Might have taken the best/luckiest picture on my cell phone I'll ever take last night

Police Capture Man Climbing Trump Tower After Hours-Long Standoff

Cops have captured a man who tried to scale the side of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan this afternoon after an hours-long standoff.

Responding officers yanked the man into the building around 6:35 p.m. after knocking out a full window pane on the 21st floor.


Police and the fire department responded to the scene and could be seen removing vents and breaking holes in windows of the building. Rescuers also deployed airbags in case the climber were to fall.

The man appeared to change his path at one point, shimmying sideways to avoid holes that police sawed into ventilation grates, where officers were leaning out. At one point he appeared to be talking to officers through a hole that cops had punched through a window.

NYPD Emergency Services officers had been trying to “safely isolate” the climber while talking to him, an NYPD official said, by making it difficult for him to continue climbing.


Cops had been actively negotiating but were reluctant to do anything that could cause him to fall, the official said.

The source said there’s no reason the Secret Service will become involved because there is no apparent intent to harm Trump.

Police did not suspect the climber had a weapon, the NYPD official said.

"This is clearly a stunt guy," the official said. “The guy doesn’t appear to be here to do anything evil.”

As the scene unfolded, a crowd formed below on Madison Avenue. Some people cheered the man and whistled. When the climber slipped, gasps could be heard.

One onlooker was concerned the climber would slide down the side of the building if it rains.

"I thought it was a movie shoot at first," another witness said



It was unclear why the man scaled the building.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is more than 500 miles away from New York City. He held a rally in Abingdon, Virginia, this afternoon.

Trump's campaign has not commented on the climber but Trump Organization EVP Michael Cohen said in a statement: "This man performed a ridiculous and dangerous stunt. There’s damage to the building and he caused the unnecessary deployment of New York’s finest to protect his safety and the safety of everyone in the building.

"He’s caused the shutdown of traffic on Fifth Avenue. I’m 100 percent certain the NYPD had better things to do. If Mr. Trump were here he’d be thanking law enforcement for the job they’re doing."

Donald Trump Calls President Obama the 'Founder of ISIS' at Florida Rally

Donald Trump is continuing his controversial comments.

During a Wednesday rally in Florida, Trump accused president Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of co-founding ISIS, ABC News reports.

"ISIS is honoring president Obama," Trump said. "He is the founder of ISIS. He founded ISIS. And, I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton."

According to the network, rally-goers responded to the accusations with chants of "Lock her up!"




The Republican presidential nominee continued, criticizing the commander in chief for the way he's described terrorist attacks in the past, saying that President Obama "refuses to use the term radical Islamic terrorism."

"And Hillary won't say it either," he added. "She doesn't wanna say it, cause she doesn't wanna offend the president, because then bad things could happen to her if she offends the president. But, we have a real problem with radical Islamic terror. It's what it is. It's terror."


Wednesday's comments follow right behind Trump's suggestions about Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

At a Wilmington, North Carolina rally, the billionaire businessman accused Clinton of wanting to "abolish the Second Amendment," before seemingly insinuating that gun-owners take action against her.

"If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks," Trump said to the crowd. "Although the Second Amendment people – maybe there is, I don't know."

According to CNN, US Secret Service had had "more than one conversation" with Trump about the incident and Clinton responded to the comments on Wednesday at her Iowa rally.

"Word matter my friends, and if you are running to be president or you are president of the United States, words can have tremendous consequences," she said. "Yesterday we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that cross the line.

Learn more about Bernie's life and career with an interactive timeline

Born in Brooklyn, New York, he attended James Madison High School, Brooklyn College, and the University of Chicago. After graduating, he moved to Vermont where he worked as a carpenter and documentary filmmaker. In 1981, he was elected as mayor of Burlington, the state’s largest city, by a mere 10 votes. As mayor, Bernie’s leadership helped transform Burlington into one of the most exciting and livable small cities in America

Under his administration, the city made major strides in affordable housing, progressive taxation, environmental protection, child care, women’s rights, youth programs and the arts. Bernie and Jane In Congress, Bernie has fought tirelessly for working families, focusing on the shrinking middle class and growing gap between the rich and everyone else. Bernie has been called a “practical and successful legislator” and he was dubbed the “amendment king” in the House of Representatives for passing more amendments than any other member of Congress. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Bernie worked across the aisle to “bridge Washington’s toxic partisan divide and cut one of the most significant deals in years.” In 2015, Democratic leadership tapped Bernie to serve as the caucus’ ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee. Bernie lives in Burlington, Vermont with his wife Jane. He has four children and seven grandchildren

Teary Michael Phelps Collects 20th Gold as Baby Boomer Cheers Him On

It was a Rio rematch.

