The Week: Most Recent all

9 suspected criminals who got themselves caught via social media [Updated]

The Week — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:43:00 -0400

The "stupid criminal" story has long been a staple of local crime reporting, late-night talk shows, and comedy-news programs such as NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! And now, the magic of social networking is giving ne'er-do-wells a new venue to thwart themselves, often in front of large audiences. Call it "cops-and-robbers 2.0," says Winston Ross at The Daily Beast. Driven by "a self-destructive combination of ignorance, narcissism, and generation-specific disregard for their own privacy," social-media (un-)savvy crooks are making life much easier for cops. Here, nine suspected crimes uncovered...

WATCH: 6 crazy-adorable grandparent reactions to things young people like [Updated]

The Week — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:41:00 -0400

Old age — it's inevitable. But just because you're finally able to order off the senior menu at IHOP doesn't mean you have to lose your zest for life. Au contraire! Here, six truly awesome videos of seniors reacting to foreign, weird, and puzzling things young people like, guaranteed to zap warm fuzzy feelings into even the iciest of hearts:

1. Grandpa answers the Call of Duty
Wee. This exuberant, 84-year-old fellow picks up an Xbox controller for the first time and knocks out a few casual rounds of Black Ops 2 and Halo with his grandson. Warning: You will smile. (Via BuzzFeed...

'Mexican Barbie' and 10 other controversial Barbies [Updated]

The Week — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:35:00 -0400

"Mexican Barbie," part of Mattel's "Dolls of the World" collection, wears a fiesta dress, and carries a Chihuahua and a big pink passport. Mattel says all the collection's dolls carry documentation, but Jason Ruiz, a professor at Notre Dame, takes exception. "It is a point of contention and great sensitivity for people of Mexican origin, especially Mexican immigrants," he told ABC News, adding that "[Mexican Americans] are tired of being seen as merely colorful.” Click through for more disputed dolls.

7 adorable animals that interrupted sporting events [Updated]

The Week — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:00:00 -0400

1. The marten who wouldn't go quietly
Just as FC Thun and FC Zurich were starting their Swiss Super League soccer game on Sunday, a wild marten — a small, ferret-like animal — ran onto the field, brazenly bobbing and weaving through the players, managing to evade capture, and finding refuge in the stands. But it wanted more, and soon after play resumed, the stubborn little star zipped across the field once again. Zurich defender Loris Benito made an impressive jump and tackle, grabbing the marten with both bare hands, but was bitten on the finger. (See the photo above.) The animal almost...

6 strange ways Cory Booker helps his constituents [Updated]

The Week — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:20:00 -0500

In addition to being a rising star in the Democratic Party, Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J., has built up a reputation for going above and beyond the call of duty. Here, six reasons to think he's America's hardest-working civil servant:

1. He will help you propose to your girlfriend
This week, Booker helped a former constituent play cupid. Israel Burns contacted the mayor via Twitter and asked him if he would help him pop the question to his girlfriend. Within minutes, Booker tweeted back, "I am a romantic. Please DM me. Sounds fun." Booker eventually called up Burns' girlfriend to...

The 2013 Oscars: Live-blogging the awards

The Week — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 19:00:00 -0500

One of the longest and strangest Oscar seasons in recent memory draws to a close tonight with the 85th annual Academy Award ceremony – which begins on ABC starting at 8:30 p.m. (See our predictions for the Academy Awards here, and read a collection of The Week’s other Oscar-related stories below.) Will Argo fend off tough competition to win Best Picture? Will host Seth MacFarlane be a hit or a dud? Will anyone be able to pronounce Best Actress nominee Quevazhane Wallis' name correctly? (For the record: Kwah-VAN-jeh-nay.)

Join us in real time as we find out. Tonight, entertainment...

Dispatch from Cairo: Egypt's president is under attack from all sides

The Week — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 09:30:00 -0500

Seven months after he was elected amidst celebrations and optimistic expectations, President Mohamad Morsi and his Islamist Freedom and Justice party are finding themselves increasingly embattled and isolated.

Morsi's much-lauded panel of advisors, initially made up of 21 luminaries from across the political spectrum, has been hit by a spate of resignations and dismissals, and has lost over half its members. The secularists and Christians began leaving late last year, complaining that Morsi was increasingly partisan and authoritarian. Now over the past week, ultra-conservative Salifi members of...

4 things we'd like to see from Sony's PlayStation 4

The Week — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:52:00 -0500

It's tough out there for game consoles.

At the end of January, Nintendo lowered sales forecasts for the Wii U from 5.5 million to 4 million through March. The problems are many: Today's consoles are expensive, with launch prices sandwiched somewhere between $300 and $500. Secondly, it's easier than ever to access games from the gadgets we already use everyday. Computer games? Not going anywhere. Neither are 99 cent downloads for Angry Birds or Temple Run. If we can play great games on the devices we already have, why do we need gaming consoles? It's not an easy question to answer.

