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News Briefs TV, movie and music news

May 17 2012 07:20 PM ET

Facebook IPO raises $16 billion

Tags: Facebook

Facebook’s initial public offering of stock is shaping up to be one of the largest ever. The world’s definitive online social network is raising at least $16 billion for the company and its early investors in a transaction that values Facebook at $104 billion.

It’s a big windfall for a company that began eight years ago with no way to make money.

Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on May 17, at the high end of expectations. The IPO values Facebook higher than Amazon.com and other well-known companies such as Kraft, Disney and McDonald’s.

Facebook’s stock is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market sometime May 18 under the ticker symbol “FB.” That’s when so-called retail investors can try to buy the stock.

May 17 2012 02:17 PM ET

Lawsuit from second John Travolta accuser dismissed

by Lanford Beard

Tags: John Travolta, Lawsuits, Movies

The second masseur to bring a claim of sexual battery against John Travolta is now pondering his next step. EW has confirmed that John Doe Number Two’s lawsuit has been dismissed without prejudice by the United States District Court, Central District of California. This dismissal follows just two days after John Doe Number One dropped his lawsuit against Travolta. Marty Singer, Travolta’s lawyer, called both claims “absurd and ridiculous,” and Travolta even produced credit card slips to discredit John Doe Number Two. Now the first accuser has retained the legal services of famed attorney Gloria Allred who, per a statement from Allred’s office, “will be conferring with our client regarding what will happen next in this case.”

May 17 2012 09:33 AM ET

Coroner: 'Swamp People' star died of natural causes

by Associated Press

Tags: Health, In Memoriam, TV

Authorities in Louisiana say a man who starred in the reality television show Swamp People died from natural causes. Ascension Parish Sheriff Jeff Wiley says the parish coroner, Dr. John Fraiche, made that determination after a preliminary autopsy on Mitchell Guist.

Guist, who appeared in segments of the Swamp People with his brother, Glenn, died after collapsing Monday while working on a houseboat he was building on Belle River. Authorities tell The Advocate of Baton Rouge, La., Guist had just launched the houseboat and was pushing it when he collapsed.

Funeral services are scheduled for Saturday in Gonzales. Swamp People, which airs on the History channel, features residents of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya swamp country during alligator hunting season.

May 16 2012 12:24 PM ET

Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes dead

by Associated Press

Tags: Books, In Memoriam, Books

Image Credit: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

Author Carlos Fuentes, who played a dominant role in Latin America’s novel-writing boom by delving into the failed ideals of the Mexican revolution, died Tuesday in a Mexico City hospital. He was 83.

Fuentes died at the Angeles del Pedregal hospital where he was taken after his personal doctor, Arturo Ballesteros, found him in shock in his Mexico City home. Ballesteros told reporters outside the hospital that the writer had a sudden internal hemorrhage that caused him to lose consciousness.

The loss was mourned worldwide via Twitter and across Mexican airwaves by everyone from fellow Mexican authors Elena Poniatowska and Jorge Volpi to reggaeton artist Rene Perez of the group Calle 13. “I deeply lament the death of our beloved and admired Carlos Fuentes, a universal Mexican writer,” said President Felipe Calderon on his Twitter account. READ FULL STORY »

May 16 2012 10:46 AM ET

'Terminator 3' actor missing

by Jeff Labrecque

Tags: Crime

Image Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Actor Nick Stahl, who starred in Terminator 3 and the Oscar-nominated film In the Bedroom, has gone missing.

As TMZ.com first reported, a missing persons report was filed with Los Angeles police by Stahl’s wife on Monday. She said she hadn’t seen her 32-year old husband since Wednesday, May 9.

Stahl’s rep did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

May 16 2012 09:35 AM ET

OneRepublic drummer arrested

by Associated Press

Tags: Crime, music, Music

The drummer for the band OneRepublic has been arrested on suspicion of assault, destruction of private property, and disturbing the peace. KMGH-TV in Denver reports that 38-year-old Eddie Fisher was arrested early Tuesday morning. He was being held at a Denver jail and is set to appear in court on Wednesday. Details of the arrest weren’t immediately available.

