Here is a news article: Ariana Grande Manchester Concert: 19 Fatalities Confirmed After Explosion

 UPDATE 3: Manchester police confirmed 19 are dead and around 50 injured. They received "reports of an explosion at Manchester Arena" just before 10:35pm local time. British Transportation Police report, "Officers are at Manchester Arena following reports of an explosion within the foyer area of the stadium at 10.30pm this evening." NBC reports that officials suspect a suicide bomber is to blame for the incident.

 Latest statement on incident at Manchester Arena pic.twitter.com/BEpLOan3dY — G M Police (@gmpolice) May 23, 2017

 UPDATE 2: Manchester's regional counter terrorism unit is treating this as a possible terrorist incident, according to the BBC's Daniel Sandford.

 The North West Counter Terrorism Unit is treating the incident at #ManchesterArena as a possible terrorist incident. — Daniel Sandford (@BBCDanielS) May 22, 2017

 UPDATE 1: Greater Manchester Police have issued a statement that there have been a number of confirmed fatalities and others injured at Manchester Arena. An on-the-ground source tells Billboard at least 18 have been reported dead.

 Police statement on incident at Manchester Arena pic.twitter.com/gaKASukx9a — G M Police (@gmpolice) May 22, 2017

 Emergency services have rushed to the U.K.'s Manchester Arena where Ariana Grande had been performing Monday (May 22) after concertgoers claim two explosions were heard.

 Billboard has confirmed Grande is "okay" with the singer's rep and that her team is further investigating what happened. Supporting act BIA confirmed she and her team were also "okay."

 So far no official report has been issued, but people at the concert and in the surrounding area are posting on social media that there were two bangs and people running out of the 21,000-person capacity arena.

 CNN spoke to one of the concertgoers, Kiera Dawber, immediately after she exited the arena. Dawber said she saw "at least" 20 dead, and didn't think it looked like the deaths were the result of a stampede. "There was a massive explosion, a bang, smoke coming through the steps…It was just chaos."

 Going through corridors to exit the arena, Dawber described seeing "at least 20, 30 people on the floor. Just… dead. You could see they were passed away, some people with injuries. There was a guy holding what looked like his wife and she wasn't in a good state….There was blood and shoes and handbags and bits of food and phones….I don't think I'll ever get rid of the images."

 One man captured video of an emergency vehicle racing to the scene. See it here:

 Two loud bangs heard around Manchester arena. People running out of the arena. No idea what's going on pic.twitter.com/KaRzQckvEE — Alan Brennan (@alanbmufc92) May 22, 2017

 Others shared video from from the frightening scene inside the arena:

 EXPLOSION AT MANCHESTER ARENA AND EVERYONE RAN OUT SO SCARY-- pic.twitter.com/pJbUBoELtE — ♡♡ (@hannawwh) May 22, 2017

 New video shows mass panic as fans flee Ariana Grande concert at the #Manchester Arena after 2 explosions.pic.twitter.com/gufS5r7tRj — Tennessee (@TEN_GOP) May 22, 2017

 I was inside Ariana Grande's concert in Manchester Arena. Right at the end a explosion was heard. Smoke on the corridors and blood — Critico en serio (@criticoenserio) May 22, 2017

 Wtf is happening in Manchester arena? Massive bang & everyone is running & screaming, people are crying — Rebecca B (@RebeccaBx) May 22, 2017

 Network Rail has told Reuters U.K. and other outlets that all train lines out of the Manchester Victoria station are currently blocked with emergency services in attendance. Mancunians around the arena are offering to take in anyone stranded in the area with the hashtag #RoomforManchester on Twitter.

 Local police are calling it a "serious incident" and asking people to stay away from the area.

 Emergency services responding to serious incident at Manchester Arena. Avoid the area. More details will follow as soon as available — G M Police (@gmpolice) May 22, 2017

 Greater Manchester is the United Kingdom's second-most populous urban area with a population of 2.55 million.

 We will update as more details become available. ||||| MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - British police on Tuesday identified the suicide bomber who killed 22 people, including children, in an attack on a crowded concert hall in Manchester, and said they were trying to establish whether he had acted alone or with help from others.

 The man suspected of carrying out Britain's deadliest bombing in nearly 12 years was named as Salman Abedi, aged 22, but police declined to give further details about him. (For a graphic showing where the blast hit: tmsnrt.rs/2rKy5Y1)

 U.S. security sources, citing British intelligence officials, said he was born in Manchester in 1994 to parents of Libyan origin. He is believed to have traveled by train from London before the attack, they said.

 “Our priority, along with the police counter-terrorism network and our security partners, is to continue to establish whether he was acting alone or working as part of a wider network,” Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said.

 The attacker set off his improvised bomb as crowds streamed out of the Manchester Arena after a pop concert by Ariana Grande, a U.S. singer especially popular with teenage girls.

 “All acts of terrorism are cowardly,” Prime Minister Theresa May said outside her Downing Street office after a meeting with security and intelligence chiefs.

 “But this attack stands out for its appalling sickening cowardice, deliberately targeting innocent, defenseless children and young people who should have been enjoying one of the most memorable nights of their lives.”

 Britain has increased its security threat level to “critical” from “severe” following the attack, May said in a later televised statement, adding that members of the armed forces would boost security at key sites and military personnel might be deployed at public events such as concerts and sports events.

 Islamic State, now being driven from territories in Syria and Iraq by Western-backed armed forces, claimed responsibility for what it called a revenge attack against “Crusaders”, but there appeared to be contradictions in its account of the operation.

 FRANTIC SEARCHES

 Witnesses related the horror of the blast, which unleashed a stampede just as the concert ended at Europe’s largest indoor arena, full to its capacity of 21,000.

 “We ran and people were screaming around us and pushing on the stairs to go outside and people were falling down, girls were crying, and we saw these women being treated by paramedics having open wounds on their legs ... it was just chaos,” said Sebastian Diaz, 19. “It was literally just a minute after it ended, the lights came on and the bomb went off.”

 A video posted on Twitter showed fans, many of them young, screaming and running from the venue. Dozens of parents frantically searched for their children, posting photos and pleading for information on social media.

 Singer Grande, 23, said on Twitter she was devastated: “broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words.”

 The attack was the deadliest in the UK since four British Muslims killed 52 people in suicide bombings on London’s transport system in 2005. But it will have reverberations far beyond British shores.

 Attacks in cities including Paris, Nice, Brussels, St Petersburg, Berlin and London have shocked Europeans already anxious over security challenges from mass immigration and pockets of domestic Islamist radicalism. Islamic State has repeatedly called for attacks as retaliation for Western involvement in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

 While claiming responsibility on its Telegram account, the group appeared to contradict the police description of a suicide bomber. It suggested explosive devices were placed “in the midst of the gatherings of the Crusaders”.

 “What comes next will be more severe on the worshippers of the cross,” the Telegram posting said.

 It did not name the bomber, as it usually does in attacks it has ordered, and appeared also to contradict a posting on another Islamic State account, Amaq, which spoke of “a group of attackers”. That reference, however, was later removed.

 People take part in a vigil for the victims of an attack on concert goers at Manchester Arena, in central Manchester, Britain May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

 “DEPRAVED”

 May said security services were working to see if a wider group was involved in the attack, which fell less than three weeks before a national election. Campaigning was suspended as a mark of respect.

 May spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and several other foreign leaders on Tuesday about the attack, her spokesman said. She also visited the police headquarters and a children’s hospital in Manchester.

 The White House said Trump had agreed with May during their telephone conversation that the attack was “particularly wanton and depraved”.

 Macron and senior French ministers walked to the British embassy in Paris to sign the condolence book.

 German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it “will only strengthen our resolve to...work with our British friends against those who plan and carry out such inhumane deeds”.

 The U.N. Security Council condemned “the barbaric and cowardly terrorist attack” and expressed solidarity with Britain in the fight against terrorism.

 Queen Elizabeth held a minute’s silence at a garden party at Buckingham Palace in London.

 Manchester remained on high alert, with additional armed police drafted in. London Mayor Sadiq Khan said more police had been ordered onto the streets of the British capital.

 Police raided a property in the Manchester district of Fallowfield where they carried out a controlled explosion.

 On Tuesday evening thousands of people attended a vigil in central Manchester in somber but defiant mood.

 “There’s hard times again in these streets of our city, but we won’t take defeat and we don’t want your pity, because this is the place where we stand strong together with a smile on our face, Mancunians forever,” local poet Tony Walsh said in a poem he read to the crowd that drew loud cheers and applause.

 Slideshow (24 Images)

 British police do not routinely carry firearms, but London police said extra armed officers would be deployed at this weekend’s soccer cup final at Wembley and rugby at Twickenham. Security would be reviewed also for smaller events.

 In March, a British-born convert to Islam plowed a car into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four people before stabbing to death a police officer who was on the grounds of parliament. The man was shot dead at the scene.

 In 2015, Pakistani student Abid Naseer was convicted in a U.S. court of conspiring with al Qaeda to blow up the Arndale shopping center in the center of Manchester in April 2009. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| This will appear next to all of your comments

 This will NOT appear anywhere on Newser ||||| Joseph Carozza, a representative from Ariana Grande's U.S. record label, said the singer is OK following reports of an explosion at her concert in Manchester, England.

 Late tonight, Grande shared a message on Twitter writing: "broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so sorry. i don't have words."

 broken.

 from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have words. — Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) May 23, 2017

 Police say 22 people are confirmed dead and around 59 others are injured following reports of a blast Monday night at Manchester Arena.

 Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said children are among the deceased.

 It is being treated as a terrorist incident until police know otherwise, Greater Manchester Police said late Monday.

 Sky News reported that the concert was sold out Monday.

 The Dangerous Woman Tour is the third concert tour by Grande to support her third studio album, Dangerous Woman. The tour began on February 3, 2017, in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Talking Stick Resort Arena.

 Musicians and celebrities posted messages of support as reports unfolded about the incident.

 "My heart breaks for everyone who endured the terrifying attack at Ariana Grande's show in Manchester," wrote Paula Abdul.

 "Praying for everyone at @ArianaGrande's show," Katy Perry posted.

 My heart breaks for everyone who endured the terrifying attack at Ariana Grande's show in Manchester. I'm praying for everyone there... — Paula Abdul (@PaulaAbdul) May 23, 2017

 Our prayers and strengh to the victims and their families involved in this tragedy in Manchester. Stay strong. @ArianaGrande 🙏🏾 — Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) May 22, 2017

 Praying for everyone at @ArianaGrande's show — KATY PERRY (@katyperry) May 22, 2017

 Sending love to those affected in Manchester. — Ellie Goulding (@elliegoulding) May 22, 2017

 Stunned by the news coming in from the UK… my thoughts are with the fans and families at Ariana’s Manchester show. Awful — Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest) May 22, 2017

 Just saw the news about Manchester... Our hearts are breaking 💔 Prayers for all who attended, their families, Ari and her whole crew. — Fifth Harmony (@FifthHarmony) May 23, 2017

 My heart is with you Manchester. — Brie Larson (@brielarson) May 23, 2017

 I just heard about the attack at Ariana's concert.This is truly awful. I'm sending my deepest condolences & praying for every one affected🙏🏼 — Victoria Justice (@VictoriaJustice) May 23, 2017

 Absolutely Horrendous what happened in Manchester tonight. My thoughts are with the great people of Manchester and also Ari and her team xx — Niall Horan (@NiallOfficial) May 23, 2017

 Horrified hearing about what's going on in Manchester . Bless everyone x — Lily (@lilyallen) May 23, 2017 ||||| MANCHESTER, England — Children were among the 22 people killed in a suicide attack after an Ariana Grande concert at Britain's Manchester Arena, police confirmed Tuesday.

 Meanwhile, authorities identified the suicide bomber responsible for the carnage as 22-year-old Salman Abedi and warned angry residents against any reprisals.

 "We understand that feelings are very raw right now and people are looking for answers," Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said. "We will not tolerate hate towards any parts of our community."

 Police also arrested a 23-year-old man in Manchester in connection with the attack.

 Abedi had a British passport, sources told NBC News, but it was not immediately clear where he was born. He was killed when he detonated an improvised explosive device near one of the venue's exits at 10:33 p.m. local time Monday, officials said.

 The pop star's fan base is primarily girls and teenagers, so the venue was packed full of families.

 While Hopkins did not identify any of the dead, 8-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos' death was confirmed by her school.

 Some 59 other people were wounded, including some who suffered life-threatening injuries, officials said.

 And thousands of grieving Manchester residents were expected to attend a vigil at 6 p.m. local time Tuesday to remember the victims.

 ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack but provided no evidence and neither U.S. nor British officials have corroborated that.

 The blast sparked a nightlong search for loved ones as frantic parents tried to locate their children, and groups of friends scattered by the explosion sought each other.

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 Video shot inside the 21,000-capacity venue showed terrified teenagers screaming as they made their way out amid a sea of pink balloons. Some fans were still wearing the singer and former Nickelodeon TV actress' trademark kitten ears as they fled.

 "We have been treating this as a terrorist incident," Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins told reporters. "Our priority is to establish whether he was acting alone or as part of a network."

 Rohit Kachroo, security editor for NBC News' U.K. partner ITV News, reported that nuts and bolts were spotted in the arena's foyer but police would not comment on whether victims had suffered wounds from shrapnel.

 “ When it exploded, it just rocked your whole body”

 Police said the explosion took place outside the arena catching people as they exited, also triggering chaos inside the venue. U.S. officials said initial reports indicated that some of the injuries might have been caused by a stampede of concertgoers.

 Nicola Murray, who was at the concert with her 12-year-old daughter Olivia, told NBC News that she witnessed "a red-orange-looking flash" and heard an "incredibly loud bang."

 "Within seconds, as you can imagine, it was chaos and people were panicking and running to try and get out the door," she said. "We were getting swept with the people crushing to get out and I was terrified my daughter would get crushed. At one point, she was getting dragged away from me but I managed to pull her into me and force her in front of me while trying to direct her to the door and down the steps.”

 Murray, who had traveled to the concert from the Scottish town of Hamilton, said the area outside the venue was "full of people who were completely traumatized — kids and adults alike all crying, screaming, some still running away ... adults in cars who were due to be picking up kids screaming trying to find them."

 The scene after a suicide bombing in the foyer of the Manchester Arena on Monday. PA Wire/PA Images

 Alison Pritchard, 34, who works as a waitress, recalled hearing "an almighty explosion behind us."

 Her friend Carole Taylor, a 49-year-old teacher, told NBC News she turned around to see "this plume of smoke coming over and all this sort of debris and embers floating from the roof."

 "When it exploded, it just rocked your whole body," she said. "It went right through us. People started screaming."

 Related: A 'Very Horrified City' Embraces Kindness After Concert Attack

 Steve Rotheram, the mayor of Liverpool, told NBC News his two daughters and two nieces were at the show. They described "pandemonium" at the scene with "people climbing over seats to get to exits [and] obviously there were a lot of young girls so there was a lot of screaming and panic," he said.

 However, Rotheram's four relatives managed to escape safely.

 Hopkins, the police chief, confirmed that children were among the dead and warned of "difficult days ahead."

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 British Prime Minister Theresa May said the terrorist set out "to cause maximum carnage and kill and injure indiscriminately."

 She added: "This attacks stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice — deliberately targeting innocent and defenseless young people who should have been enjoying one of the most memorable nights of their lives.”

 Related: Rock Legend's Daughter 'Safe' After Concert Carnage

 Police said emergency services received 240 calls after the incident and victims were taken to eight hospitals. At least a dozen people aged under 16 were hospitalized.

 Jon Rouse, a local health official, said the wounded included "a number of individuals who have very, very serious injuries ... and people who are going to be in hospital for a long time."

 Ariana Grande performs at Madison Square Garden in New York on Feb. 23. Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Republic Record

 Grande, 23, tweeted early Tuesday: "broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have words."

 In a statement, the pop star's manager Scooter Braun thanked first responders "who rushed towards danger to help save lives."

 He added: "We ask all of you to hold the victims, their families and all those affected in your hearts and prayers."

 Bianca Landrau, the Boston hip-hop star known as Bia, who also performed, tweeted: "Guys we are okay!!!"

 And singer Victoria Monét, the opening act, said in a statement that she was safe but "heartbroken that loved ones who came to have the night of their lives ended up losing them."

 "I wish I could say that I am OK, but I am not," she wrote, adding: "Please send all your prayers up high for Manchester."

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 Britain's terrorist threat level stands at "severe," the second-highest rung on a five-point scale, meaning an attack is highly likely.

 White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump's national security team was keeping him up to date while he is in Israel.

 Speaking after meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem on Tuesday, Trump blamed "evil losers" for the attack, adding that he won't call terrorists "monsters" as "they'd think that's a great name."

 He added: "We cannot stand for a moment longer for the slaughter of innocent people."

 The Department of Homeland Security stressed that there was no information to indicate a specific credible threat involving U.S. music venues.

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 Manchester Arena, which opened in 1995, is one of the largest indoor venues in Europe. More than 1 million people fill its seats every year. It is located near the Manchester Victoria transit station.

 Local families offered beds for the night to people who had been affected by the explosion, and taxis provided free rides.

 Before you speculate about those Muslims again, Muslim cabbies and taxi drivers giving free lifts to get ppl safe #Manchester — A.Wajid (@w47id) May 22, 2017

 Manchester Muslim doctors working through the night, Manchester Muslim taxi drivers taking people home for free. You don't know Manchester. https://t.co/C8yXe7u0jw — Glenn Kitson (@Glenn_Kitson) May 23, 2017

 A statement issued by Muslim organizations in the Manchester area said the community was “saddened and horrified" by the attack.

 It added: “The perpetrators, whoever they may be, must bear the full consequences of their actions.”

 This was Britain's deadliest terrorist attack since four suicide bombers killed 52 London commuters on three subway trains and a bus in July 2005.

 Manchester is located 160 miles northwest of London. It was hit by a huge Irish Republican Army bomb in 1996 that leveled a swath of the city center. More than 200 people were injured in that attack, though no one was killed.

 Came down to the postbox which was the last thing standing after the IRA bomb in 96.Manchester cordoned off again for the city's darkest day pic.twitter.com/YToPZtnghv — Will Perry (@willperryTV) May 23, 2017

 Alexander Smith reported from Manchester. Eoghan Macguire and Jason Cumming reported from London. Alex Johnson reported from Los Angeles. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Police say an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert in northern England has killed at least 19 people and injured about 50, the AP reports. Billboard has confirmed that the American singer herself is OK. Police suspect a suicide bomber set off the blast, which is being treated as a terrorist attack unless new information emerges, NBC News reports. A statement from Manchester Arena said the explosion took place outside the arena just after the concert, as people were exiting. "A huge bomb-like bang went off that hugely panicked everyone and we were all trying to flee the arena," concertgoer Majid Khan, 22, tells Britain's Press Association. "It was one bang and essentially everyone from the other side of the arena where the bang was heard from suddenly came running towards us as they were trying to exit." Video from inside the arena showed concertgoers screaming as they made their way out amid a sea of pink balloons. Authorities say most of those being taken to the hospital had shrapnel injuries. "Praying for everyone at Ariana Grande's show," tweeted Katy Perry, one of the many celebs taking to Twitter to voice support, per CBS News. Britain's terrorist threat level has been set at "severe" in recent years, indicating an attack is highly likely. Reuters reports Manchester Arena is the biggest indoor arena in all of Europe, and can hold 21,000. The concert was part of the 23-year-old Grande's Dangerous Woman Tour. After Manchester, Grande was to perform at venues in Belgium, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, and France, with concerts in Latin America and Asia to follow.


A trip to the casino cage started in a panic for Jacob Brundage.

 The professional poker player’s black tote, filled with $7,000 in cash and playing chips, was missing.

 “I started freaking out, shouting ‘no way, no way,’” recalled the 39-year-old Lakeland, Florida, man in town for the World Series of Poker.

 That’s when Brundage realized the money-filled bag was left in the back seat of a minivan he requested through Uber around 9 p.m. June 1, when he caught a ride from The Venetian to the Rio.

 Brundage frantically grabbed his smartphone and used an in-app option that allows riders to directly call their drivers through a masked number.

 The driver, who declined an interview, picked up the phone but couldn’t hear Brundage. He hung up. Brundage tried again and again, with no success.

 Frustrated, Brundage said he stepped outside the casino to get some air when he came across a group of Uber employees who were promoting the service at the Rio. Brundage explained his dilemma, and the Uber team immediately started tracking down the driver and the lost bag.

 More than an hour passed before Brundage’s phone finally rang. On the other end, the driver explained that his cellphone battery died.

 “I told him that I would give him $200 if he came back with my bag,” Brundage said.

 The driver agreed to circle back to the Rio within 20 minutes.

 During the wait, Brundage said he listened to Christian music on his phone and retraced the night’s events, starting when he cashed out at The Venetian. Uncharacteristically, he forgot to put the cash-filled tote into a larger backpack to ensure it wouldn’t be forgotten.

 When he got into the backseat of the minivan, Brundage set the money bag to his left. Rather than engaging the driver with small talk, Brundage said he spent most of the ride on the phone with a friend he met at a Las Vegas church.

 “Honestly, I was distracted,” Brundage said.

 Brundage isn’t alone. Uber had 168 reported incidents of keys, wallets and bags that were left behind in vehicles across Las Vegas since September, said Uber spokeswoman Maui Cheska Orozco.

 “People lose things in their Uber all the time,” Cheska Orozco said. “But this has to be the most valuable thing that someone lost in one of our cars in Las Vegas.”

 The driver finally pulled up to the front of the Rio and opened the minivan’s doors. The bag was exactly where Brundage left it.

 When he recovered the cash, Brundage said he felt like he won an emotional jackpot. As promised, he handed $200 to the driver and kicked in another $100 to the Uber team members for helping out.

 “It felt like a miracle, and I was very relieved,” Brundage said. “This man’s honesty and integrity made me feel very blessed.”

 Contact Art Marroquin at amarroquin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Find @AMarroquin_LV on Twitter. ||||| LAS VEGAS (AP) — A World Series of Poker player says he hit an "emotional jackpot" thanks to an Uber driver who returned his $7,000 ante.

 Jacob Brundage, of Lakeland, Florida, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (http://bit.ly/1RZJRBK) that he lost a tote filled with cash and playing chips June 1.

 The 39-year-old says he realized the bag was in an Uber car that he rode from The Venetian to the Rio.

 Brundage failed to reach the driver through the app and enlisted a group of waiting Uber drivers to help.

 The driver, who wants to remain anonymous, called Brundage and returned the bag.

 Brundage gave him $200 as a reward.

 Uber spokeswoman Maui Cheska Orozo says this is likely the most expensive item ever left in an Uber car in Las Vegas.

 ___

 Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com |||||

Write a summary.

– A World Series of Poker player says he hit an "emotional jackpot" thanks to an Uber driver who returned his $7,000 ante. Jacob Brundage, of Lakeland, Fla., told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he lost a tote filled with cash and playing chips June 1. The 39-year-old says he realized the bag was in an Uber car that he rode from the Venetian to the Rio, reports the AP. "People lose things in their Uber all the time," says an Uber rep. "But this has to be the most valuable thing that someone lost in one of our cars in Las Vegas.” Brundage failed to reach the driver through the app and enlisted a group of waiting Uber drivers to help. The driver, who wants to remain anonymous, called Brundage and returned the bag. Brundage gave him $200 as a reward. "It felt like a miracle, and I was very relieved,” Brundage said. “This man’s honesty and integrity made me feel very blessed."


– In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is challenging special counsel Robert Mueller's authority to investigate crimes and seeking to have the indictment against himself thrown out, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to the Washington Post, the lawsuit calls the actions of Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and the Department of Justice "arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with the law." At issue is what the lawsuit claims was overly broad authority granted to Mueller by Rosenstein, CNN reports. Mueller was given orders to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government, as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from that." Manafort has been charged with money laundering, fraud, and more as part of Mueller's investigation. But the lawsuit claims those charges have nothing to do with the Trump campaign, instead arising from lobbying work Manafort did on behalf of Ukrainian groups. The lawsuit states that work ended in 2014. The lawsuit—which seeks to have Mueller removed as special counsel and prohibited from similar investigations against Manafort—states the indictment against Manafort "is completely unmoored from the special counsel's original jurisdiction." A spokesperson for the Department of Justice says Manafort's lawsuit "is frivolous, but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants."

Expand this summary.

President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul J. Manafort, asked a federal court Wednesday to void the Justice Department's appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and charges Mueller's office filed against him, elevating Trump supporters' attempts to discredit the probe into Russian interference in last year's election.

 Manafort's attorneys argued in a 17-page lawsuit in federal court in Washington that the department exceeded its legal authority when, in May, acting attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein ordered Mueller to investigate "links and/or coordination" between the Russian government and Trump campaign, as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from" that investigation.

 The order "purports to grant Mr. Mueller carte blanche to investigate and pursue criminal charges in connection with anything he stumbles across while investigating," no matter how remote from his original charge, Manafort attorneys Kevin M. Downing and Thomas E. Zehnle wrote.

 [Read Manafort’s lawsuit against DOJ, Mueller and Rosenstein]

 They said the special counsel office's indictment of Manafort alleging he committed fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in secretly lobbying for a Russian-friendly political party in Ukraine focuses not on actions with the Trump campaign in 2016 but private business dealings that began much earlier, adding that he was interviewed by the Justice Department in 2014.

 "The actions of DOJ and Mr. Rosenstein in issuing the Appointment Order, and Mr. Mueller's actions pursuant to the authority the Order granted him, were arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with the law," they alleged.

 [Inside Trump’s legal team: Trying to protect the president from Mueller’s ‘killers’]

 A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment.

 "The lawsuit is frivolous but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants," a Justice Department spokeswoman said.

 The lawsuit, assigned to U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a 2013 Obama appointee, escalates attacks by current and former Trump officials on the legitimacy of the government's investigation into campaign activities.

 Manafort, 68, and his longtime deputy, Rick Gates, 45, have pleaded not guilty and remain under home detention awaiting trial on charges including money laundering and fraud.

 [Special counsel: Manafort’s stated wealth fluctuated wildly; he keeps three passports]

 Their indictment, announced Oct. 30, marked the first criminal charges disclosed in probes into possible Russian influence in U.S. political affairs, which have also swept up former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump campaign foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos. Both pleaded guilty to lying to investigators — Flynn about contacts with Russia's ambassador and Papadopoulos about contacts with foreigners claiming high-level connections to them — and are cooperating with investigators.

 [Trump slams FBI, Obamacare in post-Christmas tweets]

 White-collar criminal defense attorney Jeffrey Jacobovitz said it is not unusual for a defendant to try to question the bounds of a special counsel. But he couldn't recall a single time that approach succeeded in tossing a charge.

 Trump, in social media postings after Christmas and New Year's Day, has attacked the special counsel investigation, the Justice Department and the FBI, including the FBI's former director, James B. Comey; former general counsel James Baker; and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

 Trump, his spokeswoman and his attorney have cast the charges as having nothing to do with the president, who has called the probe a "witch hunt."

 [Trump urges Justice Department to ‘act’ on Comey, suggests Huma Abedin should face jail time]

 Democrats and some Republicans have condemned the strategy of attempting to delegitimize law enforcement, warning that it will only feed the politicization and weakening of key institutions upholding law and order, outcomes Trump supporters say they oppose.

 Independent investigations set up by the Justice Department tend to have fairly wide jurisdiction, Jacobovitz said. He noted the charge that led to president Bill Clinton's Senate impeachment trial in 1998 was lying under oath about sexual liaisons with intern Monica S. Lewinsky, in a probe that began over his pre-presidency land deals.

 "Look at what Ken Starr was looking at with respect to Bill Clinton and his dealings with Monica Lewinsky, and yet that was not shot down by any courts," Jacobovitz pointed out. "Ken Starr started looking at Whitewater and ended up looking at actions related to Monica Lewinsky."

 Devlin Barrett and Amber Phillips contributed to this report. ||||| Paul Manafort, a former chairman of the Trump presidential campaign, filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that special counsel Robert Mueller had exceeded his authority in indicting Mr. Manafort on money laundering and tax-related charges.

 The lawsuit asks a federal judge in Washington to throw out the order issued by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May that appointed Mr. Mueller to investigate any links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, as well as any issues arising from that inquiry.

 ... ||||| (CNN) Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman indicted on money laundering and other charges, filed a lawsuit challenging the broad authority of special counsel Robert Mueller and alleging the Justice Department violated the law in appointing Mueller.

 The suit brought Wednesday in US District Court in Washington, where Manafort and another former Trump campaign aide are charged, challenges Mueller's decision to charge Manafort with alleged crimes that they say have nothing to do with the 2016 campaign, but rather relate to lucrative lobbying work Manafort and his deputy did for a former Russia-friendly government in Ukraine. That work ended in 2014, the suit says. Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates deny the allegations in the charges.

 The legal action represents a new tack in a broader effort by supporters of the President to push back on the special counsel. Some Republicans have begun publicly calling for Mueller's probe to be shut down. Manafort's attorneys have echoed the President's criticism that Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election is pursuing crimes that never happened.

 The Manafort lawsuit alleges Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Mueller have unlawfully exceeded the authorities allowed under the law governing special counsel appointments. The lawsuit contends that the order Rosenstein signed to appoint Mueller "exceeds the scope of Mr. Rosenstein's authority to appoint special counsel as well as specific restrictions on the scope of such appointments."

 A DOJ spokesperson responded with a statement, saying: "The lawsuit is frivolous but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants."

 Read More |||||


These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore talks to the media as he arrives to vote, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017, in Gallant, Ala. Alabama voters are deciding between Moore, former chief justice of the Alabama... (Associated Press)

 Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore talks to the media as he arrives to vote, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017, in Gallant, Ala. Alabama voters are deciding between Moore, former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and Democrat Doug Jones. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) (Associated Press)

 BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The Latest on Alabama's U.S. Senate election (all times local):

 9:24 p.m. CST

 Democrat Doug Jones has won election to the U.S. Senate from Alabama, dealing a political blow to President Donald Trump.

 Jones has defeated Republican Roy Moore, a one-time GOP pariah who was embraced by the Republican Party and the president even after facing allegations of sexual impropriety.

 An attorney and former prosecutor, Jones rallied voters on a message of moving past the Moore controversies. He was buoyed by an influx of national Democratic cash and endorsements.

 Jones' victory is set to narrow the slim Republican majority over Democrats in the Senate to 51-49. His win in the Republican stronghold energizes the Democratic Party as it looks to build on anti-Trump sentiment to mount a challenge next year to Republican control of Congress.

 ___

 8:40 p.m.

 Republican Roy Moore has briefly greeted an optimistic crowd at his election night party in Montgomery, Alabama.

 Moore shook hands with supporters after they chanted, "Judge Roy Moore." He then left to watch returns in another room.

 His campaign manager told the crowd that Moore would soon have the new title of senator.

 With about half the vote counted, the Alabama Senate race between Moore and Democrat Doug Jones is too close to call.

 Moore is looking for support in rural areas and party loyalty from Republicans to carry him to victory.

 Jones is attempting to become the first Alabama Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in 25 years.

 __

 7:10 p.m.

 Republican Roy Moore's supporters are expressing optimism as polls close in Alabama.

 Supporters filed into Moore's election night party in Montgomery shortly before polls closed at 7 p.m.

 "Watch party? It's a victory party," Moore campaign manager Rich Hobson told the crowd.

 Becky Gerritson, the leader of a nearby tea party group, says sexual misconduct allegations against Moore have caused his supporters to rally around him harder.

 "We're seeing his supporters digging in and they're pumped up," Gerritson said.

 Reporters at Moore's election night party were kept behind a barricade in the back of the ballroom.

 __

 7 p.m.

 Polls are closed in Alabama in the race to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

 At time of national reckoning over long-suppressed misconduct by powerful men, the choice between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones has taken on outsized significance. Moore has faced allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers, dividing the GOP and giving Democrats hope of picking up a seat in a reliably red state.

 President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee broke with top congressional leaders in standing by Moore despite the accusations, wagering that maintaining the seat in the Republican stronghold was of paramount importance.

 Democrats are hoping to break their 0-5 streak in special elections for Republican-held seats in 2017, and looking for momentum heading into the 2018 midterm elections.

 __

 4:30 p.m.

 Alabama Republican Roy Moore's campaign says The Washington Post is not being let into his election night gathering in Montgomery.

 The Post first reported the allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore.

 Moore campaign spokeswoman Hannah Ford confirmed the newspaper is not being granted press credentials. The campaign told the newspaper it had reviewed its request and was denying them.

 Moore faces Democrat Doug Jones in Tuesday's election for a U.S. Senate seat.

 __

 3:45 p.m.

 There are signs of heightened security at Republican Roy Moore's election night gathering in the Alabama race for U.S. Senate.

 Men in SWAT uniforms videoed the exterior of the building where Moore's party is being held in Montgomery.

 Campaign spokeswoman Hannah Ford said the campaign had previously received threats.

 Earlier Tuesday, a Department of Homeland Security official said the agency is keeping an eye on the election.

 The agency's top infrastructure and cybersecurity official said a federal protective security adviser and a cybersecurity adviser are in Montgomery and working "side by side" with state government officials in case issues arise.

 ___

 2 p.m.

 The Department of Homeland Security is keeping its eye on Alabama's special U.S. Senate election.

 The agency's top infrastructure and cybersecurity official says a federal protective security adviser and a cybersecurity adviser are in the capital city of Montgomery and working "side by side" with state government officials in case issues arise.

 Christopher Krebs says he's not aware of any specific threats. But he says DHS has been working with the state "for quite some time" to prepare for any issues.

 It's part of a larger effort to better share threat information and provide technical support after DHS concluded Russian government hackers targeted election systems in 21 states last year.

 Krebs says: "We learned our lessons last year."

 ___

 1:55 p.m.

 Voter turnout appears heavier than expected in one of Alabama's most reliably Republican counties in the U.S. Senate election, and officials say they're not just seeing the usual GOP crowd.

 Shelby County Probate Judge Jim Fuhrmeister says turnout appears higher than normal among young people and black voters in Tuesday's balloting. That could help Democrat Doug Jones against Republican Roy Moore.

 Democrats have a table outside one of the county's largest voting precincts in Helena, and volunteers from the Jones campaign are canvassing neighborhoods in normally Republican areas.

 Fuhrmeister says he isn't predicting a Democratic win, but he expects the party to see some results for its efforts.

 Shelby County, just south of Birmingham, is one of Alabama's most affluent counties.

 ___

 11:50 a.m.

 Republican candidate Roy Moore rode his horse to the polls as he's done in past elections to cast his ballot in the U.S. Senate race.

 Moore was accompanied by his wife Kayla Moore, also on horseback, as he voted at a rural fire station in the northeast Alabama community of Gallant on Tuesday.

 Dozens of members of the media surrounded the couple, making it difficult for them to get through on their horses.

 Moore spoke briefly to reporters, talking in generalities and not discussing allegations that he sexually molested teenage girls decades ago.

 Moore expressed confidence that he will win.

 He also said that after the election will be the time to discuss whether he's allowed to take a seat in the Senate.

 ___

 11:15 a.m.

 U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he cast an absentee ballot in Tuesday's special Senate election in Alabama but declined to specify his choice, saying he "valued the sanctity of the ballot."

 At a Tuesday news conference in Baltimore on gang violence and immigration, Sessions said Alabama residents are "good and decent and wonderful" people. He said he's confident they will make the right decision.

 Alabama voters are deciding between Republican Roy Moore, former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and Democrat Doug Jones, a lawyer who prosecuted two Ku Klux Klansmen who killed four black girls in a 1963 church bombing.

 Multiple women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct with teen girls when he was in his 30s. Moore denies the accusations.

 The winner of Tuesday's election will take the seat previously held by Sessions.

 ___

 8:55 a.m.

 Democratic nominee Doug Jones was met by cheering supporters as he cast his ballot in Alabama's U.S. Senate race.

 Jones smiled and waved as he arrived at his voting precinct in the wealthy Birmingham suburb of Mountain Brook on Tuesday.

 Poll workers at the church where he voted complained that so many news reporters were on hand that voters were having a hard time parking.

 Jones says he feels good about the campaign he's run and he doesn't think Republican Roy Moore is going to win.

 Jones said, "This is an important time in Alabama's history, and we feel very confident where we are and how this is going to turn out."

 ___

 8:25 a.m.

 Alabama's top election official estimates that turnout for the hotly contested U.S. Senate election now underway will likely be around 18 to 20 percent of registered voters.

 Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill tells The Associated Press there's also a chance that turnout for the special election could be as high as 25 percent.

 Voting places opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday and will remain open until 7 p.m.

 Cool temperatures were common across Alabama when voting began and the state is expected to see dry weather all day during voting.

 Republican Roy Moore faces Democrat Doug Jones in Tuesday's election.

 Multiple women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct with teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Moore is now 70 and denies the charges.

 ___

 7:45 a.m.

 More than two dozen people stood in line in the chilly morning air at Legion Field, a predominantly black precinct in Birmingham, after polls opened at 7 a.m.

 Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones have both reached out to minority voters during their contentious campaign for a U.S. Senate seat.

 Political observers believe that Jones needs heavy turnout among African-American voters in order to win on Tuesday.

 The Legion Field precinct is in a stadium office, where blue-tinted posters of local college football players and cheerleaders lined one of the walls. About 20 Doug Jones campaign signs were planted in the ground near the parking lot where voters were driving in to vote. There were no Roy Moore signs.

 ___

 7 a.m.

 Polls have opened across Alabama in the state's closely watched U.S. Senate election, which has drawn national attention.

 Voting places opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday and will remain open until 7 p.m.

 Cool temperatures were common across Alabama shortly before voting began and the state is expected to see dry weather all day during Tuesday's voting.

 Republican Roy Moore faces Democrat Doug Jones in Tuesday's election.

 Multiple women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct with teen girls when he was in his 30s. Moore is now 70 and denies the charges.

 ___

 2:45 a.m.

 An internationally watched Senate election is down to Alabama voters.

 The controversies surrounding Republican Roy Moore give Democrat Doug Jones an opening in the GOP-dominated state. Polls open Tuesday morning.

 Multiple women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct with teen girls when he was in his 30s. Moore is now 70 and denies the charges. He's telling voters they know his character already.

 Jones is saying decency must prevail. He's urging Alabama voters to see the race as a crossroads with an opportunity to avoid repeating past mistakes that harm the state's image.

 No Democrat has won an Alabama Senate seat since 1992. That was Sen. Richard Shelby. He's now a Republican who says he didn't vote for Moore. |||||

Write a summary.

– It's Doug Jones. The Democrat won election to the Senate from Alabama on Tuesday, dealing a political blow to President Trump, reports the AP. Jones narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore, a one-time GOP pariah who was embraced by the Republican Party and the president even after facing allegations of sexual impropriety. An attorney and former prosecutor, Jones rallied voters on a message of moving past the Moore controversies. He was buoyed by an influx of national Democratic cash and endorsements. Jones' victory is set to narrow the slim Republican majority over Democrats in the Senate to 51-49. His win in the Republican stronghold energizes the Democratic Party as it looks to build on anti-Trump sentiment to mount a challenge next year to Republican control of Congress. With 92% of votes counted, Jones had 49.5% of the vote to Moore's 48.8%, per CNN, which also called the race for Jones.


News article:

Image copyright A. Klypin/J. Primack/S. Cantalupo Image caption An intense quasar can, like a flashlight, illuminate part of the surrounding cosmic web

 The hidden tendrils of dark matter that underlie the visible Universe may have been traced out for the first time.

 Cosmology theory predicts that galaxies are embedded in a cosmic web of "stuff", most of which is dark matter.

 Astronomers obtained the first direct images of a part of this network, by exploiting the fact that a luminous object called a quasar can act as a natural "cosmic flashlight".

 Details of the work appear in the journal Nature.

 The quasar illuminates a nearby gas cloud measuring two million light-years across.

 In this case we were lucky that the flashlight is pointing toward the nebula and making the gas glow Sebastiano Cantalupo, University of California, Santa Cruz

 And the glowing gas appears to trace out filaments of underlying dark matter.

 The quasar, which lies 10 billion light-years away, shines light in just the right direction to reveal the cold gas cloud.

 For some years, cosmologists have been running computer simulations of the structure of the universe to build the "standard model of cosmology".

 They use the cosmic microwave background, corresponding to observations of the very earliest Universe that can be seen, and recorded by instruments such as the Planck space observatory, as a starting point.

 Their calculations suggest that as the Universe grows and forms, matter becomes clustered in filaments and nodes under the force of gravity, like a giant cosmic web.

 The new results from the 10-metre Keck telescope in Hawaii, are reported by scientists from the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg.

 They are the first direct observations of cold gas decorating such cosmic web filaments.

 Image copyright S. Cantalupo (UCSC) Image caption The observed portion of the cosmic web (cyan) is about 2 million light-years across

 The cosmic web suggested by the standard model is mainly made up of mysterious "dark matter". Invisible in itself, dark matter still exerts gravitational forces on visible light and ordinary matter nearby.

 Massive clumps of dark matter bend light that passes close by through a process called gravitational lensing, and this had allowed previous measurements of its distribution.

 But it is difficult to use this method to see very distant dark matter, and cold ordinary matter remains tricky to detect as well.

 The glowing hydrogen illuminated by the distant quasar in these new observations traces out an underlying filament of dark matter that it is attracted to it by gravity, according to the researchers' analysis.

 "This is a new way to detect filaments. It seems that they have a very bright quasar in a rare geometry," Prof Alexandre Refregier of the ETH Zurich, who was not involved in the work, told BBC News.

 "If indeed gravity is doing the work in an expanding Universe, we expect to see a cosmic web and it is important to detect this cosmic web structure."

 In the dark

 He added: "What is expected is that the dark matter dominates the mass and forms these structures, and then the ordinary matter, the gas, the stars and everything else trace the filaments and structures that are defined by the dynamics of the dark matter."

 "Filaments have been detected indirectly before using gravitational lensing, which allows us to see the distribution of the dark matter.

 "Part of the ordinary matter has formed stars, which we can see, but another component is the gas. If the gas is very hot it emits X-rays and can be seen using X-ray telescopes. Other techniques to detect cooler gas now include the method described here."

 Dark energy and dark matter mysteries Image copyright Other Image caption LUX in South Dakota is the most sensitive dark matter detection experiment yet Gravity acting across vast distances does not seem to explain what astronomers see

 Galaxies, for example, should fly apart; some other mass must be there holding them together

 Astrophysicists have thus postulated "dark matter" - invisible to us but clearly acting on galactic scales

 At the greatest distances, the Universe's expansion is accelerating

 Thus we have also "dark energy" which acts to drive the expansion, in opposition to gravity

 The current theory holds that 68% of the Universe is dark energy, 27% is dark matter, and just 5% the kind of matter we know well How close are we to finding dark matter?

 Sebastiano Cantalupo, lead author of the article, and others have used the same method previously to look for glowing gas around quasars, and had seen dark galaxies.

 "The dark galaxies are much denser and smaller parts of the cosmic web. In this new image, we also see dark galaxies, in addition to the much more diffuse and extended nebula," Dr Cantalupo, from UCSC, explained.

 "Some of this gas will fall into galaxies, but most of it will remain diffuse and never form stars.

 "The light from the quasar is like a flashlight beam, and in this case we were lucky that the flashlight is pointing toward the nebula and making the gas glow. We think this is part of a filament that may be even more extended than this, but we only see the part of the filament that is illuminated by the beamed emission from the quasar."

 While the observations support the cosmological simulations' general picture of a cosmic web of filamentary structures, the researchers' results suggest around 10 times more gas in the nebula than predicted from typical computer simulations.

 They postulate that this may simply be due to limitations in the spatial resolution of the current models, or, more interestingly perhaps, may be because the current grid-based models are missing some aspect of the underlying physics of how galaxies form, evolve, and interact with quasars.

 "We now have very precise measurements of the amount of ordinary matter and dark matter in the Universe," said Prof Refregier.

 "We can only observe a fraction of the ordinary matter, so the question is what form the remainder takes. These results may imply that a lot of it is in the form detected here." ||||| 300 SHARES Share Tweet Google Reddit Linkedin Mail Sign up to receive our weekly newsletter of the most popular space stories:

 Astronomers from the University of California – Santa Cruz have found a far-off quasar lighting up a very large nebula of spread out gas, showing for the first time part of the network of filaments believed to link galaxies in a cosmic web.

 Utilizing the 10-meter Keck I Telescope, the researchers spotted an extremely large, bright nebula of gas spreading approximately 2 million light-years across intergalactic space.

 “This is a very exceptional object: it’s huge, at least twice as large as any nebula detected before, and it extends well beyond the galactic environment of the quasar,” posited first author Sebastiano Cantalupo, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Santa Cruz, in a statement.

 The standard cosmological model of structure development in the universe envisions that galaxies are nested in a cosmic web of matter. The web is observed in the findings from computer simulations of the development of structure in the universe, which reveal the dispersion of dark matter on large scales, including the dark matter halos in which galaxies develop and the cosmic web of filaments that link them. Gravity forces ordinary matter to follow the dispersion of dark matter, so filaments of spread out, ionized gas are believed to trace a pattern akin to that observed in dark matter simulations.

 Prior to this research, these filaments have never been observed. Intergalactic gas has been identified by its absorption of light from bright background sources, but those findings don’t show how the gas is dispersed. In this study, astronomers identified the fluorescent glow of hydrogen gas due to its illumination by intense radiation from the quasar.

 “This quasar is illuminating diffuse gas on scales well beyond any we’ve seen before, giving us the first picture of extended gas between galaxies. It provides a terrific insight into the overall structure of our universe,” explained coauthor J. Xavier Prochaska, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz.

 The hydrogen gas brightened by the quasar gives off ultraviolet light called Lyman alpha radiation. The distance to the quasar — approximately 10 billion light-years — is so great that the discharged light is “stretched” by the expansion of the universe from an invisible ultraviolet wavelength to a visible shade of violet by the time it’s detected by the Keck Telescope. The astronomers determined the wavelength for Lyman alpha radiation from the distance to the quasar and constructed a special filter for the telescope’s spectrometer to obtain an image at that wavelength.

 “We have studied other quasars this way without detecting such extended gas,” Cantalupo noted. “The light from the quasar is like a flashlight beam, and in this case we were lucky that the flashlight is pointing toward the nebula and making the gas glow. We think this is part of a filament that may be even more extended than this, but we only see the part of the filament that is illuminated by the beamed emission from the quasar.”

 The study’s findings were published in the journal Nature. ||||| Computer simulations suggest that matter in the universe is distributed in a "cosmic web" of filaments, as seen in the image above from a large-scale dark-matter simulation (Bolshoi simulation, by Anatoly Klypin and Joel Primack). The inset is a zoomed-in, high-resolution image of a smaller part of the cosmic web, 10 million light-years across, from a simulation that includes gas as well as dark matter (credit: S. Cantalupo). The intense radiation from a quasar can, like a flashlight, illuminate part of the surrounding cosmic web (highlighted in the image) and make a filament of gas glow, as was observed in the case of quasar UM287. (Photo : S. CANTALUPO (UCSC); JOEL PRIMACK (UCSC); ANATOLY KLYPIN (NMSU))

 Astronomers have found gas strands that hold galaxies in a cosmic web.

 The team of astronomers, led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, found a distant quasar (hyperactive galaxies) that was illuminating a nebula of diffuse gas. Researchers believe that this bright nebula of gas, extending 2 million light-years across intergalactic space, could be the web holding all the cosmic matter.

 "This is a very exceptional object: it's huge, at least twice as large as any nebula detected before, and it extends well beyond the galactic environment of the quasar," said Sebastiano Cantalupo, first author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at UC Santa Cruz, according to a news release.

 Share This Story

 The filament of the cosmic web was found using 10-meter (33 feet) Keck I telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

 What is a Cosmic Web?

 Leading theories on the structure of Universe say that galaxies are hanging at the ends of a vast "cosmic web." About 85 percent of this cosmic web matter is the invisible dark matter.

 In 2009, researchers at European Southern Observatory (ESO) had reported seeing part of this cosmic web.

 Then in October 2012, researchers from France said that they've carried out a three-dimensional study of a cosmic filament of dark matter. Their calculations had shown that the cosmic web must be responsible for half of the mass of the universe.

 The cosmic filament found in the current study is part of the cosmic web that keeps the galaxy, including our Milky Way together. Researchers hope to study this filament to understand the structure and development of the Universe, National Geographic reported.

 How did they find it?

 Quasars or "qausi-stellar radio sources" are the bright centers of very distant galaxies. In the present research, astronomers studying the quasar 'UM287' found that it was illuminating a gas filament.

 "The light from the quasar is like a flashlight beam, and in this case we were lucky that the flashlight is pointing toward the nebula and making the gas glow. We think this is part of a filament that may be even more extended than this, but we only see the part of the filament that is illuminated by the beamed emission from the quasar," said Cantalupo, according to National Geographic.

 The study is published in the journal Nature. ||||| Astronomers have for the first time captured a glimpse of the vast, web-like network of diffuse gas that links all of the galaxies in the cosmos.

 Leading cosmological theories suggest that galaxies are cocooned within gigantic, wispy filaments of gas. This “cosmic web” of gas-filled nebulas stretches between large, spacious voids that are tens of millions of light years wide. Like spiders, galaxies mostly appear to lie within the intersections of the long-sought webs.

 In observations spied through one of the most powerful telescopes in the world, the 33-foot (10-meter) Keck I Telescope in Hawaii, astronomers led by Sebastiano Cantalupo of the University of California, Santa Cruz, now report that they have detected a very large, luminous filament of gas extending about 2 million light-years across intergalactic space, exactly as predicted by theory.

 Essentially, the filament reported in the January 19 Nature represents one of the strands of the cosmic web that holds together the galaxy-rich universe. Astronomers hope to understand both the structure of the universe and the development of galaxies such as our own Milky Way by unraveling the secrets of the cosmic web.

 The discovery came thanks to intense radiation bellowing out of a quasar (a hyper-active galaxy) dubbed UM287, 10 billion light years from Earth. The quasar illuminated the neighboring gas filament, revealing its presence with a glow that resembled a cosmic florescent sign.

 “This is a very exceptional object: it’s huge, at least twice as large as any nebula detected before, and it extends well beyond the galactic environment of the quasar,” said Cantalupo, in a statement.

 “The light from the quasar is like a flashlight beam, and in this case we were lucky that the flashlight is pointing toward the nebula and making the gas glow. We think this is part of a filament that may be even more extended than this, but we only see the part of the filament that is illuminated by the beamed emission from the quasar.”

 Follow Andrew Fazekas, the Night Sky Guy, on Twitter and Facebook. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Scientists have seen a tendril of dark matter for the first time, and all it took was a "cosmic flashlight." Using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, a scientific team spotted the dark matter in a gas cloud illuminated by the radiation of a distant quasar, the BBC reports. "The light from the quasar is like a flashlight beam," said Sebastiano Cantalupo, lead author of the report. Lit by that beam, the glowing hydrogen of the gas cloud traced out the dark matter lying behind it. This all supports a theory that galaxies are wrapped up in filaments of gas that stretch across space like a web, National Geographic reports. About 85% of the web is said to be dark matter, Nature World News explains, and galaxies sit like spiders on intersections of the web. Gravity is what keeps us, and all matter, sitting on these filaments, and now one has actually been observed. It's "giving us the first picture of extended gas between galaxies," co-author J. Xavier Prochaska tells The Space Reporter. "It provides a terrific insight into the overall structure of our universe."


Article:

Just keep smiling, the bank robber told his victims Saturday as he hit a Tustin bank. Those are words he uttered in the past too, the FBI said.

 But the note the man dubbed the “Keep Smiling Bandit” passed to a teller at the Citibank branch in the 18200 block of Irvine Boulevard was cheerless, menacing and easily understood.

 “Keep your hands away from the alarm or I’ll shoot,” the note read.

 The bandit seemed nervous during the robbery but a weapon was never seen, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

 He may also be linked to a robbery that occurred just days before at another Citibank in Costa Mesa. In both robberies, authorities say he wore a baseball cap and glasses.

 Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at (310) 477-6565.

 For breaking news throughout California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA. She can be reached at veronica.rocha@latimes.com. ||||| Los Angeles & SoCal News Los Angeles & SoCal News More>>

 Investigation Continues Into Shooting Death Of Homeless Man By LAPD Officers Investigation Continues Into Shooting Death Of Homeless Man By LAPD Officers Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and the union representing the LAPD rank-and-file find themselves deeply at odds Thursday over the officer-involved shooting death of an unarmed homeless man in Venice, with the union livid over Beck's suggestion that it was excessive.

 Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and the union representing the LAPD rank-and-file find themselves deeply at odds Thursday over the officer-involved shooting death of an unarmed homeless man in Venice, with the union livid over Beck's suggestion that it was excessive.

 Lindsay Lohan Back In Court For Not Finishing Community Service Lindsay Lohan Back In Court For Not Finishing Community Service Lindsay Lohan has completed only about nine of the 125 community service hours she is required to perform as part of her probation stemming from a 2012 traffic crash in Santa Monica, and the actress will face "consequences" if she fails to complete the hours by May 28, a judge said today. Lindsay Lohan has completed only about nine of the 125 community service hours she is required to perform as part of her probation stemming from a 2012 traffic crash in Santa Monica, and the actress will face "consequences" if she fails to complete the hours by May 28, a judge said today.

 DWP Pledges To Recapture Water During Repairs After Complaints Of Waste DWP Pledges To Recapture Water During Repairs After Complaints Of Waste Responding to complaints that thousands of gallons of water were emptied out of the Eagle Rock Reservoir and allowed to flow into storm drains during a severe drought, the Department of Water and Power announced today it will work to recapture water that might otherwise be lost during future repair projects. Responding to complaints that thousands of gallons of water were emptied out of the Eagle Rock Reservoir and allowed to flow into storm drains during a severe drought, the Department of Water and Power announced today it will work to recapture water that might otherwise be lost during future repair projects.

 The Drought Through The Eyes Of A 10-Year-Old Girl The Drought Through The Eyes Of A 10-Year-Old Girl We met one youngster who seems to understand the drought better than a lot of adults. Her name is Jialian Mackey. When you ask her "What do you know about water?" She says, "California is in a very serious drought." Not exactly what you would expect from a 10-year-old. We met one youngster who seems to understand the drought better than a lot of adults. Her name is Jialian Mackey. When you ask her "What do you know about water?" She says, "California is in a very serious drought." Not exactly what you would expect from a 10-year-old. ||||| × ‘Keep Smiling,’ Orange County Bank Robber Tells Victims: FBI

 Orange County detectives and the FBI on Tuesday asked for the public’s help identifying a bank robber who told his victims to “keep smiling” as he robbed a Costa Mesa Citibank last week.

 The so-called “Keep Smiling Bandit” earned his nicknamed during the Oct. 12 robbery at 234 E. 17th St. in Costa Mesa, and he was believed to have robbed a Tustin Citibank at 18232 Irvine Blvd. on Saturday.

 A joint FBI-Orange County Sheriff’s Department Bank Robbery Apprehension Team asked for help identifying the man, described as white, in his early 30s, 5 foot 7 inches to 5 foot 9 inches tall, and weighing 140 to 150 pounds.

 During both robberies, the “Keep Smiling Bandit” passed notes to a teller and verbally demanded cash, a news release distributed by the FBI stated. He wore eyeglasses and a baseball cap and was described as “nervous.”

 No weapon was seen in the two robberies, but the robber’s note read, “Keep your hands away from the alarm or I’ll shoot.”

 Anyone with information on the “Keep Smiling Bandit” was asked to call 911 or, in the Los Angeles area, call the FBI at 310 477-6565. |||||
What is a summary?

– His words may seem cheerful, but his actions have been anything but. A California bank robber now called the "Keep Smiling Bandit" is being sought in two Orange County robberies in which he verbally instructed the likely terrified tellers to keep grins on their faces as they handed the cash over to him, the Los Angeles Times reports. In both instances—one at a Citibank in Tustin on Saturday, the other at a Citibank in Costa Mesa on Oct. 12—the thief passed a note to the teller that said, "Keep your hands away from the alarm or I'll shoot," KTLA reports. No weapon was spotted in either case, an FBI spokeswoman tells the Times; the robber, who can be seen wearing a baseball cap and eyeglasses in both surveillance videos, was described as appearing "nervous," KTTV reports. He's said to be a white man in his early 30s, between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighing around 150 pounds with a "thin build." Anyone with info should call 911 or the FBI's LA office at 310-477-6565. (A 55-year-old man was accused last year of stealing 37 bank rugs.)


– At least 10 students lost their spots at Harvard before the first day of class after they exchanged offensive messages in a private Facebook group, the Harvard Crimson reports. College officials told the incoming freshmen they were no longer welcome after getting wind of the messages and memes in a chat group once called "Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens." The posts included sexually explicit memes and posts that called child sexual abuse arousing and mocked the Holocaust and minorities, per the Crimson, which obtained screenshots of the posts (but didn't publish them). One post dubbed a hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child "piñata time." The rogue chat sprang from a larger group of 100 students who began exchanging popular memes in December on Harvard's official Class of 2021 Facebook page. Jessica Zhang tells the Crimson prospective students like her "were excited about forming group chats with people who shared similar interests." But the mostly "lighthearted" messages, as Zhang put it, gave way to suggestions for a "more R-rated" meme" that spurred the "dark" group, per student Cassandra Luca, who added "it was people doing stupid stuff." Harvard officials who discovered the posts in mid-April took a harder line and revoked at least 10 admission offers, per the Crimson. The college reserves the right to rescind admission if a prospective student "engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity, or moral character," a Harvard rep tells the Washington Post. In September, 2,056 freshmen will begin classes at the elite college; 39,506 students applied. (Those incoming students include Malia Obama.)

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Describes the services provided by the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) in its roles as builder and steward of buildings on the Capitol Campus in Washington, D.C., which includes the U.S. Capitol, Capitol Visitor Center, Senate Office Buildings, House Office Buildings, Supreme Court, Library of Congress, U.S. Botanic Garden and Capitol Grounds. Covers AOC's maintenance and preservation activities and standards that it applies for sustainability and accessibility. Also provides inventories and descriptions of works of art housed throughout the campus. ||||| After discovering the existence and contents of an explicit group chat, Harvard administrators revoked admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021.

 Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat.

 A handful of admitted students formed the messaging group—titled, at one point, “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens”—on Facebook in late December, according to two incoming freshmen.

 In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”

 After discovering the existence and contents of the chat, Harvard administrators revoked admissions offers to at least ten participants in mid-April, according to several members of the group. University officials have previously said that Harvard’s decision to rescind a student’s offer is final.

 College spokesperson Rachael Dane wrote in an emailed statement Saturday that “we do not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants.”

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 The chat grew out of a roughly 100-member messaging group that members of the Class of 2021 set up in early December to share memes about popular culture. Admitted students found and contacted each other using the official Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group.

 “A lot of students were excited about forming group chats with people who shared similar interests,” Jessica Zhang ’21, an incoming freshman who joined both chats, wrote in an email. “Someone posted about starting a chat for people who liked memes.”

 Messages shared in the original group were mostly “lighthearted,” wrote Zhang, who said she did not post in the splitoff meme group and that her admission offer was not rescinded. But some members soon suggested forming “a more R-rated” meme chat, according to Cassandra Luca ’21, who joined the first meme group but not the second, and who also said her offer was not revoked.

 Luca said the founders of the “dark” group chat demanded that students post provocative memes in the larger messaging group before allowing them to join the splinter group.

 “They were like, ‘Oh, you have to send a meme to the original group to prove that you could get into the new one,’” Luca said. “This was a just-because-we-got-into-Harvard-doesn’t-mean-we-can’t-have-fun kind of thing.”

 Employees in the Admissions Office emailed students who posted offensive memes in mid-April asking them to disclose every picture they sent over the group, according to one member of the chat whose admission offer was revoked. The student spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be publicly identified with the messages.

 “The Admissions Committee was disappointed to learn that several students in a private group chat for the Class of 2021 were sending messages that contained offensive messages and graphics,” reads a copy of the Admissions Office’s email obtained by The Crimson. “As we understand you were among the members contributing such material to this chat, we are asking that you submit a statement by tomorrow at noon to explain your contributions and actions for discussion with the Admissions Committee.”

 “It is unfortunate that I have to reach out about this situation,” the email reads.

 The anonymous student also said that administrators informed implicated students that their admissions status was under review and instructed them not to come to Visitas, Harvard’s annual weekend of programming for prospective freshmen held at the end of April. Roughly a week later, at least ten members of the group chat received letters informing them that their offers of admission had been withdrawn.

 The description for the official Facebook group for the Class of 2021, set up and maintained by the Admissions Office, disclaims all administrative responsibility for “unofficial groups” and warns members their admissions offers can be rescinded under specific circumstances.

 “As a reminder, Harvard College reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions including if an admitted student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character,” the description reads.

 Luca said she had mixed feelings about the administration’s move to revoke admissions offers. She said she was “going back and forth” on the matter.

 “On the one hand, I think people can post whatever they want because they have the right to do that,” Luca said. “I don’t think the school should have gone in and rescinded some offers because it wasn’t Harvard-affiliated, it was people doing stupid stuff.”

 She added, though, that if memes sent over the chat posed any kind of threat to members’ lives or well-being, then she believed administrators’ actions were justified.

 Other members of the Class of 2021 said they strongly supported the Admissions Office’s decision. Zhang wrote that she thought the students’ actions were indefensible, and that the administration was correct in choosing to penalize those who posted obscene images.

 “I appreciate humor, but there are so many topics that just should not be joked about,” Zhang wrote. “I respect the decision of the admissions officers to rescind the offers because those actions really spoke about the students’ true characters.”

 “I do not know how those offensive images could be defended,” she added.

 Wyatt Hurt ’21, who said he did not participate in either meme chat, agreed and said he was glad administrators took action.

 “I haven’t seen any of the stuff firsthand, but I definitely think that the administration made the right choice and I think that as an incoming student—we all have our group chats and everything like that going on—we all pretty much universally agree it was the right decision,” he said.

 Hurt added that he recently attended several scholarship conferences and that students he met at those events—many of whom he said planned to matriculate at Ivy League schools—also agreed that “rescinding was definitely the way to go.”

 This incident marks the second time in two years that Harvard has dealt with a situation where incoming freshmen exchanged offensive messages online. Last spring, some admitted members of the Class of 2020 traded jokes about race and mocked feminists in an unofficial class GroupMe chat, prompting Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 to issue a joint statement condemning the students’ actions.

 “Harvard College and the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid were troubled and disappointed to see a conversation that included graphics with offensive themes,” Khurana and Fitzsimmons wrote in their statement, which they posted on the Class of 2020’s Facebook page.

 But administrators chose not to discipline members of the Class of 2020 who authored the messages. Then-Interim Dean of Student Life Thomas A. Dingman ’67 said in an interview at the time that the individuals in question were “not matriculated students at this point.”

 Harvard admitted 5.2 percent of applicants to the Class of 2021, accepting 2,056 of the nearly 40,000 total applicants. Roughly 84 percent of students invited to join the class accepted their offer, marking the highest yield rate in recent memory.

 —Staff writer Hannah Natanson can be reached at hannah.natanson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hannah_natanson. |||||

 The campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. (Lisa Poole/AP)

 The Facebook messaging group was at one point titled “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.”

 It began when about 100 members of Harvard College’s incoming freshman class contacted each other through the university’s official Class of 2021 Facebook group. They created a messaging group where students could share memes about popular culture — a growing trend on the Internet among students at elite colleges.

 But then, the exchanges took a dark turn, according to an article published in the Harvard Crimson on Sunday. Some of the group’s members decided to form an offshoot group in which students could share obscene, “R-rated” memes, a student told the Crimson. The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group.

 The students in the spinoff group exchanged memes and images “mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children,” sometimes directing jokes at specific ethnic or racial groups, the Crimson reported. One message “called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child ‘piñata time’” while other messages quipped that “abusing children was sexually arousing,” according to images of the chat described by the Crimson.

 Then, university officials caught on. And in mid-April, after administrators discovered the offensive, racially charged meme exchanges, at least 10 incoming students who participated in the chat received letters informing them that their offers of admission had been revoked.

 In an email to The Washington Post Sunday night, Rachael Dane, a Harvard spokeswoman, said “we do not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants.”

 But according to the Harvard Crimson article, written by Harvard student Hannah Natanson, representatives from the admissions office emailed the implicated students asking them to reveal every picture they sent in the group.

 “The Admissions Committee was disappointed to learn that several students in a private group chat for the Class of 2021 were sending messages that contained offensive messages and graphics,” read a copy of the Admissions Office’s email obtained by the Crimson. “As we understand you were among the members contributing such material to this chat, we are asking that you submit a statement by tomorrow at noon to explain your contributions and actions for discussion with the Admissions Committee.”

 “It is unfortunate that I have to reach out about this situation,” the email continued.

 According to Harvard college admissions policies, the university reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission if the admitted student “engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity or moral character,” among other conditions, Dane told The Post.

 The Harvard College Class of 2021 official Facebook group — like similar groups for incoming students at other universities — allows admitted students to meet classmates, ask questions and prepare for their first semester. The group is managed by the Admissions and Financial Aid Office and states in its description it is “not responsible for any unofficial groups, chats, or the content within.”

 “As a reminder, Harvard College reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions including if an admitted student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character,” the group description states.

 Cassandra Luca, an incoming student who joined the first meme group but not the second, told the Harvard Crimson the “dark” group chat was a “just-because-we-got-into-Harvard-doesn’t-mean-we-can’t-have-fun kind of thing.” Luca’s admission offer was not revoked, she told the student newspaper.

 This spring, 2,056 students were invited to join Harvard’s incoming freshman class, drawing from a record number of applications — 39,506, according to a university news release. Nearly 84 percent of the admitted students eventually chose to enroll at Harvard — the highest yield rate in several decades.

 The university’s decision to rescind the students’ acceptance to Harvard underscores the dangers of social media posts — public or private — among prospective college students. According to Kaplan Test Prep, which surveyed more than 350 college admissions officers, 35 percent of admissions officers said they check social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to learn more about applicants. About 42 percent of those officials said what they found had a negative impact on prospective students.

 “For better or worse, social media has become an established factor in college admissions, and it’s more important than ever for applicants to make wise decisions,” Yariv Alpher, executive director of research at Kaplan Test Prep said.

 The repercussions spurred both praise and criticism from Harvard students, alumni and others at a time when university campuses across the country are in the midst of clashes over free speech. Some felt the decision was justified, while others expressed a belief that admissions officers crossed a line by judging students for their private conversations.

 Erica Goldberg, an assistant professor at Ohio Northern Law School who calls herself a “free speech enthusiast,” wrote in a blog post that by “ferreting out” the members of the private chat group and revoking their acceptances Harvard “has proven that there is an oppressive force to transgress.”

 Goldberg, who said she taught at Harvard Law School for three years, compared the dark humor used by the Harvard students to the popular “unabashedly irreverent” game Cards Against Humanity, “whose purpose is to be as cleverly offensive as possible.

 “Even many good liberals love the game, precisely because the humor is so wrong, so contrary to our values,” Goldberg wrote. She called on Harvard to reconsider its decision.

 “Harvard should not teach its students to be afraid to joke in private, among people willing to joke back,” Goldberg wrote. “Harvard should not teach students to turn on each other for speech.”

 This was not the first time Harvard administrators addressed controversial messages exchanged among incoming students. Last year, after connecting on the university’s official Facebook page for the Class of 2020, incoming students joined a private unofficial chat on the GroupMe messaging app. In it, some students exchanged images that included racially charged jokes and at least one message that mocked feminists.

 Though the exchanges prompted a controversy among members of that incoming class, administrators did not discipline the students who sent the messages, according to the Harvard Crimson. Thomas A. Dingman, then the interim dean of student life, said in an interview at the time that the individuals were “not matriculated students at this point.”

 [Yale dean placed on leave after calling people ‘white trash’ on Yelp]

 In recent months, college meme groups on Facebook have become institutions among Ivy League students; some even refer to the craze as “college meme wars.” The groups have been popping up at the campuses of Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, Yale and Dartmouth, as well as the University of California Berkeley and others.

 College meme groups on Facebook have become institutions among Ivy League students; some even refer to the craze as "college meme wars." Here's what you need to know. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

 Students use the groups to share memes picking fun at college cliches, inside jokes and even standard student topics, such as textbook prices. Old-school college rivalries often play out in the groups, as Mic pointed on in a story titled “Inside the elite meme wars of America’s most exclusive colleges.”

 These groups have become so popular that many now have more members than the schools have students. In early February, a Harvard freshman started a Facebook group titled “Harvard Memes for Elitist 1% Tweens,” modeling it after two similar university-based groups: “UCLA Memes for Sick AF Tweens” and “UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens,” according to an article in the Harvard Crimson magazine, Fifteen Minutes.

 By early March, there were more members of the Harvard meme group than Harvard undergraduate students. The group now has nearly 30,000 members — including “pharmabro” Martin Shkreli, the former Turing Pharmaceuticals executive who became known as “Pharma Bro” after he dramatically boosted the price of a drug.

 According to the Harvard meme Facebook group description, all memes must be Harvard-specific. “If the meme could apply to any group of wealthy, pretentious pseudo-intellectuals, at least Photoshop a Harvard logo in there somewhere,” the description states.

 As the group’s popularity swelled, so did disputes and controversies that played out in exchanges between its members.

 “Most of these fights fell in line with a discourse familiar to contemporary college campuses,” Tarpley Hitt wrote in the article in the student magazine, “with one side calling for increased moderation of posts which played into racial stereotypes or targeted marginalized groups, while the other championed freedom of expression.”

 One participant in the Harvard meme group posted a link Sunday to the news about the obscene meme exchange.

 “When the memes get too real,” the post read.

 One Twitter user who shared the story surmised: “Are these the first casualties of the college meme wars?”

 Editor’s note: The original version of this story inadvertently neglected to put in quotes words in the fourth paragraph which came from the Harvard Crimson. The story has been adjusted.

 Much memes. So web. Such wow. (Adriana Usero,Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post)

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– Two Tennessee men have been charged with killing a couple over what police describe as a "senseless and stupid" motive: A defriending on Facebook. Marvin Potter, 60, was enraged by the couple's decision to scratch his 30-year-old daughter from their list of friends, according to police. The two were found shot dead in their home, with their 8-month-old daughter lying unharmed in her mother's arms, reports AP. Potter was charged with first-degree murder after an intensive week-long police investigation, reports the Johnson City Press. Investigators found that the couple had complained about Potter's daughter harassing them on the Internet and over the phone. A friend of Potter's, who police said had romantic feelings for his daughter, has been charged as an accessory to murder.

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MOUNTAIN CITY — The Johnson County Sheriff’s Department arrested two men on first-degree murder charges Tuesday morning, completing an intensive, weeklong search for the killers of Billy Clay Payne Jr., 36, and his girlfriend Billie Jean Hayworth, 23, while leaving the couple’s 6-month-old child alive in his mother’s arms.

 Sheriff Mike Reece said Marvin E. “Buddy” Potter Jr., 60, 727 Hospital Road, and Jamie Lynn Curd, 38, 2358 Pleasant Valley Road, were taken into custody without incident.

 The sheriff said the motive for the killings of the young couple was “senseless and stupid.” Potter was angry about Internet and telephone communications between the couple and his daughter.

 Reece said the arrests were the culmination of an investigation by his department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in which officers interviewed between 150 and 170 people.

 He said Potter and Curd were among the list of suspects at the start of the investigation and as more and more people were interviewed some suspects dropped off the list, but Potter and Curd kept returning. Finally, information gleaned from the interviews led to the department interviewing Potter and Curd with a polygraph. Things soon came into focus when Curd began to cooperate after the polygraph test.

 The TBI reported Payne and Hayworth made complaints against Potter’s daughter last year for harassing them by telephone and over the Internet. Curd, who is Payne’s second cousin, went to court in defense of Potter’s daughter.

 When the bodies of Payne and Hayworth were discovered inside their residence at 128 James Davis Lane on Jan. 31, Reece said his department had few clues. There was no forced entry, no weapons were found and there did not appear to be a struggle.

 The last person to see the couple alive was Payne’s father. The couple lived in his house and he left for work in Boone, N.C., at 5:30 a.m. The bodies were discovered by a friend five hours later.

 Reece said Payne was found in his bedroom with a gunshot wound to the head and his throat cut. Hayworth was found in the baby’s bedroom. She had been shot in the head. The child was uninjured and has been taken in by family members.

 “I am really proud of my officers,” Reece said of the effort to seek justice for the slain family. “They worked many long hours during the past week and didn’t see much of their own families.” ||||| A father who was upset after a Tennessee couple deleted his adult daughter as a friend on Facebook has been charged in the shooting deaths of the couple, authorities said Wednesday.

 The victims had complained to police that Marvin's Potter's daughter was harassing them after they deleted her as a friend on the social networking site, Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece said Wednesday.

 Potter, 60, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in last week's slayings of Billy Payne Jr. and his girlfriend, Billie Jean Hayworth. The couple was shot to death in their Mountain City home in the far northeast corner of the state. Their 8-month-old baby was found unharmed in Hayworth's arms.

 "It's a senseless thing," the sheriff said.

 Authorities have been involved other cases where Potter's daughter, Jenelle Potter, believed she had been slighted by someone.

 Marvin Potter's friend, Jamie Curd, has also been charged in the killings. Curd, 38, had romantic feelings for Jenelle Potter, 30, the sheriff said.

 Potter and Curd were arraigned Wednesday. Potter asked for time to hire an attorney while Curd was assigned a public defender who did not immediately return a phone message.

 Assistant District Attorney General Matthew Roark said Curd's initial bond was raised to $1.5 million while Roark agreed to put off a bond hearing for Potter until next week, when he is expected to have an attorney. Potter remains jailed on his initial $200,000 bond.

 The victims lived with Billy Payne Sr., who was the last person to see them alive. He told detectives he saw Hayworth get up to feed the baby before he left for work at about 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 31.

 The slayings were discovered about five hours later when a former neighbor stopped by to pick up mail the family would save for him.

 The younger Payne was found in his bedroom, and Hayworth was found in the baby's room. |||||