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North Korea Says It Has Arrested a South Korean NYU Student

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North Korea Says It Has Arrested a South Korean NYU Student

North Korea announced on Saturday that it had arrested a South Korean student for allegedly attempting to illegally enter the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. The prisoner, according to state media, is Joo Won-moon—a 21-year-old permanent resident of the United States and New York University student.

According to the Journal, the North Korean state media said that it had detained Joo in late April when he attempted to cross North Korea’s border with China from the city of Dandong.

The South Korean government has not been able to independently confirm the state’s account, the Journal reports:

The state-run Korean Central News Agency said Mr. Joo had allegedly admitted his entry to North Korea was a serious violation of the law. He is now under investigation, the report said.

A New York University spokesman, John Beckman, told the New York Times that a student named Won Moon Joo was a junior at the Stern School of Business, but he was not taking classes this semester. “The university was unaware of his travels,” Beckman said.


Photo credit: Getty Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.


According to CNN, the death toll from last week’s devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal now

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According to CNN, the death toll from last week’s devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal now stands at 7,040 with another 14,398 injured. “It will be a miracle if anyone is found alive,” a government spokesperson told the network. “But we have not completely given up yet and are continuing to look.”

An Open Letter to My White Grandfather

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An Open Letter to My White Grandfather

I’ve started this letter five times and deleted it five times. Even though we’ve never met I’ve known you all my life. I learned you existed from a letter addressed to someone else. A few months ago, my mom told me you wanted to meet me along with my wife and son. I was surprised. I hear we have some things in common. You love Laphraoig and, like me, tend to overindulge in it. You are slow to recant an opinion. You’re an avid reader of political books, although I imagine our choices here likely differ. But I struggle to understand what meeting you would accomplish. In an earlier draft of this letter, I wrote that I forgave you. But I realized that I was writing what people want to hear in instances like this, not what I actually feel. How do you forgive a forty-year absence?

Although I often want to think of you as a bad person, I don’t. I think of you as a pretty average white man, perhaps a little more openly committed to the myth and illusion of whiteness. In truth, I am angry at what you, and your absence, have represented in my life.

I was four when your letter arrived. My mother was in our small kitchen in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, standing at the counter, crying. I panicked. Seeing your mother cry always rocks you as a child, but for me, it was a physiological danger. We had recently fled the life-threatening violence of my biological father. I associated my mother crying with seeing her get hit or choked or thrown. Sometimes, seeing her cry caused asthma-inducing flashbacks. These attacks were so intense that I was hospitalized repeatedly throughout my childhood. In this case, I went to my mother, asked why she was crying, and tried, with four-year-old clumsiness, to comfort her. My mom was young and inexperienced and told me a lot of things kids should be sheltered from. She told me the letter said my white grandfather refused to meet me—because I’m black. At four, you aren’t supposed to know why your white grandfather hates you. No child should ever have to face that reality.

After my mom told me you wanted to finally meet, I asked her about that letter from 1982. She told me she’d burned it, but wished she hadn’t. In short, the letter said you disapproved of my mother dating my stepfather, who is also black. You knew we were poor; you offered to help. But the help was conditioned on my mother leaving him. Because the letter is ash, I’m not sure what you expected her to do with your half-breed grandchildren. But that letter meant you would rather I not live. Not the actually existing four-year-old me that was watching my mother cry, but your idea of me. You thought I was less than human, dysgenic, non-white.

I would be lying if I said your rejection didn’t influence me. Much of my life has been spent trying to understand how something as trivial as your whiteness could justify the abandonment of family. I couldn’t have known at four, but in my twenties, James Baldwin taught me that this rejection meant more about you. Baldwin also taught me that the “really terrible thing” was that one day I would have to accept you. This letter is me listening to Baldwin.

Your absence taught me, too. It showed me that whiteness is a harsh, brutal, unforgiving force. Whiteness is full of power and dread for its targets. But the powerful are always more fearful, as they have more to lose. Your absence taught me that whiteness has boundaries so fragile, so tenuous, that two little mixed-race kids could threaten your claim. Your belief in whiteness was more important than family. The arrogance encapsulated the letter you sent my mother is really the essence of what it means to be white: the unflinching and unfounded certainty of superiority. You didn’t intend, I’m sure, to teach me this. And it wasn’t a lesson I was eager to learn. But you started teaching me at a young age.

