Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Law and Order - Trump Unit:
• Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize in literature:
The Swedish Academy handed Bob Dylan a remarkable, unexpected accolade on Thursday, announcing the singer as the recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature. In a succinct statement, the Academy said Dylan deserved the honor "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." He is the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature since Toni Morrison in 1993. Previous renowned American laureates in the literature category include William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
• Here’s a cool interactive look at all 57 presidential elections since 1789: You get a map, the results and a synopsis of each race.
• Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, world’s longest serving monarch, dead at 88. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha said Thailand would hold a one-year mourning period. He called the king’s death "the most devastating moment for Thais,” and said, "He is now in heaven and may be looking over Thai citizens from there." The king was Thailand’s ninth monarch from the Chakri Dynasty and known as Rama IX. He had reigned since June 9, 1946, making him the world's longest serving head of state as well as the longest-serving monarch in Thai history, serving for 70 years, 126 days.
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• Boko Haram has released 21 of the girls it abducted. The girls were among the 276 taken from the Chibok boarding school in 2014. Since then some 50 have escaped, but others remain missing. The release was brokered by the Red Cross and the Swiss government.
The militant group Boko Haram has kidnapped thousands of other women and girls in similar fashion, releasing a video in August that purportedly showed recent footage of some of the Chibok girls, saying that they were killed in airstrikes, The Washington Post reported. Last year, the Nigerian military rescued 450 women and girls from Boko Haram camps, though none of them came from Chibok. [...]
The release of some of the girls come at a time when millions in Nigeria, one of Africa’s wealthiest nations, are on the brink of starvation. About 1.5 million people have fled Boko Haram, setting up makeshift camps and receiving little help from international agencies. An additional two million people are inaccessible because of the militant insurgency in northeast Nigeria.
• Trump may be finished—but Trumpism? Just getting started: With his focus on white blue-collar workers, Trump has shaped the Republican Party in ways that could continue long after November 8.
• President Obama guest-edited the current issue of WIRED. But it’s his conversation with the magazine’s staff that is really interesting.
• EPA agrees to reexamine its assessment of emissions from flaring: The agency will take a new look at its three-decades-old estimates of air pollution from flaring near oil refineries and oil and gas drilling sites.
The agreement comes in the wake of a lawsuit against the EPA by four environmental organizations. They claimed that air samples near oil refineries in Houston showed elevated levels of volatile organic compounds, chemicals associated with threats to public health and smog-forming pollution. Those levels, the plaintiffs said, were 10 to 100 times higher than being reported under outdated and inaccurate formulas that estimate levels of air pollution.
Although the lawsuit focused on refineries in Houston, the agreement could have consequences nationwide. Booming oil and gas drilling in Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Dakota and other states have been blamed for noxious emissions that residents say has sickened them.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin updates us on the first polls to include reaction to the Trump tapes. And they look pretty much as you thought they would. It can only get worse, as the floodgates open & we try to keep up with the accusations. And they may yet find video!
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