Ironically, it was just after the high school in Wilcox County, Georgia, became integrated thirty years ago that the school held its first segregated proms.

"It's embarrassing to know that I'm from the county that still does this," Wilcox County High School student Keela Bloodworth told 41NBC.

Bloodworth, a white student, and three of her friends — two of them black — have launched an effort to hold the school's first ever integrated prom, but the task is proving more difficult than one might expect in 2013.

"I actually put up posters for the integrated prom and we've had people ripping them down at the school," Bloodworth told CBS Atlanta.

Both the separate black and white proms and the separate black and white homecoming dances are privately funded by parents and students, so Bloodworth and her friends have been forced to try and raise the money themselves.

While the school has no official stance on the matter, it did decide that there should be only one homecoming king and queen this year.

But it was an empty gesture: The white king and black queen were not allowed to take joint photographs for the yearbook, and neither is allowed to attend the other's prom.

"I think it's more of the personal opinions of those involved," City Councilman Wayne McGuinty told Fox24. "I don't think there is an effort made to keep black kids out of the white prom and to keep white kids out of the black prom."

Actually, there is.

When a biracial student attempted to enter the white prom just last year, police were called to turn them away.

McGuinty, meanwhile, fondly reflected on his high school days, when the school had three proms instead of two.

"They couldn't agree if they wanted a live band or a DJ, so there were two white proms that year," he said.

[screengrabs via Fox24, CBS Atlanta]

Christopher Abbott, better (and forever) known as Charlie on Girls, has just announced his abrupt departure from the HBO series, which follows a group of youths with undiagnosed personality disorders as they careen wildly around New York's Brooklyn borough.

According to Page Six, the exit was unexpected—the result of Abbott "butting heads" with show creator/ultimate Girl Lena Dunham as production began on the show's third season in March.

A source told the Post that Abbott "didn't like the direction things are going in," which, judging by last season, could perhaps be characterized as increasingly sallow.

His rep confirmed the departure in an icy statement:

"[Chris] is grateful for the experience of collaborating with Lena, Judd [Apatow], and the entire ‘Girls' cast and crew, but right now he's working on numerous other projects and has decided not to return to the show."

Translation: Fuck you. Fuck you all. Fuck you, Marnie. CHARLIE OUT.

[NY Post // Image via Getty]

When Colorado's prisons chief was shot in the face last month and a Texas prosecutor was gunned down with his wife in their house last weekend—the second such assassination of a Lone Star DA since January—you could have looked at any number of suspects:

1) Random bad people.

2) Rogue Obama-controlled Black Panthers engaging in a sophisticated false-flag operation whose end result is full confiscation of guns, the imposition of Sharia Law, and U.N.-sponsored bike lanes.

3) Messicans!

4) The Aryan Brotherhood, a prison diaspora of maladjusted white guys who've made an art of murders, gun-running, and dog-fighting rings from the comfort of their solitary cells since 1964.

Investigators of the law-enforcement killings are focusing on the latter group, which seems prudent, since ABC News yesterday unearthed a December 2012 police bulletin warning officers that "high ranking members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas are involved in issuing orders to inflict 'mass casualties or death'" on lawmen.

The Brotherhood's gambit appears to have succeeded: The US attorney prosecuting 34 members of the gang in Houston withdrew from the case Tuesday, reportedly over security concerns.

But despite the fact that it's been a proven killing machine with a race fetish for nigh on half a century, the Aryan Brotherhood (the "Brand," among people trying to sound cool) hasn't quite gotten the heap of opprobrium from Americans that we reserve for Al Qaeda and women who defend birth control. Perhaps it's because the Brand (#aryanbrotherhood) operates chiefly out of the US penal system, which is something akin to Vegas in the law-abiding American imagination: What goes on in supermax stays in supermax.

Perhaps it has to do with America's general policy of giving angry white guys a mulligan, because freedom isn't free, but is rather secured through the vigorous waving of Obama-monkey signs by gun-caressing mostly Anglo mostly male patriots who are constantly fighting the fascist government's attempts to label them terrorists.

Whatever the reason, it's time for us to get back to the heady days of McVeigh and Nichols, when we were unafraid to call murderous white assholes terrorists and rain potassium chloride injections on their jihad. According to New Yorker reporter David Grann's detailed investigation, the Aryan Brotherhood

established drug-trafficking, prostitution, and extortion rackets in prisons across the country. Its leaders, often working out of barren cells in solitary confinement, allegedly ordered scores of stabbings and murders. They killed rival gang members; they killed blacks and homosexuals and child molesters; they killed snitches; they killed people who stole their drugs, or owed them a few hundred dollars; they killed prison guards; they killed for hire and for free; they killed, most of all, in order to impose a culture of terror that would solidify their power.

Sounds like a terror group to me. All we need to do is find a prosecutor who's unafraid. And bulletproof.

Just when you thought spiders couldn't possibly get any worse, along comes Poecilotheria rajaei.

The newly discovered tarantula is described as being the size of a human face, with "beautiful, ornate markings" on its legs which can span up to 8 inches across.

Though venomous, the so-called "tiger spider" is not known to be lethal to humans, which is a fairly small comfort to the people of Northern Sri Lanka, particularly patients at a local hospital, where at least one of these eight-legged freaks was found.