As you know, my step-grandfather passed this past year. That qualifier—step—has never been more inappropriate than in his case. My grandfather’s life, and his care for my brother and me, is a repudiation of every abhorrent caricature of black family life in this country. At the end of the Great Migration he fled the state-sanctioned racial terrorism of Alabama for Pittsburgh’s Black Belt. He was, at the least, a proud Alpha, father, principal, and mentor. When we met my grandfather, around the time we received your letter, he did what generations of black families have done and what most white families haven’t: he adopted and raised us. This was a considerable risk. Here was a poor white woman with two mixed kids, fleeing domestic violence, vying for his son. But for my grandfather the only fact that ever mattered was that we were his grandchildren. Without ever questioning it, he moved us into a trailer next to his house. It was there, in his library, that I discovered The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Native Son, and Invisible Man—works that inspire and nourish still.

I bring up my grandfather not to point out what you’ve missed. Your interest in meeting me implies you have at least some understanding and regret. Rather, I want to highlight something that black people have always known. Race is a sham. A hustle. A joke. White people are fooled by this joke, and in allowing themselves to be fooled, lessen their humanity. You abandoned me in a country that has done everything it could to destroy us, but destroyed a piece of yourself instead.

When I tell white people about your letter, they tend to get self-righteous. Smugly assured that they would never be so crass as to cut off their own kin; they roll with easy condemnation. “I’m one of the good ones,” they think. But America is designed so that most whites are never confronted with the possibility of intermarriage or the reality of black grandchildren. They live in white enclaves, are educated in white schools, pray in white churches, and sleep with white partners comfortably ignorant of the looting, violence, murder and abandonment that made those white enclaves. It is this general blindness, a condition of unenlightened whiteness, that gives these words life: I don’t think of you as a bad person. But I also don’t know where things go from here.

I can see people wondering why I would make something this personal public. But white abandonment has always been public. As I write this, Baltimore is burning with the rage of abandonment. It is not a perfect analogy for your absence, but white America has turned its back on its black family for decades—refusing to provide basic services while pillaging the public purse. Now, reaping the harvest they’ve sown, white America looks on—and blames the kids throwing rocks, not the cops killing black people. But like you and I, black and white America are bound together from the start. White America just refuses to take responsibility for both the white and black children they have helped to create.

Victor Ray is an assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. His research focuses on race and gender inequality.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

Floyd Mayweather Bans Michelle Beadle, Rachel Nichols From Covering Bout

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Floyd Mayweather Bans Michelle Beadle, Rachel Nichols From Covering Bout

In the past year, Michelle Beadle has emerged as one of the most important and independent voices at ESPN. When First Take’s Stephen A. Smith suggested that battered women were guilty of provoking their assailants, it was Beadle who offered the most eloquent and vocal denunciation of Smith’s comments. A relative newcomer to boxing, Beadle joined the HBO Boxing team as a special correspondent for its popular sports magazine telecast, The Fight Game, where she brought a fresh and needed perspective to a sport whose audience and media is overwhelmingly older and male. Beadle has been in Las Vegas all week, covering the Mayweather-Pacquiao superfight for both HBO and ESPN. So why won’t she be at the fight tonight?

Because Floyd Mayweather —unabashed misogynist and unrepentant batterer of women—doesn’t want her there. After the Mayweather camp learned that Beadle had publicly condemned Mayweather for his history of violence against women, they—via their network, the CBS-owned Showtime—denied Beadle a press credential for the fight. Mayweather/Showtime also revoked a press credential to CNN’s Rachel Nichols, who relentlessly grilled Mayweather over his history of domestic violence last year. A source closely connected to these events tells Deadspin that Mayweather’s publicist, Kelly Swanson, told producers there’s “no way” Nichols gets in.

Stop and process this for a moment. Showtime has denied press credentials to two of the most prominent reporters for three of the world’s most important television outlets, including HBO, which is co-producing the fight, and ESPN, which has invested huge chunks of its prime schedule this week promoting the fight in infomercial-like fashion. The network also denied credentials to Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan, presumably due to his connection with Deadspin, and widely-read boxing writer, Steve Kim, who has published a number of articles critical of Mayweather’s history of domestic violence. (ESPN’s only response to the denial of access? Stephen A. Smith complaining on-air that Pacquiao is allowed to wear Cleto Reyes boxing gloves, a complaint that was immediately ridiculed by boxing fans who know Reyes is not only Pacquiao’s signature glove, but one of the largest and most common brands in the sport; you can buy them on freaking Amazon.com).

