A man near Denver has contracted "the rarest and most fatal form of plague." Oh, brother!

Fitted to excite pity and sympathy, state and federal agencies have begun filing lawsuits against financial services juggernaut and arguable maîtres du monde Barclays PLC over allegations of fraud at Liquidity Cross: the British firm's "dark pool" trading venue. Yes. Fraud. In a dark pool.

Like the warm, amniotic fluid of a womb, dark pools are private trading venues that, in theory, are meant to protect large institutional investors (and others) by not publicly reporting their buy-and-sell orders until those incubating trades have fully formed. They first arose around the 1970s as phone-based services, archetypal Wall Street guys shouting "Buy! Sell!" into handsets, but by the 1980s — and this is very 1980s — electronic platforms with names like Instinet and Posit began cropping up, automating the field. For decades, these discreet trading platforms remained an acquired taste, floating under 4 percent market share, consolidated volume, until around 2008. What changed (and you probably know this already) was the untrammeled growth of high-frequency trading by algorithms.

Suddenly, it became very easy, plus lucrative, to jack-rabbit around these monumentally large institutional trading orders, skimming off profit by quickly placing one's own orders before the institution's purchase altered the market price.

But, somewhere between 2008 and today, as the dark pools swelled, now covering 15 percent of market share, they transformed from shelters for institutional investors — like mutual funds, pensions, and (sure) hedge funds — into feeding chambers for select high-frequency traders.

According to data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Barclays' dark pool, often shortened to LX, was nearly the largest in trading volume, second only to Credit Suisse's dark pool, Crossfinder. So, it was something of a serious matter when, two weeks ago, New York state's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed what the New York Times called "a scathing lawsuit" against Barclays over "demonstrated persistent fraud" and repeated violations of the Martin Act.

"The particularly egregious behavior was that they marketed this as a protected dark pool," Todd Cipperman of Cipperman Compliance Services told Crain's Pensions & Investments (an excellent gift for grandma or grandpa).

Integral to this deception, according to the suit, was a complete misrepresentation of Barclays' "Liquidity Profiling" service which promised to police "each interaction in the dark pool" to "protect [clients] from predatory trading" but in practice, well, didn't do shit. The suit alleges that Barclays "granted liberal 'overrides' to high-frequency trading firms and to Barclays' own internal trading desks (which themselves employ 'aggressive' trading strategies), in order to make them appear less 'toxic' than they really are."

Citing internal emails between senior executives of Barclays' Equities Electronic Trading division, Schneiderman's office states that the firm intentionally "de-emphasized" high-frequency traders in a promotional chart of the dark pool's liquidity landscaped. They also altogether removed data about Tradebot Systems from the chart, an ominously generic firm that "had historically been, and was at that time, the largest participant in Barclays' dark pool, with an established history of trading activity that was known to Barclays as 'toxic.'"

As described by one former senior-level Director within the division:

Barclays was doing deals left and right with high frequency firms to invite them into the pool to be trading partners for the buy side. So the pool is mainly made up of high frequency firms. [...]

[T]he way the deal would work is [Barclays] would invite the high frequency firms in. They would trade with the buy side. The buy side would pay the commissions. The high frequency firms would pay basically nothing. They would make their money off of manipulating the price. Barclays would make their money off the buy side. And the buy side would totally be taken advantage of because they got stuck with the bad trade [...] this happened over and over again.

Phenomenally lurid, containing prose written with great clarity and momentum, the 31-page civil suit against Barclays makes for excellent beach reading, full of serious misdeeds that teeter between mere compliance breakdown and full-on criminal conspiracy.

In advance of this suit, this past spring, Schneiderman's office issued subpoenas to six high-speed trading firms seeking to determine whether those firms were given preferential treatment in certain dark pools. In early June, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations announced plans to hold hearings focused on potential conflicts of interest between dark pool operators and some of their clients. And this week the Wall Street Journal reported that the SEC is now quietly planning to launch its own probe into Barclays' LX dark pool. Cumulatively, a pretty clear indication that utterly heedless and/or malicious behavior may have been the norm in Wall Street's off-exchange trading venues.

Just before Independence Day, in front of a Sandler O'Neill + Partners conference, SEC Chair Mary Jo White said her agency will be examining whether the current volume of off-exchange trading in dark pools, and wherever else, "risks seriously undermining" the entire U.S. stock market.

Stock-exchange executives, who would likely benefit from a dark pool crackdown (in particular, given that off-exchange operators are believed to be using their knowledge of large private trades to benefit out in the open market), naturally applauded the speech.

"If you make that statement and you believe it," Robert Greifeld, chief executive of Nasdaq OMX Group, reportedly said during a question-and-answer session, "it's a call to action."

So, it's a troubling case — though you wouldn't know it from certain sectors of the business press.

At Forbes, Tim Worstall has decided that the Barclays case "isn't serious" based on the fact that Goldman Sachs only had to pony up a trivial $800,000, or so, in a recent case against their dark pool, SIGMA-X. Why he selected the Goldman case and not, say, the SEC's recent $2 million settlement with New York dark pool Liquidnet, or the $110 million settlement against Putnam Investments pursued jointly by the SEC and Massachusetts state regulators, is sort of anyone's guess. Then again, Worstall wrote a trollishly contrarian op-ed last year praising the NSA's PRISM program. So, perhaps he is not a representative example of the financial pundit class.

And yet, his core belief that few bad trades or price-gougings took place in the dark pools "precisely because none of the customers [came] out complaining" is a weirdly common one.

"If these brokers and trading houses were that badly effected by this practice, the first thing that I'd be looking for would be private suits by the aggrieved people who were put into these dark pools without their knowledge or who were given so-called 'more predatory counter trades' than they thought they were getting [...]" Charles Griffin Intelligence Managing Member Philip Segal told Bloomberg's Street Smart, continuing:

I think the people who would have the best idea of what it would cost are the people that were put into these pools, the people that the Attorney General was supposedly protecting. It's not a "Let's protect the small investor" lawsuit; it's "Let's protect the poor innocent hedge funds and the Blackrocks of the world who are very good at getting lawyers, and analysts, and expert witnesses, and figuring out very quickly how much it cost them." So, I want to hear from them now.

It's certainly surprising that a guy with 13 years as a business reporter and an 8-years-and-counting career in business intelligence and due diligence investigations can't seem to figure out that the "large institutional investor" category includes really small-time victims, like the clients of pensions and mutual funds. It's also surprising that someone with a law degree, like Segal, doesn't seem to know that private suits would have to prove intentionality in court, a prohibitively high bar compared to the government's civil suits under the Martin Act.

