Man Accused of Breaking Into Home to do Laundry

A Florida man has been arrested for allegedly breaking into a home to do his laundry.

Robert James Luther III, 23, faces charges of burglary after the owner of the home said he was sitting in his truck when he saw a man and a woman pry open the door to the laundry room and go inside, reported the Naples Daily News.

The rental property is currently vacant. The owner said he thinks Luther may have been a friend of the previous tenants, but he didn't have permission to enter or use the laundry equipment.

The owner told police that Luther used his electricity and approximately 30 gallons of water.

Woman Walks Across America But Fails To Brag About It

A 24-year-old woman named Catherine Li is walking all the way from Daly City, California (near San Francisco) to New York City—a 3,000-mile journey that's taken her more than seven months to complete. So, at this late date, walking across the country is not by itself that big of a deal, but you know what is crazy? This:

"There is no blog or Facebook page chronicling her moves. She isn't tweeting. She has no official sponsor."

Can you even imagine? No tweets? No camera crews? No Red Bull sponsorship? It's like if you can't brag about it and get a reality deal from it, why even bother going on a beautiful journey of self-discovery? Also, she's walking with a Sears shopping cart that she carries all of her belongings in, which sounds like it would be a giant pain in the ass, judging from how hard it is to push one of those carts around a parking lot.

So why is Ms. Li even doing this at all?

"‘People always ask me that,' she said with a laugh. ‘At first, I was so urgent (to respond) so I just started to tell them all the feelings I was having but I realized that was tough to do. So I just boil it down to the short version: I just felt like walking. I just decided to click over to living in the actual moment instead of inventing all these fantastic fantasies for the future.'"

Whoa. That is some next level thinking right there. She must understand something about life that the rest of us—who spend our days glued to our little devices, constantly tapping out our every thought—are missing. Whatever it is, it seems to be working for her because the reporter who caught up with her in Pennsylvania describes Li as having a "relentless smile." Hmm. Maybe we should all follow in her footsteps and hold off on tweeting about the cool things we're doing tonight and see if it makes us enjoy the experience more. Hahaha, just kidding! Pics or it didn't happen.

[MSNBC]

Dish Network’s New Blockbuster Streaming Service Offers More Movies than Netflix

Watch out Netflix, big blue's coming for you. Dish Network subscriptions are getting bundled up with a new service called Blockbuster Movie Pass, which includes Blockbuster's DVD-by-Mail and a new media streaming service. The bottom line? More titles than Netflix.

The combination satellite, mail, and streaming service is pretty massive: 100,000 DVDs by mail, 4,000 movies streaming by web, and 3,000 to your TV. In keeping with the old Blockbuster plans, you'll be able to exchange your movies in store and get access to 3,000 games by mail.

Adding the new streaming service will start at $10 a month for existing Dish Network subscribers—expect to pay more if you want more than one DVD at a time. New subscribers will get one year free if they subscribe before the end of January. What about the rest of us? Too bad! Blockbuster Movie Pass wiil be available only to Dish Network subscribers—at least for now.

Should Netflix be shaking in its boots? The $10 plan would be a no-brainer if I subscribed to cable or satellite. Netflix's combination DVD and streaming costs $16 per month and doesn't offer games, or in-store exchange, which I always thought was a convenient feature. Blockbuster says it has more than anyone else, but Netflix's streaming library of 20,000 titles will probably keep a lot of people hanging on—no matter how disaffected they are with Netflix after the company's recent missteps.

[Dish Network]

The New Facebook Layout, Translated

You've only got a few weeks with the most recent Facebook design changes before Zuck shoves a Timeline down your throats. To make the most of it, here's a quick guide to what all those new features are really for.

Okay, so maybe by "quick" we mean "snarky." But at least we can agree that this overview from Happy Place accurate. Full guide (click to biggie size) below:

[Happy Place via The High Definite]

A Story Worth A Wagging Tail

Harper, an 11-week-old pit bull born with a debilitating disorder commonly known as “swimmer puppy disorder,” was found in a trash bag and brought to a shelter to be euthanized.

Dogs with pectus excavatum can’t walk and aren’t expected to survive, but Harper was lucky enough to find shelter regular Erica Daniel, who took the puppy home and, with a little TLC, slowly helped Harper learn to stand on her own four paws.

Daniel admits falling in love with Harper was not what she had in mind — “I’d planned on taking her home that night,” she told NBC’s Today, “letting her sleep in bed with us, and having her humanely euthanized in the morning” — but felt she couldn’t just give up, especially after seeing Harper’s determination to walk around on her own.

