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Gov. hasn’t reviewed Hilton fan petition

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
LOS ANGELES - The many moods of   Paris Hilton shifted again when the jail-bound socialite rehired the publicist she blamed for her 45-day sentence.
 
Elliot Mintz confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday that he is again representing the 26-year-old socialite, who was ordered to report to county jail by June 5 for violating the terms of her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. Mintz, 62, wouldn’t elaborate on why he reunited with Hilton. The publicist, whose clients have included John Lennon and        Bob Dylan, issued a statement Sunday night that he and Hilton had parted ways over an apparent “misunderstanding she received from me regarding the terms of her probation.” In a court appearance Friday, Hilton told the judge Mintz informed her it was all right to drive on a suspended license for work obligations. Mintz also testified Hilton believed she was allowed to drive. The judge called Mintz’s testimony worthless. Hilton — star of E! network’s reality show “The Simple Life” — has called the sentence unfair, and her fans have posted a petition on the Internet urging Gov.        Arnold Schwarzenegger to pardon her. “I feel that I was treated unfairly and that the sentence is both cruel and unwarranted and I don’t deserve this,” Hilton told photographers assembled outside her home Saturday. In an interview for the June issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Hilton says: “I get in more trouble just because of who I am. The cops do it all the time. They’ll just pull me over to hit on me.” “It’s really annoying. They’re like, `What’s your phone number? Want to go to dinner?’ They won’t even give me a ticket. They just pull me over, and the paparazzi, of course, take a picture. All the time. I have so many cops’ business cards.” The governor’s office hasn’t reviewed the petition but has received individual e-mails from constituents both for and against a gubernatorial pardon, Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said Tuesday. “We’ll treat this as we would any other case of this nature, but it would be premature for the governor to get involved until the individual has exhausted his or her judicial remedies,” McLear said. The petition, which had more than 900 signatures by Tuesday morning, urges Schwarzenegger to pardon Hilton because she provides “beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives.” Meanwhile, Hilton’s lawyers have filed a notice with the court indicating their intent to appeal the decision. The document is required before a formal appeal can be lodged. The latest installment of “The Simple Life,” which throws Hilton and pal        Nicole Richie, 25, into everyday situations, premieres May 28 on E! After famously feuding and filming their parts separately last season, the celebutantes reunite as camp counselors for the show’s fifth installment. source : yahoo news http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com Tags:

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State records will be easier to view with Google deal

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007
Anyone who wants to check on the complaint records of a specific contractor or a day care center will find the task much easier as the result of a partnership between Google and the state of Arizona announced Monday. About 160,000 state documents that are public records but have been difficult to access online will appear prominently in Google and other search engines beginning this week, allowing computer users to find the records more easily than was previously possible through state government Web sites. The partnership was announced Monday by Gov. Janet Napolitano and Google officials at the Google offices in Tempe. Napolitano said the project will transform the way state government presents information to the public. “It eliminates a lot of the hassles and it simplifies the process of searching for Arizona records,” she said. “And it will be a way to make government even more transparent.” State agencies whose records will be accessible through the most commonly used search engines will be the registrar of contractors, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the Government Information Technology Agency, the governor’s office, and the departments of administration, health services, public safety and real estate. State job openings will also be available. Examples of specific information that will be more easily available are licensing records of day care centers held by the Department of Health Services and the licensing records of real estate agents held by the Department of Real Estate, officials said. The information will appear in the Google search engine results in a few weeks, said J.L. Needham, Google’s manager of public sector content partnerships. Previously, if a citizen wanted information on a real estate agent, the computer user would have to know the specific state Web site on which the information was held. Now a user will simply launch a search on that person through a commercial search engine such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN, and those search engines will take the user to the right page inside the state database. A person who is frustrated in trying to find information could revert to the time consuming method of calling an agency or going in person to a government office, Needham said. Thus the project should make state government more efficient, he said. “If government is creating information and putting it online . . . this information should be as easy to find as the address of your favorite restaurant,” he said. Arizona is joining California, Utah and Virginia in the first group of states to roll out the service. Needham said those states were chosen because they could adopt their records rapidly. He said the company hopes to expand the service to other states and more federal documents as well as to records of Arizona counties and municipalities. Answering criticism that the service could create privacy issues by making personal information more readily accessible, Napolitano said only state records that are already public will be available through the search engines. “We are making sure that the information available on the state databases is not the type of private information that would lead to identify theft,” she said. If the service is expanded to county government records, efforts will be needed to make sure the counties follow the same policy on personal information, she said. The service is being provided at no cost to the states. The process of making government records available to the search engine is relatively easy, requiring only that government technology managers submit information lists to Google that allow the search engine can “crawl” automatically to those pages, Needham said. Chris Cummiskey, the state’s chief information officer, said records from more state agencies will join the program over time. He said the state is interested in the effort because the public is increasingly using search engines to gain information about state government rather than going to the Web pages of state agencies. source : Google news http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com Tags:

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Marriage - a bad Bollywood career move?

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
She is a former Miss World, top Bollywood actress and one of the faces of international cosmetics firm L’Oreal. She has featured on the cover of Time magazine, and is one of the few Indian actors successfully to have crossed over into western cinema - her wax statue has even been placed in Madame Tussaud’s in London. So when the green-eyed beauty, Aishwarya Rai, decided to marry the eligible bachelor and rising star Abhishek Bachchan, the news made world headlines. There has been a frenzy of interest in her marriage to him on Friday. But once the last of the confetti has fallen, Ms Rai may well discover that there is little compatibility between her glittering career and tying the knot. The problem is that Bollywood does not take kindly to actresses getting married. Wedding bells usually sound the death knell for most acting careers, and if the hard truth is that a married woman in her 30s can, in most cases, bid farewell to the silver screen. Some critics say it’s better she stops acting now before a lack of roles forces her to quit anyway. But a woman of Ms Rai’s beauty and status is unlikely to disappear quietly. Film critic Indu Mirani told the BBC website that her options may now change.
“Bollywood is changing and where married actresses did not get any decent roles, now they are getting offers to play mature parts. “Aishwarya will certainly not be shunted out of the industry but she can no longer do any of the roles that other single actresses still can,” she said.
The couple will not be short of options once the festivities are over Advertising representative Prahlad Kakkar says that she and Abhishek Bachchan could - if they want to - take advantage of the fact that they enjoy a huge fan following. He says that India is an emotional country where people have few real or imaginary heroes. “The couple are like the fairytale prince and princess of this country,” he says. “So the first lady of films, marrying the young prince of the first family of films, it’s magical and everybody wants to touch that magic because they feel it’s going to be very lucky for them, so they want to be part of the whole jamboree.” Mr Kakkar points out that together the pair could be a great - but expensive - asset for advertisers. But he cautions that the audience may not take immediately to products which they endorse. “Let’s see if they actually do it or not, because to put them together and fit them in a product and suddenly, from a goddess, she becomes a housewife, and from a young teenage idol, he becomes a husband, it’s going to be a bit of taking to in terms of their transition,” he said. Product endorsements are a big source of income for actors and actresses who charge millions of dollars to lend their names and faces to ad campaigns. For most advertisers aiming to draw in consumers in India, the first choice of brand ambassador is usually a cricketer or a Bollywood actor since Indians are great fans of cricket and Hindi films.
players and film stars enjoy demi-god status and are big icons for the common man. Aishwarya Rai is one of the top brand ambassadors in the country, while Abhishek Bachchan is the face for Motorola phones. Brand consultant Santosh Desai says that the pair cannot be guaranteed to succeed in advertising in the same way as another Bollywood couple, Kajol and Ajay Devgan. They are in constant demand and have recently advertised an international household appliance company as well as an Indian telecoms company. “I think they should pretend like the wedding never happened when it comes to endorsing products,” he told the BBC website.
“Aishwarya Rai has this air of royalty about her, she is like the princess to the manor born, an ice maiden who is unattainable. “Abhishek Bachchan is the likeable, cool guy who is unaffected by where he comes from - that is his appeal. “If the two come together, then there will be a sense of domesticity and normalcy about them. The air of mystique will disappear and that will take some of their allure away.” But most agree that is a pessimistic assessment. Even if things do go wrong, Abhishek Bachchan can derive inspiration from his father Amitabh Bachchan’s career. It picked up dramatically after his marriage to the top actress at the time Jaya Bhaduri. We will see if this turns into a case of history repeating itself.   source : BBC News http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com
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WEB EXPLOSION IN INDIA

