"Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then," the LA Times reports.

Doctors at a hospital in Australia wrote a letter to the editor of The Medical Journal of Australia that describes a scary new trend ravaging their country: People getting fucked up on hand sanitizer (four instances makes it a trend, right?). But one recent patient, who was being treated for epigastric pain due to excessive drinking, took it to another level:

For his new Current TV program — premiering tonight! — angry television personality Keith Olbermann will step out of his comfort zone to bring viewers a diverse set of voices. Last night on the Twitter, Olbermann announced the guests for his first show: Michael Moore and Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos.

Perhaps trying to establish himself in a new neighborhood, a 30-year-old Brooklyn man got tough with a pair of teenagers who were kicking cars and trash cans on his block early on Sunday. After the kids mouthed off to Thomas Dunikowski and his new neighbors, Dunikowski decided that he just wasn't going to take it anymore:

You'll be not entirely shocked to learn that Hindenberg-ian song stylist Amy Winehouse has cancelled the rest of her European tour after her disastrous performance at a Serbian rock festival on Saturday night. [Reuters]

After three teaser fakes, the real, full-length trailer for the upcoming The Muppets has finally come out. Does it put to ease my growing concerns over what Jason Segel and company would do with Kermie and the gang? For the most part, yes, though I still have some reservations. But there's fart shoes, a new Muppet who looks a lot like Gene Simmons, Miss Piggy in a Chanel suit, and a Starship sing-along. How bad could it be? (And is that a "K & P" I spy on the wrought iron gate?) The movie opens November 23rd. [Muppets Studio]

A rabbinical court in Jerusalem has sentenced a dog to stoning, according to Behadrei Hadarim, a Hebrew website for ultra-Orthodox Jews. The sentencing came after a large dog wandered into the Monetary Affairs Court in the neighborhood of Mea Shearim.

Something not good has gone down at Cooper Nuclear Station, an electrical power plant near the Missouri River in southeast Nebraska. The region has been flooding steadily for weeks, and with river levels rising, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released water from two dams on Saturday in anticipation of more heavy rains this week.

Every day, celebrities across the world are followed and photographed by the omnipresent paparazzi, often to entertaining results. From Oprah in Chicago to Snooki in Italy to Nick Jonas in Los Angeles to Beyonce in Nice, here are some of the more amusing shots from the past week.

The parents of Kaavya Viswanathan — the former Harvard undergrad whose literary career was cut short after her first novel was discovered to be partially plagiarized — died early this morning when their small plane crashed at Rickenbacker International Airport in central Ohio.

Even though he's a godless Chicagoland schoolteacher who majored in math and biology-science, Hemant Mehta still has some values. I know! The world's so complicated. Anyway, when Mehta heard about two Oregon churches being vandalized, he started fund-raising to help them finance their clean-up efforts.

In the Japanese city of Beppu, you can visit Hotel Jzauruss, a love hotel modeled on Jurassic Park. Finally, a place that can accommodate all of your Dennis Nedry roleplaying fantasies. You didn't say the magic safe word, ah-ah-ah! [io9]

The names, email addresses, birthdays and encrypted passwords of some 1.3 million Sega customers were hacked, the company revealed today. The hack targeted SegaPass, "a newsletter and online game service operated by [Sega's] European subsidiary," but luckily, since the company uses a third-party vendor to handle payment, no credit card or bank information was accessed.

Idaho potato John McGee, who boasts on his website that he's the youngest member of his state's senate, celebrated Father's Day by engaging in some youthful indiscretions that he probably now very much regrets, as he sits in his Ada County Jail cell.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart entered the Fox News lion's den for the third time today, appearing on Fox News Sunday opposite Chris Wallace and having the exact same argument about the media that he had with... well, that he tried to have with Tucker Carlson back in 2004. It was infuriating! Not because of Stewart, who is an able if at times frustratingly conciliatory interlocutor, but because of Chris Wallace, who is a huge, silly boob. Above, Stewart tries to make a point, using big words; Wallace responds by showing a clip from Comedy Central's roast of Pamela Anderson. If you have the desire, or the patience, to wach the whole thing, you can find it here.

Poor Terry Jones, the world-famous Koran-hating pastor of Florida! He traveled all the way from Jacksonville to Dearborn, Michigan for the Arab International Festival, and instead getting of a welcoming reception he was mobbed by protesters who seemed agitated by his very presence.

Jarrett Barrios, the president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, resigned on Sunday night following revelations that GLAAD had expressed support of AT&T's merger with T-Mobile—while also taking $50,000 in donations from the company.

Years from now, when we're sitting in our old-people rocking chairs and fondly reminiscing about the memes of our youth, we'll be able to remember this weekend as the moment when Kool-Aid balls entered our national consciousness—shaping our eating habits for decades to come.

For months, there's been a steady trickle of sites getting hacked, followed by their usernames and passwords being passed around publicly on the Web. It's a real and growing problem that's just going to get worse. [Gizmodo]

The Republican Leadership Conference hired an Obama impersonator named Reggie Brown to liven up the proceedings on Saturday. And liven them up he did! Only, with jokes that are not really appropriate for political conferences—especially not conferences of parties that would like to present themselves as serious-minded and economy-focused rather than quasi-racist clown shows.