By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:04 PM
Early this morning, Kevin Rose, founder of the news and link sharing and aggregation site Digg, woke to discover his dog, Toaster, being attacked by a raccoon.
Rose sprinted outside, broke up the fight, and tossed the raccoon down a flight of stairs outside of his home.
The whole incident was captured on Rose’s security cameras, and he uploaded the footage to YouTube – watch it below.
According to Rose, Toaster is recovering, but has some bite and claw marks inflicted by the raccoon.
By Paul Thomson :: 1:19 PM
A woman who died after falling out of a roller coaster at Six Flags Over Texas yesterday may not have been properly restrained in the ride, according to witnesses who were on the coaster at the time she was ejected.
The accident occurred on the park’s Texas Giant coaster, a fixture at the establishment since 1990 when it opened as an all-wooden coaster. It was recently retrofitted with a steel track, and reopened to the public in 2011. At its highest point, the ride is 153 feet tall, and features a drop of 147 feet.
As the coaster climbed to the top of the track and then dropped, the woman apparently flew out of her seat.
“It released and she just tumbled,” said witness Carmen Brown, in an interview with Texas TV station WFAA. Brown also told the Dallas Morning News that the victim had complained to a park employee that she didn’t feel that the restraints at her seat had been properly fastened before the ride. The photo above of a Texas Giant ride car shows that passengers are held in their seats by individual restraining bars.
In addition to Brown’s account, a passenger on the coaster who was seated behind the victim also confirmed an issue with the ride’s restraint system. Joshua Fleak tweeted, “Literally just witnessed someone fly off the Texas Giant two seats in front of me.” and then, in a second tweet, “Restraint came undone, coaster turned, and she was gone.” Fleak has since made his Twitter account private.
The Texas Giant ride remains closed at Six Flags today as investigators try to piece together what happened.
“Since the safety of our guests and employees in our number one priority, the ride has been closed pending further investigation,” the park said in a statement released on Friday evening.
By Gilbert Falso :: 9:24 PM
Statistician Nate Silver, who attained something of a cult-like following after his stunningly accurate predictions of the 2008 and 2012 presidential election outcomes will reportedly be leaving his post at the New York Times for sports network ESPN.
The deal, which has not been announced widely yet, will apparently be inked on Monday, according to sources at ESPN who spoke to the Times under conditions of anonymity.
In his new position at ESPN, Silver will continue his regular statistics work and writing, but will also be a regular fixture on a new late-night talk show “Olberman,” hosted by Keith Olberman. The new show is set to launch some time in August. In addition to the ESPN airtime, Silver will also be expected to appear on ESPN’s sister company, ABC News. Both networks are owned by the Walt Disney Company.
Prior to his political work at the Times, Silver worked in baseball, devising statistics models that projected how certain players would perform in future games and seasons.
Silver’s contract with the Times expires in late August, and the timing lines up with when ESPN expects to begin airing Olberman’s new show.
Immediately following Silver’s success in so accurately predicting the outcome of the 2012 elections, many news agencies tried to woo him away from the Times, including NBC News, MSNBC, and CBS.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 6:36 PM
Not unlike last week’s heartstring-pulling pizza effort, Redditors are again coming together to brighten the life of another child with a debilitating disease.
6-year-old Emma Ritter of Bakersfield, California (above, left), will be celebrating her 7th birthday on Monday, and is currently is undergoing treatment at Children’s Hospital of Central California in Madera.
She has one lofty birthday wish that Reddit is trying to make come true – she wants to receive 100 birthday cards.
Her family told ABC TV affiliate KERO that they hope the cards are special, and include drawings for Emma and messages of hope as she goes through her treatment at the hospital.
The Reddit thread that tells her story quickly ascended to the front page of the news aggregation site on Friday afternoon, with information about Emma’s condition, and information on how to send cards to the girl.
In addition, a number of Redditors also provided information for organizations that support Cystic Fibrosis research that are in need of donations.
To send a card to Ritter, address it as follows:
Emma Ritter
c/o Children’s Hospital Central California
Room 506
9300 Children’s Place
Madera, CA 93636
By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:28 PM
The Yahoo.com website and many Yahoo services, such as Yahoo Mail are currently down for some users in North America.
Yahoo’s problems seem to be centered with one of their east coast data centers going offline suddenly, although an official explanation has not been given by the company.
A brief message (below) was posted to Yahoo’s Facebook page at 9:10 PM that acknowledges the problem.
Yahoo.com is experiencing an outage at the moment. We’re working on getting up and running as fast as we can. Sorry for the inconvenience!
This story will be updated as more information is made available.