Remember the L.A. U.F.O.
http://gawker.com/everyone-in-lo...
If you believe the government, the screaming that came across the sky this evening in southern California was actually a test launch of a Trident II missile.
Each Trident missile costs $30 million, and they blew one up for kicks this evening.
Shriveled apricot and presidential candidate Donald Trump took the stage at Saturday Night Live on Saturday night, and he was every bit as bombastic and as orange as usual.
During the middle of his monologue, the line “You’re a racist!” was heard from somewhere in the back of the studio. Can it be — is this finally the moment when Trump, the most racist of all the presidential candidates (and that’s saying something), gets his comeuppance?
Alas, it was nothing but a skit. Trump will not get his day of reckoning, because networks want to make money off his giant bellowing mouth-hole. Meanwhile, people on the street outside the studio were actually calling Trump a racist, for real. Protesters from a coalition of Latino groups marched from Trump Tower to 30 Rockefeller Center to carrying signs calling Trump “the face of racism.”
Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.
Here are the best of today’s deals. Get every great deal every day on Kinja Deals, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to never miss a deal, join us on Kinja Gear to read about great products, and on Kinja Co-Op to help us find the best.
Whether you’re hoping to pick up an Xbox One or a PS4 this holiday season, there’s really no need to wait until Black Friday; both of these early deals are fantastic.
Speaking of video games, Target just kicked off a buy two, get one free promotion, which is a great opportunity to build or expand your library. [Buy Two Video Games, Get One Free]
More of a board game person? One of the best ones you can buy is cheaper than ever on Amazon. [Catan 5th Edition, $35]
http://www.amazon.com/Mayfair-Games-...
Today only, Amazon’s offering not one, not two, but three expansive Gold Box apparel deals.
If you missed out on last week’s Wake-Up Light Gold Box promotion, the high end HF3520 model is just $115 today, which is only $5 more than its Gold Box price, and one of the best deals ever listed. [Philips HF3520 Wake-Up Light With Colored Sunrise Simulation, $115]
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3520...
Amazon’s #1 selling cat scratching post has a 4.7 star review average from nearly 4,000 customers, and is down to just $36 today. But alas, it still won’t make your cat love you. [SmartCat Ultimate Scratching Post, $36]
http://www.amazon.com/SmartCat-3832-...
http://jezebel.com/stupid-shit-iv...
Even though they’re the previous generation models, GoPro’s Hero3+ cameras are still great action cams by any measure, and you can score huge discounts on refurbs today from GoPro’s official eBay store.
If you don’t have a philosophical objection to selfie sticks, $5 for a Bluetooth model is about as cheap as they get. [Aukey Self-portrait Monopod Extendable Selfie Stick, $5 with code NIAQ6Y39]
http://www.amazon.com/Aukey-Self-por...
If you’re planning on seeing Spectre or The Peanuts Movie this weekend, Fandango is currently taking $4 off two tickets to either film with promo code BOND. [Fandango]
Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here
In its final moments, a sudden noise was heard in the cockpit of the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula last week. According to the Associated Press, the voice recording findings fuel theories that the plane may have been struck by a bomb.
The plane, Airbus 321, broke up at an altitude of 30,000 feet and crashed in a mountainous region, killing all 224 people aboard on Oct. 31. CNN is reporting that flight data for Metrojet Flight 9268 confirms the explosion was not accidental. But some investigators say that it’s still to early to know.
“All scenarios are being considered ... it could be lithium batteries in the luggage of one of the passengers, it could be an explosion in the fuel tank,” El-Muqadem, leader of the investigation committee looking into the crash.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that he will suspend Russian air traffic with Egypt until the cause of the crash is determined.
[Image via Getty]
Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.
Justin Trudeau made big news this month when he was sworn in as the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada. And while he certainly is easy on the eyes, he is not the most interesting member of his family, not by a long shot.
An unintentionally hilarious profile of Margaret Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s mother and the wife of the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was published by The New York Times on Saturday, and it provides great insight into the real life of a kooky Canadian political wife.
Among her accomplishments: partying with the Rolling Stones, hanging out with Andy Warhol at Studio 54, and being a “hippie who had been wandering around North Africa.”
The piece includes this lovely passage about that one time Trudeau took peyote before a state dinner:
As she has noted, Mrs. Trudeau did not always deal with the pressure wisely. Before giving a speech, which became “a song of love” during a state dinner in Venezuela, Mrs. Trudeau ate peyote. “Even in my addled state, I could sense the acute embarrassment I had caused,” she later recalled. After a visit to the United States, Mrs. Trudeau became infatuated with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who she found to be more sympathetic than her husband.
Read the whole bizarre tale here, you won’t regret it.
[Image via Getty]
Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.
Former Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann is back and she’s got some big ol’ ideas about converting Jews to Christianity.
Earlier this week, the woman who once blamed natural disasters on the U.S. foreign policy with Israel, appeared on a radio program hosted by Tony Perkins, head of the conservative Christian group Family Research Council.
Bachmann, a former congresswoman from Minnesota, said that the need to convert followers, “even among the Jews” is imminent.
“We recognize the shortness of the hour and that’s why we as a remnant want to be faithful in these days and do what it is that the Holy Spirit is speaking to each one of us, to be faithful in the Kingdom and to help bring in as many as we can — even among the Jews — share Jesus Christ with everyone that we possibly can because, again, He’s coming soon.”
Listen to the whole clip below and be reminded of the hell we all went through back in 2012:
[Image via Getty]
Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.
“I wish the whole thing hadn’t happened [but] I think it was a moment in internet history that I was a part of. At the end of the day I’m Jewish and pretty nice. And I’m just trying to party,” said Josh Ostrovsky, aka the Fat Jew, in an interview with the Guardian. What kinds of parties do you think Ostrovsky uses for inspiration for his own parties?
Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.
“While my family may be the first guests to speak out about a wrongful death at an Airbnb rental, it shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. Staying with a stranger or inviting one into your home is an inherently dicey proposition.”
A plainclothes NYPD detective shot an 20-year-old man in the stomach on Sunday after he tried to rob him at gunpoint, CBS News reports. The suspect was shot once in the stomach and is in stable condition. The detective was also hospitalized, with tinnitus.
Police said three detectives were in Bed-Stuy investigating an earlier robbery. Two of the detectives were wearing plain clothes, Pix11 reports, and one was wearing an NYPD reflective vest.
The chief of Brooklyn’s detectives, Patrick Conry, said that the three suspects were allegedly running a real estate scam, posting fake rentals on Craigslist and robbing prospective tenants. From CBS New York:
Earlier on Sunday, a woman went to look at an apartment that was supposedly for rent, but was robbed by three male teenagers instead, officials said. The woman called the cops, who then set up a meeting with the suspects themselves, according to law enforcement sources.
At that meeting, one of the suspects pulled what looked like a semi-automatic weapon on the three detectives, officials said.
(The wounded individual’s age has variously been reported as 16, 18, and 20 years old. Most news outlets have updated to 20.)
A police spokesperson said that a Daisy PowerLine 415 BB gun was recovered at the scene. One other suspect was arrested in addition to the young man who was shot, and the third is still at large.
Image via Pix11. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.
For the second day in a row, a freight train has derailed in Wisconsin, reports the New York Times.
The first train derailed Saturday in western Wisconsin, “spilling thousands of gallons of ethanol.” Reuters has those thousands of gallons of ethanol spilling into the Mississippi River, so that’s, like, not very cool. 25 cars were derailed, and several spilled ethanol, with one car reportedly spilling more than 18,000 gallons.
Early Sunday afternoon, a Canadian Pacific Railway train derailed in Watertown, dumping at least 10 cars from the tracks and spilling crude oil from leaking derailed cars. This ABC News report says less than 1,000 gallons were spilled from only one leaking car, in today’s derailment. The leak has already been plugged, according to the Reuters report.
35 area homes were reportedly evacuated. Thankfully, no one was reported injured in either derailment. Tomorrow’s derailment is expected to continue this trend of diminishing consequences, but only time will tell.
[New York Times] [Reuters] [ABC News]
Screengrab via YouTube
Police are looking for a vehicle in connection with a shooting that left one dead and two wounded in Midtown Manhattan Monday morning, ABC 7 NY reports. The shooting took place at the intersection of Eighth Avenue and West 35th Street.
According to ABC 7, two victims were taken to Bellevue Hospital in serious condition.
Police said the man who died was pronounced dead upon arrival at a hospital, Pix 11 reports:
A 43-year-old man was shot once to the neck and to the stomach, according to authorities. And the third victim was shot in the leg, cops said.
Police said the gunman possibly escaped in a silver car.
Update 8:30 a.m.
