Human Race

Died

St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras, 22, and his 18-year-old girlfriend died in a car crash on Oct. 26. Taveras, considered a future star, was driving his 2014 Chevrolet Camaro near his Dominican Republic home at the time of the accident. News of Taveras’ death shook the baseball community during Game 5 of the World Series, two weeks after Taveras hit a game-tying home run in the National League Championship Series and four months after he hit a home run in his first big league at-bat.

Died

Longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, one of the most important newspapermen of the 20th century, died on Oct. 21 at age 93. Bradlee, who guided the Post’s newsroom from 1965 to 1991, took the publication from a local paper to a national powerhouse, overseeing the Watergate coverage that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Bradlee, a close friend of John F. Kennedy, also made the controversial decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War.

Died

Billionaire oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt, 88, one of the “funding fathers” of the conservative and evangelical movement, died on Oct. 21. Hunt, a Texan who lived modestly, became one of the world’s wealthiest persons after finding vast oilfields in Libya in the 1960s. He was known for amassing more than 1,000 race horses and embarking on a failed attempt to corner the world’s silver market, but he also quietly funded influential Christian causes: Hunt, a former Texas Bible Society president, put up most of the money for the original Jesus film, an evangelistic movie seen by billions worldwide.

Sentenced

A South African judge sentenced Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, 27, to five years in prison for culpable homicide in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, earlier this year. The sentence came after Pistorius, a double-amputee dubbed the “Blade Runner” during the 2012 Olympics, was cleared on the more serious murder charge. He says he accidentally shot Steenkamp through a bathroom door thinking she was an intruder. Prosecutors vowed to appeal the conviction and sentence, which could free Pistorius in 10 months.

Announced

Hannah Overton, 37, a Texas mother serving a life sentence for the salt poisoning of her adopted son, will be retried for capital murder. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in September overturned Overton’s 2007 conviction, citing ineffective trial counsel, but Nueces County District Attorney Mark Skurka said he plans to retry the case: “No jury, no trial judge, and no appellate court has ever found [Overton] is not responsible for the death of Andrew Burd.” Overton’s attorney called the comment outrageous because it did not presume innocence.

Released

The State Department announced North Korea released American detainee Jeffrey Fowle, 56, almost six months after he was arrested on accusations that he left a Bible at a night club. Fowle, a Miamisburg, Ohio, resident, was traveling as a tourist when authorities accused him of proselytizing in the city of Chongjin. White House spokesman Josh Earnest applauded the news but called on Pyongyang to release the other two Americans it is holding: Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller. North Korea did not immediately give a reason for why it released Fowle.

Abducted

Christian villagers in Nigeria’s terror-plagued East said militants, apparently belonging to the Islamist faction Boko Haram, kidnapped at least 60 women and girls on Oct. 18—and kidnapped 30 more boys and girls a week later. Since April Boko Haram fighters have been holding captive more than 200 schoolgirls, most of them Christians, possibly in forced marriages. The latest abductions and renewed attacks by gunmen cast doubt on the Nigerian government’s promise of a cease-fire deal.

Rebuked

CNN’s Carol Costello on Oct. 23 apologized for joking about a recording in which Bristol Palin, daughter of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, describes being attacked by a man during a confrontation in Anchorage, Alaska. “This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across,” Costello said before playing the recording for CNN viewers. She advised viewers to “sit back and enjoy.” After being heavily criticized by conservatives in the following days, Costello said in a statement, “I deserve such criticism and would like to apologize.” She did not, however, initially apologize on air.

Hacked

Veteran journalist Sharyl Attkisson, in her new book Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, claims that a government agency hacked into her computer, installed spyware, and planted three classified and potentially incriminating documents deep in her operating system. Attkisson at the time was a reporter for CBS News who was aggressively pursing Benghazi and other administration scandals. “This is outrageous,” she quotes a computer analyst as telling her after checking out her computer. “Worse than anything Nixon ever did.”

By the numbers

6.4

The percentage of noncitizens in the United States who voted in the 2008 U.S. election, according to a study by Jesse Richman and David Earnest of Old Dominion University and published in the journal Electoral Studies.

95

The percentage of Vietnamese, according to the Pew Research Center, who say most people are better off under a free market economy despite inequalities in wealth. Only 70 percent of Americans agreed with that statement.

10,000

The number of federal dollars spent to watch grass grow, according to a new report from U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., on wasteful government spending.