In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Shooting] Last night in Ferguson, two police officers were shot and seriously wounded during protests near police headquarters, hours after the Ferguson police chief announced his resignation. "Protesters had gathered near the Ferguson police headquarters after Thomas Jackson, the chief of police, said he would step down next week. But the shooting, which occurred after midnight, took place as protests in the area were relatively quiet and after many demonstrators had left, according to police." Protesters are being blamed by police for the shootings, although the shooter is still unknown, and the protesters noted "'that the gunfire did not come from among them, rather from a distance behind them,' The New York Times reported. Witnesses told the Times that the shots came from the top of a hill about 200 yards across from the police station."

[CN: War on agency] OH GOOD GRIEF: "The Arizona legislature took an unprecedented step Tuesday during a late night hearing, amending a bill that would block abortion coverage in insurance plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act and inserting a new rule requiring that abortion providers inform patients that the procedure could in fact be reversed—despite no substantiated medical evidence to support that charge."

[CN: Clergy abuse] The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled that the Catholic Church cannot "hide behind claims of religious liberty in order to avoid liability" for clergy members' sexual abuse of parishoners. "The Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee sought to insulate $55 million of its funds from lawsuits brought by victims of priestly sex abuse, according to a letter penned by then-Archbishop of Milwaukee Timothy Dolan, so it transferred those funds into a separate trust set up to care for the archdiocese's cemeteries and mausoleums. Once the sexual abuse victims sought those funds in a bankruptcy proceeding, however, the archdiocese claimed that it had a religious liberty right not to use that money to compensate victims of abuse." That is one cynical fucking religious liberty claim. Fucking hell.

What in keystone cops hell is going on with the Secret Service?! "Now, in what almost looks like a deliberate attempt to prove that the Secret Service still can't be trusted, two senior agents are under investigation for allegedly getting drunk last week and crashing a government car into a set of security barricades at the White House. The Washington Post reports that the two agents are Mark Connolly, the second-in-command on the president's protective detail, and George Ogilvie, a senior supervisor at the Washington field office." Good gourd.

[CN: Elder abuse] Oh dear: "Investigators in Alabama are examining a claim of possible elder abuse related to the upcoming publication of the second novel by Harper Lee, the 88-year-old author of To Kill a Mockingbird... It was announced out of the blue last month that a novel Lee wrote as a precursor to Mockingbird had been discovered and would be published in July by HarperCollins, with the author's approval. Lee's lawyer, Tonja Carter, has said she stumbled on the unpublished manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, and Lee agreed it should be published. But doubts arose about whether the publicity-averse Lee was fully behind the decision, or even understood it. And immediately, conflicting accounts began emerging from different friends, acquaintances, neighbours, staff and lawyers about exactly how frail the 88-year-old, who now has little sight or hearing, is, with some saying she has a full grasp of her faculties, others that she is weak-minded and easily duped. Carter has been looking after Lee's affairs since the author's sister Alice, a lawyer and her long-time gatekeeper, died last November. Now the Alabama authorities are investigating, according to the New York Times."

Would you like to read a very detailed article about the clitoris? It's very good! I enjoyed it!

How about an interview with Maya Yamato, a whale biologist at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, about how whale ears work compared to how human ears work? It is also very good!

And finally! Baby sloths getting a bath omgggggggggg!