Vox Sentences: Obama strikes back for the Sony hack

1. Another round of sanctions

• President Obama has issued sanctions against 10 North Korean individuals and 3 state-run firms.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• The three firms are North Korea's intelligence agency, its arms dealer, and a firm that procures resources for defense research and development.

  [Treasury Department]

• The sanctions block access to the US financial system.

• But that might not be very important, as North Korean officials don't really use Western banks.

  [Reuters / Julia Edwards and Jason Lange]

• Obama is acting in response to the Sony hack, which the government believes was perpetrated by North Korea, while some outside security experts aren't so sure.

  [Vox / Timothy Lee]

• "White House officials said there was no evidence that the 10 officials took part in ordering or planning the Sony attack."

  [NYT / Michael Schmidt and Michael Gordon]

2. Cuomo

Mario and Matilda Cuomo. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for HELP USA)

• Former New York governor Mario Cuomo has died at age 82.

  [NYT / Adam Nagourney]

• Cuomo became a national figure in 1984 with his blistering keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• He came this close to running for president in 1992, and kept an airplane on a runway for hours in case he jumped in and needed to go to New Hampshire.

  [Capital New York / Steve Kornacki]

• He would have been tough competition for Bill Clinton, who later came close to naming Cuomo to the Supreme Court.

  [New York Daily News / Joanna Molloy]

• He vetoed attempts to reinstate the death penalty in New York 12 consecutive times.

  [NYT / James Dao]

• He was one of the most vocally pro-choice Catholic politicians in the country, though, personally, he opposed abortion.

  [Slate / Amanda Marcotte]

• James Fallows: "Among politicians of the past generation-plus seen as national-level contenders, he was the most accomplished and engrossing public thinker."

  [The Atlantic / James Fallows]

• Ken Auletta: "He had the temperament of a writer — not unlike Barack Obama — and he preferred observing from the outside, as if he were watching someone else’s movie."

  [New Yorker / Ken Auletta]

3. Misc.

• Apparently washing your hair without shampoo is A Thing now.

  [NYT / Marisa Meltzer]

• Meet the blogger who broke the Steve Scalise hate group scandal.

  [Huffington Post / Michael Calderone]

• The surprisingly murky science of hangovers.

  [New Yorker / Joan Acocella]

• A profile of Chris Harrison, the host of The Bachelor who is now one himself.

  [GQ / Taffy Brodesser-Akner]

4. Verbatim

• "I look at the cost of not using ketamine — for me it was certain death."

  [Dennis Hartman to NYT / Andrew Pollack]

• "In a recent survey conducted in the United Kingdom, 62 percent of men in relationships admitted to poking around in a current or ex-partner’s mobile phone. Interestingly, among women, the proportion was only 34 percent."

  [The Atlantic / Michelle Cottle]

• "If he was dead, what was this officer doing letting a 17-year-old ride around with a corpse?"

  [Charles Carr to The Tennessean / Peter Cooper]

• "Relative to other searches, interest in 'hangover cure' is nearly 10 times higher than average on New Year's day."

  [Washington Post / Christopher Ingraham]

• "This is the dream of anyone who defines themselves primarily by his or her smarts: to win wars with the mind, to save millions of lives through unprecedented cleverness."

  [The Atlantic / Emma Green]

• "The internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter."

  [Mother Jones / Kevin Drum]

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