Though some arachnologists expressed doubt that a wholly new species had been discovered, British Tarantula Society journal editor Peter Kirk said the spider "has enough significant differences to separate it from the other species."

Ranil Nanayakkara, the scientist who first documented the face-sized spider's existence, did note that the Poecilotheria rajaei is hard to stumble across — though that might soon change.

"They prefer well-established old trees," he is quoted as saying, "but due to deforestation the number have dwindled and due to lack of suitable habitat they enter old buildings."

End. Deforestation. NOW.

[H/T: Breaking News, top photo via Shutterstock, bottom photo via British Tarantula Society/Ranil Nanayakkara]

While farm animals wandering amok in city parks are often associated with agrarian cities of yesteryear, and also Texas, some Parisian officials have decided that woolly mouton are the latest chic, sophisticated addition to the 21st century metropolis.

Yesterday morning, four "wary" black sheep began their tenure to keep a half-acre lawn on the edge of Paris neatly shorn. The four ewes are a rare type of sheep called Ouessant, a diminutive breed, prized for their stockiness and hardiness. Sent by the ecologically conscientious Mayor Bertrand Delanoe as part of a newly founded "eco-grazing" program, the four ewes are the new landscapers of a half-acre in the 19th arrondissement by the municipal archives building.

This is part of Mayor Delanoe's several initiatives for a more environmentally friendly city. The Mayor has increased bike shares and bike lanes, bus lanes, and pedestrian walkways. He hopes these new sheep will masticate away, keeping the grass manicured as well as fertilizing the grounds, in an efficient process requiring only the steps of digestion. The sheep, which cost the city the equivalent of $335, mean no more raging lawnmowers, fewer human employees, and less harsh chemical fertilizer. This small field is a testing ground for larger eco-grazing projects, so if these ewes get their cud on, they could reduce the sheep unemployment rate.

Of course, not everyone is completely pleased by the urban ovines. The director of the archives Agnès Masson noted she was a little disappointed with the choice of mammal, saying "Myself, I wanted a donkey." In what was perhaps a snide commentary on the intelligence of the ruminant creatures, she noted that the archive employees had to have some instruction regarding the care of the sheep. For example, if the ewes fall onto their backs, they will require a person to flip them right. "Otherwise, it risks smothering itself," noted Ms. Masson.

Guarded by a metal fence around the archives, surrounded by a small yellow electrified fence, labeled by informational panels, and monitored by a security guard, the quadrupeds have been carefully protected from any potential predators (large dogs, werewolves in Paris, curious toddlers). Visitors and admirers are welcome and the New York Times reports that employees of the archive hope that the woolly mammals actually draw people to the building filled with stodgy books.

Some are worried that the presence of sheep could lead to a drop in the biodiversity of this half-acre city field. Marcel Collet, the farmer who oversees the ewes, says that previously employed landscapers had discovered four distinct types of orchid there—or as the sheep will see it, lush, tasty wafers to scarf up as soon as they blossom. Mais bien sur.

[The New York Times, image via Getty]

A Russian man was arrested late last month and charged with homicide after killing his friend by shoving a foot up his ass. Literally.

According to local reports, Vladimir Krasnov, 28, of Nizhny Novgorod had decided to make good on the oft-heard threat following a drunken fight with his 48-year-old friend Sergei over Krasnov's girlfriend Yelena.

Police say Krasnov waited until his friend passed out, and then proceeded to insert his right foot "into the victim's anus and rectum."

Sergei suffered severe internal bleeding as a result, and eventually died at the scene.

Krasnov was subsequently arrested, and now faces up to 15 years behind bars.

"All I can say [is] I really regret [it]," Krasnov told officials. "Nothing like this would happen if I were sober."

His girlfriend Yelena concurred. "It's just alcohol," she told a reporter, adding that Krasnov had nothing to be jealous about.

"With [Sergei] it was just 'hello' and 'goodbye'," she said.

[H/T: RedHotRussia]

A spit-take-inducing story about a McDonald's restaurant in Massachusetts requiring applicants for a cashier job to hold at least a bachelor's degree along with 1-2 years of experience went viral yesterday after being republished by the Washington Examiner along with a "thanks, Obama"-style write-up courtesy of Washington whisperer Paul Bedard.

"Sadly we've taxed-and-spent our way to an economy in which there's intense competition for just about any job," Bedard quoted Generation Opportunity president Evan Feinberg as saying.

But nonsensical generalizations aside, the independent McDonald's franchise that sparked this latest wave of misdirected blame says it never set any such requirements for its potential cashiers.

"There has been some misinformation reported by an independent job site with no relationship to the Winchendon, Massachusetts McDonald's," restaurant owner Lori Ruscito said in a statement. "The original job posting, which could be accessed through McState.com, did not require a bachelor's degree. We are working diligently to have the misinformation removed from the site but to date the website has been unresponsive to our requests."

I've reached out to Feinberg for a follow up comment and will update if/when I hear back.

UPDATE: Feinberg responds with the following statement:

There are reports questioning whether the ad I was asked about was for real. Either way, we are constantly hearing from college graduates who are flipping burgers or out of work completely, so I wouldn't be surprised to see employers trying to hire them for jobs they are laughably over-qualified for.