On Tuesday night, Michael Phelps competed against South African rival Chad le Clos in his signature race: the men's 200-meter butterfly.

Phelps had lost the same race by 5/100ths of a second in the 2012 Olympics in London – a loss that has always bothered him.

But Phelps redeemed himself in a big way, winning his 20th gold medal with a time of 1.56.36, 4/100ths of a second in front of the second-place finisher Masato Sakai of Japan. Le Clos came in fourth.




The crowd went wild after his victory, shouting "20! 20! 20!" after also shouting his name in support before the race began.


Spectators inside the arena included infant son Boomer and other family members, as well as prominent members of Team USA's basketball team.

Teary Michael Phelps Collects 20th Gold as Baby Boomer Cheers Him On| Olympics, Summer Olympics 2016, Michael Phelps
Boomer Phelps at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium Tuesday
DAVID RAMOS / GETTY IMAGES


Phelps savored his victory in the pool, wagging his finger in a gesture resembling the one Lilly King flashed the night before after her gold medal swim, and waving his arms as he encouraged the deafening cheers of the crowd.

Later, Phelps had tears in his eyes as the National Anthem played during the medal ceremony. After the song concluded, Phelps found his family in the audience, sweetly giving Boomer a quick kiss and cuddle after fiancée Nicole Johnson passed him over a railing.

Teary Michael Phelps Collects 20th Gold as Baby Boomer Cheers Him On| Olympics, Summer Olympics 2016, Michael Phelps
MARTIN BUREAU / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

"There was so much emotion and so much build-up for that race over the past four years," he told NBC after his victory. "I don't want to say revenge, but that's kind of what it was. I wanted that race back."

Even before the race, the 2016 Olympics had already proven successful for Phelps. With Boomer and Johnson cheering him on from the stands, the 31-year-old swimming icon earned his 19th gold medal – and 23rd overall – in Sunday's 4x100-meter freestyle relay. (Before Tuesday's race, he also had 2 silver and 2 bronze medals.)

I am proud to stand with her today”: Bernie Sanders makes it official, finally endorses Hillary Clinton

More than a month after securing enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton finally received the biggest endorsement of this cycle. “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating process and I congratulate her for that,” Bernie Sanders declared on Tuesday, standing besides his beaming former rival. “I have come here to make it as clear as possible as to why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton.”

While not quite as symbolic as her first joint appearance with one-time rival Barack Obama in Unity, New Hampshire, after the 2008 Democratic primary, Clinton finally saw her long-awaited unification with Sanders in the Granite State Tuesday. The endorsement comes two weeks before the start of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. “I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States,” Sanders told a cheering crowd at a joint rally of both Clinton and Sanders supporters in Portsmouth. Sanders, the Independent senator from neighboring Vermont, defeated Clinton by a wide margin in New Hampshire, the nation’s first primary. While many of Trump’s primary challengers have yet to endorse him, Clinton has enjoyed the support of Democratic heavyweights like President Obama, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden on the campaign trail. Her surprisingly competitive upstart challenger, however, has been reluctant to publicly push her campaign until today. “Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her here today,” he boomed. “Together we have begun a political revolution to transform America, and that revolution continues.” “Hillary Clinton believes that we must substantially lower student debt, and that we must make public colleges and universities tuition free for the middle class and working families of this country,” he assured his hesitant supporters, lauding his campaign’s achievements pushing Clinton to the left. “I am happy to tell you that…we produced by far the most Progressive platform [in history].” “I learned that this campaign is not about Clinton, Trump, or Sanders…[it’s] about the needs of the American people,” he continued. “This is about moving the U.S. towards universal health care.”

Christie Brinkley and John Mellencamp Split After a Year of Dating as Rep Says 'They Vow to Remain Best Friends

Supermodel Christie Brinkley and singer John Mellencamp have split after a year of dating, a rep for the pair tells PEOPLE exclusively.

"Both the mileage between their homes and their heavy career demands interfered with their ability to maintain the relationship," a rep for both Brinkley and Mellencamp tells PEOPLE. "They vowed to remain best of friends."

Brinkley, 62, has been busy promoting her new line of Prosecco, Bellissima, this summer. Mellencamp, 64, has been touring this spring and was set to resume his American tour this summer.

