Prince targeting the fans?
People
Fan sites dedicated to Prince say they have been served legal notice to remove all images of the singer, his lyrics and “anything linked to Prince’s likeness,” and have vowed to fight what they said was censorship. The move was a shock to many of his followers and came two months after Prince threatened to sue YouTube and other major Internet sites for unauthorized use of his music and image.
A no-show, Rosie says
It looks as though Rosie O’Donnell won’t be facing off with Larry King after all. The talk-show host announced on her blog Wednesday that talks to give her a prime-time show on MSNBC had fallen apart. An MSNBC spokesman had no comment Wednesday night; a call to O’Donnell’s spokeswoman went unanswered.
Law & disorder
Bail set for designer
A Los Angeles judge set bail at $2.095 million Wednesday for celebrity fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander, who has been held on charges of raping or sexually assaulting 20 young would-be models. Jon, 33, is charged with 59 counts involving 20 women between the ages of 14 and 27 between 2002 and March 2007. Jon will have to submit to electronic monitoring, be barred from having contact with women younger than 21 and be barred from leaving the Los Angeles area without permission.
It’s a record!
A tall order
George Bell, a Norfolk, Va., sheriff’s deputy, is being recognized today by Guinness World Records as the tallest man in the United States. At 7-foot-8, Bell is 2 inches taller than the NBA’s current tallest player, Yao Ming, but too short to be the world’s tallest living man. According to Guinness, Bell comes up short compared to Ukraine’s 8-foot-5.5 Leonid Stadnyk and China’s Bao Xi Shun, who is 7 feet 8.95 inches. To answer the inevitable questions: Bell wears size-19 shoes, pants with a 43-inch inseam and shirts with 45-inch sleeves.
Update
Big sister wins
Score one for the big sister: Charlotte Garman, the mayor of the village of Montezuma, Ohio, held off a challenge from younger brother Daniel Huffman on Tuesday and kept her office. Garman has been mayor for eight years and is the postmaster in the western Ohio community. She got 43 votes; her brother had 24.
Food & drink
Bananas for everyone
Thousands of bananas washed up on two Dutch North Sea Islands on Wednesday after at least six containers fell off a cargo ship in a storm and one burst open, a local official said. Residents are no strangers to stuff turning up on their beach; thousands of tennis shoes, aluminum briefcases and children’s toys washed ashore a year ago, drawing crowds of treasure-hunting residents. Some 20 years ago it was a load of sweaters.
Worth a try
Time to switch back
Two boys, one Saudi and one Turkish, will swap homes four years after a hospital gave them to the wrong parents, a Saudi newspaper said Wednesday. Saudi health authorities had been reluctant to accept the Turkish father’s claim that his son Yacoub was not his, but DNA tests carried out this week proved him right.
Caught ya
A Chinese lottery ticket seller has been jailed for life for fraud for taking advantage of a system flaw to cash 28 million yuan ($3.76 million) in tickets illegally, state media said Tuesday. Zhao Liqun, 36, discovered the flaw in the Welfare Lottery “3D” system in 2005 that let a person buy tickets with the right numbers within five minutes of their being announced.
Passages
Bruce Gordon, 56, a longtime Disney Imagineer who was involved in the creation of numerous Disney theme-park attractions around the world and wrote or co-wrote an array of Disney-related books, died at his home in Glendale, Calif., on Tuesday. Cause of death had yet to be determined.
Today in History
1923: Adolf Hitler launched his first attempt at seizing power with a failed coup in Munich, Germany, that came to be known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch.”
1966: Edward W. Brooke, R-Mass., became the first black candidate to be elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote.
Today’s Birthdays
CBS newsman Morley Safer, 76. Singer Bonnie Raitt, 58. Musician Rickie Lee Jones, 53. Singer-actor Leif Garrett, 46. Actress Courtney Thorne-Smith, 40. Actress Parker Posey, 39. Actress Gretchen Mol, 34. Actress Tara Reid, 32. Jack Osbourne (”The Osbournes”), 22.
Seattle Times news services