Quantcast
Channel: Gawker
Viewing all 24829 articles
Browse latest View live

Kentucky Hero Does 57 Cans of Whipped Cream Nitrous In Closed Store

$
0
0

A Kentucky man was arrested after having an all-night solo party inside a closed supermarket, where he heroically went through 57 cans of whipped cream. He was found inside the ceiling on Monday, and surveillance video revealed his feast of steak, shrimp and beer before the nitrous oxide called.

Employees of the ValuMarket in the Kentucky town of Mount Washington arrived to a harrowing scene of excess Monday morning, with the remains of six steaks and untold shrimps littering the aisles and a garbage can filled with discarded whipped cream canisters.

Eventually, he "allegedly went to the bathroom on himself" and fell asleep in the supermarket's rafters.

Trevor Runyon, a 30-year-old resident of Shepherdsville., was arrested and charged with partying harder than any dozen lesser men.

[Photo via Mount Washington Police.]


Don't Just Stand There

$
0
0

At my gym, OK, there's only one really good place to do pullups. If someone is occupying the pullup area, that means nobody else is doing pullups at that particular time. That means that, if you are the person in the pullup area, you have a responsibility. A responsibility to do pullups. A responsibility to not just stand there. So tell me, dude in the pullup area: Why are you just standing there?

There he was, this guy, right beneath the pullup bar, just standing there. He wasn't warming up. He wasn't cooling down. He wasn't preparing or getting pumped or just finishing up. He was just standing there, gazing out into space. He was, for no particular reason, blocking everyone else in the gym from doing any pullups, so that he, Mr. Standy Man, could stand not just anywhere, but in a highly desirable area that could be put to better use by literally any person willing to do a single pullup. Why didn't Standy "Two Legs" McHeadInTheClouds do his standing in one of the many areas of the gymnasium not earmarked for pullup use—or, better yet, on a street corner, like the common harlot that he is? Scientists are still unable to say for sure. What we do know is that the problem is not confined to this one dude in my gym who wasn't even wearing headphones and getting lost in the music. (I know you were thinking maybe he was. No, he wasn't.)

Lest you imagine that this "Uselessly Standing Somewhere and Blocking Me From Doing Shit" problem is confined to the pullup area in my gym, it isn't. Other places in my gym that have been afflicted by Dudes Just Standing There For No Reason include the squat area, the dumbbell area, the bench press area, and even The Area by the Wall Where I Left My Sweatshirt and Now It's Been Surrounded by the Goon Convention of Dudes Who Just Wanna Stand Around Yakking About Who Knows What and Now I Have to Awkwardly Tell Them to Move If I Want to Get to My Sweatshirt. Well my friends, my sweatshirt didn't sign up for the goon convention. That's for sure. And neither did the muscles nor the cardiovascular systems of all the fine folks out there who would like to use these areas of the gym for their intended purposes, unencumbered by your motionless body, which prevents them from doing so. Sounds like we have a problem.

At this point you're probably saying to yourself, "Damn that story was just as incredibly captivating as every story is that some guy tells about his gym, Hamilton, but I don't go to your gym. What about me?" Well, today's your lucky day, Brad (the name I imagine you have thanks in no small part to your "snarky" attitude). Besides my own personal gym, the Dudes Standing There Doing Nothing problem also occurs in the following locations: every gym. And now your eyes are opening.

Besides the fact that you need to get the fuck out of the way so I can use that, Just Standing There comes with an obvious detriment to you personally: If you're just standing there, you are not working out. Therefore, why don't you just go the fuck home? Look, I'm not one of these stopwatch-wielding spandex clad personal trainers named "Brad" wearing a T-shirt that says "TRAINER" on the back and telling you that you can rest only 15 seconds between sets because today we're keeping you in the cardio-fat-burning-interval-high-intensity zone, OK? I'm not one of those guys also probably named "Brad" who go on internet fitness sites and write articles with titles like "OMG It Is So Annoying When People Look at Their Cell Phones at the Gym." I'm not even "into" that. (I had a text, OK? Is that OK with you, Bradley?) I'm talking about a very specific sort of layabout who is just standing there without a good reason. Good reasons for occupying an area of the gym that is in high demand while just standing there are as follows:

1. You are just about to begin a workout.

2. You are actually working out. You are in the middle of a workout. You are resting for a brief period of time in order to recover enough to continue your workout. Your standing and doing nothing is serving the legitimate physical purpose of muscle recovery. Please—carry on.

