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News Briefs

Ryan Schultz

Anna Nicole Smith dead

Anna Nicole Smith, the former Playboy Playmate and reality television star, died Thursday at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida at 2:10 p.m.

She was discovered, collapsed and unconscious, in her hotel room by her bodyguard and private nurse, who promptly alerted staff at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel. Smith’s bodyguard performed CPR until rescue workers arrived.

“I can confirm that she is deceased. It is as shocking to me as to you guys,” said Smith’s attorney, Ronald Rale. “I don’t know anything further. [Her husband] Howard [Stern], obviously, is speechless and grieving.”

Smith was 39.



A head-butt, Wookie style

A street performer dressed as Chewbacca (the Wookie of Star Wars fame) has been accused for head-butting a tour guide outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California. The guide, Brian Sapir, noticed that Chewie, 44-year-old Frederick Evan Young, seemed to be harassing and touching two Japanese tourists, in violation of a recently-intensified Hollywood law regarding street performers outside of Grauman’s. After being corrected by Sapir, Young exploded, saying “Nobody tells this Wookie what to do.”

Police Lt. Paul Vernon said, “The lesson here is you can have the force with you. You just can’t use illegal force.”



World’s oldest newspaper now only online

January 1, 2007 marked the last print edition of Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, the world’s oldest newspaper, which was founded by Queen Kristina of Sweden in 1645. Today, the newspaper can only be found online. The owners of the paper, the Swedish Academy (which gives the Nobel Prize in Literature) recently sold the publishing rights to the Swedish Companies Registration Office, a government agency which decided to take the paper online.

Hans Holm, the chief editor of the paper for 20 years, said “we think it’s a cultural disaster.” Despite no longer existing in print form, the World Association of Newspapers still holds that Post-och Inrikes Tidningar is the world’s oldest still-published newspaper.