A referee punched in the face by a teen soccer player in Salt Lake City has died a week after suffering serious internal head injuries.

Ricardo Portillo, 46, was refereeing a game for teenagers last week when he cited a player with a "yellow card." Portillo was taking note of the infraction in his notebook (which soccer referees use to keep track of penalties) when the player, enraged, punched him in the face. Portillo then sat down and began vomiting blood. At the hospital, his health quickly deteriorated.

"He loved soccer," his daughter told CNN. "We just never thought this was going to happen. He loved what he did and it was his passion."

The player, who is 17, remains at juvenile detention. Originally charged with aggravated assault, he will know face more serious charges after the death of Portillo.

Portillo's death comes just a few months after youth soccer players in the Netherlands beat another referee to death.

Speaking for the first time in Afghanistan since it was revealed that he had been taking massive payoffs from the CIA, Afghan president Hamid Karzai reiterated his confidence that the payoffs would continue and that the flow of cash for bribes and appeasing local warlords was absolutely necessary for continuing stability in Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai very frankly revealed to reporters that when he met with the Afghanistan CIA station chief, “I told him because of all these rumors in the media, please do not cut all this money, because we really need it.”

The money, the amount of which has never been disclosed, has been used by the CIA to influence Karzai and other high-profile officials and power brokers. Several diplomats and lawmakers see the money as a corroding influence on what was supposed to be a new democracy after the US invasion, but has been plagued by staggering amounts of corruption.

Karzai sees the money as "nothing unusual," and more in line with other aid money Afghanistan receives from the US. Except the CIA money has no oversight, and is made in cash.

“Yes, sometimes Afghanistan’s political elites have some needs, they have requested our help and we have helped them,” Karzai explained to the media. “But we have not spent it to strengthen a particular political movement. It’s not like that. It has been given to individuals.”

Ah, the CIA money is only given to individuals, including warlords, with no political agenda. President Karzai, does any other country give you money, no questions asked?

“No, none. And even if they were, we wouldn’t let you know. We wouldn’t tell you that.”

Oh, fantastic! Not including these undisclosed, unregulated cash payments, the United States has spent over $100 billion on rebuilding Afghanistan.

Are all our telephone calls being secretly recorded by the government? Sure thing, says former FBI counterterrorism agent.

Howard Kurtz, whose bizarre, incoherent article on Jason Collins earlier this week led to his departure from the Daily Beast, offered a long, mostly awkward apology on his own show, CNN's Reliable Sources.

Kurtz opened the show, saying, “It was a mistake that I made and it was sloppy and inexcusable." He also apologized for the “inappropriate" tone he took in a video he made for the Daily Download, the strange, little-watched website he contributes to.

Kurtz was then interrogated by Politico's Dylan Byers and NPR's David Folkenflik over his bizarre article and resistance to retraction or correction. Folkenflik asked Kurtz, "Why didn’t you have the decency to apologize to him at that time when you knew what you had written was wrong?”

“I handled it wrong and convinced myself that I could soften the wording,” Kurtz told him. “I should have retracted it immediately."

Byers then continued to press Kurtz about mistakes he's made in recent years, “You claimed to have interviewed Darrell Issa and later admitted that you actually had interviewed one of his aides. You attributed a quote to Nancy Pelosi that it turns out she did not say. In addition to this, you also said that Fox News host Greta Van Susteren was casting doubts on Hillary Clinton’s illness. In fact she had been a defender against people who had cast such doubts.”

Asked whether he, as a media critic, would view his own career favorably, Kurtz said, he would like this affair “to be viewed in the full context of my career."

East Orange Mayor Robert Bowser is currently the subject of a discrimination suit that stems from a long-term extramarital affair he was having with his research assistant. But things weren't always so bleak for the high-minded Bowser. During the affair, he would write the assistant, Corletta Hicks, romantic poetry that wonderfully mixes the lofty and mundane.

“Good morning flower,” Bowser wrote in one of the poems that was part of 200 page deposition. “Hope your day brings new hope, new meaning to those things so close to our hearts. Folks at Planning Board said hello.”

Another email goes, "Love is in the air. Breathe it in deeply for distribution throughout the body and soul. Enjoy the day. Be in by 10 or 10:15."

