Daily News Channel
YouTube is in talks to acquire licensing rights to full-length content from Sony Pictures, home of such films as "The International" and "Spider-Man," sources familiar with the negotiations told CNET News. Details about what a final agreement could look like are sparse, but any partnership between the two powerhouses would likely benefit both. Representatives from both companies declined to comment
A researcher says he predicted Monday’s devastating earthquake that killed dozens of people and left tens of thousands homeless in central Italy, but authorities dismissed him as a scaremonger. Gioacchino Giuliani, an employee at a physics institute at Gran Sasso, near the badly-hit city of L’Aquila, has demanded an official apology for what he says was an unforgivable failure to act on his predictions. “There are people who must apologize to me, and they must have the weight of what occurred on their conscience,” Giuliani said after the quake hit, according to local news site Ilcapoluogo.com.
A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond Between Two Friends and a Lion By Anthony Bourke and John Rendall 221 pages; Broadway Books The Gist: In 1969, two flamboyantly dressed, long-haired hippies named Anthony Bourke and John Rendall purchased a lion cub from London’s upscale department store Harrods — which, at the time, traded in exotic animals — and brought him to live in their Chelsea furniture store in the heart of Swinging London. Christian lived in the store, aptly named Sophisticat, for five months. He played well with children, was litter-trained, and only ruined the store’s furniture by accident.
A Texas woman claims in a lawsuit her 21-year-old son has suffered emotional trauma from being forced to participate in alleged "fight clubs" at a state school for mentally handicapped adults.
China has blocked the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube but did not offer a reason for the ban. Google, which owns YouTube, said it began noticing a decline in traffic from China about noon Monday.
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, arrived in Pakistan on Saturday morning, a Pakistani Interior Ministry official said. Khamenei said a change in rhetoric is not enough, and Washington must practice what it preaches, according to the English-language Press TV channel in Iran. He also promised that Iran will change its policy if the United States does so as well, Press TV reported.
A lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who was violently attacked by a chimpanzee is seeking $50 million in damages from the owner of the primate, attorneys said Tuesday. She brought the infants to her new house in La Habra, California. Members of the media and gawkers crowded the cul-de-sac, as news helicopters hovered overhead.
Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to octuplets in January, brought two of her babies home from the hospital late Tuesday.
IMDb founder Col Needham said the massively popular movie database has set as its major goal for the future to add one-button streaming for all of the 1.3 million titles it indexes. Obviously, the vision is a long-term one, Needham acknowledged, and it faces hurdles from the slew of content owners who control the vast library of titles the Internet Movie Database provides information about, but as a leading movie-oriented site, it’s a very important goal to articulate in public. Needham was speaking Monday afternoon at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival here.
YouTube began pulling music videos from its United Kingdom Web site Monday after talks with Britain’s music licensing group collapsed in a dispute over how much the video-sharing site should pay to host the songs.