The FBI special agent who sent Jill Kelley a shirtless photo of himself said Thursday the image wasn’t meant to be sexual. It “was a tongue-in-cheek joke,” Frederick Humphries explained, noting he sent the image to dozens of friends, including a reporter at The Seattle Times. In the 2010 photo, Humphries is posing with two target dummies in the picture, which is captioned, “Which One’s Fred?” Kelley turned to Humphries for help after she received harassing messages from an anonymous email address. Humphries then took the emails to the FBI’s cyber-crime unit, essentially launching the investigation that uncovered David Petraeus’s affair with Paula Broadwell.

Tragedy struck a Midland, Tex., parade on Thursday evening when least four people were killed in a train accident. Around 5pm, a Union Pacific train hit a flatbed trailer carrying 24 veterans and their families. The group was on their way to the “Hunt for Heroes” parade to honor veterans. Another 17 were injured, and 10 of those casualties were in critical condition. What caused the accident remains unclear, but a witness said the truck appeared to have gotten stuck on the tracks. The National Transportation Safety Board says it is investigating the crash.

After a string of ethical lapses—the grand poobah of which is the three-ring sex circus led by ringmaster David Petraeus—Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is ordering a review of military-ethics training. Panetta’s memo to Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, didn’t reference the Petraeus scandal directly, and his press secretary says that the review was in the works “long before the matters that have come to light over the past week.” The goal of the review is to determine “how to better foster a culture of values-based decision making and stewardship” in the military. Or, how to keep it in the pants. The CIA also announced Thursday it is opening an investigation into the conduct of ex-chief Petraeus. 

Israeli forces continued airstrikes on Gaza Friday morning, as at least 12 trucks were seen transporting tanks to the border. Hundreds of rockets launched by Palestinian militants targeted Tel Aviv for the first time. Defense Minister Ehud Barak sent off the first air-raid warning in the city since 1991, and promised, “There will be a price for that escalation that the other side will have to pay.” It’s still unclear whether Israeli troops are laying the groundwork for an invasion. 

For someone who went through a presidential campaign cycle, Sen. John McCain hasn’t quite learned how to tolerate tough questions. On Thursday, journalists revealed that McCain skipped a classified Senate Homeland Security briefing about the Benghazi attack in order to hold a press conference on events in Libya. Asked by CNN’s Ted Barrett why he didn’t just go to the briefing to get his questions answered, McCain snapped. “I’m not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media.” Pressed further McCain snapped, “Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?” A spokesman later said McCain had missed the hearing “due to a scheduling error.”

Hopefully, McDonald’s president, Jan Fields, won’t be asking, “Would you like fries with that?” anytime soon. The U.S. head of operations is stepping down after two years on the job, following a decision made by senior management. The fast food giant has been suffering uncharacteristically poor financial results—profits fell 3.5 percent in the third quarter this year—and copycat competitors are rising, though analysts don’t think Fields’s departure is related. “The time was right for this leadership change,” company spokeswoman Lisa McComb said. Fields will depart Dec. 1, and will be replaced by Jeff Stratton, currently McDonald’s global chief restaurant officer.

New Yorkers who had to live in the dark for days or weeks after Hurricane Sandy struck may soon have their day in court. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has subpoenaed local electrical providers Con Ed and Long Island Power Authority for documents pertaining to their preparation for, handling of, and response to power outages during the storm. It’s possible that criminal charges could be brought against the companies if it’s determined they broke consumer-protection laws, requiring they provide “safe and adequate service.”

Put down that Rockstar. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration released records about fatality and injury filings that may involve three big-market energy drinks. A day earlier, The New York Times revealed the FDA had more than 90 filings linking 5-Hour Energy as possibly involved in 13 fatalities. “In an effort to be transparent” the agency published the records, which include 13 files about Rockstar Energy drink that had not previously been released. Two senators have requested the FDA discuss tightening energy drink regulations.

What’s the penalty for causing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history? BP plead guilty to 11 felony counts and agreed to pay $4.5 billion in damages for the 2010 Gulf oil spill. Two BP employees will also face manslaughter charges for the deaths of 11 people in the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Sources also said that BP will plead guilty for lying to Congress about the size of the leak.

For those of you who believe there’s a conspiracy to drag food guru Guy Fieri’s name through the mud, your day has finally arrived. Fieri shot back at a scathing New York Times review of his new restaurant Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar, saying that the author had “another agenda.” Fieri, a connoisseur of diners, drive-ins, and drives, did not enjoy the tone and format of the review. When Today show host Savannah Guthrie pointed out that the restaurant only had 2.5 stars on Yelp, Fieri wasn’t fazed. At two months, he said, he’s not expecting to knock anyone’s socks off.

Jon Bon Jovi’s 19-year-old daughter was hospitalized on Wednesday after being found unresponsive in her upstate New York dorm room following a heroin overdose. Police said Stephanie Bongiovi, of Red Bank, N.J., is also facing drug charges after investigators found heroin, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia in her Hamilton College dorm room. Ian Grant, 21, also of Red Bank and Hamilton College, was also arrested. Bon Jovi is scheduled to perform at a concert to benefit Hamilton in New York on Dec. 5.