“The whole world was against her, but she’s such a fighter,” says Daniel. “She’s a blessing. She’s awesome.”

Watch Today’s report below:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

[today / urlesque]

Trailer: Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey

Sundance standout Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey gets its first official trailer.

Synopsis: “The Muppet Elmo is one of the most beloved characters among children across the globe. Meet the unlikely man behind the puppet - the heart and soul of Elmo - Kevin Clash.”

A limited number of engagements are scheduled around the country starting October 21. Check the official site for theaters and showtimes near you.

The Google Doodle - Jim Henson Style

Google and The Jim Henson Company joined forces to create a special doodle honoring what would have been Henson’s 75th birthday. (Link to Google.)

The Easter Egg-filled interactive doodle allows users to “puppeteer” six original characters created specially for the occasion by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.

Meanwhile, on the official Google blog, Henson’s son Brian remembers his dad.

[@google / hensonco.]

Video: Scientists Record Movies Straight From Your Brain

Conclusion: The human brain is very adept at recreating Steve Martin's likeness. Using fMRI technology, science can now show you difference between what you see and what your brain sees.



Source: gallantlab.org / Found via: geekologie.com

Video: Unfortunately Timed News Blooper

Just when you thought the weather would just stop being SO annoying. That car accident sounds super sad…

[tumblr.thedailywh.at]

Video: Fire Truck Runs Out Of Water, Catches Fire

Kenya’s national army was called to put out an apartment building blaze in Kiambu after two failed attempts by two different fire departments. The reporter notes that in Kenya it’s “fashionable for fire engines to lose water when they really shouldn’t.”



[Via Star941FM]

Sobeys Partners With Target For Groceries

Target is teaming up with Sobeys.

Starting in 2013, the Canadian supermarket chain will provide frozen, dairy and dry grocery products to the U.S. fashion powerhouse, the two companies said in a statement.

"We are pleased to welcome Target as a valued wholesale customer. The associated increased revenue, and the supply chain efficiencies which will lower our costs, will continue to strengthen our competitive position," said Bill McEwan,, president and chief executive of Sobeys.

The two companies said they will look at ways of using each other's distribution systems to reduce costs and will also explore other supply chain opportunities.

Also on Friday, Target said it has finalized its store selection with Zellers, choosing a further 84 leases. It has now taken over a total of 189 leases from Zellers following a January agreement to purchase as many as 220 leases for $1.82 billion from the Hudson's Bay Company

Target said 29 of the 84 new locations will open as stores in 2013, while the remainder will be sold to other retailers or back to landlords. Target has already said rights for 39 of the locations will be transferred to Walmart.

Target plans to open 125 to 135 stores in Canada, the majority of which will open in 2013, beginning with the first batch in March and continuing with four subsequent cycles later in the year.

"Target is excited to take another meaningful step toward our expansion in Canada," said Tony Fisher, president of Target Canada. "We look forward to delivering a superior shopping experience for our guests throughout Canada and building on our strong reputation as a good neighbour and partner in the communities in which we do business."

Entertainment: Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Writing An Autobiography

Arnold Schwarzenegger is writing his memoirs, which certainly won's stir up any controversy because he's known for being respectful to the ladies. With a career like Arnold's, there are dozens of different directions you could go in for a title, but Arnold's ghostwriter has already come up with a doozy. It's called Total Recall. So clever! The book is tentatively subtitled My Unbelievably True Life Story, which doesn't sound quite right, but perhaps that's fitting. [LAT]

• Gwyneth Paltrow says she was excited to be seated behind the cast of 30 Rock at the Emmys, but "The seat filler before me was sweaty, so my chair was wet. Gross!" [Us]
  
• Beyonce on carrying her bey-be: "It's been great. I feel free. I feel very empowered ... I was just wondering how it's going to be when one day I am pregnant and everyone's like, 'Oh god, I don't want to hear this again. But I'm happy that people were happy and I actually didn't announce it in a statement. I said it's better to just show everyone." [People]
  
• Nadya Suleman is trying the old "you can't fire me because I quit" strategy with her house. She hasn't been paying the mortgage and it's about to be foreclosed on, but she says she doesn't want to live there anyway. [TMZ]
  
