So. Sarah Palin. She's Alaska's 11th governor--it's only been a state since 1959!--and before that she was the mayor of the town of Wasilla. But where the heck is Wasilla?
It's about 40 miles north of Anchorage, and it's an 80-mile drive to get to Ted Stevens' house in Girdwood. To get to Alaska's capital of Juneau, it's 568 miles as the crow flies; if Palin is headed to One Observatory Circle this January, it's gonna be one hell of a red-eye: Washington, DC is 3,351 miles from Wasilla.
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The US Open started today, and right this second, Rafael Nadal is beating Bjorn Phau in a first round matchup. Olympic gold medalist Elena Dementieva has already advanced to the second round. (Roger Federer plays tomorrow.)
We've already told you where to eat at Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, but we were a little short on the other details. Plot a route on our map between the courts and nearby transportation options. Just don't, for the love of God, try to drive.
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Nicolette Waechter is tired of her family's lake in the resort district of Salzkammergut in Austria. So she's selling Mondsee, and €16 million ($24 million) seems to be the going price.
Mondsee, or Moon Lake, is about a mile wide and 10 miles long, and it's one of only five lakes of substantial size in Austria that is still privately owned. It's also part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it has lent its name to a Neolithic people who built pile dwellings on its shores between 3600 BC and 3300 BC.
But it's not without problems: Waechter has lost numerous court cases trying to ban motorboats on the lake. At least one potential buyer would probably be happy with those rulings, though. Local tabloids say billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, the co-creator of Red Bull, is interested.
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Two American tourists prepping a sailboat for a cruise from Guatemala to the United States were allegedly attacked by four locals brandishing machetes on Lake Izabal. While Nancy Dryden survived the assault, her husband Perry was killed by the men, who demanded dollars, which the couple didn't have.
The four assailants then swam off, leaving the pair for dead, though Nancy was able to raise assistance on the vessel's radio. Local police say they are investigating, but this isn't the first incident involving tourists at the lake, the largest in the country.
Earlier this year, four Belgian tourists were kidnapped at Izabal by farmers hoping to use them as a bargaining chip. They were eventually released unharmed, but yikes!
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The super-scary, walks-on-land, razor-toothed snakehead fish--that's so frightening that even a dead one threw Lincolnshire, England into a panic in February--has once again washed up on American shores. And it's coming to get you, bedroom communities of Upstate New York!
In Wawayanda, just south of Catskill Park, officials have ordered that any snakeheads must be shot or otherwise killed on sight to keep them from infesting the Hudson downstream. (Once the ferocious fish invade an ecosystem, it's next to impossible to clear 'em out.) The state Department of Environmental Conservation is using designer pesticides to poison the baddies in local waters while residents are poaching them with .22s from golf carts. Seriously.
While the killing may seem like swatting flies with a cruise missile, you don't mess around with these terrors. To wit:
Gale A. Norton, United States secretary of the interior when snakeheads were discovered in Maryland in 2002, called them "something from a bad horror movie" before ordering a federal ban. Since then the fish have spawned not one but two bad horror movies, "Snakehead Terror" and "Frankenfish."
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Morgan Freeman was seriously injured in a one-car accident in Northern Mississippi late Sunday night. The 71-year-old "Dark Knight" actor was airlifted to the Regional Medical Center at Memphis after being pulled from a 1997 Nissan Maxima that flipped over multiple times. His passenger, Demaris Meyer, was also injured, though authorities can't say for certain how seriously she was hurt.
Filmmaker Paul Saltzman, who visited the Oscar-winner in the hospital, said Freeman suffered a broken shoulder and broken arm. He recently wrapped work on a documentary project with Freeman about a newly integrated prom held in Charleston, Mississippi--an event the actor sponsored.
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At 11:42 local time, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook up Los Angeles, making us glad that the White Knight Two reveal was yesterday instead of today. We don't like hiding under desks!
The epicenter, mapped above, was just two miles from Chino Hills and 29 miles from the LA Civic Center downtown. While 5.8 isn't that strong, it did manage to shake up buildings and locals alike. There were no serious injuries reported, but Disneyland has closed its rides for inspections.
As for people trying to flee LA, they're in luck: Flights out of LAX continue to operate normally.
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