Forget secret NSA requests - a Facebook "bug" has been inadvertently exposing the contact information of more than six million users for the past year.

The social network began offering a Download Your Information tool, which has apparently also been downloading other people's information, including other user's email addresses and phone numbers, since at least 2012. This information was shared to people who "had a connection" to the affected users.

Facebook says it has fixed the bug and is in the process of notifying the affected users via the same email addresses that the company has already freely given out.

[TWP, photo via AP]

When Amanda Bynes announced her plans to become a rapper, no one took her seriously except for Waka Flocka Flame. The Atlanta rapper is now working with Bynes on her first album, tentatively called Shots. “It's going to be crazy hot,” Waka said.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden left Hong Kong this morning on a flight bound for Moscow. Snowden's departure was apparently aided by Wikileaks, which posted a statement regarding Snowden's "safe exit from Hong Kong" on its Twitter early this morning.

[UPDATE: Snowden has apparently landed in Moscow and is next headed to Ecuador, where he hopes to receive asylum. Ecuador's foreign minister confirmed that the South American country (which is sheltering Wikileaks' Julian Assange in its London embassy) has already received an application from Snowden.]

According to news reports, Snowden — who was charged with espionage on Friday afternoon — is also booked on a flight from Moscow to Cuba that leaves tomorrow. From there, he may fly on to Caracas, Venezuela, or even Iceland or Ecuador, the country currently sheltering Wikileak's Julian Assange. Wikileaks has said only that it is aiding Snowden at his request, that Snowden has made it to Russian airspace, and that Snowden is headed for a "democratic nation via a safe route for the purpose of asylum."

According to the Washington Post, there are direct flights from Moscow to Cuba daily. A flight to Ecuador out of Cuba leaves Friday. The next flight from Moscow to Iceland is on Tuesday.

In the meantime, the Washington Post reports that Hong Kong has been politely delaying American authorities. When the U.S. government sent documents requesting Snowden be arrested, they asked for additional information, claiming that the warrant “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law." As such, Hong Kong authorities have said, they had no legal recourse to prevent Snowden from leaving the country. The Hong Kong government did alert the U.S. that Snowden had left.

The Hong Kong government has also asked the U.S. for clarification regarding allegations that the N.S.A. and other agencies have hacked Hong Kong systems.

[TWP, photo via Getty]

Last night, Lifetime aired the quickie cash-in TV-movie version of Jodi Arias' saga that resulted in the murder of her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Travis Alexander. Perfectly overacted, Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret featured Nomi Malone-sized breakdowns, a blowjob-to-Mormon-baptism transition, the line "I feel like a prostitute, Travis — a piece of toilet paper," a murder scene that stretched on for two full minutes and a wannabe haunting rendition of "O Holy Night" sung by Tania Raymonde (as Arias). Those highlights are above.

This weekend there was a race in the small French city of Le Mans, featuring some of the greatest racing drivers from all over the world. But for France itself there was one man alone who stood on the shoulders of racing giants before him: Patrick Dempsey. Also known as "McDreamy."

Yes, that Patrick Dempsey, the actor from the hospital show Grey's Anatomy. No, not ER, that's George Clooney. And definitely not Scrubs, that's Zach Braff. No, not that Zach Braff. You're thinking of Donald Faison.

Dempsey, along with teammates Joe Foster and Patrick Long actually put in a solid race, not only finishing (a spectacular achievement in itself) but even leading their class for a good portion before finishing in fourth at the end in the GTE-Am class, more famously known as GT-Dempsey.

At one point the European paparrazzi swarmed him on the pit lane, annoying him and everyone else to no end with Co-Driver Long pulling them away:

Not that you'd know that from a lot of people on Twitter (warning, my criteria for this was either the French language or a French-sounding name. Not very scientific, I know):

je veux aller au 24H du Mans pourquoi? pour voir PATRICK DEMPSEY ! Quand je pense qu'il est juste à deux petites heures de chez moi ...

