Daily News Channel
— An elderly gunman opened fire with a rifle inside the crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, killing a security guard before being shot. Authorities said they were investigating a white supremacist as the suspect.
You can blame it on out-of-towners. Smithsonian Institution scientists say it was migratory Canada geese — and not resident Canada geese — that caused US Airways Flight 1549 to ditch in New York’s Hudson River on January 15. More specifically, it was at least two female and one male geese flying at approximately 2,900 feet that got sucked into the two engines of the Airbus A320, disabling both engines and causing one of the more spectacular water landings in aviation history
Manila often gets a bad rap, derided as dirty, chaotic, and an incoherent mess of unfinished urban areas and slums. It’s a world away from carefully planned Asian cities like Singapore — which makes it perfectly suited for visitors who don’t need their lives hermetically sealed in air-conditioned shininess
To win a summer weekend, a movie usually needs a star name or an action-film punch, or to be a sequel to or the remake of a blockbuster. Except, that is, for any new Pixar release. Rising on the propulsion of a brand name known for quality entertainment, the studio’s tenth animated feature, Up, surpassed most predictions by earning $68.2 million this weekend, according to official projections.
When a film cast includes names like Ben Stiller, Robin Williams and Owen Wilson, a bit of improvisation on set is to be expected. “I think the movie is really only 25 percent scripted, maybe even less than that,” said Shawn Levy, director of the new film “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” which boasts those comedic actors and several others. “It just so happens that the scenes that get some of the biggest laughs are the improvised scenes, so it feels like more than that, but we had a very good script and it’s still very much there.” The sequel to 2006’s “Night at the Museum” welcomes back the trio and director as well as other original cast members, including British actor Ricky Gervais, while also adding fresh faces such as Hank Azaria (as a villainous pharaoh) and Amy Adams (as Amelia Earhart)
Las t year the Pritzker Prize, the closest thing architecture has to an Oscar, went to the architectural equivalent of an indie star: Paul Mendes da Rochas, a Brazilian architect who was greatly gifted but not exactly a household name. This year it goes to the architectural equivalent of Paul Newman
“People love what’s next,” says Ricky Gervais’ fussy museum manager, explaining why many of the beloved old-fashioned exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History are being shipped off to storage at the Smithsonian Institute, to be replaced by holograms. Even Ben Stiller’s Larry Daley, the former night guard at the museum, seems to have moved on. He’s now the infomercial king, hawking such wares as the Glow in the Dark Torch in excruciatingly stilted exchanges with George Foreman
Steven Van Zandt did not mince words. “I want to spend just a minute on a topic that never ever gets discussed in the music business — the music,” the Bruce Springsteen guitarist and “Sopranos” star said in a speech to the SXSW music and arts festival in March
One of the perks of using search engine Google’s home page is checking out the frequently changing seasonal, current-event, and holiday-inspired "doodles" used for the logo. Soon the work of 12-year-old Christin Engelberth will occupy the Google spotlight to be viewed by millions of online searchers worldwide
Scientists hailed Tuesday a 47-million-year-old fossil of an ancient "small cat"-sized primate as a possible common ancestor of monkeys, primates and humans. Scientists say the fossil, dubbed “Ida,” is a transitional species, living around the time the primate lineage split into two groups: A line that would eventually produce humans, primates and monkeys, and another that would give rise to lemurs and other primates. The fossil was formally named Darwinius masillae, in honor of the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday