Explore More When I first met Kerry Washington, she and Katie Lowes were walking arm in arm, like schoolgirls, on their way to Stage 12 at Sunset-Gower Studios. They had just come from a table read and, frankly, they looked stunned. The actresses, who play Olivia Pope and Quinn Perkins, respectively, were not the only ones looking blown away. Their castmates, Joshua Malina (David Rosen), Jeff Perry (Cyrus Beene), and Tony Goldwyn (President Fitzgerald Grant), were there too, baking in the sun on an abnormally hot California day and talking about some wickedly delicious things that we can’t tell you about in the first and second episodes of this season’s “Scandal,” TV’s most addictive drama.

Today the Australian Koala Foundation announced they believe “there are no more than 80,000 koalas in Australia,” making the species “functionally extinct.” While this number is dramatically lower than the most recent academic estimates, there’s no doubt koala numbers in many places are in steep decline. It’s hard to say exactly how many koalas are still remaining in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory, but they are highly vulnerable to threats including deforestation, disease and the effects of climate change.

Merlene Ottey is a Jamaican and Slovenian track and field athlete who was born on May 10, 1960 in Hanover Parish, Jamaica. She is known as the "Queen of the Track" and holds the record for the most Olympic medals won by a woman in track events, with nine medals in total. She is an inspiration to many and a true champion of the sport. Merlene Ottey is a member of Runner Age, Biography and Wiki 💰 Net worth: $110 million Some Merlene Ottey images

Explore More The prominent MAGA donor couple whose daughter and granddaughter were killed along with two other people in a “ghost plane” crash reportedly faced another tragedy almost 30 years ago — when their other daughter died in a scuba-diving accident. John and Barbara Rumpel lost their daughter and their 2-year-old granddaughter when the twin-engine Cessna Citation V crashed Sunday afternoon in a rural part of southwest Virginia. The adult daughter was identified by the Daily Mail as Adina Azarian, 49, whose LinkedIn profile lists her as a real estate broker in East Hampton.

A rescue husky dog named Bret Michaels has been adopted by the human rock star Bret Michaels. Michaels, 60 — frontman of the glam rock band Poison — first heard the story of his namesake pup when the Nebraska Humane Society shared a Facebook post about the canine, whose blood was used to save a month-old kitten. “It’s not very often that our own dogs get a chance to be the hero!