Plenty of other financial observers seem to have understood that the victims weren't exclusively white-shoe hedge funds and investors, or that, as the Times pointed out, "banks should not be entitled to operate increasingly in the shadows, where even large and savvy clients can get mugged."

But whatever.

Perhaps the most generous appraisal of these dark pool apologists, would be to point out that in the face of Wall Street's total graft and corruption take, in a grand assessment of world finance's scary intractable problems, these dark pool scandals may simply be (somehow) small potatoes.

Last June, institutional investors including BlackRock Inc., and Allianz SE's Pimco sued a phalanx of their largest bond trustees — U.S. Bank, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo & Co., HSBC, and Bank of New York Mellon — for failing to adequately supervise over $2 trillion in mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis. They are suing them for $250 fucking billion in damages.

These are Greek Gods doing battle outside our sad necropolis. Kaiju monsters left fighting each other within city limits, while regulators watch helplessly from their giant broken robots, or opt instead to noodle around in the rubble chasing down pick-pockets.

There's a narcotic fatalism that comes very organically from following this sort of news story: a shared True Crime titillation between writer and reader that's mutually gratifying, chic yet pornographic, and maybe not entirely productive. The problem is that the options beyond it are thorny.

Would you like to donate to Eric Schneiderman's 2014 political campaign, shore up his war chest for what surely promises to be a vicious battle against Wall Street-larded New York Republicans? I think that's a swell idea, frankly — despite the fact that I have only minimal confidence that it will change a damn thing.

Perhaps you want to go back to Zuccotti Park and Occupy Wall Street all over again? Or throw some tea into Boston Harbor? (Are you a time traveler from the past?) Sure. That seems fine too. Or a full-blown post-post-Structuralist Marxian-materialist revolución that dares to push for rhizomatic utopian structures? Sounds good to me, so long as everyone gets course credit.

OR: Would you like to preserve an aura of jocular detachment from all this? Give it the horse-race speculation treatment? What's your take: Will Barclays get hit harder because it is a foreign bank and thus easier to attack politically than the well-connected boys back home? Does that mean Credit Suisse or UBS (who incidentally has the third largest dark pool) will be next in regulators' crosshairs?

Will Eric Schneiderman's political career survive this aggressive pursuit of white collar criminality? Or will embarassing facts miraculously emerge, as it did for his predescessor Eliot Spitzer, inciting a Client 9-style scandal just in time to derail him, and preserve the raucous, disruptive virtues of our free market society?

One thing is certain: Roger Stone, the veteran GOP operative who took credit for exposing Elliot Spitzer's prostitution habit (almost assuredly without earning it) is totally gunning for Eric Schneiderman:

@MicahLasher Big Trouble for Schneiderman- the next Eliot Spitzer? http://t.co/RhjYgqFkx5

— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) April 28, 2014

Will Nassau DA Rice ride Moreland Commision to a rematch with the son of Eliot Spitzer , Eric Schneiderman ?

— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) July 2, 2013

For the record, Eric Schneiderman is older than Eliot Spitzer by four years.

That H. L. Mencken quote, "No one in this world [blah, blah, blah] has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people," you might have heard it before?

Everyday, you should wake up endeavoring to prove it wrong.

[Barclays office photo via Reuters]

To contact the author of this post, email matthew.phelan@gawker.com, pgp public key here. In the interest of full disclosure, the author owes Barclays PLC over $2000 in credit card debt.

When the forecast calls for a 30% chance of rain, it's reasonable to think that the chances of seeing rain are 3 out of 10. But when the forecast calls for a 30% chance of tornadoes, the risk is much higher and much more dangerous. Why is there such a discrepancy between severe weather and rain forecasts?

Categories

As I've previously covered, starting in September the Storm Prediction Center will rate the risk for severe weather on any given day on a categorical scale ranging from "marginal" to "high." Forecasters arrive at these rankings based on the probability for damaging winds, large hail, or tornadoes. The higher the probability for severe weather, the higher the category.

When the two new categories — "marginal" and "enhanced" — are placed into service in September, forecasters will use the above chart to determine which category to issue and where. For example, if there is a 10% probability of tornadoes in Atlanta, forecasters would include the city in an "enhanced risk" for severe weather.

These probabilities are different from the chance of rain you hear in your local forecast. When you hear that there's a 30% risk for tornadoes, they're not just telling you that a tornado will occur 3 out of 10 times. They're telling you two things:

1. There is a 30% chance of seeing a tornado within 25 miles of any point in the risk area.
2. The risk of seeing a tornado today could be hundreds of times higher than normal.

The second point is what's important. A 30% chance sounds relatively low, but since tornadoes are relatively uncommon, the risk is much higher than it appears. We can see how many more times likely than normal tornadoes are on a certain date by looking at severe weather climatology maps.

Let's use two examples from this past year, starting with the tornado outbreak back on April 28.

Tornadoes

On April 28, meteorologists issued a 30% risk for tornadoes across parts of Mississippi and Alabama, meaning that there was a 30% chance for tornadoes within 25 miles of any point within the shaded area.

It also meant that tornadoes were 50 times more likely than normal. How did we figure that out?

The Storm Prediction Center publishes maps showing the overall probability for tornadoes, damaging winds, and hail based on weather over the 30-year period between 1982 and 2011. We use these maps to come up with the climatological risks.

Over most of the 30% risk zone on April 28, a tornado occurred within 25 miles of anywhere in the area of concern over the 30-year period 0.60% of the time. In other words, the climatological risk of seeing a tornado on April 29, based on 30-year averages, is 0.60%.

Since the forecast risk of tornadoes is 30% and the climatological risk is 0.60%, this means that tornadoes are 50 times more likely than normal.

But wait! It gets even worse.

Do you see the black hatching over the 30% risk area? That signifies the potential for significant tornadoes, or those rated EF-2 or stronger. The climatological probability for significant tornadoes is even smaller, sitting at 0.20% across the risk area. This means that the risk for significant tornadoes is 150 times higher than normal. That's an astronomically high risk, and a far cry from the math behind a 30% chance of rain.

Damaging Winds

Let's look at another high risk day, this one from the beginning of last month.

The risk for damaging winds across parts of Nebraska and Iowa was a top-of-the-scale 60% on June 3, signalling forecasters' concerns that an intense derecho would form. This means that there was a 60% chance of seeing wind damage (or winds recorded above 58 MPH) within 25 miles of any point in the shaded area.

As we did with the tornadoes, let's look at the severe weather climatology for June 3.

