California’s budget woes have reached new heights: outer space. The San Francisco Chronicle says due to a lack of funds the SETI Institute has been forced to shut down its Allen Telescope Array, a series of radio dishes that scan the skies for signs of alien life. Scientists say the timing is unfortunate: 1,235 new possible planets have recently been discovered, dozens of which fall within the “habitable zone.”

This is not your mother’s hot dog. This, says the San Jose Mercury News, is a danger dog. Wrapped in bacon, the Tijuana street food is making its way up the West Coast. The bacon-wrapped hot dog has become so popular, several chains have added it to their menu. RECIPE

The White House just released President Obama’s long-form birth certificate reports the Washington Post. Just like the one released by his campaign during the 2008 election, this one shows the president was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu. But, in a nod to the growing birther cacophony, this copy includes the “signature of an attendant who witnessed the birth and a local registrar, as well as a certificate number.” SEE THE DOCUMENT

He’s tall. He’s thin. He doesn’t have a hockey mask but he’s just as scary as Jason. Meet Slender Man. He’s yet to star in any movies but the Minneapolis Star Tribune says the “mythical predator and Internet sensation” is this generation’s boogeyman. VIDEO

The New York Times has a well-presented editorial in today’s paper about the “Republican threat to voting.” New laws pushed by Republican governors and state legislators are making it harder for certain groups that tend to vote Democratic—the young, the poor and African-Americans—to cast their ballots. More than 30 states are considering or have passed laws that would require a government-issued ID to vote.

There’s a new duck in town. The Minneapolis Star Tribune says a Twin Cities man was picked to replace Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of Aflac, and he’s basically a regular Joe. A sales manager for a local radio station, Dan McKeague says perfecting the quack is harder than one might think: “It’s just one word, but you have to give it meaning and emotion and make it sound surprising.” VIDEO

It just won’t stop raining in the Midwest. Several parts of region are experiencing severe flooding after weeks of above-average rainfalls. The Chicago Tribune says there was so much rain on the tarmac yesterday that a Southwest plane skidded off the runway and landed in a mud patch. The plane came to a stop “150 feet from a wall separating the airport grounds from the street, with the nose pointed directly at a White Castle drive-through.” VIDEO

It’s long been known that Botox limits one’s ability to show emotion via normal channels like smiling or say, furrowing one’s brow. But a new study has found Botox also limits one’s ability to do something else: read other people’s emotions. The LA Times says researchers think their findings give weight to the theory that humans use “facial mimicry” to figure out what others are feeling.

If the Queen of England and 4972 others die suddenly, Karin Vogel will become queen. The Wall Street Journal says the 38-year-old therapist holds an unusual distinction: she’s last in line to the British throne. She’s a descendant of Sophia of Hanover, a German princess who was chosen by the British Parliament in 1701 to inherit the throne. VIDEO

The San Jose Mercury News reports that a Playstation hacker may have pulled off the biggest theft ever, stealing the personal information of 77 million customers, half of whom live in the US. Even more disturbing: Playstation says the hacker may have also accessed “users’ credit card numbers and expiration dates, billing addresses and transaction records.”

Let’s raise a toast to William and Kate says Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens. He lauds the royal couple for signing up to do a job that they have no choice but to sign up for: being a reaffirming symbol of British identity. And that’s a task that deserves respect, writes Stephens, at a time when the UK’s identity—one third of Londoners are foreign-born—is rapidly changing.

Take it from someone who wakes up before the sun does, there are times when your energy needs a boost. The Star Tribune puts together a nice list, organized by time of day, of tips to help you increase your energy levels naturally. Showering without steam is an early-morning trick; drinking 10 to 12 ounces of ice-cold water in the afternoon can shock your system back to alertness.

Ever wonder what Victoria’s Secret is? According to the Tampa Tribune, it’s a “dirty little secret” shared by several major retailers. Instead of donating returned clothes or putting them back on the rack, chains like H&M and Target take a pair of scissors to the returned duds, destroying them on the spot. The practice is to deter people from re-selling the clothes for a profit but critics say it’s a gross waste of resources.

Drop and give me ten vocabulary words. The Raleigh News and Observer says the US military is making a push to train troops in Dari, the most common language spoken in Afghanistan, a sign, perhaps, that military officials expect to be in the region longer than the summer withdrawal date floated by the Obama administration.

