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Despite basically being roommates, Pope Francis and pope emeritus Benedict XVI probably won't tune in to see their respective national teams face off in Sunday's final. The German one doesn't even care about soccer, the New York Times reports, while Francis, a noted Argentine fan, doesn't watch much TV, "especially at that hour." The game starts at 9 p.m. in Italy, so he'll probably just follow along on Twitter from bed.
Regulators are working hard to block the New York City launch of ride-share app Lyft, which was scheduled for this evening. In the last couple of days, the Taxi and Limousine Commission has threatened to impound Lyft's cars based on the claim that the start-up is offering an "unauthorized service," and the Department of Financial Services has issued a cease and desist order against the company for "acting in bad faith." On Friday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit saying that Lyft — whose vehicles have been on the roads of Buffalo and Rochester since April — "actually operates as a traditional for-hire livery service using mobile technology, not a peer-to-peer transportation platform as claimed," putting it "in open defiance" of the state's licensing and insurance laws.
The story of Jada, the Houston 16-year-old who found out she was raped after photos of her, passed out at a party, popped up on social media, was so depressingly familiar I believed I would lose all faith in humanity. But Jada's bravery in a local news interview — “Everybody has already seen my face and my body, but that’s not what I am and who I am,” she said — suggested that, against the odds, there was hope for us yet. Then a bunch of kids began tweeting pictures of themselves splayed out like a passed-out Jada (hashtag #jadapose), and I wondered if it was too late to sign up for that manned one-way trip to Mars. But the #jadapose tweets were quickly drowned out by the supporters (#justiceforjada) — not to mention a tear-jerking interview with Jada’s mom on MSNBCÂ — and now I just feel like TGIF. I’m not sure I could've handled another swing of the emotional pendulum.
Esquire's Scott Raab, whose book The Whore of Akron is about how much he hated LeBron James for leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers, no longer hates LeBron James. No hard feelings, he says!
"Broadway Danny Rose said it best — 'Acceptance, forgiveness, and love,'" Raab writes after today's big news. "As human beings, that's the only recipe for leading a righteous life in this world. Such words — from the famous and unfamous — come cheap. But you're living those truths now, walking that walk. Who am I to hold a grudge?"
In other words, Scott Raab, who profited off of his sports-fan indignation, read James's touching announcement as an apology to Scott Raab, and he would like the best basketball player on earth to know that apology is accepted.
Bad news: The Center for Disease Control is not as on top of things as everyone would like to think. On at least two separate occasions in the past few months, CDC employees have accidentally sent dangerous bacteria and viruses to other facilities, potentially exposing their colleagues and the greater public to deadly illnesses.
In December, 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a groundbreaking plan for how the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. The conventional wisdom before the EPA’s plan held that the agency’s only legal option involved prohibitively expensive mandates. Almost immediately after the plan came out, I somewhat accidentally learned that high-level policymakers in the Obama administration were aware of it, and — while they were cagey about it — seemed intent on crafting a plan along the lines the NRDC proposed. I wrote a story for the magazine explaining how this would work and how it would fit with the administration’s agenda.
LeBron James is returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the superstar announced via an “as told to” piece authored by Lee Jenkins on Sports Illustrated’s website. The announcement is the polar opposite of James’s last one, and it brilliantly gives James a sympathetic, relatable character arc: He left Cleveland a boy seeking out formative, youthful experiences, and is returning a seasoned man with a newer, more mature set of priorities.
On Tuesday morning, two people found the partially dismembered body of a woman in a Bay Shore lot. On Wednesday afternoon, a man found a severed arm in his sister's yard in Hampstead. On Thursday, afternoon someone discovered another arm about a half-mile away from where the first one was found. By Friday, everyone on Long Island was slightly freaked out.Â
Now police are trying to figure out if the severed arm found yesterday belongs to the body found the day before. They're also investigating any potential connection to the 2010 Gilgo Beach serial killer. And lastly, they're considering the possibility that the body parts belong to missing 27-year-old Brownsville woman Chinelle Latoya Browne. She was last seen Saturday fighting with her landlord over an extension cord.Â
Everybody panic! According to a flyer posted in South Slope, a Mexican Red Rump tarantula named Penelope escaped from her home this week and is now creeping around somewhere. Oh, and the smallish monster is supposedly pregnant, which means that Brooklyn is going to be overrun by her terrifying spawn unless somebody does something very quickly.Â
Four years after LeBron James broke Cleveland’s hearts by signing with the Miami Heat, and two weeks after he opted out of his contract to become a free agent, he announced today that he’ll be signing with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He made the announcement in a piece on Sports Illustrated's website, saying, "I always believed that I’d return to Cleveland and finish my career there. I just didn’t know when."
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