The climatological probability of seeing severe winds across the risk area is 2.00% on June 3, putting the area's overall risk for seeing wind damage 30 times higher than normal.

Again, as with the tornadoes, the black hatching indicates the risk for significant severe winds, which are defined as 75 MPH or higher.

Here's the map showing the climatological probability of seeing significant severe winds on June 3:

Values range from 0.30% to 0.40%, which would equate to the risk of seeing winds greater than 75 MPH clocking in around 150 to 200 times higher than normal.

When should we be concerned?

For future reference, here are the risks generally considered to warrant concern and special attention:

• 15% risk for damaging winds
• 15% risk for hail
• 5% risk for tornadoes

Not to say that lower probabilities are anything to shrug off — "marginal" doesn't mean "not gonna happen," after all — but once the values start ticking up to these thresholds, it's time to start paying extra attention.

When viewed in the context of severe weather occurring x amount of times out of ten, it's easy to brush off a 30% risk of tornadoes as nothing much. But when viewed properly through the spectrum of climatology, forecasters are really trying to tell you that the risk for severe weather is much, much higher than normal, and that you should take appropriate action to stay safe.

[Top image via AP, all others by the SPC]

Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino made quite an impression at Allen & Co.'s rural schmoozefest this week. Both on Twitter and in an on-air segment, Gasparino complained about being mistreated by the private security guards hired for the Sun Valley conference. But sources told Valleywag that good time Gasparino was the instigator.

On Wednesday evening, after perhaps imbibing a little too much, Gasparino attempted to barge into a private event at Duchin, a bar within the Sun Valley Lodge. MSA Security, the firm hired by Allen & Co., stopped him and a producer for Fox Business News from entering. Then yesterday morning, Gasparino, seemingly still tipsy from the previous night, confronted the head of security, screaming: "How dare you put your hands on my producer?" He was given a trespass citation.

We heard he was given a trespass citation and kicked off the entire property for trying to cause a scene, which is when the photo above (provided to Valleywag by a tipster) was taken. The MSA representative on site in Idaho told Valleywag yesterday that he was not able to comment. Fox Business spokesperson Irena Briganti has not returned an email about the incidents from yesterday. Gasparino has not responded to an email from this morning. We will update the post if we hear back.

But that might explain why Gasparino appears to be filming his segments from the side of the road. In this appearance on Money with Melissa Francis he says, "I can stay here but I can't go over there," pointing to whatever's behind the wooden fence.

None of the fracas stopped a bulldog like Gasparino from trying to report. He spotted Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Christie dining together, speculating that the governor might have been in Idaho to do a little fundraising. Gasparino said he complimented the Facebook CEO before, Zuck "like, ran away from me," calling him "the most uncomfortable guy in his own skin."

Francis asked Gasparino if, like some of the other reporters, he had a drone to try to listen in on conversations or whether that was too "wimpy."

"Listen I go into bars and I talk to people," said Gasparino.

"I bet," Francis replied.

"When they're a little bit liquored up," he added, "it's the best."

To contact the authors of this post, email tips@valleywag.

A video of Rihanna giving a lap dance to a bespectacled, "nerdy" audience member made the rounds yesterday, as the guy was declared both the luckiest and the most awkward Rihanna fan of all time. Awkward, maybe, but this ain't exactly Rihanna's first lap dance rodeo—at least a half-dozen other fans have gotten just as lucky.

Rihanna's Loud tour of 2011 featured an interlude during "Skin" where she'd pull a very lucky concertgoer onstage for a lap dance. Every once in a while, a video from those shows pops up as something brand new.

Her performance in Amsterdam, where she did a little bump and grind for a handsome guy who turned out to be Mr. Gay Netherlands 2010 contender GJ Kooijman, was big news in 2013.

"Seriously, how is my lapdance from @rihanna going viral 18 months later? It's 2 albums and a tour later, ffs," he tweeted at the time.

Rihanna's generosity doesn't just extend to uncomfortable-looking boys and hot gay models, though. Men, women, black, white, nerds, players—she's danced for all of them. But this latest performance to surface stood out as "the most awkward onstage moment ever."

That raises an important question: What is the proper way to get a lap dance from Rihanna? In the parlance of reddit, do you "touch the merchandise" or just "do hover hands?" Some feel it's a catch-22.

"Awkward Rihanna lap dance guy is doing his best, okay? What was he supposed to do anyway?" asked Esquire, in defense of the nerd.

Here are several possible answers, presented in the form of a video. Rihanna appears to be totally fine with any of them:

This weekend on TV you are presented with sexy werewolves, stand-up comedy, vampire viruses, a kidnapping stepmother and over 42 kinds of TLC programming interrogating and radicalizing, but mostly blissfully ignoring, the vast gulf in our country between money and class.

FRIDAY

Hemlock Grove came out on Netflix last night around midnight, so you can binge watch that whenever you want (that is how it works). For me, how it works is, that show is either very crappy or I just don't get it, but either way I don't watch it. That one dude is superfine and Famke Janssen is the greatest, but I just... Something about it really rubs me the wrong way.

At 8/7c. you can relive childhood or whatever you have to tell yourself by watching two more episodes of Legend Of Korra—which is currently spending time in Ba Sing Se, which is the most bullshit place you have ever seen, and I hate it when they go to Ba Sing Se because it gives me literal nightmares when I go to sleep—or the next episode of Girl Meets World, which is entitled "Girl Meets Boy," which I guess is like gently reminding us how dumb the original show's title actually was.

At 10/9c., if you still haven't caught the Crossbones wave on NBC—and has any show, ever, screamed "NBC" quite as loudly as "hugely expensive period piece where John Malkovich is a pirate and he meets historical figures"? Guess what, it's network, you're not going to be seeing tits, so really the question is, how intrinsically interesting is John Malkovich qua John Malkovich, and be honest with yourself—there is an antipodal import starting on Syfy called The Almighty Johnsons that I don't really understand, but I think it's like The Witches of East End, only instead of witches they are Norse gods and instead of women they are men? Pass. Or maybe it's super funny, or something.

At 11/10c. Kurt Metzger has a Comedy Central Special with the unfortunate title "White Precious," then two Half Hours, which, I will say again, in fact is known as an hour. Just call it The Hour. You wanna jazz it up? The Hilarious Hour. Done. You're welcome.

SATURDAY

At 8/7c. on CBS there is a new episode of Under The Dome! Just kidding, it's two episodes of Bad Teacher. I still haven't seen that. I am only now restoring my relationship with Kat Dennings and I refuse to let CBS come between me and Ari Graynor too. There is a Lifetime movie called Presumed Dead In Paradise, which is a title that bewitches me. What does that mean?

