The Cheat Sheet

thedailywhat:

Crowdsourcing Project of the Day

In the wake of the latest violent conflict in the Gaza Strip, The Guardian put together a handy,crowdsourced map powered by Google that highlights specific areas that have been targeted by missiles in the region with a red dot. When clicked, the dot opens up a dialogue box detailing the location of the strike, as well as other information related to casualties and property damages as they become available.

breakingnews:

President Obama speaks to residents in Staten Island, N.Y., as he visits neighborhoods hit by Hurricane Sandy.
 More on this story from NBCNews here.
(Photo: Mandel Ngan - AFP/Getty Images)

buzzfeed:

BREAKING: The man who accused Kevin Clash, the actor behind Sesame Street’s Elmo, has now recanted his statutory rape allegations, claiming it was an adult consensual relationship.

All of our VP debate coverage in one place.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Frontpage: Monday, July 23rd

1. Iraq Bombings Kill 93: Monday marked Iraq’s bloodiest day so far this year, as 93 people died from bombings and shootings. Just a few days prior, the leader of the country’s al Qaeda faction declared a new offensive in an attempt to take advantage of the disorganized Baghdad government U.S. troops are leaving behind. Monday’s violence suggests al Qaeda is much more powerful than U.S. and Iraqi officials admit. 
2. Holmes Dazed in Court: James Holmes, the sole suspect in the Colorado movie-theater shooting, sat silent and seemingly dazed in his first court appearance Monday. Investigators say Holmes is not cooperating with them, and when they searched his apartment Sunday, they found several Batman-related items, including a poster for the movie and a Batman mask. 
3. Penn State Fined $60M: Penn State will be fined $60 million—one year’s worth of revenue from the football team—which will go towards foundations to help victims and the prevention of sexual abuse, the NCAA announced today. Its football team will also be banned from bowl games and any other postseason games for the next four years and the number of scholarships provided for Penn State athletes will be reduced from 25 to 15 for the next four years.
4. Arab League Offers Assad ‘Safe Exit’: In an effort to end the violence that has raged across Syria for over a year, the Arab League’s secretary-general offered Bashar al-Assad, the country’s president, a “safe exit” if he steps down. The organization also offered $100 million for Syrian refugees who’ve had to flee to other countries. This isn’t the first such offer the despotic president has received. 
5. Euro Drops to 11-Year Low: The euro reached its lowest level since 2000 Monday, making it 1 percent against the yen. The slip seems motivated by fear of an impending bailout for Spain. 

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Photo via picturedept:

Photo of the Day: July 22, 2012

Penn State employees covered the Joe Paterno statue outside Beaver Stadium before removing it on Sunday.

Photo: Christopher Weddle, Centre Daily Times / Getty Images

PHOTO OF THE DAY ARCHIVE

Frontpage: Wednesday, July 11th

1. Spain Unleashes New Austerity Measures: The Spanish government is celebrating being granted a big bank bailout by the U.N. with a brand-new plan for austerity. Spain plans to tighten its belt even further through a new hike in sales tax on such things as cigarettes, cars, clothing, and telephone services, as well as public transportation, processed foods, and hotel and bar services. They’re also adding several more spending cuts in the hope of taking $79.85 billion off its total budget over the next two and a half years.
2. Parliament: Diamond Misled Us: Bob Diamond may have resigned and agreed to testify in front of British Parliament when an interest-rate-fixing scandal within Barclays Bank, of which he was CEO, came to light. But now British lawmakers think Diamond misled Parliament during its inquiry into the Barclays scandal. 
3. GOP: Stop Health Care Law, Stop Tax: House Republicans are on a mission to repeal President Obama’s health-care overhaul, and they’re latching onto the wording of the Supreme Court’s recent decision two weeks ago. The House of Representatives has voted at least 30 times to get rid of Obamacare in some way and will do so yet again on Wednesday, this time making the argument that by doing so, they’d be saving about 20 million Americans from paying an unnecessary tax. 
4. Hillary Clinton Visits Laos: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a stop in Laos Wednesday while traveling through Asia, and was faced with several reminders of the Vietnam War. Her visit was the first by an American secretary of state in 57 years.
5. Holder: Texas ID Law a Poll Tax: Embattled Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at the NAACP’s annual convention on Tuesday just after federal judges in Washington began hearing a lawsuit over Texas’s voter-identification law. “We will not allow political pretext to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right,” Holder declared before the crowd of 600 in Houston. The U.S. Justice Department, led by Holder, has opposed Texas’s photo-ID requirement for voters, finding it more harmful to minorities than helpful.

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Photo via picturedept:

Photo of The Day: July 10, 2012

Housecall
President Barack Obama discusses middle class tax cuts with Jason and Ali McLaughlin at their home in Iowa.

