U.S. paratroopers on their way to drop behind
enemy lines the evening before D-Day.
More photos
here.
"A few moments after 1 a.m. on June 6, the boots of American and British paratroopers thudded upon the soil of France."
So begins U.S. News's detailed description of one of the largest invasions by land, sea and air in the history of the world.
In this day and age, detailed information flies around the world within minutes of news breaking. But 69 years ago, things were a little different. It took several weeks for U.S. News & World Report (known at the time as The United States News) to get a detailed description of what happened on five beaches in Northwest France on Tuesday, June 6, 1944.
- Komen for the Cure cuts half its walks: Plunging participation in the organization after its politicized effort to cut off grants to Planned Parenthood last year are hurting the Susan G. Komen for the Cure's fund-raising efforts.
Komen said its Susan G. Komen 3-Day will not return next year to Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Phoenix, San Francisco, Tampa Bay and Washington D.C. Seven other such walks will still be held next year in Atlanta, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the Detroit area, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle and in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
Participation in the three-day events has declined 37 percent over the last four years, according to the group. Participants must raise at least $2,300 to walk 60 miles over three days, and due to the amount of money that must be raised, 60 percent of participants only take part in the event once, Komen spokeswoman Andrea Rader said.
Guards at a prison in northern Russia noticed just such a feline perched on a fence, reports the Moscow Times. Upon closer inspection, they discovered the cat had several cellphones and chargers secured by tape encircling its abdomen. The cat was caught last Friday attempting to bypass a security perimeter around Russia’s Penal Colony No. 1, a prison located near the Republic of Komi’s capital city, Syktyvkar.
In rare form, Vice President Joe Biden delivered a heartfelt eulogy for the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., on Wednesday, keeping the crowd laughing as he recalled stories about Lautenberg's grandchildren, his trips on Amtrak, and the perils of a good eulogy, among other topics.
There is substantial conjecture — and concern — over when the Arctic will finally lose its summertime coating of ice to the effects of climate change. Some scientists have previously suggested that it could happen by 2016.
So NOAA scientists recently used three common techniques for predicting when the summertime ice would disappear from everywhere in the Arctic, with the exception of Greenland and a spot just north of the Canadian Archipelago, and compared the results. Their methods: They extrapolated sea ice volume data; they assumed rapid melting events such as occurred last summer and in 2007 would occur again; and they used climate models. The use of these different techniques resulted in forecasts of nearly ice-free summers sometime around 2020, or around 2030, or around 2040. Massive pool party y’all!
Florida will be allowed to outsource its prison health care system to a private contractor, the First District Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday. The privatization plan was blocked by a judge last year, after a lower court found that the state Department of Corrections had circumvented the legislative process. Another judge killed the plan in 2011 because some state lawmakers had tried to sneak privatization through a budget rather than attempt to pass a bill explicitly about prison health care.
It’s no wonder Florida officials have tried to downplay the privatization plan. Private prison contractors have become popular with many Republican lawmakers across the country because of their promises to cut costs. But these companies also often cut corners to increase their own profits, leading to abysmal conditions, inmate abuse, and frequent riots.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation has crowd-sourced funding to place a professional stenographer in the media room covering the trial because the military refuses to release transcripts to the media and has barred 270 or 350 press organizations see to cover it.
Under the flooring of my dressing room is a safe. In it are two guns that I used to shoot the bad guys in movies and a silver plated revolver with my name engraved on it which was given to me by some crazy fan. People take their movie heroes very seriously. I often played the good cowboy on screen, riding in to save the day. Now, everybody thinks he is a cowboy too. That frightens me. We have become a cowboy country with too many guns.