In June, Brinkley spoke at length about her attraction to Mellencamp, saying she initially didn't think they were a match when they first met at a Hamptons party in 2015.





"I thought, 'Oh my gosh, we're really opposites. He's kind of a throwback from another time, like a silent cowboy,' " she told PEOPLE. "But then we talked and realized that we do have a lot of shared interests."

But Brinkley said the two had bonded over their kids (she has three; Mellencamp has five, plus six grandkids) as well as their age.

"I know guys that go out with girls that are so, so young. They'll throw some reference out, and they're like, 'What's that?' " Brinkley said.

"When it comes to relationships, there is something nice about just being the same age."

When asked if she thought the two might wed, Brinkley said they were keeping it light.

Jill Stein taps ‘Bernie Sanders movement’ in Green Party presidential bid

Short of adopting wire-frame glasses and a Brooklyn accent, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein did everything possible last weekend to blur any distinction between herself and Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont.
“It is such an honor to be also running in alliance with the Bernie Sanders movement,” Ms. Stein said to thunderous applause at the Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention in Houston. “We are Bernie Green!”
To nobody’s surprise, Ms. Stein, a Harvard-educated physician and prohibitive front-runner, won the nomination Saturday at the University of Houston. She will run on a ticket with human rights activist Ajamu Baraka.
That Mr. Sanders has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton matters little to the Greens, a third party poised to make an enormous electoral leap in November if Ms. Stein can persuade Mr. Sanders’ ground troops to line up behind her instead of staying home or voting Democrat.
The Greens suffered a setback Friday when a federal court ruled that the Commission on Presidential Debates has the right to exclude third-party candidates such as Ms. Stein and Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson from televised forums if they don’t meet polling criteria.
The ruling all but guarantees that Ms. Stein will be excluded from the debates, given that the commission requires participants to reach at least 15 percent in the polls. A McClatchy-Maris survey released Friday shows Ms. Stein with 6 percent, and even that is a recent high-water polling mark.
Even so, the Greens have reason for optimism. For one, that 6 percent figure is far higher than the 0.36 percent that Ms. Stein earned as the party’s presidential candidate in 2012.

For another, Ms. Stein has new high-profile allies in former Ivy League professor Cornel West and WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange.

Mr. Assange, who released 20,000 hacked emails last month showing Democratic National Committee officials plotting against the Sanders campaign, urged left-of-center voters via live feed Saturday not to cast a lesser-of-two-evils vote for Mrs. Clinton.

“What the Clinton campaign is doing at the moment is trying to say, ‘Well, OK, yes, maybe we’re committed to arms dealers and to Saudi Arabia, and yes, maybe we subverted the integrity of the Democratic primary, etc., etc., but you’ll just have to swallow that. You’ll just have to swallow that, or else you’ll get Donald Trump,’” he said.

“That’s a form of extortion,” Mr. Assange told the enthusiastic crowd from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has lived since being granted asylum amid sexual assault charges.

That message may be taking hold with voters like Angelica Duanes, a Sanders supporter from Los Angeles who attended the convention.

“I am still a Democrat but I guess you could say we’re a flight risk, so we’re really looking at our options now,” Ms. Duanes told Russia Today television. “We really can’t stand with Hillary Clinton as our nominee. We definitely can’t stand with Donald Trump. So at this point, we’re looking at what our options are.”

As for the argument that a vote against Mrs. Clinton is a vote for Mr. Trump, Ms. Duanes said that’s the Democratic Party’s fault, not hers.

“We feel that they had an opportunity to choose a stronger candidate that would definitely beat Donald Trump come November, and they did not,” said Ms. Duanes. “At this point, we’re not going to be influenced by fear tactics and the boogeyman narrative that they’re painting. We’re looking for someone to vote for rather than vote against.”

The Sanders loss, combined with the evidence of DNC favoritism, has given the Greens their best opportunity for a strong showing since well-known consumer advocate Ralph Nader headed the party ticket in 2000.

“We are at such an incredibly powerful, unprecedented moment in history,” Ms. Stein told delegates. “We have an incredible opportunity, we have an incredible responsibility to stand up and lead the way forward to the transformative change.”

This year’s presidential election “really is that moment that so many of us I think have dedicated our lives to creating and that we never thought we’d see actually happen in our lifetimes,” she said. “We are closer to that now than we’ve ever been.”

Ms. Stein called the election a “perfect storm, because the American people are tired of a rigged economy of the rigged political system that keeps us trapped in that rigged economy.”