Bowser, 77, told attorneys that, “I thought I was being poetic, I was feeling romantic."

Bowser faces a tough reelection campaign while also dealing with mounting pressure to resign.

"Even the sea cannot produce the beauty of Ms. Hicks," Bowser wrote in one note. "If I were a fisherman I’d bait my line to hook you. You would be a prize catch, not as a trophy, but as someone for me to continue to love and adore."

Iron Man 3 made $175.3 million in the domestic box office this weekend, the second highest-grossing weekend of all-time. The first? Last year's The Avengers.

As part of incremental progress towards more freedom for women in the incredibly conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia, women in private schools will now be allowed to play sports.

Saudi Arabia's official press agency said that the schools are now allowed to hold sport activities in accordance with sharia law, and the girls must wear "decent dress" at all times.

"It's about time," said Aziza Youssef, a professor at King Saud University told the Guardian. "Everything is being held back in Saudi Arabia as far as women's rights."

Saudi education ministry spokesman, Mohammed al-Dakhini, told reporters that the decision "stems from the teachings of our religion, which allow women such activities in accordance with sharia".

Women's sports mostly operate underground in Saudi Arabia, since women's gyms were closed in 2010.

This move is seen as a step in a larger project of allowing more freedom for women, which will include women being allowed to run for office for the first time in 2015. Women are still not allowed to drive cars or participate in much of civic life without the permission of a man.

A vintage jet fighter has crashed at an air show in Madrid, Spain, after failing to pull out of a stunt.

The pilot somehow survived the initial crash, but died of severe injuries at the hospital, according to Russia Today.

Though 3,000 spectators were at the event, none appear to have been injured.

We'll update you with more information as it comes in.

UPDATE: The pilot, Ladislao Tejedor Romero, was experienced in fighter jets and was also an assistant to Spanish Defense Minister Pedro Morenes, according to the AP. It's not yet known what brought the plane, an Hispano Avacion HA-200 built in the 1950s, down to the ground. Two rescue workers were also taken to the hospital due to burns and smoke inhalation, respectively, as well as 57-year-old man believed to be the pilot's father, suffering from an anxiety attack.

UPDATE #2: Reader The Stig's Oklahoman Cousin just posted this video, taken from another angle. The bad bit is towards the end:

The parents of Avenues, the new for-profit private school that caters to the children of "hedge-fund managers and artists who refuse to live above 23rd Street," have had an exciting first year. From a seven-page e-mail sent by parents about the lack of snacks, to a different series of emails about a homeless man's butt-crack, they remain committed to giving their children an education that matches their hard-fought wealth (part of the demand for the school was that all the other private schools in New York are clogged with legacy-students, AKA old money).

But in a society and city that is growing desperately unequal, perhaps the greatest lesson these incredibly privileged children can get is a little humility?

As Manhattan, and particularly downtown, is transformed by a staggering infusion of wealth, there is a growing market for creating emotionally intelligent future global leaders who, as a result of their emotional intelligence, have a little humility. In fact, when the nearby Grace Church School was researching whether to start its own high school, it asked top college-admission officers what was lacking in New York City applicants. The answers coalesced around the idea of values, civic engagement, inclusiveness and diversity — in a word, humility.

But how will they learn this thing called "humility"? Perhaps it is something that can be bought with money?

How do you build humility at a school that costs $43,000 a year? Where students are tended to by a 10-person success team and are expected to find a passion — any passion — around which expertise, confidence and college admission may come?

Perhaps the high-schoolers will find this "humility" while attending the class "Empire State of Mind: Thinking About Jay-Z in a New Way," or spending "semesters in São Paulo, Beijing or any of the 20 other campuses the school plans to inaugurate around the world."

Perhaps they will learn this concept from their classmate Suri Cruise, who backed out from an outrageously expensive private school to attend this insanely expensive one.

And anyways how can they learn this concept of being a real live person, when their food has been so oppressive?

And then there was the food committee. After the PowerPoint presentation concluded in the black-box theater, the questions started flying: Why so much bread? What was the policy on genetically modified organisms? Why no sushi?

Why no sushi? Where's the love?

