CNN: A baby believed to be ripped from the womb of its mother has been found, Massachusetts police said Wednesday. In addition, authorities have arrested a suspect in connection with the crime. Darlene Haynes was found slain and wrapped in bedding in her apartment closet, according to authorities. Police had searched for the baby since Monday, when her mother, Darlene Haynes, was found dead in the closet of her Worcester apartment. Officers received tips from women who became suspicious of Julie A. Corey, a friend of Haynes who turned up with a newborn girl at the time that Haynes went […]
BIG NEWS: Dr. Dog Signs With Anti
Anti Records, home to such iconic artists as Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Mavis Staples, is proud to announce the signing of acclaimed symphonious pop purveyors Dr. Dog. The band, which has amassed a dedicated audience through four remarkable albums and a steady diet of exhilarating live shows, is currently preparing to record a new LP set for release in early 2010. Guitarist-vocalist Scott McMicken promises a subtle yet profound evolution in the band’s harmonic sound. (continued, with tour dates, after the jump)
TONITE: Nekophilia
BY JONATHAN VALANIA A tomboyish siren with a thick red mane and lungs of fine Corinthian leather, Neko Case is equal parts gender warrior and indie aesthete, a potent hybrid aptly evoked by the Joan-of-Arc-on-a-muscle-car tableau on the cover her new album, Middle Cyclone. Case is also in possession of what is arguably the greatest voice of her generation — clarion in tone; trans-national in its reach; and bottomless in its capacity to transmute wryly-observed public fictions into inescapable private truths that all more or less boil down to: I am woman, hear me ruminate. That voice was in fighting […]
SPITZER AGONISTES: Vanity Fair Investigating Whether Or Not Client #9 Was Set Up By Wall Street
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] GAWKER: The idea that Eliot Spitzer’s downfall was engineered by the financial industry whose profits he threatened with regulation has made the rounds on the internet for a while. Now Vanity Fair is siccing two investigative reporters on the story. Gawker has learned that Vanity Fair‘s Craig Unger and John Connolly are currently looking into the prospect that the banking and financial interests that Spitzer took on during his tenures as attorney general and governor of New York tipped off the feds to Spitzer’s proclivities and launched the investigation. MORE PREVIOUSLY: INJUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Was The Spitzer […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To Day 3 Of All Points West
We have a winner for yesterday’s contest: Phawker reader TIM ALLEN correctly answered that Creation Records was the label that My Bloody Valentine nearly bankrupted with the costly making of their landmark Loveless album. But fear not dear reader, there are no losers here at Phawker, just people who haven’t won yet. With that in mind, let’s get one of you into a pair of tickets for Day Three of All Points West, aka Sunday August 2nd. Even though we have long believed that headliners Coldplay are little more than Radiohead for people who still buy Sting solo albums, this […]
USEFUL INFORMATION: Getting Hassled By The Man
THE ETHICIST: Gates should enjoy a cool one and then file suit, assuming he has legal grounds to do so. We Americans are often mocked for being overly litigious, but we are not nearly litigious enough. In the right circumstances, filing suit can be a way to pursue social justice, and that makes it thoroughly ethical. I am not encouraging frivolous lawsuits or those inspired by TV pitchmen who use the words “slip and fall” as if invoking El Dorado. Rather, I refer to suits filed to oppose systemic injustice, for the benefit of the larger community, often at some […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
[Click image to enlarge] FRESH AIR Economists Paul Krugman and Stuart Butler discuss the way America’s health care system is financed — and how it should be. A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, Krugman argues in a July 25 New York Times column that free markets alone cannot fix the health care system. He’s a professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University, and his books include The Conscience of a Liberal, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century and The Return of Depression Economics. A native of Britain, Butler — the vice president […]
GEMINI WOLF: Sudseyfuss
Gemini Wolf — “Sudseyfuss” from Derek Moench on Vimeo. From Synchronized Eyes now out on Earsnake.
KILLADELPHIA: Murder Rate Drops 30%
DAILY NEWS: The city’s homicide rate has fallen 30 percent from the grim total it had registered by this point in 2007, when the constant deluge of murders led to the loathsome local nickname “Killadelphia.” According to police statistics, 162 homicides have been recorded so far this year, compared with 183 a year ago, and 234 in 2007. The city had 333 homicides all of last year, a 15 percent drop from the 392 slayings in ’07. The homicide rate — which soared at a time earlier this decade when homicides in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were reaching […]
Senate Finance Committee Drops ‘Public Option’
ASSOCIATED PRESS: After weeks of secretive talks, a bipartisan group in the Senate edged closer Monday to a health care compromise that omits a requirement for businesses to offer coverage to their workers and lacks a government insurance option that President Barack Obama favors, according to numerous officials. Like bills drafted by Democrats, the proposal under discussion by six members on the Senate Finance Committee would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to any applicant. Nor could insurers charge higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. But it jettisons other core Democratic provisions in a reach for bipartisanship […]
CONTEST: Win Tix 2 See My Bloody Valentine At APW
Time for round two of our All Points West tix giveaway contest. These tix are for Day Two of APW, aka Saturday August 1st, and although Tool are the official headliner (along with Gogol Bordello, Ting Tings, Arctic Monkeys, Neko Case and Chairlift) in our estimation the real reason to be there that day is My Bloody Valentine. We can still remember where we were they day we heard Kennedy got shot: In our bedroom, listening to MBV’s Loveless, tripping our tits off. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Anyway, a pair of tickets […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Century Foundation fellow Maggie Mahar is the author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Healthcare Costs So Much, published in 2006. A former financial journalist for Institutional Investor, The New York Times, Barron’s and Bloomberg, Mahar writes the Healthbeat blog, a Century Foundation project. She has also contributed to Dartmouth Medicine, covering Medicare spending and the possibility of reform. Money-Driven Medicine argues that, over the past century, the history of U.S. health care has been shaped by corporate interests’ gradual encroachment on physician autonomy. According to Mahar, this has produced a system of costly and inefficient competition among […]
BOTTLED WATER: Lies And Propaganda
GOOD: Tappening, the tap-water campaigners, has taken its gloves off and is fighting the bottled-water business the dirty way. Using the old beat-them-at-their-own-game approach, Tappening’s new Start a Lie campaign takes on truth in advertising by allowing you to create your own viral lie about bottled water. Because, as they say, “If bottled water companies can lie, we can too.” MORE RELATED: There is so much wrong with bottled water that it’s hard to know where to begin (read Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania, for starters). But let’s start with the fact that bottled water is the most brilliantly marketed product ever […]