— Clara (@Clara_trml) June 23, 2013

Je suis a 2km de Patrick Dempsey #jeveuxlevoir!!!!!! #monreve

— AnnaBensahkoun (@Bensahkoun) June 23, 2013

I've run all of these through my High School French Translation Machine (tm), and in general it's Ladies Love Cool Dempsey. Even traditional French media was getting into it, calling Dempsey "un docteur aux 24 heures du Mans," or roughly "Dr. Le Mans."

Not everyone was happy about Dempsey, though:

I am sorry but FUCK patrick dempsey right now. #LM24

— Yilmaz Guler (@YMGuler7) June 23, 2013

I, for one, say congratulations, Patrick Dempsey. Maybe if this whole acting hobby of yours doesn't work out you can try racing full-time. Beats community theater.

Photo credit: AP

New York Times media reporter and Lena Dunham BFF David Carr's brother, Joe, was arrested in DC earlier this month for scalping tickets to a Nationals game. Then, scooping the story from the Times, Joe Carr wrote an op-ed about it for the Washington Post. The best part is, it may or may not be Taylor Swift's fault.

The lesser-known Carr says the trouble all began when he was on a trip to DC and had tickets to a Nationals game that got rained out. That left him with $360 worth of tickets to a make-up game that coincided with his departure date. So he decided to sell them.

Now, had he listed them on StubHub (online it's not scalping, it's legal reselling), Mr. Carr would have made some money to spend on fun luxury items, like maybe drinks (or toilet paper) on his flight home to Chicago. But Carr, ever the vox populi fan, decided he wanted to go hand-to-hand, so he headed down to the stadium to find someone worthy of his golden club seat tickets.

When Carr was approached by a police officer who asked how much he was selling the tickets for, he decided honesty was the best policy and said, "Love to get face value." And with that, he was promptly arrested, handcuffed, booked, mug shotted, fingerprinted, and jailed for more than two hours — all over a $50 ticket.

The seemingly large waste of tax dollars was necessitated, according to the cop who arrested him, because of a zero tolerance policy instituted after outrageous scalping occurred at Taylor Swift's show at the Verizon Center in May. Interestingly, the cop also told Carr that he would have been within his legal rights had he stood 15 feet away or not put a price on the tickets. But whether you blame Taylor Swift or not, the cop apparently had "no discretion" to not arrest and book Carr. And an arrest for a minor crime like scalping — which is perfectly legal online — involves dozens of law enforcement officers and can cost more than an average of $2,500 a person. The worst part is, the policy clearly isn't stopping DC's scalpers — Carr writes that he witnessed tons of ticket-sellers hawking the same tickets he had outside the stadium the next morning.

[TWP, photo via AP]

Start your morning off right with these heart-warming photos of '70s SNL cast members doing fun '70s things (including Bill Murray pretending his belly button is a mouth, to Gilda Radner's delight) plus some bonus '70s New York City shots.

The New York Post has a story this morning on rich people getting the city to remove or relocate the much-discussed Citi Bike racks, including from the block where media billionaire Barry Diller's corporate headquarters are located in Chelsea, the block of a luxury Midtown East condo building, and the block where John Slattery lives in SoHo.

The Post story includes a full list of every rack that's been relocated so far. Real estate attorney Steven Sladkus (of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz), says he's managed to get at least three Citi Bike stations moved from sidewalks in front of his wealthy clients' luxury buildings.

So maybe Dorothy Rabinowitz was wrong and the bicycle lobby isn't terrorizing the city's governance? Sladkus sure makes it sound that way, telling the Post that on three separate occasions he was about to file papers to sue the city when the Department of Transportation caved and called him to settle at the last minute. The management of Diller's building merely had to reach out to DOT to get the offending rack moved to another block — according to DOT because of "safety concerns with the M14 bus," but also maybe because "it got in the way of celebrity receptions."

