DALLAS (Reuters) - A Dallas police officer missed clues, including the smell of marijuana, when she entered an apartment she believed was her own and shot dead a man eating a bowl of ice cream, a prosecutor said Monday at the start of the former officer’s murder trial.

Amber Guyger, who is white, has told investigators she mistook 26-year-old Botham Jean, a black man, for a burglar after she mistakenly entered his central Dallas apartment one floor above her own.

A defense attorney said in his opening statement that the officer was so exhausted she was “on autopilot” and that dozens of other people who live in the same apartment complex reported they had confused floors because all of them are virtually identical. Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus told the jury of four men and 12 women that Guyger had a 16-minute phone conversation with her former partner, with whom she had a romantic relationship, on the way home from work that night after a 13-1/2 hour shift.

“Whatever is on her mind after that conversation has consumed her attention entirely,” Hermus said in his opening statement.

In the dark, barbaric days (1980-1995) before a steady gush of anonymous memes soaked our brains, Gary Larson’s comic The Far Side was lord and master of the single-panel zinger. A quarter-century after inking his last strip in 1995, Larson may be coming out of retirement to show a new generation how it’s done.

The beloved cartoon was the original proto-meme: a bizarre mashup of science, dark humor and anthropomorphic animals that pointed out the absurdity of human behavior and life in general. Now The Far Side website is teasing new content with a cartoon of a man thawing out several iconic Far Side characters trapped in a glacier. The caption reads “uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen. A new online era of The Far Side is coming!”

I used to skip over the other crappy Sunday comics to read The Far Side. The compact, absurd punchlines delivered by simpleton characters offered a hilarious glimpse into a Gonzo world where cows stand on their back feet and only drop down to graze on all fours when there’s a car coming. One panel shows a Viking rowing ship with brawny Celts on the left, and scrawny ones on the right. “I’ve got it too, Omar,” says one ship commander to the other, “a strange feeling like we’ve just been going in circles.” In another, a karate class watches aliens made of bricks and wood blocks pile out of a spaceship: “The class abruptly stopped practicing. Here was an opportunity to not only employ their skills, but also to save the entire town.”

The buzz is loud for a comic that’s been out of the public eye for a quarter-century. Fred Armisen played the ultimate Far Side fanboy in “Searching for Mr. Larson,” the Documentary Now! Parody of “Dear Mr. Watterson.” Director Joel Schroeder’s 2013 passion project/road trip to explore the appeal of Calvin and Hobbes through fan interviews became more of a vanity project about Schroeder’s own personal journey. Armisen is only mocking the documentary trend of filmmakers wedging themselves narcissistically into their hero’s story, but it’s clear that Far Side fans are just as invested and expectant for Larson’s output.

Statement from the Patriots on Antonio Brown
STATEMENT FROM A PATRIOTS SPOKESPERSON

“The New England Patriots are releasing Antonio Brown. We appreciate the hard work of many people over the past 11 days, but we feel that it is best to move in a different direction at this time.”

Healthcare, living costs, and security makes US one of world's worst places to live

The US ranked only 47th out of 64 countries as the best place to live in the world for the second consecutive year.

That’s according to the major benchmark Expat Insider 2019 report which surveyed 20,259 expats, representing 182 nationalities and living in 187 countries or territories.

An expat is defined as an employee sent abroad on a corporate assignment or classed as a new international hire. The survey ran from 7 to 28 March. Respondents were asked to score 48 different factors — which fall into 17 subcategories — related to living abroad. Those 17 subcategories are then put into five pillars —Quality of Life, Ease of Settling In, Working Abroad, Family Life, and Personal Finance.

For a place to be ranked, there needs to be a sample size of at least 75 survey participants per destination. The only exception to this rule is the Family Life Index, where a sample size of at least 40 respondents raising children abroad is necessary.