Kirstie Alley's Cheers Reunion

It's been nearly two decades since Cheers went off the air, but the onscreen chemistry hasn't changed between Kirstie Alley and Rhea Perlman, as seen in Kirstie's new TV Land pilot, Giant Baby.

On the show, Kirstie plays a Broadway diva whose life gets up-ended.

VIDEO: Kirstie Alley Celebrates 62nd Birthday with ET

"You know, we were planning this when we were doing Cheers," Kirstie said of reuniting with Rhea. "We said when Cheers isn't on the air anymore we'll do a show together."

Rhea plays Kirstie's best friend on Giant Baby, but she's also been a close friend to the Golden Globe winner in real-life, as Kirstie mentions in her New York Times bestseller, The Art of Men.

Kirstie's book, detailing her sexual exploits and struggles with drug addiction, has had so much success that it's attracted readers that Kirstie never thought would buy it.

"It never dawned on me that my dad would read my book," Kirstie said. "I didn't give it to him!"

Click the video for more.

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At least 20 hostages, including Americans, escape from al Qaeda captors in Algeria

AFP/Getty Images

Hostages had been taken captive at this natural gas complex in Algeria - but 20 of the hostages later escaped, an official said.

ALGIERS, Algeria — At least 20 foreign hostages escaped Thursday from Islamist militants who had taken over an Algerian natural gas complex in the Sahara desert, an Algerian security official reported.

Americans and Europeans were among those who escaped, he said, without elaborating. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

At least 20 gunmen attacked the vast complex early Wednesday in retaliation for France's military intervention against al Qaeda-linked rebels in neighboring Mali.

The militants, who claimed to have 41 hostages, have been in a tense standoff since then, surrounded by the Algerian military, which has helicopters flying over the plant.

Some 30 Algerian workers fled the complex earlier in the day, suggesting that the militants are having trouble managing the many hostages they have taken at the vast natural gas complex, the third largest in oil-rich Algeria.

Algerian authorities, meanwhile, were talking with tribal Algerian Tuareg leaders in hopes of mediating the dispute that involves dozens of hostages

The group claiming responsibility — called Katibat Moulathamine or the Masked Brigade — originally said it had captured 41 foreigners, including seven Americans, in the surprise attack on the Ain Amenas gas plant, 800 miles south of the capital of Algiers.

Two people, one a Briton and the other Algerian, were killed in the initial assault, which the US defense secretary has called "a terrorist attack." The kidnapping is one of the largest ever attempted by a militant group in North Africa.

The hostage-takers are reportedly seeking a safe passage out of the isolated area, something Algerian authorities have already rejected.

Another Algerian official, also not authorized to speak publicly about the attack, said authorities are in contact with tribal elders among Algerian Tuaregs, who are ethnically related to the rebels fighting the Mali government, some of whom have close al-Qaida links.

The France-based head of a catering company at the plant told French media before the latest escape that some 40 foreigners appeared to be held hostage in a separate area from the Algerian workers.

Regis Arnoux of the Mareseille-based CIS Catering company said while electricity to the plant has been cut, it had at least three weeks of food supplies.

Militants phoned a Mauritanian news outlet to say one of its affiliates had carried out the operation and that France should end its intervention in Mali to ensure the safety of the hostages.

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Jackson Health System asks Kendall trauma center be shut down

Ratcheting up the stakes in Miami-Dade’s hospital wars, Jackson Health System has filed two petitions with the state demanding a hearing to consider its belief that the license for trauma operations at Kendall Regional Medical Center was granted illegally and should be revoked.

Jackson, which for years has had the county’s only trauma center, has been complaining loudly since the Scott administration decided the state needed more centers. Kendall Regional’s opened in November 2011.

Jackson executives estimate it has been losing about $28 million a year since then because, as one of its trauma doctors quipped, Jackson Memorial’s Ryder Trauma Center tends to get the inner-city gunshot victims who have no insurance while Kendall gets the suburban car accident victims with insurance.

State officials and the HCA hospital chain, which owns Kendall Regional, maintain that Miami-Dade’s size requires more than one trauma center.

Mark McKenney, medical director of the Kendall center, said Wednesday the center has treated 2,500 patients in its first year -- “with mortality rates significantly below the state and national averages.” He said Kendall treats anyone who comes through the door, including plenty of gunshot and stabbing victims who may or may not have insurance.

