On the back of disappointing box-box office figures for ‘The Brave One’, starring Jodie Foster, and ‘The Invasion’, starring Nicole Kidman, Warner Brothers Pictures has reportedly decided not to make any more movies with female leads.
The story was broken by the LA Weekly newspaper which quoted three different Warner Bros. producers. The move has outraged women’s rights activists with attorney Gloria Allred calling it an insult to women and an insult to moviegoers.
“Instead of taking responsibility for their own lack of judgment about which scripts to make, directors to hire and budgets to OK, some men in the movie industry find it easier to place blame for their lack of success on women leads…” said Allred. Read more »
China has confirmed a sighting of an endangered species of tiger that hasn’t been spotted in 20 years. The International Natural Conservation Alliance listed the South China Tiger, or Penthern tiger, in 1996 among 10 highly endangered species.
Farmers who live in Northwest China’s Qinling Mountains, located in Shaanxi Province, spawned an investigation after some tigers by their village were spotted. China is the only habitat for the animal, where only 68 remain in zoos there.
A plethora of evidence was gathered on October 3rd, according to deputy director of Shaanxi Wild Animal Management Station Lu Xirong. It included photos, paw and teeth marks, paw prints left on the trunks of trees, and hair and feces. Read more »
Posted on October 12th, 2007 in News | No Comments »
Police have arrested a Japanese man who ran a suicide website on the Internet for killing a woman who paid him to do it. She contacted him through the website, and paid him $1,700 (U.S) to kill her. She was given sleeping pills and suffocated.
Her body was found April 16 in a city south of Tokyo. Police found a suicide note, but her car keys and cell phone came up missing. The man, Kanuzari Saito, has been charged with violating narcotic and psychotropic drug control laws.
Saito was arrested in July for selling sleeping pills to 10 people through his website. One has died and police are investigating. Japan has the highest suicide rate in the industrialized world, topping over 30,000 in 2006. Read more »
Parents of kids who watched two other students engage in sex in class are outraged and are demanding more supervision, since the incident occurred when the teacher stepped out of class. They are also angry that it took over a week to hear about it.
A parent of one Crockett Middle School student said, “I would expect the parent to at least have a call from the principal if not the day at least the next morning. I don’t believe there’s any excuse why that wouldn’t happen.”
The students involved have been disciplined, the school said in a letter to parents Friday, and said they have had campus and district counselors talk to the students who witnessed the incident, and will be available for them in the future. Read more »
An attorney representing Britney Spears said that she will abide by a judge’s order to turn herself in for a hit-and-run incident that occurred in Studio City in August with Kim Robard-Rifkin, a nurse in California.
Her attorney, Michael J. Flanagan, said “The judge ordered today in court that Britney must go to any L.A. police station for fingerprints and mug shots before Oct. 25. She will do that, but I don’t know when.”
“Britney wants to make sure she is compensated for any damages [she] may have and would like to figure out what those damages are,” he added. The order was handed down Tuesday by LA County Commissioner Rebecca Omens. Read more »
Stocks in Internet giant Google have risen above the US$600 mark for the first time since the company went on the stock market just over three years ago. The rise in stock sends the company’s value up to US$25 billion.
Share price fell back below $600 to $597.13 in trading this morning. Last night’s peak marks the sixth in the last 12 sessions of trade that Google shares have hit an all-time high. The company’s third-quarter earnings are due out this month. Read more »
Authorities in Iraq are demanding that Blackwater USA pay $8 million in compensation to each family of 17 victims. They also want the US government to cut all contracts within six months, and they want those involved handed over to face Iraqi trial.
The Iraqi government says the amount was because Blackwater hires employees who don’t respect the rights of the citizens of the country it is working in. They are challenging a decree in 2004 which gave Blackwater immunity from legal action.
In addition, they also stated that Blackwater’s license to work in Iraq expired on June 2, 2006. Read more »
WKQI 95.5 FM in Detroit has come under fire for their insensitive publicity stunt. A contest titled ‘Britney Death Poll’, started last Tuesday by DJ Big Boy, a station employee, asked listeners to correctly guess when Britney Spears would ‘end it’.
The rules for the contest stated: “If you can guess the exact day that Britney dies, whether it’s from drugs or however she dies, if you’re right, we’ll give you a thousand bucks”. The cash prize of $1,000 would have been donated to the AFSP.
After swift and negative public reaction, the station pulled the Web page for the Britney stunt by mid-morning Oct. 3rd. Later, 95.5 aired a statement by Dom Theodore, operations manager, in which he apologized if anyone was offended. Read more »
A man with an IQ of only 50 has been held in a mental institution for the last 14 years, without charges. A Judge dropped the charges against him, and freed him. He was charged with beating to death and robbing a 80 year old woman.
Brown, was found incompetent to stand trial, and was put in Dorothea Dix mental hospital, prosecutors saying he was too dangerous, refused to drop charges against him. He said he beat the woman with a walking stick when she wouldnt give him a dollar.
His attorneys say that the ‘flowing’ narrative style of the confession he signed, and his speaking pattern is completely different. “His speech is marked by being very repetitive,” a psychologist at the hospital says. Read more »