Ukraine: Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels agreed to a ceasefire today, even as heavy shelling struck outside the port city of Mariupol. The opposing forces were supposed to freeze in place at noon today.

Oil Slick: A federal judge has ruled that British Petroleum was “grossly negligent” in its actions leading up to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Subcontractors Transocean and Halliburton also were found negligent and together the three could end up paying billions of dollars in fines. A BP statement said, “The law is clear that proving gross negligence is a very high bar that was not met in this case.”

Virginia is for Convicts: Former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell and his wife Maureen have been convicted of corruption for taking about $165,000 in cash and gifts from a rich businessman pushing diet supplements. Both the McDonnells hung their heads and cried as a string of guilty verdicts was read out for each of them. One witness said Mrs. McDonnell jammed statehouse closets with gifts and the booty from shopping trips paid for by Jonnie Williams, who was trying to curry favor with the couple. They even accepted $15,000 to pay for the catering at their daughter’s wedding.

Nation: A suburban Atlanta father has been indicted for the murder of his 22-month-old son after leaving him in a hot car last June. Justin Harris at first garnered sympathy for the death of his son Cooper, until investigators found that he did research about “living a child free life.”

Nation: The Justice Department is opening a civil rights investigation into the behavior of the Ferguson Mo. police after one of their officers killed an unarmed black teenager.> Across the country yesterday, fast food workers rallied for a $15 an hour wage. Some demonstrators from Milwaukee to Chicago and Hartford were arrested. >A Chinese developer is about to spend $1 billion on housing projects in California and New York.

The Obit Page: Joan Rivers, the brash comedienne who has worked the audience since the early 1960s, has died in New York at age 81. Her heart stopped Aug. 28^th during throat surgery and she had been in critical condition since.

Rivers was one of the first female standups. In the raspy voice of a lifelong Jewish-American princess, she’s ask, “Can we talk?” then launch into a litany of neurotic obsessions from fashion to facelifts.

After several years in the New York comedy clubs, Rivers was launched to fame by Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show. She was one of the early practitioners of insult comedy, ripping up celebrities and the powerful, but one of her biggest targets was herself. “I have no sex appeal. If my husband didn’t toss and turn, we’d never have had the kid.”

For the last 20 years she has partnered with her daughter Melissa in various hosting and television projects.

With repeated plastic surgeries in later years, Rivers looked like a caricature of her former self. She joked, “I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die, they will donate my body to Tupperware.”

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