A man fired from his job with an apparel importer stalked and shot dead his former manager outside the Empire State Building, before turning his gun on two cops who showed up to confront him and then killed him. Nine people were wounded, maybe seriously, at least some of them by police bullets. The shooter, identified as Jeffrey Johnson, was a clothing designer laid off a year ago.

The creepy right-wing gunman who killed 77 people in a two-pronged, politically motivated bombing-and-shooting massacre in Norway was declared "sane" by a court this morning and sentenced to 21 years in prison—the most severe sentence allowed under Norwegian law.

Lance Armstrong will be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after ending a years-long battle to clear himself doping allegations. Though he's essentially wiping away the past 14 years of his career, and all concomitant glory and cash, and accepting a ban from the sport, he says it's not because he's actually guilty. It's because he wants to spare his family.

China is building missiles so technologically advanced they can hold multiple nuclear warheads and probably overpower and/or evade our Cold War-era missile defense systems.

On their smoke breaks, workers in Iran's nuclear program—which is adding uranium-enriching centrifuges by the dozen—are complaining about a speed-up and then fantasizing about how good it would feel to finally tell their foremen to stuff it.

Egyptians are in the streets again, this time because they're accusing their new Islamist president, the guy who just stared down the country's formerly preeminent military council, of taking too much power.

Remember when Barack Obama said the private sector was "doing fine" and got savaged by Willard Romney's robot operators for it? Well, yesterday, Willard's operators spoke into the microphone and said the same thing—"doing fine"—about big businesses. Why, says Willard? Because those companies "save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens."

Willard Romney's fundraising operation is using the kind of secretive data-mining techniques preferred by major corporations—sifting through Americans' purchasing history and church attendance, among other things—to find new and untapped and rich Republican donors.

Tropical Storm Isaac probably won't mature into a hurricane if it stays on course for Tampa, home of this year's GOP convention. Only if it turns West, toward New Orleans, will God arm it with his most awesome, sin-washing might.

Tampa's strip clubs, however, might also need some sin-washing after the Republican convention. Strippers in town are getting ready like it's the Super Bowl.

One porn star stands
at the center of a syphilis outbreak that's crippled the adult film industry: Mr. Mercury Marcus.

The Count on Sesame Street is dead.
And so is Herry Monster and a hundred other everyman Muppets. RIP Jerry Nelson.

THE COUNT WAS CLEARLY AN ADDICT WITH TERRIBLE PROBLEMS, BY THE WAY.