More than 40 people were killed in Cairo on Wednesday in a violent Egyptian Army operation to clear two sit-ins for supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and its ousted president, Mohamed Morsi.

To promote her new cookbook, It's All Good, and to raise money for a public library, Gwyneth Paltrow attended the East Hampton Library's Authors Night on Saturday. So how did her appearance go over with other writers at the event? Eh, not so great.

Authorities in Florida confirmed on Tuesday that a 12-year-old boy has been infected with Naegleria fowleri, a rare “brain-eating” amoeba. The boy, identified as Zachary Reyna, suffers from primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a deadly brain infection caused by the amoeba.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker won the Democratic nomination for New Jersey's vacant United States Senate seat Tuesday evening, easily defeating his three opponents. He'll face Republican nominee Steven Lonegan in a special election on October 16.

After yesterday's ruling that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional, StreetsBlog looks at the "virulent" culture of NYPD cops, who sometimes say things like this: "We own the block. They don’t own the block, all right? They might live here but we own the block. ... We own the streets here. You tell them what to do."

Sam Horowitz actually became a man last November, but it wasn't until the Jewish mommyblog Kveller picked up his burlesque-themed Bar Mitzvah entrance video last week that the rest of the world was punched in the face with that fact.

Local TV news has produced many of the classics in the "out of touch news reports about the internet" genre. (Remember Pedobear Panic?) Fox 2 Detroit's hysterical exposé of internet troll "Ebayisajoke" is another amazing specimen:

A boat commuter and a group of windsurfers worked together Monday to rescue a puppy from the middle of the San Francisco Bay.

Just a little bit of extra sugar doubles the death rate for female mice. “Sugar is a poison by itself when consumed at high doses.”

For New York magazine's fall fashion interview, Lionel Shriver (known for novels like We Need To Talk About Kevin and So Much for That, as well as her journalism) wrote an essay about beauty and obesity and their manifestations in literature and life. The whole of "Warning: I Will Employ the Word 'Fat'" (posted two days ago on online) is terrific, but this early paragraph on feeling beautiful is particularly perfect:

The terrifying incident that took place over the weekend started as most nightmare scenarios often do: With strange voices coming from inside the children's bedroom.

Things are getting downright silly in the fight to depose San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, who currently stands accused of sexual harassment by more than a dozen women. In order to try and sate his critics, Filner promised to do a two-week stint of "intensive therapy," which he completed on Friday. When Filner got back to his office, however, he discovered that his chief of staff had changed the locks.

The Syrian Electronic Army, a loosely defined collective of pro-Assad hackers, successfully hacked the New York-based social media firm SocialFlow on Tuesday afternoon, leading the firm to shut down its entire website. How? A mid-level SocialFlow staffer clicked on One. Single. Link.

Journalists are generally human disasters: stimulant-addled, barely-functional hoarders unable to focus on anything other than scrabbling after the next story with an addict's claw-handed fury. I type this encased in the stale, coffee-stained shirt that proves it. Journalists, in other words, are the people least likely to spend time setting up arcane email encryption technology that could very well prove of no use to them. And yet they are among the people who could benefit the most.

A 12-year-old boy on vacation in Arkansas with his family found an enormous diamond inside a crater at an Arkansas state park over the weekend, because apparently Arkansas has a state park where people are encouraged to just scratch around inside a giant crater for diamonds until they find them?!?!??! It’s called the “Crater of Diamonds State Park” and it consists of a crater full of diamonds. IT IS A REAL PLACE. Why don’t we all live there?!

This is the sound of taking pop music so seriously that it aches: Alt-bubblegum singer-songwriter Charli XCX covers the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way."

For many U.S. military veterans, returning home from war means it's time to begin another battle: the fight to receive proper physical and mental health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs. We want to hear firsthand stories from veterans about their experiences and struggles with the VA.

This video was captured a few years back, but the metaphor remains as stingingly apt as ever.

Stephen Colbert has shed more light on last Tuesday's episode-long Colbert Report response to MTV barring Daft Punk from playing his show. On comedian Paul Mecurio's podcast, Colbert explained that there was trouble with booking Daft Punk from the start — they didn't want to perform "Get Lucky" or be interviewed (since part of the Daft Punk members Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter's schtick is that they are robots who do not speak). "I’m beginning to see why they don’t do TV," Colbert recalled thinking weeks ago, during the negotiations for the proposed appearance.