gay marriage made by a foundation funded by Amway president Doug DeVos. The recipient of the donation, the National Organization for Marriage, "has been one of the most virulently anti-LGBT organizations in the country," says a statement launching the boycott by Rights Equal Rights. "A global boycott of Amway will let others know that there are consequences for giving massive amounts of money to take away the rights of a minority." Amway officials said the donation represents the personal beliefs of DeVos. As "private citizens, the DeVos family supports causes and organizations that advocate for policies aligned to their personal beliefs," Amway said in a statement to ABC News, adding that the family believes "one of the highest callings of any individual is to express their own personal beliefs as a participant in the democratic process." The Magic has reported no dip in ticket sales.
– For nearly 40 years, the death of Natalie Wood has remained a mystery. First the 43-year-old actress was ruled to have died of accidental drowning after disappearing from a yacht she was on with husband Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken. Then, in 2012, that ruling shifted to drowning plus "other undetermined factors," with LA County Sheriff's Department investigators suspicious there was more to the case. Wood's sister, Lana Wood, has contended for years that Wagner was responsible for her sibling's death, and this week, Dr. Phil McGraw added oxygen to that theory by having Lana Wood and the yacht's captain, Dennis Davern, on his show for two days of interviews on the subject, USA Today reports. "You believe Robert Wagner murdered Natalie Wood?" McGraw asked Davern, who'd initially stuck with the accidental drowning story. "Yes, I really do," Davern answered. He says he heard Wood and Wagner fighting, and when the noise ceased, he went up on the deck to find Wagner standing there solo; Davern says Wagner insisted they say Wood likely slipped and fell into the water. Lana Wood sticks by that, too. "Are you suggesting that [Wagner] knocked her out and threw her in the water?" McGraw asked. "Something like that, absolutely," she answered. Per Us Weekly, Lana Wood also recently appeared on a podcast in which she says that, shortly after her sister's death, Hollywood exec Rowland Perkins informed her Wagner was keeping her out of Tinseltown. "He said, 'Stop trying to get a job in production or acting. You've been blacklisted by Robert Wagner," Lana Wood said. A rep for Wagner, now 88, tells USA Today that Davern and Lana Wood are "despicable human beings" and that "they should be ashamed of themselves."
– The 21st season of South Park debuted Wednesday, and it seems technology has finally advanced enough to pull Cartman and company's foul-mouthed antics out of the TV and into America's living rooms. In Wednesday's episode, "White People Renovating Houses," characters repeatedly yelled commands at Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, the Hollywood Reporter reports. Thanks to the nature of voice activation, this led to some chaotic and foul-mouthed results with real-life Echos and Homes across the country. "This South Park episode has set my Amazon Alexa off about 15 times so far. Had to unplug it," one fan tweeted. "We have an Alexa and a Google Home and South Park repeatedly screwed with both of them tonight," tweeted another. Some viewers ended up with offensive-sounding items on their grocery lists, had their alarms reset, or heard their devices repeat NSFW phrases. As Consumerist delicately puts it, Cartman got a group of devices on the show to repeatedly "say things about human genitalia," and devices in the real world dutifully followed suit.
– After just six months on the job, the head of the US Forest Service is stepping down after a PBS probe revealed not only claims of sexual harassment and assault throughout the agency in general, but also accusations of misconduct against Tony Tooke himself, PBS reports. Tooke's retirement, which is effective immediately, comes just a few days after a PBS NewsHour investigation into both the Forest Service and Tooke, who informed his staff he'd be leaving in a Wednesday email obtained by Politico and BuzzFeed. While Tooke didn't confirm or deny the allegations against him—allegations that the New York Times says haven't yet been spelled out—he says, "I cannot combat every inaccuracy that is reported in the news media," and therefore feels it's best to "make way for a new leader that can ensure future success for all employees and the agency." PBS talked to 34 current and former Forest Service female workers, who described a hostile work environment that included everything from bullying and sexual harassment to groping and rape. Many women also allege retaliation after they reported these incidents. The Forest Service says its parent agency, the Department of Agriculture, has "engaged an independent investigator" to look into specific allegations against Tooke, who has been with the Forest Service since he was 18. Tooke wrote in his email that "I admire the courage" of the women who've come forward about the Forest Service and that "each employee deserves a leader who can maintain the proper moral authority to steer the Forest Service along this important and challenging course." Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue thanked Tooke in a statement for "his decades of service to this nation and to the conservation of its natural resources."
– Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate attorney David Friedman as US ambassador to Israel, selecting an envoy who supports Israeli settlements and other changes to US policies in the region, reports the AP. Friedman says he looks forward to carrying out his duties from "the US embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem," even though the embassy is in Tel Aviv. Like some of his predecessors, Trump has vowed to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, a politically charged act that would anger Palestinians who want east Jerusalem as part of their sovereign territory. The move would also distance the US from most of the international community, including its closest allies in Western Europe and the Arab world. The president-elect says Friedman will "maintain the special relationship" between the US and Israel. But the announcement sparked anger from liberal Jewish groups, with the president of J Street calling Friedman's nomination "reckless," citing his support for settlements and his questioning of a two-state solution with the Palestinians. (Friedman has previously likened liberal Jews in the US to Jews who aided the Nazis during World War II, notes the New York Times.) The statement doesn't detail how Friedman could work in Jerusalem. One option would involve Friedman, if confirmed by the Senate, working out of an existing US consulate in Jerusalem. The administration would essentially deem the facility the American embassy by virtue of the ambassador working there.
– Molly Shattuck, estranged wife of Constellation Energy CEO Mayo A. Shattuck III and a lifestyle guru who was once the oldest cheerleader in the NFL, was arrested in Delaware yesterday and charged with third-degree rape, unlawful sexual contact with a 15-year-old boy, and providing alcohol to minors, reports the News Journal. Shattuck, due back in court in December, pleaded not guilty and was released on $84,000 bail, reports the Baltimore Sun. She is the mother of three, the oldest of whom is a classmate of the alleged victim. Police outline the alleged timeline in court documents: They say that Shattuck commented on photos of the teen on Instagram in May; Shattuck's son then reportedly gave the boy his mom's cell phone number and prodded him to text her, saying "she is obsessed with you." The former Baltimore Ravens cheerleader later allegedly had make-out sessions with the teen in the back of her Cadillac Escalade, and invited him (along with her children and their friends) to her beach rental over Labor Day, where she allegedly performed oral sex on him. Police say the teen told them that Shattuck also offered him sex that weekend, but he "decided to leave at that point and go back to the rooftop."
– If you thought you'd seen the last of Capri Anderson, the porn star (and rumored prostitute) police found hiding in the bathroom after Charlie Sheen's latest rampage, think again. She's filing a criminal report as well as a civil complaint alleging assault and false imprisonment, she tells Good Morning America. She claims she was offered $3,500 to make a "paid appearance" at a dinner party with Sheen, but went back to his room of her own free will (she denies she was expecting to be paid $12,000 for sex), which is where things got ugly. "There was a little bit of romance if you will," she says, but "it became really uncomfortable ... when he put his hands around my neck. At that point things began to rapidly ... fall apart and get out of hand." When she started to leave, "he started throwing things. He threw a lamp, that was the first thing he picked up." She fled for the bathroom when she saw him pick up something shiny, "an envelope opener maybe, a knife." She claims she didn't report the assault to the police when they arrived because she was "embarrassed" and wanted to go home. Click here for more from the interview.
– Kim Jong Nam's assassins killed him with a banned chemical weapon, Malaysian police revealed Friday. The country's police chief said toxicology reports on swabs from the face and eyes of the exiled North Korean found VX nerve agent, which the BBC notes is classed as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations. He said that one of two women believed to have rubbed the extremely toxic substance on Kim's face with their hands suffered from vomiting after the attack. The New York Times reports that VX agent can be created by mixing two compounds—and police suspect the two women put the substances on Kim's face, one after the other, to create a deadly dose. The police chief said the airport where Kim was attacked is now being decontaminated. North Korea—which is widely suspected to have been behind the killing of leader Kim Jong Un's half brother—never signed the Chemical Weapons Convention that banned VX, the AP notes. Pyongyang denies involvement and says Malaysia's investigation is full of "holes and contradictions." The father of one of the two women being held, Vietnamese citizen Doan Thi Huong, tells the Times his daughter trained as a pharmacist and he has seen little of her in recent years. (Police say that after Malaysia refused to give Kim's body to North Korean diplomats, somebody tried to break into the morgue.)
– If they're serving smoked salmon at the New Year's Eve party, it might pay to find out where it's from. Walmart's Sam's Club is recalling packages sold in 42 states because of concerns about listeria, reports the LA Times. The product in question is from Multiexport Foods of Miami and Tampa Bay Fisheries, specifically the 12-ounce Twin Pack and 1.25-pound Paramount Reserve. Info on UPC codes and affected states is here. No illnesses have been linked to the fish, but a routine lab test turned up traces of the potentially deadly bacteria.
– The "trial of the century" has begun in South Korea, where a vice chairman at Samsung Electronics faces bribery and embezzlement charges after allegedly giving $36 million to President Park Geun-hye and her close friend Choi Soon-sil in order to win government support for a 2015 merger. Lee Jae-Yong, also identified as Jay Y. Lee, faces five years to life in prison if convicted and is expected to learn his fate within three months, though years of appeals could follow. The latest: Samsung has admitted donating about $17.5 million to foundations controlled by Choi, but Lee says it was forced to do so by Park, per Yonhap News. However, Lee says he provided money and a horse to help the equestrian career of Choi's daughter, per the BBC. A prosecutor has described this as the "trial of the century" and a lawyer previously involved with the case explains why: It "will draw attention from around the world, not just for the defendant's fame abroad, but also for the size of the alleged bribe," he says. "Every step will be contentious," reports Bloomberg. In the first court hearing Thursday, Lee's lawyers attempted to show a PowerPoint presentation, only to have prosecutors fiercely object. Defense lawyers then complained about a special prosecutor's involvement in the hearing. In some ways, Park is also on trial. A constitutional court is set to decide whether to uphold her impeachment on Friday, a decision that could lead to an election within two months. Bloomberg reports any decision is "almost certain to provoke protests." It won't be anything new. People have been protesting in Seoul for months, many outraged over what they view as "chronic corruption" in dealings between the government and family-run conglomerates. What does this all mean for Samsung's business? The company has said its strong management team will ensure all runs smoothly. But without Lee at its head, major decisions for the company could be delayed.
– The White House has walked back comments made by President Trump on Friday that he would not sign a "moderate" immigration reform bill scheduled for a vote next week. A spokesman said Trump had misunderstood the question and does indeed back the measure, reports Politico. The tumult erupted as GOP leaders put the finishing touches on a pair of Republican bills: a hard-right proposal and a middle-ground plan negotiated by the party's conservative and moderate wings, with White House input. Only the compromise bill would open a door to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the US illegally as children ("Dreamers"), and reduce the separation of children from their parents when families are detained crossing the border. When asked about the bills Friday in a Fox News interview, Trump said, "I certainly wouldn't sign the more moderate one." But a senior White House official later said Trump had misspoken and believed his Fox interviewer was asking about an effort by GOP moderates—abandoned for now—that would have forced votes on a handful of bills and likely led to House passage of liberal-leaning versions party leaders oppose, per the AP. The White House later put out a statement formally endorsing the "moderate" measure now in the works. Earlier this week, Paul Ryan had said the president was on board with it. Trump also weighed in by tweet, writing that any bill "MUST HAVE" provisions financing his proposed wall with Mexico and curbing the existing legal immigration system. Those items are included in the middle-ground package. Democrats are expected to solidly oppose both GOP bills, giving Republicans little leeway for losing support.
– "Chaos" is the word being used to describe the first day of Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and now new labels are being applied to Kavanaugh himself, including ill-mannered and "coward." Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Parkland shooting, said he approached Kavanaugh during a break in Tuesday's hearing to introduce himself. "I put out my hand and I said: 'My name is Fred Guttenberg, father of Jaime Guttenberg, who was murdered in Parkland,' and he walked away,'" Guttenberg tells the Guardian, adding on Twitter: "I guess he did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence." Videos from various angles are circulating, showing Kavanaugh stare at Guttenberg, with his extended hand, for two seconds before walking away. It's not clear if Kavanaugh heard Guttenberg's introduction. White House spokesman Raj Shah says "security … intervened" when an "unidentified individual" approached Kavanaugh, an explainer Guttenberg is refuting. "Incorrect. I was here all day and introduced by Senator [Dianne] Feinstein," who invited Guttenberg to the hearing, Guttenberg tweeted. The Parkland father said he'd simply wanted to speak to Kavanaugh, father to father, to let him "know that my family was torn apart by gun violence," and he dismissed theories that, although he doesn't support Kavanaugh's nomination, this was intended to make Kavanaugh look bad. Per the Hill and the Washington Post, Guttenberg says he was questioned by Capitol Police for about 15 minutes, then allowed to return to the hearing—and he thinks Kavanaugh is the one who pinpointed him to security. "He could have absolutely shook my hand and said: 'I'm sorry for your loss.' I mean—if nothing else," he tells the Guardian.
– A maker of one of the hottest products of the year has just found itself in a bucket of hot water. According to a consumer advocacy group, two fidget spinners supplied to Target by Iowa-based Bulls-i-Toy contain lead at up to 330 times the federal legal limit for toys. Inspired by a 15,000-strong Facebook group run by a woman who tests consumer products for lead, the US Public Interest Research Group tested 12 fidget spinners sold by Target and found two with unsafe lead levels, reports CBS News. Fidget Wild Premium Spinner Brass was found to contain 33,000 parts per million at its center, while Fidget Wild Premium Spinner Metal contained 1,300 parts per million, reports the Washington Post. Federal laws limit lead in "children's products" to 100 parts per million. The group is now asking Target to remove the products and recall those already sold. But Target isn't complying, arguing the Consumer Product Safety Commission classifies fidget spinners as "general use products" marketed to users 14 and up, making them exempt from regulations on toys. Bulls-i-Toy seconds that, noting the products are "clearly labeled" for ages 14 and up. But FOX 13 notes the fidget spinners sold in Target toy aisles had actually been listed on its website at one point with a manufacturer's recommendation for users "6 years and up." Given that lead exposure can cause learning disabilities in children, among many other issues, US PIRG's toxics director maintains "these products are not safe," per CBS. (They're also a choking hazard.)
– A Mexican lucha libre wrestler died early yesterday from a flying kick he took inside the ring in a match that continued for almost two minutes before anyone realized he was injured. As NBC News reports, Pedro Aguayo Ramirez was rushed to a hospital a block away from the Tijuana match, but died at 1:30am local time. The state prosecutor's office says that it's opened a manslaughter investigation into his death; his cause of death is listed as "trauma to the neck and a cervical fracture," reports the AP. Aguayo Ramirez, the 35-year-old son of another revered wrestler, had competed in the sport for 20 years and went by Hijo de Perro Aguayo in the ring. "I have no words for this terrible news," said the director of the AAA wrestling federation.
– Alexander Haig died this morning at age 85. The former four-star general served as White House chief of staff during the tumultuous final months of the Nixon administration—he kept the place running and guided Nixon toward a peaceful resignation, reports the Washington Post—and he ran for the top office himself in 1988. But he's perhaps best known to Americans as Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, who incorrectly told the nation "I am in control here" after Reagan got shot. Another former Reagan aide, Lyn Nofgizer, said Haig knew that despite all his accomplishments, the third paragraph of his obituary would harp on that, notes the New York Times—in the third paragraph of its obituary. Prior to the news conference in which he made the declaration, Haig told fellow Cabinet members that the "helm is right here, and that means in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the vice president gets here." The Constitution, of course, disagrees, and Haig's words forever earned him the reputation as being hungry for power.
– Donald Trump's poll numbers among black Americans are abysmal—he's polling at around half the 6% Mitt Romney received in 2012—but he hasn't given up trying. On Wednesday, he offered a "new deal for black America" in a policy-heavy speech delivered to what the Washington Post reports was a largely white audience in North Carolina. The "deal is grounded in three promises: safe communities, great education, and high-paying jobs," Trump said, per the Hill, blaming Democrats for "total violence" in inner cities. He promised to provide incentives for companies to move to "blighted communities," and to allow cities and states to declare such places disaster areas to receive federal funding. In other election coverage: Earlier Wednesday, Trump took the morning off from campaigning to attend a ribbon-cutting at his new hotel in Washington, DC, reports Politico. "My theme today is five words: under budget and ahead of schedule," he said. He went on to describe America as a great country where there is "no task or project too great" and "no dream outside of our reach." At the DC event, Trump congratulated Newt Gingrich on his "great interview" with Megyn Kelly, in which Gingrich accused Kelly of being "fascinated with sex." Deadline reports that on The Kelly File Wednesday night, Karl Rove told Kelly that Trump had wasted precious time opening the hotel and "complimenting Newt Gingrich on having a food fight with you last night." The Wall Street Journal looks at the latest damaging WikiLeaks release on the Clintons. A 2011 memo from then-Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band outlines how his fundraising work on behalf of the Clinton Foundation also led to paid speaking engagements and other business opportunities for the former president. The New York Times spoke to Trump supporters at rallies in six states and found that many believe there will be violence, or even a "new Revolutionary War," if Hillary Clinton wins the election. But some still expect a landslide Trump win. "You go through any neighborhood and see how many Trump signs there are and how many Hillary signs there are, and I guarantee you it's not even going to be close," a 44-year-old Florida man says. "The only way they've done it is by rigging the election." The AP reports that Clinton, who celebrated her 69th birthday Wednesday, said she was struck that Trump "was paying more attention to his business than to the campaign. That's his choice, but we're going to keep working really hard to reach as many voters as possible." (Wednesday was a very bad day for Trump's Hollywood star.)
– The Grey, a survival-in-the-wilderness thriller starring Liam Neeson, is earning a wealth of literary comparisons. The film tells the story of a group of men stranded in the snow after a plane crash, and critics are mostly impressed. In the New York Times, AO Scott applauds the "fine, tough little movie, technically assured and brutally efficient, with a simple story that ventures into some profound existential territory without making a big fuss about it." The film is "as blunt and effective—and also, at times, as lyrical—as a tale by Jack London or Ernest Hemingway." The Grey is "in the best sense, like a men’s adventure magazine splashed on the big screen," notes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News. "With a bellyful of lite Hemingway and a heavy soul that never drags it down, director Joe Carnahan’s great adventure follows Neeson’s lead and stays steely to the end." But in USA Today, Claudia Puig isn't particularly wowed. "With its reliance on jolts, sudden movements, and thunderous sounds, The Grey is more startling than frightening," she writes. "What starts as a tense and moody survival thriller fairly quickly becomes tedious, forced, and far-fetched." "Some of The Grey is phony," agrees Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. But "there's an actual human element to go with Carnahan's Jack London-inspired depiction of humans against the elements." Click to see why Slate's Dana Stevens thinks the movie is "almost haiku-like."
– In what could be one of history's more intriguing cases of a Catholic confessing his sins, a former mobster has asked for a meeting with Pope Francis so he can confess three "very important secrets." Vincenzo Calcara, described by the BBC as a "mafia turncoat" who was a member of Sicily's Cosa Nostra before becoming a police informant, wrote a six-page letter to the pope claiming that what he has to say "can change the course of certain events," according to local media. (This after Pope Francis in March warned mobsters to repent or "end up in hell.") Specifically, he implies he has information about the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee. Calcara wrote that what happened has been kept secret "because to reveal it would be like opening a box and bringing to light truths so weighty as to throw into crisis a system that links the Vatican with other deviant entities." It's not Calcara's first run-in with the church: Years ago, he claimed that Ali Agca, who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in a St. Peter's Square shooting in 1991, was a hitman hired by the mafia, according to the Catholic Herald. And in 1994, the AP reported Calcara claimed that a US archbishop who once ran the Vatican bank had helped mobsters launder $6.5 million through the bank. That allegation was denied by the cardinal who ran the Vatican bank at the time.
– Women's earnings continue to rise slightly every five years between the ages of 20 and 40, at which point the median salary peaks at $49,000. From there until retirement 25 years later women's earnings remain flat, while men's salaries continue to grow until into their 50s, at which point the median salary is around $75,000, reports Marketwatch. This discrepancy persists even when men and women hold the same jobs, according to numbers released by salary comparison site PayScale, with a regular pay gap of 2.2% for most workers and an even higher one, 6.1%, for executives. ThinkProgress notes that the study shows the wage gap persists in every industry, at every educational level, and at every job level. "There’s discrimination," says Heidi Hartmann, the president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. "A lot of pay is still based on the head of household model, where expectations that men earn to support their families while women earn money that's just "nice to have" persist, she says. "There’s a heck of a lot of inefficiency the way supervisors set wages." And while more women do tend to take some time off of work to start a family, this doesn't explain the stalled increase in earnings a full decade before men see the same plateau. Hartmann says that at least some of the difference may be more in the kinds of jobs women are currently taking versus men, and Payscale's lead economist backs that up. "It’s not really a wage gap, it’s a jobs gap," Katie Bardaro says. Fast Company has a more detailed breakdown, ranging from a gender wage gap of 9.4% in farming, fishing, and forestry, to 1.4% in personal care and service. (See why Jennifer Lawrence thinks she's paid less than her male co-stars.)
– The coming-of-age indie flick The Way, Way Back has been compared to Little Miss Sunshine and Adventureland. Starring Steve Carell, Allison Janney, and Toni Collette, it's certainly got the acting chops to make it a hit—but is it a hit with critics? The consensus is yes, even though it doesn't offer viewers anything new. It's expected but charming, with a few laughs thrown in the mix, too. "The film is awash in safe choices, from indie-pop-accompanied montages to sitcom one-liners and black-and-white characters," Liam Lacey writes at the Globe and Mail. Though he compares the plot to that of Little Miss Sunshine, he argues The Way, Way Back is "way underdeveloped." Betsy Sharkey at the LA Times appears to have been watching a different film entirely. She says the flick has a "witty, heartwarming, hopeful, sentimental, searing, and relatable edge." Though she admits it's a "fairly straightforward story of coming of age in a time of divorce," the writers "make it feel fresh." It's a "minor pleasure," as opposed to a "major work," concedes Ty Burr at the Boston Globe. But isn't that nice during the summer? "This one goes down like a popsicle on a hot day," even as it moves along "genially if not always freshly." Sure, "there's nothing strikingly new or different about The Way, Way Back," writes Andrew O'Hehir on Salon. "It's classic summer counter-programming, a low-tech indie comedy driven by its strong cast and eccentric characters." But it's done well, and it stays away from "raunchy teen-movie cliché" territory. O'Hehir liked the film enough to make it Salon's "pick of the week."
– "I aimed to eat 150 slices, but when I … got to 182 slices, I knew it must be because I'm fueled by bacon!" Words of victory to WXIA from 22-year-old Matt Stonie, who consumed 182 slices of bacon in five minutes at the Daytona 500 on Sunday, Mashable reports. Stonie, ranked second in competitive eating by Major League Eating (the sanctioning organization for the "sport"), has very specific preferences for how his breakfast meat is prepared. He tells the Huffington Post that "it needs to be cooked perfectly. It can't be too crispy, and if it's not warm when I get it, the fat coagulates into lard." Stonie also holds the records for eating the most gyros, birthday cake, fro-yo, and pumpkin pie, WXIA notes. The Huffington Post has more on Stonie and his insane birthday-cake record.
– The man who inspected a Philadelphia building three weeks before it collapsed last week, killing six and injuring 13, has died in an apparent suicide. The 52-year-old, whose name has not been released, inspected the building several times and ruled it safe after a complaint was lodged last month, reports NBC. He apparently shot himself in the chest while parked in his pickup truck in an isolated area about a mile from his home, where his wife found him. His suicide note had been a text to her. Meanwhile, a crane operator awaits trial in the collapse, while victims are suing the demolition contractor.
– Engine failure is not what you want to experience at 31,000 feet, but that's what happened to actress Jennifer Lawrence on Saturday—and then it got worse. The 26-year-old had departed Louisville, Ky., on a private plane with two pilots and one other passenger when the engine issue occurred. A rep for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority tells the Buffalo News a Beechcraft 400 Beechjet made an emergency landing in Buffalo at 1:15pm due to the left-engine issue. E! reports that while making the landing, the other engine gave out, but the plane was able to land without incident. A rep for Lawrence confirms to USA Today that she was uninjured.
– A Texas judge delivered a bombshell ruling on ObamaCare Friday night, declaring that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. US District Court Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the individual mandate—the penalty those who forgo insurance must pay—is unconstitutional. And because the individual mandate is so integral to the ACA, the entire ACA is unconstitutional as well, he declared. All of which has lawmakers in both parties, as well as millions of Americans who get their coverage from the ACA, wondering, "Now what?" Here's what we know, including a debate over the legal principle of "severability": What's next: In terms of the immediate future, nothing changes, reports USA Today. Though much uncertainty is now in the mix, the ACA remains in place while this plays out in the courts—perhaps even at the Supreme Court, for the third time—and the process could take months, if not years. Those insured under the ACA, including those who just enrolled, remain covered. The stakes: Here's how the Washington Post puts it: "The opinion, if upheld on appeal, would upend the health insurance industry, the way doctors and hospitals function, and the ability of millions of Americans to access treatments they need to combat serious diseases." Core provisions: As the AP notes, key provisions of the ACA have become popular with Americans, including its protections for pre-existing conditions, expanded Medicaid for lower-income Americans, and the ability of parents to keep their kids covered through age 26. All of which makes the politics tricky for the GOP; the AP says the decision "has landed like a stink bomb among Republicans."
– In his first-ever Oval Office speech tomorrow night, President Obama will demand that BP hand over billions of dollars to an independent mediator who will handle the claims of people and businesses affected by the Gulf oil spill. The White House hasn't named a sum, but House Dems asked BP for $20 billion for the escrow fund yesterday. The speech will come amid a week of activities that the president hopes will convince the public he's in control of the oil spill crisis, the New York Times reports. Those the administration wants BP to compensate include all oil industry workers affected by the current moratorium on drilling. The oil giant fears the plan would create unlimited liability for it, the Washington Post reports. Another current sore point as both sides gear up for Obama's meeting with BP leaders Wednesday is the $10.5 billion dividend BP had planned to pay out to shareholders, likely unfeasible in the current political environment. Topping off the week's confrontations with the government, BP head Tony Hayward will go before a congressional committee Thursday.
– A Kentucky pastor has nullified a vote by his church to ban interracial couples, he says. “As far as I'm concerned and the church is concerned, this case will be closed as of tomorrow,” said Stacy Stepp on Saturday, after raising the issue with a council of local church leaders. The group ruled that the vote had no weight because parishioners hadn’t followed proper voting rules, ABC News reports. Stepp opposed the vote in the first place, he told the Lexington Herald-Leader.
– Jesse Jackson is organizing a march this weekend in remembrance of Hadiya Pendleton, the Chicago teen who was killed just days after performing with her school band at President Obama's inauguration. Chicago already has some of the nation's strictest gun laws, but Jackson says he's hoping to inspire action on other factors that lead to gang violence. "It's not just about gun laws," he said on MSNBC. "It's about gun flow and drug flow and job flow." Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition will participate in the march, as will Rev. Al Sharpton, Politico reports. Hadiya's shooting is believed to be gang-related, but police say neither the 15-year-old nor anyone she was with had gang ties. Indeed, in sixth grade she even recorded an anti-gang PSA, the Chicago Tribune reports. It's heartbreaking to watch now: "So many children in the world have died from gang violence," another girl in the video tells the camera. "More than 500 children have died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
– Top European officials scheduled a last-minute meeting today amid fears Italy would be the next country hit hard by the euro zone debt crisis. Though a rep for the European Council president says Italy isn’t on the agenda, other officials privately contradict him. Last Friday saw a 2.45% gap between the yields of Italian and German 10-year bonds—the biggest since the euro began. The Italian yield has hit some 5.27%, just below the 5.5% bankers fear could prompt a widening crisis. Meanwhile, the country’s blue-chip stock market index dropped 3.5%. Investors are worried Silvio Berlusconi may be trying to squeeze out the country’s finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, who has been considered highly effective during the financial crisis and in managing debt. The threat to Italy hasn’t approached the severity of the Greek crisis, but its economy is more than double the size of Greece, Portugal, and Ireland combined, notes the New York Times. “We can't go on for many more days like Friday," a European official tells Reuters. "We're very worried about Italy."
– Authorities say a Georgia man killed his ex-wife's attorney in his law office just hours after the couple's divorce was final and then killed himself, the AP reports. Cartersville Police Lt. M.E. Bettikofer tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that 33-year-old Walter Samuel Radford failed to show up Wednesday for the final divorce hearing. The divorce was finalized at 12:04pm. Police say Radford shot and killed his ex-wife's attorney in the attorney's Cartersville law office about two hours later. The lawyer, 41-year-old Antonio Benjamin Mari, was shot multiple times. Bettikofer says Radford called ex-wife Cindy Radford to tell her he had shot Mari. He says Radford then broke into her home and shot himself. His body was found about 2:40pm. Colleague Wade Everett says Mari had reported being afraid of Radford and had said Wednesday morning, hours before the murder, that he had a "gut feeling" the man could harm him. According to court documents, Radford never filed a response or hired a lawyer after he was served with divorce papers in March. At Wednesday's hearing, his ex-wife was awarded the family home and granted custody of the couple's two children.
– It was one small model for Neil Armstrong, but one giant heist for thieves: Police in Ohio are searching for a rare solid gold replica of the first vehicle to land on the moon that was stolen from the Armstrong Air and Space Museum late Friday, NPR reports. An alarm signaled cops to the theft from the museum in Wapakoneta, Armstrong's hometown. Police said it was impossible to put a value on the 5-inch Cartier-cast replica, which Armstrong received in Paris shortly after the 1969 mission. Fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins also got 18-karat models, which were commissioned and paid for by France's Le Figaro newspaper and its readers. The museum, which closed for several hours on Saturday, posted a statement on Facebook saying, "The truth is that you can't steal from a museum. Museum's don't 'own' artifacts. We are simply vessels of the public trust. … For every day that an item is missing, we are all robbed of an opportunity to enjoy it and our history." The FBI was aiding local police in investigating the theft. A retired NASA agent tells the AP the replica could fetch millions among space collectors, but the thieves probably plan to melt it down for its gold. Joseph Gutheinz Jr. notes that whoever swiped the statue left behind a large moon rock also worth millions. "Either they didn't have easy access to the moon rock, or they weren't into collectibles," Gutheinz says. "They were into turning a quick buck." (Thanks to a NASA inventory error, this woman is $1.8 million richer.)
– It looks like Shakespeare's skull really is missing from his grave. That's what an archaeologist has concluded after researchers were allowed to use ground-penetrating radar to scan the Bard's final resting place, Reuters reports. "We have Shakespeare's burial with an odd disturbance at the head end and we have a story that suggests that at some point in history someone's come in and taken the skull of Shakespeare," says Staffordshire University archaeologist Kevin Colls, who says the findings are "very very convincing" that the long-standing rumors of a missing skull are true. He tells Fox News that analysis shows the "odd, strange" disturbance at the head end of the grave is a sign "of material being dug out and put back again." Per those rumors, grave-robbers took the skull from Shakespeare's grave at the Church of the Holy Trinity in England's Stratford-upon-Avon in 1794. At the time, trophy hunters believed a person's genius would be apparent in his skull. Rumors also claimed that Shakespeare's skull might be hidden in a sealed crypt at another church nearby, but Colls' team investigated and found the skull there was that of a woman in her 70s. The team also discovered that Shakespeare was buried in a simple shroud, not a coffin, and that he and his wife were buried in shallow graves, not a deeper family vault as had been believed, Newsweek adds. Researchers, who ignored a curse in Shakespeare's epitaph in order to do their non-intrusive analysis, present the findings in a documentary airing in Britain Saturday. (Click to see Shakespeare's entreaty for refugees, in his own hand.)
– Americans were reminded of one more thing to be thankful for on Thursday: Aretha Franklin. In what caused a "Twitter meltdown," per CBS Sports, Franklin sang the national anthem ahead of the Detroit Lions' game against the Minnesota Vikings and stretched the song into an incredible "4-minute, 35-second-long church spiritual," per NBC News. The national anthem performance at the Super Bowl is typically expected to take about two minutes. One Twitter user joked that "I cooked my whole turkey, ate, and did the dishes" during the performance, while another said it was a wonder Franklin didn't get a delay of game penalty. At one point in the game, CBS even included Franklin in a graphic showing time of possession on the field. But fans at the stadium were thrilled, applauding several times throughout the performance, per People. The Lions went on to win the game 16-13.
– If you're trying to land a job, it's much better to explain why you're the perfect candidate in person than in an email, a new study suggests. And it's got nothing to do with power suits—it's all about your voice. Employers are more likely to rate people as intelligent if they hear their pitch than if they read it, say researchers at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In their experiments, the researchers had students prepare videotaped pitches for their dream companies. Evaluators rated the applicants more highly if they listened to the audio rather than reading the same words in a transcript, the researchers write at phys.org. Watching the video didn't seem to affect the scores at all. "In addition to communicating the contents of one's mind, like specific thoughts and beliefs, a person's speech conveys their fundamental capacity to think—the capacity for reasoning, thoughtfulness and intellect," says lead researcher Nicholas Epley. In the tests, "intellect was conveyed primarily through voice," perhaps through subtle variances in pitch and cadence, writes Wray Herbert at the Huffington Post. He thinks it backs up that age-old advice about the importance of wrangling face time with a potential boss. Or as a post at Counsel & Heal puts it, "work on your voice to get your dream job." (In other voice research, a study finds that lousy singers can improve—by singing more.)
– Welcome to ObamaCare's website woes, part two: the Spanish version. Americans who visit CuidadoDeSalud.gov to enroll for ObamaCare say it's slow, has links to English-speaking pages, and poor translations—like using "prima" for "premium" even though the Spanish word is commonly used for "female cousin," the AP reports. "When you get into the details of the plans, it's not all written in Spanish," says a health care navigator who helps people enroll in Miami. "It's written in Spanglish, so we end up having to translate it for them." So attempts to enroll Spanish-speakers seem to be flailing so far (the exact numbers aren't in) and critics are pouncing; Hot Air calls it yet another "grandiose" ObamaCare promise that falls "tremendously, incompetently flat." But the Obama administration notes that Spanish speakers have been able to use phone and paper options to enroll. And that may suit some Hispanics better, according to an NBC News report on health care among low-wage, Spanish-speaking workers near Silicon Valley. Many of them say they have no Internet connection and wouldn't feel comfortable handing over personal information online.
– Legendary mountain climber Fred Beckey, who wrote dozens of books and is credited with notching more first ascents than any other American mountaineer, has died. He was 94. Megan Bond, a close friend who managed his affairs, told the AP that Beckey died of natural causes in her Seattle home Monday. She described him as a "brilliant writer" and "extraordinary mountaineer" with "a personality and humor that almost dwarfed the mountains around him." But though he "made as many as a thousand ascents that no one was known to have taken before," the German-born climber who immigrated to Seattle, Wash., as a child, avoided publicity and was "virtually unknown to the general public," reports the New York Times. Choosing mountains over people (he never married or had kids), Beckey often climbed 50 peaks in a single year. In 1942, he and his younger brother, Helmut, wowed the climbing community with an impressive second ascent of Mount Waddington in British Columbia. He went on to accomplish hundreds of first ascents on peaks throughout the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Canada, and Wyoming. In 1954, he established new routes on three of Alaska's mountains: McKinley, Deborah, and Hunter. "Fred was a true American icon" and "inspired countless people to explore this amazing planet," says Dave O'Leske, who spent the past decade filming Beckey. Even in his 90s, Beckey was still plotting routes and climbing. Bond said they were planning a trip to the Himalayas next spring.
– Life of one kind or another has been around on this planet for 300 million years longer than thought, according to US researchers who took a close look at some incredibly ancient crystals unearthed in Australia. The scientists say that the zircon crystals from 4.1 billion years ago contain a telltale carbon deposit that appears to have come from something organic, Reuters reports. That's getting closer to the origin of the planet itself, roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Before now, the earliest hint of life was found in rocks 3.8 billion years old. There's no chance the carbon deposit could be any younger than the zircon because the crystal is crack-free and undisturbed, the researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The zircon crystals were formed during a geological era known as the Hadean, after Hades, because conditions were thought to be so hellish that no life could have existed, the New Scientist notes. The UCLA and Stanford researchers now dispute that, saying life on Earth may have formed "almost instantaneously"—and restarted quickly if it were wiped out at some point. "The early Earth certainly wasn't a hellish, dry, boiling planet; we see absolutely no evidence for that," study co-author Mark Harrison says in a UCLA press release. "The planet was probably much more like it is today than previously thought.” (Earth's first big predator may have been an enormous sea scorpion.)
– The "simplest of drugs" is in short supply at hospitals around the country, causing crucial surgeries and other treatments to be reprioritized, and it's a cheap drug whose main ingredient may be found in your own pantry, the New York Times reports. That drug is sodium bicarbonate solution, aka baking soda, which is used in chemo regimens, as a poison antidote, and to help patients whose blood has veered into acidic ranges, among other uses. But the nation's two lone suppliers, Pfizer and Amphastar, are suddenly unable to give medical facilities what they need, causing those facilities to hoard what's left in their own cabinets. "Does the immediate need of a patient outweigh the expected need of a patient?" says the head pharmacist at a hospital in Mobile, Ala., calling it a "medical and ethical question that goes beyond anything I've had to experience before." Supply problems can arise when things go wrong at the factory level or when suppliers of the raw ingredients have issues, leaving hospital officials irritated at the short notice they receive about a dearth. Right now on the FDA website, there are dozens of drugs said to be "currently in shortage," many of them critical generic injectables. Some pharmacy officials even harbor suspicions that manufacturers aren't investing enough to ensure adequate supplies since, per Ars Technica, generic drugs aren't the moneymakers. Some hospitals have "compounding pharmacies" where they whip up their own generic drugs, but that doesn't solve the larger problem. "It is unbelievably frustrating," a University of Utah drug shortage expert tells the Times, which notes Pfizer and Amphastar can't guarantee more sodium bicarbonate supplies until at least June and maybe not until August in some cases. (The "cartels" some think control the market.)
– America's favorite big-box retailer may be responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of US jobs since 2001, Fortune reports. According to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, Walmart's importing of cheap Chinese goods resulted in the elimination of 400,000 American jobs between 2001 and 2013 by increasing the US' trade deficit with China. It's an estimate the EPI calls "conservative." About three-quarters of those lost jobs were likely manufacturing jobs, Fortune reports. "These job losses are particularly destructive because jobs in the manufacturing sector pay higher wages and provide better benefits than most other industries, especially for workers with less than a college education," the study states. The EPI estimates Walmart is responsible for more than 15% of the trade deficit growth from 2001 to 2013, costing 3.2 million US jobs. Fortune reports the EPI's study is based on a 2007 report and—because Walmart doesn't release specifics on its imports—"guesswork." Needless to say, Walmart disagrees with the EPI's findings. "Unfortunately, this is an old report with flawed economic analysis that assumed that imports equal job losses and does not take into consideration that countless jobs are added," Fortune quotes a Walmart statement. Economists agree, pointing to retail and transportation jobs created by importing goods, according to the New York Times. In 2013, Walmart announced it would increase its use of American-made goods by $50 billion over the next decade. But the EPI counters that Walmart's importing of Chinese goods has cost 100 US jobs for every one American job it creates with that program.
– Students at MIT and Boston University are being investigated as possible accomplices in the massive leak of military documents posted on the Wikileaks site, according to officials. The FBI was apparently sicced on the schools in part by blogger Adrian Lamo. He did not reveal the students' names because he said at least one of them threatened his life, reports CNN. The students told Lamo they gave encryption software to soldier Bradley Manning and taught the Army private how to use it to obtain the secret documents he's suspected of providing to Wikileaks, Lamo claims. Lamo, who was working with a Wired reporter at the time, turned Manning into the feds after convincing the soldier to give him an interview. A "civilian" in the Boston area contacted by the New York Times said Army investigators quizzed him about his relationship with Manning, and offered him money to spy on Wikileaks. An MIT graduate told the Boston Globe he exchanged emails with Manning, but denied doing anything illegal. In a related development, Wikileaks editor Jacob Applebaum was detained and interrogated by customs officials and FBI agents over the weekend after he returned to the US from Europe, reports the Independent.
– There's a surprising new skeptic on the eligibility of the Canadian-born Ted Cruz to be president: John McCain. "It came up in my race because I was born in Panama, but I was born in the Canal Zone, which is a territory," McCain said Wednesday on 550 KFYI. "Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona when it was a territory when he ran in 1964.” McCain and Goldwater were two of the examples Cruz used to justify his eligibility when he addressed the issue this week. Cruz was born in Canada, but his mother was a US citizen, which gave him US citizenship at birth, BuzzFeed reports. "It was a US military base,” McCain clarified to KFYI about his own birth. “That’s different from being born on foreign soil, so I think there is a question. I am not a constitutional scholar on that, but I think it’s worth looking into." According to Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post, it's really not all that surprising McCain would join Donald Trump and Rand Paul in questioning the eligibility of Cruz, who Cillizza describes as McCain's "longtime nemesis." In the past, McCain has accused Cruz of "grandstanding" and lumped him in with Tea Party "wacko birds." Cillizza characterizes McCain's statements on Cruz's eligibility as an act of revenge. "By McCain giving a 'you know, that's a good question' response to the question of whether Cruz is eligible to be president, he keeps the story—not a good one for the Texas senator—very much alive," Cillizza writes.
– A male student opened fire at a suburban Indianapolis middle school Friday morning, wounding another student and a teacher before being taken into custody, authorities said. The attack at Noblesville West Middle School happened around 9am, police Chief Kevin Jowitt said at a news conference, per the AP. He said investigators believe the suspect acted alone, though he didn't release the boy's name or the names of the victims, who were taken to hospitals in Indianapolis. Indiana University Health spokeswoman Danielle Sirilla said the teacher was taken to IU Health Methodist Hospital and the wounded student was taken to Riley Hospital for Children. She didn't know the seriousness of their injuries. After the attack, students were bused to the Noblesville High School gym, where their families could retrieve them. USA Today reports that the high school then received some kind of threat, which police suggested might have been a hoax. Erica Higgins, who was among the worried parents who rushed to get their kids, told WTHR-TV that she learned of the shooting from a relative who called her at home. "I just want to get my arms around my boy," she said. Higgins said her son was shaken up but knew little about what happened. "I got a 'Mom, I'm scared' text message and other than that, it was 'come get me at the high school,'" Higgins said.
– Fatigue cracking has been found along the entire 5-foot section of a Southwest Airlines jet that ripped open on Friday, forcing an emergency landing in Arizona. The NTSB says that mechanics will cut a 9-foot by 3-foot section of the plane and send it to Washington, DC, for testing. Southwest has responded by grounding at least 79 planes, reports the AP; at least 300 flights were canceled yesterday. And more cancellations were on the horizon today: "We don't at this time know what the impact will be, but it's possible that it could be in the 300-flight range again," a Southwest spokesman told Reuters.
– The death toll in the San Francisco plane crash has risen to three, with another passenger dying due to injuries in San Francisco General Hospital today, the AP reports. The hospital's chief of surgery says the victim was a female child, but her identity and age have been withheld at the request of her family. The girl had been in a critical condition since arriving at the hospital. Two adults injured in the crash remain in critical condition, and four others, including another minor, are also still in hospital, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
– Since President Trump announced Thursday he was pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement, France has been relentlessly dragging the White House. CNN reports the dragging now includes the French government tweeting a remixed version of a White House video on the agreement Friday. The new version of the video, created by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, pencils in corrections to the original. For example, the White House's video claims the agreement was a "bad deal for the US"; it was changed to say leaving the agreement is the bad deal. The edited video also points out that companies like Microsoft and Exxon Mobil think the Paris agreement is good for the US economy and that the deal was "comprehensively"—not "badly"—negotiated by former President Obama, according to the Hill. The video comes after new French President Emmanuel Macron tweaked Trump by pledging to "make the planet great again" and reasserting American greatness despite Trump's actions. In a live broadcast in English, Macron offered France as a "second homeland" for US climate scientists, as well as "all scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, responsible citizens," telling them, "Come here and work with us," the Independent reports. "I wish to tell the United States, France believes in you—the world believes in you," Macron added.
– One of the most widely circulated images to come out of the Texas flooding on Sunday showed several elderly residents of a nursing home sitting in waist-deep water. "Need help asap emergency services please RETWEET," tweeted Timothy McIntosh. That's exactly what people did, and Galveston County Daily News reports that 15 elderly residents and three others from the La Vita Bella nursing home in Dickinson were rescued from the facility within hours. "We were air-lifting grandmothers and grandfathers," says the chief of emergency management in Dickinson. The New York Daily News provides background on the tweet. McIntosh lives in Tampa, Florida, but his mother-in-law in Texas, Trudy Lampson, owns the nursing home and sent the image to him and his wife. He quickly put it online. "Thanks to all the true believers that re-tweeted and got the news organizations involved," McIntosh wrote in a follow-up tweet after the rescue. "It pushed La Vita Bella to #1 on the priority list." The myth-busting site Snopes looked into the veracity of the image and reports nothing fishy about it.
– Twelve days after suicide bombs killed 16 people there, the Brussels Airport will reopen—at least partially—on Sunday, Reuters reports. Brussels Airlines will fly three flights—to Greece, Italy, and Portugal—out of the airport that day. "A restart of the operations, even only partially, as quick as this is a sign of hope," the airport's chief executive says. According to Bloomberg, new security measures will be in place for the reopening. Vehicles approaching the airport will be randomly screened, travelers and baggage will be checked outside the airport, and there will be another security barrier inside the airport. Trains and buses will not be servicing the airport for the time being, and cameras will read the license plates of vehicles arriving there. These measures will drastically reduce the amount of passengers the airport can handle, but officials hope to be back to normal capacity by July.
– What with Facebook, Flickr, and other fine venues for stalking "exes," breakups aren't nearly as final as they once were. But for your own good, please stop following them around cyberspace. "Conventional wisdom, and even science, has it that cutting off contact with an ex makes for a smoother recovery," writes Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon. And she knows the struggle all too well, having tracked an ex from Flickr to Twitter until she realized that the ring on his finger wasn't "merely an engagement ring." Not only was he already married, but Clark-Flory had to see a live-tweeted photo of him standing in the aisle. "It’s one thing to realize that the man you once wanted to marry" has moved on, she writes, "and another to be a virtual witness to it." Clark-Flory digs up studies to make her case, like one that finds "Facebook stalking ... may obstruct the process of healing" and another in which 30% of college students admit to posting status updates "to taunt or hurt" an ex. The only problem: "It’s never been easier to secretly keep tabs on exes," writes Clark-Flory, "and it’s never been harder not to."
– It's a region that produces a new species every other day: Carnivorous plants that can eat mice, birds, and lizards. An all-female species of lizard that reproduces by self-cloning. Brightly colored geckos bathed in orange, yellow, blue, and green markings. A noseless monkey that looks like it's wearing an Elvis wig. These are just a few of the 208 new species discovered in the Greater Mekong region last year, reports the World Wildlife Fund. Stretching from Yunnan province in southern China to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, and Thailand, the Greater Mekong region is full of biodiversity, but is under increasing pressure from development, the WWF warns. The recent extinction of Vietnam's rhinoceros population has spurred concern for rare wildlife in the area. "This is a region of extraordinary richness in terms of biodiversity, but also one that is extremely fragile,” a WWF official tells Time. “It’s losing biodiversity at a tragic rate."
– The 13 siblings rescued from captivity in a California home were so badly treated that mental and physical recovery is likely to take a very long time, experts say. Corona Regional Medical Center CEO Mark Uffer says his staff was horrified by the condition of the seven adults in the group, who were so malnourished that they were mistaken for children. Sophia Grant, medical director of the child abuse unit at Riverside University Health System, tells the Press-Enterprise that such stunting of growth would have required malnourishment over a long period. She says recovery will be a gradual process for the siblings, who have likely suffered psychological damage from being deprived of normal interaction and from being mistreated by the parents who were supposed to provide for them. In other developments: Home-schooling. Father David Turpin, a former engineer at the Northrop Grumman aerospace company registered to run a private school out of his home, was required only to submit a form every year. Advocates for greater oversight of home-schooling in California say the abuse could have been exposed much earlier if the children had been required to have annual checkups from doctors and teachers, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Current law provides nothing to stop families like the Turpins from using home-schooling to isolate and imprison their children," says Rachel Coleman of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
– Is it a recall? Is it a software update? Well, it's actually both. Abbott, the medical device company that produces implantable cardiac pacemakers under the St. Jude’s Medical brand, has issued a "corrective action," per the Food and Drug Administration, to mitigate what it calls the "risk of patient harm due to potential exploitation of cybersecurity vulnerabilities." That's right, it's asking 465,000 people with certain devices to visit their doctors and get a firmware update so that their implants are not so easy to hack into. They say patients should schedule a visit with their doctor, and that the process will take three minutes start to finish, during which time all essential features will run in backup mode, reports Consumerist. It's unclear how many people in other countries are affected. Over the past decade, there's been an increase in reports of serious vulnerabilities in pacemakers, insulin pumps, and other medical devices, reports Ars Technica. That's because they're now outfitted with tiny radio-frequency equipment for remote maintenance that no longer requires new and costly surgeries when the devices need updating. Back in May, Engadget reported that security company WhiteScope found 8,000 bugs hackers could exploit in pacemaker programs alone. While attackers must be within 50 feet of the device to hack into it, and no one has yet to die from a cyber attack, some argue that the mere threat of an attack is reason enough to make these devices as sophisticated and protected as possible. (One pacemaker was used in an arson investigation.)
– President Trump says his previously undisclosed one-on-one with Vladimir Putin was no secret and no big deal—and the media is "sick" for suggesting otherwise. Trump reportedly spoke to Putin for around an hour after leaving his seat during a couples-only dinner with other leaders during the G20 summit. He had met with Putin earlier in the day with aides present. "All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany," Trump tweeted late Tuesday. "Press knew!" In a statement, the White House said the talk was a "brief conversation" and any insinuation that the administration tried to hide it "is false, malicious, and absurd," USA Today reports. "The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest!" Trump said in a second tweet. "Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!" But despite efforts to downplay the meeting, some analysts say it raises security concerns. Besides Putin and Trump, the only person party to the conversation was Putin's translator, meaning there is no independent American account of the meeting and what was discussed. "If I was in the Kremlin, my recommendation to Putin would be, 'See if you can get this guy alone,' and that's what it sounds like he was able to do," former ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer tells the New York Times.
– A new book on the 2012 election has President Obama making a rather brutal claim, particularly, as Michael Kelley notes at Business Insider, for a Nobel Peace laureate: The president said to aides that he's "really good at killing people." The quote comes from Double Down, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, and it's mentioned briefly in Peter Hamby's Washington Post review. (Hamby gives it as an example of the book having "click-bait aplenty.") Kelley, for his part, observes that Obama's comment is quite accurate. While there were 52 total drone strikes while George W. Bush was president, Obama's administration has overseen 326 drone strikes in Pakistan, 93 in Yemen, and some in Somalia. That's on top of the surge in Afghanistan, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and drone strikes during NATO's Libya mission in 2011; Business Insider has even more examples. Click for more tidbits from the Game Change sequel.
– If you're a big fan of wine and would like to be surrounded by apparently like-minded people, consider moving to Vatican City. Despite its small size, or perhaps because of it, it manages to consume more wine per capita than any other country, according to the Wine Institute. How much exactly? At 74 liters of wine per person, double Italy's consumption, Religion News Service reports—and in terms of major countries, Italy is one of the top two wine consumers. That amount translates to about 105 bottles of wine per resident per year, the Independent notes. And no, this doesn't hinge around all that communion wine. As local media have pointed out, the number is probably so high because Vatican residents are, in general, older, male, and highly educated, and they eat communal meals. All of those factors tend to increase wine consumption. And with a population of just 800, those numbers are easily skewed by outliers. Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that just one store sells wine in the Vatican—and the wine is practically tax-free.
– If you were thinking of designing an aircraft shaped sort of like an enormous doughnut, we have some bad news for you: Airbus has already called it. The company has filed a patent application for a passenger aircraft in that very shape, the Financial Times reports. Why go for the doughnut look? Well, current aircraft face heavy pressure on their front and rear ends, requiring special support. "The purpose of the invention is particularly to provide a simple, economic, and efficient solution to these problems," Airbus says. The new design, which you can view here, also offers more room for passengers, CNBC reports. The "doughnut" does, of course, have its drawbacks. Boarding hatches—in the doughnut's "hole"—don't clearly fit emergency exit rules, Fortune notes, and the aircraft's shape might require airport redesigns. Either way, don't expect Dunkin' Donuts to start an airline anytime soon. "It’s just one of many ideas,” an Airbus rep tells Fortune. "It doesn’t mean that we’re going to be working on making it a reality." In fact, the company seeks more than 600 patents yearly, the rep tells the publication (though the Financial Times puts the figure at 6,000). For instance, Airbus recently sought a patent for standing "seats" that are basically bike saddles. (If that's not quite your desired comfort level, maybe try a flying three-room suite.)
– Not all scientific research takes place in labs. Just ask food anthropologist Sergio Grasso and physicists Andrey Varlamov and Andreas Glatz, who had the tough job of sampling Margherita pizzas across Rome in the lead up to their paper, "The Physics of Baking Good Pizza." The pizzaiolos of Italy have the process down pat, relying on curved brick ovens heated to 625 degrees Fahrenheit to perfectly bake the pie of tomato, mozzarella, and basil on all sides in two minutes, the authors found. They also learned duplicating this process in your standard electric oven would turn a pizza to "coal" since metal conducts heat much better than brick, reports Live Science. There is a solution, however. Per Particle, the authors developed a mathematical formula to show how a pizza could be baked to near-perfection in an electric oven. They recommend baking a pie at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 170 seconds, or slightly longer if the chosen toppings have a high water content "as the pizza will return more heat to the oven via evaporation," per Live Science. Broiling the top at this point would work, too, per Reader's Digest. While you may not get the even cook of a brick oven—if necessary, pizzaiolos lift the pizza base from the oven while allowing the toppings to continue cooking with radiant heat for about 30 seconds—the pie should be similar to Rome's pizza, the authors say. (Just don't substitute the mozzarella.)
– A relatively new email scam is raking in millions of dollars, and it's got nothing to do with long-lost relatives in Nigeria. Instead, as Quartz explains, the "CEO Email Scam" dupes employees into wiring money by using bogus messages from the boss. The scammers do their homework: They assume the identity of a company CEO, or sometimes simply send an email so close to the correct email that the recipient never notices the difference. The requests go to someone in the company authorized to deal with money, usually demanding quick action—and confidentiality—because of a pending business deal. It's been so successful that the FBI issued an alert last week, citing complaints in every state and in 79 countries. "On the surface, business email compromise scams may seem unsophisticated relative to moneymaking schemes that involve complex malicious software," writes Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security. But the CEO scam is especially effective because of one crucial factor: "In traditional phishing scams, the attackers interact with the victim’s bank directly, but in the CEO scam the crooks trick the victim into doing that for them." When it works, a typical haul is between $25,000 and $75,000. The known haul worldwide is $2.3 billion, says the FBI. One cybersecurity expert in France warns that it won't go away any time soon. "It will spread because it's too good to be ignored," he tells the BBC.
– A researcher calls it "a decades-old mystery that has been the Holy Grail of paleontology": What, exactly, Dickinsonia was. It's one of a group of lifeforms called the Ediacaran biota, which the BBC describes as the "first complex multi-cellular organisms to appear on Earth." But for decades they've defied definitive classification, with scientists suggesting they could be everything from lichen to giant single-celled amoeba to "evolutionary dead-ends." Now, an answer: Dickinsonia is an animal that dates back 558 million years, making it the earliest confirmed one in the geological record. That conclusion comes thanks to fat, reports Phys.org. Ilya Bobrovskiy of Australian National University discovered a Dickinsonia fossil in 300-foot-high cliffs along the White Sea in northwest Russia, in a place so remote she reached it via helicopter. The fossil was superbly preserved, so much so that its tissue had cholesterol molecules present in it. "The fossil fat molecules that we've found prove that animals were large and abundant 558 million years ago, millions of years earlier than previously thought," says ANU professor Jochen Brocks, co-author of the paper on the discovery, which was published in Science. The Cambrian explosion that gave rise to modern animal groups didn't happen for another 20 million years or so. As for the oval Dickinsonia's appearance, the BBC describes it as possibly bearing "a superficial resemblance to a segmented jellyfish." National Geographic delves into the difficulty of studying Ediacarans, who had no shells or bones to leave behind and whose "squishy bodies have long since decayed." Read more on how the team overcame that here.
– You probably wouldn't pay $160 to have any 16-year-old cook you dinner, but you might if the teen in the chef's hat is Flynn McGarry. The self-taught chef and recent high school graduate's first New York City restaurant, Eureka, opens Saturday, the New York Post reports. It won't be easy to get in, and not just because there are only 12 seats in the place. Flynn has an impressive résumé for one so young, reports Food & Wine. His California supper club—also named Eureka after the street on which he used to live—landed his face on the cover of the New York Times Magazine at 15, and he's since worked at elite restaurants Maeemo in Norway and Geranium in Denmark. He also has a TED Talk under his belt and recently met Martha Stewart. At his pop-up counter restaurant on a corner in the West Village, he'll serve 14-course tasting menus with a $160 price tag three nights a week. Among the dishes that may make the cut: seawater-brined sea urchin with carrot cremeaux and coffee-pickled carrots; a beet dish involving fermented beet butter; a tomato-lobster dumpling in rose-hips tea; and his signature peanut Ritz crackers with foie gras terrine and sour cherry compote. "Peanut butter and Ritz is everyone's favorite snack," Flynn tells Food & Wine, but that doesn't mean he loves making the dish. The crackers are "fun, but a pain in the ass. I make the ridges on each cracker with a toothpick," he says. The Eureka website has already crashed once, and reservations are sold out through mid-October. Flynn's very 16-year-old advice on Twitter, "Everyone needs to chiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllll out..."
– It's a rough day to be a schoolkid in the Big Apple. Some 152,000 of them had to find an alternate way to get to class in the freezing rain this morning, amid a school-bus drivers strike, reports the NY Daily News. Schools issued MetroCards to affected students so they could take public transportation, and parents who opt to pay for a taxi or drive their kids can fill out forms for reimbursement. But some worry that kids with special needs—more than a third of the children affected—will fall through the cracks, and parents of young students won't receive MetroCards allowing them to escort their kids until tomorrow. The strike, the first since the 1970s, could last for days or months, as no negotiations have yet been scheduled between the striking bus driver's union and city officials. The dispute centers around new contracts for certain bus routes that the city plans to bid out in an attempt to cut costs. The union called for a strike, fearing current drivers could wind up jobless when their contracts expire in June, reports NBC 4 New York. Protestors are forming picket lines at bus yards, and at least one driver says she plans to stay there for "as long as it takes." Replacement drivers hired by the bus companies will be ready to take the wheel next week—so long as they're willing to cross the lines.
– Pluto is gonna be PO'd. While the dwarf planet tries to fight its way back into the good graces of Those Who Deem What Counts as a Planet, another icy orb even further out may snatch that designation first. Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology say a giant celestial body "lurking at the end of our solar system," as the Washington Post puts it, may actually be a planet, and they're even already calling it "Planet Nine." In their research published in the Astronomical Journal, the sky-watching scientists—one of whom is known as the "Pluto killer" for his role in getting Pluto demoted—think their find is five to 10 times as massive as Earth, and per the AP, almost as big as Neptune and orbiting billions of miles past that planet's orbit. Michael "Pluto Killer" Brown and Konstantin Batygin haven't seen the supposed planet directly, but say they can infer the "massive perturber" exists by how the orbits of smaller bodies nearby are affected by its gravitational pull, the Post notes. What's interesting is that Brown and Batygin originally set out to disprove the existence of Planet Nine. "We thought their idea was crazy," Brown says of the scientists who originally floated the idea of a large, hidden planet. But as they did their own research, they soon came to their own conclusion in what Brown calls a "jaw-dropping moment" that Planet Nine could be the real deal. Now they're simply hoping more astronomers join in to actually try to spot the alleged planet—and they're not concerned it will face Pluto's fate. "That's not even a question—it's definitely a planet," Brown says. Not everyone's convinced. "I have seen many, many such claims in my career," a planetary scientist at Colorado's Southwest Research Institute tells Nature. "And all of them have been wrong." (The Washington Post caught up with Brown for a Q&A on the latest Pluto-killing endeavor.)
– A University of Missouri fraternity with a track record of problem behavior has been accused of telling new members to drug women and sexually assault them as part of their initiation, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, multiple people informed the school in August that members of Delta Upsilon had given new members three pills each and told them to drug woman and have sex with them as the final step of initiation. Justin Kirk, executive director of Delta Upsilon, calls the allegations "deeply concerning" but notes there have been no claims of sexual assault brought against the frat. But in September, an 18-year-old girl was hospitalized after being possibly drugged, ABC 17 reports. She was found naked from the waist down and smearing feces on a wall after drinking at Delta Upsilon. She didn't see who was making her drinks and didn't remember if she had sex that night. This is just one in a string of problems at Delta Upsilon—which was temporarily suspended last month by both its national organization and the University of Missouri—including underage drinking, physical abuse, at least one assault, and a "racial incident." In September, frat members reportedly yelled racist and sexist slurs at black female students. Members also reportedly forced drunk pledges to fight each other. In one incident of underage drinking last year at Delta Upsilon, a woman had to be hospitalized. In 2014, the frat removed 90 of its 132 members and hired a live-in graduate student as well as an off-duty police officer to keep an eye on things. Multiple school investigations into Delta Upsilon are ongoing.
– Fox man Bill O'Reilly is after Sandra Fluke again, claiming the "committed leftist" who wants him to fund her sex life is at the "center of a campaign to reelect" Barack Obama. "Let me get this straight, Ms. Fluke," said O'Reilly in an earlier program. "You want me to give you my hard-earned money so you can have sex? Good grief." In fact, Fluke wants her university health insurance (typically paid for by students) to cover birth control, as college health plans usually do if they're not affiliated with the Catholic church, notes the Huffington Post. "I don't want to pay for Sandra Fluke's recreation," said O'Reilly. "This is madness." Because "Obamacare mandates that I have to buy health insurance," my "premiums go up a small amount" to cover female contraception, he noted. He suggested that if Fluke wants her "activities" covered by health insurance, then the government should have subsidized his college football uniforms. O'Reilly and guest Bernie Goldberg rehashed their views yesterday, with Goldberg characterizing Fluke as the "poster person for the entitlement society." At least they didn't use the S word.
– People have thoughts about the new Obama portraits, and some are weirder than others. On Tuesday, Sean Hannity's website pushed perhaps the weirdest of all—that the portrait contained hidden images of sperm. The Week quotes from the since-deleted page: "Controversy surrounding Kehinde Wiley's wildly non-traditional portrait of the commander-in-chief broke out within minutes of its unveiling, with industry insiders claiming the artist secretly inserted his trademark technique—concealing images of sperm within his paintings." And a since-deleted Hannity tweet read, "Obama's portrait - a stark contrast to predecessors with inappropriate sexual innuendo," per Newsweek. The allegation drew quite a bit of attention, and apparently Hannity himself was surprised. "Earlier today my web staff posted content that was not reviewed by me before publication," he said in a statement. "It does not reflect my voice and message and, therefore, I had it taken down." The sperm rumor apparently began circulating on 4chan, and the Daily Beast appears to have tracked down the original source, a 2008 article in the New York Times about artist Wiley. That article says his portraits “initially depicted African-American men against rich textile or wallpaper backgrounds whose patterns he has likened to abstractions of sperm.” This tweet shows the image making the sperm-conspiracy rounds.
– US-based researchers may have gotten a tad carried away when they announced the discovery of a new, potentially life-sustaining planet a couple weeks back. Yesterday, a team of Switzerland-based astronomers said their own observations of star Gliese 581g didn’t back up the American team at all. “We do not see any evidence for a fifth planet,” astronomer Francesco Pepe told ScienceNow. The team also said that, if they were forced to draw a conclusion from their data, they would get a negative signal, which implies that the planet isn’t there, not that they just haven’t been able to find it, notes Steinn Sigurðsson on his blog. Meanwhile, a member of the US team admits that more data is necessary to confirm Gliese 581g’s existence. “I would expect that on the time scale of a year or two, this should be settled.”
– So which party will control the Senate next year? Flip a coin. That's the current assessment at FiveThirtyEight.com, which gives Democrats a 52% or 53% chance of regaining control and a 16% chance of a 50-50 tie. In the latter case, the new VP would cast tie-breaking votes. Not too long ago, most forecasts comfortably predicted that Democrats would wrest control, but things have tightened considerably. The GOP currently has a 54-46 advantage (two independents caucus with Democrats), but Democrats have an opportunity to pick up ground up because 24 of the 34 seats up for grabs are held by Republicans. Some key races, per FiveThirtyEight, the Washington Post, and NBC News: New Hampshire: GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte has been in a virtual dead heat with Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. This race in particular "is expected to play a critical role in determining which party will hold the Senate majority next year," notes the Post. Wisconsin: Republican Ron Johnson is defending his seat in a tight race against a familiar Democratic name, former Sen. Russ Feingold. Pennsylvania: Incumbent Republican Pat Toomey, a staunch conservative, is in a close one with challenger Katie McGinty, who could get a boost if Hillary Clinton wins the state. Illinois: GOP incumbent Mark Kirk is in real danger of losing to Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth. (Moments like this haven't helped him.) Missouri: Democratic challenger Jason Kander has a chance of ousting Republican incumbent Roy Blunt. Nevada: Harry Reid is retiring, and Republicans hope to get a flip of their own. The GOP's Joe Heck is keeping it close with Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.
– George Bush's stop-the-presses revelations just won't stop, though the latest comes by way of a dusty anecdote that's finally seeing the light of day. Alex Barker, writing for the Financial Times reveals that in an Oval Office meeting with Gordon Brown and other British dignitaries during the 2008 campaign season, John McCain came up in conversation. Bush reportedly told the group (according to two who were there): "I probably won’t even vote for the guy. I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me." Barker recounts the "flash of astonishment" that befell the British crew, but says the alleged comments weren't "completely unexpected," considering the lack of love between Bush and McCain (he points to their dirty fight in the 2000 South Carolina primary).
– A major food safety bill cleared a Senate hurdle today, but it's getting friction from a group you might not expect: locavores. They want small family farms to be exempt from the sweeping new regulations and are pushing for an amendment to that effect from Montana Democrat Jon Tester. Two high-profile names from the food world are on board, notes Food Safety News: Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. "S 510 is the most important food safety legislation in a generation," they said in a joint statement. "The Tester amendment will make it even more effective, strengthening food safety rules while protecting small farmers and producers. We both think this is the right thing to do." Another potential holdup is an amendment from Dianne Feinstein to put limits on the use of the plastics chemical bisphenol-A in food and beverage containers, notes the AP. Negotiations with both senators continue as the Senate proceeds with the bill, which would still have to be reconciled with a House version from last year. Time is running out to get that down in the lame-duck session. The Hill has more details on the proposed new FDA powers.
– Controversy keeps swirling around H&M and an online ad that showed a young black boy in a hoodie with the words "Coolest Monkey in the Jungle." The ad has since been removed, but the family of 5-year-old Liam Mango, the ad's model, now says they had to move out of their home in Sweden for "security reasons," Liam's mom, Terry Mango, tells the BBC. Mango didn't get too much into those reasons for vacating their Stockholm residence, but she did mention violent protests in South African H&M stores as a factor. Mango has come under fire herself for her reaction to the ad: The New York Post reports on a series of now-deleted Facebook posts in which she said she didn't think the ad was racist and told people to stop "crying wolf" over this "unnecessary issue" and to "get over it." She elaborated to the BBC that "I know racism exists, but does the shirt to me speak racism? No it doesn't." Mango and Liam's dad, Frank Odhiambo, appeared on a Swedish morning show this week, where Mango says she was once called a monkey herself on a cruise ship and understands why some might be upset about the ad, per Newsweek. Odhiambo says they had to move because they "have an obligation to protect our children," the Independent reports. The one person kept out of the fray so far: little Liam himself. "He has no idea what's going on, he's only 5," Mango tells the BBC, adding that he "has not experienced [racism yet]." Meanwhile, H&M, which was criticized for its first brief apology, has issued a second, lengthier one, per Quartz. "We agree with all the criticism that this has generated—we have got this wrong and we agree that, even if unintentional, passive or casual racism needs to be eradicated wherever it exists," it reads.
– Is the era of sugary sports drinks coming to an end? Gatorade is launching its new Gatorade Zero this week, a sports drink with no sugar and no carbohydrates. Gatorade has long dominated the sports drink industry, but as health-conscious consumers have begun eschewing sugar, some have soured on the drink—which has 34 grams of sugar per 20 ounces—sending sales down 0.5% last year, CNNMoney reports. Gatorade has previously tried an organic version and a low-calorie version with less sugar. Gatorade Zero, which will be known as G Zero, per Bloomberg, will compete directly with Powerade Zero, a sugar-free sports drink that entered the market 10 years ago.
– Elon Musk wasn't blowing smoke. The BBC reports on a three-sentence statement issued by six of Tesla's nine board members saying the board had "met several times over the last week" to discuss Musk's proposal to take the company private, which he announced via an unexpected tweet Tuesday. The talks "included discussion as to how being private could better serve Tesla's long-term interests" and the statement ends by saying the board "is taking the appropriate next steps to evaluate this." The three board members who did not sign the statement are Musk, brother Kimbal Musk, and a board member who is on leave, reports the Wall Street Journal. At MarketWatch, Steve Goldstein flags some unresolved points: The statement didn't elaborate on Musk's claim of "funding secured" and raised but didn't answer a question of timing. "'Last week' predates Tesla's filing on Monday of its 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which didn't mention such discussions. News of a takeover would certainly be considered material," he writes. Shares of Tesla are currently down about 1%.
– In what Stormy Daniels' lawyer called a "stunning development," President Trump's personal lawyer said Wednesday that he plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself in the adult film star's lawsuit against him. Michael Cohen, citing government raids on his home and offices, filed papers saying he plans to plead the Fifth in connection with the civil lawsuit "due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI and US Attorney for the Southern District of New York," CNN reports. Daniels is suing Cohen for defamation for accusing her of lying about her alleged affair with Trump, reports the Hill. She is also seeking to void a deal in which Cohen paid her $130,000 to stay quiet about the alleged affair. Michael Avenatti, Daniels' attorney, says the move is especially stunning because Cohen was Trump's "fixer" for more than a decade. "Never before in our nation’s history has the attorney for the sitting President invoked the 5th Amend in connection with issues surrounding the President," he tweeted. He also tweeted a link to a Washington Post story that noted Trump slammed Hillary Clinton staffers in 2016 for invoking the Fifth during the investigation of her email server—but invoked the amendment himself during his 1990 divorce from Ivana Trump, dodging no fewer than 97 deposition questions, mostly about other women. (Avenatti has filed a motion to depose Trump.)
– A suspect believed to have fired shots at the White House last week is still at large and police believe he may be a threat to President Obama. A semi-automatic weapon was found in a crashed car belonging to Oscar Ramiro Ortega, a 21-year-old Idaho man, CNN reports. Ortega has a fixation with the White House and a criminal record that includes convictions for domestic violence, drug offenses, and assaulting police officers, sources tell ABC. A bullet was found in a White House window after Friday's incident. It had been stopped by ballistic glass behind the historic exterior glass. Authorities believe Ortega has been in the DC area for weeks, repeatedly visiting the Washington Mall, and possibly blending in with Occupy protesters.
– Alec Baldwin made his return as the president-elect on Saturday Night Live—a week after his conspicuous absence in a muted Cold Open—and it is again safe to assume that his performance did not go over well with the future occupant of the Oval Office, reports the AP. After a general praises Trump's ''secret plan" to take out ISIS, Baldwin's Donald Trump scurries over to his desk to frantically Google "What is ISIS?" Bowled over by the results, he proceeds to ask his BlackBerry, "Siri, how do I kill ISIS?" Starting to freak out, Baldwin's Trump soothes himself by repeating, "Big beautiful boobs and buildings big beautiful boobs and buildings," adds People. SNL alum Jason Sudekis returned in his role as Mitt Romney; Romney and Trump met in reality on Saturday at Trump's New Jersey golf course. The real Trump was back on Twitter trolling SNL, tweeting, "I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night. It is a totally one-sided, biased show - nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?" Trump also doubled down on his insistence that the cast of Hamilton apologize to VP-elect Mike Pence, tweeting that the show, "which I hear is highly overrated," should "apologize immediately" for "terrible behavior."
– Lamarr Chambers fought the law, and the law came in No. 2—all over some No. 2. The BBC reports "poo watch" has officially ended in the UK, with the 24-year-old released on Monday after 47 days in custody in which he refused to have a bowel movement. Chambers was arrested in Essex on Jan. 17, and police suspected the alleged drug dealer had swallowed his stash—and decided to wait him out. It didn't work after what Sky News reports was seven court hearings in which police sought custody extensions, and even though Chambers ate and drank daily. Prosecutors decided to drop the charges—possession with intent to supply—against him due to "insufficient evidence," though he was then re-arrested by police on different drug charges—suspicion of being concerned in the supply. He was released on bail; Chambers was then taken to a hospital and treated. The BBC reports it's believed to be the longest anyone in custody has gone without pooping, though the human body can go longer. Newser previously reported that a 16-year-old British girl died in 2013 after she reportedly did not have a bowel movement for eight weeks. (This remains one classic story of a poop gone wrong.)
– Yahoo followed through on its threat to sue Facebook today, filing a suit accusing the social networking company of violating 10 Yahoo patents. The suit, filed by new CEO Scott Thompson, reportedly comes after months of talks between the two companies; it alleges that Facebook got a "free ride" by using patented technology covering everything from messaging to online ads. Yahoo is struggling and Facebook is about to go public; suits like this are common in such cases, an expert tells the Wall Street Journal. Another tells Reuters that the timing might make Facebook "more willing to resolve" the differences. The suit alleges that Facebook succeeded by using principles "Yahoo had its pulse on" years earlier, a former Yahoo exec says; one example is Facebook's newsfeed, which is similar to Yahoo's patent for custom data streams. "With this lawsuit Yahoo is saying they had the ideas first," the exec says. Indeed, the lawsuit quotes Mark Zuckerberg himself, Mashable reports; he once said, "Getting there first is not what it's all about." A Facebook spokesperson says the company first learned of the suit through the media.
– Chris Cornell kept saying "I'm just tired" in his final phone conversation with his wife, according to a police report with more details on the final hour of the Soundgarden frontman's life. Vicky Cornell, alarmed by how different her husband sounded, called band bodyguard Martin Kirsten, who had to kick in two latched doors before he found the 52-year-old dead on the bathroom floor with "blood running from his mouth and a red exercise band" around his neck, according to a police report seen by the Detroit News. His death was ruled suicide by hanging, but Vicky Cornell says he told her he "had taken an extra Ativan" or two, and she believes the anti-anxiety medication or other substances may have clouded his judgment. According to TMZ, Cornell used a piece of climbing equipment to secure the exercise band to the bathroom door at his suite in the MGM Grand Hotel in Detroit. Less than an hour earlier, the band had played a sold-out show in front of 5,000 fans. Soundgarden had been scheduled to play the Rock on the Range festival in Columbus, Ohio Friday night, Pitchfork reports. Instead, artists including Bush and Live paid tribute to Cornell by covering songs by his bands Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Temple of the Dog. Rolling Stone reports that Rage Against the Machine co-founder Tom Morello paid tribute to his former Audioslave bandmate with a moving poem, which can be seen in full here.
– A Florida woman has gone missing in Costa Rica after visiting for her birthday and getting into an unknown car, WFLA reports. Carla Stefaniak, 36, was scheduled to return Wednesday, the day after her fellow traveler/sister-in-law flew back—but Stefaniak never made the plane. "She totally went missing, ghosted on her birthday, which is totally unlike her," says sister-in-law Antonieta, whose last name is reported variously in the media. "I'm scared of what I'm going to find." Now Antonieta's husband, who is Stefaniak's brother, has flown down with a friend to find her. They've talked to security guards, an Uber driver, and Airbnb owners, who say Stefaniak got into an unknown car Wednesday morning, per CBS Miami. According to relatives, Stefaniak dropped off her sister-in-law at the airport Tuesday, returned their rental car, and took an hourlong tour on San Jose in an Uber. That night she texted that rain was pouring and power was intermittent. Her last text: "It's pretty sketchy here," per QCostaRica. Police investigators confirm she left her room with her luggage at about 5am Wednesday morning. Her social media accounts have gone quiet, with her last Instagram post showing her on vacation Monday. Antonieta says she's told the Miami FBI, the US embassy, and Sen. Marco Rubio's office, and set up a GoFundMe page to pay for the search. "She was just such a happy go lucky person," says Antonieta. "I'm just afraid she was just too trusting with someone there."
– Superstorm Sandy is battering coastal communities tonight with storm surges, downpours, and high winds, causing power outages and evacuation orders from Vermont to Virginia. No longer officially a hurricane, Sandy is starting to merge with two cold fronts, becoming bigger and messier but slightly weaker, sustaining winds of 85mph, according to CNN. As of this evening, about 2 million were without power along the eastern seaboard, according to the AP and other sources. Some specifics: Facing a direct hit, New Jersey is suffering flooding, high winds, and 434,000 power outages. Part of the Garden State Highway has been closed due to rising waters, and Atlantic City is so flooded that cars are underwater, CNN reports. Part of the city's famed boardwalk has been washed away. Hoboken, meanwhile, is banning all driving after 4pm. New York City is expecting storm surges as high as 11 feet. Thousands of flights have been canceled, and the subway has been shut down. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has requested 1,000 National Guard troops be deployed. About 452,000 are without power, and emergency crews have responded to a construction crane hanging dangerously from a luxury high-rise. The story is similar in Pennsylvania, specifically Philadelphia, which has also shut down its mass transit system, and seen hundreds of flights canceled. Officials say wind could reach 75mph and rainfall 10 inches. National Guardsmen have been told to be ready for deployment. Power outages: 74,000. Flooding is expected to knock out power stations in Connecticut, killing power for 117,400. Several coastal communities in Massachusetts are being urged to voluntarily evacuate, the Boston Globe reports, and in Boston all subway and bus service was shut down at 2pm. Nearly 1,000 crews are out helping more than 300,000 who have lost power. Flooding is expected along the coast with this evening's high tide. Washington, DC closed its rail service for the first time since 2003, and the federal government has closed up shop save for emergency employees, the Washington Post reports. Nearly 5,500 are without power. In Virginia about 9,500 people are without power, and the same could happen to about 1 million more. Chincoteague Island is entirely underwater with 3,500 residents who decided to tough it out. Maryland has seen damage to an iconic ocean pier in Ocean City, and a blizzard warning has been issued for the mountainous western part of the state. About 145,000 are without power, the Baltimore Sun reports. West Virginia has blizzard fears as well, with as many as 14 counties told to prepare for high winds, heavy snows, and flooded towns. Vermont has declared a state of emergency to give it access to National Guard troops. According to the AP, the state still hasn't fully recovered from the damage wrought by Hurricane Irene. About 14,470 have lost power. Rhode Island officials say wind could drive water up Narragansett Bay and flood low-lying areas. About 110,000 are without power. Keep checking back for more.
– A million people have now fled Syria to avoid the war raging there—and half of them are children, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported today. "Syria is spiraling towards full-scale disaster," commissioner António Guterres said. "We are doing everything we can to help, but the international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched." The defections have accelerated dramatically this year, with more than 400,000 fleeing since January. The UN hadn't expected to pass the 1 million mark for three more months, the BBC reports. The influx has put a real strain on neighboring countries; Lebanon, for instance, has seen its population swell as much as 10%, while Turkey has spent $600 million on refugee camps. Jordan and Iraq have also been sharing the load. Jordan's king yesterday urged other countries to help carry "the tremendous burden," and Guterres echoed that call. "These countries should not only be recognized for their unstinting commitment to keeping their borders open for Syrian refugees," he said, "they should be massively supported."
– Not a bad result for Roseanne Barr: Only five people finished ahead of her in this year's presidential election, notes the Independent Political Report. The comedian ran on the pro-pot Peace and Freedom ticket and drew more than 49,500 votes, according to PBS election results. That puts her in sixth, behind Obama (61 million), Romney (58 million), Gary Johnson (1.2 million), Jill Stein (410,000), and Virgil Goode (115,000). Note: an earlier version of this file based on Google's election results said she placed fifth, but those results left out Goode.) MyFox Tampa Bay notes that Barr drew about 8,000 votes in Florida, which, by the way, remains too close to call for either Obama or Romney. (Don't hold your breath for a result tonight—the Miami Herald says votes in Miami-Dade won't be fully counted until tomorrow.) No hard feelings from Roseanne, though. She tweeted congratulations to President Obama, notes the Huffington Post.
– Mother Nature isn't making it an easy transition back to work in the new year, throwing a whole lot of snow, whipping winds, and freezing temperatures at commuters in the Northeast this week. As much as a foot of snow is expected in New England and New York today into tomorrow; more is expected in Boston, which will see "near blizzard" conditions, CNN reports, and Philadelphia and southern New Jersey could see 3 to 7 inches. "The wind is going to whip around the snow and reduce the visibility, creating near-blizzard conditions" through much of the Northeast, one meteorologist tells NBC News. Some 900 US flights are already cancelled today alone, as temperatures fall to highs just above zero in some areas, the National Weather Service said, per the AP. "There will be travel problems," a meteorologist said. "It will be very cold." Adds another, the snowstorm, dubbed "Hercules" by the Weather Channel, could stretch into parts of the Midwest, USA Today reports. "Falling and blowing snow with strong winds and poor visibilities are likely," particularly in NY and Long Island, the Weather Service said, per CNN. "This will lead to whiteout conditions making travel extremely dangerous. Do not travel."
– CNN is taking heat after a host assumed a teen spelling bee champ of Indian descent was "used to using" Sanskrit. The Washington Post reports the exchange occurred on the network's "New Day" program following 12-year-old Ananya Vinay's victory at Thursday night's 90th annual Scripps Howard Spelling Bee. After asking Ananya to spell "covfefe," hosts Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo joked that President Trump's "nonsense word" has dubious origins. "We’re not sure that its root is actually in Sanskrit, which is what you’re probably, uh, used to using," Camerota told Ananya, who was born and raised in Fresno, Calif. Criticism that Camerota's quip was insensitive and "racist" swept social media. "If she were Jewish would you say 'your real language is Hebrew?'" one woman tweeted. "Are you serious @CNN?" tweeted another. "That's some straight racism there." Sandip Roy writes in Huffington Post India that while "there's nothing wrong with Ananya Vinay being used to" the ancient language of the Hindu scriptures, "the presumption that (Ananya) must be familiar with her Sanskrit just reeks of the assumption that she is still more Indian than American." He compares it to Camerota being asked if "she was probably used to Latin." CNN dismissed the dust-up, per HuffPo, calling the segment "fun and innocent" and noting that Camerota was following up an earlier joke about "covfefe's" roots. "If she's guilty of anything it's recycling a joke," the network said. (Ananya nailed her bee win with this word. Meanwhile, Americans find these words vexing.)
– A pizza deliveryman confronted by workers at a Massachusetts car dealership over $7 may soon reap the financial rewards of staying cool under pressure. Employees at Westport's F&R Auto Sales gave Jarrid Tansey two $20 bills and two $5 bills for an order just over $42, the Boston Globe reports. Tansey says he confirmed the extra $7 was his tip and left, but F&R employees called his manager to make him return and give the money back. It's all on videotape: When Tansey tells them, "I'm not mad, I just had to waste my resources coming back here," it fans the flames: One woman tells Tansey as he's leaving to get "out the door before I put my foot in your a--"; a man pipes in, "Get the f---ing owner and the manager on the phone, I want that mother-f---er … fired." The video ended up on LiveLeak, and viewers rallied to Tansey's side. Former waitress Amanda Rogers was so angry that she set up a GoFundMe page for him, CNN reports. Her efforts have raised more than $21,000 as of this posting, with many of the donations in (appropriately enough) $7 increments. "We will [sic] like to apologize for the actions that led to this situation, this embarrassing video gone viral on the Internet, was not released by any employee of F&R Auto Sales," says a statement from F&R's sales manager. The company's Yelp reviews may say it all: Although it can't be said for sure how many reviews were influenced by the video, most of the 2,100 or so ratings there are one star.
– Beaches are closed in South Florida, where a massive algae bloom has caused water to turn bright green and Gov. Rick Scott to declare a state of emergency in four counties—Martin, St. Lucie, Lee, and Palm Beach—over Wednesday and Thursday, reports Weather.com. Health officials are telling people to stay out of the water if they notice discoloration and not to use tainted water to water their lawns. And tainted it is, according to one resident who tells CBS Miami, "The only way to describe how it smells is like a hundred dead animals that have been sitting in the street for weeks." What some blame for the toxic turmoil: a water release from Lake Okeechobee, found last month to have more than 20 times the level of toxins deemed safe by the WHO, per TCPalm.com. Exposure to these toxins can cause skin rashes, vomiting, and respiratory issues, and aquatic life could be sickened and killed. One video posted to Facebook by a Martin County resident shows a manatee struggling to work its way through what a county rep calls "guacamole-thick" algae, Fox News reports. The US Army Corps of Engineers is planning on decreasing the flow Friday from the lake, opened for release because water levels were straining the lake's levee and posing a flooding risk. Gov. Scott, who blames the feds for not repairing that dike, has instructed the state DEP and fish and wildlife commission to address issues caused by the hazardous situation. But some are blaming Scott himself, saying he hasn't done enough to curtail pollution happening on farms near the lake.
– America is positively freaking out over the state of Japan’s nuclear reactors, with some calling for a halt to the development of new nuclear plants. But that’s a wild overreaction, opines a Wall Street Journal editorial. The media’s done a poor job of putting the tragedy in Japan in proportion: The quake killed hundreds, and released a thousand times more energy than the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. “In simple human terms, the natural destruction of Earth and sea have far surpassed any errors committed by man.” In a separate piece, William Tucker breaks down the technical workings of the reactors, and concludes that there’s little danger. “None of this amounts to ‘another Chernobyl,’” he says. Chernobyl had massive design flaws that these Generation II reactors don’t; their containment structures have held. “If a meltdown does occur,” he concludes, “it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company, but not for the general public.” For another (paywall-free) dose of realism, click here.
– A UK High Court judge may have deemed his decision Tuesday "the final chapter" in the case of little Alfie Evans, but Alfie's parents aren't ready to accept that ending. The BBC and Guardian report on the court's ruling that the seriously ill 23-month-old—who suffers from a rare degenerative neurological disorder and who was taken off life support Monday—can now return home from Alder Hey Children's Hospital or be placed in hospice, but that his parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, can't bring him to a Rome hospital for further treatment. Although Justice Anthony Hayden described the toddler as "a fighter, resilient, courageous and a warrior," he doesn't think further treatment will make any difference in Alfie's condition and that his parents should take this "special opportunity" to spend time with him, not waste it on what he sees as futile treatment and legal battles. Hayden also rejected claims by Alfie's father that the boy was doing "significantly better" after Alfie was said to have breathed without machinery for 20 hours after being taken off life support. "The brain cannot regenerate itself and there is virtually nothing of his brain left," Hayden argued. Alfie's parents are appealing Hayden's decision and tell the BBC they have an appointment at the appeals court set for Wednesday. They'd like Alfie to receive care at Bambino Gesu Hospital, which has ties to the Vatican. "I'm not giving up because Alfie is breathing away," Evans says. "He is not suffering, he is not struggling; he is fighting." Both Pope Francis and Italian authorities have supported the family's desire to bring Alfie to Rome, with the pope saying "only God can decide who dies," per CBS News. (Alfie's case is reminiscent of that of baby Charlie Gard, who died last summer.)
– Paris prosecutor Francois Molins gave new details on the police raid on an alleged ISIS terror cell just north of Paris in a press conference Wednesday. Some highlights : Molins said about 5,000 rounds were fired by police during an hourlong gunfight between heavily armed police and those inside the Saint-Denis hideout, the AP reports. Investigators found "a total war arsenal" of Kalashnikovs, ammo, and explosives, per the Guardian. Law enforcement was bombarded with gunfire as they tried to fight their way in through a reinforced door, the AP notes. There's confusion whether alleged mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud was among those killed in the raid. Molins said during the press conference that two suspects were dead and eight arrested, though he said he can't yet ID them, per the Guardian. He added that neither Abaaoud nor Salah Abdeslam were among those arrested. But two anonymous senior EU intelligence officials tell the Washington Post that Abaaoud was indeed killed during the siege and that forensic experts had gathered evidence at the scene after the chaos had ended. The suspected terror cell was caught just in time, per authorities. "A new team of terrorists was neutralized and all indications are that given their arms, their organizational structure, and their determination, the commando could have struck," Molins said, per AFP.
– Despite anticipation that Lady Gaga would make some kind of political statement during the Super Bowl halftime show, the pop star appeared to play nice, a performance of the LGBT-friendly "Born This Way" aside. Even prominent conservatives hailed her "apolitical" show, the Washington Post notes, with tweeted praise from the likes of Fox News, Marco Rubio, and even Ivanka Trump. But Vanity Fair reports that an "edgy political statement" may have been a "dog whistle" for President Trump protesters with Gaga's choice of opening songs, a double hit of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" followed by a portion of "This Land Is Your Land"—and the latter Woody Guthrie song is where Gaga's hidden message may lie. Guthrie's son Arlo has said his dad wrote "This Land" as a biting response to Berlin's patriotic song, and in the 1944 version the elder Guthrie recorded on his guitar—he owned one sporting a "This Machine Kills Fascists" sticker—the fourth verse contains some interesting (and timely Trump-tied lyrics) that have since fallen out of the versions we hear today. To wit: "There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me / The sign was painted, said 'Private Property' / But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing." Vanity Fair notes that Trump protesters have been crooning the song at rallies lately, and Arlo Guthrie and other singers like Bruce Springsteen keep the original lyrics in when they perform the song. In other words, Teen Vogue may have picked up on something major outlets missed. (Gaga made a big announcement after the Super Bowl.)
– Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines are having to pay up for EPA violations seen on their hit HGTV show. The couple's business, Magnolia Homes, has agreed to pay a $40,000 fine after the EPA determined 33 of its home renovations were "conducted without adequate lead paint protections," reports Deadline, which notes the potential fine the company faced was as high as $556,000. The EPA notes Fixer Upper footage "reviewed by EPA did not depict the lead-safe work practices normally required" though "Magnolia took immediate steps to ensure compliance" when it was notified. Chip Gaines, who in March tweeted advice about engaging a professional to check for lead paint when buying or remodeling a home, will also star in a Magnolia-paid video on lead paint safety as part of the settlement, per Vulture. (The couple are expecting their fifth child.)
– There's a burning question in the days leading up to this year's Burning Man: Who let the bugs out? And while that may seem like an ordinary question at the start of any Burning Man, this year it's particularly literal as early-arriving Burners photograph an apparent infestation ahead of the festival's start on Aug. 30, reports Business Insider. The complaint originated on the Burning Man blog, where John Curley wrote: "It’s not a localized occurrence, it’s everywhere. We don’t know where they came from, but there are two main theories: One is that all the spring and summer rain has hatched critters that lie dormant, or usually come to life at a different time of year. Or maybe they hitchhiked in on a load of wood." The bugs are clearly bloodthirsty, reports SF Weekly, with images of bites now making the rounds. One woman reportedly had a bug fly into her mouth and lodge itself between her teeth. (Apparently they taste bitter.) Another wrestled one out of her bra. A self-described entomologist is calling them winged ants and stink bugs. Time will soon tell if the bugs put a damper on the impending festivities, because the critters are clearly no picnic. "They bite," Curley writes. "They crawl all over you. They get up and in you." And so far, they don't seem to mind the burning hot desert sun. (Check out what revelers at a Burning Man knock-off in Israel accidentally torched.)
– A female costumer on The Grinder—a Fox sitcom canceled in 2016 after just one season—is suing Fred Savage, who starred in the show alongside Rob Lowe, alleging harassment and even violence. But both Savage and Fox are hitting back strongly against the claims. Youngjoo Hwang says Savage treated her poorly, giving her mean looks and cursing at her, and once told her he hated her and was annoyed that he had to be nice to her. She says she once brushed dandruff off his tuxedo jacket, which was part of her job—and he hit her three times in the arm while telling her not to touch him. She says he was also verbally abusive to other female crew members on the show, yelling at them not to follow him around or look at him, TMZ reports. Hwang says Fox protected Savage, and that when she reported the alleged violence to an executive producer he said, "I'm not even sure what Fred did constituted harassment and I don't think you should report it to HR." But Fox says it looked into Hwang's claims: "We conducted a thorough investigation into these allegations and found no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Savage. We will vigorously defend against these unfounded claims," the company said in a statement obtained by Deadline. Page Six has a lengthy statement from Savage in which he says, among other things, "These accusations are completely without merit and absolutely untrue. Fox conducted an extensive internal investigation into her claims, a process in which I fully participated. ... None of her claims could be substantiated because they did not happen."
– When journalist Al Letson saw a suspected alt-right protester being beaten by "antifa" supporters in Berkeley, Calif., on Sunday, he didn't stop to consider what the fallen man might think of him. Letson, who is black, simply wanted to save him. Running into the crowd, Letson jumped on top of the man in order to protect him. A series of videos posted to Twitter show Letson, in a red shirt, shielding the man's body and attempting to push the assailants away. "What came to me was that he was a human being, and I didn't want to see anybody die," Letson, host of podcast Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, tells NPR. "In retrospect, it doesn't matter if he doesn't see my humanity, what matters to me is that I see his." Letson tells Slate that the unidentified protester had been with Joey Gibson of right-wing group Patriot Prayer during the mostly peaceful rally. But after Gibson began "antagonizing the black bloc," 20 to 30 others began chasing them. Gibson fled but his apparent companion "stumbled—or someone tripped him—and then four or five people surrounded him and began to kick and hit him," Letson says. When he noticed "a whole mass of people coming," Letson says he intervened in fear for the man's life. Though he was struck a few times, he'd do it all again, per Reveal. "I remember seeing the pictures of a young man being brutally beaten by these guys with poles [in Charlottesville], and when I saw that I thought, "Why didn't anybody step in?" he says.
– It's not every day that a tycoon's feces are tested by the authorities, but such is the case in Thailand. Wildlife officials accuse Premchai Karnasuta—ranked by Forbes as the country's 35th richest person, with an estimated net worth of $240 million—of poaching a leopard and other animals in the Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary in the country's west. AFP reports rangers came up on the camp set up by Premchai, 63, and three others and found 10 carcasses of protected species, including a black leopard, a Kalij pheasant, and a red muntjac. The group was arrested Feb. 4, reports the Bangkok Post. Human excrement was found there, too, and officials say that its presence near the camp is noteworthy. They don't believe Premchai—who made his fortune in construction and heads the Italian-Thai Development Company, which erected Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport—would have strayed far from the camp when nature called. It's not the only test being conducted: Elephant tusks found in his Bangkok home will be analyzed to determine whether they came from Africa illegally. The Post reports on another potential clue: Two pellets identified via X-ray in the pheasant carcass will be tested and compared to the firearms taken from the suspects, who have denied the allegations. Premchai has a March 26 court date; wary of any potential attempt to flee, Thailand's immigration checkpoints have been told to keep watch for him. (This billionaire is involved in his own poop situation.)
– Margaret Bekema would have loved to graduate with the rest of the Class of 1936 but life got in the way—almost eight decades of it. The Michigan woman, who had to drop out of high school when she was 17 to look after her mother, who had cancer, and three younger siblings, finally received her diploma from Catholic Central High School on Thursday at the age of 97, reports USA Today. Bekema, who was presented with the diploma in a ceremony senior community, said graduating had been a lifelong dream, the AP reports. "I had to quit school to take over the family," said Bekema, who did clerical work for the Army during World War II and late worked as a preschool teacher. "It was hard, you have no idea how hard that was. I loved high school and I had lots of friends." One of her two children tells MLive.com that her mother isn't one for complaining, but not graduating from high school was something she always regretted. "She is the type of person that whatever life hands her, she just deals with it very graciously," she says.
– A disabled California man who spent a hellish half-hour stuck on Disneyland's "It's a Small World" ride as the theme song blared over and over again has been awarded $8,000 in damages. The man, who is in his early 50s and is paralyzed from a spinal cord injury, was left in the "Goodbye Room" when the ride broke down and other riders were evacuated from the boat, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The man's lawyer says his client suffers from panic attacks and high blood pressure—and a full bladder made the situation even worse. The judge awarded the man $4,000 for "pain and suffering" and another $4,000 for a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. "I find a breach of the common-law duty to provide safe premises," the judge said in his ruling, saying Disney has a duty to warn disabled visitors that they could be trapped for an extended period of time when rides break down, CBS reports.
– The hiring committee at Pittsburg High School took Amy Robertson's list of credentials—including supposed master’s and doctorate degrees—at face value. But not the school's students, whose investigation has since led to their new principal's resignation. After Robertson was hired for the job at the Kansas school last month, with an annual salary of $93,000, six student journalists writing for the school's Booster Redux newspaper began to dig into her past—only to find things "just didn’t quite add up," one student tells the Washington Post. For example, Corllins University, where Robertson claimed to have been educated, was accused of selling degrees, had no known physical address, and wasn't accredited by the Department of Education. Robertson told the students she attended Corllins before it lost accreditation, but she also "presented incomplete answers, conflicting dates, and inconsistencies in her responses," the Redux reported. Robertson, who has lived in Dubai for the last two decades, told the Kansas City Star last week that she wouldn't comment on her credentials because the students' "concerns are not based on facts." It was "red flags" about her time in Dubai that turned up during an electronic search of her name that prompted the students' full investigation; initially, one of the student journalists was planning to write a standard article introducing the students to their new principal. Ultimately, Robertson resigned Tuesday after she was unable to verify an undergraduate degree she said she received from the University of Tulsa, a Redux adviser tells the Post. The students are getting plenty of praise for their investigative work from professional journalists. The school superintendent, meanwhile, says it was up to the school board to review Robertson's credentials before approving the hire, which it did.
– The head vocalist in rock band Panic! At The Disco has come out as pansexual. Brendon Urie opened up about his sexuality in a recent interview in Paper magazine, per BuzzFeed. While the crooner is married to a woman, he told the magazine that it's the person, not the gender, that he's attracted to. "If a person is great, then a person is great. I just like good people, if your heart’s in the right place. I’m definitely attracted to men. It’s just people that I am attracted to," he said. As Variety notes, the revelation should come as no real shock to Panic! fans. The band's song “Girls/Girls/Boys," about a woman who loves men and women, won praise from the LGBT community when it appeared on their fourth studio album back in 2013. Per the AP, Urie recently launched a non-profit aimed at supporting "communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the basis of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity."
– One lucky museum will be getting a treasure trove in the form of hundreds of items belonging to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. A foundation run by Howard Buffett, son of Warren, has purchased the items—including a postcard from Martin Luther King Jr. and a hat Parks may have worn when she made history for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama—and intends to donate them to a soon-to-be-chosen museum or institution. "I thought about doing what Rosa Parks would want," Buffett tells the AP. "I'm only trying to do one thing: preserve what's there for the public's benefit." The collection of more than 1,000 items also includes clothing, lamps, and Parks' Presidential Medal of Freedom. All have been gathering dust in a New York warehouse as family and friends battled over Parks' will. "I doubt that she would want to have her stuff sitting in a box with people fighting over them," says Buffett. He didn't disclose what he paid, but an attorney for Parks' heirs says the price was $4.5 million. In less-happy news, copper thieves this week ransacked the Alabama apartment where Parks lived, the AP reports separately.
– Rumors of major restructuring of White House staff have been circulating in recent days, and on Tuesday the first shoe may have dropped in the form of Mike Dubke, President Trump's communications director. Axios reports that Dubke offered Trump his resignation on May 18, though he offered to stay on at least until the president's overseas trip had wrapped up. A senior administration official notes Dubke is leaving on friendly footing, and he's still reporting for work—in fact, Politico nabbed him for an interview as he was driving into the White House on Tuesday. It's not clear yet when his last day will be, though he plans to return to the Black Rock Group communications firm once he exits the White House. "The reasons for my departure are personal, but it has been my great honor to serve President Trump and this administration," Dubke said in a Tuesday morning email. Dubke told Politico he was shocked it took nearly two weeks for news of his resignation to get out. Axios notes Dubke's sayonara is just the "start of a wave of changes." Sean Spicer is expected to take on a downplayed role, though it's unclear where the fates of Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner lie. Axios reports Trump is rumored to be considering bringing on "killers," including GOP lobbyist David Urban and former campaign aides David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski, the latter being one who "experience suggests … will not only indulge Trump's most combative instincts, but goad them." In other anticipated changes, an official says Trump plans on serving more often as the White House's spokesperson. "He says things exactly the way he wants them to be said," the official notes.
– Another big win for the GOP establishment: Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts has defeated Tea Party challenger Milton Wolf, ending what Politico calls "conservatives' last, best hope to topple an incumbent GOP senator this year." Roberts, who has been in Congress since 1981 and a senator since 1997, had a 48% to 41% lead over Wolf with 95% of precincts reporting, according to the AP. The campaign of Wolf, a radiologist and a distant cousin of President Obama, took a hit early this year when it emerged that he had posted patient X-rays on Facebook and joked about them. "Tonight, we reaffirmed what we all knew. We are Kansas-loving conservative Republicans, and we are in charge of our own future," Roberts told supporters. "My posse did not flinch, even though there were times when their candidate—me—stepped on our message." In other GOP primaries yesterday, a Tea Party congressman in eastern Michigan was defeated by a lawyer backed by business groups, while a libertarian-leaning congressman in the western part of the state defeated a business-backed challenger, the New York Times reports.
– Keith Olbermann stormed off Twitter in a huff yesterday, after finding himself the recipient of a barrage of tweets condemning him and Michael Moore for defending Julian Assange. Olbermann had Moore on his show Tuesday to talk about the WikiLeaks founder, and nodded in sympathy as Moore declared the rape allegations against Assange “hooey.” That enraged readers at the blog Tiger Beatdown, who barraged the pair with tweets accusing them of being “rape apologists.” Moore hasn’t responded, but Olbermann did—and it didn’t go well. The host bickered with seemingly every critic (see Salon for details), eventually issuing an if-I-offended-anyone apology. Then he began blocking offending tweeters, and finally, when he could stand it no more, he tweeted, “I'll thus unblock all blocks, wish you all a Merry Christmas and I'll suspend this account until/if this frenzy is stopped.” Since then he’s posted one tweet—an innocuous congratulations to Larry King.
– More is emerging on suspected Sikh temple gunman Wade Michael Page: The white supremacist and former Army soldier was demoted in rank and discharged in 1998, the LA Times reports. A military official didn't say why Page received a general discharge rather than an honorable one after 6 1/2 years of service. But a dishonorable discharge would have stopped him from buying the 9mm handgun he purchased July 28, picked up July 30, and used days later in the shooting, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Among other emerging details: Lt. Brian Murphy, 51, was the first officer on the scene. He came upon a victim in the temple parking lot and was ambushed by Page, who shot him eight or nine times. When other officers arrived, Page fired on them and was killed by a policeman with a rifle. Murphy remains in critical condition. Authorities said this morning they were trying to identify a white male who was a "person of interest." But FBI officials said later he was not relevant to the case. Page was quiet and "not a friendly guy," said a neighbor. "You'd have more fun with a camel. He was very quiet. You'd say hi and he'd kind of 'uh.' It was like he didn't care if you were talking or not." Page's grandmother, Elaine Lenz, called Page a good grandson who gave her a dozen roses last month "just to tell me he loved me," she said. "I'm sorry he has caused so much trouble."
– We've got a name but still no real explanation of why a shooter opened fire at LAX today. Authorities have identified the gunman at Los Angeles International Airport as 23-year-old Paul Ciancia. A law-enforcement official says Ciancia was carrying a note that said he "wanted to kill TSA and pigs," reports AP. One witness tells NBC News that the gunman approached him calmly in the airport while carrying his weapon. "All he said was, 'TSA?' Just like that." (The one person killed in today's shooting was a TSA employee.) Not much is known about Ciancia at this point, but a separate AP story has this surprising nugget: His father in Pennsville, NJ, called police there this afternoon because Ciancia had texted one of his siblings suggesting he was about to kill himself. The New Jersey chief called the police in LA, who sent a patrol car to his apartment. He wasn't there. "Basically, there were two roommates there," says the Pennsville chief. "They said, 'We saw him yesterday and he was fine.'"
– "She's full of life, loving, kind, sweet, everything you could ever imagine," Lori Cichewicz describes her 5-year-old daughter, Reagan, to WXYZ. But the 50-year-old from Oakland County, Mich., worries about the financial strain and other issues involved in raising a child with special needs (Reagan was born with Down syndrome), as well as whether she'll be around to celebrate all of Reagan's milestones as she gets older—and she's now suing her doctor for damages for what she says was a pregnancy that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Per Fox 2, Cichewicz went to get her fallopian tubes tied in 2008 as a permanent birth-control measure, but her doctor informed her that her tubes were blocked and that surgery was unnecessary—in fact, he said, she could go without any contraception from that point forward and not worry about getting pregnant. Fast-forward about three years, when a shocked Cichewicz found out she was pregnant with Reagan. A Michigan appeals court ruled last week that while Cichewicz can't sue for funds to cover raising a child with Down syndrome, she can file a complaint to be compensated for the emotional stress of the unplanned pregnancy, per the AP. "[The doctor's advice] misled Lori and caused her to ... make a decision that she never should have had to make," her lawyer tells WXYZ, while a Fox 2 legal analyst says she likely has a solid case, calling it "very close to ... medical malpractice." The case is expected to go to trial later this year. Not that the outcome of the suit will affect how Cichewicz feels about her daughter. "I can't imagine life without her now," she tells WXYZ. "When they say having a child with special needs is a gift, it's a gift." (Read about why a woman in her 20s chose to have her tubes tied.)
– Uber looks like it's trying to get in on the self-driving cars business, officially announcing this week that it's partnering with Carnegie Mellon University (home to the Mars Rover) to build the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh—in other words, "kickstart autonomous taxi fleet development," inside sources tell TechCrunch. And while Uber wouldn't say as much, sources allege that the company is hiring more than 50 senior scientists from the university, as well as an affiliated robotics research center; Uber does say the partnership will focus on "mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology." It's not the first time Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has talked about turning real drivers into robotic ones. Meanwhile Google, which Grist reports has thus far played nice with Uber by sharing Google Maps and investing $258 million in its app, might be ending that streak. Google appears to be creating its own ride-hailing app, reports Bloomberg Business, and is already well ahead of Uber when it comes to autonomous vehicles. Curiously, David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, is so far still maintaining a spot on Uber’s board, even though the two companies appear to be on the verge of becoming competitors. (Uber's legal troubles continue to mount around the world.)
– Huge, man-eating crocodiles may be hiding throughout the Florida wilderness, according to a study published last month in Herpetological Conservation and Biology. The Orlando Sentinel reports that DNA testing on three young crocodiles caught between 2009 and 2014 confirmed them to be Nile crocodiles native to Africa. Nile crocodiles can grow up to 18 feet long and weigh as much as a car, according to a press release. They eat everything from hippos to humans and are believed to be responsible for up to 200 human fatalities a year in Africa. The Florida Everglades have long proven to be a haven for nonnative species—including the Burmese python and Cuban tree frog. “Here's another one," study co-author Kenneth Kysko says. "But this time it isn't just a tiny house gecko." Researchers say the Nile crocodile could thrive in Florida, which is bad news for the already tenuous ecosystem in the Everglades. Nile crocodiles could eat and mate the smaller and less-aggressive native alligators and crocodiles out of existence. Not to mention what they could do to livestock and human populations. Analysis of one of the captured Nile crocodiles—it grew 28% faster than Nile crocodiles in Africa—showed they can thrive in Florida. And researchers believe there are likely more living in the Everglades. It's unclear how the Nile crocodiles got to Florida. As their DNA doesn't match up with Nile crocodiles at Disney's Animal Kingdom and other attractions, it's most likely they are escaped pets. "They didn't swim from Africa," Krysko tells the Sentinel.
– Heads probably haven't finished rolling at the Secret Service over its prostitution scandal, Rep. Peter King said today on Meet the Press, saying he expected "several" members to depart in the "near future." The House Homeland Security chair promised a thorough investigation, and has already sent a letter to the agency demanding answers to 50 questions, like whether agents used their expense accounts to pay their paramours, Fox News reports. He's not alone; the Senate will be expanding its investigation too, Joe Lieberman said today, according to CNN. Secret Service officials also confirmed today that one of the 12 agents implicated in the scandal so far was staying at a different hotel than the other 11—the same hotel that President Obama would eventually stay in, the AP reports. "It just gets more troubling," Lieberman said, though he cautioned that, "We don't know at this point what that 12th agent is being charged with." Lieberman and King weren't the only lawmakers discussing the scandal either; click for more from our Sunday talk show roundup.
– The Chilean flag is annoyingly similar to Texas' state flag, but that doesn't mean Lone Star Staters should appropriate Chile's flag emoji when they feel like expressing Texas pride. That's the gist of what one state lawmaker is trying to push through via Texas House Concurrent Resolution 75, which takes it upon itself to "urge" residents not to use the Chilean icon online as a substitute for the non-existent Texas flag emoji, the Houston Chronicle reports. In what the Dallas Morning News says belongs under the "yes, it's a real bill" umbrella, Cypress' conservative Rep. Tom Oliverson filed the resolution, noting, "Just as our flag could never fully embody the country of Chile, neither can the Chilean flag inspire feelings of pride and passion in the heart of a true Texan." He points out that although both flags feature a similar red, white, and blue layout capped by that lone star, which often causes emoji-users to confuse Chile's flag for Texas' flag, Chile's colors are meant to symbolize "sky, snow, and blood spilled while fighting for freedom," while Texas' hues are meant to represent "loyalty, purity, and bravery." He also notes that the blue in his state's flag extends all the way down to the bottom, while Chile's is cut off into a square about halfway down (he even wants to get the #TheBlueGoesAllTheWayDown hashtag to pick up steam). That said, Oliverson concedes this bill isn't "the most pressing issue" the Legislature has on its plate at the moment, per the Morning News. (The White House rejected a Texas secession petition a few years back.)
– The investigation into what happened to Malaysia Airlines MH17 took big steps forward today, with victims' bodies finally arriving by train in a Ukraine town and Malaysia declaring that the black boxes are in "good condition." But Moscow, in the meantime, sought to cast doubt on the generally accepted theory that pro-Russian separatists were to blame, reports the Wall Street Journal. At an official briefing last night, the defense ministry said that its radar spotted a second aircraft in the vicinity and that it was probably a Ukraine fighter jet, which could have shot down the plane. The air force chief also suggested that a Ukraine missile system could have hit the plane from the ground, and he said satellite imagery suggested that Ukraine had been moving such systems into the area. He offered no proof, but as Katie Stallard at Sky News writes, "Russia doesn't need to prove its case—all it needs is to create one, to insist that there are different versions of events, that there is credible claim and counter-claim." Meanwhile, the refrigerated train carrying passengers arrived in the Ukraine town of Kharkiv, reports the AP. Forensic experts from the Netherlands, which is taking the lead in the investigation, were to prepare the bodies today for transport to Amsterdam, probably tomorrow. Meanwhile, Malaysia's prime minister declared the black boxes to be in "good condition," reports MarketWatch. Malaysia will hold them until they are turned over to international investigators.
– President Trump has one more big decision to make in regard to "the memo." The House intelligence panel on Monday voted unanimously to make public the Democratic rebuttal to the GOP's memo on the Russia investigation. As with the original memo, the president now has five days to review it and decide whether to allow its release, reports the AP. Will he do so? A tweet Trump sent earlier on Monday about the lead Democrat on the panel, Adam Schiff, raises doubts about the prospect, notes the Washington Post. Trump accused Schiff of leaving committee hearings to "illegally leak confidential information" and said he "must be stopped." Schiff has previously asserted that the Republican memo is misleading and intended mainly to discredit the Robert Mueller investigation. He and his staffers compiled the 10-page rebuttal memo in question, and Schiff has said it presents a point-by-point refutation of the Republican version, reports Politico. The GOP memo made the case that the FBI and the Justice Department were politically biased against candidate Trump and improperly obtained permission to spy on his campaign.
– Houston made headlines first over the weekend, after a swastika was drawn in chalk on Rice University's statue of William Marsh Rice on Friday night. As CNN reports, it was the first of three such incidents to occur in different pockets of the country over a roughly 24-hour period. On Saturday Chicago police shared a video that depicts a man who drove up to the Chicago Loop Synagogue and put two swastika stickers on its door. The Sun-Times reports police were alerted to the incident just after midnight Saturday and found a window smashed. That evening, New York City subway riders came face-to-face with a slew of swastikas. Rider Gregory Locke describes getting on the No. 1 train and seeing swastikas written in Sharpie on the windows. "The train was silent as everyone stared at each other, uncomfortable and unsure what to do," he writes in a Facebook post that includes photos of the incident; it has gone viral with more than 500,000 reactions. The New York Times reports vile messages were also scrawled in the car, including "Jews belong in the oven." Upon one rider's suggestion that hand sanitizer would undo the hate, "I've never seen so many people simultaneously reach into their bags and pockets looking for tissues and Purel. Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone." The Times notes the NYPD and Metropolitan Transportation Authority received no reports of the vandalism, though the paper spoke with Locke and another rider who gave their accounts. (This man found swastikas in his boot prints.)
– Facebook just lost an important legal fight in India, and now one of its board members has complicated its next steps. The mess started when Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen took to Twitter to criticize India's decision to block Facebook from offering free but limited Internet access to poor areas. At one point, when a critic likened Andreessen's position to "Internet colonialism," he shot back, "Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?" recounts the Wall Street Journal. That sentiment drew widespread condemnation and prompted Mark Zuckerberg himself to quickly distance himself from it. And in a series of tweets, Andreessen apologized for his "ill-informed and ill-advised comment." On his Facebook page, Zuckerberg used stronger language, describing the tweet as "deeply unsettling" and making clear that the company "strongly" rejects it. The controversy revolves around a program called Free Basics. As CNET explains, an Indian court declared that the concept violated Net neutrality rules because it would have provided free access to the Internet but only to a limited number of services. The controversy "comes at an inopportune time" for Facebook, which wants to establish a bigger presence in the country but now needs a new strategy after the misstep with Free Basics, notes the New York Times. As for Andreessen, "I will leave all future commentary on all of these topics to people with more knowledge and experience than me," he wrote.
– Welcome to the year that the Eurozone begins its breakup and slides into certain doom—or so says one economic think tank in Europe. There is a 60% chance that "at least one country (and probably more) will leave" the euro in 2012, the head of the Centre for Economics and Business Research says. He adds that Greece's departure seems "pretty certain" and Italy will "more likely than not" follow suit, the Telegraph reports. CEBR gives the euro currency a 99% chance of failing over the next 10 years, and warns that a global depression may follow. Along the way, the think tank says, French and German banking systems could seek bailouts and even be nationalized, the Financial Post reports. For now, European leaders are trying to give Spain and Italy time to gain control over their debt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that 2012 will be turbulent but that she will "do everything to strengthen the euro," Bloomberg reports. (Read about S&P's plan for the Eurozone.)
– Women in sports say Forbes' annual list of the world's highest-paid athletes is proof that the gender pay gap is real and pressing. That's because—for the first time in eight years—not a single woman made the cut. The highest-paid female athlete in 2017—the year she gave birth to a daughter—was Serena Williams. Her $18 million puts her roughly $5 million below the take of the man to hold the 100th spot, Nicolas Batum of the Charlotte Hornets, who made $22.9 million, reports NBC News. "When more men in power become allies and care about gender equality, the power differential will shift," former tennis champ Billie Jean King says in a tweet. They top-earners for 2017 are:
– When Ohio's health department released birth records last month for those adopted over a period of more than three decades, a spokesman called it a chance for people to "possibly reconnect with some siblings or their birth parents," WYTV reported at the time. For one Youngstown woman, both her birth mom and sister were much closer than anyone could have guessed. La-Sonya Mitchell-Clark, 38, had been working with her mother for four years before the two found out about it, ABC News reports. Her sister—one of three Mitchell-Clark learned she has—works at the same company, InfoCision. The path to discovery began on Monday, when Mitchell-Clark's birth record arrived in the mail. She learned that her mother's name was Francine Simmons, and she looked up Simmons' Facebook profile, which revealed her place of employment. "There's a Francine that works at my job. She works in (volunteer recruitment) and she works at the front desk," she tells WYTV. It was the same Francine, and the two shared a tearful phone call soon afterward. "They would come in contact around the building and during events such as our corporate summer cookouts," says a rep for the company, which has put out an exclamation point-filled press release about the news. Simmons had always wanted to meet her daughter, whom she gave up at age 15. "Had her. Got to hold her. Didn't get to name her, but I named her myself in my heart all these years," Simmons tells ABC. The two women live only six minutes apart. (Another incredible reunion saw a mother reconnect with the daughter she heard had died 50 years ago.)
– The Brock Turner controversy rumbles on: A defendant from a very different background than the former Stanford student received a much harsher sentence from the same judge in a similar case, the Guardian reports. According to court records, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky oversaw a plea deal earlier this year involving Raul Ramirez, a 32-year-old man from El Salvador who sexually assaulted his female roommate. Ramirez, who needed an interpreter in court, agreed to plead guilty in a deal that will see him spend three years in state prison, while Turner will spend just six months in county jail. Critics say that if Persky had treated Ramirez as leniently as he treated Turner, a white 20-year-old, the Latino man would have ended up with a much lighter sentence or even have avoided prison. The deal "shows that Turner got consideration not available to other defendants who aren’t as privileged," says Michele Landis Dauber, a Stanford professor leading a campaign to recall Persky, who's a former Stanford student. Persky's days on the bench may be numbered—a recent poll found that 66% of people in Santa Clara County would vote for his recall, Palo Alto Online reports—but a group of Stanford law grads is urging Dauber to reconsider the recall campaign, the Stanford Daily reports. In an open letter, they argue that it will be more effective to fight for "educating future judges and jurors about the realities of sexual assault, or pressing for systemic changes in how these cases are handled." (Persky was removed from another sexual assault case earlier this month.)
– After his death, police searched the rental car Vester Flanagan used to flee after allegedly shooting two journalists to death during a live broadcast. What they found, per NBC News and reporter Tom Winter: A Glock pistol and six magazines of ammunition A to-do list 17 stamped letters A briefcase holding three license plates, a wig, a shawl, an umbrella, and sunglasses "Assorted handwritten and typed letter/notes" A black hat A "bookbag w/ random papers / cards" An iPhone The Enterprise rental agreement More details are coming to light today, including the fact that WDBJ, the station where victims Alison Parker and Adam Ward worked, helped authorities identify Flanagan as the suspect. Ward had captured an image of Flanagan pointing his gun toward the camera, and "everybody who was gathered around it said, 'That's Vester,'" the station's general manager tells NBC. "I wasn't sure. They were"—and so the station contacted the county sheriff with the information. After Flanagan allegedly carried out the shooting, police say he texted a friend "making reference to having done something stupid." The third victim, who was shot while Parker was interviewing her on camera, was upgraded to good condition today, WDBJ reports.
– If your visions of high-profile hedge fund managers include frenetic scrambling through paperwork, fielding endless phone calls, and scouring the Internet during never-ending workdays, those don't apply to Steve Edmundson, the investment head of Nevada's $35 billion Public Employees' Retirement System, the Wall Street Journal notes. Where other states' retirement systems try to come up with the most complex investments possible to beat the markets, the 44-year-old Edmundson has a different philosophy when it comes to day-to-day trading: "Do as little as possible, usually nothing," as the Journal puts it. And by "nothing," that means not obsessing over the daily fluctuations in oil prices, the elections, or even what Janet Yellen is up to—an approach that's rare among managers of large pension funds, the New York Times noted last year in an article about Edmundson. This laissez-faire tactic has served Edmundson well: His system's returns over anywhere from one to 10 years are competitive, if not better, than the pension systems of other states, including the largest public one—California's. Even Edmundson's desk looks like it's his first day on the job, with just basic office supplies, a few family pics, and a printer—no fancy Bloomberg Terminal to monitor real-time market info. Edmundson is able to kick back by keeping the system's stocks and bonds in low-cost index funds, though one investment strategy expert (who held the job before Edmundson) concedes "doing nothing is harder than it looks" when it comes to showing such restraint. Edmundson's minimalist philosophy even carries over to lunch: He brings leftovers or a sandwich from home so he doesn't have to spend $10 each day. (A typical Steve Edmundson day, in the Wall Street Journal.)
– It's been a nearly 200-year-long debate: Did William Shakespeare add 325 lines to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy nearly a decade after Kyd's death? None other than Samuel Taylor Coleridge raised the question in 1833, and a 2012 computer analysis seemed to lend credence to the theory. Now, a University of Texas professor says the proof may be in the handwriting—and bad handwriting at that. In a paper to be published next month, Douglas Bruster compares the play's 1602 "Additional Passages" with a three-page handwriting sample believed to be the Bard's held at the British Library. What he found, per the New York Times and UT at Austin News: about two dozen similar spelling patterns (for instance, "sorow for "sorrow"; past-tense words that ended in "t", like "wrapt"; and one word spelled two ways, like "allie" and "allye" for "alley") and nine textual "corruptions" that he believes resulted from the printer misreading Shakespeare's hand. He also thinks an awkward passage—so seemingly poorly written that it has been cited as evidence the lines couldn't have been crafted by Shakespeare—is the result of another bad handwriting/printer error goof. Says Bruster, "This is the clinching evidence we need to admit the additional passages into the Shakespeare canon." The Times notes this would mark the first such addition since passages from Edward III (also attributed to Kyd) were included in scholarly editions in the mid-'90s. (Another fascinating recent study paints Shakespeare as a food hoarder.)
– President Trump may have another high-profile summit to attend in the near future. National security adviser John Bolton will travel to Moscow next week to discuss a possible meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin, reports Politico. A National Security Council spokesperson tweeted that Bolton will first meet with US allies in London and Rome to talk about national security issues, then head to Russia "to discuss a potential meeting" between the two world leaders. Bolton's trip is June 25-27. A Kremlin spokesman confirmed Bolton's visit, but he wouldn't confirm Russian media reports that Putin and Trump would get together in Vienna in July, reports the New York Times. "When and if we are ready, we will make the announcement," he said. Trump has publicly floated the idea of a meeting this summer, and Putin has said he willing to accommodate "as soon as the American side is ready." Trump will travel to Brussels for a NATO summit July 11-12, and the meeting with Putin could take place before that, perhaps in Vienna, reports Reuters. If the summit does take place, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg is fine with that, reports the Times of London. "To meet President Putin is not in any way contradicting NATO policy," he told reporters.
– About 1% of the US population (around 3.2 million Americans) has a gambling disorder, per the National Center for Responsible Gaming—and the Atlantic tells the tragic story of one of those addicts and how a lawsuit took the entire industry to task for his death. Scott Stevens was a successful Ohio finance exec whose life started unraveling in 2006 after a trade show in Vegas. For six years, his gambling habit spiraled out of control: He sneaked off to gamble when his wife thought he was working, embezzled nearly $4 million from his firm, and drained his family's savings—until the day in 2012 he decided to end his life. After his suicide, Stacy started researching gambling addiction (she hadn't even known about her husband's problem) and filed suit against the West Virginia casino where he was a regular, as well as the maker of the slot machines there. Experts relay how casinos track and target addicted gamblers, supply ready flows of cash via on-site ATMs, and offer plenty of perks to keep them coming back. But it's the modern-day slot machines themselves, with deceptive technology called virtual reel mapping, that seem to be designed to lull gamblers into a trance—or what the industry refers to as "continuous gaming productivity"—so they don't stop playing. While the casinos and machine manufacturers place the blame for gambling addictions on individuals, Terry Noffsinger, the lead attorney for the Stevens suit, says these addictive machines are not due to "negligence. It's intentional." Stacy Stevens lost her case in West Virginia, but Noffsinger believes the movement to hold casinos accountable for addicts will gain momentum, much like how the tobacco industry eventually paid for sickening its own customers. "The public is learning more about it," he says. (Read about the tech behind the slot machines here.)
– At least one person was killed and multiple others injured Friday by a gunman inside New York City's Bronx Lebanon Hospital, the AP reports. The shooter, a doctor who used to work at the hospital, also apparently killed himself. A law enforcement official anonymously named Dr. Henry Bello as the suspect; it's not clear when he left the hospital. The AP says six others were injured while CNN puts the number at five, three of them with serious injuries. Per CNN, the victim who was killed is a woman. The New York Times says three of the people shot are doctors.
– Barack Obama may not be Mitt-Romney-rich (or even Al-Gore-rich), but he's doing all right for himself. The president's latest financial disclosure forms, released yesterday, reveal that he and Michelle had total assets worth somewhere between $1.8 million and $7 million in 2013, the AP reports. (That's just like 2012.) Most of that is in US Treasury notes, which are worth between $1 million and $5 million. Other assets include Vanguard retirement funds and college saving funds. Current financial disclosure rules only require politicians to list their assets within a broad range, so it's hard to pin down exactly how much Obama has, the New York Times explains. Besides his presidential salary, Obama makes most of his money off royalties from his books, though the market seems to believe he peaked as a writer in the '90s. His latest, 2010's Of Thee I Sing, A Letter to My Daughters, earned between $5,001 and $15,000, compared to $50,001-$100,000 for 1995's Dreams From My Father. But even Of Thee's numbers probably sound good to Joe Biden, who made less than $201 in royalties last year off of his 2007 book Promises to Keep.
– An actress known to one generation as Gabe Kaplan's wife, Julie, on Welcome Back, Kotter and to another as the mom in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids has died after a seven-year battle with breast cancer. Marcia Strassman died Saturday at home in Sherman Oaks, Calif.; she was 66, the AP reports. "They gave her two and a half years to live but she lasted much longer. She was very courageous," says sister Julie Strassman. "She was the funniest, smartest person I ever met. And talented. She knew everything. Now I won't be able to call her and ask her questions," she tells Deadline. The actress is also survived by a daughter and a brother. Strassman was born in 1948 in New York City and went to Los Angeles at age 18. Her career began in music but turned to acting when she appeared on The Patty Duke Show and landed the role of nurse Margie Cutler on M.A.S.H. This was followed by her role on Kotter, then as the mom opposite Rick Moranis in the Disney hit and its sequel. She also appeared in Third Watch in 2004, adds Variety. Even before her cancer diagnosis, Strassman was involved in cancer research and treatment organizations. "She had more friends than anyone in the world. She could do anything," her sister says. (Click to read about other celebrities who died of breast cancer.)
– The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has promised to diversify its membership—but making good on that promise is slow-going: A Los Angeles Times analysis of 5,800 of the academy's 6,261 voting members shows that 91% are white and 76% are male, only a slight improvement from 2012, when 94% of voters were white and 77% were male. What's more, the academy's executive branch is 98% white and its public relations branch is 95% white. Meanwhile, about 87% of lead actors, 87% of directors, and 92% of writers for the top 163 films of 2014 were white, according to a new UCLA study, per the Washington Post. "What doesn't interest them is the current black experience or black culture," filmmaker Rod Lurie says of the academy, which hands out its annual honors on Sunday. "A movie like Straight Outta Compton doesn't stand a chance." The UCLA study also found that women directed only 3% of 2014's major films. The academy says it will double the number of women and minority voters (now 1,500 and 535, respectively) by 2020.
– The 115th Congress was sworn in Tuesday, and Kansas Rep. Roger Marshall was one of the newbies who took advantage of a photo op with Speaker Paul Ryan after the ceremony. But per CNN, another Marshall ended up stealing the spotlight: the congressman's son, who started dabbing—for the uninitiated, Wikipedia describes it as "a dance move in which the dancer simultaneously drops the head while raising an arm and the elbow in a gesture that has been noted to resemble sneezing," and often employed by the Carolina Panthers' Cam Newton to celebrate a touchdown. Ryan seemed flummoxed by whatever was going on next to him, asking young Marshall, "Do you want to put your hand down?" Ryan said, gently pulling the boy's arm down. "You gonna sneeze? That it?" The elder Marshall responded with details of his son's fate Tuesday afternoon, tweeting, "Just so you know @SpeakerRyan: He's grounded." But Ryan's take on the dab debacle showed it was less the punishment he was concerned about and more answers that he sought. "Just finished swearing-in photos. Nearly 300 members. Countless cute kids. Still don't get what dabbing is, though," he tweeted Tuesday evening. Someone tape a Panthers game for him?
– Amazon.com's first CFO was killed Wednesday afternoon in a bicycle accident, authorities confirmed yesterday. Joy Covey, 50, was riding on a rural road in Woodside, California, when she collided with a minivan as it turned onto another street. "She was wearing a helmet, but the injuries were too severe," says a California Highway Patrol officer. "The vehicle turned left directly in front of the bicycle, which was traveling downhill." The 22-year-old driver has not been cited, but authorities are still investigating, the San Jose Mercury News reports. In a tragic twist, police say he may have been making deliveries for OnTrac—a shipping service that counts Amazon among its customers, the New York Times reports. Covey was the CFO and VP of finance and administration from 1996 to 1999, and oversaw Amazon's IPO, the San Francisco Chronicle reports; during that time she was named one of the 50 most powerful business women in America by Fortune. After leaving Amazon in 2000 she served on various boards, started a nonprofit, and most recently worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's a very sad day for Amazon," a company spokesperson tells CNET's Dara Kerr, who describes Covey as "instrumental in making the massive e-commerce company what it is today." Many reports on her death are citing a 2002 Harvard Law Bulletin interview, in which Covey recounted dropping out of high school and working as a grocery clerk; she ended up graduating from Fresno State in just 2.5 years, and got her law and MBA degrees from Harvard. (Covey wasn't the only business leader to die this week.)
– Facebook has seen a mixed start to its IPO: Initially priced at $38 each, shares in the company quickly jumped about 11%, opening at $42. But things cooled off, and at one point in the first half-hour, shares were back down to about $38, notes the Wall Street Journal. They were hovering just under $40 around mid-day. “I think it’s surprising that they didn’t get the pop that many were expecting,” one analyst tells MarketWatch. “It seems the underwriters did not leave much upside, or perhaps investors were signaling that they would buy a lot more shares than they ended up actually buying.” TheStreet.com has a liveblog here.
– The three American hikers detained by Iran weren’t captured in Iraq, says Sarah Shourd: They were beckoned over the border by an armed soldier, she tells the New York Times in an effort to set the WikiLeaks version of the story straight. “We did not actually enter Iran until he gestured to us. We were confused and worried and wanted to go back." In Shourd's fullest account of her ordeal to date, she goes into detail about their fateful overnight camping trip, describing "scores of campfires" near the waterfall they were hiking to—which abutted Iran. “I think we were extremely unlucky,” says Shourd. “I guess I never believed there would be so many hundreds of people close to a border.” Her interview with the Times comes ahead of a court date for her fellow hikers, which was set for Saturday but has been delayed by Iran until Shourd “can return to Iran or,” if she refuses, her case can “be dealt with differently,” said an Iranian official. But her lawyer says the trial should go forward; neither he nor Shourd, he tells Reuters, were notified of the change.
– The newspaper that first received the Panama Papers says it isn't going to release all 11.5 million files it received from a whistleblower to the public or to law enforcement—because it "isn't the extended arm of prosecutors or the tax investigators." Sueddeutsche Zeitung has shared files relating to celebrities and politicians, but the German paper doesn't believe there's public interest in exposing all of the individuals and companies involved, the AP reports. The paper says it was contacted by a source at Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca who felt a "very strong moral impulse" to expose the tax evasion and money laundering the firm facilitated with its creation of thousands of offshore shell companies. In other coverage: Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela, apparently unhappy with his country's name appearing in headlines about financial crimes all over the world, has promised to boost transparency and clean up the industry, the BBC reports. He says the country will bring in international experts to recommend changes. The Guardian looks at how the scandal has exposed China's "red nobility"—wealthy families connected to the Communist Party. Prominent figures named in the papers include the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping. Unsurprisingly, the scandal is not being reported in China, and censors have been trying to scrub every mention of it from social media. The CBC looks at how the wealth revealed in the leak is just a fraction of what an analyst calls "absolutely astonishing, mind-boggling amounts of money" tied up in offshore funds. Estimates run as high as $31 trillion, or 13% of global wealth, much of which is being kept in offshore funds to cheat governments out of tax revenue—or to hide the plunder of national resources. The New York Times looks at the history of the Mossack Fonseca firm and its role in Panama's economy. Co-founder Ramon Fonseca had been trying to expand his role in the country's government, claiming he wanted to improve the nation's human rights record. At the Atlantic, Brooke Harrington examines the legal issues involved and concludes that the real scandal isn't the law-breaking—it's that so much of what Mossack Fonseca did was perfectly legal.
– Mexican police saw something shocking when they aimed their X-ray scanners at a pair of tractor trailers at a checkpoint in Chiapas. The trucks were jammed full of 513 illegal migrants, many of them suffering from dehydration, the AP reports. Though air holes had been cut in the top of the trucks, the migrants said they felt suffocated as well. “We were suffering,” one said. “It was very hot, and we were clinging to the ropes.” The migrants hailed from throughout South America, Central America, and even Asia, and were bound for the US. Some said they were charged around $7,000 for the trip. Mexican authorities say it was their largest migrant smuggling bust in years. The type of scanner that spotted the migrants was, interestingly enough, similar to the devices so reviled by airline passengers, the New York Times notes.
– Coty Vincent's car was smashed last week after a hit-and-run accident, so she lugged her twin boys to a rental car company, CNN reports. But the Oklahoma mom didn't find only a vehicle at Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Tulsa: She also found a young man she says is "one of the most compassionate and caring people I've ever met," per her Facebook post. She tells Today that the car company sent 25-year-old employee John Goodlett to her home to pick up her and the 11-month-old babies and bring them to the office. She didn't have a double stroller, so she asked Goodlett to carry one of her sons in—and once inside, Vincent figured he'd hand the baby back to her and "let me fend for myself." Instead, he held onto his young charge and started working on her order on the computer. Vincent was so touched that she took a photo of him holding the baby and posted it online, where the image quickly went viral (it's got more than 25,000 shares on her Facebook page). There's a reason Goodlett may have felt a special kinship with the little ones: He has a twin sister. "Just like any sibling, one moment we got each other's back, one moment we're yelling at each other's throats," he tells Today. "But … it's a natural love." Vincent, meanwhile, has started a #BeAJohn hashtag, noting, "This world would be a better place if we all would just be a John." Enterprise is doing its part: After getting wind of Goodlett's interaction with Vincent, it bought the mom a double stroller and made a donation to the Boys & Girls Club where Goodlett spent time when he was a kid (he turned down a gift card for himself). "I'm still blown away," he tells Today. "It's kind of shocking to see the world took it as such a big motion. I hope it helps get the message out that this is the way people are supposed to treat each other every day." (This mom has her hands full.)
– Miguel Rincon was trying to settle up a speeding violation Saturday on a highway outside Bisbee, Ariz., when things went in a totally unexpected direction. A car pulled up behind him, and the driver told Rincon that her granddaughter was about to give birth, the AP reports. But Courtney Benavidez couldn't wait for an ambulance—that baby was coming right there in her car. Rincon alerted medics and rushed back to his patrol car to get gloves and blankets, per KSAZ. But by the time he returned to the pregnant mom, she was no longer pregnant. Little Carter Jett—so named for his super-speedy entrance—had arrived. "I just knew there was no stopping him coming," Benavidez tells Tucson News Now, explaining that her husband was out of town because the baby wasn't due for another two weeks. "He made his debut … on the side of the road." As for Rincon, he tells the AP he's had no official training in birthing babies, but "I do have three kids of my own, so that kind of makes me a little familiar with the process." He also let the speeding driver go. (At least she knew the baby was on its way—this Massachusetts woman had no clue.)
– Hang on to your wallets, folks, because "the age of bull---- investments is back," declares Kevin Roose at New York. The collapse of 2008 put a damper on things, but today the financial world is filled with crazy schemes and iffy start-ups designed to separate suckers from their money. Want to buy stock in a football player? Have at it. Heard of "Motif Investing"? Good luck with that. Care to join the Winklevoss twins by investing in Bitcoins? Fine. "Some of these bad ideas spring from the normal irrational exuberance that comes with an economic bounce-back, and the fact that many investors are more willing to jump into murky waters than they were in 2008," writes Roose. But he also blames the JOBS Act, put in place after the financial crisis to help companies raise money, for unleashing a wave of these dumb investments. "The upshot is that between the rise of the social web, the recovering economy, and the deregulatory impact of the JOBS Act, it's now easier than ever for you to lose money in fun-sounding ways." That's fine if you've got money to burn, but ordinary investors should pay heed. Click for the full column.
– The US gained two new citizens of note on Thursday: Viktor and Amalija Knavs, parents of first lady Melania Trump. The couple are natives of Slovenia, where they raised Melania, but have been in the US for more than a decade, says their immigration lawyer, per CNBC. Their path to citizenship "was no different than anybody else's," adds Michael Wildes. The couple reportedly live in the DC suburbs and are frequently seen out with their daughter and grandson, Barron. The couple's exact path to citizenship isn't clear, but one likely possibility is that their daughter's citizenship helped them get green cards first, reports CNBC. As CNN notes, critics have pointed out that President Trump wants to end that type of family-based migration.
– Goop is getting called out again. Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle site should be investigated by California regulators, according to the watchdog group Truth in Advertising. TINA announced on its website this week that it has compiled more than 50 instances of Goop claiming, directly or indirectly, that certain products "treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms of, or reduce the risk of developing a number of ailments," Fortune reports. Those products, of course, are either sold by or promoted by Goop, but Goop doesn't have the scientific evidence legally required to make such claims about the products, per TINA. The watchdog group has submitted a complaint letter to two of the California Food, Drug, and Medical Device Task Force's district attorneys requesting enforcement. A Goop spokesperson reached out to BuzzFeed (which has helpfully compiled some of the products TINA takes issue with, including a crystal said to treat infertility, hair treatments for depression, and a vaginal egg to prevent uterus slipping) to say that TINA's claims are "misleading ... unsubstantiated and unfounded." Goop was also recently called out by NASA over body stickers supposedly containing spacesuit material, and soon after, a San Francisco OB-GYN made headlines when she called out Goop for promoting the aforementioned vaginal eggs, among other things. In fact, Dr. Jen Gunter's posts about Goop spurred the website to issue a defense, with Team Goop writing: "As women, we chafe at the idea that we are not intelligent enough to read something and take what serves us, and leave what does not. We simply want information; we want autonomy over our health."
– CIA Director John Brennan offered up a spirited defense of his agency's torture program today, saying that "our nation and, in particular, this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country safe and secured" in the aftermath of 9/11, and that most agents "carried out their responsibilities faithfully," obtained "useful and valuable" information, and "did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation." He acknowledged that techniques were used that "had not been authorized, were abhorrent, and rightly should be repudiated by all," notes Politico, and that "we fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes." Speaking at a rare press conference, Brennan took questions, including one about whether more information would be forthcoming, notes CNN. "I think there's been more than enough transparency that's happened over the last couple days. I think it's over the top," responded the nation's top spy. Brennan bashed the "flawed" report for the "unusual" choice of not talking to CIA agents, but said that ultimately many "conclusions are sound and consistent with our own prior findings." The AP notes that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office began a lively and real-time Twitter fact-check defending the report's accuracy, using #ReadTheReport. Read one: "Brennan: 'unknowable' if we could have gotten the intel other ways. Study shows it IS knowable: CIA had info before torture. #ReadTheReport"
– Parker Spitzer is no more. After weeks of rumors, CNN announced today that Kathleen Parker is leaving the 8pm show she co-hosted with Eliot Spitzer, reports the Wrap. The former governor will remain, and show will be renamed The Arena starting Monday. Joining Spitzer will be E.D. Hill and Will Cain, notes the New York Times' Media Decoder blog. The show had been plagued by lackluster ratings and reports of friction between the hosts since its inception last fall. The CNN statement from Parker, a Pulitzer-winning columnist with the Washington Post: "I have decided to return to a schedule that will allow me to focus more on my syndicated newspaper column and other writings."
– Fox News is basking in this year's frigid winter because it apparently disproves global warming. "Yeah, that global warning thing is really kicking into high gear, isn't it?" sniggered Foxman Steve Doocy recently as he reported record lows across the nation. Dufus! "The ability to distinguish trends from complex random events is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom," snorts the Guardian, adding that a brief weather pattern has nothing to do with a climate trend. "The cold snap doesn't disprove global warming at all —it's just a blip in the long-term heating trend," a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research tells AP. With global warming, he added, "we'll still have record cold temperatures. We'll just have fewer of them." In fact, 2009 ranks as one of the ten warmest years since 1880. So enjoy the cold while you can.
– If you've ever wanted to know the effect that liberation has on a person, Chelsea Manning is glad to show you. ABC News reports that the transgender soldier released from prison earlier this year posted a photo Thursday to her social media accounts that shows her smiling at the beach in a red one-piece swimsuit, with the caption, "Guess this is what freedom looks like." The picture was taken by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, who documented Manning for an article appearing in the September issue of Vogue. In that interview, Manning talks about how she's adjusting to being out of jail, her regrets that she didn't come out as transgender earlier in her life, and her future plans, which may or may not include running for political office. "My goal is to use these next six months to figure out where I want to go," she notes. Online reaction to the Vogue coverage has been mixed, CBS News notes, with some offering support and others blasting the magazine for highlighting both a transgender woman and someone who many believe should still be behind bars. "This ugly whatever should be in prison, forever," one non-fan tweeted, to which Manning replied, "And here I am," accompanied by her trademark slew of positive emojis. The conservative National Review also weighed in, with a column by David French that asks: "If Bradley Manning had stayed Bradley Manning, would he be basking in celebrity, enjoying fawning photo shoots?" The Guardian notes that Manning's appearance in Vogue isn't the magazine's first transgender presence: Models Hari Nef and Andreja Pejic have both appeared in its pages, and model Valentina Sampaio has graced the cover of the publication's French version.
– The come-from-behind Broadway hit Once won a Tony Award—but it didn't just do it once. The sweet reverie based on the 2006 movie about the unlikely love affair between a Czech flower seller and Dublin street musician took home eight Tonys, including wins for Best New Musical, Best Musical Performance for actor Steve Kazee, and one for Enda Walsh, for Best Book of a Musical. Both the film and musical featured the Oscar-winning song, "Falling Slowly." Audra McDonald grabbed top honors for an actress in a musical for Porgy and Bess, which won Best Musical Revival. Best Dramatic Play was Clybourne Park, and Best Dramatic Performances went to James Corden for One Man, Two Guvnors, and Nina Arianda for Venus in Fur. The awards presentation, in Manhattan's Beacon Theater, was hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, and featured more performances than ever, reports the Los Angeles Times. Check here for a complete list of nominees and winners.
– Bronx Zoo officials say they won't euthanize a tiger that mauled an apparently suicidal visitor yesterday. The 25-year-old victim survived, though the Daily News says he might lose one of his legs. He horrified fellow riders on the zoo's monorail when he jumped off the ride and into the tigers' den. There, a 400-pound male Siberian tiger mauled him until zookeepers moved the animal away with a fire extinguisher, reports AP. The man then rolled under an electrified wire to safety. "The tiger did nothing wrong," said the zoo's director. "When someone is determined to do something harmful to themselves it's very hard to stop that." The New York Post and others have identified the victim as David Villalobos and note that his Facebook page shows that he's an animal lover. In fact, he posted a photo of a mother tiger licking its baby this week. Villalobos was in stable condition this morning.
– Filmmaker and writer Nora Ephron has died at age 71, reports TMZ. Ephron, who wrote the screenplays for Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, had "emerged over the past four decades as one of America's warmest and most acute chroniclers of contemporary culture," says the Washington Post in a photo tribute. But she was also, as People notes, "one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood." Other big titles include Silkwood, You've Got Mail, and Julie and Julia, not to mention her novel Heartburn and her best-selling 2006 collection of essays I Feel Bad About My Neck. Ephron died of complications from a blood disorder called myelodysplasia, which was diagnosed six years ago, reports the Post. (Its full obituary is here.) Salon: "Her cultural influence is so elemental ... she's like hydrogen." The site rounds up its interviews with her here. New York Times: "She was a journalist, a blogger, an essayist, a novelist, a playwright, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a movie director—a rarity in a film industry whose directorial ranks were and continue to be dominated by men." What's more, she was successful in all those things. Huffington Post: She "belonged to America's top tier of filmmakers, but her talents extended far beyond Hollywood."
– Russell Brand has been talking about Katy Perry quite a bit this week, the Huffington Post observes: On Tuesday, Brand took his first shot at Perry since they split. While filming his new show, Brand X, the comedian started bantering with an audience member also named Katy. Eventually he said, "Enough of you, I’ve had enough arse-ache from people called Katy in the last year," according to the Sun. Then, Tuesday night, he sat down for an interview with Piers Morgan and went a different way. "Of course I still feel great feelings of compassion and warmth for Katy," he said, "but like, I'm very happy with my life." Finally, yesterday, he was interviewed by Howard Stern—and even Stern couldn't get him to say anything mean. "When we got married, I just thought, 'I’ve got to marry her, I just love her so much.' And then we got married and I thought, 'OK, this isn’t really working out,'" he said. He later refused to dish any more details on why they split, MTV reports: "I don't want anything to hurt her," he told Stern. "She's younger than me, she's a young woman and she's beautiful and she's sensitive and I care about her deeply ... I don't want to be too glib. She'll read it and she'll be sad and I don't want that." Click for more, including Brand confessing to having a new girlfriend.
– "Dear Gerald A: Congratulations on being identified as one of the elite college football fans in the nation. You have worked diligently to separate yourself by exhibiting unrivaled tenacity, character, and loyalty." Not a bad way to start your appeal to a season-ticket holder if you're trying to get him to renew—but perhaps Penn State should've checked its mailing list before sending this one out. The letter was sent to the Pennsylvania home of Jerry Sandusky, the college's former assistant football coach and convicted sex offender, KDKA reports. The letter to Sandusky—who of course isn't at his home because he's in prison for about 60 more years—is signed by head football coach James Franklin. KDKA says it obtained photos of the letter from Joe Ziegler, who runs FramingPaterno.com and says he received the missive from "someone inside the Sandusky household" other than Sandusky's wife. Penn State released a statement about the letter, explaining that a mass mailing went out to about 30,000 people. "Clearly, a mistake was made and our database needs further updating and cross-referencing," says the statement. (NCAA sanctions against Penn State were only recently removed.)
– Breast implants have been linked to an extremely rare but treatable cancer, the New York Times reports. It's called anaplastic large-cell lymphoma, and in these cases, it usually forms in the scar tissue around the implant. The link was seen in saline and silicone implants, and in both reconstructive implants for breast cancer sufferers and in cosmetic surgeries. The good news: Only about 60 cases have been reported worldwide—out of 5 million to 10 million women with implants. Given the rarity of the condition, the FDA said implants are still safe, though women considering them should factor it into their decision. One manufacturer of implants said "a woman is more likely to be struck by lightning than get this condition.” Most women diagnosed reported symptoms—including lumps, fluid buildup, pain, and swelling—long after they had healed from surgery. (Click for other health risks associated with implants.)
– It's been nearly a quarter-century since Nevest Coleman helped powerwash and pull back the tarp at Comiskey Park, the Chicago White Sox stadium now known as Guaranteed Rate Field. But the 49-year-old is back on the job, after 23 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. The Chicago Tribune reports Coleman, whose conviction for a 1994 rape and murder was overturned in November after DNA evidence cleared him, would often watch his former groundskeeping colleagues taking care of the rain-delay tarp on TV in prison, and once released, he talked fondly about his old role at the stadium. "I'd wake up in the morning proud to go to work," he tells the Tribune. "I loved it." When the White Sox got wind of his desire to return, they called him in for an interview, and to Coleman's delight he got the gig, which started Monday, per CBS News. The head groundskeeper greeted him with: "I saved your spot for you. I knew you'd be back," per the Tribune. As for the White Sox, they said in a statement, "We're grateful that after more than two decades, justice has been carried out for Nevest. It has been a long time, but we're thrilled that we have the opportunity to welcome him back to the White Sox family." Coleman, who kept his mind occupied in prison by reading the Game of Thrones and Harry Potter books, among others, is now looking forward to spending time with his kids (whom he left on the outside when they were babies) and grandkids and getting used to all the changes at the park. And he's done looking back at the past, per CBS Chicago. "If I'm happy, everybody else will be happy," he says. "I don't have time to be miserable, you know?"
– The chaos in Dallas is over after the city's police headquarters was attacked by a gunman with bombs. A police sniper has indeed killed the suspect inside his van, reports AP. It took a while to confirm because police were cautious about approaching the vehicle. It also appears that he acted alone, contrary to earlier police reports that up to four people were involved. Police Chief David Brown said the man identified himself as James Boulware and blamed police for "accusing him of being a terrorist" and causing him to lose custody of his son. He allegedly opened fire on police headquarters with automatic weapons about 12:30am and left two explosive devices near the building. One of them, described as a pipe bomb, detonated as an explosives robot moved it, but nobody was injured. Authorities say the gunman led police on a chase to a fast-food parking lot, where he holed up in his van and claimed it was rigged with bombs. The Dallas Morning News reports police arrested a James Boulware, now 50, in 2013 after he threatened to attack his family, churches, and schools, and had obtained firearms, ammunition, and body armor. "He blames the police for taking his son away from him," his father, Jim Boulware, tells the newspaper. "I tried to tell him that the police are just doing their job."
– Farmers in Iowa who planted corn seeds genetically modified to fend off the dreaded corn rootworm are seeing a troubling sign: The rootworm is apparently developing a resistance to the Monsanto seeds and gobbling up cornfields again, say Iowa University researchers. It's still just a small percentage of rootworms that have adapted, reports AFP, but the development is renewing fears that biotech crops will create superbugs. "These are isolated cases, and it isn't clear how widespread the problem will become," an Iowa State entomologist tells the Wall Street Journal. "But it is an early warning that management practices need to change." At Mother Jones, blogger Tom Philpott thinks Monsanto has put farmers on a "treadmill" of sorts: "the need to apply ever more, and ever more novel, high-tech responses to keep up with ever-evolving pests."
– Yes, President Trump took the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to drag Arnold Schwarzenegger and his weak Celebrity Apprentice ratings. But he also brought up something arguably just as important: the Johnson Amendment, which he vowed to "totally destroy." Here's what you need to know: The Washington Post has a great explanation of the Johnson Amendment, which basically bans churches and charities from participating in political campaigns unless they give up tax-exempt status. Getting rid of the Johnson Amendment is part of Trump's emerging "agenda of religious nationalism," in which the president is linking being American with being Christian, the Atlantic reports. MSNBC weighs in on why promising to "totally destroy" the Johnson Amendment is important. One such reason is that it would allow political parties and candidates to "funnel campaign donations through tax-exempt churches" with no oversight. While the Johnson Amendment is wildly unpopular with the religious right, that's not necessarily the case elsewhere, the Independent reports. A survey last year found 79% of people didn't think pastors should endorse candidates. And some religious leaders believe churches would be hurt by entering the partisan world of politics. In addition to the Johnson Amendment and Celebrity Apprentice, Trump also discussed foreign relations, telling those in attendance, "just don't worry about" the "tough phone calls I'm having," apparently in reference to threatening to invade Mexico and picking a fight with Australia, MarketWatch reports. Outside the National Prayer Breakfast, around 150 members of local churches were protesting Trump's Muslim travel ban. One Christian author at the protest tells Yahoo News it's important for the church to "stand up and be on the right side of history."
– Note to self: Don't anger Poland's deputy defense minister, or he'll remind you about your country's uncouth eating habits from the 1500s. That was Bartosz Kownacki's reaction after France apparently rescinded Poland's invite to the Euronaval maritime defense fair next week, the Guardian reports. And that disinvite was because Poland apparently backed out of buying 50 Airbus helicopters and decided to buy US Black Hawks instead; France was said to be backing the original Airbus deal, per the BBC. But while the dialogue started to take a turn for the worse regarding the choppers and the negotiations, it's Kownacki's comments on a particular dining utensil that's now causing a commotion. "These are the people we taught to eat with a fork a couple of centuries ago, which may explain their behavior today," Kownacki sniffed to the TVN24 network, via RT.com. "This is obvious history, and I invite you to read up on that." He was referring to the story that King Henry III of France eagerly introduced the fork to the French population after he first came across it in Poland while he was king there. Historians aren't sure if this is how it actually happened, though, noting Henry also may have stumbled across the fork in Venice. Either way, some aren't happy with Kownacki's dining diss, with a member of Poland's Law and Justice Party calling his remarks "unfortunate," while a Polish weekly notes, "Minister Kownacki is perhaps the first politician to commit diplomatic suicide by fork." (A first-grader was suspended for the eating utensil he brought to school.)
– Silvio Berlusconi’s office reacted angrily to Standard & Poor’s downgrade of Italy’s credit rating today, insisting that it had a solid majority in parliament and was taking the necessary steps to solve Italy’s debt crisis, the New York Times reports. “The evaluations of Standard & Poor's seem dictated more by behind the scenes reports in newspapers than reality,” the government said in a statement, “and seems influenced by political considerations.” The move actually didn’t much rattle stocks; the Euro Stoxx 50 index was actually up almost 2% by midday. But the yield on Italian bonds shot up to 5.59%, increasing the beleaguered country’s borrowing costs. “Just when everyone was waiting for Moody’s to downgrade Italy, S&P gets in first with what is a much more damaging downgrade,” one securities analyst tells MarketWatch. Moody’s has extended its review period for the country.
– If the idea of watching a game of chess online sounds a little dull, then perhaps you're not familiar with the Chessbrahs on the gaming website Twitch. A stream can last up to four hours, during which "you might see chairs thrown amid a torrent of f-bombs, freestyle rapping mid-game, and a never-ending barrage of trash talk," writes Kevin Lincoln at Topic. "This is the new, online era of chess—set to the soundtrack of dance music." But the Chessbrahs, the brainchild of 25-year-old Canadian grandmaster Eric Hansen, occupies just one end of the spectrum of online chess, which turns out to be more popular than you might expect. A more conservative option would be the YouTube videos of 31-year-old International Master John Bartholomew. Just ask one of his 50,000 subscribers. Somewhere in the middle is perhaps the biggest player of all, Chess.com, led by IM Danny Rensch, 32, who also is a major chess presence on Twitch. All are finding their niche, connecting with fans through live streams, chats, instructional videos and more. Lincoln provides an overview of the options and the growing success. "A game doesn’t survive for hundreds of years if it doesn’t change to fit the spirit of the times, and with streaming, chess has entered a new age," he writes. The story also takes note of one drawback unfortunately common in gaming—sexism. For example, rising player Alexandra Botez, 22, stopped streaming temporarily because of the steady stream of vulgar comments. A moderator has since helped. Click to read the full story.
– A celebrity chef has spent tens of thousands of dollars to quietly change the name of his Manhattan restaurant after he discovered its meaning had racial undertones. Per the New York Times, Tom Colicchio, the lead judge on Bravo's Top Chef, originally called his eatery in the New York City's financial district Fowler & Wells, named after publishers Samuel Wells and brothers Lorenzo and Orson Fowler, whose building rested on the same site as Colicchio's restaurant in the mid-1800s. However, a little digging by Colicchio's team after they'd already named the restaurant revealed "facts about [the Fowlers' and Wells'] beliefs that go against everything we stand for," per a statement cited by Page Six. More specifically, the Fowlers and Wells were advocates of phrenology, the study of the shape and size of the skull, which many in the 19th century believed to be an indicator of one's mental abilities—and which was often used to "prove" African-Americans were mentally inferior and to justify slavery (at least one of the Fowler brothers had eyebrow-raising thoughts on this). Colicchio, who's an outspoken liberal on social media, said that although his team incorporated the concept of phrenology into the restaurant's theme (including on the bar's menu), they didn't initially realize quite how bad the practice's roots could be. Once they made this discovery, they went about coming up with a new name and reworking logos, signage, business cards, and menus to match. The restaurant's new name: Temple Court, named after the building it's housed in.
– Former Chinese political star Bo Xilai has been expelled from the country's Communist Party, Voice of America reports, following his wife's suspended death sentence in the murder of a British businessman. Once the party leader in the city of Chongqing and a likely candidate for high national office, Bo now stands accused of corruption, abusing power, taking bribes, and "improper relations with women," the BBC reports. "Bo Xilai's actions created grave repercussions, and massively damaged the reputation of the party and the state," said Xinhua, the state news agency, which adds that he will "face justice." The party also announced that the National Congress will convene Nov. 8, a meeting that will put into a place a new generation of leaders. The Wall Street Journal's take on the twin announcements: "By unveiling the accusations against Mr. Bo at the same time as it announced the beginning of the leadership change, party officials appear to be trying to send a signal to the country regarding corruption, the abuse of power and the decadent lifestyles of many within the party elite," writes Jeremy Page. It seems that the party finally recognizes the public's wrath.
– The US and Israel are in it together when it comes to Iran—whether the US likes it or not. Iran said today that it saw no difference between Israel and the United States, and that an attack by either would result in retaliation against both, Reuters reports. " We must not recognize Israel as separate from America ," a Revolutionary Guard commander told Iran's state-run news service. "If the Americans commit the smallest folly they will not leave the region safely." The comments come in the wake of an Israeli media report that the White House was negotiating with Iran to ensure it wasn't sucked into an Iran-Israel war. The White House denied the report, though US military officials have openly talked about their reluctance to back an Israeli attack. "I don't want to be complicit if they choose to do it," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey recently told the Guardian.
– Add Sandra Bullock's name to the list of celebs helping out in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. And she's doing so in a big way: Bullock has pledged $1 million via the American Red Cross to help victims. "I'm just grateful I can do it," Bullock, who owns a home in Austin, tells E! News. Other big names stepping up include the Kardashians, who have donated $500,000, and Kevin Hart, who launched a challenge to get fellow celebs to donate $25,000. Meanwhile, Coldplay, which had to cancel a gig in Houston, wrote a song in tribute to the city, which you can hear them perform via CNN.
– ABC is apparently going big with Kelly Ripa's new morning co-host: CNN reports that Live With Kelly is about to become Live With Kelly and Ryan—yes, Ryan Seacrest. Ripa will announce the replacement for her most recent co-host, Michael Strahan, during Monday's show. The former American Idol host lives in Los Angeles, but he also has a home in New York and is expected to move there for the show. Live airs at 9am in many markets, which means it will go head to head with former Fox host Megyn Kelly's NBC show when that launches in the fall. Seacrest, 42, is expected to keep his national radio show for iHeartMedia. (Here are 5 facts you may not know about Seacrest.)
– News Corp is in hot pursuit of British Sky Broadcasting, offering it $11.5 billion for the 61% of the British pay channel it doesn’t already own, according to the company’s own Wall Street Journal. That 700 pence-per-share offer was an improvement on the 675 pence-per-share reported last night, according to the Guardian, but Sky rejected it, saying it wouldn’t accept less than 800 pence-per-share. The two sides have, however, agreed to work together to acquire regulatory approval, and reach a mutually-agreeable price. Rupert Murdoch's son, James, is Sky's non-executive chairman, but won't participate in the talks. “I wouldn’t think News Corp. would enter into this if they didn’t think they were going to get BSkyB,” one analyst told Bloomberg. Sky’s price shot up 19% to 715 pence on the news, its biggest jump in 10 years.
– As Donald Trump pledged his loyalty to his own party inside Trump Tower yesterday, things got a little ugly outside. Police were called after Trump security guards scuffled with anti-Trump protesters on the sidewalk outside the New York City tower, NY1 reports. The guards took signs away from the protesters and one man was hit in the face after he grabbed the guard who had taken his "Trump: Make America Racist Again" banner, reports the New York Times. The Trump campaign says the guard was "jumped" and that it's considering pressing charges, reports the Times, which notes that the Trump staffer involved looks a lot like the one who removed Univision's Jorge Ramos from a Trump event last week. The protesters—some of whom dressed in KKK outfits to mock Trump's immigration policies—are also threatening to press charges, CNN reports. Trump, meanwhile, had what the Washington Post says would have been a damaging moment for an ordinary campaign when he appeared on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt's show last night. After Trump failed to recognize the names of the leaders of Hezbollah, ISIS, al-Qaeda, or the Nusra Front, he accused Hewitt of asking "gotcha questions" and said the names didn't matter because they'll "all be changed" by the time he's in the White House. Hewitt said he might bring the names up again when he asks questions at the next Republican debate, the Post notes. (Trump does not approve of Jeb Bush speaking Spanish.)
– Love bacon? Love pizza? If so, Little Caesars is hoping you'll drool over its newest experimental pizza featuring a bacon-wrapped crust. Beginning Feb. 23, customers who fork over $12 can chow down on a deep dish pizza, topped with pepperoni and bacon, with 3.5 feet of bacon wrapped around the crust, USA Today reports. Officially dubbed the Bacon Wrapped Crust Deep! Deep! Dish Pizza, it replaces Little Caesars' soft pretzel crust variety. "Every time you take a bite out of the crust, you'll get bacon," CEO David Scrivano promises. At 450 calories per slice, "This is a more indulgent offering for a demographic that craves premium quality," he says. Scrivano notes the idea for a bacon-wrapped crust came from an employee in Little Caesars' research and development wing who ordered a bacon-wrapped filet at a restaurant. The pizza adaptation will be available nationwide until late April, CBS Detroit reports. A warning: it may not "travel" well, Scrivano says. In stranger pizza news, Pizza Hut has awarded pizza-themed nail polish to 30 people who wrote the chain cheesy love poems as part of a Valentine's Day competition, Time reports. They'll take home a set of eight polishes with names like "Say Cheese," "Voracious Veggie" and "Dough You Need Me." (Find out why you should always buy the bigger pizza.)
– Police last night searched Germanwings co-pilot's Andreas Lubitz's apartment in Duesseldorf, Germany, and the home he shared with his parents in the small town of Montabaur, removing boxes of possessions and what one investigator called a potentially "significant clue" that will be taken for testing, reports the BBC. German prosecutors later announced that they found medical documents in the 27-year-old's home that indicate "an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment," reports the AP. Prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck further said that torn-up sick notes for the day of the crash "support the current preliminary assessment that the deceased hid his illness from his employer and colleagues." It's not clear if the notes and the "clue" are the same. Herrenbrueck says no suicide note or evidence of any political or religious motivation for Lubitz's actions were uncovered. An unconfirmed report in Germany's Bild newspaper stated that Lubitz was diagnosed with a "severe depressive episode" in 2009 and had to repeat flying classes because of depression. The German paper says Lubitz was having relationship problems with his girlfriend, and police are looking into whether he was having a "personal life crisis," the Guardian reports. So far, airline chiefs have said only that there "was a lengthy interruption in his training" six years ago and he passed all subsequent checks with "flying colors," reports Reuters.
– Nature giveth, and nature taketh away. The same vitamin credited with helping the brain and nervous system—B12—is now accused of contributing to acne, reports the Independent. A new UCLA study suggests a link, though researchers emphasized that more research needs to be done to confirm what's actually happening. Still, the findings "could raise questions about whether people with acne should take vitamin B12 supplements," observes Live Science. It seems that the vitamin changes the way skin bacteria behaves, which promotes inflammation, which in turn leads to pimples. Some people are more vulnerable than others. "This study does present some compelling evidence suggesting that supplementation with B12 can cause or exacerbate acne in a subset of individuals," says a co-author of the study. She emphasizes that the research shows correlation, not causation. While previous studies have linked the vitamin to acne flareups, this is the first to provide details on how it interacts on a molecular level with bacteria, especially Propionibacterium acnes. One upside of the research is that it might eventually lead to better acne medication, reports the Verge. (Kids may be getting too many vitamins in cereal.)
– If your idea of a perfect Halloween involves spending the night with 6 million dead people, Airbnb has just the thing. It's offering up a free night in the Catacombs of Paris on Oct. 31 to the person who submits the best essay here. The winner will get a private concert in what Time calls "basically the world's biggest grave," a fancy dinner, and the apparent honor of becoming "the only living person to wake up" in the catacombs, according to the contest. One guest is allowed. Airbnb reportedly paid about $400,000 for the privilege of privatizing the site for the night, reports AFP. “Before bedtime, a storyteller will have you spellbound with fascinating tales from the catacombs, guaranteed to produce nightmares," says the contest. The Catacombs of Paris, a labyrinth of tunnels set up to relieve cemetery overcrowding in the 18th century, are now a public museum, notes UPI—and a major tourist attraction. The Airbnb rules ask guests to "respect the Catacombs as you would your own grave." The contest deadline is Oct. 20. (In the US, a woman's Halloween decorations outside her home were apparently a little too realistic.)
– Less than a fortnight remains before Election Day, and Donald Trump is attempting an 11th-hour outreach to an entirely new demographic: Indian-Americans, reports the Washington Post. And so he's released a TV ad in which he attempts to speak Hindi (with a New York accent, the Post notes), swapping his name into a slogan used by Indian PM Narendra Modi during his own 2014 campaign. The 30-second ad kicks off with a Diwali greeting, followed by an abruptly edited score and clips from a Trump speech he gave to Indian-Americans in New Jersey on Oct. 15. In that speech, he promises the US will be a "true friend" to the "Indian and Hindu community" and help it defeat "radical Islamic terrorism." "We love the Hindus! We love India!" he proclaims. Then, his new catchphrase as he speaks directly to viewers: "Ab ki baar, Trump sarkaar" ("this time, a Trump government"). As for reaction from Delhi residents, the BBC found that Trump "still has some work to do" in wooing Indians. One commenter on the street said he was "disgusted" by Trump's appeal to only the Hindu community when "Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians also live in this country" and noted he hoped "Americans will be smart enough to not vote this guy into power." A female respondent said, "He is not a friend of India," adding his speech seems "rehearsed" and that he appears to be a "man of contradictions." "He first berates immigrants and then tries to woo Indian-Americans," she said. (A Hindu nationalist party had a special surprise for Donald on his 70th birthday.)
– Jon Stewart shed some real blood during a mock press conference last night on the Daily Show. The host, while offering his "resignation" for going too easy on his old friend Anthony Weiner, accidentally slashed his hand on some broken glass while making a margarita, reports Mediaite. He wasn't seriously hurt, and taping continued after a pause. During the mock presser, set up to resemble Weiner's the previous day, Stewart explained that the decision to run with material about John Edwards and Sarah Palin (rather than skewer Weiner) had been all his. John Oliver pretended to take over as host, promising to cover Weiner cruelly, and telling Stewart that he should photograph himself like the congressman did "so you can remember what balls look like." (Click to read Weiner's "crazy dirty" Facebook chats with one of the women.)
– John Stumpf, the Wells Fargo CEO slammed for his "gutless leadership" by Sen. Elizabeth Warren last week, is going to have to tighten his belt a little this year: He will forfeit his bonus, part of his salary, and $41 million in stock awards over the fake-account scandal that saw the sacking of 5,300 employees, CNN reports. In addition, Stumpf will work for free while the company conducts an investigation. The bank's board of directors also says Carrie Tolstedt, who headed the retail division where workers created the phony accounts, will forfeit at least $19 million of the $125 million she was going to leave the company with at the end of the year, and will not receive severance or a bonus for 2016. The announcement comes as Wells Fargo is set to go before the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday. The board says it is launching an independent investigation into how millions of accounts were created without the permission of customers, the BBC reports. Wells Fargo was fined $185 million over the scandal and the Washington Post describes the board's cash clawback as "by far the most aggressive and public effort" since the 2008 financial crisis to punish bank chiefs for misconduct—although Stumpf still has the estimated $161 million he received in bonuses over the five years the scam took place, and Tolstedt received $60 million over the same period. (Wells Fargo whistleblowers say they were fired for speaking out.)
– Fred Phelps and members of his Westboro Baptist Church were ignored when they filmed themselves burning a Koran in 2008, but Terry Jones managed to grab headlines worldwide. The Florida pastor, the New York Times finds, managed to make himself a major news story by exploiting the "Ground Zero mosque" debate, the summer lull in news, and by giving more than 150 interviews in July and August as the story snowballed. News outlets including Fox, the AP, and CNN now stress that if Jones goes ahead with the burning tomorrow—which he says has been suspended—they won't be showing any images of burning Korans. If he doesn't proceed tomorrow, but threatens to revive International Burn a Koran Day in the future, Richard Adams writes at the Guardian, "he'll be handled with much more caution by the US media, which has made itself look ridiculous in being outfoxed by the crackpot pastor of a miniscule church in the swamp."
– Merriam-Webster sent out a tweet this week subtly asking for help from the public in fixing the situation surrounding the lead contender for its "word of the year" honors. "'Fascism' is still our #1 lookup," it informed Twitter. "There's still time to look something else up." Without spelling out why that word has attracted so much attention in 2016, Mashable reports that several words "that will forever echo somewhere in the pits of our brains" have entered the vernacular this year at a brisk pace, including, per the online dictionary, "bigot, resurgence, diatribe, socialism, misogyny, [and] xenophobe." However, "fascism" has vaulted to the fourth-most-searched word in the site's history, per the Washington Post. "Guys, 2016 is so bad it made the dictionary sad," one Twitter user noted. But MW apparently doesn't want to leave 2016 with fond thoughts of "a political philosophy, movement, or regime … that exalts nation and often race above the individual and stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition." And the internet came to the rescue, with people flooding the lookup tool with searches for "puppies," "squirrels" (that was a dog's request), and, finally, a word that could soon overtake "fascism" if people keep up the campaign. "'Flumadiddle' is now in our top lookups. Not as many as 'fascism.' But more than that phrase from Gilmore Girls," the MW account tweeted, referencing the "in omnia paratus" ("ready for all things") term used on the show. (Merriam-Webster made a controversial decision about hot dogs earlier this year.)
– At least seven people were killed in Acapulco yesterday in what police believe was a clash between rival drug gangs. Guns and grenades were used to attack a house in a residential part of the resort city, AP reports. Further north, suspected cartel hitmen killed the mayor of a small town outside Monterrey as he drove to his ranch. Mayor Prisciliano Rodriguez is the fourth public official assassinated in Mexico in just over a month, Reuters reports. As cartel violence continues to plague Mexico with no end in sight, mob justice is on the rise, reports NPR. In a small town in Chihuahua state where kidnapping and extortion have soared over the last two years, a mob pursued a gang that had kidnapped a teen girl, killing one and beating two others. Police took the beaten pair to a military base, where a crowd of around 1,000 broke through the gates, seized the men, and locked them in a hot vehicle where they eventually died. The town's mayor fired all 14 of the town's police officers the next day.
– The Chromodoris reticulata has a peculiar way of mating: After the deed is done, the sea slug sheds its penis ... and then grows a new one within 24 hours and does the whole thing again. "I haven't seen anything like this before," says one expert. A team of Japanese researchers discovered the surprising behavior in the species, which lives in the Pacific Ocean, the BBC reports. Chromodoris reticulata is the first creature known to have what they're calling a "disposable penis." Other creatures discard their sex organ post-copulation, but they don't re-grow it. The researchers called the slug's behavior "extremely peculiar." A large part of the slug's penis is actually an internal one that's coiled inside its body; this is what regenerates the detached portion after sex. The studied slugs were seen to mate three times in a row, 24 hours apart each time; it's not clear if the penis could regenerate once again, perhaps months later. The evolutionary purpose? Scientists aren't quite sure, but they say the purpose of the first sex act may be to remove any sperm left by a previous partner. The disposable penis is far from the slugs' only sexual quirk: The penises are equipped with spines that could help with the removal of prior sperm, AFP reports. The creatures are also "simultaneous hermaphrodites," which means they have male and female sexual organs that can be used simultaneously.
– Amanda Knox's new book describes a traumatic, harrowing ordeal as she was imprisoned for four years for a murder she says she didn't commit—but in some cases, the memoir is at odds with earlier accounts she gave, such as letters she wrote and even her own diary, the BBC reports: Though her memoir reportedly describes sexual harassment at the hands of prison guards, she described the staff as "really nice" in the diary, which was published in Italy. "They check in to make sure I'm OK very often and are very gentle with me." As for the prison itself, she called it "pretty swell." In her memoir, she writes that she was "weak and terrified" and coerced into falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of Meredith Kercher's murder; she says a prison guard told her to write down the accusation quickly. But in a letter she sent lawyers after making the written declaration to police, she says nothing about being rushed, writing simply, "I tried writing what I could remember for the police, because I've always been better at thinking when I was writing. They gave me time to do this." Her memoir also describes a medical examination at the police station, during which she was stripped naked and told to spread her legs. She calls it "the most dehumanizing, degrading experience I had ever been through." But in the aforementioned letter to lawyers, she made it sound routine and simply said she was "checked out by medics." Click for the full report.
– A nun says Dzhokhar Tsarnaev expressed remorse, while prosecutors played video of him giving the finger to a security camera. But today, secondhand narratives and hand gestures may give way to words straight out of the Boston Marathon bomber's mouth during his sentencing, NBC News reports. Although defense lawyers are mum, the will-he-or-won't-he question has set off a debate over whether it's a smart idea for him to vocalize, say, his motives or apologies to victims' families, as the Los Angeles Times suggests. The lawyer who defended Timothy McVeigh, for one, thinks Tsarnaev shouldn't talk. "I would be very surprised if he speaks," he tells NBC. "Generally, I don't advise clients to make a statement unless they are articulate and it ... doesn't sound like it was written by lawyers." Adds another defense attorney, "I don't think there's anything to be gained by it at this point," he says. "Whatever would be said … would be viewed as too little, too late." But a law school prof tells CBS that Tsarnaev could take a long view: While an apology won't affect his sentence, it could give him leverage if he seeks to have his death sentence commuted by the president. Conversely, he could use his sentencing as a platform, like Zacarias Moussaoui, who issued taunts at his 2006 sentencing for conspiring on the 9/11 attacks: "God curse America. And God save Osama bin Laden. You will never get him." Who will likely be speaking today: bombing victims and their families, who will have the chance to give impact statements, the Times notes. (Tsarnaev didn't testify at his trial, but he did cry during one person's testimony.)
– Morgan Freeman says this could "undermine" everything he's done. On Friday, the 80-year-old actor issued a personal defense of his behavior with women, saying he's kidded around with female colleagues but never jeopardized work environments or offered jobs for sex, the LA Times reports. "I am devastated that 80 years of my life is at risk of being undermined, in the blink of an eye, by Thursday’s media reports," Freeman says in a statement. "All victims of assault and harassment deserve to be heard. And we need to listen to them. But it is not right to equate horrific incidents of sexual assault with misplaced compliments or humor." Freeman is likely referring to recent Entertainment Tonight footage of him sitting down with female interviewers. In one instance, he asks a correspondent if she was married and "fooled around with other guys." In another, with author/activist Janet Mock, he marvels at how she "got a dress halfway between your knee and your hips, and ... cross[ed] your legs." For Mock, this was "an exhibition of the casual nature at which men in positions of power believe that everything belongs to them, including women's bodies." But Freeman says he only wanted women to "feel appreciated and at ease around me. As a part of that, I would often try to joke with and compliment women, in what I thought was a lighthearted and humorous way." See his initial apology here.
– There's a saying in the health care world: dose matters. It certainly did in the case of 19-year-old Levy Thamba, a native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who was studying at Wyoming's Northwest College. While in Denver with friends on spring break in March of 2014, the teen jumped to his death from a Holiday Inn balcony after ingesting a whole lot of weed. In this week's Morbidity and Mortality report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention review his death, the first "linked to marijuana consumption without evidence of polysubstance use" since pot became legal in the state in 2012. (The lemon poppyseed cookie was purchased legally by a 23-year-old friend; Thamba, however, wasn't of age and therefore didn't consume the pot legally.) The police report stated he initially ate just the recommended single portion of the cookie; some 30-60 minutes later, still feeling no effects, Thamba—called "marijuana naive, with no known history of alcohol abuse, illicit drug use, or mental illness"—ate the whole cookie, constituting 6.5 servings. Roughly 2.5 hours later, Thamba exhibited "hostile behavior," according to his friends. He had no other drugs in his system at the time he jumped, and his death was ruled an accident. The legal blood limit for THC for drivers in the state is 5.0 ng/mL; his blood level was 49 ng/mL. LiveScience reports that regulations were put in place in February regarding the labeling of edible marijuana items; if they contain more than 10 mg of THC, each 10 mg serving must be clearly indicated. The cookie Thamba ate contained 65 mg. (Thamba's friends reportedly tried to calm him.)
– There's an app for pretty much everything—except cutting through bureaucracy. A woman who mistakenly left her iPad on a plane was able to track the whereabouts of the device, but couldn't convince authorities to follow up on it, reports the Syracuse Post-Standard, via the Consumerist. The woman was fairly certain she left the iPad on a plane after deboarding in New York City, and after leaving messages with American Airlines, she used the GPS function of MobileMe to find that the iPad was in a house on Long Island. She contacted airline and law-enforcement authorities with the exact location, but no action was taken. She suspects an airline employee pocketed the iPad because it then made several trips back and forth between JFK airport and California. She can't trace it anymore because she replaced the iPad and shut off wireless service to the old one. At one point, she used an app to make it beep every two minutes. “I just wanted to harass who ever took it,” she said. “I didn’t want him to enjoy it if he was using it.”
– Japan says it's exercising every diplomatic channel in the wake of ISIS' video threat to kill two Japanese hostages, emphasizing that the funds it's contributing to the international effort against the group are "not aimed at killing Muslims … and that [ISIS] shouldn't harm the two Japanese men," per Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday that the country wouldn't abandon plans to provide the money, which he said is intended to provide food and medicine for people affected by the crisis, the Wall Street Journal reports. Suga responded to questions about whether a $200 million ransom would be paid by saying that Japan wouldn't submit to terrorists. But Japan will "exert its utmost to secure the men's release," he said. Japan is also sending a counterterror team to Jordan as it investigates the video, CBS News reports. Hostage Haruna Yukawa sought to become a military contractor without any experience in the field, CBS notes, via Japan's Asahi Shimbun. When a friend warned him about working in Syria, he said he was "alone in the world, so even if I die, it doesn't matter." Fellow hostage Kenji Goto, a journalist, made it his life's work "to cover children in conflict-torn regions with a hope to convey to the world the harsh realities that those marginalized children are facing," a friend tells Asahi Shimbun. For more on their story, click here.
– Howard Arthur Klein lived 87 years without so much as a blot on his criminal record. In truth, the elderly Michigan man didn't have a record at all until a night in June when he was nabbed in a sting, accused of soliciting a prostitute who was actually an undercover cop. But it seems all will be forgotten as a Kent County prosecutor has decided to throw out his case. "He is 87 years old with absolutely no criminal record. In addition, I am told he struggles to some degree with dementia," he tells Michigan Live. "He wouldn't and shouldn't go to jail and 87 years without involvement in the criminal justice system has, in my opinion, earned him a pass." Two accused prostitutes, aged 32 and 45, and two other males arrested alongside Klein in the June sting in Grand Rapids were booked into the Kent County Jail, but Klein was allowed to go free because of his age, reports Fox 17. He was arraigned on July 8 and faced 93 days in jail if convicted. Klein, who MLive reports is "likely the oldest person ever charged with this crime," has denied any wrongdoing. He tells WOOD-TV he simply thought the woman he approached on a street was someone he knew from his church.
– Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore had the toughest of jobs Tuesday: to announce that the Trader Joe's employee killed during a shootout in Los Angeles on Saturday lost her life to a bullet fired by police, not the suspect. "I am truly sorry," Moore said about 27-year-old Melyda Corado's death. "As a father, as an individual, it is unimaginable, the pain of the Corado family, and everyone that knew her. And we share that pain today." He said the officers involved will forever wrestle with the choices they made, though he believes "my officers' actions were taken to defend themselves and in direct response to the deadly threat" and therefore were appropriate. An investigation into the officers' actions is ongoing. ABC News reports he also detailed a timeline of the crime, which was allegedly sparked by a feud between a man and his grandmother over his girlfriend staying at the grandmother's home. Moore said Gene Atkins, 28, shot his grandmother several times and ultimately led police on a chase that ended when his vehicle crashed into a pole outside the grocery store. Moore said Atkins fired at cops as he ran toward the entrance; Corado had come to the same entrance upon hearing the crash and was struck in her left arm in the process. The bullet entered her body. "Miss Corado ran back inside the store and collapsed behind the manager’s desk," Moore said, per the Los Angeles Times. CBS Los Angeles reports that, among other charges, Atkins faces one count of murder in connection with Corado's death.
– Perhaps aliens have taken a liking to the Great White North. The annual Canadian UFO Survey by Winnipeg-based Ufology Research shows "the second highest level of sightings that we've recorded since we started doing the survey back in the 1980s," with 1,267 across Canada in 2015, rep Chris Rutkowski tells the CBC. Only 2012 had more, with 1,981 sightings. The provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland each saw an increase in reports over 2014, but Quebec outpaced them all, according to data from 17 sources, including Transport Canada and YouTube. The province, which typically produces 5% to 15% of all UFO reports in Canada, generated 35% of reports in 2015, reports the Canadian Press. Montreal led Canadian cities with 97 reports, followed by 78 in Toronto, and 69 in Vancouver. That doesn't mean there were that many unexplained cases; about 88% of unidentifiable objects turn out to be stars, planets, airplanes, or helicopters, Rutkowski says. Ufology Research investigates the remaining cases—by visiting a site and talking to witnesses—to determine if a case is "high quality." About 1% to 3% of cases fall into this group, Rutkowski says. One of the perhaps not-so-high-quality ones: A resident in Sainte-Brigitte de Laval, Quebec, recalled seeing three 4-feet-tall "humanoids" with huge heads and "big, black slanted eyes," and hearing a high-pitched hum. "We're not saying the little grey guys are here," Rutkowski tells CTV News. "This is simply what people are reporting." (Aliens might also have a thing for Florida.)
– Critics aren’t exactly howling over the new remake of The Wolfman starring Benicio del Toro, giving it mostly mediocre or failing marks. Here’s what they’re saying: “The movie is pungent with atmosphere, laying down a thick fog of creepy Victorian murk,” writes Kyle Smith of the New York Post, but the story is toothless, centering on a mystery “so simple that even Marmaduke could have sniffed it out.” “The movie is scary only as regards all its wasted potential,” laments John Anderson of the Wall Street Journal. There are good elements here, but they’re “reduced to a gruesome fondue, accessorized by actorly ham and studio cheese.” The filmmakers obviously loved the original Wolfman, but “nostalgia isn't always the best barometer,” writes James Berardinelli of ReelViews. The makeup is “inexcusably campy,” and scenes from the original are “recreated in a fashion that seems more Monty Python than unsettling.” But Ty Burr of the Boston Globe had fun. “The movie is by no means good,” he writes, “but it’s surprisingly enjoyable: a misty, moody Saturday-matinee monster-chiller-horror special.”
– President Trump's decision to pull the US from the Iran nuclear deal drew a fiery response from conservative Iranian lawmakers Wednesday—during the opening session of the country's parliament, they burned a paper American flag and the text of the 2015 deal, chanting "Death to America." But they were scenes of celebration, not anger, the Guardian reports. Hardliners in Iran view the US pullout as an opportunity to gain power over moderates who pushed for the 2015 deal, analysts say. The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards issued a statement Wednesday congratulating the country over the US move, saying it "was proved once more that US isn't trustworthy in regards its commitments." Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, challenged Trump over the withdrawal Wednesday, saying "You cannot do a damn thing," CNBC reports. But while hardliners are calling for the country to immediately restart its nuclear program, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the deal can still be salvaged. He announced late Tuesday that he will send his foreign minister to visit the other signatories: China, France, Germany, Russia, and the UK. Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's foreign minister, said Wednesday that "the deal is not dead," the BBC reports. "There's an American withdrawal from the deal but the deal is still there," he said. Russian officials said they were "deeply disappointed" by Trump's decision, though it was cheered by Tehran foes Israel and Saudi Arabia.
– The Federal Communications Commission will vote on net neutrality today, after lengthy debate. Though the topic seems destined for the courts, the FCC's decision "is going to be a benchmark," a researcher tells USA Today. The board is expected to approve chairman Tom Wheeler's guidelines to regulate the Internet like a utility, as President Obama suggested. His proposal also labels broadband providers as "common carriers" under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which means the FCC could prohibit paid prioritization for "fast lanes," NBC News reports. What does that mean for you? "All this ruling means is that there will be FCC jurisdiction to examine practices and hear complaints," a legal professor explains. He bats down claims that this is "an all-or-nothing decision that will transform the Internet," suggesting much is still to be determined. "Your broadband will still cost the same amount as it did before." Essentially Wheeler's rules would mean Internet service providers must treat all traffic equally, which is why Netflix—which claims almost 35% of peak traffic in the US—supports the move. It can't be charged more for the bandwidth it uses. Companies like Etsy, Kickstarter, Tumblr, and Vimeo support rules similar to Wheeler's. In the past, so did Google. But nearly a decade after Google and Facebook first pushed for new rules, the search giant has urged the FCC to draft rules boosting investment in broadband Internet networks, as have net neutrality opponents AT&T and Comcast, the Wall Street Journal reports. An expert predicts the "public utility-style regulations" will "create a tremendous amount of chaos" for cable and Internet companies, particularly when it comes to addressing congestion. They would have to ensure their practices of freeing up bandwidth are "reasonable," NPR reports. The rules also include what's called "zero-rating," which is when an app or group of apps—for example T-Mobile's Music Freedom plan—isn't counted against a user's data cap. Sounds like a bonus, right? "That distorts competition," says one expert. Republicans generally consider Wheeler's rules a government power grab. Congress could respond with legislation that undercuts Wheeler's guidelines, but Obama would likely veto.
– "Did I hear the word bipartisan?" President Trump asked Wednesday as he announced his support for a major reform of prison and sentencing laws. The First Step Act, which the AP calls the "first major rewrite of the nation's criminal justice sentencing laws in a generation," was created by a bipartisan group of senators and will remove some of the harsher minimum sentencing laws passed in the 1990s. "We're all better off when former inmates can re-enter society as law-abiding, productive citizens," Trump said. "Americans from across the political spectrum can unite around prison reform legislation that will reduce crime while giving our fellow citizens a chance at redemption." The bill, which builds on one the House passed in May, includes a boost to rehabilitation efforts for federal prisoners and bans practices including the shackling of pregnant women, the Guardian reports. It's not clear whether it will go to a vote during the lame-duck session of Congress, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says it will go to the floor if 60 votes can be guaranteed—depending on how it "stacks up" with other priorities. The bill is opposed by some conservatives, though its broad range of support includes both the ACLU and the Koch brothers, the New York Times reports. It earned the support of the national Fraternal Order of Police last week. (Last year, Jeff Sessions brought back tougher drug sentences.)
– A UCSB student died yesterday after being attacked by a shark while boogie boarding off the coast of Santa Barbara. Lucas Ransom, 19, was pulled off his board about 100 yards from shore just before 9am; his left leg was ripped off at his pelvis, according to the LA Times. Ransom was just a few feet away from friend Matthew Garcia—who said the two had joked the night before about the chances they would be attacked by a shark—at the time. He said, “Help me, dude,” before disappearing in the waves, Garcia said. "You just saw a red wave and this water is blue, and it was just red, the whole wave." Garcia saw his friend's body board pop up shortly thereafter, swam to the body, and did chest compressions as he brought him to shore of Surf Beach, an open-to-the-public spot on Vandenberg Air Force Base, located some 130 miles northwest of LA. Ransom, described by his parents as an avid swimmer once credited for saving a drowning child at a local pool, was a junior majoring in Chemical Engineering. Based on the size of Ransom's injury, experts believe he may have been attacked by a great white. Click here for more.
– It's another win for cord-cutters, but in this case they'll still need some ties to Apple or Cablevision. Customers of either company now have access to HBO Now, a stand-alone streaming service that offers HBO content for $15 a month, reports the Wall Street Journal. Those who sign up in April can try it out for free the first month. (Everyone's pointing out that HBO made the service available ahead of Sunday's premiere of the new Game of Thrones season.) Apple customers can get HBO Now though an app on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod, or via Apple TV. Subscribers to Cablevision's Optimum Online also can get it via an app. Some quick reaction: "It's HBO Go without the costly cable package," writes Chris Welch at the Verge. "If you don't have any Apple devices around, jumping in right now might not make the most sense. Cord cutting Android users will need to keep borrowing someone else's HBO Go login for now." "Obviously the app will be coming to other places eventually (one can only assume Android, Xbox, and nearly every set-top box, much like HBO Go), but for now it’s iOS, Cablevision or nothing," writes Eric Limer at Gizmodo. "But even with those artificial and temporary constraints, the days of HBO without the cable are finally here."
– In what the Washington Post calls an "extraordinary breach of political decorum," Donald Trump isn't endorsing Paul Ryan in his Wisconsin primary battle. Trump tells the Post he's "not quite there yet" when it comes to backing Ryan. Trump may be getting his revenge on Ryan, who last spring said he was "not there right now" about endorsing Trump before finally giving in. It's also possible Trump's decision not to endorse Ryan has to do with Ryan not supporting Trump's continued attacks on the Khans. Meanwhile, Ryan's primary opponent, Paul Nehlen, defended Trump's comments this week, saying the Khans "attacked, ridiculed, and attempted to humiliate Trump," according to NPR. Trump then publicly complimented Nehlen's "very good campaign." “I like Paul, but these are horrible times for our country,” Trump tells the Post. “We need very strong leadership." Trump claims Ryan sought his endorsement, a claim denied by a Ryan spokesperson. Regardless, Ryan is expected to easily defeat Nehlen, Politico reports. Trump also refused to endorse John McCain in his primary campaign, claiming McCain hasn't done right by the country's veterans. In the same Post interview, Trump called out New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte. It should be noted that both Ayotte and McCain denounced Trump's attacks on the Khans. Ayotte says she still plans to vote for Trump.
– After the "chaotic" first day of Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination hearing, Wednesday saw the 53-year-old appellate judge bombarded with questions from senators. The AP describes him as "treading carefully," and highlights some of the biggest issues raised during the second day of the hearing. Kavanaugh "didn't show his hand" when questioned about abortion rights, for example, though he did call Roe v. Wade "important precedent" that has "been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years." (The AP also notes that Sen. Dianne Feinstein "vastly overstated" the number of deaths from illegal abortions in the decades before Roe v. Wade; it has a fact-check here.) More from the hearing, which is expected to extend into the late evening hours of Wednesday: Kavanaugh said it was like a "gut punch" to learn that multiple women had accused one of his mentors, Judge Alex Kozinski, of sexual misconduct, and that it highlights the broader need for a better system of reporting workplace harassment; he said he was not aware of the allegations until they were made public. Fox News has more.
– The death toll in Friday's Santa Monica shooting spree has risen to five victims, with 26-year-old Marcela Franco passing away in the hospital today, CNN reports. Franco was taken to the hospital in critical condition after she and her father, Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, were shot on the campus of Santa Monica College. Her father, who the Los Angeles Times reports worked for the college as a groundskeeper, died at the scene. The two were reportedly on their way to buy books for Marcela's summer classes when the gunman, IDed as John Zawahri, shot at their Ford Explorer. "Her family was with her by her side," said the college president in a message to the school community. "Our deepest sympathies go to the Franco family. At the appropriate time, the College will convene a campus-wide memorial." Click for early thoughts on Zawahri's motive.
– Nicole Kidman continues her recent trend of dishing about her marriage to Tom Cruise in a new cover interview with Vanity Fair. "I was so young," she says of marrying Cruise at age 23. "I was a child, really, when I got married." That's why she was alone for some time after her divorce. "I needed to grow up," she says, and she also "didn't want to jump from one relationship to another." As for what it was like to be in a relationship with such a high-profile person, well, there's one other couple that likely understands, Kidman says. "There is something about that sort of existence that, if you really focus on each other and you’re in that bubble, it’s very intoxicating, because it’s just the two of you," she explains. "And there is only one other person that’s going through it. So it brings you very close, and it’s deeply romantic. I’m sure Brad and Angelina have that—because there’s nobody else that understands it except that person who’s sleeping right next to you." But she wouldn't call Cruise her "great love"—that's current husband Keith Urban, she says, adding, "No disrespect to what I had with Tom." As for Urban, E! reports that he yesterday admitted to Ellen DeGeneres that he and Kidman engage in "nice sex texting" maybe once "a year." Also: "I'm a little red right now."
– An airline pilots union says a computer glitch at American Airlines left approximately 15,000 scheduled flights during the busy December holiday travel season without a captain, co-pilot, or both, USA Today reports. The Allied Pilots Association tells CNN it learned about "a failure within the pilot scheduling bidding system" last Friday. "Thousands of flights currently do not have pilots assigned to fly them during the upcoming critical holiday period," the APA states. According to the Los Angeles Times, a computer error let too many pilots get time off for the holidays. Or as American Airlines Capt. Dennis Tajer puts it to CNBC: "The system went from responsibly scheduling everybody to becoming Santa Claus to everyone. The computer said, 'Hey ya'll. You want the days off? You got it.'" American Airlines, which isn't confirming the number of affected flights, says it has fixed the glitch and is working to avoid canceling holiday flights. "We have reserve pilots to help cover flying in December, and we are paying pilots who pick up certain open trips 150% of their hourly rate," an American Airlines spokesperson says. This December is expected to be one of the busiest holiday travel seasons in years. Thanksgiving already saw a 3% increase in travelers over 2016.
– A World Series of Poker player says he hit an "emotional jackpot" thanks to an Uber driver who returned his $7,000 ante. Jacob Brundage, of Lakeland, Fla., told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he lost a tote filled with cash and playing chips June 1. The 39-year-old says he realized the bag was in an Uber car that he rode from the Venetian to the Rio, reports the AP. "People lose things in their Uber all the time," says an Uber rep. "But this has to be the most valuable thing that someone lost in one of our cars in Las Vegas.” Brundage failed to reach the driver through the app and enlisted a group of waiting Uber drivers to help. The driver, who wants to remain anonymous, called Brundage and returned the bag. Brundage gave him $200 as a reward. "It felt like a miracle, and I was very relieved,” Brundage said. “This man’s honesty and integrity made me feel very blessed."
– NYPD Officer Randolph Holder was shot dead Tuesday, and by Saturday Quentin Tarantino was in Washington Square Park, protesting "murderers"—not the ones going after cops, but the cops themselves. "When I see murders, I do not stand by … I have to call a murder a murder, and I have to call the murderers the murderers," Tarantino said during the "Rise Up October" rally, per the New York Post, adding too often it is cops who kill. The head of the NYPD's labor union wasn't impressed and responded by asking locals to boycott the director's films, including the upcoming Hateful Eight. "It's no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too," Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said in a statement, via the Post. "New Yorkers need to send a message to this purveyor of degeneracy that he has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous 'Cop Fiction.'" About 300 people gathered for the rally, chanting and holding up signs that said things like "Rise Up! Stop Police Terror!" and "Murder with a badge is still murder." Tarantino concedes that the timing so soon after Holder's killing was "unfortunate," but he also says people had already traveled to attend, the Post notes. "I'm a human being with a conscience," Tarantino says, per the AP. "And if you believe there's murder going on, then you need to rise up and stand up against it. … I'm on the side of the murdered." Not everyone sees it that way. "The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls 'murderers' aren't living in one of his depraved big-screen fantasies—they're risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime," Lynch continues in his statement. One of Holder's cousins tells the Post that the rally was "very disrespectful." "Everyone forgets that behind the uniform is a person," she says.
– "I'm not a football fan, I'm not a sports fan, but I'm surely a Donald Trump fan," Joe Hornick tells NBC 4. The New Jersey man has been flying a Trump flag outside his home for months and he says he will go to jail rather than obey an ordinance in the town of West Long Branch against flying political flags more than 30 days before an election. New Jersey holds its primary on June 7, meaning it will be weeks before Hornick can legally fly the "Make America Great Again" banner. He has already been ticketed, and people have ripped down his flag at least five times. "I have a warehouse on alert, and I'll put up a flag every time they tear one down," Hornick says. Hornick—who says that if Trump loses, he'll rip up his registration card and never vote again—could get 90 days' jail time or a $2,000 fine if he doesn't take down the flag. Hornick says that he has a constitutional right to fly the flag, and the American Civil Liberties Union is supporting him, reports NY 101.5. According to Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post, Hornick is right: Banning political signs or placing similar restrictions on the content of signs violates the First Amendment, Volokh writes, though the city would be within its rights to apply content-neutral restrictions that applied to all signs. (Trump had a rough night Saturday.)
– A 22-year-old man and his parents have been arrested after the alleged abduction of a woman in Utah and her four teen daughters. The latter five managed to escape and alert authorities, reports NBC News. Police say Dereck Harrison, 22, and his father, Flint Harrison, 51, knew the Utah mother and suspected her of telling authorities about their drug use. They lured her and her daughters, ages 13 to 18, to a home on the pretext of a barbecue, then tied all five up with zip ties, say police. The elder Harrison hit the mother with a baseball bat, at which point the daughters began breaking free from their ties, say the charging documents, per the Casper Tribune. One of the girls knocked away a shotgun pointed at her throat and another seized the bat and hit the younger Harrison with it, say police. The victims fled, as did the Harrisons, but both suspects eventually surrendered separately in Wyoming and now face charges of aggravated kidnapping and possession of a controlled substance. While Dereck Harrison was still on the loose, his mother, Maryann Dalrymple Harrison, went to police in Wyoming to obtain information about her son, but she, too, ended up under arrest. It seems she violated her probation by leaving Utah without permission. (No more details were provided on her case.) Police say that the victims are recovering but that the Harrisons aren't cooperating with the investigation.
– The J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy at Wheaton College has taken Hastert out of its name as the scandal surrounding the former House speaker continues to grow. Hastert, who graduated from the Illinois college in 1964, resigned from the conservative institution's board of advisers on Friday, reports NBC News. The center will continue to advance the understanding of issues, including the "redeeming effects of the Christian worldview on the practice of business, government, and politics," and Wheaton respects Hastert's "distinguished public service record and the due process being afforded him pursuant to the charges that have been filed against him," the college said in a statement. It isn't clear what will happen to the collection of papers Hastert donated to his alma mater, reports the Chicago Tribune, which notes that the scandal has had several other "ripple effects" for the former speaker. He has stepped down from his job at lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro, which he joined after leaving the House in 2008, and he has also left the board of directors at futures-exchange company CME Group. A plan to put a $500,000 statue of Hastert in the Illinois state Capitol is also on ice. A spokesman for Michael Madigan, the Democratic speaker of the state House, tells ABC News that Hastert called a month ago asking for the project to be shelved because it was a "not wise use of state funds."
– "God brought Jonathan in with a storm and took him back in a storm." That's how the family of 19-year-old Jonathan Brussow describe his death earlier this month in the Bahamas, just after he'd asked the family of his girlfriend for permission to marry her. Athena Williams tells People and FOX 17 that the Michigan man she met at a party in middle school was vacationing on the island of Eleuthera with her and her family when, on March 4, he secretly asked her family if he could marry her. Early the next day, Brussow and Williams' brother went for a hike, and as they were resting on a cliff, a wave came out of nowhere and swept the two men into the water below. Williams' brother was badly hurt but managed to get to shore, where he ran for help. Brussow, however, was nowhere to be found, and his family flew out from the US to help Williams, her family, and the locals search for him. On March 9, an 8-foot-deep depression filled with water near where the men were swept away dried up, and Brussow's body was found, MLive.com reports. The $21,000 raised on GoFundMe to help in the search for Brussow—described as the "most beloved kid" on his high school swim team before he graduated in 2016, per WZZM—will now be put toward bringing his body home, offering funds to those who helped look for him, and putting warning signs and safety gear near where the wave took his life. In a statement, his family notes how Brussow had been born in a wild storm on May 31, 1998, and that "those that knew him well knew he lived his life with a storm of passion." As for Williams, she tells People: "I would give anything to be able to have him here and be able to marry him and spend the rest of my life with him. … I wish we had more time." (A rogue wave killed twin sisters in Cabo.)
– A New York state lawmaker running for re-election killed himself Friday, four days before the state's Republican primary, the Democrat and Chronicle reports. Police were called about a distraught man at an area cemetery and arrived to see Bill Nojay shoot and kill himself. He died next to his brother's grave in his family's burial plot. It's unclear what led Nojay to kill himself, but the lawmaker had recently become embroiled in a number of controversies. According to the New York Times, he was accused of embezzling $1.8 million from a legal client and was supposed to be in court on those charges Friday. And federal investigators are looking into an agricultural business Nojay started in Cambodia after he allegedly took a $1 million donation from a Cambodian dentist and had nothing to show for it. He was also being investigated for his role in a $1.3 billion deal to modernize schools, the Albany Times Union reports. The 59-year-old father of three was first elected to the state assembly in 2012. Nojay was known for going against Democrats and Republicans alike and for his anti-gun control work. He hosted a local radio show and had been championing Donald Trump for president since 2013. He also worked on elections in Afghanistan and Ukraine. Nojay will remain on the primary ballot. If he ends up winning Tuesday, party leaders will have to nominate a replacement for the general election. Nojay's Republican challenger, Richard Milne, says he's "devastated" by the news and is "suspending all political activity until further notice."
– Bloomberg LP operates both a multi-platform media organization, Bloomberg News, and a computer system, Bloomberg Terminal, that bankers and traders use to monitor market data. The problem: Bloomberg News reporters can see how and when any customer has been using a terminal, and now it turns out they have been using that access to snoop on Wall Street and break news, the New York Times reports. And it may have gone even further than just traders: a former Bloomberg staffer now says he also accessed the terminals of Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, according to CNBC. The issue was first discovered when a Bloomberg reporter asked Goldman Sachs if a partner had recently left the firm because he hadn't recently logged into his terminal, the New York Post revealed. JPMorgan claims Bloomberg may have used data from terminals to break the "London Whale" scandal, the Post reports. The Times says "several hundred" reporters have used the technique, gaining access to 315,000 subscribers worldwide. Bloomberg has called the news-gathering process "a mistake," and has cut off its journalists' access, reports the AP. But the damage may already be done: the terminal is Bloomberg's primary money-maker, with firms paying around $20,000 a year to use it, and Wall Street is not happy.
– Reports were out over the weekend that Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin may be the next Cabinet member to get the boot, but White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley downplayed those reports Monday—somewhat. "We all serve at the pleasure of the president. If he is not pleased, you‘ll know it," Gidley said on Fox News, according to Politico. "At this point in time though, he does have confidence in Dr. Shulkin. He is a secretary and he has done some great things at the VA. As you know, the president wants to put the right people in the right place at the right time and that could change." Sources told CNN and the AP over the weekend that Trump planned to oust Shulkin, possibly as early as this week, but that he wanted to have a replacement selected first. Pressed on that subject, Gidley said, "When the president wants to make a change, he will make it. ... Whether he has a replacement or not, he can still make a change." Shulkin has been under fire due to accusations of excessive spending and policy differences with the White House, leading to friction within his department. (Trump was at one point reportedly considering Energy Secretary Rick Perry as Shulkin's replacement.)
– The passengers on Southwest Flight 3606 were somewhere over Idaho Sunday when their captain came over the PA with a message: They were headed back to Seattle. That's because there was a "life-critical cargo shipment" that had been left on board, per the Seattle Times: a donated human heart. The heart should have been left in Washington after arriving from Sacramento, but instead it stayed on the plane and was Dallas-bound before the airline realized it hadn't been removed at Sea-Tac Airport. CNN and its affiliate KTXL note that this heart wasn't intended for a full transplant; it was donated for its valves alone. That means a) it was in a thermally controlled box in the cargo hold, making it easier to forget, and b) it had, per KTXL, a "much longer transportation window" than if it had been intended for a heart transplant. Luckily, no damage came to it, and the heart got to where it needed to go on time, per the Sierra Donor Services nonprofit. The passengers, meanwhile, weren't too irked, as they were "happy to save a life," one man on board tells the Times. (Another organ donor was 107 years old.)
– Lately, it seems that the history of the American Revolution is not the strong suit of the two most well-known Republican women who could decide to run for president. Back in March, Michele Bachmann stated that "the shot heard 'round the world" at Lexington and Concord was fired in New Hampshire. Then yesterday Sarah Palin made a history error of her own: Stopping in Boston on her bus tour, she stated that Paul Revere warned the British about the American arms locations. ABC News has her comment: "He who warned, uh, the ... the British that they weren't gonna be taking away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells and, um, by making sure that as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free ... and we were gonna be armed." Click for more.
– Hillary Clinton says she lost the 2016 election due in part to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. Emmanuel Macron, on the other hand, looks poised to become France's next president despite a seemingly similar effort to derail his campaign. According to cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, Macron—who will compete against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the May 7 election—appears to have been targeted by the same Russian hackers who took aim at Clinton's campaign, though officials say they didn’t manage to steal staffers’ email passwords, per the New York Times. The scheme involved emails sent to campaign officials with links to web addresses almost identical to those of Macron's party, CNN reports. Trend Micro—which also claims the hackers targeted groups linked to political parties in Germany, per the Hill—says it traced those addresses to Fancy Bear, the same group US intelligence has blamed for the DNC hack. The Macron campaign had previously suggested Russia might be behind a "highly sophisticated" effort to access campaign emails using shady web pages that were "pixel perfect" matches to originals, with only tiny differences in URLs. In response to the report, however, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin says Russia has "never interfered" in foreign elections and the latest charges are "a reminder of the accusations that were heard from Washington just recently and that have remained unconfirmed to this day."
– A conservative think tank has pulled a controversial billboard that compared those who believe in global warming to deranged killers. The Heartland Institute was taking heavy flak for the digital sign in Chicago that featured a photo of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and the question, "I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?" reports the Washington Post's Plum Line blog. The institute explained on its website that the "experiment" was designed to be deliberately provocative. It had originally planned to follow up with images of Osama bin Laden and Charles Manson, among others. An earlier post from the site explained that "the most prominent advocates of global warming" are "murderers, tyrants, and madmen." It added, helpfully, that "not all global warming skeptics are murderers or tyrants," notes the Guardian, which first spotted the billboard. Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Beast thinks it's everything that's wrong with the right—"a refusal to acknowledge scientific reality; and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association." GOP Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a prominent skeptic about global warming, vowed to pull out of an institute-sponsored conference later this month if the ad campaign continued; it ended soon after.
– The Coast Guard is considering setting the gigantic oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico ablaze as it approaches land. A controlled burn to burn off the oil could happen as soon as today if winds keep pushing the Rhode Island-sized slick toward ecologically sensitive areas of the Mississippi Delta, CNN reports. "We fully understand that there are benefits and trade-offs" in torching the slick, the admiral co-ordinating federal operations told the New York Times. Birds and mammals will be "more than capable" of handling the effects of a burn, which will remove most of the oil and leave a waxy residue, said a Coast Guard spokesman.
– Lots of musicians—notably Thom Yorke of Radiohead—hate Spotify because it pays out a tiny fraction of a cent for every track played. But now a funk band out of Ann Arbor called Vulfpeck has come up with what Quartz calls an "ingeniously simple" way to actually make some money off the online streaming service. The group has put out a new album called Sleepify that consists of 10 tracks of absolute silence. Vulfpeck asks fans to stream the album overnight while they sleep, on repeat, figuring it could make about $4 per listener per night. The band promises to use the money for a fall tour in which shows would be free. Guardian music blogger Tim Jonze does some more math and observes that diligent fans could join together to help their favorite groups "make a load of money from this scheme." (Jonze also reviews the album in tongue-in-cheek fashion: "Opening track 'Z' certainly sets the tone, a subtle, intriguing work that teases the listener as to what may come next.") At Businessweek, Joshua Brustein is impressed. "It’s an ingenious publicity stunt and, if you squint hard enough, a commentary on the way music is valued in the digital age." Spotify, meanwhile, seems to be taking it in good spirit, with a spokesperson calling it a "clever stunt." As of now, the company doesn't plan to crack down on the musical silence. (Click to read about how YouTube is planning a service to rival Spotify.)
– The body of former top White House chef Walter Scheib has been found more than a week after he disappeared in rough terrain near Taos, NM. State officials say the body of the 61-year-old, who had recently moved to the state from Florida, was found near a hiking trail, the AP reports. Scheib went for a solo hike in the mountains last weekend and never returned, sparking a huge search effort involving aircraft, dogs, and National Guard teams, NBC News reports. Police say rescue teams are still gathering information on his death. Scheib, author of White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen, was hired by Hillary Clinton in 1994 to give daily meals and state dinners a distinctive American twist, and was asked to resign in 2005, during the George W. Bush administration, the Washington Post reports. In an interview with Munchies earlier this year, the chef said he would be "hard-pressed to say no" if a victorious Hillary Clinton asked him to return to the White House kitchen in 2016. "If she wants me, she knows my phone number and I'll be of service. I don't care if it was a Republican or Democrat, if I knew them or didn't know them—if the president asked me to serve, I would do it."
– The underlying theme of the GOP race this year seems to be Citizens United, observes Law.com. The Supreme Court decision that led to the creation of super PACs funded by unlimited donations is getting its first real-world test, and the results are hard to miss. Most notably: The super PAC known as Restore Our Future decimated Newt Gingrich with negative ads on behalf of Mitt Romney. As Politico notes, Gingrich called the decision at the time a "great victory for free speech," and while he still supports it, he is also complaining about being "Romney-boated" by his rival's "millionaire friends." Also: Restrictions needed? The Huffington Post gives banner treatment ("We've Created a Monster") to the issue, with Sam Stein writing that some prominent Republicans think that restrictions on super PACs are in order. Among others, it quotes Tom Ridge, who thinks that donations to the groups should be disclosed almost immediately online. "Transparency now, it is the best antiseptic," says the Jon Huntsman ally. Full story here. Montana decision: At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick gives a figurative high-five to the Montana Supreme Court, which last week issued a "stunning" decision that the state could essentially ignore Citizens United and continue to restrict corporate election spending. The court "knows exactly what Justice Kennedy seems to have missed: That corruption is corruption regardless of its packaging, and that it rarely comes with a detailed disclosure label." Full piece here. Overblown issue? The National Journal rounds up conservative opinion and finds little "buyer's remorse" about the ruling. It quotes a GOP consultant who thinks the issue is being exaggerated: “Every cycle there is a new vehicle as the law changed. Campaigns have always run negative ads. The vehicle may be different, but the ads certainly weren’t.” Full story here.
– Tom Hanks was just trying to do his civic duty, and he ended up inadvertently messing up a trial. Hanks was serving on a jury in LA this week, but when a lawyer in the City Attorney's Office made the mistake of talking to the actor, the case had to be settled with a plea deal. The prosecuting attorney revealed the interaction Tuesday and asked for a mistrial based on prosecutorial misconduct, CNN reports. Instead, yesterday, both sides agreed to a reduced charge. The defendant initially faced up to a year in jail on domestic assault charges; the reduced disturbing the peace charge carries with it just a $150 fine. So what did the lawyer approach Hanks about? He reportedly thanked the actor for his service. TMZ earlier reported that Hanks was either an awesome juror or just acting like one: taking lots of notes, listening closely, talking to the other jurors during the breaks, and laughing at one of the lawyer's jokes. The defense attorney confirms to CNN that, though he was initially skeptical of putting Hanks on the jury, "He never looked or made any statements like he wanted to get off jury duty. So based on everything, he seemed like a very fair juror." How would he have voted? The defense attorney says Hanks simply "looked at me like he always had, smiled and said, 'I was going to vote the way of justice.'"
– The image was so volatile that it still comes up more than four decades later: Jane Fonda sitting on an anti-aircraft gun used by North Vietnamese soldiers against American planes. On Wednesday night, the 80-year-old actress talked to Stephen Colbert about "the bad thing I did," and said she still regrets it, reports Mediaite. "I wasn’t even thinking what I was doing and photographs were taken and that image went out, and the image makes it look like I was against our soldiers, which was never the case," she says. "But that image is there and I will go to my grave regretting that. I knew right away that that was wrong." The incident landed Fonda the derisive nickname Hanoi Jane, especially an image in which Fonda is seen peering through weapon's scope, as noted by the Hollywood Reporter. Fonda has previously called the photo a mistake, but it keeps coming up decades later, as it did when Megyn Kelly raised the issue anew in her recent public feud with Fonda. Despite the controversy, Fonda tells Colbert she doesn't regret the anti-war trip itself. (See the video here.) HBO has a new documentary about Fonda's life, and she recently discussed the impact of her mother's suicide with People.
– A 2-year-old girl was recently given a 50/50 chance of surviving stage 4 neuroblastoma cancer, and dad Adam Koessler wants to do everything in his power to boost those chances. The Australian man started putting cannabis oil in Rumer's food and noticed "extremely beneficial" and even "miraculous" results, he says—but on Jan. 2, he was arrested and charged with supplying dangerous drugs to a person under 16. While on the cannabis oil (which does not contain the compound that gets marijuana users high), Rumer was in less pain, had more energy, and was able to eat, gain weight, and even go outside. "Her skin color came back, her eyes were sparkling again," her father says. "Her cancer-ridden little body was alive again." Without the cannabis oil, her condition has declined and she's in intensive care on morphine, the Newcastle Herald reports. Medical marijuana advocates are standing behind Koessler, who—as part of his bail conditions—is not allowed any contact with Rumer. The NSW Hemp Party spokesman points out the fact that Rumer was put on opiate painkillers after being forced off cannabis oil and says, "The current legal position regarding the enforced medical treatment of an innocent child is unconscionable." The Cairns community is also rallying behind Rumer and her family, donating money toward Rumer's treatment, the Cairns Post reported last month, shortly after Rumer was diagnosed on Christmas Day. Two crowdfunding campaigns have raised more than $30,000, and a Change.org petition for Koessler to see his parental rights reinstated and medicinal cannabis oil to be decriminalized has more than 157,000 supporters. A Facebook page apparently run by Rumer's mother (her parents are not together, according to her dad's GoFundMe page) says her cancer was recently downgraded to stage 3. (This dad credits his son's recovery from cancer to cannabis oil.)
– CNN's glory days are unquestionably behind it. Want proof? Q2 of 2012 clocked in as its lowest-rated quarter in 21 years. In fairness, Deadline notes that all three cable news networks reported a dip, but when you stack up the numbers, things looks pretty gloomy for the network: It averaged 446,000 total primetime viewers to Fox News' 1.79 million; even MSNBC eked out 689,000. Not even the dashing Anderson Cooper could save the day—his show reeled in 19% fewer viewers. On the heels of the dour numbers, the media weighs in: TVNewser tempers CNN's 35% drop in primetime viewers year over year, pointing out that Q2 of 2011 was a biggie: Osama bin Laden was killed and Kate and Wills tied the knot. (By comparison, Fox News was down 1%; MSNBC, 13%.) And a big part of the network's problem, posits the New York Times, is its avoidance of hyperpartisan analysis, which helps fill in the gaps when there's just not much going on. It "has yet to find an answer to what to do when news is light," writes Bill Carter. Politico goes behind the scenes, talking to staffers and former execs who report that morale is low and cite a lack of editorial leadership. "It’s frustrating to hear our leadership talk about the exemplary journalism we do, then turn on the TV during the day and see CNN doing another story about 'birthers' or 'tips for dining out alone,'" said one staffer, complaining about the lack of strategy. But one senior VP tells Politico that isn't so, saying its "clear" editorial direction rests upon "worldwide newsgathering and reporting a broad range of stories without picking sides." Still, Dylan Byers writes that "Cooper, once known for intrepid reports from disaster zones, now makes his most notable contributions to the following day’s news with a humor segment called 'The RidicuList.'"
– Finesse can help in a jewel heist, but brute force is handy, too. Police in France say about two dozen "heavily armed and battled-hardened" robbers attacked two armored cars at a highway toll booth, securing a payday of $9.5 million in jewels, reports the Guardian. Not a single shot was fired in the midnight heist near Auxerre. The robbers let the drivers go and drove off with the vans, whose burnt-out shells were found nearby. The AP says the caper bears the hallmarks of the Pink Panther gang, which has made off with hundreds of millions in thefts over the last 15 years.
– A fight in a high school hallway led to an all too familiar outcome Monday morning: a shooting that left a student dead. But Butler High School in Matthews, NC, also is drawing attention for its decision to resume classes less than two hours after the altercation. Police say two male students fought in a crowded hallway as students were arriving for the day, reports the AP. One student shot the other, who died at the hospital, and the alleged shooter is in custody, reports WRAL. A junior at the school tells the Charlotte Observer that students were ordered into the nearest classroom for about 90 minutes, then allowed to proceed to their scheduled class once the lockdown was lifted. “They’re changing classes during an active crime scene,” says one parent critical of the decision to resume a normal school day. It appears to have been optional, however. After police gave the all-clear, the school district informed parents they could pick up their children at the high school, adding that "classes will proceed on campus today for students remaining on campus." Police are still investigating how the shooter was able to bring the gun into the school itself. (Authorities say this would-be school shooter appears to have been foiled by his own gun.)
– America's best male tennis player of the last decade is about to throw in the towel, reports USA Today. The US Open now under way will be Andy Roddick's last tournament. "For 13, 14 years, I was invested fully," he said today. But "I don't know if I'm healthy enough or committed enough to continue another year." Roddick, married to model/actress Brooklyn Decker, turned 30 today. He first became world No. 1 in 2003; that year, at 21, he was the youngest American to end the year in the top spot. (His victory in the US Open in '03 remains the last time an American male has won a Grand Slam singles title.) He's the owner of 32 ATP World Tour titles and 33 Davis Cup wins. He's been in the Wimbledon final three times—each time losing to Roger Federer, most recently in 2009. This year, "walking off at Wimbledon, I felt like I knew," he said. "I don't want to disrespect the game by coasting home." See more at Bleacher Report.
– The House and Senate's failure to reach a deal to resolve the budget brouhaha has left the US without a functioning federal government for the first time in 17 years—and the two sides seem so averse to compromise that it's anyone's guess when the shutdown will end. Federal agencies have been ordered to "execute plans for an orderly shutdown," meaning around 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed immediately and another million or so, including Border Patrol agents and air traffic controllers, will be asked to work without pay, the New York Times reports. In the past, federal workers—though not contractors—have been reimbursed for time missed, but it's unclear whether Congress will approve a similar measure this time around, the Washington Post finds in its guide to the shutdown's impact on federal workers. Politico explains the process for furloughing workers: Federal employees do have to go to work today; once there, they'll be handed an official notice outlining who is essential. Those who aren't will have until mid-day to wrap things up and set up those out-of-office auto-replies. Social Security and Medicare benefits, veterans' services, and the US Postal Service will not be affected, but national parks, monuments, and other government offices are closed, and transportation safety inspectors nationwide have been furloughed, the AP finds. The Post reports that all but 549 of NASA's 18,250 employees will be furloughed ... in a slightly cruel twist, on the agency's 55th birthday. Last-minute legislation ensures that members of the military will keep receiving their paychecks. Members of Congress will also keep getting paid, but their employees will have to either work without pay or be furloughed, the Federal Times reports. Mother Jones looks at some of the more quirky casualties: the National Zoo's Panda-cam, winery permits, National Park Service golf courses, Bureau of Land Management's wild horse and burro adoption programs, and 45 fountains. John Boehner has called for a special House-Senate committee to resolve the two parties' differences, but some senior Republicans believe the shutdown could last at least a week, the Washington Post reports. Democrats, meanwhile, believe that the funding battle could overlap with debt-limit talks that need to be resolved before October 17.
– A rare outbreak of winter tornadoes has killed at least seven people in Missouri and Arkansas and left a trail of destruction across the South and Midwest. Three people were killed by a tornado in a small town in northern Arkansas and a tornado spawned by the same weather system killed four more in Missouri. Tornado watches are in effect for parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana as the system moves east. Making matters worse, the storm system has caused flash flooding in parts of Alabama, MSNBC reports One Arkansas man survived with only bumps and bruises after a tornado plucked him from his home. "It sucked me out of my house and carried me across the road and dropped me," he told AP. "I was Superman for a while. You're just free-floating through the air. Trees are knocking you and smacking you down." Meteorologists believe the violent winter weather is linked to changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures, which have affected the jet stream across the central US.
– Three down, nine to go. Harry Reid made his three picks for the bipartisan "super committee" that will try to come up with $1.2 trillion of cuts in about 3 months. Reid picked Patty Murray, who will serve as co-chair with a yet-to-be-named Republican, along with John Kerry and Max Baucus. Politico sees the choices as a sign that the Senate majority leader is serious about getting a deal struck. Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Nancy Pelosi will each add three picks of their own. At least seven of the 12 will need to agree on a proposal by Thanksgiving if they hope to have it signed by the president by Dec. 23, notes the National Journal. Failure triggers across-the-board cuts. Click to read how Daily Intel wishes the first three were announced, or here to see Jon Stewart's take on the committee.
– Graduation rates at US institutions of higher learning have dropped 33% since 2002, a Chronicle of Higher Education study finds, and the recession may be to blame. The Huffington Post lists the 12 colleges with the lowest graduation rates: Golden Gate University, San Francisco: 10% Alliant International University, San Diego: 11% Idaho State University, Pocatello: 16% University of Arkansas, Little Rock: 21% University of New Orleans, New Orleans: 22% Cleveland State University, Cleveland: 26% Texas A&M, Kingsville: 27% University of Alaska, Fairbanks: 27% University of Texas, El Paso: 31% Indiana University—Purdue University, Indianapolis: 32% Morgan State University, Baltimore: 32% University of Massachusetts, Boston: 33% See the colleges with the highest graduation rates.
– Hit Chinese TV program Interviews Before Execution has been abruptly canceled—after five years on the air and just about a week of attention from the West. The show, which reached 40 million viewers every Saturday night, featured glamorous host Ding Yu speaking to condemned criminals days, hours, or even just minutes before their execution. Officials at China's Legal TV say the show, which just started popping up in Western press for the first time in advance of a BBC documentary on the show that aired last night, has been axed because of "internal problems," ABC reports. Some 55 crimes carry the death penalty in China, but Interviews focused only on murderers. In an interview with the BBC, Ding denied that the program was exploitative. "Some viewers may consider it cruel to ask a criminal to do an interview when they are about to be executed. On the contrary, they want to be heard," she said. "Some criminals I interviewed told me: 'I'm really very glad. I said so many things in my heart to you at this time. In prison, there was never a person I was willing to talk to about past events.'"
– Think we've stored so much data that future historians will be swimming in the stuff? Not necessarily: A Google executive says the "digital Dark Ages" may be coming, when people will have little idea of how we think or live today, NPR reports. Google Vice President Vint Cerf expressed his concern last week at a conference of scientists in California: "If we're thinking 1,000 years, 3,000 years ahead in the future, we have to ask ourselves, how do we preserve all the bits that we need in order to correctly interpret the digital objects we create?" he says. "We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it." Cerf's worry is that future "modern computers" will have no way of reading content from today's software. Comparing future historians to Doris Kearns Goodwin—who relied quite a bit on letters of the period when writing Team of Rivals about Abraham Lincoln's cabinet—Cerf warns that today's email stash could vanish "because nobody saved it" or because it can't be read since it was created on century-old software, per the Independent. And he discards the notion that "important" stuff will be stored, saying that "sometimes documents and transactions images and so on may turn out to have an importance which is not understood for hundreds of years." His advice for us: Print those photos. For big data savers: Embrace the idea of "digital vellum," which involves snapping a pic of every way a file can be opened, and storing it with the original file, reports Engineering and Technology Magazine. "We're going to have to build into our thinking the concept of preservation writ large," says Cerf. (Unless of course the world ends up taken over by robots.)
– Less than a month after its big launch, Google+ has hit its first minus: Usage declined 3% to 1.79 million visits last week, reports Bloomberg. What's more, time spent on the new social media site dropped 10%, falling to 5 minutes to 15 seconds. It's important to note Experian Hitwise's numbers include neither international nor mobile web traffic, and Google+ is technically still in "limited beta," writes MG Siegler of Techcrunch. But when your prime competition has 750 million users, any setback can be daunting. Since making its debut June 28, Google+ quickly rose to 20 million users in just three weeks. "There was a sense of excitement: Could this really be the next big social network?" writes Siegler. But "after initially checking it several times a day, I now load Google+ about twice a day, mainly to see if I’m missing anything. I rarely find that I am. I +1 a few things here and there, maybe leave a comment. But overall, the content feels fairly stale. The new car smell is wearing off. And it’s time for reality." And that reality? "User retention is a bitch," says Siegler.
– Two former servers at the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando—the chain's biggest site—are suing because they say the restaurant illegally paid them less than minimum wage for three years, the Orlando Sentinel reports. They say Hard Rock broke the law by requiring them to share tips not only with other servers and bartenders but with kitchen staffers. They ended up making less than minimum wage—it's $7.25 in Florida—and want the difference repaid. "In this economy, servers and bartenders need all the tips they can get," one of their attorneys tells the Broward Palm Beach New Times. "Hard Rock should have known that a tip-sharing arrangement that included kitchen staff violated Florida and federal law." They're seeking class-action status. Hard Rock says the allegations "do not accurately reflect how Hard Rock pays it employees." Writes New Times' Jeff Stratton: "The real crime is that minimum wage isn't up to $10 an hour by now."
– There is water on the moon, and it comes from an unlikely source: the sun. That's the conclusion of a new study, after studying soil samples brought back from the original Apollo 11 mission, Cosmos reports. While studies dating back to 2008 have pointed to the existence of water on the moon, until now no one was sure where it came from. Now, University of Tennessee researchers believe that solar winds carry hydrogen ejected from the sun's atmosphere to the moon. The study will force scientists to rethink the conventional wisdom that water in the inner solar system generally comes from icy meteors or comets. This more reliable source of water could make a lunar colony more feasible, the lead author says. "This water would be of most value as rocket fuel—liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen," she tells Space.com. "We could use the moon as a jump-board for missions to Mars and beyond." Others aren't as sure. "Extracting the water might be as much trouble as it's worth," one independent geochemist warns.
– Republicans including Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio were quick to speak out against President Trump's comments Tuesday that "both sides" were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend. But that wasn't at all what the White House had planned. A memo of talking points sent to Republicans and other allies Tuesday called on them to declare Trump was "entirely correct," report CBS News and Fox News, which both obtained a copy. "Both sides of the violence in Charlottesville acted inappropriately, and bear some responsibility," the memo continued, noting Trump's comments reaffirmed that "we are equal in the eyes of our Creator, equal under the law, and equal under our Constitution." The memo stressed that Trump "condemned—with no ambiguity—the hate groups fueled by bigotry and racism" and is "taking swift action to hold violent hate groups accountable," per Business Insider. After referring to Trump as "a voice for unity and calm," it called on leaders and the media to "join the president in trying to unite and heal our country rather than incite more division." Censure followed, however, from almost all sides. From Republicans, it was "swifter and more widespread than perhaps at any point in his presidency," reports Politico. A standout tweet from Rubio: "Mr. President, you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain."
– The Paris Saint-Germain soccer team wanted to show the world that its thoughts are with its home city and the victims of the recent terror attacks—so it has (temporarily) ditched a major sponsor from its jerseys and replaced it with a message of solidarity instead, reports For the Win. "Je Suis Paris" ("I am Paris")—reminiscent of the "Je Suis Charlie" message that proliferated after January's Charlie Hebdo attack—will adorn the team's jerseys for the next two games, against Malmo on Wednesday and Troyes on Saturday. "This [message] of unity [will appear] on the shirt in the space usually occupied by our main partner Emirates," the team says on its website; it also tweeted a photo of some of the players sporting the jerseys. The team says Emirates Airline has given the A-OK for the limited redesign and "has been cooperative throughout the process of memorializing the victims," as the Washington Post puts it. (A poignant conversation about the Paris attacks between a father and son went viral.)
– Gunshot sound effects at an outdoor music festival, when memories of last year's Las Vegas concert massacre are still fresh, goes way beyond poor taste, critics told Eminem after his Saturday night set caused panic at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee. Witnesses say some fans screamed, ducked, or dropped to the ground after the sounds were heard at the end of "Kill You," Billboard reports. "I hate to be the one to say it, but being someone who suffers from very mild PTSD, it was EXTREMELY irresponsible and distasteful to end songs w the shot gun sound effect," tweeted social media star Andrea Russett. "To hear a gun shot sound effect and see the entire crowd drop to the floor out of instinct is not funny, cute, or amusing," she added, per E! Online. Critics said that after the killing of 58 people in last year's Las Vegas mass shooting and other deadly attacks on concerts, Eminem should at least have warned people there could be gunshot noises during his set. But plenty of fans came to the rapper's defense on social media, arguing that he has used similar sound effects without problems during countless other live performances, including at a New York City music festival just a week ago, Time reports. An Eminem rep said the noises weren't even gunshot effects. "Contrary to inaccurate reports, Eminem does not use gunshot sound effects during his live show. The effect used by Eminem in his set at Bonnaroo was a pyrotechnic concussion (that) creates a loud boom. He has used this effect—as have hundreds other artists—in his live show for over 10 years," a spokesperson said in a statement. (A body was found Friday at a Bonnaroo campsite.)
– ISIS has beheaded another hostage, but while the outcome is grimly familiar, analysts say the video revealing the death of Peter Kassig has differences that hint at serious problems for the militant group. Unlike four earlier videos showing the execution of Western hostages, the quality is poor, Kassig is not seen reading a statement, and no other hostage is displayed. Instead, only the American's severed head is shown. Analysts suspect that the threat of airstrikes stopped the militants from being able to film outside for long. "The likeliest possibility is that something went wrong when they were beheading him," an expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tells the New York Times. Another possibility, he says, is that Kassig resisted and the "media-savvy" militants were unable to get the video they wanted. Other analysts speculate that the hostage—who converted to Islam while in captivity—may have chosen to recite quotes from the Koran instead of his captors' script. More: Kassig, a former US Army Ranger, founded an organization to aid refugees from the Syrian civil war. His parents say they are heartbroken by the killing but incredibly proud of his work, the AP reports. He "lost his life as a result of his love for the Syrian people and his desire to ease their suffering," his parents, who live in Indianapolis, said in a statement. The latest ISIS video, which also shows the execution of 18 Syrian captives in "revolting, lingering detail," is also different because it shows the faces of many militants and gives a specific location in Syria, notes BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. He calls Kassig's execution an "act of desperation" carried out by the group because it is unable to fight back against coalition airstrikes. With Kassig dead, ISIS' only remaining American hostage is a 26-year-old woman, security officials tell the Daily Beast. Like Kassig, she was kidnapped while carrying out aid work. Her name has not been made public and officials say it is significant that she doesn't appear in the group's latest video—and while it's not clear what the militants have planned for her, even ISIS is likely to carefully consider the public reaction to killing a female Western captive on camera.
– Looks like the "complete meltdown of humanity" in Aleppo will continue for at least another day. The ceasefire declared in the war-ravaged Syrian city Tuesday appears, to nobody's surprise, to have broken down, leaving tens of thousands of civilians in rebel-held areas stranded in desperate conditions. Reuters reports that a planned evacuation has stalled amid fierce fighting and what rebels say is a resumption of airstrikes by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Buses that were supposed to evacuate fighters and civilians to rebel-held areas outside the city returned to their depots Wednesday morning, the AP reports. Activists say Iran-backed militias and Syrian government forces blocked the evacuation after demanding that the Russia- and Turkey-brokered deal be changed to allow the evacuation of their own injured fighters from towns in rebel-held zones, reports the BBC. "The sectarian militias want to resume the massacre in Aleppo and the world has to act to prevent this sectarian slaughter led by Iran," a member of rebel group Noureddine Zinkitells the Guardian. "The opposition will continue to abide by the agreement." Russia, which claims thousands of civilians and hundreds of fighters left the remaining rebel-held portion of Aleppo over the last 24 hours, says Syrian forces are responding to rebel attacks, and they expect resistance to end over the next two or three days.
– Marijuana is giving up its secrets: A Massachusetts company has sequenced the entire genome of the cannabis plant for the first time, reports the Nature news blog. The results from Medicinal Genomics have yet to be peer-reviewed and probably won't be published in full until next year. And the company has only the best of intentions, notes Bloomberg: “It may be possible through genome directed breeding to attenuate the psychoactive effects of cannabis, while enhancing the medicinal aspects.” In other words: Make medical marijuana more "medical" and less "marijuana." That's not to say others couldn't take the information and do the reverse. As the PopSci blog notes, the discovery eventually could have "significant implications for both the medical and recreational users of the drug" by allowing particular genes to be "isolated and concentrated." The company promises to make genome annotations available via iPhone app next fall.
– Justin Timberlake's recent Vanity Fair article was a downright ex-girlfriend bonanza. Of recent ex Jessica Biel, he says, “She is the single-handedly most significant person in my life. In my 30 years, she is the most special person, OK? … I don’t want to say much more, because I have to protect things that are dear to me—for instance, her.” But, you say, what of childhood sweetheart Britney Spears? Oh, he talks about her, too: “I wish her the best—that goes without saying. We haven’t spoken in nine or 10 years. ... We were two birds of the same feather—small-town kids, doing the same thing. But then you become adults, and the way you were as kids doesn’t make any sense. I won’t speak on her, but at least for me, I was a totally different person." Click for much more from the interview, including his thoughts on other fellow Mouseketeers, whether he wants a family, and why celebrities always date other celebrities.
– Alaska's legislature didn't move to expand Medicaid, so Gov. Bill Walker is doing it on his own. Walker says he plans to accept $146 million in federal funds that his state has access to under the Affordable Care Act in order to cover some 42,000 residents who qualify under the program, Reuters and the New York Times report. Walker, who is just seven months into his term, had made expanding Medicaid a campaign priority. "This is the final option for me," he says. The Legislative Budget and Audit Committee will now have 45 days to act before Walker accepts the funds; he says he can proceed regardless of how the committee responds. The federal government will take on the full cost of the expansion at first, then shave its cut to 90% by 2020. Some 28 other states have expanded Medicaid under the law, but just Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio did so without legislative consent. Walker, who calls the move a "common-sense decision," says his bills seeking expansion approval were all blocked by Republicans worried about the tab Alaska would have to pick up in the future. "Regardless of federal funding, we cannot afford the Medicaid system we have now," says Republican state Sen. Pete Kelly. "Our current system is broken." Walker hopes to begin enrollment in September and have 20,000 signed up within one year. The Wall Street Journal observes that the move will "bring the number of states opting into the law's expansion close to 30 and make it more likely other states would follow."
– CNN says its New York offices and studios have been given the all-clear after a bomb threat was phoned in Thursday night. The threat at Manhattan's Time Warner Center forced the evacuation of the facility and the closure of part of West 58th Street to vehicle and pedestrian traffic, the New York Post reports. Police say a man with a southern accent called CNN at around 10pm and said five bombs had been placed in the building, reports the AP. Fire alarm bells rang in the newsroom and Don Lemon's CNN Tonight, which had been on a commercial break, ceased broadcasting as the network switched to taped programming. After around 30 minutes, Lemon and Brian Stelter resumed broadcasting from outside the building. "We were told to evacuate the building and to do it as soon as possible," Lemon told viewers. "We grabbed what we could and got out of the building and now, we are standing outside of the building." After the all-clear was given, CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker thanked authorities for the swift action and praised the "patience and professionalism" of staff. (CNN had to evacuate the facility after a suspicious device was found in October.)
– When US inspectors looked at four border police bases in Afghanistan—funded by the US at a cost of almost $19 million—they found most of the facilities on three of those bases had either been abandoned or weren't being used as intended, the Wall Street Journal reports. The report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a US government watchdog agency, uncovered numerous examples of poor construction work: One base has no water supply, a second is experiencing sewage overflow, some are missing drainpipes, others have leaking fuel lines or broken doors. One even includes a well house being used as … a chicken coop. The US Army Corps of Engineers says it is working on fixing the issues. The report also finds that the US plan to fund hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects in the country is extremely behind schedule—and that some of the ambitious plans may actually hurt the country, the Washington Post adds. The report raises concerns about the 2014 withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and questions whether local forces are prepared to take over security duties—and whether this new infrastructure can be successfully maintained by a country with limited resources. The Post digs into a $220 million electricity project in Kandahar that it cites as a prime example.
– President Obama warned Moammar Gadhafi today if he doesn't immediately pull back his troops from major cities and cease attacks on protesters, the world community will make good on its promise of military action, reports CNN. He emphasized that the US would not act alone and that no American ground troops would be involved, notes AP. Gadhafi has already declared a cease-fire in the wake of last night's UN Security Council resolution, but reports of attacks on rebels continue. “Let me be clear, these terms are not negotiable—these terms are not negotiable,” said Obama. “If Colonel Qaddafi does not comply with the resolution, the international community will impose consequences. The resolution will be enforced through military action."
– Cristiano Ronaldo is considered one of the best soccer players ever, and he proved why on Friday. He scored three times, including one with about 2 minutes left in regulation, to lift Portugal into a 3-3 tie with Spain in their World Cup opener. The feat makes him, at age 33 years and 131 days, the oldest player to notch a World Cup hat trick, notes ESPN. He's also only the fourth player ever to score in four World Cups. Ronaldo's first two goals weren't perhaps of the write-home-about-it variety, including one that went in with help from Spain's goalie, but the third one was incredible, per the BBC. It came on a free kick, and you can watch it here. The New York Times' headline on all this refers to a "draw for the ages, starring a player for all time."
– Most toddlers celebrate turning 2 with cake and presents. Yoshiki Fujimoto spent his birthday lost on a Japanese mountain, the subject of a frantic three-day search after he disappeared while with his grandfather. The South China Morning Post reports on the "miracle" of a volunteer finding Yoshiki Wednesday, perched with no shoes on a rock in the middle of a stream on Yashiro Island, almost 72 hours after he was reported missing. The Asahi Shimbun notes the boy had been headed to the beach on Aug. 12 with his grandfather and 3-year-old brother when Yoshiki decided he wanted to turn around and return to his great-grandfather's home about 300 feet away, which his grandfather didn't stop him from doing. Shortly afterward, it was discovered he never made it back. Nearly 400 cops and other rescuers—as well as drones and search dogs, per Channel NewsAsia—were deployed to find Yoshiki, who doctors feared would succumb to dehydration and Japan's summer heat. Being credited with Yoshiki's discovery: 78-year-old volunteer Haruo Obata, who correctly guessed the boy was more likely to have climbed up the mountain rather than down it. Obata tells the Shimbun that as he called the boy's name around 6:30am Wednesday, he heard an "I'm here" and found the child, who "snatched a bag of candy" from Obata's hands as he held it out to him. Yoshiki was found to be dehydrated, with tick bites and scratches, but otherwise fine. "I'm so grateful my son returned safely," Yoshiki's mother told local TV. The boy's grandfather tells the Morning Post, "I apologize, as it was I who took my eyes off him."