[screengrab via YouTube]

Dinosaurs!

The first rule of Jurassic Park is: Dinosaurs are awesome.

The second rule of Jurassic Park is: Birds are dinosaurs. This movie really, really wants to you to know that the birds that fly and walk among us are related to the dinosaurs we dream of doing the same. You can handle the truth. Paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neil) wrote a book about the lineage, which is dissected by the prepubescent Tim (Joseph Mazzello), whose squeaky incredulity makes him something of a boyish Shirley Temple. I have seen Jurassic Park maybe a dozen times at this point, and yet rewatching the new IMAX 3D version of that's out tomorrow, I kept expecting little Tim to punctuate his mad questions with, "Oh my gunnus!"

Although the early '90s peach fuzz on its picture and matinee monster-movie DNA suit it to the format, there's no real need for Jurassic Park to be in 3D. That is because there's no real need for any movie that isn't invested in playing with visual texture (a la Prometheus) to be in 3D—you will never feel like a brachiosaurus is going to crane his neck over for a pat on the head, or that a pack of the ostrich-esque gallimimus is going to stampede from the screen, knocking your snacks everywhere and stepping on your face.

But, in the words of Jeff Goldblum's mathematician character Dr. Ian Malcolm, "Life finds a way," and if converting Jurassic Park to 3D was the way to breathe life back into it, making it relevant to a contemporary theater-going audience, it was worth it. For a culture that has grown increasingly distracted in the 20 years since Jurassic Park was released, in a time when "chaos theory" seems like a good way to describe all the noise in the average entertainment-addled brain, I appreciated the opportunity to allow this cable-TV staple to occupy my attention. Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park is a virtually extinct brand of action blockbuster (like the ethically aligned but thematically disparate Top Gun and Robocop, for example) that never stops entertaining, whether intentionally or not. From its circus-like structure that reveals exotic beast after exotic beast in deliberate measure to its cornball script and consistently unnatural line readings (the dinos often feel realer than the humans), Jurassic Park is worth a revisit.

I think my favorite part of the movie occurs relatively early on, when the tour group consisting of Grant, his fellow paleontologist Dr. Ellie Sattler (the always mesmerizing Laura Dern), Malcolm, the grandkids of the park's owner and a lawyer that everyone (including the T. Rex) hates, stops at the side of the road to check out a triceratops. This is when wonderment is still fresh, before the fiendishly fat Dennis Nedry (aka Wayne Knight aka Newman) shuts down power, allowing the dangerous dinos to roam the park in, as luck would have it, a monsoon. Kneeling next to this passive monster, Sattler gushes "She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw!" The glint in Grant's eye confirms that he's right there with her. Meanwhile, the multi-ton motherfucker is lying on its side, wheezing, literally foaming at the mouth. What a bizarre creative decision—that isn't beauty, that's death. A brachiosaurus that snots all over Tim's sister Lex (Ariana Richards) and the T. Rex's bitchy attitude suggests that Jurassic Park is one of those sad zoos that's kind of rundown, where all the animals are kind of sick. It hasn't even opened yet. Cool thing to gasp at, everybody.

And then Laura Dern plays with poop.

The movie is abounding with dopey, outmoded relics of a time when virtual reality seemed like it was going to take over actual reality. "It's an interactive CD-ROM!" squeals one of the kids upon seeing the display in their tour jeeps. We hear reference to "thinking machines and super computers." "I'm a hacker! I'm not a computer nerd! I prefer to be called a hacker!" insists Lex, who goes on to restart Jurassic Park's security system, which is arranged spatially, like a highly pixelated early incarnation of Sim City. Hilariously enough, though, the depiction of amusement park rides (and their tedious short-film intros) has pretty much held true for the past 20 years—what you see in Jurassic Park is much like what you'd see today at the likes of Disney and Universal Studios (whose parent company also produced Jurassic Park and whose "Islands of Adventure" houses an extremely entertaining Jurassic Park ride). A shot of a pile of Jurassic Park merchandise seems less prescient than diabolical considering the amount of merchandise generated in this $2 billion franchise's wake.

Jurassic Park gives you enough to chew on regarding the ethics of cloning and messing with nature. It feels both weighty and fluffy –- a serious popcorn flick. Its surface influences are obvious—Godzilla springs to mind and King Kong is name-checked by Goldblum's character upon entering the park (behind-the-scenes footage on the Blu-Ray shows Fay Wray on set for a visit). But there are also shades of other less heralded movies like Gremlins—the disgusting, jelly-covered birth of a raptor gets coos from the weirdo archeologists, and the dilophosaurus, with its Michael Crichton-invented neck frill and venom spit, is an evil clown in the tradition of the head gremlin in charge, Stripe. Also, the grown-up raptors and their awful noises more entirely reminiscent of The Dark Crystal's Skeksis. Employing not just puppetry but the then-burgeoning CGI, Jurassic Park proved a sturdy bridge between tradition and the future. You can still detect green-screening, especially during the outside scenes up against the giant herbivores, but the raptors are particularly lifelike.

