LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Casino owner Steve Wynn was awarded $20 million in damages on Monday in his defamation suit against “Girls Gone Wild” creator Joe Francis, whom Wynn accused of slander for falsely claiming the Las Vegas mogul wanted him killed over a gambling debt.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court jury, which began its deliberations on Friday, also found that Francis acted with malice. The verdict set the stage for a second phase of the trial – due to open on Tuesday – to determine whether punitive damages should be ordered.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Gay marriage opponents asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to uphold a California ban on same-sex matrimony that was struck down by a lower court as a violation of the Constitution.

The petition from supporters of Proposition 8, the voter-approved state constitutional amendment defining marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman, moves the politically charged case one step closer to a potential high-court review in the weeks before November’s U.S. presidential election.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Aspiring actor and filmmaker Sage Stallone, the son of action movie star Sylvester Stallone, was found dead on Friday at his home in Hollywood, authorities and his attorney said.

Police and a lawyer for Sage Stallone, 36, the younger of two sons from his father’s first marriage, gave conflicting accounts of how he was found, but police said there was no sign of forced entry or foul play.

LOS ANGELES, July 13 (Reuters) – Veteran Hollywood executive
Richard D. Zanuck, the prolific producer behind the blockbuster
shark thriller “Jaws,” the best-picture Oscar-winner “Driving
Miss Daisy” and a string of Tim Burton fantasies, died on Friday
of a heart attack at age 77.

Zanuck, son of famed 20th Century Fox chieftain Darryl F.
Zanuck, who was named by his father at age 28 as Fox’s head of
production, making him Hollywood’s then youngest-ever studio
boss, died at his home in Beverly Hills, a spokesman said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor Ernest Borgnine, whose barrel-chested, bulldog looks made him a natural for tough-guy roles in films like “From Here to Eternity” but who won an Oscar for playing a sensitive loner in “Marty,” died on Sunday at age 95, his publicist said.

The real-life U.S. Navy veteran who became a household name during the 1960s by starring as the maverick commander of a World War Two patrol boat in the popular television comedy “McHale’s Navy,” died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, longtime spokesman Harry Flynn said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor Ernest Borgnine, whose bulldog appearance made him a natural for tough-guy roles in films like “The Wild Bunch” but won an Oscar for playing a sensitive loner in “Marty,” died on Sunday at the age of 95, his longtime publicist said.

Borgnine, who also starred as a maverick World War Two patrol-boat skipper in the popular 1960s television comedy “McHale’s Navy,” died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he had gone for a medical checkup on Tuesday, spokesman Harry Flynn said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop star Justin Bieber was pulled over for speeding down a Los Angeles freeway in his flashy but environmentally friendly sports car on Friday, and police said they were investigating reports that he was being chased by paparazzi photographers.

The 18-year-old singer was driving his chrome-bodied Fisker Karma, a luxury hybrid-electric roadster, west of downtown Los Angeles, when he was stopped by California Highway Patrol officers at about 10:45 a.m. pdt (1:45 p.m. edt/1745 GMT).

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former Oakland Raiders defensive end Anthony Wayne Smith, whose murder trial stemming from a 2008 shooting death ended in a hung jury, was charged this week with three more Los Angeles County slayings from several years earlier.

The new criminal complaint, filed on Monday, charges Smith, 43, with a total of four counts of first-degree murder, incorporating the original case against him and the kidnap-killings of three other men – one in 1999 and two in 2001.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The physician convicted of killing Michael Jackson regrets not testifying on his own behalf while on trial last year, two defense lawyers said on Monday after visiting the jailed doctor on the third anniversary of the pop star’s death.

Dr. Conrad Murray, hired as the “Thriller” singer’s personal physician in 2009, began serving a four-year jail term in November after a jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – One of three men who kidnapped a busload of school children in California more than three decades ago and buried them alive in a moving van has been released on parole, state prison officials said on Thursday.

Richard Schoenfeld, 57, was freed on Wednesday after serving more than 34 years in prison for his role in the 1976 abduction of 26 children and their bus driver in the town of Chowchilla in central California.