Danny Puff

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop sensation Justin Bieber flew from Europe back to his Los Angeles area home on Tuesday and into an argument with one of his neighbors - the latest in a series of odd incidents involving the teen singer.

Deputies were called to the 19-year-old's house in Calabasas, California, on Tuesday morning after a neighbor claimed that he had been threatened and struck by Bieber, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

A police report alleging battery and threats by Bieber had been filed and was being investigated, Whitmore said. No charges have been filed against the Canadian pop star and Whitmore declined to give details, citing an ongoing investigation.

Under California law, a misdemeanor battery charge can include unwanted touching or spitting.

The alleged altercation took place after the "Boyfriend" singer flew overnight from Poland, startling photographers and Lodz airport officials by stripping off his shirt on a freezing evening as he walked through security and to his private jet.

Bieber's publicist did not return calls for comment on Tuesday's incident, which follows odd behavior by the singer during his European tour, including turning up late for a London concert and wearing a gas mask on a night out.

A source close to the star said the Calabasas dispute stemmed from a neighbor who came by to complain about parties at the house while Bieber was away. Words were exchanged but no physical altercation took place, the source said, citing the singer's security detail.

Celebrity website TMZ.com said the dispute was provoked by Bieber driving a newly delivered Ferrari up and down the street at high speed early on Tuesday morning. The Bieber source disagreed with that claim.

Bieber has been playing concerts around Europe for his "Believe" tour for several weeks, and his next concert is scheduled for Munich, Germany, on March 28.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) From a bank of chairs in an NBC Universal control room, technician Antonella Caruso counted down as if she were anticipating a rocket booster's liftoff: "Nine, eight, seven, six ..."

It was a dress rehearsal for USA's plan to let viewers of "Psych" choose the ending of Wednesday's episode, celebrating the drama's 100th episode and culminating the network's two-year experiment at an exclusively fan-centered approach at marketing.

In the episode, Shawn (actor James Roday) and Gus (Dule Hill) try to solve a murder at a party hosted by an old rock star in a California mansion. There are five suspects: the groupie, the manager, the author, the host and, of course, the butler. During the show, the suspects are narrowed down to three and viewers are asked to vote on social media who they thought committed the crime. Three endings were filmed, each lasting three minutes, and the top vote-getter will be used.

The episode salutes the 1985 film "Clue" and features that film's actors Christopher Lloyd, Lesley Ann Warren and Martin Mull, along with guest shots from Garrett Morris and Curt Smith of Tears For Fears.

Depending on where you live, you could see a different ending. USA is conducting separate votes for the East and West coast airings of the show. (Viewers in other time zones will see the Eastern version at 10 p.m. Eastern.) They estimate tabulating 190,000 to 250,000 votes.

Viewer-selected endings aren't necessarily unique (CBS' "Hawaii Five-0" did one this year), but here fans will be updated a handful of times during the show on how the vote is going. That's where Caruso's practice came in; she was counting down to an insert of a vote tally.

"Psych" is in its seventh season, a point at which most shows are considered "mature" and are losing viewers, but it does have a relatively young, devoted audience and is USA's third most-popular original show behind "Burn Notice" and "Suits." Instead of running general advertisements encouraging viewership when its sixth season started last year, USA sought to engage fans through social media and activities, said Alexandra Shapiro, USA's executive vice president of marketing and digital.

"It's great to be loved," Shapiro said. "But you have to love back."

USA set up online games for "Psych" fans to play, with real and virtual prizes. Particularly high-scoring fans even become part of the game. There was a fan appreciation day, with some invited to meet the cast. USA encouraged social media interaction with stars and others involved with the show. A "slumber party" of viewer-chosen shows that aired from midnight to 6 a.m. on a Saturday in February resulted in some 157,000 mentions on Twitter.

One goal is to make live viewing of new episodes an event, Shapiro said. DVR viewing is fine, but networks still reliably make more money when there is a strong audience for original airings.

So far, so good. The February debut of the seventh season saw stronger ratings than the sixth season opener in 2012, with a 22 percent increase in the desirable young audience of viewers aged 18-to-34, the Nielsen company said.

"Our job is so much harder than it was 10 years ago or even five years ago," Shapiro said. "We used to be content messengers. Now you have to be content creators. You as a marketer have to create compelling content that a fan is going to engage with."