I'm not sure what moral message we should glean from Jurassic Park. Don't mess with nature, sure. Don't build things that can eat you, OK. But what of the idea that the crafty, agile raptors end up battling what seems early on like the ultimate antagonist, the Tyrannosaurs Rex? Don't trust little people? Don't judge a book by its foot-long teeth? A bunch of little dicks are nothing compared to a giant whopper?

I don't know, who cares, Jurassic Park is a terrific ride. Around the start of the last act, when the raptors began their ambush, a woman sitting in the row next to me began to laugh uncontrollably and part of the fun of the rest of the movie was listening to her failed attempts to suppress her guffaws. My friend ended up in the same subway car with her after the movie and she was still laughing, proclaiming to all who could hear, "That's a good movie." In the bathroom, the guy who pissed next to me whistled the secondary theme—the slower more elegant one. In my head, I sang along to John Williams' melody (this particular part): "I love dinosaurs, I love dinosaurs, I love dinosaurs so muuuuuuch…" They really are awesome.

Eric Stevenson, an Assemblyman in the Bronx, was charged with embezzling nearly $20,000 in bribes associated with the launch of an adult day care center.

Stevenson was sold out by one of his fellow colleagues, Assemblyman Nelson Castro. Castro agreed to cooperate with investigators in January 2012 and wore a wire to record Stevenson and other officials. Castro reports that Nelson pocketed one cash-filled envelope outside a steakhouse in the Bronx and even an Albany hotel bathroom, just to make the scene all mafioso-like.

In December 27, 2012, Stevenson was also recording holding forth about the prevalence of corruption in the New York political realm, especially referring to the conviction of Senator Pedro Espada, a Bronx Democrat:

"Bottom line ... if half the people up here in Albany were ever caught for what they do ... they ... would probably be (in jail). So who are they bullshitting? When the money is good and there is a way you can get it and you start to do it, and then you do it once, and then you notice that you don't get caught - then you go and do it again, and you keep doing it again, again, again."

This charge comes just two days after the arrest of New York state Senator Malcom Smith as well as a City Councilman, who were charged with attempting to rig a Manhattan mayoral race. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told the New York Daily News that these two incidents are reflective of the current "show-me-the-money culture" in New York politics.

UPDATE: Assemblyman Nelson Castro just announced he will resign from office, starting on Monday, and admitted to working as an informant for investigators since July 2009, after being indicted on perjury charges that year.

U.S Attorney Preet Bharara is telling corrupt New York politicians to watch their backs, saying:

"If you are a corrupt official in New York, you have to worry that one of your colleagues is working with us and that your misdeeds will be reported and reported to us, and that it will be that much harder to escape punishment."

[New York Daily News | Politics on the Hudson | DNA Info., image via NY State Assembly]

Cops have always quietly hassled kids for photographing freshly adorned graffiti and street art, the unfair presumption being that they might be the vandal returning to preserve their work. But even in that context, what happened yesterday in Canada is bonkers: a 20-year-old Montreal woman was arrested for posting a photo of anti-police street art to her Instagram feed.

On March 26, Jennifer Pawluck posted a wheatpaste portrait of Montreal police spokesman Ian Lafrenière with a bullet hole in his forehead to her Instagram. More than a week later, local cops came to her house with a warrant, which HuffPo Québec reports, "alleges that Pawluck acted with intent to harass Lafrenière and gave him reason to fear for his safety."

"Many of my friends do not like the police," admitted Pawluck to the HuffPost Québec, in French. "I thought it would be funny to put the picture on Instagram. I do not even know who he is, Ian Lafreniere."

As you can see in the above photos, the drawing on the left not only resembles Lafrenière, who's been responsible for the department's media relations since 2007, but the caricature also wearing an IAN nametag. Pawluck insists she didn't draw the image and doesn't know who did: "ACAB," the text on the right, isn't a tagger's signature, but a graff acronym for "all cops are bastards."

For their part, the Montreal police insist there's more to the arrest than just Pawluck's role as a social-media conduit. "There are circumstances that surrounded the publication of this image, circumstances that we can't reveal because it is still under investigation," spokesman Dany Richer told CBC.

Pawluck is an activist who was arrested three times during Quebec-student tuition protests. Her Instagram bio had emojis of a gun shooting a cop in the head until a few hours ago. Still, is posting a photo of an anti-police image really harassment? Are emojis threats?

Asked if she would hesitate before taking a photo and sharing it on social media, Pawluck told Hyperallergic, "I don't think so. I mean, art is art. I don't have an evil mind when I posted a photo like this."

[CBC, Hyperallegenic // l-r photo via @anarcommie statigram, Service de police de la Ville de Montréal ]

The National Rifle Association produced its 225-page plan for securing schools from gun violence on Tuesday—and the report cited fake evidence and incorrect facts from school shootings.

The NRA's National School Shield Task Force report cites a mass shooting in 2010, where they write that a 16-year-old shooter killed six people in a locked classroom at Hastings Middle School in Minnesota. Mother Jones cites the actual summary of the 2010 incident at Hastings Middle School, writing that it is a "less useful story of the NRA" because it doesn't appeal to "fear and fantasy":

"Brandishing a loaded handgun at teachers and students in at least two Hastings Middle School classrooms Monday, an eighth-grade student spread terror but fired no shots before being tackled and subdued by a school police officer."