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

 

THE PLUSES  

1. Indians internet users have multiplied from just 2.5 million in 2000 to 37 million now.  

2. India’s internet usage has grown the fastest in the world at 33% way ahead of Russia’s 21% and china’s 20 %  

3. In 2006, venture capitalists (VC’s) struck 30 deals worth a total of 200$ million compared to $ 36 million in seven deals in 2005.  

4. In the first four months of 2007, VC’s have already invested $ 13 million in five companies.  

THE MINUSES  

1. India does not figure in the top countries in terms of average monthly hours spent online per unique visitor.  

2. Indians spend most of their time on the internet chatting or checking mail, e-commerce is still in a nascent stage.  

3. Too many ‘me –too’ companies means that innovative ideas many not get funded when they need it the most in their early stages.  

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Bollywood’s Bachchan, Rai wed in Hindu ceremony

Saturday, April 21st, 2007
 Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, one of Bollywood’s best-known screen couples, married on Friday in a traditional Hindu wedding in which the groom rode a white horse before the pair took their vows around a sacred fire. The ceremonies concluded three days of celebrations at the actors’ homes in India’s entertainment capital of Mumbai, creating, what industry pundits said is, Bollywood’s ultimate power couple. Rai, 33, is a former Miss World and Bachchan, 31, belongs to Indian film royalty, being the son of Amitabh Bachchan, the country’s best-known actor who has a huge fan following around the world. Bachchan, wearing a white “bandhgala” or a long Indian tunic, a silver-colored turban and a veil of flowers on his face, rode a white horse as part of a custom and waved to hundreds of fans gathered outside his house. The groom’s party then moved to another Bachchan residence nearby where the marriage was solemnized by priests who chanted hymns from ancient Indian scriptures amid the blowing of conch shells and ululation, sources involved with the wedding said. The celebrations have transfixed Bollywood and sent India’s celebrity-obsessed media into a frenzy even though the Bachchans have tried to keep the event strictly private and low-key because the groom’s grandmother is ill. But fans did not leave the couple — dubbed as “Abhiash” by the Indian media which likens them to the Hollywood celebrity duo of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie — alone as hundreds of them lined the roads leading to the marriage venue. Police briefly used batons to push back over-enthusiastic fans. “LOVER” SLASHES WRIST Many fans slept on the pavement outside Bachchan’s house to catch a glimpse of the stars. “I don’t have an invitation but I have come to bless the couple,” said Keshav Srivastav, a look-alike of Bachchan senior who drew cheers from the amused crowd. Earlier, the celebrations were marked by drama after an Indian woman claiming to be Bachchan’s lover slashed her wrist in front of his home. She told reporters she wanted to kill herself because Bachchan had gone back on his promise of marrying her after having “physical relations” with her. Police arrested the woman — described as a struggling fashion model — for attempting suicide, a punishable offence. Police refused to register a complaint against Bachchan, saying the model had no proof of the relationship and it looked like a publicity stunt. Rai and Bachchan have worked together in at least five films, and both have been romantically linked in the past to other Bollywood stars. Rai, who has acted in over 40 films, was crowned Miss World in 1994. Bachchan too has notched up about 40 movies. source : Reuters http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com Tags:

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Two A-I flights make emergency landing

