Starbucks' holiday drinks are back -- and so is the controversy surrounding their cups.

The coffee chain unveiled a new paper cup design Tuesday: a green cup with illustrations of the faces of more than 100 people, Business Insider reported. 

"The green cup and the design represent the connections Starbucks has as a community with its partners (employees) and customers. During a divisive time in our country, Starbucks wanted to create a symbol of unity as a reminder of our shared values, and the need to be good to each other," Howard Schultz, the company's chairman and CEO, said in a statement.

The people are connected through one continuous line, drawn by artist Shogo Ota. While the message isn't meant to be divisive, it reignited last year's controversy over the company's red holiday cups, sparking mixed reactions from Twitter users.

Some voiced their annoyance with the cups.

Others, however, took it as an opportunity to poke fun at those who complained.

Last year, Starbucks sparked criticism across social media when it released its red holiday cups devoid of the word "Christmas" or holiday designs, like snowmen or snowflakes.

It isn't clear whether the company's classic red cups will make a comeback this holiday season. Starbucks wouldn't confirm whether the green cups are part of the chain's holiday plans, or if it would also use red cups.

"The rest of our holiday plans are still under wraps," a spokesperson told NBC in an email. 

Glamour Magazine on Tuesday named a young woman at the center of the high-profile Stanford sexual assault case one of its women of the year.

Without naming her, the magazine cited the impact of Emily Doe's powerful sentencing statement, which she read after her assailant was sentenced to six months in jail, as the reason for her award. It prompted a national conversation about "rape culture" and drinking on college campuses, as well as a recall movement against the sentencing judge and a California law requiring minimum sentences for sexual assault.

Though Doe's name has not been reported, because she is the victim of sexual assault, her story reached Vice President Joe Biden, who emailed her after the trial. “You are a warrior,” Biden wrote her, in a public letter that urged everyone to believe the victims of sexual assault.

In a companion essay in the December issue, Doe described her amazed reaction at receiving an email from the vice president: "I printed his letter out and ran around the house flapping it in the air."

The young woman also described her frustration with the sentence that Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky handed to Brock Turner, a former Stanford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting her after a fraternity party in January 2015.

After a jury convicted Turner of three counts of felony sex assault, Persky sentenced Turner to six months in jail, saying a harsher sentence would have a “severe impact” on the young 22-year-old athlete, of which he only served three months for good behavior.

Led by Stanford professor Michele Dauber, millions came out to sign papers saying that they think Persky should be recalled and is guilty of favoring "white privilege." By law, Persky isn't allowed to say much about the case, but he has set up a web site to counter those efforts.

On Tuesday, Dauber said how pleased she was that Glamour recognized the young woman who brought all these issues to light.

"This award recognizes the fact that Emily Doe's letter was both a significant literary accomplishment and a significant political document," Dauber said in an email to NBC Bay Area. "As a piece of literature it moved people and created a tidal wave of compassion and empathy for sexual assault survivors. But its real significance lies in its impact as a political document, as a declaration of the 'End of Business as Usual.' Emily opened a door. Since then survivors have declared that enough is enough."

Still, the door opened through the legal system led to far from a perfect ending for Doe. In her essay, she said she thought the trial would set her free. In the end, she said she didn't feel that way.

“So when it was quickly announced that he’d be receiving six months, I was struck silent," Emily Doe recounted in Glamour. "Immediately I felt embarrassed for trying, for being led to believe I had any influence. The violation of my body and my being added up to a few months out of his summer. The judge would release him back to his life, back to the 40 people who had written him letters from Ohio. I began to panic; I thought, this can’t be the best-case scenario. If this case was meant to set the bar, the bar had been set on the floor.”

Emily Doe also noted that she approved of the recall effort against Judge Persky.

Her deeply personal statement had a major impact in America, Glamour said in its decision to make Doe a woman of the year. 

