The Ledes

Thursday, September 19, 2024

New York Times: “A body believed to be of the suspect in a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month was found on Wednesday, the authorities said, ending a manhunt that stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge. The Kentucky State Police commissioner, Phillip Burnett Jr., said in a Wednesday night news conference that at approximately 3:30 p.m., two troopers and two civilians found an unidentified body in the brush behind the highway exit where the shooting occurred.... The police have identified the suspect of the shooting as Joseph A. Couch, 32. They said that on Sept. 7, Mr. Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about eight miles north of London, Ky., and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.”

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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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The Commentariat -- October 3

It’s virtually impossible for participants in the current political system to enact any significant change without first seeking and gaining permission from the largest commercial interests who are most affected by the proposed change. -- Al Gore

Frank Rich: Christine O'Donnell provides cover for Republicans -- she's one of a very few true non-elites in the Republican stable:

By latching on to O’Donnell’s growing presence, the Rove-Boehner-McConnell establishment can claim it represents struggling middle-class Tea Partiers rather than Wall Street potentates and corporate titans.

Idle Rich: Millionaires Claim Jobless Benefits. Ryan Donmoyer of Bloomberg: "According to U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, 2,840 households reporting at least $1 million in income on their tax returns that year also collected a total of $18.6 million in jobless aid. They included 806 taxpayers with incomes over $2 million and 17 with incomes in excess of $10 million. In all, multimillionaires reported receiving $5.2 million in jobless benefits." ...

... Idle Poor. Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "The nation's welfare system of cash assistance, for decades the core of help for mothers and children in financial distress, has become a shrunken piece of the U.S. social safety net. The welfare rolls have absorbed relatively few of the Americans who have tumbled lately into poverty or unemployment.... Three out of 10 children were poor last year.... State by state, welfare programs are a patchwork, with little connection between the condition of a state's economy and the number of people who have gone onto welfare. Welfare's role will be further diminished after Thursday, when emergency funds Congress began providing early last year to help states cope with hard economic times run out."

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, which is part of the Affordable Care Act, "started this summer [but] isn't living up to expectations. Enrollment lags in many parts of the country. People who could benefit may not be able to afford the premiums. Some state officials who run their own 'high-risk pools' have pointed out potential problems."

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "With ... [TARP]’s expiration on Sunday, we can expect to hear lots of claims from the folks at the Treasury that it was a great success.... But ... proclamations emanating from the Washington spin machine must be taken with an extra-hefty grain of salt.... The Dodd-Frank financial reform act ... has created a new set of institutions that will almost certainly be deemed too important to fail if they ever get into trouble. And that means there won’t really be an effective way to keep those firms from taking big, profitable, short-term risks that are dumped on the taxpayers when the bets fail...."

Jeff Zeleny & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "... the fight for control of Congress is more fluid than it seemed at Labor Day, with Democrats mounting strong resistance in some parts of the country as they try to hold off a potential Republican wave in November."

Here's a fun little game: the Supreme Court justices are seated according to seniority. See if you can seat the Supremes. Click on the image to go to the interactive page:

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The new Supreme Court term, which begins Monday, includes cases on some of the most contested issues of the day, including protests at military funerals, illegal immigration, support for religious schools, violent video games, DNA evidence and prosecutorial misconduct." Take a look at the cases to watch; Justice Kagan has recused herself on three of them.

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court begins its new term Monday with unprecedented diversity among its members but also the potential for a split that would for the first time in decades reflect the partisan ideologies of the presidents who appointed them."

Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker has a deep-in-the-weeds analysis of why the climate bill failed. Funniest bit: John McCain yelling at Lindsey Graham for stealing McCain's "maverick" label; McCain later denied he had ever considered himself a maverick, even though he had repeatedly called himself a maverick.

According to the rough plans, the upper floors would include space for art exhibitions and interfaith programs. There would also be a 9/11 memorial and a space open to people of “all faiths and of no faith” for prayer, contemplation and meditation. Art by SOMA Architects, via the New York Times.Anne Barnard of the New York Times reviews "the tentative architectural renderings that the planners of the [proposed Islamic] center, called Park51."

Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars: "Without the benefit of months and months of advertising and promotion on Fox News Channel (in fact, I'm only aware of Ed Schultz on MSNBC doing any kind of TV promotion), the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington DC has gathered more supporters than Glenn Beck's much ballyhooed rally, which I will lovingly refer to as 'Whitestock'." With video.

Richard Escow of Curbing Wall Street: "... the banking industry covertly uses payday lenders as a 'front,' a way to prey on minority neighborhoods without getting their hands dirty."

Here in Florida.... Robert Trigaux of the St. Petersburg Times: "Even the tepid rebound of Florida's economy may face crippling delays in resolving hundreds of thousands of foreclosures in the Sunshine State.... Title insurance companies may be scared away from offering 'clear title' guarantees on foreclosed homes.... A study that found errors in about 75 percent of court filings tied to home repossessions.... Four [foreclosure law] firms are already under investigation by the Florida Attorney General's office." ...

... USA Today: "Old Republic National Title Insurance, among the nation's largest title insurance companies, will no longer write new policies for homes foreclosed upon by J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage unit –– a sign that concerns about faulty foreclosure paperwork could now endanger new sales of foreclosed homes."

     ... The Backstory from Friday's New York Times: "Bank of America, the country’s largest mortgage lender by assets, said on Friday that it was reviewing documents in all of its pending foreclosure cases to evaluate if there were errors made. It is the third major lender in the last two weeks that has said it was freezing foreclosures in the 23 states where the process is controlled by courts." The other two are JP Morgan Chase & GMAC Mortgage.

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