Unwilling to let Taco Bell have all the fun with new fast food products, McDonald's announced on Monday that it will sell chicken wings nationwide starting in September. The bone-in wings, which McDonald's calls “Mighty Wings,” will be breaded, fried, and seasoned with cayenne and chili peppers.

Mighty Wings sold well enough during a trial run in Atlanta last year, but will they prove popular nationwide? Important chicken wing and fast food experts are divided on the subject.

As Business Week noted, the wings, which will cost $4.99 for five, are both more expensive and more difficult to eat than Chicken McNuggets. But Scott Hume, editor of BurgerBusiness, which broke the big news on Monday, thinks they will be a hit. “Wings is a major move,” he told USA Today. “It's like the Colonel adding a cheeseburger.”

And Bloomberg interviewed a financial analyst who was very optimistic about the announcement:

“They’re being more innovative, and they’re being more aggressive with the changes on their menu,” Peter Saleh, an analyst at New York-based Telsey Advisory Group, said in an interview. “This is good news because it’s in conjunction with the football season.”

Will they be good or bad? Will people actually buy them? Impossible to know! The only guaranteed successful change McDonald's could make would be to serve breakfast all day long.

[Image via AP]

A former high school teacher convicted of raping his 14-year-old student, who would commit suicide three years later, will spend just 30 days in jail. Yellowstone County district judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years but suspended all but 31 days, in part because Judge Baugh said the 14-year-old victim was “older than her chronological age” and “as much in control of the situation” as Rambold.

Rambold, 54, raped Cherice Morales in 2008, when Morales was his 14-year-old student in at Billings Senior High School in Billings, Montana. In October 2008, prosecutors charged Rambold with three counts of sexual intercourse without consent, but the case remained pending for several years. In 2010, when she was 17, Morales killed herself. According to Morales's mother, the relationship with Rambold was a “major factor” in Morales's suicide.

In part because Morales's suicide disrupted their case, the Yellowstone County District Attorney's office reached an agreement with Rambold delaying prosecution for three years. If Rambold completed a sex offender program during that time, charges would be dismissed. As part of that agreement, Rambold admitted to one of the rape charges, knowing that the admission could be used against him.

Last November, Rambold was expelled from his sex offender program after his supervisor learned “he had been having unsupervised visits with minors and had not informed his counselors that he had been having sexual relations with a woman.” Prosecutors reintroduced the case last December, after learning of Rambold's dismissal from the program.

Despite testimony from Morales's mother asking him to “Please put [Rambold] behind bars,” Judge Baugh agreed with Rambold's defense attorneys, who argued that Rambold had suffered enough by losing his job and his wife as well as receiving a “scarlet letter of the internet.”

Prosecutors had sought a 20-year sentence, with 10 years suspended. When the verdict was read aloud, Morales's mother reportedly screamed out “You people suck!” and ran from the courtroom. Rambold was given credit for the one day in jail he'd already served.

[Billings Gazette/Image via]

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

According to a report in Foreign Policy, U.S. intelligence agents intercepted "panicked" phone calls last Wednesday between officials at the Syrian Ministry of Defense and the leaders of a Syrian chemical weapons unit. The calls, along with visual evidence, are the principal reasons the Obama administration believes the Syrian government is responsible for last week's alleged chemical weapon assault against Syrian civilians. Earlier this week, Secretary of State John Kerry called the alleged attacks a "moral obscenity" and President Obama ordered the release of a document justifying a military strike against Syria.

In the intercepted phone calls, one official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense reportedly demands answers from the chemical weapons unit's leader for the alleged chemical weapons attack that killed over 1,300 people last week. While the phone calls, if true, would prove that the Syrian government was responsible for the attacks, it would raise other questions, like was the attack intentionally ordered by Assad's government or was it work of a rogue Syrian officer?

From Foreign Policy:

"It's unclear where control lies," one U.S. intelligence official told The Cable. "Is there just some sort of general blessing to use these things? Or are there explicit orders for each attack?"

…

"We don't know exactly why it happened," the intelligence official added. "We just know it was pretty fucking stupid."

What is known by American authorities is that the alleged chemical attack took place on August 21, though the U.S. still lacks hard evidence from the scene – soil samples, blood, etc. The United Nations is in the process of collecting such evidence, but the White House is debating whether or not to wait for the U.N.'s confirmation.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that a U.S. strike would be intended to "deter and degrade" Assad's forces, rather than removing Assad from power. The strikes reportedly would be "a far more limited unleashing of American military power than past air campaigns over Kosovo or Libya." From the Times:

A wide range of officials characterized the action under consideration as “limited,” perhaps lasting no more than one or two days. The attacks, which are expected to involve scores of Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from American destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, would not be focused on chemical weapons storage sites, which would risk an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe and could open up the sites to raids by militants, officials said.

The strikes would instead be aimed at military units that have carried out chemical attacks, the headquarters overseeing the effort and the rockets and artillery that have launched the attacks, according to the options being reviewed within the administration.

[Image via AP]

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

Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of murdering 13 people and attempting to murder 32 more at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009, has been sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Exploiting her granddaughter and making Kanye West endure an hour of awkward questions wasn't enough to save Kris Jenner's talk show, which has been canceled, reports Radar. A rare miss for that iron-clad Kardashian brand.

Last February, Oberlin College in Ohio ground to a halt, canceling classes and holding campus-wide meetings when a figure wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood was spotted near the college's African Heritage House following weeks of racist signs being posted on campus. As it turned out, the shadowy figure was just a person wearing a blanket. But the signs and graffiti were part of a strange, month-long racist hoax perpetrated by Oberlin students, and documented in a thoroughly bizarre police report we recently obtained.

According to the report, the signs (“Martin Looter Koon Jr., with a swastika, commie?”) were thrown up by a pair of unidentified students simply to get a rise out of their liberal peers. On February 9, they hung anti-Semitic signs in a classroom building:

On February 12, they targeted various Oberlin professors:

A few days later, more signs appeared in a residence hall:

(In an interview with Oberlin’s police department, one of the students admitted to fabricating a “a giant Nazi flag as a joke to troll people” with the help of another student.)

On February 27—nearly a week before the “KKK hood” incident—Oberlin College campus security caught the trolls in action. One of them provided this explanation for hanging several signs targeting Muslims:

I printed about 1,000 anti-Islam fliers to put up as a joke/troll (to get an overreaction, in the context of the racist crap that has been going on on campus). I met ████ along the way in the Science Center and kept posting them. I thought the reaction to the racist garbage was irrational and out of proportion. It seems clear to me that whatever racist scum or Nazi did that shit, he was just looking for a big reaction. People need to take everything with a grain of salt, and decide what kinds of things are worth engaging with and which are not. Instead of holding a sit-in, a march/rally, and a community meeting, if I were in control, I would have torn any Nazi or hate speech down and told people that it is wrong to put shit like that up. Whether the people doing the racist hate speech are racist assholes, or just trolls, they clearly are just seeking attention. Don’t give them what they want, and they will stop. I put out these fliers to get a similar over-reaction to prove this point.

The names of the students are redacted from the police report, and without them it’s difficult to understand which student did what, and when. However, the conservative website the Daily Caller, which first reported on the police report, identified the pair as two male students, one an Obama supporter. But the website declined to specify how it determined the suspects’ identities. When asked, editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson told Gawker that “the official documents do name [the names published by the Daily Caller], just as we reported. We never described our sources, and therefore did not represent them.” When asked to supply said documents, Carlson wrote back: “Sure. But first please send me your last four tax returns and the results of a recent blood test.” Without those supporting documents, it’s impossible to tell who did what.

According the OPD report, the Oberlin City Prosecutor declined to press charges.

The full police report is posted below.

Email the author of this post at trotter@gawker.com

A Republican state senator from Arkansas who is leading a legislative committee on the subject of giving guns to school teachers accidentally shot a teacher during an "active shooter" drill earlier this year, the local paper of record has uncovered.

State Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson put forward a proposal in the wake of last December's mass shooting event at Sandy Hook Elementary School that would allow law enforcement officials to deputize teachers and other staff members, effectively putting them in charge of school safety.

But an embarrassing item in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette might make other local politicians wary of placing the gun debate in Hutchinson's hands:

After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Hutchinson became interested in arming school personnel, he said. He was invited to attend an 'active shooter' training and - using a rubber bullet-loaded pistol - he mistakenly shot a teacher who was confronting a 'bad guy.'

The experience gave Hutchinson some pause, but he still supports giving schools the authority to decide how best to secure their campuses.

Interestingly, an item on the training exercise published by the office of Rep. Kim Hammer, who was also in attendance, omitted the part about Hutchinson shooting someone, but did include this priceless quote:

“It was intense, enlightening and when we weren’t being shot, it was fun,” said Sen. Hutchinson. “I learned how little I knew about school safety.”

[H/T: Fark, photos via Facebook]

A ray of hope in the global battle against obesity today, courtesy of "The Flemish Gut Flora Project," one of Scandinavia's most respected gut flora projects.

Close study of the gut bugs of hundreds of Danes has shown that obese people with "a large richness of bacterial species in their intestines" are much healthier than their less bacteria-rich compatriots. From Science Daily:

The scientists did see that the group with lower species richness in the intestinal flora was more susceptible to developing obesity-related conditions and chronic inflammation. The obese people in this group are more at risk of cardiovascular conditions than the obese people in the other group. These are important results that suggest that it is not only weight gain and dietary habits that play a role in the development of medical complications in obese people.

So eat all you want, but only eat the Jamie Lee Curtis poop yogurt.

The Flemish Gut Flora Project, The Flemish Gut Flora Project, The Flemish Gut Flora Project.

[Science Daily. Photo: Flickr]

For every child that dreamed of one day becoming a "a financially embattled thousandaire," Trump Soho hotel has just the thing.

The company is now offering, "Young Entrepreneurs SoHo, a unique extension of the brand-wide Trump Kids program," open to "children and teens aged 3 to 17 who are hotel guests, condo owners, or residents of the neighborhood."

So what does a deluxe package for kidtrepreneurs consist of? Coding lessons? The chance to crowdfund Donald Trump's next real estate deal? An acquisition offer from Yahoo?

The suite of benefits includes:

• Personalized business cards upon registration
• Personalized child-size robe for initial stay post registration
• Complimentary kid's meals*
• Custom in-room amenities such as milk and cookies
• Exclusive invitations to cooking classes, beauty days at The Spa at Trump, and more
• Quarterly newsletter discussing kid-friendly events around the city

"Eloise at the Accelerator" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Here is a color-coded map of the 31,000 wildfires in North America over the last six months. While 3.7 million acres have burned this year, that is just over half of last year's scorched acreage at this time (7.3 million). This news comes after varying reports that indicate huge wildfires are the new normal.

Like most of us, Lee Beaumont gets dozens of calls from telemarketers each month. Unlike most of us, he loves it.

That's because telemarketers who are foolish enough to call Beaumont have to pay 16 cents a minute for the privilege of speaking to him.

After getting bugged nonstop by telemarketers looking to sell him insurance or solar panels, Beaumont decided to convert his landline into a premium hotline.

The Leeds native set up a new number through Phone Pay Plus which he has since been giving out to banks, public utilities, and any marketer who asks him for his personal details.

"I don't use my normal Leeds number for anyone but my friends and family," he told BBC Radio 4.

Since installing his 0871 line back in November of 2011, Beaumont has brought in a cool $465 in mad money thanks to chatty telemarketers.

Informed of Beaumont's clever shenanigans by BBC Radio, Phone Pay Plus released a statement saying it "would strongly discourage any listeners from adopting this idea, as they will be liable under our code for any breaches and subsequent fines that result."

But Beaumont insists he makes sure every telemarketer knows up front that they are being charged to harass him, and they are fine with it.

Asked what he tells the cold callers when they inquire about why he has a hotline, Beaumont told You and Yours, "Because I'm getting annoyed with [payment protection insurance] phone calls when I'm trying to watch Coronation Street so I'd rather make 10p a minute."

The grand irony of it all is that telemarketers have been phoning Beaumont less often since he got his new number, but because he stands to get paid when they do, Beaumont admits he enjoys getting cold calls now, and goes out of his way to encourage companies to call him and talk as much as they want.

[photo via Shutterstock]

Welcome back to Midweek Madness, in which Callie Beusman and I attempt to frolic through the fields of the celebrity tabloids. This week, the Kardashians have issues, Jessica Simpson is happy yet destroyed, and Jennifer Aniston's body needs an explanatory essay. Are you ready for this?