[New York Times]

Lauryn Hill just released her first song since 2010, which she had to record as part of a deal to avoid prison time for tax evasion.

Late Saturday night, five women on the way to a bachelorette party died after a fire broke out in their limousine. The bride, who was just recently married, was among those killed. The driver and four other women managed to escape.

According to the California Highway Patrol, the limo was headed west on the San Mateo Bridge near San Francisco when smoke filled the passenger area at around 10 p.m. The driver, 46-year-old Orville Brown, stopped the car and helped the women sitting nearest to the front reach safety as the limo burst into flames. The fire then spread so quickly that the remaining passengers were unable to escape. All five were pronounced dead at the scene.

"We don't know what caused the accident yet," said CHP Officer James Evans. "It wasn't a traffic collision, we do know that, but we are still investigating."

The four women who survived were hospitalized for burns and smoke inhalation, and at least two were in critical condition. The driver was unhurt.

The bride, 31-year-old Neriza Fojas, was a nurse at nearby hospital. According to her sister, she'd been married recently in the United States and had plans to travel to her native Philippines next month to hold a second wedding ceremony for her family there.

"She was a hard worker, a loving sister," a sobbing Bersamin told the San Francisco Chronicle.

[ABC News/San Francisco Chronicle/CBS Bay Area]

To contact the author of this post, email taylor@gawker.com

U.N. investigators have collected evidence that shows “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” that Syrian rebels have used the nerve agent sarin. The investigation has not yet uncovered any evidence that Syrian government forces used the chemical weapon, despite recent reports to the contrary.

Noted monkey abandoner Justin Bieber was reportedly attacked Sunday night during a concert in Dubai.

As first reported by The National, the government-owned newspaper of Abu Dhabi and your new essential source for all celebrity news, a member of the audience rushed Biebz mid-song, managing to grab/hug the "singer" before being absolutely destroyed by security guards, who, in the process of tackling Bieber's would-be attacker, managed to knock over a giant piano.

Bieber escaped — skipping no less — to the side of the stage, unharmed. He was reportedly able to continue the concert, even without puking on stage.

This isn't the first time Bieber has faced danger. Last December, police thwarted a plot to murder and castrate the young star.

[Image via AP]

To contact the author of this post, email taylor@gawker.com

Over the past five years, David Stein has made a name for himself as a leader for Hollywood's conservatives. As an operator for the popular website Republican Party Animals, he hosted right-wing congressmen and celebrities at parties, and he was a regular on conservative talk shows. But it turns out Stein had a bizarre secret.

Two weeks ago, Stein was unmasked as David Cole, an infamous Holocaust revisionist who questioned the existence of Nazi gas chambers. Throughout the 90s, he was a guest on talk shows like The Phil Donahue Show and The Montel Williams Show, and profiled by the likes of 48 Hours and 60 Minutes.

Stein/Cole was revealed as a Holocaust revisionist after he had a falling out with a friend in April. That friend, who Cole called an “exceptionally vindictive young lady” in a blog post he wrote about the incident, showed Cole's immediate social circle a series of YouTube videos of Cole spouting his Holocaust revisionist bullshit.

"My friends are horrified," said Cole, now aged 44 and with greying hair. "They rang and emailed to ask if it really was me. The Hollywood types are the ones hurting the most right now because they could be harmed by this. I'm feeling a certain amount of guilt."

Cole, who insists he is a genuine conservative, said his betrayal would sting all the more because conservatives in Hollywood are a "persecuted minority" who must hide their political convictions from the intolerant liberals who dominate the industry:

"I don't blame them for jettisoning me. Everyone is scared to death. They don't want this to range beyond Facebook."

So scared, in fact, that, according to the Guardian, Cole's friends with blogs, newspaper columns and radio shows refused to report on the story.

Cole, who was raised Jewish, said he grew initially uneasy after his crackpot theories became popular with white supremacists and Islamic radicals. He stopped appearing publicly after the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995, and in 1998 he renounced his views because of a death threat from the Jewish Defense League. Later that year, he changed his last name to Stein.

Cole told the Guardian that Obama’s election in 2008 inspired him to create the conservative networking site Republican Party Animals, which, in the vein of PJ O'Rourke, promised “scantily-clad women, drink, fun, loud music."

