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/ 18 March 2005

Celebrity trials dominate US media

”You’re innocent until proven broke,” said celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochrane who managed to secure football star OJ Simpson an acquittal in his celebrated double-murder case a decade ago. That case, followed breathlessly by television cameras from around the world, set off an obsession with celebrity trials, which seemed to reach its peak last Tuesday when three separate cases dominated the news in the United States.

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/ 14 March 2005

Iger to succeed Eisner as Disney chief

Walt Disney said on Sunday its president, Robert Iger, will succeed Michael Eisner as chief executive and that Eisner will leave his post one year earlier than previously announced. Iger, who is credited with reversing the fortunes of its ABC television network, was considered a front-runner from the start.

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/ 9 March 2005

Man vs machine

A girl described as a 17-year-old weakling has beaten three robotic arms powered with plastic muscles in the first arm-wrestling competition of its kind, The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday. ”I was hoping we could have a win, but that didn’t happen,” said Yoseph Bar-Cohen, an expert on responsive plastics with the United States space agency.

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/ 22 February 2005

Scott victorious at shortened PGA event

Australia’s Adam Scott rolled home a three-footer on the first play-off hole to defeat Chad Campbell Monday at the PGA Tour’s rain-shortened Los Angeles event. Because inclement weather forced organisers to shorten the event to 36 holes, it won’t count as an official victory, although Scott did earn the full first prize of  000.

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/ 21 February 2005

Australian claims share of PGA lead

Australia’s Adam Scott completed a second-round 66 on Sunday to join American Chad Campbell atop the leaderboard at the PGA Tour’s rain-ravaged Los Angeles stop, and could only hope the weather gave him a chance to mount a further challenge. Scott finally made it into the clubhouse at nine-under 133.

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/ 16 February 2005

Tiger takes aim at top spot

Tiger Woods could reclaim the world number one golf ranking from Fiji’s Vijay singh in Los Angeles this week by finishing in the top four at the PGA Nissan Open. Woods spent a record 334 weeks atop the rankings, including 264 in a row, before being dethroned last September by Singh’s victory at Boston.

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/ 9 February 2005

US media want end to secrecy in Jackson case

News organisations covering the Michael Jackson trial are seeking an end to the secrecy surrounding key aspects of the case, including the grand-jury indictment describing the pop singer’s alleged crimes. A lawyer for The Associated Press and other news outlets will ask California’s Second District Court of Appeal to lift the gag order on attorneys in the case.

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/ 10 January 2005

Fahrenheit 911 wins People’s Choice Awards

United States fans voted Fahrenheit 911 their favourite move of 2004 in
the 31st Annual People’s Choice Awards, picking politics over the animation and fantasy flicks also nominated. Accepting the award at a glittering ceremony near Los Angeles on Sunday, the winning film’s controversial director Michael Moore dedicated it to United States parents who have children serving in Iraq.

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/ 22 December 2004

Ray Charles’s mistress to be grilled about sex life

An ex-mistress of Ray Charles agreed on Tuesday to be grilled by lawyers over her sexual history in a bid to establish whether her 17-year-old son is really the late soul legend’s child. But unemployed Mary Anne den Bok told a court on Tuesday that she regretted asking for a twentyfold increase in child support payments from Charles’s estate to at least  000 a month.

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/ 15 December 2004

Hollywood takes aim at server operators

Hollywood movie studios on Tuesday sued scores of operators of United States- and European-based computer servers that help relay digitised movie files across online file-sharing networks. The copyright infringement suits expand on a new US film industry initiative whose initial targets were individual file-swappers.

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/ 7 December 2004

Old rockers never die

The original members of the 1980s glam metal band Motley Crue made hard living and wild sexcapades a centerpiece of their music and their lives, selling millions of albums along the way. Now, after a five-year hiatus from performing together, the big-haired, leather-clad Crue members are eager to slip back into the music, if not the lifestyle depicted in hit rockers like Girls, Girls, Girls and Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room.