It's not necessarily an approach that works with every show, she said. But it could be a template for some with similar audiences.

For this week, the chief concern is compiling the fans' votes, and making sure technicians in New Jersey charged with making sure the correct ending of Wednesday's episode is inserted.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE David Bauder can be reached at dbauder(at)ap.org or on Twitter (at)dbauder.

Read More

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) Singer Dionne Warwick claims in a recent bankruptcy filing that she owes nearly $10 million in back taxes and her monthly expenses exceed $20,000.

The South Orange resident and singer of classics such as "Walk On By," ''I Say a Little Prayer" and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" filed a Chapter 7 petition in U.S. bankruptcy court in New Jersey last Thursday.

In the filing, the 72-year-old Warwick listed liabilities that include nearly $7 million owed to the Internal Revenue Service for the years 1991 to 1999 and more than $3 million in business taxes owed to the state of California.

Warwick, a cousin of the late Whitney Houston, also listed $20,950 in monthly income from royalties, retirement income and a contract with Culver City, Calif.-based Star Girl Productions. Her monthly expenses total $20,940 and include $5,000 for housekeeping/housesitting.

Warwick's publicist said that the singer was victimized by bad financial management in the 1990s and that she has paid back the actual amount of the taxes, but penalties and interest have accumulated over the years.

"In light of the magnitude of her tax liabilities, (Dionne) Warwick has repeatedly attempted to offer re-payment plans and proposals to the IRS and the California Franchise Tax Board for taxes owed," Kevin Sasaki said in an email Tuesday. "These plans were not accepted, resulting in escalating interest and penalties. Although the actual amount of back taxes owed has been paid, the resulting penalties and interest has continually accrued."

Read More

A suburban district attorney who is the son of TV's "Judge Judy" is being accused of interfering in a child rape case in which the suspect is his personal trainer and recently lived with him.

Putnam County District Attorney Adam Levy has recused himself from the investigation of Alexandru Hossu, but the local sheriff claims Levy is still involved.

"He is apparently trying to influence and affect the investigation, which could be perceived as an ethical violation of his official duties and perhaps even as an attempt to undermine it," Sheriff Donald Smith said.

In a response Monday night, Levy accused the sheriff of making "unfounded allegations and misstatements."

"My office acted properly in every aspect of the investigation," he said.

The question of Levy's involvement in the case has turned into a volley of accusations between the two men, who have clashed publicly before over traffic tickets; Levy also made a veiled criticism of the sheriff's office in a news release recently.

Hossu, 35, was arrested last week on charges that he twice raped a 12-year-old girl in 2010. The sheriff said the victim, now 15, only recently reported being raped. Hossu made a brief appearance in court Tuesday in and is due back May 7. A call to his lawyer was not immediately returned.

In his initial news release, the sheriff gave the defendant's address as Levy's home in Southeast, N.Y., about 50 miles north of New York City. Later, he described Hossu as Levy's "live-in personal trainer."

Levy said the sheriff had made a mistake. The sheriff's office said Monday that Hossu did live at Levy's home, but "the specific dates" have not been determined.

Levy said he recused himself as soon as he learned that Hossu, "who my family had known for years," was under investigation. But the sheriff said an assistant district attorney had already made the recusal decision for Levy, so it "was not really his original idea at all."

Smith said Levy's commenting on the case revealed "ongoing and improper involvement."

"In my view, Mr. Levy's comments and actions would seem to suggest that, if he could have his own way, Mr. Hossu would never have been brought to justice for his crime and Mr. Levy's relationship with him would never have been brought to the light of public scrutiny," the sheriff said.

He said Levy was trying to distract public attention "from what this case is really about: the vicious rape of a little girl by a man whom he housed and hired as his personal fitness trainer."

The sheriff also said Hossu is a Romanian in the country illegally, his work visa having expired 12 years ago. Without mentioning Levy, he said he has requested a federal investigation to determine if anyone illegally "harbored, shielded, aided or abetted" Hossu before or after the alleged rape.

Levy said last week he had no idea of Hossu's immigration status.

Both Levy and Smith are Republicans. It's not clear whether there's any underlying reason for the war of words, though the men battled last year over how to handle traffic tickets. In one of his recent statements, Levy said his office has been trying "to improve the way law enforcement agencies like the Sheriff's Department handled child sexual abuse allegations."

Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore, would not say whether Levy might be questioned during the investigation. But he said, "Our investigation relates to the allegations of the forcible rape."

Judy Sheindlin, who is Levy's mother, a retired New York judge and earns a reported $45 million a year as the wildly popular star of her courtroom TV show, says that's as it should be.

"The sole focus of this story should be the investigation as to whether a young girl was the victim of a very serious crime," she said Tuesday through spokesman Gary Rosen.

Read More

By John Gaudiosi

(Reuters) - Film director James Cameron is donating the Deepsea Challenger craft he used to make a record-setting solo dive a year ago to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to speed research into the deepest parts of the world's oceans.

Cameron, who is focused now on pre-production for the sequels to his blockbuster movie "Avatar," said he hoped the donation to the non-profit research facility in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, would bring the technology he developed for the undersea craft into the mainstream.

In a telephone interview marking the one-year anniversary of his nearly 7-mile-deep (11.2-km-deep) dive in the western Pacific, the Oscar-winning director said that scientists had identified more than 60 new species, including bacteria, from material he brought back.

Cameron expects to release a long-awaited 3D movie of the dive in movie theaters in the fall of 2013.

Cameron also directed the 1997 movie "Titanic" as well as undertaking and filming several underwater expeditions exploring the wreck of the ship in the North Atlantic.

Q: What impact do you hope the Deepsea Challenger's transfer to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will have on continued research?

A: It drives public attention to the need for new technology and funding for deep ocean work, which WHOI is the leader of in this country. It will have a very specific and immediate effect of new vehicles and new vehicle platforms, our cameras, our communications, our syntactic foam and battery systems, they'll incorporate into their future stuff. The way we solved problems is so outside the box, they're eager to bring that into their projects.

I could leave the sub in my barn, but that's not going to do anybody any good while I'm off making "Avatar" films for the next few years. I want this technology to be out there and dynamic and adaptive.

Q: What are some of the new species and findings that have come from this dive?

A: I met with Doug Bartlett out of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (who was the chief scientist on the dive expedition) and he said there are at least 68 new species coming out of this, and that includes a number of arthropods and invertebrate animals and a lot of new bacteria.

Q: What will audiences experience when your 3D movie of this dive is released.

A: "The Deepsea Challenge" is coming out this fall. You go on the journey. It's about the team of these young guys and how they tackled the problems and overcame a lot of hurdles and set-backs. They got to see some pretty amazing stuff and got to bring back the footage in 3D. You'll feel like you've been through the whole thing, including actually diving inside the sub. I was jammed into this 42-inch (106 centimeter) sphere with all this equipment and a 3D camera with me at all time.

Q: How has filming underwater in 3D with this dive and past Titanic dives helped you as a Hollywood director?

A: There's always been a good synergy between the technology that's been developed for these expeditions and the technology that's used for the films. "Avatar" was shot with a second generation of the 3D cameras that were built for my 2001 Titanic expedition. We're constantly building and improving the technology. Some of the things that went into building the Deepsea Challenger cameras, which had to be so tiny, will probably be used in action cameras in the next "Avatar" films.

The odds are other filmmakers will use this technology before me because my company, Cameron Pace Group, supplies cameras to most of the big movies that are shooting in 3D. We develop something new, I use it on an expedition, and while I go off and write and design and fool around in pre-production, five other movies have gone out and used the cameras in the meantime. That was the case even when I had made "Avatar," a number of other films had already used those cameras.

(Reporting By John Gaudiosi in North Carolina, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) ESPN is staying in the family in giving its Arthur Ashe Courage Award to Robin Roberts at its annual ESPY awards this summer.

The "Good Morning America" anchor is being saluted for how she kept viewers involved in her treatments for two serious illnesses. She had breast cancer in 2007 and last year had to undergo a bone marrow transplant to treat a rare blood disorder. Roberts returned to "Good Morning America" last month.

Roberts came to sister company ABC from ESPN, where she was the network's first black female sportscaster.

Most past awards recipients have sports connections, like former Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt last year. But the ESPYs also have honored Nelson Mandela and the four men who tried to stop one of the Sept. 11 hijackings.

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) Former "American Idol" contestant Crystal Bowersox will officially be taking a walk after midnight on Broadway.

Producers of the Patsy Cline musical "Always... Patsy Cline" said Tuesday that Bowersox will portray the legendary country singer in a new production this summer in New York. John Rando will direct.

Performances begin in July with an August opening. The theater and exact dates haven't been announced.

Written in 1988 by Ted Swindley, "Always... Patsy Cline" is based on a true story about Cline's friendship with a fan from Houston who befriended the star in a Texas honky-tonk in 1961 and continued a correspondence with Cline until her death in 1963 in a plane crash at age 30.

The musical features 27 Cline hits, including "Walkin' After Midnight," ''I Fall To Pieces," ''Crazy," ''She's Got You," ''Sweet Dreams," ''Back In Baby's Arms" and "Your Cheatin' Heart." A live band accompanies the action.

Bowersox, born in Elliston, Ohio, had previously expressed interest in the project but producers only publicly announced its plans on Tuesday.

The name of the musical is borrowed from the Cline's letters to the fan, Louise Seger, which she signed "(Love) Always... Patsy Cline." Oscar and Emmy nominee Annette O'Toole will play Seger.

The show made its world premiere at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, where it is currently playing in honor of the show's 25th anniversary. It has been staged all over the U.S., Canada, the UK and Australia. This year is the 50th anniversary of Patsy Cline's death.

Bowersox, who lost season nine of "American Idol" to Lee DeWyze in 2010, is currently promoting her new release, the sophomore CD "All That For This." Bowersox's previous acting roles include a 2011 appearance on ABC's "Burden of Proof."

Other "American Idol" contestants to reach Broadway include Fantasia Barrino, Clay Aiken, Jordin Sparks and Constantine Maroulis, who return this year in "Jekyll and Hyde." Plans fell through for another alumni, Bo Bice, to make his Broadway debut this spring when his show "Pump Boys & Dinettes" was scrapped.

___

Online: http://www.alwayspatsycline.net

___

Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Read More

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - King Richard III is at the centre of a new fight over the location of his final resting place, just weeks after the remains of the last English king to die in battle were found underneath a council car park.

Archaeologists announced one of the most remarkable finds in recent English history last month when they confirmed the discovery of the body of Richard, who was slain at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, during excavations in Leicester.

The discovery generated massive interest internationally as the monarch was famously cast by William Shakespeare as a deformed tyrant who murdered his two nephews, known as the princes, in the Tower of London.

He has long been one of the most controversial characters in English history, with passionate supporters claiming he was wrongly maligned after his death and was in fact an enlightened ruler. Now, more than 500 years after his death, he is still generating division.

The University of Leicester, which led the project to find and exhume Richard, was given permission to reinter the king's remains at the cathedral in Leicester, which is close to Bosworth in central England.

But descendants of the monarch, who was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty, are seeking a legal challenge to have his body laid to rest instead in York, the northern English city with which he had close links during his life.

"We have now written officially to the Ministry of Justice and University of Leicester, notifying them that we plan to issue these claims," said Matthew Howarth, the lawyer representing the Plantagenet Alliance which is spearheaded by 15 of Richard's descendants.

"We will follow up by issuing the judicial review and other proceedings as soon as possible, but certainly within the next few weeks."

They will argue that the Ministry of Justice failed to consult them over the exhumation and the licence allowing the university to re-bury the king, and this failure breached the European Convention on Human Rights.

"We have every hope that Matthew and his colleagues will succeed in these cases and help us significantly in our quest to have Richard's remains buried at the most appropriate site, York Minster," said Stephen Nicolay, a 16th great-nephew of the monarch.

(Reporting by Michael Holden, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

Read More

By Belinda Goldsmith

LONDON (Reuters) - Actress Judi Dench may be battling deteriorating eyesight and a failing memory but the veteran performer showed no sign of faltering when she teamed up with fellow James Bond star Ben Whishaw on a London stage on Monday.

Dench, 78, one of Britain's most-respected actresses, has tackled a list of stage and film roles over her career, at ease with Shakespeare as in Hollywood, playing M in seven Bond movies before bowing out of 007's life in last year's "Skyfall".

It emerged a year ago that Dench was suffering from macular degeneration, the leading cause of severe vision loss in people over 60, and she relied on friends to read scripts to her.

This month she told a television interview she took fish oil tablets daily to boost her memory and remember her lines but said she had no intention of slowing down or stopping acting.

Dench won nothing but praise on Tuesday for joining 32-year-old Whishaw, the gadget guy Q in James Bond, in a new play, "Peter and Alice", by American playwright John Logan who co-wrote "Skyfall".

"(Dench) lends to Alice her brilliance at combining a sense of tart, witty combativeness with a reverberant depth of bruised humanity," wrote critic Paul Taylor in the Independent although he was less enamored with the play, giving it three stars out of five.

"Dench is unmatchable," raved the Times critic Libby Purves, giving the play that "breaks your heart open" five stars.

Logan's play imagines a real-life meeting between an elderly Alice Liddell Hargreaves and 30-something Peter Llewellyn Davies at a Lewis Carroll exhibition in 1932, the people who inspired Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan".

As the two start talking and look back to their childhoods, the gaps start to emerge between the fantasies of the stories they inspired and the harsh reality they faced as adults, confronting loss, death, illness and alcoholism.

The 90-minute play, painfully moving, was described as a tenderly sketched portrait of life's challenges.

TRAGEDY

"No one expresses that pain and resilience quite as acutely yet stoically as Judi Dench, and she is ideally partnered by the more depressively hang-dog presence of Ben Whishaw for a beautiful study in contrasts of how they deal with life's blows," wrote critic Mark Shenton in the Stage.

The true story of the five Davies brothers, whom Barrie befriended, is tragic. The eldest, George, died in the trenches of World War I, while Michael, the second youngest, committed suicide aged 20, and Peter, the middle child, killed himself by throwing himself in front of a London train in 1960 aged 63.

The case of Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell) is almost as sad. She lost two of her three sons in World War I and ended up broke after her husband's death, selling off the original 1864 "Alice" manuscript to raise cash. She died in 1934.

"One of Judi Dench's great strengths, seen in countless Shakespearean heroines such as Viola and Beatrice, is her ability to combine ecstasy and melancholy, witnessed in abundance here," wrote the Guardian's critic Michael Billington, giving the play four stars.

"Peter and Alice", running at London's Noel Coward theatre until June 1, is Logan's first new play since "Red" which opened in London in 2009 and went on to win six Tony awards, Broadway's highest honors, in 2010.

(Editing by Sophie Hares)

Read More

CINCINNATI (AP) Phil is off the hook.

A winter-weary Ohio prosecutor who filed a tongue-in-cheek criminal indictment against the famous Pennsylvania groundhog over his "prediction" of an early spring dropped the charge Tuesday. Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser said Punxsutawney Phil has a "defense with teeth in it" since the animal's handler is taking the blame.

The Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, attracts worldwide attention each year. But when Gmoser filed his indictment last week after snow was forecast to fall after the official start of spring, renewed attention made it feel like Feb. 2 all over again.

Bill Deeley, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's Inner Circle, said Monday the furry prognosticator had actually predicted six more weeks of winter, but he mistakenly announced an early spring because he failed to correctly interpret Phil's "groundhog-ese."

"Now it turns out, Punxsutawney Phil is little more than a scapegoat," Gmoser wrote in the dismissal.

That's a sharp contrast to last week, when Gmoser had written: "Punxsutawney Phil did purposely, and with prior calculation and design, cause the people to believe that spring would come early."

Deeley said Tuesday that going after the groundhog probably gave prosecutors some relief from their challenges in bringing murderers, drug dealers and other criminals to justice, and that Phil seemed nonplussed by the charge.

"No, he's not worried," Deeley said. "He's getting three square meals a day, and a lot of rest."

He also said the community appreciated all the extra publicity, which he said "you couldn't put a dollar figure on." Gmoser's office said he had also received hundreds of calls.

Deeley wanted to be sure Tuesday he wouldn't be the prosecutor's next target, but Gmoser said it was time to move on.

"Truly, I have really serious work to do in Butler County," he said from his office in Hamilton, some 25 miles north of Cincinnati, even as snowflakes dropped from the skies. "Let's end it on a high note."

He assured Ohio's lesser-known fuzzy forecaster, Buckeye Chuck, he won't face prosecution for his own erroneous prediction. Chuck, it turned out, was granted immunity after agreeing to cooperate with the state.

"I'm kind of done with animal cases," Gmoser said. "Maybe another prosecutor can go after the Easter Bunny." __

Associated Press writer Joe Mandak in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

___

Contact Dan Sewell at http://www.twitter.com/dansewell

Read More