After the collapse of a temporary cease-fire betweens Palestinians and Israel earlier this week, the AP reports that today Egypt called for an open-ended cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

The call hopes to make room to restart talks that were brought to a halt with this week's cease-fire break. From the AP:

The call from the foreign ministry came shortly after Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo.

Mark Regev, spokesperson for the Israeli government, reportedly had no immediate comment on the call.

[image via AP]

A SpaceX test rocket that launched over McGregor, Texas experienced an "anomaly" while propelling into the atmosphere, causing an explosion mid-flight on Friday afternoon.

The rocket, a three-engine version of the F9R test model, automatically detonated when a problem was detected within, setting off the rocket's automatic detonation system. The rocket, according to NBC News, is a prototype intended to "pave the way for fully reusable rockets that would fly themselves back home."

A statement released by SpaceX confirmed that there were no injuries.

.@SpaceX statement on 8/22 F9R test in McGregor, Texas: pic.twitter.com/p7JL5VoQlP

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 23, 2014

A St. Louis County police officer, who was seen earlier this week attempting to shut down Don Lemon's live broadcast on CNN, has been suspended after a video emerged in which he made racist, inflammatory remarks.

The video, which the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports was made in 2012 in front of a group called the Oath Keepers of St. Louis and St. Charles, shows officer Dan Page making disturbing remarks about Muslims ("Muslims are passive until they gain parity with you or they exceed you in numbers and they will kill you"), President Barack Obama, and killing, saying "I'm into diversity. I kill everybody. I don't care":

"I've killed a lot. And if I need to, I'll kill a whole bunch more. If you don't want to get killed, don't show up in front of me. I have no problems with it. God did not raise me to be a coward."

During a slideshow displaying images from a recent trip to Kenya, he says:

"I said 'I wanna go find where that illegal alien claiming to be my president, my undocumented president, lives at.'"

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Page, who has been with the department for 35 years, has been suspended pending a review by the internal affairs unit. "With the comments on killing," Belmar said, "that was obviously something that deeply disturbed me immediately." Belmar issued a public apology for the video on Friday, saying:

"[I] apologize to the community and anybody who is offended by these remarks, and understand from me that he ... does not represent the rank-and-file of the St. Louis County Police Department."

Belmar has also ordered a psychological evaluation of Page.

[image via YouTube]

A babysitter who had been watching two girls in Austin, Texas for only a few months allegedly grew so frustrated with their shenanigans that she decided to light their house on fire. A punishment fit for the crime!

Martha Dreher, 57, was caught on surveillance camera entering the Texas home of the children she watched, leaving twenty minutes later with flames beginning to emerge from the girls' bedrooms. Dreher denies starting the fire.

Dreher told investigators that she was tired of dealing with the girls and wanted to quit. She had told their father that his oldest daughter was "very disrespectful."

According to ABC News and Glenn Williams, the girls' father, the family's oldest child came home and saw smoke:

Hours later, the girls' brother came home.

"My son Adam came in and said, 'Dad, I just went to the kitchen - lot of smoke,'" said Williams.

No one was injured.

Dreher is being held on an arson charge, which she has plead not guilty to.

[Image via ABC News]

Police in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania have returned a life-sized statue of Barack Obama to its owner after finding it chilling out in a park with a six-pack of Twisted Tea.

The AP reports that the owner, Tiffany Bruce, was so upset to find her $1,200 Obama statue—beloved by her five children—missing that she had to be hospitalized for a panic attack. (She really loved it!) The family reportedly had all sorts of fun with the statue throughout the year:

The statue, purchased at a furniture store last year, depicts Obama smiling and sitting casually, his legs crossed and his right arm flung out. Bruce decorated the statue as Santa Claus on Christmas and arranged pumpkins around him on Thanksgiving.

Police found the statue posed with the Twisted Teas on a park bench and returned it (him?) to Bruce on Thursday. Bruce spoke with Philly.com about how the theft has not hampered her statue-loving spirit:

"I tried to order Hillary [Clinton] five months ago," Bruce said. "Hopefully I'll get Michelle [Obama]. I'm just getting one at a time because they're expensive."

[image via Philly.com]

People are wildly sharing the news that the Farmer's Almanac is predicting a brutally cold and snowy winter this year. Did you know that they also predicted a brutally hot summer across most of the country this year? Hope you didn't bake to death in the 70-degree, low humidity weather.

The Farmer's Almanac is famed for its long-range outlook — which the company claims is "80 percent accurate" — that it develops through a mixture between a secret formula developed back in the 1700s and modern technology.

