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March 23, 2012 | | MOCKINGJAY While The Hunger Games confidently broke the record for the biggest Friday midnight opening for a nonsequel, the film’s star, Jennifer Lawrence, has been oddly dismissive about her new stardom—though her record shows her to be anything but ambivalent. The Daily Beast’s Chris Lee on whether the movie’s star is about to become the next Kristen Stewart. RAMPAGE Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged Friday afternoon with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the deaths of Afghan civilians March 11. Bales, 38, a married father of three, is accused of shooting and killing 17 civilians, including nine children. The exact details of the shooting are still sketchy, and Bales’s lawyer has said that the soldier does not remember it. Six other Afghans were wounded, and Bales has been charged with six counts of attempted murder and assault. If Bales is convicted of murder, he could face the death penalty. Close to Home President Obama announced his new pick for the head of the World Bank on Thursday and then turned his focus to the investigation of Trayvon Martin’s death. “I can only imagine what these parents were going through. If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” he said of the 17-year-old boy who was shot by a neighborhood watchman. The president urged that it’s “absolutely imperative” that every angle of the case be investigated. “All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this happened.” POTUS President Obama is set to nominate Dartmouth College president Jim Yong Kim to lead the World Bank, senior administration officials have confirmed to the Associated Press. Officials are hopeful that the nomination of Kim, a doctor and former director of the HIV/Aids department at the World Health Organization, will quell criticism from developing countries who are wary of the U.S. “monopoly” on the World Bank presidency. Former World Bank president Robert Zoellick announced in February that he was stepping down. The World Bank is dedicated to promoting development and lending money to impoverished countries for infrastructure projects. PEEPING TOM Officers from the New York City Police Department went undercover to gather information on liberal political groups and their members, The Associated Press reported Friday. Newspaper investigations in 2007 revealed that the NYPD used similar information-gathering methods before the 2004 Republican National Convention, and a lawsuit regarding those actions is currently pending. The NYPD’s monitoring of liberal organizations was carried out by the unsupervised Intelligence Division and ran counter to directives from the U.S. Homeland Security Department, which has asked police not to monitor individuals and groups that engage in legal forms of protest. | | 
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