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 -- September 25

** Larry's Not-so-Brilliant Career. Maxwell Strachen, in Salon, reports on Larry Summers' biggest blunders. CW: Summers is reportedly returning to Harvard to teach about job creation. How did this train wreck/blowhard get so arrogant?

Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times: corrupt Iraqi officials made off with $1.4 million worth of computers purchased by the U.S. & designated for Iraqi schoolchildren. The U.S. has forced the Iraqi government to investigate, sort of, & some computers have been recovered.

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar & Jennifer Agiesta of the AP: "President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has divided the nation, and Republicans believe their call for repeal will help them win elections in November. But ... a new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1."

My link to biographer Ron Chernow's excellent op-ed in yesterday's New York Times got lost in the ether, so better late than never. Chernow addresses the Tea Party's ahistorical view of the Constitution & its authors. "The truth is that the disputatious founders — who were revolutionaries, not choir boys — seldom agreed about anything." They definitely did not agree on how the Constitution should be interpreted, & George Washington himself came down on the side of a strong federal government.

The Republicans, I think, merged with the Tea Party, and in many instances they're finding out it's the Donner Party, because it's knocking off Republicans left and right. -- DNC Chair Tim Kaine

... Dana Milbank, a Donner descendant, thinks Kaine was unfair to the Donners (stranded in the Sierras & starving, the Donners resorted to dining on their own dead): "Republicans have been doing things to each other that would make a Donner's stomach turn." Milbank cites some examples of Republicans gleefully eating their own.

Gail Collins: Republican Sens. Jim DeMint & Tom Coburn, for no good reason, have put a hold on a bill that would allow the creation of a National Woman's History Museum which would be privately-funded. Coburn's "reason" is that there are already plenty of museums with women in them....

... CW: I liked Akhilleus' (#5) explanation: "National Women's History Museum. Now can you think of four things far right extremists like DeMint find more unappealing?" Karen Garcia (#4) thinks that if Meryl Streep, who gave $1MM to the women's museum & is playing former British PM & Reagan chum Margaret Thatcher in an upcoming film, should testify before Congress, in character, which will "bring back such fond memories of Uncle Ronnie the Republicans will ... give her whatever she wants."

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post asks a question on the minds of many of us: why let Bob Woodward into the White House? She doesn't answer the question, but she does make some thoughtful observations about President Obama's decision-making process, as Woodward describes it.

A.G. Sulzberger of the New York Times: "Judicial elections that were designed to be as apolitical as possible are suddenly as contentious as any another race."

Andrew Lehren of the New York Times: "Experts say that weak oversight of the 2.7 million miles of gas pipeline in the United States has contributed to hundreds of episodes that have killed 60 people in the last five years."

Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: under the Obama Administration, the Food & Drug Administration has become more transparent & more flexible as demonstrated by their unusual decision on the controversial diabetes drug Avandia.

In 2003, Christine O'Donnell vowed to "stop the whole country from having sex. Yeah, yeah.... Kids are not dogs in heat":

"Evolution Is a Myth." As promised, Bill Mahar has more. From his ABC show, "Politically Incorrect":

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