Mark Follman for Mother Jones adds that the NRA's report incorrectly credits an armed security officer at Columbine High School in 1999 and an armed teacher at Pearl High School in Mississippi in 1997 as helping to prevent more deaths, while there is no specific evidence from either incident that the armed security officer or teacher helped to stave off more fatalities.

The task force that assembled the report for the NRA is headed by a former congressman, Asa Hutchinson, and includes former federal law enforcement officials. It contains training programs, tips about building design, and preparedness suggestion. The main focus of the report involves placing armed guards in K-12 schools in America as well as encouraging teachers to carry guns. These suggestions support concerns regarding how the gun industry could profit from NRA's role in influencing school safety policies.

[Mother Jones, image via Pio3/Shuttertsock]

A deeply homophobic man is unwittingly sending out rainbow vibes via his work truck's bumper, if one gay Redditor's tale of passive-aggressive retribution is to be believed.

"I came out at 14," said the 20-year-old, who goes by PutaGatito on the popular social news site. "I guess my dad has been in pretty deep denial for the past 6 years because when I introduced him to my S/O he flipped."

She continued:

He's a strong baptist and made sure we knew we were going to hell. He made my girlfriend really upset. So, like any good girlfriend would do, I made sure my dad understood he was a dick.

How? By surreptitiously placing a bumper sticker on his truck that reads "i'm so gay i can't even drive straight."

"April fools, pop!" PutaGatito writes.

Asked if her father has since become wise to her rainbow-colored ruse, the young woman replied that he "has no idea," but invites him to "disown me for being 'damn filthy' all he wants" once he does find out.

Responses to the prank from other Redditors have run the gamut from supportive to concerned to unamused.

And then there was this comment: "I like how that sticker is so gay, even the alignment isn't straight."

[photo via Reddit]

The Twitterati (and presumably a bevy of bankers) went astir today after a small DC watchdog began systematically leaking millions of financial secrets about offshore companies. Here's why you should care.

What is this "Offshore Leaks" thing everyone's freaking out about?
For 15 months, nearly 100 reporters from outlets around the world have worked together to analyze a trove of 2.5 million documents detailing the identities and activities of 120,000 offshore companies, most of them based in the Caymans and the British Virgin Islands. In terms of sheer data, that's 160 times larger than Wikileaks' cache of US embassy cables.

The project, billed by its organizer as the "likely largest journalism collaboration in history," shines a light on the tactics wealthy individuals and businesses use to avoid taxes, run Ponzi-style schemes, and participate in corrupt government and banking practices. It was all put together by the International Center for Investigative Journalists, a project run by the DC-based nonprofit Center for Public Integrity aimed at "exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con artists, and the mega-rich in more than 170 countries."

I've never understood how offshore tax havens work. Is there a simple breakdown?

Glad you asked. Canada-based CBC News has a great interactive explanation that walks you through the process of sheltering your cash in a variety of tropical environs. Give it a try.

Okay, but where'd these journos get all their info from?
According to the Guardian, one of ICIJ's partner media outlets, the load of docs came into the nonprofit from a variety of sources, including confidential informants. The linchpin for these info-gathering efforts appears to be ICIJ director Gerard Ryle, an Australian investigative reporter who blew the lid off an international fraudster whose umbrella corporation was headquartered in the British Virgin Islands.

So who's publishing what?
In Wikileaks fashion, ICIJ has been sharing links to journos' stories on Twitter with the hashtag #offshoreleaks. Much of what ICIJ's partners have published so far mirrors the exhaustive information on the nonprofit's site.

The Washington Post has yet to roll out its much-anticipated analysis of the offshore info, which will presumably include details on the Americans implicated by the leaked documents. Most of the other partners—CBC in Canada, Guardian in the UK, Spiegel in Germany—have focused on companies and private citizens in their nations who've stashed money in the Caribbean. Here's a map of the open investigations worldwide; it's a safe bet that each media organization will publish more reporting on the documents.

Okay, but where's the dirt, and what's the likely impact?
Well, we sure wouldn't want to be the deputy speaker of the Mongolian parliament today. (He may have to resign after the project exposed $1 million he'd secreted in a Swiss account while he was the nation's finance minister.) But beyond that, here are some of the folks who've been called out so far:

• Ferdinand Marcos' oldest daughter Imee, who may have hidden some of the $5 billion her father sucked from state coffers as president of the Philippines.
• Principals of several companies with deep military and intelligence connections, including the arms producer BAE and the cyber-surveillance firm Gamma Group, which provided spy software to Hosni Mubarak's Egyptian regime. The offshore entities reportedly were used "to distribute hundreds of millions of pounds in secret payments to get overseas arms contracts."
• A Canadian senator's husband, who moved $1.1 million offshore in the midst of a national tax dispute; the president of Azerbaijan, who had a mogul secretly create offshore accounts for his adolescent daughters, possibly against the law; and damn near everyone in the Russian government and state-run industries—from managers of the natural-gas conglomerate Gazprom to a top aide of Vladimir Putin whose offshore fortune has helped bankroll an investor in Facebook and Groupon.
• Four thousand US-born investors, including Denise Rich, who's written songs for Celine Dion and Mandy Moore—and was married to disgraced financier (and recipient of a Bill Clinton pardon) Marc Rich. Denise Rich reportedly kept $144 million in a Cook Islands trust in the mid-2000s...five years before she renounced her US citizenship and moved to tax-friendly Austria.
• If you used offshore entities to shelter your income, art collection, yacht fleet, and vast land titles, you, too, could be hearing from some reporters soon.

