There’s a hangry little new creature on Doctor Who and Twitter is into it.

Dubbed a Pting, the small but fierce newcomer appeared on Sunday in “The Tsuranga Conundrum,” the fifth episode of Series 11, which stars Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor.

Without spoiling too much, the Doctor and her crew found the creature somewhere in the galaxy, hanging out on a spaceship. It’s super cute, but is poisonous to touch, and though non-carnivorous, it will feed off any kind of non-organic material it can find.

The Pting’s rampant insatiability was something that struck a chord with some on Twitter.

Sure, it’s a little vicious, but it’s truly cute, and a damn sight less terrifying than the Weeping Angels. Folks on Twitter ran with their own interpretations of the Pting, and where they’d seen it before.

Image: Caroline McCredie/Getty Images for Fenty Beauty by Rihanna

It’s getting tougher for Trump’s playlist organizers, with the likes of Pharrell Williams to Axl Rose working to stop their music being played at his rallies.

R&B singer, diplomat, and icon Rihanna has caught wind of her songs being played at the president’s political events, and she too wants no involvement.

Rihanna seemingly found out from Washington Post’s White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, who tweeted about hearing the artist’s 2008 track “Don’t Stop The Music” blared at a Trump rally in Chattanooga, as aides tossed free Trump t-shirts to the crowd.

But as Rihanna declared in a tweet, she or her representatives wouldn’t ever attend those “tragic rallies.” It looks like RiRi is next to hit Trump with a cease-and-desist.

Earlier on Sunday, Rihanna endorsed Florida Democrat Andrew Gillum for the midterm elections, backing the candidate to become the state’s first black governor.

“If you’re tired of feeling like you don’t matter in the political process,” Rihanna wrote in an Instagram post. 

“Know the most important thing you can do in supporting a candidate is finding someone who will take on critical issues such as: making minimum wage a livable wage, paying teachers what their worth, ensuring criminal justice reform, making healthcare a right, and repealing Stand Your Ground.”

She also wants Floridians to vote “yes” to an amendment to restore voting rights to 1.68 million of the state’s residents with felony convictions. Nothing but respect for MY president.

This article contains spoilers for Season 9, Episode 5 of The Walking Dead.

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Rick Grimes is gone and it looks like The Walking Dead might be better for it.

Despite advertising to the world that Sunday’s episode “What Comes After” was going to be lead actor Andrew Lincoln’s last hurrah, The Walking Dead managed to produce one of the best episodes in the series’ eight-year history that was both heartfelt and refreshingly surprising.

At the end of Episode 4 of Season 9, Rick rode off on his own to draw away a horde of zombies, until to be reared off his horse and find himself impaled on a piece rebar, jutting up out of his abdomen. “What Comes After” picked up right after with an emotionally charged, suspenseful scene of Rick digging deep and freeing himself just in time to get away.

Image: Jackson lee davis / amc

Rick’s hurt. It’s bad. He’s slipping in an out of consciousness with a shambling mass of undead nipping at his heels. Rick is on a death march.

What follows is a Rick-centric episode, taking us into his fever dreams where the show revives meta versions of past characters like Shane (Jon Bernthal) and Hershel (Scott Wilson) in a sort of homage to the show, which comes off as a touching reprieve to Rick’s seemingly inevitable demise.

There was definitely a rose-tinted glasses vibe going on. Although I knew while watching this episode that the last eight years of The Walking Dead were consistently oscillating between boring and predictable, “What Comes After” effectively tugged at those nostalgic strings between some stellar moments of acting from Lincoln.

Meanwhile, back at the Sanctuary, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) was storming in with wrath in her veins and a weapon in her hand to kill Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who murdered her husband Glenn (Steven Yeun).

The scene stands out as one of the best to ever grace The Walking Dead, where an emaciated Negan pleads for Maggie to end his suffering and his life so he can finally die, be at peace, and be with his wife Lucille.

It’s heartbreaking

“Please kill me, please kill me,” he pleads, “I should be dead, I have to be dead.”

