Can this marriage be saved? In an effort to repair our relationship with Pakistan, the Obama administration sent Hillary Clinton to and from Pakistan yesterday to attend “several hours of meetings.” (Also, her hair looked great.) “We’ve reached a turning point,” she said. “Osama bin Laden is dead. But al-Qaeda and its syndicate of terror remains a serious threat to us both.” Another US official helpfully added that there was discussion of “specific operations to achieve specific objectives where the United States and Pakistan are together.”

Gaza-Egypt border now open “every day except Fridays and holidays”: This morning, Egypt permanently reopened its border with Gaza for the first time in four years. The Telegraph reports that Israelis have raised concern that it’ll be used as a smuggling point for weapons, but so far the border has only been crossed by two ambulances transporting patients from the Gaza Strip for treatment in Egypt, and a minibus carrying visitors.

Air France Flight 447 “dropped 38,000 feet in three-and-a-half minutes”: The black boxes to Air France flight 447 have been found, and the Guardian provides a disturbingly detailed explanation of the mechanical malfunctions that caused it to crash. If you are a nervous flyer, pretend you didn’t see that link.

Awful: A 2 1/2-year-old boy drowned in the Greenwater River outside of Enumclaw yesterday after he wandered away from the campsite where he was staying with his parents.

Today, in better news: Ninety of the people who were missing Sunday after the tornado in Joplin, Missouri have been found alive, bringing down the count of missing people to 156.

This is what happens when your business plan is the Rapture: Orange County-based “Hour of Power” megachurch Crystal Cathedral Ministries is selling its property to pay off almost $46 million in debts, reports the NY Times.

Thanks for your input, you guys: Republicans have an exciting new plan for saving the earth: CLEAR CUTTING THE RAINFORESTS!

This sucks, because I was totally looking forward to that Lifetime Original Movie: The Seattle Times reports that US District Court in Seattle has filed an indictment against Barefoot Bandit Colton Harris-Moore stating that he should forfeit “any profits or proceeds received in connection with any publication or dissemination of information.”

Neat! The anchor of the pirate Blackbeard’s ship has been found by explorers off the coast of North Carolina, reports CNN. It weighs 3,000 pounds and was one of three belonging to the Queen Anne’s Revenge, which ran aground in 1718.

Just in time for Sasquatch! This woman went hiking and thinks she caught Bigfoot on her iphone. Then it became TV news. You can watch it here.

Finally, this is a thing that happened: Due to outbreaks of equine herpes, KSL in Utah reports that “contestants at the Davis County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse Junior Queen Contest had to cowgirl up Thursday night without their mares.” In fact, they had to compete on hobby horses. Then it became TV news. You can watch it below. Life is weird! Happy Saturday.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

17 replies on “Morning News”

  1. Yesterday I was reading this Tumblr about people on Facebook who interpreted stories from the Onion seriously.

    http://literallyunbelievable.tumblr.com/

    So in that herpes story, I was thinking — ok, this has to be an Onion story. But it appears to be real.

    So, even smart people can be fooled into thinking something is so offbase that it must be fake. Or is everyone dumb.

    Or is this whole website from The Onion.

    It’s what we economists call “market pollution”.

  3. On the Air France story, NBC had a story (complete with animation) about the last 4 minutes of this flight. The plane started to dive, the co-pilots quickly climbed 3,000 feet, the plane was rocking from side to side and then dove down to the water.

    The reporter then said that the passengers probably had no idea how serious it was.

    I’m thinking the rocking and rolling gave them a hint.

  6. @2: You’re just still mad that nobody believes your version of the events that transpired between the SWAT team and the retired Marine.

  7. Also, Gil-Scott Heron died. Strange to not see it here.

    Also, two days ago, Obama signed an extension of the Patriot Act after the White House fought against any revisions designed to decrease civil rights violations. No mention of it on Slog. Sadly, that’s less surprising.

  8. @7 gil scott heron notice is on line out..cause it’s music..cause..that’s where shit ends up ( i.e. phoebe snow and poly styrene )

  9. Is this the reason there are no black iPhones?

    http://thegadgets.net/2011/05/26/inciden…

    The two men, who are black, were wearing ”baggy jeans and large sweaters with hoods”. They wanted to purchase headphones, when a 6-foot-2, 225 pound Apple employee approached them “in an intimidating fashion” and told them, “You know the deal, you know the deal.”

    The two men were asked to leave the store unless they planned to purchase something or see a Mac specialist. Before they could respond, they claim, the employee went on to say, “And before you say I’m racially discriminating against you, let me stop you. I am discriminating against you. I don’t want ‘your kind’ hanging out in the store.”

  10. #7

    I think his line about “hairy armed Women Liberationists” might provoke a muted response from SLOG.

  11. Chiming in with a plug for the Guardian’s new investigation into Bradley Manning. Amazing stuff:

    So why did the US army ignore warnings from officers that Manning was unstable? Why did it send him – a 5ft 2in gay man with a history of being bullied in the military – to one of the most isolated and desolate bases in Iraq? Why was security so lax on the base that passwords for secret military computers were posted on sticky notes nearby?

    A year after his arrest, a Guardian investigation reveals a trail of ignored warnings, beatings and failed personal relationships that led to Manning’s arrest on 29 May 2010.

    Manning, the son of a former naval intelligence analyst, Brian Manning, and his wife Susan, was brought up in the small town of Crescent, Oklahoma. Neighbours watched the family disintegrate as Susan Manning turned to drink to ease the final years of the marriage.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may…

    and they’ve done a 20-minute film as well. The Guardian spent serious money doing this for us. Really worth watching:

    The American soldier at the centre of the WikiLeaks revelations was so mentally fragile before his deployment to Iraq that he wet himself, threw chairs around, shouted at his commanding officers and was regularly brought in for psychiatric evaluations, according to an investigative film produced by the Guardian.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may…

  12. SOmehow I don’t think that sending Hillary to any country that ends in -stan is going to shore up the relationship. Do you suppose that Obama’s deal with the devil included her remaining in that post for a 2nd term? And her hair, in the flip that I recall her having 20 years ago when Willie was running fro president, is a bit too mutton dressed as lamb.

  15. @12–Thanks for the link. Well-written and informative, but a strange article. Granted, most of the coverage I’ve read is from civil rights/intelligence-focused news sources, but I’d never even heard that Manning was gay. I hope they do a follow-up.

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