McKenney said the state decided Miami-Dade needed more trauma centers after a 2005 study showed that only 39 percent of the county’s trauma victims were treated in trauma centers. Those treated in ordinary emergency rooms showed a considerably higher mortality rate, McKenney said.

In Miami-Dade, HCA’s Mercy and Tenet’s Palmetto General have also applied for trauma licenses. Jackson countered by seeking trauma units at its two community hospitals, Jackson North and Jackson South.

In its filings to the Department of Health on Jan. 2, Jackson’s lawyers asked for formal administrative hearings, maintaining North and South were unfairly denied approval in a Dec. 13 Department of Health letter that stated the regulators were rethinking trauma rules on trauma centers after court rulings.

The Jackson petitions, first reported on Tuesday by Jim Saunders of News Service of Florida, noted that an administrative law judge in November 2011 decided that the Department of Health’s trauma certification rule was invalid. After that, the department granted provisional licenses to Kendall Regional and three other hospitals.

On Nov. 30, 2012, the First District Court of Appeal upheld that decision. Seven days later, the department approved the application of Ocala Regional, another HCA facility, and allowed it to open the following day. Gov. Rick Scott is the former chief executive of HCA.

Jackson’s attorneys accused the department of giving these other hospitals a “selective benefit.” They said that a hearing would establish that “the ultimate facts” show that “all provisional licenses issued under the invalid trauma rule need rule should be revoked,” as well as all pending applications, until the department established a legally acceptable rule on trauma centers.

Steve Ecenia, an attorney for HCA, called Jackson’s petition “bizarre” because, instead of seeking approval for its own applications, it was trying to hit back at other hospitals, including Ocala, “hundreds of miles away.” He said the appeals court decision wasn’t final, because there are demands for a rehearing, and the Department of Health’s licensing has been fair.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said Wednesday that the department “had no additional information to provide.” A Jackson spokesman said executives couldn’t comment “because of pending litigation.”

Wayne Brackin, chief operating officer of Baptist Health South Florida, said Baptist is “very worried about this trauma issue,” because in the 1980s, the trauma system fell apart in Miami-Dade with many hospitals losing money on the service, and Baptist doesn’t want the Ryder Trauma Center weakened by competition that could again endanger trauma care in the county.

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Mother of Trayvon Martin to demand repeal of Stand Your Ground law

TALLAHASSEE --
The mother of Trayon Martin, along with state lawmakers, plan to hold a news conference on Wednesday morning to decry the state’s controversial Stand Your Ground law and demand that the Florida Legislature repeal it.

Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, and family attorneys will join Democratic state Rep. Alan Williams, of Tallahassee, and Democratic state Senator Dwight Bullard, of Miami, to talk about the new legislation. HB 4009, introduced last week, would repeal certain provisions of the state’s self-defense statute.

The Stand Your Ground law passed in 2005, grants legal immunity to people who use deadly force if they reasonably believe their life is in danger.

The law drew worldwide media attention last year when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a crime watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla. The volunteer, George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder. His trial is pending.

Zimmerman insists that he was jumped and pummeled by the 17-year-old Michael Krop High School junior, whom Zimmerman had followed after finding him suspicious.

In response to the shooting, Gov. Rick Scott created a 19-member task force to review the law. The task force, which spent six months traveling the state and taking public testimony, concluded there was no need to overhaul the controversial self-defense law.

Critics charged that the task force was dominated by Stand Your Ground law supporters.

The task force included two lawmakers who helped draft the law, along with two others who voted for it in 2005. Another lawmaker appointed to the panel was the chief sponsor of a NRA-backed law prohibiting doctors from asking patients about guns.

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“Banshee” head Greg Yaitanes: secrets galore, but hold the olives

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Like many TV creators, Greg Yaitanes isn’t crazy about the alternate identities people adopt online – and the Emmy-winning former “House” executive producer gets to explore anonymity and becoming someone else in the new Cinemax series “Banshee.”

“I’ve been harassed by ‘House’ Twitter fans for years now. I’m always kind of surprised at people’s level of saying something that they would never say to my face – that they would never say to another human being’s face,” he said.

Not that Yaitanes has a problem with social media – he was an early investor in Twitter, and used a litany of apps and new technology to make his pulpy drama, executive produced by Alan Ball, as scrappy as a tech startup.

With “Banshee,” Yaitanes gets to explore “the best of the wish fulfillment that people have of reinventing themselves or being able to disappear. In a way, all the characters are reinventing themselves.”