It’s gripping, and it catches Maggie off guard, who decides it’s a worse punishment to let the man who murdered Glen and others to live with his guilt.

Back to Rick, who keeps passing out. He’s losing blood. We see some iconic scenes like Hershel’s farm, the “Don’t Open Dead Inside” doors from the hospital, Atlanta.

Rick is stumbling forward, bleeding, walking like a zombie as the horde continues to follow him. He’s on the edge of death and he tries to lure the slow-moving group of people eaters over a bridge that’s just begging to collapse.

There are close calls, some fake outs, and Rick’s last move is to shoot some bundles of dynamite, blowing up the bridge and zombies and saving the day for everyone else, sacrificing himself.

It’s heartbreaking, until moments later when Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) with a walkie talkie sees him washed up on the side of the river that the bridge ran over. And then one of the biggest twists to ever hit the show occurs: the helicopter we first learned about a year ago appears on the horizon, and Rick is ferried away through the skies to some unknown location.

Image: jackson lee davis / amc

Maybe it’s a stable settlement, maybe there are some parts of the world that aren’t in such dire straits as the southeastern U.S. It’s intensely intriguing. The possibilities of what this means are just swirling.

And then, boom, time jump, where we see a roughly 10-year-old Judith saving a group of 20-somethings from zombies with her dad’s old gun.

There hasn’t been an episode ending this enticing in a very long time.

Andrew Lincoln’s last episode was shockingly outstanding. And while he was one of the best actors on the show with some truly compelling performances throughout the years, the show needed to move on. The Walking Dead has been stuck in a sort of complacent loop of the same old stuff.

The show was exciting at the beginning, it felt fresh and fun, but as the years wore on, it just felt like the same old things were happening to the same old characters. This shake up is exactly what the show needed to inject a little excitement into it.

For the first time in years, I’m excited to watch the next episode of The Walking Dead.

Image: Matthew Hatcher/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

When suspected Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers was treated at Allegheny General Hospital, the nurses and doctors — some of whom were Jewish — went ahead and did their jobs as normal.

One of the nurses who treated Bowers in the emergency room, Ari Mahler, has spoken out in a Facebook post about his experience treating the suspected shooter. Mahler said that he chose to be empathetic, despite the horrors of that day.

“I’m sure he had no idea I was Jewish. Why thank a Jewish nurse, when 15 minutes beforehand, you’d shoot me in the head with no remorse?” he wrote in the post.

“I didn’t say a word to him about my religion. I chose not to say anything to him the entire time. I wanted him to feel compassion. I chose to show him empathy. I felt that the best way to honor his victims was for a Jew to prove him wrong. Besides, if he finds out I’m Jewish, does it really matter? The better question is, what does it mean to you?”

Mahler, who experienced anti-Semitism “a lot” while growing up, said he was nervous about writing the post but felt like he had to speak for himself. He said that he wasn’t surprised that the shooting had occurred, given a thriving “underbelly” of anti-semitism. 

“I chose to show him empathy. I felt that the best way to honor his victims was for a Jew to prove him wrong.”

“To be honest, it’s only a matter of time before the next one happens. History refutes hope that things will change. My heart yearns for change, but today’s climate doesn’t foster nurturing, tolerance, or civility,” he added.

The nurse said he didn’t see evil in Bowers’ eyes, and noted the suspected shooter even thanked Mahler for his help. 

What Mahler did see was someone who was “easily influenced by propaganda,” and the kind of person who is “manipulated by people with a microphone, a platform, and use fear for motivation.” But Mahler says he personally chose to act out of love rather than fear.

“Love as an action is more powerful than words, and love in the face of evil gives others hope. It demonstrates humanity. It reaffirms why we’re all here. The meaning of life is to give meaning to life, and love is the ultimate force that connects all living beings,” he wrote.

“I could care less what Robert Bowers thinks, but you, the person reading this, love is the only message I wish instill in you. If my actions mean anything, love means everything.”

Bowers plead not guilty Thursday to 44 federal charges, 32 of which are punishable by death, following the shooting which left 11 people dead at the Tree of Life synagogue.