...Oh man you guys I am so glad I checked out what this movie is. Look.

At 9/8c. who cares what is on, I am still watching that shit right there. At 10/9c. there's a new Almost Royal, which is a show I have to tell you I am really, really digging. The commercials were fucking insufferable but the show itself is dear. Oh, and Sex Sent Me To The ER moves to its new timeslot, before two episodes of something dubious called Buying Naked which, given that the show is on TLC, I'm going to leave a mystery.

SUNDAY

At 8/7c. it's Big Brother noms and BOB, and the sixth season premiere of Real Housewives of New Jersey. There's also an episode of Wipeout called "Win A Date With Jill," and if they're talking about Jill Wagner, I would like honestly to accept that challenge. She is marvelous.

At 9/8c. there's True Blood and Witches of East End, or if you are into things that are spectacular in other ways, uh, Ray Donovan and Masters Of Sex start now on Showtime. Otherwise, there's Musketeers, a Sister Wives special about how they actually got into this situation, and a show on Bravo called Game Of Crowns which is about... I don't know how to describe it accurately, so I will just lie and say that it's about adult babies. Game Of Babies. Girl Meets Crown Babies.

At 10/9c. there's another Botched on e!, the second season finale of Devious Maids, a two-episode premiere of Lone Star Lady on A&E, which seems pretty irritating but also maybe interesting? Same on Return To Amish and The Strain, which are on different networks and have crews that are differently able to bargain collectively, but otherwise: basically the same show. Then you should go to bed, or else you can watch John Oliver or Watch What Happens: Live with Dina Manzo and Chris Colfer. An embarrassment of riches! In some ways.

[ Image via Bravo, obviously]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. What are you watching tonight? What are we missing out on? Recommendations and discussions down below.

Yahoo, the last living fossil of the internet dinosaurs, is coming to grips with its own mortality. The lumbering tech giant once bought 48 acres of land in Santa Clara for a massive office expansion. Now it's turning the land into a parking lot.

The land was purchased by Yahoo last decade, with Santa Clara approving a three million square foot, 13 building office park in 2010. But as the company fell on worse times, the project was put on hold.

Now that the Marissa Mayer-led corporate redesign and turnaround has failed to revive the company, Yahoo is paving over its expansion plans. According to the San Francisco Business Times, the 7,200-car parking lot isn't even intended to serve Yahoo employees—it's going to be used as off-site parking for Levi's Stadium.

City records show general contractor Devcon Construction Inc. submitted grading, paving and striping permits for parking lot improvements on the Yahoo site June 20. The San Francisco 49ers also show the parcel as one of the largest available lots on the team's interactive parking website. A team spokesman told me that the 49ers had reached an agreement with the property owner earlier this year.

The move suggests Yahoo remains in no hurry to build, which is perhaps not surprising given that the Internet pioneer has been shrinking, not growing, its real estate footprint in recent years.

If being a parking attendant does pan out, Yahoo can always lease the land to Google.

[Photo: Getty]

Shortly after LeBron James announced via Sports Illustrated that he was heading back to Cleveland, Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski fired off this tweet, which, given the stature of his pronouncements at times like this, had the general air of a collective verdict:

LeBron James needed to go away to Miami four years ago, immerse himself in the structure and discipline and accountability of culture there.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 11, 2014

So true. Whenever I think of the city of Miami, I think DISCIPLINE. But no matter. A new narrative had been established, and directly after the LeBron announcement came a torrent of accolades for his decision, not so much for the choice he'd made as a thing in itself, but for the WAY the decision was announced. LeBron has grown. LeBron has matured. LeBron is a grownup. LEBRON IS A GOOD BOY NOW. Who's a good boy, Bronny? IS IT YOU? IT IS!

This video was compiled from just the past couple of days:

While narratives change a lot, people tend to remain the same, and I would wager that the only thing about LeBron James that has changed since The Decision back in 2010 is that he now knows precisely what kind of horseshit sports fans and sportswriters want, and how to deliver that horseshit. It should be humble, it should be understated, and it should turn up in tasteful prose in a tasteful magazine. Read that essay in SI and you see LeBron touch on every possible item in the great American psychic lunchpail:

True to his roots? Check.

Before anyone ever cared where I would play basketball, I was a kid from Northeast Ohio.

Chastened? Check.

My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn't realize that four years ago. I do now.

Keeping his head down and not celebrating like a GLORY BOY? Check.

I'm not having a press conference or a party. After this, it's time to get to work.

Making Rust Belt folks feel like they're good blue-collar folks who drive trucks and shit? Check.

In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. Everything is earned. You work for what you have.

All of this gets you the requisite pat on the head from the media—some large percentage of which is a lot more interested in pandering to the idea of the moral superiority of the Rust Belt than in actually living there—all because you did things the RIGHT WAY.

Got chills reading LeBron's story. Loved how he compare his time in Miami to college. He has truly grown up. No press conference no parties.

— Seth Davis (@SethDavisHoops) July 11, 2014

Four years ago, LeBron blew town for less money so that he could play with his friends and win some championships, which was totally reasonable, but because he announced this on a TV special that looked like a live broadcast of a hostage crisis, he was filleted up and down the sports pages. Shit, I called LeBron a cocksucker at the time. We were all evaluating LeBron on the merits of his self-presentation, on the quality of his public relations staff. We were drama critics, grading a performance. The substance of the decision—again, he took less money so that he could win, the sort of thing you'd figure would thicken the dick of your average sports moralist—didn't matter as much as the bad optics.

And now it's happening again, only as if in a photographic negative. If you cast aside all the "I'm coming home" shit, what you have is a story of the NBA's best player ditching a loyal group of aging teammates for a bigger salary and a franchise with better and younger talent and more maneuverability under the salary cap. From a basketball perspective, it was a cold decision—a smart call, and one that LeBron has every right to make, but one that under normal circumstances would touch the very center of Woj's g-spot, what with its overtones of greed and disloyalty. LeBron sold himself better this time, though. The optics were good. He put on a great show, the drama critics all agreed.

Everyone has a little Darren Rovell in him, it turns out. There is something truly gross about sportswriters marveling over LeBron's improvement in self-branding, which is completely divorced from his significance as a historically great basketball player and probably divorced from his everyday personality. (In this essay, as elsewhere, LeBron comes across as a prop in his own life.) When people praise LeBron for this letter, what they're basically saying is, "Oh, he's worked us over MUCH better this time."

