| While boarding a flight Thursday morning for a surprise visit to immigrant child detention facilities near the U.S.-Mexico border, First Lady Melania Trump was spotted wearing a jacket emblazoned with the phrase “I DON’T REALLY CARE DO U?” on its back. The attire inevitably garnered outrage online, especially considering the casually indifferent tone of the jacket when juxtaposed with the potentially permanent separation of young children, including toddlers, from their parents upon being detained at the border. “It’s a jacket. There was no hidden message,” Melania’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. (She is technically correct: the message wasn’t hidden; it was printed in bold white font across the entire back.) “After today's important visit to Texas, I hope this isn't what the media is going to choose to focus on.” |
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| Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was dropped from a top speakers bureau after he dismissed a story about a 10-year-old immigrant with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother at the border by saying “womp womp.” His name was taken off the Leading Authorities Inc. website and a source told CNN the bureau discontinued its association with Lewandowski Wednesday. Speakers bureaus help manage speaking engagements for notable figures. Lewandowski defended his remarks despite backlash. |
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| A suspect has been arrested in connection with the murder of rapper XXXTentacion, local Florida news outlets report. The controversial chart-topping artist was shot and killed Monday in South Florida. The Sun Sentinel named the suspect as 22-year-old Dedrick D. Williams. He was taken into custody by the Broward County Sheriff’s Department shortly after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday on charges of murder without premeditation, violation of probation, and driving without a valid license. Williams was serving a five-year probation for four counts of grand theft auto, the Miami Herald reports. He had also been subject to a temporary injunction for domestic violence. XXXTentacion, 20, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, was shot as he was driving away from RIVA Motorsports in Deerfield Beach in his BMW. It’s not yet clear if other suspects are being sought for the murder. |
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| Koko, the gorilla who captivated imaginations with her ability to use sign language to communicate with humans, died in her sleep Tuesday morning. “The Gorilla Foundation is sad to announce the passing of our beloved Koko,” the organization said in a press release. Born July 4, 1971, Koko—named Hanabiko, which is Japanese for “fireworks child,” a nod to her birthday—was a western lowland gorilla who was chosen as an infant to work on a language-research project with psychologist Penny Patterson at the San Francisco Zoo. Koko became an icon, shooting her own portrait for a National Geographic cover in 1978, becoming pals with actor Robin Williams, and even having an adorable kitten, All Ball. The Gorilla Foundation said it would honor her legacy by continuing work on wildlife conservation, growing an ape sanctuary in Maui, and creating a sign-language app. |
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| Remember Rosetta Stone, the go-to language learning CD experience? The trusted service has adapted to the demands of the digital age while you weren’t looking—and Matt Hulett, newly-hired President of Language, is continuing to drive innovation at Rosetta Stone. Their newly-revamped app was designed to help you learn the nuances of a language, which means new features help you go beyond just memorizing vocab. Live Tutoring connects you with a language coach to practice having actual conversations, while TruAccent is like finishing touch tech that helps you hone your pronunciation. The goal of this human-centered approach? To help you feel more comfortable speaking Japanese in that upcoming business meeting or French as you navigate the streets of Paris. It’s no wonder the technology is used by NASA and the U.S. State Department! The app also offers offline and cross-device access, which means you can pick up on your iPad wherever you left off on your iPhone. Bonus to all of this: It’s also more affordable now. So whether you need a crash course in Italian during your flight to Italy, or just want to do something productive while you commute, download the app now and start learning. Scouted is here to surface products that you might like. Follow us on Flipboard. Please note that if you buy something featured in one of our posts, The Daily Beast may collect a share of sales. |
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| The Whitney Museum of American Art is set to mount the first U.S. museum retrospective of Andy Warhol’s work since 1989. Curated by Donna de Salvo, who knew Warhol and oversaw two shows of his work when he was alive, Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again will feature more than 350 works of art, many assembled together for the first time. The museum said the exhibit, opening Nov. 12 in New York City, would “unite all aspects, media, and periods of Warhol’s 40-year career.” While the exhibition will include Warhol’s famous Pop pieces from the 1960s, De Salvo told The New York Times it would also feature lesser-known pieces from the 1970s and ’80s. It will also include explicitly gay-related pieces, such as when, on the facade of the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair, Warhol presented portraits based on FBI criminal mug shots with the double entendre title Most Wanted Men. “His insertion into a highly public space of something that had this very homoerotic aspect is a pretty radical gesture,” De Salvo told The Times. “Perhaps more than any artist before or since, Andy Warhol understood America’s defining twin desires for innovation and conformity, public visibility and absolute privacy,” De Salvo said in a Whitney press statement. “He transformed these contradictory impulses into a completely original art that, I believe, has profoundly influenced how we see and think about the world now.” The Whitney exhibition will run through March 31, 2019. It will then travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. |