But the relenting relocations seem reserved only for New York's monied (Rabinowitz, you're still safe). According to the Post, Frank's Bike Shop — which literally makes its money renting bikes to tourists — was unable to persuade NYC authorities to relocate the rack, even with a 1,000-signature petition. Also unsuccessful were a group of five food vendors, backed by a petition and a New York Councilwoman, who were dislocated from their spot outside an office building by the new racks.

At least some people are trying to use the bikes for good — what started out as a joke spin class for the homeless has now apparently become a real thing. Comedian Fabrizio Goldstein, who goes by the moniker "The Fat Jew", told Gothamist that he's gotten "bizarrely positive" responses from homeless people and plans to bring in "less fat friends" to start leading regular classes on the docked Citi Bikes.

[NYP, photo via AP]

U mad? Lawmakers are blasting Russia for allowing NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to land in Moscow. Snowden is rumored to be headed next to Ecuador, the South American country currently sheltering Wikileaks' Julian Assange. The US also just got around to revoking Snowden's passport.

Pakistani militants wearing police uniforms shot and killed 10 foreign tourists, including one American, and a Pakistani guide on Saturday night at the base camp of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world.

Edward Snowden is reportedly seeking political asylum in Ecuador after arriving to Moscow today. The US has revoked his passport. The former NSA contractor has been on the run since he first revealed details of Verizon's participation in a telecommunications industry program to store information on all telephone calls, and then broke news of the NSA/Silicon Valley PRISM system that watches over the whole Interent. Developing...

Sunday, June 23, 2013 1:00PM—Russian media has confirmed that Edward Snowden is now in Moscow after leaving his secret Hong Kong hideout. The same sources reported he has a ticket for an Aeroflot flight to Havana, Cuba, leaving tomorrow at 2PM.

Snowden's final destination may not be Havana, however. The current speculation is that he may go to Caracas after landing in Havana. Other rumors point to Iceland. Wikileaks claims his final destination is Ecuador. Julian Assange and his organization claim they are helping him.

Latest updates

U.K. Internet Spying & U.S. Drone Evidence

Friday, June 21, 2013 3:40 PM—The extent of the FBI's domestic drone spying is revealed by "drone licenses" released to the Electronic Freedom Foundation. News of the drone documents follow FBI Director Robert Mueller's admission to U.S. senators that drones are already spying on Americans on U.S. soil. The Guardian continues revealing details of the massive spying operations, with new evidence showing the U.K. intelligence services tapped into the same Internet pipelines fully monitored by the NSA.

NSA and Silicon Valley In Same Business

Thursday, June 20, 3:25 PM—The National Security Agency wants information on everybody. Tech giants such as Facebook and Apple and Google have information on everybody. They're all in the same business, and the subject of this massive combined technology-intelligence operation is you. Using Prism, the NSA snatches all Internet traffic as it flows in and out of the United States, which violates the U.S. Constitution.

And it's not just data that flows between the California technology giants and the NSA. Facebook's former security chief, Max Kelly, left the social network to take a similar job with the National Security Agency.

Snowden's "Wargame," FBI Drones Over USA

Wednesday, June 19, 2013 3:39 PM—The veteran leaks site Cryptome.org calls Edward Snowden's NSA leaks part of a growing "wargame," while the FBI's director has admitted to the Senate that drones are currently spying on Americans from the skies above the United States.

Opinion

Some tech experts say all this should be expected, some say it's no big deal.

Others say it's a march to fascism. Is privacy officially dead?

The story so far...

In reverse chronological order

Tuesday, June 18, 10:45 PM—The surveillance of Americans' phone calls and Internet activity is "transparent," President Barack Obama said on television Monday night. The names of these secret programs revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden are turning up on job sites all over the Internet.

The NSA and FBI has had access to private accounts on Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple during the last six months, and appears to be expanding and extending online surveillance that first began with the controversial Patriot Act programs launched after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Monday, June 17, 10:45 PM—Edward Snowden—the NSA contractor employee who revealed the secret US government spy program Prism on June 6—now says that more details are coming.