It wasn’t always this way. At last year’s ESPY’s, Beadle engaged in a friendly interview with Mayweather, even telling the fighter, “I like that you live your life.” It was only after that interview that Beadle learned about the Mayweather’s history of abuse. Then, in a remarkably honest moment, Beadle publicly apologized for the light-hearted way she had handled the interview and pledged not to support the fighter in the future. Just before his pay-per-view showdown with Marcos Maidana in September 2014, Beadle tweeted #BoycottMayweather (joining her ESPN colleague Sarah Spain as the first prominent figures to take that position, which has now been echoed by Keith Olbermann and others). In a discussion on The Fight Game, Beadle more fully explained her refusal to buy the fight:

I didn’t pay for it. I wouldn’t pay for it. I, along with many, many, many, many people – we were aware, somewhat, of his past, that he had a pretty bad past. I think in light of everything that’s happened across the board in the NFL and the comments that Mayweather had, I think more research had been done. Now I am FULLY aware of how bad a past this guy has. So, no, I will not be spending any of my money.

This week, however, signs were all that was going forward as planned. Beadle even shot a promo for her coverage of the fight on ESPN, which spoofed the old video game Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!. According to our source, it was not until yesterday’s weigh-in that Beadle got the first sign that Showtime was considering denying her access to the event because they were not happy with Beadle’s “ways.”

Beadle’s “ways” are precisely what boxing needs. She brings with her a unique perspective and a huge following of viewers who appreciate her self-effacing sense of humor, honesty and willingness to embrace the casual fans who are too often shunned by establishment boxing journalists. Most importantly, she brought a fearless willingness to speak her mind that is often absent from a sport where access is too often permitted only to those reporters who unhesitatingly tow the party line.

While it is Mayweather’s team that is pulling the strings, it’s Showtime that owes the world an explanation. Why have they continued to sanitize their coverage of Mayweather’s history of domestic violence while continuing to unhesitatingly promote other aspects of his outside-the-ring lifestyle? Why did they allow Mayweather to air a one-sided self-produced infomerical in which he denied any responsibility for his convictions? Why are they blackballing important female journalists for having the temerity to question Mayweather about what everyone else seems to recognize is a legitimate topic; even cartoonish mega-shill Stephen A. Smith admitted that he thinks Mayweather is “probably” guilty after watching ESPN’s Outside the Lines coverage. Mayweather has made it clear that his boxing career will end this year, but Swanson’s relationship with the media, and Showtime’s ambitions to be a major player in the boxing world do not. It will be interesting to see how these events will affect them.

ESPN has not responded to a request for comment.

Update (1:49 p.m.): Kelly Swanson is denying the above reports, while it appears another reporter who has covered Mayweather’s domestic violence past, Martin Rogers, has also had his credential denied.

Update (2:45 p.m.): HBO says Mayweather publicist Kelly Swanson isn’t telling the truth, as the network does not have the authority to issue its own credentials.

Update (3:30 p.m.): Michelle Beadle says she has emails proving Mayweather revoked her credentials to cover the fight. ESPN has no say in the matter, as Beadle was in attendance working for HBO.

Update (5:20 p.m.):

Update (7:45 p.m.): Rachel Nichols has released a statement outlining the multiple times she was denied a fight credential.

Have had a bunch of folks asking questions about the Mayweather issue. Here’s what happened: After asking tough questions of Floyd Mayweather on my program, I was not offered press credentials to cover tonight’s fight. In an email dated April 23, I was told I would only be credentialed for the run-up events through the week, but in bold, italic letters the email stated “you do not have any access Saturday to any services or events.” A CNN producer revisited the issue with the Mayweather camp on April 29, confirming to Mayweather’s publicist that I would be in Las Vegas, and the publicist replied that I would still be denied a fight night credential. I was told the same thing when I arrived at the credential office in person on May 1, by two separate officials, in front of several other people. It doesn’t surprise me that now, after facing significant backlash, the Mayweather camp has reversed its position. But despite this, and other outside parties generously offering me their seats, I will not attend the fight. I will also not let fear of retaliation prevent me from asking the tough questions the public deserves answers to in the future.

