LA's Gas Leak Is a Global Disaster

One of the worst environmental disasters of the decade is currently underway in a quiet community 25 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Putrid, methane-rich natural gas has been spewing into the air at an estimated rate of nearly 1,300 metric tons per day for over two months. Experts are calling it the climate version of the BP oil spill, and the leak isn’t going to be contained anytime soon.
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Munich police warn of terror threat - BBC News

Police in the German city of Munich warn that a terror attack may be imminent, evacuating train stations and asking people to avoid crowds.
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'MASH' Star Wayne Rogers Dies at 82

Actor Wayne Rogers dead at 82 from complications from pneumonia.
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The Hidden History of the Housewarming Pineapple

If you were rich 1700s nobleman, had a dinner table, and wanted to impress your fellow gentry, a pineapple would sure as hell be the way to go. Indeed, if you find yourself at an old inn or perhaps even a new, trendy hotel, there will likely be a picture of a pineapple somewhere near you. It is a near-universal symbol of hospitality. But why?
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How New Year's Eve Came to Times Square

On New Year’s Eve in 1903, there was no countdown to midnight, no ball drop, and no partygoers wearing silly hats in Times Square.
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Meet "Sledgehammer Shannon," the lawyer who is Uber’s worst nightmare

In early 2012, on a visit to San Francisco, Shannon Liss-Riordan went to a restaurant with some friends. Over dinner, one of her companions began to describe a new car-hailing app that had taken Silicon Valley by storm. "Have you seen this?" he asked, tapping Uber on his phone. "It's changed my life." Liss-Riordan glanced at the little black cars snaking around on his screen. "He looked up at me and he knew what I was thinking," she remembers.
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How Clementine Churchill Wielded Influence As Winston's Wife

Biographer Sonia Purnell says Clementine once remarked that she "would have loved to have been a statesman in her own right if only she had been born with trousers rather than petticoats."
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Putin's son-in-law boosted by $1.75 billion Russian state loan

The son-in-law of Vladimir Putin stands to benefit from $1.75 billion in cheap finance from the Russian state, a Reuters examination of public documents shows. The money will help fund a petrochemical project at a company in which Kirill Shamalov, husband of Katerina Tikhonova, the Russian president's younger daughter, has a significant interest. Shamalov is a major shareholder in Sibur, Russia's largest processor of petrochemicals.
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Most Americans are OK with government surveillance, poll reveals

According to the new poll, 56 per cent of Americans favor and 28 per cent oppose the ability of the government to conduct surveillance on Internet communications without a warrant.
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Locked away: Egypt’s forgotten Jewish literary heritage

Inside a library of a synagogue in downtown Cairo, hundreds of Judaic books dating from the medieval ages to the 20th century are shelved, unread and un-indexed. Despite a center dedicated to their preservation, government ministries have stalled, eschewing responsibility for what would be an expensive project to review and record the manuscripts digitally.
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[Letter from Washington] A Special Relationship, by Andrew Cockburn

One morning early in 1988, Ed McWilliams, a foreign-service officer posted to the American Embassy in Kabul, heard the thump of a massive explosion from somewhere on the other side of the city. It was more than eight years after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the embassy was a tiny enclave with only a handful of diplomats. McWilliams, a former Army intelligence operative, had made it his business to venture as much as possible into...
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How mapmakers are helping driverless cars stay on track

HERE, a California-based company that creates detailed digital maps, is working to help self-driving cars navigate roads even in extreme conditions when lane markings aren't visible. "[A] snowstorm may be the extreme case for most autonomous cars," says HERE's John Ristevski. "But you've still got to have a solution for a suddenly featureless road."
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Fire breaks Out in Dubai Skyscraper

A fire erupts in a building in Dubai close to the world's tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa, ahead of a major New Year fireworks display.
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The food desert of the north

Despite living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the majority of homes Canada's Nunavut territory suffer from chronic food insecurity. Without relief in sight, survival sometimes comes down to killing a narwhal.
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The Paranoid Style of American Policing

