Libyan forces shot and killed deposed leader Muammar Qaddafi after finding him hidden in a drainage pipe in Sirte. Upon being discovered, Qaddafi reportedly raised his hands and begged, “Don’t kill me, my sons.” Video footage showed him being taunted, beaten, and sodomized with a weapon, possibly after he had been shot in the head and stomach. His body was mounted on a truck and paraded around Misrata before it was placed in a shopping-center freezer. Crowds said, “We want to see the dog!” as they lined up to view the corpse. “The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted,” said President Barack Obama. “Wow!” said secretary of state Hillary Clinton.TelegraphAPAPGlobalPost via CBSNew York TimesBBCObama announced that U.S. troops would withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year, and Turkish troops crossed into Iraq in search of Kurds. In eastern Turkey, Kurdish fighters killed 24 Turkish soldiers, Turkish soldiers killed 49 Kurdish fighters, and an earthquake killed more than 250 people.AP via NOLA.comAPReutersBBCVoice of AmericaHamas freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Shalit, whose captivity had lasted five years, was interviewed on Egyptian TV immediately after his release, prompting outrage from Israelis, who said he looked exhausted and extremely pale.APAP via CBSYouTubeIn Nigeria, government forces hunted the militant Islamist group Boko Haram after it killed a TV journalist and an MP and bombed a police station, and in San Francisco, MC Hammer launched WIREDoo, a new “deep search” engine. “Generalities,” said Hammer, “tend to not be the wave of the future.”BBCBBCChristian Science MonitorInformation WeekYouTube
A boxing-glove-shaped gold nugget worth $424,000 was discovered in Russia, Occupy Wall Street said that it had raised $300,000 in donations, Communist Party U.S.A. and the American Nazi Party announced their support for the “Occupy” movement, and zombies and witches fought for economic turf in Salem, Mass.PravdaThe Smoking JacketAP via Huffington PostCommunist Party USARaw StorySalem NewsBank of America shifted $55 trillion worth of Merrill Lynch derivatives to its retail bank unit, where they would be insured by U.S. taxpayers through the FDIC.New York PostFelix Salmon via ReutersUnwarranted self-praise was found to lead to depression, and a military care package consisting of two boxes of Bill O’Reilly’s book “Pinheads and Patriots” was set on fire in Afghanistan, on orders from a unit commander. “I won’t say I didn’t take pleasure in removing a few copies of this bigoted twerp’s writings from circulation,” the soldier who burned the books wrote on his blog, Everqueer, “but the reason for doing so was military necessity.”Science DailyGawkerEverqueerEverqueerThree U.S. Marines were imprisoned in San Diego for entering into fraudulent heterosexual marriages to get housing-allowance money for one of the Marines and her female partner, and American researchers demonstrated that people with strong physiological responses to unpleasant images, such as a man eating live worms, are more likely to oppose gay marriage.Los Angeles TimesPLoSChristian Louboutin fought Yves Saint Laurent over red-soled shoes, and Patrizia Reggiani, who has been in prison 13 years for contracting the murder of her ex-husband, the heir to the Gucci fortune, turned down work release, telling an Italian court, “I’ve never worked in my life.” Reggiani said she would prefer to live in her cell, which she shares with other prisoners, two evergreens, and a replacement ferret for her first, Bambi, who was hanged. “Living with her cellmates is not easy,” said her lawyer.Women’s Wear Daily via New York MagazineLa Stampa via WorldcrunchGuardian
A Zanesville, Ohio, man freed 56 exotic animals from his private zoo and then committed suicide. As townspeople hid indoors, deputies captured or shot lions and tigers and bears. “There was a loss of life here, and we thank God it was not human life,” said Columbus Zoo director emeritus Jack Hanna. “It was animal life, and that’s my life.” A herpetic macaque remained at large, but was presumed eaten by a big cat.Columbus DispatchCNNTwenty-three Swedish women, aged 38 to 70, were convicted of possessing child pornography; the hacker collective Anonymous outed 1,500 pedophiles following a siege of Lolita City; and a hacker redirected video links on the “Sesame Street” YouTube channel to a clip from “First Anal Quest: Angelica.”AFPExaminer.comE! OnlineA California court dismissed a lawsuit brought by a former business partner of retired NBA player Shaquille O’Neal, which alleged that O’Neal had hired the Main Street Mafia Crips to kidnap the plaintiff in order to retrieve a sex tape.Hollywood ReporterResearchers announced that junk food weakens young men’s sperm and that cell phones do not cause cancer, and journalists investigated the testicles of a 34-year-old Taiwanese woman and the 100-pound scrotum of Wesley Warren Jr., a Las Vegas man seeking donations for an operation to save his genitals. “It’s not something people have seen before,” said Warren. “I doubt if they can even imagine it.”news.com.auArs TechnicaStraits TimesLas Vegas Review-Journal