– While Homer and Bart Simpson might be glad to see the back of Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner, and Reverend Lovejoy, can the show survive without the man who voices them and at least 20 other recurring characters? Harry Shearer, who has voiced an impressive range of characters on The Simpsons for 26 seasons, is leaving the show, which Fox recently renewed for two more seasons, Variety reports. His other regular characters include Otto, Smithers, and Dr. Hibbert, as well as more rarely seen ones like Satan, Adolf Hitler, Bill Clinton, and George Bush, according to his website. Shearer appears to be leaving over a contract dispute: In a series of tweets last night, he quoted producer James L. Brooks as saying "show will go on, Harry will not be part of it, wish him the best." Shearer added: "This because I wanted what we've always had: the freedom to do other work" and thanked Simpsons fans for their support. Trouble seems to have been brewing for a while, the Hollywood Reporter notes: He was the only holdout in recent negotiations and tweeted "Doesn't this show have a cast?" after the renewal was announced last week. (Check out 14 interesting facts about The Simpsons.)
– As thousands of people deal with treacherous flooding in southern Louisiana, a new danger may enter into the mix: increased risk of a mosquito surge over the next few weeks, and with them, the potential spread of the Zika virus, a tropical medicine expert tells USA Today. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine says that mosquito eggs lying around in vessels such as tires and buckets may start hatching en masse once the floodwaters pull back, and if enough of those eggs come from Zika-carrying Aedes aegypti insects, it's going to be "crunch time." Hotez also warns the risk could similarly rise for other diseases linked to mosquitoes, including West Nile. Louisiana so far hasn't had a documented case of Zika contracted locally, though there have been around two dozen cases of travel-related Zika reported there, per the Shreveport Times. But another expert isn't so sure about the Zika risk. Ben Beard, who helps run the CDC's Zika outbreak initiative, concurs there may soon be a proliferation of the blood-hungry mosquitoes in Louisiana due to the massive flooding, but not necessarily of the Zika-carrying kind, as that variety is tinier and therefore more likely to be swept away with the floodwaters. Meanwhile, Zika is already affecting the Bayou State in another way: Per KENS, blood donors are desperately being sought there because locals who've recently traveled to Zika-affected regions can't give blood for about a month after they've come back from their trip, a logistical issue that, along with other factors, has caused a blood shortage in the state. (The Zika situation in Florida isn't improving.)
– There've been no shortage of complaints about how the media is handling the candidacy of Donald Trump—but now one media outlet is putting its advertising revenue where its mouth is and axing a deal to run ads this fall from the Republican National Committee. That outlet is BuzzFeed, and in an email to employees Monday morning, company CEO Jonah Peretti outlined the reasons it has nixed what a source tells Politico was a $1.3 million ad buy promoting Trump. "The Trump campaign is directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States and around the world and in some cases, such as his proposed ban on international travel for Muslims, would make it impossible for our employees to do their jobs," Peretti writes, explaining the deal was originally signed in April, before Trump became the presumptive nominee. Although Peretti notes that BuzzFeed staff "certainly don't like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company," he adds that "the tone and substance of his campaign are unique in the history of modern US politics" and that an exception must be made. "We don't run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won't accept Trump ads for the exact same reason," he writes. Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief, says that editorial coverage of Trump will continue as usual, noting in his own email: "This was Jonah's call, and the prerogative of a publisher." (Read the full email at BuzzFeed.)
– When law professor Anita Hill faced the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 to testify about the sexual harassment she said she endured from then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, she also faced down attacks on her character and credibility—and many (including Hill herself) still blame Joe Biden, the senator who led the panel, for allowing that to happen. Now he tells Teen Vogue he's sorry for his role. "I believed Anita Hill. I voted against Clarence Thomas," he says. "And my one regret is that I wasn't able to tone down the attacks on her by some of my Republican friends. I mean, they really went after her." He says he felt his hands were tied as he tried to simply play "judge" in the proceedings, but he wonders if he could've done more, including subpoenaing witnesses who may have backed Hill up. "I wish I had been able to do more for Anita Hill," he says. "I owe her an apology." Also making the rounds, per the New York Times: a video of Biden on The View Wednesday morning, in which he consoled Meghan McCain as they talked about the aggressive brain cancer both her dad, Sen. John McCain, and Biden's son, the late Beau Biden, were struck by. After an emotional McCain confessed to Biden she couldn't get through his book on Beau's life and his battle with glioblastoma, Biden took her hand and said to her: "One of the things that gave Beau courage, my word, was John." He then discussed recent breakthroughs in dealing with the cancer and told her that "if anybody can make it," it was the senator. "You gotta maintain hope." Among the online reaction to the segment, which can be viewed here, was a tweet from John McCain: "Thank you @JoeBiden & the entire Biden family for serving as an example & source of strength for my own family."
– Fart jokes are available on 3,000-year-old Sumerian stone tablets but apparently not on Apple's latest piece of 21st-century technology. The developer of Fart Watch, a whoopee cushion-inspired app that boasts it can "turn your Apple Watch and iPhone into a remote-controlled fart machine," tells Cult of Mac that Apple told him it had been rejected, because the company noticed it "is primarily a fart app" and "we do not accept fart apps on Apple Watch." It appears that fart apps go against the "sophisticated, elegant image" Apple wants for the watch, writes Chris Mills at Gizmodo, but it's "probably just a matter of time until someone jailbreaks the Watch, and sideloading galore can begin." (A French inventor says he can make farts smell like roses—or chocolate.)
– Maine State Police are investigating whether an innkeeper violated state law in an essay contest with her 210-year-old country inn as the prize. Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve McCausland said today an investigation was opened into whether the "Win an Inn" contest violated laws governing games of chance. The Boston Globe first reported that some contest losers felt the odds were stacked against them, contending that Center Lovell Inn owner Janice Sage marketed the contest to "dreamers" but instead awarded the prize to a couple with hospitality business experience in the Virgin Islands. "One of the many allegations against Janice Sage and the contest she sponsored is that the advertising of the contest ... was illegally deceptive and violated consumer-rights regulations, intentionally coercing thousands of people to enter a contest that they never had an actual chance of winning," says the founder of the Center Lovell Contest Fair Practices Commission, a group made up of dozens of unhappy contestants. The entry fee was $125. Sage told the Globe she received fewer than the 7,500 entries she sought, but it was still enough to fund her retirement.
– Unless a surprise challenger emerges at the last minute, the race to replace Eric Cantor as the House's second-ranking Republican is already over. House Rules Committee chief Pete Sessions says he has dropped his bid to become majority leader "after thoughtful consideration and discussion" with colleagues, leaving Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy as the only lawmaker known to be seeking the position, reports Reuters. Cantor—the first majority leader ever to lose a primary—is stepping down at the end of July following his shock defeat at the hands of little-known Tea Party challenger David Brat. "It became obvious to me that the measures necessary to run a successful campaign would have created unnecessary and painful division within our party," Sessions said. The leadership election will be held by secret ballot next week but the more competitive race is now the one to succeed McCarthy as whip, the Hill finds. McCarthy's chief deputy, Rep. Peter Roskam, is in the running, along with Rep. Steve Scalise, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, and Rep. Marlin Stutzman, a hardline conservative who was punished last year for defying House leaders, the Indianapolis Star notes.
– Some stores are trying to resist Black Friday madness by refusing to open on Thanksgiving, but for die-hard shoppers, it's never too early to get ready for the mega-sales. Take Vicky Torres and Juanita Salas, who were already bundled up and camped out in front of the Beaumont, Calif., Best Buy weeks before everyone starts defrosting their turkeys. They've been there since last Wednesday, ABC 7 reports, and they're "good to go" for the duration, Torres says, with warm clothing, hot coffee, and food. "The point is to get the sales, because everybody is on a fixed income and we don't have that kind of money to splurge," says Salas' husband, Jacob Alva. The two women alternate who stays overnight to save their places in line, though there's no indication from reports that anyone else is actually in said line yet. If both women have to leave for a bathroom break or for any other reason, Alva takes over, he tells the San Bernardino County Sun; he also charges their phones and brings them sustenance. He's not particularly worried about his wife's safety, claiming "the cops and security out here are really good." Torres and Salas did the same "fun" thing last year—Best Buy's Beaumont manager tells the Sun "we love Vicky here." So what's their holiday must-have this time around? A 50-inch high-def TV for $199, they tell ABC. (Cyber Monday might be even bigger than Black Friday.)
– Lots of girls are going to have to go pretty wild to pay off Joe Francis' legal bills: A jury has awarded casino mogul Steve Wynn $20 million in his slander suit against the Girls Gone Wild soft-porn tycoon, reports the Los Angeles Times. Francis had publicly claimed that Wynn threatened to have him killed and buried in the desert over a $2 million gambling debt, but the jury decided that the allegations were false and Wynn had been slandered. The jury will now decide whether to hit Francis with punitive damages, which could be as much as $60 million, TMZ reports.
– James Cameron's Avatar had its world premiere in London last night, and audience members and critics are sworn to secrecy for now. Based on the inevitable leaks and pseudo-reviews, the 3-D epic is pretty good: Anna Keir, the Independent: It's "rather good. Surprisingly, for a film this rich in action and this beautiful to watch, Cameron doesn't overegg the 3D-ness of it all, which makes those moments, when they come, even more of a joy to watch." Sam Rubin, KTLA-TV: "This is another rare example where the quality of the movie does indeed exceed the hype." He predicts Oscar nominations for best picture and best director. The Sneak, the Sun: "Everything feels real—and it’s as if you are immersed in the action. ... The Sneak’s advice is to make sure you can say you were there when the future of cinema began.” Mark Brown, the Guardian: "The film does not make you sick and it is not a disaster. By saying Avatar was really much, much better than expected, that it looked amazing and that the story was gripping—if cheesy in many places—the Guardian is in technical breach of the agreement."
– A British lawyer with a penchant for puzzles decided to pop the question to his girlfriend in what she calls an incredibly "geeky way": in the local paper's crossword. Per the BBC, Matthew Dick contacted the British Times' puzzle editor via Twitter and arranged for yesterday's crossword to spell out his marriage proposal to Delyth Hughes through a series of underlined, personalized clues, including "Pretty Welsh girl widely thought not to be all there" (six-letter answer: Delyth) and "'Will you marry me,' say, that's formal also rude" (answer: proposal). As Hughes pondered the puzzle, Dick took the engagement ring out of his pocket. "She looked so surprised and didn't say anything for about 30 seconds, before then saying 'no,' which she thought was hilarious," he tells the Times, per the AP. Hughes, who did eventually say yes, says she was "dumbfounded that he'd gone to such lengths," adding, "It was also bloody typical, as he's a smart-arse at the best of times. … It's so special and such a geeky way of doing it." (This crossword puzzle possibly contained a code to carry out a hit on Hugo Chavez's brother.)
– Stephen Colbert's well-covered joke about President Trump, Vladimir Putin, and oral sex has netted more than 5,700 complaints to the FCC since the May 1 episode of The Late Show. Upon request from Politico, the FCC released the first 100 of those complaints, which center on hate speech, indecency, and homophobia and come from both liberals and conservatives. One viewer was thankful their "children, elderly parents, and other loved ones" didn't hear the joke. Another told the FCC: "It is your job to keep these Leftists from dragging this nation further into the gutter." Most of the complaints advocated for a fine against Colbert. FCC chairman Ajit Pai says they are reviewing the complaints, but that doesn't mean the complaints have merit. A lawyer tells Politico there's "zero chance" the FCC brings an obscenity case against Colbert and a "less than zero chance" such a case would be a success. Colbert is also unlikely to face punishment from CBS. Both the late-night host and network chairman Les Moonves joked about the situation during a CBS upfront presentation Wednesday in New York, the Los Angeles Times reports. "There's only one word to describe this president, and the FCC has asked me not to use it anymore," Colbert said following a song-and-dance number. Moonves added The Late Show is very popular with "FCC investigators 18 to 49."
– Five years after his wife suffered a fatal head injury in a skiing accident, Liam Neeson is dealing with a similar family trauma, reports the Daily Mail. The actor's 31-year-old nephew, Ronan Sexton, fell 20 feet from a telephone box onto the pavement in East Sussex, Britain, and is in critical condition with head injuries. Sexton, the son of Neeson's sister, Bernadette, had been out with friends when the stunt went wrong about 4am Sunday, reports the Telegraph. Earlier this year, Neeson said the death of Natasha Richardson still didn't seem real.
– In open defiance of the UN, North Korea has executed its third nuclear test, prompting global condemnation among leaders from the US to Russia to Japan. The latest test involved a "miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously" in 2006 and 2009, the country said. Calling the test a "highly provocative act," President Obama has urged "swift and credible action by the international community," and the UN Security Council is planning a meeting this morning to address the issue, the New York Times reports. Pyongyang said afterward that the test was a "first response" to US hostility and warned of unspecified "second and third measures of greater intensity." The test has also angered China, Pyongyang's one major ally, Reuters notes. It's "hugely insulting to China, which now can be expected to follow through with threats to impose sanctions," says an analyst. Thus far, China has cited "firm opposition" to a test conducted "heedless of widespread international opposition," the AP reports. According to South Korea, seismic activity suggests the explosion measured some 6 to 7 kilotons—more than previous tests but less than the 20 kilotons detonated in Hiroshima. Seismic tests by several countries suggested the test, which the North called "safe and perfect," occurred near the location of its predecessors; the US Geological Survey says it was just a kilometer underground. Over at the Washington Post, the crack staff has found the exact test site—on Google Maps, just off "Nuclear Test Rd."
– In a move that some analysts fear could be the start of a "global currency war," China's yuan dropped again today, dragging other Asian currencies down with it. Today's drop against the dollar was the second biggest since 1994, exceeded only by yesterday's, and the rapid fall has led some to believe that the country is trying to boost exports and create jobs at the expense of rivals like South Korea, Reuters notes. It's not clear how long the drop will continue: China has described the devaluation as a "one-off," and the New York Times notes that with $3.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves, China certainly has the ability to prevent any unwanted falls in the yuan. A change in the tightly controlled exchange-rate mechanism means the yuan could continue to drop 2% a day, the AP reports. The IMF has welcomed the move as a way to give market forces more control of a currency that China wants to play a bigger role globally, but US lawmakers are skeptical. "For years, China has rigged the rules and played games with its currency," says Sen. Chuck Schumer, per the AP. "Rather than changing their ways, the Chinese government seems to be doubling down." Today's drop in the yuan led to sharp falls in world markets, which analysts believe were caused by fears that China's economy is in worse shape than previously thought, the Guardian reports.
– Late rapper Tupac Shakur apparently had plenty of time to reflect while in jail in early 1995: He wrote a letter to ex-girlfriend Madonna explaining the reasons for their breakup, which he said happened partly because she was white, TMZ reports. "For you to be seen with a black man wouldn't in any way jeopardize your career, if anything it would make you seem that much more open and exciting," Tupac writes in the letter, which can be seen here. "But for me at least in my previous perception I felt due to my 'image' I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was." Madonna didn't reveal until 2015 that she used to date Tupac, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996, Mashable reports. In the letter, Tupac tells Madonna he never meant to hurt her, saying, "I must apologize to you because like you said I haven't been the kind of friend I know I am capable of being." He says he has "grown both spiritually and mentally" since their relationship. He also tells her he was hurt by an interview in which she said, "I'm off to rehabilitate all the rappers and basketball players." Auction site GottaHaveRockandRoll.com plans to auction the letter off later this month, with $100,000 as the starting bid. (Another Tupac letter from jail sold for more than $170,000 two years ago.)
– Surprisingly enough, this idea didn't come from Silvio Berlusconi: Italy plans to include things like illegal drug sales, prostitution, and cigarette smuggling in its GDP figures for the first time, immediately giving the size of the economy a big boost, Bloomberg reports. Prime Minister Mario Renzi has pledged to cut the country's deficit to 2.6% of GDP, a target that will be a lot easier to hit when illegal sectors of the economy are included. The European Union's statistical agency has provided guidelines for estimating the contribution of illegal activities to the economy, and the move is expected to add up to 2% to Italy's GDP, ANSA reports. (As for Berlusconi, he's doing community service at a hospice after being convicted of tax fraud.)
– The Southern Avenger rides alone once more. Jack Hunter has left Rand Paul's employ amidst a firestorm of controversy about his past as a Confederate flag-wearing secessionist shock jock and columnist. Hunter first broke the news to his friend W. James Antle III at the Daily Caller. "I've long been a conservative, and years ago, a much more politically incorrect (and campy) one," Hunter said. "But there's a significant difference between being politically incorrect and racist." He intends to return to punditry. Paul had previously stuck by Hunter. "I think the things he said about John Wilkes Booth are absolutely stupid," he told the Huffington Post two weeks ago. But "if I thought he was a white supremacist, he would be fired immediately." Instead it seems he's been fired slowly. Paul today said he and Hunter had come to a "mutual decision" that he should leave. "I think everybody occasionally has people that work for them who sometimes have a background that damages what you’re trying to do," Paul explained, according to CN|2.
– Residents of the Milky Way, meet z8_GND_5296. That's the not-so-great name of a newly discovered galaxy that just happens to be the most distant—and thus oldest—ever spotted, reports CBS News. Scientists say it formed a mere 700 million years after the Big Bang, and it could shed further light on how the universe came to be. The BBC adds this little mind-bender: "Because it takes light so long to travel from the outer edge of the universe to us, the galaxy appears as it was 13.1 billion years ago." Not mind-bending enough? Try this from the Washington Post: "We’re looking 95 percent of the way back to the Big Bang. To put that into human terms, that would be like an 80-year-old watching a video of himself on his fourth birthday." The discovery comes courtesy of images taken by the Hubble Telescope and follow-up analysis by astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. One weird quirk of the galaxy: It produces stars at a much faster clip than our own, a trait that might have been more typical in the early days of the universe. So can we go even further back? In principle, yes, explains National Geographic, but we'll need bigger telescopes.
– No sooner had rumors of Chuck Hagel's pending nomination to head up the Pentagon leaked than lips were flapping about what a bad idea it was. Hagel "is an in-your-face nomination by the president," charged Lindsey Graham, who "would be the most antagonistic secretary of defense toward the state of Israel in our nation’s history." Texas Sen. Ted Cruz blasted President Obama as "a president who has drunk the tea. He's high on re-election right now." Mitch McConnell, in an interview taped yesterday, was slightly warmer, saying, "he ought to be given a fair hearing, like any other nominee, and he will be. I’m going to wait and see how the hearings go and whether Chuck’s views square with the job he would be nominated to do.” Elsewhere on your Sunday dial, as per Politico: Dick Durbin on Hagel: “Chuck Hagel was a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war, a person that includes service on the Foreign Relations Committee as well as the Intelligence Committee. Yes, he is a serious candidate if the president chooses to name him.” Freshman Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on Hagel: "I would vote against him. Mr. Hagel came out against the surge the week that I returned from Iraq in 2006, said the war couldn't be won. No one had told us that when we were fighting it in 2006." McConnell on a potential challenge from Ashley Judd: "Look, the election is going to occur in 2014. In the meantime, I'm going to focus on the issues we have going on here."
– Marc Lynch hopes "fervently" that the UN's decision on Libya causes Moammar Gadhafi's regime to fall quickly. It could "reverse the flagging fortunes of the Arab uprisings" and put both the US and international community on the right side of the protest movement, he writes in Foreign Policy. But don't underestimate the risks, he warns, especially if the "intervention degenerates into a long quagmire of air strikes, grinding street battles, and growing pressure for the introduction of outside ground forces." The problem is that "Arab support for the intervention is not nearly as deep as it seems and will not likely survive an extended war," he writes. If Libyan civilians start getting killed by foreign troops, the current anti-Gadhafi narrative "could change quickly into an Iraq-like rage against Western imperialism." Gadhafi's quick declaration of a cease-fire suggests some kind of political settlement could be in the offing. "Let's hope." (Click to read about worries that Gadhafi's move is just a ploy.)
– Bahrain protesters reclaimed their symbolic Pearl Square today, after the nation's leaders ordered the military to withdraw in a key concession that came just a day after a brutal crackdown that injured at least 50 and drew a sharp condemnation from President Obama. Members of the opposition chanted, "We are victorious," as they poured into the square carrying flags and flowers. Bahrain's king is signaling that he's open to talks with the opposition, reports the Washington Post, appointing his son, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa, as point man. The crown prince appeared briefly on state TV, reports the AP, to urge talks and calm.
– The Oscar nominations come once a year, and so too the avalanche of stories on the biggest snubs. But in terms of 2015, Richard Lawson at Vanity Fair puts it thusly: "Don’t the nominations this year feel so wrong?" Our roundup of this year's particularly vocal snub-coverage: Director Phil Lord is grabbing a ton of headlines for his "touché" response to the Lego Movie somehow not being nominated for Best Animated Feature: "It's okay. Made my own!" he tweeted along with an image of an Oscar made entirely from yellow Legos. He's nearing 12,000 retweets. How Jezebel sums it up: 2015 Oscar Nominations Snub Basically Everybody Who Isn't a White Dude. Mashable notes "this will be the whitest group since 1998." In that vein, Scott Mendelson at Forbes zeros in on one "egregious" omission: Selma director Ava DuVernay. His lengthy piece explores why her snub matters. Mashable notes that no black female director has ever gotten a nod; only three black male directors have (John Singleton, Boyz n the Hood; Lee Daniels, Precious; Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave). None won. Lawson looks beyond Selma's Best Director snub, expanding it: "That the movie’s wonderful acting, directing, writing, editing, and cinematography were shut out is a real oversight, sad in the story it tells and troubling in how grimly predictable it was." (Its only nods were Best Picture and Best Original Song.) For a meaty rundown, check out Huffington Post's list of today's 29 biggest snubs.
– Gennady Kernes, the mayor of the Eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, was shot in the back this morning, and doctors are currently performing emergency surgery and "fighting for his life," city hall tells the AP. The circumstances of the shooting are unclear, though a Ukrainian report spotted by the Wall Street Journal said he was swimming in a local spring. Kernes was a staunch ally of ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, notes the BBC, and was accused of sending activists to Kiev to harass pro-Western protesters against him. When Yanukovych fled the country, Kernes briefly did too, before returning and declaring that he now supported a united Ukraine. Kharkiv has so far managed to fend off the pro-Russian separatists that have taken over many other Eastern Ukrainian cities. Kernes is also Jewish, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency points out, and was the target of anti-Semitic hate speech during his mayoral election. Meanwhile: Masked militants today seized the city hall building in yet another town—Kostyantynivka, which lies between Slovyansk and Donetsk—and raised a flag proclaiming it part of the "Donestsk Republic." They also reportedly control the town's police station. The self-proclaimed mayor of Slovyansk held a press conference yesterday in which he paraded before the cameras a group of European military observers separatists had captured, declaring them "prisoners of war." He accused them of being spies for NATO, and said he might exchange them for pro-Russian activists held by Kiev, CNN reports. The observers said they'd agreed to the press conferences so that their families could see them. Shortly after the appearance, the separatists released one of the observers for health reasons; the Swedish captive had been suffering from diabetes.
– Joseph Kony has named his 22-year-old son as deputy leader of his Lord's Resistance Army—and top Ugandan general Sam Kavuma says the move is a sign that Kony's control over the guerrilla force is weakening. Fighters have separated into different autonomous groups roaming across remote parts of Africa, and "the role of the son is an indication Kony has lost contact with most of his commanders, some who have been killed by our forces and others are in disarray, with the rebels becoming weaker," Kavuma says, according to AFP. Salim Saleh is said to have spent his life fighting with his father's violent rebel forces. "Previously the son was in charge of the group providing security to the father, but now he has an added responsibility of field command," Kavuma says. The LRA continues to evade Ugandan troops and US special forces attempting to hunt it down. In November, there were reports Kony was ill and his reign might be nearing an end. In a report last week, the UN said Kony is hiding in a Sudanese-controlled area of the disputed border between South Sudan and the Central African Republic, al-Jazeera reports, and Voice of America adds that a UN official predicted Kony's capture is "coming pretty soon."
– Detroit police are ushering homeless people out of a tourist area and leaving them miles away—in some cases outside the city itself, the ACLU alleges in a federal complaint. Officers are "approaching individuals who appear to be homeless in the Greektown area, forcing them into police vans, and deserting them miles away," the group says in a press release, citing a yearlong probe into the practice. The ACLU contends those subject to such treatment are having constitutional rights like due process violated. Police say they'll investigate, but opted not to comment further, the Detroit Free Press reports. The ACLU is calling on the Justice Department to get involved and wants the city to explicitly direct police that such practices are illegal. "Often (people are) being dropped off late at night in neighborhoods that they don’t know. Police often take any money they have out of their pockets and force them to walk back to Detroit, with no guarantee of any safety," an ACLU attorney tells WWJ Newsradio 950. An ACLU rep says the organization learned of the practice from one of the city's warming centers. CBS Detroit has the stories of five people who the ACLU says were "taken for a ride": among them, a 37-year-old who says he was once dropped off eight miles from where he was picked up.
– The Supreme Court has denied Virginia’s request to fast-track the state’s case against the health care law, MSNBC reports. Virginia’s attorney general had sought to take the case—which calls the law’s requirement that almost all Americans purchase health care unconstitutional—straight to the high court, a legal move that's hardly ever allowed. The decision means that the Virginia case, one of several against the law, will keep progressing through US appeals courts. AG Ken Cuccinelli said he asked for speedy review to end "crippling and costly uncertainty" about the law. The matter is likely to reach the Supreme Court by early summer 2012, reports the AP. MSNBC notes that when it does, all nine justices are set to hear it, despite efforts by conservative groups to remove Elena Kagan from the mix. The groups held that she should recuse herself because she’d been involved in the matter as solicitor general. She apparently took part in the court's order today, as there was no announcement that any justice sat out.
– It sounds like something that might have happened on The OC: Mischa Barton is suing her mother, claiming the greedy "momager" withheld the actress's earnings, among other things. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Barton, 29, says mom Nuala Barton "had absolutely no experience or training" and simply "[posed] as a talent manager" in order to exploit and defraud her daughter. The lawsuit accuses Nuala of controlling Barton's earnings while only giving Barton an occasional "allowance," and even of lying about her earnings for one movie "so that she could pocket the difference—on top of her hefty management fee—all without Barton's knowledge." According to the Los Angeles Times, Barton's suit says she entered into a verbal contract with her mom when she was 8; her mom was to get 10% of her gross earnings. In 2006, when Barton was 20, she claims her mother convinced her to buy a $7.8 million home in Beverly Hills as an investment vehicle ... but that Nuala and Barton's dad now live in the home, where Barton is "not welcome." There are myriad additional accusations surrounding forged signatures, a handbag line, a fashion boutique, and endorsement contracts, along with allegations of "bullying and verbal abuse." As TMZ notes, the lawsuit gets decidedly personal: Barton says neither of her parents have had a job other than managing her for more than 10 years, and they both "sit back expecting their daughter's hard work and dedication to her craft to support their lifestyle." Nuala is, as you might expect, no longer Barton's talent manager. (Click to read about 10 more momagers and dadagers.)
– Slavery continues to afflict almost 30 million people across the planet—in every one of 162 countries surveyed in a new report. India is home to 13.9 million slaves, by far the largest number; relative to population, however, Mauritania has the highest rate, with 4% of the population enslaved (though other groups have placed the figure as high as 20%). The new data comes from Australian activist organization Walk Free; its Global Slavery Index includes cases of human trafficking, forced labor and marriage, debt bondage, and other forms of exploitative control, Reuters notes. Three-quarters of slaves are in just 10 countries, led by China, with 2.9 million; Pakistan, with 2.1 million; Nigeria; Ethiopia; and Russia. By percentage, Mauritania—where a "chattel" system sees masters with "total ownership over (slaves) and their descendants"—is followed by Haiti, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. Iceland, meanwhile, has both the lowest number and the lowest proportion of slaves. The US has some 59,000 people experiencing such exploitation, al-Jazeera America reports. Numbers of enslaved people in wealthy countries is often "six to 10 times higher" than leaders believe, weakening anti-slavery efforts, says an expert.
– Alaska has experienced some unusual natural phenomena lately—including a burping volcano and a desperate need for snow—and it just took another turn into some more weather-related weirdness. Per the Alaska Dispatch News, the mercury at an airport in Southeast Alaska registered at 71 degrees on Thursday, which University of Alaska Fairbanks climate scientist Brian Brettschneider says set a record high for temps in March, beating out a peak of 69 degrees set in March 1915. "The fact that it's March—it's pretty amazing," a National Weather Service meteorologist in Juneau says. "It's a big deal." What scientists say has brought on this thermometer-busting breach in Klawock, which KTVA notes is northwest of Ketchikan on Prince of Wales Island, is a high-pressure ridge that Brettschneider tells the Dispatch News is "basically [like we] had a June or July air mass move in in March. If we had June or July sun, it would have been 80 degrees, but we didn't." Other towns have similarly recorded record highs, and the warm weather is, as of now, anticipated to continue through May. (Alaska also just had the weirdest murder plot in a while.)
– After Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders faced off in the first Democratic debate since Sanders' big win in New Hampshire, critics agreed there was one big loser: Henry Kissinger, who came under merciless attack from Bernie Sanders. "I'm proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend," Sanders told Clinton. Here's what people had to say about the candidates' performances: "This was Clinton's best debate of the election," decides Chris Cilliza at the Washington Post. She was "in total control all night" and scored plenty of points against Sanders, he writes, while Sanders stumbled despite an improved command of foreign policy—and will probably regret claiming that he will be better on race relations than President Obama. Clinton didn't score any home runs but she still won, according to Matthew Yglesias at Vox. Nothing happened that would cause Clinton supporters to think twice, he writes, while voters getting a first look at Sanders would not have been impressed: The candidate turned in a "dangerously complacent debate performance" and failed to assuage "doubts about his electability" or add anything new to his critique of Clinton. Scot Lehigh at the Boston Globe also calls the debate for Clinton. She came out on top by "presenting herself as a deeply knowledgeable candidate whose progressive stands are tempered by real-world practicality," he writes. This was the case in her attacks on Sanders' plan for a single-payer health care system, where Clinton stressed that the "focus should be on expanding coverage and care to those who still lack it, rather than starting from scratch and overhauling the entirety of the system." Both candidates "performed well initially in talking about systemic racism and reforming the criminal justice system," but the "calm, cool, and collected" Clinton prevailed, writes Lucia Graves at the Guardian. Sanders, she writes, "was oddly on the defensive despite what has been momentum in his favor, starting out the night more combative than Clinton and wasting his time on petty one-liners." Click for some of the debate's best lines.
– Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. stepped up its retreat from China yesterday with the sale of a controlling interest in three TV channels to a government-backed fund. The company insists that it plans to maintain a strong presence in China but analysts believe the move signals that News Corp., frustrated by interference from Beijing, has finally given up on its hopes of building a broadcasting business in the country, the Independent reports. News Corp. Asia and Europe CEO James Murdoch, Rupert's son, "doesn’t believe that they can build a business in China," an industry executive tells the Financial Times. "This is a clear sign that they aren’t interested in China anymore, but they can’t say that.”
– A rare attack from a rare tiger killed a zookeeper in Japan on Monday. Officials say 40-year-old Akira Furosho was found bleeding from the neck in a cage in the Hirakawa Zoological Park in the southern city of Kagoshima, the BBC reports. They believe he was attacked by Riku, one of the zoo's four white tigers. The 375-pound animal, a 5-year-old male, was sedated with a tranquilizer gun. Police are investigating procedures at the zoo, where the manual states that keepers are not allowed to enter display cages until tigers have been moved to their sleeping chambers, reports the Japan Times. (Last year, two white tiger cubs killed a novice zookeeper in India.)
– Florida Gov. Rick Scott will not hand his job back to former Gov. Charlie Crist. The Republican Scott fended off the challenge from Republican-turned-Democrat Crist tonight in one of the higher-profile races of the 36 gubernatorial contests on the ballot. Elsewhere, Wisconsin's Scott Walker defeated Mary Burke to keep his seat and, as the AP notes, remain a viable presidential candidate for 2016. In Texas, Wendy Davis' rise in state politics hit a major barrier, with state Attorney General Greg Abbott easily defeating the abortion rights advocate, reports the Austin American-Statesman. As one analyst observes, Davis probably could have won the red-state race only if Abbott made a major gaffe, and he didn't oblige. Also: Pennsylvania: Democrat Tom Wolf beat incumbent Republican Tom Corbett. Kansas: Republican incumbent Sam Brownback defeated Democrat Paul Davis, even though Brownback's conservative agenda had some members of his own party backing Davis. Maryland: After a surprise win over Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Republican businessman Larry Hogan will succeed Democrat Martin O'Malley. Massachusetts: Republican Charlie Baker won, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley's bid to become the first woman elected governor in her state. Illinois: Republican businessman Bruce Rauner prevailed in a tight contest to unseat incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn. Georgia: Jimmy Carter's grandson, Jason Carter, failed to unseat Republican Nathan Deal.
– Hillary Clinton had to be fast on her feet during a speech in Las Vegas today. A woman in the audience chucked a shoe that whizzed past her head, reports the Las Vegas Sun. "Good thing she didn't play softball like I did," said Clinton, drawing laughter. The unidentified woman apparently threw a stack of papers, too, before being escorted from the convention to face arrest, reports the Review-Journal. Clinton was speaking before the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, and the woman wasn't part of the convention, says a spokesperson. It's unclear at this point what prompted her protest. "My goodness, I didn’t know that solid waste management was so controversial,” said Clinton. (Click to see George W. Bush's famous close call with a shoe in Iraq.)
– Two people are dead following shootings at a shopping mall and grocery store Friday in Maryland, and police have a possible suspect in custody. The first shooting took place around 11am outside the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, with two men and one woman hit, Fox 5 DC reports. Two of the victims were reportedly shot when attempting to help the first victim, and all three were hospitalized. According to ABC News, one of the men has died and another victim is in critical condition. Police say there is no indication the shooter knew the victims, the AP reports. The second shooting took place at a grocery store about eight miles from the mall and left a woman dead, the Washington Post reports. It's unclear if the two shootings are related. Police say Eulalio Tordil, wanted on suspicion of shooting and killing his estranged wife outside a Maryland high school on Thursday, may be responsible for one or both of Friday's shootings. He was arrested Friday afternoon, according to NBC News. Tordil allegedly followed his wife to the school, where she was picking up her children, and shot her. Police say he also shot and injured a person attempting to help his wife. CNN reports the 62-year-old Tordil is a law enforcement officer with the Federal Protective Service who was put on administrative leave in March after a protective order was issued against him.
– Its mission had a rocky start, but China's Jade Rabbit moon rover is now sending back some nifty high-resolution images of the lunar surface, reports CNN. China has made them available to download here, though Business Insider finds the process "frustratingly complicated." Luckily, it adds, Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society has done much of the heavy lifting, so head here if you'd like to see many, many more.
– Look up into the skies Sunday night and you might just get to see the aurora borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights. Scientists at the NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center say that aurora lights, which are usually only seen in the extreme north and south of the globe, should be visible over much of Canada and the northern United States late Sunday and early Monday, USA Today reports. That includes northern New York state, much of New England, Illinois, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas. The Weather Network, which has a map showing viewing areas, reports that the event was caused by a solar flare that exploded on the sun Thursday night. That flare released a cloud of solar particles, a process known as a coronal mass ejection. When those particles reach the Earth's atmosphere, they interact with atmospheric gases, creating the famed colors of the aurora. At the same time the flare was releasing that cloud of particles, it also emitted X-rays that caused a small radio blackout in Asia. At about 10am Eastern Standard Time Sunday, the National Weather Service announced on Twitter that "Geomagnetic storm conditions" had begun. According to its latest forecast, the best viewing will come between sunset and 2am, "clouds permitting."
– One thing Rick Perry doesn't lose sleep over are the executions in his state. Asked last night if he ever worried that Texas has put an innocent man to death, he answered confidently: "No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all." He praised the state's "thoughtful, very clear process when someone commits the most heinous of crimes." If "you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer ... you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, you will be executed." Members of the audience applauded when it was revealed that 234 prisoners have been put to death while Perry has been governor, notes the Huffington Post. The New Yorker in 2009 revealed very serious doubts by scientific experts about evidence against Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 on Perry's watch for a fire that killed Willingham's three daughters. A year after the execution the Texas Forensic Science Commission re-examined the case, and its investigator concluded that there was no reliable evidence that arson had been committed.
– Authorities say a UPS driver "made a huge difference" in helping rescue a woman who was being abused by her husband this week in Missouri, KMOV reports. On Monday night, 33-year-old James Jordan allegedly locked the couple's 3-year-old son in a bedroom without food or water and started assaulting his wife. The victim says Jordan beat her, put a gun to her head, and threatened to kill her. When she tried to leave the house, she says he dragged her back inside by the hair. She also says Jordan forced her to take off her clothes then sexually assaulted her, according to CNN. A UPS driver made a scheduled stop at the house Tuesday to pick up a package—15 hours after the alleged abuse started. Authorities say the victim handed the package to the driver while Jordan stood behind her with a gun. She managed to write "contact 911" on the package as the driver was leaving. KTVI reports the driver called police, who arrived at the home and arrested Jordan without incident. "We are grateful this UPS driver with more than a decade of service followed protocol when he saw a customer in distress," CNN quotes UPS as saying in a statement. Jordan has been charged with domestic assault, sodomy, felonious restraint, unlawful use of a weapon, and endangering the welfare of a child.
– Brad Pitt is trying to promote Moneyball, his film coming out tomorrow, but everyone keeps insisting on asking him about his Jennifer Aniston non-slam from last week. The whole thing was made into something it wasn’t by the tabloid press, Pitt tells Matt Lauer in a Today interview this morning (watch at left). “My point was, the best thing I'd done as a father is be sure that my kids have a good mother,” he says. “That's all I was, or am, trying to say. It has no reference to the past. And I think it's a shame that I can't say something nice about Angie without Jen being drug in. You know, she doesn't deserve it.” He also calls Aniston “good people,” a “valuable person,” and a “dear friend." Earlier this week, he had already clarified his comments to People, saying it “was never my intention for it to be spun” as a diss. “People read things into it that just weren't there." An Aniston friend tells Us that Jen was “annoyed” by Pitt’s comments and found them “rude and inappropriate,” and a Pitt source says her team “went ballistic” and called Pitt to “read [him] the riot act” before he released his first clarification. But another Jen source tells E! that story “is complete crap,” and that “Jennifer does not want to continue any of this nonsense." Click for more on Pitt’s Today interview, or check out one take on why Pitt’s apology is “totally bogus.”
– A man who stopped for gas at a Jerusalem gas station yesterday saw his day go downhill in a flash when cops say a woman peeved that he didn't give her a cigarette set his car on fire, per Haaretz. Security footage shows the woman walking up to the guy as he fills his tank; she appears to say something to him, then momentarily walks away. But she's back in a couple of seconds—with a lighter, a police statement says, per the Independent—and as she holds her hand out to where the pump is connected to the car, the car ignites. The man was able to yank the pump out of the tank before he fled, and gas station workers put out the fire, the newspaper notes. The man's brother, said to be in the car at the time, was also reportedly unharmed. Israeli police arrested the woman, though she's apparently denying all accusations, Haaretz notes. (Cops say a California man returned to the gas station he robbed to apologize.)
– It's apparently not too early to anoint this year's hot holiday toy, one that is surprisingly old school: the Rainbow Loom. And as Annie Murphy Paul writes at Time, "If you don't know what that is, you don't have children under age twelve." For those in the dark, the contraption helps kids create intricate rubber band bracelets, usually dispensed to friends. The craze got its start in the summer but intensified with the return to school, writes Laura DeMarco at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. And, crucially, boys are on board. In fact, Time's Murphy Paul finds this the most interesting part of the trend, given the entrenched gender roles in the toy biz. Parents seem to love the looms because they don't involve staring at a screen and theoretically build kids' motor skills and social ones, too. (Thanks to all the bracelet exchanging going on.) Plus, starter kits don't break the bank at about $17—assuming you can find one on store shelves. "The last time parents were this hot and heavy over a toy, it was Beanie Babies," a toy store owner tells the Chicago Tribune. And the obligatory Beanie Babies comparison isn't the only milestone for the looms: Two schools in New York City have banned them because they were deemed too distracting, notes Today.com. (In other toy news, click to read about how Legos are angrier these days.)
– To receive a Michelin star, let alone three, is a coveted honor for most chefs. But Sebastien Bras isn't most chefs, announcing Wednesday he wants his restaurant, Le Suquet in Laguiole, France, out of the famous guide due to the pressure, the Guardian reports. The three-star chef made his wishes known in a Facebook video, noting "at 46 years old, I want to give a new meaning to my life … and redefine what is essential." He called his move "a new chapter of my professional life" that will allow him to have "so much passion for the kitchen." A member of the executive committee for Michelin, which says Bras' request is the first time a chef has opted out without a restaurant undergoing some kind of major overhaul or closing, notes that while "we note and we respect" Bras' plea, her team is still reviewing it and that doesn't mean it's a definite. Bras, who took over the restaurant from his father, Michel, more than a decade ago, tells AFP he can no longer take reviewers showing up unannounced at any time, usually a few times a year. "I want to feel free without asking myself whether my creations will please the Michelin inspectors," he says. He adds that the 2003 suicide of French chef Bernard Loiseau, whose restaurant had been rumored to being close to losing its third star, was a factor. His father is supportive of his decision, AFP reports, via Eater, and another three-star chef who shut his own restaurant tells the Telegraph, "When the Michelin guide is no longer a driving force, it's better to change lanes." Bras knows this may knock him down a few pegs in the cooking world, but it doesn't faze him. "Maybe I will be less famous, but I accept that," Bras tells AFP. (London has become a Michelin hot spot.)
– In 2012, hackers posted 6.5 million stolen LinkedIn passwords to a Russian forum, TechCrunch reports. It turns out, that security breach was much bigger and much worse than possibly anyone realized. According to Motherboard, 117 million LinkedIn emails and passwords taken as part of the same breach were just put up for sale by a hacker named "Peace," who is seeking $2,200 for them on the dark web. LinkedIn has confirmed the emails and passwords are legit and is working on contacting affected users. Back in 2012, LinkedIn never specified how many accounts had been compromised by hackers. Ars Technica reports it's possible even the company didn't know how many passwords had been stolen initially. Hackers have apparently had no trouble with the lightly encrypted passwords. One source claims hackers cracked 90% of the stolen passwords within 72 hours. Ars Technica argues many of the passwords should never have been allowed by LinkedIn in the first place. More than 750,000 users had the password "123456." More than 170,000 used "linkedin." Other popular passwords were "password" and "111111." People who were using LinkedIn in 2012, still have the same password, and use that password for other websites should be concerned, according to TechCrunch, which says it's best to change your password on LinkedIn (and anywhere else you used it) just in case.
– The Obama administration will likely include a provision in next month’s budget that imposes fees on banks in an effort to make back some of the taxpayer money lost on the bailout and close the record deficit. Politico has it that a transaction tax is not on the table; while the Wall Street Journal notes that such a tax would require international cooperation. A tax on compensation is considered too easy to skirt. The goal is to structure a fee that newly flush banks can't pass on to still-struggling consumers.
– If there's a third vacancy on the Supreme Court during President Trump's first term, it won't be the result of Ruth Bader Ginsburg stepping down. The 85-year-old justice said Sunday that her senior colleague, John Paul Stevens, stepped down when he was 90, so she thinks she has at least five more years, CNN reports. Ginsburg, speaking after a New York City production of The Originalist, a play about Antonin Scalia, said the dissenting opinions of her conservative colleague helped her form her own arguments. "Sometimes it was like a ping-pong game," she said. Ginsburg said there was no chance of term limits being introduced for Supreme Court justices because that would require amending the Constitution. "Article 3 says ... we hold our offices during good behavior," she said. "And most judges are very well behaved." Ginsburg, who was appointed to the court by Bill Clinton in 1993, described herself as a "flaming feminist" and said the most important case of the last 20 years was the ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2015, the Guardian reports. Asked what keeps her hopeful, Ginsburg spoke of her late husband. "My dear spouse would say that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle—it is the pendulum," she said. "And when it goes very far in one direction you can count on its swinging back."
– It's a predictable cycle: A hunter posts a photo of themselves beaming over the carcass of a fresh kill only to become the target of international condemnation (like this, this, and this, to recall a few). This time, the ire-inducing image shows American Larysa Switlyk, host of Larysa Unleashed on the Wild Television Network, posing with a goat she'd just shot on Scotland's Island of Islay, the New York Times reports. "Such a fun hunt!!," Switlyk writes in the Twitter post. "Hunted hard for a big one for 2 days." Additional photos posted to Switlyk's Twitter account show hunters posing with other dead animals. Sarah Moyes, spokeswoman for animal advocacy group OneKind calls the photos "utterly shocking," saying, "This is not the kind of tourism we should be encouraging in Scotland, let alone allowing to happen in the 21st century." Some commenters on social media are more blunt about their displeasure, including "So basically you enjoy killing things? Scary but sad." Others are speaking up to support Switlyk, with one saying, "What’s the problem with going and hunting a goat … and using all parts of the goat, it's quite beautiful." Still others say that hunts are an important part of keeping animal populations in check. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham both acknowledge that the images may be disturbing, but say that hunting wild animals is not illegal, ABC reports, with Cunningham saying she will review the laws. As for Switlyk, she posted on Instagram that she's heading back into the wild for two weeks, "Hopefully that will give enough time for all the ignorant people sending me death threats to get educated on hunting and conservation."
– A former United Nations musical director allegedly embezzled $750,000 from a charity concert for homeless and displaced children, spending some of the funds on a home for his ex-wife. Robin DiMaggio—a professional drummer who's worked with artists like David Bowie, Diana Ross, Tupac, and Johnny Cash—was arrested Friday on a felony wire fraud charge after a promise to help a nonprofit put on a star-studded charity concert in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, inspired by the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert, per KTLA and NBC News. Per CBS Los Angeles, DiMaggio, 47, was wired $750,000 in August 2016 to pay artists he agreed to recruit. But prosecutors say "he took the money, deposited it into his own account, never put it in an escrow account," then spent it on cars, living expenses, and a $250,000 home in Calabasas, Calif. DiMaggio is also accused of paying off credit card debt and wiring $150,000 to his company, DiMagic Entertainment. The Peace for You Peace for Me Foundation demanded its money back when he suggested the concert scheduled for Oct. 1, 2016 be postponed, but DiMaggio said the artists had already been paid, reports Fox News. While battling a lawsuit from the concert sponsor in December 2016, DiMaggio instead claimed someone used his email to contact the foundation and withdraw funds, though he acknowledged buying the home as a partial settlement of his spousal support, per KTLA. The foundation was awarded a $1.2 million summary judgment when DiMaggio later filed for bankruptcy, per NBC. Released on $40,000 bond, the drummer must now wear a tracking device. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. (This rocker is accused of defrauding 100,000.)
– Andrew Gillum pulled off an upset victory in Florida on Tuesday to become the state's first black nominee for governor, the AP reports. The Bernie Sanders-backed liberal Democrat, currently the mayor of Tallahassee, will run against President Trump-endorsed Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis, Fox News reports, results that the AP says "immediately transformed the Florida race into one of the most closely watched gubernatorial campaigns in the country." The Huffington Post says the November election will be "a referendum" on the president. Trump congratulated DeSantis on Twitter after his win. More from the primaries in Florida and Arizona, both closely watched political battleground states, plus a runoff election in Oklahoma on Tuesday: Florida Senate race: Current Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who is term-limited in that role, won the GOP nomination and will run against incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary and is seen as vulnerable.
– Relatives of the California Highway Patrol officer whose death sparked the first wave of Toyota recalls are taking the automaker to court. Mark Saylor was killed along with his wife, daughter, and brother-in-law when his Lexus ES350 was involved in a high-speed crash on a freeway last summer. The relatives blame Toyota for producing a fatally flawed vehicle and are suing for product liability and negligence, AP reports. Investigators determined that the crash was caused by a wrong-sized floor mat that trapped the accelerator, causing Saylor—a veteran officer and highly experienced driver—to lose control of the vehicle. Millions of Toyota vehicles were recalled soon afterward. A lawyer for the relatives says they are seeking more than just damages from Toyota, including "responsibility and change,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “And that process has begun.”
– Protesters in Egypt have held on to Tahrir Square after the latest round of clashes with police, which in three days have left 22 dead throughout the country. Police burned banners and assaulted a field hospital in a raid beginning last night; protesters threw pieces of pavement at authorities; and in unconfirmed Internet videos, protesters were beaten with sticks by police, who appeared to toss a body on a heap of trash. An apparent fire in a nearby apartment building left a woman calling for help, but police shot tear gas at those below, Reuters reports. Though demonstrators were temporarily driven from the square yesterday, they soon returned ahead of another police raid, and the Los Angeles Times reports their ranks grew to 20,000 by midnight. The unrest may complicate the country's plan to hold its first free parliamentary elections in decades; the staggered vote is due to begin next Monday, though Reuters notes that the army will retain its hold on presidential powers until a presidential poll is held, which may not happen until about a year from now; protesters object to that timeline.
– Maybe you don’t yet have a baby you can turn into a Ramones-listening, eye-rolling version of your younger self—but certainly you have a pet. Time points to Hipster Puppies and Hipster Kitty, both dedicated to celebrating pets and poking fun at hipster humans. The quickly-going-viral sites prove that for a popular blog, all you need to do is “combine two things that people love—and sometimes love to hate," writes Claire Suddath.
– Somebody who bought a Powerball ticket in Massachusetts has scored the biggest solo jackpot in American history. But state lottery officials have a major correction: It turns out, the winning ticket for $759 million was sold at a store in Chicopee, not Watertown as originally announced, reports the AP. "Human error, plain and simple," says the state lottery's executive director, Michael Sweeney. The store in Watertown did sell a ticket worth $1 million, perhaps playing a role in the confusion, but the much bigger winner picked up the lucky ticket at the Pride Station & Store across the state. The numbers that won a jackpot were 6, 7, 16, 23, 26 and the Powerball was 4. The only bigger lottery jackpot in US history was 2016's $1.6 billion prize, but that was split three ways. The store owner in Chicopee will get $50,000 for selling the winning ticket, reports CBS Boston. The store owner in Watertown will have to settle for $10,000 for selling the $1 million ticket. Of note: The $758.7 million is the figure for the annuity option, which is paid over 29 years. If the winner wants it all now, he or she will receive $443.3 million, minus more than 30% to cover state and federal taxes.
– John Fisher has no beef with voters calling him on his personal phone, but please don't call his 91-year-old mother. The Michigan Democrat, who's running for a state House seat, is fired up after a GOP campaign mailer was sent out this week telling people in the city of Portage to call him and "tell him hard-working Michiganders are being hurt by ObamaCare and the health care policies [Democrats] support." Which would've been fine, except the phone number on the mailer was the direct line to his mother's room at a local nursing home, where she's being given hospice care for congestive heart failure, Fisher's campaign manager tells Michigan Live. Fisher didn't recognize the number when he got his hands on the mailer. "When I dialed it, it came up on my cellphone, and it said, 'Mom,'" he tells WWMT. Meanwhile, Isabel Kramb fielded her son's calls from her room, giving a stock answer of "I'm sorry, he's not here, I'm his mother," she tells the station. The Michigan GOP says it discovered the number online under Fisher's name and apologized "for any distress that was caused" by Kramb receiving the phone calls. In a statement cited by Michigan Live, Fisher railed on the campaign promo, noting that "to direct people to call a suffering woman who deserves peace and comfort is beyond the pale." He also spoke about the mailer outside the nursing home—with his mother present. WMMT asked him if that was perhaps also in poor taste. "I don't know how it could be underhanded to try to remind people not to call my mom," Fisher said.
– More than half a century before AIDS even had a name, the HIV virus was already spreading across Africa via the city now known as Kinshasa, researchers say. In the 1920s, the city was Leopoldville, capital of the Belgian Congo, and scientists say a "perfect storm" of conditions caused the pandemic to emerge, the BBC reports. The fast-growing city was full of transient male workers who visited prostitutes, researchers say. Sexually transmitted diseases were rife, and unsterilized needles at health clinics also helped spread the disease, according to a study published in the journal Science. Researchers studied HIV's genetic code as well as historical documents. The researchers note that strains of HIV have been transmitted from primates to humans at least 13 times, but only one has caused a global epidemic. They believe a key factor in the 1920s spread was the Congo's booming transport network early last century, which saw a million people travel through Kinshasa every year on the railways alone, reports Reuters. Researchers say the disease was at first confined to specific groups of people, but it started to spread into the general population and around the world after 1960, the Guardian reports. It took genetic research to track the pandemic back to its source because the disease hits the immune system, meaning victims died from any of a wide variety of infections, making the spread of HIV before it was identified hard to track through medical records, says the lead researcher, an evolutionary biologist. (HIV has infected 75 million people, but UN officials say real progress is being made and the epidemic could be over by 2030.)
– There might be a reason that college sexual assaults make the news more often these days. A new Department of Education report has found that reports of "forcible" campus sexual assaults shot up 50% between 2001 and 2011, jumping from 2,200 to 3,300, Time reports. At the same time, every other category of college crime decreased. The numbers mean that 2.2 out of every 10,000 college students in 2011 reported an assault, Business Insider points out. Still, the spike doesn't necessarily mean that more assaults are occurring; it might just mean that victims have become more comfortable coming forward. "It's a good thing that more victims are reporting," one advocate told NPR in response to a similar finding in April. "For far too long, they've been left on their own. And now they're getting the help they need."
– A British quadriplegic who installed hidden cameras in his home because he was worried about the quality of his care was left severely brain damaged by a mistake that confirmed his suspicions. The cameras captured a nurse who lacked the proper training accidentally disconnecting his ventilator and then struggling to reattach it, AP reports. Jamie Merrett was starved of oxygen for 21 minutes before paramedics arrived. Merrett, 37, was paralyzed from the neck down after a car accident 8 years ago but had been able to talk, operate a wheelchair, and use a computer before the nurse's blunder. His sister says his level of understanding has now dropped to that of a small child. "He has an existence but it's nowhere near what it was before," she told the BBC. Officials for the local health authority say the nurse has been suspended and they have "put in place a series of actions to ensure such an event will not occur again."
– The passing of Kim Jong Il won't change anything in North Korea, the country announced today in quite the blustery manner. "We declare solemnly and confidently that the foolish politicians around the world, including the puppet group in South Korea, should not expect any change from us," officials said in a statement, the BBC reports. The North "will have no dealings" with South Korea president Lee Myung-bak's "group of traitors forever." The statement, released by the National Defense Commission, hammered the South for its "show of enmity" that "culminated in its act of blocking South Koreans who wanted to visit Pyongyang to mourn the demise of leader Kim Jong Il." The South let just a few citizens head north following Kim's death, but the move doesn't seem to have appeased the North: Officials said Seoul had created "a war-like atmosphere" by putting its military on alert after the leader's death. North Korea's "sea of tears" will become "retaliatory fire to burn all the group of traitors to the last one," the statement said, according to CNN.
– Walmart got a dose of positive headlines Thursday when it announced a bump in the wages it pays workers. Then came the surprise news that some of those workers will be out of a job as the company is closing 63 Sam's Club locations, or about 10% of the stores. Most are being shuttered for good, though about 10 will be turned into distribution centers for online orders, notes USA Today. The closures are spread across the country, but some states are hit worse than others. Illinois, for instance, is losing six locations. Alaska also is taking a hit on a per-capita basis, with three closing there. See the complete list of stores here. CNBC also has a map here. "After a thorough review, it became clear we had built clubs in some locations that impacted other clubs, and where population had not grown as anticipated," wrote Sam's Club CEO John Furner in a company email. It wasn't immediately clear how many people would lose their jobs. "We will work to place as many associates as possible in new roles at nearby locations, and we'll provide them with support, resources, and severance pay to those eligible," wrote Furner.
– NYPD chief Ray Kelly confirmed today that all nine bystanders wounded in yesterday's shooting near the Empire State Building were injured by police bullets, reports CNN. The two officers who approached Jeffrey Johnson fired 16 rounds after he pulled his gun on them at point-blank range, and authorities think at least seven rounds hit Johnson, reports Gothamist. (See surveillance video of the shooting here.) “We recovered whole bullets from two of the victims," Kelly said. "Actually, we think a total of the three out of the nine bystanders were struck with bullets, the rest were struck with fragments of some sort.” Of the nine, six were treated and released from local hospitals by this morning. The other three were in stable condition, reports the New York Times. It remains unclear whether Johnson got off any rounds himself after pointing his gun at police. (Click to read details emerging about the shooter.)
– No matter how busy the holiday travel season, you're pretty much guaranteed to have a smoother flight than the unfortunate turkeys involved in Arkansas' Turkey Trot. The annual October festival in Yellville sees turkeys hurled from buildings and a plane flying 500 feet above the ground. Disturbed? You're not alone. Tommy Lee is among those to bash the "sick" tradition, reports Arkansas Online. Live Science explains the uproar: Domestic turkeys are bred for flightlessness, their bodies too heavy for their wings to get them off the ground. While their wings can slow a descent, there's no guarantee domestic turkeys will survive falls from great heights. The same is true of wild turkeys, which can only fly short distances. Indeed, two turkeys dropped from a plane last year died on impact. At least four turkeys dropped this year were found injured and bleeding, though they've since found refuge at a New York shelter, where they were named John, Ringo, George, and Paul, per the Fairfield Citizen. The town of Yellville technically stopped throwing turkeys in 1989—continuing the Turkey Trot festival started in 1946 with a dance, race, and parade—but local pilots continue to throw turkeys, per the Citizen and Baxter Bulletin. Despite animal activists' appeals, the FAA says it doesn't have the authority to intervene. "FAA regulations do not specifically prohibit dropping live animals from aircraft, possibly because the authors of the regulation never anticipated that an explicit prohibition would be necessary," a rep tells the Huffington Post, adding, "This does not mean we endorse the practice."
– In 2011, the Social Security Administration put the kibosh on mailing paper statements to 150 million future retirees, at an annual cost savings of $72 million. But last month's budget contained language that forces the government to plan for restarting these paper mailings. Ridiculous? Not according to a group called Consumers for Paper Options, which lobbied for that change and has since 2010 been "advocating for access to paper-based services and information," as the group puts it. But though the group says it's a "coalition of individuals and organizations," it's actually a product of the paper industry, the Washington Post reports: It was established by the Envelope Manufacturers Association and gets funding from the top paper-industry trade group. The Treasury expects to save $1 billion over a decade following its 2013 move to largely paperless communications, noting that processing a paper check costs $1.25, which is $1.16 cents more than the cost of an electronic payment. (It hasn't stopped paper mailings to the elderly and people with "mental impairments," the Post notes.) But "if there are Americans who can't use an iPhone to navigate the Internet, there ought to be an option for them," says a rep for Consumers for Paper Options, noting that a quarter of the US lacks Internet access. He also cites a study that says 73% of adults don't believe they should have to deal with the government online. That study was run by the group. A recent op-ed in Roll Call signed by a pair of congressmen also pushed for paper; it turns out Consumers for Paper Options was involved in that piece, too. Who are the "consumers"? "Everybody’s mother and father and sister who care about the way government policy develops," says an industry leader.
– Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple are widely considered the kings of digital world. But as they look to grow further, increasingly they will need to target each other's turf, dramatically raising the stakes in cyber conflicts in 2013, reports the Wall Street Journal. Google. Perhaps the most wide-ranging of the giants, it's clashing more and more with rivals in telecommunications and cable TV. Thanks to its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola, expect Google to expand in all aspects of Android and smartphones. (It also wants to take most of Microsoft's Office business, notes SlashGear.) Amazon. The Kindle Fire HD (running on Google's Android) has garnered raves and earned a strong niche versus Apple's iPad. But rumors are swirling that 2013 will be the year Amazon brings out a smartphone of its own. Facebook. With the social network rewriting its code for mobile devices, many predict that a move into hardware will be coming any day now, even though Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly denied it. Also expect to see Facebook getting more aggressive with its own search technology and online retailing. Apple. Apple may be king of the tech hill these days, but many experts say that just gives the company more areas it needs to defend. But Apple isn't only playing defense, and is increasingly looking to move into TV.
– One of the most reproductively successful pandas in captivity is no longer stuck with a chipped tooth. On Wednesday, the San Diego Zoo's giant female panda Bai Yun underwent a procedure to fix a chipped lower canine tooth that could have seriously cut down her bamboo consumption, the Los Angeles Times reports. A veterinarian team gave the 23-year-old panda anesthesia, then used a dental composite to fill the damaged area before giving Bai Yun's chompers a cleaning. "The good news is the pulp canal hadn't been compromised, but it's very close to breaking into the pulp canal," the vet said, per the Times of San Diego. The procedure will "hopefully, prevent any further chipping or deterioration." That's good news for Bai Yun, who spends up to 12 hours a day munching on bamboo. The effort used to break down the chewy and not-so-nutritious food makes pandas especially prone to damaged teeth, the Times reports.
– The Washington Post's decision to run an op-ed piece by Sarah Palin on the "Climategate" emails is attracting almost as much derision as Palin's call for President Obama to boycott the Copenhagen conference, the Huffington Post notes. Here's an attitude roundup: Palin was "looking for a way to inject herself into this and found it," writes Marc Ambinder, who dissects the piece paragraph by paragraph in a highly critical "annotated" version at the Atlantic. Scientific consensus on climate change now appears to represent "the radical environmental movement" to Palin, writes Mark Silva at the Chicago Tribune, noting that she was singing a different tune on the campaign trail last year. "What use is the Washington Post?" asks Tim Lambert at Science Blogs, complaining that even the links embedded in Palin's piece contradict her claim that there is no consensus on global warming. "If they are not going to do even the most perfunctory fact checking on the stuff they publish, what value do they add?"
– Huma Abedin is separating from Anthony Weiner after his latest online sexcapades, this time involving a series of sexts apparently sent between Weiner and an unnamed "40-something divorcee." But a source said to be close to Abedin tells Politico the couple had already been "estranged" and more or less separated for about a year, despite still being holed up in the same Manhattan digs and sharing parenting duties for their young son. Meanwhile, Weiner foe Donald Trump says in a statement, per the New York Times, that while he applauds Abedin for making a "wise decision" to leave her husband, Hillary Clinton has been "careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information" because of his marriage. "Who knows what he learned and who he told?" Trump said. Reaction on Twitter to the man who lived by Twitter and metaphorically died by Twitter—Weiner has apparently deactivated or deleted his Twitter account—has been firing back and forth Monday faster than someone can post a scandalous selfie. Check out a few in our photo gallery that stand out (and scroll through Twitter for a seemingly endless stream of more).
– The 5-second rule may or may not protect your stomach from nasty germs (here's a no, here's a yes), but it probably depends more on location than duration, writes Julie Deardorff, who rounds up recent studies and talks to scientists for her Health Club column in the Chicago Tribune. Kitchen and bathroom floors, for instance, are nasty places where a 0-second rule is wise. The sidewalk, on the other hand, is safer because it's less likely to harbor the germs that cause illness. A kitchen floor "is probably a zero-second zone because the bacteria from uncooked meat and chicken juices are more hazardous than the ‘soil’ bacteria outside,” says one medical expert on the subject. Ditto for a bathroom floor because "it’s a great potential source of bacteria and shorter-lived viruses that can cause gastrointestinal illness if ingested.”
– Among their 1,000 pages, the newly found diaries of Holocaust architect Heinrich Himmler track his hourly schedule—filled with activities both mundane and grotesque—over the years 1938, 1943, and 1944. The Jewish Chronicle reports that some of Himmler's diaries were discovered in the 1950s, and hundreds of letters surfaced in Tel Aviv more recently; these "service diaries" were reportedly taken by the Red Army, archived in Podolsk near Moscow, and forgotten. Germany's Bild newspaper on Tuesday began serializing the diaries, and the Times of London has details. Himmler began many days with a lengthy massage in an effort to assuage chronic stomach cramps. Hours of meetings would follow (one entry shows 19 policy meetings in a four-hour span); meetings occurred with 1,600 people over the course of the diaries. The Times reports plenty of innocuous moments: looking at the stars and planned phone calls with his daughter Gudrun, identified as "Puppi." But interspersed are execution orders, the purchase of guard dogs for Auschwitz, and movements that sound innocuous but were anything but. A February 2, 1943, entry lists a visit to the Sobibor death camp for “inspection of special commando”; the Times reports his visit was to include a demonstration of gassing, and 400 women and girls were reportedly brought to the camp from a nearby city for that purpose. The German Historical Institute has authenticated the diaries, and its director says that what appears to be "rather dry" is actually very valuable. "We get a better structural understanding of the last phase of the war," says Nikolaus Katzer. Himmler killed himself with a cyanide pill in May 1945. (A trove of personal documents revealed more about Himmler.)
– A Scottish brewer has lost its battle to give a bestselling beer the same first name as one of the most popular musicians in history. Last week, the UK Intellectual Property Office ruled that BrewDog must change the name of its grapefruit-infused Elvis Juice IPA after attorneys for Elvis Presley Enterprises objected to the brewer applying to register "Elvis Juice" and "Brewdog Elvis Juice" as trademarks, the Daily Record reports. The Scottish brewers launched the IPA in 2015 and it quickly became a bestseller. Not long after, however, attorneys for the Presley estate sent them a copyright infringement notice. In response, BrewDog co-founders James Watt and Martin Dickie legally changed their first names to "Elvis" in October 2016. "There isn't just one single person in the world called Elvis, so we added two more to make a point," Watt told Munchies at the time. Despite those efforts, hearing officer Oliver Morris ruled last week against the brewers, saying, "On the basis that Elvis is a relatively uncommon name, and given that Mr. Presley is the most famous of Elvises, I consider that most average consumers, on seeing the name Elvis alone, are likely to conceptualize that on the basis of Elvis Presley." In addition to losing the name of one of its most popular products, BrewDog must also pay the Presley estate $1,934 in court costs. (Read: Priscilla Presley on why she left Elvis.)
– Twenty years after he was tied to a fence, beaten, and left to die for being gay, Matthew Shepard will be laid to rest in the same cathedral as Hellen Keller and Woodrow Wilson. The ashes of the University of Wyoming student—kept in an urn since his 1998 murder—will be interred at Washington's National Cathedral following a remembrance service on Oct. 26, the Casper Star-Tribune reports. Shepard's death helped inspire the expansion of hate-crime laws to include crimes relating to sexual orientation. Shepard's mom, Judy, describes the location as "a sacred spot where folks can come to reflect on creating a safer, kinder world." The dean of the cathedral, which observed the 15th anniversary of Shepard’s death in 2013, said the cathedral was "honored and humbled to serve as his final resting place." He referred to Shepard's death 20 years ago Friday as "an enduring tragedy" that "should serve as an ongoing call to the nation to reject anti-LGBTQ bigotry." Despite the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide, there is much still to be done in terms of legal protections, while cyberbullying presents a new and "profoundly damaging" problem for LGBT youth, Jason Marsden of the Matthew Shepard Foundation tells the San Diego Union-Tribune. "If we try to erase a little bit of hate in our corner of the world, it is our most effective route to change," he says.
– The official results from Florida aren't in yet but it looks like Nate Silver—whose blog accounted for a fifth of the New York Times' web traffic Monday—correctly called 50 out of 50 states after getting 49 right in 2008. "You know who won the election tonight? Nate Silver," said Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, a sentiment echoed even by Bret Baier at Fox News, the Huffington Post reports. But while Silver triumphed, there were plenty who got it wrong, notes Politico, which lists more than a dozen pundits who predicted a Romney win with varying degrees of confidence. Among them are assorted Fox pundits, Sarah Palin, and Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal, who wrote "I think it’s Romney ... While everyone is looking at the polls and the storm, Romney’s slipping into the presidency." Rush Limbaugh was also way off. "All of my thinking says Romney big," he said Monday. "My thoughts, my intellectual analysis of this—factoring everything I see plus the polling data—it’s not even close. Three hundred-plus electoral votes for Romney."
– Melissa McCarthy stormed Saturday Night Live a second time last night, falling down (literally and intentionally) in her opening monologue before proceeding to lead a hysterical tour de force in "stellar physical comedy," writes Hal Boedeker at the Orlando Sentinel. Perhaps most notably, McCarthy ripped on disgraced Rutgers coach Mike Rice, taking a turn as a neurotically violent women's basketball coach who threatens her players with flying toasters and golf carts. Added bonus to a solid show: Dennis Rodman dropped by the Cold Open, which featured Bobby Moynihan as Rodman's BFF, Kim Jong Un. "I wonder if he's in on the joke or not, to be honest," muses Steve Lepore at SBNation. Over at the Huffington Post, Mike Ryan has his SNL scorecard.
– Macho guys may attract more women, but the quality of their sperm might not be of he-man standards, a new study suggests. Oddly, the sperm of good-looking guys—but not necessarily macho ones with square jaws and distinct cheekbones—is just fine, reports Medical Daily. The link was found when researchers analyzed the semen of 62 Caucasian men, then compared its motility and structure to facial measurements of masculine traits and ratings of their attractiveness, the Huffington Post explains. Scientists theorize that the macho man trades virility for a gravely voice and ripped arms, and high testosterone hinders sperm production. Meanwhile, the study casts doubt on the belief the "phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis" (read: fancy feathers and pretty songs attract more ladies) applies to humans. A study that claimed short guys are preferred by women over tall ones, long believed to have the evolutionary upper hand, has also poked holes in that theory. But don't revamp your mating habits just yet, girls—researchers say their findings need further study. (Short guys are also less likely to divorce you.)
– Eric Massa's disastrous interview with Glenn Beck yesterday has brought his brief flirtation with the right to an end, writes Dana Milbank. Tickle fights? Beck himself told viewers, "I think I've wasted your time," after Massa refused again and again to be specific about the promised Democratic dirt. And he called "bull crap" on Massa's attempt to explain why he quit instead of staying to fight. Turns out "Massa's dalliance with the right was to be a one-night stand," writes Milbank at the Washington Post. Tom Schaller called Beck's apology to viewers "one of the most honest moments" he's ever seen on TV. " It's hard to out-crazy Glenn Beck, whose show is sponsored by the Yoshi Knife, and gold brokers running ads featuring Gordon Liddy and the dude Matt Damon chumped down in the famous bar scene from Good Will Hunting. But this afternoon, Massa did just that," he writes at FiveThirtyEight.
– Congrats, Amazon. The company has the best reputation among American consumers, according to 24/7 Wall St., which lists the companies with the best and worst reputations based on the 2017 Harris Poll and American Customer Satisfaction Index. The top five in each category, with a reputation score out of 100: Best: Amazon.com: 86 Wegmans: 85 Publix: 83 Johnson & Johnson: 82.5 Apple: 82 Worst: Takata: 49 Wells Fargo: 49 Goldman Sachs: 56 Monsanto: 57 Halliburton: 58 Click to see both lists in full, or the companies with the best reputations in 2016.
– Think moving to the 'burbs will save you money? Not in these neighborhoods. Real estate firm Engel & Völkers has identified the priciest suburb around each of America's 10 most populous urban areas, based on the median home price. The top five, per Forbes: Bel Air outside Los Angeles: $3.45 million Los Altos Hills outside San Jose: $3.45 million Bronxville outside New York City: $2.33 million Rancho Santa Fe outside San Diego: $2.12 million Westlake outside Dallas: $2 million Click for the full list or the strongest and weakest housing markets.
– The US and Pakistan have agreed to work together in the future against "high value targets" in Pakistan, the countries announced in a joint statement today. The news comes after Sen. John Kerry arrived in Pakistan last night, intending to send a strong message following the death of Osama bin Laden: Cooperate more when it comes to rooting out terrorists, or face "profound" changes in the US-Pakistan relationship—which could include kissing billions in aid goodbye. Kerry is the most senior US official to go to Pakistan since bin Laden's death, but since issuing the joint pledge, he said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will soon announce her own plans to visit, the AP reports. Kerry's meetings with Pakistani leaders began last night, the Washington Post reports. Many in Washington think Pakistan is harboring Islamist militants, and some members of Congress are calling for the US to sever the billions of dollars in aid it provides to Pakistan. Kerry is in Pakistan to lay out the new stakes following bin Laden's death, and question officials about how bin Laden was able to hide in Pakistan for years. In Kabul, Kerry said there is "some evidence" that the Pakistan government has knowledge of insurgent activities, calling it "very disturbing."
– As predicted, this year's flu season is already a doozy: It features a more severe strain, it started earlier, it's hitting more people, and it has affected a wider swath of the country than usual, USA Today reports. Flu season started earlier this year than it has in the past 10 to 12 years, and by the end of 2012, 18 children had died and 2,257 had been hospitalized as a result. And things could get much worse: One Mayo Clinic expert recalls that "a decade ago, when we had widespread circulation [of seasonal flu], we had 70,000 deaths in the US." The proportion of people with flulike symptoms and the states reporting such illnesses are both on the rise, and a flurry of local stories today illustrate the problems in various states: There's quite an abundance, but here's a sampling: Flu cases spiked in New Jersey last month, the Star-Ledger reports; the state has seen about twice the number of flu-related ER visits as it did last year. In Chicago, some ERs are actually turning away patients because they're so overwhelmed with flu cases, CBS Chicago reports. In Cleveland, medical centers are limiting visitors in an effort to control the spread, Fox 8 reports. And in Florida, even people who got a flu shot still got sick, ABC News reports. NPR explains that this is a common problem, since the vaccine is only 60% effective—plus it takes about two weeks to kick in, and doesn't necessarily cover all strains of the virus.
– Protesters are rallying once again to decry the burning of Korans at Bagram, with more shouts of "death to America"—and deaths—throughout the country. The New York Times reports that gunfire was audible as demonstrators assembled at a Kabul mosque following Friday prayers. Another 4,000 people carrying sticks and rocks moved toward the center of the city; some waved Taliban flags and had a jihadist slogan written on their clothes: "I sacrifice myself." Demonstrations occurred in at least six more provinces throughout Afghanistan, and Reuters reports that nine more were killed today: seven in the western province of Herat, and two in Khost in the east. Meanwhile, Germany says it has withdrawn troops from an outpost in northern Afghanistan amid the protests. The German military had planned to shutter its base in the Taloqan area in late March, but the 50 remaining soldiers have been transferred out of the base in light of the demonstrations, reports the AP. And at home, Obama is facing GOP criticism for his apology.
– Sure, there was plenty of "hero sex," but the aftermath of the Miracle on the Hudson wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. It's that story Clint Eastwood has chosen to tell in Sully, starring Tom Hanks as pilot Chesley Sullenberger. Here's what critics are saying: Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times calls it "an absolute triumph." It's "an electrifying thriller, a wonderful in-depth character study and a fascinating airline safety procedural." Hanks, meanwhile, "is so good he could play this character in a one-man show with nothing but a chair and a telephone onstage and it would be riveting." "That it unnerves you as much as it does may seem surprising, given that going in, we know how this story ends." But Eastwood is "very good at his job, a talent that gives the movie its tension along with an autobiographical sheen," writes Manohla Dargis at the New York Times. In particular, he offers "a master class in direction" during the accident scene, while Hanks makes a perfect Sully. Stephen Whitty at NJ.com says the accident scene is "the best part of the film," but he's not so enthralled with the rest of it. Basically, he concludes "there's not enough story" to warrant a feature-length film. Flashbacks to Sully's youth "add nothing but time," while the National Transportation Board Safety Board investigation delivers no drama or suspense, he adds. Ann Hornaday doesn't agree. Sully is "a four-square, upstanding, rock-solid example of filmmaking at its most direct and honestly affecting," and is "thoroughly engrossing and exciting to watch," she writes at the Washington Post. "To paraphrase the title character, it's just a movie doing its job. And amen to that."
– Visitors to New York Fashion Week will see a first today: a model with Down syndrome walking the runway, reports USA Today. Actress Jamie Brewer, best known for her work on American Horror Story, will do the honors, wearing an original by designer Carrie Hammer as part of Hammer's Role Models Not Runway Models show. “Young girls and even young women … [see me] and say, ‘Hey, if she can do it so can I,’” Brewer tells Today. Hammer explains that the idea came from Katie Driscoll, a woman whose daughter Grace has Down syndrome. “She asked if I would have a role model for Grace,” Hammer says. Brewer was an easy pick, given that she's not only an actress but an activist for others with disabilities. The actress tells Bustle she understands why it's taken this long for the milestone: “A lot of people have a certain image of what perfect is until they actually see or hear something that’s extremely different in the media."
– It's not the first time Tiger Woods has made headlines for dubious reasons over a holiday: The golfer was arrested on suspicion of DUI around 3am Monday in Jupiter, Florida, reports WPTV, which notes that's where Woods resides. Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office records indicate the 41-year-old was booked shortly after 7am and released at 10:50am under his own recognizance. A police spokesperson said she had no more details about the circumstances leading to the arrest or whether drugs or alcohol were involved, but that an arrest report may be available Tuesday, the AP reports. Sports Illustrated reports the former No. 1 player in the world underwent back surgery once again in April, and hasn't hit the links competitively since February, when he pulled out of a Dubai tournament due to back problems.
– An incredible tale of bravery may have surfaced thanks to new "pixel signature" technology applied to 14-year-old videos—but it's a complicated revelation. The New York Times reports those videos, shot by overheard aircraft on March 4, 2002, may show Air Force Technical Sergeant John Chapman fighting al-Qaeda militants and killing two while alone on a mountaintop in Afghanistan. What's so shocking about the footage is not just the bravery. It's that Chapman was supposed to be dead. He was originally there with members of SEAL Team 6, providing support as their radioman. In the midst of a fierce and disastrous operation, Senior Chief Petty Officer Britt Slabinski determined the men needed to get off the mountain. Slabinski couldn't verify the wounded Chapman was dead, but he was nearly certain. So a "dead" Chapman was left behind. The Air Force now suspects Chapman was alive for roughly another hour and tried to provide cover for a helicopter carrying Army Ranger reinforcements (three Rangers were among seven Americans to die that day; some say blame rests at the SEALs' feet). The conclusion comes thanks to technology that assigns those on the ground a pixel signature that can be tracked even when ground cover blocks a man from view. The Air Force secretary wants Chapman given the Medal of Honor; SEAL Team 6 has no issue with that, but hasn't taken a stance on whether Chapman was alive. Slabinski is outwardly skeptical, and suggests the Air Force would welcome a Medal of Honor, which it hasn't seen one of its own get since Vietnam. But a fresh look at Chapman's autopsy may provide further proof he was alive. Read the full story at the Times.
– Jon Huntsman is skipping next week's debate in Las Vegas to protest Nevada's decision to move up its caucuses to January, reports the Hill. Instead, Huntsman will host a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire. The Huntsman camp accuses Mitt Romney of encouraging the state to shift its caucus date to "game the system." Romney is expected to win in Nevada, and his rivals fear that if he racks up enough early victories, he will lock up the nomination. Huntsman's daughters weigh in on their Twitter feed: "Dad boycotting Tuesday's Vegas debate to hold townhall in NH. Enough w/@mittromney and his campaign's attempts to rig the political process."
– Sorry, Philly—Indianapolis gets to be the City of Brotherly Love this week. That's thanks to Timothy Batz, 21, and his 24-year-old sibling, Noah Batz, both accused of involvement in a chaotic story featuring drugs, nudity, assault, and an intense makeout session in front of a dumpster, WISH and the Indianapolis Star report. Court documents say police who showed up Sunday at the Lighthouse Landings apartment complex found the brothers wandering around naked, and Noah Batz admitted to cops they'd both partaken of some psychedelic mushrooms, with his brother adding pot-smoking to the mix. The mind-altering drugs may explain what allegedly happened before cops arrived. One witness says it began when she emerged from her apartment to see the brothers yelling and lying "completely naked" on top of each other on the sidewalk, the court report notes. The woman says Noah Batz then chased her and clocked her in the forehead. Also per court docs, a second witness, the apartment complex manager, says she spotted the brothers "passionately … making out" in front of a dumpster and that Noah Batz also went after her (she says she locked herself in her car while he screamed he was going to kill her). The brothers, who reportedly jumped and banged on other cars, also allegedly gave cops a hard time during their arrest, with Noah Batz ending up stun-gunned. "It was something beyond just being drunk or high," one of the witnesses tells WXIN. "Not a good batch of whatever he got." The Batzes pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 17 charges combined, including disorderly conduct, obscene performance, and incest. Per court records, they're due back in court in May. (This couple made a dumpster "love nest.")
– Top government officials from the Koreas met over the weekend in the border town of Panmunjom to discuss keeping the peace, Reuters reports. But North Korea seems to be hedging its bets after a South Korean military official said that 50 of its northern foe's submarines have disappeared, the Yonhap news agency reports. "Seventy percent of North Korea's submarines left their bases, and their locations are not confirmed," an official told reporters yesterday, adding, per Chosun Ilbo, "Scores of subs that have left their bases on the eastern and western coasts are off our radar, which is an unprecedentedly serious situation." The main concern is that the subs could cross the Northern Limit Line (the maritime line in the sand between the two countries) or take on South Korean Navy vessels in surprise attacks from the rear, the paper notes. It adds that although North Korean submarines—described by the National Post as" largely outdated and technically obsolescent versions produced in the 1960s for the Soviet Union"—make a lot of noise (meaning they should be easy to find), there are so many missing it would be hard to keep track of them all. Also worrisome, per the military official: North Korea has apparently doubled its number of artillery troops along the DMZ since Friday, per Chosun Ilbo. "They seem ready to shoot," the official says. (Pyongyang declaring a "quasi-state of war" doesn't sound good.)
– Donald Trump delivered what one analyst calls a "surprisingly serious" speech on foreign policy and counterterrorism Monday—but serious may not equal coherent. Many analysts were taken aback by the mix of proposals in the speech, which included policies favored by the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, along with ideas dating back to the Cold War and some touches that were pure Trump. A roundup of reactions: Some elements of Trump's speech on the war on "radical Islamic terrorism" were familiar, but what was new was "alarming," according to the Los Angeles Times editorial board. His calls for a Cold War-style "ideological screening test" and a Commission on Radical Islam could be "catastrophically counterproductive," they write—and "would punish thoughts rather than deeds," as well as encourage newcomers to the US to conceal their beliefs. Former Bush administration official Peter Feaver tells the New York Times that he gives Trump credit for the "surprisingly serious" speech, but a striking amount of it "depends on counterterrorism ideas developed by the Bush administration." The "good parts are not new," and "the new parts are not good," he says. Robert Burns at the AP believes there was a lot more Obama than Bush in Trump's disdain for nation-building. Obama ditched Bush's large-scale projects in Iraq and Afghanistan while "trying to keep enough US influence there to prevent those two countries from crumbling," he writes, noting that Trump's argument that the US should have seized Iraq's oil isn't nation-building, it's "nation-grabbing." John Noonan, Jeb Bush's former national security adviser, tells NBC News that Trump is completely correct about Obama's contribution to the rise of ISIS, and not much else. "The rest of his foreign policy is an absolutely blathering jumble of nonsense," he says. "I can't in good conscience sign my name to it." At Politico, Nahal Toosi looks at the "extreme vetting" proposal that has replaced Trump's ban on Muslim immigration and finds numerous problems. She notes that focusing on regions with a "history of exporting terrorism" would include much of Europe, even if only Islamist-inspired terrorism is included. Trump seemed bored by much of his own speech and only seemed excited when congratulating himself on his prescience or accusing Hillary Clinton of "wanting to be 'America's Angela Merkel,'" per the Lexington column at the Economist. The article notes that real Cold War veterans will find this election very strange. "The party of Eisenhower and Reagan has nominated a man who calls looting of foreign assets the highest priority for America in war, and who sucks up to Russia," it says. Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post is equally scathing in his fact-checking of the speech. Kessler debunks claims, including the notion of an Obama "apology tour" in 2009, and notes that Trump was not an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War until well after it began—and that he has apparently forgotten that he "was a fervent advocate of intervening in Libya."
– Microwave weapons? That's the latest theory being floated to explain the mysterious ailments suffered by staffers at the American embassy in Cuba. But now a pioneering scientist in that field thinks the idea—based on a principle called the microwave auditory effect—is bogus. Kenneth Foster is a professor of bioengineering at Penn who explained the auditory effect in a 1974 study. At Scientific American, he assesses what's known about the Cuban ailments and lays out why it's "wildly implausible" that microwaves are to blame. For one thing, any such weapon powerful enough to cause brain damage would almost certainly burn the victims, too, and that didn't happen. Instead, Foster suggests that a much simpler explanation is likely. "It is reasonable to guess the sounds were inadvertently produced by ultrasound devices, possibly even spytech, but without malicious intent against the embassy personnel," he writes. Foster cites this earlier investigation from the AP revealing the sounds that the victims are believed to have heard, and he says the sounds are consistent with ultrasound devices interacting with each other. It makes sense to him that the Cubans might have been trying to listen in on Americans with these relatively common gizmos. "The incidents occurred about the time of the 2016 US election, and the Cubans undoubtedly were desperate for intelligence about US intentions." A Cuban scientist, meanwhile, agrees that the microwave theory is far-fetched. "First, it was sonic weapons, now microwave," he told CNN. "What's next, kryptonite?"
– Huma Hanif should have survived a March 31 fender bender in Fort Bend County, Texas, authorities say. Instead, the 17-year-old was killed when the driver's-side airbag in her 2002 Honda Civic exploded and, police say, "fired a sharp piece of jagged metal into her throat at point-blank range," KPRC reports. Huma died within seconds after her jugular vein and carotid artery were severed, Sheriff Troy Nehls says, adding "there is no doubt" that the Takata airbag in her vehicle failed. A bystander who came to Huma's aid says the damage to the car wasn't that bad, but there was a gash in her neck, which he tried to cover. "I feel like there was not a whole lot I could do," he says. Huma, who aspired to become a nurse, is the 10th person in the US to die after a Takata airbag's inflator broke apart and sprayed shrapnel into a vehicle's cabin, CBS New York reports. More than 100 people have been injured. A recall last year included some 29 million cars by many manufacturers, but only a quarter of those have been repaired. And that doesn't always seem to be the fault of vehicle owners. One Long Island woman tells CBS that she received a recall notice that read in part, "At the present time, we do not have parts available." Honda says Huma's Civic was part of the recall and that the company sent notices to multiple people who had owned the car, "including the current registered owner." The repair, however, was never completed. Huma's family tells CBS she didn't know about the recall. During a press conference, her brother urged vehicle owners to find out whether they may have a defective airbag and, if they do, to "get it fixed before you lose a loved one." (This young woman was injured in a bizarre car accident.)
– The Supreme Court made a surprise decision this morning by refusing to hear appeals from five states trying to ban same-sex marriage, kick-starting a flurry of "What does this mean?" and "What happens next?" speculation. Some reaction: Under the headline "The Supreme Court Just Quietly Made Marriage Equality The Law Of The Land In Many States," Ian Millhiser writes at ThinkProgress that the "anti-climax" of a decision is, nevertheless, "an earthquake for gay rights" practically speaking. Though Millhiser notes there may be a waiting period and logistical obstacles for same-sex couples, he writes that looming marriages "will make it very difficult for the Supreme Court to reverse course—and retroactively invalidate those marriages—in a subsequent opinion." Over at Slate, Mark Joseph Stern calls the court's move "unexpected and somewhat bizarre," citing his own Slate piece last week in which he noted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's recent comments that there was "no need for [the Supreme Court] to rush" until circuit courts found same-sex marriage bans to be constitutional. He brings up one other interesting point: "If no circuit court ever rules against gay marriage, the gay marriage question will be effectively settled, and the Supreme Court will never have to wade in again." Agreeing that "almost no one expected that to happen," Lyle Denniston writes at SCOTUSblog that the decision was so surprising because: the Supreme Court had actually been asked to review all seven state cases ("a rare thing … that almost never fails to assure review"); that the court appeared to have given recent indications it was ready "to confront the basic issue"; and that today's decision doesn't exactly sync up with last year's ruling in United States v. Windsor, which struck a major blow to the Defense of Marriage Act, as per the AP. Jonathan H. Adler at the Washington Post, however, wasn't terribly surprised, mainly because all petitions before the Supreme Court had already been nixed by lower circuit courts. Instead, Adler wants to know—especially since the decision came with zero comment from the judges—"is what Justice Anthony Kennedy thinks. … Is he ready and willing to hold that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage? Or is he still conflicted given his federalist sympathies?"
– President Trump trotted out a familiar whipping boy on Saturday, tweeting that Amazon was screwing over none other than the United States Postal Service. "The U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon," he tweeted, adding that "That amounts to Billions of Dollars." Trump says the USPS should jack its parcel rates, hitting Amazon with a $2.6 billion hike. "This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!" he tweeted. Trump's criticism has hit Amazon in the wallet, notes CNBC, with its stock taking a 6% slide in the last five trading days. Trump also took a swipe at another favorite Jeff Bezos-owned punching bag: The Washington Post, which he says "is used as a 'lobbyist' and should so REGISTER." The AP fact-checks Trump's claims and finds that "Trump is misrepresenting Amazon's record on taxes, the U.S. Postal Service's financial situation and the contract that has the post office deliver some Amazon orders. Federal regulators have found that contract to be profitable for the Postal Service." Though it acknowledges that a 2017 study found that USPS parcel rates were below market rates.
– While it would have been infinitely more entertaining had Vladimir Putin actually tried to freestyle, his appearance at a music awards show this weekend still made newspapers titter. Putin, who first stood around looking awkward while his “youth disguised” security mingled with the dancing crowd, handed out an award and offered his thoughts on rap ("addresses the problems of youth"), graffiti ("a real art form"), and, yes, break-dancing, the Telegraph reports. He looked “less than slick,” tee-hees Andrew Osborn in the Telegraph, dubbing him “stiff,” “awkward,” and “embarrassed,” before quoting a Moscow newspaper that called it “a desperate move” to increase his popularity. Putin was “doing his best to look cool, in a turtleneck and windbreaker,” adds Adam K. Raymond in New York. The stunt apparently worked on one rapper, who says he dreams of performing a duet with Putin.
– Two explorers managed to finish their re-creation today of Ernest Shackleton's famous survival journey from the Antarctic to South Georgia Island—but only after a blizzard stranded them on a high, icy plateau for hours, reports the Australian Times. Using only period gear and food, Tim Jarvis and Barry Gray had already completed a 12-day, 800-mile sea voyage in a wooden lifeboat from the site of Shackleton's original shipwreck on Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, but tough conditions forced four members of their crew to drop out. The journey then required a 32-mile trek across the island, over mountains up to 2,950-feet high, to reach on old whaling station, which is when rain, snow, and 45-knot winds forced the men to take shelter for 12 hours in a tent—a modern tent with modern sleeping bags, notes Global Post, along with some extra food supplied by their modern support team. But today, Jarvis and Gray completed the arduous journey. "There’s no doubt in my mind that everyone has a Shackleton double in them and I hope we’ve inspired a few people to find theirs," says Jarvis. Some of Shackleton's long-lost Scotch was last month returned to Antarctica.
– A minivan driving around San Francisco has fueled speculation that Apple may be creating its own "street view" for Apple Maps, the Guardian reports. Spotted by the Claycord News & Talk blog, the van had 12 cameras mounted along with a lidar sensor, which uses a spinning laser to survey the environment. "When asked about what they are doing, the person sitting in the vehicle would never give an answer," says the blog. What's more, CBS San Francisco reports that the vehicle is leased to Apple. Could they be mounting a rival to Google Maps' popular Street View? After all, Apple is planning to release iOS 9 for iPhones and iPads in the summer, and was rather embarrassed by Apple Maps' poor directions and subpar 3D imagery when it first came out. Yet Apple would need a fleet of vehicles to challenge Google's Street View, the Verge notes. Also, technology analyst Rob Enderle says the van has "too many cameras" for street-viewing and may in fact be a self-driving vehicle. The van also resembles one seen in a Brooklyn YouTube video that describes it as a "self-driving car." Apple isn't among companies with a permit to test self-driving cars, but the van may be used by an Apple partner who does: "You know, they have partnerships with a variety of the carmakers," says Enderle. "Just because they’re leasing the car doesn’t necessarily mean it’s their project." Apple has no comment on the high-tech van or vans—so "it looks like these curious vehicles will remain a mystery for now," says the Verge. (See why Uber may use "robo-cabs.")
– In a move that analysts say could be a devastating blow to ObamaCare, President Trump is ending one of the health care bill's crucial subsidies. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Thursday night that the federal government will stop "cost-sharing reduction" payments to health insurers, which help millions of people afford insurance they get through ObamaCare's exchanges, Politico reports. Sanders called the payments a "bailout of insurance companies" and "another example of how the previous administration abused taxpayer dollars and skirted the law to prop up a broken system." Related coverage: The impact: The Washington Post likens the decision to "throwing a bomb into the marketplaces" created by ObamaCare. Insurers have said this is the strongest step Trump could take to undermine the law, because rising costs would force them to bail without the promise of getting reimbursed. The alternative could be to remain, but to raise premiums to levels most couldn't afford. The New York Times also calls the subsidies "essential" to the Affordable Care Act. Trump's possible offer: "The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding," the president tweeted Friday morning. "Massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies has stopped. Dems should call me to fix!" The last part might be the most telling. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump has told at least one lawmaker that he's open to preserving the payments if a bipartisan deal is struck on health care. All eyes on this: Trump is referring to a deal being negotiated by GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. Under the broad strokes, the subsidies would be continued, a win for Democrats, but states would get more flexibility to avoid ObamaCare rules, a win for Republicans, per the Journal. Big deadline: Open enrollment for the ObamaCare exchanges begins in less than three weeks, raising pressure for a quick resolution. Background: A federal court declared the subsidies illegal last year, though the decision is being appealed. The subsidies add up to around $7 billion this year, a figure expected to steadily rise in coming years. The attorneys general of California and New York vowed Thursday night that they would challenge the latest move in court, while Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer called it "a spiteful act of vast, pointless sabotage leveled at working families and the middle class in every corner of America." Second move: Earlier Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that's expected to undermine ObamaCare in a different way.
– Carl Paladino may have taken his bat and gone home, but another of the losing New York gubernatorial candidates is still with us. Happily, it's Jimmy McMillan of the Rent-Is-Too-Damn-High fame. He's back in a Funny or Die video with a new passion: Charlie Sheen Is Too Damn High. His "son" is played by Billy Eichner. See the Huffington Post for more.
– Ride-hailing giant Uber has filed confidential preliminary paperwork for selling stock to the public, the AP reports. That's according to a report late Friday in the Wall Street Journal. Citing people familiar with the matter whom it did not identify, the Journal says San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc. filed the paperwork earlier this week. That would indicate it could go public within the first three months of next year. Uber declined to comment on the Journal report. Uber's advisers have suggested the company could get a valuation of $120 billion; its latest valuation was $76 billion when it sold about a $500 million stake to Toyota in August. The filing would come on the heels of a similar move by Uber's smaller rival Lyft. The two initial public offerings could raise billions for the two companies to fuel their expansions, while giving investors their first chance to buy stakes in the ride-hailing phenomenon. (One report says 30% of Uber and Lyft drivers actually lose money driving.)
– A Dutch organization that advises women on reproductive rights has now launched a website to help US women terminate pregnancies on their own. The Guardian reports on the "Self-Managed Abortion: Safe and Supported" portal, or SASS, set up by Women Help Women. Through it, 23 trained counselors will answer questions and give advice if women have already decided to take the drug misoprostol. The medication, which, when taken alone or in combination with mifepristone, keeps a pregnancy from happening, is only legal in the US at medical facilities, though it can be purchased OTC in Central American nations. A Women Help Women rep says the idea for the site came about after a Guardian story documenting a Texas woman's trip to Mexico to get the drug, and all the questions she had once she got it. The site won't provide pills, and organizers say they won't even suggest women take them—they're just there to keep women safe if they've already decided to. "It's worse to just remain silent," says a UC San Francisco obstetrics professor who calls misoprostol a "very safe and effective" drug (though it's more effective taken with mifepristone, which isn't as easy to obtain). For women who do have complications and must seek medical care, the Washington Post notes they'll be advised that drug-induced and spontaneous abortions typically look the same, and that the drug isn't detectable via drug test. Abortion foes note the meds can be dangerous if not taken correctly or if taken late in the gestation period, and that this site could put women at risk by providing info on taking them. Women Help Women is being cautious in case of legal ramifications: Its servers are located outside the US, as are its two dozen or so staffers.
– While many people were unwrapping gifts on Christmas Day, the brother-in-law of tennis star Andy Murray was wrapping up a 700-mile, 38-day journey through brutally cold temps and blistering winds—and, he hopes, setting a world record. Scott Sears, 27, reached the South Pole on Monday, and he says he's the youngest person ever to do so solo, though Guinness has yet to offer its final seal of approval, the BBC notes. "MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE SOUTH POLE! Absolutely chuffed to pieces," he wrote on his blog, where he documented his unassisted adventure, which included temperatures of minus 58 degrees and wind gusts of up to 150mph. Sears said he was so tired when he finally took a rest after his trek that he fell asleep "within about 2 minutes of my head hitting the mat." Sears, whose sister, Kim, is married to the tennis star, describes a grueling expedition with icy, crevasse-marred terrain and an isolation made worse when the "iPod poltergeist" would occasionally strike, causing his music player to stop working. He says he "truly hit a wall" on Christmas Eve, where "everything was just saying 'no more, not one more step.'" But he devoured some dried meat, juice, and chocolate and pushed through, even hanging up his stinky socks as "makeshift stockings" for Santa that night. Sears' message from Andy Murray's mom once he arrived at his destination: "Well done Scott Sears." If Guinness confirms Sears' feat, he'll be three years younger than the previous record-holder, per the Telegraph. (Prince Harry drank champagne out of a prosthetic leg when he arrived at the South Pole.)
– A money manager who catered to high-profile celebrities and wealthy New Yorkers has been charged with running a $30 million Ponzi scheme. The client list of Kenneth Starr (no, not that Kenneth Starr) includes Uma Thurman and Martin Scorsese, reports Reuters. No details on exactly who lost what, but Starr made enough to afford a $7.5 million Manhattan apartment. The indictment doesn't name names of possible victims, but it recounts "an actress" storming into Starr's office to demand to know where $1 million of her money went. Jacob Bernstein of the Daily Beast identifies her as Thurman. She reportedly did get her money back, though it came not from Starr but, in classic Ponzi fashion, another client. That unlucky guy was Jim Wiatt, the former head of William Morris, writes Bernstein.
– The short version is easy enough: Trinidad and Tobago upset the US Mens National Team in soccer Tuesday night, and the 2-1 loss means that the Americans won't qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1986. But just how bad a loss is this? The defeat is "the most surreal and embarrassing night in US soccer history," writes Grant Wahl for Sports Illustrated. "Unthinkable," declares the New York Times. "With that loss, the USMNT gave a nation the lowest point in its sporting history, and it’s not really close," writes Andrew Joseph for USA Today. "It took 90-plus minutes for United States soccer to regress 30 years," writes Frank Isola at the Daily News. The kicker is that two other games fell the wrong way in unexpected fashion, one on a "phantom goal," sealing the US fate. Honduras rallied from two goals down to beat Mexico, and Panama rallied from one goal back to beat Costa Rica. Had either of those games gone the other way, or had the US even tied Trinidad and Tobago (which had previously been eliminated from qualifying), the Americans would have secured a spot in Russia for the 2018 competition. Of note: Phantom goal: The winning goal scored by Panama against Costa Rica didn't cross the goal line, per CBS Sports, which has video here. The story raises the faint hope that the US could appeal the goal ruling, but it seems unlikely. "As far as I know, there is no recourse," says a US soccer official. Pity Fox Sports: The network paid $200 million, outbidding ESPN, for the rights to televise the 2018 World Cup and showcase teen phenom Christian Pulisic, notes Business Insider. It's now going to be tough for that investment to pay off. Five culprits: Yahoo Sports looks at what went wrong in the US game, and why Bruce Arena has almost certainly coached his last game for the team.
– Get ready for a deluge of information in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, as prosecutors today released a cache of related documents. Some early samples: Pro-Zimmerman: His lawyers surely hope lots of attention will be paid to the fact that Trayvon apparently smoked pot at some point before the altercation. (It's not clear when or how much.) The autopsy found traces of the drug THC in his system, the active ingredient in marijuana, reports CNN. Also, ABC News notes that two witness accounts given to police "appear to back up Zimmerman's version" of events. Pro-Trayvon: Prosecutors will no doubt point to the police conclusion that the shooting was "ultimately avoidable," had Zimmerman "remained in his vehicle and awaited the arrival of law enforcement." The Orlando Sentinel leads its story with it. Zimmerman photo: The documents include a grainy copy of a photo police took of Zimmerman after the shooting in which he appears to have a bloody nose, notes AP. See the photo here. Trayvon's belongings: He had $40.15 on him, along with a packet of Skittles, a red lighter, headphones, and a photo pin in his pocket. See for yourself: MSNBC has the documents here in PDF form, and the Sentinel has crime-scene photos here. Click to read about a damning assessment of the Sanford police by the New York Times here.
– Sometimes paradise is better off lost: Off the coast of India in the Bay of Bengal, a Manhattan-size island called North Sentinel Island boasts a deep green canopy of trees, stretches of sandy beaches, coral reef barriers—and a population that's decidedly hostile to outsiders, who aren't likely to live long. As Wackulus explains, the isolated indigenous tribe, one of the last of its kind on Earth, almost always attacks visitors. A little digging uncovered this story: After a night of drinking in 2006, two fishermen drifted too close to the island and were killed by the Sentinelese, who've lived there for 60,000 years. A helicopter sent to recover their bodies was halted by tribesmen's arrows, the Telegraph reported at the time; the air generated by the copter's rotors revealed their bodies in shallow graves. One of the earliest known encounters a century earlier ended when a convict who'd escaped from the neighboring Andaman Islands ended up on the island with his throat slit, the New York Times reported in 2012. In 1967, the Sentinelese—a Stone Age people but for the metal-tipped arrows carved from wrecked ships—hid from an Indian government expedition, during which a marker was placed on the island, declaring it part of India. Indian anthropologist TN Pandit's visits in the late 1980s and early 1990s proved more exciting. He left gifts of coconuts, knives, cloth, mirrors, and once a live pig. The native hunter-gatherers—believed to number between 50 and 400—killed the pig and buried it in the sand, but only insulted Pandit's group. "They would turn their backs to us and sit on their haunches as if to defecate," he told the Independent. India has since established a 3-mile exclusion zone around the island to protect both outsiders and the natives from disease. Survival International argues it's all for the best as the natives are "extremely healthy, alert, and thriving." They have fire and are believed to dine on fish, fruits, tubers, wild pigs, lizards, and honey. (This video reportedly shows the first contact with an isolated tribe.)
– Covert operations, hidden civilian victims of the Afghanistan War and US suspicions that Pakistan is aiding the Taliban are among the shocking secrets bared in some 92,000 leaked American military documents posted yesterday on Wikileaks. The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel were given early access to the documents, and all three publications are running huge front-page stories on the leaked information today. Among major civilian casualties never before reported to the American public were 7 children, killed in 2007 during a raid by a secret special American operations unit called Task Force 373, according to the records. The documents also reveal that US officials fear that even as Pakistan collects some $1 billion in US aid to combat militants members of its intelligence community secretly meet with the Taliban to help organize networks of militants to fight American soldiers, reports the Times. National Security Adviser James Jones blasted Wikileaks' disclosure of classified information—one of the biggest leaks in US military history—saying it endangers the lives of American servicemen and threatens US security. The Times said in a statement to readers that it took care "not to publish information that would harm national security interests."
– If, someday, bedbugs are no longer a cause for concern, remember to thank Regine Gries. She's a biologist in British Columbia who was willing to tolerate 180,000 bites as a host for the creatures so that her team could study them. "I calmed myself down thinking when human beings were still living in caves, they were probably bitten by bedbugs, by fleas, by mice and who knows what," she tells the Canadian Press via CTV. "So I think humans can endure this, and I'm lucky enough that I have no side effects, that I just can handle it." It seems her work has paid off. The researchers, including Gries' husband, found a histamine molecule that, to the bugs, indicates a "safe space," the Press reports; once the bugs find it, they stick around. The researchers lured them to the trap using a pheromone blend and components from the bedbugs' own feces; the histamine then keeps them there. The cost of the chemicals? Less than a dime per trap. "The biggest challenge in dealing with bedbugs is to detect the infestation at an early stage," Gries' husband tells Simon Fraser University News. "This trap will help landlords, tenants, and pest-control professionals determine whether premises have a bedbug problem, so that they can treat it quickly." The trap should be on the market next year, CBC reports. That's particularly good news for Chicago, which was reported earlier this year to be America's worst city for bedbugs. (Another researcher suffered bee stings in the name of science.)
– Kanye West was released from the hospital Wednesday, sources tell CNN. West, who was brought to UCLA's medical center after a nervous breakdown, was reportedly treated for exhaustion and is now home with wife Kim Kardashian and their children. TMZ says the breakdown was triggered by the anniversary of his mother's funeral, and that his Saint Pablo concert tour, which he put on hold before being admitted to the hospital, is still on hold indefinitely. Sources say the rapper still requires medical and psychological treatment. Also on hold indefinitely: production of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Sources tell TMZ that thanks to West's hospitalization and Kardashian's robbery at gunpoint, there's no telling when filming will begin again. Kim is said to be "rethinking everything." Sources tell Us Kardashian and West were fighting a lot before his hospitalization. After the robbery, when West returned to his tour, Kardashian was too anxious to go along. "Of course it strained their relationship, because she hadn’t seen him," one source says. When he was home from the tour, "he would be up all night ranting about things" while continuing to work, adds a source. "They were fighting because he was impossible to live with." And then there was the fact that Kardashian was robbed so close to the anniversary of his mother's death, sources say; the combination was too much for West to handle: "Seeing Kim close to death did a major number on him. It sent him into a tailspin." That, in turn, led Kardashian to be unhappy, because she felt West wasn't supporting her in her time of need. Sources say she's relieved he's now getting help.
– Michael Bloomberg isn’t wasting any time celebrating New York’s new marriage law. The day gay marriage becomes legal in the state, the mayor will officiate at the wedding of two city officials, NBC New York reports. Bloomberg will unite his chief policy adviser (John Feinblatt) and the city’s consumer affairs commissioner (Jonathan Mintz) in a ceremony at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence. The city clerk’s office would usually be closed on a Sunday, but it’s staying open for the big day on July 24. Bloomberg's decision contrasts with that of Rudy Giuliani, who has so far rebuffed requests from gay friends to preside over their nuptials in the city, notes the Daily Intel blog.
– One of the richest men in the world is once again a free man, but it may have cost him a fortune. Saudi billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal walked out of prison Saturday after being arrested on corruption charges as part of a sweeping roundup in November, reports Reuters. More precisely, he walked out of the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, which has been turned into a prison of sorts for Saudi elite accused of wrongdoing. Prior to his release, Saudi authorities were reportedly seeking a financial settlement of $6 billion—yes, billion—from al-Waleed, though it is unclear what, if any, amount he paid, reports the Wall Street Journal. Neither the prince nor Saudi authorities have provided details about his release, including whether he has been cleared of wrongdoing. The corruption crackdown set in place by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is widely regarded as more of a bid on his part to consolidate power as he institutes wide-ranging reform throughout the country. So far, the government has secured about $100 billion in settlements from those rounded up, though nearly 100 have not paid and face prosecution.
– In a break with tradition, last year's Best Actor winner will not be presenting the Best Actress award at this year's Oscars. Casey Affleck's win last year for Manchester by the Sea was controversial because of past accusations of sexual harassment, and sources tell Deadline that he decided to drop out because he "did not want to become a distraction from the focus that should be on the performances of the actresses in the category." Affleck denied accusations in 2010 that he sexually harassed producer Amanda White and director of photography Magdalena Gorka on the set of I'm Still Here, though he settled with them out of court for an undisclosed sum, the Independent reports. A rep for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirmed Affleck's withdrawal Thursday, saying they "appreciate the decision to keep the focus on the show and on the great work of this year," Variety reports. An Affleck rep says he will not be attending the ceremony at all this year. After last year's controversy, Affleck said both sides in the case are banned from commenting on it. He added that he believes "any kind of mistreatment of anyone for any reason is unacceptable and abhorrent." Almost 20,000 people signed a petition at Care2 urging the Academy not to let Affleck present the award.
– A New Mexico courtroom will be the scene of a trial sure to make many uncomfortable next month: A 36-year-old mother and her 19-year-old son have been charged with incest and face three years in jail, reports the Clovis News Journal. But Monica Mares and Caleb Peterson are anything but ashamed: In fact, they say they're madly in love and hope their trial raises awareness of something called Genetic Sexual Attraction. "Nothing can come between us—not courts, or jail, nothing," Mares tells the Daily Mail. She gave Peterson up for adoption when he was a baby, and he eventually found her on Facebook and moved in with her after he turned 18, notes the News Journal. The relationship quickly became sexual. "I never thought I was crazy for having these feelings because I didn't see her as my mom," says Peterson. "It was more like going to a club and meeting a random person." The relationship came to light when a neighbor in Clovis confronted them about it, and police were called, reports KOB4. Both were arrested, though they are now free on bond—and forbidden by court order from seeing each other. GSA refers to sexual attraction between biological relatives, usually involving people who didn't grow up together, and the couple hopes their case might bring the issue all the way to the Supreme Court. GSA may be more common than you think.
– The New York Times sheds a little more light on what went on behind the scenes of Caitlyn Jenner's super-secretive Vanity Fair cover shoot, via the paper's conversation with Jessica Diehl. Diehl, VF's fashion and style director, says she found her job "completely petrifying," partially because in depicting Jenner, Diehl wanted to nail "how she sees herself," she explains. And then there was the secrecy: Only about 10 people at the magazine knew Jenner was being photographed; Diehl told the rest of the team Barbra Streisand was the subject of the shoot. And, because of the need for secrecy, Diehl had to buy rather than borrow some of the clothing for Jenner to wear—a challenge for a 6-foot-2-inch cover model. One dress was sourced traditionally from Zac Posen, and the designer didn't realize he was going to be part of such a "historic moment," as he later called it, until he saw the magazine Monday morning. More news: In case you were wondering why Caitlyn didn't go with Kaitlyn, in a nod to ex-wife Kris, stepdaughters Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian, and daughters Kylie and Kendall, well, she's not saying. But, as the AP reports, Caitlyn does acknowledge in the full VF interview that she at least considered the "K" spelling before deciding to break the tradition. Jenner's mom is having a hard time adjusting to all the changes: Caitlyn is "beautiful" and "so much more at ease," Esther Jenner tells Access Hollywood, but "I still have to call him Bruce. His father and I named him that. It's going to be a struggle for me to get used to the change, but happily so … I'm very happy for him—or her!" Caitlyn seems to have overshadowed Kim Kardashian's pregnancy news, but a source tells the New York Daily News that Kim and Kanye are expecting not one but two babies. "Kim has told a handful of people that she had in vitro and that two eggs were fertilized. She is waiting to see if they both 'stick' before she makes any kind of announcement," the source says, adding that Kim also doesn't want to take away from Caitlyn's moment. Another source tells E! the due date is December. Click to watch a promo for Caitlyn Jenner's upcoming reality show.
– As Venezuela gears up for its presidential election Sunday, the economic and social turmoil there continues. But for one American, trapped in the Helicoide prison in Caracas, the stakes are especially high. NPR and CNN report on the plight of Utah's Joshua Holt, a Mormon missionary jailed there in 2016 with his wife, Thamara Candelo, a Venezuelan Mormon Holt met online before heading to Venezuela to marry her. They were waiting on paperwork for Candelo so they could move back to the US, along with her two young daughters, when they were detained in an anti-gang raid in June 2016 and hit with weapons charges. Now, prisoners are rioting in the Helicoide, and Holt, 26, is using social media to plea for help. "The prison where I am at has fallen the guards are here and people are trying to break in my room and kill me. WHAT DO WE DO?" he posted on Facebook Wednesday. Holt's trial on the weapons charges was set to start Tuesday, but he and his wife were never brought to the courthouse, per the AP. "They want to kill me and paint the walls with my blood," he added in another post, begging the US to help him and noting Venezuela's intelligence agency said it won't let him go "as long as my government continues attacking this government." He also uploaded two short video clips making similar pleas, saying, "I've been begging my government for two years. They say they're doing things but I'm still here." On Thursday, the US Embassy in Venezuela tweeted that it's concerned about the situation at the Helicoide and that Holt and other Americans there are in peril. "The Venezuelan government is directly responsible for its security and we will hold it responsible if something happens to them," the embassy added. (The "illegal" closing of a Kellogg factory there.)
– Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, is known as a champion for women. What's less well-known is that her husband, Dave Goldberg, who died unexpectedly Friday at the age of 47, spent his life working to strengthen women's voices, reports the New York Times, which calls Goldberg "perhaps the signature male feminist of his era." Even as a teenager, his prom date says he pushed her to speak up in class, telling her, "They need to hear your voice." Years later, when an employee had a child, he didn't stop challenging her—but he did start letting her spend a day each week working from home. In his own life, he made sure he could be at home with the kids while his wife, whom he had encouraged to fight for a high salary, was traveling. Both often left work at 5:30 to have dinner with their two kids, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2013—though he noted that doesn't mean they don't work after dinner. Goldberg was "the first major chief executive in memory to spur his wife to become as successful in business as he was," adds the New York Times, and was a central figure in Sandberg's bestseller, Lean In. "The most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry. I have an awesome husband, and we’re 50/50," she said in 2011, per the Wall Street Journal. From his perspective: "It is great having one of the smartest people in business as your partner," he told the Los Angeles Times. "I always say, 'Well, Sheryl said.'"
– Fresh off winning a rotating seat on the 15-member UN Security Council, Saudi Arabia has made the unexpected move of refusing it, citing the body's poor response to unrest in the Middle East, specifically in Syria. In a statement reported by the New York Times, the Saudi Foreign Ministry argues "the method and work mechanism and the double standards in the Security Council prevent it from properly shouldering its responsibilities toward world peace," noting the country will only take its place once reforms have been made to boost the body's role in fostering that peace. It didn't give specifics. Though the Times suggests that Saudi Arabia is frustrated that permanent members Russia and China have stymied some of the West's efforts regarding Syria (efforts the country supports), Reuters reports that much of the country's anger is directed at the US. It specifies that Saudi Arabia views American policies regarding the Arab Spring as damaging relations between the two countries; Washington's softening toward Iran's new president, Hasan Rouhani, hasn't sat well with the country, either. The Times calls it a "surprising" move, noting that it was the first time Saudi Arabia has gone after a Security Council seat, which many saw as an indication that it wanted to have a bigger hand in what's happening in Syria.
– Leonardo DiCaprio is the new cover boy for Rolling Stone, and the magazine has snippets of its interview: Dating: "I had better success meeting girls before Titanic. My interactions with them didn't have all the stigma behind it, not to mention there wasn’t a perception of her talking to me for only one reason." Growing up: "I was essentially a dwarf with the biggest mouth in the world. I would talk back to anyone and be up for any fight." Nerves: "(My stomach churns over) really stupid stuff. Things that shouldn't make you anxious whatsoever. It's crazy how your mind will become this database to make you worry about things that are so arbitrary." Wilder days: "I got to be wild and nuts, and I didn't suffer as much as people do now, where they have to play it so safe that they ruin their credibility." Drugs: "My two main competitors in the beginning, the blond-haired kids I went to audition with, one hung himself and the other died of a heroin overdose... . I was never into drugs at all. There aren’t stories of me in a pool of my own vomit in a hotel room on the Hollywood Strip." (Radar says he's speaking of Jonathan Brandis and River Phoenix.)
– It’s official: Mahmoud Abbas will demand full UN membership from the Security Council next week, despite an almost certain veto from the US. Abbas formally committed to the gambit for the first time in a speech today, the New York Times reports, saying that “We need a state, a seat at the United Nations, and nothing more.” The US had hoped it could talk Abbas out of the move. But the AP notes that Abbas downplayed expectations, saying the move wouldn’t grant Palestine its independence. “The occupation will not come to an end,” he said. “But we will at least have recognition that we are under occupation, and not a disputed territory as Israel says.” He also said that he wasn’t trying to isolate or delegitimize Israel, according to the Jerusalem Post. “Israel is there, no one can isolate or take away its legal status,” he said, “but we need to isolate the policies of Israel.”
– Feeling gloomy about life, the universe, and everything? Then take note of a new study that links optimism to heart health and a handful of other health positives, EurekAlert reports. Analyzing data on more than 5,100 adults, researchers found that the most optimistic are twice as likely to be "in ideal cardiovascular health compared to their more pessimistic counterparts," says lead author Rosalba Hernandez. "This association remains significant, even after adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics and poor mental health." Optimists were found to have better total cholesterol levels, blood sugar levels, and body-mass indexes, and to get more physical activity. "It's an incentive to try to be optimistic," CBS New York quotes a physician as saying. That's "oftentimes difficult in the times we live in, in the world we live in and the sad news all the time," the physician goes on. "But if you knew that you could actually save your life, I think that’s a pretty good prescription." Published in Health Behavior and Policy Review, the paper looks at 11 years of data on people aged 45 to 84 across six US regions. They were assessed every 18 months to two years by seven health metrics (including blood pressure, BMI, and dietary intake) and filled out surveys about their optimism and physical and mental health. It's likely the first study linking heart health and optimism in the general population, although a 2012 Harvard study did connect overall happiness with cardiovascular health, the New York Times reported at the time. (Another study finds that those who feel younger than their age will live longer.)
– It was smooth sailing to the top spot at the box office for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, but the waters were choppier for the much-derided Dwayne Johnson comedy Baywatch. Studio estimates on Sunday say the fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise commandeered $62.2 million in its first three days in theaters. The Johnny Depp-starring flick is projected to take in $76.6 million over the four-day holiday weekend, reports the AP. Despite its top spot, however, the latest is showing what Variety calls "a serious case of franchise fatigue." To wit, it's the lowest finish for a Pirates movie since the original; Dead Man's Chest was the peak with $135.6 million. The R-rated Baywatch, meanwhile, is sinking like a rock. The critically derided update of the 1990s TV show earned only $18.1 million over the weekend against a nearly $70 million price tag. Even Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 did better in its third weekend. The space opera added $19.1 million. Rounding out the top five, per Box Office Mojo, were Alien: Covenant with $10.5 million and Everything, Everything with $6.2 million,
– Protesters in the park at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration were bracing for a showdown with police this morning, but they appear to have been granted a reprieve. The protesters had vowed to defy orders to leave Zuccotti Park by 6am so it could be cleaned. The city had said protesters could return after that cleaning—but without the sleeping bags and other gear that has made a 27-day sit-in possible, the New York Daily News reports. Dozens of protesters with brooms and buckets began a major park clean-up last night, with some even planting flowers, reports the Huffington Post. Did their efforts work? Maybe: NYC's deputy mayor announced this morning that the cleaning has been postponed. According to a statement from him, the park's owner "believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation." Activists viewed the order to leave the park as an attempt to shut down the protests; Capital Tonight calls the postponement a victory for the protesters.
– President Trump's longtime personal driver says the billionaire exploited him in an "utterly callous display of unwarranted privilege and entitlement." Noel Cintron is suing the Trump Organization, claiming he was stiffed for around 3,300 hours in overtime over six years and didn't receive a "meaningful" raise for more than a decade, TMZ reports. The 59-year-old says he joined the Trump Organization more than 30 years ago and served as Trump's chauffeur for around 20 years until the Secret Service took over in 2016. He says he worked at least 50 hours a week but was paid a flat yearly salary, which rose to $75,000 in 2010, instead of time-and-a-half for overtime as required under New York law, reports the Washington Post. Cintron—whose lawyer says he is still employed by the Trump Organization—is seeking more than $200,000 in compensation for overtime worked over six years, which is as far back as his lawsuit can go under the statute of limitations, Bloomberg reports. According to his lawsuit, on one of the few occasions he received a raise, Cintron ended up losing money because the organization forced him to give up his health benefits. His lawsuit slams Trump for his "callousness and cupidity." The Trump Organization says it will fight the lawsuit. Cintron "was at all times paid generously and in accordance with the law," a spokeswoman said in a statement. "Once the facts come out we expect to be fully vindicated in court."
– The mysterious disappearance of an Arizona woman hiking a world-famous trail in Spain appears to have been solved, but in the worst possible way. Authorities there arrested a 39-year-old man and found a body on his property believed to be that of 41-year-old Denise Thiem, reports the AP. Tests to confirm are pending. Thiem went missing in April while walking the St. James Way, also known as the Camino de Santiago. The suspect, Miguel Angel Munoz, has a small farm in Asturias near the trail, which leads to a cathedral believed to house the remains of St. James the Apostle. Thousands of hikers from around the world make the pilgrimage each year, one that was popularized in the 2010 Martin Sheen movie The Way. Thiem, who was widely traveled, had quit her job working in PetSmart's corporate headquarters in Phoenix to make the hike herself, reports the Arizona Republic. She began in Pamplona in March and planned to finish in about 90 days. All was going well until she disappeared on Easter Sunday. Spain's interior minister says the remains "effectively appear to be those of Denise," adding that the suspect "was little-known in his own neighborhood and did not relate much to society." He reportedly led police to the body, reports ABC News.
– Love is pouring into Orlando from around the world—including some 4,000 miles away in London. Among those to gather at a vigil in the city's Soho district Monday—in memory of those killed at Pulse nightclub—was the London Gay Men's Chorus, which performed a moving rendition of Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" that "will send shivers down your spine," per Mashable. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, in attendance along with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, described a "sense of solidarity," per the Telegraph. "Love, in the end, defeats this crime, because it's stronger," he said.
– Rush Limbaugh helped snarl the White House switchboard today when he gave listeners the toll-free numbers and urged them to call to chat about health care reform. “The system is being overwhelmed by calls,” one employee told Roll Call this afternoon. It's only the second time Limbaugh has pulled such as a stunt, and he explained it was necessary because "this is ballgame." Answering an email from Michael Calderone of Politico on the air, Limbaugh said: "The only reason we're at this point is because the American people have stood up. The Republicans don't have the votes to stop this. ... All we can do is continue to have the American people let it be known they want no part of this—the substance of the bill or the process."
– Kathryn Schurtz and Joseph Kearney were on their way to their wedding when the unthinkable happened Wednesday. The New Jersey couple was driving to Pittsburgh for the nuptials when a crash occurred ahead of them on I-78 in Windsor Township, Pa. Traffic slowed, but a tractor-trailer behind the couple wasn't able to stop in time and hit their car, pushing it into the back of another tractor-trailer. That crash caused a fiery chain reaction ultimately involving the couple's car, which caught on fire, and five tractor-trailers, the Reading Eagle reports. Three other people were injured, NBC Philadelphia reports. Now, instead of a wedding, family will be attending funeral services. Schurtz, 35, "will be remembered for her voracious appetite for reading, love of cooking, and trailblazing new adventures with Joseph," says her obituary. Born and raised in New Jersey, she graduated from George Washington University before getting her MBA at Notre Dame. She was working for Oracle Data Cloud in New York City, and living back in New Jersey, when she was killed. Little information was available on her fiance, but NJ.com reports that per his Facebook profile, Kearney was originally from Pittsburgh. (This couple was married just one and a half hours before tragedy struck.)
– To the victors go the massive ticker-tape parades. Thousands roared as Giants quarterback Eli Manning hoisted the team's Super Bowl trophy during a parade today through New York City. (The Daily Intel blog wonders why the city can't do this for Iraqi war vets, too.) Today's parade set off from the southern tip of Manhattan and moved slowly north to City Hall as confetti wafted down from the high-rises. Mayor Bloomberg said the city should now be nicknamed the "Big Blue Apple." Click for more from the parade.
– The Obama administration will soon take the radical step of allowing legal pot businesses to actually put their money in banks—sort of. At an event yesterday, Eric Holder said he was working with the Treasury Department on new regulations and would unveil them "very soon," Politico reports. "There's a public safety component to this," the attorney general explained. "Substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around ... is something that would worry me, just from a law enforcement perspective." But a Justice Department spokesperson later said that it would merely issue legal "guidance" telling prosecutors not to prioritize such cases. That might not be enough for banks; the American Bankers Association tell the New York Times that they'll want "a lot of detail from regulators"—and assurances they won't be prosecuted—before they'll feel comfortable taking the money. States with legalized marijuana have been clamoring for such a change, as have the companies themselves, who say they're overburdened with cash. But the Times notes it's unclear whether what the DOJ is preparing would extend to all states that have OKed medical marijuana, or just Colorado and Washington. It would be a rare pro-pot step from what's been a virulently anti-pot administration, and comes on the heels of President Obama's recent much-discussed comments on it.
– Just in case anybody missed the three short-range missiles North Korea fired off into the sea yesterday, Pyongyang launched a fourth missile in the same area today, reports CNN. That flies in the face of Western calls to cool it already, notes Reuters, after UN chief Ban Ki-moon voiced concern, calling yesterday's launches a "provocative action." Saber-rattling or no, the region is still decidedly calmer than last month, a Seoul-based journalist says. "It's really simply because it's North Korea doing this that it raises concerns," he said. "The North Koreans have significantly de-escalated their bellicosity and their rhetoric since the end of April." Seoul, which confirmed the launch today, "will not be strongly condemnatory of this test because right now they are very, very keen to get the North Koreans to the negotiating table."
– A brief, planned ceasefire failed to materialize in Gaza today, as death continued to rain down on the strip. Israel had offered to hold its offensive to accommodate a visit from Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil, provided Hamas held its fire as well. But Hamas said it would keep firing, and one Israeli defense minister complained that 50 rockets had flown in from Gaza during Kandil's visit, CNN reports. A Hamas-run TV station reported that Israel had kept firing as well, but Israel says it took a break for at least two hours. In Palestine the death toll has risen to 21, including 13 civilians, Reuters reports. Among those civilians were seven children and a pregnant teenager. Israel's death toll held steady at 3, despite the hundreds of rockets fired into Israel. But Hamas did up the ante by firing rockets near Tel Aviv for the first time. Air-raid sirens sounded (the last time they did so was during the Gulf War) and civilians ran for cover, though the missiles exploded harmlessly, with one going into the sea. "There will be a price for that escalation," Ehud Barak vowed, according to the New York Times. Israel has now hit 250 Gaza targets, while taking further steps toward a ground invasion, calling up 16,000 reservists, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's also steadily sending troops and armored vehicles to the border, notes CNN—between 1,500 and 2,000 are already there, one official said. Israel claims the attacks have weakened Hamas' military capabilities and caused its attacks to lighten, but Hamas denied that, saying it had hit multiple Israeli targets today. Kandil emerged from his meeting with Hamas expressing solidarity, saying the new Egyptian regime would be more active in helping the Palestinians. "The time has changed," he said. "No longer the Israeli occupation will be able to carry out their attacks against the Palestinians without being held responsible. That time is far bygone." For its part, the Obama administration says it's seeking help from Arab countries in calling on Hamas to relent. "The onus rests squarely on Hamas ... to stop its rocket attacks," says a State Department spokesman. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is planning diplomatic visits to Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Cairo within days.
– A Florida woman trying to get pregnant via artificial insemination called police because she feared the thermos she was using to store sperm and dry ice might explode. Felicia Nevins sought the Pasco County Sheriff's Office's help after she forgot to remove a rubber O-ring from the container, the AP reports—and the next thing Nevins knew, the incident was all over social media. That's because the sheriff's office posted details on Facebook. Per the Tampa Bay Times, the 26-year-old called the cops Wednesday evening, and a deputy and firefighters showed up. They took the thermos and managed to get it open without incident, and Nevins said she appreciated that they didn't reveal the purpose of their visit to her curious neighbors. However, the sheriff's office posted a description of the house call on Facebook, along with a stock photo of a woman looking repulsed. Nevins says that even though she wasn't identified by name, there was enough information about her, including her age and location, for people to put two and two together after sifting through public records. Nevins, who has been trying to conceive a child with her husband for three years, told the Times she was upset because the post had not been removed as of Friday (it's still up as of Monday morning). "I didn't want any of this," she notes. The sheriff's office defended its decision, saying it was important to provide the type of safety information in the post. "Make no mistake, this was a potentially dangerous situation," a statement by Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco noted.
– A nuclear accident happened somewhere in Russia or Kazakhstan during the last week of September and was kept very quiet, the French nuclear safety institute IRSN has concluded after analyzing a mysterious radioactive cloud that appeared over Europe last month. IRSN researchers say they detected high levels of ruthenium 106, a type of atom that does not occur in nature and is only found when atoms are split in reactors, Reuters reports. The cloud was at its peak during the first week in October and dissipated until it could not be detected in France by Oct. 13, according to IRSN, which says its analysis of weather patterns points to a source between the Ural mountains and the Volga river. The institute, which says other European nuclear regulators have made similar findings, has ruled out the crash of a radioactive satellite or an accident at a nuclear reactor as the source of the cloud. It says the most likely source was either a facility dealing with spent nuclear fuel or a facility for radioactive medicine. Russian authorities say they're not aware of any accident in the area, while Kazakh authorities haven't been reached for comment yet, IRSN says. The institute says the cloud itself is harmless and is unlikely to contaminate food, though it says there must have been a very large amount of ruthenium 106 released at the accident site, enough that would have theoretically warranted an evacuation of a radius of several miles.
– Move over, sugary Slurpees—a trendy new drink that purports to offer a whole lot more in the nutrition department is about to hit the shelves at 7-Eleven. Quartz reports that the chain launched its first run of Soylent products Monday in 18 stores across the greater-LA region. It’s the first time the meal-replacement drink has been offered in stores, with all sales previously done online via Amazon and the company’s website. "Eating isn't easy," Soylent’s website says, vowing to make meals less stressful via its range of drink and powder mixtures described by Quartz as tasting like “licking stamps” and “stale Cheerios.” Marketed toward millennials, the time-starved hacker-set, and efficient Silicon Valley-types, the products offer a nutrition-dense meal replacement you can down in a few gulps rather than stopping to get lunch. According to the Soylent blog, three flavors will be available at the 7-Eleven locations: Cacao, Cafe Coffiest, and Cafe Chai. No word yet on whether the products will expand to more stores, but Soylent CEO Rob Rhinehart has hinted that this is the first step in offering their products more broadly: “We are thrilled to be working alongside the talented 7-Eleven team and look forward to building our retail presence nationwide.” But per Grub Street, not all the kinks in the drinkable meal revolution have been worked out. After a whopping four product recalls within 18 months, including food bars that reportedly made people violently sick, some consumers still complain of digestion issues with some of the company's products.
– While Donald Trump did his Dr. Oz thing, Hillary Clinton's doctor released a letter hoping to clear up this whole pneumonia brouhaha. CBS News reports Dr. Lisa Bardack diagnosed Clinton with pneumonia last Friday. Two days later, Clinton was seen stumbling while leaving a Sept. 11 memorial, kicking off speculation about her health and leading her campaign to make the pneumonia diagnosis public. In her letter released Wednesday, Bardack says a CT scan showed Clinton had "mild, non-contagious bacterial pneumonia" for which she is taking antibiotics, according to the Washington Post. CBS' chief medical correspondent says he's "reassured" by the letter, which answered "a bunch of the questions that I had." The letter also includes a whole host of health information on Clinton, including her blood pressure of 100/70, heart rate of 70, and temperature of 97.8, NBC News reports. Experts reviewing the letter for the Post say it shows normal vitals, including cholesterol and that Clinton appears to be "at low risk for illness for a woman her age." In the letter, Bardack writes she is happy with Clinton's recovery and that Clinton continues to be "healthy and fit to serve as president."
– Facebook's IPO is looking more disastrous by the day. Regulators are now probing reports that underwriter Morgan Stanley and other banks cut their revenue forecasts for the company just days before the IPO—but only advised major clients of the change. Insiders believe the revised forecast, which smaller investors were not advised of, contributed to the weak performance of Facebook shares, which finished more than 18% below the IPO price yesterday, costing investors close to $40 billion, Reuters reports. Regulators in Massachusetts have subpoenaed chief underwriter Morgan Stanley, and the SEC is reviewing the allegations The forecasts were cut after a tipoff from a Facebook exec, according to Business Insider, which notes that such "selective disclosure" is grossly unfair to investors at best and a violation of securities laws at worst. "There is no debating this is a misadventure of epic proportions," a Greencrest Capital analyst tells CBS. "This was supposed to be the chance to restore the public's faith in the public markets and in Wall Street," he says. "And instead, it's been a reminder of everything people suspected, feared, or hated about the public markets and Wall Street."
– A CIA operative in charge of hunting down Osama bin Laden is a war profiteer who helped bilk the Pentagon out of some $200 million, reports Gawker. Marty Martin was put in charge of tracking down the terror mastermind from 2002-2004, and boasted to the AP that those early efforts "led to this great day" the day bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs. After he left the CIA, Martin joined International Oil Trading Company, a Florida operation that delivered fuel to US forces in the Middle East, a company accused by both Congress and the Pentagon of grossly overcharging the government, to the tune of $204 million. Martin was also accused in a Florida lawsuit of paying a $9 million bribe to Jordanian officials to win exclusive fuel shipping rights, and has been linked to dirty campaign contributions given to (and returned by) John McCain during his bid for the presidency. Contacted by Gawker to comment on the various charges, Martin responded: "No no, man. I don't want to talk to you, man."
– The New York Times is standing by its Q&A with Pulitzer-winning author Alice Walker despite complaints about her comments on a book by an accused anti-Semite. The 74-year-old author of The Color Purple told the newspaper's By the Book column that was she was currently reading David Icke's And the Truth Shall Set You Free and called it "a curious person's dream come true." At Tablet, Yair Rosenberg writes that the book referencing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a text accusing Jewish people of a plot for global domination, "is an unhinged anti-Semitic conspiracy tract written by one of Britain's most notorious anti-Semites." The Washington Post highlights this quote: "I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War." A Times rep says the column is a "portrait of a public person through the lens of books; it is not a list of recommendations from our editors," who might "dislike, disdain or even abhor" the books mentioned, per the Guardian. But Amy Russo at HuffPo notes the paper failed to provide context in an editor's note, "thereby allowing [Icke's] name to be promoted unchecked." Rosenberg argues the column only ensures "racism is disseminated to more people." Walker also said this of the book: "In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about." Her comments are "especially corrosive because the anti-Jewish conspiracies she uplifted and adopted are part of the same white supremacist power structure she so deftly fought through her written work in the past," adds Jewish filmmaker Rebecca Pierce. (Walker once blocked an Israeli publisher from printing her book.)
– It's tough to comprehend: The FBI says the owner of a Dallas-area hospice ordered nurses to increase drug dosages for patients to speed their deaths and maximize profits, reports the AP. The revelations come via KXAS-TV, which obtained an affidavit filed to justify a search warrant of Novus Health Services in Frisco. The affidavit alleges that owner Brad Harris, 34, texted nurses orders such as, "You need to make this patient go bye-bye." More specifically, it accuses Harris of ordering too-high dosages for at least four patients with drugs such as morphine, though it's unclear whether any patients died as a result. No charges have been filed as the investigation continues. The FBI also accuses of Harris, during a meeting with two other execs, of expressing the wish to "find patients who would die within 24 hours." In regard to one patient in particular, he said "words to the effect of, 'If this fu**** would just die,'" according to the affidavit. The FBI says Harris was worried that if patients lingered too long in hospice care, it would cut into his company's profits. Several employees left the company after the FBI raid, and now Harris is suing them for breach of contract, reports a separate KXAS story.
– An interview Herman Cain had scheduled with New Hampshire’s largest newspaper fell through today, in what the New Hampshire Union Leader dubbed a “no-show.” Cain’s camp blamed the newspaper. Scheduled a week in advance, the sit-down was originally supposed to be an hour long and aired on C-SPAN. But after Cain’s Libya flub in a similar interview in Milwaukee, the campaign said it didn’t want the interview taped. “Videos are typically used for television and it’s a newspaper,” a Cain spokesman explains to Politico. Cain instead scheduled another event, telling the Union Leader he could stop by for only 20 minutes—which the paper deemed unacceptable. “We can catch Cain anywhere for 20 minutes,” the publisher said; the sit-down interview was intended to “really size up the candidate.” The implication? The interview—which three of Cain’s rivals have already done—is key to nabbing the paper’s influential endorsement.
– From now until the end of the World Series, you probably won't be hearing Lorde's hit song, "Royals," playing in San Francisco. Locals have been asking the city's radio stations to ban the song until the series between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals comes to a close, and at least two have obliged, Yahoo Sports reports. "No offense, Lorde, but for the duration of the World Series, KFOG Radio will be a 'Royals'-free zone. We're sure you understand," wrote one station on Facebook. And according to Fox 4, 96.5 KOIT has also decided to keep the song off-air for the duration of the series. Interestingly, the Kansas City Royals partially inspired the song, Lorde told VH1 last year. “I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude just signing baseballs," she explained. "He was a baseball player and his shirt said, 'Royals.' ... It was just that word. It's really cool."
– Flags are flying at half-staff in front of the White House and the Capitol today in honor of the victims of last week's Chattanooga shootings. President Obama ordered the move at the White House “as a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated," and the flag will remain that way through Saturday. Obama made the decision soon after John Boehner and Mitch McConnell announced they would lower flags at the Capitol, reports CNN. For a brief period today, flags at either end of Pennsylvania were out of sync on the matter. Obama, in fact, had been taking criticism from the right for not lowering the flags right away, notes the Hill.
– Jesse Jackson Jr. wept in court today, apologized for using $750,000 in campaign funds as his personal piggy bank, and then took his lumps: 30 months in federal prison and three years' probation, reports the Chicago Tribune. “I am the example for the whole Congress,” he said. “I understand that. I didn’t separate my personal life from my political activities, and I couldn’t have been more wrong.” The former Illinois congressman added an unusual request: He wants to serve his time in Alabama because "I want to make it a little inconvenient for everybody to get to me.” His wife, Sandi, then got sentenced to 12 months in prison for filing false tax returns about their income, reports AP. She wept, too. “My heart breaks every day with the pain this has caused my babies,” she said, referring to their two children, ages 9 and 13. Because of the kids, the judge will allow the Jacksons to stagger their sentences and to decide themselves who goes first, reports the Sun-Times. Interesting part noted by the Tribune: The judge made a point to sentence Sandi Jackson to exactly one year, not the more common one year and one day. The latter would have made her eligible for time off for good behavior. Now she must serve her full term.
– Puerto Rico is still in great need of hurricane relief supplies, as San Juan's mayor noted last week, which makes recent news out of Florida frustrating. The Orlando Sentinel reports that boxes of donated supplies meant to be sent to the island after Hurricane Maria remained stuck instead in a Kissimmee government office, and that a recent rat infestation has now contaminated some of the food, water, and other supplies that were left languishing. The office of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, which its executive director says is situated in an "old" and "deteriorated" building, couldn't move the materials to their intended destination due to budgetary issues related to shipping. Carlos Mercader says attempts to recruit other groups to help them send the supplies were "unsuccessful." A previous chief of the PRFFA is outraged by the wasted donations. "Every day, those employees would go into that office and saw those boxes and they did nothing," says Juan Hernandez Mayoral, who is also a former Puerto Rican senator. "This is government negligence." Newsweek notes this news comes on the heels of a contract canceled by FEMA after a one-woman company failed to deliver millions of meals to Puerto Rico as promised; Democratic lawmakers now want the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to subpoena FEMA to find out how that small company got the $156 million contract to perform that service. Meanwhile, Mercader says his team is trying to assess which supplies are still good and will then get them out to Puerto Rican evacuees living in central Florida.
– The Texas teenager who killed four people while driving drunk and got off with probation thanks to an "affluenza' defense says he doesn't even remember the crash. In newly released deposition footage, Ethan Couch says he believed his parents knew that he was a drinker and his mom had warned him not to drink and drive the night of the June, 2013 crash, ABC reports. "I've taken Valium, Hydrocodone, marijuana, cocaine, Xanax, and I think I tried Ecstasy once," says Couch, who testified that he was often allowed to stay alone at the family's second home. Couch, who is now 18, was three times over the legal blood-alcohol limit for an adult when he crashed his father's pickup truck, and he says he doesn't even remember leaving the house. The newly released footage also includes video of Couch's parents talking about the boy's upbringing, WFAA reports. Both parents admitted that the teen had issues with alcohol and although his mother claimed he was sometimes punished, she couldn't recall the last time that happened, the New York Daily News reports. Months before the deadly crash, Couch received a summons for an incident that included drunk-driving allegations, and his mother says she "should have" realized that if he wasn't punished, he would probably end up drinking and driving again. The final crash lawsuit was settled last week and Couch is now out of rehab and working at his father's sheet-metal company, reports ABC. (Last year, Couch's father was charged with impersonating a police officer.)
– We've heard plenty of public outcry about Gov. Mike Pence signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law last week. So who is cheering the law on? A family-owned pizza joint in Walkerton, Indiana. "If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no," Crystal O'Connor of Memories Pizza tells ABC 57. The station reports the family says gays are welcome to simply dine there—just not to order a wedding pie. "We are a Christian establishment," says Crystal. "We're not discriminating against anyone, that's just our belief and anyone has the right to believe in anything." Crystal's dad, Kevin, tells the station he also concurs with the bill. "I choose to be heterosexual. They choose to be homosexual. Why should I be beat over the head to go along with something they choose?" he says of potential gay customers trying to get their nuptials catered. ABC 57 reports the reaction has been swift and harsh, noting the pizzeria's Facebook rating has fallen from a 5 to a 1.2; its rating is currently a 1 on Yelp, too, where some of the current posts are definitely NSFW. (Gov. Pence insists the law is being "grossly misconstrued.")
– Amazon isn't just expanding grocery deliveries: The company will soon offer a shipping service for businesses, putting it in direct competition with UPS and FedEx, whose shares saw sharp declines in pre-market trading Friday, per CNBC. "Shipping with Amazon" will see Amazon pick up packages from third-party merchants who sell on Amazon's website before shipping them to buyers at lower rates than offered by UPS and FedEx—though Amazon may have to use those companies to reach areas beyond its delivery network, sources familiar with the plan tell the Wall Street Journal. The service is expected to debut within weeks in Los Angeles, where a pilot program has been in the works for more than a year. The service could be expanded to more cities, possibly this year. "We're always innovating and experimenting on behalf of customers and the businesses that sell and grow on Amazon to create faster lower-cost delivery choices," a spokeswoman says, without offering specifics, though the Journal notes "Shipping with Amazon" could eventually be offered to other businesses, too. Sources say Amazon will be able to undercut UPS and FedEx because it already delivers some of its own orders in 37 cities. "Any extra space it can fill in its trucks with additional deliveries is considered added revenue," the Journal reports, noting Amazon eventually hopes to offer two-day deliveries, even on weekends.
– It might not just be the foods teens are eating that lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes, but the wrappers and cans they come in, two studies published recently in Pediatrics suggest. In one, researchers found that higher levels of DEHP, a phthalate found in processed foods, their packaging, medical equipment, and other products, correlated strongly with greater insulin resistance, a key precursor to diabetes. The other linked the infamous-yet-ubiquitous BPA with obesity, LiveScience reports. The DEHP link held true even after correcting for things like economic status, ethnicity, and glucose levels. "While dietary sources are likely to be the chief source of exposure, given the uses of DEHP in other products, we cannot rule out nondietary sources," researchers wrote, according to Fast Company. But both teams added that their results didn't prove causation, and one doctor commenting on the study complained that they relied on urine analysis, which isn't necessarily indicative of how much of the chemicals remained in the blood.
– We already knew the Great Recession was the worst in decades, but in fact we were even worse off than we thought, new figures show. The economy shrank 5.1% over the course of the recession, from 2007 to 2009—1 percentage point worse than the earlier estimate of 4.1%, the AP reports. Only two in the past 10 recessions saw a squeeze of more than 3%. And yes, the economy is now growing—but it expanded only 1.3% from April to June, the Commerce Department said, lower than expected. Officials also revised the growth figure for the first three months of the year to 0.4%, compared to an earlier estimate of 1.9%. That means that the past 6 months have seen the least growth since the end of the recession. Among the reasons: Gas prices, less consumer spending, and smaller government, notes the Atlantic. Combine these figures with the debt ceiling crisis, and it’s “like hearing about the Hindenburg on the day the 6-mile meteor hits the earth,” said a blogger.
– Police in Spartanburg, Va., aren't laughing off a woman's April Fool's "joke" about a shooting in the college where she worked. Police say 54-year-old Angela Timmons sent her daughter a text message to say she was hiding in a bathroom at Virginia College after hearing shots fired; the daughter called 911 after failing to receive a response to a follow-up text and police raced to the scene. "There's like 20-something cops all of the sudden," a witness tells WYFF. "They were just jumping right out of the cars and running straight in." Officers quickly determined there was no threat. The local sheriff says officers responded at "breakneck speed," fearing they would arrive at the scene of another Columbine or Sandy Hook massacre. He says he was glad it turned out to be a joke—though not a funny one. "Text someone and tell them their tire's flat, that's funny," he tells WPTV. "We're talking about death. It's real. The people of Sandy Hook, when they see this online they're not going to think it's very funny. I don't think it's very funny." Timmons faces multiple charges including disturbing schools. She worked in the college's financial aid office, though it's not clear whether she still has a job.
– President Trump escalated his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday, suggesting the Department of Justice put Republicans in midterm jeopardy with recent indictments of two GOP congressmen. Per the AP, Trump tweeted that "Obama era investigations, of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department." He added: "Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff......" The president's striking suggestion that the Justice Department consider politics when making decisions showed his disregard for the agency's independence. Investigators are never supposed to take into account the political affiliations of the people they investigate. Trump, who did not address the specifics of the charges, did not name the Republicans. But he was apparently referring to the first two Republicans to endorse him in the GOP presidential primaries. Both were indicted on separate charges last month: Rep. Duncan Hunter of California on charges that included spending campaign funds for personal expenses and Rep. Chris Collins of New York on insider trading. Both have proclaimed their innocence. A spokeswoman for Sessions declined comment, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump did not have any public events Monday. He briefly exited the White House to a waiting motorcade, but then went back inside without going anywhere.
– Israel launched an airstrike in the Gaza Strip today, in retaliation for the shooting of an Israeli working on the border fence, the Israeli military said, according to the AP. The military gave no hint as to its target or how many casualties it may have inflicted, but Hamas security sources tell CNN that one 4-year-old girl was killed in the strike, and three others were wounded. All four belonged to a family that lived near an al Qassam Brigades camp that the attack appeared to be targeting. A Palestinian sniper shot Salah Shukri Abu Latyef, a 22-year-old civilian engineer, earlier today, the Jerusalem Post reports. He was airlifted to the hospital, where he died of his wounds. Benjamin Netanyahu called it a "very grave incident," and promised to "react with force" in accordance with longstanding policy. Palestinians have launched a series of attacks on Israeli targets in recent days; Israeli soldiers have fired on Palestinian suspects five times since Friday, including an incident yesterday in which they spotted a man planting a bomb and fired at his legs.
– The captain who was "distracted" when the Costa Concordia sailed smack into a rock finally took to TV yesterday to at last say sorry, though it doesn't sound like the passion quotient was too high. "When there's an accident, it's not just the ship that's identified or the company," said Francesco Schettino according to Reuters, which took note of his "pronounced tic" in one eye. "The captain is identified and so it's normal that I should apologize as a representative of this system." And while he did fault the fact that he was distracted, he pointed out that another officer was sailing the ship at the time of the incident. More not-exactly-heart-wrenching comments: "This was a banal accident in which there was a breakdown in the interaction between human beings ... It was as though there was a blackout in everyone's heads and in the instruments." The BBC notes that he did get choked up at one point, though: When asked about the 5-year-old who was among the more than 30 who died, he was unable to speak. Schettino was released from house arrest last week, but faces multiple manslaughter charges.
– Tim Kaine's youngest son probably wouldn't have gotten arrested had his dad fared better in the November election, and not exactly because of the privilege of the vice presidency: The Pioneer Press reports that six people were arrested or cited Saturday at a "March 4 Trump" rally of about 400 in St. Paul, Minn., and 24-year-old Linwood Michael Kaine was one of them. The younger Kaine was arrested on suspicion of second-degree rioting at the state Capitol, where cops say a group of 50 or so anti-Trump protesters raised a ruckus by blaring air horns, being verbally disruptive, setting off fireworks, and even a smoke bomb that reportedly hit a 61-year-old woman in the head when it was thrown into the crowd. A St. Paul police rep says "some force" was needed to haul "Woody" Kaine to the Ramsey County jail. He wasn't charged, nor were the others, though the St. Paul city attorney is looking into whether any misdemeanors are warranted. Kaine was released Tuesday morning while the case is further investigated. Per WCCO, the Minnesota Republican Party put out a statement Monday blaming Democrats for "coordinating disruption and violence" both during the election and afterward. The senator, meanwhile, issued his own statement to the Press, noting he and his wife "love that our three children have their own views and concerns about current political issues," adding his kids know well how to "express those concerns peacefully." (Tim Kaine once ran for his Senate seat against a cat.)
– Yoko Ono is going to be reunited with a trove of John Lennon memorabilia that apparently took a long and winding road after being stolen from her New York home in 2006. Police in Germany say they have recovered more than 100 items, including diaries, glasses, and sheet music, many of which were confiscated from a Berlin auction house in July, the BBC reports. Police say a 58-year-old man was arrested Monday after a search of his home and cars turned up additional Lennon items. Prosecutors say a second suspect, Ono's former chauffeur, is living in Turkey and they will try to have him extradited. Police say they became aware of the items when a bankruptcy administrator at the Auctionata auction house contacted them in July, the AP reports. They are now trying to determine whether the auction house knew the items were stolen when it acquired them in 2014. The diaries are from 1975, 1979, and 1980. The final entry in the 1980 diary was made on Dec. 8, hours before he was murdered, says prosecutor Susann Wettley. She says that when investigators flew to New York to have Ono verify the items, the widow was "very emotional and we noticed clearly how much these things mean to her and how happy she would be to have them back." (An angry letter from Lennon to Paul McCartney was auctioned off last year.)
– North Korea fired an unidentified projectile from its capital Pyongyang that flew over Japan, officials said, an especially aggressive test-flight that will rattle an already anxious region, the AP reports. Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday said the South Korean and US militaries were analyzing the launch and the South Korean military said the projectile traveled 1678 miles with a height of 341 miles. Japanese officials said the missile flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido and landed in the Pacific Ocean. There was no damage to ships or anything else reported. Japan's NHK TV said the missile separated into three parts. The launch comes days after the North fired what was assessed as three short-range ballistic missiles into the sea and a month after its second flight test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, which analysts say could reach deep into the US mainland when perfected. North Korea typically reacts with anger to US-South Korean military drills, which are happening now, often staging weapons tests and releasing threats to Seoul and Washington in its state-controlled media. But animosity is higher than usual following threats by US President Donald Trump to unleash "fire and fury" on the North, and Pyongyang's stated plan to consider firing some of its missiles toward Guam.
– New York is poised to become the first state in the nation to require people convicted of any crime, no matter how minor, to provide DNA samples for a database. The state's lawmakers are putting the finishing touches on the measure, which would double the size of New York's DNA database, reports the New York Times. Supporters—including all 62 of the state's district attorneys—say the move will catch more violent offenders and exonerate more innocent people. "Every single time we’ve expanded the DNA database, we have shown how effective it is in convicting people who commit crimes, and we’ve also shown that it can be used to exonerate the innocent,” the chief of the Citizens Crime Commission says. The legislation would allow both prosecutors and defense lawyers to access the database. Some lawmakers are seeking to add a measure to the bill that would make it a violation, not a crime, to possess very small amounts of marijuana in public. Click for more on a state with a serious wrongful-conviction problem.
– The Union Street Guest House in Hudson, NY, wants you to keep your crummy opinions to yourself. So if you post something about the hotel’s "rude customer service, unclean, terrible odor," as NY Pix 11 quotes one reviewer, the hotel will collect a $500 fine. It’s right in their policy, which states that customers who’ve booked weddings or other events at the hotel will have their deposit deducted for every negative review written by their guests. Want your money back? Remove the review(s), the NY Post reports. But woe to the reviewer who doesn’t remove his complaints—the owners tend to get defensive. When a guest said staff was rude when they asked for ice, the hotel posted a response: "I know you guys wanted to hang out and get drunk for 2 days ... I was so so so sorry that our ice maker and fridge were not working and not accessible." Despite the hotel’s efforts, it still has a poor average rating on Yelp.
– Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman says FBI Director James Comey should explain the "unprecedented" step of announcing an agency review of new Clinton-related emails just days before a national election, reports the AP. John Podesta told CNN's State of the Union that Comey should have reviewed the information more thoroughly before making the decision public. Now, Podesta says, Comey should explain why "he took this unprecedented step, particularly when he said himself in the letter to the Hill that these (emails) may not even be significant." The candidate herself kept up the attack on Comey, notes CNN, telling a crowd on Saturday that "it's pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election. In fact, it's not just strange, it's unprecedented and it's deeply troubling because voters deserve to get full and complete facts." Elsewhere: Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says Comey was between a rock and a hard place, and could have been accused of meddling with the election if he hadn't made the disclosure. Meanwhile, Team Trump is walking back its previous criticism of the FBI's handling of the investigation into Clinton's email. Tim Kaine says Comey needs to tell the public if he hasn't yet reviewed any of the emails considered "pertinent" to the investigation, and says that as far as the campaign knows, Comey "knows nothing about the content of these emails." He calls it a "distraction" but says the Clinton campaign will "power forward" during the last 10 days. Mike Pence says the scandal shows that Clinton is "just a risky choice in this election." He adds that Trump has "made it clear we'll have the resources we need," and praises his "incredible generosity." Clinton's close relationship with top aide Huma Abedin is being put to the test, reports the New York Times. The AP notes that Team Clinton is thus far standing by Abedin, with campaign manager Robby Mook saying he's "absolutely" confident that Abedin fully complied with the FBI.
– So much for ending their marriage with “love and kindness”: A source happily dishes to Us that Ryan Reynolds would often say Scarlett Johansson “treated him badly” before their split. And while Reynolds was “beyond sad and depressed” about the breakup, says another friend, Johansson “was disconnected and disaffected. It was harsh.” Even so, the pair was recently spotted having dinner together, and PopEater notes that the goal of the dinner was accomplished—click to see what it was.
– A company hawking a "gravity blanket," which went viral on Kickstarter after claiming to treat everything from insomnia to anxiety, has doubled back on those promises after a website questioned its science. The crowdfunding campaign has raised $3.5 million with 15 days to go, but now, a thorn: Health news site STAT started nosing around the $279 gray coverlet's bid to be something of a cure-all and found the science behind its assertions to be lacking. STAT calls out one word in particular: "treat." The original Kickstarter listing said the weighted blanket can "treat" a slew of issues including PTSD and ADHD. STAT reports that on Thursday the word "treat" was dropped in favor of "used for" those ailments; then the paragraph was wiped entirely. STAT reports the original language went against Kickstarter's own rules banning claims to "cure, treat, or prevent an illness or condition." The pledge violated FDA recommendations, per STAT, though Fortune notes the agency doesn't regulate the industry and gives companies "broad leeway" to make medical claims. The Brooklyn-based makers say the blanket, which comes in three weights and should weigh about 10% of body weight, uses "deep pressure touch stimulation" to boost brain hormones that "improve your mood." All of this, they add, "without filling a prescription." The Kickstarter listing acknowledges weighted coverings are not a new idea, but says the idea of making them so accessible is. The Telegraph cites a 2015 study that credited the blankets with promoting a "beneficial calming effect." (This entrepreneur has made big bucks via Kickstarter knockoffs.)
– When you hear the name "Brent Scowcroft," certain things may come to mind, including "retired lieutenant general" and "heavyweight foreign policy adviser" to several GOP presidents, CNN notes. He served as national security adviser to Presidents Ford and George HW Bush, as well as in White House roles during the Nixon, Reagan, and Dubya years. But we can now also add "Hillary Clinton supporter" to his résumé: Just hours after Donald Trump ripped into Clinton during a speech in New York (see the AP's fact-check of it here), the 91-year-old Scowcroft offered his endorsement of the presumptive Democratic nominee, underscoring the trepidation that the GOP establishment has for Trump as its main shot at the White House. "The presidency requires the judgment and knowledge to make tough calls under pressure," Scowcroft said in a statement, per the Los Angeles Times. "[Clinton] has the wisdom and experience to lead our country at this critical time." What makes his venture into Dem territory not a 100% surprise: Scowcroft fell somewhat out of favor with the George W. Bush administration when he publicly expressed reservations about the war in Iraq. And as CNN notes, Scowcroft has had an impact on Democratic foreign policy. Even President Obama recently lauded Scowcroft, saying of the man who helped him put together his own security team, "I love that guy," per the Atlantic.
– Family got worried when Forrest Sanco didn't come to pick up his cat. Their worry grew when they learned he hadn't shown up to work. They reported Sanco and his girlfriend, Donna Grant, missing Oct. 6—10 days after the couple had flown to the Bahamas on a private plane to elope, People reports. "They had lots of plans and lots to look forward to," Grant's daughter-in-law, Erin Simmons, tells WFAA. Sanco and Grant, of Forth Worth, Texas, went to high school together and fell in love after reconnecting on Facebook last year. Sanco, who had a pilot's license, flew the couple to the Bahamas for a vacation and to get married, arriving in Freeport on Sept. 26. Sanco's last Instagram post shows a Bahamas sunrise. It's the final message family and friends received from the couple. After spending the night in Freeport, Sanco and Grant were supposed to fly on to Rum Cay, where they had rented a house, the Bahamas Tribune reports. Simmons says they made a planned stop on the island of North Eleuthera, where they purchased fuel, and departed for the 121-mile flight to Rum Cay. The owner of their rental house in Rum Cay says they never arrived. Weather reports had called for storms, and Sanco's plane had received unspecified repairs during the trip. Family hadn't expected to hear much from the couple during their vacation and didn't report them missing until they failed to return home. "We're trying to remain hopeful, but we're also realistic," Sanco's niece, Lee-Ann Burger, tells People. "I think at this point we're searching for answers." She says the family has hired private search crews to look for the couple.
– Caitlyn Jenner has a new memoir dropping April 25, and she makes a big announcement in it, People has confirmed: She underwent gender reassignment surgery in January, meaning her physical transformation from male to female is more or less complete. "The surgery was a success, and I feel not only wonderful but liberated," Jenner writes in The Secrets of My Life, per Radar. She had indicated back in 2016 during an I Am Cait episode that she wasn't sure when or if she'd undergo the procedure, which for a person born male means removing the penis and creating a vagina. She apparently decided to go for it, however, and to tell her fans in the interest of "candor"—and so everyone would quit bugging her about whether she'd had it done or not. "So all of you can stop staring," she writes. "You want to know, so now you know. Which is why this is the first time, and the last time, I will ever speak of it." She also adds, in typical Caitlyn style: "I am also tired of tucking the damn thing in all the time." (So yeah, that "sex change regret" story obviously didn't pan out.)
– Heartburn is a big problem in the US. In fact, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), which are used to treat acid reflux and heartburn, are among the most prescribed drugs in the country, with millions taking them, and they're becoming more widely available over-the-counter, reports CNN. But a preliminary report just released by the American Heart Association is concerned that the drug—already associated with a higher risk of heart attack and other vascular problems, as the AHA reported earlier this year—may also increase one's risk of ischemic stroke, the most common type caused when a clot cuts off blood flow to the brain. "At one time, PPIs were thought to be safe, without major side effects," the study's lead author says. “This study further questions the cardiovascular safety of these drugs." Researchers followed nearly a quarter-million patients in Denmark who were suffering from stomach pain and indigestion and had an endoscopy. Their average age was 57, and six years later those taking one of four PPIs (Prilosec, Protonix, Prevacid, or Nexium) had a 21% higher risk of stroke than those not taking one. Lowest-dose PPIs didn't increase the risk much if at all, while highest-dose increased it, from 30% for Prevacid to 94% for Protonix. Another type of acid-lowering meds called H2 blockers (think Pepcid and Zantac) showed no elevated risk. "As a culture, we tend to want a pill to deal with our problems, when a lot of people could reduce their heartburn by eating smaller meals, drinking less alcohol, or not smoking," one doc told CNN in 2010. (PPIs are also associated with a higher risk of dementia.)
– Shortly after the USA's win over Japan in the Women's World Cup last night, Twitter fans exchanged jubilation and sportsmanship for something much darker: mentions of Pearl Harbor. Several soccer fans suggested the 5-2 victory was a form of payback for the 1941 attack during World War II, reports the BBC. "This is for Pearl Harbor," one less-than-subtle user tweeted along with a photo of Carli Lloyd's face on an atomic bomb. "They destroyed Pearl Harbor, we destroyed their dreams," tweeted another. Yet another wrote "USA has blown Japan away," while referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The New York Daily News reports 120,000 died instantly when two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; while 2,403 died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor tends to get mentioned about 500 times a day on Twitter, analytics website Topsy finds, per NBC News. That number jumped to 50,000 yesterday, but at least some users challenged the trend. "Pearl Harbor isn't funny. Hiroshima isn't funny. Nagasaki isn't funny. This isn't WW2 this is a women's soccer match in 2015," wrote a user.
– The dean of Harvard College is stepping down amid controversy over her decision to authorize searches of faculty email accounts in relation to the school's cheating scandal, the Boston Globe reports. While the email announcing Evelynn Hammonds' departure didn't specifically mention the email snooping, Hammonds was in the thick of that scandal, admitting last month to having conducted the searches even as the school's president agreed with angry staffers that something else should have been done. Rumors have been swirling that Hammond would depart ever since. Hammonds, the Atlantic Wire points out, is the school's first black, female dean. She'll stay with the school, leading a new program on race and gender in science and medicine, but only after taking a sabbatical of undisclosed duration.
– “Snowden did not try to mask his identity, or lie to the FBI. He knew he would pay a personal price. As he has,” 15 former staff members of the Church Committee write in an 8-page letter to President Obama. The Church Committee investigated illegal activity by intelligence agencies in the 1970s, and now its experts are asking for leniency for Edward Snowden, the Guardian reports. According to the Intercept, the group argues that Snowden, acting selflessly, "stimulated reform" through his actions. The letter writers say that without Snowden, Americans may still not know “what intelligence agencies acting in our name had been up to," TechCrunch reports. The letter gives more weight to the movement to get Snowden pardoned, though the members of the Church Committee don't go that far; they want Snowden to strike a deal with the government. “There is no question that Snowden broke the law," they write. "But previous cases in which others violated the same law suggest leniency." They point to former CIA director David Petraeus, currently being considered by Donald Trump for secretary of State. He leaked confidential information in violation of national security but received no jail time after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor. In contrast, Snowden is facing a sentence of 30 years if he returns to the US from Russia, where he has been living in exile.
– Entertainers, journalists, and politicians have lost their careers over sexual misconduct in the age of #MeToo, but it seems doctors have little to worry about. According to an AP investigation, many doctors facing sexual assault charges will keep their medical license and simply go on suspension while taking a kind of addiction-treatment therapy. Most undergo no medical-license review and need only avoid trouble for a five-year period. In one case, Florida doctor Gunwant Dhaliwal was convicted by a jury of misdemeanor battery for grabbing a patient's breasts but still works in the Tampa area. "There's been a failure of the medical community to take a stand against the issue," says a health services researcher. Many factors weigh in doctors' favor, like hospital staffs and patients who are reluctant to accuse them, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in a 2016 probe. Not to mention that state medical boards are often full of doctors: "They work very hard to get their medical degrees and they're very, very disinclined to yank the license of another doctor," says a medical malpractice lawyer. "The primary focus is: Let's take care of the doctor and help him get through this problem." But the rehabilitation programs don't always work, and either way, doctors who commit a crime are getting away with it. "I had to sit there in front of him, look him in the eye, they made their guilty verdict and that's it, nothing came of it," says the woman groped by Dhaliwal. "He should have lost his license a long time ago."
– 2013 has been a pretty unbelievable year for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis, dominated Facebook, and now finds himself Time's Person of the Year. Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs explains how he ended up on the cover after just nine months on the job: because of how he has positioned himself ("at the very center of the central conversations of our time," from wealth to the role of women to justice), for his reach in our flattening world ("far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church"), and for what he has accomplished in such a short time. "Something remarkable: he has not changed the words, but he's changed the music." Gibbs acknowledges the skeptics' likely response—that Francis faces many obstacles "in accomplishing much of anything beyond making casual believers feel better about the softer tone coming out of Rome while feeling free to ignore the harder substance." But the fascination that swirls around him gives him an ability Benedict XVI lacked: "to magnify the message of the church and its power to do great good." Writes Gibbs, "The heart is a strong muscle; he's proposing a rigorous exercise plan. And in a very short time, a vast, global, ecumenical audience has shown a hunger to follow him. For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world's largest faith to confronting its deepest needs, and for balancing judgment with mercy, Pope Francis is Time's 2013 Person of the Year" (cover story here). Also, the runners-up: Edward Snowden, Edith Windsor, Bashar al-Assad, and Ted Cruz. See past winners here.
– Lena Dunham appears on the cover of Glamour magazine's February issue with her Girls co-stars, wearing booty shorts, and she has something to say to the magazine for not Photoshopping her thighs to smooth perfection: thanks. "Here goes: throughout my teens I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was f---ing funny looking. Potbelly, rabbit teeth, knock knees- I could never seem to get it right and it haunted my every move," she writes on Instagram. "Let's get something straight: I didn't hate what I looked like- I hated the culture that was telling me to hate it. When my career started, some people celebrated my look but always through the lens of 'isn't she brave? Isn't it such a bold move to show THAT body on TV?' ... Well, today this body is on the cover of a magazine that millions of women will read, without photoshop, my thigh on full imperfect display." "Thank you to the women in Hollywood (and on Instagram!) leading the way, inspiring and normalizing the female form in EVERY form, and thank you to @glamourmag for letting my cellulite do the damn thing on news stands everywhere today," she continues. In another Instagram post, Dunham shared the cover image itself and noted that the Glamour issue in which she appears was produced entirely by women. In the accompanying interview, Dunham reveals that Girls star Jemima Kirke nearly quit during season two: "I remember being in a cab. And Jemima called me. She was like, 'I have to tell you something. It’s not a big deal. I don’t want you to freak out. I want to quit the show.'" Girls' final season premieres on HBO Feb. 12, Us reports.
– Protesting truckers are planning a shutdown of their own—on Washington's beltway. Starting on Friday morning, they intend to fill the road "three lanes deep" with tractor-trailers, an organizer of "Truckers Ride for the Constitution" tells US News and World Report. In a demonstration against what they view as violations of the Constitution, planners like Earl Conlon are calling for "the arrest of everyone in government who has violated their oath of office." Their grievances include truckers' wages, industry regulations, and NSA spying, the Hill reports. They're also accusing President Obama of treason for allegedly putting weapons in the hands of rebels with ties to al-Qaeda. Organizers have received some 3,000 RSVPs, says one. Moving at the 55mph speed limit, they'll leave a lane open for emergency vehicles; vehicles with "T2SDA," or "Truckers to Shut Down America," displayed will also be allowed to pass. "Everybody that doesn't have a supporter sticker on their window, good luck: Nobody in, nobody out," says Conlon. A Facebook page for the event has more than 55,000 "likes."
– Russia has proposed a March 1 ceasefire in Syria, US officials say, but Washington believes Moscow is giving itself and the Syrian government three weeks to try to crush moderate rebel groups. The United States has countered with demands for the fighting to stop immediately, officials say. The talk of new ceasefire plans comes as the US, Russia and more than a dozen other countries meet in Munich to try to halt five years of civil war in the Arab country. The Guardian reports that according to a new study from the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the war has killed or injured 470,000 people—11.5% of the population—and has also lowered life expectancy from 70 to 55 and almost "completely obliterated" the country's infrastructure. The most recent Russian-backed offensive, near Aleppo, prompted opposition groups to walk out of peace talks last month in Geneva, while forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee toward the Turkish border. Sources tell the AP that the US can't accept Russia's offer of a March 1 ceasefire because moderate opposition forces could suffer irreversible losses in northern and southern Syria before it ever takes hold. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, meanwhile, says NATO military authorities have been ordered to draw up plans for how the alliance could help shut down illegal migration and people smuggling across the Aegean Sea. Three NATO allies—Turkey, Germany, and Greece—requested alliance participation in an international effort to help end Europe's gravest migration crisis since World War II.
– With the debut of vaping in the US in 2007, there was hope that teens who smoked would replace old-school cigarettes with e-cigarettes, curbing tobacco use. But a new USC study in the journal Pediatrics has found teens who never would have smoked regular cigarettes are experimenting with vaping. Another USC study finds older teens who try vaping are six times more likely to try a tobacco-filled cigarette than non-vapers, per a press release. "E-cigarettes may be recruiting a new group of kids to tobacco use," says Jessica Barrington-Trimis, lead author of both studies. While e-cigs may seem safer than tobacco, if they come pumped with nicotine (some don't), kids can get addicted. The New York Times notes chemicals in the vaping liquid may be harmful; WebMD adds long-term effects are unknown. Using participants from USC's Children's Health Study, scientists followed 5,490 teens who graduated high school in select years between 1995 and 2015, asking them via questionnaire about their tobacco use. It's true that rates among Southern California teens who said they had smoked over the past 30 days fell significantly from 1995 to 2004 (19% to 9%), and slightly more in the decade after that (a bit less than 8% by 2014). But when teens were asked to include e-cigarettes in their assessments, the smoking rate jumped back up to 14% in 2014. And that's got scientists worried, especially with the prevalence of e-cigarettes that come in kid-friendly flavors such as cotton candy. "E-cigarettes may be safer than regular cigarettes for adults who are transitioning from smoking to vaping, but for youth who have never used any other tobacco products, nicotine experimentation could become nicotine addiction," Barrington-Trimis says.
– A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday near Nashville, Tennessee, killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. A US official said the pilot was Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, the AP reports. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. According to his official Blue Angels biography, Kuss joined the elite acrobatics team in 2014 and accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours. Harry Gill, the town manager in Smyrna just outside Nashville, said Thursday that the pilot was the only casualty and no civilians on the ground were hurt. The Navy said in a news release that the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session when the crash happened. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments after the crash. "My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the Blue Angels after this tragic loss. I know that the Navy and Marine Corps Team is with me. We will investigate this accident fully and do all we can to prevent similar incidents in the future," Adm. John Richardson, the Navy's top officer, said in a Facebook post. This is the second fighter jet crash of the day for the military's elite fighter jet performance teams. A member of the US Air Force Thunderbirds crashed in Colorado following a flyover for the Air Force Academy graduation where President Barack Obama spoke. That pilot ejected safely into a field. And in Texas Thursday, three soldiers were killed and six were missing after an Army truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood, the Texas Army post said. Three soldiers were rescued from the swift water and were in stable condition Thursday afternoon at Coryell Memorial Healthcare System in Gatesville.
– One of the reporters who tangles publicly with President Trump the most is himself in a bit of hot water over a tweet. Jim Acosta of CNN has apologized after tweeting "f--- you" (except he spelled it out) to a critic, reports Mediaite. Acosta also maintains that he mistook the person as an old friend, but not everyone is buying that. It all started Thursday night when Acosta tweeted a complaint that the Trump campaign turned up the music so loudly at a Trump rally that it was difficult to work—the implication being that it was deliberate. At that point, a former aide for Melania Trump, Justin Caporale, mocked Acosta with a tweet reading, "Dear Diary ..." That's when Acosta sent his controversial response—he did so in a private direct message, but Caporale then made it public. Acosta also blocked Caporale. As online criticism grew, and Caporale demanded an apology, Acosta responded: "Hey buddy I thought you were an old friend from the campaign days. I’m so sorry. Hope I didn’t offend you. Have a good night and take care." As the Wrap notes, the apology seems a bit odd given that Acosta also blocked Caporale, raising the question of why he would block a friend. Neither Acosta nor CNN has commented further. (Acosta also once tangled memorably with White House aide Stephen Miller.)
– Dennis Rodman was pulled over late Saturday in Southern California, where police allege he was driving under the influence. USA Today reports the five-time NBA championship winner was first stopped by cops in Newport Beach around 11pm for vehicle code violations before officers began a DUI investigation. According to reports, Rodman was given a breathalyzer test before being arrested and booked into Newport Beach Jail. The legal limit in California is .08, but police did not release Rodman's test results. TMZ reports the 56-year-old was cooperative and that he remained in custody for seven hours before officials determined he'd sobered up enough to go home. Rodman was previously arrested on DUI charges in 1999 and 2003. "Alcoholism has been a struggle on and off for Dennis the past 15 years," a rep for Rodman told TMZ on Sunday. Rodman retired in 2000 after 14 seasons in the NBA. More recently, he's made headlines for his unlikely bond with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Just last month, the LA Times reported that Rodman wanted to arrange a diplomatic basketball game between North Korea and Guam, a US territory. “The people in Guam are all about it. They love it," he said while on what he called a "humanitarian" tour of Asia aimed at bridging the rift in US-DPRK relations. With President Trump and Kim Jong Un trading fiery rhetoric, Rodman used the occasion of his fifth and most recent North Korea visit to present a state official with a copy of Trump's The Art of the Deal in June.
– The amount of perfectly good food that Americans throw away every year is enough to feed dozens of smaller countries, and the federal government says it's time to cut the waste dramatically. We throw away around a third of our food, and the USDA and EPA have partnered with private sector groups to announce the first-ever target for reducing food waste, which amounts to around 133 billion pounds a year in the US, NPR reports. The agencies want to cut waste by 50% by 2030, largely by scaling up existing initiatives to educate consumers on avoiding waste and to divert more food to hungry Americans. The US "enjoys the most productive and abundant food supply on earth, but too much of this food goes to waste," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says in a press release. "An average family of four leaves more than two million calories, worth nearly $1,500, uneaten each year." EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy adds: "Let's feed people, not landfills," warning that the staggering amounts of food that end up in landfills are a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions. The USDA says part of the plan will involve teaching consumers that food is often still good to eat after the "sell by" date and the "use by" date on packaging, reports USA Today. (Advocates want a national standard for the "haphazard" and "almost completely arbitrary" system of expiration dates.)
– After a confrontation between locals and federal officials this week, the US has ended a Nevada cattle roundup early, CNN reports. "We have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public," said Neil Kornze, director of the Bureau of Land Management, who was confirmed just this week. Some 400 cattle were gathered in the weeklong roundup; officials had planned to gather 900, the AP reports. Officials prompted local protests when they began gathering cattle that were illegally grazing on federal land some 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, CNN notes. The animals belonged to rancher Cliven Bundy, who has allowed the illegal grazing for two decades. At issue is a 1993 law that altered grazing rules in order to protect an endangered tortoise. Bundy now owes the government $1 million in grazing fees, officials say. Bundy counters that according to the Constitution, Nevada should be in charge of such fees, rather than the federal government. A videotaped protest on Wednesday resulted in officials saying they were assaulted while protesters said they were thrown on the ground and tasered.
– A North Korean diplomat stationed in London vanished in mid-July, and Seoul is now explaining why: Thae Yong Ho has defected to South Korea, in what the BBC reports could be the "highest-ranking" defection North Korea has experienced. The New York Times calls Thae the "No. 2" official of the five stationed at North Korea's London embassy, and the Guardian reports it is the first such defection to have occurred since the embassy opened its doors 13 years ago. Thae and his family "are currently under government protection and relevant institutions are going ahead with necessary procedures as usual," said a South Korean unification ministry rep. The Guardian calls the defection a "coup" for global intelligence agencies, who may be able to gain insight into Kim Jong Un's regime. In London, Pyongyang had charged Thae with keeping tabs on defectors living there, and was also supposed to combat negative perceptions of the North.
– Jason Bateman is apologizing a day after an emotional interview with the cast of Arrested Development was published by the New York Times ahead of the show's fifth season. It touched upon allegations of sexual misconduct against star Jeffrey Tambor, as well as his admission earlier this month, via the Hollywood Reporter, of a "blowup" with TV wife Jessica Walter. "In like almost 60 years of working, I've never had anybody yell at me like that on a set. And it's hard to deal with," 77-year-old Walter, who described the incident as verbal harassment, eventually revealed through tears. But first, her male co-stars jumped to Tambor's defense. David Cross stressed it was "important to remember" Tambor "learned from the experience." "Not to say that ... [Walter] had it coming," added Bateman. But "families come together and certain dynamics collide and clash every once in a while." With critics pointing out how Walter's male co-stars interrupted her while trying to "mansplain her situation," per the Washington Post—Alia Shawkat, the only other female cast member present, defended Walter—Bateman took to Twitter Thursday to say he was "incredibly embarrassed and deeply sorry" for his comments. "I was so eager to let Jeffrey know that he was supported in his attempt to learn, grow and apologize that I completely underestimated the feelings of the victim," he wrote. "This is a big learning moment for me." Tambor previously told THR he had "profusely apologized" to Walter. "I was difficult. I was mean" on sets, he said, but he claimed his firing from Transparent was "a real wake-up," per USA Today. "I've learned that I need to be more patient," he continued. "I need to be more of a gentleman in how I interact with my castmates and not lose my temper."
– Tyra Banks is hosting the 12th season of America's Got Talent, the AP reports. NBC said Sunday that the supermodel, Emmy-winner, and creator of America's Next Top Model will be joining the competition series alongside returning judges Simon Cowell, Mel B, Heidi Klum, and Howie Mandel. Banks will be taking over hosting duties from Nick Cannon, who left the show earlier this year after eight years in the post. Banks said she looks forward to "connecting with the dreamers" and will try to get a few to "smize" for the audience. Contestants in the popular summer series come out to show off a wide array of talents to compete for a $1 million prize. Episodes will be aired live this summer from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Tyra Banks, Stanford professor?)
– In what one analyst calls a "digital temper tantrum," hackers linked to the Russian government have hacked into the World Anti-Doping Agency's Olympic database and released information on star American athletes, including Serena and Venus Williams. WADA has confirmed the security breach, and the hacking group "Fancy Bears"—which was apparently motivated by revenge for WADA's exposure of state-sponsored Russian doping—says there are more leaks to come, the Washington Post reports. A roundup of developments: Fancy Bears also posted information on gymnast Simone Biles and basketball player Elena Delle Donne relating to "Therapeutic Use Exemptions" that allow athletes to use banned substances for valid medical reasons, the Independent reports. The hackers claimed the exemptions were "licenses for doping." WADA says it believes the attacks were carried out with a "spear-phishing" attack that gathered passwords with emails to authorized users that convinced them to click on infected links. According to the leaked documents, Biles uses medication to treat ADHD. "Having ADHD, and taking medicine for it is nothing to be ashamed of" and "nothing that I'm afraid to let people know," she tweeted in response. Venus Williams, who was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease Sjogren's syndrome in 2011, issued a statement saying she followed all the rules and was disappointed "that my private, medical data has been compromised by hackers and published without my permission." The Fancy Bears group is believed to be linked to the Russian military intelligence agency suspected of hacking the DNC, reports the New York Times, which notes that the Kremlin "has gone to to great lengths to maintain plausible deniability in matters of espionage"—and denies involvement in the WADA hack. The hackers are "trying to sow doubt over the integrity of the individual athletes and the various Olympic bodies and watchdog groups," Rich Barger of cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect tells the Post. "It's just ultimately sour grapes. What we're seeing here is a digital temper tantrum." US Anti-Doping Agency chief Travis Tygart called the hack "cowardly and despicable," saying that the athletes involved had "done everything right in adhering to the global rules for obtaining permission to use a needed medication," the BBC reports. Fancy Bears, which claims to be allied with Anonymous, says it will release information on other countries' athletes this week, reports the AP, which found that a French phone number provided by the group was bogus and the mailing address it gave was that of a florist east of Paris.
– Optimists hoped today's humanitarian cease-fire might lead to a longer peace in Israel and Gaza, but that's not the case by a long shot. In fact, Israel just raised the stakes considerably by launching a ground offensive into Gaza, reports the BBC. A military statement said the goal was “establish a reality in which Israeli residents can live in safety and security without continuous indiscriminate terror," reports the New York Times. Troops were expected to focus on so-called "terror tunnels" used to infiltrate the country. It's not clear whether the ground offensive will be a quick strike or a longer one with the goal of taking control of Gaza. An Israeli defense official who speculated yesterday about such a move said that a takeover of Gaza wouldn't be too much of a challenge, but that any such mission would have to last "many months" in order to fully secure the area. Today's development comes after 10 days of back-and-forth bombing, notes CNN.
– With Day One of the Republican National Convention in the can, the GOP heads into the second day of its Cleveland rally. Per the Hill, Tuesday's convention theme will center on the slogan "Make America Work Again," and to bolster Donald Trump's message that his business acumen makes him the obvious choice to lead the US into economic prosperity, a lineup of speakers is set to take the stage. Among them: Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Kerry Woolard (GM of Trump Winery), and Donald Trump Jr., who's an executive VP at the Trump Organization. Donald Sr.'s 22-year-old daughter, Tiffany, who USA Today notes just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania this year, will also speak—her most high-profile appearance in the campaign yet. Also on the roster: Speaker Paul Ryan, whose perpetual exasperation and frustration with Trump makes his speech one of the most highly anticipated of the night. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will also have something to say, as will Ben Carson and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who didn't seem fazed at Monday's convention gathering about not being chosen as Trump's running mate. "I'm going to make a case tonight that Donald Trump is ready to be president of the United States, and perhaps his opponent is not," Christie said on the Today show Tuesday morning, per USA Today. A handful of C-list celebrities have also been slated in, including soap opera star Kimberlin Brown and Dana White, head of the UFC mixed martial arts promotion company. (The highlight from Monday's convention: Melania Trump's speech.)
– One forensic expert tells the Daily Beast the claim is "ridiculous." But being ridiculous never stopped the Internet before: A theory has been making the rounds on social media (and covered by outlets like USA Today and Buzzfeed) that Sandra Bland was actually dead in her mugshot photo. The argument being put forth: the background's photo looks like the cell floor; she's wearing an orange jumpsuit, while most mugshots taken at the jail feature street clothes; her eyes look "flat," as USA Today puts it. But Buzzfeed observes that "mugshots of other inmates at Waller County Jail ... were taken against a similar background." And a two-page statement from the Waller County Sheriff's Department released Thursday explained the jumpsuit. "Depending on how many inmates are being processed at this time, an inmate's photograph may be taken in their original clothing, or the inmate may be dressed out in orange," it read. Forensic pathologist Michael Baden shot down the theory in comments to USA Today. The eyelids of the dead typically droop when open, he says, while her eyes appear "purposefully open." He continues to the Daily Beast, "To say that she’s dead from the photo is ridiculous because you can say that about almost any head photo. You have to use evidence." And another forensic pathologist says a low-resolution photo will never be capable of providing that evidence. "From just looking at a photo, there are no signs."
– With just over four months to go until Election Day, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are locked in battle over the shape of a star. In a statement issued Monday, the Clinton campaign's director of Jewish outreach slammed the Trump campaign's use of a Star of David in an anti-Clinton image as "blatantly anti-Semitic," reports the New York Times, which notes that Mic traced the image to a message board used by white supremacists. Trump, however, tweeted: "Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star." Dan Scavino, Trump's social media director, said the image had been "lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear." Trump later issued a statement on his website saying the star is used by "sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior" and that Clinton "is just trying to divert attention from the dishonest behavior of herself and her husband." Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wasn't buying the "sheriff's badge" line, the Guardian reports. He told CNN on Monday that the Trump campaign has had a troubling tone for months. The first couple of times Trump did things like retweet images from white supremacists could be called mistakes, he said. "But we're now at the sixth or seventh time the Trump campaign has invoked bigotry or racism. It's a pattern that’s perplexing, troubling, and wrong."
– President Obama devoted his weekly radio address today to the Connecticut school shooting, asking Americans to pray for the victims and their families. "Most of those who died were just young children with their whole lives ahead of them," he said, echoing yesterday's news conference. "And every parent in America has a heart heavy with hurt." Obama reiterated that it's time to "come together to take meaningful action" to prevent future shootings, thought he stopped short of specifics, reports Reuters. (USA Today has the full transcript here.) Advocates of stricter gun control already have begun to step up pressure, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "We have heard all the rhetoric before," he said yesterday. "What we have not seen is leadership—not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today."
– The youngest son of the late shah of Iran killed himself in his Boston home this morning, his family says. Alireza Pahlavi, 44, apparently shot himself, reports the Globe. “Like millions of young Iranians, he too was deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland, as well as carrying the burden of losing a father and a sister in his young life," said a family statement. It refers to his sister Leila, who died of a drug overdose in 2001. Pahlavi's father, an American ally, was overthrown in 1979 and died the following year in exile in Egypt. A family friend says Alireza Pahlavi never recovered from the death of his sister and that his depression "grew over time," reports AP. He had studied music and history at Princeton, then did postgraduate work at Harvard. He kept a relatively low-key profile, unlike his brother Reza Pahlavi, a US attorney who frequently speaks out against the Iran regime. Click for more on Alireza Pahlavi.
– The wedding of two White House staffers was extra special Monday, and not just because the vice president was in attendance. Joe Biden was actually the one to pronounce the couple husband and husband as he officiated his first ever wedding, reports ABC News. The couple—Brian Mosteller, the director of Oval Office operations, and Joe Mahshie, Michelle Obama's trip coordinator—specifically requested him, reports BuzzFeed. "Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn't be happier, two longtime White House staffers, two great guys" Biden tweeted alongside a photo of the ceremony. The wedding took place at the VP residence at 4pm, with only family present.
– Angry Polish leaders have demanded an apology from the US ambassador after some ill-judged remarks on the Holocaust from FBI Director James Comey. "In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil," Comey wrote in a Washington Post column. "They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do." Many Poles are infuriated by the suggestion they shared the blame for Nazi crimes, reports the BBC, which notes that around 6 million Polish citizens died during the 1939-45 occupation. "Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War II," says Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz. "I would expect full historical knowledge from officials who speak on the matter." The American ambassador in Warsaw says suggestions that any country other than "Nazi Germany was responsible for the Holocaust are wrong, harmful, and offensive," adding that he thinks Comey's wider message was that there were people, even in the US, who "aided the Nazi criminals, or there were people who did not respond sufficiently," reports Reuters. In another Washington Post column, Anne Applebaum writes that it's wrong to call Poles "accomplices" because after the 1939 invasion of Poland, it was Germans who created "a lawless, violent world, one in which anyone could be arbitrarily murdered, any Jew could be deported—and any Pole who helped a Jew could be shot instantly, along with his entire family. Many were."
– "Watching Gigi Hadid stare at you for four minutes is weirdly mesmerizing." That's the conclusion Glamour comes to, at least, upon the release of a video it produced that features Hadid. Staring, and occasionally blinking, in slow motion. For four minutes and nine seconds. And that's it (though she does laugh near the end, prompting one person to comment on YouTube, "3:53 melted my heart and make my eyes wet?"). At Slate, Heather Schwedel looks at where this fits in to the buzzy "pivot to video" that's underway in the media world, with more and more publications dumping journalists and shifting their resources to producing video. Her conclusion: "This is how backward our world is, now: A video of a Hadid doing nothing makes a weird sort of sense. Of course! Brilliant!" Schwedel speculates that this started out as an inside joke born from photo-shoot footage, but writes, "It’s just as fun to imagine that the editors at Glamour were so devoid of ideas that they asked Hadid to sit there and do nothing for a while on camera." And she sees the whole thing as reflective of "how clueless many magazines are about how to produce good videos for the web." But, she concedes, maybe this is a "step up," at least compared with the "glorified slideshows" that have become a popular approach to creating cheap videos. At Man Repeller, Amelia Diamond writes that she did get sucked in by the video, but the credit may not go to Hadid. "Could you have watched anyone for this long with the right song? I think maybe I could have. It’s strangely voyeuristic."
– Ebola doesn't always show itself through fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. A new PLOS study finds that some people with the virus show mild or no symptoms at all—a potential concern for preventing its spread. Researchers who visited the village of Sukudu in Sierra Leone, a hot spot in the recent West African Ebola outbreak, found up to 25% of Ebola infections "may have been minimally symptomatic," meaning "a significant portion of Ebola transmission events may have gone undetected" in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, NBC News reports. At least 28,000 people are known to have been infected during the epidemic, at least 11,000 of whom died. In Sukudu, there were 34 known Ebola cases, including 28 deaths among 900 residents, reports Gizmodo. A year after the worst of the outbreak was over, Stanford University researchers tested the blood of 187 people in Sukudu who'd lived with or shared a toilet with someone infected with Ebola, per a release. They found 14 had Ebola antibodies, suggesting they'd previously been infected, while 12 said they didn't recall feeling sick or having a fever. Believing them to be truthful as health workers kept an eye on villagers during the outbreak, researchers now plan to visit other villages "so we can begin to answer the question of what was the true burden of disease," the study author says. "We expect to find a lot more undocumented survivors." It's not clear if asymptomatic patients are contagious. "They were not passing it along in the usual way, through vomiting or diarrhea," he says. "It's unclear if they can pass it along sexually." (This Ebola-like disease can shut down organs.)
– "This is highly unusual," says a rep for Maryland Natural Resources Police, and that might be putting it lightly. The Maryland NRP has confirmed that a 51-year-old who was hunting geese with a larger group was rendered unconscious when a dead goose fell from the sky and hit him. Robert Meilhammer regained consciousness as emergency officials arrived on the scene just before 5pm Thursday, but Demarva Now reports the Crapo, Maryland, man struggled to answer questions beyond his name and so was flown to a Baltimore hospital. The Baltimore Sun reports it's unclear which hunter shot the goose, which the Washington Post reports typically weighs about 12 pounds and has a wing span of up to six feet. The Post reports Meilhammer's head injury was initially described as "severe," and that two of his teeth were knocked out by the hit. The Maryland NRP tweeted Friday morning that he was in stable condition and awaiting further tests. (As this hunter tracked a lion, he was shot dead.)
– Six people have been killed and one injured in a shooting at a weapons store in southwest Russia. A 14-year-old and a 16-year-old were among those killed after a gunman arrived at the store in Belgorod by car, RT News reports. He reportedly attacked people outside with a semi-automatic weapon before entering the shop. He then fled in his car, RIA Novosti reports. The car has been found and officials reportedly know where the man is. Special forces are on their way, says an insider. The suspect is 31-year-old Sergey Pomazun, who reportedly has four previous convictions, mostly theft-related. Some reports pointed to a second suspect; the two may have been father and son. The suspect may have been trying to rob the shop.
– It was quintessential Pope Francis: On a plane journey back from a foreign trip on Sunday, the pontiff made a statement that once would have been considered jaw-droppingly radical. In a response to a reporter's question, Francis said the church should apologize for offending and discriminating against gays over the years, the BBC reports. "I believe that the church not only should apologize to the person who is gay whom it has offended," he said, "but has to apologize to the poor, to exploited women, to children exploited for labor; it has to ask forgiveness for having blessed many weapons." Francis stressed that when he says "the church," he means Christians. "The Church is holy, we are sinners!" he said. Francis—who made waves three years ago when he asked: Who am I to judge gays?—has been hailed by gay rights groups for his groundbreaking statements, though he has reaffirmed church policy that actually having gay sex is sinful, the BBC notes. The pope was on his way home from Armenia, where he once again enraged Turkish authorities by describing the mass killing of Armenians a century ago as genocide, reports CNN. He also addressed Britain's vote to leave the EU, saying that while "something ... is not working in that unwieldy union" and EU countries should be given more independence to creatively deal with their problems, "let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater."
– Previous studies have found teen marijuana use could result in cancer, asthma, respiratory problems, and psychotic symptoms like delusions and hallucinations over time. That's why researchers say the results of a new long-term study following teen pot smokers into their 30s are "a little surprising." Researchers who analyzed 408 males for health and social issues from age 14 to 26, then checked back in with the participants at age 36, found no connection between pot use and any of the aforementioned conditions. Not only that, the study in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors—an extension of the Pittsburgh Youth Study of the 1980s—also found no apparent link between smoking marijuana as a teen and later depression, anxiety, allergies, headaches, or high blood pressure, according to a press release. The participants—54% black, 42% white—were classed into four groups: those who rarely or never used marijuana (46%); chronic users who started using the drug early (22%); those who picked up the habit as an adult (21%); and those who smoked marijuana only in their youth (11%). "There were no differences in any of the mental or physical health outcomes that we measured regardless of the amount or frequency of marijuana used during adolescence," a researcher explains. That means chronic users who smoked the drug 200 days a year on average at age 22 were no more likely to have health problems than those who rarely or never picked up a joint. Researchers say the study should "help inform the debate about legalization of marijuana," but "should not be taken in isolation" as negative health effects may appear in those with a genetic liability, per Medical Daily. (Marijuana apparently heals broken bones.)
– Apparently Google's self-driving cars have yet to learn how to evade cops. One of its bubble-shaped autonomous vehicles was pulled over during a traffic stop in Mountain View, Calif., on Thursday, though it managed to avoid a ticket, reports NBC News. An officer spotted the vehicle traveling 24mph in a 35mph zone, with traffic backed up behind it, police say, per the San Jose Mercury News. "The officer stopped the car and made contact with the operators to learn more about how the car was choosing speeds along certain roadways," authorities say in a blog post, noting "it was lawful for the car to be traveling on the street." According to the California Vehicle Code, the cars can operate on roads with speed limits of 35mph or under. However, "we've capped the speed of our prototype vehicles at 25mph for safety reasons," Google Self-Driving Car Project explains. "We want them to feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighborhood streets." The project notes "people sometimes flag us down when they want to know more about our project," but "after 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving (that's the human equivalent of 90 years of driving experience), we're proud to say we've never been ticketed!" (Apple is working on its own self-driving cars.)
– A new autism study makes what looks to be a significant discovery: The first signs show up as early as two months of age in the form of reduced eye contact by babies, reports the New York Times. If the findings hold up, they could provide doctors with the earliest warning yet that a child is developing the disorder—a big deal because research suggests that the earlier treatment begins, the more effective it is. The study "tells us for the first time that it's possible to detect some signs of autism in the first months of life," one of the Emory University researchers tells the BBC. "These are the earliest signs of autism that we've ever observed." The researchers studied two groups of kids from birth to age 2 with sophisticated eye-tracking technology. One of the groups was deemed high risk because of a sibling with autism. The researchers then went back when the kids were 3 and found a clear correlation between those who had been recently diagnosed with autism and their eye contact as babies. The dropoff began between two and six months of age, and the more severe it was, the more severe the case of autism. An autism researcher not involved with the study called it a "major, major finding." The researchers say this isn't something parents would likely be able to notice on their own, notes HealthDay via US News & Report. Nor do they want parents to panic if their child isn't maintaining constant eye contact. But "if they do have persistent concerns, they should talk to their child's pediatrician," adds one.
– What was Michael Phelps doing before he was arrested on DUI charges early yesterday? According to TMZ and its "casino sources," he was on an eight-hour "gambling binge." The sources say Phelps was playing blackjack and drinking beer in a private VIP room at Baltimore's Horseshoe Casino starting around 5pm Monday; he left around 1am was pulled over around 1:40am a few miles from the casino. He's said to be a regular there, usually playing poker; it's not clear whether he played other card games Monday. Phelps apologized on Twitter yesterday: "I understand the severity of my actions and take full responsibility," he wrote. "I know these words may not mean much right now but I am deeply sorry to everyone I have let down."
– There was the question of when Cheryl's birthday is. The dress that was either white and gold or blue and black. And now the Internet is going insane over a hidden panda, BuzzFeed reports. Illustrator Gergely Dudás, pen name Dudolf, shared an image on Facebook last Wednesday showing what appears to be a bunch of snowmen, along with the caption: "There's a panda amongst them! Can you find it?" Though some may spot the panda easily, many apparently have had trouble, with the more than 27,000 comments including ones like, "There is no panda but it was nice" and "Been looking for 15 mins still can't find it lol." The image has been shared nearly 153,000 times so far.
– Alabama just got a new Confederate memorial, even as similar monuments have sparked protests and violence elsewhere. AL.com reports that more than 200 people attended the unveiling Sunday of a stone dedicated to "Unknown [Alabama] Soldiers" with the Confederacy at Confederate Veterans Memorial Park in Crenshaw County. "That's why we're here is to honor our Confederate dead, to honor our ancestors," David Coggins, a Sons of Confederate Veterans member, told the crowd. Five cannons fired as a red cloth was lifted to reveal the monument, the AP reports. Coggins, who owns the land on which the park was built two years ago, says the ceremony was planned months ago and was unrelated to the deadly protest in Charlottesville, Va. "We have been really scrutinized for the past two weeks," a commander of the state chapter of the SCV tells AL.com. Dozens of attendees wore Confederate dress and waved Confederate flags. Sporting camouflage and body armor, about 10 members of the Three Percenters militia stood watch "in case anything were to happen." There was no reported violence. Organizers barred reporters from using video and other cameras apart from cellphones. A local resident says he turned out to honor soldiers who died fighting for the South. "The thing is nowadays everyone wants to take the monuments down, so we're just glad that they're down here doing this," he says. "It's to let people know that what our ancestors did was not in vain." (Cops "never moved" after gunshot in Charlottesville.)
– Even 106-year-olds dance for joy. Need proof? You've got it thanks to a White House video shared on Twitter on Sunday. It shows centenarian Virginia McLaurin busting a move while meeting President and Michelle Obama at the White House for Black History Month, reports Us Weekly. "It's an honor, it's an honor," she told the president, before rushing across the Blue Room to meet Michelle Obama, forcing the president to tell her to "slow down." "I want to be like you when I grow up," the first lady joked to McLaurin, before joining her for an impromtu dance party. The first lady held McLaurin's hand while the president held her cane.
– The Islamic State regards Iraq's Yazidi minority as devil worshippers, so when militants captured the village of Sinjar this weekend, 60-year-old Yazidi farmer Kareem Sido fled to the mountains with thousands of others. What he found there were people dying of thirst in conditions so dire that he risked the trip home, Reuters reports. Up to 40,000 refugees remain on Mount Sinjar, however, surrounded by the extremists who attacked their village and who have a penchant for beheading dissenters. There is little food or water, and though the UN has offered to drop supplies, it hasn't been asked to do so by the Iraqi government. One witness tells the Washington Post that 10 children and one elderly woman died yesterday and seven children Monday; UNICEF believes 40 children have died since fleeing their village Monday night. "We need to get them out. If we don’t, it would be catastrophic," a UNICEF rep tells the Post. Going home would also spell death: "We would need a miracle to avoid the Islamic State's brutality," says one resident. There are about 308,000 Yazidi in Sinjar’s district; a minority sect of the Kurds, their religion is a combo of ancient Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. When the Islamic State came to Sinjar on Saturday, 20 Yazidi were killed in a failed defense and 30 more died of unknown causes. Many more fled—the US-trained army fell apart and the Kurdish pershmerga, mobilized to take their place, ran away "without shooting a bullet," one Sinjar resident tells Reuters. The Christian Science Monitor has this primer on the Yazidi people.
– If a judge is a big enough Taylor Swift fan to repeatedly quote her lyrics within a ruling, should they not be required to recuse themselves from any case involving the pop star? That's the legal conundrum we're left with after judge Gail Standish used references to at least four of Swift's hits to dismiss a plagiarism lawsuit brought against her by an R&B singer, the Guardian reports. Earlier this month, Jesse Graham—who says he hasn't had a job in nine years—sued Swift for $42 million and a songwriting credit, claiming she stole 92% of the lyrics to her hit Shake It Off from his song Haters Gone Hate, according to CNN. Graham says he copyrighted his song a year before Shake It Off was released. Shake It Off includes the lyrics "Cause the players gonna play; and the haters gonna hate," as well as "And the fakers gonna fake," the Guardian reports. Meanwhile, the chorus to Graham's song goes "Haters gone hate; players gone play; watch out for them fakers; they'll fake you everyday." Standish said the lawsuit was based on speculation and lacked enough evidence. In her ruling, she wrote: “At present, the Court is not saying that [Graham] can never, ever, ever get his case back in court. But, for now, we have got problems, and the Court is not sure [Graham] can solve them." After further references to Swift's lyrics, Standish concludes: "At least for the moment, Defendants have shaken off this lawsuit.”
– It looks like the hackers that hit Target had lots of other, well, targets. The Department of Homeland Security recently sent retailers and financial service companies a secret memo warning that the Target hit appeared to be part of a larger international campaign, the Wall Street Journal reports, an insight gleaned with the help of Dallas cybersecurity firm iSight Partners. Yesterday, iSight released its own report, saying that a virus it's calling KAPTOXA "has potentially infected a large number of retail information systems"—and noting that the "intrusion operators displayed innovation and a high degree of skill," particularly in terms of the "operational sophistication" of the hack. The Journal shares this feature by way of example: The virus focused on stealing data during the peak hours of 10am and 5pm; the data was housed in a Target server that the hackers later accessed. The virus attacks point-of-sale systems in a way that is "new to eCrime," subverting traditional efforts to protect consumer data, the report warns, according to NBC. Parts of the code, which is impervious to all known antivirus software, have been online since last spring. It's partly in Russian, which US officials think may indicate a link to organized crime in the former Soviet Union. The finding follows reports of similar breaches at Neiman Marcus. That breach had gone unnoticed since July, the New York Times reports today; Neiman's system was only fully secured Sunday.
– Look at a Van Gogh painting today, and you're not quite getting the full effect. Reports in 2013, as cited in the Guardian, revealed that the paintings were fading; studies have found yellows are turning brown. The color red is also posing a problem in works like Wheat Stack Under a Cloudy Sky, and researchers are now moving closer to finding out why, Chemistry World reports. Van Gogh often used a pigment known as red lead. The stuff, also called minium, turns whiter when it's exposed to light. Seeking to understand the process, researchers analyzed a tiny dot of paint from the work. The process, which involved shooting X-rays at the paint, showed that the red lead is now covered with what Chemistry World calls "degradation products" in the form of other chemicals. The researchers found a substance they call the "missing link" in the degradation process: It's a mineral lead known as plumbonacrite, Hyperallergic reports. Light shining on the plumbonacrite has apparently caused the buildup of other chemicals. Interestingly, as Hyperallergic notes, the researchers say plumbonacrite has never before been reported "in a painting dating from before the mid 20th century." Of course, the color issues actually make Van Gogh's work even more impressive, Jonathan Jones wrote in the Guardian: "In the end, the fact that some of Van Gogh's colors have changed over the years is simply a homage to his genius. No one, after all, has any complaint about his colors." Last year, Van Gogh—or rather, his "regrown" ear—made some unusual headlines.
– Kanye West dropped by Kazakhstan—or, as TMZ puts it, "Borat Land"—this weekend to play a private show for President Nursultan Nazarbayev's grandson's wedding. He was reportedly paid some $3 million for the show, which has raised eyebrows thanks to the country's reputation, the Huffington Post reports. It's ranked among the most corrupt countries, Complex notes, and its human rights record is said to be terrible. In the Daily Mail, an activist cites torture allegations, media clampdowns, and "continued violations of workers' rights." Indeed, Sting dropped out of a planned 2011 show in the country, pointing to "hunger strikes, imprisoned workers, and tens of thousands on strike," the Mail notes.
– It's probably been a hot summer where you are, but nothing like this: California's Death Valley registered an average temperature of 107.4 degrees for the month of July, per the National Weather Service. The previous record, set in 1917, was 107.2 degrees. It's not only a record for Death Valley: "It should be noted that this is the hottest average monthly temperature ever measured in the US, or, for that matter, anywhere in the Western Hemisphere," a climatologist tells the Washington Post. If 107.4 doesn't seem insanely high, keep in mind that was the average temperature of both days and nights, notes the Los Angeles Times. During the day, it typically got up to 120 degrees before cooling down to about 95 at night. The hottest day came on July 7, which saw a temperature of 127. Fortunately, few people were affected: As USA Today notes, Death Valley is a national park with no permanent residents save for park rangers.
– A priceless bag used during the first moon walk was accidentally sold at a government auction, and is now the center of a legal dispute, the AP reports. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin tucked moon rocks into the white sack they took with them during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. After discovering the bag was hawked last year, the government is now scrambling to reverse the sale. The bag is embedded with space material and is "a rare artifact, if not a national treasure," officials say. Although a clerical error was to blame for the sale, the bag caper dates back to the case brought against Max Ary, the ex-director of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, who was convicted in 2005 of stealing and selling museum artifacts. The Apollo 11 bag was among hundreds of items found during a search of his garage. Then the government accidentally sold the bag at auction in 2015. Nancy Carlson, the Illinois woman who bought it for $995, sent it to NASA to confirm it was the real deal. It was—and surprised NASA officials kept it instead of returning it, touching off a legal fight. It turns out the bag was given the same inventory identification number as a similar one used on the final Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the Christian Science Monitor reports. (Ary had sold that one in 2001 for $24,150. It was eventually recovered.) Carlson sued in June to have the bag returned to her, but federal prosecutors are asking a judge to rescind the sale. Astronauts called the lunar bags the “purse.” After Armstrong’s death in 2012, his widow found one of them, filled with space-related objects, in a closet.
– We don't want to know how many pills it took to kill this hangover: Two buddies went out for a few drinks at a pub in Marton, England, last Friday. Hours later, they were in Thailand, a la Hangover II. The idea for the spontaneous trip sprouted around 11am Saturday at Phillip Boyle's place. The men had headed there from the pub around 1am for a "quiet night" after picking up a "few drinks from the petrol station," Boyle, 33, tells GazetteLive in a story spotted by USA Today. Friend Jamie Blyth "asks if I have my passport handy and comes up with the idea of us going to Thailand straight away," says Boyle. "Then we got into a taxi he'd phoned and—apart from the short delay of picking up Jamie's passport—we were off." It was "all a bit rash," says Boyle, whose luggage consisted of a grocery bag containing a few shirts and some underwear. The men booked two seven-hour flights spanning 6,750 miles, heading for the beachside city of Pattaya; they apparently "knew some guys from school" in Thailand. "On the way out there we sobered up on the flight and thought 'what have we done!'" Blyth tells GazetteLive. But they made the most of the adventure, which ran through Tuesday. It was "brilliant fun," Boyle says. "We went out for meals and to bars and didn't really sleep that much." He adds, "I'm feeling okay now." The guys admit they did face consequences. "I have fallen behind with a few things at work," Boyle says. Blyth adds his new girlfriend "was a bit annoyed," but "she's just been laughing about it and thought we were daft." (A night of drinking didn't end so well for one Qatar Airways employee.)
– On Nov. 7, Maine will take an unprecedented step for a state when it allows residents to vote on expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the New York Times reports. Maine is one of 19 states where Republicans have blocked Medicaid expansion available under the ACA. The Maine legislature has voted repeatedly to expand Medicaid only to have Gov. Paul LePage veto expansion five times. However, if expansion is approved by voters through a referendum next month, LePage would be unable to veto it. If the referendum passes, approximately 80,000 more Maine residents making up to 138% of the poverty level will be eligible for Medicaid. In addition to decreasing the number of uninsured Maine residents, supporters of the referendum say it will add jobs and help rural hospitals stay open. LePage, while attacking Maine hospitals for their support of the referendum on Friday, said it would take "resources away from our most vulnerable Mainers" to "give free taxpayer-funded healthcare to adults who should be working and contributing," the Press Herald reports. Under the ACA, at least 90% of Medicaid expansion costs would be covered by the federal government. The other 18 states where Medicaid expansion has been blocked are carefully watching what happens in Maine. It's estimated more than 2.5 million Americans would gain access to health care if all 19 holdout states allowed Medicaid expansion.
– Activating a turn signal takes just a flick of the finger, but that simple move apparently is too much for lots of drivers out there. A new patent filing by Tesla seeks to change that. The company envisions an automated signal, one that senses when a driver is getting ready to turn and activates the blinker on its own, reports CNET. What Electrek finds surprising about the patent application is that it appears to be designed for use with human drivers, not with self-driving cars. The technology stems from Tesla's Autopilot function. (A Tesla in Canada managed to fly, sort of.)
– Tanning beds have long been associated with skin cancer, and now researchers are quantifying just what that costs the US financially. Reporting in the Journal of Cancer Policy, they calculate that in 2015, the direct medical care for skin cancers resulting from tanning bed exposure totals $343.1 million. What's more, they figure that early deaths and loss of productivity in these cases add up to a $127.3 billion loss over the lifetime of individuals currently diagnosed. But those are just dollar signs: the human toll is large, too, with more than 263,000 cases of skin cancer attributed to tanning beds in 2015 alone. The researchers call tanning beds a "significant contributor to illness and premature mortality in the US." Reuters notes that some 30 million Americans use tanning beds every year. Tanning beds emit UV-A rays, which damage DNA, and UV-B rays, which can burn one's skin and also raise the risk of skin cancer. (The research did not calculate the medical cost of burns.) Previous research has found that indoor tanning bed exposure in people younger than 35 nearly doubles their risk of melanoma, reports STAT News, and Americans must now be 18 or older to use them in several states. "Women younger than 30 are six times more likely to develop melanoma if they tan indoors," says a University of Alabama researcher who wasn't involved in the study. "Even one indoor tanning session can increase users' risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma by 67% and basal cell carcinoma by 29%." (Australia has outright banned tanning beds.)
– The fight between Julian Assange and the team behind the upcoming WikiLeaks movie, The Fifth Estate, is apparently more personal than we realized. In a letter from January, Assange denies a request to meet with Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor who plays Assange in the film, noting, "I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this is a good film," the letter says, as per Variety. "Your skills play into the hands of people who are out to remove me and WikiLeaks from the world ... Surely you can see why it is a bad idea for me to meet with you." "I believe you are well intentioned," he continues, noting he would enjoy meeting the British actor and is fond of his work, but "you will be used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it. By meeting with you, I would validate this wretched film, and endorse the talented, but debauched, performance that the script will force you to give." Ultimately, he encourages Cumberbatch to reconsider his role in the movie; afterward, the actor did consider dropping out, Raw Story reports. The movie is due out next week. Click for the full letter.
– Twitter is looking into the idea of developing its own video hosting capabilities, so users won't have to turn to third-party services like yFrog, TwitVid, or Vodpod to share their videos with the world, sources tell All Things Digital. While Twitter still expects most users to upload their videos on services like YouTube or Vimeo, it thinks offering its homegrown option will help refine Twitter's user experience. Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder and Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey confirmed that he'd taken a step back from his operational role in the company, but denied a New York Times report that it was because "employees complained that he was difficult to work with." In a Tumblr post, Dorsey said he stepped back because he wanted to spend "the majority of my time with Square, where I'm CEO."
– The Plan B morning-after pill is moving over the counter. The FDA announced today that the emergency contraceptive will be available without a prescription to those ages 15 and older. The pill also no longer needs to be behind pharmacy counters. Instead, it can sit on drugstore shelves just like condoms, but buyers will have to prove their age at the cash register. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled there should be no age restrictions and gave the FDA 30 days to act. The FDA said that its latest decision was independent of the court case, and that Justice Department lawyers were still considering their response to the ruling. "Research has shown that access to emergency contraceptive products has the potential to further decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States," says FDA chief Margaret Hamburg. "The data reviewed by the agency demonstrated that women 15 years of age and older were able to understand how Plan B One-Step works, how to use it properly, and that it does not prevent the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease." Click for more.
– Trump attorney Michael Cohen is indeed under criminal investigation. That might not be a huge shock given that FBI agents raided his office earlier this week, but the Justice Department revealed that fact for the first time in a court document Friday, reports CNN. Cohen “is being investigated for criminal conduct that largely centers on his personal business dealings,” according to the document, though any further details were redacted. Another nugget: The raid turned out to be more extensive than thought, reports ABC News, with agents also searching a safety deposit box and two cellphones, in addition to Cohen's home and office. All of this came to light as part of a legal fight related to the raid. Attorneys for Cohen and President Trump want to block federal prosecutors from the seized documents until it can be properly determined if any should be shielded by attorney-client privilege. Friday's hearing in Manhattan was pushed into Monday when an attorney hired Wednesday by Trump, Joanna Herndon, requested more time. "He has an acute interest in these proceedings," she said of the president.
– The US has a simple choice, according to Pyongyang: Meet North Korea at the negotiating table, or in a "nuclear-to-nuclear showdown." Senior North Korean official Choe Son Hui put the planned June 12 summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un in even more doubt Thursday with a blistering statement that warned Pyongyang wouldn't "beg" for dialogue and called Mike Pence a "political dummy," the Wall Street Journal reports. Choe, the North's vice minister of foreign affairs, slammed Pence for comparing North Korea to Libya in the context of denuclearization. "I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice president," she said. Choe—who warned that Pyongyang could make the US "taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined"—was responding to Pence's comment to Fox News earlier this week, in which he said the Clinton and Obama administrations had been "played" by North Korea and it would be a mistake for the Koreans to think they could do the same to Trump, the AP reports. The BBC notes that Choe is one of Kim's top aides and her statements will have been sanctioned by the leader. Trump said Tuesday that the summit "may not work out" for June 12, but he sounded more optimistic Wednesday, before Choe's remarks were released. "Right now we're looking at it, we're talking about it, and they’re talking to us," he told Fox. "We have certain conditions. We'll see what happens. But there's a good chance."
– An intruder broke into Sandra Bullock's home early yesterday—and the actress was home at the time, along with her 4-year-old son. Law enforcement sources tell Today that suspect Joshua Corbett, 39, may have been obsessed with Bullock and kept a diary about her. He allegedly rummaged through her belongings before police responded to a call about a prowler at 6:30am and arrested him on suspicion of burglary. Bullock "is unharmed and she is fine," her rep tells People.
– A man on death row in Texas has been granted a last-minute reprieve after his lawyers successfully argued he was convicted on "junk science" regarding shaken baby syndrome, Reuters reports. Robert Roberson, who had been scheduled to be executed June 21, was convicted in 2002 of murdering his 2-year-old daughter. According to the AP, Roberson's girlfriend says he was angry when he became the sole caregiver of his daughter, Nikki. That same day, Roberson brought Nikki to the hospital with serious head injuries. Doctors thought they looked intentional and called police. Nikki died the following day. While Roberson maintains Nikki was hurt falling off her bed or from a fever, experts during his trial testified that she died of shaken baby syndrome and that Roberson planned to sexually abuse her. But new research shows that what used to be taken as signs of shaken baby syndrome—brain swelling and bleeding behind the eyes and on the brain’s surface—can also be caused by short falls or undiagnosed medical conditions. Roberson's lawyers successfully convinced eight of the nine members on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that Roberson had been convicted on "false, misleading, and scientifically invalid testimony." Nikki never showed any outward signs, such as an injured neck, of shaken baby syndrome. Roberson's case will now go back to trial. (This boy died 12 years after being shaken as a baby.)
– John Roberts upheld the Affordable Care Act today, and "in doing so, he gave a lot of people who don't pay attention a reason to celebrate him on Twitter," writes Mobutu Sese Seko of Gawker. "They're idiots." Seko and some other observers believe Roberts had a secret plan. Yes, his ruling hands Obama a superficial victory, but that "was, ultimately, a pretext," writes Tom Scocca of Slate. His real goal: to gut the commerce clause, and fundamentally cripple Congress' ability to regulate. Roberts ruled that the victory was a result of Congress' power to tax, not the commerce clause. In so doing he's rolling back long-held precedent, and severely curtailing Congress' power. "It is what Roberts has been pursuing ever since he signed up with the Federalist Society," Scocca writes. "Roberts' genius was in pushing this through without attaching it to the coattails of an ugly, narrow partisan victory." Seko also notes that by using the tax power, he's "handed the Republican Party a talking point." The ACA is now, officially, a tax.
– A Massachusetts woman apparently botched some home repairs yesterday and blew her house to smithereens, WBT reports. Lucky for Laurie Beliveau, 52, she fled her property in Taunton, Mass., minutes before the explosion. "We, my son and I, got her a pair of sandals and a glass of water and within about five minutes the house was in flames and the windows exploded," says Paul Saltalamacchia, a neighbor who saw her crying for help. Seems that Beliveau was trying to fix her hot water heater—which was gas-fueled—when she took off the gas shut-off valve, according to fire officials. That allowed gas to leak into the basement and somehow get ignited. "Everything caved in," says Taunton Deputy Fire Chief Scott Dexter. "It's just a pile of lumber. Nothing is salvageable." According to Saltalmacchia and police, Beliveau was at home in her bedroom when an initial explosion rocked the house and blew off her closet door, the Taunton Gazette reports. "She was walking up the street screaming 'Help me, help me! My house exploded!'" Saltalmacchia says. Another neighbor says Beliveau was once married but lived alone for years, barely communicating with others and living in apparently unsanitary conditions with dogs and cats. A "rotting-vegetable-type odor" could be smelled out back even after the explosion, the Gazette reports. "She should not have been here by herself," says the neighbor. "It doesn’t make sense."
– President Trump held a campaign-style rally in Nashville, Tenn., Wednesday night, and a federal judge's blocking of his new travel ban hours earlier was one of his chief topics. The president slammed the Hawaii judge's decision as "unprecedented judicial overreach" and accused the court of acting for "political reasons," ABC News reports. The order blocked "was a watered-down version of the first order that was also blocked by another judge and should have never been blocked to start with," Trump told the raucous crowd, adding: "This ruling makes us look weak, which we no longer are." He vowed to fight the "terrible rule" all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary, to "keep our citizens safe." At the rally, which followed a day of events marking Andrew Jackson's 250th birthday, Trump praised the controversial leader as one of America's great presidents, and one who opposed the "arrogant elite," WHNT reports. "Does that sound familiar?" he asked the crowd. During his 40-minute speech, Trump also praised his administration's accomplishments so far and repeated his promise to repeal ObamaCare, which he said is now in a "catastrophic situation," the Tennessean reports. "It's time for us to embrace our glorious national destiny," he said at the end of his remarks. Several protesters were removed during his speech, including a woman with a "Medicare for all" sign.
– A photo circulating online in the wake of the Manchester attack has sparked controversy, and the British Royal Air Force has confirmed it's indeed a real pic, CNN reports. The image, which started proliferating on Thursday, shows what appears to be a bomb with a written message on it apparently meant for ISIS: "Love from Manchester," it reads in neat black marker, a small heart directly underneath. While some may have initially thought the image was fake news, the RAF confirmed to CNN in an email that it was "genuine," though CNN notes no one has said where or when the message was created, or whether that bomb was ever dropped in Iraq or Syria, where the RAF helps out with airstrikes. "I'm sure they heard this loud and clear," writes Sarah Palin on Twitter. But not everyone is cheering the explosive message. "What does this achieve?" one commenter posted on Twitter, while in an op-ed in the Independent, Manchester native Harriet Williamson says she's "sickened" by the RAF response and that "killing and maiming people abroad" doesn't bring back those lost in her hometown. "No one with any compassion or humanity could take pleasure or satisfaction in seeing children in other countries with their arms and legs blown off, or parents with their little ones dead in their arms, white with dust from collapsed buildings," she writes. "It won't punish the man who committed the atrocity. It's not guaranteed even to punish those involved in ISIS." Her full column here.
– Comedy Central's Justin Bieber roast was taped Saturday, and Rolling Stone reports that the Bieb "got off easy"—but that the roast still managed to be "hilarious" and "uncomfortable" even while it seemed "more like ... a networking opportunity for the participants." A few highlights: A line from Hannibal Buress: "They say that you roast the ones you love, but I don't like you at all, man. I'm just here because it's a real good opportunity for me." "Natasha Leggero suggested that the pop star honed his dance moves by dodging coat hangers in his teen mother's womb," Rolling Stone notes. Will Ferrell made a surprise appearance as Ron Burgundy, and recited a list of Bieber's wrongdoings. The roast ended with, in Rolling Stone's words, "a stammering, long-winded plea for a second chance" from Bieber. The roast airs on March 30.
– President Obama and Angela Merkel have discussed US spying allegations by phone, the White House says, and they're organizing a meeting between US and German security officials on the issue. "The president assured the chancellor that the United States takes seriously the concerns of our European allies and partners," the White House notes, per Reuters. Germany plans to send envoys to Washington; a meeting could come within days. EU and US officials are also set to meet as soon as July 8. Merkel and Obama both continue to support a new transatlantic trade deal, the White House adds; talks on the matter are set to begin next week. Though France has suggested delaying the talks until after spying claims are addressed, the European Commission says the discussions will go forward on schedule. Meanwhile, European Union ambassadors are reviewing the surveillance issue amongst themselves at a meeting today in Brussels, CNN reports. They'll also talk about PRISM and the possibility of creating a US-EU working group.
– President Obama slammed Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's rape comments on the Tonight Show last night. "I don't know how these guys come up with these ideas," Obama said. "Let me make a very simple proposition. Rape is rape. It is a crime." He noted "Roe vs. Wade is probably hanging in the balance" of the election, Politico reports. Mourdock's comments that pregnancies from rape are "something God intended" are "exactly why you don't want a bunch of politicians, mostly male, making decisions about women's health care decisions," Obama said. "Women are capable of making these decisions in consultation with their partners, with their doctors." Meanwhile, asked by Anderson Cooper whether he still supports Mourdock, John McCain said it "depends on what he does," the Huffington Post reports. "If he apologizes and says he misspoke and he was wrong and he asks the people to forgive him, then obviously I’d be the first" to support him. Mourdock has in fact issued an apology. Mitt Romney, for his part, still supports Mourdock, though his campaign says he "disagrees" with the Indiana Republican's comments: "We disagree on the policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest but still support him." The campaign says it hasn't called on Mourdock to withdraw ads featuring Romney.
– In hindsight, the words "Just watch and wait" on his Facebook page may have been a warning. Disguised as a photographer, Anurag Singh, 31, walked into his cousin's wedding in India this week and shot her dead as she was saying her vows, the Daily Mail reports. Several reports say he did it because she "cheated him," but the Indian Express and Times of India go into greater detail, portraying Singh as a man lovestruck by Jayshree Namdeo, 26, ever since he lived in her family's house five years ago while doing his bank exams. Namdeo, a pediatrician, refused his hand in marriage, and Singh reacted to her engagement by saying on Facebook that he might kill himself. Her family knew about his opposition to the marriage but "never thought he would go that far," the bride's father said. At the wedding in Bhopal, Singh waited the near the stage for an hour before shooting Namdeo, and tried to shoot the groom and himself but only grazed himself and injured a guest. The crowd savagely beat Singh before police arrived and took him away. Beyond Singh's banking career (described in one report as "modest"), all that's known about him was written on his Facebook account: "Interested in.. women."
– In 2013, 32.7% of all babies delivered in America were born by cesarean section. If that sounds high, well, check out Brazil's stats. The BBC reports that at private hospitals, 85% of women deliver by cesarean; in public hospitals, it's about half that (45%). In 2013 NPR reported the figure for some private hospitals is 99%; one doctor NPR spoke with could hardly recall the last time he handled a vaginal delivery. The World Health Organization recommends a 10% to 15% rate. In an effort to get closer to that figure, Brazil is now making it a little more, well, laborious to have a cesarean. New rules were introduced yesterday, reports AFP, and going forward, there's more paperwork. After women are told about the risks (now required), they'll have to sign a consent form; a doctor will have to fill out a form that asks for the justification of the procedure. But forms may not solve what some women say is the real issue: a lack of beds. Those who want to deliver in a private hospital report that the beds are often completely preassigned to women who've booked a cesarean, forcing them to, in some instances, go to hospital after hospital while in labor. AFP reports doctors play a role, too, with some saying doctors encourage women to take the scheduled route, which helps quash middle-of-the-night working hours. As one pediatrician puts it, mass cesareans are the country's "international shame."
– A Texas man who escaped a burning building with his life but not his phone made the fatal mistake of going back for it, firefighters say. Rex Benson, 72, his adult daughter, and another man made it out of their Plano home when the fire started around 1am yesterday, but the two men decided to brave the flames and go back in to retrieve their phones to call 911; a neighbor tells the Dallas Morning News he had to stop Benson's daughter from following them in. Firefighters, who were alerted to the fire by someone's call and arrived within minutes of it, found the house fully engulfed in flames and Benson's body inside, NBCDFW reports. "It was big enough to get your attention," says the neighbor of the fire. "It was a terrible miscalculation on their part. A terrible accident," a fire department spokeswoman tells the New York Daily News. "I don't think people realize how quickly fire grows. Evidentially, they felt they had the time to go back in," she says, explaining that people should never go back into a burning building—and 90% of those that do don't make it out alive. "This is a notch in the statistic on the wrong end." (In Chicago last month, two men died after jumping into the Chicago River to retrieve a dropped phone.)
– Police in the country's smallest state capital are investigating something that hasn't happened there in living memory: a murder. Police in Vermont say they have issued an arrest warrant for 29-year-old Jayveon Caballero, who is accused of fatally shooting Markus Austin in Montpelier early Sunday after an altercation, the Times Argus reports. Witnesses told investigators that Austin, 33, assaulted Caballero’s girlfriend, Desiree Cary, during the altercation outside a bar in the nearby city of Barre early Sunday. Police say Caballero later confronted Austin outside his apartment and shot him dead. The body was found in the parking lot of Austin's apartment complex. A Vermont State Police spokesman says Caballero, who knew Austin before the shooting, fled the town and probably the state after the shooting, WCAX reports. The police spokesman says Caballero is believed to have boarded a Greyhound bus bound for New York City on Sunday morning, which made numerous stops in other states along the way. Later Sunday, Cary, 22, was arrested on apparently unrelated charges of selling heroin and crack cocaine. With around 7,500 residents, Montpelier has the smallest population of any state capital, the AP notes. Police Chief Anthony Facos says this is the city's first murder since a woman shot her husband in the 1920s.
– Now we know why Apple canned iOS guru Scott Forstall: He refused to sign a letter apologizing for iOS 6's much-maligned map app, sources tell the Wall Street Journal—a letter that CEO Tim Cook wound up signing himself. Forstall was close with Steve Jobs, and indeed was once considered a potential successor, but he had a contentious relationship with other Apple executives. Forstall had recently been heard complaining that Apple had no "decider" without Jobs. Chief designer Jonathan Ive reportedly refused to sit in on meetings with Forstall unless Cook was there to referee, according to ComputerWorld. Ive, interestingly enough, will be taking over Forstall's responsibilities—which, Harry McCracken at Time writes, could make him "the most important person at Apple." Yesterday's other departure, retail chief John Browett, was asked to leave as well, sources say, though in his case it was simply because he hadn't fit in at the company, and had botched the implementation of a new staffing formula.
– Pope Francis officially kicked off his papacy today with a call to protect the planet and its poor, in a "low-key" yet dignitary-stuffed inaugural Mass that installed him as the Catholic Church's 266th pontiff. “Let us never forget that authentic power is service and that the pope, too, when exercising power, must enter ever more fully into that service which has its radiant culmination on the Cross," he told the crowd in St. Peter's Square. His inauguration was a simpler—and shorter—affair than previous ones, Reuters reports. In a sign of the humble and open style the Argentine is expected to bring to the papacy, he shunned the bullet-proof popemobile to tour the square in an open-topped Jeep, emerging to walk among the crowd, shaking hands and kissing babies. As the service began, he received the fisherman's ring that symbolizes the papacy and the white woolen vestment that symbolizes his role as a shepherd for the faithful, the New York Times reports. The square holds around 100,000 people but Italian authorities were predicting the crowd in the area would top 1 million, CNN reports. The service installing Francis was attended by 132 official delegations and religious leaders from around the world, including six sovereign rulers, 31 heads of state, three princes, and 11 heads of government, mostly from Latin America, the AP reports. The pope will meet the government delegations in St. Peter's Basilica following today's service and meet with religious delegations from around the world tomorrow before taking a day off. Reuters adds that Francis surprised his native Argentina with a phone call home.
– The Weinstein Company has filed for bankruptcy—a move that could bring yet more sexual misconduct allegations against co-founder Harvey Weinstein to the surface. The movie and TV studio says that as part of the filing, all employees will be released from nondisclosure agreements. "Today, the Company also takes an important step toward justice for any victims who have been silenced by Harvey Weinstein," the company said in a statement, per the Guardian. "Since October, it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used nondisclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers. Effective immediately, those 'agreements' end." The statement thanked those "courageous individuals who have already come forward." The Lantern Capital Partners private equity group has entered an agreement to buy the company's assets, but other companies will be able to bid at auction, the Hollywood Reporter notes. An earlier attempt to buy the company collapsed after New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit against the company last month, then collapsed again earlier this month amid debt issues. The New York Daily News reports that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has ordered Schneiderman to investigate whether Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. properly handled allegations against Weinstein in 2015. "It is of great concern that sexual assault cases have not been pursued with full vigor by our criminal justice system," the governor said Monday.
– Kim Jong Un has allegedly had two men put to death using a method he's been said to have used before: by anti-aircraft gun. South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reports by way of an unnamed source that two men were publicly executed earlier this month. It identifies the men as Ri Yong Jin, a high-ranking official in the education ministry, and Hwang Min, the former agriculture minister. The men's alleged offenses: Ri fell asleep while in a meeting with Kim and was "arrested on site and intensively questioned"; corruption charges followed. In Hwang's case, unspecified "policy proposals he had pushed for were seen as a direct challenge to the Kim Jong Un leadership," says the source. While Kim is thought to have ordered at least 70 executions since taking power in 2011, Bloomberg highlights one difference with the current case: If Ri and Hwang were in fact put to death, they are the first from outside the Workers' Party or the military to have met that fate on Kim's orders. The Guardian notes the news has not been independently verified, nor has it been announced by the KCNA. The South Korean newspaper suggests the executions were in part prompted by a high-profile defection and carried out as a way of reasserting control over the country's elite. (Ri's alleged situation has echoes of another from 2015.)
– Songwriter Robert Sherman is dead at 86, and the AP notes that his life's work might be summed up in the word "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." He and brother Richard wrote that song along with the ubiquitous "It's a Small World (After All)" for Disney. They also wrote the scores for movies such as The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins (including a best-song Oscar for "Chim Chim Cher-ee"), and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And that's just a small sampling. "He was a very simple guy—complex but simple," says son Jeffrey. "If you ever want to know about my dad, listen to the lyrics of his songs."
– President Obama next month will become the first sitting US president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge's trip to Havana in 1928. Obama announced the trip on Twitter Thursday, and ABC News reports that he'll be there March 21-22. The visit will mark a watershed moment for relations between the US and Cuba and will be part of a broader trip to Latin America, reports the AP. (President Harry Truman visited US-controlled Guantanamo Bay on the southeast end of the island in 1948, and former Jimmy Carter has paid multiple visits to the island since leaving office.) Word of Obama's travel plans drew immediate resistance from opponents of warmer ties with Cuba—including Republican presidential candidates. Ted Cruz, whose father fled to the US from Cuba in the 1950s, said Obama shouldn't visit while the Castro family remains in power. Marco Rubio, another child of Cuban immigrants, lambasted the president for visiting what he called an "anti-American communist dictatorship." "Today, a year and two months after the opening of Cuba, the Cuban government remains as oppressive as ever," Rubio said on CNN. Told of Obama's intention to visit, he added, "Probably not going to invite me." (An Alabama tractor-maker is the first US firm to set up shop in Cuba since the revolution.)
– A roofer has been accused of gruesomely murdering his co-worker using a tool of the trade. The Pierce County Herald reports that 24-year-old Miguel Angel Franco Navarro faces charges of first-degree intentional homicide and mayhem in the death of 37-year-old Israel Valles-Flores. Authorities in Wisconsin say that his weapon of choice was a circular saw and that the slaying unfolded while the two were part of a crew working atop a home outside the city of River Falls on Aug. 6. Per the criminal complaint cited by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, police say the victim handed Navarro the saw moments before Navarro sliced Valles-Flores' throat. Valles-Flores then fell onto an adjoining room, where he was discovered dead. A circular saw was found at the scene. In a recorded phone call from jail following his arrest, Navarro allegedly said he was being teased by his co-workers prior to the attack and that it made him feel "really mad inside." However, a relative of Valles-Flores told reporters the two men had known each other for years and would frequently poke fun at one another. Navarro is being held in lieu of $500,000 bond and has a hearing set for Monday.
– One of the two suicide bombers that killed at least 30 people at the Brussels airport Tuesday was the same man who made two of the bombs used in the terrorist attacks on Paris in November, authorities confirmed Friday. The New York Times identified the man as 24-year-old Belgian citizen Najim Laachraoui. Laachraoui's DNA was found on a suicide belt at the Bataclan music venue and an explosive device at the Stade du France following the Paris attacks, NBC News reports. Authorities asked for help finding him on Monday, three days after they arrested Paris attacker and suspected accomplice Salah Abdeslam. On Tuesday, Laachraoui used a bomb hidden in a suitcase to blow himself up at the Brussels airport. Laachraoui left Belgium for Syria in 2013, Reuters reports. His family says it saw no sign of radicalization beforehand and has no idea what happened. Laachraoui's family warned police after he left for Syria. His brother, 20-year-old Mourad, remembers his brother as "nice" and "clever." "Mourad and his whole family are crushed that Najim could have committed such a barbaric act," Reuters quotes Mourad's lawyer as saying. Mourad, who represents Belgium in international taekwondo competitions, says he will do whatever it takes to keep his three younger siblings from following his brother's path.
– Major European retailers are lining up to sign a Bangladesh safety plan aimed at preventing disasters like Rana Plaza, but American companies, including the Gap and Walmart, are backing away. Walmart—which blames a "rogue employee" for an order for its clothes found in the rubble of the building collapse—says it has its own safety plan for the 279 factories it uses in Bangladesh, and it will quickly deliver results as good as or better than the European plan, the New York Times reports. Walmart plans to audit factories for safety and remove them from its suppliers list if hazards are found. But while the European plan is legally binding, Walmart's is voluntary, and experts say such plans have a poor record for delivering results. "Without the legally binding contract that the European retailers have signed, it's just putting lipstick on a pig," a sociology professor who has been a vocal critic of sweatshops tells the Wall Street Journal. The Gap, meanwhile, says it won't sign the European plan unless language is removed that it fears could make it liable in US courts for safety failures at Bangladesh factories. The only American firm to have signed the plan so far is PVH, the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.
– The Baltimore landscape is becoming more dire as police and demonstrators continue to clash following today's funeral for Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody on April 12. And when protests about Gray's death initially started turning violent on Saturday, local sports broadcaster Brett Hollander took to Twitter to highlight damaged storefronts, proclaiming in one tweet that "protests should not violate the basic freedoms of non-protestors." That's when Baltimore Orioles COO John Angelos stepped in, throwing out his own perspective with a series of tweets that USA Today's For the Win says amounts to "a qualified and brilliant defense of those protesting." "Brett, speaking only for myself, I agree with your point that the principle of peaceful, non-violent protest and the observance of the rule of law is of utmost importance in any society," he begins, citing MLK, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela as examples of "great opposition leaders." Angelos' "greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy," however, isn't on the smashed windows, or even on the damaging acts themselves. Instead, he points out "the past four-decade period during which an American political elite … have plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections." To wit: "An unfairly impoverished population [is] living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state." (Head over to Angelos' Twitter feed to read what else he had to say.)
– Mary Jordan was charged with assault and child endangerment last week in Bellevue, Ohio—but you wouldn't know it from her smiling mugshot. Police say Jordan and friends Ashley England and Sammie Whaley attacked a McDonald's worker in a restaurant parking lot on June 8 because they thought the service was too slow, reports Fox 59. Jordan and England's children were not just witnesses to the incident—which was caught on surveillance cameras—but they even "participated," police write on Facebook. All three women from Sandusky, Ohio, were arrested the next day. In addition to Jordan's charges, Whaley was charged with assault, and England was charged with assault, theft, and child endangerment; it isn't clear what she allegedly stole. When it came time for the women to have their mugshots taken, Whaley put on a straight face. England and Jordan, however, both smiled broadly, per Boing Boing, drawing a host of negative comments online. Jordan is being held on a probation violation, per WTSP.
– Did the gorilla have to die? The Cincinnati Zoo is facing an angry backlash for shooting Harambe, an endangered gorilla, dead after a 4-year-old boy fell in its enclosure Saturday, CNN reports. Protesters who accuse the zoo of using excessive force gathered outside the zoo Sunday and the #JusticeforHarambe movement has started a petition to have the boy's parents investigated for negligence. The zoo, however, says that while it is devastated by the death of the male western lowland gorilla, the boy was in imminent danger and tranquilizers would not have worked quickly enough. A witness says that after the boy fell 15 feet into in the enclosure, the gorilla seemed protective at first, but he became agitated as visitors screaming and started dragging the boy through a moat. A witness tells CNN that to get into the enclosure when his mother was distracted, the boy had to "climb under something, through some bushes and then into the moat." He was released from a hospital on Saturday night and his parents issued a statement thanking the zoo and saying the boy is "doing just fine," the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. "We know that this was a very difficult decision for them, and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla," they said. The BBC notes that a similar incident in Britain in 1986 had a happier ending. When a 5-year-old boy fell into a gorilla enclosure on the island of Jersey and fractured his skull, a male silverback named Jambo stood guard, stroking the boy and keeping other gorillas away until he was rescued.
– Nearly half of all Americans—49%—have no money in their savings account or no savings account at all, CNBC reports. “It’s worrisome that such a large percentage of Americans have so little set aside,” a financial analyst for the site that conducted the survey tells Market Watch. “They likely don’t have cash reserves to cover an emergency and will have to rely on credit, friends, and family." The survey of 5,000 people found that 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 saved, while only 14% had more than $10,000 in their savings account. These numbers come despite a September survey showing Americans are getting more interested in—and being more effective at—saving money, CNBC reports. Last month's numbers for interest, effectiveness, and effort toward saving were the highest ever for the survey. However the survey did come to the obvious conclusion that the country's biggest earners—those making more than $100,000 a year—were by far better at saving money than those in a lower income bracket. According to the federal government, Americans on average saved 4.6% of their disposable income in August.
– Some of you have been waiting a long time for this news: Justin Bieber was arrested this morning. Bieber—who was driving a rented Lamborghini at the time, NBC Miami reports—was busted on suspicion of drag racing, driving under the influence, and resisting arrest in Miami Beach, according to police. TMZ reports that he had just left a club, had a model with him in the car, and failed a field sobriety test. Police say Bieber admitted to drinking beer, smoking marijuana (all day long), and taking prescription anti-depressants before his arrest, the Miami Herald reports. He also allegedly cursed out the arresting officers and, as the Herald puts it, "babbled incoherently." He refused, at first, to get out of his car, then refused to remove his hands from his pockets, and didn't have a valid license, according to police sources. In case none of that is infuriating enough, Bieber's posse is said to have blocked traffic in order to create a drag strip for him to use. And this isn't the only controversy related to his trip to Florida; the Opa-locka Police Department is also investigating an unauthorized police escort of Bieber after he landed at the Opa-locka Executive Airport. Bieber's currently at county jail and a detective tells ABC News he can't be bailed out until after noon, because DUI suspects are required by law to "dry out" for eight hours.
