Seven U.S. Marines were killed and at least seven wounded when a mortar exploded during a live-fire training exercise overnight at an Army munitions depot in the Nevada desert, military officials told NBC News.

There were conflicting reports about what happened. According to one account, a 60-millimeter mortar shell exploded in a tube as Marines were preparing to fire it. Another account said that the shell exploded as Marines were picking it up to load it.

The accident happened just before 10 p.m. Monday at Hawthorne Army Depot, a 230-square-mile ammunition storage and training facility just east of the California line.

The injured were taken to two hospitals. Stacy Kendall, a spokeswoman for Renown Regional Medical Center, a trauma center about 100 miles away in Reno, said the injuries included traumas and fractures.

The Marines were part of the 2nd Marine Division, a ground combat force based at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The depot’s website says it is a training facility for the Army, Navy and Marines, including Special Operations forces preparing to deploy to the Middle East. The site says that the facility offers a “realistic simulation of the situation in Afghanistan” because of the mountainous desert terrain.

A Marines spokesman said that the dead would be identified publicly 24 hours after their next of kin were notified.

“We send our prayers and condolences to the families of Marines involved in this tragic incident. We remain focused on ensuring that they are supported through this difficult time,” said Maj. Gen. Raymond C. Fox, commanding general of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, which includes the 2nd Division. “We mourn their loss, and it is with heavy hearts we remember their courage and sacrifice.”

His real name is Al, but the Tampa gangsta drugsta played by James Franco calls himself Alien. Sporting elaborate cornrows and front teeth studded with more grillwork than a ’58 Plymouth, Alien is a man in love with his stuff: his gun-bedecked walls, his bed “that’s an art piece,” his constantly running loop of the 1983 Florida crime classic Scarface. (Maybe he never got to the end of the movie.) Put another way, he’s the Wizard of Oz in his own crazy, Day-Glo kingdom, and instead of Munchkins he’s got a posse of hot chicks. “Bikinis and big booties, y’all,” Alien proclaims. “That’s what life is about.”

It is, at least, during the months-long rite of passion known as spring break. Needing little urging from the gentlemen on Florida’s Gulf Coast, young women booze on the beach, merrily expose their siliconed breasts and fellate red-white-and-blue lollipops, all to fulfill the hedonistic edicts of Girls Gone Wild videos and MTV. They act silly; you can watch.


Spring Breakers, written and directed by Harmony Korine, operates under two pretenses: that it’s a more extreme version of spring-break movies that stretch back at least half a century, to the sedate dating of 1960′s Where the Boys Are, and that it’s a satire of the genre — indeed, of the American dream of sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll and eternal nubility.

But the movie, the most accessible in the oeuvre of the 40-year-old who really was an enfant terrible when, back in the early ’90s, he wrote the script for Kids — Larry Clark’s teen-AIDS outrage — has a little too much fun exploiting the milieu it may be trying to mock. Spring Breakers is a canny mixture of satire and sellout — if there’s even a difference between the two in a movie age where excess and irony have become incestuous twins.

Say this for the writer-director: he scored several artistic coups, none of them having much to do with what’s onscreen. He signed Franco for the Alien role and corralled three young graduates of well-scrubbed TV shows — Selena Gomez, from the Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place; Vanessa Hudgens of Disney’s High School Musical films; and Ashley Benson of the ABC Family Channel’s Pretty Little Liars — to dance around in skimpies. Two of them mime smoking dope and lesbonic kissing.

Gomez plays the pointedly named Faith, who is part of a Christian sect and the college friend of Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, the director’s wife). She’s known them for years, she tells her skeptical evangelical cohorts; these girls are good people. Faith should have trusted in the skepticism of her grumpy co-religionists. Yea, I say unto thee, her friends are the demon spawn.

Stuck at school and short on cash, Candy, Cotty and Brit raise money for the trip to Florida by donning ski masks, talking like rap masters and robbing the patrons of a Chicken Shack. Once in Tampa, with Faith in tow, they party their way into jail. There they are bailed out by Alien, who takes them on as his posse in a turf battle with archrival Archie (rapper Gucci Mane). Faith sees the light and heads for home, another girl takes a bullet, and the remaining pair turn out to be gunslingers of the most violent order.

A pop-art junk movie, Spring Breakers does reveal an artist at work: French cinematographer Benoît Debie, who filmed Gaspar Noé’s truly transgressive Irréversible and Enter the Void. Saturating the images with a neon tinge and supervising a sensational reverse-crane shot of revelers by the hundreds at a pool party, Debie gives Spring Breakers a great look, even if the movie’s mind is nearly as wasted as Alien’s.

Apparently the three are very fond of one another, as revealed at the HBO premiere of David Mamet's movie "Phil Spector" this week. According to the New York Post, Pacino (who plays the titular role in "Spector") met up with Richards for the first time and the two icons had a friendly exchange.

"We have a mutual friend," Richards was overheard telling Pacino. "Johnny Depp!" Pacino replied, "I love Johnny!"

And somewhere in the world, an angel got a high five.

Pacino and Depp were co-stars in the 1997 movie "Donnie Brasco" and Richards wrote and performed the song "Only Found Out Yesterday" on Depp's blockbuster hit "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" in 2007.

Also, Depp's next talked-about project, the thriller "Black Mass," will be directed by Barry Levinson -- who was the producer on Pacino's "Phil Spector." In the film, Depp is set to play the part of infamous gangster Whitey Bulger.

Indian media are reporting that a Swiss tourist was gang-raped in the central state of Madhya Pradesh and that 13 men are being questioned.

