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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Tuesday
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The Commentariat -- September 14

CW: I confess. I didn't know the Boner had a "budget plan." He does, and -- no surprise -- it's extremely simple-minded, extremely radical & extremely loopy. Edmund Andrews of the Fiscal Times reports, "House Republican Leader John Boehner’s plan for rolling back nonsecurity government spending to 2008 levels as part of an overall economic strategy would force cuts in many domestic programs far deeper than Republicans and Democrats have been able to agree on in decades.... If the Republicans' proposed domestic spending cuts were spread evenly through all the affected programs, they would require deep cuts in basic services and big projects, according to budget policy experts."

It became very apparent to me shortly after crossing the border that the government and many of my superiors had no idea what they were doing.... We turned up, took away a country's infrastructure and its law and order with absolutely nothing to put in its place. -- Col. Tim Collins, Irish Brigade

The Guardian: Col. Tim Collins, "a prominent veteran of the Iraq war," said "Britain's government and military leaders had 'absolutely no idea' what to do in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.... Tony Blair, and US president, George Bush, had given Saddam Hussein 'an offer he couldn't understand' and even the Iraqi dictator probably did not know what he was required to do to avoid war, said Collins."

Maybe Happiness Is the Best Revenge. David Leonhardt of the New York Times: although black Americans have not made significant economic progress in the past decades, they are -- unlike whites -- much happier with their lives today than were black Americans in the 1970s.

Martin Luther King, Jr., arrives at Memphis Airport April 3, 1968. He was assassinated the next day. CW: many believe the FBI was involved. Photo by Ernest C. Withers.

I had access to Martin Luther King because we grew up together, came up together in the same social setting. He was comfortable with me.... As a photographer, you've got to be trusted by the people that you come in contact with. One thing I had was a level of moral life of honesty and integrity. -- Ernest C. Withers

New York Times: "Ernest C. Withers, one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era ... was a paid F.B.I. informer." AND here's the Memphis Commercial Appeal story, well worth a read.

Almost all of these confessions looked uncannily reliable. I had known that in a couple of these cases, contamination could have occurred. I didn’t expect to see that almost all of them had been contaminated. -- Brandon Garrett

Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "In the primaries, Republicans have borne the brunt of the anti-establishment fervor that has swept the country. But come Election Day on Nov. 2, say strategists in both parties, Democrats will probably bear the brunt of that anger." ...

... Update. Charles Mahtesian of Politico on what to watch for in Tuesday's primaries.

Jim Tankersley in the National Journal: "Americans offer tepid support for much of the Republican Party's domestic agenda, including repealing the new healthcare law and extending tax cuts for the wealthy, according to the latest Society for Human Resource Management/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, conducted with the Pew Research Center."

"I Did It." John Schwartz of the New York Times: Prof. Brandon Garrett of the University of Virginia uncovers how non-guilty subjects confess crimes to interrogators.

We did not learn the larger lesson of the 1930s: that when the distribution of income gets too far out of whack, the economy needs to be reorganized so the broad middle class has enough buying power to rejuvenate the economy over the longer term. -- Robert Reich

New York Times graphic.Michael Luo of the New York Times: "Outside groups supporting Republican candidates in House and Senate races across the country have been swamping their Democratic-leaning counterparts on television since early August.... Driving the disparity in the ad wars has been an array of Republican-oriented organizations that are set up so they can accept donations of unlimited size from individuals and corporations without having to disclose them. The situation raises the possibility that a relatively small cadre of deep-pocketed donors, unknown to the general public, is shaping the battle for Congress...."

Bob Herbert reviews some of the bad news in Robert Reich's new book Aftershock on the effects the economy's downturn has on ordinary Americans.

Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post: "The number of former workers seeking Social Security disability benefits has spiked with the nation's economic problems.... Policymakers ... suspect the current surge has less to do with any worsening in the health of the workforce than with the poor health of the economy."

Habiba Nosheen of NPR: "Some Jews, Muslims and Christians are abandoning Yahoo and Google and turning to search engines with results that meet their religious standards. Shea Houdmann runs SeekFind, a Colorado Springs-based Christian search engine that only returns results from websites that are consistent with the Bible. He says SeekFind is designed 'to promote what we believe to be biblical truth' and excludes sites that don't meet that standard." CW: my friend Ned writes, "Since the NPR story ran the poor little dears have had to close their SeekFind site. It got broke. Or something. But I'm sure it will make its return if only to, you know, keep satan away from spreading lies to impressionable Christian children about the real world." Here's the audio:

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