But an effort by Ms. Stein and her Libertarian counterpart to break through one element of that “rigged political system” failed Friday when U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer turned away their challenge to the right of the Commission on Presidential Debates to exclude them.

Judge Collyer ruled that the commission is a private entity, not a “public forum,” and rejected arguments by Mr. Johnson and Ms. Green that the commission is essentially a government actor, performing an important role in U.S. democracy, and therefore should be subject to public oversight.

“This court could not require defendants to include plaintiffs in the debates because such an order would violate the First Amendment prohibition on forced speech and forced association,” Judge Collyer found.

Mr. Johnson’s campaign said it was disappointed with the ruling and spotted “several serious flaws” that could lead to an appeal.

The Green convention came as a reminder that the Green platform isn’t for everyone, even progressives. Ms. Stein has long taken a hard line on Israel, referring in her remarks Saturday to “war crimes” committed by Israeli troops in the “occupation” against Palestinians.

At the same time, she played up issues popular with Sanders voters, such as opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, banning hydraulic fracturing, erasing student loan debt, instating a single-payer health care system, releasing nonviolent prisoners convicted of drug offenses, and legalizing marijuana.

Ms. Stein also dropped Mr. Sanders’ name repeatedly in several speeches and interviews during the three-day convention, even though the senator was nowhere to be found.

Her supporters chanted, “Jill, not Hill,” although polling shows Mrs. Clinton is more likely to attract Sanders voters than is Ms. Stein.

A CNN/ORC survey released Aug. 1, two days after the Democratic National Convention, showed that 69 percent of Sanders supporters now favor Mrs. Clinton, versus 13 percent for Ms. Stein, 10 percent for Mr. Johnson and 3 percent for Mr. Trump.

The figures represent a 5 percent increase in support for Mrs. Clinton, within the poll’s margin of error, but also a 7 percent boost for Ms. Stein.

Oddly enough, Mr. Trump’s decline in the polls could wind up benefiting the Greens — and hurting the Clinton campaign — by reducing the perceived urgency among left-of-center voters to vote Democratic in order to defeat the Republican ticket.

“There’s a cost to violating principles, even if there’s also a cost to yourself, even if you don’t like the risk — which seems to be getting very small — the risk that Donald Trump becomes president,” Mr. Assange said.

For those still unconvinced, Ms. Stein argued that voting for one candidate in order to avoid the other has “brought us everything we were afraid of.”

Ms. Stein had urged Mr. Sanders to step in and run as the Green Party candidate. Although he didn’t accept her offer, the convention was evidence that he won’t be forgotten on the campaign trail. Far from it.

“We owe Bernie such a debt of gratitude for lifting up this revolution that has been smoldering for decades. You broke through the media blackout. You lifted us up and you refused to be shut down by the DNC,” Ms. Stein said in her acceptance speech. “Thank you to the Bernie campaign!”  

The Rock Calls out His'Chicken S'Candy-Ass'Fast 8 Male Co-Stars

Oh no. Someone upset The Rock.

Dwayne Johnson is finishing up his last week shooting the eighth installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise. And while the high-speed films are known for their intense action on-screen, it appears things off-screen can be just as intense.

The 44-year-old actor took to Instagram on Monday to praise the sequel, its "hard working" crew, Universal studios and his "amazing" female co-stars – Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky and Helen Mirren.

But wrapping in his message of support were some choice words for some unnamed male costars.




"There's no other franchise that gets my blood boiling more than this one," he explained. "My female costars are always amazing and I love 'em. My male costars, however, are a different story."


"Some conduct themselves as stand up men and true professionals, while others don't," Johnson continued. "The ones that don't are too chicken s--- to do anything about it anyway. Candy asses."


The Rock Calls out His'Chicken S'Candy-Ass'Fast 8 Male Co-Stars

Just who could Johnson be talking about remains unclear. But Fast 8 stars Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Kurt Russell, Lucas Black, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and Scott Eastwood – for those who want to speculate.

And apparently, it'll be easy for fans to spot just who he's talking about when the film comes out. Johnson says he had a hard time hiding his frustration while filming.

"When you watch this movie next April and it seems like I'm not acting in some of these scenes and my blood is legit boiling – you're right," he noted.

Despite his anger, Johnson – who has been with the franchise since its fifth installment – is confident in the work he's done in Fast 8. 

"Bottom line is, it'll play great for the movie and fits this Hobbs character that's embedded in my DNA extremely well," he wrote. "The producer in me is happy about this part." 

"I'll finish strong," he concluded – adding the hashtag #ZeroToleranceForCandyAsses.