News around the world

An Arkansas woman was arrested Saturday after telling police she shot and killed her husband because he bought pornography, officials said. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said in a news release it received a call around 2:30 p.m. from 69-year-old Patricia Hill, who told dispatchers she just shot her 65-year-old husband, Frank. When police arrived at the home, located about 36 miles south of Little Rock, they found Frank Hill dead in a shed on the property. Hill sustained two gunshot wounds to the upper and lower body, according to police. The sheriff's office said that during an interview with Hill, she told investigators she arrived home and went to the shed on her property to confront her husband, but there had never been any physical altercations between the couple. "However, Mrs. Hill stated that she disagreed with her husband’s purchase of video pornography via the television guide, which she canceled upon discovering the purchase, but Mr. Hill man...

(CN N) "Until I see a male writer asked this question, I'm going to respectfully decline to answer it." That was acclaimed novelist Lauren Groff's  response  to an interview question about work-family balance, which promptly went viral. Groff was interviewed by the Harvard Gazette (she's a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard) and was asked a question that noted that she was "a mother of two," who had produced "three novels and two short-story collections." The interviewer asked Groff to talk about her process, and how she manages "work and family." Her reply sent social media into a praise hands emoji-induced meltdown. Screengrabs of the exchange lit up Twitter. "Good for @legroff,"  tweeted  Ann Marie Lipinski, the former editor of the Chicago Tribune. With her response, Groff had become "an exemplar of how to have this conversation as a feminist,"  wrote  Quartz journ...

Sometimes it seems as if we’re living under a constant barrage of heavy news. But it isn’t all bad out there. This feature is meant to send you into the weekend with a smile, or at least a lighter heart. Want to get The Week in Good News by email?  Sign up here. Here are seven great things we wrote about this week: There’s a lake on Mars. For years, “follow the water” has been the mantra of humanity’s search for life beyond Earth. Well, the water has been found — by Italian scientists working for the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission. A 12-mile-wide lake, hidden beneath an ice cap, is the first significant source of liquid water found on the planet. It appears to be similar to underground lakes found on Earth. Cue David Bowie  — is there life on Mars? “It is liquid, and it’s salty, and it’s in contact with rocks,” Enrico Flamini, the former chief scientist of the agency, said. “There are all the ingredients for thinking that life can be there, or can...

(CNN) —  "If you have someone that you think is The One," Bill Murray once said (in a homemade viral video taken at a stranger's bachelor party he crashed), " travel  all around the world, and go to places that are hard to go to and hard to get out of. And if when you come back ... and you're still in love with that person, get married at the airport." That's exactly what my fiancée, Kate, and I were doing one snowy night 16 years ago, when a car swerved into our lane on a rural highway in Poland. We pinballed off the center guard rail, spun across three lanes of traffic, lurched off a 10-foot embankment and slid to a stop in a dark, snow-filled field. Upon landing, all the doors opened and anything that was not in a seat belt flew into the dark night, leaving us stunned in a crumpled car in eerie silence. We were halfway through a two-year journey that began when Kate was offered a fellowship in  Thailand  just one month into our courtship. I fo...