In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today! Your daily thread on the shutdown is here.

[Content Note: Hostility to agency] Activists in Ohio protested at the state capitol yesterday and held a 90-minute rally at which ten speakers "urged attendees to make their opposition to the anti-woman legislation known, stand up for the rights of doctors and patients and consider changing Ohio's political climate by running for office." Go get 'em, Ohio activists!

Tokyo Electric Power Company reports that Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant "has suffered yet another leak, spilling out 430 liters of contaminated water thousands of times more radioactive than legal limits." Yikes.

Heads-up: "Tropical Storm Karen has formed in the Gulf of Mexico, and a hurricane watch is in effect along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida."

[Note: Ad with audio begins playing automatically at link.] Joe Michalski from the Planetary Science Institute and Jacob E. Bleacher from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center say that thing you thought was an impact crater on the surface of Mars is actually a volcanic caldera. Don't you feel silly now?

US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, who famously called Hillary Clinton a "monster" during the 2008 primary says she has regretted it every day since: "You lose your temper and you're in a campaign and things go back and forth. But it just completely broke my heart that somebody so amazing, could–that there is a fair amount of negativity heaped upon her that I find massively unfair. And the idea that I could have contributed in some way to that narrative…was terrible. So yeah, I've pretty much regretted it every day since." Powers says she also personally apologized to Clinton, and, of course, because Hillary Clinton is not, in fact, a monster, she spent four years working effectively with Powers as part of the Obama administration's foreign policy team.

[CN: Rape culture] NBC Los Angeles reports on a terrible story about a teenage girl being raped on her high school campus by two male classmates, one of whom had recently been expelled for an unidentified "prank." And this is an actual excerpt from that story: "Investigators said their evidence is solid and they are confident the girl is telling the truth. But on campus Wednesday, some students doubted the charges. 'They're good guys and they're funny guys to be around. I don't think they could ever be that dumb enough to do it, especially on campus,' said one girl." Incredible. Here's their contact info.

Author Tom Clancy has died. RIP.

In a recent interview, Mia Farrow said that her son Ronan (who is awesome and used to work for Hillary Clinton TRUE FACT) could "possibly" be Frank Sinatra's biological son. This has, naturally, become MAJOR NEWS, because policing women's reproduction is always THE GREATEST THING EVER. Anyway. The best response to this bullshit? Ronan Farrow. The best.