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ABC attacked by "DWTS" fans over Chaz Bono casting - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Dancing With the Stars" aims for provocative casts, and Chaz Bono's joining the show has already yielded strong reaction -- some of it ugly.

Bono, the only child of Sonny Bono and Cher, was born a woman but legally changed his gender and name last year. The announcement Monday that he would join the highly rated ABC dance competition immediately made him one of the highest-profile transgendered people in the world.

It also brought to the surface prejudices about Bono and others who have changed their gender, judging from the "Dancing With the Stars" message board. In hundreds of comments, Bono was the most common subject.

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Cartoonists plan Sept. 11 anniversary tribute - Yahoo! News

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Sept. 11 is etched in the memories of millions, and as the 10th anniversary nears, cartoonists are etching their thoughts and emotions about 9/11 into comic strips.

With the anniversary falling on a Sunday, more than 90 cartoonists with five different syndicates have banded together to dedicate their strips on Sept. 11 to those whose lives were lost in the attacks. Sept. 11-themed strips will appear from the writers and artists of "Family Circus," ''Mallard Fillmore," "Candorville," "Doonesbury" and "Pluggers," among others.

Jeff Keane, who co-authors "The Family Circus," was immediately sold on the idea when approached by King Features, his syndicate.

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Nasdaq extends gains, rises 2 percent - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rallied on Monday and the Nasdaq climbed 2 percent, supported by European and Asian equities that rallied partly on a possible merger between two big banks in Greece.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 189.89 points, or 1.68 percent, at 11,474.43. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> was up 21.73 points, or 1.85 percent, at 1,198.53. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> was up 51.66 points, or 2.08 percent, at 2,531.51.

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London actor wins comedy award at Edinburgh fringe - Yahoo! News

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Five years of solo comedy performances on the Edinburgh Fringe finally paid off for London-based actor Adam Riches Saturday when he won the festival's top comedy award.

The Foster's Best Comedy Show prize went to the 38-year-old comedian for what the judges described as his "trademark mix of character comedy, anarchic stagecraft and a fearless level of audience engagement" in "Bring Me the Head of Adam Riches."

They said he had created "a cavalcade of barely controlled chaos" in featuring such characters as Ian Dustry the talent manager, Pedro the swingball star, O'Hara the monster hunter, and the wheelchair-bound despot behind the board game Mastermind.

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"Midnight in Paris" actor mans up for Hemingway role - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Corey Stoll, though not a household name, was a major player in "Midnight in Paris," a movie that remained in picture houses all summer long and made more money than any other movie from the director Woody Allen.

Stoll spoke to TheWrap about acting, the motion picture business and how he played Ernest Hemingway in "Midnight in Paris."

Did you have any sense of the kind of phenomenon this movie was going to be?

No. I expected it to get the attention that Woody Allen movies have been getting over the last decade or so. I knew it was going to get out there, and I knew that even if it ended up being a minor Woody Allen film, it's still going to last. But you never know how many people are going to see it.

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Star-studded Venice festival gets movie mojo back - Yahoo! News

LONDON (Reuters) - The Venice film festival has rediscovered its movie mojo this year, putting high costs and growing competition from Toronto aside to provide a line-up full of hotly anticipated titles and big Hollywood stars.

George Clooney, a regular favorite on the Lido island where the world's oldest film festival is held, kicks off the glamorous 11-day event on Wednesday with "The Ides of March," a political drama which he also directed.

His cast includes Ryan Gosling and Philip Seymour Hoffman, part of a roll-call of A-listers that includes Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, Matthew McConaughey, Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and pop superstar Madonna.

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Wall Street pares gains as Apple drags - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose at the open on Thursday after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc agreed to invest $5 billion in Bank of America Corp , sending financial shares higher.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> gained 74.55 points, or 0.66 percent, to 11,395.26. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> rose 13.08 points, or 1.11 percent, to 1,190.68. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> added 14.46 points, or 0.59 percent, to 2,482.15.

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LAPD probe threatening letter to Craig Ferguson - Yahoo! News

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Craig Ferguson managed to crack a few jokes on his talk show Tuesday after receiving an envelope packed with white powder that turned out to be harmless.

"Today someone sent an envelope packed with white powder to the show. I offered to test it, but they said 'no,'" Ferguson quipped during a studio taping of "The Late Late Show."

The taping went on as scheduled after the show received a threatening letter sent to Ferguson. Police Det. Gus Villanueva declined to discuss the nature of the threat against the talk show host, saying only that it was sent from overseas.

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David Letterman jokes about militant death threat - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Late-night American TV comedian David Letterman shrugged off a death threat made against him by a Muslim militant, joking on his show that his audience could "shield" him.

Last week, the U.S.-based SITE intelligence monitoring group said a death threat against Letterman was posted on a website used by militants.

The militant who made the threat, and was apparently angered by a joke Letterman made about the death of a leading member of al Qaeda killed in an air strike in Pakistan, called on Muslims in the United States to "cut the tongue" of the comedian and "shut it forever."

While taping an episode of CBS network's "Late Show with David Letterman" on Monday, the comedian addressed the threat during his opening monologue.

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Wall Street rallies after four weeks of losses - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks surged more than 1 percent in early trading on Monday following four weeks of equity losses as stocks rebounded globally.

Equities have been pressured of late by growing concerns about the economy, given a string of weak economic data and the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe.

European stocks gained 2.1 percent, while the MSCI world equity index rose 0.3 percent. <.EU>

"Recent data has been inconclusive about whether we're going into recession, so the market bounces back and forth daily based on mood swings," said Andrew Slimmon, managing director of global investment solutions at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Chicago.

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