A new study by a Mexican research group ranks the 50 most dangerous cities in the whole wide world (based on homicide rates), and guess what, Latin America seems to be a region which is unsafe, if you define unsafe as "I do not want to be murdered." Key findings:

Would it be good optics for President Obama to deliver his convention speech at Bank of America Stadium, in order "to sell more skyboxes to wealthy donors"? Nope, not really.

Life is never easy for Herbie Fully Loaded star Lindsay Lohan. After her countless trips to court and rehab and the Chateau Marmont, now she owes the government $94,000 because she didn't pay taxes in 2009. Oh, bother.

America has entered a bold new era of internal mistrust: a new Pew survey officially shows that class conflict has surpassed both racial conflict and immigrant-native conflict as "the greatest source of tension in American society." Well—are you just going to stand there and let them get away with that?

Most of the big banks have kept quiet after President Obama controversially recess-appointed Richard Cordray to his throne atop Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We still don't know how much this new bureaucracy will annoy the banks, but one can assume they were just fine with the previous arrangement, in which congressional procedural gimmicks were used to block it from ever taking formation. But then yesterday, something wonderful happened: Citigroup's lobbyist chimed in with a passive-aggressive blog post about the whole issue!

A video emerges showing US Marines pissing on three Taliban corpses in Afghanistan. The outrage machine grinds into motion. The media bestirs itself from its slumber. Americans momentarily pay attention to the war in Afghanistan again. Politicians rush to add their names to the chorus of identical statements. All inflamed over the least bad thing that soldiers do in war.

Have you been cracking wise about our cherished field of Republican presidential candidates? Perhaps calling them "assholes" when they do and say horrible things? Let's grow up already. Because stilted CNN misery bot Wolf Blitzer will surely put us in detention if this goes on much longer.

Outstanding news, terrified Americans who watch too many fearmongering cable news crime stories: for the first time in nearly 50 years, homicide is not one of the top 15 causes of death in America. First a black president, and now this! Why, it's damn near impossible to get anyone to kill you these days. America is a safety festival, and everyone under the age of 75 is invited.

Former Nixonite and coonskin cap-wearing sometime presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has always been a racist relic who appealed mostly to those caveman-like Americans anxious for a return to the Andrew Jackson era. Always. There has never been a time, during his long career as a smiley pundit, in which he was not a racist. So. Although it's kind of nice that he's been suspended by MSNBC, it's the media equivalent of giving all the homeless people in your city a one-way bus ticket just as long as the Olympics are in town.

It's time to cover the results of the First Primary in the Nation, New Hampshire — that famous outlier among the Republican coalition that doesn't tell you much about anything! Mitt Romney is expected to win, but will he win by enough? That's how we're sucking you in tonight. If Mitt Romney doesn't get 52% of the vote, or let's say 100%, his campaign is over. Grab your assault rifle and poor a beer down your ear, as we watch — together.

At first, the co-chairs of the Congressional Privacy Caucus said they were "concerned" about Facebook's tracking of users. Then they were "alarmed." Now they're just pissed.

Mitt Romney is going to win the New Hampshire primary tonight — but is he going to WIN it? See, it's no fun for political writers to simply declare a Mitt Romney victory a victory. What are we supposed to write about for the next year, if he just keeps winning every primary? Policy? Yeesh. And so Mitt Romney must contend with the "expectations game," in which folks with a vested interest in not seeing this primary season end sans hyperdrama come up with a random number that Romney must "hit" tonight, lest his campaign collapse entirely.

Once again this week, the FBI has foiled an incredibly unconvincing terror plot replete with plans that fail to strike fear in the heart of any American. Sami Osmakac, a 25 year-old in Tampa, Florida, has been arrested for allegedly plotting to destroy bridges and bomb nightclubs in the name of Islam. Anyone who's been to Florida knows that destroying nightclubs in Tampa would be a great public service, to the United States of America.

Just as you suspected, nicotine gum and nicotine patches are a crock, a sham, a mockery, a sucker's bet, a shuck and jive, a switcheroo, and a false hope. They do not work. A new study confirms that they are for shit, unless your goal is to make the inside of your lip taste like a Kool soaked in Listerine. Want to really stop smoking? We have done it. More or less. Here's how.

The New Hampshire primary is supposed to be a civil, grassroots affair in which Granite Staters politely listen to a class of sophisticated presidential candidates discuss the important issues — trade, housing, etc. — and then pass on their choice of the most serious of the serious candidates for the nation to certify. There is no time for silliness; this is an affair of statesmanship. Also, there's this crazy guy who wears a boot on his head and shouts nonsense who shows up in Manchester every cycle.

As a close follower of the position papers of Republican presidential candidates, I've long been under the impression that teachers in America are a bunch of shady unionized borderline thugs, like the Teamsters with frumpier clothing. But according to a new study, a few good apples out there in our crumbling schools are actually getting something accomplished, while robbing the taxpayers blind. Who knew? The NYT reports:

Can Newt Gingrich be president for just one day, so we can all watch this on pay-per-view? "I will go to the NAACP convention, and tell the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps."

Gather round, horny America: your daily scientific study with the word "sex" in it is here, for everyone to slobber over in a scientifically acceptable way. Riddle me this: who has hotter, sexxxier sex, do you think—hot sexxxy young women whose bodies are taut, tauter, and tautest; or old and wrinkly women?

Though yesterday's news was that 40-year-old confessed Frappucino firebomber Ray Lazier Lengend threw Starbucks-themed Molotov cocktails to avenge petty slights, the New York Daily News reports that prosecutors now say Lengend wanted to hit "as many Muslims and Arabs as possible."

If you've been anywhere near Twitter this evening, you know something truly wonderful and unique and amazing and THE BEST is happening. In the space of two hours, Kanye West has tweeted 60 times and counting on, uh, his earnest pursuits in the realm of fashion and graphic design and nutrition and architecture and video games and publicity and medicine and law and science and app guys. You think Tom Ford is full of himself? Kanye West shits Tom Fords for breakfast. Then he irons out the shits into cutting-edge fabrics, and frantically cuts, sews, and laces that fabric through the night and into the morning, until he has produced the most unbelievable clothes — nay, FASHION + ART = FARTSHION! — in the universe. And he calls these clothes DONDA. But he calls all that other stuff DONDA, too! DONDA will be your everything. Just you wait and see. And what is DONDA? It's an acronym for Dis Original N***a Dresses Aight.*