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Senate Passes First Budget in Four Years

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Senate Passes First Budget in Four YearsWhat have you not done for four years? Exercise? Visit your great-aunt? Pay taxes?

Well, if you're the Senate, you've just passed your first budget in four years, narrowly approving (50-49) a budget that would raise a trillion dollars in revenue, boost job growth programs, and preserve social safety-net programs. Of course, this budget will now square off with the new House budget, drafted by Paul Ryan, meaning that neither of these budgets stand a chance of passing the other chamber.

The budget, championed by Senate Budget Committee Chair Sen. Patty Murray (above), was passed by so slim a margin in the Democratic Senate after four Democratic senators facing reelection sided with Republicans, concerned about giving the appearance of supporting government spending.

The budget does signal a relative lull in the budget wars, which will probably not resume again until summer, when these two budgets do, in fact, have to be somewhat reconciled. Or not. It's more than likely that this budget simply sets up another protracted battle between the President and House Republicans with the threat of even deeper spending cuts and a possible government shutdown looming above us all, forever and ever, as Americans entirely lose their faith in the federal government.


Current and Former Popes Do Lunch, Bro Down

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Current and Former Popes Do Lunch, Bro DownIn what is going on public record as the first modern meeting of present and former popes, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI grabbed lunch with newly elected Pope Francis at Castel Gandolfo.

Pope Francis was flown via helicopter to the lakeside castle in Rome where Pope Emeritus Benedict has been living since falling ill last month. Present and former popes apparently got along quite well: Pope Francis declared the two "brothers."

According to Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, after arriving at the chapel at the palazzo, Francis refused to pray alone at the papal kneeler at the front of the chapel, opting instead to pray side-by-side with Benedict in the same pew. Francis also gifted the exiting pope with a Madonna of humility icon, telling him, "I thought of you. You gave us so many signs of humility and gentleness in your pontificate."

If you're on pins and needles wondering about the fashions, I can assure you: they were fascinating. Pope Francis' mantella and sash distinguished himself from Pope Benedict's simple white cassock of the papacy—proving Francis to be a style maverick and a pope that I can get behind.

The Vatican spokesman reported that following prayer, the two met privately in the library for 45 minutes, before being joined for lunch by Secretaries Monsignors Georg Gaenswein and Alfred
Xuereb. While the details of the lunch remain private, there's already been some speculation about what the two spoke about. Did they focus on the rise of secularism? Or how to draw more young people to the Church? Perhaps they discussed what's next for Pope Benedict. Benedict could have debriefed Francis on the investigation into the leaked papal documents last year. Or maybe they went over Justin Timberlake's comeback and how "Mirrors" is clearly so beyond better than "Suit & Tie."

No word on what was on the menu, or whether or not the two discussed the real reason for Pope Benedict's resignation. (The Knights Templar, obvi.)

[NCR, AP]

Our Kind of Ridiculous: Yous, Me and Blackness as Probable Cause

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Our Kind of Ridiculous: Yous, Me and Blackness as Probable CauseWhen I was twenty-four, I flew paper airplanes past the apartment of a thirty-two-year-old white boy named Kurt in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Kurt rocked a greasy brown mullet, bragged about ironing his bleached Lee's, and said the word "yous" a lot. Even with caked-up cornbread sealing the cracks of his teeth, and a raggedy mustache that looked like it was colored by a hyper six-year-old, Kurt always reminded me of somebody cute.

Kurt, whose apartment was directly above mine, lived with two women. One was his girlfriend. She could see. One was his wife. She could not.

Three little boys lived in the apartment with Kurt and his two partners. The youngest boy was Kurt's girlfriend's child. This miniature Viking loved to run his muddy hands through his blond hair and grin when he wasn't growling. The other two boys looked like they rolled around naked in a tub of melted tootsie rolls before coming outside to play.

I was in Pennsylvania working on my graduate thesis while Nicole, my girlfriend at the time, interned at Rodale Press. Though I spent most of my life in Mississippi surrounded by black folks who were thirty cents away from a quarter, that summer in Emmaus, Pennsylvania was the most intimate I'd ever been with white folks who barely had a pot to piss in.

After paying our rent, food and utilities, Nicole and I had about $140 left in disposable income every month. That $140 had me feeling quite bougie.

It was the first summer I hadn't worked as a phone book delivery man, a waiter at Ton-o-Fun, a health care assistant at Grace House, a knife salesman at Cutco, a bootleg porter at the Buie House, a counselor at Upward Bound, or a summer school teacher at Indiana University. I was on fellowship, which meant for the first time in my life, my job was simply to collect a small check in exchange for not wasting reading and writing's time.

During the day, when I wasn't reading and writing, I made paper airplanes and talked outside with Shay, our eight-year old neighbor; Barry, her six-year old brother; and Kurt's kids. For most of the summer, Kurt's kids looked into our empty apartment through a huge sliding glass door. At first, they would stand about a foot from the door, looking directly at their reflections and our empty living room. A week or so into the summer, all three of Kurt's kids started smashing their faces against the door and running their muddy hands up and down the glass.

Shay and Barry had what Grandma called good home-training. They simply watched Kurt's kids watch us from a distance and whispered in each other's ears.

We had one chair, one desk, a blow-up bed, a fridge covered in word magnets, and a cranky Mac in our apartment. While Kurt's place spelled like fried meats, thin gravy, sticky fruit punches, and carpet that rarely got vacuumed, our place smelled like new paint and feet. Miseducation, ATLiens, Aquemini, and the greatest hits of Joni Mitchell and Curtis Mayfield worked to shield our ears from Kurt's mash-up of Zeppelin, short people screams, laughter and that gotdamn Cartoon Network.

