A new two-and-a-half minute trailer for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s much-anticipated film adaptation of E.L. James’ bestseller, 50 Shades of Grey, is out.
There’s no full frontal nudity in this preview but viewers do get a peek into of the Red Room of Pain and a glimpse into the relationship between Christan (played by Jamie Dornan) and Anastasia (Dakota Johnson), the Wrap reports.
Want more? You’ll have to wait until the film’s release on Valentines Day 2015.
[The Wrap]
A Connecticut man whose 15-month-old son died of hyperthermia after being left in a hot car for hours was arraigned Wednesday on charges of negligent homicide.
MORE: Who’s at fault when a child dies in a hot car?
Thirty-six-year-old Kyle Seitz was free to leave the courtroom, but Superior Court Judge Dan Shaban ordered him to surrender his passport and remain in Connecticut, Reuters reports.
Shaban also ruled that Seitz was to have no unsupervised contact with his two daughters, who are now living with their mother.
Seitz says he had forgotten that he was supposed to take his son Benjamin to day care and did not realize the boy was still in his car seat as he went to work on July 7.
The chief state medical examiner’s office in August said temperatures inside the car that day would have reached 88°F, causing Benjamin to succumb to “hyperthermia due to environmental exposure.”
Seitz is due to reappear in court on Nov. 21.
In the U.S. in 2013, 44 children died of heat stroke in cars, and more than 600 have died since 1998.
[Reuters]
Manhattan District Attorney Cryus R. Vance Jr. has pledged $35 million to fund DNA testing in as many as 70,000 rape cases nationwide.
Many swabs, painstakingly collected, have been left untested because of the high cost of conducting DNA tests — up to $1,000 in each case — the Associated Press reports. Tests in some cases have not been done for decades.
Fresh funding for the DNA tests could finally help bring justice to thousands of women who have been raped or sexually assaulted but whose attackers were never caught.
“We want them to know that we, as a nation, are doing everything in our power to bring justice to them,” said Vance during a news conference Wednesday.
The money to fund the tests comes from the District Attorney’s share of an $8.8 billion settlement with BNP Paribas over allegations the French bank violated U.S. sanctions.
[AP]
A top federal regulator is considering a split with President Barack Obama over a controversial Internet policy, according to a new report, in what could set up a big fight between the White House and the Federal Communications Commission.
The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources who were present, sounded a different note than Obama when addressing a room full of tech executives after the President made his statement Monday. “What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told executives from several major tech companies, including Google and Yahoo. “What I’ve got to figure out is how to split the baby.”
Obama on Monday made his strongest statement yet in support of Net Neutrality, the principle that all content should be treated equally online. However, the FCC is an independent agency that’s not required to follow the President’s lead on policy matters.
Correction appended Nov. 12, 1:19 p.m. ET
A collection of love letters and other memorabilia belonging to Marilyn Monroe will go up for auction next month at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Monroe’s “Lost Archives” is a collection of 300 items including letters from her second husband, baseball star Joe Dimaggio, that were sent just before their divorce, the Associated Press reports.
“I love you and want to be with you,” Dimaggio wrote in one letter. “There is nothing I would like better than to restore your confidence in me.”
Also found in the trove are correspondences from her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, and from friends including Clark Gable, Cary Grant and Jane Russell, along with various paintings, photographs and clothes.
The curators are expecting a huge turnout for the auction, which will run Dec. 5-6.
“We anticipate a lot of fans will be here. They’ll fly in from all over the world,” said auction owner Darren Julien, who estimates some pieces could go for more than $1 million.
The collection will be put on display for the public four days before bidding begins.
This article originally misstated the profession of Joe Dimaggio. He was a baseball player.
A new study on house cats has found that our feline companions are actually only semi-domesticated.
People began domesticating cats around 9,000 years ago but DNA researchers from Washington University in St. Louis found that house cats still have many of the same traits as their wild cousins. The fact that cats have retained the ability to hunt and survive effortlessly in the wild just underscores how little impact we humans have had on them.
Wes Warren, an associate professor of genomics at the university, told the Los Angeles Times, “We believe we have created the first preliminary evidence that depicts domestic cats as not that far removed from wildcat populations.”
That’s not to say humans haven’t had any influence on cats. We originally took them into our homes to hunt rodents and rewarded that behavior with food. According to researchers, this lead to eventual changes in a group of stem cells that resulted in more docile (but not fully domesticated) felines and produced colors and fur patterns that humans liked.
“Our results suggest that selection for docility, as a result of becoming accustomed to humans for food rewards, was most likely the major force that altered the first domesticated cat genomes,” researchers wrote.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.
Read next: Celebrate National Cat Day With the Most Ridiculous Cover in TIME History
Three crew members from the International Space Station (ISS) landed safely back on earth in Kazakhstan on Sunday after spending 165 days in orbit.
The trio were part of Expedition 41 and were conducting hundreds of scientific experiments and other research focusing on how humans can stay healthy while spending long durations in space.
Commander of the station, Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, and flight engineers Alexander Gerst, from the European Space Agency, and Reid Wiseman, an astronaut from NASA, completed a remarkable 82 hours of research in a single week in July.
During their time on board the ISS they traveled more then 70 million miles.
Prince Harry delivered an emotional message in support of his fallen comrades Sunday as part of Remembrance Day commemorations.
The fourth in line to the British throne returned to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he had served two tours of duty as an Army officer, the Express reports.
At a vigil to commemorate the 453 British military personnel who were killed in action in Afghanistan, Harry laid a wreath and a handwritten note that said, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. They will never be forgotten. Harry.”
The Remembrance Day service at Kandahar airfield will be the last as U.K. troops are scheduled to completely withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
[Express]
A fireball described as being brighter than the moon was seen streaking across the sky in Texas Saturday night.
The American Meteor Society says more than 200 residents reported seeing a very bright and fleeting flash at around 8.45pm, CNN reports.
Dr. Bill Cooke heads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office and said the fireball was a meteor.
“This was definitely what we call a fireball, which by definition is a meteor brighter than the planet Venus,” he said.
The meteor, Cooke estimates, was over four feet wide, weighed about 4,000 pounds and was a dazzling five times brighter than the moon.
“This event was so bright that it was picked up on a NASA meteor camera in the mountains of New Mexico over 500 miles away, which makes it extremely unusual,” he said.
Read more at CNN
France’s President François Hollande said Thursday that he may not stand for re-election in 2017 if he fails to cut unemployment by the end of his term.
“If I cannot manage it by the end of my term in office, do you really think I would go before the French in 2017?” he said in a televised interview with French TV channel TF1.
Hollande admitted that it was a mistake to promise that he could bring down the rise in joblessness, which currently stands at 11%.
But the 60-year-old vowed to “go to the end” to reform France’s weak economy.
A poll released Thursday shows the Socialist Party leader has an approval rating of just 12%.
