People,Places and Things
LOS ANGELES — Brittany Murphy, the actress who got her start in the sleeper hit “Clueless” and rose to stardom in “8 Mile,” has died in Los Angeles. She was 32.
A Los Angeles County coroner’s official says it appears the actress died of natural causes.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center spokeswoman Sally Stewart says Murphy was pronounced dead at 10:04 a.m. Sunday. Murphy was transported to the hospital after the Fire Department was called at 8 a.m. to the home Murphy shared with her husband, British screenwriter Simon Monjack, in the Hollywood Hills.
Los Angeles police have opened an investigation into Murphy’s death, Officer Norma Eisenman said Sunday afternoon. Investigators have been dispatched to Murphy’s home in the hills of West Hollywood.
Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said the cause of Murphy’s death “appears to be natural.” He said Murphy apparently collapsed in the bathroom Sunday morning, and authorities are looking into her medical history. He said Murphy’s family is cooperating with the coroner’s investigation, and an autopsy is planned for Monday or Tuesday.
Born Nov. 10, 1977, in Atlanta, is best known for parts in “Girl, Interrupted,” “Clueless” and “8 Mile,” and her voice also gave life to animated characters, including Luanne Platter on more than 200 episodes of Fox’s “King of the Hill” and Gloria the penguin in the 2006 feature “Happy Feet.” She is due to appear in Sylvester Stallone’s upcoming film, “The Expendables,” set for release next year.
CAIRO — Egypt’s antiquities chief said Sunday he will formally demand the return of the 3,300-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti from a Berlin museum after confirming it had been sneaked out of Cairo through fraudulent documents.
Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has been aggressively campaigning to reclaim treasures he says were stolen from Egypt and purchased by some of the world’s leading museums.
Hawass’ campaign yielded a huge success last week with the return of painted wall fragments from a 3,200-year-old tomb from the Louvre in Paris. Hawass had cut ties with the French museum and suspended its excavation in southern Cairo to pressure it to return the artifacts.
The limestone bust of Nefertiti, the wife of famed monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaton, topped the list Hawass has drawn for high-profile items he wants back. Hawass has also asked for the return of the bust of Achhaf, the builder of the Chephren Pyramid, from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — A Russian rocket blasted off from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and hurtled spaceward Monday local time, shuttling an American, a Russian and a Japanese to the International Space Station.
The Soyuz TMA-17’s three astronauts will take the orbiting laboratory’s permanent crew to five following the early-hours launch, the first-ever blastoff of a Soyuz rocket on a winter night.
Timothy J. Creamer, Soichi Noguchi and Oleg Kotov are to join current inhabitants, American Jeff Williams and Russian Maxim Surayev, who have been alone on the space station for three weeks.
A NASA television webcast showed the crew giving a thumbs-up sign as the vessel thundered skyward.
The Soyuz will travel for about two days before docking with the space station 220 miles above Earth.
Striking a festive mood, the space station this week beamed a video Christmas greeting to Earth. On its Web site, the U.S. space agency NASA has created a series of virtual postcards for members of the public to send to the space station with their holiday greetings.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Police confirmed Sunday they have tracked down 14-year-old Dutch sailor Laura Dekker in the Caribbean territory of St. Maarten, days after she ran away from home leaving her boat behind.
Dekker made headlines around the world earlier this year when she unsuccessfully went to court as a 13-year-old to fight for the right to set off on a single-handed circumnavigation of the world in her boat, Guppy.
St. Maarten police spokesman Ricardo Henson confirmed that Dekker was on the island Sunday evening, and said efforts are under way to get her back to the Netherlands.
Earlier Sunday, Utrecht police spokesman Bernhard Jens said Dutch authorities issued an international alert after Dekker was reported missing Friday.