Stranger Than Fiction

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TOP NEWS

• Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq. Administration officials said there are no American casualties they’ve discovered so far but the damage assessment is still underway. There are likely Iraqi casualties.

• A Ukraine International Airlines jetliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 passengers and crew members on board.

• Propelled by gains against lung cancer, the overall death rate for cancer in 2017 had it’s biggest one-year drop ever.

THE ELECTION

• Biden has managed to withstand incoming fire from the progressive wing of his party

• Warren’s surge has cooled. She’s deploying Castro for a boost.

• Warren takes shot at Biden’s bankruptcy plan 

THE COMMENT

“Yes, I know: most people are not happy about cancer. Shame on most people. You have a choice about how you see everything that happens to you.

You cannot choose how you feel, but you can choose your attitude.

Consider that Salman Rushdie married two beautiful women while living under a fatwa, which is a constant death threat. It was only after the Ayatollah came out against him that Salman went from literary writer to author of international bestsellers. And my friend Cyrus Habib lost his eyesight at age 10, but he still became a photographer – and a Rhodes scholar. And lieutenant governor of Washington. And maybe our first blind president?” - Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation in her 2018 essay on her cancer diagnosis. She died yesterday at age 52.

THE STRANGEST

• The wild story of how former Nissan chairman fled Japan in a big black box.

THE AV ROOM

• KYLO REN IN UNDERCOVER BOSS

• NEAL BRENNAN ON DAVE CHAPPELLE AT MARK TWAIN PRIZE

• HEMINGWAY’S LIFE IN THREE AND A HALF MINUTES