As we've heard meteorologists reiterate time and time again over the past week, there is no skill in accurately predicting specific weather events more than a week before they occur. A meteorologist for Penn State sums it up nicely:

"The ability to predict events that far in advance is zero," says Knight. "There's no proven skill, there's no technique that's agreed upon in science to be able to do that."

[...]

According to Knight, the Almanac's secrecy is part of the problem.

"If you have something that's really innovative and shows skill, then bring it before your peers," he says. "You don't have to show us everything in case you want to make a business out of it, but give us some idea."

The Farmer's Almanac is basically the "unskewed polls" of the weather world, using secret formulas and zero skill to predict major weather events only to have things turn out wrong. If given the option of listening to the Farmer's Almanac or trusting a forecast put out by Half Pint the Slow Loris (awww, LOOK AT HIM), I'd trust Half Pint.

[Image via AP]

As a massive rally unfolds in Staten Island Saturday afternoon in memory of Eric Garner, who died after being put in a chokehold last month by an NYPD cop, the New York Post has something different to say about New York's boys in blue: three cheers for them, hurrah, hurrah. They're doing their jobs just great!

The Post is no stranger to trolling, and the timing of this op-ed, which begins with "we'll say it flat out—we support the cops," is eye-rollingly deliberate. While many of us reflect on unnecessary cop deaths like those of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and police brutality that hits endless New Yorkers like Jahmil-El Cuffee, there seems to be little necessity in raising up a system that instead needs wholesale reevaluation. But the Post must know that, right?

Are there some bad cops? No question. Are there police-related tragedies in a city where 35,000 uniformed officers interact with 8.5 million residents 23 million times a year? Who would expect otherwise?

Okay, so it's like you have 35,000 eggs. Naturally, some of them are gonna be rotten. And then some of those rotten eggs are going to wrongfully kill or harm people. All part of the process of buying 35,000 eggs, you know.

But think about what the city asks of these men and women: To walk up a dark flight of stairs in some seedy building searching for armed bandits who might shoot at any moment. To break up gang violence and get weapons off the street from thugs who'd rather not give them up.

And, yes, to improve the quality of life for average New Yorkers.

What the city asks is that cops do their jobs. To protect and serve, the proud slogan of the New York Police Department, does not cover killing a man for selling untaxed cigarettes illegally. Ah, but the Post must disagree.

Which is why the march makes little sense. It was supposedly motivated by the death of Eric Garner (who died after resisting cops who were trying to arrest him for . . . selling illegal, ­untaxed cigarettes).

It's predicated on the cops' guilt, which Sharpton wants folks to infer mainly on the basis of an edited video. Indeed, he wants folks to indict the entire NYPD on that flimsy ­evidence.

Sorry: Given all that cops do, we think they deserve at least the same benefit of the doubt that criminals get every day.

The rag argues that the death of Eric Garner was an equal punishment to fit the crime, mostly due to the lack of solid evidence to assess either way. The article goes on to say that the officers did nothing unlawful in the arrest of Garner, despite the fact that chokeholds have been illegal in the NYPD since 1993.

Police brutality and wrongful deaths are not just random occurrences in the NYPD. As long as citizens are expected to do everything cops say, there will always be incidents of mistaken infallibility that will cause harm to the undeserved. The evidence, though near impossible to quantify, is there. You've even told us yourselves.

[Image via New York Post]

The AP reports that Icelandic authorities have declared a no-fly zone over Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano, which began erupting today under the ice of the Vatnajokull glacier.

Throughout the last week, thousands of small earthquakes caused magma movement within the volcano that suggested it could erupt at any point.

The Civil Protection Department reported that scientists who flew over the ice cap saw no signs of eruption at the surface level, but authorities still raised the aviation alert to red due to the threat of "significant emission of ash into the atmosphere." From the AP:

Icelandic authorities declared a no-fly zone of 100 nautical miles by 140 nautical miles around the eruption as a precaution, but did not shut down air space over most of the island nation in the North Atlantic.

Spokeswoman Olof Baldursdottir told the AP that "all airports are open and flights are on schedule."

[image via AP]

Parents: what gives? When a mom and dad in Dinwiddie County, Va. discovered that their 13-year-old daughter had been sending nude photos of herself to boys on her phone, they decided to take her into the police station with the hopes that it would never happen again.

