A community outside San Francisco is in mourning this week after 15-year old Austin Price was struck by a train and killed on Thursday evening. The incident took place around 6 p.m. and was the result of a game of chicken, authorities confirm. Police say Price and two other teens were playing on the tracks near San Lorenzo High School when the former failed to get out of the way of a northbound Capitol Corridor train. At a school in mourning, Principal Tovi Scruggs acknowledged that students often play near the tracks, while signs were hung in hallways that said “Austin, we’ll miss you.” Several moments of silence were held for the sophomore, with Scruggs echoing the sentiments of other teenagers who said they will no longer take things for granted. “Life is precious,” Scruggs said.
All is not simply well in the world of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart . All is musical! The reunited couple was spotted at Coachella on Friday, taking in the music festival while trying to dress incognito. But it will take more than a baseball cap and t-shirt for this pair to go unnoticed! Robsten watched the Jurassic 5 set and mingled with famous friends such as Katy Perry at the annual festival in Indio, California. They’ve been seen together often over the past few weeks, ever since Rob returned from filming a movie in Australia. Staving off rumors of any tension between the two, Pattinson presented his girlfriend with a $40,000 locket for her birthday a few days ago, just the latest sign that everything is peachy keen for the couple. Now there’s a happy tune with which we can all sing along!
Adam Lanza’s mother considered suing Sandy Hook Elementary School, according to a new report, due to the intense bullying her son endured there. Nancy Lanza reportedly believed teachers at the Newtown, Conn., school turned a blind eye to beatings and taunts Adam suffered from his classmates. A relative, speaking to the N.Y. Daily News , claimed that mass murderer Lanza was ridiculed and attacked by fellow students at his boyhood alma mater. “Nancy felt fiercely protective of him,” the relative said. “She was convinced the school wasn’t doing enough to protect Adam. It made her irate.” She was gunned down by 20-year-old Adam Lanza on December 14, 2012. He then drove her car to Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 26 people . Obviously a disturbed individual, Adam had been socially withdrawn for years. It’s hard to pinpoint why or when it started, or if it could’ve been prevented. Still, Nancy struggled with people bullying her son often, family members say, and even went to school in an effort to catch his classmates in the act. “Adam would come home with bruises all over him,” the relative said. “His mom would ask what was wrong, and he wouldn’t say. He would just sit there. “She was trying to get proof. She wanted to know where the bruises came from.” Nancy considered a lawsuit against the school, though it’s not clear if she pursued that. What is clear is that this was a troubled youth from an early age. Relatives said Adam Lanza never seemed emotionally right after his time in Sandy Hook. Nancy Lanza switched him to another school after sixth grade. “He was a sick boy,” the relative told the Daily News . Mother and son shared a Newtown home where they were heavily armed with rifles, knives, Samurai swords, a 7-foot spear and 1,600 rounds of ammunition. Investigators found a Sandy Hook report card inside the house, along with a holiday gift card from mother to son with a check for him to buy a new gun. The tragedy has sparked nationwide gun control discussion, with Connecticut recently passing the nation’s toughest laws; federally, the debate rages on.
And the award for Most Adorable Photo in the History of the Internet does NOT go to Justin Bieber ! In a viral photo that is melting hearts around the globe, Cindy Clark – a French Bulldog Breeder from Pennsylvania – has posted an image of a sleeping baby covered in puppies online. Yes, a sleeping baby covered in puppies! What else needs to be said?
Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia doctor, is on trial for performing gruesome, illegal late-term abortions that led to the death of a woman and seven infants. In Pennsylvania, abortions after 24 weeks of gestation are against the law. Gosnell regularly performed the procedure at 30 weeks of gestation or later. Gosnell’s clinic has been labeled a “house of horrors” and is beyond sickening, no matter where you stand on the issue of abortion rights’ legality. The case has already had a profound effect politically. Anti-abortion advocates are using the high-profile case, which first made headlines in 2010, to boost support for new restrictions nationwide. One of those is TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws imposing strict architectural standards on clinics that perform only first-trimester abortions. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, implied on Friday that TRAP laws are all directly inspired by the Kermit Gosnell case. Dannenfelser said in a statement about Virginia’s new regulations: “Since Kermit Gosnell’s ‘house of horrors’ clinic was discovered in 2010, several states have enacted measures to ensure women going into abortion facilities are treated with basic dignity and respect.” Not surprisingly, the doctor has galvanized the pro-life movement with his misdeeds. The images (not shown here) from his trial are graphic and horrific. But others, like Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, argue that abortion rights opponents are drawing the wrong lesson from the case. Hogue argued that the TRAP regulations could shut down many safe and legal abortion clinics by requiring them to undergo cost-prohibitive renovations. That, she said, could increase the chances of another Gosnell. “Kermit Gosnell’s so-called clinic is a peek into the world before Roe v. Wade,” she said, “and this is exactly what our opponents are driving us to.” Instead of encouraging more restrictions on rights, Hogue said the Gosnell trial should remind people of the need for safe and affordable abortion care: “This is exactly what happens when you place undue restrictions and you try to shame women to keep them from exercising their constitutional right to safe and legal abortions.” “You make them victims to people like Gosnell, because in desperation they’ll turn anywhere.” “You want to drive people like Gosnell out of business? Then you actually support medical facilities and the right of women to safe and legal abortion.”
Beaten down by months of snow, wind and cold, an Ohio county has issued an “indictment” against Punxsutawney Phil over his Groundhog Day prediction . Phil did not see his shadow February 2, signaling spring’s imminent arrival. Six days later, Winter Storm Nemo dumped 30 inches of snow on New England. Six weeks later, temperatures across the Northern U.S. remain frigid. Birds chirping? Flowers blooming? No sign of those anywhere. As a result, (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek Butler County, Oh., prosecutors are demanding justice, claiming Phil deliberately misled the American people. They say such a felony should be punished by death. Butler County’s chief prosecutor filed an official brief about this, lambasting the rodent for actions “against the peace and dignity of the state of Ohio.” “Punxsutawney Phil did purposely, and with prior calculation and design, cause the people to believe that spring would come early,” wrote Mike Gmoser. He vowed to bring the Pennsylvania icon to justice in the neighboring Buckeye State, but Phil’s handlers are having none of it, coming to his defense. Bill Deeley, president of the club that organizes Groundhog Day, said Phil has a lawyer and would fight attempted extradition by the Ohio authorities. “We’ll have to plead our case one way or the other, but I think we can beat the rap,” Deeley said, taking Butler County’s indictment more or less in stride. Criminally negligent or not, Phil really dropped the ball in 2013. This winter was pretty harsh, at least by recent standards, and grew worse if anything following Phil’s prognostication that spring would come early. Case in point: There’s another storm due on Sunday/Monday that could bring several additional inches of snow across the Midwest and Northeast. The first day of Spring was Thursday, March 21.
A North Korean terrorist may be responsible for taking the president hostage, but it’s Bulgarian-made CGI that does the most damage in Antoine Fuqua’s intense, ugly, White-House-under-siege actioner Olympus Has Fallen . Cut past the pic’s superficial patriotism, and the message is ironically clear: Never outsource your visual effects when a domestic shop will do. Courageously representing the human element in this mostly digital assault on American soil, Gerard Butler holds his own as a one-man-army. Millennium was wise to push this grim act-of-war movie out three months ahead of Columbia’s like-minded White House Down . In June, auds will see how Roland Emmerich , whose Independence Day gleefully made things go boom at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., handles the task today. For the moment, the post-9/11 memory of real attacks on American targets still hits a bit too close to home. And though Hollywood’s jaunty disaster-movie days may have passed, this lower-budget entry comes with the satisfaction of evening the score before end credits roll. Olympus Has Fallen helmer Fuqua, who’s known for bringing an unflinching toughness to inner cities ( Training Day ) and ancient history ( King Arthur ), sticks to the Die Hard model here, minus most of the tossed-off one-liners. In ex-Special Forces pro Mike Banning, Butler presents a gritty but humorless hero who cusses, bleeds and occasionally pauses to remove shards of glass from his wounds. To raise the personal stakes, Creighton Rothenberger’s script opens with a prologue in which Banning saves the life of President Benjamin Asher ( Aaron Eckhart , who looks the part of a Wall St.