Those promises were enough to lure at least two congressmen, Thaddeus McCotter and Mike Kelly, to events hosted by the blog, not to mention tons of obscure Hollywood C-listers, like Lloyd Lee Barnett, one of the visual effects artists for Avatar. Cole also made a several conventional Holocaust documentaries in order to “give mainstream audiences what they wanted.”

After Cole's history was revealed, some of his friends and acquaintances told the Guardian that Cole had always been somewhat dishonest, an exaggerator.

Scott Edwards, an Oregon-based businessman, said he founded Republican Party Animals in 2009 and that Cole, claiming to be a Hollywood bigshot, took over the website and was involved in organising just a few events. "He never ran the group. Things started happening behind the scenes so I kicked him out in February 2012." Cole, however, continued controlling the website, networking and organising events under the Republican Party Animals banner until last month.

And it turns out, despite his public renouncement, Cole was actively a Holocaust revisionist throughout his rise to fame within the conservative movement.

"The best guess is yes, there were gas chambers" he says. "But there is still a lot of murkiness about the camps. I haven't changed my views. But I regret I didn't have the facility with language that I have now. I was just a kid," he said this week.

[Guardian]

To contact the author of this post, email taylor@gawker.com

Penis scientist Rush Limbaugh is reportedly upset with executives at his flagship station WABC and its parent company, Cumulus. He's so mad, in fact, that's he's reportedly threatening to leave the company. Why? Because Lew Dickey, Cumulus's CEO, is (probably correctly) blaming Limbaugh's “slut” comments last year for declining ad revenue at the company

Several major advertisers dropped support for Limbaugh after the “slut” incident, but Limbaugh and a source who spoke with the Daily News said the show's earnings were “very minimally impacted in the short term.”

Politico, however, notes that Dicky, on an August 2012 earnings call. said Cumulus's top three stations lost $5.5 million. Some of those losses, Dickey said, were because of the boycotts agains Limbaugh. In a March 2013 earnings call, Dickey said the company was still suffering because of the comments, blaming them for roughly a third of the company's revenue losses.

“There has been residual hangover ... in terms of advertisers sitting out,” Dickey said in March. “Clearly that’s had an impact. ... That’s something that we are dealing with on an ongoing basis.”

But a source told the New York Daily News, “Lew needs someone to blame, (so) he’s pointing fingers instead of fixing his own sales problem."

Another source spoke to the Politico:

“It’s a very serious discussion, because Dickey keeps blaming Rush for his own revenue problems," the source close to the show told POLITICO. "Dickey’s talk stations underperform talk stations owned by other operators in generating revenue by a substantial margin. It’s not a single show issue... it’s a failure of the entire station. And trying to blame Rush for that is not much of a business partnership."

So, would the top-rated radio host in the country actually leave the stations that broadcast him in his largest markets? Maybe. Less Rush would certainly be a good thing, though that seems very unlikely to happen.

Regardless, this will make for a boring section in John Cusack's movie about Limbaugh.

[Image via AP]

To contact the author of this post, email taylor@gawker.com

A few minutes ago, The Onion's official Twitter account let loose a series of tweets that suggested it had been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army, the same outfit responsible for taking down the Associated Press' and CBS' account. Of course the possibility of this being some meta-joke has twisted everyone's brains into pretzels.

Here are the tweets, which seem very similar to other tweets by the Syrian Electronic Army, a group of angry nerds who support Assad's regime by hacking twitter accounts and defacing websites with pro-Assad messages:

Israel denies forging new alliance with Al Qaeda: "We were friends all along, so it can't be new" - IDF Spokesperson onion.com/LZuAvY

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 6, 2013

UN's Ban Ki Moon condemns Syria for being struck by israel: "It was in the way of Jewish missiles" onion.com/104PKAs

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 6, 2013

Poland todouble flights from the Middle East, anticipating Israeli mass exodus."The bagel bakery ovens are working over time" ~ Larry

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 6, 2013

BREAKING: #TheOnion readership mass confusion as Syrian Electronic Army takes over. All demand a permanent column. twitter.com/TheOnion/statu…

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 6, 2013

UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: "Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor"

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 6, 2013

We only wish this one was a joke, but this is what we have to live through in #Syria. twitter.com/TheOnion/statu…

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 6, 2013

The unfunniness of the jokes suggests that this is not The Onion. Of course it could just be the onion doing a spot-on impression of an anti-Isareli hacker. But according to Business Insider's Adam Taylor, a hacker named Th3 Pro, one of the SEA's leaders, sent along a screenshot to prove he was behind the hack.

