Conservatives lashed out at actress and filmmaker Lena Dunham on Monday over her odd Memorial Day message. On the day Americans are supposed to commemorate the ultimate sacrifices made by the country’s veterans, Dunham informed the world of her voiding habits. The tweet left many perplexed....
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Conservatives freak out over Lena Dunham’s peculiar Memorial Day tweet
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Canadian scientists revive ‘Little Ice Age’ plant frozen 400 years under glacier ice
Scientists in Alberta said this week they’ve revived a plant that was trapped under glacier ice for some 400 years or more, discovered during an exploration of Canada’s Teardrop Glacier in 2007. The organism is an ancient moss in the category of bryophytes, non-vascular plants that grow...
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Nebraska lawmaker’s ‘biggest mystery’ is women: ‘They don’t even understand themselves’
A Republican state senator in Nebraska says that his “biggest mystery” is women because they “don’t even understand themselves.” In responses to a questionnaire published by the Journal Star on Tuesday state Sen. Bill Kintner (R) explained that he applies the...
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Republicans get three times more ‘false’ ratings from PolitiFact than Democrats
An analysis of PolitiFact ratings suggests Republicans are significantly less credible than Democrats. The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University found Republican’s had made three times as many false statements as Democrats this year. PolitiFact examines a variety of...
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U.S. shuts down digital currency service Liberty Reserve in money laundering probe
The United States on Tuesday unveiled the world’s “largest” money laundering probe targeting the digital currency operator Liberty Reserve, striking a major blow against what a prosecutor termed the “Wild West” of virtual banking. The Costa Rica-based entity, which...
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Chinese hackers jeopardize secrecy of U.S. weapons programs
Chinese hackers have gained access to secret designs for a slew of sophisticated US weapons programs, officials said Tuesday, possibly jeopardizing the American military’s technological edge. The breaches were part of a broad Chinese campaign of espionage against top US defense contractors...
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Feminist analysis of video game tropes booted off YouTube within hours
Within hours of being uploaded to YouTube, a video analyzing the portrayal of women in video games was removed for an alleged “Terms of Service” violation. Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist media critic behind the video, suspected the video was flagged by angry gamers. “Looks like my...
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International trio take Russian Soyuz rocket to space station
An international trio blasted off Wednesday on top of a Russian Soyuz rocket for the International Space Station with a busy schedule full of space walks and a docking with a pioneering US cargo craft. The six-month mission of Russian commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and his two flight engineers —...
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Freight train derails near Baltimore causing massive explosion
A freight train plowed into a garbage truck and derailed Tuesday near the US city of Baltimore, triggering a fire and a massive explosion that injured a driver and was reportedly felt for miles. Television footage showed several train cars lying on their side and engulfed in flames, along with the...
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Two U.S. embassy personnel shot in Venezuela
Two employees of the US embassy in Venezuela were shot and wounded early Tuesday in the capital Caracas, in a murky incident that local media and a police source said took place at a strip club. “We can confirm that two members of the US embassy in Caracas were injured during an incident...
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Facebook agrees to work on removing gender-based hate
Facing a growing boycott from advertisers, Facebook on Tuesday said efforts to remove content that trivialized or incited violence against women would be increased. “In recent days, it has become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as...
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High school security guard arrested for threatening to shoot up school
A man was arrested earlier this week for a terrorist threat against Nyack High School in New York, where he was employed as a security officer. Kenneth A. Carter, 51, was arrested May 22 without incident after a co-worker told police he made threats against the school. Carter allegedly threatened...
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Republicans accuse Eric Holder of misleading Congress over leak investigations
Eric Holder has been accused of misleading Congress over his involvement in aggressively investigating journalists for security leaks, forcing the White House to repeatedly defend its embattled attorney general. Republican critics seized on fresh information about attempts to obtain classified...
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Undeterred by setbacks, Newtown families plan to end NRA’s stranglehold on gun politics
Terri Rousseau is a member of what she calls “the saddest club in the world”. She was forced to join it on 14 December last year when her daughter, Lauren, a teacher at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, was shot dead along with all 14 of the young children in her...
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Larry King moves to Kremlin-funded station RT
Legendary US television presenter Larry King announced Wednesday that he was moving his show to a Kremlin-funded TV station that primarily broadcasts Moscow’s views on world affairs. RT channel director Margarita Simonyan tweeted a link to a TV ad in which the suspenders-wearing veteran makes...
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Canada’s Miss Universe competition embarrassingly crowns wrong winner
Losing is never easy, but for one unlucky contestant in Canada’s Miss Universe competition the bad news came 24 hours later — after she’d been crowned the winner. Red-faced organizers admitted on Wednesday that a typo led to a counting error that resulted in Denise Garrido, 26,...
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Citigroup settles lawsuit over federal securities law violations
Citigroup has settled a lawsuit by the US Federal Housing Finance Agency over the sale of home mortgage-backed securities to government-backed lenders, a court document showed Wednesday. According to the New York court filing, Judge Denise Cote said that both sides had reached an agreement that...
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Bird ancestor reclaims its branch on tree of life
Venerated for 150 years as the forebear of all birds until being relegated two years ago to the common class of winged dinosaurs, the Archaeopteryx was restored to its hallowed branch on the tree of life on Wednesday. A fossil find in China proved the winged creature was in fact an ancestor of...
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Newsweek up for sale yet again: report
Newsweek, the longtime news magazine which ended its print publication last year in favor of digital, is up for sale again, according to a leaked memo seen Wednesday. The first report on the possible sale came from Variety, which quoted unnamed sources familiar with the intentions of parent company...
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Maine governor: Might as well go home and ‘get our guns’ over alleged censorship
Maine’s Republican governor Paul LePage has voiced new outrage over the alleged censorship of his speech in the Statehouse. “It’s freedom of speech,” he told reporters on Wednesday, according to the Portland Press Herald. “You folks should understand that better than...
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