One July weekend, someone was shot in the building next to ours. As soon as the police left, Kurt and I walked over to see what we could.

As we walked, Kurt asked me how to pronounce my name. He'd heard his kids call me "Keith" and Nicole call me "Key" or "Kiese."

After I told him that "Keith" was fine, he asked me if he could borrow ten dollars. I told him I'd give it to him when we got back to our building.

Kurt and I kept walking and talking about his odd family arrangement and money a little while longer before he asked me if people got shot a lot where I was from.

I stopped to look him in the eye and see if he was asking a question he really wanted answered. He wouldn't look back.

I didn't tell Kurt anything about missing Mississippi, or how I was reckoning with the fact that a friend had taken a young woman into Central Mississippi woods, blown her brains out, and was now serving a life sentence. I ignored Kurt's question completely and asked him about Pennsylvania amusement parks, Italian ices and when he planned on getting a job.

After he answered all my questions, Kurt got really close to my face. He looked up at me and didn't run from my eyes. "Keith, yous should move here," he said. "I'm serious. Yous are different. Yous ain't like your kind."

He kept saying it too, absolutely sure he'd given me that gift that a number of white folks I'd met loved to give black folks at the strangest times, the gift of being decidedly different than all them other niggers. Kurt wanted a pat on the back for not saying the word "nigger," two pats for distinguishing one nigger from another nigger, and three pats for inching closer to the realization that black Americans were never niggers to begin with.

On the way back from the murder site, Kurt walked ahead of me. I gripped his bony shoulder before we got to the hill leading up to our building. I asked him if his greasy mullet, his two in-house partners, his caved in chest, his white BeBe's kids, and his belief in niggers made him different than his kind.

"I ain't racist, Keith," he kept saying.

"That's sweet," I told him.

Kurt wiggled free of my grip and walked up the hill to our building. I caught up with him outside of our glass door. I told him that the problem was that the niggers he believed in knew so much more about his kind than even he did, and that the niggers he believed in were taught to never ever be surprised by the slick shit that came out of the mouths of white folks. Then I got all graduate school on him and spouted some mess about dissonance, dissemblance, white absolution, and how it might be impossible for him to know if I was different than my kind if he didn't know himself.

Kurt turned his back on me and my big words.

He walked upstairs to his family and slammed his door. I walked into our empty apartment, partially disappointed that I didn't slap the taste out of Kurt's mouth, and mostly ashamed that there was so much more I wanted to say to him.

If white American entitlement meant anything, it meant that no matter how patronizing, unashamed, deliberate, unintentional, poor, rich, rural, urban, ignorant, and destructive white Americans could be, black Americans were still encouraged to work for them, write to them, listen to them, talk with them, run from them, emulate them, teach them, dodge them, and ultimately thank them for not being as fucked up as they could be.

That's what I learned in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.

Kurt avoided me the rest of the summer, but his kids still banged their muddy hands on our sliding glass door every morning. A few days after Kurt said I was different than my kind, his youngest child walked into our apartment and started playing with the word magnets on our refrigerator. I placed the words "wash" "your" "dirty" "face" "and" "hands" "sometimes" "boy" in a line and asked him to read that sentence.

Kurt's son looked at the words, moved them around, smiled and clapped his muddy hands like he was lightweight touched before proudly saying, "Nope. I can't even read, Keith. Nope. I can't. I can't even read!" The little muddy joker said it the way you would expect a white child to say, "Gee! I found the treasure. Yep! I really found the treasure."

I laughed in that child's face for a good minute and a half.

Deep. Terrible. Sad laughs.

And he laughed back, thinking I was laughing with him.

For worse, never better, nothing I saw, or heard, or smelled, or touched, or felt from Kurt and his family surprised me that summer.

I can't say the same thing about myself.

***

A month or so later, two of Nicole's friends came to visit. I don't remember much about Nicole's friends except one of them was the roundest short adult I'd ever met and she tried too hard to not sound like she was from rural West Virginia. Every few seconds, she managed to throw in the words "ridiculous" and "totally" into something that wasn't ridiculous or totally anything.

Nicole drove a tiny Green Geo Metro that I couldn't drive because it was a stick, and my license was suspended. The four of us piled in that Geo and headed to a Lilith Fair concert in Hershey. The concert wasn't Fresh Fest, and I didn't love the wet fog of patchouli and weed, or the lack of my kind at the show, but it ended up making me smile and feel a lot.

When it was over, we stopped at a gas station before leaving Hershey and heading back to Emmaus. A few minutes after we got on the interstate, I reminded Nicole to turn on her headlights.

Seconds later, we heard the siren.

A young white cop came to Nicole's side and pointed his flashlight at me in the passenger seat. I asked him if I could open the glove compartment to get her registration. He told me to keep my hands in plain sight.

I laughed at him. "See?" I said to Nicole.

Another older white cop pulled behind us and came to my side. They both walked to the front of the Geo, talked for a second, then told me to get out of the car.

"For what?" I asked, now fake-laughing.

"Because we saw you throw crack out of the window."

I sucked my teeth. "I'ont even drink," I stupidly told the PoPo.

I pointed towards the field and told both cops again that I didn't throw shit out of the car and that we could all go look if they wanted to.

When I raised my arms, the bigger cop put his hands on his gun and told me to put my hands on the car. He patted me down and handcuffed me while Nicole watched from the driver's side and her ridiculous round friend sat quietly in the back of the car talking to the girl whose voice I can't ever remember.

***

Blackness is probable cause, I tell myself. They got me.

I'm standing handcuffed in front of the flashing blue lights of a parked police car and a green Geo Metro. I've had guns pulled on me before and I was never afraid.

This is different.

The handcuffs hurt more than the thought of bullets. Two cops with deep frown lines place me in the back of the police car "for my own good" as a parade of mostly drunk white folks, on their way home from Lilith Fair, drive down the highway looking in our direction.

Shame.

I am guilty of being too much like my kind, which means I am one mistaken movement from being a justifiable homicide, or a few planted rocks from being incarcerated.

This is American law. In Hershey. In Jackson. In Compton. In Oakland. In Brooklyn.

This is American life.

I'm wondering what will happen if I ask the cops, "Do y'all still drink Kool-Aid? Does it make your tongue purple? Remember Tang? Would you ever want us to do this to you and your kids? I'm serious. Don't you think police, teachers, doctors and dentists should be more just and compassionate than the rest of us? Who protects us from you?"

I'm wondering if Nicole, who is now standing at the back of her green Geo Metro talking to one of the cops, will think I could have actually thrown drugs out of her passenger side window. This, I tell myself, is why Mama and Grandma got so mad when Nicole's white stepfather disowned her for talking to me. Grandma and Mama believed if anyone should have used disowning as a tactic to protect their child, it should have been them. But they never did. They never would. They simply said, "Don't get caught riding in the car with white girls" in the same speech that they told me, "Don't fuck anyone you can't imagine raising a child with."

I'm wondering if Nicole is wondering if she ever really knew me. I'm thinking I should have asked myself that question long before we decided to move in together.

From the backseat of the police car, I'm watching this blinking blue field where my kind has thrown lots of invisible, and not so invisible, rocks of crack cocaine. I convince myself that Mississippi is on the other side of that field.

I want to run home.

For a second, though-truth be told-I'm wondering if I threw rocks out of the window. Sitting in the back of that police car in handcuffs that had been wrapped around the wrists of many of my kind, I'm wondering if there's any chance that I am what, not who, they think I am.

I'm watching the police search Nicole's car. They pull out my backpack from the trunk. The older cop reaches in the bag and pulls out what looks like some condoms they gave out at Lilith Fair. He holds the backpack up in Nicole's face and shakes his head. He comes to back of the police car I'm sitting in and tells me to get out.

"Thought you said we wouldn't find anything in your bag," he says.

I get it.

As calm as I can, still water cradling my eyes, I say, "You should find that crack you saw me throw or you should let me go." The cop makes some comment about my mouth and takes the handcuffs off.

I don't feel free. I want to run home.

"All the people that you could've stopped, and you chose us?" I say with my hands pressed against my thighs. Cars filled with white folks keep passing us. They're all watching, mostly knowing, what my kind is capable of. I wonder if Kurt is in one of those cars. I wonder, too, how many of my kind saw me handcuffed on the side of the road that night.

They want to help, I tell myself. But they already know.

"You'uns safe tonight," the older officer says. "We're just doing our job."

They got us, I tell myself. They got us.

"That was so ridiculous," Nicole's friend keeps saying from the back seat as we head home. "That was so totally ridiculous."

No one else is saying a word. Nicole is driving 8 MPH below the speed limit.

As we get closer to Emmaus, Nicole's friend starts replaying what happened from the beginning of the concert to the cops saying I threw crack out the window.

She nervously says "totally" and "ridiculous" a few more times. She never says "afraid," "angry," "worried," "complicit," "tired," or "ashamed."

***

We got out of the Geo and saw the blue flickering of the TV on the upstairs balcony of Kurt's apartment. Kurt and his family were watching something with a loud laugh track. Our sliding glass door was covered in the new muddy smudges.

I walked in the smaller bedroom of our apartment. While Nicole's friend kept replaying what happened for the third time in the living room, I dug my feet into the carpet of the bedroom and tried to push myself through the wall.

Nicole knocked on the door.

"You OK?" she asked me.

"I'm good," I said. "For real. You should spend some time with your friends before they leave."

Nicole looked at me like she wanted to say everything was going to be okay. I wanted her to say that we were the collateral damage of a nation going through growing pains. Part of me wanted us to hug and agree each other to death that we were better people than we actually were. But most of me was tired of lying to myself and really tired talking to white folks.

Nicole kept staring at me through silence when we heard some thumping and screaming upstairs. I told her that I was sorry for being a dick, but I just wanted to read and write before going to bed.

As emo as it sounds, I grabbed my notebook and told myself I was going to use that day as fuel to finish a chapter I was writing about four black children from Mississippi who time-travel through a hole in the ground. The kids think time-travel is the only way to make their state and their nation love the kids coming after them. I scribbled away at a chapter before getting stuck on these two sentences one of the characters sees written in sawdust in a workshed around 1964:

We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause.

We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause.

We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause.

We are real black characters …

After what happened that day, all that really mattered was making it to those two clunky sentences. Everything else—including Kurt's intentions, Nicole's nervous friend, and my shame at getting niggered by two perverted police officers—was as light as the paper airplanes I threw past Kurt's apartment. And making it to that point, as quiet as it's kept, felt like the most one of my kind could ask for, a few minutes from some invisible crack, not that many miles from Mississippi, directly beneath the apartment of an American white boy who needed to say "yous" and "your kind" just as much as some of y'all could ever imagine.

Contributing editor Kiese Laymon is the author of the novel Long Division and the essay collection How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, of which this is an excerpt. Gawker is running a personal essay every weekend. Please send suggestions to saturdays@gawker.com.

Gun Deaths Continue Since Newtown

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Gun Deaths Continue Since Newtown The Huffington Post is running a lengthy feature which profiles the shooting deaths of five Americans over the past decade. Similar to the AP story from a few weeks ago that profiled the shooting deaths of Americans on a single day, the Huffington Post feature outlines the lives lost and, more extensively, their survivors.

Devin Aryal, 9, was killed by a mentally ill man while driving home with his mother from school:

On the one-month anniversary of Devin's murder, Aryal attended her first support group meeting. She said she hasn't managed to do much more than sit on her couch with the TV's white noise. She has been in her bedroom only to grab clothes. "I try to get in and out of there quickly," she explained. She keeps her bedroom door closed at all times.

Chris Heyman was killed when a man searching for meth shot into the car he was in with a group of friends:

"Every year on Chris' birthday, she [Chris's mother] returns to the overpass. Twenty-one was tough. Heyman bought a piece of chain-link fence and tied it to the bridge. She weaved a ribbon through it to spell Chris' name. She was proud that she thought of something that didn't blow away. "Sometimes I think it would be easier to be dead than alive," she said.

While supporters of guns would argue that people who want to kill will kill anyway, most of these stories highlight the randomness of their deaths, the targeting of people only because they were within the range of a gun.

The graphic above, which tracks the amount of gun deaths since the Newtown massacre, serves as a grim reminder that partisan gridlock is only one symptom of a culture of violence that has resulted in more American deaths than all the wars in the country's history.

Tilda Swinton is Currently Sleeping in a Box at MoMA

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Tilda Swinton is Currently Sleeping in a Box at MoMAOn random days this month, Tilda Swinton (actress, Bowie-enthusiast, badass) will be performing her 1995 piece "The Maybe," which consists of Swinton sleeping in a glass box. In fact, at this very moment, Tilda Swinton is sleeping in a glass box at MoMa for your viewing pleasure.

Gothamist spoke with a source at MoMA who told them that the "Museum staff doesn't know she's coming until the day of, but she's here today. She'll be there the whole day. All that's in the box is cushions and a water jug."

Swinton first performed "The Maybe" in London, followed by a repeat performance in Rome.

Tilda Swinton is Currently Sleeping in a Box at MoMA

MoMA describes the piece's random schedule:

An integral part of The Maybe's incarnation at MoMA in 2013 is that there is no published schedule for its appearance, no artist's statement released, no museum statement beyond this brief context, no public profile or image issued. Those who find it chance upon it for themselves, live and in real-shared-time: now we see it, now we don't.

[Images courtesy of Gothamist]

King of the Cat Burglars Gets A Pretty Great Obit from The Telegraph

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King of the Cat Burglars Gets A Pretty Great Obit from The TelegraphIn 1994 Peter Scott, Britain's most legendary cat burglar, wrote the The Daily Telegraph, saying that it would be "a massive disappointment if I were not to get a mention in [its] illustrious obituary column."

Well, do a little dance in cat burglar heaven (or hell, probably), Mr. Scott, because you got your wish. The Telegraph released a lengthy obit on Scott yesterday, who died from cancer at the age of 82, and whose life reads like a USA Network Sunday night movie.

Born Peter Craig Gulston in Belfast on February 18, 1931, his mother emigrated the family to the United States after the passing of his father and already sensing that young Peter, much like that dude Taylor Swift has warned us about (Okay. Much like Harry Styles), was trouble.

While still in his teens he was wandering the Malone Road in his school scarf burgling houses of the well-off and stashing the spoils in a rugby bag slung over his shoulder. He estimated that he had committed 150 such "screwers" before the police finally nailed him in 1952. "They never suspected me," he explained, "because I looked like a resident. When the police eventually caught on, I had done so many jobs that they were embarrassed and only charged me with 12."

He eventually changed his last name to Scott and moved to London, working as a bouncer by day, and a burglar by night. Scott served a total of 12 years in correctional facilities, serving lengthy terms with eventual co-conspirator George "Thaters" Chathum, following multiple shorter terms in the late 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s. By the mid-1990s, Scott claimed to have laid to rest his thieving ways, but was jailed again in 1998 for the theft of Picasso's Tête de Femme from the Lefevre Gallery in Mayfair the year prior.

In all, by his own reckoning, Scott stole jewels, furs and artworks worth more than £30 million. He held none of his victims in great esteem ("upper-class prats chattering in monosyllables"). The roll-call of "marks" from whom he claimed to have stolen valuables included Zsa Zsa Gabor, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren, Maria Callas and the gambling club and zoo owner John Aspinall. "Robbing that bastard Aspinall was one of my favourites," he recollected. "Sophia Loren got what she deserved too."

Scott justified his crimes by declaring his victims as deserving of what they got, saying, "The people I burgled got rich by greed and skulduggery. They indulged in the mechanics of ostentation - they deserved me and I deserved them. If I rob Ivana Trump, it is just a meeting of two different kinds of degeneracy on a dark rooftop."

Scott ultimately declared bankruptcy and died broke, having spent all his hard-earned money on "head waiters and tarts."

[Via TT, The Guardian]

Man Allegedly Steals $100,000 Worth of Whiskey

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Man Allegedly Steals $100,000 Worth of WhiskeyAfter a long day, John Saunders, 62, would kick back, reach into the wall, and pull out a bottle of 100-year-old whiskey. Saunders, who rented a basement apartment in a large mansion in western Pennsylvania, had stumbled upon a massive stash of pre-prohibition era whiskey.

But what started as an innocent drink has become a bad hangover for Saunders, who is now facing theft charges from the owner of the mansion. The whiskey that Saunders found hidden behind a staircase was stashed there by industrialist J.P. Brennan, the original owner of the mansion, who probably hid it there during prohibition, then forgot about it. Saunders drank over 45 bottles of the hooch. The owners of the mansion, now a bed and breakfast, claim that the whiskey he drank is worth over $100,000.

WTAE-Pittsburgh spoke with an employee of the bed and breakfast:

"The whiskey was buried right back here under these stairs. They were doing renovations down here for the plumbing and electrical and they had to rip out underneath the stairs. Whenever they did, they discovered 9 cases of the old farm, pure rye whiskey," said South Broadway Manor's chef and innkeeper, Rick Bruckner. "The story with this isn't just, 'Hey, we have some really old whiskey.' It's, 'Hey, we have some really old, historical whiskey.'"

Saunders is claiming the whiskey "evaporated" from the old bottles. The police, however, have picked up his DNA from the empty bottles. Saunders claims he was only "cleaning" them.

John, we believe ya.

[Image courtesy of AP]

Brooklyn Man Murders Roommate's Fish Because He Just Really Doesn't Want Her To Move Out

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Brooklyn Man Murders Roommate's Fish Because He Just Really Doesn't Want Her To Move OutI used to fantasize about leaving the front door open for hours so that my roommate's obese cat who shed incessantly would muster enough energy to escape. And I often thought, "It would be much easier to make her life miserable if she had a fish that I could just flush down the toilet." That's a lie, but it's exactly what 47-year-old Brooklyn man, Jose Santiago allegedly did.

According to 45-year-old Brenda Alvarez, her roommate Santiago became irate after she decided to move out of the Nostrand Avenue apartment they shared because, shockingly, tension between the longtime friends was thick. Alvarez told police that when she started packing her things Santiago "went crazy," and murdered her underwater pals - Bonnie and Clyde - right in front of her. Santiago allegedly flushed one down the toilet and tied the other in a bag, suffocating it.

"I did everything for him, and the only thing I ever asked him to do was the laundry," Alvarez said, "So why did he do this to me?"

Santiago has been arrested and charged with animal cruelty and assault and was released without bail at his arraignment on Thursday. He is apparently frustrated that no charges are being filed against Alvarez, who he alleges started it. "I have a mark on my head," he said, "but you're not going to do anything about it. She pushed me first and started the whole fight."

[Image courtesy of AP]


Boris Berezovsky, Oligarch Critic of the Kremlin, Has Died

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Boris Berezovsky, Oligarch Critic of the Kremlin, Has DiedBoris Berezovsky, the used-car salesman who became a major influence on Boris Yeltsin in shaping post-Soviet Russia has died at the age of 67. London officials are describing his death as "unexplained." Theories of his death now range from suicide, to a heart attack, to murder, as British authorities cordon off his property.

Berezovsky, who was living outside of London and had reached apparent financial ruin, was a wanted man inside of his native Russia for "economic crimes." He clashed frequently with Russian strongman President Vladimir Putin after assuming a massive amount of wealth during the rash of privatizations that swept Russia in the 1990s. In 1997, Forbes estimated that he was worth $3 billion.

Recently however, Berezovsky had become involved in a series of high-profile and highly-embarrassing court cases, including losing a $4.7 billion claim against fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich.

Berezovsky made his fortune by selling used Mercedes to a newly-wealthy Russian luxury class, and was a main supporter of the rise of Boris Yeltsin in shaping Russian Federation policy. The BBC reports that, "Mr Berezovsky survived numerous assassination attempts, including a bomb that decapitated his chauffeur."

Berezovsky also supported President Putin's rise to power, but soon became one of his fiercest critics as Putin moved to curb the influence of Russia's oligarch class. Berezovsky moved to London voluntarily, only to find himself in virtual exile after Russian courts found him guilty of economic crimes in absentia. Russia repeatedly tried to extradite Berezovsky from the UK, but he was granted political asylum there in 2003.

"He rose from being a mathematician, a computer programmer and a used car salesman, to being such an influential figure in Boris Yeltsin's Russia," said the BBC's Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg.

Berezovsky had recently been trying to sell off personal assets to deal with his enormous debt and outstanding legal fees. Friends reported that Berezovsky had recently been depressed.

"It was as if life had already left him," Mikhail Kozyrev, a journalist, told Moscow's TV Rain.

Jeb Bush on George's Paintings: He Would Like to Paint Your Dog, Probably

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Jeb Bush on George's Paintings: He Would Like to Paint Your Dog, ProbablyLast week, hacker Guccifer, revealed more of George W. Bush's newfound love of painting (or method of therapy. Whichever.), releasing six new photographs of his work that ranged from still life to animal portraits.

And it gets better.

Jeb Bush, who admits to being surprised when learning about his brother's hobby after finding out about it a year ago, told CNN's Jake Tapper that the former president is painting dogs "with a vengeance," saying, "He's actually become a pretty good painter."

According to Jeb, there's a good chance that Tapper, who is a former White House correspondent for ABC News, could someday be the owner of his very own Bush painting. "If you've got a dog, I'm sure based on your past relationship, he would like to paint it," he said.

In the meantime, we can all sit patiently while we wait for the inevitable Etsy shop.

Man Wrongfully Imprisoned for 23 Years has Massive Heart Attack on Release

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Man Wrongfully Imprisoned for 23 Years has Massive Heart Attack on ReleaseDavid Ranta was released from prison Thursday after serving 23 years for a crime he did not commit. On Friday however, his first full day of freedom, he suffered a serious heart attack and had to be rushed to an area hospital where he now waits to undergo several procedures that will hopefully clear blockages from his arteries.

Ranta, who was convicted in the 1990 killing of a Brooklyn Rabbi, told reporters on his release that "I'm overwhelmed. Right now, I feel like I'm under water, swimming."

His lawyer, Pierre Sussman, told the Daily News that, "The accumulated trauma of being falsely convicted and incarcerated for 23 years, coupled with the intense emotions experienced surrounding his release, has had a profound impact on his health."

His sister reported that his first meal after being freed was a steak ("and probably everything else on the menu"), and that he began feeling ill shortly after.

Ranta was sentenced to 37 years to life after being found guilty of shooting Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger in the head during a failed jewelry robbery. No physical evidence tied Ranta to the crime, but he was convicted anyway. A then 13-year-old witness later admitted that they had been coached by a detective to identify Ranta as the shooter. The detective told the witness to "pick the guy with the big nose" out of the lineup.

Bill Gates Wants to Pay You $100,000 to Build a Condom That Feels Good, Man

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Bill Gates Wants to Pay You $100,000 to Build a Condom That Feels Good, ManCreeps: You don't have to try to convince your partner that the pull-out method works just as good anymore! Bill Gates is here for you.

Latex condoms may be over 85% effective at preventing unwanted pregnancy and the spread of most sexually transmitted diseases when used properly, but they just don't feel good, amirite? You know what I'm talking about, fellas. [Exaggerated wink.]

And so the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is offering up $100,000 of initial funding for the designer of the "next generation of condoms," just one of the topics for Round 11 of its Grand Challenges Exploration initiative.

According to the official call for entries, released earlier this month:

The one major drawback to more universal use of male condoms is the lack of perceived incentive for consistent use. The primary drawback from the male perspective is that condoms decrease pleasure as compared to no condom, creating a trade-off that many men find unacceptable, particularly given that the decisions about use must be made just prior to intercourse.

And ladies! Fret not, ladies. Bill & Melinda are thinking about you too, asserting that the less common and more expensive female condom needs to see some changes as well:

Female condoms can be an effective method for prevention of unplanned pregnancy or HIV infection, but suffer from some of the same liabilities as male condoms, require proper insertion training and are substantially more expensive than their male counterparts. While negotiating use of female condoms may be easier than male condoms, this need for negotiation precisely illustrates the barrier preventing greater use that we seek to address through this call.

Are you ready for the challenge, young grasshopper? Proposals must "have a testable hypothesis, include an associated plan for the the idea would be tested or validated, and yield interpretable and unambiguous data in Phase I," before being considered for Phase II funding.

Your next level condom ideas are being accepted by GrandChallenges.org. Get to it, pervs.

[image via AP]

Kate Middleton Impersonator Buys a Baby Bump To Keep Up Appearances

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Kate Middleton Impersonator Buys a Baby Bump To Keep Up AppearancesIt's hard out there for a celebrity impersonator. Authenticity is important. And when the celebrity changes, you must implement those changes as well in order to keep your job, regardless of how much of a burden they may be on your own life. (So sorry for all you Lindsay Lohan impersonators out there. Are there Lilo impersonators out there?)

That's why Kate Middleton lookalike, Heidi Agan, recently purchased her very own baby bumps to stay current with Kate while she's pregnant with the royal baby.

Agan, who quit her waitressing job last May after repeatedly being told by customers how much she looked like Middleton, now has "a bump in various sizes."

"It's difficult at the moment as she's not big enough yet to change her entire wardrobe so it's difficult to see how she's' going to dress it," she said.

Agan's salary has increased substantially since taking on her doppelganger duties, allowing her to make it rain when she needs to in order to match Middleton's chic style. "The most expensive shoes I've bought as Kate were about £200, the dress was about £300 - which I don't think is that bad considering her original evening wedding dress by Alexander McQueen would have cost ten of thousands of pounds," Agan said, adding that, "I have to get the clothes, the mannerisms, the way she stands and interacts with William right. Things like that are all very important if I want to be the best."

Agan's Middleton copycat ends when it comes to the Prince though, saying that neither William nor Harry are her type — "they are too tall."

Yeah. Okay, lady.

[via BBC]

[image courtesy of AP]

Washington Post Kills Account of Its Failures in Iraq Reporting and Runs a Defense Instead

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Washington Post Kills Account of Its Failures in Iraq Reporting and Runs a Defense InsteadVeteran journalist Greg Mitchell is claiming an assigned piece he wrote for the Washington Post that outlined the failure of the media (including the Washington Post) in reporting on the lead-up to the Iraq War was killed by editors, who then ran a piece by Paul Farhi that defends their coverage instead.

Mitchell, whose new book chronicles the failures of the media in reporting during the run-up to the Iraq War, wrote on his blog,

The Washington Post killed my assigned piece for its Outlook section this weekend which was mainly on media failures re: Iraq and the current refusal to come to grips with that (the subject of my latest book)—yet ran this misleading, cherry-picking, piece by Paul Farhi claiming the media did NOT fail. I love the line about the Post in March 2003 carrying some skeptical pieces just days before the war started: "Perhaps it was too late by then. But this doesn't sound like failure."

Farhi's piece contends that the media as a whole, and the Washington Post in particular, didn't "fail" in their reporting, they just didn't "succeed." "Success" meaning properly informing the public, regardless of the political climate. "Failure" being repeating the talking points of war hawks and giving them prominent placement in your newspaper. Farhi writes:

Some of these stories - too many - were not given prominence and, in the case of newspapers, didn't make the front page. But it wasn't impossible for skeptics of the war to connect the dots.

So Farhi believes the Washington Post could have done better, but by at least publishing some critical pieces deep in the paper, they were laying out the breadcrumbs for endeavoring, skeptical readers to come across. How is that not failure?

Farhi then resorts back to the tired "it was right after 9/11, the world was crazy" defense,

The field was tilted. Administration officials hogged media attention with scary, on-the-record statements. On the other side, there were few authoritative sources countering them. Even Al Gore believed that Iraq had WMDs, said Doyle McManus, who covered the period for the Los Angeles Times."The consensus was universal," he says.

Mitchell, in his blog post, digs into Farhi's defense:

"There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all the contrary stuff?" admitted the Post's Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks in 2004. And this classic from a top reporter, Karen DeYoung: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power." In Farhi's new piece, Len Downie, the longtime Post editor, is still claiming, with a shrug, hey, we couldn't have slowed or halted the war anyway. Farhi agrees with this. Nothing to see here, move along.

Mitchell has now posted the rejected article on his blog, and The Nation is running it as well.

Watch the CEO of Starbucks Tell a Shareholder to Sell His Shares if He's Not Down With Marriage Equality

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Watch the CEO of Starbucks Tell a Shareholder to Sell His Shares if He's Not Down With Marriage EqualityStarbucks CEO Howard Schultz made news last week after reportedly telling shareholder Tom Strobhar "fuck you!" - not in so many words - after Strobhar questioned Schultz on the company's support for marriage equality, suggesting that he simply sell his shares if he didn't like Starbucks' stance on the issue.

Now there's video of Schultz announcing to shareholders:

We want to embrace diversity - of all kinds. If you feel, respecfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38% you got last year, it's a free country. You can sell your shares at Starbucks and buy shares at another company. Thank you very much.

[via Towleroad, image courtesy of AP]


Scientists Can Now Grow Human Noses, Parts of Hearts in Jars

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Scientists Can Now Grow Human Noses, Parts of Hearts in JarsWhy get a kidney on the black market, when you can just make one in a jar?

Scientists in Europe have made groundbreaking strides in the manufacture of body parts, bioengineering noses and parts of human hearts. Their research ushers in a new era of building body parts for transplant into human bodies, instead of just waiting for a suitable donor. Patients wouldn't even be subject to the dangerous process of suppressing the bodies' rejection of a donor organ, because the transplants would be built with the patients' own cells.

The Wall Street Journal outlines the scientific progress,

The development of lab-built body parts is being spurred by a shortage of organ donors amid rising demand for transplants. Also, unlike patients getting transplants, recipients of lab-built organs won't have to take powerful anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives. That's because the bioengineered organs are built with the patients' own cells.

Until the late 1980s, few scientists believed it would be possible to make human organs because it was a struggle to grow human cells in the laboratory. The task became easier once scientists figured out the chemicals-known as growth factors-that the body itself uses to promote cellular growth.

Scientists are still experimenting with the process of building a organ from scratch. The technology behind the nose for example, has mostly been cracked. Scientists have been able to grow the cartilage in jars. There is one problem, however:

The nose was missing a crucial piece: skin.

This posed a substantial hurdle. No one has made natural human skin from scratch. Dr. Seifalian's idea: to implant the nose under the skin of the patient's forehead in the hope that skin tissue there would automatically sheath the nose.

But the patient objected, and for good reason: The implanted nose would have to sit inside his forehead for weeks or even months. In the end, Dr. Seifalian chose a less obtrusive approach. The bioengineered nose was implanted under the patient's forearm.

Whew, glad that the patient objected to having that nose transplanted under their forehead.

Racist EMT Cries Like a Baby When Confronted About Being Racist

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Racist EMT Cries Like a Baby When Confronted About Being RacistIt's a rough month to be a racist civil service worker in New York.

Just last week, Joseph Cassano—the son of Fire Department commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano—resigned following a series of hate-filled tweets aimed at pretty much anyone who's not a white dude. And now EMS Lt. Timothy Dluhos has been caught in a similar public hate-rant scandal.

Dluhos, who used an image of Hitler as his twitter profile photo and tweeted under the name "Bad Lieutenant," became a "blubbering crybaby" when confronted about his racist, sexist, anti-Semitic tweets by the New York Post (which is somewhat understandable because we all know that being called a racist is like, the worst thing that could ever happen to you.) Dluhos told the paper, "There has got to be a lot worse out there than me," after he broke down crying, "My life is ruined. Oh, my God. I'm so sorry."

Are you though, Dluhos?

His tweets ranged from racist and hateful to just straight up creepy. Dluhos' twitter account has been deleted, but the Post was kind enough to offer up some of his tweets:

Racist EMT Cries Like a Baby When Confronted About Being Racist

"Hahaha! I work with the coloreds," he wrote in a Feb. 8 exchange. "For 12 years so that s—t just run off on me."

"I'm going to give up racial insults for Lent," he tweeted Feb. 12. "Jesus that didn't [last] too long. F—ken chinks can't drive."

"But at least I know my taxes go to the ‘undocumented' citizens and lazy asses who do drugs all day," Dluhos wrote March 15.