Those characters include a thief who steals the identity of the sheriff in Banshee, Pa., his cat burglar ex-girlfriend, who has eked out a new life as a homemaker, and the villain, a man who becomes a criminal mastermind after he is ousted from his Amish community. Then there’s the identity thief – Job – who keeps changing which gender he appears to be.

We talked with Yaitanes about how he made his show look expensive, how to describe Job, and the importance of counting olives.

The Wrap: The show looks expensive – starting with a sequence in New York in which a bus falls over and skids through an intersection. Can you talk about how you kept costs down?

Yaitanes: It’s a way of thinking from working with startups. They’re often one, two, three man operations when they first operate. Twitter was an example of that. You have to look at what is the simplest, most effective way to do this, to deliver to the consumer. We had a very specific box that “Banshee” could be made in, in terms of our budget.

The first thing that came to mind was what I call the “one olive.” The one olive is a story that originates with American Airlines back in the ’80s, when American Airlines took one olive out of their inflight meal – and saved $ 40,000. It’s all about challenging and making everybody their own producer and their own CEO and asking, ‘What is that one thing I can take out that either saves money or makes us that more efficient over the course of 100 days?’

Maybe $ 1,000 isn’t particularly exciting, but when you do it across a season, that’s an official day of shooting. That’s seven more minutes of content that we can get done that day.

We just looked for all these small ways that I feel put nearly an episode’s worth of saving back into the show, so we could make our show more robust and make the action scenes that much bigger and get the actor that we really want.

These are things that the audience gets to enjoy.

What are some of the cost-saving measures?

We also tried to find our olives by using the apps and technology that’s right in front of us, like Skype and Facetime and iChat so we don’t have to fly everybody around? I think probably 75 percent of the crew including directors were hired through some form of video conferencing. You saw the pilot, with the bus crash. We scouted all of that via Google Streetview. We could find blocks and circle around and look up and down and did all the legwork until we absolutely had to go to New York. So we saved on those flights, those hotels, those per diems.

You’ve invested in so many social media sites. Is there something that want to say on the show about the changing nature of identity when we can all take on different personalities online? Your main character, Lucas Hood (Antony Starr) actually takes on another person’s life.

Lucas does the most obvious adoption. A lot of people’s secrets and new identities and new lives are happening before the series starts, which is why we’ve shot an entire online series with our cast.

One of those characters, Job, is constantly in flux – even in terms of whether he appears male or female. Is he transgendered?

He’s straddling this line of androgyny. We specifically don’t want to answer questions about Job’s sexuality… he is a chameleon. He has something that he can tap into depending on his situation. By the time you get to the finale you won’t believe where Job goes.

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Megan Fox Apologizes for Lindsay Lohan Comments

In the process of explaining her reason for removing a Marilyn Monroe tattoo on her forearm to Esquire magazine, cover girl Megan Fox unleashed what appeared to be a harsh criticism of actress Lindsay Lohan. In light of all the attention Fox's words have garnered, the star has taken to Facebook in an attempt to clarify her comments. 

Pics: New Mom Megan Fox's Sexiest Shoot Yet

"In the newly released article that I did for Esquire, there is a reference that is made to Lindsay Lohan that I would like to clarify before it snowballs into something silly," began Fox in an open letter posted to her personal page.

"The journalist and I were discussing why I was removing my Marilyn Monroe tattoo, especially since, in his opinion, Marilyn was such a powerful and iconic figure for women. I attempted to draw parallels between Lindsay and Marilyn in order to illustrate my point that while Marilyn may be an icon now, sadly she was not respected and taken seriously while she was still living.

"Both women were gifted actresses, whose natural talent was lost amongst the chaos and incessant media scrutiny surrounding their lifestyles and their difficulties adhering to studio schedules etc.

"I intended for this to be a factual comparison of two women with similar experiences in Hollywood. Unfortunately it turned into me offering up what is really much more of an uneducated opinion. It was most definitely not my intention to criticize or degrade Lindsay.

"I would never want her to feel bullied, as she does not deserve that. I was not always speaking eloquently during this interview and this miscommunication is my fault."

Related: How Megan Fox Lost All That Baby Weight

Fox's original quote to Esquire reads as follows:

"I started reading about [Marilyn] and realized that her life was incredibly difficult. It's like when you visualize something for your future. I didn't want to visualize something so negative.

"She was sort of like Lindsay [Lohan]. She was an actress who wasn't reliable, who almost wasn't insurable. ... She had all of the potential in the world, and it was squandered. I'm not interested in following in those footsteps."