– President Trump has discussed the political fallout of a potential pardon for Paul Manafort, whom he believes "has been horribly treated"—and understands a pardon is off the table, at least for now, according to Rudy Giuliani. The president's personal lawyer made the comments to the New York Times on Wednesday before elaborating to the Washington Post. Claiming the conversation occurred "three to five weeks ago" then correcting that timeline to June, Giuliani said Trump had brought up the possibility of a pardon but both Giuliani and fellow attorney Jay Sekulow advised against it, at least before the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. "We sat him down and said you're not considering these other pardons with anybody involved in the investigation," Giuliani said. That would ostensibly include former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, and campaign aide Rick Gates, all of whom have pleaded guilty as part of the Mueller probe. "He said yes, absolutely, I understand," Giuliani continued. "The real concern is whether Mueller would turn any pardon into an obstruction charge." Still, the president has been publicly praising Manafort since his Tuesday conviction on eight counts of financial fraud. "Some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant, every lobbyist in Washington probably does," Trump told Fox News on Thursday, a day after he took to Twitter to praise Manafort for refusing to "break" for prosecutors. "Such respect for a brave man!" he wrote.
– Andre Davis served 32 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Now he might be going back for one that prosecutors say he did. As NBC Chicago explains, Davis served his lengthy prison sentence after being convicted of the 1980 rape and murder of a young girl, but he was released in 2012 after DNA evidence overturned the conviction. He had been a free man since—until this week, when he got arrested and charged with the kidnapping and murder of a 19-year-old, reports the Sun-Times. Police say the victim got into a fight with Davis' nephew during a house party, and the nephew shot him. According to prosecutors, witnesses say the victim was still alive when Davis put the teen into his trunk and said he would find a place to dump the body, reports the Chicago Tribune. He told another witness the next day that he cut the victim's throat, say prosecutors. Both he and his nephew have been charged, and Davis is once again behind bars awaiting trial. For an in-depth look at the original case, see the Chicago Reader. (Click to read about another man who spent three decades on death row before his exoneration.)
– Scientists have been concerned for some time about "Phantom Menace"-type superbugs that aren't fazed by meds. The latest CDC data finds that 2 million people a year in the US are infected with bacteria resistant to antibiotics, and at least 23,000 die directly from those infections. And a new report from the CDC and the Pew Charitable Trusts—the first research to quantify this issue, per the Washington Post—isn't encouraging. A study published Tuesday in JAMA finds nearly one in three antibiotic prescriptions (around 47 million per year) are given needlessly to people with viruses such as bronchitis and the common cold, as well as for ear and sinus infections and sore throats not caused by bacterial infections—meaning the Rx not only won't vanquish their illness, but can potentially build up antibiotic resistance, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Besides the drug resistance, overuse can up the risk for drug allergies and even an unpleasant-sounding diarrhea that can be fatal. The researchers analyzed 184,032 outpatient visits to ERs and medical clinics in 2010 and 2011 and found that 12.6% walked out with an antibiotic script, per the Pharmacy Times. Out of an estimated annual antibiotic-prescription rate of 506 per every 1,000 people, only about 353 of those who received prescriptions should likely have received them. The Times notes President Obama's initiative to cut down on unnecessary outpatient antibiotic use by 50% by 2020; researchers say that, based on this study, we'll need to slash overall antibiotic use by 15% to meet that. "If we continue down the road of inappropriate use we'll lose the most powerful tool we have to fight life-threatening infections," CDC Director Tom Frieden says. "Losing these antibiotics would undermine our ability to treat patients with deadly infections [and] cancer, provide organ transplants, and save victims of burns and trauma." (Here's hoping teixobactin can help us out with superbugs.)
– The Wall Street Journal has a report raising hopes about the 200 or so Nigerian girls still missing after being kidnapped by Boko Haram. US surveillance planes have on at least two occasions spotted sizable groups of girls in remote locales in northeastern Nigeria. The girls had been moved by the time subsequent flights flew overhead, but the development suggests that instead of selling the girls into sex slavery as feared, Boko Haram is keeping them in the hopes of a prisoner swap with the government. In fact, the Journal quotes a Nigerian security adviser who says that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has given orders that "anybody found touching any of the girls should be killed immediately." President Goodluck Jonathan has publicly ruled out a prisoner exchange, but he is up for re-election in February and under heavy pressure to bring the girls home. Meanwhile, a human rights group has launched a campaign to provide educations for the girls who managed to escape, reports the Catholic News Agency.
– As fighting rages today across Iraq, Washington is beginning to take action. About 50 to 100 Marines and Army personnel are now at the US embassy in Baghdad, and some embassy staff have been moved to other consular offices in Iraq and Jordan, CNN reports. Meanwhile, US Navy ships including the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush have arrived in the Persian Gulf, NBC News reports. And the Wall Street Journal reports that the US is planning to begin direct talks with Iran this week about ways of curbing Sunni militants in Iraq. In other news: The militants who seized much of western and northern Iraq say they've recently executed 1,700 people, the New York Times reports. No official confirmation yet, but the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria posted gruesome images of massacre sites on Twitter. Most victims are reportedly Shiite Iraqi soldiers, but Sunnis affiliated with the government were among the dead. The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani revised the call to arms he issued Friday, apparently concerned about a possible wave of Sunni/Shiite reprisal killings. He urged Iraqis "to exert the highest level of self-restraint during this tumultuous period." Militants clashed with security forces near al-Khalis, northeast of Baghdad, and took over the town of Tal Afar, near the Syrian border. Sunni residents in Tal Afar say Shiite forces bombed their neighborhoods with mortar fire, Reuters reports. Two bomb attacks today killed up to 21 people in central Baghdad, one in a market full of volunteers assembled to join the fight against militants, the New York Times reports. See where ISIS militants came from, or how they became "insanely wealthy."
– More than 200 bottlenose dolphins await their deaths in Japan's Taiji cove—made infamous in 2009 documentary The Cove—and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is doing its best to draw attention and outrage to the annual slaughter. As CNN reports, Japanese fishermen herded a pod of 250 or so dolphins into the cove on Friday; a total of 37 dolphins, including an albino calf, have been separated from the larger group to be sold to aquariums, or as Sea Shepherd calls it, "a lifetime of imprisonment." It doesn't sound like a peaceful process: Two dolphins have been killed. Slaughter of the rest, which will be harvested for their meat, is expected to begin tomorrow. Sea Shepherd has been live-streaming video and tweeting from Taiji, with one update today reading, "Many of the 200+ Bottlenose dolphins who are in still the cove are visibly bloody & injured from their attempts to escape the killers." They've attracted the attention of new US ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, who tweeted that she was "deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive hunt dolphin killing."
– With Michelle Obama cheering them on, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and the US men's basketball team tidily put France away today in a preliminary game, reports the New York Times, in the first step to defending their gold medal. Though France is led by Tony Parker and five other NBA stars, they proved no match for Team USA and fell 98-71. "They're going to be very, very tough to beat," Parker said. Elsewhere on the first Sunday of the London Games: With London calling for its first medal, Lizzie Armitstead answered, taking a close second-place finish in the women's cycling road race, reports Sky News. American Kimberly Rhode won the gold in skeet shooting, her fifth consecutive gold in the event, becoming the first American to accomplish the feat, reports the AP. Queen Elizabeth's granddaughter, Zara Phillips, made her Olympic debut in a dressage event, reports People. She'll compete tomorrow with a couple of famous cousins in attendance. American gymnast Jordyn Wieber failed to qualify for the all-around competition in a stunning turn of events, reports the AP. Heartbroken 38-year-old British marathoner Paula Radcliffe, stymied in four previous Games, pulled out of her event today with a foot injury, reports the BBC. Click through the gallery for other scenes from today's events.
– It might be the strangest advice imaginable for survivors of a nuclear attack: Don't use hair conditioner. But it turns out to be sound advice as well, reports Live Science. The matter came up when Guam, under threat of an attack by North Korea, recently issued safety guidelines to the public. And there among the usual seek-shelter nuggets was the warning that people should use soap and water to rid themselves of toxic dust but avoid the conditioner. It's all because of how the stuff works, and the upshot it that it could actually cause radioactive particles to bind to your hair. Hair is shaped almost like scales, which can open up and come apart throughout the day. Conditioner uses compounds like silicone and cationic polymers to pull these scales back down and smooth it, one cosmetic chemist tells Racked. Conditioner is also oily, and any oily products like lotions or cosmetics are likely to encourage fallout to stick around. So there you have it: Wash with soap and shampoo, but let your hair frizz out. NPR also took a look at those safety guidelines and highlights one that would come in handy should doomsday arrive: If you see a flash, get inside anywhere as fast as you can to reduce exposure to fallout, and remove your outer layer of clothing. (Dandruff shampoo could be harming our water.)
– The UC Berkeley campus erupted in anger Wednesday night during a protest that turned violent against a scheduled speech by far-right Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos (the speech ended up being canceled). President Trump weighed in on the incident on Twitter, per the Hill, and it was clear from his message which side he planted his feet on. "If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" he tweeted early Thursday. Per Business Insider, the school received $370 million in research funding from the government in fiscal year 2015-16, according to the school's own stats. Politico notes that Trump has also threatened to pull federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities for immigrants.
– A young mother in Texas who holds down two jobs but doesn't have health insurance is in the fight of her life—doing battle with not just the necrotizing fasciitis that has already claimed the vision in her left eye but also with her $100,000 medical bill. It all started a few hours after a mud run in Dallas earlier this month. "My eye started hurting, like maybe I've got mud or some debris in there," Brittany Williams tells CBS DFW. "When I opened my eye, it was just like white. The whole room was white.... [The bacteria] just completely melted off of my eye." She suspects that debris cut her eye, providing an entryway for the bacteria; CBS reports it has destroyed her cornea. And while some doctors have told her it's possible she'll someday regain vision in that eye with surgery, she needs antibiotics to prevent the bacteria from spreading to other parts of her body and several doctors are denying her treatment because she has no insurance. (Her GoFundMe page is currently at around $11,500. An updated posted there on Tuesday notes "we were asked to leave [an appointment] and told we could no longer be treated within their facility secondary to lack of insurance and full payment.") Williams' ordeal isn't exactly rare, reports the New York Daily News. Just last week, dozens of mud runners in France became violently ill from gastroenteritis, likely due to bacteria in the mud, while 22 people contracted a diarrheal illness in Nevada in 2012 thanks to bacteria in animal feces on an obstacle course. (In Florida, a "flesh-eating" water bacteria has killed two.)
– Working the night shift has already been linked to higher risks of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Now researchers at Harvard—who've combed through 22 years of data tracking 75,000 nurses in the US—write in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that rotating night shifts for five or more years results in higher mortality rates in women. Specifically, death from cardiovascular disease is as much as 23% higher and death from lung cancer is as much as 25% higher, reports Fox News. "These results add to prior evidence of a potentially detrimental relation of rotating night shift work and health and longevity," the lead researcher says. Rotating shift work is defined as working at least three nights a month in addition to working day and evening shifts. And while the researchers acknowledge that more study is needed to learn how a person's individual traits might play a role, people who work rotating night shifts for more than five years do experience an 11% hike in risk of death from all causes, reports HealthDay News. (Researchers blame the disrupted balance of light and dark in the increased cancer rates.)
– A teen surfing off the southern coast of Australia died Monday after she was attacked by a shark, the AP reports. ABC Australia says the 17-year-old was surfing with her dad near the Kelp Beds surfing break, off of Esperance, at the same beach where a surfer suffered serious injuries from a shark attack in 2014. The girl was attacked around 4pm while her mom and sisters watched from the shore, PerthNow notes. Paramedics tried to help her on the beach, but she was soon taken to a local hospital in critical condition, and died of her injuries, per local cops. Although police haven't said what kind of shark may have killed the teen, PerthNow says a local shark-watch site flagged two sightings nearby of great white sharks (perhaps the same one) in the week before the attack. (An Oregon man started pummeling a shark in a panic when he was attacked.)
– With NFL referees locked out since June amid a collective-bargaining dispute, a new batch of officials will be calling the shots in upcoming games—and for the first time, one of them is a woman. Shannon Eastin, who has refereed small-college and high school games, will officiate at a Green Bay Packers vs. San Diego Chargers exhibition game on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reports. But the replacement refs have had a shaky start: In last night's Hall of Fame game, an official had to correct himself after announcing the wrong coin toss outcome, the Washington Post notes.
– Bradley Manning never should have been let near Iraq, much less the classified trove he spilled to WikiLeaks, reports the Guardian in a look at the Army private's mental health. "He was harassed so much that he once pissed in his sweatpants," says an anonymous officer from the base where Manning trained, calling him "a mess of a child." Manning was prone to outbursts, regularly hauled in for psych evaluations, and once punched "a chick in the face"—yet sent on his way to Baghdad, security clearance intact. "Low-flying planes could have seen that kid wasn't suitable," says a former soldier who recalls Manning "curled up in a fetal position on his bunk." "He was a wreck." Couple that with security so lax that passwords were scrawled on sticky notes on laptops at Manning's base, and as a former comrade says, "no wonder something like this transpired." Watch the 19-minute Guardian video here.
– A new federal study suggests more young men and women are remaining virgins longer. In the 15-24 age group, 27% of men and 29% of women say they've never had a sexual encounter of any kind, reports MSNBC. That's up from 22% for both groups from the last study in 2002. Other findings: In the 25-44 age group, 97% of men and 98% of women have had vaginal intercourse, and about 90% in both groups have had oral sex, notes the Washington Post. 36% of women and 44% of men in the age group have had anal sex. 12.5% of women reported a same-sex experience, vs. 5.2% of men. 21% of men say they've had at least 15 sex partners, compared with 8% of women. To read about Northwestern's hey-watch-this approach to sex ed, click here.
– Noticed Pete Davidson's absence from SNL as of late? Well, there's a good reason behind it: The 23-year-old has been focusing on his sobriety. After telling High Times last fall that he couldn't function without the medical marijuana he's prescribed for Crohn's disease, Davidson now says, "I quit drugs and am happy and sober for the first time in eight years" in an Instagram post. Rapper Kid Cudi might have inspired that sobriety, per the New York Daily News. Last fall, Davidson told a radio station, "I would have killed myself if I didn't have Kid Cudi," who'd checked himself into rehab a few weeks earlier.
– Hillary Clinton takes "absolute personal responsibility" for losing the 2016 presidential election, CNN reports. "Did we make mistakes? Of course we did," the Guardian quotes Clinton as saying during a Women for Women event Tuesday in New York City. "Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes." She added: “It wasn’t a perfect campaign. There is no such thing." Still, despite "a barrage of negativity, of false equivalency," Clinton says she was "on the way to winning" until James Comey's Oct. 28 letter to the FBI and "Russian WikiLeaks" frightened voters, CNBC reports. "If the election had been on Oct. 27, I would be your president," Clinton said. Those close to Clinton say she's still locked in on Russian interference during the election. The US government now says the Russian government was responsible for hacking John Podesta's emails and releasing them through WikiLeaks just hours after President Trump's damaging Access Hollywood tape broke. Clinton sees the timing as highly suspicious. Clinton added that misogyny also "played a role" in how the election turned out. Though, she pointed out she did win 3 million more votes than Trump. It doesn't appear Clinton is currently planning another run for office. "I am now back to being an activist citizen and part of the resistance," she said.
– The death of a Canadian man is making headlines for its location, manner, and the murkiness around it. The body of Sebastian Woodroffe was found in a shallow grave Saturday in the Ucayali region of Peru's Amazon by police who began searching for the 41-year-old after a video was posted to social media that showed him being dragged on the ground with a rope around his neck until his body goes limp. One early theory, according to local media and a police officer who spoke with the Guardian, is that he was killed over the murder of Olivia Arévalo, an octogenarian shaman from the Shipibo-Konibo tribe who was shot dead Thursday. Woodroffe's body was buried a little more than half-a-mile from the site where she was killed, and he was thought to be one of her clients. But while one potential motive being investigated is that Arévalo's son owed Woodroffe money, another theory is that the same son owed money to a gang member who pulled the trigger. And the AP says authorities have "backed away" from reports that Woodroffe is even a suspect. The BBC reports Woodroffe had been in Peru previously to try the hallucinogen ayahuasca, and that he was looking to start a new career involving the use of "plant medicine" in drug addiction treatment. The Guardian cites a years-old Indiegogo campaign that helped fund a trip from his Vancouver Island home to Peru; on the campaign page he referenced a relative's alcohol addiction and wrote, "Traditional Detox Centres have a 5-8% success rate. Unacceptable." The CBC reports Woodroffe, who was apparently also killed Thursday, leaves behind a 9-year-old son.
– Another tidbit from Michele Bachmann’s media victory lap today: On Meet the Press, Gawker notes, Bachmann dodged (and dodged again… and again…) David Gregory’s repeated attempts to get her to address her 2004 comments that being gay is “personal enslavement.” Instead, she consistently said, “I am running for the presidency of the United States,” and insisted she doesn’t judge gay people. She also would not call a gay couple with adopted children a “family,” instead insisting that such questions “aren’t what people are concerned about right now.” Though, Gregory noted, she once called such issues “defining political issues.”
– A 22-year-old woman allegedly tried to flush her newborn baby down a toilet before abandoning it in a trash can at an Iowa hospital on Mother's Day, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reports. According to the Gazette, Ashley Hautzenrader delivered the baby into a toilet in a hospital bathroom Sunday night. Police say Hautzenrader later told them she wasn't aware she was pregnant before entering the bathroom, KCRG reports. Hautzenrader allegedly tried to flush the baby down the toilet because it wasn't crying and she thought it was dead. Police say she then placed it in a pillowcase and put it in the garbage. Hautzenrader cleaned the bathroom and left. A hospital spokesperson says the newborn was found "shortly after delivery." Its current condition is unclear. The hospital won't say if Hautzenrader was a patient or why she was there. She was arrested Monday and charged with child endangerment, a misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in prison. She was released from jail and placed on supervised release. Under an Iowa law, Hautzenrader could have legally turned her newborn over to the hospital.
– Rowr: After Anna Wintour failed to show up at Giorgio Armani's autumn/winter 2014 fashion show yesterday in Milan, Armani did not hide his displeasure. "There are some who prefer to snub the Giorgio Armani show and go to Paris," he said at a press conference after the show, apparently referring to the Vogue editor. "She took an airplane, dumped Mr. Armani and went to Paris." The problem? Armani is the only big designer whose show was on the last day of Milan Fashion Week, so much of the press had already left for Paris Fashion Week, which starts today, the Telegraph reports. It's not the first time Wintour has skipped the Armani preview for that reason, the AP notes. According to the Irish Independent, Armani (whose tirade also included digs at the Milan Fashion Week organizers and other Italian designers) went on to say—while not naming Wintour—"Why should I always be the [moron] to be penalized because of a person, who, for better or for worse, like or dislike it, is powerful? I feel penalized. She said she was sending her people. But if you go to see your dentist and he puts you in the hands of his assistant, what’s your reaction? They told me, 'She went to see the Privé in Paris; she has no time to see the ready-to-wear in Milan.' She is influential and powerful. But, perhaps, I’m influential as well." As for Wintour, her rep tells Women's Wear Daily, "Anna has the greatest respect for Giorgio Armani and everything he has done for Italy and fashion worldwide. Unfortunately, with the fashion calendar now running for more than a month, there are some shows that Anna is not able to attend."
– More weirdness from Shia LaBeouf: The Transformers star was handcuffed by police and hauled out of the Broadway show Cabaret at Studio 54 last night, ABC reports. Sources tell the New York Post that the actor was smoking in the theater, yelling during the performance, and slapping random people on the back of the head. Witnesses saw him in tears outside the theater, but he was allegedly belligerent at the precinct, spitting and swearing at police officers, sources say. He has been charged with one count of criminal trespassing and two counts of disorderly conduct, reports the New York Times. The increasingly erratic 28-year-old head-butted somebody in a brawl at a London bar earlier this year—and appeared at a press conference with a paper bag over his head the next month. (Click for more on Shia's night—he reportedly really freaked out at the police station.)
– President Trump came out swinging on the second day of the government shutdown, reports the Washington Post, tweeting Sunday that Senate "Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked," and that "If stalemate continues, Republicans should go to 51% (Nuclear Option) and vote on real, long term budget, no C.R.’s!" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he's not open to using the nuclear option, which would circumvent the need for 60 votes, and will gavel open a session at 1pm Sunday. The Post notes that McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer "did little in public Saturday besides trade insults" and that negotiations appear deadlocked with the clock ticking until Monday morning, when about a million federal workers either will or won't go to work.
– The butter was the surprise, not the simulated rape. That's what director Bernardo Bertolucci is adding to the conversation on the recent dustup about one of his most famous movie scenes. Outrage ensued after an interview with him from 2013 emerged in which he said he and Marlon Brando decided the morning of shooting to use a stick of butter (as lubricant) on actress Maria Schneider during the rape scene in Last Tango in Paris, but Bertolucci says the scene itself wasn't a shock to Schneider, the AP reports. "Some people thought, and think, that Maria wasn't informed about the rape," he said Monday, per ANSA. "False! Maria knew everything because she had read it in the script, where it was described. The only novelty was the idea of the butter." Schneider, who died in 2011, was 19 when the scene was shot with 48-year-old Brando; she said in 2007 that she "felt a little raped" by both men. The movie's cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, weighs in, telling the Hollywood Reporter that Schneider loved being in the film and that the element of surprise was part of Bertolucci's moviemaking MO. "I was there with two cameras and nothing happened," he says. "Nobody was raping anybody. That was something made up by a journalist." He adds Bertolucci likely felt "a little guilty and nothing more than that" for not completely explaining the butter to Schneider before the scene was shot. Bertolucci also calls anyone who thought Schneider was actually raped "naive" and the controversy "ridiculous." "Those who don't know that in film, sex is [almost] always simulated, probably also think that every time John Wayne fires, someone actually dies," he said in the statement. He admitted in the 2013 interview that Schneider "hated me for all of her life," per the Express. More from Storaro.
– European leaders today lauded President Obama's plan to limit the size and risk-taking of the nation's banks, but stock markets worldwide were rattled. Asian markets fell sharply today and European markets opened down, following a 213 point drop in the Dow yesterday, its biggest 2-day loss since March. Europeans said they'll seek an international agreement to avoid competing bank policies that, aiming to shore up stability, would put one country at a disadvantage. Bankers fear the proposal, which would prevent commercial banks from running hedge funds and private equity firms, and separate commercial and investment banking within the big firms, will mean an end to huge profits in the financial sector, the Times of London reports. "It's like a child who is being told not to do something," the editor-in-chief of the Stock Trader's Almanac tells BusinessWeek. "'Don't take my toy away'—that's a natural reaction."
– The CDC warned American hospitals last year to keep an eye out for the emergence of a possibly fatal, drug-resistant yeast infection, and now the agency's fears may be realized. CDC officials tell the Washington Post that 35 patients in the US have been stricken with Candida auris, a fungus that can cause bloodstream, wound, and ear infections, with another 18 people harboring the microbe without becoming ill. Some strains of the pathogen don't respond to the three main classes of antifungal drugs, and based on the small number of cases health officials have had the chance to review, 60% of patients hit with C. auris have died (though the agency notes many of those patients had other serious medical issues they were contending with). The fungus is contagious and durable, especially in health care facilities, where it can stick around on furniture and other equipment for months. The first C. auris strain was reported in 2009 in a Japanese man, and it has since spread around the globe, including to Colombia, India, Israel, Kenya, Kuwait, Pakistan, South Korea, Venezuela, and the UK. The first US case was reported in 2013, and the CDC's latest report places 28 of the incidents in New York state, with other affected states including New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois. CDC Acting Director Anne Schuchat said at a recent briefing that "scary," "difficult to combat" drug-resistant microorganisms are on the rise, per the Post. Some good news is that C. auris hasn't morphed yet into new strains, and most people's chances of contracting it are very low, with it only affecting "the sickest of the sick," says CDC infectious disease specialist Tom Chiller. Also encouraging: a recent study IDing an antifungal that may prove useful. (No drug could save this Nevada woman.)
– The unemployment rate ticked down from 5.9% to 5.8% last month, its lowest level since July 2008, the AP reports. And 214,000 jobs were added; 233,000 had been expected, per the Wall Street Journal's forecast, with the unemployment rate expected to stick at 5.9%. August and September numbers were also revised upward: August saw 203,000 new jobs added (up from 180,000), and September saw 256,000 (up from 248,000). That means the economy has added 200,000 or more jobs per month for nine consecutive months, the longest stretch since 1995, the AP notes. Even though the new jobs number for October doesn't look great when compared to what was expected, the AP points out that it extends "the healthiest pace of hiring in eight years." And Michael J. Casey at the Journal explains why today's jobs report is actually pretty good news: "Unemployment dropped, including in the U-6 broader measure of joblessness. And it came with a higher participation rate. Along with the upward revision in the September payrolls number, all of this means the net takeaway ain't as bad as the headline jobs number suggests."
– It's the size of a marker and as common as Band-Aids in a school nurse's office. EpiPen, a device that delivers a dose of epinephrine that can stop an extreme allergic reaction, has been credited with saving the lives of children for whom a peanut or a bee sting could be fatal. But drugmaker Mylan has hiked the price of the device by nearly 500% over the past few years, CBS News reports, and parents and doctors aren't happy. "When epinephrine only costs a few cents, but they're going up to $500, personally I don't think that's ethically responsible," allergy specialist Dr. Douglas McMahon told NBC News. “Patients are calling and saying they can't afford it.” (McMahon is seeking FDA approval for his own device that he says will cost $50.) Twice in her seven years, Ellie Henegar’s life was saved with an EpiPen, but her parents were stunned last year when the bill came to $600, they told CBS. Compare that to 2009, when the bill was about $100 for the same two-pack of EpiPen. While insurance covers varying degrees of the cost, not everyone is lucky enough to have a plan that does, NBC notes. With a near monopoly, Mylan has little incentive to cut the price, Bloomberg reports. In fact, Mylan execs considered dumping the aging product in 2007. Instead, they launched a marketing campaign that turned the device into an essential, donating EpiPens to schools and dropping $35 million on TV ads. A law passed by Congress in 2013 requiring schools to stock epinephrine devices also boosted sales, which last year totaled $1 billion. Mylan contends it has made a "significant investment" to improve the device and offers coupons. "It's a totally established brand name with little competition," Bloomberg’s Robert Langreth tells CBS. "That gives them freedom to raise the price every year."
– Carl Paladino may have implied yesterday that homosexuality is not as “valid or successful” as heterosexuality, but that’s only because being gay is “a very, very ugly experience for those that are discriminated against,” he explains today. “And it shouldn’t be. Our society should be more accepting of them.” The New York gubernatorial candidate defended his remarks on Today, telling Matt Lauer that, far from being a homophobe, he actually believes “the discrimination against homosexuals is horrible. It’s terrible … I have a nephew and I have many workers who suffer that.” He also defended his comment about children being “brainwashed” into homosexuality, saying his only concern is that “children should not be exposed to that at a young age. Exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a Gay Pride parade, and I don't know if you've ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other … Would you take your children to a Gay Pride parade? I don't think it is proper for them to go there and watch a couple of grown men grinding against each other. I think it's disgusting." For more, including the original video of his controversial remarks, click here.
– An old-school form of discipline remains popular in Alabama. The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights has found that almost 19,000 children—2.5% of the state's students—got paddled in public schools during the 2013-2014 school year, reports AL.com. Boys get hit more than girls, and black children were paddled at a disproportionate rate compared to whites. It's a long-standing (and legal) disciplinary tradition in the state that locals don't seem terribly motivated to change: The National Education Association wants the practice banned, but the Alabama Education Association has stayed mum—despite the fact that it's illegal to paddle an adult in the state, per an opinion piece on AL.com. UNICEF's "Violence Against Children" report doesn't exactly support paddling enthusiasts, noting that studies have linked corporal punishment to poor mental health, social issues, and academic problems. And many educational and child advocacy groups, including the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree it's ill-advised. But a 1977 Supreme Court decision ruled corporal punishment was not cruel and unusual and that schools could decide whether to use it—and in 1995, Alabama lawmakers gave public schools the right to do so. Most of the states that allow paddling (21 states reported it in the 2013-'14 school year) are in the South. (Fifty years of spanking studies analyzed here.)
– President Trump sat down with Laura Ingraham Thursday night, and when the Fox News host pressed him on why there are still so many vacancies for top posts in the State Department, he seemed nonplussed. "Let me tell you, the one that matters is me," Trump said, per the Hill. "I'm the only one that matters because when it comes to it that's what the policy is going to be." He also reminded Ingraham that he comes from the business world and that he often tells his own teams, "When you don't need to fill slots, don't fill them." He also put some of the blame on "[Chuck] Schumer and the Democrats" for "obstructing" nominees he's made for these positions, though a Washington Post/Partnership for Public Service tracker points out he's made far fewer nominations than the four presidents before him by this time in their tenure. Trump did touch upon one slot that's filled at State: Rex Tillerson's post. Per Politico, the president was asked if the secretary of state would remain with his administration "for the duration," to which Trump replied: "We'll see. I don't know who's going to be [here for the] duration." He did add that Tillerson was "working hard" and "doing his best." Also receiving mentions from Trump: Pyongyang and Putin. Trump called North Korea a "thing that I think we will solve," per Fox News. "If we don't solve it, it's not going to be very pleasant for them. It's not going to be very pleasant, I guess, for anybody," he said, without giving further details. As for the Russian president, Trump noted he wouldn't be against meeting with him during his upcoming trip to Asia. "Putin is very important because they can help us with North Korea," he said. RealClearPolitics has clips from the interview.
– It's official: If you want to see a movie while it's still in the theaters, you'll have to take off your Google Glass or smartwatch first. The MPAA and the National Association of Theatre Owners yesterday banned all wearable tech, meaning you'll need to turn such devices off and put them away if you don't want to get kicked out. And—in a policy that already exists for phones and other recording devices—if theater staff thinks you're recording illegally, they'll notify police. The new zero-tolerance policy was approved during the ShowEast convention, where theater owners gather each year, according to the Hollywood Reporter; the Washington Post reports that the association represents about 32,000 US theaters. But many individual theater owners had already instituted such a ban. Two potential problems: The new rule "ignores something pretty crucial," writes Greg Kumparak on TechCrunch. "If someone is the type of person who will strap a computer to their face, they're probably also the type of person who knows of easier/better ways to pirate movies than recording a shaky, crap-resolution copy on Google Glass." Plus, what happens when smart glasses become more popular and some people "choose to use the device as their primary eyewear"? wonders Chris Morran at the Consumerist. "At that point, do theaters kick people out just for wearing glasses that could shoot video?" One theatergoer has already been hauled from his seat by the feds because he was wearing Google Glass.
– Since ditching Hugh Hefner at the altar a couple of weeks ago, Playboy playmate Crystal Harris has only added to her frank critique of Hefner's lovemaking shortcomings, telling Howard Stern that sex with Hef was over in "like two seconds," reports People. "Then I was just over it," she says. "I was like, 'Ahhh.' I was over it. I just like, walked away. I'm not turned on by Hef, sorry." Harris also said that Hefner never takes off all of his clothes ("I've never seen Hef naked") and that they had sex only once. But Hef isn't taking any of this lying down. In tweets that have apparently since been deleted, Hefner accused Harris of lying during her Stern appearance, adding that he didn't know why she would do such a thing, Gossip Cop reports. “The sex with Crystal the first night was good enough so that I kept her over two more nights," he continued. “Crystal did a crazy interview with Howard Stern today that didn’t have much to do with reality. Is she trying to impress a new boyfriend?”
– Losing weight is one thing, keeping it off quite another. And now researchers are finding that among those with coronary heart disease (CHD)—which the Mayo Clinic reports develops from damaged or diseased blood vessels typically caused by blockage and inflammation—yo-yo dieting may dramatically increase the risk of stroke, heart attack, and death. Reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers say they followed nearly 10,000 men and women with CHD between the ages of 35 and 75 for about five years, monitoring changes in body weight and other health outcomes. The takeaway? "It's important to lose weight, but this data says you have to keep it off," lead researcher Dr. Sripal Bangalore at the New York University School of Medicine tells the New York Times. The highest weight fluctuation was on average 8.6 pounds over five years, while the smallest body weight changes averaged closer to two pounds, reports Medical News Today. Those who were already overweight or obese at the beginning of the study and who experienced the highest level of weight fluctuation experienced 124% more deaths, 136% more strokes, and 117% more heart attacks, meaning these CHD patients were more than twice as likely to suffer these negative outcomes in just a few years than people with CHD whose weight only fluctuated two pounds. This doesn't pinpoint a cause, as pre-existing heart problems could be the culprit, but researchers hope to study this correlation further. (Yo-yo dieting is bad for women's hearts in general.)
– New parents will do almost anything to relieve their little ones' teething pain—but one thing the FDA says they shouldn't do is give their babies homeopathic teething products, Live Science reports. In a Sept. 30 statement, the FDA warns these "natural" tablets and gels found in some chain drugstores and online can pose medical risks to infants and young children, from constipation and agitation to more serious issues such as breathing problems and seizures. "Teething can be managed without prescription or over-the-counter remedies," says Janet Woodcock, director of the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Per the National Institutes of Health, homeopathy is an alternative (and little-proven) type of medical treatment that works on the theory that using tiny amounts of natural substances that usually cause ailments can actually help treat them. And for years, the FDA has been on the case of homeopathic teething tablets and gels, which aren't evaluated or approved by the agency: In 2010, it sent out an alert about Hyland's teething tablets, which contained "inconsistent" amounts of belladonna (also known as deadly nightshade), Popular Science reports. So what else are desperate parents to do? Per Live Science and the American Academy of Pediatrics, everything from hard, unsweetened teething crackers to pacifiers, clean wet washcloths, and refrigerated (not frozen) teething rings can work as soothers. In advance of the FDA's announcement, CVS announced it was pulling all homeopathic teething products, while Hyland's issued a statement saying its products are safe, per Drug Store News. (Check out the weird thing these parents discovered was causing their baby's "teething" issues.)
– A story involving an AR-15 is making headlines, with a twist: Police near Chicago say a man used his weapon to stop a knife attack, reports the Chicago Tribune. The resident of Oswego Township tells WGN that he witnessed a confrontation among neighbors turn violent and decided to act. Dave Thomas says he ran back to his house and "grabbed the AR-15 over my handgun—bigger gun, I think a little more of an intimidation factor. Definitely played a part in him actually stopping." The Kendall County Sheriff's Office confirms that Thomas stopped the stabbing attack with "only the threat of force." The suspect fled but was quickly apprehended by deputies, while the stabbing victim was hospitalized with multiple injuries. The victim's condition wasn't known. Thomas says the incident shows that the AR-15 is a good weapon for home protection in the hands of someone properly trained, and the incident is likely to draw attention in the current debate over gun laws. Exhibit A is the headline at Breitbart News: "Bad Guy with Knife Stopped by Good Guy with AR-15."
– Apple has released figures on its Apple Renew recycling program, and it's clearly paying dividends. Out of nearly 90 million pounds of electronic equipment it recovered last year, 61 million pounds were recycled, Apple reports. Specifically, it reclaimed 23 million pounds of steel; 13 million pounds of plastic; 12 million pounds of glass; 4.5 million pounds of aluminum; 3 million pounds of copper; 6,600 pounds of silver; and 2,200 pounds of gold. That amounts to $1.7 million worth of silver, $6.5 million of copper—and a whopping $43 million in gold, reports Quartz. Activist group Fairphone, which watches electronics supply chains, notes that a typical smartphone contains 30 milligrams of gold, mainly in circuit boards and other internal components, reports Business Insider. It's not a lot, but spread across millions of phones and other electronics, it adds up. CNNMoney reports that while it's pricey, gold is a popular choice in consumer electronics for being corrosion resistant yet excellent at conducting electricity. (Silver is a superior conductor but corrodes easily.) In March, Apple unveiled an experimental bot called Liam, which can disassemble an iPhone in 11 seconds and sort its parts for recycling. Prototypes are already at work, and the line is designed to take apart 1.2 million phones a year. "It's an experiment in recycling technology, and we hope this kind of thinking will inspire others," Apple notes. (This woman unknowingly dropped off a $200K Apple I to be recycled.)
– Gazing at whales from a boat may seem like an animal-friendly pursuit, but new research is questioning that idea. Why? It's not just about the odd collision; whale-watching seems to stress out the whales, Nature reports following a symposium in Scotland. When they spot a boat—whose operators know where the preferred feeding grounds are—the whales may opt to skip a meal or hurry away. In Iceland's minke whales, the rush to escape looks a lot like an effort to flee a predator, with heavy breathing and a boost in speed, researchers say. Meanwhile, dolphins in New Zealand—whose numbers have been dropping, researchers find—appear to be focusing on dodging tourists rather than eating. As for a solution, some areas suggest a distance boats must keep from the creatures, but the standards aren't usually officially required. “Whale-watching is traditionally seen as green tourism,” says a US wildlife biologist. “The negative is the potential for disturbance. That disturbance is a worry because we don’t want to do ‘death by 1,000 cuts.'" Other researchers, however, have seen benefits to whale-watching as a means of encouraging conservation work, Takepart notes. "Presentations in the symposium pointed out much good that whale-watching can do if—and that’s a big if—managed appropriately," says one. (It's not just whales who are on display: Shark watching is also a hit.)
– Two people are dead and one wounded after a shooting inside a mall in Melbourne, Florida, reports the Orlando Sentinel. The shooting took place about 9:30am at the food court in the Melbourne Square Mall, and police say the shooter is believed to be one of the victims. A witness tells WESH that a gunman shot two people and then killed himself. Police evacuated the mall but haven't released details yet on the victims or a motive. The survivor is in stable condition and able to talk to investigators. "We started hearing 'pop, pop,'" another witness tells MyNews13. "I figured somebody was shooting somebody. It's going on all the time now."
– Did you just get caught taking a few minutes to update your fantasy football team or Instagram your lunch? Just tell your boss it's making you a better worker. Two researchers from Baylor University recently published a study after looking at the break habits of 95 workers to identify a better break. "What we found was that a better workday break was not composed of many of the things we believed," researcher Emily Hunter says in a press release. For example, it turns out, midmorning—not afternoon—is the best time for a break. "You should pace yourself, similar to how plants should be watered early in the day before getting distressed from a long day in the sun," Hunter tells the Huffington Post. Second, don't use the time to run errands. Breaks should be composed of an activity you enjoy—even, counterintuitively, if it's work-related. (Like some kind of "passion project," in the words of HuffPo.) Finally, the researchers found frequent, smaller breaks are ideal over a singular, longer break. "Unlike your cellphone, which popular wisdom tells us should be depleted to 0% before you charge it fully to 100%, people instead need to charge more frequently throughout the day," Hunter says. While they didn't identify an ideal break length, the Huffington Post reports previous studies have shown as little as five minutes away from work can improve productivity. By following their advice for better breaks, researchers say employees will experience less mental and physical burnout. (Others say a lunchtime walk will cure your work woes.)
– Ashley Judd can do drama, comedy, and action, but top Democrats are increasingly skeptical that she has the chops to play the junior senator from Kentucky. While Judd looks toward a run for Mitch McConnell's seat next year, party power brokers—including Bill Clinton—are trying to convince Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes to run instead, reports Politico. McConnell's seat is top of the party's hit list for 2014. A Judd candidacy would guarantee the party both big headlines and fundraising dollars. But some are worried that a Hollywood liberal who currently lives in Tennessee won't play well to a Kentucky base. Grimes, a more established politician with strong family connections in the party, offers a far less controversial choice. But that's assuming Clinton and Co. can convince her to run at all. "Why would [Grimes] take on this race?” said a former McConnell chief of staff. “She could run for a state office with little opposition or run against McConnell and endure $30 million in career-ending advertising." Judd's big sister Wynonna, however, is predictably and firmly in her corner, telling Us Weekly, "Of course I'd vote for her!" Though maybe just because blood is thicker than water: "I don't agree with anything she says half the time. We're so different. But I love my sister. I am for Ashley."
– Eva Longoria has given birth for the first time at 43. The actress welcomed a son with her husband of two years, Televisa president Jose Baston, on Tuesday, People reports. Santiago Enrique Baston was born at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center weighing 6 pounds, 13 ounces. "We are so grateful for this beautiful blessing," the couple tells Hola, which has the first photo of the child. "This boy, my son, will be surrounded by very strong, educated, powerful women," Longoria previously said, per People. "I'm so excited that I'm having a boy because I think the world needs more good men," she added. Longoria has three stepkids via Baston. (Another celebrity duo is expecting their first child.)
– After she broke her back, Olympic skier Maria Komissarova of Russia had "successful" surgery, a rep for the Russian Freestyle Federation tells RIA Novosti. Now, she is in stable condition, the Wall Street Journal reports. The good news is that the accident didn't damage her spinal cord, her coach says. Surgeons rebuilt one of Komissarova's vertebrae; she also received a metal implant, the Journal reports, noting that she was conscious following the accident. Now she's due for a hospital visit from Vladimir Putin, CNN reports. As for this year's Games, we won't be seeing her on the slopes.
– Central banks around the world plan to ease the strain on the global financial system by taking coordinated action to prevent a lack of liquidity, they announced in a statement this morning—news that sent stock futures soaring more than 250 points. The Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, and the Swiss National Bank join the Fed in the moves, which the AP reports will, as of next Monday, "reduce the cost of temporary dollar loans to banks—called liquidity swaps—by a half percentage point." NPR explains that'll make it easier for financial institutions to get cash, which they'll hopefully then lend at reduced interest rates. The AP reports that these central banks are also working to shore up banks' ability to ready money in any currency if market conditions warrant, though "at present, there is no need to offer liquidity in non-domestic currencies," the Fed's statement noted. "The purpose of these actions is to ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity," explained the Fed.
– Dustin Snyder and Sierra Siverio are moving fast. The Tampa Bay Times reports Snyder proposed to his girlfriend of two years after leaving a Chili's in Florida on Thursday. They'd only been talking about marriage since Monday, and they're getting hitched on Sunday. But you have to move fast when doctors give you less than a month to live and marrying your high-school sweetheart is one of your dying wishes. "I wanted to give her something back before my time was up," Snyder says. The 19-year-old has synovial sarcoma, a rare cancer, and doctors say there's nothing they can do, according to WTSP. ABC News reports Snyder is in hospice with a pain pump connected to his heart. But that won't stop him from declaring his love for Siverio in front of friends and family this weekend. Snyder and Siverio dated in middle school and reconnected as seniors in high school when Siverio showed up to the Steak and Shake where Snyder was working. "I'm blessed that he has her," Snyder's mom, Cassandra Fondahn, says. "She's literally been by his side the whole time." Siverio says Snyder was her "first love," and Snyder says she "means the world" to him. “She was there with me since the beginning, and I couldn't imagine being with anyone else,” he tells WTSP. Now the community has come together to give them a wedding, donating a dress, photographer, venue, and even a diamond ring. “I can't believe the amount of people that have reached out to help,” Fondahn says. Another $13,000 or so in donations will help the young couple tie the knot.
– Tomorrow should be a pretty good day to live in Farmville: Creator Zynga begins trading publicly on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker ZNGA, and the company has set the price for the 100 million shares being sold at $10, reports MarketWatch. That would peg the market value of Zynga at $7 billion and make it the biggest US Internet IPO since Google in 2004, notes the Wall Street Journal. The $7 billion valuation is impressive, but it's way under the figure of $20 billion being thrown around earlier this year in giddier days. Next up, Facebook?
– Mark Zuckerberg's little startup filed papers with the SEC today to become a publicly traded company. Some of the Facebook particulars: The company says it plans to raise $5 billion, but that figure is expected to rise to perhaps $10 billion by the time the big day arrives in the spring. (The AP thinks the stock will debut in May.) The Wall Street Journal pegs the company's potential value at between $75 billion and $100 billion. The ticker symbol will be FB, though the filing didn't specify which exchange would be used for trading, notes MarketWatch. The company reported $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, up from about $2 billion in 2010. Analysts expected $4.3 billion, says the Journal. A Zuckerberg quote from a letter to future shareholders: "We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits." TechCrunch has the full text here. Facebook should shatter the figures from 2004 IPO of Google, which raised $1.9 billion and valued the company at $23 billion. See the filing for yourself here.
– A former professor who taught one Barry Obama at Harvard Law School now says his onetime student "must be defeated in the coming election." Roberto Unger—who, the Daily Mail reports, actually advised Obama during his 2008 campaign—believes Obama "has failed to advance the progressive cause," he says in a YouTube video from last month that got little notice until now. Unger at one point launches into what the Daily Caller refers to as "a series of one-liners against Obama," though he also criticizes the Republican Party. "He has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests and left workers and homeowners to their own devices," says Unger, who is also a well-known Brazilian politician. "He has subordinated the broadening of economic and educational opportunity to the important but secondary issue of access to health care. … His policy is financial confidence and food stamps. He has evoked a politics of hand-holding." After reiterating that Obama must be defeated, Unger concludes, "Only a political reversal can allow the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life."
– "To smoke or not to smoke" was not the question. Something had been smoked in the pipe bowls and stems unearthed from William Shakespeare' garden in Stratford-upon-Avon; the question was what. Researchers in South Africa now have gas chromatography mass spectrometry to thank for their answer. A piece in the Conversation based on the report published in the South African Journal of Science explains the "technique is very sensitive to residues that can be preserved in pipes even if they had been smoked 400 years ago." Eight of the 24 pipe-fragment samples tested were shown to contain cannabis; another had evidence of nicotine, and two more "evidence for Peruvian cocaine from coca leaves." Of those, only four of the cannabis samples were from Shakespeare's garden; the others were from the Stratford-upon-Avon area. Study author Francis Thackeray writes that the research establishes that a wide range of plants were smoked in the area during the early 17th century, and he leans on Shakespeare's own words to try to draw connections. Thackeray references Sonnet 76, which refers to "invention in a noted weed"; he interprets weed as cannabis and invention as writing. As for whether we can conclude that Shakespeare got high, Thackeray writes "one can well imagine" it. (In April, Texas researchers reported another Shakespeare find.)
– The world is becoming more egalitarian, with men doing a much larger share of things like cooking and childcare these days. "It’s seen as socially admirable and masculine for a man to be on diaper duty or to sous-vide a steak," writes Jessica Grose, whose own husband handles half the midnight baby feedings. "But there are no closet organizing tips in the pages of Esquire, no dishwasher detergent ads in the pages of GQ," and her husband hasn't scoured a single toilet during their six-year relationship. Cleaning, she writes for the New Republic, is the "final feminist frontier." She shares a few theories as to why (cleaning just isn't fun, laundry detergent is still marketed as a women's product) but ultimately posits that society's instinct is to blame the mess on the woman. "Unfortunately, the notion that women will be the first to be judged for a messy home and the first to be commended for an orderly one isn’t much of an incentive for men to pick up a mop," she writes. But in New York, Jonathan Chait sees something else at work: Women simply have higher cleanliness standards. The underlying assumption is "that there is a correct level of cleanliness in a heterosexual relationship, and that level is determined by the female. I think a little cultural relativism would improve the debate. My wife and I ... settled—fairly, I think—on a home that’s neater than I’d prefer to keep it, but less neat than she would." Click for Grose's full column or Chait's response.
– Bruce Jenner is no more, and the 65-year-old former Olympian debuts as a woman on Vanity Fair's July cover in an Annie Leibovitz photo with the headline "Call me Caitlyn." VF sent Leibovitz and Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger to Jenner's place in Malibu, where they got "unfettered access." "If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it," Jenner tells Bissinger, "I would be lying there saying, 'You just blew your entire life.'" Jenner also debuted @Caitlyn_Jenner, tweeting, "I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me." She had 153,000 followers in her first 40 minutes. The issue of Vanity Fair is out June 9.
– Google's parent Alphabet Inc. says its stratospheric balloons are now delivering the Internet to remote areas of Puerto Rico where cellphone towers were knocked out by Hurricane Maria. Two of the search giant's "Project Loon" balloons are already over the country enabling texts, emails, and basic web access to AT&T customers with handsets that use its 4G LTE network, the AP reports. The balloons—called HBAL199 and HBAL237—are more than 60,000 feet above land, according to FlightRadar24.com. They navigate using an algorithm that puts them in the best position to deliver signal by rising and falling to ride wind currents. They are also solar-powered and only provide signal during the day Several more balloons are on their way from Nevada, and Alphabet has been authorized by the Federal Communications Commission to send up to 30 balloons to serve hard-hit areas, according to Libby Leahy, spokeswoman for Alphabet's X, its division for futuristic technologies. Project Loon head Alastair Westgarth said in a blog post that Project Loon is "still an experimental technology and we're not quite sure how well it will work," though it has been tested since last year in Peru following flooding there. Hurricane Maria devastated the US territory of 3.4 million people last month. Less than a fifth of the island has electricity, and half its cellphone towers are still not functioning,
– Enter the new narrative from the DC press corps: The White House is shifting from offense to defense on scandals, or as Politico puts it, "President Obama tries to stop the bleeding." Obama fired the IRS chief yesterday, released Benghazi emails, and got a new press-shield law in the works in response to the trio of recent scandals. The upshot? "After days of anxiety, Democratic operatives said the White House has found its footing," writes Jennifer Epstein. "But happy as they were to see Obama win a news cycle, they insisted he’s far from being in the clear—Republican adversaries feel that they’re only just beginning, and they’ll have another chance to lay into the administration at Friday’s hearing on the IRS." The New York Times, meanwhile, has a front-page analysis that says a quick fix is out of the question. ("An Onset of Woes Raises Questions on Obama Vision" reads the headline.) Yes, the president got aggressive, but "at times, Mr. Obama comes across as something of a bystander occupying the most powerful office in the world, buffeted by partisanship and forces beyond his control," writes Peter Baker. The president is clearly vulnerable, and Republicans must press these investigations, writes the conservative National Review. But they shouldn't be licking their chops: "Democratic scandal does not take the place of a Republican agenda," write the editors.
– She could use the publicity for her cause, and he could use some press that doesn't involve fighting over girls or inadvertently fending off bear attacks. Which might explain this weird FaceTime pairing spotted by Pakistan's Dawn.com: Justin Bieber and teen activist Malala Yousafzai. In a Facebook post last night, Bieber writes that they connected via video chat: "Just got to FaceTime with Malala Yousafzai. She has such an incredible story. I can't wait to meet her in person and talk about how I can support her and the Malala Fund." The Daily News notes that Malala has been working to drum up publicity for her fund, aimed at educating girls around the world.
– KIC 8462852 is an odd and fascinating star, astronomers say—but it probably isn't host to an "alien megastructure," as some researchers suggested as a longshot possibility when the star and its highly unusual dimming pattern first came to attention. Instead, Iowa State University researchers who studied infrared light emitted by the star in the Cygnus constellation believe that the likeliest explanation is the "destruction of a family of comets," which caused dramatic changes in the light observed by the Kepler telescope as the fragments and debris cloud moved past the star in a long, elliptical orbit. The team didn't actually look for alien structures, but they were able to use the infrared data to rule out possibilities including a massive collision nearby, the Washington Post reports. The SETI Institute has also investigated the star, and found no trace of the radio signals that would suggest extraterrestrial technology was present, CNN reports. But even without aliens, nothing like what is happening around KIC 8462852 has ever been seen before and astronomers want to learn more. "This is a very strange star," lead researcher Massimo Marengo said in a NASA press release. "It reminds me of when we first discovered pulsars. They were emitting odd signals nobody had ever seen before, and the first one discovered was named LGM-1 after 'Little Green Men.'" "We may not know yet what's going on around this star," he added "But that's what makes it so interesting." (Closer to home, astronomers have discovered that Mars is destroying its own moon.)
– Starbucks is calling a limited-time beverage that changes colors and flavors with a stir of the straw a "Unicorn Frappuccino," the AP reports. The chain says the drink was inspired by the trend of unicorn-themed food online and starts out purple with a sweet and fruity taste. It changes to pink and tart after it's stirred to mix in a blue drizzle. It will be available from Wednesday to Sunday in the US, Canada, and Mexico, with a 12-ounce size containing 280 calories. USA Today says the Unicorn Frappuccino "either sounds like a dream come true or truly disgusting." And Eater quotes an anonymous Starbucks employee who got an early sample as saying it "tastes just like those Tropical Skittles." We'll have to wait until Wednesday to see what actual customers think of the colorful creation.
– John McCain's opposition to the latest GOP effort to repeal ObamaCare didn't quite kill the legislation's chances, though it came pretty close. Still, Democrats are taking pains not to declare victory in public or do anything that smacks of gloating, reports Politico. As Democratic Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz tweeted, "This bill is not dead yet. You can relax on October 1. They never let up, and neither can we." (After that date, Democrats will be able to easily kill any repeal effort with a filibuster.) McCain joins Rand Paul as a definite no, meaning Mitch McConnell can't afford one more defection even as Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both were leaning in that direction. So what next? McConnell isn't saying yet whether he will proceed with a vote on the bill from Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham regardless, reports the Washington Post. If the repeal effort does indeed fail this month, Democrats want to resurrect bipartisan talks aimed at improving ObamaCare, rather than dismantling it. But given the vast differences in ideas on the left and right about what is necessary, the Hill doesn't see much hope for an "era of bipartisanship" on health care. On Friday night, President Trump called McCain's decision "horrible" but suggested that Republicans continue with the vote. “The most we’ll be is one or two votes short,” he said, per the New York Times. "You can’t quit when you have one or two votes short. You can’t do it." Meanwhile, co-author Graham didn't sound too peeved at McCain. "My friendship with @SenJohnMcCain is not based on how he votes but respect for how he’s lived his life and the person he is," he tweeted.
– It seems applying to join ISIS isn't so different from applying to be a Subway sandwich artist. NBC News reports thousands of what appear to be ISIS recruiting forms were leaked to various news agencies by a "disillusioned" member of the terror organization. CNN has the full list of 23 questions from the forms. Those questions include normal job application queries (education level, current employer, and recommendations) as well as some questions not likely to be asked by your local HR department—religious level, previous jihad experience, obedience level, and preference for becoming a fighter or suicide attacker. Of more use to intelligence agencies around the world, the leaked documents include the names, addresses, phone numbers, and travel routes of ISIS members, Sky News reports. The names not already known by officials include ISIS members in the Middle East and beyond, including the US and Canada. Officials believe this information could be key in preventing future terror attacks. The documents, which include a file marked "martyrs," also shed light on the mindset of people hoping to become suicide attackers. One applicant wrote he was interested in a suicide mission because "I have a headache because (of) shrapnel in my head." An Australian man was also interested in becoming a suicide attacker but worried about his poor night vision and inability to drive stick.
– It’s time, Gizmodo declares, "to start building a canon of the most significant websites of all time." In putting together a list of the "100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It," the Gizmodo staff considered sites (not apps or services) "that influenced the very nature of the Internet, changed the world, stole ideas better than anyone, pioneered a genre, or were just really important to us." And Gizmodo is quick to point out that a spot on the list doesn't mean the website is good ("a number of sites on this list are cesspools"). Among the sites that made the list are Blingee (2006), PizzaNet (1994; the LA Times was dubious), and Hampsterdance (1998). Keep reading to see Gizmodo's top 10 Internet-shaping websites.
– About 10 people were sickened after a suspicious package arrived in the mailroom of an IRS building in Kansas City, Missouri, Friday morning, a fire official tells the AP. Symptoms included vomiting and sweating; two of the people were taken to a hospital but are in good condition. The package's contents have not yet been determined, but the fire department is checking for gasses and fumes. The building was not evacuated, but the package has been isolated from the public. Law enforcement is investigating, the Kansas City Star reports.
– Golf Digest has distanced itself—temporarily, the magazine says—from Tiger Woods, in a sign that his escapades have seriously damaged the golfer’s cachet. Woods’ name will remain on the masthead, but his instructional columns will be on hiatus as long as he is. The move is shocking because a beleaguered athlete’s own sports community is usually a main source of support, the Los Angeles Times observes. A contributing factor may have been the magazine’s latest cover, printed before the scandal broke, which features “10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger.” Meanwhile, after TAG Heuer appeared to be preparing to drop the golfer, the watchmaker posted a note on its website reading, “TAG Heuer stands with Tiger Woods,” the Daily Mirror reports.
– The US won't be competing in men's soccer at the Olympics, thanks to a heartbreaking goal that came literally at the last minute. El Salvador battled the US to a 3-3 draw last night, the AP reports; the US, which had been heavily favored to win its group in CONCACAF qualifying, needed a win after being upset by Canada 2-0. It was a back-and-forth affair, with the US scoring in the first minute, then falling behind, and finally coming back to lead 3-2. But in stoppage time El Salvador's Jaime Alas bounced a ball off the hands of substitute keeper Sean Johnson and into the net. Starting keeper Bill Hamid had been injured in the 31st minute, but, in a move ESPN suspects will be much-criticized, he wasn't pulled out immediately. El Salvador scored two goals against him in six minutes.“This is probably the worst feeling I've ever felt in my life,” says captain Freddy Adu. “This is going to be hard to get over.”
– Sad news for cancer patients: A new study finds that those who receive chemotherapy during the end stages of the disease are at a higher risk of enduring a less peaceful death. Of 386 terminally ill patients in a new study, 65% of those who received chemotherapy during the final few months of their life died in their preferred place (for example, at home as opposed to in a hospital). But 80% of those who had chosen to stop treatment died in their preferred location, CBS News reports. Those who continued chemotherapy were more likely to die in an intensive care unit, to undergo CPR, and to be placed on a ventilator. Those who continued treatment were also less likely to have discussed their end-of-life wishes with their doctors. "There’s a subtle dance that happens between oncologist and patient," the lead author explains to the Boston Globe. "Doctors don’t want to broach the subject of dying, especially in younger patients, because it makes those patients think we’re giving up on them." Of the subjects, who died within an average of four months after the study, 56% continued chemotherapy—and they tended to be younger, wealthier, more educated, and more optimistic about their chances of survival. The lead author thinks chemotherapy may give end-stage patients a false sense of hope.
– Another game-changer? One of the United Nations' chief investigators says evidence is building that sarin gas was used in the Syrian conflict—but by rebels, not Bashar al-Assad's regime. "Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors, and field hospitals" and "there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas," said Carla Del Ponte, a member of a panel probing alleged Syrian war crimes, Reuters reports. "This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she adds. The war crimes inquiry commission Del Ponte is involved with is separate from the main UN probe into chemical weapons use in Syria. Each side accused the other of using chemical weapons during fighting in Aleppo in March, while Britain and France say they have evidence that regime forces used nerve agents in attacks on rebels. In other developments: Israeli airstrikes on targets inside Syria in recent days have killed at least 42 government soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights tells the AP. Israel today emphasized that the strikes were not meant to aid rebels, Reuters adds, but rather to block weapons from Hezbollah. The Israeli move renewed debate on whether the US should use airstrikes against the Assad regime, the New York Times reports. John McCain, who yesterday blasted President Obama's "red line" as being "written in disappearing ink," said the strikes show that Syria's air defense system may not be much of an obstacle. Opposition activists say rebel forces shot down a military helicopter last night, killing eight government troops, the AP reports. The regime's air power has long been a chief target of rebels and activists say rebels also attacked and occupied parts of an air base in the north of the country yesterday, killing the base's commander and capturing a tank unit.
– Courtney Stodden, former child bride, announced Monday that she is four weeks pregnant. If it seems a bit early for such an announcement to be made, let Stodden explain: "It's a bittersweet time for me right now. I'm dealing with a lot of stress and emotions surrounding life and its ups and downs," she tells Us. "Doug and I weren't planning on going public with this so soon. ... But some things are out of your control." (As Fox News notes, a source had been circulating video husband Doug Hutchison apparently shot showing Stodden with a positive pregnancy test.) Stodden, now 21, was 16 when she married Hutchison, who is 34 years older than she is. Stodden, whose Twitter account is totally terrific, went on Couples Therapy with her husband in 2012, the year after they wed; they separated in 2013 and got back together in 2014. This year, Stodden went on Lifetime's The Mother/Daughter Experiment: Celebrity Edition with her mother, where it was revealed that, among other things, Stodden had cheated on Hutchison before their separation—and that Stodden's mom was also in love with Hutchison. Apparently things still aren't going well between Stodden and her mom, because her mother told Fox that "if it wasn't for the media I would not get to know the news about my daughter's pregnancy." (Anderson Cooper's impression of Stodden will definitely make you feel better.)
– Researchers from London's Imperial College think they've found two networks of genes, possibly controlled by a master system, that control cognitive functions—a find that may allow them to modify human intelligence down the line, the Guardian reports. In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, scientists say these M1 and M3 clusters control cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and reasoning, per the Daily Express. "Traits such as intelligence are governed by large groups of [genes] working together—like a football team made up of players in different [positions]," study co-author Dr. Michael Johnson says, per the Guardian. By figuring out how these "players" work together, scientists could perhaps boost cognitive abilities by simply flicking the equivalent of a master switch. And based on other findings in the study linking mutations of those same genes to cognitive impairments, research in this area may be lead to treatment of cognitive issues that accompany neurodevelopmental diseases such as epilepsy, Dr. Johnson notes, per the Guardian. Researchers analyzed "huge sets of data" taken from samples of mouse and human brains, the paper notes, as well as info from a previous health study and genetic data from volunteers (both healthy ones and those with autism and other intellectual disabilities) who took IQ tests. Not only did they find evidence for the disparate gene networks—they also found that the same genes that apparently contribute to the intelligence of healthy subjects damaged cognitive abilities if they were mutated. "Eventually we hope that this sort of analysis will provide new insights into better treatments for neurodevelopmental disease … and ameliorate or treat the cognitive impairments associated with these devastating diseases," Johnson says. Not everyone is thrilled with the idea of flipping a switch to play around with intelligence functioning. "Genetics is the science of inheritance, not pre-determinism, and there is no substitute for hard work and application," a University of Kent genetics professor tells the Express. (Predict your kid's intelligence—with a raisin.)
– Dick Cheney, an "iron ass"? Yep, he admits he was. On Fox News Sunday, the former vice president addressed the notion of "a fundamental break" between him and the late George HW Bush after Bush accused him of being "just iron ass," USA Today reports. Quoted in the 2015 John Meacham book Destiny and Power, Bush criticized Cheney's "seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything" and said Cheney "had his own empire." Cheney's response: "I was more, I guess, of an 'iron ass' when I was vice president. ... [But] we'd had 3,000 of our people killed on 9/11, more people than we lost at Pearl Harbor and we moved, I think legitimately, into a war-time setting rather than simple law enforcement." For more Sunday talk: GM Plants: "And clearly General Motors' decisions are in part based upon the tariff issue, so yes it has an impact, and it costs us jobs here in America," says Sen. Ben Cardin on Fox News Sunday about tariffs pushing GM to shutter five facilities, per Fox News.
– Thursday is International Women's Day, an annual event getting more attention than usual in 2018 because it's the first in the wake of the #MeToo movement. As expected, brands (including McDonald's) are looking to capitalize, though critics are calling out examples of perceived misfires. Here's a look at what's going on in the US and around the world: Obituaries: One of the more interesting efforts comes from the New York Times, which acknowledges that it has focused too much on men in its obituaries over the years. A new project, "Overlooked," seeks to correct that by catching up on obits that should have been done but weren't. Subjects now getting their due include poet Sylvia Plath, anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells, and Jane Eyre author Charlotte Bronte. Branding: At the Financial Times, Kate Allen thinks the move by McDonald's to flip its arches into a W is "possibly the most superficial approach to gender politics in the universe." Nor is she a fan of the stunt by French newspaper Liberation to charge male readers more on Thursday. "There are various ways to highlight the gender pay gap, but this is a vastly oversimplified one to pick." Branding, II: Fortune looks at other corporate efforts, including Mattel's "role model" Barbies, also being panned. The problem for companies is that sloganeering is no longer enough, writes Claire Zillman. Google is also in on the day with its interactive Google Doodle, which invites women to share their own stories, notes People.
– Scourge of the modern protester: Ukraine demonstrators this morning got this text on their cell phones: “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance," reports the New York Times. The threat is clear enough, given that the government also made it a crime punishable by prison to take part in such demonstrations. But the attempt to scare away protesters didn't work—clashes with police continued in Kiev. Protesters have been taking to the streets for two months now, angry that President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a trade pact with the EU in favor of stronger ties with Russia. An opposition leader arrived at Yanukovych's office today but was rebuffed by the leader, reports AP. Russia, meanwhile, accused European nations of encouraging the protests and demanded that they stop "meddling," reports Reuters. "The situation is spinning out of control," says Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
– He has been convicted of killing two and attempting to murder two more—and he could actually be "Germany's worst post-war killer," reports the BBC. Niels Hoegel, 40, was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for those crimes, but prosecutors voiced their belief that the nurse had killed many more while working at clinics in Oldenburg (from 1999 to 2002) and Delmenhorst (from 2003 to 2005), reports the AP. Now police are giving a sense of just how many more: at least 84. Hoegel said at trial that he wanted to play the hero and drugged his patients so that he could then resuscitate them and win praise. Except a commission established three years ago to determine the breadth of his crimes has found that many patients ended up receiving lethal doses of drugs that brought on heart failure or destroyed the circulatory system. The BBC reports that 134 bodies have been exhumed and tested for traces of the drug, but "it is simply not possible to say how many people were killed," per Oldenburg police chief Johann Kuhme. That's in part because many of his patients were cremated. The AFP quotes chief police investigator Arne Schmidt as describing the death toll as "unique in the history of the German republic." There is "evidence for at least 90 murders," he said at a press conference, "and at least as many [suspected] cases again that can no longer be proven." Kuhme faulted the clinics for having "hesitated to alert authorities," saying the death toll could have been much lower if they had. New charges against Hoegel will likely be filed next year. (This nurse says she would get a "red surge" before killing one of her patients.)
– It's hard to know for sure, but President Trump may save a pretty penny if his administration's "once in a generation" tax proposal goes into effect, despite Trump insisting earlier this week the plan is "not good for me." The New York Times put Trump's estimated net worth of $2.86 billion and his 2005 federal tax return—one of the few publicly available pieces of detailed info on the president's finances—up against the current tax law and the new plan. Its findings: The president and his estate could save more than $1 billion. Experts commissioned by the Times postulate the benefits would mostly come from the elimination of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. Under the current estate tax, Trump's estate would take a 40% hit following an assets transfer after his death. In what it called a potential "bonanza" for Trump and his Cabinet members, Bloomberg last year estimated Trump's family would save $564 million by dumping the estate tax; the Times figures it closer to $1.1 billion, minus New York state taxes. Getting rid of the AMT, which made up about 80% of Trump's income tax payment in the 2005 return, could save him more than $31 million. Writing for the Washington Post, Philip Bump notes Trump's "vague articulation" on how he's looking out for the little guy, not the ones with fat wallets, "is not borne out by the details." Fox News offers the winners and losers under the tax proposal.
– The debate over gun laws brings renewed attention to the debate over the Second Amendment, with two very different takes today from the left and right: Noble intent: Erick Erickson as RedState offers a history lesson. "On April 19, 1775, British regulars marched on Lexington and Concord to seize the guns of American colonists that had been stockpiled in case of revolution," he writes. "It may be an abstract concept for us. It may be distant. But when the 1st Congress of the United States met in 1789, the memory of 1775 was fresh." The amendment is all about protecting citizens from the abuses of their own government. Full post here. Awful intent: Nope, writes Thom Hartmann at Alternet. The Second Amendment was written to protect slavery. The slave states needed militias to keep rebellions in check and were worried the federal government would disband them. That's why the line about a "well regulated militia being the best security of a free country" got changed to "free state" in the final version. Read the full post here.
– Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell will get another chance. Republican Susan Collins and Independent Joe Lieberman say they plan to introduce a stand-alone measure in the lame-duck session, and Harry Reid says he's on board, reports MSNBC. It's no gimme by any stretch—opponents could try to talk it to death with amendments, for one thing, notes the Times—but "we're not going to give up," says Lieberman. Assuming it comes up after the tax issue is settled, it could theoretically pick up three decisive pro-repeal votes from Scott Brown, Lisa Murkowski, and Dick Lugar, writes Greg Sargent at his Plum Line blog. The measure that failed today (by three votes) was part of a larger defense bill, and Harry Reid knew it was going to fail when he brought it up for vote, writes Sargent. So why did he do it? He figured it was doomed anyway—that even if he had agreed to Collins' demands for four days of debate, others wouldn't abide by that deal. "You can talk about four days until the cows come home," an aide tells Sargent. "That has very little meaning for Coburn and DeMint and others who have become very skilled at grinding this place to a halt."
– First FIFA, now this? Yep, evidence has emerged of possible widespread match-fixing in the pristine world of professional tennis. According to documents obtained by the BBC and Buzzfeed, investigators hired by the Association of Tennis Professionals uncovered signs of corrupt betting syndicates and gamblers buying off well-ranked players—but little was done to fix the problem. "There was a core of about 10 players who we believed were the most common perpetrators that were at the root of the problem," says Mark Phillips, an investigator in a landmark 2007 enquiry. "The evidence was really strong." Yet tennis officials shelved their conclusions, saying lawyers advised them that strict new rules couldn't be applied to players retroactively. Among the accusations: Corrupt gamblers have contacted players in their hotels and offered them $50,000 or more to fix a match. Gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy then placed "highly suspicious bets on scores of matches—including at Wimbledon and the French Open," says Buzzfeed. More than 70 players are suspected of taking part, but Buzzfeed and the BBC decided not to print names because the suspects' computer, bank, and phone records weren't available as conclusive proof. Suspects include winners of Grand Slam singles and doubles titles, and eight players slated to play in the Australian Open starting Monday. "There is an element of actually keeping things under wraps," says an investigator. But Nigel Willerton, who heads the unit designed to police tennis, denies the accusations: "All credible information received by the [Tennis Integrity Unit] is analysed, assessed, and investigated by highly experienced former law-enforcement investigators," he says.
– The cyclospora outbreak, believe to be linked to prepackaged salad in Iowa and Nebraska, just got a little ickier: Experts say that salad may not be the sole source of the stomach bug, which causes "sometimes explosive diarrhea"and has now sickened a confirmed 397 people across 16 states as of Wednesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Indeed, Iowa's state epidemiologist tells USA Today that the "epidemiology looks a bit different" in other affected states. "The people who are getting ill are not necessarily the same as we saw; they're not getting sick at the same time." The FDA says it "can't speak to an ongoing investigation," though CBS News reports the FDA and CDC are "getting closer" to IDing the source. (CBS points out that even if the salad is to blame, the true root of the illness could be the plant that processed the lettuce, for instance.) Says the VP of a produce trade group, "I think the investigation has a long way to go." If you want a first-hand account of what cyclospora is like, CBS talks to a Texas woman who had diarrhea "for weeks."
– After nearly a half-century tracking trends in rock and culture, Rolling Stone is up for sale. Trailblazing editor Jann Wenner, 71, tells the New York Times he is making way for new blood by hawking his 51% controlling stake in the magazine. "I love my job,” says Wenner, but selling is "just the smart thing to do." Wenner Media confirms the sale to NBC News, saying it was investigating "strategic options ... to best position the brand for future growth." Wenner sold 49% of his stake in Rolling Stone in 2013, and more recently two other magazines run by Wenner Media. But those moves weren't enough to turn the financial tide after decades of plummeting ad revenue. "There’s a level of ambition that we can’t achieve alone," his son and company president, Gus Wenner, tells the Times. "So we are being proactive ... Publishing is a completely different industry than what it was." Gus Wenner, who crafted the sale, and his father say they'd like to stay on, though they recognize the new buyer might wish otherwise. But Jann Wenner concedes that "it's time for young people" to have a crack at running the glossy known for its edgy pieces—but badly bruised by a $3 million libel verdict over the botched University of Virginia gang rape story. The sale process is just beginning. One candidate is American Media, which recently bought Wenner Media's other titles, Us Weekly and Men's Journal. Music critic Anthony DeCurtis worries over the magazine's future. "That sense of the magazine editor’s hands on the magazine," he tells the Times, "that’s what’s going to get lost here." (Vanity Fair announced its own "changing of the guard.")
– The New Hampshire primary may have boosted the prospects of a politician who wasn't even on the ballot: Michael Bloomberg. Stories about a possible run have been circulating for a while, and the victories by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have only ramped up speculation. Bloomberg is "itching to do it," an anonymous confidant tells the New York Post. The former New York City mayor is reportedly unlikely to run if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, but she got trounced by 21 points. "There's a big opening in the middle of the electorate, and Bloomberg is on point in that space," a former John McCain adviser who's not working with Bloomberg tells the Wall Street Journal. A Sanders-Trump race "would open a path for an independent candidate." On Monday, Bloomberg told the Financial Times he was "looking at all the options" and found "the level of discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters." He added he'd probably announce by early March. Aides say the results of Super Tuesday on March 1 will help him make his decision. But even if Bloomberg does run, one professor says he'll have a tough go. "It still is difficult to come in from out of the blue and get the traction you need, even when things are really seemingly divisive and there's a great deal of disenchantment, even when you're a billionaire," he says. The Republican National Committee believes Bloomberg would steal votes from the Democratic candidate, notes CNN. The DNC's chair says Bloomberg's priorities are "well cared-for."
– A new study suggests an upside for boys who have older dads: higher IQs. More specifically, they tend to score higher on what the researchers call the "geek index," reports the Guardian. And this is clearly seen as a positive: "If you look at who does well in life right now, it’s geeks," says Magdalena Janecka at King’s College London. The geek index, she explains, is determined by such factors as ability to focus, non-verbal IQ scores taken at age 12, and social aloofness. The latter trait may sound like a negative, but the BBC frames it as the boys not being overly concerned with fitting in. A mother's age appears to have no impact. The team studied more than 7,000 sets of twins in the UK. The average geek score for boys born to dads 25 or younger is 39. It goes up to 41 when dads had the child between 35 and 44, and jumps to 47 when dads were 50 or older. The impact was less pronounced on girls, and more pronounced when measuring science, tech, engineering, and math scores. Kids born to fathers 50 or older were 32% more likely to earn at least two A's on standardized tests than children born to men aged under 25, the researchers report in Translational Psychiatry. They calculate that 57% of the geek index score is inherited, with possible overlap between genes that contribute to a high geek score and to autism. “Our primary hypothesis is that higher levels of those ‘geeky’ traits in offspring of older men are mainly due is due to characteristics of the fathers themselves," Janecka tells Newsweek. "Men who decide to delay fatherhood often do so due to their extended career and educational pursuits, and likely themselves display higher levels of ‘geekiness.’” (Younger fathers are also likelier to die younger.)
– Bernie 2020? It's a distinct possibility: "If there’s somebody else who appears who can, for whatever reason, do a better job than me, I’ll work my ass off to elect him or her," Bernie Sanders tells New York of the next presidential election. But, the Vermont senator adds, "If it turns out that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, then I will probably run." He insists, however, "I’m not one of those sons of multimillionaires whose parents told them they were going to become president of the United States. I don’t wake up in the morning with any burning desire that I have to be president." The Hill notes that Sanders, 77, also said last week his team was "looking at" the possibility of running in 2020. (Hillary, too?)
– Why Walter Scott bolted during a routine traffic stop is a mystery even to Pierre Fulton, the man in the Mercedes with Scott when he was pulled over by South Carolina police officer Michael Slager. "Walter was a dear friend and I miss him every day," Fulton says in a statement released by his attorney yesterday, per ABC News. "I'll never know why he ran, but I know he didn't deserve to die. Please keep Walter and his family in your prayers and respect my privacy moving forward." He appears serious about his privacy: Fulton's lawyer says his client won't be speaking further on the matter, NBC News reports. He's already been grilled by investigators, per NBC, and has turned down all news interviews.
– "Americans are not walking away from the Paris climate agreement," Fortune quotes Michael Bloomberg as saying. On Friday, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced it would commit $15 million to "support the operations" of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change, which coordinates the Paris climate agreement, CNN reports. The $15 million will cover the US' share of the convention's operating budget. The executive secretary of the Framework Convention on Climate Change calls the money "crucial." On Thursday, after announcing the US was withdrawing from the Paris agreement, President Trump said the money the US had pledged to give the UN for climate matters was a "draconian" burden on the country. Bloomberg says he believes the US can hit its 2025 emissions reduction target laid out in the Paris climate agreement without the help of the federal government. "The bulk of the decisions which drive US climate action in the aggregate are made by cities, states, businesses, and civil society," the New York Times quotes Bloomberg as saying in a letter to the UN secretary-general. Bloomberg says the federal government doesn't determine how the US as a whole acts on climate change. "We're going to do everything America would have done if it had stayed committed," the former New York City mayor with an estimated worth of $50 billion says of group that includes mayors, governors, universities, and businesses.
– The wife of Olympic skier Bode Miler has spoken out on the tragic death of 19-month-old daughter Emeline—and says she doesn't want any other mother to experience what she is going through. "It’s been 37 days since I’ve held my baby girl. I pray to God no other parent feels this pain," Morgan Beck Miller wrote in an Instagram post, sharing a picture of Emeline and a link to another grieving mother's story of how her 3-year-old son drowned on a family holiday. Authorities say Emeline drowned in a "very short amount of time" last month after wandering away from her mother and falling in a backyard pool. In her post, Beck Miller, who has a 3-year-old son and is expecting a third child, said parents discuss issues like vaccinations and screen time at length but rarely talk about drowning, People reports. "Drowning is the NUMBER ONE cause of death in children ages 1-4," she wrote. “It takes SECONDS. Please share and help us spread awareness." In an earlier Instagram post, Beck Miller thanked everybody who had supported the family and said money raised in a GoFundMe campaign would go to causes connected to water safety education. "We are inspired to make our baby girls memory go forth and help prevent as many drownings as possible," she wrote. (Earlier this month, a California woman drowned trying to rescue her three children.)
– Police in Winnipeg have charged a 40-year-old woman with six counts of concealing a body after they found the remains of six infants in a storage locker she rented. But the Toronto Star reports that it could be months before forensic tests determine how the babies died and whether Andrea Giesbrecht was their mother. Employees of the U-Haul facility opened the locker when Giesbrecht stopped making payments, and a court appearance late last month might shed light on why she fell behind. Giesbrecht pleaded guilty to defrauding an older neighbor of about $8,000 as evidence of a long-term gambling addiction came to light, reports the Winnipeg Sun. "I feel distraught and severely taken advantage of," her 73-year-old neighbor wrote in a victim-impact statement obtained by the CBC. But a friend of Giesbrecht came to her defense: "In the five years I have known Andrea, I have come to love her as a friend and person," she wrote. "She is a loving, considerate person and I have seen her drop everything to be there." Giesbrecht, who also has used the name Andrea Naworynski, is married and has two teenage sons. Court documents suggest she got hooked on gambling as a teenager and had repeatedly borrowed money from her now-dead parents that was never repaid.
– Felix Baumgartner has already sky-dived from 13 miles up and 18 miles up—so what's a leap of 23 miles that shatters the sound barrier? Well, it at least requires good weather, so the record-breaking dive has been bumped from Monday to Tuesday to avoid strong winds and rain, Space.com reports. Then the 43-year-old Austrian will ride a specially designed capsule into the stratosphere and take a leap over southeastern New Mexico. The key for Baumgartner is to jump head-first and reach maximum speed so as to avoid an uncontrolled flat spin—which could cause brain damage and possibly kill him, the Daily Mail reports. Within 40 seconds he hopes to reach 700mph, and hit the speed of sound at around 100,000 feet. Ultimately he intends to land near Roswell. His plan after completing the feat: retire and enjoy a quiet life, which for him means working as a rescue helicopter pilot.
– Carrie Fisher is gone but she will live on through her books and movies—including Star Wars: Episode VIII, which won't be in theaters for almost a year. Sources tell the Wrap that the 60-year-old Fisher had completely finished filming her role and all necessary reshoots for the movie, in which she reprises her role as Princess Leia. It's not clear how her death will affect the future of the Star Wars series. George Lucas was among the many people paying tribute to Fisher on Tuesday. "She was extremely smart; a talented actress, writer and comedienne with a very colorful personality that everyone loved," he told People. "In Star Wars she was our great and powerful princess—feisty, wise and full of hope in a role that was more difficult than most people might think.” Harrison Ford was among the Star Wars co-stars with warm words for Fisher. "Carrie was one-of-a-kind…brilliant, original," he said. "Funny and emotionally fearless. She lived her life, bravely." Mark Hamill, at first, could only tweet that he was "devastated." In a follow-up tweet, he praised his "beloved space-twin." "She was OUR Princess, damn it, and the actress who played her blurred into one gorgeous, fiercely independent and ferociously funny, take-charge woman who took our collective breath away." Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca, tweeted photos of himself with Fisher over the years. "There are no words for this loss," he wrote. "Carrie was the brightest light in every room she entered. I will miss her dearly."
– With the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers meeting for their fourth straight NBA finals, senators from Ohio and California are keeping things interesting with a bet. California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris have bet a case of California chardonnay and a case of beer from Anchor Brewing, respectively, on the Warriors, the Hill reports. If the California team loses, the senators have promised to deliver the booze to Ohio Sens. Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman. If the Cavaliers prevail, Brown will give the Californians a case of beer from Platform Beer Company and Portman will send one from Great Lakes Brewing. The series is 1-0 for the Warriors after a 124-114 win Thursday night, the AP reports. The Cavs lost in overtime despite a 51-point performance from LeBron James.
– The global relief effort in Haiti has devolved into a nasty power struggle, with countries and aid agencies furious at the US takeover of emergency operations. France, Brazil, which runs the UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Cross all lodged complaints after their aid shipments were diverted to the neighboring Dominican Republic so that US military flights could land at Port-au-Prince's congested airport, where just one runway is operable. "We are all going crazy," a Red Cross official told the Guardian, as a UN World Food Program officer complained in the New York Times that US military has muscled out other relief efforts. "Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync." The Haitian president begged the squabbling powers to stay calm: "We must keep our cool to coordinate and not throw accusations at each other."
– Critics aren’t enthralled by The Voyage of the Dawn Treader the third film based on CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. (Its Rotten Tomatoes rating is 51%.) But there are some bright spots: Manohla Dargis calls the film “largely dreary” in the New York Times. Still, “though there are times when the movie turns into a congested mess, there are moments when you also see a quieter, less industrial production.” The film reminds us” that “the Pevensie family is always destined to come in second to Harry and Hermione,” writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. It fails to “connect with the deeply human emotions that propel the best fantasies.” But at the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips has some kind words: the film, which “strikes an artful balance between allegorical religious concerns and escapist ones,” beats out its predecessors.
– In a six-page, 2,500-word Politico op-ed (with an attached three-page, 1,800-word appendix), Newt Gingrich makes it crystal clear that he is on the side of Michele Bachmann and her four fellow members of Congress who want an inquiry into whether the government is being infiltrated by Islamic extremists. (He refers to the group as "the National Security Five.") According to Gingrich, the quick and plentiful denouncements of Bachmann's theory are simply examples "of the fear our elites have about discussing and understanding radical Islamists," he writes. "You have to wonder why people would aggressively assert we shouldn’t ask about national security concerns." "It’s as though our leaders have forgotten every lesson of the 1930s about fascism, Nazism, and communism and every lesson from 1945 to 1991 about communism," Gingrich writes, noting that "political correctness" has taken precedence over security and that the "elites" worry that "if Americans fully understood how serious radical Islamists are, they would demand a more confrontational strategy." He quotes Tony Blair and JFK (and Wikipedia, notes The Blaze incredulously), and notes the Fort Hood shootings and the Times Square car bomb as evidence that we must be more vigilant. On Salon, Glenn Greenwald decries Politico ("a glorified gossip rag") in general and Gingrich's piece in particular, calling it a "bigoted, McCarthyite screed." Click for Gingrich's full piece, or Greenwald's response.
– Oh, Canada, you might have to actually pick a side on this one: It seems that Matthew Perry recently admitted that he once beat up a kid in elementary school for "excelling in a sport," and that kid is now the current prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, reports Mashable. Trudeau responded to the story on Saturday, reports TMZ, perhaps in the spirit of April Fool's Day, tweeting that "I've been giving it some thought, and you know what, who hasn't wanted to punch Chandler? How about a rematch @MatthewPerry?" No response as yet from Chandler, er, Perry.
– It's hard to find a one-way ticket domestically for $69, but if the CEO of Norwegian Air has his way, a ticket for that much may soon be available between Europe and the US, NBC News reports. Bjorn Kjos' master plan is to connect flights from smaller coastal US airports—New York's Westchester County Airport and Connecticut's Bradley International Airport have both been mentioned—that offer lower fees than busier airports to European destinations such as Bergen, Norway, and Edinburgh, Scotland. It's all part of the budget airline's blueprint to wrest trans-Atlantic market share away from larger airlines such as Lufthansa. Norwegian has 100 Boeing 737 MAX jets on order, with the first five set to arrive in 2017, the Telegraph notes. These planes are capable of flying over the ocean, but are more fuel-efficient and smaller, which would make them a better size for smaller airports like the one in Birmingham, England. Regulators would have to agree to the plan and set up customs stations at those US airports that don't currently handle international flights, but Kjos says he's sure that won't be an issue. A round-trip ticket will likely cost around $300 once all the fees are factored in, but that's still cheaper than the $500 or so that Norwegian's flights in and out of busier airports run, NBC notes. (One day of the week is the best day to buy a plane ticket.)
– For the first time in 45 years, Americans who support the death penalty can't count themselves among the majority. Just 49% of Americans polled from late August to early September said they supported capital punishment for people guilty of murder, while 42% said they opposed it, according to the Pew Research Center. Recent botched executions by lethal injection may be responsible for the drop in support from March 2015, when 56% of Americans backed the death penalty, reports Business Insider. But support has actually fallen across the political spectrum since the mid-1990s, when support reached 80% as violent crime and murder rates rose, per the Washington Post. Some 57% of white Americans now support the death penalty, compared to 29% of blacks and 36% of Hispanics, according to the poll of 1,201 adults. Men, older Americans, and those without a college degree are also more likely to support the death penalty. But just 34% of Democrats support capital punishment, compared to 71% two decades ago, reports the New York Times. Some 72% of Republicans support it, down from 87%, and 44% of independents support it, down from 57%. As support has fallen, so have the number of executions. There have been just 15 so far this year, including 12 in Texas and Georgia. (Ohio is set to resume executions after a three-year break.)
– If you have a peanut allergy, you may want to hold off on opening that box of Ding Dongs. Hostess is recalling 710,000 cases of some of its products over undeclared peanut residue they might contain, CBS News reports. In addition to Ding Dongs, the items being recalled include Zingers, Chocodiles, and a number of different kinds of donuts; the FDA has a complete list including UPC and batch numbers. A Hostess supplier, Grain Craft, told the company it was recalling certain lots of flour due to undeclared peanut residue, and Hostess decided to recall its own products made with that flour "out of an abundance of caution," it says in a statement. Two allergic reactions have been reported so far related to the recalled products.
– Ticks are out in force this year, and there's one species in particular you should watch out for if you'd ever like to eat meat again. Experts say the lone star tick appears to be spreading from its home base in the southeastern US. Whereas other ticks can spread ailments such as Lyme disease, the lone star tick is bothersome because it is believed to trigger a potentially life-threatening and apparently lifelong meat allergy with its bite. The tick doesn't technically make people allergic to meat, but rather to a sugar molecule found in red meat known as alpha-gal. This alpha-gal allergy has typically been limited to the southeastern US, where the lone star tick is prevalent, but no more, reports Wired. Cases—in which the consumption of meat can result in hives, difficulty breathing, or death—have been reported in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and New York, per Inverse. Long Island has seen at least 100 cases in the last year. Researchers suspect the spread of the allergy coincides with the spread of lone star ticks, though it's also possible that other ticks are responsible. Either way, "the nuisance level [for lone star ticks] is much higher than the black-legged tick," an expert tells the Weston Forum. "It is aggressive and very abundant." Researchers are currently studying the effect of a lone star tick bite on mice to determine why it triggers the allergy. (A toddler died after a tick bite.)
– New York Knicks center Enes Kanter took news that prosecutors in Turkey want to imprison him about as well as a person could. "Four years? That's it?" he said on Wednesday, per the New York Times. "For all of the trash I've been talking?" Turkish media reported earlier Wednesday that the "fugitive" would be tried in absentia on charges of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with prosecutors seeking four years in prison, reports Hurriyet Daily News. Kanter—who was born to Turkish parents in Switzerland and grew up in Turkey before moving to the US—is a vocal supporter of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who's been blamed for last year's failed military coup in Turkey, reports ESPN. He continued to bash the leader Wednesday, telling reporters he's a "maniac." "I'm just trying to be the voice of all of these innocent people," said Kanter, who hasn't visited Turkey in years, per the Times. "Journalists, innocent people in jail getting tortured and killed and kidnapped. And it's pretty messed up." The first sign of Turkey's displeasure at his comments came in May, when Kanter's Turkish passport was canceled. He was temporarily detained in Romania before US officials intervened. Kanter has said his family home in Turkey was also raided. The New York Daily News reports Kanter's father publicly disowned him while apologizing to Erdogan in August. The charges now laid against Kanter are "just nothing to me, man, because I'm in America. I'm good," Kanter said. "It's a free country. But it's not like that in Turkey." Acknowledging laws banning criticism of Erdogan, he added, "They can do whatever they want to do."
– In a Rolling Stone cover story on Donald Trump and his campaign, one particularly crass comment is getting the most attention: Writer Paul Solotaroff says Trump made fun of GOP rival Carly Fiorina's looks when she appeared on TV news, saying, "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president." Solotaroff says Trump added, "I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?" Trump's derogatory remarks about women led to his feud with Fox News' Megyn Kelly, and on Kelly's show last night, Fiorina said his remarks about her suggest she may be "getting under his skin a little bit," the AP reports. Analysts tell CNN that the Fiorina remarks could cause Trump problems at next week's GOP debate, although similar episodes haven't done him much harm. "If you're waiting for Trump to blow himself up in a Hindenburg of gaffes or hate speech, you're in for a long, cold fall and winter," Solotaroff concluded after 10 days with the Trump campaign. "Donald Trump is here for the duration—and gaining strength and traction by the hour." (Stephen Colbert targeted Trump on his Late Show debut.)
– He didn't use the word "conflate," but Sanjay Gupta used many other words to try and clarify why a report he filed from Nepal after the April earthquake there was apparently filled with inaccuracies, the Guardian reports. The Global Press Institute, a journalist-training nonprofit, reports not only that Gupta didn't save the life of an 8-year-old girl he claimed to have operated on—it says he actually helped with a surgery on a 14-year-old—but that after Gupta's segment aired, CNN took down a story that accurately reported on the 14-year-old's injuries and put in its place a story that swapped in the 8-year-old's name to match Gupta's report. Gupta tried to clear things up yesterday on CNN, admitting he may have mixed details up during the chaos. "There were many children, many people in the hospital," he said, per the Guardian. "When you report on these kinds of situations, you take lots of different bits of information and you consolidate it and in the end you tell the story." The neurosurgeon who performed the surgery on the older girl also tells the paper that Gupta wasn't asked to help, as Gupta claims, but that he harangued staff until they conceded; the surgeon also says he never gave permission for Gupta's team to film the operation. His statements underscore what some ethics experts are saying is a conflict of interest: being a physician and a journalist and filming your interventions. Meanwhile, the director of the GPI isn't buying Gupta's "things were so crazy" excuse. "A pretty grave mistake was made," she tells the Guardian. "The excuse that things were chaotic shouldn't hold up for any journalist, especially when that journalist is also performing a medical operation." CNN notes it's investigating, adding, "Journalism is not brain surgery. But brain surgery is brain surgery. … Sanjay spent a week in Nepal, helped save a young life in the operating room, and we couldn't be prouder of him. He has our full and unequivocal support." (Read the Global Press Institute's entire damning report.)
– Apple is working out a deal with newspaper publishers for a digital subscription service on its various i-gadgets, industry sources tell the San Jose Mercury News. Apple, as usual, isn't saying anything, but the Mercury News talks to one industry observer who predicts that Steve Jobs would take a 30% cut from subscriptions, plus 40% from any ads generated by the newspaper apps. And remember this is all speculation, warns the Columbia Journalism Review. Because of Apple's obsession with security, we have to rely on thinly sourced stories like this one to get our fix of company news. "And if you want my guess (pure speculation—labeled as such!) I’d say newspapers won’t give Steve Jobs 30% cut," writes Ryan Chittum. "Far be it from me to overestimate the business prowess and intelligence of newspaper executives, but surely they’re not so dumb as to give him nearly a third of a recurring revenue stream." (For more iPad doings, click here.)
– Thousands of immigrants stayed home from work Thursday, shuttering restaurants and slowing other industries, for the national "A Day Without Immigrants" protest. Now it appears many were asked not to come back. In Oklahoma, a dozen workers at I Don't Care Bar and Grill were fired after missing work Thursday; most had been working at the restaurant since it opened, KTUL reports. "You and your family are fired," their boss said in a text message. "I hope you enjoyed your day off and you can enjoy many more. Love you." According to WLTX, 21 workers at Encore Boat Builders in South Carolina—most of them long-term employees with young kids—were fired after taking part in A Day Without Immigrants. Meanwhile in Tennessee, 18 workers at Bradley Coatings were fired after informing their supervisors they planned to participate in the protest, NewsChannel5 reports. They say it was "unfair after working for them for so many years," especially because they were going to make up the time missed on Sunday. In a statement, Bradley Coatings says it has "always celebrated diversity and supported the immigrant community," but it "had no choice" but to fire the workers. According to WTVD, two employees at a North Carolina packing warehouse were suspended for missing work Thursday. Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina are right-to-work states, which means employers can terminate employees with few restrictions.
– Brown University has imposed tough sanctions on two fraternities that held unlicensed parties, including one where a student said she was sexually assaulted after drinking punch spiked with a date-rape drug. That fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, has lost university recognition for four years and will lose its housing, reports the Providence Journal. Another, Sigma Chi, is on probation, has had its privileges suspended until next fall, and will be "ineligible to conduct recruitment, rush, or initiation processes," the university said in a statement. Officials say a student reported being touched in a sexual nature as the Department of Public Safety shut down an unregistered Sigma Chi party in October. No member of either fraternity has been charged with sexual misconduct, but the university says they're responsible "for creating an environment that facilitated sexual misconduct through improperly monitored spaces and inadequate safeguards surrounding the service of alcohol." Officials tell the Brown Daily Herald that Phi Kappa Psi received the toughest sanctions because of its history of infractions, and many members have already been moved out of the frat house. The university has also decided to ban registered events with alcohol in residential areas, including Greek houses, although they can still be held in spaces designated for parties. (The University of Virginia recently reinstated its Phi Kappa Psi chapter.)
– Bill Cosby is not dead, despite what you might have read on the Internet this afternoon. In fact, the 73-year-old comedy legend is alive, well, and making up words on Twitter, reports WPIX. Using a term he created after a similar false alarm in February, he tweeted today, "Again, I'm rebutalling rumors about my demise." He added, "Emotional friends have called about this misinformation. To the people behind the foolishness, I’m not sure you see how upsetting this is." To learn more about things the web has actually killed, click here.
– It's a mere five years old, but South Sudan is on the brink of civil war. What's more, the situation is so dire that the US just brought in 40 additional troops to protect the US Embassy in Juba. Some coverage to explain what's happening: The fight is between forces backing President Salva Kiir and those backing Vice President Riek Machar, and the DW has a primer on their long rivalry for power, one that got violent soon after the country's independence from Sudan in 2011. Read this and understand why it's SPLA-IG vs. SPLA-IO. Adding to this web: A post at the Conversation suggests that a third man, Paul Malong, might hold the real power in the country. Kenya's ambassador says the latest fighting was set off by a bogus Facebook post by Machar's spokesman saying Machar had been arrested, even though the VP actually was in a security meeting with the president. The Star of Kenya explains. The spokesman, however, says he made the post after violence had started, fearing that a plot to detain or harm Machar was underway. The US has ordered non-essential employees to evacuate, and several other countries were doing the same. The BBC has details. Few details were released on the new US troops, but they're from the US Africa Command's Crisis Response Force, reports the Marine Corps Times. They'll protect employees staying and help those leaving do so safely. In addition to reports of more than 200 people killed, the renewed fighting has displaced about 36,000 people, says the UN. Worse, even before this, "the humanitarian situation in South Sudan was already dire." Read the plea for help from a UN humanitarian official here. Aid workers in the nation face huge problems, but a 28-year-old from San Diego hasn't lost hope. See NPR.
– Police in three states are still hunting for a Range Rover whose occupants opened fire on another car on the Vegas Strip this morning and set off a deadly chain reaction. Cops don't know most of the details, but they say it started with a dispute of some kind in one of the nearby hotels, then spilled into the street, reports the Las Vegas Sun. When the Range Rover caught up to a Maserati at a stop light, shots were fired from the SUV that sent the Maserati crashing into a taxi, which exploded upon impact. Three people—the Maserati driver, the taxi driver, and a taxi passenger—were killed, and three others were injured, reports the LA Times. Police are hoping to piece together more details by interviewing a passenger in the Maserati, who was injured in the melee. Earlier reports that gunfire came from both vehicles as part of a moving shootout were incorrect. The AP collects this quote from a tourist visiting from Manchester, England: "This doesn't happen where we come from, not on this scale. We get stabbings, and gang violence, but this is like something out of a movie. Like Die Hard or something."
– After pressure from beer-chugging vegans who were behind a long-running campaign and several online petitions, Guinness has elected to change its 256-year-old recipe and remove isinglass—a gelatinous byproduct of fish bladders that helps filter yeast particles—from its brewing process, reports CNN Money. Guinness now says it will use a new filtration plant to be installed at its flagship brewery in Ireland at some point in 2016, reports the Independent, while it doesn't yet plan to change its other breweries scattered across 49 countries. The company had previously responded to requests to remove isinglass by saying it provides a "very effective means of clarification," and as recently as January said in a company email to Barnivore, which tracks animal ingredients in adult beverages, that it had yet to find a replacement "as effective and as environmentally friendly." No word yet on what it's come up with. Parent company Diageo has said that competition from microbreweries flattened its sales in 2015. Meanwhile, many popular beers, including Anheuser-Busch, Heineken, and Miller, are deemed vegan-friendly by Barnivore. (Guinness lovers may want to check out one of Starbucks' latest latte flavors.)
– Allergy experts have unveiled the worst cities in the US for those with spring allergies, and Louisville, Ky., is the place you most want to avoid if you're an allergy sufferer. It moves up from No. 5 last year to the top spot this year. "The river provides a basin effect that traps allergens … plus the temperate climate and precipitation encourages plenty of pollen growth for patients out here," a local allergist tells Today. Factors assessed in the list include the amount of pollen and mold in the air, the number of allergy meds used per patient, and the number of allergy specialists per patient, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America notes. The top 10: Louisville, Ky. Memphis, Tenn. Baton Rouge, La. Oklahoma City, Okla. Jackson, Miss. Chattanooga, Tenn. Dallas, Texas Richmond, Va. Birmingham, Ala. McAllen, Texas Click for the complete list, or find out why this year's allergy season may be particularly bad.
– They anticipated the first burglary, just not the second. While reporting on the epidemic of car break-ins in SanFrancisco, Inside Edition crew members watched as a man broke into a bait car fitted with hidden cameras. Reporter Lisa Guerrero began Wednesday's report by parking a car near San Francisco's Alamo Square with a designer purse and $250 speaker in full view. It wasn't long before a man smashed a rear window and grabbed the items, which had hidden GPS trackers. The purse, thrown to a female companion who slipped away at a subway station, was eventually found in a trash can, but Guerrero discovered the speaker still in the man's hand, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. "Five million people are gonna see you steal that," Guerrero told him. When he dropped the speaker and walked away, Guerrero went to interview a neighborhood resident whose surveillance camera captured the burglary, which he described as a daily occurrence. But Guerrero returned to the crew's SUV to find "we actually got hit twice in one day." The same surveillance camera spotted thieves smashing two of the vehicle's windows and making off with "thousands of dollars worth of equipment," Guerrero said. Per Inside Edition, "the problem has reached epidemic proportions, with car break-ins happening an average of every 17 minutes" in the city. Desperate residents have actually taken to leaving notes for would-be burglars, the Fresno Bee reports, via a reporter's tweet.
– The woman on the "kill list" of UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar was his estranged wife, who was apparently shot to death in her Minnesota home before Sarkar traveled to California, authorities say. Jean Johnson, grandmother of 31-year-old University of Minnesota medical student Ashley Hasti, tells the Star Tribune that the couple married in 2011 and split up around a year later, but they didn't get a divorce because Hasti couldn't afford one. Her body was found in her St. Paul home after cops at UCLA found a note from Sarkar asking them to "check on my cat" and giving his Minnesota address. Police found her name on a list in Sarkar's apartment and realized she could be in danger. Johnson says her granddaughter was a "kind, beautiful, giggly girl" and she doesn't know if there was any tension between her and Sarkar. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck says that Sarkar drove from Minnesota to Los Angeles and was probably in town for a "couple of days" before killing UCLA professor William Klug and shooting himself in Klug's office, the Los Angeles Times reports. The chief says Sarkar's car hasn't been found yet and it's not known whether he committed other crimes between Minnesota and California. Beck says investigators believe Sarkar, who made online postings accusing former mentor Klug of stealing his work, had planned to kill another UCLA professor but couldn't find him. That professor "is fine" and was aware Sarkar had issues with him, Beck says. On Thursday night, hundreds of students and faculty members gathered at UCLA to mourn Klug, known as a kind and dedicated professor who did his best to help students, including Sarkar, the AP reports. "Bill was so much more than my soul mate," his wife, Mary Elise Klug, said in a statement. "I will miss him every day for the rest of my life."
– With Edward Snowden's lawyer in tow, dad Lon Snowden arrived in Russia early today in the hope of seeing his fugitive son. "I am his father, I love my son, and I certainly hope I will have an opportunity to see my son," he told Reuters, though his real purpose is "to learn more about his circumstances and his health and to discuss legal options," the BBC reports. Speaking from the same airport in which Edward Snowden was stranded for weeks, Lon said he wasn't in contact with his son, but noted a reunion in the US was unlikely. "I am not sure my son will be returning to the US again," he noted. "That's his decision." Neither the elder Snowden, nor his son's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, would give any details about when and where a meeting would take place, but Kucherena did share some details of Edward's new life in Russia. He still hasn't found a job and is living modestly, mostly on donations since he's run out of his savings, Reuters notes. As to reports of NSA leaks to come: "I really have no idea what his intentions are," Lon Snowden said, but as of now, he is "not leaking information," CNN reports.
– A British general is warning his country and the West about Russia—a threat he calls worse than anything posed by ISIS or al-Qaeda, the BBC reports. "The Russians seek to exploit vulnerability and weakness wherever they detect it," General Mark Carleton-Smith tells the Telegraph. "Russia today indisputably represents a far greater threat to our national security than Islamic extremist threats such as al-Qaeda and [ISIS]." Carleton-Smith, who led Britain's fight against ISIS and in June became head of the British army, says military action has weakened Islamic militants. But in the wake of alleged poisoning and cyber-attacks, Russia looms large. "Russia has embarked on a systematic effort to explore and exploit Western vulnerabilities, particularly in some of the non-traditional areas of cyber, space, undersea warfare," he says. But he opposes any notion (perhaps like French President Emmanuel Macron's) that would weaken the military strength of NATO. He says the "center of gravity of European security" should hold fast. "In my experience, we should reinforce success." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov derided Carleton-Smith's remarks while visiting Lisbon, Radio Free Europe reports. "We cannot influence the British government's decisions as to whom they trust to head its armed forces," says Lavrov. "I hope they check the appropriateness of such decisions." (Russian trolls apparently whipped up a frenzy over vaccines.)
– Alec Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, have welcomed their third child together, the AP reports. The 58-year-old actor announced the birth of son Leonardo Angel Charles on Twitter Monday night. His post linked to Hilaria Baldwin's Instagram account, which featured a photo of her posing with the newborn. Baldwin said baby Leonardo was born at 6:51pm Monday in New York City. The couple, who wed in 2012, are also parents to a 3-year-old daughter and 15-month-old son. Alec Baldwin also has an adult daughter from his previous marriage to actress Kim Basinger.
– Another neighbor testified at Oscar Pistorius' murder trial today, saying she heard "terrified, terrified screaming" that didn't sound as though it was emanating from an enclosed space, like a bathroom, the morning of Reeva Steenkamp's death, the Telegraph reports. But the most attention-grabbing part of today's testimony took the form of texts between Pistorius and Steenkamp, which were shown on monitors. While a police IT expert said 90% of the WhatsApp messages were normal and "loving," a small portion showed a complicated, jealous relationship. A sampling, per Sky News, the Telegraph, and the Independent: Steenkamp: "I'm scared of u sometimes and how u snap at me and of how u will react to me." "I do everything to make u happy and to not say anything to rock the boat with u. You do everything to throw tantrums in front of people." "I'm sorry you think I was hitting on my friend's husband and u think so little of me. I just want to be loved and to love. Right now I am very unhappy and sad" "I can't be attacked by outsiders for dating you and then be attacked by you..the one person I need protection from." Pistorius: "I was standing tight behind me watching you touch his arm. But when I left, u just kept on chatting to him. I'm sorry I asked u to stop touching my neck." Pistorious admitted he is "tired and sick" but that doesn't excuse his jealous behavior. Apparently in reference to a shooting incident, he wrote "Angel, please don't say a thing to any one, Darren told everyone it was his fault. I can't afford for that to come out. The guys promised not to say a thing." The Telegraph notes the prosecution's case is expected to close this week.
– Italians are a wee bit upset about an ArmaLite ad that shows a massive $3,000 rifle cradled in the arms of Michelangelo's David, the BBC reports. "The image of David, armed, offends and infringes the law," tweeted culture minister Dario Franceschini. He vowed to take action against the Illinois-based small arms company for its AR-50A1 rifle ad, which reads "a work of art" along the top. A gallery director in Florence noted that the law forbids distorting a work of art's aesthetic value: "In this case, not only is the choice in bad taste but also completely illegal." "It is an act of violence towards the sculpture; like taking a hammer to it and perhaps, actually, even worse," said a city councilor in Florence, reports the Guardian. But Italian art critic Philippe Daverio pooh-poohed the uproar, comparing ArmaLite's ad to cheeky images of a mustached Mona Lisa: "Certain cultural icons belong to everyone and no one; to humanity in general," he said. If true, that's good news for ArmaLite, which has another ad showing its AR-301A on a museum wall between American Gothic and the Mona Lisa—pointed at Mona Lisa's head, The Wire reports.
– North Korea looks to be preparing a third nuclear test, the AP reports: New photos show work on an underground tunnel—at the site of two earlier such tests—is nearly finished, say South Korean intelligence officials. "North Korea is covertly preparing for a third nuclear test, which would be another grave provocation," says the intelligence report, noting that dirt piled at the tunnel's opening indicates there's a "high possibility" Pyongyang could launch the test—soon. That's because plugging tunnels with dirt was the final step taken during its two previous nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri site, in 2006 and 2009. Meanwhile, the North is almost ready to start fueling a long-range rocket; it will be launched April 12-13, according to Pyongyang. While officials there say the rocket's goal is to send a satellite into space, the US fears the country is preparing a prohibited missile launch. The North has aimed to reassure journalists by inviting them to view preparations, Yonhap News reports. "If you look for yourselves with your own eyes, then you can judge whether it's a ballistic missile, or whether it's a launch vehicle to put a satellite into orbit," the launch site's boss told the group of the 100-foot-long red- and blue-painted rocket, according to CNN journalists who were present.
– When Friday's blue moon arrives, don't expect it to be blue—a blue moon isn't actually that color, reports CNN, though some full moons can indeed have a bluish hue. The phrase "once in a blue moon" refers to something that is rare, and it was once used this way in the Maine Farmers' Almanac when describing the third full moon in the rare season that has four (typically, there is only one full moon a month, thus a three-month season will have three full moons). But in 1946, Sky & Telescope magazine published an article that misunderstood this definition, instead calling the second full moon in a calendar month a blue moon. And it is indeed fairly rare: It happens once every 2.7 years or so. This has become the modern definition and is used to describe Friday's full moon, which is the second this month (the first was on July 2); it'll be the last of its kind until January 2018. Interestingly, while the most recent blue moon according to this modern definition occurred at the end of August of 2012, the most recent blue moon according to the original definition occurred more recently, in August of 2013, when the full moon was the third of four that summer. As for the blue moon on July 31, while it may seem to last all night, it's technically an "instantaneous event" that occurs at 6:43am EDT on the nose, reports Space.com. (Earlier this month, a man took an incredible picture of the International Space Station passing in front of the moon.)
– An Antarctic adventure cruise has become stuck in ice after a storm, and rescue ships are at least two days away—but to judge from the dispatches from the ship, the people aboard don't seem to mind. The Akademik Shokalskiy sent out a distress call yesterday, News.com.au reports, but a spokesman for the Spirit of Mawson, which organized the voyage, says the Russian ship is "reinforced against ice and well adapted to the conditions." The ship is believed to have enough provisions aboard to hold out. Reports differ on how many people are aboard—News.com.au says there are 50 tourists and 20 crew, while ABC has the numbers at 35 and 22—but those "tourists" include scientists, explorers, and historians. "We're in the ice like the explorers of old! All are well and spirits are high. Happy Christmas," the expedition leader tweeted. In a blog post, the ship said it was just two nautical miles from open sea, but powerless to get closer. The timing of the storm was actually fairly fortuitous though; if it had struck earlier, it might have caught the adventurers in the middle of a nearly 40-mile hike across pack ice.
– If someone tries to sell you unmarked or homemade skin cream, just walk away. That's the message the California Department of Health is sending to consumers, after identifying at least 60 cases over the past four years of state residents getting mercury poisoning from such creams, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. In a public health advisory yesterday, it revealed that analysts had found creams from Mexico designed to lighten skin, fade blemishes, and treat acne contained as much as 200,000 times the legal limit of mercury. The problem isn't a new one. The FDA and various state health departments have in recent years issued similar warnings, sounding the alarm about creams not just from Mexico, but from many countries. It warned customers to look for ingredients like "mercurous chloride," "calomel," "mercuric," "mercurio," or plain old "mercury." The products use mercury, Health Canal explains, because it suppresses the production of melanin in skin, lightening it. But it takes a long time for absorbed inorganic mercury to leave the body, so repeated use can raise the risk of harmful effects. Indeed, the Chronicle notes that a 16-year-old who used one such cream to treat his acne ended up in intensive care for nearly a month due to poisoning.
– As Rick Perry was waxing poetic over his political future yesterday, he refused to rule out a 2016 run for the White House, calling it "certainly ... an option out there." Today, Texas' longest-serving governor said he "will not seek re-election" in 2014, reports the AP, during a gathering of friends and supporters he called to discuss "exciting future plans." "The time has come to pass on the mantle of leadership," he said, as per CNN; his move opens the door for longtime Texas AG Gregg Abbott. And it does nothing to quell speculation about a run in 2016, notes Politico. "I will spend the next 18 months working to create more jobs, opportunity, and innovation," said Perry. "I will actively lead this great state. I’ll also pray and reflect and work to determine my own future path." The AP has a timeline of Perry's career here.
– So did Mitt Romney help his cause with the right with his health care speech today? The early reaction isn't pretty for him on that front: Avik Roy, National Review: "His effort to make a distinction between Romneycare and Obamacare was not persuasive: If anything, he convincingly made the opposite case, that Romneycare and Obamacare are based on the same fundamental concept." Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: "The consensus: If possible, Romney made things worse. If anything, Romney proved to be a far more articulate spokesman for the individual mandate than Obama. And if conservative pundits hated it this much, can you imagine what Tea Partyers will think?" Ezra Klein, Washington Post: The speech was "as thoroughgoing a defense of the individual mandate as I’ve heard in months. The White House would’ve been wise to take notes." Potential rival Rick Santorum, at Time: "Both Romneycare and Obamacare infringe upon individual freedom and exponentially increase the government's healthcare cost burden. Romneycare has, in fact, not made healthcare better or saved costs in Massachusetts. It's done just the opposite."
– The new Star Wars trailer debuted at halftime during ESPN's Monday Night Football, and immediately became a force to be reckoned with both on social media and ticket sites that crashed during presales for its Dec. 18 opening. Fandango and Movie Tickets both had issues after offering tickets even before the trailer aired for the JJ Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, the Hollywood Reporter notes. Fandango users got hit with a "site maintenance" message, while Movie Tickets customers received an error warning. Imax, meanwhile, waited patiently until after the halftime show to start its selling spree, but also had problems and had to funnel people to the other two sites. Meanwhile, buzz about the movie was one for the cosmos, making it hard to find a non-Star Wars-related tweet for a couple of hours after the trailer aired. The clip—which Business Insider called "glorious" and the San Jose Mercury News deemed "spectacular with surprises"—blasted plenty of computer-generated special effects off the screen, as well as close-ups of newbies John Boyega as Finn, the franchise's new hero, and Daisy Ridley as female scavenger Rey (Ridley got emotional herself watching the trailer). And, to everyone's great pleasure, there was a Han Solo-Chewie appearance, as well as a rumor-busting interaction between Solo and Princess Leia, the Mercury News notes. See the full trailer below. (This couple should have made Dec. 18 their wedding date.)
– A wide receiver who just scored an $82 million contract extension is helping a family that was recently awarded 4 cents, ESPN reports. Mike Evans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers donated $11,000 Saturday to the family of a man who was shot dead by a Florida sheriff's deputy in 2014. The family of Gregory Hill filed a wrongful death suit, and a jury ruled in May that Hill was 99% responsible for his death and the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office only 1%—so the family received 1% of a $4 reward, TCPalm reported at the time. Evans vowed when signing his March contract renewal to help people out. "It's hard to put into words," he said. "With my actions you'll see it." Evans' donation pushed the Hill family's GoFundMe page to nearly $100,000.
– Nintendo's console business might be on its last life. The company today slashed its Wii U sales forecast for the year ending in March by a staggering 70%, anticipating sales of just 2.8 million units, Reuters reports. It also halved its projection for Wii U game sales to 19 million units, and dropped its 3DS forecast from 18 million to 13.5 million. The numbers are especially bad, because the second year of sales is typically a peak period for consoles, the Wall Street Journal points out. "We are thinking about a new business structure," President Satoru Iwata said in an apologetic news conference, according to Bloomberg. He said the company wanted to take advantage of mobile gaming, but "it's not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone." Some analysts say the company is investing heavily in research and development, and could even have a new console in the works. Despite losing money for now three years in a row, the company is sitting on $4.44 billion in cash.
– After a disastrous year and a major round of layoffs, Zynga has decided its founding CEO is no longer the person for the job. The social gaming firm behind titles such as FarmVille has chosen Don Mattrick, the current chief of Microsoft's Xbox division, to replace Mark Pincus at the helm, All Things Digital reports. "Don is unique in the game business," Pincus, who will remain as chairman, said in a statement. "He can execute in multiple domains—hardware, software, and network." Mattrick, a hardcore gamer with a solid business record, will be tasked with turning the company around, though some analysts say his lack of experience in mobile gaming could be a problem, the New York Times notes.
– Comets stink, and not just because they have the potential to cause cataclysmic devastation if they ever came hurtling through our atmosphere and made impact with Earth. These "cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust roughly the size of a small town" (as described by NASA) literally stink to high heaven, according to scientists at Switzerland's University of Bern. One comet does, anyway: Researchers analyzed the "perfume" of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and said that its BO is apparently a combo of "rotten eggs, horse urine, formaldehyde, bitter almonds, alcohol, vinegar, and a hint of sweet ether," the AP reports. "If you could smell the comet, you would probably wish that you hadn't," reads a blog post on the European Space Agency site. The scientists were able to surmise what the comet would smell like by examining the gas emitted by the "coma," the comet's head, Phys.org reports. Luckily, instead of a squeamish human, a mass spectrometer aboard the space probe Rosetta was assigned the task of parsing out the perfumed molecules of 67P, including ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanide, and "the pungent, suffocating (odor) of formaldehyde," notes the ESA post. The probe caught up to the comet in August after chasing it nearly 4 billion miles; it will be sending its Philae robot lander onto the comet proper on Nov. 12, NASA reports. And it appears the comet's odoriferous odyssey is just beginning: The lead scientist on the project says that as 67P gets closer to the sun, it will start stinking up the cosmos even more. (Whatever happened to NASA's plans to harpoon comets?)
– Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle wants his child pornography sentence reduced, claiming that the judge who sentenced him was, in part, punishing him for his fantasies, TMZ reports. According to the New York Daily News, Fogle's plea deal called for a maximum sentence of 12.5 years; the judge ended up giving him more than 15. His lawyers claim that longer sentence was partly based on fantasies Fogle had but never acted on. As evidence, they quote the judge: "This defendant is obsessed with child pornography and having sex with minors. He fantasized about it in telephone conversations." Fogle filed an appeal for a new sentencing on Friday. His appeal calls his current sentence "unreasonable" and says the judge "abused her authority." Fogle admitted to paying for sex with girls who were 16 and 17, as well as receiving child pornography made by the head of his charity. But he also talked about more sexual contact with minors and getting pornography featuring children as young as 6. Fogle's lawyers argue it's those conversations about things he was never charged with that led to the longer sentence. Fogle's sentence is still much shorter that the 50 years the judge could have legally given him.
– Saturday Night Live again deployed Kate McKinnon as Laura Ingraham to lampoon Fox News in its Cold Open, reports NBC News, lamenting how "celebrities in California are whining about some tiny wildfires, while our heroic president is under constant attack—from rain." Steve Carell stopped by to host his third time, in what the AV Club calls "a congested wheeze of an episode, packed with sketch after sketch of unimaginative premises, indifferently executed." Slate, however, likes a sketch in which Carell broadcasts from the space station as corpses float by a window in the background. And Mashable highlights a sketch of Carell as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, which is "just an extended string of Trump burns, targeting his hair, his Twitter addiction, his bullying behavior, and his repeated failures as a businessman." Highlights in the gallery.
– Paul Manafort's lawyers are pushing to get him out of jail to prepare for his upcoming trials, and their newly filed court documents reveal something of a surprise: President Trump's former campaign manager is being kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, reports Axios. The reason? The Northern Neck Regional Jail in Virginia "cannot otherwise guarantee his safety," the lawyers write. What's more, the jail is about a two-hour drive for his defense team, and all of this "makes it effectively impossible for Mr. Manafort to prepare" for his trials on money laundering and bank fraud. Manafort had his bail revoked and got sent to jail last month after he was accused of tampering with witnesses. His lawyers are appealing that decision, but prosecutors say the limitations he's facing behind bars "are common to defendants incarcerated pending trial," per New York. The court documents do not provide details on the safety concerns regarding Manafort. His first trial is scheduled to start on July 25, and the charges he's facing are unrelated to his work on the Trump campaign of 2016.
– "We are not thugs. We are professionals," says the leader of a black policing group, addressing a speech in which President Trump urged officers to not be "too nice" when arresting suspects. Perry Tarrant of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives met with AG Jeff Sessions on Tuesday to discuss Trump's comments, which he said could have "potential harm … in detracting from the legitimacy [of police], and detracting from the trust that local law enforcement and communities have," per the Los Angeles Times. Sessions said he would "hold any officer responsible [for] breaking the law," noting it took "one bad officer to destroy the reputations of so many" who "serve with honor and distinction," reports USA Today. Tarrant isn't the only one with a grievance. In a Saturday memo, acting DEA chief Chuck Rosenberg said he had "an obligation to speak out when something is wrong," then addressed how the president had "condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement." Rosenberg encouraged agents to "earn and keep the public trust and continue to hold ourselves to the very highest standards." Trump has yet to elaborate on his comments made to law enforcement officers in Brentwood, NY, on Friday. At the time, he suggested officers need not shield suspects' heads when placing them in police cars. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday, per CNN, "It wasn't a directive, it was a joke."
– Like a nice bowl of microwave popcorn in the evening? Others do too—in fact, America downs 16 billion quarts of popcorn annually—but Safebee reports that many microwave popcorns come with apparent health risks. Four, to be exact: Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA): This nonstick coating can be found in fire-fighting foam and pizza boxes. Scientists say the chemical is also associated with cancers and female infertility. Luckily some brands, like Orville Redenbacher and Jolly Time, don't have it. Trans fats: Several microwave popcorns include these so-called "Franken fats," which have been linked to diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Check the product's Nutrition Facts panel for brands that have no trans fats. Saturated fat: If you don't want "bad" LDL cholesterol, buy microwave popcorn with better fat options. Visit Safebee to read about the fourth potential health woe—high sodium—or read more on apparent health risks of microwave popcorn at NDTV. On a positive note, see In Style's guide to microwaving popcorn on your own.
– Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, some of whom may have been having a hard time getting excited about voting for Hillary Clinton, got an angry warning Saturday night about a Trump presidency from the man preparing to pack up and leave the Oval Office in January. "You may have heard Hillary's opponent in this election say that there's never been a worse time to be a black person," President Obama said in his final address to the group as president, per CNN. "I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery or Jim Crow," adding, "we will educate him." As for the black community's supposed indifference about this election, "read up on your history. It matters. I will consider it a personal insult—an insult to my legacy—if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote." More from the speech, which Politico calls "rip-roaring": On what's on the ballot: “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration, that’s on the ballot right now.” Sources tell Politico Obama strayed significantly from a more staid version of the speech. On Donald Trump: He's "somebody who has fought against civil rights and fought against equality and who has shown no regard for working people most of his life." On the end of the birther controversy: "I mean: (ISIS), North Korea, poverty, climate change—none of those things weighed on my mind like the validity of my birth certificate. And to think: that with just a 124 days to go, under the wire, we got that resolved."
– The drawn-out saga involving the lawsuits against Trump University gained a new wrinkle with a New York Times probe that reveals students who took his real estate classes were coerced into giving their instructors positive reviews—with those reviews perhaps serving as "a central component of a business model … that deceived consumers into handing over thousands of dollars with tantalizing promises of riches," as the paper puts it. A review of hundreds of legal files, plus interviews with ex-students and instructors, suggests pressure to make those reviews sing, in addition to what the paper calls "unusual practices," such as not clearly offering anonymity on the forms and requesting the surveys in exchange for graduation certificates. Why this revelation could be critical: the glowing reviews have, as of late, served as Trump's main ammunition against the claims of fraud. He has referred to the surveys as "beautiful statements" that show a 98% level of satisfaction. There's even a website with thousands of positive evaluations to back him up. But ex-students say their praise came only under duress. "I finally gave in," says one former student who initially gave his teacher a bad score but changed it after a Trump U employee kept badgering him with phone calls. Another says an assigned "mentor" stood over him as he filled out his form, while a third says he was guilted into rating his teacher highly because the teacher basically begged him to. "It's absolutely a con," that ex-student, 76, says. A Trump lawyer says it's "completely implausible to suggest that the 10,000 reviews from the students and their guests were the result of pressure or coercion." The last rating by the BBB in 2010, meanwhile, gave Trump U a D-minus, per the Hill.
– Dramatic footage taken by a Globe and Mail reporter captures an exchange of gunfire inside the seat of Canada's government. More than 30 shots can be heard as authorities inside the Parliament building exchange fire with an attacker now identified as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. In an evening address to the nation, Prime Minister Stephen Harper described the "brutal and violent" Ottawa shooting as a terrorist attack—the second this week—and an assault on the values of "Canadians as a free and democratic people who embrace human dignity for all," the CBC reports. "Let there be no misunderstanding—we will not be intimidated," he said. "Canada will never be intimidated." The gunman—who fatally shot 24-year-old soldier Nathan Cirillo before entering Parliament—was shot dead outside an occupied caucus room and three people were hospitalized with minor injuries, including one who was shot in the foot. After earlier reports of up to two other shooters, lockdowns around Parliament and in Ottawa's downtown core have been lifted. Police say nobody else is in custody and there is no longer any threat to the public in the area, reports the AP. The National Security Council says President Obama, who publicly condemned the attack as "outrageous," has spoken with Harper and offered "any assistance" needed, CTV reports.
– Another person in Illinois has died after using synthetic marijuana, reports the Chicago Tribune. The central Illinois woman, who was in her 30s, is the fourth person to die in the state after apparent use of the tainted substance. She's the third central Illinois victim; the fourth was from Chicago. In the last few weeks, more than 150 people across 13 counties have been hospitalized after using synthetic pot laced with what health officials believe to be a type of a rat poison known as brodifacoum, a powerful anti-coagulant. A widely used pesticide, when ingested by humans brodifacoum can cause bleeding from the nose or gums, as well as internal bleeding. Symptoms include coughing up blood and bloody urine, health officials say, and brodifacoum poisoning can be treated with vitamin K administered via IV to stabilize the blood’s clotting ability. The treatment is effective if initiated before excessive bleeding occurs, per the American Council on Science and Health. CNN reports health officials urge anyone who has a reaction to synthetic marijuana to call 911 or go to an emergency room.
– An Alaska man ducked prison time Wednesday in a deal the presiding judge called "breathtaking." Justin Schneider, 34, pleaded guilty to assaulting a woman who says he strangled her unconscious and masturbated on her prone body, CNN reports. Charged with four felonies including assault and kidnapping, Schneider cut a plea deal for single felony assault. "But I would like the gentleman to be on notice that this is his one pass," prosecutor Andrew Grannik said in court, per KTVA. "It's not really a pass, but given the conduct, one might consider that it is." Schneider was accused of assaulting the woman in Anchorage in August 2017 after offering her a ride. "She said she could not fight him off, he was too heavy and had her down being choked to death," the complaint reads. "[The victim] said she lost consciousness, thinking she was going to die," per the complaint. When she awoke, he was zipping up and "told her that he wasn't really going to kill her, that he needed her to believe she was going to die so that he could be sexually fulfilled." So why the plea deal? Schneider lost his job as an air traffic controller, which Grannik called a "life sentence." And Judge Michael Cory, who called the deal "breathtaking," said he hoped Schneider could be rehabilitated. As for Schneider, he offered no apology and said he "would just like to emphasize how grateful I am for this process." He was sentenced to two years, one suspended, and received credit for time spent at home with his family. The assault survivor did not show up for trial.
– Spain's Prince Felipe became King Felipe VI at midnight as the abdication of his father, King Juan Carlos, became official. The occasion was fairly low-key, with no foreign heads of state present and no huge state banquet, which the palace says was "in keeping with the criteria of austerity that the times recommend," the AP reports. The 46-year-old king was later proclaimed head of state in a parliamentary ceremony where he promised to be a monarch "who is ready listen and understand, warn and advise as well as to defend the public interest at all times," the BBC reports. The new king spoke of the need to "look ahead to the Spain we are building together as I begin this reign," reports CNN, which notes that while the monarchy remains popular in Spain, the royal family has been accused of corruption and excess during the country's economic crisis—and Juan Carlos' image suffered after he went on a luxurious elephant-hunting trip in the middle of the recession. Felipe and his wife, who is now Queen Letizia, will be driven through the streets of Madrid before appearing at the palace but they may find that many Spaniards aren't in the mood for cheering: The country's soccer team, which won the World Cup in 2010, crashed out of the tournament last night with a 2-0 loss to Chile.
– A 23-year-old from Illinois has been charged in connection with an alleged plot to blow up 48 churches in northeast Oklahoma. Gregory Weiler, who has a long history of mental illness, was arrested after motel workers in the town of Miami spotted suspicious items in a garbage bin, CNN reports. Police found 50 Molotov cocktails in the trash and bomb-making materials in Weiler's room, along with documents outlining his plans to set off bombs at dozens of churches. He has been charged under state anti-terrorism laws. Miami's police chief says Weiler's answers in custody ranged from rambling to coherent and it's not clear whether he was going to actually carry out the plot. "He had the means and the ability to carry this out," the chief tells the AP. "How does one assess the threat?" Weiler's parents both committed suicide and he has battled drug addiction and "a lot of mental illnesses," his cousin says. "With his medication, he was perfectly fine and functional," but family members believe he must have stopped taking the medication, the cousin says.
– The question of who owns a particular chunk of a famed meteorite is heading to federal court with the filing of a lawsuit and countersuit, SF Gate reports. It all started billions of years ago with the Fukang meteorite slammed into China's Gobi Desert. Fast-forward to the year 2000: when the meteorite was discovered and collectors began acquiring slices of it. Among them was Stephan Settgast, currently of California, who says he bought his 220-pound piece in 2004. In 2014, according to court documents, Settgast agreed to sell it to Lawrence Stifler and Mary McFadden of Massachusetts for $425,000. And then it all went bad. Settgast says the couple violated the conditions of the sale by planning to show it in their rock museum. They say not showing the meteorite was never a condition of the sale and suggest that Settgast got "seller's remorse" after learning he might have undervalued it. And, they allege, that remorse manifested in what they call the "outrageous act" of Settgast stealing back the rock from the studio of a pair of Kansas rock polishers who spent two years preparing the stone for the buyers, per NBC News. After all, the rock polishers did tell Settgast the meteorite could fetch up to $1 million (which, documents point out, would bump up their 5% fee to $50,000). How the alleged theft of the gold-flecked meteorite actually went down is unclear. Settgast filed a suit in February alleging breach of contract. Stifler, McFadden, and Darryl Pitt, the meteorite expert who brokered the deal, countersued last month. Local authorities in Kansas say they are going to hang back on pursuing Settgast for theft until a federal judge determines who owns the meteorite. "This isn't a typical theft," Miami County undersheriff tells NBC. (No one noticed this meteor the size of a large living room plowing into the earth.)
– Kellyanne Conway says she was just trying to capture a big moment, not create one. In an interview on Lou Dobbs Tonight on Tuesday, the White House adviser says the viral photo of her kneeling on an Oval Office couch simply caught her doing what she was asked: "What happened is we had the largest gathering of men and women to date in the Oval Office for a picture ... I was being asked to take a picture in a crowded room with the press behind us, and I was asked to take a certain angle and was doing exactly that," she told Dobbs. "I certainly meant no disrespect. I didn't mean to have my feet on the couch." Then she flipped the criticism on its head: "If we started a trend here, where people are outwardly talking about greater respect for the office of the president and its current occupant, then perhaps that’s something positive to come out" of this. And in emails to the Washington Post, Conway tried to shift the attention back where she felt it should be: "on the actual visit and the incredible, important work of these men and women at [historically black colleges and universities]." Trump aide Omarosa Manigault, who was present, also framed the moment to the Post, calling it "very sweet ... to be honest. She looked down at the picture after she got it, and I looked at her and said, 'Kellyanne, did you get a good shot?' ... She tried again; she positioned herself to get a better picture. It really was at my encouragement for her to try to capture such an important, historic moment." (Check out more reaction to the photo here and here.)
– While some fret about the government coming to take their guns, an increasing number of musicians and comedians are coming for your cellphones. The Washington Post reports Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, the Lumineers, Alicia Keys, Chris Rock, and Guns N' Roses are among the artists using a new device called Yondr to separate fans from their phones during performances. Yondr is a small pouch for your phone that is locked by venue staff. You can carry it with you, but your phone is unusable for the duration of the show. “If you haven’t been to a phone-free show, you just don’t know what you’re missing,” Yondr founder Graham Dugoni says. “There’s something about living in real life that can’t be replicated.” At least one California high school is even using the pouches, according to CBS News. Artists are not only worried about phones ruining the experience—Chappelle tells CBS people are "vastly more fun" to perform for when they aren't on their phones—but about their work being immediately posted to YouTube and Instagram. “We don’t want the first time you ever hear a song to be some [lousy] MP3 somebody captured on their phone,” Keys’ manager tells the Post. While many fans are understanding, not everyone is willing to go without their phone for a few hours. "My phone is how I keep my memory," one man waiting in line to see Keys says. "If you don’t want your music heard, then don’t perform it.” Today reports that others worry—in the wake of mass shootings—about the risk if fans don't have immediate access to their phones in an emergency. (This Paris attack survivor credits his phone with saving his life.)
– A little thing like rape isn't a good enough excuse for an abortion, as far as Sharron Angle's concerned. Harry Reid's conservative, Tea Party-backed opponent gave an interview in January, in which she told conservative host Bill Manders that rape victims need to trust in God's plan. “Is there any reason at all for an abortion?” Manders asks in the clip, which was dug up by Think Progress. “Not in my book,” Angle replies. Not even, Manders presses, in the case of rape or incest? “Well, you know, I'm a Christian,” Angle says, “and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith.” Angle got pressed on the issue yesterday in her first interview with the mainstream press since winning the GOP nomination. (More details from it at the Las Vegas Sun.) “You want government to go and tell a 13-year-old child who’s been raped by her father she has to have that baby?” asked her interviewer. “I didn’t say that," she responded. "I always say that I value life.”
– "We have never faced this before: purposeful, vindictive chaos," Jon Stewart said Tuesday, summing up President Trump's first 10 days in office during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Impersonating Trump with a "dead animal on head" and a tie reaching the floor, the former Daily Show host read out Trump's next executive orders. The first: "China shall immediately and without hesitation send us their wall." The second: The official language of the United States is now "bulls--t." The third: "I, Donald J. Trump, am exhausting" because "every instinct and fiber of my pathological self-regard calls me to abuse of power." The segment had Stewart, Colbert, and the audience in stitches—particularly when the aforementioned dead animal appeared to try to crawl down Stewart's face—but Stewart chose to end it on a serious note, per the New York Daily News. He called on America's "relentless stamina and vigilance and every institutional check and balance this country can muster" to restrain Trump, per Variety, noting, "If we do not allow Donald Trump to exhaust our fight and somehow come out of this presidency calamity-less and constitutionally, partially intact, then I, Donald J. Trump, will have demonstrated the greatness of America, just not the way I thought I was going to."
– So much for a changed Donald Trump. He told supporters on Saturday that he's not changing his pitch to voters, a day after his chief adviser assured Republican officials their party's front-runner would show more restraint while campaigning, reports the AP. "I sort of don’t like toning it down,” he said at a rally in Connecticut, per the New York Times. “Isn’t it nice that I’m not one of these teleprompter guys?” Trump also declared to the crowd that he has no intention of reversing any of his provocative policy plans, including building a wall along the length of the Southern border. "Everything I say I'm going to do, folks, I'll do," he said. Trump's new chief adviser, Paul Manafort, met Thursday with top Republican officials and told them his candidate has been "projecting an image." The "part that he's been playing is now evolving," Manafort said. At a rally in Waterbury, Trump joked about acting presidential, making a series of faux somber faces. He also revived his birther criticism of rival Ted Cruz, which he has previously used to suggest the Texas senator is ineligible to run for president. "Rafael! Straight out of the hills of Canada!" he declared, referring to Cruz by his given name and the country of his birth. The Republican front-runner and most of his rivals in both parties were out campaigning Saturday across the Northeastern states holding primaries on Tuesday: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
– The ship bound for Rome sunk in 1BC and was first discovered off the coast of Greece in 1900. And yet the Antikythera shipwreck is still providing new discoveries. The Guardian reports an expedition to the site last month turned up a silver tankard, a human bone, and much more. Perhaps most exciting: the arm of a bronze statue and evidence that the remains of at least seven bronze statues are still buried there. Previous bronze statues found at the Antikythera shipwreck were dated to the 4th century BC. Bronze statues from that time period are extremely rare, with only about 50 known in the world, according to Gizmodo. National Geographic reports that based on the positioning of the fingers, the newly discovered arm may belong to a statue modeled on a philosopher. Recovering the rest of the statue—and the others at the site—won't be easy. The Antikythera shipwreck is 180 feet underwater on a slope and has been buried by boulders from a succession of earthquakes starting in the 4th century AD. It will take a lot of time and money to move the boulders, recover the statues, and reconstruct them. Also discovered in last month's expedition was a mysterious bronze disc that the dive team originally thought could be a missing component of the famous Antikythera Mechanism. The mechanism, often called an "ancient computer," could predict eclipses and the movements of various heavenly bodies and was discovered at the site. However, X-rays of the disc show it's engraved with a bull and was likely a piece of decoration for a statue or the ship itself. The next expedition to the Antikythera shipwreck is scheduled for spring 2018. (An odd item was found at the site in 2016.)
– To get into Harvard, you have to be the best and the brightest—or at least copy off the best and brightest's paper. In a Harvard Crimson survey, 10% of incoming freshmen said they'd cheated on a test, 17% admitted cheating on a paper or take-home project, and 42% admitted cheating on a homework assignment. All of those numbers went up among athletic recruits, and among men. The survey covered 1,300 students, or 80% of the incoming class. The numbers are not likely to help the university recoup its image in the wake of its cheating scandal, the LA Times points out. A Harvard spokesman responded to the report by pointing out that cheating was "a national problem," but said Harvard was taking action against cheating "through faculty and presentations to students."
– Russell Brand is free on bail today on charges of simple battery after he allegedly roughed up members of the paparazzi at LAX airport. The reason? He told cops upon his arrest that photographers were trying to shoot up fiancée Katy Perry's skirt, reports TMZ. Katy herself confirms the line of defense, via tweet, of course: "If you cross the line & try and put a lens up my dress, my fiancé will do his job & protect me." MTV has more details.
– Hailey Glassman's two-part Insider interview began last night, and she cried about putting "her entire life on hold" (including college) for Jon Gosselin. "I can't do this anymore, I can't take it," she said, adding that she's told Jon "If you really loved me, you would let me go," but he has begged her to stay. He's even threatened suicide if Glassman leaves him, ex-nanny Stephanie Santoro tells Radar. Jon, of course, responded to the Insider with a statement, thanking Hailey for her "emotional support" and asking the world at large for an "opportunity to prove myself." The best news of all comes from Star, with the seemingly inevitable revelation that this whole mess will be turned into a movie, courtesy of New Line Cinema. "Ideally they'd like Cameron Diaz for Kate and Johnny Depp for Jon," says a perhaps naively optimistic source.
– Google has won the praise of privacy advocates by rolling out a tool that shows just how often governments ask for information about its users. Of the countries listed on Google Disclosure—which omits China—Brazil leads the way with 3,663 requests for data during the second half of 2009, the Wall Street Journal reports. The US is second with 3,580 requests. The tool also reveals demands that certain content be removed. Each request for information is run through the company's legal department, said a Google spokesman. "We hope this tool will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe," said Google's chief legal officer. "We also hope that this is just the first step toward increased transparency about these actions across the technology and communications industries."
– North Korea says it's ready to deploy and start mass-producing a new medium-range missile capable of reaching Japan and major US military bases there following a test launch it claims confirmed the missile's combat readiness and is an "answer" to President Trump's policies. The solid-fuel Pukguksong-2 missile flew about 310 miles and reached a height of 350 miles Sunday before plunging into the Pacific Ocean. North Korea's media said more missiles will be launched in the future, the AP reports. Trump, traveling in Saudi Arabia, had no immediate public comment. Kim Jong Un ordered the launch and watched from an observation post, state media reported Monday. The Korea Central News Agency said the test verified technical aspects of the weapon system and examined its "adaptability under various battle conditions" before it's deployed to military units. Kim reportedly said the launch was a success, "approved the deployment of this weapon system for action," and said that it should "be rapidly mass-produced." Viewing images sent from the rocket, Kim noted, "It feels grand to look at the Earth from the rocket we launched," KCNA said, via Reuters. The North's Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary Sunday that in Pyongyang's "answer to the Trump administration," many more missiles "capable of striking the US will be launched from this land."
– The 26-year-old woman sought by French police as the widow and potential accomplice of Paris deli shooter Amedy Coulibaly is in Syria, Turkey's foreign minister confirmed today. The timeline that Mevlut Cavusoglu is offering up indicates that Hayat Boumeddiene crossed over into Syria after Wednesday's slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, but potentially before her husband's killing spree began: Citing "telephone recordings," Cavusoglu says that Boumeddiene flew from Madrid to Turkey on Jan. 2, then entered Syria on Thursday, reports NBC News—the day her common-law husband is accused of killing a French policewoman. "We provided [French authorities] with the information as soon as we got it, without them even asking," he says. Germany, at least, is unimpressed; its domestic spy chief said today that Turkey is a "key country" that needs to do more to stem the tide of radicals crossing through it into Syria, USA Today reports. It's estimated that north of 90% of extremists headed to Syria cross through Turkey. France confirmed today that it's still seeking at least one probable accomplice, with PM Manuel Valls saying that "the threat is still present" and "the hunt will go on." The AP has more on Boumeddiene's movements: She apparently stayed at an Istanbul hotel with an unnamed 23-year-old man before heading for Turkey's border with Syria. Her last cell transmission came from a border town on Thursday, and she apparently crossed over into ISIS-controlled territory. Meanwhile, video emerged yesterday of Coulibaly declaring his allegiance to ISIS.
– During an appearance on Megyn Kelly Today Wednesday, former Scientologist Brendan Tighe said that Scarlett Johansson once auditioned to be Tom Cruise's girlfriend. Johansson was having none of it, quickly hitting back with a statement to E! News. "The very idea of any person auditioning to be in a relationship is so demeaning," it reads. "I refuse for anyone to spread the idea that I lack the integrity to choose my own relationships. Only a man aka Brendan Tighe would come up with a crazy story like that." In his interview with Kelly, Tighe claimed to have learned of the audition when reports from Cruise's handler were accidentally printed on Tighe's printer. The report said "it didn't go well," Tighe said of the audition, adding that another actress, Scientologist Erika Christensen, had to "disconnect" from Johansson as a result of it not going well. "Because Scarlett wasn't interested?" Kelly said. "Correct," Tighe said. The Church of Scientology also disputed Tighe's claims. As for Cruise, he's also in the tabloids due to a report that he's trying to make plans to see Suri, his daughter with Katie Holmes. Gossip Cop says those reports are false, though the site does note Cruise hasn't seen Suri, 12, in several years.
– Consumers planning on scouring Amazon to find a hoverboard to place under the Christmas tree may have to look elsewhere. Joining fellow online retailer Overstock.com, Amazon has decided to halt sales of most of the two-wheeled products on its US and UK sites in the wake of recent reports of explosions and fires. Although hoverboards from Razor and Jetson remain on the site, as do hoverboard accessories, Amazon says it won't put any other manufacturers' hoverboards back on until makers can prove their units meet appropriate safety requirements set by the private company UL, notes Quartz. The BestReviews.com site, which recently reviewed five models (none of which are available any longer on Amazon), said in response to the Amazon move that "we are not recommending any hoverboards until they are proven to be safe." So far, at least 10 hoverboard fires have been reported in nine states, per Fox59, and the Guardian reports that 88% of the non-EU hoverboards tested by the UK's trading standards authority didn't pass basic safety requirements. The Verge notes that the problem has become so worrisome that some airlines are now banning hoverboards from their flights. "Criminals and irresponsible manufacturers will often exploit high demand and attempt to flood the market with cheap and dangerous products," the CEO of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute tells the Guardian. One company that may end up profiting from the other sites' reluctance to carry hoverboards: eBay, which EcommerceBytes.com notes still had plenty of listings for the product as of Sunday night. (This guy's hoverboard didn't catch fire as he allegedly shoplifted.)
– Call Me By Your Name takes viewers to northern Italy in the summer of 1983, where 17-year-old Elio (recent Golden Globe nominee Timothee Chalamet) meets 24-year-old American graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer) and, well, things heat up. The film by Luca Guadagnino, adapted from the novel by Andre Aciman, has a 96% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Their thoughts: The film is a "generous, sensitive adaptation" of Aciman's novel, benefited by the "ridiculous chemistry" of Hammer and 22-year-old Chalamet, who gives a "beautiful, complex performance." These are just a few of the “million reasons why Call Me By Your Name is far and away the best movie of the year," writes Christy Lemire at RogerEbert.com, who also calls the film "a lush and vibrant masterpiece." It's "a powerfully erotic and affecting love story, albeit one so closely and intimately observed that the term 'slow burn' seems almost inadequate," writes Justin Chang at the Los Angeles Times. "The undercurrents of lust, intrigue, jealousy and sexual anxiety flickering between Elio and Oliver are observed with a precision and playfulness that verge on the Hitchcockian," he adds, but it's the film's "compassion and wry wisdom … that catch you off-guard." It's "a spellbinding, almost ecstatically beautiful movie" that's "almost sinfully enjoyable," to boot, writes Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post. The "timeless" coming-of-age tale "acknowledges the purity and sculptural beauty of youth" but adds plenty of erotic tension. Chalamet brings it all together with "a note-perfect combination of cocky self-assurance and wary naiveté," Hornaday writes. "Chalamet delivers one of the year's best performances" in a film simple in its subject matter, writes Rafer Guzman at Newsday. "It's about two people and their feelings"—"erotic yet never graphic, heartfelt yet highly stylized." Two scenes to watch out for: one featuring "an eyebrow-raising use of a peach," and another in which Elio's father (Michael Stuhlbarg) "gives a lovely monologue with such purity of emotion that it's almost breathtaking."
– A frog named Toughie, likely the last of his species, died quietly in his enclosure at the Atlanta Botanical Garden this week, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "He will be missed by Garden staff and visitors alike," the Garden posted on Facebook. The Rabbs' fringe-limbed tree frog wasn't even discovered until 2005 when scientists were attempting to rescue specimens of any amphibian they could before a deadly chytrid fungal infection hit Panama. According to National Geographic, Toughie made it out of Panama, but it's estimated that the chytrid fungus killed up to 85% of all amphibians left behind in his natural habitat. He had lived in isolation at the Garden since 2008. A cause of death is unknown, but Toughie was believed to be at least 12 years old. In his final years, Toughie became a "symbol of the extinction crisis." His photo was projected onto St. Peter's Basilica, and he was visited by film directors and race car drivers. "A lot of people were moved to tears when they saw him," a photographer who worked with Toughie says. "When you have the very last of something it's a special deal.” While some scientists are holding out hope for the Rabbs' tree frog, it's likely Toughie was the last, Scientific American reports. His species hasn't been seen in the wild since 2007. It's rare for humans to actually witness an extinction when it happens and not just learn about it years later. (For the first time, bees have been put on the endangered species list.)
– How far are women willing to go for fashion? According to the New York Times, pretty far. The newspaper walks a mile in the shoes of a handful of LA- and NYC-based podiatrists who perform procedures specifically designed to help women fit comfortably into designer heels. What types of surgery are women undergoing for the sake of their Manolo Blahniks? Aesthetic toe-shortening, fat-pad augmentation, and toe-lengthening procedures, by way of one Beverly Hills podiatrist, who brands his procedures with names like "the Cinderella" and "Perfect 10!" A Park Avenue podiatrist, who recommends Prada and Michael Kors for women looking for a wider shoe, offers injectable fillers for cushioning and other injections to tame profuse sweating; another NYC practitioner corrects what he calls Hitchhiker's Toe (a case of an outsize big toe) but drew the line at one patient's request: amputation of a pinkie toe to allow for a better fit. And it's not a new trend: The Times checked in on it in 2003, focusing on the "perils on the procedures"—an elective bunion removal, for instance, that ended up saddling the patient with serious foot pain. Time points out that woman are doing other "gross things" for fashion's sake, like Botoxing their calves to make them skinnier, and thereby better suited for skinnyjeans and slim boots. (And then there are these 7 people, who went under the knife in an attempt to look like a celeb.)
– The man Texas Monthly once dubbed "the nation's most motivated motivational speaker" is dead at age 86. Zig Ziglar, author of more than two dozen books, died in the Dallas suburb of Plano, reports AP. Ziglar rose to national fame with his first book, See You at the Top, and became a fixture on the lecture circuit and at corporate retreats for decades with his folksy advice. The Washington Post lists some of his mantras: “If you’re going to have to swallow a frog, you don’t want to have to look at that sucker too long!” “The more you gripe about your problems, the more problems you have to gripe about!” “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want!” A friend, former FedEx chief Fred Smith, is quoted in the Texas Monthly profile mentioned earlier: “I’ve asked myself many times how Zig can say the same things people have been hearing all their lives, and instead of getting yawns he gets a tremendous response."
– All public schools in Nashua, NH, will be closed Monday after what Superintendent Mark Conrad describes as a "detailed threat of violence to harm students and staff" at both of the city's high schools. The school district made 14,000 automated phone calls Sunday evening to inform parents of the closure, WMUR reports. "I regret any difficulties this creates for working parents but safety must remain our first priority," Conrad, who expects schools to reopen on Tuesday, said in a statement. Gov. Maggie Hassan says state officials are working closely with Nashua police and the FBI, per WMUR. "We are really working from the perspective of caution," the superintendent tells the New Hampshire Union Leader, adding that police are doing a "great job" in trying to determine where the threat came from and whether it's credible. He says the amount of detail in the threat, which was received by a school administrator, is "especially concerning." It's not clear whether the New Hampshire threat is linked to those that were received by school districts across the country and shut down all Los Angeles-area schools for a day last week. Those threats have been traced to an email service that doesn't keep any information on users.
– Sign of the times? Several hundred Pacific walruses began amassing on an island off Alaska’s northwest coast in the first week of August in what wildlife officials say is the earliest date yet for their annual "haulout." The culprit appears to be shrinking Arctic ice. Walruses tend to head ashore two weeks after warm temperatures cause sea ice to recede too far north for them in the Chukchi Sea. This year, it happened earlier than ever. Walruses typically use sea ice for protection and as a home base, particularly for juveniles, while adults dive to the ocean floor for food. But "when that ice retreats to the deeper water, they can't do that," Fish and Wildlife rep Andrea Medeiros tells Alaska Public Media. For the past several years, a barrier island near Point Lay has served as an alternative home base. Last year, thousands of walruses had arrived there by Oct. 7. This year, however, the haulout was observed beginning on Aug. 3—a full two weeks ahead of the next earliest date observed back in 2011, reports Alaska Dispatch News. Medeiros tells the AP that last week some 2,000 walruses were observed on the island, where they're expected to stay until the fall. Hoping to head north to observe the animals? Officials would rather you not. Not only is it illegal to disturb them, the walruses are known to stampede to the water in response to plane and boat activity in the area, which spells bad news for juvenile walruses.
– Chelsea Manning has been banned from going outside or using the Fort Leavenworth prison library for 21 days after being found guilty of prison infractions including having an expired tube of toothpaste and the Caitlyn Jenner issue of Vanity Fair. The punishment is minor compared to the indefinite solitary confinement she could have been sentenced to, but her ACLU lawyer tells USA Today that the Army private will "carry these infractions through her parole and clemency process and will be held longer in the more restrictive custody where she is now incarcerated." The lawyer says it sets a "concerning precedent" that Manning wasn't allowed to have legal counsel during the hearing, which lasted four hours. The "convictions will follow me thru to any parole/clemency hearing forever. Was expecting to be in min custody in Feb, now years added," said a tweet from Manning's official account. Ahead of the hearing, a petition with more than 100,000 signatures seeking the dismissal of the charges was dropped off at the Army liaison office in Congress, and Manning's lawyer says it was that support that kept her from getting solitary, the Guardian reports.
– Hurricane Harvey has devastated Texas, and it's also bringing bad news for drivers across the nation. Harvey's impact on the Gulf Coast caused several major refineries and a key gasoline pipeline to shut down, the AP reports. What that means: Prices are on the rise: Per GasBuddy, the average price of a gallon of gas in the US was $2.469 Thursday afternoon. That's up 2.3 cents from Wednesday, 11.7 cents from last week, 15.1 cents from last month, and 24.3 cents from last year. They're even higher in some areas: Reuters, citing AAA data, says fuel prices in Georgia and North Carolina are up 17 cents a gallon from a week ago; in South Carolina, almost 20 cents. And they're likely to go higher: Per Business Insider, gas futures for both September and October are up. In fact, Thursday was their eighth straight day of gains, their longest rising streak in four years. There's also the problem of gas availability: The AP reports that QuikTrip, one of the biggest convenience store chains in the country, is going to stop selling gas entirely at about half of its stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area in anticipation of shortages. Even locations that have gas may run out: The Star-Telegram reports that convenience store operators and gasoline retailers are warning there's a major chance some Texas locations will run out of gas this weekend due to supply chain disruptions. Specifics on those disruptions: Colonial, the largest pipeline operator in the country, has shut down key fuel lines (AL.com) and Motiva Enterprises' Port Arthur, Texas refinery, the biggest in the country, may be closed for as long as two weeks (CNBC). Some of the other refineries and pipelines affected are starting back up, CNBC reports. A dire quote: "Hurricane Harvey has potentially cut US fuel-making capacity to the lowest level since 2008," per Bloomberg. And another: "This is going to be the worst thing the US has seen in decades from an energy standpoint," a market analyst tells Reuters. What's being done to help: Per Bloomberg, the EPA is exempting many southeastern states from requirements that they use fuel meeting clean-air standards. And CNNMoney reports the Trump administration is tapping the emergency US oil reserve; the Energy Department will send 500,000 barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the Phillips 66 refinery in Louisiana. That could help with gas prices.
– Chris Kluwe made a name for himself not only as an NFL punter but as a (very) outspoken advocate for gay marriage. Now Kluwe has taken to Deadspin to allege that he got cut from the Minnesota Vikings after eight years by special teams coach Mike Priefer, "a bigot who didn't agree with the cause I was working for," because of his views. He also calls out "two cowards," (recently fired) head coach Leslie Frazier and team GM Rick Spielman for not standing up to Priefer. In the lengthy account, Kluwe recounts his controversial 2012 season and subsequent firing. "If there's one thing I hope to achieve from sharing this story, it's to make sure that Mike Priefer never holds a coaching position again in the NFL, and ideally never coaches at any level," writes Kluwe, who quotes the coach at one point as suggesting that all gay people be rounded up on an island and nuked. "It's inexcusable that someone would use his status as a teacher and a role model to proselytize on behalf of his own doctrine of intolerance, and I hope he never gets another opportunity to pass his example along to anyone else." The team responded this afternoon by saying it would "thoroughly review this matter," reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but it insisted that Kluwe got fired for football performance, not his views on marriage equality. Click to read Kluwe's full post.
– With an eye toward 'roid rage, police had Oscar Pistorius' blood tested for steroids, and a "source close to the investigation" tells the Sun that police did find performance enhancers in their search of his house. "Steroid drugs were found at Pistorius’ home together with evidence of heavy drinking. That’s why police have specifically ordered that he be tested for steroids," says the source. What might have gotten him so angry? The Sun reports that Reeva Steenkamp's phone records indicate she may have gotten a text from rugby star Francois Hougaard that night. Sources say Pistorius was unhappy with Steenkamp's friendship with Hougaard. Pistorius' running days are over for now even if he is granted bail. "I have decided that following these tragic events that we have no option but to cancel all future races that Oscar Pistorius had been contracted to compete in," his agent said after a visit to his client, who is being held in a police station, the AP reports. The Olympic and Paralympic star still has "overwhelming support" from his fans, says his agent, whose company has confirmed that big sponsors including Nike are sticking by Pistorius and "are happy to let the legal process takes its course before making any change in their position." He declined to discuss Pistorius' emotional state, Reuters reports. Pistorius' best friend—who introduced him to Steenkamp—says the runner called him minutes after the shooting, before contacting emergency services, the Mirror reports. Pistorius said, "My baba, I’ve killed my baba. God take me away," says Justin Davaris. Asked to explain, Pistorius said, "There has been a terrible accident, I shot Reeva," Davaris says. Amid reports that a bloodied cricket bat is now a key part of the case, the runner's family say they have "zero doubt" that Pistorius shot his girlfriend by accident after mistaking her for an intruder. "When you are a sportsman, you act even more on instinct," his father tells the Telegraph. "It's instinct—things happen and that's what you do."
– A chimpanzee that famously knocked a flying drone out of the air with a stick earlier this year wasn't reacting out of fear or annoyance but rather executing a pre-planned and deliberate attack. That's according to a new study in Primates. "This episode adds to the indications that chimpanzees engage in forward planning of tool-use acts," researcher Bas Lukkenaar says in a press release. The Christian Science Monitor reports a Dutch TV crew was using the drone to film a documentary on the chimps at the Royal Burgers' Zoo in April. After a test-run with the drone, the chimps started collecting sticks and climbing scaffolding. When the drone returned, a chimp named Tushi was ready, swiping it out of the air with a 6-foot branch. While studying footage from the busted drone, researchers focused on Tushi's facial expression during the attack, NBC News reports. They found the grimace she makes before and during the incident is similar to what humans do while carrying out a predetermined use of force. According to the press release, the lack of fear in Tushi's expression means she wasn't simply attacking out of reflex. The Monitor explains it's the difference between a calculated plan and swatting at a mosquito. This isn't unusual behavior for the chimps at Burgers' Zoo; they've taught themselves to use 13 different types of tools, the press release states. (Now find out how chimps are more advanced than humans.)
– A man has been charged with holding eight women against their will inside a million-dollar home in the suburbs of Atlanta, NBC News reports. Authorities say 33-year-old Kenndric Roberts met the women online and offered them modeling jobs. But once they moved into the 6,800-square-foot, five-bedroom house he was renting, things changed, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The women—who range in age from 19 to 22—tell police Roberts threatened them if they tried to leave, forced them to work at strip clubs, threatened their families, and made them get plastic surgery. One of the women referred to Roberts as "our boss," the AP reports. It's unclear how long the women had been in the home. What authorities now believe was a human trafficking operation was discovered Tuesday when one of the women called 911 and asked police to help her escape a "very bad situation" in a "very nice house." She said a man who had a "house full of girls" was threatening to kill her if she left. Police responded and found the eight women. Roberts was arrested on Wednesday. He's been charged with multiple counts of false imprisonment, trafficking persons for labor, and more. Federal charges are also possible. The women have been returned to their families or placed in safe houses.
– Residents of the Northeast have known that a storm was on the way for days now, but the forecasts are only getting more dire as the moment approaches. The National Weather Service has issued a blizzard watch from late Monday through Tuesday evening for New York City and parts of northern New Jersey and southern Connecticut, while winter storm warnings and watches were issued for the remainder of the Northeast, per the AP. Meteorologists said the storm could dump 12 to 18 inches of snow on New York City and Boston, with Philadelphia is expecting up to a foot. But as NBC News notes, the more dangerous component will be high winds on Tuesday morning, with gusts of 55mph to 70mph in the forecast. "This would certainly be the biggest snowstorm of the 2017 winter season in New York City," says a weather service meteorologist based on Long Island. In fact, it has the potential to be among the worst, if not the worst, March snowstorm in New York City history. Coastal flooding also is a risk along the Jersey shore and elsewhere, as is "thundersnow," explains the Daily Beast. Meanwhile, spring officially arrives on March 20.
– Tennessee is poised to be the first state to sue the federal government to prevent the settlement of refugees, the Tennessean reports. On Friday, Gov. Bill Haslam refused to sign—but also refused to veto—a resolution passed resoundingly by the Tennessee legislature earlier this year. That lack of action allows the rest of the state government to move forward with a lawsuit against the federal government. The resolution calls on the state attorney general to sue the federal government. If the attorney general decides not to, the resolution says the legislature will hire its own lawyers to do so. Supporters of the resolution say they'll use a law firm that has previously challenged “abortionists, pornographers, those against school prayer, those against the Ten Commandments, those against God.” Haslam has expressed a number of concerns about the resolution in the past, including whether or not the legislature has the authority to hire outside counsel to represent the state and letting a branch of the government tell the attorney general what to do, the AP reports. The attorney general's office hasn't said whether it will follow through on the lawsuit. But attorney general Herbert Slatery has in the past said the state legally can't refuse to accept refugees mandated by the federal government, according to WKRN. Opponents of the resolution say it will make life harder for refugees already living in Tennessee. “Attempting to block refugee resettlement blames refugees for the very terror they are fleeing," the Tennessean quotes an ACLU executive director as saying. The resolution was supported through an online petition titled "Don't let potential terrorists come to Tennessee."
– Dr. Phil has aired the first of two episodes with alleged secret recordings of Jared Fogle—and it's stomach-churning stuff. In recordings made by FBI informant Rochelle Herman-Walrond, a man she identifies as Fogle talks about his sexual desire for children and discusses who might be the "most promising" victim at a pool party for young children that Herman-Walrond claimed to be planning, the Indianapolis Star reports. After hearing descriptions of boys and girls that the informant had invented, Fogle decides a 7-year-old "girl from the broken home" would be a "definite possibility." Herman-Walrond says the recordings, which Dr. Phil described as the "playbook of an evil monster," were made over four years. "I like all ages," Fogle says in one recording, per CNN. "That's the thing, I mean. I like all of them. You know." He says it isn't hard "at all" to lure children, and he waits for one to "give you the glance." "We just start sharing stories, and then, you know, we get a little closer, and a little closer, and a little closer, and before you know it, it just starts to happen," he says. Herman-Walrond—who says she gained Fogle's trust in order to bring him down, and that the experience has left her scarred—told Dr. Phil that she had made Subway aware of the recordings in 2011, though the chain says the complaint was made via its website and did not mention anything illegal, People reports. (Fogle, who will be sentenced Nov. 19, has already paid out at least $1 million to victims.)
– Since we last checked in, the situation in Mali following a soldiers' coup has spiraled, with rising concerns over food and gas shortages, violence, and indeed the country's "very existence," according to Le Monde. An update: The coup has driven more than 200,000 people from their homes to other parts of the region, the AP reports. The UN worries that major food shortages could be imminent, and "mayhem in these towns and cities is increasing," says a rep. Neighboring countries have established an embargo against the rebels who ousted the president; they've closed off their borders and frozen the country's regional bank account. That has prompted residents of Mali, which imports all its fuel, to rush to gas stations to collect fuel. The country's electricity grid may also be headed for failure. UNESCO is citing a threat to Timbuktu, a World Heritage Site full of "architectural wonders," notes the BBC. Mosques there are "essential to the preservation of the identity of the people of Mali," says the group. Yet "nothing seems to be able to stop" the Tuareg coup, Le Monde reports. West African leaders need to help Mali's military fight back before the instability spreads beyond the country's borders.
– Scientists who study tree rings for a living have discovered that central Mongolia had an usually warm and wet spell from 1211 to 1225. This would probably remain of note only in tree-ring-studying circles if not for one other thing: Those dates happen to coincide with the rise of none other than Genghis Khan, reports the BBC. And the researchers say it's no coincidence. They argue in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the change in weather from severe drought conditions prior to 1211 to fertile ones afterward directly helped Khan build his empire. Think rain—specifically the lush grasslands it created to fuel to Khan's horse-driven army, along with the livestock his soldiers needed to survive. "It wasn't the only thing, but it must have created the ideal conditions for a charismatic leader to emerge out of the chaos, develop an army, and concentrate power," West Virginia University researcher Amy Hessl tells National Geographic. "Where it's arid, unusual moisture creates unusual plant productivity, and that translates into horsepower—literally. Genghis was able to ride that wave." By the time he died in 1227, Khan's empire spanned modern-day Korea, China, Russia, eastern Europe, India, and southeast Asia. Researchers stumbled onto his meteorological good luck while studying ancient Siberian pine trees. (Click to read about the 800-year search for Genghis Khan's tomb.)
– A woman who worked as JK Rowling's personal assistant for more than three years allegedly used a business credit card issued to her by the Harry Potter author to buy stuff for herself—lots of stuff. In a new lawsuit against Amanda Donaldson, Rowling says her former employee benefited to the tune of more than $31,000 by charging all sorts of things to the credit card—including nearly $2,000 at a luxury candle company, nearly $5,000 at a cosmetics store, and more than $2,000 at Starbucks—plus helping herself to Harry Potter merchandise. Rowling is suing Donaldson, who was fired in April 2017 after spending discrepancies were uncovered, for more than $31,000, the BBC reports. Per the Sun, Rowling's husband helped to uncover the alleged misdeeds. In addition to the allegedly unauthorized "business" expenses, which also included $2,800 at a stationery store and more than $1,000 at a bakery, Rowling says Donaldson was in charge of handling memorabilia requests from fans—and that she used that role to snag items including a "Harry Potter Wizard Collection" worth nearly $3,000 without Rowling's "knowledge or consent." Perhaps the oddest expense of all: Donaldson allegedly spent more than $1,500 on two cats. She's also alleged to have taken more than $10,000 in cold hard cash, most of it from a safe she had access to. Donaldson, 35, has denied the allegations and has claimed Rowling has "not suffered any loss and is not entitled to damages." (When Harry Potter and philosophy class merge.)
– Looks like the honeymoon might be over: President-elect Donald Trump complained on Twitter Thursday night about "unfair" protests against him, which continued for a second night. "Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!" he tweeted in his first public comment on the protests. But his tune was changed by this 6am tweet, which read, "Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!" The Washington Post notes that after President Obama was re-elected in 2012, Trump urged people to "fight like hell" and tweeted: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!" The Los Angeles Times reports that the many of the anti-Trump demonstrations around the country Thursday night were not as big as the protests on Wednesday, though some organizers say they are planning bigger rallies over the weekend. One city where things intensified was Portland, Ore., where police declared the protest to be a riot because of "extensive criminal and dangerous behavior," CNN reports. The BBC reports that protests remained largely peaceful in cities including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York City, where a crowd gathered outside Trump Tower for a second night.
– Five people were stabbed at the Rutgers University Business School in Piscataway, New Jersey, on Friday, CBS New York reports. According to NBC New York, the campus announced a lockdown Friday afternoon, advising students and staff to take shelter. A short time later the school announced a suspect was in custody, and the campus was declared safe, the AP reports. Further details were not available, and an investigation is underway.
– Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office Sgt. Troy Smith is dead. The question is whether it was by his own hand or his wife's. A judge on Tuesday determined there was sufficient probable cause to hold Smith's wife, Shantel Parria Wagner, in connection with his June 24 death. The timeline in the case begins one week prior, on Father's Day, when Wagner called 911 saying her husband had shot himself in the head. Wagner is at times crying and near-hysterical in audio of the call posted by Fox 8. The Times-Picayune reports Smith was hospitalized until his death the following week. Wagner's lawyer says Smith, 44, suffered from depression and PTSD, was dealing with financial strain, and texted a suicide threat the day before he was shot. But investigators say the evidence suggests the fatal gunshot wound Smith suffered wasn't self-inflicted. The autopsy report hasn't been finished, however, so the pathologist who handled the autopsy wouldn't deem it a homicide or suicide on the stand, though the Advocate reports she did say Smith exhibited no gunpowder burns or abrasions. The head of the Sheriff's Office Crime Lab testified the "totality of evidence," as the Times-Picayune puts it, isn't in line with a suicide—though he also acknowledged Wagner's DNA was not present on the gun found at the scene. But the judge said inconsistencies in Wagner's story—WDSU reports prosecutors say she altered her story 16 times—and a witness who alleges Wagner copped to the murder amounted to probable cause. Her bond has been set at $300,000.
– Cops handcuffed and arrested a 99-year-old grandmother who's never committed a crime, the Telegraph reports, and yet there were no protests or outraged blog posts. That's because Annie, who lives in the Netherlands, wanted to "experience a police cell from within" as part of her bucket list, according to WPVI. Last week, police in the town of Nijmegen-Zuid happily obliged. Officers put handcuffs on Annie and closed her in a jail cell, posting photos on the department's Facebook page. Time says "it looks like she's having an absolute blast." And officers say it was a "day to remember."
– The wait is over: Heidi Montag’s debut album finally dropped yesterday, and it’s just as horrible as you’d expect. Case in point: Superficial track “I’ll Do It” includes the lyrics, “Come eat my panties off of me / Do whatever you feel comes naturally.” Nonetheless, Montag called the music “empowering,” Us reports—but not everyone agrees. The song “is so gross I'm starting to second-guess even the non-gross parts,” writes Azaria Jagger for Gawker. Here's yet another example, Jagger continues: "'Off up into ya dungin.' I think she means ‘dungeon,’ but is it possible that ‘dungin’ is slang for some part of the body that one can be ‘up into’?" Listen to the track at left.
– Authorities say a man has been arrested trying to climb a fence at the White House this afternoon. The Secret Service says the unidentified man was apprehended before he could get over the fence along the north perimeter. He had two bags with him, and an agency spokesperson say they contained nothing dangerous but wouldn't elaborate, reports the Washington Post. No charges have been announced. The incident shut down Pennsylvania Avenue for about an hour as the White House went into lockdown mode. President Obama was in Michigan at the time, notes CNN.
– Pierce Brosnan has joined the ranks of celebrity painters in a major way, reports People. A portrait of Bob Dylan painted by the former James Bond star sold for $1.4 million at the 25th annual amFAR Cannes charity auction held in Antibes last week. "I am deeply proud, humbled and plain old over the moon joyous following the sale of this painting for 1.2 million euros at last nights auction," Brosnan posted on Instagram the next day. The buyer was Ukrainian billionaire Marina Acton, who paid $17.8 million for Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s Bel-Air mansion, reports TMZ. Brosnan, who took up painting in 1987, according to artnet, is a trained commercial artist and has worked as an illustrator. He even has a studio in his bedroom, where he paints landscapes and portraits in oils and acrylics. (To read about a painter-in-chief, go here.)
– Say what you will about Elon Musk, he's not boring. But apparently that could change next month. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX tweeted last month about traffic in Los Angeles "driving me nuts" and said he was going to make a tunnel boring machine and "just start digging." He insisted at the time that he was serious. Musk was back to talking tunnels Wednesday, when he tweeted that he's planning "to start digging in a month or so." CNBC reports the plan is apparently to start drilling at SpaceX in order to tunnel under Los Angeles and get around its notoriously awful traffic. While it appears possible—probable?—that Musk is joking (he's dubbed his tunneling business The Boring Company), USA Today points out the man did send rockets to space and popularize electric cars. If anyone is going to successfully tunnel under Los Angeles, Musk would be the one to do it. But he would have to get around laws, permitting, and what CNBC calls "simple scientific realities." The Verge reports it's more likely that—if not joking—Musk is simply trying to set himself up to take advantage of President Trump's promise to throw money at infrastructure projects. In fact, Musk met with Trump this week.
– Although you wouldn't know it from the constant barrage of pregnant celebrity pics on social media, the fertility rate in the US—the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44—fell to 60 last year, its lowest level since the government started tracking the figure in 1909, reports NPR. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the birth rate is down in nearly every age group tracked. The 3,853,472 births in the US last year represent a 3% drop from 2016, the largest single-year decline since 2010 and the fewest babies born in one year since 1978. A country’s fertility rate is an important measure of its sustainability, reports the New York Times. Too many births put a strain on education and housing. Too few births, and over time the labor pool declines, which in turn tightens resources. In the US, the decline has not yet led to a drop in overall population, because it has been offset to some degree by immigrants. The decline is a bit surprising because in 2017 there were about 7% more women in their prime childbearing years of 20 to 39. One group that ran against the trend was older women. The birth rate among women age 40 to 44 was up 2% over the previous year. In fact, almost one in five births were to women 35 or older. Although it’s difficult to say for certain what's causing the decline, several factors may be at work, including economic uncertainty stemming from the economic downturn in 2007, reports LiveScience. In addition, women have been waiting longer to have children, and millennial women appear to be waiting even longer than previous generations as they build their careers. One happy finding: Births in the 15 to 19 age group were down 7%, down 55% since 2007, and down 70% from a high in 1991, a trend one statistician called "phenomenal."
– A little piece of history is on the market in California. An oceanfront estate in San Clemente once owned by Richard Nixon and dubbed the Western White House while he was in office is up for sale for $63.5 million, reports the Los Angeles Times. Nixon hosted everyone from Leonid Brezhnev to Frank Sinatra at the 5.45-acre estate, now owned by former pharmaceuticals exec Gavin Herbert. In addition to a 9,000-square-foot main house, the walled estate features a guesthouse, swimming pool, tennis court, greenhouse, 450 feet of beach front, and—given its location on an isolated bluff—panoramic ocean views. See a photo gallery here.
– Fidget spinners are the hot new children's toy this year—but maybe they're also an American plot to topple the Russian government? "Those who understand political technologies, they understand very clearly that this simple thing is controlling the masses," the New York Times quotes the editor in chief of PolitRussia.ru as saying. Multiple reports about the dangers of fidget spinners have been appearing on Russian state-run media in recent weeks. It started with Rossiya 24 claiming opposition politicians were using them to gain the support of young Russians. An opposition leader was seen playing with a fidget spinner in court, and the toys were being sold at an opposition protest, the Telegraph reports. A reporter for Rossiya 24 said fidget spinners make it "easy to divert attention from the real problems." But the fidget spinner phenomena could be even more insidious than that. Commentators on Rossiya 24 said the toys might be an attempt to "zombify people" in Russia and make them open to manipulation. Newsweek reports commentators went on to claim users of fidget spinners could experience a form of "hypnosis." They added that playing with the toy "dulls" the mind and "takes you to a different place." A Rossiya 24 reporter pointed out that the package of a fidget spinner purchased in Moscow bore only English writing. Russia's consumer protection agency is now investigating the toys and encourages parents to supervise children using fidget spinners.
– Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into reports of torture at Afghanistan's prisons, in the wake of a UN report claiming that nearly a third of detainees NATO had transferred into Afghan custody had been abused or tortured. But the team Karzai appointed includes advisers from the interior ministry and the National Directorate of Security, both of which were implicated in the UN report, al-Jazeera reports. Afghanistan's initial response to the report was to deny it. "If we rip out people's fingernails, then show the scars. Prove it," one official was quoted as saying. Now Karzai is promising the team will "fully investigate" the claims, and report back in two weeks "so that follow-up measures can be taken," according to Radio Free Europe. But one Kabul lawyer predicts the panel will conveniently find nothing. "They will only speak in front of NDS authorities, to people they are confident will not speak up."
– The wife and stepson of Missouri KKK leader Frank Ancona were charged Monday with his murder. Police say 24-year-old Paul Jinkerson Jr., the son of Ancona's wife, Malissa Ancona, 44, shot 51-year-old Frank Ancona while he was asleep Thursday in his bedroom, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Police say Ancona's body was driven away in Jinkerson's vehicle and dumped. They say Malissa Ancona confessed to that scenario, and told police she helped to clean up and try to hide what happened. Police found "extensive blood evidence" in the master bedroom of the couple's Leadwood home. Ancona and Jinkerson have been charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and abandonment of a corpse. The body of Ancona, who was reported missing by his employer last week, was found Saturday. The coroner also revealed Monday that Ancona, who identified himself as a KKK imperial wizard, was shot in the head with a shotgun-like weapon at close range and did not have any other bullet wounds on his body, Time reports. Authorities have not speculated publicly on a motive. When police searched the Anconas' home, they found a broken-open safe and discovered Frank Ancona's guns were missing. Malissa Ancona, who was at the home with Jinkerson when police came to search it, per the Daily Journal, claimed her husband had taken them, and that he planned to file for divorce when he got back from his trip. But his family says he wouldn't have taken all his guns with him, and the gun he typically did carry on a daily basis was still at the house. Authorities then searched around his vehicle, which had been found abandoned on Thursday, and found a burn pile.
– A lawsuit representing the families and estates of about 800 victims of 9/11 has been filed in Manhattan federal court, with the Saudi Arabian government in its sights, WPIX and NBC News report. Of the 19 plane hijackers that day, 15 were Saudi nationals, and three of those reportedly had employment history with the government there. Accusations in the newest consolidated complaint, compiled in large part via an FBI investigation, include embassy officials being instrumental in assimilating some of the 9/11 attackers into the US via English instruction, funding assistance, and help in finding a place to live. Saudi authorities also allegedly offered special passport codes to a handful of the terrorists that smoothed their way into the US. The suit also says Saudi royals turned a blind eye regarding money they donated to certain "charities," which was really being shifted to al-Qaeda. "The Saudis were so duplicitous," aviation attorney Jim Kreindler tells WPIX, noting while Saudi Arabia was putting up a good front as a US ally, it was secretly enabling terrorism. (USA Today notes Kreindler's law firm is handling the new suit, which is seeking unspecified monetary damages.) Per NBC, more than a half-dozen lawsuits against the Saudi government have filtered into federal court since September, when Congress rejected then-President Obama's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which gave families of 9/11 victims a way to circumvent sovereign immunity to sue the Saudis. Obama was against JASTA, saying the tables could be turned so other nations can file suit against the US. Attorneys for families and the Saudis are to appear in court Thursday to hammer out the multi-case logistics. (The Saudis obviously don't like JASTA.)
– Death Row Records founder Suge Knight won't be going to death row—but it's going to be a long time before he sees the outside of a prison. Under a plea deal with prosecutors in Los Angeles County, the 53-year-old rap mogul will serve 28 years in state prison for killing a man with his truck in 2015, E! Online reports. He pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter with a "deadly and dangerous weapon"—the pickup truck—but will avoid a murder charge and a separate case involving robbery and making threats will be dismissed, the BBC reports. Knight fatally ran over Terry Carter and seriously injured another man after an argument in 2015, but claimed he was acting in self-defense. California's "three-strike" law added six years to the sentence.
– Another day, another political sex scandal—but this one involves a minor. Ohio's Eric W. Deaton, Senate candidate for the conservative Constitution Party, was indicted Tuesday for having alleged sexual contact with a young girl, the Dayton Daily News reports. Deaton, 42, is accused of having unlawful sexual conduct with the girl, who he reportedly met at his church, while she was between the ages of 13 and 15 ... and he's calling the whole mess "politically motivated." He adds that “the powers that be don’t like” his decision to run for office, and says he'll stay in the race despite his Sept. 14 arraignment and the fact that he faces the possibility of five years in prison. According to WDTN Dayton, police say they have hotel surveillance video and receipts that prove their case ... and Deaton's lawyer says those very items (somehow) help prove that his client is innocent. Deaton, a married Cub Scout leader with three kids, says he has Tea Party endorsements.
– So just what are the 23 executive orders President Obama signed today as part of his plan to curb gun violence? Dave Weigel at Slate runs them down, and here's a sampling from him and AP: "Require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system." Order "tougher penalties for people who lie on background checks." Have the attorney general "review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks." Direct the Centers for Disease Control "to research the causes and prevention of gun violence." (This one is getting a lot of attention. See here.) Nominate an ATF director. "Require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations." Give "schools flexibility to use federal grant money to improve school safety, such as by hiring school resource officers." Read Weigel's full list here. Or see details on each from the White House itself here. These are separate from the list of proposed laws Obama hopes to push through Congress starting next week—reinstating the ban on assault weapons, limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines, closing loopholes on gun sales, and more, reports the New York Times.
– The top US commander in Afghanistan survived an assassination attempt Thursday, but a high-ranking Afghan official was killed. US Army Gen. Scott Miller was not injured in the attack in Kandahar City, which took place after a meeting to discuss security ahead of Saturday's national elections, reports the Wall Street Journal. However, the assault in which bodyguards for a regional governor opened fire did kill Kandahar's police chief, Gen. Abdul Raziq, described by the Journal as "one of southern Afghanistan's most powerful political and military figures." One other Afghan official was killed, the regional governor critically wounded, and three Americans—a service member and two civilians—were also hurt, per the AP. The New York Times calls the attack "one of the most devastating Taliban assassination strikes of the long Afghan war," and the Taliban confirmed afterward that Miller and Raziq had been the targets. The assault took place at the regional governor's compound. "When the high-ranking participants were heading to helicopters, an enemy infiltrator opened fire on them,” says an Afghan government official. The 39-year-old Raziq was a controversial figure, seen as crucial in maintaining order in the region but also accused of human rights abuses and corruption.
– Andrew Breitbart, fresh off the news of Shirley Sherrod's lawsuit against him, has gotten himself embroiled in another controversy. His Big Government website lashed out at Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign ... by basically calling her fat. A cartoon strip on the website shows an overweight Obama eating a huge pile of hamburgers while talking to her big-eared husband about the campaign, Salon reports. The punch line—"Shut up and pass the bacon!"—was originally "Shut up and pass the lard!" Media Matters notes. Click to see the cartoon.
– An Arkansas high school teacher has resigned as parents and students were planning to boycott school events in response to his references to Barack and Michelle Obama as "spider monkey" and "first chimp." The online posts attributed to Trent Bennett of Malvern High School have since been deleted, though a KATV reporter has posted screenshots to Twitter, per Time. After the Malvern School District announced Monday that it was investigating "inappropriate" comments using "racially charged rhetoric" posted to an employee's personal Facebook page, a special meeting was held Thursday, during which the school board unanimously voted to accept Bennett's resignation. The Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP had promised to hold protests if Bennett did not resign, per Arkansas Matters. Students and parents had also vowed to boycott school sporting events, reports the New York Daily News. "I am aware of the impact this has had, and though I negate that I have ever conducted myself in a less than professional manner in regard to my students, I have resigned my teaching position," Bennett says in a statement. "I would like to issue an apology for the outrage and hurt feelings caused by these comments. I acknowledge that they were disrespectful and offensive." He also says he's deleted his social media accounts to avoid "future issues." (A West Virginia nonprofit director was fired for a similar post, and a Buffalo school board member may be ousted for his Obama slurs.)
– Turns out all that fanfare over the end of American Idol was a bit premature. The singing competition is coming back after all, just not on its original network. ABC will revive the show next season after reportedly outbidding NBC and Fox (which canceled it last year due in part to flagging ratings), Entertainment Weekly reports. In its official announcement, ABC got in a couple little digs at Fox: "American Idol is a pop-culture staple that left the air too soon," says ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey. "ABC is the right home to reignite the fan base." "Idol is an entertainment icon, and now it will air where it belongs, in ABC’s lineup of addictive fan favorites," adds Disney co-chairman Ben Sherwood (Disney owns ABC). "America, get ready for the return of a bigger, bolder, and better-than-ever Idol." The network does not yet have a host or judges lined up, though TMZ reports Ryan Seacrest might be interested in returning as host. The speculation is that ABC will launch a shortened season, starting next spring, on Sunday nights, USA Today reports. How excited is the general public? Well, not very. "American Idol is back by popular demand! ..oh wait there was no demand? Oh okay. American Idol is just back then," reads one tweet. Another: "Not real sure why anyone thinks bringing American Idol back is a good idea. Go ahead and keep it, we're good." Meanwhile, Jezebel compares the show to "that strange rash on your elbow that miraculously went away but then resurfaces."
– The CEO of the company that made the rifle used in the Parkland mass shooting says the firm "shares the nation's grief"—but it hasn't changed its mind about gun laws. "We share the nation’s grief over this incomprehensible and senseless loss of life, and we share the desire to make our community safer,” James Debney, CEO of American Outdoor Brands, said when announcing the firm's latest results Thursday, per the Guardian. He said the company, formerly known as Smith & Wesson, would seek "effective solutions" to safety issues, while still "protecting the rights of the law-abiding firearm owner." Debney is a strong supporter of the NRA, though he has said he never fired a gun before becoming CEO of a gun-maker. Debney blamed "challenging market conditions" for falling sales and a collapse in profits, Bloomberg reports. He added, however, that after the Parkland shooting, there had been "increased foot traffic" to gun stores, leading to "some increased sales," Reuters reports. "We will operate our business under the assumption that the next 12 to 18 months could deliver flattish revenues," said Debney, announcing that the company had cut its profits forecast and sales targets. In after-hours trading, the company's stock, already down more than 50% over the last 12 months, fell 12%. (The GOP is "flummoxed" by President Trump's push for gun control.)
– Mitochondrial diseases afflict an estimated one in 4,000 people, most notably in the recent high-profile case of Charlie Gard in the UK, whose parents unsuccessfully sought to transport him to the US for experimental treatment. The fault lies in mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from mothers and is responsible for powering every cell in the body, per Quartz. Now a 5-month-old baby in Michigan has been diagnosed with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome 13, which claimed the life of Gard last week. His parents will attempt experimental treatment in Boston, they tell NewsChannel3. With only a 50% chance of reaching his second birthday, they say at least their baby might "help other children with this condition." Russell Cruzan III, or "Bubs," first worried his parents in early June, when they wondered why he wasn't eating or thriving and was lethargic. After several hospital visits, respiratory problems, and eventually pneumonia, they got the grim diagnosis: His body lacked the energy to power his major organs. The couple doesn't have help from their insurance provider, per WOOD TV, so they've set up a YouCaring page to help with the initial test. This is the type of disease that geneticists hope to be able to stop in its tracks using so-called three-parent IVF, where a donor egg supplies a healthy set of mitochondrial DNA (37 genes) and the biological mother supplies her egg's nucleus (thousands of genes) without passing on mitochondrial diseases. (A baby was born in Mexico using this technique.)
– Ryan Lochte has won five medals so far in London. If his success translates into endorsement deals, the money might come in the nick of time to save his parents' house: TMZ reports that CitiMortgage is suing to foreclose on their place in Florida. The couple still owe about $240,000 but have stopped making payments. Steven and Ileane Lochte divorced last year, but both are in London for the Games, according to AP. (Ileana made headlines earlier with her "one-night stand" comment, and subsequent walkback, regarding her son's lifestyle.) Click for more on the foreclosure story.
– It's no surprise that Mexico is keeping a very close eye on drug lord Joaquin Guzman after recapturing him for the second time—but that doesn't mean his wife has to like it. In her first public comments about "El Chapo," beauty queen Emma Coronel says she fears he may not survive the "slow torture" of solitary confinement at El Altiplano, the prison he left through a mile-long tunnel last year. "They want to make him pay for his escape. They say that they are not punishing him. Of course they are. They are there with him, watching him in his cell," Coronel says, per the Los Angeles Times. "They don't let him sleep. He has no privacy, not even to go to the restroom." The Telemundo interview with Coronel was recorded in Mexico in mid-February and aired Sunday night, NBC News reports. Coronel—who married Guzman on her 18th birthday eight years ago, when he was 50—has dual American-Mexican citizenship and gave birth to his twin girls in California in 2011. He is believed to have at least 17 other children. Coronel says she only saw her husband twice during his months as a fugitive last year. "He just wanted to have a nice time with his daughters," she says. "To be in peace." She claims to know little of Guzman's drug empire and says she has never seen him use drugs or violence. "He is like any other man—of course he is not violent, not rude," she says. "I have never heard him say a bad word. I have never seen him get excited or be upset at anyone." (When authorities closed in, Guzman temporarily escaped through a door hidden behind a mirror.)
– Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have won a settlement from the News of the World after taking the British tabloid to court for publishing "false and intrusive allegations" that they were breaking up, E! reports. The paper reported the pair had met with a divorce lawyer in LA. The settlement, the amount of which wasn't disclosed, will go to charity. "When the News of the World failed to publicly retract the allegations and apologize for them—thereby leaving their readers in the dark as to the true position—the couple felt they had no alternative than to sue," the couple's lawyer said. To read more about Angelina, who wowed the geeks at Comic-Con in San Diego last night, click here.
– Drugs are likely to blame for the death of Finley Boyle, the 3-year-old Hawaii girl who died a month after going into cardiac arrest during a root canal at a Kailua dentist's office on Dec. 3, according to the official autopsy report. The report says the combination of sedatives and anesthesia Finley received during the procedure probably caused her death, the AP reports. The report noted that Finley was healthy, and ruled out any signs of an underlying heart condition or an allergic reaction. The medical examiner's office ruled the toddler's death an accident, and no charges have been brought against Dr. Lilly Geyer, KHON reports; however, Finley's family has filed a lawsuit claiming Finley was not monitored for 26 minutes while she was under sedation. Geyer's office has since shut down, but Geyer's attorney calls the Boyle family's allegations "unproven." (Meanwhile, a young mother in Hawaii is in a coma following wisdom teeth surgery.)
– It is not your typical lost-hiker story: For one thing, it was a group of 40 hikers who could not find their way down a remote mountain in Kentucky as night fell and freezing temperatures set in, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader. Luckily, they still had phone reception. The group of 37 students and three staffers from La Salle University in Pennsylvania called for help about 7pm yesterday, and rescuers got them off the trail about 3:45am. All were checked out for hypothermia, and only one was admitted to a local hospital. She is expected to be out tomorrow. "It's pretty rough country back in there," one rescuer tells the AP of the Bad Branch Nature Preserve. The main treatment provided by hospital staffers was, yep, chicken soup. "The other thing was loaning them cellphones so that they could call their parents," says a hospital official. "That was an emotional time." The students are in the area to build houses for Project Appalachia.
– In some cities, it's a joy to own a set of wheels to cruise around in; in others, you're better off hawking your car on Craigslist and taking the bus, per CBS News. A SmartAsset analysis examined seven driving-related factors (including non-driving options, hours that commuters spend in traffic, and the number of parking garages and repair shops) in America's 100 largest cities to come up with the country's worst cities in which to own a car—and they're pretty much all huddled along the coasts. Here, the worst five: Newark, NJ San Francisco Washington, DC Oakland, Calif. Arlington, Va. Check out other cities on the list here. (Related: the 10 worst US cities for traffic.)
– There are more obese or overweight people in the world today than there were people of any weight in 1935, the most comprehensive look at worldwide obesity in decades warns. The 188-country study found that there are 2.1 billion overweight or obese people in the world, making up around 30% of the world's population, up from 20% in 1980, USA Today reports. Not a single country has recorded a decline in obesity over the last 30 years. "We hoped there would be some examples of success that you could latch onto," a study co-author says. "But there's a complete lack of success stories in bringing down obesity." The study published in British medical journal the Lancet found that the Middle East and north Africa had seen the biggest weight gains, though the US still has the largest number of obese people, with 87 million of the world's 671 million obese people, reports Reuters. Other countries, however, have even higher obesity rates, including Tonga, where more than 50% of all adults are obese. "Two-thirds of the obese population actually resides in developing countries," says one of the researchers; they warn that obesity rates are rising among rich and poor countries, men and women, and adults and children alike.
– A jaguar bite to the neck left a three-year-old boy in critical condition—but he's now "stable and ... expected to improve," the Arkansas Children's Hospital says. The boy was visiting a zoo in Little Rock, Ark., when he fell into the jaguar display, USA Today reports. Hearing calls for help, a zookeeper hurried to the spot to see an animal biting the boy's neck, she told police. Now the boy, whose name hasn't been released, is being treated for injuries to his skull and scalp, police say. The wounds aren't life-threatening, hospital staff say, per THV11. "Zoo staff are trained to use fire extinguishers to safely overwhelm potentially dangerous animals if an incident like this were to occur," an officer says. That's what they did "while other zoo staff lowered a ladder into the exhibit," he notes. "A zoo staffer then climbed into the exhibit and retrieved the child, who was conscious and responding." The boy's father also threw things at the animals, and one such throw prompted the biting animal to let the child go, per the police report.
– The operator of the Little Giggles day care center in Bend, Ore., had a rule: Parents couldn't drop off or collect their children between 11am and 2pm. That was the period January Neatherlin referred to as "nap time"—and when she headed out to go tanning and to CrossFit. The 32-year-old was on Friday sentenced to just north of 21 years in prison after pleading guilty to 11 counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment and one count of third-degree assault. Per court documents, Neatherlin would give the children in her care the sleep aid melatonin and then take off. Her misdeeds didn't end there: the daycare was an illegal one, and she was not a registered nurse, though she told parents otherwise. The Oregonian reports the scheme unraveled after an ex-boyfriend and ex-roommate tipped off police, who began tracking Neatherlin a year ago. They observed her exiting the house on two occasions, leaving alone seven kids, ages 6 months to 4 years, reports the Bend Bulletin. Bend Police Sgt. Devin Lewis testified that "what we saw was shocking." For example, one of the kids left unattended was found covered in damp vomit, and KTVZ reports Lewis feared the child could have possibly suffocated without intervention. Using CrossFit and Tan Republic records, police verified Neatherlin visited those establishments during "nap time" hours. Four of the charges relate to prior incidents, in which Neatherlin was said to have burned a baby with scalding milk; on another occasion, an 11-month-old was taken to a hospital with head injuries. Said the sentencing judge: "It is sheer serendipity and chance that some of those kids were not killed." (This day care is also in the news over alleged melatonin use.)
– With day two of its ground offensive in Gaza under way, Israel says it's discovered 13 tunnels used by Hamas to infiltrate the country or store weapons, reports AP. Israeli tanks and bulldozers are focusing on a strip about a mile wide near the border, looking for both tunnels and rocket pads, reports Reuters. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and two others injured today by Hamas fighters who emerged from one of those tunnels, reports the Washington Post. One Hamas militant also was killed in the firefight. Palestinians, meanwhile, say the death toll from Israeli airstrikes has passed 330, with nearly a quarter of those killed under the age of 18. In other developments: NBC reporter returns: NBC has reversed itself and allowed Ayman Mohyeldin to continue reporting from Gaza, reports AP. The network pulled Mohyeldin for unexplained reasons after he reported on the deaths of four Palestinian children, noting among other things that he had just been kicking around a ball with them. The move set off a social media outcry, especially among fellow journalists, notes Mediaite. The network had nothing but praise for Mohyeldin's "extraordinary reporting" in announcing his return. Analysis: In a New York Times analysis, Jodi Rudoren writes that the "landscape is different" than in years' past for this latest ground offensive, in ways that benefit Israel. This time, Israel "has publicly framed a clear agenda targeting tunnels it says militants built to store weapons or stage attacks on its territory. This time, a weakened Hamas cannot turn to Egypt for respite. This time, Western leaders appear more patient." That could change, however, if the ground offensive expands. Click for the full analysis.
– It looks like a good day for Jay-Z: Sprint is buying a 33% stake in his music-streaming service, Tidal. Billboard reports the deal was for $200 million. Under the terms, Jay-Z and other big-name celebs—including Beyonce, Madonna, and Kanye West—will remain part-owners. Sprint, meanwhile, will be able to provide exclusive music to its customers. The deal may be a life-saver for Tidal, which has been struggling to compete with Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify, reports the New York Times. Its holding company lost about $28 million in 2015. (Jay-Z maintains that having artists own the site is what sets Tidal apart.)
– A Schenectady man confessed this week to the horrendous crime of murdering a retired nun in her own home, reports News10. And the Albany Times Union notes that police caught 38-year-old Michael Briggs thanks in part to a dumb move on his part at the crime scene: He used the toilet and left the seat up. It caught the attention of a detective who wondered why an 82-year-old woman who lived alone would have the seat in that position, and, sure enough, Briggs' fingerprints turned up on the toilet handle. Police had other evidence, including surveillance video that showed him leaving his house with a snow shovel and heading toward the victim's house shortly before she was killed. But the prints (he left some elsewhere, too) put him inside the house, and defense lawyers opted to have him plead guilty. Briggs will get 30 years to life, and the DA doesn't expect he'll ever be a free man again.
– Sean Penn's 2015 Mexican sitdown with drug lord Joaquin Guzman (aka "El Chapo"), which he documented in an early 2016 Rolling Stone article, caused its fair share of controversy. And the ruckus isn't over yet, as the actor is now going after Netflix for a documentary on Guzman, set to start airing Friday, that Penn's spokesman says in an email to the New York Times is a "profoundly false, foolish, and reckless narrative" that could put Penn's life in danger. The actor's main bone of contention with The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate del Castillo Story: that he thinks the three-episode film hints he assisted the DOJ in helping to capture El Chapo, who was busted right around the time Penn's Rolling Stone article went public. Del Castillo, a Mexican actress, was with Penn when he met with Guzman, and the film is said to take place from her POV. Producer David Broome denies there's anything in the film that says Penn "is in cahoots" with the Justice Department and that both he and Netflix tried to see if Penn wanted to take part (Penn reportedly never answered); Netflix backs that up, saying in a statement "Penn was given the opportunity on multiple occasions to participate." Broome says when Penn saw an advance copy of the film, he demanded changes. Deadline notes that Penn's lawyers contacted Netflix shortly after and said Penn was afraid Guzman's associates might go after him if the film wasn't altered. A letter from Penn's lawyer to Netflix notes that "blood will be on [Netflix's] hands if this film causes bodily harm" to Penn. (In the end, Penn thought his Rolling Stone article on El Chapo was a failure.)
– A lifeguard on Australia's Gold Coast saved a 10-year-old boy from rough waters Thursday, except it wasn't just any 10-year-old boy: It was Denmark's Prince Christian, on vacation with his family, 7 News Australia reports. The young heir to the throne was caught in a riptide at Queensland's Mermaid Beach, and when Nick Malcolm saw the boy struggling, he dove into the ocean, per the Telegraph. Chief lifeguard Warren Young says that Christian, the son of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, was a "good little swimmer" who was hanging out in the lifeguard-monitored area between beach flags and who didn't freak out as he started getting dragged into deeper waters. Malcolm paddled out on his board, pulled the boy up, and brought him back to shore. "We got [the prince] before it got too serious, but he wouldn't have come back in" without Malcolm, another of the lifeguard's supervisors tells 7 News. Prince Frederik, who had been swimming nearby with Princess Mary and Christian's three siblings, personally thanked Malcolm, a native New Zealander, the Times notes. But Malcolm didn't realize at first who was doing the thanking. "He didn't know who it was until someone said, 'Oh, that was the royal family from Denmark,' and Nick said, 'Oh, OK,'" Young tells the Telegraph. This wasn't Malcolm's first beach save, either: In January 2014, he pulled a 68-year-old tourist from the water and helped with lifesaving efforts until medics arrived, the Brisbane Times reports. (A Florida lifeguard was fired for saving a drowning man.)
– Apple finally responded to the accusations that it was tracking iPhone users’ locations today, saying it “has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.” In a statement, which you can read on TechCrunch, the company explained that it was actually keeping a log not of the phone’s location, but of the location of WiFi hotspots and cell towers, “some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone.” The data is used to more quickly triangulate users’ position when they use location-based services, and is sent to Apple anonymously. But the company did admit to some “bugs” in the software—like that it keeps collecting data even after you’ve turned Location Services off, and that it stored years of data, instead of the week's worth it needs—and promised an iOS update to fix them. And, just to add some positive news to the cycle, it also announced that the rumored white iPhone will be available tomorrow, Time reports.
– A 16-year-old girl died Friday after being thrown from a carnival ride at a church festival in El Paso, Texas, the El Paso Times reports. According to ABC News, three teen girls were aboard the Sizzler when something went wrong. Two of the girls were flung from the ride; the third managed to stay on by hooking her arms around a handle bar, her father tells KFOX. The 16-year-old hit a metal barricade after being ejected from the ride and died at the hospital. The second teen who was thrown from the ride was also hospitalized with unspecified injuries. The festival was being held at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in celebration of Dia De Los Niños. The three girls were the only ones on the ride at the time of the accident. An investigation into the incident is ongoing, and it's unclear what caused the teens to be thrown from the ride. "There's inspections that are required, whether or not this vendor has been up to par with that hasn't been determined," a police spokesperson tells KFOX. But the aunt of the girl who wasn't thrown from the Sizzler tells KTSM the teens complained to the ride operator that their seat belt wouldn't buckle. She says he told them it would be OK. In 2005, there were approximately 200 Sizzlers—which spin around a central point while also spinning riders in their seats—in the US. The ride has previously been responsible for deaths in Arkansas, Colorado, and elsewhere.
– When customers order an heirloom pet teepee, Charles Manson necklace, or vinyl Gorillaz wall clock from Etsy, they expect it to be lovingly handmade or authentically vintage, perhaps even customized and made from ecologically sound materials. But critics of the site are claiming that sellers are increasingly taking to mass production or even reselling cheap items from overseas—a move that many see as undermining the crafts giant's authenticity and credibility, the New York Times reports. And although execs from the online marketplace didn't grant interviews with the Times ahead of its potential IPO, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson notes in the IPO prospectus that there have been complaints about sellers working with outside manufacturers and "diluting our handmade ethos," he notes. "After all, Etsy has always served as an antidote to mass manufacturing. We still do." Etsy used to ban sellers from outsourcing manufacturing or hiring employees to keep up with demand, the Times notes—until Dickerson relaxed the rules in 2013, as long as certain criteria were met. Alicia Shaffer's Etsy shop has been featured on Yahoo and in Fast Company as one of Etsy's biggest success stories; she tells the Times that while she understands why people are skeptical about her high-volume output, she follows all of Etsy's guidelines, hiring a couple dozen local seamstresses to help her out. But Grace Dobush, an ex-Etsy seller, tells the Times that "as Etsy has gotten bigger, it’s gotten more like eBay." In an essay last month for Wired, Dobush notes the "pages of crap" shoppers have to filter through and a seeming disinterest on Etsy's part to purge resellers. "At its outset … we were a bunch of Davids, fighting back against the big-box Goliaths with artisanal slingshots. … In the past few years it's become apparent that Etsy is the Goliath." (Click to read about Etsy's "haunted doll" market.)
– One of the most infamous figures in Bitcoin history has endured death threats, interrogations, and a year in solitary at a Tokyo jail. Now Mark Karpelès is telling his full story for the first time. "I think this really is the worst experience for anyone to have in life," he tells Fortune. "But based on the information I had at the time ... I still think that I've done the best I could." To recap: Karpelès was CEO of Mt. Gox, the world's biggest Bitcoin exchange, when an apparent $473 million hack forced it to declare bankruptcy in 2014. Karpelès says he then found 200,000 missing Bitcoins in an archived file, but critics said he was just dangling his secret stash to appease creditors. Perhaps worse, leaked records indicate that Mt. Gox had fraudulently inflated its numbers to stay afloat. For that, the Frenchman was arrested by Japanese police in 2015. He denied everything during months of interrogations, he says, and lost 70 pounds in his cell. Now free while on trial for embezzlement and other charges, he was partly vindicated when Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik was arrested for allegedly laundering most of the hacked Mt. Gox Bitcoins. But they remain lost, and the sharp rise in Bitcoin value only complicates matters because Japanese bankruptcy law would give most of it to Karpelès—who wrote on Reddit that he'd pass on what could be worth over a billion dollars, Business Insider reported. "The only thing I'm touching related to cryptocurrency is how to solve this bankruptcy," he tells Fortune. "Bitcoin right now is, I believe, doomed." (A suspected Bitcoin thief broke out of a low-security prison and flew home to Sweden.)
– Georgia Tech says it's investigating an ill-advised mass email within a fraternity that explained how to treat women at parties: essentially, get them drunk and into bed, reports WSB-TV. What's caught the attention of most critics is the signoff by an unnamed member of Phi Kappa Tau: "In luring rapebait." And among its gems: "If anything ever fails, go get more alcohol." (You can read it in full at TotalFratMove, but be warned, it's as raunchy as you might expect.) The frat issued a statement calling the email "extremely inappropriate" and said its writer had been suspended. The campus chapter also placed itself on suspension pending the school investigation. Aren't frat brothers supposed to help each other out, wonders Maureen Downey at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution? "With all those new best friends, couldn't someone warn them that they were about to make a mistake they'd never live down?"
– More aftermath following the conviction of Stanford swimmer Brock Turner on sexual assault charges, including new allegations of previous troubling behavior he showed toward women—with prosecutors noting he was "on the prowl" the night of the attack and was still in denial as of his sentencing that his actions were criminal, ABC News reports. Per sentencing documents, a woman at a party the same night Turner attacked his victim alleges he became sexually aggressive toward her, grabbing her and kissing her, without encouragement. And in June 2015, investigators got wind about two other women who ran into Turner at a frat party the weekend before the January assault. One said he was "flirtatious" while dancing, and that when she began to feel "creeped out" and tried to turn away, he became "touchy." Meanwhile, a Turner supporter facing backlash for calling out the victim's drinking issued a "defensive apology" to the Guardian Wednesday. In her statement, Leslie Rasmussen says people "misconstrued" her defense of Turner into meaning she didn't feel for the victim, a "distortion" she blames on the "overzealous nature of social media" and, per the New York Times, the fact that she mistakenly thought her court letter would be kept private. "I apologize for anything my statement has done to suggest that I don't feel enormous sympathy for the victim and her suffering," she said. The Guardian notes that after its own article was posted with her apology, she wrote a follow-up on Facebook. "I was not there that night. I had no right to make any assumptions about the situation," she wrote Wednesday evening. "Most importantly, I did not acknowledge strongly enough the severity of Brock's crime and the suffering and pain that his victim endured, and for that lack of acknowledgement, I am deeply sorry." She adds that, at the age of 20, "it has never been more clear to me that I still have much to learn." (New York explains why Turner isn't "technically" a convicted rapist.)
– Yesterday, Comedy Central announced that Trevor Noah would be taking over the Daily Show, a fresh, biracial—albeit male—face to add to the late-night pantheon. But that was yesterday. Today, there's a tempest brewing over Noah's Twitter account, in which he says things like this, as spotted by Buzzfeed's Tom Gara: @Trevornoah: "'Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I'm sexy!" - fat chicks everywhere." @Trevornoah: "Messi gets the ball and the real players try foul him, but Messi doesn't go down easy, just like jewish chicks. # ElClasico " @Trevornoah: "So now that Adele is singing, does that mean it's over?" @Trevornoah: "In Thailand hookers are so cheap, even cheaper than food. Tough choice between Big Mac or Quarter Poundher Deluxe." @Trevornoah: "Originally when men proposed they went down on one knee so if the woman said no they were in the perfect uppercut position." Reactions ranged from those accusing Noah of misogyny and anti-Semitism to those accusing him of just being lame, notes the New York Times. Comedy Central, though, stood by him. Noah "pushes boundaries; he is provocative and spares no one, himself included,” says a statement. "To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair." Roseanne Barr, for one, tweeted that "U should cease sexist & anti semitic 'humor' about jewish women & Israel," reports Politico. Noah himself responded this morning in a quickly deleted tweet: "Twitter does not have enough characters to respond to all the characters on Twitter." In a Slate piece, Jessica Winter writes that while, sure, "Twitter is a space for comics to try out material that isn't fully baked," and Noah by no means has the monopoly on misogyny in comedy, "the problem is that Noah’s jokes are so annihilatingly stupid. Are they even jokes? Are they meta-jokes, like the “My arms are so tired” airplane joke he made on his first Daily Show appearance? Or did he mean that as a joke, too?!? Trevor Noah: ontological mystery."
– A "gun joke" involving palace sis-in-law Pippa Middleton is causing a royal stir. The driver of a car that Pippa, 28, was riding in smilingly pointed what looked like a gun at pestering paparazzi in Paris over the weekend. Now he says he was just goofing around, and the gun wasn't real. "It was not a real gun. It was just a stupid joke," said a representative. The French aren't laughing, though, especially in the wake of the shocking shootings in Toulouse last month. Paris authorities warned that everyone in the car (including grinning Pippa) could face arrest and even two years in prison. "Anybody involved in the illegal use of a handgun in public is liable to arrest and interrogation," a source told the Sun. But so far, no one has filed a complaint, and the "targeted" photographer didn't feel threatened, reports ABC. The driver hasn't yet been identified. Her Royal Hotness was in the front passenger's seat, and sitting in the back were two men, including aristocrat fashion designer Viscount Arthur de Soultrait, whose wild birthday party Pippa attended (for photos, check here). Buckingham Palace reps are keeping mum, saying Pippa is a "private individual" and not their concern.
– Nestle extracted roughly 32 million gallons of water from Southern California's San Bernardino National Forest in 2016 and sold it as Arrowhead bottled water. An investigation has determined the company's permits only allow it to take about 8.5 million gallons per year. The AP reports the news is being hailed by opponents to Nestle's action—and by Nestle. The company reportedly described itself as pleased that the State Water Resources Control Board's report confirms it has the right to access "a significant amount" of water. "We will continue to operate lawfully according to these existing rights and will comply fully with California law," Nestle said in a statement. The longer view isn't quite as favorable sounding: NPR reports that between 1947 and 2015, Nestle extracted an average 62.6 million gallons annually, with the rights unchanged at 8.5 million. Nestle told the state its claim to the water dates to an 1865 claim held by the owner of the Arrowhead Springs Hotel; the board found that claim was limited to "riparian"—meaning at the water's origin—use "and is not valid for Nestle’s current appropriative diversion and use of water" from the forest. The company was notified of the findings—the result of an investigation begun in 2016 and borne from complaints spurred by the state's drought—on Dec. 20. A letter accompanying the findings recommended that Nestle immediately halt unauthorized distributions and outlined steps it recommends the company take over the next 18 months.
– Physical anthropologist John Verano has seen plenty while working in Peru over the last 30 years. What he came across this summer in the village of Huanchaquito, however, is "not what we've seen before, especially on the coast," he says. Locals noticed bones poking out of a sandy ridge in 2011, and Peruvian archaeologist Gabriel Prieto went to investigate. He was greeted with a shock: the remains of 42 children and 76 llamas sacrificed some 600 years ago in a ritual by the Chimú, who controlled part of coastal Peru from around 1100 until they were overthrown by the Inca in 1470, Phys.org reports. Verano and Prieto's expansion of the dig this summer added to the "exciting discovery" as even more remains were found. "It's not a place where you'd think to look," Tulane University's Verano says of the site, about 100 yards from a beach. He notes erosion and construction nearby helped reveal the forgotten remains. While Verano has come across the bodies of adults captured and killed in Peru, children are a rarity, he says. He explains the children may have been killed as a gift to the sea. (As Prieto explained to National Geographic in 2011, "In the north coast of Peru, the ocean is very closely tied to agriculture because the temperature of the water can determine whether there will be rain or not.") As for the llamas, the Chimú may have believed they would transport the children to the afterlife. The discovered bones and teeth are now being analyzed. (Other recent Peruvian discoveries include the world's highest Ice Age camp and ancient designs in the desert.)
– Hillary Clinton on Wednesday came out against a major trade deal supported by the White House known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even though she supported it in its early stages as secretary of state and later praised it in a memoir. An honest change of heart? An NBC political analysis has a much different take: "This flip-flop isn't believable at all." It's all about "protecting her left flank" against Bernie Sanders and gaining favor with organized labor. Clinton says she made her decision based on new details about the TPP, but the NBC post says her newfound "opposition is so unbelievable, it feeds every negative stereotype about her—despite the short-term political benefits." One of those stereotypes? That she puts polls ahead of policy. At Vox, Ezra Klein writes that Clinton has provided critics with plenty of fodder on that front over the years. In this case, "knowing Clinton's record, her advisers, and her past comments about the deal, it's hard to believe Clinton really opposes the TPP deal." So, yes, she might gain ground with the left, but these types of "convenient policy changes" undermine her greatest strength: "that she's an extraordinary policy mind who understands these issues better than her challengers, and so can be trusted to make better decisions on them." Click for the full NBC post, or for Klein's full post.)
– Christopher "Big Black" Boykin, star of MTV reality show Rob & Big, died Tuesday of an apparent heart attack at the age of 45, TMZ reports. “He was a long time and beloved member of the MTV family and will be greatly missed," Variety quotes MTV as saying in a statement. Rob & Big ran from 2006 to 2008 with Boykin appearing as best friend, bodyguard, and roommate to professional skateboarder Rob Dyrdek. The show chronicled various shenanigans, including adopting a mini horse, breaking Guinness World Records, and snaring people with net guns. "We truly were brothers that lived an unexpected unforgettable adventure," Dyrdek tweeted. "I just can't fathom that it would end so suddenly." Boykin, a veteran of the Navy, also started his own clothing line based on his catchphrase, "Do work." He's survived by a 9-year-old daughter.
– As a well-known media personality in Israel and the wife of one of the country's most powerful politicians, Judy Shalom Nir-Mozes has a lot of Twitter followers—and a lot of people to offend when she does something like tweet a racist joke about another country's leader. "Do you know what Obama coffee is? Black and weak," she tweeted yesterday, quickly drawing responses like, "Have you gone mad?" reports the Guardian. She quickly deleted the offending post, tweeting "I shouldnt have written the inappropriate joke I heard. I like people no matter about their race and religion." Nir-Mozes, whose husband is Interior Minister Silvan Shalom, apologized for repeating the joke and quipped that her husband might leave her, the Guardian reports. Last month, Nir-Mozes deleted another tweet sent soon after President Obama launched his Twitter account, the Times of Israel reports. "@POTUS well come, I hope u 'll write from The hurt of barack, and not from the head of Rrsedent Obama. Kisses from israel," she wrote, apparently meaning "heart" instead of "hurt."
– Washington, DC, appears poised to become the first municipality in the nation to let 16-year-olds vote in national elections, including presidential races. A measure to lower the voting age from 18 to 16 cleared a committee last week and now heads to the full council, reports WTOP. To pass, it needs the support of a majority of the 13-member city council, and WJLA reports that eight members already have voiced their approval. While a handful of US cities allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections, none grants the right in national elections. DC has an estimated 10,000 teens of that age, most of them minorities, per WJLA. “At the age of 16, your legal relationship with the government changes,” says council member Charles Allen, who introduced the measure. He points out that many 16-year-olds get jobs and begin paying taxes, and they also start driving. "Ironically, they pay fees to get a license plate that reads ‘End Taxation Without Representation.’ I think it’s time to change that.” Allen says he was inspired in part by the youth political movement that surfaced after school shootings. If passed by the council and signed by the mayor, the measure must undergo a 30-day congressional review period. (One leader of the youth political movement has big plans for himself by the age of 25.)
– A small stone tool unearthed in eastern Oregon appears to be so ancient that the history of humans in the area may have to be rewritten, archaeologists say. The agate scraper found at a rock shelter was below a 15,800-year-old layer of ash from Mount St. Helens, making it potentially older than any other evidence of human occupation west of the Rocky Mountains, reports the AP. Analysis of the tool—which is made from orange agate not usually found in the area—revealed it had been used to butcher an animal believed to be the extinct buffalo species Bison antiquus, KTVZ reports. University of Oregon archaeologist Patrick O'Grady says the team plans to keep excavating the site after the "tantalizing" find, which may be older than any other find predating the Clovis people once thought to be the first in North America, NBC News reports. University of Washington professor of archaeology Donald K. Grayson, however, predicts there will be a lot of skepticism about the find. "No one is going to believe this until it is shown there was no break in that ash layer, that the artifact could not have worked its way down from higher up, and until it is published in a convincing way," he tells the AP. "Until then, extreme skepticism is all they are going to get." (Experts believe they have found evidence of a long-lost civilization in the Honduran rainforest.)
– On Thanksgiving Day, Paige Warner and her family flew to Honolulu for the 11-year-old's first trip to Hawaii. She "was so excited," recounts mom Karin Carpenter, who explains that after a holiday dinner of white rice and soy sauce—Paige had "extensive" food allergies—her daughter got into the pool with her sister. Fewer than 15 minutes later, she was out of the pool, complaining of a stinging nose. Her condition quickly snowballed into something much more serious, involving difficulty breathing, and she was taken to the ER. On Dec. 4, after a week in a coma, the girl from Roseville, Calif., was taken off life support; it's still unclear what triggered the reaction, reports KTLA. As Carpenter writes on a GoFundMe page, she speculates about possible contributing factors: the plane, entering an environment full of allergens that were new to her, the area's large feral cat population, pesticide runoff in the pool from an adjacent golf course, or a bronchial spasm caused by the pool's temperature. The family is "devastated," but sister Violet is bringing healing, insisting that the family hang its Christmas decorations because Paige "loves Christmas." The GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $30,000 to date. The most heart-tugging line on the page, from Carpenter's description of the events immediately after Paige got out of the pool: "She looked into my eyes and screamed, and said, 'Mom, I'm dying. I know I am because I can see it in your eyes.'" (A teen's allergic reaction recently caused her to "burn from the inside out.")
– What a California drug task force probably expected to find when it raided a Mendocino County pot farm: pot. What it probably didn't expect to find: Bowe Bergdahl. The US soldier, charged with desertion after he went missing in Afghanistan and was held by the Taliban for five years, was one of the people present Tuesday when sheriff's deputies rushed the Redwood Valley site and rounded up 181 marijuana plants, the New York Daily News reports. Bergdahl had been staying with "old friends" on the property since Friday while on approved leave from the Army, the Anderson Valley Advertiser reports. He "apparently had no connection to the dope grow," the paper adds, and wasn't charged. By all accounts, Bergdahl was courteous and cooperative during the raid, with the Mendocino County sheriff telling the Advertiser that the soldier was "above politeness." "I'm not sticking up for the guy at all, but I will say this, he was very polite," the sheriff says, per the Daily News. "He was not resistant at all. He shook everybody's hand. He thanked us all." And even though he wasn't implicated in any crime, Bergdahl's high profile prompted authorities to make calls "all the way up to the Pentagon," which sent an Army major to bring Bergdahl back to his Texas base; he had been scheduled to return Wednesday. Bergdahl is currently awaiting a hearing to see if he'll face a court-martial. (Bergdahl has described his brutal treatment in captivity.)
– Vili Fualaau says he and wife Mary Kay Letourneau are still in love, despite the fact that he recently filed for legal separation. Fualaau says he's only separating from Letourneau—who spent more than seven years in prison for having sex with Fualaau when he was her 12-year-old student and who is still a registered sex offender—to protect his business interests. He's looking to become a licensed marijuana cigarette distributor, he tells Radar, and "when you want to get licensed, they do background checks on both parties ... I have to be licensed and I have to be vetted and so does a spouse. She has a past. She has a history." He says the couple is still in love. Meanwhile, TMZ reports that Letourneau has filed what the gossip site calls "a bizarre petition" to have her husband's separation filing dismissed.
– Sobering stats out of the CDC Friday show that 37 kids have perished from the respiratory illness as of last Saturday—and the flu season is on track to be one of the worst in 15 years, the Washington Post reports. Nearly 12,000 people have required hospitalization so far, and flu activity was said to be high or even "extreme" in 39 states, as well as New York City and Puerto Rico. Health officials say the final pediatric death toll might exceed the 148 deaths recorded in the 2014-15 season. More details and developments: NBC News reports the death toll may be even higher than what's been reported, and Dr. John Williams, head of pediatric infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, notes "we probably haven't peaked yet." Although NBC adds that influenza usually isn't cause for too much alarm with prompt and proper treatment, it cites the cases of two children who died this month after experiencing "typical" cold or flu symptoms. The best way to keep your own kids safe, says Williams: Get them vaccinated. Fox 8 Cleveland lists child-specific symptoms parents should look for that might warrant a trip to the doctor, including labored breathing, finding it hard to keep from dozing off, and an unrelenting fever (or one that vanishes, only to reemerge). "It's incredible to think about a normal, healthy child who can succumb to the flu and succumb very, very quickly," a Cleveland Clinic doctor warns.
– With its 1,000th issue (more or less) coming out this week, the Onion isn't just content to be America's top satirical newspaper: It wants a Pulitzer. It's not fussy at all about which Pulitzer—editors have submitted articles to the Pulitzer Board in categories like commentary and public service in the past—but the Onion's editors think its day has finally come, for real this time. “We’re spending all our capital on this,” the Onion's head writer, Seth Reiss, tells the New York Times of the paper's brand-new Pulitzer-focused multimedia campaign. To make its Pulitzer dreams come true, the Onion has enlisted the completely independent and not at all biased nonprofit group Americans for Fairness in Awarding Journalism Prizes, which declares: “Simply put, it’s time for the Pulitzer Board to stop the bias, stop the ignorance, and stop the neglect.” The Onion also claims such diverse supporters as Arianna Huffington (for real) and the president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili (maybe not so real). And there's an online petition, if you care to add your voice to the cause.
– The random woman Conan O’Brien decided to follow on Twitter got a new computer, donations to her cancer walk, and the wedding of her dreams. The random guy Kanye West decided to follow on Twitter just got…annoyed. “Before this weekend I thought it would be cool to have a celebrity following me on Twitter but now I think it’s really not worth it,” 19-year-old Steve Holmes tells the Coventry Telegraph. “It’s crazy. I’m getting messages from people I don’t even know.” His followers jumped from 60 to more than 6,000 and his iPhone “wouldn’t stop bleeping,” so he deleted the Twitter application from it. “A guy wanted me to look at his film trailer and people have been sending me links to their music demos—as if I have some sort of influence over Kanye West,” Holmes says. He’s turned down interviews with outlets including the BBC and CNN, and recently tweeted that he won’t be speaking to any more press.
– Brittany Murphy's autopsy is complete, but the LA county coroner's office won't determine an official cause of death until after the completion of toxicology tests, which could take as long as 2 months. The 32-year-old actress, who died yesterday after suffering cardiac arrest, was bleeding internally before her death, a source tells the Los Angeles Times. The body appeared "normal" and not unusually thin, another source tells TMZ.
– For tens of thousands of years, the secrets of France's Bruniquel Cave went unknown, its mouth closed off by a rock slide. That began to change in the late '80s, the Atlantic reports, when a boy named Bruno Kowalsczewski started clearing away what obstructed the opening; three years later, in 1990, the then-15-year-old's 100-foot path allowed local cavers entry. One caver made it more than 1,000 feet in and found something wild: two stone rings up to 16 inches high intentionally made from pieces of chopped-up stalagmites (pillar-shaped mineral deposits that stick up from the ground), probably by Neanderthals some 176,500 years ago, scientists now say. A press release notes "until now the oldest formally proven cave use dated back only 38,000 years." While previous research had suggested the structures predated the arrival of modern humans in Europe around 45,000 years ago, the AP reports the notion that Neanderthals could have made them didn't fit long-held assumptions that these early humans were incapable of the kind of complex behavior necessary to work underground. "Their presence at [1,102 feet] from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity," the researchers concluded in a study published online Wednesday by the journal Nature. The authors said the purpose of the oval structures—measuring 172 square feet and 25 square feet—is still a matter of speculation, though they may have served some symbolic or ritual purpose.
– Is Justin Bieber's short-lived redemption tour already over? A Mexican official tells the AP Bieber and his entourage were asked to leave the Mayan archaeological site of Tulum after the singer apparently tried to climb onto the ruins on Thursday. Visitors can climb some pre-Hispanic pyramids in Mexico, but officials rope off or place 'no entry' signs on some ruins that are considered vulnerable or unstable. Per the CBC, the ruins Bieber tried to climb were clearly cordoned off, and he and his security team got into a "shouting match" with staff after Bieber was asked to stop, culminating in Bieber "pulling down his underpants." Per the Sun, Biebs was drunk at the time.
– If you've ever found yourself struggling through a so-called "classic" book only to find yourself thinking, "How racist/sexist/boring," you're not alone. The editors of GQ, along with some current authors, have put together a list of 21 such books (technically 20, because one of them got two votes) that are simply outdated and should be struck from the "Great Books" canon. The list got itself mentioned on Fox & Friends last weekend, and not in a good way—it includes the Bible, which Jesse Ball calls "repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned," leading Fox News religion contributor Father Jonathan Morris to push back by calling its inclusion on the list "foolish," USA Today reports. Lots of social media users also decried the choice, and evangelist Franklin Graham said the editors "couldn't be more wrong." As for what else made the list, here's a sampling—along with the books the editors and the authors they spoke to think you should read instead: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: This is the book that got two votes. "Mark Twain was a racist. ... He was a man of his time, so let's leave him there," writes Tommy Orange. Instead, he suggests reading The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis; Caity Weaver suggests Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
– The top speed of a giant tortoise on dry land, according to Gizmodo, is about 0.17mph. That turned out to be great news for Japan's Shibukawa Animal Park, which had a 121-pound Aldabra giant tortoise named Abuh escape earlier this month. Channel News Asia reports Abuh is allowed to wander around the zoo during operating hours. But on Aug. 1, the 35-year-old tortoise wandered right on out, according to the Asahi Shimbun. Aldabra giant tortoises can survive for months without food or water, but the zoo was anxious to have Abuh back and was offering a $4,500 reward for her safe return. The Asahi Shimbun reports Abuh was returned Wednesday after a family spotted her on a steep hill in a forest 160 feet or so from the zoo. But Channel News Asia states the tortoise was found in some bushes nearly 500 feet from the zoo. Regardless, Abuh didn't make it far. The zoo says she appears healthy and has been eating pears and watermelon since her return. "We were so relieved that she came back safely as she is so popular among children," zoo staffer Yoshimi Yamane says, per Gizmodo. Yamane says the zoo will try to take steps to prevent Abuh from escaping in the future, as this was actually her second disappearing act in a month.
– You probably wash your hands after using the airport bathroom—but what about after going through the security line? You might want to start, because a new study from the UK's University of Nottingham and the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare found that those trays you put your belongings in as you go through security had more cold germs on them than airport toilets, the New York Times reports. Researchers analyzed a variety of surfaces at Finland's Helsinki-Vantaa airport during peak flu season in 2015-16 and found evidence of respiratory viruses (including the common cold, influenza, and others) on 10% of them, CNN reports. But researchers highlight the security trays as the biggest risk, with 50% of them having respiratory virus germs on them. Respiratory virus germs were also found on surfaces in the children's play area, payment terminals, stair handrails, and a desk and divider glass at the passport check area. No respiratory virus germs were found on toilets—a finding referred to as "interesting" in a press release. "People can help to minimize contagion by hygienic hand washing and coughing into a hankerchief, tissue or sleeve at all times but especially in public places," says a researcher. "These simple precautions can help prevent pandemics and are most important in crowded areas like airports that have a high volume of people travelling to and from many different parts of the world." Researchers also suggest airports install hand sanitization stations near areas of "intense, repeat touching of surfaces."
– Today in the ugly lawsuit department: Walmart and the Walton family are suing for the rights to photo negatives, some half-a-century old, in what has been classified as "a total David vs. Goliath situation." The story goes like this: Robert Huff—who owned a photography studio in Fayetteville, Ark., near where Sam Walton and his family lived—and son David snapped hundreds of shots of the Waltons over the years. Now, the Waltons want total control over them. They're suing David's widow, Helen Huff, for all negatives, proofs, and prints of the photos, dating from 1950 to 1994, to prevent them from being used for commercial purposes, the Washington Post reports. Walmart and the family intend to use some of the photos—of its founder, the original Walmart board of directors, and the Walmart visitor's center—in the Walmart Museum, and argue the material was only kept by the studio "as a courtesy," the Professional Photographers of America notes. The Post and the Arkansas Times explain the question at the center of the case: When the photos were snapped, who was the boss? Huff says her husband and father-in-law were independent contractors who used their own equipment and managed all the aspects of the shoots and film processing; the Waltons claim the shoots occurred under their "supervision," making it an employer-employee relationship. The case will be heard in Arkansas federal court July 7. (Click to read about how Walmart is taking flak for the fees collected by banks that operate within the chain.)
– Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci wasn't on the job for long—but it was long enough to be taken in by an email prankster who impersonated other officials. In emails to Scaramucci, the prankster pretended to be Reince Priebus and may have escalated tensions between the two men, the Guardian reports. After Priebus was fired as White House chief of staff, his impersonator told Scaramucci: "General Kelly will do a fine job. I'll even admit he will do a better job than me. But the way in which that transition has come about has been diabolical. And hurtful." Scaramucci replied: "You know what you did. We all do. Even today. But rest assured we were prepared. A Man would apologize." "I can't believe you are questioning my ethics! The so called 'Mooch,' who can’t even manage his first week in the White House without leaving upset in his wake," the fake Priebus wrote. The real Scaramucci replied: "Read Shakespeare. Particularly Othello ... I know what you did. No more replies from me." In other emails, the prankster—who describes himself as a "lazy anarchist" and uses the Twitter handle @SINON_REBORN—convinces Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert he is Jared Kushner, convinces Scaramucci that he is Ambassador to Russia-designate Jon Huntsman Jr., and convinces Huntsman that he is Eric Trump, CNN reports. The White House says it is investigating.
– It's "extremely likely" that sea levels rose faster in the 20th century than at any other time in the previous 2,700 years "and the rise over the last two decades has been even faster," scientists say. A new study—based on "reconstructions" of past sea levels from 24 areas around the world, plus tide gauges—finds global sea levels were steady for almost three millennia before they began to rise with the Industrial Revolution, reports USA Today. "We can say with 95% probability that the 20th-century rise was faster than any of the previous 27 centuries," the lead author tells the Washington Post. Sea levels rose 5.5 inches from 1900 to 2000, or about 1.4 millimeters per year. NASA puts the current rate at 3.4 millimeters per year. Scientists expect sea levels to rise between 9.5 inches and 2 feet by 2100—if we stick to the climate treaty agreed upon in Paris. But a high emissions scenario could see seas rise by more than 4 feet. Another study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences seconds that finding but notes researchers didn't consider the collapse of glaciers of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which "is hypothesized to be already underway." There's no surprise why: Humans burned fossil fuels, which produced greenhouse gases, which melted glaciers and warmed ocean waters, scientists say. If not for humans, sea levels might not have risen at all and thousands of coastal "nuisance" floods in the US would have been avoided, according to Climate Central. (Some 316 US cities may be partially submerged by 2100.)
– Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro's 19,300 feet is tough enough for most people. But Spencer West just spent seven days climbing to the top on his hands, reports ABC News. West, who lost both his legs when he was 5 years old, estimates he did 80% of the climb on his own, taking about 20,000 "steps" to make it to the top. (He used a wheelchair on easier terrain, and was carried over the few patches that were too tough, notes the Toronto Star.) "It's literally climbing the largest mountain on Africa on your hands," he said. "I don't know if it can get much more challenging than that." Born with a genetic disorder called sacral agenesis, doctors amputated West's legs below the pelvis when he was 5, but he credits his parents with treating him normally and giving him the confidence to tackle any obstacle. West spent a year training for the climb, made to raise $750,000 for Free the Children's clean water program in Kenya (he's raised $500,000 so far). "We all have the ability to redefine what is possible—whether you're missing your legs or not," said West. "Everyone has challenges and challenges can be overcome."
– Police records released yesterday are painting a picture of George Zimmerman's period on bond, and they contain some interesting details. The neighborhood watchman ordered a bulletproof vest and an infrared home security system, the AP reports. A police supply sales representative told officials about the order; Zimmerman told them the gear was for his own safety. He called the infrared device "an extra layer of security at the point of entry at his residence," the records say, via USA Today. Zimmerman wore a GPS ankle device during the period, which he often complained was uncomfortable, prompting authorities to adjust it. He and his wife moved at least three times last year, the records indicate, and he told police the couple would be changing their phone numbers after the media got hold of hers. Meanwhile, in accordance with directions, he phoned police every other day between 10am and noon to check in. At one point, deputies noted a trip to a sporting goods store and checked the store's surveillance video to ensure he hadn't entered the gun section.
– Iowa drivers caught texting while driving under a new law aren't getting tickets. Instead, police are handing out brightly colored thumb bracelets that bear the phrase TXTING KILLS, reports the Wall Street Journal. The idea is to raise awareness, with fines kicking in next year. State employees are also distributing the bracelets at fairs and football games. So far, authorities say they're not having much luck catching drivers in the act. Once a few stops are made, "the kids text out, 'Watch out, put your phones down,'" says a spokesman for the Public Safety office. The Daily Intel blog at New York magazine is a wee bit skeptical of the bracelet approach. "Seriously, have you ever seen a kid in a DARE shirt that wasn't stoned?"
– John Boehner planned a strategy session later today with House Republican leaders to plot their next move, but the prospects of avoiding a government shutdown before Monday's midnight deadline are getting bleaker by the hour, reports Politico. For one thing, no negotiations between Republicans and Democrats are even on the horizon, because both sides feel they've already staked out their positions. The Hill also thinks a shutdown is "increasingly likely," and USA Today has rolled out a primer on what it would mean to ordinary citizens: Yes, you'll get your mail, and neither Medicare, Social Security, nor Medicaid will be affected. But scores of other federal programs and activities will come to a halt: Forget visiting a national park or museum, and expect delays in everything from passport applications to gun permits to mortgage approvals. USA Today estimates that 40% of non-defense federal workers will be furloughed during the shutdown, and the Washington Post has details on how the Pentagon is scrambling to prepare. In short, it's a logistical mess, with about 400,000 civilian employees told they'd have to stay home unless a deal is reached. “The planning itself is disruptive,” says the Defense Department's comptroller. “People are worrying right now about whether their paychecks are going to be delayed, rather than focusing fully on their mission.”
– The friend who found Bobbi Kristina Brown face-down in a bathtub after an overdose has suffered a similar death himself, reports TMZ. Max Lomas was found unresponsive on the floor of a friend's bathroom in Mississippi with a syringe nearby and died at the hospital, according to the website. Lomas played no small role in the case of Brown, the daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. He was the one who actually pulled the 22-year-old from the tub and helped administer CPR until help arrived, notes Page Six. "We were all bad into drugs," Lomas told People in 2016, referring to himself, Brown, and her boyfriend, Nick Gordon. No charges were ever filed after Brown's death in 2015.
– His public push to end sexual violence against children was so significant it reportedly nabbed him a nomination for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. Joel Davis' private actions couldn't have been more contradictory, say police. The 22-year-old Columbia University student, who started Youth to End Sexual Violence before becoming chairman of a group of more than 5,000 human rights organizations, was arrested Tuesday in Manhattan on charges of child pornography and attempting to sexually exploit children, reports the Columbia Spectator. Davis allegedly responded to a post left by an undercover FBI agent on a "fetish" website, per the Washington Post. In a series of text messages, he admitted to past sexual experiences with children as young as infants, including a 13-year-old boy he met in June through the Grindr app, police say. Showing "the highest degree of hypocrisy," Davis also tried to arrange meetings with children supposedly in the care of undercover agents, says the FBI's William F. Sweeney Jr. "As if this wasn't repulsive enough, Davis allegedly possessed and distributed utterly explicit images of innocent infants and toddlers being sexually abused by adults." US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman calls the development "as unfathomable as it is sickening" given that Davis has rubbed elbows with Angelina Jolie, served as a youth ambassador for the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, and is now leading the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence. Davis, who last year described being "tormented by the recollection of my childhood sex abuse" and spoke out about child rape in war zones in a 2014 Huffington Post op-ed, could face up to 70 years in prison.
– Pope Francis was merely praying in a video that some claim shows him performing an exorcism on a Mexican pilgrim, the Vatican says. In the video—broadcast on a TV station owned by the Italian Bishops' Conference—the man convulses and then goes limp after the stern-faced pontiff places his hands on his head, the BBC reports. Exorcists say that no matter what the Vatican claims, the pope was clearly expelling the forces of evil from the man. "The Pope is also the Bishop of Rome, and like any bishop he is also an exorcist," says Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's former chief exorcist. "It was a real exorcism," he says, claiming that the pilgrim was possessed by no fewer than four demons. The pope's frequent references to Satan have fueled suspicion that the incident was an exorcism, but a Vatican spokesman says it was at most a "prayer for liberation," the AP notes.
– Details are still sketchy, but something seriously weird and unpleasant happened aboard an American Airlines flight set to take off from Dallas to Chicago today. Early accounts suggest that one of the flight attendants got on the PA system and began ranting about how the plane was going to crash and about the company's financial troubles, report the Chicago Tribune and Dallas Morning News. At that point, several passengers apparently subdued her. Two other flight attendants suffered injuries in the melee, and the plane returned to the gate. The airline has confirmed that an "incident occurred involving some of the cabin crew" and said it is still investigating, as is the FAA. The Dallas newspaper quotes an email from a passenger to a friend: "The flight attendant went crazy, screaming about 9-11 and crashing. Six men held her down."
– Rahm Emanuel sounds like he wants out of the Obama administration—and Washington altogether. In an interview with Charlie Rose last night, Emanuel confirmed the rumor that he's considering running for mayor of Chicago in 2011. “I hope Mayor Daley seeks reelection. I will work and support him” if he does,” he said. “But if Mayor Daley doesn't, one day I would like to run for mayor … that's always been an aspiration of mine.” “I want to run for office again,” he said, saying he'd missed the contact he'd had with constituents in the House. But Chicago isn't exactly rolling out the welcome mat. “That makes him one of many who aspire to the same goal,” a Richard Daley spokesman tells the Chicago Sun-Times. But hizzoner's brother, William Daley, was more blunt last month, saying Emanuel would have to “get in line.” You can read a transcript of Emanuel's remarks at the Huffington Post.
– An accused child rapist who tried to flee from Maryland to Guatemala was thwarted by bad weather, authorities say. Sergio Morales Soto, 19, was arrested on board a flight at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport the day after the alleged April 4 rape, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. After he was identified as a suspect, police discovered that Soto had boarded an early morning flight in Baltimore, with a connection in Atlanta. Homeland Security officials say flight delays caused by severe weather in the Southeast gave them enough time to catch up with him. Soto was detained in Georgia and put on a plane back to Maryland this week to face six felony assault charges, WSB-TV reports.
– Yes, Wall Street would love to see Mitt Romney win in November, writes Gary Weiss at TheStreet, but Weiss wants to debunk the "conventional wisdom" that the financial services industry and Democrats don't get along. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is a case in point. She's a Democrat running for reelection against a conservative challenger, yet Gillibrand has heavy backing from Wall Street because she is such a strong advocate for it on Capitol Hill. Gillibrand may be the biggest example, but she's far from the only one. "Wall Street can expect plenty of help from both sides of the aisle in the years to come, Democratic platform rhetoric notwithstanding," writes Weiss. "They may be liberals on many subjects, but when it comes to Wall Street, they tow the line. And the Street is not afraid to show its appreciation." Click for Weiss' full column.
– Hillary Clinton has joined Donald Trump in selecting a white man from a swing state who describes himself as "boring" for a running mate—and liberal Democrats, especially Bernie Sanders supporters, aren't exactly fired up about Sen. Tim Kaine. Clinton, however, describes the former Virginia governor as "a lifelong fighter for progressive causes," and both Wall Street donors and labor groups are happy with the choice. Republicans, meanwhile including RNC chief Reince Priebus, were quick to highlight the party divisions. A round-up of reactions: The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is among the groups not happy about Kaine's past support for the big trade deals criticized by Donald Trump. "The mood of the country is a populist one," group co-founder Stephanie Taylor said in a statement to Politico. "Unfortunately, since Tim Kaine voted to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Republicans now have a new opening to attack Democrats on this economic populist issue." Union chiefs expressed their support for Kaine, including Service Employees International Union chief Mary Kay Henry, who called him "an experienced leader with a proven track record on issues from raising wages to immigration reform and racial justice," the Washington Post reports. The Trump campaign wasted no time coming up with a nickname for Kaine: It is calling him "Corrupt Kaine," based on gifts he received as governor, the New York Times reports. "It's only fitting that Hillary Clinton would select an ethically challenged insider like Tim Kaine who’s personally benefited from the rigged system," a Trump spokesman says. Wall Street lobbyists are satisfied with the choice, especially since the other candidates being vetted included Elizabeth Warren. "He's a sign of Hillary being Hippocratic in her pick—he does no harm," a top lobbyist tells Politico. "Time will tell if progressives show real angst or if it’s just fringe groups." The National Organization of Women supports Kaine: "The combination of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine stands in sharp contrast to the turn-back-the-clock, step up the war on women platform of Donald Trump and Mike Pence," NOW President Terry O'Neill said in a statement. "Women know this is the most important election in a generation, and we also know that we have a steadfast advocate in Tim Kaine." Norman Solomon, who says his "Bernie Delegates Network" represents hundreds of Sanders delegates, calls Kaine "a loyal servant of oligarchy." "If Clinton has reached out to Bernie supporters, it appears that she has done so to stick triangulating thumbs in their eyes," he tells the Washington Post. The AP spoke to convention delegates and found that Clinton supporters consider Kaine a "solid" choice who will appeal to a range of voters, while Sanders supporters are deeply unhappy with the choice. It "was a horrible pick," says Angie Morelli, a Sanders delegate from Nevada. "In a time when she is trying to cater to Sanders supporters, it was more catering to conservative voters and she's not going to get any wave from it." USA Today lists some facts about Kaine, who is fluent in Spanish and is one of just 20 people to have been a mayor, a governor and a US senator.
– A month after stunning Hollywood and sparking questions about her mental stability with the news of her retirement, Amanda Bynes wants a do-over. "I've unretired," the 24-year-old on-again-off-again actress tweeted. She's a co-star of the buzzed-about high school comedy Easy A, notes People—and within minutes of "unretiring," Bynes was tweeting about the trailer.
