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Published: June 26, 2009
■ It's the final countdown -- again -- for radio legend Casey Kasem. He will wind up his American Top 40 spinoff programs, American Top 20 and American Top 10, on July 4 -- a date of significance: He created the franchise on July 4, 1970. "Hosting various versions of my countdown program has kept me extremely busy, and I loved every minute of it," Kasem, 77, said in a statement. "However, this decision will free up time I need to focus on myriad other projects." But that famous voice (he also provided the vocals for Shaggy on the Scooby Doo cartoon series) will live on. His classic 1970s and 1980s AT40 countdowns will continue to be distributed by syndicator Premiere Radio Networks.
■ Comedian Dane Cook's sister-in-law has pleaded not guilty to charges she helped her husband steal millions of dollars from Cook. Erika McCauley was arraigned yesterday and ordered held on $1 million bail. Darryl McCauley, Cook's half brother and McCauley's husband, pleaded not guilty in March to larceny and forgery. Authorities say that state police recently found more than $700,000 hidden in the McCauleys' homes in Wilmington, Mass., and York Beach, Maine. State police found nearly $900,000 in December.
■ For the 35th anniversary of his A Prairie Home Companion, humorist Garrison Keillor will be in "Lake Wobegon" when he reads the news from Lake Wobegon. But don't assume that Keillor is all misty about the milestone. "I'm not sentimental anymore. I used to be, when I was younger," he told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday at his Prairie Home Productions office, an old radio station in St. Paul. Keillor caps the latest season of A Prairie Home Companion with a Fourth of July broadcast from Avon, part of the central Minnesota region that helped inspire Keillor's make-believe hometown, "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average."
■ Award-winning actress Edie Falco, cable television's no-nonsense "Nurse Jackie," delivered a stern message to legislators yesterday: fix health care. "I'm here because I've traveled through the health-care system and there are some holes," Falco, a breast-cancer survivor, told a Capitol Hill rally for health-care overhaul. "I'm here because I care about the people in this country and I know that we can do better, that we must do better." Falco, who stars in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie, said she went without health-care coverage for many years. "It's bad enough the emotional impact of not having a job," she said. "But to get sick on top of that, and worry every day that your symptoms are not getting better, figuring out what you're gonna have to do without so you can afford a doctor's visit -- I am far more familiar with that than I am with my situation these last number of years."
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