The Labor Department reported this morning that there were 439,000 initial jobless claims, a 78,000 increase from the previous week’s 361,000. These latest numbers stand out because the trend has been for claims to be holding steady or coming down; last week’s spike is almost certainly attributable to Hurricane Sandy. The four-week moving average of claims, which is less noisy than any new week of data, rose 11,750 to 383,750.

“In chess you have fixed rules and unpredictable results,” Russian former chess grandmaster turned political activist Garry Kasparov said Thursday at The Hero Summit. “In [Russian politics] it’s the opposite.” Kasparov spoke with The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake about the state of Russian politics and the country’s relationship with other world powers. He said that Russia could be linked to Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon, and warns that “Putin will do absolutely everything to protect Assad.” He said, “If you look at trouble [in the Middle East], Russia is usually behind it.” Russia needs to free itself from Vladimir Putin’s regime, Kasparov maintains, but he cautions it will be a challenge—and he won't be seeking office as part of the solution.

It looks like Bobby Jindal won the race to be the first Republican to denounce Mitt Romney’s gifts comments. The Louisiana governor said on Wednesday at the Republican Governors Association that Romney was “absolutely wrong” in saying that President Obama won reelection because of large “gifts” given to women and minorities. “I don’t think that represents where we are as a party and where we’re going to be as a party,” Jindal said. One of the Republican favorites for 2016, Jindal said Romney had lost the election because he had not laid out a “vision” for the presidency. Your move, Mitt?

Not a bad endorsement. In the first public comments from an elite military official, Admiral William McRaven—also known as the man who devised and commanded the raid that killed bin Laden—said that Petraeus was the “finest general” he had ever served under. McRaven, speaking at Newsweek & The Daily Beast’s Hero Summit, said that the general had made thousands of decisions that saved lives in Afghanistan. But he doesn’t condone the affair: “Holly Petraeus is also an American hero.” The comments suggest that Petraeus will still hold influence over the military, even after resigning from his post.

The euro zone’s GDP fell again in the third quarter, with a .1 drop coming after the second quarter’s .2 percent slide. Five euro zone countries have contracted so much that they have either requested or received aid from their richer neighbors. The two largest European economies, Germany and France, both had quarterly growth of .2 percent while Italy and Spain both contracted. Smaller, peripheral countries have been in recession for much longer: Greece since 2008 and Portugal for the last two years.

Uganda’s health minister said on Thursday that at least three people have been killed in a new outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. Two of those killed were members of the same family in the Luwero district, Health Minister Christine Ondoa said. Ondoa also said that five other cases are being monitored, including two people at an isolation facility at Mulago Hospital in Kampala. The deaths come just one month after health officials reported an outbreak of the Marburg virus, a cousin of the Ebola virus, which killed three people.

Dozens of anti-austerity protesters stormed into a German conference in Greece on Thursday, throwing coffee on a diplomat and eventually clashing with police. Chanting “Nazis out” and “This will not pass” while also playing Nazi anthems from the loudspeakers, protesters tried to stop municipal workers from entering the building. Riot police chased protesters from building to building through the conference-center complex, although there were no reports of arrests. In response to bailout creditors, the Greek Parliament last week passed new austerity measures that raised the retirement age, cut pensions, increased taxes, and eased restrictions on firing workers.

All the top literary nerds gathered Wednesday evening in Manhattan for the annual National Book Awards. For fiction, the prize went to Louise Erdrich’s The Round House. Katherine Boo won best nonfiction work for Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Taking the stage, Boo joked she felt like Mitt Romney, since she didn’t have a prepared speech. David Ferry’s Bewilderment won for poetry. The winners each received $10,000.

At least this will distract New York sports fans from the Jets drama. Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey won the National League Cy Young Award on Wednesday, the first player from the franchise to win since Doc Gooden in 1985. Dickey had a 2.73 ERA and 20 wins in 2012, the first Met to pass that milestone since 1990. In the American League, the Tampa Bay Rays’ David Price won Cy Young. Price had a 20-5 record and a 2.56 ERA and came oh-so-close to getting a Triple Crown in 2012, but fell one category short.

General David Petraeus wasn’t doing so hot during his last days. The CIA was embroiled in scandal over its role in Benghazi, and criticism was coming from all sides at the general, a senior official told The Wall Street Journal. Apparently,  Petraeus wanted aides to publish a timeline of the events in Libya, even after the Pentagon objected. His Army background also didn’t mesh with the relaxed attitude at the CIA, according to agency officers, who said Petraeus was surprised when disagreed with, and was controlling.

The suspect in the Aurora, Colo., Dark Knight Rises massacre was hospitalized Tuesday after sources say he hurt himself by ramming his head into his jail-cell wall. James Holmes's hospital trip caused Arapahoe County District Court Judge William Sylvester to move a hearing originally scheduled for Thursday to Dec. 10 and 13, despite the objections of prosecutors. The hearing will cover matters like how details of the package Holmes mailed to his psychiatrist found its way into the media. Holmes faces 166 counts of murder, attempted murder, and other charges related to the July shooting that killed 12 and injured 58 moviegoers.

