Longtime New York tabloid gossip columnist Liz Smith died on Sunday at her Manhattan home. She was 94. Smith chronicled the lives of the rich and famous for more than 30 years, writing her column for publications including the New York Daily News, Newsday, and finally the New York Post, where it appeared from 1995 to 2009, before it moved onto the internet in the New York Social Diary. For years, her column was syndicated and was published in up to 70 other newspapers. She occasionally got big scoops, such as Donald and Ivana Trump's 1990 split and Madonna's 1996 pregnancy, but Smith was known for a more gentle approach to gossip than the brutal, sensationalist style of many of her competitors, which led critics to accuse her of going easy on celebrities to stay in their good graces.

Source: The New York Times

Editor's Note:
Familiar with Liz Smith? No, neither was I. Sometimes I think they report the deaths of certain pseudo famous people when their age adds up to a significant numerological number, in this case 13. Occasionally a legitimately famous person dies, whose age seems significant, but this seems more obvious when that person is probably only known by a fraction of the population. 

North Korean troops shot and injured a fellow soldier on Monday as he dashed across the heavily armed border into South Korea as the two countries remain on high alert due to tensions over the North's missile and nuclear weapons programs. South Korean soldiers found the defector about 55 yards south of the border line and took him to a hospital, where he was being treated for gunshot wounds to an elbow and shoulder. The incident occurred as the U.S. and South Korea conduct joint naval exercises involving three American aircraft carriers off South Korea's east coast. This is the first time in a decade the U.S. has used three carrier groups in the drills, in a show of the kind of force President Trump has said Americans "hope to God we never have to use" against Pyongyang.

Source: The New York Times

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck near the Iraq-Iran border in the Iraqi city of Halabja on Sunday, killing at least 330 people, most of them in Iran. Iran's state-run news agency reported that at least 328 people were killed and about 3,950 were injured in the country. News videos showed people fleeing their homes in the night. More than 100 aftershocks were reported. At least seven people died in Iraq, and at least 535 were injured. The quake, which was centered just over 200 miles north of Baghdad, was felt across Iraq and as far away Pakistan, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Turkey. Iran sits on several major fault lines and experiences frequent earthquakes. A magnitude 6.6 temblor killed 26,000 people in the historic city of Bam in 2003.

Source: CNN, The Associated Press

Editor's Note:
330 is obvious
3 + 2 + 8 = 13
3 + 9 + 5 + 0 = 17
5 + 3 + 5 = 13
And notice how they keep using words like "at least", "about", etc.