So we'll finally know what Mitt Romney and his brood are worth?
Well, shit, man. Been there, done that. But yeah, perhaps the new files can add to our already-robust understanding of the Romney family offshore holdings.

What about Gawker Media, or its owner Nick Denton?

Pardon me?

So, like, in the name of financial transparency: Who funded this project?
With dozens of media organizations around the world participating in this document sift, it's a pretty safe bet that some of their owners will pop up in the offshore data themselves. The Guardian points out that even its parent company "has used offshore entities to acquire other companies"—though not in the shadow of darkness that persists among high-rolling financiers and trust-funders in the islands.

ICIJ's parent, the Center for Public Integrity, lists its funders here. Will any of them pop up in the documents? Man, that would be: Awk. Ward. We're looking into it.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Today Facebook announced their new "not a Facebook phone"-Facebook-phone "Facebook Home" which is basically a phone where all you can do is look at Facebook. "This is a phone," announced a sweaty, mumbly Mark Zukerberg, "that is centered around people not apps." By which he actually means: "this is a phone which enables you to treat your human friends like aps."

"When you're done with them, just tap their face and throw them away." If only.

[GIF via BuzzFeed]

A man who has spent the past ten years in prison for stabbing his friend in the back and paralyzing him will be surgically paralyzed himself in accordance with a ruling reportedly handed down by a Saudi Arabian court.

Ali al-Khawaher was 14 years old when he stabbed his friend in the heat of a dispute and inadvertently severed his spine causing him to become paralyzed. He has been behind bars ever since.

Both the Saudi Gazette and al-Hayat, the Arab diaspora's "paper of record," have reported that a local court recently sentenced al-Khawaher to be surgically paralyzed — an "eye-for-an-eye" punishment in line with the Middle Eastern country's adherence to Islamic sharia law.

According to Al-Khawaher's mother, the victim's family said they would be willing to pardon her son in exchange for 1 million Saudi riyals (~$266,000), but "we don't have even a tenth of this sum."

She told al-Hayat that "an unnamed philanthropist" was in the process of trying to obtain the necessary blood money, but was unsure it could be raised in time.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, released a statement condemning the punishment as torture.

"That such a punishment might be implemented is utterly shocking, even in a context where flogging is frequently imposed as a punishment for some offenses, as happens in Saudi Arabia," Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa deputy director Ann Harrison said in the statement.

She called on Saudi Arabian authorities to overturn this ruling and others like it and "start respecting their international legal obligations."

[photo via AP]

Roger Ebert, the celebrated film critic, has passed away at age 70. Though active as a critic and pundit to the very end, Ebert had battled thyroid cancer since 2002, and lost his voice in 2006 following surgical complications.

Just yesterday, Ebert, who reviewed thousands of movies across his career as a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and the host of several television programs, had announced he was taking "leave of presence" from his popular blog on the Sun-Times website. His last line: "So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I'll see you at the movies."

Siskel and Ebert Promo Outtake: "McDonald's"

In this outtake from a 1987 promo recording, Ebert and his longtime cohost Gene Siskel bicker after Siskel can't land his lines: "Did you know for Gene, speech is a second language?" Ebert asks. "Roger's first language is, 'Yes, I'll have apple pie with my order.'"

Ebert on How He Would Like to Be Remembered

In 2005, Ebert was interviewed by the Archive of American Television, which asked him how he would like to be remembered. They've reposted his answer: "I would like to be remembered as a guy who really loved the movies... and wanted to share his enthusiasm."

Roger Ebert's New Voice

In 2006, Ebert lost his voice thanks to complications from surgery for his thyroid cancer. But thanks to his years hosting his TV show—and more importantly, the many DVD commentaries he'd done—he had a wealth of high-quality recordings of him speaking, which were used to create a custom text-to-speech software that used his own voice.

My Roger Ebert Story

The first time I was ever published in a book was 1997. It was because I'd found Roger Ebert's email and asked him a question. More »

For his entire adult life — 42 years to be exact — Louis Taylor has been behind bars.

The Tucson man, now 58, was convicted in 1970 of starting a hotel fire in which 29 people perished.

But all these years later, fire science advancements have helped set Taylor free as new evidence suggests that the Pioneer Hotel fire wasn't ignited by an arson at all.

But Taylor, who was at the downtown Tucson hotel that day to steal Christmas party food and drinks, and who was seen helping people out of the building once the blaze began to spread, has already paid a heavy price for prosecutorial negligence.

And even his release this week came with strings attached: Taylor was forced to plead no contest to 28 counts of murder in return for a sentence of time served.

Though prosecutors admitted they probably would not be able to get a second conviction with a new trial, waiting for one would have meant a few more years in prison for Taylor, and that was unacceptable.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Taylor thanked his attorneys for their support.

He also revealed the first place he asked to be taken upon his release: In-N-Out Burger.