The FBI seized classified information from the home of Paula Broadwell, David Petraeus’s biographer whose extramarital affair led to his resignation as CIA director, sources said on Thursday. The files were reportedly discovered on a machine in Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, N.C., and investigators also allegedly discovered documents Broadwell admitted taking from secure government buildings. A U.S. official said Wednesday that, in a somewhat unsurprising move, Broadwell's security clearance had been suspended. Meanwhile, Petraeus has said that he did not leak intel on Benghazi. 

It doesn’t happen often, but change is coming to China’s leadership. Vice President Xi Jinping is taking over for outgoing President Hu Jintao as chief of the Communist Party and its military, and in March, he will assume the presidency. The party also reduced the number of seats on its all important Standing Committee from nine to seven, in order to help with consensus building. Along with Xi, Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan, and Zhang Gaoli will be controlling the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years.

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan Ryan Crocker and French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy honored Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who was killed on Sept. 11 with three others, at Newsweek and The Daily Beast’s Hero Summit on Thursday. “He was the kind of person we need as diplomats,” Albright said. Crocker called Stevens “one of very finest officers,” and noted that Stevens was fluent in Arabic and wanted to “dramatically influence the future of Libya.”

Three Israelis were killed and another three were wounded on Thursday as rockets fired from Gaza hit the Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi. The deaths are the first for Israel since its military killed Hamas military commander Ahmed al-Jabari on Wednesday. Eleven Palestinians died in that operation, mainly militants but also reportedly some children. Since then, more than 130 rockets have been fired into Israel, police say. A rocket also hit a house in Ashdod, and another landed close to a school in Beer Tuvya. There were reports of more attacks in Ofakim and Ashkelon, and even a missile attack in Tel Aviv.

Outrage over the death of a woman who was denied the termination of her pregnancy spurned the Irish government to announce on Thursday that it will clarify its notoriously vague abortion laws. Savita Halappanavar, an Indian Hindu seeking an abortion, died after a miscarriage 17 weeks into her pregnancy. Ireland, which is largely Roman Catholic, has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, but fails to specify what circumstances constitute a high enough risk to the life or health of a mother to justify a termination, leaving the decision up to the doctors. Following the global outcry over Halappnavar’s death, Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore said, “We need to bring legal clarity to this issue and that is what we are going to do.”

It’s a classic case of "she said, she said." Detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are doubtful there will be any charges filed against Ariel Winter’s mother. The 14-year-old Modern Family star alleged her mother was physically abusive, but the authorities haven’t found evidence to back up the claim. Winter’s mother, Chrisoula Workman, has made her own allegations—against her daughter’s then-18-year-old boyfriend. Workman says he unlawfully had sex with Winter, who is too young to legally consent. Police haven’t been able to substantiate that claim either. Winter’s older sister, Shanelle Gray, has temporary guardianship of the young actress.

The grand, earnest monologue that almost was. Aaron Sorkin confirmed that there will be no story line about the David Petraeus scandal on the second season of the HBO drama The Newsroom. Appearing at Newsweek and The Daily Beast’s Hero Summit, Sorkin said that season 2 of the series will conclude, literally, the day before the story broke. “Otherwise,” he said, “I would go there.” He also called Petraeus “a hero in the classic definition,” but one who “made a very human mistake.” Sorkin also copped that he “can’t calculate how many people hated” Newsroom’s first season, and revealed that his upcoming Steve Jobs biopic will be three scenes, all of which will lead up to a major product launch and end with the quote "here's to the crazy ones."

What fiscal cliff? Christie’s held its largest-ever Postwar and Contemporary auction Wednesday, with collectors from around the world shelling out record prices for works by artists like Franz Kline, Jeff Koons, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The sale brought in $412.3 million, surpassing the already high estimate of $411.8 million. The night's big seller was Andy Warhol’s Statue of Liberty, which fetched $43.8 million. And you balk at paying $4 for gas.

President Obama made an appearance on Staten Island Thursday after first taking in a bird's-eye view of Hurricane Sandy's enduring damage from a helicopter. Among a sea of white tents housing disaster-recovery services, the president met with several survivors as well as local officials and federal aid workers, promising that he'd continue to make regular trips to the region to ensure a complete and expeditious recovery. "There's still a lot of cleanup to do," he said. "People still need emergency help. They still need heat. They still need power, they still need shelter, kids are still trying to figure out where they're going to school." 

Maybe Jill Kelley did have reason to be afraid. A source close to the Kelley family said on Wednesday that the emails sent to Gen. John Allen about the Tampa socialite were “offensive” while also sending emails to Kelley that were “stalking.” Kelley has been linked to threatening emails sent by Paula Broadwell, the woman having an affair with former CIA director David Petraeus, who resigned last week in response to the scandal. The email reportedly came from an account called “Kelley Patrol,” and it implied that Allen could lose his reputation for his association with Kelley. Allen reportedly then sent the email to Kelley herself, who showed it her husband, Scott Kelley. In early June, the Kelleys, who have a joint email account, started receiving messages in a similar vein.