Of course Texas is the reason America’s freaking out (or maybe reasonably and sanely concerned) about its first Ebola case. Officials now say “about 100” people had contact with Thomas Duncan after his return from Liberia, including students at a handful of Dallas-area schools—but that the number of people who might require a quarantine will be lower. Duncan’s immediate family has already been quarantined. Duncan might have been attended to much sooner, but was sent home from a hospital days ago after no one relayed news of his recent trip to Africa.
Meanwhile… in Africa, where Ebola is virulently ripping through entire overwhelmed countries, stats suggest Sierra Leone is seeing five new infections every hour.
Hong Kong is boiling. Still. The masses demanding truly open elections and a new leader have refused to stop gathering outside the Chinese territory’s government buildings—and now China, with its patience growing quite thin, is warning about “serious consequences” and arming cops with tear gas and rubber bullets. The conflict has been eye-opening for visitors from the mainland, watching something that would get them jailed or worse if they attempted it back home. China has also kindly asked the United States to shut the hell up about it all.
The grand jury investigating the police shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, is also being investigated—for misconduct. One of the grand jurors is accused of leaking details to friends.
Some 35,000 walruses have been spotted in a desperate cluster on a beach in Alaska, driven there, apparently, by melting sea ice. Which is a good time to remind everyone that half of the planet’s wildlife has vanished over the past 40 years, one major study says.
Shooting someone to death over loud music really does amount to murder. A Florida man, in a retrial, was found guilty of killing an African American teenager at a gas station after jurors refused to buy his self-defense argument.
Argentina’s president, presiding over an economy in free-fall, went on national television to air a conspiracy theory about her future. Namely, that the United States is secretly working with bankers and business interests to plot a coup.
A voter ID law in North Carolina widely seen as a Republican attempt to keep African Americans (AKA Democrats) away from the polls has seen its crucial components cast down by a judge.
A racist cartoon about the president in the Boston Herald has warranted a reluctant apology.
This is maybe the messiest recipe for chicken salad imaginable.
EVERY HOUR I CAN FEEL YOUR POWER.