11:23 AM—Answering The Guardian readers' questions, Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden claims that more details are coming no matter what happens to him: "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

10:42 AM—Today, Apple has admitted that the government obtained data from 9,000 to 10,000 devices as part of investigations on "robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide." The company also claims it doesn't chat messages or videoconferences and that "it doesn't store Maps, location, or Siri data in any way that could identify you."

Saturday, June 15, 2013 3:00 PM—The Associate Press has numerous sources detailing that Prism's collaboration with tech companies is just the tip of the iceberg—the NSA actually captures every single bit of data that comes in and out the United States, storing it for analysis:

...larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.

Thursday, June 13, 2013 1:55 PM—The Silicon Valley giants are telling a very different story than the NSA, which explained in top secret Power Point presentations exactly how the data comes from the biggest Internet companies to the government's massive spying operations.

Patriot Or Traitor: Edward Snowden and the NSA Prism Surveillance Web

Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 7:25 PM—More Americans see Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden as a patriot than as a traitor, according to a new opinion poll. But the 29-year-old former intelligence contractor who leaked the details of the NSA's massive data mining operation is still unknown to most Americans—46% have no opinion on his motivations.

1:40 PM—Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden has resurfaced in Hong Kong, telling the South China Morning Post that he's "revealing criminality" and has no other motives. He plans to stay in Hong Kong and has more secrets to reveal.

Since the shocking revelations were revealed a week ago, Snowden has been vilified as a defector but also hailed by supporters such as WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.

“I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American,” he said, adding that he was proud to be an American. “I believe in freedom of expression. I acted in good faith but it is only right that the public form its own opinion.”

Snowden tells the Hong Kong paper, “I will never feel safe."

Ron Paul Fears Edward Snowden Will Be Assassinated

Tuesday, June 11, 2013 11:39 PM—Congressman Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who first became a hero to young computer technicians in 2007, said today that he fears that the United States government will assassinate Edward Snowden using either a "cruise missile or a drone missile."

Google, Microsoft and Facebook released open letters today asking the U.S. government to get the tech firms off the hook for cooperating with widespread electronic spying on Americans by the biggest tech firms as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In Maryland, the father of Snowden's girlfriend described Snowden as a man of "strong convictions of right and wrong." But because Snowden is generally "shy and reserved," Jonathan Mills said he was shocked by the revelations.

Lindsay Mills, the 29-year-old girlfriend of Snowden, reportedly texted her father but did not reveal her whereabouts. Snowden disappeared from his Hong Kong hotel at least a day ago, and has yet to surface.

6:40 PM—While the world's attention turned to Edward Snowden's pole-dancing ballerina girlfriend today, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a legal backlash against the NSA and FBI's widespread domestic spying as Google and Apple sought permission from the U.S. government to disclose at least some of what's going on.

The ACLU lawsuit is the first challenge to the widespread phone company spying revealed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old American who has single-handedly brought the nation's attention back to the long forgotten issue of constant surveillance.

2:31 PM—The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald wrote the shocking stories based on Snowden's leaks, but Greenwald knows firsthand that surveillance dragnets allegedy created to target foreign terrorists are just as easily—and clumsily—turned on U.S. citizens critical of an overreaching government that increasingly seems to exist only to protect itself from the nation it ostensibly serves. The Nation's Lee Fang describes what was revealed just two years ago:

Two years ago, a batch of stolen e-mails revealed a plot by a set of three defense contractors (Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal) to target activists, reporters, labor unions, and political organizations. The plans — one concocted in concert with lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to sabotage left-leaning critics, like the Center for American Progress and the SEIU, and a separate proposal to "combat" WikiLeaks and its supporters, including Glenn Greenwald, on behalf of Bank of America — fell apart after reports of their existence were published online. But the episode serves as a reminder that the expanding spy industry could use its government-backed cyber tools to harm ordinary Americans and political dissident groups.

