The guards at Rikers Island are notoriously violent toward inmates—especially mentally ill ones—and it's relatively rare that even documented beatings result in punishment for those responsible. That's why it's a surprising, encouraging development that a judge recommended the termination of six employees this week.
In February 2013—over a year before he killed Michael Brown—Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson arrested Christopher A. Brooks for marijuana possession, a case for which he was given an official commendation. Unsurprisingly, at a preliminary court hearing in Brooks' case yesterday, Wilson was a no-show.
Audio of the purse-carrying gift from heaven Aretha Franklin's cover of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" (with a twist of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough") made the rounds on the internet yesterday. Later, she tore the roof off David Letterman's studio when she performed the medley on the Late Show (it's the first release off her upcoming Aretha Franklin Sings The Great Diva Classics album). While her voice has noticably aged and isn't quite as acrobatic as it once was, the woman can still wail. Her pipes remain among our country's greatest natural resources.
Olympic swimming star Michael Phelps was pulled over by Maryland police early this morning and arrested on a DUI charge, TMZ reports. He was apparently stopped by officers around 1:40 a.m. in a white Range Rover, driving 84 in a 45 zone, and allegedly failed a field sobriety test with a BAC of almost twice the legal limit.
Welcome to another edition of America's Ugliest Accent, where we as a country gather together to determine which of us in this great nation of disgusting vocal squalor has the least listenable accent. Every day this week, Round One of the Tournament, we'll be presenting two face-offs between cities. You, humble reader, will decide a victor.
The Guinness World Records has declared Menahem Asher Silva Vargas, a 37-year-old adult lawyer, the owner of the world's largest Harry Potter memorabilia collection. His trove of Hogwarts treasures contains over 3,000 pieces of junk. Congrats.
Earlier this month, doctors reportedly performed life-saving surgery to remove a nine-pound hairball from an 18-year-old girl's stomach. The huge hairball was apparently the result of the teen compulsively eating bits of her own hair and wool chunks from a carpet. Fair warning: Pictures of the bloody hunk of hair and wool, embedded below, are exactly as disgusting as you'd expect.
Last week, Levar Jones, an unarmed black man, was shot by a South Carolina police officer during a routine traffic stop. Fortunately, Jones survived the encounter. In February, however, Ernest Satterwhite, another unarmed black man who encountered a similarly trigger-happy S.C. cop, wasn't so lucky— the cop shot and killed him after a low-speed chase ended in Satterwhite's own driveway.
Schenectady High School teen hero Draven Rodriguez petitioned to have a highly stylized photo of himself and his cat, Mr. Bigglesworth, be included as his senior portrait in the school's yearbook. Instead, he took a second photo at the behest of the school principal that will run on her page and also include her dog, Vivienne.
Hong Kong's Beijing-approved leader, Leung Chun-ying, has called for an end of the pro-democracy demonstrations being held in the semiautonomous city by tens of thousands of its citizens. He has taken specific aim at Occupy Central With Love and Peace, one of the two major organizing groups, saying, "Occupy Central founders had said repeatedly that if the movement is getting out of control, they would call for it to stop. I'm now asking them to fulfill the promise they made to society and stop this campaign immediately."
Modern Family actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson didn't exactly plan his coming out moment, which involved gay porn, a citizen's arrest, and his dad.