That's how easy it is to change a narrative. Stay off the television, pose for a tasteful photograph, write a letter, and play to the fancy of a few influential people who like the idea of the Midwest a whole lot more than they like the reality of it, and you go from selfish to TEBOW in no time. LeBron James wasn't aware of this game four years ago. He sure as hell is now.

Video editing by Gizmodo's Nicholas Stango

Maria Zhang, a top executive at Yahoo, is being sued for sexual harassment, wrongful termination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The complaint was filed today by Nan Shi, an engineer supervised by Zhang, and names Yahoo as a defendant.

As a senior director of engineering, Zhang helps lead the troubled company's attempts to improve its mobile efforts. According to the San Jose Mercury News:

In her complaint, Nan Shi says she was working as a principal software engineer when the supervisor, industry veteran Maria Zhang, forced her to have sex against her will on multiple occasions, promising her "a bright future at Yahoo'' if she acquiesced. After coercing her to have "oral and digital sex,'' Shi says when she finally resisted Zhang's advances, the executive retaliated by giving her a bad performance review and removing her as a project lead. When she reported the abuse to Yahoo, Shi says, the company did nothing to stop it, and then put her on what eventually became an unpaid leave followed by final termination that took effect Friday.

Zhang's previous company, Propeld, was acquired by Yahoo last February. Shi worked under Zhang at Propeld, which was based in Seattle. After the acquisition, both women joined Yahoo. Shi claims that Zhang instructed her to move into a temporary Yahoo housing in Sunnyvale, which is when the alleged harassment began.

"While staying with Plaintiff, Zhang coerced Plaintiff to have oral and digital sex with her on multiple occasions against her will, even after Plaintiff told her she did not want to have sex,'' the complaint alleges. "Zhang told Plaintiff she would have a bright future at Yahoo if she had sex with her. She also stated she could take away everything from her including her job, stocks, and future if she did not do what she wanted.''

The complaint alleges that Zhang, as Shi's manager, forced her "to work grueling hours and compose work emails over the weekend at the apartment, sometimes right after sex.''

A Yahoo spokesperson told the Mercury News that Zhang has the company's complete support:

"There is absolutely no basis or truth to the allegations against Maria Zhang. Maria is an exemplary Yahoo executive and we intend to fight vigorously to clear her name."

Shi was born in China and claims she did not report the alleged assaults to the police or to Yahoo because she feared a public dispute would end her career. This past Spring was the first time Shi reported the abuse to Yahoo's human resources department. The Mercury News says that Shi was emotional during an interview today and "broke down" describing the alleged harassment.

"I was in a deep sleep one morning, sleeping on the sofa because she had taken my bed, when she came in without clothes on, crawled into my blanket, and woke me up, hugging me, kissing my face and neck,'' Shi said. "I woke up and got scared; I was shocked. I said, what are you doing? She said she'd liked me a long time, but I didn't' feel the same toward her. I said come on, we're friends; I love you as a person, but not as a lover.''

This is the most recent in a steady stream of sexual harassment lawsuits within the tech industry, alleging an abuse of power by a high-level executive.

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

[Image via Geekwire]

Tommy Ramone, also known as Thomas Erdelyi, died on Friday at his home in Ridgewood, Queens. Erdelyi was the last surviving original member of the New York-based punk band The Ramones. He had suffered from bile duct cancer.

It had originally been intended that Erdelyi would be the manager of The Ramones when the band formed in 1974, but then he was drafted as a drummer instead. Erdelyi was drummer for the group from 1974 to 1978, after which point Marky Ramone took over.

Erdelyi still played an integral role in the group's history, serving as producer on several Ramones records.

Via Variety:

Ramone played on the first three epoch-making Ramones albums, "Ramones" (1976), "Leave Home" (1977) and "Rocket to Russia" (1977). He also co-produced the latter two albums with Tony Bongiovi and Ed Stasium, respectively. He appeared on and co-produced the 1979 live Ramones opus "It's Alive."

The Ramones are often considered the inventors of punk. As Erdelyi told The Guardian in 2011, "We were the first," he says. "People forgot that for a long time. In the 70s and 80s, they didn't know. A lot of other acts got much more publicity, more record company support, more radio play."

According to an associate, Erdelyi died in hospice care on Friday.

[Image via ViralNews]

After a truck driver for Walmart crashed into his limousine van last month, killing one and injuring several others, Tracy Morgan has announced via a rep that he is suing Walmart for damages. The suit alleges that the company was negligent for allowing their truck driver to drive 700 miles without sleeping for 24 hours.

According to a report in the Associated Press, Morgan's suit also alleges that the driver fell asleep at the wheel.

Via the AP:

"As a result of Wal-Mart's gross, reckless, willful, wanton, and intentional conduct, it should be appropriately punished with the imposition of punitive damages," according to the complaint.

Morgan suffered a broken leg and broken ribs after the crash and is currently in rehab. Kevin Roper, the truck driver who turned himself in after the crash, has pleaded not guilty to death by auto and assault by auto charges.

Ardie Fuqua and Jeffrey and Krista Millea, three other passengers in the crash, are also listed as plaintiffs in the case. The accident resulted in the death of James McNair, a close friend and mentor to Morgan.

A report by federal transportation safety investigators said that Roper had been working for 13 1/2 hours when the crash happened and that he had been driving 65mph in a construction zone that had been lowered to 45 mph that night.

[Image via AP]

The Costa Concordia cruise ship, which crashed off the coast of Italy's Giglio Island in January of 2012, killing 32, has been slowly breaking down in the water for over two years. Authorities announced that they will begin to clear away the wreckage as early as Monday.

The forthcoming efforts follow a September success in turning the cruise ship, which had previously capsized, completely upright. The ship will now be floated to shore, where it will be dismantled on the mainland at Genoa.

The cruise ship wreckage had turned into a site for "disaster tourism" for many visiting Italy's Western shores since the liner struck a reef in 2012. The Associated Press reports that the Costa Concordia's captain "is being tried in Tuscany for manslaughter, causing the shipwreck and abandoning ship before all were evacuated."

The operation to fully remove the cruise ship from the water could take several days.

Howard Beach/JFK, A

There was the first ride, 20 years ago by now, from JFK to Washington Heights with my parents. My cousins had given us instructions: Just take the A. So we took the A for an hour and a half, from Queens, through Lower Manhattan, snaking up the west side past the park, through Harlem, all the way to 181st street. It was July and hot. I was ten years old with an unfortunate short haircut in the middle stages of growing out, wearing a halter top with daisies sewn on it. The subway ran on tokens then—we fed bills into the machines and filled our pockets with them. I dropped one by accident and put my face flush against the floor to find it, the way my dad had taught me to spot a lost object. My mother shouted, horrified. She didn't understand why we couldn't just take a cab.

