Updating today's headlines every hour of every single day. Well, the interesting ones.
Strange murmurs from the world of reality television: Two "freelance facilitating producers" were apparently poisoned "after a failed shakedown attempt" in central Africa, Fox News reports. Veteran Amazing Race and Whale Wars producer Jeff Rice died; his body was found in Uganda. Though "details are sketchy," Fox News reports that the men were poisoned after "refusing to give in to the demands of local thugs."
The last remaining version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" in private hands will be sold at an auction this spring, according to Sotheby's.
A Minnesota man recently filed a lawsuit against his uncle for uploading an unflattering Christmas photo to Facebook. In his harassment suit, Aaron Olson says his uncle posted childhood photos of him on Facebook, and proceeded to add “mean comments” underneath. Among the offending photos: “[Olson] posing in front of a Christmas tree.”
When confronted, the uncle, Randall LaBrie, agreed to untag Olson, but suggested that if he didn’t care for the photos “he should stay off Facebook.”
After the district court tossed out Olson’s request for a harassment restraining order against LaBrie, he took his case to the Court of Appeals, which also turned him down.
In its ruling, the court determined that mean comments “coupled with innocuous family photos” do not adversely effect “the safety, security, or privacy of another.”
Upset, Adele quickly wrapped up by saying “I’ll see you next time ‘round” and extending her middle finger.
After the show, Corden admitted that he doesn’t understand why he was forced to cut Adele off. “Blur played for 11 minutes and she didn’t get chance to say thank you once,” he told ITV2.
Adele later clarified that the gesture was for “the suits, not the fans.”
A popular online radio station was forced to issue an apology after some “unauthorised activity and inappropriate behaviour” led to a gay porn soundtrack being played over the channel’s pre-recorded programming.
Researchers at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands say they expect to serve the first burger grown from bovine stem cells later this year. Professor Mark Post, who reported growing small strips of meat from a pig’s stem cells last year, says his team has been able to repeat the process using stem cells from a cow and a serum taken from a calf fetus.
“In October we are going to provide a proof of concept showing out of stem cells we can make a product that looks, feels and hopefully tastes like meat,” Post said at the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.
Unfortunately, the most efficient way to extract stem cells from cows still involves killing them, but Post says his process could produce a million times more meat per cow than the current method of butchery.
Each lab-grown burger requires 3,000 strips of muscle tissue and 200 strips of fat tissue. The strips currently take about six weeks to produce.
Post says the $350,000 burger is being financed by a wealthy and famous benefactor who chooses to remain anonymous, and celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal has been invited to cook the first specimen.
