News Appetizers: Amsterdam Train Collision, Obama Fundraises, Don’t Cull the Badgers!

Mooooooonday! Also known as fun-day, amiright? Here, in easily digestible bits, is your day’s news:

The French election is heating up, with Sarkozy’s main rival, Francois Hollande, claiming victory in round 1 of the elections. Beware: he is a socialist. (CNN)

Ted Nugent got in big trouble for killing one too many bears in Alaska. Which is… in the news because of the terrible things that he said about Obama? Anyway, he’s going to pay $10,000 and not hunt or fish in Alaska for a year. (CNN)

Look at this gallery of a house made out of beer cans. I know that they probably washed out the cans first, but I can’t shake the feeling that it smells like a really gross frat basement in there. (CNN)

125 people were injured, several critically, when two trains collided in Amsterdam. Public transportation accidents terrify me. Stay safe, everyone. (CNN)

The U.N. has authorized 300 unarmed observers to go to Syria. Godspeed. (CNN)

Fuck. The mother of a mentally disabled teenager in South Africa is blaming the cops for not protecting the girl after she was raped a first time, and then a second time. This time, she was probably kidnapped and used as a sex-slave, and a cell-phone video of her rape went viral. They’ve captured the men, and placed the girl in a safe-house, but fuck. (CNN)

The U.S. has pledged to give support to Afghanistan for the next ten years; the draft of the deal hasn’t been made public, but it looks like financial and possible military support, to encourage stability after we pull our military out. (NYTimes)

Iran says that the drone that they captured is now going to be a prototype for their very own drone. The U.S. officials are scoffing, saying that it’s way too complicated to be replicated. Iran says they cracked the code, though. (CNN)

Remember when I tried to be a pole vaulter for like two weeks in high school? THIS WOMAN, JENN SUHR, DID IT AND DID IT WELL. And now she’s going to the Olympics, and I will root for her, but deep down I will kind of think if I had just stuck it out I’d probably be in her position right now. (NPR)

So far, Obama is raising more money than Romney, and that makes me very happy. (NPR)

Remember all those rape kits that had been abandoned that were found in 2009? Yeah, they’re still unprocessed, and probably will remain so. (NPR)

877 dolphins have washed up on the shore of Peru, and nobody knows why. They are saying possible virus outbreak. DO NOT CLICK THE LINK IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE A GRAPHIC PICTURE OF A DEAD DOLPHIN. (CNN)

The European debt crisis has led to a sharp increase in suicides in Italy, Greece, and Ireland. (NPR)

The British government is planning on culling badgers in order to cut down on bovine TB, but their plans have been challenged in court. Related: I got sorted by two separate websites into Hufflepuff, which means it is set in stone.

Wow. This study says that breast cancer is not one disease, but ten separate diseases, and should be treated as such. Wow. (BBC)

The website IsAnyoneUp.com closed down; looks like it was bought out. It encouraged people to send in nude photos and videos of their exes as a form of revenge, and the 26-year-old owner is a slimy, gross human being. I say this because I heard an interview of him on “On The Media,” and he was slimy and gross. Even now, he sounds slimy and gross. He says he was burnt out, and tired of having to go through all the hoops when it was time to report under-age porn that was submitted. Gross. (BBC)

There is a little girl missing in Tucson – 6-year-old Isabel Mercedes Celis has been missing since Saturday morning. My heart seizes up at this kind of news. (NYTimes)

And that’s all we’ve got for you for this Monday. Until next time, keep fighting the good fight.