When I was around 10 years old, my father confronted a young man who was said to be “crazy.” The young man was always too quick to want to fight. A foul in a game of 21 was an insult to his honor. A cross word was cause for a duel, and you never knew what that cross word might be. One day, the young man got into it with one of my older brother’s friends. The young man pulled a metal stake out of the ground (there was some work being done nearby) and began...
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UN: 1 in 122 people worldwide have been forced to flee homes

European countries need to set up a "massive" refugee resettlement programme, the head of the UN refugee agency says.
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One Of Congress's Biggest Defenders Of NSA Surveillance Suddenly Aghast That NSA May Have Spied On Him

It would almost be funny how the defenders of surveillance react when they're being surveilled... if it weren't so tragic.
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New CISA Law: Big Brother Writ Large or No Big Deal?

CISA was slipped inside an unrelated spending bill before Christmas and it passed. The new law gives the NSA renewed and broadened rights to surveil America. [analysis]
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Why Mormons identify with Syrian refugees

They were religious exiles once too.
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Turbulence injures 21 on Air Canada flight

Twenty-one passengers — including three children — on an Air Canada flight from China have been taken to a Calgary hospital after turbulence caused multiple injuries Wednesday.
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Obamacare Insurers Sweeten Plans With Free Doctor Visits

Health insurers in several big cities will take some pain out of doctor visits in 2016. The plans will offer free visits to primary care doctors in their networks.
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This Viral List About 1915 Is Full of Lies

A list of fun facts about the year 1915 has gone viral. But many items on the list are false or misleading. As we’ve seen time and again, never trust the internet for your fun facts.
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The Black Chamber

The man who made Edward Snowden inevitable.
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American woman mistakenly kills her daughter

Police in Florida say a mother mistook her daughter for an intruder and shot her dead. Sergeant Denise Roberts, of the St Cloud police, said the mother was asleep when she heard someone enter her home late on Tuesday. The mother told police she heard footsteps approaching quickly so she fired a single shot. She then discovered the person was her 27-year-old daughter. The daughter was taken to a hospital where she died.
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By 2050, There Could Be as Many as 25 Million Poor Elderly Americans

As the Boomers age, there are going to be a lot more people living in poverty.
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The problem with science journalism: we’ve forgotten that reality matters most

It’s the job of science journalists to look beyond data – we have to look at the people doing the science and whether they have conflicts of interest
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Bikers patrol flood-hit Yorkshire towns to deter looters

Night-time patrols of Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd by motorcycle club members in 4x4s, vans and on foot have blessing of police
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8 Survivors Found 5 Days After Chinese Mine Collapsed

Rescuers using infrared cameras to peer into darkness at a wrecked mine in eastern China on Wednesday found eight surviving miners who were trapped for five days after a collapse so violent it registered as a seismic event. The disaster on Christmas Day at the gypsum mine in Shandong province killed at least one worker. Nine others remain missing, and 11 made it to safety or were rescued early on.
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In Tanzania, a Horrific Fishing Tactic Destroys All Sea Life

Tanzania is the only country in Africa where fishermen widely use homemade bombs to increase their catch. By Jani Actman.
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Dave Barry’s Year in Review

The sad thing is, we’re not making this up!
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Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock dies at 42, cause unknown

Just prior to his death, Murdock had started sending increasingly erratic tweets from his Twitter account.
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Solar Storm To Hit Earth By New Year's Eve

A solar storm can be caused by a solar flare or the aftereffect of a coronal mass ejection (CME) by the sun. Solar flares travel faster than CMEs
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Poor people in the Deep South are on their own

In the Deep South’s cities, simply applying for a job exposes a particularly pervasive and isolating form of poverty. By Chico Harlan.
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The Tipping Point

As a species, we stand at a precipice, and the choices we make in this moment determine a great many things. We are all participants, and now more than ever we need every hand on deck to right this ship and chart a better course. By Camille Seaman.
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A Strange Tale of Fruitcakes and the Collin Street Bakery

Sandy Jenkins was a shy, daydreaming accountant at the Collin Street Bakery, the world’s most famous fruitcake company. He was tired of feeling invisible, So he started stealing—and got a little carried away. By Katy Vine.
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No Visible Bruises: Domestic Violence and Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury is only starting to be addressed in the domestic-violence community. By Rachel Louise Snyder.
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Inside Gitmo: America’s Shame

Fifteen years of pain and suffering outside the rule of law — why can’t we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay? By Janet Reitman.
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The Return of the 1920s

America is again caught between nationalists longing for the glories of an imagined past, and activists invoking ideals the nation has never yet attained. By Richard Yeselson.
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An Elegy for America's Oldest Bald Eagle

Eagle 629-03142 lived to see its species come back from the brink—and even played a role in the recovery.
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A Renowned, But Forgotten, 17th-Century Japanese Artist Is Once Again Making Waves

Long neglected, the 17th-century Japanese artist Tawaraya Sōtatsu influenced Western art 400 years later.
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My Brother, the Murderer

A beautiful young mother, a dark family secret, and a new suspect in a 45-year-old mystery. By Michael J. Mooney.
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Big Oil Argued for U.S. Crude Exports to Fend Off Iran, But First Exporter Vitol Group Also Exported Iran's Oil

The American Petroleum Institute (API) successfully lobbied for an end to the 40-year ban on exporting U.S.-produced crude oil in part by making a geopolitical argument: Iran and Russia have the ability to export their oil, so why not unleash America? What API never mentioned... By Steve Horn.
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Gone in 2015: Commemorating Ten Outstanding Women in Science

These notable researchers who passed away during the year just ending made key contributions to ecology, planetary science, medicine, chemical engineering, and more.
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Latin America is home to thousands of modern-day slaves, new report says

According to the latest figures from the Global Slavery Index 35.8 million people are estimated to be held under slave conditions. While Mauritania, Uzbekistan, Haiti, Qatar and India round out the top 5 countries with the most people trapped in slavery, a large chunk of Latin America is said to be home to a number of slaves. This is the second year the index has been published.
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If you buy these jeans, you’ll never have to worry about washing them

We scratched our heads in disbelief when the Levis CEO, Chip Bergh, proudly proclaimed that he hadn’t washed his pair of jeans in over a year. How could he live like that? Didn’t he have any sense of personal hygiene? Was he immune to the swathes of bacteria that must have accumulated on the fabric? Yuck.
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The real scandal in the Bernie/DNC feud is the one nobody is talking about

When we just talk about how the Sanders campaign accessed unauthorized data, we're ignoring the bigger picture. By David Dayen. (Dec 22)
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Americans support religious freedom for Christians, but not Muslims: Poll

WASHINGTON — Americans place a higher priority on preserving the religious freedom of Christians than for other faith groups, ranking Muslims as the least deserving of the protections, according to a new survey. Solid majorities said it was extremely or...
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Bill Cosby Charged in Sexual Assault Case

The authorities in Montgomery County, Pa., announced criminal charges on Wednesday against the entertainer Bill Cosby stemming from a woman’s accusation that he drugged and abused her at his home in Cheltenham Township, a suburb north of Philadelphia, in 2004.
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Lawsuit seeks more than $5M from Apple for slowing older iPhones with iOS 9 upgrade

A class action lawsuit lodged with a New York district court on Tuesday dredges up claims that Apple engages in planned obsolescence, saying the company knew of potential compatibility issues when it foisted its latest iOS 9 software update on iPhone 4s owners.
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US marines reject BigDog robotic packhorse because it's too noisy

‘They took it as it was: a loud robot that’s going to give away their position,’ said a military spokesman of Boston Dynamics’ LS3 quadruped
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