-friendly commander in chief), but fails to protect the First Lady ( Ashley Judd ) — a tragedy that leaves the redemption-seeking secret service agent reassigned to desk duty. Banning’s chance to square the books with Asher arrives when heavily armed guerillas swarm the White House, led by the undercover Kang ( Die Another Day ’s Rick Yune). While a massive CG warplane flies low over D.C., gunning down pedestrians and blasting the top off the Washington Monument, turncoat Forbes ( Dylan McDermott ) helps Kang and his men take the president and his top staffers (including Melissa Leo’s unyielding Secretary of Defense) captive in the White House’s underground safe room. Hokey glimpses of tourists attempting to outrun blocks of falling granite make the lo-fi effects of an earlier era look realistic by comparison. As pedestrians run for cover or die in the crossfire, Banning makes his way into the fray, searching for the president’s missing son (Finley Jacobson) before worrying about the kidnapped world leaders. With Asher incapacitated and his veep brutally executed before the eyes of the military’s top brass, the shot-calling role falls to the Speaker of the House, played by Morgan Freeman , an actor with experience at holding the reins of power, having occupied the Oval Office in Deep Impact . Freeman demonstrates due gravitas, steeling his nerves with a strong cup of coffee while the small army of character actors around him hang their heads in desperation. Fuqua’s widescreen approach — which offers ample room for all that vidgame-quality CG — relishes such cornball iconography, featuring shots of the American flag pierced with bullets, or tumbling slowly to the ground against a flame-red sunset, while Trevor Morris’ drum-corps score keeps things sounding duly martial. Banning earns well-deserved cheers for using a heavy bust of Lincoln’s head to bust in a baddie’s noggin. Though not as exciting as the White House-storming seventh season of 24 , the high-concept project alternates between brawny action movie and crudely considered “what if” scenario. Despite the pic’s one-on-many focus, Fuqua approaches it as a full-blown war movie, incorporating the military’s latest toys into large-scale shootouts between squads of anonymous opponents. Sadly, those crude Bulgarian-rendered effects aren’t much more convincing than the recent White-House-in-the-crosshairs propaganda videos pouring out of North Korea. Butler brings things back to a more practical level, as his butt-kicking hero shoots, stabs and punches his way through to the commander-in-distress, only to face off against a foreign-rigged computer program in the final scene. Figures. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Like Justin Bieber On Facebook :goo.gl http://www.youtube.com/v/tNdgmxPRuzY?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Original post: Justin Bieber – Take You – (Acoustic) Live
Scary Spice aka Melanie Brown aka Mel B had a dinner date in Beverly Hills with little cherub cutie-faced Madison at Mr Chow. How precious is that wittle baby!!! She’s meanmuggin like get them shady cameras out my face!!!! GSI Media
WTF?!?! 11-Year-Old Cancer Survivor Catches Fire In Hospital Bed Via NYDailyNews An 11-year-old Oregon cancer survivor caught fire in her hospital bed after cleaning a table with alcohol hand sanitizer – which may have generated enough static electricity to set her t-shirt ablaze. Ireland Lane suffered third degree burns to her chest, neck, arms and earlobes after the freak accident at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland on February 2. Her Navy veteran dad Stephen, who had been asleep in the room, said he chased her into the hallway and smothered the flames using his own body. State investigators have not yet confirmed the cause of the blaze, but Stephen believes it was static generated by the handwash Ireland was using to clean a table fitted over her bed. Wow, can you imagine being a parent and watching your child burn? “She still has bad dreams, but she doesn’t recall the actual incident, which from my perspective is very good,” Stephen told The Oregonian. The incident came at the end of Ireland’s hospital stay after she hit her head at school and lost consciousness. It also followed an intense six years in which she has beaten kidney cancer twice since 2007. Avagard D, the hand sanitizer blamed for the blaze, is 61 per cent alcohol and comes with warning that it should not be used near a flame. You smell that? Smells like…lawsuits and mula. A spokesman for manufacturers 3M defended its safety. But Mark Bruley, hospital fire investigator for the Pennsylvania non-profit ECRI Institute, said hand sanitizer could catch alight with a “surprisingly small” amount of static electricity. And he speculated the fire could have been caused by Ireland using a lot of the fluid and then wiping her hands on her t-shirt. Ireland has undergone one skin graft and will have a second on Thursday. SMH @ these corporate azzholes who defend their products when people are severely injured by them. Thoughts and prayers go out to the Ireland and the Lane family, sounds like they have suffered plenty. Images via KPTV
