The Gun Used to Kill Trayvon Martin Was Put Up For Auction and Then Taken Down
George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watchman who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in 2013, put the gun he used in an online auction. Fox 35 in Florida asked him about his decision to sell it. "I'm a free American. I can do what I want with my possessions,” he told the outlet. But on Thursday before the auction began, the site it was listed on, GunBroker.com, took it down. [Local 10 News/AP]
Azealia Banks’ Latest Twitter Rant Gets Her Axed from UK Festival
The rapper, Azealia Banks, best known these days for her Twitter and Instagram rants, was cut from the Born & Bred festival in July after posting several derogatory Tweets at former One Direction singer, Zayn Malik. The rant, which became a trending topic yesterday afternoon on Twitter after Malik responded to Banks’ Instagram with a shady tweet of his own, even took on another young, Disney actress, Skai Jackson. Banks deleted the Tweets and posted an explanation Wednesday afternoon stating she was “angry” and wanted to remind Malik that they’re both artists of color in the same industry. [The Guardian]
Ronan Farrow on His Father and the Media
In a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter, Ronan Farrow examines what the press often ignore when powerful stars like Bill Cosby and his own father, Woody Allen, are accused of sexual abuse. “That kind of silence isn't just wrong. It's dangerous,” Farrow writes. “It sends a message to victims that it's not worth the anguish of coming forward.” [The Hollywood Reporter]
Family May File First Unlawful Death Suit Against Legal Marijuana Industry
The family of woman whose husband had a psychotic break and shot her after eating potent pot edibles is blaming the legal marijuana industry for their daughter’s death, the Denver Post reports. The lawsuit could be the first filed against the legal marijuana industry and names the company that made the edible as well as the store that sold it claiming that they failed to adequately warn Richard Kirk about their potency. [Denver Post]
Criminal Court in the Bronx is 'Worthy of Dickens'
Bronx residents trying to fight criminal charges are likely to be staring down the barrel of a Dickensian (or Kafkaesque) legal process, with little guarantee of a speedy trial, says the New York Times Editorial Board, following up on reports that defendants in the Bronx face an average wait of 642 days for a bench trial and 827 days for a jury trial. [NYT]
How Big Pharma Has Helped Prescription Drug Abuse
Reporters at the Los Angeles Times took a deep dive into America’s bestselling painkiller, Oxycontin. Spoiler alert: big pharma’s dubious marketing has played a big role in the devastating prescription drug abuse epidemic. [LA Times]
One Woman Guides Others in Alabama Through the State-Mandated Difficult Abortion Process
In a mere five years in her 20s, June Ayers went from abortion clinic receptionist to abortion clinic owner in a state where lawmakers have devoted themselves, since then, to making it as close to impossible as they can for women to end their own pregnancies. [Fusion]
The Sad Story of ‘Crying Jordan’
After reading this New Yorker piece about the slow and steady decline of Michael Jordan’s golden image in the eyes of America — which led, they posit, to the ubiquitous “Crying Jordan” meme — we can’t look at it exactly the same way anymore. Turns out, the snarky image used for every laughably bummer-ish scenario is, in reality, a big bummer. [New Yorker]
Joe’s Crab Shack is Backing Away from Its No-Tipping Policy
The national restaurant chain Joe’s Crab Shack announced about six months ago that they would test a tip-free business model at 18 of their locations, but the experiment appears to be nearing its end. The chain has reduced the number of restaurants where this is the policy from 18 to four after receiving several complaints from customers, who didn’t trust management to pay their employees higher wages and missed being able to incentivize good service. [Grub Street]
This column was compiled by DNAinfo reporters Carolina Pichardo, Noah Hurowitz, Danielle Tcholakian, Gwynne Hogan, Shaye Weaver, Eddie Small, Rachel Holliday Smith, Jeanmarie Evelly and Irene Plagianos.
