Новости за 08.06.2016

As if the 2016 presidential election wasn't already ridiculous enough, the presumptive Republican nominee's image is now showing up on people's bathroom floors. Yes, you read that right: Virginia man Clayton Litten says that while he was sitting on his toilet recently, he noticed Donald Trump's image "clear as day" in his newly installed bathroom tile.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continued his attacks on Donald Trump at a BIO International Convention in San Francisco on Wednesday, this time dubbing the Republican Party's presumptive nominee an "absurd amateur." Trump, Gingrich contended, "made a really stupid mistake last week" in calling for U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a civil lawsuit against Trump University, to recuse himself from the case due to his Mexican heritage. "It took him about three days to learn," Gingrich reportedly said. Читать дальше...

Sometimes being a woman in the film industry can make you want to bang your head against a wall in despair. Consider this upcoming feature-length documentary about gender inequality in Hollywood — and then exhale loudly in disbelief when you realize it's being directed by a man:

Well here's the least surprising news ever: After Hillary Clinton's historic presumptive nomination on Tuesday night, Democratic strategist Laura Olin tweeted emoji art celebrating the moment — and then men almost instantly claimed credit for creating it.

In conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt's opinion, the Republican Party's decision to keep Donald Trump as its presumptive nominee is about as smart as "ignoring stage-four cancer." "You can't do it, you gotta attack it," Hewitt said Wednesday morning during his show. "And right now the Republican Party is facing — the plane is headed towards the mountain."

Russian professional tennis player Maria Sharapova has been suspended for two years for an anti-doping rule violation, the International Tennis Federation announced Wednesday. Her "period of ineligibility" will be backdated to Jan. 26, 2016, the day Sharapova tested positive for the heart disease drug, meldonium, at the Australian Open.

Three in four Americans say they're already giving "quite a lot" of thought to how they'll cast their presidential vote come November, finds a new Gallup poll released Wednesday. By comparison, just 42 percent said the same in May of 2000.

It will take about 75 years to fully compile and release the emails sent by Hillary Clinton and three of her top aides during her tenure in the Obama administration, the State Department said this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing requesting the records.

According to Minnesota state representative Tony Cornish (R-Vernon Center), there are a few really simple ways to "reduce the use of force by police." And the police don't even have to do anything! Behold his ad in a Minnesota newspaper Wednesday:

Two of Sen. Bernie Sanders' top congressional supporters aren't onboard with the candidate's decision to "continue to fight," even after Hillary Clinton claimed the Democratic Party's nomination Tuesday. In an interview with The Washington Post's Greg Sargent, Sanders' sole supporter in the Senate, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), pushed Sanders to put the nomination battle behind him and move forward in supporting Clinton. "This is the moment when we need to start bringing parts of the party together... Читать дальше...

British Olympian Greg Rutherford isn't letting the Zika virus stop him from participating in this summer's Rio Games, but he is taking extra precautions before he heads to Brazil. The gold medalist has decided that, before he heads to the Games to defend his long jump title, he will freeze his sperm to ensure that he and his partner can have more children without worrying about the Zika virus' potential effects. The mosquito-borne virus has been associated with birth defects and developmental problems in infants. Читать дальше...

It's something every science-fiction reader knows to fear: the robot rebellion, when artificial intelligence will learn how to override and outsmart human commands. Now scientists at Google are working to develop a "kill switch" to prevent AI from figuring out they got the short end of the deal (or just getting mischievous), BBC News reports.

After a crushing defeat against the Golden State Warriors in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers seek to make up their 0-2 series deficit in Game 3 Wednesday night in Ohio. The series is a rematch of last year's Finals — which the Warriors won 4-2 — but this year's matchup has been decidedly lopsided.

North Korea's plutonium plant in Yongbyon is believed to be back up and running, indicating the country has no plans to heed international sanctions against its nuclear program, a senior official from the U.S. State Department said Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — which monitors the country's activity via satellite — first reported signs that the reactor, which reprocesses spent reactor fuel, was active once again.

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Oil prices jumped by more than 1 percent to hit 2016 highs above $50 a barrel on Tuesday on anticipated reductions in domestic stockpiles, and pushed a bit higher still early Wednesday. Concerns over possible supply cuts due to attacks on Nigeria's production facilities also helped push up prices. U.S. crude stocks probably dropped by 2.7 million barrels last week, the third straight weekly drop. The news helped the S&P 500 Index rise Tuesday to its highest level since last July... Читать дальше...

Hillary Clinton aims to make herself welcome to Republican voters and Donald Trump plans to dredge up decades-old gossip and scandals concerning the former first family — an all-around unconventional start to the general election.

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Hillary Clinton claimed victory in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday with primary victories in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota, making history as the first woman to top the ticket of a major U.S. political party. "Thanks to you, we've reached a milestone," she said, declaring that her victory "belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible." Her rival, Bernie Sanders, won in North Dakota and Montana. Читать дальше...

Americans who can barely keep their heads above water economically often blame housing. Costs are rising all over the country, and have skyrocketed in major coastal cities. One in four Americans use half their pay on housing, and even people quite high up the income ladder often live paycheck to paycheck as a result.

Flocks of birds. Swarming locusts. Schools of fish. Such self-organizing behavior in nature tends to evoke both fear and fascination, emotions that photographer Thomas Jackson taps into with his beautifully surreal series Emergent Behavior.

The Republican primary season ended precisely as one would expect — with the presumptive nominee sweeping all five of the states that voted. But in other respects, the outcome was just as surreal as everything that preceded it in this extraordinary political year.

There's an oft-told joke about Hillary and Bill Clinton, which goes like this: The couple are driving along when they stop to get some gas, and it turns out that the attendant is a high-school boyfriend of Hillary's. As they're pulling away, Bill says, "Just think — if you had married him, today you'd be a gas station attendant's wife." Hillary shakes her head and says, "No, Bill, if I had married him, today he'd be president of the United States."

Bernie Sanders is vowing to carry on his fight for the Democratic presidential nomination all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July. He may just do that, too, but he won't win. On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton secured enough pledged delegates to win the nomination even without the help of superdelegates.

In the last round of Democratic presidential primaries, Hillary Clinton officially claimed the nomination. Bernie Sanders won North Dakota and Montana, but Clinton won in California, South Dakota, New Jersey, and New Mexico. Though Sanders said in a speech he would continue to campaign until the last primary in Washington, D.C., next week, since he cannot win a majority of pledged delegates at this point, it's over.

Coal mining is in a state of slow-motion collapse. Three of the industry's biggest players — Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources — have filed for bankruptcy within the last year. As they shutter their doors, they leave behind ruined landscapes throughout Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the rest of coal country: abandoned mines, dynamited mountain tops, piles of refuse and polluted rivers and valleys.

For more than three decades, no one who knows me even casually has ever thought to ask me whether I will vote for the Republican presidential nominee in a general election. As a conservative and a Republican, my vote has been assured as soon as the nomination was clinched.