3. You are psyching yourself up to do some real crazy shit in just a minute here.

4. You are Randall J. Strossen, Ph.D, the author of the book Super Squats. You do what you want.

If you ever find yourself occupying a popular area of the gym while not actually engaged in physical movement, stop for a moment and consider this list carefully. Which category do you fall into? If your answer is "none," you need to move your feet forward, one after the other, until your body has been propelled to an area of the gym that is not right where I'm trying to do pullups. Likewise, if I feel the need to just stand around for a few minutes—hey, cool, it's not a problem, man, because you will notice that I am standing off to the side somewhere so that I'm not "that guy" (Brad) who decides to come to the gym and then have a chatty conversation with my pal (Erskine) while leaning on the dumbbell rack and my hand is literally on the dumbbell that somebody (Hamilton) wants to use right then if you can believe it. As if the dumbbell was the subject of the movie Lean on Me.

Don't just stand there, Brad. Do some fucking work. Don't make me write an unpopular internet fitness column about you.

Curls in the squat rack count as Just Standing There. NO CURLS IN THE SQUAT RACK. NO ON THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE. YES TO A FREE TIBET.

This is an occasional column about fitness, and how you're doing it wrong. Image by Jim Cooke.

New Yorkers Furious to Discover Bike Sharing Requires Bikes, Racks

$
0
0

When New York City authorities announced details of a new municipal bike-sharing program last year, New Yorkers cheered. "What a fun, cheap, and easy way to traverse this great city of ours," thought citizens, 30 percent of whom said they would be at least somewhat likely to use the bikes. "And wonderful for the environment as well."

Fast forward to today, and New Yorkers are not so pleased anymore. "Wait, you mean the bike-sharing program involves actual bikes?" they are asking. "We didn't know there would be bikes and bike racks everywhere. This changes everything."

An article in today's New York Times details the frustration some New Yorkers are feeling toward the city's newly installed bike racks, which will start accommodating 6,000 environmentally friendly bicycles on Memorial Day. Indeed, the bikes haven't even arrived yet and already everyone is moaning that the racks themselves are a problem, what with the way they take up space.

"None of us are against bikes—most of us have bikes that we stow in our building," said Lynn Ellsworth, 54, from TriBeCa. "But why they put these giant racks in these little streets is crazy to me."

Another New Yorker, West Village resident Jane Browne, said in a recent community meeting that she supported the bikes until she saw mice running in the "'corridors of trash and water' that formed between a nearby bike station and the curb."

Mice and trash on the streets of New York City? Next thing you know there will be rats and people urinating right out in the open.

Perhaps the best complaint came from Shelly Mossey, a local from Battery Park City, who doesn't like that one of the proposed new racks will displace a bike rack he, his son, and his neighbors use to hold their personal bikes. "Why do we have to lose that," Mossey asked the Times, "and give it up for the bigger picture?"

It's a good question: Why should Shelly Mossey have to go through the small hassle of finding a new place to put his bike in order to help benefit his city at large? Is this what America was built on? Having to suffer minor inconveniences so that others might see their quality of life improve? I don't think so. Mayor Bloomberg, tear down these racks.

[Image via AP]

CNN Says ABC's Benghazi Scoop Used a Fake Quote

$
0
0

Remember last week, when ABC News caught the Obama administration red-handed, manipulating its talking points about last year's fatal attack in Benghazi? In that account of the editing chain, ABC's Jonathan Karl reported that one email had specifically asked for the State Department to be protected. According to the orthodox theory of Benghazi-as-Watergate, this demonstrated that the White House was more interested in spinning things to protect the Obama 2012/Hillary 2016 presidential campaigns than it was in presenting the truth.

Here's the ABC account of the email:

In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. —three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows—Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed.

“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

But today, CNN's Jake Tapper obtained and published the original email:

From: Rhodes, Benjamin J.

Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 9:34 PM

Subject: Re: Revised HPSCI Talking Points for Review

Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don't compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.

We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.

The words "including those of the State Department," which established the motive behind the revisions—and which ABC put in quotation marks, to indicate that they were the actual text of the email—were not in the email at all. If Tapper's email is legitimate, ABC took a fabricated quote from its source and published it as real.

(So, obviously, the next question is: Who is feeding Jake Tapper forged emails?)

Oh, and now ABC is telling the Washington Post's Erik Wemple that there's no contradiction between Karl's made-up version of the email and the actual text:

Well, that sounds fine, as long as you don't care about the conventional meanings of "summary" (which doesn't usually mean "extra stuff added") or "quoted" (which usually means "quoted"). Not that ABC originally identified the passage as a summary. Who edited the ABC spokesperson's talking points?

[Image by Jim Cooke]

(Update) Nightmare Restaurateurs Who Scared Gordon Ramsay Flip Out on Facebook

$
0
0

In six seasons of Kitchen Nightmares, Chef Gordon Ramsay has never quit on a client. Until last week, that is, when he found Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, owners of Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, Arizona, simply beyond help.

"It is because they are incapable of listening," an exasperated Ramsay told viewers.

Ramsay was being unusually euphemistic: Throughout the episode, the Bouzaglos threatened some customers, screamed profanities at others, fired waitstaff, and proved generally terrifying.

"You have the right to run the business the way you want to run your business," Ramsay tells the couple after giving it his best shot. "I have the right to do the right thing. And the right thing for me is to get out of here."

And it was that real talk that finally convinced Amy and Samy to straighten up and fly right.

Nope: Since the show aired, the Bouzaglos have taken their now-infamous charm online, and have been going unequivocally apeshit over comments being left on their Facebook page.

Apparently driven right over the edge by a flood of one-star reviews on Yelp and similarly unflattering takes on their professionalism by Redditors, Amy and Samy have left a series of increasingly loud Facebook posts blaming their impending financial ruin on everyone and everything besides themselves:

It was around this time that Reddit users started to back off and moved on to other matters.

Nah: They've spent the last 10 hours debating the real possibility that Amy's Baking Company is just front for a money laundering operation.

Update: Amy's Baking Company has since updated their Facebook status to read the following:

Amy's Obviously our Facebook, YELP, Twitter and Website have been hacked. We are working with the local authorities as well as the FBI computer crimes unit to ensure this does not happen again. We did not post those horrible things. Thank You Amy &Samy.

This is probably not true, but there it is anyway.

[H/T: Eater]

Wikipedia Entries to Use When Flirting: Vol. 1: Kathie Lee Gifford

$
0
0

Meeting a new person and then flirting with them can be a tense, sweaty experience. Chances are you’re going to say some words they’ve heard before, which is boring; you’re going in with one strike against you. Why not give yourself a fighting chance by arranging those words in new and riveting constructions to reveal odd facts you have recently learned from Wikipedia?

You practice shoehorning unrelated facts into casual conversation. Let Kathie Lee Gifford's fascinating Wikipedia page do the rest.

Entry: Kathie Lee Gifford
Category: Person
Interesting Because: Kathie Lee's life is a thousand times weirder than you ever imagined.
Jumping off points: Morning shows, Paris, sweatshops, snake charmers, carnival barkers, Jews, Native Americans, born-again Christians, Anita Bryant, the Kennedys, Michael Bray, cruises, SlimFast, crackbabies, terrorists, junior high school musicals, etc.

The least interesting thing about Kathie Lee Gifford is that she is a snippy day drunk who encourages women in white pants to get bombed at 10 a.m. Think about that for a moment. That is the LEAST interesting thing about her.