PHOTO OF THE DAY ARCHIVE

Frontpage: Tuesday, July 10th

1. Annan: Iran Part of Syrian Solution: Following talks with the Iranian foreign minister, U.N. envoy to Syria Kofi Annan argued, in a press conference Tuesday, that Iran should be “part of the solution” to Syrian turmoil. “My presence here [in Tehran] proves that I believe Iran can play a positive role,” he said. 
2. Not All Dems Stand With Obama: Yesterday President Obama called on Congress to renew Bush-era tax cuts for just one year for Americans making under $250,000. He was expecting trouble from Republicans eager to keep the tax cuts for wealthiest Americans around forever, but he’s also getting some push-back from his own party. Embattled members of both the House and Senate, such as Sen. Claire McCaskill from Missouri, Senate hopeful Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada, say they’d either prefer to raise taxes on people making over $1 million per year, or permanently extend the Bush-era cuts for anyone making less than that. 
3. Diamond Gives Up $31M in Bonuses: Former-CEO Robert Diamond is giving up $31 million in deferred bonuses. New insight into the Barclays Libor scandal reveals that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York may have known that the British bank was manipulating global interest rates as early as August of 2007. In 2008 the Fed even offered up some suggestions to British authorities on how to fix the system. 
4. Ex-Israeli P.M. Cleared of Corruption: After three years as prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert resigned in 2008 amid a high-profile corruption scandal. Now Olmert has been cleared on two charges of corruption. He was convicted on a third, less drastic charge—of breach of trust—which he’s expected to appeal. 
5. Egyptian Parliament Meets in Cairo: Legislators gathered in Cairo Tuesday for a meeting of Egypt’s now-dissolved Parliament, despite opposition from the senior military generals and high-court judges. During the short meeting, lawmakers approved a proposal by the speaker—a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—to appeal an earlier ruling that reviving the defunct Parliament went outside the law. 

Photo via picturedept:

Photo of the Day: July 9, 2012

Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A Bosnian Muslim man prays near coffins prepared for a mass burial at the Memorial Centeron July 9, 2012. The bodies of 520 recently identified victims of the Srebrenica massacre will be buried on July 11, the anniversary of the massacre when Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Ratko Mladic slaughtered 8,000 Muslim men and boys and buried them in mass graves, in Europe’s worst massacre since World War Two.

photo: Dada Ruvic, Reuters / Landov

PHOTO OF THE DAY ARCHIVE

Frontpage: Monday, July 9th 

1. Obama: Extend Tax Cuts: President Obama is gearing up for his latest fight with Congress as he plans to push for a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for anyone with a yearly income under $250,000. House Republicans want to keep the tax cuts in place permanently for both middle- and upper-income Americans, and congressional Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have been pushing to extend them to anyone earning up to $1 million. 
2. Egypt’s Parliament Closure ‘Final’: Egypt’s highest court has spoken: the decision to dissolve the country’s parliament is binding. Monday’s ruling is a blow to newly-elected president Mohammed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood party won most seats in the chamber in a the recent election.
3. Euro Zone Aims to Create Agency: The euro zone is in the process of creating a new agency to supervise banks within the currency union that would report to the European Central Bank. Germany and other European nations with strong economies see the establishment of one overarching authority as necessary to keep the rest of the bloc in line. 
4. Annan, Assad Have ‘Constructive Talk’: The United Nations’ envoy to Syria and the Arab League, Kofi Annan, held “constructive” talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus Monday. Assad reportedly claimed that any effort to end the 16 months of violence that has torn through his country has been hindered by the U.S.’s support of “terrorists” and support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey—both via weaponry and other logistical aid—to the rebels attempting to take down his regime. The two have agreed on an “approach” to end the violence. 
5. Lance Armstrong Suing USADA: Livestrong, litigate stronger. Lance Armstrong is turning the tables on the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency by suing the organization for charging that he used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career. The seven-time Tour de France winner filed the lawsuit Monday and is expected to argue that the USADA’s doping investigations violate the constitutional rights of athletes. 

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Photo via blakegopnik:

DAILY PIC: Jeff Brouws takes photos of abandoned railroad rights-of-way.  The “train-track” perspective that still lurks in his pictures is the last trace of technology’s encounter with nature. His photos are haunted by the trains that no longer cross them. One way or another, such haunting is the central subject of “The Permanent Way”, a show at the New York non-profit gallery called Apexart. In honor of the 150th anniversary of the law that paved the way (almost literally) for the first transcontinental railroad, Brian Shollis, a brilliant young scholar now transitioning from art into history, has put together a small survey of railroad-themed images. It includes vintage train maps, old railroad postcards and contemporary art about trains and their riders. No matter how commonplace trains became, I don’t think we ever grew completely blase about them. As they disappear, we may become less neglectful than ever.

The Daily Pic, along with more global art news, can also be found on the  Art Beast page at thedailybeast.com.

