Ski Report: The International Olympic Committee has chosen the winter wonderland of Beijing for the 2022 winter games. Beijing will re-use the Bird’s Nest stadium and the Water Cube from its summer games for indoor events like hockey. The mountain events will be held many miles outside the city, probably entirely on artificial snow an ice. Skiing wasn’t invented in China. The only other bidder was Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Permawar: The Taliban has confirmed the death of its leader, Mullah Omar, and revealed his successor, Omar’s lieutenant Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. According to some analysts, Mansoor’s appointment may split the Taliban between those seeking peace talks, like him, and those who want to fight on to take over Afghanistan once more.

The Most Dangerous Game: Everyone from reporters to human rights activists and the government of Zimbabwe is hunting Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who shot Cecil the lion with a bow and arrow. Palmer has shuttered his dental practice and gone into hiding. The government of Zimbabwe is calling for Palmer’s extradition to face charges that he and his guides lured Cecil out of a game park and killed him for a trophy. According to official accounts, Cecil was badly wounded with an arrow but didn’t die. Palmer tracked him down 40 hours later and killed him with a gun.

The incident has drawn attention to the plight of the African lion, which has been reduced in number from about 75,000 in 1980 to at most 32,000 today. In much of Africa, big-game hunting is a big money business.

World: An 18-month-old Palestinian child burned to death and several family members were injured when Israeli extremists set fire to their home in the northern West Bank. The attackers broke a window and threw a firebomb inside. They are believed to have come from a nearby Israeli settlement.

Also in Israeli yesterday, an ultra orthodox man attacked a gay pride parade with a knife, stabbing six marchers. The man had recently completed a 10-year prison sentence for a similar attack.

Water, Water: California’s water districts cut usage by more than 27 percent in June, exceeding the state mandate of 25 percent for saving water. Agricultural districts have been put under restrictions but homeowners have also become serious about cutting water use. There’s a rush to rip out lush green lawns and replace them with drought-resistant landscaping.

Dept. of Corrections: Hillary Clinton has blasted the NY Times for wrongly reporting that she had been referred for criminal prosecution for discussing classified information over her private email server while she was secretary of state. Regardless of the content of the emails, Clinton was not referred for prosecution and the Times was slow to correct the mistake. Clinton’s communications director wrote to the Times, “Literally hundreds of outlets followed your story, creating a firestorm that had a deep impact that cannot be unwound. This problem was compounded by the fact that the Times took an inexplicable, let alone indefensible, delay in correcting the story and removing ‘criminal’ from the headline and text of the story.”

Nearer My God to Thee: Fans of the movie Titanic are grabbing life preservers after news that Netflix is pulling the 18-year-old movie from its lineup. For those who have not seen it, the ship sinks and so does Leonardo DiCaprio.

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