The episode also shows that Greenwald, who helped Snowden expose massive spying efforts in the U.S., had been targetted by spy agency contractors in the past for supporting whistleblowers and WikiLeaks.

Majority of Americans Support NSA Spying

Monday, June 10, 2013 5:42 PM—NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has left his Hong Kong hotel as Republican members of Congress call for his extradition and the White House. The 29-year-old contractor for U.S. intelligence services provided details of Washington's decade-long spree of data collection on the phone calls and Internet use of all Americans, and now fears for his life.

Nearly 19,000 people have signed the "Pardon Edward Snowden" petition at WhiteHouse.gov. Daniel Ellsberg, whose life was upended by his decision to leak the Pentagon's bleak assessment of its war in Vietnam, today is praising Snowden's "conscience and patriotism."

Meanwhile, a solid majority of Americans surveyed by Pew Research Center say they're just fine with the constant surveillance of telephone calls and Internet use—56% of Americans support the illegal domestic spying, but only 27% of Americans claim to be closely following the scandal.

3:04 PM—Palantir, the Silicon Valley startup named for an evil all-seeing rock from Lord of the Rings reportedly behind the NSA's Prism program to spy on all Internet activity, takes the hobbit life very seriously. A company director explained in 2010 that a surveillance program called "Save the Shire" saw America's perceived enemies as orcs and dark wizards.

Sunday, June 9, 10:00PM—Edward Snowden: This is the man who told the world about PRISM, the NSA spy network capable of grabbing all your personal data—including private messages, photos and videos—with the help of America's top tech companies.

According to the Guardian, Snowden worked for the last four years at the National Security Agency. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," Snowden told The Guardian. “I don’t want public attention because I don’t want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing.”

Following the revelation of his identity, Edward Snowden was hiding in a Hong Kong hotel.

Despite Denials, Tech Companies Collaborated With NSA

Saturday, June 8, 3:30 PM—The Guardian has revealed the existence of a second NSA surveillance network. Its name is Boundless Informant and, unlike PRISM, it covers the entire planet. Unlike PRISM, however, this network doesn't capture the data but merely organizes it, indexing countries by the metadata obtained from local phone and computer networks.

3:10 AM—The New York Times says that Facebook, Google and Apple are collaborating with the NSA, rebutting the companies' carefully worded statements. According to their sources, companies like Facebook built specific systems so the government could easily request and access their data.

This information contradicts Zuckerberg's denial, posted on his Facebook page Friday afternoon, which has the vague sound of many, many lawyers parsing their own language:

Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access [added emphasis] to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.

Google's Larry Page posted something that sounds remarkably similar to Zuckerberg's statement:

First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access [added emphasis] to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

According to the Times, the key words here are direct access. The government didn't have a backdoor to access the data, but these companies built a system for them:

New York Times | Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program

[C]ompanies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.

Obama Says PRISM Exists To "Keep Us Safe"

Friday, June 7, 3:31 PM—A mysterious Facebook-connected startup called Palantir—a Lord of the Rings reference to a magical method of surveillance—appears to be the entity that runs the NSA's PRISM program just revealed to be spying on all Americans at all times, with Barack Obama's approval. Obama was in Silicon Valley this morning shaking down the tech billionaires for campaign money:

1:36 PM—Obama claimed the massive, unprecedented national surveillance system involves only "modest encroachments on privacy." As for any political fallout in Congress, Obama also made it clear that "your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we're doing."

12:41 AM—Barack Obama, speaking live in Silicon Valley right now, said the electronic snooping "helps protect us from terrorism" and insists all the eavesdropping of every mobile call, email, instant message and file attachment is completely legal. Obama is in San Jose raising campaign money from the Internet billionaires who allow the NSA to spy on all Americans.

11:18 AM—The nine major tech companies letting the U.S. government spy on all Americans all the time have denied being part of the wholesale surveillance program run by the National Security Agency and the FBI. The spies have full access to all Internet communications and mobile call data coming in and out of the United States and Britain—but the online collective known as Anonymous has already retaliated by dumping a huge trove of NSA documents on the Internet.

