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Larry L. King, a journalist, essayist and playwright with a swaggering prose style and a rollicking personal one, who left Texas as a young man but never abandoned it in his work — turning out profiles of politicians, articles on the flaws and foibles of American culture, searching autobiographical essays and, most famously, the book for the Broadway musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” — died on Thursday in Washington. He was 83.
The cause was emphysema, his wife (Barbara Blaine) said.
A prolific writer for Texas Monthly, Harper’s, Playboy and other magazines, Mr. King had a big personality suffused with humor, characteristics evident in his work. Critics often noted his affinity for the wordplay, wry attitude and joy in the existence of scalawags that were hallmarks of Mark Twain. Nor was he, like Twain, loath to cast aspersions on the dull, the self-righteous and the oafish.
“There are ‘good’ people, yes, who might properly answer to the appellation ‘redneck’ ” – he wrote in Texas Monthly in 1974, “people who operate Mom-and-Pop stores or their lathes, dutifully pay their taxes, lend a helping hand to neighbors, love their country and their God and their dogs. But even among a high percentage of these salts-of-the-earth lives a terrible reluctance toward even modest passes at social justice, a suspicious regard of the mind as an instrument of worth, a view of the world extending little further than the ends of their own noses and only a vague notion that they are small quills writing a large history.”

Larry L. King.

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Friday, December 21, 2012 is the date that the 5.000-year-old Mayan calendar ends. Some say that this means the Mayans predicted the end of the world.
“The Mayans never predicted the end of the world” – said Dr. Peter Dunham, a Cleveland State University professor who teaches about the Maya.
“They have a calendar cycle that’s going to end tomorrow, a big one, over 5000 years” – said Dunham. “But just like our millennia end, as ours did in 2000, another cycle begins.”
What about these Doomsday theories that persist despite scientific evidence to the contrary? Will Planet X, also known as Nibiru, return after it’s 3.600-year journey through the solar system to crash into the Earth?
“If there were a rogue planet that was going to hit the earth tomorrow, you’d be able to see it right now.”
How about an upcoming NASA-predicted solar flare? Will that cause a magnetic shift in the Earth’s core or possibly incinerate the planet?
“If you look at NASA’s projection for this one, it’s not even a serious peak that they’re talking about” – Durham said.

Mayan calendar.

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Miss USA Olivia Culpo was crowned Miss Universe in Las Vegas.
Miss Philippines (Janine Tugonon) placed second, and Miss Venezuela (Irene Sofia Esser Quintero) took third.
Culpo (20) hails from Rhode Island and beat out contestants from 88 other countries to take the prize.
An American hadn’t won Miss Universe since Brook Lee won the crown in 1997.

Olivia Culpo.

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Another year older and Christina Aguilera still hasn’t run out of new hairstyles to try!
Sharing the sam birthday as Brad Pitt, 49, and Katie Holmes, 34, the “Your Body” singer turns 32 on Tuesday, Dec. 18.
“Thank you Fighters for the many sweet birthday messages today!” she tweeted to her fans with a link to a video of them wishing her a happy birthday. “Let There Be Love to you all! XoXtina.”
In an interview with ABC News in October, the mother to son Max, almost 5, said she doesn’t mind getting older. “I am enjoying being a woman now. Every year I think, this is going to be a great year, a new chapter. And it is” – the Mouseketeer-turned-teen pop sensation. “I enjoyed being young but I would never relive my teens. Those are hard years for everyone.”
Aguilera has had quite the big year with the release of her seventh studio album (Lotus) and the 3rd season of The Voice. But it’s her colorful hairstyles that has also been earning The Voice judge a lot of attention.
From long, hot pink extensions to short, black tips, to rainbow braids, Aguilera has never been too shy to try a new style and set a new trend.

Christina Aguilera.

