A carjacking suspect being chased by police in Phoenix suddenly got out of the car and shot himself on live television, prompting Fox News's Shepard Smith to apologize after the network aired the footage.
The task of trying to estimate the tab News Corporation will have to pick up by the time this phone hacking mess is all over just got a bit easier as The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that lawyers expect the company to face 500 legal claims in total.
Now that police have identified the victim in that gruesome Canadian dismemberment murder, we can start putting together a basic sequence of what they think happened, where, and to whom.
Let it never be said that Roger Ailes isn't petty. It turns out that if you write too critically about the tiny newspaper the Fox News president owns in Putnam County, or even about Ailes and Fox, the paper will cancel your subscription.
It's time to tally up the betting pools and start paying out: If you picked Green Lantern as DC Comics surprise gay character you won.
The steady drip of diplomatic scandals between the U.S. and Chinese governments keeps coming, this time with a report, delayed for months, that China arrested one of its own security officials for allegedly spying for the United States.
This has not been a great week for the U.S. job market as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the nation added just 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, pushing the national unemployment rate up to 8.2 percent from last month's 8.1 percent.
The cranky comments section of Rebecca Greenfield's post on Hollywood's beef with Silicon Valley started to reflect the post itself, though with the notable absence of anybody defending Hollywood or its representative, Ari Emanuel.
Not being inside the head of Fox News producer Chris White, we can't say why he decided to make and run Wednesday's controversial anti-Obama segment, but one theory is that he was giddy on his way out, having been offered a job at CNN. Not anymore.
"While I do not belive I did anything illegal… I did an awful, awful lot that is wrong," Edwards said outside the courtroom after a jury acquitted him of one count and the judge declared a mistrial on the other five.
Luka Magnotta, the 29-year-old model suspected in killing and dismembering someone, then sending the body parts to Canadian political parties, is now the subject of an international manhunt, and INTERPOL is on the case.
The first private mission to the International Space Station is over, and roundly hailed as a success, as the SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Baja, CA. at 11:42 a.m. EDT.
All you really need to know from The Boston Globe's exhaustive report on Elizabeth Warren's ethnic identity is this: Warren finally admitted she told Harvard and Penn she was of Native American descent.
If you thought Tupac Shakur had the market cornered on posthumous public appearances, you're wrong: Steve Jobs now has a new body of public speeches that's just been made available on iTunes.
One unique bit of information we gleaned from Thursday's news of a big federal crackdown that shuttered 26 different Chinatown bus operations is that the more colorfully painted buses tend to be safer.
Reports of two U.S. tourists kidnapped in Egypt's Sinai peninsula have changed throughout the day, but the latest is that they've been released, after an initial report of their freedom proved false. Either way, the takeaway is that it's probably not a good time for a Red Sea vacation.
Luka Rocco Magnotta, the guy who police suspect of killing a man and then mailing his body parts to political parties, had a bizarre and wide-ranging web presence before he became Canada's most salacious murder suspect.
Remember the story of Richard Descoings, the French academic who died mysteriously in a Midtown hotel room last month? The mystery has been solved: he had a heart attack.
It's tantalizing to tease a split between Zynga and Facebook, but based on the game-maker's and the social network's intense codependence, that's probably not happening any time soon.
The official start of summer means it's time for the return of the annual urban earworm, the Mister Softee jingle. Resistance is futile, so here instead is another way to fight: reappropriation.
Dharun Ravi's apology on Tuesday came too late to save him from serving jail time, as the judge in his case said on Wednesday the reason he rejected a corrections official's suggested sentence of no incarceration was that he'd never heard him say sorry.
Hosting The Eurovision Song Contest was a really big deal for Azerbaijan, so foiling an alleged terrorist plot to attack it was a pretty big deal too, which the country kept secret for weeks.
British Prime Minister David Cameron's former spokesman Andy Coulson, once the editor of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, found himself in police custody for a second time on Wednesday, in a perjury case.
It was a small word to get wrong but it had global implications: President Barack Obama's reference to a "Polish death camp" while awarding the Medal of Freedom to a Polish resistance fighter drew the ire of the Polish prime minister, who wants an apology.
Our readers love having an incisive discussion about Mad Men after reading Jen Doll's incisive analysis of the show, and Tuesday's was particularly sharp.
When a British tourist came back from Las Vegas with a $5 painting he'd bought at a garage sale and told everybody he was pretty sure a 10-year-old Andy Warhol had done it, people flipped out, but now Warhol's brother and a bevy of art experts say its a fake.
If you were Jaguar, how would you have felt about Sunday's episode of Mad Men, in which the head of Jaguar's dealers association extorts the ad agency, promising to approve its campaign in return for a night with office manager Joan Harris?
Just when it looked like Henry Blodget was heading toward redemption with his Facebook coverage, his latest Business Insider troll bait is so over the top he's lost whatever goodwill he might have accumulated, and then some.
One key takeaway from last month's New York Times Magazine profile of Samuel L. Jackson was that he puts his all into even unimportant roles, but a Tuesday story about a lawsuit over one of his movies shows even the great actor sometimes phones it in.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker sure had a rough week last week and even though he has plenty of good to show for it, his controversial Meet the Press appearance caused enough strife in his own office that his communications director quit on Tuesday.
This is the worst trend ever: Afghan police say yet another poisoning attack at a school -- the fourth this year and the second in a week -- has put 160 female students in the hospital as Taliban militants try to keep women from getting an education.
Attacks on journalists are, unfortunately, not terribly uncommon in Russia, so it's weird that a radio presenter recently embroiled in controversy would comply with an anonymous midnight text asking him to come outside, where he was stabbed 20 times.
The Miami Zombie has a name: Police told local press that the naked man they shot to death when he wouldn't stop eating another guy's face is 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, and that he was in the depths of the world's worst acid trip when it happened.
We didn't even want to know who was behind @NotTildaSwinton, but now we do, because apparently the lifespan of Twitter memes is shortening by the day.
Mark Zuckerberg still has at least one fan after that fiasco of an IPO, but it has nothing to do with his business maneuverings.
New York is expected to arraign the first legitimate suspect in the 33-year-old disappearance of Etan Patz as early as Friday, but from the facts made public by both police and reporters, there's as much reason to doubt they've got the right man as to believe it.
The desert island cartoon is one of those clichés we'd never thought to analyze too deeply until we read a smart cartoonist doing so, and now we're fascinated.
It's like the Vatican's own real-life version of Clue: the mystery of who leaked Vatican documents, including papal letters, has been a scandal for months, but on Friday Vatican police made an arrest, and it turns out they think the butler did it.
Shockingly, the allegations that former Pennsylvania State University football coach Jerry Sandusky raped kids have hurt donations to his charity, and it's now making plans to close.
Fugitive penguins. Monkeys on a plane. Presidential pot smoking. Just in case you don't have enough surreal news to think about today, try this little gem: Silvio Berlusconi enjoyed a sexy "Burlesque version of President Barack Obama."
It's official: The first private mission to the International Space Station is a success.
The story about an escaped monkey wreaking havoc on a plane at JFK provides an object lesson in why SEO is ruining news.
This should give you pause if you're thinking of working in Chinese finance: A Singaporean banker has just been released after nearly three months in detention, and ordered to stay in China for another year, because she worked for a client who fled the country as a fugitive.
It's no surprise that Jeff Neely, the General Services Administration official hilariously photographed in a sky-high bubble bath before that embarrassingly expensive Las Vegas conference left the agency. But why did it take so long?
It's true: Our little gimmicks to bring in readers pack far less bang than The Daily Caller's plan to give out a gun a week until election day.
Anderson Cooper scored the first in-depth interview with Chen Guangcheng since the blind Chinese activist arrived in the United States last weekend, and the first thing in CNN's teaser for tonight's show is Chen's absolute relief at just being able to go outside.
Like any city, El Paso, Texas, makes goofy, oversimplified tourist maps for visitors, but in 2010 it oversimplified the map so much that it deleted its violence-plagued neighbor to the south, Ciudad Juarez.
One thing the United States can do to persuade Pakistan to rethink imprisoning a doctor who helped find Osama Bin Laden is to issue strongly worded statements; another is to cut military aid.
There's no way this could ever go wrong: The Daily Caller plans to give away a gun a week until election day.
Every single person interviewed for a story about a secret gay club at evangelical Biola University said they wanted to open a dialogue about the university's relationship with its gay students, but nobody can figure out how to get that conversation started.
Mad supply-side scientists wanting to clone Ronald Reagan will have to get their source DNA somewhere else, as an auction house selling a sample of the Gipper's blood has decided to cancel the sale.
Have a story we missed? A link we have to click? A sharp opinion about the news? Instead of waiting for us to post it, tell us on the Open Wire.
Submit your news and ideas | See all reader postsThe Atlantic Wire is your authoritative guide to the news and ideas that matter most right now. Our team tracks newsmakers and opinions across the entire media spectrum: newspapers, web sites, television, radio and magazines.
But we do more than just collect information. By synthesizing, analyzing and summarizing what’s out there, and adding new information when we can, we are a news engine that gives you a quick and valuable account of the issues of the day.
Have a hot tip? A story we missed? Tell us on the Open Wire
How to send us editorial or technical feedback
Get Five Best Columns in your inbox each morning (preview)