NSA Surveillance Program Is Called PRISM

Thursday, June 6, 2013 10:29 PM—The Washington Post reports that the NSA and FBI are working with the top nine U.S. tech companies—including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Apple—to capture all your e-mails, photographs, audio, video, and documents, in addition to wiretapping all your calls.

Their spying system is called PRISM. As a response, hackers group Anonymous have published 13 secret US government documents, including documents about PRISM and the Department of Defense's Strategic Vision for controlling the internet.

Newly exposed proof that all the major telecommunication companies in America continue to hand over all phone data to the National Security Agency means that the White House's illegal mass wiretapping of people suspected of no crime has continued for a dozen years.

Along with monitoring of web traffic, email and searches through the major telecom carriers, all phone calls been wiretapped with full cooperation of the communications companies since at least 2001. That the practice is illegal hasn't stopped the White House or NSA from continuing the wholesale surveillance. Congress reliably moves to make illegal spying legal whenever there's a scandal like the current Verizon outrage.

White House Says Spying On Millions of Verizon Calls a "Critical Tool"

Wednesday, June 6, 2013 9:03 AM—America's spy agencies have had full access to US cellphone call data to and from Verizon customers since April, the Guardian reports. The Obama Administration is defending the National Security Agency phone spying as a "critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States."

The secret order was obtained by the British newspaper and reported Wednesday night.

Reuters | Obama administration defends phone record collection

The Obama administration on Thursday acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack. Read...

AP | White House Defends Collecting Phone Records

The White House on Thursday defended the National Security Agency's need to collect telephone records of U.S. citizens, calling such information "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats." Read...

Forbes | NSA's Verizon Spying Specifically Targeted at Americans

[T]he extent of the NSA’s surveillance shows that it has focused specifically on Americans, to the degree that its data collection has in at least one major spying incident explicitlyexcluded those outside the United States. Read...

CNN | Obama administration reacts to phone records report

A senior Obama administration official [...] stressed that the information acquired by the purported order "does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call." Read...

Data from all incoming and outgoing calls is provided to the NSA under the top secret order, which the Washington Post describes as a "routine renewal of a similar order first issued in 2006." The White House did not specifically address the Verizon order this morning, but referred to at least one telecommunications company.

Past revelations of major U.S. telecommunications companies spying on Americans suspected of no crimes has shown that the other carriers have consistently opened their lines and data banks to America's spy agencies since 2001.

[Photos by the Associated Press and Getty Images. Illustrations by Front]

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The FAA, finally admitting what everyone else has known all along, is slated to scale back its draconian electronics policy. The only surprise is why it took so long, since the gadgets ban never actually accomplished anything in the first place.

The rule barring the use of electronics has always been illogical and completely untenable — pilots have been using iPads in the cockpit for years. And really, why do I have to turn my phone off when I can literally put it into airplane mode? Why can't Alec Baldwin play Words With Friends in peace? According to the Wall Street Journal, this attitude is prevalent enough that the FAA is being forced to act due to the "sheer number of passengers flouting today's rules." The new guidelines will likely allow passengers to use electronics for anything other than phone calls during taxiing, takeoffs, and landings.

But this is also a government agency, and so the changes will take time — according to WSJ, the FAA likely won't make a formal decision until the end of September, when the final version of a study will be prepared by an advisory panel comprised of industry, government and pilot-union representatives.

[WSJ, photo via Shutterstock]

Did you miss Twinkies? Because they're baaaaack. Ripped from the shelves after Hostess filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012, Hostess plans to reintroduce the snack (and other perennial favorites like Ho Hos and Ding Dongs) on July 15.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela is now in critical condition after two weeks of hospitalization for a recurring lung infection.

