It's still not entirely clear what caused I-5 bridge over the Skagit River in Washington to collapse Thursday night. What is clear is that, if the state had needed to repair it, getting federal money to do so would be an uphill climb.
When Senator Mark Pryor voted against a gun background check compromise, he was taking a measured political risk. Even as an anti-gun group announces a plan to spend $350,000 on ads criticizing Pryor ahead of a near-certain second vote, a detailed new poll shows why it may have made political sense.
Andrew Goldman has an extensive interview with Billy Joel in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, which — after you finish admiring the accompanying photo of Joel and his pug posing in a sidecar — covers the piano man's finances, divorces, and drinking.
Kiel Brennan-Marquez on the ethics of drones, Saeed Jones on New York's spate of attacks aimed at gay people, Jane Mayer on Obama's foreign policy speech, Bhaskar Sunkara on the future of liberalism, and Philip Preville on Toronto's scandalized mayor.
And as with everything North Korea says, we'll believe the message of "positive actions" toward maintaining "peace and stability" when we see action, but China's propaganda machine is trying to make it very clear after a week of seemingly legit diplomatic meetings: Beijing wants Pyongyang back at the nuclear negotiating table.
Today in celebrity news: Amanda Bynes was arrested last night, Leo's space trip earns millions, and Prince William receives a gift.
Are we sure this isn't a viral marketing stunt for a remake of To Catch a Thief? About a week after some $1.4 million worth of Chopard jewels were stolen from a hotel during the Cannes Film Festival, a diamond necklace valued at $2.6 million vanished from a swanky party on the French Riviera that hosted the likes of Paris Hilton and Alessandra Ambrosio.
Now that we've reached Memorial Day weekend, the kick-off to the season and all of its sweaty flair, Mister Softee worship can begin in full, right along with a lot of Mister Softee hate.
The Israeli mobile GPS startup Waze has another mega-suitor in Silicon Valley, with Google reportedly joining the bidding war and topping the $1 billion offer rumored to be coming from Facebook. What is it, really, about this mapping app that's drawing acquisition prices as high as — if not higher than — Instagram and Tumblr?
One of the big fears about Obamacare has been that insurers will charge exorbitant prices for plans sold on state exchanges, meaning the law would have the opposite effect of its goal to make health care more affordable. But that's not happening in California.
It is the conundrum of our time — or at least this Memorial Day: Should you watch the entire fourth season immediately in Netflix's big batch, or savor the return? We asked TV superfans, writers, critics, and Annyong himself about their Arrested Development Day plans. Model your viewing habits accordingly.
Chaperones at St. David Catholic Secondary School near Waterloo, Ontario in Canada had 15 of its teenagers go missing on a school trip intended to teach "survival and backcountry camping" in a national park.
Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart explained that the Department of Justice is going after people whose crimes seem minor — especially when you look at them in comparison to what Wall Street executives did to create the financial crisis. To which Stewart asked: "What, none of them bought pot?"
At some point over the next few weeks, the NYPD is likely to lose a civil trial criticizing it for repeatedly and on a massive scale violating the civil rights of city residents. The cops will probably blame the judge, mostly because it can't blame the numbers.
Late Thursday, a bridge over the Skagit River north of Seattle collapsed, taking at least two cars (and the people inside them) with it. They both survived, but it's the infrastructure conversation all over again. Get ready to talk about "functionally obsolete."
Quick update on NASA's amazing plan to lasso an asteroid: they're making progress on the ion propulsion engine they'll need for the mission.
If you were wondering why anti-abortion advocates were so keen on getting Gosnell into the news cycle this spring, look no further than HR 1797: the reintroduced "D.C. Pain Capable Unborn Protection Act," which some lawmakers hope to institute on a national level.
Google announced Thursday that they've taken their Street View cameras on a hiking trip around the Galapagos islands — above ground, and under water.
Today in show business news: Steven Soderbergh is headed to television, Intervention will intervene no more, and USA is sending camp kids to battle.
The National Council of the Boy Scouts of America passed a resolution permitting openly gay youth the participate in scouting activities on Thursday afternoon at a national meeting in Grapevine, Texas. Passed by a vote of 61% among 1,400 members, the resolution will go into effect in January 2014, and overturns more than century of organizational precedent.
President Obama's speech on counterterrorism on Thursday won rave reviews among some who seemed to see it as a return of the liberal constitutional law professor who ran for president in 2008. But while the tone might have been refreshing, maybe we should wait to see Obama's follow-through?
According to multiple outlets, the IRS administrator who first revealed and is perhaps central to the scandal at the agency, has been placed on administrative leave. With pay.
Doesn't Ashton Kutcher know what happens to people who complain about how terrible Twitter has gotten since the good old days? They get shamed with the following adage: Twitter is what you make it, bro.
Weiner's new official campaign website switched up its main logo to a budget version of the New York City skyline late Thursday afternoon, because the background art temporarily adorning AnthonyWeiner.com... was a budget version of the Pittsburgh skyline.