Daniel Roberts (IronMikeGallego) is a longtime boxing fan and occasional contributor to Deadspin and SportsOnEarth. He can be found on Twitter @ironmikegallego or at ironmikegallego@gmail.com.

Photo credits: Associated Press

Sheryl Sandberg's Husband Dies Suddenly

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Sheryl Sandberg's Husband Dies Suddenly

Sheryl Sandberg’s husband Dave Goldberg has died suddenly, according to a post on Facebook written by his brother Robert. Dave’s Facebook profile has been converted to a memorial page.

Robert requested that friends share their memories of Dave on his Facebook page. “No words can express the depth of loss we feel, but we want his children to learn how much he meant to all of you,” Robert wrote.

“In lieu of donations, we want to celebrate his life in a manner that respects the family’s privacy as they cope with this tragic, life changing event: Sheryl, their children, and our family would be grateful if people would post their memories and pictures of Dave to his Facebook profile.”

The post was shared by Mark Zuckerberg to his own profile page. “I hope friends will join me in celebrating his life by sharing your memories of Dave on his proflle [sic.], as his brother Rob suggests,” Zuckerberg added.

Goldberg was the CEO of SurveyMonkey. Sheryl Sandberg is the COO of Facebook.

Update, 4:30 p.m. – SurveyMonkey has confirmed Goldberg’s death, but did not disclose the cause, the New York Times reports. Goldberg was 47.


Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

A Moment of Bliss on the Vegas Strip That Soon Will Fade Away

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A Moment of Bliss on the Vegas Strip That Soon Will Fade Away

An old man sitting on the wall outside the MGM Grand yesterday and smoking a cigarette regarded the protesters streaming by dubiously. “Hey, they say don’t hit women,” he said out loud to no one. “A woman hit me, I’m hittin her back!”

He cackled, and continued smoking his cigarette in the sun.

At noon yesterday, crowds began streaming into the MGM Grand to get their seats for the official weigh-in, the last big event before The Biggest Fight We Have Seen In Our Lifetime. At the same time, about four dozen protesters—moms with young kids, Mexican working men, young women, all types—made their way out front of the MGM Grand carrying hand-lettered signs to protest the fact that Floyd Mayweather, this weekend’s biggest attraction, beats up women. “Don’t hit women! Keep it in the ring!” they chanted as they trudged down Tropicana Avenue in the oppressive heat.

“Haters,” muttered a tween girl passing by in the opposite direction.

A Moment of Bliss on the Vegas Strip That Soon Will Fade Away

The crowd of protesters, thrusting their “Why should we root for a monster?” signs in the air, passed knot after knot of 20-something bros in swimsuits carrying beers. The bros walked past in silence. Eventually, the group settled on the sidewalk to the south of the MGM’s lobby, directly across the street from the Hooters Hotel & Casino. “Put up your dukes! Stop the abuse!” they yelled at passing cars, as the wide-eyed Hooters owl looked down on them with an unblinking stare.

Some TV cameras showed up to the protest, but they were of the general news variety. All the sports reporters were inside at the weigh-in. At one point a group of four guys climbed out of an SUV just down the sidewalk, one of them wearing a “TBE” t-shirt proclaiming Mayweather The Best Ever. “The champ is here!” he screamed at the protesters, making the sign of a championship belt around his waist. “The champ is here!”

The protesters should have marched right into the MGM Grand’s lobby and made security throw them out. Good publicity. They also would have had the opportunity to gaze upon the MGM’s lobby the day before The Big Fight, which was one of the most truly remarkable clusterfucks I have had the privilege of laying eyes on. If Floyd Mayweather is your enemy, then here is where you face his army. From the front desk to the full sized blue and red promotional boxing ring to the OFFICIAL fight merchandise store to the casino entrance, the entire garish marble rotunda was a mass of TMT shirts and TMT hats and groups of muscled young men with their hands on the small of the back of women teetering precariously in heels, and all of them were posing for selfies. Anyone who was in any way associated with Floyd Mayweather or a fan of Floyd Mayweather or just an aspiring world-class egomaniac had descended upon this spot on earth at this moment to commune with the gods of self-expression. One man who appeared to be in his fifties leaned against a slot machine as conspicuously as possible, peering at everyone who passed through dark black shades. He was wearing a black TMT t-shirt and a lanyard around his neck held a credential that read “Mayweather-Canelo VIP.” That credential would be nineteen months old. But there’s no reason to squander a perfectly good way to advertise that one was once a VIP.

