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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Friday
Oct292010

The Commentariat -- October 30

The Washington Post has a whole page of stories & info about Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear. ...

... Here's a post-event AP story. ...

... Sanity More Popular than Insanity. CBS News: "An estimated 215,000 people attended [the] rally..., according to a crowd estimate commissioned by CBS News." CBS commissioned the same company, AiRPhotoLive.com, to estimate the crowd size at the Stewart-Colbert rally & a'at Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Honor' rally in August. That rally was estimated to have attracted 87,000 people." ...

... Canadian TV: "In an impassioned 15-minute speech, Stewart told a crowd estimated to number at least 250,000, that their presence has restored his sanity. 'We live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies,' [Jon] Stewart said. 'But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country's 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems. But its existence makes solving them that much harder.' Stewart's speech was capped off with a short rendition of 'America the Beautiful' by Tony Bennett before the show's many entertainers sent the crowd home with The Staple Singers' "I'll Take You There," led by Mavis Staples." ...

... The New York Times' liveblog is pretty good. ...

... AND for some fair & balance coverage, here's Fox "News"' headline: "Stewart's Rally for 'Sanity' Draws Insane Crowd."

... Stewart's final remarks:

... C-SPAN has video of the entire three-hour-plus rally here. ...

... Christian Science Monitor: "Comedy Central has provided no details about the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert 'Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.' But the park service permit lays out the schedule minute-by-minute." Performers include Jeff Tweedy & Mavis Staple, Sheryl Crow & the Roots. ...

... Mike Isaac of Forbes has an interesting story about how the rally was conceived & how the idea took hold -- on the Internet. ...

... James Burnett of Rolling Stone: according to scientific analysis! of Internets chatter, the Stewart-Colbert rally was already working prior to the event.

... In the New York Times, Tobin Harshaw reprises some of the print media's commentary on the rally. ...

... Alex Parker of US News: Democrats & progressives hope to capitalize on the rally. ...

... CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews sat down with Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" correspondent John Oliver the day before Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity" on the National Mall. With video. ...

... It would be wrong to ignore the Fear side of this equation, so here is Stephen Colbert, bravely sitting down with five men who scare the crap out of him:

Dana Milbank: "The [Republican] party is sorely in need of grown-ups.... There are weak leaders who, frightened by the Tea Party radicals, have become unquestioning followers of a radical approach.... There are no authority figures to say 'no' to the angry, the rude and the violent. With a House leader determined not to compromise, and a Senate leader whose top national priority is the defeat of the president, things won't get any better after Tuesday."

Think the negative campaign ads this year are "the worst ever"?"Attack ads are as American as apple pie." Produced by ReasonTV:

Peter Wallsten of the Wall Street Journal: "Florida independent Senate candidate Charlie Crist personally lobbied Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek to exit the race this week, offering him a cross that had been a gift from his sister, Mr. Meek said Friday." And yes, the story gets weirder from there.

Talk about Voter Intimidation. Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: the owner of a McDonald’s restaurant in Canton, Ohio, inserted a political pamphlet, printed on McDonald's letterhead, into workers' pay envelopes "urging them to vote for the Republican candidates for governor, Senate and Congress, or possibly face financial repercussions.... A spokesman for McDonald’s USA, the parent company, said: 'It was an unfortunately lapse in judgment on [the franchise owner's] part...'" & did not represent McDonald's policy. The owner appears to have violated an "Ohio statute that prohibits political material from being attached to wage envelopes."

Washington Post: "Native-born Americans lost more than a million jobs while foreign-born workers gained hundreds of thousands of jobs as the country emerged from a painful recession, according to a new analysis of economic trends.... The report does not explain why foreign-born workers are doing so much better than native-born workers."

Doug J. at Balloon Juice: "Jonah Goldberg calls for Julian Assange’s murder.... If you don’t think that the right is serious about using violence to take power, you’re not paying attention." ...

... Alex Pareene's take (Salon): Jonah Goldberg wonders why real life can't be more like the movies. Jason Bourne should have killed Julian Assange by now.

Japan Redux. Martin Fackler & Steve Lohr of the New York Times: "... in the current political climate, with Republicans ... preaching fiscal austerity, the prospect of more federal stimulus spending seems remote, and it is unclear if monetary policy alone will be enough to restore healthy growth.... Partly as a result, some economists now predict that it could take years or even a decade for the American economy to regain the levels of employment and vigor achieved before the 2008 crisis. The growing political pressure for cuts in federal spending — along with plunging consumer confidence and companies that seem more intent on cutting costs and hoarding cash than investing in new growth — have led economists to talk of the United States’ entering a grim new era of austerity."

Robert Worth of the New York Times: Yemen has become a base for attacks on the U.S. & has been using an English-language Website & magazine to recruit Americans:

These are people with both access to explosives and knowledge of how the United States works. And in Yemen, you can walk into a local branch of FedEx and mail something to the U.S. You can’t do that in Somalia or in rural Afghanistan. -- Princeton Prof. Bernard Haykel

Air Cargo -- a Security Weak Spot. Mike Brunker of MSNBC: "U.S. authorities on Friday said they were tightening screening of air cargo in the wake of incidents in which packages from Yemen containing explosives triggered a worldwide security scare. But aviation insiders say that even with the additional measures, only a small percentage of the air freight originating overseas is likely to be examined before it arrives at U.S airports." Related AP story here.

Andrew Pollack of the New York Times: "Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry."

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