Singapore – Traditional street food thrives across Asia, as it does around the world, reflecting in unique ways local history, culture, ingredients, and tastes.

Street hawkers in Vietnam serve up a beloved rice noodle soup called pho (pronounced “fuh”).

Indonesia gave the world satay – skewered and grilled meats.

Multi-cultural Malaysia has satay too. And spicy laksas.

While Thailand has a green papaya salad called som tam that’s hot and sour and helps counter the tropical heat.

Singapore’s street foods are largely the same as those found in neighbouring Malaysia – both share a long history under British rule and briefly merged until Singapore’s expulsion in August 1965 – and in Indonesia.

An apt example is a popular dish called rojak, a traditional fruit and vegetable salad dish that means “mixture” or “eclectic mix” in the Malay language.

Even Singapore’s national dish, Hainanese chicken rice, was brought by immigrants from the Hainan province in southern China.

Yet Singapore is making a bid for a unique distinction among Asian street food traditions. As its neighbours and food critics scoff, the city-state is preparing a petition for UNESCO recognition of its hawker culture, and a listing on the UN body’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

If the bid is successful, it will be Singapore’s second listing after the Botanic Gardens, which were named a World Heritage site alongside Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and the Great Wall of China in 2015.

‘Arrogant behaviour’

Neighbouring countries with revered street food traditions such as Malaysia – where the city of Penang is renowned for its hawker culture – see the effort as pushy and divisive.

Malaysian celebrity chef Redzuawan Ismail, better known as Chef Wan, told local media it was “arrogant behaviour”.

“I don’t think it’s wise for them to do this because it’ll create a lot of unhappiness among the people in terms of branding,” he said.

Bee Yinn Low, a Malaysian cookbook author who blogs at Rasa Malaysia, told Al Jazeera that Singapore’s bid was purely about marketing.

“There is nothing unique about Singapore hawker culture,” she said. “If UNESCO approves their application, it would be a real shame, not to mention that Singapore would create a very hostile environment for its neighbouring countries, which have so much more to offer as far as hawker food culture and tradition.”

But others support the idea.

“While one may find similar dishes throughout the region in terms of ingredients, Singapore is unique in combining flavour profiles and cooking techniques that are inspired and created by its multiracial population,” American-born chef Eve Felder, managing director at The Culinary Institute of America, Singapore, told Al Jazeera.

“From these diverse cultural influences, Singapore has developed a unique street food culture that stands in a class of its own.”

‘Community dining rooms’

Announcing Singapore’s intention to win the designation, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called hawker centres a unique part of Singapore’s identity. “Hawker centres are our community dining rooms,” he said at a National Day rally in August.

Like their counterparts elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Singapore’s hawkers once dished out food from rickshaws and mobile carts on the streets, staples such as char kway teow, fried carrot cake, and fish ball noodles.

But from the 1960s, the travelling vendors were moved into government-built open-air hawker centres as well as to food courts and coffee shops, all of which serve as neighbourhood social centres and meeting places.

KS Teng, 60, shows up each weekday morning at a bustling hawker centre in Singapore’s central Ang Mo Kio neighbourhood for coffee and breakfast, greeting friends and neighbours, before heading to work.

“There’s no other place like the hawker centre,” he said. “If you go over to Malaysia, they have the food but they don’t have the hawker centre culture.”

Lily Kong, a Singapore Management University professor who is part of a 14-member committee set up to oversee the UNESCO bid, stresses hawkers are very much part of Singapore life.

“It is quintessentially multicultural and it mirrors very much Singapore’s evolution in urban development, food culture and heritage, and societal fabric,” she said. “It is something that Singaporeans identify themselves with and cuts across multiple social and cultural groups.”

Many worry Singapore’s hawker culture is endangered by economics and changing tastes.

With fast-growing wealth (memorably portrayed in the hit movie Crazy Rich Asians) and the popularity of celebrity chefs and Michelin-starred restaurants, Singaporeans worry about the loss of their traditional street fare, which can go for as little as S$3 to S$4 ($2.17 to $2.90) for a meal.