Bryan Singer broke some news on Twitter today: Evan Peters, of American Horror Story, will be playing Quicksilver in Singer's upcoming X-Men film. Alone, that's not all that interesting, but put that together with Joss Whedon's intention to put Quicksilver in the Avengers sequel, and things get really interesting.
The Code Pink protester got herself inside the National Defense University in Washington on Thursday for Obama's big drone speech, even though she's been a famous heckler in Washington for a decade. So how does she do it? By using her old name — plus maybe a little help from middle-aged woman invisibility syndrome.
In an attempt to move beyond standard promoted tweets, Twitter is trying so hard to legitimize its business model that, well, you're about to find out just how much Twitter really knows about where you shop. And the main privacy model "doesn't actually provide protection," a leading online privacy firm tells The Atlantic Wire.
There ended up being two speakers Thursday at the National Defense University in DC. The first, as planned, was President Obama. The other, speaking for a surprisingly long time, was Madea Benjamin, a well-known heckler.
New Jersey state investigators have revealed that 29 bars and restaurants, including 13 TGI Fridays, stand "accused of putting cheap booze in premium brand liquor bottles and selling it to patrons who thought they were buying the good stuff." Oof.
Hurricane experts at the NOAA delivered some potentially bad news on Thursday: 2013's Atlantic hurricane season, is forecasted to be "active or extremely active," poised to produce 3-6 "major" hurricanes, 7-11 regular hurricanes, and more than a dozen tropical storms. And you should listen to them, despite the inherent weakness of predictions.
When justifying his use of drone strikes — in countries we're not at war with, in a war against "networks" with a not-yet-clear end, in a major speech on a limitless war — it helps for President Obama to use the rhetoric of George W. Bush as a foil. At least he's not as bad as that guy, right?
At some point, the government violated the Constitution while conducting electronic surveillance. How and when is masked by the secret court that authorizes such action — the sort of tool Obama offers as a way in which his drone program might be made more transparent. But the existing court shows just how opaque transparency can be.
Which sport, you may wonder, best suits players to trade derivatives or devise credit default swaps? No outlet has given greater thought to this question than Bloomberg News, as evidenced by a curious trend item, published on Thursday, about the preponderance of college lacrosse players in the financial industry.
President Obama just delivered his major policy speech outlining the future of America's military drone program, and the future of the entire war on terror. We have the full text and the key highlights.
Now that he's running for mayor and advancing his plan of pre-emptive damage control, has Weiner already takend the scandal out of the next scandal, when more naughty Twitter photos from his last days in Congress inevitably surface?
It's that time of year when people begin to ask you, "What are your plans this summer?" So, what are your plans this summer? Will you be traveling? Or will you be embarking on the most beautiful travel plan of all, the one in which you vacation to your own home?
Details surfaced this week of Hustler's upcoming porn parody of HBO's Girls — titled This Ain't Girls XXX and open to the immediate response of "well, is that really necessary?" — but now Lena Dunham has decided to weigh in and, well, surprisingly enough to her, she's not really ecstatic.
In a strange true-life story that seems ripped from TV crime drama (rather than the other way around), a New York City man was kidnapped and held for ransom in a warehouse for more than a month, before the NYPD rescued him this week.
Shazam, the song-identifying app whose logo keeps making its way onto TVs for second-screen expansion, has expanded its smart-listening deeper into your life with a new automatic tagging feature that basically turns your iPhone or iPad into a personal little wiretap.
Heading into the third Hangover's Memorial Day weekend release, the proposition of reviewing such a ridiculous film set off a competition of sorts between critics who have each tried their hardest to criticize the movie in the most excoriating way possible. Let's award some prizes.
If you think juice is something that comes in orange and apple alone, you are missing out on a whole world of juice. The year 2013 will go down in history as the time of the juiciest juice wars yet. Who will the Next Top Juicer be?
Maria Bustillos on small-scale surveillance, Jeffrey Goldberg on Jewish magnitude, Charles M. Blow on E.W. Jackson's GOP appeal, Irin Carmon on the stuggles of gay couples and child custody laws, and Peter W. Singer on Obama's drone decision.
Today in celebrity news: Leo DiCaprio is auctioning off an escorted space trip, Amanda Bynes can't get on a plane, and Brad Pitt can't remember your face.
President Obama will say he sees a day when the War on Terror comes to an end in a much anticipated speech Thursday afternoon. But when-ish will the War on Terror really end? It's going to be a while — maybe long after Obama has left office.
Later this summer, the Senate may at last tackle a controversial issue: if it should approve executive branch nominations decisions based on a majority vote. If it happens, the body will be taking on the warped new interpretation of Senatorial courtesy.
How do you become the toast of Cannes? Pretend to be Psy, apparently.
After taking a little break from the classic Mac-vs- PC wars to punch a little lower (at Samsung), Microsoft has decided to return to its old rivalry, hoping to revive slow Surface tablet sales with a little anti-Apple advertising.
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