Y! Big Story: Oakland shootings
The story has been updated with victims’ names and latest reports. In recent months, Oakland, Calif., had been the center of national attention as a flash point in the Occupy Movement. Now, a horrific spree shooting at a religious vocational school has once more focused on the city’s persistent homicide…
Y! Big Story: ‘Fifty Shades’ frenzy
Everything you need to know to get up to speed on the big story of the day Fifty Shades of Grey What started as “Twilight”-inspired fan-fiction bondage erotica became an underground reading obsession and erupted into two separate bidding wars. The story of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy might be the…
Y! Big Story: Mega Millions long odds and unreasoned dreams
One in 176 million. Let me spell that out: 1 in 176,000,000. But it’s another number—$640,000,000—that’s creating a feeding frenzy among ticket buyers hoping for a shot at that historic Mega Millions jackpot. (Heck, even a gorilla is playing.) The bounty crushes the previous record of $390 million. Then again,…
Most Dangerous Teens
Puberty unleashes the killer instinct. Katniss Everdeen’s the newest pledge in an exclusive and mostly female society of teen avengers and assassins. After decades of testosterone cinema, females are now allowed a Hollywood fantasy fight. Are these underage antiheroes showing girl power? Has Hollywood reached an equal-opportunity turning point in…
Y! Big Story: Supreme Court and health care reform
Everything you need to know to get up to speed on the big story of the day Defending the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—“Obamacare” to detractors—may rank as the most high-profile case on the Supreme Court docket this year. The hearing lasted just three days, long enough to combust…
Race controversy over ‘The Hunger Games’
Lenny Kravitz (left) as Cinna and Amandla Sternberg as Rue (right) Any adaptation from book to movie is bound to rile up fans. The casting of black actors in “The Hunger Games” has spurred some negative tweets — even though at least two are true to Suzanne Collins’s 2008 book….
HBO’s ‘Luck’ Loses Another Horse: The Web Reacts
Hollywood has made horses look powerful and heroic, but the recent equine deaths behind the scenes of HBO’s racehorse drama “Luck” underscore their fragility. Three accidents have resulted in euthanasia. The latest injury didn’t involve any cameras — a horse reared up as it was being led back to the…
Dick Cheney avoids “dangerous” Canada
After what happened in Vancouver when the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup, who can blame Dick Cheney for canceling on his northern neighbors? The former vice president had planned to speak April 24 in Toronto. However, recovered memories of September protests convinced Cheney that “personal safety” was at stake…
Encyclopaedia Britannica ends its print run
The end of serendipity, as we know it. Leafing through the world’s knowledge, alphabetically, will become am obsolete tradition. The oldest English-language general encyclopedia — according to, of course, the Encyclopædia Britannica — will abandon foolscap once and for all. “For 244 years, the thick volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica…
Fan-Made Poster Imagines Ryan Gosling as ‘Walt’
First, the French won this year’s Oscars. Now they’re telling Americans what movies to make. Quel toupet! Not that Paris-based graphic artist Pascal Witaszek hasn’t come up with a bonne idée, especially now that Hollywood is awash in nostalgia about its own past. The pitch: a biopic about Walt Disney….