There appears to be some confusion over where the shooting occurred: one police source tells the New York Times the altercation began outside and “spilled into Penn Station,” where the man was shot on a platform. But another tells the paper, somewhat confusingly, that the man was shot on the subway stairs and “the shooting did not take place inside Pennsylvania Station.”
Detectives reportedly believe the men knew each other.
Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.
According to a new report in the New York Times, an attorney who worked in high-profile positions at Al Jazeera America, Sony and Def Jam records wasn’t really an attorney at all.
David W. Harleston has served as the general counsel and executive vice president of business and legal affairs for Al Jazeera America since at least 2013, handling internal disputes and leading major cases against DirecTV and Al Gore.
But there’s no record that Harleston—who says he attended Yale Law School and clerked for a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge—was ever licensed by any state.
“According to court officials, there are no records that indicate Mr. Harleston is licensed to practice law in New York State, where Al Jazeera America has its headquarters,” the Times reports. “He has also not been admitted in any other jurisdiction, according to research by The New York Times.”
Still, he’s managed to maintain a long and illustrious legal career.
Harleston’s LinkedIn page has since been deleted, but according to his Al Jazeera profile he started out as an litigation associate at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett, an ultra white shoe law firm in New York City. From there, he reportedly served as counsel to Sony Music Entertainment “where he negotiated agreements for the services of major global artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey.”
After Sony acquired an interest in Def Jam Records—a deal Harleston says he helped negotiate—he was reportedly installed as president. He was serving as general counsel for Current TV when Al Jazeera purchased the network in 2013.
If he was able to fake being a lawyer for so long, it may be because he came pretty close: the Times reports he passed the 1986 New York State bar exam but never obtained his license through the Committee on Character and Fitness.
Al Jazeera America announced Sunday that Harleston has been suspended, pending an investigation by the law firm Skadden Arps. As the Times points out, Harleston’s non-lawyer status would make irrelevant attorney-client privilege—meaning previously confidential communications could be ruled discoverable.
Image via Al Jazeera America. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.
The near-collapse of the global financial sector in 2008 was our periodic reminder that banks that are “too big to fail” are a threat to the public. Now, seven years later, some action is being taken.
Today, the Financial Stability Board, an international financial regulatory body, released the hard numbers on how much new money banks are going to be required to set aside in order to (hopefully) be able to bail themselves out when the next financial crisis rolls around, rather than running to the public to bail them out—which has been a wonderful business model for banks historically, but which does tend to wear on the public’s patience.
The FSB’s requirements are a bit more arcane than just telling banks “have more money, in the bank,” but they amount to the same goal: create a pool of money to shore up teetering banks, and lay out exactly who should expect to lose money when banks go into crisis. In aggregate, the 30 most “systemically important” banks in the world will have to set aside an extra $1.2 trillion to serve as a safety net. Eight major U.S. banks on the list will be responsible for setting aside $120 billion.
Some regular people might ask: why not just require banks to hold more cash in case of emergency, rather than setting up this system of bonds which is too complicated for a blogger to even explain? And indeed, the Bloomberg editorial board asked the same thing: “How is this better than simply requiring banks to have more equity in the first place? Equity absorbs losses without requiring regulators to trigger bail-ins or strike cross-border agreements. Banks need more of it.”
I dunno. Do you? If so, please share in the comments.
In any case it is an encouraging sign that something rather than nothing is being done about Too Big to Fail, a dynamic
http://gawker.com/the-worst-thin...
[Photo: Flickr]
Two Brisbane, Australia blokes who review golf courses on YouTube, James Macklin and Connor Reeves, just wanted to have their shot at Queensland’s Hervey Bay Golf Club, but this kangaroo wasn’t having it, mate.
According to Macklin, he went to hit his ball and the roo started chasing him on foot. He decided to let Connor have a turn, and got out his phone just in case the kangaroo came at them again. Obviously, it did.
On YouTube, the reviewers admitted that they overreacted as they fled screaming in their golf cart—but not by much, because kangaroos will fucking kill you: “Anything could have happened and we all know a roo kicking someone wouldn’t end well. But the overreaction was perfect.”
Too right. Just get out of there, mate.
Final review for Hervey Bay Golf: OOooo. (Two kangaroo balls out of five.)
[h/t Telegraph]
Justin Theroux: He’s Jennifer Aniston’s husband. In this capacity, he’s sometimes moved to compliment Jen on her various positive attributes. What compliment does he say the most?
