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Stories 761 - 780 | << Prev   Next >>

He Taught His Son About Guns. Then the Boy Shot Himself

An 11-year-old's death, and the subject of safe storage legislation

(Newser) - The night on which 11-year-old Tyler Paxton died in 2014 began in an unremarkable way. He had Taco Bell for dinner and watched YouTube videos, sharing one involving an otter with his mom. He told his parents he was going to watch cartoons in their room. Then came the gunshot....

15 Human Feet Washed Ashore. Science Explains Why
15 Human Feet
Washed Ashore.
Here's Why
longform
Mar 28, 2021 4:00 PM CDT

15 Human Feet Washed Ashore. Here's Why

The mystery started in 2007

(Newser) - "Please don’t call them 'severed feet.'" So says forensic scientist Gail Anderson of Simon Fraser University, whose research involving dead pigs plays a big role in getting to the bottom of a mystery that flummoxed Canadian locals and police near the Salish Sea off British...

Father to Daughter: &#39;Do You Think I&#39;m a Monster?&#39;
Father to Daughter:
'Do You Think I'm a Monster?'
longform
Mar 28, 2021 12:30 PM CDT

Father to Daughter: 'Do You Think I'm a Monster?'

Children of those who committed atrocities in Argentina cope with the legacy

(Newser) - The atrocities committed by the military regime that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 have been well documented, with an estimated 30,000 people "disappeared" during the stretch that has come to be known as the Dirty War . Now, the children of that generation are increasingly speaking out to...

True-Crime Case Has Nearly Destroyed Best-Selling Author

'Water for Elephants' writer Sara Gruen became obsessed with proving a man's innocence

(Newser) - Sara Gruen became a best-selling author in 2006 with her novel Water for Elephants, which was later turned into a movie. Gruen has received tons of fan mail over the years, including a 2015 letter from convicted murderer Charles Murdoch, who is imprisoned in California. The letter struck a chord...

Very Wealthy Artist: 'Sweet Baby Jesus, This Is Ridiculous'

Mike Winklemann, aka Beeple, has stunned the art world with his $70M digital sale

(Newser) - Earlier this month, an artist named Mike Winklemann—aka Beeple—entered the upper echelons of the art world by selling a digital work for nearly $70 million at Christie's. So who is Winklemann? On the surface, a nondescript 39-year-old living in a nondescript home in Charleston, South Carolina, with...

How, Months Later, COVID Killed a Healthy 29-Year-Old

A deep dive into how COVID led to Audrey Ellis' March 2020 death

(Newser) - The final day and night Kelsey Ellis spent with her twin sister Audrey was their 29th birthday. Audrey had flown from Denver to Portland, Ore., to spend a few days together, but by their March 17, 2020, birthday, Kelsey noticed her sister's lips had turned purple. They went to...

Sell This 'Dangerous' Cheese and You Could Be Fined $60K

But in Sardinia, casu marzu is a way of life

(Newser) - Spotting maggots in your food is generally a sign that it needs to be tossed, quickly. When it comes to the Sardinian cheese casu marzu, it's a sign that everything is going as planned. At CNN , Agostino Petroni takes a deep dive into what Guinness World Records has called...

How Our Car Safety Ratings Went From Best to Worthless

Motherboard takes a look at the rise and stagnation of the NCAP

(Newser) - When it comes to car safety ratings, the US was a trailblazer. Not so much anymore. In a deep dive for Motherboard , Aaron Gordon traces the fairly recent history of these ratings, which were created in the final days of the Carter administration thanks to Joan Claybrook, then the head...

Threats Arrived for Years, Until Tormentor Was Revealed

Story at Medium recounts the 4-year ordeal of Ruth Finley in Kansas

(Newser) - The threatening letters baffled Wichita police for four years, from 1977 to 1981. As Corey Mead explains in an almost impossible-to-believe account at Medium , a letter writer who came to be dubbed "The Poet" sent regular letters to a woman named Ruth Finley threatening to kill her. Worse, his...

They Passed the Wine World's Most Brutal Test. Then It Fell Apart

Vice looks at the scandal that has followed the 2018 Master Sommelier test

(Newser) - For almost everyone on the planet, an email that simply read "PG" and "CndP" would be meaningless. For 24 sommeliers, it was devastating, and the start of a wine-world scandal that still has more questions that answers. Writing for Vice , Adam Elder has the story of the 2018...

His Ancient Find Was 'Too Good to Be True.' Maybe Not

Inside new research on what one scholar says is a precursor to the Book of Deuteronomy

(Newser) - Biblical scholar Idan Dershowitz started a fellowship at Harvard's Society of Fellows in 2017 , and he sent emails to its chairman about a theory he had about 15 manuscript fragments found more than a century ago. The response he got: "You're crazy, I don't want to...

Texas Storm Took Harrowing Toll on COVID Patients
When the Power Failed,
So Did Their Lifeline
longform
Mar 9, 2021 6:29 PM CST

When the Power Failed, So Did Their Lifeline

Texas COVID patients relying on oxygen machines were endangered in their own homes

(Newser) - "It was terrifying." So recalls Daysi Marin of watching her husband struggle to breathe for two days during the prolonged power outage in Texas. Mauricio Marin, 44, had been sent home from the hospital in Richmond with an oxygen machine as he recovered from COVID-19, reports ProPublica . But...

On the Hunt for an Animal Serial Killer
On the Hunt
for an Animal
Serial Killer
longform
Mar 7, 2021 12:30 PM CST

On the Hunt for an Animal Serial Killer

Atatavist magazine follows volunteers in UK, though police say culprit is a fox

(Newser) - The killings began in 2015. Beloved cats began turning up around London, their bodies mutilated. As Phil Hoad writes at Atavist magazine, the cats appeared to have been cut with a sharp knife by a human with increasingly skilled hands. The remains also seemed to have been displayed to cause...

He Has Helped More People Die in California Than Anyone

The Atlantic looks at aid in dying and the work of Dr. Lonny Shavelson

(Newser) - Dr. Lonny Shavelson stopped taking new patients in August. It's unclear who, if anyone, will pick up his slack. Shavelson's Bay Area End of Life Options is thought to be the only practice of its kind in America—where aid-in-dying is now legal in nine states—and he...

Did He Doom His Body by Hiking the Appalachian Trail?

Grayson Haver Currin thought he'd be ready for marathons. Definitely not

(Newser) - You have to be a physical warrior to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Grayson Haver Currin certainly emerged one after covering its 2,200 miles in 2019. "I was now a rippling sheet of endlessly lean muscle," he writes of his body immediately after his five-month trek in a...

A High-Profile Murder in 1963 Still Haunts Chicago

A rising Black politician named Ben Lewis was shot to death in his office

(Newser) - It is, declares the headline of a lengthy story at ProPublica , "the murder Chicago didn't want to solve." And as Mick Dumke writes, the killing of Black politician Ben Lewis in 1963 does indeed remain unsolved after nearly six decades. The slaying was national news at the...

She&#39;s On a One-Woman Mission Against &#39;Femicide&#39;
She's On a One-Woman
Mission Against 'Femicide'
longform
Mar 1, 2021 10:25 AM CST

She's On a One-Woman Mission Against 'Femicide'

Mexico's Frida Guerrera tracks down the men who kill women

(Newser) - For the last five years, Mexico's Frida Guerrera has made it her personal mission to tell the stories of women who were murdered by men in her country. But as the Guardian reports, the 50-year-old journalist frequently goes well beyond blogging about these victims—she actually tracks down their...

She Defected, Vanished, Then Re-Surfaced in the North

But friends of Lim Ji-hyun fear she was abducted and coerced into making propaganda videos

(Newser) - "What happened to Lim Ji-hyun?" It's a question explored in a story by Abigail Haworth at Marie Claire , and one that continues to haunt her friends. As a 23-year-old, Lim defected from North Korea, swimming across the Yalu River into China before making her way to South Korea....

She Was Only 13 When North Korean Agents Took Her

They didn't realize Megumi Yokota was just a kid in 1977 abduction from a beach in Japan

(Newser) - The BBC recounts a harrowing chapter in relations between North Korea and Japan, a stretch from 1977 through the early 1980s when North Korean agents abducted Japanese citizens to help train their spies. North Korea has since admitted to this and apologized, though critics say the North has not acknowledged...

&#39;He Was the DB Cooper of Nebraska&#39;
'He Was the
DB Cooper
of Nebraska'
longform
Feb 20, 2021 5:15 PM CST

'He Was the DB Cooper of Nebraska'

Fugitive Howard Farley busted after 35 years on the lam with a fake identity

(Newser) - It was big news in Nebraska in 1985 when the feds busted a cocaine-distribution network and rounded up 73 of the 74 people charged. The person they didn't catch? Alleged kingpin Howard Farley, writes Rich Shapiro in a feature on the case at NBC News . Farley disappeared into the...

Stories 761 - 780 | << Prev   Next >>