What should one save from a burning house? A dog? Sure. Prized family heirloom? Probably not. A few cans of beer? Nope.

Jesse Jackson Jr. almost had to sell off his sweet precious mink furs and Michael Jackson memorabilia last month, and October isn't shaping up to be his month either — the former Congressman has to sell his $1.3 million Washington D.C. home to settle a $750,000 forfeiture judgement before he goes to jail for a two-and-a-half-year sentence.

Almost a year after a shooter killed twenty first graders and six employees, Newtown has begun to tear down Sandy Hook Elementary School.

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $5.1 billion to settle claims that it misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about mortgage securities it sold them in the lead up to the housing market crash. HuffPo's "JPMorgan Shame Tracker" reports that this puts JPMorgan's fine and legal cost bill since 2009 at $31.28 billion.

At dusk, Banksy revealed the newest piece in his month-long rampage of New York City's streets: a Grim Reaper in a scythe-powered bumper car, listlessly bobbing to Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." The installation sits at the corner of Houston and Elizabeth Streets and, according to Banksy's site, will remain there through Sunday.

A Michigan Walmart employee who was fired last week for intervening with a man assaulting his ex-girlfriend says he is rejecting Walmart's offer to come back to work.

From ABC News to the Atlantic Wire to Wired.com, everyone's talking about the cool new Twitter trend—changing your name to a "spooky" version for Halloween. Here's how you can join the fun!

A man arrested by deputies in Florida for allegedly assaulting his pregnant girlfriend became the living embodiment of the "Thanks, Obama!" meme after he tried pinning the blame on the President.

For whatever reason, this video of an apparently sloshed Robert Pattinson and Katy Perry performing Boyz II Men karaoke staple "I'll Make Love to You" at a friend's birthday in December 2008 surfaced on the Internet today, nearly five years later. The performance is pretty atrocious (also entertaining in the way closed circuit video of drunk celebrities crawling into one another's laps can't help but be), but, then, neither of them is known for being a particularly good singer.

Is your designer purse too small for your handgun? One woman has the perfect $1500 solution.

A quarter century ago, the US government decided that Yucca Mountain, Nevada would be where we would store all of our deadly nuclear waste. So where is our deadly nuclear waste today? Oh, just spread out all over the place.

Federal prosecutors are reportedly seeking a guilty plea on "at least a single criminal charge" from JPMorgan in relation to allegations that the bank purposely turned a blind eye to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

With Halloween just around the spooky, poorly lit corner, Crest decided to play a little trick on the littlest Halloweeners by switching their candy with terrible tasting "veggie-flavored treats."

“I’m not going to hurt kids,” said documentary filmmaker Joyce Draganosky to the New York Post earlier this week. Here are some of the seasonal items currently festooning Draganosky’s red brick home—the subject of its own dedicated photo galleries on both Gothamist and the Post's website—in the charming Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn: a baby doll lying on the ground with a fake-bloody knife through its forehead; a baby doll chained to a rocking chair with duct tape covering her mouth; a baby doll hung by its hands from a tree branch with a fake-bloody incision in its stomach (into this has been stuffed a smaller fake-bloody baby doll); a baby doll sealed in a jar filled with fake blood; a pumpkin surgeon (presumably unlicensed) looming over a fake-bloody gurney, on which rests baby doll covered in fake blood.

A teenager who took her own life after her parents banned her from accessing her own Facebook page wrote a suicide note saying she couldn't live without the social networking site.

Zen. Zen. Zen. Zen. Say it with me. Zen. Zen. Zen. Do you feel the word? Do you feel its size? That's ridiculous. And that's what zen is all about. Today's zen koan is somewhere. Can you "find" it?

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan today, precipitating what estimates say will be a 1-meter tsunami headed for the Fukushima coast. The U.S. Geological Survey says there is a "low likelihood" for fatalities or economic loss from this tsunami, according to the New York Daily News.

The Buncombe County Republican precinct chairman whose disastrous Daily Show appearance cost him his position fired back at his party leaders yesterday, saying his forced resignation proved the GOP had "no guts."

"Going to the Store" has a sequel ("companion") and it's every bit as moving and life-affirming as the original.

"Twitter writer" Kelly Oxford just sold a TV comedy. Hope it's more original than her past stuff?