Here are some more interesting things about her, copied directly from her Wikipedia entry:

  • “Gifford was born Kathryn Lee Epstein in Paris, France...”
  • “During her senior year at high school she dated and went to the prom with Michael Bray (who later became an anti-abortion activist convicted for acts of terrorism).”
  • ”Her mother, a relative of writer Rudyard Kipling, [...] was raised in a snake handler family.”
  • “After seeing the Billy Graham-produced film, The Restless Ones at age 12, Gifford became a born-again Christian.”
  • “During one summer in the early 1970s, she was a live-in secretary/babysitter for Anita Bryant at her home in Miami.”
  • “In 1996 the National Labor Committee, a human rights group, reported that sweatshop labor was being used to make clothes for the Kathie Lee line, sold at Wal-Mart.”
  • “Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford raised the money to build and continue to financially support two shelters in New York City for babies born with HIV or a congenital crack cocaine addiction. These shelters were named in honor of her children, Cody and Cassidy.”
  • “In 2008, Gifford and David Friedman wrote a junior high school musical entitled Key Pin It Real. The play depicts a coming-of-age story about a young girl named Key Pin.”

So before you force another stranger to make awkward conversation with you about the temperature of the room you are in ("It feels just right in here!") take a minute to read and memorize these and other key facts from the Kathie Lee Gifford Wikipedia article. You—and your future spouse ;)—will be glad you did.

(We encourage you to get the article fresh off the vine at Wikipedia, but have included screenshots of the entry as it appeared at 3 o’clock Tuesday afternoon, in case any nefarious lotharios edit it to fuck up your game.)

[Image via Getty]

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

Hospital Sued For Performing Unneeded Sex-Assignment Surgery on Baby

$
0
0

The adoptive parents of an 8-year-old child who received sex-assignment surgery as an infant, are suing the state of South Carolina for allowing doctors to perform the unnecessary and potentially harmful surgery that was intended to "make the child a girl."

The child, identified by The Advocate as M.C., was born intersex (as some children are), or with sexual organs that do not fit squarely into the categorization of male or female. At birth, doctors decided M.C. was male because of the presence of a phallus. Later, however, doctors were like "Just kidding!" and decided M.C. was actually a girl. They strongly suggested that the now 16-month-old M.C., who had been born into the care of the state of South Carolina, should be returned to the hospital so that doctors could white-out the "M" in the box marked "sex" on the birth certificate, and also perform the highly-invasive surgery to remove the penis. This despite the fact that intersex surgery is no longer considered an appropriate medical practice by any means.

M.C.'s parents, Mark and Pam Crawford, adopted the child shortly after the surgery and are now suing the State as well as the hospital and other caregivers for damages.

The lawsuit—which is to be the first of its kind according to WYFF 4—alleges that doctors were not forthcoming with information involving the risks of the surgery, stating that "there was no compelling reason that [the child] should either be made male or female."

The Crawfords believe M.C. was subjected to "dangerous and mutilating surgery" for the purpose of "conforming to society." Meanwhile, they said, M.C. has been identifying himself as a boy.

[Image via]

Kermit Gosnell, the doctor convicted yesterday of killing three babies at his nightmarish Philadelph


Politician To Camera That Gave Him Speeding Ticket: "See You, Sucker"

$
0
0

Hey, look, it's Jon Lundberg again, the same Tennessee lawmaker who honored himself last month with a formal resolution to celebrate his achievements. Now the Republican representative has moved on to squaring away another personal issue: getting even with that GD son-of-a-bitch stupid BASTARD traffic camera that fined him for speeding in 2010.

On October 21, 2010, an honest, law-abiding, hard-working traffic camera stationed in Bluff City, Tennessee captured Lundberg's 1998 Ford driving 60 mph in a 45 zone and issued the car owner a $90 ticket. The photo didn't picture the driver, so Lundberg claimed that an employee of his PR firm—the same public relations firm honored with a formal resolution last month—was driving the company vehicle at the time. (Eyewitnesses, however, swore they saw a faceless operator shaking a fist and hollering, "DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" at the camera.)

Then, earlier this year, a bill magically appeared in the State House that would outlaw the Bluff City traffic camera. Guess who ponied up to be the co-sponsor? None other than Jon Lundberg.

