Oscar: Meryl Streep collected her 18th Oscar nomination this morning, again for playing a woman with a heavy accent, this time in “August Osage County”. She’s won three times. For Best Picture: “12 Years a Slave”, “American Hustle”, “Captain Phillips”, …

Russian Bombing: A suicide bombing outside the main railroad station is Volgograd, Russia, killed 15 people today and wounded more than 40. Volgograd is about 550 miles southeast of Moscow. The bomb went off as security officers approached a woman …

Travel: It’s snowing in western New York and Pennsylvania as holiday travelers hit the road. Snow fell in Atlanta, but mostly it’s raining along the Atlantic coast and the I-95 corridor, the east coast artery from Florida to Maine that …

The old joke in journalism is “if your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Reporters pride themselves on being skeptical of everything they’re told. People lie to us all the time. It’s a reporter’s job to smoke out …

Monster: At least 1,200 people are believed to be dead in the Philippines in aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, which has been described as the strongest storm ever to make landfall. The Red Cross reported an estimated 1,000 bodies floating in …

World: A storm 500 miles wide, described as the biggest in recorded history to make landfall, hit the Philippines early today. Sustained winds were 195 mph and gusts reached 235. One woman said, “Galvanized iron sheets were flying just like …

Day of the Dead: One elderly man is dead after a tornado ripped through a mobile home park in Shawnee, OK. A large storm front swept through yesterday bringing at least one tornado a half-mile wide. More tornadoes could hit …

National: The recently fired head of the IRS was personally audited by an angry Congressional committee over the agency’s special attention to conservative political groups. But Steven Miller refused to say the audits of groups applying for non-profit status were …

Scandalville: The President fired the acting IRS commissioner over the scandal about targeting conservative non-profit political groups. Steven Miller knew about inappropriate audits last fall and didn’t tell the administration. In a brief speech to the press, President Obama said, …

Breathe: The level of heat-trapping, climate-changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at the highest levels in 2-3 million years, scientists reported yesterday. The amount of CO2 in the air is 400 parts per million, a milestone and an indicator …