Ok!

"IT'S A GIRL!"

Let's start this off by saying "it" is not a girl, because there is no "it." Following an outing during which Kourtney worse a LOOSE WHITE TOP over SHORTS, some have speculated that she and Scott "American Psycho" Disick might be "preparing" to "welcome another baby." It would be nice if it were a girl, says a source. Kourtney loves girls. Also: "She loves being pregnant, it just kind of suits her." Oooookay. Moving on: Amanda Bynes has been transferred to a bigger psychiatric facility with more staff. An insider reports it's because she's constantly trying to leave the building, so she needs more supervision. Elsewhere in the mag, the editors have concocted a "best man battle" between George Clooney and Doug Pitt, Brad's brother. George has been bribing Brad with his Lake Como villa, whereas Doug has been bribing him with his strong Midwestern family values and ethics. Don't discount the "dark horse candidate," though, OK! warns: 12 year old Maddox could do it. Oh, God, how will we all live with the suspense? In a heartwarming tale of romance and passion, Tom Cruise has "fallen" for Jessica White, a model and fellow Scientologist. "Fallen for" might be Scientologist code for "auditioned as a girlfriend candidate and compensated financially." Awwww. Another tale of love: Simon Cowell's mom is pressuring him to marry Lauren Silverman, his pregnant girlfriend. The v-neck-clad professional television bully won't be swayed, though — apparently, he's been spotted cavorting about with two separate ex-girlfriends. Sad face.

Grade: F (minefield)

Life & Style

"BABY JOY & DRAMA!"

In which the magazine inserts fabricated "baby drama" into three celebrity pregnancies: Kris Jenner had a meltdown about her ratings and forced Kim and Kanye to debut Baby Nori on her talkshow! Kim Zolciak is scared that having twins will be overwhelming! Fergie's pregnancy has gone really well but... um... might as well be worried anyways, says an ob-gyn who is not Fergie's ob-gyn. Yawn. In other news, Faith Hill is worried that Taylor Swift will hook up with her husband, Tim McGraw, the magazine inexplicably alleges. Elsewhere on this earth, a terrifying stranger was living in J-Lo's pool house and masturbating on her lawn for six days. He also did some landscaping to pass the time. He has been taken into police custody. And now let's check in on some of the most boring and insignificant humans on the planet: "Real" "Housewife" of Miami Joanna Krupa says that her husband won't have sex with her. What follows is the most painfully awkward exclusive interview ever printed in earnest. Don't worry, though, guys — the couple is now in sex therapy.

Grade: F (nuclear test site)

In Touch

"2 KARDASHIAN MARRIAGES OVER!"

So rumor has it Lamar Odom is addicted to crack cocaine. That's the real reason he's been living in a hotel — Khloe Kardashian kicked him out. This mag claims he cheated on her with at least two different women because he'd be high for days at a time, and Kris Jenner has met with attorney Laura Wasser — who handled Kim's divorce from Kris Dummy-phries — to talk about Khloe and Lamar's possible split. Meanwhile, Kris's "loveless marriage" to Bruce Jenner is "over," and the evidence is that she wore black gloves to Kylie's birthday party so no one would notice she wasn't wearing her enormous ring. Blah, finger-news is so boring. Moving on: Cameron Diaz was seen having an "intimate dinner" with Jason Segel in the Hamptons, which means it's on. Shocker: Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux looked "relaxed" and "happy" while in Los Cabos, as if there is some other way to be while on vacation in Mexico. The Jessica Simpson headline is "THIS BABY DESTROYED MY BODY," as though a rogue infant attacked her with a chainsaw. The copy points out that she seems "self-conscious about her size." Hmm, wonder why? In other news, Elizabeth Berkley, Snooki and Jack Osbourne will probably be on the new season of Dancing With The Stars. Jesse Spano says, "I'm so excited!" And finally, some good news: Catelynn and Tyler from Teen Mom have become the legal guardians of Catelynn's teenage sister Sarah, which should get the kid away from their mother, who struggles with substance abuse. Good luck, guys.

Grade: D- (cold desert)

Star

"DRUGS, LIES, & A LOVE CHILD!"