‘Nostalgic experience’

As older hawkers retire, younger Singaporeans aspire to careers that involve shorter hours, better pay, and air-conditioned offices.

Genevieve Lee, 21, helps her father, David Lee, 52, in a family business founded by her grandfather in 1968. Lee Fun Nam Kee started as a hawker stall and today operates as a thriving open-air coffee shop; its critically acclaimed chicken rice going for S$4 a plate.

“It’s kind of a nostalgic experience; the feeling that comes with the food,” Genevieve Lee said. “Every day you see people gathering around, your neighbours, your friends.”

But a young person becoming a hawker is an exception to the rule.

Singapore has schemes to encourage more young hawkers, as well as to expand on the roughly 110 hawker centres that host more than 6,000 hawker stalls across the island. Many doubt it’s enough.

UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, created in 2008, already includes batik from Indonesia, yoga in India, and Malaysia’s Mak Yong theatre.

As one of the criteria for inclusion is strong public support, Singapore’s orchestrated campaign includes an online petition. So far, more than 35,000 Singaporeans have pledged their support.

Sitting at a table at his coffee shop, David Lee says the biggest thing that makes Singapore’s hawker culture stand out may be the government’s involvement, from building and regulating hawker centres to draw vendors off the streets, to aggressively marketing its food tourism.

“In Singapore, hawker culture is much more organised because of the government,” he said.

Image: DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images

Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company CEO Elon Musk made an appearance on Recode’s podcast and he talked to the publication’s Kara Swisher about tweeting, building a car company, a cyberpunk Tesla pickup truck, electric scooters, and the race to self-driving cars. Plus a whole lot more, like the eccentric billionaire’s likely demise on Mars.

In an hour-plus conversation the tech journalist hit on a lot of hot topics and Musk didn’t evade or skip around most answers. He admitted that his tweeting habit — while not as time-consuming as some might assume, at about 15 minutes a day — led to to some regrettable moments.

“It’s fair to say I would probably not have tweeted some of the things I tweeted, that was probably unwise. And probably not gotten into some of the online fights that I got into. I probably shouldn’t have attacked journalists, probably shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

He didn’t mention the $40-million tweet that stripped him of his chairman title after the SEC accused him of securities fraud for posting about taking Tesla private. But he did say he can’t tweet as freely now because of an SEC settlement. “I think it’s mostly just if it’s something that might cause a substantial movement in the stock during trading hours,” he said.

So he’ll still be tweeting.

We got clued into some new Tesla vehicles, like the Roadster sports car and Model Y mid-size SUV. Then Musk got giddy over the future Tesla pickup truck.

“It’s gonna be like a really futuristic-like cyberpunk, Blade Runner pickup truck. It’s gonna be awesome, it’s gonna be amazing. This will be heart-stopping. It stops my heart. It’s like, oh, it’s great,” he said.

But don’t expect a Tesla scooter — Musk says it “lacks dignity” even if it’s an electric vehicle. But an e-bike or electric plane aren’t out of the question.

As to Tesla competitors, Musk didn’t get into it, but he acknowledged that in terms of self-driving cars Google’s Waymo is the closest to accomplishing autonomous driving. He says it’s a software issue and that Tesla’s Autopilot software is the best contender. Tesla is likely to have fully self-driving vehicles out in 2019.

“I don’t wanna sound overconfident, but I would be very surprised if any of the car companies exceeded Tesla in self-driving, in getting to full self-driving,” he said.

All this hard work (and no sleep, though Musk says he’s working on resting more) for his various companies really stem from Musk’s core belief that his innovations push everyone forward, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.

“Tesla cannot die,” he told Swisher. “Tesla is incredibly important for the future of sustainable transport and energy generation. The fundamental purpose, the fundamental good that Tesla provides is accelerating the advent of sustainable transport and energy production.”

The conversation was recorded on Halloween and includes some digging and tunnel dad jokes, naturally.

Kateryna Handziuk, a 33-year-old Ukrainian anti-corruption activist and political adviser, died on Sunday after suffering critical injuries from an acid attack in July.