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Victoria Soto (a teacher who was among the 26 people gunned down during the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.) on Friday is being widely praised on Facebook as a hero after saving students in her class from being killed.
News of the mass shooting believed to have been carried out by 20-year-old Adam Lanza captured the attention of the entire nation.
But the tale of devastation at the Sandy Hook school is not without its heroes.
The day after the shooting, when many people posted statuses sharing condolences for the families and friends who had lost loved ones, photographs of Soto began to go viral on the social-media website.
Here is the description under one of the pictures – “This is Victoria Soto. The 27 years old heroic teacher who gave her life to save her students in Friday’s incident of Sandy Hook school. She hid her first graders in the cabinets and closets after hearing the gunfire. When the shooter came to her classroom, she told him that her students were in the gym. He then gunned her down and moved on. She saved the lives of all of her students. Please pass this on if you see it. She deserves to be remembered for her bravery.”

Victoria Soto.

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“Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence has been named the Most Desirable Woman in the World for 2013 0 according to AskMen’s just-released annual Top 99 list. The actress rose from #47 last year to the top spot based on a poll of 2,4 million readers, based on her “beauty, brains, ambition and charm.”

Jennifer Lawrence.

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Ravi Shankar (the sitar virtuoso who became a hippie musical icon of the 1960′s after hobnobbing with the Beatles and who introduced traditional Indian ragas to Western audiences over a 10-decade career) died Tuesday. He was 92.
A statement on the musician’s website said he died in San Diego, near his Southern California home. The musician’s foundation issued a statement saying that he had suffered upper respiratory and heart problems and had undergone heart-valve replacement surgery last week.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also confirmed his death and called Shankar a “national treasure.”
Labeled “the godfather of world music” by George Harrison, Shankar helped millions of classical, jazz and rock lovers discover the centuries-old traditions of Indian music.
He also pioneered the concept of the rock benefit with the 1971 Concert For Bangladesh. To later generations – he was known as the estranged father of popular American singer Norah Jones.

Ravi Shankar.

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Facebook said some users were briefly unable to access the site because of a technical glitch.
The social networking site with more than one billion users worldwide said on Monday it made a change to its domain name system set-up. The change resulted in some users temporarily not being able to reach the site.
The problem was detected and the site is now fully back.
A DNS acts like a phone book for the Internet – translating a domain name like facebook.com into a number that points to a specific host computer.
Facebook did not say how many users were affected or for how long.
Some technology blogs say the problems lasted about 20 minutes.

Facebook.

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If you set out to design a reality TV star, you couldn’t have created a more perfect specimen than Jenni Rivera, the norteno, banda and Mun2 TV star who died Sunday in the crash of a small plane in the Mexican mountains.
She was 43, three times divorced, the mother of five and one of the defining stars of Spanish-language television, where her brassy, no-nonsense style made her such an icon to U.S. Latinas that ABC was developing a sitcom for her, titled just “Jenni.”
Yet she was also “very down to earth” – her oldest daughter Chiquis said in July. “What you see on television is real, but she’s not one of those stars who forgets her family. She knows what it was like to struggle, so she’s always been there for us.”
Rivera developed fragrances, cosmetics and clothing lines, and started the Jenni Rivera Love Foundation, which helps single mothers and victims of domestic abuse.
Rivera was both in her earlier life, and that was just the start of a story that made it unnecessary for her reality show to invent any drama.
She was born into a musical family. But she took a circuitous route to get into music herself.

Jenni Rivera.

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Kate Middleton “feeling better” as she remains in the hospital to be treated for severe morning sickness during pregnancy.
Though the royal mom-to-be is recovering well, she reportedly still faces up to six more months of misery.
Kate Middleton was on the mend Tuesday after her second day in a London hospital for severe morning sickness.
With Prince William by her bedside, Kate was recovering from her violent vomiting bouts and “feeling better” – according to a statement from St. James Palace.
The relief was evident on William’s face when he finally left the hospital.
The Duke of Cambridge is “immensely grateful for the good wishes they have received” – his spokesman said.
Prince William leaves the hospital in central London on Tuesday after visiting his wife.
Queen Elizabeth and the rest of the royals found out later Monday after William and Kate raced to the hospital, where the stricken princess was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, a malady that affects one in 50 expectant mothers and can turn pregnancy into torture.
Citing royal sources, the Daily Mail reported the Duchess of Cambridge was holding her own “but her symptoms of severe vomiting may last for much of her pregnancy.”

Kate Middleton.

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