I was 14, just starting high school at an all-boys public school in the Bronx, when I began to feel a strong physical attraction to other boys. I was quiet and observant, and I didn’t yet know if I should, or could, act on those emotions.

My high school locker room completely bewildered me—a small space full of sweaty boys, constantly fighting, and pulling each other’s pants down. Curious, I couldn’t help but glance at some of them while they changed. And I can tell you; I was not the only one looking. Off to the side or in the background, I often overheard boys say things like “nice dick” and “you got a hairy ass.” At one point, I saw a boy playfully touch a classmate. In the corner of the locker room, and still in the closet, I felt a moment of joy: What if I wasn’t alone? What if there were other boys that felt the same way I did?

That moment was short-lived. In actuality, the same boy that touched the boy in the locker room, later called him a “faggot” in the hallway. It happened daily. I would see guys touch each other’s private parts and call them “faggots.” I was alone and horribly confused. I wondered if I could share my desires with some of them, but the fear of being called a “faggot” stopped me. At my school, the very place that I first observed queer curiosity, I was scared to come out, fearing my own physical and emotional safety.

It wasn’t just the school locker room where I heard homophobic remarks. In church, the pastor would say, “I know you love your sons. But you also have to spread the word of God and tell them the truth. Gay people are an abomination and are going to Hell if they don’t get right with God.” These statements led to countless hours of reflection, and a terrifying fear that God might strike me down at any moment. But even at 14, I knew I didn’t totally believe him. How could I be condemned to Hell for loving the wrong way?

I was raised in a strict Christian household and lived with my grandmother and mother. My father was not in the picture, although I would see him sporadically from the age of two, when he left my mother, to the year I turned 16. When I was little, I preferred the company of girls during my trips to the park, and I would sometimes play with dolls, showing little interest in sports. My father would say, “Stop acting like a little bitch.”

Years later he warned: “If you turn out gay, I’ll fuck you up.” But by then I had already lost respect for him. It was a good thing I didn’t see my father often.

Imagine me, a young black gay Christian male, trying to reconcile my sexuality with school, home, and church life. What happens to a black gay Christian who lives in a household that hates him; who really believed that he was going to Hell. Who would ask God for forgiveness every time he fantasized about another boy?

I eventually became comfortable enough to admit I like guys. Two years after curiosity flared in the locker room, I came out. I first told my close, straight friend, then classmates, then anyone who asked, then my grandmother, and, finally, my mother. Perhaps it was the support of friends, aunts, and those around me that made me not want to feel ashamed about myself anymore, even if that meant God damning me to Hell.

By the beginning of senior year, I went from “I’m gay” to whoever asked, to “Can you stop saying faggot please?” every time I heard the word. I was ready to be wholly true to myself and my sexuality. I began to imagine life in college, and envisioned a more inclusive post-high school existence.

Looking to strengthen my resume, I decided to participate in a school-based mentorship program, which was dedicated to developing strong black mentor-mentee relationships in the workplace with black professionals. One day, for a lesson on proper dining etiquette, the program took us to a Spanish restaurant. The room was well-lit and the atmosphere emanated a fancy air that was almost palpable. Unlike some of my classmates, I had experienced restaurants like this before, so I wasn’t nervous at all. I gazed around, admiring the patrons: strong, muscular men in suits. Just before the fish tacos and appetizers arrived, a mentor cautioned: “One piece of advice, if you want to be a successful man, do not mess around with those pregnant girls. Find yourself a good woman!” he said, smirking.

Everyone but me chuckled, laughs ricocheting across the table.

“Well, I like guys, so I don’t have to worry about that,” I said, trying to end the conversation.

“Oh, okay,” he said, staring at me and clenching his jaw. I could see he was trying to contain his anger and disgust.

The whole table—fifteen students, three mentors—looked at me, then at him. I cowered in my chair, embarrassed and uncomfortable. I suddenly felt isolated, a great distance growing between me and the group. Only after he released me from the lock of his eyes, did he continue the conversation about the sort of “good women” we should seek.

A month later, I decided to no longer participate in the mentorship program, and every time I was asked why, I made excuses about being too busy.

In time, I retreated into my fantasy world, where I was not sixteen and gay in a homophobic environment, but a world where I was older, in in the future, when I would arrive to a beautiful home from a long day at work, and be welcomed by a husband who loves me and bears my burdens on his shoulders. In this fantasy world, I am loved, desired, accepted.

After that night, I was desperate to be in a different environment. I explored several outlets and, with the help of an organization called Urban Word, learned that I could use spoken word poetry as not only a place to recite my story, but as a platform to advocate for social justice. Over the course of the past year, I have been trying to figure out just how I might go about that. In the process, I lived two secret lives: I became this other person, scared to be open up about my sexuality in my poems, and, even worse, I was hiding my poetry from my family. Maybe that’s why I never quite got over my nervousness during performances. Still, I always managed to channel my anxiety, and never worried about what others might think when I discussed coming out on stage, even though I couldn’t speak freely with my family about it.

It was in this new world that I found my real mentor, Timothy DuWhite, a 24-year old black queer poet who embraced me with open arms. I first met Tim at the Urban Word Poetry Slam semifinals a year before I became an active member. We connected and discovered that we both had been through similar issues involving our sexual identities. It was a moment that I had been searching for: to find a kindred community who accepted and nurtured all parts of my identity.

A month ago, I graduated from high school. Before I addressed our class in my valedictorian speech, I scanned the crowd, a sea of people before me. I saw the boys from the locker room, my mother, my grandmother, my teachers, and my best friend—and I understood them all, each in their own ways. I was thrilled to be leaving and moving on, but I could see that many of my fellow graduates were facing similar hurdles, ones that I had encountered, and had only masked their truth with homophobia. The culture we live in, though it has made strides in the last decade, still makes so many of us—the boys who like boys, boys like me—feel unwanted, feel like outsiders. But I no longer choose to stand on the outside.

James Fisher grew up in the Bronx, New York. He is as an incoming freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, where he will be a senior writer at Abernathy Magazine. During his time as a member of the UrbanWord Slam Team, James performed at the Apollo Theater, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Lincoln Center.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

By the end of its run in 1999, Peanuts was an institution. It had become an omnipresent part of American culture, and that’s not a compliment.

The general response to reading the average Peanuts strip in the 80s and 90s was a ‘meh’ half-smile — a snicker, maybe, but never a full-blown laugh. The strip had run for over 50 years, but it was a flicker of its former flame, mostly coasting on its reputation and its endurance. Humor-wise, it was aggressively safe and took no risks, which of course, made it ripe for global, unprecedented popularity. There was a figurative mountain of Peanuts merchandise everywhere, and the smiling faces of Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy stared back at us from shelves.

Perhaps Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, had the right idea. He stopped working on his strip after only 10 years — a fifth of the time that Schulz spent working on his — and he never licensed his characters. Because as legendary as Peanuts is, it was only ‘great’ for a 15-20 year period — from about the mid-50s to the early 70s. And even by the 70s, there was a slow, but definite drop-off in quality. By the 80s, with the exception of a few notable storylines, the strip was essentially dead. The 90s was just more of the same.

And unfortunately, much of the blame for this can be traced back to Snoopy, the most beloved of Schulz’s creations. As the strip progressed, the beagle hogged more and more of the spotlight in increasingly negative ways. And the intelligence and darkness of the strip, which once made it so distinctive on the comics landscape, was replaced by more mainstream, cutesy humor.

The now famous debut strip is an important reminder of what Peanuts used to be. Note that it stars Shermy and Patty, both of whom stopped being featured in the strip in the 70s:

It establishes, from its very debut, that this strip is not about the adorable inanities of being a child. It’s about the cruelties and hardships of being a child; children can be bullying, backstabbing, petty people. And sometimes, children can be irrational, and hate someone for no reason — simply ‘because.’

Now, granted: the earlier years of the strip had plenty of easy, cutesy humor — Schroeder, Linus, and Lucy were toddlers and infants at the beginning of the strip’s run, instead of the seven and eight-year-olds they would eventually become. But it was still expressive humor — Schulz played around with facial expressions and wordless punchlines to hilarious effect. Like in this strip, from 1952:

Or in this strip from 1953, which negotiates the indignities and politics of being a young kid, amongst bigger kids:

It was around the mid-late 50s that the strip really came into its own, and started cultivating an adult’s despair and rejection. It allowed for Schulz to make pointed commentaries about the American dream, and the pressures of fulfilling it:

Schulz started repeating some earlier jokes, but in their retelling, he gave them additional depth and subtlety, like this Sunday strip from 1955, which is a longer take on the debut strip with Shermy and Patty:

And then there were other strips that were just pitch black, with no happy resolution or redemption. Because sometimes, life isn’t fair. Here are a few strips from 1957. Notice how Schulz uses distancing in the first strip to show how small Charlie Brown feels — not to mention how he uses blank space to conjure despair.

Even Schroeder, one of his most loyal friends, abandons him in a time of need. It’s difficult to think of a strip that so cruelly battered its main character in the way that Peanuts did.

Schulz saw darkness in America’s youth, and he highlighted their painful realities, particularly their social strata. Take Violet, for example; if Charlie Brown, with his working class roots and bad luck, was at the bottom of the pecking order, then Violet was at the top. She was the rich, pretty, mean girl of the troupe, and she spent her free time lording her privilege over the other characters. Most of the time, Violet got away from it. But whenever she did get taken down, she got taken down hard, and it was such sweet redemption.

Brutal.

The happiness we feel for these characters, when they occasionally get the final word or win, is poignant because they’re dragged through the muck so many times. One of the most famous Peanuts strips is this one:

But that’s all most people know of Peanuts, and that’s a gross oversimplification of the strip. Because in his prime, Schulz always balanced the sentiment with the flipside of it, sometimes over the course of multiple strips, and sometimes in the context of a single Sunday strip, with multiple panels.

Which brings us to Snoopy.

Snoopy was always the wild card of the strip, because he was not tied to the same social conventions and behavior of the other characters. He was a dog, and since there were no other animals in the strip (at least at first, but we’ll get to that) he was forced to interact with the children in a different way, usually from a place of subordinance.

Snoopy began the strip as a normal dog, and the majority of his gags were of him doing traditional dog stuff. But a couple of years in, Schulz figured out how to characterize Snoopy; he was a dog who resented being a dog. So, Snoopy spent most of his time trying on other identities — usually those of other animals, and occasionally those of humans.

But the end result was always failure — for whatever reason, he would always revert to being a dog, because the new identity didn’t fit him properly. It was a great commentary on self-acceptance, but also on embracing creativity and the need to dream of something better.

Failure was the key to Snoopy’s charm; as it was to Charlie Brown, who never kicked the football; as it was to Linus, who couldn’t give up his security blanket; as it was to Lucy, who never got Schroeder to look her way. On the rare instances Snoopy tried to be human, Frieda or Lucy tried to cut him down.

And on the occasions that he cultivated human emotions, he got hurt:

But near the end of the 60s and well into the 70s, the cracks started to show. Snoopy began walking on his hind legs and using his hands, and that was the beginning of the end for the strip. Perhaps he was technically still a dog, but in a very substantial way, Snoopy had overcome the principal struggle of his existence. His opposable thumbs and upward positioning meant that for all intents and purposes, he was now a human in a dog costume. One of his new roleplays was to be different Joes — Joe Cool, Joe Skateboard, etc.

None of this had any greater, narrative payoff, or ended with Snoopy realizing he was a dog. It was always a pure visual gag, and it lacked the subtlety, pain, and vision that had previously been the strip’s trademark. In short, there was no balance. It was just a series of Snoopy in new costumes, almost as if Schulz was anticipating merchandise demands. Cuteness had replaced depth in a strip that had always celebrated the maturity and adult-like nature of precocious children. And since the strip had become globally, universally loved, there was little impetus to revisit the darker social commentary of years past.

Snoopy even passed for a human in many circumstances — Peppermint Patty referred to him as the “funny-looking kid with a big nose,” and took him to her school dance. And thus, the ‘humanizing’ of Snoopy also meant that the real kids were used less and less. Snoopy filled their roles, and eventually, many human characters were discarded altogether. By the 80s, Shermy and Patty, who started the strip with Charlie Brown and Snoopy in 1952, were gone, or reduced to brief cameos. Violet and her high bred snobbery were gone. Frieda, who used to challenge Snoopy more than any of the other characters, was also gone. Instead, we got more strips of Snoopy in cute costumes.

This is no funnier than any standard Hallmark card. And as for Woodstock, he did the strip no favors either. Here, we had a character who didn’t use words at all, and primarily existed just to be cute. It broke the chemistry of the main cast, because now, Snoopy wasn’t forced to interact with the kids; he could just adventure with the birds and disappear into his own little world. There was a defined split between the Snoopy strips and the human strips, and both suffered as a result.

By the end of the strip’s run, the artwork had also started suffering. Sometimes, due to poor health and unsteady hands, the lines were no longer clean. Schulz stopped detailing the characters’ facial expressions, and they all took on a bland, monotone sameness — but then again, most of the characters were subdued versions of their former selves, and rarely projected emotions with their words either.

Occasionally, Schulz threw us some abstract thoughts and reflections, but they were neither fleshed out nor followed up on — they seemed like random, depressed musings, rather than fully-formed jokes or insights. Per usual, Snoopy (and now, multiple members of his family) dominated the strip to its detriment. And look at all those ellipses — every thought trails off into the ether, unresolved:

Do you see how different this strip is from the one in 1955? But more people are familiar with the latter, and that’s unfortunate. Two generations of comics readers think of Peanuts in a very limited way, when it was actually so much more, and so much better.

The new Peanuts movie is getting a lot of hype. We’ve only seen a handful of promotional clips and images, but at least visually, it seems to have made its transition from 2D sketch to CGI with its soul in tact. In the poster, there are even some nice nods to the show’s history:

You can see Violet, Patty, and Frieda, right in the front rows. You can even see the Little Red-Haired Girl, and of course, she’s covering her face. But we’re a long way from the 1960s, and most people don’t even remember what the strip used to be like before Snoopy hijacked it.

Yes, the movie will make a lot of money. And yes, it will likely put Charlie Brown and his friends back on the pop culture landscape, at least temporarily. But to be truly successful, it needs to have the thoughtfulness and sincerity that these characters were originally imbued with. Less Woodstock, more Linus. Less Snoopy, more Marcie. It needs to have a little darkness and a little sadness to balance with the silliness. Because as Schulz proved over 60 years ago, it’s the combination that will make the audiences laugh — and cry — even harder.

Kevin is an AP English Language teacher and freelance writer from Queens, NY. His focus is on video games, American pop culture, and Asian American issues. Kevin has also been published in VIBE, Complex, Joystiq, Salon, PopMatters, WhatCulture, and Racialicious. You can email him at kevinjameswong@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter @kevinjameswong.

According to one A-list wedding planner, tabloid magazines are now flying camera drones over celebrity weddings: “At one event I did recently in the Hamptons, one came in over the water... To the world of celebrities, that is horrible. What do you do: Shoot them down?” Hey, why not!

Three California Highway Patrol officers, a defense attorney, and five others have been arrested in connection to the 2012 murder of a California man who, the New York Post reports, officials said was suspected of having been stealing the attorney’s antiques.

At a news conference on Friday in Modesto, California, law enforcement officials said that nine people were arrested altogether. All either participated in the killing of 26-year-old Korey Kauffman—who was reported missing in April 2012 and whose body was found in August 2013—or helped cover it up, officials said.

According to investigators with the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department, the killing was orchestrated by prominent Modesto attorney Frank Carson, who believed that Kauffman was stealing antiques from storage containers he owned. The Post reports that Kauffman was kidnapped and killed on his way to steal from Carson, according to a police court filing.

(The New York Daily News reports that Kauffman had planned to steal irrigation equipment.)

Carson, who ran unsuccessfully for district attorney last year, allegedly enlisted the help of two brothers, Baljit Athwal and Daljit Athwal, who owned a liquor store, to help him kill Kauffman—they both face murder charges. According to the Daily News, the brothers earlier filed a harassment lawsuit against the task force in federal court.

Two of the California Highway Patrol officers, Scott McFarlane and Eduardo Quintanar, are suspected of obstructing the investigation. They have been placed on administrative leave. Former CHP officer Walter Wells, who left the force just a few weeks ago, is suspected of murder.

“The entire department and I are appalled at the mere thought that one former and two current employees played any role in this incident,” California Highway Patrol Commissioner Joe Farrow said Friday. “To hear news like this is devastating to our organization.”

Carson’s wife, Georgia Defilippo, was also arrested and charged with murder; her daughter, Christina, was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy and being an accessory.

Image via Fox40. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

When I was 17, I smiled constantly, still hiding the worst secret of my life. By that point, I was barely conscious of keeping it. Seven years earlier, when I was just 10 years old, a town scandal had unfolded, pitting girl against girl. I had determined, at that point, to forget all that had happened—the lie I’d told to protect a man considered our version of powerful.

When I began fifth grade in the fall of 1991, it was also my third year of piano lessons with the beloved Howard Lotte. He was a sixth-grade teacher who taught piano at his house to many young girls after the school day was over. By then, I was finally graduating from boring “Hot Cross Buns” songs to popular ballads. I loved the theme from “The Young and the Restless.” But my lessons were growing disquieting. Earlier that summer, the infallible Mr. Lotte had slipped his hand beneath my armpit and onto my breast while I played through my weekly assignment. I remember the blinking metronome, the darkness of the basement with its closed door, and the intense panic that led me to promise myself I’d never breathe a word of it to anyone.

That season, I discovered I wasn’t the only student Mr. Lotte had violated. When rumors started to spread that he might not be as virtuous as he’d led us all to believe, our small town went into what felt like an overnight tailspin. But, because this was 1991, people weren’t asking about Mr. Lotte. Instead the scrutiny centered on the seven young girls who actually dared to speak out about what he’d done. Much of the town believed these girls had conspired and that Mr. Lotte—their dear friend, fellow teacher, and friendly neighbor—had simply been framed. Speaking out, apparently, was a worse sin than the crime that had been committed.

The police conducted a long investigation while the town itself continued to argue over this man’s innocence. Girls tend to imagine things, people said to each other at the mail box, the grocery store, the school parking lot. Why should he pay the price? Even the children at school were not immune. These young women whose identities ought to have been kept private were named on the playground and in the hallways between classes—as if they were the perpetrators. It seemed less important to everyone whether or not he’d actually done it. They wanted to know who had said he did.

To be known so notoriously at such a young age felt impossible. I was so afraid of being named among them that first I lied to myself about what Mr. Lotte had done to me, as if telling myself he hadn’t touched me would make it disappear. Then I lied to my parents, then to my classmates, and finally to the police when they interrogated me. After the investigation wrapped and Mr. Lotte served a short sentence, I renewed my promise to never think of the lie I’d told or Howard Lotte again.

It turned out that no one else in town wanted to remember it, either. The whole scandal and all of Mr. Lotte’s crimes became part of our communal amnesia—our feeble attempt at moving forward without offering any apologies or admitting any mistakes. The girls who told the truth about Lotte’s crimes had to forgive and forget their classmates’ mistreatment of them or else remain loners and outcasts. Mr. Lotte stayed in his house, stayed with his wife. He no longer taught at the school, though he appeared around town every now and again—shopping at the grocery store, walking in the park, holding the door open for someone at the hardware store. Sometimes people said hello, sometimes they looked away. No one dared utter his name for a very long time.

The shame of a childhood secret can be a heavy burden, whether you remember it or not. Throughout my adolescence and into young adulthood, I always felt like a fraud, and I tried to compensate for it by keeping a squeaky clean reputation. But my fear festered. I felt I couldn’t trust even my closest friends. I suspected every classroom whisper was about something I’d done. As I got older, I waited for the men in my life to hurt me. They can’t help it, I told myself. That’s what men do. I believed their actions had no consequences. They got someone pregnant, and it was the girl who held the shame. They cheated and it was the girlfriend who couldn’t keep her man interested. Somehow, the female was always to blame. I assumed people never told the truth. I thought others were hiding something because, of course, I was hiding something.

My attempts to be “good” in its legal sense—no cheating, no (more) lying, no disobeying—overshadowed the value of inner truth. I had fallen in love with my own illusion. I wanted to be pure. I wanted to be innocent. But beneath these desires was another lie I had become tied to: because Lotte had done this to me, I was dirty. Damaged. The one lie I’d told fostered others in its wake—that if I let this be true, it would destroy me. That no one could love me. That I couldn’t be smart, sexy, and sophisticated and be a victim of sexual violence. In fearing that others would only see me as a victim or as a liar, I had come to define myself that way, too.

As I became a young woman who always felt so old, I started to see that shutting off all my feelings about Howard Lotte caused me to cut off my feelings about everything else, too. I couldn’t feel the love that others extended toward me, and I couldn’t extend my full love in return. Friendships I valued ended abruptly or faded out completely. Phone calls and invitations went unanswered. I was lonely, and yet felt powerless to fix it. By the time I reached my early twenties, I couldn’t stand it. I knew I was facing a choice: to let the lie continue to reign over my life or to finally dethrone it. So I did what my ten-year-old self thought was impossible: I told my boyfriend, my close friends, and my family—but before any of that, I told the truth to myself.

As I started to be honest about my past, I witnessed a truer, stronger version of myself come to life, a young woman no longer petrified of speaking out about abuse. After more than a decade of buckling beneath the weight of self-assigned shame, I finally held Howard Lotte accountable for his actions, if only in my heart. He had wronged me, and the act of speaking this simple, yet incredibly difficult truth created a tidal wave of emotion. I grieved not just for myself, but for all the other silent girls in my hometown and in so many towns beyond it. The grief eventually gave way to an inner imperative to tell my story, to search out the lie and all it had cost me. This story formed the crux of Cinderland, my first book.

It shouldn’t surprise me that I’ve received a host of varying reactions since the book’s publication. A few have accused me of exaggeration, or worse—re-abusing the victims by speaking out about it now. Some have said I shouldn’t bring up something that happened so long ago. But this sentiment proves why stories like mine are so important. Countless women have needed their silence to protect them in very dangerous situations, and it still may not be safe for them to tell the truth, no matter how much time has passed. Silence is not evidence of healing or closure; it’s a symptom of a very painful wound. Lionizing the act of keeping quiet only ensures these kinds of secrets will continue to be kept, and it trivializes the kind of damage that lasts.

Amy Jo Burns is the author of Cinderland, and her writing has appeared in The Butter, Dame, Good Housekeeping, The Rumpus, and Salon. She currently writes for Ploughshares.

“In contrast to companies where declarations about their philosophy amount to vague platitudes, Amazon has rules that are part of its daily language and rituals, used in hiring, cited at meetings and quoted in food-truck lines at lunchtime. Some Amazonians say they teach them to their children.”

On Thursday afternoon, Shenitria Blocker filmed a Miami police officer beating a handcuffed man in the back of a squad car, and Blocker’s friend Marilyn Smith posted the video to Facebook. Now, according to the Miami Times, the Miami Order of the Fraternal Police has begun to disparage Smith.

Late on Thursday, Miami Police Major Delrish Moss said in a statement that the department had seen the video, and that the officer involved had had his gun and badge taken away, pending an investigation, the Associated Press reported.

The police union has already closed ranks. “As everyone is aware, social media has placed a very negative tone on law enforcement nationwide,” union president Javier Ortiz wrote in a press release.

“On August 13th, there was a video that was posted in social media that shows an encounter with Miami Police Officers. While the video may seem concerning to some, the FOP is confident that when everything is analyzed with the totality of the circumstance, it will be concluded that the police officer was doing what he is supposed to be doing: Protecting our Community.”

In the press release, Ortiz included screenshots of Smith’s Facebook page, which has since been deactivated.

“What is extremely concerning is that the poster of this video (aka Facebook Marilyn Smith) has photographs of her with young men armed with handguns,” he wrote.

“It seems that no one cares to address this. Social media has focused so much on #blacklifematters [sic] /alllifematters campaigns, yet nobody targets the root of the problem our community faces today.”

