• Hurricane Irma devastated multiple Caribbean islands and parts of Florida, wiping out airports, medical facilities and basic necessities.  At least 61 have been killed in the Caribbean and the United States.  (For our own Dr. Science’s explanation of what made Irma so deadly, see Why Hurricane Irma was Such a Dick.) [Wall Street Journal]
  • Despite exhibiting encouraging signs earlier this year, Giant Panda and National Zoo resident Mei Xiang is not pregnant.  Pandas, which ovulate only once a year and give birth to butter-stick-sized infants that they often crush shortly after birth, have pregnancies that are notoriously difficult to identify. Mei Xiang has previously birthed three cubs, but is now nearly the end of her reproductive life. [DCist]
  • On the red carpet of Harper’s Bazaar’s “Icons” party, actor Jim Carrey commented on New York Fashion Week by telling E! News reporter Catt Sadler that the event was “the most meaningless thing that I could come to and join.” [Vanity Fair]
  • Rapist Brock Turner’s mug shot has been published in the second edition of “Introduction to Criminal Justice: Systems, Diversity, and Change,” a textbook by Callie Marie Rennison and Mary J. Dodge, by the definition of the term “Rape.”  Turner served three months in prison after his January 2015 assault of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster at Stanford University.  [Salon]
  • A nine-week-old tiger cub born at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. has been transferred to San Diego after his mother rejected him.  Reports indicate that the tiger is bonding well with another cub at the zoo, a seven-week-old cub rescued from a private vehicle at the U.S./Mexico border. [The Torch]
  • Early Tuesday morning, Ted Cruz’s official Twitter account liked an explicit pornographic video from the account @SexuallPosts.  The tweet was quickly un-liked, but not before multiple individuals memorialized the event. [The Cut]

FACT OF THE WEEK: Indigenous peoples of what is now Washington and British Columbia bred a type of small, white dog known as the Salish Wool Dog.  Now extinct, the dogs’ bloodlines were kept pure by isolating the packs on islands and in caves where they were primarily fed salmon, and sheared for their wool in early summer each year. [Science]