Mess with success

Published 2:42 pm Monday, July 6, 2015

Black on the outside, white on the inside and ill-advised all over: The maker of Oreos says a skinny new makeover of the cookie won’t be intended to be twisted apart so that kids (and adults) can scrape off the frosting with their teeth.

New Coke-style product redesign launch debacle in three, two, one …

Umm, about those loans: Despite winning a popular vote against austerity, the prime minister of Greece struck a more conciliatory note Monday in hopes of reaching a financial rescue deal with the nation’s European creditors.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipra spoke German Chancellor Angela Merkel by phone and appointed a mild-mannered economist to lead talks. Other stopgap measures including pawning the government’s power tools, acoustic guitars, and NordicTrack exercise machines to raise much-needed cash for Greek banks.

Don’t know much about history: On this day in 1846 and 1898, the United States annexed California and Hawaii, respectively.

Driving the annexations was the 19th century belief in manifest destiny, which held that America was preordained to expand from coast to coast because of the exceptional nature of its people and institutions, and also because winter in the East and Midwest really sucks.

— Mark Carlson, Herald staff