“If the police officer has done something not within policy, it must be corrected. With that said, there is a much more serious message by this video poster. Our community has accepted behavior that motivates violence in our younger generation. It’s time for the community to take a stand against this reckless behavior and stop the violence. As the saying goes: It takes a village to raise a child. Guns don’t belong in the hands of children. It is the responsibility of our stakeholders that live in our community to stop that from occurring in the first place.”

According to the Times, Ortiz was sued in 2013 by an Ultra Music Festival attendee for allegedly beating him over a glowstick.

Screenshot via Miami Times. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

On Sunday, after losing contact with ground control, an Indonesian airliner went missing over the country’s easternmost province of Papua, a remote and mountainous region, the Associated Press reports.

Officials said the Trigana Air Service lost contact with ground control during a short flight from Papua’s provincial capital of Jayapura to the city of Oksibil. Transportation Ministry spokesman Julius Barata said there was no indication that the pilot had made a distress call.

According to the AP, locals told authorities that they had seen a plane crash into a mountain. An air search for the plane was suspended due to darkness and will resume Monday morning.

Barata said that the plane was an ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane carrying 49 passengers and five crew members. Five children were among the passengers, he said, including three infants.

NBC News reports that there are conflicting reports over when exactly contact with the plane was lost:

One BASARNAS official told NBC News that the airliner lost contact at 2:55 p.m — before it was due to arrive.

However, local BASARNAS search and rescue officer Raymond Konstantin told NBC News that air traffic control said the plane last made contact at 3:21 local time — after it was due on the ground — saying it was unable to land due to poor visibility.

The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

Aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman told The Guardian that it was likely the missing plane had crashed, given the amount of fuel it was carrying and the time it had been missing. “If it has not landed somewhere now, it has crashed somewhere, that’s for sure.”

“It’s mountainous, very remote and the airfield runways are sometimes on the side of a hill so it is not really an area for the faint-hearted to fly,” Soejatman said. “There are bound to be accidents.”

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

On Thursday, non-profit environmental-health watchdog group As You Sow filed a notice of intent to bring legal action against Soylent, alleging that the meal replacement start-up failed to warn consumers about high concentrations of cadmium and lead in its space food. Also it makes you fart a lot.

On Saturday night, after a brief illness, civil rights leader Julian Bond died in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was 75.

Born on January 14, 1940, in Nashville, Tennessee, Horace Julian Bond, while a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, was one of the original leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

In 1965, he and seven other black members were elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. According to the New York Times, white members of the House refused to allow him to take his seat; in 1966, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the legislature to seat him, saying it had denied Bond freedom of speech. He served in the Georgia Legislature for 20 years.

Bond founded the Southern Poverty Law Center with Morris Dees in 1971 and served as its president until 1979. In 1998, Bond was named the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

He is survived by Pamela Sue Horowitz, his second wife, and five children.

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

During a Friday performance on the Today show, Janelle Monae was cut off as she was speaking about the Black Lives Matter movement. At the end of her performance of “Hell You Talmbou” — a protest song dedicated to the movement — Monae began to speak about police brutality: “God bless all the lives lost to police brutality. We want white America to know that we stand tall today. We want black America to know we stand tall today. We will not be silenced...” The camera panned away and an anchor spoke over Monae as she continued. The show cut to commercial moments after Monae said “silenced.” The awkwardness of the break and its timing has many wondering if Today purposefully cut off Monae. [Huffington Post/VH1]

Fifth Harmony was the latest guest at a Taylor Swift concert. As always, Swift released many perfectly composed photos on her Instagram, but this video is the best media from the concert. Bless you, Swift. [E!; Vine]

Apparently the Hunger Games’ original press photo included the word “cunt”. The studio quickly deleted the photo. [The Hollywood Reporter]

• George W. Bush met his newest grandchild, Poppy. [E!]
  
• Kirsten Dunst is going to direct a movie. [Page Six]
  
• Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner took the kids to check out Harry Potter at Universal Studios. [People]
  
• Pamela Anderson thinks the Baywatch reboot is going to be terrible. [TMZ]
  
• Here are the first cast photos of Star Wars: Rogue One. Cast members include Felicity Jones and Mads Mikkelsen. [The Hollywood Reporter]
  

Images via Getty, Vine, and THR.

On Sunday, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at anti-Taliban provincial minister Shuja Khanzada’s home in eastern Pakistan, killing him and 13 others, the Associated Press reports. A militant group associated with the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

A government official, Saeed Elahi, said the bombing took place at Khanzada’s hometown of Shadi Khan, about 50 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. Another official, Deeba Shahnaz, said 17 people were wounded in the explosion, four of whom were in critical condition.

Khanzada was the head of Pakistan’s National Action Plan against terrorism in the province of Punjab, which is reportedly home to many groups affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida.

According to the AP, Khanzada was an outspoken critic of the Taliban and militant Islam:

Khanzada was a vocal public advocate for harsh government tactics against the militants, and endorsed the government’s recent decision to bring back the death penalty for terrorism cases. Late last month, he had announced the killing in a police shootout of one of the most feared Islamic militants Malik Ishaq, who was the chief of al-Qaida linked Pakistani sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

“We will not spare any of the 63 proscribed militant organizations,” Khanzada said in a recent local TV interview.

The New York Times reports that Khanzada, who officials said had received death threats, was holding a “political meeting” at his home when the attack took place. “People had come to condole the death of one of our uncles, who had died a few days ago,” his son, Jahangir Khanzada, told local reporters.

“Such dastardly, cowardly attempts can’t dent our national resolve to eliminate the menace,” a military spokesman said in a statement. “Khanzada was a bold officer whose sacrifice for the greater cause of cleansing Pakistan won’t go to waste.”

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

James Harrison, workout maniac, is not down for rewarding mere participation. The Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker is apparently forcing his sons, who are eight and six years old, to return “Best of the Batch” trophies.

Here’s Harrison via Instagram, explaining his rationale.

I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I’m sorry I’m not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I’m not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best...cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better...not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy. #harrisonfamilyvalues

This reads like the parenting manifesto of someone who saw Whiplash and thought, “Yes. That bald guy gets it. Really makes you think.” In the abstract, sure, incentivizing last place the same as first isn’t going to motivate anyone to work for first. But participation trophies aren’t really a motivator. Kids understand the difference between a ‘thanks for showing up’ party favor and a trophy you get for winning something.

Approaching everything like it’s a competition isn’t necessarily the healthiest way to go through life either. This mentality works for elite athletes, who often have to have militant self-belief to make it in their field, but cooperation is essential too. Lest we forget, Harrison once beat up his girlfriend, smashed down a door, and broke her cell phone to prevent her from calling the cops over an argument about the baptism of his older son. This is the problem solving strategy of an all-the-time, nonstop competitor.

Photo via Justin Aller/Getty

Here are some things that Donald Trump, a Ralph Steadman illustration come to life, who arrived at the Iowa State Fair this weekend by helicopter and who apparently isn’t going away anytime soon, said this weekend.

Asked by Chuck Todd, on Meet the Press, about his policy regarding undocumented immigrants, Trump said, “We’re going to keep the families together, but they have to go.” From NBC News:

Pressed on what he’d do if the immigrants in question had nowhere to return to, Trump reiterated: “They have to go.”

“We will work with them. They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don’t have a country,” he said.

Trump published his platform for immigration reform on his website, in which he proposes that not only should a wall be built along the U.S.-Mexico border, but that Mexico should pay for it!

Also, he said that Saudi Arabia should pay the United States for its support and aid. “We defend Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “We send our ships. We send our planes. Every time there’s a little ruckus, we send those ships and those planes. We get nothing. Why? They’re making a billion a day. We get nothing. And this is the problem with the world.”

Elsewhere, he said some things to Maureen Dowd that will either make you laugh or make your skin crawl, or maybe both, depending on how you process the implosion of the democratic ideal:

How does he tone it down when he’s proud of his outrageous persona, his fiery wee-hours Twitter arrows and campaign “gusto,” and gratified by the way he can survive dissing John McCain and rating Heidi Klum when that would be a death knell for someone like Scott Walker?

“Sometimes I do go a little bit far,” he allowed, adding, after a moment: “Heidi Klum. Sadly, she’s no longer a 10.”

Despite the fact that it relies heavily on a Grumpy Cat reference, Dowd’s column is actually quite good! Though that probably has as much to do with the fact that Trump will say anything to anyone as it does Dowd.

The Times generously has published a bunch of extra quotes from Trump that didn’t make it into the piece, like this, on Rand Paul:

Tiny little guy. Did you see the press release I put out about Rand Paul? Pretty brutal, right? A nasty, nasty guy. I gave him a lot of money for his eye center. I played golf with him. I’m a good golfer. I’ve won 18 club championships. And he’s a golfer and I killed him. I could play him a thousand times and never lose to him.

Anyway! So continues the waking nightmare that is Election 2016.

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

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union this morning, Mike Huckabee was asked about “Mainumby,” a ten-year-old Paraguayan girl who became pregnant after she was raped by her stepfather. The girl, whose name is a pseudonym, was denied an abortion and forced to carry the baby to term, despite objections from medical experts.

When CNN host Dana Bash asked Huckabee if he would have allowed Mainumby to have an abortion, Huckabee responded with a stock answer: “Does it solve the problem by taking the life of an innocent child?”

Bash then asked Huckabee if it would be easy “looking in the eyes of a 10-year-old girl and saying, ‘You had a horrible thing happen to you, and you’re going to...carry it out for the next nine months.’”

Huckabee responded: “No, it isn’t easy. I wouldn’t pretend it’s anything other than a terrible tragedy. But let’s not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life.”

His rationale for such a decision is two-fold Huckabee explained, it protects both fetus and mother: “There are two victims. One is the child; the other is that birth mother who often will go through extraordinary guilt years later when she begins to think through what happened — with the baby, with her. And again, there are no easy answers here.”