Last Wednesday, shoppers at a Target in Oregon were shocked to find tens of thousands of dead bees littering the store's parking lot. Environmentalists and scientists, while initially baffled by the deaths, now believe the bees died because of exposure to an insecticide called Safari, which had recently been applied to the parking lot's trees.

Some shoppers notified the Xerces Society, a Portland-based organization dedicated to preserving bees and other insects.

"They were literally falling out of the trees," Xerces conservation biologist Rich Hatfield told Oregon's Fox 12. "To our knowledge, this is one of the largest documented bumble bee deaths in the Western U.S. It was heartbreaking to watch."

His partner at Xerces, Mace Vaughn, described the bizarre scene as devastating for the local bee population.

"Losing 25,000 or more bumblebees – we've lost a hundred, a hundred fifty colonies at least just from this area – just wiped them out," Vaughn told KATU. “This is a big mistake, somebody really screwed up,” he said to KGW.

Authorities worked quickly to cover the poison-covered European linen trees with netting. Bees, while sometimes prone to terrifying attacks in cities, are rapidly dying across the US. The Guardian reports that as many as 31% of honeybee colonies died out during late 2012 and in early 2013.

[ABC News/Huffington Post/Image via AP]

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

College-bound monsters are apparently more popular than Brad Pitt-chasing zombies, as Monsters University $82 million topped World War Z's $66 million at the box office this weekend.

Last Thursday, a woman in Charlestown, Indiana and her boyfriend stayed up all night, armed with a rifle, to hunt down whatever it was that had been attacking small animals in her neighborhood. After spotting and shooting a creature prowling in the shadows by the woman's pool, they were shocked to find that they'd just killed a leopard, an animal that's not native to North America, much less Indiana.

The woman, who didn't want to be identified, mentioned the story to her friend and neighbor Donna Duke, who then told ABC affiliate WDRB about the strange kill. Officials at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources confirmed that a leopard had been found on the woman's property. Duke said the woman was worried about a recent streak of attacks against cats and dogs in the neighborhood.

"She's got cats that are basically her family," Duke said. "She was trying to protect her babies.”

The woman contacted a local wildlife official, who told her that the attacks were probably from a bobcat.

“But it was not a bobcat,” Duke said, noting that the leopard let out a “horrible squeal” after it was shot.

Phil Bloom, director of communications for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, told WDRB that the cat had been id'd as a leopard.

"The cat in these photographs has been identified tentatively as a leopard," Bloom said. "Perhaps an immature cat about 9 months old. DNR is attempting to determine who it belonged to, or where it came from."

Bloom believes the leopard must have been someone's pet, though authorities have no idea whose. The owner of a nearby wild life refuge denied that the leopard was his. So, people living in Indiana, if you're missing your pet leopard and reading this, we have bad news.

[Image via WDRB]

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

With his funeral scheduled for Thursday morning in New York City, James Gandolfini's body was sent home to the US from Italy on Sunday. Gandolfini died of a heart attack last week in Rome.

Let's disrupt modesty: Drew Houston, who created the widely popular cloud-syncing service Dropbox, just shared a little gem from his past. Do you remember the day you became a tech millionaire? He sure does—and here's the unimpeachable proof!

The screenshot—uploaded to, of course, RapGenius—shows Dropbox's company account the moment it received a $1.2 million funding round in 2008:

Honestly, I don't think I've ever been "ready." I remember the day our first investors said yes and asked us where to send the money. For a 24 year old, this is Christmas — and opening your present is hitting refresh over and over on bankofamerica.com and watching your company's checking account go from 60 dollars to 1.2 million dollars. At first I was ecstatic — that number has two commas in it! I took a screenshot — but then I was sick to my stomach. Someday these guys are going to want this back. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

You'd gotten yourself into a massively successful business, Drew! [via FastCo]

Update: RapGenius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam provided Valleywag with the following statement. It's best read as a sort of poem:

he did it!

he is such a boss

that's like something I would do

he is such a rustic thug pimp
he threw the bank shit up on RG

clearly a disruptive ass mufucka

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