Hmmm. Pretty suspicious, huh? When a Nashville City Paper reporter asked Lundberg about his feud with the camera, the Republican insisted that there was no lingering animosity between the two and that, as a matter of fact, the whole incident had completely slipped his mind:

The traffic camera speeding ticket “has absolutely zero effect” on his decision to sponsor the bill, Lundberg told The City Paper. “In fact, until you said that, I completely forgot about that.”

And then he leaned over to pick up something and a teeny-tiny traffic camera voodoo doll fell out of his pocket and no one said a word.

[Nashville City Paper // screengrab via WSMV-TV]

The ten worst prisons in America include a familiar one.

Frances Ha: Like Girls, But Black and White and Real All Over

$
0
0

When people talk about the strengths of HBO’s Girls, they tend to mention how relatable and real it is. I enjoy that show, but I don’t see a lot of myself in it besides the sporadic human truths that punctuate these never unclever, coddled existences. Noah Baumbach’s seventh film, Frances Ha (opening this week) is similar in its focus—Greta Gerwig (who co-wrote the script) plays Frances, a 27-year-old dancer who lives in New York. Watching her struggle to eat while feeding her creative impulses and flailing to assert an identity while not quite fully formed as a secure human being felt like a trip back home to me.

It was the same kind of trip home that Frances takes toward the end of the movie—enjoyable and mildly melancholy for being so. Frances Ha is not a sad movie. It's often howlingly funny, though what felt more satisfying were the moments of subtle realness, like when Frances dashes out of a cash-only restaurant to find an ATM. Once in front of it she contemplates the $3 surcharge—her head tips back and forth like a scale as she weighs the cost. That is what you do when you are charged exorbitantly for nothing. Only in New York, kids.

Frances Ha has been compared to Truffaut and to Woody Allen’s Manhattan (it is, after all, in black and white), but what it mostly reminded me of was Annie Hall. Granted, the film’s key romance is platonic and occurs between Frances and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), whose life progress drives a stake through her and Frances' friendship. Granted, it’s missing the creepy older guy who’s on screen to usher your adoration of the woman at the center of the movie. Frances Ha doesn’t need either of those things—the orchestrated affection for this character from higher up is implicit throughout. Watching, I thought, “Baumbach has tremendous empathy for Frances.” And then I went back and read the recent, sprawling New Yorker profile on him and discovered that he and Gerwig are dating, and furthermore, according to Baumbach:

It always felt important that Frances get a victory and be protected in the movie, and I’m sure on some level it was because I wanted to protect Greta.

He also revealed that this movie was devised to "showcase" Gerwig's "old studio-system chops." The success of this movie depends on whether you find Frances’ half-high smart-goofy manner charming. I saw the mannerisms of a lot of women that I know and love in her, and so I did.

The person that I watched the movie with did not. He is almost 30 and has the kind of success that people would do awful, inhuman things for a fraction of. He is one of the few true eccentrics that I know, and unconsciously so. He moves on a different vibration and often responds in non sequiturs to what I think are straightforward questions and observations, when he bothers to respond at all. He’s only going to get weirder, too, if aging does its usual tricks. I adore him. Perhaps I’ll figure out a way to one day rhapsodize him, to package him (or a character like him) as handsomely as Baumbach has packaged Frances/Gerwig. I explained to him that the kind of struggle at the center of Frances Ha—that horrifying gnawing of not being able to pay your rent while you’re out being distracted by all the fun that’s sucking up your money, while knowing that you have so much to offer the oblivious world—was foreign to him. His good fortune came early; he didn’t even have a brief, teenage Mariah Carey-esque girl-with-one-shoe struggle.

He disagreed, but with characteristic vagueness before getting distracted by some flickering Times Square lights. A bit later, I realized that by the time Baumbach was 27, Frances’ age, he had directed two movies, including the career-making Kicking and Screaming. Despite characterizing himself as "agonized" by 1997, Baumbach was no Frances, either, but I guess some people just get it.

