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/ 13 October 2005
Devery Freeman, a screenwriter who helped create the Writers’ Guild of America and wrote for such TV series as The Thin Man, has died. He was 92. Freeman, who had been ill since having open-heart surgery in March, died on Friday evening in Los Angeles, according to a statement on the guild’s website.
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/ 12 October 2005
A giant pumpkin weighing more than half a tonne has snatched top place in a world championship competition of giant vegetables held in California, organisers said on Tuesday. A retired firefighter won Monday’s World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off for the second year running with his humongous 557,47kg entry.
Police in Idaho in the United States have arrested a man suspected of trying to peddle his HIV-infected blood to a blood bank when he knew he was carrying the deadly virus. Officers in Boise, the capital of the largely agricultural western state, arrested 22-year-old Kyle Rich for knowingly attempting to transfer bodily fluids infected with human immunodeficiency virus.
The Pulitzer prize-winning American playwright August Wilson who chronicled black America died on Sunday of liver cancer at a hospital in Seattle, Washington, surrounded by family and friends, his assistant announced. He was 60. Wilson won wide acclaim for his stage plays, which focused on the African-American experience through the 20th century.
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/ 30 September 2005
Cooler, wetter air and calmer wind helped thousands of firefighters battling a wildfire early on Friday that has pushed hundreds of people from their homes in the hills and canyons along Los Angeles’s north-western edge. The fire, which has burned an estimated 8 300ha, was 20% contained on Friday morning.
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/ 30 September 2005
Oscar-winning South African movie star Charlize Theron was welcomed into the heart of Tinseltown on Thursday when she was awarded her own star on Hollywood’s glittering Walk of Fame. The star of the 2003 film Monster turned out for the ceremony on Hollywood Boulevard’s famous pavement.
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/ 29 September 2005
A half-century after his death, the memory and legacy of movie icon James Dean, who in a short but brilliant career incarnated the rebellious angst of a generation, burns brighter than ever. The actor and his off-screen persona left an indelible mark on both cinema and popular culture.
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/ 29 September 2005
Most frogs settle for lily pads. Kermit the Frog has hopped on to a United States postage stamp. The green leader of the beloved Muppets troupe was on hand on Wednesday for a first-day issue ceremony featuring 11 postage stamps honouring the Muppets and late creator Jim Henson.
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/ 28 September 2005
Author M Scott Peck, who wrote the bestseller The Road Less Traveled and other self-help books, has died. He was 69. Peck died on Sunday at his home in Connecticut, long-time friend and Los Angeles publicist Michael Levine said. He had suffered from pancreatic and liver-duct cancer.
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/ 24 September 2005
The Oscar-winning maker of films such as Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola, is to return to directing after an eight-year break in a big-screen adaptation of a Romanian short story. Coppola (66) is set to begin production in Bucharest on October 3 on the low-budget Youth Without Youth, based on the novella by Romanian author Mircea Eliade.
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/ 23 September 2005
It was gripping television. A commercial jetliner unable to retract its front landing gear circled for three hours south of Los Angeles, burning fuel, before it attempted an emergency landing. As the pictures were carried live on TV, aviation experts pondered the likely fate of the 145 people on board.
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/ 22 September 2005
A United States airliner with 146 people on board made a dramatic but safe emergency landing on Wednesday amid a hail of sparks and smoke after its nose wheels jammed wildly out of alignment. Sparks, flames and a pall of thick smoke erupted from the tyres as they scraped along the tarmac.
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/ 20 September 2005
Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down numerous Nazi war criminals following World War II and then spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died on Tuesday. Wiesenthal spent more than 50 years hunting Nazi war criminals.
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/ 19 September 2005
Everybody Loves Raymond, a television comedy series that is being dropped off the small screen after a nine-year run, won its category in the 2005 Emmy Awards late on Sunday, beating Desperate Housewives, which had been largely expected to clinch that prize.
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/ 17 September 2005
Producer Sid Luft, who is credited with reviving the career of his then-wife Judy Garland in the 1950s, has died. He was 89. Luft, whose movie production credits included Kilroy Was Here (1947), French Leave (1948) and A Star Is Born (1954), died on Thursday in Santa Monica of an apparent heart attack.
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/ 16 September 2005
Guy Green, who won an Academy Award for cinematography for the 1946 film Great Expectations, died of heart and kidney failure at his Beverly Hills home. He was 91. Green, who also directed more than two dozen films, lapsed into a coma about 10 hours before his death on Thursday, his wife of 57 years, Josephine Green, told The Associated Press.