Syrian hacker Th3 Pr0 says that SEA is behind @theonion attack, sends this screenshot twitter.com/mradamtaylor/s…

— Adam Taylor (@mradamtaylor) May 6, 2013

If The Onion truly was hacked, then that leaves about three media organizations that haven't been taken over by Syrian hackers. Maybe everyone should just find a new social media platform.

Well. It turns out Floyd Mayweather has not lost a step after all. I was under the mistaken impression that Floyd Mayweather had lost a step—a tiny step, at least. After extensive review, however, we can now say that, as of the early morning hours of this past Sunday, Floyd Mayweather has not lost much of anything.

Floyd Mayweather, the world's best boxer, last fought a year ago, against Miguel Cotto, who hit him. The fact that Mayweather was hit by someone, in a 12-round boxing match, was big news, because Floyd Mayweather makes a handsome living by not getting hit cleanly by anyone as a matter of principle. In that fight, Mayweather seemed a bit flat-footed; he stood around in the corners and let Cotto swing away at him, and came away with a bloody nose like a normal human in a boxing match, rather than like the untouchable Money Mayweather Supreme. (He also won that fight.) To my eye, his hand speed and foot speed were a tad slower than usual, marking what I thought was the beginning of his inevitable decline as he moved into his late 30s. From this apparent evidence, I extrapolated the idea that Mayweather would have a tough time in his fight against Robert Guerrero on Saturday night, because Guerrero is younger and stronger and determined and, while not Mayweather's equal in boxing skill or speed, was the type of seasoned but hungry younger fighter who could make Floyd uncomfortable by muscling him and crowding him and pushing him onto the ropes and then pounding on him with that downward slashing left hand, as Guerrero did in his last fight against Andre Berto, who ended the night resembling a hungover raccoon. You do not expect Floyd Mayweather to lose, of course, but it seemed as though the combination of his decline in speed and Guerrero's ability to both box and bully could produce at least a mild amount of swelling on Floyd's famously unblemished face.

That is not what happened, though. What happened was that Mayweather absolutely goddamn dominated Robert Guerrero in every facet of the boxing match. Exactly, it should be said, as Mayweather would've been expected to do a few years ago, before the "he's lost a step" whispers began. The idea that Floyd could possibly lose this fight to the cocky young guy gunning to hand him his first defeat is the promotional theme for every single one of Mayweather's fights, because it's hard to sell people on a $70 pay-per-view that promises to be nothing more than an uncompetitive and systematic dismantling with no knockout, which is Mayweather's specialty. I recognize this as hype, because I am a savvy observer of fights, and would never buy into the farcical idea that Floyd could lose to one of his own hand-picked plausible but inferior opponents. Except for this fight, when I did believe that.

Wrongly! Robert Guerrero actually looked like shit against Floyd Mayweather. Which is not a knock on Robert Guerrero. Everyone looks like shit against Floyd Mayweather. Why? Because in order to have a competitive boxing match, each fighter must possess the upper hand in at least some aspect; the competition comes from seeing which set of upper hands will win. The strong guy or the fast guy? The elusive guy or the brawler? The smart veteran or the cockstrong kid? You get the idea. In Mayweather's case, though, he is better in every single aspect of boxing than virtually all of his opponents. On Saturday, Floyd Mayweather proved that he has better hand speed, and better foot speed, and better accuracy, and better defense, and better movement, and better game planning, and better strategy, and better power than Robert Guerrero. Guerrero had better nothing.

Which is not a knock on Robert Guerrero.

