Hasta La Gadget!

This Halloween ain’t big enough for the both of ’em.

Watch a kitten taking on a remote-controlled spider in a spooky showdown. (The music is the perfect touch.)

According to the video’s YouTube description, our feline friend and her foe have since become friends: “The kitty and the spider have become best friends. She is now sleeping and cuddling with the spider.”

Happy Halloween, you two.

H/T Tastefully Offensive

Right from the start, Gunnar the dog showed himself to be a great fit with his brand new adoptive family in San Jose, California — by sticking his tongue out for a photo, just like they did.

“It’s funny because we do tongue pics as a joke all the time,” says Antonio Beretini, who’s sitting in the driver’s seat below, next to partner Chad Winningham. “So having Gunner do this as soon as he sat in our car between the kids was just too funny to pass on capturing!”

This picture was taken about a week ago, and Gunner had only just been adopted from Red’s Bully Rescue, a California-based pit bull-focused group. Red’s had rescued Gunnar from a high-kill facility, right before his euthanasia date.

“On our arrival at the shelter, Gunner was so excited to see us that he pulled us out for a walk,” says Beretini. “Since then he has been giving us kisses and been taking us on regular daily walks”

What else has changed: Gunner is now called Dash, and Dash has picked up a host of adorable habits. For example, he now loves watching movies with the kids — upon whom he he plants a surfeit of kisses — and has become a big fan of morning cuddles in bed.

And when Dash isn’t cuddling, or licking, or attacking squeaky toys, these days he can often be found admiring himself in the mirror.

“He thinks he is pretty, I guess,” Beretini says. “Dash also farts a lot, but that’s been somewhat controlled with organic food and no corn or starches in his diet.”

Beretini says he loves the photo of everyone sticking out their tongues for a whole lot of reasons. For one, it sends a positive message about pit bulls.

For another, it is “a representation of happiness and rescue of someone who if we haven’t picked him up could have been killed,” he says. “It represents us as a family.”

Find out more about Red’s Bully Rescue on Facebook. And get in touch at arin.greenwood@huffingtonpost.com if you have an animal story to share!

Every week, The WorldPost asks an expert to shed light on a topic driving headlines around the world. This week, we talked to Jack Serle about the United States’ drone strike program in Pakistan.

Last year, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London embarked upon an ambitious effort to record the names of people reportedly killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. The project, called Naming the Dead, aims to acknowledge those who have lost their lives in the strikes and to create more transparency about a counterterrorism program shrouded in secrecy.

The CIA has conducted hundreds of drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan’s tribal regions since June 2004. U.S. officials have lauded the program for its effectiveness and precision, and it has become an essential pillar of the administration’s counterterrorism policy. Yet despite promises by President Barack Obama to make the program more transparent and apply the highest possible standards to avoid civilian casualties, the administration has, so far, continued its secretive practices.

With Naming The Dead over a year into its investigation, The WorldPost sat down with Jack Serle of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to discuss the progress of the project.

What motived the Bureau to start this massive effort to identify the casualties of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan?

About three years ago, my former colleague Chris Woods decided that there was plenty of anecdotal evidence that U.S. drone strikes had killed civilians, but there was no hard data to analyze it. The line coming from Washington seemed to be that the strikes were surgically precise, but in order to test these statements we started collecting data on the strikes, all the way back to the first one in June 2004. In the process of recording those drone strikes, it became abundantly clear that what we were actually doing was casualty reporting. So we decided that we ought to find out more about those killed. For starters, without the names, you can really say whatever you like about those killed — for example, that they are members of al Qaeda or the Taliban. They’re either unnamed militants and therefore permanently branded as bad guys, or unnamed civilians who we know nothing about.

It’s also the principle of these people dying anonymously in a conflict. Irrespective of their affiliation and status, whether they’re civilian or militant, we feel that they should be identified and their names should be recorded as a casualty of an armed conflict.

Where do you find information?

We monitor several sources and draw on the results of other organizations that have carried out similar investigations. Researchers also conduct field investigations into specific attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas and try to record the names of people who were killed and collect biographical details. We talk to sources in the Pakistani government and the local communities. We’ve also had some success with documents. We discovered that some local authorities kept lists of people killed in drone strikes.

