STATUS UPDATES
A week in which an athlete was branded a traitor and Donald Trump sued someone who sued right back
DEFENSIVE Long-jumper Darya Klishina, whom some critics in Russia have branded a traitor. Though the country’s track-and-field athletes have been banned from next month’s Rio Olympics, Klishina is being allowed to compete as a neutral athlete. Kremlin pool journalist Dmitry Smirnov compared her actions to the Soviets who collaborated with the Nazis.
SUING Dr. Phil and wife Robin, who filed a $250-million (U.S.) lawsuit against the National Enquirer. The couple claims to have “suffered permanent injury to their personal and professional reputations” and seeks to deter the company from “repeating such unlawful and egregious conduct” against others, the Washington Post reported.
EVACUATED David Cameron, who vacated 10 Downing St. with his wife and three children, moved into a $28-million mansion in Notting Hill. The residence is owned by family friend and “PR mogul” Sir Alan Parker, the Independent reported. The Camerons own two other houses, but neither is close to the school their son and two daughters attend. Their stay is expected to be temporary.
HELPING Erykah Badu, who’s donating proceeds from a concert to pay for the testing of some of the 11,300 rape kits found abandoned in a Detroit police storage unit in 2009. Since then, a public-private partnership has raised enough to test about 10,000 of the kits, the Detroit Free Press reported. Badu is participating in the African American 490 Challenge.
SUED Donald Trump, by the man he’s suing, former aide Sam Nunberg. Trump has accused Nunberg of leaking information to the New York Post. Nunberg claims Trump is attempting to “cover up media coverage of an apparent affair” between a former and current staffer, Courthouse News Service reported. Nunberg was fired by Trump last summer.
PROTECTED The glowing Citgo sign, instantly recognizable to anyone who’s watched a Red Sox game or who remembers the scene in Field of
Dreams in which Ray Kinsella forces Terence Mann to go to Fenway Park. After public outcry over plans to sell the building on which the sign stands, a board has voted to consider granting the 51-year-old sign landmark status.
VACCINATED The rare black-footed ferret and the prairie dogs it feeds upon. Both creatures are susceptible to the sylvatic plague, which reduced the population of the former to just 300 across the U.S. The solution, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist told the Guardian, is to attach a “glorified gumball machine” to a drone and have it shoot M&Ms smeared with vaccine-laden peanut butter.
HURTING Rio, which is so strapped for cash that the state’s governor is selling off his summer palace and the tiny island it sits upon. While the mansion is luxurious, it’s also in need of repair and surrounded by encroaching jungle, litter-covered beaches and a sewage-contaminated bay. The same property in Rio’s wealthy south zone might fetch $12 million, Bloomberg reports.