A California appeals court
upheld the dismissal of Olivia de Havilland's lawsuit against the creator of the television series
Feud: Bette vs. Joan. de Havilland, who is 101 years old and very much alive, objected to being portrayed as a "b**ch" in the series. The appeals court ruled that a person "does not own history" and does not have veto power over how he or she is portrayed in an "expressive work" such as a TV series. de Havilland, who is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, appears in only 17 minutes of the 6-1/2 hour series. Main characters Bette Davis and Joan Crawford are played by Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange, respectively.
Linda Brown,
of Brown v. Board of Education fame, has died at the age of 75. In 1951, Oliver Brown tried to enroll Linda at the all-white Sumner Elementary School near her Topeka home. When the school refused to enroll her, Oliver Brown sued the Topeka Board of Education. Four similar cases were combined with Brown's complaint and presented to the Supreme Court as
Oliver Brown, et al v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al.
Lockheed Martin
has obtained a patent for a compact fusion reactor. The company may debut a prototype CPR the size of shipping container, but capable of powering a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier or 80,000 homes, sometime in the next year or so.