Author: Derek Hawkins
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How Colorado became the safest state to cast a vote
As local officials across the country scramble to hack-proof their voting systems ahead of the midterm elections, there’s one state that is paving the way as a leader in election security. Colorado has done virtually everything election experts recommend states do to stave off a repeat of 2016, when Russian hackers targeted 21 states as…
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National Geographic confronts its past: ‘For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist’
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Months ago, when National Geographic set out to make race the sole focus of its April 2018 issue, it decided to engage in some soul-searching. For much of its 130-year history, the magazine depicted people…
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Football coach reported dead after shielding students from Florida gunman
An assistant football coach at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School died after risking his life to protect students from the gunman who fatally shot at least 17 people in the south Florida school, according to a message posted on the team’s Twitter account. Aaron Feis, who doubled as a school security guard, was shot after throwing himself in front…
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Bad news for the Juggalos: the FBI’s gang label could be here to stay
Tucked in the FBI’s 2011 gang-intelligence report, between ominous write-ups on cross-border human trafficking and organized crime in the Caribbean, was a short section warning about the growing menace of the Juggalos. The facepaint-wearing, Faygo-drinking followers of the rap duo Insane Clown Posse were a “loosely-organized hybrid gang,” the FBI said. Though their crimes were…
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WATCH: Trump judicial nominee fumbles basic questions about the law
Nomination hearings for U.S. district judges tend to be dry affairs that offer little in the way of mass entertainment — in other words, they’re not typically the stuff of viral videos. But a clip of one of President Trump’s federal judicial nominees struggling to answer rudimentary questions about the law garnered well more than…
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Bride kills 17 people with poison milk in effort to escape arranged marriage, police say
Arranged marriages are a standard practice in Pakistan, and there’s no shortage of stories about the extreme steps some Pakistani women will take to escape them and marry men of their choosing. But few go as far as Aasia Bibi is alleged to have gone. According to Pakistani authorities, the 21-year-old woman tried to slip…
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A skydiver’s parachute mysteriously failed; prosecutors say her husband sabotaged it
The skies were cloudy over southern England on the morning of April 5, 2015, and Victoria Cilliers was having second thoughts. The veteran skydiver had planned to go up for a jump above an airfield in Salisbury Plain, but the weather was foreboding. Her husband, Emile Cilliers, told her to hold out. “It will be…
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WATCH: ‘This is crazy,’ sobs Utah hospital nurse as cop roughs her up, arrests her for doing her job
By all accounts, the head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit was professional and restrained when she told a Salt Lake City police detective he wasn’t allowed to draw blood from a badly injured patient. The detective didn’t have a warrant, first off. And the patient wasn’t conscious, so he couldn’t give…
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Sarah Palin sues New York Times for defamation over editorial on mass shooting
Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times Tuesday, claiming the newspaper falsely linked her to the 2011 mass shooting in Arizona that wounded then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, says a Times editorial earlier this month “falsely stated…
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111 people have killed themselves under California’s new right-to-die law
Tom House was about as robust and independent as anyone could hope to be as an octogenarian. A former Marine, private pilot and insurance broker, he was still chopping wood and going on miles-long jogs at his retirement home in Sonoma, Calif., long after his 80th birthday, relatives told the Sacramento Bee. But last year, congenital heart disease…