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Huckabee would support Paraguay’s policy, ThinkProgress notes that Huckabee’s (as well as Rubio’s and Walker’s) policy is nearly identical to Paraguay’s. Though this is familiar rhetoric from the Republican primary candidate, it still strikes as immensely cruel to defend “no exception” policies when faced with the real suffering of actual women (or child, in this case).

Video via CNN.

Tourists and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton are upset with the growing number of topless, painted women hustling people for money in Times Square, the New York Daily News reports. Other area fixtures agree. “There’s so many boobs,” the Naked Cowboy said. “You don’t look at them anymore.”

An alleged member of the Latin Kings gang, 23-year-old Angel Dejesus Arias, was arrested and charged in North Carolina this week, the Guardian reports, in the killing of Elisha Walker, a 20-year-old transgender woman who’d been missing for nearly a year,

According to The Guardian, Walker’s body was found in Johnston County, in a “crude grave” more than 100 miles from her home:

Walker was reported missing in November 2014, after her family had not heard from her since 24 October, the Salisbury Post reported. Police gave local media information about Walker’s disappearance in an effort to generate leads, but few were forthcoming until Walker’s burnt-out 2000 Pontiac Sunfire was discovered in an open field in Sampson County, police said in a release.

Arias had lived in a house in Salisbury that Walker was known to frequent, before moving to Johnston County, more than 100 miles away, where he was arrested on unrelated drug charges. Rowan County police obtained a search warrant for a Johnston County house, they said. They discovered Walker’s body in a “small depression” behind it.

Elsewhere this week, police in Texas announced an investigation into the death of Shade Schuler, a 22-year-old transgender woman whose body was found decomposing in a field in Dallas. In Detroit, police are investigating the death of Amber Monroe, who was shot and killed in Palmer Park—the fifth transgender woman to be killed there since 2014. On Tuesday, 35-year-old transgender woman Kandis Capri was shot and killed in Phoenix.

“Even as we are seeing an increase in transgender visibility through a range of inspiring national media stories, including Caitlyn Jenner’s,” transgender Human Rights Campaign staff member Laya Monarez said in a statement, “the levels of violence and harassment transgender people face – particularly transgender women and transgender women of color – constitute a national crisis.”

Walker’s alleged killer, Arias, will not face hate crimes charges, as North Carolina does not have a hate crimes statute.

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

According to a report from The Buffalo News, Thomas English—a police lieutenant with the city of Buffalo—drove Patrick Kane, his alleged rape victim, and two other people from SkyBar in downtown Buffalo out to Kane’s home in Hamburg early on August 2, the night of the alleged rape. The News also reports that English is a longtime friend of Kane’s and has worked for him as a driver for five years.

Here’s the News with more details:

Law enforcement sources told The News that Buffalo police are conducting an internal investigation to determine whether English was with Kane at any time he was supposed to be on duty the night of the alleged rape. Authorities said English was scheduled to work a half-shift that night at the police cell block and took a half-shift off on that night as personal leave time. English said he took the entire shift off with personal leave time.

Buffalo police officers are allowed to have second jobs as long as they have the proper paperwork, and a police source told the News that English’s paperwork is “in order.” English has told investigators that he dropped Kane and the three others off then went home. He disputes the testimonies three sources have given The Buffalo News that the alleged victim was urged to Kane’s by her friend, saying instead that, “It was a mutual agreement to go to the house.”

The News reports that up until Thursday, there were photos of English posing with Kane and the Stanley Cup in 2010 on English’s Facebook page. On Twitter, News reporter Tim Graham says one of the pictures shows English drinking from the Stanley Cup while in uniform, which sounds like a description of photos we posted four years ago. Chicago radio host Dan Bernstein claims that English recently deleted all of his social media accounts. http://deadspin.com/5807956/beer-i...

[The Buffalo News]

Photo via Bill Smith/Getty

“In a five-year period ending in 2010, according to a lawsuit, prosecutors in Houston and Henry Counties in Alabama used peremptory strikes to remove 82 percent of eligible black potential jurors from trials in which the death penalty was imposed.”

Novak Djokovic is fed up, man. Right after he took the first set from Jeremy Chardy in yesterday’s Rogers Cup semifinal in Montreal, Djokovic complained to the official that he could smell someone smoking the devil’s lettuce in the arena.

Here’s the Serbian getting annoyed:

You can see Djokovic saying there, “Someone is smoking weed, I can smell it. I’m getting dizzy.” His dizziness didn’t really hold him back, as he beat Chadry easily 6-4, 6-4 to head to the final. After the match, he told reporters, “Whoever it is, I hope he doesn’t come back tomorrow. He’s probably on the seventh sky somewhere,” which is the best way I’ve ever heard anyone describe being high.

If you are the Québécois weed smoking bandito in question, please email us at tips@deadspin.com.

Photo via Minas Panagiotakis/Getty