Frontpage: Friday, July 6th

1. ‘Friends of Syria’ Meet in Paris: Over 100 countries sent representatives to Paris Friday to determine what can be done to end the violence that’s been raging in Syria for over a year, resulting in close to 16,000 deaths. French President Francois Hollande opened the meeting by declaring Syria a threat to world peace and insisting that it is “a human and political necessity” to step in.  
2. Mitt Blasts Obama on Jobs: Mitt Romney called June’s unemployment figures “unacceptably high,” and placed the blame squarely on President Obama this Friday.  ”It doesn’t have to be this way,” the former governor said, adding that “the president’s policies are not working.”
3. 80K Jobs Added in June: Some 80,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in June, and the unemployment rate remained steady at 8.2 percent, according to a monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number is a disappointing figure for economists hoping for a respite from the tepid job growth of the last several months, and came in below market expectations.
4. Duke Energy CEO Lasts One Day: Bill Johnson was slated to become Duke Energy Corp.’s new chief executive ever since Duke announced a $26 billion merger with Johnson’s former company, Progress Energy Inc. That was 18 months ago. On July 2, the merger and his new position went into effect, and on July 3 (at 12:01 a.m.) Johnson resigned. Apparently, it only took a few hours on the job to realize that Johnson wasn’t the right fit for the position.
5. More States Get ‘No Child’ Waivers: The U.S. Department of Education is expected to announce Friday that Washington and Wisconsin have been granted waivers releasing them from the obligations of No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush’s key education legislation. These are just the latest states to be let off the hook from the law’s most demanding conditions. 

Photo via jemappellejambon:

Bring your dog to sleep on your desk day (Taken with Instagram)

This is two desks to your Tumblr’s left. 

Frontpage: Thursday, July 5th

1. Fukushima a ‘Man-Made Disaster’: A parliamentary inquiry into last year’s nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant concludes that Japanese conformist culture and government-industry alliances were to blame. “It was a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented,” declared the report. 
2. Barclay’s Scandal to Spread: It’s been a rough week for Bob Diamond. First he was forced to resign from his position as CEO of Barclays after the bank came under fire for falsifying interest rates and then, Wednesday, he was raked over the coals by parliament. But Barclays is hardly the only bank that will undergo investigation for manipulating the London interbank offered rate (Libor). Other banks also projected artificially low rates at the beginning of the financial crisis to give the impression that they were not suffering.
3. Wikileaks to Release 2.4M Syrian Emails: Uh oh Assad, you’ve got some explaining to do. WikiLeaks announced Thursday that it is publishing 2.4 million Syria emails, several from government accounts. An official said that the emails show a relationship between Assad’s government and Western companies.
4. ECB Drops Rates to Record Low: The European Central Bank’s benchmark interest rate has dropped from 1 percent to 0.75 percent—its lowest level ever—in an effort to keep the euro from deteriorating any further.  The cut will likely be welcomed by politicians and economists alike. 
5. Obama Going on Blue-Collar Bus Tour: Now that the Fourth of July celebration is over, President Obama is hitting the road. His first bus tour of the 2012 campaign will take him to several cities in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania to court, specifically, male, blue-collar workers. 

Photo via picturedept:

Happy Birthday America

The 4th of July celebration in Washington DC, July 4th, 2007

(Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Or watch San Diego’s firework show, which, due to a malfunction, went off all at once. 

Frontpage: Monday, July 2nd

1. Mexico’s Presidential Win Raises Concerns: Mexico’s presidential elections resulted in the apparent return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country for more than 70 years before being ousted by the conservative National Action Party in 2000. 
2. Power Outages Could Last a Week: The eastern U.S. has been hit with fatal storms, power outages, and blistering heat for three straight days, with several cities hitting record highs and others declaring a state of emergency. After thunderstorms killed at least 15 people, more than 3 million lost power, adding to the excruciating heat. Charlotte, N.C.—one of the hardest-hit areas—reached 104 degrees on Sunday. 
3. Kidnapped Air Workers Released: Four European aid workers were released Monday after being kidnapped from Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex near the Somali border last week. Two of them were injured and their Kenyan driver was killed. It’s unclear whether their kidnappers were members of Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda–affiliated group that’s been blamed for other recent kidnappings of tourists and aid workers from Kenya. 
4. Apple Pays $60M in iPad Case: Apple settled its trademark lawsuit in Chinese provincial court Monday, paying $60 million for the legal rights to the iPad trademark in China. 
5. ‘God Particle’ Footprint Found: It’s been a long, difficult—and, for most of us, incomprehensible—search, but scientists at the largest particle accelerator in the world have finally found evidence of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle that gives the building blocks of matter mass. 

Photo: Anderson Cooper tells Andrew Sullivan that he’s gay. (via Buzzfeed)