A Moment of Bliss on the Vegas Strip That Soon Will Fade Away

By Friday, all along the Vegas strip, there was a noticeable uptick in the sort of giddy energy and repulsive dirtbag glamour that one associates with big fights. Dudes shadowboxed in the mirror at the hotel gym. A short man weaved through the crowd at the MGM flashing diamond rings for sale out of his palm. Even the shit hole Excalibur, where I am staying, has filled up with a crowd that is markedly younger and more hyper than usual. A Caesars Palace-level crowd, at least. That means Caesars has filled up with a Cosmpolitan-level crowd, and the glamour at the Cosmopolitan by now must be staggering. (In fact, the most glamorous group at the Cosmopolitan last night was the cadre of young female dealers in identical tight black dresses with semicircles cut out on the front, perfectly framing their identical cleavage. They all looked bored. If this is all that beauty gets you in life, it’s a raw deal.)

The Tropicana, directly across from the MGM Grand, is doing its part to balance the scales of fandom by turning its entire front lawn into a grand Manny Pacquiao ad, sponsored by Nike. There is a boxing ring lined with Manny pictures, and all the hedges have been lined with enormous black banners emblazoned with slogans like “You said you couldn’t lead your people with your first and your heart,” and “They said you couldn’t make history. Do what they say you can’t.” Followed by a three-foot-long Nike swoosh. The mawkishness levels are off the charts. Nike may find that boxing, a sport of death and pain, does not mix well with this sort of can-do cheerleading in the long run. For now, though, the Pacquiao fans are the most enthusiastic people in town. “Ayyyyy, that nigga Manny Pacquiao walked right past us!” one guy fresh in from Cali said into his cell phone as he strode down the sidewalk. “Hell yeah! He’s hella short.”

As night fell, portions of the Vegas strip proceeded to become more and more like Freaknik. The two blocks between Planet Hollywood and FatBurger grew thick with crews of roving drunk dudes and hoochies, shouting and bumping and laughing and stumbling. The daytime version of Vegas tourists began to flee. A few lone pear-shaped white mom types appeared to be hustling back to their hotels as fast as possible. At a bus stop, a drunk girl attempted to throw a bottle into a metal trash can from ten feet away; she missed, the bottle shattering all over a woman waiting for the bus, who looked traumatized.

Two women who make a living by covering themselves in an outfit made only of body paint and posing for pictures drew a crowd of drunk guys so thick and trembling that I feared for their safety, though they didn’t seem bothered in the least. It all had the atmosphere of a happy party that could slide into unbridled chaos at any moment. In 1996, Tupac was shot to death a few blocks away from here after a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM. The Vegas strip on fight weekend remains a properly cinematic place to get killed to this day. Still, no level of barely-restrained anarchy can alter the street’s fundamental hustle. A smiling man with dreads still played the steel drums on the sidewalk; a man in zombie makeup still crawled out of a planter in search of tips.



In just a few hours, fans will begin entering the MGM Grand Garden Arena for the first fights. A few hours after that, the pay-per-view will begin live on Showtime and HBO. I do not have a press pass to get into the arena. Nor do I have a press pass for the big warehouse where the lesser reporters will be stuck watching the fight on TV. Nor was I fast enough to purchase a ticket for a viewing party at any of the ten MGM resort properties on the Vegas strip, which have the exclusive rights to showing the fight. They all sold out by yesterday. I was reduced to paying a scalper $200 for a ticket to watch the fight broadcast right here at the beautiful Excalibur, amid the fake King Arthur’s Court furnishings. I think it’s what Tupac would have wanted.

If you like, you can read an encyclopedia’s worth of prefight saturation coverage about Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather. You can read about their upbringings, and their families, and their trainers, and their mild trash talk. You can read the good vs. evil narratives, and the think pieces about What This Fight Represents. But the reality is that this fight represents one thing above all else: two of the best guys, fighting. It is that that has produced the whole shit show in which I now sit. Here is a secret for you about boxers: the most interesting thing about them is their boxing. Everything else is just colorful wrapping paper. Some boxers are colorful and some boxers are boring and some boxers are Christian philanthropists and some boxers are loathsome woman-beaters. The same is true for all groups of people. None of that is capable of creating the frenzy that is The Big Fight. Muhammad Ali has had dozens of hagiographies written about him and is considered a political hero; none of that would have happened had he not been able to fight. Mike Tyson is an object of public fascination to this day; had he not been able to fight, he would have been just another poor man in Brooklyn.