Handziuk, who was an adviser to the mayor of Kherson and critic of local police, sustained severe burns to more than a third of her body after she was sprayed with a litre of sulphuric acid outside her home in the southeastern city of Kherson. 

She had been battling the injuries in a hospital in Kiev, where she underwent 11 operations.

Five suspects have been detained for their alleged involvement, but no further information has been released about who ordered the attack.

From her hospital bed and covered in burns, Handziuk had recently called on the government to probe rising attacks on activists.

Police initially listed the case as “hooliganism” but after public uproar changed it to “attempted murder committed with extreme cruelty”.

Local and international human rights groups have recorded more than 55 unsolved attacks on activists – including Handziuk – since the start of 2017.

President Petro Poroshenko on Sunday called on law enforcement agencies to do “everything possible” to find and punish Handziuk’s killers.

But campaigners say his remarks are too little, too late.

Marya Guryeva from Amnesty International Ukraine told Al Jazeera: “The situation is getting worse and has been for about a year now. Many attacks have been identity-focused – committed by far-right groups against LGBT and Roma people. But now we see they are happening against anti-corruption activists too.” 

Natalia Shopavlova, a Ukraine expert from Carnegie Europe, told Al Jazeera: “Activists campaign against corruption, they name the names of people who are behind illegal construction. Those people are not happy and they try to shut up the activists.”

In one case, on October 4, politician Sergiy Gusovsky was doused with antiseptic liquid and beaten in Kiev City Council following his speech at a rally.

Gusovsky told Al Jazeera he was attacked because he opposed various investment agreements, highlighting his work in challenging the construction of 25 buildings in Kiev’s Echo Park for ecological reasons.

“If an attack inside Kiev’s city council can’t be stopped, it’s impossible to keep any public figure safe,” he said.

‘People who order the attacks are never brought to justice’

About two weeks earlier, anti-corruption activist Oleg Mikhaylik was left in critical condition after he was shot in the chest by an unidentified assailant in the southeastern city of Odessa. 

On the day of the shooting, he had protested against illegal construction on the Lanzheron Beach.

Mikhaylik, who is currently housebound for safety reasons, leads the local branch of the People’s Power movement and had recently announced himself as a candidate for 2020 mayoral elections. 

He told Al Jazeera he believes the attack was organised by local authorities.

Activists say police rarely investigate the attacks, nurturing a climate in which more violence can take place. 

“People who order the attacks are never brought to justice. In the last nine months, only one case was investigated and closed. Ninety-nine percent of the time there is impunity,” said Amnesty’s Guryeva.

Carnegie Europe’s Shopavlova added: “The lack of investigation reflects inadequate reform in the justice system, and corruption – the biggest problem facing Ukraine today.”

Dmytro Bulakh, head of the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center has been assaulted several times, apparently for his anti-corruption work, most recently in August 2017 when unknown assailants punched him in the head with knuckle dusters and broke three ribs. He was in hospital for nine days.

‘Revenge for our attempts’

President Poroshenko introduced what he calls а Western-oriented reform to cleanse the judiciary, starting mid-2016.

However, his critics see the actions as an effort to establish control over the courts and ensure impunity for corrupt, high-level officials.

According to Bulakh, the government views civic activists as opponents. “I am convinced the passivity in government is a kind of revenge for our attempts to rid the country of corruption and create accountability.”

Over the past few months, protesters have gathered outside government buildings across Ukraine in a campaign called “silence kills”, urging the authorities to properly investigate the attacks. 

Following a rally in September, Ukraine prosecutor general and presidential appointee Yuriy Lutsenko said activists were partly to blame for the violence because they create an “atmosphere of total hatred toward the authorities”.

But according to Amnesty’s Guryeva, officials do not show enough effort in responding.

“There are hardly any public statements, and only after huge resonance in the country did we see some tweets by politicians. You would expect that they would loudly condemn such acts.”

Before she began singing “Without Me” literally on her hands and knees onstage at the 2018 MTV EMA, Halsey revealed that this was her first time singing it live. Not just on television, mind you — first time ever. Knowing that makes everything she did up there even more impressive.