That's...

The rise and fall of Jesse Jackson Jr.: 3 lessons

The Week — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:30:00 -0500

Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. pleaded guilty early Wednesday to conspiring with his wife, Sandi Jackson, to spend $750,000 in federal campaign funds on themselves, using the money to buy everything from a $43,350 Rolex watch to a $4,600 fedora that once belonged to Michael Jackson. Sandi Jackson, a former Chicago alderman, also entered a guilty plea to one count of tax fraud connected to the same allegations. Jackson, the son of famed civil rights leader and former Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, could face years in prison. He has already resigned from Congress, after seeking...

The true story behind Chuck Hagel and 'Friends of Hamas'

The Week — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:15:00 -0500

Chuck Hagel is still waiting for the Senate to vote on his bid to become defense secretary, after a brutal confirmation hearing that saw Republicans attack his alleged connections to "extreme and radical groups." It's perhaps no surprise, then, that a new poll from Pew shows that Hagel's favorability ratings are down, which has prompted a fair amount of jubilation among the anti-Hagel contingent. However, at least one charge against Hagel appears to be totally false, reinforcing Democratic claims that the decorated war hero has been the victim of a rightwing smear campaign.

The conservative...

Are campaign contribution limits unconstitutional?

The Week — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:20:00 -0500

The Supreme Court has agreed to review what legal experts are billing as the most important campaign-finance case since Citizens United. That 2010 decision struck down limits on what individuals and groups can pump into election season messaging done independently of any candidate's campaign. The new case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, goes after another pillar of federal campaign finance law — the limits on contributions people can make directly to political candidates and some political committees. The lawsuit — filed by Shaun McCutcheon, a GOP donor from Alabama, and...

David Axelrod joins NBC News: Is the White House running MSNBC?

The Week — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:15:00 -0500

On Tuesday, NBC News announced a new hire: David Axelrod, most recently chief strategist to President Obama's re-election campaign, is now a senior political analyst, slated to "contribute frequently across all broadcasts and platforms of both networks." Axelrod joins former Obama White House colleague Robert Gibbs, who was unveiled as a political contributor at the liberal-leaning NBC cable-news network MSNBC a week ago, as well as numerous other alumni of various White Houses who contribute regularly.

In one sense, this is pretty unremarkable in today's media market, says Bill Carter at...

WATCH: Finally, a realistic look at Google Glass?

The Week — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:35:00 -0500

On Wednesday morning, Google quietly published a new video for its hush-hush Glass project, the futuristic monocle that pulls triple duty as a camera, phone, and wearable computer. The video, "How it feels [through Glass]," showcases users tapping into the gadget's purported features, including voice search, Google Hangouts (with friends while skydiving... duh), and — in one fascinating snippet — the ability to ask for audio translations in different languages on the fly.

Unlike the last preview video we saw nearly a year ago, this clip seems a little more grounded in...

Is it time to disband the White House press corps?

The Week — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 07:15:00 -0500

It was probably, in retrospect, bad timing for Politico to publish a long article complaining about the Obama administration's ill treatment of the White House press corps on the same day the White House press corps, with lots of help from Politico, was complaining bitterly about not getting a photo-op of Obama and Tiger Woods golfing together in Florida last weekend. The big golf grievance successfully "kicked off a kind of debate about the Obama administration's atrocious record of letting the press corps talk to the president," raging "from the pages of Politico to... well, to the pages of ...

Simpson-Bowles 2.0: Is the new bipartisan deficit plan too conservative?

The Week — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:50:00 -0500

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction panel, earned the good regard of centrist pundits in Washington, D.C., for proposing a fairly balanced plan in 2011 that included both new tax revenues and spending cuts. But a balanced plan was not to be: Obama's negotiations that year with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to reach a grand bargain foundered on their inability to reach a compromise. Still, the Simpson-Bowles plan endured as a rare beacon of common sense shining through the partisan miasma in Congress, and the two men have come...

'We've been hacked!': @MTV and @BET's annoying Twitter stunt

The Week — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:00:00 -0500

After a string of hacks over the last few days littered the major corporate Twitter accounts of @BurgerKing and @Jeep with unprintable expletives, shoutouts to competitors like McDonald's and Cadillac, and references to Chicago rapper Chief Keef, someone at Viacom decided to have a little fun with the handles belonging to @MTV and @BET.

The hacks turned out to be fake.

Naturally, the stunt provoked a collective groan across the Twittersphere, with everyone from BuzzFeed to ABC News initially reporting the hacks as the real thing. (And understandably so.)

And not...