American Troops Pose for Picture with Dead Afghans: A soldier has released to the Los Angeles Times a series of 18 photographs taken in Afghanistan of soldiers and corpses. Do read the whole article if you have a chanceâthe LA Times editor talks about their decision to publish; the source talks about the reasons behind the photos. (Warning: Images probably NSFB [Not Safe for Breakfast].)
It's a Tie! Obama and Romney now in a dead heat, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll.
Secret Service Scandal: US investigators are in Cartagena, Colombia, looking to interview "women who are said to have accompanied 11 agentsâincluding snipers and explosives expertsâto their hotel rooms after a night of heavy drinking."
Let's See How Many Layers of Fucked Up This Story Can Manage: King County prosecutors allege a SeaTac man pimped out a developmentally disabled woman online while the state was paying him to be her caretaker. They further claim he was using the same computer to collect child pornography, he allegedly obtained fraudulent payday loans under the woman's name, and it sounds like she thought they were dating. "She didn't tell anyone because she didn't want him to carry out his threats to dump her," a detective reports in court documents.
Worst Hashtag Ever: A cell-phone video of a sexual assault "said to have gone viral among school kids in the township south of Johannesburg" causes "#rapevideo" to trend on Twitter in South Africa.
Have You Been Waiting for a 520 Toll Bill? It'll be arriving in a plain envelope with "no marking that says a toll bill is inside or that it's from the Washington state Department of Transportation," causing some people to throw them out.
Mariners Give Away Free Tickets: Because you had to stand in a really long line for hot dogs.
Weird Fact of the Day: Las Vegas has more single fathers per capita than any other US city. The BBC reports (but they don't report very hard). "My fat fingers don't do the ponytail thing very well," says one such dad.
Hardcore Word Nerdery Alert: The AP Stylebook approves a new (actually very common) definition of "hopefully." I would be in heaven if stories about word usage and grammar were always reported with such style!
The barbarians have done it, finally infiltrated a remaining bastion of order in a linguistic wasteland. They had already taken the Oxford English Dictionary; they had stormed the gates of Websterâs New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition. They had pummeled American Heritage into submission, though she fought valiantlyâshe continues to fight!âby including a cautionary italics phrase, âusage problem,â next to the heretical definition.