– Virginia's attorney general learned all about the dangers of Twitter yesterday, when he sent out a tweet that made at least one writer think he wanted to "service bin Laden, sexually, in the great beyond." The offending tweet from Ken Cuccinelli: "How much would I give to be one of the 72 Virginans Osama is 'hanging out' with since Sunday?" Of course, some assumed he meant "virgins," which led to quite an uproar, reports the Virginian-Pilot. "Is Cuccinelli a virgin, or was he—perhaps more disturbingly—shooting for 'Virginians' with this tweet?" wondered Jason Linkins on the Huffington Post. Turns out Cuccinelli was, in fact, aiming for "Virginians," in reference to a joke that went around the Internet recently. (Think bin Laden being greeted after death by 72 such names as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, rather than the virgins he expected—read the entire joke here.) Cuccinelli quickly clarified his tweet, and even spelled Virginians correctly the second time around—but apparently didn't pick up on his initial typo.
– A father and former bicycle puller is gearing up for major surgery at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital in Bangladesh to remove more than 11 pounds of bark-like warts on his hands and feet that have earned him the nickname "tree man." The 26-year-old tells AFP he has suffered from what doctors call epidermodysplasia verruciformis for a decade, but that the growths dramatically increased in size and number four years ago. "Slowly I lost all my ability to work," says Abul Bajandar. "There are now dozens of two to three inch roots in both my hands. And there are some small ones in my legs." The genetic skin disease is so rare that one doctor says there are only three known cases in the world. At first Bajandar says he tried to cut the growths off himself but found it too painful, and when he went to a village homeopath his condition worsened. And while the six-person medical team is already starting to perform blood tests and biopsies, they describe Bajandar as too malnourished and weak for multi-stage plastic surgery, reports the Daily Star. "Doctors said I might need to stay here for six months," he said. His mother and sister are with him now, while his wife and 3-year-old daughter will join him soon. "Even here at the hospital, hundreds have already gathered" to try to get a look at Bajander, says his sister. Surgery is expected to start in three weeks, and the hospital is not charging Bajandar. (This baby's skin blisters when simply touched.)
– Kanye West is, apparently, $53 million in debt, but he should be able to pay that off in no time thanks to a GoFundMe campaign started by 36-year-old Minnesotan Jeremy Piatt, CNET reports. "Recently, Kanye let us in on his personal struggle. He is 53 million dollars in debt and it doesn't look like he's going to get Mark Zuckerberg's help that he desperately needs," Piatt writes. "We must open our hearts and wallets for Kanye today. Sure he is personally rich and can buy furs and houses for his family, but without our help, the true genius of Kanye West can't be realized." So far, after just a single day of fundraising, $603 has been raised for Kanye (along with a lot of comments like, "How about you get a job?"). Piatt tells Mashable that he's spoken to GoFundMe, and only Kanye or his team will be able to access any money raised. As for Zuckerberg—West specifically asked him, as well as Larry Page, to donate money to the Kanye cause when he went on his Twitter rant, and then went on to imply that he knows other tech giants who should help him. "All you dudes in San Fran play rap music in your homes but never help the real artists…," he tweeted, followed by, "All you guys had meetings with me and no one lifted a finger to help…." The Guardian did a little investigation into how many "tech guys" Kanye actually knows, and found that he really does have something of an ongoing relationship with Facebook and Apple; has had meetings with investors in Silicon Valley and even had some of them at one of his parties; has had interactions with an Instagram co-founder, the Dropbox chief executive, a co-founder of Rap Genius, and Elon Musk; and is good friends with venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. (Here are some of the dumbest GoFundMe campaigns ever.)
– In a scheme clearly devised to give brick-and-mortar retailers nightmares, Amazon is running a one-day promotion on Dec. 10 in which customers can score up to $15 in discounts for literally walking out of stores. Here's how it works: Download the Amazon Price Check app for your iPhone or Android device, walk into the retailer of your choice on Saturday with the geo-location feature on, scan three things you'd like to buy, and leave. Then, anytime within the next 24 hours you can buy all three from Amazon at 5% off, to a maximum of $5 each. That might not sound like much, but as IntoMobile points out, Amazon's prices are usually lower anyway, so that discount is something of a bonus. Plus, Chris Velazco of TechCrunch notes, it allows customers to see a product in person before buying—something you can't usually do on Amazon.
– Puppy lovers, rejoice. Officials in eastern China last week canceled the Jinhua Hutou Dog Meat Festival. If that name makes you a little queasy—well, there's good reason for that. The 600-year-old tradition saw at least 5,000 of dogs slaughtered on the spot, and served up as the main dish. As the story goes, the festival stemmed from a tradition begun in the 14th century, when the barking dogs that revealed an army's position were fed to the soldiers on the general's angry orders, reports the New York Times. The ancient custom was scuttled following a Web campaign staged by animal-rights advocates, who posted graphic images from past festivals of cooked dogs and leftover carcasses. The People's Daily shares the observations of one blogger, "I've seen the dogs being stabbed, strangled, and even beaten into comas and thrown into boiling water." Some say it's an encouraging sign that, as pet ownership gains steam in China, so too does the animal-rights movement. But not everyone is on board. Wrote another blogger, "I personally think dog meat is like alcohol. They are both components of our ancient Chinese culture."
– It's not unusual for the peanut gallery to ask if a politician was drinking after a speech—or if that drink was Kool-Aid—but it's Marco Rubio's swig of water last night that's getting more attention than his words. While giving his party's response to the State of the Union, he was forced to dive far to the side to reach a bottle of water, Slate reports, thus creating a distraction from the speech and fueling extensive Twitter commentary. There were 9,200 tweets per minute just after the sip, Twitter says, and #watergate and Poland Spring became trending topics, USA Today reports. "Strong material but the trivial water bit will get endless attention. #LifeUnfair," tweeted a GOP strategist. Rubio himself has reacted to the snafu with good humor. Late last night he tweeted this photo of the Poland Spring bottle. "This tweet came straight from the boss. #staffisnotthisfunny," Rubio's research director added in a follow up tweet spotted by BuzzFeed. This morning, Rubio took a swig during an interview with George Stephanopoulos. "I needed water, what am I going to do, you know?" he said. "God has a funny way of reminding us we’re human."
– Jeff Sessions is out as attorney general, report CNN and the AP. White House chief of staff John Kelly reportedly asked him to resign Wednesday, and Sessions' resignation letter was subsequently delivered to the White House. The speed of the move, coming so soon after polls closed, "suggested how eager Mr. Trump was for Mr. Sessions to depart," observes the Wall Street Journal. "At your request, I am submitting my resignation," Sessions wrote in a letter addressed to the president, which you can read here. "Since the day I was honored to be sworn in as Attorney General of the United States, I came to work at the Department of Justice every day determined to do my duty and serve my country. I have done so to the best of my ability, working to support the fundamental legal processes that are the foundation of justice." More:
– What was unprecedented in April is now becoming ... routine? The leaders of North and South Korea will meet again sometime in September, their third such meeting in five months, reports CNN. This time, however, the South's Moon Jae-in will travel to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong Un. High-level officials from the two nations announced the meeting after talks in the Demilitarized Zone on Monday. No agenda has been released, but the two sides have been discussing everything from a possible peace declaration to economic projects, notes Reuters. One potential sore spot: The plight of 12 North Korean women now in South Korea as restaurant workers. The North claims they were kidnapped—or perhaps tricked into defecting—and must be returned, while the South maintains they defected of their own accord in 2016 through China, per Yonhap News. "If our female citizens' repatriation issue is not resolved as quickly as possible, it could serve as an obstacle not just to the planned reunions of separated families between the two Koreas but also to the overall inter-Korean relations," said Uriminzokkiri, a propaganda website for the North, last month. South Korean officials declined to say if the issue came up in Monday's talks.
– It has been more than six months since a rookie cop shot a 12-year-old boy to death in Cleveland—and community leaders are tired of waiting for prosecutors to act. They plan to use a little-known and little-used Ohio law to go directly to a judge to have the officers involved arrested for the murder of Tamir Rice, the New York Times reports. The leaders plan to bypass police and prosecutors by filing citizens' affidavits today. "Here we are taking some control of the process as citizens," Walter Madison, a lawyer for the Rice family, tells the Times. "We are going to participate without even changing the law," he adds, noting that similar cases that went to grand juries ended up "unfavorable to the families." Community leaders say that there's a conflict of interest in officer-involved shooting cases because cops work closely with prosecutors, the Times notes, but authorities say the Rice case will end up before a grand jury even if there is an arrest. A spokesman for the prosecutor tells Cleveland.com that the grand jury "ultimately makes the charging decision in all fatal use of deadly force cases that involve law enforcement officers." In a statement to Fox 8, the chief of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association called the move an "attempt to totally disrespect and disregard our justice system" and warned such efforts would worsen the "increasing lawlessness of an emboldened criminal element." (Ex-cop Michael Slager was indicted yesterday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man.)
– A birthday party in California turned tragic after the guest of honor was run over and killed by his friend. Police say Jonathan Carlyle Merkley was celebrating his 34th birthday early Sunday at a hotel near San Diego when a woman decided to leave the party. Merkley wanted her to stay and reportedly walked toward her BMW and laid down in front of what the Orange County Register describes as a moving car. The woman didn’t stop, ran him over, and kept going. Police cite witnesses as saying both had been drinking, Fox 5 reports. Merkley, who suffered major chest trauma, died about 45 minutes later at a hospital. Police tracked the woman down and a car that "may have been involved" was impounded, cops tell the San Diego Union-Tribune. The woman was not arrested but police said on Tuesday that the investigation is continuing. "There's a lot we still need to find out," says San Diego Police Sgt. Tim Underwood.
– Critics are hopping aboard at The Last Station, a lively drama about Leo Tolstoy's final days starring Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren. Here’s what they’re saying: “The arrival of a movie with as much intelligence and artistry as The Last Station should also be accompanied by the sound of trumpets,” writes an ebullient Rex Reed for The New York Observer. “ This movie is passionate, profound and unforgettable.” Nearly every critic raves about Mirren, who “is a lusty roaring wonder” playing Tolstoy’s long-suffering wife, writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “To watch her threaten, cajole, and seduce her husband is a treat Oscar voters cannot ignore.” Plummer’s Tolstoy is great, too—he’s “warmly and disarmingly life-sized,” writes Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal. He calls the movie “a lovely quicksilver version of literary history.” But AO Scott of the New York Times is less impressed. “You will certainly see better acting” in other movies, he writes, “but it is unlikely you will see more. To say the actors overdo it would be an understatement.”
– Gawker has stirred up a furor by posting an anonymous guy's claim of a having a "one-night stand" (which involved the same bed, but no sex) with a drunk Christine O'Donnell a few years ago. On Twitter and all over blog land, the story about the story has now eclipsed the actual story (as evidenced by this summary). The Huffington Post's roundup of reaction includes Meghan McCain tweeting, "Wow gawker, just wow. This is the exact reason why women don't want to run for office in this country. Posting that is vile and disgusting." At Yahoo's Upshot blog, Michael Calderone talks to Gawker editor Remy Stern, who defends it as a "great story" and rejects the various charges of misogyny being leveled. "If it was any politician whose private life diverged from his public life in such an interesting way, we'd be interested in that. It had nothing to do with her being a woman." Calderone also quotes a tweet from Slate's Dave Weigel: "Hey Gawker, I hope a one-day SEO term victory is worth the sleaziest piece of s--- story in memory." Michelle Malkin, meanwhile, is calling out Gawker's advertisers over the "smear."
– An airstrike killed the Islamic State's "Jihadi John" last year, but a new ISIS spokesman with a British accent appears to have taken his place. The group released a video in which the masked man warns that ISIS will attack the UK in retaliation for Britain's support of the US-led coalition that's bombing Syria, reports USA Today. The video also purports to show five men from Syria and Libya, alleged spies for Britain, being executed with a gunshot to the head, reports the BBC. The Telegraph labels the militant the "new Jihadi John" in its headline and notes that the video has another "chilling twist": a young boy clad in military clothes warns in what sounds like a British accent that ISIS is going to kill non-Muslims. The video hasn't been authenticated yet. "Only an imbecile would dare to wage war against a land where the law of Allah reigns supreme," says the adult militant, addressing David Cameron. "The Islamic State, our country, is here to stay. And we will continue to wage jihad, break borders, and one day invade your land, where we will rule by the Shariah." He also calls Cameron a "slave of the White House" and a "mule of the Jews."
– Lindsey Graham is still talking. His latest headline-worthy quote: If he becomes our next president, the very first thing he will do is deploy the military. Against ... Congress. "I wouldn't let Congress leave town until we fix this," he said yesterday at New Hampshire's "politics and pies" forum, referring to the budget. "I would literally use the military to keep them in if I had to. We're not leaving town until we restore these defense cuts. We are not leaving town until we restore the intel cuts." As Vox notes, the quote implies Graham would use the military to force Congress to actually pass a bill, not simply to vote on one, since his stated goal is to "restore" the cuts. Sounds like a "coup" if taken literally, writes Amanda Taub. And though Graham did, indeed, use the word "literally," his office later clarified to Mediaite that the senator "was employing over-the-top humor to win over his audience."
– Hope Solo didn't react well to her team losing to Sweden during the Rio Olympics, earning her a six-month suspension from US Soccer for her remarks that the Swedes were "a bunch of cowards." Her reaction upon finding out about her suspension was similarly explosive, and USA Today's For the Win notes a video clip of that moment that it says is "a bit difficult to watch." The clip—filmed for Fullscreen's Keeping Score documentary, which follows Solo and two other women's pro soccer players as they strive to succeed in an industry with sexist "double standards," per Deadline—shows Solo's "stunned" reaction to her punishment, People reports. "Seventeen f---ing years and it's over!" she can be heard yelling in the video, right after a shot of her hugging her husband, ex-NFLer Jerramy Stevens, and noting, "Terminated contract. Effective immediately" before adding directly to the camera: "Terminated contract, not just a suspension." Stevens seems baffled, asking, "How can they do both?"—to which his incredulous wife retorts, "It's both." (A Washington Post piece calls Solo a "pure loser and lout.")
– After the American Civil War, a storied ship was wrecked off South Carolina. Now, experts believe they've found the remains of the Planter, a Confederate supply ship commandeered by its crew of slaves and turned over to the Union, LiveScience reports. The ship's wheelsman, in charge of steering, was one Robert Smalls, whose "knowledge became vital to the Confederates," an expert tells Discovery. The crew at first joked about commandeering the ship, Smalls later said, but eventually the slaves decided to take real action. When the crew's white men were partying offshore in 1862, Smalls and Co. made a daring break for it, picking up relatives as they escaped. They turned the Planter over to the Union, and Smalls continued to operate it as it fought the Confederates. He became the US military's first African-American captain, and eventually a US congressman. Years after the war, in 1876, the ship was damaged in a storm near Charleston and buried in sand. NOAA researchers have likely rediscovered it using a magnetometer to trace its iron. Now, South Carolina could excavate it—or install a tribute at the site. A plaque has already been made, Reuters reports. (Another shipwreck off South Carolina appears to house plenty of gold.)
– A renowned jockey who was among the best in Pennsylvania history died Thursday of injuries suffered in a racing accident, the AP reports. Parx Racing announced the death of Jose Flores, 56, who was racing Monday at the suburban Philadelphia track when his horse went down and Flores was thrown off. The jockey hit the ground headfirst and suffered a massive trauma. He was removed from life support Thursday afternoon. Flores won 4,650 races in a career that spanned more than three decades. He was the top career earner at Parx, formerly known as Philadelphia Park. TMZ calls him "legendary." "It's unbelievable, just sickening," Scott Lake, the top trainer at Parx, who has known Flores since 1991, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "He was just tremendous, a nice guy, always a professional." Flores' mounts earned $64 million in nearly 29,000 career starts, according to the Equibase thoroughbred database. Parx called Flores an "outstanding jockey" and expressed condolences to his family. The Jockeys' Guild said Flores is the 157th jockey to die in a racing accident in unofficial records going back to 1940. The group said that before Flores, it had no record of a jockey ever being killed in an accident at a Pennsylvania track. The Inquirer says there was "absolutely no warning" before the horse, Love Rules, went down. Flores is survived by a wife and three sons.
– The family of Swedish DJ Avicii has suggested the 28-year-old committed suicide, and a new report from TMZ has troubling details on the method. The website cites multiple sources who say that Avicii used a shard of glass from a broken bottle to fatally cut himself. Avicii had been a leading figure in the genre of electronic dance music but had reportedly fought alcoholism and depression for years. One lesser-known aspect that has come to light since his death: The entertainer, real name Tim Bergling, had donated millions to charity over the years, particularly ones to fight hunger, reports Page Six.
– The professional wrestling world lost two of its own over the weekend, including the son of WWE legend Jerry Lawler. Per Yahoo Sports and the Commercial Appeal, Brian Christopher Lawler, 46, was found hanging in his jail cell in Memphis, Tenn., Saturday evening and died the next day. "Corrections officers administered CPR until paramedics arrived," the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says in a statement. "Lawler was transported to Regional One Medical Center in Memphis, where he died Sunday afternoon." Lawler, who once performed for the WWE as Grandmaster Sexay on the Too Cool tag team, had been behind bars after being arrested on July 7 and charged with DUI, driving with a revoked license, and evading arrest. "WWE is saddened to learn that Brian Christopher Lawler … has passed away," the WWE said in a statement. "WWE extends its condolences to Lawler's family, friends, and fans." Big names in wrestling also paid their condolences, including Hulk Hogan, who tweeted, "RIP Brian Christopher thank you for always stealing the show my brother only love HH." The WWE also announced the death of "one of the greatest villains sports-entertainment had ever seen," per NBC News: that of Josip Peruzovic, known in the ring as Soviet heel Nikolai Volkoff. The AP reports that the wife of the 70-year-old Hall of Famer, who was once on a tag team with the Iron Sheik, found Peruzovic unresponsive when she went to give him medication he took for heart problems. The Iron Sheik paid an all-caps tribute to his former partner on Twitter, noting, "I MISS YOU FOREVER."
– The weekend brought photos of Tesla's first Model 3 sedan to roll off the production line, but it wasn't all positive news for the automaker. The Wall Street Journal on Sunday posted an analysis of data out of Hong Kong that suggests just how severe an effect the reduction of a significant tax break for electric vehicles has had on Tesla. The tax break had dropped the cost of a Model S 60 to a roughly $73,000 price tag; under the new tax rules, it costs about $118,000, per Quartz, which notes that elevated price is basically the same as buying a new Mercedes-Benz there. March was the last month where the electric vehicles were available at the lower effective price. Newly purchased Teslas registered by first-time electric vehicle owners that month: 2,939. And in April: zero. And then in May: five. Tesla said in a statement that its "business does not rely on" favorable government policies, though its securities filings note it is not immune to the effects of changing such incentives. The Journal notes Tesla is working to get its vehicles into China, citing one gloomy quote on the subject from an analyst: "Hong Kong is the fashionable China. It's not exactly painting a glowing picture for the future of Tesla in China."
– Who says social media don't matter? Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker's "big-haired, big-brained and big-mouthed columnist," may think Twitter is a silly fad, but the Gap logo case says otherwise, writes Shane Richmond for the Telegraph. The retailer recently abandoned its cheap-looking new logo after an outcry online. "And Malcolm thinks social media can’t bring social change. Tsk tsk," he writes. The iconic American retailer's decision to ditch the ugly logo came after a wave of highly critical—and occasionally hilarious—comments posted to Twitter and Facebook. "It reminds me of the old Microsoft Free Clip-art galleries," wrote one person on Facebook, according to CNN. "It totally looks like a powerpoint design!" wrote another. (Click here to read more on Twitter.)
– OJ Simpson has been out of prison for more than a month, and he's not exactly being a model parolee, according to TMZ. Sources tell the website that Simpson was chucked out of the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas for being drunk and belligerent. According to TMZ's sources, Simpson " was angry at hotel staff and glasses broke at the bar," though he behaved himself when security arrived to escort him out. Simpson is now apparently permanently banned from the hotel, though his lawyer, Malcolm LaVergne, says it was nothing to do with his client's behavior. He claims the hotel decided to ban Simpson even before he arrived. "Cosmopolitan exercised its right to issue a trespass notice," LaVergne said in a statement. "Any private property in Nevada has the right to tell any person that you are trespassing and please don’t come back; if you come back you are subject to a misdemeanor arrest." If Simpson was drunk, he could be in violation of parole terms, the Washington Post reports, though a witness tells KABC that Simpson abstained while other members of his party drank wine. LaVergne says Simpson was neither drunk nor belligerent and only tends to have one drink when he is socializing, WXYZ reports. (Since his release from prison, Simpson has been signing autographs and living in a friend's Las Vegas mansion.)
– Nine people are dead and dozens injured after a new round of tornadoes slammed Oklahoma last night, reports AP and CNN. Among the fatalities were a mother and infant, whose bodies were found near their car on I-40, a major state artery. Oklahoma City and its suburbs took the brunt of storms, which were followed by heavy flooding. Fuller assessments will become clearer this morning, but the tornadoes were not as powerful as the EF5 monster that hit Moore, Okla., less than two weeks ago. That city got hit again yesterday, however, with winds estimated at 80mph. "This storm had everything you could handle at one time: tornadoes, hail, lightning, heavy rain, people clogging the highways," says a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla.
– In a situation that was unthinkable just 24 hours ago, Donald Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto gave a joint press conference Wednesday in Mexico City following an hour-long meeting between the two, reports the Los Angeles Times, which calls Trump's jaunt to Mexico both "hastily arranged" and "stunning." "We did discuss the wall," the AP quotes Trump as saying, answering the question on everyone's mind. But: "We didn't discuss payment of the wall." But ABC News reports Peña Nieto later took to Twitter, claiming he did in fact tell Trump Mexico wouldn't pay for the wall, essentially calling the candidate a liar. During the news conference, Trump maintained it was America's right to build a wall, Peña Nieto says any talk of border security needs to include stopping the flow of money and guns into Mexico, according to Politico. In addition to not addressing his long-made claim that Mexico would pay for the wall, Trump also softened his rhetoric on Mexican immigrants. "I happen to have a tremendous feeling for Mexican-Americans," Salon quotes Trump as saying. And Peña Nieto insisted that all Mexican nationals living in the US "deserve the respect of everyone." Trump ended his speech by calling Peña Nieto, a man who once compared him to Hitler, a "friend." Peña Nieto characterized his discussion with Trump as "open and constructive." He says he believes Trump really does want to help Mexico via his policies, the AP reports. Both men are "extremely unpopular" in Mexico, as the Times puts it.
– The moment of truth has come for these 18 celebrities rounded up by TMZ, all of whom said they might move to Canada should Donald Trump win the presidency. A sampling: Larry Flynt: "The thought of Donald Trump becoming president nauseates me in a big way," and if he won? "I don’t know, maybe move to Canada." (Toronto Sun) Neve Campbell: "My biggest fear is that Trump will triumph. I cannot believe that he is still in the game. I cannot conceive of how that’s possible. I’ll move back to Canada." (Toronto Sun) Raven Symone: "If any Republican gets nominated, I'm going to move to Canada with my entire family. I already have my ticket." (Fox News Insider) Barbra Streisand: "I'm either coming to your country [Australia], if you'll let me in, or Canada" if Trump wins. (YouTube) Lena Dunham: "I love Canada. I think that it’s a great place, and there’s an area in Vancouver that I find beautiful and appealing, and I can conduct business from there." (Hannity.com) Whoopi Goldberg: "I don’t think that’s America. I don’t want it to be America. Maybe it’s time for me to move." (Fox News Insider) Bryan Cranston: "I would definitely move. It’s not real to me that that would happen. I hope to God it won’t." (Hannity.com) Chelsea Handler: "All these people that threaten to leave the country and then don't—I actually will leave that country." (Hannity.com) Miley Cyrus: "gonna vom / move out da country #aintapartyindausaanymo" if Trump wins. And: "I am moving if this is my president! I don't say things I don't mean!" (Vanity Fair) Click through for the full list.
– Those Brits who want to cut down on their alcohol intake—and can spare about $5 a day—now have access to a pill to reduce their craving. UK officials have approved the drug nalmefene for use along with counseling to help reduce alcohol dependency, the International Business Times reports. The official approval means people who fit the right profile can request the prescription drug. "Those who could be prescribed nalmefene have already taken the first big steps by visiting their doctor, engaging with support services, and taking part in therapy programs," says a researcher. Nalmefene, which can be taken once a day, helps people feel less of an urge to drink, experts say. It's considered appropriate for many people drinking the equivalent of at least half a bottle of wine daily, the Guardian reports. Plenty of potential candidates to take the drug "probably don’t even recognize themselves as an alcoholic," says a health official, who compares it to a nicotine patch. But since nalmefene is intended to be used to gradually reduce alcohol intake, it's not a good solution for people who need to quit right away, the Guardian notes.
– Long lines at polling sites in Arizona's March 22 primary led Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton to call the night a "fiasco"—and the Justice Department to now investigate whether there were civil rights violations regarding what Stanton called "unacceptably disparate distribution of polling locations," Reuters reports. The DoJ's civil rights division penned a letter Friday asking Maricopa County, the state's most populous, to determine if federal law was violated regarding, among other things, the number and location of polling sites (the county cut them from 200 to 60 in 2012 in an apparent bid to save money). The Justice Department's reason for this request: reports of "disproportional burden in waiting times … in some areas with substantial racial or language minority populations," the letter noted. Those waiting times were incredibly inconvenient: The AP notes that some voters waited nearly six hours, with the last vote cast at almost 1am at one site; polls had closed at 7pm, but voters already in line at that point were allowed to cast ballots. Poll workers even reportedly brought pizza to hungry voters. Maricopa County has until April 22 to respond to the DoJ's letter, which included 10 specific requests for information, including polling locations, procedures, and response to public backlash, the Arizona Republic reports. "We are going to gather the information … and we will make it public," the county elections director says. Despite these issues, Arizona's secretary of state certified the primary results on Monday, calling it for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, per the AP. (Here's hoping Wisconsin's big night Tuesday goes more smoothly.)
– Almost a million jars of peanut butter are being trucked to a New Mexico landfill after Costco refused to either accept them or allow them to be donated to food banks. The peanut butter—made from $2.8 million worth of Valencia peanuts owned by Costco—is being dumped as part of the sale of a bankrupt plant linked to a huge peanut butter recall in 2012, reports the AP. Sunland, once the nation's largest producer of organic peanut butter, went bankrupt last year following the much publicized salmonella outbreak, and a Canadian company has snapped up the plant for $25 million, the Albuquerque Journal reports. The jars had been sitting in a warehouse since last fall, and while court filings say "all parties agreed there's nothing wrong with the peanut butter from a health and safety issue," Costco on March 19 said it had to be destroyed; the company previously determined the jars were "not merchantable" because of leaky peanut oil. The last of 58 truckloads of peanut butter is due to arrive at a landfill in Clovis today, where it will be covered in dirt. A spokeswoman for New Mexico's largest food bank declined to comment on the peanut butter dump, but noted that "rescued food" accounts for 74% of what it distributes. And the drama doesn't end there: The AP notes that a North Carolina company had won the first round of bidding for Sunland with a $20 million offer, only to be outbid by Golden Boy Foods just minutes before the court hearing that would have approved Hampton Farms' purchase; Hampton Farms is prepping for an appeal. (New Mexico landfills have been in the news lately.)
– It's springtime in Vacationland, and Mainers are celebrating the return of sunshine with a dose of their acerbic wit. As the Bangor Daily News reports, MaineDOT is rolling out a new round of highway signs promoting safety—and they are the work of the people of Maine who entered a contest. While MaineDOT noted in the contest page that while, "(Hey – we’re state government, we don’t have a lot of prize money hanging around," winners "will have the GLORY of having your words in neon lights (Well...LED lights actually)!" Without ado, the winners, picked from some 2,000 entries: Put Down UR Cell—Or You May End Up In One, by Katie Landry Spend Money On Lobstahs—Not Speeding Tickets, by Dan Zarin Little Known Fact—Snow Is Really Slippery, by Tim Fahey A Cold Suppah Is Bettah Thana Hot Ticket, by Craig Carver Be Protected—Not Projected—Buckle Up, by Laura Giuliano Keep In Mind—Moose Eyes Don’t Shine, by Terry White MaineDOT has been playing with funny road signs since winter 2016, notes the Daily News, with officials writing their own seasonally appropriate puns. Past examples include, "Santa sees you when you’re speeding" and Super Bowl-themed "87 is Gronk’s number—not the speed limit."
– Things are getting heated on the campaign trail: An aide to Rand Paul says Marco Rubio's campaign manager hit him while both men were at a Michigan bar in today's wee hours. "He literally physically assaulted me by punching me in the face," John Yob wrote on Facebook, noting that at first he didn't even know who Rich Beeson was. CNN notes that "a number of Republican candidates have gathered [on Mackinac Island] for the weekend"; six of them are participating in the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference. The incident was captured on video, and Yob says he wants to press charges. Police forwarded the assault complaint to the county prosecutor, who will decide whether to file criminal charges, the Detroit Free Press reports.
– A New Jersey mom is suing after her daughter ended up on an anti-abortion billboard in New York City, reports Adweek. Tricia Frasier called the use of her daughter's image by Life Always and its ad company "defamatory, unauthorized, and offensive," notes Courthouse News Service. The billboard drew controversy with its photo of a black child—then 4-year-old Anissa Frasier—and the accompanying slogan, “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” Life Always quickly took down the billboard amid loud protests. The group's ad company, Heroic Media, bought the stock photo of Anissa from Getty Images with a standard clause forbidding its use "in connection with a subject that would be unflattering or unduly controversial to a reasonable person." Tricia Fraser says those terms were violated. She maintains her daughter's modeling career could be harmed—plus she had to give a talk about the birds and the bees way ahead of schedule.
– Wall Street has been waiting anxiously for a few days now to see what the Fed was going to do about the economy, and the answer arrived this afternoon: Nothing. For now. The Fed sees evidence that the economy has actually decelerated in recent months, reports MarketWatch, but it's not going to enter into new bond-buying or other such stimulus until the picture clarifies in the next month or two. Friday's jobs report might be the first indicator. In Fed-speak: “The committee will closely monitor incoming information on economic and financial developments and will provide additional accommodation as needed to promote stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions," said its official statement. The Wall Street Journal parses the wording and thinks the Fed "signaled more strongly" that it will eventually take action. The New York Times, too, calls the language "somewhat stronger" than past statements.
– How's this for a tangible sign of the banking mess in Cyprus: Britain's Royal Air Force is flying in a plane loaded with 1 million euros so its troops stationed there don't get stuck without cash, reports the Independent. The defense ministry made the move after the crisis raised fears that ATMs and debit cards would stop working. Troops also get the option of having their pay deposited into UK bank accounts instead of Cypriot ones. "We're determined to do everything we can to minimize the impact of the Cyprus banking crisis on our people," says a ministry spokesman. Britain, which doesn't even use the euro as its national currency, has about 3,000 troops and 500 civilian personnel in Cyprus, reports Yahoo News.
– Add one more study to the "coffee is good for you" file. Contrary to the long-standing belief that caffeine may cause heart palpitations that can lead to heart failure, new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association suggests the claim is, well, rubbish. Researchers surveyed 1,388 people with an average age of 72 about their caffeine consumption, reports NBC News. Some 61% of participants said they consumed some amount of coffee, tea, or chocolate daily. After looking for premature ventricular and atrial contractions in the heart, scientists concluded there was no link between caffeine consumption and heart palpitations, heart fluttering, or other irregular heartbeat patterns, even among those who consumed a lot of caffeine each day. "Clinical recommendations advising against the regular consumption of caffeinated products to prevent disturbances of the heart's cardiac rhythm should be reconsidered, as we may unnecessarily be discouraging consumption of items like chocolate, coffee, and tea that might actually have cardiovascular benefits," says the lead author of the study from the University of California-San Francisco. Current AHA guidelines suggest that a patient with extra heartbeats avoid caffeine, which can worsen the problem, notes CBS San Francisco. Because "this was the first community-based sample to look at the impact of caffeine on extra heartbeats," the researchers say further study is needed, per the Mirror. (There's more good news if you drink three to five cups of coffee per day.)
– Judith Meisel says that when she was a teenager in the Stutthof concentration camp in western Poland, other prisoners told her: "Don't let us die without you mentioning what happened to us." The 88-year-old Minnesota resident has not forgotten: Her testimony helped German authorities indict two former guards from the camp where 65,000 people, including Meisel's mother, died, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. She identified one former guard, 94-year-old Johann Rehbogen, as the young SS officer who would taunt female prisoners as they undressed. Prosecutors say the men can't be tied to specific murders, but their work as guards made the killings possible. Meisel—who escaped along with her sister when inmates were sent on a "death march" away from the camp in 1945—says she is willing to relive her horrific experiences to help prosecutors. "This process of seeking answers and finding justice for my mother gives new meaning to my life," she says. The two former guards have been charged as accessories to murder, the AP reports. They deny any knowledge of killings at the camp, where thousands were starved to death or froze. Prosecutors say prisoners were also gassed to death, shot, and killed with lethal injections. Authorities say Meisel and several other Stutthof survivors in the US could be called as witnesses if the former guards are deemed healthy enough to stand trial. (A pendant found at the Sobibor camp helped reunite a family.)
– "For the baptism, five people are needed—no more and no less," reads the coded instructions. But this "baptism" isn't the usual sort: It's for new members of the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate in Italy, reports the Telegraph. Police discovered the instructions during a murder investigation, and two officers who like to solve puzzles got busy deciphering the text, which resembles ancient Egyptian and Greek. The big break came when they figured out the letter C, and the rest fell into place. It's oh-so-dramatic stuff: The initiation must take place in a "sacred, sacrosanct, and secure" location, and the newbie must cut his skin with a knife in order to swear a blood oath—"an eternal allegiance to the honored society.” The BBC reports that the 'Ndrangheta is thought to be the most powerful mafia in Italy, with a specialty in cocaine smuggling. "Finding such a document shows that even if they are projected towards big businesses and are a criminal group with a global presence, they still use archaic systems," says a police official in Rome. (The syndicate apparently isn't a fan of the new pope.)
– Looks like the Boeing 787's fire issues aren't entirely behind it. A parked Dreamliner, owned by Ethiopian Airlines, caught fire today at Heathrow airport, prompting a suspension of all arrivals and departures to the London airport, the BBC reports. No passengers were aboard, no injuries have been reported, and the airport has since reopened. But the incident is likely to raise more doubts about the benighted Dreamliner—and sure enough, Boeing's stock plunged on the news, the AP reports. And as if that wasn't enough bad news for the plane maker, later another 787 flying from Manchester to the US had to turn around after encountering an unspecified mechanical failure. All 126 passengers aboard have now disembarked safely. The plane's operator, Thompson Airways, describes the emergency landing as a "precautionary measure."
– "This is a tragedy that no community should have to experience," Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen told reporters after a mass shooting at a historic black church left nine people dead. "I do believe this was a hate crime," he says of the attack, which is believed to have been carried out by a young white man who is still at large. The president of the Charleston NAACP tells the Post and Courier that a survivor says the gunman briefly sat down in the Emanuel AME Church before opening fire on a prayer meeting, but at a news conference this morning, Mullen said the shooter stuck around for almost an hour before the shooting began, the AP reports. Mullen also distributed a surveillance video of a possible suspect and vehicle, and added that the victims were six females and three males. The NAACP chief says the gunman told one woman he was letting her live so she could tell others what happened. "It is unfathomable that somebody in today's society would walk into a church when people are having a prayer meeting and take their lives," Mullen told reporters. "I can assure you that we're going to do everything in our power to find this individual, to lock him up and to make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else." Mayor Joe Riley called the suspect "one hateful person," describing the shooting as "the most dastardly act that one could possibly imagine." In other developments: Helicopters are circling Charleston in the search for the suspect, who's described as a white male, around 21 years old, slender, clean-shaven, and wearing a gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and Timberland boots, the Guardian reports. Police say he is "obviously extremely dangerous." State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor, was in the church at the time of the attack, and State House Minority leader Todd Rutherford tells the AP that the lawmaker was among those killed. The 41-year-old "never had anything bad to say about anybody, even when I thought he should," Rutherford says. "He was always out doing work either for his parishioners or his constituents. He touched everybody." The Post and Courier has more on the history of the church, which it calls the "spiritual home to one of the oldest and largest black congregations south of Baltimore," and which many in the city call "Mother Emanuel." Its roots go back to 1816, and it was burned after one of its founders tried to organize a slave revolt in 1822. Members went underground until after the Civil War, when the church adopted the name "Emanuel." Jeb Bush has canceled a Charleston campaign appearance scheduled for today, the New York Times reports. A campaign aide for Hillary Clinton says she was in the city yesterday but left before the shooting.
– One more for the gold, and seemingly nothing can prevent it. This US men's basketball team might not slow down until it's standing at the center of the medals platform again. Kevin Durant scored 19 points, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony added 18 apiece, and the US powered its way back to the gold-medal game by beating Argentina 109-83 today. The Americans play Spain on Sunday in the title game. Also today: The US scored a record-breaking victory in the women's 4x100-meter relay. The crowd cheered wildly as Carmelita Jeter crossed the line as the clock marked 40.82 seconds—well below East Germany's 41.37 record from 1985. Teammates Tianna Madison, Allyson Felix, and Bianca Knight gave the US a big lead heading into the anchor leg. Olympic silver medalist Bryshon Nellum was picked to carry the US flag at Sunday's closing ceremony. With a surge of medals in track and field, the United States has sprinted ahead of China and is poised to finish atop the medals table—maybe with the most golds ever collected by the Americans on foreign soil. The US led China 94 to 81 in total medals and 41 to 37 in golds. It needs four more golds to tie the mark.
– The financier that President Trump nominated to be secretary of the Navy has decided that the job would be too hard on his finances. Philip Bilden, a former military intelligence officer who spent 20 years working in private equity in Hong Kong, cited conflict-of-interest rules when he withdrew from consideration Sunday, reports Reuters. "After an extensive review process, I have determined that I will not be able to satisfy the Office of Government Ethics requirements without undue disruption and materially adverse divestment of my family's private financial interests," Bilden said in a statement. The Pentagon and Sean Spicer firmly denied reports earlier this month that Bilden was likely to pull out, the New York Times reports. "Just spoke with him and he is 100% commited (sic) to being the next SECNAV pending Senate confirm," Spicer tweeted on Feb. 18. The AP notes that Bilden's withdrawal is very similar to that of Vincent Viola, Trump's pick for Army secretary. The Wall Street billionaire pulled out on Feb. 3, citing rules concerning family businesses. In a statement, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Bilden had "significant challenges he faced in separating himself from his business interests" and promised to recommend a new Navy candidate within days.
– Matt White was grocery shopping in Memphis, Tenn., when 16-year-old Chauncy Jones asked if he could carry White's groceries to the 30-year-old's car in exchange for a pack of doughnuts. Little did Chauncy know that he was about to change his life. He told White that he had taken a bus to the "rich people's Kroger" in the hope of getting some food, since his own fridge was empty. "He looked ashamed, hungry, and broken," White writes on Facebook. So instead of buying him doughnuts, "I went on a shopping spree" for cereal, pizza, milk, soap, toothbrushes, and more. But when he drove the boy home with the haul, he discovered Chauncy and his disabled mother were truly living with "nothing," he writes, per Fox 13. "They didn't even have beds or furniture. They were sleeping on pads made out of sleeping bags, they had two lamps and nothing in their fridge." White decided to help the family even further. Chauncy "is a straight A student who is doing his best to make it in a world with no money and very few resources. He wants to work and help his mother financially," he writes on a GoFundMe page he set up to raise $250 so Chauncy could buy a lawn mower and start mowing lawns for money. Two weeks later, more than $273,000 has been raised. "I didn't know this much love could exist in one place, be aimed in one direction, but seen and felt and empowered by so many people," White says, per USA Today. The money will be put in a trust for Chauncy's education and perhaps a new home. Mother and son are now living in a hotel over security concerns, but are "getting better now," Chauncy tells WMC News. "Something told me to go to Kroger. God told me to go to Kroger." (The internet rallied for this veteran scammed out of his life savings.)
– Lady Gaga sold a whopping 1.1 million copies of Born This Way in its first week, but 440,000 of those copies went for just 99 cents on Amazon.com. Amazon, however, did pay Gaga's distributor the full price of $8 to $9 per album—which means, the New York Times calculates, the online retailer lost more than $3 million. Of course, New York magazine points out, a big point of the gimmick was to drum up new users for its Cloud Drive service, so the company can just consider those millions "marketing costs." As for Gaga, the move does provide "much fodder for anyone wishing to quibble with the validity of the 1.1 million number," writes Amos Barshad. Click to see which artist Barshad thinks is "probably pretty salted" right now.
– "People are panicking." That's the message from one immigration lawyer after hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up this week by ICE agents in raids in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and the Carolinas, the Washington Post reports. According to NPR, the raids were the first since President Trump signed a Jan. 26 executive order on undocumented immigrants. That order redefined "criminal alien," expanding the definition beyond the couple million "bad hombres" the president mentioned during the campaign to include undocumented immigrants who are only suspected of a crime or those who've committed low-level offenses, such as using a fake Social Security number to get a job, the Hill reports. All last week, homes and businesses were raided in broad daylight—a change in tactic from the Obama administration that one government aide says is possibly meant to "send a message" under Trump. Immigrant advocates are also reporting that ICE agents are stopping immigrants at random or going door to door in minority-heavy neighborhoods to ask for IDs, though ICE denies these tactics. There have also reportedly been major raids in Kansas, Texas, Florida, and Virginia. Many advocates see this week as punishment for sanctuary cities and an attempt to "instill fear" in immigrants. And while officials maintain they're targeting undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records, advocates say it doesn't help their case that the first deportation under Trump was a "working mom with two US kids."
– Scientists are calling it a breakthrough and a turning point: In a new study, a compound successfully halted brain cell death in mice, meaning we're one step closer to a pill that can treat Alzheimer's, the Independent reports. Neurodegenerative diseases halt the production of key proteins, which in turn results in the unprotected brain cells dying off, and symptoms appearing. The compound blocks the faulty brain signal that causes the initial "shutdown," thus basically flipping the switch from "off" back to "on." Proteins are produced, brain cells are protected, and symptoms are reversed. The mice in the study had prion disease, which is similar to a human neurodegenerative disorder. After receiving the compound, memory loss and other symptoms including impaired reflexes and limb dragging were reversed; the treated mice also lived longer than those who didn't receive the compound, Sky News reports. Though it's still a long way off, scientists think a treatment based on these findings could also help people with Parkinson's disease. Now the bad news: The mice did suffer side effects, including weight loss and diabetes. (In other Alzheimer's news, how well you can smell peanut butter could predict your risk of getting the disease.)
– Looking for true love? Thinking of fleeing to Canada if Donald Trump wins the general election in November? Now you can take care of both in one fell swoop thanks to a site that promises to "make dating great again," Global News reports. Maple Match "makes it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency," per the site—a mission that CEO Joe Goldman says is just part of the Great White North's neighborly duties. "As Barack Obama said during Justin Trudeau's official welcoming ceremony at the White House, 'We're two different countries, but we're like one big town," Goldman says. "Our side [of] this 'town' happens to have a megalomaniac trying to seize power, so we're naturally concerned." Goldman insists this isn't a spoof. "Donald Trump is a joke," he tells Cosmopolitan. "Finding true love in a place where you can be happy is not a joke. Maple Match is very real." There's already a waiting list for the site, which hasn't started matching anyone yet, and Goldman tells Tech Times there've been more than 4,500 signups in just four days' time. (A Maple Match couple's ideal first date: Cheetos tacos and "America" beer?)
– On the red carpet, they look so glamorous—but it's the housekeepers and assistants who see what celebrities are really like when the tuxes and the gowns come off. Radar rounds up 31 secrets of the stars, as told to tabloids by the hired help. From the glamorous couple that supposedly doesn't shower for weeks on end to the diva who insists her entire household be on a macrobiotic diet, click through the gallery for a sampling. Or check out the complete list—which includes one sexy fella who liked to dress up in his woman's clothes and parade around the house. You can also read about 12 celebs' movie-salary secrets here.
– A Florida Republican is looking to halt funding for Robert Mueller's special investigation into ties between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia and bar review of all matters before Trump's campaign kicked off. The amendment put forth by Rep. Ron DeSantis would block Mueller from investigating "matters occurring before June 2015" and end funding for the probe 180 days after the amendment is passed, reports the Hill. DeSantis says the order appointing the special counsel "didn't identify a crime to be investigated and practically invites a fishing expedition" and that "Congress should use its spending power to clarify the scope and limit the duration of this investigation," per Politico. The amendment by DeSantis—who some suspect will run for governor of Florida in 2018, per Florida Politics—is just one of hundreds attached to the government spending bill and may never make it through committees. The House Rules Committee, Politico notes, has freedom to strike out amendments it deems improper. The bill will be reviewed after lawmakers return from a recess next week. While House members have been away, Mueller has apparently been busy. His investigators are allegedly focused on whether Trump helped construct a "knowingly false statement" that aimed to hide the true purpose of the meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, reports NBC News.
– Never heard of "Canada's panda?" Naturalists fighting to preserve the very rare bear's rainforest habitat in British Columbia want that to change. Only about 500 of the bears—a subspecies of black bear that has white fur—exist, and activists fear that a proposed pipeline through the Great Bear rainforest will spell doom for the animal that native peoples know as the "spirit bear," ABC reports. The pipeline project—designed to speed the passage of oil from tar sands in Alberta to China—will require the building of a terminal for supertankers in the rainforest, a largely untouched area of wilderness the size of Switzerland, and activist warn that a spill would devastate the area. So they've brought in the International League of Conservation Photographers, a sort of "SWAT team of photographers that are deployed to an area that needs immediate media attention," to photograph the wildlife there and bolster the case for preserving it. After much effort, they managed to capture images of several "spirit bears"—click here for a look.
– The iconic Emperor penguin is now marching toward its own demise thanks to climate change, according to the first study to assess the creature's long-term chances. An international team of scientists studying Antarctica's Emperor penguin population is calling for the birds to be reclassified as "endangered" after finding that, if sea ice continues to melt at its current rate, all of the continent's penguin populations will be in decline by 2100, with the total population down 19% from today's numbers; the researchers project two-thirds of the 45 known colonies will drop to less than half their current size. They're calling for the establishment of marine reserves to help protect the penguins. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers say there will at first be an increase in the current total of 600,000 penguins due to a recent increase in sea ice, Phys.org reports—algae grows under the ice, which sustains the krill that the penguins eat. But one expert explains that too much ice elongates the females' march to the sea to obtain food; not enough ice, and waves could fracture colonies come spring. Most of the planet's 18 types of penguins are dropping in population size, reports Reuters, with only king, adelie, and chinstrap thought to be increasing. (Climate change is taking its toll on penguins in Argentina, too.)
– Some 400,000 people have now fled South Sudan amid weeks of fighting, the UN says; at least 200 drowned on a ferry trying to escape. "The reports we have are of between 200 to 300 people, including women and children. The boat was overloaded," an army rep tells AFP. He says the incident occurred today, while other reports indicate it was overnight Sunday. "They all drowned." He said they were fleeing Upper Nile state capital Malakal, which has been under both rebel and government control; it’s situated near the state’s oil fields. The rebels have launched a new attack on the area, where some 19,000 people have sought shelter at a peacekeeping base, a UN spokesman says. Malakal, the BBC notes, sits near the White Nile, which thousands of civilians have tried to cross in a bid to escape. Many, however, can’t afford a boat ride; one refugee tells the BBC she had to borrow $66 to get across. A recent estimate puts the death toll of the conflict at 10,000.
– For fans looking forward to watching Selena Quintanilla and Chris Perez's love story play out on screen, don't get your hopes up too high. A TV series about the relationship was just announced two weeks ago, but now Quintanilla's father is suing Perez, her widower, to stop production, E! reports. The series was to be an adaptation of Perez's 2012 book about his romance with Quintanilla, the iconic "queen of Tejano music" who was murdered by her fan club president in 1995 when she was just 23. The couple married in 1992. In the lawsuit, Abraham Quintanilla Jr. says that, per an Estate Agreement entered into after Selena's murder, only Quintanilla Jr. holds the rights to "Entertainment Properties," a broad category that includes the use of Selena's name, voice, signature, and photographs. Per the suit, Perez agreed to that in exchange for receiving, "among other things," 25% of "net profits derived from the exploitation of the Entertainment Properties." Perez "doesn’t have the rights to publish a book or produce a television series based in any part on Selena," a Quintanilla estate attorney tells Forbes.
– The former editor-in-chief of the New York Review of Books—who abruptly left his post after running an essay by #MeToo villain Jian Ghomeshi—has given an interview with a Dutch publication blaming his downfall on Twitter and university publishers, the Guardian reports. "As editor of the New York Review of Books I published a theme issue about #MeToo offenders who had not been convicted in a court of law but by social media," says Ian Burama of the Oct. 11 issue, which actually focuses on modern male struggles and female empowerment. "And now I myself am publicly pilloried." He also blames academic advertisers who were unhappy about the Ghomeshi piece. "University publishers, whose advertisements make publication of the New York Review of Books partly possible, were threatening a boycott," says Burama. "They are afraid of the reactions on the campuses, where this is an inflammatory topic. Because of this, I feel forced to resign..." But the head of the Association of University Presses says he's unaware of any such boycott threat, the Washington Post reports. And with the Review keeping mum, most commentators and critics are slamming Burama for giving an alleged serial assaulter such a highly regarded platform. "One of the biggest and most valuable pieces of currency journalism has is credibility," an associate professor in Canada tells CTV. "If you're going to throw it under the bus, don't be sad when you don't have an audience."
– A generally gushing review in the New York Times of a book by its own Washington correspondent hit an Internet landmine when it referred to the book as "chick nonfiction," observes New York Magazine. The reconfiguration of the term "chick lit" was no doubt meant to be witty when Douglas Brinkley discussed Jodi Kantor's bestseller The Obamas, which follows the first couple's relationship in the White House. But bloggers and tweeters are stunned. The label seen as a sexist slight by many comes in the wake of years of criticism of the Times for predominantly reviewing books penned by male authors. "That alleged lack of respect—and to call a book 'chick nonfiction' is to call it unserious—extends not only to the woman who is the author, but also to the woman who is the subject," notes The Scroll, referring to Michelle Obama. When a woman writes even a serious book in Times-land, argues novelist Jennifer Weiner, "it can only be gossip, and the writer, however skilled a reporter, is still merely a chick." A Washington Post blogger took the opportunity to zing the Times. The Obamas is "among the very best books on this White House," notes Ezra Klein. "It’s a serious, thoughtful book on the modern presidency in general. So no, I’m not going to call it ‘chick nonfiction.’” So far no response to request for comment from the Times, notes The Scroll.
– President Trump's controversies may be wearing thin on both sides of the aisle in the Senate. Two different outlets on Monday have posts with a similar theme: New York Times: "Senate Republicans, increasingly unnerved by President Trump’s volatility and unpopularity, are starting to show signs of breaking away from him as they try to forge a more traditional Republican agenda and protect their political fortunes." Senate Leader Mitch McConnell may still be a reliable Trump defender, but that appears to be changing among the rank and file, as seen in the public and private criticism of Trump in the aftermath of the James Comey firing. The story includes a quote from Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who says that among his GOP colleagues, "there is a lot less fear of him than there was just a month ago." Axios: It notes that Senate Republicans are going their own way on health care and the Russian investigation, and it predicts the same will happen on tax reform. Trump can't get leverage over his own party because Senate Republicans don't need him for the 2018 races, don't particularly like him, and no longer fear him, per the post. "Not long ago, Republicans worried about a Trump tweet fired their way. No more." NBC News and the Washington Post, meanwhile, have stories explaining how the Comey firing is the latest example of a surprise distraction taking away from the GOP agenda in the Senate, particularly on health care. "Anytime you have something else come along when you’re debating legislation, while you’re trying to iron out something, it can—it takes some of the momentum away," GOP Sen. Mike Lee said on Fox News Sunday. But, he added, "We’re going to get it done one way or another."
– Demi Moore stepped out last night for the first time since her rehab stint, supporting best friend Amanda de Cadenet at the launch of her show, which Moore is producing, TMZ reports. Moore, who hadn't surfaced since being hospitalized after a party back in January, was looking good, the New York Post notes. No longer "sullen and gaunt," she has put some weight back on and "appeared to glow" with "round cheeks and a dewy complexion," the paper decrees. Moore—who has not filed for divorce from Ashton Kutcher yet—also reappeared on Twitter Sunday for the first time since January 7. And last night, she tweeted that she's ready to stop being @MrsKutcher on the microblogging site. "Time for a change, twitter name change," she posted, asking for suggestions. USA Today lists a few she's received so far: SheWhoLaughsLast, QueenMoore, and HotExWife.
– A woman who went to the dentist for a tooth extraction ended up dying after flat-lining in his chair, and now the Connecticut dentist has been charged with criminally negligent homicide in her death. Judith Gan, 64, went into Rashmi Patel's office on Feb. 17 of last year for a full-mouth extraction, during which 20 teeth would be removed and implants would be inserted. But during the procedure, Patel allegedly ignored the sedated woman's worsening condition—even though the low-oxygen alarm went off multiple times, Gan started gurgling, wheezing, and changing color, and one of Patel's assistants "begged" him to stop working on her, inspectors say. The assistant finally called 911, but by then Gan had stopped breathing and "flat-lined," according to a health inspectors' report. She was declared dead at a hospital; Patel has also been charged with evidence tampering. Gan had health problems, including a heart attack six months prior to her death and two strokes in the two years prior, the Monitor Daily reports; she was also on medication that could have interfered with sedation. "That's of course an issue into whether she should have been sedated in the first place," the Gan family lawyer says, per Fox Connecticut. But, he adds, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy "ruled out a lot of potential problems as causes of her death. Her pre-existing things did not ... suddenly occur and cause her to die." Officials also say Patel, 45, should not have planned so many procedures at once. The Dental Commission declined to revoke his license, but it did put him on five years of probation and banned him from performing sedation, the Hartford Courant reports. He has previously been accused of failing to monitor a sedated patient who choked on gauze but survived, the AP reports, as well as other problems. (A trip to the dentist may have saved this girl's life.)
– Handsome Santa Claus and one-time Late Show host David Letterman has a new talk show on Netflix, and his first guest truly needs no introduction. The Hollywood Reporter reveals the first guest on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman will be none other than Barack Obama. The episode, which hits Netflix Jan. 12, is notable for two reasons: It will be Obama's first talk show appearance since becoming a former president, and it marks Letterman's first return to a regular TV gig since leaving The Late Show in 2015. EW.com quotes Netflix on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction: "The conversations are intimate, in-depth, and far-reaching, with the levity and humor Dave’s fans know and love." A new episode will be available every month. Other confirmed guests include Malala Yousafzai, George Clooney, and Jay-Z—but not President Trump, who Letterman had said he hoped would be his first guest.
– Marrion P'Udongo is recognized simply as "pastor" by many and has pulled off a laundry list of heroic acts in the war-torn Republic of the Congo, including assisting child soldiers and rape victims and helping manage an orphanage, per NBC News. His other nickname, the "Schindler of Congo," came about after a 2003 massacre of ethnic Hema residents in Bunia by ethnic Lendu militiamen: P'Udongo housed 70 or so frightened Hema for about a week, but militiamen forced their way in and threatened to kill everyone—until P'Udongo successfully pleaded for their lives and they were all brought to safety. But now the people's savior is the one who needs help as he languishes in Uganda hooked up to a dialysis machine, the result of a failing kidney he received in a 2011 transplant. But while a new donor has been secured and a hospital in India with a high success rate for his type of procedure is ready to perform it, the $35,000 price tag is overwhelming for P'Udongo, who makes $200 a month, NBC notes. The people he's touched are doing whatever they can to help him: The same reporter who helped fundraise for the pastor in 2011 is doing it again. "Look at the world right now … you don't see a lot of really good people left," Bryan Mealer says on Generosity.com. "This is one of them." P'Udongo even has a friend in Hollywood: Ben Affleck, who founded advocacy group Eastern Congo Initiative and met P'Udongo in 2008, when the actor visited northeastern Congo. Meanwhile, P'Udongo continues to fight, mostly for his wife, four kids, an orphan he's taken in, and all the others he advocates for. "If I am not there … who will fill that gap?" he says to NBC. "No, I should not die now … There's still a lot to do." (Read what Bryan Mealer wrote about the pastor in 2011 for the Huffington Post.)
– Royal-watchers are ravenous for news about the forthcoming progeny of Prince William and wife Kate, so E! and other sites take a look at what life will be like for the soon-to-be third in line to the British throne: He or she will be welcomed with tolling bells, cannons, and bonfires. Yes, really. His or her last name will be the same as William's. Which is Mountbatten-Windsor, for those not in the know. If she's a girl, her name will probably include "Diana." But it most likely won't be her first name, just one of many, the Atlantic Wire points out. Europe's largest betting firm is already taking bets, reports People. Kate will probably breastfeed the little one. That might seem obvious, but up until Princess Diana, British royals typically used wet nurses. There may (or may not) be a nanny. But just one, and any royal siblings may share. (A far cry from the two to four nannies per child some American celebrities use.) However, sources tell the Daily Beast that Kate plans to be a full-time mom and doesn't want a nanny, an idea that initially shocked Prince Charles. She may, however, have a maternity nurse for the first few weeks. Speaking of royal siblings, Kate may be having twins. Medical experts say hyperemesis gravidarum, the severe form of morning sickness that caused Kate to be hospitalized, is linked to having twins, Radar reports. Kate wants her child to lead as "normal" a life as possible. Even so, that "normal" life will likely include a $2 million wardrobe in the first year alone, according to an expert who has dressed royals in other countries. But another expert notes that those clothes will probably be "sensible," and that royal babies are typically brought up with "few parties, not too many toys, and very dull meals."
– Ugandan lawmakers today overwhelmingly approved what would be one of the harshest anti-gay laws in the world. Homosexual acts were already illegal in Uganda, but now anyone caught committing this crime twice will be imprisoned for life, the AFP reports. The first draft of the law called for the death penalty in such cases, but it was shelved for years amidst international outrage. The bill also makes not reporting homosexuals a crime you could go to jail for, the BBC reports. It essentially outlaws gay rights groups as well, making it illegal to promote homosexuality. (Though many groups were already specifically banned.) The bill passed despite opposition from the prime minister, who said not enough lawmakers were present. "This is a victory for Uganda," the lawmaker behind the bill said. "I am glad the parliament has voted against evil." Activists are naturally despairing. "I am officially illegal," one said following the vote. The bill still needs to be signed by President Yoweri Museveni.
– The unsealed indictment against Paul Manafort made big headlines on Monday, but another development in the Robert Mueller investigation might have more troubling implications for President Trump. That's because while the Manafort charges have no connection to the Trump campaign, this one does, notes Politico. Former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, 30, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his outreach to a Russian national who promised "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, reports CNBC. Papadopoulos initially told the FBI that this contact was a "nothing," but he has since acknowledged that he knew the professor had "substantial connections to Russian government officials," per the New York Times. The case is outlined in court documents here. Papadopoulos also told the FBI that his contact with the professor took place before he joined the Trump campaign, when, in fact, Papadopoulos met with the professor days after becoming an adviser, reports the Guardian. The Times calls his guilty plea, which occurred earlier this month, "the most explicit evidence connecting the Trump campaign to the Russian government's meddling in last year's election." Similarly, Papadopoulos met with a woman he believed to be related to Vladimir Putin after joining the campaign, even though he told the FBI the contact occurred beforehand, reports Business Insider. "He believed she had connections to Russian government officials; and he sought to use her Russian connections over a period of months in an effort to arrange a meeting between the campaign and Russian government officials," per the court filing.
– The family of a gun instructor accidentally killed by a 9-year-old has a video message for the girl, Mediaite reports: "Our dad would want you to know that you should move forward with your life," says Charlie Vacca's 15-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. "You should not let this define you. You should love yourself, and love your family." Says son Christopher, 11: "We don't know your name, but we are connected by this tragedy … someday we hope we can meet you, hug you, and tell you that it's OK." Watch it here.
– North and South Korea will compete together under one unified flag at next month's Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, in what will be the first such arrangement since 2006. South Korea previously announced North Korea would send officials, athletes, and a cheer squad to the Olympics following talks between the two countries. It has now revealed North Korea's intention to send a 550-member delegation. Among those arriving in South Korea beginning on Jan. 25 will be female ice hockey players joining a team of South Korean athletes (they'll compete under a flag showing the Korean Peninsula in blue on a white background), as well as 230 cheerleaders, 140 orchestra members, and 30 people who will take part in a taekwondo demonstration, report Sky News and CNN. Ahead of the Olympics, skiers from both countries will also train together in North Korea, per CNN. The thawing of relations between the North and South has drawn praise from some. But others, like Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono, fear Kim Jong Un only hopes to ease international pressure while continuing to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal. "It is not the time to ease pressure, or to reward North Korea," Kono said Tuesday in Vancouver, Canada, where 20 countries met and agreed to consider tougher sanctions on the North, per Reuters. Warning countries not to be fooled by its "charm offensive," Kono added, "The fact that North Korea is engaging in dialogue could be interpreted as proof that the sanctions are working." China avoided the meeting, saying it showed a "Cold War mentality."
– Marijuana enthusiast Snoop Dogg launched a website yesterday, and of course it's all about weed. Merry Jane, which the rapper announced at TechCrunch Disrupt, is what TechCrunch describes as an "information hub" for all things pot; Snoop says it will be a sort of cannabis encyclopedia giving users "all they need to know." There will be shows and videos centered around the marijuana lifestyle, including a food show (cooking with cannabis or pairing meals with pot), celebrity interview videos, and a show called "Deflowered," which will feature people doing something for the first time. There will also be editorial content looking at marijuana news from legalization to pot policy to the business side and the politics of pot. And, of course, there will be a database featuring all sorts of cannabis strains so that users can decide which one is right for them and where they can find it. It sounds pretty high-tech, featuring "high-res rotating imagery for every product listed" and allowing users to search via type, flavor, or even symptom. Right now the site is in beta ("I'm givn away 420 sneak peeks a day," Snoop tweeted. "Sign up now at http://MERRYJANE.com & put 1 n the air !!") but it will be open to the public within the next few weeks. (Click to read about eight other celebrities with surprising side businesses.)
– You can temporarily take Donald Trump out of real estate, but you can't take the real estate out of Donald Trump. That much was clear at a Singapore press conference Tuesday, which took place after the president's meeting with Kim Jong Un and in which he touched upon the potential of North Korea's coastline. "They have great beaches," Trump noted, per the Washington Examiner. "You see that whenever they're exploding their cannons into the ocean." And that spectacular view got him to thinking: "Wouldn't that make a great condo? Instead of doing that you could have the best hotels in the world right there. Think of it from a real estate perspective, you have South Korea, you have China, and they own the land in the middle, how bad is that, right? It's great." The AP also reports on another post-summit activity, which it deems a "classic alpha male move": Trump showing off "The Beast," the presidential limousine, to the North Korean leader. CNN shows a video clip of the two men approaching the limo, a Secret Service agent opening the door, and Kim peering in to take a look. "We know that these men were trying to find ways to bond, in just like a personal, human way, and what's more natural for guys [than] to want to check out one another's car," Chris Cuomo notes. (Here are seven complimentary things Trump said about Kim after the summit.)
– The US begins its journey into uncharted territory Friday when Donald Trump takes political office for the first time in his life—starting at the top. He will deliver his inaugural address at 11:51am, according to the AP's timeline, and analysts say it will be one of the most closely watched in history. Advisers say that, like many predecessors, Trump will issue a call for unity and give his vision of "one America." Experts tell NBC News that Trump's unique and repetitive speaking style will drive the message home and maybe even go a little way toward unifying America. "If I keep saying it, it becomes it," says New York University neuroscience professor David Poeppel. In other coverage: The Los Angeles Times reports that Trump has said he looked to the speeches of Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon to prepare—and of the three, Nixon might be most relevant. After winning with a minority of the popular vote in the deeply divisive 1968 election, Nixon called on the "better angels of our nature" in his inaugural address, saying America had heard too much inflated and bombastic rhetoric. "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another," he said. The San Francisco Chronicle lists five things to look for in Trump's address, including efforts to reassure foreign leaders. Ad-libs are also a strong possibility, though analysts say trying to wing it could be a big mistake. The speech was largely written by incoming senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, Politico reports in its guide to inaugural events, which includes viewing tips and the order of the ceremony. The Washington Post looks at the many demonstrations that will be taking place across the capital on Friday, including a few pro-Trump events, as well as numerous "counterinaugural" protests. The "Let America Hear Us, Roar for Trump" group will be sharing Dupont Circle with a pro-marijuana group that plans to hand out 4,200 joints. Time takes a look back at every Inauguration Day in US history, and at what every president had to say on the occasion. The Times of London reports on the "security nightmare" posed by Trump's first ride in the presidential limousine, which will take him past tens of thousands of people between the Capitol and the White House. Many will be watching to see whether he chooses to walk part of the way as predecessors including Obama did. The New York Times speaks to five Trump voters from very different backgrounds to find out why they traveled to DC for the inauguration. Protests are taking place in cities across the world, but in Melania Trump's hometown in Slovenia, they're getting ready for a huge party, TMZ reports. The Atlantic reports that there will apparently be no poetry on the agenda, which is more a sign of the partisan divide than a break with tradition.
– Grambling State won the Celebration Bowl when it blocked an extra point set back 15 yards by an excessive celebration with just over two minutes left, holding off North Carolina Central 10-9 Saturday, the AP reports. Down 10-3, North Carolina Central had a chance to pull even after Quentin Atkinson shook loose and caught a 39-yard touchdown pass from a scrambling Malcolm Bell late in the 4th quarter. But Atkinson took off his helmet while reveling with the crowd, drawing a personal foul penalty and moving the extra point back. Grambling State's Joseph McWilliams surged in and swatted kicker Brandon McLaren's 35-yard extra-point try to preserve the Tigers' edge. Deadspin has the video.
– Glenn Greenwald is resolutely standing by his story, telling ABC today that if the NSA comes calling, “I will tell them that there is this thing called the Constitution, and the very First Amendment of which guarantees a free press.” Of his sources, the Guardian reporter dismissed claims of recklessness, saying they "risked their careers because what (is) being done inside the United States government is so alarming and so pernicious that they simply want ... for the American people at least to learn about what this massive spying apparatus is, so that we can have an open, honest debate about whether that’s the kind of country that we want to live in.” Further, he says, as per Politico, “The only thing we’ve endangered is the reputation of the people in power." Elsewhere in NSA news on your Sunday dial: Rand Paul wants to sue: I'm going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I'm going to be asking the Internet providers and all of the phone companies; ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying, 'We don't want our phone records looked at' then maybe someone will wake up and things will change in Washington." Mike Rogers thinks Greenwald 'doesn't have a clue:' “Neither did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous. Taking a very sensitive classified program that targets foreign person on foreign lands, and putting just enough out there to be dangerous, is dangerous to us. It's dangerous to our national security and it violates the oath of which that person took.” Dianne Feinstein wants hearings: "I'm open to doing a hearing every month if that's necessary." But there's a but: "We can't actually go in there and - other than the two that have been released—give the public an actual idea of people that have been saved, attacks that have been prevented, that kind of thing." John McCain thinks it's OK: “I believe that the FISA court system is an appropriate way of reviewing these policies. To somehow think that because we are having phone calls recorded as far as their length and who they were talking to, I don’t think that that is necessarily wrong if they want to go further and have to go to this court." Speaking of McCain, the New York Times ... has this piece on the faces you keep seeing on the Sunday shows over and over and over again.
– An anonymous POW buried in an American war cemetery in the Philippines isn't "X-816," it's Bud Kelder, say family members who have finally won their fight to have the remains disinterred. The 26-year-old Army medic survived the Bataan Death March but died in a POW camp and was buried in a communal grave along with 13 other Americans who also died on Nov. 19, 1942; four were later identified, but the remaining 10 were left in Grave 717. After carrying out their own research and studying declassified burial records, family members zeroed in on Grave 717, and "Manila #2 X-816" in particular—the only unknown in the grave that records show had gold inlays in his teeth, as Kelder did. But it has taken a long fight, and a lawsuit, to get the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command to agree to dig up the remains and carry out DNA testing, ProPublica finds. The military also plans to disinter the remains of the others in the grave who were never identified. J-PAC receives $100 million a year to do its work but only identified 60 service members last year out of the more than 73,000 Americans still missing from WWII. Relatives—and J-PAC whistleblowers—say J-PAC is choosing to ignore modern technology and war documents that could identify many World War II unknowns, Stars and Stripes found when it reported on the Kelder case last year. The cousin who did the bulk of the investigative work says that while the family is overjoyed that they could soon finally be able to bury Kelder in the family crypt in Chicago, the government has only changed its stance because of the lawsuit, not because it sees it as the right thing to do. "This will be a hollow victory for MIA families unless the US government undertakes substantial and meaningful reforms of the MIA accounting process," he says. (Meanwhile, rising seas are washing up WWII skeletons.)
– Michelle Obama will attend Saturday's funeral for Hadiya Pendleton, the Chicago teen killed not long after performing at President Obama's inauguration, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Alongside Obama will be adviser Valerie Jarrett and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, also Chicagoans, reports the Tribune. No arrests have been made in the shooting, but a $40,000 reward remains. Police think the 15-year-old got shot accidentally amid a turf war between gangs.
– Charlie Sheen may have alienated his "truther" fans, but it looks like he'll be able to replace them with birthers. Politics was on the agenda when Sheen's "Violent Torpedo of Truth" tour hit Washington, DC, Tuesday night and the actor got plenty of cheers when he raised the birth certificate issue, reports the Washington Post. "For starters, I was f**king born here, how about that? And I got proof!" Sheen said. "Nothing Photoshopped about my birth certificate." Sheen—observing that a poll shows him beating "that lunatic from Alaska" Sarah Palin—discussed the possibility of a presidential bid, with Nicolas Cage as his running mate, Politico reports. President Sheen would legalize pot, "send the IRS to prison," and deal with Moammar Gadhafi by sending ex-wife Denise Richards and soon-to-be-ex-wife Brooke Mueller to Libya. "If I run for president and win, country music is illegal," Sheen told the crowd.
– Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is in China today, where she met with President Xi Jinping to sign various agreements and spoke at a conference attended by 1,000 businessmen in an effort to raise Chinese investment in Argentina's struggling economy. And yet, she still thought it would be a good idea to post a tweet mocking the Chinese accent, Bloomberg reports. The tweet, posted in Spanish, translates as: "Did they only come for lice and petloleum?" She was referring to the businessmen; Bloomberg notes that the tweet was in response to criticism that she tends to crowd her supporters into events. She followed the original tweet up with, "Sorry, do you know what? The levels of ridiculousness and absurdity are so high they can only be digested with humor," Time reports. The presidential palace's official Twitter account retweeted that second tweet, but not the first. (Kirchner is really not having a good week.)
– On the heels of his Mississippi and Michigan wins, Donald Trump on Tuesday held a 45-minute press conference from the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla., and that was far from the only Trump brand on display. The candidate was last week dinged by Mitt Romney over ventures like Trump University, Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump Magazine, and Trump Steaks, reports NBC News. ("A business genius he is not," is how Romney put it.) And so Trump did his best to counter that claim, trotting out his steaks ("if you want to take one we'll charge 50 bucks a steak," he said), his magazine (a copy was lobbed into the crowd, notes TPM), his water, and his wine (from the "largest winery on the East Coast"). As RealClearPolitics national political reporter, Caitlin Huey-Burns—and many others—put it, "This is like Trump QVC." But not all digs were aimed at Trump. "I hope the Trump speech lasts another 4 hours and I hope the Cable networks will carry it all, because there is obviously no news judgment," former NPR political editor Ken Rudin tweeted, as spotted by Politico. Politico points out that CNN, Fox, and MSNBC carried the entirety of Trump's press conference even though Hillary Clinton and John Kasich spoke during the 9pm ET hour. And as far as mocking goes, Trump didn't just take it, he dished it. At one point, NBC News reporter Peter Alexander asked the candidate about how parents should explain his language to their kids. Trump's reply, per Gawker: "Oh, you’re so politically correct. You’re so beautiful. Oh, look at you. Awwww. Aw, he’s so. Oh, I know. You’ve never heard a little bad, a little off, language. I know, you’re so perfect. Aren’t you perfect. Aren’t you just a perfect young man. Give me a break. You know what? It’s stuff like that that people in this country are tired of. It’s stuff like that." So how are those no-longer-available Trump Steaks? Archived, and not too kind, reviews here.
– Serial killer sisters, who kidnapped and murdered at least five children, are poised to become the first women hanged in India, reports the Washington Post. “This is indeed one of the rarest of the rare cases where the perpetrators deserve the death sentence,” a human rights lawyer tells the Hindu. Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit were charged in 2001 with 13 kidnappings and 10 murders, and convicted of five killings, reports the Telegraph. Their killing spree began in 1990 when the girls were teen pickpockets and their mother told them to kidnap her ex's daughter, their half-sister. After that, mother and daughters kidnapped street kids ages 1 to 5, turned them into pickpockets and decoys, then killed them. Their mother died in prison, the Mumbai Mirror reports. Some of the sisters' ghastly crimes: They killed an infant by bashing his head against an electric pole, dropped a 7-month old to stop its crying, bludgeoned a boy while he hung upside down, and dismembered another and stuffed his parts in a bag, the Post reports. The killing ended as it began—with a revenge kidnapping and murder in 1996, also plotted by their mother as revenge against her ex. The 9-year-old, his daughter, was dumped in a field and an eventual investigation led to the sisters' other crimes. The sisters say they're innocent and wrongly convicted. A recent plea for mercy was rejected.
– The rare "ring of fire" annular solar eclipse did not disappoint. Millions of watchers from Tokyo to San Francisco and Albuquerque stood transfixed before homemade pinhole boxes, telescope projections, live action on computers—or peered at the sky with special cardboard glasses as the moon moved into position to turn the sun into a crescent, and, finally, left a slender, fiery ring around the mega star. Heavy clouds obscured the sun in Hong Kong, but the sky was clear for minutes in Tokyo to the delight of earthlings. After sweeping across the Pacific, the eclipse was spotted in Oregon and northern California, then Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, notes CNN. "Is it the nerd in me that's beyond excited to see this solar eclipse?" asked a tweeter. "It was a very mysterious sight. I've never seen anything like it," Tokyo watcher Kaori Sasaki told the BBC. Panasonic sent an expedition to the top of Mount Fuji to film the eclipse using solar-powered equipment. "This can get people to look up from their little anthill lives, and maybe get a sense of the bigger cosmic cycles that are going on all the time over our heads," said a senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine.The event was last witnessed in the US in 1994, and won't be seen again until 2023.
– Dennis McGuire was put to death today with a two-drug combination previously untested in the US, and at more than 15 minutes, it was one of the longest executions in Ohio since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999. McGuire, whose lawyers had attempted to delay his execution by arguing that he would likely feel "terror" following the lethal injection, appeared to gasp a few times as he died, making several loud snorting or snoring sounds, the AP reports. Before his execution, he told his sobbing adult children, "I'm going to heaven, I'll see you there when you come." McGuire had sought a reprieve by offering to become an organ donor, but was rejected because he couldn't identify a family member who would receive his organs, according to documents obtained by the AP. McGuire, who raped and murdered a pregnant woman in 1989, was executed with the untested combination of the sedative midozolam and the painkiller hydropmorphone because of a shortage of the execution drug pentobarbital, NBC reports. His lawyers had contended "that he will suffocate to death in agony and terror. The state disagrees," the director of UC Berkeley's Death Penalty Clinic told CNN before the execution. (One Wyoming state senator, concerned about the shortage of execution drugs, is trying to bring back firing squads as an alternative.)
– Moammar Gadhafi is dead, according to the National Transitional Council. Libyan revolutionary fighters took the city of Sirte today, and in the process captured the former strongman, who was wounded in both legs while trying to flee the city in a convoy that NATO planes attacked, a senior NTC official tells Reuters. "He was also hit in his head," the official said. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died." US officials are working to confirm the report. The Guardian has a photo that purports to depict a bloody Gadhafi here (Warning: it's graphic). The strike also reportedly killed the head of Gadhafi's armed forces, Abu Bakr Younus Jabr. Earlier, AP reporters watched as rebels fought a 90-minute battle to rout pro-Gadhafi fighters from their remaining neighborhoods in Sirte, apparently ending the last major battle of the Libyan war. "Sirte has been liberated. There are no Gadhafi forces anymore," an NTC colonel said. "We are now chasing his fighters who are trying to run away." Not all Gadhafi forces are running through; the Telegraph says there are reports of some taking off their uniforms and firing indiscriminately on civilians. (Click for the latest updates on the death of Gadhafi.)
– Three Republican state senators in Idaho skipped the chamber's daily invocation yesterday because they objected to the guest chaplain's religion. The three didn't take their seats until after Hindu cleric Rajan Zed had finished his prayer, which focused on selflessness, the AP reports. "Hindu is a false faith with false gods," said Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll. "I think it's great that Hindu people can practice their religion, but since we're the Senate, we're setting an example of what we, Idaho, believe." Another of the three, Sen. Steve Vick, had tried to have the prayer stopped, warning that a non-Christian prayer could "send a message we're not happy with the way America is," reports the Spokesman-Review. "They have a caste system. They worship cows," Vick complained, saying he had plenty of support from constituents who wanted the prayer stopped. Several other lawmakers missed the prayer, but they said it was because they were running late. After the prayer, Zed—who has delivered Hindu prayers for the US House, US Senate, and other state legislatures—said Hinduism is very inclusive and he didn't mind that some lawmakers had boycotted the prayer. "Most of them welcomed me," he told the Spokesman-Review. "They came out and shook my hand—some of them hugged me. It was good. There are multiple viewpoints. ... That is what makes the country great, you know? Different viewpoints."
– Huma Abedin is thus far still standing behind her man, but the guy running Anthony Weiner's campaign for New York City mayor is not. Weiner's 31-year-old campaign manager, Danny Kedem, has quit, reports the New York Times, in the latest tire to blow out for an increasingly battered and bare-bones campaign. Weiner confirmed Kedem's departure this morning, noting, “Danny has left the campaign. He did a remarkable job." Kedem put his long-shot candidate atop the polls—before the latest round of sexting emerged. It's not the only blow for Weiner today, as top politicians raced to the Sunday shows to throw Weiner under the bus. A sampling: David Axelrod, as per Politico: "At this point it's absurd. He is not going to be the next mayor of New York. He is wasting time and space. It's time for him to go away and let New York have its mayor's race." Peter King: "He should do himself and everybody a favor and step to the sidelines. He is not psychologically qualified to be mayor of the city of New York. I just can't see any way, even if this latest scandal would not have come out, that Anthony Weiner could have won." Mayoral rival Christine Quinn: "When you see scandal after scandal about this, what it does is create even more distrust and maybe even disgust in government. We really need to move beyond that." And further: "Has he disqualified himself? Yes. He disqualified himself, but not just because of these scandals. He didn't have the qualifications when he was in Congress. He was in Congress for 12 years, he passed one bill." Former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers: The Clintons "would like to see this go away. It's very painful for the Clintons. They are genuinely very close to Huma." And it's all over but the singing anyway: “He may still be in the race, but his campaign is over. Voters are willing to forgive people as long as the person is genuinely sorry and tries to change. Anthony Weiner's played voters for fools.”
– China issued a warning to its citizens in the Philippines yesterday, telling them to "avoid going out at all if possible," because a war may be brewing between the two countries, the Telegraph reports. What is this war over? A few rocks in the South China Sea. Both countries lay claim to the Scarborough Shoal—and, more importantly, to the fish-rich waters around it. One Chinese TV station aired footage of a reporter defiantly raising China's flag on one of those rocks. Chinese state-run media has warned that there will be a "small-scale war" if the Philippines doesn't back down, Voice of America reports. China's state-owned tourism company broke off ties with the country yesterday over today's scheduled protest outside the Chinese embassy building in Manila. China's foreign minister today accused the Philippine government of encouraging the protest, and said it would complicate and escalate the situation and endanger Chinese nationals in the Philippines.
– In what may be one of its more unusual Facebook posts of 2017, the police department in Pawhuska, Okla., has reported on an incident that took place Friday in a junior high school choir room. The alleged perp, per KOTV and the Smoking Gun: Lacey Sponsler, a 34-year-old substitute teacher. The purported crime: showing off her cartwheel skills sans underwear. Per a probable cause affidavit, a 17-year-old female student says that Sponsler had announced she wasn't wearing undergarments, as well as dished about using drugs and how "14-year-old boys were like men." Then, captured in a video cops say a student shot on a cellphone, Sponsler allegedly did a cartwheel and caused her dress to "[flip] up," showing her buttocks. The female student said in the affidavit she saw Sponsler's exposed vagina "open and close" as her legs swung up in the air. Police arrested Sponsler, who initially denied the incident, on charges of indecent exposure and took her into custody Tuesday. After cops told her there was a video, Sponsler said she "did not remember" doing the cartwheel. According to the police report, Sponsler told cops she was simply "trying to be a cool teacher" and was only "dancing" with some students. Sponsler has pleaded guilty in the past to possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia, as well as to public intoxication, per the Smoking Gun. (An Arizona teen said to have flashed his private parts in a yearbook photo lucked out.)
– If you're subscribing to the old adage of "grin and bear it" to mask negative emotions, you're not doing yourself any favors—we're simply not that easily fooled. Researchers say that over time, fake smiling can actually cause people to associate smiling with feeling unhappy, and that people should instead perhaps forgo a smile until whatever negative emotion they're feeling is resolved, reports Live Science. "Smiling by itself does not increase happiness or well-being," one of the researchers writes in the Daily Mail. For the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers conducted three experiments in which they asked people a range of questions, including how happy they are with their lives, how much they smiled that day, whether they thought people more often smile to feel good or to try to feel good, and in which scenarios they recall smiling from happiness. They concluded that those who smile when happy often feel better as a result, while those who smile when they're not happy often feel worse. (Meanwhile, check out five stars whose perfect smiles are fake.)
– Miley Cyrus says she's "completely clean" after giving up marijuana, the AP reports. Cyrus told Billboard magazine in an April interview published online Wednesday that she hadn't smoked marijuana in three weeks. She says that's the longest she's ever gone without it. Cyrus also opened up about her relationship with fiance Liam Hemsworth. She says they had to "refall for each other" after their 2013 breakup. The 24-year-old former Disney star also discussed her performance at the MTV Music Video Awards in 2013. A scantily clad Cyrus shocked audiences with a rump-shaking performance alongside Robin Thicke. But she says she wasn't looking for attention by twerking on stage and was surprised by the reaction. Cyrus is promoting an upcoming album. Its lead single, "Malibu," is set to be released on May 11.
– Pope Francis hit a wide-ranging number of topics in his address to Congress today. Here are five getting attention: Death penalty: He implored Congress to abolish it, reports ThinkProgress. “Every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes." Immigrants: He invoked MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech in asking the US to be more welcoming not only to refugees from Europe but from Mexico as well, reports the Hill. "On this continent, too, thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities. Is this not what we want for our own children?" Marriage: In what Slate says is "almost certainly an allusion" to gay marriage, Francis lamented the state of the modern family. It is "threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without," he said. "Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life." Climate change: He said the US has an "important role to play" in reversing the "environmental deterioration caused by human activity," reports CNBC. "Now is the time for courageous actions and strategies." Arms trade: He told lawmakers from the world's largest exporter of weapons that the arms trade must end, reports the AP. Why do weapons get sold to war mongers? he asked. "Sadly, the answer as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. ... It is our duty to confront the problem."
– To all the new parents struggling to feed their newborn every two to three hours, imagine having to do it every hour—for years. Such is reality for the Torti family in Tennessee, whose son, Owen, now 23 months, was diagnosed with the rare metabolic disorder LCHAD (long-chain 3-hydroxyacyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase) as an infant. Because his body doesn't break down certain foods into energy, Owen is at risk of his body breaking down his muscles for energy if he goes without food for more than an hour, reports ABC News. "He wants to act like a normal 2-year-old and he wants to go and play and run around as long as the other 2-year-olds," mom Kayla Torti says. "Unfortunately, we have to have him sit down and take little breaks. He doesn't know how to pace himself." LCHAD, which was first diagnosed in the 1990s, is so rare it only affects one in every 100,000 newborns and wasn't even on newborn screening tests until six years ago, reports WKRN Nashville. To help with medical bills, two teams recently ran the Ragnar Relay through Tennessee wearing "All in for Owen" shirts and raised $15,000. Owen was born nine weeks premature, according to the family's YouCaring page, and has been hospitalized 12 times in 20 months, typically when a metabolic breakdown causes breathing problems and seizures. If not treated, he could slip into a coma and even die. With the constant eating, his mother says he's developed an oral aversion to food and is on a special medical formula called Lipistart, administered largely through a feeding tube. The Tortis have a 25% chance of having a second child with the same disorder. (These parents are losing both their sons to a rare brain disease.)
– It could be months before a full investigation of Friday's propeller plane crash in East Haven, Conn., is completed. In the meantime, the identities of the victims have been officially confirmed as Bill Henningsgaard, 54, a former Microsoft VP; his 17-year-old son, Maxwell; and two children in the house the plane hit, Sade Brantley, 13, and Madisyn Mitchell, 1. The town held a vigil for the victims on Saturday, NBC New York reports. Pilot Henningsgaard didn't declare an emergency prior to the crash, says a National Transportation Safety Board investigator; there is no evidence thus far that there was "anything wrong with the plane," he notes. It was Heningsgaard's first approach to Tweed-New Haven Airport, the investigator says, though other reports have described it as his second approach. Henningsgaard was a noted philanthropist, NBC adds; he was named as one of 2013's Superheroes for Washington Families by parenting organization ParentMap, the Daily Astorian reports. He had previously survived a 2009 plane accident.
– The price of Bitcoins is skyrocketing at a head-turning rate—they're currently worth more than $200 each, up from $90 when we wrote this piece on the phenomenon two weeks ago—which has everyone wondering: Is this a bubble? And should you buy anyway in the likely event that it is? Here's what people are saying: Farhad Manjoo at Slate gives a first-hand account of the confusing and frankly downright shady process for buying the coins. "You've got to take several leaps of faith, trusting sites that look like they were put together by teenagers," he writes. But that's why he thinks this bubble still has legs. Bubbles, he theorizes, take off when mainstream buyers get involved. Once better Bitcoin sites appear, the masses will arrive, and "prices will begin to get really crazy." Speculators "are just laughing at all the people who are dismissing Bitcoin as a bubble," writes Henry Blodget at Business Insider. Because the most you can lose on Bitcoins is 100% of your money—and you stand to make much more than 100% back. Like, say, 600% (which investors have made in the last six weeks). That said, lots of things could obliterate the market, like hacking, or a government crackdown. Timothy Lee at Forbes thinks Bitcoins are a bonafide disruptive technology. "The Bitcoin economy today looks a lot like the PC market circa 1978," he observes. "Most people today look at Bitcoin and see an impractical curiosity." But Bitcoin isn't a product, it's a platform, and one with lots of room to grow. But Kurt Eichenwald at Vanity Fair is far, far less convinced, calling the system "very cool. But also very foolish." Bitcoins aren't a currency anymore—currencies are based on "a rational expectation of relatively stable valuation," and Bitcoin prices are anything but stable or rational. "In essence, the market is a fantasy," based on speculators and investors. And when they stop buying, who will replace them? "My bet? No one." It's worth noting that the price took a really nasty hit today, falling 24% from its intra-day high of $266.
– Ebola doesn't just cause a horrific death: It'll leave you with a massive hospital bill if you survive, reports Bloomberg. Care for Liberian national Thomas Duncan, who is in critical condition at a Dallas hospital, is costing up to $1,000 an hour, and analysts believe the bill could total more than $500,000, including costs like security and decontamination. Duncan—who will also face criminal charges if he pulls through—has no health insurance, and it's not clear if the bill will ever be paid. "It's too early to make a decision about payment of bills; he is in critical condition," a Liberian Embassy spokesman says. "The focus is on his health." More: Duncan, 42, is receiving an experimental drug, and health officials say there have been a few positive signs: He's still on dialysis, but his blood pressure and temperature are now normal, reports the New York Times. None of the 48 people under observation who came into contact with him are showing Ebola symptoms. But with the incubation deadline days away, Dallas is on edge, reports the AP. "This is a very critical week," says Texas Health Commissioner David Lakey. "We're at a very sensitive period when a contact could develop symptoms. We're monitoring with extreme vigilance." Before he became unresponsive, Duncan apologized to his fiancee and told her he would have "preferred to stay in Liberia and died than bring this to you," a family friend tells the Washington Post. The friend says he told her, "I'm so sorry all of this is happening ... I would not put the love of my life in danger." Duncan's relatives have been able to view him via a video system, but they decided not to during a hospital visit yesterday because earlier images had been too disturbing. "What we saw was very painful. It didn't look good," a nephew tells the AP. A fascinating read: How Firestone shut down Ebola.
– The West Coast sardine population was down 72% since 2006 per a fall assessment—the worst crash since the mid-20th century, and one with far-reaching implications, particularly since the steep decline is expected to continue. One of those implications: Ocean predators that depend on sardines may be starving, the Los Angeles Times reports: Researchers think 1,600 malnourished sea lion pups that washed up onshore in Southern California last year were born to nursing mothers whose milk quality was compromised after they had to turn from fatty sardines to other fish; brown pelicans—which also depend on sardines for food—are also suffering. Neither species can turn to anchovies as an alternative food source, as they normally would, because their numbers are also down. Fishermen, too, are affected; they're not allowed to catch as many sardines (harvest maximums have been dramatically cut)—and they often can't find any to catch (the LA Times follows one boat that caught zero fish in a 12-hour outing). So what's going on? Sardine populations often experience wild swings, booming when conditions are good and then dropping sharply when conditions shift. After the last bad collapse, which happened after a massive boom in the 1940s, sardine fishing was halted for 18 years beginning in the 1960s, and though the population bounced back in the 1980s, it was never the same. Scientists now, as then, aren't sure how to divide the blame between ocean conditions (the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a climate cycle, has brought cold, sardine-unfriendly water to the area) and overfishing. Last month, Pew Charitable Trusts warned that dozens of species, including whales, sharks, dolphins, salmon, and tuna, could feel an impact.
– Yesterday was the day net neutrality died, with a court ruling that Internet service providers aren't bound by FCC non-discrimination rules—so they can prioritize some traffic over others. The decision may mean major changes for the everyday user, and today, media sites are offering the details. Among their warnings: The Wall Street Journal reports that the decision could have a huge impact on sites like Netflix and YouTube, whose video services hog a lot of bandwidth (they account for 32% and 19% of peak web traffic, respectively). If ISPs start making Netflix, for instance, pay a usage fee to maintain speedy content delivery, that cost could make a serious dent in its profits—or trickle down to consumers. ISPs could charge sites big fees in exchange for faster content delivery, potentially giving giants who can pay, like Amazon, a big leg up over independent retailers—not to mention other small businesses, the Huffington Post notes. Providers might even go so far as to prioritize traffic to partner sites—Time Warner might push CNN, for example. Another anti-competitive fear, via BuzzFeed: Big companies might start paying your data fees for the use of their sites. That might sound good—free data?—but it would mean that companies with the ability to pay would have a major advantage over start-ups in winning users. As BuzzFeed points out, "If, in this future, you're choosing between two streaming music services, and one of them pays for your data, there's a very good chance you’re going to pick that one." Beyond concerns over fees, there are worries that providers could block certain websites completely: Comcast users could theoretically end up with no access to, say, Netflix or Vonage, writes Troy Wolverton in the San Jose Mercury News. But net neutrality, in some form, may live to see another day, the Journal notes, reporting that the ruling "left open the door for the FCC to craft rules in a different form that might accomplish its earlier intentions."
– Soon-to-be-former CIA Director John Brennan strongly criticized Donald Trump on Sunday for reckless tweeting and for failing to understand the threat from Russia—and the president-elect took to his communication medium of choice to react. "'Outgoing CIA Chief, John Brennan, blasts Pres-Elect Trump on Russia threat. Does not fully understand,'" Trump tweeted, quoting a Fox headline. "Oh really, couldn't do much worse - just look at Syria (red line), Crimea, Ukraine and the build-up of Russian nukes. Not good! Was this the leaker of Fake News?" Trump wondered. In an earlier tweet about the Russia dossier, Trump said intelligence chiefs and the media should "APOLOGIZE" for making "a mistake." Brennan had told Fox News Sunday that Trump needs to be a lot more disciplined about his "talking and tweeting" when he becomes president, the Hill reports. "Spontaneity is not something that protects national security interests and so therefore when he speaks or when he reacts, just make sure he understands that the implications and impact on the United States could be profound," he said. Brennan—who leaves office Friday, along with other Obama administration officials—also warned Trump against "absolving Russia of various actions that it's taken in the past number of years" and said it was "outrageous" that Trump had compared the intelligence community to Nazi Germany, the BBC reports. (Trump also tweeted criticism of Saturday Night Live after the "really bad" show's latest portrayal of him.)
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg: booze-swilling Supreme Court justice, part-time actress, and … new namesake of a praying mantis. Scientists from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History were examining 30 praying mantis specimens when they discovered that species—typically classified using a male specimen—could be differentiated simply by looking at female genitalia, according to a release, per the Washington Examiner. They then noticed that one specimen, collected from Madagascar in 1967, was actually a unique species bearing a resemblance to 83-year-old Ginsburg. As scientists explain, the so-named llomantis ginsburgae has a neck plate that brings to mind the jabot, or frilly collar, often found around the justice's neck. Since the researchers were the first "to use female genital structures to delimit a new species of praying mantis," and Ginsburg has devoted much of her life to gender equality, it only made sense to name the insect in her honor. "As a feminist biologist, I often questioned why female specimens weren't used to diagnose most species," the lead researcher says. "It is my hope that our work not only sets a precedent in taxonomy but also underscores the need for scientists to investigate and equally consider both sexes in other scientific investigations." The llomantis ginsburgae species—kept in a Paris museum—is described in the journal Insect Systematics & Evolution. (Does this frog species look oddly familiar?)
– North Korea's economy may not be growing, but one of its prison camps sure seems to be. New satellite photos show that Camp 25, thought to house about 5,000 of the 200,000 people believed to be held in North Korea's gulags, has grown steadily over the past decade, reports the Washington Post. Its perimeter grew 37% between just 2009 and 2010, according to the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which says new buildings, guard posts, and fields have been added. Experts are unsure whether the expansion of Camp 25 signals an overall growth in political prisoners in North Korea or a move to accommodate existing prisoners as other camps are downsized. "It appears that North Korea's vast system of unlawful imprisonment may be undergoing an alteration involving the consolidation of some of its political prison camps, and the expansion of others," said the executive director of the committee, according to Yonhap News.
– With just the press of a button, "cash out crews" have been attacking ATMs around the world, and now apparently in the US. Reuters reports that two big ATM makers, Diebold Nixdorf and NCR Corp., have issued warnings about the so-called "jackpotting" scheme, which has made its way to US machines—usually stand-alone units in pharmacies, drive-thrus, or big-box stores, per a US Secret Service alert cited by Krebs on Security—for the very first time. "This is the first instance of jackpotting in the United States," site owner and security guru Brian Krebs tells the Washington Post. "It's safe to assume that these are here to stay at this point." And it's become an increasingly sophisticated money-grabbing maneuver, as he explains on his site. Per the Secret Service alert, an on-the-street crew decked out to look like ATM technicians uses an endoscope like you'd see at the doctor's office to access an ATM's innards and connect the ATM's computer with their own laptop. The ATM will then seem to be out of service when other potential customers show up to use it, and "co-conspirators" can then send an SMS or use an external keyboard to command the ATM to start spitting out cash "like slot machines" to a "money mule" lying in wait, per the Post. In past hacks, also known as "logical attacks," the ATMs would churn out the bills "at a rate of 40 bills every 23 seconds," per the Secret Service alert, cleaning out the ATM unless the "Cancel" button was pressed. The mule then leaves and the "technicians" come back to disconnect their equipment. "This should be treated by all ATM deployers as a call to action," NCR warns.
– Chicago might have been making headlines this weekend for the thousands of people who packed downtown for Lollapalooza. Instead, most of the attention is focused on the shooting violence that occurred elsewhere in the city, leaving more than 60 injured and 10 dead between Friday evening and Monday morning, reports WLS-TV. The worst of it took place in a three-hour span starting around midnight Saturday when 30 people were shot, reports the Sun-Times. Of those victims, 25 were injured in five mass shootings. Police say gang violence is mostly to blame, with shooters taking advantage of large gatherings in the summer weather to inflict the most casualties. "If they shoot you, they don’t even run,” one man tells the Chicago Tribune. "They just walk away, they ain’t trying to run." A police spokesman says the extra police presence at the music festival did not play a role in the violence because officers working it were generally on their regular days off and on OT. The violence prompted Rudy Giuliani to enter the fray with a series of tweets backing Garry McCarthy, a former Chicago police chief who hopes to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel. "MAKE CHICAGO SAFE AGAIN!" tweeted Giuliani, who worked with McCarthy in New York when Giuliani was mayor. Giuliani called McCarthy a "policing genius" thanks to his work with the data-centric CompStat system, adding, "Chicago murders are direct result of one party Democratic rule for decades." The Washington Post can't resist pointing out that Giuliani misspelled McCarthy's first name as "Jerry" and the current mayor's last name as "Emmanuel," and that McCarthy is a Democrat himself.
– President Trump doesn't appear to be heeding calls to end his rhetoric in regard to North Korea. In a pair of tweets, he boasted about America's nuclear prowess. "My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal," he tweeted. "It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before." He then added, "Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!" Earlier, in response to North Korea's threat to strike Guam, Trump retweeted a Fox News story about US Air Force jets taking off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam for a training mission, with a caption noting pilots could be ready to "fight tonight," notes the Wall Street Journal. Related: Ad-lib? The New York Times reports that Trump's "fire and fury" line from Tuesday was improvised. The newspaper says the president did not run the language by advisers in advance, including chief of staff John Kelly. A piece of paper Trump had in front of him was reportedly a fact sheet on the opioid crisis. Politico reporter Josh Dawsey's sources tell him the words were not "carefully vetted," adding, "Don't read too much into it." Mattis weighs in: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may have had a more calming tone on the subject Wednesday, but defense chief James Mattis followed up with some tough language. Among other things, he warned in an afternoon statement that North Korea should "cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and destruction of its people," per CNN. American nukes: Trump's tweets on the US arsenal were apparently in reference to a review of nuclear weapons that was ordered on Jan. 27 but isn't expected to be completed until year's end, reports the Washington Post. Such reviews are required by Congress about every eight years. After the last one in 2010, Barack Obama announced a $1 trillion plan to upgrade the nuclear arsenal over 30 years. Given all that, fact-checkers are pushing back on Trump's boast that he beefed up the arsenal, and that's putting it mildly. JFK comparison: “These are the moments when we have to come together as a nation and support the executive,” White House aide Sebastian Gorka said on Fox News, per Mediaite. “Whether you voted for him or not, whether they’re a Democrat or whether they’re a Republican, these are trying times. … During the Cuban missile crisis we stood behind JFK. This is analogous to the Cuban missile crisis.” Seeking ambassador: No ambassador to South Korea is in place yet under the new administration, and BuzzFeed reports that the absence of one is especially troubling now.
– President Obama's acceptance speech last night wasn't a complete dud, but it wasn't the finest speech of his career—or of the Democratic National Convention, or even of yesterday, say pundits. At 38 minutes, it was the shortest acceptance speech from an incumbent since Gerald Ford in 1976, Politico notes. The Democrats were having a great convention until the president delivered a "warmed-over rehash of his stump speech" with a "laundry list of familiar proposals," writes Molly Ball at the Atlantic. His speech—which "seemed engineered as a series of defensive moves"—was "so befuddlingly flat as to make you wonder whether its lameness was intentional," she writes. The speech wasn't make-or-break for Obama, but he could surely have done better than the "fourth best speech of the Democratic convention" after Bill Clinton's, Michelle's, and Joe Biden's, writes Yuval Levin at the National Review. Obama "laid out no discernible second-term agenda of his own," and his attack on Romney's "supposed plans to eradicate all of government while giving tax cuts to the wealthy" was the speech's "sole coherent message," he writes. Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post names his winners and losers of the convention, and puts Obama between the two categories. "At times, it felt more like a State of the Union address than a convention acceptance speech. It was workmanlike more than inspirational," he writes. The speech wasn't in the same league as Bill Clinton's, "but neither will it be remembered as a colossal flop." The speech was "forceful, animated, and error-free—but not among his most lustrous rhetorical moments," write Niall Stanage and Amie Parnes at the Hill. The speech "highlighted Obama’s accomplishments, drew broad outlines of what a second White House term would bring, and was jam-packed with stark, sometimes mocking, contrasts between his policies and those" of Mitt Romney, but there wasn't a glimpse of the "more elevated oratory that powered his historic journey to the Oval Office in 2008" until the final minutes.
– Will Smith stars as Nicky, an established con man who takes on a new apprentice, Australian newcomer Margot Robbie's Jess, in Focus. They both love the con game, but who's playing who? Here's what critics are saying: Richard Corliss at Time is a fan. "The mix of longtime star and minx on the rise is one tasty element in the success of a movie that approaches the modest goals and effortless allure of a 60-year-old Hitchcock," he writes. Smith "takes a welcome break from glowering sci-fi roles" and writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa "deserve some credit in letting Will be Will in the star's first charm barrage since 2005's Hitch." Steven Rea at the Philadelphia Inquirer admits Smith "shows some of the movie-star wattage that's been missing from his recent pics. He charms." There's also "combustible chemistry" between Smith and Robbie, but the movie just "disappoints," Rea writes. "Even if you're willing to forgive its sinkhole plotholes and farthest-fetched conceits, the film ... ultimately makes no sense." Betsy Sharkey, on the other hand, says this "rom-com-con" is "an irresistible reminder of all the reasons we first fell for the Fresh Prince so many years ago." Writing at the Los Angeles Times, she notes the romantic role of Nicky fits Smith perfectly, while Robbie is "more than holding her own" as his match. "The scams are Rubik's Cube complicated, but what keeps you guessing is whether the romantic connection between Jess and Nicky is real or just another con." But Mick LaSalle at the San Francisco Chronicle isn't convinced. In a review titled "Will Smith just stole $12 from your pocket," he argues Focus is "ridiculous in every detail. It's a movie with no truth that teaches nothing and shows nothing, that has only its audacity to recommend it." Nicky and Jess lack "impact," partly because "Smith is not a strong leading man," he says. Viewers are left "waiting for the trick, which is not the same as being fooled."
– Chris Christie got back in the national spotlight in a way he prefers today—as a featured speaker at the annual CPAC convention for conservatives. The New Jersey governor took particular aim at the media ("We've got to stop letting the media define who we are and what we stand for") and President Obama ("Man, that's leadership, isn't it?"), reports Politico. He also advised members of the GOP and the Tea Party that it's time to "start talking about what we're for and not what we're against." The AP called it an "aggressive message," and Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post writes that he was back to his "pugnacious self," but the sentiment wasn't unanimous. Time says the "humbled" governor delivered an "uncharacteristically low-key message." Either way, the crowd seemed to warm up to Christie as he went along and rewarded him with a standing ovation at the end, writes Eliana Johnson at the National Review. Rubin sums up: "Christie is still an impressive speaker who knows how to hold a room’s attention. If he is no longer the GOP front-runner, neither can he be ignored in 2016."
– One of the co-founders of Politico makes the case that the success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders shows that America is ready for a third-party movement. Those two have raised a "terrific middle finger" to the establishment, but neither presents a coherent governing strategy, writes Jim VandeHei in the Wall Street Journal. He wants a new party to combine the best of their movements, and even floats a name for it: the Innovation Party. VandeHei suggests someone like Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg could lead it, while Michael Bloomberg could provide financial backing and then perhaps run the Treasury. "Right now, millions of young people are turned on by a 74-old-year socialist scolding Wall Street" and "millions of others by a reality-TV star with a 1950s view of women," writes VandeHei. His ideal candidate is instead someone from outside the political system who can talk to Americans in "unvarnished" language. He or she should also be from the military or select a running mate who is, because "terrorism is today's World War." Click for his full column, which is meeting with some heated criticism. Some samples: "It takes a uniquely special mind to come up with an op-ed that is simultaneously so pointless and so perverse," writes Isaac Chotiner at Slate. He takes particular exception to VandeHei's suggestion that a candidate "exploit the fear" of Americans. "Anyone who believes we are a meritocracy should read Jim VandeHei, who somehow rose to the top of journalism world," tweets Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress. At the Washington Post, Daniel Drezner provides a critique "of an op-ed gone horribly, horribly wrong," from VandeHei's use of "Silicon Valley buzzwords" to his call for a military leader to save us all.
– Rihanna and Drake have long been an item, but, as TMZ puts it, they were just "casually hooking up"—until now. Sources say they're now an exclusive couple, and that Rihanna is spending all her free time with Drake because he treats her so well. Currently, they're spending every night together in Europe as Drake tours; the rapper is said to be "in the best mood he's been in a long time." In other celebrity romance news: Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger is engaged to racecar driver Lewis Hamilton, according to the Daily Star. She had previously turned him down three times. Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx wed longtime girlfriend Courtney Bingham yesterday in LA, People reports. And Jamie Lynn Spears married James Watson on Friday in New Orleans, E! reports.
– Reactions are flying in to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down much of Arizona's immigration law, but one of the most extreme came from the court itself. Speaking in dissent of the ruling, Antonin Scalia questioned whether Arizona and other states would have even joined the union if they'd known today's ruling was coming, Politico reports. He said the ruling particularly "boggles the mind" in light of Obama's recent executive order on immigration. He said delegates at the constitutional convention would have "rushed to the exits" at the thought of Obama's move. But while Scalia may have been incensed, seemingly every other quarter was declaring victory, or at least partial victory. For example: Jan Brewer called it a "victory for the rule of law," and for the 10th Amendment, because "the heart of SB 1070 can now be implemented," meaning the provision requiring police to check the immigration status of people stopped for other crimes. Joe Arpaio agreed. "I think this is a good section that's been upheld," he said, though he lamented the loss of "the authority to arrest illegal aliens just by being there illegally." President Obama said he was also "pleased" with the decision, which "makes unmistakably clear (that) Congress must act on comprehensive immigration reform," but said he was still "concerned" about the remaining provision, according to CNN. Mitt Romney's statement, meanwhile, was decidedly vague. "Today's decision underscores the need for a president who will lead on this critical issue," he said. "President Obama has failed to provide any leadership on immigration." He said every state has a duty and right to secure its borders, but offered no explicit opinion on the ruling itself.
– Serious sex offenders in the UK will soon be forced to take routine lie detector tests after being released from prison, Sky News reports. The new legislation is expected to be approved shortly and implemented next year. Though the polygraph test results won't be admissible in court, officials expect they'll help reveal probation violations that could land offenders back in jail. While the test could point out those who may be lying about their activities, there's also a big chance it'll spur them to own up to such behavior, per the Guardian. The paper reports that a three-year trial program found that offenders who took polygraphs were twice as likely to cop to prohibited behavior like communicating with a victim. "Introducing lie detector tests, alongside the sex offenders register and close monitoring in the community, will give us one of the toughest approaches in the world to managing this group," says a Justice Minister in a statement, adding that the new approach will "help stop sex offenders from reoffending and leaving more innocent victims in their wake."
– A vehicle struck a hay-lined flatbed trailer carrying adults and children who were dressed up for Halloween, killing three people and injuring several others in a small Mississippi town, authorities say. Two children and one adult—all related to each other—were killed in the crash, Newton County Coroner Danny Shoemaker said late Monday. Their names and ages were not immediately released. "It was just chaos," Shoemaker tells the AP, describing the scene of the wreck on US Highway 80 in Chunky, a town near the Alabama border, about 80 miles east of Jackson. Halloween hayrides are a tradition in Chunky, which has a population of around 325, reports the Washington Post. "It's a small community. This is a bad thing to happen anywhere, but when it's local, it really hits home," Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Andy West tells WTOK. "These are good people, and our hearts go out to them," he says. West says a Ford F-150 pickup truck apparently rear-ended the trailer, which was being pulled by another vehicle, while both vehicles were traveling westbound.
– Deadly weather hit the central US at the beginning of the holiday weekend, with at least six people reported dead across multiple states as of Friday morning. WFAA reports four fatalities due to heavy flooding in north Texas. One body was pulled from a submerged Hyundai after the driver apparently tried to drive across a flooded street, the Dallas Morning News reports. The other victims were also caught in the floods while in vehicles. Meanwhile, two people were killed in traffic accidents credited to freezing rain and high winds in Kansas on Thursday, according to the AP. The AP reports the weather is only expected to get worse as the weekend goes on. Travelers are being warned to stay off the roads because of continued flooding in north Texas. An ice storm warning has been issued for Oklahoma through Saturday. And Arkansas is looking at potential flooding into Sunday. More than 4 inches of rain fell overnight in north Texas, bringing the yearly total at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to 55.23 inches—nearly 2 inches more than the previous record in 1991. A sheriff's deputy in Texas was swept away while trying to help a stranded motorist and found two hours later clinging to a tree, according to the Morning News.
– A Trump administration official has called the president's travel ban a "massive success," but a CNN employee may beg to differ. Per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mohammed Tawfeeq—an Iraqi national and permanent legal US resident who's an editor and producer for the news network—was held at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport Sunday evening as he returned after being on assignment in Iraq. Now Tawfeeq, who's enjoyed permanent resident status since 2013, is suing the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies for his detention, which the suit says was illegal. Per Courthouse News, Tawfeeq was returning to the US from Baghdad (he travels to the Middle East often for work) on Jan. 29 when a US Customs and Border Protection officer pulled him aside. Tawfeeq's green card and passport were examined, he was interrogated about his trip, and he was told he'd need to wait for "an email" from the proper authorities to clear him to enter the country. When he was finally allowed to leave, no one offered further explanation, and they didn't even stamp his passport or give him any entry papers. "The executive order has greatly increased the uncertainty involved in current and future international travel" for legal resident such as Tawfeeq, the suit claims, per the Hill. It also adds that, as a legal permanent resident, he should be afforded "greater procedural protections than non-immigrants/temporary aliens." A CNN rep says the network supports Tawfeeq and that his complaint "is a basic request to clarify and assert his rights under the law," per the Hill.
– Tunisia got a new interim president today—parliamentary leader Fouad Mebazaa—who is technically the third leader in 24 hours, notes the Los Angeles Times. He takes over from the previous interim president, who briefly held power when longtime leader El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country in the face of mass protests over rising prices, joblessness, corruption, repression, you name it. The storyline continues to shape up as one that could set a historical precedent—an Arab populace rising up against its leader. Anthony Shadid, New York Times: "The most enthusiastic suggested it was the Arab world’s Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity in Poland, which heralded the end to Communist rule in Eastern Europe. That seemed premature, particularly because the contours of the government emerging in Tunisia were still unclear." Shadi Hamid, Huffington Post: "No one should underestimate what happened yesterday in Tunisia. If the revolution succeeds, it may very well prove to be one of the most important moments in recent Arab history. It will alter the calculus not only for Arab regimes—who are watching very, very nervously—but for Western powers that have long oriented their Middle East policy around seemingly stable, autocratic governments." Click for the latest as chaos continues on the streets.
– The case of a body dumped in waters off Brooklyn using a "Mafia-style technique," as the New York Times puts it, seems to indeed have Mafia elements. The body found attached to both a cinder block and 5-pound bag of drywall compound on Saturday has been identified as Carmine Carini, 35. "It was right out of GoodFellas," a police source tells the New York Post, which says the cinder block was secured to Carini's legs via an electrical cord; a blue tarp was duct-taped around his body. "The victim was a reputed mobster's son," said Police Chief of Detectives Robert K. Boyce on Tuesday, specifying, "His father had the OC [organized crime] ties, not him." The Post says those ties were to the Colombo crime family, while the New York Daily News says he's a Gambino family associate. The younger Carini did have his own troubles with the law, including five years spent in prison in connection with at least 10 muggings he committed in 2003 in the span of an hour. The Daily News reports Carini was last seen on Aug. 30, with Boyce saying police "believe he was in the water Friday night." He reportedly suffered a skull fracture and had been stabbed in the arm and leg; a fingerprint identification was made.
– A man is trying to find his best friend after Delta Airlines lost track of the 6-year-old bull terrier Friday night. "I keep praying and wishing for him to come back," Frank Romano tells ABC News. Delta has told him they're looking for the dog, Ty, who seems to have gone missing at LAX when Romano and his family were headed to Tampa. After Romano boarded the plane, Delta staff told him Ty was missing, having bitten through the door of his kennel. Romano finds that confusing "when it had a metal door and was made of hard plastic," he tells the LAist. He searched the airport without finding the dog. The next day, he and his family headed to Tampa, where he is now. Meanwhile, he says he's received mixed reports from Delta, who at first told him they'd found the dog; then, "a few minutes later," said they hadn't. "They give us the run-around," he says. "Even gave us a number to the cargo place at Tampa airport saying he was there. We called and (they) said they had no dogs." Delta has lost enough dogs in the past to prompt a Change.org petition, LAist notes, pointing to three different incidents. "If I could I would go back to LA in a heartbeat," Romano says. "I bet I could find Ty faster than Delta can."
– Since the story of baby Gammy went viral several days ago, the Australian government has announced that it is looking into whether it can intervene in a case described by the Australian immigration minister as "very, very murky," particularly because it took place in another country, reports the Telegraph. The baby, now 7 months old, was allegedly abandoned by his Australian parents, who paid a 21-year-old Thai woman to be a surrogate mother following an IVF procedure that ultimately resulted in twins. But the Australian couple says they were never told about the second baby, though surrogate Pattaramon Chanbua, a street vendor with two young children of her own, thinks they're lying about that. She says she was asked to abort Gammy but refused due to religious beliefs, and she's now raising him—and she wants to raise his twin sister as well after new allegations arose against the couple who took her and left Gammy behind. Sources tell Australia's 9 News that the father is a pedophile who was jailed in the 1990s on child sex convictions; his wife says she's aware of those convictions but that her husband is a changed man. The AP also spoke to a police officer who says the man is a convicted sex offender. Child protective services is reportedly looking into the father's suitability now, and Chanbua says she'd take the baby girl she carried back. As for whether she'd turn Gammy over to the couple at this point, she says, "Never. Not in any way." He's currently in the hospital with a serious lung infection and will need surgery for a heart problem, reports the Guardian. A GoFundMe campaign started by a charity has raised more than $230,000 for Gammy's care, and some have argued that Gammy should be able to access Australia's health care. Click for more on the baby's story.
– Fed up with working moms getting all the perks, 38-year-old magazine editor Meghann Foye writes in the New York Post that it's time for childless women to start getting theirs. "There’s something about saying 'I need to go pick up my child' as a reason to leave the office on time that has far more gravitas than, say, 'My best friend just got ghosted by her OkCupid date and needs a margarita'—but both sides are valid," she says. But Foye has bigger fish to fry than working moms getting to leave work on time. She's advocating for "meternity leave" to balance out the maternity leave given to new moms. She defines meternity leave as "a sabbatical-like break that allows women and, to a lesser degree, men to shift their focus to the part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs." Foye says a meternity leave would allow childless women to get the time to refocus and reevaluate their lives—time that is already afforded to new mothers. Foye actually took a meternity leave for herself and says the experience was invaluable. "I may not have been changing diapers, but I grappled with self-doubt for the year and a half that I spent away from the corporate world," she writes. Obviously, Foye's opinion has been controversial. "I have to laugh pretty hard at a Foye’s description of maternity leave as a 'sabbatical-like break,'" writes Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. "It’s not exactly a vacation," concurs Korin Miller at Women's Health Magazine. "You're up every three hours to nurse. ... If you can squeeze in a five-minute shower, it's pretty much a damn miracle." And Laura June at New York Magazine points out only 13% of new moms in the US even get maternity leave.
– Under pressure to show he's taking the threat of Russian interference seriously, President Trump claimed without evidence Tuesday that Moscow will be "fighting very hard" to help Democrats win in the 2018 midterm elections, the AP reports. Trump, who has offered mixed messages on Russian interference in US elections—at times even calling it a "hoax"—acknowledged in a tweet that the midterms are a likely target. "I'm very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election," Trump wrote. "Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!" That's despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying outright last week, following the leaders' summit in Helsinki, that he wanted Trump to win in 2016. US intelligence agencies also have determined that Russia interfered in the election to help him win, and the agencies have warned there are ominous signs of more cyberattacks to come. As Trump tweeted on Tuesday, House Republicans held a hearing on election security in which lawmakers—even some of Trump's closest GOP allies—strongly criticized Russian interference and pointed to an indictment this month of 12 Russian intelligence officers. The indictment alleges that the Russians broke into Democratic email accounts and tried to penetrate state election systems. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy noted that the indictment said there is no evidence the vote count was affected, "but that was not likely for a lack of trying." Meanwhile in the Senate on Tuesday, two senators introduced bipartisan legislation to impose new Russian sanctions, saying the US "must make it abundantly clear that we will defend our nation."
– George W. Bush's library and museum get dedicated in Dallas tomorrow, and the former president has been making the interview rounds in advance. In one, he tells Diane Sawyer of ABC News that he is "very comfortable" with his decision to invade Iraq, even though no WMDs turned up. "I think the removal of Saddam Hussein was the right decision for not only our own security but for giving people a chance to live in a free society. But history will ultimately decide that, and I won't be around to see it." Other subjects: Jeb Bush in 2016? "He'd be a marvelous candidate if he chooses to do so. He doesn't need my counsel 'cause he knows what it is, which is, 'run.'" Dick Cheney: Asked by CSPAN to describe his relations with his former VP, Bush used the subdued term of "cordial," notes the Washington Post. “You know, it’s been cordial,” Bush said. “But he lives in Washington and we live in Dallas. And one of the saddest things about departing Washington is that you miss your pals. A lot of people were there for all eight years, and I became good friends with them, like Vice President Cheney. And you know, I just don’t see him much. And I don’t see many of the people I worked with much. And it’s kind of sad.” Rising poll numbers: A CNN poll finds that 42% of Americans consider Bush's presidency a success, up 11 points from when he left office. Meanwhile, 55% rank his presidency a failure, down 13 points. Tea Party resentment: Many in the movement are rankled by what they see as a revival of Bush's legacy, writes Dave Weigel at Slate. Click for that post.
– Twitter has again suspended Alex Jones of InfoWars infamy. And this time it's permanent, CNN reports. "We took this action based on new reports of tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior police, in addition to the accounts' past violations," Twitter tweeted on Thursday afternoon; InfoWars is also permanently banned. CNBC notes that the ban is related to a confrontation between Jones and a CNN reporter at Capitol Hill on Wednesday that was streamed live on Twitter's Periscope service. Jones berated Oliver Darcy for several minutes, the AP reports, at one point saying the journalist was smiling "like a possum that crawled out of the rear end of a dead cow" and mocking his "skinny jeans." Other social media platforms, including YouTube and Facebook, have previously given Jones the boot. However, Jones is reportedly back on Facebook as that ban has expired. Between his namesake Twitter account and the InfoWars account, Jones had about 1.3 million followers, per the AP.
– A horrifying story out of Uganda, where a toddler was grabbed and eaten by a leopard Friday at the Mweya Safari Lodge in Queen Elizabeth National Park. The 2-year-old boy's mother is a game ranger at the park and was working, and the boy was with his nanny in the kitchen of the family's home in the park's staff quarters, near a doorway. "He was seated with the maid when the leopard grabbed and ran with him," the boy's father tells the Kampala Post. But a spokesperson for the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) says the boy followed the nanny outdoors: "The maid was not aware the child followed her. She heard the kid scream for help, she intervened but it was too late the leopard had vanished with it in the bush." The staff quarters are reportedly in a protected area that is popular with tourists, USA Today reports, but the family's home is said to be unfenced. A search team ultimately found some of the boy's bones, including his skull, and they were buried over the weekend. The boy's father says he expects compensation from the UWA and that the organization should do more to protect staff and their families. "UWA gave us the coffin," he says. "I have not talked to them about the incident but I would expect something reasonable to compensate me, although my son's life is gone." Leopard attacks on humans are rare in Uganda. The UWA spokesperson says efforts are being made to locate the leopard and possibly relocate it. "The hunt is on with the intention of capturing the leopard and removing it from the wild because once it has eaten human flesh, the temptations are high to eat another human being, it becomes dangerous," he says, per the Telegraph.
– Members of a Colombian-style band who disappeared after a gig in northern Mexico last week have become the latest musicians to be kidnapped and murdered by drug gangs, authorities fear. The 16-man Kombo Kolombia band and four of its roadies were reported missing early Friday; investigators have now discovered at least eight bodies dumped in a well in the area, the AP reports. The band members were Mexican but played Colombian-style vallenato music, which is not normally associated with drug gangs, the International Business Times reports. After the band played a private show in a bar north of Monterrey last Thursday night, people reported hearing gunshots and vehicles speeding away. The band members' empty vehicles were found outside the bar.
– "It does like the peak is behind us now," CBS News quotes Dr. Dan Jernigan as saying. But the director of the CDC's Influenza Division says that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet, warning there's still "a fair amount of influenza to go." Jernigan says this flu season, which has been the worst in a decade, could continue until mid-April. And despite signs the flu is finally letting up, it's still doing plenty of damage. The share of doctor's visits related to the flu dropped from 7.5% last to week to 6.4% this week, USA Today reports. And the number of states with high patient traffic related to the flu dropped from 43 to 39. Another 13 children were reported dead from the flu this week—bringing the total this flu season to 97—but that's down from the 22 child deaths reported last week. While this year's flu vaccine is only 36% effective overall, it's 59% effective in children. Most the of children reported killed by the flu this week had not been vaccinated, and experts say parents should still be getting their children vaccinated even this far into the flu season. Meanwhile, NBC News looks at why experts believe next year's flu vaccine will be mediocre at best.
– The Food and Drug Administration has approved a second "living drug" to fight cancer—a personalized treatment that alters a patient's own cells to turn them into cancer-killers. The new "CAR T-cell therapy" has been approved for non-Hodkins lymphoma patients with few other treatment options, a group that could number around 3,500 per year, the Washington Post reports. But the innovative therapy won't come cheap: Forbes reports that the cost will be $373,000 per patient, not including the cost of treating side effects that could include dangerous fevers. A similar treatment approved for leukemia in July costs $475,000 per patient. Doctors believe the new treatment, produced by Kite Pharma under the brand name Yescarta, could save thousands of lives, the New York Times reports. In the study that led to FDA approval, 54% of 101 patients went into complete remission, and 39% of the 101 were still in remission an average of 8.7 months later. "Today marks another milestone in the development of a whole new scientific paradigm for the treatment of serious diseases," FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. "In just several decades, gene therapy has gone from being a promising concept to a practical solution to deadly and largely untreatable forms of cancer." (The fight against breast cancer is also making progress.)
– The NYPD is on the lookout after an anonymous driver posted a video that appears to show him (or her) driving all the way around Manhattan (a 26.5-mile loop) in 24 minutes, 7 seconds. That would be an unofficial record, MyFox New York reports; the previous mark was 26:03, set in 2010. The August 26 drive was made in a BMW Z3, and the driver had to stop at six red lights. "We've seen this before. We've taken enforcement action," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly says. "We now have license plate readers that will help in this investigation." Jalopnik writer Raphael Orlove calls the Manhattan speed laps "illegal," "reckless," and "dangerous," and notes that though the driver was going an average speed of 66mph, the driver was also "passing on the right, weaving across lanes, and cutting people off like a cabbie." Orlove managed to contact the driver, who insists, "Being a fast driver doesn't mean that you're inherently a bad or reckless driver. ... I'm in control."
– The latest unfortunate headline for Tesla comes courtesy of actress Mary McCormack, who on Friday tweeted a video of a Model S with flames shooting from it. "This is what happened to my husband and his car today. No accident,out of the blue, in traffic on Santa Monica Blvd. Thank you to the kind couple who flagged him down and told him to pull over. And thank god my three little girls weren’t in the car with him," wrote McCormack, who has had leading roles in series including Murder One and The West Wing. Tesla says it is investigating, calling such an incident is "extraordinarily unusual," CBS News reports. Responding to queries on Twitter, McCormack said the Tesla wasn't equipped with Autopilot and that her husband was "barely moving in traffic" at the time. "Our initial investigation shows that the cabin of the vehicle was totally unaffected by the fire due to our battery architecture, which is designed to protect the cabin in the very rare event that a battery fire occurs," Tesla says in a statement. It is not officially blaming a faulty battery for the fire, but local authorities say that could be the case. The editor-in-chief of car site Edmunds notes, "We've driven over 50,000 miles in these vehicles and have never replicated this or anything like it, nor have we seen any evidence elsewhere of other cars spontaneously catching fire, so I think it needs more investigation." The Street notes that Tesla's stock slumped in pre-market trading Monday.
– Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance—via a remote-controlled video chat robot—at the TED conference yesterday, and, as at his SXSW appearance, he got a warm welcome. The inventor of the Internet himself, Tim Berners-Lee, appeared onstage and called Snowden a hero, Wired reports, and a vocal segment of the crowd agreed, according to Fortune, with only about 10% deeming him a villain. Snowden's most headline-generating pronouncement was that "there are absolutely more revelations to come. Some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come." But the appearance itself fascinated David Weigel at Slate. Snowden has essentially positioned himself as a "cyborg thought leader," Weigel writes. With these appearances, he's "controlled his image like … well, like a guy who doesn't give out his contact info and lives in a country that American journalists need a visa to visit." Snowden's TED and SXSW hosts asked exactly the questions he wanted and avoided uncomfortable ones he didn't—like, say, anything to do with Russian politics. "Snowden has outlived the DB Cooper mystery that defined his public debut, and is now situated for a long game in which he becomes more popular and harder to call a traitor." Click for Weigel's full column.
– This is one of the biggest days in the exploration of our solar system since Voyager 2 approached Neptune in 1989—and there may not be a day like it again. According to NASA's calculations, its New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto at 31,000mph at 7:49am EDT today; confirmation of that will come tonight, some 13 hours later, reports the AP. The confirmation will mark the completion of NASA's tour of the "classical nine" planets, reports the AP, which notes that Pluto was considered a full-fledged planet instead of a dwarf one when the probe began its journey in 2006. Some things to know about the historic flyby, which comes 50 years to the day after the first successful flyby of Mars: New Horizons will have to capture a vast amount of data in a short time. The probe will be pushed to its limits as it pivots to capture photos and information on Pluto and its moons Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra during the flyby. "I can't wait to get into the data and really start making sense of it. Right now, we're just standing under the waterfall and enjoying it," principal New Horizons scientist Alan Stern tells the BBC. We don't know whether it was a success. The probe is far too busy to "phone home," the AP notes, but it's expected to send a confirmation signal at around 9pm tonight. The eagerly awaited first photos from the flyby should be released tomorrow night, the Guardian reports, though it will take 16 months to send all the data from the flyby back to Earth. We've already learned a lot of new things about Pluto. "The science we've already made is mouth-watering," says Stern. "The Pluto system is enchanting in its strangeness and its alien beauty." Among NASA's findings in recent days: Pluto's North Pole has an icy cap and the planet's diameter is 1,597 miles across, not 1,471 miles as previously thought. The finding suggests the planet contains a lot more ice and a lot less rock than thought, the Christian Science Monitor reports. There are still a lot of mysteries to be solved. Scientists hope the first close-up look at Pluto's surface will explain features like heart- and doughnut-shaped features recently spotted for the first time. LiveScience notes that new information from Pluto could help explain how our own planet formed and how life began. "There's a feeling among scientists that Pluto probably will tell us what the early solar system looked like and it's now locked in deep freeze and maybe it will tell us what we once were, a long time ago," the director of the Deep Space Communication Complex tells Reuters. The Australian facility will be first to receive new information from the spacecraft. New Horizons isn't done. New Horizons will keep traveling into the Kuiper Belt debris field and beyond after it passes Pluto, National Geographic notes, and it may have more research to do if NASA approves funding. (The astronomer who first spotted Pluto in 1930 is the spacecraft's only passenger.)
– The big news organizations couldn't call this one fast enough. The moment the last of the Florida polls closed at 8pm, AP, CNN, and all the usual suspects declared Mitt Romney the winner. It wasn't tough: With all precincts reporting, Romney had 46.4%, Newt Gingrich 31.9%, Rick Santorum 13.4%, and Ron Paul 7%. In their respective speeches, Gingrich made clear that he is in the race for the long run, while Romney put all his focus on President Obama. Click for that. Some exit poll highlights: Electability: 45% said it was the most important attribute in a candidate, a good sign for Romney. Conservatives: Voters who called themselves "very conservative" went for Gingrich 43-29, one of Newt's few bright spots, notes Politico. Anyone else? About 4 in 10 said they would like another candidate in the race. Women: Romney won among female voters 51-29, reports the Daily Caller. Economy: 30% said they were falling behind financially, and half said foreclosures were a big problem in their communities, notes AP. Negative ads: 37% said Romney ran the most unfair campaign, while 34% pinned it on Gingrich. Demographics: About 1 in 7 voters were Hispanic, and 4 in 10 were over age 65.
– Donald Trump launched what the BBC describes as a "fresh assault on America's intelligence community" with a tweet Tuesday night accusing them of delaying a briefing—and putting "intelligence" in quotes. "The 'Intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case," Trump tweeted. "Very strange!" Officials, however, tell CNN that the briefing had never been scheduled for Tuesday, and even President Obama has yet to receive the final report from top intelligence officials on the alleged Russian hacking of the presidential election. Officials say Trump or his team may have mistakenly thought his regular intelligence briefing Tuesday would be the Russia-related one. A senior intelligence official tells NBC News that the director of national intelligence and heads of the NSA, CIA, and FBI are among those scheduled to meet with Trump on Friday. The Washington Post reports that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump's attitude toward intelligence services "really dumb" Tuesday night. "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you," he told Rachel Maddow. "From what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them." A source tells the Post that the report on Russian hacking could be on Obama's desk as soon as Thursday. A declassified version might be released to the public early next week, the source says. (At least one Trump adviser disagrees with the president-elect's skepticism.)
– Oil giant BP lost $5.2 billion last year, but the company somehow saw fit to propose maximum bonuses for 2015 for its top executives, including a 20% pay increase for CEO Bob Dudley—a proposal that 59% of shareholders roundly rejected by proxy vote at Thursday's annual meeting, MarketWatch reports. The company had indicated earlier in the day that it may also have to reduce its dividend, the Wall Street Journal reports. Dudley is set to receive the full bonus he was eligible for, which comes to $4.2 million (including $1.4 million in cash and a portion in deferred BP shares), per an earlier MarketWatch report. This amount was bumped up from the $3 million ($1 million in cash) he received in 2014. BP's CFO was also on the list to rake in his full bonus. "We think it sends the wrong message," a rep for shareholder Royal London Asset Management tells the BBC. "It shows that the board is out of touch." Not only did BP suffer straight-up monetary losses as the price of oil fell, it also announced it will be getting rid of about 7,000 jobs and taking other belt-tightening measures. And the Financial Times notes that other energy company execs saw their pay slashed in 2015. But a BP spokesman says "executives performed strongly in a difficult environment in 2015, managing the things they could control and for which they were accountable." Andy Critchlow, writing for the Reuters Breakingviews blog, agrees. "Dudley has to work harder than his predecessors," he writes, noting the CEO has helped the company recover from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and improved safety protocol. "The mild-mannered American has had possibly the toughest job in the oil industry. His rewards look in line with that task." Carl-Henric Svanberg, chairman of BP's board, says the nonbinding shareholder vote won't alter the payouts they've already decided on, but that the board will take investors' concerns into account when coming up with next year's compensation packages.
– Israel says it has foiled a major plot by al-Qaeda that included a planned attack on the US embassy in Tel Aviv, reports the AP. The Shin Bet security agency arrested three Palestinians it says were recruited indirectly by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. The alleged plot called for suicide bombers to hit the embassy and the Jerusalem Convention Center simultaneously, and then for subsequent bombs to go off when first responders arrived, reports the Jerusalem Post. Another attack was planned on a passenger bus near Jerusalem. Authorities say an operative in Gaza who worked for Zawahiri recruited the three men separately via Facebook and Skype. One was supposed to go to Syria first to learn how to make bombs, and then help other foreign terrorists enter the country with fake Russian passports, says Shin Bet.
– Not engaged, but just dying for an oh-so-special ring to call your own? Great news: Thanks to today’s brilliant jewelry marketers, there’s a ring for every relationship status you’d like to broadcast to the world, be it “available and happy” or “divorced, available, and happy.” Websites like MySingleRing.com offer you a silver band that promises to deliver the message, “I am an intelligent, empowered individual”…who also just so happens to be single and looking. The trend goes even further, reports the New York Times, with more divorced people starting to turn their wedding bands into “divorce rings” (picture a severed band with a stitched-together gap). If you just can’t bear the sight of your wedding band, no problem: D Jewelry Company will sell you a brand-new divorce ring. Want to go one step further? Consider the Wedding Ring Coffin.
– A French extreme sportsman described by the Inertia as an "inspiration to the working man" has died at the age of 32 after a hot air balloon stunt backfired, ABC News reports. Tancrede Melet, part of a daredevil group known as the Flying Frenchies, was setting up the stunt in a small town in southeastern France when the balloon that he and other members of his crew were anchored into lifted off. Melet wasn't able to release his anchor, the site adds, and when it did finally give, he was dangling "at arm's length" from the basket and fell about 100 feet to the ground, NBC News reports. "[Tancrede] Melet, an amazing lover of life, surprised us yesterday morning in us leaving too fast," his teammates posted on his Facebook page Wednesday, noting the stunt was part of an "artistic project." "He leaves behind wonderful memories, a taste of freedom and [a head] full of dreams." Melet, described on various sites as an accomplished climber, tightrope walker, kayaker, BASE jumper, and wingsuiter, didn't start out as a full-time adventurer. He was an engineer for four years before deciding to more fully indulge his adrenaline fix, the Inertia notes, and he literally jumped right into things once he committed himself, performing such stunts as "high-lining" between skyscrapers and cable cars and BASE jumping off of Mont Blanc. "In Love with circus and acrobatic performance, he was the leader of the … Flying Frenchies with whom he pushed the limits," his colleagues wrote on Facebook. Melet leaves behind his partner, Tiphaine Breillot, and his young child, Leonie, they add.
– Spain erupted into chaos on Sunday as Catalonia held a referendum on independence, with police firing rubber bullets at protesters and smashing into polling stations in an effort to halt the vote, reports the AP. The officers fired the rubber bullets while trying to clear protesters who were trying to prevent National Police cars from leaving after police confiscated ballot boxes. The Spanish government has ordered police to stop the voting process, saying it's illegal. Catalan officials said more than 300 people were injured, some seriously. Catalan President Carles Puigdemont condemned the crackdown. "Police brutality will shame forever the Spanish state," he said as crowds cheered. Tension has been on the rise since the vote was called in early September, crystalizing years of defiance by separatists in the affluent region, which contributes mightily to Spain's economy. Enric Millo, the Spanish government's rep in the region, said police and National Guard forces acted "professionally" to enforce court orders to suspend the vote. He dismissed the vote's validity, saying, "today's events in Catalonia can never be portrayed as a referendum or anything similar." Clashes broke out less than an hour after polls opened. Polling station workers reacted peacefully and broke out into songs and chants challenging the officers' presence. Spanish officials had said force wouldn't be used, but that voting wouldn't be allowed. Regional separatist leaders pledged to hold it anyway, promising to declare independence if the "yes" side wins, and called on 5.3 million eligible voters to cast ballots.
– The number of coral-plundering crown of thorns starfish could boom from some 12 million to 60 million over the next four years, the Brisbane Times reports, and for Australia's Great Barrier Reef that would be akin to "a locust plague devastating vegetation," says Glen Holmes, co-author of The Starfish That Eat The Reef. This winter, though, an aquatic robot will be deployed to help slow the invasion of the invertebrates … by killing them, Scientific American reports. The COTSbot, developed at the Queensland University of Technology, is a small submarine outfitted with cameras, sonar, GPS, and a syringe-tipped arm. Following a pre-programmed path along the reef, the robot scans for crown of thorns starfish. Once it identifies its target, the COTSbot pumps it full of bile salts that, as Scientific American puts it, "digest the animal from the inside" before it can separate and regenerate (one starfish can produce millions of young). The COTSbot, which can kill more than 200 starfish in eight hours, will augment the efforts of human divers. “It's now so good it even ignores our 3D-printed decoys and targets only live starfish,” one researcher says. It is believed the starfish has destroyed some 230 square miles of live coral in the past three decades, per the Times, which says the outbreak may be linked to starfish-nourishing algal blooms resulting from fertilizer runoff. Overfishing of the starfish's predators may also be to blame, per Scientific American. Check out the COTSbot in action in this video.
– Sesame Street briefly turned into Sex-ame Street yesterday, when hackers apparently took hold of the children’s show’s YouTube channel and filled it with porn. The page was taken offline in the afternoon, CNN reports, but it appears to be back up today. The nonprofit Sesame Workshop apologized yesterday, noting that, "We always strive to provide age-appropriate content for our viewers and hope to resolve this problem quickly." The XXX material was available for at least 20 minutes, The Daily What notes. Gawker and Reddit have NSFW screenshots.
– Geez, the French are even sophisticated while performing wanton acts of destruction. The Verge reports a young man was caught on video calmly and methodically wrecking up an Apple Store in France over a refund disagreement. The man used a steel ball—apparently the kind used in a French lawn game—to break at least 10 iPhones and a MacBook Air, one at a time, before being arrested outside the store. “Apple is a company that violated European consumers' rights," the Daily Dot quotes the man as saying in French during his iPhone smashing. "They refused to reimburse me. I told them: 'Give me my money back.' They said no. So you know what's happening? This is happening!"
– Three scientists from the United States, France, and Canada have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for advances in laser physics, including the first woman to take home the prize in 55 years. The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences on Tuesday awarded half the $1.01 million prize to Arthur Ashkin of the United States, and the other half will be shared by Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada, per the AP. Strickland is the third female laureate in physics, but the first in more than half a century, reports the BBC. The academy says Ashkin developed "optical tweezers" that can grab tiny particles such as viruses without damaging them. As the Guardian notes, "this means scientists can hold even living cells in place, allowing them to probe their inner workings." Strickland and Mourou helped develop short and intense laser pulses that have broad industrial and medical applications. The Nobel panel's explanation: "Ultra-sharp laser beams make it possible to cut or drill holes in various materials extremely precisely—even in living matter. Millions of eye operations are performed every year with the sharpest of laser beams." (A CERN scientist just got suspended for saying physics was built by men.)
– Gisele Bundchen says her husband, NFL quarterback Tom Brady, has a history of concussions and even suffered one last year, though such an injury was never reported by the New England Patriots. While appearing on CBS This Morning to discuss climate change, Bundchen touched on Brady's plant-based diet before bringing up her concerns about his overall health. "He had a concussion last year. I mean, he has concussions pretty much every—I mean, we don't talk about [it], but he does have concussions," she said. "I don't really think it's a healthy thing for your body to go through ... that kind of aggression, like, all the time," she added. Brady didn't miss a single game due to injury last season and hasn't been listed as having a concussion or a head injury at any point in his career, report the Bleacher Report and ESPN, leading the New York Post to ask, "Did Gisele just reveal a Tom Brady concussion cover-up?" A player diagnosed with a concussion must abide by the NFL's concussion protocol, which notes a player can only return to action if he has been cleared by his doctor, per TMZ. Teams have previously faced penalties for not disclosing injuries, per CBS Sports. However, it isn't clear if the NFL would consider Bundchen's comments as evidence of a violation.
– The family of the 17-year-old Texas boy who was shot and killed after sneaking into his girlfriend's bedroom says the girlfriend should be charged in his death. The 16-year-old girl has not been identified, but a grand jury is deciding whether her father should face any charges for shooting the teen after finding him in his daughter's bedroom. However, the family of victim Johran McCormick says the DA should also take action against his daughter, because she allegedly lied to her father and said she didn't know Johran—which arguably led to his death. Their idea: The girl could be charged with accessory to murder or even involuntary manslaughter, KHOU reports. Activists including Johran's mom, Zakia McCormick, rallied yesterday in front of the home where he died. But earlier this month, experts told the Houston Chronicle that an indictment for murder against the father would be unlikely. Says one, "If it's perceived that there is a 'stranger' in his home, there could be a viable claim of self-defense or defense of others."
– Now pondering fatherhood, Deadpool is back to kick butt and crack jokes in Marvel's Deadpool 2, featuring Ryan Reynolds and more than a few F-bombs. Its predecessor ruled the box office in 2016, but does this sequel from David Leitch—which cost a stuntwoman her life—have the power to do the same? It seems so, with the movie getting a solid 85% positive rating from critics and audiences alike at Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what critics are saying: "If you love films that keep you guessing, laughing and surprised on the edge of your seat, this is a must-see," writes Colin Covert at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "More gory, bizarre, offbeat and even obscenely funny than the original," the film "revels in its self-referential perspective" while Reynolds "radiates a bizarre charisma," Covert writes. Not to be outdone is a "delightful" Zazie Beetz as lucky superhero Domino. "There's no way it could equal the freshness and irreverence of the 2016 original. Fortunately, the sequel comes off as much more than a cash grab," writes Calvin Wilson at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He mostly credits Reynolds. In "the role of his dreams," the actor "totally sells the character's blend of reckless self-absorption and reluctant heroics." Even so, "another sequel really isn't necessary, but it's in the works anyway." Jen Yamato wasn't as impressed. "While the sequel benefits from Reynolds' superhuman charisma," it "merely rehashes and recycles the same wink-wink barbs that worked the first time around" and offers "uninspired plotting," she writes at the Los Angeles Times. Thank goodness for Celine Dion. Her music brings "new life, emotion and a winking, self-aware wit into the action," Yamato says. The movie "comes blazing out of the shoot, but dips in its second hour, like a stretched-out piece of taffy," writes Adam Graham at Detroit News. "Still, there is a lot left to like here, and Reynolds and company crank out better, more outrageous laughs than most pure comedies. You'll laugh loud and you'll laugh hard."
– Fans of IHOP and Applebee's, take note: It's possible your hometown location will be closing, though it's also possible one will opening there soon. Parent company DineEquity announced a plan to close as many as 160 of the restaurants and to open up to 125 new ones, reports USA Today. The problem is that the company hasn't decided specifics yet in regard to locations. A safe bet when all is said and done: It will be harder to find an Applebee's in the US but easier to find an IHOP. The Los Angeles Times provides more details on that front: 105 to 135 Applebee's restaurants will close, and while that will be offset slightly by 20 to 30 openings, most of those openings will be outside the US. As for IHOP, 20 to 25 restaurants will close, but 80 to 95 will open, mostly in the US. DineEquity operates 1,968 Applebee's locations worldwide and 1,752 IHOP sites.
– For decades, conspiracy theorists have claimed the famous "backyard photo" of Lee Harvey Oswald, which shows him holding the same type of rifle used to assassinate JFK, is a fake—a claim that Oswald himself made when he was arrested. But thanks to a scientist who has studied this photo before and stated previously it was "highly improbable that anyone could have created such a perfect forgery with the technology available in 1963," that claim has now been debunked. A new study out of Dartmouth, published in the Journal of Digital Forensics, Security, and Law, used sophisticated 3D imaging technology to analyze key details of the photo, including Oswald's pose, and found that the photo is indeed authentic, a press release notes. "Our detailed analysis of Oswald's pose, the lighting and shadows, and the rifle in his hands refutes the argument of photo tampering," Hany Farid, the study's senior author, says. Both the Warren Commission and a special House committee on assassinations had already found photo tampering hadn't taken place, and Farid had done studies in 2009 and 2010 that determined the photo's lighting and shadows were indeed feasible, per Phys.org. But some said that Oswald's pose in the photo, in which he appears to be standing somewhat off-balance, was a physical impossibility, so this time around Farid and his team put the photo through a rigorous 3D stability analysis. By adding appropriate mass little by little to each section of a 3D model of Oswald, they were able to examine Oswald's balance to show he certainly could have stood that way. The study also found, once again, that the lighting, shadows, and rifle length were also plausible. "With a simple adjustment to the height and weight, the 3D human model that we created can be used to forensically analyze the pose, stability, and shadows in any image of people," Farid says in the release. (The CIA has admitted to covering up JFK's assassination, though.)
– Some Baltimore residents aren't standing by idly in the mess after yesterday's violence. Volunteers took to the streets today to clean up their "Comeback City." Gawker has culled a series of tweets showing images of helpers picking up debris on the roads and sidewalks, sweeping up in front of a burnt CVS, and handing out refreshments to other volunteers and police monitoring today's activities. "I'm just here to help out, man," one local sweeping broken glass in front of the CVS tells Reuters. "It's the city I'm from."
– A charter bus headed to a casino crashed in far South Texas on Saturday, killing nine people and injuring 43 others in a one-vehicle rollover, officials tell the AP. Seven people died at the scene on US Highway 83 about 46 miles north of Laredo and two died later at a Laredo hospital, per Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Conrad Hein. "The driver of the bus lost control and rolled over," he says. "Everything's real preliminary right now." Hein says the driver was among the survivors. His name and the names of passengers were not immediately available, the Dallas Morning News reports. The trooper says it was raining Saturday morning but it's uncertain if that was a factor in the crash that occurred just before 11:30am. A family member who had three aunts on board, one of whom was killed, says a trooper told her the bus rolled over three times, the Laredo Morning Times reports. Fighting back tears, she says some passengers were trapped inside and others flew out windows. Hein says no other vehicles were in the area at the time. "Our troopers are going to look into what happened but it's going to take us some time," he says of the investigation. "We just know the driver lost control." The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday night it was sending a team to also investigate the wreck. They were expected to arrive Sunday. The crash is one of the deadliest bus accidents in Texas in the last several years.
– As many fret over the increasingly tense relationship between the US and North Korea, President Trump threw another country into the mix Friday: Venezuela. Speaking to reporters Friday from his New Jersey golf club, flanked by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, and National Security Adviser HR McMaster, Trump offered what Reuters calls a "surprise escalation" on the US response to Venezuela's current political upheaval, in which more than 120 people have been killed and thousands arrested over the past four months. "Venezuela is not very far away, and the people are suffering and they are dying," Trump told reporters, per the Hill. "We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option if necessary." When pressed by reporters on whether that meant the US would lead an operation in the South American country, Trump replied, "We don't talk about it, but a military operation—a military option—is certainly something that we could pursue." The US just hit Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with financial sanctions in late July, with a statement from Trump noting: "Maduro is not just a bad leader. He is now a dictator." The Pentagon told Reuters it has yet to receive any instructions from the president regarding Venezuela. Meanwhile, one reporter circled back to North Korea during Trump's appearance, asking, "Is the US going to go to war?" after Trump mentioned a possible "bad solution" to the Korea problem, per CBS News. "I think you know the answer to that," the president replied.
– The wife of Louisiana shooter John Russel Houser sought a protective order against him in 2008 after he "exhibited extreme erratic behavior" and "made ominous as well as disturbing statements," according to court documents cited by the AP. The filing for the order, which was at least temporarily granted, says that his wife, Kellie Maddox Houser, had "become so worried about the defendant's volatile mental state that she … removed all guns and/or weapons from their marital residence." The papers also noted John Houser had "a history of mental health issues, i.e., manic depression and/or bi-polar disorder." It wasn't just his wife, who filed for divorce in March, who was concerned. Other family members also joined the court filing, saying that Houser had traveled from Phenix City, Ala., to where they lived in Carroll County, Ga., and "perpetrated various acts of family violence." Meanwhile, using info found on a LinkedIn page that appears to be that of the shooter, the Daily Beast tracked down several online forums and websites where Houser allegedly expressed "strong views on race, immigration, and the future of America," all under the names "John Russell Houser" ("Russell" spelled slightly differently than what's been reported in the media) and "Rusty Houser." "I am also sorry for what is to come for the other very few moral souls left in the entire US," he reportedly wrote in one forum lamenting the murder of a man in the deer-processing business. "I am not sorry for the 90% immoral population which will be meeting the same fate. Filth is rampant. That none have stood against it causes me to take rest in the worse than MAD MAX near future which approaches."
– Tom Clements, the executive director of Colorado’s department of corrections, was shot dead last night—but the who and why remain a mystery. Clements was shot fatally in the chest as he answered the door of his home in Monument, Colo., reports NBC, but nobody else in the house was harmed. Although there's no clear connection, the timing is notable: the shooting comes on the eve of tough and controversial new gun laws in the state, following the movie theater massacre in Aurora last year. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is expected to sign new legislation today that will restrict magazine capacity and expand background checks on private and online firearms sales. But his first duty this morning was instead to pen a letter to Department of Corrections employees. "I can hardly believe it, let alone write words to describe it," wrote Hickenlooper. "I am so sad. I have never worked with a better person than Tom, and I can't imagine our team without him."
– The US in early July hit $34 billion of Chinese goods with an extra 25% tariff; China responded in kind. CNN reports round two could see the US slap tariffs on another $16 billion in goods as soon as this week, but it's a much bigger figure that's attracting attention Wednesday. Bloomberg cites sources who say the White House is thinking about upping the ante and imposing not an additional 10% tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods but an additional 25%. CNN echoes that news via its source. Bloomberg frames the move, which would be revealed in the next couple of weeks, as intended to "force officials back to the negotiating table through threats of even higher tariffs"; the last high-level negotiations took place nearly two months ago. A Chinese foreign ministry rep responded to the news thusly, per the AP: "If the United States takes further measures that escalate the situation, China will definitely fight back. We are determined to safeguard our legitimate and lawful rights and interests."
– A new edition of the manual doctors use to diagnose mental illness, the DSM, has just been released by the American Psychiatric Association—but it has already been stirring up controversy for months, reports CBS. Most critically, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health has spoken out against DSM-5, saying its definitions are too broad and lack scientific validity, the New York Times reports. "As long as the research community takes the DSM to be a bible, we’ll never make progress," he said. "People think that everything has to match DSM criteria, but you know what? Biology never read that book." Among other changes, the new DSM-5 has encompassed four previously separate disorders under the blanket "autism spectrum disorder." Another change: previously, those grieving for a lost love one couldn't be diagnosed with depression within two months of the death. Now bereavement is actually classed as a trigger. (PsychCentral has a thorough rundown of all the changes.) John Hopkins psychiatry professor Paul McHugh has also criticized the new manual in the Washington Post, saying it encourages doctors to rely on check-lists rather than getting to know their patients. "DSM-5 will be more of the same—a way to 'know of' disorders without 'knowing about' them," he writes.
– All 222 passengers and 19 crew from a Singapore Airlines flight are safe and unharmed after a terrifying incident early Monday. The airline says the Boeing 777-3000 was on its way from Singapore to Milan when the pilot decided to turn back after receiving an engine oil warning message, the AP reports. It landed back at Singapore's Changi Airport more then four hours later—and just after it came to a halt, its right engine burst into flames as horrified passengers looked on. "By the time the fire engines reached the plane, the flames were about a meter high," passenger Amit Jain tells Today. "When we could see the flames rising, some people were trying to remove their bags from the overhead compartments, which was crazy," he says. "I heard a few people scream 'Open the doors!' and 'Let us out!'" The airline and the airport say the blaze was extinguished within minutes, CNN reports. The passengers were transferred to another flight to Milan. Passengers say they could smell oil while the plane was in the air, but they didn't realize how close to death they were until afterward, the BBC reports. Analyst Greg Waldron at Flightglobal says it appears the pilots did everything right by turning back when they discovered the problem and dumping fuel along the way. "When the plane slows down as you land, fuel can cling to the wing and surfaces. Sparks from the hot brakes after they landed could have the triggered the fire and it does appear quite dramatic. But they appear to have gotten that under control very quickly," he says, per Reuters. "There don't appear to be any procedural issues here."
– The US made it to the men's 4x400-meter relay finals with the help of a runner who deserves a gold medal for pain endurance. Manteo Mitchell was 200 meters into the race's first leg when a bone in his leg snapped. He managed to finish the rest of the lap in excruciating pain, and keep the US in the competition, CNN reports. After he limped off, an X-ray confirmed that the 25-year-old athlete had a broken left fibula, the smaller of the two leg bones. It is possible to run with a broken fibula, but most people would find the pain unbearable, Slate notes. Mitchell originally hurt himself missing a step as he went up some stairs at the Olympic Village earlier in the week, but he says he felt fine after treatment. But "as soon as I took the first step past the 200-meter mark, I felt it break. I heard it," he says. "I even put out a little war cry, but the crowd was so loud you couldn't hear it. I wanted to just lie down. It felt like somebody literally just snapped my leg in half." The US—which has won gold at the eight Olympic 4x400-meter relays it entered—now advances to tonight's final, although the team has not yet announced its replacement for Mitchell.
– Sequester politics have taken a weird turn. Joe Biden is now the subject of a spate of negative-sounding headlines because he isn't returning part of his salary in solidarity with federal workers about to be furloughed. (See this headline at CBS News or this one at Reuters.) President Obama has said he will do so—though critics are calling him a cheapskate—as have others, including Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, Janet Napolitano, and Jack Lew. Biden, though, is conspicuously absent. The VP's office says he might change his mind if members of his own staff lose pay, reports Politico. "The vice president is committed to sharing the burden of the sequester with his staff," says the statement. Why the reluctance, especially for a potential 2016 candidate? One possible reason is that Biden is a man of relatively modest means, with a net worth figured to be under $1 million, notes the National Journal. “It is a more difficult calculus for members who are not as wealthy,” says a senior Democratic Senate aide.
– Google has pronounced itself "profoundly sorry" for the revelation that its roving street-map vehicles have been inadvertently collecting data about websites people visit over unprotected WiFi networks. The company says it's ditching the data and fixing the problem. (See its explanation and apology here.) Some early reaction: "It’s not likely that Google grabbed enough data about many individuals for this to be a major privacy concern," writes Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch. But as it faces increased scrutiny from privacy advocates and governments, "this is certain to haunt Google nonetheless." At Wired, Kim Zetter says it could go beyond bad PR: "The revelation raises questions about whether the company violated federal wiretapping laws in collecting the information and could draw scrutiny from US regulators." Harry McCracken, PC World: "None of this is cause for panic—if anything, Google is guilty of sustained incompetence, not malevolence."
– Gil Scott-Heron, the spoken-word artist and musician often hailed as the godfather of hip-hop and made famous by "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," has died at age 62, reports NPR. Scott-Heron was held up as a major influence by many in the hip-hop community, including Kanye West, who closed his My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy with an homage to Scott-Heron. "You can go into the beat poets and [Allen] Ginsberg and [Bob] Dylan, but Gil Scott-Heron is the manifestation of the modern world," rapper Chuck D. once said. "He and the Last Poets set the stage for everyone else." Scott-Heron rose to prominence in 1970 with the album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, and continued to record into the early '80s. He resurfaced in 1994 with Spirits, but the LA Times notes that he spent much of the 2000s wrestling with drug addiction. A New Yorker profile published last year found him openly smoking crack. "He wasn't a great singer, but with that voice, if he had whispered it would have been dynamic," bassist Ron Carter told the New Yorker. "It was a voice like you would have for Shakespeare."
– Rick Santorum has made it clear that he's sticking around despite his resounding defeat in Illinois. In a rambling election night speech in Gettysburg, he described this year's election as the most important since 1860, urged supporters to "saddle up, like Reagan did in the cowboy movies," and predicted a big win in Louisiana's primary on Saturday, reports the Washington Post. Speaking to Fox News, he blamed the Illinois loss on being outspent heavily in the Chicago media market, and said he didn't think super PACs should exist. In Chicago, "which has 70% of the population of the state of Illinois, we got outspent 21 to 1. We feel like we are up there, running against the machine,” he said, adding that Illinois is a moderate state that elects moderate Republicans. Romney won, he said, because of a super PAC funded by his billionaire friends. A Romney spokeswoman said Santorum complaining about being outspent was "like a basketball team complaining that they lost to another team because their players are too tall," Politico reports. "That’s just ridiculous," she said. "This is all part of the game."
– A New York City hospital says it has "agreed to admit and evaluate" Charlie Gard, the terminally ill British baby whose case has attracted the attention of Pope Francis and President Trump. New York Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center says it can admit 11-month-old Charlie, provided he can be safely transferred, "legal hurdles are cleared, and we receive emergency approval from the FDA for an experimental treatment," CBS reports. Charlie is currently in London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, and the New York hospital says another option would be to send the experimental drug there if the FDA approves, reports the Washington Post. The Vatican has also offered to bring Charlie, who has a rare genetic disease, to Rome's Bambino Gesu hospital for treatment, but British courts have ruled that the boy should be kept in the UK and taken off life support because further treatment would only prolong his suffering. "The world is watching," website charliesfight.org says. "Two of the most powerful men in the world want to give Charlie Gard his chance." But despite the offers of help, the legal situation has not changed for Charlie, who could be taken off life support at any time, the AP reports. Legal experts say British courts dealing with the " terrible, terrible situation" have decided that overruling his parent's wishes is the best thing for the child.
– If brain size relative to body size determines IQ, the venerable shrew would be the smartest creature on the planet. But it doesn't, and it's not, and scientists from Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany have combed through 88 studies with more than 8,000 participants to confirm in the journal Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews that when it comes to intelligence, brain size simply doesn't matter. "Although a certain association is observable, brain volume appears to be of only little practical relevance," says Jakob Pietschnig from the Institute of Applied Psychology at the University of Vienna. The researchers write that "positive associations between human intelligence and brain size have been suspected for more than 150 years." Why the long-held belief in such a link despite a lack of concrete evidence for it? It may partly be the result of publication bias, reports ScienceAlert. This means that journals more readily publish findings with strong links between subjects than weak or inconclusive links. And that's all that Pietschnig and his team found when they reviewed published and unpublished studies—a link too small to have any discernible effect. "Rather, brain structure and integrity appear to be more important as a biological foundation of IQ, whilst brain size works as one of many compensatory mechanisms of cognitive functions," Pietschnig adds. This helps explain why men, who tend to have larger brains than women, do not perform better on IQ tests. To be small-minded, then, should be construed in only a metaphorical sense. (Check out what has been hiding in brains for centuries until this year.)
– A retired Utah school teacher was sent to prison for having sex with one of his teenage students 22 years ago, reports the Deseret News. The woman came forward last year and told police that former teacher Michael Layne Williamson, 60, had repeatedly assaulted her over a period of years. He was sentenced to one to 15 years in prison by a judge who berated him for disgracing the "noble profession" of teaching. Williamson, who pleaded guilty in May to aggravated sexual abuse of a child and another count of attempted sexual abuse, apologized in court. "This indiscretion of mine was of the most heinous type," he said. "Let me stop you right there," retorted Judge Thomas WIllmore. "It is not an indiscretion. You broke the law." The unidentified victim, now 35, displayed a photo of herself as an eighth-grader and said Williamson ruined her life. "You put it all on my shoulders, those of a 13-year-old, to carry," she said. "I always blamed myself." She said she left the state and kept silent but on a trip back home, the pain was too much. Supporters of Williamson, however, wrote that he was a respected teacher and golf coach who “fell victim to the persuasions of a girl,” reports the Herald Journal. It's possible this isn't the end of Williamson's legal trouble: Last year, the state changed the law to allow victims of sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits years after the fact, notes the Deseret News. (In Texas, this teacher was accused of having a longtime sexual relationship with an eighth-grade student.)
– A bald eagle mass murder? The US Fish and Wildlife Service says it has tested 13 bald eagles found dead near a Maryland farm last month and concluded that they were killed by humans, NBC News reports. An agency spokeswoman tells the Baltimore Sun that avian influenza and other diseases were ruled out in the state's biggest die-off of the birds in at least 30 years, and the investigation is now focused on "human causes" and bringing the offenders to justice. The birds showed no sign of trauma and the Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman says investigators know how they died, but that information will not be released to avoid compromising the investigation. Bald eagles are a protected species and the reward leading to the culprits in this case has been raised to $25,000.
– A tiny creature grew inside a Florida woman for two months after her honeymoon in Belize—and no, she wasn't pregnant. Weeks after returning home, the 36-year-old noticed an itchy spot on the left side of her groin and assumed she'd been bitten by an insect, reports Live Science. Thinking it was an infected spider bite, her doctor fruitlessly prescribed antibiotics. Dr. Enrico Camporesi of Tampa's Memorial Hospital next took a look, noticing a hole in the center of the wound, which felt hard, as though something were inside. A surgeon suspected it was a living thing, and turned out to be right. Cutting open the lesion, doctors found a tapered human botfly larva with rows of spines and hooks meant to keep it buried in the woman's skin for up to 128 days, reports the Miami Herald. Commonly found in Central America, a human botfly first deposits her eggs on an insect, like a mosquito, which carries them to human or animal hosts. Injected in skin via bites, the egg hatches into larva that eventually drops from the skin and continues developing, eventually reaching the size of a large bumblebee, per the Journal of Investigative Medicine High Impact Case Reports. Though the botfly didn't reach the pupa stage in this case, it wasn't necessary for its human host to go under the knife. Belizeans cover lesions—with petroleum jelly, nail polish, and even bacon strips, per the Herald—to suffocate larvae, which emerge for air and can be removed with tweezers. Still, the Florida patient was healed within a week. (Caterpillar larvae might prove useful.)
– Europe has hundreds of billions of reasons to try to keep Greece from unceremoniously ditching the eurozone. If Greece leaves, the rest of Europe would face catastrophic losses, Reuters reports. Greece would default on the roughly $250 billion in debt held by the ECB, IMF, and other eurozone nations, and that loss will likely be "high enough to eliminate the ECB's capital," one investor said. And the losses wouldn't end there because Europe would still probably have to prevent a total collapse or risk economic contagion. How bad could it get? One Guardian estimate puts the total cost at $1 trillion. But it's looking increasingly unlikely Greece will abide by its bailout deal; new elections are looming, and polls favor Alexis Tsipras' far-left party. In a BBC interview, Tsipras urged Europe, and particularly Angela Merkel, to "stop playing poker with the lives of people" by demanding such harsh austerity measures. That defiance has some European decision-makers pushing to rip the Band-Aid off and boot Greece. "It's going to hurt, absolutely," one diplomat tells Reuters. "But is it going to be lethal?"
– President Trump gave his much-anticipated address Friday to fellow world leaders at the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he stuck to a familiar theme: "America is open for business, and we are competitive once again." In the speech, Trump made the case that the US economy is buzzing thanks to policies put in place since his election. Politico and USA Today have excerpts. Some of the other big lines: "As president of the United States, I will always put America first, just like the leaders of other countries should put their country first also. But America first does not mean America alone." "We have the best colleges and universities in the world, and the best workers. Energy is abundant. There is no better time to do business with America." "The stock market is smashing one record after another." "We support free trade, but it needs to be fair and it needs to be reciprocal ... in the end, unfair trade undermines us all." "Our immigration system is stuck in the past," he said, again calling for a merit-based system to replace "chain migration" of families. On the Trans Pacific Partnership, which the US pulled out of under Trump, the president said he is willing renegotiate terms with members, per the Wall Street Journal. On North Korea, he called for "maximum pressure to de-nuke the Korean peninsula," per the Guardian.
– Nathan "Bodie" Barksdale, the former Baltimore gangster who inspired characters in the HBO series The Wire, has died in a federal medical prison in North Carolina. He was 54. He was shot more than 20 times in his life and had to have his right leg amputated below the knee while running a heroin-dealing operation in Baltimore in the 1980s, but he died of natural causes on Saturday after a period of illness, a rep for the Baltimore City Health Department tells CNN. In a 2010 documentary on Barksdale's life, a narrator calls the ex-gangster "a magnet for violence" and "one of the most notorious and resilient gangster drug kingpins Baltimore has ever seen," per the Baltimore Sun. In 1985, he was convicted of torturing three people and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He later assisted an anti-violence program in Baltimore but was arrested again in 2014. He told a judge he was addicted to heroin and running a scam to get access to the drug. He was sentenced to four more years behind bars. "There are some anecdotal connections between his story and a multitude of characters," The Wire creator David Simon said in 2014. "We mangled street and given names throughout The Wire so that it was a general shoutout to the Westside players. But there is nothing that corresponds to a specific character." Characters on the show included drug kingpin Avon Barksdale and dealer "Bodie" Broadus.
– Police have arrested a suspect in the fire that left a 100-square-foot hole in the roof of a Florida mosque occasionally attended by Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, WKMG reports. According to Reuters, 32-year-old Joseph Schreiber is believed to be behind Sunday's arson at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce. Scrhreiber was caught based on tips and surveillance video, the Palm Beach Post reports. The arson charge against Schreiber carries a hate-crime enhancement. Schreiber has been arrested at least 11 times since 2003 and spent time in prison in 2008 and 2010 for theft. As a "prison release re-offender," he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years. He could get life in prison if convicted as a "habitual felony offender." Police say Schreiber made anti-Islamic posts to social media. The Post quotes one such post, which reads: "ALL ISLAM...should be considered TERRORIST AND CRIMINALS and all hoo participate in such activity should be found guilty of WAR CRIM." No one was injured in the arson, and it's unclear if the mosque was targeted because Mateen went there.
– Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old Yazidi woman who survived captivity as an ISIS sex slave, was named a UN goodwill ambassador Friday—the first time a human trafficking survivor was named as such, Time reports. Murad has another distinction: a high-profile human rights lawyer helping her cause of bringing ISIS criminals to justice. That attorney is Amal Clooney, wife of George Clooney, and she tells People the couple conferred before she decided to take on the case. "This is something I discussed with my husband," she says, adding that George was also "moved" when he spoke to Murad and that they know the risks. But, Clooney adds, "I don't think anyone can feel that they're being courageous compared to what Nadia is doing. I met her and I just thought, I can't walk away from this." Clooney gave a heartfelt speech at the UN Friday, relaying the story of how Murad was one of 6,700 Yazidis captured by ISIS in 2014. Her mom and six brothers were executed, and Murad was pushed into a revolving door of ISIS "owners" who abused and raped her, once until she was unconscious. She escaped after "three hellish months," per NBC News, though she still gets threats from ISIS, and she's now working with Clooney to bring her attackers to justice for crimes against humanity—a daunting task, as Iraq isn't part of the International Criminal Court. "I am ashamed, as a supporter of the UN, that states are failing to prevent or even punish genocide, because they find that their own interests get in the way," Clooney told the UN. (Barbara Walters has picked Clooney as her "most fascinating person.")
– Decaying road tunnels have left Brussels in a perpetual state of traffic chaos, but repairs are apparently on hold due to what CityLab deems possibly "the world's worst excuse for poor infrastructure": hungry rodents. Because the transportation department was housed 25 years ago in a hotel (apparently when the responsibility for the roads passed from federal hands into local ones) and didn't have a lot of space, the original construction blueprints for some of the city's major tunnels were instead filed away in the pillars under a highway bridge, Reuters reports. Apparently the four-legged creatures got to them before their two-legged counterparts. The Telegraph reports the plans were stored in that less-than-ideal location for two decades, and were moved to a typical storage facility in 2010. But by then "they were apparently eaten by mice," the ex-chief of Brussels' infrastructure department informed city officials on Wednesday. (Well, they do say city mice are smarter than country mice.)
– For Julian Assange, there's good news and bad news. The good is that a UN panel has ruled in his favor and found that Britain is essentially keeping him in arbitrary detention, reports the BBC. The bad is that London doesn't care and vows to arrest him if he tries to leave the Ecuadorean embassy, reports Reuters. The developments come after Assange appealed to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to look into his case. The official ruling is to be made public on Friday, but both the BBC and the Guardian say the panel has sided with Assange. The WikiLeaks founder has been holed up in the embassy for more than three years, hoping to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face sex-crimes charges. In an earlier tweet, Assange said he would turn himself in to police if the panel ruled against him, reports the AP. "However, should I prevail and the state parties be found to have acted unlawfully, I expect the immediate return of my passport and the termination of further attempts to arrest me," he wrote. That appears unlikely: A spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday that the ruling isn't legally binding and that Assange—who also fears extradition to the US over the leaking of military secrets—would be immediately arrested if he tries to leave. WikiLeaks, meanwhile, says it is awaiting confirmation of the news reports about the ruling.
– The grieving parents of 15-year-old Reid Comita say he died after going on a hike the Boy Scouts should never have sent him on. The Texas teenager died from heat stroke in June while on an "Intro to Backpacking" course that would have been his final task to become an Eagle Scout. "The Boy Scouts of America are responsible for my son's death. It's that simple," father John Comita tells WFAA. Reid's parents are suing Boy Scouts of America, accusing them of being negligent by sending the boy on an "extremely aggressive hike" through rugged terrain in southwest Texas on a day when temperatures were around 100 degrees. "He wasn't an athlete. He wasn't prepared to go on an advanced hike," the father says. John Comita says the family signed Reid up for the course—which was supposed to include two days of training followed by a three-day hike—because they thought it was the safest option, but he was immediately sent on the hike, reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The lawsuit also faults the Boy Scouts for sending Reid on a hike with two other teenagers, a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old, instead of the two adults that regulations require. Boy Scouts of America, which awarded Reid the rank of Eagle Scout after his death, declined to comment on the lawsuit but said the "health and safety of our youth members is of paramount importance," the Washington Post reports. (This woman got sick on a hike and was dead 9 hours later.)
– There’s no need to panic about Japanese markets post-earthquake, says Warren Buffett: Such cataclysmic events often create a “buying opportunity,” he tells Reuters from South Korea. “It will take some time to rebuild,” but the market plunge “will not change the economic future of Japan.” Put it this way: “If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them.” A Hong Kong investor agrees: “I saw lots of buying last week by overseas investors,” notes the Asian equities boss. “I tend to agree with Mr. Buffett for the long term. I suppose the economy will be weaker over the short term but reconstruction spending will eventually help.” And there will be plenty of that: The World Bank today said it expected the 5-year reconstruction effort to cost as much as $235 billion. Shares of Japan’s top home construction firm have already skyrocketed, the New York Times reports.
– Christopher Ruddy is seen as a confidante of President Trump, so his assertion on PBS on Monday that Trump might fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller is drawing a lot of attention. It wasn't exactly a firm statement, with the Newsmax CEO saying that Trump is "considering perhaps terminating" Mueller, who is looking into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He added: "I think he's weighing that option." That prompted a quick response from White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who said that Ruddy "never spoke to the president regarding this issue" and that "only the president or his attorneys are authorized to comment.” Related coverage: Who's Ruddy? The Los Angeles Times has a quick bio of the longtime Trump pal that explains why he's generally a reliable gauge on what Trump is thinking. Trial balloon? That Atlantic speculates that Ruddy could be deliberately floating the idea to see how it flies, noting that he's done so previously with, among other things, statements in regard to Reince Priebus. 'Explosive': The New York Times says firing Mueller would be "politically explosive" given Trump's recent firing of James Comey. It might mean that he'd have to fire deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, too, the man who appointed Mueller in the first place. A big no: Rosenstein himself testified before a Senate panel on Tuesday and was asked a simple question by Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen: “Have you seen good cause for firing Mueller?” He had a simple answer, per the Hill: “I have not." Conservative push: Newt Gingrich initially praised Mueller as a "superb choice," but on Monday, he tweeted: "Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring.check fec reports. Time to rethink." Fellow conservative Ann Coulter joined the push, tweeting, "Now that we know TRUMP IS NOT UNDER INVESTIGATION, Sessions should take it back & fire Mueller." Big hire: Gingrich's remark about Mueller's hires may be in reference to high-powered criminal specialist Michael Dreeben joining the team. A post at Lawfare on Friday called the hire "the worst thing that happened to Donald Trump this week," because it signaled an aggressive investigation. Overplayed? A post at Axios suggests all this will amount to nothing. "Ordering the firing of Mueller really does seem unlikely," writes Mike Allen. "The near-universal advice Trump will be getting from his White House team—and from legal advisors close to the administration—will be that it's a catastrophic idea to get rid of Mueller." Before Ruddy: On ABC Sunday, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow perhaps got all this started by refusing to rule out the possibility of Trump firing Mueller. "I'm not going to speculate on what he will, or will not, do," said Sekulow, per Politico. He added that he "can't imagine" it would happen, however.
– Most teens don't find music history in their dad's stuff, but Maggie Poukkula's dad is Seattle musician Tony Poukkula, who was a friend of Kurt Cobain. Her find? Photos of Nirvana's first concert, performed by then 20-year-old Cobain and his new band in March 1987 in Tony Poukkula's basement. "My dad showed me them awhile back, but he never mentioned that's what was going on in the photos," Maggie Poukkula, 19, tells Rolling Stone. "I found out because of all the articles. I didn't realize it was such a historical thing. I thought they were just cool pictures of my dad and Kurt jamming together." She tweeted the photos last week, and the post quickly went viral. That first concert featured the early Nirvana lineup of Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Aaron Burckhard playing original songs and Led Zeppelin covers. Similar early-days footage of Cobain and Co. featured in the recent documentary Montage of Heck has renewed interest in the grunge band. The Emmy-nominated project includes home movies, never-before-heard music, and intimate interviews with Cobain's family and friends, notes SPIN. After being critically acclaimed at festivals across the country, the film will return to theaters on Aug. 7, adds Rolling Stone. (Want a little more Cobain history? Here's the mix tape he made at 21.)
– It may not surprise you to learn that Gwyneth Paltrow has sought to treat her ailments—in this case inflammation and scarring—by subjecting herself to the stings of live bees. "It's a thousands-of-year-old treatment," the Goop mastermind told the New York Times in 2016. "It's actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it's painful." Now a report published in the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology reveals what's believed to be the first death related to bee-sting therapy—aka live bee acupuncture, aka bee venom apitherapy—in someone who had previously shown tolerance for the treatment. In the case from 2015, a 55-year-old Spanish woman died of multiple organ failure after two years of the treatment to relieve muscular contracture and stress. In bee-sting therapy, bees placed on a patient's body have their heads squeezed until they extend their stingers, the Telegraph reports. The idea is that the stings cause inflammation and lead to an anti-inflammatory response from the body. The unnamed woman started wheezing and having shortness of breath during one of her monthly treatments at a private clinic before losing consciousness. She died weeks later at the hospital. Researchers say severe anaphylactic shock caused a "massive watershed stroke and permanent coma," as well as the multiple organ failure. "The risks of undergoing apitherapy may exceed the presumed benefits, leading us to conclude that this practice is both unsafe and unadvisable," one researcher says. (Doctor accuses Goop of pushing "fake medicine" with $135 coffee enema.)
– The only person killed in Thursday's horrific New Jersey Transit train crash has been identified as Fabiola Bittar de Kroon, a 34-year-old lawyer who dropped her 18-month-old daughter off at day care before rushing to the train station where she died. "It's incredibly sad that this child won't know her mother,"a friend tells the New York Daily News. De Kroon, a Brazilian citizen who studied in Florida, had recently moved from Brazil to Hoboken because of her husband's career. She was killed by debris and another 108 people were injured when the train plowed through barriers and crashed into Hoboken Terminal during the morning rush hour. At a press conference Thursday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the train crashed through all the barriers at a high rate of speed, NJ.com reports. "We will not speculate about the cause of the accident," Christie said. "The engineer is critical and cooperating with law enforcement officials." A passenger who has been doing the same commute to Manhattan for 30 years says he was in the first car and was thrown out of his seat but not injured. "There was a horrendous sound of crashing, just a loud, scary, hard sound. It seemed like we were going for a little bit.," he says. "When I got out and saw the damage, it was amazing how far the train went." The NTSB is investigating.
– Oh, the joy of being a female CEO, and in the tech industry, no less: At Yahoo's shareholder meeting today, Marissa Mayer got to hear this from a questioner, reports Sam Biddle at ValleyWag (which has the video): "I have 2,000 shares of Yahoo, I'm Greek, and I'm a dirty old man, and you look attractive." The shareholder then went on to carp about dividends, and Mayer "handled it very well," writes Jay Yarow at Business Insider. "She just ignored his scuzzball comment." And beyond that, the meeting was "largely an uneventful affair," adds John Paczkowski at AllThingsD.
– France today became the first country to recognize the Libyan National Council as the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people, following a meeting between Nicolas Sarkozy and two representatives from the upstart government, the New York Times reports. France says it will soon engage ambassadors with the rebel group, which has set up camp in Benghazi. The move puts France ahead of its allies—including the United States, which, the Washington Post observes, has been unusually passive in the Libyan crisis, with President Obama seemingly content to let allies take the lead. France’s statement comes amidst a NATO meeting to decide whether to enforce a No-Fly Zone over Libya. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces have relentlessly exploited their air power against the rebels; today, planes and naval artillery bombarded Ras Lanuf, a major oil port controlled by opposition forces, CNN reports. Loyalist forces also claimed the central square of a rebel-held city just west of Tripoli, according to the Wall Street Journal. Gadhafi has held together the military better than originally appeared likely, and the outgunned rebels appear to have lost their momentum in their push toward the capital.
– Reynolds American, the maker of Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes, has agreed to buy Lorillard, the maker of Newport menthols, in a deal that will make it a strong second to Marlboro manufacturer Altria in the US tobacco market, the Wall Street Journal reports. Reynolds will pay a combination of cash and stock amounting to about $27.4 billion. It will also sell off its Kool, Salem, Winston, Maverick, and Blu eCigs brands to Imperial Tobacco Group for $7.1 billion, in the hopes of easing antitrust concerns—though analysts say regulators will be taking a hard look at the deal anyway. Altria controls about half of the US cigarette market, while Reynolds and Lorillard controlled 25% and 15%, respectively, before the tie-up. "It’s transformative because it creates a duopoly in the US," one analyst tells Bloomberg, which will help dull the pain of a longstanding downward sales trend. The deal also serves to boost Reynolds' presence in tobacco's fastest-growing product categories, menthols and e-cigarettes, the New York Times points out.
– Whitney Houston was killed by a combination of Valium, Xanax, and alcohol, an insider tells Radar. All three were found in her system, but the coroner is still waiting for toxicology results before the "major contributing factor of her demise" can be determined, the source says, adding that drowning is almost certainly not to blame: "Her heart stopped beating because her respiratory system was suppressed because of the anti-anxiety meds, and combined with the booze it probably happened very quickly before she was found partially submerged in the bathtub." (In other Whitney news, sources say Bobby Brown is shopping a tell-all about their life together.)
– London's transport authority says it won't renew Uber's license to operate in the British capital, arguing that it demonstrates a lack of corporate responsibility with implications in public safety and security. Transport for London says the car-hailing app was not "fit and proper to hold a private hire operator license." It cited Uber's approach to reporting serious criminal offenses and its "approach to explaining the use of Greyball in London"; that's the software Uber reportedly used to block regulatory bodies from gaining full access to the app, preventing "officials from undertaking regulator or law enforcement duties." The AP reports London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he supported the decision, saying any operator of taxi services in the city "needs to play by the rules." He says that "providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security." Uber's current license is up on Sept. 30, but the Guardian reports it can appeal the decision over the next 21 days. It can keep operating "until any appeal processes have been exhausted," per Transport for London.
– A Sunday deadline is looming for Iran to strike a nuclear deal with six world powers under a plan set in motion last year—but with just days to go, Iran's supreme leader has made the chances of a deal being forged in time look supremely unlikely. In a major speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country will need 190,000 centrifuge machines, 19 times as many as the 10,000 negotiators from the US, France, Britain, Russia, China, and Germany want to limit the country to in order to reduce its capacity to build nuclear weapons. After the leader's speech appeared to undermine negotiators, analysts began to wonder whether Iran really wants a deal that would limit its nuclear capacity in return for the lifting of sanctions, or if Khamenei is playing for time, the Atlantic notes. "In ostensibly expressing support for the Iranian negotiating team, close scrutiny of Khamenei's speech shows that in reality his remarks were aimed at severely curtailing his team's room for maneuver, making it effectively impossible to bridge gaps with the stance" of the six powers, an intelligence analysis seen by Reuters states. If all sides agree, the talks could be extended for another six months, though US officials say they will need to see some progress in the days to come before they will agree to an extension. John Kerry joined the talks in Vienna yesterday, but it's not clear whether he made any progress during hours of talks with Iran's foreign minister; issues including Afghanistan were also discussed, the AP reports.
– The TSA's acting director has been replaced by the acting deputy after an embarrassing report showed TSA agents failed 95% of tests in which fake explosives and weapons were smuggled through security. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says Mark Hatfield will replace Melvin Carraway until the Senate can confirm President Obama's nomination of Coast Guard Vice Adm. Peter Neffenger as the agency's next administrator, which he hopes can be done "as quickly [as] possible," reports the New York Times. Carraway—who only became acting director in January, Politico notes—will move to Homeland Security's Office for State and Local Law Enforcement "effective immediately," Johnson says, per ABC News. Johnson, who thanked Carraway for his 11 years of service at the TSA, has called on the agency to retrain airport agents and supervisory personnel, retest screening equipment, and boost the number of covert tests in airports. "The numbers in these reports never look good out of context, but they are a critical element in the continual evolution of our aviation security," he says, per Reuters. "We take these findings very seriously in our continued effort to test, measure, and enhance our capabilities and techniques as threats evolve." Johnson says he will meet with companies who manufacture airport security equipment and will be given biweekly updates from officials supervising new security standards.
– Food chains around the country must rue the day someone decided to add cameras to phones. Golden Corral is the latest to have its dirty ground beef aired online, as Reddit exploded this morning in reaction to a video from one employee showing all manner of meat camped out near the dumpster in what he alleged was an attempt to hide it from food inspectors, Mashable reports. "I've been working here for a long time, and I don't think this is right," says cook Brandon Huber, who shows his face and identifies himself on camera. Golden Corral later commented on the video, saying that the food was never served to customers, that it was thrown away immediately, and that the manager at the restaurant was terminated, Gawker reports. It also accuses Huber of trying to sell the video, and says he participated in disposing of the food.
– Joan Rivers is still on life support, her daughter says on Facebook, per the Wire. "I know my mother would be overwhelmed by the continued outpouring of kindness and I want to thank everyone for keeping us in their prayers," Melissa Rivers notes. Family and friends are with Rivers in the hospital, the New York Daily News reports. Yesterday, a source to E! News said Rivers was "on the road to recovery," though slowly, while other reports said she was being brought out of a medically induced coma. A recovery would be followed by a months- or years-long rehab period during which she wouldn't appear publicly, insiders tell the Daily News.
– The Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump showdown on Monday night was billed as the most anticipated in many years, and it did not disappoint, according to the Hill, which describes the clash as one between "the more incisive and prepared Clinton and Trump, who leaned heavily on instinct and combativeness." Five other takes on the debate, which many analysts are calling a win for Clinton: Glenn Thrush at Politico calls it a clear loss for Trump, who "became muted and pouty" toward the end. Clinton "went right for Trump's ego," and he "wilted and offered a series of meandering answers" when challenged on things like his wealth and his record of job creation, writes Thrush, who believes Trump "flat-out forgot to pursue" a line of attack on the Clinton Foundation. FiveThirtyEight kept track of the number of interruptions, and Trump comes out way ahead on that score: He had three full-fledged interruptions, where he seized the floor, compared to zero for Clinton, and 24 "fleeting interjections" while his rival kept talking, compared to five for Clinton. The biggest contrast may have been between styles, not policy positions, according to Alexander Burns at the New York Times. "He shouted, interrupted, and sniffed. She kept a level tone and wielded prefab one-liners," writes Burns, who thinks Clinton prevailed on issues of race, gender, and national security, while Trump was strongest when portraying himself as a political outsider. Paul Farhi at the Washington Post takes a look at the moderation and finds that NBC News anchor Lester Holt played a "largely passive role," declining to intervene as "Trump interrupted Clinton and made a series of questionable assertions," though he did seem "to push harder on the Republican businessman" than on Clinton. Farhi notes that Holt's questions didn't cover issues such as "Supreme Court nominations, Social Security, gun control, abortion, student loans, military affairs and health care, especially the Affordable Care Act." It was a debate that highlighted the stark choice voters face, and one where the "two contenders did, in fact, play to their strengths," decides Gerald F. Seib at the Wall Street Journal. "He to his ability to connect with voters on visceral terms, she on her ability to move smoothly from subject to subject with an air of authority." Trump, however, sometimes "seemed a bit too eager to interrupt and play the part of the bully," he writes, while Clinton "occasionally seemed on the verge of appearing smug." (Click for 12 of the debate's standout back-and-forths.)
– A 19-year veteran of the Secret Service has died after suffering a stroke during President Trump's visit to the UK. The 42-year-old agent, identified as Nole E. Remagen, was on protection duty for national security adviser John Bolton during a Saturday midnight shift at the Turnberry golf resort in Ayrshire, Scotland, when he was found unresponsive. CNN reports he died at a Glasgow hospital on Sunday, though the BBC gives the date as Tuesday. His body is to be flown to the US on Wednesday. A GoFundMe page set up to cover funeral expenses has raised more than $49,000.
– Donald Trump woke everyone from their pre-Christmas slumber Thursday with a tweet calling for a strengthened and expanded US nuclear arsenal. His tweet followed remarks made earlier by Vladimir Putin in which he called for his country's "need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces," per Yahoo. On Friday, Trump doubled down on his previous remarks during what Politico calls an "off-air conversation" on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "Let it be an arms race … we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all," he said. (Politico notes some flip-flopping on nuclear issues, citing a March New York Times interview in which he said, "It's a very scary nuclear world. Biggest problem, to me, in the world, is nuclear, and proliferation.") Not in on his latest stance, apparently: his own team. Per a transcript posted by NBC's Katy Tur on Twitter, Trump's new White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Rachel Maddow Thursday night "we're getting ahead of ourselves" when Maddow mentioned a "new nuclear arms race." And, per a tweet by CNN's David Wright, incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer insisted on Today Friday that "there is not going to be" an arms race and that "we will all be just fine." A short time later on CNN's New Day, Spicer said the remarks Trump made to Morning Joes' Mika Brzezinski "was a private conversation. I was not privy to that," per Mediaite. Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star wonders: "Is there any point of quoting clarifications from Trump spokespeople? They've proven to be unreliable interpreters of him." One person shrugging off arms race chatter: Putin, who said Friday Trump's tweet was "nothing new," per Politico.
– Doctors are reluctantly delaying vaccine schedules for kids, despite knowing the risks of doing so, because they don't want to alienate parents altogether, reports the New York Times. A study published in Pediatrics that surveyed 534 primary care physicians found that 93% of them were asked to delay a vaccine by a parent in any given month; a fifth of respondents said more than 10% of parents in their practice had asked for delays. More than one-third of the physicians copped to giving in "often" or "always"; another 37% said they did "sometimes." "Doctors are feeling really conflicted because they overwhelmingly think this is the wrong thing to do, and is putting children at risk, but at the same time, they want to build trust with their patients and meet people halfway," the study's lead author says, per Time. It's not for lack of trying to reach these vaccine-wary parents, the researchers note: Doctors will often use a variety of strategies to convince parents to stick to the traditional schedule, including telling them their own kids have been vaccinated, bringing up possible future outbreaks if they buck vaccination, or even warning that the alternate schedules haven't been studied adequately. But in the end, the doctors still often acquiesce and are faced with a stressful decision. "To know I'm going to pick one [vaccine] and leave the other behind, despite all the time I spend explaining the risks and benefits to the parents—it's very difficult for me," a pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine tells Time.
– A convicted child killer just got a last-minute reprieve from Ohio's governor, thanks to the inmate's unusual request to be an organ donor. Ronald Phillips, who raped and murdered the 3-year-old daughter of his girlfriend, was supposed to be put to death tomorrow morning. Instead, Gov. John Kasich has postponed the execution until July while the state considers Phillips' plea to donate organs to family members or anyone else who might need them, reports the Columbus Dispatch. "I realize this is a bit of uncharted territory for Ohio, but if another life can be saved by his willingness to donate his organs and tissues then we should allow for that to happen,” said Kasich. If doctors think Phillips' non-vital organs can be harvested, he would undergo surgery before his execution, reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer. This isn't the only reason Phillips' case is making headlines—prison officials plan to use an untested combination of drugs because of a shortage of the standard pentobarbital.
– Demi Lovato is coming clean about just how bad things got during her drug abusing days. "With my drug use I could hide it to where I would sneak drugs. I couldn’t go 30 minutes to an hour without cocaine and I would bring it on airplanes," the 21-year-old tells Access Hollywood. "I would smuggle it basically and just wait until everyone in first class would go to sleep and I would do it right there. I'd sneak to the bathroom and I'd do it"—even though she had a "sober companion" who was supposed to be "watching me 24/7," she says. Lovato's new memoir came out last month. Click for more from the interview, including Lovato's "rock bottom" moment, which happened at age 19.
– The creator of popular comic website The Oatmeal launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to make a card game, and let's just say things are going well for him. "Exploding Kittens," a Russian roulette-inspired game created by The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman along with Elan Lee and Shane Small, reached its $10,000 goal in eight minutes yesterday, Mashable reports, citing an Inman tweet. Within an hour, it had raised $100,000. And that was just the beginning: With 21 days to go in the campaign, it has so far raised more than $1.8 million.
– British hospitals have incinerated more than 15,500 aborted and miscarried fetal remains over the years, at times to generate power for heat in "waste-to-energy" plants, the Telegraph reports. A UK television show revealed the practice tonight, but health officials beat them to the punch by banning the practice yesterday. In all, ten hospitals have admitted to incinerating fetal remains with other garbage, while two leading hospitals—Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge and Ipswich Hospital—said they burned about 1,900 of them at energy facilities. Until now, British law has required hospital staff to offer women who have a miscarriage or abortion three options: incineration, cremation, or burial, the BBC reports. But forms given to women mention "cremated" and make no mention of "incineration" with the daily trash, reports the Daily Mail. At times, hospital staff actually told the real story: "I was hysterical. I was crying," said a 35-year-old woman who learned at a 13-week scan that her baby had died at 8 weeks. "I asked one of the nurses what would happen to my baby, and she just said, 'Well, it will be incinerated with the rest of the day's waste.'"
– Just as quickly as the bombshell was dropped, it disappeared: FBI Director James Comey said in a letter Sunday to the top Republicans on the House Oversight Committee that after reviewing newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails, the bureau still believes there's no reason for Clinton to be criminally charged. "Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July," the letter reads, per CNN. Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon tweeted in response: "We were always confident nothing would cause the July decision to be revisited. Now Director Comey has confirmed it." Twitter went nuts after the news broke; Mediaite and the Raw Story have a sampling of the reaction, much of it backlash against Comey and the FBI. Newt Gingrich tweeted, "Comey must be under enormous political pressure to cave like this and announce something he cant possibly know." Mediaite notes that when news of the review of the new emails was first announced, Rush Limbaugh had speculated the announcement was just a stunt to distract everyone from the WikiLeaks release of John Podesta's emails. "[Comey] is going to make everybody think for the next three or four days that there’s really something to be forthcoming here," Limbaugh said, only for nothing to ultimately come of it. At least one blog says Sunday's letter proves Limbaugh correct.
– Wonder Woman wrapped up Tom Cruise's The Mummy at the weekend box office, pulling in an estimated $57.2 million in North American theaters. Universal's The Mummy looked its age, selling a relatively feeble $32.2 million in tickets in its debut weekend, reports the AP. That couldn't compete with Warner Bros.' Wonder Woman in its second weekend. The Gal Gadot superhero film has quickly earned more than $205 million domestically in two weeks. In third place was Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie from Fox, which is expected to pull in $13 million, per Variety. (The reviews for The Mummy were pretty bad, while the opposite was true for Wonder Woman.)
– Facebook data scientists can figure out who you're sleeping with, even if your relationship isn't "Facebook official," and in a new paper researchers explain how they figured out the method, the Atlantic reports. Turns out the key is to look at more than just mutual friends. "Embeddedness," or the number of mutual friends two people have, can show how close those people are (the more mutual friends, the closer they are). But researchers found embeddedness predicted the correct significant others just 24.7% of the time. A more accurate predictor is something called "dispersion." That means researchers looked at how many networks were shared between two people, working on the theory that your romantic partner will have met your family and your current friends and co-workers, as well as old friends from high school or college. By looking at which friend was the most dispersed across all of a Facebook user's networks, researchers upped their accuracy at predicting significant others to 50%. "A spouse or romantic partner is a bridge between a person’s different social worlds," one researcher explains, according to the New York Times. Oh, and dispersion also works to predict the health of your relationship: The more dispersion a user had with his or her partner, the more likely the relationship was to last at least 60 days.
– US News says he "appeared to get irritated," while Politico and NBC note he was being sarcastic, but if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov didn't know about President Trump firing FBI Director James Comey before Wednesday morning's presser at the State Department, he does now. Lavrov, who's in town to meet with Trump, appeared with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when MSNBC reporter Andrea Mitchell asked, "Does the Comey firing cast a shadow over the talks, gentlemen?" That sent Tillerson to the door while Lavrov lingered. "Was he fired?" he asked. "You're kidding—you're kidding!" Lavrov made a dismissive gesture with his head and exited the room with Tillerson. Per the State Department, Lavrov's sit-down with Trump on Wednesday was to focus on Syria, the conflict in Ukraine, and "bilateral issues," USA Today reports. NPR notes that even though the Lavrov-Trump meeting was closed to the US press, Russian agencies tweeted pictures of Trump with Lavrov and also with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who was not mentioned on the original itinerary. When the American media was allowed into the Oval Office, they found Trump sitting with Richard Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger—also a surprise appearance. Meanwhile, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he didn't think the Comey firing would impact the US-Russia relationship, calling it an "independent decision" by Trump that "has nothing to do and should have nothing to do with Russia," per the TASS news agency.
– Apparently, the only thing necessary to pass yourself off as a doctor—an OB/GYN, no less—is an official-looking white coat. Fox 13 reports that a teenager pulled it off for a month at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. The center insists that the unnamed juvenile never had contact with patients, but he apparently came close. A police reports says the ruse finally came to a halt when the teen was inside an exam room with a doctor and his patient. “The first thing I thought was, ‘I am getting, I am really getting old because these young doctors look younger every year,” recalls Dr. Sebastian Kent. The suspicious doctor called authorities, and the youth was taken into custody. His mother later explained that her son has an undisclosed illness for which he's been refusing to take medication, and no charges were filed, reports the Orlando Sun-Sentinel. Based on interviews with security guards, "Dr. Robinson" had been walking the halls of the facility for about a month, and he had gotten into secured areas. "Terrifying," writes a blogger at Jezebel.
– The mother of an 11-month-old baby in Australia can once again breastfeed her child, but it took the intervention of a court. Sydney's Family Court today overturned a previous decision barring the woman from breastfeeding because she had gotten a tattoo a month ago, reports 9 News. The earlier judge thought that put the child at risk for diseases such as HIV or hepatitis and ordered the unidentified woman to stop breastfeeding, but a Family Court judge ridiculed the decision as one that seems to have resulted purely from "surfing the Internet." The unusual case stems from a nasty custody dispute, explains the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The child's parent's aren't together, and the father complained to the court that the mother was unfit, in part because of the tattoo. The woman tested negative for any diseases, but the first judge deemed the results inconclusive. "It is the view of the court that it is not in the best interests of the child that the mother continue to breastfeed," he ruled, per the Sydney Morning Herald. The strange thing is that he cited guidelines from the Australian Breastfeeding Association, but the leader of that group thinks he overreacted. "Women do need to be careful," she says. "But it doesn't mean that you have to wrap yourself in Glad wrap." (Dad can take heart: He lost, but his kid may end up earning more in the long run.)
– Al Jazeera America launches this afternoon, and while some analysts believe the channel's entry to cable line-ups is a development as important as the launch of CNN or the Fox News Channel, others wonder if the new channel and its formula of serious, in-depth news will ever be able to attract more than a handful of viewers. The channel has decided to focus heavily on US news, and its "seemingly limitless financing" from the Qatari government may be "its biggest strength and its most remarked-upon weakness," writes Brian Stelter at the New York Times. With 900 staff, it is "one of the most significant investments in TV journalism in modern times," he notes. The channel has bureaus in New York City; Washington, DC; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Dallas; Detroit; Chicago; Denver; Miami; Seattle; Nashville; and New Orleans. The channel's chief executive has promised "less opinion, less yelling, and fewer celebrity sightings," reports the Guardian, which notes that its 16-person investigative team sets it apart from peers like CNN, which recently ditched its entire investigative team. Advertisers, however, seem wary, and AJA will start out with just six minutes of commercials per hour. Former Al Jazeera English reporter Dave Marash believe AJA's focus on solid news will help it make its mark. "Almost all of their hires are respectable people with real careers and real records," he tells the AP. "Several are flat-out outstanding—Sheila MacVicar is outstanding. I'm optimistic." Other major hires include John Seigenthaler, Joie Chen, and Antonio Mora. But the new channel faces plenty of hurdles: It will be available in fewer than half of US homes; and like Current TV, which it replaces, cable systems have given it high-numbered channels unlikely to draw in many channel viewers. Some Americans are still suspicious of the Al Jazeera name, as well.
– President Trump tells Fox News that he does indeed respect Vladimir Putin, even though he agreed with Bill O'Reilly's assessment that the Russian leader is a "killer." Said Trump: "There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?" As he has in the past, Trump argued that it makes sense to get along with Moscow to help the fight against ISIS. And as for Putin, "Will I get along with him? I have no idea." Fox released an excerpt as part of a pre-Super Bowl interview that will air at 4pm Eastern. The "innocent" line has triggered a quick backlash, with USA Today picking up on this tweet from Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens: "Trump puts US on moral par with Putin's Russia. Never in history has a President slandered his country like this." The Guardian notes that Trump has expressed the sentiment before: When MSNBC's Joe Scarborough told Trump that Putin kills journalists, he replied: “Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too, Joe.”
– New York magazine doesn't beat around the bush: "Unless the economy goes into a recession over the next year and a half, Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election." But not everyone agrees. A sampling of what the pundits are saying: In New York, Jonathan Chait argues that "the United States has polarized into stable voting blocs, and the Democratic bloc is a bit larger and growing at a faster rate." That should put Clinton in the White House, though it's not guaranteed. "She cannot promise her supporters a dramatic change or new possibilities," Chait notes. "Her worry is that ennui sets in among the base and yields a small electorate more like the kind that shows up at the midterms, which is an electorate Republicans can win." But at Salon, a former aide for Bill Clinton is concerned about his wife's strategy so far. "Republicans love to paint Democrats as elitists. It’s how the first two Bushes took out Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry—and how Jeb plans to take out Hillary," Bill Curry writes. And Clinton isn't helping herself. "When she says she and Bill were broke when they left the White House; when she sets her own email rules and says it was only for her own convenience; when she hangs out with the Davos, Wall Street, or Hollywood crowds, she makes herself a more inviting target." Meanwhile, statistician Nate Silver acknowledges that Clinton is "very likely to become the Democratic nominee." As for the general election, he writes at FiveThirtyEight, it could go either way. Silver questions the so-called "Emerging Democratic Majority" that plays a role in Chait's thinking. Right now, Clinton's favorability ratings are "break-even," and she's "so well-known … that it’s almost as if voters are dispensing with all the formalities and evaluating her as they might when she’s on the ballot next November. About half of them would like to see her become president and about half of them wouldn’t. Get ready for an extremely competitive election." While the pundits debate, Clinton is heading out on the trail in a van named "Scooby."
– Parents who thought they were going to have to sit through a boring graduation in a stuffy gym got anything but at Portsmouth High School on Friday. Colin Yost, the valedictorian for the New Hampshire school's senior class, decided he wanted to shake things up—and off—during his commencement speech, so after his words of inspiration, he stepped out from behind the podium and started dancing, by himself, to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off," eliciting laughter and some "oh gosh, what is he doing?" reactions, MTV reports. Soon, however, his intentions were made clear as the rest of his graduating class (more than 230 in all) stood up and joined Colin in a choreographed celebration of the end of their high school career. While Colin's flash mob surprised the audience, it was far from spontaneous. The senior posted a video tutorial on YouTube for his classmates to study and cajoled the school's administration beforehand into letting him use five graduation rehearsals to get the moves down just right, MTV notes. "As we practiced, the energy was just building and everyone was feeling how great it was to work together and send this positive message," he tells the station. He adds that the song-and-dance show played perfectly into what he had talked about in his speech on embracing your inner nerd, the Portsmouth Herald notes. But despite the Taylor-made two-stepping's success, we probably won't be seeing Colin—who admits he's never taken a dance lesson—on So You Think You Can Dance: He's headed to Princeton to study chemical and biological engineering, per MTV. (Hopefully no one got arrested for cheering.)
– Blood tests on at least one of the North Korean soldiers that defected to the South this year have detected something extremely concerning, according to a South Korean TV channel. Channel A, citing an unnamed South Korean military source, says anthrax antibodies were detected in the soldier, suggesting Pyongyang could be ramping up its biological weapon capabilities, UPI reports. According to Channel A, South Korean authorities have confirmed that the soldier is immune to the deadly bacterium, though it's not clear whether his immunity comes from vaccination or exposure. Anthrax can kill within 24 hours if people are not vaccinated, the International Business Times notes, and the South Korean military says its anthrax vaccine will not be ready until the end of 2019. The news adds to concerns about possible biological attacks: The White House released a report last week that said Pyongyang had spent "hundreds of millions of dollars on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that could threaten our homeland," and Japan's Asahi newspaper recently reported that North Korea has been trying to find ways for anthrax to survive the high temperatures that intercontinental ballistic missiles experience.
– In a refreshing interview with Elle, Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence talks about body image and living modestly even when you're rich and famous. Our three favorite quotes: "I eat like a caveman, I'll be the only actress who doesn't have anorexia rumors," she says, according to Australia's News Network. "In Hollywood, I'm obese. I’m considered a fat actress, I'm Val Kilmer in that one picture on the beach." She adds, "I'm never going to starve myself for a part … I don't want little girls to be like, 'Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner,'" noting that she wanted her character to appear "fit and strong." "Ten million dollars and I'm still living in my parents' condo ... I've always lived in a tiny rat-infested apartment in New York, or a little condo in LA, or a normal house in Kentucky. I think it would be very bizarre to live in a big mansion by myself." "[My boyfriend, actor Nicholas Hoult] is honestly my best friend, and hopefully I'm his best friend too. He’s my favorite person to be around and makes me laugh harder than anybody … We can eat Cheetos and watch beach volleyball and we turn into two perverted Homer Simpsons, like, 'Oh, she’s got a nice ass.' I never thought we’d have such different opinions on asses." In other refreshing celebrity body image news, Adele recently revealed that she "would only lose weight if it affected my health or my sex life, which it doesn't," the Sun reports.
– "Bloomingdale's must be pleased everyone is too distracted by red cups to notice its pro-roofie holiday ad," tweets one Washington Post writer. That's right, another company has found itself in some holiday hot water this week. The Wall Street Journal reports the Internet is in an uproar over an ad in the Bloomingdale's holiday catalog that appears to encourage date rape. The offending ad shows a laughing woman looking away as a man stares intently at her. The text reads: "Spike Your Best Friend's Eggnog When They're Not Looking." A social analytics firm found thousands of online comments made about the ad, mostly negative with the majority opinion apparently being "creepy." "Someone at Bloomingdale’s thought this ad was smart," a Mashable executive tweets. "I assume that person has been fired." But it's not just the Internet that has a problem with Bloomingdale's ad. "What is this? Some kind of business function they’re attending? This is the way we’re going to treat women in the workplace?” a gender studies professor tells the Post. “It’s sending the message that it is it okay to have sex with people who are incapable of consent." "I doubt the person who created this was consciously thinking about sexual assault," another expert says. "Male or female, whoever it was who came up with this—and the many people who okayed it—just don't get it." Bloomingdale's apologized for the ad in the wake of the uproar. “In reflection of recent feedback, the copy we used in our current catalog was inappropriate and in poor taste," the Journal quotes a company statement. "Bloomingdale’s sincerely apologizes for this error in judgment."
– Over the past year, CJ Twomey has been scuba diving in the waters off the Dominican Republic, flown over Turkey in a hot-air balloon, and ascended Peru's Machu Picchu. He's visited more than 100 countries, thanks to the kindness of hundreds of strangers who are helping CJ—who died in 2010 at the age of 20—see the world, the BBC reports. His mom, Hallie Twomey of Auburn, Maine, who has been guilt-ridden since CJ committed suicide four years ago after they had a fight, decided to set up the "Scattering CJ" Facebook page for her son last year to ask people around the globe to spread his ashes in "some of the world he never got to see," Worthy to Share reports. He's even been able to go to parts out of this world: In October, his ashed rode into space on a rocket as part of a Celestis memorial spaceflight, the AP reports. "It dawned on me that his ashes would be sitting in that urn forever," Hallie tells the BBC. "I wanted to give CJ something he didn't get a chance to have." She and her husband, John, anticipated a few hundred responses after their initial social-media appeal, but they've received more than 9,000 so far. Volunteers are sent a small bag of CJ's ashes, as well as a letter and a photo of the ex-Air Force member in his Red Sox shirt. Hallie asks that before they spread CJ's ashes, they tell him his mom loves him and that she's sorry. Hallie is even OK when she hears that envelopes with CJ's ashes sometimes arrive damaged or go missing due to postal problems. "We decided to believe that wherever CJ's ashes ended up, that's where they were meant to be," she tells the BBC. (Robin Williams' ashes were scattered over San Francisco Bay.)
– What do Queen Elizabeth, Kanye West, and Kristen Stewart have in common? They all have Resting Bitch Face—or, as New York puts it, a "face combining disgust, better-than-you snobbery, and boredom." Actress Anna Kendrick even once tweeted, "Is there a filter on Instagram that fixes Bitchy Resting Face? Asking for a friend." The not-so-formal condition came to prominence in 2013 with a "Bitchy Resting Face" PSA by Funny or Die. Now, behavioral researchers Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth with Noldus Information Technology have used science to uncover why some people's resting faces are expressionless while those of others are considered angry and judgmental, the Washington Post reports. The pair used software called FaceReader, which maps 500 points on the human face and assigns expressions based on the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and "neutral." When the researchers plugged in faces of famous RBF faces, the software lit up. "Something in the person's face is relaying greater-than-trace amounts of contempt, but they don't intend that to be the case," Macbeth tells CBS News. That includes signals, Rogers tells the Post, such as "one side of the lip pulled back slightly, the eyes squinting a little." One key point: The researchers found that the condition afflicts men and women equally. "This means that classifying RBF as a female-dominant expression of bitchiness is actually quite wrong, and probably a reflection of societal expectations of women," observes the post at New York. (The Stir amplifies the point that men are affected, too, with a gallery of Kanye West RBF photos.) Can anything be done about RBF? "We can't 'fix' anyone's face," Macbeth, also a sufferer tells CBS. But, she adds, "I don't think it's worth getting stressed out over." (Here's one woman talking about her RBF.)
– The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie has apparently fallen into the hands of a different kind of pirate, and they're threatening to make it public unless a ransom is paid. Disney CEO Bob Iger told employees Monday that hackers have seized a Disney movie and are demanding a massive Bitcoin payment, the Guardian reports. Iger, widely believed to have been talking about franchise reboot Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, said the unidentified hackers threatened to release five minutes of the movie online followed by 20-minute chunks until the ransom was paid or the entire movie was leaked. The movie is scheduled for a May 25 release. Disney has refused to pay the ransom and is working with the FBI, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The latest Orange Is the New Black season was recently released by hackers after Netflix failed to pay a ransom, and analysts say studios can probably expect many more such threats in the year to come. The likes of Disney and Netflix may have efficient security, but you "have all these vendors and small production companies which don’t have great security and probably don’t have the budget to focus on their own security so hackers get in pretty easily," Hector Monsegur, a former hacker who became an FBI informant and director of Security Assessments for Rhino Security Lab, tells Deadline.
– A freshman Republican in the House now has much bigger worries than a re-election campaign. Rep. Trey Radel, who represents Florida's Fort Myers area, has been charged with misdemeanor cocaine possession in DC, reports Politico. The Miami Herald describes Radel as a "libertarian-leaning" Republican in line with the Tea Party and says the 37-year-old might have caught a break by getting busted in Washington: He would have faced felony charges in Florida. His maximum penalty in DC would be 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted. “I'm profoundly sorry to let down my family, particularly my wife and son, and the people of Southwest Florida," Radel says in a statement picked up by the Naples Daily News. "I struggle with the disease of alcoholism, and this led to an extremely irresponsible choice. As the father of a young son and a husband to a loving wife, I need to get help so I can be a better man for both of them." Radel, a self-described rap fan and "hip hop conservative," once co-sponsored a bill to ease up on mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, notes the Herald.
– A Jewish teen with American-Israeli citizenship is behind dozens of threats made against Jewish community centers in the US, Israeli police say. The 19-year-old male living in the Ashkelon area of Israel was arrested Thursday after a months-long investigation involving the FBI, Israeli police rep Micky Rosenfeld tells CNN. Police say the teen used neighbors' internet connections, voice manipulation, and other "advanced camouflage technologies" to hide his identity while making threats against Jewish centers in the US, Australia, and New Zealand, the New York Times reports, via Israel Radio. However, police believe he's also responsible for hundreds of other threats around the world over two or three years, reports Haaretz. Those include threats against shopping malls and airports. In one case, he forced a Delta flight to make an emergency landing, police say. Authorities say five computers, antennas, and other equipment were seized from his residence. Per Haaretz, the teen tried to grab the gun of an officer who arrived to arrest him; he was previously found unfit for military service in Israel. Police had previously said they were searching for a single individual believed to be behind the majority of more than 100 bomb threats made against Jewish centers in the US this year. "This is the guy we are talking about," Rosenfeld says. The teen appeared in court on Thursday. (Federal officials have also traced some of the bomb threats to a jilted ex-boyfriend.)
– A former police bloodhound handler told a court on Monday that during the search for UVa student Hannah Graham, the animal detected her scent outside the car and apartment of suspect Jesse Matthew—and the scent of "fear and adrenaline" where she was allegedly attacked. The handler was testifying during a pretrial hearing where lawyers for Matthew, who is already serving three life terms in prison for a 2005 sexual assault, unsuccessfully challenged the search warrants police obtained for Matthew's home and vehicle, the AP reports. He said the 7-year-old dog, Shaker, traced Graham's scent from downtown Charlottesville to a mulch pile at an industrial site, where the smell of fear was strongest. Matthew, 33, faces a capital murder charge in the 2014 death of Graham, whose body was found on an abandoned property around six weeks after she disappeared. He has also been charged with the 2009 murder of a Virginia Tech student. At Monday's hearing, another police witness testified that, contrary to what the defense claimed, the scent trail was consistent with surveillance videos that showed Graham wandering around, reports WSET. The officer shared text message records indicating that she was lost the night she disappeared.The Washington Post notes that Matthew is seen walking alongside Graham in some of the surveillance videos.
– EU leaders are meeting in an emergency session today to discuss continued flight bans in the wake of the volcanic eruption in Iceland. They're meeting by video teleconference because leaders can't fly anywhere. "We cannot just wait until this ash cloud dissipates," said EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas. Increasingly angry airline officials are demanding flight bans be lifted, accusing governments of crisis mismanagement. The International Airline Association blasted the lack of "risk assessment, consultation, management and leadership," AP reports. The decision to close the airspace "was made exclusively as a result of data from a computer simulation in London," an Air Berlin spokesman complained to the Wall Street Journal. Several test flights over the weekend have revealed that engines suffered no harmful effects from the ash. Airport shutdowns have affected some 6.8 million travelers and are costing airlines $200 million a day in lost revenue, reports the BBC. Airspace is closed or partially closed in 20 countries.
– As though Jared Lee Loughner didn’t already seem crazy enough, a strange shrine complete with a replica of a human skull has been found in his backyard. Inside a camouflage tent, Loughner has a small altar, atop which sits a pot filled with shriveled oranges, the skull replica, a row of candles, and a bag of potting soil, the New York Daily News reports. Experts tell the paper that the objects are common to many occult ceremonies. Loughner was obsessed with lucid dreaming, the process of attempting to consciously control one’s dreams, one friend tells Mother Jones. “I saw his dream journal once. That’s the golden piece of evidence,” he says. “You want to know what goes on in Jared Loughner’s mind, there’s a dream journal that will tell you everything.” He also says that Loughner had been obsessed with Giffords ever since she failed to answer his question at a campaign event. “The question was, ‘What is government if words have no meaning?’ … I told him, ‘Dude, no one’s going to answer that.’”
– Cody Ha may have been 600 miles from his friend in Texas, but the 23-year-old Kansas man sounded as though he were in the same room via the microphones and headphones the pair used to communicate while playing video games online with others Saturday. Then, around 10pm, Ashley Martinez of Houston heard at least two loud popping noises that hurt his ears, reports the Wichita Eagle. Ha didn't speak again, and when players called his phone, they heard only the unanswered ring through his microphone, Martinez says. An hour later, they heard something else: Ha's sister arriving at the Wichita home to find her brother and 62-year-old mother, Huong Pham, covered in blood, dead of gunshot wounds, per KAKE. "She was panicking," Martinez recalls. "She said she didn't feel safe." Another friend tells the Eagle that people often visited the family's home to buy what Ha described as prescription drugs. He suggests Pham sold the drugs and gave Ha a cut of the proceeds. Court records show that Pham had prior conflicts with others: In 2014, a woman accused Pham of sending two men "looking for me and my husband" over a money dispute. Pham later said the woman "hired somebody to cause me harm for $2,000 … after I talked about the money owed my family." Pham said someone broke windows of a family business and slashed the tires of her son's car around the same time. Police, who've named no suspects, are investigating whether the Saturday shooting death of a Pizza Hut delivery driver three blocks from Ha and Pham's home is related, per the Washington Post.
– Teachers don't like it when students talk during exams—but one teacher in New Mexico apparently really doesn't like it. Police say Benjamin Nagurski was arrested Friday after allegedly pulling a knife as kids chatted during a pop quiz in his math class at Bernalillo Middle School, and the police chief says the charges he faces are "very serious." Nagurski was booked on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a weapon onto school grounds, both felonies; he's currently out on bail, KOAT reports. "One of the teachers there allegedly turned around, had a knife in his hand, and pointed it toward some students" about 4 feet away, the police chief says. Students told police that Nagurski was upset with one boy in particular, telling him, "Maybe next time I'll pull a machete on you," the AP reports. But Nagurski, 63, claims he was using the knife to remove staples from a bulletin board and just happened to have it in his hand when he turned around to scold the students, the chief says, adding, "That certainly wouldn't be the best method to remove staples." The school's principal called the cops, though it's not clear how he learned of the incident.
– A truly astonishing tale of survival out of North Carolina: A 9-year-old girl managed to survive for more than 43 hours stuck upside down after the car her father was driving crashed. Jordan Landon was trapped by her seatbelt from about 10pm Friday until her Sunday night rescue, reports the Sun Journal. "She ate Pop Tarts and Gatorade while she waited for help," says a sergeant with the NC Highway Patrol. Her father, Douglas, 39, died from his injuries. "He was curled up in a ball with his arm right across his chest and his other arm pushed out across Jordan. He was trying to hold her and trying to keep her protected," says a family friend. Though alcohol is not currently suspected as a contributing factor, police recovered the speedometer, which was stuck at 110mph, reports ABC News. The car "ran off the road to the right and into a steep ditch bank. The car went airborne and was inverted as it hit a cluster of trees," the sergeant explained. A passerby happened to notice the 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo while out walking. Police initially believed Jordan was dead, until she managed to make a sound. The story's unbelievably bizarre twist: WCTI reports that Jordan's mother set out on Saturday to look for the pair—and crashed her own car 100 feet from where her daughter was pinned. She survived, but rescuers never spotted Landon's wreck.
– New York City terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov was allegedly quick to reference ISIS, while the militant group stayed mum. That's changed. Reuters reports the Islamic State claimed responsibility Thursday in its own Al-Naba paper for the attack, saying that the 29-year-old is "one of the caliphate soldiers." Although investigators are still looking into Saipov's background, the criminal complaint against him says he told officials he was glad he'd carried out the attack, gained inspiration for it by viewing ISIS propaganda clips on his phone, and wanted to put up an ISIS flag in his room at Bellevue Hospital, where he's recovering after being shot in the abdomen by NYPD officer Ryan Nash. CNN reports that ISIS didn't use Saipov's name in its claim and offers no evidence to back that claim up, including any showing that ISIS helped plan the attack or even knew about it beforehand. The site notes the wording is similar what it used after the Pulse Orlando shooting and a 2016 attack in Nice, France. CNN adds this is the first time ISIS has posted such a claim first in its newspaper rather than via its Amaq News Agency. Per ABC News, the ISIS statement also mentioned that the attack took place "close to the monument for the 9/11 raid" and, oddly, claimed that "60 crusaders" were killed or injured in the Halloween attack; the official count so far is eight dead, around a dozen wounded.
– A Pennsylvania-sized patch of the Indian Ocean has been combed in a $150 million search effort for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370—and that search is now coming to a close with the mystery still unsolved. The last boat still looking for the plane left the Australian port of Fremantle on Tuesday to scan areas that might have been missed during the initial search because of sonar issues or too-deep water, reports Perth Now. If no fresh evidence or trace of the plane has been found once its month-long mission wraps up, no future search missions will likely follow, reports NBC News. Though officials "remain hopeful," Australia's transport minister says that "we have to prepare ourselves for the prospect" that MH370, which disappeared in March 2014, will not be found, per the BBC. Relatives of MH370's 239 victims plan to continue hunting for evidence of what happened to their loved ones, however. Frustrated by a lack of activity from Malaysian officials, family members from Malaysia, China, and France have banded together to search for debris, including on remote beaches in Madagascar, where Jiang Hui, 44, of China says he recently found a possible plane part. "I felt excited but at the same time it was saddening," he tells the Guardian. "It is a small piece and will not really be able to show what happened to the plane, but I hope so much that the authorities … will try to find more." Relatives have also handed out brochures in three languages that explain to locals what to do if plane parts are found, per the BBC. (Here's what debris has revealed so far.)
– Melania Trump is holed up in New York City until at least the end of son Barron's school year, already redefining the role of first lady. The New York Times reports on that upended role, and whether Melania will even play much of one at all, noting it was Trump's daughter Ivanka, not his wife, who accompanied him to Dover Air Force Base to honor a US Navy SEAL killed during last weekend's Yemen raid. A first-lady historian tells the Times that Melania is "far behind the curve" in terms of conventional duties, including organizing the tour requests that are already stacking up. People said to be close to Mrs. Trump, though, say she'll eventually increase her presence but is in no rush to do so. Other ruminations about the first lady from around the web: AFP expands on the "low-profile" first lady, with a Connecticut College professor observing that the first lady's agenda has traditionally emerged in March or April of inauguration years. Melania has made one major move: She hired Lindsay Reynolds, a private fundraising organizer, as her chief of staff, per Politico, which calls the first lady's office the "loneliest place in the White House." Despite an Us Weekly report earlier this week that Melania and 10-year-old Barron may never leave New York, an aide to the first lady tells ABC News that Melania (and presumably Barron) will indeed relocate to DC at the beginning of the summer. The rep adds Mrs. Trump takes "the role and responsibilities of the First Lady very seriously." Melania's defamation lawsuit against the Daily Mail was tossed by a Maryland judge because the state court did not have jurisdiction to take on a foreign entity, BuzzFeed reports. Her suit against a blogger continues.
– The latest retelling of Snow White (before June's Snow White and the Huntsman) is a lot like its vain queen: visually stunning, but kind of shallow. Critics aren't particularly impressed with Mirror Mirror: Though director Tarsem Singh "knows how to make performers and sets look good, he has trouble putting them into vibrant, kinetic, meaningful play," notes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. That "effectively means that he’s a better window dresser than a movie director." In the Toronto Star, Linda Barnard agrees. "Everything about Mirror Mirror echoes old-school animation and the entire thing is gorgeous," she notes. It's "a pretty, spun-sugar confection, airy as a plate of Easter egg-colored macarons and similarly devoid of substance." The script doesn't hold up to the visuals, writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "The dialogue is rather flat, the movie sort of boring," he notes. It's "a listless tale that moves at a stately pace through settings that could have supported fireworks." In the Los Angeles Times, however, Sheri Linden sees a lot to like. "The fable zings along on the sharp comic timing of the cast, led by a royally wicked Julia Roberts" as the queen. It's "a fractured fairy tale that occupies the divide between Disney and Grimm."
– Mark and Christina Rotondo wanted their 30-year-old son, Michael, to move out of their home in Camillus, NY. He wouldn't, and after a legal battle that made its way to New York's State Supreme Court, Justice Donald Greenwood sided with the parents Tuesday and told Michael he would have to leave. The story went viral after Syracuse.com first reported on it last week; its article features a series of letters the Rotondos gave their son, starting with one on Feb. 2 of this year giving him 14 days to move out. Letters given to him after that include everything from a formal eviction notice to money ($1,100 to help him find a new place), advice ("There are jobs available even for those with a poor work history like you. Get one."), and strongly-worded suggestions that he sell his things ("especially ... any weapons you may have") to raise funds. The Rotondos went to the town court in April after Michael stayed put, then found out only a state Supreme Court justice could remove a family member. During Tuesday's hearing, which Syracuse.com called "surreal," Michael Rotondo argued with the judge for 30 minutes, including insisting he was legally entitled to six months' notice before having to move out. The judge said that's not true, pointing to an appellate court decision ruling, and asked the parents' lawyer to come up with an eviction order that Greenwood could sign. He also asked adult protective services to investigate the case. Outside the courthouse, Michael Rotondo, who moved back home eight years ago after losing a job, told reporters he would appeal the decision. He said he doesn't speak to his parents but that he is not ready to move out. According to court filings cited by ABC 7, his parents say he does not contribute to household expenses or do chores.
– Whitey Bulger's longtime FBI handler might be on the verge of freedom, after an appeals court threw out his murder conviction yesterday. In a 2-1 decision, the Miami judges ruled that because John Connolly Jr. hadn't actually pulled the trigger, he should never have been tried for the 1982 killing of businessman John Callahan, because the statute of limitations for second-degree murder without a firearm had run out by the time prosecutors charged him. Connolly had alerted Bulger that Callahan intended to inform on him to the FBI, prompting Bulger to hire a hit-man, the Boston Globe reports. "It’s interesting that he has a chance to be free," Callahan's widow said. "Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t have that chance." Connolly isn't free yet—the judges sent the case to a lower court "until any and all post-appeal motions are final," denying his lawyer's request for immediate release. Prosecutors do intend to seek a rehearing. "I'm just glad for him that he's finally going to be a free man," one Connolly lawyer tells the Boston Herald. "The only case against John has been out of the mouths of killers." The appeal had been predicted from the moment Connolly was convicted. (Click here for proof.)
– A US official has called it "inflammatory and inappropriate" for a Pakistani minister to offer a $100,000 bounty for killing the filmmaker of Innocence of Muslims. Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, who made the offer, said he would pay the bounty out of his own pocket as protests continued yesterday against the anti-Islamic film. Bilour, who called himself a "Muslim first and a government representative second," said he has invited the Taliban and al-Qaeda to carry out the assassination, reports CNN. Pakistani government officials have similarly blasted the offer. A US State Department official told the BBC yesterday: "The president and secretary of state have both said the video at the core of this is offensive, disgusting, and reprehensible—but that is no justification for violence, and it is important for responsible leaders to stand up and speak out against violence." In another threat, this one aimed at the French publication Charlie Hebdo for printing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, an 18-year-old man who threatened the magazine's editors on Facebook has been charged with terrorism-related activity.
– Drinking and the sport of curling aren't totally incompatible, the manager of the Red Deer Curling Center says—but most teams wait until after the game. A team that included Canadian Olympian Ryan Fry, however, got so drunk before a game Saturday that they were banned from a tournament in Red Deer, Alberta, and told never to come back, the CBC reports. "They went out to curl and they were extremely drunk and breaking brooms and swearing and just unacceptable behavior that nobody wants to watch or hear or listen to and it was just 'enough was enough,'" says facility manager Wade Thurber. He says there was "some damage in the locker room" and other teams complained about having their stuff kicked around. Thurber tells the Red Deer Advocate that the foursome drank so much before the game that staff at the curling club lounge cut them off. They ended up with only three players on the ice because skipper Jamie Koe was too drunk to even play. Thurber says there were complaints from spectators and other teams. Fry, who was part of the team that won gold for Canada in Sochi in 2014, issued an apology. "I will strive to become a better version of myself while contributing positively to the sport and curling community that I love so much," he said. The team forfeited the rest of its games in the Red Deer Classic, which is part of the World Curling Tour, the BBC reports. (American curlers surprised the world by winning gold in Pyeongchang earlier this year.)
– Grilled lamb has become a scapegoat for Beijing's notorious air pollution, Reuters finds. Authorities say they have destroyed more than 500 open-air barbecues, which they claim seriously affects the city's air quality. State media showed photos of workers cutting apart the grills, many of which are operated by migrants from Xinjiang. The barbecue blitz was ridiculed online, with citizens suggesting that authorities do something about the factories and millions of vehicles creating pollution instead, the AP notes. Earlier this year, the pollution index in the city soared to 755—on a scale of 500.
– So Ted Cruz's book won't be listed among the New York Times' best sellers, even though it racked up about 12,000 sales in its first week. But if you think Cruz is angry, you've got it exactly backward, reports Politico. The feud is a sign that the "campaign gods are smiling down" on him, writes Dylan Byers. It's helping him among conservatives who loathe the paper as too liberal, and it's generating more attention for his book. If you missed the original controversy, the Times essentially accused the Cruz campaign of rigging the system by buying up books in bulk. But publisher HarperCollins disputes that, as does the campaign. “The Times is presumably embarrassed by having their obvious partisan bias called out," says spokesman Rick Tyler. "But their response—alleging ‘strategic bulk purchases’—is a blatant falsehood." Tyler challenged the newspaper to present its evidence for the accusation. In a piece at the Washington Post headlined "Ted Cruz hits the jackpot: A book war with the New York Times," Philip Bump predicts an ironic conclusion to the tale: The book will eventually show up on the Times' list because all this attention will do wonders for authentic, no-doubt-about-it sales. "In which case Cruz gets the conservative cred of being blackballed by the Times and the PR bonus of being a Times bestseller. Win-win."
– Authorities say an American Airlines flight from Phoenix to Boston has been diverted to Syracuse, New York, after the captain became ill and later died. Airline Spokeswoman Andrea Huguely says Flight 550 was diverted shortly after 7am Monday and the first officer safely landed the plane. She confirmed that the flight's captain had died. Details of the medical emergency and the identity of the deceased pilot weren't immediately released. Before the flight landed at Syracuse, the first officer called air traffic control and said "American 550. Medical emergency. Captain is incapacitated." He requested a runway to land and said there were 154 passengers on board. The plane later completed its leg to Boston. USA Today reports that the incident occurred about four hours into a "red eye" overnight flight. Though the AP reports it wasn't immediately clear when the pilot died, outlets including CNN and ABC News cite airline officials who say he died mid-flight. ABC notes that after calling the tower to report the captain was incapacitated, the first officer also said, "pilot is unresponsive, not breathing." "We landed and had no idea what was going on," one passenger tells NBC News. After boarding the plane that would take them to Boston with a new crew, the passengers were told the pilot had died, so "there was no time to panic when we were on the flight," she says.
– Coulrophobes might want to steer clear of Wisconsin for a while. Some creeped-out people in Green Bay have been calling police about a clown wandering around with a bouquet of black balloons, reports USA Today. The clown was spotted at 2am Monday, though it's unclear whether he's surfaced since. Police tell NBC 26 there's nothing they can do since the clown doesn't appear to be doing anything illegal. Of course, a Facebook fan page has since sprung up, and Chicagoist rounds up some theories: viral marketing stunt, actor in a horror movie, or some kind of self-promotion, given that "the page launched a half hour after the first photo was supposedly taken."
– Celebrities may like guns and have weird addictions, but they enjoy speaking in full sentences too. So let's salute those who are heading to college this fall (and not include James Franco, for once, if possible). From the Huffington Post: Hannah Dakota Fanning: The actor seen in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and heard in Coraline will attend New York University. Connor Paolo: The Gossip Girl actor will develop his method techniques at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute. Christy Turlington: The activist and former Calvin-Klein-ad hotty will attend Columbia University. Alex Linz: Remember the Home Alone 3 guy? He'll be at UC Berkeley. Emma Watson: The Harry Potter star will be at Brown University. OK ... James Franco: Recently enrolled at Yale, the actor-writer-artist-Oscar host also taught a class at New York University—so we figure he'll study again somewhere. But professors beware: Don't give him a 'D'. Click for the full list.
– Sad news for those of you who were hoping to see wrongly accused lovers Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito reunite: In a new interview on Italian TV, Sollecito confirmed “it’s all over between us,” as tears apparently welled up, according to the Daily Mail. “I still have a great affection toward her but nothing else. Our love was like a seed that was not allowed to grow because it was brutally stamped on,” he continued. “All I want to say is that I wish her all the happiness in the world. She has suffered like me and now I just want her to be (the) happiest woman in the world.” Sollecito had previously said they “need each other” (although his father claims that report was a lie, ABC News adds) and Knox’s father had predicted a reunion; now Sollecito says that he has no immediate plans to accept Knox's invitation to the US. Don’t worry about Amanda, though, she appears to have moved on: The Mail has pictures of her hand-in-hand with musician James Terrano, 24. “Yes, she’s dating my brother. They have known each other for years,” Terrano’s brother confirms. The Mail reports that the couple is moving in together. Clip for more from Sollecito’s interview, including a video clip.
– Our very primitive beginnings look to have been very primitive indeed. It turns out the earliest known ancestor of humans was a sea creature a millimeter in size that likely lacked an anus. In a study published in Nature on Monday, scientists named Saccorhytus coronaries as a 540 million-year-old member—at that age the oldest one—of a category of animals called deuterostomes. The BBC explains deuterostomes gave rise to vertebrates. "All deuterostomes had a common ancestor, and we think that is what we are looking at here," researcher Simon Conway Morris tells the BBC. As for what they're looking at, "the bag-like body bears a prominent mouth and associated folds," the researchers write. Live Science reports the deuterostome groups scientists have previously discovered were at most 520 million years old, and had begun evolving into vertebrates, echinoderms (ie, starfish), and hemichordates (acorn worms). That left scientists stumped as to what a common ancestor would have looked like. Now they say they know. "We had to process enormous volumes of limestone—about [3 tons]—to get to the fossils, but a steady stream of new finds allowed us to" answer that question, says co-author Jian Han of the find, made in China. Two other details, from a Cambridge press release: The minuscule creature is thought to have lived between grains of sand on the sea bed, and it featured small conical structures that the water it ingested may have exited through "and so were perhaps the evolutionary precursor of the gills we now see in fish." (Scientists have found Earth's oldest civilization.)
– The unfortunate big development after Sunday's crash of a passenger jet outside Moscow comes from the country's transportation minister. "Judging by everything, no one has survived this crash," says Maxim Sokolov. Here is what is known: The victims: Sixty-five passengers and six crew members were aboard the plane, and the BBC reports that most of the passengers were from the Russian region of Orenburg in the Ural mountains. The cause: Way too early to tell. Investigators are looking into weather conditions (it was about 23 degrees Fahrenheit), human error, and the technical condition of the Antonov An-148 airliner, reports Reuters. But Russia's Investigative Committee wasn't ruling anything out at this point, reports the AP. After takeoff: The plane went down shortly after takeoff from Domodedovo Airport en route to Orsk, about 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow. Fragments of the plane were scattered about a large, remote region near the village of Argunovo. Engine explosion? The Guardian cites unconfirmed reports in Russian media that the captain had requested permission for an emergency landing at a nearby airport after reporting a technical malfunction. Witnesses reported seeing the plane in flames as it fell, leading to speculation that an engine had exploded before the crash. End of streak: This is the first crash of a commercial airliner in more than a year, following a sterling aviation record in 2017, notes the BBC. Putin: He offered his condolences to the families of victims and delayed a trip to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he planned to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Monday.
– The cutest yearbook photo ever was just taken by Presley at Good Hope Middle School in Louisiana. In fairness to everyone else's not-quite-as-cute yearbook photos, Presley is a 5-year-old golden doodle. She's also a service dog for seventh-grader Joseph "Seph" Ware, who was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy when he was 3 years old, Al.com reports. Presley has been attending class with Seph for a few years, so it only seemed right for the school to give the dog her own yearbook photo, right next to Seph's. "Seph says that it took about 10 minutes to get Presley to look at the camera—and who knows how many shots," his mother, Lori Watkins-Ware says. Presley's yearbook photo went viral, and Ware says Seph is his having his "15 minutes of fame," Good Morning America reports. Though she tells Fox News her family can't believe all the attention the photo is getting. “It’s humbling," Ware says. "I’m glad Presley is making the world happy.” Presley helps Seph with everything from turning on light switches to opening doors. Now Seph is returning the favor. Ware says other students have been asking Presley to sign their yearbooks, so Seph helpfully draws a paw print for her.
– Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris terror attacks and Europe's most wanted man, was captured alive Friday during a raid in Brussels, Belgian counterterrorism sources tell CNN and the AP. The 26-year-old was believed to be hiding out in a Brussels apartment since the Nov. 13 attacks, and a raid on that apartment earlier this week turned up Abdeslam's fingerprints and DNA. But two people escaped that raid, apparently including Abdeslam. (One person, an Algerian also believed to have been involved in the Paris attacks via calls from Belgium, was killed in that raid.) Friday's raid reportedly involved a shootout that ended with Abdeslam being brought into custody. Abdeslam is a brother of one of the suicide attackers in Paris, and he is believed to have driven three suicide bombers to one of the attack sites. "We got him," Belgium's asylum minister said about Abdeslam Friday, per Sky News.
– Nine weeks into her pregnancy, Naomi Findlay was told "termination" was the only option. The fetus in her womb was growing a heart—but in a rare case of ectopia cordis, it was outside of the body, as was a portion of the stomach, giving the fetus less than a 10% chance of survival, reports the Guardian. Three weeks after giving birth a month prematurely, however, Findlay, 31, and Dean Wilkins, 43, are the proud parents of a baby girl believed to be the first in the UK to survive such a condition, joining a few others in the US, per the New York Times. Less than an hour after she was delivered via caesarean section on Nov. 22, Vanellope Hope Wilkins went into her first of three surgeries at Leicester's Glenfield Hospital to relocate her heart into her chest. Doctors say she's now doing well, though she remains on a ventilation machine. Getting to this point wasn't easy. After the first surgery, doctors had to wait for Vanellope's chest to grow to make room for the heart. With doctors assisting, the heart eventually moved into a cavity through gravity. Doctors then created a mesh to protect the heart, as Vanellope was born without ribs or a sternum, and in the final surgery, they covered the hole with skin taken from under the infant's arms. "In a way her strength gave me a strength to keep going," Findlay tells the BBC. "No one believed she was going to make it except us," adds Wilkins. "It's beyond a miracle." A pediatric cardiologist says Vanellope "has proved very resilient." The main focus now is to prevent infection, but "in the future we may be able to put in some internal bony protection for her heart, perhaps using 3D printing or something organic that would grow with her." (Heart surgery saved an unborn child in Canada.)
– Amanda Knox's Italian ex-boyfriend has spoken out for the first time since their murder convictions were overturned, saying "we need each other," and that they talk every day and he cannot wait to see her again, reports the Daily Mail. "We spent four years in a circle of hell, we suffered unspeakably, and it ruined our lives," said Raffaele Sollecito. "I really want to see her again, to speak with her and look into her eyes." Sollecito said that the two write and talk, "to try and understand what happened to us," and that he has been invited to spend Christmas at the Knox home in Seattle. "I will certainly go and see Amanda." They each "look forward to a future that appeared broken forever but instead we can still build on," he says. Italian speakers can check out the original interview in Oggi magazine.
– Roger Ebert loved good movies—here's his top 10—but those reviews aren't nearly as fun as the ones for god-awful flicks. Some of the slams getting passed around in the wake of his death today: Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo: "Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks." (After Rob Schneider questioned the credentials of an earlier reviewer.) North: "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained it." Last Rites: "Was there no one connected with this project who read the screenplay, considered the story, evaluated the proposed film and vomited?" Brown Bunny: “I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.” Mad Dog: “Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line." Little Indian, Big City: "There is a movie called Fargo playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see Little Indian, Big City, I will never let you read one of my reviews again." Baby Geniuses: "This is an old idea, beautifully expressed by Wordsworth, who said, 'Heaven lies about us in our infancy.' If I could quote the whole poem instead of completing this review, believe me, we'd all be happier. But I press on." For more, see Today.com and the Daily Beast.
– Elle dropped a Hollywood bombshell Tuesday: Gal Gadot made a piddly $300,000 for Wonder Woman while Henry Cavill got a staggering $14 million for Man of Steel. This striking example of the gender pay gap sent shock waves through Twitter despite being, in the words of one inside source, "ridiculous." According to the Hollywood Reporter, the figures cited in Elle were "cobbled together" from multiple publications and weren't comparing the same things. Vanity Fair explains the $300,000 figure is Gadot's pre-negotiated base salary, while Cavill's reported payday would have included post-release bonuses. Still, no one can verify Cavill ever got anything close to $14 million. One source says of the figure: “It certainly isn’t for one picture. That’s insane.” Actors leading their first big blockbuster typically get something more in line with Gadot's reported base salary. Chris Hemsworth made $150,000 for Thor, Adam Driver got $500,000 or so for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Chris Evans is said to have made about what Gadot did for his first outing as Captain America. In fact, sources say that an "apples to apples comparison" between contracts for Gadot and Cavill show she made the same, if not slightly more, upfront as her fellow DC hero. And with the success of Wonder Woman, bonuses and contract re-negotiations should soon kick in. Elle updated its original story, adding: "Although the pay gap persists in Hollywood, this example is not adequately supported by the information available."
– A competitor who collapsed short of the finish line at the Beach to Beacon 10K in Maine managed to complete the race with some help. "It kind of seemed like it was over for me," says former University of Maine runner Jesse Orach, who won last year’s race. "Then, I felt someone pick me up." Robert Gomez, of Windham, helped Orach to his feet, and together they crossed the finish line. Then, Orach collapsed again. "He ran a better race," tells the Portland Press Herald. "He gave it more than I did. I didn’t deserve to win." "I couldn’t leave him there," Gomez continues. "In the running community, I feel camaraderie comes before competitiveness."The touching moment was captured by news photographers, reports the AP. Gomez and Orach both had the same time: 31 minutes, 31 seconds. Orach tells the newspaper he'd suffered a heat stroke, with his core body temperature peaking at 107.3 degrees. There were nearly 6,500 competitors.
– For the first time, scientists have successfully implanted living bone grown in a laboratory, Live Science reports. And while those implants were in miniature pigs, not humans, it's pretty impressive nonetheless. Scientists removed part of the jaw bones of 14 pigs, carved cow thighbones into the right shape, removed all the cells from the cow bones, saturated the cow bones with stem cells from the pigs, and left the bones to grow in the lab. When the new, living bones were implanted in the pigs, they showed impressive regrowth and returned the jaw to full strength, according to Science Magazine. “The pigs woke up, and a half-hour later they were eating,” researcher Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic tells the New York Times. “We thought they would be in pain. But no, they’re doing great.” The researchers published their findings this month in Science Translational Medicine. They want to try the process in humans in the next few years. At the moment, no great options exist for people who need replacement bones due to injuries, birth defects, or diseases. There are titanium replacements or donated bones, but those come with the risk of rejection. Doctors replacing facial bones currently take the bone from elsewhere in the patient's body, but that causes a new injury, and it can be hard to find a large enough chunk of bone to borrow. Prior methods of bone regrowth have involved letting the new bone grow inside the body, but researchers say growing it first in a lab could have a number of benefits. (Scientists hope to grow human organs in farm animals.)
– Looking to hobnob with the rich but not necessarily famous? Although New York City used to be where you'd be find the largest population of super-rich people in the world, Hong Kong has taken over the top spot this year, CNNMoney notes. That's per a new report from research firm Wealth-X, which looked for how many UHNWIs (ultra-high-net-worth individuals) reside in cities around the globe. To qualify as an UHNWI for this study, an individual had to be worth $30 million or more, and thanks to its robust stock market and ties to a burgeoning Chinese economy, Hong Kong now claims more than 10,000 of these super-rich residents. The Big Apple falls to second place with nearly 8,900. Here, the top 10 cities and the number of UHNWIs in each:
– A man who as a teenager had an affair and subsequent child with his high school science teacher is now accused of killing them both. A building superintendent alerted to a foul smell found Felicia Barahona, 36, strangled with an electrical cord in her Manhattan apartment on Monday, while Barahona's 4-year-old son, Miguel, had been drowned in a bathtub, reports People. Miguel's father, Isaac Duran, 23, was arrested later Monday and initially denied any involvement, saying he hadn't been to Barahona's apartment since their son was born. However, police sources say Duran "owned up" to the murders after police found surveillance video showing him entering and exiting the building on several occasions, reports the New York Post. He was charged Tuesday with two counts of first-degree murder, reports the New York Times. Duran and Barahona had started a relationship in 2011, reportedly after Duran turned 18 but while Barahona was his teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City. Barahona, who was later fired, became pregnant, though her relationship with Duran ended before Miguel was born in 2012, per DNAInfo. Duran had shared custody of Miguel, relatives tell NBC News, but he was reportedly angry about how Barahona was raising the boy. His half-brother tells the Times of frequent arguments. “It was over who gets the kid, how do we figure out what payments are done, if he’s going to pay support or not." (Teachers caught having sex with students often avoid prison.)
– Police say a Florida teen stopped his parents from fighting on Father's Day and was shot four times for his efforts, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports. Eugene Blackwell Jr., 18, a star weightlifter, separated his mom from the elder Blackwell, 45, and got her out of the house. Then the father allegedly unloaded on Eugene, shooting him in the chest, elbow, hip, and thigh, reports WKMG. "He was shot all over the body," said a Smyrna Beach neighbor who called 911. "He says he can’t breathe." The neighbor could be heard telling the young man "stay calm" and "stay with me." Meanwhile another neighbor followed the alleged shooter, who had driven off in a Dodge pickup. "You’re gonna love this—I’m following the suspect," the man told 911 before stopping at the mouth of a dead-end street where the father had parked. The suspect later turned himself in and was charged with attempted murder. This morning, Eugene was undergoing surgery for multiple bullet wounds at a hospital in Daytona, the Orlando Sentinel reports. So what started the fight? The mother brought up the idea of a divorce and the elder Blackwell began choking her, police say.
– A full-blown trade war is looking ever more likely with President Trump threatening US allies upset with the tariffs on steel and aluminum imports he announced just days earlier, USA Today reports. "If the E.U. wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on U.S. companies doing business there, we will simply apply a Tax on their Cars which freely pour into the U.S. They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!" Trump tweeted Saturday from Mar-a-Lago. The president announced a 25% tariff on imported steel and 10% tariff on imported aluminum on Thursday. Both Canada and the EU called the tariffs "unacceptable," and the EU threatened to retaliate in the form of tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Kentucky bourbon, and jeans. Canada also threatened retaliation of its own. The US was the largest market for cars exported from the EU in 2016, importing over 1 million, CNBC reports. According to the Washington Post, Trump's newest tariff threat mostly targets Germany, which exported $23 billion in cars to the US in 2016. Germany's BMW and Volkswagen employ thousands of workers in factories in the US, and critics say a tariff on their cars would only hurt US consumers. Trump said during his presidential campaign that he wanted to fix trade imbalances with China and Mexico. But his announced tariffs on aluminum and steel would mostly affect Canada, the UK, Germany, South Korea, Turkey, and Japan—all allies of the US. “None of this is reasonable, but reason is a sentiment that is very unevenly distributed in this world,” the president of the EU says. Trump on Friday called trade wars "good and easy to win."
– Members of the anti-Kardashian Klub can live vicariously through the woman who threw flour all over Kim last night on the red carpet. Kardashian was in Los Angeles to launch her new fragrance when she found herself covered in the baking product, but after the fire department determined the substance was just flour and nothing dangerous, she got herself cleaned up and returned to the event. The flour-dumper was detained, but later released, and Kardashian is not pressing charges, E! reports. Sisters Khloe and Kourtney both tweeted that they wished they had been there to protect Kim, the Huffington Post adds. "I wonder if they would have dared thrown the flour at my hormonal and pregnant self!" wrote Kourtney, and Khloe added that if she had been there, "I bet you that woman wouldn't have dared tried a thing..." No word on why the woman felt the need to pelt Kim with flour, but some witnesses reportedly heard her talking about fur. As for Kim, she took it in stride, but she apparently doesn't know what the word "translucent" means: "Like I said to my makeup artist, I wanted more powder and that's a whole lot of translucent powder right there." Click for a slideshow of other celebs who have been "assaulted" in public.
– Don't like the thought of dogs being served up with lychees? Neither does Yang Xiaoyun, a 65-year-old Chinese woman who saved 100 canines from being killed and served at a dog-meat festival in southern China, AFP reports. The animal lover paid about $1,100 yesterday for the dogs in the city of Yulin, and plans to take them home to Tianjin, about 1,240 miles away. Her gesture has drawn more attention to Yulin's controversial festival, where activists hold demonstrations, charge animal cruelty, and sometimes buy dogs so they won't get eaten. "I saw cat and dog intestines and carcasses strung up," an activist tells the Independent. "There were some dogs still alive in wire cages, but they looked exhausted, emaciated, and dirty." Locals say the dogs are killed in a humane manner at Yulin's festival, where people eat dog meat with lychees—but the tide in China may be turning against the practice. Roughly 30 million Chinese households are said to have dogs now, while more young people are moving into cities and buying animals for companionship, CNN reports. What's more, the city of Guangzhou—known for serving dogs and cats—just shut down a dog-meat restaurant. But while officials have criticized the Yulin festival, they stop short of imposing a legal ban against the slaughter of cats and dogs. "Yulin is an open, tolerant and civilised city," says the city's news office. "We welcome people across the world to pay attention to Yulin."
– Will Ferrell's latest comedy about a wealthy white guy who enlists a law-abiding black man to help him prepare for life in prison is proving more controversial than his usual work. With accusations that Get Hard is homophobic and racist, Ferrell defends the flick to the AP, noting he and costar Kevin Hart "show a mirror to what's already existing out there." Do critics agree? "Perhaps there's an edgy dark comedy to be made about race, class, and the prospect of facing prison, but Get Hard is not it," Claudia Puig writes at USA Today. The film's "jokes are a cavalcade of racist and homophobic humorlessness." And though its cracks at class divisions perform better, they aren't worth the price of a movie ticket. Her advice: "Unless you're really hard up for entertainment, stay away from this tone-deaf raunchfest." It "seeks to make you laugh while also risking offense by going too far. It succeeds on both counts," writes Peter Howell more favorably at the Toronto Star. The film will undoubtedly offend a portion of the audience, but "I enjoyed it because, unlike similar films of its ilk, everybody is in on the joke," he writes: white, black; rich, poor; etc. "It's not great cinema, but it's also not just a scattershot of dumbness and vulgarity." And "Ferrell and Hart make a good team." Cary Darling at DFW is less kind. "Since anyone who has seen the trailer has already seen many of the film's best moments, making it through to the end does feel like something of a life sentence," she writes. Excepting a scene in which Hart portrays a black guy, a Latino guy, and a gay black guy within a matter of minutes, the film just doesn't bring the laughs. Instead, it's "weighed down by middle-school jokes." At its best, Get Hard "does a smartly scathing job" of attacking privilege and entitlement, writes Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post. At its worst, it "veers perilously close to committing the very sins it aspires to criticize." Particularly, "the movie is drenched in gay panic" and includes "tiresome 'don't drop the soap' jokes," based on Ferrell's character's fears about being raped in prison. At least "Ferrell and Hart have a genial, easygoing chemistry," Hornaday writes.
– Mitt Romney's campaign was scrambling yesterday to reverse any impression that the candidate might be slipping into election oblivion. A GOP campaign pollster conceded that, yes, maybe President Obama got a bounce out of the Democratic National Convention, but he warned voters not to get "too worked up about it." All "signs point to a tight race," emphasized pollster Neil Newhouse, reports the Huffington Post. "While the president has seen a bounce, his approval has already begun to slip, indicating it is likely to recede further. In eight states, Pollster.com's reporting of the most recent statewide polls puts the margin between the two candidates at less than three points." An unnamed Romney source talking to the National Review also slammed reports that Romney's campaign "knows it's losing, and that Ohio is slipping out of reach." The source said Obama's convention bounce will quickly evaporate. "Sometimes I think there’s a conscious effort between the media and Chicago to get Republicans depressed," he told Richard Lowry. "And I hope our friends realize that all these media analysts out there are Democrats who want us to lose."
– Police officers yesterday broke up a massive brawl at a baby shower by tasing at least one person and arresting four others, WHDH reports. It began when an officer tried breaking up a fight during the shower at a neighborhood social club in Stoughton, Mass., police say. Things got so ugly that cops called in three more police departments, the sheriff's department, and state police to tame the 200-person brawl. A few partygoers and police officers were injured, but none seriously. The four suspects were each charged with assault and battery on a police officer. Hat tip to Raw Story.
– Garth Brooks, who lost entertainer of the year at last year's Country Music Association Awards when he returned to music after a 13-year break, won the top prize at the show Wednesday, the AP reports. Brooks beat out Carrie Underwood, Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban, and last year's winner, Luke Bryan. "We are so damn lucky to be part of this thing called country music," Brooks yelled loudly at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena. Taylor Swift presented Brooks the award, but she wasn't the only pop star in the building: In a surprise duet with the Dixie Chicks, Beyonce sang her twangy song "Daddy Lessons" on a night celebrating the CMA Awards' 50th anniversary. Dolly Parton, who earned the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award, was honored by Reba McEntire, Underwood, Martina McBride, and Kacey Musgraves, who all sang a rousing rendition of "I Will Always Love You." "I would have cried, but I didn't want to mess up my eyelashes," said Parton. Stapleton, who won big at last year's show, was the night's top winner with two: He took home male vocalist and music video of the year. Underwood won female vocalist of the year, ending Miranda Lambert's six-year consecutive winning streak since 2010. Eric Church won album of the year for "Mr. Misunderstood" and Maren Morris picked up new artist of the year. Click for a full list of winners.
– Unusually for an Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has had to clarify his position on who he thinks caused the Holocaust. In a Facebook post, Netanyahu backtracked from earlier remarks suggesting the extermination of European Jews was a Palestinian's idea, reports i24. "The decision to move from a policy of deporting Jews to the Final Solution was made by the Nazis and was not dependent on outside influence," said Netanyahu, though he stressed that Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini supported the Holocaust and collaborated with the Nazis. "My remarks were intended to illustrate the murderous approach of the Mufti to the Jews in his lengthy contacts with the Nazi leadership," Netanyahu wrote. "The interpretation of my remarks as though I absolved the Nazis of even one ounce of responsibility for the Holocaust is absurd." The Israeli leader's Oct. 20 remarks were widely condemned by historians and the New York Times finds it odd that he waited until Friday afternoon, when the controversy had almost completely died down, to clarify them. (Netanyahu's remarks caused Germany to issue a statement saying the Holocaust was indeed Hitler's fault.)
– A 7-year-old bowler in Canada just learned a tough lesson about rules, or pants, or ... something. After Grayson Powell bowled a terrific game and prepared to collect a gold medal with two teammates, he was told he was disqualified for wearing pants that weren't black enough. So reports the CBC, which photographed Grayson's outfit and, sure enough, his black jeans are faded to a gray. "If this is what sport is about when it comes to kids ... shame on them," said his angry father, Todd Powell. This odd controversy, however, was just getting started. In a long rebuttal, Gord Davis, provincial head of Youth Bowling Canada, insisted the organization "did nothing wrong" and is "not to blame for how this went down." The black jeans dress code has been in place "for decades," he said, and rules are rules. The boy's dad smelled a rat. He accused Davis of disqualifying his son's team so the second- and third-place teams, which bowl at lanes owned by Davis, could take higher honors. Davis fired back that Powell was "full aware of the dress code" and sent his kid anyway. He pressed: "What parent would do this?" As the Guardian reports, one of Powell's complaints is that his son was disqualified only after bowling a 171-point game that propelled his Riverdale team to the title in the Newfoundland city of St. John's." After the story made headlines in Canada, an odd-sounding compromise was reached. The disqualification stands, but the kids get their gold medals. In the future, however, all rules must be followed "no matter what," wrote Davis on Facebook. (This girl's leggings and tunic got her in trouble at school.)
– In the midst of a continued backlash against Confederate symbols following the deadly shooting at a black church in South Carolina, the University of Texas at Austin said today it will be relocating a statue of Jefferson Davis, the Dallas Morning News reports. The statue of the Confederate president, which is located on UT's Main Mall, had been defaced in recent months with the phrases "Davis Must Fall" and—following the church massacre—"Black Lives Matter," according to the Texas Tribune. While the statue of Davis will be moved to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, four other statues of Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee, will remain on the Main Mall because of their relationship to Texas history, the Morning News reports. Earlier this week, the school created an advisory panel of students, professors, and alumni to make recommendations about the statues, of which Davis was the most controversial. After announcing his decision to move Davis, UT's president said it wasn't "in the university's best interest to continue commemorating" him. He is also considering plaques to give historical context for the remaining Confederate statues. The Morning News reports the university is also moving a statue of former President Woodrow Wilson, which had been located across from the statue of Davis, for symmetry purposes.
– Human blood is rich with genetic material, and scientists have in recent years taken many steps forward in decoding it. The latest announcement—that a blood test can spot cancer at its earliest stages—has the potential to save millions of lives as treatment is administered earlier in the disease's progression, reports Reuters. Reporting in the journal Science Translational Medicine, scientists say that by analyzing DNA fragments in blood to look for several dozen cancer-driver genes, they spotted 86 out of 138 stage 1 and stage 2 cancers; they also confirmed no trace of cancer in 44 healthy patients (in other words, there were zero false positives). Some call this minimally invasive test a "liquid biopsy." "This is one of the first studies that has looked directly at early-stage cancers," says lead author Dr. Victor Velculescu, an oncologist at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. While the test is proof-of-concept and not yet ready for prime time, detecting 62% of cancers that were only in stages 1 or 2 is a major milestone, experts say. For instance, less than one in five ovarian cancers are caught that early, when the survival rate is higher than 90%; those that are caught after the cancer has spread face a dramatically lower 40% survival rate five years out, per HealthDay News. For this study, however, the blood test caught early-stage ovarian cancer 68% of the time. Scientists hope they can get the test much closer to a 100% detection rate. (This cancer treatment is being hailed as the most exciting in a lifetime.)
– Dozens of firefighters and rescue crew risked their own safety to save 10 horses that fell through the ice Sunday in Canada—and it was all caught on video, CBC reports. After the horses fell through the thinning ice in northern Alberta, rescuers had to use chainsaws to cut a path back to the shore before using boards and slings to get the horses to dry land. Rescuers were at risk not only from the cold temperatures and thin ice, but from the frantic animals, which were "wild broncing" horses used in rodeos and not domesticated, according to CTV News. All 10 horses were removed from the water after two hours, though three later died. "To rescue seven was a great feat, especially when having such a large number in the water," a local fire chief tells CBC.
– An obsessed baseball fan's near-fatal attack on her idol became a movie—but the fan herself quietly died three months ago. Ruth Ann Steinhagen, whose story inspired the Robert Redford movie The Natural, was 83 when she died Dec. 29 of a subdural hematoma that arose after a fall in her home, reports the Chicago Tribune. The paper talks to the biographer of the Philadelphia Phillies' Eddie Waitkus, who explains the depth of her obsession: "She builds an Eddie Waitkus shrine in her apartment: photos, newspaper clippings, 50 ticket stubs, scorecards. She knows he's from Boston so she develops a craving for baked beans. ... He's Lithuanian, so she teaches herself the language and listens to Lithuanian radio programs." In 1949, at age 19, she was in a Chicago hotel where Waitkus was staying. She managed to slip him a note telling him she had "something of importance to speak to you about," and he visited her room. When he sat down, she told him she had a surprise for him; she took a rifle from the closet and shot him in the chest, then held his hand, the AP reports. She was ruled insane and spent three years in a psychiatric hospital. Following her release, she worked in an office and lived with her sister. Even workers at the morgue didn't at first realize who she was, the AP notes. "She chose to live in the shadows and she did a good job of it," says a baseball historian. Waitkus, on the other hand, kept on playing—and the Phillies won the pennant that year. The Tribune, which first reported her death, notes that it accidentally stumbled upon her death record while researching another story.
– Police in Houston are searching for a vandal who spray-painted a Picasso painting. The man was captured on camera using a stencil to paint an image of a bull and the word "Conquista" on the Spanish master's 1929 "Woman in a Red Armchair," reports the Houston Chronicle. A bystander who videoed the man in action says the vandal identified himself as an up-and-coming Mexican-American artist who wanted to "honor" Picasso's work. The painting, one of nine Picassos in Houston's Menil collection, was rushed to the museum's on-site conservation lab and experts say the prognosis is good. "The most important thing is to get the painting to full health, which is happening," a museum spokesman tells Fox. "All the spray paint has been removed. It is in the right hospital. The painting now needs to rest." If the vandal is caught, he will face a charge of criminal mischief with a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
– The distributed denial of service attack that sent Internet users into a tailspin Friday was the most powerful of its kind by far, say cybersecurity researchers, and they're especially alarmed because it looks to be the work of amateur hackers. Twitter, Netflix, Reddit, and other sites went down as the Mirai botnet took over poorly protected "Internet of things" devices like DVRs and webcams—whose owners hadn't changed the devices' default passwords—and bombarded domain host company Dyn with traffic so regular users couldn't get through. Apparently there were a lot of insecure devices out there to use. Dyn says there were "100,000 malicious endpoints" leading an attack twice as powerful as any other DDoS attack reported, per the Guardian. Researchers from cybersecurity firm Flashpoint suspect the attack was tied to the community at Hackforums.net—where the Mirai source code was published earlier this month, per Mashable—and was meant to target a video game company, perhaps the PlayStation Network, reports Computer World. If amateur hackers did so much damage, "imagine what a well-resourced state actor could do with insecure IoT devices," says a cybersecurity rep at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We have a serious problem with the cyber insecurity of IoT devices and no real strategy to combat it." Experts recommend users reset an IoT device to its factory settings to erase any existing malware, then create a new password immediately.
– Donald Trump entered the national abortion debate on Wednesday as smoothly as a burning oil tanker slamming into a fireworks warehouse. After causing an outcry by saying that if abortions are banned, women who have them should be punished, he went on to claim the issue was "unclear" before issuing a statement saying that doctors, not women who have abortions, would be the ones to be punished if abortion was outlawed. "My position has not changed—like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions," he insisted. A roundup of reactions: The statements came amid what Politico calls "24 hours of mayhem" for Trump that also included scrapping his GOP loyalty pledge, a fresh line of attack in the Corey Lewandowski case, and complaining about the Geneva Conventions. Politico predicts that with the party now hopelessly divided, a contested GOP convention is almost inevitable. Ben Carson offered a very Carsonesque defense of Trump in a CNN interview. "I don't think he really had a chance to really think about it," Carson said, adding that Trump was able to "come up with a more rational and informed type of answer" after talking to advisers. Carson said he agreed with Trump's latter position that abortion providers, not women, should be the ones to be punished if the US ever bans abortion. Ted Cruz didn't pass up the opportunity to slam Trump, the Hill reports. Trump "has demonstrated that he hasn't seriously thought through the issues, and he'll say anything just to get attention," Cruz said in a statement. "We shouldn't be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world," added Cruz, who, unlike Trump, does not support exceptions for rape and incest under an abortion ban, according to the Washington Post. Some anti-abortion activists are just as outraged as pro-choice groups by Trump's earlier comments, the New York Times reports. They say the call to punish women shows that Trump's shift toward being anti-abortion is very recent—and insincere. "No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion," says the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund. "We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment." The Washington Post fact-checks Trump's claim that his change of position mirrors Reagan's, finding that this time, Trump is not "glaringly incorrect," although the comparison is a "gratuitous one that lacks historical context, and not analogous to his own evolution." The Post gives him two Pinocchios on a scale that goes to four.
– Halloween is James Yochim's favorite time of year: "I get really excited about going to haunted houses." His Friday night at Nashville Nightmare in Madison—a sprawling attraction with four haunted houses, an escape room, and scary cast members running around with fake weapons—might dull the thrill, however. Yochim says a thin man with skull makeup, assumed to be an actor, approached his friend, Tawnya Greenfield, asking if Yochim was "f—ing around with her," per BuzzFeed. When she jokingly said yes, the man handed her a knife and said "stab him," Yochim tells the Nashville Tennessean. "Keep in mind, we'd been chased by chainsaws, holding other weapons, all kinds of stuff all night, and it was all fake," he adds. "So she stabs at me with it, and everything got really black." The blade—very much real—went through the 29-year-old's forearm. Though it didn't hit any major arteries, bones, or tendons, "his arm was gushing blood like something out of a horror scene," Greenfield tells Fox 17. Nine stitches later, Yochim recalls the unknown man apologizing as he lay bleeding, saying, "I didn't know my knife was that sharp." But according to Yochim, there were no weapons allowed inside the attraction and visitors were required to go through "very thorough" metal detectors. In a Tuesday statement, Nashville Nightmare's organizers said an employee believed to be "involved in some way" had been placed on leave "until we can determine his involvement." An initial police report said the suspect had not been identified. No charges have been laid.
– Police in northern India have made two arrests in connection with the rape of an Israeli tourist, who was assaulted after she accepted a ride with six men while traveling in the state of Himachal Pradesh. Police were using security camera footage from the town of Manali, where the victim was left after the attack, to identify the suspects, NDTV reports. The victim told police that two of the men in the car assaulted her. The local police chief described the men arrested as "locals," according to the Guardian, adding, “A search operation is on to arrest the remaining four accused. The vehicle involved in the crime has also been recovered." The 25-year-old victim is the third tourist raped in the area in that past four years, the Times of India reports. In 2013, three men raped an American woman as she was hitchhiking. The year before, an Australian woman reported being raped in her hotel room by a man she met through Facebook. The Israeli woman told police that she was trying to find a taxi early Sunday to join friends in a nearby town, the Times of Israel reports. The suspects offered her a ride, saying they would take her to Manali and she could get a cab from there. The woman was being treated at a hospital following the attack. Despite increased punishments for rapists in India, the Guardian notes, sexual assault remains a a big problem in the country, "with incidents hitting the headlines almost every day."
– Coach will spend $2.4 billion for Kate Spade, tying together two premier brands in the luxury goods sector in a bid to snare younger shoppers. Noting that crucial demographic, Coach CEO Victor Luis says in a company release Monday that Kate Spade has a "strong awareness among consumers, especially millennials." Coach will pay $18.50 per share of Kate Spade, a 9% premium to its Friday closing price of $16.97. It follows another recent millennial-minded deal on Coach's part: engaging Selena Gomez (and, it likely hopes, her 120 million Instagram fans) in a deal that will put her in Coach ads and across its social media, reports CNBC. But the brand isn't just going younger, it's going luxe-er, reports the AP: Coach has made an aggressive push to polish its image as a purveyor of opulence, ending many of the promotions it had used to ramp up sales. To power future growth, it's begun to build an empire of luxury brands. In 2015, Coach acquired the high-end footwear company Stuart Weitzman. Last month the company hired Joshua Schulman, the president of Neiman Marcus's Bergdorf Goodman division, and put him in the newly created position as president and CEO of the Coach brand. In CNN Money's view, the acquisition is "bad news for purse-loving bargain hunters." It cites Coach's CFO as saying that Kate Spade will likely reel in the number of "online flash sales" it has.
– Former University of Alabama student Megan Rondini would still be alive if not for the "mishandling" of her alleged rape, her parents say. In a wrongful death lawsuit filed Sunday, Rondini's parents accuse the university, school officials, sheriff's deputies, and Rondini's alleged rapist of enabling her suicide in February 2016. Rondini had been a 20-year-old student at the University of Alabama in July 2015 when she alleged she was raped by local businessman TJ Bunn Jr. But authorities "wrongfully acted or failed to act in response," the lawsuit alleges, per Buzzfeed. It adds deputies—who found the case didn't meet Alabama's legal definition for rape—didn't test Rondini's rape kit or interview witnesses, an "intentional" behavior that was due to Rondini's gender. Rondini—who allegedly stole $3 and a gun from Bunn—was "treated as a crime suspect," not a victim, the suit continues, per the AP, also alleging a school counselor refused to see Rondini unless she took anxiety medication. Rondini later dropped out of school, moved back to Texas, and suffered "extreme depression, anxiety, PTSD, fear, panic attacks, decline of cognitive functions and general well-being … all of which directly led to Megan's loss of life," the suit states. Per AL.com, two days before her suicide, she sent a text reading, "I wonder what I could've accomplished if one man didn't completely rip everything away from me." Bunn, who claimed the sex was consensual, was never charged with a crime. His lawyer tells AL.com that the lawsuit is "baseless" and "simply false."
– Another body was found Sunday on the property of South Carolina kidnap and murder suspect Todd Kohlhepp—and investigators still have plenty of digging to do. The unidentified body was found in one of two locations on the 95-acre property that Kohlhepp, who bought the land two years ago, had identified as graves, ABC reports. The body of a man identified as Charlie Carver—whose girlfriend was found chained up in a storage container on the property—was earlier found in a shallow grave. Police say the 45-year-old Kohlhepp has confessed to killing at least seven people over the last 10 years, including four people who were massacred at a South Carolina motorcycle shop 13 years ago. Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright says the FBI and Homeland Security are now involved in the investigation, which will be looking at other sites Kohlhepp, a realtor, owns or used to own, the AP reports. Kohlhepp declined to make a statement at a brief court hearing on Sunday, where he was denied bond. The Greenville News reports that chilling Amazon.com product reviews from a user believed to be Kohlhepp have surfaced. He reviewed items like knives, padlocks and tactical gear. For a shovel with a folding handle, he wrote: "Keep in car for when you have to hide the bodies and you left the full size shovel at home." (Disturbing details have emerged about Kohlhepp's teenage years.)
– The polls this week were right: Mitt Romney easily won the Nevada caucuses tonight, just as he did four years ago, report the AP and CNN. That's two straight victories for the frontrunner. The more interesting battle was that for second place: Romney took 42%, but Ron Paul at times looked poised to trounce Newt Gingrich. Gingrich prevailed in the final tally with 25%, Paul with 18%, and Rick Santorum had 13%. As he did after his South Carolina win, Romney addressed supporters and put the focus on the White House rather than his rivals."President Obama seems to believe America's role as leader in the world is a thing of the past," he said. "I believe the 21st century will be and must be an American century." Next up after tonight: Tuesday night caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado, and a primary in Missouri. (No delegates will be awarded in the Missouri contest, and Gingrich isn't even on the ballot, notes the Washington Post.)
– Sky watchers will get a bit of a show Tuesday night: People across the Eastern US and much of the Southwest will be able to see the moon move in front of Aldebaran, one of the brightest stars in the night sky, a phenomenon known as a lunar occultation, reports USA Today. Most in the viewing zone will see a "total occultation," in which the star disappears behind the moon. But the real treat comes for residents in certain areas of LA and Denver, who will be able to witness a "grazing occultation," where the star moves along the very periphery of the moon. Those with high-powered telescopes (or perhaps a nice pair of binoculars) should be able to see the star move in and out of view as mountain ranges and craters on the moon rise and fall. In the West, Aldebaran will disappear shortly after 10pm PDT, per Space.com. In the Eastern US, it will happen between 1am and 2am EDT. Astronomy site Sky and Telescope has the nitty-gritty on when and where to look.
– President Trump launched his push for tax reform Wednesday in Indianapolis, promising a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" and "revolutionary change." "Under our framework, we will dramatically cut the business tax rate so that American companies and American workers can beat our foreign competitors and start winning again," USA Today quotes Trump as saying. The New York Times reports the proposed framework reduces the corporate tax rate to 20%, doubles deductions for married and single filers to $24,000 and $12,000 respectively, and reduces the number of tax brackets from seven to three. The top bracket would see a reduced tax rate; the lowest bracket would see an increased tax rate. Overall, Trump claims the plan represents the biggest tax cut in history: "There's never been tax cuts like we're talking about." Trump is promising the middle class will be "the biggest winners" of his tax plan, which will cause "jobs to start pouring into our country." But the framework presented lacks details to show whether that would or would not be the case. (CNN reports Trump also claims the plan is "not good for me," but that's impossible to prove without his tax returns.) The framework does, however, include details that will specifically benefit rich Americans, for example by getting rid of inheritance taxes paid by the country's wealthiest families. Without further specifics, the head of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calls Trump's tax plan "nothing more than a fiscal fantasy." Trump says he wants to work with Democrats to fill in those details, but Republican leaders say they'll likely use a special rule to pass tax reform without Democratic support.
– US News & World Report is ready to shock us all with its Best Colleges 2011 ranking, which places Harvard smack dab on top. Again. But—news alert!—Princeton has tumbled from tying the venerable Crimson to No. 2. That list, which you can see here, doesn't wow us quite so much as does another annual list released today: Beloit College's Mindset List, which gives us a snapshot of the realities and events shaping the lives of this year's freshman class, born in 1992. Some highlights: The majority don't know how to write in cursive. They have never had trouble understanding what a "caramel macchiato" is. Clint Eastwood is some guy who directs movies. Fergie is a member of the Black Eyed Peas, not the British Royal Family. Czechoslovakia has never existed. The Post Office has always been basically broke. Click here for the complete 75-item list (Buffy and Barney and Beanie Babies, oh my!).
– The prominent conservative site RedState is now poised to have a decidedly pro-Trump vibe. Parent company Salem Media on Friday purged a slew of bloggers in a "mass firing," and many of those who lost their jobs were critics of President Trump, reports CNN media writer Brian Stelter. Former editor Erick Erickson, now at the Resurgent, writes that it's not a huge surprise given that Salem similarly got rid of many anti-Trump voices at its radio properties. Both stories point out that the move wasn't entirely political. Salem wanted to cut costs; it's just that those who bore the brunt of the cuts were generally critical of the president. "They fired everybody who was insufficiently supportive of Trump," one source tells CNN. The Daily Beast lists some of those fired writers as Caleb Howe, Jay Caruso, Ben Howe, Patrick Frey (who writes as Patterico), Neil Stevens, and Susan Wright. Caleb Howe, for one, sounded ticked about Friday's events. "There is a right way to do something and a f---ed up way," he tweeted.
– The Philadelphia couple who raised more than $400,000 for a homeless veteran are using the fund as their "personal piggy bank," lawyers for Johnny Bobbitt Jr. write in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. Though lawyers say Bobbitt is staying at a hotel during a third stint in rehab, the 35-year-old Marine Corps veteran had been back to panhandling and battling a drug addiction on Philadelphia's streets despite a generous GoFundMe campaign organized by Kate McClure, 28, and Mark D'Amico, 39. They started the campaign after Bobbitt used his last $20 to buy gas for a stranded McClure and later bought a camper in which Bobbitt resided on property owned by McClure's family. Asked to leave in June because of drug use, per the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bobbitt alleges he's received just $75,000 of what he's due. McClure and D'Amico have interfered, spending more than half of the $402,000 raised "to fund a lifestyle that they could not otherwise afford," the lawsuit claims, per ABC News. Bobbitt previously wondered at how McClure, a receptionist, could afford a new BMW. But the couple have said only $500 of the fund was improperly spent on gambling and repaid. Noting well over $150,000 remains but is being withheld from Bobbitt for fear he will spend it on drugs, the couple say they'll open the fund to review by an accountant, per the Inquirer. Too late, according to Bobbitt's lawyers, who say the lawsuit seeking a court-appointed overseer of the account came after D'Amico ignored repeated requests for a full accounting. "He's really left us with no choice but to go forward," one tells the AP. A Thursday hearing is set.
– You can buy many things on the Internet, and one of them is now the garish tie Rob Ford wore to the press conference in which he confessed he might be more than abstractly familiar with a substance we like to call crack cocaine, albeit only in a "drunken stupor." The former Hizzoner, who is battling an aggressive cancer, has as of yesterday listed various such treasures on eBay, including aforementioned tie, which is currently going for nearly $2,600. Per the listing: "You are bidding on an original piece of memorabilia from former Toronto Mayor, and current Toronto Councillor Rob Ford." It comes with a "Certificate of Authenticity from Councillor Rob Ford himself." Also up for grabs: Some kind of weird moose-print jammies Ford apparently "was seen wearing on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart"; a "Keep Calm and Carry On" sign that Ford "added as a decoration to the Mayor's Office in January, 2014"; and a Saskatchewan Roughriders jersey that "he got while attending a game in July of 2013 (Size 4XL)." But as Gawker notes: "Caveat emptor, eager Rob Ford collectors: torontorobford currently has a feedback score of 0."
– Defying fierce opposition from the United States and a few other nations, nearly 85% of the countries at the UN agreed Monday on a sweeping yet non-binding accord to ensure safe, orderly, and humane migration. A total of 164 countries among the 193 UN members approved the first-of-its-kind the Global Compact for Migration by acclamation Monday, reports the AP. At the two-day conference, UN leaders were hoping to lure in holdouts from mostly Western nations who were not signing: Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, and Slovakia along with the United States, which under President Trump did not participate in drafting the accord. The UN's International Organization for Migration estimates there are 1 billion migrants worldwide, or nearly one in every seven humans," and more than 60,000 migrants have died on the move since the year 2000," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a migration conference in Marrakesh, Morocco. "This is a source of collective shame." The conference is the capstone of efforts set in motion two years ago when all 193 UN member states, including the US under President Barack Obama, adopted a declaration saying that no country can manage international migration on its own and agreed to work on a global compact. The Trump administration pulled out of the accord a year ago. It said it could not "support a 'compact' or process" that could "impose" policy and said the agreement failed to "distinguish adequately" between legal and illegal immigrants. Read more on the pact here.
– Charges are piling up for Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., the suspected Golden State Killer. In addition to 13 counts of murder, DeAngelo will face 13 charges of kidnapping to commit robbery, prosecutors announced Tuesday. The 72-year-old will be tried in Sacramento County, the Los Angeles Times reports. The announcement of the new charges and trial venue were made during a press conference in Orange County. Prosecutors from Contra Costa, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Tulare, and Ventura counties—all jurisdictions where DeAngelo allegedly committed crimes—were also on hand. DeAngelo, a former police officer, is believed to be responsible for a series of murders, rapes, and burglaries committed decades ago. He was arrested in April. The prosecutors from Northern, Central, and Southern California "stand united" on "team justice," Sacramento DA Anne Marie Schubert said, according to ABC. If convicted, DeAngelo, who is being held in Sacramento and has yet to enter a plea, is eligible for the death penalty, but prosecutors have not decided whether to pursue it, per the LA Times. He will be arraigned on all of the charges on Thursday, reports the New York Times, which notes that it is unusual for charges from so many jurisdictions to be tried at a single trial.
– Atticus! Harper Lee has sued her former literary agent, claiming that he tricked her into signing over the rights and royalties of To Kill a Mockingbird, reports Reuters. The 87-year-old author alleges that Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of her late longtime agent, pulled a fast one on her while she was recovering from a stroke in 2007. “Pinkus knew that Harper Lee was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see,” says the complaint filed in federal court yesterday. “Harper Lee had no idea she had assigned her copyright." The story gets a little convoluted from there. The AP says Lee is suing to "re-secure" the copyright to the 1960 novel, but Bloomberg reports that she actually got the copyright back last year in a separate legal action. It adds, however, that Pinkus was still receiving royalties through the legal arrangement he set up in 2007. The new suit demands that he forfeit all of his Mockingbird commissions since the deal. Pinkus himself has not responded publicly.
– Eliot Spitzer is back on the political scene—just like Mark Sanford and Anthony Weiner—and apparently tearing up over his past transgressions this morning on Morning Joe. Which makes Politico wonder: What makes these guys tick? The simple answer, from Washington insiders, is egomania. "The essential thing that these politicians all have is an absence of shame," says journalist Sally Quinn. "This is strictly about ‘me, me, me,’ and it’s a neediness that I don’t understand but we see all the time in Washington." A political psychologist agrees, saying the new runs for office are attempts to redeem bruised egos: "It’s not that the public needs ... them back in office. It’s much more that they need to be back in office." How some are reacting to Spitzer's run for comptroller: Whether or not Spitzer stands a chance, Wall Street won't want to see him back again, Politico notes. "He’s had these legendary duels and battles with a number of people in the sector,” says an industry official. “Should he be elected, you’ll just have another official who’s antagonistic towards the sector." Indeed, as a financial manager for New York City, he'd have a powerful weapon against corporate heavyweights. Spitzer's own argument is that he's a gutsy progressive; he notes his backing for gay marriage in 1998. "I’ve been ahead of the curve. I’m not a traditional politician. I am not one who takes the measure of a political issue and calibrates to the public opinion," he tells Politico. "I’m tough enough to stand up and do what needs to be done." Adds a former Bush administration official: "When people say his name, it’s usually preceded by a four-letter word."
– Baseball's "Sistine Chapel" turns 100 today, a century to the day after its first regular-season game. As the oldest major-league stadium, Fenway Park has seen the Boston Red Sox through a turbulent century, hosting heroes from Babe Ruth to Ted Williams to Hank Aaron, the Boston Globe notes. Today, you can feel the stadium's age, columnist Dan Shaughnessy tells USA Today: "The seats between the aisles were built for people 5-foot-6 in 1912," and "some of the things that don't work are never going to work." "But overall, it is the jewel of baseball and the best place to watch a baseball game," he concludes. The stadium was the product of a $120,000 purchase of 8 acres of land in Boston. Nearly a century later, the park seemed old-fashioned and small compared to others, and it faced a shutdown. But new owners invested $285 million to bring it up to date, and it's expected to stay in business another 40 years. "We think of Fenway as the 'Little Engine that Could,' and it just keeps chugging along," Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner says. Today, the Sox celebrate the anniversary with a game against—who else?—the New York Yankees.
– In the aftermath of a Texas sheriff's deputy's "execution-style" murder on Friday night, police explained that Darren Goforth was killed by a gunman who fired at him multiple times from behind a gas station. Suspected gunman Shannon Miles was today in court for the first time, and a prosecutor got even more specific about the circumstances of Goforth's death. "He unloaded the entire weapon into Deputy Goforth," said Harris County DA Devon Anderson of Miles, per NBC News. That was 15 shots: a bullet in the chamber plus a 14-bullet clip. "They found Deputy Darren Goforth face down in a pool of his own blood," continued Anderson, per the Houston Chronicle. She says 15 shell casings were found at the scene, and a .40 caliber handgun recovered from Miles' home proved a match for the bullets that killed Goforth. The Chronicle reports Miles, 30, didn't say much during his appearance, and was dressed in the yellow uniform given to high-profile inmates. He remains in jail without bail. A motive has yet to be given for the shooting. A GoFundMe campaign for Goforth's family (he has two kids) today surpassed its $100,000 goal.
– The man accused of raping a 15-year-old girl while they were students at a prestigious New Hampshire boarding school was found guilty of misdemeanor sexual assault but acquitted of more serious felony charges today, the Boston Globe reports. The victim claims Owen Labrie, 18 at the time, forced sexual intercourse on her—ignoring her pleas to stop and fighting to remove her underwear—in the attic of a St. Paul's School building in May 2014. In his defense, Labrie, who attended a choir concert following the attack, says the two never had intercourse—he says he started putting a condom on before deciding he didn't want to have sex with the victim—and any sexual contact was consensual, CNN reports. He said it seemed like the victim was "having a great time." During the two-week trial, Labrie's friends testified he bragged about having sex with the victim, and prosecutors claimed Labrie and his friends were competing to see who could "slay" the most girls before graduation, the Globe reports. CNN states the defense attempted to put blame on St. Paul's itself for encouraging a tradition known as "senior salute," in which seniors attempt to have sexual interactions with underclassmen before commencement. The defense claims the school is "failing" its students by tolerating senior salute, which it said harmed both its client and the victim. In addition to misdemeanor sexual assault, the jury found Labrie guilty of using a computer to lure a minor and endangering the welfare of a child. He was acquitted of felony rape.
– What started on Twitter has ended on the Tesla company blog. Elon Musk announced in a statement posted there late Friday night that the electric car maker would not in fact be going private. He writes, "I knew the process of going private would be challenging, but it’s clear that it would be even more time-consuming and distracting than initially anticipated." And "although the majority of shareholders I spoke to said they would remain with Tesla if we went private, the sentiment, in a nutshell, was 'please don’t do this.'" The statement elaborates on his meetings with investment firms Silver Lake, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, and Musk says his initial assertion that the funding was there was "reinforced." But "after considering all these factors"—including institutional investors, who said internal rules limit how much they can put into a private company—"I met with Tesla’s board of directors yesterday and let them know that I believe the better path is for Tesla to remain public." The New York Times reports a very brief second statement issued by six of Tesla's directors says the special committee established to look into the feasibility of going private has now been dissolved; the statement also voices the board's "[full] support" for Musk. As for what Musk had to say on Twitter, he simply retweeted the company's tweet of his statement, adding the words, "Staying Public."
– Belgian doctors accused of improperly euthanizing a woman with autism will see their case go to trial, marking "the first time that there has been a decision to refer such a case to a court of law" since the practice was legalized in 2002, a prosecutor tells the AFP. Three doctors from East Flanders are being investigated on suspicion of having "poisoned" Tine Nys in 2010. The 38-year-old had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome two months before she died in an apparently legal killing by a doctor. Sophie Nys, one of Tine's sisters, told the AP of "irregularities" in the process: that the doctor who performed the euthanasia asked her parents to hold the needle in place while he administered the fatal injection, among other fumbling efforts. Afterward, the doctor asked the family to use a stethoscope to confirm that Tine's heart had stopped. Last year, the AP reported that after Nys' family filed a criminal complaint, her doctors attempted to block the investigation. "We must try to stop these people," wrote Dr. Lieve Thienpont, the psychiatrist who approved Nys' request to die—and one of the doctors now facing charges. "It is a seriously dysfunctional, wounded, traumatized family with very little empathy and respect for others." Nys also alleged that her sister's longtime psychiatrist wouldn't give Tine the OK, and that Thienpoint did so after as few as two or three sessions with her. Belgium is one of two countries, along with the Netherlands, where euthanasia of people for psychiatric reasons—including depression, personality disorder and Asperger's—is allowed if they can prove they have "unbearable and untreatable" suffering.
– The Anti-Defamation League says the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh is thought to be the deadliest attack specifically targeting Jews ever in the US—by far. CNN reports the previous attack to have that label occurred in 1985, when Seattle lawyer Charles Goldmark, his wife, and two sons were killed. (The Washington Post notes it "was actually a case of mistaken religious identity," as the family was not Jewish.) The toll in Saturday's shooting stands at 11. The AP reports police on Sunday said the victims were eight men and three women. In an arrest affidavit made public, police say that while treating alleged shooter Robert Gregory Bowers for injuries he sustained after being shot by police, he said Jews were "committing genocide to his people" and that he wanted them all to die. The AP separately reports on a "vulnerability" the shooter took advantage of: an unlocked door. While the Tree of Life synagogue required guests to ring a bell to gain access during the week, on the Jewish Sabbath the building was open to all guests for Shabbat services. The Post quotes the FBI special agent in charge as saying it was "the most horrific crime scene I’ve seen in 22 years." Federal hate crime charges were filed against Bowers on Saturday: 29 charges in all, including 11 counts of using a firearm to commit murder. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports Pittsburgh police also filed charges on Saturday: 11 counts of criminal homicide, six counts of attempted homicide, six counts of aggravated assault, and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation. (Read what President Trump had to say about the shooting here.)
– After a social media campaign—and an avalanche of bad publicity—a drug company has done a U-turn and agreed to give a dying 7-year-old boy an experimental drug that could save his life. The FDA allows "compassionate use"of unapproved drugs in such cases, but the Chimerix pharmaceutical company had insisted that giving the drug to Josh Hardy, who developed a bone marrow disorder after cancer treatment, would delay efforts to get it to market, CNN reports. Chimerix president Kenneth Moch says Josh will be the first patient in a pilot trial for the drug. "Being unable to fulfill requests for compassionate use is excruciating, and not a decision any one of us ever wants to have to make," says Moch, who tells the Fredericksburg Lance-Star that he and his employees have received death threats amid a flood of pleas to help the Virginia boy. Josh is expected to receive the drug within 48 hours, though his mother fears he is running out of time. "Even though he is frail, he has a very strong will about him," she tells Fox News. "But things just keep stacking against him, and we just want to do everything we can to give him the opportunity to make a full recovery."
– Those worried the Donald Trump-Megyn Kelly conflagration had burned out should don protective gear once more: Kelly is back from a 10-day vacation, and the real estate mogul is back to his online berating of her, USA Today reports. On the heels of his remarks that Kelly was bleeding out of her eyes and other orifices, as well as his issues with how she moderated the debate overall, Trump took to Twitter last night to elucidate his thoughts on Kelly's first post-vacay show yesterday. What the Huffington Post calls a "ceasefire" between the two parties, apparently orchestrated by Fox honcho Roger Ailes himself, came to an abrupt end shortly after Kelly tweeted a link last night to Trump's immigration policies. Trump's attacks began anew minutes later, after she squared off with Dr. Cornel West, who spoke on #BlackLivesMatter. ".@megynkelly must have had a terrible vacation, she is really off her game. Was afraid to confront Dr. Cornel West. No clue on immigration!" Trump tweeted, followed shortly thereafter with: "I liked The Kelly File much better without @megynkelly. Perhaps she could take another eleven day unscheduled vacation!" (Fox, for its part, says Kelly's vacation was planned, per the Huffington Post.) Trump wrapped up his Twitter tirade with a retweet of someone who apparently agrees with Trump's characterization of Kelly as a "bimbo" in a previous retweet. This one said, "The bimbo back in town. I hope not for long." (Trump's apparently not feeling very apologetic now, but click for a list of all his past mea culpas.)
– Ah, the internet. This week, it gave birth to a rumor about the legendary song "The Electric Slide" that became so widespread the songwriter had to come forward to officially debunk it. No, says Bunny Wailer, the song isn't about a woman's vibrator. "At no time have I ever lent credence to a rumor that the song was inspired by anything other than [Eddy] Grant's Electric Avenue," Wailer, aka Neville Livingston, tells EDM. "To state otherwise is a falsehood and offends my legacy, the legacy of the singer Marcia Griffiths, and tarnishes the reputation of a song beloved by millions of fans the world over." Well. As HuffPost (which cops to being among the sites to report the rumor as truth) explains, it's not crystal clear where it all started, but the rumor officially kicked into gear when the LGBTQ website Aazios ran a story with a definitive-sounding headline of "Writer Confirms 'The Electric Slide' Is About a Vibrator." The story, which includes the lyrics, has a quote from an anonymous source who says Wailer confirmed the rumor. That story set off a social media frenzy, which the real Wailer is now trying to shut down. Myth-busting site Snopes digs into the whole mess and concludes the rumor is indeed "False."
– The FBI was listening in on Paul Manafort's conversations long before he became chief of the Trump campaign and it wiretapped him again as part of the investigation of alleged Russian election meddling, source say. The insiders tell CNN that Manafort was initially wiretapped under a secret court order in 2014 in connection with his work as a consultant in Ukraine. That investigation was dropped last year, apparently because there wasn't enough evidence to bring charges, the sources say, but the wiretapping resumed under another secret order which, like the first, was issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It isn't clear when the second court order was issued, but the warrant extended until at least early this year, long after Manafort parted ways with the Trump campaign, the sources say. They say evidence collected suggests Manafort encouraged the Russians to help the Trump campaign—though the evidence is not conclusive. The New York Times, citing sources including lawyers and witnesses, reports that federal agents, apparently fearing Manafort would destroy evidence, picked a lock and entered without warning when they raided his Virginia home in July. The sources say that after the raid, special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutor warned Manafort that they planned to indict him. (Mueller has made a move that could be very bad news for Manafort.)
– Sophie the Giraffe, a squeaky rubber teething toy, has become all the rage the past few years, despite a relatively steep price tag—Quartz noted in June its $24.99 cost compared with simpler teething toys that retail for less than $5. But Sophie's popularity may take a hit after some consumers report finding mold, per GoodHousekeeping.com. Pediatric dentist Dana Chianese, a mom of two young boys, says she promotes teething products (including Sophie the Giraffe) to parents of infants, but she recently noticed a weird smell emanating from her own, and when she sliced Sophie open, she made what the website calls an "absolutely horrifying" discovery. It was a "science experiment living inside," she reveals, adding, "It … hurts my heart" to know she let her own little boys gnaw on the giraffe. Other complaints have filtered in about the giraffe's mold issue on Amazon and various baby forums, with some saying even a baby who drools a lot could spur mold growth inside the giraffe. Meanwhile, Valerie Williams rolls her eyes at the Scary Mommy blog: "If you don't want toys filled with mold, clean them." (Chianese, for her part, says she always meticulously followed directions on how to take care of the toy.) A spokeswoman from the company that makes the giraffe reiterates that tip in a statement to GoodHousekeeping.com, noting that cleaning how-tos should be "carefully respected" and that all efforts must be made to keep water out of the hole. (Parents, stay away from homeopathic teething products.)
– Ricki Lake's ex-husband had a hard time owning his bipolar disorder. In fact, by the time he did, it was too late. Christian Evans, a jewelry designer who married the former talk show host in 2012, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Feb. 11. "Christian didn't want to be labeled as bipolar, but he admitted he was in the note he left. That was him finally owning it," Lake tells People, adding she now feels compelled "to spread the word about recognizing this disorder and getting treatment as soon as possible." Though she describes Evans as "charismatic" and "funny," she says he also had "a lot of self-esteem issues and a lot of demons." It was difficult "for him to get out of bed and be excited for things," says Lake, who initially revealed his death on Instagram, per Us Weekly. But in 2014, he suffered a manic episode. "I didn't know what it looked like, so I didn't see it coming," Lake says. He "thought he could fly. He thought he could cure cancer with his hands. It was horrific." Lake later divorced Evans, who entered a treatment center, but says the couple remained together until a similar episode last September. "I wanted to save him," but "there was nothing I could do," Lake says. "The struggle was just too much for him," she adds of his suicide. "He did the best he could."
– A report to Congress alleges that China briefly hijacked a chunk of the world's web traffic, including some from US military facilities, before sending it on its way. (The actual amount rerouted is in dispute.) China denies it, but tech writers are pretty sure it happened. Cause for alarm? A definite maybe. Bob Sullivan, MSNBC: "If there is a grey area between honest mistakes and outright cyber attack, these incidents probably fall right in the middle—if not a pre-planned testing of the waters, then certainly a happy accident with valuable results to be studied by would-be cyber-attackers." Nate Anderson, Ars Technica: "The culprit here was 'IP hijacking,' a well-known routing problem in a worldwide system based largely on trust." But as is usually the case with these things, "it's hard to know if anything bad happened here. The entire thing could have been a simple mistake. Besides, Internet traffic isn't secure and already passes through many servers outside of one's control." Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo: "Perhaps it wasn't a malicious move, but it certainly seems like a test to its network power. In any case, it seems like it can happen again at any time. I don't know about you, but I don't feel comfortable with the idea of China hijacking such a massive amount of information without explanation." Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee: “This is one of the biggest—if not the biggest hijacks—we have ever seen," the security expert tells National Defense Magazine. "And it could happen again, anywhere and anytime. What happened to the traffic while it was in China? No one knows.”
– An Iowa state lawmaker says he loved visiting his wife at a nursing home before her death at age 79. But prosecutors have filed felony charges against him, saying that her Alzheimer's made her unable to consent to his sexual desires, Bloomberg reports via the Washington Post. Henry Rayhons, 78, now out on a $10,000 bond, has declined to run for a 10th straight term in the state House, saying his reputation is ruined. But he seems angrier about how his relationship with his wife, Donna, is being portrayed. "My wife just died and you’re charged with something like this because you prayed by her bed," he says, sobbing. "It hurts. It really hurts." Bloomberg gives a detailed account of how things went sour between Rayhons, Donna's three daughters, and officials at the Concord Care Center in Garner, Iowa. The daughters had Donna placed in the home, where Rayhons visited often and wanted sex once or twice daily, one of the daughters said. "Henry likes this a lot," Donna reportedly said while pointing between her legs, and staffers were said to be "sickened." Rayhons was given a physician-approved document saying that Donna couldn't consent to sex, but he allegedly continued and may have admitted as much to a state investigator. "It was not a regular thing," Rayhons told him, saying he "never touched her when she didn’t want it and I only tried to fulfill her need when she asked for it." Iowa state law doesn't help him, stating that sex with a permanently mentally ill lover is illegal unless that person "is both a spouse and cohabiting," the Post notes. Charged with third-degree sexual abuse, Rayhons is scheduled to begin his trial on Jan. 28 in Garner.
– Steven Avery has filed a fresh appeal in his Wisconsin murder case—and thanks to the hit Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, there are now a lot more people paying attention. The appeal filed in a Madison court on Monday, which can be seen in full here, accuses authorities of searching his property illegally and claims that a juror with a preconceived notion that he was guilty improperly influenced other jurors during his 2007 trial for the murder of Teresa Halbach, the AP reports. Avery recently secured new legal representation from Chicago-area lawyer Kathleen Zellner and the Midwest Innocence Project, reports WBAY, but Monday's court filing appears to have been prepared without the new legal team. Zellner specializes in reversing convictions, and she says she has found new evidence that will exonerate Avery, reports NBC News. The Netflix documentary suggests that Avery—who served 18 years for a rape he didn't commit before being released two years before the Halbach murder—is the victim of a conspiracy, and a petition urging President Obama and Gov. Scott Walker to free him now has more than 415,000 signatures. Walker, however, has never pardoned anybody, and WBAY reports that he has signaled he isn't going to start with Avery. Netflix viewers "should read the unanimous opinion of the Court of Appeals before jumping to conclusions," he said in a Facebook post.
– North Korea has joined a host of other countries in condemning President Trump's speech at the UN. Trump's Tuesday speech, in which he vowed to "totally destroy" North Korea if the country threatened the US or its allies, amounted to "the sound of a barking dog," Ri Yong-ho said from New York on Wednesday, per the BBC. "There is a saying that goes: 'Even when dogs bark, the parade goes on,'" said Ri, who is due to make a speech at the UN General Assembly on Friday. "If he was thinking he could scare us with the sound of a dog barking, that's really a dog dream," meaning ludicrous, he added. Asked what he thought of Trump referring to Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man," Ri simply said, "I feel sorry for his aides." The UN General Assembly presents a rare opportunity for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to meet face-to-face with Ri, but Tillerson suggested the US couldn't have a "matter-of-fact discussion with North Korea because we don't know how their means of communication and behavior will be," reports CNN. Trump is due to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday after speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping by phone on Monday. Though the US wants China to pressure North Korea, which gets 90% of its imports from Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi repeated Thursday that removing the THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea was key to reducing tensions, per Reuters.
– President Obama's pick to be the next attorney general has wrapped up a daylong confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, and the AP writes that Loretta Lynch's day can be summed up in one question posed to her by Republican Sen. John Cornyn. “You’re not Eric Holder, are you?” Cornyn asked her in jest. Lynch assured him she wasn't, adding later that, as attorney general, “I will be myself. I will be Loretta Lynch. And I will refer you to my record [as U.S. attorney] as well as a practicing lawyer to see the independence that I have always brought to every particular matter.” Generating the most headlines today was her defense of President Obama's controversial policy to ease deportation rules for millions of undocumented immigrants. Noting that Holder's Justice Department had backed Obama's action, Lynch said, “I don’t see any reason to doubt the reasonableness of those views.” Other high-profile issues that came up before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as noted by the Washington Post and Politico: Death penalty: She backs it as an "effective penalty." Waterboarding: It is "torture and thus illegal." NSA surveillance: The programs were "constitutional and effective." Marijuana: It “certainly would be my policy" to continue enforcing marijuana laws at the federal level. Bottom line? Lynch is expected to win approval of the committee and be confirmed by the full Senate, reports the New York Times. To do so, she needs three Republican votes on the panel, and, barring surprises, Democrats think they have them in Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch, and Jeff Flake.
– As has been widely noted, Mitch McConnell had a truly awful Tuesday. The Senate majority leader had to surrender on ObamaCare repeal, ally Bob Corker announced he was retiring, and, perhaps worst of all, the Senate candidate that McConnell strongly backed in Alabama got trounced by one backed by the Steve Bannon contingent. Just how bad is it for McConnell? Here's a look at coverage: Mocked by Trump: The president has taken to doing physical impressions of a slump-shouldered McConnell, reports Axios. Trump also reportedly called out McConnell as "weak" at a dinner with conservative activists, reports Politico. On the wane: McConnell has gone from "brilliant tactician" to looking vulnerable after the defeats this week, reports the New York Times. If the GOP fails to get tax reform passed this year, his post as majority leader could be in jeopardy—especially with populist insurgents backed by Bannon looking to win more seats. No immediate danger: Both Politico and the Times say McConnell retains rock-solid support in the Republican Conference and thus is not in any immediate peril. Much of that support is based on his formidable fundraising skills on behalf of Senate Republicans. Beware the midterms: In a piece subtitled, "Is the Senate Leader Losing His Grip on the GOP?," Abigail Tracy at Vanity Fair notes that midterm elections in general are often unkind to the party in power: "With the GOP in the midst of an ideological schism, McConnell’s faction could be headed for a reckoning." Indeed, Tuesday's triple whammy "just shows how weak the Republican establishment is right now," writes Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight. Boehner's fate? McConnell is willing to take all the criticism coming from conservatives over the ObamaCare fail, especially if it protects rank-and-file Republicans, per an analysis at the Washington Post. "But one thing that could hamper McConnell’s long-term standing would be if he became a real albatross to his own incumbents in primary elections ahead," writes Paul Kane. Fear of that played a role in John Boehner's resignation as House speaker two years ago. False narrative: Many in the media are portraying the Alabama results as a loss for Trump, but winner Roy Moore is decidedly Trumpian, writes Erick Erickson at the Resurgent. No, this was all about McConnell—in fact, Moore made running against him "the theme of his campaign."
– Older adults who want to take a crack at the Sunday Times crossword or try a Food Network recipe may want to do it first thing in the morning. A small study by Canadian researchers and published in the journal Psychology and Aging found that adults between the ages of 60 and 82 were less distracted and better able to perform cognitive tasks between the hours of 8:30am and 10:30am than in the afternoon, when their brains started "idling," reports Medical News Today. “Time of day really does matter," says the lead author. "This age group is more focused and better able to ignore distraction in the morning." Using a sample of 16 older adults and 16 younger ones ages 19 to 30, researchers had participants play a memory game of sorts, taking brain scans of the subjects as they were shown picture-word combos on a computer screen—interspersed with unrelated, purposefully distracting pictures and words—and then asked to recall the combinations. During testing between 1pm and 5pm, the older adults were 10% more likely than the younger ones to lose focus, Psych Central notes. However, a different group of 18 older adults tested in the morning showed increased action in the same regions of the brain as their younger counterparts and tightened the performance gap between the two groups. "Our research is consistent with previous reports showing that at a time of day that matches circadian arousal patterns, older adults are able to resist distraction," says another of the researchers. (If you want to keep your mind sharp, try learning a new language.)
– Toronto's crack-smoking mayor has made it clear he's not going anywhere despite his many scandals, but City Council has other ideas. Councilors will today consider a motion that would call on Rob Ford to apologize, take a leave of absence, and cooperate with a police investigation into his activities, CBC reports. Just one problem: Even if it passes (Ford, who made the motion the key item at today's council meeting, has promised a "rumble in the jungle" debate), Ford won't actually have to heed the request. If he refuses, the City Council can ask Ontario to pass legislation removing him, but the council itself can't remove him from office since he hasn't been convicted of a crime—and councilors are hesitant to ask Ontario to step in. With "no clear legal path to force him out," the AP reports, the council is looking for a way to isolate Ford and run the city without him, which could actually be possible, since the powers of the Toronto mayor are more limited than the powers of many mayors in big US cities. "We really just have to build a box around the mayor so we can get work done," says one councilor. A second option to be debated next month: a motion that would further limit Ford's powers, basically keeping him from being able to fire executive committee members who want him out. "We will shun him, curtail his power as best we can," says another councilor. "He clearly has gone off the deep end, shot himself in outer space." Much of the public, though, still loves Ford: Hundreds lined up to buy "Robbie Bobbie" bobblehead dolls yesterday; they're being sold for charity.
– How does one truly understand David Bowie? Only by becoming him, of course. That's just what Will Brooker is in the midst of doing. The film and cultural studies professor from Kingston University in England says he'll dress like Bowie, eat like Bowie, watch the same movies and read the same books as Bowie, and act like Bowie's various personas over the course of a year, all in the name of research for a book he's writing on the pop icon, reports the Guardian. "The idea is to inhabit Bowie's headspace at points in his life and career to understand his work from an original angle, while retaining a critical and objective perspective at the same time," Brooker says. He last month told Australia's ABC News in a video interview he started the project as "1965 Bowie"; he has lately emulated Bowie's 1974 Philadelphia soul period. He'll suffer from a lack of sleep but avoid cocaine. "The levels of cocaine Bowie was consuming is not just illegal for a professor like myself, but it's much too expensive—as well as unhealthy," Brooker says. "I had a six-pack of energy drinks to try and simulate the experience," he adds. "It made me very jumpy." He'll also likely avoid "a fling with Mick Jagger," he says, per Rolling Stone. But he consumed only red peppers and milk for a time and has visited cities linked to the singer. The project is likely to be anything but boring, but a year as the icon will be more than enough. Bowie's head can be a "strange" and "dangerous" place, "a place you wouldn't want to live too long," Brooker says. Next up: 1983. "I think I'll get a tan, get fit, get my hair changed again, get my teeth whitened," he says. There's a bright yellow suit waiting in his closet. (Perhaps he'll visit this dying Bowie-linked town.)
– A woman befriended a mom and kids at Pennsylvania's King of Prussia Mall on Thursday night and then, when the mom was briefly distracted by her older children, grabbed the baby out of his stroller and ran off. Malika Hunter, the mother of 7-week-old Ahsir Simmons, ran after her, but turned back to check on a child still sitting at their food court table and lost track of her. A search was launched and surveillance video was released showing 32-year-old Cherie Amoore allegedly leaving the mall with Ahsir in her arms, and within hours, both had been found, 6ABC reports. Amoore, who was arraigned Friday on charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment, and more, claims that she gave birth to a baby boy on Feb. 11, but he died shortly after birth and she never told anyone. "I just wanted my baby. I felt like I was holding my son again," she reportedly told police. But police haven't been able to confirm her story, and friends tell 6ABC they're not sure Amoore was ever really pregnant. While talking to the baby's family at the mall, Amoore told his mother she had a baby around the same age; Hunter says Amoore seemed "nice" and like a "normal, average" person, NBC Philadelphia reports. Shortly before Amoore allegedly took Ahsir, she asked if she could hold him, but his mother refused. Then, when Hunter was distracted and Ahsir started to cry in his stroller, Amoore allegedly picked him up and left. Police say she took him to show her relatives and friends at a few different locations, and it was her family members who recognized her on the surveillance video that was released and called the cops. Ahsir was asleep in a carseat owned by Amoore when police found him; police say Amoore had also given him a bath and new pajamas.
– Vladimir Putin is paying back the US for what he says is its "insolence" in approving new sanctions against Russia, kicking American diplomats out of the country by September and shuttering the US Embassy's recreational compound (aka "dacha") just outside Moscow. That payback apparently includes not letting the diplomats get their stuff out first, per Reuters, which reports that a news agency cameraman spotted five vehicles sporting diplomatic license plates drive up to the retreat Monday, only to be turned away. "The US mission to Russia was supposed to have access to our dacha until noon on August 1," an Embassy spokeswoman says, citing an agreement with the Russian government. "We have not had access all day today or yesterday. We refer you to the Russian government to explain why not." The Russian government doesn't deny the deadline, but it's taking issue with the US' side of things. Per the RIA state news agency, a Russian foreign ministry rep says the property—which the Moscow Times describes as a "2,000-square-meter warehouse in an industrial area"—is in a conservation area, and so the trucks used by the Americans can't enter without proper permits (the official says three of those vehicles were industrial-sized cargo trucks, per RT.com). The official also scoffs at the suggestion Russia was flat-out barring the US from the dacha, noting that assertion was a "premeditated provocation." Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Russia John Tefft gathered all Moscow Embassy staff to inform them of Russia's decision, which includes slashing 755 roles at US diplomatic missions. "The atmosphere was like a funeral," one unnamed source said, per the Independent.
– After downing a cheeseburger and a handful of drinks Sunday evening, Paul Rater called home and ordered his wife to come get him, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says, per the Arizona Republic. But instead of his wife showing up at the South Buckeye Equestrian Center, the cops did—and hauled him into a Maricopa County jail on child endangerment and abuse charges for allegedly leaving his 5-year-old granddaughter alone in the desert with a peculiar and perilous set of instructions. "She was given [a] gun and told to shoot any bad guys," Sheriff Joe Arpaio tells Reuters. "I don't know how a 5-year-old can tell a good guy from a bad guy, but that's what she said she was told." Deputies say the girl had been reported missing about four hours after she went out Sunday afternoon with her grandpa in his pickup truck. It's unclear whether the truck broke down or somehow became stuck; Rater says he didn't have his cellphone on him, couldn't call for help, and started walking. The 53-year-old says his granddaughter started to complain she couldn't go further, so he left her under a tree with a .45-caliber handgun that was both loaded and cocked, per Reuters. An off-duty firefighter and the girl's grandmother found her during a frantic search; she was holding the weapon with "one round in the chamber and the hammer locked back," per a police statement. Workers at the equestrian center (a bar/restaurant/feed store) say when Rater arrived he did gripe about having to walk out of the desert but made no reference to the girl. "He came across multiple people and never thought he should call 911," deputies say in the statement. Bond for Rater was set at $25,000 on Monday, per KPHO. The girl has been returned to her mother, ABC15 notes. (Young children with guns almost never ends well.)
– CNN reported yesterday that an arrest had been made in the Boston Marathon bombing, with Wolf Blitzer touting the network's "dramatic, exclusive reporting." Just one problem: There was no arrest, and the network eventually backtracked. Cue Jon Stewart: "There was a very good reason why this was exclusive," he said last night on the Daily Show. "Because it was completely f---ing wrong." He later quipped, "It's like a news story ... as imagined by M. Night Shyamalan." John Oliver spoofed the exclusive in a second segment, reporting that the bombing suspect is "a dark-skinned male, possibly white, or maybe a woman. It could be a mannish woman or an effeminate man. The police don't want to appear rude at this point by asking the suspect. The police are just waiting around to see which lavatory he or she uses ... You heard it here, exclusively, and first."
– Insights into Texas' War for Independence may have just bubbled up from 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. A mystery shipwreck 150 miles off the coast of Galveston—found carrying muskets, swords, and cannons—may have been transporting weapons and soldiers to help in the battle, the AP reports. But while most artifacts from the 200-year-old wreck are from Spain and Mexico, some look British, and scientists aren't sure what type of ship it is and where exactly it came from, the Houston Chronicle reports. "It's really a mystery being put together," one of the salvagers told KHOU, calling the expedition, "a CSI adventure." Ceramic plates, anchors, clothing, glass bottles—including one sealed, full of yellow ginger—and even an intact leather-bound book were also recovered in the expedition by Texas A&M scientists using robot submarines. While it's also a mystery what sent the ship down, KHOU offers a clue: It hit the depths around the time that notorious pirate Jean Lafitte called Galveston home port.
– Houston is underwater, but Los Angeles is on fire as the largest wildfire in its history burned at least 5,000 acres and forced hundreds of people to evacuate amid scorching temperatures and unpredictable winds of up to 50mph. "The La Tuna Canyon Fire is an emergency that requires all available resources to protect our residents and keep our homes and other structures out of harm's way," LA Mayor Eric Garcetti said Saturday, per CNN. The fire, which broke out Friday near Burbank, is about 10% contained, notes the Washington Post. At least 100 firefighters who had been sent to help Houston in the Harvey aftermath were being recalled home.
– Sears' biggest shareholder appears to be pushing for a breakup of the 125-year-old company that has survived two world wars and the Great Depression. Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert—whose hedge fund has forwarded millions in funding to keep the ailing chain afloat—has asked the struggling retailer to sell its prominent Kenmore appliance brand and its home improvement business, the company said Monday. His private equity firm, ESL Investments, said it might buy the assets if the company is willing to sell. That sent shares of Sears Holding Corp., which have lost more than 70% of their value in the past year, up nearly 5%. Lampert, who combined Sears and Kmart in 2005 after helping bring Kmart out of bankruptcy, has long pledged to turn the company's fortunes around, per the AP. He said the retailer would find ways to capitalize on its best-known brands like Kenmore appliances and DieHard car batteries, as well as its vast holdings of land. But as the company has seen shoppers move on to Target, Walmart, and Amazon, and has closed hundreds of stores, cut costs, and sold brands to deal with falling sales, Lampert now appears to have reconsidered. In his letter to the board, Lampert said Sears has been trying to sell the Kenmore businesses for nearly two years but has been unable to do so. "In our view, pursuing these divestures now will demonstrate the value of Sears' portfolio of assets, will provide an important source of liquidity to Sears and could avoid any deterioration in the value of such assets," he wrote. (Business Insider has the full letter.)
– Senate Democrats have announced that they won't be debating a major climate bill until sometime in the spring. The delay, which reduces America's bargaining power at next month's Copenhagen conference, reflects weakening support for the controversial "cap-and-trade" bill as unemployment remains high, the Wall Street Journal notes. The bill strategy calls for capping overall greenhouse-gas emissions, but would allow companies to buy and trade permits allowing certain amounts of emissions. President Obama is working with Senate leaders to get the bill through as quickly as possible, said a White House spokesman. The delay, however, has raised fears that the Senate may end up putting off debating the bill for as long as 2011 to avoid holding a vote just before next year's midterm elections. "There would be nothing better than for us to talk about over the summer than Democrats pushing a huge new energy tax,” one Republican leadership aide told The Hill.
– See if this sounds familiar: A nation reeling from a major terror attack puts into place sweeping new surveillance rules in the name of public safety that critics think violate civil liberties. A measure with the nickname the "French Patriot Act" cleared the lower house of Parliament in France today, reports France24. The legislation now goes to the Senate, where it seems likely to pass, reports the New York Times, which provides some specifics: The provisions would let intelligence services "tap cellphones, read emails and force Internet providers to comply with government requests to sift through virtually all of their subscribers’ communications." Advocates insist the monitoring would be directed at suspected terrorists, but critics don't buy it. A nine-person committee set up to oversee the surveillance would have only an advisory role and could not overrule the prime minister. The measure "shows a number of tactics that seem cribbed from the NSA, including bulk collection of internet metadata, which would allow the government to track French citizens from site to site," notes a post at the Verge. The legislation also allows intelligence services to put microphones in a room or on objects to record conversations, and to use other devices to intercept phone conversations and text messages. The French debate follows the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices, and "many in the Socialist Party who would normally have spoken out against the new powers have instead kept quiet," observes the BBC. "In the wake of the January attacks, there is little political mileage in raising doubts about the intelligence services." (In the US, things seem to be moving in the opposite direction.)
– Apple appears to have decided that it doesn't make a lot of sense for the company to be tougher on marijuana apps than 23 state governments are on marijuana. Isaac Dietrich, co-founder of pot-themed social network MassRoots, tells the San Francisco Chronicle that Apple has decided to allow his app back in its App Store, as long as it's restricted to the states where marijuana is legal, at least for medicinal purposes. The app had been in the store since July 2013, but it was yanked in November along with dozens of other marijuana-related ones, the Chronicle reports. Dietrich started an online petition last month to have the MassRoots app reinstated. "We're a social network for cannabis that enables people to talk about the plant in ways most people don't feel comfortable on other social networks," he told Adweek. "I don't want Grandma to see me taking bong rips on Facebook." In a blog post, MassRoots thanked the cannabis community for its support. The company says it now has "a duty to show the world that cannabis consumption can be done in a safe and responsible manner in compliance with state laws and federal enforcement guidelines" and will strengthen its own compliance even beyond what's required. (Maybe Apple will now stop refusing to spell-check "marijuana.")
– Oh joy: The world finds itself with yet another Kardashian. The daughter of Kourtney and partner Scott Disick arrived yesterday, and the couple is "overjoyed" and feels "forever blessed," Kourtney says in a statement to E!. Penelope Scotland Disick joins older brother Mason, 2, after an all-natural birth that Kardashian mom Kris Jenner says was "easy." Need more? Though we find it hard to believe anything Scott Disick does can accurately be described as "cute," feel free to click on to some of his allegedly adorable daddy moments. Kardashian wasn't the only celeb mommy giving birth this weekend: Sienna Miller also welcomed a baby girl, her first child with fiancé Tom Sturridge, Us reports.
– A pharmaceutical company that has in recent years made billions of dollars on hepatitis C treatments—the three the FDA has approved range from $75,000 to $94,500—has been named a "price gouger" and "tax dodger" in a new report. Gilead Sciences, the sixth richest drugmaker in the world, "is making a fortune selling essential drugs to the very government and taxpayers that helped pay to develop them, and then dodging taxes on the resulting profits," says Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, which issued the report this month. Gilead has avoided some $10 billion in taxes by moving assets to Ireland, where there is a lower tax rate, and then not bringing some $28.5 billion in profits back into the US. Per the Washington Post, the California-based company's revenues in 2015 hit $32.6 billion, up three times from 2012. As for the accusation of gouging: Last year, a Senate investigation found that the company "pursued [a] profit-driven strategy" with its hepatitis drugs, rather than making the drugs more accessible at a lower price (it had considered $50,000). As the Post notes, Gilead, which declined to comment on the report, isn't alone in looking overseas for tax relief. Plenty of other pharmaceutical and technology companies do it. Apple, for instance, has squirreled away nearly $200 billion abroad, Bloomberg reported last year. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, that's enabled the company to avoid paying $59.2 billion in US taxes. Pfizer has some $193 billion abroad, per the Post. The new report singling out Gilead, the Post points out, highlights the "simmering battle" between President Obama and big business over the practice of sending assets to foreign countries.
– The family of the missing California woman found alive on Thanksgiving has a lot of thanks to give. "We are overwhelmed with joy over how supportive everyone has been to bring us together as a family again," Sherri Papini's sister told reporters Friday, per KCRA. "Everyone's tireless efforts has made our family whole this Thanksgiving. We cannot thank you enough." Papini, a mother of two young children, disappeared after going for a jog Nov. 2. Police say she was kidnapped and was reunited with her family Thursday after her captors dumped her near Interstate 5 in Yolo County, where she was able to flag down a passing car. Papini had been chained and beaten by her captors, according to police audio obtained by the Sacramento Bee. The California Highway Patrol "is on scene and advised that she is chained to something," a radio dispatcher told a responding officer. "CHP is advising that she is heavily battered." Police say they are searching for two armed Hispanic woman in a dark-colored SUV. A motorist who called police after seeing Papini by the roadside tells the New York Daily News that the woman she glimpsed in the dark appeared terrified and was waving a piece of fabric up and down. "I realized if she was that close to getting hit—willing to be that close to freeway traffic—she must really need help," the driver says.
– One of the two brothers who detonated a suicide bomb in Brussels on Monday was clearly worried about getting caught just prior to the attacks. Authorities revealed a note written by Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, that reads: "Being in a hurry, I don't know what to do, being searched for everywhere, not being safe. If it drags on it could end up with me in a prison cell next to him." The "him" is believed to refer to Salah Abdeslam, the suspected terrorist ringleader arrested last week, reports USA Today. The note was found on a computer that had been dumped into a street trash can outside an apartment building in Brussels, reports ABC News. A taxi driver led police to the building after realizing that he had driven El Bakraoui and two others to the airport on Monday morning. Also on Tuesday, authorities clarified some confusing earlier accounts of the investigation: They now say that Ibrahim El Bakraoui is the man seen in the middle of two others in a surveillance photo from the airport. On the left is a fellow suicide bomber, still unidentified, and on the right is another suspect, clad in white, who remains at large. Some media reports have identified him as Najim Laachraoui, who is suspected of paying a role in the Paris attacks, but authorities have not officially identified Laachraoui as a suspect in Brussels. Ibrahim El Bakraoui's brother, Khalid, 27, meanwhile, is accused of detonating a suicide bomb on the Brussels subway train. In another development, a Turkish official says Ibrahim El Bakraoui was arrested in June at the Turkey-Syria border and deported to the Netherlands. Turkey then warned both the Netherlands and Belgium that he was a "foreign terrorist fighter," reports AP.
– A spaceship arrives on a distant planet that looks like a perfect new home for humans in Alien: Covenant. But if you know anything about Alien movies, you'll know there's only terror in store. Here's what critics are saying about the latest installment of the franchise, with director Ridley Scott of 1979's Alien returning: The filmmakers have finally managed to "dig the series out of its hole," Todd McCarthy puts it at the Hollywood Reporter. He calls Alien: Covenant "the most satisfying entry in the six-films-and-counting franchise since the first two." Beautiful and gripping, it "feels vital" and is "keen to keep us on our toes right up to the concluding scene, which leaves the audience with such a great reveal that it makes you want to see the next installment tomorrow." Peter Howell at the Toronto Star agrees this flick "ranks among the better chapters" of the franchise. Scott "breaks new ground even while revisiting old concepts" and "brings back the visceral panic that fans expect." Actors Katherine Waterston, Danny McBride, Billy Crudup, and Michael Fassbender—who delivers "a grand performance times two" as two separate robots—also deserve high praise, he writes. The inclusion of Fassbender's David, from 2012's Prometheus, was an incredibly smart move, writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. But there was little else that impressed him. There's just "nothing new" to this "gore fest," he writes. He acknowledges, however, that "many Alien fans will come looking for something old, and that's in bloodily abundant supply." Chris Klimek had his own issues with the film. For example, "a religious subtext is introduced and then immediately abandoned," he writes at NPR. But he, too, had to marvel at Fassbender, whose "existential rap session" provides the "freshest part of the movie." Then again, Fassbender's David "is the only character in whom Scott seems truly interested," he writes.
– Just a day before the start of the Democratic National Convention, President Obama toured a storm-ravaged Louisiana neighborhood, promising federal aid and hailing rescuers. He drove to St. John the Baptist Parish 30 miles west of New Orleans, and went house to house in one neighborhood, reports ABC News. “There is enormous faith here, enormous strength here,” Obama said after his tour of battered houses, twisted road signs, and toppled trees yesterday. “You can see it with these families. They were just devastated a few days ago, and they are already smiling and laughing and feeling confident about the future and pulling together.” Obama's visit was designed in part to highlight the president's concern for local suffering, and his deep engagement in the government's handling of Isaac's destruction, in contrast to George Bush, who was lashed for the sluggish federal response to Hurricane Katrina, which caused an estimated 1,800 deaths. Isaac was a much weaker storm with only six deaths. Mitt Romney visited Louisiana last week.
– Is Ryan Lochte trying to wrest back control of Lochte-Gate? USA Today points out the US swimmer posted a lengthy mea culpa—though TMZ labels it nothing more than a doubling down—on social media Friday morning. In it, he says he's sorry to "my teammates, my fans, my fellow competitors, my sponsors, and the hosts of this great event" for his behavior in Rio over the weekend, though he doesn't document specifically what that behavior was. He apologizes "for not being more careful and candid" about what transpired and the part he played in "taking the focus away from the many athletes fulfilling their dreams" at the Olympics. With no mention of the drunken gas-station vandalism that's being alleged, Lochte simply wrote, "It's traumatic to be out late with your friends in a foreign country—with a language barrier—and have a stranger point a gun at you and demand money to let you leave," adding that even in those circumstances, he should've a) "been much more responsible in how I handled myself," and b) avoided the situation entirely. As for why it took him so long to address the issue more fully, he notes he had to make sure teammates Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger, and James Feigen were set to arrive back in the US safe and sound (though Feigen still remains in Brazil, per ABC News) and that all legal matters had been taken care of.
– With a 3% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, reviews of The Emoji Movie could have consisted of repeated strings of the vomiting emoji, thumbs-down emoji, and poop emoji. Fortunately for fans of brutal critical drubbings, film critics had to use words (despite the film's position that "words aren't cool"). Here are some of the best takedowns of the new animated film: "Children should not be allowed to watch The Emoji Movie," writes Charles Bramesco at the Guardian, calling it a "sponsored-content post masquerading as a feature film" and a "force of insidious evil." It somehow exists to get kids to buy apps without apparently understanding kids and how they actually use emojis. "A viewer leaves The Emoji Movie a colder person," the reviewer concludes. "Hear that? It's the end of the world," writes Johnny Oleksinsk at ithe New York Post after calling The Emoji Movie a "new exercise in soulless branding." At Vulture, Emily Yoshida calls it "one of the darkest, most dismaying films I have ever seen, much less one ostensibly made for children." The Emoji Movie is "a very, very dumb thing" full of moments that "sound like they were written by ad agencies," according to the Hollywood Reporter, which laments that the film wasn't released "via Snapchat, where it would vanish shortly after arrival. But even that wouldn't be fast enough." Finally, Alonso Duralde at the Wrap calls it a "soul-crushing disaster" and "completely shrill and stupid." This "complete waste of your time" is without "humor, wit, ideas, visual style, compelling performances, a point of view, or any other distinguishing characteristic."
– An American right-wing extremist is cited some 64 times in the crazed manifesto written by Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik in a bid to justify his terror attack. Robert Spencer, co-founder of the Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America (recently hacked) blogs denied any responsibility for the attack, calling his writings a "defense of human rights." If "somebody gets from that that they should kill, well then he's nuts," he told NBC News. But some observers believe heated hate speech can trigger such actions. “When you push the demonization of populations, you often end up with violence,” warned the research director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. The manifesto also frequently cites the blog Atlas Shrugs by Muslim-basher Pamela Gellar, who insisted that if anyone incited Breivik to violence "it was Islamic supremacists." One expert called the Norwegian tragedy a "wake up call" for US security. A 2009 Department of Homeland Security report warned of a growing threat from home-grown right-wing extremists and hate groups. “We could have a similar attack here, and that’s my greatest fear,” said former federal terror analyst Daryl Johnson. It wouldn't be fair to blame the American bloggers who influenced Breivik, a former CIA analyst tells the New York Times. Still, he adds: "This rhetoric is not cost-free."
– Pyongyang has a message for the US: North Korea has become a "fully-independent rocket and nuclear weapons state," according to an official website—and America "should be acutely aware that the US mainland is now well within the range of our strategic rockets and nuclear weapons." How credible is the warning? Experts say it could be awhile before the North actually has an intercontinental ballistic missile ready, AFP notes. But debris from December's rocket launch suggested its possible range included the US West Coast, according to South Korea. Closer to home, Pyongyang is fuming over planned US-South Korea military drills. The Korean peninsula is "an inch away from explosion," official news warns. "The US is to blame for the situation on the Korean peninsula, which is inching close to an unpredictable phase now," said Pyongyang's UN ambassador, according to Reuters. Washington is pushing a "hostile policy" against the North via the UN Security Council, the official said.
– A Wall Street Journal reporter was fired Wednesday over potential business dealings with an Iranian-born arms dealer. The Washington Post reports Jay Solomon, chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Journal, had received Pulitzer consideration and was well-liked by the paper's editor in chief. His shocking termination springs from an AP investigation into Farhad Azima, who Solomon used as a source for stories. Azima, who has dealt weapons to multiple nations and was tied to the Iran-contra affair, offered Solomon a 10% stake in a company called Denx. While it's unclear if Solomon ever accepted that stake, the AP uncovered 18 months of emails and texts between Solomon and Azima discussing business together. In 2014, Solomon texted Azima: "Our business opportunities are so promising." The following year, Azima wished Solomon luck "on his first defense sale" in regards to delivering a proposal to UAE representatives. Also in 2015, there was talk of Denx being involved in an effort to bring down the government of Kuwait, though Solomon denies any knowledge of that. "Mr. Solomon violated his ethical obligations as a reporter, as well as our standards," Politico quotes a statement from the Journal as saying. The newspaper says it was "dismayed" by Solomon's actions and "poor judgement." Solomon, while denying ever getting into business with Azima, says he understands "why the emails and the conversations I had with Mr. Azima may look like I was involved in some seriously troubling activities."
– Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran who helped smuggle six American hostages home from the country in 1980, died Thursday of colon cancer at the age of 81, his wife tells the AP. For three months, Taylor and his deputy, John Sheardown, hid at their Tehran homes the six US hostages who escaped from the American Embassy after it was overrun by Iranian student radicals on Nov. 4, 1979. Along with the CIA, Taylor helped arrange the hostages' escape by procuring plane tickets and fake Canadian passports. It was an incredibly risky operation that included passport foul-ups and a suspicious airport official, but the six hostages flew to safety from Tehran's airport on Jan. 28, 1980, the New York Times reported. Taylor's Iran exploits were chronicled both in the 2013 documentary Our Man in Tehran and in Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo, though critics complained of the latter movie's inaccuracies, saying it minimized the Canadians' role in the rescue and gave most of the credit to the CIA. "Canada was not merely standing around watching events take place," Taylor told the Toronto Star in 2012. "The CIA was a junior partner." (Affleck later apologized and reworked the closing credits that mentioned Taylor's role, the Atlantic notes.) Meanwhile, Taylor's wife of 50 years, Pat, remembers one of her husband's most notable traits: his generous spirit. "He did all sorts of things for everyone without any expectation of something coming back," she tells the AP. "It's why that incident in Iran happened. There was no second thought about it."
– More pieces of the puzzle are coming together as to why two men reportedly dressed as women rammed an NSA gate yesterday morning, resulting in gunfire and the death of one of the suspects. Police are now speculating that the driver of the stolen Ford Escape may have made a wrong turn and taken a restricted exit to the agency, then panicked because there were drugs inside the car, the Washington Post reports. An NSA officer gave the men instructions on how to get off the campus, an NSA spokesman says, but the driver didn't listen, so barriers were erected, the AP reports; at least one NSA officer started shooting when the car revved up to crash into a police vehicle, the agency adds. It's not uncommon for drivers to think the off-ramp leading to the NSA security post is just a regular Fort Meade exit, an ex-intel officer tells the Daily Beast. In fact, the source notes, "a large number of immigration law violations" have been culled from the accidental trespassers who couldn't come up with the proper ID once they were stopped by NSA agents. The FBI confirms to the Post it doesn't believe this was a terrorist incident, while an unnamed law enforcement source tells the paper, "This was not a deliberate attempt to breach the security of NSA. This was not a planned attack." (Meanwhile, the White House is having issues in putting up a jumper-proof fence.)
– ISIS has reportedly lost one of its more unlikely members: Sally Jones, a former punk singer from Britain who traveled to Syria to become a recruiter for the group in 2013. A British intelligence source tells the Sun that Jones was killed in June by a drone strike near Syria's border with Iraq. "The Americans zapped her trying to get away from Raqqa. Quite frankly, it's good riddance," the source says. Jones, 50, left the UK with her son to marry 21-year-old ISIS hacker Junaid Hussain, reports USA Today, which describes her as Britain's most-wanted female terrorist. She became known as the "White Widow" after Hussain died in a drone strike in 2015. Jones' death has not been confirmed, though the social media accounts she used to offer Western women advice on joining ISIS and traveling to Syria have been silent for months, the Guardian reports. "You Christians all need beheading with a nice blunt knife and stuck on the railings at Raqqa ... Come here I’ll do it for you," she said in one post. JoJo, Jones' 12-year-old son, may also have been killed in the airstrike. He was radicalized in Syria and his grandparents identified him last year as an executioner seen in an ISIS video. Authorities say they're not sure if he was with Jones—and the brainwashed boy was too young to be declared a target in any case.
– "Dystopian" and "horrifying" are just two adjectives Tim Maughan uses to describe for the BBC what he recently witnessed in the remote industrial city of Baotou in Inner Mongolia. Most disturbing was his visit to a man-made lake filled with toxic sludge that makes the surrounding area smell like sulfur, wielding an environmental impact that has turned the place into what Maughan says is "like hell on Earth." The wasteland is the site of one of the world's largest rare-earth-mineral productions, where processing plants churn out cerium oxide, neodymium, and other rare earth elements necessary for everything from consumer electronics (cellphones, tablet touchscreens) to the magnets in "green" products such as wind turbines and electric car motors, per the BBC. The unfortunate byproduct of this venture: the dangerous chemical waste in the lake right outside of the city, Maughan notes. China claims the lion's share of the world's production of these minerals: LiveScience has reported it produced about 95% of our rare earth elements in 2009. A local pol told the Guardian in 2012 that before the factories were erected in the late '50s, "there were watermelons, aubergines, and tomatoes." But Maughan—who traveled there with a design research group to "[trace] back the route consumer goods take from China to our shops and homes"—now found just abandoned outposts, "huge diesel-belching coal trucks," and the sludge-filled lake. "Nothing prepared me for the sight," he writes. "It's a truly alien environment. … The thought that it is man-made depressed and terrified me, as did the realization that this was the byproduct not just of the consumer electronics in my pocket, but also green technologies like wind turbines and electric cars that we get so smugly excited about in the West." (If you need happier environmental news, here's one good story.)
– Miss Teen USA 2016 was supposed to take a step in the direction of feminism and equal rights as the contest ditched the swimsuits for athletic wear. But in the wee hours following the event that crowned Miss Texas Karlie Hay, the 18-year-old high school senior took to Twitter to do damage control on, well, previous comments on social media. Accused of repeatedly using racial slurs, people began to take screenshots and call her out on it, reports the Houston Chronicle. Hay, her school's varsity cheer captain and yearbook editor, apologized on Twitter at 2am Sunday: "I admit that I have used language publicly in the past which I am not proud of and that there is no excuse for. Through hard work, education and thanks in large part to the sisterhood that I have come to know through pageants, I am proud to say that I am today a better person." Former Miss Teen USA Kamie Crawford issued her own message on Twitter: "If you win any pageant—first things first. Clean up your page. Because if you're under 21, you shouldn't be drinking and if you're white, the N-word ain't your word." The Miss Universe Organization, parent company of Miss Teen USA, tells ABC News that while Hay's language was "unacceptable at any age," she will keep her crown because she "learned many lessons through those personal struggles that reshaped her life and values." Meanwhile, E! News reports that model Chrissy Teigen took issue with the final five, who were all white and blond. "Wow how can we choose from such a diverse bunch," she tweeted, later adding, "It's fiiiiiine. Not their fault. I'm sure they are delightful women. Just funny. I'm not gonna write a think-piece on a damn pageant."
– The people at People have spoken, and there is officially no one else in the entire world more beautiful than Sandra Bullock. Yes, the actress has been named the World's Most Beautiful Woman for 2015, and she apparently laughed when she learned of the honor that had been bestowed upon her. "No, really. I just said, 'That's ridiculous,'" she tells the magazine of her reaction. "I've told no one." If you aspire to achieve Bullock's beauty, she recommends a healthy diet including green juice and a Body By Simone workout four to five times per week. "I love that it's not big weights, you move the entire time, it's a torture chamber of sorts," she says. "When I started, I could barely do 20 seconds, and I'm not kidding. I'm crying on the floor, and she's like, 'Are you a smoker?' I was like, 'I hate you.'" But, of course, Bullock insists inner beauty is better. "Real beauty is quiet. ... The people I find most beautiful are the ones who aren't trying." (Click to see what Sandy looks like blonde.)
– A former University of Nebraska women's basketball star who claimed to be the victim of an anti-gay attack appears to have staged the attack herself out of a desire to spark social change, police say. Charlie Rogers, who told police last month that three men had entered her house, stripped her, and carved anti-gay slurs on her body, has been charged with lying to police, CNN reports. Police say their investigation uncovered numerous inconsistencies in her story, and that physical evidence, including DNA, did not support Rogers' version of events. An FBI forensic pathologist determined that Rogers' wounds were self-inflicted. Four days before the alleged attack, she made a post on Facebook that investigators believe underscores her motive, AP reports. "I believe way deep inside me that we can make things better for everyone," she wrote. "I will be a catalyst. I will do what it takes. I will. Watch me." Rogers, who ranks second all-time in blocked shots for the Cornhuskers, has pleaded not guilty. Her lawyer says she has been devastated by investigators' decision to focus on her.
– Seniors had better brace themselves: Some US hospitals are now administering the "death test," which estimates an elderly patient's chance of dying over the next 30 days. Invented in Australia, the test weighs 29 different criteria—including blood pressure, respiratory rate, and medical history—to determine whether hospitalization is worthwhile or the patient should return home or go to a hospice, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The idea is to prevent needless and expensive procedures while allowing patients to spend their last days with loved ones. "Most terminally ill people want to die at home, but in fact three quarters end up dying in acute hospitals, often after intrusive, expensive, and ultimately pointless medical procedures," says study author Magnolia Cardona-Morrell, the Independent reports. The test also aims to take pressure off doctors and nurses to prolong patients' lives "at all costs," the Telegraph reports. "I had lots of nurses and doctors standing there saying, 'We have been waiting for a tool like this for years, when can we start using it?'" says Cardona-Morrell, whose work was presented recently at a US medical conference. "To me that is an indication there is a need out there." She says the test takes just five or 10 minutes, and helps doctors have a more "transparent" conversation with patients. Called CriSTAL, it's now being tested to see if it would have predicted the future of patients who have since died. Then it may be used in more hospitals. (In related news, a study says those who feel younger than their age will live longer.)
– It's tough to remain "anonymous" online these days, especially when the post is salacious. The Smoking Gun has made quick work of identifying the writer of yesterday's "I Had a One-Night Stand With Christine O'Donnell" essay on Gawker. TSG names 28-year-old Dustin Dominiak as the author after tracking him down via his Halloween costume in the accompanying photos—the Boy Scout uniform of a friend. Said friend, Brad Kurisko, initially refused to give up his buddy, but tipped his hand by removing Dominiak's name from his Facebook friends list after TSG's initial phone call. On a follow-up call, he fessed up but said he had no idea Dominiak was going to write the piece. Kurisko is now worried about losing his job—as a district executive with a Boy Scouts council in Philadelphia. Not much is known of Dominiak, but given the outrage surrounding his O'Donnell essay, he could be in for some rough treatment. Click here for more.
– Tomorrow, Wisconsinites will decide whether to keep Gov. Scott Walker or boot him in favor of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, in what Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post is calling "the second most important and influential race of 2012 aside from the presidential," with "absolutely massive" stakes. Here's what you need to know as the clock ticks down: Two polls released yesterday show the race virtually tied—Walker leads in each, but by thin margins. He's up 50-47 in one, 53-47 in the other, but both are within the margin of error, Reuters reports. It's all about turnout now: "If Democrats turn out in the numbers they did in 2008, Tom Barrett will win a surprise victory. If they don't, Walker will survive," the head of Public Policy Polling says. The agency managing the election is predicting turnout somewhere between 60% and 65%—above 2010's 49.7%, but below 2008's 69.2% "If there's any state that epitomizes what the permanent campaign feels like, it's this one," observes David Catanese of Politico. This will be the seventh time Wisconsin has gone to the polls in the last 14 months, thanks to various recalls. All those campaigns are expensive: Through May 21, $110 million had been spent on political ads. President Obama will be closely watching the results, because he's counting on Wisconsin in November, the New York Times points out. "A Republican victory here could set off a wave of adjustments in the lineup of swing states." If Scott Walker wins, Cillizza expects to hear presidential rumblings surrounding him. A lot is on the line for Barrett, too; this would be his third gubernatorial defeat, likely ending his statewide ambitions. Organized labor has a lot to lose, too. A Walker win would be both an affirmation of his anti-union policies, and a signal that unions have lost their political juice; they opposed Barrett in the primary, and lost there, too.
– JK Rowling announced back in June that Harry Potter was coming to the London stage, but until now, there was much speculation the stage play's plot would be a prequel to the books. Rowling debunked that today: "So now you know it really isn't a prequel," she tweeted. "Harry Potter & the #CursedChild starts #19yearslater!" Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opens at the Palace Theater in the summer of 2016, and tickets go on sale next week, USA Today reports. Rowling's site Pottermore has more details on the plot, which involves Potter and his youngest son, Albus Severus. "It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children," reads the official synopsis. "While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places." The play's official Twitter account has artwork and more info. (Albus' older brother, James Sirius, started at Hogwarts last month.)
– On Sept. 8, a 35-year-old Moroccan woman's bag was randomly checked upon her arrival in Graz, Austria. What was inside was "absolutely secure, triple wrapped, according to European Union norms," per a pathologist. Yes, pathologist: The New York Times reports the woman was carrying a four-inch piece of her late husband's intestine; the Independent picks up a local paper's report that describes the entrails as being in two containers. The Local reports a government agency confirmed the find. The woman's lawyer tells the Times that the woman was bringing the body part back to Graz, where the couple had spent the last eight years, to have it tested. This after a Marrakesh doctor suggested the 40-year-old might have been surreptitiously poisoned, perhaps by members of her husband's own family who were against the marriage. The BBC reports a doctor was called and said such testing wasn't possible in the absence of the whole cadaver, but the Times reports the intestines have been sent to the aforementioned pathologist's clinic, which is examining the entrails and expects results next week. The woman's transport of the organ was not illegal, notes the paper. (The airport isn't the only unexpected place intestines have turned up.)
– A 2-year-old girl was killed last month in China while her mother stared at her smartphone, leading many Chinese social media users to call for a change, the New York Times reports. Surveillance video (Warning: graphic content) posted online on Oct. 20 shows the toddler walking near an SUV while her mother is on her phone a few steps behind her, reports McClatchy. The SUV starts moving, running over the little girl as she walks in front of it. The mother doesn't appear to look up from her phone until her daughter had already been hit. The girl, identified as Tutu, died before an ambulance could arrive. Police determined the driver wasn't at fault because Tutu was in his blind spot. The video spread all over the Chinese web, leading to outrage, New China reports. "If the mobile phone was so much fun, then why had you given birth to the child?" one person writes online. "Everyone should be alerted not to play with a smartphone while walking. God knows how regretful the mother is," writes another. A local prosecutor's office calls it "heart-wrenching." "Put down your phone. Save the children!" it posts online. At least two other 2-year-olds were killed by cars while their mothers were looking at their phones in the past 15 months in China. "There's not enough discussion or awareness" of "potential dangers," a smartphone addiction expert tells the Times. (Two women go blind in one eye after using their smartphones.)
– Brian David Mitchell got a life sentence today for kidnapping Elizabeth Smart, but she got the last word in court. Confronting him for the first time, she kept it short and sweet: "I don't have very much to say to you. I know exactly what you did. I know that you know what you did was wrong. You did it with a full knowledge. I also want you to know that I have a wonderful life now. You took away nine months of my life that can never be returned. But in this life or next, you will have to be held responsible for those actions, and I hope you are ready for when that time comes." Mitchell did not appear to look at her during her statement, notes ABC News. He just kept rocking in his chair and singing to himself. Click for more details.
– And so it begins: Speculation about Election 2016 is already running rampant, mere hours after President Obama was re-elected. Some of the frontrunners for a presidential run next time around, courtesy of ABC News and US News & World Report: Hillary Clinton: Not surprisingly, she's at the forefront of many minds right now ("Hillary2016" was trending on Twitter early today, the Hill notes), and is widely considered the No. 1 Democrat contender. Of course, she also keeps insisting she won't run. Joe Biden: The world took notice when he said yesterday that he'd probably vote for himself again someday—but he later joked that he just meant he'd be running for county councilman in the future. Andrew Cuomo: The New York governor has access to lots of money, and his liberal stance on social issues combined with a more fiscally conservative stance could make him a formidable contender. But don't expect him to run if Hillary does; he served under Bill Clinton and is loyal to the family. Other possible Democrats: Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Paul Ryan: He fared well as Romney's running mate and got himself re-elected to boot, so clearly he's a top contender. Marco Rubio: The charismatic Florida senator could help the GOP increase its appeal to Latino voters. Chris Christie: His tough talk has made him quite popular, and he's seen as more of a bipartisan figure now that he's praised the federal response to Hurricane Sandy. Other possible Republicans: Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, plus pretty much anyone who ran in the primary this time around. But in the International Herald Tribune, Harvey Morris has just one piece of advice: "Take a breath, America! Give yourselves time to recover from what seemed the longest and certainly was the most expensive campaign in US political history before starting on the next one."
– Remember that guy who started the Bulletproof Coffee fad, where people add butter and oil to their cups of joe in the hopes of losing weight? Well he's at it again, this time with what the Silicon Valley techie calls "a disruptive technology for beverages," reports the New York Daily News. It's called FATwater, and creator Dave Asprey swears it's better than real water because it is infused with tiny droplets of fat extracted from coconut oil (he's patented this) that improve both hydration and fat burning. The cloud computing pioneer calls it "biohacking," or "taking control of the environment around you so you have control of your biology," he says. "You are less stressed and recover better and are a nicer person. I am making it easier for people to make those little changes and feel good all the time." Not so fast, say the experts. "It is just getting crazier and crazier," one nutritionist says. "If you’re thirsty, drink water; if you’re hungry, eat food," Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge, who researches medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) at Columbia University’s Institute of Human Nutrition, tells Time. Asprey himself concedes that there isn't much research in this area, but he says he's got plenty of anecdotal evidence that because MCTs are digested differently than other fats, you do "get a little bump of energy." But St-Onge says he's actually got it backward because they're just burned off. "It's not useful energy." She adds that the 2 grams of fat in a bottle isn't close to enough to improve fat-burning. Meanwhile taste testers at both the Daily News and Time were unimpressed, describing the water as tasting like "lotion," "sweetened room water" that's gotten dusty from sitting around, and "liquid soap." FATwater is currently being sold in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. (Even asparagus water was a thing this summer.)
– Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews has a lot to be thankful for now that his show has been rescued by NBC after Fox nixed the beloved series last week. Crews seemed especially grateful to several actors who voiced their support for the show along with its many fans. On Saturday, he name-checked some fellow celebrities to thank them for amplifying the show's cause, including Star Wars actor Mark Hamill. "I want to personally THANK YOU Mark for using the power of the force to save Brooklyn Nine Nine! *Wipes dirt off shoulder*," Crews tweeted. Per the Hollywood Reporter, Crews also gave shout-outs to actor Sean Astin and Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda. By Sunday, however, it began to seem like Crews' gratitude may have been misdirected. While the fan outcry was heartening, NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt told the AP that because of business considerations, the pickup already was in the works. The show is made by a studio owned by NBC Universal. Greenblatt said if he had known earlier in the series' development that Andy Samberg was going to star in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, NBC's studio never would have sold it to Fox in the first place. "It was a missed opportunity for us from the beginning," he said. "We jumped on it really quickly, and we're thrilled to have it."
– Another twist in the Francisco Sanchez case: The gun that the murder suspect claims he found wrapped in a T-shirt on a bench belonged to a federal agent and was stolen in a recent car break-in, sources tell the San Francisco Chronicle. The sources say the firearm wasn't the agent's official gun, and ABC News reports that the Bureau of Land Management is investigating whether the gun belonged to one of its employees. Sanchez, who claims the gun went off accidentally when he picked it up, killing 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder yesterday, the AP reports. Sanchez has been deported from the US five times, and San Francisco's decision not to turn him over to federal authorities for deportation when a drug charge was dropped in April has been strongly criticized by lawmakers and presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, who told CNN yesterday that the "city made a mistake, not to deport someone that the federal government strongly felt should be deported." At yesterday's hearing, Sanchez's public defender said the shooting appeared accidental and argued that the media should look at the "ubiquitous nature of guns in our society" instead of the immigration issue, the Chronicle reports.
– Four paralyzed patients unable to communicate for years were finally able to do so through a potentially groundbreaking brain-reading system. And it turns out that one of them really didn't want his daughter to marry her boyfriend. The patients all had advanced ALS and were unable to control even their eyes, reports the Guardian. In other words, they had "locked-in syndrome," meaning total motor paralysis in spite of normal cognitive and emotional processing. Researchers at the University of Tübingen in Germany fitted the patients with caps through which they could observe changes in blood flow in different parts of the brain, they explain in the journal PLOS Biology. They first asked the patients to think yes or no in response to simple statements such as their spouse's name, and moved on to more personal questions when that was mastered. “It’s the first sign that completely locked-in syndrome may be abolished forever, because with all of these patients, we can now ask them the most critical questions in life,” says researcher Niels Birbaumer. The patients, all of whom are on ventilators and being cared for at home, range in age from 24 to 76. The team did stumble on a couple surprises. For instance, all four patients suggested they were "happy" with their lives in spite of being locked-in. (Birmbaumer suggests this might be because of something akin to meditation.) And one patient, who is 61, answered "no" nine times out of 10 when his 26-year-old daughter asked if she should marry her boyfriend Mario. "But they got married," one of the researchers tells the BBC. "Nothing can come between love." (Researchers can't explain how Stephen Hawking has lived this long.)
– As she traveled through Brazil's northern region on a mission to kayak the 4,000-mile length of the Amazon River, Emma Kelty repeated a warning from a Peruvian guide in tongue-and-cheek fashion. "I will have my boat stolen and I will be killed too," she tweeted. "Nice." It appears the latter part of that warning has come true. On Sept. 13—a day after remarking that she'd come across dozens of men in motor boats armed with arrows and rifles near Coari, an area known to be frequented by river pirates and drug traffickers—Kelty sent out a distress signal and then went silent, reports the Guardian. Authorities now believe the 43-year-old British woman had pitched her tent on the banks of an Amazon tributary near Lauro Sodré when she was approached by men who shot her and threw her body in the river. A man and two 17-year-olds are in custody while police search for four other suspects who may have tried to sell Kelty's tech devices. A search for Kelty's body is also underway. A statement from Kelty's siblings note they're "extremely proud" of their sister, who sought "to prove that challenges were achievable." (She had quit her job as a school principal in 2014 to travel solo.) Back in February, Kelty—who became the sixth woman to ski solo to the South Pole in January—told the BBC that surviving encounters with "people who organ-harvest and rob and fire guns" was "half the challenge" of her Amazon adventure. "But it's about minimizing the risk," she said. "I'm going to a self-defense course which is going to be tailored to de-arming people, so if I do come across that situation at least I'm prepared for it."
– President Trump says California won't get its border wall until the entirety of the wall is approved for construction. California is almost certainly OK with that. “I have decided that sections of the Wall that California wants built NOW will not be built until the whole Wall is approved,” Reuters quotes Trump as tweeting on Wednesday. But it's unclear exactly why Trump thinks California wants a border wall, as the state sued the federal government to stop construction of said wall. In fact, in the very same tweet Trump referred to the lawsuit after a federal judge ruled against the state of California and environmental groups. “Big victory yesterday with ruling from the courts that allows us to proceed," he tweeted. "OUR COUNTRY MUST HAVE BORDER SECURITY!” California and environmental groups argued John Kelly, then secretary of Homeland Security, overstepped his powers when he waived environmental reviews for the border wall, which experts say could harm threatened and endangered species, NBC News reports. US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel ruled they weren't able to prove that. If the name sounds familiar, it's because Curiel is the same "Mexican" judge Trump claimed couldn't be objective because of his heritage, according to Politico. Trump also called Curiel, who was born in Indiana, a "hater" and "very hostile." Curiel ruled a decision on the wall should be left up to politicians, not the courts. "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices,” he wrote in his decision.
– Baltimore's police department wrapped up its own investigation into Freddie Gray's death a day early and turned it over to the city's top prosecutor today, reports the Baltimore Sun. Now all eyes are on State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who is in her fourth month on the job and at 35 is the youngest lead prosecutor in any major US city, reports NBC News. Her supporters, though, say she's perfect for the case. Police work runs in her family, but she campaigned for office talking tough against police brutality. "She has a natural affinity for police officers and law enforcement types, and at the same time, she is aware of the incredible number of complaints against the Baltimore city police department," says an attorney who knows her. "It was important to have somebody who was willing to look at it from both sides, and Marilyn Mosby fits the bill." Mosby's office released a statement emphasizing that it will conduct its own investigation into Gray's death and not just rely on the police report. One new wrinkle: Police revealed that the van carrying Gray made an additional, previously undisclosed, stop on the way to the police station, though the reason and significance aren't clear. The AP says the van stopped at "a desolate intersection with three vacant lots and a corner store." (Earlier, another prisoner in the van suggested that Gray was trying to injure himself, at least according to a police document cited by the Washington Post.)
– A man was shot dead while wearing a bulletproof vest at a Houston party and police say they've been left to uncover whether the tragedy happened as part of some kind of prank gone terribly wrong. Jason Allen Griffin was arrested early Sunday morning following the death of a man named Daniel Barber. Per KTRK, cops say Griffin and Barber had been at a party together when Barber was shot in the chest while wearing the vest, allegedly by Griffin. He was arrested and has been charged with manslaughter, unlawful possession of a firearm, and felon in possession of a gun. According to the Houston Chronicle, police are trying to determine whether the men thought they were playing some kind of game. A woman who identified herself to KTRK as Griffin's girlfriend, Mary Warstler, said the suspect didn't even know his gun was loaded. What's more, Warstler claims that Barber told Griffin "shoot me" before Griffin allegedly pulled the trigger. After Barber was shot, Warstler said Griffin ripped off the vest in a bid to help the victim, but it was too late. Warstler said Griffin was so distraught following the shooting that he was suicidal and that he had to be checked into the hospital for seizures.
– The FBI is warning state officials to boost their election security in light of evidence that hackers breached related data systems in two states, the AP reports. In a confidential "flash" alert from its cyber division, first reported by Yahoo News and posted online by others, the FBI said it's investigating the pair of incidents and advised states to scan their systems for specific signs of hacking. The FBI said Monday that it doesn't comment on specific alerts, but added that it routinely sends out advisories to private industry about signs of cyber threats that it comes across in its investigations. The FBI didn't name the states that were breached. State election websites in Arizona and Illinois experienced hack-related shutdowns earlier this summer. In both cases, the parts of the websites attacked involved online voter registration. “This is a big deal," a cybersecurity expert tells Yahoo News. "Two state election boards have been popped, and data has been taken. This certainly should be concerning to the common American voter." The FBI's Aug. 18 warning came just days after Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson hosted a call with secretaries of state and other state election officials to talk about cybersecurity and election infrastructure. In that call, Johnson said that while DHS isn't aware of any particular cyber threat against election-related computers, it's "critically important" to make sure that election systems are secure amid a rapidly changing threat landscape, according to a DHS summary of the call. Federal officials are becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility that hackers, particularly those working for Russia or another country, could breach US elections systems and wreak havoc on the November presidential election.
– The financial secrets of many of the world's elites are trickling out thanks to the release of what are being called the Paradise Papers. The massive leak of internal documents from Bermuda-based law firm Appleby is spurring headlines like this one: "Lewis Hamilton avoided taxes on £17m jet using Isle of Man scheme." It has also led Bernie Sanders to warn of a "rapid movement toward international oligarchy." In a statement to the Guardian, he says the papers show "how these billionaires and multinational corporations get richer by hiding their wealth and profits and avoid paying their fair share of taxes." Two apparent examples, as revealed by some of the 13.4 million records being examined: Apple: The tech giant has employed a maneuver called the "double Irish" that allows the company to route its non-Americas revenue in a way that incurs very little tax. The EU in 2013 decided to probe this arrangement, and Ireland cracked down: It announced that firms incorporated there wouldn't be allowed to be stateless for tax purposes, as Apple's Irish subsidiaries were. The Paradise Papers leak reveals Apple found its state. Communications between Applelby and Apple show Apple asking about the benefits that might come from various options (think Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man). It ended up going with Jersey, an island between England and France, reports the BBC, where foreign companies are taxed at a 0% rate. Nike: The Guardian reports the Paradise Papers spell out exactly how Nike has been able to reduce its tax burden, and says the Netherlands is key. From 2005 to 2014, the revenue from sales throughout Europe went there, and much of it then traveled to Bermuda via its Bermudan subsidiary, Nike International Ltd. That subsidiary was pretty much a shell: no office, no staff, but it possessed Nike's intellectual property rights, which let it impose big royalty fees of Nike's European headquarters, which created the funnel that legally allowed profits to move to the Bermuda subsidiary. Then things got even weirder with the creation of the subsidiary Nike Innovate CV which is based ... nowhere. The Guardian explains.
– One night after sitting down for his first one-on-one interview as president with ABC News, Donald Trump granted Sean Hannity the same privilege at the White House Thursday evening, and he offered as many ear-perking nuggets as he had the day before. Still on his radar, per Deadline: the "very hostile" media, which he went on to describe as also being "very angry" and "very dishonest." "I get stories that are so false," he told Hannity, specifically calling out an erroneous report by Time magazine writer Zeke Miller that Trump had removed a Martin Luther King Jr. bust from the Oval Office (Miller later tweeted a correction for his mistake). "It's fake news. … They make things up," he added, per Fox News. Other snippets from the interview: He let fly his feelings about Madonna, who made headlines at the Women's March Saturday for saying she'd thought "an awful lot about blowing up the White House." "Honestly, she's disgusting," Trump told Hannity, adding that what she said was "disgraceful," per the Telegraph. "I think she hurt herself very badly. I think she hurt that whole cause." "Disgrace" is also a word he used to describe a recent tweet about his son, Barron, by now-suspended SNL writer Katie Rich. "I don't mind some humor, but it's terrible," Trump said. "For NBC to attack my 10-year-old son … it's a disgrace. He's a great boy. And it’s not an easy thing for him. Believe me." He had thoughts on President Obama as well, who rode with him in a limo on Inauguration Day. "What amazed me is that I was vicious to him in statements, he was vicious to me in statements, and here we are getting along … riding up Pennsylvania Avenue," he said, adding, "I like him, he likes me … you're going to have to ask him, but I think he likes me." Moving on to official presidential business, he labeled ObamaCare a "horror show" and a "disaster," said he had a Supreme Court justice nominee "pretty much in my mind," and noted that even though Secretary of Defense Mattis doesn't advocate waterboarding, he himself "absolutely" believes it is effective, per Fox. On his long-talked-about wall, Trump said it was "necessary." "People want protection and a wall protects," he said. "All you've got to do is ask Israel." (One possible way to pay for the wall: a 20% tax on Mexican imports.)
– The engineer apparently knew the Amtrak train that derailed Monday in Washington state, killing three people and injuring more than 70, was going too fast. He just didn't know it in time. In a preliminary report, the National Transportation Safety Board states the engineer, who was in the cab with the conductor, commented on "an over speed condition" just six seconds before the crash, NBC News reports. It remains unclear why the train, the first run on a new route, was going nearly 80mph as it entered a 30mph zone. The NTSB review also found neither the conductor nor other crew were using cellphones or other personal electronic devices, as had been the case in previous crashes, according to the Los Angeles Times.
– Scott Walker is out of the GOP race after a campaign that peaked well before it officially began: He led the polls in Iowa for much of the year, but he has dropped out of the race after just 71 days, which ABC News reports is one of the shortest modern presidential campaigns on record. Where did it all go wrong for the Wisconsin governor? Insiders tell Politico that Walker was overconfident, and though he tried to act as his own campaign manager, he seemed to be "making it up as he went along," causing plenty of strategic blunders. Fundraising dried up as Donald Trump's rise pushed him to the sidelines, leaving him with a large organization but little support. His sudden departure from the race came after he failed to make an impression at the second debate and a CNN poll found his support at well below 1%. "He was a terrible candidate, but he also got Trump-ed," a source tells Politico. More: Sources tell CNN that although a super PAC supporting him had plenty of cash, Walker's campaign funds started to dry up after the first debate as donors looked elsewhere. Walker "is a pragmatist above all else and just didn't see the path to a comeback" after his poll numbers collapsed even in Iowa, a campaign insider says. Walker was hurt by flip-flops on issues like birthright citizenship, where he changed his position three times in a week, CNN notes, and by gaffes like suggesting he would consider building a wall along the Canadian border. In his exit speech last night, Walker said he had been "called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top of the field." He urged other candidates to follow his lead so a clear alternative to Trump could emerge, the Washington Post reports. Some of Walker's former rivals praised him as he left the race, including Marco Rubio, who called him "one of the best governors in the country," and Donald Trump, who said "he's a very nice person and has a great future," reports the Hill. The rival campaigns didn't wait until Walker announced his exit to start trying to poach his aides and his donors, the AP reports. The competition heated up after the announcement: A source close to the billionaire Ricketts family, which had supported Walker, tells the AP that within minutes of the governor's press conference, the family received calls from six campaigns, some of them from the candidates themselves. (Rick Perry has also dropped out of the race, and one donor wants his $5 million back.)
– A Texas veterinarian may have angered a lot of people, but she won't be charged for allegedly killing a cat with an arrow through the head in April. The investigation into Dr. Kristen Lindsey could find no substantial evidence Lindsey committed a crime. Though she posted a photo of herself with the dead cat on Facebook, which she later deleted, the sheriff's office couldn't verify the photo—and an Austin County grand jury today "no billed" her, the county district attorney's office says, according to the Houston Chronicle. A "no-bill" finding means there's not enough proof to file charges, KHOU notes. A crowd gathered outside the courthouse today to protest the finding. "Without more information, the State lacks proof that this incident even occurred in the state of Texas," the DA says in a press release, adding that investigators also couldn't prove the cat's manner of death was cruel. (The American Veterinary Medical Association itself says a "bolt to the head," performed correctly, is a humane way to euthanize, and, as KBTX notes, the press release also points out that in some parts of the US, hunting stray cats is perfectly legal.) The sheriff's office says it was told that Lindsey was trying to protect her own pets from a "potentially rabid stray cat," but the cat she's accused of killing was reportedly a house pet named Tiger who went missing. Lindsey was fired from her job at an animal clinic after the photo went viral. As for her veterinary license, the DA notes it is "not involved" in the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners' decision on that.
– A white-collar crook is facing extra prison time for having his son shoot him in the legs with a 20-gauge shotgun, the BBC reports. Shannon Egeland, 43, was already facing 10 years for taking part in a vast mortgage-fraud scheme when he had his 17-year-old son shoot him by a road in Caldwell, Idaho, in an attempt to avoid prison. "The psychological and emotional destruction defendant caused this minor child is unimaginable," US attorney Scott Bradford wrote in a sentencing memo. Back in 2009, Egeland was co-owner of an Oregon development company that defrauded banks out of $20 million in loans that he and a partner used to fund a lavish lifestyle. Facing prison, Egeland took out disability insurance and had his son aim for his legs. Egeland told police he'd been attacked after stopping to assist a pregnant driver, but investigators got suspicious when his pricey BMW, his wallet, and his cellphone weren't taken, the Idaho Statesman reports. Then they learned about his recent insurance, and the whole thing unravelled. Now Egeland is facing an extra 3 years and 10 months for his roadside scheme and had his leg amputated from the shotgun blast. Bradford called him a "self-absorbed, opportunistic narcissist," the Oregonian reports, but Egeland—who is now on three medications for mental health—has cast his own judgment. "What bothers me the most is my son—the pain is on him,'' he says. "If I could take it all back, I would, but I can't. That will haunt me the rest of my life.''
– A giant bell on a billboard in St. Louis will ring every time a child completes chemotherapy at a local hospital, per the AP. The 12-foot-tall metal bell went up Wednesday on a billboard over Interstate 44 that reads "Childhood wins another round against cancer." Hospital staff will use a mobile app to trigger the bell every time a child completes cancer treatment at St. Louis Children's Hospital, explains the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The bell's speakers enable people passing by to hear it ring. The hospital has its own bell that children with cancer can ring to mark their last day of chemotherapy, and five to 10 kids a month do so.
– Cleveland Browns fans were looking forward to a "Perfect Season Parade," though that "perfect" season was meant to be perfectly winless, reports NPR. But then the players had to go and ruin everything by winning their Christmas Eve matchup against the San Diego Chargers 20-17, leaving more than $10,000 sitting in the GoFundMe account created to pay for parade security, insurance, and facilities. The event's organizers recovered the fumble by making a charitable decision: to donate the money instead to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, News 5 reports, which added its own surprise note. "Thanks to the Browns fans who donated $10k+ to the Food Bank! The @Browns have announced they're MATCHING with an additional $10k!" the food bank tweeted on Tuesday, bringing the total received to $20,000. Not bad for a sad season's work. (That win also ended a hairy situation.)
– Got a free weeknight? Going to the movies may soon become a more affordable option. Last year, US movie theaters sold 1.34 billion tickets, down 1.5% from the year before. And ticket sales dropped 11% between 2004 and 2013, the Motion Picture Association of America reported yesterday. To combat the trend, theaters are mulling a coordinated move: They may drop ticket prices on one weeknight a week, the Wall Street Journal reports. The National Association of Theatre Owners plans to try it out in one state this year. Which night will be cheap night isn't yet clear. The move would run counter to theaters' current habit of raising prices each year—a trend which has resulted in higher revenues despite lower ticket sales. Last year, for instance, the average ticket price was $8.13, up from $7.96 in 2012. Box-office sales, meanwhile, hit $10.9 billion, compared to $10.8 billion in 2012. The cheap-day system "has worked for years in Latin America and Canada," says theater owners association head John Fithian, per Deadline. Studios will have to agree to the plan, he notes—and the industry has feared that lowering prices one day a week will lead to people opting not to pay the higher weekend price, Mashable points out.
– Weird: Martha Stewart has her own limited-edition flavor of Triscuit crackers out this month. Not so weird: That flavor is "toasted coconut and sea salt." The Huffington Post calls it "the bougiest thing in the cracker aisle," which is about what you'd probably expect from Stewart, but notes that it actually tastes pretty good. Yahoo notes that the ingredients are "totally on trend," and the Week jokes that you're probably required to serve the crackers "on a gleaming silver tray alongside Waterford goblets and perfectly folded linen napkins."
– Well, now we know what a portion of those new, higher Netflix fees could be used for: to pay call center reps to deal with angry customers. Customer service reps have been telling callers that the company not only told them to be ready for a backlash, it hired extra employees to take the calls, CNET reports. “We tested, we researched, we analyzed. We knew what the reaction was going to be,” a spokesman confirmed. “We are not surprised.” Despite the extra manpower, the phone lines have been overwhelmed. One analyst found that it took representatives nine to 15 minutes to get to the many callers on hold. When they did pick up, their suggestion was to just cancel in September, when the price increase hits. “There was simply no promo or 'save' technique to … retain our business,” he complained, indicating that “Netflix is simply not concerned with the prospect of losing customers.” But hey, it’s not all bad news, Netflix users: The company has renewed its deal with NBC Universal, so at least you can stream new episodes of 30 Rock.
– More Nazi photos, more stripping, more custody fights: The Jesse James-Sandra Bullock mess beats on. The latest, courtesy of TMZ and Radar: James’ own Nazi photo, which both gossip sites have seen, is being shopped. In the 2-year-old image, he’s reportedly wearing an SS hat, making the Nazi salute, and holding two fingers under his nose in what appears to be an imitation of Hitler’s mustache; there’s a model airplane in the background that looks like the kind flown by the Third Reich. James’ ex-wife, Janine Lindemulder, decided to ramp up her custody battle again since the cheating allegations came out. James and Bullock initially won full custody of 6-year-old daughter Sunny, but Lindemulder thinks Bullock will file for divorce—leading a judge to perhaps grant Lindemulder partial custody. McGee has gone back to her roots—stripping. TMZ has a video of her dancing at a San Diego nightclub last week. Don't expect McGee to stop talking about James anytime soon. Sources say she's looking for a $100,000 payday in exchange for another story—for more on what she might reveal, click here.
– Broadway's problem-plagued Spider-Man production was halted near the end of the show last night when a stunt double's flying harness snapped, dropping him two stories into a stage pit, according to witnesses The audience sat, horrified, as the empty harness swayed over their heads and a woman—likely lead actress Natalie Mendoza—began sobbing and screaming: "Call 911." Miraculously, the 31-year-old stuntman may not be seriously injured. "All signs were good as he was taken to the hospital," said a spokesman for the $65 million musical production, Turn Off the Dark, which is in previews. The rep said the performer fell about 10 feet, but audience members said it could have been as much as 30 feet, reports the New York Daily News. It was the third accident since previews started last month. An actor broke both wrists and another broke his foot doing a slingshot flying technique across the stage, and Mendoza got a concussion early this month when a rope struck her in the head. The play's opening has been delayed until February.
– Ever wondered what a young Ted Cruz looked and sounded like (and no worries, no Princess Bride impersonations)? A circulating YouTube video, which Politico says was apparently provided by a high school classmate, purports to show the 18-year-old GOP candidate mulling his future. "Aspirations? Is that like sweat on my butt?" Cruz ponders in the video—which Raw Story says was shot for his Baptist high school in Houston in 1988—before offering up his first goal to "be in a teen tit film." Upon further reflection, however, Cruz realizes he should set the bar higher. "Well, other than that, uh, take over the world, world domination, you know, rule everything," he notes. "Rich, powerful, that sort of stuff." Although some reviews of the video aren't terribly flattering—Raw Story labels young Ted Cruz "irritating and horrible," while Gawker calls his less-mature self an "insufferable twerp"—Cruz's campaign spokesman tells Politico: "Good to see he's always had a great sense of humor." (Mother Jones documents Cruz's various beefs with people to see if he's really an "awful, terrible jerk.")
– As four black Florida A&M University students waited outside for a friend to let them into his apartment building for a party, a white man confronted them—and ultimately pulled a gun on them in an incident Tallahassee police and the university are now investigating. Video of a portion of the Saturday night incident went viral after one of the students, Isaiah Butterfield, posted it on Twitter; Butterfield tells BuzzFeed News that before he started filming, the white man in the video walked past him and his friends and through the building's entrance. "Then he turned and he said, ‘You aren’t getting in here if you don't have a key,'" Butterfield says. "We were shook because we hadn’t said anything to him." He says the man then came back outside and started harassing the group, at which point another white person walked up and started defending the black students. Butterfield then started filming. The white bystander, who had a key to the building, let the group inside; the first white man then insisted they not get on the elevator with him and asked repeatedly whether they had a key to the building. As the group attempted to enter the elevator, the man pulled out a gun. "He made sure we saw that he had a gun so we didn't get in the elevator," says Butterfield, who notes that the group had earlier questioned whether the man actually lived in the building, since it is student housing and he looked older than most residents. (At one point in the video, the man can be heard saying, "Where am I going? I am going upstairs to get laid.") The students, who were ultimately let into the building by their friend, reported the incident to police the following day. Building management has since released a statement saying the man in the video is not a resident. Social media users identified him, and his employer announced he has been fired from his position as general manager of a nearby hotel.
– Ohio state Sen. Tom Patton is a term-limited Republican who's now going after an Ohio House seat, and he's running against a real "sweetie." At least, that's what the 62-year-old called his chief Republican opponent in a radio interview last week, but it's a separate comment he made about Jennifer Herold that has drawn the most fire. In a Jan. 18 interview with Ed Ferenc on the America's Work Force radio show, he questioned why Herold is running while being a young mother, reports the Columbus Dispatch. "The gal that's running against me is a 30-year-old, you know, mom, mother of 2 infants," he said. "I don't know if anybody explained to her you have to spend three nights a week in Columbus. So, how does that work out for you? I waited until I was 48, 'til my kids were raised, and at least adults." Herold, who has 1-year-old and 3-year-old sons, took to Facebook with a lengthy response in which she asked whether the current legislators with children, mothers and fathers alike, are "all unfit to serve." She added: "Tom, only one man in my life is allowed to call me 'sweetie.' From now on, I respectfully ask you to refer to me as Jen, Jennifer, Ms. Herold, or your opponent." Cleveland.com reports Patton has followed up with his own statement in which he "sincerely" apologizes and says his comments were "misunderstood." He notes that "millions of women" balance work and family every day, including his own daughters: "I used a poor choice of words to express what I know first-hand—raising young children and working is tough." The two will face off in the March 15 GOP primary.
– Toronto police have a suspect in a gruesome case in which body parts were mailed to at least two places, reports the local Star. The suspect is 29-year-old Luka Rocco Magnotta, described by CP24 of Toronto as a low-budget porn actor who has reportedly posted a wide range of disturbing videos, including the torture of cats. So far, three body parts believed to be from the same male victim have been discovered: a torso in a suitcase behind a Montreal building where Magnotta lived; a foot mailed to Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa; and a hand at a postal warehouse, also in Ottawa. The hand was reportedly addressed to Canada's Liberal Party, according to the CBC. Police aren't saying much about the case, other than that Magnotta and the victim knew each other. CP24 notes that among the Internet articles written by Magnotta is one titled "How to Completely Disappear and Never Be Found." Most news reports, including this one from CNN, are citing sources saying that Magnotta videotaped the dismemberment and posted it online.
– Ever wondered how tiny a bumble bee's brain is? Imagine a sesame seed clinging to a burger bun, reports the Washington Post—in other words, it's about 0.0002% the volume of a human brain, as calculated by Science. But that doesn't mean you can't teach a bee a new trick, as behavioral ecologist Clint Perry tells the paper: "Bees have some amazing cognitive abilities," including counting up to at least four. And now he and colleagues from Queen Mary University of London are reporting in the journal Plos Biology that bees can not only learn an entirely new skill to get food but also pass on their knowledge, which is one of the basic aspects of culture. In their study, researchers placed blue discs with sugar water beneath a clear plastic table, just out of reach, but affixed a string to each one that, if tugged, would move it within reach. Out of 110 bumble bees individually introduced to the task, some tugged at the strings before eventually quitting, and only two sorted out how to pull on the string to get the sugar water. However, when bees got to watch the ones retrieving the sugar water, more than 60% of them were able to pull the string when it was their turn. One of the researchers tells Science that, as exciting as the findings are, the explanation isn't necessarily that bees are smart, but that "culturelike phenomena might actually be based on relatively simple mechanisms." (One type of bumblebee has nearly gone extinct in 20 years.)
– What do Oprah Winfrey and Maria Sharapova have in common? Soon, they could both be represented by the same company. Hollywood talent titan William Morris Endeavor Entertainment has reached a deal to buy the massive sports agency IMG Worldwide, the companies announced today. "IMG has incredible strategic value," WME's co-CEOs said in a statement. IMG's "leadership across sports, fashion, and media are a strong complement to our business." WME, and its private equity partner Silver Lake, will pay about $2.4 billion, sources tell the Wall Street Journal, beating out a bid from another private equity firm, CVC Capital Partners, for about $2 billion. The deal is in part a sign that movie stars aren't what they used to be, the Journal explains; Hollywood agencies are diversifying in part because contracts for A-list stars have fallen off significantly. The fall of sitcoms and rise of original cable shows have also cut into once massive syndication revenues.
– A former police employee skirted murder and manslaughter charges in Texas this week when a jury sided with his so-called "gay panic" defense, the Houston Chronicle reports. James Miller, 69, testified that in 2015 he was at the house of neighbor David Spencer, 32, drinking and jamming on their instruments when the younger man tried to kiss him. "We were playing back and forth and everything, and I just let him know—Hey, I'm not gay," Miller says in an affidavit, per KXAN. "Then it seemed like everything was all right, and everything was fine. When I got ready to go—it seemed like [expletive] just started happening." Miller apparently pulled a knife, stabbed Spencer twice, and showed up at a police station in the wee hours saying "I think I killed someone. ... I stabbed him." In his defense, Miller said Spencer was bigger and stronger and might hurt him. Prosecutors argued that Spencer didn't threaten or injure his neighbor, but on Tuesday an Austin jury rejected murder charges and found Miller guilty of criminally negligent homicide, sentencing him to 6 months in jail with 100 hours of community service and $10,000 in fines. Now LGBT advocates are speaking up against "gay panic" defenses, which are legal in every state except California and Illinois. "It's hard to believe that something like this exists," the executive director of the LGBT Bar Association tells the Washington Post. "This is something from the very darkest of ages, based on the idea that if a gay guy hits on a straight guy, then the straight guy gets to do whatever he wants to do to him, including a homicide." (This story has been updated: We originally reported Miller was an ex-cop; he was a civilian employee of the Austin PD.)
– Dave Sowers' head-on car collision while on vacation in Yellowstone was traumatic enough: He was airlifted and broke his arm, leg, and ribs. But he awoke to the news that his dog Jade had fled from park rangers who tried to pull her from the car, and was nowhere to be found. What followed was a 42-day search—complete with fliers, a few dozen volunteers, and GoFundMe and Facebook pages—for the 18-month-old Australian shepherd, largely headed up by Sowers' girlfriend, Laura Gillice, reports the Missoulian. But in the end, it was Gillice, on a walk with her own dog, Laila, who spotted Sowers' canine pal near Canyon Village. "She just came running to me, like ‘Where’ve you been mom?'" says Gillice. When the trio returned to the hotel where Sowers was staying, she says, a "hugfest" ensued. "A lot of people have just dedicated their weekends to looking for her," says Sowers. "It’s amazing, we didn’t think we’d ever see her again."
– The gossip mill is churning in the wake of the Rupert Murdoch-Wendi Deng divorce filing. As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Deng's friendships with prominent males from Tony Blair to Eric Schmidt are being poked at (Blair's rep firmly denies the former British PM and Deng "are having an affair"). But sources say Deng was surprised to be served with divorce papers, even though she and Murdoch have been growing distant in recent months (and have been sleeping in separate bedrooms for a while, according to the Daily Beast). The BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, (who, the Daily Beast notes, is "usually sober and buttoned-down") tweeted last night, "Am told that undisclosed reasons for Murdoch divorcing Deng are jaw-dropping - & hate myself for wanting to know what they are." Writes Newser founder Michael Wolff in the Guardian, "We can only speculate about what he might mean." But, he notes, Peston is close with "key Murdoch lieutenant" Will Lewis. And we could be hearing more soon: Wolff tweeted last night, "I'm hearing the WHY, the big reveal, the scandal details, could come tomorrow."
– After 50 million different rumors, the Internet has its answer as to who will play Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey on the big screen: Anastasia is none other than Dakota Johnson, the 24-year-old daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and perhaps previously best known for Fox sitcom Ben & Kate, and minor roles in The Social Network and The Five-Year Engagement. "I am delighted to let you know that the lovely Dakota Johnson has agreed to be our Anastasia in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey," tweeted author EL James this morning. James later tweet-dropped: "the gorgeous and talented Charlie Hunnam" as the actor who would portray Grey. Click for more Social Network alums working on the project.
– Cuba has arrested a US government contract worker who was distributing laptops and cell phones in the country. The man works for a company in Bethesda, Md., that does work for various development agencies. It's not clear what he's been charged with—cell phones and laptops are legal, if rare, in Cuba—though it doesn't take much to fall under the Cuban crime of "dangerousness," notes the Washington Post. US officials are awaiting permission to see the man, who was picked up last week, reports the New York Times. The arrest comes amid signs of a thaw between Havana and the Obama administration. "The arrest and detention are clearly wrong," said a spokesman for Human Rights Watch. "An activity that in any other open society would be legal—giving away free cellphones—is in Cuba a crime."
– A mother is facing felony charges of child neglect after her 8-month-old son died from being left in a hot car for hours, reports the Washington Post. Police in Arlington, Virginia, don't think Zoraida Magali Conde Hernandez, 32, did so deliberately. She apparently meant to drop the boy at day care on her way to work yesterday, but forgot. She worked for six hours, then discovered the child in the back seat only after going to pick up another child at day care, reports WJLA. The high temperature reached about 90. In suburban Baltimore, meanwhile, a 16-month-old girl died yesterday when a relative mistakenly left her in his vehicle for about four hours, reports the Baltimore Sun. Police say the man picked her up from one spot and was supposed to drop her at day care. Instead, he drove home, took a long nap, then drove to the day care to pick her up. "After learning that the child had not been dropped off, he ran back out to the truck and found the child in the vehicle," say police. No charges have been filed, reports ABC2News, which says the relative is not the girl's father.
– Thousands of students, from university down to elementary-school level, are rallying today across the US to protest the ever-more-dismal state of education funding. California demonstrators, who also included faculty and parents, have been most visible, and mainly peaceful, though a car windshield was smashed during the gathering at the University of California-Santa Cruz, authorities tell the San Francisco Chronicle, and punches were thrown at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the AP adds. Students from UC-Davis tried to march from that campus to the state capitol in Sacramento, 15 miles away, using Interstate 80, but were turned away by police using pepper spray. At the Cal State-Dominguez Hills campus, protestors played a mock Wheel of Fortune game, where spins could yield “graduating in 4 years with a good education” and “a 30% fee increase,” the Los Angeles Times adds.
– It costs more than a penny to make a penny. The US Mint produced more than 8.4 billion of the one-cent coins last year, at a cost of $0.0182 each with production costs and shipping taken into account. That means $69 million was lost when compared to the pennies' total value, Quartz reports, the biggest loss in nine years. That's probably because zinc (pennies are made mostly of zinc, with a small amount of copper) has been rising in price. Nickels, which are worth five cents, cost seven cents each to make, but dimes and quarters cost less than their value to produce, which ends up making up for the losses associated with pennies and nickels. Even so, petitions abound on the internet to abolish the penny and nickel.
– Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is recommending that six of 27 national monuments under review by the Trump administration be reduced in size, with changes to several others proposed, per the AP. A leaked memo from Zinke to President Trump recommends that two Utah monuments—Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante—be reduced, along with Nevada's Gold Butte and Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou. Two marine monuments in the Pacific Ocean also would be reduced under Zinke's memo, which has not been officially released. (Details have previously leaked.) Trump ordered the review earlier this year after complaining about improper "land grabs" by former presidents, including Barack Obama. The monuments under review were designated by four presidents over the last two decades. Several are about the size of the state of Delaware, including Mojave Trails in California, Grand-Staircase Escalante in Utah, and Bears Ears, which is on sacred tribal land. Among other things, Zinke recommends opening hundreds of thousands of square miles of currently protected zones in the Atlantic and Pacific to commercial fishing, reports the Wall Street Journal, which also obtained a copy of the memo. The changes also could open up areas around monuments on land to coal and oil exploration. For instance, the memo says the Grand Staircase-Escalante currently has "an estimated several billion tons of oil and large oil deposits." The Journal expects environmental groups to fight any changes.
– A photo album featuring candid shots of some of the most evil people ever to walk the Earth has been snapped up for $41,000 by an anonymous buyer at an auction in England. The album, found in the bunker bedroom of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's mistress, features Hitler and henchmen including Heinrich Himmler and Josef Goebbels in lighter moments, the Telegraph reports. Some of the 73 photos can be seen on the auction site, including one of Hitler relaxing in the Alps. C&T Auctioneers says the photo album was taken in April 1945 from the bunker as a souvenir by British wartime photographer Edward "Dixie" Dean, who sold it to a collector in 1983. Per the auction house, "Very few significant artifacts liberated from the Fuhrer Bunker in 1945 exist today in the open market, especially with such concrete provenance." Auction house owner Matthew Tredwen tells the New York Times that it is clear that the photos were taken by a member of Hitler's inner circle, though the book gives no indication of who that might be. "The photographs had to be taken by someone who was very close," he says. "All photographs of Adolf Hitler were very much controlled" to show him in the best light. These "would not have been made for the general public." Tredwen adds that in his years of dealing in Nazi memorabilia and other military history items, he has never met anybody who actually supports Nazi ideology. "People are fascinated by how evil the Third Reich were," he says. (There is a dispute over whether "Hitler's personal phone" is the real thing.)
– Heartbreaking details about Peaches Geldof's final moments are trickling out: The Sun reports that her 11-month-old son, Phaedra, was near her, playing, when her body was found. "The hope is that Phaedra is so young he wasn’t aware of what was going on," says a source, according to Radar. Geldof's husband, Thomas Cohen, was out of town with their other son, Astala, at the time. He asked a friend to check on his wife when she didn't answer her phone. Meanwhile, you may have heard the Daily Mail-fueled rumors that "juice fasting" could have been a factor in Geldof's death, as well as concern over how thin Geldof was in recent days. But in a 2011 interview that was previously unpublished, Geldof slammed rumors that she was anorexic, E! reports. "Do I really look that thin? Let's be honest. How did I do it? I just stopped eating McDonald's and f---ing s--- every day," she said, adding that she was much less healthy before: "I had the heart of a 90-year-old gangster. ... People are like, 'Peaches is scary and anorexic.' Not really. It's ridiculous." (But, of course, that didn't stop a doctor not involved in the case from speculating that Geldof may have been bulimic.)
– Two disturbing reports were issued this week on the cancer front, with one noting women will see a spike in cancer deaths over the next decade or so—5.5 million cancer deaths by the year 2030. The other report adds that women afflicted with breast cancer alone could nearly double from 1.7 million diagnosed last year to 3.2 million by 2030, the Guardian reports. The first report, compiled by Merck and the American Cancer Society and released at the World Cancer Congress in Paris on Tuesday, says the predicted surge in cancer deaths would amount to a 57% increase, per a press release. The same report notes all four top cancers—breast, lung, colorectal, and cervical—are mostly preventable or easily detected early on, aiding treatment. The second report, based on three papers in the Lancet, adds cervical cancer may rise by as much as 25% by 2030, leading to 700,000 diagnoses. That report also notes women in low- and middle-income countries carry much of the burden of breast and cervical cancers, with less access to quality care and a greater likelihood of dying from their illnesses than women in richer nations. Perhaps a bit ironically, some of the cancers in the lower-income countries used to be prevalent only in higher-income ones, but as the poorer countries started going through "rapid economic transition," the women there began experiencing risk factors like their more affluent counterparts, including "physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, obesity, and reproductive factors" like putting off having kids, per an ACS VP. "The global community cannot continue to ignore the problem—hundreds of thousands of women are dying unnecessarily every year," Richard Sullivan, co-author of the Lancet report, says in the release. (Good news on the pancreatic cancer front.)
– Katherine Heigl suffered the worst opening weekend of her career as audiences forgot in droves to go see Unforgettable, but still managed to come out ahead of Christian Bale's latest, the apparently controversial The Promise. Per the Hollywood Reporter, Fate of the Furious again came out on top, with another $38.6 million on the heap. The Boss Baby continued to coo with another $12.75 million and second place, while Beauty and the Beast took third and $9.98 million, reports Box Office Mojo. Born in China zipped to No. 4 with $5.1 million. But the real debut disasters were Unforgettable with $4.8 million and seventh place, and The Promise with $4.1 million and ninth. Adding particular insult to Bale's injury was the $100 million price tag of his film; Unforgettable, meanwhile, cost a much more attainable $12 million to make, notes the Reporter. These are the biggest box-office disasters of all time.)
– New research into the amount of time that infants in various countries spend crying found that the littlest ones in usually placid Canada were the most colicky. British babies came in second, followed by Italy. The most tranquil tots, meanwhile, live in Denmark and Germany. Writing in the Journal of Pediatrics, psychologists at the University of Warwick analyzed 28 previous studies of some 8,700 infants to measure colic—a harmless, if nerve-jangling, condition—by gauging crying times during the first 12 weeks. The longest crying jags were clocked in Canada, reports the Guardian, where 34.1% of babies wailed more than three hours a day, at least three days a week. In the UK, the tally was 28% and in Italy 20.9%. Relatively blissful Danish babes scored 5.5%, with Germany at 6.7%. The first-of-its kind analysis found that babies the world over cry around two hours a day for the first weeks, peaking at two hours and 15 minutes at six weeks. Happily for stressed-out new parents everywhere, crying time is halved by week 12, per a press release. Lead researcher Dieter Wolke says parents in countries with low colic scores are less likely to intervene when baby starts crying, allowing the infant to self-soothe. "They don’t get all worried about it," Wolke tells the Telegraph. Then again, he notes, Danish babies may enjoy a bit of "genetic bias" since their country consistently ranks at the top of wellness surveys. In any case, new parents should learn to chill. "If you are not relaxed you are not going to be any use to your baby," Wolke says. (Crying saved this baby's life.)
– Back in 2006, a study that went on to gain prominence found that 18-month-olds were willing to be helpful even without being prompted. Many assumed this was evidence of innate altruism, but new research out of Stanford and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that these kids were actually primed by the playful researchers, if subtly, to display generosity—which means that altruistic behavior may be dictated by our experiences, however brief, instead of mere instinct, reports Stanford News. "People often call something 'innate' because they don't understand the kinds of subtle experiences that can make something, like altruism, flourish," says the lead author, admitting that "the findings will stir up some controversy, but in a good way." To investigate the effect of the original study's priming, researchers mimicked it with a group of 34 toddlers, rolling a ball back and forth with the child while chatting, then knocking over an object to see if the child would pick it up. They split the group in two; in the second group, the adult and child played with their own ball independently while talking. Turns out the kids who played with the adult were three times as likely to help out and pick up the dropped object. "Kids are always on the lookout for social cues, and this is a very prominent one," says another researcher. "Does the person's play indicate that they'll care for me? These actions communicate a mutuality, and the child responds in kind." To foster altruism at home, the researchers suggest, model it, reports Yahoo. (Altruism has been linked to a specific gene.)
– Much of Washington, DC, came to a halt on Friday to honor the late John McCain, whose casket is now lying in state in the US Capitol. Among those to speak was Vice President Mike Pence, who stood in for President Trump. “The president asked me to be here on behalf of a grateful nation to pay a debt of honor and respect to a man who served our country throughout his life, in uniform and in public office,” said Pence. “As President Trump said yesterday, we respect his service to the country." Before McCain died, the former Arizona senator asked that Trump not attend his funeral, notes the Hill. "It is only right that today, near the end of his long journey, John lies here, in this great hall, under the mighty dome, like other American heroes before him," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, per the AP. House Speaker Paul Ryan called McCain "one of the bravest souls our nation has produced," even if he did "talk like a sailor." On Saturday, McCain's casket will be taken to Washington National Cathedral for a formal funeral, and it will pause at the Vietnam Memorial along the way. McCain is just the 31st American to lie in state in the Capitol. (Trump defended his White House's handling of McCain's death.)
– A Russian judge today found three members of punk band Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism driven by "religious hatred and enmity" and sentenced them to two years in prison, Reuters reports. Prosecutors had been seeking three years. The three were arrested in March after performing an anti-Putin "punk prayer" inside Moscow's main cathedral. The three women sat in a courtroom cage as the judge addressed the court for nearly three hours. Finally, two and a half hours after the band members were declared guilty, the sentence was read. Previously, the judge had been reading from a seemingly endless summary of the trial as participants and observers alike appeared to grow increasingly bored. From the Wall Street Journal's live blog: "One of the lawyers for Pussy Riot is blatantly flicking through a Twitter feed on her smartphone as the judge drones on."
– Yesterday felt like 1994 all over again, with OJ Simpson grabbing headlines across America after TMZ broke the news that the LAPD is testing a knife that was allegedly found nearly two decades ago on Simpson's former estate. More comments and context as the dust settles: The Los Angeles Times spoke with Mike Weber, whose Weber-Madgwick Inc. construction company demolished the Brentwood mansion in 1998. "I think it's a joke. No one on my crew found anything. I had instructed my people, 'If you find anything, don't keep it,'" he said, though he does concede, "Hundreds and hundreds of people were there after me." TMZ keeps its story going by speaking to Dr. Irwin Golden, the Deputy Medical Examiner who examined Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman's bodies. He believes a knife with a 4-inch blade could have been the murder weapon; the newly found knife has a 5-inch blade. NBC News' report throws plenty of water on the story. Its law enforcement sources tell it the knife is not consistent with the murder weapon but is akin to a small utility knife a gardener might carry, was given to now-retired LAPD officer in 2001 or 2002, and didn't have the appearance of having long-been buried. Former prosecutor Marcia Clark weighed in, too, with comments to Entertainment Tonight. "It might be a hoax ... but, of course, I'm glad the LAPD is taking it seriously and subjecting it to testing so we can find out." As far as those tests go, The Verge explains exactly how the forensic analysis will be carried out. And should the knife actually check out? The Washington Post asks and answers a slew of "tricky legal questions." Read more on the newly found knife here.
– Thursday is a Wall Street milestone: The bull market that began on March 9, 2009, turns 8 years old, making it the second-longest such run in history. (It would need to go another year and a half or so to match the record from 1990 to 2000.) Some coverage: On this day in 2009, the S&P 500 plunged to 676. Since then, it's rallied about 250%. The Wall Street Journal has a funky graphic illustrating the near-historic run here. The Dow closed that same day at 6,547, and if you'd invested $20,000 then, it would be worth $64,000 today, notes the New Yorker. But the post has a warning: "With many investors still upbeat, stock prices could rise further for a time. Eventually, however, overvalued markets do correct and revert to levels justified by economic fundamentals." Reuters, however, suggests a bear is nowhere in sight. "The bull market is going to finish, in our view, when conditions begin to accumulate that tend to lead to a recession," says one analyst. "We just don't see that as a 2017 or 2018 event." What's unusual about the long run is what Bloomberg calls the "freakish calm" surrounding it. There's barely a whiff of volatility or investor anxiety, so much so that there's now a debate underway about whether that's healthy. One consequence of the bull run is that stocks and bonds are now quite expensive by historical standards, according to Money. It runs down that and other factoids here. The top performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Index since 2009? Home Depot, which is up more than 600%. MarketWatch looks at other winners. The star stock in the S&P has been biotech firm Incyte, notes USA Today. There's some debate on when this bull market actually began, and Michael Santoli at CNBC runs through it. Unemployment at the start of the run was 8.3%, and it's now 4.8%, per a list of key stats at Yahoo Finance.
– Pitbull's marketing deal with Walmart may backfire on him: The Miami rapper is getting sent to whichever Walmart store gets the most "likes" on its Facebook page, and right now the store in the lead is in … Kodiak, Alaska, population just north of 6,000. That's because Boston Phoenix writer and SomethingAwful.com founder David Thorpe figured it would be hilarious to get people to purposely like the Kodiak store in order to exile Pitbull to the remote island location, Rolling Stone reports. The Kodiak Walmart had more than 35,000 likes yesterday, and even has its own Twitter campaign: #ExilePitbull. "I know Pitbull is hoping his Miami Walmart shoppers start liking their Facebook page," a rep for the company tells the AP, but they only have until July 16 to vote and it will be an uphill battle: One Miami location had just 45 likes yesterday. The rapper is taking it all in stride, tweeting, "I hear there's bear repellant at Kodiak, Alaska @walmartspecials @sheets #exilepitbull."
– Dr. Fredric Brandt "was a huge pioneer" when it came to Botox and other anti-aging techniques, a fellow dermatologist says. In fact, he was once called the "Baron of Botox," and he boasted such celebrity clients as Madonna and Kelly Ripa. But on Sunday the 65-year-old died of an apparent suicide at his Florida home; a publicist tells the New York Times that he'd not only been struggling with depression, but was "devastated" by an apparent parody of him on Unbreakable Kimmy Schimdt. Martin Short played a character on the Netflix series who looks similar to Brandt, with features that make it seem the fictional doctor has been using Botox to excess on himself. Brandt was known for experimenting on himself before trying a new treatment on patients. Brandt was found hanged in his garage, the Miami Herald reports. Multiple sources who talked to People agree the show hurt him, but one says not to blame Short's character (Dr. Grant, pronounced Franff) for Brandt's death. "Did the show upset him? Yes. He was a human being, no one would like that. It was making fun of him for the way he looked and it was mean and it was bullying," the source says. But "it wasn't the only thing troubling him, it was just one factor. But that was not why he committed suicide. But it didn't help." The source blames the "illness" of depression. Meanwhile, Allure's editor remembers Brandt's contributions: "When he came into dermatology it was people treating sunspots and removing moles. Suddenly there were all these new substances and techniques that altered our relationship to age and aging, and he was at the absolute forefront of that."
– Let's just say this wouldn’t have happened to the real James Bond. Pierce Brosnan, who played the iconic 007 agent in four flicks, was stopped at Vermont’s Burlington International Airport on Sunday attempting to carry a 10-inch hunting knife on board a flight, police say. TSA agents found the bone-handled blade stashed in his carry-on luggage and seized it, apparently to Brosnan's chagrin and anger, reports the Telegraph. A source says Brosnan—traveling with his 14-year-old son, Paris—had to remove his belt for a pat-down, then was screened in a private area. He apparently told his son, "I can't believe they're doing this." TMZ reports officials asked Brosnan to surrender the knife or put it in his checked luggage; he chose the latter. The Burlington Police Department says officials then let the actor board a flight. Or as the Mail puts it, they chose to "live and let fly."
– Civil rights advocates see this as a tale of two voters. Crystal Mason, who is black, was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a ballot in Tarrant County, Texas, in 2016 while being a felon under supervision. Terri Lynn Rote, who is white, was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $750 fine for trying to vote for President Trump twice in Iowa. On Monday, the judge who sentenced Mason turned down her request for a new trial. “Prison is a lot closer for her today,” Mason’s lawyer told the New York Times. Mason, 43, had been sentenced to 60 months for tax fraud. She served part of her sentence and was released in 2016. She says she didn’t know that being a felon meant she was ineligible to vote. Her name had been purged from the voter rolls, and she was given a provisional ballot, which should have alerted her to her ineligibility, the prosecutor said. The judge had the option of sentencing Mason to anything from probation to 20 years, reported the Dallas Morning News in March. Whether a felon can vote varies by state. For example, as the New York Times notes, in Vermont, a person convicted of murder retains the right to vote, even while in prison. But in Mississippi, a conviction for perjury is enough to void the right to vote. Mason told the Star-Telegram that she was originally sent to jail for inflating returns and took responsibility for her actions. “I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. ... I didn't even want to go vote.” Mason's attorney is appealing the decision. Mason's case is juxtaposed with Rote's in an online petition calling for charges against Mason to be dropped.
– UFO enthusiasts last week got a gander of an alien allegedly recovered from Roswell—oversized head and all—but experts say the evidence likely originated on planet Earth, Tech Times reports. Attendees at a UFO conference in Mexico City paid $350 for the chance to see an old Kodachrome color slide said to capture an alien that crashed in New Mexico in 1947 (UFO lovers call it the "Roswell Incident"). A journalist apparently dated the film stock to the 1940s, Discovery reports, saying it was recovered in Arizona from an oil geologist's photo collection. The slide shows a small figure with a big head in a display case; Discovery argues that the skeleton belonged to a child (with typically oversized head) or the body of a mummified child with a deformed head. Such bodies have been turning up for years in the Americas and identified as extraterrestrials, Discovery reported last year. What's more, no eyewitness at Roswell in 1947 described aliens or even a flying saucer; the first one there talked about something "made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks" (the US Air Force put it down to air balloons and radar detectors that crashed there). Yet UFO proponents at the Mexico City event stood firm: "Analysis of the body ... suggested this is not a mummy and not a human, not a mammal and not a model," says enthusiast Richard Dolan, Reuters reports. A British defense official was less enthused, telling the Mirror that "it could be a model, or it could simply be a fake image, dressed up to look like a Forties slide." (Read about Air Force UFO files now available online.)
– Scratch that: Outlets including the BBC and the AP reported that Madonna had applied to adopt two children in Malawi, but the Material Girl has since refuted those reports. "I am in Malawi to check on the children's hospital in Blantyre and my other work with Raising Malawi, and then heading home," she tells Us. "The rumors of an adoption process are untrue." Madonna, 58, flew into Malawi on Tuesday and a government spokesperson had confirmed to the aforementioned news outlets that she appeared in High Court in the country's capital on Wednesday. Citing local reports, the Telegraph said she was seen carrying one child after the hearing, while another person from her group carried a second child. A court spokesperson had also said that the singer, who has already adopted two children from Malawi, would need to wait a week before learning the court's decision. (The Secret Service is rumored to be investigating Madonna.)
– Eight years ago, a much-discussed study estimated that there were 304 million lakes on Earth—but a careful count reveals that the number is closer to a third of that. The planet holds 117 million lakes, researchers find in what LiveScience calls the "best count yet." And while they may be fewer in number, they take up more of the Earth's surface than scientists had thought: some 3.7% of it, it turns out. Experts used computers to count the bodies of water using high-resolution satellite images. "This is something one would have assumed had been done long ago, and was in a textbook somewhere," says a researcher. One reason it wasn't: Most lakes are far from human residences, and millions are so small they haven't appeared on maps, LiveScience reports. Indeed, 90 million of the lakes counted were between 0.5 to 2.5 acres, or less than two football fields. The new figure measures the lakes around today, a number that can easily change; indeed, the Aral Sea, once the fourth-biggest lake on Earth, is now almost dry, the Independent reports. So what's the point of all this counting? "If we are to be able to make realistic estimates of the collected effects of the different processes in lakes, for example their contribution to global warming, we first need a good map," a researcher says in a press release. (Of course, we're not the only planet with lakes.)
– After the pilot of a small plane fell ill at the controls, two flight instructors were called in to the airport to give his only passenger a crash course in not crashing. The passenger—who had no flying experience—managed to bring the plane in for a safe, though somewhat bumpy, landing at England's Humberside Airport. "He made quite a good landing actually," one of the flight instructors tells the BBC. "He didn't know the layout of the airplane, he didn't have lights on so he was absolutely flying blind as well," he says. "I think he'd flown once before as a passenger but never flown an airplane before." There were cheers in the control room as the passenger made a successful landing on his fourth attempt, says the instructor, who did his best to keep the man calm. "I think without any sort of talk-down he would have just gone into the ground and that would have been the end of it," he says. A pilot who witnessed the landing praised the "most amazing brave passenger who landed at Humberside at night with a blacked out cockpit and cross wind," the Lincolnshire Echo reports. "The boy done well, never landed a plane before and sounded calm as a cucumber on the radio," he said. Sadly, the BBC reports that the pilot died; the cause of death has not been given. (In another recent emergency landing, a plane was forced to come down ... on a California highway.)
– Oops. An economics adviser to Barbara Boxer got caught trying to sneak some pot into a DC Senate office building and promptly resigned. His arrest—he tried to "remove and conceal" the marijuana while going through security—comes just ahead of California's proposition to legalize the stuff. Boxer, incidentally, opposes that, as does rival Carly Fiorina, notes the San Francisco Chronicle. Boxer's office terse statement: "Marcus Stanley is no longer with this office. He submitted his resignation and Senator Boxer accepted it because his actions yesterday were wrong and unacceptable." And in a weird footnote to the story, Politico notes that no fewer than a dozen people have been arrested for trying to sneak drugs into the Capitol complex in the past year and a half. Thank additional screening facilities for that.
– The New Delhi woman whose rape set off huge protests is now "fighting for her life" in a Singapore hospital, its chief executive says. "In addition to her prior cardiac arrest, she also had infection of her lungs and abdomen, as well as significant brain injury." She has already been through three surgeries in India, the Times of India notes. Meanwhile, another woman who reported a gang rape has committed suicide, the AP reports. Two officers have now been fired and one suspended in that case; insiders say that instead of responding to the case, police harassed the 18-year-old after she reported it on Nov. 27. The three suspects in the attack weren't arrested until last night. Another police officer has been suspended in a third rape case after he reportedly refused to register the allegations against a driver.
– More than 500 migrants have been detained for illegally entering Hungary or breaching a border fence, with nearly 50 criminal cases on the books since new laws took effect yesterday, the New York Times reports, while the BBC notes that Hungarian riot police today fired tear gas at migrants trying to break through the border with Serbia. And as restrictions tighten, migrants are seeking other ways into Western Europe through Slovenia and Croatia, as well as through Hungary's border with Romania. Issues remain: Hungary’s poorer neighbors may be ill-equipped to handle the flow, and there are areas peppered with land mines, remnants of the Balkan Wars. While solutions are sought, thousands spent last night in a Vienna train station, per the Times, while at least 22 migrants drowned yesterday in the Aegean Sea, the Post notes—a sad repeat of a similar incident a couple of days earlier. Leaders of neighboring nations are scrambling to come up with their own plans for dealing with the influx, which is no small task: The EU border agency notes a head count of 500,000 migrants at EU nations' entry points so far in 2015; last year that number was around 280,000, the BBC reports. Many are refugees fleeing high-conflict areas such as Syria and Iraq, per the Washington Post, which adds there's a noted "absence of a coordinated policy for the unprecedented influx." "Barbed wire in Europe in the 21st century is not an answer, it's a threat," Croatia's PM says, per the Post, adding that Croatia would "accept and direct" migrants through his country. An Egyptian billionaire who says he wants "to clear my conscience as a human being" has come up with an even more creative stopgap for the Syrian refugees involved: hosting them on two available Greek islands, using a joint-stock company to accept donations, Bloomberg reports. (The US is trying to help out.)
– One of the moments getting the most attention from President Trump's press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron Tuesday had to do with ... dandruff. "We have a very special relationship, in fact I'll get that little piece of dandruff off," Trump said while learning over to brush something off Macron's suit. "We have to make him perfect—he is perfect." CBS News reports that Macron seemed at first "caught off guard," but then smiled and laughed. More details from the joint news conference, which took place during Macron's second day of meetings at the White House: Another weird move: Live MSNBC footage caught Trump apparently attempting to hold the First Lady's hand, and Melania Trump apparently not being into it at all. People calls the whole thing "awkward" and rounds up amused Twitter reactions, while Elle says it's "absolute agony" to watch and rounds up images of Trump's other awkward hand-holding encounters. Cosmopolitan calls it "without a doubt the most uncomfortable Donald/Melania hand-holding moment of all time," noting it took Trump 13 seconds before finally managing to grasp his wife's hand in his, and the Cut reminisces about the other times Trump has failed at holding hands with his wife. Hand-holding success: Trump had more success grabbing—and holding onto—Macron's hand, but that moment was also widely hailed as awkward, People reports, rounding up reactions.
– Utah's Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, says he won't be running for re-election in 2018. The 83-year-old announced the move on Twitter. “Every good fighter knows when to hang up the gloves," he says in a video. "And for me, that time is soon approaching. That’s why after much prayer and discussion with family and friends, I’ve decided to retire at the end of this term." The move paves the way for Mitt Romney, a frequent critic of President Trump, to run for his seat. Details and developments: Unpopular at home: Hatch has been in the Senate for four decades and currently chairs the powerful Finance Committee, a post that allowed him to play a big role in the GOP's recent tax overhaul. But his clout doesn't seem to matter in Utah, where polls show that about 75% of residents wanted him to retire, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. (The newspaper itself issued a scathing editorial calling for him to do just that.) Trump unhappy: The president is "very sad" upon hearing the news, says spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The New York Times reports that the president, pleased with Hatch's work on the tax plan, had been encouraging him to run again. If nothing else, that would keep Romney—who has been vocal in his criticism of Trump—out of the Senate. (Still, Trump reportedly considered Romney for secretary of state.)
– The backlash over Colin Kaepernick's appearance in Nike's latest ad campaign continues: Now President Trump has weighed in. "I think it’s a terrible message," Trump tells the Daily Caller. "I think it’s a terrible message that they’re sending and the purpose of them doing it, maybe there’s a reason for them doing it, but I think as far as sending a message, I think it’s a terrible message and a message that shouldn’t be sent. There’s no reason for it." The ad features Kaepernick, who started the controversial NFL anthem protests and who is now accusing NFL owners of colluding to keep him off any team's roster, overlaid with the message, "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything." Trump conceded, though, "As much as I disagree with the Colin Kaepernick endorsement, in another way—I mean, I wouldn’t have done it. In another way, [but] it is what this country is all about, that you have certain freedoms to do things that other people think you shouldn’t do, but I personally am on a different side of it." Trump also noted "Nike is a tenant of mine. They pay a lot of rent," referring to Niketown New York at 6 East 57th Street in New York City. Meanwhile, the AP reports that in the league's first statement since Nike announced the ad campaign, an NFL exec says the social justice issues raised by Kaepernick and other players "deserve our attention and action" and that the league supports players promoting "meaningful, positive change in our communities."
– Denis Finley has taken to Twitter to call Politico a "whore," sniff about David Letterman's upcoming Netflix show featuring Barack Obama, and call for the destruction of all office buildings, but it was his tweets about a potential change to Vermont's driver's licenses that cost him his job as editor of the Burlington Free Press. The paper reports Finley was fired by honchos at parent company Gannett on Monday evening after he was found to have repeatedly flouted its social media rules. "We encourage our journalists to engage in a meaningful dialogue on social media, but ... the conversation [should] adhere to our overarching values of fairness, balance, and objectivity," says an exec from the USA Today Network, Gannett's main brand. Poynter explains Finley's demise came after he reacted to Vermont's proposal to add the gender option "X" to "F" and "M" on driver's licenses. The Washington Post documents the Twitter exchange between commenters who were lauding Vermont's decision and Finley. After one user noted the news was "awesome," Finley replied: "Awesome! That makes us one step closer to the apocalypse." When someone else tweeted the recognition of different genders was awesome, Finley wrote: "All recognition? … What if someone said it's awesome they are going to recognize pedophiliacs on licenses? I'm not being snarky, I'm just asking." Poynter notes some readers threatened to cancel their Free Press subscriptions over the tweets. "'Reader engagement' is not making provocative statements and then picking fights with people who disagree," an editor for a string of other local Vermont papers says. Emilie Stigliani, the Free Press' planning editor, will temporarily step in as Finley's replacement.
– A Labor Day disappointment on Cape Cod: Beaches have shut down along much of the coast thanks to shark trouble. Officials have banned swimming at several top sites after a pair of sightings, CBS News reports. The animals seem to be appearing more frequently lately; earlier this summer, a man was reportedly bitten by a great white off Truro for the first time in 75 years. "White sharks have probably been drawn into the area by a really large increase in the number of grey seals that are in the area," says an expert. And the sightings aren't limited to the Cape: A 1,500-pound shark turned up dead this weekend on the Massachusetts side of the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border. A biologist performed a necropsy, but officials aren't sure what killed the creature. They're going to leave it on the rocky shore, hoping the tide might eventually carry it out to sea: "There's really no means to move an animal of that size," a spokeswoman tells the AP.
– A female employee of Canada's largest oil and gas company was killed by a black bear at a work site in northern Alberta, reports the CBC. The 36-year-old had just emerged from a washroom at Suncor's oil-sands site when she encountered the bear, reports Global News. Co-workers tried in vain to save her, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police then killed the bear. “We don't know why this happened," says a company spokesperson, who promised an investigation. "We are reminding people to be especially vigilant in dealing with wildlife." Most of Suncor's production comes from these oil sands, also called tar sands, explains Reuters, and the company has a sprawling industrial complex at the site. The region is heavily populated with bears now emerging from hibernation, it adds.
– With French police calling Anthony Bourdain's death a suicide, only one investigative question remained: What substances were in his body? The answer: none, save a therapeutic dose of nonnarcotic medicine, a French prosecutor tells the New York Times. "No trace of narcotics. No trace of any toxic products," says the prosecutor, per Reuters. The late celebrity chef, 61, had talked openly about his past substance abuse but said he had cleaned up in rehab in the 1990s and drank without any problems since, per People. Now Bourdain's family will likely hold a private ceremony with his ashes, his mother Gladys Bourdain tells the Times. "He would want as little fuss as possible," she says. Gladys never much liked his tattoos, which reflected his culinary adventures, but she's decided to get one herself—the word "Tony" on her inner wrist in small letters. She plans to use her son's tattoo artist and says she won't get any other tattoos. As news broke Friday of the French toxicology test, Today reports, Italian actress Asia Argento posted an Instagram photo of the pair smiling in front of sun-drenched water: "Two weeks without you," she wrote. (Rose McGowan wants people to stop blaming Argento for his suicide.)
– Bucking expectations, ObamaCare is off to a record-breaking start. The Hill reports that around 200,000 signed up for health care coverage on the first day of this year's enrollment period, compared to 100,000 last year. Such early enthusiasm is good news for fans of ObamaCare, many of whom assumed enrollment would be down this year due to actions by the Trump administration, including slicing the advertising budget by 90% and cutting the length of the enrollment period by half. Still, despite the early high numbers, analysts say early enrollees tend to be renewing coverage, not getting it for the first time. Last week Standard & Poor's said enrollment could drop by as much as 1.6 million this year. With the government's advertising budget just $10 million, some insurance companies are spending their own money to spread the word about the enrollment period, Reuters reports. These companies are using advertising both to bring in the young, healthy customers whose coverage keeps premiums down and to clear up any confusion about the cessation of subsidies under Trump. The ObamaCare numbers come as reports have surfaced that the Trump administration is preparing an executive order that would effectively wipe out the mandate that most Americans have health insurance. The order would state that the administration will not collect the tax penalties from people who fail to get coverage, CNBC reports.
– In a sign of just how frustrated some in the GOP are with special counsel Robert Mueller after "indictment week," three House Republicans introduced a measure Friday that would pressure Mueller to step down. The nonbinding measure, introduced by Reps. Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, and Louie Gohmert, would put the House on record as believing Mueller should resign because he's unfit to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Politico reports. Why? Due to "obvious conflicts of interest," including his relationship with James Comey, who succeeded him at the FBI and was later ousted from his post by President Trump; among other things, Mueller is investigating whether anyone in the Trump administration obstructed justice during that ouster. Per Fox News, the measure also makes note of Mueller's supervision of a bribery probe when he was FBI director that involved a Russian nuclear-energy company that got approval from US government agencies to buy a Canadian energy company that had mining operations in the US. "Evidence has emerged that the FBI withheld information from Congress and from the American people about Russian corruption of American uranium companies," Gaetz said in a statement wondering how the deal got US approval despite the bribery probe. The representatives say that's another reason Mueller should recuse himself as special counsel, as his "impartiality is hopelessly compromised." But, as multiple outlets including Business Insider note, most Republicans so far support keeping Mueller in place, including those in leadership positions.
– Marijuana has a reputation for being a safe drug, but some researchers say there is mounting evidence that the drug is associated with adverse heart complications. In two new case studies, two young men in Germany—ages 23 and 28—with no drugs other than THC in their systems and no known health issues (though the 28-year-old had used other drugs up until a few years ago), both died due to complications from abnormal heart rhythms, or arrhythmias. "After exclusion of other causes of death, we assume that the young men died from cardiovascular complications evoked by smoking cannabis," the researchers conclude. They added that the two men may have also been predisposed to cardiovascular risks. Though the researchers tell LiveScience there have been some "quite unpleasant reactions from individuals" following their report, and while some researchers say there isn't a strong enough link to implicate marijuana, there is mounting evidence that there are "marijuana-associated adverse cardiovascular effects, especially in young people," an author of a similar study said in an American Heart Association statement. Either way, one toxicologist says people should proceed with caution: "Some people who are predisposed to cardiac events may be particularly vulnerable to potential harmful effects of marijuana use, and the new report shows this." (Berkeley, meanwhile, recently voted to give free medical marijuana to the poor.)
– President Trump made big news Thursday through his power to issue pardons and commute sentences. First, he announced that he would issue a full pardon to conservative firebrand Dinesh D'Souza, who once pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations. Hours later came two higher-profile names: Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he might pardon Martha Stewart and free former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich from prison, reports the AP. Details and developments: D'Souza: "He was treated very unfairly by our government!" Trump tweeted. In 2014, D'Souza received five years' probation and a $30,000 fine after prosecutors say he used "straw donors," reports the Washington Post. That is, prosecutors say he got people to donate money to the GOP New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012 with the understanding that he would reimburse them. His background: The 57-year-old is a best-selling author and filmmaker who was one of President Obama's most vocal critics. He also went after Hillary Clinton frequently. See this trailer for his Hillary's America for a taste. He has a "penchant for trolling and needling liberals," writes Dylan Matthews in a profile at Vox. D'Souza has long maintained that he was prosecuted because of his politics, and he was gloating publicly at the expense of former US attorney Preet Bharara Thursday, notes the New York Post, which collects the related tweets.
– A woman on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship got way more exposure to the ocean than she intended, but lived to tell the tale. The 46-year-old British passenger fell off the back of the Norwegian Star ship about 60 miles off the coast of Croatia around midnight Saturday, reports the Guardian. The woman, identified only as Kay, managed to stay afloat for 10 hours in the Adriatic Sea, long enough to be rescued by a Croatian cruise ship that scrambled into action upon getting a coast guard alert, per Sky News. “I am very lucky to be alive," the smiling woman told a Croatian news channel before leaving in an ambulance. "These wonderful guys rescued me." The woman said she "was sitting at the back of the deck," but it's not clear yet exactly how she fell in. She was listed in stable condition and expected to be fine. Norwegian has launched an investigation into the incident. The rescue comes just weeks after a man fell off a different ship operated by Norwegian Cruise Line, and he managed to survive nearly a full day in the water before being rescued.
– Dick's Sporting Goods gets the unlucky honor of being this year's villain in the “War on Christmas” campaign. The American Family Association has singled it out for a boycott this holiday season because the chain is “against” the holiday, reports Advertising Age. One of its offenses is having a "Holiday Shop” section on its website, with no mention of Christmas. All in all, though, the defense of Christmas has been going splendidly for the AFA, says a spokesman; over five years, the percentage of retailers acknowledging Christmas has soared from 20% to 80%, he says. And while Dick's may be "the 'most anti-Christmas' of all," only eight retailers remain on the “Companies Against Christmas” list, including Barnes & Noble, CVS, and RadioShack. The campaign is “not bullying," says the rep. "It's consumer advocacy." More at the Consumerist.
– More than 100 cars and dozens of tractor trailers have been caught up in a chain of accidents stretching over several miles of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Bensalem this morning, backing up traffic for several more miles behind that. The first accident came at about 7:45am on the westbound side, causing a rubbernecking delay on the eastbound side—where the subsequent crashes occurred beginning at 8am, Fox 29 Philadelphia reports. Icy conditions are believed to be responsible—though residents say that stretch of road is so notoriously treacherous that accidents sometimes occur there in good weather. One crash site involves roughly 75 cars and several tractor trailers, CBS 3 Philadelphia reports. Another 30 cars were involved in another big wreck, in which a tractor trailer jackknifed, reportedly landing on top of at least four cars. Emergency crews are now using the westbound side to transport out the wounded. At least five people have been hospitalized so far. This is "the worst accident I have seen in the 20 years I have been doing this," CBS' traffic reporter said.
– Extended family butting in with opinions about your kids is nothing new—but this case in Vietnam is a wild exception. CNN reports that a Vietnamese couple had their 2-year-old twins genetically tested after family members kept harping about how different the children looked. What the Center for Genetic Analysis and Technologies in Hanoi discovered: The twins are bi-paternal, meaning they share only a mother. The revelations about the family pretty much end there. The twins' gender was not revealed, and the only identifying details given by Vietnam's state-run news agency VNS is that the children have very different hair (thick and wavy vs. thin and straight) and live in Hoa Binh province with their 34-year-old father and mother, whose age wasn't given. Le Dinh Luong, president of the Genetic Association of Vietnam, says he's unaware of any case like this in his country. That hasn't stopped paranoid fathers from phoning the Hanoi center over fears about their twins, reports the Tuoi Tre paper. It's rare, but certainly not unheard of in the US. Last year, a New Jersey judge ruled a man is father to one twin while another man is father to the other, in a case that had child-support implications. The judge in that case cited two other similar court cases, and a 1997 article by identity testing expert Karl-Hans Wurzinger, who testified in the case, put the number of reported paternity cases involving superfecundation (the fathering of fraternal twins by two males) at one in every 13,000. CNN reports that the lifespan of the egg and sperm allow for roughly a week-long period in which a woman could become pregnant through two acts of intercourse. (This man's son was "fathered" by his unborn twin.)
– Two women who faced slights at the hands of prominent Republicans on Tuesday were defended by Hillary Clinton, who has experience in the area. Clinton, speaking at the Professional Businesswomen of California conference, decried the "indignities" women have to put up with while "simply doing their jobs," the Hill reports. She was referring to journalist April Ryan and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters. Ryan was interrupted and told to "stop shaking your head" by Sean Spicer while asking a question at a press conference. Waters was mocked by Bill O'Reilly, who said he was unable to listen to what she was saying because of her "James Brown wig." Both women are black, and Clinton noted that the problem is especially bad for women of color. Her remarks were part of a bigger call for diversity and inclusion in Silicon Valley, according to TechCrunch.
– The feral cat population has exploded in Hawaii, where they are not native and face no natural predators—and this could spell disaster for the endangered monk seal. That's because cat poop often contains a parasite called Toxoplasmosa gondii, and when sewage and polluted runoff carry the infected feces to the ocean, it can prove lethal, reports Scientific American. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that eight Hawaiian monk seals have succumbed to the disease since 2001, which is a sizable number given that 1,100 are estimated to be alive today in the wild. The same bacteria have also killed California sea otters and helped send the Hawaiian crow into extinction, reports the Christian Science Monitor. But while conservationists call for the "humane euthanization" of some feral cats, animal welfare advocates oppose a "hierarchy in which the protection of certain animals comes at the suffering of others," as the president of the Hawaiian Human Society puts it. Monk seals are considered the most endangered pinniped in the country, and their numbers are expected to dip below 1,000 soon, with starvation among the young the largest known problem. Meanwhile, Hawaii's Division of Forestry and Wildlife estimates that 300,000 feral cats live on Oahu and as many as 400,000 on Maui, which is roughly two cats per human resident. NOAA is working with California’s Marine Mammal Center on a monk seal hospital in Kona to try to care for the sick ones before they die. (Humans have hunted Caribbean monk seals to extinction.)
– The CDC's director of STD prevention says that "not long ago" syphilis was close to elimination. But some troubling new statistics show that a lot of ground has been lost in the fight against STDs, and it's affecting some of the most vulnerable members of society. According to a new CDC report, 918 babies were born with syphilis in the US in 2017, the Guardian reports. That's a 20-year high. For context, there were 628 cases of syphilis in infants in 2016. In 2013, there were 362. Of the 2017 cases, 77 resulted in stillbirths or newborn deaths, per USA Today. Western and southern states had the most cases of congenital syphilis in 2017, per the report, with Louisiana having the highest rate. "It's just a systematic public health failure. It's shocking that this has come roaring back in the United States," David Harvey of the National Coalition of STD Directors tells the Guardian. Syphilis is easily treated with antibiotics, and women can be treated while they are pregnant to prevent the disease from being passed on to their child. But, per the Guardian, some women do not get tested, and others contract the disease while pregnant after testing negative. In some cases, there is a connection to drug use. Overall, there were 30,644 syphilis diagnoses in the US in 2017—up 76% from the year before.
– Less than two weeks ago, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said replacing Flint's lead-coated pipes in the city's water distribution system wasn't on his "short-term agenda" and that coating the pipes with phosphates might serve as a stopgap. But it looks like Flint is moving on with or without him: On Tuesday, Mayor Karen Weaver announced a $55 million public works project that will replace all of the city's water pipes, and the process will begin within a month, the Detroit Free Press reports. "All lead pipes need to be replaced," Weaver said at a press conference, per WDIV. "We deserve new pipes because we did not deserve what happened." The mayor and other officials are hoping the project can be completed within a year with a few dozen crews and under "optimal conditions," per Weaver. Around 15,000 lines will be replaced, and "high-risk" households (those with children and pregnant women) will be first on the list. Funding for the project will come from the Michigan Legislature and the US Congress, Weaver said. And other money may show up as well: As the FBI continues to investigate the crisis, high-ranking public officials have asked for funds all the way up to the federal level. US Rep. Candice Miller, for instance, wants the EPA to hand over a $1 billion emergency grant. "We're going to restore safe drinking water one house at a time, one child at a time, until the lead pipes are gone," Weaver said, per WDIV. (A Flint family is suing the city after their 2-year-old tested positive for lead poisoning.)
– The best overall diet is the DASH diet, US News & World Report says in new rankings—but if weight loss is your specific goal, go with Weight Watchers. So what's DASH? It stands for Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension and it's generally meant for adults looking to curb high blood pressure. It's big on "whole grains, fruits, vegetables, low-fat and nonfat dairy foods, lean proteins, nuts and limited amounts of fats and sweets," explains the Los Angeles Times, which writes about it for a different reason: A new study suggests it slows weight gain in teen girls. Back on the US News & World rankings: The Mediterranean diet came in second for overall diet, while Jenny Craig and the Raw Food diet were close runners-up for weight loss, Reuters reports. “Our analysis put hard numbers on the common-sense belief that no diet is ideal for everybody,” says the magazine. It all depends on your aim. Click for details on the specific diets and complete rankings.
– People have been using the term "bloodcurdling" to describe feelings of intense fear for centuries. Now, a new study has found that being scared can, indeed, cause your blood to thicken, NBC News reports. Dutch researchers found that a frightening situation—in this case, watching a horror movie—can increase levels of Factor VIII, a blood-clotting agent. "We hypothesized that acute fear activates the coagulation system and that this poses an important evolutionary benefit, by preparing the body for blood loss during life-threatening situations," write the Leiden University Medical Center researchers in the study, which was published in the December issue of the British Medical Journal. The study used 24 healthy volunteers ages 30 and under. UPI reports 14 of the subjects watched the horror movie Insidious and then, a week later, watched the documentary A Year in Champagne at the same time of day. The order of the movies was reversed for the other volunteers. Blood samples were taken before and after participants viewed the movies. Levels of Factor VIII increased in 57% of subjects during the horror movie, while they decreased in 86% of participants during the documentary. No one in the study suffered a blood clot, NBC notes. While the researchers outline some study limitations (sample size, "the magnitude of fear induced by the movie genre"), they conclude that "after centuries the term 'bloodcurdling' in literature is justified." (Speaking of fear, here's how to cure a spider phobia in 2 minutes.)
– The man who co-founded Pixar and is seen as the creative force behind blockbusters such as the Toy Story and Cars franchises will soon be out of a job at Disney. John Lasseter, 61, has been on leave from parent company Disney since November after allegations of improper workplace behavior surfaced, including his propensity to wrap up everyone he meets in long bear hugs. Disney announced Friday that Lasseter—who previously acknowledged and apologized for his "missteps"—will shift into a vague consulting role through the end of the year and then depart for good, reports the New York Times. Disney execs were wrestling for months with whether to allow Lasseter to return, but Deadline reports on a "gathering sense" among employees that he would not have been welcome. Disney chief Bob Iger issued a statement that praised Lasseter for "reinventing the animation business, taking breathtaking risks, and telling original, high quality stories that will last forever,” and Lasseter issued one of his own thanking Disney and saying he's "extremely proud" of his work but that it's time to move on. Despite the positive public comments, the move amounts to what the Los Angeles Times describes as "a dramatic unraveling of one of the most storied careers in animation." The story notes that hugs were just a part of the problem, with female employees at Pixar alleging that Lasseter and other senior execs turned a blind eye to a corporate culture rife with crude jokes and inappropriate touching. (Actress and screenwriter Rashida Jones left Toy Story 4 and complained about Pixar's unequal treatment of women.)
– It might be the worst day yet in an already lousy year for the stock market: The Dow was down more than 500 points shortly after noon, a fall of about 3.3%, and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 were down similar percentages. The news comes after yet another bad day for Asian stocks, with Japan's Nikkei falling into bear territory—roughly defined as 20% below a recent high, reports the Wall Street Journal. One huge, familiar factor: Oil prices continue to fall, with the price of a barrel now under $27 a barrel. "Obviously we're in the throes of an environment where sentiment is not positive about risk assets, so it takes very little to put pressure ... pressure coming from falling oil prices continues to serve as a cues for equities to follow suit," a strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott tells CNBC. This MarketWatch piece suggests "the bear market in stocks has finally arrived" for US investors.
– What should have been a joyful trip turned tragic early Friday, when a central Wisconsin man died while driving his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their eighth child. Michael Rogan, 42, was driving a van with his wife and seven children aboard when another car hit a deer, sending the animal into the van's windshield. Wife Niki was able to steer the van into a shallow ditch, the AP reports. Rogan died of his injuries later at a Marathon County hospital; everyone else received only minor injuries, and Niki gave birth to a son named Blaise that afternoon—the new baby was baptized, as planned, Sunday at the family's church, the Wausau Daily Herald reports. A friend explains to WSAW that she doesn't think Niki has ever missed a mass due to a child's birth: "She wanted to go." "It was a very teary morning," says the reverend, who notes that about 100 people came together at a nearby home after the baptism. Faith was important to Rogan, and the former Marine could typically be found at St. Mary's Oratory in Wausau, which he had attended for at least 15 years, about three times a week, the reverend says. Friends have stepped forward to help with Rogan's organic seed and fertilizer business, and a GoFundMe campaign has so far raised more than $270,000 for the family he left behind. Niki is a stay-at-home mom and homeschools the kids—who, besides the newborn, range in age from 2 to 15—and the money raised will be used to allow her to continue to do that as well as cover the costs of a new van, medical expenses, and the funeral this weekend.
– Jared Fogle remains very busy trying to get himself out of jail—and apparently keeping up with current events. The former Subway pitchman's new legal gambit revolves around the case of disgraced Team USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, reports the Blast. In newly filed legal documents, Fogle complains that he was charged with "traveling for the purpose of engaging in illicit sex" while he was on the road for Subway, but Nassar was not similarly charged even though he committed crimes while on the road with the gymnasts. Fogle apparently sees this as an example of how the case against him was unfair. He also says he was pressured into pleading guilty and wants to withdraw his pleas to charges of distribution and receipt of child pornography and traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor. TMZ points out that Fogle is serving a 15-year sentence, while Nassar has no hope of ever leaving prison, raising the question of why Fogle would take the risk of withdrawing his pleas to get a new trial. (Fogle previously said the judge was biased because she has daughters.)
– Justin Bieber may be an international pop star, but he’s also a teenage boy—and lately, he’s been proving it. On a recent international flight, Biebs and his entourage reportedly started cussing, loudly, in first class. A mom of two (who should probably now be your hero) approached the group and, a source tells TMZ, asked Justin to “stop yelling curse words and using that kind of language on a plane. It’s not appropriate.” An embarrassed Bieber apologized, a friend says. But apparently he’s just as loud at home: On The View yesterday, celebrity couple Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard revealed that Justin recently moved into a house behind them, People reports. "The music and the parties and the paparazzi, I mean, it's like living in Lebanon now," Shepard said. Bell added, "In his defense, I will say we don't know the exact house the music is coming from. We just know since he moved in, the music has been blaring."
– The "buried treasure" found by a California couple out walking their dog—an estimated $11 million worth of rare gold coins from the 1800s—has started to be auctioned off. Last night at the Old San Francisco Mint, an 1874 $20 double eagle sold for $15,000, the AP reports. A few other coins were also auctioned there, and most of the remaining 1,400 are now on sale on Amazon.com and Kagins.com, according to the firm handling the sale. The anonymous couple, who found the coins on their own property, are also keeping a few. As for the money they make, they'll pay bills and donate to local charities—and the money from last night's auction will help turn the Old San Francisco Mint into a museum. About 60 of the coins will be displayed there, USA Today reports. It's still not clear where the coins, most of which are in mint condition, came from—the numismatist who valued the coins and is handling the sale says theories (none of which panned out) have linked them to stagecoach bandit Black Bart, outlaw Jesse James, and a heist at the San Francisco Mint. And, of course, there are people out there who claim the coins belonged to their distant relatives—one of whom has threatened to sue. But none of the stories so far is legit, according to federal officials.
– China appeared to give a boost to US efforts to curtail North Korea's nuclear program on Sunday, one day after the United Nations voted to impose new sanctions on the country. After meeting North Korea's top diplomat, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged North Korea to make the "smart decision" and stop testing nuclear weapons and launching missiles, the Washington Post reports. “Do not violate the UN's decision or provoke international society’s goodwill by conducting missile launching or nuclear tests,” Wang said. China's warning came a little more than a week after North Korea tested a ballistic missile that experts say could hit major cities in the United States. On Saturday, the UN Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions on North Korea, banning the country's largest exports, coal, iron and iron ore, lead and lead ore, and seafood, the Los Angeles Times reports. The resolution also freezes the assets of a North Korean art studio that makes Communist-style statues and monuments for dictatorships around the world. All told the sanctions would cut North Korean annual exports by a third, from $3 billion to $2 billion. In response to the UN vote, North Korea's state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, condemned the United States on Sunday, CNN reports. "The US mainland will sink into an unimaginable sea of fire on the day when it dares to touch our country by stupidly causing mischief and brandishing its nuclear and sanctions clubs," the article warned.
– The exact nature of the relationship between schizophrenia and cannabis still isn't clear to scientists, but a new study offers additional clues. Researchers studied genetic data on 2,082 people, about half of whom had used cannabis, Reuters reports; they focused on the number of schizophrenia-linked genes in the subjects. The experts found that those with a predisposition to the illness were more likely to use cannabis—and to use more of it—than were those without schizophrenia-linked genes, regardless of mental health history. In other words, says a researcher, the study suggests "a pre-disposition to schizophrenia also increases your likelihood of cannabis use." The Verge explains the complexities of the possible relationship between schizophrenia and marijuana: In the 1960s, for instance, scientists thought that smoking marijuana could cause psychosis in most people; these days, researchers believe using the drug may spur schizophrenia in those who are predisposed to it. The new study effectively turns the idea around, suggesting that those who are predisposed to the illness may also be predisposed to using marijuana. But that doesn't mean weed use doesn't increase schizophrenia risk, an outside expert notes: "Both (theories) may be true."
– The Senate on Thursday advanced legislation that would allow states to block federal funding to Planned Parenthood, after calling in Vice President Pence to break a tie, Politico reports. First, Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson was called in to the procedural vote, despite the fact that he's recovering from back surgery. He walked in with a walker but did cast his vote, bringing the total to 50-50. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate, but Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted with Democrats on this issue, forcing Republicans to keep the vote open for just over an hour to get their win, Fox News reports. The legislation would allow states to block funding that's earmarked for family planning, and Collins explained that's why she opposes it: "It’s important to recognize that there is already a bar against using federal funds for abortion and that bar stays in effect. That’s a prohibition that I personally support, but I’m a strong supporter of family planning funds." Now that the procedural vote has passed, the Senate can hold a final vote later Thursday to officially repeal an Obama-era regulation that kept states from blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving funding from Title X family planning grants. The House already voted to reverse the regulation in February, USA Today reports. This is the second time Pence has had to break a tie since becoming VP; the last time a VP had to do it prior to Pence was in 2005, the Washington Post reports.
– Willy Wonka may have been on to something. Regularly eating chocolate could possibly help prevent a type of irregular heartbeat that can increase the risk of heart failure, strokes, and cognitive impairment, according to a study published Tuesday in Heart. Live Science reports between 2.7 million and 6.1 million Americans have atrial fibrillation, in which the upper chambers of the heart beat at a different pace than the lower chambers. But a study of 55,000 adults in Denmark found that those who ate chocolate at least once a month had rates of atrial fibrillation 10% to 20% lower than those who ate it less than once a month. The best results came from eating an ounce of chocolate two to six times per week. It's impossible to say based on the study whether chocolate consumption was directly responsible for lower rates of atrial fibrillation. Researchers also aren't clear how chocolate could even affect the development of the condition, but it may have something to do with things called flavanols, the Los Angeles Times reports. Atrial fibrillation is thought to be caused by molecules damaging heart tissue. The flavanols in chocolate can stop inflammation that leads to tissue damage. "As part of a healthy diet, moderate intake of chocolate is a healthy snack choice," Reuters quotes the study's lead author as saying. Though it's important to choose chocolate with a higher cocoa content. (And you should probably also take it easy on the ibuprofen.)
– Think deforestation is declining in the Amazon, with all the warnings about climate change? Nope, it just got worse—its highest rate in the past 10 years, the BBC reports. Brazil has released data showing that roughly 3,050 square miles (or nearly 1.5 million football fields) of Earth's biggest rainforest was chopped down between August 2017 and July 2018, a 13.7% increase over the year before. Opinions differ on the cause, with Environment Minister Edson Duarte blaming illegal loggers: "An upsurge in organized crime" is behind it, says Duarte, who calls for a broader battle against "environmental violations and in defense of sustainable development of the biome." Then there's a 2012 forest code that still gives amnesty to anyone who deforests on small properties, notes the Guardian. After declining for years, deforestation began rising in 2013 and increased in four of the following years. Now Brazil is welcoming a new, openly anti-environmentalist president, Jair Bolsonaro, whose foreign minister calls global warming a Marxist plot. Environmentalists say the Amazon rainforest could suffer a 300% deforestation surge under the new regime: "We are already in a very critical situation in terms of climate change," an environmental researcher tells National Geographic. "If we mess up with the Amazon, carbon dioxide emissions will increase so massively that everyone will suffer." Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old former military officer, wants more roads and mines in the rainforest and fewer penalties for chopping down trees. (A scientist calls the decline in forest insects "hyperalarming.")
– George W. Bush dutifully attended the Trump inauguration in his role as ex-president, and his struggles with a rain poncho became an internet sensation. Now there's a new Bush-inauguration story creating a buzz: New York quotes three anonymous people present who said Bush summed up the ceremony, including the new president's short speech about America's dire straits, thusly: "That was some weird s---." A spokesperson declined to comment. Bush hasn't offered a public comment about the proceedings. As for that poncho, the former president earlier this month joked about it with Ellen DeGeneres. "Is that the first time?" she asked of his poncho wearing, per Entertainment Weekly. "It looks like it," he conceded. (Here's why Bush likes Michelle Obama so much.)
– When Harold Hayes said he had one helluva war story to tell, he wasn't kidding. The 94-year-old, who died on Sunday, was the last survivor of 30 intrepid Americans who crash-landed behind Nazi lines during World War II, plunging them into a surreal odyssey that included German attacks, blizzards, illness, and near starvation as they trekked 600 miles until their eventual rescue 63 days later. Details of their saga was a "long-held-secret" for decades, the New York Times reports. It all began on a clear day in November 1943 when a cargo plane carrying nurses and medics from Sicily to Bari, Italy, was blown off course by a major storm and fired on by German flak guns. After ditching in a remote area, the group learned they were in Albania from locals. Under constant threat of capture, Hayes, then 21, and the others bunked with peasants with little to share except lice-infested blankets. They boiled tea from straw and ate berries. Their limbs froze as autumn gave way to white-out blizzards. "When you're hungry, cold, and tired, you forget about almost everything else and are only thinking about surviving," Hayes said, per National Geographic. A British spy found them too sick to go on, and arranged a US air rescue that failed. Crushed, the group managed to continue moving west and reached the Adriatic coast on Jan. 9. To protect their Albanian saviors, they stayed mum during the war and for years after during the Communist years. Hayes "rarely talked about his ordeal," author Cate Lineberry tells the Times. (This lost WWII sub was found off Hawaii.)
– The name Eastern Ghouta may not be a familiar one, but the neighborhood near the Syrian capital of Damascus is now making international headlines for all the wrong reasons. The enclave of 22 communities happens to be the last opposition-controlled region near the capital, and it's been the target of fierce bombing by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On Monday, airstrikes and artillery shelling killed about 100 people, including 20 children, reports the AP, citing stats from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the civil defense group known as the White Helmets. The details: Assad's strategy: With the civil war now in its seventh year, Assad is looking to reclaim rebel-held territory through "an outright military victory instead of a negotiated settlement," per the Guardian. The bombardment could be paving the way for a ground assault against the two Islamist factions that control the neighborhood of about 350,000 people, reports Gulf News. One problem: This is a suburb with no international borders and thus is of little strategic value to world powers, explains the Washington Post. "As a result, there is no power broker such as Turkey, Russia or the United States to deploy ground troops or strike a backroom deal."
– "You should be concerned," a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Public Safety said during a press conference yesterday. "It has not ended in tragedy, but it could." The AP reports four vehicles have been struck by bullets while traveling along an 8-mile stretch of Interstate 10 in Phoenix, with a 13-year-old girl being the sole injury so far. According to ABC 15, the shootings took place between Saturday morning and yesterday morning, and no suspects or motives have been identified. "We've had bullets hit the sides of the cars; we've had bullets hit windshields," says the DPS spokesperson. Since Saturday, bullets have struck an SUV's window, the headlight of a work truck, and the passenger sides of a tour bus and another vehicle, DPS states in a press release. ABC reports that a 13-year-old girl was cut on the ear when a bullet pierced the SUV, with photos showing a bullet hole in the passenger-side window. At the moment, the shootings appear to be random, and drivers are being warned to stay vigilant. The AP reports police are looking for witnesses and trying to figure out if the same person is responsible for all four shootings.
– Researchers say they've found fossilized bacteria that may date back to shortly after the formation of the Earth (geologically speaking, anyway), the New York Times reports. They published their findings Wednesday in Nature. The rocks were collected in 2008 from the Nuvvuagittuq geological formation in Canada. The rocks are estimated to have formed near a hydrothermal vent on the seafloor between 3.77 billion and 4.22 billion years ago. They contain tiny filaments and tubes, some connected by knobs, that resemble younger bacteria fossils created near hydrothermal vents. They also contain a level of carbon indicative of a living organism. If the fossils are what researchers say they are—and not everyone is convinced they are—they would push the date of earliest known life back billions of years. Currently the oldest fossilized bacteria widely accepted as legitimate are 3.5 billion years old and come from Australia, Ars Technica reports. And if these Canadian fossils are closer to 4.22 billion years old, it means the bacteria would have been alive just 340 million years after the formation of the Earth. Still, every new claim of finding the world's oldest fossilized life is met with skepticism, and this discovery is no different. One expert calls the rocks "dubiofossils," fossil-like but not clearly evidence of an organism. In response, researchers argue there's too much evidence in favor of their conclusion to ignore. (This dinosaur fossil is one of the "saddest" ever found.)
– A distant relative of Joseph James DeAngelo hoping to learn more about their family submitted a DNA sample to a genealogy website. They now know that they're related to a suspected serial killer. Police say they tracked the suspected Golden State Killer by comparing DNA from one of his many crime scenes to genetic information freely available online, the Sacramento Bee reports. They traced family trees for possible suspects and singled out DeAngelo, a 72-year-old ex-cop, last Thursday. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert says DeAngelo was placed under surveillance, and DNA collected from discarded items provided "astronomical evidence" that he was the killer. Schubert tells the Bee that when she was informed of the DNA test results, "I probably used a few words I wouldn't put in a newspaper, but basically said, 'You'd better not be lying to me.'" She adds: "There were a lot of holy s--- moments." DeAngelo was arrested outside his home Tuesday. The San Jose Mercury News reports that investigators used the open-source genealogy website GEDMatch.com to search for the suspect who committed 12 murders and more than 50 rapes between 1974 and 1986. Other genealogy websites, including Ancestry.com and 23andMe, say they weren't contacted by police about the case and that they never provide customer information to law enforcement unless they're legally compelled to. (Neighbors describe DeAngelo as a "nice old grandpa" obsessed with lawn care.)
– The Pentagon's plan to train an army of moderate Syrian rebels to defeat ISIS hasn't gotten off to the best start, officials admit: The $500 million program, which involves hundreds of US troops and training sites in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, has only trained 60 vetted candidates so far, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Congress yesterday. The program's goal was to produce 5,400 fighters a year as part of the White House's strategy to provide assistance to those fighting ISIS on the ground, reports Reuters. Carter explained to the Armed Services Committee that around 7,000 potential fighters are being vetted, and authorities are trying to ensure that they have no history of atrocities and no intention of committing future ones, the Guardian reports. Defense sources tell Politico that while background checks have eliminated some rebels, many potential fighters who came forward have been rejected because they won't commit to only fighting ISIS and not the Assad regime they were rebelling against in the first place. (Israel's anti-ISIS strategy involves a very big fence.)
– We shouldn't be too worried about the sequester—after all, Congress doesn't exactly seem to be recoiling at the thought. And Roger Simon has a theory on why: Lawmakers' own salaries aren't getting cut, he explains at Politico. Sure, their staffers are facing furloughs that amount to a 20% pay decrease, but members of Congress will keep collecting six-figure salaries. Of course our lawmakers "might have to figure out how to put those plastic coffee pods in the machines themselves, but these people are not fools," he writes. "They will order out. If they can figure out how to work the telephones." In fact, House Republicans are positively excited about the sequester, writes Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, noting their agenda yesterday consisted only of renaming a California NASA research center. They're "pursuing a considered strategy of deliberate idleness," after finally realizing that doing nothing means they get "a 2.5% cut in all federal spending without coughing up a single dollar in tax increases. They have learned to stop worrying and love the sequester." Click for Milbank's full piece; Simon's humorous take is here.
– Now that former Nazi prison guard Jakiw Palij is out of the US, the New York Times explores how he got in, and it wasn't through his efforts alone. As Nazi records of his SS membership weren't uncovered until the 1990s, Palij successfully applied for a visa under the Displaced Persons Act at the American consular office in Schweinfurt, Germany, in June 1949 alongside Jaroslaw Bilaniuk, whose SS identification number turned out to be only one digit away from Palij's, says Peter Black, a former Justice Department historian who worked on Nazi deportation cases. Both claimed to have worked in Germany during the war—Palij as a factory worker, Bilaniuk as a farmhand. Mykola Wasylyk, who also served with the men at the Trawniki labor camp and who'd already arrived in the US after securing a visa, vouched for both. The records suggest Palij and Bilaniuk weren't coerced into joining the SS as Palij later claimed, but volunteered together in February 1943. Together with Wasylyk, they guarded prisoners who made uniforms and brushes at Trawniki, says Black, a camp known for having executed 6,000 Jews in a single day in November 1943. Upon their arrival in the US, Palij and Bilaniuk settled 100 miles from Wasylyk in Queens, NY. Bilaniuk and Wasylyk would each die in the US, even after officials uncovered their true past. Deported to Germany this week at President Trump's direction, per Reuters, Palij is unlikely to face charges.
– It used to be you'd be heavily fined if you turned on your water too much or for an unapproved reason in parched California. Now many of those restrictions are about to be dismissed, with a reversal of the state mandate for a 25% drop in city water use, the New York Times reports. Instead, thanks to the hard work of everyday Californians and a precipitation-filled winter that partly restocked the area's reservoirs and mountain snowpacks, the State Water Resources Control Board is rolling back its rules on keeping tabs on how long people shower or water their lawns, allowing local communities to come up with their own conservation methods. "We are still in a drought, but we are no longer in the-worst-snow-pack-in-500-years drought," says Felicia Marcus, the head of the SWRCB. By putting the conservation power back into the hands of each community as of June 1, those areas can come up with the best plan based on their particular area's water supply, which varies greatly from place to place. But a climate manager on the water board warns this is still just a trial run, with the National Drought Mitigation Center noting in the Sacramento Bee that 70% of the state is still in "severe," "extreme," or "exceptional" drought. The AP notes that certain bans, such as spraying down sidewalks with a hose, will permanently remain.
– Ben Friberg is far from the first person to paddle from Cuba to the US. He is, however, the first person to paddleboard from Cuba to the US, a feat he accomplished yesterday via a 28-hour, 110-mile journey. Friberg, a 35-year-old musician from Tennessee, stood up on his 14-foot-long paddleboard for almost the entire trip to Key West, though he sat down for quick snacks, Reuters reports. Friberg says he made the journey "to promote peace and understanding between Cuba and the United States and to promote a healthy lifestyle." Friberg is not the only Tennessean to set a watery record this week: a Gate City man spent more than six days underwater to set a world record for the longest freshwater scuba dive. Jerry Hall, 49, went under South Holston Lake last Saturday, and emerged yesterday afternoon, reports the AP. Hall gained 15 lbs before the dive and subsisted only on liquids while underwater. "He's very, very cold, very wrinkled and gray," says his trainer. Hall says he now wants a hotdog, beer, and a shower.
– Looks like Massachusetts voters won't be getting another chance to elect a Romney after all, unless Ann steps in. Following reports that GOP leaders were interested, Mitt Romney's son, Tagg, has announced that he won't be seeking the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry. "I have been humbled by the outreach I received," the younger Romney tells the New York Daily News. "It would be an honor to represent the citizens of our great Commonwealth. However, I am currently committed to my business and to spending as much time as I can with my wife and children." Scott Brown's decision not to run for the seat has left the state GOP scrambling for a replacement, and Romney isn't the only possible contender to have ruled himself out, the Boston Herald reports. Former Gov. William Weld and former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey have also decided against running, leaving the party with a handful of little-known choices. "It reminds me of the Three Stooges episode where the sergeant says 'I need volunteers for a dangerous mission. Step forward,' and they all step back," says a Republican state senator.
– It was his job to take care of the swans, and it was a swan that ended up ending his life. Now the wife of a Des Plaines, Ill., man who died in 2012 after a swan attack in a condo complex's retention pond is suing the companies that own and operate the complex, the Chicago Tribune reports. In her complaint, Amy Hensley says the property management companies, as well as the condo and homeowners associations at the Bay Colony complex, were negligent in keeping the swans on the premises. Geese are fearful of swans, so swans or swan decoys are sometimes brought in to keep the goose population in check. But swans can act aggressively while trying to protect their young, and it was a swan's unchecked aggressiveness, Hensley says, that led to the death of her husband, Anthony Hensley. The 37-year-old dad of two worked for Knox Swan and Dog, a local company that rents out swans as a goose control remedy, and he was often seen at Bay Colony taking care of the hired-out birds, typically in his kayak and with his dog. But on the day in question in April 2012, a nesting swan attacked Hensley's kayak and tipped him out of it. The bird continued to go after Hensley, who Fox News says was wearing heavy clothes and boots. He tried to make it to land but ended up drowning. His death was ruled accidental, but his wife's complaint notes the defendants in her suit "should have known the swans are strongly territorial with a dangerous propensity to attack." The suit adds he didn't do anything to agitate the swan before it attacked. Hensley's wife is asking for at least $50,000 in damages. (An Indianapolis man got ticketed for trying to protect his young son from a goose.)
– "It was something to see," Larry Carter tells Fox 5. The plumber got video of a Georgia firefighter catching a baby that had been thrown from a burning apartment building Tuesday in Decatur. Good Morning America reports the baby's father was unable to get out of the building, so he tossed the baby from the second floor and into the arms of firefighter Robert Sutton. Carter says Sutton "caught it like a football pass." While others are calling Sutton a hero, colleagues say he's being "very humble" about his lifesaving catch. "I just did what any of the other firefighters out here would have done." The baby's father was eventually pulled from the building by firefighters, and no injuries were reported.
– Researchers say they've found another possible way to detect Alzheimer's, this time through a blood test that looks for antibodies. Though still under development, a diagnostic kit could be available within the year, reports Reuters. The catch: While scientists are getting better at detecting Alzheimer's with such discoveries, they still can't cure the disease. "It's unclear whether people would want to know a couple of years ahead of time they are going to get Alzheimer's if they can't do anything about it," says a scientist with the Scripps Research Institute. "But I can say with some certainty that we will never get a good therapy for Alzheimer's without early diagnosis." More details here on the science involved in the blood test, which could theoretically work on other diseases such as cancer.
– Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have vowed to make good on their threat of widespread civil disobedience after Beijing crushed hopes of an open election for the territory's chief executive in 2017. China's legislature ruled that candidates must be backed by a nominating committee, a move that means voters are likely to have just two or three candidates to choose from—all of them nominated by a pro-Beijing committee. At a protest last night, one of the pro-democracy movement's leaders called it the "darkest day in the history of Hong Kong's democratic development" and warned that the former British colony's people "are no longer willing to be docile subjects," reports Reuters. Activists in the "Occupy Central" movement plan to paralyze Hong Kong's central business district to protest Beijing's decision. Analysts say Beijing feared that granting Hong Kong's demand for greater democracy would have led to similar demands on the mainland. "In the territory controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, only Hong Kong has some space for free speech, some judicial independence, so it is a mirror for people on the mainland," a dissident in Beijing who was placed under house arrest ahead of the government announcement tells the New York Times. "The outcome of this battle for democracy will also determine future battles for democracy for all of China." In nearby Macau, meanwhile, chief executive Fernando Chui was "re-elected" to another five-year term yesterday by a 400-strong pro-Beijing committee that didn't have any other candidates to choose from, the South China Morning Post reports. Five people were arrested last week over an informal poll on more democracy in the former Portuguese colony.
– A government helicopter crashed today in Damascus, with rebel groups claiming they shot it down. "It was in revenge for the Daraya massacre," a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army told AFP. A video posted online shows the burning helicopter falling to the ground, reports the AP. Syria's official news agency verified the crash, but did not provide details or confirm it was destroyed at the rebels' hands. Meanwhile, the toll from the Daraya massacre continues to rise, and has hit 334 by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights' count. The Los Angeles Times reports that video footage shows victims placed in a mass grave. "We are finding bodies everywhere," says one activist. "The smell of death is everywhere." August has seen 4,000 people killed, according to the Observatory.
– Belgium is taking after the monarchies of Britain and the Netherlands and trimming the royal purse strings. Reigning King Albert II is exempt, but other royals are going to pay income taxes for the first time and get smaller allowances, reports Reuters. For instance, in the case of Queen Fabiola—she is the widow of the previous king—her annual allowance is shrinking to $600,000 from $1.7 million. The king's kids are taking similar cuts, reports AFP. Much of this stems from an outrage that ensued earlier this year when Fabiola was accused of trying to skirt the system by setting up a trust to shield her fortune from estate taxes.
– A kayaker hoping to reel in some salmon on Lake Michigan instead found himself face-to-snout with a 4-foot alligator on Monday. David Castaneda was fishing off Waukegan Harbor when he spotted the reptile swimming slowly with its mouth taped shut, reports the Lake County News-Sun. "I was just in shock," says Castaneda, who sent authorities a video to confirm the alligator wasn't a toy. Once rescued, it was taken to Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, where officials hope to nurse it back to health. Though the animal's condition remains unclear, curator Rob Carmichael says the gator was thin and likely would've died within a couple of weeks as "Lake Michigan is only getting colder and colder." An effort is now being made to trace the foreigner; an investigation will examine whether the exotic animal was abandoned against the law, says city spokesman David Motley. "These creatures are not indigenous," he tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "You can imagine the skepticism that came with it."
– The families of hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram two years ago have been given fresh hope by what the Nigerian military says is another rescue. A military spokesman says that "Miss Serah Luka, who is number 157 on the list of the abducted schoolgirls," was among 97 women and children rescued in a raid that killed at least 35 militants, reports the BBC, although a spokesman for the families of the girls kidnapped in the town of Chibok denies that she is on the list. The military says Luka, a pastor's daughter who joined the Chibok school just two months before the mass kidnapping, is receiving medical treatment, the Guardian reports. On Tuesday, the military announced that it had rescued missing schoolgirl Amina Ali Nkeki from the militants. Since then, she has met with President Muhammadu Buhari and so many other dignitaries that critics are accusing the government of putting a traumatized girl on parade in an effort to score political points. Nkeki was found by vigilantes in the Sambisa Forest after she ran away from a Boko Haram camp with a 4-month-old baby and a man she said was her husband. But while she was meeting the president, the husband was being interrogated as a suspected Boko Haram fighter, CNN reports. Some 217 schoolgirls are still missing, and Nkeki has reportedly said that they are all still in forest camps, apart from six killed in a recent attack.
– Almost eight years after their daughter's car was found abandoned in Detroit, a Georgia couple held out hope that the missing woman would be found alive. It was hope that should've been dashed within months. The body of Crissita Cage-Toaster was pulled from the Detroit River in March 2010, five months after the 28-year-old vanished, per the AP. But though the woman was black, Detroit police and the coroner determined her body belonged to a white or Hispanic woman. It was labeled "Jane Doe 10-3047," held in a coroner's cooler for a year, then buried with other unidentified remains in an unmarked cemetery grave, a cause of death never established, reports MLive. Rosita Cage-Toaster, 58, and her husband, Johnny Toaster, 64, say authorities only informed them of "a mix-up" a month ago, a few months after the couple asked a missing-persons group for help in the case, per WXYZ. Police now say months in the river had affected their daughter's complexion, but the couple wonders how a large tattoo of a red rose on their daughter's right shoulder wasn't a clear giveaway. "I kept telling them to focus on that tattoo," says Cage-Toaster, per MLive. "You could give this to an elementary school student and they could figure out the puzzle." The pair—who say personal items found in their daughter's car were apparently thrown out—say their daughter's body will be exhumed and they'll figure out where they want to bury her. A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday.
– Australian power company SP AusNet hasn't officially accepted responsibility for a wildfire that killed 119 people near Melbourne in early 2009—but it has agreed to pay $470 million to survivors in the biggest class-action settlement in the country's history. Some 10,000 plaintiffs accused the firm of negligence after investigators determined that the fire began when an electricity line failed between two poles, causing a live conductor to ignite vegetation, the BBC reports. The ensuing fire was one of several wildfires that killed a total of 173 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes on February 7, 2009, which became known as Black Saturday. The company says the settlement, which still needs court approval, is not an admission of liability, the AP reports. "The conductor which broke and which initiated the fire was damaged by lightning, compromising its fail-safety design in a manner which was undetectable at the time," it said in a statement. "It is a tragedy that the conductor eventually failed on one of the worst days imaginable." A lawyer for the plaintiffs says the settlement will bring "a measure of justice and some real compensation to help ease the financial burden of their suffering." After the deadly fires, rescued koala Sam became a symbol of hope—though he died of chlamydia later that year.
– Big news from the Palin clan: Page Six reports 26-year-old Bristol is pregnant with her third child. "We are so excited to announce that our family is expanding!" ET quotes Palin and husband Dakota Meyer as saying in a statement. "God has blessed us so much; we are thankful for His grace and new beginnings." Palin gave birth to her last child, daughter Sailor Grace, last December after ending her engagement with Meyer and before marrying him anyway.
– A "mini-mammoth" the size of a baby elephant has been identified on the island of Crete. Mammuthus creticus is the tiniest mammoth ever found, and is another example of "dwarfism" on islands, where scare resources can keep animals small, notes the Telegraph. Fossilized teeth of the three-foot-tall mammoth were first discovered in 1904, but were initially believed to be elephant teeth. Scientists only recently re-examined them and determined they were evidence of a miniature mammoth. They also returned to the spot in Crete and discovered a mini leg bone. "Dwarfism is a well-known evolutionary response of large mammals to island environments," said lead researcher Victoria Herrige from London's Natural History Museum. "Our findings show that on Crete, island dwarfism occurred to an extreme degree, producing the smallest mammoth known so far." Researchers believe the animals may have evolved from regular-sized mammoths as long as 3.5 million years ago.
– Bobby Lee Pearson got what was probably the luckiest break of his life on Wednesday when a jury mistakenly set him free after a burglary trial. It soon turned into the unluckiest break of his life: An hour into his accidental freedom, he got fatally attacked, reports ABC30 in Fresno. The strange chain of events began when jurors couldn't reach a unanimous verdict about Pearson. Eight thought he was guilty and four didn't, and at that point—as the judge had explained to them—they should have sent a note saying they were deadlocked. Instead, they signed a not-guilty form. Judge W. Kent Hamlin learned of the mistake only after the verdict had been read into the public record and had to release the career criminal, reports the Fresno Bee. Otherwise, Hamlin would have declared a mistrial and ordered Pearson held for a second trial. "I can't believe it," he said in court. "I can't change it because double jeopardy has already attached. This has never happened to me in more than 100 jury trials that I have done." Upon being released at 11:57pm Wednesday, Pearson went to his mother's house to collect some belongings and got into a fight with his sister's boyfriend, say police. He was stabbed, with a steak knife found next to his body, and was pronounced dead around 1:25am. "There's not a death penalty on a burglary," the prosecutor in Pearson's case tells AP. "I'm not sitting here thinking he got what he deserved." (Click for another unusual courtroom story.)
– Snowfall in Siberia during October has proved to be a remarkably accurate indication of how cold winters in the US will be, according to meteorologist Judah Cohen—and it looks like this winter could be a doozy. Siberia experienced record snowfall and its worst blizzard in 10 years this October, meaning the "Arctic Oscillation" pattern could once again cause the polar vortex to put the US' Northeast in a deep freeze, reports USA Today. But Cohen, an Atmospheric and Environmental Research scientist who describes himself as a "weather weenie," says the very strong El Nino pattern has made this year more complicated than most and for now, he predicts mild weather in the short term. "The snow cover is the most efficient reflector of sunlight out into space, so more snow cover creates dense air masses that stay close to the ground," Cohen told the Boston Globe earlier this year while explaining why such an immense amount of snow had fallen on the city, and how Siberian snow predicted it. University of Albany polar vortex expert Andrea Lang tells the Albany Times Union that while mild weather may lie ahead until around Christmas this year, the vortex is currently stronger than usual, which raises the risk of it becoming weaker than usual later in the season, sending fiercely cold weather south. (The Old Farmer's Almanac says the coming winter will be incredibly cold, while the NOAA believes it could be balmier than usual in a lot of places.)
– It's not uncommon to spot a black bear roaming the Florida Everglades, but it is uncommon to actually hit one on the road. Three people died last night and eight were injured in a three-car wreck in the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation that began when the first car hit a bear, the Sun-Sentinel reports. The SUV driver's collision with the 300-pound bear set off a chaotic chain reaction. A second car with three people pulled over to help out the SUV passengers—the bear was dead, the SUV was totaled, and passengers were hurt, though the driver herself wasn't injured. That's when a Mercedes smashed into the second car, killing the three good Samaritans who had stopped to help, CBS Miami reports. The Mercedes passengers and at least three of the SUV's passengers suffered various injuries ranging from serious to critical and were brought to two local hospitals by airlift and ambulance. "I have never heard of a case of a bear being in a traffic accident," a Seminole Police Department spokesman tells CNN. "We have had cases of Florida panthers being involved in car accident[s], but not a Florida black bear." One other person wasn't injured in the accident, which involved a total of 13 people and took place close to 7pm on desolate Snake Road. (Another recent tragic crash involved a 16-year-old driving his family to Disney World.)
– An Illinois woman with five kids was arrested July 7 and briefly thrown in jail for an offense that the town of Cahokia obviously feels strongly about: not mowing her lawn, the Week reports. Single mom Ebony Conner tells KMOV she was verbally warned by a municipal code-enforcement officer back in June and also told to get rid of garbage and broken-down cars from her driveway—but she thought she had more time to fix things, and she definitely didn't think she'd be hauled off to jail. "I understand I violated a code, but … give me a ticket first, make me appear in court," she says. "I know there's gotta be channels other than, 'If you don't cut your grass, we're arresting you right now.'" Conner says she hails from Wisconsin and has spent time in St. Louis, Mo., and she'd never heard of such a thing in either place. While she was detained (cops say she was held for about a half-hour in jail), her five children remained at home, with just a code enforcement officer patrolling the outside of her house, Conner says, adding, "I said 'I don't trust him. I don't know him at all.' … And they still hauled me off." She says she would've cut her grass by hand if she had known her long grass was an arrestable offense. The Institute for Justice lists similar cases that some consider to be an abuse of municipal code enforcement, including those in the town of Pagedale, Mo., where residents can be slammed with fines and tickets for such offenses as barbecuing in front of one's house, having mismatched curtains, and walking on the left-hand side of a crosswalk. (Postal workers mow residents' lawns in Finland.)
– Racial slurs posted outside the dorm rooms of five black students at the Air Force Academy were written by one of those students, the school said Tuesday. The announcement was a jarring turn in an episode that prompted the academy's superintendent to warn students that racists were not welcome at the school—a speech that attracted nationwide attention. The student is no longer at the school, the academy said. A spokesman declined to say whether the student withdrew or was expelled, citing privacy laws, the AP reports. The student's name wasn't released. The slurs were found in September at a dormitory that houses students attending the academy's prep school. In a written statement Tuesday, the academy said, "We can confirm that one of the cadet candidates who was allegedly targeted by racist remarks written outside of their dorm room was actually responsible for the act. The individual admitted responsibility and this was validated by the investigation." The statement added, "Racism has no place at the academy, in any shape or form." Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria gave his stern speech to cadets shortly after the slurs were reported. "If you can't treat someone with dignity and respect, get out," he said. At one point, he insisted that everyone in the audience take out their phones and record him so his message was clearly heard.
– Law enforcement officers and volunteers have flooded the area around a North Carolina home in the search for a 3-year-old girl whose mother says she vanished after she was put to bed Sunday night. Mariah Kay Woods was reported missing around 6:45am Monday after her mother discovered she was gone from their home in Jacksonville, Onslow County, People reports. "My last memory of her was feeding her and putting her to bed," mother Kristy Woods told reporters. "I told her I loved her and she loved me." Woods said her daughter wears leg braces to help her walk, meaning she would have been unlikely to wander off alone. An Amber Alert was issued early Monday and the FBI has now joined the search, ABC reports. Wooded areas around the home have been searched and neighbors have been asked to thoroughly check their yards and sheds for any sign of a little girl. Mariah is described as white, 2 feet, 9 inches tall and 30 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. WRAL reports that the FBI has released surveillance images of a woman and a little girl taken Monday morning in a Walmart in Morehead City, NC, around 40 miles away from Jacksonville. Authorities are trying to determine whether the girl, whose face is seen in profile, is Mariah.
– Hope is fading by the hour at this point, but rescue teams in Nepal say a hiker who has been missing 12 days could well be alive—assuming he merely got lost and not seriously injured in a fall. Rescuers with four trained dogs are combing the area of the Himalayas where 47-year-old Dennis Lee Thian Poh of Kuala Lumpur was last seen on April 5. The goal is to reunite him with his wife before their second wedding anniversary on Saturday, reports the Malay Mail Online. Family and friends have set up a Find Dennis page on Facebook. In a more in-depth look at the search for Lee, NPR reports that his crucial mistake was walking ahead of his hiking group, alone, on treacherous terrain. He either didn't see or ignored signs warning precisely against it, and it's not clear whether his guide informed him. "People always underestimate the mountains," says an official with the rescue outfit SAR Dogs Nepal, which is leading the search. "The mountains are not your friends. So many people believe they can do it alone." One sliver of hope: Other hikers have survived longer stretches before being found, and Lee, an amateur hiker, at least had a warm jacket, a compass, and some muesli.
– In just a month, Iran could have enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb, a US expert says. "Breakout times"—a reference to the period needed to get weapons-grade uranium from low-enriched uranium—"are currently too short and shortening further." The findings, from the Institute for Science and International Security, are based on Iranian and UN data on nuclear progress, USA Today notes. The White House is currently urging Congress to hold off on potential tougher sanctions on the country. Meanwhile, however, some US officials say new nuclear talks with Iran are going well. "I have never had such intense, detailed, straightforward, candid conversations with the Iranian delegation before," says a negotiator, per the Christian Science Monitor. Indeed, an Iranian lawmaker says the country isn't currently enriching uranium to 20% purity, a point at which it's easy to make weapons-grade stuff, the Monitor notes. MP Hossein Naqavi Hosseini says there's "no need for further production" of 20%-enriched uranium, the Telegraph reports. Such a halt is one of the West's central goals in negotiations, the Monitor reports. Hosseini, however, isn't a government spokesman or nuclear negotiator, the AP notes.
– Apparently that dinner with Bradley Cooper last month was no fluke: Jennifer Lopez was spotted with the Hollywood heartthrob again in LA Saturday, and People has pictures. “She likes him,” says one source. Another adds, “It makes her feel good that he seems so into her. She has a fun time with Bradley and he makes her laugh.” In more rebound news, Blake Lively has moved on from Leonardo DiCaprio to ScarJo ex Ryan Reynolds, and sources tell the New York Daily News that their relationship is getting “more serious” as Lively recently visited Reynolds in Boston for a second time. As for her ex, Leo is filming The Great Gatsby in Australia and “has six local models on speed dial,” the Sun reports.
– The SEC's fraud suit against Goldman Sachs might be just the tip of the iceberg, because other investment banks engaged in exactly the same sleight of hand, Pro Publica reports. Goldman is accused of failing to disclose that a hedge fund was both helping to create, and betting against, the investments Goldman was selling. But several other investment banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup all did the same thing. The SEC is already investigating some of these other deals, the Wall Street Journal adds. The agency says it'll sue if it believes banks misrepresented securities to their clients. Indeed, Rabobank already sued Merrill Lynch last year, alleging that Merrill did just that with some securities that the hedge fund Magnetar helped create and bet against. When the Goldman case came out, Rabobank issued a statement saying it was “the same type of fraudulent conduct” Merrill had engaged in.
– Tempted to blame China for your economic woes, America? Take a look in the mirror instead. That was the message of Alibaba founder Jack Ma Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he wagged a finger at the US for blowing $14 trillion on war efforts over the past three decades while letting US infrastructure languish, CNBC reports. "It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys," Ma said, instead citing an error in US strategy, per the South China Morning Post (which is owned by Alibaba). While globalization has enriched us, the country ends up funneling money to Wall Street and Silicon Valley instead of to Main Street USA and people "not good at schooling," he said, adding "not everybody can pass Harvard like me." He also asked where billions of dollars made by major multinational corporations like Microsoft and IBM has gone, which Investopedia sees as a reference to the cash they've squirreled way abroad. Ma's comments come in the wake of campaign warnings from Donald Trump that the US could hit China with tariffs on its exports here, though Ma says he's met with Trump sees him as "open minded and … listening," per SCMP. In other big Alibaba news, an Olympic-sized announcement: CNN reports the Chinese e-commerce company has made a deal to supply technology and other services for the next six Olympic Games. (Here's what else Ma and Trump talked about.)
– It's being called the CIA's "Snowden moment"—and it reveals secrets that paranoid time-travelers from the 1950s would find completely unsurprising, including suggestions that the agency has been spying on people through their TVs. The CIA is scrambling to deal with the fallout from WikiLeaks' release Tuesday of a vast trove of data on the agency's hacking tools. A former senior intelligence official tells the Washington Post that the leak, which experts believe is genuine, could "cause grave if not irreparable damage to the ability of our intelligence agencies to conduct our mission." A roundup of coverage: One hack, code-named Weeping Angel, allows spies to capture audio and possibly video from Samsung smart TVs that appear to be turned off. Wired has a guide to telling whether your TV has been hacked. PC World reports that the WikiLeaks release included snippets of code that antivirus vendors can now use to determine whether hacking attempts originated at the CIA. MIT Technology Review describes the leaked information, including news that the CIA has found vulnerabilities in iOS and Android, as "sinister" but not "particularly Earth-shattering" from a technological point of view. Business Insider examines some of WikiLeaks' claims and finds that there's no evidence that the CIA was able to crack the encryption of apps like Signal and WhatsApp. Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, tells the New York Times he's disturbed by signs that the government knew about vulnerabilities in electronic devices and kept them quiet to make spying easier. "Those vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies, but by hackers and governments around the world," Wizner says. "Patching security holes immediately, not stockpiling them, is the best way to make everyone's digital life safer." Forbes spoke to security experts from several companies about the leak. They said the information about the CIA's technological capabilities is unsurprising, but that it should serve as a reminder to people that they cannot fully trust the security of their devices. "People need to wake up to the fact that they need to take responsibility for maintaining the privacy of their information and make no assumptions," says Ajay Arora, CEO of Vera. "At the end of the day, no one has your best interests in mind but you—people can't even trust their own government anymore. This is the tragic new normal we have to all unfortunately accept." Companies including Google, Samsung, and WhatsApp declined to comment, the Washington Post reports. Apple released a statement saying the issues disclosed in the leak were patched in a recent update and that they "always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security update." "Imagine a world where the actual CIA spends its time figuring out how to spy on you through your TV. That's today," tweeted Edward Snowden, though he added that while it may not feel like it, end-to-end encryption has actually made computer security a lot better than it used to be.
– After last year's dismal debut HealthCare.gov is feeling much better now, and is busily connecting Americans with health care plans as the second sign-up period opened yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said today. The site took in 100,000 new applications in its first 24 hours, reports Politico, saw 500,000 log in to their accounts, and 1 million more went "window-shopping" for plans. Call centers took 100,000 calls. Burwell said she expects "strong and healthy growth" this year—about another 2 million people to add to the 7 million already signed up, per the AP. A White House spokesman said today there was no indication of problems. "HealthCare.gov works really well now," said President Obama.
– Rookie Giants linebacker Mark Herzlich is happier than most to be playing in the Super Bowl: “2 yrs ago I was told I might never walk again. Just WALKED off plane in Indy to play in the Super Bowl. Take That Sh*t Cancer," Herzlich tweeted after arriving in Indianapolis yesterday. Herzlich was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in 2009. He had been expected to be a first-round draft pick from Boston College, but instead spent the year undergoing treatment, choosing chemotherapy and radiation over a leg amputation that would have ended his dream of playing in the NFL, ABC reports. Herzlich, who went undrafted and joined the Giants as a free agent this season, says he sees his arrival in Indianapolis to take on the New England Patriots as an opportunity to inspire. "This week’s all about football and all about playing," he tells NFL.com, "but there are people that are out there going through cancer right now and saying, ‘He’s doing it. I can do it.’"
– In a potentially unprecedented move for the state, a Minnesota man is being charged with murder for allegedly driving his partner to suicide. According to the Olmsted County Attorney, Long Vang and Jessica Haban were together for 10 years. During that time, Haban was subject to increasing levels of domestic violence. She was thrown into a wall by her hair and had a knife held to her throat, the Huffington Post reports. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Vang allegedly knocked Haban unconscious multiple times and poured vegetable oil on her because she "had bad in her." In May 2015, Vang allegedly punched Haban in the head, causing a traumatic brain injury, which led to depression. Despite a court order, Vang repeatedly called and texted Haban. She told a social worker she felt like Vang had killed her. Haban sought mental health treatment, but Vang threatened her, telling her she would lose custody of their two kids if she didn't stop getting medical care. Three days after leaving treatment in December 2015, Haban killed herself. She was 28. Vang was arrested this month and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The county attorney believes Haban killed herself to escape Vang. It's extremely rare to be charged with murder for someone else's suicide. In what is called a "depraved heart murder," prosecutors must prove Vang "did something that was very likely to kill" while displaying "complete disregard for human life," HuffPo explains. The county attorney believes they can do so. Haban's mother tells the Star Tribune the charges mean "there is finally going to be some justice for Jessica."
– President Obama visited New Jersey today to promote his new efforts to help prisoners re-integrate into society, the Star-Ledger reports. Visiting a facility that helps former inmates and joining a roundtable on the topic at Rutgers University, the president made his case. "There are people across the board—folks who work inside the criminal justice system, folks who are affected by the criminal justice system, who are saying, "There's got to be a better way,'" he told 226 people in attendance at Rutgers. Among his plans, which the New York Times calls "relatively modest": Job applicants with the federal government won't have to reveal their criminal history right away—so they can make an impression first. Obama has also called on Congress to "ban the box" that requires applicants to disclose any past criminal conviction. New education grants and tech training programs will be made available to help former prisoners, the White House said today. A new "National Clean Slate Clearinghouse" will allow certain released prisoners to seal or wipe clean their records. Residents of public housing under the age of 25 will be given the same chance. Obama's visit sparked partisan rancor between Gov. Chris Christie and the White House, CNN reports. Christie accused Obama of piggybacking on criminal-justice reforms that aren't his, and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called Christie's remarks "particularly irresponsible, but not surprising for somebody whose poll numbers are close to an asterisk."
– Which colleges pay off? PayScale crunched the numbers to compute the best returns on investment—by comparing the cost of a degree against what its students earn upon graduation—and Huffington Post rounds up the best of the bunch: Massachusetts Institute of Technology: annual ROI: 12.6%; 30-year ROI: $1.69 million California Institute of Technology: 12.6%; $1.64 million Harvard: 12.5%; $1.63 million Harvey Mudd College: 12.5%; $1.63 million Dartmouth: 12.4%; $1.59 million Stanford: 12.3%; $1.57 million Princeton: 12.3%; $1.52 million Yale: 11.9%; $1.39 million Notre Dame: 12.2%; $1.38 million University of Pennsylvania: 11.8%; $1.36 million See the Huffington Post slideshow here and PayScale's complete rankings here.
– The nation's debate on sanctuary cities and states is about to play out front and center in a federal courtroom. The Justice Department is suing the state of California over three new laws that provide protection to undocumented immigrants, reports NPR. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be in the state Wednesday to lay out his case that California is hindering the federal government's ability to enforce immigration laws, reports the Los Angeles Times. The laws, all passed last year, deal with how businesses and law enforcement agencies in the state cooperate with federal immigration officials. For example, one makes it illegal for private employers to help agents track down undocumented workers unless they're bound to do so by a court order. "The Department of Justice and the Trump administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair, and unconstitutional policies that are imposed on you," Sessions will say in a speech to the California Peace Officers Association. California Gov. Jerry Brown was already tweeting in response, with a not-so-subtle dig at President Trump's tweeting style. “At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America," he wrote. "Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they don’t work here. SAD!!!” The case is not only a big escalation of the fight between the feds and California, it could have big consequences across the country in other states and cities with similar laws, notes the Washington Post.
– You'd expect some jail time for a child rapist, right? Not so for du Pont heir Robert H. Richards IV, who admitted to raping his 3-year-old daughter almost a decade ago, the Daily Mail reports. In a 2009 case that's only now coming to light, the News Journal reports that Delaware Judge Jan Jurden sentenced Richards to an eight-year prison term but suspended it for probation, plus a sex offenders rehabilitation program, because Richards "will not fare well" in prison and "treatment needs exceed need for punishment." The News Journal calls it "a rare and puzzling rationale" from a judge who is known for her tough sentencing, especially given that treatment is usually reserved for first-time drug offenders, drunk drivers, and the mentally ill. While some attorneys say such a sentence isn't unheard of, a public defender notes that the case raises questions about "how a person with great wealth may be treated by the system." A defense lawyer adds, "I've never heard of the judge saying in general that he is not going to do well ... Who thrives in jail?" A suit recently filed against Richards by his ex-wife is seeking damages for assaults on the couple's two children. Initially indicted on two counts of second-degree child rape, Richards took a plea deal of one count of fourth-degree rape, which carries no mandatory minimum prison sentence, the Daily Mail notes.
– "Je Suis Charlie," read signs at silent vigils around the world as thousands of people gathered to express their horror and outrage at the terrorist attack on Paris satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Around 35,000 people gathered in Paris' Place de la Republique, with many leaving candles and piles of pens at memorials to pay tribute to the 12 dead journalists, cartoonists, and police officers, the BBC reports. "These killers tried to kill not only people but also the idea of peace and debate," a Muslim schoolteacher carrying one of the newspaper's controversial cartoons at the Paris vigil told the Independent. "I won't let them do that and everyone in France won't let them do that. They had no right to use the name of Allah. Mohammed would be turning in his grave. Tonight we are all Charlie." Across France, the number of people at vigils ran into the hundreds of thousands, with vigils also taking place across Europe and worldwide. In New York City, where security has been stepped up at buildings such as the French consulate, a crowd gathered in Union Square sang the French national anthem and held pictures of the victims, reports CBS. There has also been a huge outpouring of support online, with hashtags like #IamCharlie trending, and social media users sharing images like a picture of a machine gun with the slogan "This is not a religion," the AP reports.
– Robert Samuel is a professional time-killer. As the founder and CEO of Same Ole Line Dudes (or SOLD) in New York, he'll keep your place in line to ensure you get your hands on "iPhones, the latest Air Jordans, or the hottest Broadway tix in town." SOLD has even helped New Yorkers with brunch waitlists, sample sales, and passports. And because he's paid for his time—$25 for the first hour, and $10 for every half-hour thereafter—long lines are likely a lot more welcome to him than they are to the rest of us. In fact, Samuel recently made nearly $1,000 when he spent 48 hours at the very head of the line for the iPhone 6, reports Salon, which calls the business part of the "Uber-ization of everything." Since starting SOLD after getting laid off in 2012, Samuel now has 15 employees. He says he makes up to $1,000 a week, though the New York Times notes that because his business is "cyclical," he currently also has a full-time job as a security guard. The line-waiting doesn't always sound pleasant. SOLD employee Adonis Porch tells Salon he's had to wait in hot weather, freezing weather, rain, sleet, and snow. Samuel says that while his customers can be superwealthy, most are just "everyday" people for whom time is a real commodity, reports CNBC. "Moms hire me because they can't wait in lines in the mornings. They have to take the kids off to school." Though in that wealthy vein, the Times recounts the time a group from the Middle East had nine SOLD workers wait in line for Cronuts. Whatever he's doing, his advice: "The rule is always respect the order of things. First come first served." (This line stretched more than a mile last November.)
– Melania Trump, master troller? While what Donald Trump's wife was wearing during the "ugliest debate in American history" at first glance didn't seem newsworthy, it's now creating buzz based on name alone, the Hill reports. There was no "wardrobe malfunction," but Melania's bright fuchsia $1,100 Gucci silk crepe de chine shirt set Twitter aflutter because the style is one of the fashion house's "signature silhouettes" known as the pussy-bow—which immediately brings to mind Trump's recently revealed "hot mic" tape from 2005. CBS News notes that the style—also known as the pussycat bow—was popular in the mid-1900s and a favorite of Margaret Thatcher. Quartz reports that this "sartorial reverberation" of Donald Trump's 2005 comments—which Melania called "unacceptable and offensive"—wasn't any kind of jab or joke on her part, per CBS journalist Sopan Deb, who tweeted, "Campaign spokeswoman says this was not intentional." But the Internet is a cynical bunch, with the Cut's Stella Bugbee wistfully noting, "I really want to believe the Pussy Bow was an artful act of silent rebellion," while George Takei is simply incredulous: "You can't make this stuff up." (Here's who won and lost the debate.)
– Sheriff's deputies shot and killed a 6-year-old boy Thursday in Texas, WOAI reports. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar says four deputies opened fire on 30-year-old Amanda Jones, a suspected car thief, after they "cornered" her outside a mobile home occupied by Kameron Prescott and his family in the town of Schertz. One of the bullets went through the mobile home and hit Kameron in the abdomen. According to CNN, Salazar says deputies performed first aid on the boy, but he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Jones was also killed. "The deputies are, of course, understandably shaken up," Salazar says. He says the shooting is under investigation, but in his opinion the boy's death is "a tragic accident." Salazar says one deputy is "adamant" he saw Jones with a gun and that she threatened to shoot him. He says Jones threatened both police and Kameron's family, who didn't know her, just before deputies opened fire. But investigators haven't been able to locate a gun despite the use of a helicopter and dive team. Salazar says they have found a pipe with Jones' blood on it near the scene of the shooting. One deputy at the scene was wearing a body camera, but he blocked it with his rifle during the shooting. Meanwhile, Kameron is being remembered by those who knew him. "Kameron was a ball of energy, happy, smart, and could strike up a conversation with anyone,” school counselor Maria Morales tells KSAT. “He also had a great sense of humor and caring heart."
– For the first time ever, Viagra will be available over the counter and without a prescription. Reuters reports Pfizer plans to start selling an over-the-counter version of the erectile dysfunction medication this spring in the UK. The new Viagra Connect will have the same major ingredient as regular Viagra, according to Fortune. Sales of Viagra have been declining since 2012, and Pfizer hopes an over-the-counter version will open a new revenue channel. The drug maker has been pushing for the UK to reclassify Viagra as a non-prescription drug for nearly a decade. That finally happened courtesy of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, Time reports. “Erectile dysfunction can be a debilitating condition, so it’s important men feel they have fast access to quality and legitimate care,” says Mick Foy of the MHRA. The agency hopes allowing anyone over the age of 18 to purchase Viagra at the pharmacy will reduce the number of people who buy dangerous counterfeit erectile dysfunction medication. Viagra Connect is the first non-prescription erectile dysfunction medication in the UK. It will cost approximately $27 for a four-pack.
– In its latest execution video, ISIS threatened that its next victim would be an American aid worker named Peter Kassig. The 26-year-old is a former Army Ranger from Indiana who served in Iraq in 2007 before being honorably discharged for medical reasons, reports CNN. He enrolled at Butler University upon his return to the US, but traveled to Libya on his spring break to learn about the Syria crisis. "I wanted more of a challenge, more of a purpose," he told the network in a 2012 interview. Eventually, Kassig decided to stay full time to do humanitarian work and founded a relief group called the Special Emergency Response and Assistance, reports the Washington Post. In the last few years, he has been delivering food and medical supplies to refugees from the Syrian conflict. Kassig's parents today released a YouTube video pleading for his release. They refer to their son as "Abdul-Rahman, formerly known as Peter." The Kassigs have previously said that their son converted to Islam while in captivity. A few quotes from Kassig, from CNN and from an interview last year with Time: “This is real, and it’s scary stuff, and it’s sad what is happening to people here. People back home need to know about it, they need to know. Sometimes you gotta take a stand, you gotta draw a line somewhere.” "I am not a doctor. I am not a nurse. But I am a guy who can clean up bandages, help clean up patients, swap out bandages, help run IVs, make people's quality of life a little bit better. This is something for me that has meaning, that has purpose." "In five years, if I can look back on all of this and say that our organization is able to truly help people, that I was able so share a little bit of hope, and that I never stopped learning, then I will know this all stood for something."
– The Islamic State may have claimed responsibility for Wednesday's twin terror attacks in Tehran that killed 12, but Iran has a different culprit in mind: regional rival Saudi Arabia. "This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists," says a statement from Iran's Revolutionary Guards, per Reuters. It acknowledges that ISIS was "involved," however, thus insinuating a link between ISIS and the Saudis, notes New York. A look at coverage: Potent symbols: The attackers hit not only the parliament building in Tehran but the mausoleum with the tomb of founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—"the two most potent symbols of the 1979 revolution," writes Simon Tisdall at the Guardian. For Iranians, this is "deeply shocking," the equivalent of someone attacking the Lincoln Memorial in the US. The attacks: Details on how the coordinated attacks unfolded are at the New York Times. A first: Assuming the ISIS claim is legit, this would be the first ISIS attack in Iran, but the militant group has wanted to strike there for years, explains a Q&A at PRI. ISIS is Sunni, while Iran is a Shia nation, and it's no small distinction: ISIS views Shiites as apostates. The backdrop: The New York Times notes the attacks come not only after Trump's trip (seen as emboldening the Saudis) but after the Saudi move to isolate Qatar, which it accuses of supporting terrorism and Iran. It all relates to the main issue: "Iran and Saudi Arabia are the leading nations on opposing sides of the Middle East split between Shiite and Sunni Islam." Morale boost: Given ISIS retreats in Iraq and Syria, the successful strikes in Iran will clearly be a big morale boost to the group, per an analysis at the BBC. As they lose their strongholds in those countries, they want followers to launch attacks elsewhere, and no target is bigger than Iran. Trump response: It was notably mixed. "We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times," he said in a statement. But then added: "We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote." The US does indeed consider Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, notes Business Insider. Ominous threat: Just hours before the attacks, the Saudi foreign minister had said Iran should be punished for supporting groups such as al-Qaeda, per Al Arabiya English.
– India is giving up attempts to recover John Allen Chau's body from the remote island where the US missionary was killed by tribespeople, at least temporarily. Government officials, including those within law enforcement and tribal welfare, agreed Monday to put the plan on hold to avoid disturbing the protected Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island, reports the BBC. A government official adds that a boat was dispatched Tuesday morning "only to check the situation." No contact has been made with the tribe, which resists outsiders, since the 26-year-old Chau is believed to have died after reaching the island on Nov. 16, per CNN. Fishermen who dropped him off believe they saw his body a day later. "We know the general direction of where it was taken, but we still don't know where exactly it is," the official tells the BBC, referring to the body's recovery as "too risky." Survival International said the recovery would be "incredibly dangerous," noting the risk of disease for the islanders and past incidents that resulted in them using force in a bid to defend their home, reports the Guardian. Still, evidence may need to be collected before Chau's death certificate can be issued. (The bodies of two fishermen killed on the island in 2006 have not been recovered.)
– It's a common hypothetical in physics classrooms: How long would it take to fall through a tunnel from one side of the Earth to the other? The new answer: 38 minutes and 11 seconds, reports Science. The result is courtesy of McGill University graduate student Alexander Klotz, whose calculations take four minutes off the previously accepted answer and appear in the American Journal of Physics. The reason for the shorter time? Unlike previous calculations, Klotz's take into account that the Earth's layers have different densities, and those differences would affect the hypothetical falling man, notes Phys.org. "The way the Earth is structured, the gravity increases slightly as you go deeper towards the dense core, to about 110% of its surface value, before getting weaker as you move through the core, reaching zero at the center,” says Klotz, as quoted in Forbes. (If it's all a little too hypothetical, try physics-inspired pasta instead.)
– Car bombings, kidnappings, and attacks on railway stations and Jerusalem's Teddy soccer stadium were just some of the items on Hamas' checklist, according to Israeli officials who today say they foiled a major West Bank terror plot by the group, the AP reports. The Shin Bet security service confirms it arrested in September more than 30 militants who reportedly were recruited and trained in Jordan, Turkey, Syria, and the Gaza Strip to carry out their missions, the Jerusalem Post reports. Their orders came directly from Hamas leaders who had set up shop in Turkey, and a stash of weapons and explosives was found as well, CNN reports. Other intended plans: sneaking into Israeli communities, targeting Israeli traffic and military hubs, and establishing Jordanian terror cells, the Post notes. The operation apparently started to fall apart after a failed roadside attack at the end of August, the Times of Israel reports: Info gathered after that incident offered "a wealth of information about the infrastructure." "This is one operation that has been published, but there are many more that remain secret," PM Benjamin Netanyahu says, per the AP. "These foiling activities are against terrorists and against Hamas, which challenges the existence of a Jewish nation-state and the existence of Jews in general." Hamas, meanwhile, has offered no comment so far. (A reported member of Hamas drove right into an Israeli crowd in October and killed a baby.)
– An unknown object is falling from the sky—WTF?? Actually, astronomers refer to it as WT1190F and say it's destined to strike Earth on Friday the 13th next month, CBS San Francisco reports. Bill Gray, an expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., says the unknown piece of space junk will land in the Indian Ocean not far from Sri Lanka. The object appears to be three to six feet long and has likely been orbiting way beyond the moon for a while now, Nature reports. It may be paneling or a used rocket stage from a recent trip to the moon, or could date back as far as the Apollo flights. Gray predicts it will burn up before landing, but adds that "I would not necessarily want to be going fishing directly underneath it."
– The Securities and Exchange Commission is filing a complaint against professional golfer Phil Mickelson related to insider trading, the AP reports. The SEC says gambler William Walters received tips and business information about Dean Foods Co. from Thomas Davis, former head of Dean Foods, between 2008 and 2012. The SEC says Walters called Mickelson, who owed him money, in 2012 and urged him to trade Dean Foods stock. The SEC says Mickelson did so the next day, buying 240,000 shares and making a profit of $931,000, per ESPN. He then used that money to pay Walters back his IOU a few months later, the SEC says. Mickelson's attorney told ESPN on Thursday that the golfer, who wasn't charged criminally, has made a deal with the SEC that involves him returning all money made from that trade—what the SEC refers to as "all ill-gotten gains in the form of illicit trading profits," per USA Today. Mickelson was not in the field at the AT&T Byron Nelson tournament in Irving, Texas, where play began Thursday morning. Walters, meanwhile, was arrested in Las Vegas Wednesday and charged with insider trading; he's set to appear in court Thursday. (The New York Times offers a more in-depth look, including more on Walters, often said to be the best sports bettor in the US.)
– Amid a "shocking" tragedy, locals say something smells fishy in central Colorado. On April 12, after the owners of the Lion's Gate wild animal sanctuary requested to move to a nearby but more urban location citing safety concerns after recurring flooding on the property, Elbert County commissioners voted no, citing safety concerns, reports the Denver Post. Then on April 20, the sanctuary suddenly euthanized all 11 of its animals—three lions, three tigers, and five bears—and the Lion's Gate web site went dark, showing only the words, "This account has been suspended." The owner of a nearby, larger sanctuary says he had offered to take the animals, but co-owner Dr. Joan Laub and a sanctuary volunteer say the senior animals wouldn't have survived a move to a larger sanctuary and that the county commission's vote forced the sanctuary's hand, reports CBS4. On a Care2 Petition page launched months ago, Laub wrote that Colorado Parks and Wildlife had authorized a move to 85 acres the sanctuary also owns in a more urban part of the county, though she listed 18 animals at the time. County Chairman Danny Wilcox, meanwhile, tells Huffington Post that the commission is "shocked" the animals were put down after the owners had said they'd continue to operate if their request was denied. A spokeswoman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife calls the killings unprecedented: "This has never happened before in our state." One of the owners was once accused of smuggling cats, per the Denver Post in 2006, and the owner of the larger sanctuary theorizes to the Huffington Post that issues with licensing made it difficult for Lion's Gate to get funding. (See why this vet killed herself with a euthanasia drug.)
– Thanks to a dedicated grandson, Illinois man Walter Thomas finally has an answer to a question that he has pondered for many of his 91 years. He "told me a long time ago that he always wanted to back a car through the garage door," granddaughter Becky Goers tells the Woodstock Independent. "He always wondered if the garage door would pop off, or if the frame would come down with it." After hearing about the bizarre "bucket list" item, Goers' brother—an accident reconstruction officer for the county sheriff's office—set to work making it happen, obtaining an old car and finding friends who were about to demolish a garage, the Independent reports. Last Sunday, as family members that included great-grandchildren and his wife of 70 years looked on, Thomas put on a crash helmet and backed right through the wooden garage door with his grandson sitting in the passenger seat, reports the Independent, which notes that while the door was smashed, the frame stayed up. "I hit the gas, squealed the tires, and bang—we went through the door," a satisfied Thomas tells the AP. It's not clear whether there are any items left on his bucket list, but he says taking down that garage door will be hard to top. (A New York City man took his dying dog on an epic "bucket list" road trip.)
– You're never too young, it seems, for a trendy diet. The release of an Australian paleo diet cookbook has been delayed amid concerns over its recipes for babies, Australia's ABC News reports. Officials are investigating Bubba Yum Yum: The Paleo Way For New Mums, Babies and Toddlers, which includes a recipe for a "homemade formula" for infants younger than six months. To make the bone broth, parents will need chicken bones, chicken feet, and vinegar. Australia's health department says it "has concerns about the inadequate nutritional value of some of the recipes, in particular the infant formula"—which, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, is touted in the book as the "next best thing" after breast milk. "All of the experts that you will speak to would say that feeding your baby anything other than infant formula or breast milk under six months as their primary source of nutrition is extremely dangerous," says a breastfeeding expert. In the Australian Women's Weekly, a public health advocate puts it even more starkly: "In my view, there's a very real possibility that a baby may die if this book goes ahead." The book is the work of chef and bestselling author Pete Evans along with a nutritionist and a blogger, Charlotte Carr, who says the paleo diet fixed her son's health issues. (The founder of PayPal, who embraces a paleo-style diet, is aiming to live to be 120.)
– A party in October ended with a Legal Aid lawyer lying unconscious on a New York City sidewalk, and on Tuesday, a state parole judge who handles Rikers Island cases was charged with misdemeanor assault and harassment in the case, the New York Daily News reports. Robert Beltrani, 53, was said to be at the same Oct. 20 party as attorney Sam Roberts, 48, per the New York Post, and an allegedly intoxicated Beltrani reportedly said some inflammatory words to Roberts just after 11:30 that night as they stood outside the venue. "Yeah, I'm the judge," Beltrani said, per the complaint against him. "I do justice and I f---ing kill people!" Beltrani then allegedly sucker-punched Roberts as he tried to walk away, then fell on top of him on the sidewalk. Roberts was knocked out and suffered a separated shoulder, a black eye, and other injuries. He told the Daily News in October that Beltrani just didn't seem to like him after they were introduced, that he tried to disengage and may have been impolite to Beltrani, and that at one point the judge warned him, "Don't disrespect me. Watch out." The Post, which noted Beltrani showed up to court Tuesday with a "quarter-size lump on his forehead," adds that he left the courtroom without comment, "[mumbling] profanities under his breath." He was released without bail; Roberts received an order of protection against him. (An Iowa man died over the summer after being sucker-punched.)
– A school bus carrying about 30 sixth-grade girls overturned in Kansas today when its driver took an on-ramp too quickly, police in Bonner Springs tell KCTV. Eight girls were hurt in the crash, but none of the injuries was life-threatening, a spokesperson for Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City, Missouri, tells AP. According to an administrator, the girls were en route to a camping trip.
– Madame Tussauds will have its first transgender wax figure in place by the end of the month, with Orange Is the New Black actress Laverne Cox getting the honor. The 31-year-old pronounced herself "deeply honored," reports Entertainment Weekly. "When I think about being who I am, a black trans woman from a working class background raised in Mobile, Alabama, this honor feels even more improbable and extraordinary." It will be unveiled June 26 in the San Francisco museum, coinciding with the city's Pride festival. Orange, meanwhile, is back for a new season on Netflix Friday, notes UPI.
– Sometimes all it takes for a wounded man to heal is a little TLC—or a lot of TLC, if all 17 of your girlfriends show up. A Chinese man identified only by the surname Yuan was in a car accident on March 24 and was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, per local media. But when staff started contacting his loved ones, more people than anyone expected showed up at his bedside. Yuan had apparently been dating at least 17 women at the same time—including one who says she has a son with him, the South China Morning Post reports—with no one aware of the others' existence until his accident. "I was really worried when I heard that he was in hospital," one paramour says, per the Morning Post. "But when I started seeing more and more beautiful girls show up, I couldn't cry any more." Another deceived lover reveals she had been planning a wedding with him, while the one who claims to have a child by him laments, "What can I do now? I don't love him any more, but I do love my son." Yuan, who was reportedly with some of these women as long as 10 years, is also accused of stealing more than $40,000 from his ex-wife and conning at least some of these 17 girlfriends out of their own funds, China Daily reports; the paper says he'll be charged with fraud. This isn't the only scam Yuan is said to have pulled: Even though it seems he only graduated from middle school, he reportedly worked for a company that rebuilt highways after claiming that he had a civil engineering degree, China Daily notes. (Romance scams can be big business.)
– If the NBA didn't have a certified sensation on its hands before last night, it does now. Harvard wunderkind Jeremy Lin scored 38 points to lead the New York Knicks past Kobe Bryant's Los Angeles Lakers, reports AP. Unfamiliar with Lin? He is only the fourth Asian-American to play in the NBA and the first US-born player of Taiwanese or Chinese descent to do so, notes ABC News in a profile. And up until last week, he'd been a bench-warmer who got overlooked in the draft. Then came a monster week for the point guard, who seems to have single-handedly revived the Knicks' fortunes en route to become the city's new sports darling. (Chants of "MVP" were going up last night.) His marketing potential is off the charts, notes ABC. Even Bryant is impressed: "I think it's a great story. I think it's a testament to perseverance and hard work. Good example for kids everywhere."
– According to a new lawsuit, Sharon Stone hired a nanny … then wouldn't let her speak to Stone's children, lest they pick up her Filipino accent. This according to Erlinda T. Elemen, who worked as Stone's live-in housekeeper and nanny for five years, and who claims Stone made other racially derogatory comments around her. Elemen claims she was fired after she asked Stone to pay her overtime wages that the actress had originally withheld; Stone allegedly paid her but screamed at her and called her a thief, then fired her for taking the pay. The craziness doesn't stop there: The lawsuit also claims Stone criticized Elemen for going to church and wouldn't let her read her Bible in the house at one point, and TMZ notes that Stone is also accused of calling Filipinos stupid and dissing their food. Now Elemen wants unpaid wages, plus damages and penalties, ABC News reports. Stone's publicist says Elemen is just looking for a way to "cash in" after being terminated, and calls the lawsuit "frivolous" and the claims "absurd," "made-up and fabricated."
– A 17-year-old student is in custody as a person of interest in Wednesday's fatal shooting at an Alabama high school, AL.com reports. According to ABC News, police are pursuing charges against the teen but aren't releasing any additional information on his or her identity until charges are filed. The person of interest was also one of the two students injured in the incident, which happened during dismissal in a classroom at Huffman High School in Birmingham. The teen reportedly shot themselves in the leg. They were released from the hospital and into police custody. The 17-year-old killed in the shooting has been identified Courtlin Arrington. She was set to graduate in May, had been accepted to college, and hoped to become a nurse. A third, non-student person was injured in the shooting and treated at the scene, WBRC reports. Police initially called the shooting "accidental," though the cause is still under investigation. Officials decided to pursue charges after watching video of the incident. "At this particular time, we consider it accidental until the investigation takes us elsewhere,'' acting Birmingham police chief Orlando Wilson says. "We have a lot of unanswered questions. There are so many unknowns at this time."
– A Florida deputy was fired last month for impersonating one of the most famous corrupt cops in movie history. The Orlando Sentinel reports Deputy Dean Zipes was outside a sheriff's substation in Lake County around 4am last February with a police trainee and other deputies when he started quoting a "profanity-laced" speech given by Denzel Washington in Training Day. He then rubbed his pistol and Taser together in the direction of a convenience store in what an internal affairs review says mimicked Washington's character, according to WESH. WKMG reports another deputy "was upset" Zipes was acting "in an unsafe manner" where a member of the public could potentially see him. Zipes told investigators he was just joking around. “I am not a rogue, reckless, dangerous, insane guy that slipped through the cracks at the hiring process and somehow got a gun and a badge,” the Sentinel quotes Zipes as saying to investigators. He told them he's "going through some stuff." Zipes was fired April 21, with a supervisor saying he created a "serious safety concern" for fellow deputies and civilians. There are also reports Zipes pulled his pistol twice in an "office setting" and used racial slurs. He reportedly motioned to pull his pistol on a pizza delivery person he was pretending to mistake for an accused cop-killer, and also once "made a scene" at a Starbucks when they wouldn't give him free coffee.
– Police in Utah trying to find the body of Susan Powell after more than two years have labeled her father-in-law a person of interest in the case, reports Utah's KSL.com. Police are specifying that Steven Powell isn't a suspect in her disappearance but that he may have information about it. "They lived together in the house," said the police chief in West Valley City, Utah. "There are things he should want to talk to us (about), we hope." The development comes after Powell's husband, Josh, killed himself and his two sons on Sunday, apparently after the boys began remembering things about their mom's disappearance. "We sure can't prosecute Josh," said the police chief, "but did somebody know something? Did somebody help him? Those are the questions we need to resolve." Steven Powell remains in custody after a search of his house last year found "thousands of images of females being photographed without their knowledge, including Susan Powell and many minors," notes KIRO-FM.
– A billboard near a "gentlemen's club" in Birmingham screams out "strip for me" to passersby, which is notable mainly because it was put up not by the club but by a local church, reports WBRC. The pastor of Rock Church is paraphrasing a line from the Bible's book of Hebrews I, in which people are asked to strip away their sins and encumbrances to serve Jesus. The pastor says his attention-grabbing stunt has a simple purpose: He wants guys to think twice about going into the club and spend that time with their families instead.
– Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is aiming to hold a vote on the Senate's version of ObamaCare repeal-and-replace legislation next week—despite the fact that many GOP senators haven't seen it yet, let alone said they will support it. Insiders tell the Wall Street Journal that although McConnell can only afford to lose two Republican votes, he wants to wrap it up before the July 4 recess so the chamber can move on, and he is gambling that the pressure will make it easier for the GOP to reach a consensus. The Journal notes that if the bill fails to pass before the recess, lawmakers returning home could face "pressure from constituents." The bill is being crafted behind closed doors and sources tell Politico that the text should be ready this week, giving lawmakers around a week to review it before the vote. In contrast, the chamber debated the ObamaCare bill for a month in 2009. The Hill reports that McConnell has focused on winning over moderate Republicans, though conservatives in the House say the bill will die there unless the Senate keeps provisions including the phasing out of ObamaCare's extra Medicaid funding by 2020. "It's close," says GOP Sen. Richard Burr. "Everybody's been counting [votes] since the beginning. It's been close since the beginning." Democrats have slammed the GOP for failing to hold hearings, and plan to "embarrass the heck out of Republicans, who are as much in the dark as we are about their own leadership's plans on the bill," says Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned Monday that Democrats will delay Senate business unless the GOP allows open debate on the legislation.
– Rep. Aaron Schock, an up-and-comer previously best known for baring his six-pack on the cover of Men's Health, has a new claim to fame in the form of his interior decor: It seems the Washington Post's Style reporter Ben Terris popped by the Illinois rep's digs in the Rayburn House Office Building, and ran into Schock's interior decorator, who showed him around. Terris describes the outer office thusly: "Bright red walls. A gold-colored wall sconce with black candles. A Federal-style bull’s-eye mirror with an eagle perched on top." "It's actually based off the red room in Downton Abbey," an aide helpfully told Terris of his outer office. The rest of Terris' piece describes Schock's team trying to squash the story. USA Today took the ball and dug back to 2009 and 2010 and found about $118,000 in office expenditures—including $4,000 on fine-leather furniture and $79,061 on other furniture—that Schock billed to a taxpayer-funded account. Which is turning into kind of an upstairs-downstairs conundrum: While it's not yet clear how much the Downton renovation cost, Schock's interior decorator says she worked for free, thus saving the taxpayer—but prompting CREW to file an ethics complaint claiming that Schock illegally received a gift. "Perhaps it’s not totally surprising that the same congressman who spent campaign money on P90X workout DVDs wanted to create a more picturesque setting in which to be photographed, but the rules clearly require him to pay for those renovations himself," says CREW’s executive director, per NBC Chicago. "Again and again, Rep. Schock’s seeming obsession with his image impedes his ability to conduct himself in ethical manner." The other irony being widely noted: Downton airs on PBS, which Schock has repeatedly voted to de-fund. Schock has yet to comment.
– De La Soul has found a pretty cool way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its first hip-hop album, 3 Feet High and Rising: The group is making its entire catalog free for download for 25 hours, reports Rolling Stone. Fans can get to it through the group's website until 11am EST tomorrow. "It's about allowing our fans who have been looking and trying to get a hold of our music to have access to it," says one of the trio, Posdnuos. That hasn't always been easy because the band's heavy use of samples has led to copyright headaches, explains Rolling Stone. Slate, meanwhile, picks out 10 De La Soul songs perfect for Valentine's Day.
– In 1963, a 23-year-old surveyor for the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army accidentally crossed the border into India. He remained stuck there for 54 years, making it back to his homeland only last week, reports the BBC. The strange tale of Wang Qi starts with a nighttime stroll away from camp. He told the BBC in a previous interview that he got lost and was "tired and hungry." He found a Red Cross vehicle and asked for help, only to be turned over to the Indian army. After nearly seven years in various jails, authorities relocated Wang to a remote village, the Hindustan Times reports. He was not allowed to return to China, however, but nor was he given Indian citizenship. He lived in a kind of limbo. "I cried in the night," Wang says of those first years in India. "I missed my mother." He eventually married, worked at a flour mill, and had children and grandchildren, but he never stopped hoping to return home. A spokesperson for the Chinese government blames Indian bureaucracy for preventing Wang's return over the past half-century. But after being visited by a delegation from the Chinese embassy in recent weeks, visas were procured for Wang and his relatives. His wife was too sick to travel, but Wang arrived in Beijing on Friday with his adult children, where they were met by his surviving relatives. This is only a visit, however. "My family is (in India)," he says. "Where would I go?" (For this soldier, WWII didn't end until 1974.)
– As Australia mourns two hostages killed in a Sydney cafe yesterday, many are wondering what gunman Man Haron Monis was doing on the streets in the first place. The Iranian-born cleric, who was killed when police commandos stormed the cafe, was on bail for around 50 counts of sexual and indecent assault and for charges of being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife. The 31-year-old mother of two was stabbed repeatedly and set on fire with the use of lighter fluid last April, allegedly by Monis' girlfriend. The crime happened in an apartment stairwell. More: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says the government will look into why the 50-year-old was out on bail and why he did not appear on the country's terrorist watch list, the BBC reports. "How can someone who has had such a long and checkered history not be on the appropriate watch lists, and how can someone like that be entirely at large in the community?" he wondered at a press conference today. "These are questions that we need to look at carefully and calmly and methodically." Just three days before he walked into the cafe with a gun and took 17 people hostage, Monis had failed in an attempt to overturn a conviction for sending "grossly offensive" letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. The country's High Court rejected his application to hear a fresh constitutional challenge to the charges against him, for which he was sentenced to 300 hours of community service. Monis, who declared himself to be a sheikh and a "spiritual healer," was seen as a "fringe figure" in Sydney's Islamic community, according to a Guardian profile. Shia Muslim leaders had asked police to probe his claims to be a leading cleric and last week, he announced on his website that he had converted to Sunni Islam and pledged allegiance to ISIS. The lawyer who represented Monis in the murder case tells the Australian Broadcasting Company that his client, who came to the country as a refugee in 1996, may have thought he had "nothing to lose," hence "participating in something as desperate and outrageous as this." He says that while in prison, Monis suffered some "very unpleasant events, involving matters of excrement over himself and his cell," and he is certain that the siege was the act of a "one-off random individual," not an organized terrorist group.
– Donald Trump's feud with civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis of Georgia was making political headlines on Martin Luther King Day. (The background on the feud is here.) Coverage: The New York Times explores how it further frays Trump's ties with an African-American community already wary of him. "I don't think we have ever had a president so publicly condescending to what black politics means," says a Duke professor. A GOP county commissioner in Georgia's Gwinnett County, Tommy Hunter, is facing calls to resign after he wrote online that Lewis is a "racist pig." See the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In a speech marking MLK Day, Lewis did not mention Trump, instead telling personal stories of his own civil rights battles and preaching non-violence. "The way of love is a better way," he said, per NBC News. Michelle Obama tweeted her support of Lewis today. Martin Luther King III met with Trump Monday, and while he praised Lewis, he also sought to tamp down the controversy. “Things get said on both sides in the heat of emotion. And at some point in this nation, we’ve got to move forward.” See the Los Angeles Times. So far, nearly 28 Democratic members of Congress vow to skip the inauguration, reports the BBC. A blogger at the liberal Daily Kos says Lewis went too far in saying Trump was not a "legitimate president." Democrats must admit it or face charges of hypocrisy, reads the post here. Mike Pence is "so disappointed" in Lewis, he tells Fox News. Trump slammed Lewis' Atlanta district as crime-ridden and "falling apart," and those who live there were surprised to hear it and eager to rebut the charge. See the Wall Street Journal. Columnist Paul Krugman defends Lewis' original slam of Trump as "an act of patriotism." Read it in the New York Times. Columnist David Weigel writes that Democrats, including Lewis, appear to have learned that "explosive rhetoric" of the sort mastered by Trump is the new normal. Welcome to the "New Rudeness," he writes at the Washington Post.
– British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward has been roundly bashed for his unfortunate "I'd like my life back" comment—lots of fishermen and coastal residents want their lives back, too, not to mention relatives of the 11 men killed in the initial explosion. Today, Hayward apologized, reports the Huffington Post. "I made a hurtful and thoughtless comment," he said. "When I read that recently, I was appalled. I apologize, especially to the families of the 11 men who lost their lives in this tragic accident." His statement continues: "Those words don't represent how I feel about this tragedy, and certainly don't represent the hearts of the people of BP. My first priority is doing all we can to restore the lives of the people of the Gulf region and their families—to restore their lives, not mine." In the meantime, that saw remains stuck, notes AP.
– President Obama's next executive action may be to expand background checks for some gun buyers—based on whom they're buying from. Obama, who reacted with emotion to the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College and will visit Roseburg, Ore., on Friday, is "seriously considering" new rules that would force private high-volume dealers to perform background checks on potential buyers, according to the Washington Post. Private dealers who sell a certain number of guns each year would also need to get a license. Nine days before the Umpqua shooting, gun-control activists Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, visited the White House to repeat their desire to see just such a rule put in place. Officials considered targeting dealers who sell at least 50 guns a year back in 2013, but the plan was ultimately put on ice. The proposed rule change would clarify the federal statute, which notes anyone "engaged in the business" of dealing firearms needs to obtain a federal license and conduct background checks, except anyone "who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms." Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton said she would take executive action to change the definition of a gun dealer if elected president, per the Post. A rep for the NRA, however, says the proposed change would "ensnare" a widow selling off her late husband's gun collection, for example. "People who repeatedly sell large volumes of firearms are already covered in the current statute," she says.
– This will likely come as a surprise to Latino voters, but Donald Trump tells NBC News that he would win the Latino vote. As for his comments about Mexican immigrants largely being a bunch of rapists and drug dealers, he sees nothing to apologize about: "I have a great relationship with the Mexican people ... I have many legal immigrants working with me. And many of them come from Mexico. They love me, I love them. And I'll tell you something, if I get the nomination, I'll win the Latino vote." Trump says he would do so by creating jobs. He also doubled down on his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, and he vowed to make Mexico pay for it. For good measure, he slammed Hillary Clinton as the worst secretary of state in history and as weak on immigration, because she would "let everybody come in … killers, criminals, drug dealers." During the interview, Trump called NBC's Katy Tur "naive," and the Daily Beast accuses him of sexist mansplaining. (Actress America Ferrara, for one, is probably not swayed by this win-the-Latino-vote assertion.)
– Police in Spain say they killed five terror suspects Thursday night during a second terrorist attack hours after a van plowed into pedestrians in Barcelona, killing 13 people and injuring more 100. Police have released few details on the suspects killed in the town of Cambrils, south of Barcelona, though there are unconfirmed reports that they were wearing explosive belts. Authorities say the Cambrils suspects deliberately drove an Audi A3 into pedestrians before encountering a police patrol. Police say six bystanders and one police officer were also injured, the Guardian reports. Two other suspects have been arrested in connection with the Barcelona attack, authorities say, though the van's driver, who fled on foot after creating scenes of horror on a pedestrian walkway, is still believed to be at large. Police say they believe the Cambrils attack was linked to the Barcelona attack. ISIS has claimed responsibility for Spain's deadliest terrorist attack since 2004, saying it was carried out by "soldiers of the Islamic State," the AP reports. Authorities say that before the Barcelona attack, a person was killed in a blast in Alcanar, a town southwest of the city, where people in a house were apparently preparing explosives, Reuters reports.
– The Republican-led House Benghazi committee released its final report Tuesday after two years of investigations. The 800-page report lays out the committee's findings on the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead. Here's what you need to know: Benghazi is "unlikely to be a potent tool for weakening Clinton" in the general election, as the committee and report have little credibility and aren't seen as serious by many, the Los Angeles Times reports. Easily distilling the massive report, the Washington Post lays out its five "most serious accusations," including that the CIA "missed warning signs" and "misread how dangerous Libya ... was at the time." New evidence of “culpability or wrongdoing” on Clinton's part is lacking in the report, despite it being “one of the longest, costliest, and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history," according to the New York Times. Given a lack of new evidence against Clinton, the Weekly Standard uses the report as a tool for blaming Obama. “The Obama administration knowingly provided the American people a false story about the Benghazi attack, its causes, and its consequences," the Standard states. How various government agencies responded to the Benghazi crisis is one of the more interesting aspects of the report. According to Politico, a conference call in the midst of the attack included a conversation about whether Marines should wear their uniforms if deployed. Marines changed in and out of their uniforms multiple times while waiting for an answer and were never deployed. According to the Hill, a Democratic lawmaker on the House Benghazi committee calls it "one of the saddest exercises I've ever engaged in" during 20 years in Congress. He accuses Republicans of hiding the final report from Democrats to avoid having it fact-checked. Zeroing in on what it calls the "most revealing paragraph" in the report, Vox concludes there's a pattern of spinning "non-damning facts as damning" for the Obama administration. The paragraph in question admits there were no US forces close enough to prevent the attack but insists that, in itself, was a failure on the part of the White House. "I think it's time to move on," the AP quotes Clinton as saying after the release of the report, which she says includes nothing not previously discovered by an accountability board.
– After decades of living in the public eye, Hillary Clinton tells the BBC she is ready to get off the "merry-go-round" at the end of President Obama's first term and enjoy her private life, reports Politico (which has a link to the full transcript.) “I think that I am a pretty normal, average person, despite all of the hype,” Clinton said. “And I am very interested in spending time with my friends and my family." While Clinton has said before that she is ready to take a break or retire, these comments came unprompted from Clinton herself, not in response to a specific question about stepping down, notes Jennifer Epstein. “I do wake up and say I’m tired so I better get up and get going,” said Clinton, calling her job a "nonstop marathon." "It is for me a moveable adventure." You can hear the full audio at the BBC.
– Workers in Japan put in notoriously long hours, and the country appears to be paying a price: stressed out workers and resulting health problems, including suicide. As the Japan Times notes, there's even a word for it: "karoshi," or "death by overwork." Now Japan is designating the last Friday of every month as "Premium Friday," with employees encouraged to sign out at 3pm—and maybe do a little shopping to jump-start their weekend and possibly a lagging economy, reports the London Times. The move isn't mandatory for companies, but the nation's biggest business lobby is on board and encouraging its members to take part when it launches on Feb. 24. It doesn't help that most workers in Japan tend to use only half their allotted paid time off, and that an estimated one in eight work 50 hours or more—the highest percentage among G-7 nations. So it remains unclear whether Premium Friday will be a sufficient break for the overworked, or even attainable for those who must squeeze in their work at other times. Fortune is skeptical, calling it an "essentially meaningless" scheme. It quotes a critic who says the bigger issue to focus on is efficiency to cut down on those long work weeks, which are "still considered a virtue." Another problem is that Japan has lots of small, family-run businesses where shortened hours could be a problem, notes the BBC. (A Japanese CEO resigned after a young woman's suicide.)
– H&M's fashions are on fire—literally, that is, in Vasteras, Sweden. A heat and power station that powers 150,000 homes there has a mandate to stop burning fossil fuels like coal and oil by 2020. Its path to achieving that involves burning "only renewable and recycled fuels," which in its case, includes recycled wood and "trash" from an H&M warehouse in the neighboring city of Eskilstuna. Bloomberg reports it was only last week that the trash was specified as clothing, and a rep for H&M in Sweden explains the company "does not burn any clothes that are safe to use." What's being torched—year to date, about 30,000 pounds' worth—are ones that may "contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals." The alternative would seemingly be a landfill, which is where a staggering amount of our clothing ends up. The Atlantic in 2014 reported that Americans toss about 10.5 million tons of clothing a year. That's about 85% of what we get rid of, with the other 15% recycled—either ultimately worn by someone else, turned into industrial rags, or "ground down" and repurposed as items ranging from insulation and furniture stuffing to pet bedding, per the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association. The Sourcing Journal cites the Environmental Protection Agency's concern over the situation: The agency recorded a 38% jump in textile waste between 2000 and 2011. Quartz points to a 2016 McKinsey study that found that over that same period, European clothing companies increased their number of annual collections from two to five.
– Go to Patagonia's website and you're greeted with a message Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has deemed "nefarious": "The President Stole Your Land." The California company is referring to President Trump's move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, but it's not stopping at that: It filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the Bears Ears slashing, joining three other legal challenges to save the monuments, the AP reports. The suit, which the AP notes was filed on behalf of several groups, says the proposed 85% reduction at Bears Ears is an "extreme overreach in authority" and puts at risk dinosaur fossils and Native American artifacts, among other resources. Patagonia owner Yvon Chouinard told CNN of his litigious plans earlier this week, noting, "This government is evil, and I'm not going to sit back and let evil win." President Obama designated Bears Ears a national monument at the end of 2016; Grand Staircase-Escalante received the protection 20 years earlier from President Clinton. At the heart of the commotion is whether a current president can walk back a former president's creation of a national monument under the Antiquities Act, with Native American tribes, environmental groups, and paleontologists arguing that Trump doesn't have the authority to do so; two legal experts interviewed by the AP had varying opinions on the matter. NBC News, which notes the legal wrangling over the national monuments could stretch out for years, adds that Patagonia has long been active in fighting for Utah's public lands. The AP notes more lawsuits are anticipated, especially if Trump moves on Zinke's push to cut other national monuments. More in Time from Patagonia's CEO on why the company is suing.
– Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain hanged himself in French hotel bathroom with bathrobe belt, French prosecutor Christian de Rocquigny tells the AP. Rocquigny, the prosecutor of Colmar in France's eastern Alsace region, also says there did not appear to be much planning in Bourdain's suicide, the AP reports. "There is no element that makes us suspect that someone came into the room at any moment," he says, adding that a medical expert had concluded that there were no signs of violence on Bourdain's body. Rocquigny says toxicology tests were being carried on Bourdain's body, including urine tests, to see if the 61-year-old American took any medications or other drugs, in an effort to help his family understand if anything led him to kill himself. (Bourdain's friends are mourning the loss.)
– A lawyer for Tamir Rice's family calls it the cruelest thing he's ever seen. In newly released surveillance video, two Cleveland police officers can be seen pushing the boy's 14-year-old sister to the ground as she tried to run to her brother's side just 90 seconds after he had been fatally shot by another officer. After a struggle, she is handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car just a few feet from where her 12-year-old brother lay dying, reports Cleveland.com, which obtained the video after what it calls "protracted talks" with city officials who initially refused to release it. The video shows that in the minutes after the shooting, police stood around the wounded boy, who had been carrying a pellet gun, but made no attempt to offer first aid. The first person to begin first aid was an FBI agent who arrived around four minutes after the shooting, the AP reports. Tamir, who had been shot in the abdomen, wasn't pronounced dead until nine hours later. "How inhumane to put her in handcuffs and sit her in the car about 4 feet from where her brother lay dying and she has to watch that," another lawyer tells the New York Times. "And they rendered no aid to this kid." Tim Loehmann, the rookie officer who fired the fatal shot seconds after arriving on the scene, was found unfit to serve in his previous police job. Prosecutors are expected to present the case to a grand jury to determine whether Loehmann and his partner should face criminal charges.
– A military coup is under way in Mali, as renegade soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital of Bamako today, and soon afterward appeared on state TV to announce that they had booted the president and taken over the country, the BBC reports. The soldiers said they were suspending the constitution, dissolving its institutions and instituting a nationwide curfew. They said they were taking power because of President Amadou Toumani Toure's failure to defeat a rebellion by the Taureg tribes in the north, the AP reports. The military “has decided to assume its responsibilities and end the incompetent and disavowed regime of Amadou Toumani Toure,” the troops said, adding that it “does not in any way aim to confiscate power, and we solemnly swear to return power to a democratically elected president as soon as national unity and territorial integrity are established.” The mutiny comes just a month before Toure was set to leave office legally.
– Pooping in space "isn't glamorous, but it is necessary for survival," an astronaut explains—yet it's presenting quite a challenge for NASA. See, while the International Space Station has a pretty fancy toilet, an astronaut must wear a diaper during launch and landing activities or while spacewalking. But as NASA looks toward future missions in deep space, it's also looking for a way for astronauts to relieve themselves while remaining in their space suits for up to six days, reports Time. That's where you come in. The agency is offering a $30,000 prize in a "space poop challenge" if someone can create "a system inside a space suit that collects human waste for up to 144 hours and routes it away from the body, without the use of hands." There are plenty of stipulations. For example, the system "needs to take no more than five minutes [to set up]" as an astronaut might be forced to jump into their suit quickly in an emergency, per Space.com. While such a challenge might seem humorous, a solution "could be the difference between life and death," notes the contest website. "You don't want any of these solids and fluids stuck to your body for six days," NASA adds in a release. "Given enough time, infection, and even sepsis can set in," says astronaut Rick Mastracchio in a video. Inventors have until Dec. 20 to submit their entries. NASA plans to test the top entries next year, with a solution executed within three years. (A scientist thinks humans could get to Mars in a month.)
– It's not that weird that a 70-year-old man traveling overseas and working long hours to boot would nod off at an inappropriate time. But when it happens to be Secretary of State John Kerry while attending a news conference with President Obama and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, the cameras are bound to notice. As ABC's did here. At least the brief power nap came during the Polish president's answer, notes the Wire.
– A federal worker who says he lost out on a plum job because he is a man has filed a discrimination lawsuit naming Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano as the sole defendant. What's more, James T. Hayes also alleges that a high-ranking official in Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office "created a frat house-type atmosphere that is targeted to humiliate and intimidate male employees," reports the New York Times. That official, Suzanne Barr, has gone on paid leave as an investigation into the allegations continues, notes Fox News. They came to light after Hayes says he got passed over in favor of a woman who he says wasn't qualified. He says she got the job because she had a "long-standing relationship" with Napolitano—"and because he was not female," according to the lawsuit.
– In a moment of reflection on the eve of graduating from Eastern Michigan University, student Daivon Reeder struck a chord on social media with a tweet that has since gone viral. Alongside a photo in his cap and gown, Reeder wrote Thursday: "My step dad told me it was pointless to go to orientation, I wasn't going to graduate.....4 years later he in jail & I'm well....," followed by a line of laughing emojis. Hours later, the tweet began trending in Detroit, catching the attention of Twitter as well as the media. Local Detroit station WDIV 4 featured a segment on Reeder, who graduated Saturday with a degree in criminal justice and a minor in military science. He told the station that after losing his academic scholarship, those words pushed him even harder to succeed. "[I have] the average, typical, inner-city Detroit boy story," Reeder, 22, says. "I grew up constantly moving houses." The eldest of four, Reeder said his mother struggled to make ends meet for his family, and his stepfather was not always in the picture. After his stepdad made the comment about graduating, "I kind of heard that and I was like OK, I'll show you," Reeder tells Fox 8. "I'm just a first generation college kid from Detroit trying to beat the odds," he tells BuzzFeed News. "I guess people can relate to a humble beginning." The tweet had more than 600,000 likes and 148,000 retweets as of Monday afternoon. (This tweet made waves for a different reason.)
– More than a year after her arrest, Reality Leigh Winner is pleading guilty. The former NSA contractor—who allegedly supplied the media with secret intel on Russians hacking US voting systems—planned to enter her plea agreement Friday in federal court, Engadget reports. "I do know that she has always been ready and willing to accept responsibility for any wrongdoing, and that she will accept the consequences," her mother Billie Winnie Davis says in a statement. The 26-year-old Air Force veteran was denied bail and spent a year in jail after the Intercept ran a bombshell NSA report detailing Russian hacking of a voting equipment vendor and attempts to hack 122 local election officials. Emails obtained through FOIA requests show that local officials didn't know about the hack until it leaked to the press. But as Winner became a political lightning rod, she lost several court battles and faced 10 years behind bars and a $250,000 fine for espionage, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports. Now comes her guilty plea, which remains under wraps. "I still disagree strongly with the use of the Espionage charge against citizens" like Reality, her mother says. "The use of the Espionage charge prevents a person from defending themselves or explaining their actions to a jury, thus making it difficult for them to receive a fair trial and treatment in the court system." (Per one report, 39 states saw Russians intrude on US elections.)
– Tip for Russell Brand: When accepting an award, maybe don't joke about the award show sponsor's Nazi ties. The comedian was accepting the Oracle Award at the British GQ Men of the Year Awards in London last week when he made this comment about fashion label Hugo Boss, which was sponsoring the event: "If any of you know a little bit about history and fashion, you'll know that Hugo Boss made the uniforms for the Nazis. The Nazis did have flaws, but, you know, they did look f---ing fantastic, let's face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality." Later, he added, "We're selling a lot of these ... they're flying off the shelves!" and goose-stepped while doing a Nazi salute. The Sun reports Brand was booted from the after-party over the joke, and the Daily Mail says the comedian later elaborated on Twitter: "GQ editor: 'What you did was very offensive to Hugo Boss.' Me: 'What Hugo Boss did was very offensive to the Jews.' #GQAwards #nazitailor." Gawker posted video of Brand's speech today.
– A lot of drunk drivers in New Jersey could end up getting away with it because one police officer allegedly failed to do his job properly. The state's Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that some 20,667 people accused of drunk driving could have their cases tossed because of Sgt. Marc Dennis, who allegedly failed to perform a temperature check while calibrating machines used to check blood-alcohol levels, NJ.com reports. The ruling means that test results from five of New Jersey's 21 counties—Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Somerset, and Union—are inadmissible as evidence if they involve "Alcotest" machines that Dennis handled. A criminal case against the officer, who denies wrongdoing, is still pending. It's not clear how many convictions will actually be vacated—some defendants will have been found not guilty, while others could have been convicted on other evidence. State authorities told the top court that the step Dennis allegedly skipped is only required in New Jersey, the AP reports. The judges ordered the state to notify people who could seek to have DWI convictions vacated because of the ruling, though lawyer Matthew W. Reisig predicts a "hornets' nest" lies ahead in the courts. "The state at some point is going to notify people, but we don’t know if they are notifying the correct people," he tells the New York Times. "I have zero confidence that the state knows who the affected people are." (This driver was involved in a fatal DUI crash 90 minutes after police let him go.)
– Bristol Palin got the boot from Dancing With the Stars: All-Stars last night—even though she and partner Mark Ballas actually did not get the lowest score of the week, for the first time in the entire competition. That slot went to Kirstie Alley and partner Maks Chmerkovskiy, the Hufington Post reports, but the audience still voted Palin out. "I had an awesome time and an awesome partner and I wish everyone the best of luck," Palin said before leaving the stage—but once backstage, she refused to talk to press, which was a little odd, E! notes. Ballas explained that she was "preparing for the schedule that lays ahead," which may have meant their appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (in which Palin asked Kimmel to apologize for all his jokes about her mother). Ballas also said he was "really proud" of his partner. "For someone like that with zero entertainment experience, she didn't go down without a fight," he said, adding that she was "more vocal about what she wants" since her first appearance on the show. One thing she didn't want: matching bunny costumes for this week's dance, People reports. Ballas gave up on the costume idea, but after the elimination he bemoaned Bristol not being more "open-minded" and willing to step "out of the box."
– Joe McQuaid, publisher of New Hampshire’s Union Leader, was at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester during a recent visit from Mitt Romney, and he got a bit of much-needed clarification on an issue that’s been bothering some people: Why in the world is Romney giving his foes fodder for complaint by quadrupling the size of his California beach house? Easy answer: The story isn’t accurate, Romney explained. In truth, his application was to simply double the living space by adding a second story. Of course, if you include the additional nonliving space—including a basement and a garage—then you get to the “quadrupling.” Even so, McQuaid thinks Romney should make an official statement to clear the issue up. “Accuracy in media is more than the name of a group. It ought to be what we in the profession strive for, rather than to have the story fit a preconceived notion,” McQuaid writes. “We sure cannot afford to pick any more of our presidents based on assumptions.” (But in a snarky post on Wonkette, Kirsten Boyd Johnson notes, "Mitt Romney still appears as out-of-touch with the vast majority of hobo Americans as ever before.")
– Text messaging has proven to be a wildly popular method of donating to the relief effort in Haiti. As of 8:25 this morning, the Red Cross had pulled in more than $8 million through text messages, Fox News reports. That’s the most mobile donations “that we have ever seen,” says the head of mGive, the nonprofit that set up the mobile donation service. Money is pouring in at a rate of roughly $200,000 an hour, in $10 increments. A Red Cross spokesman called the contributions “nothing short of awe-inspiring,” though he noted that the majority of donations are still coming through the organization's website, redcross.org. To donate, head there, or text the word “Haiti” to 90999, which automatically charges a $10 donation to your phone bill. The four major wireless providers have agreed to waive the charge for users whose accounts don't cover unlimited texting, the Consumerist blog reports.
– Separatists in Eastern Ukraine are starting to complain that Moscow has sold them out, as they prepare for what the New York Times is declaring their "last stand." As they retreated toward Donetsk yesterday, insurgents blew up two road bridges and a railroad bridge behind them. An emboldened Ukraine today said that it would not reopen ceasefire negotiations until the rebels had laid down their weapons entirely, the AP reports. The once undermanned and outgunned Ukrainian force is now noticeably better armed, using buses and pickup trucks alongside its armored vehicles to transport what the Telegraph describes as a "motley mix" of police, special forces, and militiamen. Ukraine says it has succeeded in sealing the Russian border, preventing troops and weapons from flowing to the rebels. But Vladimir Putin has been suspiciously silent, ignoring the separatists' increasingly urgent pleas for help, and many are speculating that he aims to cut his losses, having already taken the real prize of Crimea, the Wall Street Journal reports. Observers believe Moscow has ruled out any military intervention, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov struck a decidedly peaceful tone at a news conference, saying, "A quick end to the bloodshed is in our common interest." But one US official cautioned against declaring victory. "There is only one person who knows what Putin is planning," he said, "and that is Putin."
– Boston paused today to mark the one-year anniversary of the marathon bombings, and President Obama was observing a moment of silence at the White House at 2:49pm Eastern. Some quotes from the Boston ceremony, via CNN and AP: Joe Biden: "You are Boston strong. But America is strong," said the VP. "That's what makes us so proud of this city and this state. What makes me so proud to be an American is that we have never, ever yielded to fear. Never." Survivor Patrick Downes: "We would never wish the devastation and pain we have experienced on any of you," said Downes, who lost a leg, as did his new wife. "However, we do wish that all of you, at some point in your lives, feel as loved as we have felt this last year. It has been the most humbling experience of our lives. We hope you feel all the emotion we feel when we say 'thank you.'" Ex-Mayor Thomas Menino: "This day will always be hard, but this place will always be strong." Tom Grilk, Boston Athletic Association: "Next week, we will run again. But on this day, in this place, in remembrance and resolve, we gather as citizens of Boston, Boston strong."
– What do you do with an ex-pope? If you happen to know, call Rome, because the Church isn't sure yet. Many fear Benedict will become an implicit rival to the new pope, despite his apparent desire to keep a low profile. He told Roman diocese priests yesterday that he would be "withdrawing into prayer," Reuters reports. "I will always be close to all of you," he said, "even if I remain hidden from the world." The "close to you" bit is somewhat literal; Benedict has announced he'll be living in the Vatican. That's caused some controversy, the Wall Street Journal reports, but one senior papal adviser says it's "better to have him here than somewhere else, where he could become another center of power." Benedict is likely to exert influence over the next pope by picking a new head of the embattled Vatican Bank, and he'll keep writing as a respected theologian. The Church also hasn't decided what vestments he'll wear, whether he'll give audiences, or even what to address him as—a decision that has "juridical" ramifications, a spokesman said. One thing's for sure: He won't be infallible anymore.
– A UK mother who made the news for having extremely premature triplet girls who all survived has herself died unexpectedly. Rachel Park, who died at age 39 just days after taking her 9-month-old babies home from the hospital for Christmas, became pregnant after six years of trying with her husband, Steven, and on her fourth round of IVF. "She idolized those little girls," her husband said. "They were her world." The cause of death is still unknown, but police say the circumstances are not suspicious, reports the BBC. During the pregnancy, Park, a Type 1 diabetic, developed pre-eclampsia, and her blood pressure got so high that her kidneys and liver began to fail. At just 24 weeks' pregnant, she was sent to a hospital in Newcastle 100 miles from her home, where she suffered what the Mirror calls "a serious bleed." Doctors found a problem with blood flowing to the placenta, and performed an emergency C-section when the triplets were 26 weeks and five days along. Due June 12, the girls were put on ventilators upon their birth on March 11 and, weighing 5 pounds combined, spent two months fighting for their lives. "It was touch and go with all three at some point," Rachel told the News & Star just a week ago. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Steven and his daughters Poppie, Mollie, and Evelyn. (Just days before the Park triplets were born in the UK, a mother of newborn triplets died in Kansas.)
– Big oil's lobbyists have lost a fight over cleaner gasoline: The EPA will require refiners to reduce the amount of sulfur to cut down on smog, reports the Washington Post. The cut is a sizable one, dropping the allowable limit by two-thirds from 30 parts per million to 10. Backers say the move will eventually save the US billions in health care costs, but the oil industry disputes that and says the only tangible result will be higher gas prices. Sulfur content already has come down drastically since 1994 from 300 parts per million, and an industry executive says getting the remaining "little buggers" out of there isn't worth the cost. Environmental groups pushed for the move, as did the auto industry, which argued that the lower limit will put the US in line with Japan and Europe, reports the Hill. Automakers are big fans of the change because it will make it easier for them to meet emissions standards nationwide. The Post quotes the leader of a clean-air group as saying the EPA decision will end up being the biggest such move of President Obama's second term. "There is not another air pollution control strategy that we know of that will produce as substantial, cost-effective and expeditious emissions reductions."
– An Australian teen whose legs were severed by a train while celebrating his 18th birthday died on Christmas Eve in the hospital, three days after the incident, ABC Australia reports. "The death of the young lad is very sad, very upsetting," Paul Hogan, mayor of Taree—where the incident took place in New South Wales—tells the Sydney Morning Herald. Alcohol is believed to have been a factor in Adrian Simon's death. Simon had been in serious condition since the accident on Dec. 21, when he was hit by a train around 4:30am, severing his legs above the knee. Police are still investigating why Simon was on the tracks; ABC reports he was asleep. Police are also investigating a group of partygoers from that night who attacked emergency workers and police as they attempted to tend to Simon; charges may be pending. "It was a very unfortunate accident that had happened, but (the attack) was definitely unwarranted, and no one will tolerate that," Hogan says. (Earlier this year, a California teen died trying to retrieve her phone from train tracks.)
– Almost exactly a year ago, rural Michigan resident Harold "Butch" Knight allegedly called 911 and matter-of-factly told the operator he'd strangled his wife, Sara Knight, and that she was lying dead on the living room floor in their Ganges Township home. Then he disappeared. (Audio of the 911 call is available at Crime Watch Daily.) Now the murdered woman's daughter, Roxanne Cameron-Harris, has launched a personal manhunt by asking for tips and donations through a GoFundMe page. It has has raised just $50 toward her $1,000 goal in two weeks, though MLive reports she has separately received $560 in donations. Those who donate $20 or more will get a pink T-shirt that says, "No evil goes unpunished ... Justice for Sara Lee." Since Jan. 13, 2015, when the 911 call was placed, law enforcement has searched the country for the 67-year-old, with sightings in rural Maine, reports Fox 17. Just days after he disappeared, his abandoned vehicle was found in Franklin County, Maine, and a surveillance photo suggests Knight had dyed his hair black, reported Michigan Live back in May, when Sara would have turned 49. Fox 17 noted in September that the couple had lived in Maine for nearly a decade before heading to Michigan in 2014; the station also noted that police were investigating whether Knight could be hiding out in one of Maine's Amish communities. A vigil is planned for Monday, exactly a year after the day officials believe Sara was killed. Friends and family interviewed by Crime Watch Daily said that something always seemed off about Knight, who was 18 years older than Sara. The couple had been married for 14 years, during which time Knight never worked and sometimes showed a short temper. (Cops say they know who killed this pastor's wife.)
– Almost 30 years after he went missing from a group home in Kitchener, Ontario, at the age of 21, Edgar Latulip remembered something very important last month: his name. Police say the 50-year-old, who has a developmental delay and functions at a child's level, has spent the last 30 years living in St. Catharines, around 80 miles from where he disappeared, CTV reports. From what investigators can piece together, Latulip took a bus to Niagara Falls in September 1986 and ended up in St. Catharines, where he suffered a head injury and "effectively forgot who he was" until this year, when he told a social worker he remembered. Before his disappearance, Latulip had attempted suicide at least once, leading to fears he may have killed himself. Police officer Duane Gingerich, who investigated the disappearance, tells the Guelph Mercury that he's thrilled that Latulip has turned up alive. "I had hopes that he was out there somewhere," he says. "For us as investigators, this is great, this is awesome. It's satisfying because most of these cases don't turn out this way. You expect the worst when a person is missing for that period of time." A DNA test confirmed Latulip's identity and police say a reunion with his mother, who moved to Ottawa years ago, is being arranged. In a 2014 interview, she told the Mercury she was still haunted by the disappearance. "This is always at the back of my mind. Having an answer would mean closure," she said. (A California hospital recently identified the man it had called "Garage 66" for 16 years.)
– Kim Jong Un is a terrible, murderous despot, but he's not the only Dr. Evil on the block. Ozy runs through some of the equally ruthless dictators who you've likely never heard of: Alexander Lukashenko: The Belarusian president Condi Rice once called "Europe's last dictator" just got a fifth term in an election that was basically uncontested, reports the AP. Among his charms: A penchant for sending his foes to labor camps, or just making them disappear. King Mswati III: Swaziland's ruler presides over Africa's lone remaining absolute monarchy, and uses his power to marry young girls (15 wives to date) while not doing much in the way of actual ruling (unemployment sits at 23%). Isaias Afwerki: The Eritrean president of 24 years is into torture, imprisoning political foes, and indefinite compulsory military service. Yahya Jammeh: Gambia's president seized power in 1994, and has since fired at peaceful crowds of protesters, tossed suspected witches in jail, and once demanded all gay people leave within 24 hours on threat of being beheaded. For the full list, which includes a mild-mannered 79-year-old who enforces state-sanctioned abductions, head over to Ozy.
– If Washington doesn’t manage to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2, Tim Geithner’s going to have some angry people on his hands. That’s the date the Bipartisan Policy Center predicts the government will run out of money, leaving the US to pay its bills with incoming tax money. In August, that amounts to $172.4 billion in revenue to pay $306.7 billion in obligations, meaning someone—be it seniors, soldiers, the unemployed, or bondholders—will be getting shafted, the Washington Post observes. “You can move the chess pieces around all you want,” says the former Treasury official who ran the analysis. “You’re going to lose.” Paying for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense contracts, and unemployment, for example, would leave the government unable to pay courts, police, soldiers, veterans, and so on. At the same time, Treasury must pay bondholders, or its credit rating will drop—making future borrowing even costlier.
– What happens in California should stay in California—especially if what happened was someone meticulously wrapping $330,000 worth of THC pills, hash wax oil, and marijuana (about 71 pounds) like Christmas presents, UPI reports. Instead, per an Ohio State Highway Patrol press release, 31-year-old Daniel Yates apparently decided to cross state lines with these "gifts" in the trunk of a rented 2016 Ford Expedition, and when he was pulled over Monday morning for driving too closely, a drug-sniffing police dog alerted its human colleagues to Yates' cargo. Yates was charged with the felonies of possession and trafficking in drugs, which could net him up to a $30,000 fine and up to 16 years in prison if he's convicted. (A marijuana Christmas tree was seized in Germany a few years back.)
– Chicken giant Tyson Foods says it will retrain all of its workers who deal with live birds after an animal rights group released hidden footage from within its facilities on Wednesday, USA Today reports. According to the Washington Post, the video from Compassion Over Killing shows workers choking, punching, and kicking chickens, plus running them over with forklifts and leaving them in piles to die. One worker in the video says it's "inhumane" to kill a chicken by stepping on its head while he kills a chicken by stepping on its head. Tyson calls the behavior "inexcusable" and says it fired 10 employees at the Virginia facilities shown in the video. Animal rights activists have infiltrated Tyson Foods to film such videos at least five times in a little over a year.
– Hurricane Irma has made a second landfall in Florida as it moves up the state's west coast. No. 2 came at 3:35pm at Marco Island, about 15 miles from Naples, while Irma was a Category 3 storm, per the Guardian. As of 5pm, it had been downgraded to a Category 2, though winds were still a powerful 110mph. That is technically below "major hurricane" status, notes the AP, though the distinction may be small comfort to cities along its path. Perhaps the biggest concern continues to be the densely populated Tampa-St. Petersburg area, thought to be "woefully ill-equipped" to handle such a big storm, per the Washington Post. Irma should arrive there after midnight. “Today is going to the be the long day,” says Mark DeMaria of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Though Miami avoided a direct hit, the driving rain and storm surges have flooded parts of the downtown area, particularly the Brickell neighborhood. And two construction cranes have collapsed onto buildings in Miami, though no casualties were reported. In Palm Bay, also on the east coast, a related tornado destroyed six mobile homes, reports USA Today. Irma is on track to hit Georgia Monday morning, and a state of emergency was in effect for all 159 counties. On Sunday morning, Irma made its first landfall at Cudjoe Key in the Florida Keys.
– In a move that is definitely, absolutely, totally not a publicity stunt, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is knitting a kangaroo for the next heir to the British throne, Sky News reports. Gillard discussed the "cute project" for the progeny of Prince William and Kate Middleton in the new issue of Australian Women's Weekly, which came complete with photos showing Gillard surrounded by yarn. "In terms of knitting for Kate's baby—I knit for babies, in part, because they are smaller projects," she explained. Despite the fact that Gillard's press office actually pitched the story to the magazine, the office insists it's not a PR move, but that hasn't stopped people from mocking the PM. "I'm keen to discuss options for an interview/photoshoot with the PM, ideally for the July edition," reads the email from Gillard's director of communications to the magazine. "As I mentioned the PM is putting together a care package for Kate Middleton, who is due in mid-July. ... I'm picturing a story that includes the patterns for the items the PM will knit so your readers can knit their own royal blanket or something." Critics are calling the article "contrived," among other less-than-nice things, the Guardian reports; the Independent calls it "a public relations disaster." The article conveniently arrives just months before September's general election, which the controversial PM is predicted to lose. Gillard has previously stirred the pot with Sandwichgate and her epic takedown of a sexist rival.
– Sarah Palin took time out from her war with new neighbor Joe McGinniss—now safely behind a mile-high fence—to launch a Facebook attack on President Obama, who she says passed the buck in his press conference on the Gulf oil spill and hasn't gotten federal agencies involved fast enough. "His lack of executive experience might explain this because he is apparently unaware that it’s his job as a chief executive to make sure they do their jobs and help solve problems." Could be read as a cute rejoinder to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggesting sweetly on Sunday that Palin, who had charged that Obama was in bed with BP because of campaign contributions, apparently "wasn't paying a whole lot of attention" during the election, and might want to get "slightly more informed as to what's going on in and around drilling in this country." Palin goes on to slam Obama's decision to suspend drilling off the coast of Alaska, and says it shows how much the president has to learn. "Please learn that we must have domestic energy development, you must stop looking backward and blaming Bush, and we must all work together to 'plug the d#*! hole.' ”
– A 16-year-old girl killed her 7-year-old nephew, then concealed the secret and his body as a community frantically searched, according to police. Denver's Jordan Vong was reported missing around 4:30pm on Aug. 6, hours after his mother had last seen him, prompting officers to search a 20-block radius, reports KDVR. The boy's body was discovered in one of two portable closets in the basement bedroom of his 16-year-old aunt during a second search two days later, the Denver Post reports. Police say the teen admitted to pushing the boy off her bed, causing him to hit his head and start crying, then using her hands to cover his mouth and nose until he stopped moving, reports KUSA. Authorities say the teen was upset because Jordan came into her room and asked to play video games, and he wouldn't leave when she refused. The teen, to be charged as an adult with murder and child abuse, first hid the body under her bed before wrapping it in a blanket and moving it to the closet, authorities say.
– Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and independent Emmanuel Macron have been drawing the lion's share of attention as the French presidential election nears (the first round is April 23), but a leftist candidate who has used a hologram of himself to stump at campaign rallies is now gaining some traction. In what the Washington Post calls a "truly unprecedented campaign," Jean-Luc Melenchon has seemingly emerged out of thin air as the Unbowed France candidate, with added support from the French Communist Party—and he "gives shivers to banks, businesspeople, and the bourgeoisie," per the New York Times. Melenchon, once considered a fringe candidate no one really paid mind to, is running on an anti-capitalism platform, with a mission to dismantle the monarchy-styled governmental system implemented by Charles de Gaulle in the late '50s. Melenchon is now ahead of mainstream conservative Francois Fillon in the polls and only a couple of points behind Macron and Le Pen. He's been speaking to the younger set with videos on YouTube and a video game in which players go after bankers and the head of the IMF. What makes this year's election in France notable is that the slightly left-leaning Socialists and slightly right-leaning Republicans aren't the ones duking it out for the country's top seat. And the showdown between Le Pen and Melenchon, whom the Times says is sometimes depicted as a "French Bernie Sanders," even sounds strikingly like the one witnessed between Sanders and Donald Trump, with both candidates vying for voters who want to decimate the status quo, though with different tactics: Le Pen is tapping into nationalism, while Melenchon is pushing help for the poor. (Facebook is going after false accounts before the election.)
– Tom Petty's death did not mark the end of new music from the rock legend. A previously unreleased track from 1982 has been made public ahead of a box set to be released by Reprise Records. Per Variety, the song, called “Keep A Little Soul,” will be among dozens of new, rare, and live recordings that will be included in the four-CD set dubbed An American Treasure. According to Rolling Stone, Petty’s daughter, wife, and former Heartbreakers band members Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell are among those who helped choose the tracks to include from the rocker's formidable body of work. The box set is due out September 28. Petty died last October of an accidental drug overdose. (Later this month, some of the singer's signature clothes and one very special guitar will go up for auction.)
– The body of Richard Oland—the sixth generation of Canada's oldest beer dynasty—was found on the floor of his office with nearly four dozen wounds in 2011, the CBC reports. According to Vice, it appeared someone had used a hammer to "break apart the bones in his face," and there was so much blood it seeped through three layers of flooring into an office below. The defense for the beer magnate's 47-year-old son Dennis—who has been charged with his murder—rested its case this week, the CBC reports. Money is suspected to have played a part in the killing. According to Vice, Dennis was hundreds of thousands in debt and owed more than $500,000 to his millionaire father alone. After Richard's death, Dennis inherited leadership positions in three companies and a $150,000 payout. The CBC reports Dennis continued to maintain his innocence during testimony this week while acknowledging discrepancies between his testimony and a 2011 police statement. For example, Dennis—who was the last person to see his father alive—originally told police he was wearing a different jacket than he was when he saw Richard the day before his body was found. The jacket he was actually wearing had three bloodstains on it matching Richard's DNA. He blames the differences on shock and nerves during his interview with police. The Oland family, which founded Moosehead Breweries, has rallied around Dennis and says he is innocent. Jurors are scheduled to reconvene on Dec. 14 to decide that for themselves. (Money was also suspected when this US man was charged with murdering his missing parents.)
– Those who remember the hype when Alibaba priced its initial public offering of stock in 2014 will get to relive that excitement Wednesday when Snap does the same. Reuters reports the owner of the Snapchat messaging app will serve up a number at the end of the trading day, with expectations of anywhere between $14 and $16 a share and a possible valuation of more than $20 billion. What the buzz is on this "eagerly awaited" IPO: Recode offers a quick-hit Q&A, including such queries as: "What could possibly go wrong with Snap going public?" Kids, teens, and young adults are the ones who use Snapchat the most, but it's the older generations who are more likely to be investors. The elder set's confusion over the vanishing messages could be a problem, per MarketWatch. All eyes would be on Snap CEO Evan Spiegel right now—if anyone could find him. The Wall Street Journal takes a closer look at the company's "elusive" (and apparently reticent) founder. "Evan doesn't talk much," shrugs an early investor. The company's plans for the future are an important piece of the IPO puzzle. Sources tell the New York Times those plans may involve a drone. Despite Snapchat's sluggish user growth and the company's hefty hosting costs, Mad Money's Jim Cramer believes the trade will be a "phenomenal" one. "I think the good absolutely outweighs the bad here," he says, per CNBC. Lock them up? Find out why a big block of investors will agree not to sell their Snap stock for at least a year at Business Insider. A Barron's Next primer ponders whether Snap will follow in the footsteps of Facebook (up 250% since its own IPO) or Twitter (not doing quite as well).
– For every dollar made by the average Facebook employee, Mark Zuckerberg earned $37 in 2017. As far as CEO pay goes, that's nothing. The CEOs of America's top 350 publicly held companies earned an average of $18.9 million in wages, bonuses, and stock options last year, or 312 times more than their workers, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. Per the Guardian, such an "astronomical gap" hasn't been seen since the eve of the 2007 financial crisis. The 17.6% increase in average CEO pay, compared to 0.3% for workers, had a lot to do with a booming stock market, but it's also part of a larger trend. Since 2009, average CEO pay has risen 72%, compared to about 2% for workers, who now make $54,600 on average. "It speaks to the degree the economic recovery is unbalanced," report co-author Larry Mishel tells the Washington Post, which describes CEO-to-worker pay ratios of 3,101-to-1 for McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook and 1,188-to-1 for Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. "Had there not been the redistribution upward … the wages of the bottom 90% could have grown twice as fast as it actually did," Mishel tells the Guardian. Per the Post, 2018 figures could be even worse for workers given the tax package signed into law last fall; critics say it will make the rich richer, though Republican backers claim it will increase wages across the board.
– Yelp shares hit the stock market today and soared, despite mixed reviews of the consumer review website's long-term prospects. The initial public offering of 7.1 million shares had been priced at $15 a share, which was above the target range of $12 to $14 it set last month; that valued Yelp at around $900 million, CNN notes. But shares were up 62% in early trading, at $24.60, Reuters reports, valuing the company at around $1.43 billion. That's 17 times its revenue in 2011. The 8-year-old website hosts some 25 million reviews of restaurants and other businesses, and lures close to 66 million visitors a month, but has never turned a profit, and is more than $40 million in debt. Analysts expected the stock to jump on its first day of trading, but with sites like Facebook and FourSquare seeking more money from local advertising, they are wary of recommending Yelp as a long-term investment. The president of IPOdesktop.com tells AP he is a "little bit skeptical" about Yelp's future prospects. "Sooner or later people will be wanting them to make money," he says. "They won't go away," but "at some point in time, people are going to get tired of them losing money all the time."
– They are called "unicorns of the sea" and they are infesting the Pacific Coast, destroying fishing nets and puzzling scientists, the Guardian reports. The tiny blob-like creatures are infesting some stretches of the West Coast as far north as Alaska so badly that fishermen can't catch anything. The translucent tubular invaders are pyrosomes, and while they generally range in size from a few inches to 2 feet, they band together in huge colonies. (See video.) They rip nets and clog hooks, and wash up on beaches to the consternation of the locals. One researcher began spotting the "sea pickles" in nets in February and since then, the numbers have exploded, per Oregon Public Broadcasting. One research boat captured 60,000 within minutes. "They were glowing and floating on the surface, completely covering the sea," says University of Oregon researcher Hilarie Sorensen. The creatures—their Greek name means "fire bodies"—prefer the tropics, but even there, they haven't been seen in the "insane" numbers of this year's bloom, says Sorensen. The impact of the little cucumbers is unknown, but there is concern their massive presence could foul ecosystems. While the bloom could be a natural phenomenon, Dr. Lisa-ann Gershwin says "an abundance this gobsmackingly big" indicates something fishy may be going on. Warming seas could be a possible explainer, or perhaps changes in the marine food supply or shifting currents. (Killer whales are also tormenting Alaskan fishermen.)
– Facebook says a Russian "troll farm" appears to have spent $100,000 on 3,300 digital ads targeting American voters in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Post reports. While some of the ads expressly mentioned Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, the majority simply promoted "divisive" views on things like gun and gay rights, discrimination, and immigration. According to Reuters, the ads were linked to 470 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that have since been suspended. While Facebook isn't releasing the ads, the names of the suspended pages featured words like "patriot" and "refugee," the Guardian reports. The Russian company linked to the ads has a history of spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda. Facebook said it also found $50,000 spent on 2,200 "potentially politically related" ads that may be tied to Russia. The company's findings are more evidence to back the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that Russia influenced the election. The findings are also likely to make investigators question whether the Russians were getting input on ad buys from people in the US. The ad buys may have been a violation of US election law by Facebook and others involved. “It is unlawful for foreign nationals to be spending money in connection with any federal, state, or local election, directly or indirectly,” a member of the US Federal Election Commission tells Reuters. Facebook found no evidence tying the ads to any presidential campaign.
– It might not be shocking to read that two Hooters employees are suing the company for sexual harassment. But what if we told you the two employees were men? A lawyer for PJ Cagnina and Scott Peterson tells CBS Los Angeles his clients were subjected to years of "repeated, intense acts which were intended to cause mental harm…to humiliate them" at the hands of their former boss while they worked as managers at various Hooters locations in the LA area. The lawsuit claims their boss, Rick Leukert, would inappropriately touch Peterson and talk about him in a sexually demeaning way, NBC Los Angeles reports. It also states he sent Peterson photos of a female employee he claimed to have slept with and would touch Peterson's butt while standing behind him. But according to the lawsuit, Cagnina got the worst of it. It claims Leukert threw him to the ground following a bikini contest and pretended to have sex with him while people watched. It also states Leukert would try to get him to "go skinny dipping with female employees" and ask if he'd impregnated any of them. The lawsuit claims Leukert took a cellphone belonging to Cagnina's girlfriend—a Hooters' manager—and looked at her "intimate photos." It states he had his assistant write "PGay" on a trophy being given to Cagnina and would pronounce his name "Cagina" to rhyme with "vagina." The lawsuit claims Cagnina and Peterson were retaliated against after complaining about Leukert's behavior, with Peterson losing his job. The lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks unspecified damages.
– Pro tip: If you're going to smuggle heroin in your underwear, try to walk like a normal person while doing so. Bernard Charles apparently couldn't manage that, so when Customs and Border Protection officers spotted him "walking awkwardly" at New York's JFK Airport on April 1, they patted him down—and found a "hard object in [his] groin area" that ended up being two clear packages holding 1.79 pounds of heroin, according to US Homeland Security. Charles, a 42-year-old citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, was initially detained when he disembarked Caribbean Airlines Flight 520 and appeared "visibly nervous," avoiding eye contact; customs officers were examining his suitcase at the time, CBS New York reports, and they brought him to a private search room. That's when they noticed his gait and patted him down, the New York Daily News reports. The drugs he was allegedly carrying are worth more than $70,000 on the street, according to authorities. He faces 10 years in prison for drug smuggling. (A celeb recently confessed to smuggling cocaine onto planes, for her own personal use.)
– President Trump's longtime bodyguard reportedly told Congress this week that Russians offered to send five women up to Trump's hotel room while he was in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Sources with direct knowledge of Keith Schiller's testimony in front of the House intelligence committee this week confirmed the account to CNN, NBC News, and ABC News. Sources say Schiller, who had worked full-time for Trump since 2012, testified the offer was made by someone—he doesn't remember who—following a business meeting ahead of the pageant. He reportedly testified that he turned the offer down, believing it to be a joke. Sources say he later told Trump about the offer, and they both laughed about it. Committee members asked about the incident because of allegations made in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British agent. Specifically, the dossier alleged a "salacious" encounter between Trump and prostitutes at his Moscow hotel that was secretly recorded. Sources say Schiller testified that Trump went to bed alone that night and that he waited for a few minutes outside Trump's door before going to bed himself. He reportedly said he couldn't be sure what happened after that, but he doubts Trump had any guests. Sources say Schiller testified he and Trump were aware of surveillance dangers posed by hotels in Moscow. Schiller's lawyer says "the versions of Mr. Schiller’s testimony being leaked to the press are blatantly false and misleading."
– Cindy McCain pressed her face against the flag-draped casket of her husband, US Sen. John McCain, on Wednesday and several of his children sobbed during the first of two services for the statesman and former prisoner of war before he is taken for the last time from the state he has represented since the 1980s. The private service at the Arizona Capitol marked the first appearance of McCain's family members since the senator died Saturday of brain cancer, the AP reports. During the service, Gov. Doug Ducey remembered McCain as a senator and internationally known figure as well as a major figure in the history of Arizona. Former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl also spoke, and Sen. Jeff Flake offered the benediction. Arizona National Guard members carried the casket into the Arizona State Capitol Museum rotunda, where McCain will lie in state. Later in the afternoon, the Capitol will be open to the public to pay their respects. By the time the service ended and the rotunda was cleared, at least 100 people had already gathered outside to wait for the public viewing in 90-plus degree heat—even Democrats, one of whom told the AP McCain was a "real hero." The people, some of whom traveled from California to be there, took shelter from the hot sun under tents erected by security teams while volunteers filled coolers with ice and water bottles. The viewing later in the day will go on as long as people are waiting in line, said Rick Davis, McCain's former presidential campaign manager. Thursday morning will feature a procession through Phoenix on the way to a memorial service at North Phoenix Baptist Church, with the public invited to line the route along Interstate 17. From there, McCain will depart Arizona from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Another viewing will be at the US Capitol on Friday, with a final memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral Saturday.
– The Curiosity rover has discovered evidence of an ancient freshwater lake on Mars that was brimming with the key chemicals necessary to support microbial life, and its findings suggest that it could have held that life more recently than we thought—and possibly for millions of years before that. "Quite honestly it just looks very Earth-like," the Curiosity's lead scientist said, according to Space.com. The lake, located in the Gale Crater, would have been about 30 miles long and 3 miles wide. The lake's mudstones—which form in calm, still water—contain traces of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon, meaning it could have supported chemolithoautotrophs, a kind of microbial that obtains energy by breaking down rock minerals. The lake was revealed today amidst a barrage of papers on the Rover's progress. National Geographic breaks down some of the other key take-aways, including one that's less promising for Martian life hunters: Curiosity's first radiation measurements indicate levels that would be fatal, within a few million years, to anything within several meters of the surface. Though the researchers did note that some classes of bacteria might have been able to survive through long periods of hibernation.
– President Obama today paid homage to Nelson Mandela shortly after the former South African leader's death was announced, reports Politico and AP. "He no longer belongs to us," said Obama. "He belongs to the ages." Some other highlights: Mandela was “a man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.” “We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again—so it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love, to never discount the difference that one person can make, to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice." “I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set. So long as I live, I will do what I can to learn from him.” Other tributes: Music: Billboard rounds up 10 musical salutes to Mandela, from Bono to Public Enemy. Jimmy Carter: "His passion for freedom and justice created new hope for generations of oppressed people worldwide, and because of him, South Africa is today one of the world's leading democracies." Tony Blair: "Through his dignity, grace, and the quality of his forgiveness, he made racism everywhere not just immoral but stupid." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon: "Only because of such a great man like Nelson Mandela is it possible that particular people in Africa and elsewhere are able to enjoy freedom and human dignity."
– After nearly 40 years in prison, a man convicted in a 1975 Cleveland slaying has walked out of the county jail as a free man. Ricky Jackson, 57, was dismissed from the Cuyahoga County Jail and walked out of the adjoining courthouse this morning about an hour after a judge dismissed his case. The dismissal came after the key witness—then a 13-year-old boy—at trial against Jackson and brothers Wiley and Ronnie Bridgeman recanted last year and said Cleveland police detectives coerced him into testifying that the three killed businessman Harry Franks on the afternoon of May 19, 1975. About two hours later, Wiley Bridgeman was also dismissed; Ronnie Bridgeman, who now goes by the name Kwame Ajamu, got out on parole in 2003, NBC News reports. "Finally, finally," Jackson said as he left the Cleveland Justice Center Complex, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Jackson, who was just 18 when he entered prison, offered gratitude toward the Ohio Innocence Project (which says that of all exonerated US prisoners, he spent the most time behind bars) and county prosecutors and absolved Eddie Vernon, the boy whose testimony helped put him away. "I don't hate him," he tells the Plain Dealer. "He's a grown man today, he was just a boy back then. It took a lot of courage to do what he did." Because when it comes down to it, he's just happy to finally be free. "The English language doesn't have the words to express how I'm feeling right now.''
– Investigators suspect an overdose of prescription drugs caused Prince's death last week and they want to find out exactly where he got them, according to a source close to the investigation. The probe is looking at whether a doctor was on Prince's plane when he made an emergency landing in Illinois the week before his death, and whether he overdosed on the plane, a law enforcement official tells the AP, which notes that the development is worryingly reminiscent of Michael Jackson's death. The source confirmed reports that the opiate painkiller Percocet is believed to have been involved. Documents released on Thursday signal that the investigation is now a criminal probe and charges are a possibility, the Star Tribune reports. The documents released by the Carver County, Minn., sheriff's office Thursday include a request to seal the results of a search conducted at Prince's Paisley Park the day he died, Reuters reports. A judge granted the request, which was made on the grounds that "intense media scrutiny" could hamper the investigation or risk injury to innocent people. Carver County Chief Deputy Jason Kamerud declined to comment on reports of drugs found at Prince's home. He tells the AP that contrary to media reports, investigators have not asked the DEA to get involved. "We might contact them to help us, but that hasn't happened," he says. "We don't have the medical examiner's report yet. We don't know to what extent pharmaceuticals could be a part of this." (Prince was given a private send-off last weekend.)
– Ronan Farrow continues his investigation into Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault and harassment settlements with a new piece in the New Yorker, offering the strongest evidence yet that Weinstein's brother and Weinstein Company partner was in the know. Though Bob Weinstein has denied prior knowledge of allegations from more than 75 women, Farrow reports roughly $600,000 paid to two British accusers 20 years ago came from Bob's personal bank account. Bob, who was operating Disney's Miramax with Harvey at the time, confirms the payment but says he only agreed because Harvey said "he was fooling around with two women" who wanted money "and he didn't want his wife to find out." The payment was also hidden from Disney, but Bob says "there was nothing to indicate any kind of sexual harassment." While Bob Weinstein remains as head of the Weinstein Company, a $275 million bid for its assets led by Maria Contreras-Sweet, former head of the US Small Business Administration, would see 51% of the company controlled by women, reports Deadline. Such a change might be necessary, according to the Weinstein Company's remaining board members, financier Tarak Ben Ammar and director Lance Maerov. They tell Fortune Weinstein should've been fired in 2015 for alleged misuse of company funds but was protected by billionaire friends and board members, including James Dolan and Dirk Ziff. That same year, Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez says she received a $1 million settlement after Harvey groped her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt, per the New Yorker. Three other accusers discuss allegations of their own, with each other, at Slate.
– Ohio could become the fifth state in the country to legalize recreational marijuana after it was announced today that backers collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the Nov. 3 general election, Time reports. ResponsibleOhio, the organization behind the proposed constitutional amendment, collected 320,267 signatures, nearly 15,000 more than needed, notes the Cincinnati Enquirer. ResponsibleOhio plans to spend at least $20 million to sway voters in what appears to be the best-financed marijuana legalization effort in US history. Yet many are speaking out against the push, including Republicans like Gov. John Kasich and Attorney General Mike DeWine, who says it's "a stupid idea." Marijuana is already legal in Washington, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, DC.
– A Montana police officer who shot an unarmed man—and broke down crying afterward—was justified in pulling the trigger, a coroner's jury ruled this week. In a traffic stop last April, Billings police officer Grant Morrison pulled over a car with four people inside and repeatedly told them to raise their hands, the AP reports via Mediaite. When backseat passenger Richard Ramirez didn't raise them, Morrison warned he would shoot. Then he did. "I was getting very scared," Morrison told the jury, the Billings Gazette reports. "He shoved his hand down to his side and started jiggling it up and down." Methamphetamine and a syringe were later discovered near Ramirez's seat, and a toxicology test found a strong dose of meth in his system. Mediate has a police dashcam video of the shooting (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT); another dashcam shows Morrison breaking down afterward. "I thought he was going to pull a gun," says a visibly distraught Morrison, the Independent reports. "I don’t know what’s going on." But Ramirez's mother Betty says she still doesn't see why Morrison shot her 38-year-old son. "He was just a good person, and they didn't have to do that to him," she tells the Gazette. "I'm going to fight it. ... I'm not going to give up." A family friend says they saw the hearing as one-sided. The ruling is only a recommendation, but the Yellowstone County Attorney’s Office says it likely won't seek charges. It wasn't Morrison's first such incident, either: In 2013, he fatally shot a man who ignored his orders and reached for what turned out to be a replica BB gun.
– A stunning allegation out of the Netherlands: The defense minister said Thursday the country had previously kicked out four Russians, believed to be GRU military intelligence officers, who were planning a cyber attack on the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the Hague. The global chemical weapons watchdog has been testing the nerve agent used to poison the Skripals in the UK. CBS News reports the four suspects, which included an IT expert, were caught "in flagrante" on April 13 and immediately removed from the country. The men were allegedly trying to hack into the OPCW via its WiFi network, reports the Guardian, supposedly after a spear-phishing attack launched from Russia failed. The trunk of their rental car, which was parked outside the OPCW's HQ, reportedly contained computer equipment designed to intercept log-ins. One of the men allegedly tried to trash his cell phone upon being confronted by authorities, reports the BBC, but officials say plenty of damning evidence was recovered, including an antenna concealed under a coat and a taxi receipt for a trip from a street near the GRU's Moscow location to the airport. British ambassador to the Netherlands Peter Wilson, who was present for the announcement, said a seized laptop's history indicated it was part of previous hacks: in Malaysia in association with the investigation into the downing of flight MH-17 over the Ukraine in 2014, and in Lausanne, Switzerland, in connection with the World Anti-Doping Agency, which has investigated doping by Russian athletes. Wilson's take: that the GRU was trying to "clean up Russia's own mess." Russia's take, per a foreign ministry rep quoted by the Guardian: "big fantasies."
– Academics at Beijing Normal University recently compiled a report ranking how "socially responsible" Chinese celebrities are, and China's highest-paid actress, Fan Bingbing, received a 0% rating—which would be eyebrow-raising enough, except that Fan has also gone missing. The BBC reports the 36-year-old X-Men actress, model, and singer hasn't been seen since her last public showing at a children's hospital on July 1, and Business Insider notes her social media posts dried up about a month before that. Her boyfriend, actor Li Chen, also seemingly vanished at the beginning of the summer. Meanwhile, a watchdog site covering social media censorship in China notes that concerned supporters who wondered online what had happened to Fan have since seen their posts scrubbed. Fan vanished not long after state-run TV suggested the contract with her entertainment company misrepresented what she earned so she could pay less in taxes. Her studio said the report was "slander," per Channel NewsAsia. Then came the celebrity-ranking report in which Fan ranked last, with just nine of the 100 celebrities reviewed on their work, philanthropy, and personal integrity deemed to be "socially responsible." The BBC notes that celebrities "who voice opinions in line with government rhetoric" generally get more praise and positive press in China. There have been whispers Fan was arrested by the Chinese government for tax evasion, and a cryptic article has fueled that rumor: The state-run Securities Daily posted a story last week saying Fan was "under control" and "will accept the legal decision"; the article was yanked a few hours later.
– The third-ranking House Republican has admitted that he addressed a gathering of white supremacists in 2002—but House Majority Whip Steve Scalise says he didn't know the group's beliefs and it is "insulting and ludicrous" to suggest he shared them, the Hill reports. Scalise, who was a Louisiana state lawmaker at the time, tells the New Orleans Times-Picayune that he "spoke to any group that called" about his opposition to government spending. An aide says Scalise has spoken to "hundreds of different groups" and is in no way "affiliated with the abhorrent group in question." "I detest these kinds of views," Scalise says of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization founded by former KKK leader David Duke. "As a Catholic, I think some of the things they profess target people like me. A lot of their views run contradictory to the way I run my life." Louisiana politicians, including Gov. Bobby Jindal, have defended Scalise, saying they're confident he is not a racist, reports CNN. But Democrats—and some conservatives—say Scalise still has questions to answer, Politico reports. "If someone in Louisiana didn't know about David Duke's beliefs in 2002, they must have been hiding under a very large rock somewhere," says the executive director of the state Democratic Party.
– As the Boston carjacking victim known only as "Danny" continues to recount his story of what happened during his encounter with the Tsarnaev brothers, CNN has what might be the strangest detail of all. Danny says that while Tamerlan made threats, blustered about his hatred of Americans, and generally acted as ringleader, Dzhokhar asked only one question the whole time: He wanted to know how much Danny paid for the Mercedes SUV they were riding in. At another point, the Chinese immigrant tells CBS that his phone rang. "If you don't want me to pick up the phone, I won't pick it up," he told Tamerlan. "I won't say anything." Tamerlan "told me that you have to answer the phone. But if you use any single word in Chinese, I will kill you." Danny complied, and when he hung up Tamerlan said, "Good job. Good boy."
– President Obama today cast the budget fight today as a choice between jet owners and ordinary Americans at his press conference. Some reactions: Greg Sargent, Washington Post: "He was clearly out to pick a major public fight with Republicans over tax cuts for the rich. Obama mounted a surprisingly aggressive moral case for ending high end tax cuts, casting it as a test of our society’s priorities, and argued—crucially—that anyone who fails to support ending them is fundamentally unserious about the deficit." Larry Kudlow, National Review: "Basically his message today was class-warfare, soak-the-rich. Somehow, Democrats are for your kids but Republicans are for your fat cats. It’s so tiresome. It will never sell." Steve Benen, Washington Monthly: Obama "did a very effective job at putting Republicans in a box. Either policymakers accept a balance approach, Obama argued, or the GOP will be exposed as deficit frauds who care about protecting the rich at the expense of everyone else." Robert Frank, Wall Street Journal: "Obama has a new term for the people he wants to tax more: jet owners. ... The problem is that most of the people that would be subject to the higher taxes the president wants aren’t likely to be private-jet owners. Someone earning $250,000 a year—among those scheduled for a tax increase in 2012—is unlikely to afford a jet—or even a few charter trips on a jet."
– In a bombshell ruling just a week before the Winter Olympics open in Pyeongchang, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has overturned the lifetime Olympic bans of 28 out of 43 Russian athletes accused of doping at the Sochi Games in 2014. The athletes can now keep medals they won in Sochi and could theoretically compete in Pyeongchang—though the International Olympic Committee says the ruling doesn't mean they are automatically invited, the Guardian reports. The CAS also reduced the bans of 11 Russians found guilty of doping from lifetime to this Olympics only. The IOC banned Russia for sanctioning doping, but at least 164 Russian athletes will compete in the "Olympic Athlete of Russia" team. In a ruling that the IOC warned "could have a serious impact on the future fight against doping," the CAS said the bans were being overturned not because the athletes were being "declared innocent, but in their case, due to insufficient evidence," the BBC reports. The IOC also said the upholding of sanctions against some athletes "clearly demonstrates once more the existence of the systemic manipulation of the anti-doping system at Sochi 2014." Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko says Moscow plans to file legal action to allow the athletes involved to compete in Pyeongchang, the AP reports. Veteran American skeleton athlete Katie Uhlaender, meanwhile, says she is "heartbroken" by the decision, which means she will lose the bronze medal she was awarded after the Russian who finished third in Sochi was disqualified.
– As President Trump puts "gag orders" on federal agencies, including the EPA and USDA, pockets of defiance are appearing. On Tuesday, someone running the Twitter account for South Dakota's Badlands National Park—part of the National Park Service—started tweeting facts about climate change, Vanity Fair reports. Those facts included, "Burning one gallon of gasoline puts nearly 20lbs of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere" and, "Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than an any time in the last 650,000 years." The tweets were later deleted but can be viewed here. CNN reports the facts may have run afoul of what the Trump administration wants people to believe about climate change, which the president has previously called a "hoax." The Democratic National Committee responded to the deletion of Badlands National Parks' tweets by saying "Putin would be proud." Meanwhile, the park's Twitter followers ballooned from 7,000 to 70,000 while it was tweeting about climate change.
– A California high school student made a find LiveScience calls "amazing": While doing paleontology fieldwork for school in Utah in 2009, Kevin Terris helped to discover an almost complete baby Parasaurolophus skeleton—in fact, the most complete one ever found. Nicknamed "Joe," it also turned out to be the smallest and youngest Parasaurolophus fossil ever found at under a year old and 6 feet long. The herbivore is known for its tube-shaped head crest, and this one was so young the crest is just a bump. "We now understand a lot more about how Parasaurolophus grew its crest," says a paleontologist. Specifically, the fact that the crest was already in existence on such a young dinosaur suggests that Parasaurolophus crests started growing earlier than those of other duck-billed dinosaurs. "It finally lets us understand how Parasaurolophus evolved that big crest, just by shifting around events in its development," the paleontologist says. Why so much time between the discovery and its reporting? The team couldn't even dig up the bones until 2010, because of the need for permits, and it took 1,300 hours of cleaning and chiseling to unearth the fossil—the completeness of which is "pretty spectacular," according to the paleontologist. Fun side note: Terris spotted the first bone after two professional paleontologists walked right by it, which one of them tells NBC News is "a little embarrassing."
– Luis Lopez Gallegos says he is now a widower with four children to raise—just because someone didn't like the way he drove. In what police are probing as a road-rage attack, 30-year-old Perla Avina was shot dead Sunday afternoon as the couple was driving to their East Oakland, Calif., home from a supermarket, reports the Oakland Tribune. Gallegos, a mechanic, says that after an altercation, a "young guy with a gun who doesn't care about life" pulled up alongside his car and sprayed it with bullets, killing his wife as she sat in the front passenger seat. "I wish God would have took me before they took her. I wish I would have gotten shot," says Gallegos. The couple's four children are three girls ages 1, 4, and 8, and a 14-year-old boy. The younger children "don't know what's going on," the boy tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "But my older sister, she's just trying to hold it down, like me." A reward of up to $30,000 is being offered for information leading to the shooter. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan tells KTVU that police have been told to make the murder a priority and will be "putting investigators on overtime and really focusing on this."
– Talk about being too good at your non-job. A Harvard University junior lost his Facebook internship two hours before he had planned to travel to it after he exploited a privacy issue in the social network's Messenger system. Aran Khanna discussed his experience and findings in a paper published in Harvard's Technology Science journal. "From 2011 to the start of this study in May 2015, Facebook Messenger collected and shared user geo-locations as the default setting for every message sent from the Android mobile app," he writes. The flaw was that those locations could be seen by anyone in a group chat, even if the person who sent the message wasn't friends with everyone else in the group. And so Khanna developed a browser app called Marauder's Map that exposed, on a map, the geo-location data that was being shared. He tweeted about his Chrome extension and posted about it on Medium on May 26. By the 28th, CNN, the Washington Post, and many others had covered his findings; the extension was downloaded 85,000 times. That same day, Facebook asked Khanna to disable the app; he did. The company also deactivated location sharing on desktops and released a June 4 update that required users to opt in to location sharing. It also withdrew Khanna's internship, which was to start on June 1. The official reason given was a violation of the "high ethical standards expected of interns," according to Boston.com. "This mapping tool scraped Facebook data in a way that violated our terms," a Facebook rep tells the site. Khanna says his app was created using his own Messenger history, not data scraping. "I didn't write the program to be malicious," he says. Khanna ended up securing an internship with another Silicon Valley firm. (This alleged intern tale of woe involves the Olsen twins.)
– You may not think of that guy manspreading across from you on the subway as a magnificent peacock, but he's more or less doing it for the same effect: a show of dominance and openness. And indeed, new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that in online dating and speed dating, nonverbal displays showing "postural expansiveness"—i.e., how much space you fill with your body and limbs—can up your chances of scoring with potential mates compared to those with a more "closed" posture. "We've seen it in the animal world, that ... maximizing presence in a physical space is used as [a] signal for attracting a mate," co-author Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk says, per CNN. "By exerting dominance they're trying to signal to a potential mate, 'I am able to do things.'" Scientists filmed 144 speed-dating sessions, matching 12 pairs of men and women for four minutes a pop; subjects were asked whether they'd want to see each partner again —and those who gestured or moved hands or arms nearly doubled their chances of a "yes." Even a tried-and-true smile didn't attract mates as well, Vacharkulksemsuk says, per the Atlantic. In the study's second part, a mobile dating app gave almost 3,000 subjects the profiles of possible dates, with each featuring a photo, first name, and age, Smithsonian reports. Each of the six candidates had two photos: one showing an expressive, open posture, the other a tighter one. Those with the more-expansive look got about 25% more hits, with the success rate higher for men. In online dating, "we are forced to rely more on these instincts because time is so limited," Vacharkulksemsuk says. (Here, cougar speed dating.)
– Ten years and $66 billion later, not one Afghan battalion is operating on its own. That was the conclusion of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell today as he set new benchmarks for training Afghan soldiers and expressed alarm over the attrition rates of Afghanistan's men in uniform. In charge of the training, Caldwell admitted that even the two so-called "independent" military units still require US backing for "maintenance, logistics, and medical systems." Most Afghan soldiers read below the kindergarten level, Wired reports, preventing them from using complex equipment. Afghan police are also dogged by corruption allegations that include mass murder as well as rape, arbitrary detention, and abductions. Meanwhile 2.3% of Afghan cops and 1.4% of Afghan soldiers are quitting every day. Caldwell said the US must continue training until 2017 and aim to reduce attrition rates to 1.4% across the board. “I’m still very realistic about the challenges out there,” he said.
– The "leading from behind" theme looks to be emerging as a conservative line of attack against President Obama. The phrase comes from an Obama adviser describing the Libya strategy in a New Yorker piece on foreign policy by Ryan Lizza. (Read it here.) The gist is that Obama is a pragmatist who recognizes that US power is declining and that a lot of people hate us. "Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as military strength," writes Lizza. It's the anti-John-Wayne approach, adds the Obama adviser quoted earlier. Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer weighed in at the Washington Post, criticizing the piece for turning a "foreign policy of hesitation" into a doctrine. "Leading from behind is not leading," Krauthammer writes. "It is abdicating." Now William Kristol at the Weekly Standard is on the case, sarcastically thanking Lizza for making clear that Obama is "shepherding" the country through this age of "appeasement and decline." He wants Republicans to take note: "How do you defeat a leader from behind? With a leader from the front." The party, therefore, needs a "workhorse, not a show horse."
– The post-mortems on Jeb Bush's failed campaign are rolling in. Some examples: Don't blame Donald Trump. "What killed Jeb Bush’s campaign was first the failure of his brother’s administration, and then the emergence of Marco Rubio to present a more attractive face for its continuation," writes Jonathan Chait at New York. Still, Peter Beinart at the Atlantic explains why Bush was Trump's "perfect foil." The Week sums things up by collecting 19 "devastating quotes" that compare coverage of Bush in early 2015 with more recent stories. One problem: His campaign underestimated "Bush fatigue," observes the Washington Post. Another: He didn't have advisers who could recognize shortcomings and, more importantly, point them out to Bush himself, says this piece in Politico Magazine. How on earth do you spend $130 million and have so little to show for it? The New York Times digs into "one of the least successful campaign spending binges in history." Those early stumbles on Iraq didn't help, notes CNN. Gary Legum at Salon bids "good riddance" to the "Bush Dynasty" with the question, "Can anyone think of another family dynasty that has had such a huge role in a particular stretch of American history, yet has almost zero hold on the country’s imagination?"
– Like vanilla ice cream? Don't read this—because the smell of a beaver's butt is key to at least some vanilla flavoring, Time reports. More specifically, beavers like to mark their territory with a musky, vanilla compound located in sacs between the pelvis and the base of the tail. Manufacturers have been extracting it for 80 years to flavor foods and perfumes—but it's tricky, because the compound often mixes with urine and anal gland secretions. "You can milk the anal glands so you can extract the fluid," wildlife ecologist Joanne Crawford tells National Geographic. "You can squirt it out. It’s pretty gross." But she admits to sticking her nose in there and taking a whiff: "People think I’m nuts. I tell them, 'Oh, but it’s beavers; it smells really good.'" For the record, the slimey brown compound is extracted by anesthetizing a beaver and "milking" its nether regions. Ice cream sundae, anyone?
– Tragedy in Sarasota, Fla., where police say a father accidentally shot and killed his son at a shooting range Sunday afternoon, WFLA reports. William Brumby was firing in the last shooting lane at High Noon Gun Range, where there was a solid wall to his right, when a spent shell casing hit that wall and ricocheted into the back of Brumby's shirt. Brumby, who was holding the handgun he was using in his right hand, used that same hand to try and get the casing out, accidentally pointing the gun behind him and firing it while doing so. The bullet hit his 14-year-old son, Stephen, who was brought to a local hospital but could not be saved. The Herald-Tribune notes that, in 2013, the newspaper described High Noon as "possibly ... one of the safest indoor shooting ranges ever designed," thanks to armored steel plates embedded in the dividers between lanes and sound-dampening panels that were designed to both make the range quieter than most other ranges and to prevent ricochets by absorbing stray rounds. According to the Bradenton Herald, High Noon's website states that shooters younger than 14 shoot for free as long as a parent is with them. No charges are currently pending against Brumby.
– Billboard is forecasting that Taylor Swift's 1989 will likely sell at least a million copies in its first week—and if that happens, Swift will become the first pop music act in history to pull off what the Los Angeles Times calls a "hat trick." The album, released at midnight Monday, would be her third consecutive one to sell more than a million copies during its debut week, a feat that's never been achieved before. It would also be just the 19th album to ever hit the million mark in one week since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991; the first million-seller this year and the second-biggest-selling album of the year (topped only by the Frozen soundtrack); and the biggest debut-week seller since Swift's last album, Red, sold 1.21 million copies in 2012.
– One of his victims clapped as George Doodnaught got led away in handcuffs, and it's hard to blame her: The Toronto anesthesiologist got sentenced to 10 years in prison today for sexually assaulting her and 20 other women during surgery. The victims were "sedated but still aware of their surroundings" during the assaults, reports AFP. The 65-year-old fondled them and forced oral sex on them, among other things. In the recovery room, he would tell the women that they had initiated once the drugs kicked in. “Never once during this whole process, even when I was on the stand, when I was giving my victim impact statement, at any time, did he look at me,” the woman who clapped tells the Globe and Mail. “He’s a coward.” Doodnaught worked at North York General for 26 years, and all but one of the victims had surgery there between 2006 and 2010, reports the Toronto Star. He was often separated from the rest of the medical team with a surgical drape. Though not part of the criminal case, allegations of about 10 other assaults date back to 1992.
– Police in New York City arrested a 27-year-old man tonight accused of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old boy and injuring his 7-year-old playmate over the weekend, reports Gothamist. Daniel St. Hubert is in custody, the arrest made soon after police publicly identified him as a suspect. As the Daily News explains, the break in the case came when investigators matched DNA found on a knife left at the scene with the state's criminal database. Hubert has a long criminal record for offenses including assault and had been paroled on May 23, reports the New York Times. Police haven't called him a suspect in another fatal stabbing that occurred just two nights earlier, but the investigation is continuing. The same brand of knife—a model discontinued 10 years ago—was left behind in the slaying of 18-year-old Tanaya Copeland, and the man seen fleeing that scene had the same general description as Hubert. The 6-year-old boy who was killed, PJ Avitto, had gotten into an elevator with friend Mikayla Capers in their Brooklyn housing complex before being attacked. Mikayla remains in critical condition.
– BP has bowed to pressure from an increasingly ticked-off White House and reversed an earlier decision to cut off a live video feed as it attempts a top kill maneuver to plug the Gulf oil leak. The company—slammed by lawmakers yesterday after executives said the feed would be cut off during the attempt—warns that changes in the appearance of oil flow during the procedure may be misleading, the AP reports. The attempt to plug the leak with mud and cement was set to begin at dawn today and last up to two days. President Obama—who snapped "Plug the damn hole" at aides in a recent meeting, according to the Washington Post— has been receiving frequent updates on BP's progress. Top government scientists will be in the room with BP to supervise the attempt and consider alternatives if it fails.
– With their case making international headlines, the Australian parents of baby Gammy are telling their story. Speaking to Australia's 9News, David Farnell said he and his wife, Wendy, "wanted" to take Gammy home with them, Reuters reports—but his surrogate mother wouldn't let them. Surrogate Pattaramon Chanbua "said if we tried to take our little boy, she's going to get the police and she's going to come and take our little girl," Farnell said, via Sky News, referring to Gammy's twin sister. Earlier, the BBC notes, the Farnells told reporters they hadn't known about Gammy at all. In other moments from the interview: David Farnell also says the couple would likely have sought to terminate the pregnancy if they'd known earlier that Gammy had Down Syndrome, Sky News reports. "It was late into the pregnancy that we learned the boy had Down's," Farnell says, noting that "no parent wants a son with a disability." Farnell acknowledged his convictions for child sex abuse; 9News notes that he was convicted of abusing four girls, ages five to 10, over a decade. He spent three years in jail. "I’ve been convicted of child sex offenses and I hang my head in shame," he said. "Everybody hates sex offenders," he noted, per Sky. "That's why I've tried so hard and want to be a good father to my children, so people can see that I'm a good person now because I did this bad thing a long time ago."
– Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space firm beat Elon Musk's SpaceX to the punch and launched its Blue Shepard reusable rocket into outer space, then returned to its landing pad in its "first successful uncrewed reusability test," Mashable reports. The BE-3 rocket and empty crew capsule flew to a suborbital height of about 62 miles, at which point the capsule and rocket separated, Engadget reports. The capsule landed on Earth with the help of parachutes, the rocket's engines roared back to life about 5,000 feet above the landing pad, and the rocket touched down at 4.4mph. "Rockets have always been expendable," Bezos wrote in a Monday blog post. "Not anymore. Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket." Bezos also tweeted a video of the event Tuesday morning, noting "Controlled landing not easy, but done right, can look easy." Bezos notes how reusable rockets could economize space travel, telling CNNMoney that current space travel is akin to airlines throwing out every 747 jet after it makes a cross-country journey. "You can imagine how expensive your ticket would be," he notes. Elon Musk tweeted kudos Tuesday, posting, "Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster," though he turned that compliment into a backhanded one with a tweet that read, "It is, however, important to clear up the difference between 'space' and 'orbit.'" His point: that even though SpaceX's rockets have yet to nail an upright landing after leaving Earth's atmosphere, at least his rockets leave the atmosphere—a task requiring 10 times more speed and 100 times the energy of suborbital rockets, per CNN. But Bezos says he doesn't even consider Musk's company, or Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, to be competitors. "I think of our competition primarily as Earth's gravity," he says. "Space is a big place. There's room for all of us." (The last Virgin Galactic launch didn't go well.)
– Despite their fame and (sometimes) fortune, even celebrities occasionally turn to crime. The Frisky rounds up 11 (alleged!) celebrity thieves: Miranda July: The indie filmmaker admitted in the New Yorker that she stole some Neosporin as a college freshman—then peed her pants when apprehended. Even so, she says she kept on shoplifting, even from Goodwill. Farrah Fawcett: She took clothes from a boutique and was charged with shoplifting in 1970, but she called it "vigilante behavior"—citing the store's unfair return policy. Courtney Love: The troubled rocker has been sued for not returning $114,000 worth of borrowed jewelry. Megan Fox: After taking some lip gloss as a child, the future star was banned from Walmart for life. Angelina Pivarnick: The former Jersey Shore star was accused of never returning a gown she borrowed from a designer for the MTV Movie Awards. Click for the full list, which includes a tennis star and a former Miss USA.
– Could "North Colorado" soon become the 51st state? Voters in 11 northern Colorado counties will get to weigh in tomorrow on whether or not they'd like to secede from the state, CNN reports. Ten of the conservative-leaning counties would become North Colorado, while the other would become a panhandle for Wyoming. Of course, CNN thinks there's zero chance this actually happens, because the entire state and congress would have to vote to approve the move. But it still stands as one of the more intriguing ballot measures up for vote tomorrow. Others include: Colorado is also voting on whether or not to impose a 15% excise tax on now-legal marijuana sales, which would go to fund school construction, and an additional 10% sales tax to fund marijuana enforcement laws. Washington state has a measure that would require special labeling for genetically-modified food—a proposal that met with ardent opposition and eventual defeat in California last year. Sure enough, out-of-state opponents have poured money into this race as well, the Seattle Times reports; of the whopping $22 million raised in opposition, $550 has come from Washingtonians. New Jersey will consider a constitutional amendment to raise the state's minimum wage to $8.25 an hour. New Yorkers are considering whether or not to allow the construction of seven casinos, with the proceeds going towards education and/or cutting property taxes. New Jersey is also considering a gambling bill of sorts, the Star-Ledger reports, allowing veterans' groups to raise money via Bingo games, raffles, and similar games.
– Gone apparently are the days of nude photo scandals and the like for Jersey Shore alum Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, who yesterday wed longtime fiance Jionni Lavalle in what Radar is calling a "Great Gatsby-themed wedding." The couple, parents to 2-year-old Lorenzo and 3-month-old Giovanna Marie, included a cigar and scotch bar in their big day, adds Us Weekly. And planning it wasn't as stressful as people usually make it out to be, says Polizzi. "It’s not that hard to plan a wedding. For me, it’s just that I don’t let myself get stressed out. I just enjoy the moment and I try to be positive about everything." She released photos on her website.
– Plans for a boycott of Harley-Davidson are "great," President Trump said Sunday, the day after he met with 180 bikers at a "Bikers for Trump" event. Many Harley owners "plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas," Trump tweeted. "Great! Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors. A really bad move! US will soon have a level playing field, or better." Trump has been feuding with the American motorcycle maker since June, when it announced it would shift production of some bikes destined for the European Union from the US to overseas to avoid tariffs the EU introduced as a response to Trump's steel tariffs. Harley—which has plants in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania but is planning to close one in Missouri by the end of next year—says it stands to lose $100 million a year from the tariffs, though Trump accuses the company of using tariffs as an excuse to move production out of the US, CNN reports. Harley-Davidson declined to comment on the latest remarks from Trump, who welcomed bikers to his golf course in Bedminster, NJ, on Saturday, the AP reports. CEO Matt Levatich told CNBC last month that Trump's remarks were "unfortunate attention" at a time when the company is being forced to make tough choices because of stagnant motorcycle sales in the US.
– A former well-known Canadian TV sports anchor is in jail after police say he robbed two banks in as many days in the western province of Alberta last week. Police in the small city of Medicine Hat say Steve Vogelsang robbed a Royal Bank of Canada on Thursday, Oct. 19, and then turned around the next day and robbed a Bank of Montreal, CBC reports. He entered both banks without a disguise and after demanding money, left with an undisclosed sum. Police finally arrested Vogelsang at a nearby hotel at around 3am on Saturday. Per CTV Winnipeg News, Vogelsang, 53, was a longtime news director and sports broadcaster at CKY, now CTV Winnipeg. He also taught journalism at Red River College in Winnipeg from 2002 to 2011. Conor Lloyd, a spokesman for the college, says, “I can confirm he is no longer an employee here.” Vogelsang is scheduled to appear in provincial court on Tuesday.
– What's up with New York lawyers? Months after one was caught on video spewing anti-immigrant rhetoric in a restaurant, another flung racist insults on the subway and apparently assaulted a woman of Asian descent. Anna Lushchinskaya, 40, shouted profanities at a 24-year-old Tuesday after bumping into her on the northbound D train—then is seen assaulting her with keys and an umbrella, CNN reports. Lushchinskaya unleashed an obscenity meant to denigrate Asians, per the South China Morning Post, then fired off an anti-Middle Eastern insult at a man who intervened. "What?" he responds. "...I'm Dominican!" A good Samaritan who intervened got scratched up, while the female victim walked away with facial lacerations: "I'm lucky that she didn't have anything like weapons on her—like knife, gun—because it could have got a lot worse," she tells WABC-TV. "I'm lucky that people were on the train who were helping me, especially the first Asian guy who stood in front of me right away because he wasn't recording." As for Lushchinskaya, she was arrested and charged with five misdemeanors, including attempted assault and menacing with a weapon other than a gun, Law.com reports. See videos of the incident here and here, but be warned, it's ugly. (See how New Yorkers dealt with the first ranting lawyer.)
– Choi Eun-hee led a fascinating life—even before the actress was kidnapped by North Korean agents and forced to make films for the state. A film icon, Choi died Monday at a South Korean hospital, where she was receiving dialysis, her son tells Yonhap News. She was 91. Beginning her film career in 1947's A New Oath, Choi became one of South Korea's leading actresses in the 1950s and '60s and one of the country's first female directors, reports Screen Daily. By 1976, she'd appeared in more than 130 films, and apparently caught the eye of future North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. That year, while in Hong Kong, Choi was kidnapped by agents working for Kim, who believed she could help elevate North Korea's film industry, reports the BBC. Months later, Choi's ex-husband, director Shin Sang-ok, was also kidnapped when he went to Hong Kong to look for her. Reunited at a party, the pair eventually made 17 films in North Korea, including 1985's Salt, for which Choi took home the best actress award at the Moscow Film Festival, per Screen Daily. But though she was the first Korean to receive such an honor, Choi wasn't happy living under guard. While promoting a movie in Vienna in March 1986, Choi and Shin sought asylum at the US embassy. The pair—who would spend more than a decade in the US before returning to South Korea in 1999—would later reveal secret recordings in which Kim apologized for the kidnapping scheme, per CNN. But to this day, North Korea claims the pair sought refuge in the country, per the BBC.
– Jimmy Carter was hospitalized in Canada after he collapsed while building a Habitat for Humanity home Thursday in Winnipeg, CBC reports. The 92-year-old former president was using a handsaw to cut wood for a staircase at the time. The reason given for Carter's collapse was dehydration. According to the Winnipeg Free Press, which has video of the incident, Carter had been working in the sun for about 90 minutes. Habitat for Humanity states Carter was taken to the hospital as a precaution and the former president is doing fine. "He encourages everyone to stay hydrated and keep building," Habitat for Humanity CEO Jonathan Reckford says.
– Matthew Matheny went for what was supposed to be a brief hike on Mount St. Helens on Thursday last week—and was airlifted to a Vancouver, Wash., hospital Wednesday when search and rescue teams finally found him. The 40-year-old Warren, Ohio, resident, who was in the state visiting friends, had borrowed a buddy's Subaru Outback to go to the trail, but he became lost in the wilderness and could't find his way back to the vehicle, the Oregonian reports. The search began after Matheny was reported missing and authorities discovered the unoccupied Subaru at the entrance to the Blue Lake Trail on the side of the mountain. He was treated overnight for dehydration, but authorities say he doesn't have life-threatening injuries—and he's lucky to be alive at all. Around 30 searchers took part in the rescue operation, which located Matheny in the general area of the trail, ABC News reports. Authorities zeroed in on a small area Tuesday using cellphone signals and a computer model that tried to predict his movements, the AP reports. His parents, who flew to the state days ago and are ecstatic that he has been found, say he apparently survived by eating berries—and by killing and eating some bees that had been chasing him. "He knew it was a tough situation," mother Linda Matheny tells the Oregonian. "But everyone who has encountered him [has] told us it's remarkable the condition he's in." She adds that she wants to "wring his neck" for his choice of hiking footwear: sandals.
– Mitt Romney spoke to the NAACP national convention today, and most of the headlines are centering on the boos he got when he started talking about ObamaCare and the president himself. He endured three rounds of jeering in all, which amounted to the "most hostile reception of his campaign so far," according to the Washington Post. The candidate himself appeared "visibly unsettled," it adds. Politico, too, uses "hostile" to describe the crowd at points, though it adds that most of Romney's speech was received politely. The first boos came after this line, notes AP: "I am going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program that I can find—and that includes ObamaCare." The New York Times says he also got some cackles for this assertion: "If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him."
– After four decades of work, researchers published the origin of Big Bird (not that one) in Science this week—and it's scientifically unprecedented. The BBC reports that for the first time ever, researchers were able to watch the rise of a new species play out in nature. "It's an extreme case of something we're coming to realize," a speciation expert says. "Evolution in general can happen very quickly." According to a press release, in 1981 an interloper arrived on Daphne Major, a tiny island in the Galapagos archipelago where Peter and B. Rosemary Grant were studying Darwin's finches. The new bird, bigger than the three species living on the island, was a large cactus finch that had apparently flown from an island more than 60 miles away. Unable to return, it mated with a local medium ground finch. The resulting offspring, nicknamed the Big Bird lineage for their size, were unable to attract partners from the local finch population due to their weird song and unusual beak size and mated only among themselves. B. Rosemary Grant calls it a "terrifically inbred lineage," Science Alert reports. Within just two generations, the Big Birds were a distinct species, as confirmed by genomic sequencing and their own unique physical characteristics. An expert says if a naturalist came to the island today, they would simply believe there were four native finch species with nothing giving away the Big Bird as a recent addition. It was touch-and-go there for a minute—droughts in 2002 and 2003 killed all but two Big Birds—but there are now 30 or so members of the hybrid species living on Daphne Major. (The savior of the Galapagos tortoise is a dirty, dirty old man.)
– They might have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for those pesky X-rays: Police in Orem, Utah, who pulled over a man suspected of stealing a ring worth thousands of dollars last Friday eventually discovered it in his passenger's belly, reports the Deseret News. Bryan Ford, 30, and Christina Schlegel, 25, were taken to a police station and sent cops seeking the ring on "several wild goose chases" before an X-ray revealed that Schlegel had swallowed it when the pair were first pulled over, according to Tucson News Now. Both have been charged with felony theft.
– Chicago is losing a big piece of its broadcasting history—and around 200 jobs—with the closure of Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios. Winfrey came to Chicago yesterday to tell staff in person that production work for Oprah Winfrey Network shows like Super Soul Sunday and Oprah's Master Class is being shifted to OWN headquarters in West Hollywood and that the Chicago facility will be completely shut down by December, reports the Chicago Tribune. The West Loop facility hosted Winfrey's talk show from 1990 until it finished in 2011. Chicago has "been everything for me," Winfrey tells the Hollywood Reporter. "I've spent more hours in this building than I have any other building on Earth. We were here when there was nothing but hoes and rats on the street, and now it's one of the hottest neighborhoods" in the city she says, adding that it "will be sad to say goodbye, but I look ahead with such a knowing that what the future holds is even more than I can see." Staffers say there might not be enough TV jobs in Chicago for people affected by the closure and some people are going to have to seek work in New York or Los Angeles, the Tribune reports.
– Madonna's 15-year-old son has been ordered by a judge to return to his famous mom in New York, though it's not clear whether Rocco Ritchie—who, his lawyers have said, would much rather stay with dad Guy Ritchie—has actually complied with said order. Sources have been saying Rocco had no plans to return to his mom; he's not pictured in any of the Christmas Day snaps of her kids that Madonna shared on Instagram (though she did also share an older picture of Rocco with the caption, "Merry X-mas to the Sun-shine of my Life!"); and Page Six reports that he spent the holiday with his dad and told a friend, via Instagram, that he was staying in London. So what's the problem? As TMZ reports, it sounds like pretty typical teenage stuff. Sources say Rocco is "miserable" having to be on tour with his mom, and that many "horrible, full-blown fights with screaming and crying" have taken place. Radar also reports the teen was fed up with how "controlling" his mom is. Rocco has also reportedly said that his mom treats him like a trophy, not a son. And Page Six notes that Madonna's oversharing may be part of the problem: Among other things, she's posted things like a picture of Rocco in pigtails and a snap of him in a bathing suit with the hashtag, "#nosausage." Of course, there are also the sources telling TMZ that, per Madonna, this is all Guy Ritchie's fault and that he's trying to come between mother and son by trash-talking Madonna to Rocco. (Click to see why Madonna was crying last month.)
– The nation that seems to be showing up in most headlines Thursday is Nambia, mainly because it doesn't actually exist. In a speech to African leaders Wednesday, President Trump referred to "Nambia" not once but twice, first in his general introduction and then later when he mentioned that "Nambia's health system is increasingly self-sufficient." As the BBC notes, that led to plenty of online jokes, along with people wondering whether he meant Gambia, Zambia, or Namibia. Turns out, it was the last of those. Coverage: For the record: The official White House transcript of the speech made the correction without mention of the mispronunciation. (You can hear for yourself in this video.) But that hasn't slowed a barrage of coverage making light of the president's mistake. One example: At CNN, Anderson Cooper referred to Nambia as a "magical land far, far away" in his recap. Namibia 101: The gaffe has led to a slew of civics-type primers about Namibia. Time, for instance, notes the tiny nation of fewer than 2.5 million people is relatively young, having achieved its independence in 1990. Among the factoids it highlights: Namibia is a big producer of diamonds and it has environmental protection written into its constitution. Silver lining: "If Trump's blunder was worth anything, it was this: The world now knows about Namibia," writes Luis Gomez at the San Diego Union-Tribune. He notes that Namibia also is one of the top global producers of uranium. The main point: The gist of Trump's speech was to tout the region's economic potential (he said he has friends who go there "trying to get rich"), and a member of the African advocacy group ONE praised the intent. "I know 'Nambia' will be the narrative that comes from those remarks, but POTUS is right on this: Africa has tremendous business potential," tweeted rep Ian Koski. Namibia's reaction: Officially, nada. No major government official, including President Hage Geingob, who was present, has said anything publicly about the mistake. But the Washington Post reports that Namibians themselves sound a little miffed and are mocking Trump, like so.
– Just days after South Africa's Rolene Strauss won this year's crown, Miss World organizers have announced it will no longer feature the swimsuit portion of the contest, reports the New York Daily News. Next year's competition will be the first year in the event's 63-year history in which the contestants put on a "beachwear" fashion show instead of parading down the catwalk in bikinis, ABC News reports. It's not exactly clear what "beachwear" means, though a rep for the event frames it as "more of a fashion competition than a bikini show." The Daily News notes that Miss World had already stopped airing the bathing suit portion of the competition, and had made it optional. Donald Trump, who owns the Miss Universe pageant, puts what Elle calls a "strong emphasis" on swimsuits and doesn't include interviews or service elements during his contest, as Miss World does. After Miss World Chairwoman Julia Morley's husband (the founder of Miss World) died in 2000, Trump called Morley and reportedly asked, "So little lady, are you ready to throw in the towel?" His remarks spurred Morley to get a $5 million loan and keep her contest going. As for the latest change, "I don't need to see women just walking up and down in bikinis," Morley tells Elle. "It doesn't do anything for the woman. And it doesn't do anything for any of us." (Miss World got rid of bikinis in 2013 out of respect to host country Indonesia.)
– Tragedy struck a Brooklyn family over the weekend when a father and son died of drug overdoses at a birthday party. Police say Joseph Andrade, 44, and his son Carlos, 22, told family members they were stepping outside for a cigarette when in actuality they were going to snort a mix of heroin and fentanyl, an opioid 50 times stronger than morphine, the New York Post reports. Carlos, who had driven up to Brooklyn from Maryland, was discovered by his girlfriend, Jasmine Santos, as he asphyxiated in the foyer of his father's building around 3am. Joseph was found outside the building on 27th Street. Emergency responders administered Narcan, a medication that blocks the effects of opioids, to the two men and took them to NYU Langone Hospital, but they died within an hour of being found, the New York Daily News reports. Joseph Andrade is a reputed addict but several witnesses expressed surprise at his son's involvement. “I’m so surprised because I know Carlos, and I never know that he used drugs or anything like that," Jasmine Santos' uncle Yovanny said. New York City officials say 1300 people died from overdoses last year, 90 percent of which were caused by heroin or fentanyl.
– Bernie Sanders was busily going after Hillary Clinton's blood Saturday night, Donald Trump was waxing poetic about the stability we used to enjoy under some of its bloodiest dictators. Asked Sunday by CNN's Jake Tapper if the world would be a more stable place if Moammar Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power, Trump responded, "100%." His full quote: "I mean, look at Libya. Look at Iraq. Iraq used to be no terrorists. (Hussein) would kill the terrorists immediately, which is like now it's the Harvard of terrorism. If you look at Iraq from years ago, I'm not saying he was a nice guy, he was a horrible guy, but it was a lot better than it is right now. Right now, Iraq is a training ground for terrorists. Right now Libya, nobody even knows Libya, frankly there is no Iraq and there is no Libya. It's all broken up. They have no control. Nobody knows what's going on." Trump turned his thoughts to the Benghazi hearing, adds the Hill, saying, "it was very partisan, and it looked quite partisan. The level of hatred between Republicans and Democrats was unbelievable. You’ve never seen anything like this." His solution: Donald Trump. "I’m going to unify," he said. "One of the big knocks on me was that over the years I’ve gotten along with Democrats and I’ve gotten along with Republicans, and I said that’s a good thing. As a businessman, I had an obligation to do that, to myself, to my family, to my company, to my employees. I get along with everybody. I will be a great unifier for our country."
– Bob Dylan acknowledged his Nobel Prize win—but only momentarily. The musician has been oddly quiet about winning the literature prize, but a fan noticed that his official website added a line to this page that said "Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature." But by Friday morning, the reference had been removed from the site, NBC News reports. Per USA Today, the Nobel board has given up attempting to confirm whether Dylan plans to attend the December ceremony at which he would theoretically accept his award.
– Conan O’Brien joins the ranks of the unemployed today, so the ousted Tonight Show host now has plenty of time to track the backlash and second-guessing about the TV shell game. Jay Leno remains the villain of the piece, but the hard truth is that O’Brien never drew the numbers of young viewers to his time slot that NBC had hoped for. “The 18-to-34 group is so difficult to attract and the lower half, 18 to 25, is the hardest of all,” a strategist told the New York Times. The increasingly fractured TV landscape didn’t help. Competition is now fierce for the audience Tonight Show producers once took for granted. O'Brien has been buffetted by the same economic realities most American are grappling with, making him a "Harvard-educated, multi-millionaire late night talk show host" who was "magically transmogrified into a guy who got laid off at the local car plant," blogs Michael Ian Black.
– Take your pick as to which of these statements from Alibaba founder Jack Ma is gloomier: He's going back on his pledge to create 1 million US jobs, and the US-China trade war that he blames for that plan's undoing is one that he believes could last two decades. "It's going to last long, it's going to be a mess," the Chinese tech billionaire said Tuesday. He addressed the jobs plan, made after he met with then president-elect Donald Trump in January 2017, on Wednesday: "This promise was on the basis of friendly China-US cooperation and reasonable bilateral trade relations, but the current situation has already destroyed that basis. This promise can't be completed." CNN provides background, explaining Ma's "vague promise" didn't involve building Alibaba facilities in the US, but rather by helping fire up small US businesses by enabling them to better tap into the Chinese market. The Wall Street Journal also uses the word "vague" to describe how critics viewed Ma's pledge, observing that, nearly two years later, Alibaba hasn't released any figures related to the number of jobs created thus far. Count the Washington Post among those critics. It points out that based on Commerce Department figures, 1 million new American jobs would require that US exports to China rise by an additional $206 billion a year. That's a more than 100% jump over 2017's $188 billion in exports, a figure that encompasses things that wouldn't benefit from Alibaba's platform, like airplanes.
– If the goal of movies is to provide viewers with an escape from their everyday lives, then these movies offer that, with an extra hallucinogenic slap in the face. Salon set out to find the 10 Trippiest Movies Ever Made, and Matt Zoller Seitz's collection has everything from Disney to David Lynch to Porky Pig. Samples: Porky in Wackyland (1938): Here's one part: "In a field of towering mushrooms, Porky is menaced by a huge, fanged beast who suddenly starts traipsing about like a toddler, pealing, 'La la la! La la la!," writes Seitz. The Loony Tunes short is a true “mind-effer.” Fantasia (1940): Come on, dancing mushrooms? The psychedelic combo of instrumental music and choreographed animation—both dramatically horrifying and playfully silly—was probably pretty wicked for kids at the time. Yellow Submarine (1968): Another popular animation set to music, this movie follows the Fab Four on a journey to restore color to Pepperland…and that’s essentially all the plot you’ll find. The rest is stunning visual imagery to accompany Beatles’ classics like “Eleanor Rigby” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Inland Empire (2006): This list wouldn’t truly be trippy without infamous surreal director David Lynch. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic, "a parable of evolution and the limits of imagination," plays with the mind’s concept of space, time, and human existence. After 43 years, it still lives up to its original promo, “The ultimate trip.” See the other trippy classics that made the list.
– A ship that measures more than 1,000 feet long has vanished in the South Atlantic. The Stellar Daisy departed Rio de Janeiro last Sunday and was bound for China with its load of iron ore. But on Friday, while off Uruguay, the crew texted their South Korean employer to say the 266,000-ton ship was taking on water on the port side, reports Reuters. Commercial ships in the area some 1,500 miles off the coast were made aware of the situation and began searching; two Filipino crew members were found in a life raft. But Yonhap reports that a second raft and two 30-person lifeboats were both found empty, though authorities believe the 22 missing crew members were wearing life vests. "A search operation is continuing for the 22," says a South Korean foreign ministry official. The BBC reports the Uruguayan navy has said ships participating in the search detected the smell of fuel.
– The second episode of Sacha Baron Cohen's Who Is America? aired Sunday night on Showtime, and it may have claimed its first casualty: Georgia lawmakers are calling for state Rep. Jason Spencer to step down after what Mic calls a "life-ruining appearance" on the show. "Of all the individuals featured in Who Is America? so far, Spencer seems the most likely to have damaged his career," Kathryn VanArendonk and Megh Wright declare on Vulture. The segment featured Baron Cohen, pretending to be an Israeli "anti-terrorism expert" named Erran Morad, supposedly teaching Spencer (who introduced a bill in 2016 that would have effectively barred Muslims from wearing burkas or niqabs) how to protect himself from Islamic extremists. Read on for what happened, the reaction that has followed, and more from the episode: So what exactly did Spencer do during the segment? He pretended to be a Chinese tourist (attempting to imitate a Chinese accent and spouting what Mic calls "racist gibberish"), pulled down his pants and underwear to thrust his bare buttocks at Morad after Morad told him members of ISIS believe any man who comes in contact with another man's butt will become homosexual, and repeatedly shouted the n-word as part of a kidnapping role-playing exercise in which Morad told him that doing so would attract attention to himself. You can watch the segment here.
– Campbell's is tinkering with its chicken soup recipe to appeal to millennials, multicultural families, and same-sex parents—among others, the New York Times reports. The company is removing ingredients that have fallen out of favor with customers—potassium chloride, monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate, and, um, celery, to name just a few—in an effort to shore up flagging sales. “We’re closing the gap between the kitchen and our plants,” Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison tells the Times. While most of the changes were made with an eye on more natural ingredients, celery apparently fell victim to child taste-testers. All told, the new recipe includes only 20 ingredients to the old recipe's 30. But don't worry if you're a fan of classic Campbell's chicken soup in all its disodium guanylate goodness. NPR reports the changes will only affect children's chicken soup containing noodles shaped like Star Wars and Frozen characters. After a minor change to the recipe in 2011, this more complete overhaul took Campbell's chefs two months of tinkering, according to the Times. NPR reports the company may or may not make similar changes with its classic chicken soup recipe. But company chefs are already attempting to remove high-fructose corn syrup from Campbell's tomato soup, according to the Times. “It’s a delicate balance because these products are beloved,” one Campbell Soup executive says. (If fewer ingredients can't save Campbell's, maybe instant soup pods can.)
– If you had big plans this weekend, David Meade regrets to inform you that the world will be ending Saturday. Meade, a Christian numerologist and self-described "researcher," says Sept. 23 is foretold in the Bible's Book of Revelation as the day a series of catastrophic events will begin, and as a result, "a major part of the world will not be the same," the Washington Post reports. The Bible prophecies a woman "clothed with the sun" and a "crown of 12 stars" giving birth to a boy who will "rule all the nations" while she fights off a seven-headed dragon. The woman, Meade says, is the constellation Virgo, which on Saturday will be positioned under nine stars and three planets, per Popular Mechanics. The baby boy will be the planet Jupiter, which will be moving out of Virgo on that night. According to Meade, who says he studied astronomy at an unspecified university in Kentucky, the great change in our world will be the result of the arrival of Nibiru, a planet famous in conspiracy circles but which astronomers say doesn't exist. David Morrison, a senior space scientist at NASA, says that if Nibiru were really on a collision course with Earth, we would have seen it by now. "It would be bright," he says, per the Post. "It would be easily visible to the naked eye." But that's not dissuading Meade, who points to the fact that Sept. 23 falls 33 days after last month's total solar eclipse as proof of his prophecy. "Jesus lived for 33 years. The name Elohim, which is the name of God to the Jews, was mentioned 33 times [in the Bible]," Meade says. "It's a very biblically significant, numerologically significant number."
– A 4-year-old New Jersey boy who died after contracting enterovirus-68 had no symptoms other than pinkeye when his mom put him to sleep on the night of Sept. 24; by the time she went in the next morning to wake him up, he had died, Bloomberg reports. Eli Waller stayed home from school on the 24th because of the pinkeye, but had attended school earlier in the week. And unlike other children hard-hit by the virus, Eli was not asthmatic. He was "a beautiful mix of eagerness and hesitancy, need and striving, caution and surprise, all of which were grounded in a pure, unconditional love," his father tells ABC News. Born last in a birthing of triplets, Eli came out "smaller and lighter" than his two sisters but didn't let that hold him back, his dad says: "Eli was not the type to give up, and even though things never really came easily to him, he would just plug away, day after day." Enterovirus-68 has struck at least 43 states, hospitalizing hundreds of children, paralyzing others, and apparently playing a role in at least four US deaths. On the brighter side, the enterovirus season should subside later this fall—but with the rare 68 strain dominating, experts say it's smart to follow basic hygiene practices like covering coughs, staying home when unwell, and washing hands in warm water. (Meanwhile, the CDC is trying to confirm links between EV-68 and cases of paralysis.)
– Little Fockers, the third and, critics promise, worst movie of the Meet the Parents franchise, opens with an extended enema joke, and pretty much goes downhill from there. Here’s a healthy dose of the critical scorn being heaped on it: “I suffered through Little Fockers wishing that I could have periodontal surgery instead,” writes Andrew O'Hehir of Salon. It’s a collection of “creaky, homophobic gross-out gags that would make many eighth-graders roll their eyes in embarrassment.” The only picture of the year more vulgar, pathetic and unfunny was the one Brett Favre allegedly sent over his cellphone, quips Kyle Smith of the New York Post. It’s a movie “of such boundless ineptitude that I’d rather watch student films, or even Glee.” Yet ironically, it’s not tasteless enough. “The jokes get halfway there and wimp out with a crude little splat,” complains Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. It also suffers from egregious overacting from Jessica Alba. “It’s like she has to pee really badly in every one of her scenes.” “Rarely does a comedy bring such an overpowering sense of sadness,” writes James Berardinelli of ReelViews. Once, Robert De Niro was a truly great actor. But this movie “represents a new low … a level of embarrassment to which I never thought I would see him sink.”
– Viewers of Russian state TV recently learned about a 3-year-old boy nailed to a board by Ukrainian officials in front of his mother; it was "just like Jesus," the report said. Afterward, the mother, who was said to have committed a crime, was reportedly dragged around a central square in Slovyansk behind a tank. It's a story that would shock any viewer, but the thing is: There's no indication that it actually happened, Russian opposition leaders say, per the Daily Beast. They suggest the story was made up to stir anti-Ukraine sentiment. Russia's most popular TV station cited just one witness, and opposition figure Boris Nemtsov is calling the story "dangerously false." A Wall Street Journal reporter did some investigating of his own: "I spoke with dozens of people, but strangely, none of them mentioned anything about the crucifixion of a 3-year-old boy," Alan Cullison noted, according to the Moscow Times. A Russian journalist's video comes to a similar conclusion, the Times reports. But "on seeing the horrors of such inhuman torture, an ordinary viewer would have only one intention: to join the volunteer forces and ‘seek revenge against the Ukrainian fascists,'" Nemtsov posted on Facebook.
– She met four teen girls through social media and acquaintances and quickly tried to befriend them. But it wasn't their friendship Jelinajane Bedrijo Almario was after, say police in Hanford, Calif. Over the next few weeks in 2016, Almario, then just 16, pimped the girls, aged 14 and 15, by posting their photos on prostitution websites and driving them to meet clients at motels in Tulare County, Detective Richard Pontecorvo tells the Fresno Bee. Thankfully, "we caught her case very early," he adds. Almario was arrested in May 2016 and charged as an adult with human trafficking and making terrorist threats. On Monday, two days after her 18th birthday, she was sentenced to 13 years in prison. "It was a huge eye-opener for us," Pontecorvo says of the case, heard in Kings County Superior Court. "We were able to get these girls back home and get them the help they needed … but these pimps are ruining these kids' lives at an early age." Pimps like Almario, he adds, per UPI, "are great at locating kids with low self-esteem and trying to be their friend, and then it obviously changes." For example, Almario once sent threatening emails to the mother of one of her victims who was simply looking for her daughter, reports the AP. Pontecorvo explains the girls Almario targeted "would run away for weekends or work a couple of nights." (A teen says she was forced to have sex with 1,000 men at this hotel.)
– Scientists in Canada say they've found a way to trick the heart, making it behave as if it were the beneficiary of exercise even if no exercise was able to be done. According to a study in Cell Research, the Ottawa researchers discovered that protein cardiotrophin 1 (CT1) can fuel healthy heart growth, repair heart damage, and cause the heart to pump more blood in cases of left heart failure, as a result of heart attack, and right heart failure, as a result of high blood pressure in the lungs, reports Medical News Today. It's a big deal since medications used to treat left heart failure don't work on right heart failure, which usually requires a heart transplant, per a release. Exercise can be beneficial because it boosts the heart's ability to pump blood, but "people with heart failure usually can't exercise," researcher Lynn Megeney tells the Ottawa Citizen. The heart usually responds by expanding, irreversibly, in an unhealthy way. But that's why CT1 is "very exciting," Megeney says. It "causes heart muscles to grow in a more healthy way and it also stimulates blood vessel growth in the heart," increasing blood flow just like with exercise. And just like with exercise, the heart returns to its original size afterward. Megeney says the discovery could lead to fewer heart transplants, but he says it could be two or three years before researchers begin clinical trials on humans and, assuming they go well, a decade before treatment is available to the public. (To avoid heart issues, avoid beer?)
– A tip about one "Nikolas Cruz" had been investigated by the FBI back in September, though nothing seems to have come out of it. Now CBS News and NBC News are reporting on a new admission from the FBI that "protocols were not followed" for a separate tip about the Parkland shooting suspect received early last month. Someone said to be close to Cruz called the FBI's Public Access Line on Jan. 5 and offered info on "Cruz's gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting," per an FBI release. However, although the info from that call should have placed Cruz on a "potential threat to life" list, spurring further local investigation, that never happened. "I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public," FBI Director Christopher Wray says. He adds that the FBI has spoken with survivors and victims' families and "deeply [regrets] the additional pain this causes." The FBI currently has a dedicated webpage set up regarding the shooting for people to send tips to.
– Drivers in a London suburb weren't exactly sympathetic yesterday to a suicidal woman who blocked traffic for two hours as emergency crews tried talking her down, the Independent reports. Amid the M3-motorway delay in Sunbury, Surrey, angry tweets came rolling out: "Tell her to get on with it," wrote one Twitter user to the police force's account. "Bloody ruining everyone’s weekend. Sat in this for an hour and a half now." "To the person causing traffic jam on the M3/ A31, you selfish, selfish tw*t." "Surrey police, can’t you rubber bullet the jumper on M3/ A316 and get the traffic moving? Or get net ready and charge her? Ridiculous." Police responded on Twitter by explaining the cause for delay and responding to criticism about the closure, the Guardian reports. "If we could think of better we’d honestly take it," wrote the chief constable of police in Surrey to one complaint. "We know how irritating road closures are!" But not everyone on the force played nice: "Having members of the public taunt somebody who is clearly in a distressed state as we did earlier today is completely unacceptable," said an inspector. Eventually first responders saved the woman, who is being under the Mental Health Act, and one angry tweeter dialed it down in response to Twitter backlash: "Goodness I am so sorry for any offence. ... I apologise unreservedly."
– Greece has a new leader, as long as no last-minute obstacles pop up: parliament speaker Filippos Petsalnikos, who founded the ruling socialist PASOK party. Sources confirm that the parties settled on Petsalnikos to lead a unity government after three days of feuding. "We have agreed on Petsalnikos, but things can change between now and when the prime minister sees the president," a source tells Reuters. In a TV address today before meeting with Greece’s president to formally resign, George Papandreou wished the new PM well but did not name him, the Wall Street Journal notes. "I am proud that, despite the difficulties, we avoided bankruptcy and ensured the country stayed on its feet," he added. An idea to recruit former European Central Bank VP Lucas Papademos was ditched after politicians apparently refused to let him choose his own team.
– A Pakistani court has ruled that an American diplomat who allegedly shot and killed two men he says tried to rob him must remain in custody for 14 more days, CNN reports. Raymond Davis’ lawyer quickly filed a petition for his release, holding that he has diplomatic immunity. Davis has been transferred from police custody to “judicial remand”—which usually means prison. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 25. The US has called for his release, and American officials have threatened to cut aid to Pakistan over the matter. Meanwhile, a Pakistani police chief called Davis’ actions “clear-cut murder.” He said witnesses reported that Davis continued firing at the men as one ran away. He admits that the men were armed, and that one pointed a gun at Davis, but says they didn’t fire. (For one of the dead men's wives, a tragic end; click for that story.)
– George Zimmerman now has a legal site, a defense-minded Twitter feed, and a 7-year-old MySpace page that's causing some fresh trouble. The Miami Herald unearthed the page, which has been confirmed as authentic by his lawyer, and reports on the less seemly details contained within. Most notably: not-so-nice comments about Mexicans. Sample lines: "I dont miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around (what are you provin, that you can dent a car when no ones watchin)." "Workin 96 hours to get a decent pay check, gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!" The page, which was abandoned in 2005, also talks about Zimmerman's "ex-hoe," references jailed friends, brags about getting two felonies reduced to misdemeanors, and mentions that he misses his friends in his hometown of Manassas, Va. The Herald notes that he also posted several photos, including one in which he appears to be wearing the infamous orange polo from his 2005 mugshot.
– James Franco is a "bully" who shoved her to the ground on the set of Freaks and Geeks, Busy Philipps writes in new memoir This Will Only Hurt a Little. In a leaked excerpt confirmed by the Hollywood Reporter, Philipps says Franco freaked out and broke character after she followed the script's direction to nudge his character in the chest. "He grabbed both my arms and screamed in my face, 'DON’T EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!'" Philipps writes. "And he threw me to the ground. Flat on my back. Wind knocked out of me." Philipps says everybody on the set of the 1999 sitcom was appalled by Franco's behavior, Yahoo reports. She says her co-star apologized to her the next day, having been ordered to do so by the episode's director and producers, but he was never punished. Franco, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by five women, has yet to respond to the latest allegations. The Reporter notes that in her book, which is due out Oct. 16, Philipps also describes her experience of being raped when she was 14 years old. She decided to share the story for the first time last week soon after Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her alleged assault by Brett Kavanaugh.
– Billy Joel wed longtime girlfriend Alexis Roderick yesterday, turning the couple's annual Fourth of July party at the Piano Man's Long Island estate into a surprise wedding, reports People. The couple, 66 and 33 and together since 2009, are expecting a baby daughter this summer. Joel's 29-year-old daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, was on hand, as was her mom, Christie Brinkley, notes Page Six, who's famously on good terms with her ex. Brinkley Instagrammed a photo of the newlyweds, " wishing the growing family every happiness!" New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo officiated.
– No one—but no one—likes to get killed for having sex, and as that is often the fate of male black widow spiders, the critters are evolving a mating tactic that is, anthropomorphically speaking, more than a little creepy. Researchers found a startling, and slightly unsettling, mating shift in a study titled "Copulation with immature females increases male fitness in cannibalistic widow spiders," published in Biology Letters and translated into English as "Dirty old men spiders avoid violent death, increase number of babymamas by chasing jailbait female spiders." Essentially, Gizmodo notes, the males of the species have noticed that they keep getting killed when mating with sexually mature females. But if they chase young spider-skirt, the immature females aren't capable of killing them. Here's how it works: The young females' reproductive organs are functional, but internal, and protected by an exoskeleton. The dirty old man spiders cut through the exoskeleton with their fangs, and leave a special sperm delivery in the female's sperm receptacle. It's a narrow window in her development, but when the female matures, she pops out the male's spider babies. Writes Gizmodo: "Spider sex with minors isn’t a rare occurrence. When the researchers went out into the field to collect immature females, they found that one-third of them had been violated in this way." It's an evolutionary win-win for the male, who is a) still alive, and b) free to go out and mate again, thereby increasing his progeny. (Here's a graphic description of what it's like to get bitten by a black widow. Hint: Not fun.)
– It's a milestone for No Child Left Behind, but not in a good way: More than half of the nation is now exempt. The White House issued waivers today to the 25th and 26th states, and another 10 are in the works, reports the New York Times. The exemptions come ahead of a 2014 deadline requiring all students to be proficient in math and reading. They also come close to making the hallmark of George W. Bush's education reform "essentially nullified," says the Times. Education chief Arne Duncan says the waivers are necessary while the administration works with Congress to rewrite the law, which critics say is too focused on test results, notes AP. "A strong, bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act remains the best path forward in education reform, but as 26 states have now demonstrated, our kids can't wait any longer for Congress to act," said Duncan in a statement. A school superintendent in Maryland says the waivers don't do much to get away from standardized tests, however. “I have a lot of respect for Arne Duncan, but it’s just sort of moving around the chairs on the Titanic.”
– The Discovery Channel's Shark Week is under way again, but it can't end soon enough for Alan Yuhas at the Guardian. Discovery now prefers schlock to science, as evidenced by the fictional documentary Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives that kicked off this year's festivities. When it began 20-plus years ago, Shark Week actually served a useful purpose in educating people about sharks and marine biology. Now, it's a joke. "Discovery made its name as a champion for science, but it's been abandoning that mission for years," complains Yuhas. The network is reinforcing the myth that sharks are mindless man-eaters instead of "the important, diverse animals they are." Can't we talk about real sharks? After all, Discovery owes its success to them. "It would be doing right by the fish" and the viewers to do so. Click for his full column. Need a dissenting view? Let's not forget that Discovery is a "for-profit business," writes Marc E. Babej at Forbes, who notes that Megalodon was a huge ratings success. "Anyone who relies on Discovery’s Shark Week for their education about sharks isn’t too serious about scholarship to begin with," he adds. Critics should lighten up and enjoy. Click for his full column.
– There are bad months, and then there are months like the one Rep. Thaddeus McCotter has had. The Michigan representative today announced he's resigning, and issued a statement that seems straight out of a soap opera. In it, he called the last month and a half "nightmarish" and wrote of "calumnies, indignities, and deceits [that] have weighed most heavily upon my family." ABC News explains that bad things have come in threes for the five-term Republican: His bid for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination failed miserably, his staff didn't collect enough valid petition signatures to get him on the Aug. 7 primary ballot, and a "racy TV pilot" he wrote was handed to the press by an ex-staffer this week. And his statement sounds pretty glum: "I do not leave for an existing job and face diminishing prospects (and am both unwilling and ill-suited to lobby)." Still, he closes by saying this to Michigan’s 11th Congressional District: "Thank you for the privilege of having worked for you." Click to read more about the "tawdry" pilot, which featured a "drunk, perverted Black Santa."
– One of the first public reactions to Hosni Mubarak's non-resignation doesn't bode well for what happens next: “Egypt will explode," wrote Nobel laureate and pro-democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei on Twitter, reports the Los Angeles Times. "The Army must save the country now. I call on the Egyptian army to immediately interfere to rescue Egypt. The credibility of the army is on the line." In Tahrir Square, protesters are seething and calling for bigger demonstrations tomorrow, notes the Wall Street Journal.
– Emergency crews traipsing through the Australian town of Ayr after Cyclone Debbie made landfall came across a rather odd sight Thursday: a shark roadblock. The 5-foot-long bull shark, surrounded by little more than a puddle, had washed up on a road and died, reports the West Australian. And it wasn't the only high-profile animal to succumb to the storm, which Gizmodo is now calling "a real life sharknado." A battered cockatoo that became famous around Australia after a photographer rescued it from a tree on Tuesday has also died, though it initially showed signs of improvement, reports the BBC.
– This exhibit isn't likely to get much A-list approval: Florida's Cory Allen Contemporary Art Showroom plans to include some of the recent hacked nude photos of celebrities as part of an art show titled "No Delete." The St. Petersburg gallery tells Fox News that the October show is "about invasion of privacy" and "has been in the works for about two years now." After photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and others leaked, Los Angeles artist XVALA decided to add them to his work, the gallery explains. E! reports the collection also will include intimate and nude images of celebrities taken from Google over a seven-year period, printed "life-size and unaltered." "In today's culture, everybody wants to know everything about everybody," says XVALA in a statement. "An individual's privacy has become everyone else's business." The gallery is using a this-is-art rationale to defend the piece and say it's within the law, but MTV sounds skeptical it will happen considering that the photos are now part of an FBI investigation and celebs are promising to prosecute those who share them. It also notes that XVALA's decision to show the exhibit in Florida rather than his native state "might have something to do with the fact that in California, posting nude photos without consent and with the intention of causing distress is actually against the law."
– A woman who attracted the wrath of animal lovers around the world with a Facebook photo of a dog with its muzzle duct-taped shut has been tracked down. Police in Cary, NC, say Katharine Lemansky, who posted under the name "Katie Brown," was charged with animal cruelty but is being allowed to keep her two dogs because they appear to be very well cared for and are clean, well-nourished, "current on their shots, spayed, and microchipped," WFSB reports. "Taping the dog's muzzle shut was a terrible decision," a police spokesman says, but animal control officers who examined the chocolate-lab mix found no sign of injury, "not even detectable hair loss." Lemansky, 45, is due in court Dec. 14 and could get up to 150 days in jail, the Orlando Sentinel reports. In South Daytona, Fla., where Lemansky used to live, police say they spoke to investigators in two other states after receiving a deluge of complaints about the photo over the weekend. A spokesman for the Volusia County Sheriff's Office tells the Daytona Beach News-Journal that the office dealt with more than 1,000 phone calls and a similar number of Facebook messages, which he tried to respond to individually. The "greatest burden fell to our extraordinarily patient dispatchers, who picked up hundreds of repetitive, emotionally charged phone calls, dealt with them appropriately, and continued to run a highly organized and efficient dispatch operation for our entire county," he says. (A Texas woman was arrested after posting photos of her neighbor's diapered dog.)
– Massive unemployment is putting a strain on state benefit funds, and states in turn are trying to recoup the money by raising taxes on employers. In all, 36 states have raised payroll taxes, a strategy that critics say will backfire by putting a crimp on hiring. “Everything’s going up, and business is going down,” one Virginia employer tells USA Today. In that state, taxes have gone up from $95 per employee in 2009 to $171 in 2010. The increases range from a few dollars in some states to nearly $1,000 per worker in Hawaii. "We don't want to pick this moment of all moments to boost taxes on employers," says an economist at the Brookings Institution. "We want to encourage employers as much as possible to add to their payrolls." Times are tough, however: Twenty-five states have borrowed a total of $25 billion from the federal government to keep up with jobless benefits, and another nine will be in the red by mid-year, reports ProPublica.
– Washington, DC, could be about to leave the rest of the US behind and move a lot closer to Europe, at least as far as family leave is concerned. The DC Council backs legislation, to be introduced Tuesday, that would give workers 16 weeks of paid leave for events like the birth or adoption of a child, the terminal illness of a parent, or recovery from a military deployment, reports the Washington Post. The paper notes that the plan applies to almost all workers in the city (including part-time) and is more than double anything on offer in any of the 50 states. It will cover 100% of pay for people making $52,000 a year or less; the maximum weekly pay for the highest earners would be $3,000 per week. The new Family and Medical Leave Fund would be funded by a levy on employers that the Post likens to a state unemployment insurance fund, with employers paying in on a sliding scale that goes up to 1% of salaries for the highest-paid workers. WAMU reports the Universal Paid Leave Act of 2015 has the votes to pass the Council; the legislation would then go to the mayor. The DC plan is a big victory for President Obama's push to boost family leave. Instead of trying to get legislation through Congress, the administration is offering grants to help create state-level paid family leave plans. The administration "has realized the action is on the state and local level, and they gave us the money to model how this could actually work," DC Council member Elissa Silverman tells the Post. "We now have a national platform and a great opportunity with this legislation to show how it can be done." The US is one of the only countries in the world without paid maternal leave, and experts say that has caused a lower rate of female participation in the labor force, reports the International Business Times. (This tech firm offers mothers and fathers a year's paid leave.)
– It sounds as if Google is getting a bit fed up with the way distracted, flawed humans keep crashing into its self-driving cars. In the latest accident, which the AP reports is the first involving a Google car to cause human injury, a car rear-ended a stationary self-driving car at 17mph, causing minor whiplash to people in both vehicles. This is the 14th accident involving the self-driving cars, and Google says they have all been minor and all been the fault of the driver of the other vehicle. "We're seeing first-hand the true measure of how distraction is impacting driving," self-driving car project chief Chris Urmson tells USA Today. In the accidents, which include 11 rear-enders, "the clear theme is human error and inattention," Urmson writes in a Medium blog post. "We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers." Unlike humans, he notes, Google's cars "can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable, or distracted." He tells the AP that Google is looking into ways to alert distracted drivers when a collision with a self-driving car is imminent, although they suspect self-honking cars won't go down too well with the public.
– The Oscar nominations are out, with La La Land leading the way with a record-tying 14 nominations, reports the AP. (It ties Titanic and All About Eve.) Some highlights: Best movie: Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester by the Sea, and Moonlight. Best actress: Natalie Portman, Jackie; Emma Stone, La La Land; Isabelle Huppert, Elle; Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins; Ruth Negga, Loving. Best actor: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea; Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge; Ryan Gosling, La La Land; Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic; Denzel Washington, Fences. Best director: Damien Chazelle, La La Land; Barry Jenkins, Moonlight; Denis Villeneuve, Arrival; Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea; Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge. Supporting actor: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight; Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water; Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea; Dev Patel, Lion; Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals. Supporting actress: Viola Davis, Fences; Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea; Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures; Naomie Harris, Moonlight; Nicole Kidman, Lion. Animated feature: Kubo and the Two Strings, Moana, My Life as a Zucchini, The Red Turtle, and Zootopia. Original screenplay: Hell or High Water, La La Land, The Lobster, Manchester by the Sea, 20th Century Women. Full list: See a complete list of nominations here. Check out this year's Razzie nominations.
– A great white shark with cuts and puncture wounds on its body washed ashore, dead, on a beach in Aptos, Calif., Sunday, and law enforcement officials with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife are investigating. The male shark, believed to be a juvenile, weighed about 500 pounds and was eight or nine feet long. A necropsy was completed on the seemingly healthy shark, which was described as "fat and robust," and something it uncovered led the investigation to turn criminal, but it's not clear what, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, noting that the idea of foul play being involved sent "shock waves" through the research community. "Great whites have numerous protections under state and federal laws. They are an extremely rare animal and play a crucial role at keeping the oceans, ecosystems and food webs balanced," one researcher says. Another researcher had earlier theorized to KION the shark may have been involved in a fight with another sea animal, swallowed debris, suffered an injury from a fishing hook, or that a pathogen could be to blame. A marine biologist had previously come under fire for posing for a photo with the dead shark, the San Jose Mercury News reports, though researchers said they were just attempting to document its size in case it washed away before its body could be recovered.
– One of the biggest changes in agriculture isn't so much about what type of seeds are being planted as who is planting them: women. Grist expands on a USDA study showing that the number of farms run by women has nearly tripled in the last three decades. Add in secondary operators, and women now account for 30% of American farmers. The trend is accelerating of late, and Grist sees two general groups—women 40 and older who are ditching office jobs and 20-somethings coming out of school with agriculture or environmental science degrees. A few general characteristics: Women's farms are typically on the small side, with only 5% registering sales of $100,000 or more, says a blog post from USDA deputy chief Kathleen Merrigan. Along those lines, more female farmers rely on "off-the-farm" income than their male counterparts. 85% of women own the land they farm, versus 66% of male farmers. Younger women are entering farming at a faster clip than older women are leaving. And finally, "so hot is ag life that novels about farming are replacing chick lit, offering an unexpected twist to the notion of dirty romance," writes Grist's Lori Rotenberk, referring to this story in the Atlantic.
– David Goodall, the 104-year-old Australian scientist who campaigned for the legalization of assisted suicide, died Thursday in Switzerland, Fox News reports. Goodall, who spoke at length on the eve of his death about why he wanted to end his own life, administered a lethal drug under the guidance of doctors at the Life Circle clinic in Basel, CNN reports. He had traveled there to die, with four family members and a close friend by his side, because euthanasia is illegal in his homeland of Australia. Goodall, a renowned botanist and ecologist, died while listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."
– Jerry Sandusky has a new accuser: His adopted son. Matt Sandusky told prosecutors this week that Jerry molested him, his attorney says. It's the first time Matt has made such allegations, though his biological mother testified before a grand jury last year regarding an unsettling relationship between her son and the former coach. Matt had been willing to testify in the current trial, the attorney says, and it's not known why he didn't, the Patriot-News reports. Matt lived as a foster child with Jerry and Dottie Sandusky, who adopted him when he reached adulthood. As far back as 1996, when the Sandusky family took Matt in, his biological mother, Debra Long, raised concerns that the former coach was stalking her son. A March profile of Long in the Patriot-News cites a "rocky" relationship between Matt and Jerry; the two were estranged for an extended period, says one source. When Long asked her son if Jerry had touched him, he replied, "I don't want to talk about it," she says.
– Should sending your kid to play alone at a local park land you in jail? Because that's what happened to Debra Harrell. The 46-year-old South Carolina mom repeatedly sent her 9-year-old daughter to a well-trafficked park while she went to work at McDonald's. When the parents of other children at the park found out, they called police, who arrested Harrell and charged her with unlawful conduct toward a child. The daughter has been placed in state custody. Local news outlets first reported the story on July 1, but it's been getting wider attention lately thanks to an indignant post on Reason from "Free Range Kids" advocate Lenore Skenazy. And so far, pretty much everyone agrees that the arrest is senseless and wrong. Some reactions: Skenazy notes that the original news reports make it sound like Harrell "committed a serious, unconscionable crime," as locals speculate that the girl could have been kidnapped. "To which I must ask: In broad daylight? In a crowded park? Just because something happened on Law & Order doesn't mean it's happening all the time in real life." "Since I'm a parent, Harrell’s arrest scares me: How can I appropriately parent my child when doing something that seems relatively safe, if out of fashion, can get you arrested?" asks Jessica Grose at Slate. One law professor tells Grose that the statutes for child welfare laws are often broadly written, giving police lots of latitude—and allowing "race, class, and gender biases to influence decisions." That could be the case here, because Harrell is black, and her poverty helped cause the situation. "The story is a convergence of helicopter parenting with America’s primitive family policy," writes Jonathan Chait at New York. "Our welfare policy is designed to make everybody, even single mothers, work full-time jobs. The social safety net makes it difficult for low-wage single mothers to obtain adequate child care. And society is seized by bizarre fears that children are routinely snatched up by strangers in public places," which is actually an exceedingly rare phenomenon. "The state has caused the child far more trauma than she was ever likely to suffer in the park," writes Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic, and they're taking the child at a time when the state has a shortage of foster families. And there's no empirical evidence saying the child would be safer, say, sitting at McDonald's. "The actual safety of a given kid is not being rigorously determined. State employees are drawing on their prejudices to make somewhat arbitrary judgment calls."
– Say hello to your great-great-great-great-great-grandparents (times a few million or so)—Protungulatum donnae, a rat-sized insect eater believed to have lived 66 million years ago. A new six-year study of the mammalian family tree, looking at DNA and anatomical evidence in greater detail than ever before, has identified Protungulatum donnae as the most likely common ancestor for all 5,400 placental mammal species, reports the New York Times. The critter, however, is only hypothetical, notes the LA Times, explaining that scientists used data to "reverse-engineer" it. The study examined 83 mammals and fossils for more than 4,500 traits, creating a database 10 times larger than any previous database. Because Protungulatum donnae would have emerged 200,000 to 400,000 years after the great extinction that ended the dinosaurs—about 36 million years later than previous estimates—scientists say this is a clear sign the rise of the mammals was tied to that mass extinction. The abstract to the original article is at Science magazine.
– Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, best known for playing a drug-gang hit woman of the same name on The Wire, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute heroin. The 31-year-old actress was arrested along with dozens of others earlier this year after a federal-state wiretap of a Baltimore drug ring. She has received a suspended seven-year sentence with credit for time served under a plea deal made a day before her trial was due to begin, AP reports. Pearson—whose record includes a conviction for second-degree murder when she was just 14—was ordered to undergo three years of supervised probation. The plea deal will allow her to pursue her acting career out of state. "I can’t say she would have been found not guilty,” her lawyer said, but Pearson interrupted, saying: “I would have been found not guilty." Asked how she planned to stay out of trouble in the future, she responded: "I'm moving to LA," E! Online reports.
– Following Roger Ebert's passing, voices across the country are remembering his landmark contribution to film criticism—as well as his companionship. At Variety, Justin Chang reflects on Ebert's "characteristic good nature and genuine delight in engaging with his readers—the very qualities that made him, for so many of us, an ideal companion at the movies." He goes on to salute "the consummate grace of Ebert’s voice—that inimitable blend of wit, erudition, amiability, and common sense—that made him our most important and indispensable film critic." The New York Times calls Ebert likely "the best-known film reviewer of his generation, and one of the most trusted ... The force and grace of his opinions propelled film criticism into the mainstream of American culture," writes Douglas Martin. "Not only did he advise moviegoers about what to see, but also how to think about what they saw." The Chicago Sun-Times, his longtime stomping grounds, praises his "stunning work ethic," noting that "we who felt such intense pride in being Chicago Sun-Times journalists simply because Roger was one of us ... were all better for his example and friendship." His wife offers a poignant statement, per NPR, on "my husband, my friend, my confidante, and oh-so-brilliant partner of over 20 years." Their romance, Chaz Ebert says, was "more beautiful and epic than a movie." Though he was "happy," she notes, "he was also getting tired of his fight with cancer, and said if this takes him, he has lived a great and full life."
– Promising new research may make it possible to detect autism in babies before symptoms appear. Researchers scanned the brains of infants with autistic siblings considered at high risk of developing the disorder themselves. They report in the journal Nature that brain changes identified in MRIs of infants allowed them to predict with 80% accuracy in the first year which ones would go to show autistic symptoms. Children usually do not show signs of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), such as not making eye contact, until age 2 or older. Early intervention has been shown to ease and even reverse symptoms. Lead author Joseph Piven tells CBS News "the first year of life (is) where the brain is most malleable" and responsive to treatment. Though small in scope, the first-ever study could lead to development of a tool to predict autism in high-risk infants—and perhaps in the general population—before their first birthday "to prevent these children from falling behind in social and communication skills," co-author Annette Estes tells the Guardian. One in 100 children develop autism, but that risk zooms to one in five for those with an autistic sibling, per Nature. Scientists analyzed the brain scans of 106 babies at high risk and 42 at low risk for the disorder. Those in the high-risk group who later went on to develop ASD saw unusual growth of the outer surface of the brains in the first year of life, followed by "an overgrowth of the brain" in the second year, Piven tells CBS. That brain growth was linked to ASD symptoms. ("Neural fingerprint" of mom's voice may help unlock secrets of autistic brains.)
– New Jersey, already struggling with its budget, could face a massive shortfall next year—all because one guy chose to move to Florida, Bloomberg reports. In fairness, that guy was the wealthiest man in the state. Hedge-fund manager David Tepper has an estimated worth of $10.6 billion, and after decades in New Jersey he's officially moved his residence and business operations to the Sunshine State. According to CNBC, people close to Tepper say he wanted to be closer to his mother and sister in Florida. But it also points out he stands to save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes by moving south. Thanks to New Jersey's 8.97% tax burden on its highest earners, Tepper likely paid nine figures in taxes—potentially more than $500 million—over the past three years. Unlike Tepper's old home, which had the third highest tax burden in the country, Florida has one of the lowest, the Christian Science Monitor reports. It has no personal-income or estate taxes. But Tepper's gain is New Jersey's loss. “We may be facing an unusual degree of income-tax forecast risk," New Jersey's budget and finance officer says regarding Tepper's move. The state gets about 40% of its revenue from personal-income taxes—a large chunk of which comes from the incredibly wealthy. Being off by even 1% in income-tax forecasts could mean a budget shortfall of $140 million. But all is not lost for the Garden State. Its population of tax-paying millionaires is continuing to rise, and it boasted the fourth highest number of millionaires in the country in 2015. (This house is available for those who want to move to New Jersey, but it comes with a stalker.)
– In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump said his first priority will be arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records, and he put a number to the effort: "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate." How does that number hold up, and what's the reaction been? The rundown: Washington Post's Fact Checker and FiveThirtyEight find Trump comes up short. While a rep for the president-elect called out a Department of Homeland Security report that cited 1.9 million "removable criminal aliens" as of fiscal year 2013, both point out that phrase also includes lawful permanent residents and those with temporary visas, meaning size of the group Trump was referring to is south of that 1.9 million. Both also cite the number 820,000—the Migration Policy Institute's estimate of undocumented immigrants with criminal records. In his first press conference since the election, President Obama addressed the topic of young undocumented immigrants and advised Trump to "think long and hard" before endangering their status. BuzzFeed has more. Trump won't find an ally among the LAPD. "We are not going to work in conjunction with Homeland Security on deportation efforts," Police Chief Charlie Beck tells the LA Times, continuing the department's decades-old stance. Los Angeles is a "sanctuary city"—meaning ones where police and city workers aren’t obligated to turn undocumented immigrants they encounter into the feds, per Politico—and it's not alone. NPR reports there are 300 such cities and counties, and under Trump's First 100 Days plan they stand to lose federal funding if they don't change their tune. That didn't scare Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who on Monday emphasized Chicago "always will be a sanctuary city." Modern Farmer looks into one of the "great ironies in the election": that rural Americans voted for a candidate whose immigration policies could decimate the agricultural workforce.
– Lakers owner Jerry Buss died this morning at age 79, after a secret hospital stay, TMZ reports. News broke last week that Buss had for months been hospitalized for an undisclosed form of cancer, though at the time family members said he was "doing fine," USA Today reports. Buss, who made his fortune in real estate, has owned the Lakers since 1979, a span that includes 10 championships and the celebrated "Showtime" era, an LA Times obituary observes. "He's meant everything to me," Kobe Bryant reflected on Friday, "in terms of taking a risk on a 17-year-old kid coming out of high school and then believing in me my entire career. And then for the game itself, the brand of basketball that he implemented in Showtime carried the league."
– CNN is getting slammed everywhere from Twitter to the blogosphere to mainstream media today, thanks to its coverage of the Steubenville rape verdict yesterday. After the teen boys were found guilty, anchor Candy Crowley kicked it to her reporter by saying, "I cannot imagine having just watched this on the feed coming in. How emotional that must have been sitting in the courtroom." Correspondent Poppy Harlow responded, "It was ... incredibly difficult even for an outsider like me to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believe their life fell apart." More of the same followed, as Crowley, Harlow, and legal contributor Paul Callan continued to focus on the rapists rather than on the victim. Washington Post has a full transcript. A sample of the reactions: How about calling the boys what they are, suggests Laura Beck on Jezebel. The coverage should have been more along the lines of, "These two young rapists that had such promising futures—star football players, very good students, rapists—literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart because they brutally raped a girl." "Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond are not the 'stars' of the Steubenville rape trial," writes Mallory Ortberg on Gawker. "They aren't the only characters in a drama playing out in eastern Ohio. And yet a CNN viewer learning about the Steubenville rape verdict is presented with dynamic, sympathetic, complicated male figures, and a nonentity of an anonymous victim." The Huffington Post rounds up some of the incensed tweets, and editor Kia Makarechi calls the coverage "embarrassing and damaging." Other portions of CNN's coverage were similarly problematic, one activist points out to Poynter, such as the fact that the journalists focused on the victim being drunk. And CNN wasn't the only network with issues in its coverage, she adds: Nightline called the case a "cautionary tale for teenagers living in today's digital world." Good Morning America also got in on the act, the Atlantic Wire notes. Before the conviction, the show offered up "a sprawling preview ... with plenty of attention paid to the 'honors student' Mays and wrong-side-of-the-tracks Richmond. The piece ends on a sympathetic note, almost bemoaning the fact that the two teens 'face incarceration in a detention center until their 21st birthdays and the almost-certain demise of their dreams of playing football.'" The Frisky points out that the Onion brilliantly parodied this very circumstance back in 2011.
– The daughter of madman actor Klaus Kinski says he raped her repeatedly throughout her youth and showed not a shred of remorse, Der Spiegel reports. Pola Kinski, now 60, says the star of Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God "flouted everything—even the fact that I often resisted and said, 'I don't want to.' He didn't care. He simply took what he wanted." The BBC reports that she describes herself as "his little sex object" from ages 5 to 19. "The terrible thing is that he once told me that it was completely natural, that fathers all over the world did that with their daughters." Pola's sister Nastassja Kinski said she is "deeply shocked" by her sister's story: "My sister is a heroine, because she has freed her heart, her soul and also her future from the weight of the secret." But an op-ed piece in Der Spiegel argues that Klaus Kinski's "alleged depravity" has only authenticated the "evil that he oozed on the silver screen." Writes Arno Frank: "They were also trips into the soul of his tortured lead actor—and that is what gave his works such power." Pola Kinski, also an actor, made the revelations in advance of her upcoming memoir Kindermund, or Child's Mouth. Her father died in 1991, at age 65, of a heart attack.
– Ever cracked your cell phone by dropping it on a hard surface? You may be pleased to know that Apple has submitted a patent for a device that would flip over falling iPhones so they land without breaking the screen, the Telegraph reports. First revealed on Appleinsider, the mechanism would measure a phone's fall with position sensors, accelerometers, or gyroscopes. How to flip it around in mid-air? Apple considers using: "Lift foils" that emerge from the surface of the phone Thrusting gas to turn the phone around A weighted mass inside the phone The patent also looks at ways to stop iPhones from being dragged off tabletops by their cables—perhaps by ejecting the cables when pulled rapidly along a surface. Sadly, the Telegraph notes that none of these plans seem close to fruition.
– Lance Armstrong is rumored to be ready to confess to drug use—and it could happen on Oprah's show. The disgraced cyclist will give a "no-holds-barred" interview to Oprah Winfrey that will air on her network next week, CNN reports. In his first formal interview since he was banned from the sport and stripped of his titles for doping, Armstrong will "address the alleged doping scandal, years of accusations of cheating, and charges of lying about the use of performance-enhancing drugs throughout his storied cycling career," the network says in a statement. In a 60 Minutes Sports interview to be aired tonight, the chief of the US Anti-Doping Agency says an Armstrong representative offered to donate around $250,000 to the agency, reports the New York Times. Travis Tygart, who accuses Armstrong of trying to intimidate former teammates, says the 2004 offer represented a clear conflict of interest. "We had no hesitation in rejecting that offer," he says. Tygart says he received death threats during his organization's investigation of Armstrong.
– One of President Obama's biggest goals for his home stretch in office took a big step forward today with a deal struck by leading Republicans and Democrats. It's regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed pact with 11 Pacific Rim nations that the Hill notes would be the biggest trade deal since NAFTA. In this case, the usual DC politics are flipped: Most Democrats oppose the president and most Republicans support him, reports the Wall Street Journal. Despite today's progress—it was introduced as "fast-track" legislation in the House and Senate—its ultimate fate is unclear in Congress. The New York Times predicts that for Obama, it will be "one of the toughest legislative battles of his last 19 months in office." Making it fast-track legislation means that lawmakers would vote yes or no on the deal once the US and the other nations agree on terms, but they would not be able to add amendments. That greatly increases Obama's chances of getting other nations—including Japan, Vietnam, Canada, and Mexico—to sign on, because they wouldn't have to fear later changes. A sign of the challenges supporters face: The AFL-CIO says it will spend six figures on ads going after 16 senators and 36 members of the House, reports the Washington Post. The group is worried about the loss of US jobs, but Obama says the deal is necessary if America hopes to stay competitive against China.
– Ah, Independence Day fireworks: What could be more ... Chinese? Yep, despite strong "Buy American" sentiments in other fields (the US military must fly made-in-America flags, for example), China still manufactures at least 98% of consumer fireworks and 75% of "display" fireworks (for big shows) sold in America, Politico reports. The US needs them because fireworks production is "very, very labor-intensive," says a pyrotechnics expert. "Basically everything is still made by hand." What's more, she says, US safety and environmental regulations would make home-made fireworks about 10 times costlier for consumers. China began grabbing the US fireworks market after Washington reestablished trade ties in 1979; by last year, the US was importing $213 million in fireworks, nearly all from China. Federal authorities grew alarmed in the 1980s and early 1990s over the lack of safety standards in Chinese fireworks, but now the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory has imposed stricter rules and says it inspects fireworks shipments before they leave China. Despite all this Chinese know-how, the US Army is making "greener" pyrotechnics that produce less hazardous smoke and leave behind fewer possibly toxic residues, NBC News reports. "Our goal is to spin this off to commercial applications," says an Army pyrotechnics chief. (Read about the connection between fireworks and war.)
– Family Guy humor works on the Family Guy, but not, apparently, on a drinks' menu. A Staten Island bar and restaurant has retired its "Roofie Colada" and apologized to patrons offended by what they saw as a date-rape joke, reports Fox News. The Phunky Elephant put the vokda and kahlua drink on the menu over the summer as a salute to the animated show, whose character Quaqmire is known to order it for his dates. Complaints began surfacing in person and online, but the restaurant initially shrugged them off, reports Staten Island Live. "For the record, you know that there aren't any 'date rape' drugs in this dessert, right?" went one Facebook reply from the restaurant a while back. But with criticism gathering social-media steam, Patricia Gaja pulled the drink and said it would be renamed. "We certainly did not intend to create an impression of reckless or negligent behavior," she wrote. "Nor did we mean to make anyone feel uncomfortable or insulted."
– A new king of beers has been crowned in Zymurgy magazine’s 15th annual Best Beers in America survey. Conducted by the American Homebrewers Association, the competition awarded Bell’s Brewery’s Two Hearted Ale first place, knocking reigning champ Pliny the Elder from Russian River Brewing Company out of the top spot for the first time in eight years, reports Brewers Association. Bell’s describes its winning IPA as "bursting with hop aromas ranging from pine to grapefruit." Here are the beers that made the top 10 list: Bell’s Two Hearted Ale Russian River Pliny the Elder Founders Breakfast Stout Three Floyds Zombie Dust Bell’s Hopslam 6. (tie) Founders KBS (Kentucky Breakfast Stout) 6. (tie) The Alchemist Heady Topper 8. (tie) Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA 8. (tie) Sierra Nevada Celebration 10. Ballast Point Sculpin IPA Check out the Brewers Association for a full list of brewery and beer portfolio winners.
– Lishan Wang, a Chinese doctor charged with murder in Connecticut, can be forced to take anti-psychotic medication in order to be competent enough to stand trial, the AP reports. The state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday it wouldn't be a violation of the mentally ill Wang's rights to forcibly medicate him. As laid out in a 2003 US Supreme Court ruling, prosecutors had to show it was "substantially likely" the medication would make Wang competent to stand trial. A state psychiatrist testified there was a 50% to 70% chance of that happening. While Wang's public defender, Mark Rademacher, argues that doesn't meet the threshold, the state Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that anything greater than 50% constitutes "substantially likely." The court also ruled there wasn't a "less-intrusive option" to forcibly medicating Wang and that he was unlikely to have side effects from the medication, CBS Connecticut reports. Rademacher may appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court. "They just set the bar too low before they can violently restrain a patient, knock him out with a sedative, and inject him with medication," he tells the AP. Wang is charged with fatally shooting Dr. Vajinder Toor and shooting at Toor's pregnant wife in 2010 outside their Connecticut home. Wang was fired from his job in 2008 after multiple confrontations with Toor and other doctors. Wang maintains that he's not guilty and doesn't need medication.
– The Nobel committee has made some strange choices over the years, but awarding its peace prize to the European Union "may be the most bizarre decision in the history of the award," writes Dashiell Bennett at the Atlantic. So naturally, it's got people talking. Here's what they're saying. Bennett thinks the decision makes sense in the long run. "However, as many people are pointing out, awarding the prize to the EU in 2012 seems odd," given the economic and societal turmoil plaguing it. The award "is a classic example of an organization jumping the shark. Quite how anyone could suggest this with a straight face I am not sure," writes Tim Worstall, a self-proclaimed "extremist" against the EU, in Forbes. He points out that it's bizarre to praise an undemocratic organization for promoting democracy, and says the continent's peace is more NATO's doing than the EU's. "Who did the Nobel Prize committee actually call to inform the European Union it won?" wonders Bernd Rigert at Deutsche Welle. Still, he thinks the organization is a "worthy" winner. "The European Union is a peace project," he argues. "People who talk and trade with each other do not shoot each other." "In the broad scheme of things, the EU has been a force for good and it seemed to be in need of a pep talk," agrees Matthew Yglesias at Slate. But there's an elephant in the room: Norway itself isn't part of the EU, and "they've built an amazingly free and prosperous (albeit small society for themselves." Rich and natural resources and with a responsive democracy, it wants no part of the bureaucracy it's praising. For more reactions, see our original post on the award.
– President Trump is about to dredge up what the Guardian says was a "low point" in his relationship with Kim Jong Un, but this time around as a wry attempt to suggest "no harm, no foul" to the North Korean leader. At least, that's what appears to be the reason behind a gift Trump is reportedly giving Kim, to be delivered via Secretary of State Mike Pompeo while he's in North Korea this week: a CD with Elton John's song "Rocket Man," per the Chosun Ilbo's sources. Late last year, Trump often referred to Kim—and not in a complimentary way—as "Rocket Man" or "Little Rocket Man" in tweets and speeches, leading Kim to fire back that Trump was a "mentally deranged US dotard." Apparently the "Rocket Man" epithet came up when the two leaders met at last month's summit in Singapore, and Trump discovered that Kim had never heard the Elton John song. And so the CD (reportedly signed by Trump) ended up in Pompeo's luggage, along with a letter to Kim. Gizmodo, which calls "Rocket Man" a "damn good song," notes Trump seems fixated on the 1972 hit, which became a staple of sorts at his rallies while he was campaigning for the presidency. On Thursday, Trump once again referenced the British superstar, per Billboard, noting at a rally in Montana that "I've broken more Elton John [attendance] records, and I don't have a musical instrument. … This is my only musical instrument—the mouth—and hopefully the brain is attached to the mouth. The brain is so much more important."
– Your next stay at Red Roof Inn could be about as close to free as it gets, but you need to be on the ball. The chain, with 350 US locations, is offering rooms for 1¢ from April 1-15, the Los Angeles Times reports, but you can book just 48 hours in advance, and there’s only one room at that price per location. Click here to try your luck at Red Roof’s “No Foolin’! 1-Cent Sale.”
– So Pinocchio wasn't that far-fetched after all: The nose may not grow when we lie, but two Spanish scientists say it does get noticeably warmer. Using thermal imaging cameras on volunteers, Emilio Gómez Milán and Elvira Salazar López found that nose temperature changed depending on their mood, the Daily Mail reports. The reason: Part of the brain called the insular cortex is altered when people lie about their feelings, and the insular cortex detects and regulates body temperature. Milán and López found other things that heat up, too. Their thermal imaging detected male and female sexual arousal in the chest and genital areas, and found that women and men became excited at the same time—even when female volunteers indicated they were not aroused, the Daily News reports. The scientists also associated "thermal footprints" with different dances: "When someone dances Flamenco, the temperature in their buttocks lowers and it rises in their forearms," they wrote. "Each type of dance has its own."
– Need a laugh? Head to Chicago. A new study finds the Windy City is also the funniest one in the US, according to the Chicago Tribune. "We found humor often has a local flavor," the lead researcher says. "The jokes that get laughs at comedy clubs in Denver seem unlikely to fly with a cartoon editor at the New Yorker." Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Humor Research Lab created an algorithm that looked at, among other things, a city's: number of comedy clubs and comedy radio stations number of famous comedians born there number of "funny tweeters" living there ratings of local audiences by traveling comedians frequency of visits to comedy websites and comedy-related web searches by residents When researchers determined a top 10, they surveyed 900 residents per city, asking them about their feelings on humor and comedic entertainment, their take on the city's sense of humor, and their favorite joke. "The jokes that Chicagoans do tend to tell often feature deadpan and quick-witted humor, much of it directed at the foibles and frustrations of living in Chicago," such as the weather and the transit system, researchers found. "They prefer to mine observational humor from the situations in which they find themselves. Such remarks seem to fit with the city’s professional comedy scene, since the city is known as a mecca for improv and stand-up." The rest of the top 5: Boston, Atlanta, Washington, and Portland. Click for the full top 10 and their complete humor profiles.
– "It depends on your definition of terrorism. A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism, but it's not linked to international terrorism," says Andrew Cuomo, via CNN. The New York governor says there's no evidence that an explosion that rocked a crowded Manhattan neighborhood, injuring 29 people, had any link to international terrorism, reports the AP. Cuomo spoke Sunday morning near the site of the Saturday night blast on West 23rd Street in the Chelsea neighborhood. Cuomo noted that the device in Manhattan appeared to be different than a pipe bomb explosion earlier Saturday in New Jersey and said he didn't believe the two were connected. Authorities found a second device in Manhattan a few blocks away from the one that exploded and removed it. Cuomo says the injured have been released from the hospital, and that given the scope of the damage "we were really lucky that there were no fatalities." Most of the injuries were minor. The Democratic governor also said that 1,000 additional National Guard troops were being deployed "just to err on the side of caution. I want New Yorkers to be confident when they go back to work on Monday that New York is up and running and we're doing everything that we need to do."
– New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney has introduced a bill that would make it illegal for replacement referees to work in the state, arguing that they are a danger to players' safety, the Bergen Record reports. "We wouldn’t allow a factory or construction site to operate without fully trained supervisors on hand to ensure the safety of employees," Sweeney reasoned in a statement. "Why should we do anything differently when the job site is a playing field?" Both the Giants and the Jets play in New Jersey. The NFL brushed aside Sweeney's concerns, saying that "officiating controversies have always been a part of the sport." But judging by the reaction so far, that's not likely to appease anyone. ESPN tweeted that the NFL offices have gotten more than 70,000 voicemails regarding the botched call. And more than pride and playoff berths are at stake: Las Vegas bookies estimate that between $150 million and $200 million in bets swung on the call.
– Erik Prince says he and Blackwater—the defense contractor now known as Xe—got a raw deal from the government. "I put myself and my company at the CIA's disposal for some very risky missions," the firm's founder tells Vanity Fair. "But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus." Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic says if Prince's venting is correct, it "rips open a closed package of secrets," specifically about the now-terminated assassination program the company ran in cahoots with the CIA. A Blackwater team tracked an al-Qaeda financier to Germany and prepared to kill him, and the CIA informed neither its own station office nor German officials. That's a "serious violation of NATO intelligence sharing arrangements," writes Ambinder, and it contradicts Leon Panetta's claim that the program was never operational.
– If President Obama absolutely killed Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," Mitt Romney has apparently responded by just plain murdering a patriotic standard. The Republican candidate was caught on camera last night at a Florida campaign rally warbling "America the Beautiful," which the Washington Post notes he has often called his favorite patriotic hymn. The unguarded moment on the eve of the primary is a departure for Romney, but the clip prompts Pier Morgan over at CNN to joke, "I think this could be an actual issue."
– Authorities are swarming the small upstate New York town of Willsboro to find the two convicted killers who escaped from prison last week, reports the Wall Street Journal. A motorist spotted two men walking on a "very rural" road last night, and they took off into the fields when he stopped, say police. Willsboro is about 35 miles from where Richard Matt and David Sweat busted out of the Clinton Correctional Facility. More details are filling in on the great escape, too. The leading theory is that a female employee of the prison who worked with the two men in its tailor shop smuggled in a small electrical saw and perhaps other tools such as a sledgehammer, reports the Albany Times Union. The woman also may have provided access to a cell phone after striking up a relationship with Matt. The men reportedly used the saw to cut holes in the metal walls of their cells, and the holes "led to a cavernous utility bowel inside the prison where the men spliced an electrical cord into a light fixture to power the saw they then used to cut a large hole in a 24-inch steam pipe that led to a sewer outside the prison," the Albany paper reports. The final barrier to freedom was a lock on the inside of a manhole cover, which they bashed with a sledgehammer. Authorities say the woman or someone else might have had second thoughts and scrapped a plan to pick them up Friday night. This is Matt's third escape attempt, his son tells the Buffalo News. The first was from a prison near Buffalo in 1986 (he climbed a wall and remained free for five days) and the second was in 1997 after he got captured in Mexico. “He said he made it up to the roof of the prison and got shot in the shoulder," says his son, who adds that his father has a "genius IQ."
– Donald Trump is planning another trip outside his comfort zone with a visit to an African-American church in Detroit on Saturday, and he wasn't planning on taking any risks, according to a leaked script seen by the New York Times. The script contains a dozen questions that Bishop Wayne T. Jackson of Great Faith Ministries International was apparently planning to ask Trump in a closed-door session—and, more unusually for such an appearance, lengthy prepared answers for Trump. "I treasure my relationship with my family, and through them, I have a strong faith enriched by an ever-wonderful God," was Trump's prepared answer for a question about whether he is a Christian. "I want to make race disappear as a factor in government and governance," Trump was directed to say after a question about his vision for black Americans. After the script was leaked, a Trump campaign spokesman said the agenda has now changed and Trump plans to speak to the congregation directly after his interview session with the pastor. In other coverage: The Detroit Free Press looks at the uphill struggle Trump will have in order to win votes in Detroit, where Mitt Romney got just 2% of the vote in 2012. Some analysts believe the real purpose of Trump's visit is to show moderate Republicans elsewhere that he is willing to reach out to different groups of voters. The Washington Post analyzes Trump's latest proposals on immigration, and finds that immigration enforcement costs would leap by more than $50 billion over the next few years in order to put his plan into action. Politico looks at the state of the Trump campaign with 22 days to go before early voting begins. There has been some progress in areas including getting the candidate to stay on-message, but the campaign remains "transitory and unstable," with many aides unsure who is calling the shots. At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver notes that the race is tightening as it nears the home stretch—and warns that Clinton supporters are mistaken if they think the electoral college math will save her if it continues to tighten. The Wall Street Journal reports that in his big immigration speech in Arizona Wednesday, Trump had originally planned to avoid mentioning a border wall. He changed his mind and added a line about Mexico paying for the wall after finding out that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had told reporters that he told Trump Mexico wouldn't pay. "I had no choice," Trump, who thought they had an agreement not to discuss the wall at their first meeting, tells the Journal. Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani was at the meeting and says that when Peña Nieto declared Mexico wasn't going to pay, he said: "That's off the table" and the talks moved to another subject.
– Antonin Scalia may have disagreed with John Roberts in the court's health care ruling, but he says that disagreement never became personal—and that "it offends me" to hear criticism of Roberts, or any of his colleagues over how they ruled. "No, I haven't had a falling out with Justice Roberts," Scalia told Piers Morgan on CNN last night, according to Politico. "Best buddies?" Morgan asked. Scalia replied, "My best buddy on the court is Ruth Bader Ginsburg—has always been." "There are clashes on legal questions, but not personally," Scalia explained. "The press likes to paint us as nine scorpions in a bottle. That's just not the case." He also dismissed the notion that Roberts' decision was based on political expediency. "We are not a political institution." Scalia wouldn't talk about the court's most recent rulings, but did briefly defend the Citizens United ruling ("You can't separate speech from the money that facilitates the speech.") and Bush v. Gore ("Get over it.").
– Groupon employees have filed a class action lawsuit against the company claiming unpaid overtime, the second such suit filed against the daily deals website in the past month. This time around, Groupon’s so-called “deal vetters”—a position that no longer exists—say they weren’t paid overtime when working more than 40 hours per week. The first class action, filed late last month, came from salespeople, Paid Content reports. About 1,000 employees were covered by that filing, while about 50 are affected by this most recent one. It hasn’t been a good month for Groupon: It saw a string of departing staff including, Gawker notes, its COO and sales chief; the planned IPO was shelved indefinitely; and the company has sparred with the SEC.
– Less than 24 hours ago, Fiat Chrysler was anticipating hitting its 2018 financial targets. On Thursday, the automaker came under fire from the EPA, per Reuters, with the agency alleging Fiat Chrysler cheated on diesel emissions—just a day after six Volkswagen honchos were indicted in that company's own scandal. In Fiat Chrysler's case, the EPA—which was to announce its findings in a Thursday morning conference call—believes the automaker's software permitted emissions beyond what's allowed by the law, in more than 100,000 SUVs and trucks sold since 2014. This reported violation "can result in harmful pollution in the air we breathe," an EPA assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance tells the AP. USA Today reports that the EPA has the ability to fine up to $44,539 for any vehicle that flouts the Clean Air Act, meaning Fiat Chrysler could have to cough up around $4.5 billion. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles shares were halted Thursday morning after the company's biggest intraday plummet since it began trading on the NYSE in 2014, with shares falling as much as 18% before settling at a 16% decline right before trading stopped just after 11am EST. Reuters' sources say Fiat Chrysler contests the EPA's take, but a statement offered by the automaker and cited on Bloomberg contends all of Fiat Chrysler's diesel vehicles meet "applicable regulatory requirements" and that the company will work with "the incoming administration to resolve this matter fairly and equitably."
– An Arizona mother has been arrested after authorities allege her nearly 2-year-old daughter ate mac and cheese that was prepared with THC butter. According to police, 25-year-old Alaina Limpert was taken into custody Wednesday after someone in her home alerted authorities that the girl had eaten the marijuana-laced food. Per KTVK, cops say Limpert did not take her daughter in for medical treatment when she realized what had happened. Instead, the police report says Limpert "laughed about the side effects the child experienced during that time and then proceeded to place her into their backyard pool to use the cold water to 'shock' her." Two days later, a call to the Department of Child Safety led to all three children being taken away from Limpert and her husband's home. Healthcare officials would reportedly later confirm the girl had THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in her system. Police say Limpert admitted she made the mac and cheese for her husband, but that he did not know her daughter had ingested it. Per the police report, cops found marijuana grow tents in the home's garage as well as mushrooms, hash oil, and drug paraphernalia. Limpert was arrested on charges of child abuse, marijuana possession and cultivation, and other charges. She is due in court April 19.
– A medical student in New Orleans is incredibly lucky to be alive after being shot in the stomach while foiling an attempted kidnapping Friday morning, police say. In footage obtained by the New Orleans Police Department, a suspect identified as 21-year-old Euric Cain can be seen shooting Peter Gold in the stomach and then pointing the gun at his head and pulling the trigger, only to have the weapon apparently jam, the Advocate reports. Police say that after Gold stopped at around 4am to help the young woman he saw the suspect dragging along the street, the suspect demanded money from him and shot him after he said he didn't have any, the AP reports. Police have praised the actions of 25-year-old Gold, who is in his fourth year at Tulane University School of Medicine. "There's no greater selfless act than to stop and help someone perhaps who you don't know, for reasons you don't know," NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison tells WWLTV. Cain is wanted on charges of attempted first-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping, and armed robbery, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The AP reports that the woman was treated for minor injuries received during the incident, while Gold is improving but remains in "guarded" condition in a hospital, his family says. (Sixteen people were injured in a shootout at a New Orleans playground on Sunday night.)
– A veteran Boston police officer is facing charges after he allegedly assaulted an Uber driver—but the cop says he was really the victim. According to a police report, Michael Doherty, 40, a veteran of 16 years, was riding in an Uber car early Sunday when he verbally accosted the driver, the Boston Globe reports. "What, you think I’m stupid, you [expletive]," Doherty reportedly said, using a racist term for Latinos. The driver claims Doherty began hitting him, believing he was being dropped off at the wrong place near East 2nd and M streets. When the driver jumped out, Doherty allegedly got behind the wheel and drove away. The driver says he flagged down a good Samaritan and got in his car in pursuit of Doherty. They approached the officer after he parked, at which point Doherty hurled the n-word at the Samaritan, knocked down the Uber driver, and punched him repeatedly, the report says. News reports have Doherty either being arrested or turning himself in, but either way, his lawyer says Doherty has a black eye, stitches over his eye, and a torn tendon, the Boston Herald reports. "He was really the victim in this matter and not the perpetrator," the attorney said in court. Doherty was placed on administrative leave as Boston police investigate. In an unrelated hearing in the same courtroom before Doherty's arraignment, an ex-girlfriend of his was charged with breaking and entering at a South Boston residence in November. (Also in Boston, an Uber driver has been accused of raping a passenger.)
– A young actor and singer has been found dead in his suburban Los Angeles home at age 20, reports Variety. Jackson Odell, best known for a role as Ari Caldwell on the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs, was found unresponsive in his Tarzana residence on Friday. The cause of death was not clear, and the Los Angeles County coroner is investigating. Odell appeared on the ABC show in seasons 1 and 2, and he also appeared on The Fosters, Modern Family, Arrested Development, and iCarly, as well as in the 2011 movie Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, notes the AP. Odell also was a singer-songwriter, with several videos on YouTube and songwriting credits on the 2018 movie Forever My Girl. Odell's family posted a note on his Twitter page saying they are trying "to make sense of our immeasurable loss privately."
– If you think you're avoiding artificial sweeteners because you don't put them in your coffee or tea, think again. These additives are found in everything from yogurt and baked goods to sauces and diet colas, per the CBC, with "a lot of people ... consuming them in foods and not realizing it," says University of Manitoba researcher Meghan Azad. Azad, the co-author of a new study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, also notes that 40% of adults report using artificial sweeteners on a regular basis—which may prove pointless when it comes to dropping pounds, as her team has found no evidence that the sweeteners help with weight loss and may even cause other health issues. Azad's team conducted a meta analysis of 37 previously published studies of the diets of nearly 407,000 people, only seven of which were randomized control trials. "A lot of the studies we found were observational, meaning they could show a link, but they can't prove a cause-and-effect relationship," she tells CTV News. Among the seven more-rigorous trials, regular consumption of artificial sweeteners had no significant effect on weight loss, while among the 30 observational studies, regular consumption was tied to a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as "modest" weight gain. Possible reasons for the weight gain, per Azad: Our bodies may metabolize based on sweetness perception (not sugar content), gut bacteria affected by sweeteners may affect obesity, or we may give ourselves permission to eat more sweets after eating diet products. An internal medicine expert says the studies aren't clear enough to cast all blame on artificial sweeteners; Azad says there isn't enough evidence the sweeteners are "truly harmless." (When it comes to higher blood sugar, gut bacteria may play a role.)
– There is a long and melodious history of hiding secret messages in song—so-called musical steganography—that dates back at least 500 years. But now a cybersecurity expert from Poland has revealed a new way to send messages that are otherwise undetectable through song: tiny adjustments in tempo. To test this, Krzysztof Szczypiorski turned to club music for its trance-like repetition and happily packed his bags for Ibiza off the coast of Spain, arguably the dance-club capital of the world, reports Vice. (Hey, somebody's gotta do it.) Szczypiorski reports in the open journal arXiv (it has not yet been peer reviewed) that in experiments DJing for dancers, he was able to adjust a song's tempo up or down by as much as 2% without anyone noticing any change. By having a faster tempo represent a dash and a slower one a dot, he used Apple's Logic Pro X digital audio workstation to manipulate the speeds of songs like "Rhythm Is a Dancer" by Snap (normally 130 beats per minute) and randomly encode the message "Steganography is a dancer" in Morse code, reports MIT Technology Review. So long as the change in tempo was subtle enough, nobody was the wiser. (Listen here.) His conclusion: It would be pretty simple to develop software that automatically encodes or decodes messages sent this way. An algorithm could be used to decode the message, though it's possible that some very careful listeners could do so on their own. (Music might also help your beer taste better.)
– British restaurant chain Pret a Manger says a second customer has died after eating a sandwich containing an allergen that was not noted on the label, reports the AP. The coffee-and-sandwich business said an investigation was underway into the second case, in which a customer died December 27 after eating a supposedly dairy-free "super-veg rainbow flatbread" that contained dairy protein, reports the Guardian. "This is believed to have resulted in the tragic death of a customer from an allergic reaction," says a Pret a Manger spokesperson, and blaming CoYo, a supplier of its dairy-free yogurt. Pret a Manger has promised to improve its labeling following criticism at an inquest into the death of 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died in 2016 after eating a Pret baguette that contained traces of sesame. Natasha's parents, who are campaigning for stronger allergen warnings, said Sunday they were "incredibly saddened to learn of someone else losing their life from allergens in their food."
– It passed in the wee hours, and by a wee margin: The Senate passed the biggest tax overhaul in more than 30 years Saturday morning 51-49. Tennessee's Sen. Bob Corker was the only Republican to side against the bill. With the House having passed its bill in November, Congress is just a few steps away from getting something on President Trump's desk. He tweeted in part, "Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas!" Politico reports the final hours before the vote were filled with "horse trading" and some ridicule from Democrats: Minority Whip Dick Durbin tweeted a photo showing a page of the bill with semi-legible handwriting scrawled in the margin, saying, "Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak – can anyone else read this?" Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer swung at Republicans for releasing a revamped 479-page bill that senators didn't have time to review. GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's take, per the AP: "You really don't read this kind of legislation." Among the numerous last-minute amendments that were debated: A controversial provision by GOP Sen. Pat Toomey that would have given Michigan's conservative Hillsdale College a pass on a new tax on university endowments was axed. Politico reports the House will on Monday formally assemble the conference committee that will work to get the House and Senate measures to jibe; the Senate hasn't commented on a formal conference yet. The Wall Street Journal offers a chart that illustrates key differences between the two bills.
– Communities in Humboldt County in northern California are cleaning up today after a 6.5-magnitude earthquake rocked the coastal area yesterday afternoon. " It was like the street was breakdancing, " a local resident who was driving when the temblor struck around 4:30pm told the Times-Standard of Eureka, 33 miles from the epicenter. There were numerous reports of power outages and property damage, but no serious injuries and no tsunami warning. "It was a monstrous one," a Eurekar restaurateur told the Los Angeles Times. "Usually, they're sharp, but this one was very wiggly." Humboldt County, about 275 miles northeast of San Francisco, enjoys a reputation as "the Napa Valley of weed," Gawker notes. " The pot will be OK no need to start a panic! " tweeted one Humboldt resident.
– A mountain lion that became trapped inside a Colorado home killed a house cat before police and wildlife officers were able to scare it out, the AP reports. Boulder police say the homeowner came back to the house late Thursday night and found the mountain lion inside. It appeared that it had pushed through a screen and couldn't get back out. The big cat roamed throughout two levels of the home for more than an hour before officers used non-lethal rounds to scare it out the front door and away from the neighborhood, which is just southwest of downtown Boulder. Boulder woman Kayla Slaughter describes the experience of seeing the mountain lion face her cat, Klondike: "There was a mountain lion standing in our living room, it looked right at him and licked its lips and he took off," she tells CBS Denver. Now she's mourning the loss: "I got her my junior year of college," Slaughter says of the cat. "She's been with me for 10 years." Police, who photographed the mountain lion lying down between a coffee table and a couch, called the break-in worrisome and asked residents to keep ground-level doors and windows locked at night.
– Just one public university made it on the list of the top 20 US colleges receiving the most graduate-student loan money—an elite group that received 20%, or $6.5 billion, of the total amount of funds loaned to graduate students in the 2013-2014 academic year, the Washington Post reports. According to a study from the Center for American Progress, New Jersey's Rutgers University—No. 26 on this year's US News & World Report list of top public colleges in the nation—squeaked in at No. 19, holding its own with NYU, Columbia, and 17 other private schools. USA Today notes that Rutgers is among the pricier public schools in the nation, and NJ.com notes that it just hiked tuition about 2.3% for both undergrad and grads for the upcoming academic year. Students aren't surprised: "A lot of my friends' parents who live in New Jersey make a decent salary," an out-of-state grad student at Rutgers tells USA Today. "[But it's] not enough to fund college completely and also not enough for these students to receive wage-based grants from the federal government." (Check out the 19 private schools that make the loan-heavy list at the Washington Post.)
– US employers pulled back on hiring in April after a streak of solid monthly gains, adding 160,000 jobs, the fewest in seven months, the AP reports. The unemployment rate remained at a low of 5%, roughly the same level it has been since the fall. The job gain was down from the average increase of 200,000 over the past three months, which is the softest three-month pace since October. The slowdown may raise concerns that weak US economic growth has discouraged some employers from hiring. The economy's growth has slumped to a sluggish 1% annual rate since October. Meanwhile, the labor participation rate went down to 62.8%, per Money. But there was good news on the wage gains front: Average hourly pay rose 2.5% from a year earlier—a "hot number," the Wall Street Journal notes, and above the sluggish 2% pace that has been typical for the past six years. Money reports that consumer confidence in the jobs that are out there is rising, with more people perceiving that jobs are "plentiful" rather than "hard to get" for the first time since the Great Recession ended. The Journal notes that April's jobs report will only serve to keep the Fed in "standby mode" as it ponders whether to boost the short-term interest rate. Officials had suggested that such a rate increase in June may have been in the cards if the economy picked up steam—but now it will likely take better news on consumption, hiring, and inflation for the rate increase to happen.
– It was a simple highway accident: A tanker blows a tire, and overturns. But it overturned Sunday in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, carrying 6,600 gallons of oil, and surrounding villagers " carrying domestic pots rushed to the scene to collect oil and they also made phone calls to their relatives living in other villages to ... come to collect oil" police told state-run media, per NPR. According to a rescuer, "somebody tried to light a cigarette," which caught fire, exploded the tanker, and "engulfed all people standing around the vehicle," reports the AP. At least 153 are dead, a toll expected to rise as dozens more remain critically injured. "The fire moved so fast," said one survivor who lost two cousins. Others describe an unbearable scene: "I could hear people screaming but I couldn't get to them," says one would-be rescuer, while a cop says that "I have never seen anything like it in my life. Victims trapped in the fireball. They were screaming for help." A local doctor says most victims suffered burns on 80% of their bodies, while another says that many of the dead were burned beyond recognition and will have to be identified via DNA testing.
– United Airlines' treatment of a passenger who was forcibly removed from an overbooked flight is the final straw, writes Adam Clark Estes on Gizmodo: It's time for a boycott. "There are plenty of other airlines out there that don’t abuse passengers and refuse to apologize," Estes writes. "Other airlines will gladly take your money and make sure you get to your destination without enlisting a muscleman to slam your head into an armrest and forcibly remove you from the plane so that one of its employees can get a free flight." This, by the way, is "just the latest in an increasingly enraging pattern of bad behavior by the airline"; other reasons to boycott United include, but are not limited to, the time United diverted a flight to kick off an autistic child and the time it refused to give an unopened can of soda to a Muslim chaplain on one of its flights. Estes is far from the only person outraged—Sasha Lekach at Mashable calls United's attempts at apologizing for the situation "meaningless corporate jargon" that just enraged people more. At the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik says United's handling of the entire incident was "botched" and shameful, but notes that the real problem is that the law allows airlines to overbook, even at risk of a situation like this. "How many businesses do you know of that can sell you a good or service, accept payment, and then withdraw that good or service unilaterally for their own purposes—much less by force?" At Slate, Daniel Gross calls the overbooking system airlines use "ridiculous" and "outdated," and notes that lately, more passengers than usual are getting bumped from overbooked flights, a fair number of them involuntarily: It's time for "a better way," he writes. If you find yourself in the same unfortunate situation as the United passenger, Quartz offers up an explainer of what you're legally entitled to.
– With the Trump administration planning to slash the National Park Service's budget, a new proposal could see entrance fees for 17 of the most-visited national parks in the country more than double during peak months. In an effort to boost revenue to pay "for improvements to the aging infrastructure of national parks," the Department of Interior has proposed increasing entrance fees from $25 to $30 for a private non-commercial vehicle to $70 during the busiest five-month period at parks including Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, Glacier, Denali, and Mount Rainier, reports KTLA. Pedestrians would be charged $30, up from $10 to $15, increasing revenue by an estimated $70 million per year, according to a release. Under the proposal, which would be instituted beginning in 2018, an annual park pass would cost $75, while a pass permitting entry to all US national parks would remain at its current $80 fee. The park service is accepting public comments on the proposal until Nov. 23 but has already come under fire. Noting the Trump administration "just proposed a major cut to the National Park Service budget," the president of the National Parks Conservation Association says administration officials must "work with Congress to address the maintenance backlog." The costs of repairs to a park "cannot and should not be largely shouldered by its visitors," she adds in a statement, per CNN, expressing concern that the change would make parks "unaffordable."
– The feds have interviewed the Amtrak engineer at the controls before this week's crash in Philadelphia, and while Brandon Bostian was fully cooperative, he says he still can't remember a thing about the derailment, reports CNN. But the more interesting development came from an interview with an assistant conductor, who said she thought she heard Bostian say before the crash that the train's windshield had been "broken by something,” reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. “We have seen damage to the left-hand lower portion of Amtrak windshield that we have asked the FBI to come in and look at for us,” says NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt. Prior to the crash, two other trains in the area had been hit by some kind of projectile, reports the Inquirer. One was a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority train, and the assistant conductor remembers hearing about it. "She recalled that the SEPTA engineer had reported to the train dispatcher that he had either been hit by a rock or shot at, and the SEPTA engineer said that he had a broken windshield, and he placed his train into emergency stop," says Sumwalt. "She also believed that she heard (the Amtrak) engineer say something about his train being struck by something." As for Bostian, he told the NTSB that he hadn't been sick or tired, but insisted he remembers nothing beyond the point his train left the nearby station in north Philly. (The train was clearly speeding up before entering a curve at twice the speed limit.)
– A paraplegic man is recovering after being dumped on a desolate road in the New Mexico desert without his wheelchair. Ricky Gilmore says he spent three days dragging himself four miles down the road after a couple he met while hitchhiking tossed him out of their vehicle when he declined to share his alcohol, the AP reports. The 49-year-old is being treated for kidney failure from dehydration, a blood infection, and a sprained wrist. Gilmore, who lost the use of his legs in a car crash 19 years ago, says three cars passed him during the first two days of his ordeal but they didn't stop when he waved. A vehicle finally stopped on the third day, and Gilmore says he doesn't believe he could have survived a third night in the desert. Cops are searching for the couple who left him in the desert. "I just got on the devil's ride," Gilmore tells the Farmington Daily Times. "I just want to heal up and go home and change my life around and keep going."
– Wildlife officials in Thailand have begun removing some of the 137 tigers held at a Buddhist temple following accusations that the monks were involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals. The director of Thailand's Wildlife Conservation Office, Teunjai Noochdumrong, says three tigers were tranquilized and transported Monday in an operation involving about 1,000 state personnel that's expected to continue for a week. The animals will be taken to three government animal refuges elsewhere in Thailand. The temple, a popular money-earning tourist attraction in the western province of Kanchanaburi, has been criticized by animal rights activists because of allegations it's not properly set up to care for the animals and flouted regulations, the AP reports The monks resisted previous efforts to take away the tigers, and they impeded the effort again on Monday morning despite the massive show of force by the authorities. It was "mayhem," Noochdumrong tells CNN. "When our vet team arrived, there were tigers roaming around everywhere," he says. "Looks like the temple intentionally let these tigers out, trying to obstruct our work." The monks relented after police obtained a court order. More than 300 officials remained at the temple overnight to ensure the tigers remained safe. (This tiger was found roaming a residential neighborhood in Texas.)
– Is there something in the water? Hollywood has been hit with a rash of break-ups: After more than three years together, Meg Ryan and John Mellencamp are over, People reports. "It was the long distance that ultimately was the cause," says one source; Ryan, 52, lives in New York while Mellencamp, 62, lives in Indiana. Michelle Rodriguez and Zac Efron weren't together nearly so long, but they, too, are finished after almost two months of dating, Us reports. "Michelle is going to do her own thing. Zac knew this about her when he got with her," one source says. "He's very into her though, and perhaps more than she's into him." Rodriguez, 36, and Efron, 26, reportedly had a big fight in Ibiza that prompted the split. In slightly more D-list news, Jersey Shore couple Ronnie Magro and Sammi "Sweetheart" Giancola are done for good after an on-again, off-again five-year relationship, Magro tells People. "We were drifting apart and not really spending any time together," he says. "She's a great girl, but we were growing distant." And, though there's no official word on this yet, multiple outlets are reporting that Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon are all but divorced. Lawyers have been negotiating property and custody agreements for months, according to TMZ, and the couple has been living separately since May. According to Page Six's sources, Carey, 45, thinks Cannon, 33, might have cheated.
– Officials have released a name in the case of the American nanny found dead in her Vienna, Austria, apartment on Tuesday night, but beyond that, much remains unclear. ABC News reports Lauren Mann, 25, died by suffocation, though it notes that Vienna police rep Thomas Keiblinger earlier referenced a preliminary autopsy that found no indications of strangulation. NBC News echoes the report of suffocation, but CBS News and the AP report the autopsy was inconclusive, and their reports don't mention suffocation. CBS cites officials who on Thursday confirmed Mann was not strangled, shot, or stabbed. The case is being treated as a homicide, and an official tells NBC News "third party involvement cannot be excluded"; police say there are no suspects at this time. Keiblinger says it'll take a week or two for the toxicology report to be completed, which has CBS saying her death "could be [a] mystery for weeks." ABC reports Mann failed to pick up one of her charges from school on Monday, but her half-dressed body wasn't found until 6pm the following day. The Colorado native was a graduate of the University of Colorado-Boulder's College of Music.
– Norway is entering the history books with a radio-related first: The country is shutting down its FM radio network in favor of digital-only transmissions, reports the Local. The country will begin cutting its FM network on Wednesday, starting with the northern city of Bodo, before moving south. All five national channels on FM will stop broadcasting by the end of the year, per Vocativ, though some local stations will continue FM broadcasts until 2022. The plan has been in place for years as digital radio costs Norway the same as the FM network, $29 million, but allows for eight times more radio stations. But residents aren't impressed. A poll shows 66% of Norwegians oppose the move, compared to 17% in favor and 17% undecided, reports Reuters. Among the critics are the owners of 2 million vehicles without digital audio broadcasting receivers who will need a $170 digital adapter and those who fear emergency alerts usually broadcast on FM radio will go unheard. "We are simply not ready for this yet," says a member of the ruling coalition government, noting "millions" of in-home radios will be rendered useless. "But Norway has made its decision," says the chairman of the Norwegian Local Radio Federation. "For practical and economic reasons it is too late to turn back now." Norway will now be watched closely by the UK, South Korea, Sweden, and Denmark, all considering the switch. Switzerland plans to switch to digital in 2020. (Norway is home to the world's slowest TV show.)
– A small scar on the forehead. A habit of feeling nauseous when she cried. These are traits that a woman named Kang Ying and a child named Qifeng shared—helping to prove the two are one and the same. The BBC reports on the 24-year search for Qifeng, who disappeared from her parents' roadside fruit stand in Chengdu city in January 1994; she was just 3. Wang Mingqing and wife Liu Dengying spent more than two decades searching for their girl, through newspaper ads and online posts. They remained in Chengdu, hoping it would increase the chances that Qifeng would find them, and in 2015, Wang began driving for the Uber-like Didi Chuxing and spreading the word. His car contained information about his search, passengers were given information about his daughter, and the South China Morning Post reports he asked riders to post about his search on social media. Then, a break, by way of a police sketch artist. The artist heard about the search and offered to create an age progression drawing showing what an adult Qifeng might look like—and, in a province far to the north, Kang Ying saw it and thought it looked a whole lot like her. She reached out to Yang in mid-March, per Global News, and a DNA test was arranged for; it proved she was Qifeng, and the family was reunited on Tuesday. The Morning Post reports Kang grew up 12 miles from Chengdu, with parents who told her they had adopted her. (This missing 9-year-old was found thanks to a reality TV show.)
– The Telegraph reported yesterday on a crazy court case in the UK: After a pregnant Italian woman, in town for business, had a panic attack, social service workers in Essex got a court order allowing the woman to be forcibly sedated and undergo a C-section so they could take her baby. Fifteen months later, the little girl is still with social service workers, who won't return her to her mother. The case is now "an international legal row," the Telegraph says, and the anonymous woman's lawyers call it "unprecedented." The woman was in Britain in July 2012 for an airline training course, and called police when she suffered the panic attack. They arrived while she was on the phone with her mother, who told police the woman suffered from bipolar disorder and was off her medication, according to a Telegraph columnist. Police took her to a psychiatric facility, and restrained her under the Mental Health Act when she said she wanted to go back to her hotel. She underwent the C-section after having been there five weeks. The case is ongoing; the mother says she has made a full recovery, but a judge nonetheless ruled that her daughter should be put up for adoption. More on the case here and here.
– The specifics of President Obama's plans for Syria don't seem much clearer after a conference call with Congressional leaders. The call didn't include information on when a strike would occur, Politico notes, nor did it appear to sway lawmakers who had doubts about military action. During the call, which involved top officials including John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and Susan Rice, the administration discussed an intercepted phone call it called proof the Syrian government used chemical weapons, the Wall Street Journal reports—though the call doesn't directly implicate Bashar al-Assad, the New York Times notes. The White House's goal is "preventing Assad from using chemical weapons again," a Democratic aide said. As to the British vote against using force, the administration said that "the president will make a decision based on what is best for the US and not what other countries would do," said Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "I don't think the UK ought to have a veto on what the US does or doesn't do." Officials said Obama still hadn't settled on a course of action—but the Times says "all indications" suggest a strike on the heels of the UN's departure from Damascus tomorrow. But we may know more soon: A senior administration official tells CNN the administration will today release declassified intelligence supporting the claim that the Syrian regime launched a chemical attack.
– In a rare bit of good news in the animal conservation world, scientists say they vastly lowballed the penguin population on Antarctica. The off-base estimate pertains to Adelie penguins—that's the adorable Happy Feet variety—and it turns out there are 3.6 million more of them than previously thought, reports the Huffington Post Australia. A team of Australian, Japanese, and French scientists now think there are 5.9 million of these birds occupying a 3,100-mile stretch of east Antarctica. From that projection, they pegged the total Adelie penguin population on the continent at 14 million to 16 million. The Adelies, named after the wife of the French explorer who discovered them in 1840, are only found on Antarctica and its islands. So why did their number take such a leap? "The reason it's higher is we have incorporated the non-breeding component of the population," says Aussie ecologist Dr. Louise Emmerson. What that means is that while the breeding birds migrate to the island to do the deed and then sit on eggs, making them easy to count, non-breeders are "off foraging out in the water where we can't see them," she says. It turns out the non-breeders were more numerous. How did the experts revise their count? They used aerial surveillance and land-based counting methods, and they studied penguin droppings to ballpark the amount of food the tuxedoed ones consume: an estimated 213,000 tons of krill and 21,000 tons of fish during the breeding season, per the AFP. The findings could help inform conservation efforts for marine and land animals, per the Australian. (What happened to 150K missing penguins?)
– Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of an election widely denounced as a "fraud foretold." According to figures released by the National Election Council, Maduro was elected to a second six-year term after winning around 68% of the vote, more than 40 points more than his nearest rival, Henri Falcon, the AP reports. Before the result was announced Sunday, US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan said the US would not recognize the election winner, reports Reuters. He said the US is considering oil sanctions on Venezuela, though Washington wants to target "corrupt regime officials," not "damage the country in a way that makes it difficult to repair after democracy is restored." Maduro told supporters outside the presidential palace in Caracas that his "truly popular victory" had been achieved through an "impeccable electoral process," but Falcon and other critics said irregularities including widespread vote-buying made the results invalid and called for new elections, the Guardian reports. Reuters notes that after voting, residents of the crisis-stricken country were asked to scan their government-issued "fatherland cards"—which are required to claim benefits—at pro-Maduro tents near polling stations to qualify for a "prize" from the socialist leader. Officials said turnout out was 46.1%, down from 80% in 2013, though critics said even that number was inflated and the true figure was closer to 30%.
– The State Department today issued a travel warning for South Sudan, recommending that all Americans "depart immediately," as violence rises in the wake of an attempted coup. That includes non-emergency US personnel, who have already been ordered to depart, forcing the US to suspend normal operations at its embassy there until further notice. At least 66 soldiers have been killed so far in clashes in Juba, the capital of the world's newest country, al-Jazeera reports. Gunshots rang out within earshot of the embassy, and military vehicles roamed the mostly empty streets as residents barricaded themselves inside. The UN says that roughly 10,000 people have sought refuge at the two UN compounds there, according to CNN, and hospitals are straining to deal with an influx of patients.
– An amazing, if grisly, feat continues to resonate after a report in Thursday's Globe and Mail of Toronto. The newspaper, quoting military sources, says a Canadian sniper in Iraq killed an ISIS militant from the mind-boggling distance of 3,540 meters, or 2.2 miles. The Canadian military has not confirmed what would be the longest kill shot by a sniper in history, but the story has in the meantime drawn attention to something else: the remarkable prowess of Canadian snipers in general. Some coverage: The training: If confirmed, that means the sniper record has been broken four times in the last 15 years, three of those times by Canadians, notes Maclean's magazine. One reason, it says, is because Canadian snipers "are not simply taught to hit their targets." The training goes beyond their shooting duties, making sure they're able to "design and run complex operations" if necessary. "That in itself may not make them better snipers but the gestalt of sniper-training and command-thinking combined could explain their skill." Long history: The CBC examines the history of Canada's military marksmanship, noting that Cpl. Francis Pegahmagabow of the 1st Canadian Infantry Battalion had 378 kills, making him deadliest sniper of World War I. A military historian says the skill carried into WWII. "The best snipers were usually country boys who knew how to hunt." Official statement: The Canadian military has not confirmed the kill, but it did confirm the shot. "A member of the Joint Task Force 2 successfully hit a target from 3,540 meters," it says in an email to NPR, adding that it won't divulge further details for troop safety. Really? The Globe and Mail says the shot was verified by video and data, but that hasn't emerged yet, and some are skeptical. The Washington Post talks to former US snipers who say that even seeing a human target would be difficult from that distance, even with advanced scopes. A theory floated by a former Marine shooter: "A spotter with an advanced optical device was able to verbally walk the sniper onto the target and correct his aim.” Yes: Canadian Cpl. Rob Furlong, who once held the record himself at 2,430 meters, counters the skeptics: “It’s not an impossible distance,” he says. “So to the naysayers I would just say, this can be done.” It's a "hell of a shot," adds former Canadian sniper Jody Mitic, who was written a book called, of course, Unflinching: The Making of a Canadian Sniper. A critic: In a post at Stuff.co.nz, John Edens thinks the shot was possible, given high-tech gizmos to account for everything from wind speed to the curvature of the earth. Plus, the gun used, a McMillan TAC-50 rifle, employs a 50-caliber bullet the size of a "large cigar." His beef, though, is with media coverage that he thinks glorifies war. "It's an achievement to a point, but it's not really one humanity should be proud of."
– Authorities say a man who was in a Colorado court for violating his bond on a drug charge is in even more trouble after a wad of cocaine fell from his hat while he was in front of the judge. The Vail Daily reported Wednesday that 43-year-old Juan Jose Vidrio Bibriesca was standing next to two other defendants at an Eagle County District Court podium when he took his hat off and a square of folded paper fell out. A police officer watched the paper filled with cocaine fall to the floor, reports the AP, and after reviewing surveillance footage, authorities determined it fell from Bibriesca's hat. Bibriesca was then walked to the county jail, and now faces new charges of narcotics possession and another bond violation. Booking documents don't indicate if he has hired an attorney. The Vail Daily notes that Bibriesca is in the country illegally, meaning his legal woes aren't over.
– There's nothing like opening up a brand-new makeup kit and glamming it up—though that glamorous feeling may be lost if you find out you're applying makeup someone else already used. That's the gist of a complaint filed in Chicago last month by a California woman who says Ulta repackaged returned cosmetics and placed the items back on store shelves, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Every customer who has purchased cosmetics at Ulta since this practice began was put at risk of unwittingly purchasing used, unsanitary cosmetics," the lawsuit states. Kimberley Laura Smith-Brown of Los Angeles alleges she stocked up on dozens of items from Ulta's Sherman Oaks location over the past six months or so—and then saw whispers on social media that her stash may not have been as pristine as she thought. A Twitter user who said she was an ex-Ulta employee started the hubbub, claiming that when she worked there, her manager would instruct employees to clean returned items with cotton swabs and alcohol, seal them back up, then slip them back on the shelves. And, she said, they "would resell EVERYTHING (makeup, hair care, skincare, fragrance, hair tools, etc.)." Other supposed Ulta employees both refuted and supported her claims. ABC Action News reports a second lawsuit was filed last week in Illinois' Cook County Circuit Court, with plaintiff Meghan DeVries alleging Ulta managers are given a "quota" of how many returned items can be listed as "damaged," per a release. The lawyer in that class action says used cosmetics can contain harmful bacteria like E. coli and even the herpes simplex virus. (A potential concern in children's makeup: asbestos.)
– So much for enjoying one's golden years. Mel Gibson's 93-year-old dad yesterday filed for divorce from his 70-something wife of 10 years. Though TMZ reports that Hutton Gibson marked the typical "irreconcilable differences" on his filing, the site also reports that the Gibsons apparently believe Teddy Joye has been abusing the patriarch. The row apparently boils down to the many medications the "seriously ill" Hutton is on. Mel & Co. want to make sure he's taking his medicine, while Teddy apparently thinks medicating him is just dragging out his pain, and wants to call it quits on the meds so he'll die faster. That apparently has the younger Gibson crying elder abuse. TMZ adds that Hutton Gibson is seeking spousal support. The million-dollar question: Is this parent-of-celeb mess juicier than this one?
– Loyalty between dog and man once again has no bounds, this time via a German shepherd who waited two weeks for an owner who'd never come home again. The dog was first spotted at an apartment complex near Houston's Hobby Airport, KTRK reports—sometimes on the steps, sometimes at the complex's front gates, sometimes camped out at one particular apartment's front door. "You could just tell that he was a lost dog," neighbor Cassandra Eubanks says. "He would follow the cars and when he would realize that it was not his owner's car, he would just stand there and look helpless." What the poor pup didn't realize: His owner, 54-year-old Hatem Abuharbid, had been killed in a robbery Feb. 7 at the convenience store where he worked, ABC News reports. "Of course he's confused, because he doesn't know what's going on," Eubanks says. The dog wouldn't approach neighbors who left food and water out for him, but he was eventually rescued by a woman who had heard about his plight on social media. "It just broke my heart to hear that the poor animal lost his owner, his best friend," Maranda Perez tells KTRK. She brought her own dog along and worked patiently for about an hour to make the now-ownerless dog comfortable around her. After following him up three flights of stairs, Perez was finally able to place a leash around his neck and get him, with some resistance, into her car. "He was still very shaken up whenever I touched him," she says. Perez says she'll take care of him for the next week or so before Abuharbid's brother takes the dog in. (This loyal pooch stuck by its owner's body until rescuers found them.)
– John Stamos asked girlfriend Caitlin McHugh to marry him less than two months ago, but it looks like they'll soon be calling each other mom and dad in addition to husband and wife. The 54-year-old Fuller House actor tells People he and the 31-year-old McHugh are expecting their first child, and his age may have played a role in expediting their household's expansion. It appears it was McHugh's suggestion that they have a kid before they tied the knot, and when Stamos asked her why, he says she teased: "Because you're old." "We have the same morals and the same values, that all clicked nicely," Stamos explains. "So we said, 'Oh, well, maybe we should have a family.'" Stamos says he's "always wanted to be a dad," but he figured "that ship has sailed." He's now eager to apply all the parenting "practicing" he did on TV. "I've done every schtick thing that you can do ... saying every song, bits and jokes and diaper gags. I'll probably just do all that." He also predicts the baby, whose gender will remain a secret until birth, "is gonna look like Don Rickles," per the Los Angeles Times. Stamos was previously married to actress Rebecca Romijn from 1998 to 2005. More on why he's now ready to be a dad in a People follow-up.
– Newt Gingrich lost both Mississippi and Alabama last night, and the calls for him to drop out have risen to a deafening roar. Here's what pundits are saying: "If Newt Gingrich can't win Alabama and Mississippi, where can he win?" asks CNN. The states are "virtual home turf" for the ex-speaker. Dig deeper, and the numbers keep looking bad; Gingrich saw sharp declines among key groups like very conservative voters and evangelicals. Gingrich "lost any of the remaining logic behind his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination," writes Glen Johnson of the Boston Globe. He can't even claim he was derailed by Mitt Romney's attack machine—Rick Santorum "has shown an ability to win in spite of it." NPR notes that it's now impossible for Gingrich to get the 1,144 delegates needed to beat Romney. "Gingrich has long been an advocate for thinking 'outside the box,' but lately he has moved outside the box where one finds the calculator, abacus, and the times table." "It is time for Santorum vs. Romney and let the chips fall where they may," agrees Erick Erickson of Red State. A one-on-one contest will give Romney "a run for his money he needs to become a candidate conservatives can potentially rally around." But don't hold your breath. Gingrich's advisers tell the Wall Street Journal that he's staying in—purely to make sure Romney doesn't get enough delegates to clinch the nomination.
– Rick Santorum may be at the top of the polls in Ohio, but even if he wins there, he may not win. Because his campaign missed several eligibility deadlines, he could lose up to 18 of the state's 63 available delegates, report the Cleveland Plain Dealer and ABC News. In nine districts, Santorum's campaign filed either incomplete delegate slates or none at all. Even worse, several of those problematic districts are areas where Santorum was expected to perform well. Santorum is not even on the ballot in Virginia, and failed to file full slates in Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Illinois, but the eligibility requirements in Ohio were considered easier. Santorum's campaign said that because he is one of the leading candidates in the GOP primaries, he should—and will—receive the full delegate count he wins on Tuesday, but the Romney campaign disagreed. “The fact that he cannot execute the simple tasks that are required to win the Republican nomination proves that Rick Santorum is incapable of taking on President Obama’s formidable political machine," said the campaign. The state party would have the final say.
– Watch out for stars moving across galaxies or losing power—it could be aliens gathering energy before the lights go out. Dan Hooper, an astronomy and astrophysics professor at the University of Chicago, posted a paper in the preprint journal arXiv.org arguing that aliens in far-off galaxies may be sucking energy from stars to offset risks posed by an expanding universe, LiveScience reports. "The presence of dark energy in our universe is causing space to expand at an accelerating rate," writes Hooper. "As a result, over the next approximately 100 billion years, all stars residing beyond the Local Group [of galaxies including the Milky Way] will fall beyond the cosmic horizon and become not only unobservable, but entirely inaccessible, thus limiting how much energy could one day be extracted from them." Therefore, he argues, an advanced civilization may use something like "Dyson spheres"—an imagined solar-powered satellite dating back to 1930s science-fiction, notes LiveScience—to harvest a star's energy or use that energy to move it closer to home. Hooper hinges his case on the work of Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, who argued in 1962 that technologically advanced civilizations would expand via three steps: harvesting resources of their planet, then the nearest star, then all stars in the galaxy and nearby galaxies. So how to spot energy-grabbing aliens? Massive stars emanate certain light wavelengths, which will appear in galaxies' light signatures if stars are drained energy—that is, when humans have powerful enough instruments to detect it.
– Sorry, science: Fewer than half of Republicans and white evangelical Protestants in the US believe that humans and other living things have evolved over time, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Overall, a third of Americans say living things are unchanged "since the beginning of time," and Republicans are growing more likely to say so, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, 67% of Democrats and nearly 80% of white mainline protestants are pro-evolution. Among stats from the survey: 25% of adults say "a supreme being guided human evolution of living things"; 32% believe evolution was guided by nature. 64% of white evangelical protestants and 50% of black protestants don't believe in evolution. In 2009, 64% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans believed in evolution. Today's it's 67% of Democrats and 43% of Republicans. 65% of men and 55% of women believe in evolution. Click for the full survey of 1,983 adults across 50 states.
– Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty's family says the 36-year-old Egyptian woman hasn't left her home in 25 years, the BBC reports. Her extreme weight forced her to crawl instead of walk by age 11, and an ensuing stroke left her bedridden. Her family says she weighs more than 1,100 pounds, which would make her the heaviest woman alive—the current Guinness record-holder is only 643 pounds—and close to the heaviest woman ever, according to the Washington Post. While Abd El Aty's weight hasn't been confirmed, Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala in India estimates she is at least 990 pounds based on photos of her. "My initial reaction was '‘How is she even alive?'" he says. His next reaction was to try to save her. Abd El Aty is expected to arrive in Mumbai for surgery in the next 10 days, but it won't be an easy journey. "In every sense, she's a challenge," Lakdawala says. The bariatric surgeon has been raising money to get her to Mumbai and will be operating pro bono, the Times of India reports. But it's not just money that's an issue. Because she can't leave her room, Abd El Aty was unable to make it to the Indian embassy to be fingerprinted for a visa; only a personal plea from Lakdawala secured her an exemption. And while transporting Abd El Aty will be challenging in its own right, Lakdawala says the surgery itself is "very high risk." He says he's "hopeful" but not "confident" he can help Abd El Aty lose up to 300 pounds. (For the obese, objects are closer than they appear.)
– Two balloonists who took off from Japan early on Sunday have sailed past the world distance record and are still in the sky. American Troy Bradley and Russian Leonid Tiukhtyaev— the "Two Eagles"—passed the old record of 5,261 miles yesterday and are due to pass the balloon duration record of 137 hours aloft, set during the first trans-Atlantic balloon flight in 1978, some time today, reports the BBC. "We're not taking any time to celebrate,'' the head of mission control says. "We have a lot of work we have to do, and we're just taking this flight one hour at a time." A worker at mission control, which is based in a balloon museum in Albuquerque, tells Reuters that the balloonists are doing fine despite cramped conditions in the capsule, where they are equipped with cold-weather gear and are living on freeze-dried hikers' meals. The men had originally planned to land in Canada, but they changed course because of weather conditions and are due to land in Baja California, Mexico, on Saturday. Chase crews are being organized to help the landing, which mission control says will probably be among sand dunes on the peninsula, the AP reports.
– Usually municipal workers taking the initiative to replace a broken picnic table would be heralded as a minor civic victory. However, that's less the case when the "broken picnic table" was actually a 6,000-year-old tomb under government protection. NPR reports the tomb is believed to have been built by Neolithic Celtic settlers in what is now the town of San Cristovo de Cea in Spain. After removing the granite slabs they thought had been parts of a bench, workers poured concrete into the burial chamber and topped it off with a picnic table. A Spanish archaeologist tells the Local he was "horrified" by the "monumental error" after an environmental group discovered what had happened in June. Town officials say they weren't aware the tomb was even there, despite it being listed as a heritage site. "No one told me," the mayor tells El Huffington Post. "The site wasn't even marked." But a regional government department is investigating the situation and tells the Local "the town council was well aware of its existence." According to NPR, this kind of thing isn't unheard of. Two years ago, workers in Belize accidentally ruined a 2,300-year-old Mayan pyramid because they needed rubble to fix a road. But more often these ancient sites are destroyed on purpose. Last year, for example, developers dismantled a Native American burial ground in California to make room for some million-dollar homes. (This kid knows a thing or two about accidentally destroying precious things.)
– Now that Newt Gingrich has finally, finally, finally dropped out of the presidential race, Comedy Central bids him adieu with an inspired take on a classic children’s book. It’s a "storybook farewell to Newt Gingrich's campaign, which we'll always remember for its nuanced policy positions and bold vision of ... ah, screw it. We'll remember the moon colony thing," reads the introduction to "Goodnight Moon Colony," spotted by Space.com. The "book," actually a series of slides, also says goodnight to other classics from the Gingrich campaign, including the "food stamp president" and "poll numbers showing beyond a reasonable doubt that Newt Gingrich will win the nomination." The artwork is the highlight, particularly the last page, showing Gingrich in bed with the moon base visible from his window in a spoof of the classic Clement Hurd illustrations in Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon. Click to see for yourself.
– The family of one of four missing young men in Pennsylvania got the news they were dreading Wednesday night when authorities announced that the body of 19-year-old Dean Finocchiaro had been found in a deep grave on a suburban Philadelphia farm. District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said the body was found in a "common grave" more than 12 feet deep, though he didn't say whether the other remains found belong to the three other men who vanished last week, the Washington Post reports. The farm belongs to the family of Cosmo DiNardo, a "person of interest" in the case who was arrested Wednesday for stealing a car belonging to one of the missing men, the New York Times reports. DiNardo, 20, was bailed out by his father late Tuesday after being arrested on a weapons charge from earlier this year. Bail on the new charges has been set at $5 million. "We bought ourselves a little bit of time" with the stolen car charge, Weintraub told reporters early Thursday, adding that homicide charges are being seriously looked at. Eric Beitz, a friend of one of the missing men, tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that DiNardo sold drugs and guns and once boasted about having somebody killed. "Cosmo has spoken about weird things like killing people and having people killed," Beitz says. "Everybody you talk to about this guy, you hear he’s mentally unstable."
– One of the most talked-about cocktails this week is the trendy Moscow Mule, but for all the wrong reasons. You can thank Iowa. The spate of headlines was kicked off by an official state health advisory warning that the drink, usually served in a copper mug, poses a health risk if the wrong kind of mug is used. For the uninitiated, a Moscow Mule has vodka, ginger beer, and lime, and thus is acidic, explains Live Science. The problem is, you're not supposed to serve acidic beverages in mugs with a copper interior because it raises the risk of copper leaching into the drink. Solution? A mug with a copper exterior is fine, but make sure the interior is made of stainless steel, nickel, or some other alternative. The advice isn't new, but the state felt compelled to issue the advisory given the "recent popularity of Moscow Mules." (A cruise through Instagram proves the point.) Iowa's warning is based on an FDA advisory from a few years ago. Specifically, it says that drinks with a PH level of 6.0 or under should not be served in pure copper mugs, and the Mule falls into that category. For the record, so do fruit juices, vinegar, and wine, notes the Daily News. (Some might prefer a little food poisoning to this cocktail ingredient.)
– A man suspected of killing one of former President George HW Bush's doctors may have been seeking revenge for his mother, who died on the doctor's operating table more than 20 years ago, authorities said Wednesday. Joseph James Pappas, 62, should be considered armed, dangerous, and possibly suicidal, Houston police Chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. "There was a lot of planning that went into this," Acevedo said of the July 20 attack on Dr. Mark Hausknecht, adding that it appears a "20-year-old grudge" led to the attack, per CNN. Hausknecht was gunned down while riding his bike to work at Houston Methodist Hospital, which is part of the busy Texas Medical Center. Authorities say the shooter rode past Hausknecht before turning around and firing. A tip on Tuesday led police to suspect Pappas, the chief said, though he didn't elaborate as to the nature of the tip. Acevedo said Pappas hadn't been seen in 36 to 48 hours, the AP reports. He said the last anyone had heard from Pappas was in a Tuesday morning text message in which Pappas wrote that he was going to kill himself. Acevedo said police searched his home at 4am Wednesday and found evidence that ties Pappas to the killing, but he declined to elaborate as to the nature of the evidence. The chief said Pappas, who was a peace officer in Harris County for three decades per the Houston Chronicle, is white and very fit, and that he's likely getting around on his 10-speed bicycle, which he rides "extensively and almost exclusively." Friends and family have described Hausknecht as a humble and generous man who was adored by his patients, volunteered in his community and cared about the environment. He was also an avid cyclist and rode his bike to work each morning, as he lived less than 2 miles from his office.
– Everyone knows smartphones can steal hours from a day, but employees are turning to their mobile devices while on the clock, too. A new survey by staffing firm OfficeTeam finds that office workers spend an average of 56 minutes a day on their cell phones while at work, and another 42 minutes a day doing other personal tasks. That's nearly five hours of personal phone time a week, and a total of more than eight hours of broader personal time, notes WTOP. Not only that, but most bosses underestimate the time waste on phones to be closer to 39 minutes a day—and workers younger than 35 are averaging a whopping 70 minutes of their day on their phones and 48 minutes on other personal matters. "It's understandable that employees may occasionally use their mobile devices or attend to personal tasks during business hours," OfficeTeam's' district president says. "But these activities can easily become big distractions." Fortune reports that most of the personal time on phones is spent on social media and non-work email; in distant third, fourth, and fifth places come sports sites, mobile gaming, and shopping. Beyond this, the survey found that 58% of office workers visit pages their company prohibits, but there's a breakdown between the sexes: 68% of men do this, compared to just 43% of women. (In the UK, some women get time off to cope with menstrual pain.)
– This morning—almost 21 hours after the attack on the US embassy and other buildings in Kabul began—the last of the six attackers have been killed and the area is locked down. But questions are being raised about why it took so long to secure the high-rise building used by the assailants as a staging area, the Los Angeles Times notes. At least seven Afghans died in the attack, and 17 were hurt. Officials believe the insurgents disguised themselves as women in order to get weapons into the building, which is under construction, the Washington Post adds. "We strongly believe they used burkas," which were found inside the van alongside the assailants' weapons, "to reach this place," a police spokesperson says. "The police respect the women too much." Though the attack raises concerns about Kabul's vulnerability and security shortcomings as US forces start withdrawing from Afghanistan, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker downplayed it, calling it simply "harassment." He continues, "If this is the best they can do, I find their lack of ability and capacity and the ability of Afghan forces to respond to it, actually encouraging." Crocker tells the New York Times today that the Pakistan-based Haqqani group appeared to be behind the assault.
– In the latest effort to make reality out of what is currently science fiction, US officials are looking into the possibility of building a mothership: a large aircraft from which smaller ones take off. "This is the float-the-idea stage of the concept. It's not the build-me-a-prototype stage," says an expert. But this month, the Pentagon asked companies to envision designs for a drone-carrying cargo plane, AFP reports. The request seeks a design that could be demonstrated within four years, CNN reports. The effort has focused on converting aircraft the Pentagon already has. "One promising idea is enabling existing large aircraft, with minimal modification, to become 'aircraft carriers in the sky,'" says an official with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Versions of the idea have been around since the 1920s; in the 1930s, airships carrying Sparrowhawk biplanes crashed and the US dropped the effort for the time being. An underwater version of such a system could come sooner than a flying version, AFP notes: The US has already managed to launch a drone from a submarine's missile tube.
– An Arkansas man won $1 million in a scratch-card lottery this weekend; the next day, his wife won $50,000. "I just couldn't believe it. It's not possible," says Steve Weaver. When they prepared to claim the cash, "I thought we were going to have to go do a lie detector test, and put our hand on the Bible," Weaver tells Fox 16. Together, Steve and Terri's tickets cost $30, Arkansas Matters reports. The couple isn't planning anything rash with their newfound $1,050,000; they'll invest it, keep working, and keep playing the lottery, they say.
– Cavities are far from a modern woe, reveals a new study of a 5,300-year-old "ice mummy." "Ötzi" didn't just have the bad luck of dying on a glacier, he also suffered from terrible teeth, reports Science. Though his remains were discovered on the Austro-Italian border in 1991, his teeth had never been assessed. Researchers circled back to a CAT scan taken in 2005 to review his "oral cavity" and "study evolutionary aspects of oral disease," per their abstract in the European Journal of Oral Sciences. What they determined, as translated from dental-speak ("the poor periodontal condition of the Iceman's dentition, eg, loss of alveolar bone...") by Science: a discolored front tooth as the result of some sort of accident, a broken molar, cavities, and gum disease. A diet involving gruel may have been responsible for the latter two conditions. In fact, the researchers believe that the rise of starches in the diets of the time may be linked to a corresponding increase in cavities.
– Wendy Davis took her 10 hours of filibustering fame and extended it by at least 15 minutes, appearing on three Sunday shows today and unloading on Texas Republicans trying to push through a 20-week abortion ban. “Gov. Perry and Lt. Gov. Dewhurst are willing to … put women in harm’s way in order to step up on the political ladder,” she said, adding that Republicans "mismanaged the clock terribly last time, and ran roughshod over a lot of our senate rules and traditions to try to ram this bill through. And they’ll probably be a bit smarter. But what they now have to confront is that the eyes of Texas, the eyes of the country are watching.” As for Rick Perry's musings on her beginnings, she responded thusly: "My life story is something that belongs to me. I had choices and chances and opportunities. What I'm working to fight for is to make sure that all women have the ability to do that." Elsewhere on the Sunday dial, as per Politico: Nancy Pelosi on Edward Snowden: “We have to know what is it that he has. And I don't know that he has that much substance. He may know something about the machinery. I don't know that he knows that much about the content. But now that he's threatening to share information with Russia and China, if he in fact he has any information, I think that should disabuse anybody of the notion that he is a hero.” And furthermore: “I think it's pretty good that he's stuck in the Moscow airport. That's OK with me. He can stay there, that's fine.” Former NSA chief Michael Hayden on NSA leak: It has caused "significant" damage, and “in an ideal world, I’d keep all of this secret because any of it I make public slices some of my operational advantage away from me. But democracies like ours don’t get to do something over a long period of time without national consensus." Conservative leader Ralph Reed says Prop 8 supporters aren't bigots: Joe Biden and Pat Leahy were among Dems who "voted for this law and Bill Clinton, who signed it into law, (so were they) intolerant and motivated by an animus toward gays? Obama was 14 months ago. Was he a bigot 14 months ago?"
– Police say the rapper T.I. was arrested early Wednesday on disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, and simple assault charges as he tried to enter his gated community outside Atlanta, the AP reports. Henry County Deputy Police Chief Mike Ireland said T.I. was arrested around 4:30am after he got into an argument with a security guard. Media reports say the Grammy-winning artist, whose real name is Clifford Harris, lost his key and the guard wouldn't let him into the community. Ireland said T.I. and a friend were arrested. The rapper has been released on bail. His lawyer posted a statement to Facebook alleging that the guard was asleep on the job when T.I., who also goes by Tip, arrived and that he continued to deny the rapper entry even after T.I.'s wife was contacted and instructed the guard to let him in. "Words were exchanged and apparently the guard and/or a supervisor called the police. When the police arrived, they were not interested in hearing Tip’s side of the story and wrongfully chose to end the situation by arresting Tip," the post reads. T.I. himself spoke to the Blast and said he was arrested thanks to "white cops in a very white area." He says he never touched the guard. T.I. served about seven months in prison in 2009 after his arrest on federal gun charges. He also spent about 10 months in federal prison on a probation violation in 2010 after he was arrested on drug charges in Los Angeles. The drug arrest violated his probation and led to an 11-month prison sentence at an Arkansas prison. T.I. is one of the biggest names in hip-hop, with multiple platinum-selling albums and singles, production credits, and roles in films like ATL and American Gangster.
– He's out of the hospital and expected to be OK, but one of the two police officers shot last night in Ferguson still has a bullet lodged behind his ear. The 32-year-old got shot below his right eye, and the bullet ended up just below his right ear, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The other officer, 41, got hit in the right shoulder, and the bullet exited out his back. He's out of the hospital, too. Police haven't made any arrests in the shootings, but they took three people in for questioning this morning. "We're lucky by God's grace that we didn't lose those two officers last night," said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar. "We could have buried two police officers next week because of this." Belmar called the attack an "ambush," and Eric Holder used the same word along with some stronger ones, reports CBS News. “This was not someone trying to bring healing to Ferguson," the attorney general said today. "This was a damn punk, a punk, who was trying to sow discord.” Protests are expected to resume tonight, and the Missouri Highway Patrol and St. Louis County Police will take the reins from the Ferguson department, whose chief resigned yesterday. Police think the bullets came from a pistol fired from across the street from the department. In amateur video, two shots are heard, followed by a man screaming in pain, reports AP. The voice of an unidentified person is heard saying, "Acknowledgement nine months ago would have kept that from happening."
– Get out your checkbooks, kids: There is a slew of famous and infamous items up for auction. The US Marshal's office's online auction of the Unabomber's personal effects ends tomorrow, and Aol's Weird News astutely observes that Ted Kaczynski's 35,000-word handwritten manifesto ($17,525) is currently going for less than the gray hoodie ($20,025) that figured so prominently into his FBI Wanted poster. Bonus: sunglasses included. Looking for more of a bargain? A bow and arrows in a Sears box is currently a steal at $743. And in other bizarre auction news: Balloon boy's dad is trying to auction off the infamous "flying saucer" balloon for $1 million. But don't worry, reports KTLA: Richard Heene has vowed to give all the money to charity (specifically, Japan). A bunch of celebrities are hoping JetBlue loses their luggage ... right into the hands of eager bidders. The Celebrity Baggage Auction will benefit DoSomething.org. Buy a signed Jessica Simpson-brand bag or a leather Coach bag personally used by Rosario Dawson, and get two roundtrip JetBlue tickets, too. Click for more. Maybe eBay is the place to buy stuff: Morace Park bought a film reel for $5.25 that turned out to be the only known copy of the Charlie Chaplin film Zepped. The Telegraph reports that it's expected to fetch six figures in a June 29 auction.
– Facebook is going to have to cough up $500 million in real money for unlawfully using another company's virtual reality technology. A jury decided Wednesday that VR pioneer Oculus, which Facebook bought for $2 billion in 2014, infringed copyright and trademarks when it used code from games maker Zenimax to launch its own VR headset, the BBC reports. Zenimax had accused the company of stealing trade secrets, saying Oculus headsets were "primitive" before a former Zenimax employee used his insider knowledge to improve them. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg tells CNBC that the company is "disappointed in certain elements of" the ruling, but Facebook notes that while the jury found the company guilty of copyright infringement, failure to comply with a non-disclosure agreement, and misuse of Oculus trademarks, it did not find it guilty of stealing secrets. She says the $500 million verdict, which Facebook is considering appealing, is "not material to our financials." Reuters reports that Facebook released its latest financial results Wednesday, showing a $3.57 billion profit in the last quarter, up $2 billion year-over-year.
– "Any guy that can do a body-slam, he's my guy," President Trump shouted to a cheering Montana audience Thursday night as he simulated slamming someone to the ground, then noting, "I shouldn't say that." Trump was discussing Rep. Greg Gianforte, who assaulted Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs last year during the special election for the House seat vacated by Ryan Zinke, a misdemeanor assault to which he pleaded guilty and completed community service and an anger management class. Trump said after the incident, he feared Gianforte had blown his chance at the congressional seat. "I said, 'Oh, this is terrible, he's gonna lose the election,'" Trump recounted. "Then I said, 'Well, wait a minute—I know Montana pretty well. I think it might help him.' And it did." Trump was in Big Sky Country stumping for Matt Rosendale in his race for Democrat Jon Tester's Senate seat. Reaction came quickly: John Mulholland, US editor of the Guardian, put out a statement after the rally blasting Trump's words as "an attack on the First Amendment," asking for an apology and adding, "In the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it runs the risk of inviting other assaults on journalists both here and across the world." ABC News reports on what the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale calls the "most significant" and "truly horrible" moment in the rally: "The president is gleefully applauding violence against a journalist." Trump also praised Gianforte as "smart" and then advised the crowd to "never wrestle him." (Trump seems to acknowledge Khashoggi is dead.)
– In what one conservationist is calling an "environmental nightmare," an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Atlantic salmon busted out of their holding pen over the weekend after a net broke, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is now pleading with locals to help catch as many as they can. Cooke Aquaculture's net pen was holding around 305,000 farmed salmon when anchor lines to the pen gave way and service walkways tipped on Saturday, reports the Seattle Times. The WDFW is now asking for the public's help in scooping the escaped fish out of the waters near Cypress Island (or wherever they may turn up), with no size or quantity restrictions. The exodus has environmentalists concerned, as they're afraid the farmed escapees could take over the feeding and spawning grounds of native chinook and steelhead salmon and pass on disease, KUOW notes. Cooke says in a statement that "exceptionally high tides and currents coinciding with this week's solar eclipse" contributed to the "structural failure" that led to the salmon's breakout. But environmentalists are pushing back on that, KING 5 notes, with one organization claiming Cooke had the same net issue earlier this summer. KUOW also reports that tide tables and current and wind speed numbers weren't unusually high on Saturday. A Cooke spokeswoman doubled down on the eclipse explainer late Tuesday, and she also added that the escaped salmon weren't a threat to native fish because they wouldn't survive. "It's primarily a business loss," she tells the Times. The salmon, which weigh about 10 pounds each, "will be food for the seals and the fishermen can enjoy them." (Is California's salmon population in big trouble?)
– Smartphones going for about $4 are said to be shipping this week in India, and the manufacturing company's head says he's pleased that they're finally coming out, even though the company will take a loss on each phone, the Guardian reports. Ringing Bells originally said it would ship 2.5 million units of its Freedom 251 phone—a 3G Android with a 4-inch screen, 8GB of storage, an 8MP main camera, and a 3.2MP selfie camera—by the end of June, per Android Authority, but now CEO Mohit Goel tells the Indian Express that's been dropped down to 200,000 shipped out by June 30, with more soon to come. There had been much skepticism over whether the phones actually existed. "We learned from our mistakes and decided to go silent till we [came] out with the product," Goel says. "Now we have a … dual-SIM phone ready for delivery. I feel vindicated." Talk of the phone has raised disbelieving eyebrows since it was announced: In February, Ars Technica called the whole deal "awfully shady," noting that initial previews of the phone showed an unattractive, cheap-looking unit that appeared to be another company's phone "rebranded" with white correcting fluid. The Guardian notes that Ringing Bells is losing about $2.20 per smartphone, but Goel tells the Express he hopes to recoup profits in volume. "We will have a loss, but I am happy that the dream of connecting rural and poor Indians as part of the 'Digital India' and 'Make in India' initiatives has been fulfilled with Freedom 251," he says. Also reportedly to be released from Ringing Bells within the next month or so: a 32-inch high-def LED TV that retails for less than $150.
– Christopher Watts will spend the rest of his life in prison for the murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters in Colorado. Some of the last things he did as a free man have come into sharper focus thanks to some 2,000 pages of documents the Weld County District Attorney's Office released on Wednesday. Authorities say he suffocated his girls late on Sunday, Aug. 12, or early on Monday the 13th, which is when he strangled his wife. The details begin before that, per the Daily Camera: With his wife out of town on business, Watts on Saturday took girlfriend Nichol Kessinger to dinner, though he told police and others he had dinner with friends. More: Kessinger says he uncharacteristically paid with a credit card, rather than a gift card, which she took as a sign that he no longer needed to hide their relationship from his wife (whom Watts told her he had divorced). The $62 charge caught Shanann Watts' eye; she mentioned it to a friend as suspiciously high considering her husband told her he had salmon and a beer. CBS Denver reports on Aug. 5, Shanann texted Watts, "l just don't get it. You don't fall out of love in 5 weeks." CNN reports Shanann took her girls on a lengthy summer trip to North Carolina to see family; Watts joined her for the last week of the trip, but the two were apart from June 27 to July 30. During that time, Watts reportedly saw Kessinger, who told co-workers they got physically intimate in early July.
– The pollsters were wrong once again with France's presidential runoff election but there was no surprise result this time: Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen 66% to 34%, a much bigger margin than the 20 points that had been predicted, Reuters reports. But 34% was still a record for Le Pen's National Front, and analysts say it shows the pro-business, pro-EU Macron has a big struggle ahead to unite a divided nation—as does the fact that in a race between two political outsiders, more than a third of voters either didn't show up or cast a blank ballot. A roundup of coverage: The BBC looks at five reasons for what it calls the "political earthquake" of Macron's victory. They include the scandal that knocked out the initial front-runner, and a strong grassroots operation inspired by Barack Obama's 2008 victory. The result may be a sign that the "populist wave" that led to the Brexit vote and the election of President Trump may be fading, the New York Times reports. "I understand the divisions of our country that have led some to vote for extremists," Macron said after the vote. "I understand the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that a great part among us have also expressed." Governing is going to be the hard part for Macron, who will have to deal with the country's established political parties while implementing his "neither left nor right" policies, EJ Dionne writes in a Washington Post op-ed. "Macron is both a former investment banker and a moderate social democrat," he writes. "Demonstrating how these two sides of him fit together will define the drama of his presidency." The Guardian predicts that there will be no honeymoon period for the 39-year-old president-elect and his "En Marche" movement. As well as the sharp divide between left and right, he has to deal with problems including mass youth unemployment, rising inequality, and the threat of terrorism, which still has the country under a state of emergency. Condoleezza Rice tells USA Today that despite the defeat, Marine Le Pen and similar anti-free trade, anti-immigration populists are still having a worrying effect on politics. "I really do believe that these populists are changing the character of the politics just by being there, so even mainstream candidates are having to respond to their agenda," she says. Vladimir Putin and President Trump were among the world leaders congratulating Macron on Sunday. "I look very much forward to working with him!" Trump tweeted. A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the win as a victory for a "strong and united Europe," France24 reports. CNN notes that centrist candidates in Europe and elsewhere are now looking to Macron for an example of how to defeat candidates like Le Pen amid widespread voter dissatisfaction. Macron's youth—he is France's youngest president ever and its youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor at 34—helped distance him from the political establishment.
– The US military will continue to permit transgender individuals to serve openly until Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has received President Donald Trump's "direction" to change the policy and figured out how to implement it, America's top military officer said Thursday. In a memo to all military service chiefs, commanders, and enlisted military leaders, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "there will be no modifications" to current policy for now, amid questions about Trump's announcement on Twitter that the US government will not "accept or allow" transgender people to serve in any capacity in the military, the AP reports. "I know there are questions about yesterday's announcement," Dunford began, adding that nothing would change until the president's direction has been received by Mattis and Mattis has issued "implementation guidance." The Dunford statement suggests that Mattis was given no presidential direction on changing the transgender policy. Mattis has been on vacation this week and has been publicly silent amid questions about Trump's announced ban. His spokesmen declined to comment Thursday. On Wednesday they said the Pentagon would work with the White House and provide revised guidance to the military "in the near future." Dunford himself was not aware that Trump was going to announce the ban, a US official said. Trump's announcement caught the Pentagon flat-footed and unable to explain what it called Trump's "guidance." The Navy is in sync with Dunford's direction: In an email obtained by USA Today, Vice Adm. Robert Burke said transgender sailors will not be discharged and will continue to receive medical treatment until the White House issues clear guidance.
– A backcountry skier in the upper reaches of Alaska died after he was buried in a surprise avalanche in the Rainbow Mountains on Saturday evening, the Alaska Dispatch News reports. Eric Peterson, 35, and his friend, 63-year-old Michael Hopper, had been enjoying their late-afternoon ski when the two heard a "whoomp" sound from about 20 feet above them, an Alaska State Troopers dispatch noted yesterday. The snow barreled down the mountain and covered the two men, but Hopper was able to extricate himself after two to three hours of strenuous digging. He found his friend's glove and started clawing through the snow until he got to Peterson's body, at which point he hightailed it to the Richardson Highway to find help. David Savage, a volunteer at the Lodge at Black Rapids about 20 miles away, says Hopper is the owner of the lodge and very familiar with weather conditions in that neck of the woods, spending plenty of time in the mountains there and even holding an avalanche safety course once a year at the lodge, KTUU reports. "Mike is very educated in those mountains," Savage says, adding, "Those mountains can be unpredictable." Indeed, the trooper dispatch noted that where Hopper and Peterson were skiing "is widely unstable and continuing to deteriorate with the additional heavy snowfall," which is holding up efforts to recover Peterson's body. His family has been notified of his death, KTUU notes. (Avalanches could possibly halt future Everest attempts.)
– Defendants in federal drug cases are getting unfairly sentenced, thanks to mandatory minimums and unchecked power wielded by the Justice Department, according to a Human Rights Watch report. Prosecutors basically "force" defendants into pleading guilty with threats of lengthy sentences and stacked-up charges if the case goes to trial, the study states. "Prosecutors can say, 'Take these 10 years or, if you get a trial and are convicted, you're going to look at life," study author Jamie Fellner tells the Huffington Post. "That's a pretty amazing power that unfortunately they are more than willing to wield." Just 3% of cases went to trial last year, and of those, 89% of defendants lost. On average, they were given an extra 11 years in prison compared with those who took a plea deal, NPR reports. In one case, a 53-year-old woman with no prior convictions was given "effectively a life sentence" of 45 years for dealing meth and having guns in her house; she had refused a plea deal of 17 years. "When you have innocent people tempted and also maybe pleading guilty just to avoid the possibility of a really long sentence, that doesn't give you a whole lot of faith in the integrity of the system," Fellner says. As for Eric Holder's promised reform: Fellner says she's already found cases where prosecutors have failed to take his advice.
– It's easier to guess men's intelligence than women's just by looking at their faces—maybe because we're so distracted by female beauty, according to a new study. Czech researchers gave IQ tests to 80 male and female students, took photos of them, and asked 160 students to rate them in order of attractiveness and perceived intelligence, PsyPost reports. Generally, students deemed more attractive were also deemed smarter, especially among the women. Little surprise there, but somehow the 160 students were more able to spot men's actual IQ. Why is that? Maybe signs of higher intelligence are only visible in men's faces "due to some genetic and developmental association," the researchers write. "Another option is that women are pervasively judged according to their attractiveness," which prevents "an accurate assessment of their intelligence." What's more, our ability to quickly identify a person's IQ may have "evolutionary" consequences, the researchers say, the Daily Mail reports. Neat factoid: The study found that people hold a certain mental image of an intelligent person's face—narrow, with a long nose and thin chin—which didn't correlate to actual IQ.
– Jamaica's incredible bobsledding run to the Winter Olympics now has a theme song to go with it—named, appropriately, "The Bobsled Song," the AP reports. The upbeat tune by Sidney Mills and Jon Notard plays perfectly in sync with the team's 4,921-foot run in Sochi and wraps up with "Last turn, keep your head down/I see the finish line/Jamaica rock the whole town," reports Mashable. (See the 8-bit video here.) Considered a long shot to win a medal, the two-man team of Marvin Dixon and Winston Watts are aiming to recapture the thrill of the 1988 film Cool Runnings and ride the crowd-funding high that paid for country's first bobsledding Olympic appearance since 2002.
– Derrick Henry has won the Heisman Trophy, becoming just the third running back to take college football's top honor in the past 16 years. The 6-foot-3, 242-pound Henry broke Herschel Walker's Southeastern Conference record with 1,986 yards rushing and matched an SEC mark with 23 touchdowns, leading No. 2 Alabama to the College Football Playoff. Still, one former NFL scout tells Jacksonville.com that Henry's heavy workload in college could drop him into the fourth round if he decides to turn pro. Henry, for his part, is tired of hearing about that line of criticism, reports AL.com. "People make a big deal about these carries," he said. "I mean, I want the ball. I want to play so it's not a big deal to me." Stanford's do-it-all running back Christian McCaffrey was the runner-up. Deshaun Watson, quarterback of No. 1 Clemson, finished third. Henry and the Crimson Tide (12-1) play Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl on Dec. 31.
– There are 26 people confirmed dead in America's latest horrific mass shooting—including the 14-year-old daughter of Frank Pomeroy, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas. Pomeroy tells ABC that Annabelle, his youngest daughter, was a "very beautiful, special child." Pomeroy says he was in Oklahoma Sunday in a rare absence from the church. He says all the people killed were good friends. At least three other children were killed in the attack and others are among the wounded. Sutherland Springs resident Nick Uhlig tells the Houston Chronicle that his cousin, Crystal Holcombe, was eight months pregnant and died along with three of her five children. The two others were badly injured. Uhliq says the church provides community services, including free meals, for the tiny town, where the shooting is believed to have killed or injured close to 10% of the population. "Everybody can come, it doesn’t matter what religion you are," he says. Local business owner Dana Fletcher tells CNN that the community about 30 miles east of San Antonio is very small and very tight-knit. "There's two gas stations, the church, a community center, post office, a Dollar General, a tire shop," she says. Amanda Mosel tells the San Antonio Express-News that the congregation numbers around 50. She says her 13-year-old goddaughter was among those killed. The gunman, identified as Devin Kelley, was found dead in his vehicle after the mass shooting. His motive is still unclear.
– A big first for the US Navy: The branch has its female SEAL candidate. A second woman is a candidate to become a special warfare combatant crewman, another elite special operations job previously open only to men. "They are the first candidates that have made it this far in the process" since the Pentagon opened front-line combat positions to women more than a year and a half ago, a spokesperson for the Naval Special Warfare Command tells NPR. The women, who have not been identified, still need to get through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, which is grueling; they will need to complete the same training a man would. The spokesperson says it could still "take months and potentially years" before we see the first woman graduate from the SEAL or SWCC program. In another first for SWCC, a spokesperson for Naval Special Warfare Command confirms to Military.com that a petty officer recently informed their chain-of-command they identify as transgender.
– A group opposed to the teaching of evolution has won a major victory in the Deep South—of the Korean peninsula. A creationist group has successfully petitioned South Korean publishers to remove several references to evolution from high school textbooks, Nature reports. The group—set up by the US Institute for Creation Research in the '80s as Christianity spread across South Korea—says it wants the "error" of evolution removed from textbooks to "correct" students' view of the world. Biologists complain that the government did not consult them on the issue, but merely forwarded the group's petition to publishers. "When something like this comes to fruition, the scientific community can be caught flat-footed," a director at the National Center for Science Education tells the New York Daily News. "Scientists are not by their nature political." Polls show that some 40% of South Koreans don't accept the theory of evolution, about the same proportion as in the US, but much greater than in Canada and in many European countries, io9 notes.
– A potential new lead in the kidnapping of Holly Bobo: MSNBC reports that Heather Sullivan, who lives about 45 minutes from where Bobo was abducted, found herself nearly kidnapped in January. A "tall, skinny man" accosted her outside her home around 5:30am, grabbing her arm. But she dropped a lamp and her boyfriend, hearing the crash, came out of the house and scared the man away. Bobo was dragged off by a man dressed in camouflage clothing on April 13 around 7:30am, and Sullivan thinks the two events could be related: "When I heard about it, that's what I thought," she says. Click for more, including a video report.
– Think you've got the most stressful life in the world, ladies? Unless you live in India, that's probably not true, according to a recent study. A staggering 87% of women surveyed in India said they felt stressed most of the time, and 82% claimed to have no time to relax, reports CNN. Women in Mexico (74%) and Russia (69%) are the next most stressed, with women in the US (53%) ranking 11th. The Women of Tomorrow Study examined 6,500 women from 21 countries earlier this year, and found that there's also a correlation between women's stress and their spending habits. Those in developed countries like the US are more likely to spend on vacations, savings, and paying off debt; while those in emerging countries like India are more likely to splurge on themselves. Women are also more immersed in social networking, talking 28% more and texting 14% more than men each month. Reuters also has the study.
– The highly anticipated all-day breakfast menu at McDonald's is debuting nationwide Tuesday, but not everyone's morning favorites have made the cut, ABC News reports. Those who are jonesing for the chain's hash browns, hotcakes, fruit and yogurt parfaits, oatmeal, and sausage burritos are in luck—as are those who want a plain egg or sausage McMuffin and most egg-and-biscuit sandwiches. What aren't included: two specialty McMuffins (the Egg White Delight and the steak-egg-cheese variety), the "Southern style" chicken biscuit, bagel sandwiches, cinnamon melts, and, alas, the maple-infused concoction known as the McGriddle. And those who have a huge appetite may need to supplement their breakfast sandwich with a Big Mac as the day drifts by: "Big Breakfast" platters aren't an all-day offering, either. (There's something else you should know about McMuffins.)
– The death certificate of Tamerlan Tsarnaev apparently will hold no surprises. While Massachusetts officials have yet to release it publicly, the owner of the Worcester funeral home with his body said it lists the cause of death as "gunshot wounds of torso and extremities" and "blunt trauma to head and torso," reports CNN. That gibes with what authorities have previously said: Tamerlan was hit by police bullets and run over by Dzhokhar as the younger brother fled their shootout in a stolen SUV. The certificate lists the time of death as 1:35am on April 19, reports AP. The funeral home, meanwhile, is still striking out in finding a cemetery willing to take the body. "There’s a fear there,” owner Peter Stefan of the Graham Putnam and Mahoney funeral parlor tells WBZ. "Will people want to go to the cemetery, or will people be upset that somebody who’s a terrorist will be buried next to their Uncle Freddy.”
– A nation away from New York's Wall Street, thousands of sympathetic California protesters thronged the streets of Oakland yesterday and shut down the city's port in the most vigorous anti-corporate demonstration of the past weeks. Moms and dads, the jobless, students and union members joined together for a day-long protest and general strike that ended in a march to the port where activists blocked shipments, effectively closing operations accounting for some $8.5 million in business a day, reports the Los Angeles Times. Protesters also blocked intersections and pounded on the windows of banks, forcing some to close. "This is a warning, a test, to the 1%. We don't need them, they need us," one of the protesters told the Guardian. Police announced earlier they had made no arrests and the protest was largely peaceful, but cops were keeping careful watch as the night progressed. “The world is watching Oakland tonight. We need to make sure this remains a safe place for everyone,” said City Administrator Deanna Santana. Initially, police were notably restrained just days after a rubber bullet shot by cops fractured the skull of former Marine Scott Olsen, who is still hospitalized with serious head trauma. But the Oakland Tribune was reporting that a squad of police appeared to be moving in to shut down the Occupy Oakland encampment after midnight, and were firing tear gas cannisters.
– A convicted killer who escaped from a Michigan prison yesterday and carjacked a woman has been arrested after a car chase in rural LaPorte Country, Indiana, WNDU reports. Michael David Elliot, 40, allegedly stole a woman's red jeep and abandoned it in the small town of Shipshewana, Indiana, this afternoon. A woman spotted the car and called police, who said the vehicle had been seen in the area as early as 5:30am. Knowing Elliot "can go a lot of places in seven hours," police went door-to-door and had schools locked down before releasing students under a heavy police presence. Then a call about a stolen vehicle came in to the LaPorte County Sheriff's Office, and a deputy saw the vehicle and attempted a traffic stop, WOOD-TV reports. But the driver kept going and led authorities on a 5-minute chase. Stop sticks disabled his tires in Kankakee Township; Elliot jumped out and tried to run but was arrested and booked. He was serving five life sentences for the murders of four people when he broke out of the Ionia Correctional Facility yesterday by slipping through a gap in the fencing system.
– Donald Trump won the first electoral victory of his life Tuesday night and he promised supporters there would be many more to come. "We are going to start winning again and we are going to win so much," he said at his victory party in New Hampshire, per Politico. "You are going to be so happy." Trump—who cruised to victory with around 34% of the vote—went on to repeat campaign promises to build a border wall, "make America great again," and be the "greatest jobs president that God ever created." He also slammed fellow New Hampshire winner Bernie Sanders, accusing him of wanting "to give away our country." Here's what some of the other candidates had to say: Marco Rubio finally admitted that his debate performance on Saturday was a disaster, the Washington Post reports. "Our disappointment tonight is not on you—it's on me," Rubio, who finished in fifth, told supporters. "I did not do well on Saturday night, so listen to this: That will never happen again." During his victory speech, Bernie Sanders praised the "yuge" voter turnout and said that what happened in New Hampshire "in terms of the enthusiastic and aroused electorate" will happen all over America, reports the Hill. "The government of our great country belongs to all the people and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors and their super PACS," he said. In a fiery concession speech, Hillary Clinton vowed to "take this campaign to the entire country" and "fight for every vote in every state," reports Politico. "It's not whether you get knocked down that matters, it's whether you get back up," she said. Ted Cruz, claiming he was "effectively tied for third" in the New Hampshire race, congratulated Trump and John Kasich and thanked New Hampshire, telling supporters: "Your victory tonight has left the Washington cartel utterly terrified." After his second-place finish, Kasich told supporters that there was "magic in the air" and the "light overcame the darkness of negative campaigning," per the Boston Globe. "In this campaign, I've become convinced even more about what it takes to win a political campaign and what it takes for somebody to be a leader," he said. "It's not just what’s up here in the head, it's also what's deep in here in the heart."
– President Trump amped up the rhetoric Tuesday by calling Democrats "con artists" and saying Brett Kavanaugh's second accuser "has nothing" on the Supreme Court nominee, USA Today reports. "She admits that she was drunk," says Trump of Deborah Ramirez, who accuses Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her at a drunken dormitory party years ago. "She admits time lapses." Talking Points Memo notes that Trump was at UN headquarters in New York with the president of Colombia, Ivan Marquez, when he said, "As the president of a great country, Colombia, you must say, 'How is this possible?' Thirty-six years ago and nobody ever knew about it, nobody ever heard about it?” "And now a new charge comes up and she said, well, it might not be him, and there were gaps, and she said she was totally inebriated and she was all messed up and she doesn’t know it was him, but it might have been him?" adds Trump. "Oh gee, let’s not make him a Supreme Court judge because of that?" Of the Democrats, he says: "They’re really con artists. They don’t believe it themselves. They're playing a con game, and they play it very well." Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Ramirez could testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday—the same day Christine Ford plans to speak—and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who remains undecided on Kavanaugh, suggests she supports a full FBI investigation, per the AP.
– Before crashing into a home in East Haven, Conn., the aircraft in the fatal crash was upside-down in what sounds like a nightmare scenario. According to a preliminary NTSB report, a witness "saw the airplane at the end of a right roll. The airplane was inverted and traveling at a high rate of speed, nose first, towards the ground" in the vicinity of the Tweed-New Haven Airport, where pilot Bill Henningsgaard was supposed to land. The former Microsoft exec, his 17-year-old son, and two children on the ground were killed. Another witness, who lives two houses from the crash site, saw the plane coming down at a 90-degree angle, NBC Connecticut reports. Less than two minutes before the plane went down, Henningsgaard told the control tower he was "in visual contact" with the airport and preparing to land, WTNH reports. A few seconds before the crash, the air traffic controller made a brief transmission, according to the report, but "no further communications were received from the accident airplane." The report also states that at the time of the accident the wind was gusting up to 22mph, and visibility was at 9 miles with overcast clouds at 900 feet.
– The Jimmy Kimmel-Bill Cassidy dust-up over health care circled back to Kimmel Thursday, the third night in a row that the late-night host has taken on the Louisiana senator over the latter's bill with Sen. Lindsey Graham to replace ObamaCare. Per EW, Kimmel addressed President Trump at the outset, noting that the commander in chief's aim is dumping ObamaCare, "which he hates, primarily because Obama's name is on it. … He'd sign copies of the Koran at the Barnes and Noble in Fallujah if it meant he could get rid of ObamaCare." Kimmel did have praise to offer for Cassidy, a doctor who started a community clinic in his home state. "He's done good things; I just want him to keep doing good things. This plan is not a good thing," said Kimmel, who then rattled off the doctor-tied organizations, including the AMA, that have come out against the bill. Although some media sources have given Kimmel a thumbs-up for his understanding of the legislation, the National Review has jumped into the fray, calling the host a "policy wonk wannabe" and asserting that "comedians are not public intellectuals." "Does Kimmel want a career change?" writes Theodore Kupfer. "Or does Hollywood simply want to feel better about its propensity to wax earnest about complicated public-policy questions?" Some are coming to Kimmel's defense with clips of the conservative-leaning Fox News interviewing other celebrities on various topics. Kimmel wrapped up his latest launch against Cassidy by addressing critics. "Some people tell me I should give him the benefit of the doubt," he said. "And you know what, I do give him the benefit of the doubt: I doubt all the benefits he claims are part of the new health care bill." The whole clip here.
– A man who liked to surf kidnapping-fetish websites will face the death penalty in the disappearance of a Chinese graduate student. A federal grand jury on Tuesday slapped Brendt Christensen, 28, with one count of kidnapping resulting in the death of Yingying Zhang, 26, whose body has not been found, the Chicago Tribune reports. The indictment, updating existing charges, says Christensen killed the University of Illinois student "in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner" involving "torture or serious physical abuse to the victim." Christensen, an ex-grad student, allegedly carried out the crime after "substantial planning and premeditation." The FBI questioned the suspect after determining his Saturn was the car captured on surveillance video that picked up Zhang, who was late for an appointment, at a campus bus stop on June 9. She is missing and presumed dead. Christensen is also charged with two counts of lying to the FBI when he said he was playing video games and sleeping on the day Zhang disappeared, when, the indictment says, "he knew full well" he offered her a ride. He allegedly lied again when he said he dropped her off a short time later. The FBI says he took Zhang back to his apartment. A lawyer for Christensen , who is being held without bail, had no comment, but an attorney for Zhang's family calls the new charges "not unexpected," per CBS News. Christensen's trial is set for Feb. 27. Cops say he was recorded at a vigil for Zhang describing the "characteristics of his ideal [kidnapping] victim."
– The nation's spy chief took the unusual step yesterday of issuing a statement to defend the shifting US position on the Libya consulate attack, reports the Washington Post. Yes, said national intelligence director James Clapper, the assault initially seemed to be a spontaneous response to that anti-Islam movie, but we “revised our initial assessments to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists. Some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaeda." The New York Times thinks it's an attempt to take pressure off the White House as Republicans zero in on a potential miscue on national security—if it was a planned attack, why didn't we know about it?—and foreign policy. The Wall Street Journal notes that Mitt Romney kept up the pressure yesterday on the campaign trail: "There was a great deal of confusion about that from the very beginning on the part of the administration, and whether that was something that they were trying to paper over or whether it was just confusion given the uncertain intelligence reports—time will tell." Frequent White House critic Peter King called for the resignation of Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, who stated repeatedly in the days after the attack that it was spontaneous. "Somebody has to pay the price for this," the GOP congressman told CNN.
– Sofia Vergara is engaged again, and let's hope this one goes a little better than the last one. After calling off her engagement with entrepreneur Nick Loeb—whom she'd been dating since 2010—in May, Vergara is now planning to marry True Blood star Joe Manganiello, whom she's dated for six months. Manganiello proposed while the couple was on vacation in Hawaii on Christmas, sources tell Page Six, and Vergara, 42, has been spotted around the resort wearing a telltale ring. "Sofia was staring at her hand at the pool and couldn't stop smiling," says one witness. "The ring is giant and very sparkly. It stands out from a mile away and is hard to miss." The couple met in May at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and started being spotted in public together in June. As for Loeb, he tells Us he's happy for his ex. "She is beautiful and majestic and therefore to be loved," he says. "Beyond all else in life she deserves happiness, the kind that only true love can bring."
– San Diego Mayor Bob Filner promised to undergo two weeks of "intensive" therapy at a clinic after a spate of sex-harassment accusations, but he's ducked out after just a week, reports the Los Angeles Times. His lawyers say he'll continue therapy as an outpatient and remains on track to return to work as scheduled on Aug. 19. Let's hope he has the new keys: The Union-Tribune reports that the locks on the mayor's office were changed yesterday, though it's unclear why. Could it be that Filner is finally getting ready to quit? The number of women accusing him of making crude, sometimes physical, advances has risen to 14. That includes two former members of the military who were victims of sexual assault during their service; both say Filner hit on them—at a conference for sexual assault victims. Filner has now lost the support of every single member of the City Council, and Sen. Barbara Boxer yesterday implored him to resign in an open letter. "Bob, you have already hurt so many people," she wrote. "To avoid hurting your victims and the people of San Diego more than you already have, you should step down immediately."
– The young actress best known for playing Mel Gibson's daughter in The Patriot died at her home in Houston on Saturday, her mother says. Skye McCole Bartusiak was 21. "She was a kind and really beautiful girl," her mother tells CNN, explaining that while no cause of death has been determined, the epileptic seizures Bartusiak had suffered since she was a baby returned last week after disappearing for a few years. Bartusiak was found by her boyfriend in her garage apartment next to her parents' home. "We think she had a seizure and choked and nobody was there," says the mother, who performed CPR on her daughter before emergency workers arrived. "I've done CPR on that kid more than one time and it just didn't work this time." Bartusiak made her movie debut in 1999's The Cider House Rules and also appeared opposite Michael Douglas in Don't Say a Word, as well as in TV shows including 24 and CSI, reports Variety. Her last movie role was in the 2012 thriller Sick Boy. She had been working on directing and producing her first film, her mother says.
– It's been a deadly year for those who jump from extreme heights in nothing more than a wingsuit, a grim trend that continued last week with the death of Johnny Strange, an American adventurer who plunged to his death while BASE jumping in the Swiss Alps. As the Los Angeles Times reports, the 23-year-old Malibu native died seconds after leaping off Mt. Gitschen on Thursday amid reported high winds in the area. Strange's death was mourned by model Gigi Hadid, who said they attended Malibu High together. "RIP my friend, # JohnnyStrange — one of the most loving & adventurous spirits I've ever known. Bigger mountains to climb in heaven," she tweeted. Strange was acutely aware of the dangers of his sport, having BASE jumped with Dean Potter, who died during a jump at Yosemite earlier this year. "I'm sorry to hear you died flying," Strange wrote of Potter's death. "See you on the other side." Strange first achieved fame by becoming the youngest person to scale the world's seven tallest peaks at age 17. He climbed his first at 12, notes TMZ. A police investigation into his death is underway.
– The "you're fired" jokes already are flying fast and furious: Donald Trump has been picked to host a Republican debate in Iowa on Dec. 27, reports the New York Times. The forum is sponsored by the conservative media group Newsmax, and invitations went out to the candidates today. It takes place just a week before the Iowa caucuses. Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy explains the choice: “Our readers and the grass roots really love Trump. They may not agree with him on everything, but they don’t see him as owned by the Washington establishment, the media establishment." Politico notes that given Trump's clout on the right—as evidenced by many of the candidates' visits to see him—it would be a tough invitation for any of the GOP hopefuls to decline.
– Tension between President Trump and Mexico over his border wall plans was probably inevitable, though not everybody expected it to flare up before his administration was a week old. After Trump signed an executive order Wednesday and promised to start building the wall within months, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto told his country in a televised address that Mexico "does not believe in walls" and will not pay for it, no matter what Trump says, the BBC reports. "I regret and condemn the decision of the United States to continue construction of a wall that, for years, has divided us instead of uniting us," he said. In other coverage: Peña Nieto said Mexico still offers its friendship to the US, but he didn't confirm whether he plans to go ahead with his Jan. 31 meeting with Trump at the White House, the Guardian reports. Senior government officials said late Wednesday that the Mexican leader is thinking about calling it off. CNN reports that Peña Nieto said he would wait for an evaluation from Mexican officials in the US before confirming the visit to the US. He also said he had ordered government agencies, including the 50 Mexican consulates in the US, to step up protection for immigrants. The Washington Post looks at five major challenges the wall project will face, including rough terrain and the fact that most land along the border in Texas is privately owned. In Mexico, people are furious and are calling for a stern response to Trump's plans, reports the New York Times. "It's like we are Charlie Brown and they are Lucy with the football," says former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda. "Peña is a weak president in a weak country at a weak moment, but he has to find a way to get some official backbone." Historians say the last president to anger Mexico this much was Calvin Coolidge, who threatened to invade "Soviet Mexico" in the 1920s. The Los Angeles Times looks at the details of the border wall project and other immigration-related actions Trump unveiled Wednesday. His plan to withhold federal grants from "sanctuary cities" like LA is expected to start legal battles that will last for years.
– Lady Gaga's new album Born This Way has zoomed to mega-hit status with sales of 1.11 million copies in its first week, making it the hottest-selling debut for an album since 50 Cent's The Massacre in 2005, according to Billboard. Only 17 albums in the last 20 years have hit a million in their first week of sales, although Gaga had a huge boost from an Amazon promotion, notes the Wall Street Journal. Amazon, in a bid to draw attention to its new Cloud Drive online storage service, offered downloads of the album for just 99 cents twice last week. The money-losing promotion helped sell an estimated 440,000 copies of Born This Way, crashing Amazon's servers in the process. The total number of downloads from all digital retailers was a record-breaking 662,000.
– Alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht was no ordinary drug boss—he paid $1,000 a month for a San Francisco apartment he shared with two roommates, used an alias from the Princess Bride, and was arrested in the sci-fi section of his public library. But the FBI says the 29-year-old not only raked in around $80 million from his online drug marketplace's $1.6 billion turnover over two years, he ordered at least two killings to protect his operation, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The FBI says Ulbricht, aka "Dread Pirate Roberts," was provided with a photo of the supposed victim in one killing he ordered but there's no indication the killing actually took place. The other hit man he tried to hire was an undercover agent. Ulbricht, a Texas native, appears to be a "normal, nerdy guy" in his social media postings, Gawker finds. He went to grad school at Pennsylvania State University, where he studied solar cells. On his LinkedIn profile, he complained about government control and said his goals had changed after graduation. "The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort," he wrote. "I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force."
– In a conclusion that some may not consider surprising, researchers have found that police officers are more respectful to white people than black people during traffic stops, according to a study published Monday in PNAS. Ars Technica reports the data for the first major study of US bodycam footage comes from 981 traffic stops conducted by 245 Oakland, Calif., police officers in 2014. Researchers had volunteers rate comments made by officers during the traffic stops in terms of respectfulness and more, per the Los Angeles Times. The BBC reports respectful behavior by officers included apologizing, showing an interest in the person, and saying "drive safely." Disrespectful behavior included asking questions, calling the person "bro" or "man," and using words that have a negative connotation. The study found officers were 57% more likely to use one of the most respectful phrases with white people and 61% more likely to use one of the most disrespectful phrases with black people. For example, white people were more likely to be called "sir" or "ma'am," while black people were more likely to be called by their first names. Officers were also found to be less polite, formal, friendly, and impartial with black people. The race of the officer didn't appear to change things. "These routine interactions are important," researcher Jennifer Eberhardt says, per the BBC. "They're the way most people encounter the police." And if those encounters go poorly, citizens may become less supportive or cooperative toward police. (Another study found expecting trouble from black men starts even before kindergarten.)
– New York Congressman Daniel Sickles put it simply before killing a friend: "Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my house—you must die!" But the trial that followed was hardly simple and set a vast historic precedent when Sickles became the first American to successfully plead temporary insanity, Lapham's Quarterly reports. On February 27, 1859, Sickles gunned down his friend Philip Barton Key (whose father wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner") in Washington, DC, for having an affair with Sickles' wife. Then came the court case, where one of Sickles' seven lawyers claimed it was manslaughter, not murder, perpetrated in "a state of heat" that put Sickles above "the pale of accountability to the criminal law." He added that it's "no matter how a man becomes insane; is he insane, this is the question?" The district attorney saw it differently, saying Sickles planned the attack and carried three pistols to the crime scene. But public opinion sided with Sickles, as did Harper's and the New York Times. And Sickles' theatricality won over jurors, moving some to tears when he cried during a friend's testimony and had to be escorted from the courtroom. The jury needed just 30 minutes to find him not guilty. In a twist, public opinion turned against Sickles when he made up with his wife, Teresa (who had only cheated on him over his "compulsive womanizing," according to an old Times review of a Sickles biography). And when Sickles became ambassador to Spain, after Teresa's death by tuberculosis, he supposedly hooked up with Spain's deposed queen, Isabella II—who was married at the time. (Read about the diary of a modern killer who's also using the insanity defense.)
– There is now one less armed separatist group in Europe: After nearly 40 years and thousands of attacks, including bombings and assassinations, the National Liberation Front of Corsica has decided to call it a day, CNN reports. The banned militant group, which launched its violent campaign for independence from France in 1976, says it has begun the process of demilitarization without preconditions and will pursue its goals through political channels. The group's cause still has plenty of support on the island of 320,000 people, where at least 40% of homes are second properties owned by non-residents, the Financial Times finds. The regional assembly recently restricted property purchases to those who have been residents for at least five years, and the militants say that move and similar ones show that "we are moving from a phase of combat and resistance to a phase of the construction of a true Corsican political power."
– The 29-year-old Australian twins shot at a firing range in Colorado meant to kill each other in a suicide pact, sheriff's officials said. Witnesses say the twins were shooting and chatting for about 90 minutes when they suddenly fell to the floor of the booth they occupied. Both had gunshot wounds to the head. One died, and the other is hospitalized but was able to speak with authorities today. "Based on the physical evidence collected, the surviving sister's statements, and video surveillance footage from the shooting center, the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office believes that this incident was indeed a suicide and attempted suicide," said a statement. More details here or at the Denver Post.
– British singer-songwriter Adele is getting tons of acclaim for her second album, 21, which is entirely about one person: the guy who broke her heart. In her honor, New York lists 13 of the most deserving exes famously called out in song: Nick Jonas: In Miley Cyrus’s “7 Things,” she recounts all the teenage-y wrongs he did her, like being vain and liking other girls. John Mayer: Taylor Swift’s “Dear John” is about him, but it didn’t really enact too much vengeance, considering Mayer is probably jazzed Swift penned a song about him. Amber Rose: Kanye West’s “Blame Game,” in which he complains about a lover who, among other things, let her brother buy cocaine with his money, is likely about the model. Anna Gordy: Marvin Gaye’s ex-wife got a whole album named for her—Here, My Dear—after she was awarded a chunk of his royalties in the divorce agreement. But he got the last laugh—the album is considered a landmark. Britney Spears: She cheated, Justin Timberlake wrote “Cry Me a River,” and we all know who won in the end: Timberlake, who is starring in Oscar-nominated movies while Spears is still trying to live down that head-shaving incident. Click for the complete list, or check out more on Adele’s album.
– Actress Kim Cattrall says she seriously considered having children back in the late 1990s but decided instead to focus on the then-new HBO series Sex and the City. Appearing on Monday's episode of Piers Morgan's Life Stories, Cattrall admitted that she contemplated starting IVF treatments after marrying Mark Levinson in 1998, the same year SATC premiered, People reports. “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I have 19-hour days on this series. … My Monday morning would start at 4:45am and go to 1 or 2 in the morning. How could I possibly continue to do that, especially in my early 40s?' I thought, 'I don't think it is going to happen.'" Cattrall also told Morgan she has "never been friends" with her SATC castmates. Cattrall's confessions come a month after her co-star Sarah Jessica Parker confirmed that there would not be a third Sex and the City movie, and rumors started circulating that the movie was called off due to Cattrall's "outrageous demands." But Cattrall told Morgan those rumors aren't true, Page Six reports. "To be thought of as some kind of diva is ridiculous,” she said. Instead, Cattrall said she has been saying "no" to a third installment in the series for a year and that she believes Parker should be blamed for her negative press. "I really think she could have been nicer,” she said.
– Just as it looked like LulzSec was gearing up for an extended reign of cyber leaks and hijinks, the notorious hacker squad decided to hang up its modem—but not without one last hurrah, reports Reuters. "Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind—we hope—inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love," the group said in a statement. But with LulzSec coming under increasing pressure from law enforcement around the world, some analysts think that the "50 day cruise" is just bravado to cover a sudden retreat in the face of some pretty serious heat. "I can't help but wonder if the pirates aren't on the run," writes a security analyst at Beta News. Even if LulzSec really is going away, they leave with one with their biggest data dumps yet, featuring tech manuals, passwords, and other data from AOL, AT&T, the FBI, the US Navy, and much more.
– Oh, the difficulties faced by Rand Paul: He's considering running for president in 2016 but would like to run for re-election to the US Senate at the same time, just in case, and he's not sure Kentucky law currently allows him to do so. So he's asked the state Senate majority leader to pass a law ensuring he can conduct both campaigns simultaneously, the Washington Times reports. Current state law says a candidate's name cannot appear on a ballot more than once, the Wire explains. "Yes, I am working on clarifying an ambiguous state law that Rand Paul believes is unconstitutional if it is interpreted to bar running for re-election to the Senate and for president at the same time," the majority leader, Damon Thayer, confirms. "The purpose of the bill will be to make clear that Rand Paul or anyone in a similar situation in Kentucky can run for both offices in the same year." But the Kentucky state House speaker, Greg Stumbo, is a Democrat, and an anonymous Republican Party operative tells the Times that Stumbo has said he wouldn't allow such a bill through the Democrat-controlled House. (How serious is Paul about a presidential run? Thayer tells WFPL that Paul "is strongly considering seeking the Republican nomination for president.")
– "We're expected to forgive the bullies because the authorities are sure they didn't mean it," Emily Gipson says in a YouTube video posted Jan. 22. "Sometimes I wonder how many kids it takes dying to make a difference." The 16-year-old sophomore at Tennessee's Lebanon High School made the video after a classmate's apparent suicide, the AP reports. The video went viral—surpassing 800,000 views—and Gipson has been hit with a two-day suspension. In the video, she says her school is an "emotional prison" and a place "where creativity is put down, where the people who make fun of others never get punished because 'There's no proof,' or 'There's nothing we can do about it,' or, my favorite, 'Kids will be kids.'" Principal Scott Walters says his feelings and those of teachers were hurt by the video, but that's not why Gipson was suspended. Gipson says the school administration accused her of "trying to incite violence," but Walters says she was suspended for filming in a classroom after school without the teacher's permission or knowledge, the Tennessean reports. Gipson says she had permission from two coaches, and in a statement quoted by CNN, Wilson County Schools spokesperson Jennifer Johnson confirms that Gipson asked a coach if she could use the classroom only to have the coach later be "mortified by the nature of her message." Johnson adds that it's "patently false" to say Gipson was punished for inciting violence and there's "no evidence whatsoever" that the student who died was bullied, despite the claims of other students. Gipson says she wanted "to be a voice for as many people as possible" and ends the video by imploring others "do not be the bully ... do not be the one that takes their own life."
– Anyone with the misfortune to lose a limb on the job at least gets a decent workers' comp payout, right? Actually, it all depends on where they live, reports ProPublica and NPR. Here's a crazy example of what the joint investigation calls this "geographic lottery": Jeremy Lewis and Josh Potter lived 75 miles from each other when each lost part of his left arm in a machinery accident. Lewis got $45,000, while Potter will collect about $740,000. Reason: Lewis is in Alabama and Potter in Georgia. The figures vary wildly because states set their own payouts without any guidelines. "Given their profound impact on people’s lives, how much compensation workers get for traumatic injuries seems like it would be the product of years of study, combining medical wisdom and economic analysis," write Michael Grabell and Howard Berkes. "But in reality, the amounts are often the result of political expediency, sometimes based on bargains struck decades ago." Which is why a big toe is worth $6,090 in California and $90,401.88 in Oregon. See this chart to compare various body parts in different states, or click here for the full piece.
– The city of Los Angeles is suing Wells Fargo, claiming the California-based bank pushed employees to engage "in unfair, unlawful, and fraudulent conduct" to hit sales quotas. The suit notes bank employees opened unauthorized accounts for customers, failed to close them when asked, and applied phony fees that hurt customers' credit. The bank says the issues stem from a few bad eggs, who have been disciplined or fired. But "on the rare occasions when Wells Fargo did take action against its employees for unethical sales conduct, Wells Fargo further victimized its customers by failing to inform them of the breaches, refund fees they were owed, or otherwise remedy the injuries that Wells Fargo and its bankers have caused," the suit alleges, per the Los Angeles Times. The suit also claims bank employees robbed customer accounts of money that was used to pay fees on accounts they never wanted, while the bank placed customers in collections and added "derogatory information" to credit reports, Courthouse News reports. The lawsuit follows a 2013 Times investigation which described Wells Fargo employees forging customers' signatures to open unwanted accounts. In new interviews, a former employee says false accounts were opened "daily," while a customer describes "a three-year battle" with the bank after his three accounts multiplied to 10. Per the suit: "Wells Fargo has generated a virtual fee-generating machine, through which its customers are harmed, its employees take the blame, and Wells Fargo reaps the profit." LA hopes to put an end to the practices, with up to a $2,500 fine for each violation, plus refunds for customers.
– Saddam Hussain's name is making it difficult for him to get a job. "People are scared to hire me," the 25-year-old Indian marine engineer tells the Hindustan Times. Hussain was, yes, named for that Saddam Hussein; the name was given to him by his grandfather. It turned out to be a poor choice, as the young man has been unable to find a job since graduating university two years ago, despite having done very well in school. And he's applied for dozens of positions. He says he's spoken with some of the HR departments of companies he's applied with, and they told him his name was the problem, because it could cause "suspicion." One recruitment expert points out that this would be a problem especially if a job requires travel abroad, during which he might get stopped by airport or border authorities: "He might just keep getting stuck or the company has to pull him out of the sticky situation, making the hire cumbersome," the expert says. Hussain got his first name legally changed to Sajid, but though he got all his official documents changed to reflect his new name, his original name still poses a problem because it's listed on educational certificates, which prospective employers want to see. He's working on getting those certificates changed as well, but the process is moving slowly, the BBC reports. (Meanwhile, in America, a guy is trying to change his name to Hitler.)
– In today's world, if you want to work for free, you'd better be ready to do a lot of free work—even before you're hired. Especially if you're looking to intern at Emmis Digital in Chicago, DNAinfo reports. The media company narrowed down its pool of applicants to three college students, then made them compete in a Hunger Games-inspired "Intern Games." OK, they weren't trying to kill each other, but the "tributes" faced off against one another to see who could bring the most traffic to the company's social media. They also had to make videos to prove they deserved the unpaid job. "We thought that it would be fun to pit them against each other, test their mettle, and see who was the hungriest," says one of the employees who came up with the idea. In the process, he notes, Emmis stood to boost its social media following; would-be interns were told to badger their friends, family, and followers to follow the company. Two of the three finalists were ultimately given internships. One of the creators of the Intern Games herself had at least six internships during college, Digiday reports. The kids get college credit for their work; as Business Insider points out, unpaid internships legally must offer beneficial "education and experience." (Even Oprah was once an intern.)
– The fate of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight and the 239 onboard continues to stump officials. Authorities are considering every possible explanation for the disappearance, says Malaysia's civil aviation boss, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman. Among those explanations are engine failure, pilot error, or possibly suicide. But so far, searches have yielded little information—even with 40 ships and 34 aircraft investigating a radius of 50 nautical miles around where the plane dropped off radar screens, the AP reports. Nine countries are involved in the search, and they're working "every hour, every minute, every second," Rahman adds, per the Guardian. It's now after dark in the area, and the search will resume tomorrow. In other search news: As for hijacking, "we are not discounting this," says Rahman, via the AP. Malaysia says it has CCTV visuals of two people traveling with stolen passports. Officials said today at a news conference that the two were not "Asian-looking people," as per the BBC. One-way tickets under the names on the stolen passports—Luigi Maraldi and Christian Kozel—were issued at a Thai travel agency. Passengers traveling under those names were also booked on a one-way flight from Beijing to Amsterdam Saturday, says a rep for Royal Dutch Airlines. Maraldi was then due to fly to Copenhagen, while Kozel was set to go to Frankfurt, Germany. Malaysia is now downplaying reports suggesting Vietnam had discovered possible debris. "We have not found anything that appear to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft," says Rahman, per CNN. Officials had believed they'd spotted a life raft in the water, and helicopters were rushed to the spot—only to find a "moss-covered cap of a cable reel," NBC News reports. Meanwhile, oil slicks discovered in the South China Sea are not connected to the aircraft, Sky News confirms via AFP.
– The arrival of March brings a weird milestone to Chicago this year: The city recorded no snow on the ground in January and February for the first time in at least 146 years, reports the Weather Channel. In fact, the last snowfall of more than an inch occurred on Dec. 17, days ahead of the official start of winter, which means the city has been virtually snow-free all season. The Chicago Tribune notes that flurries were seen on a few days, but not enough to register when the official morning tally was taken at O'Hare International Airport. It's possible the streak goes back longer, but the 146-year mark reflects the start of National Weather Service data. Forecasts called for possible snow this week. Winter wraps up on March 20.
– Britain's Prince Philip remained hospitalized today, recovering from coronary stenting, but the royal show must go on, and so it did: Queen Elizabeth and her entire brood attracted throngs of Brits as they attended Christmas services this morning at the queen's retreat in Sandringham. Kate, in her first Christmas as Duchess of Cambridge, likely boosted the number of watchers, notes People, and impressed in an eggplant-colored coat and hat. The royals were also joined by Mike Tindall, who married the queen's granddaughter, Zara Phillips, this year. The matriarch herself stressed the importance of family in a pre-recorded Christmas address, notes the AP, though she said that family might "not necessarily mean blood relatives, but often a description of a community." Members of the family were to visit Philip later today. Click through the gallery above for more scenes.
– The catacombs 65 feet under Paris are home to the bones of 6 million people, tours, illegal parties, secret film festivals, and—on one recent night—thieves making off with nearly $300,000 worth of fancy wine. The Guardian reports thieves drilled into a cellar belonging to an apartment near Luxembourg Gardens and stole more than 300 bottles of vintage wine. The wine is said to be worth between $595 and $1,200 per bottle, according to the Telegraph. "We're talking about very, very good wine," a spokesperson for the local prosecutor says. She says the burglary could have happened any time between late July and late August but was only discovered this week. After loading up on wine, the thieves made their escape through the catacombs. The International Business Times reports the thieves are still at large, and police are offering few details on their investigation. The specific wine stolen has also not been revealed, according to Decanter. With approximately 150 miles of tunnels comprising the catacombs, police believe the thieves knew exactly what cellar they wanted and where it was located. "One can assume that they had made reconnaissance missions and that the criminals didn't drill through this wall by chance," the Telegraph quotes a police source as saying. (Two teens spent three days lost in the dark and cold of the Parisian catacombs.)
– Two men have been charged with human trafficking after police arrested them for running a prostitution ring out of a senior living facility in Pittsfield, Mass. Police say Joseph Van Wert, 65, and Randy Lambach, 45, will face a hearing later this month, the New York Daily News reports. Lambach would allegedly seek out women with drug addictions and post their pictures online, then arrange meetings with clients. Some of these meetings took place in Van Wert's apartment in a senior facility. Van Wert offered his apartment in return for cash or drugs. The Berkshire Eagle reports that the police investigation began last spring in response to citizen complaints about increased prostitution across the city. Lambach would allegedly keep up to 90% of the money the women made, sometimes refusing them cash altogether and paying them in heroin or crack cocaine instead. At least one woman said Lambach drove her to an "appointment" across state lines. Police estimated one of the victims was 15 years old. They were also told that some of the women were Lambach's former foster children. Both men have pleaded not guilty, Lambach to four counts of human trafficking and Van Wert to conspiracy to commit human trafficking, deriving support from prostitution, maintaining a house of prostitution, and sexual conduct for a fee.
– A woman accused of killing her twin sister by driving their SUV off a cliff in Hawaii is fighting her extradition from New York to face a murder charge. A lawyer for 38-year-old Alexandria Duval said Friday at her court appearance in Albany that his client is "profoundly distraught" and described the siblings as "soul mates," reports the Albany Times Union. He claimed the paperwork as presented by New York and Hawaii prosecutors "is not sufficient to force extradition so far." Duval was tracked down in Albany and arrested a week ago, after a grand jury in Hawaii indicted her on a second-degree murder charge last month. Authorities say Alexandria was driving an SUV in May with her sister, Anastasia Duval, in the passenger seat when the vehicle crashed into a rock wall and plunged about 200 feet. Authorities say the sisters were fighting over the steering wheel, reports AP. A previous murder case against Duval was dismissed because of a lack of evidence. The extradition hearing is scheduled for Dec. 16.
– Home invaders messed with the wrong woman in Charlotte, NC. Semantha Bunce, a 21-year-old Army National Guard combat medic, was breastfeeding her 4-month-old son in her bedroom when she heard the doorbell just before 10am last Tuesday, reports WSOC. Seconds later, intruders kicked in the door and opened fire, leaving several bullet holes in Bunce's home, per WBTV. Bunce, who grabbed her own weapon and fired at the intruders, was shot in the stomach and arm before they fled, per WCNC and CBS News; her infant was uninjured. She was taken to a local hospital in critical condition. She's "not out of the woods yet," her father-in-law says. "Everybody is concerned about her." Police say 23-year-old Reco Latur Dawkins Jr., who has twice been convicted of breaking and entering, turned himself in on Sunday. He's now been charged with attempted murder, felony breaking and entering, and conspiracy. Police say they're still searching for a second suspect. Bunce's husband—who was at work at the time of the shooting, per WBTV—says his wife's National Guard training likely helped her stay calm while fighting for her life, per the Charlotte Observer. "I think it was a shock to the intruders just as it was to her," her father-in-law adds. Two fundraising pages have been set up to help pay Bunce's medical bills, child care, travel expenses, and missed wages. (This woman foiled an intruder with her medieval skills.)
– Police say a Cincinnati father, thinking he heard an intruder in his basement, fatally shot his 14-year-old son Tuesday morning, the AP reports. According to the Cincinnati Inquirer, the father dropped his son off at the bus stop before returning home. When he heard a noise in his basement, he assumed his son was at school and got a gun to check it out, the AP reports. Police say he fired a shot "after apparently being startled," and his son was hit in the neck. The teen was taken to the hospital, where he died from his injuries, the Inquirer reports. No charges have been filed, and the names of the father and son haven't been released. According to the AP, the father is cooperating with the police investigation. (In December, a Florida mother fatally shot her 27-year-old daughter she mistook for an intruder.)
– The woman labeled "Mom of the Year" for dragging her son away from rioting in Baltimore says she didn't want her only son to end up like Freddie Gray. Toya Graham, who was filmed smacking and berating her 16-year-old son, tells CBS News that she "lost it" after she saw him among a crowd throwing objects at police. The single mother of six says she doesn't believe attacking police is any way to get justice for Gray, and she wanted to protect her son. "There's some days that I'll shield him in the house just so he won't go outside, and I know that I can't do that for the rest of my life," she says. "I'm a no-tolerant mother. Everybody that knows me know I don't play that." One of Graham's five daughters tells CNN her mom "has always been tough"—and didn't have any trouble spotting the boy in the crowd, even with a hoodie and mask on. She says her brother is grateful and understands that their mom was just trying to keep him alive. Graham says she thinks the situation on Monday would not have been as bad if more mothers had acted like her, but she understands that many may have been busy providing for their families—and there is only so much a mother can do. "You can talk blue in your face to your children, but at the end of the day they gonna make their own decisions," she tells CBS. "As parents we just have to follow through to make sure that's where they supposed to be at."
– When Prime Minister Theresa May entered a room in the House of Commons to speak to Conservative lawmakers ahead of a no-confidence vote Wednesday, she was greeted by table banging—a customary sign of approval, reports the AP. It ended up being a prescient gesture: The BBC reports she needed the votes of 159 MPs to remain the Conservative leader, and she crossed that threshold, winning the confidence vote 200 votes to 117, reports the Guardian. It adds that after the words "does have confidence in..." were announced, it could not hear the rest due to the eruption of cheers. But Reuters reports May won't be in it for the long haul. In her pre-vote comments, she pledged to step down in advance of the 2022 parliamentary election. "She did say she wouldn't be fighting the next general election," one minister was quoted as saying. "It was quite emotional the way she put it, she said in my heart I wanted to do that but now I recognize that I am not going to."
– Americans Alvin Roth and Peter Shapley have won the Nobel prize for economics on the strength of their work matching players in a wide range of markets, the Wall Street Journal reports. "For example, students have to be matched with schools, and donors of human organs with patients in need of a transplant. How can such matching be accomplished as efficiently as possible?" asks the Swedish Academy in charge of the awards. "The prize rewards two scholars who have answered these questions on a journey from abstract theory on stable allocations to practical design of market institutions." The prize is the last of the 2012 Nobels to be awarded, the AP notes. In other major prize news, this year's winner of the Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa is... nobody. Just as in 2009 and 2010, no candidate qualified for the world's biggest individual prize, at $5 million. The prize is intended for a leader who's elected democratically, boosts living standards, and leaves office voluntarily, the BBC notes. "You make your bed, you have to lie on it. If we said we're going to have a prize for exceptional leadership, we have to stick to that. We are not going to compromise," said Ibrahim.
– Sofya Tsygankova, the estranged wife of famed Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko, has been declared unfit to stand trial for the murder of the couple's two young daughters earlier this year. NBC reports that a Texas judge has ordered the 32-year-old to spend 120 days in a mental health facility so she can regain "a reasonable degree of rational understanding." Her defense attorney says several doctors who evaluated Tsygankova decided she wasn't mentally competent enough for a trial, and prosecutors did not object. She faces two charges of capital murder of a person under age 10. Tsygankova, who will remain in the Tarrant County Jail until a bed in a mental health facility becomes available, is accused of smothering 5-year-old Nika Kholodenko and 1-year-old Michaela Kholodenko on March 17 in their home in a Fort Worth suburb. Her husband, who filed for divorce months before the deaths, told police he arrived at the home to find the girls dead and Tsygankova in an "extreme state of distress" with cuts to her wrists. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that according to court documents, Tsygankova visited a mental health facility in Fort Worth the day before the killings. (The tragedy renewed talk of a "Cliburn curse.")
– A sweet yearbook-signing photo seems to have won over the Internet. It shows students at Alan Shepard Elementary School in Bourbonnais, Illinois, lining up to have "Mr. Steve"—aka Steve Weidner, the school custodian—sign their books. “He pays attention to the kids," principal Shirley Padera tells WGN. “The kids know if anything happens, Mr. Steve is going to take care of it.” The school district first posted the photo on its Facebook page, saying Mr. Steve had attained "Rock Star status," and from there it got picked up at Reddit. As WILX explains, there was nothing staged about it. Weidner, who has been at the school for 15 years, was on the school playground June 2 when students were given some time to sign each other's books. "So many of the children wanted him to sign their books that someone got him a chair, and a line of children formed to the left," it adds. No word from Weidner himself, but the school says he was touched by the outpouring. (Elsewhere, a teacher was inspired by his students' anonymous notes.)
– A 21-year-old University of Texas-Austin student is suing the school to keep from being expelled one semester before graduating after being accused of raping a woman, Fox News reports. His lawsuit claims a disciplinary hearing scheduled to decide his fate violates "his Constitutional right to due process." The College Fix explains the unnamed student won't be able to call witnesses or cross-examine the alleged victim during the hearing. The school has already recommended he be expelled. The alleged sexual assault took place last March after the student met two women at a house party and went home with them. He had sex with one of the women that night before having sex with the alleged victim in the morning. The lawsuit states the student believed the alleged victim was consenting to sex, in part, because she "talked about being in a pornographic movie." But she later texted her friend that she was still unconscious from heavy drinking the night before and didn't remember having sex with the student. The lawsuit points out the alleged victim never filed a police report (she did talk to campus police, and her father later complained to the school) and claims she later told her friend the sex must have been consensual because it sounded "passionate" even though she didn't remember it. The University of Texas-Austin released a report Monday detailing how its officers deal with sexual-assault allegations, according to the Texas Tribune. “Trauma victims often omit, exaggerate, or make up information when trying to make sense of what happened to them or to fill gaps in memory,” the report states. “This does not mean the sexual assault did not occur.”
– Did Junior Seau have football-related brain damage? The Boston University Center for Traumatic Encephalopathy wants to look at his brain to find out, Peter King reports on Twitter today. The Center has studied the brains of a number of deceased football players, and almost every time it's found evidence of repeated head trauma, according to Pro Football Talk, which suspects that a Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy diagnosis on Seau would be a "watershed moment." As if to underscore the news, more than 100 ex-NFL players today jumped onto a lawsuit against the NFL alleging that it "repeatedly refuted the connection between concussions and brain injury," and failed to "take reasonable steps necessary to protect players" from them, CNN reports. A total of more than 1,500 players have now joined on the suit.
– In what police describe as "a sad case, no matter how you look at it," an Alabama judge has ordered a suspected drug addict to remain behind bars until she gives birth to her second child. Authorities say Alexandra Nicole Laird, 21, gave birth to a baby girl who tested positive for opiates in March. She later admitted to using heroin one or two times a week for most of her pregnancy and was charged with chemical endangerment of a child, says Pleasant Grove Police Lt. Danny Reid. In the months that followed, she was charged with drug possession and failure to appear in court, reports AL.com. Jailed last week, she told officers she was again pregnant and using heroin daily, Reid says. "I'm doing my damndest to try to prevent any further damage to this child, since it's obvious the mother doesn't seem to care,'' Reid told a judge Tuesday, securing a second child-endangerment charge against Laird, who is believed to be 18 to 20 weeks pregnant. "You won't know you've truly victimized this child until much later in life when she has trouble in school, trouble functioning,'' he told Laird at an earlier hearing. Laird does not have custody of her 1-year-old daughter, who spent a month in the ICU after birth for withdrawals, reports AL.com. In a sign of America's opiate epidemic, Reuters previously reported that one drug-addicted baby is born every 19 minutes, according to 2013 numbers. (Addicts have died from withdrawal in jail.)
– "It is time to say husband is not the master," Dipak Misra, the chief justice of India's top court, says in a ruling striking down the country's adultery law. "Legal sovereignty of one sex over another is wrong." The ruling jettisoning the 158-year-old colonial-era law means adultery is no longer a crime in India, the BBC reports. Long criticized as archaic and sexist, it made it illegal for a man to have sex with a married woman without the permission of her husband. Misra said that while adultery could certainly be an issue in civil cases like divorce, "it cannot be a criminal offense." The law had been challenged three previous times, most recently in 1988. "I welcome this judgment by the supreme court," says Rekha Sharma, the head of India’s National Commission for Women. "It was an outdated law, which should have been removed long back." She notes that the law dated from the British colonial era—but the British got rid of their version of the law many years ago. Government lawyers had urged the court to keep the law, arguing that "making adultery legal will hurt marriage bonds." The Guardian reports that those who brought the case had only sought to make the law gender neutral, but the court decided to simply get rid of it. (Earlier this month, the court struck down a colonial-era law banning gay sex.)
– After enduring a ruckus over its segregated student government elections, a Mississippi middle school has nixed rules it says were put into place some three decades ago in order to ensure minority representation. Under the rules, white students were allowed to run for class president one year, black students the next. Other positions were similarly segregated at Nettleton Middle School, reports AP. The brouhaha began when a mother learned her white daughter could not run for the position of sixth-grade reporter. It spread to the blogosphere and ultimately led to the superintendent's reversal: "It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body," the statement said. "It is our hope and desire that these practices and procedures are no longer needed."
– In a move he's been signalling for some time, President Trump on Tuesday withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, reports NBC News. “This is a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never ever been made," said the president in a televised news conference. "It didn't bring calm, it didn't bring peace, and it never will.” Trump, who accused Tehran of lying about its nuclear ambitions, also said the US would be reimposing the highest level of sanctions and warned other nations not to assist Iran, reports the AP. After his news conference, he signed a presidential memorandum to make the move official. The decision puts the US at odds with its European allies, which urged Trump to stick with the deal, and raises the possibility of tension with Russia and China, notes the New York Times. “We cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” Trump said in his remarks, adding that the agreement was "defective at its core" and an "embarrassment to me as a citizen and all citizens of the United States.” Doing away with what was considered President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement fulfills an oft-stated campaign pledge of Trump's, notes the Washington Post. Trump cited documents revealed last week by Israel suggesting that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in the 1990s, something it has repeatedly denied, and lied about that fact during negotiations for the 2015 accord. "At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction," Trump asserted.
– The Environmental Protection Agency is stuck in what insiders call a "holding pattern" after a Trump administration order that freezes all EPA grants and contracts. "New EPA administration has asked that all contract and grant awards be temporarily suspended, effective immediately,” an email obtained by the Washington Post states. "Please construe this to include task orders and work assignments," states the email, which was sent on Friday, within hours of Trump's swearing in. The email says the agency hopes to receive more clarification soon on the order, which could affect everything from climate research and education to waste handling and water testing. Trump has nominated longtime EPA critic Scott Pruit to run the agency. Myron Ebell, the prominent climate skeptic who ran the EPA transition for the Trump team, tells ProPublica that the move isn't unusual, though it may be wider than what previous administrations have done. "They're trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first," he says. A source tells the Huffington Post that EPA staffers have been ordered not to discuss the freeze with anybody outside the agency. There also has been a freeze on EPA press releases and social media postings, according to a memo obtained by the HuffPo. (On Monday, Trump brought in a federal hiring freeze.)
– Two former execs at an insurance firm that paid out $850 million to settle allegations of shady dealing brought by Eliot Spitzer in his days as a crusading attorney general are now suing the former governor for libel. The former Marsh & McLennan execs, who claim Spitzer libeled them in a recent column for Slate entitled "They Still Don't Get It," are seeking $90 million in damages, Reuters reports. Neither man is named in the column, which stated that Marsh's behavior was a "blatant abuse of law and market power." Spitzer then listed illegal acts that he wrote were "designed" to harm customers. Both men were indicted on dozens of charges following Spitzer's probe. They were found guilty on one count of restraint of trade and competition, but that conviction was later overturned.
– A drug task force agent from California was arrested Dec. 29 in Pennsylvania while allegedly transporting nearly 250 pounds of marijuana, ABC 27 reports. According to the Patriot-News, authorities say a traffic stop in York County turned up $2 million worth of pot, $11,000 in cash, and sheriff's deputy Christopher Heath. Heath, who was on vacation from the Yuba County Sheriff's Department at the time, had his badge and gun on him, ABC reports. Heath—along with two other men who were also in the vehicle—has been charged with multiple drug-related offenses, including delivery of marijuana, according to the Patriot-News. Federal charges are also likely since the drugs were allegedly moved across state lines. All three men have since bailed out of jail.
– Joe Jackson, the iron-fisted Jackson family patriarch and manager, died Wednesday at age 89 from cancer, reports Billboard and TMZ. The father of Michael Jackson, Joe Jackson launched the Jackson 5—which included Michael and brothers Jackie, Marlon, Jermaine, and Tito—in Gary, Ind., in the 1960s. The group went on to sign with Motown Records, and they quickly scored four No. 1 singles with "I Want You Back," "ABC," "I'll Be There," and "The Love You Save." The Jackson 5 sold millions of records, had their own variety show, and would go on to become one of the most successful R&B groups of all time. Jackson later guided the careers of Michael and sister Janet Jackson when they embarked on solo careers. Over the years, Jackson had a rocky relationship with his wife, Katherine, with whom he had 10 children, according to CNN. They separated several times but never divorced. Katherine described his alleged extramarital affairs in the book My Family, The Jacksons. Jackson was also roundly criticized by his children and others for allegedly abusive parenting, which included physical punishment. He acknowledged that he was a strict disciplinarian but was unapologetic about his behavior. "I'm glad I was tough because look what I came out with," he told CNN in 2013. "I came out with some kids that everybody loved all over the world. And they treated everybody right."
– President Obama's choice to be the next interior secretary sailed through her Senate confirmation today by a vote of 87 to 11, reports the Washington Post. Sally Jewell, 57, will replace Ken Salazar as head of the department that overseas 500 million acres of parks and public lands, reports AP. Jewell has an interesting resume, notes Bloomberg and the Hill: She is currently CEO of the huge outdoor gear company REI, though she will resign immediately. Previously, she worked as a petroleum engineer and a commercial banker. “Outdoor recreation is now a major economic generator for our country,” Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon said before the vote. “You can’t run a multi-billion dollar company like REI without being able to bring people together and anticipating some of the trends that lie ahead."
– The tale of the demise of Easter Island's people may have to be rewritten. The story has long held that infighting as resources ran out was one of the main drivers of the collapse, but a new study published in the Journal of Pacific Archaeology suggests a different scenario. CNN reports on the "unlikely method" of examining the society via of some of the stone tools used to carve the island's famous stone figures: Researchers performed a chemical analysis on four of the statues and fragments from 17 of the roughly 1,600 basalt tools, called toki, that had been excavated. The goal was to determine where the basalt had come from. There were three quarries on the island that were potential sources of the volcanic rock; the key discovery is that there was "near exclusive" use of a single quarry to make the toki. Here's the jump researchers are making from there, per a press release: Lead study author Dale Simpson Jr. sees that as "solid evidence that there was cooperation among families and craft groups. ... The idea of competition and collapse on Easter Island might be overstated." But Jo Anne Van Tilburg, who led the excavations, cautions against coming to an overstated conclusion in this case. She says the findings bolster the view "of craft specialization based on information exchange, but we can't know at this stage if the interaction was collaborative. It may also have been coercive in some way. Human behavior is complex." (This separate study pushes the same theory but based on different evidence: obsidian.)
– When Alan Rickman started playing Professor Severus Snape, the end of the Harry Potter series was not yet written—but JK Rowling already had Snape's story arc figured out, and she hinted to Rickman that (spoiler alert!) there was more to Snape than met the eye so that he'd understand the character's motivation and know how to play him. Rickman had hinted at that fact in interviews, Mashable reports, but he never revealed exactly what Rowling told him—but now Rowling finally has, thanks to a fan on Twitter who asked her, "Will you tell us the piece of information that you told Alan Rickman about Severus Snape? Or will that forever be a secret?" As the Independent explains, Rickman once said that Rowling didn't reveal the entire ending of the series to him, but rather gave him "one little piece of information, which I always said I would never share with anybody and never have, and never will," and that helped him "travel down that road rather than that one or that one or that one." Rowling's response to the aforementioned fan explains what that "one little piece" was: "I told Alan what lies behind the word 'always,'" she wrote. Spoiler alert part 2: She's referring to the fact that, as Snape reveals to Dumbledore toward the end of the series, he's "always" loved Harry's mother, and thus felt compelled to protect Harry. (Watch Snape's scenes in chronological order and all will become clear.)
– A new study on cancer won't make for pleasant reading for tall people. Consider this quote from lead researcher Leonard Nunney of the University of California Riverside: "If you were comparing a 5-foot guy to a basketball player who's over 7 feet tall, then that basketball player has around twice the risk of cancer across the board," he tells Australia's ABC. Yes, Nunney's study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that taller people are at greater risk for cancer. The surprisingly simple reason? They have more cells, and thus more things go can wrong in those cells, explains the Guardian. Specifically, the study found that cancer risk rises by 10% for every 4 inches people are above average height—5 feet 4 for women and 5 feet 9 for men, reports CNN. The findings held true for 18 of 23 cancers studied. "Now, you can't do anything about your height, but what you can do is tell extremely tall individuals that they should be aware of this, and if they have any concerns, to get checked," says Nunney. Cancers of the colon and kidney were among those with the strongest correlation to height. A researcher not involved with the study says it backs up previously seen links between height and cancer, but she said tall people shouldn't worry too much. "The increased risk is small, and there's plenty you can do to reduce the risk of developing cancer, such as not smoking and keeping a healthy weight," says Georgina Hill of Cancer Research UK. (A WWE wrestling star made an emotional revelation about his own cancer.)
– The tropical storm formerly known as Hurricane Harvey is continuing to cause massive flooding in Texas, and analysts say the state's oil and gas industry has been hit very hard. Almost a third of US refining capacity is in the affected coastal areas, and experts say closures due to flooding could pinch the gas supply, sending prices up as much as 25 cents a gallon. "This is the dominoes starting to fall," a GasBuddy petroleum analyst tells the AP. "This is sort of slowly turning out to be the worst-case scenario." In other developments: Dams opened. The US Army Corps of Engineers opened the Addicks and Barker flood-control dams on the western outskirts of Houston overnight in a controlled release to prevent uncontrollable flooding of downtown Houston, KHOU reports. Thousands of nearby residents were advised to pack their bags overnight and leave their homes Monday morning. Evacuations. A series of voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders were issued in the Houston region Sunday night as several more inches of rain fell on the area, reports the Houston Chronicle. Officials warn that possible structural damage, including bridge collapses and levee overflows, could leave residents trapped by the storm. The storm is expected to keep dumping rain on the area for days, bringing the total to over 50 inches in some areas. National Guard. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Sunday night that 1,000 more National Guard troops are being activated to deal with flooding in Houston, CNN reports. The governor plans to tour hard-hit coastal counties Monday with Sen. John Cornyn. "Most devastating." The floods, described as "catastrophic and life-threatening" by the National Weather Service, are the worst on record and are set to get even worse in the days to come. "What we're seeing is the most devastating flood event in Houston's recorded history," a meteorologist tells Reuters. The storm has already caused at least five deaths. Stalled. In a 4am CDT update, the National Hurricane Center said the storm is now centered 120 miles southwest of Houston and is moving southeast at just 3mph, leaving it "virtually stalled" near the coast, the AP reports. "We'll get through." Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, whose force used motorboats and airboats to rescue at least 2,000 people Sunday, urged Texans to stay strong, reports the New York Times. "It's sad," he said. "It breaks your heart for our city and our state. But it's Texas. We'll get through."
– Different types of cars rotate in and out of various best-of categories every year, except for one long-time champ: Honda Accord in the odd field of most-stolen vehicle. A new list by car-security company LoJack has the Accord at No. 1 for the fifth straight year, reports NBC News. And it's no statistical fluke on the part of the company: An annual list put out by the National Insurance Crime Bureau also has had the Accord in the top spot for five years' running. So is the Accord particularly vulnerable to break-ins? Not so much. As a LoJack VP explains to ABC News, this is more about supply and demand—for parts. The model has been a longtime favorite with buyers, and "that means year after year there are more Accords on the road, getting into car accidents or needing parts for repair." The upshot is that car thieves can steal an Accord, sell it for parts, and make three times the value of the vehicle, says Patrick Clancy. The top 10 most stolen: Honda Accord Honda Civic Toyota Camry Toyota Corolla Chevy Silverado Acura Integra Cadillac Escalade Ford F350 Nissan Altima Chevy Tahoe
– They fought the law and, for now, it looks like they won. Villagers in southern China who rebelled against the Communist Party over a land grab and the death of a village negotiator in police custody have had some of their demands met, AP reports. Authorities have agreed to release four detained villagers from Wukan and return confiscated land to farmers. The Communist Party's deputy chief in Guangdong province has agreed to meet with protest leaders, and, in return, villagers have agreed to postpone a planned march to government offices. Police officers had surrounded the Guangdong village of 20,000 people during the two-week standoff, but roadblocks have now been lifted. Thousands of protests against land grabs occur every year in China, but the one in Wukan attracted an unusual amount of attention both in China and abroad, the BBC notes.
– A month after 236 SATs went missing, school officials in Loudoun County, Va., found the tests yesterday—and they weren't exactly in the hands of UPS as the school had initially claimed, reports NBC Washington. Rather, they were neatly boxed up sitting in a cart in Broad Run High School's shipping area—presumably a place where one would have thought to look before telling students they might face a retake. "UPS did not lose this, and we apologize profoundly to UPS," says a school rep, per WTOP. The rep says some mix-up happened when the exams were moved from the guidance office; the school had claimed it had video of a UPS employee carrying the box, but it was actually "a box that looked like the one containing the tests [that] went out the door at 3pm that day," the rep says. The tests were being hand-delivered to the College Board in Princeton, NJ, notes WUSA, and it appears they'll be validated.
– Got a big day ahead? You're better off thinking you slept well, even if you didn't, a study suggests. Researchers told subjects a normal night of sleep consisted of about 20% to 25% REM sleep. Less than 20%, the subjects heard, meant a worse performance on cognitive tests, while more than 25% meant scoring well on such tests, the Telegraph reports. Researchers duped these subjects into believing that sensors attached to their bodies were tracking their sleep quality. After a night's sleep, some subjects were told they spent 16.2% of the night in REM sleep, while others were informed they'd spent 28.7% of the night in REM. That was all made up, the Smithsonian reports. Next, the subjects took tests involving adding numbers. Subjects who'd been told they'd slept poorly did worse on the tests, reports blogger Eric Horowitz. Those who heard they slept well did better, the Independent reports. In other words, the subjects experienced a "placebo sleep" effect. Indeed, the effect isn't limited to pills: We can get placebo exercise, too, the Smithsonian notes.
– Aviation enthusiasts spotted three mystery planes over Amarillo, Texas, earlier this month, and buzzed online about what they had seen, Fox News reports. Initially they thought B-2 Bombers had flown by on the afternoon of March 10, but the aircraft lacked the B-2's W-shaped back. They "loosely resembled" the Navy's new X-47B killer drone, but were too big, The Aviationist reports. Which leaves what, exactly? "If I had to guess, I'd say we took a picture of a stealthy transport aircraft," said one of the enthusiasts, Steve Douglass. He blogs in greater detail, saying the US military may be trotting out new planes (probably piloted) to make its enemies shiver or go broke trying to replicate them. This last happened when the world took note of the Air Force's F-117, and "the Soviet Union went bankrupt" seeking "ways to counter stealth," writes Douglass. "Ask yourself an important question—what's going on in the world right now?" he asks. "Who (has of late) has decided to roll back the clock to the good old days of the Cold War and MAD?" Another analyst looks at "gaps in the USAF's line-up" for answers, noting that the Air Force has sought a "penetrating, stand-in electronic attack" for its strike systems; see that analysis at Aviation Week.
– The Cuban government on Wednesday selected 57-year-old First Vice President Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez as the sole candidate to succeed President Raul Castro in a transition aimed at ensuring that the country's single-party system outlasts the aging revolutionaries who created it. The certain approval of Diaz-Canel by members of the unfailingly unanimous National Assembly will install someone from outside the Castro family in the country's highest government office for the first time in nearly six decades, the AP reports. In what the AP initially called an "unusual two-day process," Diaz-Canel will officially take office Thursday; the new national leadership will be officially announced that day, the anniversary of the defeat of US-backed invaders at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. What to know: More on the process: The Cuban National Assembly has generally met and selected the president in one day. Its votes are nearly always anonymous and seen as reflecting the will of the country's top leadership. Cuba's constitution allows for any member of the 605-seat legislature to be elected as head of the council of state, but Diaz-Canel had long been seen as the overwhelming favorite. The new president will take over for the 86-year-old Castro, who is stepping down after two five-year terms. The Candidacy Commission also nominated another six vice presidents of the Council of State, Cuba's highest government body. The successor: Diaz-Canel gained prominence in central Villa Clara province as the top Communist Party official, a post equivalent to governor. There, people described him as a hard-working, modest-living technocrat dedicated to improving public services. He became higher education minister in 2009 before moving into the vice presidency. Most Cubans know their first vice president as an uncharismatic figure who until recently maintained a public profile so low it was virtually nonexistent.
– A Utah man who said he was the prophet of a polygamist sect is headed to prison after his conviction and sentencing this week on a child sodomy charge. Samuel Shaffer is the Knights of the Crystal Blade leader who was arrested in December on kidnapping charges involving his two daughters, as well as the two daughters and two sons of sect co-founder John Coltharp, who was also arrested. On Wednesday in Sanpete County, Shaffer pleaded guilty to felony sodomy on a child and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, KUTV reports. Among the details Shaffer shared with detectives as they looked into his case, per People: that he'd "married" Coltharp's 8-year-old daughter, and Coltharp had done the same with his 7-year-old daughter. Shaffer, listed as either 34 or 35, had previously been sentenced to 26 years to life in Iron County on child rape and child abuse charges; his new sentence will run concurrent with that one. "I sincerely believed that child marriage was a correct principle from God," Shaffer told Sanpete County Judge Marvin Bagley, per USA Today. "And I've seen the consequences of what's happened, and I know that I shouldn't have done it now." But Bagley wasn't buying his excuses. "I'm not aware of any religion in this world that justifies an adult having a sexual relationship with an 8-year-old girl," Bagley said. "Certainly it's a violation of Utah law." Coltharp is set to be sentenced Aug. 8.
– He used to be a city boy with zero experience with the great outdoors. But that didn't stop Masafumi Nagasaki from heading to the uninhabited Japanese island of Sotobanari for what he thought would be a two-year respite from the rest of the world. That was in 1989, as the man who came to be known as the "naked hermit" ended up sticking around until this past April, a nearly 30-year stay all by his lonesome. The 82-year-old, who long ago eschewed clothing, technology, and other creature comforts and had hoped to die on the island, was removed earlier this year after someone reportedly called authorities out of concern he'd become too weak, documentary maker Alvaro Cerezo tells News.com.au. "They took him back to civilization and that's it," Cerezo says. "They won't allow him to return." Cerezo spent five days with Nagasaki before he was booted from his "paradise," where he insists he was never lonely, bored, or sad. A 2012 Reuters article reported Nagasaki did don clothing once a week to make a boat trip to a settlement an hour away to buy food and water; he'd also collect an allowance sent from his family. Speaking of family, Nagasaki was once married and may have had a couple of kids, but he "doesn't like to talk about his past," Cerezo notes. What he missed most from his former life while he was holed up on the island: lighters, per the documentary. What he didn't miss: money and religion. "[Those] two things are destroying the world," he says. He also wished he could have been killed by a typhoon during his stay so "nobody [would] try to save me." Nagasaki is now living in a government house in a city about 40 miles away from his beloved island. (This man is one of central Europe's last hermits.)
– The presumed death toll in the eruption of a Japanese volcano has hit 36 after five more bodies were discovered today, the AP reports. They were found near a shrine at the summit, officials say. Twelve bodies have been airlifted down the mountain, but 24 are believed to remain, and officials have paused recovery efforts amid a continuing threat from toxic gases and ash at the still-rumbling volcano. Some victims were found under 20 inches of the debris, officials say. Reuters puts the number of injured at 63, with eight missing. It was Mount Ontake's first fatal eruption in the modern era, the AP notes. A minor eruption occurred in 2007 and a major one in 1979, though there were no fatalities in that case, Reuters reports. The latest blast was particularly tough to predict, an expert says, despite recent rumblings in the area. "They often occur quite suddenly and there is absolutely no guarantee that … earthquakes earlier this month were connected," he told reporters yesterday. "There is no guarantee of total safety when you're dealing with nature."
– A gunman shot three people and terrified hundreds more when he opened fire at a mall in Indianapolis Wednesday night. Police believe the incident was the result of a dispute between the gunman and one of the victims, not a random mass shooting, reports the Indianapolis Star. Police say the suspect entered the Washington Square Mall and opened fire on a man he apparently knew near a Target store. Two women, apparently bystanders, were also shot and all three victims were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. "This could have been a mall, a park, the gas station," a police spokesman says, per the AP. "This could have been anywhere that these two individuals ran into each other." The gunman has not been apprehended and police have not released a description of him or a possible second suspect. Witnesses tell WTHR that there was chaos in the mall after 10 or 11 shots rang out. A man who ran to safety with his 3-year-old son says he saw two of the victims fall to the ground. "You could tell they were shot. So didn't nobody have time to go back and see if they're okay, because when you hear a gunshot, your first instinct is to run," he says. A woman who had entered Target minutes before the shooting tells the Star that after the shots, "someone started screaming, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.' Then it was just deafeningly quiet."
– A suburban Philadelphia transit worker who found $15,000 and turned it in to police has been given the cash. Bob Tracey was driving home from work last March when he spotted a black bag in the middle of the road. When he opened it, he saw dozens of $100 and $20 bills and immediately called police. Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said some people claimed the money was theirs, but they had no proof, the AP reports. He said it was unlikely the real owners would come forward since the bag also contained drug paraphernalia, including a crack pipe. Chitwood says Tracey, 62, should have been allowed to keep the money after the real owner failed to come forward within 90 days, but he ended up having to petition a court under a law dealing with finders of lost property. "The bureaucracy was a nightmare for the guy," Chitwood tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. "He had to jump through a lot of hoops for being honest. Most people would have taken the money and kept on going."
– The big moment arrived: President Trump and Kim Jong Un—two leaders who were exchanging military threats and personal insults not too long ago—met face-to-face and shook hands, then had a private meeting of about 40 minutes in Singapore that left Trump predicting big progress on the nuclear issue. "By working together, we will get it taken care of," he said. The initial greeting was a friendly one, with Trump grasping the arm of his fellow world leader during the handshake. (See the video.) "We will have a terrific relationship," Trump told reporters shortly after the greeting, reports USA Today. Kim, for his part, said "it has not been easy to get here," adding that "the old prejudices and practices worked as obstacles, but we have overcome them and we are here today," per the Guardian. After the ceremonial introduction, the two men met with only their interpreters in tow, then walked together along a balcony as they headed to a larger meeting with aides. Trump told reporters from the balcony that the meeting was "very, very good" and predicted he and Kim "will solve a big problem, a big dilemma," reports the AP. It was difficult to hear the two men, but the AP adds that Kim appeared to agree with the optimism. White House officials have been downplaying the idea that a major breakthrough will result from the historic meeting on Sentosa Island. Instead, the big hope is that the summit will lead to a blueprint for negotiators from both countries to follow that would lead to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. In return, North Korea wants a guarantee from the US that it won't try to overthrow the regime.
– The Secret Service prostitution scandal that's threatening to overshadow the Summit of the Americas came to light after one agent refused to pay one of the women involved, reports the New York Daily News. “The agent said, ‘I don't owe you anything,’ but gave the woman some money,” says Rep. Peter King, who as head of the House Homeland Security Committee, has been briefed. The agents, part of an advance team that was supposed to secure President Obama's hotel, were caught with prostitutes in their hotel rooms, and the dispute caused a disturbance that got local police involved. “Number one, it is against basic ethics to go to a prostitute. Number two, it is incredibly embarrassing to the White House,” says one insider, who added that the agents' careers are probably over. “Yes, doubly good judgment there.” Eleven agents have been placed on leave in the incident, notes the AP, and another five military personnel have been accused of similar misconduct after violating curfew. None of the Secret Service agents involved were directly responsible for Obama's protection. A Secret Service rep has apologized "for any distraction."
– Apparently still smarting from some of Chris Rock's Oscars barbs, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited 683 people—many of them women and minorities—to join in an unprecedented move Wednesday, Reuters reports. The voting group behind the Oscars is largely old, white, and male and was lambasted this year with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite after two years in a row of all-white acting nominees. In response, the academy is attempting to—as the AV Club puts it—" add seemingly goddamn everyone it had, for one reason or another, forgotten to invite into its membership.” The actors, directors, and others invited Wednesday include Idris Elba, Eva Mendes, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Ice Cube, Greta Gerqig, Michael B. Jordan, Vivica A. Fox, the Wachowskis, James Wan, Luis Guzmán, Kate Beckinsale, Park Chan-wook, James Hong, Michelle Rodriguez, and not one, not two, but three Wayans brothers. Of the new invitees, 46% are women and 41% are people of color. If all 683 accept their invite, women would account for 27% of the more than 7,000 academy members (up from 25%) and minorities would total 11% (up from 8%). “I'm especially happy to be part of such a diverse group. I actually want to hang out and watch movies with most of the people on this list," Arab-German director Lexi Alexander tells the Los Angeles Times. “To be honest, I cried a few tears when I started to get congratulation tweets in Arabic.” Other invitees took to Twitter to share similar sentiments. “Excited to use my vote to nominate talent that reflects the real world we live in—DIVERSITY," tweets Brie Larson, who won best actress at this year's Oscars.
– James Foley's Catholic parents received a call from Pope Francis himself yesterday to console them on the gruesome death of their son. The pontiff was "very compassionate, very loving," and spoke to the New Hampshire couple through a translator for around 20 minutes, a family friend tells the New York Daily News. Meanwhile, Foley's former employer, GlobalPost, has released the full text of the last email sent to Foley's parents by his captors, with the family's permission. "You and your citizens will pay the price of your bombings!" the Aug. 12 message declares, addressing both his parents and the US government. "Now you return to bomb the Muslims of Iraq once again, this time resorting to Arial (sic) attacks and 'proxy armies,' all the while cowardly shying away from a face-to-face confrontation!" It alleges that the US passed up chances to pay a ransom or swap prisoners, and ends by saying that Foley will be executed "as a DIRECT result of your transgressions towards us!" Read it in full here. In other developments: Other foreigners held alongside Foley says ISIS militants, including British-accented executioner "John the Jihadi," treated the captured journalist more harshly than other captives, the Washington Post reports. "He was some kind of scapegoat," a captured French journalist who's since been released tells the BBC. "And the kidnappers knew that his brother was in the US Air Force. He became the whipping-boy of the jailers." He says militants performed mock executions on Foley, and he witnessed them force him to "pose as if he was being crucified against a wall." The militants have threatened to execute captive US journalist Steven Sotloff next, but he is just one of up to 20 Westerners believed to be ISIS captives, reports the Telegraph. They are believed to include Vanessa Marzullo, 21, and Greta Ramelli, 20, two Italian aid workers who vanished in Syria earlier this month, as well as three Red Cross workers seized last fall. Senior Pentagon officials describe ISIS as a group with an "apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated"—but they warn that fighting the group effectively will have to involve strikes on Syria. Senior British officials say the country's military is likely to end up joining any American military action against the group, the Guardian reports.
– Reports on the 12 boys trapped in a cave in Thailand along with their soccer coach have generally quoted officials as describing the group as in good health. CNN is changing that narrative somewhat, referencing a new doctor's report that described the coach and two boys as experiencing exhaustion from malnutrition and quoting an unnamed Thai Navy SEALs member who says that based on the group's health, no extraction effort will be made on Thursday. And the timeline may be tight, with CNN reporting the area is expected to be dry until Saturday, at which point the chance of rain—and rising cave waters—spikes. It notes that the current round-trip time for the divers who have reached the boys is 11 hours. But the Guardian reports hundreds of industrial pumps continue to suck water from the cave system in hopes of draining the levels to the point where the group can don life vests and cover the 2.5-mile distance out largely on foot. A rescue official says they're currently focusing on draining the third chamber to waist height; of the remaining chambers, which measure about 1.5 miles, a diver at the scene speculates about half would be walkable, with the water reaching a maximum depth of about 20 feet. Gizmodo reports the "herculean efforts" at the site have seen 34 million gallons of water pumped out, at a current rate of about 0.6 inches per hour.
– For years, the Los Angeles Zoo has been under a court order requiring it to exercise its three elephants on soft ground and not use electric shocks or barbed sticks on them. On Thursday, that court order was overturned in a unanimous decision by the California Supreme Court that animal activists are decrying. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge issued the injunction against the zoo in 2012 in response to a taxpayer lawsuit alleging animal cruelty. But in what the Los Angeles Times calls a "highly technical ruling" overturning the injunction, the state's highest court said a taxpayer lawsuit (which uses civil law rules) can't be used to address criminal conduct. The taxpayer lawsuit began in 2007 when an LA resident sued over what he said was abusive treatment of the elephants, also including the use of chains and drugs, Courthouse News Service reports. A lawyer who worked on the case, for free, for more than five years says he'll attempt to find another way to get a similar injunction against the zoo, or request that the state legislature overturn the ruling. "I thought we had done something here to move the ball forward and instead the Supreme Court has allowed the zoo to take a step into the Dark Ages," he says. The Supreme Court explained in its ruling that by obtaining the injunction in such a way, the court did not allow the zoo to have a jury trial or the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The barbed sticks known as bull hooks have since been banned entirely in California, and for its part, the zoo says that it has never used and will never use them or electric shocks as disciplinary tools for its elephants, and that it will continue to follow the court order despite it being overturned.
– If this story didn't already cause you to develop a mild case of gephyrophobia, then this one may do the trick: Some 11% of America's bridges are structurally deficient and in need of repair, according to a new report from Transportation for America. It's a stat made more serious when you consider this next one: 260 million trips are made across the 66,405 problematic bridges each day. As USA Today explains, these bridges aren't necessarily dangerous, they just need a lot of work, which has been priced at $76 billion by the Federal Highway Administration. That amount will just get larger as the years pass. These bridges are, on average, 65 years old, and in 10 years, the number of "senior citizen" bridges will be one in four. "You're seeing the aging of the system," says a co-author of the report. "It really does parallel the [aging of] the Baby Boomers in a startling way." Congress recently eliminated a dedicated bridge repair fund, meaning "bridge repair now must compete with other transportation needs," the report states. Rather than "an epidemic of collapses," the more common consequences of the aging bridge system will be things like more large potholes and closed lanes, the co-author tells NBC News.
– A man who went on a murder rampage against white people in San Francisco 40 years ago has died at San Quentin. NBC News reports that JCX Simon, 69, one of four notorious "Zebra killers," was found unresponsive in his cell. An autopsy is pending. Simon and three others were convicted of killing 14 random white victims and wounding seven others from October 1973 to April 1974. Most were shot in the back or execution-style while walking down a street, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. They were dubbed the "Zebra" killings because investigators used the Z channel radio band to communicate, explains the newspaper. At one point, the manhunt was so intense that police stopped and questioned any black men who remotely resembled the suspects—until a federal judge ruled that the stops were unconstitutional. The LA Times reports that the men hoped to "run all the whites out of San Francisco" and make the city headquarters for a group known as the Death Angels, an offshoot of the Fruit of Islam, which provided security for the Nation of Islam. The other three killers are still serving life sentences without parole at separate prisons.
– Kim Kardashian is nothing if not polarizing. A New York Times profile acknowledges that for every person who hates her (her fans are "classless, tasteless, and clueless sheep," says one) there are many more who will follow her on Twitter, wear her clothes, buy products she's endorsed, and even compare her to Sophia Loren (yes, really). "You would have had to be living in a cave in Nepal to have not been exposed in one way or another to the celebrity ilk of Kim Kardashian," says one branding expert. Perhaps shockingly to some, Kardashian—whose empire includes fashion and jewelry lines, boutiques, fitness videos, credit cards, and cosmetics—actually tops the celebrity loyalty index at one research company, meaning consumers view her quite positively. (Even more shockingly, she's tied for the top spot with Snooki.) Consumers associate Kardashian with entrepreneurship, the branding expert says. And Kardashian seems to revel in her role: "I really do believe I am a brand for my fans," she says. (Click here to read why it would be bad for business if Kim were to get hitched.)
– Sleeping more than eight hours a night? That may be too much of a good thing, because you're more likely to suffer a stroke, according to a study out of the University of Cambridge. Researchers analyzed the sleep patterns of nearly 10,000 people ages 42 to 81 in the UK, and they report in the journal Neurology that based on nearly a decade of follow-up and 346 reported strokes, older adults who sleep more than eight hours a night are 46% more likely to suffer a stroke than adults who slept six to eight hours. That risk is actually four times greater when people went from sleeping for less than six hours at the beginning of the study to more than 8 as the years passed, per a Eureka Alert press release. The researchers adjusted for several factors, including age and sex, and their findings were strikingly consistent with what they found in a review of the combined data of 11 similar studies spanning 560,000 people in seven countries. But in terms of age and sex, the Los Angeles Times notes the following: The link between the risk and sleep length was a little stronger for women, and the increased stroke risk was only seen in those eight-plus-hours sleepers who were 63 or older. The researchers caution that it remains unclear whether longer sleep duration is a symptom or cause of stroke risk. Says one, "With further research, we may find that excessive sleep proves to be an early indicator of increased stroke risk." (Experts have just revealed how much sleep you should be averaging a night based on your age.)
– Jonathan Butler can finally savor a good meal—and the taste of victory. The 25-year-old University of Missouri graduate student, who began a hunger strike on Nov. 2, posted a tweet Monday in the wake of school President Tim Wolfe's resignation: "The #MizzouHungerStrike is officially over!" Butler also addressed a buoyant crowd about their months of protests against racism and sexism on campus, the New York Times reports. "It should not have taken this much, and it is disgusting and vile that we find ourselves in the place that we do," Butler said. He became central to the campaign when he announced that he would consume no "food or nutritional sustenance" until Wolfe was out or Butler's "internal organs fail and my life is lost," the Missourian reported at the time. Butler found powerful allies when black players on the Missouri football team, and then the coaching staff, refused to play with Wolfe as president, Gawker reports. (Gawker notes that coach Gary Pinkel earns $4 million per year and Wolfe less than $500,000.) "It was really heartwarming and encouraging really because I didn’t think that I had people in my corner in the beginning," Butler told the Washington Post on Sunday. What drove Butler to take such drastic action, which he says gave him pain, shortness of breath, and wildly fluctuating body temperatures? "The campus climate here at the University of Missouri is an ugly one," says Butler. "I'm on a campus where people feel free to call people the n-word, where people feel free as recently as last week, to used [their] own feces to smear a swastika in a residential hall. Everything that glitters is not gold."
– Mad Men will be back with creator Matthew Weiner at the helm for two more seasons and possibly a third. After tough negotiations, Weiner has signed a deal with AMC and Lionsgate believed to be worth around $30 million, reports the New York Times. The cable hit's fifth season will begin in early 2012. The deal ensures a sixth season and has an option for a seventh, which Weiner says he expects will be the last. "That’s how long the show is," he says. "I'm just thrilled I get to finish it." "I'm not Don Draper, I don't have the stomach for this," Weiner—who was under pressure to cut costs—said of the negotiations. He says the new contract includes a stipulation that cast members will only be cut for creative reasons, not financial ones. "The cast will be intact and people's characters will only leave the story if it suits the story creatively," he tells the Los Angeles Times.
– Alleged Waffle House mass shooter Travis Reinking was still at large early Monday, and Nashville officials say schools will be in "lock-out" mode if he isn't found by the time classes begin, with guests and visitors not allowed into buildings, the AP reports. The 29-year-old, accused of killing four people in a rampage early Sunday, was last seen later in the day in a wooded area near his apartment complex, wearing only pants, say police, who have gone door-to-door in the area and warned residents to be on alert. According to police reports, relatives in Reinking's Illinois hometown say that since 2014, he has been having delusions that Taylor Swift is stalking him and dozens of unknown culprits are hacking into his phone and computer, the New York Daily News reports. According to a July 2016 police report from Peoria, Reinking told officers he had confronted the singer in a Dairy Queen parking lot. In his version of events, "Taylor climbed up the side of a building and Travis followed. However, when he reached the rooftop, Taylor was gone." In other incidents the next year, after he moved to Nashville, Reinking allegedly threatened a man with a semi-automatic rifle and barged into a community pool and jumped in wearing a pink housecoat. Police say Reinking's weapons, including the AR-15 used to kill four people at the Waffle House, were seized after he was arrested outside the White House last year, the Tennessean reports. The weapons were given to Reinking's father after he promised to keep them away from his son. Police believe the father later gave the four firearms back to his son. (A Waffle House customer managed to wrest the gun away from Reinking.)
– The USS Independence has remained submerged a half-mile deep off the coast of California for 65 years, out of human sight since it was purposely relegated to the bottom of the ocean by the US Navy in 1951, reportedly with a bunch of 50-gallon barrels containing radioactive waste, per the Mercury News. This week, however, thousands of viewers watched as the first photos other than sonar scans of the 623-foot aircraft carrier were shown live online, courtesy of the same ocean explorer who discovered the Titanic, among other famous shipwrecks—and those pics show the Independence is in remarkably good shape in its watery grave. "There's very little change from when the Navy scuttled it," Robert Ballard says of his team's documentation, in conjunction with the Navy and the NOAA, adding the Titanic was similarly well-kept. "The deep sea is the largest museum on Earth." Viewers saw such wonders as the Independence's sponge-covered flight deck, a Grumman Hellcat fighter plane, and even the ship's name imprinted on its hull, all at the same time as researchers on the Nautilus exploration vessel, who sent out two remote-controlled submersibles Monday and Tuesday to capture the pictures about 30 miles west of Half Moon Bay. What the deep-sea dive didn't find: any evidence of the atomic waste rumored to have been sunk with the ship, per USA Today, though a UC Berkeley nuclear engineering expert tells the Mercury News any danger posed by such waste would've long since dissipated. The 74-year-old Ballard says he treated his newest subject with the same respect he does all his shipwrecks, leaving artifacts intact. "Taking things off would be like bringing a shovel to Gettysburg," he says. (Sonar images of the Independence were first seen last year.)
– After Wednesday's massacre at a vocational school in Crimea, Russians are looking for answers—and some of them are looking toward the West. Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the gun and bomb attack carried out by a student in Kerch "appears to be a result of globalization," the BBC reports. "On social media, on the Internet, we see the creation of entire communities," he said. "Everything started with the tragic events in schools in the US." State-funded broadcaster RT has described the attack as having a "shocking resemblance" to the 1999 Columbine mass shooting, with the attackers in both cases setting off explosives in cafeterias, shooting fellow students, and killing themselves in school libraries. Political analyst Sergey Mikheyev blamed the attack on "Western subculture," CNN reports, which "builds its matrix on the cult of violence," he said on state television. "The one who has a weapon in his hands is right. This is a purely American approach to the matter." The death toll in the Kerch attack reached 20—15 students and five teachers—after one of the injured died Thursday, the AP reports. Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova says most victims died from gunshot wounds, but the shrapnel-packed explosive device caused many horrific injuries, with some victims losing their legs or feet. Few details have been released on attacker Vladislav Roslyakov, an 18-year-old student at the school. (Putin said Thursday that Russians killed in a nuclear strike will "go to heaven" as martyrs.)
– An oversized bull penis at the center of a dispute in the small Utah town of Hurricane has been cut off—but restaurant owner Stephen Ward says it was because he decided he didn't like the look of it on the statue, not because he cares what his neighbors think. The owner of Barista's Restaurant tells the Spectrum that he told the city: "I am not removing the penis for you or because of your complaints. I don't like you. I'm doing it for me. I just decided it would look better without the weenie. And oh my God! It's beautiful." He tells the St. George News that he decided the conical penis—which sparked weeks of complaints from local residents—was "stupid because it looks like a party hat." Ward says he paid $130,000 in Las Vegas for the bull sculpture, which he placed on a perch outside the restaurant. The outrage over the statue's "party hat," which led to a petition to revoke the restaurant's license, was just the latest in a series of disputes between Ward and local residents, who accuse him of charging too much for food and having poor business practices, according to the AP. Ward counters that his food is some of the best in southern Utah and the statue has helped his business. "I am having fun with all the attention and it's brought in more customers," he says.
– Yesterday saw Dennis Rodman participate in a super weird CNN interview, and the bizarre saga of Rodman in North Korea didn't end there. The former NBA player today sang "Happy Birthday" to "best friend" Kim Jong Un, the AP reports. The performance, before an exhibition game involving US and North Korean players, "started out as surreal," a tour guide tells Reuters. "Then people joined in and it sort of faded a bit, but it seemed pretty heartfelt from Rodman's side." As for Kim, he "appeared to smile, but he didn't appear to expect it." Other players didn't accompany Rodman in song, says former New York Knick Charles D. Smith. "We always tell Dennis that he can't sing. He is tone deaf," Smith notes. "He did it alone."
– The disagreement with the US currently devastating the Turkish economy doesn't appear likely to end anytime soon. American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was jailed by Turkey for almost two years before a shift to house arrest last month, is at the center of the dispute and a senior White House official tells the Wall Street Journal that the US has rejected a Turkish offer to trade his freedom for dropping charges against Halkbank, a state-owned bank facing billions in US fines for violating sanctions on Iran. The US has told Turkey it won't negotiate until Brunson, who faces up to 35 years in prison if convicted, is freed, the White House official says, adding: "A real NATO ally wouldn’t have arrested Brunson in the first place." The US has already hit Turkish officials with sanctions over Brunson and the two countries have traded tariff increases, causing the Turkish lira to plummet to record lows. Brunson, a pastor from North Carolina strongly supported by American evangelical groups, was arrested because of his alleged ties to banned political groups, the BBC reports. American officials have threatened even more sanctions unless Brunson is freed, while Turkey has said it will not give in to American threats. Jon Alterman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies describes Brunson as a "pawn" in a feud between President Trump and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (Shots were fired at the US Embassy in Ankara early Monday.)
– Johnny Manziel's ex-girlfriend claims the NFL quarterback forced her into a car, hit her, dragged her by the hair, and threatened to kill them both during last weekend's altercation in Dallas. Though a police report notes Colleen Crowley "was somewhat vague on the details of the assault," sources tell WFAA that the pair—who dated for two years before breaking up in December—met in Manziel's room at Hotel ZaZa on Saturday and started arguing about another woman. Crowley told police Manziel "restrained" her then "led" her down a back stairway to the valet after she tried to leave. "I was crying and begged the valet, 'Please don't let him take me. I'm scared for my life!'" she reportedly told police. She said the valet responded: "I don't know what to do." USA Today reports Manziel told her she was too buzzed to drive, so he would take her home. Sources say Manziel—who Crowley told police seemed to be "on some kind of drugs"—drove her to her car at a local bar but dragged her back to his vehicle by her hair when she tried to hide in some bushes. "He hit me with his open hand on my left ear for jumping out of the car,” Crowley reportedly said, adding she couldn't hear two days later. Crowley claimed Manziel then threatened to kill himself, later adding, "Shut up or I'll kill us both." The altercation ended at Crowley's Fort Worth apartment where she says she grabbed a knife and Manziel fled, sources say. A police report notes Crowley became "increasingly uncooperative" during an investigation, and no charges were filed. Manziel tells TMZ that he didn't hit Crowley or threaten suicide. "It didn't happen," he says. "I'm completely stable."
– As the Democratic National Convention heads into its final night, viewers may experience a subtle sense of deja vu from last week's RNC event: the presidential nominee being preceded by an intimate speech from a daughter. It's Chelsea Clinton's turn to "sell Mrs. Clinton to the American public," as the New York Times puts it, wondering if the former first daughter's spin will tend toward Hillary's role as a feminism advocate—the theme Thursday night focuses on women's issues—a doting mom, or both. Chelsea Clinton may even touch upon Trump: Per the Los Angeles Times, the younger Clinton told Today Thursday morning that the way she's heard the GOP nominee talk about the US is "far more upsetting … than anything they said about my mom." As for the main event herself, the New York Times notes Hillary Clinton has a tall order before her on the DNC stage Thursday night: to start to win back citizens' trust, make a case why Trump is too "erratic" to be president, and "own her flaws" about everything from her highly publicized email server issues to problems she's dealt with in her personal life. Another challenging task: making a speech that gives a shoutout to President Obama's achievements but lays out new goals of her own so she doesn't seem like a clone.
– Hand-wringing isn't going to help stop the world's Ebola outbreak, but money might. The New York Times offers a list of groups trying to keep the disease in check in West Africa and elsewhere, along with links for those interested in donating: Doctors Without Borders: Ways to help here. International Medical Corps: Go here. UNICEF: Go here. Save the Children: Go here. International Red Cross: Go here. World Food Program: Go here. Samaritan's Purse: Go here. Partners in Health: Go here. Americares: Go here. An NBC cameraman is the latest American to contract the disease.
– Despite the general opinion after a video surfaced of her kicking Syrian migrants, Hungarian Petra Laszlo says she is "not a heartless, child-kicking, racist camera-person." Rather, "something snapped in my head" when hundreds of migrants broke through a police barricade not far from the Serbian border in Roszke, Hungary, and "one of them ran into me," Laszlo writes in a letter, per AFP and New York Times. "As I had my camera in my hand I couldn't see who was coming at me, my only thought was that I was going to be attacked, and that I had to defend myself." Laszlo, who was filmed kicking a child and tripping a man with a child in his arms, says, "As a mother I'm particularly sorry that fate had it that a child was running at me, and I wasn't able to sense that." She adds, "I honestly regret what I have done and take responsibility for it," but she says she doesn't "deserve either the political witch hunt that is going on against me or the smears or the many death threats … It's not easy to make a good decision when you're in a panic." Laszlo has since been fired from Internet-based station N1TV and faces criminal charges of breaching the peace.
– Fans of The Mindy Project were upset yesterday that Fox is canceling Mindy Kaling's sitcom after three seasons, but could it be saved? Kaling posted a video to Instagram shortly after news broke, Us reports: "Hey guys, I'm in Montana, is anything happening in LA? #themindyproject," reads the caption; the video pans to show the scenery, then Kaling's face—and it ends with her winking. After she posted it, Variety ran a story claiming that the studio behind the show, Universal Television, is in talks to move the series over to Hulu for at least two more seasons, though neither Universal, nor Fox, nor Hulu would comment on that. (Click to read about the next book Kaling has coming out.)
– Though one of the most well-known dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex is actually somewhat of a mystery, having suddenly emerged as a fearsome beast some 80 million years ago. As a 20-million-year gap in the fossil record preceded T. rex, paleontologists have known little about its evolutionary path—until now. The discovery of 90-million-year-old fossils belonging to a previously unknown relative shows T. rex likely developed brains before size, reports New Scientist. Discovered in Uzbekistan in 2012, Timurlengia euotica's large brain and ears used for balancing and hearing low-frequency sounds were "almost identical to T. rex," which also shared certain bone features, researcher Stephen Brusatte tells the BBC. Yet Timurlengia was only "the size of a horse" and weighed less than 500 pounds. "Only after these ancestral tyrannosaurs evolved their clever brains and sharp senses did they grow into the colossal sizes of T. rex," weighing over five tons, Brusatte tells the Telegraph.Timurlengia was "evolving features that would eventually allow T. rex to become this super-dominant top-of-the-food-chain animal," he adds. "Tyrannosaurs had to get smart before they got big." Researchers still don't have a full picture of Timurlengia after uncovering 25 sections of its skeleton—they don't know the length of its arms, for example—but say the "nimble pursuit hunter" had long legs and was a fast runner. Timurlengia also had "slender, blade-like teeth suitable for slicing through meat" and "probably preyed on the various large plant-eaters, especially early duck-billed dinosaurs," an expert says. (One creature alive today has teeth like T. rex.)
– Tesla is facing more scrutiny following three car fires in six weeks. First, investors launched a lawsuit; now, the government is getting involved, USA Today reports. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is now investigating two of the fires, both of which occurred after Model S undercarriages hit debris on the road (the other happened during a crash). In a blog post, CEO Elon Musk says his company asked for the investigation and writes that "if something is discovered that would result in a material improvement in occupant fire safety, we will immediately apply that change to new cars and offer it as a free retrofit to all existing cars." But the NHTSA tells the LAT a different story: "The agency notified the automaker of its plans to open a formal investigation and requested their cooperation, which is standard agency practice for all investigations." Musk also says the company will increase the cars' ground clearance to help prevent them from hitting debris, and warranties will start covering fire damage, even in the event of driver error, "to reinforce how strongly we feel about the low risk of fire in our cars." To that end: "We believe the evidence is clear that there is no safer car on the road than the Model S," Musk notes. "Since the Model S went into production mid last year, there have been more than a quarter million gasoline car fires in the United States alone, resulting in over 400 deaths and 1,200 serious injuries ... compared to zero deaths and zero injuries due to Tesla fires. The media coverage of Model S fires vs. gasoline car fires is disproportionate by several orders of magnitude, despite the latter actually being far more deadly."
– After a military coup attempt that now appears to be firmly quashed, the Turkish government is focusing its wrath on Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. The town is home to Fethullah Gulen, an influential cleric who leads a popular movement called Hizmet, and President Recep Tayyib Erdogan blames his followers for the coup attempt that left at least 161 dead in overnight clashes, the New York Times reports. "I have a message for Pennsylvania: You have engaged in enough treason against this nation," Erdogan said early Saturday. "If you dare, come back to your country." Gulen, a moderate Muslim cleric who has lived in the US since 1999, was Erdogan's ally until 2013, when the leader blamed him for corruption allegations. In other coverage: Vox has more on the Gulenist movement, which runs a large network of schools and supports interfaith dialogue, secular democracy, science, and a progressive stance on social issues. Gulen says he condemns the coup attempt "in the strongest terms." The AP reports that John Kerry says the US would consider an extradition request for Gulen, though nothing has been received yet and firm evidence would be required. "We fully anticipate that there will be questions raised about Mr. Gulen," Kerry told reporters. "And obviously we would invite the government of Turkey, as we always do, to present us with any legitimate evidence that withstands scrutiny." The New York Times looks at how the fallout from the coup will make the region's politics even more complicated for the US and Europe, which saw Erdogan's government as a stable and reliable ally. "The danger here is this could spiral out of control and turn into a full-blown civil war," says former US Ambassador to Turkey Eric S. Edelman. CNN reports on how many civilian supporters of Erdogan stood up to the coup attempt, in some cases blocking military vehicles with their cars and even lying down in front of tanks. Almost 3,000 military service members have been arrested and almost the same number of judges have been removed from their duties in what appears to be a nationwide purge of Gulen supporters, the Guardian reports. Reuters reports that Erdogan, who had been vacationing on the country's southeast coast, addressed thousands of supporters after flying into Ankara's airport early Saturday. " This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army," he said. Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says 161 people were killed and 1,440 were injured in the coup attempt, but a government source tells the AP that the figures exclude coup plotters, meaning the true toll could be much higher. Greece says it will return a Blackhawk helicopter flown to the country from Turkey, but it will examine the asylum claims made by the eight military members on board, including two majors, the AP reports.
– Sadly, it's beginning to look like the Loch Ness Monster does not have a cousin in Alaska, but a video shot by a Bureau of Land Management worker was fun all the same. In the original Facebook post, the BLM said the video "captured this strange 'thing' swimming in the Chena River in Fairbanks." The "thing" quickly became known as the Alaska Ice Monster, with all kinds of crazy theories from commenters about what it might be. NPR rounds up some of them, including a giant sturgeon, a lost shark, a "beavegator" (no idea), a Nessie-ish creature, and a "giant arctic crocodile." Mother Nature News took note of this one: "What is the likelihood that this is a whale that seriously lost its way from the Yukon river, transferring across other small river fjords into the Chena?" Alas, the BLM then updated with a less exciting explanation. "So far the most compelling explanation ... is that the video shows 'frazil ice stuck to a rope that is probably caught on a bridge pier.'" Frazil ice is "a kind of loose, slushy ice that forms on water," explains Alaska Dispatch News. "It looks like it's swimming upstream but it's actually stationary and just wading in the current," a biologist with the state's Department of Fish and Game says of the formerly mysterious subject of the video, adding, "it's not organic." Not that the fun is necessarily over. "Such a clear, scientific explanation isn't likely to stop the multiplication of more 'creative' stories about the Alaska 'ice monster,'" observes the Christian Science Monitor. (A drone hunting for Nessie had a weird false alarm.)
– Wheel of Fortune accidentally stepped in it Monday night, when one of the answers to a puzzle on the show was "The Fast and the Furious" ... just two days after the death of The Fast and the Furious star Paul Walker. The show is now scrambling to explain, Fox News reports. It was just an "unfortunate coincidence," according to the show's official Twitter account, with that particular episode having been recorded weeks before Walker's death. It had been sent out "days ago" to the 200 local stations that aired it, explained host Pat Sajak.
– The USDA wants Americans to know it's probably fine to eat that yogurt hiding in the back of the fridge. Consumerist reports the agency released new guidance Wednesday asking meat and dairy producers to do away with the various "sell by" and "use by" dates they put on their packaging in favor of a universal "best if used by" date. The USDA says that wording isn't quite so confusing to consumers, who may not understand that most foods are still safe to be eaten well after the date on the package. It's part of the agency's attempt to cut down on food waste. The USDA estimates about 30% of all food is thrown away by stores or consumers before being eaten, according to Food Safety News.
– Wonder what happened to iconic film directors like David Lynch, John Waters, and Francis Ford Coppola? Well, Hollywood checked the balance sheet and decided to stop making their kind of mid-budget films, Flavorwire reports. It's all dollars and cents: Thoughtful or offbeat films costing $5 million to $60 million can make moderate profits at best, while blockbusters with international appeal are able to bring in sick money. Paramount's Titanic made that point in 1997 by costing $200 million and earning nearly $2.2 billion worldwide. At that time, mid-budget films like Kiss the Girls and In & Out dominated the Paramount slate and drew modest profits; this year, mega-flicks like Transformers: Age of Extinction, Hercules, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rule Paramount's roost and earn the big bucks. "You could make movies in the ten-to-twenty-million-dollar budget range" at one time, says Susan Seidelman, director of Desperately Seeking Susan. Now, she says, studios "have to appeal to every demographic in every part of the world." And few seasoned directors want to test the indie market, where tons of under-$2 million films are vying for attention. So Spike Lee has funded a film via Kickstarter, Steven Soderbergh publicly quit feature filmmaking last year, and other directors are turning to TV for creative freedom. This sea-change has been coming for years now, as an old Forbes piece shows, but some—including Steven Spielberg—believe Hollywood will over-invest in blockbusters: "There’s going to be an implosion" where several "mega-budgeted movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm again," he says.
– Lee So Yeon volunteered to join the North Korea army in 1992, lured in part, she says, by the promise of a daily meal. While cautioning that stories of defectors like Lee have to be taken with a grain of salt, the BBC presents an interview with the now 41-year-old about a military experience that she describes as brutal on the body. Lee says she was 17 when she enlisted, and she was initially energized by the experience. That quickly gave way. "After six months to a year of service, we wouldn't menstruate anymore because of malnutrition and the stressful environment," she says. The training was tough—essentially equivalent to what the men underwent, just slightly shorter—and they had to do domestic chores that the men didn't. Conditions were far from comfortable, she says: The women slept on mattresses made of rice hull that soaked up their body odor as they slept and sweated, making for an unpleasant smell. Showers were icy cold and compliments of a hose that pulled water from a mountain stream: "We would get frogs and snakes through the hose." She says rape was common (a statement she gave more detail about in this 2016 interview with the Korea Herald), though it's not something she experienced, and that access to sanitary pads for those who needed them was extremely limited. Lee got out in 2001 and successfully fled to South Korea about eight years later. The BBC notes that military service became compulsory for women in 2015; they must now serve from ages 18 to 25. (The most recent defector has regained consciousness in the hospital.)
– It's only about 3 inches long, but the Oregon chub is about to achieve a first among fish: It's coming off the endangered species list, reports Popular Science. The Fish and Wildlife Service announced the move yesterday, though it won't become official until after a 60-day period for public comment. That's largely a formality, however. The minnow went on the list about 20 years ago, when only about 1,000 existed in eight locations in Oregon. Today, the population is at 180,000 in 80 locations throughout the state. "We're not saying it won't need management," says a Fish and Wildlife official. "But they can leave the hospital and get out to be an outpatient." The fact that the chub is so small contributed to the success story, reports the AP. Wildlife officials could find small places throughout the Willamette Valley to re-introduce it, unlike the larger-scale methods needed to protect, say, salmon. When the fish comes off the list, it will join 26 others animals that have done so, including the gray wolf, notes the Verge.
– An early Christmas gift for Lord of the Rings fans: The first official trailer for the first part of Peter Jackson's two-part adaptation of The Hobbit has been released, reports Wired. An Unexpected Journey, one of 2012's most hotly anticipated releases, stars Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins and will be out next December. The trailer reveals plenty about Jackson's plans for his second outing in Middle Earth, and makes it clear that new material he has written based on JRR Tolkein's other writings won't be saved for the second movie, notes Cinema Blend.
– Clarence Thomas jolted a courtroom awake Monday during Supreme Court proceedings when he did something he hasn't done in more than 10 years: He asked a question, the AP reports. The usually reserved justice—whose long silence has been dubbed a "curiosity" and raised accusations of neglecting his duties, per CBS News—had court reporters sitting up straight and caused what Courthouse News Service calls an "audible shift" in the room when he suddenly started making inquiries. His questions came during a case in which the court weighs whether to walk back a federal ban on gun ownership for those convicted of domestic violence. "Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?" was Thomas' initial question, posed to a Justice Department lawyer after she presented arguments for the ban. Thomas didn't quit there, also throwing out a question about whether the feds could shutter a publisher if it recklessly displayed kids in "compromising circumstances," per Courthouse News. It was his first question from the bench since Feb. 22, 2006—a silence Thomas has explained before by noting he's good to go with just written legal briefs and that he doesn't like to "badger" lawyers who only have a short time to present their arguments, CNN notes. "Everyone leaned in disbelieving," a Slate reporter in the courtroom tells CNN, which adds this was one of the first oral arguments the court has heard since Antonin Scalia—who had defended Thomas' reticence—died. "That he's now asking questions—for the first time in over a decade—is as powerful evidence of the impact of Justice Scalia's absence as anything we've seen from the justices thus far," an American University law professor says.
– Most people board a plane with the goal of going somewhere. Not on Flamingo Air, unless an orgasm counts as a destination. The Cincinnati-based airline's goal is for fliers to fulfill their dream of having sex in the sky. President and CEO David MacDonald once owned a large security firm, reports Priceonomics. Then one day 20 years ago, he was discussing the mile high club with friends and he got the idea to create an airline to help people have sex. Today, he says thousands of surprisingly "straight-laced" couples have paid for private, hour-long "flights of fancy" on Flamingo—which also offers sightseeing tours and has a flight school—for a $495 fee. They've included a couple celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary and a pair with eight kids who simply wanted some time to themselves. No need to maneuver around airplane seats: couples are treated to a pile of cushions where two seats should be, plus chocolates and champagne. As MacDonald puts it, "you've gotta think romance, not sex." That's why similar airlines have failed, he says—though the Love Cloud does offer "mile high club" flights in Las Vegas. "They all tried to sell sex, not the sizzle." That doesn’t mean the flight isn't awkward. The space is cramped, there's turbulence to worry about, and the pilot is only hidden behind a curtain, Melanie Berliet wrote for Maxim in 2014. "I have had a high heel in my ear once, been shot in the back of the head with a champagne cork," MacDonald, also a pilot, previously admitted, per the New York Daily News. "Thank God we wear headsets." (These celebs say they're in the mile high club.)
– Take the velociraptors made famous by Jurassic Park, make them a bit smaller, add feathers, then change the limbs to wings and you will have something resembling a newly discovered dinosaur species found in China. Researchers say Changyuraptor yangi, a carnivore that lived around 125 million years ago, has the longest feathers ever found outside birds, to which it is very closely related. It's a lot bigger than any other "four-winged" dinosaur species known, reports NBC News. Researchers compare the creature, which was around 4 feet long and weighed about 9 pounds, to "a mid-sized turkey with a very long tail" and say that while it probably couldn't fly the way modern birds do, it could flap its wings and the feathers would have helped it land safely despite its size. "So this does raise the possibility they could glide or 'fly' in a primitive sort of way," a paleontologist tells Reuters. "The way I like to think of it is: if you pushed them out of a tree, they'd fall pretty slowly." (Another newly discovered dinosaur had bony "wings" on its head.)
– More than 40 technology leaders have proposed a radical solution for how Volkswagen can fix its emissions-test-cheating vehicles: don't. Instead Quartz reports the 44 signers—including Tesla's Elon Musk—of a letter sent to the California Air Resources Board on Thursday suggest putting all the money and resources that would have gone toward fixing diesel cars already on the road toward speeding up production of emissions-less electric vehicles. "Cure the air, not the cars," they write in the letter. Earlier this year, Volkswagen found itself in hot water when it was revealed it had installed software to cheat emissions tests in nearly 500,000 diesel cars sold in the US, the Wall Street Journal reports. Quartz reports regulators have ordered Volkswagen to fix all emissions-test-cheating vehicles currently on the road. In their letter, Musk and the other signers argue it's no longer worth it from a financial or performance standpoint to keep trying to make diesel cleaner, and many owners won't get the fix anyway. According to the Journal, they argue putting that money—as well as money from potential fines—toward electric cars and new zero-emission plants and technologies would reduce pollution 10 times what fixing the individual cars would. They also point out zero-emission cars have no way to cheat emissions tests, Quartz reports. Neither Volkswagen nor CARB have responded directly to the letter, with a CARB spokesperson telling the Journal only that their "focus has and will continue to be cleaning the air and advancing the cleanest vehicle and fuel technologies.”
– A story getting big play across Australian media today: On a visit to a high school yesterday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard had a Vegemite sandwich thrown at her by one of the students. The alleged thrower was suspended from school for three weeks, the Brisbane Times reports, but he claims he was actually trying to protect Gillard. "I’m innocent and I didn’t throw it," Kyle Thomson tells B105. "I hit the sandwich out of the kid’s hand because he threw it and there was another one so I hit it out of his hand." Amusingly, his mother chimes in, "Kyle is no angel, don’t get me wrong, but I think there is a lot more to the circumstances." She adds of Gillard, "I mean, I’m sure she’s had more than a sandwich thrown at her throughout her life." Sadly, Gillard said she would not appeal to the school principal to have Thomson's suspension overturned. Social media, not surprisingly, loves "Sandwichgate," the Atlantic Wire reports, and there have been a few "There was a second sandwich!" jokes. Click for more viral moments in Julia Gillard.
– The FBI says hate crimes reports were up about 17% in 2017, marking a rise for the third year in a row. An annual report shows there were more than 7,100 reported hate crimes last year. There were increases in attacks motivated by racial bias (59.6% of incidents), religious bias (20.6%), and because of a victim's sexual orientation (15.8%). The report, released Tuesday, shows there was a nearly 23% increase in religion-based hate crimes, including a 37% spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker says the report is a "call to action," reports the AP. He says the offenses were "despicable violations of our core values as Americans." The FBI says that although the number of attacks has increased, so has the number of law enforcement agencies reporting hate-crime data; roughly 1,000 additional agencies provided information.
– A "towfish" sonar vehicle searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 didn't find the missing plane, but it did find a 7,400-foot-tall underwater volcano…when it crashed right into it on Sunday, NBC News reports. The towfish was being dragged by a search vessel and scanning the floor of the Indian Ocean when it hit the volcano. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, searchers plan to recover the million-dollar towfish, which is sitting under more than 8,500 feet of water, sometime in the future. The search vessel has a backup towfish but has to travel to Australia to replace the 2.8-mile cable it also lost in the accident, CNN reports. The trip will cause a 12-day delay in the search for the missing plane. Flight MH370 has been missing since March 2014, when it disappeared with 239 people onboard while traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, NBC reports. Searchers have covered about 70%—more than 32,000 square miles—of the search zone so far. If they haven't turned up any "credible new information" on the location of the missing plane by the time they complete the entire zone in mid-2016, they'll call the search off. In the meantime, the Joint Agency Coordination Center will be investigating to find out exactly how a giant underwater volcano (which the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has a 3D image of) snuck up on its towfish, according to the Morning Herald.
– The South African government has begun the controversial process of seizing land from white farmers in cases where negotiations to purchase the plots have fallen through. Per Newsweek, two game farms in the country's Limpopo province will be the first ones taken under the order after their owners declined to sell for a government offer that was a tenth of the asking price. While South African authorities say they still intend to pay Johan Steenkamp and Arnold Cloete, the owners of the land, the equivalent of $1.37 million, the men had priced the land at $13.7 million. Per News.com.au, the farmers' landholding company, Akkerland Boerdery, was sent a letter in April regarding an audit of the land that would be conducted by the government. Akkerland Boerdery reportedly received an injunction to prevent their eviction, however the country's Department of Rural Development and Land Affairs has opposed the injunction. Should the seizures go through, it would reportedly be the first case of the government refusing to pay market value. Under existing laws, such a seizure is allowed only if it's in the public interest. Since the end of apartheid, the government has only redistributed land to black South Africans only from willing white sellers.
– The details of the story are hazy, but what's certain is this: An 11-year-old was suspended from school in Virginia after school officials in late September found what they believed was a marijuana leaf in his backpack, along with a lighter. (A suit filed in the case alleges the assistant principal found "crumpled leaves.") The boy, identified only as RMB, was suspended for 364 days for alleged "possession of marijuana," and he faced charges in juvenile court. Turns out, however, that three tests found the leaf wasn't pot at all, and the juvenile charges were dropped, the Roanoke Times reports. But things with the school weren't so simple: Only now, six months after the case began, has RMB been able to return to class at a different school, and he remains on probation. That time away has taken a toll. The son of Bruce and Linda Bays of Bedford County, both teachers, used to be an easygoing, upbeat child. Now he gets panic attacks, suffers from depression, and fears authority figures. After a disciplinary hearing, his mother tells the Times, "he just broke down and said his life was over. He would never be able to get into college; he would never be able to get a job." He's being treated by a psychiatrist, and his parents have launched a federal lawsuit against Bedford County Schools and the county sheriff's office. But the suit could face a hurdle when it comes to school drug policy: It also bans "imitation controlled substances," defined as a "pill, capsule, tablet, or other item which is not a controlled substance." In the meantime, it remains unclear how the leaf got in RMB's bag. The Inquisitr points to concerns about "zero tolerance" school policies, noting that this month, a 6-year-old was suspended for shaping his hand like a gun—and it wasn't the first such suspension.
– Stephen Hanks, who famously heckled Bristol Palin in a Los Angeles bar while she was filming her reality show, may have apologized … but now he's suing over her "outrageous" conduct. Hanks, a talent manager, says he never gave permission to be filmed, and is suing Palin and Lifetime—which is including video of the incident in Life's a Tripp, premiering Tuesday—for defamation, claiming he suffered emotional distress and invasion of privacy when Palin asked him if he was gay. Palin said the incident was partly to blame for why she left LA and returned to Alaska, but Hanks claims she had already bought her new Alaska home at the time—and thus further defamed him by blaming their exchange for her departure. His lawyer tells Reuters that Hanks attempted to communicate with Lifetime's parent company A&E about using the footage, but got no response. Hanks wants unspecified damages; his lawyer says the amount is more than $75,000. Click to relive the bar encounter.
– Amid sexual harassment allegations and an exodus of advertisers from The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly is on vacation—or, as the Washington Post puts it, on "vacation." In a report that Fox has refuted, New York's Gabriel Sherman says several high-placed sources have told him that Tuesday night's show will be O'Reilly's last. Sherman says his Fox sources have told him that in a Murdoch family split similar to the one that preceded the departure of Roger Ailes last year, Fox CEO James Murdoch wants O'Reilly gone for good, while brother Lachlan and father Rupert Murdoch want him to stay. Sherman says lawyers who looked into Ailes' behavior are now taking a "deep dive" into list of allegations against O'Reilly. Mediaite notes that Sherman's sources have been spot-on about Fox developments the past, though a Fox spokesperson says O'Reilly's vacation was planned before the allegations surfaced and he will be back on the air April 24. O'Reilly said the same when he announced the vacation at the end of his show Tuesday night, the AP reports. "We all need R&R," said O'Reilly, who told viewers he usually takes a break around this time of year and he booked this trip last fall. This year, The O'Reilly Factor has had its best viewing figures in its 20-year history, though around 60 companies have pulled ads from the show, which now only has about half as much advertising time as it did a few weeks ago, the Post reports.
– Two people were injured as a number of small bombs hit a major Buddhist temple yesterday in eastern India. The Mahabodhi temple complex, home to a tree where Buddha is said to have reached enlightenment, was struck by at least four blasts, but the temple wasn't damaged, CNN reports—nor was the tree, though bombs reportedly went off nearby, the BBC adds. Several other explosions hit sacred spots near the UNESCO World Heritage Site, in India's Bihar state, police say. The injured were a Tibetan, 50, and a Burmese national, 30. No group took responsibility for the attack, but authorities suspect Indian Islamist group Mujahideen.
– The temporary Gaza ceasefire was broken today when three rockets landed in Israel, its military says, per the AP; the reported attack prompted new Israeli airstrikes within minutes. The rockets landed in fields near Beersheba, southern Israel; no one was hurt, officials say. An Israeli official says the military's new strikes are targeting "terror sites," the BBC reports. The attacks came hours before the scheduled end of the current ceasefire, the New York Times notes, adding that it's not certain who was behind the latest rocket attacks.
– Like a game of Risk, Russia and NATO have not only been suspiciously eying each other in recent months, but also conducting military exercises in border areas that the Washington Post says are making Europe "a region of high military drama." Now a UK-based think tank is warning that these war games could lead to real conflict if they don't start communicating and scaling down their activities, the Guardian reports. The European Leadership Network says that although reps from both sides may insist these training exercises—including a flurry of activity in March for Russia and in June for NATO, per the Post—are against hypothetical opponents, it's clear there are definite foes in mind, and that alleviative measures need to take place ASAP to stave off a possible confrontation. "Russia is preparing for a conflict with NATO, and NATO is preparing for a possible confrontation with Russia," the report asserts, adding that even though this doesn't make a real conflict unavoidable, it helps perpetuate tension in the region—especially thick since the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The organization's recommendation: Tamp down the size and scale of said exercises, start hammering out a new treaty on limiting the types of weapons used along the borders, and publicly announce beforehand when exercises are being held (Russia is pointed out as a prime offender in this regard). But a NATO rep told Bloomberg that the ELN report "misleadingly puts NATO and Russian exercises on par" and that "the scale and scope of Russia's exercises are far beyond anything the alliance is doing. Russia is deliberately avoiding military transparency and predictability." (NATO's got its hands full with ISIS, too.)
– Whoops: Viewers watching the Emmys last night were dismayed when a montage celebrating shows that came to a close this year gave away the endings of many of those shows, Sky News reports. Among the series spoiled: Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy, Nurse Jackie, Parenthood, and Boardwalk Empire. "Welcome back to the spoiler awards," host Andy Samberg said when he came back onstage. "I guess everyone on every show died." There was outrage on Twitter, the New York Daily News reports, but not everyone was sympathetic to the complainers. For example: "To everyone complaining about spoilers: most of those shows ended in the spring. If you haven't watched you're not going to," tweeted one person. But, as another pointed out, "Hey #Emmys, we aren’t all @AndySamberg! Not everyone can lock themselves in a bunker and watch ALL the shows."
– President Trump ended his night by congratulating Doug Jones, and began his morning by tweeting that he essentially knew Jones would be the victor. "The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election," he tweeted. "I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!" Politico scratched its head at the "deck was stacked against" Moore part, noting Alabama ranks as one of America's most conservative states and hasn't voted a Democrat into the Senate since 1992 (the last time it went Democrat for president was 1976). The Hill reports Trump wasn't the only one to react to the Moore news by tweeting about Strange. In what it calls a "rare tweet," Matt Drudge wrote: "Luther Strange would have won in a landslide... Just too much crazy in nerve racking times. There IS a limit!" In a second tweet, Trump offered his Alabama takeaway: "If last night's election proved anything, it proved that we need to put up GREAT Republican candidates to increase the razor thin margins in both the House and Senate."
– Turkey says it has seized eight suspected ISIS militants who were trying to reach Germany. The suspects were detained at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport after arriving from Morocco. Turkey's state-run news agency says they claimed to be tourists who were staying at a hotel in the city for two days, but the hotel denied that any reservations had been made, report the AP and the Local. The agency adds criminal profiling teams found a hand-drawn map showing a route from Turkey to Germany—via Greece, Serbia, and Hungary—on one of the suspects. Authorities say the alleged militants were planning to pose as refugees during the journey. A day earlier, a friendly soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands was canceled in Hanover after a bomb threat. "No explosives were found nor did we make any arrests," a police rep says. The threat level in Berlin is now listed as "high."
– To say that it was an indulgent purchase would be an understatement: A Chinese millionaire paid a record $10,050 for a shot of 1878 Macallan single malt scotch in July—except it turns out the alcohol was all of 40 years old. Eyebrows were raised about the veracity of Zhang Wei's purchase after photos were posted online of Zhang posing with the bottle and the manager of the Waldhaus Am See hotel; the Swiss hotel's Devil's Place whisky bar has a 2,500-bottle collection. The prime condition of the vintage bottle, and the wording on the label didn't add up, said doubters. They were right. The BBC reports a series of lab tests were performed and returned all-around negative results. University of Oxford researchers carbon dated the sample and say there's a 95% probability it was produced between 1970 and 1972. And it's not even a single malt, as testing by alcohol analysts Tatlock and Thomson found it was a blend of 60% malt and 40% grain. Manager Sandro Bernasconi tells the Scotsman, "The result has been a big shock to the system, and we are delighted to have repaid our customer in full as a gesture of goodwill." The repayment was done in what's likely the most expensive way possible: SwissInfo.ch reports Bernasconi flew to Beijing to apologize and reimburse Zhang. The Daily Meal suspects the bottle is one of a batch of fakes that were so convincing Macallan actually purchased 100 such bottles in 2002. As for the story behind the man who felt comfortable paying so much for a nip of Scotch, he's a 36-year-old writer of online fantasy novels who reportedly made $16.8 million in 2015. (Here's why water improves whisky.)
– South Korea and Japan say they've reached a deal to resolve a disturbing legacy of World War II—the issue of sex slaves, or "comfort women," forced to work in Japanese brothels for soldiers. An estimated 200,000 women, many of them Korean, were forced to take part, though only 46 remain alive today in South Korea, reports the BBC. Under the deal, Japan will pay $8.3 million to a fund to help victims, though the New York Times says the agreement has vague wording that doesn't "clarify whether the responsibility that the Japanese government acknowledged was legal or moral." Still, the countries say that if Japan does what it has promised, the issue will be "finally and irreversibly resolved." But the newspaper quotes one survivor who says it does not go far enough. "I will ignore it completely,” says 88-year-old Lee Yong-soo, who wants Japan to unequivocally admit legal responsibility. The deal doesn't go that far, though it comes with an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: He "expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women," says Japan's foreign minister. South Korea says it will now consider removing a statue memorializing victims erected by activists outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011. The pact is expected to clear the way for stronger military relations between the two nations, a development that Reuters notes will be welcomed by the US because of an increasingly aggressive China.
– Sorry, Twinkies fans: Hostess really is shutting its doors. The company threatened to do so yesterday if striking workers did not return by the end of the day. Apparently they didn't, because CNN reports that the Twinkies maker is now asking a federal bankruptcy court for permission to go out of business. That will mean 18,500 employees will lose their jobs, but CNN notes that Ding Dongs and other popular items could still survive under another brand, as Hostess will be selling its assets at auction. Slate reminds us that Hostess has gone bankrupt before; that time around, Mexico's Bimbo Bakeries tried to nab it. Maybe they'll try again—although, writes Matthew Yglesias, "the company's various packaged snack cakes are cultural icons, but also pretty unfashionable in the era of artisanal cupcakes." Wonder Bread, too, has suffered as customers gravitate toward healthier options like multigrain bread. (Click to see why one food writer fervently believes it's time for the Twinkie to die.)
– Some 10,000 people fled across the border from Myanmar into Thailand today to escape fighting between government troops and a splinter of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army rebel group. At least three people have been killed and 10 others wounded in the battle, which broke out in the eastern border town of Myawaddy, according to Al Jazeera. Members of the DKBA militia had been working as border security troops for the government, but rebelled when they saw that the military was forcing people to vote at gunpoint, according to a Burmese web report quoted by CNN. “The people want to boycott [the vote], so the soldiers are holding them at gunpoint and our troops had to intervene and take sides with the people,” a militia general said.
– Secretive data companies are tracking almost every American's every move online—and compiling and selling disturbingly targeted lists based on that spying, a new Senate Commerce Committee report concludes. That includes lists of rape victims, people suffering from ailments including HIV, AIDS, and dementia, and people with substance abuse problems, a privacy group said in a hearing yesterday, as per CNN. Mailing addresses for police officers and domestic violence shelters—the latter of which are usually protected by law—are also for sale, as are lists based on demographics and economics, including "Ethnic Second-City Strugglers," and "Rural and Barely Making It." The World Privacy Forum urged Congress to act to "remove unsafe, unfair, and overall just deplorable lists from circulation." The Direct Marketing Association released a statement saying that while the lists are occasionally "used to disparage certain groups," they represented a "tiny minority" of marketing products. Overall the committee looked at nine companies, some of which refused to explain how they got their data or who they sold it to, Gawker reports. One company admitted it had sold social security numbers and banking information to an alleged identity theft ring.
– President Trump has raised eyebrows ahead of his meeting with Vladimir Putin regarding who he feels are the enemies of the United States. In an interview from Scotland with CBS News, the president told anchor Jeff Glor that the EU with its 28 members, many of which are longstanding US allies, qualifies. "I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade," he said. "Now, you wouldn't think of the European Union, but they're a foe." While the interview made headlines mostly for this line on Sunday, just a day before Trump is slated to meet face-to-face with Putin, Trump also said he believes the same about Russia and others. "Russia is foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn't mean they are bad. It doesn't mean anything. It means that they are competitive," Trump said. Trump also sat with former CNN news show host Piers Morgan for the Daily Mail. As USA Today notes, the interview touched on some of today's most hot-button issues, including the US Supreme Court's potential to revisit Roe vs. Wade, Trump's meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, and child separation at the southern border. The interview took place aboard Air Force One, where Trump told Morgan he believes there's a "very good chance" the high court won't address the landmark 1973 decision to legalize abortion. Trump also told Morgan he "had a great feeling" during his meeting with the queen and discussed with her the complexities of the Brexit issue. He added that Putin was "probably" ruthless, "but I could name others also."
– President Obama scolded Hamid Karzai by phone today and warned him that the US is preparing to bring home all its troops at the end of the year, instead of leaving a contingency force behind, reports Politico. Karzai refuses to sign a security deal that, among other things, would grant those troops immunity, reports USA Today. He's already blown by one US deadline to sign the accord, and Obama told him that American patience is running out. "We will leave open the possibility of concluding a BSA (bilateral security agreement) later this year," said a White House statement. "However, the longer we go without a BSA, the more challenging it will be to plan and execute any US mission." Up to 8,000 troops could be part of such a contingency force, reports Reuters. Its main duties would be to conduct counter-terror missions and train Afghan troops.
– Russian military pilots seem to be getting a little adventurous these days. A pair of US military jets intercepted six Russian aircraft near the coast of Alaska Wednesday evening, reports AP. The Russian pilots never entered US airspace, but instead remained in something called the Air Defense Identification Zone, which extends about 200 miles from the coast. Still, NORAD sent up two US jets "basically to let those aircraft know that we see them, and in case of a threat, to let them know we are there to protect our sovereign airspace," says a spokesperson. The six Russian planes—two fighter jets, two long-range bombers, and two refueling tankers—eventually looped back toward Russia. Hours later, Canadian fighter jets intercepted two Russian long-range bombers over the Beaufort Sea, near the Canadian coast but again in the international zone. While such incidents aren't all that uncommon, one US official tells CNN that Moscow was likely expressing its displeasure about a visit by Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko to the US and Canada. Elsewhere, two Russian military aircraft entered Swedish air space without authorization, reports the BBC. Sweden's foreign ministry called it a "serious violation" and has summoned the Russian ambassador to complain. (Russia doesn't think Scotland's independence vote was up to snuff.)
– How to figure out what Vladimir Putin might be up to next? You might stare into his eyes to plumb his soul, as George W. Bush famously did. Or you can spend serious money to study his body language, as the Pentagon has done. Defense officials confirmed yesterday that they've commissioned two such studies, one in 2008 and the other in 2012, reports NBC News. In fact, the Pentagon has shelled out $300,000 since 2009 to study the body movements of Putin and other world figures, though no Americans are among them. It's called the "Body Leads" project, and USA Today explains that it builds off research that first emerged in the 1940s. Here's a taste: Researchers "believed each individual has a unique 'body signature' consisting of how one body movement links to the next. These 'posture/gesture mergers' can lead investigators to learn more about a person's thinking processes and relative truthfulness when matched with what the person says." Sound a little strange? Apparently, the Pentagon itself thinks so. The studies "have not informed any policy decisions of the Department of Defense,” the Pentagon's press secretary insisted yesterday. He added that defense chief Chuck Hagel hasn't read the studies of Putin, notes the Wall Street Journal.
– Greg Barnes was in a hurry to get home on Friday, so when he saw police lights behind him on State Road 332 in Muncie, Indiana, "immediately I knew I was in the wrong," he tells WISH. What followed was "a simple interaction" that has touched hundreds of thousands of people. Police officer Shawn Cosgrove, who is white, chatted with Barnes, who is black, after running Barnes' information and handing him a warning. The talk turned to negative and even deadly police encounters, and Barnes asked if the two could take a selfie; the officer agreed. "I thought that would be a great moment, especially nowadays when there is tension all around the nation when it comes to policing," Cosgrove says. "It made me feel like our interaction could help people and children." Barnes posted the photo to Facebook in a post that's been shared some 465,000 times as of this writing. "The officer did not know me nor did I know him, but we each showed one another a mutual display of respect," Barnes writes. "Neither of us are the enemy. We can continue to fight against each other until we are literally 'black and blue,' or we can show one another the respect we inherently deserve, not as 'black man' and 'blue police officer,' but as humans. None greater, none less." WGN points out the hashtag Barnes ended his post with: #Respect. In a subsequent Facebook post made on Sunday, Barnes added, "Together, we, the only race that matters, the human race, can all make this world a better place than we found it." (This guy took a different kind of selfie with a police officer.)
– Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith Mata were born conjoined on April 11 and spent 10 months connected at the chest and abdomen—but on Tuesday at Texas Children's Hospital, the girls were successfully separated. After months of preparation, a team of more than 26 medical professionals from numerous specialties took 18 hours to separate the chest wall, lungs, diaphragm, liver, intestines, colon, pelvis, and lining of the heart, according to a press release. In total, Knatalye was in surgery for 23 hours, Adeline for 26, KHOU reports. Prior to the procedure, doctors put in tissue expanders designed to stretch their skin, among other preparations. "We've done everything from working with our radiology experts to build a 3D model of their organs, to conducting simulations of the actual separation surgery," says Dr. Darrell Cass, who calls the separation the first successful one for "thoraco-omphalo-ischiopagus twins with this particular configuration." A YouCaring fundraising page for the girls explains that they were given just a 20% chance of survival when their parents learned about their condition at an ultrasound on Jan. 13, 2014; the girls were born early, at 31 weeks, weighing an estimated 3 pounds, 7 ounces each. "You can't have hope without faith, and you can't have faith without hope," mom Elysse told KHOU last year, explaining their names. "And if one baby would have gone, the other would, too. And so right away I knew you have hope and faith." Now she says, "We are so grateful to all the surgeons and everyone who cared for our daughters and gave them the incredible chance to live separate lives." A Facebook page for the girls has pictures of them separated; each will undergo future surgeries. (A woman who didn't know she was pregnant recently birthed a rare type of twins.)
– What's better than being a famous actor? Being a famous actor and a semi-famous singer. Celebuzz rounds up 10 actors who've also been in a band: Abigail Breslin: She's just 16, but the Little Miss Sunshine actress is already a multi-hyphenate. Her first song is "Westfjords" with indie group Stargroves. Ryan Gosling: When he performs with his group, Dead Man's Bones, he goes by "Baby Goose." Get it? Hugh Laurie: The House star is the frontman for Band From TV, which is exactly what it sounds like: a charity cover band "supergroup" of sorts that also features Heroes star Greg Grunberg. Jada Pinkett Smith: Who says Scientologists can't be into heavy metal? Yep, Jada—as Jada Koren—fronts metal band Wicked Wisdom. Click for the complete list, which includes one overachiever who's in not one but two bands.
– Michelle Williams is moving on from Heath Ledger's death—and it makes her a little sad. Promoting her latest film Blue Valentine on Nightline, Williams recalled the first year without him: “In a strange way, I miss that year, because all those possibilities that existed then are gone. It didn't seem unlikely to me that he could walk through a door or could appear behind a bush. It was a year of very magical thinking, and in some ways I'm sad to be moving further and further away from it.” "I've found meanings around the circumstance but the actual event doesn't have it, I can't find it," she says of his death. "I can't find a meaning for it." Click for more from the interview and to watch the video.
– Violence comes naturally to humans, but we are far less murderous than we used to be, a new study shows. Scientists in Spain who examined the tendency among more than 1,000 mammal species to kill their own found that humans have been "particularly violent" throughout our history, reports the AP. Early humans killed each other at a rate of about 20 in 1,000, but got more violent during the Middle Ages when the rate shot up to 120 in 1,000. After studying 600 human populations from the Stone Age to the present day, the researchers concluded that "lethal violence is part of our evolutionary history but not carved in stone in ‘our genes,’” lead author Jose Maria Gomez tells the Guardian. Levels of violence are influenced by societal pressures and have "decreased significantly in the contemporary age," says Gomez. Still, the study published in the journal Nature found modern humans to be pretty dangerous, killing each other at a rate of about 13 in 1,000. At least we're not the worst. That title goes to, surprise, the meerkat. "Almost one in five meerkats, mostly youngsters, lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their peers," Ed Yong writes in the Atlantic. The meerkats were followed by two types of monkeys and assorted lemurs. The New Zealand sea lion, long-tailed marmot, lion, branded mongoose, and grey wolf round out the top 11. Not surprisingly, violence was more common among mammals who share territory than among loners like bats and whales. "Our study suggests that the level of lethal violence is reversible and can increase or decrease as a consequence of some ecological, social, or cultural factors," says Gomez. (A study found early humans may have killed off real-life hobbits.)
– Got an old Yahoo email address kicking around that you haven't checked in a year or so? Better log in over the next few weeks if you'd like to keep it. Otherwise, Yahoo is going to free it up for someone else. The example it uses is letting someone claim an address of "albert@yahoo.com" rather than "albert9330399@yahoo.com." It may sound like some harmless house-cleaning, but this is a "spectacularly bad idea," writes Mat Honan at Wired. "It means that people will be able to claim Yahoo IDs and use them to take over other people’s identities via password resets and other methods," he writes. If someone has a seldom-used Yahoo account as a backup to Gmail, for example, this raises the possibility that the new owner of the Yahoo address will figure out a way into the Gmail account. Yahoo insists it will take pains to make sure that any recycled ID is safe and secure, but Honan wants the company to rethink this one. Otherwise, "this is going to lead to a social engineering gold rush come mid-July." Click for his full post.
– Bernie Sanders is raising a lot more money than many people expected, and he's doing it a lot faster. His campaign announced just before the Wednesday filing deadline that it has received more than a million online donations, making him the first 2016 candidate to pass that milestone and the first ever to pass it so early, reports the Wall Street Journal, which notes that the Obama campaigns got there in February 2008 and October 2011. According to the filing, Sanders' fundraising is rapidly catching up with Hillary Clinton's, with the Vermont senator raising $25 million in the third quarter of this year, not far off the $28 million his rival raised during the same period, although her second-quarter numbers were much higher, CNN reports. Most of Clinton's cash in the third quarter came from the 58 fundraising events she headlined that asked donors to pay $2,700, CNN reports, while almost all of Sanders' take came from the online operation, which had an average donation of $24.86. But he has had to spend money to make money: The New York Times estimates that the Sanders campaign has already spent $15 million, mostly on hiring staff and on online fundraising, without spending much on commercials or polling. Politico calls his haul "eye-popping" and notes that it undercuts arguments that Sanders couldn't compete with a well-funded Republican. Clinton, however, has affiliated super PACs on her side and Sanders shuns such groups. (Polls show that Clinton is falling behind in New Hampshire.)
– Happy St. Patrick's Day, Hendrix. United Airlines accidentally shipped the pooch from Newark to Ireland this week, instead of his home destination of Phoenix, reports CNN via local affiliate KNXV. After the English springer spaniel touched down in Eire, he got to stretch his legs before being sent back in the other direction, making for about 24 hours cooped up in a plane's cargo hold. United has given the family a refund, but the owner wants somebody to get fired, too. "My dog got sent to frickin Ireland?" says Edith Albach.
– Running out of things to do with Alexa? Don't despair. Soon, you'll be able to tell your Amazon personal assistant to heat a mug of water, defrost a chicken, or prepare some popcorn. It's all thanks to the new AmazonBasics microwave that connects to Amazon's Echo device so you can give it voice commands. The microwave was unveiled Thursday in Seattle, Engadget reports. The appliance will sell for $59.99 and will ship starting Nov. 14th, per The Verge, which calls it "a pretty dead-ahead 700W microwave." It features many of the standard microwave buttons, but most of the cooking presets are voice activated (such as "Alexa, one potato," a command used by Amazon's David Limp a demonstration). You can also set it up to automatically order products from Amazon. "What this microwave does is keep track of how many times you cook popcorn and make sure you never run out," Amazon VP Daniel Rausch tells the Wall Street Journal. Also debuted on Thursday were other smart devices, such as an Echo for cars and a home security system, as well as improvements to Alexa like the abilities to whisper and hold conversations. It all adds up to Amazon's push to "unite a scattered industry," the WSJ notes. Through products like the new AmazonBasics microwave, the company hopes to get big manufacturers to use its Alexa-enabled chips affordable household appliances. As The Verge puts it: "The point is to wow gadget makers with how simple, secure, and easy it is to integrate its Alexa Connection Kit."
– Miss America chairman and CEO Sam Haskell resigned Saturday—just a day after saying he wouldn't, the New York Daily News reports. He was joined by chairman Lynn Weidner, president and COO Josh Randle, and board member Tammy Haddad. The resignations of Miss America leadership come after HuffPo published internal emails Thursday that feature Haskell calling a former Miss America winner "fat and gross" and joking that he's one of very few people who haven't had sex with her, according to USA Today. He also mused about renaming Miss America winners "c--ts," as per the Hollywood Reporter. On Friday, Haskell was suspended pending an investigation as 49 former Miss America winners signed a petition calling on pageant leadership to resign. Haskell remained adamant that he wouldn't resign over what he said were false accusations and a "mistake of words." In a statement, the Miss America Organization says Haskell's resignation will take effect immediately. Randle and Weidner will stay on for the coming weeks to "facilitate a smooth transition." "The board thanks Lynn and Sam for many years of tireless work for, and significant financial support to, both the Miss America Organization and thousands of young women," the statement reads. In addition, the board says it "will be conducting an in-depth investigation" into the emails.
– The GOP is on damage control duty after controversial comments on rape from another one of its candidates. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that pregnancies resulting from rape are "something that God intended to happen," when answering a question on abortion in a debate in Indiana last night, CBS reports. Democrats quickly attacked the remarks from the Tea Party-backed candidate, labeling him a "zealot." MItt Romney distanced himself from Mourdock after his remarks, the AP reports. Romney "disagrees with Richard Mourdock's comments, and they do not reflect his views," a spokesman said, but aides wouldn't say whether Romney would drop his support for Mourdock's Senate bid. After the debate, the candidate tried to clarify his remarks, saying that he meant "God creates life." Any suggestion that he believes that "God preordained rape" is "sick and twisted," Mourdock told reporters.
– "It was the worst cramping I've ever had and probably one of the worst pains I've gone through. And … there's always that slight uncertainty of ... I don't really know what I'm doing." This interview with a 24-year-old Texas woman, part of a University of Texas report on reproductive legislation released Tuesday, underscores the measures women in the Lone Star State are taking as access to abortion facilities is restricted, the Guardian reports. Findings of the Texas Policy Evaluation Project are startling: Between 100,000 and 240,000 Texan women ages 18 to 49 have taken matters into their own hands and tried to induce an abortion at home, with, as the Guardian puts it, "varying degrees of success and differing medical consequences." The report asked an online sample of 779 women if they or their best friends had ever tried to self-induce an abortion, with 1.7% saying they had and 4.1% saying their best friend had or they suspected she had, the Atlantic reports. Extrapolating those figures to the nearly 6 million women of reproductive age in Texas is how researchers came to the final numbers, Mother Jones notes. In terms of methods used to attempt an abortion, the drug misoprostol was the most commonly cited, with others including "herbs or homeopathic remedies," alcohol, illegal drugs, hormonal pills, and "getting hit or punched in the abdomen," per the Atlantic. Texas restrictions on abortions are among the strictest in the US: The 2013 HB2 law has shut more than half the state's 41 abortion clinics. The CEO of a gynecology and abortion care organization tells the Guardian that the result is "tremendously disrespectful. Abortion is legal in this country," she says. "And so every woman deserves to have access to whatever method for terminating her pregnancy safely she might choose in her local community." (The Supreme Court will hear arguments over a provision that could leave just 10 or so abortion clinics open in Texas.)
– A former CIA officer says she's days away from being sent to an Italian prison and blames the US government for not doing more to help her, ABC News reports. In 2003, the CIA abducted Egyptian cleric and terror suspect Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr from Milan, Italy, under its "extraordinary rendition" program. Nasr says he was transferred to Egypt, where he was tortured. At the time, Sabrina de Sousa was working undercover for the CIA in Italy but tells NPR she was 150 miles away on a ski trip with her son during the week Nasr was kidnapped. Nevertheless, de Sousa was one of 26 Americans convicted of violating Italian law by abducting Nasr. She faces four years in prison, the Guardian reports. De Sousa has been living in Portugal and fighting extradition—without any apparent help from the US government. "The US government won't intervene because they don't want me implicating anyone else as I try to counter the charges against me," de Sousa tells ABC. She says she feels "abandoned and betrayed" by her own country. De Sousa appealed her extradition to Portugal's highest court but lost that appeal Wednesday. She believes her next stop is an Italian prison and has asked Pope Francis for help. In a strange twist, while the US government isn't speaking up for de Sousa, the man she is said to have helped kidnap is. “The US administration sacrificed them," Nasr tells the Guardian. "All of those higher up in the hierarchy are enjoying their immunity." He says de Sousa is a "scapegoat." So far, none of the 26 Americans convicted by Italy have seen jail time.
– Barbara Soper managed a feat that seems like it should be impossible: She had her three children on 8/8/08, 9/9/09, and 10/10/10. No, she isn’t a mathematician who planned out her pregnancies to happen that way: Her first child was born full-term, but the next two were both born early—and both were actually induced a day prior to being born, USA Today reports. Of course, along come the statisticians to make the story a lot less magical: “The probability is not as astronomical as you might be compelled to think,” says one. Another says the chance of such a series of births is about 1 in 2,500—not all that “extraordinary,” he says, since thousands of women in the US gave birth during those years. What is extraordinary, The Stir notes, is that Soper was pregnant or recovering for three years straight. For more on that, click here.
– With popularity comes some nasty bugs for the unwary: A Trojan known as "Sabpab" is the latest piece of malware infesting Macs, according to security firm Sophos. The malware is spreading through a weakness in Java and through an infected Word document purporting to be a statement from the Dalai Lama, reports MSNBC. Like others of its kind, Sabpab enables hackers to steal personal information and send remote commands to computers. The spread of Sabpab comes soon after warning about the "Flashback" malware believed to have infected up to 600,000 Macs. Experts say these kinds of attacks tend to come in waves, so there may be many more Mac viruses on the way. "Although there's no reason to believe that this attack is widespread, it's clearly time for some people to wake up to the reality of Mac malware," writes Greg Cluley at Sophos. "Mac users—please get an anti-virus, for goodness sake."
– Maybe it's her new 'do? Whatever, a man allegedly leaped into Miley Cyrus' yard early yesterday morning wielding a pair of scissors, TMZ reports. Police received a 911 call from inside her LA house—not from Miley—and arrested a man named Jason Luis Rivera for trespassing. The singer herself was not around. Radar reports that Rivera said he was "friends with Miley Cyrus. I am. She's my wife. Me and Miley have been friends for five years." Click for a pic and video of the accused.
– Have you ever gazed upon a river and thought, “This would make a lovely photograph that someone would pay millions of dollars for”? No? Well, that’s why you’re not Andreas Gursky. A chromogenic color print of the Gursky photo below, entitled Rhein II, sold for a whopping $4.3 million at Christie’s in New York this week, the AP reports, making it the most expensive photo ever sold at auction. With the sale, Gursky reclaims the most-expensive crown from Cindy Sherman, whose Untitled #96 sold for $3.9 million in May, the Huffington Post reports. Before that, the most expensive sale was Gursky’s 99 Cent II Diptychon for almost $3.4 million. Of course, everyone’s a critic; Gizmodo snickers at Rhein II, saying it’s “as bland as it is expensive.” But HuffPo disagrees, declaring, “This photo is meant to be stared at.”
– A half-dozen state employees in Michigan are officially in hot water in the ongoing investigation in Flint, Michigan, with the state's attorney general filing charges for their part in the tainted water crisis there, the Detroit News reports. According to testimony in Flint district court Friday morning, three workers in the state's health department—Nancy Peeler, Robert Scott, Corinne Miller—and three in the environmental office—water regulators Patrick Cook and Adam Rosenthal and ex-municipal water chief Liane Shekter-Smith—were hit with charges filed by AG Bill Schuette, per the Detroit Free Press. MLive.com reports that all six were charged with misconduct in office, with willful neglect of duty and various conspiracy charges also being assigned. Schuette filed criminal charges in April against two other state employees and a city water utility official. In the Department of Health and Human Services, alleged transgressions include reliance on shoddy data and hiding or ignoring bloodstream test results that indicated the significant presence of lead. Within the Department of Environmental Quality, accusations include workers manipulating water monitoring reports, purposely "misinterpreting" federal drinking-water standards, and trying to mislead the EPA, as well as suggesting ways to keep an EPA expert quiet about concerns. Shekter-Smith, meanwhile, is said to have turned a blind eye as evidence of water contamination became clearer. Meanwhile, per the Wall Street Journal, federal experts say filtered Flint tap water is safe to drink, but Mayor Karen Weaver noted Wednesday at the Democratic convention that the city's crisis is far from over. "Our infrastructure is broken, leaking, and rusting away," she said, per CNN.
– One of yesterday's April Fools' Day pranks apparently fooled a few too many people: A Forbes contributor posted a blog on Forbes.com claiming that Mitt Romney had dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Rick Santorum. Despite the fact that editors took it down after just half an hour, the news quickly went viral on Twitter and was, for a short time, the No. 1 story on Google News. The uproar is "kind of baffling," contributor Len Burman tells the Washington Post. "It was April Fools’ Day, and it was completely implausible. Nobody in the party would have said those things." Among Burman's "implausible" quotes from the original blog: Romney claiming he has "no chance" to win the general election and saying that Republicans should "get our butts kicked now and move on." The entire post is available on Burman's personal blog. Meanwhile, Romney also found himself the butt of an April Fools' Day prank dreamed up by his aides, the Post notes. Paul Ryan introduced Romney, set to give a stump speech at a Milwaukee pancake breakfast yesterday, but when the candidate emerged he was faced with an empty room. "I thought, 'Oh, boy, this is gonna look really bad on the evening news, let me tell you,'" says Romney, who had forgotten the date. After hearing cries of "April fools" he laughed it off and was taken to the real room, where several hundred supporters were gathered. The whole thing was caught on video, of course.
– Even after overdose and addiction risks became known, opioid prescriptions continued on the belief that the drugs were more effective at relieving pain than other medications. New research suggests that may not be the case. In a study in JAMA, scientists say opioids appear to be no better at treating chronic pain than non-opioids like acetaminophen (Tylenol), ibuprofen (Advil), and lidocaine, which are much less addictive. In a trial of 240 patients—mostly middle-aged white males who'd endured at least six months of pain in their back, hips, or knees—non-opioid users actually experienced more pain relief than patients using morphine, oxycodone, or hydrocodone, though not in a way that was statistically significant, reports the Los Angeles Times. "There was no significant difference in pain-related function between the 2 groups over 12 months," say the researchers. Half of the trial patients at Minneapolis VA Health Care System were given opioids, while the other half were given acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Both groups reported an average pain score of 5.4 out of 10 at the start of the trial. But after a year, opioid users reported an average score of 4, compared to 3.5 for non-opioid users, reports Reuters. Study author Erin Krebs blames opioid tolerance. "Your body gets used to that level of opioid, and you need more and more to get the same level of effect," she tells NBC News, adding this might explain why opioid users suffered more side effects like constipation, fatigue, and nausea. Since the added risks of opioids come with no advantage over other drugs, Krebs says people with chronic pain just "shouldn't start opioids." (That goes for kids, too.)
– A Minnesota woman who struck and killed a man while allegedly texting and driving will spend just four days in jail over two years. As part of a plea deal, Le Sueur County Judge Mark Vandelist on Monday sentenced Susan Ann Russo to four days behind bars, 40 hours of community service with Minnesotans for Safe Driving, and two years of probation for reckless driving, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Russo, 48—who killed school bus driver Joseph Tikalsky, 79, as he was getting his morning paper on the road outside his home on Oct. 28, 2015—must also pay a $3,000 fine to be used to erect a billboard warning about distracted driving. She'll spend two days in jail beginning on the anniversary of Tikalsky's death, and again on the same date in 2017. Russo initially told officers she was reading a text and about to respond before the crash and pleaded guilty to reckless driving and misuse of a wireless communication device before an investigation found no activity on her phone at the time. Vandelist then threw out the misuse of a wireless device charge, per Le Center Leader. However, he said Russo should have seen Tikalsky—who was wearing a reflective jacket—regardless. "You are a gifted teacher, use that gift," Vandelist told Russo on Monday, advising her to educate others on the dangers of distracted driving. Russo said she "will spend my entire life trying to make up for my mistake." "Four days or 400 days, it really doesn't matter," adds Tikalsky's widow, per CBS Minnesota. "I know she didn't mean to kill anyone." (Texting is the worst kind of distraction.)
– Pandas may prefer their meals in the form of bamboo, but that doesn't mean their bite is toothless. A man in China recently received a harsh reminder of that after a wild panda bit his leg after authorities pursued the critter onto his lawn, reports AFP via Yahoo. The creature had made its way into a northwestern village, which is near a sanctuary that's home to about 100 wild pandas. "I saw a panda jump out in front of me, its body completely covered in mud," the man told local news. A struggle ensued, in which the bear wouldn't release the man's leg until a rescuer wrapped a coat around the animal's head. Finally, it fled—but not before causing injuries which, China Daily reports, led to eight surgeries over the past year and may lead to amputation. The man sued three government departments and won an $83,000 payout that will cover his medical costs, his lawyer says. (China Daily has a pretty gruesome photo of the injury.) "As cuddly as they may look, a panda can protect itself as well as most other bears," the World Wildlife Fund notes, per AFP. Indeed, panda attacks have led to some nasty consequences in the past.
– John Kerry said it. Joe Biden said it. But now the person who truly matters has said it: President Obama has concluded that Syria used chemical weapons, he tells PBS NewsHour. Obama, however, said he has not made a decision about a possible military strike. The president said it's clear that chemical weapons were used, and he said the US has ruled out the possibility that the rebels were responsible, as Bashar al-Assad's government claims. "We have concluded that the Syrian government, in fact, carried these out, and if that's so, then there need to be international consequences." The US is in consultation with its allies, he said, adding that "I have no interest in any kind of open-ended conflict on Syria." Pressed on what such a limited action would accomplish, Obama said it would send a "pretty strong signal" to the Assad regime that it must stop the chemical attacks. The bigger message to Assad? "You are not only breaking international norms and standards of decency, but you're also creating a situation where US national interests are affected."
– If you'd like your passengers to be able to sip from silver champagne flutes in comfort while being transported across rugged terrain—and you have at least $500,000 to spare—look no further than the Mercedes-Maybach G-Class 650 Landaulet. The ultra-high-end SUV, described by Road and Track as the ideal vehicle for the world's extravagant dictators, was introduced at the Geneva auto show as the latest addition to parent company Daimler AG's luxury Maybach brand. Only 99 of them will ever be made, and while the final price tag hasn't been settled, it is expected to be the most expensive SUV ever produced, Fortune reports. With features like massage seats and thermal cup holders, "this car meets the highest demands for luxury and yet still has all the elements that make the G-Class a real off-roader," Mercedes SUV chief Gunner Guethenke tells Bloomberg, which notes that the company may be trying to offset the costs of developing electric cars and self-driving vehicles with its top-end ventures. So how does it handle? Car and Driver took the "most over-the-top vehicle imaginable" for a spin and found that "craggy rocks, nasty holes, and muddy swampy bogs are simply nonissues," and while speed is not the primary goal, "if the order arrives from the rear seat, the chauffeur can hurl it forward with gusto."
– With Monday's news the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign, it's a good time to get the know the man who stands a good chance of being at the center of the investigation. Roger Stone, a Republican strategist who's championed a Trump presidency for three decades, has been accused of colluding with Russian agents to make that happen. Here's what you need to know: To start with, the New York Times has a profile of the man who calls himself a "dirty trickster," has a massive Nixon back tattoo, claims he's survived a recent assassination attempt, and says he's playing a character. CBS News reports Stone denies any sort of collusion with Russia regarding the 2016 election. And Stone says he hasn't spoken to the FBI as part of its investigation into communication between Trump camp and Russians, though he's long assumed he himself has been under investigation, according to Politico. Heavy has a list of five facts about Stone, including that he acknowledges being in communication with Gufficer 2.0, the hacker who took credit for data breaches within the DNC ahead of the election. Stone also claims to have a direct line of communication with Julian Assange and has repeatedly said he knows about WikiLeaks releases before they happen, CNN reports. Also according to CNN, Stone accuses the US intelligence community of being "politicized" and says Americans shouldn't trust it, especially when it claims there's no evidence Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Finally, New York wonders what's up with Stone's bizarre sartorial choices—such as this outfit, or this one—that have been keeping Twitter busy in recent days.
– People names Ryan Reynolds 2010's Sexiest Man Alive, but the actor wants you to know that "my body naturally wants to look like Dick Van Dyke," he says. "When I stop training, I turn into a skin-colored whisper." The actor, who will play the Green Lantern next year, is conveniently enough married to GQ's Babe of the Year, Scarlett Johansson. "Now it's going to be, 'Sexiest man, take out the garbage.' That does sound better," he says. Of course, he adds, "this gives my family entre into teasing me for the rest of my life." Click here to see his cover shot, or here to see the new Green Lantern trailer.
– CBS journalist Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted while covering the aftermath of Hosni Mubarak's resignation speech, the network says. She is back in the US and recuperating in a hospital. Logan and her crew were covering the jubilation when they were "surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration," says the network. "In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew," reads the CBS statement. "She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning." Days earlier, Logan had been detained by Egyptian police, notes the Huffington Post. For more, click here.
– Though the number of complaints on Twitter might lead you to believe otherwise, "Flying has never been better." At least according to the industry experts the Outline spoke with, who pointed out that taking to the friendly skies has gotten safer and more on time (arrivals are now punctual about 80% of the time). And while it may not feel like it, it's cheaper, too, at least compared to the early '70s, when price fixing meant a flight from New York to LA was not allowed to cost less than about $1,600 in today's dollars. The Outline's full story works to bust some misconceptions, and Business Insider does something similar. It talks to 80 airline workers—the ones who staff the gates, the planes, the customer service lines—to share the secrets they wish they could share. Here are 5 standouts: Know I'm not being rude when I don't give you a free upgrade: One customer service agent explains "the airline computer system tracks everything, and big brother can be watching us"—and doling out a free upgrade improperly can be a fireable offense. Don't take off your shoes: It might be tempting to wiggle those toes under the seat, but this isn't your house, and that "water" you're stepping on in the bathroom isn't actually water. Don't let those hands wander: If you're tempted to tug at your flight attendant's clothes to get his or her attention as they walk by, just don't. Ever. Keep the number 50 in mind: That's how many passengers are generally served by a single flight attendant. We're not forgetting about you, explains one. We're just dealing with minimal staffing. Know I have to do what the FAA says: That includes saying specific things. Not following the FAA's rules and regulations could cause a flight attendant to be fined. Read the full list, which includes a couple of booze-related insights, here. Or see a viral photo of a "nightmare" passenger who didn't follow one of the tips above.
– A Tribe Called Quest rapper Phife Dawg lived in Atlanta for more than a decade, and there are apparently at least a couple Quest fans at Atlanta's WSB-TV. After the rapper's death Wednesday, the station's traffic reporter, Mark Arum, worked an impressive number of Quest references into his traffic report. The video went viral and was shared by sites including the Daily Dot and BuzzFeed, who note some of the best call-outs: "This rush hour comin' on with more hits than the Braves or the Yankees." "Are things ludicrously speedy or infectious with the slow-mo?" "[Interstate-]85 is stacked and packed now, heading into midtown Atlanta with a crash south of 400—tell your mother, tell your father, send a telegram." Anchor Fred Blankenship even got in on the action, noting at one point, "Sometimes the definition of traffic comes sideways and straightways." "Phife and Tribe were the soundtrack of my youth," Arum tells BuzzFeed. "I was crushed when I heard the news this morning just before we went on the air. I wanted to pay tribute to him somehow." He says he's been inserting hip-hop lyrics into his traffic reports for years, but he really "let them fly" Wednesday—he typically only includes one or two a show. Arum and Blankenship also discussed their love for A Tribe Called Quest in a Facebook video Thursday, with Blankenship expressing his amazement that Arum "dropped deep Tribe Called Quest lyrics, and then didn't short-change the traffic."
– Syria may have given UN inspectors the OK to access the site of last week's alleged chemical weapons attack, but inspections are not off to a great start. A UN rep confirms that one of the team's vehicles was "deliberately shot at multiple times" by unidentified snipers in Damascus; all are safe. The shooting reportedly occurred in the buffer zone between rebel- and government-controlled territory, and the team will head back to the area once it replaces its vehicle, reports the AP. The Syrian government, for its part, has already blamed "terrorists," reports CNN. More: Once they finally reach the site of last week's alleged attack, UN inspectors will spend two days taking soil, blood, urine, and tissue samples, reports the BBC. But Reuters reports that the US and its allies aren't expecting much: They believe the regime's offer to allow inspectors to the site came too late and any remaining evidence has probably been destroyed by heavy shelling. To wit, a senior White House official dismissed the visit as "too late to be credible." Assad, meanwhile, says that any American attempt at military intervention will be doomed to fail. "Failure awaits the United States as in all previous wars it has unleashed, starting with Vietnam and up to the present day," he said in an interview with a Russian newspaper. UN chief Ban Ki-moon warns that "every hour counts" in determining the facts of what was a "major and terrible incident," reports the Guardian. "We cannot allow impunity in what appears to be a grave crime against humanity," he said. But the UN Security Council, which is split on the issue, has already failed to shoulder its responsibilities and the UK and its allies may have to take action without its approval, Britain's foreign minister says. "Is it possible to respond to chemical weapons without complete unity on the UN Security Council?" William Hague tells the BBC. "I would argue yes it is, otherwise it might be impossible to respond to such outrages."
– Want to stop neo-Nazis using music to spread hate? There's now an app for that. Police in Germany have developed a app dubbed "Nazi Shazam" which can detect banned far-right songs within seconds, Der Spiegel reports. The country's authorities have identified more than a thousand songs with racist or Nazi-praising lyrics and banned them from being accessed by people under 18. Police say the software will allow them to react instantly if banned songs are played at concerts, far-right gatherings, or on Internet radio stations. Authorities consider hate songs a "gateway drug" to the far-right scene. "Music is indeed a weak spot through which young people can easily be recruited into neo-Nazi circles," a spokeswoman for the Network Against Nazis website tells the Guardian. "A song can plug teenagers straight into the ideology conveyed through the lyrics." The neo-Nazi songs span genres from punk to heavy metal to folk and even rap music. "We've come across pretty much everything but far-right swing bands," says an expert on the far-right.
– The dog that may be partially responsible for getting Ethan Couch's deportation to the US delayed has gone missing. The "affluenza teen" and his mom, who has been deported, brought their dog with them when they fled to Mexico, and the SPCA in Puerto Vallarta—where Ethan and Tonya Couch were located by authorities—has reposted a Facebook post originally put up by a relative of Tonya Couch's, the Dallas News reports. The post offers a $1,000 reward for the return of the dog, named Virgil, and says he went missing near the intersection where the Couches were detained, per the News. Not much information is available beyond that—the relative won't comment further; a spokesperson for the Jalisco fiscal office in Mexico says the dog "was never in our possession" but that his office is looking into the animal's whereabouts; and the US Marshals Service, the Tarrant County DA's office in Texas, the US Embassy, and Mexico's foreign ministry all claim to have no idea what happened to Virgil. Per the News, he looks like a "large shepherd mix or wolf hybrid"; the Fort Worth Star-Telegram says he "appears to be a Saarloos wolfdog—a female European wolf and a male German shepherd hybrid." At the Tuesday hearing at which Tonya Couch agreed not to fight extradition from California to Texas, her attorney said Couch's "two main concerns" are Ethan, who is still detained in Mexico, "and her dog, Virgil," WFAA reports.
– If anyone is feeling sympathetic toward North Korea as its war of words with the US ramps up, Otto Warmbier's family has a message: "North Korea is not a victim. They're terrorists." In their first lengthy comments since Warmbier's death days after the 22-year-old University of Virginia student was released by North Korea in June, Fred and Cindy Warmbier lashed out at the North Korean regime in an interview with Fox & Friends on Tuesday. They described their first sight of Warmbier on a stretcher inside the plane that brought him to the US. He was blind, deaf, and "jerking violently, making these inhuman sounds," said Fred, who also said "it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth." There were other injuries, too, including a large scar on his right foot, the couple says. Warmbier—whom doctors believe suffered brain damage consistent with cardiopulmonary arrest—died less than a week later, per the Washington Post. A North Korean Foreign Ministry rep at the time said only that Warmbier had fallen into a coma linked to botulism during his 17-month imprisonment for subversion, but that his death was "a mystery." In reality, "they kidnapped Otto. They tortured him" and "they destroyed him," his parents told Fox & Friends, asking that North Korea be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. President Trump referred to the "great" interview in a tweet Tuesday, noting "Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea."
– At least 10 students lost their spots at Harvard before the first day of class after they exchanged offensive messages in a private Facebook group, the Harvard Crimson reports. College officials told the incoming freshmen they were no longer welcome after getting wind of the messages and memes in a chat group once called "Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens." The posts included sexually explicit memes and posts that called child sexual abuse arousing and mocked the Holocaust and minorities, per the Crimson, which obtained screenshots of the posts (but didn't publish them). One post dubbed a hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child "piñata time." The rogue chat sprang from a larger group of 100 students who began exchanging popular memes in December on Harvard's official Class of 2021 Facebook page. Jessica Zhang tells the Crimson prospective students like her "were excited about forming group chats with people who shared similar interests." But the mostly "lighthearted" messages, as Zhang put it, gave way to suggestions for a "more R-rated" meme" that spurred the "dark" group, per student Cassandra Luca, who added "it was people doing stupid stuff." Harvard officials who discovered the posts in mid-April took a harder line and revoked at least 10 admission offers, per the Crimson. The college reserves the right to rescind admission if a prospective student "engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity, or moral character," a Harvard rep tells the Washington Post. In September, 2,056 freshmen will begin classes at the elite college; 39,506 students applied. (Those incoming students include Malia Obama.)
– Warning: The promos for Comedy Central’s roast of David Hasselhoff might just be enough to make you like the troubled actor again. The Baywatch star and German music phenom was roasted Sunday night by Comedy Central regulars like Gilbert Gottfried, as well as newcomers like Jerry Springer and Hulk Hogan. A few zingers courtesy of E!: Seth MacFarlane: “He's multi-lingual. He can speak English, Spanish, German, and...whatever the fuck that language was in the cheeseburger video.” Jeffrey Ross: “What a lucky break—an alcoholic that gets cast in a show about a car that drives itself!” Seth MacFarlane: “Marlee Matlin called and said, 'Please, David, no more singing.’” Pamela Anderson: “I remember how nervous I was on my first day of Baywatch because I can't swim. But David was so sweet. He pulled me aside and said, 'Don't worry, I can't act.'” Pamela Anderson: “I really want to work with you again someday, but you know, there is just no role for somebody like me in gay porn." The roast airs August 15—and it marks the first time Hasselhoff has addressed his infamous "cheeseburger video." To watch that classic, and see what the Hoff had to say about it, click here.
– The promised overhaul at Malaysia Airlines has begun. New CEO Christoph Mueller—dubbed "the Terminator"—says 6,000 of 20,000 jobs at the "bleeding" airline will be slashed. "We are technically bankrupt," says Mueller, who developed a reputation for laying off workers during restructuring at Ireland's Aer Lingus, Belgium's Sabena, and Germany's Lufthansa airlines, per the BBC. "The decline of performance started long before the tragic events of 2014." Before MH370 disappeared and MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, the airline suffered from what AFP calls "poor management, unwise business decisions, government meddling, and unfavorable service and supplier contracts stemming from Malaysia's crony capitalism." Though 14,000 workers were offered jobs, Mueller says some may be fielding offers from competitors. Noting the Malaysia Airlines brand has been blemished in some markets, Mueller, hired last month by state investor Khazanah, adds the airline will rebrand in September, but he remains vague on the details. The airline may also reduce the frequency of flights or the size of aircraft on long-haul routes to Europe to focus more on regional flights, though a flagship route to London will be unaltered. The hope is that the airline can "stop the bleeding" in 2015, per today's announcement, and see growth by 2017. Sky News reports the yearlong restructuring plan will cost $1.7 billion.
– Disney's Christopher Robin sees its adult namesake (Ewan McGregor) reunited with his childhood friend Winnie the Pooh (Jim Cummings) outside the Hundred Acre Wood and just in time, as life in post-World War II London is pretty gloomy. What critics are saying about Marc Forster's latest: "It's a movie every bit as messy as its 'hunny'-craving bear, though only somewhat as lovable," writes Christopher Lawrence at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. As it meshes "a somber, artsy meditation on lost childhoods" with a second half meant to engage kids, "the end result may be discordant … but Christopher Robin still is worth 'oh, bother'-ing to see," he writes. Tom Russo at the Boston Globe calls it "an appealing new spin" on Winnie the Pooh's world. Appearing much like the vintage book illustrations by EH Shepard, "the CG-animated Pooh and friends… steal the show," he writes, noting the script adds "a contemporary flair that's funny without being obtrusive." "Younger kids might grow a bit fidgety" as the film "gets off to a somewhat slow start," writes Brian Lowry at CNN. Once it gets going, though, it offers "a genuine sweetness" and serves as "a reminder of the simple pleasures of hanging out with family and a talking bear, which, in these frenetic times, is the kind of silliness that's worth savoring." But Odie Henderson could've done without "another movie built on the pseudo-psychological cliché that adults need to reconnect with their childhoods in order to be better adults," especially one led by the Hundred Acre Wood's "least memorable character." "It feels as if reality has invaded the Hundred Acre Wood and sullied it," he writes at RogerEbert.com, giving the film two stars.
– The Obama administration is planning to restore access to federal college subsidies for a huge number of Americans who have a lot of time on their hands. Congress banned inmates at the state and federal level from receiving Pell grants in 1994, but Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he'll have an "important announcement" to make when he visits a Maryland prison this week, reports Politico. The administration will be able to temporarily lift the ban without going through Congress by treating the restoration of grants as an experiment in reducing re-offending rates, reports the Wall Street Journal, which notes that prisoners received $34 million in Pell grants in 1993. Pell grants are worth up to $5,775 a year, which Rep. Donna Edwards, co-sponsor of a bill to permanently restore the grants to prisoners, notes is a lot less than the $40,000 or so it costs to keep an inmate behind bars for a year. "We haven't really been able to get a handle on recidivism," the Democrat tells the Journal. "We have to present some training and opportunities. These are programs that work." The prison population has doubled in the 20 years since the grants were removed, and the bill's co-sponsors say inmates who take part in education programs are 43% less likely to end up back in prison, Politico notes. (This month, President Obama became the first sitting president to visit a prison.)
– If Kim Jong Un's disappearance from the public arena in recent weeks wasn't strange enough, now factor this in: The No. 2 and No. 3 leaders of North Korea made a surprise visit today to South Korea, reports the Washington Post. Delegations from both nations held their first high-level talks in five years, and while no details were released, they agreed to another round later this month or in November, reports ABC News. Leading the North's delegation was Hwang Pyong So, who has risen this year to become the second most powerful person behind Kim. “It’s a big deal, it's really a big deal, because it’s completely unprecedented,” a North Korea scholar who teaches in Seoul tells the Post. The BBC's Stephen Evans suspects that the North's economic troubles have forced the nation to ditch its old approach of hurling insults and threats at its neighbor. As for Kim, there's still no official explanation for his absence from public events, save for a documentary that showed him limping and referred to his "discomfort." Among the theories: Maybe gout or bum ankles.
– The former director of national intelligence minced no words Sunday in describing "our institutions" as being "under assault, both externally—and that's the big news here, is the Russian interference in our election system," Clapper told CNN in addressing James Comey's firing as he investigated that interference. "I think as well our institutions are under assault internally." Asked, "Internally, from the president?" Clapper said, "Exactly." He continued: "The founding fathers, in their genius, created a system of three co-equal branches of government and a built-in system of checks and balances. I feel as though that is under assault and is eroding." There was lots more Comey reaction on the Sunday dial, via the AP: Chuck Schumer: Wants a new FBI director "not of partisan background" with "great experience" and "courage." He also said Democrats should refuse to confirm a new director until a special investigator into Russian meddling had been appointed, per CNN. Lindsey Graham: "It's now time to pick somebody (to run the FBI) who comes from within the ranks, or is of such a reputation who has no political background at all who can go into the job from Day 1." Mark Warner: "I think Jim Comey deserves his chance to lay out to the American public his side of the facts," Warner said, per the Hill. "We would love to have Director Comey appear in an open hearing." Further, "how he was treated was pretty awful by this president."
– You'd think only good fun could come from George Clooney directing Matt Damon in Suburbicon. Apparently not so. The satire touching on murder, fraud, and also racism in 1950s suburbia has just a 29% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what they're saying. "There's no other way to say it—this movie stinks," writes Katie Walsh at Tribune News Service, throwing out a long list of adjectives: "irritating, faux-edgy, tonally wack, strained, unfunny," along with "shoddy, shameful." She complains in particular about a racism subplot that comes across as "condescending" and says the film fails by wanting us to do two things—feel upset about that subplot while finding hilarity in a "satirical family murder insurance scam. ... You can't mix nihilism and earnestness." Lindsey Bahr calls Suburbicon "a derivative and somewhat edgeless satire with some compelling performances nonetheless." Gary Basaraba and Oscar Isaac, specifically, are impressive, Bahr writes at the AP. But Damon and Julianne Moore aren't up to snuff. Nor is the story itself, which "doesn't even go far enough to satirize the hypocritical social mores of the time." The result feels "so much like something we've already seen before." Chris Klimek was impressed with Damon, Moore, as well as Isaac and child actor Noah Jupe. Too bad they're in a "tone-deaf” film that's "queasy to sit through," he writes at NPR. In condemning racism "in the most broad, perfunctory, awareness-ribbon-wearing way while barely allowing its black characters to speak … Suburbicon might be the biggest embarrassment to pious Hollywood liberalism since Crash won best picture in 2006," he writes. Colin Covert identifies the main problem as the reworking of Joel and Ethan Coen's script by Clooney and Grant Heslov, who should have made either a crime comedy or a piece of social commentary, but not both. Instead, Clooney made a film that's "strikingly bad, too somber to be a comedy and too dizzy to work as drama," Covert writes at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He does applaud Isaac, though. "In a film running a brief 104 minutes, he supplies 90% of the entertainment in 5% of the time."
– Barack Obama better get his Broadway fix while he can because if a couple dissatisfied French voters get their way, he'll soon have an important new job: president of France. CNN reports a campaign to elect Obama president of France sprung up in Paris this week featuring a website, petition, and more than 500 posters plastered around the city. The Obama17 campaign bears a familiar slogan to go with its familiar face, "Oui on peut," which translates to "Yes we can," according to NPR. The Verge reports the petition to make Obama the French president had 30,000 signatures by Friday morning despite one major stumbling block toward that goal: He's not a French citizen. Obama17 was started by two friends "after a drink," and while they admit it's a joke, they say it's one with a serious point: They're tired of the same French politicians running for office over and over and getting embroiled in scandals. One Obama17 organizer says he's sick of feeling like he's voting "against" someone instead of "for" someone, and Obama is the only politician who's ever inspired him. He might not be alone. Last year, a poll found 84% of French people trusted Obama to do the right thing on world issues, the Washington Post reports. "Who cares that he's not French? He's Barack Obama," one of the organizers tells CNN. The French begin voting for their next president April 23.
– Tech titan Scott Jones, best known for inventing voicemail and founding the search engine ChaCha, is moving on. The Indiana native has spent most of the past two years in Hawaii, and now he's decided to sell the Indiana house, which he has been renting out on Airbnb, for nearly $5 million and throw one of the country's "best estate sales ever conducted" per the company managing the sale, Aether Estate Sales Co. Fox59 reports that the Carmel home took seven years and $20 million to build in the tradition of an English country manor. It also boasts a 25-foot saltwater aquarium, circular mahogany slide, indoor tree house, and more. But what's for sale inside the 27,000-square-foot, 7-bedroom, 14-bathroom mega mansion is arguably more intriguing. That's because Jones, who is 56, is a collector with eclectic interests. Want a T. rex skull replica? That'll cost $10,000. A Steinway grand piano? That's a cool $100,000. He's also got "high-end, original art" and "museum-quality, priceless antiques," but because everything must go, there are even price tags on half-empty bottles of Windex (50 cents), reports IndyStar. The sale runs Sept. 14 through 17 and is open to the public; buyers can wander through the house to check out the wares as they would at any other estate sale. (Estate sales can turn up stolen masterpieces.)
– Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens acknowledges he was "unfaithful" in his marriage but denies allegations that he blackmailed the woman he had an affair with to stay quiet, the AP reports. The Republican governor and his wife, Sheena, released a joint statement Wednesday night after KMOV reported that Greitens had a sexual relationship with his former hairdresser in 2015. The station reported that the woman's ex-husband alleged Greitens photographed her nude and threatened to publicize the images if she spoke about the affair. "A few years ago, before Eric was elected governor, there was a time when he was unfaithful in our marriage," the Greitens' statement said. "It was a deeply personal mistake." The woman allegedly involved did not comment on the record to KMOV, which released its report late Wednesday after Greitens gave his State of the State speech. But her ex-husband, who divorced her in 2016, provided a recording of her detailing a sexual encounter with Greitens and saying Greitens told her the photos would be released if she exposed the affair. She did not know she was being recorded. Greitens' statement with his wife didn't address the affair specifically or the allegations, but in a separate statement, Greitens' attorney, Jim Bennett, said, "There was no blackmail and that claim is false." St. Louis Public Radio notes that the news could damage Greitens' higher political aspirations, especially since his 2016 campaign focused on character and family values.
– “You don’t mind if I go off script a little bit?” President Trump asked the audience Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Time reports the president, admitting his prepared remarks were "a little boring," mostly ignored the teleprompter (including a segment on new North Korean sanctions) during his nearly 75-minute speech. For Trump, going off script mostly meant getting back to some of his favorite rally topics: the size of his election victory, having "the most successful first year in the history of the presidency," and "atrocities" committed by the Clintons (complete with chants of "lock her up"). The president warned of the danger and treachery of immigrants, reciting The Snake by Al Wilson. Trump regularly recited lyrics from the 1960s song during his campaign. It culminates with the line, "You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in." Trump also addressed the topic of the moment: guns. "When we declare our schools to be gun-free zones it just puts our students in more danger, far more danger—well-trained gun-adept teachers and coaches should be able to carry concealed firearms," Politico quotes Trump as saying. Repeating his call to arm teachers, he added: “A teacher would have shot the hell out of [the Parkland shooter] before he knew what happened." Trump tried to fire up the audience for the 2018 midterms, warning them not to get complacent and allow Democrats to take control of Congress, the Hill reports. “If they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts, they will put judges in that you wouldn't believe, they'll take away your Second Amendment, which we will never allow to happen.”
– Critics are warning about the "very real risk of a botched execution" in what is to be the first US case of capital punishment using fentanyl. With manufacturers unwilling to sell any drugs to be used in executions, Nevada's Department of Corrections quietly purchased small doses of fentanyl from Cardinal Health over several months and plans to use the prescription painkiller in combination with paralytic drug cisatracurium and sedative midazolam in the state's first execution in 12 years, scheduled for Wednesday, per the Guardian and Vice. Critics, however, are putting up a fuss, and not only due to the secretive way officials went about acquiring the drug. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid well known for its role in the opioid epidemic, has "never been used in an execution before. It's extremely experimental," as Amy Rose of the American Civil Liberties Union puts it. Especially concerning is the fact that the fentanyl will be mixed with midazolam, which "has been at the center of executions that have gone visibly wrong in every single state in which it has been used," says Maya Foa of anti-death penalty group Reprieve. She tells the Guardian execution strategies are normally reviewed by courts through inmate appeals. Not so in this case, as double murderer Scott Dozier—convicted of second-degree murder in 2005 and first-degree murder in 2007—accepts his fate and says he wants to die. It's unclear if there's enough opposition to stave off the execution, though the ACLU is looking into the legality of how Nevada obtained the fentanyl. But if it goes ahead, Gov. Brian Sandoval "is in danger of creating the very black market he is trying to eliminate," pharmaceutical expert Donald Downing argues at the Reno Gazette Journal.
– There's no word yet on what killed Cory Monteith—the autopsy is scheduled for today, Fox News reports—but one thing is certain: After completing a month in rehab in April, Monteith seemed upbeat and looking forward to whatever the future held, the Los Angeles Times reports. He was seen in magazines vacationing with girlfriend and Glee co-star Lea Michele, and it appeared he had turned things around. In his last interview, he told E! he was "really, really happy to be coming back" to Glee; one of E!'s sources says he was "committed to getting sober. He would say this was his last chance." Then he was found dead in his Vancouver hotel room Saturday just after noon; security records show he had returned to the room in the wee hours that morning. Police say he went out with friends Friday night, but was alone when he got back to his room, the Atlantic Wire reports. Two days before his death, Monteith had "a quiet night with a lot of laughing" with a mentor who runs a children's arts charity, she tells People. "He looked so good, so healthy," she says. "I hadn't seen him look that good in a long time. ... He was in great spirits." (Click to see a photo from the meal, which could be the last photo taken of Monteith.) The mentor says no one drank alcohol during the meal, but TMZ notes Monteith was drinking on July 6, the day he checked into the hotel. Many of his Glee co-stars, as well as the show's producers and Fox network, are reacting to Monteith's death, but the only official word from Michele's rep: "We ask that everyone kindly respect Lea's privacy during this devastating time." A source tells HollywoodLife that Michele, 26, "is absolutely hysterical and completely inconsolable. She is devastated beyond belief."
– Connor Cummins' family describes him to WABC-TV as a photography devotee—and that enthusiasm may have cost him his life. The New Jersey man, said to be either 20 or 24 years old, and an 18-year-old pal ascended the scaffolding outside NYC's Four Seasons hotel Wednesday night in search of the perfect panoramic picture—but Cummins may have slipped on railings made slippery by the rain and fell nine stories to his death, cops tell NJ.com. An NYPD spokesman tells the New York Daily News that the initial investigation suggests the men weren't guests of the hotel. Cummins, who originally hails from Rockaway and whose Facebook page indicates he's now a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, per ABC, landed on one of the hotel's lower-level rooftops around 11:15pm and was pronounced dead at the scene, reports the New York Post. His friend wasn't injured and was questioned by authorities to fill in the blanks; he was released Thursday morning without being charged. "He was a loving boy, that's all I can say," one of Cummins' relatives tells the Post. "I don't know what happened." (There's more suspicion surrounding a Muslim teen's fatal fall off a Seattle building.)
– When John and Jeanette Betancourt were alerted Friday that their 4-month-old son had been bitten at his San Antonio day care, Jeanette went to pick him up and noticed the day care operator was holding the infant close to her body. "She finally turns my son around and the first thing my wife notices is his legs," John Betancourt tells the Houston Chronicle, describing a horrific scene that involved not only bites on the baby's legs, but also on his eye area, cheeks, stomach, and back—27 bites in all by another child at the day care, KENS 5 reports. Now the state of Texas has shut down the in-home operation, which investigators say is unlicensed and has been in business for eight years, and the incident is being probed by the San Antonio PD to see if the operator could face charges. The woman, who was found with eight children in her charge Monday when investigators showed up, told Jeanette Betancourt that although she heard the baby crying, she didn't think anything was wrong, per the paper. On Tuesday, the day care operator told KENS 5 that she called the parents minutes after realizing the baby had been bitten and that she wasn't aware she needed a license, saying, "Yesterday I found out." But the Betancourts tell KENS 5 that the woman waited four hours to call them (and only after the baby's wounds didn't fade), and John Betancourt tells the Chronicle, "When we went to her house to do the initial interview ... she showed us that she had a license"; he adds he wishes they'd confirmed that. Other parents who've sent their children to the day care tell KENS 5 they never had any issues. The baby, meanwhile, is healing and "doing fine now," the dad tells the Chronicle.
– Four people died and four more were injured in a flurry of gunfire outside a popular downtown Buffalo restaurant early this morning, reports the Buffalo News. (Earlier media reports of a fifth death were the result of confusion with another city homicide.) A private party—the celebration of an out-of-town couple's one-year anniversary—was one of several taking place at the City Grill when shots erupted around 2:30am. One of the victims was the newlywed husband. Later, police raided a city home and took an apparent suspect into custody but didn't provide any details. "It's just a senseless killing," the father of 32-year-old victim Tiffany Wilhite tells the News. "A senseless, random killing." The scene was chaos, one partygoer tells the AP: "A lot of people were real upset, just trying to get out of the way. Nobody knew where anything was coming from. Everyone was in a panic." The victims were in their 20s and 30s.
– While Hong Kong is undoubtedly a more pleasant place to spend time than an Ecuadorian embassy—let alone a US prison—analysts are baffled by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's decision to take refuge there, as are lawmakers in the largely self-governing Chinese territory. Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US, though Beijing maintains the right of veto over it, notes the Guardian, calling Snowden's move a "high-stakes gamble" that makes his fate "a matter of political expediency." What's more, CNN adds that hotel costs will soon max out Snowden's limited funds. (And then there's the stir-crazy factor; he has apparently left his room just three times in the last three weeks.) Snowden—who admits he doesn't expect to see home again—says he chose Hong Kong because they "have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent," though his first choice for asylum would be Iceland, CNN reports. Some Hong Kong politicians say the territory's history of working closely with the US makes it a poor choice for Snowden—though others say they are "flattered." A criminal investigation into the leak has begun and the US is expected to begin extradition proceedings soon; a long legal battle in Hong Kong could ensue before Beijing decides on using its veto, the Wall Street Journal reports. In the meantime, Snowden has gotten his very own White House petition, with some 8,734 people, at the time of this writing, requesting "a full, free, and absolute pardon" for the "national hero."
– Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis' new memoir is dedicated in part to daughters Amber, Dru, and Tate, and those familiar with Davis' life story might be puzzled by the last name on that list. That's because Davis is revealing for the first time that Tate is the unborn child that she and her husband aborted in the second trimester, after doctors discovered a severe brain abnormality. The San Antonio Express-News and the AP obtained advanced copies, and the news is generating headlines given that Davis shot to national fame while filibustering against an abortion bill in Texas. Davis writes that she decided to abort in 1996 after doctors said the baby would be blind, deaf, and in a vegetative state if she survived the pregnancy. Davis also felt the fetus “tremble violently" in the womb, "as if someone were applying an electric shock to her, and I knew then what I needed to do. She was suffering." Her doctor "quieted" the unborn child's heart and delivered her by C-section. Davis and her husband had Tate baptized. After the abortion, "an indescribable blackness followed," writes Davis in Forgetting to Be Afraid, "and when I finally did come through it, I emerged a different person." Davis also writes of a previously disclosed procedure to terminate an earlier ectopic pregnancy in which the embryo was implanted outside the uterus. She says she opted not to talk about either case during her famous filibuster because she feared it would "overshadow the events of the day."
– If you love the taste of Chick-fil-A but loathe the company president's recent statements against gay marriage, you may want to head over to ChickenOffset.com, a website that allows you to donate money to gay rights campaigns after you've wolfed down that spicy chicken sandwich. The website was started by Washington, DC, lawyer and activist Ted Frank, who says he loves the restaurant's fare but not "the guilt of indirectly supporting Chick-fil-A's stance on gay rights." Frank tells the Huffington Post that giving money—$1 per offset—to groups like It Gets Better and the Williams Institute is a lot more effective than "depriving Christian groups of $0.0001 by boycotting Chick-fil-A." Frank isn't the only gay rights supporter coming up with creative ways to strike back at the eatery...
– Catalonia's regional parliament passed a motion Friday to establish an independent Catalan Republic, voting to secede from Spain after an acrimonious debate that saw opposition lawmakers walk out in protest before the vote, the AP reports. The vote in Barcelona was approved with 70 in favor of independence, 10 against, and two blank ballots in Catalonia's 135-member parliament. Shortly after the vote, Spain's Senate authorized the government to apply constitutional measures to take control of the government of Catalonia. A majority of senators gave Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy the go-ahead Friday to apply unprecedented measures including sacking Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont and his cabinet. It also authorized him to curtail Catalan parliamentary powers. The Spanish government must now decide how and when to apply the measures. It says they are temporary and aimed at restoring legality in the northeastern region that is an economic powerhouse in Spain. "I call on all Spaniards to remain calm. The rule of law will restore legality to Catalonia," Rajoy said on Twitter. Separatist lawmakers in the regional parliament erupted in applause and chants when the chamber's main speaker announced the passing of the motion. Outside, thousands who had gathered near the parliament building cheered, with some dancing and raising glasses after seeing the vote and the counting live on a giant screen. No country in the world has expressed support for independence for Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain that has 7.5 million people.
– A multi-state hunt for two missing New Mexico State University students ended in Idaho Thursday morning. The Las Cruces Sun-News reports that 18-year-old McKinnah Sinclair and 19-year-old Charlie Daniels, missing since they attended a hip-hop concert in Texas last Friday, were found driving in Nampa and said to be in good condition. A Facebook post from the Las Cruces Police Department notes a Nampa cop pulled over a red Ford Focus crawling along at 30mph below the highway speed limit and found Sinclair and Daniels inside, with Daniels behind the wheel. A lieutenant with the department tells the Sun-News the car, which apparently belonged to one of the teens' parents, had been reported stolen and was sporting license plates from another car. Investigators say the women purposely switched plates before they started traveling the country. Before they ended up in the Gem State, they had been caught on camera in Beverly Hills, Calif., Monday at an ATM. All told, they covered a driving distance of at least 1,600 miles before they were located, the Sun-News estimates. They hadn't been answering calls to their cellphones or contact on social media since they vanished after the concert. KTSM reports it's still vague what the teens' final destination was, or why they didn't tell anyone where they were going. The police in Nampa didn't detain the women after determining they were OK (both are technically adults), but the LCPD says their families have put things in place to get them back to New Mexico.
– A Brazilian woman got quite the surprise when she went on a radio show this week to reconnect with her long-lost mother, Gawker reports. Adriana, 39, who gave no last name, went on Radio Globo's The Time Is Now (which helps people find lost family members) and talked to her mother for the first time. The big news: Adriana had a brother who'd been given up as a child and raised by a relative, just like Adriana was. Bigger news: His name was Leandro, just like Adriana's husband. The two men, in fact, had the same last name. "I don’t believe that you’re telling me this," said a sobbing Adriana, the Daily Mail reports. "Leandro is my husband." The couple has a 6-year-old daughter. Adriana was given up at the age of one and raised by her father, according to the show. Her husband Leandro, 37, learned at age 8 that he'd also been abandoned at a young age, then raised by his step-mother. By the time Adriana and Leandro met, each had spent years seeking their birth mother—without knowing it was the same person. "Now I'm scared to go home and find out that Leandro doesn't want me anymore," she said. "I love him so much." But she later said that the pair, who were never legally married, will stay together "whatever anyone might think." Their romantic connection isn't that unusual, according to experts who estimate that up to 50% of such reunions include at least short-term attraction and sometimes sexual obsession, reports an old Guardian article. (Read about twins who reunited after 78 years—a new world record.)
– Mathematician Katherine Johnson was one of the women of NASA depicted in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, and now she's about to get her own Lego figure. Per MIT News, Johnson and four other women involved with the space agency over the years—Margaret Hamilton (computer scientist), Mae Jemison (first African-American woman in space in 1992), Nancy Grace Roman (pioneering NASA female exec and astronomer), and Sally Ride (the first US woman in space in 1983)—are set to be part of Maia Weinstock's "Women of NASA" Lego prototype, which was chosen from the Lego ideas submission website to be made into an actual set. Concepts for potential sets can be posted on the site, and after the public votes (Weinstock, the deputy editor of MIT News, got 10,000 votes for her idea), Lego then reviews eligible projects. Weinstock says she not only wanted to give a nod to the history of women in STEM, but also to "set an example" for both girls and boys that it isn't "strange or unusual" for there to be females working as astronauts, computer programmers, or any other science or technology expert. Lego says more details on Weinstock's set, including how much it will cost and its release date, should be out later this year or in early 2018. (Cambridge is offering a Lego professorship.)
– A 7-year-old Syrian girl whose tweets from Aleppo showcased the horrors of war has appealed to President Trump to "do something for the children of Syria." Now living in Turkey, Bana Alabed wrote a letter to the new president days before his inauguration, the BBC reports. "Dear Donald Trump," she writes, "I lived in Syria my whole life (and) ... I am part of the Syrian children who suffered from the Syrian war." Although she is now safe, "millions of Syrian children are not like me," she writes. "They are suffering. … I know you will be the president of America, so can you please save the children and people of Syria?" Bana's mother, Fatemah, sent the text to the BBC. (Read the full letter here.) Bana opted to make her plea in writing after seeing Trump "many times on the TV," Fatemah says. Like Trump, Bana has a penchant for tweeting—she has 362,000 followers—although hers drove home the terror in besieged Aleppo before her family was evacuated last month as government forces regained control of the city. More than 300,000 people, including 150,000 children, have been killed in the six-year civil war, reports the Guardian. Trump's position on Syria is not yet known. A White House spokesman said the president would "work with any country" committed to fighting ISIS, per the Guardian. The Pentagon, meanwhile, denied on Monday that US warplanes aided a Russian mission in Syria. Russia supports the government of President Bashar al-Assad. (Bana "befriended" JK Rowling.)
– Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced a new development Wednesday in Flint's water crisis that "just adds to the disaster we are already facing": specifically, a marked increase in cases of Legionnaires' disease that could be linked to the area's tainted water, reports the Detroit Free Press. From June 2014 to November 2015, there were 87 cases in Genesee County, 10 of them fatal, per the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. In the previous four years, Legionnaires' cases ran from six per year to 13, CNN notes. And while the MDHHS isn't able to definitively tie the spike to Flint's water, it's taking the news seriously, and a drinking water expert who's been studying Flint's water tells the Free Press there's a "very strong likelihood" that it played a role. MDHHS officials first observed the rise in Legionnaires' cases in the fall of 2014, per the Free Press, and researchers found the bacteria to blame was proliferating in larger buildings, many with older plumbing. "Our hypothesis is that something about the Flint River and lack of corrosion control, plus big buildings, is creating these problems," Marc Edwards, head of an independent Virginia team looking into the crisis, tells the Free Press. Speaking Wednesday, Snyder said he learned of the issue just "a few days ago" and appeared to place some blame on the state's Department of Environmental Quality, the paper notes. "We're taking every action within reason, and going beyond reason to address this," he said. State health officials say it's OK for residents to shower and bathe, though they still can't drink the water. Edwards' team agrees, though he laments how it's all been handled. "It's a crisis of conscience in government," he tells CNN. "There are just so many places where you wish people had done things differently."
– Ferocious winds in Southern California whipped up an explosive wildfire that forced thousands of homes to evacuate and could soon threaten a city of more than 100,000, authorities say. The blaze broke out Monday and grew wildly to more than 15 square miles in the hours that followed, consuming vegetation that hasn't burned in decades, Ventura County Fire Sgt. Eric Buschow says. The winds are pushing it toward Santa Paula, a city of some 30,000 people about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles, the AP reports. Most of the evacuated homes are in that city. Authorities say that the city of Ventura, which is 12 miles southwest and has 106,000 residents, is likely to feel the effects soon. "The fire growth is just absolutely exponential," Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen says. "All that firefighters can do when we have winds like this is get out ahead, evacuate people, and protect structures." One person was killed in a fire-related car crash and at least two structures have burned so far, officials say. Winds exceeding 40mph and gusts over 60mph are expected to continue, the National Weather Service says. Firefighters and aircraft from neighboring Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties poured in to help, though darkness and winds forced the grounding of planes late Monday night. The Los Angeles Times reports that 260,000 people in the area were without power early Tuesday.
– People in one Hawaiian city may have to say "aloha" to texting while crossing the street.* CNN reports the Honolulu City Council voted 7-2 Wednesday to bar pedestrians from looking at their mobile devices while crossing the street. The legislation applies to cellphones, tablets, video games, digital cameras, pagers, and laptops, according to Hawaii News Now. Pedestrians caught checking Facebook or sending a tweet while in the street would be subject to a fine of between $15 and $99. Fines could increase to up to $500 for multiple citations. Brandon Elefante says he got the idea for the legislation from high school students. "These high school groups were concerned for their peers being distracted while crossing the streets and looking at their phones instead of looking both ways," the councilman tells CNN. While the Honolulu Police Department supports the legislation, Councilman Ernie Martin, who voted against it, says a public awareness campaign would be a better solution. The legislation now heads to Mayor Kirk Caldwell for approval. A spokesperson for the mayor's office tells KITV that Caldwell is still deciding whether he'll approve the legislation. *Ed. Note: In this case, "aloha" means "goodbye," not "hello."
– When Joan and Richard Bowell decided it was time to leave the Greek island of Syros, they first needed to find someone to manage the cat sanctuary they'd established there. God's Little People Cat Rescue, which started with one stray mama cat and her two kittens, expanded to more than 60 cats roaming the Bowells' property as they continued to take in strays. They posted a Facebook ad for a modestly paid job managing the sanctuary—and 40,000 people responded. The ad went viral, spawning headlines about the "dream job" or "purrrfect job," leading the Bowells to explain to would-be caretakers that it would, in fact, often be a difficult job—not only would poop have to be scooped and the like, but "heartbreaking decisions" would need to be made about sick cats. Months later, as the Washington Post reports, the sanctuary's caretaker has been chosen. Jeffyne Telson's husband sent her the ad soon after it was posted in August, the 62-year-old recalls. Telson runs her own cat rescue in Santa Barbara, Calif., only taking in strays; she's adopted out 3,000 cats and kittens over the past 21 years and has kept those who can't be placed at her own small sanctuary. Her application stood out, and the Bowells traveled to California to visit the couple in September. Joan and Jeffyne clicked immediately, and the Bowells offered Telson the job. She'll run the Syros sanctuary for some months, while volunteers run her Santa Barbara rescue, and other finalists for the Syros job will likely then take their own turns managing God's Little People. Meanwhile, the Bowells are looking into expanding the sanctuary, possibly even using it as an international training center for similarly-minded volunteers.
– The full-length Ferris Bueller-inspired Super Bowl ad is here, and AdWeek dubs it "awesome." Matthew Broderick stars in "Matthew's Day Off," a Honda ad in which he calls in sick to a film shoot in order to do all sorts of fun stuff in his CR-V. The extended version of the ad (watch in the gallery) clocks in at nearly two and a half minutes, and according to its YouTube page, features more than two dozen references to the 1986 movie. "Broderick doesn't sully the original film's reputation here," writes Tim Nudd. "Quite the opposite—this is how a tribute should look."
– A disturbing video getting attention on social media shows a row of eight Chinese bank employees on a stage being told to "get their butts ready" then spanked—hard—in front of their colleagues for "not exceeding themselves." The employees had been in a "Breakthrough in Performance" training class, and a man with a microphone asked them each to explain why they ranked lowest in the class, the South China Morning Post reports. After they all gave reasons like "failing to make a personal breakthrough," he whacked each of them on the behind with a thick stick four times. (After the third time, when one woman tried to cover herself with her hands, he yelled, "Take off your hand!") After the 75-second video, taken by someone in the audience, appeared online Monday and went viral, the president and another executive from the bank were suspended. Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives Union confirmed the video was taken during Zhangze Rural Commercial Bank's training on Saturday. NPR, citing People's Daily, says at least 200 people were in the audience. An anonymous staff member says that another punishment involved 16 employees whose heads were forcibly shaved. The man doing the spanking was a trainer, not a bank executive, and reportedly charges more than $15,000 per day for his classes. He has publicly apologized, though he insists spanking is "one of the most effective ways to raise consciousness."
– Critics are predictably split on President Obama's much-hyped Daily Show appearance last night, but no one seems to think he single-handedly saved—or doomed—Democrats: Though Jon Stewart and Obama are both funny in their own ways, they managed "to not be very funny together for the show's entire 22 minutes," writes Hank Stuever in the Washington Post. "Obama seemed resiliently cool as ever, ready-made for just about anything one can do on television ... But that anything—a surprise moment, or a difficult question, or a failed attempt at humor—never quite arrived." Also in the Post, Dana Milbank weighs in: "As in his MTV appearance a couple of weeks ago, Obama didn't try to connect with his youthful audience. He was serious and defensive," and even had "a Brownie moment" when he insisted that "Larry Summers did a heckuva job." But at least "Obama has been willing to bring his presidential platform to settings his predecessors might have regarded as unconventional, to say the least," writes Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the New York Times, noting that "the gentle ribbing was perhaps a price the White House was willing to pay for the opportunity to reach Mr. Stewart’s valuable audience." As far as Stewart is concerned, the president's "presence was enough to quiet grumbles from some on the left that an election-eve snark-fest [Saturday's Rally to Restore Sanity] made light of the real dangers of Republican control," write Ben Smith and Byron Tau on Politico. "Stewart played a comic, not a courtier, to Obama on his set, but he also let the president appear to be in on the joke." To watch the interview, click here.
– Britain's Royal Air Force has scrambled fighter jets twice this month after receiving warnings of possible attempts to hijack American passenger jets, defense sources say. Both incidents proved to be false alarms but they have put fresh focus on Britain's post 9/11 counterterrorism procedures for commercial aircraft, the BBC reports. The Guardian notes that PM Gordon Brown was alerted, and could have faced the decision of whether to shoot an airliner down to avoid a potential attack. In the most recent incident, fighter jets were scrambled after air traffic controllers overheard the words "hostage" and "ransom" in a conversation on a flight from the US, followed by a highly unusual request to carry out a sudden descent to test auxiliary power units. The jets followed the aircraft through UK airspace and into Belgium, where it landed. Defense officials said the matter was resolved but declined to provide further details.
– San Diego police have named two suspects in a teen girl's cold-case murder, including a former San Diego Police Department criminologist. DNA evidence found in November 2012 led police to Ronald Clyde Tatro and Kevin Charles Brown—though as of Tuesday, both men are dead. Claire Hough, 14, was found strangled with sand pushed into her mouth at Torrey Pines State Beach on Aug. 24, 1984, the Los Angeles Times reports. One of her breasts had been cut off. Brown, who processed evidence for the force from 1982 to 2002 but was not "assigned to any part of the murder investigation," knew he was a person of interest, FOX 5 reports. The 62-year-old was found dead in a state park on Tuesday, and his death has been ruled a suicide. Tatro was 67 when he died in a 2011 boating accident in Tennessee. Officers had been building a case against Brown over the last two years and were planning an arrest, NBC San Diego reports. "I can only surmise that was part of the reason" he killed himself, a police rep says. Authorities aren't saying what kind of DNA evidence led them to the suspects, how the two men knew each other, or their relationship to the victim. The Rhode Island teen had been visiting her grandparents at the time of her death; it's unclear why she went to the beach that night. Police continue to investigate a similar killing at the same beach in August 1978. The body of Barbara Nantais, 15, was found beaten and strangled, with one breast cut. Police say there's no evidence to link the murders. "We are not treating them as related cases," a rep tells the AP. (A TV show helped bring about an arrest in a 1997 murder.)
– A month ago, Lamar Austin was hired by a security company for a 90-day trial period that involved him being on call 24/7. On New Year's Day, Austin's son was born. Austin, who had already had to miss one shift offered to him due to a doctor's appointment for his wife, ended up missing shifts on Friday and Saturday. Son Cainan was born Sunday, and at 1am that day, Austin got a text notifying him he'd been terminated from Salerno Protective Services. Austin's story made headlines, especially due to the fact that Cainan was the first baby born in Concord, NH, in 2017. "If I have to choose between work and family, I’m always going to pick my family," Austin told the Monitor shortly after his son's birth. Since then, people have been stepping up to help Austin, a 30-year-old military veteran and father of four, big-time. He's gotten offers for at least three jobs, plus money raised for him on a GoFundMe page set up by a mother who was upset by what happened to Austin—even though, as experts explain to the Concord Monitor, it's perfectly legal in an "at-will" employment state such as New Hampshire. In a statement reported by WCVB, Anthony Salerno Jr. cited confidentiality in not commenting on the particulars of the situation, but did say "SPS is not in the practice of releasing employees for reasons stated in the article published in the monitor [sic] but must be cognizant of the product we give our clients!" But there's no bad blood, Austin tells the Monitor. "[Salerno] had his company, which is like his baby, and I had my baby ... Naturally, he’s going to pick his baby over my baby. I can't blame him for that." (This waitress lost her job for firing a shot at robbers.)
– Debris from EgyptAir Flight 804 has been found in the waters near Greece's Karpathos Island, ABC News reports via a statement from the airline. The country's Ministry of Civil Aviation was sent an official letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirming the find; EgyptAir says family members of passengers and crew have been informed and "conveys its deepest sorrows." Meanwhile, as officials probe the cause of the crash, an Egyptian official says it's looking more like terrorism than mechanical malfunction, USA Today reports. In a Thursday press conference held before the debris was confirmed, Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi says the "possibility of a terror attack is higher than that of a technical error," noting he based that assessment on "what I read and from my expertise," per Al-Ahram. But, he added, "these remain assumptions and possible scenarios." More developments: NBC News offers a breakdown of what countries the passengers were from. A radar map showing the plane's flight path appears on the Telegraph. There were three air marshals aboard the flight, per MSNBC. CBS News examines Egypt's "checkered air travel safety record." In addition to aviation experts, government officials, and law enforcement authorities, Donald Trump is chiming in on what he thinks happened, the New York Post reports.
– A 9-year-old girl and her twin 6-year-old brothers were struck and killed by a pickup truck as they crossed a northern Indiana road to board a school bus before sunrise Tuesday, police said. A fourth child was critically injured and airlifted to a hospital, the AP reports. A Tippecanoe Valley School Corp. bus had stopped and lowered its stop-arm on the road near Rochester around 7am, just before a northbound pickup truck slammed into the children as they crossed the southbound lane, Indiana State Police Sgt. Tony Slocum said. Six-year-old twin brothers Xzavier and Mason Ingle and their 9-year-old sister, Alivia Stahl, died at the scene, he said. The rural Rochester residents were students at nearby Mentone Elementary School. The siblings' great aunt, Pamela Pugh, told the South Bend Tribune that she was stunned and shaken by their deaths. "I'm just trying to make sense of all of it. There are no words," she said. Slocum said an 11-year-old boy not related to the deceased siblings suffered multiple broken bones when he was also hit by the pickup. That child, Maverik Lowe, was in critical condition at a Fort Wayne hospital and was undergoing surgery. Lowe was conscious and speaking to emergency workers before he was airlifted to the hospital, Slocum said. The pickup driver, 24-year-old Alyssa Shepherd of Rochester, was arrested and charged with three counts of reckless homicide and one misdemeanor count of passing a school bus when arm signal device is extended, causing bodily injury. (A school bus driver's illegal U-turn allegedly caused a fatal crash.)
– They're not quite working together, but American and Cuban authorities are both looking into the theft of at least 70 artworks from a Havana museum. In the first such heist reported since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, paintings worth a total of around $1.5 million were apparently cut from their frames while in storage at the Cuban capital's National Museum of Fine Arts, reports CNN. The theft was uncovered after Miami art dealer Ramon Cernuda bought a suspicious painting and alerted both the museum and the FBI late last month; the museum then reviewed its archives and confirmed the theft. Cernuda says art theft in Cuba is extremely rare, and it is rarer still for stolen Cuban art to be found in the US. "The theft is so much more complicated than the smuggling out of Cuba," he says. "To just get the art out of the museum is very complicated." Soon after the museum acknowledged the theft, Cuba's minister of culture was fired without explanation, the Havana Times notes. Cernuda says he turned the stolen painting over to the FBI and he believes the agency will hand any recovered artworks back to Havana despite poor US-Cuban relations. "I am about certain it will go back," he says. "Stolen property is stolen property."
– There's at least one graffiti vigilante on the loose at Columbia University. Over the past week, lists have been appearing in bathrooms across the school's campus, with titles like "Rapists on Campus" and "Sexual Assault Violators on Campus," according to student media reports. The first list, reported by the Lion, appeared to featured the handwriting of multiple people, though subsequent lists—featuring the same four names—appeared to be the work of one person. Yesterday the campaign reached a new level, when two more graffiti lists were found and flyers describing the alleged wrongdoers were found in multiple stalls, according to Bwog. The school has quickly scrubbed the graffiti each time it has been found—yesterday it reportedly began closing down bathrooms until it could be sure it had removed the lists. Media outlets have so far blacked out all the names when posting photos of the list—Bwog said that senior administrators had warned that publishing it would violate Title IX—but Jezebel reports that the list includes a musician, a varsity athlete, and a "prominent writer for a campus publication." That publication may have been Bwog; the site posted a statement from its editors yesterday saying that a member of its staff had indeed been accused of violating the school's Gender Based Misconduct policy, and had agreed to resign.
– What's harder to watch: An adult human kicking a puppy or an adult human kicking another adult human? Science says: the puppy. A new study has found abused dogs—both puppies and grown-ups—elicit more sympathy than abused adult humans. Abused human kids, however, are equally sympathetic as abused dogs, LiveScience reports. "The fact that adult human crime victims receive less empathy than do child, puppy, and full grown dog victims suggests that adult dogs are regarded as dependent and vulnerable not unlike their younger canine counterparts and kids," says one of the study's researchers. The researchers at Northeastern University in Boston showed 240 students one of four news articles about a beating—each article was the same except for the victim, which was variously an infant, a puppy, a man in his 30s, or a 6-year-old dog. "We were surprised by the interaction of age and species," says a co-author of the study, per Science Daily. "Age seems to trump species, when it comes to eliciting empathy. In addition, it appears that adult humans are viewed as capable of protecting themselves while full grown dogs are just seen as larger puppies."
– Authorities have rounded up hundreds of relatives of Kim Jong Un's recently executed uncle and ferried them to prison camps, according to a report out of Seoul. The night after Jang Song Thaek was executed, "armed men from the Ministry of State Security arrived unannounced in the Pyongchon area of Pyongyang where a lot of his relatives lived," an insider tells the Daily NK, which is run by defectors, Fox News notes. "It was not just his close relatives who were taken away, but distant members of his family, too." Observers say family members could be executed or spend life in prison (though things appear OK for Kim's aunt). In other news from Pyongyang: The Telegraph lists some of the 24 charges against Jang, which apparently included "gnawing at the unity and cohesion of the party" and "dreaming different dreams." He was also blamed for "improper relations with several women" and "squandering foreign currency at casinos." But Pyongyang's claims that Jang was executed over his plans to seize power are likely inaccurate, says South Korea's head of intelligence: The real problem was Jang and his associates' push to take control of major business deals—for instance, coal sales to China, the official said in a closed meeting, as noted by the New York Times. After Jang's rivals complained, Kim ordered Jang's associates to drop certain deals, but they refused; Kim believed his authority was being questioned. In less consequential North Korea news, Dennis Rodman has exited the country, having wrapped up his third "fun" visit. He didn't get to see his pal Kim this time around (he was training basketball players), but tells CNN, "I'm not worried about it. I'll see him again. I will be coming back in another week."
– Chicago police will screen the bags of passengers getting on the city's CTA trains in what the department calls a "proactive, protective measure," the Chicago Tribune reports. "We know that surface transportation has been targeted in other places in the past"—places like Madrid and New York—and police "want to take whatever precautions possible," says a spokesman. A few days a week, passengers at a single station will be randomly selected to have their bags swabbed, but not opened, in a check for explosives. If passengers refuse the test, they'll be required to leave the station, but they can get on the train elsewhere—unless police have "probable cause" to question them, the spokesman says. If a passenger fails the swab test, police will ask to look in his or her bag. The program, funded using a portion of a federal anti-terror grant, has some riders questioning its usefulness. "If they swab one random person's bag, what about the next person who might have something?" asks one passenger. "I think it's just a waste of money and time." As for time, a police officer says it will take "20 to 30 seconds" to do a check, CBS 2 reports. "While we know our commuters’ time is precious, we think their safety is probably priceless."
– Jamie Denbo, who plays Ginsberg on Orange Is the New Black, is 43. Which is, in Hollywood terms, apparently not young enough to be the wife of a 57-year-old and the mother of an 18-year-old. In a series of tweets last week just now getting mainstream attention, Denbo says she was told she was "too old" to play such a role in a project, which she did not name. "The real wife of the 57 year-old actor is EASILY AT LEAST 50. But this f---er wants to be tv married to a 38 year-old -TOPS," she wrote, adding that the characters involved are in a first marriage, so no, this isn't a situation where the female character is a "re-wife." Per E! News, she refused to name the actor, but did say he's considered an "American treasure." (This situation is not a first.)
– John Carter was burdened by production drama and bad press about its giant budget; now critics are getting a chance to see what the fuss was all about. It's no great work of art, but the story of a Civil War veteran turned Martian hero is reasonably exciting, they say: In Slate, Dana Stevens calls the film "a strange, at times misshapen, but somehow lovable thing: a movie that keeps trying to be smaller and simpler than its $250 million special-effects budget will permit." Its best moments are simply as a "bare-bones space western," but there aren't enough of those moments. Roger Ebert calls the movie a "rousing boy's adventure story" that "will probably succeed" at generating a franchise. Does it "get the job done for the weekend action audience? Yes, I suppose it does," he writes in the Chicago Sun-Times. "For all the bumps in the narrative ... and less-than-stellar 3D effects, John Carter exerts the pull of a tall tale told by a campfire," notes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. But in the Los Angeles Times, Betsy Sharkey can't forgive the movie's flaws. She calls it "hit and miss, and miss, and miss," noting that it's "the latest version of a long and rich Hollywood tradition: the big-budget fiasco. It's enough to make your jaw drop."
– John McCain has put together quite the résumé for himself lately, and it includes the wrath of Vladimir Putin, ISIS, Fidel Castro, and now the regime of Bashar al-Assad. McCain added those latest bragging rights after Bashar Ja'afari, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, yesterday asked the Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to "take the necessary measures against their nationals who enter Syrian territory illegally," Time reports. Although Ja'afari blasted "certain journalists and prominent figures" for this infraction, he specifically singled out the Arizona senator's entry into the country's rebel-held territory in June 2013, Reuters reports. McCain took the opportunity yesterday to cheerfully tweet that "Today I hit the Superfecta! First I was sanctioned by Vladimir Putin, then #ISIS called me 'enemy #1.'" His elation spread into a second tweet, which read "Next Fidel Castro said I created #ISIS w/ #Israel's Mossad and today Assad regime tried to sanction me @UN for visit to #Syrian rebels." He elaborated in a more somber statement yesterday: "It is a sad but unsurprising truth that the Assad regime is less concerned with its massacre of more than 200,000 men, women, and children than it is my visit with those brave Syrians fighting for their freedom and dignity." (Is McCain trying to add Obama to his list?)
– One of South Carolina's most notorious serial killers claims to have buried two more bodies near an interstate—but a full day of searching Wednesday failed to find any remains. Police using cadaver dogs searched an area near Interstate 26 in southern Spartanburg County without success after receiving information from a production company making a documentary on Todd Kohlhepp, who is already serving life for seven murders, CBS News reports. Sheriff Chuck Wright said there would be no more searching without new information. "At present, there aren't any plans to go back to the site tomorrow, and that lead will be suspended until Kohlhepp decides to share more detailed information that can be verified," he told WYFF4, adding that while he doesn't want to give Kohlhepp more attention, it is his duty to families of potential victims to investigate. "This will be the last time this happens until he gives me some specifics that I can corroborate, because I don't want it to be one of those things—he wants to stay relevant," he said. (Kohlhepp has previously said he won't disclose how many people he killed.)
– Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old right-wing nationalist suspected of killing at least 92 people in Norway on Friday, apparently left behind a 1,500-page manifesto and a 12-minute video detailing his bizarre beliefs, reports the New York Times. The document, titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence” and posted to the Internet hours before the attacks, blasts "multiculturalism" and "Marxism" and provides a detailed daily diary of Breivik's preparations in the months leading up to the attacks. Both his lawyer and police say he has confessed to the attacks, the AP reports. The manifesto claims that a small group of like-minded militants would “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda," and talks of a London meeting in 2002 to re-form the "Knights Templar" crusading order. “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come," wrote Breivik, predicting a war that would kill or hurt more than 1 million people. Some analysts say the manifesto bears a striking resemblance to the writings of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. “It seems to be an attempt to mirror al-Qaeda," but from a Christian rather than Muslim viewpoint, says a Norwegian terrorism expert.
– Last week, Gizmodo claimed that an investigation showed most of the female user profiles on Ashley Madison were either fake or inactive—the same complaint hackers had about the site before leaking a massive amount of data—and now the cheating website is hitting back. "Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated," Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison's parent company, says in a statement picked up by Reuters. In fact, the company claims that not only have hundreds of thousands of people signed up for Ashley Madison accounts in the past week, but 87,596 of those people are women. Today's statement notes that an unnamed reporter—presumably referring to the Gizmodo writer—incorrectly calculated the number of active female users when looking at the leaked data, and that in truth, "last week alone, women sent more than 2.8 million messages within our platform." Ars Technica notes that there's no way to confirm the number of new sign-ups, and as for those 2.8 million messages, "the company ... made no assurances that the female messages weren't generated by automated scripts." And Engadget notes that while Avid Life Media's statement also claims the ratio of men to active ladies on the site is 1.2 to 1, the company "isn't outlining the ratio of real to fake women, so it's not clear whether real women are bountiful or needles in the proverbial haystack." On another note, the leaked Ashley Madison data revealed that Avid Life Media had been "struggling to sell itself or raise funds" in the three years before the hack, Reuters reports.
– The latest in the attempt to better define Aurora shooter James Holmes: He apparently had a lot of target practice, isn't so smart, and may have a thing for prostitutes. From the most to least concrete: Based on Holmes' "unusually high" hit rate, police believe he had extensive target practice in advance of the shootings, reports the Los Angeles Times. To be able to kill or wound 70 moving targets in a dark theater cloaked in gas is no easy feat, and the kick from the shotgun (used to shower the theater with buckshot, or something like it) and Glock (which he switched to after his semiautomatic AR-15 jammed) only added to the difficulty level. Such a hit rate under those circumstances would be "unusually high for someone new to this," said one law enforcement official. So he was a skilled shooter—but was he brilliant? His neuroscience career path, his federal grant, that science camp video may indicate so, but the man Holmes listed as his camp mentor calls him a "mediocre" student; another neuroscientist says he was considered a "dolt," reports USA Today. He "should not have gotten into the summer program. I've heard him described as brilliant. This is extremely inaccurate." As for that $26,000 grant, "Everyone has one.There is nothing elite about it." (Business Insider speculates that the grant money could have paid for his weapons cache.) And then there's the latest from TMZ, which claims Holmes frequented prostitutes in the months before the attack. Click to hear from three women Holmes supposedly "reviewed" online.
– Take your fingers off your cell phone, and nobody gets hurt. That could be a warning from one New Jersey town's cops, who are handing out $85 jaywalking tickets to pedestrians who text while they walk—117 so far. "It’s a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going, and they are not aware," said the chief of the Fort Lee police department. Three pedestrians have been killed this year in car accidents, and investigators hope the crackdown will help public safety. Texters, considered "dangerous walkers" by the police department, were warned about the fines with brochures in March, notes ABC News. Two professors at a New York university found that texters are 60% more likely to veer cluelessly off their route than non-texters, increasing the likelihood that they'll stray into danger. Texters, not surprisingly, aren't LOL-ing about the change. “When I walk I still look around. I’m not, like, constantly looking down the whole time,” sniffed one resident.
