Metal singer arrested over murder-for hire plot: On Tuesday, Tim Lambesis, the lead singer of Grammy-nominated metalcore band As I Lay Dying, was arrested for reportedly trying to hire an undercover detective to kill his wife. Lambesis, who is known for his devout Christianity and humanitarian work (something which plays a large role in the band’s public identity), was reportedly estranged from his wife at the time of the incident.
Former Gov. Mark #Sanford will fill the vacant U.S. House seat in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, CNN projects.
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) May 8, 2013
JUST IN: Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford wins hotly contest U.S. House seat - AP
— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 8, 2013
Former Governor Mark Sanford is being projected as winner of the race for South Carolina’s first district House seat, defeating his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch. Sanford, 52, was dogged by his infamous abandonment of his post as Governor in June of 2009, when he vanished to Argentina to engage in an extramarital affair. He ran on a very overt platform of redemption and asking forgiveness, however, and SC-1’s largely conservative voters seem to have been in a forgiving mood — Sanford is back from the Appalachian Trail, and he’s headed to the United States House.
Leaders in the technology community have every right to talk about how immigration reform will benefit their businesses. But instead, FWD.us has chosen a strategy that’s condescending to voters and counterproductive to the cause of reform.Former Sen. Russ Feingold • In a statement given to Politico, offering an explanation for why Progressives United, MoveOn.org, and other left-leaning organizations have decided to stop advertising on Facebook for at least two weeks. The advertising boycott is in response to several televised ads from FWD.us, the Mark Zuckerberg-founded advocacy organization which is supposedly focused on immigration reform, that support construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and attack “Obamacare.” source
Delaware just became the 11th state to pass marriage equality!
Same-sex marriage licenses will be available starting on June 1st, the result of a 12-9 state senate vote to codify marriage equality in the state of Delaware. Democratic Governor Jack Markell signed the bill just minutes after its legislative passage, bringing to a conclusion the tireless work of activists within the state.
Today brought some sad news from the entertainment world, as special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen has died, aged 92. Harryhausen was, for a time, at the cutting edge of creature and monster effects in major motion pictures, long before computer generated images took so much of the tangible, numbing labor out of creating such imaginative realms. Harryhausen employed stop-motion photography to bring his creatures to life, a slow and exhaustive method demanding masterful dedication and devotion — both of which, his body of work clearly attests, he possessed in spades. source
CONE OF NOT SILENCE Mount Mayon, one of the Philippines’ most active volcanoes, rumbled to life Tuesday, spewing room-sized rocks toward nearly 30 surprised climbers. Five people were killed; no evacuations were planned. (Photo: Redemtoristine Monastery via EPA / NBC News)
The Mayon Volcano has erupted a number of times over the past decade, in 2006, 2008, and 2010, and this latest burst of activity proved fatal for five people — our thoughts and sympathies go to those lost.
The FBI has released its full 207-page report on the deceased “Brother Leader” of Libya. (h/t Gawker)
Breaking news in the ongoing saga of the 25-year-old man accused of killing 12 and injuring 58 during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises on July 20.
(Source: twitter.com)
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Editor’s Note — We’ve updated the post to include official figures from the Pentagon’s report. — Scott @ SFB
CNN’s Nancy Grace and Ashleigh Banfield Hold Split-Screen Interview in Same Parking Lot
Check out the “same bus in both shots.”
More: The Atlantic Wire
CNN’s problems, in animated GIF form.
Investigators have confirmed that ammonium nitrate was the trigger for the explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer plant last month that left 14 people dead and some 200 injured, according to the Texas state fire marshal’s office.
The actual cause of the fire and subsequent blast at the West Fertilizer facility is still being determined, investigators said.
The fire marshal’s office has been leading the investigation of the April 17 blast, along with the federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency (ATF).
Roughly $100 million in damages will be attributed to the West, Texas blast when everything is said and done, according to the latest estimates from Texas’ State Fire Marshal Office. More than 70 investigators are still working to determine where exactly the initial fire began, with more than 200 leads and 400 interviews collected already.
These individuals need the opportunity to heal and connect back into the world. This isn’t who they are. It is only what happened to them. The human spirit is incredibly resilient. More then ever this reaffirms we should never give up hope.Jaycee Dugard’s statement on the release of the Ohio women found last night after then went missing for a decade. The three women—Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight—were reunited with their families this morning after being released from the hospital.
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kindofagiant:
Sure, let’s try a substantive critique. The woman on the left is talking to Nancy Grace, a major CNN Networks personality who once berated a woman on television just a few days before that woman committed suicide, then was forced to settle for $200,000 in a wrongful death suit. When asked if she felt sorry for what happened, she said of Melinda Duckett in the immediate wake of the news, “If anything, I would suggest that guilt made her commit suicide.” Despite this, Nancy Grace is still on the air seven years later, talking in the same parking lot as Ashleigh Banfield. If you had a job where you did that and had to settle over it, would you still be working there? Probably not. But Nancy Grace is still at HLN.
The problem with CNN is that they have lowered their standards significantly, thinking that a broad but unbiased approach will bring the ratings. (It hasn’t.) Moments like Howard Kurtz’s 15-minute mea culpa are so rare on the network these days that you have to cherish them as signs that a network that’s lost its way might find it again. It’s like they realized recently, hey, Twitter is faster than we are, and so maybe this breaking news thing isn’t quite as fun anymore. Let’s do another “lighter side of life” segment.
They don’t have a rudder anymore. For the first twenty years of their existence, they had a pretty good one: Covering news, being the first news outlet to report on a story, keeping the level of the conversation high. But sometime between 9/11 and now, something changed. They got sloppy. They blew two major stories within a year—first healthcare, then the Boston marathon suspect. For some reason, Fox News scared them a lot. And instead of deciding their mission was hard-hitting journalism, they decided they were more comfortable with “background visuals for airport terminals.” Their rudder could be BBC, American version. But instead it’s, The Weather Channel, but for news.
You may think that this is a stupid thing to make fun of, funny ha ha, oh they’re on split screens like this. But really, the reason this is coming up is because CNN has become so much about the spectacle—holograms, giant touch screens, never-ending cruise line sagas—that you can’t take them seriously, and moments like this bus moving by two anchors at the same time overshadow the news actually happening.
I snarked that this was “CNN’s problems, in animated GIF form,” and I stand by it. They were already seen as lightweight, but then they hired the fluffmeister himself. They’re so concerned with looking like a serious news outlet that they’d rather look the part by having split screens than actually focus on the kind of in-depth stuff that Al Jazeera English actually does. Do you think AJE’s producers are like “we must get our reporter on a split screen to make it look like we’re on the scene”? No. They’re at the big kids’ table, reporting the news.
That’s why this GIF represents CNN’s problems. Because while they were busy putting Nancy Grace on a split screen, they could have gotten someone other than Nancy Grace to talk about this story.