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/ 3 December 2004

LA broadcasters object to ‘Phil the Sore’

County health officials are having trouble finding a TV station willing to air a public service announcement about syphilis that employs a lumpy, red cartoon character named ”Phil the Sore.” Los Angeles-area broadcasters said the ad is in poor taste, but the county health agency said it is simply trying to reach gay men — the group at greatest risk of getting the sexually transmitted disease, which has been on the rise in recent years.

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/ 20 November 2004

Elizabeth Taylor staring death in the face

Violet-eyed Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor is suffering from congestive heart failure and crippling spinal problems, but the movie icon says she is not afraid of death. The star (72), once hailed as the world’s most beautiful woman, revealed in a rare interview that she is once again staring death in the face.

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/ 17 November 2004

Singer’s wife jailed for bathroom beauty clinic

Musical legend Lionel Richie’s estranged wife was behind bars on Tuesday for allegedly allowing her boyfriend to turn her bathroom into an illegal cosmetic-surgery clinic, officials said. The boyfriend allegedly injected patients in her Beverly Hills bathroom with anti-wrinkle drugs that are not approved by United States drug regulators.

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/ 16 November 2004

This DVD wil self-destruct…

The Christmas-themed movie <i>Noel</i> most likely won’t be coming to a theatre near you — but if you miss it on cable, there’s always the self-destructing DVD. They look and play like normal DVDs, except that their playable surface is dark red. Each disc contains a chemical time-bomb that begins ticking once it’s exposed to air.

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/ 10 November 2004

Northrop Grumman, Boeing reach for the stars

Defence contractor Northrop Grumman and Boeing said on Tuesday they will bid as a team to compete for Nasa’s planned manned and robotic space exploration programme. The two companies say they will start with a joint bid for the crew exploration vehicle, the first phase of ”Project Constellation,” which is designed to explore the moon and travel to Mars.

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/ 5 November 2004

Man says Michael Jackson assaulted him 20 years ago

Michael Jackson faced fresh legal woes on Thursday after a man claimed to have recently remembered that the superstar sexually assaulted him 20 years ago. Court documents seen here showed that Joseph Bartucci filed suit this week in the state of Louisiana, claiming that repressed memories had revealed that Jackson repeatedly forced him into sex in May 1984.

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/ 1 November 2004

New film pokes fun at George’s ‘Bushisms’

”I know how hard it [is] for you to put food on your family,” a sympathetic United States President George Bush told baffled single mothers in one of his inimitable foot-in-mouth utterances. Just days ahead of Tuesday’s US presidential election, a new political film is taking a light-hearted poke at the lexicon of unique words and phrases invented by the leader of the free world.

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/ 23 October 2004

Unknown actor cast as Superman

Little-known United States actor Brandon Routh has been chosen to don the cloak of the ”man of steel” in a Hollywood revival of its money-spinning Superman movies, studios officials said on Friday. The 25-year-old was signed to star in the reincarnation of Superman, due to hit screens in 2006, following an exhaustive search for an actor to fill the role made famous by Christopher Reeve, who died earlier this month.

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/ 14 October 2004

Movie star sued over Van Gogh painting

The heirs of a victim of Germany’s Nazi rule on Wednesday sued screen icon Elizabeth Taylor for ownership of a Van Gogh painting they claim rightfully belongs to them. The South African and Canadian descendants of a Jewish woman who fled Germany in the late 1930s say the actress should have known the painting had been stolen by the Nazis.

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/ 20 September 2004

Sopranos, expired sitcoms take home Emmys

<i>The Sopranos</i> finally whacked its competitors in the best-drama category at the Emmy Awards, but it was HBO and its record-breaking <i>Angels in America</i> that fluttered away with the most trophies. <i>Frasier</i> and <i>Sex and the City</i>, which have both ended their runs, also collected some trophies.

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/ 16 September 2004

Johnny Ramone dead at 55

Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band The Ramones, has died. He was 55. Ramone died in his sleep on Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, his publicist said. He had battled prostate cancer for five years, and was hospitalised in June at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre.