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Surprise, anger, parenting and Lizzo: That's one way to sum up NPR's list of our most engaging stories in 2019, as those themes drew a huge amount of interest from our readers this year. Other big topics included consumerism and climate change and officials behaving badly.

People often linger for several minutes on these popular pages. Collectively, NPR's readers spent the equivalent of more than 35 years' worth of time reading our top five stories. The top draw was a story about how to help kids handle anger; altogether, readers spent nearly 16 years' worth of time reading that report.

1. How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger

At the top of the world, the Inuit culture has developed a sophisticated way to sculpt kids' behavior without yelling or scolding. Could discipline actually be playful?

2. American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 DiedWhen she was 19, Renee Bach founded a charity that went on to care for more than 900 severely malnourished babies and children. Now she is being sued by two of the mothers whose children died.

3. 'The Best Thing You Can Do Is Not Buy More Stuff,' Says 'Secondhand' Expert"Your average thrift store in the United States only sells about one-third of the stuff that ends up on its shelves," Adam Minter says. His book explores what happens to the things that don't sell.

4. U.S. Charges Dozens Of Parents, Coaches In Massive College Admissions ScandalActresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are among 33 parents who paid large sums of money to cheat admissions standards at prestigious schools, federal prosecutors say.

5. Trump Tweets Sensitive Surveillance Image Of IranThe tweet had experts picking up their jaws from the floor when they saw a photo of an Iranian space facility an image that was almost certainly taken by a classified satellite or drone.

6. The Mysterious Death Of The Hacker Who Turned In Chelsea Manning

Adrian Lamo was a hero in the hacker community for years. Everything changed when he began exchanging messages with U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

7. FACT CHECK: Trump's State Of The Union AddressNPR reporters provided context and analysis in real time as President Trump delivered the annual speech to Congress: "Remarkably, President Trump did not acknowledge the new power dynamic in Washington."

8. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Releases Green New Deal Outline"Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us," Ocasio-Cortez said.

9. 'Game Of Thrones' Season 8, Episode 5: 'Let It Be Fear'In the series' penultimate episode, the quality of mercy gets seriously strained. And stabbed. And set aflame. And razed. And several characters meet their final fates.

10. NPR's Book ConciergeThe end-of-year Book Concierge recommends more than 350 great reads across 30 genres hand-picked by NPR staff and trusted critics.

In terms of page views, a slightly different list emerges. While some of the top stories are the same, here are the top 10 most-viewed stories that didn't also appear in the above list. All of the pages drew more than 1 million views on NPR's website, not including traffic on other platforms, such as Apple News or Facebook.

1. Lizzo: Tiny Desk Concert

Backed by a band assembled just for this occasion, the breakthrough pop icon performs three joyfully showy songs from Cuz I Love You.

2. Patient With 'Tree Man' Syndrome Says He 'Can Finally Live A Normal Life'The man, who lives in Gaza, has undergone a pioneering treatment by Israeli surgeons for a severe case of this rare condition.

3. Speaker Pelosi Revokes Vice President Pence's House Office SpaceRepublicans had given Pence, a former House member, a first-floor bonus office in the House side of the U.S. Capitol shortly after President Trump was inaugurated.

4. Court Says Using Chalk On Tires For Parking Enforcement Violates ConstitutionA federal appeals court in Michigan cited the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures.

5. 'Not One Drop Of Blood': Cattle Mysteriously Mutilated In Oregon

Five young, purebred bulls mysteriously showed up dead on the ranch this past summer, drained of blood and with body parts precisely removed.

6. 3 Indiana Judges Suspended After White Castle Brawl That Left 2 Of Them WoundedA fight apparently started when one of the judges raised a middle finger at two men yelling from a passing SUV. The Indiana Supreme Court found that the three had "gravely undermined public trust."

7. Workers Are Falling Ill, Even Dying, After Making Kitchen CountertopsIrreversible lung disease has started to show up among young workers who cut, grind and polish countertops made of increasingly popular "engineered" stone. The material is more than 90% silica.

8. Taylor Swift: Tiny Desk ConcertAs she settled in for the set at NPR's offices, Taylor Swift looked out over the crowd. "I just decided to take this as an opportunity to show you guys how the songs sounded when I first wrote them."

9. Notre Dame Cathedral Fire Extinguished; Spire Collapsed, Towers Still StandingAs night fell on Paris and the fire continued to burn, people knelt and sang "Ave Maria" as they watched the blaze.

10. Florida Governor Declares State Of Emergency As Hurricane Dorian Gains ForceAs the storm neared, the National Hurricane Center said Dorian's winds could top 115 mph making it a Category 3 storm.

NPR senior manager for digital analytics Christina Macholan contributed to this report.

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The 20 Top Stories On NPR In 2019 - KRWG

You are here: Home / News / University of Phoenix to pay $191 million to settle false advertising claims

December 19, 2019 by Sharyl Attkisson 1 Comment

The University of Phoenix will pay $50 million to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and cancel $141 in student debt to settle false advertising charges, according to Reuters.

In ads targeting military and Hispanic students, the university allegedly falsely claimed to have relationships with several large corporations that could translate to jobs for graduates.

According to Reuters, university representatives denied wrongdoing but said they settled to avoid the distractions caused by lengthy and costly protracted litigation.

Read the Reuters article found in TaskandPurpose.com by clicking the link below:

https://taskandpurpose.com/university-of-phoenix-false-advertising

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkissons work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Filed Under: News, US Tagged With: false advertising, University of Phoenix

Emmy-Award Winning Investigative Journalist, New York Times Best Selling Author, Host of Sinclair's Full Measure

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University of Phoenix to pay $191 million to settle false advertising claims - Sharyl Attkisson

It wouldn't be a Pittsburgh wedding without a cookie table. But why keep the tradition exclusive to happy couples? In the spirit of the season, Pittsburgh City Paper is celebrating the holiday cookie table. Were reviewing bakery favorites, family recipes, and grocery store staples until the table is full. click to enlarge

CP photo: Lisa Cunningham

Starbucks 2019 holiday cookie and coffee cup

Surely youve seen online trolls take to social media around this time every year to blast the coffee company for its supposed War on Christmas for its non-denominational holiday cup designs. (I mean, we all know you cant praise Jesus unless you drink a latte with skim milk and two pumps of hazelnut syrup out of a to-go cup plastered with the son of Gods face, right?)

But the festive (but not too festive) holiday cups havent been the only controversial item at your favorite American coffee company chain. Back in 2010, Starbucks customers cried foul when polar bear cookies with a scarf made out of red icing ended up looking like the animal had just gotten its neck slit. (Having the polar bears head raised high, with the scarfs red icing, extra thick, dripping down in two nondescript lines didnt help.)

If youve also got a sense of humor about these kinds of things or, if maybe youre equally as deranged? youll be happy to hear that this years snowman-shaped shortbread cookies still have a little bit of that bloody homage to their polar bear cousins.

CP photo: Lisa Cunningham

Black buttons, black eyes, and a black smile, paired with a tiny flash of a bright orange nose complete the characters design, with a delightful sprinkle of snow-like flakes of sugar along the bottom of the cookie as a final touch.

Paired with a latte (in a Merry Coffee cup, of course), this years cookie was a tasty treat with a soft texture, strong buttery flavor, and worth every one of the 390 calories it contains.

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Let the alt-right have their 'War on Christmas' if it means more delicious cookies for the rest of us - PGH City Paper

The gesture is not the only symbol to have been appropriated and swiftly weaponized by alt-right internet trolls. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified memes featuring the hoax religion of Kek and the cartoon character Pepe the Frog, among others, as being at the forefront of white nationalists efforts to distract and infuriate liberals.

A number of high-profile figures on the far right have helped spread the gestures racist connotation by flashing it conspicuously in public, including Milo Yiannopolous, an outspoken former Breitbart editor, and Richard B. Spencer, one of the promoters of the white power rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 that resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman.

The gesture was in the headlines again after Roger Stone, a longtime political adviser to President Trump, met with a group of white nationalists known as the Proud Boys in Salem, Ore., in 2018 and was photographed displaying it with them.

Critics expressed outrage when a former White House aide, Zina Bash, appeared to be flashing the sign as she sat behind Brett M. Kavanaugh during his televised Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment to the Supreme Court. Defenders of Ms. Bash insisted that she had not intended any racist connotation and was merely signaling O.K. to someone.

That the gesture has migrated beyond ironic trolling culture to become a sincere expression of white supremacy, according to the Anti-Defamation League, could be seen in March 2019 when Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist accused of killing 50 people in back-to-back mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, smiled and flashed the sign to reporters at a court hearing on his case.

Some people who have used the gesture publicly in a way that seemed to suggest support for racist views have faced consequences. In 2018, the United States Coast Guard suspended an officer who appeared to use the sign on camera during an MSNBC broadcast. Later that year, four police officers in Jasper, Ala., were suspended after a photo was published showing them flashing the sign below the waist. And over the summer, a baseball fan was barred indefinitely from Wrigley Field in Chicago after making the gesture behind the NBC sports commentator Doug Glanville during a broadcast of a Cubs game.

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When the O.K. Sign Is No Longer O.K. - The New York Times

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDSGetty Images

At Saturdays Army-Navy football game, Army cadets and midshipmen appeared to flash a hand sign that has been adopted by white supremacistsand now officials say theyre investigating the incident.

During the game, which was attended by President Trump and held at Philadelphias Lincoln Financial Field, ESPNs Rece Davis reported live surrounded by students from the United States Military Academy and the Naval Academy. According to The New York Times, on at least five occasions, some of the cadets and midshipmen appeared to be making the sign.

The gesture, formed with one hand by touching the thumb to the index finger while leaving the other three fingers splayed, began being associated with the far right in the wake of a 2017 4chan hoax that attempted to spread the idea that the hand sign formed the letters "WP," standing for "white power." Aside from being well-known as the OK sign, the hand gesture has also been deployed as a part as the schoolyard circle game. But while its white supremacists associations may have begun a hoax, the symbol has since been adopted by real-life members of the alt-right and hate groups.

The Anti-Defamation League counts the gesture in its database of hate symbols, noting that "at least some white supremacists seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy." White nationalist Richard Spencer has been photographed using it, as has alt-right agitator Milo Yiannopolous. Most horrifying of all, after 50 worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand mosques were murdered, the alleged shooter flashed the sign during a court appearance.

Military officials told The Washington Post that they were investigating whether or not the cadets intended to signal support for white supremacist ideologies with the gesture. Last year, a member of the Coast Guard appeared to make the gesture in the background of a news broadcast. The Coast Guards official Twitter account subsequently tweeted that the organization had "identified the member and removed him from the response," writing that his "actions do not reflect those of the United States Coast Guard."

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Military Officials Are Investigating Possible White Power Signs Flashed During the Army-Navy Game - Esquire.com