– Federal officials say postal workers in metro Atlanta weren't just delivering mail but also cocaine on behalf of drug traffickers in exchange for bribes as low as $250. When the gavel came down Tuesday, a mail clerk and 15 letter carriers had been sentenced to between three and nine years in prison. The scheme first came to light in 2015 during an investigation into a drug trafficking group, which apparently thought postal workers would have a better chance of making the deliveries uncaught, according to the US Attorney's Office. Federal agents then watched as a confidential source posing as a drug trafficker sought USPS employees willing to deliver drugs to specific addresses for bribes, nabbing 16 "corrupt" workers ranging in age from 26 to 64, per CNN and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. In a statement, prosecutors note defendants negotiated the amount of money they would charge and took additional bribes for packages delivered by other employees they recruited. Though USPS workers are "typically valuable members of the community, entrusted to deliver the mail every day to our homes," these 16 individuals "chose to abuse" the public trust and "used their positions to bring what they thought were large amounts of dangerous drugs into those same communities for a quick payoff," says US Attorney Byung J. Pak. Noting the possibility that rival drug traffickers could target USPS workers, officials say the scheme also put innocent people at risk. In addition to prison time, the workers were ordered to pay restitution. (This postal worker stole 6,000 greeting cards.)
– The Texas Board of Education issued a warning to textbook publishers today: It wants future social studies books to fix what it sees as a pro-Islam and anti-Christian bias, reports the Dallas Morning News. "What we're trying to do is prohibit and send a clear message to the publishers that (the bias) should not happen in the future," said one board member who voted with the majority in the 7-6 decision. Proponents say current books whitewash negative aspects of Muslim culture, and they say it's because "Middle Easterners" have big investments in the publishing industry. As for opponents: “This makes us look cuckoo,” said a board member on the losing side. "It's crazy. We are allowing ourselves to be distracted by this narrow-minded resolution, which is itself biased. We should have taken the higher ground on this.” More details at AOL News.
– The Democratic National Committee has agreed to restore access to voter files for the Bernie Sanders campaign, cooling tensions in what Politico calls a "civil war" within the party over the Sanders campaign's improper accessing of Clinton campaign data. The DNC agreed to restore access soon after the Sanders campaign made good on its threat to file a lawsuit but the two sides described the development in very different ways, reports the Washington Post. The Sanders campaign said the DNC had "capitulated" and "reversed its outrageous decision," while the DNC's statement said it had decided to restore access because the Sanders campaign had agreed to "fully cooperate with the continuing DNC investigation of this breach." The issue has caused angry words to be exchanged ahead of Saturday night's debate, the AP reports. The Clinton campaign seemed especially annoyed by a Sanders fundraising email accusing the DNC of "tipping the scales" for Clinton. "They stole data as a reason to raise money for their campaign," Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said, per Politico. He said the breach was far more than the "inadvertent glimpse into our data" the Sanders campaign has described. "It's outrageous to suggest that our campaign 'stole' any data," countered Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs. "What is true is the data we collected and need to run a winning campaign is now being stolen from us by a DNC dominated by Clinton people."
– At least one Glee cast member is apologizing for the racy GQ photo shoot that has the Parents Television Council up in arms. Dianna Agron writes on her blog, “I am sorry. If you are hurt or these photos make you uncomfortable, it was never our intention,” but notes that when it comes to pushing the envelope, “we are not the first.” “If your eight-year-old has a copy of our GQ cover in hand, again I am sorry,” she continues. “But I would have to ask, how on earth did it get there?” She also notes that, though these days “kids can be subject to very adult material,” there are “parental locks” and other safeguarding methods. Even so, she acknowledges, “Nobody is perfect, and these photos do not represent who I am.” For more pictures from the controversial shoot, click here.
– In 2013, after Edward Snowden dropped his NSA bombshell, President Obama called for an end to spying on certain world leaders. But Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli bigwigs remained on the "keep an eye on" list for "compelling national security" reasons, current and ex-US officials tell the Wall Street Journal. Included in the US spying sweep were conversations between Israeli officials and US lawmakers and American-Jewish groups, which, as one senior US official tells the paper, resulted in an "Oh s--- moment" that the executive branch would be nailed for spying on Congress. The White House, though, felt the info necessary to rebut lobbying Netanyahu might do against a US-Iran deal; still, it was "wary of a paper trail stemming from a request." And so "we didn't say, 'Do it' [to the NSA]," a senior US official tells the Journal. "We didn't say, 'Don't do it.'" Instead, the administration more or less let the NSA share whatever info it saw fit, and the NSA did just that, reportedly following tight mandates about spying on communications "to, from, or about" Americans, the paper notes. For example, the agency took out names of individual lawmakers and any personal info in reports it submitted to the White House and also omitted any "trash talk" about the administration, officials tell the Journal. At least one presidential candidate isn't surprised by the revelations. "This administration views Congress, Republicans, and sometimes even Democratic members of Congress as their enemy," Ted Cruz tells CBS News. "At times, it seems like they view the American people as their enemy." A National Security Council spokesman, however, tells CBS, "[W]e do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose. This applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike."
– Elton John's feud with Madonna continues, with John declaring last night that the Material Girl's "career is over." As evidence, he pointed out that "her tour has been a disaster," adding, "it couldn't happen to a bigger ****." Appearing on Australian show Sunday Night, John also had harsh words for Madonna's look, comparing her to "a f***ing fairground stripper." Why so angry? John may have provided a clue; he accused Madonna of being "so horrible" to Lady Gaga, who just so happens to be godmother to John's son, the Daily Mail notes. "She's such a nightmare," he said. "If Madonna had any common sense she would have made a record like Ray of Light and stayed away from the dance stuff and just been a great pop singer and make great pop records, which she does brilliantly."
– Next time you’re tired and hungry, don’t waste time pounding a Red Bull and a snack—get both fixes with some Perky Jerky. Available on the Internet and coming next week to Sports Authority outlets in New York, each ounce packs as much caffeine as one cup of coffee or a can of Red Bull. “This is a great combination,” a company founder tells the Daily News, “like vodka and orange juice, or peanut butter and chocolate.” Matt Keiser says the idea was born on a Utah ski slope 4 years ago, when he slopped Red Bull on some jerky. It got mixed person-on-the-street reviews, however. “It is disgusting,” one New Yorker says. “I like beef jerky. I like caffeine. But it is not a good combination.” But, says another, “I didn’t crash after the workout like I do with Red Bull.”
– Lululemon's see-through yoga pants sound scandalous, and a scandal is what the company appears to have on its hands. The Taiwanese supplier of the pants is hitting back after the yogawear chain blamed its massive pants recall on the manufacturer. "All shipments to Lululemon went through a certification process which Lululemon had approved," Eclat's CFO tells the Wall Street Journal. "All the pants were manufactured according to the requirements set out in the contract with Lululemon." Writing for the Atlantic Wire, Adam Clark Estes sums up the drama thusly: "So which one is it? Did Eclat make a bad batch of $100 yoga pants, or did Lululemon just design transparent $100 yoga [pants] and milk the market for as long as it could?" For now, it remains unclear, and Lululemon may have larger problems on its hands than some potentially see-through pants: This is the fourth quality control issue the chain has experienced in the past year, and some analysts are expressing concern that the company "does not have the appropriate presence in and around its factories. It appears that there is not appropriate oversight in place."
– Why anyone would enter into a relationship with Tiger Woods after this is a mystery to us, and yet: Sources tell Star skier Lindsey Vonn has done just that, according to the New York Daily News and the New York Post. They've apparently been together since November, with Tiger visiting the Olympian in Austria while she was racing, then taking her to Antigua. According to a Hollywood Life source, "They met through the ski community, because Tiger is an active skier," and Vonn has been teaching his kids how to ski. It's the first serious relationship for Tiger, 37, since his divorce from Elin Nordegren (who, the Daily News notes, looks a bit like Vonn). As for the 28-year-old Vonn, she was just divorced from her husband of six years, Thomas, this month. For some reason most of us probably wouldn't comprehend, Tiger "wants to marry again," a source explains. He "thinks Lindsey could be the woman." But "it took Lindsey a while to trust him because of his past," says a source, and her friends are reportedly concerned.
– Power: One day you have it, the next you don't. No one likely knows that better than the world's 50 "least powerful" people, described by 24/7 Wall St. as "well-known individuals around the world who have recently experienced a precipitous loss in stature." The top 10: Anthony Scaramucci: Where to begin? Try here, here, and here. Chris Christie: The former head of Donald Trump's transition team has the lowest approval rating of any governor in New Jersey's history. James Comey: The former FBI director lasted not even five months under Trump. Mark Fields: The Ford CEO was canned after shares fell almost 40% during his tenure. Tiger Woods: Blame his DUI arrest and 899th ranking in men's pro golf. Kendall Jenner: Remember that Pepsi commercial? Montgomery Moran: After a wave of issues at Chipotle, the co-CEO stepped down last year. Tomi Lahren: The conservative media personality was suspended from the Blaze after announcing she was pro-choice. Park Geun-hye: The former president of South Korea was impeached and jailed after a corruption scandal involving Samsung. Mitch McConnell: As Senate majority leader, McConnell failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Click for the full list, which also includes Sean Spicer, R. Kelly, and Theresa May. (See last year's ranking here.)
– "The first assumption was someone had done something to him," but the reality is much less nefarious: Juneau Police Chief Bryce Johnson on Wednesday announced that the city's newly installed mayor died of natural causes, reports the Alaska Dispatch News. Though the AP notes Greg Fisk was found "bruised and bloodied," the injuries he sustained—which Johnson specified were on his face—resulted from a fall, not an attack, per preliminary autopsy results. The 70-year-old is believed to have hit a counter and "other objects" as he fell; Fisk was found dead Monday by his son after he was a no-show at morning appointments. Police believe Fisk died that same morning, and while the specific cause of death hasn't been given, Johnson did note that Fisk's health history included heart issues. Fisk had been in the job since October; Deputy Mayor Mary Becker has been named acting mayor.
– Lady Gaga showed up on the Grammys red carpet all Ziggy Stardusted-up in her Marc Jacobs getup and platform heels, ostensibly to get her pumped for her much-talked-about tribute to David Bowie (she even got a giant tattoo of Bowie on her torso over the weekend, per the New York Daily News). And like all things Bowie, her set was replete with costume changes and vibrantly colorful lights in an Intel-sponsored performance that was described by PSFK.com before the show as being "experimental" with a "wizard behind the curtain" feel." Gaga ran through some of Bowie's best-loved hits, including "Space Oddity," "Changes," "Ziggy Stardust" (which she accompanied on the keyboard), "Suffragette City," "Rebel Rebel," "Fashion," "Fame," "Let's Dance," and "Heroes." The performance was called a "burst of rock 'n' roll energy on a sleepy night" by the Verge, while Rolling Stone deemed it an "astonishing" and "transformative performance."
– After Robin Williams' sudden death, the tributes are rolling in, with many recalling a comic genius grappling with private challenges. A sampling: When it comes to comedy, "there wasn't a faster brain on the planet," writes Tony Hicks in the Contra Costa Times. We'll be hearing "a litany of tributes about one of the great comedians who ever lived. Much of it will be some of the same adjectives used when any great performer dies—especially before their time. But in Williams' case, most of it will be true." Early in his career, "it was clear that Mr. Williams was one of the most explosively, exhaustingly, prodigiously verbal comedians who ever lived," AO Scott writes in the New York Times. And beyond that, "his essential persona as an entertainer combined neediness and generosity, intelligence and kindness, in ways that were charming and often unexpectedly moving." Williams may have gotten his start long before Aladdin, but he gave a "generous and humble" gift to the millennial generation, writes Daniel D'Addario at Salon. "Williams will be remembered for his edgy comedy and for dramatic turns, but for people my age, Williams was our childhood," from Mrs. Doubtfire to Jumanji to Flubber. In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan recalls a moment when, facing an onslaught of photographers, Williams asked him—in the voice of a fly from a 1950s sci-fi flick—to "help me, Ken. Help me." The experience stuck with him and seems particularly resonant today, he writes.
– An Oklahoma girl diagnosed with "super" E. coli is facing a life-or-death battle—and worse, she's only 11 months old. "With this strain of E. coli, it can get in her brain, it can get in her spinal cord, basically cause her to go into cardiac arrest," her grandfather, Chris Curtis, tells KFOR. "And we heard that it was a very, very scary situation." Her family says it's not clear how Oakleigh Nance got the infection, which appears resistant to antibiotics, but the CDC is investigating. It all started when Oakleigh was born premature at only 3 pounds and "started off on 4 liters of oxygen," according to a GoFundMe page to help pay her medical bills. "In the NICU, they used to call her Miss Sassy because of her ability to express her displeasure with her circumstances," the page says. Then she went home and was fine for months until a 104-degree temperature and severe urinary tract infection sent her back to the hospital. Since then, she's been diagnosed with moderate ASD and pulmonary stenosis of the heart, stage 3 kidney reflux, and "a dangerous, antibiotic resistant strain of Pseudomonas," says the GoFundMe page. Now doctors are planning a 4 1/2-hour procedure on her kidney, which is functioning at 22%, to possibly prevent other infections. "I know that God is in control of all else, and when I think about what’s going on in her life, I think about my faith in God," says Curtis. "That’s what sustains me and gets me through it." (Read about a brain-eating bacteria that has returned to Louisiana.)
– Donald Trump is softening his rhetoric on Pope Francis after blasting the leader of the Catholic Church for suggesting the billionaire businessman's plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border made him "not Christian." Trump said during a town hall event on CNN that he now believes the pope's remarks were "probably a little bit nicer" than first reported. Trump said he believes the pope has only heard one side of the story, as told by the Mexican government, and isn't aware of the problems Trump claims are caused by a porous border. Trump also said he has great respect for Pope Francis. Still, he couldn't help but offer a dig, noting that, "He's got an awfully big wall at the Vatican." During the University of South Carolina town hall, Trump, who has long claimed to have opposed the invasion of Iraq, was also asked about BuzzFeed's unearthing of a 2002 interview in which Howard Stern asked him whether he supported the invasion. "Yeah, I guess so," he responded at the time, according to the audio. "I wish the first time in was done correctly." At the town hall, he told Anderson Cooper he didn't remember the conversation, but he said, "I mean, I could have said that. ... It was probably the first time anybody asked me that question," adding that his opposition was early, "even if it was a little bit after the war." More from the town hall: Trump said that if he's elected to the White House, he plans to send cease-and-desist letters or similar threats to countries he believes are giving the US raw deals. He said he would send letters "to China to stop ripping us off. I would be sending them to other countries to stop ripping us off. I'd send them to Mexico." John Kasich described how his life had been shaped by the day his parents were killed by a drunk driver. "They were at the Burger King because they got the second cup of coffee for free. That's the way the mailman and Mrs. Kasich lived," he said. "I went into a black hole" after they died in 1987, he added, but he recovered and soon found God. Jeb Bush insisted that he still has momentum "if you look at the polls and if you look at the crowd sizes of our town hall meetings," and he said the endorsement from Sen. Lindsey Graham signals that he's ready to serve from Day 1 as "commander in chief and as leader of the free world."
– Sure, no one was that desperate for a Men in Black 3—but it's actually a pretty good summer movie. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back defending the planet from aliens, and this time, Josh Brolin's along for the ride as a young Jones. The movie "turns out to be so much fun," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. While it "carefully fulfills its blockbuster imperatives—with chases and explosions and elaborately contrived plot twists—it swerves into some marvelously silly, unexpectedly witty, and genuinely fresh territory." Writing in USA Today, Claudia Puig is impressed. "This spirited three-quel comes close to the exuberance of the first Men in Black and is a distinct improvement over its limp 2002 follow-up." Roger Ebert would go further: With "an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters," and "audacious cliff-hanging," the latest film is "better than the first one," he declares. But Mary Pols isn't so sure about the overall picture. "When it comes down to it, the only reason to see Men in Black 3 is Josh Brolin," she writes in Time. "He hits all those querulous notes just right. Posture, body language, Brolin nails it; his sideways glance is pure poetry of Tommy Lee-ness."
– Eric Holder angrily denied that the Justice Department was trying to hide anything about the botched "Operation Fast and Furious" program in his testimony before Congress today—and insisted that he'd had no knowledge of the gun-tracking operation. "There's no attempt at any kind of coverup," the attorney general said, pointing out that the department had turned over thousands of documents and intended to turn over more. "This has become political, I get that," he added, according to Fox News. "Not only did I not authorize those tactics, when I found out about them, I told the field … that those tactics had to stop," he said. (The idea was to track weapons as they made their way to cartels, but authorities lost track of many.) Holder added that those responsible would likely be fired or charged with crimes within six months, once an internal investigation is finished. "I can assure you those people will be removed from federal service," he said, according to CNN. But Republicans weren't satisfied, saying he was still withholding documents, and Darrell Issa threatened to do whatever necessary to obtain them. Issa has previously threatened to charge Holder with contempt of Congress.
– Vox has declared a winner in the great Nordstrom-Trump war of 2017, and it isn't the president. After the retailer announced it was dropping Ivanka Trump's clothing line due to poor sales, Trump on Wednesday took to Twitter to share his displeasure. After very briefly dipping, Nordstrom's stock rebounded in a big way. It was up nearly 5% by the end of the day—a day when the rest of the market was "essentially flat," the Los Angeles Times reports. A financial reporter for the Seattle Times tweeted that Wednesday was Nordstrom's sixth best day on the market in the past year and ninth best day in the past five years. This despite White House press secretary Sean Spicer calling Nordstrom's decision to drop Ivanka's line a "direct attack" on the president, his policies, and his family that is "not acceptable."
– It is one of the most unusual, and rarest, jobs in the country: Larry Villarin is a certified male sex surrogate, one of only 10 in the US sanctioned by the International Professional Surrogates Association. But as a profile at Broadly makes clear, the 62-year-old Villarin is not to be confused with a male gigolo. His role is to help clients "cope with their fears and anxieties about physical intimacy," writes Natalie O'Neill, and sex is just one component of that. The story uses the example of a 35-year-old woman who had shied away from intimacy her entire adult life because a car accident as a teenager left her blind in one eye. She'd never even been kissed until her sessions with Villarin. "She needed to believe I wouldn't laugh at her or run away," he says. "It was beautiful to see her open up." On its website, IPSA says "it is committed to promoting healthy attitudes toward sexuality and intimacy in our clients and in the community," and the story explains that it gets around prostitution laws "because it doesn't acknowledge intercourse is part of the practice." Villarin says his clients range in age from 22 to 75, with milestone birthdays seemingly one of the big triggers. Most are referred to him from a psychologist, with survivors of abuse and women with disabilities among those reaching out. One of the tricky parts is setting boundaries so the clients don't confuse the physical intimacy with romantic feelings for Villarin. "It's just growth—what humans are capable of," he says. "Gosh, it's intimate stuff." Click for the full story. (This study has concluded how often happy couples have sex.)
– Tunisia has arrested 33 members of the country's despised former first family. The relatives of ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali were caught trying to flee the country with large amounts of valuables, reports the Financial Times. The clan of former first lady Leila Trabelsi had a huge amount of control over Tunisia's economy and were widely hated as symbols of corruption and excess, AP notes. Soon after Ben Ali and his wife fled the country, businesses and homes belonging to the Trabelsi clan were looted and burned. The ex-leader's bank accounts and other assets have been frozen by the Swiss. The arrested family members are accused of "crimes against Tunisia," according to state television. A Tunis Air pilot has become a national hero for refusing to take off while five members of the Trabelsi clan were on board a flight to France.
– Tunisia was not pleased today when a battle between Libya’s warring factions spilled across the border today, after Moammar Gadhafi’s forces attacked a rebel-held frontier crossing. The incursion was brief and limited, and Gadhafi’s forces even apologized locally, Reuters reports. But Tunisia’s foreign ministry still issued a statement expressing “extreme indignation” and demanding “measures to put an immediate stop to these violations.” But Tunisia has proven remarkably welcoming to Libyans who aren’t fighting. Some 30,000 refugees have fled there, and the vast majority of them have been welcomed into the homes of Tunisians, the New York Times reports. Only about 2,500 have had to settle in the relatively small refugee camp at the border. “It’s the first time I’ve seen such an impressive response,” says a spokesman for the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees.
– A homeless man was arrested after hopping the White House fence Tuesday night in an incident captured by CNN's John King USA program, which was filming from the North Lawn. The man was quickly taken into custody by Secret Service agents who approached him with guns drawn. Security officers locked the area down after finding a backpack that had been thrown over the fence nearby. The 41-year-old intruder was charged with unlawful entry and contempt of court for breaking a judicial order requiring him to stay away from the White House. It's not uncommon for the White House fence to be breached, notes the Washington Post: A 6-year-old girl made it onto the White House lawn over the weekend by slipping through the fence instead of going over it. Secret Service agents returned her to her parents.
– Jurgen Klinsmann is out as coach of the US men's soccer team, the AP reports, ending a contentious five-year love-hate relationship on the job. US Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati announced Monday that Klinsmann has been "relieved of his duties" as coach and technical director for US Soccer. The move isn't exactly surprising, notes the New York Times, following a pair of embarrassing losses that damaged the Americans' efforts to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. The final straw came less than a week ago, as the Times puts it: "Then came the 4-0 thrashing against the Ticos in which Klinsmann’s team looked alternately disorganized, dispirited and—perhaps most damningly—disinterested." "While we remain confident that we have quality players to help us advance to Russia 2018, the form and growth of the team up to this point left us convinced that we need to go in a different direction," said Gulati in a statement. Klinsmann replaced Bob Bradley in July 2011 and led the team to the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup title and the second round of the 2014 World Cup, where the Americans lost to Belgium in extra time. But the US was knocked out in last year's Gold Cup semifinals, lost to Mexico in a playoff for a Confederations Cup berth and started 0-2 this month in the final round of World Cup qualifying.
– Mitt Romney's aides are using the crisis in the Middle East as a backdrop to flesh out their candidate's foreign policy, and it's a hawkish one, the New York Times reports. Aides said that if Mitt Romney had been president over the past four years… The US would have been actively involved in helping to form Libya's post-revolution government. He'd have set down the kind of "red line" against Iran that Israel is looking for, using military action if Iran crossed a certain point in nuclear development. They said Romney wouldn't have allowed Iran to enrich uranium, though the Times points out that it was doing that during much of George W. Bush's second term. The US would be "facilitating" the flow of arms to Syrian rebels, though not directly arming them. One Obama aide quips that it "sounds a lot like they are endorsing our position." All the positions are much more detailed than anything Romney himself has said on the campaign trail. The aides also attacked President Obama over the Libya crisis in especially harsh terms. "There is a pretty compelling store that if you had a President Romney, you'd be in a different situation," one adviser told the Washington Post. "For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we've had an American ambassador assassinated. … The respect for America has gone down, there's not a sense of American resolve."
– Talk about a brave 61-year-old: Patricia Maisch is being called a hero after wrenching away the Tucson shooter’s ammunition, preventing him from reloading as she helped press him to the ground, ABC News reports. Maisch was in line to meet Rep. Gabrielle Giffords when the shooting began. She threw herself to the ground to dodge the attack, and found Jared Lee Loughner “next to me on the ground” after he was laid low by another bystander. A trio of men—Bill Badger, Roger Sulzgeber, and Joseph Zimudie—had "knocked him down" and sat on him as she held his ankles. "I kneeled over him. He was pulling a magazine and I grabbed the magazine and secured that." "I think the men got the gun, and I was able to get the magazine," preventing him from reloading, Maisch said. Click for more on the four heroes.
– A substitute teacher was found throwing up at South Carolina's Brookland-Cayce High School, but a stomach bug wasn't to blame. Judith Richards-Gartee has been charged with disorderly conduct after allegedly drinking boxed wine in her classroom. Administrators say they found the 52-year-old vomiting and incapable of standing when they came to her classroom at 9:45am Friday, reports the State. She was removed via wheelchair, and a Lexington County deputy who was on the clock as the school resource officer says he found the boxed wine in her purse. Students reported that she was consuming it in class. WIS reports that in a statement Lexington School District 2 made clear that Richards-Gartee was not its employee, but had been hired by the company the district contracts with. (These students in Arizona can probably relate.)
– Sad and surprising news from Italy, where Sopranos' star James Gandolfini died of an apparent heart attack today at age 51, reports TMZ. (Other reports say a stroke.) The actor who brought Tony Soprano to life on HBO for six seasons was in Sicily for a film festival, says the Hollywood Reporter. He won three Emmys as best actor in the role, but he also had a busy film career before and after the show. It ranges from 1993's True Romance (where he drew notice as a hitman) to more recent films such as Zero Dark Thirty. "Overweight, balding, with a thick New York accent, Gandolfini was the opposite of a marquee leading man and yet he proved through his masterful acting that he could make Tony Soprano sexy and smart," writes Nellie Andreeva at Deadline. HBO confirmed the death of the Jersey native in a statement: “He was special man, a great talent, but more importantly a gentle and loving person who treated everyone no matter their title or position with equal respect.”
– The big summit is just hours away now, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is downplaying expectations of a huge breakthrough when President Trump and Kim Jong Un meet face to face. Their meeting "will set the framework for the hard work that will follow,” said Pompeo, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. “We’ll see how far we get." Pompeo reiterated that the US will not ease sanctions against North Korea for anything less than complete denuclearization. Coverage: The meeting: Trump and Kim will meet at 9pm Eastern on Singapore's Sentosa Island (that's 9am Tuesday in Singapore), shake hands, take a ceremonial walk, and then go behind closed doors for their meeting. It will be just the two of them and their interpreters, reports the Washington Post. No timetable is set on how long the session will last, but the White House has set aside two hours. Change of schedule: Kim took in some of the sights in Singapore Monday evening and was seen waving and smiling to onlookers, reports Reuters. President Trump, meanwhile, told reporters he is confident the summit is "going to work out quite nicely." Trump will head back to Washington Tuesday evening instead of Wednesday morning as originally scheduled, because talks are moving "more quickly than expected," per a White House statement. It didn't elaborate on what that meant.
– Same-sex marriage is now just one step away from being legal in France. The country's lower house of parliament today voted 329 to 229 to approve a controversial bill that would redefine a marriage as a contract between two people, without reference to gender, allowing gay and lesbian couples to both get married and adopt children, France 24 reports. The bill faced fierce opposition from France's Catholics, and from conservative lawmakers, who introduced more than 5,000 amendments to delay its passage. But now the bill needs only to clear the senate to become law, according to CNN. The vote comes as a similar bill is working its way through the UK parliament.
– Adam Levine was Christina Grimmie's coach during her time on reality competition The Voice—and now the Maroon 5 singer has offered to pay for her funeral, Billboard reports. Grimmie was murdered after a concert Friday night; her brother, Marcus, wrote on Facebook Sunday night that Levine "personally called my mother and said he will pay for the funeral and her plane flight, and I was blown away." On Saturday, Levine tweeted a picture of himself with Grimmie. "Behati and I are absolutely devastated and heartbroken by Christina Grimmie’s death," he wrote. "Our hearts go out to her family." In his post, Marcus Grimmie added that his sister's manager, Brian Teefey, has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help with expenses; it's raised more than $170,000 so far. Teefey writes on the page that Grimmie "was like a second daughter to me."
– Harrison Ford had to crash-land his small plane on a golf course near Los Angeles today, but he appears to have escaped serious harm. "Dad is ok," tweeted son Ben Ford from the hospital. "Battered but ok!" The AP reports that the 72-year-old veteran pilot suffered "moderate injuries," and NBC Los Angeles says that includes cuts to the head. Ford reported engine trouble and requested permission to make an emergency return to the Santa Monica Airport soon after taking off, reports TMZ. He landed on the course in Venice instead, and two doctors who happened to be there treated him until he was taken to the hospital. NBC reports that he appeared to be flying solo in a WWII-era training plane, and CNN reports that he appeared to hit some trees on the way down. "There was blood all over his face," says an employee at Penmar Golf Course. "Two very fine doctors were treating him, taking good care of him. I helped put a blanket under his hip."
– The FDA has ordered 23andMe to "immediately discontinue marketing" its genetic testing kits, saying that the company has repeatedly failed to prove the product actually works. The Google-backed company offers mail-in genetic testing, which it promises can reveal your risk for various health conditions and drug allergies. In a sharply-worded warning letter addressed to co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki, the FDA says it fears false positives could cause consumers to undergo unnecessary procedures, while false negatives could make them miss actual warning signs. The FDA says it's had "more than 14 face-to-face teleconference meetings" and "hundreds of email exchanges," with the company, and provided "ample detailed feedback" on what it must do. But "we still do not have any assurance that the firm has analytically or clinically validated the [test] for its intended uses." The company has 15 days to respond, and has released a statement saying it realizes it hasn't "met the FDA's expectations regarding timeline and communication." The case is being carefully watched as a sign for how the FDA will deal with genetic testing, experts tell the Washington Post.
– Watch what you say about the fidelity of the women of Egypt. That's a lesson Taymour el-Sobky is learning the hard way. The blogger, who runs the Facebook page "The Diary of a Suffering Man," has been sentenced to three years in prison with hard labor by a court in Giza, CNN reports. According to the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper, el-Sobky said, "Thirty percent of women have a readiness for immorality ... but cannot find someone to encourage them," while appearing on a TV show in December. A flood of complaints followed the comments, and a public prosecutor charged el-Sobky for "spreading false news," the AP reports. El-Sobky, who says his comments were taken out of context, has apologized. An appeal is scheduled for March 30. Rights lawyer Gamal Eid says el-Sobky's case highlights how public opinion, rather than the rule of law, controls the legal system in Egypt. Whatever one may think of el-Sobky's comments, "he did not commit a crime," Eid says, adding that the "government violates the law day and night, and implements it haphazardly." More often these days, the government is cracking down on artists, writers, and intellectuals, the AP notes. Ahmed Naji, for instance, received two years in prison for violating "public modesty" after an excerpt from his novel that contained a sex scene was published in a literary magazine. Also, a TV presenter is serving a year in prison for "defaming religious symbols," and another writer has appealed a three-year sentence for defaming Islam.
– Authorities on Friday officially closed their investigation into the death of Kenneka Jenkins, who was found "frozen solid" in a freezer in the unused kitchen of a Chicago-area hotel Sept. 10, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. According to the Chicago Tribune, Rosemont police—after a thorough investigation that included interviews with 44 people, dozens of hours of surveillance footage, forensic analysis on multiple cellphones, and more—have determined the 19-year-old's death to be accidental, stating there is "no evidence that indicates any other conclusion." Police say none of the conspiracy theories about foul play floated on social media "were supported by facts," CNN reports. Police say there is no evidence Jenkins was forced to drink or take drugs at the party where she was last seen. Jenkins' family doesn't appear satisfied with the conclusion of authorities. Along with the closing of the investigation, police released documents related to the case on Friday. Lawyers for Jenkins' mother say the "graphic and disturbing" photos of Jenkins' body in the freezer "inexplicably show portions of Kenneka's body exposed" and "raise more questions ... than they answer." Photos of Jenkins' body in the freezer show her with her jean jacket still on but her shirt pulled up "exposing her breasts." This could be the result of what scientists call "paradoxical undressing" in which a hypothermia victim removes clothing despite freezing to death. A medical examiner had already concluded Jenkins died from hypothermia with no signs of internal or external trauma. In a statement, police called her death "especially sad."
– It's a story that forces Business Standard to state the obvious: "Passengers are prohibited from entering the cockpit of a commercial flight." But what's obvious to most apparently wasn't to one man "offloaded" from a plane in India on Monday after police and airline officials say he tried to bust into the cockpit to charge his cellphone, Sky News reports. An IndiGo spokesperson says the "unruly" passenger, who was also believed to be drunk, caused the ruckus as the plane was getting ready to take off from Mumbai on its flight to Calcutta. The man, said to be around 35, was removed from the plane "on the grounds of a security violation," per the airline rep, and was questioned by local police, then released with no charges. Sky notes another problem passenger in India this week, one on a GoAir flight from New Delhi who tried to pull open his plane's rear door, apparently thinking he was entering the lavatory. That man was removed from the plane upon landing in Patna and taken away by police. AFP notes that more people have been flying in India in the past few years due to less-expensive fares and better connection options, leading to more first-time fliers who may be prone to do things like … this.
– USA Gymnastics has refused to give up its status at the sport's national governing body, so the US Olympic Committee has started what could be a months-long process to force it out. The USOC first moved to decertify USA Gymnastics earlier this month, saying the organization had failed to make the right changes after the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal. The USOC says USA Gymnastics declined the option to voluntarily relinquish its status and instead asked questions about the hearing process, the New York Times reports. "This is a situation in which there are no perfect solutions," USOC chief executive Sarah Hirshland said in a statement. "Seeking to revoke recognition is not a decision that the USOC came to easily, but we continue to believe it is the right action." "The path is not crystal clear, but our motives are ... to ensure the NGB for gymnastics in the United States is the type of organization each gymnast and the coaches, trainers and club owners who support them, deserve," Hirshland said. Her next step will be to select a three-person panel with representatives from USOC's board of directors, the National Governing Bodies Council and the Athletes' Advisory Council to review the complaint and make a recommendation to the full USOC board, USA Today reports. USA Gymnastics, which is still seeking a new CEO, will remain the sport's governing body during the process. (A former USA Gymnastics president has been charged with evidence-tampering in the Nassar case.)
– The son of former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed turns up in Philadelphia to be trained by his dead father's once-opponent Rocky Balboa in Creed—a movie cheered by critics, who give it a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what they're saying: "You'd expect a boxing movie to deliver the body blows, but what's surprising are the various tender caresses the movie delivers," writes Joe Dziemianowicz at the New York Daily News. Creed not only "packs a mighty punch," but it's "an exciting, amusing, and well-acted crowd-pleaser," he says. Sylvester Stallone will "knock your socks off," he adds. Sure, the David-versus-Goliath angle is "corny, but it still works." "Despite getting laid out in excruciatingly graphic detail, the kid somehow comes roaring back, not so much struggling to his feet as leaping. Which is exactly what this energetic, hugely entertaining film does for the four-decades-old franchise," writes Tom Russo at the Boston Globe. Michael B. Jordan and Stallone are each great on their own and "develop a terrific, relaxed chemistry," he says. The movie also "works on two levels, tending equally to nostalgists and a younger crowd." "This is the best Rocky film since the original" and "one of the year's warmest and most crowd-pleasing surprises," praises Lou Lumenick at the New York Post. A training montage shows writer-director Ryan Coogler "not only respects but totally gets what made the original underdog classic win the Best Picture Oscar in 1977." It's this that helps him deliver "a knockout punch." Stallone, meanwhile, delivers "one of his most careful and nuanced performances in years." "Creed follows the themes and gambits of classic fight films but this is no paint-by-numbers imitation," writes Colin Covert at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "This excellent sequel introduces new characters to the series while paying homage to the enduring appeal of its predecessors," he says. "It unabashedly manipulates audiences ... on its way to a wholesome, uplifting finale. It is cornball as all get out, formulaic, and wonderfully, amazingly delicious."
– Get ready for the Tiger Woods comeback, coming to a golf course near you this spring. A source tells Radar that’s when Woods plans to return to the PGA tour, when his sex rehab program is over—but it remains to be seen whether he’ll be ready for the Masters, which begins April 5. "Tiger is totally devastated," the source says. "He wants to show everyone that he intends to change." He’s spending six weeks in a private room at a rehab center in Mississippi—where wife Elin Nordegren has (shocker!) not visited him, Radar adds.
– A timeline of the final days of the Washington family killed in an apparently intentional car crash in California is coming together. Jennifer Hart, 38, was caught on surveillance footage at a Safeway store in Fort Bragg, Calif., around 8am on March 25, the day before the family's SUV plunged off a cliff about 15 miles north of the area, Fox News reports. The bodies of Jennifer Hart (who was driving the SUV) as well as her wife, Sarah, and three of their six adopted children have since been found; authorities are still searching for the couple's three other children. Jennifer Hart was purchasing bananas and other groceries during the Safeway trip; it's not clear where the rest of the family was, NBC News reports. The children ranged in age from 12 to 19; their parents were under investigation for alleged abuse or neglect at the time of the crash. Investigators have also been interviewing neighbors, searching the family's Washington home, and looking into cellphone pings. So far, they know the family was south of Portland by 8:15am March 24, and then drove south along the coast until, by 8pm, they were in the Fort Bragg area. They were there a little more than 24 hours, then headed north up the coast. Their GMC Yukon went off the cliff, falling 70 feet to an embankment below, on March 26; a passerby reported it to police around 3:30pm. Authorities say it appeared to have accelerated over the edge and that no skid marks were found near where it went over. "As of this date it is still unclear if the missing children were inside the vehicle during the incident," the CHP said in a news release, but the missing children are tentatively presumed dead. The local sheriff tells KOIN there is "every indication" they were in the car when it crashed. (A former friend of the couple has come forward to speak out about the alleged abuse.)
– Law enforcement officials have confirmed that it was Russia that told the FBI to investigate the slain Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, the AP reports. The FBI interviewed Tsarnaev, following up on the tip that he was a "follower of radical Islam," but didn't deem him a security risk at the time, reports Reuters. The FBI had said only that a foreign government had provided the intel, but two law enforcement officials, speaking anonymously, later revealed the Russian FSB intelligence security service as the source. The Tsarnaev brothers are ethnic Chechens—though they never actually lived in Chechnya—and Tamerlan visited Russia for six months last year, reports CNN. After getting the tip, the FBI not only talked to Tamerlan but checked out his travel history and web postings. The agency says it "did not find any terrorism activity." His mother says her elder son had embraced Islam but not religious extremism, and she was aware of his contact with the FBI. "How could this happen?" she asked on CNN. "They were controlling every step of him. Now they are saying this is a terrorist act." (Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a shootout with police, had an American wife and toddler.)
– Golf may be "a good walk, spoiled," but at least it doesn't spoil your life expectancy. In fact, a new study finds that heavy cardio sports like cycling and rowing do nothing to help you live longer than playing golf or cricket, reports the Wall Street Journal. Researchers looked at mortality rates in 9,889 Olympic athletes who completed from 1896 to 1936 in 43 types of sports, and surprisingly found that those who competed in intense activities did not live any longer than those who curled, shot guns, played cricket, or golfed. "Engaging in cycling and rowing (high cardiovascular intensity) had no added survival benefit compared with playing golf or cricket (low cardiovascular intensity)," says the study. One theory is that intensive exercise over the long-term also leads to injuries and damage that balance out the benefits of such exercise. "Over time, this will result in an accumulation of damage, which can be explained as a form of aging," says a study author. You can read the original BMJ article here.
– The Eta Aquarids meteor shower happens when Earth passes through the debris left behind by Halley's Comet, and it's peaking this week, the New York Times reports. The Weather Network reports that most everyone will have a good view of the shower Thursday and Friday. About 10 to 20 meteors per hour will be visible between 3am and dawn local time, just to the left of the constellation Aquarius, those mornings. Those wanting the best view may want to avoid clouds and light pollution. Oh, and don't blink. “If you blink, you’re not going to see them. They move that fast,” a NASA astronomer tells the Times. The meteors, which are typically about the size of a grain of sand, are traveling approximately 148,000mph when they hit the atmosphere.
– When you're the president of the United States, a kiss, apparently, is never just a kiss. Yesterday, the president pecked Diane Sawyer on the cheek before an interview. "It was like a current events-themed Harlequin novel," writes Gawker's Adrian Chen. And it wasn't the first time! A brief history of the president's "public smooching rampage:" The "Accidental" Kiss: During the presidential campaign an enthusiastic Obama "accidentally" kissed Jill Biden on the lips. "This can make for a very awkward situation," the Frisky notes. The "Diss" Kiss: When Barack and Michelle met Carla and Sarko, the president skimped on smooching France's first lady. It caused a major diplomatic kiss-ident, reports the Daily News. The Reward Kiss: The president puckered up to Hillary Clinton at his health care address this fall. It showed, as Gawker put it, that he can "deploy his lips" to "reward friends." Find a complete kiss and tell here.
– In September, Amber Guyger, at that time a Dallas police officer, walked into the apartment of Botham Shem Jean and shot the 26-year-old to death. Guyger lived in the same building as Jean and claimed that she thought she was entering her own unit and believed he was an intruder. On Friday, a grand jury indicted Guyger on a murder charge, CNN reports. Texas Rangers had initially arrested Guyger on a manslaughter charge. But Dallas County DA Faith Johnson said at a news conference, the grand jury settled on the more serious charge after “we presented the evidence and we explained the law.” The Texas Rangers “chose to file this case as manslaughter,” she said, per the Star-Telegram. “We did our own investigation. We thought it was murder all along.” Johnson said that murder involves causing a death “intentionally and knowingly,” as opposed to manslaughter, which results from recklessness. “At the moment of the shooting it was a knowing … offense,” she said per CNN. Jean, who was a native of St. Lucia in the Caribbean, went to college in Arkansas before moving to Dallas to work for PriceWaterHouseCoopers. His family filed a lawsuit against the city and police department in October. (This officer was fired for not shooting someone.)
– For 132 years, Coca-Cola has stuck to non-alcoholic beverages. No more. On Monday, the company introduced three fizzy lemon drinks in 3%, 5%, and 7% alcohol on the Japanese island of Kyushu, home to 13 million people. Coca-Cola's Lemon-Do falls into Japan's popular "chuhai" category, drinks that typically combine grain-based alcohol with flavored carbonated water, reports the Wall Street Journal. The canned beverage—in lemon, salty lemon, and honey and lemon flavors—will be slightly cheaper than the average chuhai, however, with a $1.50 price tag including tax. "We've started to experiment because, in the end, we are trying to follow the consumer. And, in the case of Japan, this is a relatively well-developed segment of low alcohol," Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey says, per the Journal. The brand hopes to appeal to female drinkers especially. Early testers seem impressed, comparing the drink to those made in bars. "I'm a bit surprised that this is a Coca-Cola brand," says a 59-year-old tester. "It's nice, but I would add a splash of grapefruit or more lemon to it." There are no plans to make Lemon-Do available outside of Japan, reports the BBC.
– The climate talks in Cancun are over, and the assessments seem to fall into the modest-but-better-than-expected range, mainly because they set the stage for future talks. Monsters and Critics has highlights here, including a goal by the nearly 200 participating nations to limit the rise in world temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius and the creation of a "Green Climate Fund" to help developing nations adapt. Guardian: The deal restores "faith in the multilateral UN process but will not reduce temperatures as much as scientists say is needed, and it pushes many of the most important decisions to future negotiations." AOL News: It gives "both developing and developed countries a bit of what they wanted, covering issues ranging from greenhouse gas emission cuts to rules for reducing deforestation." New York Times: "The result was a major step forward for a process that has stumbled badly in recent years." It gives the nations "another year to decide whether to extend the frayed Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that requires most wealthy nations to trim their emissions while providing assistance to developing countries to pursue a cleaner energy future." Telegraph: "A comprehensive global deal is now back on track. ... After two weeks of negotiating, rich and poor countries agreed a compromise that will see all countries committed to cutting emissions for the first time." Click here to read about Bolivia's objection that the pact is not nearly strong enough.
– Guenon monkeys are renowned for their colorful, distinctive faces, which vary from species to species. The reason? It's all part of a strategy to help the monkeys identify their own species and avoid crossbreeding with others, new research finds. Guenon monkeys, sometimes known as cheek pouch monkeys, are a group of perhaps 30 species that tend to live side by side. To prevent mating across species and possible unhealthy offspring, researchers think each species developed varying features—like mohawks, pursed lips, or white noses—as markers, LiveScience reports. US and UK researchers spent a year and a half snapping photos of 22 guenon species, then compared their features using a human-face-recognition program—the first time such a thing has been used on non-humans. What they found: The monkeys' faces evolved to look different from guenons in other species, especially those with whom they were in close contact, reports the BBC. "In other words, how you end up looking is a function of how those around you look," a researcher says.
– The raid that killed Osama bin Laden bought President Obama barely a month of higher approval ratings, according to the latest Washington Post/ABCNews poll. The president's approval rating, which stood at 47% in April, surged to 57% in May, but has now dropped right back down to 47%, the poll found. Disapproval of how the president is handling the economy and the deficit is at a high, and two-thirds of respondents say the country is on the wrong track. The bad news for Obama isn't good news for Republican contenders, however—unless they're named Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor is in first place for the GOP nomination, with Sarah Palin in second, according to the poll. Romney would be in a dead heat with Obama if the election were held today; Palin would lose by 17 percentage points. Around half of Republicans said they weren't happy with their options for the nomination, compared to less than a third four years ago.
– CIA Director John Brennan is hitting back after Sen. Dianne Feinstein confirmed reports that the CIA illegally searched Senate Intelligence Committee computers. "We weren't trying to block anything," Brennan tells NBC. "The CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate." Feinstein had earlier equated the surveillance with intimidation, notes the Washington Post, saying, "I am not taking it lightly." The CIA has broken federal laws, an executive order against domestic spying, and the Fourth Amendment, she says. The agency's own probe of the claims has been referred to the Justice Department, and criminal prosecution could be on the table, Feinstein notes. The searching occurred in January, the senator says, per the AP. Her claims come after reports that the CIA spied on computers it had provided to the committee for use in reviewing a trove of millions of top secret documents. The committee was looking into information on interrogation techniques. Further reports suggested that Senate staffers took classified documents from the computers. Feinstein, for her part, says she doesn't know how certain interrogation documents ended up in committee hands—whether they were offered by the CIA, mistakenly provided, or handed over by whistleblowers. Sen. Patrick Leahy called Feinstein's speech "one of the best" he'd "ever heard" on the Hill, "and one of the most important."
– Feeling guilty about that huge serving you heaped onto your plate at dinner last night and promptly finished? You're not the only one who does it. New research published in the International Journal of Obesity finds that the average adult eats 92% of the food on his or her plate. The reasons have yet to be hashed out, but the reality is clear: "If you put it on your plate, it's going into your stomach," says Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, in a Eureka Alert press release. The findings hold across several developed countries. Researchers observed 1,179 diners in the US, Canada, France, Taiwan, Korea, Finland, and the Netherlands, and regardless of location or gender the results were almost identical. There is, however, one exception: kids. Observing 326 participants under 18, researchers found that the typical child eats 59% of the food he or she puts on the plate. Whatever the reason, we grow up to belong to the Clean Plate Club, as researchers call it, they say this can be a wake-up call to be more mindful of what we serve ourselves in the first place. The LA Times susses out one piece of good news along those lines: Those who pile on fruits, veggies, whole grains, and other healthful stuff tend to clean their plates more thoroughly than those who eat less healthful foods. (Other research suggests it's all the sitting, not eating, that's putting on the pounds.)
– Well, ZTE is back in business—sort of. Washington will drop sanctions against the Chinese telecommunications giant if it makes management changes and pays a big fine, a Congressional aide tells Reuters. President Trump tweeted more, saying that "I closed it down then let it reopen with high level security guarantees, change of management and board, must purchase U.S. parts and pay a $1.3 Billion fine." But he's taking political fire from Democrats and Republicans alike for dealing with a company that many consider a national security threat. "President Trump would be helping make China great again," says Sen. Charles Schumer, per the Washington Post. "Simply a fine and changing board members would not protect America’s economic or national security." Sen. Marco Rubio struck a similar note, tweeting that "#China crushes U.S. companies with no mercy & they use these telecomm companies to spy & steal from us." (TechCrunch goes into detail, saying that over the past 5 years ZTE has been sued an "astonishing" 126 times in the US alone for patent infringement—not to mention that it violated sanctions by selling to North Korea and Iran and then lied about it.) But Trump was under pressure, with Beijing demanding mercy for ZTE in order to resume China-US trade talks on June 2, the Financial Times reports. So does Congress have a veto-proof majority to prevent Trump's move? "Passing such a law could be difficult," says the Post, though lawmakers may pull other political levers to try influencing the White House. (See Trump's defense of easing ZTE sanctions.)
– Originally facing 10 years in prison for giving water to pigs on their way to a slaughterhouse, a Canadian animal rights activist is a free woman after a judge dismissed the mischief charge against her Thursday, the Guardian reports. According to CBC, the pigs were in a truck headed for an Ontario slaughterhouse in 2015 when 49-year-old Anita Krajnc gave them water, ignoring the truck driver's orders to stop. She was accused of tampering with private property and giving the pigs an "unknown substance," the Canadian Press reports. The farmer who owned the pigs says he was worried Krajnc had contaminated them in some way. Judge David Harris ruled Krajnc only gave the pigs water, and since the pigs were still accepted by the slaughterhouse, Krajnc didn't "obstruct, interrupt, or interfere with the lawful use, enjoyment, or operation of the property." By the time the charge was dismissed, Krajnc was only facing a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $3,600 fine. Krajnc's lawyers say she was acting in the public good and compared her actions to those of Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. Following her victory in court, Krajnc said she and her fellow activists still have "a lot of work to do" because while the judge ruled in her favor, he also ruled that pigs were property and not persons.
– Red Bull gives you wings, and if you're an Islamic militant, apparently, extra stamina to keep fighting. Turkish traders are shipping the energy drink and other items into Syria across borders that are controlled by rebels belonging to ISIS, the Free Syrian Army, and the Islamic Front, and business is apparently booming: According to trade stats out of Ankara, Turkey sent $1.3 billion in goods to Syria through September, its highest total for a nine-month period ever recorded, Bloomberg reports. Those who wield power over the border—and right now that's militants in at least three border towns—are the ones who reap the profits, pocketing tolls and fees from transporters. While Turkish customs and economy officials either wouldn't comment or didn't respond to Bloomberg, the owner of a Turkish trucking company said that "every day we have four or five trucks carrying Red Bulls to Syria." He adds that those picking up the goods on the Syrian side don't ID themselves, and the imports are then loaded onto Syrian trucks and driven away. Meanwhile, caffeinated militants may also be fortified by the "good wives of jihadi": The Independent recently documented a new ISIS media arm that posts and tweets out nursing, morale, and cooking advice for militants' wives, including recipes to "replenish the mujahidin." (Here's how you can get your portion of a $13 million Red Bull payout.)
– McDonald's Mighty Wings simply didn't fly with customers, and now the chain appears to just want to break even on them. Reports in December predicted that a promotion would be coming, and it's here: Instead of selling the wings at a buck each, McDonald's is now offering them at a rate of five for $3, or 60 cents per wing, Businessweek reports. That price will result in either breaking even or a small loss, says an analyst. But "they’ve paid for those wings. If they don’t sell (them), they would have to eat the entire loss." A McDonald's rep indicates to USA Today that Atlanta and Chicago might bear some of the blame for the flop: "While pricing during the national advertised launch was consistent with the test markets (Atlanta and Chicago), those markets were heavy wing markets which did not reflect some of our broader customers feelings towards the price and spice of the wings." Now, the discount will continue "until supply runs out"—and there's a big supply—says the rep, who notes that while the price has changed, the level of spice has not, though there's now "more awareness" of it.
– One of Osama bin Laden's sons may have escaped the raid by Navy SEALs, according to ABC News and British papers the Telegraph and Daily Mail. It seems more guesswork than anything at this point, though. Bin Laden's three widows have reportedly told Pakistani authorities that one son has not been seen since the raid. The best guess is that they're referring to bin Laden's youngest son, Hamza, thought to be around 19 or 20 and a close confidante of his father. His mother is one of the detained widows. Initial reports had him killed in the raid, but that might have been confusion over the killing of a different son, Khalid. In any event, Pakistani officials agree that someone appears to be missing. “We don’t know if it was his son," an unidentified source tells the Telegraph. "Someone, one person may have been in the compound that we now cannot account for if—we believe what we are being told."
– Imagine all the water in the Arctic Ocean. Now, imagine all that and more on Mars. If you visited the Red Planet roughly 4.3 billion years ago, that's what you likely would have found, say NASA scientists. Their new study arrived at that "solid estimate ... by determining how much water was lost to space," says lead author Geronimo Villanueva. The Guardian reports the scientists used three powerful infrared telescopes to analyze two forms of water in Mars' atmosphere: H2O and HDO, in which deuterium (aka "heavy" hydrogen) has taken the place of one hydrogen atom. As National Geographic explains, Mars' gravity is weaker than our own; that allowed hydrogen to escape from the atmosphere and into space over time, boosting the amount of deuterium in its water. Scientists compared the ratio of HDO to H2O in Martian water today with that in water from a 4.5 billion-year-old Mars meteorite to arrive at their conclusions, a press release states. They ultimately calculated that Mars was once home to 20 million cubic kilometers of ocean. It could have covered every inch of the planet in water 450 feet deep, but the scientists think a different scenario is more likely: that the ocean covered roughly a fifth of the planet, was located in the northern hemisphere, and was as much as a mile deep. While National Geographic observes the findings back up "reams of earlier evidence that water once existed on the surface" of Mars, another study author points out the assessment of the degree of water lost indicates something new. "The planet was very likely wet for a longer period of time than was previously thought, suggesting it might have been habitable for longer," a scientist says. (Mysterious plumes on Mars are stumping scientists.)
– As the US tries to crack down on Iran, Iran is doing some cracking down of its own—on that oh-so-American symbol, the Barbie doll. The country's morality police have begun enforcing a Barbie ban issued in 1996. (Authorities blasted the doll's "destructive cultural and social consequences" at the time.) Reuters reports that the doll had been stocked on Tehran shops' shelves all the same, until about three weeks ago, when the morality police "came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies," says one shop owner. Of course, some Barbies are being tucked behind other toys, rather than removed all together, to keep up with demand. If seems that Sara and Dara, two government-OKed dolls released in 2002, haven't grabbed the hearts and minds of Iranian children. One mother says her daughter "prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat." (Barbie, clearly, to the rescue.) But what should obedient parents buy for their kiddies instead? How about a toy soon to hit shelves: a mini RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone ... a replica of the one that went down in Iran last month. The AP notes that the manufacturer plans to send the US one of the models, in response to Washington's demand that the drone be returned. Iranian kids can get theirs for about $4.
– With polls showing him in trouble on the eve of Israel's election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disavowed his support for a two-state solution with Palestinians and immediately reversed his political fortunes. With his victory less than two days old, he has already backtracked, reports the Jerusalem Post. “I haven't changed my policy," he tells Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC in an interview that airs this evening, as quoted in the New York Times. "I don’t want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that, circumstances have to change." Netanyahu says his comments before the election—in answer to a question, he said there would be no two-state solution under his watch—were more a reflection of how things had changed on the Palestinian side in recent years. “I was talking about what is achievable and what is not achievable," he said. "We have to have real negotiations with people who are committed to peace.” Critics had accused him of pandering to right-wing voters to avoid defeat. In the MSNBC interview, Netanyahu also denied that his last-minute video warning supporters that Arabs were voting "in droves" was an attempt to whip up anti-Palestinian sentiment, reports CNN. "I wasn't trying to suppress the vote," he said. "I was calling on our voters to come out." The original two-state comment in particular had irritated the White House, which warned it was re-evaluating its relations with Israel.
– A "stunning, dazzling" find across the pond, per a French book publisher: a sketchbook that belonged to Dutch master painter Vincent Van Gogh, AFP reports. "This sketchbook was known only to the owners, myself, and the publisher," a Seuil official told the news agency Thursday, noting that the drawings will be published in November and called Vincent Van Gogh: Le Brouillard d’Arles (The Fog of Arles). And it's obvious they're hyping up the book's release by revealing very few details. "No further information will be divulged until the world press conference to be held in Paris in mid-November 2016 on the eve of the book's arrival in bookstores in the various countries," a Seuil statement says, per Atlas Obscura. (Read about the battle over a cherished Van Gogh work.)
– A heartbreaking update to the story of Mei Xiang's panda cubs: The smaller twin born to the National Zoo panda has died. The new mom had started ignoring the smaller cub in favor of nursing the bigger one, and the zoo tweeted today, "We are sad to report that the smaller of the two panda cubs has died. We will continue to provide updates on social media w/ #Pandastory." The good news: The zoo says the larger cub seems "strong, robust, behaving normally," USA Today reports. "We have one healthy panda and we remain optimistic about that panda's future," said the zoo's chief veterinarian at a press conference. Click to read about how the zoo had been attempting to swap out the cubs with their mom.
– Officials in Algeria have arrested five suspects in the Algerian gas-plant hostage crisis that left at least 81 people dead, report the BBC and AP. All five are members of an Islamist group, according to a private TV channel, and Algerian officials say each hailed from one of six different countries in Africa and the Arab world. A website in Mauritania claims that terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar is behind the attack, and recorded a video saying he would negotiate if operations were halted against Islamists in Mali. The death toll climbed to 81 today as Algerian forces scoured the refinery for explosives—but many bodies were so disfigured that troops couldn't identify them as militants or hostages. The militants "decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages" when troops launched a final assault to end the four-day siege, said an Algerian official.
– The "heinous act" of leaking the draft of Pope Francis' long-awaited environment encyclical may have been designed to steal some thunder from Thursday's official launch, Vatican observers say—and some think it may have been masterminded by Vatican insiders, the AP reports. What the news agency is calling "something of a whodunit" is transpiring inside the Holy See after Italian mag L'Espresso published a 190-page-plus draft of the pontiff's "Laudato Si" ("Be Praised") letter on its website yesterday, confirmed by the Vatican to be a draft of the real deal. Today the Vatican called the posting of the draft "incorrect" and suspended the press credentials of Sandro Magister, the magazine's longtime Vatican reporter and "most reliable and revered vaticanisti," per his own Chiesa website. However, Magister claims he's not the one who obtained or leaked the document—his editor is, he tells the AP. "I just wrote the introduction," he texted, confirming that he had promised the Vatican his lips were sealed about the encyclical, which features Francis hitting global warming as being predominantly caused by humans and our insistence on burning fossil fuels. Who is under the microscope, according to some observers: Vatican conservatives who wanted the pope to keep his nose out of science and stick to church doctrine. The AP cites La Stampa, an Italian daily, as saying that those old-school conservatives don't appreciate the pope's attempts at reform. Some commentators say the leak may have been planned to devalue Thursday's launch, which will be assisted by decidedly non-church-affiliated professionals, including an atheist scientist and an economist, per the AP. (This isn't the first ugly Vatican leak.)
– A man who sounds a lot like Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski doesn't mince words about his feelings toward the US—and his fellow Poles—in a boozy, secretly recorded backroom chat obtained by Polish magazine Wprost. The man the magazine identifies as Sikorski says the "Polish-American alliance isn't worth anything. It is even harmful because it creates a false sense of security," the AP reports. We are "suckers, total suckers," the man continues. "The problem in Poland is that we have shallow pride and low self-esteem." The magazine shook Polish politics last week with the release of a recording of the country's interior minister and the chief of the central bank discussing how the bank could help the governing party win elections this year. The new recording—apparently made before the Ukraine crisis—drags the scandal into foreign policy at a critical time and the magazine says it will release full transcripts today, reports the New York Times. The magazine, which says the recordings were obtained from a businessman, was raided last week by prosecutors who tried to seize the editor-in-chief's laptop. The government later admitted there had been "legal deficiencies" and the raid should never have happened, the BBC reports.
– The FDA last week banned the use of a chemical from soap, but not from the nation’s top-selling toothpaste. Why? The New York Times reports it was because Colgate-Palmolive convinced the FDA that the benefits of triclosan are greater than the risks. Toothpaste containing the chemical "demonstrated to be effective at reducing plaque and gingivitis," an FDA spokeswoman said. The decision came after the agency announced that there was not enough evidence to prove that antibacterial soap containing triclosan was any better "at preventing illness than washing with plain soap and water." Worse, long-term use of the soap, the agency said in a statement, "has raised the question of potential negative effects on your health." Scientists have long raised concerns that prolonged exposure to germ-fighters could result in strains of resistant bacteria. The only toothpaste in the US that contains triclosan Colgate Total, the Times reports. Colgate-Palmolive insists that rigorous testing has shown the toothpaste is safe. "The full weight of scientific evidence amassed over 25 years continues to support the safety and efficacy of Colgate Total," spokesman Mike DiPiazza told the paper. But critics questioned the FDA’s logic. "We put soap on our hands, and a small amount gets into our body," said Rolf Halden, an expert at Arizona State University who has studied triclosan. He said that with exposure through the gums "chemicals get rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream." (The feds have also targeted fluoride.)
– The White House fence-jumper was an "absolutely inexcusable" security breach, and Politico reports that Peter King wasted no time today in calling for a "full investigation into what happened, why it happened and what needs to be done to make sure it never happens again." The New York Republican wants to bring the matter before his Homeland Security Committee, because, he says, while the president may face "a lot of very complex assassination plots," Friday's breach represents "the most basic, the most simple type of procedure and how anyone especially in the days of (ISIS) can actually get into the White House without being stopped is inexcusable." Elsewhere on your Sunday dial: Robert Gates on ISIS: I think that destroying (ISIS) is a very ambitious mission. I think our goal ought to be pushing (ISIS) back out of Iraq, denying them a place where they can have a permanent foothold. We’ve been at war with al-Qaeda for 13 years, we haven’t destroyed it." Tony Blair on ISIS: "The president is absolutely right to take on (ISIS) and to build the broadest possible coalition. He and Secretary Kerry have put together about 50 countries now in this coalition. We’ve got absolutely no choice but to do this and not just in order to destroy the onward march of (ISIS) but to send a very strong signal to the other terrorist groups operating in the region. We intend to take action and see it though." Dianne Feinstein on violence and the NFL: "I think I can speak for all of the women in the Senate when I say we are very surprised, amazed and very resolute to do something about it. There is no place for this. Period. I believe very strongly that if a player is arrested, he should be suspended, and if they’re convicted, that ends it. I know there are contracts. This is gone on too long, and this is getting too bad. These teams need to set an example for the rest of society."
– Activist Charlotte Laws says she is "fighting fire with fire"—and fighting an intolerant jackass with the Intolerant Jackass Act. With California Attorney General Kamala Harris unable to halt the progress of lawyer Matt McLaughlin's Sodomite Suppression Act ballot initiative, which calls for homosexuality to be punished by "bullets to the head," Laws' lighthearted counter-initiative calls for anyone proposing a ballot measure involving killing gay people to be punished with a year of sensitivity training and a hefty donation to a gay rights group, Slate reports. The measure mocks the language of McLaughlin's initiative, which describes homosexuality as an "abominable crime." Laws, who like McLaughlin only had to pay a $200 fee to file the initiative, tells Slate that the measure is a way to show that most Californians "don't agree with something as incendiary and hateful as what this one attorney proposed." McLaughlin's deranged initiative appears bound for the signature-gathering phase, though the state Supreme Court would be certain to step in to keep it off the ballot even if he found the necessary 365,000 signatures, the Guardian reports. The State Bar of California, meanwhile, has been asked to investigate the Huntington Beach lawyer, reports the Huffington Post. A petition to have him disbarred for advocating murder now has more than 18,000 signatures.
– Critics dubbed Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity "extraordinary," and moviegoers this weekend sealed the deal: The George Clooney-Sandra Bullock space drama soared to No. 1 at the box office, with a $55.6 million opening that set a record for an October debut. That's about $20 million more than Gravity was predicted to make, notes the LA Times; it's also an opening-weekend record for both Clooney and Bullock, adds the AP. Rounding out the top five were Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 ($21.5 million), Runner Runner ($7.6 million), Prisoners ($5.7 million), and Rush ($4.8 million).
– She gambled on an early election—and she lost, big time. Theresa May and the Conservative Party have been dealt a huge blow in Britain's election, with the party losing its majority in Parliament after early predictions that it would gain as many as 80 seats. Full results have yet to arrive, but a hung parliament, in which no party has a majority, is now inevitable, reports the BBC. The Conservatives still have the most seats but Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party was the night's big winner, gaining more than 30 seats in Parliament, while the pro-Brexit United Kingdom Independence Party saw its share of the vote collapse. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party saw a fall in support, with former party leader Alex Salmond among those losing their seats. The latest: With Corbyn—and plenty of angry Conservatives—calling for her resignation, May signaled that she will stay on for now, Reuters reports. "At this time, more than anything else this country needs a period of stability," she said early Friday after she was re-elected to her own seat in Parliament. The inconclusive election was result was seen as a disaster by negotiators in Brussels, where Brexit talks are due to begin within days, the Guardian reports. May, who wasn't required to hold an election until 2020, said her reason for calling one early was to secure a greater mandate for the talks. "Could be messy for the United Kingdom in the years ahead," tweeted former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt. "One mess risks following another. Price to be paid for lack of true leadership." Senior Conservative officials tell the Telegraph that May made "fundamental strategic errors" during the campaign. "This is bad, it's worse than bad. Her advisers should walk out of the door now never to return, regardless of the final result," one senior official says. Numerous senior Conservative MPs have lost their seats, including manifesto author Ben Gummer. The BBC looks at what is likely to happen now that a hung parliament has been confirmed. Unless she chooses to resign, May is expected to remain as prime minister while she attempts to form a coalition government with smaller parties. ITV looks at election night's biggest losers, including Nick Clegg. The former Liberal Democrat, deputy prime minister in the coalition government until the 2015 election, lost his seat to Labour challenger Jared O'Mara.
– A double tragedy in Pennsylvania, where authorities say a woman may have died because she cleaned up her son's drug paraphernalia after finding him unresponsive in the bathroom—and the son, too, ultimately died of a drug overdose. Theresa Plummer probably absorbed a substance through her skin or had a reaction to something she handled in the bathroom, the coroner says, according to WJAC. The 69-year-old found 45-year-old Ronald Plummer on Nov. 5; after he was taken to the hospital, she returned to clean up the scene, WOKV reports. She went to the hospital with shortness of breath and died Nov. 6. Her son died the following day. "This is a caution for safety for anyone coming into contact with any type of powder substance," the coroner says. "You should use extreme caution and notify the proper authorities. My strong advice to any family that may have this happen to them is to call law enforcement to have them or EMS services come back and remove the substance or material that may have been left behind." Toxicology reports are still pending, but autopsies on mother and son are complete.
– We now have the most definitive sign yet—courtesy of a NASA orbiter—that the European Space Agency's Mars lander crashed onto the planet's surface in what the AP describes as a "fiery ball of rocket fuel." ESA lost contact with the Schiaparelli lander Wednesday, approximately 50 seconds before it was supposed to land on Mars. What exactly happened to the lander has been a mystery, but a crash seemed likely. Now, images from a NASA orbiter released Friday show an approximately 6,500-square-foot dark patch on the Martian surface a few miles from where the lander was supposed to touch down, the BBC reports. That spot is likely the result of an exploding lander. ESA reports the lander's parachute deployed then released as planned (it's probably the small light spot in the new image). But the lander's nine thrusters fired for only a few seconds instead of half a minute for some reason. The lander probably free-fell for up to 2.5 miles before hitting Mars at more than 185mph. And since the thrusters didn't use much of the stored rocket fuel, a decent-sized explosion was probably the result. NASA plans to get a better picture of the crash site next week. The lander was meant to be testing technology for another ESA landing in 2020. Its failure means NASA is still the only agency to successfully land a robotic vehicle on Mars, having done so several times.
– The island nation of Palau is preparing for a visit from Japan's Emperor Akihito next week with an unusual and grim task: It's investigating long-sealed caves on the island of Peleliu to look for the remains of Japanese soldiers from World War II. The remains of six soldiers have been discovered so far, but that's just the start. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports they were found in one of about 200 sealed caves on Peleliu. An estimated 10,000 Japanese men were killed in a weeks-long battle with US troops during the war, and the bodies of 2,600 of them were never found. The Japanese used a network of caves and tunnels during the 1944 fighting, recounts the Telegraph, and largely "staged their defense" from within the caves. About 1,600 American troops were killed, but the US military blew up many of the caves (essentially sealing the Japanese within) and eventually gained control. The six newly found bodies were found in the vicinity of an anti-tank gun, and "it's my understanding that those [bodies] were the crew, perhaps the officer and his men that were manning that gun," says one of the search officials. "A number of US soldiers died in that vicinity as well." The task is painstaking because searchers need to guard against booby traps or the detonation of old munitions. An interesting side note from the Telegraph: Some 35 Japanese soldiers who had been hiding in the caves surrendered in April 1947—more than a year after the war's end. (In other WWII news, Anne Frank likely died earlier than thought.)
– The dad of the teenage lesbian shot dead in a Texas park called for justice yesterday. He immediately had a "bad feeling" when his 19-year-old daughter, Mollie, failed to show up for work, said Mario Olgin. “It was not like Mollie," he told KIII-TV. "If she had some place to be she was going to be there.” Mollie and her 18-year-old girlfriend, Mary Kristene Chapa, had been shot in the head by an unknown assailant. Mollie died at the scene, but Chapa is making an "amazing" recovery, her brother told NBC Latino. Mollie has just finished her first semester of college and dreamed of becoming a psychiatrist. "She was happy," Olgin recalled. Now, "she's my guardian angel. I know she's looking down on us, in a better place." He's confident police will find her killer. "Justice will be served," he declared. Texas Rangers have joined Portland police in continuing to investigate the crime, but haven't yet discussed any progress. They haven't labeled the shootings a hate crime, but aren't ruling it out.
– Sometimes your Newser Virginia bureau feels like it should really be the Alternative Reality bureau (see here and here and here), but even we can't make up this story: A 28-year-old Democrat named Krystal Ball—who is running for a seat in Virginia's 1st District—was somehow blindsided by the online release of party pics of her fellating a reindeer dildo her then-husband was wearing on his nose. Best part? She's not so much embarrassed as pissed, blaming her opponent for the leak, which she calls "sexist." "I have a message for any young woman who is thinking about running for office and has ever attended a costume party ... or done anything stupid on camera," Ball tells the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "Run for office. Fight for this country. Don't let this sort of tactic deter you." The blog that dug up the images is currently down; for the photos and Wonkette's chortling, click here. Ball talked to Salon about the pics; click here for that.
– A man claiming to be an Air Force veteran upset with the Department of Veterans Affairs set himself on fire in front of the Georgia Capitol on Tuesday, suffering burns to at least 85% of his body. Authorities say 58-year-old John Michael Watts parked a vehicle and started walking toward the building around 10:45am. "He was strapped with some homemade incendiary devices, some firecrackers and doused himself with some kind of flammable liquid and attempted to set himself on fire," Capt. Mark Perry of the Georgia State Patrol says, per the New York Times. An off-duty GSP trooper driving by saw flames, jumped out of his car, "and was able to douse him pretty quickly" using a fire extinguisher, Perry adds. The man, of no current address, was then taken to Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital with burns to 85% to 90% of his body. "He did indicate that he is disgruntled with the VA system and was seeking attention for that," says Perry, who initially indicated a phone number seen on a sign in the man's windshield could be connected to another device. A bomb squad later removed the contents of the vehicle without issue, per the Atlanta Journal Constitution. There were no reports of other injuries. Though it cannot "comment on the specifics of this Veteran's case due to patient privacy laws," the Department of Veteran Affairs tells the Washington Post it "is ensuring he receives the VA care that he needs."
– The Dalai Lama says it’s up to him to decide whether he should be reincarnated—and of course China isn't having any of that. Beijing today dismissed any successor picked by the spiritual leader himself as illegal, following the 76-year-old’s statement this weekend that he’ll make a decision on reincarnation when he’s “about 90." He said China shouldn’t weigh in on the choice; China, however, says that “the title of Dalai Lama is conferred by the central government and is illegal otherwise." Traditionally, monks pick a young boy to be Dalai Lama based on signs he is the previous leader’s reincarnation, AFP notes. But “a Dalai Lama identifying his own successor has never been the practice,” says a rep for China’s foreign ministry. “The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama should follow religious rituals and historical conventions and laws and regulations of this state." The current Dalai Lama said he planned to offer “clear guidelines to recognize the next Dalai Lama” while he remains “physically and mentally fit.” Meanwhile, two young Tibetan monks set themselves on fire today in China, calling for religious freedom.
– Horrifying news from Wisconsin: A man estranged from his wife walked into her workplace today and opened fire, killing three women and wounding four more before fatally shooting himself, police said. Authorities found the body of Radcliffe Haughton, 45, at the spa where his wife, Zina Haughton, worked in suburban Milwaukee. But police say the discovery was slowed by an improvised bomb found on the scene, the AP reports. Haughton's relationship with his wife had heated up this week when she placed a restraining order against him in a domestic dispute, and he was ordered to hand in all his firearms. But he allegedly carried a handgun into the two-story, 9,000-square-foot Azana Salon & Spa this morning, shooting at women and chasing one out into the parking lot before she escaped, the Journal-Sentinel reports. Of the four injured women, one is undergoing surgery and is in critical condition; the others are in stable condition or better. Meanwhile, scary eyewitness accounts are coming in, including one from a bystander who saw a woman running outside the building: "She was screaming, yelling, crying, hysterical," he said. "She was pleading for help. She kept saying, 'My mother was shot.'"
– Google's parent company appears to be satisfied with how Sundar Pichai has performed during his four months as Google CEO, judging by the gargantuan $199 million equity award revealed in a securities filing. Alphabet stated that Pichai was awarded 273,328 Class C Google stock units on Feb. 3, bringing his holdings to around $650 million, reports the Wall Street Journal. The award makes Pichai the highest-paid CEO in America, according to the Guardian, which notes that Pichai's fortune is dwarfed by those of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are worth around $34 billion each, and by that of previous CEO Eric Schmidt, who's sitting on around $3 billion. (A former Google employee was awarded exactly $6,006.13.)
– A Michigan town so small it doesn't have a McDonald's or a Walmart is the setting for a dark triple-murder mystery involving drugs, love-fueled jealousy, and a burned-out car, all outlined in the Detroit Free Press. The brutal killings of Heather Aldrich, her sister Carrie Nelson, and Nelson's boyfriend Jody Hutchinson—all of whom were reportedly asphyxiated—and the discovery of their bodies in a burned-out SUV in the woods was linked back to Aldrich's relationship with Kenneth Brunke, who police and locals say was a gun-happy Manistique drug dealer, and his friend Garry Cordell, who tried to tell Brunke that Aldrich, the object of Brunke's affections, was using him for drugs. And Aldrich did steal a cocaine stash from Brunke's yard, which was followed by a text from Brunke ostensibly meant to lure Aldrich to come over for some free morphine. Aldrich headed to Brunke's house, along with Nelson and Hutchinson, which is where the story takes a weird turn. At first Cordell and his girlfriend, Marietta Carlson, confessed they and Brunke had killed the victims, though the stories kept changing; Brunke denied participating. But then, despite what looked to be certain convictions for all three, Carlson died while in custody, and Cordell suddenly dropped a bombshell: He and Carlson had committed all the murders themselves and Brunke hadn't been present (though he says Brunke did help set the car on fire with the victims' bodies in it). What some believe: Brunke may have paid off Cordell, an unemployed drifter, or promised to take care of Cordell's elderly mother if he took the blame. The cryptic statement Cordell offered in court when asked about a money exchange only fueled that suspicion: "One man shall die so that the other may live." Cordell was sentenced to life in prison, per WLUC; Brunke will likely get five years or less for obstructing justice and lying to a cop when he's sentenced Jan. 21. (Read all about the fascinating case, including why locals are angry at the county prosecutor, in the Detroit Free Press.)
– Scientists used the latest forensic scanning technology to look inside the world's most famous dodo specimen in the hope of learning more about the anatomy of the bird that went extinct on Mauritius 350 years ago. "In our wildest dreams we never expected to find what we did," says University of Warwick researcher Mark Williams. They uncovered what the CBC labels a "dodo whodunit." Though scientists had assumed the dodo kept at Oxford University Museum of Natural History died of natural causes, inside its mummified skull were 20 to 30 "metallic high-density particles" that left no doubt how the male bird met its end: "He was shot in the back of the head with a shotgun," Williams says, adding "we could be looking at the first examples of lead shots ever used to hunt game birds." Now begins the search for the culprit: Museum director Paul Smith says a chemical analysis of the lead pellets will hopefully reveal "what country the shot was made in so we could then determine who killed the dodo." The Oxford specimen—the most complete dodo to be found and the only one to contain soft tissue and viable DNA—was previously thought to be from a dodo displayed in London in 1638 before its natural death, per the Telegraph. "Was it shot in the UK? More likely, was it shot in the Mauritius and then transferred to the UK? Was it shot for food on a ship?" Williams wonders, per Live Science. The dodo was later acquired by King Charles II's gardener and passed to Oxford, where it is said to have inspired Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, reports the BBC. (Dodos shed their feathers.)
– Blade Runner vamp Sean Young was busted outside a post-Oscars party after she slapped a security guard when she was told to leave, according to officials. Now she's demanding an apology, reports TMZ. "She was trying to get into the party and couldn't," a Hollywood police commander tells AP. But the 52-year-old actress—who starred in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, No Way Out, Wall Street, and most recently, Celebrity Rehab—says the guards were overzealous, and she wasn't doing anything wrong. "I was just standing by the little line," says Young, who earlier in the evening had posed for photos with Angelina Jolie, Michelle Williams, and Sandra Bullock. "I wasn't bothering anybody." She began to leave when ordered to by a guard, but he "grabbed my arm and started pulling me," says Young. "I was pulling my arm away—and I struck him." The Motion Picture Academy "needs to make a public apology on behalf of their security guard," Young tells People. She blames an Academy attorney, who she says urged one of the guards to place her under citizen's arrest. "I was well-behaved," she tells x17 Online. "It's atrocious behavior." She was booked on misdemeanor battery and released yesterday after she posted $20,000 bail. Watch Young tell TMZ what happened here.
– Drumroll, please: The final tally is in, and the total US population is 308,745,538, the 2010 census finds. The South’s population has grown the fastest in the US since 2000, at 14.3%; the West was the runner-up, growing 13.8%. But overall, the population has expanded at its slowest since the Great Depression, the AP reports. The Northeast grew 3.2% and the Midwest grew 3.9%. Every state but Michigan (whose population declined 0.6%) saw growth, with Nevada expanding the fastest at 35.1%. The census was successful, the commerce secretary said at a press conference—and it came in almost $1.9 billion under budget, thanks to high participation and good management. Some 74% of households responded to questionnaires, about the same rate as in 2000.
– Pope Francis delivered a simple simple message to Latin American bishops in Brazil today—if you're going to help the needy and keep people from straying from the church, you've got to get outside and actually meet them: "We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the Gospel," he said. "Let us courageously look to pastoral needs, beginning on the periphery (of where we live), with those who are farthest away, with those who do not usually go to church. They, too, are invited to the table of the Lord." The speech drove home "a critique of elitism that has become the overarching theme of his first overseas trip," writes the Wall Street Journal, while USA Today sees it "as yet another admonishment ... for Catholics to adopt a more missionary mindset." After speaking to the region's bishops, Francis addressed politicians, business leaders, and intellectuals, and urged them to reach out to all members of society, too. "When leaders in various fields ask me for advice, my response is always the same: dialogue, dialogue, dialogue," he said, per USA Today. "It is the only way for individuals, families, and societies to grow, the only way for the life of peoples to progress."
– Military officials who've been trying to justify a Jan. 29 raid that killed a Navy SEAL in Yemen now say the goal was to capture al-Qaeda leader Qassim al-Rimi, who they believe escaped unscathed. They believe this because al-Rimi—considered the third most dangerous terrorist in the world, per NBC News—can be heard taunting President Trump in an 11-minute audio recording released over the weekend, which officials believe is authentic. "The new fool of the White House received a painful slap across his face," CNN quotes al-Rimi as saying. Al-Rimi also claims 25 people died in the raid, noting "dozens of Americans were killed and wounded," per the AP. The US military has said one Navy SEAL died and three others were wounded. A White House official tells NBC that Trump approved the raid after Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford told him al-Rimi's capture would be a "game changer." However, an official tells CNN that al-Rimi was not essential to the mission, which officials believed would lead to him one way or another. Though al-Rimi wasn't captured—it isn't clear if he was at the site—military officials have said the mission was "successful." Fourteen al-Qaeda fighters were killed and "al-Qaeda was disrupted, at least in terms of that cell," says a former national security adviser under former President George W. Bush. "They understand that the US is willing to lean forward, and perhaps they're being deterred or disrupted in their activities." (The military initially claimed it nabbed a decade-old video.)
– Bill Cosby has been pretty quiet since rape accusations against him started becoming big news, but this week tweets appeared on his Twitter feed for the first time since Nov. 17. "Thank you @WhoopiGoldberg," he tweeted Tuesday, following that up yesterday with "Thank you @MissJillScott, from the Cosby Family." Goldberg defended Cosby on The View back on Nov. 20, saying she planned to "reserve my judgment because I have a lot of questions." One of those questions: "Perhaps the police might have believed [the allegation], or the hospital," she said. "Don’t you do a kit when you say someone has raped you?" And Scott defended Cosby and his "magnificent legacy" on Monday, Us reports. Meanwhile, three more alleged Cosby victims came forward yesterday, People reports. Gloria Allred, who is representing them, held a press conference stating that Cosby should put $100 million in a fund for his alleged victims—and also waive the statute of limitations on sexual assault claims, which would allow the women to sue him. "It could be advantageous for Mr. Cosby to give up the statute of limitations because there is a huge cloud on his reputation and legacy," she said. "If Mr. Cosby believes all the women are being untruthful, then this is his opportunity to prove it. What could be fairer than that?" In the wake of the press conference, Cosby delayed two shows he was scheduled to do in New York Saturday, TMZ reports. (Roseanne Barr recently deleted a controversial Cosby tweet.)
– A bomb squad robot was destroyed and another had its arm blown off when one of five bombs found in a backpack near a New Jersey train station blew up early Monday. The FBI says the other four devices found will be encased in blastproof material and taken to the agency's headquarters for further investigation, the New York Times reports. The devices—which were discovered by two men who found the backpack on top of a garbage can outside a restaurant near the Elizabeth station—will be closely examined for evidence linking them to explosive devices found in New York City and elsewhere in New Jersey over the weekend. A round-up of coverage: Elizabeth Mayor Christian Bollwage says the two men thought the backpack held something of value and carried it some distance before realizing it held explosive devices and calling police, NJ.com. He says in its original location near a pub, the devices could have caused carnage. "If that pub was crowded and there was a lot of people there, it could have severely injured, killed and maimed many, many people," the mayor says. The AP reports that thousands of Amtrak and NJ Transit passengers were affected by the discovery of the device, with some stuck on trains for hours. Service has resumed but passengers in the area have been warned that they can expect delays Monday. NBC New York reports that investigators believe surveillance video shows the same man at two locations where explosive devices were found in Manhattan. Police aren't sure whether there is a link between the New York devices and those found in New Jersey. CNN reports that there is now an increased security presence in New York City not just because of the bombs, but because world leaders are gathering for the United Nations General Assembly. A law enforcement source tells CBS that investigators believe cell phones were used as triggers for both the Manhattan blast—which NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls "obviously an act of terrorism"—and the device that exploded before a New Jersey race to benefit Marines and sailors early Saturday. It's not clear whether a trigger was found with the Elizabeth devices. Bollwage says he's not sure his city was targeted. He suspects somebody may have just dumped the devices in Elizabeth, but he is "extremely concerned for everyone in the state and country where someone can just go and drop a backpack into a garbage can that has multiple explosives in it with no timers and then you have to wonder how many people could have been hurt." An official close to the investigation tells Reuters that all the devices involved have been crude and the level of planning appears low—but some investigators fear this was just a test. "That's what worries us," he says. "Was this some kind of test run, not just of the devices, but also of the surveillance in New York and the response?" (The FBI says it is questioning five people found in a "vehicle of interest.")
– In our own obituary of AK-47 inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov last month, we included this quote: The rifle was invented "for the protection of the Motherland," he said. "I have no regrets and bear no responsibility for how politicians have used it." It turns out "no regrets" might not have exactly been true. The AFP picks up a report from Russia's Izvestia that Kalashnikov penned a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church nine months before his December death in which he wrote of "unbearable ... spiritual pain" and asked about his culpability. It contains this line: "I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle took away people's lives, then can it be that I ... am guilty for people's deaths, even if they were enemies?" AFP notes that Izvestia ran a copy of the letter, which is typed on Kalashnikov's personal stationery and signed "with a wavering hand." A rep for Patriarch Kirill confirms that the letter was sent, and says the church leader wrote a reply—one that very may well have calmed his fears. Says the rep, "The Church has a very definite position: when weapons serve to protect the Fatherland, the Church supports both its creators and the soldiers who use it." But the BBC notes that it's not clear whether every word came from Kalashnikov: Izvestia reports that his daughter believes a priest helped him write the letter.
– Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are a much beloved celebrity couple, thanks in part to stunts like this: When they noticed paparazzi photographing them yesterday, they took advantage of the situation by holding signs in front of their faces that promoted charities, Teen Vogue reports. "We don't need the attention, but these wonderful organizations do," read Stone's sign. Garfield's pointed to the websites for Gilda's Club, Worldwide Orphans, the Youth Mentoring Connection, and Autism Speaks. They pulled a similar stunt in 2012 to promote the first two organizations, Gawker notes.
– After three decades on the lam, an Arkansas man has been quickly reacquainted with life behind bars. Steven Dishman, 60—who was five months into a seven-year sentence for burglary and property theft when he escaped from the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County, Ark., on May 28, 1985, reports KTHV—was arrested Sunday at a home in Springdale in the northwestern part of the state, report Arkansas Online and KFSM. Arkansas State Police and local cops raided the home after receiving a tip. A rep for the Arkansas Department of Correction tells Fox 16 that Dishman will now be required to serve the remainder of his sentence. Dishman may also face additional charges related to his escape, the details of which were not immediately explained. Had Dishman stayed in jail, he would have been eligible for parole in 1987 and freed by 1991.
– Josh and Bianca Byrne were married on a New Hampshire farm the first weekend in October. Their new life together was cut tragically short during their honeymoon in Costa Rica, when Josh was swept away in a flash flood on Oct. 12. His body was found the following day, WESH reports. The couple was in a vehicle trying to cross a bridge in Playa Dominicalito when the flood hit; Bianca was able to swim to shore but Josh wasn't, NBC News reports. "It is with heavy hearts that we have concluded our search for Josh," says a statement released by his family. "After working around the clock, our search and rescue mission ended today with the recovery of Josh’s remains." A GoFundMe campaign has been set up for Byrne's family.
– A jogger in California is lucky to be alive after an encounter with folk-rock legend David Crosby. Jose Jimenez, 46, was on a road near Crosby's Santa Ynez when the singer hit him in his 2015 Tesla, which was traveling at or near the 55mph speed limit, CNN reports. Jimenez was airlifted to the hospital with fractures and other non-life-threatening injuries. Crosby stopped after the collision, and the California Highway Patrol says he's unlikely to face charges since the jogger was supposed to be on the other side of the rural road, running against traffic, E! Online reports. A CHP spokesman says Crosby "was not impaired or intoxicated in any way," but he didn't see the jogger because of the sun. "David Crosby is obviously very upset that he accidentally hit anyone," a rep tells E! Online. "And, based off of initial reports, he is relieved that the injuries to the gentleman were not life-threatening. He wishes the jogger a very speedy recovery." Apart from the accident, the 73-year-old singer-songwriter hasn't been in the news much lately, Rolling Stone notes, although he put out new solo album Croz early last year, and last fall confirmed that Crosby, Stills, and Nash would never tour with Neil Young again—but said he knows "at least 20 better guitar players than Neil."
– An earthquake struck Wyoming two years ago that made little sense, scientifically speaking—but experts seem closer to solving the mystery, the BBC reports. Called the Wind River Earthquake, it hit with 4.7 magnitude in an area that rarely sees such seismic power. Hardly surprising, since the Wind River area has little tectonic-plate movement that would normally trigger such an earthquake. But a new study in Earth and Planetary Science Letters says the quake may not have originated with tectonic plates grinding against each other at all. The Wind River Earthquake may have started deeper, in what the BBC calls "the Earth’s hotter and more viscous mantle." Such a quake might be caused by crust falling into the mantle, which lies between the Earth's higher crust and deeper core. These deeper quakes remain "a highly controversial topic," the scientists write, but this one "occurred well within the mantle, and likely over 20 km [12.4 miles] deeper than the base of the crust." If true, the finding makes the Wind River Earthquake one of the three deepest ever recorded in the area. Still, some things don't fit: While such deep quakes can occur in volcanic regions, when fluid or magma flows in the Earth's mantle, they usually affect a smaller area; the Wind River quake ruptured nearly 11 million square feet, notes Geology in Motion. And Wind River is noticeably far from the nearest volcanic region. So what's up? Perhaps the mantle was so brittle that it failed and triggered the quake, say researchers, who admit that the causes remain debatable. (Read about naked tourists blamed for a mountain quake.)
– NOAA says it's a whale of a success story: Most of the world's humpback whale populations, including all those that enter US waters, are no longer endangered, according to the agency. NOAA, which says 45 years of protection have helped whale populations rebound, wants to reclassify the species into 14 populations, only two of which would be classed as endangered, NBC News reports. The Central America and western North Pacific populations, which sometimes enter US waters, would be classed as threatened under the NOAA proposal, while the Arabian Sea and Cape Verde Islands populations would still be considered endangered. All 14 populations would remain protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. "This is good news for whales and whale conservation and should be cause for celebration, not a reason to run screaming from the room," the whale program director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare tells Science. "It shows that when we take appropriate steps to protect whales, they can recover." A senior biologist for Whale and Dolphin Conservation North America, however, tells the Guardian that the proposal seems premature. The species is too complicated to split into just 14 populations, she says, and they still face multiple threats, including boat strikes and entanglement. (A daring crew from the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary used a knife on a pole to free a 45-ton whale entangled in fishing line.)
– As Donald Trump continues to trade volleys with Latinos, he took his unrepentant show to Phoenix last night, where he told an enthusiastic crowd that waited hours in 100-degree temps that "we have to take back the heart of our country" and that he was "ready to go right at the Mexican government. I’m going to charge them $25,000 per illegal immigrant and, oh, I’ll make them pay." Trump used the 70-minute speech, which the Washington Post characterizes as more a "stream-of-consciousness rant than a presidential-style stump speech," which "put an exclamation point on his bombastic push" to focus on immigration. "These are people that shouldn’t be in our country," Trump told the crowd of between 3,500 and 4,200. "They flow in like water." He also took the opportunity to further hammer away at GOP golden boy Jeb Bush, saying, "let's say he's president—oy, yoy, yoy. How can I be tied with this guy? He's terrible. Terrible. He's weak on immigration." Bush wasn't Trump's only whipping boy: Also attracting the candidate's scorn, per the Post, were "Macy’s, NBC, NASCAR, Caroline Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton and, several times, the media." (The candidate avoided attracting Neil Young's wrath again and left the stage to "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister.) Trump spoke earlier in the day to a Libertarian crowd in Las Vegas, notes the AP, striking a slightly more nuanced tone: "I love the Mexican people. I respect Mexico greatly as a country. But the problem we have is their leaders are much sharper than ours, and they're killing us at the border and they're killing us on trade." (Even as Trump spoke, Mexico was having a little trouble keeping a notorious drug lord on lockdown.)
– A ship's chaplain in the 1740s wrote of sailors' gums that would grow out of control until they protruded from the mouth and rotted away, leaving a horrific case of bad breath, the BBC reports. So it turns out that not only was scurvy once incredibly dangerous, it was also super gross. Real Clear Science reports that approximately 2 million sailors died from scurvy, which is caused by a lack of vitamin C, between 1500 and 1800. During his voyage across the Pacific, Magellan lost 80% of his crew to the disease called "the plague of the sea," according to the BBC. One historian says scurvy killed more sailors than battle, storms, shipwrecks, and other diseases combined. And, it wasn't a pleasant way to go, either. Scurvy starts with lethargy before causing achy joints, swollen limbs, and loose teeth, according to Real Clear Science. From there, sufferers get swollen gums, bad breath, and bruising. The skin turns yellow, then black, just before sufferers die from internal hemorrhaging. The tragic part is scurvy is ridiculously easy to cure. Real Clear Science reports someone on the brink of death from the disease could be saved by eating one-fifth of an orange every day for a week. Alas, doctors of the time didn't know what vitamins were, and ships weren't exactly built to store fresh fruit. The disease is mostly gone now, but a post at Phys.org notes that NASA scientists are using the lessons learned to ensure astronauts get the vitamins they need to stay healthy in space. (Is it possible kids are getting too many vitamins?)
– A woman believed to be in her 20s or 30s held employees of a Jared Vault jewelry store in Mebane, NC, at gunpoint on Monday before making off with jewelry piled into a shopping bag. But this wasn't her first rodeo: The FBI says the same brunette has robbed five other jewelry stores across the South since April, including in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, netting more than $450,000 worth of bling, per WNCN. A black man in his 30s or 40s, weighing about 250 pounds, was spotted by cameras during three of the robberies, reports NBC News. The FBI says both suspects "are considered armed and dangerous."
– The creators of the hotly anticipated Microsoft Surface RT have touted it as revolutionary, improving upon the toy-like tablets of today by making it functional, with a detachable touch screen and a snappy design. So is it the future of computing? Not yet, most reviewers agree: Sam Biddle praises the RT's concept and design in a detailed review at Gizmodo that's worth a full read. But ultimately, he says it's "not worth your paycheck" in its current form, which retails around $600 give or take some pricey add-ons. Instead of being both a tablet and a laptop, it's "really just the worst of both worlds." It's also hard to use: "It's just a half-broken death march up the learning curve." Over at Wired, Mathew Honan loves the look of the machine, and like others, drools over the satisfying "snap" of its razor-thin kickstand. It's durable too, but the cameras lag and "the image quality looks about like the last photo you snapped with your Razr V3." Pretty much everyone hates the Windows RT software the machine runs on. It's a departure from Window's old operating systems—it's colorful and swipe-friendly, for starters. But Harry McCracken, writing for CNN, wonders why the new design still includes a desktop. Switching between the two interfaces "can be an oddly disjointed experience, as if you're teleporting between two very different planets with very little warning." The apps are a big letdown, writes David Pogue in the New York Times. You can't use any iPad or Android Tablet apps, nor any of Microsoft's own programs. That means no apps for Facebook, Angry Birds, or Spotify, among many others, and what is available is "bare-bones junky." His advice? Wait a few months for the Surface Pro.
– Oprah Winfrey—a bad neighbor? That's what one man who lives near her new property above Telluride, Colorado, seems to think. Retired physicist Charles D. Goodman is suing Winfrey, claiming the property blocks access to hiking trails that were previously open to locals. Goodman says Winfrey and the prior owners of the property made a secret deal with the town of Mountain Village to erase easements that have, for decades, allowed nearby residents to use the trails, before Oprah bought the property in March. A rep for Winfrey's company says the company plans to allow "reasonable" access. Winfrey joins these six other celebrities involved in somewhat odd lawsuits: Taylor Swift is being sued ... over a number. Lucky 13, a clothing line, doesn't want Swift using the phrase "Lucky 13" on her own official merchandise. It's a bummer for Swift, who has long held that 13 is her lucky number. "Basically, whenever a 13 comes up in my life, it’s a good thing," she once said. But not this time, apparently. Katherine Heigl is suing a drugstore for a whopping $6 million, and all over a tweet. The actress isn't happy that Duane Reade tweeted a picture of her carrying two shopping bags from the store along with the line, "Even @KatieHeigl can’t resist shopping #NYC's favorite drugstore." Britney Spears is being sued by a backup dancer who says that a "disheveled and confused" Spears, who was having trouble mastering the choreography for a music video, suddenly started twirling "in an unbalanced and reckless manner" and ended up smacking the dancer and breaking her nose. Nicki Minaj is being sued by her former wig stylist, who claims the rapper stole his wig designs and is now selling them as her own. Alanis Morissette is suing her housekeeper; the musician claims the woman stole her dog after becoming overly attached to it while Alanis and her husband were traveling. Last year, LeAnn Rimes sued her dentist, claiming he did such poor work that he caused "permanent cosmetic deficiency" and harmed her career. Click for eight more weird lawsuits involving celebrities.
– The head of Jabhat al-Nusra, a jihadist group at the forefront of Syria's civil war, has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda honcho Ayman al-Zawahiri. What that means isn't exactly crystal clear at this point. While Al-Qaeda in Iraq says the groups have merged under the snappy title of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, al-Nusra chief Abu Mohammed al-Jawalani denies his group will be ordering new letterhead just yet, the BBC reports. "The banner of the Front will remain unchanged despite our pride in the banner of the State and those who carried it and sacrificed and shed their blood for it," he said in an audio message, the AP reports. Al-Nusra is among the most effective of the rebel groups fighting the Syrian government. It has committed more than 40 successful bombing attacks and has been on the frontline of clashes against Assad forces, adds the Daily Beast. The alliance is not a surprise (Obama labeled it a terrorist organization last year), but it is concerning, says CNN. Al-Nusra's success on the battlefield and reputation for distributing free bread makes it popular with everyday Syrians. With a powerful army in Syria, al-Qaeda would gain a strong strategic position in the Middle East, and a safe haven for long-term scheming.
– A Los Angeles restaurant owner is sick of seeing customers spend more time with their cell phones than their dinner companions … so he's offering a cheaper meal to anyone willing to put the phone down. Patrons who check their phones at the door of Eva Restaurant get a 5% discount. "For us, it's really not about people disrupting other guests. Eva is home, and we want to create that environment of home, and we want people to connect again," owner Mark Gold tells KPCC. "It's about two people sitting together and just connecting, without the distraction of a phone." Gold adds that he himself is guilty of using his cell phone as "part of the table setting" these days. "Every table you look at, it's a wine glass, the silverware and the cell phone," he says. But his idea is catching on, with just under half of his customers accepting the offer. (Hat tip to Gawker for the find.)
– They've been living separately for a while, and now Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon are making the split official, reports People. Cannon filed divorce papers last month, and TMZ reports that the couple has worked out a deal to split their property. (They've also got 3-year-old twins.) The website takes note of an unusual feature of their prenup: If Cannon violates a confidentiality clause and talks about their marriage, he has to pay up $250,000; if Carey talks, she has to pay $500,000. The reason is simple: She's got a lot more money than he does, and an upcoming artist-in-residence gig in Vegas will only widen the gap.
– Travelers stuck in limbo because of flights grounded at the Tel Aviv airport just got some bad news: The FAA is extending its ban on flights to the Ben Gurion International Airport for at least another 24 hours, to 12:15pm Eastern tomorrow, reports CNN. European airlines are following suit, with Air France, Lufthansa, and Air Berlin suspending flights through tomorrow at least, reports the AP. Authorities are worried about rocket strikes, either deliberate or inadvertent, taking place near the airport. Meanwhile, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg flew into Tel Aviv last night on Israeli airline El Al to make a point, reports CBS New York. “I’m just trying to show that it’s safe, and a great place to visit, and Israel has a right to defend its people, and they’re doing exactly what they should be doing," he said upon arrival. (Earlier, John Kerry flew in to Israel to try to give peace talks a jolt, even as fighting continues.)
– A New Jersey court on Wednesday gave the Flight Crew—aka the New York Jets cheerleaders—something to cheer about: a $325,000 settlement of the class-action lawsuit filed in 2014 by a cheerleader identified as Krystal C., CNNMoney reports. That amounts to each of the 52 cheerleaders getting $2,500 per season worked and $400 per photo shoot. The settlement covers the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons. New York State Sen. Diane Savino, per the New York Post, cheered the settlement, calling on the NFL to "develop uniform rules … to ensure that all cheerleaders in every state received the employee pay and protections they deserve." NFL teams have sought to justify low pay for cheerleaders by saying they're independent contractors, CNN notes. In the case of the Flight Crew, Krystal C.'s suit claimed that cheerleaders were compensated $150 per game and $100 for special appearances. But, when you factor in practices and rehearsals, that pans out to $3.77 per hour. Throw in hair, makeup, and transportation expenses and "the hourly rate goes below $1.50 an hour," says the cheerleaders' attorney. The Flight Crew isn't alone: Cheerleaders have taken to the courts to seek higher pay from the Cincinnati Bengals (tentative agreement reached), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (settled for $825,000), Oakland Raiders (settled for $1.25 million), and the Buffalo Bills (class-action suit on the horizon).
– Dr. Christopher S. Driskill, one of the few OB/GYNs in Hobbs, New Mexico, was appreciated by many of his patients and admired by his colleagues. But the New York Times reports that Driskill now faces serious allegations, from drinking on the job to failing to show up at a delivery because he was sleeping with another patient at the time, and his license has been suspended as a result. The New Mexico Medical Board confronted Driskill with the accusations, which also include neglecting other patients who were in labor and writing "inappropriate notations of a personal nature into certain patient medical charts," but as of last week, the prosecutor for the board reached an agreement with Driskill that could allow him to start practicing again if it's approved by the board next month. The drama has been the talk of the town—and beyond. Cosmopolitan theorized in a headline, "This Might Be the Worst Doctor Ever," and Britain's Daily Mail, not surprisingly, covered the salacious story from a continent away. The story "had me wondering if he was drunk on the job when he did my three kids," says one Hobbs resident. The trouble started when Driskill, 42, who is married with four kids, was fired from Premier OB/GYN in August for allegedly being intoxicated while working and keeping a "personal cache of alcohol" in his office, as well as allegedly sleeping with patients. But the claims seem strange to people like Dr. Jose Garcia, a pediatrician who's worked closely with Driskill and who says he's a "health nut" whom Garcia has never seen drink at social gatherings. No criminal charges have been filed. (Click to read a happier story about a surprise baby's delivery.)
– When he discovered his newborn son had Down syndrome, a New Zealand man living in Armenia was horrified not by the condition, but by the assumption that he wouldn't want to keep little Leo. When the boy was born, "the doctor came out, he said, 'There's a real problem with your son,'" Samuel Forrest tells ABC. "They took me in to see him and I looked at this guy and I said, 'He's beautiful—he's perfect and I'm absolutely keeping him,'" he says. But his Armenian wife told him she would leave him if he didn't agree to put the boy up for adoption, and when he declined, she filed for divorce a week after the boy was born on Jan. 21. "When a baby like this is born here, they will tell you that you don't have to keep them," Forrest says. "My wife had already decided, so all of this was done behind my back." The wife confirmed to ABC that she had a baby with Down syndrome and has left her husband, but she declined to discuss details. Forrest, a freelance business contractor, started a GoFundMe page for help taking Leo to live in New Zealand and has had an overwhelming response, TVNZ reports. With a $60,000 target, he has now raised more than $200,000 and plans to use the extra funds to support programs that help abandoned children in Armenia and families with disabled children. (A woman who asked for a few birthday cards for her son with Down syndrome received truckloads of responses.)
– It looks like George Zimmerman has sold his gun after all. Both TMZ and WKMG report an online auction that ended Wednesday received a verified top bid of $120,000 for the weapon used to kill Trayvon Martin. A higher bid of nearly $140,000 by "John Smith" appeared to be bogus. In fact, WKMG reports that auction site United Gun Group actually had two auctions going—a fake one open to the public destined to attract pranksters like "John Smith," and a closed one made up of pre-qualified bidders. "I would like to thank and give the glory to God for a successful auction that has raised funds for several worthy causes," Zimmerman said in a statement addressed to "Fellow Patriots." The Trayvon Martin Foundation declined to comment. UGG tweeted that Zimmerman is "in the process of vetting several offers and verifying funds," adding, "Our part in this process is over and we are going to get back to business as usual." The site, though, is taking plenty of heat for facilitating the auction. "I hope you enjoy your time with the devil in hell," reads a representative tweet. Zimmerman's efforts to auction the 9mm pistol have not gone smoothly. Another site, GunBroker.com, backed out. And the fiirst attempt attracted several joke bids, such as the $65 million offered by "Weedlord Bonerhitler." (In a recent interview, an unrepentant Zimmerman said Martin's mother and father were bad parents who "didn't raise their son right.")
– The biggest apology of the week came from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but it was hardly the only one to make headlines: Shamed: “I apologize from my heart to those who have died or been injured. I feel a heavy responsibility.”—Shigehisa Takada, chief executive of the Japanese supplier Takata, over his company's air bag issues. Unsportsmanlike: "I got carried away responding to playful ribbing ... and, in my stupidity, overcompensated by saying something ignorant and extreme. 100% mistake on my part, for which I'm deeply sorry."—Andy Benoit of Sports Illustrated, after tweetiing that women's sports weren't worth watching. He then got skewered by Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. Flag gaffe: “Our local store made a mistake. The cake in the video should not have been made and we apologize.”—Walmart spokesperson, after a store in Louisiana made a cake adorned with an ISIS flag, ordered by someone trying to make a point about the chain's ban on the Confederate flag. Civil discourse: "But for those of you who were offended by what was intended as a very genuine attempt at fostering a civil discussion, I apologize."—John Micek, opinion editor at PennLive, after announcing a decision to "strictly limit" letters in opposition to same-sex marriage in the week of this week's Supreme Court ruling. The site is affiliated with the Patriot News of Harrisburg, Pa. Celebrity interference: “I sincerely regret not discussing my editing rationale with our partners at PBS and WNET, and I apologize for putting PBS and its member stations in the position of having to defend the integrity of their programming."—Henry Louis Gates Jr., after PBS said it would postpone his Finding Your Roots series because of its Ben Affleck miscue.
– It's not every day that what is essentially nothingness would be major news, but today is that day: Scientists announced in Nature that after two years of study, they've identified a roughly 100-foot-long void in Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza—built around 2500 BC, it's the most ancient of the seven wonders of the ancient world, notes the Guardian. It's the first discovery of a new structure in the monument since the 19th century, and it came by using muography, which can pick up on changes in density within rock. What was found, the BBC reports, isn't being called a "chamber," and it explains why: Also known as Khufu's Pyramid, the structure contains voids that are believed to have been incorporated to bolster the structural integrity of the pyramid. While three muon technologies confirmed its existence, "we don't know whether this big void is horizontal or inclined ... [or] made by one structure or several successive structures," says Mehdi Tayoubi. It sits above the pyramid's "most striking" chamber, the Grand Gallery, a corridor that links the Queen's and King's chambers. An archaeologist who reviewed the work says it's possible the void was intended to "protect the very narrow roof" of the gallery, though others contend that for the cavity to effectively have that function, it would need to be smaller. The Guardian notes the pharaoh Khufu's mummy is missing, but a Harvard Egyptologist tells NPR the idea that the cavity is "a hidden room and the king's body is inside ... none of that is responsible speculation at the moment." The team next hopes to get approval to drill a 1.2-inch hole that a robot could fit into. (The world's largest pyramid was mistaken as a mountain.)
– Imagine looking outside and seeing over a dozen cop cars chasing ... a tractor. That was the scene in Denver last night when a stolen tractor towing an attachment smashed into cars and buildings as it plowed through downtown, the Huffington Post reports. Addie Hooper, 20, was visiting from Texas with family when she looked out a restaurant window onto Market Street and saw a police SUV crash into the tractor: "We were just like, 'Woah, that's crazy!" Hooper tells the Denver Post. Police vehicles rushed the scene and officers jumped out with guns drawn. "We thought they were going to shoot him," she adds. Instead, officers Tased the driver and made sure he was carted off by ambulance. Two officers sustained non-life-threatening injuries, and no reports have emerged of injured pedestrians. "It could've definitely been a lot worse," a witness tells KDVR. No more details have emerged, but police say the slow-speed chase began around City Park and concluded downtown, where officers rammed the tractor to protect pedestrians. Among Twitter videos, this one seems to capture it best. (Read about the easiest suspect chase ever.)
– Hawaii's island of Oahu is renowned for its mountainous vistas, but someday it's going to be flat as a pancake, or at least as flat as Midway. So say researchers from Brigham Young University in a new study, reports UPI. The big factor isn't what you might expect, namely external erosion. Rather, the island's own groundwater is slowly dissolving the mountains. The weird part, explains PlanetSave, is that Oahu's elevation is actually going to keep growing for 1.5 million years because of how it's being shifted by tectonic plates. But after that, the slow descent begins.
– A Gallup poll released Wednesday finds that Americans' approval of Congress has hit yet another record low: 10%. There aren't many institutions Americans have liked less over the last 50-or-so years, according to Gallup: Only Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and OJ Simpson detective Mark Fuhrman have ever scored lower. ABC News takes a look at some very unpopular things that still manage to rank above Congress: According to an August poll, Paris Hilton is America's least-favorite celeb. But her 60% disapproval rating is still better than Congress's 86% disapproval rating. Socialism is about three times as popular as Congress: About 33% of Americans view the system positively, according to a January poll. About half of Americans polled in November said waterboarding should be permitted as an interrogation technique—meaning more support the technique than support Congress. During the financial crisis, banks were more popular than Congress is now: Some 18% of Americans still had faith in the institutions in 2009. In June 2010, as thousands of barrels of oil were pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day, 16% of Americans approved of BP's work on the crisis. Click through to see what else Americans hate less than they despise Congress.
– If today's questions from the conservative wing of the Supreme Court are any guide, the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 is doomed. In fact, writes Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog, expect a 5-4 decision in favor of striking down Section 5 of the act, one of its core provisions. It requires nine mostly Southern states to get federal permission when they want to change voting rules, and Antonin Scalia and others suggested the measure is no longer necessary, reports the New York Times. Scalia called it a "perpetuation of racial entitlement," Anthony Kennedy wanted to know how long Alabama had to live "under the trusteeship of the United States government," and Chief Justice John Roberts wondered whether people in the South were more racist than those in the North. The court's liberal wing made the case that the act is still necessary, with Stephen Breyer saying the "old disease" of racism, along with the desire to keep minorities from voting, remains. If the court strikes down the act, it would likely require Congress to come up with a new formula for it, but both the Times and SCOTUSblog think it's unlikely that would be politically possible.
– Thursday night was the silliest night in scientists' calendars, and with winners including a man who wore prosthetic extensions to live among a herd of goats in the Alps for several days, this year's Ig Nobel awards did not disappoint. In front of a rowdy crowd, real Nobel winners handed out the awards to those who had the year's oddest research. Winners also received $10 trillion—in a single Zimbabwean banknote (US value: less than $1). Some highlights from the annual ceremony at Harvard University, which was presented by the Annals of Improbable Research: "Goat man" Tom Thwaites wore his goat legs to the awards ceremony .He tells the BBC that he gained a "goat buddy" during his time in the Alps—but there were some tense moments. "I was just sort of walking around, you know, chewing grass, and just looked up and then suddenly realized that everyone else had stopped chewing and there was this tension which I hadn't kind of noticed before and then one or two of the goats started tossing their horns around and I think I was about to get in a fight," he says. Thwaites shared the biology prize with Charles Foster, another Brit who has spent time living in the wild as, among other things, a badger, an otter, and a fox. Science reports that the medicine prize went to a team of neurologists and psychologists, who, with the help of video cameras, mirrors, and volunteers injected with a chemical that causes a mild itch, discovered that scratching the left side of your body will relieve an itch on the right side if you're looking in a mirror at the time. A Japanese team won the perception prize with a study published as "Perceived Size and Perceived Distance of Targets Viewed From Between the Legs: Evidence for Proprioceptive Theory." Their research involved bending over and looking at things from between their legs to see if they looked any different. Egyptian urologist Ahmed Shafik was posthumously awarded the reproduction prize for his research on how wearing trousers of polyester, cotton, or wool affected the sex lives of rats. The rats that wore polyester had the biggest drop in sexual activity, notes the Guardian. This year's Ig Nobel in chemistry went to Volkswagen, for "solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested." (Previous Ig Nobels have gone to scientists who swallowed parboiled dead shrews and a researcher who allowed bees to sting every part of his anatomy.)
– An explosion and fire on a London Underground train caused panic and injuries during rush hour Friday morning. Police, ambulances, and firefighters were called to the Parsons Green station in the southwest of the city after the blast, which authorities are now calling a terrorist attack, the Guardian reports. Photos and video shared on social media showed a fire in a bucket but no extensive damage to the subway car. Passenger Richard Aylmer-Hall says he saw several people injured in a stampede to escape the packed train. "Suddenly there was panic, lots of people shouting, screaming, lots of screaming," he says. Passenger Peter Crowley tells the BBC that he was sitting on the train when he felt a "really hot intense fireball above my head." He adds: "There were people a lot worse than me." Other witnesses say they saw at least one person being taken away with burn injuries. The London Ambulance Service says at least 18 people were hospitalized after the attack, none of them with life-threatening injuries, the AP reports. London Mayor Sadiq Khan urged Londoners to remain vigilant and said the city "utterly condemns the hideous individuals who attempt to use terror to harm us and destroy our way of life."
– Now that other airlines are jumping on the fees-for-carry-ons band wagon, Spirit Airlines wants you to be sure and remember that they were the first. The airline is jacking up its carry-on fees, which will now range from between $20 a bag all the way up to an eye-popping $100, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. The cheaper rates are for fliers who pay the fee online; wait until you get to the gate, and it'll cost you c-note. Appalled? Then maybe you should join the burgeoning boycott on Facebook. The boycott isn't about bag fees though; it's about the airline's refusal to refund the ticket of 76-year-old veteran Jerry Meeks, who had to cancel a flight on doctor's orders because he's suffering from terminal esophageal cancer, Mashable reports. It gets worse: This dying ex-marine was flying in the first place to see his daughter, who was having surgery. As of this writing, the boycott page has more than 20,000 likes.
– Look, we crave chocolate as much as the next news site, but this is ridiculous. The Telegraph reports thieves in Germany made off with more than 22 tons of Nutella over the weekend. The Nutella—along with Kinder Surprise eggs and other sweet treats—was in a refrigerated trailer that was towed away by the thieves in the town of Neustadt. The entire haul is said to be worth somewhere between $58,000 and $82,000, and Neustadt police have a warning for sugar-loving residents: "Anyone offered large quantities of chocolate via unconventional channels should report it to the police immediately." NPR has more stories of thieves stealing improbably large amounts of food, including the pilfering of 9 tons of garlic and the exploits of a bread-redistributing, underwear-clad Robin Hood.
– A flight operated by Air Algerie and carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria's capital disappeared from radar early today, and an Algerian aviation official now tells Reuters the plane has crashed, though no further details were given. Air navigation services lost track of the Swiftair MD-83 about 50 minutes after takeoff from Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, at 1:55am GMT (9:55pm Eastern last night), the official Algerian news agency says. That means that Flight 5017 had been missing for hours before the news was made public. Swiftair, a private Spanish airline, confirms it has not been possible to make contact with the plane. Swiftair says the plane carrying 110 passengers and six crew left Burkina Faso for Algiers at 1:17am GMT today, but had not arrived at the scheduled time of 5:10am GMT. But, as Reuters puts it, conflicting information has been given about timing, "adding to confusion about the fate of the flight and where it might be." The plane was over Gao, Mali, when contact was lost, and a diplomat in Mali says there was a powerful sandstorm overnight in the north part of the country, over which the plane would likely have flown. The Burkina Faso transport minister says the flight asked to change course at 1:38am GMT because of a storm, according to Reuters.
– A Mississippi State University student was fatally shot in a dorm on Saturday, and a second student attending a Mississippi college was killed at an off-campus party yesterday. John Sanderson, 21, died shortly after three suspects fled his Starkville residence hall. "The perpetrators fled our campus, but we're still attempting to identify them, and we're following every lead in order to do that," said spokesman Bill Kibler. The campus has not been locked down, but only residents are being allowed in and out of dorm, and are being carefully screened, reports ABC News. Officials believe the shooting, the first ever on campus, is an isolated incident. In the second shooting, a 19-year-old Nolan Ryan Henderson of Jackson State University was shot dead in the face at a pool party. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant expressed sorrow over both deaths, and offered any aid needed, reports Fox News. "Those perpetuating these crimes will be apprehended and held accountable," he vowed.
– Police say a 37-year-old man was far from lovin' it when workers at a McDonald's restaurant in Oregon refused to make him 30 double cheeseburgers and tried to destroy the golden arches, the AP reports. The News-Review reports that police arrested Jedediah Ezekiel Fulton earlier this month on suspicion of second-degree disorderly conduct, second-degree criminal trespass, second-degree criminal mischief, and harassment. Authorities say Fulton became upset when the fast food restaurant in the western Oregon town of Sutherlin declined to make his order. Police say he destroyed a banner and then attacked the arches. The Sutherlin Police Department says he also grabbed a person's shirt and that a witness afraid for that person's life pulled out a gun. It's not clear from online records if Fulton has an attorney.
– What should this 4-year-old be when she grows up? Our suggestion: police officer. The San Francisco Chronicle has the initially frightening story of woman who ran from her Antioch, Calif., home after seeing a man come inside through an unlocked door. She had her baby in her arms—but had left the 4-year-old inside. Police arrived and found the girl unharmed, but they were unable to locate the reported intruder ... until the child told her mother exactly where he was. Police did indeed find the man hiding inside the girl's closet, as the child had said. Following a short struggle, 21-year-old Demaria Lopez was arrested, the Antioch Herald reports. He faces charges of attempted burglary and resisting arrest.
– When the Trayvon Martin shooting took place, President Obama made headlines by saying that Trayvon could have been his son. Today, he took it further: "Trayvon could have been me 35 years ago," he said during an unscheduled stop in the White House briefing room to talk about the case. Some highlights, as noted by USA Today, the New York Times, and the Washington Post: “I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that—that doesn’t go away. There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.” "I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.” But: "I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that things are getting better." Referring to his daughters and their generation: "They’re better than we are, they’re better than we were, on these issues," and that should instill confidence that things will change. He asked all Americans to do some "soul-searching," asking themselves, "Am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can."
– Minors hoping to get their tan on will have to choose the kind that comes in a bottle or get their rays from the sun, according to proposed rules from the FDA. Outlined Friday, the rules would bar those under 18 from using a sunlamp or indoor tanning device, reports NBC News, which calls the rules "unprecedented." Adult users would need to sign what USA Today calls a "strongly worded" document acknowledging the risks of tanning, including skin cancer, before using indoor tanning devices, which the FDA wants modified to include a "panic" off switch and larger warning labels. Doctors and cancer researchers are celebrating the move, per USA Today. The public has 90 days to comment. (Tanning beds send thousands to the ER each year.)
– Noticed something a bit off about PBS' A Capitol Fourth broadcast Monday? So did hundreds of people who took to Facebook and Twitter, per NBC News. Though host Tom Bergeron initially laughed off concerns that the live concert and fireworks display over Washington would be rained out, per the Washington Post, the sky above the Capitol Building was foggy and overcast as the fireworks began. That made seeing the show a bit difficult—so PBS intervened. Mingled with misty footage of fireworks over the Capitol building, with scaffolding clearly visible, was stock footage of fireworks from previous celebrations. Viewers were quick to call out the "fraudulent" scheme—there was no disclaimer during the "live" broadcast—noting the stock footage showed a clear sky over the Capitol Building, and no scaffolding, per the Post. Afterward, the show admitted to showing "a combination of the best fireworks from this year and previous years" because of the poor conditions. "It was the patriotic thing to do," reads a tweet from the Capitol Fourth account. "We apologize for any confusion this may have caused." The apology didn't appease some, though. "How is using stock video patriotic?" one user wrote. "If I wanted that, I'd watch YouTube." (A Texas teen tried to make a "fireworks bomb" and paid a steep price.)
– Wha? Scotland Yard is sure to set the conspiracy theories in motion with an unusual statement today that it is taking a look at new information about the death of Princess Diana. It wouldn't divulge details, except to say that it was "assessing its relevance and credibility," reports the BBC. Scotland Yard stressed that this doesn't mean the investigation into the 1997 car crash is being reopened, and it added that the new assessment doesn't come under the umbrella of "Operation Paget," a previous police investigation into foul play. But those distinctions probably won't do much to tamp speculation. Enter Sky News, swinging for the fences: "The information, thought to include the allegation that the Princess of Wales, Dodi al Fayed and their driver were killed by a member of the British military, will be assessed by officers from the Specialist Crime and Operations Command." A British jury in 2008 blamed recklessness on the part of Diana and Fayed's driver and on the paparazzi chasing them, notes AP.
– The interactive map of gun-owning homes published by Westchester's Journal News inspired more than outrage: Now a Connecticut lawyer has published the home addresses and phone numbers of the Journal News' publisher and 50 employees on his blog, reports Tech Crunch. “I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask,” writes blogger Christopher Fountain, who added a Google Maps shot of Hasson's house, complete with interior shots via Zillow. Another enterprising blogger even took that data and made another interactive map of his own. "Ironically, the promise of open data was supposed to lead to open-minded discussion," notes Tech Crunch's Gregory Ferenstein, but it "appears that transparency lends itself equally to being both a tool of democracy or a partisan weapon."
– Scientists still don't know what causes multiple sclerosis, but new research suggests that a particular strain of food poisoning may play a role, reports the BBC. The food bacterium in question is called Clostridium perfringens, which NBC News notes is responsible for millions of cases of foodborne illnesses per year, often through undercooked meat. A rare strain of it produces a toxin called epsilon, and the researches found that this toxin attacks the brain in the same way that MS does. “To me, if you were going to design a trigger for this disease, this would really fit the mold really well,” says a researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. He adds that it's far too early to conclude that the toxin causes MS, only that it appears to activate it. If further study backs up the finding, it could theoretically lead to a vaccine that prevents MS, says another of the Weill Cornell researchers quoted in Medical News Today.
– Police found Yonatan Daniel Aguilar dead in the bedroom closet of his family's Los Angeles home in August—and authorities say the malnourished boy, who was 11 years old but weighed just 34 pounds, had been hidden away in locked closets for three years. He was last seen publicly in 2012, at which time teachers reported that he had come to school with a black eye and seemed hungry. After that, his 39-year-old mother, Veronica Aguilar, told almost everyone, including Yonatan's stepfather, that she had sent the boy to an institution in Mexico, the Los Angeles Times reports. Yonatan was reportedly autistic and had issues with soiling himself. Authorities say that only his three siblings knew Aguilar was keeping him sedated with sleeping aids and locked in closets, some of them so small he couldn't stretch out his feet, per Fox 59. In the years prior to his vanishing from public life, Yonatan's family had been reported to DCFS six times for possible abuse or neglect; Yonatan's risk of abuse at home was gauged as "high" four times in the three years before he disappeared. But social workers never opened a case, and Aguilar, who volunteered at her kids' school, apparently convinced everyone nothing was amiss, CBS LA reports. "We talked to the school nurse, the school doctors, school counselors, the teachers, everyone, including the LAPD investigators, who all said everything was OK," says the DCFS director, who adds that social workers are "distraught" at Yonatan's death. The boy's mother has pleaded not guilty to his murder. Police say his stepfather had no idea Yonatan was hidden in the family home, and he alerted police when his wife brought him to the boy's body.
– What to do when you're being held hostage on an aircraft by somebody who appears to be wearing a suicide vest? For Ben Innes of Leeds, England, it was time for a selfie—with the hijacker. The 26-year-old, who was one of the last hostages left on the plane after hijacker Seif Eldin Mustafa forced the EgyptAir Alexandria-to-Cairo flight to land in Cyprus, tells the Sun that "I figured if his bomb was real I'd nothing to lose anyway, so [I] took a chance to get a closer look at it. I got one of the cabin crew to translate for me and asked him if I could do a selfie with him. He just shrugged OK, so I stood by him and smiled for the camera while a stewardess did the snap. It has to be the best selfie ever." Innes' relieved mother tells the Telegraph that she takes issue with the description of the photo as a "selfie," since Ben didn't take it himself. Mustafa, whose explosives belt turned out to be a fake made from phone cases, appeared in court in Cyprus on Wednesday and was remanded in custody for eight days, the BBC reports. Authorities describe the 59-year-old as a "psychologically unstable person" who made assorted incoherent demands, the AP reports. Egypt's ambassador to Cyprus says the incident stemmed from a "family feud," probably involving Mustafa's ex-wife, who lives in Cyprus and was brought to the airport at his request. "He's not a terrorist, he's an idiot," another foreign ministry official says. "Terrorists are crazy, but they aren't stupid. This guy is."
– The state known as America's Waiting Room is moving up in the ranks: According to Census data, Florida has officially deposed New York to become the third most populous state in the union, reports the Washington Post. The Sunshine State is now home to 19.9 million residents, compared to 19.7 million in the Empire State, but it's the difference in growth that's notable: Florida took in 293,000 new residents in the year ending July 1, or about 803 a day. New York managed just 51,000. Florida likely pushed past New York sometime in the spring, notes the AP, but it takes the Census to make it official. Interestingly and unsurprisingly, former New Yorkers make up about 10% of new Floridians. Other demographic nuggets, per the AP: Don't look for Florida to mess with Texas, America's No. 2 state with 27 million people, or No. 1 California's 38.8 million souls. The rest of the 10 most populous states: Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan. Six states lost population: Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico, Vermont, and West Virginia. North Dakota was the fastest-growing state, with a 2.2% jump that stood solidly on the shoulders of its energy boom. It's still the fourth least-populous state.
– A strange drama unfolded today at Dutch national broadcaster NOS, where a young man clad in a suit and wielding what appeared to be a pistol demanded air time before being arrested, reports the BBC. Police later said the pistol was fake, reports ABC News. Authorities have identified the culprit only as a 19-year-old from the town of Pijnacker near the Hague. His apparent plan was to address the nation during the evening news broadcast, but Reuters credits a "quick-thinking security guard" with leading him into an empty studio instead. Video shows him pacing and complaining that "this is taking too long" before several officers enter the studio and arrest him without a struggle. While he was pacing, the man said, "The things that are going to be said (pause) those are very large world affairs. We were hired by the security service." He also had a letter threatening the detonation of radioactive bombs if he didn't get on the air. A NOS reporter said the man told him that he was from a "hackers' collective," without elaboration, reports AP. Though he didn't get on the air, the man did manage to disrupt the national news. Staffers fled the studio, and viewers instead saw a logo on their screens reading, "Please be patient." NOS was off the air about an hour.
– A man saw a doll inside a parked truck and called police about an unresponsive infant, leading to the recovery of a stolen truck and a very real baby, reports the AP. Lumberton Police Department Capt. Terry Parker tells the Fayetteville Observer that a woman reported her pickup truck stolen and 3-week-old baby missing Monday. Parker says the woman was taking two other children inside a house when someone stole the vehicle and baby inside it. Police issued an alert, and Parker says the truck and baby were abandoned in a nearby parking lot minutes later. He says a man walking past the truck noticed a window was down and peered inside. Parker says the man saw a doll lying on the floor and called police, who found the infant uninjured in a car seat in the back of the truck. No arrests had been made as of Tuesday.
– A slow-moving Nigerian delicacy was stopped at Los Angeles International Airport when 67 giant land snails were discovered packed in picnic baskets, authorities said yesterday. The live African snails—which can grow to be 8 inches long, 5 inches wide, and live to be 10 years old—arrived with paperwork stating they were for human consumption, but federal authorities say they are a damaging, invasive species, reports CBS. "The significant interception of giant African snails is the first time this pest has been encountered in such large quantity and as a consumption entry" in Los Angeles, a Customs and Border Protection official says. The snails, which carry a parasite that can give humans meningitis, are known to consume more than 500 kinds of plants and USDA officials say they will even eat the paint and stucco off houses when there's no other food around, the Los Angeles Times notes. The snails are generally fried as a snack but the shipment seized at LAX was turned over to the USDA and then incinerated, reports Reuters. Florida has been battling an infestation of the snails for years and has caught more than 100,000 of them.
– Tennessee lawmaker Stacey Campfield is no stranger to controversy—you may recall his "don't say gay" bill, among other things—and now he's got a little bit more. On his blog, Campfield thought it would be a hoot to make a joke about the Boston bombers' weapon of choice, a pressure cooker. He posted a photo of "an assault pressure cooker" with the line, "Here comes Feinstein again," a reference to the senator's efforts on gun control. Asked about it by WVLT, Campfield said people need to "lighten up." “I say it’s insensitive that people go after guns and Second Amendment rights after the Sandy Hook shooting," he added. The state senator also made headlines earlier this month when he scrapped a measure to link welfare benefits to students' performance at school, notes Raw Story. He dropped the bill after being confronted in front of cameras by an 8-year-old girl, who he dismissed as a "prop". (The Tennessean had coverage on that.)
– First it was the kids of Flint found to have been tainted by lead, attributed by many to the area's toxic water. Now two dogs who live in the vicinity of the Michigan city have tested positive for lead toxicity—the first two pups to be confirmed with this in state records in five years, the Detroit Free Press reports. "Here in Michigan, specifically in [Genesee] County, we've had two cases of high-lead levels reported to us in dogs in the last six months," state vet Dr. James Averill tells CBS Detroit. "One was last fall and one was here in January." He says that one of the affected dogs was a stray, while the other was a pet. Both dogs are alive, Averill notes, but the state report doesn't specify how high their lead levels were, or what symptoms they had. And indeed, it's challenging to diagnose dogs with lead toxicity, as symptoms such as "mental dullness," arthritis, and lethargy can mimic those of other illnesses, Averill says. Instead, he mentions keeping an eye on variations in a pet's routine to help pinpoint if something's wrong. He does note to CBS, however, that the "vast majority" of lead tests on area dogs have come back negative, and he says they're relying on local veterinarians with "boots on the ground" to look out for suspicious cases. In the meantime, while Averill gives the OK to bathe pets in Flint-area tap water, he says they should be drinking filtered or bottled water or, as a last resort, melted snow. "It would be safer, if your only other choice is feeding them straight Flint water," he notes. (The FBI's now on Flint's case.)
– "We're using our groundwater resources too fast—faster than they're being renewed," Dr. Tom Gleeson says in a University of Victoria press release. Gleeson, along with fellow researchers, published the most accurate map of Earth's groundwater supply to date on Monday in Nature Geoscience. The study found there is about 14.3 million cubic miles of groundwater left on Earth. But that's not as encouraging as it sounds, according to Reuters, because no more than 6% of it is renewable within a human lifetime. "That's never been known before," says Gleeson, who adds that people are going to need to manage that resource better as water demands grow amid ongoing drought. "Groundwater can and should be thought of as a very useful buffer to climate extremes," he says. "It's a valuable and strategic resource for mitigating the extreme impacts of climate." The amount of groundwater less than 50 years old is enough to cover every continent with approximately 10 feet of water, according to the study. But while that young groundwater is more quickly replenished, it's also more easily polluted by people and impacted by climate change, Reuters reports. The rest of Earth's groundwater—which can be millions of years old—is much deeper underground and can be extremely salty and contain harmful elements, according to the press release. The next step is to figure out how dire the situation is. "Since we now know how much groundwater is being depleted and how much there is, we will be able to estimate how long until we run out," Gleeson says. (But at least we might have more helium left that we thought.)
– "I think it's time to bring him home," says Richard Johnson, and he's putting up a huge reward in hopes of making that happen. The man from Boulder, Colo., is referring to son Ryder, who hasn't been seen since Jan. 17. The 20-year-old was seen at 3pm on that day, just after his shift at the Eldora Ski Resort near Nederland; there have been no confirmed sightings since and leads have dried up, reports the Daily Camera. Ryder Johnson's car was found parked at Gross Dam Road that evening, and the Gross Reservoir was searched afterward. Now, friends and family have put together a $100,000 reward for information leading to the younger Johnson, the arrest of anyone potentially involved, or items he had on him when he vanished. The Denver Channel reports the reward's distribution will be at the family's discretion. "It's been pretty frustrating," said Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle in early February. "They're just not finding anything," he said of his investigation. The Camera reported that foul play is possible, but there's no evidence to that end. The other "working theories" are that he went into the mountains and harmed himself, or vanished to start a new life. Pelle called those two the "strongest possibilities." A severed foot found in a hiking boot in June at the ski resort was determined not to belong to Johnson; KDVR reports 180 acres around the resort were searched after the boot was found. The reward will expire on Jan. 17, 2017.
– On July 23, 1992, Morrad Ghonim watched his 17-year-old wife die. The couple had taken their 6-month-old son to Creek Park in La Mirada, Calif. Ghonim said he felt uncomfortable after a group of people called out at his wife and he wanted to leave, reports the Los Angeles Times. But as they made to drive off, a gunman approached the passenger door, demanded money, and murdered his wife. Now, 24 years later, a jury has decided who was responsible for Vicki Ghonim's death: then-19-year-old Morrad Ghonim. The 43-year-old, who was extradited from Antigua last year, was on Monday found guilty of first-degree murder. The man who pulled the trigger, however, was Leon Martinez. Police got to Martinez by way of grant money earmarked for cold cases, reports the Whittier Daily News. A DNA test of pants found near the scene led them in 2010 to Martinez, who said Ghonim hired him and even reached over his wife's body to hand him payment. A friend of Martinez's relayed meeting a man days before Vicki's death who said he and his child's mother—a student at John Glenn High, as Vicki was—were having issues and planned to separate. In late January, the Daily News painted a picture of a confident defense, given that in exchange for testifying, Martinez will not serve life without parole for the murder, but instead 28 years to life. "This is a 20-year-old murder that comes down to the credibility of a convicted killer and an ex-wife who hates Mr. Ghonim ... and promised to send him to hell," said one of Ghonim's lawyers, noting that Ghonim's second wife talked to police. Ghonim could be handed life without parole at his Dec. 19 sentencing.
– Author Junot Diaz has given an interview following allegations of sexual misconduct from multiple women. In the sit-down with the Boston Globe, the Pulitzer Prize winner denied, point blank, all accusations that he behaved inappropriately. “I was shocked,” Díaz said. “I was, like, 'Yo, this doesn’t sound like anything that’s in my life, anything that’s me.'" Per the AP, Author Zinzi Clemmons and other female writers have recently shared stories of Diaz's behavior. Clemmons said Diaz forcibly kissed her several years ago. in the Globe interview, Diaz denied the allegation outright. “I did not forcibly kiss Zinzi Clemmons. I did not kiss Zinzi Clemmons,” he said. “It didn’t happen.” Others cited instances when they felt he had verbally attacked them. Diaz has said in a statement that he takes responsibility for his past actions. However, he appeared to more recently back away from that statement, telling the Globe he wishes he "had the presence of mind to rewrite the damn thing.” In separate decisions that have left people close to Díaz outraged, Díaz is keeping his teaching and editing positions at the Massachusetts institute of Technology and Boston Review following investigations into wrongdoing at the institutions. A top editor at Boston Review said the accusations lacked "the kind of severity" that animated the #MeToo movement. Three editors subsequently announced they were resigning over the political and literary magazine's decision to retain Diaz.
– A series of angry viral videos has an Alabama man facing a reckless endangerment charge. Apparently fed up with cyclists slowing him down on the road, Keith Maddox posted videos in which he explains his feelings—and threatens those on bikes, the Raw Story reports. "You piece of crap!" he shouts while driving by one cyclist. "Ought to run him in the ditch is what I should have done." "I’m gonna hurt one of them one of these days. Can’t help myself, I’m gonna do it," he says in another clip. Cyclist groups told police about the videos and Maddox was charged with the misdemeanor. On Facebook, however, he apologized about "those absolute stupid videos that I posted," adding that he wouldn't actually hurt anybody. "Please everyone share the road and be very aware of bicycle riders everywhere." A local cycling association head said he'd accept the apology, the Anniston Star reports. "Many cyclists' first reaction will be to scream for the guy's head," Bobby Phillips said. "But that's not going to help anybody and could drive biking and non-biking people further apart."
– For four years, nearly all kids living in Japan's Fukushima prefecture have received ultrasounds to gauge the effects of the nuclear disaster there in March 2011. Now a research team says the alarming results are in: Children living near the nuclear plant have thyroid cancer rates that are 20 to 50 times higher than those found in children elsewhere, the AP reports. Per a study being published in the November issue of Epidemiology, of the 370,000 or so kids 18 and under in the Fukushima region who received thyroid exams since the disaster, 137 of them have suspected or confirmed cases of thyroid cancer, a number that rose by 25 from last year, the AP notes. "This is more than expected and emerging faster than expected," lead author Toshihide Tsuda tells the AP. Thyroid cancer cases in children outside the prefecture are estimated to be around one or two out of every million kids per year. Children's thyroids are particularly vulnerable to cancer—radioactive iodine released during nuclear meltdowns can cause it—because they're growing so quickly, NPR notes. Tsuda and his team claim that the numbers aren't simply the result of a "screening effect"—in which more routine checkups like the ones in Fukushima have simply found tumors earlier and more often—as the Japanese government has suggested. Other experts, however, aren't so sure how accurate Tsuda's study is and note the complexity of studying such an issue. The director for Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research, for example, tells NPR that just tying certain geographic areas to higher cancer rates doesn't prove anything without looking at individual radiation exposure, a claim that's echoed in a report by the World Health Organization.(The residents of the Japanese town of Nahara are finally allowed back—but many don't want to go.)
– The nonstop drone of plastic horns has been the soundtrack of the World Cup so far, on and off the field, and they're so annoying that FIFA is considering a ban. It can't come soon enough for some. "We can't sleep at night because of the vuvuzelas." the French captain tells the BBC. "We can't hear one another out on the pitch because of them." The cacophony isn't exactly music to the ears of the head of the organizing committee, which has already threatened to keep the omnipresent vuvuzelas out if any are thrown onto the pitch or used violently, reports the Guardian. "I would prefer singing," Danny Jordaan acknowledges. "It's always been a great generator of a wonderful atmosphere in stadiums and I would try to encourage them to sing."
– It's the kind of story where you don't want the word "again" to come into play. But Philadelphia is once again in the news with the revelation that a woman with special needs was being held captive in a basement there. The Philadelphia Daily News reports that the discovery came in a roundabout way: Regina Bennett, 46, was arrested in the wee hours of Saturday morning after getting into an altercation with her neighbor; police were told there was a young child in her home, but when they searched it, they instead found a 36-year-old woman chained and zip-tied to a bed in "unsuitable conditions," reports MyFoxPhilly. Bennett's relationship to the victim remains murky: While some outlets describe the women as cousins, others say Bennett was the woman's caretaker. WPVI reports that it spoke with the victim's sister, Alissia Robinson, who puts her mental ability at that of a 10-year-old and says police told her the 36-year-old was found naked. Robinson says her sister began living with Bennett in 2007, and that she hadn't seen her for a year following a fight with Bennett. Bennett is staring down a dozen charges, including aggravated assault, kidnapping for ransom, and neglect of care.
– A Pennsylvania man is behind bars after allegedly telling state police he'd had sex with an underage girl. What's unusual: He told them while applying for a job as a state trooper, the AP reports via the Patriot-News. Police say Joseph White, 29, made the admission during a polygraph pretest at the Meadville state police barracks on Jan. 15. He allegedly admitted to consensual sex and other sexual contact with the girl four years ago; she's now 19. Police say the victim later corroborated the incidents, which occurred in a field in South Shenango Township, the Meadville Tribune reports. White was arrested Thursday on multiple charges of unlawful sexual contact with a minor and corruption of minors, and jailed on $25,000 bond. "Needless to say, he won't be getting an interview," quips the Patriot-News.
– Ahead of their Australia-New Zealand tour next week, Prince William and Kate Middleton have released an official family photo that includes their now 8-month-old bouncing baby boy, reports the BBC. Prince George, who will accompany the royal couple on their trip beginning next Monday, is pictured being held by his mother in an open window at the royals' residence in Kensington Palace; William and the family pooch, Lupo, are at right in the image the palace says was taken by George's christening photographer, Jason Bell. As for the youngest royal's official duties on the Australia-New Zealand trek, well, it's up in the air, as per a palace statement via CNN: "George being just a little over eight months old by the time they travel, I'm sure you will appreciate that the couple will have to make a final decision on those moments much closer to the time." They will head out with an entourage of 11, notes the BBC, including a nanny and hairdresser.
– In medieval times, pilgrims flocked to England in quest of St. Anne's Well, which was said to cure ailments and wash away sins. Archaeologists now say they've rediscovered that large sandstone well on a private farm near Liverpool using only a 1983 photo and a description, reports the Liverpool Echo. When archaeologists arrived at the site, there was little evidence of the well at all as "it had become completely filled with earth," says a rep for Historic England. Once excavated, however, it was "found to be in reasonable condition," per an archaeologist. Legend has it that the supposed mother of the Virgin Mary herself descended the medieval well's three steps and bathed in its 4-foot-deep pool, located near a priory of monks, reportedly giving the water the ability to cure eye and skin diseases, per Seeker and ScienceAlert. But the well—believed to have healing properties into the 19th century—also features in a more ominous legend suggesting it's cursed. During a dispute over the well in the 16th century, the prior reportedly cursed the estate manager of a neighboring landowner, whom he believed had a hand in the monastery being seized by the king. The prior said a "year and a day shall not pass ere St. Anne thy head shall bruise"—then the prior himself collapsed and died, according to an 1877 newspaper recounting of the legend. The estate manager is said to have disappeared after a night of drinking, only to be found dead in the well with "his head crushed in." ScienceAlert points out the discovery has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. (These ancient Greek tablets also told of a curse.)
– "King of the Olympic Rings" Michael Phelps already has more medals than any other athlete in history, Fox Sports notes. Now he's going to add a flag to the mix as Team USA's flag-bearer at the opening ceremony in Rio on Friday, the Olympic National Committee announced Wednesday. The swimmer, headed to his fifth Olympics, has 22 medals to his name, including 18 golds. "I'm honored to be chosen, proud to represent the US, and humbled by the significance of carrying the flag and all it stands for," he says in a Team USA release. "For Sydney, I just wanted to make the team. For Athens, I wanted to win gold for my country. For Beijing, I wanted to do something nobody else had done. In London, I wanted to make history. And now, I want to walk in the Opening Ceremony, take it all in, represent America in the best possible way, and make my family proud. This time around, it's about so much more than medals." In more fashionable opening ceremony news, per the Los Angeles Times: Polo Ralph Lauren and the US Olympic Committee revealed Team USA's parade attire Friday, with team members set to be adorned in white denim pants, navy blue blazers, and red-white-and-blue striped T-shirts. But it's Phelps' outfit that will stand out the most: His jacket will be fitted with a battery pack that powers light-up panels to make his Olympic patch on the front and "USA" letters on the back glow. (Phelps' most recent accomplishment: his first child.)
– The man accused of detonating a bomb in a subway corridor near Times Square Monday morning carried the device strapped to himself on a 55-minute subway ride from his Brooklyn home, law enforcement officials say. Akayed Ullah, who came to the US from Bangladesh in 2011, injured himself and three others in the blast. Law enforcement officials tell the New York Daily News that the 27-year-old, who says he was inspired by ISIS, decided to set off the bomb in a commuter-packed passageway connecting three stations after seeing a Christmas poster. The pipe bomb was packed with explosive powder and detonated with a broken Christmas light, authorities say, but the explosion was not powerful enough to turn the pipe into deadly shrapnel. After the blast, Ullah was subdued by four Port Authority police officers. Ullah, who's expected to face numerous federal charges, was hospitalized with serious burns, while another three people received minor injuries. Law enforcement officials tell the New York Times that Ullah, who apparently worked for a car service after arriving in the US and more recently worked as an electrician, has told them he was radicalized online and found bomb-making instructions on the internet. Ullah came to the US on a preferential visa for people with relatives already in the US, and President Trump says the attempted terrorist attack is another reason to tighten immigration rules, the Washington Post reports. "Today's terror suspect entered our country through extended-family chain migration, which is incompatible with national security," he said Monday.
– Verizon yesterday unveiled its new "Share Everything" plans, in which families will share one data allowance on a family plan rather than each member having his or her own data allowance on separate plans. Despite the fact that Verizon is touting this as a money-saving opportunity for families, critics run the numbers and say it's actually not: Dan Rowinski of ReadWriteWeb finds that one hypothetical family of four will likely pay exactly the same amount per month, or may save at most $10 per month. The problem? Data may be cheaper under the new plans, but "you pay more per device," he explains. "Verizon's new plan does not give families a discount. The difference amounts to an administrative change." Troy Wolverton goes a bit further in the Mercury News, calling the new plans "a crummy deal for many consumers." He finds that many users will actually end up paying more, since the only real price breaks are on talk minutes and text messages—"services [consumers] are already using less." "Overall, the move appears to be a price hike tarted up to look consumer friendly," he writes. All the critics concede that the new plans are certainly simpler to understand, but on ZDNet, Matthew Miller is "disappointed that convenience comes at such a high price." If Sprint gets its LTE network running, it will be an "attractive" option for individual unlimited plans at $80 per phone, he notes. On CNET, Roger Cheng points out that Verizon is now "forcing" unlimited voice and text messages with these plans. "Under the change, customers will have to give up their old grandfathered unlimited data plans right as people use more data than ever," he writes. "It's a classic case of a carrier giving you more of what you don't need, and taking away what you do—all for a higher price." The new plans roll out on June 28, and the only way to keep your existing plan is to upgrade to new phones at full cost, with no discount.
– Abortion opponents in North Dakota have one-upped their peers in Arkansas. Less than two weeks after the latter state banned abortions after 12 weeks, North Dakota lawmakers approved a ban after six weeks, reports the Bismarck Tribune. They also voted to outlaw abortions when a genetic defect is discovered—Down syndrome, for example—or when parents don't like the sex of their fetus. Gov. Jack Dalrymple hasn't said whether he will sign the measures, but proponents have enough votes to override even if he vetoes them, reports AP. Which means it's a safe bet that the state will soon have the strictest abortion laws in the nation. Lawmakers picked six weeks because that's when a heartbeat can be detected by transvaginal ultrasound, the intrusive procedure that set off controversy in Virginia last year, reports the New York Times. Arkansas picked 12 weeks because a heartbeat can be detected with an abdominal ultrasound at that point. Assuming the North Dakota bills become law, expect legal challenges to follow. No other state, for example, has a law that outlaws abortions over a genetic defect. Of the 1,247 abortions performed in the state in 2011, 75% would be illegal under the new legislation, according to a research group that backs abortion rights. That could well mean that the state's only abortion clinic, in Fargo, would have to close its doors.
– Not besties: Gwyneth Paltrow and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. The latter has announced that his magazine will indeed go ahead with the story it started on Paltrow ... a story that Us Weekly calls an "epic takedown." Carter told the Times of London: "We have a very good writer and it'll run." This follows the news that Paltrow emailed her friends asking them to stay mum. What she is said to have written: "Vanity Fair is threatening to put me on the cover of their magazine. If you are asked for quotes or comments, please decline. Also, I recommend you all never do this magazine again." (Radar points out that one friend was unable to comply: Jay-Z will be on the November cover.) That email, says Carter, "sort of forced my hand." Paltrow hasn't always had such an icy relationship with the mag—she's been on its cover five times. See images here.
– Mitch Daniels has some advice for those who are writing Rick Perry's political eulogy: Hold your horses. "It's way too early to know, or to issue, to pronounce last rites over one performance," Daniels said today. "There's still many of these (debates), too many maybe. ... I'd cut him some slack and give him a little time." Politico notes that Daniels also had kind words for Democrat Sen. Mark Warner's work on the Gang of Six, saying, "It's very encouraging, by the way, to hear a guy like Sen. Warner speak to it as clearly as he just did. I wish he were president." More fun on your Sunday dial, as per Politico: Michael Bloomberg on President Obama's 2012 chances: "He would be a credible, formidable candidate. You're going to have a real horse race no matter who the Republican nominee is." Reince Priebus to Debbie Wasserman Schultz on 2012: "It sounds like the new slogan is no longer 'hope and change.' It's, 'Hey, it could've been worse.' Great bumper sticker Debbie, I hope it works for you." David Plouffe on a White House shakeup: "I don't expect that." Obama is "confident in his team, in the direction we've laid out here." Warner on Congress' standoff over a short-term spending bill: "It is embarrassing. The Senate is saying, 'Why should we build schools in Iraq on the credit card but expect that rebuilding schools in Joplin, Mo.,'" will be paid for. Warner blames "a group, more centered in the House, in terms of some of these Tea Party Republicans, who say on every issue, 'We're going to make this a make-or-break.'" Lindsey Graham on Pakistan: "We need to put Pakistan on notice. We're going to have to put all options on the table. including defending our troops. It's now a time of choosing, so I hope they choose wisely."
– The February jobs report came in stronger than expected on Friday: Employers added 242,000 jobs last month, above the 200,000 or so that analysts were expecting and way up from the revised figure of 172,000 in January. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, remained at 4.9%. One not-so-bright spot: Though a slight rise was expected, average hourly wages dropped 3 cents, or 0.1%, to $25.35, notes MarketWatch. The Fed in particular has been keeping an eye on wages—it wants to see steady growth before raising interest rates again, reports AP. Still, the jobs number is "a sign of steady economic growth despite financial-market turmoil and weakness abroad," notes the Wall Street Journal.
– Most people got a chuckle over the 1994 video of Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel struggling to understand that new Internet thing, but not everybody's laughing: NBC fired the employee who posted it, reports the All Things Digital blog. “The individual in question violated the company’s standards of conduct by repeatedly copying and distributing a variety of materials without permission," said a company statement. And that came after the Today show itself ran the clip when it became popular. Click for more at AOL News.
– A former prime minister of Norway was caught up in the chaos at US airports this week, though it's not clear which president's actions caused the issue. Kjell Magne Bondevik, the country's PM from 1997 to 2000 and 2001 to 2005, flew from Europe to DC's Dulles airport Tuesday to attend the National Prayer Breakfast—and was detained for an hour, the Guardian reports. The problem? Customs agents looked at his passport and saw he traveled to Iran in 2014. He says officials told him he was being held because of a law then-President Obama signed in 2015 that requires citizens of certain countries (including Norway) to have a visa to enter the US if they've visited specific countries (like Iran) since 2011. But there are exceptions (ABC 7 explains in greater depth), and Bondevik says he's never before experienced any trouble coming into the US with that passport stamp. Further, his office checked with the US embassy in Oslo before this trip to ensure he would have no issues. Bondevik tells ABC 7 he possesses a diplomatic passport, which clearly states that he is the former PM of Norway. "Of course I fully understand the fear of letting terrorists come into this country," he says, but "it should be enough when they found ... [I'm a] former prime minister." He says he was made to wait for 40 minutes, then questioned for 20 minutes about the Iran trip, which he took so he could speak at a human rights conference. Though Bondevik wasn't quoted mentioning President Trump by name, he had this to say: "I fear the future," he tells the Local. "This gives great cause for concern, in line with the authoritarian leaders we see controlling other major countries."
– A rift between two former neighbors has resulted in them sharing custody of a Labrador retriever mix, the AP reports. The Tampa Bay Times reports that Tina Marie Walker and David Somerville lived next to each other in a Florida apartment complex when he drove her in 2016 to an animal shelter, where she adopted Elario. When she worked, Somerville would take the dog for walks and to the dog park. He says he paid the dog's vet bills. That led to a rift over who really was the dog's owner and Somerville sued Walker in small claims court. Judge Lorraine Kelly ruled recently that they are to share custody and even drew up a schedule. Walker has moved from the apartment complex but now drops Elario off for his stays with Somerville. "Both parties have spent a great deal of time with the dog," Kelly writes in her order. "Witnesses say he shows great affection to both of his humans."
– The little Red Hen restaurant in rural Virginia found itself squarely in the middle of a big Beltway brouhaha after Sarah Huckabee Sanders was turned away on Friday night, and now the owner gives the Washington Post the backstory. Stephanie Wilkinson was home when her chef called around 8pm to say that Sanders had walked in with a group, and wondered what to do. Wilkinson drove to the restaurant, confirmed that it was indeed Sanders, and asked her staff, "Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave." Wilkinson notes that some of her employees are gay. "They said 'yes.'" Wilkinson says she asked Sanders to step outside, and though "I was babbling a little ... I explained that the restaurant has certain standards ... such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation." Asked to leave, Sanders said, "That's fine. I'll go." Sanders' group elected to clear out with her, and offered to pay for their entrees, which were being prepared; Wilkinson opted not to charge the group. Usually, politics aren't on the menu at the Red Hen, Wilkinson says. "I’m not a huge fan of confrontation. I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals." That business was mired firmly in controversy Saturday, with trolls of both flavors clogging the Red Hen's Yelp page (which now has two stars), its reservation line, and even shouting from the sidewalk in Lexington. The restaurant opted not to open Saturday night, writing in an email that "We would like to avoid exposing our patrons to any potential unpleasantness from outside entities."
– Accused kidnapper Ariel Castro has had 648 new counts added to his indictment, bringing the grand total to 977. To break it down, the entire indictment is 576 pages, and includes: 512 counts of kidnapping, 446 counts of rape, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, six counts of felonious assault, three counts of child endangerment, two counts of aggravated murder (he is accused of unlawfully terminating the pregnancy of one of his captives), and one count of possessing criminal tools, the AP reports. The reason for all the new charges is that his previous indictment only covered the first four-and-a-half years that the three women were allegedly imprisoned in his house. The new indictment covers the entire period, reports CNN. Despite the added heft to the charges, prosecutors are still not seeking the death penalty—though the aggravated murder charges plus the kidnapping charges would allow them to under Ohio law, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. A spokesperson for the County Prosecutor says they still may. But by not seeking the death penalty, a plea deal could be worked out, which would spare the three women the emotional turmoil of going through a trial.
– A memorial in a remote corner of Massachusetts that marks a 1969 UFO sighting has been ordered moved, but one man who experienced a close encounter is objecting, the AP reports. The 5,000-pound memorial in Sheffield was installed in 2015, but was moved about 30 feet a few weeks later when it was discovered it was on town land. Now, Town Administrator Rhonda LaBombard tells the Berkshire Eagle it has to be moved again because it's on a town right-of-way easement. That's not sitting well with Thom Reed. "This isn't fair to the community," says Reed. "It's not right having nothing there." Reed is also perplexed because he and town officials joined forces to give the memorial its current position. "She chose the spot herself," he says about LaBombard. Now Reed is threatening legal action. "This has come up more than once," he says. "We're not done with the monument." He was 9 when he, his mother, grandmother, and brother saw what he described as a "self-contained glow" that flooded their car with an amber light. About 40 people in several surrounding towns reported the strange light.
– New Hampshire may be forced to hold its GOP primary as early as Dec. 6, and it will be all Nevada's fault for moving up its caucus date, the Granite State's top election official warns. Secretary of State William Gardner says New Hampshire has no intention of surrendering its tradition of being the second state to choose a nominee, and the combination of state laws and the Christmas holiday make Dec. 6 or 13 the only realistic dates for a primary if Nevada refuses to move its date back by at least three days, Politico reports. Iowa's caucus is set for Jan. 3, and Nevada's is schedule for Jan. 14. The parties "can discourage other states from trying to leapfrog onto our tradition," Gardner said in a statement. "Right now, the problem is the date of Nevada. We cannot allow the political process to squeeze us into a date that wedges us by just a few days between two major caucus states." Mitt Romney is expected to win in both New Hampshire and Nevada, but an early December win in New England will leave a long time, and probably a big loss in Iowa, between victories, notes Nate Silver at the New York Times.
– Portland's In Other Words bookstore is well known to Portlandia fans as the fictional Women and Women First bookstore featured in sketches on the show—but it's safe to say ties have been severed between the bookstore and the show, considering a sign that appears on the bookstore's door reading, "Fuck Portlandia! Transmisogyny – Racism – Gentrification – Queer Antagonism – Devaluation of Feminist Discourse." The Willamette Week tried on Tuesday to get an explanation from the bookstore, and a representative at first offered an interview, but also asked (repeatedly) for the Week to post a link to an online fundraiser the bookstore is running. After the Week declined to guarantee a link would be posted (though one did, in fact, end up getting posted in the ensuing article), the bookstore took back its offer of an interview in no uncertain terms. "After some consideration and research we've decided to officially tell the Willamette Weekly to go fuck themselves," read a message from the rep. "Your paper has absolutely zero journalistic professionalism and you are scummy rape apologists. Thanks for the opportunity tho! Have a great night." Then, Wednesday, a blog post went up on the bookstore's website explaining the "Fuck Portlandia" sign. It was placed on the window, and the store's relationship with the show was formally discontinued, as "a direct response to a particular egregious filming of the show in our space which saw our store left a mess, our staff mistreated, our neighbors forced to close and lose business for a day without warning, and our repeated attempts to obtain accountability or resolution dismissed," the blog post reads. "It was also a direct response to a show which is in every way diametrically opposed to our politics and the vision of society we’re organizing to realize. A show which has had a net negative effect on our neighborhood and the city of Portland as a whole." There's a lot more where that came from, here.
– In a mass sterilization of 83 women in India on Saturday, a surgeon used infected instruments; now, 10 patients are dead and 69 others have been hospitalized, a local health official tells Bloomberg. "It's a case of negligence," says the chief minister of Chhattisgarh state, where surgeons are banned from conducting more than 30 such procedures daily. A reproductive rights activist in New Delhi uses starker terms: "Chhattisgarh was a culmination of no accountability in the system and when basic hygiene conditions aren't met," she says, adding that such circumstances are "commonplace." The doctor involved, RK Gupta, has been suspended amid a criminal investigation, says the state's chief minister. The district's top health officer says the deaths were a result of "infection causing septic shock" and that it's "too early to say that it was due to sterilization." All the women were poor villagers younger than 32, the AP reports. They were paid about $10 each to join the sterilization program, the state's chief medical officer says. The surgeries took place within a six-hour period. As the country works toward population control, sterilizations are voluntary. But amid events like single-day sterilization drives, India has the third-highest female sterilization rate in the world—and while 37% of married women have undergone the process, just 1% of men have had vasectomies, a national survey shows. Chhattisgarh state is aiming for 180,000 sterilizations for the 12 months preceding March, the chief medical officer says.
– The leaders of the Episcopal Church have approved same-sex marriage by a more resounding margin than the Supreme Court did last week: The church's House of Deputies voted 173-27 in favor of new rules and rituals that will allow same-sex couples to be married in church, the AP reports. The House of Bishops backed the changes 129-26 on Tuesday. The church, which is the American member of the Anglican Communion, was seen as a trailblazer when it elected an openly gay bishop in 2003 and is now the third major Protestant group to allow gay marriage in all congregations, after the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church, which voted to redefine marriage earlier this year, the AP notes. It took a week of debate at the church's General Convention to bring in the changes, which include ditching terms like "wife" and "husband" for gender-neutral language, the Deseret News reports. The final product of the negotiations was a compromise that allows clergy to refuse to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies, which means that although such ceremonies may begin in some areas this fall, they are unlikely to be held in more conservative dioceses, Episcopal priest George Conger explains at the Washington Post. "What the bishops did agree on was to hold conflicting stances in tension and allow each side to honor their consciences," he writes.
– There have been many calls for a black James Bond, and for a while, there were even rumors Idris Elba would take on the 007 role. (Rumors Elba himself shot down earlier this year.) But at least one prominent person in the Bond universe doesn't think that's a good idea. Anthony Horowitz, author of the new Bond novel Trigger Mortis—officially commissioned by Ian Fleming's estate—says in an extensive interview with the Daily Mail, "For me, Idris Elba is a bit too rough to play the part. It’s not a color issue. I think he is probably a bit too 'street' for Bond. Is it a question of being suave? Yeah." He adds that there are "other black actors who would do it better," like Adrian Lester. Sample reaction: "Apparently, there’s no way for Elba, an actor whose literal job it is to assume characters’ personalities that are not his own, to appear 'suave' enough to play Bond." Dan Van Winkle, The Mary Sue "Hold on, WHAT?!" USA Today headline On Vulture, Dee Lockett calls Horowitz's reasoning "casually racist," noting, "Horowitz doesn't mind if a black man plays Bond, so long as he's the 'right' kind of black." The Telegraph rounds up a number of outraged Twitter reactions, including this: "Are you kidding me? HAVE YOU SEEN THAT MAN IN A SUIT? HAVE YOU SEEN THAT MAN?" The world is, however, kind of already getting its first black Bond.
– To mark International Women's Day, AoL News takes note of countries that treat their women the worst. The findings are based on a UN index that factors in categories such as jobs, education, political representation, and reproductive health. The worst offenders: Yemen: Its female citizens routinely face "violence and discrimination," says Amnesty International. Democratic Republic of Congo: The civil war is officially over, but rape, famine, and disease remain common. Niger: One in 7 women will die in childbirth. Click for the full list. For better reading on the topic, click for some of the year's biggest breakthroughs for women around the world, including the creation of a UN superagency.
– Wedding bells are ringing for what seems like all of Hollywood. The latest: Drew Barrymore got engaged over the holidays to art consultant Will Kopelman, whom she has been linked to for almost a year, People and E! report. The couple was on vacation in Sun Valley, Idaho, when Kopelman popped the question with a nearly-4-carat Graff diamond ring. This will be the third marriage for Barrymore; her rep has not yet officially confirmed the engagement, but Us has what it calls an official engagement photo. Evidence is also mounting that Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel are indeed engaged. Us first reported the news, based on reports from insiders, this week. Now Gossip Cop has gotten Timberlake's grandma to confirm it—adorably, she says that she wasn't supposed to tell anyone "until after the holidays." Despite the fact that Biel has always seemed mildly unpleasant, JT's grandma says "the family loves Jessie." Timberlake proposed during a Montana vacation, she adds. Another source confirms the engagement to People. Britney Spears probably isn't crying into her ice cream over news of her ex's rumored engagement, however. "I can't stop looking at it!!" she posted on Facebook, along with a picture of herself wearing her engagement ring from Jason Trawick. Like Drew, Brit received a nearly-4-carat diamond, E! notes. Click to see the picture. Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves also got engaged over the holidays—on Christmas Day itself—and sources tell Life & Style the couple will wed in Camila's birthplace of Brazil. In refreshingly non-wedding news, E! asked Kristen Bell about her plans for marrying Dax Shepard. Her laughing response: "Nothing. I don't have any plans. I don't really care."
– Republicans were today again busily piling on President Obama's strategy—or lack thereof—against Islamic State militants, but this week they were joined by a pretty prominent Democrat: Dianne Feinstein. "I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious," said the Senate Intel Committee chair, adding that, "maybe, in this instance, too cautious." Feinstein said she agreed with John McCain and Lindsey Graham's op-ed this weekend calling for military action, reports Politico, adding that she hopes the Pentagon and State Department can "coalesce" their planning into a single strategy to take on ISIS. Elsewhere on your Sunday dial: Mike Rogers: "This is an opportunity for the president to bring the country together so that we understand this ‘don’t-do-stupid-stuff’ policy isn’t working. If you have your own European allies saying, ‘Maybe the United States isn’t a leader on this issue,’ that’s a problem for us." John McCain: The Arizonan wants "additional US troops" to fight ISIS, and says Obama is "either in denial or overwhelmed. This is a direct threat to the United States of America. It may be one of the biggest we’ve ever faced." Dutch Ruppersberger: Referencing the White House's lack of ISIS strategy, the Maryland Democrat said, "It’s extremely urgent, but you just don’t rush in because the media’s talking about it. We will do what we have to do to protect us from ISIS."
– Not long after Florida warned beachgoers to be careful, new reports are emerging of tourists suffering from flesh-eating bacteria. The Weather Channel points to reports of at least three deaths in the state this year, while others have suffered from Vibrio Vulnificus in Alabama and Texas. A Georgia man ended up with sores on his leg and a fever after eating raw oysters at a restaurant in Orange Beach, Alabama; officials have warned against eating raw shellfish. Diabetic and cancer survivor Lenny Buck, who was celebrating his 24th wedding anniversary, is due for a sixth surgery on his leg this week, WKRG reports. A woman from Austin, Texas, meanwhile, has contracted the disease after cutting her foot on an oyster in Galveston. "That oyster was like a razor blade, like a surgeon’s scalpel, it went straight through," Michelle O'Brien says, per KFOR. She was hospitalized for five days and says she would have lost her foot without antibiotics. The illness can be contracted by swimming in affected areas, and it can be fatal about half the time. (Read about another "nightmare bacteria" also on the rise in the South.)
– Because regional elections take place in Spain tomorrow, today is supposed to be a national "day of reflection," with no protests or public gatherings. Try explaining that to the tens of thousands of demonstrators who continue to pack city squares in Madrid, Barcelona, and other major cities. Police didn't even attempt to move in when the midnight deadline arrived, reports the BBC. Calls for political and economic reform mount, driven by one key factor: Unemployment among young people is 42%, notes CNN. "They want to leave us without public health, without public education, half of our youth is unemployed, they have risen the age of our retirement as well," said one protester. Noting that the protests were fueled by Twitter and Facebook groups, the Guardian asked another demonstrator whether the Arab spring had reached Europe. "You can't really compare us to people who were risking their lives by protesting," said the 23-year-old computer engineer. "But yes, you can say that we are inspired by the courage of the Arab spring."
– The noose is tightening around Adam Mayes, the man believed to be on the run with two girls he is suspected of kidnapping last month. The FBI today pushed him to the top of its 10 Most Wanted list, reports ABC News, filling in the spot vacated when James "Whitey" Bulger was captured last year. The 35-year-old was also charged with first-degree murder today, as was his wife. The two are charged with killing Jo Ann Bain and her 14-year-old daughter, Adrienne. According to an affidavit, Teresa Mayes admitted to being present on April 27 when her husband killed the two in a garage at the Bain's Whiteville, Tenn., home. She says the motive was to kidnap Bain's younger daughters, 12-year-old Alexandria and 8-year-old Kyliyah, reports the AP. She confessed to driving her husband, the girls, and the two bodies from Whiteville to their home in Guntown, Miss., where she says she saw him dig a hole in the yard. Mayes was last spotted on April 30, on surveillance footage taken at a convenience store in Guntown. A $71,000 reward is being offered for info leading to his arrest.
– Was Rick Perry pie-eyed during a speech to a conservative group in New Hampshire on Friday? In a video that has since gone viral, the candidate adopted an exuberant, jokey style and pulled a lot of funny faces, leading some commentators to believe that the Texas governor was distinctly refreshed. "It was different," the mayor of Manchester told the Huffington Post after the speech. The speech shows that Perry is "passionate about the issues he talks about," a campaign spokeswoman says. "We're not saying that he's definitely drunk, we're just saying, watch the whole thing," muses Max Read at Gawker.
– Donald Trump was pretty pleased with his performance against Hillary Clinton at Monday's debate, even though scientific polls—not the easily manipulated online polls that Trump is citing—show most Americans pick Clinton as the clear victor. Even some of his own campaign advisers don't feel he was on point enough during the head-to-head, though they're framing it as "missed opportunities" rather than total failure. And so the strategy for Oct. 9's debate is reportedly getting an overhaul, with more role-playing practice, facts study, and even rehearsing how to move around the stage for the town-hall-style event, per the New York Times. What these advisers, who spoke anonymously to the paper, are worried about, however, is whether Trump will agree to this prep. Complicating things: Some say he actually was drilled on how to combat Clinton on certain issues and that he just chose not to. Others point the finger at Trump's extremely busy schedule in the days before the debate and too many people (up to a dozen, some with not much political acumen) giving him conflicting suggestions. Sources say his debate training was "unconventional," with Trump unable to concentrate during more traditional sessions and preferring to simply dish with advisers rather than have mock debates. Trump himself told Fox News he found it hard to segue into some of those challenges against Clinton on the debate stage, such as the subject of Benghazi. Trump's pulling back—he stopped attacking Clinton and even grew "subdued" as the debate proceeded—has got to change the next time around, frustrated aides say. Instead, he has to set Clinton's vulnerabilities in his sights and stick to his plan for the whole night. "It clearly looked like he ran out of gas after 30 minutes [in the New York debate], and that came through loud and clear," a senior political strategist tells the Times.
– If you like bananas, it's time to start savoring them while you still can. A deadly fungus that's been killing the plant since the 1960s has jumped continents, moving from where it ravaged crops for decades in Southeast Asia to parts of South Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and Africa—and that's just since 2013, reports Quartz. The so-called "Panama" disease is spreading thanks to a single clone of the Fusarium fungus, also called Tropical Race 4, scientists report in the journal PLOS Pathogens. Worse still, one of the world's most popular bananas, the Cavendish, is particularly susceptible to this strain. The soil-borne fungus travels up the plant's roots, ultimately killing the plant and infesting entire banana plots, which are then contaminated for years. Entire swaths of banana plantations in Australia, China, the Philippines, Jordan, Mozambique, Pakistan, and beyond have been infested in the past two years, putting many farmers and families out of business and cutting them off from a major food source, reports PhysOrg. Right now the only way to fight the disease is through strict quarantine, so researchers are trying to spread the word about effective measures in the hopes of getting a step ahead of the fast-spreading fungus before it hits Latin America, where most of the world's bananas are grown. Once it lands there, notes Quartz, "the days of the iconic yellow fruit are numbered." (Some researchers hope it's possible to genetically modify bananas to resist the fungus.)
– What do car thieves want? Flashy sports cars? Posh luxury vehicles? Powerful trucks? Nope, nope, and nope. The most stolen car in America last year was again the humble 1994 Honda Accord, the National Insurance Crime Bureau has announced in a new report. That's because the '94 Accord was both extremely popular, and lacked the security features Honda started implementing in 1997, the Christian Science Monitor explains. Another Honda family car, the 1998 Civic, ranks second. Perhaps the most surprising entry on the list: The 2006 Ford F-150 pickup, which comes in at No. 3, the highest a truck has ever climbed in the annual report. Here's the full top 10: 1994 Honda Accord 1998 Honda Civic 2006 Ford F-150 Pickup 1991 Toyota Camry 2000 Dodge Caravan 1994 Acura Integra 1999 Chevy Pickup 2004 Dodge Pickup 2002 Ford Explorer 1994 Nissan Sentra
– After months of painstaking work in the sands of California, archaeologists have managed to restore a sphinx and other relics from a lost age—1920s Hollywood. The sphinx, one of 21 used in Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 movie The Ten Commandments, has been restored after it was excavated from California's Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes. DeMille left an enormous set buried there, but what the San Luis Obispo Tribune calls the "Lost City of DeMille" started to be uncovered as sands shifted in the 1990s. The relic goes on display at a nearby cultural center today, and LiveScience notes that in humid conditions, working with the plaster sphinx archaeologists call Nora wasn't easy and she's not quite as good as new: There's a bullet hole in her stomach, as well as graffiti reading "May 1930," and her head—along with the rest of her top half—is still in the sands. Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center Executive Director Doug Jenzen tells the Tribune that after the first sphinx they tried to remove crumbled, they spotted what looked like a "giant white buffalo wing" sticking out of the sand and found Nora. He notes that other artifacts on display, including tobacco tins and "cough syrup" bottles that probably held bootleg liquor, show that a lot of people had a "pretty good time" making the silent film. Also on display: a blackened piece of toast from the film camp. "It's definitely not edible anymore," Jenzen says. The 10.5-foot-long sphinx body, the toast, and a sphinx head found during a previous excavation will be unveiled at a 1920s-themed party tonight, reports the Lompoc Record. (Relics from a much earlier age were torched during a Burning Man festival in Israel.)
– It may be a bit early in 2015 to be handing out the Parents of the Year Award, but a man and woman in Indiana are certainly contenders: Police say they found a cellphone video featuring Michael Barnes, 19, and Toni Wilson, 22, encouraging a 1-year-old baby girl to place a .40-caliber handgun in her mouth and say "pow." "The video also shows the child placing the muzzle of the gun in [her] mouth," police say in a statement (amended here). "At no point does Barnes try to stop the child from playing with the gun." Wilson is the girl's mother, but Barnes is not her father. Authorities obtained the video after arresting Barnes in a separate incident in which he made arrangements via social media to sell a handgun to an undercover cop, Reuters reports. Wilson claimed the gun in the video was just a pellet gun, but police say that's not true. Barnes has been charged with child neglect, allowing a child to possess a firearm, and criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon, and Wilson faces the same charges, NBC News reports. The baby, as well as month-old twins in the home—of whom Barnes is the father, police say—were put into emergency care. (As for 2010's Parent of the Year winner, it might be the guy who tried to trade his baby for beer.)
– Staged or not staged? That seems to be the question surrounding Aubrey Plaza's stage-crashing moment last night at the MTV Movie Awards. The Parks & Rec star came onstage while Will Ferrell was accepting an award, and tried to grab the trophy without actually saying anything. An awkward tug of war followed, until Plaza finally returned to her seat as Ferrell said, "Aubrey Plaza, everyone—just like we rehearsed it." But MTV claims the incident was not staged. Plaza had a cup in her hand (which she dropped en route back to her seat) and had the name of her upcoming film, The To Do List, written on her chest; many speculated on Twitter and elsewhere that she was drunk at the time. Producers later asked her to leave. Even so, Vulture seems skeptical. "If it wasn't planned, why the heck was she sitting in the front row?" writes Jesse David Fox. "A bit too convenient for something that wasn't rehearsed or planned, no?" And Jezebel notes that it was also "the most exciting thing that happened" during the show. Plaza responded to the controversy today, tweeting, "thanks for the advice @kanyewest went better than planned!" in reference to Kanye crashing Taylor Swift's MTV acceptance speech.
– Many Roman Catholics saw journalist James Foley—who was kidnapped, tortured, and beheaded by ISIS—as a symbol of enduring faith under horrible circumstances. Then it came out that he had converted to Islam in captivity. Now what? "The answer is we can’t assess it," says a Jesuit preist who calls Foley "a good and holy man" but casts doubt on his conversion. "We cannot look at what is in someone’s soul." Foley's story is further complicated by his own apparent confusion, the New York Times reports. First kidnapped in Libya in 2011, Foley says he prayed with Muslim cellmates who opposed the Gadhafi government. After washing himself, he was told he had converted. "So, from then on out, I prayed with them five times a day," he says in a YouTube video. "But it was difficult. I was thinking, 'Jesus, am I praying to Allah? Am I violating my belief in you?'" he adds. "I don’t have an answer to that. I just know that I was authentically with them, and I was authentically praying to Jesus." Kidnapped again in Syria in 2012, he converted to Islam in captivity and appeared sincere about it, freed hostages say. But people are debating whether Foley, once an altar boy in a Catholic family, converted for himself or his captors (as this GetReligion article attests). "I believe, much like in Libya, Jim 'converted' for the purpose of surviving," says one of his brothers. Pope Francis has apparently called Foley a martyr and says other Christian martyrs are being "tortured, massacred" today, ANSA reports. Yet Foley's mother, a Eucharistic minister, seems unsure: "Only God and Jim know what was going on in his heart," she says.
– A first-of-its-kind study reveals that humans make up a minuscule portion of life on the planet. As in 0.01%, reports the Guardian. The flip side of that? Despite the scant figure, humans have reshaped the animal kingdom, helping wipe out about 83% of mammals and half of all plants since civilization began, according to the comprehensive survey in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For this study, researchers weren't counting individual members of species. This is all about weight—they surveyed the Earth's biomass, meaning the carbon content in living creatures. Start with this: All life on the planet weighs about 550 gigatons, notes Science. The new study breaks down that figure, including these highlights: Plants account for an astounding 82% of the planet's biomass Bacteria make up 13%—leaving just 5% for everything else beyond plants and bacteria Fungi (think yeast, mold, and mushrooms) make up 2% Ocean life makes up a surprisingly small 1% Chicken and other poultry make up 70% of all birds on the planet; only 30% are wild Livestock (mostly cows and pigs) make up 60% of all mammals; humans account for 36% of mammals, leaving only 4% as wild "The fact that the biomass of fungi exceeds that of all animals sort of puts us in our place," says Harvard biology professor James Hanken, who wasn't part of the study, per a release at Phys.org.
– Pete Seeger, a towering presence in American folk music and activism for many decades, has died after 94 years—and more than 100 albums. The bearded, banjo-playing protest singer gained fame with the Weavers in the '40s and is best known for popularizing songs like This Land Is Your Land and We Shall Overcome, as well as writing or co-writing folk classics like If I Had a Hammer and Turn, Turn, Turn, the BBC reports. He spearheaded the American folk revival of the '50s and '60s and was an inspiration and mentor to many younger singers including Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. But activism was as important to Seeger as music. A lifelong believer in causes like civil rights, racial equality, and anti-militarism, he saw folk music and community as "inseparable, and where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action," a New York Times obituary notes. Blacklisted in the McCarthyite '50s, his activism continued until the very end. At a 90th birthday tribute concert—a benefit to clean up New York's Hudson River—Bruce Springsteen introduced him, saying, "He's gonna look a lot like your granddad that wears flannel shirts and funny hats. He's gonna look like your granddad if your granddad can kick your ass. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country's illusions about itself," USA Today reports.
– A reminder to those who like to buck authority: You should at least heed warnings related to great white sharks. A 42-year-old British expat had parts of both his legs bitten off in an attack in Cape Town today, after going for a swim though shark warning flags were flying, reports the Telegraph. Michael Cohen was about 150 feet from shore at Fish Hoek beach when the great white struck; he was apparently dragged out of the water by friends and airlifted to a hospital. "It repeatedly bit at both of his legs and caused serious wounds on both the right and left side," said a National Sea Rescue Institute rep. "When medical teams arrived, they found the swimmer with his right leg bit off above the knee and the left leg bit off below the knee." Witnesses say three great whites had been been spotted nearby just 90 minutes before Cohen was attacked, and the beach was then closed. MSNBC reports that Cohen was the only swimmer in the water; a shark spotter reportedly tried to get him out, but didn't get to him in time. A video of a shark was taken in the area just after the attack.
– On National Equal Pay Day, President Obama is taking action to fight the gender wage gap among federal contractors. Today, he signed an executive order requiring the companies to publish their wage data by gender and race, thus pushing them to adhere to laws on equal pay, al Jazeera America reports."Penalizing pay secrecy is an important step that sends a strong message," says a VP for the National Women's Law Center. The move doesn't apply to private companies, though a Senate vote today could help change that. But the bill in question has twice failed to get through Congress, al Jazeera notes. Meanwhile, a second executive order today bars federal contractors from retaliating against workers who exchange information on their salaries, the Washington Post notes. "Pay inequity is a real and persistent problem that continues to shortchange women, their families, and our economy as a whole," says Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
– Katy Perry is dismissing rumors that she is getting sued for using part of the Beach Boys' "California Girls" in her song "California Gurls". "No one is suing anyone," Perry tweeted, calling the reports "once again" an example of the media's tendency to "fabricate & exaggerate stories to get hits or sell papers." Although she isn't getting sued, Beach Boys published Rondor Music isn't too happy about "California Gurls," Billboard reports. "Using the words or melody in a new song taken from an original work is not appropriate under any circumstances, particularly from one as well known and iconic as 'California Girls,'" a Rondor rep says. The company is not planning to sue Perry, but it has has filed a warning in the form of a diminutive claim. "It is up to the six writers and various publishers of 'California Gurls' to decide whether they honor the claim or not," the rep continues. Check out the video—which features Snoop Dogg, who's the one actually paraphrasing the Beach Boys—on YouTube.
– Sony currently holds the copyright to part of the Beatles catalog, including such hits as "Love Me Do" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand"—but Paul McCartney is suing to get the songs back. Per TMZ, the songs in question are the ones Michael Jackson once held the rights to; his estate sold the rights to Sony last year for $750 million. McCartney has been trying to get Sony to transfer the rights to him by 2018; as ABC News explains, he's been notifying Sony and the prior rights holders of his intention to reclaim the rights since 2008. A McCartney rep explains, per Rolling Stone, that the suit is attempting "to confirm his ownership" of the songs "which are granted to him by US copyright law." As Rolling Stone and Variety explain, the US Copyright Act says that for works in which creators transferred their interests before 1978, rights can be reclaimed by the creators 56 years after the original copyright date as long as termination notices are served to the current rights holder; next year will mark 56 years since McCartney started writing songs with John Lennon, and his suit notes that at the time the songs in question were created, he and Lennon typically transferred their rights to publishers in exchange for royalties. The Hollywood Reporter, which says the case "could become one of the most important legal battles in the music industry this decade," has more detail on the ins and outs of the law.
– Paul Krugman has long derided the "confidence fairy": a notion that government cuts will somehow spark more consumers and investors to buy. We're seeing another version of that fairy now, after learning that Mitt Romney, at his infamous "47%" fundraiser, also claimed that his election would offer an economic lift "without actually doing anything," thanks to "optimism about the future of the country." Instead of offering much in the way of policy specifics, Romney is "declaring, in effect, 'I am the confidence fairy!'" Krugman writes in the New York Times. Romney's wrong: For one thing, "business investment has actually recovered fairly strongly since the official recession ended." What's more, as the election has recently appeared to turn in President Obama's favor, "markets are up, not down, with major stock indexes hitting their highest levels since the economic downturn began." Of course, "Romney’s whole campaign has been based on the premise that he can become president simply by not being Barack Obama. Why shouldn’t he believe that he can fix the economy the same way?" Click for Krugman's full column, or over at the Washington Post, Ezra Klein breaks down Romney's tax plan and finds it would raise taxes on those he defines as middle-income.
– A citizen's official misconduct complaint against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie can move forward, a judge in the state ruled Thursday. Bill Brennan, whom the Star-Ledger describes as a "citizen activist" and Christie's office describes as "a known serial complainant and political activist with a history of abusing the judicial system," filed the complaint last month over the 2013 BridgeGate scandal. Per Brennan's complaint, Christie knew lane closures were happening and could have put a stop to the whole thing. The complaint is based on testimony from the trial against former Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly and former Port Authority executive Bill Baroni. During the trial, a man Christie appointed to Port Authority testified that both he and Baroni told Christie about the lane closures during a 9/11 ceremony (the lanes were closed from Sept. 9 to Sept. 13, 2013). Now that the judge has ruled the complaint can move forward, it will go to the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office so a decision can be made as to whether Christie should be indicted. Christie's office, which insists the governor had no knowledge of the lane closures while they were ongoing, said it would appeal the judge's ruling. The Star-Ledger reports that the courtroom audience, "mostly there for minor criminal violations," applauded the judge's ruling. The judge issued a criminal summons for Christie, the New York Post reports.
– The Shield actor accused of murdering his wife was a pretty terrifying father, according to his ex-wife. During a 2004 custody case, Jennifer Bitterman said Michael Jace used an "intimidation style of discipline" on their young son, Jordan, according to court records obtained by the New York Daily News. Jace spanked him "for crying or being afraid," and once threatened him for "failing to stand up to his stepbrother," Bitterman said, adding that Jordan was afraid to be alone with his father and once called her "inconsolably sobbing" because Jace refused to take him home from an overnight visit. The court documents also reveal that, according to Bitterman, Jace threatened to kill her if she "went to war" over visitation with Jordan. And, the Los Angeles Times reports, another filing shows that one of Bitterman's friends testified that she saw at least four violent incidents between the couple before they divorced, including one in which Jace "choked and hit" Bitterman and then "slammed her against the wall"—as Jordan, then 6 months old, cried in his crib nearby. Jordan is now grown, but Jace's two young sons with April Jace were home when he allegedly killed their mother. Money problems may have been behind their fight.
– A former Tesla technician continues to cause headaches for CEO Elon Musk. "Are you ready?" Martin Tripp tweeted Wednesday before unleashing internal documents and photos he alleges show scrap piles, "bent" cooling tubes, and "reworked" M3 battery modules at Tesla's battery factory in Nevada, backing his claims of dangerous practices, per Business Insider. (His Twitter account was down as of Thursday morning, with Gizmodo reporting he had received a 12-hour suspension, ostensibly after tweeting Elon Musk's email address.) Before his account was suspended, Tripp also shared dozens of vehicle identification numbers of cars built with what he says are "punctured/dented/damaged" battery cells, allegedly the result of a robot that malfunctioned in February. "This is how @elonmusk and his business operates. He's taking money and fooling everyone," added Tripp, who is suing his former employer for defamation. "As we've said before, these claims are false," a Tesla rep tells CNBC. "No punctured cells have ever been used in any Model 3 vehicles in any way, and all VINs that have been identified have safe batteries." Yet Tripp isn’t the only ex-employee making such claims. Per Business Insider, former Tesla engineer Cristina Balan says she was silenced and left the company in 2014 after airing concerns about design flaws, part defects, and waste. "As soon as the Model S came out the door and Elon realized how cool he'd become, everything went down the drain," she says.
– The Supreme Court heard arguments on California's Prop 8 yesterday; today, the federal Defense of Marriage Act is on the docket. What to expect: What is today's case about? DOMA defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, meaning that gay couples who legally wed in states that allow gay marriage are denied federal benefits. The high court must decide if the federal government can constitutionally do that. The specific case being considered involves Edith Windsor, 83, who married partner Thea Spyer in 2007. When Spyer died, Windsor was hit with a $363,000 estate tax bill because their marriage wasn't recognized. She's suing for a refund. Will Windsor be there? She is expected to be, but her health is declining, USA Today reports. How many people are affected? There are about 133,000 married gay couples not currently recognized by the feds, Reuters reports. The Washington Post points out that while yesterday's case involved people not yet married, today's involves people who are. What are the tax implications? If the Supreme Court strikes down DOMA, taxes for some same-sex couples might actually go up, Politico reports. The so-called "marriage penalty" means that when couples whose incomes are similar file a joint tax return, they don't get as many tax breaks as they would have had they filed separately. That "penalty" could end up applying to gay couples who currently skirt it. How will yesterday's session affect today's? It may not. Yesterday's case could potentially involve a much broader ruling; the court could theoretically strike down Prop 8 and also extend gay marriage rights to all states. But the justices seemed wary of doing that. So, Reuters notes, that case may have little bearing on today's, since DOMA is a much narrower question. And, as NPR reports, it's also "a much clearer question," and the themes that come up today aren't likely to be similar to yesterday's. The only two expected outcomes: Is DOMA constitutional or not? When is a decision expected? Late June. A ruling on the Prop 8 case is expected at the same time. Is there a possibility there won't be a decision? Yes. The Obama administration refuses to defend DOMA in court, so House Republican leaders are defending it. The court could decide that those members have not suffered an injury that would allow them to bring the case, and could thus decide not to rule on it.
– The Hubble telescope has spotted a spectacular, perplexing object in the middle of the Asteroid Belt: a rock with six "comet-like" dust tails streaming behind it. "We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," David Jewitt, the head of the astronomy team studying the P/2013 P5, said in a NASA release. "Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we're seeing an asteroid." The team hypothesizes that the sun's radiation set the 260-yard-wide rock spinning—thanks, Discovery explains, to the Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack effect—so quickly that it lost structural integrity. Using modeling, one team member calculated six dates when the asteroid likely ejected dust into space. So far, it has likely ejected as much as 1,000 tons of dust into space, but that's still a tiny fraction of its mass. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many," Jewitt says. "In astronomy, when you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more."
– Lindsay Lohan claims she was "racially profiled" while wearing a headscarf at London's Heathrow Airport, the AP reports. The actress told a British talk show that she was stopped while traveling to New York. She said an airport worker "opened my passport and saw 'Lindsay Lohan' and started immediately apologizing, but then said: 'Please take off your headscarf.'" She told Good Morning Britain on Tuesday that the incident made her wonder "how would another woman who doesn't feel comfortable taking off her headscarf feel?" Lohan was returning from Turkey, where she recently met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. She said she wore a headscarf in Turkey out of "personal respect." Lohan, who has been photographed carrying a Koran, says she finds "solace" studying the Muslim holy book and other religious texts. (Could LiLo someday be the Little Mermaid?)
– After her 16-year-old son failed to make the varsity soccer team, a disappointed mother went a step or two further than most parents might. She filed a lawsuit in federal court, alleging that the teen is a victim of age and gender discrimination, Fox 2 reports. The family says the rules at Missouri's Ladue High School state that if a junior doesn't make it onto the varsity team, he can't play again on the junior varsity team; that way, students in lower grades can use the JV team to develop the skills they need to try out for varsity. The family wants the boy placed on the JV team, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. They first appealed the coach's decision to district administrators and the superintendent, both of whom sided with the coach; they then complained to the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, but ultimately sued because the office had no power to force the school to place the boy on a team. The boy reportedly wanted to take the case to federal court. The family's lawsuit claims that the girls' soccer team does allow juniors to play on JV, which is where the sex discrimination comes in. "There are many schools across the country that have this policy that you either make varsity as a junior or you're out of the program," says the boy's stepfather, who is also one of the lawyers handling the case. "If someone said 'Cut all the blacks,' that would be illegal. And it's illegal for age too." He adds that per stats and rankings, the boy should have made varsity. But the coach testified in court that the only reason he said positive things about the boy's skills was to build up his self-esteem rather than making him feel worse after he had already failed to make the team, and he also testified that the school doesn't actually have a policy preventing juniors from playing on JV teams. He said it depends how many spots there are on the team and how many kids want to play. The judge is set to decide Monday.
– Greece's top court has declared that Sunday's referendum on a bailout is constitutional, meaning the vote with huge implications for all of Europe will proceed. The latest polls show a dead heat, reports AP, as leaders on both sides try to rally support—especially Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose political life may be at stake. “I ask you to say no to ultimatums, blackmail, and fear-mongering,” he said in a TV address. “No to divisions, no to those who want to spread panic.” He sought to downplay the notion that a "no" vote could lead to Greece leaving the euro zone. Instead, he said, the referendum is about giving him more leverage to get a better deal from creditors. It's the only way Greece can "live with dignity in Europe," he said, per the BBC. The Washington Post has a primer on the financial reasons behind the vote, but a story in the New York Times casts it in more personal terms. It's largely become a referendum on Tsipras himself, and the story suggests that's why European leaders itching to get rid of him limited emergency funds to Greek banks this week. The move set off a panic among people scrambling for cash, and his popularity tumbled. “I don’t see how anybody can believe that the timing of this was coincidence,” says a US economist. “When you restrict the flow of cash enough to close the banks during the week of a referendum, this is a very deliberate move to scare people.” Tsipras initially said he would step down if the "yes" vote prevails, but he has since backed down from that position.
– A UK couple with nearly 200 years between them tied the knot on Saturday in Britain, in a move that was a long time coming. George Kirby, 103, and Doreen Luckie, 91, are the world’s oldest married couple, according to AFP. The newlyweds have been together (and living together) for 27 years, and have a slew of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren between them. In regards to why they waited so long to marry, Luckie said they just "didn’t want to bother." That changed when Kirby popped the question on Valentine's Day—albeit in a nontraditional way. "I didn't get down on one knee, because I don't think I would have been able to get back up," he explained. The pair married at a hotel in Eastbourne, on the southern English coast, and a Guinness Book of World Records guest was in attendance, reports the Independent. The happy couple were a combined 194 years and 281 days old on their wedding day—three years older than the previous "world’s oldest couple," Francois Fernandez and Madeleine Francineau of France. The Brits met in 1988 through a group that organizes senior friendships, and hit it off right away. Kirby was a recently divorced 76-year-old, and Luckie had been widowed three years prior. As for whether any wild pre-wedding partying occurred, Kirby's 63-year-old son had this to say: "Dad missed his stag do lunch because he wasn't feeling up for it, but Doreen had a hen party luncheon which was a complete laugh with all her golden girls." (Want to stay married til you're 103? Avoid these 5 odd things that up your chances of divorce.)
– British actor Paul Nicholls spent a decidedly unglamorous three days at the bottom of a Thai waterfall before being rescued this week, the Guardian reports. Nicholls, former star of British soap opera EastEnders who went on to star in a Bridget Jones film among other things, fell from the top of the remote Khun Si falls on the island of Koh Samui, reports the Sun, which has photos and videos of his rescue. He ended up in a rock pool, unable to move because he'd hurt his leg. He was semi-conscious and had hypothermia when rescuers found him, having been alerted to the fact that he rented a motorbike and then went missing. He also contracted some sort of illness during his time in the jungle and was said to be sick in the hospital, but was able to tell the Sun he is "lucky to be alive." He says he broke his leg and will need a complete knee reconstruction.
– While Colorado citizens are taking advantage of their state's marijuana legalization, sheriffs there and in neighboring states are suffering a "crisis of conscience" in upholding that law, according to a suit filed against Colorado today in Denver. Per USA Today, the lead plaintiff, Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith, calls the case a "constitutional showdown" and says he doesn't know whether to enforce his own state's mandate or the US Constitution (pot's still not legal on a federal level). "[They're] asking every peace officer to violate their oath," Smith says, per USA Today. "What we're being forced to do … makes me ineligible for office." Meanwhile, sheriffs in Kansas and Nebraska who've joined the suit complain that tokers driving back from Colorado are running up overtime bills as police have to handle a significant increase in drug arrests. This isn't the first group to take legal measures against the state. The attorneys general in Nebraska and Oklahoma filed a lawsuit against Colorado last year, saying the free flow of pot across state lines is hurting communities. "Left unchallenged, I am confident Colorado's law will cause long-term harm to Nebraska families," that state's AG, Doug Peterson, wrote in an open letter, as per the LA Times. And two lawsuits filed last month by an anti-drug group express similar complaints and add racketeering charges into the mix, the Huffington Post noted in February. Larimer County's sheriff says the DoJ's mostly hands-off policy in dealing with the new rules amounts to showing folks "how to violate federal law but not get prosecuted," USA Today notes. But a pot advocate says pols and cops should concentrate on more serious crimes. "These guys are on the wrong side of history," he tells the paper.
– Sarah Palin is feuding with notoriously outspoken rapper Azealia Banks—and even some of the Alaskan's detractors say this time, she appears to be in the right. Palin has threatened to sue Banks over an NSFW Twitter rant—which was deleted but can be seen here—in which Banks suggests Palin should be gang-raped by black men. Palin tells People that she is suing "on behalf of all reasonable women of every age, race and political leaning." "I've had enough of the unanswered threats and attacks against my family and me," says Palin, who, in an earlier Facebook post, said she would go through her "young daughter's playlist to make sure there hasn't been any inadvertent addition of any anti-woman, pro-rape garbage." Banks appears to have gone on the attack after reading a satirical news article with a fake Palin quote about black people enjoying slavery, USA Today reports. The rapper later "apologized" in a rambling open letter posted on Tumblr. "I want to start this letter off by telling you that I actually, really like you," she said, going on to claim that she had only been kidding, and the language she used referred to group sex, not rape. "Woman to Woman, I hope you will accept my sincerest apology," she concluded, adding: "If Bristol Palin listened to my music she probably wouldn't have all those cotdamn kids!"
– Mohammed Abu Khudair was heading to morning prayers at 4am yesterday when neighbors saw him forced into a van in east Jerusalem, his father says. They called his cell phone but "my son wasn't answering," his mother adds, per the BBC. An hour later, the Palestinian teen was found dead in an apparent revenge killing, so burned beyond recognition that DNA samples were needed to confirm his identify, father Hussein Abu Khudair tells NBC News, adding, per Time, "The settlers killed my son, they kidnapped him and killed him." More developments: The teen's funeral, originally set for today, has been delayed as authorities perform an autopsy, his father says. Khudair adds he doesn't have faith in the Israeli police "because we're Arab" and says young Jews pulled a 9-year-old boy away from his mother after Mohammed's death. Though he was saved, "he was scratched," Khudair says. "They grabbed him by his neck." Another relative of Mohammed adds "the hatred has increased" instantly in the family's neighborhood. "I've never seen such racism, even in the first and second intifada," he tells the New York Times. "We are entering a very dark time." Meanwhile, police are investigating what could be a third kidnapping after a girl called police from northern Israel. "She said that she was abducted and then the line went dead," an Israeli spokesman tells the Times. "We're searching the area. Helicopters are trying to track. We'll see what's going on there." In response to mortar and rocket attacks from Gaza, "the Israeli Air Force attacked 15 terror sites in Gaza early Thursday," an Israel Defense Forces official notes. "The targets included weapons manufacturing sites as well as training facilities." Some 10 Palestinians were reportedly injured.
– Slowly but surely, Donald Trump is bulking up the position statements on his website. His immigration and gun rights platforms have now been joined by his new tax plan, which he announced Monday in a press conference from NYC's Trump Tower, CNBC reports. "Too few Americans are working, too many jobs have been shipped overseas, and too many middle class families cannot make ends meet," notes his site, which boasts four "simple" goals to mitigate these issues: offering tax relief to the middle class, simplifying the tax code, growing the US economy, and ensuring the country doesn't add to its debt and deficit. Highlights of Trump's plan include getting rid of income taxes for individuals making less than $25,000 and married couples making less than $50,000—with those qualifying filers receiving "a new one page form to send the IRS saying, 'I win.'" (Seriously.) Tax brackets would be whittled down from the current seven to four: 0%, 10%, 20%, and 25% (down from a current high of 39.6%, the AP reports; see where you'd fall on the tax chart shown here). The blueprint also would cut business tax rates down to no more than 15%, as well as levy a one-time 10% tax on overseas profits, which Trump's campaign thinks will encourage corporations to bring money back home, the Wall Street Journal notes. Trump says the tax benefits would be funded by reducing or ending "redundant" deductions and loopholes (mostly for the wealthiest, but also in certain cases for middle-class filers), as well as from newly reaped tax revenue from a healthier economy, the AP notes. "My plan will bring sanity, common sense, and simplification to our country's catastrophic tax code," Trump said in an interview with the Journal. "It will create jobs and incentives of all kinds while simultaneously growing the economy." (Read further details about the plan here.)
– A New York state appeals court ruled today that Grace Sung Eun Lee has the right to die, the Daily News reports. The incurably ill Manhattan banker has begged doctors to pull the plug, but her religious parents did their best to stop the request. They even released a video in which Lee mouthed the word "Yes" to a question from her cousin—but that question was impossible to make out, reports the Daily News. "She has made herself abundantly clear,” said Lee's court-appointed lawyer. "They stand there all day, and tell her that this is Satan’s work—and she loves her parents desperately. ... This is just awful." Lee was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor last year and put on life support last month. But her father, a reverend, says that "when someone sets a time and date to die, that is considered as a suicide and sin." No word yet on whether her parents will give up their legal battle.
– For the first time in its nearly 50-year history, Sesame Street will have a homeless Muppet character. Lily, a character first introduced as a hungry, impoverished little girl in 2011, is now involved in a storyline involving her family becoming homeless and having to stay with friends, CNN reports. For now, she appears in online clips rather than televised episodes of the show. The show launched the storyline as homelessness is increasing across the US; one report released last year estimates that about one in 20 children under the age of 6 experienced homelessness in 2014-15. "When Lily was first launched, she came out as part of the food insecurity initiative. So she's not brand-new, but this seemed like a really perfect extension of her story, so that we could use her to help children identify with," says a Sesame Workshop exec, who adds that another goal is to educate teachers, caregivers, and other children about issues affecting kids, helping them to empathize and to end the stigma around certain issues. "Now we don't have our own place to live, and sometimes I wonder if we'll ever have our own home," Lily says in one clip to Elmo, who reassures her that her friends will always be there for her, per USA Today. A press release about Lily links to resources parents and others can use with their kids. (Last year, Sesame Street introduced the first Muppet with autism.)
– One of the most respected opponents of gay marriage has changed his mind, arguing that too many of his political comrades are simply prejudiced against gays and lesbians, the New York Times reports. David Blankenhorn, who wrote The Future of Marriage and argued for California's Proposition 8 as an expert witness, revealed his new opinion in the Times yesterday: "Whatever one's definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness," he wrote. He also hopes that by embracing gay marriage, he can "help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same." Reaction is, of course, mixed: "He has thrown marriage under the bus for the sake of the homosexual movement," said Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. Sprigg blamed Blankenhorn's position on a desire not to be seen as anti-gay. "Blankenhorn's current position closely parallels my own," writes Reihan Salam in the National Review. But "Blankenhorn's new strategy actually represents a harder road than opposition to the legalization of same-sex civil marriage," because he "won't have concrete victories to celebrate." "David was a good man when he was opposed to marriage equality and he is a good man now," writes gay marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Beast. "We need more like him." Click for the full Times piece, or Blankenhorn's op-ed.
– An attack Wednesday on the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul left dozens of students and foreign staff trapped inside campus buildings, Reuters reports. The attack by suspected militants armed with guns and explosives started around 6:30pm and was followed by more than an hour of shooting when Afghan forces arrived. According to the AP, one of its photographers, Massoud Hossaini, was in class at the university when the attack started. Hossaini says he was shot at when he looked out a window after hearing an explosion and at least two grenades were thrown into his classroom. Students proceeded to barricade themselves in classrooms. A witness told CNN fires were burning on the campus. Eighteen people were reported injured in the attack, and authorities say a university guard was killed. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, though the Taliban seems like a likely culprit. More than 1,000 students are enrolled in the American University of Afghanistan. The US-style liberal arts school shut down for a time after two teachers, one American and one Australian, were abducted Aug. 7. They haven't been seen since.
– Tomatoes and potatoes go together like, well, ketchup and fries—so why not grow them together? A hybrid plant known as the "TomTato" or, yes, "Ketchup 'n' Fries," allows you to do just that, and it's now available in the US after first being released in the UK. The plant combines a vine growing cherry tomatoes with roots growing white potatoes—but it's not genetically engineered. Rather, it's created by grafting, in which the tomatoes are "spliced onto potato rootstock," the Oregonian explains, noting the process works well for tomatoes and potatoes because they are closely related. Technically, you could try to do it at home, but it requires the plant stems you're joining be the same thickness. SuperNaturals Grafted Vegetables is the company handling the grafting process in the US, and home gardeners can purchase the non-GMO plant in a 2.5-inch pot from the Territorial Seed Company. "People have been grafting tomatoes and potatoes for a while, but mostly as a novelty," Territorial's marketing director tells OPB, noting that before this plant was commercialized, it was necessary to research varieties to find ones that "complement each other well." Now, purchasers can expect to harvest some 500 red cherry tomatoes and 4.5 pounds of potatoes from each plant. Back in 2013 when the plant was only available in the UK, Stephen Colbert featured it on his "The Craziest F#?ing Thing I've Ever Heard" segment, calling it "unnatural" and noting, "The only time tomatoes and potatoes should meet is at the bottom of a Styrofoam clamshell." (Read about a tree that grows 40 different fruits.)
– The Great Gatsby is about to get the celluloid treatment again. And while we can only hope that Baz Luhrmann does it justice, a great book does not automatically equal a great film. (The Scarlett Letter much?) The Huffington Post lists 15 novels that it considers "unfilmable": Pale Fire, by Vladamir Nabokov: Truly a riddle, this footnote-ridden book revolves around a 999-line poem. The Waves, by Virginia Woolf: It's basically six monologues, making the book one big monologue. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon: It's not the book, so much as the author, that's the issue here. A famously private recluse, HuffPo can't imagine him giving anyone the movie rights. Maus by Art Spiegelman: This Holocaust-era biography/graphic novel about Spiegelman's father depicts the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats ... just too serious for a cartoon. Notes HuffPo, it's tough when your pitch is: "Think Schindler's List, but with dogs and reindeer." Click here for the complete list, which, of course, includes a book by James Joyce.
– Apparently Bristol Palin is a little bit desperate for people to show up to her book signings. Last week, in an ad posted on Craigslist, organizers offered free autographed copies of Palin's recent book to the first 100 people who promised to attend a weekend signing in Washington, DC, the Post reports—noting that Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far got trashed by reviewers and failed to become popular after it was released last year. The Post adds that even DC's right-leaning Examiner called the Craigslist ad "an attempt to entice fans to attend the event."
– In a move that seems fairly out of character, HBO is putting the first two episodes of Girls' third season—which just aired last night—on the HBO YouTube page, where anyone can watch them for free as of 10am today. Why? The show's audience is very active online, and "for us, this is an increasingly challenging demographic to reach with traditional means," HBO's VP of social media and marketing tells Mashable. The network is reaching out in other ways, too: It has Snapchat and Tumblr accounts for Girls and an Instagram video series featuring Lena Dunham sharing her character Hannah Horvath's opinions. On Twitter, cast and crew members will be live-tweeting the show starting with episode three, and on Facebook, emojis are used to recap what each character has gone through.
– Two people died during a massive fight involving up to 200 people—though initial reports put the number at 400—armed with shovels, steel bars, and baseball bats Saturday at a Russian cemetery, the AP reports. According to RT, the police and national guard were called in to break up the battle at Khovanskoye cemetery in Moscow. The BBC describes the conflict as a "territorial dispute between two different groups of cemetery workers." Combatants were possibly fighting a "turf war" over who gets to provide burial services at the highly profitable 500-acre cemetery, Moscow's largest. But USA Today reports workers may have been fighting a gang that tried to force them to pay up to 90% of their wages as a "tax." Russian police say the two people killed during Saturday's fracas were run over by a car fleeing the scene. Three people in the car, all reportedly armed with guns, were arrested. In total more than 50 people were arrested in connection with the brawl. Ten people were reported wounded. Some combatants were said to be armed with guns and gunfire was reported, but it appears no one was shot. A police officer was originally reported to have died while breaking up the fight, but that was later retracted.
– A comment from Mitt Romney on health insurance is making waves, especially among critics on the left. Speaking to the Columbus Dispatch editorial board (in all-important Ohio), Romney sought to convey the notion that sick people wouldn't be left high and dry with the repeal of ObamaCare. His quote: “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack. No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government, or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” It's that last part getting the most attention: White House: If Romney understood middle-class struggles, "he wouldn’t claim that no one in this country dies because they don’t have health insurance when, in fact, experts estimate that 26,000 people die prematurely every year because they don’t have coverage." See the Hill for more on that. ThinkProgress: Emergency rooms don't cut it as a last resort. "Hospitals may treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay, but patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference are often unable to access needed care," writes Rebecca Leber. She cites a study putting the yearly death toll as a result at 45,000. The Note blog at ABC News thinks Romney might have actually shifted his position on pre-existing conditions in the interview, and The Week has more background and context on Romney's statements.
– A Canadian woman looking for her missing daughter since she went missing as a toddler almost 40 years ago received a Facebook message in early August that may change her life, the Ottawa Citizen reports. The private message sent to Liliane Cyr, who maintains a Facebook page dedicated to finding her daughter Yohanna, who disappeared from their Montreal apartment in 1978, was from a US woman who started off asking a very specific question about a birthmark on Yohanna's finger, followed by this: "I'm not 100% sure, but I think I might be your daughter." The woman told Cyr that the discovery that her birth certificate was a fake, an odd lack of early childhood photos, and fuzzy memories of a plane ride led her to suspect something was amiss in her past. The Montreal Gazette tells the story of what happened the week Yohanna disappeared, with 20-year-old Cyr leaving 18-month-old Yohanna in the care of Aaron Lewis Guay, her US boyfriend at the time, while she was out of town for work. Guay met up with Cyr a few days later without the baby, first telling Cyr his mom was watching Yohanna, then saying the toddler had drowned in the tub and he'd buried her. Guay was charged with kidnapping, but he denied his original story and a judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence to go on with the case; he was released and disappeared. Cyr says she's trying not to get her hopes up, but she notes that photos of the woman resemble Yohanna. DNA tests are in the works. (Two teens missing for two years were found on a Minnesota farm.)
– Things aren't going as well as it might seem for "clock kid" Ahmed Mohamed, according to lawyers his family has hired to investigate the Texas teen's treatment by police. "There’s a problem when you have a 14-year-old child arrested in school and basically humiliated in front of his classmates, his teachers, his friends, and basically the whole world," attorney Thomas Bowers tells the Dallas Morning News. "He may be smiling on the outside, but he's having some issues." Ahmed's father says he won't be returning to the high school that suspended him after a teacher thought his homemade clock was a bomb. The family's lawyers initially said they were looking at ways to get the clock back from authorities in Irving, but police say they decided to return it to him last week and the family can pick it up anytime, BuzzFeed reports. The lawyers tell the Morning News that they aren't sure yet what legal action the family will take, but they feel that authorities, including Irving's mayor, have tried to "blame the victim," and now that they've been hired, "they'll probably cease comments like that." It's not clear when the family will get a chance to pick up the now-famous clock: Ahmed will meet with UN dignitaries in New York today and his father plans on a trip to Mecca, as well as a White House visit.
– The Christmas miracle that wasn’t. Last year on Christmas Day, lottery dispensers at convenience stores and gas stations across South Carolina started doing something remarkable. For two hours they spewed out winning tickets of up to $500 like candy. Lottery officials quickly figured out the problem, and cashiers began seeing the message, “transaction not allowed,” when customers went to collect their prizes, reports the Washington Post. But before the bonanza was over, 71,000 of the $1 Holiday Cash Add-A-Play tickets had been dispensed, with the errant prize money totaling about $35 million. So, what happens to all the winning tickets that were rejected? They are worth exactly $1, the state lottery board announced on Wednesday. The winners will not get their prize money, but they can get a refund. After a five-month investigation, lottery officials found the problem was caused by coding errors, reports NPR. The officials say Intralot, a Greece-based ticket vendor, did not run proper testing procedures before releasing the game. "While [the state lottery] is mindful of the magnitude of this decision on its players, any other decision would not comply with the law,” officials said, per the New York Times. Players holding winning tickets are not happy. Nicole Coggins, who thought she had won $18,000, has filed a class-action lawsuit against the lottery commission and the vendor, one of two lawsuits that have been filed, according to the Post. “We think it’s a breach of contract if the commission decided to deny them their rightful winnings,” her lawyer says. "It's not fair," Coggins tells the Times. "It's not right."
– Paul Manafort was there in a Virginia federal courtroom Friday to hear details on his sentencing, and his appearance seemed markedly different than the last time he was seen in public. NBC News notes the 69-year-old looked "visibly grayer," and that he showed up, in a wheelchair, wearing a green prison jumpsuit—not his usual tailored suit—and missing his right shoe. "There are significant issues with Mr. Manafort's health concerning confinement," his lawyer, Kevin Downing, told the judge, asking that the sentencing be sped up so Manafort, if kept in prison, could be moved to a facility better able to manage his maladies. A person said to be "familiar with Manafort's condition" tells CNN his issue is serious and is inflammation-based, tied to what he's been eating. Judge TS Ellis had earlier struck down the Manafort legal team's request that their client be permitted to wear a regular suit to Friday's hearing, with Ellis noting "defendants who are in custody post-conviction are, as a matter of course, not entitled to appear for sentencing or any other hearing in street clothing," per NBC. Ellis gave Manafort a sentencing date of Feb. 8, where he'll hear his fate on eight counts of tax evasion and bank fraud. The judge also dismissed 10 additional charges on which the jury deadlocked during the trial, though CNN notes if Manafort doesn't keep cooperating with Robert Mueller's investigation, those charges could be reinstated. Earlier this week, CNN reported Manafort and his attorneys visited Robert Mueller's DC office at least nine times over the past month, where they hunkered down for about six hours each time. (Manafort's deal to avoid a second trial.)
– Jim Carrey is having second thoughts about Kick-Ass 2, in which he plays a superhero named Colonel Stars and Stripes. The R-rated film is a sequel to the ultra-violent Kick-Ass, and Carrey filmed it a month before the Sandy Hook shootings, he explained on Twitter yesterday. "And now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence," he wrote, continuing, "My apologies to others involve [sic] with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart." Mark Millar, who wrote the comic books the films are based on, responded on his website, the Huffington Post reports. "Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but I'm baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn't in the screenplay 18 months ago," wrote Millar. "Ironically, Jim's character in Kick-Ass 2 is a Born-Again Christian and the big deal we made of the fact that he refuses to fire a gun is something he told us attracted him to the role in the first place." The film is out Aug. 16. (Click for 10 other actors who have trashed their own projects.)
– Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt says he needs to fly first-class because of a toxic environment—the political one. He says he wasn't involved in the decision to put him in first class when he travels, which he says was made after some unpleasant interactions with travelers opposed to administration policies. "We live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment," he tells the New Hampshire Union Leader. He says his security team and the administration "place me on the plane where they think [it's] best from a safety perspective." He was speaking days after the Washington Post reported that Pruitt, whose predecessors mostly flew coach, has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in first-class and military jet travel costs, including $90,000 during a busy stretch in early June. Pruitt's government-funded travel is being reviewed by the EPA's internal watchdog, which says the results of its investigation should be released by the summer, the AP reports. Earlier this week, EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox claimed Pruitt had a "blanket waiver" allowing him to choose first class whenever he travels, but he retracted the statement after Politico pointed out that federal rules require a waiver for every taxpayer-funded first-class trip when it's for security reasons. Wilcox, whose earlier statement was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, now says Pruitt "submits a waiver to fly in either first or business class" for every trip he makes. (Pruitt is the first EPA chief to be accompanied by a 24-hour security detail.)
– Marissa Mayer says coverage of her four years at the helm of Yahoo has been "gender charged." "We all see the things that only plague women leaders, like articles that focus on their appearance, like Hillary Clinton sporting a new pantsuit," she tells the Financial Times. "I think all women are aware of that, but I had hoped in 2015 and 2016 that I would see fewer articles like that. It’s a shame." It was announced Monday that Verizon would acquire the struggling Internet pioneer for $4.83 billion, which, per the Guardian, puts an "ignominious end to Mayer’s plans to turn Yahoo around." Mayer has been oft-criticized for how she has run Yahoo, with much of the criticism centering on "bad acquisitions and poor hires," per the Times, such as buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion—part of what the Guardian calls a "wild spending spree." In a post on that platform, Mayer writes, "I’m planning to stay. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It’s important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter." But how long that will be remains to be seen. "It might be for a short period," an analyst tells NBC news. "They might need her input during the integration process."
– Meet Evan. He's a bored high school kid who starts defacing school property, er, doodling on a table in the library one day. Someone writes back. Messages are swapped as days pass, mystery and romance bloom. Evan wanders the halls, eyeing his classmates, wondering who his mystery penpal is, and as AdWeek puts it, "there ensues a back-and-forth that's pretty captivating. Perhaps too captivating." (To avoid spoilers, stop reading and watch the video.) The end result has been described as "jarring" (Kansas City Star), "chilling" (Mic), and "powerful" (People). While you and Evan are busy being captivated—especially as Evan meets his mystery penpal—one of Evan's classmates is lurking in the background providing warning signs that he's planning a shooting, which in fact interrupts that very meeting we've been waiting for. The ad comes courtesy of Sandy Hook Promise, run by family of the victims of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. "When you don't know what to look for, or can't recognize what you are seeing, it can be easy to miss warning signs or dismiss them as unimportant," says Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son, Dylan, died in the massacre. The organization, which says 80% of shooters tell someone what they're planning, aims to shine a light on the need to watch for those signs. (In Utah, a teen's own parents disarmed him inside a school.)
– Male tigers are a lot like human men when it comes to sex. They're shy and awkward about their bodies if they haven't spent a lot of time around female tigers. They take libido enhancers when they get older. And, if a partner their own age isn't doing it for them, they consider trading them in for a younger, prettier tiger. BBC News reports India's Alipore zoo is having a difficult time getting its 10-year-old white tiger Vishal to mate. The zoo has tried vitamins and even de-worming him; nothing seems to be working. Experts are blaming the fact that Vishal was born in captivity, meaning he doesn't have much experience with females and might not understand the biological signals his body is sending, according to the Times of India. Plus, Vishal is at the outer limits of breeding age for tigers. This is apparently frustrating to Rupa, a female white tiger the zoo has assigned to breed with Vishal. While in heat, Rupa will chase, touch, and scratch Vishal, but he "runs away with his tail between his legs," a veterinary consultant tells the Times. Zoo staff have been trying to mate the two tigers for six months, and it's important they succeed because the zoo's tiger population is getting older and hasn't had a birth in more than a decade. Now, staff are considering trying Vishal out with a much younger Bengal tiger named Rani, who is described as having "a very beautiful face," the BBC reports. Ouch, Rupa.
– In his visit to Ferguson, Mo., yesterday, Eric Holder told residents that he understands their frustration about police. "I am the attorney general of the United States," he said. "But I am also a black man,” Holder recounted being stopped by police on a Washington street while he and his cousin ran to catch a movie, reports Politico. "I was a federal prosecutor," he said. "I wasn't a kid." He also recalled being pulled over twice in New Jersey and accused of speeding as cops searched his car, reports Fox News. "I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was," he told the crowd, and later in the day said, "We can make it better." While he praised the "good dialogue" going on about race relations, he added that "dialogue is not enough. We need concrete action to change things in this country." Holder also met with Michael Brown's parents for about 20 minutes and promised a "fair and independent" investigation. Meanwhile, Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson said last night was "a very good night" in Ferguson, with just six arrests, reports the AP.
– Starbucks' Irish Twitter account has just 2,000 followers, but an awkward tweet it directed to them has managed to piss off an entire nation: "Show us what makes you proud to be British," the company tweeted during the Diamond Jubilee. The coffee giant says it intended the message to reach only its UK Twitter followers, the Guardian reports. One Irish customer warned @StarbucksIE: "The ie stands for Ireland, awaiting the apology before I visit your stores again!!" Following the mistake, Starbucks' Ireland account noted that "we erroneously posted to our Irish Twitter page meaning to post to the UK only. Customers in Ireland: We're sorry."
– Nigeria is apparently feeling the international pressure over its kidnapped girls, with the national police offering a $300,000 reward today for information that leads to their rescue, reports the BBC. (The move comes a day after President Obama promised that a US team would help the cause.) But Boko Haram, the group that kidnapped the girls and vows to sell them, remains as defiant and brutal as ever. A new attack in the town of Gamboru Ngala, near the border with Cameroon, massacred at least 150 villagers, reports CNN. Local media reports say militants opened fire on a crowd of people in a busy marketplace, set homes on fire, and shot residents trying to flee the flames over a span of 12 hours, reports the AP. A Nigerian senator says the death toll is "high—hundreds—but we are still awaiting details from the military authorities." (Click to read about one girl's description of how she escaped Boko Haram.)
– John Kerry says he has "high confidence" in US intelligence reports that Syria used chemical weapons. Vladimir Putin has two much different words on the subject: "utter nonsense." The Russian leader used the phrase in urging the US to hold off on any military action until the UN has completed its investigation, reports the BBC. The clock is ticking on that: UN inspectors left Syria today and will brief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, but their full report to the Security Council might take a week or so to complete, reports CNN. Kerry and Obama have suggested that the US won't wait that long, in part because the UN inspectors are charged only with determining whether chemical weapons were used, not who employed them. The US says it already is sure that Bashar al-Assad is the culprit. Putin, though, told reporters that it would have been foolish for Assad to order the Aug. 21 attack because his troops have the upper hand in the war. "In these conditions, to give a trump card to those who are calling for a military intervention is utter nonsense."
– Former NFL star Chad Johnson was so close to securing a no-jail plea for violating probation on his domestic violence charges he could almost touch it—until he did. Johnson playfully slapped his attorney on the butt in front of the courtroom, prompting the judge to reject the plea and sentence him to 30 days in jail, AP reports. "I don't know that you're taking this whole thing seriously. I just saw you slap your attorney on the backside," said the judge. "The whole courtroom was laughing. I'm not going to accept these plea negotiations. This isn't a joke." Watch video of the whole thing at TMZ.
– Black Friday shoppers were evacuated yesterday after a man with a gun allegedly stole prescription drugs from a Rite Aid pharmacy, then ran into a wireless store in the same California shopping center, causing an hours-long standoff with police after which the man was found dead, KTLA reports. The suspect died "apparently by his own hand" last night, according to the LA County Sheriff's Department; authorities did not fire any shots, NBC Los Angeles reports. The man had threatened to take hostages, but the employees inside Connect Wireless in La Crescenta's Marketplace Shopping Center managed to escape.
– Janet Yellen is getting a lot of grief over her first news conference as leader of the Federal Reserve for, of all things, speaking too clearly. As Rex Nutting at MarketWatch observes, Yellen spoke for an hour yesterday, "but the market only heard three words: 'around six months.'" Those words came when Yellen was asked when the Fed might start raising interest rates once its tapering strategy ended. The official Fed statement on the matter was predictably vague, but Yellen wasn't: “You know, this is the kind of term it’s hard to define, but, you know, it probably means something on the order of around six months or that type of thing.” The markets interpreted that to mean interest rates would go up sooner than expected and immediately tanked. "A more experienced central-bank head would have obfuscated and said something vague," writes John Cassidy at the New Yorker. He calls Yellen's debut "awkward," but notes that Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan got similarly tripped up in their early days. Yellen wasn't trying to change policy, and investors drew a "remarkably dumb conclusion" in thinking otherwise, writes Clive Crook at Bloomberg. Still, Yellen needs to be careful in what she says. "Investors always want more information, but they're not always good at sifting useful information from noise," he writes. "The Fed could help them by recognizing that sometimes less is more." Adds Peter Coy at BusinessWeek, referring to the Fed's rate-setting committee: "It’s a fair bet that other FOMC members will be suggesting to Yellen that she stick closer to the script next time she addresses reporters."
– A tip from the NYPD: "Don't put your cellphone under a pillow when sleeping or when charging your device"—unless you want to set your head on fire. Deputy Inspector Wilson Aramboles of the NYPD's 33rd Precinct shared that message on Twitter on Monday alongside photos of a charred phone, battery, and pillow. It isn't clear if the photos are tied to a recent accident or an old one; Gothamist reports they might be from a 2014 incident in which a Texas teen's Samsung Galaxy S4 started a fire under her pillow. Either way, they "really do drive home the point," notes the San Francisco Chronicle. Cell phones need room to breathe, especially as they heat up while charging. While keeping a hot phone away from flammable materials like a pillow might seem like a no-brainer, some people choose to sleep with their phones nearby and rely on features like vibrating alarms. "It is recommended that you leave these types of devices on a hard surface so the heat can dissipate. The batteries heat up, they could melt—in some cases, explode—and cause a fire," a fire chief told NBC Connecticut last May after a teen's phone set fire to his bed. (An exploding cell phone actually killed a man in China.)
– PETA loves to get normally-clothed celebrities to strip down for ad campaigns, but with the addition of Sasha Grey to the stable, the animal rights organization “is basically a porn site now,” writes Jen Carlson on Gothamist. Grey is, of course, “the charming young lady you've seen in films such as Fuck Slaves”—ie, an actual porn star. Check out her ad, as well as a few other recent naked ladies courtesy of The Frisky and PopEater, in the gallery.
– MERS-CoV, the potentially deadly virus that spread from the Middle East to France last month, is now creeping further, with three cases reported in Italy this weekend. The patients, a 42-year-old woman, 45-year-old man, and 2-year-old girl, are said to be in stable condition. The man recently traveled to Jordan, and is reported to be a close contact of the two female patients, CNN reports. Of the 52 people known to be infected with the virus since September 2012, 30 have died. The virus is "a threat to the entire world," WHO General Director Margaret Chan told the World Health Assembly this week, reports CNN. "We understand too little about this virus when viewed against the magnitude of its potential threat," said Chan. "We do not know where the virus hides in nature. We do not know how people are getting infected. Until we answer these questions, we are empty-handed when it comes to prevention. These are alarm bells. And we must respond."
– Donald Trump's campaign chief may have closer—and more illegal—ties to pro-Russia interests in Ukraine than he has let on, according to a New York Times report on secret ledgers that anti-corruption investigators have uncovered in Kiev. Investigators say the ledgers list $12.7 million in payments to Paul Manafort from the pro-Russia Party of Regions between 2007 and 2012, when he worked as a consultant for the party. It isn't clear whether Manafort actually received the cash, which investigators say is linked to a network that also bribed election officials. Manafort's lawyer says his client never received the payments and any suspicions are "probably heavily politically tinged." In other coverage: The Hill reports that there doesn't appear to be any love lost between Manafort and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski: Lewandowski, who was fired after clashing with Manafort, tweeted a link to the NYT Ukraine story minutes after it first appeared. The AP reports that Trump plans to deliver a major foreign policy speech in Ohio Monday that will focus on "realism," with policies including destroying ISIS without engaging in "nation-building"—and on new ideological tests for people seeking to enter the US. Politico reports that Trump targeted the media in a series of tweets Sunday, claiming that he would be beating Hillary Clinton by 20% if the "disgusting" media covered him honestly. "I am not only fighting Crooked Hillary, I am fighting the dishonest and corrupt media and her government protection process," he tweeted. "It is not 'freedom of the press' when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!" he added. The Wall Street Journal editorial board warned Sunday that Trump's "window for a turnaround" is closing and his GOP supporters now face a "moment of truth" before he is written off as a lost cause. "The tragedy is that this is happening in a year when Republicans should win," they write.
– WikiLeaks needs "a minimum" of a million euros ASAP in order to "effectively continue its mission," it announced in a news release today. The anti-secrecy organization has seen its cash reserves plummet from around $983,600 in December 2010 to less than $120,000 at the end of June, and that reserve will dwindle to nothing "within a few months," it said, according to the Wall Street Journal. It blames these financial woes on Visa and MasterCard's joint ban on the site. WikiLeaks says it has at last figured out a workaround for would-be donors with Visa and MasterCard, saying they can send donations through France's Carte Bleue system, which in turn would route the donations through France's Fund for the Defense of Net Neutrality, a nonprofit organization, the AP reports. Carte Bleue has a contract with Visa and MasterCard forbidding them from cutting off merchants. "Let them shut it down," Julian Assange said in statement. "We're waiting. Our lawyers are waiting."
– At least six newlywed brides in India have left their husbands because their new homes lacked a toilet, reports the Times of India. The six returned to their parents' homes in protest and vow not to go back until their in-laws get proper plumbing. The newspaper describes the women's actions as raising "the banner of revolt," because the issue is anything but trivial in India. The UN recently warned about the widespread problem of open defecation in poor areas, and India's prime minister vowed last week to tackle the issue, notes the BBC. "We are in the 21st century and yet there is still no dignity for women as they have to go out in the open to defecate and they have to wait for darkness to fall," said Narendra Modi in his speech. It's not just a sanitary issue, either. The gang rape of two teen cousins in India earlier this year occurred when they went to fields near their homes in the evening. A group called Sulabh International has promised to install toilets for the six newlyweds at no cost, with its founder hailing "the changing mindset" in the country. (A recent fashion shoot in India provoked fury because it was seemingly inspired by a gang rape.)
– San Francisco's city attorney wants Monster Beverage to cut down on both the caffeine in its energy drinks and the marketing of them, and the company is fighting back in federal court. Monster sued the office of Dennis Herrera this week, arguing that its drinks are no more harmful than a cup of Starbucks coffee and making the case that only the FDA can regulate the market, reports the Wall Street Journal. One thing in particular that irritates Herrera is that the company has a Monster Army website for kids that shows an 11-year-old "Monster Army Major" and a 6-year-old "Reserve," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. So, yes, the energy drinks have less caffeine than a cup at Starbucks, but the coffee chain "isn’t marketing sweet drinks that are highly caffeinated to young people,” says a Herrera spokesperson. The legal fight comes amid heightened scrutiny of energy drinks not only by the FDA but by New York state in particular.
– Microsoft unleashed Windows 8 on the world today, in the form of a "Consumer Preview" (read: Open Beta), and it's definitely not business as usual. The OS is designed to work on both tablets and PCs, and that means that, while it still has a familiar Windows "Desktop" mode tucked inside, its default is a bold new "Metro" system that (gasp) does away with "windows" entirely. Apps, which must be purchased from the Windows Store, all run essentially full screen. Here's what people are saying: Farhad Manjoo of Slate calls it "fantastic, jarring, and risky at the same time." Microsoft clearly thinks Metro is the future—"You get the sense that the company is keeping the Desktop interface around the same way it included the command prompt in Windows 95"—but he found it awkward on his desktop. "I felt like I was wasting a lot of my display." "It's by far the most integrated and most capable operating system Microsoft has ever put out," gushes Seth Rosenblatt of CNET. "There's a speed and responsiveness to Windows 8 that no other version of Windows has ever had." His assessment: "It would be beyond shocking if Windows 8 landed like Vista did." But Peter Pachal for Mashable "the same problem bubbles up time and again in Windows 8: unintuitiveness. Metro is a beautiful and powerful interface, but it's hard to get used to," and lots of little things don't work the way you'd expect. "I think it's going to get rough welcome," predicts Jason Cross of PC World. "People often don't like change at first." But he likes it. "I'm impressed by its speed and elegance. Let me say that again: I'm impressed by the speed and elegance of a Micrsoft interface. Really!"
– For most of us, weekends are a time to relax and indulge—maybe through more sleep, more couch time, or more calories in the food and beverages we consume. The result is that we tend to weigh slightly more on Sunday and Monday, but then slightly less again by Friday, reports the Smithsonian. And enough of us do this that scientists say they've observed the general weight trend in a small study published in the journal Obesity Facts. The researchers analyzed the recorded daily weights of 80 adults ages 25 to 62 and found weight "increases begin on Saturday and decreases begin on Tuesday." Before we all fall into a pit of despair in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, one doctor stresses on PLOS' Obesity Panacea blog that it's not a bad thing to "cheat" diets and habits on the weekends. In fact, it "allows you to enjoy some highly-favored but potentially calorie-dense foods in relative moderation, potentially increasing long-term adherence to a diet." The study's authors agree, telling CNN that "some indulging" does no harm. (Meanwhile, if you want to lose weight, research indicates you shouldn't forgo fats.)
– How is it possible to rack up charges for shoplifting and child abuse at the same time? By tossing your infant daughter at the deputy coming to arrest you. Police say Pensacola's Ashley Wright, 23, was spotted by a store employee hiding about $250 worth of (adult) clothes in her daughter's baby stroller, reports WJHG. When she left the store and got in her car, a deputy approached and ordered her out. She refused, and held the baby carrier between him and her, saying, "You will have to shoot through the baby to get to me," reports the Smoking Gun. She then got out of the car and started running, still carrying the baby carrier. As the deputy chased her, she "threw the baby carrier ... at me, about shoulder height," he writes. She missed, but the 3-month-old wasn't injured. Wright, however, soon fell and was arrested. She later told police that her "night of bad decisions" probably had something to do with the beer she drank earlier.
– Seven years after it was found, a 454-year-old shipwreck in the Baltic Sea is still revealing its treasures. Cannons, a hand grenade, possible remains of helmets and swords, and a large grappling hook used to rein in enemy ships are among recent discoveries aboard Mars, a Swedish warship that sank following a battle in 1564 with Danish and German soldiers, reports National Geographic. The battle was "an absolute ruckus," as archaeologist Rolf Fabricius Warming puts it to ScienceNordic, describing grenades, lances, and spears hurled from the tops of enemy ships at Mars. The vessel had an anti-boarding net, but as many as 400 enemy soldiers were among the 800 to 1,000 on board when a gunpowder explosion at Mars' bow sent it to rest 250 feet below the sea's surface near Öland. "It was so violent that the front of the ship lies [130 feet] away from the other remains," says Warming, noting any soldiers not killed in the explosion would have drowned. In the latest search of the untouched wreck by divers and underwater vehicles, "we have come closer to the people aboard," he adds. "We found more skeletal parts, including a femur with trauma around the knee which we believe to stem from a sharp-edged weapon." But it's the grappling hook Warming finds most exciting. He calls it "totally unique," noting no other examples from the 16th century exist, except in illustrations. The hook will remain where it lies, however, along with silver treasure previously found. Researchers haven't been granted permission to disturb the wreck, which lies in cold, low-oxygen water ideal for preserving wood. (Legend has it the ship was cursed.)
– Chase Bishop probably isn't in the mood for backflips anymore after his infamous one at a Denver bar earlier this month. The FBI agent who accidentally shot a man in the leg after his gun fell from its holster while dancing turned himself in to Denver police Tuesday and was booked into jail on a charge of second-degree assault. The 29-year-old from the FBI's Washington Field Office, due in court Wednesday, may also face additional charges, depending on the results of a blood alcohol test, per CBS News. Those results are expected in about a week. Bishop was off duty but in Denver for training at the time of the June 2 shooting at Mile High Spirits, reports the Denver Channel. Pointing out that it's against its rules for a patron to carry a firearm without informing staff, the bar says 24-year-old victim Thomas Reddington is "welcome at Mile High Spirits to enjoy complimentary drinks forever," per the New York Times. Reddington's lawyer says he's weighing a lawsuit against the FBI, which is conducting its own investigation, with suspension and termination among possible outcomes.
– It's been a mild winter in Detroit, which means less snow for Abe Hagenston to shovel, and he could certainly use the income, CBS Detroit reports. Instead, Hagenston—who's been homeless for a decade—used his free time to set up a website and buy a credit-card reader, according to CNN. “Being homeless is my business now,” the 42-year-old tells WDIV. “My business is being homeless.” CBS reports the card reader from Square costs about $10 and works with any smartphone. It means Hagenston now accepts Visa, MasterCard, and American Express while panhandling, so people who tell him they don't have any change need a new excuse. Visitors to Hagenston's website get a welcome video from "Honest Abe" and can make donations to him or other homeless people who've signed up on the site or hire them for odd jobs, CNN reports. According to WDIV, Hagenston updates the site at the public library. "I’ve rebuilt my life a few times," he says. "People don’t realize how tough it is to come from nothing when you don’t have any family or any friends." In addition to the website and card reader, Hagenston is trying to organize fellow panhandlers "like a union," CBS reports.
– The Occupy LA encampment got a stay of execution this morning—though a few arrests have been reported beyond the boundaries of City Hall Park. Two hours after protesters defied city hall's order to vacate the park by 12:01am, lawyer and Occupy supporter Jim Lafferty told Reuters he expected police to give the camp a two-day reprieve. At around 5am, police told protesters over a loudspeaker that they didn't intend to clear the park, the LA Times reports. Police do, however, intend to clear protesters out of the street, and several people who refused to move out of an intersection have already been arrested. "We definitely need to get morning traffic in," a police commander explained. Everything also seems calm at Occupy Philadelphia, where protesters defied a 5pm Sunday deadline to disperse. But as of last night, a police inspector said they didn't intend to forcibly evict anyone. "We look forward to working with Occupy Philadelphia and a resolution of the problem," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Confrontation is never good."
– Three people are missing in the wake of a massive mudslide that struck near Collbran, Colorado, last night. The slide was reported at around 6:15pm, after a day of rain that is believed to have helped cause the slide, the Denver Post reports. The caller "described hearing a noise that sounded much like a freight train," the sheriff's department said. The slide is an estimated 4 miles long, 2 miles wide, and 250 feet deep. "This slide is unbelievably big," one police officer said. The area is still considered unstable, and roadblocks have been set up to try to keep people away from it, the Denver Channel reports. Rescue crews are combing the area for anyone who may have been trapped in the slide. So far no structures have been reported as damaged, and no major roads have been affected. The area is so remote that it does not get cellphone service.
– The traditional end-of-summit group photo at this year's G7 gathering will not include President Trump. The White House says Trump will leave the Quebec summit on Saturday morning and travel directly to Singapore, where he is due to meet Kim Jong Un June 12, Politico reports. The summit is scheduled to conclude hours after Trump's departure and he will miss sessions on issues including climate change and the oceans. The president will travel to the Quebec resort of La Malbaie Friday, the AP reports. His first trip to Canada as president comes as disputes with both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and France's President Emmanuel Macron are heating up. Both leaders have said they will confront Trump at the summit over new tariffs imposed on US allies in the name of "national security." Trudeau and Macron "are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers. The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out. Look forward to seeing them tomorrow," Trump tweeted Thursday. In another tweet, he said Trudeau "is being so indignant, bringing up the relationship that the U.S. and Canada had over the many years and all sorts of other things...but he doesn’t bring up the fact that they charge us up to 300% on dairy — hurting our Farmers, killing our Agriculture!" A third tweet warned the EU and Canada to "Take down your tariffs & barriers or we will more than match you!" Earlier Thursday, Macron said that the other six countries may end up signing an agreement that doesn't include the US. (Trump reportedly brought up a War of 1812 incident when discussing new tariffs on Canadian steel.)
– Sofia Coppola scored a historic victory at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday night when she became only the second woman in the event's 70-year history to win the best director award. The American, who won with Civil War drama The Beguiled, is the first woman to win since Soviet director Yuliya Soltsneva, who was awarded the prize in 1961 for World War II movie The Story of the Flaming Years, Slate reports. The coveted Palme D'Or prize went to Swedish writer-director Ruben Ostlund's comedy The Square, the AP reports. Diane Kruger won best actress and Joaquin Phoenix was named best actor. Coppola, one of three women among the 19 directors in the competition this year, was not present to accept her prize but she released a statement saying it was an "exciting start" to be honored in Cannes. "I'm thankful to my great team and cast and to Focus and Universal for their support of women-driven films," she said, per the Hollywood Reporter. Beguiled star Nicole Kidman also missed the ceremony, where she was honored with a special prize to mark the festival's 70th anniversary. Jury member Will Smith collected it on her behalf, pretending to cry and saying, "Merci beaucoup madam and monsieurs!"
– The duck boat sinking that killed 17 on a Missouri lake is now the subject of a federal criminal investigation after the Coast Guard found probable cause for negligence. The US Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri is seeking to delay civil lawsuits over the July 19 incident until the end of its "wide-ranging" investigation to prevent revealing evidence too early, though two boat captains already know themselves to be targets. Per the Springfield News-Leader, the Coast Guard found probable cause for "misconduct, negligence, or inattention to the duties of the captain" by Kenneth McKee of Ride the Ducks Branson's sunken Stretch Duck 07, and also probable cause that Barry King acted in a "grossly negligent manner" while operating Stretch Duck 54, which made it to safety. The Branson area had been under a severe thunderstorm warning for 20 minutes before Stretch Duck 07 entered Table Rock Lake, where 73mph winds whipped up waves more than three feet high. Per the Wichita Eagle, the boat wasn't to be operated in winds exceeding 35mph or waves exceeding two feet. Civil cases also accuse Ride the Ducks Branson, owned by Ripley Entertainment, of putting passengers at risk through use of boat canopies, citing a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation to remove them following a 1999 tragedy. The NTSB is also investigating this case, along with the state, per CNN. "We continue to fully cooperate," Ripley says in a statement, adding "we are providing all documentation and materials requested in the case."
– Note to tweeting politicians: Watch what you post, because Politwoops will remember it forever. The transparency-minded website is safeguarding politicians' deleted tweets, enabling the rest of us to giggle or ponder over them at our leisure, The Atlantic reports. The site's current 6-month stash includes a few doozey deletions, including John McCain mocking Vladimir Putin's tears and Rep. Jeff Miller posting a link to a poll that asked, "Was Obama born in the United States?" A few deletions are more odd than obvious, begging us to ask what politicians were thinking. Why, for example, did Rep. Tom Graves remove a tweet about going out one night with his wife? Or Rep. Kathy Hochul delete one about her visit to a cancer institute? Perhaps Rep. Stephen Fincher's tweet comparing The Bachelor to The Hunger Games is a more obvious case, but the online avenues of a politician's mind can be dimly lit indeed.
– "STOP THE MADNESS!!!!," "dear lord," and "I want to die" were just a few of the responses to what was meant to be a routine email Friday about a seasonal potluck party in a Utah state office, per the Miami Herald. What caused the holiday hubbub: The email meant for one department was accidentally sent to more than 25,000 employees throughout the state, leading to what Newsweek calls "a cascade of curt, angry, and confused responses" when recipients started hitting "reply all" in their return correspondence, KUTV reports. Unable to simply ignore the mass email, hordes of workers, both irritated and amused, tried to get off the "reply all" chain by … replying to all with that request, which Newsweek notes "only deepened the communication quicksand." "It's Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government," one worker tweeted as it was happening, while another worried the messages wouldn't taper off: "I fear this will never end." In addition to the snark and outrage, some replies were genuine queries about what to bring to the potluck, as well as to the white-elephant gift exchange also set to take place. A Utah communications professional offers some advice to those who want to avoid the same "reply all" fiasco happening when they have their own email to send out. "Prevention is key: send large group emails to yourself w/ bcc to other recipients, and hope somebody doesn't 'loop' others in," he tweeted. Neither the person who sent the email, nor the department, had been IDed by EOD Friday.