Free 'White House Down' July 4 Screening Draws 100,000 Military

On July 4, more than 100,000 active military servicemembers and veterans saw White House Down in theaters for free.

Sony Pictures offered free admission to service men and women on Independence Day as part of a special tribute to U.S. troops.

PHOTOS: Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum: Exclusive Portraits of the 'White House Down' Stars

Regal Entertainment Group, AMC Theatres, Cinemark and Carmike Cinemas participated in the offer, providing military personnel a free ticket, along with a ticket for a guest.

The Channing Tatum/Jamie Foxx actioner, which grossed a disappointing $24.8 million in its first weekend, took in $3.5 million on the Independence Day holiday. The film has grossed $36.9 million domestically to date.

Roland Emmerich's film follows a capitol police officer (Tatum) who is tasked with rescuing the president of the United States (Foxx) after terrorists infiltrate the White House.

Windows 8's Windows Store hits the 100,000 app milestone as it gains momentum

Children have a way of growing up fast, and the new kid on the app-store block certainly hasn’t bucked that trend. Late on Tuesday, Microsoft announced that the Windows Store has crossed the 100,000 app threshold, mere days after the company’s big Build conference and a scant eight months after the launch of Windows 8.

Sure, the store didn’t hit that mark in the three months that one ambitious Microsoft executive predicted, but the Windows Store did reach 100k apps faster than both Google Play and iOS’s App Store (albeit long after those markets established a consumer thirst for apps). And, after a somewhat sluggish start and an extreme slow down shortly after the holidays, it’s no small accomplishment for the Windows Store to hit 100,000 apps so soon after its conception.

Over 100,000 apps now in the #Windows8 Store!
— Windows (@Windows) July 2, 2013

The Windows Store isn’t complete despite hitting the lofty number. There’s still a general dearth of big-name apps, and both the quality and the quantity of specific slices of the store can be … questionable, as I covered in-depth earlier this year. Read: A lot of those apps are pretty spammy, or rip-offs playing off the name of more established software and services.

Things have gotten better since then, however. From video to music to games and business, most people will be able to find enough apps to scratch their mobile itch—and many, many more apps have been released since those round-ups were written. There is still work to do, but the bones are there. Desktop aficionados will even find modern-style conversions of old favorites like WinZip and (soon) the VLC media player.

At Build 2013, Microsoft announced several big-name apps destined for the Windows Store.

Yes, the Windows Store has 100,000 apps, and it’s a major milestone—but numbers alone do not an app store make. Quantity is nice, but quality is the true differentiator.

And Microsoft finally seems to be putting the pedal to the quality metal. The company has long been wooing developers to the Windows Store, and the number of new apps spiked in the days before Build. And it’s not just small fish swimming down the Windows 8 river; premier offerings like Facebook, Flipboard, Foursquare, and more are going to land on Windows 8 in the coming months, while stars like Twitter and MLB.tv have already landed.


Jared NewmanThe Windows Store app in Windows 8.1 is a huge improvement over the version in Windows 8.

Even better, those apps will have some fancy new digs to call home. The Windows 8.1 update includes a bevy of new apps, including a completely revamped Windows Store with a whole new look, personalized recommendations, a UI that minimizes needless scrolling, and—finally—short text descriptions below each app in the menu screens.

You’d think that hitting 100,000 apps would be the perfect time to pause, take a breath, and reflect on what you’ve done. For Microsoft, all the hard work is just starting to hint at a payoff now that this milestone has been reached.

This is no time to let up steam: Windows 8 and the modern UI lives or dies by the Windows Store. At 100,000 apps strong, Microsoft is just starting to build momentum, and it must be maintained. If Microsoft continues along the trajectory it’s on, in time, the Windows Store could become a source of strength rather than a source of contention.

Floods force 100,000 from homes in Canada

CALGARY, Alberta  -- Calgary's mayor warned Friday that the worst of the flooding is yet to come after a significant portion of his city's population spent the night pulling back to higher ground. Officials have estimated that as many as 100,000 could be out of their homes.

Entire neighborhoods all along the Bow and Elbow rivers have been cleared of inhabitants as many downtown neighborhoods were ordered evacuated in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said early Friday morning he's never seen the rivers that high or that fast.

Low-lying areas along the river started to flood Thursday night and there was water filling up some underpasses. There was water in the streets of the Bowness area in the city's northwest. The city has not said to what extent any homes have been flooded.

Police urged people to stay away from downtown and not go to work. All schools - both Catholic and public - are closed, while Catholic schools in the communities of Chestermere, Airdrie and Cochrane were also to be shuttered.

The Calgary Zoo, located on St. George's Island, closed its gates and started taking steps "to secure and move animals to safe locations."

Contingency plans called for big cats, such as lions and tigers, to be moved into prisoner cells at the Calgary courthouse. But the city said that hadn't happened yet.

The Calgary mayor spent Thursday night and Friday morning hours touring all the affected areas.

He said it appeared that the smaller Elbow river had reached its peak. The same could not be said for the larger Bow.

The province reported that 12 communities were under states of emergency.

It had been a rainy week throughout much of Alberta, but on Thursday the Bow River Basin was battered with up to 100 millimeters (4 inches)of rain. Environment Canada's forecast calls for more rain today in the area, but in much smaller amounts.

Calgary is not alone in its weather-related woes. There were flashpoints of chaos from Banff and Canmore and Crowsnest Pass in the Rockies and south to Lethbridge.

Torrential rains and widespread flooding throughout southern Alberta have also forced the closure of the Trans-Canada Highway and isolated the mountain resort towns of Banff and Canmore. The flooding washed out roads and bridges, left at least one person missing and caused cars, couches and refrigerators to float away.

Officials in High River estimated half of the people in its town have experienced flooding in their homes. People had to be rescued from some rooftops by boat or in buckets of heavy machinery. Others swam for their lives from stranded cars.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police called in the military, which sent two helicopters and a Hercules aircraft to help rescue those stranded in areas where roads had been washed out.

Pictures from inside the mountain town of Canmore also a raging river ripping at the foundations of homes.

Bruce Burrell, director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, said water levels on the Bow River aren't expected to subside until Saturday afternoon.

"Depending on the extent of flooding we experience overnight, there may be areas of the city where people are not going to be able to get into until the weekend," he told a news conference.