"Emily Doe’s courageous statement was one’s of the year’s most remarkable events for women – for anybody, really, who cares about justice and the experience of sexual assault survivors,’’ Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive said in a written statement to the Mercury News. “She changed how America sees this experience.’’

Glamour’s past women of the year honorees helped select Emily Doe and the other 2016 women of the year, who include Olympic gymnast Simone Biles; Black Lives Matter founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi; singer and fashion designer Gwen Stefani and, for the first time, a man: Bono.

Being stuck on a flight on the night of Halloween didn't stop one dad from ensuring his daughter was able to go trick-or-treating. 

The father passed out a note to fellow passengers on a flight from Boston to San Francisco with candy attached Monday, asking them to hand the candy to his 3-year-old daughter Molly as she trick-or-treated through the aisles dressed as a doughnut, according to one passenger whose heart was warmed by the gesture.

Stephanie Kahan, a Boston resident who was on the Virgin America flight, tweeted a photo of the note to Twitter Monday night, calling the father the "dad of the year." The tweet has gone viral, garnering over 60,000 retweets and 100,000 likes in about 12 hours.

The note read: "Happy Halloween! My 3-year-old daughter, Molly, was bummed that she wouldn't be able to go trick-or-treating this year due to this flight...so I decided to bring trick-or-treating to her. If you are willing, when my little donut comes down the aisle please drop this in her basket. You'll be making her Halloween! If you're unwilling, no worries, just pass the treat back to me. Thanks so much!"

"It pulled at everyone's heart strings," Kahan told NBC  Tuesday.

While she said that she didn't see just how many people participated, the overall reaction from those around her was positive.

"Everyone thought it was great," said Kahan, who works at Twitter.

Kahan said she spoke to the father, who wished to remain anonymous, toward the end of the flight. He said most people were happy to participate, though some were confused by the note. And according to Kahan, the father told her he wished he had spoken to people about it, rather than just handing them a piece of paper with candy. 

Kahan also posted a photo of the little girl, who she said seemed shy, as she trick-or-treated down the aisle as a smiling passenger handed her candy.

After the girl got back to her seat, Kahan overheard her talking to her father, who asked if she had fun.

"She was just kind of like, 'I want to eat the candy!'" Kahan said.

Virgin America retweeted Kahan's post, while Twitter users gushed about the father's love.

Six people were killed and 10 others hurt when a school bus slammed into a commuter bus in Baltimore early Tuesday morning, police said.

WBAL-TV footage from the wreck showed severe damage along the front of the Maryland Transit Administration bus, from which the school bus was protruding. Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith initially said told the NBC affiliate three people had died, before the Baltimore Police Department's Twitter account indicated that six were dead. 

There were no children on board the school bus, police said. 

The crash took place in southwest Baltimore, in the 3800 block of Frederick Avenue, about 7 a.m. police said. The yellow bus struck a Mustang car, hit a pillar outside a cemetery and then struck the MTA bus. At least five people died on the commuter bus, which had most its side ripped off, while the driver of the school bus was killed.

"It literally looks like a bomb exploded in the [commuter] bus," Smith said at a press briefing. "It's catastrophic damage."

He added that responders were still searching the commuter bus for victims. 

Among the eight people on the commuter bus who were taken to the hospital, injuries ranged from minor to critical, Smith said. One person each from the bus and the car were also hospitalized.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation, Smith said.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan released a statement Tuesday morning: "The First Lady and I are deeply saddened to hear of the horrific crash this morning in Southwest Baltimore involving a school bus and an MTA commuter bus. Our deepest condolences go out to the victims and their families in the wake of this tragedy. We will continue to pray for those who were injured, as well as the first responders who worked swiftly and continue to care for the injured.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of high-powered rifle shots were exchanged as three Oklahoma state troopers chased down double-murder suspect Michael Dale Vance and killed him, according to extraordinary video of the confrontation released Tuesday.