But it’s extremely difficult and it’s only getting worse. The situation in North Waziristan is extremely unstable. It’s really dangerous for our people to report on the ground and it’s dangerous for sources to be seen talking to the researchers.

Are there other factors complicating the research?

The security situation is a first hurdle. The nature of reporting on drone strikes is a second. The Pakistani state and the Taliban have a very strict grip on the flow of information inside the tribal areas and on the information that leaves the areas.

In addition, there’s a limited amount of investigating that can be done when strikes happen at a high frequency. For example, there were 23 drone strikes in September 2010, the highest number we’ve recorded in a calendar month. A lot of those strikes were hitting in North and South Waziristan.

Another factor is that a lot of the people who are being killed are unknown to the local community. They’ve crossed into the tribal regions from Afghanistan when the U.S. and their allies ousted the Taliban government. They may be known by a nom de guerre to some of the local community, but they are pretty much anonymous and die unknown. We’ve seen numerous reports of the deaths of unnamed Central Asians, Uzbeks and Chechens.

Will it be possible to identify every single person killed?

We don’t have an absolute figure on how many people have been killed, but our best estimate is about 2,318. I don’t think it’s realistic to think that we’ll be able to name every single one of them, partly because a lot of people have died anonymously.

We probably added about a hundred names since the project started last year and we have 700 names in total so far — two of them are women. Their cases are a good example of how local social and cultural norms affect the identification process. Women tend not to go out unaccompanied, but stay in the house or the compound. It’s therefore perfectly feasible that neighbors and people who live near these compounds may not know how many women were present inside the compound and were killed in a drone strike. That’s a clear potential for having an undercount.

What have you learned about who has been killed so far?

There’s a really interesting difference between what officials in the United States are saying about who’s being targeted and who’s effectively getting killed by drones. The affiliation, the association and the rank of the people don’t necessarily match what is being said about who the drones are targeting. CIA Director John Brennan, then one of Obama’s most senior security advisers, said a few years ago in a speech that drones had not killed a civilian in the 12 months leading up to the statement. But the data strongly suggests that senior members of al Qaeda and senior members of affiliated groups are not the only ones being killed by drone strikes. We noticed that while some senior members of al Qaeda or associated groups have been killed, a lot of those who were killed were lower-level players.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A former Florida A&M band member accused of being the ringleader of a brutal hazing ritual known as “Crossing Bus C” that killed a drum major was convicted Friday of manslaughter and felony hazing.

Prosecutors said Dante Martin, 27, was known as “the president of Bus C” and organized the initiations that required fellow band members to try to make their way through a pounding gauntlet of fists, drumsticks and mallets from the front of the bus to the back in November 2011 after a football game. Two other band members went through the bus before Robert Champion, 26, of Decatur, Georgia. Martin was convicted of misdemeanor hazing counts in their beatings.

Champion’s parents sat silently as the verdicts were read. Martin sat with his head down.

Martin’s sentencing was set for Jan. 9 and he was taken into custody. Manslaughter is punishable by up to 15 years in prison in Florida.

Champion complained of trouble breathing and vomited after the ritual, then collapsed and died in a parking lot. His death cast a pall over the school’s nationally acclaimed band, which had played at Super Bowls and before U.S. presidents. The band was suspended for more than a year after the death and several school officials resigned in the aftermath.

Defense attorneys told jurors the ritual was more akin to a competition and that there was no actual hazing. They said Champion and the others voluntarily took part.

“You can’t take it in isolation and act like it was just any other band,” defense attorney Richard Escobar said during closing arguments. “Brutal as it was, foolish as it was…it was competitive.”

Prosecutor Jeff Ashton said testimony made it clear that band members were looking for a measure of respect and acceptance by “crossing Bus C.” But he challenged the defense’s argument.

“Tradition didn’t kill Robert Champion,” Ashton said. “Tradition isn’t to blame. Tradition is not an excuse…It’s not a defense to those that got caught.”

Several other former band members have pleaded guilty to lesser charges, and three others await trial.

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Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/khightower .

SURUC, Turkey (AP) — Iraqi peshmerga fighters began entering the Syrian border town of Kobani Friday night where they were expected to join the battle against Islamist militants besieging the town, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Kobani-based activist Mustafa Bani said 10 vehicles carrying Iraqi peshmerga fighters and their weapons have entered the town. They said the Iraqi Kurdish force entered from an area west of the town near the strategic Tel Shair hill. The Observatory and Bali said it was not immediately clear how many peshmerga fighters of the force of 150 have entered Kobani.