• Joe Pesci is suing because he was dropped from the film Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father. The studio responded, "It has been over 20 years since Mr. Pesci has been able to gather the attention he has by merely interjecting his role in this film." [TMZ]
• Gossip sites seem to think the public is clamouring for details on the sex life of Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris, so here you go: Hef says, "We had sex with her and a girlfriend. We had sex the first night that we met, with another girl, and it was such a nice relationship that I kept them both over for a weekend." [Radar]
• AMC announced today that it's launching a Watch What Happens: Live knock off about The Walking Dead. The show is called Talking Dead and G4's Chris Hardwick is the host. [The Wrap]
• The invitation to Eva Amurri's bachelorette party features a photo of her lingerie-clad backside. Sure it's kind of tacky, but I appreciated her rear end's work on Californication. [Us]
• Ghostbusters is returning to theaters for three Thursdays in October! If you haven't seen it in years, I recommend watching it again. I saw it hundreds of times when I was little, but all of the dirty jokes went right over my head. (Why would a ghost want to unbuckle Ray's pants?) [The Wrap]
• TMZ has pics from the home of the 16 & Pregnant couple charged with child neglect. Harvey Levin and company have decided the house was just cluttered, not filthy. [TMZ]
• Dakota Fanning just started NYU and for the first time she doesn't have to wear a uniform to class. "If you ever catch me in sweatpants in class, that's not good," she joked. "I've tried not to dress like that." Just wait until finals. [People]

Why Everyone Is Kissing Up to Facebook

Their lips still chapped from smooching Apple, the news media have discovered they must now suck up to Facebook, too. Just as Apple has the wildly popular iPad, Facebook has 800 million users, many of whom check it first thing in the morning in place of a newspaper. Which is why everyone today leapt to go to work in Mark Zuckerberg's money mill, and thanked him for the privilege.

The scene at today's Facebook F8 developer conference was a lot like the bad old days of AOL, when news was funneled through a central online gatekeeper (GigaOm said as much). From the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal, from the old line movie studios behind Hulu to the new media pioneers at Netflix and Spotify, it seemed everyone was eager to publish "Facebook Editions" inside the social network's walls, and to insinuate themselves into Facebook's new "Timeline" interface and "Ticker" sidebar.

For handing over content to run on Facebook, the media get eyeballs. Facebook gets more. As the New York Times put it,

Facebook is... positioning itself to become the conduit through which news and entertainment is found and consumed... For Facebook, the potential payoff is huge[:] ...even more data about consumers' habits and desires, which in turn can be used to sell more precisely customized advertising...

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive... called what Facebook was doing an effort to "rethink some industries."

So Facebook is rethinking the news media on the news media's behalf. The industry's well compensated and notoriously prickly moguls no doubt appreciate that, just as they appreciated the new paradigm presented by Apple's iPad, which offered the chance to give Apple a 30 percent cut of revenue, relinquish editorial veto power over content and, oh ya, to get on 200 million+ iPads and iPhones and iPods Touch, each pre-loaded with a credit card. F

There have been some news media success stories on the iOS platform, both journalistically and financially, but nothing that remotely lived up to the industry's outsized expectations of salvation. Now a new land grab is on at Facebook, which offers an even bigger audience, along with the same sorts of restrictions. There will be some innovation there, too, but what's needed is intense focus — a long haul attention to what news consumers really need, and patience for the iterative and sometimes maddening technological journey required to get them there. That sort of approach can pay off big, but it's not particularly compatible with frantic, wishful hopping from trendy locked trunk to trendy locked trunk.

[Pic: Zuckerberg at today's F8 cofnerence, via Getty]

Hugo Boss Apologizes For Making Nazis Look Fabulous

German fashion label Hugo Boss issued a formal apology for that little blip on its resume — the one about them outfitting millions of Nazi soldiers. The acknowledgement comes on the clicked heels of a new book about the company, commissioned by Hugo Boss themselves in order to shed some light on the era.

Hugo Boss has never denied having provided Nazi soldiers with uniforms, but Hugo Ferdinand Boss, who founded the company in 1924, always maintained until his death in 1948 that he had done so to "protest his business." (It's the old, "I was only following hemming orders!" defense.) However the book, Hugo Boss, 1924-1945: The History of a Clothing Factory During the Weimar Republic and Third Reich, reveals the designer's involvement with the Nazis went much further. Not only did he outfit the SS, but he took advantage of forced labor in his factory.

[A] total of 140 Polish forced laborers, mostly women, as well as some 40 French prisoners of war, were made to work for Boss during the Holocaust. They were housed in a camp in one area of the factory, and lived in extremely poor conditions with "uncertain" food and hygiene levels.

The apology, which appeared on the Hugo Boss website on Thursday, therefore states that the company wanted to "express its profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule."

So, sorry, 180 factory workers! There. Was that so hard? Just six million more apologies to go.