The fight proceeded exactly according to the Floyd Mayweather Fight Script: The first couple of rounds looked somewhat competitive. This is because Mayweather uses the first couple of rounds to figure his opponent out. He is like a deadly virus that mutates constantly to overcome all attempted remedies. By the third or fourth round, Mayweather starts landing his straight right hand, a video of which should be posted in a science museum as a testament to the possibility of perfecting human movement. Mayweather is so fast that he can throw his right—his back hand, his power hand—straight into his opponent's face, snapping his head back, before his opponent can even react to the punch, and then swing his back foot around and square up and bend low at the waist and roll under and off to the side, so that any punch in response hits mere air, because Mayweather is gone before it comes. It is impossible to overstate how frustrating, enraging, and shocking it must be to eat this punch over and over and over again, as Guerrero did all night. It means getting hit with a punch you don't see that is, paradoxically, coming from right in front of your face. And having no one to punish for it. Guerrero would get his head snapped back from this shot, and by the time he regained his vision and turned his shoulders to find where Floyd had disappeared to, Floyd would hit him with it again. This process builds into utter discombobulation for all Mayweather opponents. They can't stop getting hit in the fucking face, and they can't hit the asshole back who's hitting them. Mayweather is, like Bruce Lee, a patternless fighter, so it is impossible to time him. He may hit you fast three times in a row, then lay back for half a round; he may hit you steadily every two seconds; as soon as you adjust to one thing he does, he does something else. He is smart. Incredibly smart. To witness him fight is to witness a master strategist out-thinking a competitor by a laughably wide margin. Not to sound overly dramatic. That's just what it is.

After several rounds of this, Guerrero did what every Mayweather opponent eventually does: He punched less, and less, and less, as he tried to figure out how to defend himself, and also how to he might be able to land a punch, some time. He did more and more figuring and less and less punching, which only made Mayweather's work easier. It is a process that builds on itself and proceeds towards doom. The ultimate testament to Mayweather's skill is that halfway through his fights, he can stand in front of his opponents with his hands down for 10 seconds straight and his opponent will not throw a punch. Because they're trying to figure out what to do. And indeed, you can watch the fight and see Guerrero—the rough, violent young puncher—doing exactly that.

Trying to call the exact beginning of a boxer's decline is like trying to time the stock market. It can't be done. Correct guesses are mostly due to luck. Bernard Hopkins is 48 years old and still a world champion. Floyd Mayweather is 36. The only fighters in the world who are remotely close to his talent are several weight classes away on either side of him, meaning that unless that decline sets in immediately, he will not face any real competition in his next several fights, at least. After which he will retire. And humanity's collective urge to punch that guy in the face, it seems, will go unfulfilled.

Hamilton Nolan writes for Gawker and writes about boxing for places besides Gawker.

To try and do more than simply raise awareness of child abuse, the international nonprofit Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk (ANAR) recently joined forces with the ad agency Grey Group Spain to create a public service announcement that both draws attention to the problem, and may actually make a difference.

Using a technology known as lenticular printing, Grey Group designed an ad that contains a "secret message" that is only visible from the POV of children (~4'4").

To adults, the billboard will contain the simple, yet powerful message, "Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it."

However, children will instead see the far more useful instruction, "If somebody hurts you, phone us and we'll help you," along with the foundation's phone number.

The image on the poster will also change: While adults will see a normal looking boy, children will instead see a bruised-up child with whom they might identify.

As some have noted, though clever, the poster's concept could be lost on abused children who are unaware that their aggressors are seeing a different sign.

[H/T: Laughing Squid, Gizmodo]

June "Mama" Shannon and Mike "Sugar Bear" Thompson, the parental units on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, were maybe married this weekend in their hometown of McIntyre, Georgia. "Mama June isn't saying whether or not they're married, but they did renew their vows," said Carlos Greer of People. "She's still in love with Sugar Bear and she wanted to show their love to her girls."

They definitely wore matching camo prints (the kind with leaves and all) and the ceremony or whatever was definitely filmed for the next season of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which is set to premiere on TLC in July.

They probably wanted to show the world how culturally offbeat they can be. They are really good at doing redneck drag without even really seeming like it.

Alana aka Honey Boo Boo wore a pageant gown because she is about as real of a pageant queen as this event was a wedding.

[Photos via Splash]

TEDx is coming to Williamsburg's Wythe Hotel this week—by invitation only, naturally—because of course it is. Expect simultaneously mocking and adulatory coverage from the New York Times.