The times, says the Des Moines Register, they are a-changin’. For almost one hundred years, the winners of the Drake Relay, one of the nation’s premier track-and-field competitions, have received watches. Winning one used to be a milestone in the career of a track star. Jesse Owens got one. So did Bruce Jenner and Gwen Torrence. But there’s just one problem: few of the competitors wear watches anymore.

Police in Indiana just discovered the bodies of two men in a pile of…horse manure. The discovery was made after a horse owner saw an arm poking out of the pile, which had been accumulating for years, according to the Chicago Tribune. Says the police chief: “It was the biggest pile of (manure) I have ever seen.”

Girl meets firefighter. They fall in love. He dies unexpectedly. Girl left with only mementos (a rubber duck with a firefighter hat, a lock of his hair) to remember him. Sound like the plot of a romance novel? Turns out it was says the Chicago Tribune—kind of. Except that the protagonist was a real woman and her star-crossed lover? A fictional man made up in a bizarre Internet hoax by another woman.

Every member of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles has one thing in common: they like to sing. The LA Times says that commonality made it easier for the group’s first openly straight member to come out. Chris Yraola, a 24-year-old music teacher, says he came clean about his sexual orientation during the chorus’s annual retreat while everyone was sharing their coming-out stories.

Writing a book while working at the New York Times does not guarantee a positive book review. That’s the situation Diana Henriques finds herself in this morning, following the release of her book about Bernie Madoff. Fellow journalist Charles Ferguson writes the review and calls the book “all trees and no forest,” meaning there’s lots of data but not the analysis he wanted to see.

Stop freaking out. That’s the recommendation for parents dealing with a feverish child in a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Many parents are too quick to reach for medicine when their child’s fever starts to spike says the Washington Post. Pediatricians say lowering a fever—the body’s natural defense against infection—prematurely may do more harm than good.

Why does mom’s pot roast always taste the best? According to the Washington Post, several factors besides just our taste buds determine what foods we like and those we don’t. Researchers, for example, think that children are predisposed to like what their mothers ate while they were in the womb.

Jail break. The New York Post has the details of an elaborate escape plan that led 500 Taliban fighters out of a jail in Afghanistan via a 1000-foot, hand-dug tunnel. The plan took months and is straight out of an action movie. Prisoners began digging a hole in their cell, concealing their work with prayer rugs. At the same time Taliban fighters were digging another hole from a house a block away from the prison.

Yesterday, a federal judge ordered the NFL to lift its injunction and allow players to return to work reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The owners quickly filed an appeal, claiming it was against federal law for a judge to interfere in a labor dispute. And NFL commissioner Roger Goodell writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning explaining how bad football will be if the players win.

Zero. Two. Six. Eight. Flip through the closet of an American woman and you’re likely to see a spreadsheet of numbers. The New York Times says standard clothing sizes are so far from standard—a Gap size two is equal to a Banana Republic size eight—that the garment industry is introducing new measures to correct the problem.

Not all athletic bodies are created equal. That’s the premise of an interesting photo essay in today’s Denver Post. Staff photographer Helen H. Richardson spent months chronicling the ways that different sports manifest in an athlete’s physique. From the tree trunk thighs of a cyclist to the grapefruit calves of a ballerina, experts say athletes have a special genetic makeup that allows them to train harder than the average person.

An interesting idea to foster job creation in the US is posited on the front page of the San Jose Mercury News this morning. Columnist Mike Cassidy says a group of senators is pushing to create a visa that would make it easier for immigrants to start businesses in the US.

No parent is excited to find out their child has been skipping school. But imagine their dismay to find out that they could be thrown in jail for it. The Baltimore Sun says more than 400 local parents have been cited this year after their children missed “exorbitant amounts of school” and about a dozen have ended up behind bars.

What’s the last thing you’d like to see making itself at home in your bathroom? A seven-foot alligator, perhaps? That’s exactly what a Florida woman discovered when she returned home this weekend. The Tampa Tribune says the gator made his entrance through a doggie door and spent several hours wreaking havoc before being discovered. PHOTOS, VIDEO

You better hope your team stomps the competition. According to a new study, watching a “nail biter” raises the risk of a car crash. USA Today says researchers have identified a correlation between the number of accidents in a team’s hometown on game days, one that gets stronger the closer a game is.

There’s a good chance the guy sitting next to you at the library is watching porn on the public access computer. And the New York Post says it’s a situation without a solution. Library staff knows it’s a problem but they say they’d run into free speech arguments if they tried to block access; US law only requires libraries to block content that contains child pornography.