Footage of a violent, road-rage-fueled altercation between a North Carolina couple and car full of teens surfaced online yesterday, ultimately leading to the couple's arrest.
If you've been reading our unemployment stories—or if you've been out looking for a job lately—you know that many college graduates (and even advanced degree holders) are forced to accept low-skill jobs that don't put their degrees to use. One economist is now arguing that this state of affairs is the new normal.
The highest court in Italy has ordered Amanda Knox to stand trial again for the killing of her former roommate, British exchange student Meredith Kercher, overturning Knox's 2011 acquittal. Knox will likely not return to Italy for the retrial, as her presence is not required, and after the four years she spent in Italian jail during the first trial and its appeal she's probably just as happy to never go back (though think of those wasted language skills!). In 2007, Knox, at the time an exchange student, and Raffaelle Sollecito, her then-boyfriend, were arrested after Kercher was found dead, partially undressed and with her throat slit, in their shared apartment in Perguia. An apparent confession (later thrown out), Knox's bizarre post-arrest behavior, and prosecutors' accusations that Kercher had been killed as part of a satanic sex game became tabloid fixations during the two-year trial, which ended in 2009 with convictions for Knox and Sollecito. After an appeal, the convictions were overturned in 2011—an Ivorian named Rudy Guede had been separately tried and convicted—and Knox returned to Seattle, her hometown. If she and Sollecito are re-convicted of Kercher's murder, Italian law will require her to serve out her life sentence, though it remains to be seen whether or not the U.S. would approve an extradition request. In a statement, Knox called the high court's ruling "painful" and "unfair." [NYT | NBC | CNN]
Depending on how you feel about spoilers, this could be bad news or good: Last December, someone broke into Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston's car in Albuquerque, where the show is filmed, stealing the actor's bag containing an iPad and a copy of a Breaking Bad script from one of the show's final episodes.
The Daily Beast broke a fairly damning story Monday morning about Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann. The report reveals that federal investigators working on behalf of the Office of Congressional Ethics are investigating the congresswoman's campaign about potential intentional finance violations. According to former Bachmann staffers questioned by the investigators, the allegations include improper fund transfers and illegal payments made during Bachmann's failed 2012 presidential campaign. One such allegation is that Iowa state Senator Kent Sorenson, her Iowa campaign manager, received under the table payment for his support. Her lawyers, of course, are denying any wrongdoing, at least on Bachmann's part.
Georgia and Tennessee have been engaged in a long-standing battle over water rights. The dispute has to do with the Tennessee River and, as Georgia claims, state boundary lines that Tennessee may or may not have claimed from its southern neighbor in order to control the river and all the drinking water it provides. Now, Georgia's state senate has taken action and voted 48-2 to pass a resolution that would correct the state's northern border.
The Tennessee legislature dodged a potential firestorm today when lawmakers were able to come together and reassure one another that a possible Muslim foot bath was, in fact, just a mop sink.
From the Spanish-American War all the way up to the 40 Hottest Women in Tech, the past century has borne witness to some epic trolling, bro. This amoral art form—loosely defined as "the media fucking with you on purpose"—has defined our modern era of outrage. It is time that we honored the very best trollings of the past 115 years.
New York magazine's lengthy dissection of the ultimate first-world problem that is morning-news drama is a good read, if you're into media navelgazing. Covering Matt Lauer's role as the villain in Ann Curry's unsentimental firing from the Today Show, and the Today Show's subsequent fall from grace, the piece contains a lot of interesting information that helps shed darkness on the sometimes frustratingly bouncy world of morning news programs.
Let's say your brother was going to stand trial in June for shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager. What would you do? Would you keep your mouth shut? Or would you tweet at the NAACP and the NRA about black teens? Robert Zimmerman, brother of the George Zimmerman who killed Trayvon Martin last year, has chosen the latter:
