Annette Charles, best known for her role as leggy, red-lipped bad girl Cha Cha DiGregorio in Grease has died in Los Angeles after a battle with cancer. The 63-year-old’s death comes little more than two months after the death of Grease actor Jeff Conaway, whose character Kenickie was Cha Cha’s date at the school dance. Oozing a sultry confidence on film, Charles introduced her character at the dance by saying: “They call me Cha Cha, ‘cause I’m the best dancer at St Bernadette’s.” She also appeared on many 70s and 80s television shows including Barnaby Jones, The Bionic Woman, Magnum, PI, Bonanza, The Mod Squad, Gunsmoke and The Flying Nun.
Polygamist walks out of court hearing
Convicted polygamist leader Warren Jeffs walked out of his child sex abuse sentencing hearing in Texas after reading a statement he said was from God, which threatened a “whirlwind of judgment” if he was not set free. Jeffs faces up to 119 years in prison after being convicted of sexually assaulting underage girl followers.
His lawyer Deric Walpole said Jeffs was simply a product of growing up in the breakaway Mormon Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a community that had not changed for centuries.
Rapper sex charge
Rapper Big Sean faces charges in New York state after a woman claimed she was sexually assaulted during a concert.
State park police charged the 23-year-old Detroit rapper, whose real name is Sean Anderson, with misdemeanour counts of forcible touching, unlawful imprisonment and sex abuse. Another Detroit man, Willie Hansbro, faces the same charges.
Police received the complaint at Artpark State Park in Lewiston, downriver from Niagara Falls. Anderson was performing there with rapper Wiz Khalifa. Anderson and Hansbro were released on bail and will appear at Niagara County Court on September 6.
War bodies talks
The US military has proposed talks with North Korea on resuming the recovery of remains of thousands of American service members killed in the Korean War.
A Defence Department official said a letter was sent to the North Korean government last week after Pyongyang had contacted the department saying it would look favourably on such a US request.
About 8,000 US service members are listed as missing from the Korean War that ended in 1953 without a formal peace treaty, some 5,500 of them in North Korea. Joint efforts to recover remains halted in 2005 after Washington said security for its staff was insufficient.
Rebuilding of Ground Zero noise
The owner of a Manhattan hotel overlooking Ground Zero says noise from rebuilding is driving guests away and the agency in charge has turned a deaf ear to requests to quell the din.
The Millennium Hilton’s corporate owner says in a lawsuit that it has lost €5.6 million since 2006. Companies have cancelled meetings and guests have shortened their stays because of rock-blasting, debris clattering into rubbish containers and other noise that extends late into the night, it said.
The World Trade Centre site’s owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, declined to comment. Silverstein Properties, a developer working on part of the site, said its work was done during regular business hours.
Hugo Chavez’s Cuba chemo
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez plans to return to Cuba for a second round of chemotherapy for his cancer.
The announcement from the National Assembly’s secretariat came just hours after Mr Chavez said his doctors were considering whether he should undergo the treatment in Venezuela or in Cuba.
The 57-year-old president said earlier that he expected he would have to reduce his public profile a little but said he had no plans to withdrawn from the public eye.
Pharaoh on display
A colossal, 4,000-year-old statue of a seated Egyptian pharaoh will be visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the next 10 years.
The Met announced that the sculpture was going on loan from a Berlin museum that is renovating a courtyard where the piece was most recently displayed.
The three-metre-tall, nine-tonne sculpture was carved from a single block of stone and erected in a temple near present-day Cairo. It is believed to depict the third king of the 12th dynasty pharaohs. It has been in the German museum’s collection since 1837.