Popular Stories from Across Gawker Media

Bloomberg Fixer Quit Days Before Spy Scandal Broke

$
0
0

Just before scandal broke about Bloomberg reporters using private data from the company's ubiquitous terminals, Charles Glasser, an in-house lawyer responsible for training editors and reporters at Bloomberg News, announced his departure after 12 years with the company.

In an email to colleagues sent Monday morning, reprinted by Talking Biz News, Glasser, 55, wrote:

. . . it’s time for me for pay more attention to myself. I have no long-term plans at the moment . . .

Last November, in an essay entitled "Where Was Jack Welch's Charles Glasser?" Bloomberg News editor-at-large Tom Keene called Glasser "Bloomberg News' resident pit-bull terrier":

Glasser is also very good at developing and defining the need for “question marks.”

I cannot calculate the number of times Attorney Glasser has saved me from digital idiocy. (As one small example, his lecture, and I mean lecture, on how the Media should and must handle impending corporate bankruptcy still rings in my ears.)

Each and every moment of my digital life is knowing that one dumb “tweet” could destroy me.

Charles Glasser whispers to me 24/7.

Glasser officially left on May 1st. In the New York Post story that kicked off the debate about whether clients were unfairly spied on came out on May 10th. In it, the paper says Goldman Sachs had been meeting face-to-face with top brass at Bloomberg News about the issue "in recent weeks." According to a source Goldman initially complained in early April and Glasser was not present for the meetings.

Fifty-five is young to opt out of what seems like a lifetime appointment at Bloomberg, a company whose (now 71-year-old founder) famously wrote: "We have a loyalty to us. Leave, and you're them.'' A Bloomberg News spokesperson said, "No one has been fired," related to the snooping scandal.

"I'm proud to have served Bloomberg for 12 years," Glasser told Gawker. When asked whether he had advised reporters about the use of terminal data, he said, "As an attorney, it would not be appropriate for me to discuss my advice on what a reporter should or shouldn’t do."

Here is the email sent out to the newsroom on May 5th:

——- Original Message ——-
From: RETO GREGORI (BLOOMBERG/ NEWSROOM:)
To: TY TRIPPET (BLOOMBERG/ 731 LEXIN)
At: May 14 2013 17:38:30

EEs — After almost a dozen years of dedicated service to
Bloomberg News, Charles Glasser has decided to leave the company
for personal reasons. We wish him all the best in his future
endeavors. Please contact Tom Golden and Deirdre Hykal for
assistance with news-related legal issues. Thanks, Reto.

Despite the death of a crewman after the Artemis capsized in San Francisco Bay last week, America's

Here's the First Clip from The CW's Revival of Whose Line Is It Anyway?

$
0
0

Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the cult improv show that stopped producing new episodes nearly a decade ago, is coming back to TV starting this July — and The CW has just released a genital-whetting first look at the (slightly) revamped series.

Starring Whose Line? vets Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, Wayne Brady, the revived show will be hosted by Ross's ex-girlfriend Aisha Tyler, and feature a different special guest each week.

If this first clip is any indication, Stiles, Mochrie, and Brady have spent the last ten years in an improv concentration camp because they haven't lost a single morsel of extemporaneous talent.

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Take 2 is set to premiere Tuesday, July 16th, at 8 PM ET.

[H/T: Film Thrasher via Pop Culture Brain]


After the Justice Department responded tersely to an AP letter questioning the government's decision

$
0
0

After the Justice Department responded tersely to an AP letter questioning the government's decision to seize its phone records, the wire service has published a new letter saying the DoJ's explanation "does not adequately address our concerns."

Army Sex Assault Prevention Officer Investigated for Prostitution Ring

$
0
0

The Pentagon announced Tuesday night that an Army sergeant in charge of sexual assault prevention at Ft. Hood is under investigation for sexual assault. The investigation, according to Pentagon officials and a Capitol Hill staffer who spoke to USA Today, focuses on accusations that the soldier forced a subordinate into a prostitution ring and sexually assaulted two others.

The sergeant coordinated the sexual assault prevention program for roughly 800 soldiers at the Texas army base. He's since been relieved of his duties, though no formal charges have been filed.

Pentagon press secretary George Little said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reacted to the news with “frustration, anger, and disappointment over these troubling allegations and the breakdown in discipline and standards they imply.”

The investigation comes just eight days after Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski, the head of the Air Force's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program, was arrested for sexual assault, and one week after the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in 2012, up from 19,000 in 2010.

[USA Today/Image via AP]

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

NYU Professor Busted for Allegedly Spying on Undressing Women

$
0
0

Ross Finocchio is a distinguished art history professor at NYU. The 34-year-old professor won an award for his work on 19th century art, and he's currently writing a biography about the museum founder and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick. But his talents don't end there; according to the NYPD, Finocchio is also something of an expert at spying on women in dressing rooms.

Finocchio was arrested Monday after a customer told the manager of West Village boutique that she'd noticed him sliding something from his dressing room into hers. The customer and manager then watched as he spied on another customer by placing his phone on his shoe and then sliding it under the undressing woman's door.

At that point the manager confronted Finocchio.

“I knocked on [his dressing-room door] and said, ‘You have to come out right now,’” said manager Stephanie Williams.

She said when he finally came out, “he was sweating profusely.”

Williams then snapped the above photo and called the police, who arrested Finocchio. The former NYU valedictorian was charged with unlawful surveillance, a felony. And despite his very believable initial excuse —"I’m so embarrassed. I was recording myself for a project — if I could just explain myself,” – Finocchio reportedly confessed to making the recordings.

An NYU spokesman told the New York Post that Finocchio "will not be assigned to any duties that involves contact with students” until the investigation is complete.

[New York Post]

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

Hundreds of Colorado Inmates May Have Been Accidentally Released Early

$
0
0

Various clerical errors may have led to the early and improper release of hundreds of Colorado prisoners. Judges across the state are reviewing case files sent to them by corrections officials to determine which of those prematurely released inmates need to return to prison.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper ordered the investigation, which is still on-going, after the murder of Colorado's prison chief, Tom Clements. Officials believe Clements was killed by a Colorado parolee who was released early because of a clerical error.

The audit has found “serious questions” about 349 prisoners who have been released, and judges have amended sentences in 56 of those cases. But that's just what invesigators have found so far; the investigation is expected to continue into July, and there are over 8,000 current or former inmates with sentences that require review.

Officials believe the errors occurred for a variety of reasons. Some may have involved judicial clerks giving incorrect sentences to the corrections department; other cases may have involved corrections officials incorrectly interpreting sentences.

From the Denver Post:

If the current error rate continues, "serious" sentencing flaws could be detected in the cases of more than 1,000 individuals.

"I think it would be logical to be concerned," said Roger Werholtz, the interim executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections. "There is always the potential for someone to go out and harm citizens of the community, and that's what we do our best to minimize."

He added that the public should take some reassurance in the fact that recidivism statistics indicate most of the offenders released early are unlikely to harm others, but he cautioned, "I cannot promise certainty."

[Denver Post/Image via Shutterstock]

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

Man Dribbling Soccer Ball From Seattle To Brazil Gets Hit By Car, Dies

$
0
0

Richard Swanson, 42, planned to dribble a soccer ball from Seattle, Washington to Brazil. He started two weeks ago, on May 1, and was headed to Sao Paolo in time for the 2014 World Cup. Today, he was hit by a pickup truck while walking south on US Highway 101, in Lincoln City, Oregon. Swanson was declared dead at a local hospital.

Swanson was making the 10,ooo-mile trip to promote One World Futbol, which donates soccer balls to developing countries. He made a website, BreakawayBrazil.com, where people could follow his journey. The AP has more:

In an interview with The Daily News newspaper in Longview, Wash., Swanson said he was a private investigator looking for an adventure while between jobs. An avid runner, he picked up soccer just five years ago and played on club teams and rooted for the Seattle Sounders.

"I felt destined that I should go on this trip," he said.

The driver of the pickup truck has not been charged in Swanson's death.

[AP via The New York Times]

Photo Credit: Facebook

Viewing all 24829 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images