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The Minnesota teen who became a viral sensation last December for his song about fighting death died of cancer on Monday at the age of 18.
Published: May 23, 2013 at 10:41 AM

Zach Sobiech, the Minnesota teen who wrote and sang the viral hit "Clouds" while fighting bone cancer, died Monday morning at the age of 18.

The Children's Cancer Research Fund website broke the news Monday stating Sobiech died "at home and at peace with those who love him the most."

According to People, the teen was diagnosed with osteosarcoma when he was 14. Last June, Sobiech was told by doctors he possibly had less than one year to live. The following December he released "Clouds," a song about his struggle. The clip soon became a viral sensation earning over 4.7 million views on YouTube.

Sobiech is survived by his parents Rob and Laura, and his siblings Alli, Sam and Grace. The family has requested that all memorials be sent to the "Zach Sobiech Osteosarcoma Fund" to continue the teen's mission to help kids with cancer.

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Kevin Durant's new scripture tattoo misspells the word "mature" as "mautre"
Kevin Durant via Instagram
Published: May 23, 2013 at 9:52 AM

Kevin Durant posted a photo of his new "all-finished" tattoo on Instagram Wednesday.

The basketball star's latest ink features a passage from the Bible. In the Instagram caption, Durant encouraged his followers to "look it up" explaining he had gotten it from James 1:2-4. When the star's fans willingly looked up the scripture, they realized the word "mature" (last row on the left) had been misspelled on his back.

Durant's tattoo soon became one of the most talked about subjects on social media. Some people pointed out the typo:



Others simply praised the NBA player's new ink and his recent $1 million donation for Oklahoma tornado relief.


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Morgan Freeman snoozed during a morning interview, nodding off while cast mate Michael Caine answered anchors' questions.
Morgan Freeman (right) appears to doze off during a morning TV interview with Seattle's Q13 Fox News, as cast mate Michael Caine answers questions about their film "Now You See Me." (Screenshot via Q13 Fox News)
Published: May 23, 2013 at 9:45 AM
By KRISTEN BUTLER, UPI.com

During a morning interview with Seattle's Q13 Fox News to promote their movie "Now You See Me," Morgan Freeman appeared to drop off for a little nap. As Freeman, 75, seemed to snooze on-air, costar Michael Caine stayed on the ball answering questions.

Anchors Kaci Aitchison and Bill Wixey began directing their questions at the "boisterous and happy" Caine and seemed to let Freeman catch a little shut-eye. "Now You See Me" hits theaters next week.

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"Operation Swill" in New Jersey investigated bars for refilling empty top-shelf bottles with cheap liquor.
Liquor bottles at a bar. (CC/Sean)
Published: May 23, 2013 at 8:49 AM
By KRISTEN BUTLER, UPI.com

New Jersey authorities raided 29 bars and restaurants across the state on suspicion they've been passing off cheap booze as their most expensive liquors by refilling empty top-shelf bottles.

A year-long investigation called "Operation Swill" began as a result of complaints, and found that establishments tricked customers so they could charge higher prices for premium brands and boost profits, according to a statement from the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Detectives used confidential informants to test samples of liquor covertly purchased at suspected establishments. Authorities on Wednesday raided 29 bars and restaurants, including over a dozen TGI Fridays, and seized inventory records and bottles of liquor.

The Star-Ledger reports that state authorities will release further details of the investigation on Thursday.

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Ali, a green sea turtle whose shell was broken after it was hit by a boat, was able to swim underwater for the first time in 11 years after a crew from Weymouth Sea Life Adventure Park built her a custom-made diving belt.
File. UPI/Stephen Shaver 
License photo
Published: May 23, 2013 at 8:44 AM

A 3-foot-2-inch green sea turtle named Ali is now swimming underwater for the first time in 11 years, thanks to a diving belt built for endangered sea creatures.

The Daily Mail reports Ali hadn't been able to dive properly since she was hit by a boat 11 years ago. The collision left an air bubble under the turtle's shell preventing her from submerging properly and causing her to float bottom up.

After a team at Weymouth Sea Life Adventure Park in Dorset learned about Ali's condition, they decided to build a 2.5 pound belt of removable lead weights that works in the same way as the belts used by scuba divers.

According to Fiona Smith, a curator at Sea Life, injured turtles are commonly attached to weights to allow them to dive, but Ali's condition was so dire that they had to come up with a new solution.

"My team and I started thinking about how else we could attach the weights, and came up with the idea of a harness," she said. "We took the idea to a nearby dive shop and they came back to us with a custom-built dive belt we could slip weights into. It needs a few tweaks but otherwise it is ideal."

The Mail called the invention "a first of its kind."

For photos of Ali's new diving gear visit The Daily Mail.


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Zsa Zsa Gabor sold her Bel Air house, which was featured in "Argo," for $11 million.
Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. File/UPI 
License photo
Published: May 23, 2013 at 8:23 AM

Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor has sold her Bel Air estate for $11 million in a deal that allows the actress to remain in the home for three more years.

NBC reports Gabor's home, recently featured in the Academy Award winning film "Argo," has been on and off the market for years ranging in price from $12 million to $15 million.

According to real estate site Zillow, the property sits at 1001 Bel Air Road, Los Angeles in Bel Air's prestigious East Gate. The house was built in 1955 and features six bedrooms and five bathrooms.

Besides being a location for "Argo," Gabor's home will appear in the upcoming film "Behind the Candelabra" starring Matt Damon, Rob Lowe and Michael Douglas.

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Prime Minister Cameron vows the attacks will only make Britain stronger.
British Prime Minister David Cameron File/UPI/Mike Theiler 
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Published: May 23, 2013 at 8:20 AM
By GABRIELLE LEVY, UPI.com

The two men suspected of carrying out a brutal attack on a British soldier Wednesday were known to security services and were believed to be acting on their own, not as a wave of killings.

One of the suspects -- the man who appeared holding a bloody cleaver in the images that rocketed around television and the Internet after the attack -- was identified as 28-year-old Michael Adeboloja.

"The point that the two suspects in this horrific attack were known to the security services has been widely reported," Prime Minister David Cameron said during a statement Thursday. "You would not expect me to comment on this when a criminal investigation is ongoing."

Adeboloja was born in Lambeth and grew up in east London, Sky News reported.

"He was a student at Greenwich University, but it is not clear what he was studying there," crime reporter Martin Brunt said. Already on Facebook there are comments from former pupils say that they went to school with him in east London.

Brunt said counterterrorism investigators were investigating a house in Lincolnshire believed to belong to Adeboloja's father, and another in Greenwich.

One of the suspects reportedly was stopped as he tried to leave the country to join al Shaabab militants in Somalia.

After the Cobra emergency response meeting, Cameron vowed the attack would fail in its goal of terrorizing Britain.

"The people who did this were trying to divide us," Cameron said "They should know something like this will only bring us together and make us stronger."

"One of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives."

London Mayor Boris Johnson assuaged fears of more violence, suggesting the counterterrorism services believed the attack was a one-off.

"Everything I am hearing leads me to think that Londoners can go about their business in the normal way and we are going to bring the killers to justice," Johnson said.

Johnson also urged people not to blame the religion of Islam for the attack, despite the killers' statements.

"It is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam," Johnson said, "but it is also equally wrong to try to draw any link between this murder and British foreign policy or the actions of British forces who are risking their lives abroad for the sake of freedom."

"The fault lies wholly and exclusively in the warped and deluded mindset of the people who did it."


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German software company SAP plans to hire hundreds of people with autism as software engineers and data managers.
Regional headquarters for German software company SAP. (Via Facebook/SAPNorthAmerica)
Published: May 23, 2013 at 7:46 AM
By KRISTEN BUTLER, UPI.com

German business-management software maker SAP plans to recruit hundreds of people with autism to work as software testers, programmers, and in data management.

SAP is forming an alliance with Specialisterne, a foundation to promote employment for autistic people in technology industries. A pilot program included six software testers in India, and SAP is now hiring five autistic people in Ireland.

SAP said it will expand the project to the U.S., Canada and Germany this year and that this is the foundation’s first global agreement with a company. By 2020, SAP says 1 percent of its global workforce of 65,000 employees would be people with autism.

"SAP sees a potential competitive advantage to leveraging the unique talents of people with autism, while also helping them to secure meaningful employment," the company said.

The company believes that "innovation comes from the edges," according to SAP executive Luisa Delgado. "Only by employing people who think differently and spark innovation will SAP be prepared to handle the challenges of the 21st Century," she said.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that can impair communication and social interaction and cause repetitive behaviors. Nonetheless, many autistic individuals are highly intelligent with an exceptional attention to detail.

Autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger's syndrome, are believed to affect roughly 1 percent of the global population. Specialisterne, originally founded in Denmark, is owned by the Specialist People Foundation, a non-profit organization that seeks to find employment for autistic individuals.

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Wayne Miller captured the enormous flux of the African American migration north to Chicago in a way that hadn't been done before.
Published: May 23, 2013 at 7:34 AM
By GABRIELLE LEVY, UPI.com

Through Wayne Miller's lens, the world saw black America with new eyes.

Miller, a photographer who was among the first to see the destruction at Hiroshima and who became known for his images of South Side Chicago life and the African American migration, died at his home Wednesday at the age of 94.

Magnum photos, the collective to which Miller belonged for more than 50 years, announced his death in a statement.

"Though his images speak for themselves, by all accounts, what made Wayne Miller a great photographer was his drive to capture the humanity in all his subjects -- the underlying, indefinable qualities that exist beneath our skin and behind our eyes, uniting us all," the statement said.

Miller studied photography in Los Angeles and, as a lieutenant in the Navy during World War II, he served as a member of Edward Steichen's photo unit.

“We had Navy orders that allowed us to go any place we wanted to go and, when we got done, to go home,” Miller said, describing the experience to the American Society of Media Photographers in 1994. “It was fantastic.”

But it was two grants from the Guggenheim foundation that paved the way for Miller to create his most ambitious and lasting images, taken between 1946 and 1948 on Chicago's predominantly black South Side.

"The Ways of Life of the Northern Negro" was an unflinching and unconventional portrait of a city and population in flux.

These "seminal images of American history, each one freighted with the context of what it was to be black in postwar Chicago" were so unexpected from a white man at the time that when Alex Majoli, current president of Magnum, first met Miller, he was shocked to learn Miller wasn't black.

"I had always imagined the man to be black," Majoli said. "He paved the ground for the rest of us who tried to depict the streets, the real life. He was a pioneer."

After Chicago, Miller worked for LIFE Magazine until 1953, and then helped his former boss Steichen curate the ambitious "Family of Man" project, which pooled images from 273 photographers from around the world into an exhibition for the Museum of Modern Art.

Miller served as president of Magnum from 1962 to 1968, and in 1970, he joined the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where he served as the director of its environmental center.

He spent the final three decades of his life retired from photography, working to protect California forests.

Miller is survived by his wife, Joan, his four children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

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Jon Bon Jovi to Justin Bieber: "Shame on you."
 
Published: May 22, 2013 at 10:43 PM
By KATE STANTON, UPI.com

Jon Bon Jovi has a reputation for being a nice guy, but he had some harsh words for Justin Bieber in a recent interview with The Evening Standard.

The long-time Bon Jovi frontman said Monday that the 19-year-old pop star was disrespectful to fans when he was two hours late to a concert at London's O2 Arena in March. While Bieber blamed his tardiness on "technical issues," Bon Jovi wasn't buying the excuse.

“Every generation has guys that do that, none of that is new," the 51-year-old rocker said in the interview.

"They run the risk of disrespecting their audience members who have worked hard to pay for their ticket, to give you the permission to take two or three hours of their lives -- or in that kid’s case, 80 minutes of their lives.

Do it once, you can be forgiven. Do it enough times and shame on you. They won’t have you back. Then it just becomes a cliché. It’s really not cool — you’re an a**hole. Go to f***in’ work!"

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