"I went to In-N-Out Burger and they gave me a t-shirt, so now I'm going to ask for endorsements," Taylor joked. "You can't make up for 42 years. You just have to move forward."

[screengrab via 12News]

North Korea's overseers are getting all huffy again, but like for real this time: longwindedly declaring war on South Korea (even though the first one never technically ended), moving missile launchers around, and warning, like an overeager college freshman in extremis: "The moment of explosion is approaching fast."

Oops! In all this "do-or-die battle" craziness, the supreme leader's minions forgot to secure the passwords for their Twitter, Flickr, and other propaganda websites. The hacktivists at Anonymous took 'em down Thursday, swapping the communist country's avatar for a pair of masked tango dancers:

Hacked uriminzokkiri.com, uriminzokkiri.com/itv, ryugyongclip.com

— uriminzokkiri (@uriminzok) April 4, 2013

After commandeering North Korea's social media accounts and DDOSing its official news sites, the hackers reportedly posted a claim of responsibility for the attack to Pastebin. Though its veracity couldn't be immediately confirmed, its entertainment value could:

@ Kim Jong-un
You just went full retarded! Never go full retarded.
We feel really sorry for your suffering of TDS
(aka "tiny dick syndrome") but be assured, threatening the
world with your nukes won't make it any better at all.
If you had finally opened up your country for the
real internet, you would have already seen over 9000 ads for
products devoted to solve your problem.

What does Anonymous want? According to an earlier warning on htmlpaste.com, they want no nukes, Kim Jong Un's resignation, free elections, and "uncensored internet access for all the citizens!"

Is this the sort of third-party intervention that could push North Korea's brinksmanship into full war mode? Or should we have faith that a totalitarian nation that can't secure its Twitter probably needs to MacGyver its ballistic missile guidance systems with half a potato and the innards of a smuggled Tamagotchi? The only thing we know for sure is: The Democratic People's Republic needs to replace its recently deceased social media manager. J-school students, check for the listing on JournalismJobs.com.

[Image via AP]

The attorney for a Pennsylvania woman who has been charged with prostitution is wondering if it was right for the undercover cop who busted her to have accepted a blowjob from his client prior to informing her that she was under arrest for prostitution.

Homestead police officer Ronald Depellegrin, 48, asked for and received permission to conduct a sting operation on 26-year-old Diana Gross after he spotted an ad for her escort services on Backpage.com (where she goes by "Beckie Dymon").

According to DePellegrin's own report, the two arranged to meet up at Gross's apartment for a half-hour session.

DePellegrin picked up some baby wipes and condoms at Gross's request and arrived shortly thereafter at her residence on Sarah Street.

After exchanging pleasantries — namely, each in turn asking if the other was a cop — Gross removed her shirt and asked DePellegrin to touch her breasts.

As he was complying, Gross reached down and grabbed DePellegrin's groin before getting "totally undressed" and telling DePellegrin to do the same.

"Beckie took a condom and placed it on me," DePellegrin wrote in his report. "Beckie started to perform oral sex on me when I said oh shit the cops are coming. Beckie stopped performing the act and looked out the window."

It was then that DePellegrin put his clothes back on and finally revealed to Gross that he was a detective.

Gross was subsequently taken into custody along with syringes, "paraphernalia for the ingestion of heroin," and an unspecified amount of money found hidden in her apartment.

Michael Waltman, Gross's lawyer, said DePellegrin's conduct could warrant a civil rights lawsuit.

But both the Homestead chief of police and District Attorney Stephen Zappala think DePellegrin did nothing wrong and said there were no plans to suspend him.

Back in 2010, following a similar incident, Zappala warned police officers who "engage in a sexual act" as part of a prostitution investigation that "this may constitute outrageous government conduct."

Waltman isn't giving up just yet, telling WPXI he is "willing to take the case to the federal level."

"One of the key issues," he told the Post-Gazette, "is that the police in this particular instance are engaging in the exact type of criminal activity that they're saying that they're trying to protect the community from."

[H/T: BroBible, images via The Smoking Gun]

Welcome to Thatz Not Okay, a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions to caity.weaver@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

I work on a boat. Our newest crew member whistles incessantly. We also live on the boat, so I can't really escape it when I go home, which is down below in the cabin adjacent to his.

When there's music playing—which is all the time—his whistling becomes almost frenzied. It's kind of atonal and arrhythmic with regards to the songs he's supposedly whistling along to, which makes it especially annoying—although I think even if he were a gifted whistler I'd still be going up the wall. I find myself turning off music because I can't take it anymore. Although I've never said anything, he mentioned previous captains and crew gave him a hard time for it, and I can see why. It never stops.

Now, I like the guy. He's very nice and a great worker. But I actually think the whistling might prevent him from being hired after his trial period, a long three months from now. We are five people sharing very close quarters, so a compulsive behavior can really drive everyone nuts, especially me because I usually work with him all day. We haven't had to be on anchor with him yet—but that gets really claustrophobic really fast and I'm worried I'll lose it and go off on him.

I don't want to make a delicate working/living situation awkward—which is so easy to do and so hard to undo on a boat—but I'm at my wit's end. I'd like to ask him to be more aware of how often and how loudly he whistles. Is that okay?