According to a source, Khloe Kardashian has kicked Lamar Odom out of their house following a failed intervention. Recent reports claim that Lamar has a crack-cocaine addiction and that he's recently started using heroin; as for the love child, a woman who claims to be Odom's mistress says that she "wouldn't be surprised" if Lamar "had a child with another woman" (i.e., there is no love child). In even less factual news, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are "fighting over Scientology." An "explosive new interview" puts Brad at the Church's celebrity center... in the early 1990s... twice. The article also helpfully points out that Brad Pitt filmed Interview with a Vampire in 1993 with Tom Cruise. EXPLOSIVE. Next. Paris Jackson is on the road to recovery after her suicide attempt. She apparently wants to be emancipated from the Jacksons, whom she sees as "vultures who only care about money." Moving on, we have a well-considered and compelling approximately 600-word think piece about "Jen's NEW CURVES." What are they doing there? Is there a baby inside of them? Are they "love pounds"? Or is it "just age"? Wow. Really makes you think. (Fig. 1)

Grade: C- (glacier)

Us

"JESSICA'S BABY JOY!"

Jess, Eric, little Maxwell and new baby Ace are all dressed in white for an ACTUAL INTERVIEW and exclusive photo shoot, and though there are lots of details about the C-section and bringing a new kid into the family, the best quote from Jessica reads thusly:

I will never understand why people give pregnant women such a hard time. We are creating a human life: I think we get every excuse in the world to eat a doughnut! It's very hurtful, especially when you're so emotional and going through all of these hormonal changes.

Hell yeah. Jessica also says "I felt for Kim [Kardashian] — I knew exactly what she was going through." Can we end pregnant lady weight persecution now? Also inside: "Girls In Grillz," because everyone loooooves looking like a black guy who would get stopped and frisked, as long as there's no threat of actually getting stopped and frisked. (Fig. 2) Jason Segel went to Disneyland with his crush, Bojana Novakovic. Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg are "seriously smitten." Quick, vaccinate them! Lastly, Khloe kicked Lamar out because of cocaine: "he would be high for three or four days at a time." Seems stressful.

Grade: B (poppy field)

Addendum

Fig. 1, from Star

Fig. 2, from Us

The great state of Missouri (state animal: the mule) is poised to pass a bill that would make it illegal for federal agents to enforce federal gun laws, in Missouri. Really? What, are all of Missouri's Democratic representatives just craven idiots?

State Representative T. J. McKenna, a Democrat from Festus, voted for the bill despite saying it was unconstitutional and raised a firestorm of protest against himself. “If you just Google my name, it’s all over the place about what a big coward I am,” he said with consternation, and “how big of a ‘craven’ I was. I had to look that up.”

Aha.

Don't really see that on the Google but... forget it.

[NYT. Photo: Mark Anderson/ Flickr]

Young people are bad at voting, but very good at boozing. So what's one reliable way to get them to the polls? The promise of a free drink.

According to AL.com, members of the University of Alabama's Chi Omega chapter received an email that not only encouraged them to vote for two UA alums separately running in yesterday's Tuscaloosa City Board of Education race, but also offered the sorority women free drinks, limo rides (hummer-limos, if you believe the photo), and "points" in whatever horrible internal Panhellenic system awards Chi O sisters credit for not being goddamn boners.

AL.com reports:

"In a list that was e-mailed to me this weekend, y'all are the only [members] registered in the specific district that are allowed to vote," the email states. "Cason Kirby, a past SGA president of the University of Alabama is running for the City Board of Education, and Lee Garrison a UA Alum is also running."

"They would really appreciate/need your vote to win this election. It's going to be really tight, and it is SO IMPORTANT that they get the Greek Vote. I told both of them that I would do my best to make sure that I got every Chi O that was registered to the polls. There is a big incentive for you going as well!!"

Man, sorority girls are THE BEST email stylists!! Anyway:

The email goes on to list five "incentives," including that both the sorority and individuals who vote would receive points to go toward UA's Panhellenic and the sorority's in-house point systems, which reward participation within the system.

In addition, the author states "they rented out Innisfree and Moe's" — two downtown Tuscaloosa bars — and wristbands good for one free drink at each venue and free cover would be made available to members who showed an "I Voted" sticker to the sorority representative.

Alcohol turns out to be a very good incentive: Both Cason Kirby and Lee Garrison won by slim margins in yesterday's election.

[image by Shutterstock]

Weekend crafting, sugar consuming, napkin note-taking, normal director of seizure warnings David Lynch has some advice for aspiring filmmakers. In a short clip uploaded to Quark Henares' Instagram, Lynch dispenses wisdom from below a cliff of electrified hair. He gives three pieces of advice: "Be true to yourself," "don't take no for an answer," and then whoop! "start your Transcendental meditation." Just speaking to the mundane, pedestrian, workaday everyman.

[IndieWire, image via Getty]

James Deen, a man who does sex, talks about sex, again. This time he asks the question of porn watchers: "Are you looking at it as something beyond entertainment? Do you think you can drive your car down the stairs like in The Bourne Identity?"

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Last Saturday, a six-year-old boy went for a walk in the city of Linfen, in China's Shanxi provence. Hours later, his parents found him covered in blood, with his eyes missing.

“The boy was lured by an unknown woman on Saturday evening into a field, where she gouged out his eyes," Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. According to the boy's mother, the six-year-old was walking outside when the woman attacked him, using some sort of tool to pry out his eyes.

Authorities initially suspected the woman was attempting to steal the boy's corneas, to sell them on the black market, but the eyes were discovered intact at the scene.

A police spokesman told the AFP that their investigation was still underway, but so far they had no theories about the woman's motive. According to the boy's mother, the family “had no disputes with anybody.” The only clue the boy offered was that the woman had an accent foreign to their provence. Authorities have offered a 100,000 yuan ($16,000) reward for the woman's capture.

The boy is in stable condition, but doctors say he'll never regain his vision. From the BBC:

"He asks why the sky is always dark... and why the dawn still hasn't come," Beijing Youth Daily quoted an uncle of the boy as saying.

"We could only tell him that his eyes had some injury and have to be bandaged.

"It is such a difficult question to explain to him. It is the most heartbreaking thing."

[Image via AP]

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

For the last year or so, freelance cartoonist Gavin Aung Than has been using his talents to turn inspirational quotes from some of the world's greatest thinkers into inspirational comic strips.

Zen Pencils is a project borne out of Than's decision to quit his soul-sucking corporate graphic design gig and focus on the love of his life: Drawing cartoons.

For the latest installment in his ongoing series, Than decided to focus on reclusive Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson’s legendary 1990 speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College.

C&H has a special place in Than's heart, being what he and many others consider "the greatest comic strip of all time."

So, in recognition of the role Watterson played in inspired Than's own love of comics, the Melbourne-based artist decided to draw this week's submission in Watterson's eminently recognizable style.

As Comic Book Resources' Robot 6 blog notes, Than's Watterson homage "struck a particular chord within the comics community, as it’s been making the rounds on blogs and Twitter and in email."

Than has graciously allowed us to republish his powerful piece of art, but make sure to check out Zen Pencils for more on what Watterson personally means to Than.

[image via Zen Pencils]

The man with one of the most recognizable faces in tech (behind the most recognizable homepage in history) has split from his wife of six years, 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, AllThingsD reports. Surprise: he's been dating a Google underling.

It sounds like Wojcicki wasn't quite as liberal-minded as Eric Schmidt's wife:

Brin has become romantically involved with a Google employee, according to sources. This is further complicated by the fact that that employee had also at one point been involved with another Googler.

That's a very messy position for one of the most powerful tech figures in the world to find himself in, an ugly spilling-over of the bedroom and boardroom.

The couple's ties to the company go deep, says AllThingsD's Liz Gannes:

But there are other Google-related complications. Wojcicki’s sister, Susan, continues to be one of the top executives at Google, where she is SVP of advertising and commerce. Google’s first headquarters in its key formative days was located in her garage and she was one of the first hires by Brin and Page.

They've also been philanthropic heavyweights, a la Marc Andreessen and his wife Laura. But while Marc and Laura have been making some very contrived public shows of internet affection lately, the report by Gannes and Kara Swisher doesn't show a good outlook for the Google couple:

A spokesman for Brin and Wojcicki confirmed that “they have been living apart for several months. They remain good friends and partners.”

And yes, they'd signed a prenup.

To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com