Monday, April 9th, 2007
New Delhi: An Air-India flight from Dubai made an emergency landing at the Delhi international airport Monday afternoon, hours after another jet of the airlines from Bangkok made a similar landing following technical snags. All passengers were safe.
The Air-India flight A-736 from Dubai made an emergency landing at the Indira Gandhi International Airport at 3.30 p.m. after the plane developed technical snags. The plane had 65 people onboard. “All passengers are safe,” said a senior airport official.
Earlier in the day, an Air-India Shanghai-Bangkok-Delhi flight A310 landed at the airport at around 6.28 a.m. after it developed a technical snag in the locking system of the front landing gear. All 191 passengers were reported safe. The emergency landing left the main runway blocked and disrupted flights for over six hours. source : msn news http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com Tags:

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Archie and gang to go desi

Sunday, April 8th, 2007
 Iconic US comic-strip hero Archie is all set to go desi and woo sweethearts Veronica and Betty in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil and Bengali, playing cricket instead of baseball and driving a Tata vehicle instead of a Ford.
Archie Entertainment president Steven R Herman, in an exclusive chat with FE, said the brand based on the Archie characters would make a splash across various formats like publishing, TV, mobile phones strips and apparel & accessories, targeting teens and tweens. “Going local is an important criteria to reach new audiences and we plan to do precisely that as we expand across various formats,” Herman said. Even as it moves ahead to strike local partnerships, Archie Entertainment has appointed Star India’s license & merchandising division to exclusively represent the Archie property in India. Giving examples of the special efforts for India, Herman said the company planned to localise stories and use local brand names, holiday spots and festivals in the story-line. “We will integrate Indian holidays or festivals in the stories and plan to use familiar Indian brands. For example, Archie can drive a Tata instead of a Ford; Veronica can wear a saree,” Herman said. The company is also set to publish the comics locally instead of importing them from the US. “Localisation will make the comics very cheap in India, maybe below Rs 25 against the current price of around Rs 80,” he said. The company has also signed an agreement with music and home entertainment major Sa Re Ga Ma, which will distribute Archie DVDs from the middle of this year. “There is tremendous potential here,” concluded Herman. source : google news http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com
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Hundreds missing’ after tsunami