Thatz okay.

First of all, this "atonal," "arrhythmic," "almost frenzied" whistling sounds nightmarish—I'm picturing something like the first few seconds of this 1992 commercial starring Vanessa Paradis as a human bird that wants to sell you Chanel.

Unwanted noise when you're trying to work is the worst.

When I work from the Gawker offices, which are loud because the machine that purposely inserts the typos into the blog posts makes a lot of racket, I do so while wearing earplugs and noise canceling headphones and listening to white noise (brown noise) and it's STILL TOO MUCH NOISE.

But at the end of the day, I get to leave. You are trapped with a person who is simultaneously the world's most annoying coworker and roommate.

Now, as the fearsome Pirates Who Don't Do Anything taught us, a little sing-along every once in a while can be a great way to raise crew spirits and break up the tedium of days at sea. But whistling, like the stream of questions that flows from a child relentlessly interrogating her father about basic atmospheric science, is one of those sounds that is only entertaining when you catch a snippet of it in passing. A guy walking by your window whistling a tune is a charming chap on his way to meet his best gal. A guy standing underneath your window whistling a tune is a menace.

I'm touched that you're concerned your coworker's whistling might prevent him from eventually being hired longterm; if I were in your situation, I would spend every day wishing he would just get fired already.

Normally for something like this, I would recommend broaching the subject in a jokey way.

"Are you Flo Rida? Because you been singin' that Whistle song since you got here!"

"Do I look like Anna McNeill Whistler, sitting for a portrait in your London studio? Because you got me feeling like Whistler's Mother!"

"WOW, YOU REALLY WHISTLE ALL THE GODDAMN TIME AND IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY AND I WANT TO STRANGLE YOU haha!"

But you say he's already mentioned that past Snow Whites have given him grief for whistling while he works.

A good lifehack is that if everyone at your old job and the job you had before that and the job you had before that confronted you with the same complaint about your annoying habit, you should do your best to eliminate that habit from your repertoire of tricks. Your coworker has, for whatever reason, chosen not to abide by this tip. Maybe he can't, because it's a nervous tic. Maybe he won't because he's a water demon, who whistles while aboard ships even though a common sailor superstition holds that whistling on a ship is bad luck.

Doesn't it seem odd that this charismatic stranger—with eyes the gray-green of the ocean during a storm, who always smells slightly of sulfur—strode into your lives at the exact moment you were looking to hire someone? Isn't it strange that this seasoned old salt would have no work references? No past? No clothes except the ones he was wearing the day you met him? No plans for the future because "I always seem to land on my feet..."

Perhaps he travels from port to port, joining up with new ships and setting sail, only days later to whistle up hellish tempest that casts his wretched crew into the sea, their souls a mere drop in the bucket of his yearly quota.

Either way, since gentle joshing has historically shown no effect, I would go to the skipper on the issue of the whistling. He's the one with the authority to do something drastic if he thinks it's appropriate, including banishing this sea demon to the churning tide whence he came. Otherwise, you're just one more jerk with no sway telling this guy to "stop being so annoying."

If the captain declines to intervene, try keeping the whistler's mouth occupied with an endless supply of chewing gum.

I am the kind of person who hates useless junk. I detest Snuggies/fancy soap dispensers / Batman snow-globes or anything of the ilk that some people buy when they have no proper meaningful (birthday) gift. Since I hate crap like that so much I prefer to give away experiences as gifts. I plan on giving my friend Mike theater-tickets for his upcoming birthday. We both like theater and we rarely see each other, so I thought it would be nice if just the two of us went and saw a play with me footing the bill. Right? A mutual friend says: Wrong! Her reasoning is that if I want to give him theater tickets I should just give him two tickets and let him decide whom to bring. (At this point let me state that I have absolutely no romantic interest in Mike!) Maybe he will want to go with me, maybe he will want to go with a date, his tickets, his business. I disagree. Me going to the theater with Mike, is part of the gift, isn't it? Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

No, you cannot give your friend "theater tickets" for his birthday, and then, as he's accepting them, jerk one away and say "Actually, it's ‘theater ticket' because I'm coming too."

You also cannot treat him (and you!) to a couple's massage. You cannot book him a night in a fancy honeymoon suite "and I'll come too because we never get a chance to gab!" You cannot buy him a wedding dress so that, if he ever does find a woman to marry (he won't find her at the theater—you'll be his date to that), she won't have to spend money on a gown. (Just pick out one that looks great on you—he'll probably marry somebody your size, right? Maybe he'll even marry you, haha, just joking...just...joking...)

And, though it is great, you must resist the temptation to buy him the most thoughtful gift of all: a present for you, so that when your next birthday rolls around, he won't have to shell out for one. So much hassle saved! No need to send flowers, Mike; a thank-you card will suffice.

A presence is not a present, especially if it's imposed. The polite thing to do in this situation is to give your friend both tickets and let him bring whomever he chooses.

If you present him with two tickets, there's a chance he'll feel obligated (or maybe even want! You guys have great chemistry.) to invite you as his theater date anyway. But let him decide that if for no other reason than he can feel generous for using his birthday present on you.

Submit your "Thatz Not Okay" questions here. Image by Jim Cooke.