OneRepublic was up for a Grammy in 2008. Their songs include “Apologize,” ”Stop and Stare,” ”All the Right Moves” and “Secrets.”

May 15 2012 09:41 PM ET

Former Murdoch tabloid boss Brooks faces phone hacking charges

by Associated Press

Tags: media, Rupert Murdoch

One of Rupert Murdoch’s most trusted lieutenants and five people close to her were charged with conspiring to hide evidence of phone hacking, bringing the scandal that has raged across Britain’s media and political elite uncomfortably close to Prime Minister David Cameron.

The charges Tuesday against former U.K. tabloid editor Rebekah Brooks, her husband Charlie and four aides are the first prosecutions since police reopened inquiries 18 months ago into wrongdoing by the country’s scandal-hungry press.

Brooks, 43, faces three separate allegations of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice — an offense that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

For years, Brooks was the star in Murdoch’s media empire, the top editor of two of his tabloids, a friend of his daughter Elisabeth and a close friend of Cameron, who has known her husband Charlie Brooks since they both went to an elite high school. Cameron is a neighbor, a friend and an occasional horse-riding companion of the couple.

The prospect that courts will hear potentially explosive accusations against Brooks and her husband could rock both Murdoch’s global media empire and Cameron’s political career.

To critics, however, Brooks was “The Witch of Wapping” — a ruthless figure at the heart of a media company in that London neighborhood that showed little remorse over its frequently intrusive reporting on celebrities and ordinary people in thrust into the public glare.

READ FULL STORY »

May 15 2012 02:32 PM ET

First John Travolta assault accuser drops lawsuit

by Hillary Busis

Tags: John Travolta, Lawsuits, movies

John Doe Number One — the first masseur to sue John Travolta for assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress — has dropped out of the lawsuit, People reports. The masseur’s action comes in the wake of evidence that contradicts his allegations, as well as his split from attorney Okorie Okorocha. A notice of dismissal was filed Tuesday in Los Angeles’s U.S. District Court.

“Let’s just say we had differences in opinion of how to handle the case and decided to part ways,” Okorocha told People. The lawyer is still representing John Doe Number Two, another masseur who claims the star used a private massage as an opportunity to make unwelcome sexual advances.

Travolta’s lawyer, Marty Singer, said in a statement that Number Two’s claim “is just as fabricated as the claim by Doe #1.” He added, “Our client will be fully vindicated in court on both of these absurd and fictional claims.”

May 15 2012 10:38 AM ET

Tony organizers settle with Bret Michaels over 2009 accident

by Associated Press

Tags: Bret Michaels, Health, Lawsuits, Stage, Tony Awards

Bret Michaels and organizers of the Tony Awards have settled a lawsuit filed by the rocker after a 2009 incident in which he was hit in the head with a set piece and suffered injuries that he claimed contributed to a brain hemorrhage that nearly killed him. The confidential settlement also covers Michaels’ claims against CBS Broadcasting, which aired the show and the mishap. The Poison frontman blamed the network for airing the moment, which became which a viral video watched by tens of millions of people online, and claimed Tony Awards producers never warned him there would be a set change after he and his band performed “Nothin’ But a Good Time.” READ FULL STORY »

May 14 2012 04:30 PM ET

Rapper Mystikal begins jail sentence for domestic abuse

by Lanford Beard

Tags: Crime, Legal, Music

EW has confirmed TMZ’s report that “Shake Ya Ass” rapper Mystikal (née Michael Tyler) turned himself in to a Louisiana jail today to serve out the remainder of a 90-day sentence. The jail time was first ordered in February when the rapper was convicted for domestic abuse. In 2010, Mystikal wrapped up a six-year prison sentence for sexual battery and extortion committed in 2002. This most recent altercation violated the terms of his five-year probation sentence.