August 12th, 2019

Verizon Communications Inc. VZ -0.16% has agreed to sell its blogging website Tumblr to the owner of popular online-publishing tool WordPress.com, unloading for a nominal amount a site that once fetched a purchase price of more than $1 billion.

Automattic Inc. will buy Tumblr for an undisclosed sum and take on about 200 staffers, the companies said. Tumblr is a free service that hosts millions of blogs where users can upload photos, music and art, but it has been dwarfed by Facebook , Reddit and other services.

The convicted pedophile, who was 6 feet tall, apparently killed himself by kneeling toward the floor and strangling himself with the makeshift noose, law enforcement sources said Monday.He hadn’t been checked on for several hours, the sources said... Staffers attempted to revive him and he was taken to an infirmary inside the lockup, then transported by ambulance to the NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Most of the items would have belonged to women, said Massimo Osanna, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. A room with the bodies of 10 victims, including women and children, was excavated in the same house... The trove was found in what remained of a wooden box. The wood itself had decomposed and only the bronze hinges remained, preserved by the volcanic material which hardened over it. In it were crystals, ceramic, amethysts and amber. Scarabs (beetle-shaped amulets) from the Middle East were identified, along with various gems, including a carnelian with a craftsman figure and a glass bead engraved with the head of Dionysus, the Roman god of wine, fertility and ritual madness... Archaeologists are now trying to establish kinship ties between the bodies found in the house via DNA analysis.

The most meteors are most likely to fall in the predawn hours on August 13, yet under the light of a bright waxing gibbous moon... Although the brighter Perseids will overcome the moonlight, there’s nothing like a dark sky for meteor watching. In dark skies – no moon and no city lights – the Perseids have been known to usher in 50 to 60 meteors per hour, or more, at their peak.

Gold is having its best year since 2016, soaring over 17% year-to-date, outpacing stocks, bonds, and the dollar. And Gold is strong and getting stronger.

“We’re now going from trade wars almost into currency wars,” said Whitney George, president of Sprott Inc., a precious metals-focused fund. “Gold is a currency, but it’s nobody’s obligation, so it will stand tallest when everyone else is trying to debase their currency to be competitive globally.”

The Trump administration on Monday rolled out some of the broadest changes in decades to enforcement of the landmark Endangered Species Act, allowing the government to put an economic cost on saving a species and other changes critics contend could speed extinction for some struggling plants and animals. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other administration officials contend the changes improve efficiency of oversight , while protecting rare species.

Jeffrey Epstein’s legal team reportedly requested the wealthy financier be taken off suicide watch weeks before guards found him dead in his cell... Epstein’s lawyers requested that Epstein be taken off suicide watch, which requires around the clock surveillance of an inmate, in late July, according to the Wall Street Journal. Epstein was placed on the list after guards found him lying in his cell nearly unconscious with marks on his neck on July 23.

The culprit was - wait for it - unable to be identified because they were wearing a mask and using a code name. Volusia County Sheriff’s Sgt. Todd Smith said: “We’re probably not going to solve this one. And DNA (identification) is not going to be an option.” The 9mm Glock was holstered and sitting on top of a nightstand in the master bedroom when it was stolen during an orgy. The theft was helped along by the fact that the "theme" of the night was conveniently "anonymous sex". Guests were reportedly invited to (no pun intended) come and go as they pleased throughout the course of the weekend, and even bring friends and acquaintances if they wanted to. Guests were also encouraged to use fake names, or no names at all.

llinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed a bill into law on Friday that mandates all public schools in the state to teach "LGBT history" to students, emphasizing the "roles and contributions" of gays and transgenders in the history of Illinois and the United States. The law goes into effect on July 1, 2020.

The law amends the school code in Illinois. Specifically, it mandates that "the textbooks authorized to be purchased must include the roles and contributions of all people protected under the Illinois Human Rights Act and must be non-discriminatory as to any of the characteristics under the Act."

On Saturday, anti-ICE protesters shut down parts of New York City's West Side Highway. On Sunday, demonstrators shouted "never again" and "close the camps" in front of the midtown location of Amazon Books. The demonstration was organized by local Jewish leaders, who say Amazon provides technology that helps ICE make detentions... Protest leaders say Amazon has contracts with the Department of Homeland Security. Previous reports have said Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud computing service, hosts databases for the federal government that enable authorities to track immigrants. CBS News has reached out to Amazon for more information.

A large group of FBI officers were seen disembarking speedboats at the pier of Little St James on Monday morning and driving around on golf carts after the 66-year-old was found dead by suicide in his New York jail cell early on Saturday morning. Other officials with 'FBI' lettering on clear display were later seen overlooking the crystal blue sea from the top of Epstein's remote luxury home off the coast of St Thomas.

Federal agents, including FBI and CBP were seen on the dock and grounds of Little Saint James, the island owned by accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The U.S. Attorney's Office and SDNY declined to comment on the operation. https://t.co/euCLwh7rKi pic.twitter.com/leAKQqgruA

— ABC News (@ABC) August 12, 2019

scientists and doctors in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been running a clinical trial of new drugs to try to combat a year-long Ebola outbreak. On Monday, the trial’s co-sponsors at the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health announced that two of the experimental treatments appear to dramatically boost survival rates. While an experimental vaccine had previously been shown to shield people from catching Ebola, the announcement marks a first for people who have already been infected. “From now on, we will no longer say that Ebola is incurable,” said Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the Institut National de Recherche Biomedicale, in the DRC, which has overseen the trial’s operations on the ground.

Twelve more people were recorded dead from the storm, seven from Zhejiang province and five from Shandong, and 16 people were missing, according to data from provincial emergency bureaus and state media. The state broadcaster CCTV had put the death toll at 32 on Sunday. Typhoon Lekima made landfall early Saturday in Zhejiang province, with winds gusting up to 115 mph. The center of the storm has since traveled north through Shandong and off the coast.

Federal prosecutors announced Monday they would unseal a new indictment against a pal of Betts. The Dayton Daily News identified the man as Ethan Kollie, 24, who was arrested Friday night... Kollie allegedly purchased Betts’ body armor, as well as the 100-round double drum magazine that helped him mow down nine people in under 30 seconds.

The “public charge” regulation — pushed by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and other hard-line officials — is the latest part of President Donald Trump’s vast immigration crackdown. While Trump has railed against migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, the new regulation represents his most ambitious effort yet to restrict legal immigration as he gears up for his 2020 reelection campaign. Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli praised the regulatory change at a White House press briefing Monday morning.