The James Logan Courier

By Amy Kaufman
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

LOS ANGELES — "Battle: Los Angeles" is expected to wipe out the competition at the box office this weekend, leaving "Mars Needs Moms" searching for any signs of life.

Sony Pictures' "Battle: L.A.," an alien invasion story starring Aaron Eckhart, could open with ticket sales of $30 million to $35 million in the U.S. and Canada, according to people who have seen pre-release audience surveys.

But the biggest news at the box office this weekend is projected to be a disastrous debut of "Mars Needs Moms," a big-budget animated movie from Walt Disney Studios that is on track to open at just $10 million.

By Barbara Demick, David Pierson and Kenji Hall
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

TOKYO — After years of preparation for the killer earthquake that would clearly one day strike, Japan found itself crippled Friday by floods, power failures, fires, shuttered airports and paralyzed transit systems from a 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck off the Pacific coast, killing hundreds of people and setting off a massive tsunami.

In magnitude, the quake was the largest ever in Japan and the fifth-strongest on record, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

From wikipedia:
Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. (March 11, 1926 – April 17, 1990) was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following King's assassination, Dr. Abernathy took up the leadership of the SCLC Poor People's Campaign and led the March on Washington, D.C. that had been planned for May 1968.

He was born March 11, 1926 to W. L. Abernathy on the family 500-acre (2.0 km2) farm in Marengo County, Alabama. After serving in the United States Army during World War II, he enrolled at Alabama State University. In 1951 he earned a Masters of Science degree in sociology from Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University). As an officer of the Montgomery, Alabama NAACP, he organized the first mass meeting of the Montgomery Bus Boycott to protest Rosa Park's arrest on December 1,1955. He co-founded the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King, Jr. As the Vice President of the Montgomery Improvement Association, he completed his Master’s Thesis in Sociology for Atlanta University, The Natural History of A Social Movement: The Montgomery Improvement Association, which was first referenced in 1984, then published as a chapter in 1989.

See photos of Ralph Abernathy, free from Life magazine.