Monday, April 2nd, 2007
   A LARGE-SCALE relief effort will be launched today to deliver aid to thousands of Solomon Islanders left homeless after a tsunami in the Pacific nation left hundreds missing when it washed away entire villages. At least 15 people were last night confirmed dead after 10m waves struck some of the Solomons’ most remote western provinces early yesterday, sending a wall of water 500m inland. The tsunami was triggered by a 8.1-magnitude undersea earthquake at 6.40am (AEST) about 350km of the capital of Honiara. An Australian Government team comprising ministerial officials and the Red Cross was yesterday sent to begin the rescue effort at Munda in the Western Province. The major rescue effort was beginning last night with food and medical supplies loaded on to ships in Honiara. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said last night the death toll was expected to rise. But it could have been worse if the giant waves had come at night. “We are lucky that it happened during the daytime - that the people observed that the sea receded and that basically is a sign that something is not right and then most people have taken to higher grounds,” he said. “Those that have been unfortunate to lose their lives were those people who were not aware of what is happening.” Mr Sogavare said the full extent of casualties and damage was still unclear. “Most of the islands are low-lying and the extent of the damage is yet to be known,” he said. Buildings were levelled by the earthquake, which created a series of large waves that continued to lash the Pacific Ocean islands for several hours and washed away entire coastal villages. The Solomon Islands Government last night issued a warning to expect more tsunami activity following advice by Australian seismologists that another big earthquake was possible in coming weeks. The quake was one of the biggest in the Pacific Rim since the Boxing Day quake off Indonesia in 2004, which unleashed massive tsunamis that killed more than 200,000 people across the Indian Ocean. An initial alert from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii to Australia yesterday caused widespread panic in north Queensland, where traffic was gridlocked out of Cairns after radio broadcasts told people to immediately evacuate the coast. The confusion continued further down the coast, with ferry services on Sydney Harbour being halted and surfers on Bondi Beach asked to leave the water and the beach in preparation for giant seas. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie was highly critical of the early warning systems, and telephoned John Howard to get accurate information on the extent of the threat. “Frankly, we need warning systems out to sea on islands nearby to give us a better indication,” he said. “We were trying to work out the magnitude of it but we were shooting blind, and I don’t believe this is good enough for Australia.” Solomon Islands government spokesman Alfred Maesulia last night conceded the death toll was likely to “rise significantly”, with a full assessment of the destruction hindered by the isolation of the hardest-hit areas of the Choiseul province, on the maritime border of Papua New Guinea, and Western province, where the tourist town of Gizo was completely submerged by water. Mr Maesulia said he feared disease outbreaks and untreated injury could “worsen the situation”, particularly in the more isolated coastal communities. “The number of deaths and injuries are continuing to rise, and will rise significantly as we make contact with these remote communities. It could be in the hundreds that are missing, entire villages have been wiped out, we don’t know how bad it is.” The Australian Government pledged $2 million last night in initial emergency and reconstruction assistance. The Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, deployed to the strife-torn nation in 2003, was being mobilised under the direction of the Solomons Government. Thousands of locals who escaped to higher ground ahead of the waves slept in bushland without sanitation or shelter. A Royal Solomon Islands Police spokesman said there was great uncertainty about the extent of the damage, particularly in Choiseul. “The southern end of Choiseul is the great unknown at this stage. There are so many communities that are out of touch and we don’t know what happened,” he said. Officials are not expected to reach the devastated areas until early this afternoon. Australian dive shop owner Danny Kennedy said the wave that hit Gizo was 3m high. “There are boats in the middle of the road, buildings have completely collapsed and fallen down,” he said. “We’re just trying to mobilise food and shelter for people at the moment because in the town alone there’s going to be 2000 to 3000 homeless.” The lessons of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which hit 13 countries across the Indian Ocean, appear to have saved hundreds of lives. Solomon Islands’ Red Cross Secretary-General Charles Keli said the “tell-tale” signs of the ocean receding from the shore, following a series of 2m waves, sent people running. A government warning, broadcast about 30 minutes after the earthquake, also gave notice of the imminent danger. “The waters were moving back into ocean and a lot of people in these areas evacuated themselves to higher ground,” he said. The Australian Government said it was not aware of any Australian casualties. Mr Sogavare called on leaders at all levels to ensure victims received all the help they needed. source : google news http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com Tags:

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Catholic League’s Chocolate Jesus Boycott to Continue

