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A helicopter attempted to spring an inmate from a Greek prison yesterday, in what would have been a Hollywood-esque caper worthy of James Bond—if it had worked. At first, the helicopter tried to use a hook at the end of a rope to rip down the prison's chicken-wire fence,...

With billions of dollars at stake, the trial to figure out how much more BP and other companies should pay for the nation's worst offshore oil spill began today with the federal government saying the oil giant was mostly to blame for a disaster caused by putting profits ahead of...

Two New York firefighters were going about their work yesterday morning when they heard screams—and looked over to see a man dragging his wife down the street. "Once I got closer, the man starts hacking at the woman" with a cleaver, FDNY veteran José Ortiz recalls. "He hits her...

The Supreme Court has been notoriously friendly to corporate speech rights, but it today rejected two Hillary Clinton donors' attempt to argue that corporations should be able to donate directly to candidates. William Danielczyk and Eugene Biagi, who are accused of illegally funneling $150,000 of corporate cash into Clinton's...

The Supreme Court won't be hearing a defendant's appeal in a drug case—but Justice Sonia Sotomayor made her views clear on a federal prosecutor's earlier comments, CNN reports. The prosecutor had said, "You've got African Americans, you've got Hispanics, you've got a bag full of money. Does that tell...

Warning to all Florida residents: Be sure to express your love in an Earth-friendly way. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that a 40-year-old man faces up to five years in prison because of 12 heart-shaped balloons. Anthony Brasfield was with his girlfriend in the parking lot of a Motel 6...

Police have told Reeva Steenkamp's family that Oscar Pistorius bashed in her skull with a cricket bat before fatally shooting her, the Daily Mail reports. Police withheld that information at Pistorius' bail hearing last week, preferring to conceal their case, but did brief the South African model's family on details...

The man responsible for a shootout on the Las Vegas Strip that killed three in a Diehard- esque scene is armed and on the loose, police say. Police last night named 26-year-old Ammar Harris, aka Ammar Asim Faruq Harris, as the suspect in the shooting that caused a deadly car...

Not a good month for the Pistorius clan: On the heels of Oscar Pistorius' murder charge in the death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp comes the news that brother Carl Pistorius is facing a murder charge of his own. The culpable homicide charge isn't new, reports the BBC , and stems from...

Oscar Pistorius is staying with an uncle in a Pretoria suburb today after being released on bail yesterday, reports the Guardian . The father of the woman he killed, meanwhile, offers this assessment to a German newspaper: "If it didn't happen the way he says it did, he must suffer and...

A small window into the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has played out in a New Hampshire courtroom, resulting in the loss of US citizenship for a woman who came here after the massacre. A jury ruled that Beatrice Munyenyezi, 43, covered up the role she and her family played in...

Walmart is slapping a former employee with felony charges after she allegedly ate the store's Oreo cookies on the job, The Smoking Gun reports. Penny Winters, 63, admits to munching on Oreos at the Indiana store but says she noticed an open bag and considered them a gift from management....

A kindergarten teacher and a school nurse in Virginia are accused of trying to kill the teacher's ex-husband in a murder-for-hire plot, Fox News reports. The teacher—Angela Nolen, 47—allegedly conspired with 37-year-old Cathy Bennett at the elementary school where they work in Rocky Mount, Va. But someone they...

So much for speaking up: Richmond police have fired a whistleblowing cop for claiming that two officers chatted about shooting and bombing President Obama while protecting him, Raw Story reports. The officer, who wasn't named, told WTVR last May that a supervisor had said to a police sharpshooter, "You’re down...

The Justice Department has jumped onto Floyd Landis' lawsuit against Lance Armstrong, arguing that the disgraced cyclist defrauded the government by violating its ban on illegal drugs while under contract to race for the US Postal Service team. The government is asking for around $100 million, or about three times...

Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr are all scrambling to deal with a security breach, after a hacker accessed their customer support company and stole email addresses and other information, reports Mashable . Zendesk, the customer service company, said it detected the hack this week, took steps to close the vulnerability, and notified...

An intense gun battle yesterday in the remote jungle of northern Guatemala has people wondering if notorious drug lord Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera could be dead, reports the Los Angeles Times . Guatemalan authorities are sending in security forces to investigate, but at this point officials cannot even confirm whether a...

A local rapper was killed in the Las Vegas drive-by shooting that also left two innocent bystanders dead yesterday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. Kenneth Cherry, known as Kenny Clutch, was fatally shot while driving the Maserati that subsequently smashed into a taxi. The 27-year-old rapper, as well as the...

Oscar Pistorius has been granted bail, CNN reports. The judge said he found fault with arguments on both sides but ultimately decided that the double-amputee Olympian is not a flight risk. In closing arguments before the judge's decision, prosecutors held that Pistorius' version of events, in which he mistook slain...

The US has seen 934 people killed in 146 mass shootings since 2006, a USA Today analysis of FBI records has found—a number that represents less than 1% of all gun-related homicides. Few of those shootings were the kind of Newtown-esque massacres you might be imagining, however. The paper...