Vance, 38, was wanted in the shootings of two police officers in Wellston, northeast of Oklahoma City, and the deaths of his aunt and uncle, Robert and Kay Wilkson, on Oct. 23, NBC News reported.

He eluded authorities for a week — live-streaming his getaway on Facebook — before he was shot and killed Sunday night near Leedey, Oklahoma.

In video released Tuesday, Vance's truck begins to slow, and it eventually stops. A shadowy figure — Vance, in the night-vision-enhanced video — emerges from the truck walking backward in a crouch, with what appears to be a rifle pointed back at the pursuing troopers.

More bullet casings fly around in the foreground. The figure then collapses in a heap.

A tweet sent out on Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller's Twitter account referred to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a sexually explicit, derogatory term for women.

NBC 5 political reporter Julie Fine reached out to Miller, who said the tweet was a retweet sent by a staffer that was later removed after someone realized what it said.

“Someone from my campaign retweeted it without reading it closely enough, and did not catch the derogatory term. Right when we found out we took it down," Miller told NBC 5.

The tweet referenced a Pennsylvania Auto Alliance poll showing Republican candidate Donald Trump receiving support from 44 percent of voters and Clinton, refered to as "c---" in the tweet, earning 43 percent support. "Go Trump Go!" the tweet said.

Miller later tweeted an apology for anyone who saw the tweet and added that he found the term "vulgar and offensive."

Gov. Greg Abbott, a fellow Republican, released a statement in response to Miller's tweet: "The language is reprehensible and is an embarrassment. No true Texas gentleman would ever talk this way."

On his Twitter page Miller describes himself not only as the 12th Agriculture Commissioner of Texas, but also as a "deplorable" -- a description Clinton made when describing some of Trump's supporters.

Miller, of Stephenville, has been the state's agriculture commissioner since 2014.

NBC 5's Julie Fine contributed to this report.

A new report offers further evidence that Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was diving out of control when it vanished more than two and a half years ago, NBC News reported.

The plane, which plunged into the Indian Ocean in March 2014, has been the center of competing theories of what happened on the flight. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which has been leading the search for MH370, said Wednesday that analysis of satellite communications and wing debris revealed that plane likely smashed into the water at a “high and increasing rate of descent.”

This also rules out the possibility of the plane being configured for a landing or a ditching, eliminating theories that the plane was hijacked or that pilots had control when it crashed. There were 239 passengers and crew on board.

There's plenty of hand wringing and stomach churning in Democratic households this week as polls show the presidential race tightening in its final days — and the Hillary Clinton campaign is making a series of moves that some see as panicked desperation.

Meanwhile, campaign officials have seemed unusually agitated in a series of press calls and statements responding to FBI Director James Comey's bombshell on Clinton's email server, NBC News reported.

And after pledging to close the race on a positive note, the campaign rolled out a tough new ad highlighting women who claim Trump sexually assaulted them, while reintroduced former beauty queen Alicia Machado.

But the reality is that Clinton's chances of winning 270 electoral votes have hardly changed from last week. While Democrats' agitation is palpable, it's driven more by anger than panic at what they see as unprecedented and appalling meddling by outside forces in the election.

Discoveries from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery suggest that Amelia Earhart may have died on an uninhabited island, NBC News reported.

Researchers with The Earhart Project found similarities between the famed pilot and the partial skeleton of a castaway discovered on an uninhabited Western Pacific island, Nikumaroro, in 1940.

Using modern techniques, forensic anthropologists and imaging experts compared measurements of the arm bones in the castaway's skeleton to a historical photo of Earhart and discovered that their measurements were "virtually identical."

Amelia Earhart was an aviation pioneer. In 1932, she became the first woman to complete a solo transatlantic flight. That year, she also became the first woman to fly solo from coast to coast. But it was her disappearance during her second attempt to fly around the world, in 1937, that has fascinated aviation enthusiasts for more than 70 years.