[Haaretz.com, photo: AP]

Video: This Guy Sounds Exactly Like Eddie Vedder

No doubt, that guy who sounds a hell of a lot like Freddie Mercury was pretty impressive. But Javier Diaz, who hails from Santiago, Chile, sounds exactly like Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder. As in jaw-dropping, OMG, holy shit, unreal.

Though this video's been around for several months, it seems to be enjoying a resurgence—perhaps because of the popularity of Mercury-mimicking Marc Martel's video. Makes us wonder if we're witnessing some sort of "sound-alike viral video of the day" trend. Who's the next artist whose vocal double we'll get to meet? Please say Taylor Dayne.

You can find other Vedderesque performance by Diaz here. And if you understand Spanish, here's an interview with him.

[YouTube]

Man’s Death Ruled a Case of Spontaneous Combustion

Is human spontaneous combustion a real thing? Damned if I know. But some coroner in Ireland has just ruled that a 76-year-old man who burned to death in his home died after catching on fire without external provocation, so according to that coroner, the answer is YES.

The case in question involves Michael Faherty, a pensioner from the Irish city of Galway who in December 2010 died at home for no apparent reason other than his body just done burned itself up. The Irish Times described the conditions surrounding his death:

Garda Gerard O'Callaghan said he had gone to the house after the fire had been put out and found Mr Faherty lying on his back in a small sittingroom, with his head closest to an open fireplace.

He said the fire had been confined to the sittingroom and the rest of the house sustained only smoke damage. The only damage was to the body, which had been totally burnt, the ceiling above him and the floor underneath.

In determining Faherty's cause of death, coroner Ciaran McLoughlin tried to find an alternate explanation by consulting fancy medical books and other trustworthy sources, but after examining the evidence no other explanation really fit. One of the books he consulted as part of his research says spontaneous combustion victims are "almost always near an open fireplace or chimney," so maybe the lesson here for all of us is to stay far away from fireplaces and chimneys. And always, always remember to hydrate.

[BBC. Image via Shutterstock]

Hitman Falls in Love with Target, Fakes Her Death with Ketchup

In July, a Brazilian hitman named Carlos Roberto de Jesus was paid a little over $500 by a jealous housewife to kill Iranildes Aguiar Araujo — another woman she suspected of having an affair with her husband. But Carlos broke Rule Number One of the Hitman's Handbook, the Daily Mail reports. He forgot to check his heart at the door.

The moment he laid eyes on the beautiful Iranildes, Carlos was smitten. The feelings were mutual. Realizing he couldn't go through with it, he confessed to her, and the two concocted a plot to dupe his employer into thinking he had.

The new lovers bought two bottles of ketchup from a local supermarket.

De Jesus then got his supposed victim to rip her shirt and grip a machete under her armpit.

He then taped her mouth up, tied her hands, smothered her with ketchup and got her to lie still on the floor as if she were dead.

A photo was snapped and sent to the jealous woman, and worked like a charm. What other proof could she possibly need? The knife blade was clearly buried deeply in the space between Iranildes' arm and chest. It was the perfect crime!

That is, until Carlos was spotted making out with his supposed victim three days later. The wife then went to police to report that Carlos had stolen $1,000 from her. While in custody, Carlos mustard all of his courage and admitted to the scheme, and all three were arrested. As for the future of the couple, they mayo may not live happily ever after.

[Daily Mail]

Leading Holocaust Denier Dabbles in 9/11 Trutherism

Iranian President/huge Whitney fan Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked walkouts at an address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. What was the big deal?

Well, there was the stuff about how European countries "still use the Holocaust after six decades as the excuse to pay ransom or fine to Zionists."

And the stuff about "the mysterious September 11th incident" that paved the way for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

There was the part about that high-profile assassination in May, in which the U.S., "instead of assigning a fact-finding team, killed the main perpetrator and threw his body into the sea. Why should it not have been allowed to bring him in to trial?"

A few hours later, Ahmadinejad gave the AP an interview in which he used his background in engineering to expand on his theories about that "mysterious incident."

"This was a systematic collapse of those towers," Ahmadinejad said. "I can say with certainty there must have been explosive material that was set off in sequence." [...]

"A few airplanes without previous coordination known to the security forces and the intelligence community in the United States cannot become missiles and target the heart of the United States," Ahmadinejad said.

And don't get him started on that moon landing!

[NPR/AP, photo via AP]

Light Might Not Be The Fastest Thing in the Universe

Italian physicists say they've recorded sub-atomic particles that travel faster than the speed of light. If true, it would disprove Einstein's theory of special relativity. Meanwhile, in America, we've managed to perfect the technology to measure the speed of pizza.