Hoax! Shooting report at home of rapper Lil Wayne proved to be false |
- Hoax! Shooting report at home of rapper Lil Wayne proved to be false
- A Minute With: Sean Penn
- Study finds evidence of Frankensquid sea-dwelling creature
- ‘Piece By Piece’ album by Kelly Clarkson debuts atop Billboard 200
- Ribery, Robben injuries ‘not too serious’, says Bayern coach
- New album and tour announcement from rock band Muse
| Hoax! Shooting report at home of rapper Lil Wayne proved to be false Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:51 PM PDT
Earlier in the day, Miami Beach police said they received a call on a non-emergency line from a person saying he had shot four people at the home and needed assistance. "We can say for sure it was a hoax," police spokesman Ernesto Rodriguez said after a SWAT team searched the home in an exclusive island neighborhood. "We were unable to locate any victims or subjects." Miami Beach police tweeted "unfortunately this appears to be a "swatting" call," referring to a trend of police receiving false emergency calls, sometimes targeting celebrities. Wayne's record company, Young Money, said on Twitter he was not at home at the time and he later tweeted that the incident was a "prank kall". The hoax call trend is known as "swatting" because SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) officers often are sent to the purported crime scenes. Authorities say such situations can be dangerous due to the risk of a misunderstanding between police and occupants of a building. Swatting calls have previously sent police to the homes of actor Ashton Kutcher and singers Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. Police, some wearing bullet-proof vests, surrounded Wayne's nine-bedroom home, which is valued at $9.2 million, and TV images showed a SWAT truck arriving on the scene. Local media, citing representatives for the rapper, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr, was not in the home at the time of the reported incident. In 2008 Wayne won Grammy Awards for best rap album, best rap song, best rap solo performance and was part of the award-winning best rap group performance. He has had run-ins with the law on weapons and drug charges and went to prison in New York in a gun case. — Reuters  |
| Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:47 PM PDT
For the thriller "The Gunman", opening in US theaters on March 20, the 54-year-old actor and activist talked to Reuters about what motivates him in both the movies and the causes he champions. Here are excerpts from the interview. Q: What drew you to this story and the character of Jim? A: It appealed to me in a way that a lot of action movies haven't appealed to me, because the consequences of violence were present throughout, and yet that didn't seem to create a ponderous weight on the energy of the picture. Q: How important was it to have the backdrop of Democratic Republic of Congo? A: What was important was that the epicenter of that narrative drive had a history of suffering intervention, be it political intervention or corporate intervention. And certainly DRC has had both, and continues to. There were also some real-life parallels related to the mining interests that had happened there. That made it the appropriate choice. Q: Has being an actor made it difficult for your voice to be heard for your activism work? A: I've found it harder and easier. Criticism will come more quickly, so will reverence. Generally, both are inaccurate, but you know, I think that I approach work - whether it's creative work, any work I do - very much as a functionary ... it's really clinical on both. Q: As Ambassador-at-Large for Haiti, what would you want tackled urgently? A: I'd like to see politics redefine its quality of life for people and for everybody to put their sword down and get to the table, it's very tricky there. But I think if you want good things to happen for a country like Haiti, then you need to provide the circumstances where the Haitians can do that. You need governance, but you also need a middle class, you need agriculture, they need to be able to export. I think that's probably the biggest issue, the job creation that could come with the kinds of things that Haiti has all the potential in the world to export. Q: What roles are you finding yourself drawn to? Any superhero franchises in your future? A: You asked me with a camera on this face and in this time of my life if I would be a superhero? (laughs) Maybe, if there's a very funny one. Q: There's always the villain. A: I don't know what I would be interested in doing next. There are some good movies made on that (superhero) stuff, let a few of them be made a year. But I'd like to see this business not drown itself in superhero movies. — Reuters |
| Study finds evidence of Frankensquid sea-dwelling creature Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:44 PM PDT
The two-metre (seven-foot) creature used spiny appendages to filter morsels from ocean water, said a study in the journal Nature. The technique is similar to the method used by modern-day ocean giants like baleen whales. But the bizarre beast also shared features with today's arthropods, the family of invertebrates with exoskeletons that includes spiders, insects, crustaceans and centipedes. It had pairs of "flaps", possibly for swimming, along the length of its segmented body. Aegirocassis benmoulae is the earliest giant filter feeder yet discovered "This would have been one of the largest animals alive at the time," said study co-author Allison Daley of Oxford University. The creature, which lived in the Palaeozoic era, is named after sea god Aegir from Norse mythology, the Latin for helmet (cassis) and a Moroccan fossil hunter, Mohamed Ben Moula, who discovered its remains. The creature's anatomy was pieced together by studying fossils unearthed at Morocco's Lower Fezouata Formation and kept in the collection of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in Connecticut. One particularly well-preserved, three-dimensional fossil was gently pried from surrounding rock using tiny needle-like tools, an Oxford University statement said. An artist's impression reveals an animal with a protruding, squid-like head attached to a body resembling that of a shrimp but with two pairs of flaps per segment, both upward- and downward-pointing, instead of legs. The reconstructed A. benmoulae had side-facing eyes and two articulated appendages jutting from the "mouth" area, covered in a comb of spines with which it captured plankton. "While filter feeding is probably one of the oldest ways for animals to find food, previous filter feeders were smaller, and usually attached to the sea floor," said Daley. Gentle giant "We have found the oldest example of gigantism in a freely swimming filter feeder," Daley said. The new species belonged to a now-extinct clan of marine animals called anomalocaridids, which first appeared on the scene about 520 million years ago. Most of A. benmoulae's older and contemporary cousins, however, were apex predators with sharp-toothed mouths. The researchers said the creature's flaps were likely the precursors of the double-branched legs of today's arthropods, "but at a stage before they fused together into one leg". Arthropods are A. benmoulae's closest living relatives, and use their versatile legs for everything from walking and sensing their environment, to eating and mating. The Palaeozoic period lasted from about 570 to 250 million years ago — from the rise of the first invertebrates with hard external skeletons, to the dominance of reptiles. It ended with the greatest extinction event in the history of Earth, which then had a single continent, followed by the Triassic period and the rise and fall of the dinosaurs. — AFP |
| ‘Piece By Piece’ album by Kelly Clarkson debuts atop Billboard 200 Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:42 PM PDT
The first "American Idol" winner ties fellow champion Carrie Underwood in No. 1 albums among contestants of the long-running Fox TV reality show, Billboard said. "Piece By Piece" tallied 97,000 units, including 83,000 albums sold, in the week ended March 8, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan. Close behind at No. 2 was the soundtrack to Universal Pictures' hit film "Fifty Shades of Grey," with 96,000 units sold. "1989" from Taylor Swift, the top-selling album of 2014, found its way back up to No. 3 with 77,000 units sold and has maintained a place in the top five since its release 19 weeks ago, Billboard said. The only other new entry in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart, which tallies album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album), was singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile's "The Firewatcher's Daughter" at No. 9, selling 43,000 units. Last week's chart-topper, rapper Big Sean's "Dark Sky Paradise," dropped to No. 6. On the Digital Songs chart, which measures online song sales, Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' upbeat "Uptown Funk!" remained at No. 1 with 210,000 downloads in the past week. — Reuters |
| Ribery, Robben injuries ‘not too serious’, says Bayern coach Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:39 PM PDT
Dutch winger Robben, Bayern's top scorer this season, clutched his thigh as he was taken off in the 19th minute while Frenchman Franck Ribery followed him off on the hour. "We have to see tomorrow what the damage is but doctors said it is not too serious for them," Guardiola told reporters. With Bayern chasing a treble of titles and a sixth European crown they will need all the firepower they can muster despite some long-term injured players being ready to return, including captain Philipp Lahm, Thiago Alcantara and Javi Martinez. The partnership between Robben and Ribery, nicknamed 'Robbery', is crucial for Guardiola's style of play with the pair's searing pace down the wings. "It does not see to be too bad," Ribery, who scored one goal against Shakhtar, told reporters. "It is something with the ankle and I hope I can be ready to play on the weekend." Bayern, who will not play again in Europe until April, are 11 points clear at the top of the Bundesliga and take on Werder Bremen on Saturday. ― Reuters |
| New album and tour announcement from rock band Muse Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:35 PM PDT
Lead singer Matt Bellamy said the band's seventh studio album will be released on June 8, after months of hinting that new work was on the way. "To me, 'Drones' are metaphorical psychopaths which enable psychopathic behaviour with no recourse. The world is run by Drones utilising Drones to turn us all into Drones," Bellamy said. "This album explores the journey of a human, from their abandonment and loss of hope, to their indoctrination by the system to be a human drone, to their eventual defection from their oppressors." A new track, "Psycho", will be released on YouTube on Thursday, followed by the release of the album's first single "Dead Inside" on March 23. The band is to play a series of live shows across Britain in March, followed by a tour that will pass through countries including Germany, Russia and France. Hailing from Devon in England, the band's signature fusion of genres has found considerable success over a 21-year career, and the group composed the official song of the London Olympics in 2012. Previous hits include anthems "Time is Running Out" and "Supermassive Black Hole", and the band had sold over 20 million albums worldwide. — AFP |
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