The New York Times reports that from January 1 to May 31, 540 rapes were reported in New York City. That number represents an eight percent increase from last year. In addition to the rise in reported rapes, misdemeanor sex crimes—which includes everything from unwanted touching to being groped on the subway—have increased 18%.

While some have attributed the uptick in rape and sexual assault to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to end intrusive and discriminatory police practices, advocates attribute the rising numbers to better reporting practices and changes in reporting protocol. They point to the grimmest of silver linings as evidence: in the vast majority of rapes reported in the city, the victim knows their attacker.

The Times reports:

According to national data from the Centers for Disease Control in 2012, the rate of stranger rape as a percentage of all rape is 14 percent; in New York City this year, the rate is half that. Of the 540 reported rapes, 39 were committed by someone the victim did not know, according to the police.

It is not hard to see why mining good news out of escalating sexual-assault figures would present a challenge for the department. But when you talk to those ministering to rape survivors, their tone is uniformly nonalarmist; they attribute the rising numbers to an uptick in the reporting of the crimes. And this, in turn, is regarded as a result of more concerted outreach, much of it in poor communities — where Emma Sulkowicz, the mattress-bearing Columbia University activist, has not attained the celebrity she has managed elsewhere — and much of it conducted by the Police Department, which has worked with hospital emergency rooms to encourage reporting.

So New York isn’t seeing an actual increase in the number of rapes and sexual assaults committed in the city, rather what they’re seeing is a rise in the number of them reported. That rise is the direct result of concerted effort to make reporting easier for victims.

Images via Getty.

The New York Post has found that a popular memoir, framed as anthropological study of life on the Upper East Side, is riddled with errors and—perhaps—fabrications. The book is by Wednesday Martin, “whose real first name is Wendy.” Oh, dear.

Authorities in Austin say they’re currently investigating a viral video showing officers taking the phone of a man filming police and then pepper-spraying him, KTBC News reports.

According to the witness who recorded the video, the incident took place early Sunday morning in Austin’s Sixth Street entertainment district. From NBC News:

The witness told NBC News said he he saw a lone police officer push through the crowd and tackle a single person. In the video’s caption the poster had said the person who was tackled looked “a little young to be drinking.”

After that person was arrested, “police pushed all back and started kicking people too close. Pepper spray/deterrent was used on bystander who was filming the incident, doing nothing,” the witness told NBC News.

On Sunday, officials told the network that “the Austin Police Department is aware of this incident, and they are conducting a review to determine if the officer’s conduct is compliant with our policy.”

Controversy abounds in the United Kingdom, where reports emerged over the weekend that Sylvie-Agnes Bermann, the French ambassador, was insulted by an offer of tea and biscuits from Hilary Benn, the new shadow cabinet’s foreign secretary.

“Madame is very big on etiquette and exporting civilized values around the world,” an anonymous source in the French foreign ministry in Paris told the Mail on Sunday. “If you visit the Elyseé Palace, you’re likely to get a cordon bleu meal and vintage wine dating back to the time of Napoleon. There is no reason why the English can’t try and match this.” True—it’s a simple enough request.

But! The English have no time for such Continental decadence. “It was incredible. Hilary’s team could not have been more polite but the French kicked up a fuss because they were served biscuits,” another source told the Mail. “They may have Moet and caviar at the French Embassy, but not in the House of Commons—certainly not with Hilary Benn.” Certainly not!

In an editorial, the Independent tried to make peace:

Mr Benn, it seems, takes after his father in possessing impeccable manners and a taste for tea (Tony famously used to quaff it by the pint mug, and was also teetotal). Mme Bermann, equally validly, and equally polite, believes in cordon bleu and fine wine. Both of the left, Mr Benn represents a fine non-conformist, even Roundheaded approach to life, while Sylvie-Agnès seems the champagne socialist type. There is room for both in the corridors of power, and room for both in our European Union. Vive la différence, as they say over there, over tea.

A spokesman for the French embassy denied the affair altogether. “These allegations are pure invention and completely false,” the spokesman told the Independent. “It was an interesting meeting that took place during the afternoon but nothing was said about the biscuits whatsoever.”

Perhaps nothing needed to be said, monsieur spokesman.

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

On Sunday, singer Ariana Grande posted a statement on Twitter discussing a range of feminist topics, from the objectification of women to the persistence of misogyny, closing her message with a quotation from women’s liberation leader Gloria Steinem.

pic.twitter.com/ifMzCfMA9Y

June 7, 2015

The statement began by explaining why Grande refused to be defined as former boyfriend Big Sean’s “ex” and criticizing society’s treatment of women as the property of men.

“I... do not. belong. to anyone. but myself,” wrote Grande. “and neither do you.”

Grande also decried the sexual double standards men and women are held to, writing, “If a woman has a lot of sex (or any sex for that matter).... she’s a ‘slut.’ If a man has sex..... HE’S. A. STUD. a BOSSSSSS. a KING.”

Perhaps most importantly, however, Grande’s message identified the fight for sexual equality as an on-going struggle requiring solidarity.

“Gloria Steinem published an article in 1969 titled ‘After Black Power, Women’s Liberation,’” wrote Grande, “and 46 years later... we’re still not quite there yet!”

[Image via Getty Images]

The McKinney, Texas officer placed on leave after pulling his gun on unarmed teenagers has been identified as Corporal Eric Casebolt. Casebolt has apparently deleted his Twitter and Linkedin accounts, but what appears to be his Youtube profile—and, with it, a video playlist titled “Police training”—remains.

Heavy.com pulled photos from Casebolt’s Linkedin before he deleted it that seem to verify his identity as the officer in the video. The same handle used for the Youtube profile (“decase73”) was, per the Google cache, in use until recently by someone also identifying himself as Eric Casebolt on Twitter.

The McKinney Police Department did not immediately return a call for comment.

Decase73’s Youtube playlist features a dozen videos with titles like “Man Attacks Baltimore Police Officer,” “Man Sucker-Punches Cop Gets Kicked in the Face,” and “Chief tells the TRUTH that Black People don’t want to hear.” All would appear to reflect a mindset that police officers are entitled to use any and all force necessary to subjugate those they ostensibly protect and serve.

Yesterday, the video of Casebolt manhandling a teenage girl and pointing his gun at two boys was added to the playlist.

Image via Youtube. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

The past decade has seen New York City go from a city with an economically mixed landscape to a city in which the rich have burst forth into every last neighborhood. Except three.

The Community Service Society of New York has produced a study of how rents have changed in every neighborhood in NYC between the years of 2002 and 2014. Unsurprisingly, the largest increases have come in neighborhoods that have, in the past decade, gone from Places Most White People Are Scared to Go To to Places Most White People Are Scared to Go To Without Reservations Because the Brunch Lines Can Be Absolutely Insane. Harlem rents were up by 90%; Bed-Stuy rents rose by 63%. Citywide, the number of apartments affordable to low-income New Yorkers declined by close to 45%

In fact, over the past 12 years rents have increased in every single NYC neighborhood—except for three. It is true, fellow urbanites: there are three neighborhoods in this gentrifying city that are actually cheaper than they were the year that Khia dropped “My Neck, My Back.”

Without further ado, we hereby reveal the LEAST gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City:

• Canarsie, Brooklyn (-1%)
  
• Bay Ridge, Brooklyn (-3%)
  
• South Shore, Staten Island (-5%)

See you there!

[Photo via Flickr; chart via CSSNY]

Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

Katy Perry has registered a new song with her music publisher, BMI, and it is entitled “1984.” Could this be her rumored answer to Taylor Swift’s instant classic diss track, “Bad Blood,” perhaps written with their mutual ex, racist-dick-owner John Mayer? Hmm!

“1984.” A clue? Katy Perry was born in 1984. Her former bestie/mortal enemy, Taylor, named her latest album after her own birth-year, 1989. Coincidence? Shade? Imitation: the sincerest and creepiest expression of wanting to murder a rival and wear her skin to an award show? Perhaps, perhaps.

Mayer’s name doesn’t appear in the credits alongside those of “1984” songwriters Dallas Austin, Andreas Carlsson (who co-wrote “Waking Up in Vegas”) and Tokio Nazarene. Maybe he helped write it on the downlow, feeding Katy details about Taylor from their brief, failed relationship in 2010? The people who make things up for HollywoodLife would like this delicious rumor to be true.

Alternate theory, though, Occam’s Razor-style: What if Katy Perry has written a magnum opus about our modern, Orwellian life under surveillance, inspired by the novel 1984 and the chilling revelations of ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden? War Is Peace. Ignorance Is Strength. That sort of thing.

Just think about it. She’s completely capable, based on her past oeuvre. And knowing that she’s got the “Waking Up in Vegas” team behind her, does any other explanation even make sense? No. That has to be it.

[h/t HollywoodLife, Photo: Getty Images]

Earlier this year, Charles Manson called off his engagement to a 27-year-old woman named “Star” when her cunning plot to display his corpse after his death was revealed. (Hey, even Manson has standards.) But a surprising number of other famous criminals have made it to the altar while behind bars.

There’s a term to describe a person who is attracted to criminals: hybristophiliac. Not to presume to diagnose anyone of anything, but this condition likely applies to many of the women on this list. According to Psychology Today:

Hybristophilia was defined by the sexologist Professor John Money as a sexual paraphilia in which an individual derives sexual arousal and pleasure from having a sexual partner who is known to have “committed an outrage or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery.”

This type of paraphilic behaviour is sometimes colloquially known as ‘Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome.’ In some cases, the person who is the focus of the sexual desire is someone who has been imprisoned. In some cases, the hybristophile may urge and coerce their partner to commit a crime. In other cases, the hybritophile may contact someone who is already in prison that they do not know except by reputation and/or what the have read or seen in the media.

For instance, it is well known that serial killers — particularly those who have received lots of media publicity — receive lots of fan mail from female admirers (some of who are likely to be genuine hybristophiles) ... Compared to other paraphilic behaviours, hybristophilia is quite unusual in that it is more common in women than in men.

1. Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez

Richard Ramirez received a death sentence in 1989, four years after he went on a rampage up and down California, committing 13 murders, 11 sexual assaults, five attempted murders, and 14 burglaries. He claimed to worship Satan and made proclamations like this in open court:

“I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all.”

Despite the brutality of his crimes, he attracted fangirls galore, including a woman who attended his trial and showered him with letters after. Eventually, and despite being confined to San Quentin’s death row, Ramirez married her; not long after, A Los Angeles Times journalist made these observations about their relationship:

[Ramirez] had more than his share of female groupies.

Among them was journalist Doreen Lioy, who had seen his mug shot on TV and perceived what she called his “vulnerability.”

They fell in love through prison Plexiglass and were allowed to touch – and marry – in 1996.

In the inmate visiting room, it was common to see the newlyweds nuzzling while they enjoyed vending-machine snacks.

Ardently devoted to him, she visited him four times a week and was often among the first in the visiting line. She made it a point to pack breath mints, explaining: “So I can be able to kiss with confidence.”

When people pointed out the strangeness of her choice of spouses, she rolled her eyes.

“Hometown girl makes bad,” she would say.

Another Los Angeles Times story described how Doreen first became attracted to a serial killer:

“This is a feeling that began for me as long ago as that Friday, Aug. 30, 1985, the night before he was arrested and police broke into the television show I was watching to broadcast his picture.

Looking back, I see it was a turning point for me. They showed his mug shot in the middle of ‘Dallas,’ and I saw something in his eyes. Something that captivated me. It wasn’t as if I knew him. But there was something in his eyes . . . maybe the vulnerability, I don’t really know.”

Though they were not allowed to have conjugal visits, the marriage continued for some time. In 1997, Doreen Ramirez told CNN:

“He’s kind, he’s funny, he’s charming. I think he’s a really great person. He’s my best friend; he’s my buddy.”

There were rumors that the pair split up at some point (this San Francisco Chronicle story on San Quentin groupies, written in 2005, notes that she hadn’t been seen visiting the prison in some time), but the marriage was certainly ended in June 2013, when Ramirez died of natural causes in Marin General Hospital.

2. Charles “Tex” Watson

Manson, who was actually married a couple of times prior to becoming internationally notorious, may not have ended up taking the vows in prison, but another Family member who was an active participant in the 1969 murder spree did: Charles “Tex” Watson, Manson’s “lieutenant for killing” who was said to have announced “I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s business” upon bursting into Sharon Tate’s Cielo Drive mansion.

Watson wasn’t part of the sensational trial chronicled in prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s book Helter Skelter; he left California for his native Texas after the killings, where he was arrested and fought extradition for months. When his time in court finally came, in 1971 — with Bugliosi once again prosecuting — Watson was convicted of charges that included seven counts of first-degree murder. He was handed a death sentence, later commuted to life when California laws briefly changed.

Behind bars, Watson found religion, and he also found a wife, Kristen Joan Svega, whom he married in 1979; she began sending letters to him after reading his prison-penned autobiography. They divorced in 2003, but not before having four children together, born before California ended conjugal visits for prisoners with life sentences in 1995.

3. Susan Atkins

On a related note, Tex Watson’s fellow Manson Family member/convicted murderer Susan Atkins also got married in prison — twice, actually — as Rolling Stone reports:

[Atkins] married eccentric self-described multi-millionaire Donald Lee Laisure — or Lai$ure, as he preferred it spelled — in a 1981 ceremony at the California Institution for Women in Frontera, California. Atkins had their marriage annulled soon after, when she reportedly learned that he wasn’t as rich as he had claimed and that he had been previously married some 35 times. In 1987, she tied the knot again, to Harvard law student James Whitehouse, who was 15 years her junior. They remained together until her death in 2009.

Whitehouse still runs Atkins’ website.

4. and 5. Erik and Lyle Menendez

After the Menendez Brothers became a national obsession thanks to Court TV’s broadcast of their trial, it almost made sense that the young, photogenic duo — convicted of killing their parents to hasten their multi-million dollar inheritances — would attract admirers.

Despite a matching pair of life sentences, both Erik and Lyle Menendez have gotten hitched; Lyle’s done it twice. Erik married wife Tammi in 1998; sources vary, but their wedding cake was either a vending-machine chocolate bar or a Twinkie. (She had a troubled past, including a previous husband who committed suicide after admitting he was abusing Tammi’s teenaged daughter, his stepdaughter). In 2005 she released a book, They Said We’d Never Make It: My Life With Erik Menendez, and went on MSNBC to discuss her unorthodox marriage with host Dan Abrams.

DAN ABRAMS: All right, Tammi, we will get into the legal issues in a moment but first just take us through this for a moment. People are going to look at you and they‘re going to say there is an attractive young woman who is marrying a guy behind bars for life. Why?

TAMMI MENENDEZ: Right. Right. Well, with Erik, I never expected it. You know I wrote one letter to him and he wrote back and I went to visit him in prison and our relationship developed. And I didn‘t set out to have a relationship with Erik, but it‘s something that happened. And you know, it‘s a very good relationship that I have with him.

More insight, a little later in the interview:

ABRAMS: Does it bother you that he admittedly shot his parents? And we‘ll talk about the issues that come up on appeal as to why, but, there is no question, it seems, that he and his brother shot his parents. Does that in and of itself trouble you?

MENENDEZ: It troubles me, but I do know the person that Erik is and I know his heart, I know his soul, and I do know what happened that night. And I do understand. I believe that within everybody put in certain circumstances, you will, you know, be able to kill somebody. I mean I do believe that Erik is a very good person. And you know now we‘re speaking out to try to you know get that out in the public, so...

Also in 2005, People did a follow-up piece on Erik’s life in jail. Tammi featured heavily in the narrative, which also included this bit of information:

There is also reason to suspect that Menendez’s marriage has contributed to a cooling of his relationship with Lyle, who is now in Mule Creek State Prison in lone, Calif., and is himself on his second prison marriage. According to Tammi, the brothers, who still correspond, have drifted apart partly because “I wasn’t getting along with Lyle’s wife,” who briefly lived with her.

Lyle — who’s doing his time in the same facility as Tex Watson, Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California — first married “pen pal and former model” Anna Eriksson in 1997; they divorced a year later. In 2003, he married Rebecca Sneed, a “magazine editor who has since become an attorney.” A 2012 People article noted that visits (non-conjugal, natch) from his wife are a high point of his prison routine, which also consists of “shooting hoops, lifting weights and catching bugs for his pet lizard.”

6. Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy raped and murdered more than 30 women (probably more). That same charm that helped him get close to his unsuspecting victims fueled his robust fan club once his horrible crimes were exposed. The de facto president was, of course, his future wife, Carole Ann Boone, to whom the law-student-turned-serial-killer proposed in open court during the penalty phase of his trial:

They married in 1980, but divorced in 1986, and she didn’t visit him in the months leading up to his 1989 execution. The couple did, however, manage to conceive a child despite not being allowed conjugal visits; true-crime author Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally and wrote The Stranger Beside Me about his crimes, offers this update on her website:

The child they had together, allegedly conceived in the Visiting Area of Death Row, is about 29 now. I have deliberately avoided knowing anything about Ted’s ex-wife and daughter’s whereabouts because they deserve privacy. I don’t want to know where they are; I never want to be caught off guard by some reporter’s question about them. All I know is that Ted’s daughter has grown up to be a fine young woman.

7. Joran Van der Sloot

Joran Van der Sloot pled guilty to brutally killing 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez in 2012 in a Lima, Peru hotel room. He’s also known for being the top suspect in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway, presumed dead after vanishing while on a trip to Aruba in 2005.

Biography.com recounts:

Van der Sloot told Lima police that he had left Flores in the hotel room while he went to get them coffee. When he returned, the woman was on his laptop — supposedly looking at evidence that may have tied him to the Holloway murder. Van der Sloot flew into a rage, then allegedly snapped Flores’ neck. He also admitted to emptying the girl’s wallet, then fleeing the scene.

In November 2014, a CNN report noted that Van der Sloot’s wife, Leidy Figueroa, made headlines by claiming he’d been stabbed in the Peruvian prison where he’ll be spending the next two decades or so, which prison officials denied:

Jose Perez Guadalupe, director of Peru’s National Penitentiary Institute, which oversees the country’s prisons, told a 24-hour television station that Figueroa’s assertions were untrue and further labeled her a “compulsive liar.”

He continued with an assault on her character, telling Peru’s Channel N, “For starters, no woman in her right mind goes to a maximum-security prison and marries the biggest killer there.”

The two married in July 2014, having met when Figueroa was visiting another inmate, a relative. There was some speculation at the time that Van der Sloot married the Peruvian to protect himself from eventual extradition to the United States, where he’s been indicted for attempting to extort $250,000 from Natalee Holloway’s mother.

His defense lawyer disagreed:

“He’s getting married because he’s in love and is having a child ... there are no hidden agendas.”

A child, you say? Yep. Baby girl born in October 2014.

From top: Richard Ramirez displays a pentagram symbol on his hand inside a Los Angeles courtroom, Oct. 24, 1985; credit: AP Photo by Lennox McLendon. Charles Watson being extradited from Texas to Los Angeles for his trial, Sept. 11, 1970; credit: AP Photo. Joran Van der Sloot during a press conference in Lima, Peru, June 5, 2010; credit: AP photo by Karel Navarro.

A former inmate at the Manhattan Detention Complex claims in a lawsuit that damage sustained to his penis from a six-day erection that went untreated while he was in custody has left him permanently impotent. Rodney Cotton had been taking Risperdal—an antidepressant that is known to cause painful and prolonged erections known as priapism.

Cotton, who was locked up after a parole violation in 2011, told DNAinfo that he saw two doctors who both simply gave him Tylenol and ice packs before he was taken to Bellevue Hospital and given surgery, four days after he initially made a complaint. One of the doctors is also being sued for allegedly telling another inmate to throw part of his severed finger in the trash, rather than attempting to preserve it.

After the surgery, Cotton was given stitches that were supposed to be removed in 10 days, but Dr. Landis Barnes—the severed finger guy—told him they would dissolve on their own. By the time they were removed—about a month later—“they had become embedded in the skin of his penis,” DNAinfo’s Rosa Goldensohn writes. According to Cotton’s lawyer, damage from the untreated priapism is so great that a prosthetic would not aid treatment of his impotence. “Honestly, I wanted to choke Barnes, because he destroyed me,” Cotton said of the ordeal, which seems like a pretty understated response.

DNAinfo reported last week that New York City will not renew its contract with Corizon, the medical company that handles healthcare in city jails. Considering the company’s horrendous track record, this is a very good thing.

Photo via Wikipedia. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

There are some things you should know about Richard Matt, right, one of the two convicted murders who crawled out of a maximum security prison in New York this weekend. He has killed multiple people in two different countries. He has escaped from prison once before. He is, according to one cop, “the most vicious, evil person I’ve ever come across in 38 years as a police officer.” He also has a gigantic cock.

How do we know this? Because a retired detective named David Bentley, who investigated the 1997 murder that landed Matt in the jail he just escaped from, told the New York Post about it.

Another source, retired Detective David Bentley, who helped put away Matt for the 1997 murder of a North Tonawanda businessman, added, “When [Matt’s] cleaned up, he’s very handsome and, in all frankness, very well endowed. He gets girlfriends any place he goes.”

“Power tools,” eh? Eh?

[image via AP]

The enormous pension fund Calpers, which recently stopped investing in hedge funds, says it will cut in half the number of outside investment managers it employs in order to reduce the fees it pays to Wall Street. Shoddily managed state pension funds across America, take note.

Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

On Saturday, I joined a few neighbors on the stoop in front of my apartment in gazing toward the sky. “NERO, like from Rome,” said a precocious middle-schooler, referring to the skywriting in progress southwest of our neighborhood. “I don’t know,” an adult countered, European history understandably less fresh in her mind. “I think it says NERD.” I thought so, too.

It turns out that the writing was meant as a shout-out to attendees at an “opulent” tuxedos-and-gowns party on a yacht near the Statue of Liberty. On Facebook, the party’s organizers—a company called ZERO, which is what the letters were supposed to spell—described the event like this:

Tuxedos & gowns... champagne & celebration ... opulence & debauchery... diamonds & jewels... red carpets & paparazzi... this is Monte Carlo ZERO style...

Cool party.

And the skywriting company described its fuckup like this:

“It’s very difficult,” said Ted DeReeder, owner of National Sky Ads, whose pilot spelled the message.

“They look at it upside down and backwards. Ns are the same as Zs. When he came around, he was a little bit confused.”

The pilot eventually rectified his mistake, but by then, the damage was already done. Hope you had fun, nerds.

Image via Emily Steiner/Twitter. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

On the same day that 38 members of Penn State’s Kappa Delta Rho were expelled from the fraternity over a private Facebook group where they traded secretly-snapped photos of nude women, the member who blew the whistle on the group filed suit against KDR for hazing.

The Facebook group “2.0”— which featured “regular posts ... of photos that were embarrassing to women, including the aforementioned photos of unconscious or sleeping subjects,” according to the university—had 144 members. According to court documents, one member of the frat reported the group to police and let them use his Facebook account to investigate it.

As a result, the university and the frat’s national office agreed in March to shut the offending chapter down for 3 years, followed by an announcement Monday stripping 38 of the participants of their KDR memberships.

The whistleblower, James Vivenzio, announced in a press conference with his lawyer that he’s now suing KDR over a slew of horrifying alleged hazing practices, and suing Penn State for taking no steps to rein the frat in after he first came forward in August 2014.

Vivenzio, who is no longer enrolled in school, says he’s now suffering from PTSD and anxiety as a result of his experiences with the fraternity.

His complaint claims he and other KDR pledges were forced to endure “‘line ups,’ during which pledges were called to line up in the basement of the fraternity house, often in the middle of the night, and then to perform a number of ‘ritual’ activities, including: drinking large quantities of liquor while performing wall sits and push ups until passing out; force-fed drinking from a bucket filled with a concoction of hot sauce, liquor, cat food, urine, and other liquid and semi-solid ingredients, the smell of which was often enough to induce vomiting.”

Vivenzio also accuses the fraternity of operating like a gang— “obtaining some of its funding by converting the pre-paid food plans of its pledges and confiscating and selling their prescription drugs. These funds were then used to pay for countless socials, presocials and parties at the fraternity house at which underage students were plied with alcohol and, in some cases, with drugs to facilitate sexual assault and abuse.”

“I hope nobody gets in trouble because nobody did anything worth getting in trouble over,” an anonymous, moronic member of Penn State KDR told Philadelphia magazine in March.

[Photo: AP Images]

Tornadoes are possible in any of the severe thunderstorms that blow across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast this afternoon, with the greatest risk existing across a stretch of land from Virginia to Vermont. Any of the storms that pop-up this afternoon also carry the risk for damaging winds and large hail.

This is about the time of the year when we would expect to see tornadoes form in this region of the country—the beginning of June is the climatological peak of “tornado season” (such as it is) in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. History holds true another year as powerful storms fire up in the warm sector ahead of a cold front pushing into the region (thanks, Canada).

Muggy, unstable air flowing north across the eastern part of the country isn’t sitting too well with the aforementioned cold front, and the focusing, lift, instability, and favorable wind shear are coming together in the right manner for severe weather. A slight (two out of five) risk for severe weather exists across a huge swath of interior sections of the Northeast this afternoon, stretching from Vermont down through Pennsylvania and continuing across the Appalachians into parts of the Mid-South.

In addition to the overall risk for damaging winds (60+ MPH) and large hail (quarter-size or larger), the tornado risk is concerning, especially in a region of the country where people aren’t always tuned-in to the risk for severe weather. A 5% risk for tornadoes exists from central Maryland through extreme southern New York; a 5% risk doesn’t sound too high, but the climatological risk for tornadoes on June 8 in this region is about 0.20%, so today’s risk is 25 times higher than normal.

The I-95 corridor from Washington D.C. through New York City is on the far eastern extent of the severe weather threat today, but given the linear nature of the storms, it wouldn’t be too shocking if someone somewhere in the Megalopolis saw a snail-drowning torrent this evening. The threat for severe weather isn’t exactly zero in the big cities, but you probably won’t see it as bad as your interior counterparts this afternoon.

The risk for significant tornadoes (ultimately rated EF-2 or stronger) is relatively low, but even the weakest tornado is dangerous if you’re in its path. If your location goes under a tornado warning, make sure to act quickly and get to a basement or an interior room on the lowest level of your building—the goal is to put as many walls between you and the outside as possible to protect you from flying debris.

Most smartphones are equipped with wireless emergency alert capabilities, which is basically the Emergency Alert System for your phone. When connected to the towers (in other words, not in airplane mode), a loud, screeching tone will sound along with a message telling you your location is under a tornado warning. You can also receive warnings by listening to NOAA Weather Radio, checking your local National Weather Service office’s website, and by listening to local news or radio.

Remember not to try to look for the tornado before taking action—unlike on the Plains, where visibility is rarely an issue, most tornadoes in this part of the world are obscured by heavy rain, trees, and buildings. You often don’t see the tornado until it’s on top of you and too late. If you’re like me and need to see things with your own eyes, check the radar and see if your location is in the warning polygon. If you’re not in the polygon, you’re more than likely not at immediate risk.

[Images: GREarth, author | Updated the watches map at 4:15 PM.]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

Read our story here.

As any Gilmore Girls fan knows, Dean is boring and dumb and Jess is hot and great. Do Dean and Jess know this themselves? Yes. Well—one of them does.

While in Austin, Texas for a Gilmore Girls panel at the ATX TV Festival over the weekend, Jared Padalecki and Milo Ventimiglia—Dean and Jess, respectively—took sides in the Dean vs. Jess debate. Padalecki—AKA Dean—horrible Dean—Dean, who I hate—is correct, surprisingly. From Us Weekly:

“I’m team Jess. I admit it. I even told Milo. I’m totally team Jess.”

