Colin Dwyer

Humans the world over have devised varied ways to note the opinions of a group. Want to cast a vote? Take your pick between ballots, raised hands or inked fingers — heck, just shout "aye" if you can't be bothered to move.

For all our electoral ingenuity, there is one method we can be reasonably sure no one's tried yet: sneezing.

Nearly one month since Danish inventor Peter Madsen returned to Copenhagen, rescued alone from his sunken homemade submarine, he appeared in court to explain the death and gruesome burial of the reporter who had been with him when he set out.

Updated at 6:20 p.m. ET

By all accounts, Hurricane Irma is a behemoth, a "potentially catastrophic" storm bearing 185-mph winds and the threat of devastation for the islands caught in its northwesterly course toward Florida. That threat packed an added wallop Wednesday for Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory already reeling from billions in debt.

In a span of less than two weeks, rampant violence has driven nearly 125,000 members of a Muslim ethnic minority from their homeland. And as the Rohingya cross the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh, they have borne little but the clothes on their backs and their brutal stories of the systematic rape, murder and arson they escaped.

The Houston Rockets announced Tuesday the franchise has been sold to a local and longtime fan, Tilman Fertitta. The billionaire businessman, sole owner of the Landry's restaurant empire and Golden Nugget Casinos and Hotels, now becomes sole owner of the Rockets as well — pending approval from the NBA's Board of Governors.