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/ 16 September 2005
French sports daily L’Equipe could be part of a much larger conspiracy to destroy the legacy of seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, the cycling legend’s agent said on Thursday. Bill Stapleton said apparent lapses in anti-doping protocol raised questions about integrity of the system.
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/ 15 September 2005
Robert Wise, director of top Hollywood musicals West Side Story and The Sound of Music, died overnight at his Los Angeles home, days after his 91st birthday, an official of the San Sebastian film festival said on Thursday. The death of Wise cast a pall over the festival, which was scheduled to pay a special homage to the director who also made Star Trek, the Motion Picture.
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/ 5 September 2005
Fred Joerger, one of Disneyland’s original model makers who crafted miniature versions of the park’s Sleeping Beauty Castle and other attractions, has died. He was 91. Walt Disney hired Joerger in 1953 as one of his first three model makers. They invented the profession that became known as ”imagineering” .
Lance Armstrong has vehemently denied fresh doping allegations and attacked lapses in anti-doping protocol that allowed a French newspaper to gain access to his stored urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France. ”The unfortunate thing is that you’re dealing with something you could be faced with the rest of your life,” he said.
Actor Brock Peters, best known for his heartbreaking performance as the black man falsely accused of rape in the American movie <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>, died on Tuesday at his home after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 78. Peters was diagnosed with the disease in January and had been receiving chemotherapy treatment.
United States actor Barbara Bel Geddes, best known as Ewing family matriarch Miss Ellie in the legendary television soap opera <i>Dallas</i>, has died at the age of 82, funeral directors said on Wednesday. Oscar-nominated Bel Geddes became world famous through her role as the mother of Texas oil barons JR and Bobby Ewing.
Violinists playing sweetly beneath her, the video game heroine Lara Croft has two guns blazing and the full attention of 10Â 000 people at the Hollywood Bowl. The animated star of Tomb Raider games unflinchingly braves explosions on a giant TV screen that hangs, incongruously, above the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.
Violinists playing sweetly beneath her, the video game heroine Lara Croft has two guns blazing and the full attention of 10Â 000 people at the Hollywood Bowl. The animated star of Tomb Raider games unflinchingly braves explosions on a giant TV screen that hangs, incongruously, above the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.
He will have the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the brain of Stephen Hawking. Step forward the Pentagon’s perfect Hollywood hero, possibly coming soon to a screen near you. The United States military is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to send scientists on a screenwriting course, with the aim of producing movies and television shows that portray scientists in a flattering light.
With a comeback title in his pocket and his back-nerve injury now under control, Andre Agassi is riding high as he moves deeper into his American hardcourt summer. The legend capped a return after two months off court hurt as he lifted a fourth title on Sunday at the  000 Mercedes-Benz trophy in Los Angeles, the 60th of his storied career.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on Monday launched a new round of lawsuits in Hollywood’s ongoing battle against film piracy on the internet. The MPAA said it was acting on a court ruling that peer-to-peer swapping networks like Grokster and the software behind them can be held accountable for illegal online film distribution.
Andre Agassi returned to match fitness in emphatic fashion on Sunday as the veteran stormed past Gilles Muller 6-4, 7-5 to register his 60th career title at the 000 ATP Mercedes-Benz Cup. ”It feels amazing; this is why you work so hard. I’m taking it all in and feeling good,” Agassi said.
Andre Agassi scored a crowd-pleasing win on Saturday, dominating Argentine Juan Ignacio Chela en route to a 6-4, 6-2 semifinal win at the 000 ATP Mercedes-Benz Cup. Agassi is now a win away from his 60th career title; on Sunday he faces the winner from Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller and second seed Dominik Hrbaty.
Three-time champion Andre Agassi outslugged unseeded Paradorn Srichaphan 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 on Friday to advance to the semifinals at the 000 ATP Mercedes-Benz Cup. ”I’m really happy with where my game is now,” Agassi said. ”Getting through with this match now, I’m believing in it.”
A United States astronomer said on Friday he has discovered a 10th planet in the outer reaches of the solar system that could force a redrawing the astronomical map. If confirmed, the discovery would be the first of a planet since Pluto was identified in 1930 and shatter the notion that nine planets circle the sun.
At least 14 people were rushed to hospital on Friday after two trains on a roller coaster at California’s Disneyland theme park collided, a government official with the nearby city of Anaheim said. In the crash, one car rear-ended another on the California Screamin’ ride at Disney’s California Adventure park.