Want to Tweet at Aliens? Now You Can

As of today, you can fire off a tweet-length message to a far-flung solar system, but you'll need patience—it won't get there for about 18 years, and it will take just as long to receive any extra-terrestrial response. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer explains, a start-up called Lone Signal has...

Stop Snickering at Miss Utah Over Flub

Miss Utah got to go on the Today show this morning for a second crack at the question that she flubbed at the recent Miss USA pageant. This time around, Marissa Powell gave a far more polished response, which KSL.com has in more detail. Good for her, but the...

Staffers: Bank of America Gave Us Gift Cards for Lying

Bank of America told employees to lie and cheat to homeowners looking for help under the government's Home Affordable Modification Program , and rewarded those employees for kicking people out of their homes, staffers allege in sworn statements attached to a recently filed lawsuit. Here are some of the most outrageous...

Google Fighting Gag Order on Surveillance Data

Google is going to court to try to bring more transparency to the government's surveillance program—and maybe to beef up its public image on privacy along the way. The company will file a petition with the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court demanding that it be allowed to provide more...

Another Ohio Captivity Case: Woman, Child Held 2 Years

Ohio has another creepy captivity case on its hands. Three people have been charged with forced labor after allegedly holding a woman with cognitive disabilities and her child prisoner for two years, reports the Plain Dealer . According to an FBI affidavit reviewed by the Mansfield News Journal , Jordie Callahan, 26,...

Chrysler Recalls 2.7M Jeeps

Chrysler avoided a showdown with government safety regulators today, agreeing to recall 2.7 million older Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty SUVs that could be at risk of a fuel tank fire. Earlier this month, the company defiantly refused the government's request to recall the Jeeps. But Chrysler now says...

Pentagon's 'Holy Grail': A Bomb You Can't Blow

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is necessary in Afghanistan and Pakistan to keep people from starving—but it's also a primary ingredient in more than 60% of bombs made by the Taliban. To find a solution to the conundrum, Pentagon scientists are searching for what the Washington Post describes as a "Holy...

Latest Claim in Abortion Fight: Fetuses Masturbate

As the House debates a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks , Texas Republican Michael Burgess has offered the most headline-grabbing defense of the legislation so far: "Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they're a male...

It's About Time We Started Paying Interns

The unpaid Black Swan interns who sued Fox Searchlight over having to perform menial tasks like making coffee won their case last week: A federal judge ruled that not paying the interns was a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It's about time, writes Cullen Seltzer on Slate . In...

Lolo Jones' Jokey Video Sparks a Brawl

Track-star-turned-bobsledder Lolo Jones is doing some speedy damage control after she made a Vine video this week snarking about a measly paycheck of $741.84 from her new sport. "Seven months with bobsled season. The whole season. That's it," she says, reports the Christian Science Monitor . Then, pretending to call...

Dad's Restaurant Receipt Rips His 'F---in Needy Kids'

Friendly's Sports Bar and Grill in St. Louis didn't quite live up to its name this Father's Day, when a man found an unusual line item on his printed receipt: "1 f---in needy kids," KSDK reports. The place doesn't usually allow children, its manager says, but he made an exception...

NYPD Video Shows Bike Bomber Before 2008 Blast

Authorities hope newly released video—along with a $65,000 reward—might lead to an arrest in a 5-year-old bombing case from Times Square, reports NBC New York . The stitched-together surveillance footage shows a lone bicyclist riding through New York City in the early morning hours of March 6, 2008,...

Kickstarter Users Uncover Huge Scam on ... Kickstarter

They were almost taken for fools. But one almost-unlucky group of Kickstarter users managed to uncover a $120,309 scam on the site less than an hour before the campaign was set to end—and their money was whisked out of their bank accounts. CNNMoney reports on what sounded intriguing...

NSA: Spying Foiled Stock Exchange Bomb Plot

The NSA's controversial spying activities have prevented more than 50 terror attacks since 9/11, the agency's director told the House Intelligence Committee today, including attempted bombings of the New York Stock Exchange and, as previously disclosed , the New York City Subway. Gen. Keith Alexander said he'd go over all 50...

Assange: I Could Spend 5 More Years in Embassy

As of tomorrow, Julian Assange will have spent one year in the Ecuadorean embassy in London—and he says he can handle five more, according to Ecuador's foreign minister. A lengthy stay is OK with Ecuador, adds Ricardo Patino. British Foreign Secretary William Hague met with Patino yesterday, but the...

