Culture

<noinclude> Carvings on the 600 hundred year old Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland represent a coded form of a musical score, the father-and-son team of Tommy J. Mitchell, 75 and Stuart Mitchell, 41, say. "[The] Rosslyn Chapel holds a musical mystery in its architecture and design. At one end of the chapel, on the ceiling are 4 cross-sections of arches containing elaborate symbolic designs on each array of cubes (in actual fact they are rectangles mostly). The 'cubes' are attached to the arches in a musically sequential way. And to confirm this, a

American actor Richard Gere, 51, kissed Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, 31, on the cheek several times during an AIDS awareness event in Delhi, India. A court has issued an arrest warrant for both Gere and Shetty for public obscenity. Gere, who starred in an American remake of the original Japanese version Shall We Dance, was doing a ballroom dancing act with Shetty. "He especially told me to tell the media that he didn't want to hurt any Indian sensibilities," Shetty said. The act came to issue when a local lawyer complained to a court in Ja

A wax figure of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan has been unveiled at London’s Madame Tussauds. The likeness of Khan, widely known as 'King Khan', has today become the third official figure of a Bollywood celebrity to grace the attraction. Khan, star of over 50 films, specially flew to London to unveil his wax figure at the prestigious venue, with a special documentary on the actor's movie career showcased on the day. The lifesize model was uncloaked to applause and cheers from the crowd. Artists from Madame Tussauds had spent time in India ear

Actor Nicolas Cage was seen around various Washington, D.C.-area monuments this week by Wikinews contributor Patrick Mannion, filming the sequel to 2004's National Treasure. He was seen on March 28 outside on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, sitting in his chair talking with a director. Cage has also been seen in the company of costars from the earlier film. The Memorial was closed to the public by police and park rangers while filming took place. The sequel to the 2004 film, entitled National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, is currently filmin

At Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, students are finding that popular MP3 players, such as Apple's iPod, are very convenient devices for listening to music at the gym, while traveling on foot, and in the car. In a recent ad-hoc survey conducted by Wikinews contributor Darren Mar, 150 students were randomly pulled aside in the hallways of the university, and asked if they own an MP3 player. 94 of the 150 students (62.66%) did in fact own MP3 devices, most of who were found to be carrying it on them when questioned. There

French space agency CNES released its UFO files to the public through its website on Thursday. The 100,000 pages of witness testimony, photographs, film footage and audiotapes are an accumulation of more than 1,600 sightings since 1954 and will include all future UFO reports obtained by the agency. Jacques Patenet, an aeronautical engineer who is leading the study of the "non-identified aerospatial phenomena," noted that the release of the UFO files to the public was "a world first," and that "the data that we are releasing doesn't demonstrate

Several factors including climate change and pollution may put at risk of drying up some of the largest rivers on the globe, a report by the environmental group WWF says. Following a study of ten rivers currently at risk of drying up, the group warns that without any action the process of drying up might lead to freshwater emergency. The report analyzes ten rivers, including the Yangtze, the Ganges and the Salween in Asia; the Danube in Europe and Rio Grande in North America. The study raises concerns overs dams and dikes, which the report sa

This week Google's on-line video sharing website YouTube launches its own awards ceremony. The site will present the best user-generated videos posted during 2006 in seven categories. The starting point is Monday and users will end voting on Friday. Winners will get their trophies on March 26. The categories that YouTube is going to present include: most creative or inspirational video, best series, as well as music video or commentary and best comedy. The last category, number seven, is called "most adorable video ever" and it is to continue

Actor Richard Dean Anderson, former lead for the television show Stargate SG-1, will appear in the second of the two DVD movies based on the program, Stargate: Continuum. Anderson will start filming for the movie later this month in the Arctic, with considerable involvement from the U.S. Navy, along with co-stars, Amanda Tapping, and Ben Browder. Filming for the first DVD movie, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, will begin on May 22.

On Saturday, the French Constitutional Council announced its approval for a proposed law that would make it illegal for anybody other than professional journalists to videotape acts of violence. The law is, as the Associated Press dubs it, a "clumsy effort" to curb the urban youth activity known as happy slapping in which an act of violence, such as kicking a helpless victim, is filmed by the attacker's friends for entertainment purposes. The new law was tucked inside a much larger anti-crime bill put before the Council, and has been chastise

The British stage and television actor John Inman has died at the age of 71. Mr. Inman, born in Preston, Lancashire, had been suffering from the Hepatitis A infection for some time. "John, through his character Mr. Humphries of Are You Being Served? was known and loved throughout the world. He was one of the best and finest pantomime dames working to capacity audiences throughout Britain," said Inman's manager, Phil Dale. Most famous for his role in the BBC comedy series Are You Being Served?, Inman entered popular culture with his appearanc

A former contractor of Intel, who was convicted more than a decade ago for bypassing the security systems of the semiconductor company in 1993, is now free from charge. The hacker used a special program, named "Crack", that was able to detect the passwords of his former colleagues. He worked at Intel Supercomputer Systems Division and afterwards he suspiciously left the company. When Randal L. Schwartz was accused, the court sentenced him to pay Intel a restitution, estimated at US$68,000. Then the hacker was imposed to spend five years of