23rd St., F

The train pulled into the station and I looked up from my book and saw, through the dirty, smeared glass, the first boy who really broke my heart. The one who had sprawled across my bed like it was his, happy to lie in a tangle of sheets for hours. Who'd taken me to the beach for the Fourth of July and held my hand as we ran away when the fireworks exploded on the sand, who'd written me notes that felt suspiciously like love letters on paper torn from legal pads, and who always remembered my birthday. But it had been six years and I had married someone else. When our eyes met, I remembered that I wasn't wearing any makeup and that my hair was dirty, but my hand rose in a wave. My face caught in a smile, and he was smiling too. And we stared at each other for a frozen moment before the train heaved and sighed and pulled away.

34th St., Penn Station: 1/2/3

I fell asleep on the train and woke up in a panic and got off and then realized I'd gotten off too early, so I sat down on the deserted platform to wait for another train to come. It was two or three o'clock in the morning and I was 17 and still new to the city, wearing my go-to stretchy black pants with the dip in the front that I thought made me look great but really made me look like I'd wandered outside in my pajamas. I waited and waited, and a man started walking toward me on the platform, the only other person around. As he got closer, I saw that all of his features were pushed to one side of his face, like one of those fish where both the eyes are on one side and the other side is flat. He walked past me, both of his eyes meeting mine without turning his head, and continued down the platform. Eventually, the train came. I would never be sure if he was a burn victim or born that way or if I'd imagined the whole thing.

14th St., Union Square: 4/5

It was the end of one of those perfect summer afternoons, and Adam and I were running to catch the express train back to Brooklyn at Union Square; we could hear it pulling into the station from the top of the stairs. We were sweating as we bolted down the staircase, trying to dodge the obstacle course of kids, moms and strollers clogging the platform, and as we got to the bottom, we both heard the noise—the retching. One of the kids was projectile vomiting. The whole thing happened in slow motion: a stream of puke arcing into the air, and Adam leaping over it like something out of The Matrix. And then we were in the train, all clear, a transit miracle, the doors closing safely behind us. We laughed all the way to Borough Hall.

West 4th, A

The train was packed, commuters squeezing past bunched-up tourists to find more room in the middle of the car. A girl in her early twenties got on with her parents, guiding them through the crowd, and we all held on to the same pole, they still clutching playbills from a just-attended Broadway show. The whole family was smiling, the daughter laughing and explaining things to her parents, the parents hanging on her every word. The dad had the same ambiguously olive skin as my father, and was wearing the kind of hat I would have been embarrassed by if my dad had chosen it. But I was 28 and would never get the chance to be embarrassed by my father again: He'd died two years before. My eyes filled with tears watching the three of them, their faces spread in matching grins, but I stared at the floor until I watched their feet exit the train at Fulton. After that, I closed my eyes and cried, silently, until I had to transfer at Jay.

14th St., Union Square, N/R

It was my first winter in New York and I was wearing my first real winter jacket, a brown tweedy peacoat my mom had bought me from J. Crew. There was snow on the ground and swirling in the air and I was about to walk up the stairs and out of the station when I noticed the man in front of me was wearing a hat, a puffy ski parka and snow boots, but no pants. His bare ass jiggled as he climbed up the stairs in front of me, unhurried as he stepped out into the snow.

Second Avenue, F

I was 20 and living in my first apartment out of the dorms, on First Avenue and First Street—we called it The Nexus. I had wanted desperately to be a waitress for the summer but I didn't have any experience, so I got a job as a hostess at a mostly-empty restaurant in the bottom of a hotel on 46th Street. To be there on time I had to leave at 6:20 a.m.; there was hardly anyone else on the subway that early, but you could tell we were all going to the same, menial jobs. One morning I saw a homeless man taking a shit on one of the blue seats in the station, the ones that are carved into the wall. Later that fall, the seats, which had been peeling and flaking, were repainted a fresh, bright blue: They looked as good as new.

23rd St., A

My roommate Lauren made friends with a group of guys a few years older than us who were rich and liked to spend a lot of money at clubs, so we went with them. It was 2004 and we were 19 and the big night to go out was Tuesdays; there was a strip of new places on the west side where the bouncer unclicked the velvet rope and waved us in and a girl would stamp our hands and someone else would show us upstairs to a table. I always had to wake up early to go to class, but we stayed out til 3 and 4 a.m. and drank bottle service and danced with each other and flirted with strangers, and when it was time to go home, Lauren and I would walk to the subway station in Chelsea and wait for a train to take us back to our dorm in Chinatown. While we waited, we imagined our parents in California being terrified if they could see us now, and wondered if we should have just asked the police who were parked at the gas station on the corner if they could give us a ride home. It never occurred to us to take a cab; we were trying to be responsible about spending money. One night we waited for an hour, and when the train finally pulled in it was the money train, the one that used to go from station to station transporting sacks of cash. As it pulled away we saw a group of MTA employees in one of the cars, playing poker at a card table. Afterwards, whenever I told people about the money train, they thought I was hallucinating, but then I saw an old one in the subway museum and it turns out the city retired it in 2006.

8th St., N

A boy I'd always been a little bit in love with came to New York in January of our freshman year of college, but he wasn't really there to visit me. He brought his new best friend and they looked like twins, with shaggy hair and rumpled sweaters. They went to school in Minnesota. When they arrived, I took them sightseeing. We got on the train closest to my dorm room and I said, overdramatically and with a hand flourish, so this is the New York City Subway, like I was an expert welcoming them to my town. I had lived there for five months. They shrugged and looked at the floor and sort of at each other and then one of them said finally that they'd already ridden it, they'd actually been here since yesterday. Originally I'd thought we might end up together after he came to visit, but the trip came and went and we didn't even really wind up staying friends.

Whitehall St., R

I was wearing flip-flops for my commute to work and leaning against the subway doors, reading the New Yorker, already tired of the hot weather. Suddenly I felt something warm and wet on my foot. I looked over and saw a child giggling and leaning against the pole, and I assumed he'd spilled his juice box and was annoyed that my foot was going to be sticky. Then I looked closer and there was no juice box. He had peed on my foot. His parents were too busy playing on their iPhones to notice. I got out and went to work and told everyone what had happened, and the whole newsroom laughed. Someone asked what I did with my shoes and I said I'd thrown them out, but it was my only pair of flip flops so I actually just washed them off and kept them.