Local police superintendent C. S. Solanki told the Press Trust of India that the woman and her husband had camped out for the night in a forest after bicycling from the temple town of Orchha on Friday when they were attacked by a group of eight men.

He said the couple were beaten and had their belongings stolen, and that the woman was gang-raped.

Solanki said police were questioning 13 men in connection with the attack.

India has seen outrage and protests against rape and attacks on women since the fatal gang-rape of a young woman in a moving bus in New Delhi in December.

A photo showed the woman — her identity concealed with a hood — walking while being escorted by police to the hospital.

Police detained 13 men and questioned them, Gurjar said. Six of the men were released after questioning. No other details were immediately available.

Indian television stations showed scores of police searching the forest where the attack occurred.

Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Tilman Renz described the case as “deeply disturbing” and said Swiss diplomats were assisting the couple.

The diplomats called on Indian authorities “to do everything to quickly find the perpetrators so that they can be held accountable,” Renz said in a statement.

Last month, the Swiss government issued a travel notice for India that included a warning about “increasing numbers of rapes and other sexual offenses” in the South Asian nation.

India has seen outrage and widespread protests against attacks on women since December’s fatal gang-rape of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi, the capital. The crime horrified Indians and set off nationwide protests about India’s treatment of women and spurred the government to hurry through a new package of laws to protect them.

One of six suspects in the December attack was found dead in a New Delhi jail this past week. Authorities said he hanged himself, but his family and lawyer insisted foul play was involved. A magistrate is investigating. Four other men and a juvenile remain on trial for the attack.

Britney Spears grabbed lunch with new boyfriend David Lucado at Cisco's in Camarillo, Calif., Thursday. The 31-year-old pop singer was first spotted out with 27-year-old Lucado in February, and they've since been spotted doing totally normal-person things, like hitting the driving range and dining out for Valentine's Day and going to the tanning salon together.

Spears ended her engagement to longtime boyfriend Jason Trawick just one month prior, in January. "Jason and I have decided to call off our engagement. I'll always adore him and we remain great friends," she said in a statement at the time.

Last Sunday, the first installment of History’s five-part miniseries The Bible beat everything on television with a massive 13.1 million viewers, making it cable’s most-watched entertainment telecast this year.

For producer Mark Burnett, who worked on the ten-hour special with wife Roma Downey, the success of The Bible isn’t all that surprising. “It will be, over the next 40 or 50 years, the most watched thing that Roma and I have ever made,” he told EW, quite confidently, back in January.

At the time, Burnett gushed about shooting the series. “I really believe what I’m going to tell you right now,” he said. “The hand of God was on this…. the edit came together perfectly, the actors came together perfectly, it just comes to life.” But Burnett wasn’t just speaking about how well the practicalities of production had gone. “Weird things happened during filming,” he said. “Everybody would look at each other like, “Whoa.”

Here are a few of the “weird things” he was talking about:

A mighty desert wind
“There’s a scene with Jesus and Nicodemus, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the night. It’s a very still night, not a breath of wind, and we’re on the edge of the Sahara desert in a palm grove in an oasis… Jesus says, ‘The Holy Spirit is like the wind.’ At that moment, a wind, like as if a 747 was taking off, blew his hair, almost blew the set over and sustained for 20 seconds across the desert, and the actors didn’t break — they kept going. And everything stopped. Everyone just looked at everyone like, ‘What just happened?’”

The missing frock
“We had hundreds of craftsmen working [on making costumes], and the most important costume was Jesus’ costume. Every time, at the end of the day, the costume’s got to be taken away to be maintained. So when we were doing the baptism scenes, it’s completely immersed in water. During it, a portion of the costume came away. We shot this in a giant reservoir on the edge of the Sahara desert, so we’re never going to find this again. It’s really bad. Every time you lose something, you’ve got five months ahead, and you can’t replicate these costumes. Four days later, a kid showed up from many, many, many miles away, who had been seeking us through the desert to return this to us. He didn’t know what it was why he should seek us, but he felt he had to return it.”

The electronic dance music festival that began Friday will draw internationally renowned disc jockeys, producers and tens of thousands of revelers as one of the largest dance music gatherings in the world super-sizes to two weekends. It also will draw the expanding genre's great unknowns, the next big acts who catch the attention of the 330,000 revelers expected to attend.

"Ultra Fest is important because a lot of kids who go there don't even know who's playing," said the producer Diplo, who will be performing with his group Major Lazer. "Two years ago Skrillex went and played for free. He just wanted to be part of that lineup, part of the Ultra thing. Then next year he headlined. That's how big you can get in the DJ world within a year."

This year's festival attracts most of the genres top names, including Swedish House Mafia, which will be playing its final show as a trio three years after making their North American debut at the festival. David Guetta, DeadMau5, Afrojack, Avicii and scores more were scheduled to perform – though preparation of the festival's main stage was temporarily halted following an accident Thursday that injured three workers, two seriously.

The festival is now in its 15th year, but has gained rapidly in prominence as EDM has flourished. Long popular in Europe, house music has taken root in popular music in the U.S., climbing into top 40 radio and propelling DJs, once faceless figures behind the turntables, center stage. Pop artists like Rihanna, Pitbull and Lady Gaga have found enormous success incorporating the electronic sound into their music.

The proliferation of hits has changed the way some artists present their music at Ultra, said Chad Cisneros of Tritonal. DJs still come to the event to showcase new tracks, but more frequently they play sets their fans already know well.

"It's changed from a technology and a fan perspective," Cisneros said. "They know what to expect. And they know what tracks they want to hear."

Ultra has served as a taste-making force during EDM's ascent into the popular consciousness.