Everyone wants Taylor Swift on their magazine cover this week. Everyone needs Taylor Swift on their magazine cover this week. But whose Taylor Swift magazine cover best gets at the essence of the Taylor Swift phenomenon? Who wins the Taylor Swift cover sweepstakes and two tickets to Subway (sponsored by Diet Coke and iHeart Radio)?

Chris Heath's definitive story of the Zanesville wild-animal slaughter is a National Magazine Award finalist. Congrats!

What do you get when you combine the volatile tempers of professional chefs, the developing fine motor skills of children, and knives, knives, dozens of knives whirling through the air?

Elementary schoolers at the Uruti School in New Zealand helped dozens of dead possums achieve the goals they never achieved in life last weekend, and now people are giving them grief for it.

Vincent D'OnofrioIn New York City's war on crime, the most charming sand art is sculpted by the detectives of the Major Case Squad.

Today, competitive eaters and heartburn enthusiasts competed in Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog-Eating Contest, a tradition that has been going strong since 1916.

Well holy prize-winning cow: Minnesota Congresswoman and downgrade instigator Michele Bachmann did it, she won the GOP straw poll in Iowa. Time to fry up your butter stix and celebrate/beckon death's call!

23-year-old pianist Liu Wei, who lost both his arms as a child, won the first season of China's Got Talent after playing the song "You're Beautiful." He's been invited to go on tour, with a three-month stint in Las Vegas.

Today was the 23rd Tarragona Castells Competition in the Catalonia region of Spain, in which groups of "colles" made up of skilled "castellers" try to build very complex human towers using crazy techniques. More pics of human towers inside.

American design and architecture firm Choi + Shine has entered a design for giant electrical pylons in the shape of humans into the Icelandic High-Voltage Electrical Pylon International Design Competition. Now Iceland just needs some cash to pay for them.

Keyboard Cat, Spaghetti Cat, Ceiling Cat, Roomba Cat... there are tons of kitties that have risen to fame through the magic of the internet. But who reigns supreme? Urlesque put the best viral felines into brackets to battle it out.

[Sumo students attempt to make babies cry in the "Sadism Competition"—no, sorry, that's the "Crying Sumo Competition"—at Sensoji Temple in Tokyo. Tradition holds that crying is good for the health of the babies. Pic via Getty]

In the arena of reality cooking competitions, Worst Cooks in America is definitely the most cringeworthy. Because not only are the contestants laughably incompetent, but their incompetence leads to constant emotional breakdowns.

"PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti's presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country's prime minister packing." Oh, really, Marc Lacey? Really, New York Times? Hunger did this? The inanimate sensation created when one's liver requires more glucose "bashed in" a gate and burned tires? Oh, sorry, are you trying to be poetic? A little fancy with the language? Great work! Your stupid lede made us too annoyed to read what is probably a very important and serious story about poverty. Your stupid lede and our hangover. Is it... the stupidest lede? Probably not! SO: find us even more egregiously 'poetic' Times ledes. Maybe we'll poll! After the jump, Denton's nomination for dumbest fancy intro to serious news.

Blood is in the water over at public radio, where top brass has apparently decided that Jesse Camp didn't teach big broadcasters enough lessons back in 1998. Officially, it's the "Public Radio Talent Quest," but Ira "I Am Shattering" Glass is calling it "This American Idol." The game is that people submit a short radio piece, and after a couple weeks of voting, the field starts to narrow and a panel of radio experts/personalities choose the best. If you win—and three people will—you get 10 grand and a mentor, who will help you produce a pilot of your show and shop it to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.