New Jersey

Ken Thorbourne of the Jersey Journal: "A 39-year-old Jersey City warehouse worker was taken to the hospital this afternoon after 1,500 pounds of pineapples fell on him, a hospital official said."

Iraq

Gunmen killed at least five men and seven women at a brothel in Baghdad.

Marijuana

NPR: "Chuck used to sell marijuana in California. But the legalization of medical marijuana in the state meant he was suddenly competing against hundreds of marijuana dispensaries. So he moved to New York, where marijuana is still 100 percent illegal. Since making the move, he says, he's quadrupled his income. (For the record: His name isn't really Chuck.)"

Magazines

The June issue of Smithsonian magazine and the July issue of Air & Space magazine are up!

United States

Raymond Bonner, ProPublica: "States that impose the death penalty have been facing a crisis in recent years: They are short on the drugs used in executions."

Washington Merry-Go-Round

"Meet the Man Who Set Off the IRS Firestorm"

Henry Kissinger

Gregor Peter Schmitz at Der Spiegel: "Henry Kissinger, the hawkish national security advisor to Nixon who popularized realpolitik, turns 90 this week. Few would have expected President Obama to pick up his mantle, but the erstwhile idealist resembles Kissinger more every day."

Syria

Matthias Gebauer, Spiegel Online: "Not even a year ago, German intelligence predicted Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad's regime would soon collapse. Now, the agency instead believes the rebels are in trouble. Government troops are set to make significant advances, it predicts."

Texas

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized more than $2.1 millon worth of heroin from a man at the Hidalgo International Bridge yesterday.

Hungary

Donkeys killed a 65-year-old man in Hungary.

U.S. Army

Chris Carroll, Stars & Stripes: "The Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens more in a November 2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, has continued pulling down a paycheck since the attack."

Vitamin C

Einstein: "In a striking, unexpected discovery, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have determined that vitamin C kills drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in laboratory culture."

South America

University of Zurich: "Fourteen species of crocodile lived in South America around 5 million years ago, at least seven of which populated the coastal areas of the Urumaco River in Venezuela at the same time."

Irish Potato Famine

Helen Briggs, BBC News: "Scientists have used plant samples collected in the mid-19th century to identify the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine."

Florida

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission:

A Miami man has caught and killed the longest Burmese python ever captured in Florida: 18 feet, 8 inches. The python was a 128-pound female that was not carrying eggs, according to University of Florida scientists who examined the snake. The previous record length for a Burmese python captured in the wild in Florida was 17 feet, 7 inches.

NYU

Wall Street Journal: "Three Chinese nationals working at New York University Langone Medical Center were charged with secretly sharing information about their magnetic-resonance-imaging research with a Chinese medical-imaging company, while receiving funds for the research from the U.S. government."

Press Release: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York

Pharmaceutical Shipments

U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Columbia: "Two Pakistani nationals have been extradited to the United States to face charges alleging that they operated Internet sites that illegally shipped pharmaceuticals from Pakistan and the United Kingdom to customers in the United States."

Mekong River

Xinhua, China's official news agency: "A total of 812 drug crime suspects have been arrested as part of a joint anti-drug campaign by China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand on the Mekong River, the mission's headquarters reported on Monday."

Venezuela

Andrew Rosati, Christian Science Monitor: "In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez's successor seems to be turning toward big business for help in ending rampant scarcities of basic consumer goods and an almost 30 percent annual inflation rate."

South Korea

Christian Science Monitor: "South Korea, long in the shadow of other Asian 'tiger economies,' is suddenly hip and enormously prosperous — so much so that it may have outgrown its thankless dream of reuniting with the North."

Pennsylvania

Mara Bovsun of the New York Daily News:

Among the most terrifying places in movie history is the pit from Silence of the Lambs, where serial killer Buffalo Bill imprisoned women before he murdered and skinned them. 

Unbelievably horrific it may have seemed, but it was no figment of a writer’s imagination. The prison was drawn from life and a person whose crimes were front-page headlines shortly before Thomas Harris wrote the novel that would become the classic film.

Read more.

Driving in the United States

NBC News (USA): "Imagine having a drink with dinner at a restaurant only to be pulled over on the way home and slapped with a DUI. That could happen under a proposed plan to toughen the drunk driving laws across the country, and it has restaurateurs alarmed."

Biography

Margaret Thatcher by Charles Moore

Oscar Pistorius

Vanity Fair:

When Oscar Pistorius — the South African "Blade Runner," who overcame a double amputation to compete in the Olympics last year — shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day, the millions he’d inspired were faced with a shocking possibility: that their hero was also a killer. With Pistorius claiming that Steenkamp’s death was an accident, Mark Seal delves into the murder case that has rocked the country, and the paths the couple took to that fatal night.

Read "The Shooting Star and the Model."

Indonesia

IOL: "A British woman could face the death penalty in Indonesia after being arrested for allegedly smuggling crystal methamphetamine into the country from China, an official said on Saturday."

Italy

Elena Cosentino, BBC News: "This week the boss of one of southern Italy's most powerful mafia dynasties sensationally handed himself in to police after three years on the run — and now faces 16 years in jail."

France

"Pricey Trove of Jewels Stolen From Hotel Room During Film Festival"