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“Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius breaks down at his bail hearing in Pretoria, South Africa. The Paralympic superstar is accused of fatally shooting his 30-year-old girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
(AP Photo/Antione de Ras - Independent Newspapers Ltd South Africa) -
American skier Lindsey Vonn is airlifted to the hospital after crashing on the women’s super-G course at the Alpine skiing world championships in Schladming, Austria. The 28-year-old reportedly lost balance after a jump, lost one ski, slid off course, and hit a gate before coming to a halt. Click through for more newsy images from around the globe. PHOTO: AP Photo/Luca Bruno
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Lords a leaping: The Ravens’ Jacoby Jones and the 49ers’ Chris Culliver. (Harry How/Getty Images)
Grand jeté: San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree and the Ravens’ Ed Reed. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
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Next year's Super Bowl might not have a halftime show
We hope you liked Beyonce’s Super Bowl halftime performance, because it could be the last one for a couple years. Next year’s big game will be played in New Jersey’s open-air MetLife stadium, where the temperature is currently a frigid 27 degrees. And with next year’s Super Bowl likely to be similarly cold, NFL officials reportedly aren’t sure how to plan for the halftime show, as freezing temperatures could make the already-daunting task of quickly setting up and tearing down a massive stage even more difficult.
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The moment Armstrong lays blame on his sponsors (for tacitly knowing about it, and even funding his habit) or on the cycling world, or on anything else is the moment where you might want to just turn off the television, because you’ll know that he really isn’t very sorry for anything. He’s just sorry that the proof of his doping became too overwhelming for his own ego to continue to deny.
— Marc Ambinder says Lance Armstrong deserves nothing -
Cartoon of the day: Kicking the habit
PETER BROELMAN © 2013 Cagle Cartoons(Source: theweek.com)
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“It was the whack heard around the world.” In January 1994, at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted by a masked attacker who clubbed her in the knee, leaving her unable to skate. Her biggest rival, Tonya Harding, went on to a first-place victory, stirring rumors that she’d orchestrated the attack. Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy that March to avoid possible jail time, but she maintains her innocence.
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Skateboarding through a ghost town — A group of lucky skaters live every kid’s dream of tearing their way through an eerie ghost town unchecked by authorities. This short takes place in Ordos, a northern China city that’s nearly completely deserted thanks to soaring property taxes.
More awesomeness can be found in our list of this week’s best of the internet
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“It’s like hell. The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. I thought I’d just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started speeding up… It was really brutal at times. I thought for a second that I’d lose consciousness.” —Felix Baumgartner talks about his record-breaking space jump.
If you want to know what it looked like from his perspective, here’s the helmet-cam footage.
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Top: Rescuers attempt to stop a man from committing suicide on a bridge in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The man climbed onto the top of a bridge in an attempt to jump into the Yangtze River. He was ultimately saved. PHOTO: REUTERS/Stringer
Left: A man smokes a cigarette. A goat stands on a pole. Apparently, it’s just a typical day at a temple at Khokana in Lalitpur, Nepal. PHOTO: REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar
Right: Expertly coordinated competitors high-five during the World Hickory Open Golf Championship in east Scotland.PHOTO: REUTERS/David Moir
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The NFL had $9.5 billion in revenue in 2011, and they’ve donated a paltry $3 million to breast cancer? ”Pardon me while I don’t slobber all over the NFL’s pink-drenched marketing campaign.” -Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezebel.
The NFL is coming under fire in the wake of a new report that accuses the NFL of profiting from the cause, arguing that most of the money from the breast cancer awareness push “ends up in the pockets of billionaire NFL owners.” The NFL refutes that claim. What exactly does the NFL’s breast cancer campaign do in terms of raising money and raising awareness?
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TOP: On Oct. 8, Felix Baumgartner of Austria plans to use a helium balloon to ascend more than 22 miles above the earth’s surface — technically into space — and jump down. The extreme skydiver hopes to break the record for the highest sky dive, and become the first man to exceed the speed of sound with his body.
BOTTOM: The Flying Wallendas, a family of tightrope walkers led by patriarch Karl Wallenda, were a hot commodity on the circus circuit from the 1930s to the 1960s. Disaster struck in 1962, when the family’s three-tiered, seven-person pyramid crashed to the ground, killing two members. Karl’s great grandson, Nik Wallenda, is a self-described “King of the Wire” who crossed Niagara Falls on a steel cable in 2012.
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NASA requires its astronauts to exercise on space flights to fight off the debilitating effects of zero-gravity on the body’s bone and muscle. But Sunita Williams, U.S. commander of the Expedition 33 crew at the International Space Station, took things to another level when she completed the first ever triathlon in space — running, biking, and even swimming to compete with Earth-based athletes 240 miles below in Southern California.
Since quarters are a bit cramped at the I.S.S., Williams used special exercise equipment to keep up with triathletes competing in the Nautica Malibu Triathlon in Southern California. For the half-mile “swimming” portion, Williams strapped into something called the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED), which uses weights to imitate water resistance while swimming through anti-gravity. For the 18-mile biking portion she used a stationary bike, and for the four-mile run she used a specially outfitted treadmill that strapped her in to keep her from floating off.