"But at least I know my taxes go to the ‘undocumented' citizens and lazy asses who do drugs all day," Dluhos wrote March 15.

"I'm really a dirty pervert. I see a girl with tight pants on and my eyes immediately focus on her crotch to look for camel toe," he tweeted March 15. He also posted a photo gallery of naked, obese women.

Yikes.

During the confrontation Dluhos tried to explain himself, saying, "I've seen strangers shot and killed. I've seen families torn apart by violence. It's a damn shame that gang members ruin it for hardworking, struggling people," he added, "My stepfather's Jewish. I don't hate anybody." Ah, the good old - But my best friend is black!

According to the Post, sources indicate that the FDNY's Bureau of Investigations and Trials is currently looking into offensive social media posts from other members. However, the source, a retired EMS veteran, said that this "is not an isolated case," adding, "He's a symptom of a sick system. If you work in the city for police, fire or EMS and tell me you're surprised by this, you're a liar."

[via NYT, NYP, Gothamist ]

Bloomberg on Surveillance: "Get Used to It!"

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Bloomberg on Surveillance: "Get Used to It!"When New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is not busy performing musical numbers for the City Hall press corps, or teaming up with Joe Biden to push for gun reform, he's taking his time gently explaining the permanent surveillance apparatus that will soon cover every inch of New York City.

On his weekly radio show he told listeners,

"You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they'll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not."

And while he seemed confident that cameras would be posted on most telephone and utility poles, he admitted that drones will soon also be used —

"It's scary, but what's the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building? I mean intellectually I have trouble making a distinction. And you know you're gonna have face recognition software. People are working on that."

Coupled with the Domain Awareness System, the city-wide spying/surveillance program the city announced last summer, it seems like New York City is at the forefront of a new world of surveillance, where not a moment goes unrecorded.

The mayor pushed ethics aside in favor of the unstoppable progress of technology:

"We're going to have more visibility and less privacy. I don't see how you stop that. And it's not a question of whether I think it's good or bad. I just don't see how you could stop that because we're going to have them."

In New Video, Steubenville Partygoers Describe Night of Rape

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In New Video, Steubenville Partygoers Describe Night of RapeLess than a week after Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were convicted in the Steubenville rape trial, new video has been released of police officers interviewing teenage partygoers who witnessed the victim's increasing state of intoxication.

Farrah Marcino, 16, told authorities, "I could tell that she was gradually getting more drunk and worse throughout the night," adding, "Just, like, that she couldn't, like, she didn't walk."

18-year-old Anthony Craig, who told detectives that he took photos at the home where the assault occurred, but that they were deleted, described the victim as "a mess," saying, "she wasn't responding." Craig informed police that when Mays and Richmond carried the victim out of the house, "she was passed out."

Marcino told police that despite the fact that she and her friends tried to tell the (unable to walk, unresponsive) victim to not go with Mays, it didn't work - "Like, we just kept trying to tell her: ‘You don't want to do this. You don't want to go with them.' I just let her do what she want[ed], which I understand was wrong."

Investigators are concerned with why the bystanders failed to intervene and, instead, turned it into a "social media event."

Documentarian Denise Evans points to the lack of impulse control in the adolescent brain in culmination with a mix of "alcohol, social media and power":

Think about the number of students that witnessed this, that saw this. What about the ones that didn't text or tweet, but that were there watching. ...If you're drinking alcohol - a lot of teens are drinking alcohol - they just have entered the phase where decision-making is completely gone out the window. There's not deciding right or wrong in the moment.

[via ABC]

Ari Emanuel Unhappy With Brian Williams Interview, Sends Furious Legal Letter to NBC

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Ari Emanuel Unhappy With Brian Williams Interview, Sends Furious Legal Letter to NBC

Brian Williams, famed misspeller of names, is in hot water with powerful Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel. It seems as though Ari was caught off guard by Williams's hard-hitting approach during a recent interview with the Brothers Emanuel, including Ari, Chicago mayor Rahm and bioethicist Ezekiel. What was supposed to be a fluff piece to promote Ezekiel's memoir about the brothers instead, according to a New York Post source, resembled something "from Meet the Press."

Ari, being famously mild-mannered and easy-to-work with, did the sensible thing and had his lawyers fire off a sternly worded letter to NBC over the discussion's tone.

As the Post's source described it:

Ari was not happy with it," the source said of the aggressive interview done in a casual setting. "It was very odd, and [the brothers] were caught off guard. They were there to talk about the book and growing up together. They had offers to do this interview with lots of other people."

Spies added that "something was just off."

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed the incident.

A source tells THR that Williams approached the interview in an aggressive fashion, asking the brothers about their connection to Israel and Ari's reputation as an ultra-aggressive Hollywood agent, among other things. The source says Ari, who is fiercely protective of his brothers, believed the questioning would be lighter and related only to Ezekiel's book. So the agent's lawyers sent the letter asking that NBC not air the more confrontational portions of the interview.

The Post also reported Ari angrily confronted NBC executive Steve Burke during the March 9 filming of Saturday Night Live, though the Hollywood Reporter's source denied that incident.

NBC released a statement saying, "We hope viewers saw the interview as a lively conversation with three famously colorful brothers who embody a great American story of success."

Based on the final product, which aired last Friday, there didn't seem to be anything resembling challenging or serious questions – some good natured teasing and cursing between the brothers, with a generous, friendly setup from Williams and his producers - though at one point, as THR notes, Ari made a serious looking face and said something about wishing he'd started therapy sooner.

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