News on the go: April 5, 2013

Maura Zurick

Roger Ebert, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, died Thursday at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Ebert, 70, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002 and later lost his ability to speak, but he continued writing reviews as well as on his blog, where he announced Tuesday that he was undergoing radiation treatment for a recurrence of cancer. Ebert was the first movie reviewer to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. (read full story here)

Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that Facebook will be releasing a new Android application called Facebook Home. The application integrates Facebook’s newsfeed with the phone’s homescreen and combines text messaging and Facebook messaging into a new feature called “Chat Heads.” Chat Heads allows users to continue messaging contacts while using apps and performing other phone functions. (read full story here)

A psychiatrist who treated James Holmes, the gunman accused of killing 12 and injuring 70 at the “Dark Knight Rises” midnight premiere in Aurora, Colo., said she reported that Holmes had homicidal thoughts to University of Colorado, Denver police a month before the shooting. The documents, released Thursday, reveal that Dr. Lynne Fenton, a psychiatrist at the university, reported Holmes had threatened and intimidated her and made homicidal statements.

Alabama lawmakers voted unanimously Thursday to give posthumous pardons to the “Scottsboro Boys,” the nine black teens who were wrongly convicted of raping two white women in 1931. Eight of the nine boys were sent to death row after false accusations, though eventually all were freed without executions due to years of successful appeals. The ordeal resulted several legal precedents being established as well as a 2010 Broadway musical and a museum.

Contact Maura Zurick at [email protected].