Author: Alexander Abad-Santos

Syrian Electronic Army Adds Financial Times to Its Social Media Hacks

Reuters

The Financial Times became the latest news agency to fall prey to the Syrian Electronic Army, the hacking group which has claimed the social media scalps of the AP, The Onion, the BBC, and NPR, perhaps signaling that news outlets should be more like The Onion and come clean about how they're getting hacked.

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 7, 2013

Manhunt for Ex-Cop Chris Dorner Takes Over L.A. Freeways, Ski Resort & Beyond

After a truly bizarre day that stretched from a cop killing in Los Angeles to a manhunt from San Diego to the San Bernardino Mountains, night fell on Big Bear ski resort as authorities were still going to door-to-door and checking vehicles for the Chris Dorner, the ex-LAPD officer who shot at least five people and is still on the lam. Get the best updates right here.

Comments | 59,498 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 7, 2013

Book Lovers Are Furious That Anne of Green Gables Is Now a Sexy Blonde

The cover of a self-published new anthology edition of Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic orphan tale has Amazon commenters reaching peak dye-job hysteria right now. Since when is Anne of Green Gables supposed to look like an Abercrombie & Fitch model?

Comments | 3,296 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 7, 2013

Rejected-Students List from N.Y. Private School Hints at Pay-for-Acceptance Plan

Dalton sent out a list of rejected applicants and parents of kids with pending applications, all in an apparent effort to get alumni to push said parents into donating money to the already very well-off school.

Comments | 3,505 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 7, 2013

Russian Jets Get Too Close For Japan's Liking

For the second time in one week, Japan's foreign ministry has had to lodge an international complaint after a neighboring military power got a little too close for comfort.

Comments | 862 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 7, 2013

One Year Out From Sochi 2014, Putin Fires Russia's Deputy Olympic Chief

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi to be perfect, so when he found out who was behind the delays of the site's ski jumping complex, he did the understandable thing and axed the Russian Olympics Committee deputy chief.

Comments | 517 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 6, 2013

The Most Ridiculous Propaganda from Iran's State TV Before Our New Sanctions

The United States leveled sanctions on Wednesday against the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, a gigantic umbrella group that controls Press TV, which has given the world some truly absurd versions of news stories in the past year.

Comments | 1,855 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 6, 2013

Boy Scouts Aren't Ready to Vote on Gays

After a week of speculation, from across America and including the president, the group has pushed off a decision on lifting its national ban on gay scouts and scout leaders until a national meeting in May.

Comments | 690 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 6, 2013

Did a Philly Hospital Try to Charge This 5-Year-Old Croatian Patient Too Much?

Between Croatia's economic troubles and the rogue stories about Nora Situm's treatment costs skyrocketing at the last minute, the public shaming of Children's Hospital escalated quickly, from Zagreb to Philly and social media in between. Maybe too quickly.

Comments | 23,622 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 6, 2013

That Alabama Bunker Had Bombs and One Hidden Camera

On the day of the FBI raid on Jimmy Lee Dykes's bunker, he may have been very close to detonating one of his crude, home-made bombs.

Comments | 862 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 6, 2013

Monopoly's Newest Token Is a Cat

The feline token has beat out fellow newcomers like the robot and the guitar, and will be replacing the unloved iron as the newest game piece in the classic board game, Monopoly.

Comments | 2,698 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 6, 2013

South Pacific Tsunami Leaves at Least Five Dead

This morning's 8.0-magnitude earthquake in the South Pacific generated a 3-foot tsunami which struck the Santa Cruz Islands — a remote part of the Solomon Islands — killing four elderly people and one child.

Comments | 517 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 5, 2013

How to Ruin the Precious Budweiser Super Bowl Ad

Today in viral videos: Conan O'Brien goes there with the baby Clydesdale, a YOLO gone wrong, and the next Larry Bird.

Comments | 3,878 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 5, 2013

The Soccer World Is Not Prepared for the Awesomeness of Gus Johnson

Soccer aficionados love to bludgeon American troglodytes: We don't understand the beauty of soccer, they say, and today's anointment of human sports bullhorn Gus Johnson as the voice of the World Cup won't change that. They may be wrong, but they're not giving in.

Comments | 1,788 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 5, 2013

Zimmerman Tried (and Failed) to Delay His Trial on Trayvon's 18th Birthday

Had he not been killed, Trayvon Martin would have turned 18 today. And had George Zimmerman not shot Martin to death, we wouldn't have to report that a Florida judge just denied the defense's motion to delay the second-degree murder trial past June 10.

Comments | 1,035 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 5, 2013

The 54 Countries That Helped the CIA Kidnap and Torture Terror Suspects

Yes, little old Iceland made the list. So did the Hague's neighbors in Belgium, and Sweden and Finland. Why?

Comments | 5,201 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 5, 2013

America's Toughest Sheriff Is Victim of Identity Theft and Possible Identity Crisis

Someone took Sheriff Joe Arpaio's credit-card information and went on a supermarket sweep, and unlike his obsession with Obama's birth certificate, it sounds like he might actually take it easy on this slightly less important fraudster.

Comments | 2,687 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 5, 2013

Japan Doesn't Appreciate China Targeting Their Ships

Japan's Ministry of Defense is upset with the Chinese navy frigate that locked onto a Japanese navy ship with radar usually used to shoot missiles.

Comments | 3,479 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 5, 2013

Chris Christie Can Take a Good Fat Joke

The likable New Jersey governor swung by Letterman last night (with doughnut in hand) and poked fun at himself, Letterman, and his favorite fat jokes that the late night host has unleashed. Not that this was in doubt, but Chris Christie is a fantastic sport. 

Comments | 5,212 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 5, 2013

North Korean Video Imagines What It Would Be Like to Wipe Out a U.S. City

North Korea likes to drop hints about wanting to annihilate the United States, but just to make it clear, they've produced a helpful propaganda film to show exactly how that's going to go down.

Comments | 9,165 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 4, 2013

The Only Beyoncé Lip-Syncing Scandal Left Is Shaq at the Super Bowl

Today in viral videos: Shaq really enjoyed the halftime show, the YouTube clip that inspired Dodge's farmer ad, and Community gets even more epic.

Comments | 1,207 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 4, 2013

Iran's New 'Super' Stealth Fighter Jet Is Totally Fake

It's a made-in-Iran, "super advanced," radar "evading" military jet, prepared to unleash hell upon the regime's many enemies. Only there's now one major problem: Aviation experts say this plane can't even fly.

Comments | 86,010 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 4, 2013

John McCain Called 'Racist' for Referring to Ahmadinejad as Space 'Monkey'

Iran's president wants to be the first Iranian in space, which might be open to jokes considering his country's mostly debunked claim about sending a monkey into orbit. But actually referring to Ahmadinejad as a "monkey" is a terrible idea, which McCain found out today as he went on the defensive on Twitter.

Comments | 2,939 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 4, 2013

Malala Is Awake, Doing Well, and Already Speaking Out Again

After speaking publicly for the first time since her attack at the hands of the Taliban, the 15-year-old Pakistani shooting victim had two surgical procedures to repair her skull and restore her hearing.

Comments | 346 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 4, 2013

Harry Reid's Pro-Gun Endorsement Up and Vanished from His Campaign Site

With Dianne Feinstein's assault-weapons ban on the table before Congress, Reid's team has chosen a curious time to delete a section of his semi-defunct campaign website touting just how much the NRA approved of his gun-policy beliefs.

Comments | 674 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 4, 2013

Fidel Castro Shows His Face for the First Time in Three Years

For the first time in three years Fidel Castro appeared in public, voting in Cuba's general election on Sunday and looking good for a guy everyone thought was pretty much dead just a year ago. 

Comments | 7,957 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 4, 2013

You Might Want to Be Prepared For Two North Korean Nuclear Tests

Not satisfied with upsetting the entire world with a new nuclear weapons test, there's now speculation that North Korea may be planning two tests, possibly back-to-back or even simultaneously.

Comments | 2,069 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 4, 2013

Workers Are Still Trying to Free Victims From a Horrific Tour Bus Crash

While everyone was tuning into the Super Bowl last night, emergency crews were called to California's Route 38 in San Bernadino County where a crash involving a tour bus killed at least eight people and injured 42.

Comments | 690 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

Lower Manhattan Can't Go to the Bathroom Right Now

It's not that people in New York's East Village, SoHo, and TriBeCa neighborhoods don't want to go to the bathroom, it's just that a bursted water main in the Flatiron District has strangled the water supply for much of the lower portion of the most populous little island in America.

Comments | 3,425 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

Ed Koch Is Retweeting from Beyond the Grave

if you can get over the creepy part of watching Ed Koch RT stuff about his own death, it's actually a fun to remember the mayor — 140 character-style. 

Comments | 345 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

The San Francisco 49ers Still Have a Big Gay Problem

As the controversy over their teammate's offensive comments about gay players in the locker room still brews, two members of the Super Bowl-bound San Francisco 49ers are stirring the pot by denying they ever participated in a gay-rights video — or that it was ever a gay-rights video at all.

Comments | 5,031 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

Newsweek Daily Beast Is NewsBeast, and That's the End of That Chapter

In one of the final, wheezing gasps from the magazine that the world, for 79 years, used to know as Newsweek, there is now word that The Newsweek Daily Beast Company has officially changed its name to "NewsBeast" — which sounds about as fierce as the company is not.

Comments | 3,049 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

This Week's Social Media Power Rankings: The Return of Swatch

This week, Cisco got educational, Swatch got you hooked on love, and Intel parlayed its Ultrabooks to get a jump in the social media ranks.  

Comments | 484 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

Newtown Votes for Armed Guards in Elementary Schools

As the nation continues to confront the concept of "good guys with guns" in schools, two types of guards are coming to elementary schools in Newtown, Connecticut.

Comments | 1,724 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

Don't Be Alarmed By These Airline Pilots Falling Asleep at the Wheel

We learned today the good news that planes don't crash when pilots fall asleep or lose consciousness. But yeah, the news that pilots are falling asleep and or losing consciousness doesn't exactly have us itching for our next flight.  

Comments | 1,379 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

Here's the North Korean Nuclear Site That They're Trying to Hide From the World

Want one more sign that North Korea is getting closer to their third nuclear test? They've started to camouflage and cover the entrance to an underground nuclear testing tunnel at the Punggye-ri facility so that no one can see what they're doing. 

Comments | 5,518 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Feb 1, 2013

Ed Koch Has Died at the Age of 88

Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City died from congestive heart failure around 2 a.m. on Friday at New York Presbyterian Medical Center.

Comments | 1,112 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 31, 2013

Yes, Dr. Phil Made Roniah Tuiasosopo Do the Lennay Kekua Voice

After the mastermind behind the Manti Te'o hoax came clean, revealed the source of the fake-girlfriend name, and admitted he might be gay and that Te'o most certainly wasn't, Dr. Phil McGraw apparently decided there was only one more thing to ask.

Comments | 7,256 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 31, 2013

Nobody Cares About 'Star Trek' Anymore

Today in viral videos: Dr. Spock gets no love, puppies predict the big game, and Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd, and Bob Odenkirk team up for the Samsung Super Bowl commercial.

Comments | 1,398 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 31, 2013

How Chris Culliver's Anti-Gay Comments Actually Started a Dialogue in the NFL

The 49ers cornerback's non-apology apology for his much maligned comments on gay players in the locker room won't win him any fans heading into the Super Bowl this weekend, but his offensive remarks already appear to have had an unintended effect.

Comments | 1,724 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 31, 2013

Jack Donaghy's Princeton Yearbook Page Mysteriously Emerges for '30 Rock' Finale

What's one great thing about 30 Rock ending? Well, we finally figured out that Princeton has a sense of humor.

Comments | 4,345 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 31, 2013

Facebook Saved This 'Gay' Dog from Being Euthanized

This dog was surrendered to rabies control in Tennessee — entirely because his owner saw him mounting another male dog and thought the bulldog mix was homosexual. The dog was scheduled to be put down at 1 p.m. today ... until some sane people on Facebook got involved.

Comments | 11,035 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 31, 2013

Dan Marino's Secret Love Child Is Going to Make the Super Bowl Very Awkward

The football gossip-mongers are now wondering how Hall of Fame quarterback — and CBS pre-game/halftime analyst — Dan Marino is going to handle a report that he paid millions of dollars to keep an extramarital seven-year-old daughter secret.

Comments | 6,775 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 31, 2013

Gunman Who Shot 3 People In Phoenix Is Still on the Loose

Arthur Douglas Harmon is the man Phoenix police are looking for as he's believed to have shot three people and killed one at an office complex yesterday—while the Senate hearing on gun violence carried on in Washington.

Comments | 5,023 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 31, 2013

Don't Look Now, but Iran and North Korea Are Upping Their Nuclear Games

There are two countries in this world that we'd rather not see tinker with nuclear energy: Iran and North Korea. And it just so happens one of those is now prepping for a nuclear test, while the other is bragging about how it's putting its own program into overdrive.

Comments | 2,720 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 30, 2013

Lance Armstrong's Radiohead Apology

Today in viral videos: Lance Armstrong "sings" the song "Creep," an Oscar-nominated Disney short film that's almost as good as the beginning of Up, and 60 years of pop music's valiant attempt to woo men. 

Comments | 2,944 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 30, 2013

Israel's Attack on Syria-Lebanon Border Said to Target Military Research Hub

After morning reports of an overnight incident as Syria's war may spill over the border, Syrian state TV is now reporting that the Israeli warplanes bombed a military research center. Confirmations from U.S. officials are also spilling in.

Comments | 4,373 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 30, 2013

There Was a Shooting in Phoenix During the Gun-Violence Hearing in the Senate

Maybe it's just another public coincidence since the Newtown massacre, or maybe shootings in safe places occur so frequently these days that it's impossible to hold a public meeting with the NRA without a bunch of people getting shot at the same time.

Comments | 7,458 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 30, 2013

The Steubenville 'Rape Crew' Trial Will Be on Display for the World to See

If you thought hackers and the media had brought a lot of attention upon the tough town of Steubenville, Ohio, just wait until everyone gets to see the legal fate of two of its high-school football stars accused of sexual assault play out in public there.

Comments | 30,865 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 30, 2013

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo Tells Dr. Phil He Was Behind Te'o Hoax and Thinks He's Gay

The "confused" man behind the Manti Te'o fake-girlfriend hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, is speaking out publicly for the first time — and it appears he'll confess to the whole thing and claim to be the voice of Lennay Kekua, all while coming out as gay.

Comments | 4,483 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Jan 30, 2013

South Korea's Satellite Is Not Going to Go Over Well in North Korea

South Korea has successfully put a homegrown satellite into orbit for the first time in the country's history, officials say. Now, who's going to break the bad news to their big bad neighbors to the North?

Comments | 5,488 Views

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