When Entertainment Tonight asked Justin this question yesterday at the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops III (video game), he replied:
She’s beautiful. Not to be corny, but it’s true. So I constantly say that.
A good question and a fine answer. But let’s back up and answer something else, namely: What are we doing here? (At the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops III [video game].)
According to Entertainment Tonight, Justin attended the launch because he is a “hardcore gamer.”
Big time.
Justin told ET that he often games in the home he shares with Jen. “I have a little office that I play in,” he said. “There’s a little chair that’s set up.”
Jen does not play, however. Justin explained: “Jen does not play the game and doesn’t understand why I play the game, but she allows me to. She’s nice enough to let me go away for a couple hours a couple times a week and play.”
Four hours of alone time per week. I’m guessing that’s nice and also fine.
Image via Getty. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.
Half a dozen members of the Bird Protection League converged on bird traps in Audon, a township in southwest France, Monday morning in an effort to stop the alleged poaching of thousands of protected finches. But, as they soon learned, if you wanna save finches, you’ve gotta get through one angry, shovel-wielding man and his bikini briefs.
“As they began to destroy these traps, a local resident came out of his house armed with a shovel, insulting journalists and activists and beating some of them using his tool, according to an AFP photographer,” Agence France-Presse reports.
Fortunately, the threat of being hit with a shovel didn’t prevent photographer Gaizka Iroz from capturing the absurd image above, which is a beautiful gift to us all.
Local residents also tried to the snatch the journalists’ cameras—getting away with one of them—and slashed the tires of the activists’ vehicles. The local police showed up after about 15 minutes, breaking up the fight and securing the return of the camera, Liberation reports.
The president of the Bird Protection League indicated he intends to sue for assault and for the use of illegal traps, and Captain Underpants the Shovel Warrior said he would sue for trespassing.
[h/t PourMeCoffee, Photo: AFP/Getty Images]
The University of Missouri’s President Tim Wolfe has resigned in the wake of student criticism that he has not effectively handled racist incidents on campus. Over the weekend, a group of black players on Mizzou’s football team announced they would strike until Wolfe stepped down.
http://deadspin.com/missouri-footb...
Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.
Pranka, pranka, pranka. This guy loves pranks! Mr. Bond, to you—Prank Bond.
Daniel Craig hated filming James Bond
http://defamer.gawker.com/daniel-craig-w...
Let me see if he did, via Page Six:
James Bond actor Daniel Craig played some very unclassy pranks on the set of “Spectre,” including “fart gags” on co-stars, he says.
Ah, he did. Fart gags. Mhm. Craig did not elaborate upon the sort of “fart gag” he played, however he did talk a bit about the atmosphere that bred the farts:
“The fact of it is, we do very long days — I’m not complaining — we do very long days, and if you’ve been on a movie set, it’s kind of intense and often very boring, so you just have a laugh.”
At once kind of intense and very boring, just like Mr. Pranks himself—Mr. Daniel Craig, James “Fart” Bond.
Image via Getty. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.
Back in the wild west days of file sharing, and for a moment all too brief, Kazaa reigned king. And thanks to a recently reinvigorated Twitter account, we’re reminded of the complete and utter mess that was our Kazaa-fueled Winamp queue. So for the sake of nostalgia, we ask you: What are some of your best (which is to say, worst) Kazaa memories?
Just in case you’re in need of a refresher, the phenomenal Twitter account @KaZaASongs can remind you what it is we’re dealing with.
Each one pure, early-aughts, adolescent gold. And in case you needed some help remembering the sort of mindset you were in at the time, Gawker writer Andy Cush is happy to oblige:
My greatest Kazaa memory was hanging out at a friend’s house who downloaded the new Beyonce video for me to watch, because he said that I needed to see how hot it was. He downloads it, and instead of the actual video, it’s hardcore porn featuring an actress who vaguely resembles Beyonce.
We watch it for a few seconds and giggle, and then he offers to pay me five bucks to leave the room so he can masturbate…
In case you were wondering, yes, Andy took the money.
Whether it’s the countless mediocre demo tapes you were tricked into listening thanks to “Chinese Democracy GNR leak (REAL VERSION).wav” or a little surprise porn, tell us your sloppiest, most mislabeled and EXPLICIT (SOME CURSING pop-punk remix) memories of the golden days of Kazaa. Or Limewire or Morpheus or BearShare or whichever your preferred. It doesn’t really matter, because they’re all dead now (original RIP.exe).
Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.