The Virgina parents claimed that their readiness to turn over their daughter to authorities was out of protectiveness of her. She'd allegedly been sending nude texts back and forth with a number of students at her middle school on both her phone and her tablet. The parents wanted to get investigators involved, even if it meant their daughter could be prosecuted.

Via CBS 6:

"Looking through the phone and the tablet we did find sexual pictures, conversations that were very inappropriate for her age," she said.

While none of the nude photo's showed their daughter with anyone else, there were pictures being sent back and forth with other boys.

"Everybody wanted to be her friend, because according to these people, she was cool now," she said.

There was allegedly conversation between the middle schooler and an area high school senior. Investigators say that the older teens involved could face felony charges.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Tropical Depression Four has formed in the western Atlantic Ocean over the Turks and Caicos Islands, packing winds of 35 MPH. The storm is expected to steadily strengthen into Hurricane Cristobal this week, potentially threatening the southeastern coast before turning out to sea.

Hurricane Hunters have been surveying the system for the past couple of days, and the disturbance teetered on the brink of becoming a tropical storm but failed to develop a closed center of circulation at the surface. As the system now has a closed center, the National Hurricane Center pulled the trigger and declared it a tropical depression on Saturday afternoon.

Given how close the system is expected to track to the southeastern coast, it bears close watching for folks from Florida to North Carolina. As of this evening's model runs, it looks like they're starting to come into close agreement that the storm will track parallel to the Florida coast before starting to curve out to sea later in the week. The NHC notes the uncertainty in its discussion of the system: "Given the spread in the guidance and the recent formation of the system, confidence in the details of the track forecast is lower than normal."

The storm will recurve, but how soon it turns out to sea determines what impacts it will have on coastal areas, if it has any at all.

Even though the current forecast shows the storm staying off the coast, a good portion of the southeast is in the cone of uncertainty. The cone is the margin of error in historical hurricane track forecasts — the center of the storm winds up inside the cone 66% of the time, on average. Since this is the forecast track for the center of the storm, there could still be some impacts to the coast aside from heavy surf and rip currents. If the center tracks farther west than currently anticipated, coastal areas could see the outer edges of what will soon become Cristobal.

Since Tropical Depression Four is so close to land, the National Hurricane Center will issue advisories (forecasts) every three hours. The next intermediate advisory is at 2 AM EDT, followed by a full advisory at 5 AM EDT.

[Map by the author, satellite via GOES | The graphics were updated at 7:45 PM and again at 10:57 PM to reflect the latest advisories from the NHC.]

Earlier this morning, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck California's Napa Valley, sending wine bottles crashing to the ground and knocking out power across the region.

Centered near American Canyon, just six miles south of Napa and 51 miles west of Sacramento, the earthquake hit around 3:20 in the morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Reportedly, thousands of residents have been left without power and running water. "Numerous" injuries and fires have also been reported in the area.

My sister lives in Napa proper, says there's no water, no power, glass everywhere. House down the street on fire.

— Mollie Reilly (@mollieclare) August 24, 2014

Lots of power outages in Sonoma Co. Treat all "dark" intersections as a STOP sign. #earthquake

— CHP Santa Rosa (@CHPSantaRosa) August 24, 2014

Napa fire says “numerous” injuries reported in Napa area, but none at mobile home park where three homes destroyed. pic.twitter.com/M0pXujzCcV

— Will Kane (@WillKane) August 24, 2014

The earthquake was the strongest felt in the region since 1989's Loma Prieta quake, which had a magnitude of 6.9. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, this morning's earthquake gave local residents a "rolling sensation."

Darryl Sismil, owner of Marin Computer Service in Santa Rosa, described the tremor as "just a rolling sensation. It felt like I was on a boat in the bay."

"It wasn't like the shaking I felt in '89," said Skip Hutchins, […] referring to the Loma Prieta earthquake. "It felt like more of a rolling."

Journalists across the region were quickly dispatched to California's wine country to report on the damage. Early reports indicate that area supermarket shelves were dumped onto the floor.

Lots of merchandise damage at the Safeway in American Canyon, CA - pic.twitter.com/v63zE7qXSb

— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) August 24, 2014

Walmart trashed in American Canyon. #earthquake pic.twitter.com/Y4Fd6BUfCQ

— Mike Nicco (@MikeNiccoABC7) August 24, 2014

Here's what it looks like at the 7-11 in American Canyon, which is now busy people buying batteries, water. pic.twitter.com/fEVrs2lDL4

— Will Kane (@WillKane) August 24, 2014

California Highway Patrol has also shut down portions Highway 37 due to damage.