Sunday, April 1st, 2007
A nude chocolate Jesus sparked death threats, art censorship, and an extremist Catholic political activist group to call for boycott. The “Catholic League” (it’s hard to imagine that any self-respecting Catholic would let this group speak for them), started calling for a boycott of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City because of an artwork the group found objectionable. The work, by famed artist Cosimo Cavallaro, is a life sized sculpture of a Jesus figure, sans loin cloth but with nothing to be ashamed of. William Donohue, of Terri Schiavo fame, got all out of sorts and apparently had his demonic minions go after the hotel, the art gallery and anyone else who got in the way of his orchestrated orgy of hate-filled art phobia. First came the first press release on March 29th with the threat:
“‘All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan. ‘I am contacting hundreds of organizations about this assault. Our allied list contains scores of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu organizations, as well as secular groups, that share our concerns about religious hate speech and the degradation of our culture. The only thing that those who operate the Roger Smith Hotel understand is when they get hit in the pocket book. So that’s exactly where well hit them. The boycott is on.’”
“‘While we are delighted with the outcome, we are not pleased with the comments of the gallery’s creative director, Matt Semler. For him to say that our objection to this outrageous display constitutes hate speech and is the equivalent of a fatwa shows how deliriously irresponsible this man is. ‘Because we did not like the way the Roger Smith Hotel handled the decision to drop the display, we have no intention of contacting the 500 organizations that we alerted to this assault on Christian sensibilities to inform them that the exhibition has been canceled.’”
What a sense of fair play that Donohue has. He gets what he claims to want and he is still going to encourage his wayward and apparently quite gullible followers to boycott the Roger Smith Hotel. Big deal. It is highly doubtful that any people who have anything to do with the highly divisive American Taliban public figure called William Donohue and his obnoxious organization the Catholic (religious police) League would ever set foot in the Roger Smith Hotel in the first place. His boycott is as meaningless as his rhetoric. Donohue sounds like a spoiled little kid. His mommy probably ignored him when he was young so now he must clamor for attention screaming “look at me!” to whomever will listen. His efforts to materially affect political outcomes are legion, but there is a way for people to let him know that censorship of art will not be tolerated, nor will his bigoted ignorance go unrewarded.
The Catholic League filing — signed by William Donohue — answers “no” to all of these questions. This is the same answer that Donohue gave in 2004 and 2003. Unfortunately for Donohue and his Catholic League, that was not an accurate answer. He repeatedly spoke out on TV, in the press, and to his email lists on a wide range of political topics at the state and federal level. He wrote to politicians and argued for particular courses of action with regards to judicial nominees and even lobbied for a constitutional amendment at a gathering that included at least one congressman.”
  Instead of fretting about a chocolate Jesus, William Donohue should worry about what to tell his misled followers. And the Roger Smith Lab art gallery might as well close its doors right now. Because now that they have sold out to an extremist religious group that claims to speak for Catholics, they will be hounded by those who know they sold out; and also by those that know they will cave to pressure from some fringe group of idiots who feel the need to butt in to other peoples lives on the pretext that Christianity is under attack. Lest this essay not be crystal clear in the gist of its meaning, the Catholic League and its rantings are fundamentalist extremists that are little different than those Islamic religious police that run around measuring the lengths of mens beards, making sure womens bodies are covered from head to toe, and that all art be banished unless it has a clear religious context; their religion of course. If they had the power, it is highly likely that these folks would pull down other major works of art, certainly they would destroy Hollywood as America knows it. And certainly no gay person would be safe with these folks in power. Mainstream Catholics should proclaim from the rooftops that the crazy folks over at the Catholic League speak for themselves only and do not speak for your average American Catholic person. source : google news http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com Tags:

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Teens Surrender after Setting Hollywood Hills on Fire

Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Two teens from Illinois accidentally started a 160-acre blaze in the Hollywood Hills on Friday. The fire also sent smoke over the famed Hollywood sign and threatened an apartment building. About 200 or 300 firefighters battled the fire, assisted by water-dropping helicopters, according to Ron Myers of the Los Angeles city fire department. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa held an evening news conference at Forest Lawn, where he said the blaze had been deliberately set. “They’ve admitted that they started this fire,” Villaraigosa said of the 16- and 17-year-old boys, who voluntarily turned themselves in to Burbank police and were later taken to the LAPD’s Hollywood Station. Apparently, the two teenagers were seen setting off fireworks about 1 p.m. near the Oakwood apartments. “They were old enough to know what they were doing,” said Villaraigosa, adding that the boys first told their parents about setting the fire before together calling police. The fire spread very close to an Oakwood apartment building, stopping, due to intense precautions, to about 50 feet of its parking lot. Apartment maintenance workers wetted down the hillside and turned on sprinklers on the roof of the apartments and on the hillside. The facility is reportedly known for housing out-of-town actors looking for their big break in Hollywood. “It’s something you don’t want to see in your backyard, that’s for sure,” said actor and apartment resident Travis Caldwell, 18, quoted by presstelegram.com. “It was nuts. It started so small and it just raced right up the hill.” The smoke caused severe discomfort for the people in the area, including the employees at the Warner Bros. studios nearby. Reports that the legendary Hollywood sign was actually threatened are false. While it was engulfed in smoke at some point, the actual fire was about a quarter mile away and across a canyon, fire officials said. The current Hollywood sign was unveiled in 1978. The first sign was erected as an advertisement in 1923 and actually read “HOLLYWOODLAND,” because it was advertising a new housing development in the hills above the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.
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