Lucasfilm/Warner Bros. Pictures, via AP

Premiering on Disney Channel in fall 2014.

The next Star Wars installment doesn’t hit theaters until 2015, but the Jedis will return in an animated TV series premiering in fall 2014. Disney has greenlighted Star Wars Rebels, with a one-hour pilot already in production at Lucasfilm that will premiere on the Disney Channel before debuting as a full series on Disney XD. The new series will reportedly explore the 19 years between Episode II and Episode IV, “a time where the Empire is securing its grip on the galaxy and hunting down the last of the Jedi Knights as a fledgling rebellion against the Empire is taking shape,” in the words of the studio. But don’t expect any other plotlines in advance. “Details about the show are a closely guarded secret at this point,” Disney and Lucasfilm said in a statement.  

Read it at Arts Beat

The Wall Street Journal reports that the average college graduate from the class of 2013 will enjoy a lovely $30,000 in student debt.Total outstanding student-loan debt stood at $986 billion at the end of the first quarter of this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That’s up 2.1% from the previous quarter and nearly 50% from the same quarter in 2009.The average debt load for each borrower receiving a bachelor’s degree this year is about $30,000, according to an analysis of government data by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher at student-marketing company Edvisors.

Three senators are heroically attempting to reduce federal government price supports for America's sugar industry. Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski writes:[Sen. Mark] Kirk is one of three senators leading a push to reduce price-support levels for sugar. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Patrick J. Toomey, R-Pa., and Kirk will reintroduce their sugar program overhaul as an amendment to this year’s farm bill after it reaches the Senate floor Monday afternoon.

Anne Applebaum reviews Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and assesses it as a pile of poorly considered, self-contradictory huckster cliches.[I]t’s absolutely true, only twenty-one Fortune 500 CEOs are females. But is this really a major social problem? Is this an issue that “transcends all of us”? Does the solution require “reigniting the revolution,” and does it mean men and women alike must rethink their lives and priorities? To put it differently, would the world be very different for women—or for men—if two hundred and fifty Fortune 500 CEOs were female?To the last question, the answer—purely on the evidence of Sandberg’s book—is no.

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Calls diversity of network’s content “exciting.”

Yahoo might have just upped its cool quotient—or at least CEO Marissa Mayer did. Speaking to investors on Monday morning, Mayer indicated that X-rated content on Tumblr would not be scrapped in Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of the media network. She stressed that Yahoo wants to “let Tumblr be Tumblr,” even if that means Tumblr content is “not as brand safe as the rest of Yahoo,” and that the tech giant would focus on balancing user and advertiser interests. In other words, Yahoo will ensure that certain marketers’ brands won’t end up on accounts like “Red Hot Porn” and “Secretary Sex.” She also indicated that some of the NSFW content—or at least the network’s diversity of content—is “exciting” and will be a good thing for Yahoo because it allows the company to “reach a far wider audience.”  

Read it at The Huffington Post

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Social services struggle to adjust.

The old image of blighted inner cities and affluent suburbs has been inverted. According to a report by the Brookings Institution, more poor people now live in the suburbs than in urban areas. The number of poor people living in suburbs rose by 67 percent in the last decade, far more than it rose in cities. Some of this was movement from cities to suburbs, driven by urban gentrification and the lure of cheap new suburban housing. Some people living in suburbs also fell into poverty as manufacturing jobs left. Social services have struggled to adjust to the shift, as strategies of neighborhood revitalization work less well in the suburbs, where poor people are scattered.

Read it at Los Angeles Times

David Koch speaks in Washington, DC. (Carrie Devorah, WENN / Newscom)

After critical documentary.

What does $23 million in donations to public television get you? A lot more than a tote bag, according to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. A New York public television outlet, WNET, went to great lengths to placate conservative industrialist David Koch as PBS aired an Alex Gibney documentary on income inequality that focused on the conservative billionaire. The president of WNET called Koch and offered to let him film a roundtable discussion that would air after the documentary, among other conciliatory gestures. The controversy reportedly also prompted PBS to back off another Koch-focused documentary in the pipeline. All the placation didn’t work: Koch resigned from his position on WNET’s board and reportedly canceled a large donation. Also, according to Koch’s doorman, Koch’s philanthropy doesn’t extend to tips. “We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch,” he says in the Gibney film. “Fifty-dollar check for Christmas, too—yeah, I mean, a check! At least you could give us cash.”

Read it at The New Yorker

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Site will remain independently operated.

Facebook has Instagram. Google has YouTube. And soon, Yahoo will have Tumblr. The Internet giant's board unanimously approved a $1.1 billion cash deal to buy the blogging site Sunday. It's a risk for Yahoo, since Tumblr doesn’t really make that much money, though it has been valued at $800 million. The move highlights a growing trend of monster tech companies buying startups to get an edge in the market. Now Yahoo, once considered a prehistoric company, has a thriving social network. Marissa Mayer announced on her own Tumblr page that Tumblr would continue to operate independently and “we promise not to screw it up.” Tumblr founder David Karp also issued a statement on Tumblr, promising its mission to “empower creators to make their best work and get in front of the audience they deserve” isn’t changing.

Read it at The Wall St. Journal

Bill Waugh/Reuters, via Landov

One dead, more than 20 injured.

A 79-year-old Oklahoma man was killed Sunday night when a tornado touched down on his mobile home in Shawnee, Okla.—one of a series of twisters to sweep through the Plains states as part of a severe weather system that stretched from Texas all the way north to Minnesota. At least 20 more were injured in Oklahoma alone. “It looks like there’s heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour,” said Oklahoma’s Pottawatomie County sheriff, Mike Booth. “It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty much wiped out.” A tornado touched down in Golden City, Mo., early Monday, but the extent of the damage—as well as the number of injuries—was not immediately clear. Another tornado touched down about 30 miles west of Des Moines, Iowa—the first to hit the state in nearly a year.

Read it at USA Today

Getty Images / Dan Kitwood

Prince Harry flew back from America on Virgin Atlantic, the airline owned by his pal Richard Branson, but no word yet on whether the young Prince was propositioned by other flyers via the new Virgin inflight chat system. While most airlines seem to make a habit of arresting passengers who get too fresh in the air, Branson has been encouraging customers to flirt using the new inflight chat system, in the way that this chat excerpt posted online demonstrates.