Update 10:30am PST: The Chronicle reports that the earthquake caused "extensive damage to buildings in and around downtown Napa."

There was widespread damage in downtown Napa, with bricks, concrete chunks and broken glass littering the street and building debris on parked cars.

Whoa, not looking good in Napa http://t.co/VaUTrWn0IJ pic.twitter.com/MFuiVpSnW5

— Doug Saunders (@DougSaunders) August 24, 2014

Gov. Jerry Brown has also declared a state of emergency.

However, local badasses are turning the damage into an opportunity:

Meadowbrook Lane in Napa— skaters finding upside to quake damage. Photo from #nbcbayarea photog Jeremy Carroll pic.twitter.com/aoSh1SWfLT

— vicky nguyen (@vickydnguyen) August 24, 2014

This is a breaking news post, and will be updated as new information comes in.

Photo: Andrew Crookston

The AP reports Israeli airstrikes leveled a seven-story office building and "severely damaged" a two-story commercial building in the southern town of Rafah early Sunday.

The airstrikes came hours after a strike on an 11-story apartment tower in Gaza City. Palestinian officials told the AP that around 30 people were injured in the strikes, but no one was killed.

The army reportedly used automated phone calls over the weekend to warn Gaza residents to say away from buildings harboring "terrorist infrastructure." From the AP:

A senior military official confirmed that Israel has a policy of striking at buildings containing Hamas operational centers or those from which military activities are launched. The official said each strike required prior approval from military lawyers and is carried out only after the local population is warned.

Israeli media reports the 12-story apartment tower housed a fourth-floor apartment where Hamas ran an operations center. According to the AP, the military declined to comment on why it collapsed the entire building instead of targeting a specific apartment.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Gaza residents to stay away from Hamas militants on Sunday at a cabinet meeting, saying, "I call on the people of Gaza to immediately evacuate any structure that Hamas is using to commit acts of terror. Every one of these structures is a target for us."

[image via AP]

A fire was started in the Makakilo region of Oahu this week when two seven-year-old boys were goofing around with a lighter. The fire took hold and has since run through over 800 acres of brush, grass, and trees. There have been no reported injuries.

The boys' parents spoke with investigators and confirmed that their sons had started the fire by accident when they were playing around with a lighter. According to the Associated Press, more than 100 firefighters have been brought in to fight the flames.

About 40 people in 20 homes have been evacuated because of the fire, and as winds pick up on Sunday, firefighters expect the flames to reach a mountainous region that is difficult to reach.

[Image via AP]

TMZ reports former Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight was shot six times at a Chris Brown-hosted party at a nightclub in West Hollywood early Sunday morning.

The story is still developing and details are sparse, but according to TMZ, Suge Knight was shot in the stomach and arm around 1:30 AM at the 1OAK nightclub pre-VMA party and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He was then rushed into surgery.

Family sources told TMZ that he's currently in the ICU and is expected to recover.

In a video obtained by TMZ, emergency workers are seen taking a man said to be Suge Knight into an ambulance on a stretcher:

TMZ reports that multiple sources have said Suge was one of three people shot, and at least one of them is in critical condition.

Chris Brown wrote about the shooting on Twitter:

It's disappointing that we as a society can't have fun or enjoy ourselves without any altercations sometimes. Miss me with the bullshit!!!

— Chris Brown (@chrisbrown) August 24, 2014

[image via Getty]

Amy Sedaris—the god—was on Jimmy Fallon's late-night variety program on Friday, and it was quickly revealed that Sedaris has been doing a service to communities everywhere by getting certified in CPR. If you are dying of a heart attack, the only woman you want to save you is Amy Sedaris. Deny all help unless it's Amy Sedaris.

Sedaris appears to be wearing an outfit from a clown-specific hoedown, and according to comments on the YouTube clip, her version of CPR is not recommended. It might also surprise you to learn there's a possibility your chicken could come with feathers. An important teaching moment.

The AP is reporting that more than 70 patients have been treated at the Queen of the Valley hospital in Napa after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit the Napa Valley in Northern California early Sunday morning. According to the hospital, two major injuries have been reported so far.

Ah, there's nothing on a hot day like an icy cold glass of lemonade sold illegally in a residential area.

The Tampa Bay Times reports 12-year-old T.J. Guerrero's Dunedin, Florida lemonade stand (which also sells freshly baked cookies!) has brought joy to the hearts of many—except Guerrero's 61-year-old neighbor, Doug Wilkey.

