Tonight on AC360: Boston bombing victim reunited with her hero
Erika Brannock's life was forever changed the day the bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line in April. Part of her left leg was blown off, and her right leg was broken. She might have died if a stranger hadn't been there to provide critical care and support.
Brannock, 29, was discharged from Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center this week; she was the last patient injured in the attack to be released. As she returned home to Maryland, she thought about all she had overcome, the 11 surgeries she endured and the challenges she faces adjusting to her new normal.
The preschool teacher also spent a lot of time thinking about the woman who held her hand and tied a tourniquet around her severed limb. Brannock desperately wanted to find her hero.
On Monday night, CNN's Randi Kaye reported on Erika's journey and turned to AC360° viewers for help finding the woman who saved Brannock's life.
Surprising expenses found in IRS audit
The Internal Revenue Service spent millions of taxpayer dollars on everything from event planners' commissions to speakers' fees to guest prizes to parody videos at a 2010 conference, an audit of the agency shows.
The beleaguered agency – already snared in controversy over its targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status – spent $4.1 million on a 2010 conference in Anaheim, California, with "questionable expenses" comprising much of the budget, according to the report released Tuesday by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration.
Toobin: Hasan wants suicide by judge
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin says the suspect in the Fort Hood shooting doesn't have a legal defense. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a psychiatrist, claims a shooting rampage was carried out in defense of the Taliban.
When the judge asked whom he was defending during the massacre he's accused of committing, Hasan replied, "The leadership of the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban." He specifically named Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
Toobin calls that defense a "form of suicide by judge" because Hasan knows his argument won't persuade a jury that he's not guilty. If convicted, Hasan could face the death penalty. "He is trying to become a martyr, trying to be executed for this crime."
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Post by: Filed under: Crime & Punishment • Fort Hood Shooting • Jeffrey Toobin |
RidicuList: Prancercise rocks
A fitness video has Anderson in giggling tears. The Prancercise craze makes it to the RidicuList.
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Post by: Filed under: The RidicuList |
Neil Armstrong's famous quote analyzed
When astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered what became one of the best-known - and most debated - quotes in all of history, he actually might have said it exactly the way he meant to, not the way people heard it.
After Armstrong lowered his left foot from the landing craft to the surface of the moon, people watching around the world heard him call it "one small step for man."
Both he and NASA initially insisted that he said "one small step for a man," and now a new and novel study on the much-analyzed quote backs him up
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Post by: Filed under: Space |
Track star back in court on murder charges
A judge granted a two-month delay in the trial of Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic athlete who's charged with premeditated murder for the shooting death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius was back in court on Tuesday for the first time since he was granted bail in February.
The double amputee track star killed the woman he calls the love of his life on Valentine's Day in his apartment. His next court date is scheduled for August 19, which would have been Steenkamp's 30th birthday. Anderson Cooper reports on the case.
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Post by: Filed under: Crime & Punishment • Oscar Pistorius |
KTH: Who's keeping cruise passengers safe?
CNN's Drew Griffin investigations cruise ship regulations and the recent high-profile mishaps that have occurred on cruise vacations.
Tonight on AC360: Auditing the IRS; $4.1 million spent on one conference
Already facing criticism from lawmakers at a Capitol Hill hearing today for targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, the Internal Revenue Service is now under fire for spending $4.1 million on a single employee conference in Anaheim, California in 2010.
The shocking price is revealed in a new audit released this afternoon by a Treasury Inspector General. According to the audit, there were a total of 225 IRS conferences held over three years costing taxpayers nearly $50 million.
The report focuses primarily on “questionable expenses” at that 2010 conference in Southern California attended by 2,600 IRS employees of the Small Business/Self-Employed division.
For example, more than $50,000 was spent on videos shown at the conference. That includes a Star Trek parody featuring IRS executives, while another showed executives and managers learning the Cupid Shuffle.
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