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Published: May 10, 2009
■ He is a comic, actor, Saturday Night Live veteran and Late Night talk show host. Add one more thing to Jimmy Fallon's resume: College graduate. The 34-year-old Fallon has finally gotten his bachelor's degree, 14 years after he left an upstate New York college to pursue his comedy career. The television and film star picked up his degree in communications and spoke to graduates at yesterday's College of Saint Rose commencement. Fallon was a Saint Rose student from 1992 through 1995, when he left the college in Albanyto to pursue a show business career. He was just one semester short of graduating.
■ Amy Winehouse was forced to cut short a comeback gig in St. Lucia because of heavy rain. Winehouse spokesman Chris Goodman said in a statement yesterday that the singer abandoned her performance Friday at the St. Lucia Jazz Festival. He says heavy rain pounded the stage on the Caribbean island, causing a lighting rig to fail and disrupting sound equipment. The gig was the troubled British singer's first performance of 2009. Goodman says that Winehouse attempted to continue her performance despite the storm, but was forced to stop. He says the singer was disappointed, as she had hoped to repay people in St. Lucia for their hospitality. Winehouse has been staying on the island for several months.
■ A civil jury in Santa Monica, Calif.,says Snoop Dogg didn't hit a man who came up on stage during a 2005 concert near Seattle. The rapper wasn't in court Friday when the jury's verdict cleared him of civil assault and battery claims. The jury did find that Richard Monroe Jr. suffered serious injuries during the concert and awarded him $449,400 in damages to be paid by a record label, another performer and others involved in the concert. The damages awarded were substantially lower than the $22 million Monroe sought when he sued the rapper in 2006. Jurors found that Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, doesn't personally owe Monroe anything. During two weeks of testimony, jurors were repeatedly shown a video of a melee that Monroe said left him unconscious, badly bruised and nearly naked.
■ A British soldier who lost the use of his legs in a rocket attack in Iraq has completed the London Marathon, two weeks after starting the race. Maj. Phil Packer set off April 26 and walked the 26.2-mile course on crutches at a rate of two miles a day. Packer entered the marathon to support Help for Heroes, a charity for wounded soldiers. He has raised more than $900,000 and hopes to reach $1.5 million. The 36-year-old military policeman has been a paraplegic since he was injured in Basra in February 2008. Packer crossed the finishing line yesterday and said the feeling was bittersweet, because it followed the deaths of four British soldiers in Afghanistan in the last two days.
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