Wilkey has reportedly contacted law enforcement and emailed City Hall multiple times in an attempt to shut down the stand:

Doug Wilkey contends that the Palm Harbor Middle School student's year-round operation is an "illegal business" that causes excessive traffic, noise, trash, illegal parking and other problems that reduce his property values.

Dunedin planning and development director Greg Rice told the Tampa Bay Times, "We're not in the business of trying to regulate kids like that; nor do we want to do any code enforcement like that. We are not out there trying to put lemonade stands out of business." But that hasn't dissuaded Wilkey, who brought Pinellas County sheriff's community police officers to the area twice to settle the conflict.

Wilkey claims T.J's friends make noise, use profanity, and throw rocks and debris that he then has to clean up. (Because of Wilkey's complaints about his friends, T.J. sells his $1 lemonade and $.50 cookies alone.) He's also looking out for his neighbor's health, as he wrote in one email:

"The city could possibly face repercussion in the event someone became ill from spoiled/contaminated food or drink sales."

In another email, he wrote:

"If this were a once a year event by a couple kids to earn a little money for a holiday or something, I would not have a problem with it. I am very worried about the value of my home, which is why I built in a residential area, not a business area."

The Times reports that his most recent email to City Hall complained that T.J.'s lemonade stand was back for the summer, "AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Deputy Wayne Gross polled neighbors about the stand and found they were fine with T.J.'s 10 to 30 daily customers and surprised anyone complained.

One customer, a truck driver working on a project nearby, told the Times, "I tried the strawberry before and it's perfect. That's what it's about. He's willing to work."

You have to wonder: has Wilkey even tried the strawberry?

[image via Tampa Bay Times]

The Wellington Hotel Annex in Albany, N.Y. was treated to a very special goodbye party when it was murdered in plain sight in front of hundreds of onlookers with the exciting funereal touch of colored fireworks. If I were a building, this is how I'd like to go. Take note!!!

The eleven-story hotel was built in the 1920s and has been cleared to make way for a $66 million convention center, the Associated Press reports. After doing some sleuthing, it appears that the Wellington Hotel Annex used to be home to dozens of feral cats who were dubbed Wellies. Mario Wellie, Jane Wellie, and so on and so forth. The cats were cleared out in 2009, so they weren't harmed in the colorful implosion.

Goodbye, Wellington Hotel Annex. May your exciting sendoff inspire other demolition experts to plan the same for future buildings.

Days after ISIS militants released footage of their gruesome beheading of American photojournalist James Wright Foley, Al Jazeera reports Peter Theo Curtis, a US journalist kidnapped in Syria in 2012, has been released to the UN.

According to Al Jazeera, Peter Theo Curtis was abducted in October 2012 from the Turkish town of Antakya, where he planned to enter Syria to teach English. Curtis was reportedly freed and handed over to UN representatives on Sunday after Qatari mediation aided in his release.

From Al Jazeera:

Footage of the the American was released on June 30, showing a disheveled Curtis with long hair and beard, but appearing to be in good health.

Speaking in a video obtained by Al Jazeera, Curtis read from a prepared script stating his name and profession, saying he was a journalist from Boston, Massachusetts.

Commenting on his treatment, Curtis said he "had everything" he needed and "everything has been perfect, food, clothing, even friends now".

Update 4:17 p.m. The AP reports White House national security adviser Susan Rice confirmed that Curtis is currently safe outside of Syria. He was held by an Al Qaeda-connected militant group.

[image via Al Jazeera]

The funeral for Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo. this month, will be held on Monday morning. Michael Brown Sr., the child's father, told a St. Louis radio station that he'd like protestors to take the day off that Monday out of respect for his son.

In an interview with Hot 104.1 in St. Louis, Brown Sr. expressed his desire to have a peaceful day.

Via the Washington Post:

"I would like for no protesting going on," Michael Brown Sr. said during an interview on a St. Louis radio station, according to a Buzzfeed report. "We just want a moment of silence that whole day. Just out of respect for our son."

The White House will be sending three officials to attend Brown's funeral, NPR reports:

Broderick Johnson, chairman of the My Brother's Keeper Task Force, an Obama initiative to empower boys and men of color. Joining Johnson will be Marlon Marshall, deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and Heather Foster, an adviser for the office.

Brown's funeral will be public and held at a baptist church in St. Louis that holds 2,500 people in its main sanctuary and 2,000 people in overflow sections.

[Image via AP]