A newly issued patent provides a clue about the direction of Apple’s future iPhone: It might fold.

But not in a bad way.

The phone could have an interior flexible enough to fold, giving the user twice the screen, without doubling the size, according to the patent.

Now, admittedly, this is all speculative.

There is an entire website devoted to Apple's patents — it’s called Patently Apple and it's fun to sift through — most of which have not seen the light of day.

But foldable technology is coming. We’ve seen almost foldable phones, a foldable TV on Kickstarter, and of course VR goggles, which at least look foldable.

“You have no limitation anymore,” analyst Carolina Milanesi of Creative Strategies said about foldable mobile devices. “You’re immersed in the experience.”

An experience set to change very soon.

Scott is flexible on Twitter: @scottbudman

Libertarian vice presidential candidate Bill Weld said he was "vouching" for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, NBC News reported.

On Tuesday night as a guest on "The Rachel Maddow Show," the former Republican governor of Massachusetts said Clinton is "a person of high moral character, a reliable and honest person," despite what Republican nominee Donald Trump says.

While Weld stopped short of telling people to vote for her, he voiced concern of the possibility of Trump winning on Election Day. Weld's comments are in sharp contrast to running mate Gary Johnson, who recently said Clinton could ultimately be impeached over the FBI review of her emails.

Texas is a Red state, but Mark Cuban doesn’t care if it affects his bottom line. 

Some Dallas Mavericks fans don’t like him supporting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton while continuing his feud with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. 

I asked Cuban about that on my NBC Sports Radio Show Tuesday and he didn’t hold back.

“You know what, when it’s all said and done, I’d rather lose every penny than have Trump as president because I care more about the future of my family, my children than I do about my pocketbook," Cuban said. "And so if it means we play to empty arenas, I’m down with that."

Cuban told me he already voted in the election cast his ballot for Clinton. He also said that the Mavericks will not be staying at any Trump hotels this season. 

For fans who want him to just stay out of politics after the election, he promises he will. He acknowledged his critics on both sides of this contentious presidential election:

“Maybe I pick up some fans. Maybe I lose some fans. I don’t know," he said. "I’ve heard it from both. I’ve had people say ‘there’s no way I can support you. I can’t go to another Mavs game.’ And I’ve had people say ‘you know what? We’re buying Mavs tickets.' What I’ve heard more often than anything is, ‘are you gonna be this way once the election’s over?’ And the answer is no. You’ve known me forever Newy and I’ve been apolitical my entire adult life and only because I know Donald and I know my feelings about what he would be like as president have I gotten this involved but come November 9, it’s all Mavs all the time.”

Here's the link to the entire interview.

Take notes Cubs fans – this may be the best “get out of class” note ever.

Julie Block’s father grew up living across the street from Wrigley Field and her family has been huge Cubs fans her entire life.

But going to school in Indiana, the English writing major at DePauw University knew she would face a dilemma as her beloved team headed into Game 6 of the World Series.

“After the game on Sunday, I was in Wrigley at the time,” she told NBC Chicago. “That’s when I knew I can’t leave this city during this time. I have to stay and witness the atmosphere because it’s just incredible.”

So she did the only thing she could think to do — she wrote a very convincing letter to her professor.

"There comes a time in everyone's life when they must decide between learning history and experiencing history,” the letter began. “Alas, that time for me is now. With the Chicago Cubs off to Game 6 of the World Series on Tuesday evening, I have chosen the latter (although I prefer to recognize it as a civic duty more than a "choice;" see below.) Given that I am in Chicago for a job interview today anyway, I have decided that I cannot leave the city and miss out on a once-in-108-years opportunity to witness this historic moment. Because of the timing of Game 6, and the likelihood that there will be a Game 7 on Wednesday (I'm an optimist,) I will, unfortunately, not be able to attend class on Wednesday. I understand if this is recognized as an unexcused absence; however, I would like to lay out a few reasons why I think the World Series is a viable excuse for missing class."

