Jack the Ripper victims’ biography wins book prize

LONDON (BBC): A book that tells the “untold” stories of the women killed by Jack the Ripper has won a literary prize. Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five took this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, it was announced on Tuesday.
The author and historian bagged £50,000 for the book, which attempts to give a voice to the women murdered mysteriously in Victorian east London. “These were ordinary people, like you and I, who happened to fall upon hard times,” said Rubenhold.
The book reconstructs the lives of the five women - Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly - killed by the unidentified serial killer in the Whitechapel area of the city, often using little more than the DNA of a single hair. “There’s so much in their stories that we can take away that tells us about how we live today: everything from homelessness to addiction to domestic violence,” she went on. “And people become victims because society doesn’t care about them.”

Aaron Eckhart to star in new Vietnam War thriller

LOS ANGELES (GN): Aaron Eckhart is to star in a new thriller set during the Vietnam War. The ‘Midway’ actor will feature in ‘Ambush’, which tells the story of a high-stakes mission deep inside enemy territory.
Aaron will play Captain Drummond, the leader of a group of young elite commandos who are tasked with collecting highly classified information that can change the fate of the war. On the edge of the jungle, the team is attacked by the overwhelming invisible force of the enemy. Drummond’s young team must overcome their apprehension in order to pursue the force into the complex labyrinth of Cu Chi tunnels, with enemy soldiers and traps at every turn.
‘Ambush’ will be written and directed by Mark Earl Burman, who will also serve as a producer under the Dark Mark Productions banner. Principal photography for the film will commence in January 2020. Aaron, 51, has recently starred in both ‘Midway’, which is set during World War II and ‘Line of Duty’, a thriller in which he plays an Alabama police officer. The Golden Globe nominee also starred alongside Tom Hanks in the 2016 film, ‘Sully’, which tells the true story of how a pilot managed to perform an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York.