The Altruism

Captain America co-creator Joe Simon dies at 98 - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comic book artist Joe Simon, who created Captain America with the late Jack Kirby, has died at age 98, a family spokesman said on Thursday.

Simon died of natural causes on Wednesday at his home in New York surrounded by family, said Steve Saffel, who worked with him on autobiography "Joe Simon: My Life in Comics."

The first issue of Simon and Kirby's Captain America comic, released in late 1940 by a predecessor of Marvel Comics a year before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, sold nearly one million copies.

While the United States had not yet entered World War II, the American public was concerned about the threat of Nazi Germany led by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

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Alec Baldwin asked to leave flight for playing game - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Alec Baldwin was involved in a dispute with an American Airlines flight attendant on Tuesday and asked to disembark an airplane because he was playing a smart-phone word game before departure.

"Alec was asked to leave the flight for playing 'Words with Friends' while parked at the gate. He loves WWF so much that he was willing to leave a plane for it, but he has already boarded another AA flight," Baldwin's spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said in a statement.

Baldwin took to Twitter with several posts addressing the incident, as well as supporting rival United Airlines.

"Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving," tweeted the "30 Rock" actor.

He also tweeted "Last flight w American. Where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950's find jobs as flight attendants."

Baldwin's tweets and his spokesman's statement came after a passenger on the flight from Los Angeles International Airport to New York City, posted on Twitter, "On an AA flight at LAX. Alec Baldwin removed from the plane We had to go back to the gate. Terrible that everyone had to wait."

An official with American Airlines declined to comment citing customer privacy.

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Laura Osnes is a shooting star in 'Bonnie & Clyde' - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (AP) — Laura Osnes is still in that pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming phase.

The 25-year-old actress is now starring in her third Broadway show, and originating a role for the first time, only four years after landing in New York by way of an unlikely vehicle: a reality TV show.

"I think if I had written it out myself, I wouldn't have planned it as good as this. In my wildest dreams, I never would have imagined all of the amazing opportunities that I've had," Osnes says during a break in rehearsals for "Bonnie & Clyde," which has music by Frank Wildhorn.

Thanks to talent and some good luck, Osnes has speedily gone from performing "Grease" in dinner theater in Minneapolis to doing the same musical on Broadway after winning NBC's "Grease: You're the One That I Want" in 2007.

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Gaddafi's son betrayed by his own desert guide - Yahoo! News

ZINTAN, Libya (Reuters) - Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was betrayed to his captors by a Libyan nomad who says he was hired to help Muammar Gaddafi's son escape to neighboring Niger on the promise that he would be paid one million euros.

Saif al-Islam, wanted for prosecution by the International Criminal Court, was captured at the weekend in what one official in the country's new government said was "the final chapter in Libya's drama."

With a black scarf wrapped around his head, Yussef Saleh al-Hotmani said that he contacted revolutionary fighters in Libya's south to inform them when Saif's two-car convoy would be passing through the area on the night of November 18.

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Stallone sued, accused of stealing screenplay - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Action movie star Sylvester Stallone is accused in a lawsuit of copying another writer's screenplay to make "The Expendables," a movie about mercenaries hired to defeat a military dictator.

The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday by writer Marcus Webb, who said the screenplay for "The Expendables" is "strikingly similar and in some places identical" to his work entitled "The Cordoba Caper."

Webb seeks unspecified damages for copyright infringement and an order from the court stopping further infringement in any sequel by Stallone, his credited co-author David Callaham, Millennium Films, its Nu Image Films unit and Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation.

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Schwarzenegger to star in film - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Arnold Schwarzenegger is back at work -- with a real Jackass.

The former California governor and action star is now shooting "The Last Stand," Lionsgate's chase story, with "Jackass" star Johnny Knoxville and Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker, Lionsgate announced Monday.

Harry Dean Stanton, Eduardo Noriega, Rodrigo Santoro, Luis Guzman and Jaimie Alexander also star.

Shooting began Monday and will take place in New Mexico and Nevada.

The Korean director Kim Jee-Woon ("A Tale of Two Sisters," "The Good, The Bad, The Weird") is directing.

"The Last Stand" is about a former Los Angeles Police officer who becomes the sheriff of a sleepy border town and finds himself standing between a ruthless drug cartel leader and the border.

Lionsgate says the movie includes "one of the most daring face offs in cinema history."

The movie is based on Andrew Knauer's spec script which Jeffrey Nachmanoff ("The Day After Tomorrow") rewrote.

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Oscar buzz: raves for "Tintin"; lights out for "J. Edgar" - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Two of the season's previously-unseen awards contenders were unveiled over the last few days, but it's a lot easier to find reactions to Steven Spielberg's "The Adventures of Tintin" than Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar."

The Spielberg film, which is subtitled "The Secret of the Unicorn," opens in Europe this month, two months ahead of its U.S. release. The embargo on reviews was lifted over the weekend, and the result was a flood of praise.

Eastwood's "J. Edgar," meanwhile, debuted in the filmmaker's hometown of Carmel, Calif., where its initial screening was cut short by a power outage. It re-screened the next night...but even the twitterverse was curiously silent about the film, in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

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Larry Hagman of 'Dallas' diagnosed with cancer - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (AP) — Larry Hagman has been diagnosed with cancer.

The 80-year-old actor is famous for playing J.R. Ewing on "Dallas." In a statement Friday, he said: "As J.R. I could get away with anything — bribery, blackmail and adultery. But I got caught by cancer."

Hagman declined to specify what kind of cancer he's contracted, but said it's "a very common and treatable form." He plans to continue working on a new reboot of "Dallas" for TNT, which begins production Monday.

The new "Dallas" focuses on the Ewing offspring as they clash over the future of the family dynasty. The original prime-time soap opera aired on CBS from 1978 to 1991. Hagman underwent a liver transplant in the mid-1990s.

Said Hagman: "As we all know, you can't keep J.R. down!"

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Reality star Kardashian on prenup: You do the math - Yahoo! News

DUBAI (Reuters) - Reality star Kim Kardashian, who married basketball player Kris Humphries in a lavish made-for-TV wedding in August, refused to be drawn on questions about whether she arranged a pre-nuptial agreement before marrying the New Jersey Nets player.

Some 3.2 million viewers watched Kardashian, 30, one of the highest earning reality TV stars, wed 26 year-old Humphries in a two-part episode of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" which aired in the United States this week.

Asked on Thursday whether she had signed a pre-nuptial agreement, Kardashian said: "I don't really talk finances. My father was an attorney and I'm a smart girl -- I'd like to think so -- you can do the math.

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Muslim comic series aims to break through in US - Yahoo! News

DETROIT (AP) — Comic book fans might call it a great origin story: In the aftermath of 9/11, a Muslim man creates a comic book series, "The 99," inspired by the principles of his faith. It builds a global audience and investors contribute millions for it to continue and expand.

In two vastly different cultures, Naif Al-Mutawa's tale hits a few roadblocks — "villains" if you will: Censorship from Saudi Arabia, home to the main Muslim holy sites; in the United States, a struggle to build an audience where free expression has been hampered by a post-9/11 rise in suspicion and scrutiny of all things Islamic.

For Al-Mutawa, it's evidence that tales like his are needed to counter hardline, intolerant ideologies of all stripes.

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