DUI Suspect to Cops: Here, Have a Beer

When police asked a suspected drunk driver for his license, he offered an alternative: a can of beer. "When you ask somebody for a driver's license, you're not expecting a can of beer, that's for sure," says a spokesman for police in Kent, Washington, per KOMOnews . As if that wasn't...

Etheridge: Jolie's Double Mastectomy Not 'Brave'

When Angelina Jolie revealed her choice to have a preventative double mastectomy, celebrities fell all over themselves in their rush to call her courageous—but not Melissa Etheridge. In an interview with the Washington Blade last week that apparently just got noticed by the celebrity media, Etheridge—a breast cancer...

Ailing GOP Needs a Religious Reformer

The Republican Party might win the odd national vote in the coming years, but it needs a long-term prescription: Eventually, "there won’t be enough white and gray voters to win national elections," writes Michael Gerson in the Washington Post . But as the party seeks to reform, it can't forget about...

Kim's Complications Forced Early Birth: Source

For two people as publicity-hungry as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, it's a bit odd how little we've heard since the birth of their baby girl (other than the standard "she's a miracle" and "she's beautiful" type stuff from the rest of the Kardashian Klan). But now a source reveals...

US, Taliban to Talk Peace in Group's New Qatar Office

The Taliban has opened its long-promised office in Doha, Qatar, where it will openly hold direct peace talks with the US, Taliban officials announced today at, of all things, a press conference. Top US officials tell the BBC that peace talks will begin within days, on the condition that the...

Yahoo: Most Data Requests Tied to Fraud, Murder

Yahoo has never been a big fan of the NSA's surveillance activities, and it tried to distance itself from them even further yesterday by revealing just how many requests for data it got from the government. The number, CEO Marissa Mayer wrote in a Tumblr post, was "between 12,000...

Calif. Legally Defines 'Hot Dog'

What is a hot dog, really? You may not know—which is probably a good thing—but in California, at least, the encased meat may soon have a legal definition, the Los Angeles Times reports: "'Hot dog' means a whole, cured, cooked sausage that is skinless or stuffed in a...

Pocahontas Site to Be Preserved for Eternity

A farm field overlooking the York River in Tidewater Virginia is believed to be where Pocahontas interceded with her powerful father Powhatan to rescue English Capt. John Smith from death. But the real story—according to many Virginia Indians, historians, and archaeologists—is that this land was the center of...

Woman Charged in 2 Butt Injection Deaths

Tracey Lynn Garner had already been charged with murder in one silicone butt injection death, and now she's been charged in a second, the Clarion-Ledger reports. Garner (who, authorities say, is a man also known as Morris Garner who lives as a woman) is accused of illegally injecting counterfeit silicone...

Now James Franco Wants Your Cash

James Franco would like to make three films, based on his own short stories, and he would like you to pay for them. Yes, Franco is the latest celebrity to turn to crowdfunding rather than traditional financing for a project (a trend that's sometimes successful , sometimes really not ), but...

Woman Unmasks Burglar: It's Her Grandson

An Albuquerque grandmother thought she recognized a masked burglar who entered her home on Friday morning—and when Pamela Dearinger managed to rip off his bandana, her suspicions were confirmed: It was her grandson, police say. Thomas Clark, 22, came in through the back door while she was watching TV,...

New on FBI's Most Wanted: Ex USC Prof

If you took Professor Walter Lee Williams' anthropology class at USC, you might be surprised to learn that as of yesterday he's one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted fugitives. Williams, 64, became the 500th name added to the list in its 63-year history, the Los Angeles Times reports. The...

Silent 'Standing Man' Alters Turkey Protests

Turkish protesters said over the weekend they planned to hold their ground in Taksim Square, and one man is leading the way, the BBC reports. Performance artist Erdem Gunduz stood for eight hours in the square beginning at about 6pm yesterday, facing a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, who founded today's...

Today's G8 Topic: Kidnapping

Terrorist ransoms, globe-trotting companies, huge sums of money. What might sound like the makings of a good action film is actually what's on the docket at the final day of the G8 summit today. A primer on what you should know: Kidnapping: David Cameron is looking for the attending nations...

Obama: I'm Not 'Bush- Cheney Lite'

Appearing on Charlie Rose last night, President Obama had a few things to clear up: First, he's not, as Rose put it, "Bush-Cheney lite." "Some people say, 'Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney,'" Obama said. "Dick Cheney sometimes says, 'Yeah,...