Day: February 28, 2014

On Friday afternoon, the regular flight from Moscow touched down in the Crimean capital of Simferopol, in the south of Ukraine, carrying the leader of a Russian motorcycle gang known as the Night Wolves. Alexander Zoldostanov, an old friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was wearing his usual get-up – a flaming wolf’s head stenciled onto his black leather vest – but for once he was not the most intimidating figure on the scene. Since the morning, dozens of masked troops had been sauntering around Crimea’s main airport, armed to the teeth but refusing to identify themselves. In some ways, they seemed to have the same goal as Zoldostanov, who goes by the nickname The Surgeon. They were sending a signal to the revolutionary government in Ukraine that they were no longer in charge on this peninsula.

Who exactly was in charge remained a mystery throughout the day, and a…

Mila the elephant is 41-years-old and hadn’t seen a fellow pachyderm in 37 years. It was a dream of Mila’s New Zealand zookeeper, Helen Schofield, that the elephant would get the chance to meet one of her own. And two years after Schofield’s death — she was accidentally crushed by the elephant — her wish came true. Colleagues and supporters raised $1.5 million in Schofield’s honor to send Mila to the San Diego Zoo and integrate with a pack.

The above video shows Mila’s first interaction with another elephant, the 50-year-old matriarch of the herd.

“Mary was curious of the newbie while Mila was surprised to find something as big as her on the other side of the wall!” zookeeper Robbie Clark told TVNZ.

The Academy Awards are just around the corner — millions will tune in this Sunday to watch the annual extravaganza of teary speeches, campy choreography, and Jack Nicholson’s shades.

The blogging world is abuzz, too, with predictions, reviews, and other commentary on Hollywood’s big night. Whether you’re a movie buff or just an Ellen fan, here are some blogs you should visit to get you in the right mood for the red carpet.

And the nominees are…

If you haven’t had a chance to watch all the nominated movies (who does?) and can’t tell Nebraska from Philomena, B+ Movie Blog is here to help. A real labor of love, this site provides readers with detailed breakdowns and thoughtful analyses of each award cateogory, from Best Supporting Actress to Best Original Score.

Over at Cardboard Box Office, parents Lilly and Leon produce whimsical recreations of famous movie…

A Mississippi funeral home says it found a man alive and kicking in a body bag hours after the coroner pronounced him dead.

Walter Williams was pronounced dead Wednesday night after his pulse stopped, but funeral home employees found him trying to kick through his body bag Thursday morning.

Eddie Hester, Williams’ nephew, said Friday Williams is in the hospital and breathing without the help of a respirator, but is too weak to talk.

“It’s a miracle,” Hester said in an interview. “I don’t know how long he’s gonna be here, but right now he’s here, and the whole family is glad.”

Williams started to move right as the funeral workers were getting ready to embalm him. He was rushed to the hospital and is now in good condition. The coroner said William’s pacemaker may have stopped working and then re-started, which could explain his pulse stopping.

First Scarlett Johansson endorsed the anti-poverty activist group Oxfam by serving as its ambassador. Then she left that behind in the uproar that followed becoming “Global Brand Ambassador” for SodaStream, an Israeli company that builds its home-carbonation machines on land Israel has occupied since the 1967 war.

Now she says no one should pay any special attention to what she says.

“I don’t profess to know more or less than anybody else,” the actress says in Dazed & Confused magazine, a print-only British monthly that landed her first interview since the SodaStream ruckus erupted in advance of the company’s Super Bowl ad starring Johansson. “If that’s a by-product of whatever image is projected on to me I don’t feel responsible as an artist to give anyone that message. It’s not my jam.”

Johansson’s declaration that “I don’t see myself as being a role model” may be both a bit…

Here’s a scary fact for you. While conducting an investigation into the illegal sale of guns on Facebook, it took VentureBeat reporters less than 15 minutes to set up the purchase of a semiautomatic 7mm rifle and 90 rounds of ammunition (without a background check or even ID) on the social network. That’s less time than it takes to figure out your privacy settings. 

Even though Facebook isn’t an e-commerce site and doesn’t allow gun advertising, the market proliferates on private pages. A federal law enforcement officer told VentureBeat, “We look at Facebook and others as emerging threats for unlawful gun transactions in the United States.” In fact, some guns brought on school grounds by minors have been purchased on Facebook.

There arecurrently more than 81,000 signatures on a Change.org petition asking Facebook and Instagram to crack down on the private sale of guns on the social media platforms. It is a…

We all know that Facebook ads can be annoying, but according to a  Wall Street Journal article , they can can also have  precarious  implications. 

The WSJ reports that young teens are regularly exposed to age inappropriate ads, peddling everything from diet pills to gun holsters to nude web cams. One 14-year-old liked a Facebook ad related to fashion modeling only to later realize that it was an ad for adult webcam models, who often pose nude. And the issue isn’t only that the teen was taken to the company’s website, but clicking “like” also gave it consent to use her images in future advertisements for the webcam. The WSJ reports that 13-17 year-olds were the largest demographic that went to the webcam’s Facebook page.

“We take the quality of ads on Facebook very seriously,” Facebook told the WSJ in a statement. “Because of the enormous volume of ads…

De-extinction scientists are planning to bring long-extinct, giant creatures that once roamed the Earth back and put them in a theme park.

And no, that’s not a description of Jurassic Park’s premise. According to a tremendous cover story in the New York Times magazine, biologists started a project called Revive & Restore to bring formerly extinct animals back to life. The carrier pigeon has the most likely path to success, but the team is also working on reviving the wooly mammoth.

And where will the wooly mammoth go? Revive & Restore is already working with a Russian researcher, Sergey Zimov, who created a preserve for potential mammoth-carousing called Pleistocene Park in Siberia.

It’s not clear what the benefits to humanity will be other than an increase in awesomeness if this happens, and a variety of critics are concerned this effort will be too costly, cruel to the animals, and ultimately futile. No…