An investigation has confirmed that 44 Atlanta schools and 178 teachers are guilty of a vast cheating conspiracy that dramatically increased state test scores. Former superintendent Beverly Hall (pictured) "punished whistle-blowers, hid or manipulated information and altered documents."
Vice President Joe Biden is taking his unique comedy stylings to Twitter. His office will be tweeting at @VP, so follow that for the inevitable Joe Biden-Ice T Twitter smackdown. [via Silicon Alley Insider]
Last month, deposed Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was sentenced in absentia to 35 years in prison for being a piece of shit. And yesterday, he got an additional 15 years for illegal possession of drugs and weapons.
Writer Tristane Banon will bring attempted-rape charges against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn over a 2002 incident. Banon's mother, a Socialist Party politician, convinced her not to file charges at the time; Banon first made the allegations publicly in 2007.
Fred Quigley, an Army veteran from Ohio whose flag-flying preferences became a source of contention between him and his homeowners association, has gotten the association's permission to fly his flag on a pole. He's happy, though lawyer-beholden. [Image via AP]
Wikileaks says it'll sue Visa and Mastercard—claiming the credit-card giants violated E.U. antitrust law by suspending transfers to the anonymous secrets-sharing site last year—if the companies don't re-open payments by next Thursday. [Forbes]
Kansas has issued a license to Planned Parenthood to continue providing abortions in light of new, burdensome regulations that could shutter the state's two other clinics. Those clinics go to court today to fight the regs. [Image WeNews/via Flickr]
Early this morning, TwitPic founder Noah Everett tweeted that he was being arrested and in the back seat of a police car. Then he TwitPiced a picture of his view from said police car. It's TwitPic-ception! [@noaheverett via Mashable]
French finance minister Christine Lagarde has been selected to lead the rather busy IMF, the AP reports. She replaces Dominique Strauss-Kahn, another Frenchy who resigned after allegedly forcing a hotel maid to do strange sex things with him.
Libyan rebels battling Muammar Qaddafi's forces in the western mountains are now only about 50 miles away from Tripoli. Meanwhile, "foreign parties" are meeting in Tunisia with Qaddafi government ministers today. [Reuters, LAT]
A "speck" of moon dust "the size of a fingertip" from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon (yeah, right) turned up at a Missouri auction house this week and returned to the Johnson Space Center. [Time]
A 7.4 magnitude earthquake in the Pacific, 100 miles east of Atka, Alaska, has put a tsunami warning into effect. A second quake, this one measuring 7.2, struck the same region a half-minute later. Yikes! [Reuters]
President Obama will give a speech on Afghanistan tonight, and the Times is reporting on the troop drawdown numbers he's settled on: 10,000 out by the end of the year and an additional 20,000 by September 2012.
For the first time ever, an internet company had one billion unique visitors last month. It was Google, of course. A billion people, all searching for their cultural equivalent of "good chocolate chip recipe."
Who says the Senate confirmation process is broken? Today the chamber confirmed Leon Panetta as the next secretary of defense by a vote of 100-0. He'll take over when Sec. Robert Gates leaves at the end of June.
The SEC has announced that J.P. Morgan Securities will pay $153 million to settle charges that the bank sold $1.1 billion in mortgage-backed securities that were designed to fail. That's about what the bank makes every three days.
Two American women were married today in a Hindu temple outside of Kathmandu, marking Nepal's first public lesbian wedding. One of newlyweds hailed Nepal's recognition of same-sex unions and said, "I hope the US will follow Nepal's example."
"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.
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]
U2 guitarist The Edge wanted to build five mansions on a ridge overlooking Malibu, but a California Coastal Commission official called it "one of the three worst projects that I've seen in terms of environmental devastation." Ouch.
