9 people were killed by a gunman at a South Carolina church Wednesday night. It's being labelled a hate crime. (New York Times)
California dealt Uber a massive blow Wednesday when the state's labor commission ruled that a driver who brought a claim against the company should be recognized as an employee. Uber prefers to consider its drivers as "independent contractors," with the company facilitating connections to riders. The difference isn't small; precedents set in cases like these could mean the car service has to shell out major cash for employee benefits. (The New York Times)
A delightfully bizarre slam poet performed Donald Trump's "I'm running for president" speech as a spoken-word poem. Trump's lines about how Mexican immigrants are mostly rapists? Still offensive as poetry. (Facebook)
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Rachel Dolezal, the ex-NAACP head who was outed as white, says that she experiences life as a black woman when her hair gets searched by TSA agents at the airport. (NBC)
An escaped white tiger fatally attacked a man in Tbilisi, Georgia, before authorities killed the animal. The tiger was one of hundreds of other creatures that escaped the city's zoo earlier this week when massive flooding broke open their enclosures. A hippopotamus was captured in the city square on Monday. (CNN)
Hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republican had until 7 p.m. Wednesday night to register with the government or face mass deportation back to Haiti. The two countries share the same island, but Haiti is significantly poorer, and many Haitian immigrants cross the border for work. (NBC)
They're calling it Bernie-mentum — the sudden (and totally unexpected) surge in the polls of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, long considered an extreme long shot against frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Sanders announced a venue change for his upcoming stop in South Carolina because they need a bigger room. (Politico)
Wednesday evening will likely mark the start of the holy month of Ramadan for the world's 1.6 billion Muslims. The exact start, which depends on the lunar calendar, may also wind up falling on Thursday. (TIME)