Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is the country’s youngest PM since World War II. He’s still 52, mind you, but that counts for young in the slow-moving world of Japanese politics. He’s a charmer, and the job is in his blood: his granddad, Nobusuke Kishi, was prime minister of Japan from 1957-60. Add your own “Honest Abe” joke here.
Rock legends The Who seem to be getting great reviews on their new tour. The latest come from Boston.
Patricia Kennedy Lawford, sister to political heavyweights and former wife to a movie star, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 82 and her death was attributed to pneumonia.
Ann Richards has died of esophogeal cancer at age 73.Richards made a famously feisty keynote address at the Democratic convention in 1988, telling listeners that Republican candidate George Bush was “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” She was elected governor of Texas two years later, serving from 1991-95.
Remembering the stern everyman actor Glenn Ford, who has died in Beverly Hills at age 90.
Pete Townshend has been teasing us for two years with his claims that the next album from The Who would be titled Who2.But it was too good to last. Now Pete says that it was all a gag.
John Mark Karr did not kill JonBenet Ramsey. That was the announcement made on 28 August 2006 by Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy.Despite the DA’s earlier suspicions, and despite Karr’s claim to reporters that he “was with JonBenet when she died,” Karr’s DNA did not match with DNA found at the scene of the crime.
The International Astronomical Union has stripped Pluto of its status as a planet. Pluto fails to meet the IAU’s new guidelines for planets, mainly because its orbit overlaps with Neptune’s. Suddenly our solar system has only eight official planets.
Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who took the famous photo of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, has died at age 94.
We’ve added two profiles in the sad and increasingly strange case of JonBenet Ramsey: one of the victim herself, and one of her alleged killer, John Mark Karr. His arrest in Thailand, and his apparent confession that he was “with JonBenet when she died,” have added a bizarre note to what was already a very confusing story. Our JonBenet profile has links to some of the most detailed historical sites about the case, while the Karr profile focuses on news outlets in Colorado and elsewhere that are providing steady updates.