Huh. A correct opinion from Dean, who I hate. Who knew. Ventimiglia—AKA Jess—Jess, who I love—Jess who reads books and is a bad boy with a rude attitude but it’s okay because he’s smart and likes Rory—is wrong about who Rory should have ended up with, surprisingly:

“Oh, man, I have no idea. ... I’ve been vocal about being team Dean, so maybe she should have gone way back around to the very beginning. That would have been nice.”

Huh. An incorrect opinion from Jess, a rebel known for his questionable decision making, who I love.

I guess it is true what they say: “Dean sucks.”

Image via CW. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

Relax.

Image via Shutterstock. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

A South Philadelphia rally that saw demonstrators holding signs that read “White Women’s Lives Matter” and “We Will Not Allow You to Terrorize Our Neighborhood” in response to alleged attacks by a group of black women in the neighborhood was not racially motivated, according to the chief of staff for a city councilman who attended the event.

According to local ABC outlet WPVI, which gave the event supportive news coverage, 150 to 200 people including city councilman Mark Squilla gathered at Wolf and Fourth Streets to protest a slow police response to the alleged attacks, both of which were reportedly carried out against white people. One attendee woman shown on WPVI appears to read from a numbered list that contains the items “White lives matter” and “Eliminate the thugs.”

The racism of one key demonstrator apparently goes beyond unsubtle innuendo: Last week, we posted screenshots of racist Facebook postings from a since-deleted account that appears to have belonged to Jack Owens—who WPVI identified as the rally’s organizer. One shows a black man holding a sign that has been altered to read “Please help I’m blind and I think I might be a nigger”; another reads “Black Barbie, comes with: 3 kids, food stamps, and AIDS.”

Anne Kelley, Squilla’s chief of staff, told the website BillyPenn that Squilla attended the rally after an invitation from community members and a local police captain. Kelley also asserted that “the councilman feels the rally didn’t have racial undertones and was meant to improve on police and community relations,” BillyPenn’s Anna Orso wrote.

Little has been publicized about the attacks that started the rally. According to the alleged victims, the women randomly attacked a man and his 10-year-old son, then assaulted a woman inside her home after she tried to intervene. The alleged victims asked WPVI and Philadelphia’s NBC 10 to conceal their faces and names, and the alleged attackers have not been arrested. But according to a tipster in South Philadelphia, there are rumors that the real story is quite different—that a small, mutual conflict was “exaggerated for the news coverage” so that it would appear that black people were “terrorizing” the neighborhood’s white residents.

Not content to merely defend her boss, Anne Kelley also included a dig at a certain blogger in her statement:

“The funny thing is,” she said, “is that this happened last Tuesday, and it was four days later that it became news from a blogger who had a headline that didn’t really have much to do with the story.”

I requested a comment from Squilla’s office before posting the story on Friday. They have yet to respond.

Screengrab via WPIV. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Don’t let anybody tell you a street fight is not an attack on your life.

“A street fight is an attack on your life,” I tell you. Don’t believe me? A homeless man died yesterday in Manhattan after being “shoved to the ground” in a fight with another homeless man. People routinely die after being punched during street fights, or just sucker punched. It is quite possible to be killed by the force of a hard, bare-knuckled punch to the head. It is also quite possible to die by striking your head after someone pushes you to the ground. It is also possible to die in many other ways while being physically attacked by someone who is using nothing but their bare hands.

If someone attacks you with their bare hands—punches you, chokes you, slams you to the ground—you should do whatever you have to do to stop them. If you have to stab them or shoot them or hit them with a brick repeatedly, that’s what you should do. That doesn’t mean that you should automatically kill someone who punches you in the face; it means that you should do what you need to do to stop them from attacking you, and, furthermore, it means that you should not underestimate the threat that “just a street fight” poses to you and your health. If someone decides to physically attack another person unnecessarily, and the person being attacked picks up a nearby 2x4 and hits them and kills them, well, that’s one reason you should not physically attack other people unnecessarily.

Fighting is bad so do your best not to get killed (and then after that, do your best not to kill anyone).

[Photo: Flickr]

Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.