In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

My thanks again to everyone who weighed in yesterday!

[Content Note: Terrorism; death; descriptions of violence] This is utterly breathtaking: Following is the entirety of a Reuters story on another suicide bombing in Nigeria, likely carried out by Boko Haram: "A suicide bomber at a bus station in northeast Nigeria's Borno state killed at least 17 people on Thursday, a military source and an allied local vigilante said. A second bomber tried to detonate his explosives in the same bus station in the town of Biu, but was stopped by the crowd and beaten to death, vigilante Ibrahim Jaton said." That's it. Two sentences, on an unimaginable horror. I cannot begin to fathom what the people of this region are going through right now.

In good news: "Workers in legal, same-sex marriages will now have the same federal job protections as those in [different]-sex marriages, regardless of where they live, thanks to a rule change by the U.S. Labor Department. The change, announced this week, revises the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Windsor, which struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act provision that interpreted 'marriage' and 'spouse' to be limited to [different]-sex marriages for purposes of federal law. ...The Labor Department's rule change updates the FMLA definition of 'spouse' so that an eligible employee in a legal same-sex marriage will be able to take FMLA leave for his or her spouse regardless of the state in which the employee resides."

[CN: Terrorism; violence] "Jihadi John" has been identified "by the Washington Post and the BBC to be a man named Mohammed Emwazi. ...The Washington Post cited friends and others familiar with Emwazi's case in its report identifying the suspected Islamic State executioner. The BBC did not cite its sources. British officials declined to comment on the reports. NSC spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement that the U.S. 'will not comment on ongoing investigations and therefore are not in a position to confirm or deny the identity of this individual.'"

[CN: War] The ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia may be holding: "Ukrainian troops towed artillery away from the front line in the east on Thursday, a move that amounted to recognizing that a ceasefire meant to take effect on Feb. 15 was holding at last. The military showed reporters seven or eight guns being towed away from the front at the village of Paraskoviyvka north of the government stronghold of Artemivsk. Earlier, Reuters journalists saw a larger convoy of 30-40 vehicles also towing guns away from the front on a highway. The move was Kiev's most direct step to acknowledge that the ceasefire was finally holding, a week after suffering one of the worst defeats of the war at the hands of rebels who initially ignored the ceasefire to launch a major advance."

[CN: Class warfare; addiction] At Think Progress, Bryce Covert and Josh Israel look at "What 7 States Discovered After Spending More Than $1 Million Drug Testing Welfare Recipients." If you guessed: Wasting money and "increasing stigma around both welfare and drug use," give yourself a thousand points!

Donald Trump says he's totes for sure definitely serious about running for president again in 2016. No word on whether Tronald Dump will also be running again.

Wow! "A monster black hole powering 'the brightest lighthouse in the distant universe' has been discovered that is 12bn times more massive than the sun, scientists have revealed. The extraordinary object is at the centre of a quasar—an intensely powerful galactic radiation source—with a million billion times the sun's energy output."

Here is just a great video of a bat eating a banana. And then being so done eating a banana.

And finally! This story about a girl in Seattle who receives gifts from the crows that she feeds in her garden is one of my favorite things I've read in ages! Lovely. Crows are the best.