Delancey, F

It was a few days after I turned 23, and we were going to Mexico. But the night before we were supposed to leave, I realized I'd lost my passport—I'd dropped it at my birthday party, and it had traveled back to California with a friend of a friend who had been too drunk to realize he'd put it in his pocket. Adam, who was 29 and ready to be a grownup, could not believe it. Trying to prove to him that I could be a grownup too and salvage our tickets, I took the train to the airport in the middle of the night and begged the gate agents to let me get on the plane without my passport. They wouldn't. But they did take some mercy on me and charged me a $300 change fee and $200 to ship my passport to New York on the next flight from California, and they rebooked the trip so we could leave the next morning. From the airport, I texted Adam, by way of apology, I love you more than anything, I would marry you tomorrow. He didn't respond. On the F train back to our apartment, exhausted from being awake all night, I ran into a girl I knew from college who we called Crazy Russian Ellen. She was on her way to work. She taught naked yoga and didn't shave her armpits and liked to go to Burning Man and had recently landed in the hospital after overdosing on mushrooms. She gave me a hug and wished me good luck. It was the first time I could remember being less put together than she was. In the end, Adam and I made it to Mexico, where he forgot to be mad at me. Four years later, on the side of a hill on a windy day, he married me after all.

Meena Hart Duerson is a writer, reporter and senior editor @TODAYshow's today.com.

[Image by Tara Jacoby]

After Singapore national libraries labeled a children's book about two male penguins who raise a baby chick "inappropriate," the conservative information minister, Yaacob Ibrahim, has vowed to ban "gay-themed" books in national libraries and destroy any remaining copies of books that encourage "non-traditional" family values.

According to a report in the Associated Press, the three books that will be "pulped" by the National Library Board are: "'And Tango Makes Three,' about a male-male penguin couple in the Central Park Zoo; 'The White Swan Express: A Story About Adoption,' which involves a lesbian couple; and 'Who's In My Family: All About Our Families.'"

Yaacob Ibrahim, the Minister of Communications and Information in Singapore, said on Friday:

"The prevailing norms, which the overwhelming majority of Singaporeans accept, support teaching children about conventional families, but not about alternative, non-traditional families, which is what the books in question are about."

"Societies are never static, and will change over time. But NLB's approach is to reflect existing social norms, and not to challenge or seek to change them."

The decision to destroy the books has resulted in an oppositional protest by authors and writers in the largely conservative city-state.

Via the AP:

Donald Low, author of "Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus," a book recommending policy reforms in the tightly-controlled Southeast Asian state, said he had pulled out of the Singapore Writers' Festival in November to protest the decision.

"I see no evidence of a significant segment of Singapore society objecting to these books being in our public libraries, even if the majority of Singaporeans are conservative," Low said.

There has been no news on how and when the books will be destroyed.

[Image via Singapolitics]

A woman who attended a Brad Paisley concert in San Diego on Thursday night, after being asked to leave, is now speculating that she was ejected for breastfeeding in the pit area of the concert.

Megan Christopherson filmed her interaction with a Chula Vista police officer but the video has since been deleted. According to USA Today, the police officer asked her to leave because the child could be "crushed from a potential surge from the crowd or could be impacted from loud noise coming from speakers." Christopherson claims that, no, the ejection was because people around her were uncomfortable with her breastfeeding.

Via USA Today:

"Where you're at, your child could get crushed,'' the officer says. "We're afraid your child's eardrums are being hurt."

But Christopherson argues in the video that the baby, Gracie, who was asleep, was fine and that she had recently taken the infant to another concert at the same venue and had no problems with security. She also tells the officer that she thinks she's being ejected from the area because other security personnel had allegedly told her to stop breastfeeding because people were complaining.

Christopherson's friends have corroborated her story, claiming that police officers were photographing her breastfeeding. The Chula Vista police department, however, has maintained in a statement that "The Chula Vista Police Department's involvement in the incident was due to the welfare and safety of the infant and not due to a mother's legal right to breastfeed in public."

"It's a country concert," she told ABC 10. "I wasn't at a death metal or a rap concert. It's pretty somber at country concerts."

"I trust my motherly instinct that if my baby's ears hurt, she would cry, and then I would move out," she told NBC.

Thank god she wasn't at a death metal or a rap concert. Christopherson is now lawyering up and is expecting a formal apology from the security company.

[Image via AP]

In 2012, meteorologist Rhonda Lee made national headlines after she was fired from her job at a television station in Louisiana for defending herself on Facebook against racist comments about Lee sporting her natural hair. Yesterday, she announced that WeatherNation hired her as an on-air meteorologist.

Rhonda Lee's saga began when several viewers left ugly comments on Shreveport, Louisiana-based KTBS' Facebook page about the meteorologist opting to wear her natural hair rather than "wear a wig or grow more hair," as one Facebook user put it.

The user in question, a man named Emmitt Vascocu, left the following comment:

the black lady that does the news is a

very nice lady.the onlt thing is she needs to wear a wig or grow some more hair.

im not sure if she is a cancer patient .

but still its not something myself that i

think looks good on tv.

what about letting someone a mail have

waist long hair do the news.what about

that

Lee responded to the complaint with a professional tone and restraint rarely seen on the internet.

Hello Emmitt— I am the "black lady" to which you are referring. My name is Rhonda Lee. Nice to meet you. I am sorry you don't like my ethnic hair. And no I don't have cancer. I'm a non-smoking, 5'3, 121 lbs, 25+ mile a week running, 37.5 year old woman, and I'm in perfectly healthy physical condition.

I am very proud of my African-American ancestry which includes my hair. For your edification: traditionally our hair doesn't grow downward. It grows upward. Many Black women use strong straightening agents in order to achieve a more European grade of hair and that is their choice. However in my case I don't find it necessary. I'm very proud of who I am and the standard of beauty I display. Women come in all shapes, sizes, nationalities, and levels of beauty. Showing little girls that being comfortable in the skin and HAIR God gave me is my contribution to society. Little girls (and boys for that matter) need to see that what you look like isn't a reason to not achieve their goals.

Conforming to one standard isn't what being American is about and I hope you can embrace that.

Thank you for your comment and have a great weekend and thank for watching.

News One goes on to quote another response Lee left on a post made by a viewer upset that the children in the television station's "Three Minute Smile" — a drive run by KTBS that lets a child "run in the toy section of Walmart for 3 minutes, grabbing whatever he/she can" — were mostly "people of color," and this was a sign of "some racism going on."

KTBS decided to fire Lee and another reporter for the station (whom they emphasized was a "white male") for violating the station's social media policy, which instructs employees to ignore complaints or tell them to contact the company's ombudsman.