It was not clear why the force did not enter from the main border crossing point between Kobani and Turkey although it is likely because the area is subjected to attacks by the Islamic State group fighters.

Earlier on Friday night, journalists in the Turkish border town of Suruc saw the peshmerga force leaving the area where they had stayed for days and headed toward Kobani.

The fighters left in a convoy Friday night while waving Kurdish flags and giving the victory sign. As soon as the news spread in Suruc, fireworks were let off.

The peshmerga fighters came out cheering “Kobani, Kobani,” while honking the horns of their vehicles and waving their rifles in the air. A line of Turkish riot policemen stood in front to prevent photographers from taking pictures of the fighters as they left.

Earlier in the day a Kurdish official blamed Ankara for the delay of the peshmerga force deployment for days.

The official with Syria’s powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, claimed Turkish leaders had been hoping that militants from the Islamic State group would capture the town before the Iraqi fighters entered.

“There have been so many delays and the peshmerga are not to blame. The Turks are behind the delays,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. He added that attacks by IS on Kobani have increased meanwhile.

His comments illustrated the deep distrust between Syria’s Kurds and Turkey. Relations between Turkey and Syria’s Kurds have long been strained, in large part because Ankara believes the PYD is affiliated with the Kurdish PKK movement that has waged a long and bloody insurgency in southeast Turkey.

On Oct. 22, lawmakers in Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region authorized peshmerga forces to travel to neighboring Syria and help fellow Kurds. The peshmerga fighters arr’ived in Turkey on Tuesday and have been staying in a facility in Suruc.

Anwar Muslim, a Syrian Kurdish official in Kobani, said earlier that the vanguard force that entered the town Thursday discussed defensive positions and strategy against the Islamic State group with the town’s Kurdish defenders before leaving the town.

The hope is that the Iraqi Kurdish fighters will help reverse gains by Islamic State militants who have captured parts of the town as well as dozens of nearby villages.

The senior Kurdish official said “the peshmerga want to go in as soon as possible. This is very important for us regarding Kurdish unity. When the peshmerga and People’s Protection Units are fighting together, this boosts the morale of the Kurdish people.”

He said the peshmerga fighters are bringing with them heavy machineguns and most importantly anti-tank missiles. The official said Kurdish fighters in Kobani don’t currently have the weapons to stop the tanks that the Islamic State group is using.

Islamic State fighters have been using heavy armored vehicles they had captured from Iraqi and Syrian troops when they conquered large parts of Iraq and Syria in June. With modern weapons in Kurdish hands, the balance of power could start tipping in their favor in Kobani.

In Paris, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the international community is focusing too much on the battle over Kobani and called for strikes in other parts of Syria.

Speaking at a news conference with French President Francois Hollande, Erdogan said, “We’re only talking about Kobani, a city on the Turkish border where there is almost no one left besides 2,000 fighters.”

“It’s difficult to understand this approach: why are coalition forces continually bombarding Kobani? Why don’t the coalition forces want to act in other zones?” Erdogan said.

The expected peshmerga deployment, accompanied by 50 members of the Free Syrian Army, was condemned by Syria’s government as an act of Turkish aggression and a “blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty.”

The official’s comments came as the U.S. Central Command said American warplanes conducted four airstrikes near Kobani damaging four Islamic State fighting positions and one building occupied by the group.

Muslim and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish fighters in Kobani fought heavy battles with the Islamic State group that launched an offensive in the town six weeks ago.

“We have 10 martyrs in the past 24 hours,” Muslim said, adding that corpses of Muslim militants are on their ground and they can’t pick them up.

The Observatory said 22 Kurdish fighters were killed and 19 jihadis were killed on Thursday alone. The group added that 21 fighters with the Islamic State’s police force known as Hisba, were killed in airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition on Thursday.

Islamic State militants launched the attack on Kobani in mid-September, capturing dozens of Kurdish villages in addition to parts of the border town. More than 200,000 people have fled to Turkey and more than 800 people have died, activists say.

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Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Zeina Karam contributed to this report from Beirut.