You do not have to like these men who are fighting tonight. You do not have to enjoy this thoroughly ridiculous social spectacle that has descended upon this crass and artificial city in the desert. You do not have to like boxing itself. But you should know that what drives all of this, at its core, is the expectation of the highest expression of a certain elemental human activity. A fight. It can be beautiful, if you let it. Enjoy it. Tomorrow, this will all be gone.

[Image via AP]

4.2 Magnitude Earthquake Rattles Michigan

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4.2 Magnitude Earthquake Rattles Michigan

According to CBS Detroit, the United States Geological Survey has confirmed that a 4.2 magnitude earthquake struck nine miles southeast of Kalamazoo, Michigan at around 12:25 p.m. today. No injuries or damage have been reported.

Michigan’s most powerful earthquake on record occurred in 1947, when a 4.6 magnitude quake shook an area close to today’s activity.

Last week, the USGS released a report acknowledging that fracking-related wastewater disposal was likely responsible for the dramatic increase in seismic activity in the central and eastern U.S. Between 1973 and 2008, the region averaged 21 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater a year. In 2014 alone, 659 such earthquakes were recorded.

[Image via USGS]

Black Women In Missouri 'Wonder' If Their Babies Were Stolen 

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In April a viral video showed 50-year-old Melanie Gilmore reunited with her birth mother, 76-year-old Zella Jackson Price. The video, featured by nearly every news organization, showed an emotional reunion between Gilmore, who is deaf, and Price who believed her child had died immediately after birth. But now it looks as though the story isn’t as sweet as initially reported.

The AP reports:

The suspicions arose from the story of Zella Jackson Price, who was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis. Hours later, she was told that her daughter had died, but she never saw a body or a death certificate.

No one is sure who was responsible, but Price’s daughter ended up in foster care, only to resurface almost 50 years later. Melanie Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Ore., has said that her foster parents always told her she was given up by her birth mother.

Price is now asking the city of St. Louis and the state to open an investigation. In a letter to Missouri governor Jay Nixon, Price’s attorney said he suspects a “hospital coordinated a scheme ‘to steal newborns of color for marketing in private adoption transactions.’”

After Price’s reunion video went viral, a number of other St. Louis women came forward with similar stories. The women - all black, poor and young - recounted nurses at Homer G. Phillips Hospital telling them their child had died, yet never receiving birth or death certificates. The AP notes that this was a violation of “normal protocol.”

Price’s lawyer indicated that he will file a lawsuit on behalf of the women. The women are not seeking money, but rather state-issued birth and death certificates.


Iowa Declares State of Emergency As Bird Flu Outbreak Spreads

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Iowa Declares State of Emergency As Bird Flu Outbreak Spreads

Governor Terry Branstad declared a state of emergency for Iowa on Friday, citing risks from the rapidly spreading bird flu outbreak, Reuters reports. The announcement was made after officials identified the virus’ presence at four new poultry farms. Iowa is the third state to declare a state of emergency, after Minnesota and Wisconsin did so in April.

According to Reuters, Iowa is the United States’ top egg producer. Nationally, the outbreak “either has led or will lead” to the extermination of as many as 21 million chickens and turkeys. More than 16 million birds have been infected in Iowa alone, the Wall Street Journal reports.

From Reuters:

The measure expands the efforts of the state’s emergency response plan, and authorizes various state entities access to additional resources, supplies and equipment to track and contain the influenza outbreak. It also allows for the removal and disposal of infected animals on either public or private lands and lifts weight restrictions on trucks hauling culled flocks, among other things.

In addition, the action allows the state and local law enforcement to set up checkpoints and road blocks anywhere in the state, including areas outside of quarantined farms.

The declaration is effective immediately and will remain in effect at least through the end of May. The Journal reports that, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no human infections have thus far been identified, and that this strain poses a very low risk to humans.


Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Says the FEC is Broken as Hell

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Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Says the FEC is Broken as Hell

The chair of the Federal Election Commission, Ann M. Ravel, has said in an interview with the New York Times that the agency charged with regulating the way money is raised and spent in elections is not capable of curtailing abuse.

“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ravel told the Times. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the FEC is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”

The 2016 presidential campaign is expected to produce upwards of $10 billion in political spending, the Times reports. The Koch brothers alone have promised to raise $889 million. Watchdog groups have reportedly complained to the FEC that potential candidates like Jeb Bush and Martin O’Malley are raising millions of dollars without having officially declared.

But the FEC—created 40 years ago, after the Watergate scandal—has six commissioners who regularly find themselves divided 3-to-3 along party lines. The partisan divide is so deep and so broad that the commissioners cannot even agree over which rules to enforce.

Fines assessed by the commission dropped last year to $135,813 from $627,408 in 2013. According to the Times, the Republicans say this is because more people are playing by the rules.

“What’s really going on,” Ravel said, “is that the Republican commissioners don’t want to enforce the law, except in the most obvious cases. The rules aren’t being followed, and that’s destructive to the political process.”


Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Councilman Pees While Wearing Hot Mic, Totally Doesn't Wash Hands

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In a (presumably unintentional) tribute to HBO’s The Jinx, a city councilman in Georgetown, Texas recently took a bathroom break while wearing a live microphone. Unlike Jinx star Robert Durst, however, the councilman did not seemingly confess to several murders and just peed instead, to the obvious delight of the city’s mayor pro tem.

What’s most notable, really, is what the councilman didn’t do: Wash his goddamn hands.

C’mon, guy. Even if it’s just number one, you still gotta wash them puppies.

[h/t Mediaite]

Weir Watch: Flower Mohawk With Mint Julep Garnish

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

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Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Click herein for our updated list of athletes who may or may not be drunk at Mayweather-Pacquiao. Above, it’s Russell Westbrook hanging out with Jon Voight. Below, other people!

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Who's Drunkest At Mayweather-Pacquiao?

Time Warner Cable Had a 12-Hour Wait for Customer Support on Fight Night

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Time Warner Cable Had a 12-Hour Wait for Customer Support on Fight Night

If you were hoping to watch the matchup between horrible man Floyd Mayweather and the less horrible Manny Pacquiao, it’s possible you had some trouble with your cable provider tonight. And if you were a Time Warner subscriber, customer support would get around to you sometime the morning after the fight.

The following screenshot comes from a friend’s Facebook page, who posted it after having trouble ordering the fight through pay-per-view before it began:

Time Warner Cable Had a 12-Hour Wait for Customer Support on Fight Night

It’s unclear whether this was a standard or average wait for other TWC customers, but a look at the notoriously terrible company’s Twitter help line shows you a world of horror. No matter what, a 755 minute wait is over twelve hours to complain about a thing you pay for that doesn’t work. Why not just take customers to a screen that said “FUCK YOU” in giant red letters?

Screenshot via Luke Kelly-Clyne

NYPD Officer Shot in the Face in Queens

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NYPD Officer Shot in the Face in Queens

On Saturday, a plainclothes New York City police officer in an unmarked car was shot in the face after driving up to a man to question him, the New York Times reports. The officer is in critical but stable condition.

According to the Times, Officer Brian Moore, 25, was shot in the left cheek—the bullet went out the right side of his head—at around 6:15 p.m. on 212th Street in Queens Village. Commissioner Bill Bratton said Moore and his partner Erik Jansen approached a man who was “walking and adjusting an object in his waistband” and began questioning him.

The man fired at the officers before running off, police said. After a 90-minute search, a suspect—Demetrius Blackwell, 35—was apprehended. As of late Saturday, police were still looking for the gun.

Other officers moved Moore to a squad car and drove him to Jamaica Hospital, where the New York Post reports he is in a medically-induced coma.

Update, 11:40 a.m. – Blackwell will be arraigned Sunday on two counts of attempted murder of a police officer, the Associated Press reports.


Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.


Report: Cop Dismissed Freddie Gray's Pleas for Help as "Jailitis"

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Report: Cop Dismissed Freddie Gray's Pleas for Help as "Jailitis"

During the 45-minute ride in a police van that killed Freddie Gray, an officer mocked the 25-year-old’s requests for medical attention as a case of “jailitis,” a new report from The Baltimore Sun reveals.