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| Immigrant children as young as 14 say they were beaten while handcuffed, locked up in solitary confinement, and left naked in concrete cells at a juvenile detention center in Virginia. “Whenever they used to restrain me and put me in the chair, they would handcuff me,” said a Honduran immigrant who was sent to the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center when he was just 15. “Strapped me down all the way, from your feet all the way to your chest, you couldn’t really move... They have total control over you. They also put a bag over your head. It has little holes; you can see through it. But you feel suffocated with the bag on.” Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam asked for an investigation of the facility after news outlets reported the allegations Thursday. Many of the kids were reportedly sent to the facility after immigration authorities accused them of belonging to gangs, and most held in the facility who were the focus of the abuse lawsuit were caught crossing the border illegally alone. The accusers were not children who have been separated from their families under the Trump administration’s recent policy; but the AP said it was not immediately clear if immigrant children had been sent to the site since the Trump policy change in April. President Donald Trump has repeatedly cited gang activity as a reason for his hardline position on illegal immigration. A former child-development specialist who worked inside the facility said she saw kids there with bruises and broken bones they blamed on guards. The detention facility denied all allegations of physical abuse. |
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| States can require Internet vendors to collect sales tax even if they don’t have a physical presence in the state, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Before the ruling, states said they were losing billions of dollars in sales tax revenue and businesses with brick-and-mortar stores complained they were at a disadvantage. The 5-4 ruling overturned a 1992 decision, Quill Corporation v. North Dakota, which stated that businesses did not have to collect taxes “unless they have a substantial connection to the state,” The New York Times reported. Online retail stocks fell after the ruling, with Amazon dropping 1 percent, and Etsy, a craft store, dropping 4.5 percent. “Quill puts both local businesses and many interstate businesses with physical presence at a competitive disadvantage relative to remote sellers,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority decision. Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, writing that rule changes “with the potential to disrupt the development of such a critical segment of the economy should be undertaken by Congress.” |
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| U.S. Geological Survey scientists need permission from the Department of the Interior before they agree to most interviews with reporters under a new Trump administration protocol, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Department of the Interior will also be able to decline interview requests. USGS employees told the Times that this will delay their ability to answer reporter questions and is a significant change. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told newspaper via email that “the characterization that there is any new policy or that it for some reason targets scientists is completely false.” She said the organization was just asking scientists to follow Obama-era guidelines. The guidelines say that the department must be notified, but does not require scientists to get permission ahead of interviews. |
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| Researchers have discovered links between viruses in the brain and Alzheimer’s disease, The Guardian reports. Tests on nearly 1,000 subjects have found that two strains of herpes were more prevalent in brains of those with early-stage Alzheimer’s than in control subjects. Whether or not the virus is contributing to the disease remains unclear. Scientists are divided over whether the virus can actually trigger the disease or if those on a path to Alzheimer’s are simply more prone to infection. When the scientists started their study, they were searching for genes that were unusually active in the brains of people with early stages Alzheimer’s, not the presence of viruses. Lead author of the study, Ben Readhead, assistant professor at Arizona State University-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center, told The Guardian, “We didn’t go looking for viruses, but viruses sort of screamed out at us.” But don’t panic. The viruses found in the study were not the ones that cause cold sores, but rather more common strains that most people already carry without experiencing symptoms. |
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