Anita Page, an MGM actress who appeared in films with Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford and Buster Keaton during the transition from silent movies to talkies, has died. She was 98. Page died in her sleep early on Saturday morning at her home in Los Angeles, said actor Randal Malone, her longtime friend and companion. In 1929, the New York-born Page was co-star of The Broadway Melody, the backstage tale of two sisters who love the same man. The film made history as the first talkie to win the best-picture Oscar and was arguably the first true film musical. For a short time Page was married to composer Nacio Herb Brown, but the marriage was annulled within a year. Page stopped acting in 1936 when she fell in love with Herschel House, a Navy aviator. The couple married six weeks later and Page happily adapted to life as an officer’s wife. They had two daughters, Linda and Sandra. After House died in 1991, Page went on to return to films. In 1994, she appeared in the suspense thriller Sunset After Dark. Most recently, she had a cameo in the horror film Frankenstein Rising, due out later this year.
■ UNITED STATES
Desert tortoise needs a lift
Sadie the desert tortoise needs a ride to an adoptive home in the Mojave Desert — the sooner the better. The 25cm reptile, found at a highway rest stop in Idaho, has thrived at the Kiwani Wambli wildlife rehabilitation center north of Spokane, Washington, since July but is unlikely to do so well with the onset of fall. To survive a winter in Cusick, Washington, Sadie would have to be kept indoors for months. She can’t be released in the wild because of the possibility that she’s acquired a disease that could be passed on to others of her kind. Coincidentally, Wayne and Lee Ann Cusick happened to read a newspaper story about the tortoise living in Cusick. The couple said they would like to adopt Sadie, but are reluctant to drive from their home in Blythe, a desert city in southern California, to pick up the tortoise. Cooper and Cusick are hoping a big-hearted southbound traveler can give Sadie a ride.
■ MEXICO
Storm forms off coast
The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said Tropical Storm Lowell has formed off the southwest Pacific coast. The center said late on Saturday that Lowell took shape as a tropical storm about 426km south-southwest of the port city of Manzanillo. Forecasters said Lowell was moving toward the northwest at about 19kph with maximum sustained winds of nearly 64kph. The center said Lowell was expected to strengthen and could become a hurricane by today. Forecasters say rainfall could total 5km to 10cm in mountainous areas of the southern regions of the country before Lowell gradually drifts away from the coast.
■ HONDURAS
Judges give 1,051-year term
A court has sentenced a former prison official to 1,051 years in jail for the deaths of 69 people in a 2003 prison massacre. The three-judge panel announced its largely symbolic verdict against prison official Dimas Antonio Benitez on Saturday. State law says people can’t be jailed for more than 30 years. Benitez was one of the directors at the El Porvenir prison where 65 inmates, a guard and three visitors died in an intentionally set fire in 2003. The court sentenced Benitez, 10 other prison employees and 10 inmate trustees for having helped set fire to cells holding inmates who belonged to a violent “Mara” street gang. The other defendants were sentenced to lesser jail terms.
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