Aww, poor Sgt. Ray Lewis won’t be attending his Marine Corps ball with a Golden Girl: Lewis, inspired by other Marines who invited certain A-listers to their upcoming galas, extended an invitation to “all-around perfect” Betty White . But while she is “deeply flattered”—and loves “a man in uniform”-—the…
Continue reading …The prosecution witness who testified that Casey Anthony ran online searches for “chloroform” 84 times says he screwed up—and that prosecutors ignored him when he let them know. The prosecution used John Bradley’s software to make its assertions about Anthony’s search habits. But Bradley tells the New York Times…
Continue reading …A new twist in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault saga: Anne Mansouret says she had “brutal sex” with the former IMF chief three years before he allegedly attempted to rape her daughter, Tristane Banon. L’Express reports that Mansouret described DSK as behaving “like an obscene boor,” according to a translation…
Continue reading …Police in Philadelphia are stepping up their campaign against bad behavior on the city’s thoroughfares—and distracted pedestrians are as much a target as distracted drivers and sidewalk cyclists, officials say. Officers enforcing the “Give Respect, Get Respect” program in the city center will be looking out for pedestrians who…
Continue reading …Bill Clinton sees a really easy way out of the debt ceiling crisis: He thinks President Obama has the constitutional power to just raise the darn thing if he wants. The Fourteenth Amendment states that “the validity of the US public debt shall not be questioned.” In an interview with…
Continue reading …Rupert Murdoch heads to Parliament today for perhaps the most clutch performance of his storied career, as his media empire hangs in the balance. News Corp execs who watched the mogul rehearse quietly expressed concern about his answers, Bloomberg reports, and a disastrous appearance could cement rumblings emanating from the…
Continue reading …Exasperation is high on Capitol Hill, as the House and Senate barrel ahead with unrelated debt ceiling plans, neither of which resemble the “grand bargain” President Obama wanted. Today, John Boehner will hold a vote on his so-called “Cut, Cap, and Balance” bill, which calls for $5.8 trillion in…
Continue reading …Police are baffled by the “bizarre” circumstances behind the death of Rebecca Nalepa , the 32-year-old girlfriend of pharmaceutical CEO Jonah Shacknai: She was found hanging at his mansion two days after Shacknai’s 6-year-old son fell down the stairs there; Max died on Sunday . A sergeant says of Nalepa’s death, “sometimes…
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Residents in city of Homs claim government forces and ‘death squads’ are firing indiscriminately on civilians Spiralling violence took hold of the Syrian city of Homs on Tuesday as troops and militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed 16 people in an apparent escalation of a security crackdown against a focal point for pro-democracy protests. This brings the death toll in the country’s third biggest and most mixed city in the past few days alone to at least 40 people, in addition to an estimated 1,500 killed since the Syrian uprising began five months ago. The latest fatalities added to mounting concern that events in Homs, which has a population of 1.5 million, are taking on a dangerously sectarian character. In a grimly familiar pattern, Tuesday’s dead included three mourners at a funeral for 10 people who were killed by security forces on Monday, activists said. “We could not bury the martyrs at the city’s main cemetery, so we opted for a smaller cemetery near the mosque when the militiamen began firing at us from their cars,” one mourner told Reuters. “We have to leave, we can’t stay – it’s too
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