On Saturday, The Sun published exclusive details about the police investigation into Gray’s death, including the fact that the camera in the van was broken and the unidentified officer’s suggestion that the dead man was faking his illness.

The paper agreed not to release the information until Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby had decided whether to prosecute the officers involved. On Friday, Mosby charged six officers with crimes ranging from false imprisonment to second degree murder for their role in Gray’s death.

According to The Sun, police investigators had not expected the state’s attorney’s office—who conducted a “parallel investigation” using city sheriff’s deputies—to act so quickly.

[Image via AP Images//h/t The Daily Mail]

“As my life coach has explained to me, however, positives can’t exist without negatives, so here are

Baltimore Mayor Lifts 10 P.M. Curfew, Effective Immediately

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Baltimore Mayor Lifts 10 P.M. Curfew, Effective Immediately

On Sunday morning, Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced via Twitter she was lifting the city’s 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, effective immediately.

The curfew was set by Rawlings-Blake in response to rioting that followed Freddie Gray’s funeral and had been in effect since Tuesday. In the city’s original announcement, the emergency curfew was stated to last until May 4 “unless rescinded or extended by Order of the Mayor.”

[Image via Getty Images//h/t NBC News]

Italian Vessels Rescue Thousands Migrating from Libya

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Italian Vessels Rescue Thousands Migrating from Libya

The Italian Coast Guard, aided by commercial vessels, rescued at least 16 boats of migrants off the coast of Libya on Sunday, the Associated Press reports. Ten bodies were recovered in the course of three different rescue operations.

According to the AP, smugglers have been taking advantage of calm seas this weekend to send packed ships across the Mediterranean. Officials say some 4,100 migrants have been rescued altogether on Saturday and Sunday, Reuters reports.

An ongoing investigation by an Italian court has found that smugglers make an average of $90,000 from each boat they launch. The Interior Ministry predicts that arrivals to Italy will increase in 2015 to 200,000 from 170,000.

Reuters reports that European Union leaders agreed to triple funding for the EU Triton sea patrol mission last month after 900 people drowned when a migrant boast capsized.

At least 1,750 people have died so far this year trying to cross the Mediterranean from Libya, according to the BBC. Last year, 96 people died in the same period.


Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Floyd Mayweather Is A Coward

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Floyd Mayweather Is A Coward

I should have known better. I should have known that the fight would suck. I have lived long enough to know that the whole point of spending $100 on a pay-per-view boxing match is so you can complain about spending $100 on a pay-per-view boxing match. There were people back in the day who used to bitch about Mike Tyson knocking out people too quickly, which seems like a groundless complaint now after watching Mayweather bore the world to death. Mike Tyson either knocked you out, or got knocked out trying. Floyd Mayweather is his diametric opposite.

Yes, he won the fight. He threw more punches and he landed more of them and he was the superior boxer, I guess. He won in the same way some neutral zone trap hockey team bleeds out another team. He clearly built his fighting style around with a calculated strategy of gaming the compubox system so that he gets credit for even the most cursory of punches. And he gets away with it because he always looks as if he can do more. It always feels like there’s some grand fusillade of punches in him that he never ends up having to deploy. He looks like he could unload if he ever felt like it, and so he gets an awful lot of credit for all the things he could do but is too shrewd to risk doing. The only time he ever goes on the offensive is when he’s fighting a woman.

To watch Floyd Mayweather box is to witness an elaborate exercise in self-preservation. There’s not much passion. There’s certainly not much flair. There’s just Floyd moving around, doing his best to preserve a rote decision, and preserve the potential rematch, and preserve an unbeaten record that holds more historic value to him that it does anyone else. And yes, his style works, if only in the most cynical sense. Really, it’s the perfect boxing strategy for a man who is a documented wife-beater and shitbag: always doing just enough to get away with it.

The bedrock principle of this little site is that sports and morality have no connection at all. And I believe in that. But Floyd Mayweather is a near universally agreed-upon villain, and so it was hard to watch him dick around in the ring last night—turning what should have been a big fight into an extended sparring exercise—and not think, “Hey, that guy beats up women and fights like a fucking coward.” The art, in this case, is nearly impossible to separate from its creator. I know Floyd is a coward, and so I can’t help but thinking he fights the same way. Always ducking. Always running. The man will never pick a fight he knows he might lose.

Photo credit: Al Bello/Getty Images

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