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JPMorgan's fourth-quarter earnings up 55 percent from year before

JPMorgan Chase, the country's biggest bank by assets, says its fourth-quarter earnings shot up 55 percent over the year.

The bank made $5.3 billion after paying preferred dividends, compared with $3.4 billion this time a year ago.

Per share, those earnings amounted to $1.40, blowing away the $1.16 expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

Revenue also beat expectations. It rose 10 percent over the year, to $24.4 billion, after stripping out an accounting charge. Mortgage originations jumped 33 percent.

The bank also announced that executives and board members had finished their separate reviews of the bank's surprise 2012 trading loss, which eventually ballooned to $6 billion.

The stock fell in pre-market trading, losing 56 cents to $45.79.

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Miami Dolphins bill would bring state money to aging stadiums

A bill drafted by the Miami Dolphins would give Florida sports teams $3 million a year in state money to improve older stadiums, provided the owner pays for at least half the cost of a major renovation.

Under the law, the stadium would need to be 20 years old and the team willing to put in at least $125 million for a $250 million renovation. That’s less than the $400 million redo of Sun Life Stadium that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross proposed this week, which he hopes will win state approval thanks to his offer to fund at least $200 million of the effort to modernize the 1987 facility.

Miami-Dade and Florida would fund the rest through a mix of county hotel taxes and state general funds set aside for stadiums. Sun Life currently receives $2 million a year through the program, and the Dolphins want to create a new category that would give them an additional $3 million.

While the Miami Marlins and Miami Heat both play in stadiums subsidized by county hotel taxes, the Dolphins receive no local dollars. The bill would change that by allowing Miami-Dade to increase the tax charged at mainland hotels to 7 percent from 6 percent, and eliminate the current rule that limits the money to publicly owned stadiums. Sun Life Stadium, in Miami Gardens, is privately owned but sits on county land.

The bill pits enthusiasm for one of Florida’s most popular sports teams against a lean budget climate and lingering backlash against the 2009 deal that had Miami and Miami-Dade borrow about $485 million to build a new ballpark for the Marlins. Ross also must navigate a Republican-led Legislature that has twice rebuffed his requests for public dollars.

“I would be surprised if that bill even got a hearing in committee,” said Mike Fasano, a Republican representative from the Tampa area and a critic of tax-funded sports deals. “I’m a big Dolphin fan, and have been for years. But with all due respect, we’ve got people who are struggling throughout this state right now . .. The last thing we should be doing is giving a professional sports team or facility additional tax dollars.”

While the bill would open up the $3 million subsidy to other the teams, the Dolphins see it as unlikely that another owner would be willing to put up as much money for renovations as Ross, a billionaire real estate developer.

If the bill were enacted today, any stadium opened before 1993 would be eligible for the money, provided it could show the proposed renovation would generate an additional $3 million in sales taxes.

Ross and his backers are pitching the renovation as a boon to tourism, with Sun Life a magnet for the Super Bowl, national college football games and other major events. The National Football League is considering South Florida and San Francisco for the 2016 Super Bowl, and the Dolphins say approval of renovation funding is crucial to winning the bid.

Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, who sponsored the Senate bill, said the funding makes sense because when Sun Life hosts a Super Bowl, the entire state benefits from both tourism dollars and publicity.

“It’s a small price to pay for economic development, and for all the shine we get from major sporting events,” said Braynon, whose district includes Sun Life. Rep. Eduardo “Eddy” Gonzalez, R-Hialeah, is the sponsor on the House side.

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Wedgie-spree at Florida theater lands prankster in jail

Authorities say that Charles Ross is known to go around Manatee County and create situations in order to harass and annoy people while filming their reaction for You Tube.

Last weekend, Ross, 18, of Bradenton, ended up in jail after police say he went on a wedgie spree at a theater.

Deputies say Ross was at Royal Palm Theater Sunday night with a friend and began grabbing people by their pants and pulling them up hard, causing discomfort.

A victim told deputies that Ross pulled up his pants, wedgie-style, and then asked the victim if he wanted to hit him, all while his friend was filming, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.

One victim decided to press charges but others were too embarrassed, deputies said.

The deputy took the camera as evidence and both Ross and his friend were removed from the theater and told they would be arrested if they come back, according to the report.

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Verizon may be prepping a new mid-range Samsung smartphone with a 720p display

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