In addition to suing KTBS over her firing, Lee also has a pending lawsuit against one of her former employers, KXAN-TV in Austin, Texas, after she says she was "repeatedly subjected to crude and insensitive remarks about her race."

Lee, who has extensive experience working in television weather at stations in Memphis, New York, Texas, and Louisiana, graduated from Kansas State University in 1997 with a degree in journalism and communication, and completed the broadcast meteorology program at Mississippi State University in 2009.

In a post on her Facebook page, Rhonda Lee said that she isn't sure when her new job with WeatherNation will begin, but she's moving from Shreveport to Denver in a couple of weeks.

WeatherNation is The Weather Channel's main competitor, and it appears on DirecTV channel 361 as well as digital channels across the country. The weather network's broadcasts also stream live on its website.

[Image via Rhonda Lee's website]

The 15-member U.N. Security Council announced in a press release on Friday that it's unanimously calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Over 130 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli offensive began on Tuesday.

According to the Associated Press, Israel has increased its air assault on the Gaza Strip's Hamas leaders and vowed to continue the offensive in order to restore peace to Israel. Hamas leaders have also promised to continue fighting, claiming on Friday that a "long battle" was ahead of them.

From the AP:

An Israeli official said the goal of the operation is to restore quiet to Israel for a continuous period. "This goal will be achieved whether it is done militarily or diplomatically. Israel will consider any suggestion that will bring the accomplishment of this goal," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The military said it has struck more than 1,100 targets, including Hamas rocket launchers, command centers and weapon manufacturing and storage facilities, in a bid to stop relentless rocket fire coming Gaza. Officials in the territory said that two women were killed in the attack on the disabled center.

The UN Security Council's measure is expected to be mirrored by British, American, French, and German foreign ministries after talks this Sunday, according to Britain's foreign minister, William Hague. Hague is a "close Israeli ally" and has reportedly spoken with his Israeli counterpart on the issue of de-escalating the current conflict.

According to the AP, this most recent Israeli offensive has been the most violent and ongoing since a similar operation in November 2012.

[Image via AP]

Residents and drivers along Aviation Road in Queensbury, N.Y. were confused and annoyed on Thursday afternoon to find that their commutes were being affected by an unwelcome visitor: meat. Lots of rotting meat that stunk up their cars. "Why is it here?" they asked. "Who did this?"

The Glen Falls Post-Star reports that the source of the rotted chunks of meat littered down the road has not been identified, but that hasn't reduced residents' anger at the matter. Many drivers took their cars directly to a car wash to handle the disgusting smell.

Via the Post-Star:

Saratoga Springs resident James Teele had the misfortune of meeting the meat Thursday afternoon as he drove home from work at Maple Tree Funding in Queensbury.

He said he quickly realized what the ramifications were.

"I immediately took my Toyota 4Runner to a car wash but it was too late," he said. "My vehicle still smells like rotting meat. Flies are swarming on my vehicle at my office."

According to the Associated Press, state workers cleaned up most of the meat, but that didn't make the rotting smell go away. Matt Phillips, a manager of a local car wash, said the loose chunks of potential chicken fat (one resident speculated) helped business for the day.

The Post-Star reports:

Matt Phillips, one of the managers of Hoffman Car Wash on Quaker Road in Queensbury, said the influx of dozens of sullied vehicles Thursday night forced the business to have them pre-washed to clean off much of the meat before going through the automated wash.

He estimated the car wash was visited by as many as 35 customers whose vehicles were dealing with decomposing material.

If this is your meat, it is time to claim it. Come claim your meat. You ruined everyone's day.

[Image via the Post-Star]

Buddy "Cake Boss" Valastro's cake life passed before his cake eyes when his 32-foot Boston Whaler got stranded in heavy fog in New York Harbor this weekend.

CNN reports that Cake Boss was traveling home after dinner in Highlands, New Jersey, with his wife, another couple, and nine children, when his vessel was lost in thick fog in Ambrose Channel:

"I can't see the city," said Valastro, who had owned a boat for about six years. "I'm thinking it's dark... We wind up going into this deep, deep fog where you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you. We started to get really scared."

Cake Boss decided that it was time to call for help when he had to quickly turn from a bigger vessel, about 30 feet away, that was headed towards his boat:

"I saw him but I don't think he saw us. We had to get out of the way... I turned quick. It got really, really scary. I said,' You know, it's time to call for help."

Sgt. Carlos Nieves told CNN that both the New York fire and police department units located and towed the Cake Boss's boat to Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City. (For the record, police found no alcohol on board and Cake Boss showed no signs of impairment.)

Cake Boss—desperate to return to what he can control, Cake Land, after being adrift in that which he cannot, Cake Sea—wants to bake them a cake!

"I want to bake them a cake," he said. "I want to do something good for them. They didn't even realize who I was until the end. It was all business. I'm not the kind of guy to say, 'I'm the Cake Boss. The Cake Boss in distress. May Day."

Didn't even realize that they were talking to the world-famous Cake Boss, who is far too humble to flaunt his title, and still the police and fire department rescued him.

All business, indeed.

[image via TLC]

A cop in Jersey City, N.J. was shot while still in his police vehicle early Sunday morning as he responded to a robbery call at a local Walgreens. Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop released a statement this morning that confirmed the death of officer Melvin Santiago.

[UPDATE 7/13/14, 2:25 pm]: The man who killed rookie cop Melvin Santiago was reportedly "laying in wait" for police, "telling a witness to watch the news because he was 'going to be famous,'" the AP reports. Lawrence Campbell, 27, never tried to rob the Walgreens, but instead assaulted a security guard in the store with a knife, stealing his gun, which was reportedly used to then shoot Santiago in the head.

Santiago responded to a call at a Walgreens at around 4 a.m. Sunday morning. According to a witness, when Santiago and his partner arrived to the store, the robbery suspect came out shooting.

Via the Associated Press:

Jean Belviso, who has been delivering newspapers for 10 years, was driving through the Walgreens parking lot when she said saw a man wearing burgundy sweatpants and a baseball cap walk out of Walgreens. A police cruiser pulled up in front of the store, and the suspect began shooting, the 61-year-old Belviso said.

"We thought he was running, coming toward us," said Belviso, who was riding along with a friend. "He kept on shooting."

Additional officers, who had responded to the robbery call, arrived and shot the robbery suspect. According to the AP, the man's body lay out for four hours before police officers pulled a tent over him.

This was the first cop killing in Jersey City since 2009, Mayor Fulop said in his statement.

[Image via AP]