Block goes on list six reasons why she believes her absence should be excused:

1. I am a journalist, and it is said that the news is the first draft of history. It would go against my journalistic integrity if I did not get as close to the making of said history as possible.

2. I feel it is imperative that I document the Chicago atmosphere during this time so that, when it is studied in this exact class a few hundred years from now, it will be historically accurate.

3. Were I to return to campus for Wednesday's class, my level of distraction would likely be so high that I would cause more of a disruption by being there than by not being there. My absence will be for the good of the class as a whole.

4. Four generations of Blocks have come and gone without witnessing the a World Series win. For the sake of my ancestors, I must see what they could not.

5. I do not know if I will have the pleasure of living in Chicago again once graduation rolls around in May, so this may be my only chance to be in the city when my home team wins it all. It is, quite literally, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

6. My father is Jewish and my mother is Catholic, so my family does not have a recognized religious affiliation. However, we do all have Cubs Christmas stockings and a Cubs menorah, in addition to sending out a Cubs-themed Christmas card every year, so I consider myself religiously affiliated with the Cubs. Really, I will be absent due to a religious holiday. 

Block figured she got her point across.

“I think I laid out a pretty solid argument why I won’t be there and he knows how big of a Cubs fan I am so I think he understood it pretty well,” she said.

It didn’t take long for her professor to respond – echoing the undeniably humorous tone that filled Block’s note.

"Ha--wow! I really enjoyed reading your rationale, which is probably the most creative and thoughtful ‘I won't be in class’ note I've had in 21 years of teaching,” Professor Harry Brown wrote. 

He then goes on to explain his classroom policy, which allows students three absences, excused or not. After those three, future absences could impact a student’s grade, barring any serious circumstances.

He noted that after missing Monday’s class, Block had two cuts. Wednesday would be three.

“You're in great shape if you don't miss class after that,” he wrote. “For the sake of your family, the city of Chicago, and the whole human race, I hope the Cubs don't blow it! W!"

Brown told NBC 5 Block is a “great member of my class” and said “her letter was among the most memorable and forthright explanations for missing a class that I've received in 20 years of teaching.”

The Cubs managed to stay alive against the Indians in Game 6 of the World Series Tuesday night. Block gets to root for her team one more time during Wednesday's Game 7. 

For anyone else in need of an excuse note for that game, the Cubs have got you covered. They put out a form letter saying that they need each supporter to help them "#FlytheW."

The Donald Trump campaign rejected an uncomfortable backer Tuesday after the official paper of the Ku Klux Klan warmly embraced the Republican presidential nominee, NBC News reported. 

The Crusader, a quarterly journal that bills itself as "The Premier Voice of the White Resistance," issued a full-page spread supporting Trump.

"Make America Great Again!' It is a slogan that has been repeatedly used by Donald Trump in his campaign for the presidency," the Crusader's Pastor Thomas Robb wrote. "You can see it on the shirts, buttons, posters and ball caps such as the one being worn here by Trump speaking at a recent rally. ... But can it happen? Can America really be great again? This is what we will soon find out!"

In a statement, the Trump campaign said: "Mr. Trump and the campaign denounces hate in any form. This publication is repulsive and their views do not represent the tens of millions of Americans who are uniting behind our campaign."

A black church in Mississippi was badly burned in a fire and vandalized with the words "vote Trump" on Tuesday evening, NBC News reported.

The fire erupted at Hopewell Baptist Church in Greenville about 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, heavily damaging the main sanctuary, officials said. The pro-Trump graffiti was written on an outside wall.

Mayor Errick Simmons said the "hateful and cowardly act" was likely race-related, "an attack on the black community."

The local police chief said investigators were talking to a person of interest who lives in the area, but there is no surveillance footage of the fire, which appears to have been set deliberately. The FBI said it is investigating the incident, and federal ATF and Mississippi State Fire Marshal investigators were on the scene as well.