Halsey sang the song, sure, but she did it while chained to a post, enclosed in a glass case (of emotion), and, eventually, drenched in a downpour. It mirrored the video’s depressive intensity, visually capturing the rawness of a song Halsey said she “cried the whole time” while recording.

Though she spent most of the harrowing song trapped in a box, the performance took a very watery turn when the case lifted — as soon as the “Cry Me a River” interpolation hit — and Halsey got soaked by the rain. After the final notes rang out, she sat there on the ground for a moment, collecting herself.

“It’s just me. No wig, no colorful hair, no character,” she said of the song when it premiered in October, “and it’s about my life and about my relationship that the world has watched so closely and so vehemently in the past year and a half.” The video has its own G-Eazy lookalike, but on the EMA stage, it was just Halsey. And she was more than enough.

See the full list of EMA winners here, and catch the entire show at 7 p.m. ET on MTV or stream on MTVEMA.com!

You may have noticed that Nicki Minaj didn’t grace the red carpet at the 2018 MTV EMA on Sunday night (November 4), but that’s for very good reason — she had a hell of a performance to get ready for. The Queen rapper spared no drama while opening the star-studded awards show, kicking off the festivities with slick choreo, sparks, and Britain’s hottest girl group.

Nicki’s performance got underway in theatrical fashion, with cloaked figures forming a circle around the stage. As chants of “majesty” filled the arena in Bilbao, Spain, she descended from the ceiling surrounded by showers of golden sparks and wearing an embellished pink leotard. She and her crew of dancers launched right into the Queen cut “Good Form,” before ceding the stage to Little Mix, who busted out some Michael Jackson-esque moves for their empowering new single, “Woman Like Me.” Naturally, Nicki chimed in with her verse before joining the girls for an explosive final chorus, punctuated by a sassy claw move. NM + LM = EMA royalty.

Earlier in the night, Minaj took home the EMA for Best Look, besting fellow nominees Dua Lipa, Migos, Post Malone, and Cardi B. See the full list of winners here, and catch the entire show at 7 p.m. ET on MTV or stream on MTVEMA.com!

Pete Davidson’s appearance on Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update segment grabbed a lot of attention on Sunday with his comments about his real-life break-up with performer Ariana Grande. 

That left a poor-taste joke poking fun at the physical appearance of candidates running for office initially overlooked. But as the clip spread, backlash started brewing about Davidson’s move to mock a Republican congressional candidate who wears an eye patch.

Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who is running as the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for Texas’s 2nd congressional district, lost his eye in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. He’s a combat veteran.

In the segment, Davidson said Crenshaw looks like “a hit man in a porno movie.” He immediately acknowledged the mean-spiritedness of the comment and said, “I’m sorry I know he lost his eye in war or whatever.”

Weekend Update co-host Michael Che anticipated the outcry before Davidson even started the joke. After a photo of Crenshaw with an eye patch displayed on the screen, Che lamented, “Come on, man.” But Davidson carried on. 

After his Crenshaw impression, he moved on to a Democrat, “so I look fair.” It wasn’t all attacks on right-wing candidates, but still.

Crenshaw posted about the bad joke Sunday, noting “I hope [SNL] recognizes that vets don’t deserve to see their wounds used as punchlines for bad jokes.”

A bevy of responses followed, assuring the candidate that joking about his war injuries was in poor taste. People from both the left and right acknowledged that going after physical appearances and former combat veterans was a low blow (even if it’s not the worst rhetoric our country has seen in recent years).

Rep. Pete King from New York, who was also included in the segment, took to Twitter to call for Davidson’s or someone at NBC’s firing. An ironic request from a man who supports a president who has mocked a reporter’s physical disability, insulted a Gold Star family, and disparaged John McCain’s military service. Trump’s still got his job.

None of which excuses Davidson’s remarks on SNL. He may not be held to the same public standards as a politician (at least in the pre-Trump era), but that doesn’t mean he can get away with spouting whatever mean-spirited garbage he wants.

Mashable has reached out to NBC for comment and we’ll update this story once we hear back.