Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth are engaged

FILE - This Feb. 26, 2012 file photo shows Miley Cyrus, right, and Liam Hemsworth at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in West Hollywood, Calif. The couple who met on the set of that movie in 2009 announced their engagement Wednesday morning. Publicist Jeff Raymond confirms a People Magazine report of the news. Hemsworth, the 22-year-old Australian star of "The Hunger Games," and Cyrus, the 19-year-old "Hannah Montana" star and singer, were engaged on May 31. Hemsworth proposed with a 3.5-carat diamond ring, People reports. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, file)

FILE - This Feb. 26, 2012 file photo shows Miley Cyrus, right, and Liam Hemsworth at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in West Hollywood, Calif. The couple who met on the set of that movie in 2009 announced their engagement Wednesday morning. Publicist Jeff Raymond confirms a People Magazine report of the news. Hemsworth, the 22-year-old Australian star of "The Hunger Games," and Cyrus, the 19-year-old "Hannah Montana" star and singer, were engaged on May 31. Hemsworth proposed with a 3.5-carat diamond ring, People reports. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, file)

FILE - This Feb. 26, 2012 file photo shows Miley Cyrus, right, and Liam Hemsworth at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in West Hollywood, Calif. The couple who met on the set of that movie in 2009 announced their engagement Wednesday morning. Publicist Jeff Raymond confirms a People Magazine report of the news. Hemsworth, the 22-year-old Australian star of "The Hunger Games," and Cyrus, the 19-year-old "Hannah Montana" star and singer, were engaged on May 31. Hemsworth proposed with a 3.5-carat diamond ring, People reports. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, file)

(AP) ? It turns out "The Last Song" was only the beginning for Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth.

The couple who met on the set of that movie in 2009 announced their engagement Wednesday morning. Publicist Jeff Raymond confirms a People Magazine report of the news.

Hemsworth, the 22-year-old Australian star of "The Hunger Games," and Cyrus, the 19-year-old "Hannah Montana" star and singer, were engaged on May 31. Hemsworth proposed with a 3.5-carat diamond ring, People reports.

"I'm so happy to be engaged and look forward to a life of happiness with Liam," Cyrus told People.

The magazine report also said Cyrus is recording a new album while Hemsworth is scheduled to shoot two movies before tackling "The Hunger Games" sequel.

A message left with the publicist of Cyrus' father, Billy Ray, was not immediately returned.

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Online:

http://www.mileycyrus.com

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Follow www.twitter.com/AP_Country for the latest country news from the Associated Press.

Associated Press

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Law Change for Winning Gamblers Helps State Collect Unpaid Debt

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - A change in Iowa law has raised the state's debt collections from gamblers.

The Des Moines Register reports that since a law changed nearly two years ago, the state has recovered more than $5 million in winnings from indebted gamblers. That's a 15-fold increase.

The law that took effect in July 2010 lowered the winnings threshold at which casinos and racetracks are required to check the names of the big winners against a list of people who owe money for taxes, child support and other debts to the state.

Lakeside Casino general manager Bob Thursby says the casino has "collected a ton of money for the state."

The threshold had been $10,000. It was lowered to $1,200.

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Ray Bradbury, a passionate sci-fi writer with the gifts of a painter

Ray Bradbury wrote his more than 500 stories, novels, plays, and poems on a typewriter, creating imagery that helped bring sci-fi and fantasy into the mainstream of American popular culture.

By Gloria Goodale,?Staff writer / June 6, 2012

In this 2000 photo, author Ray Bradbury poses for a photo in Los Angeles.

AP/File

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Author Ray Bradbury was a passionate, professional wordsmith who wrote his more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and?poems on a typewriter.?He loved the feel and smell of?printed words on paper and?began a lifelong love affair with libraries at an early age.

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Mr. Bradbury, who died late Tuesday, often?recounted how he penned his most famous novel, ?Fahrenheit 451,? in the basement of the UCLA library where he could rent a typewriter for a dime per half hour.

But, in the end, say colleagues?and fans, it is?his images that?helped elevate the world of science fiction and fantasy from the fringes into the heart of?modern American popular culture, paving the way for?such mainstream hits as ?E.T.? and Harry Potter.

?Bradbury had the gift of a writer, but the soul of a painter,? says Fordham University Professor Paul Levinson,?a former president of the Science Fiction Writers of America who knew and worked with the writer on author events.

Bradbury?s short stories were particularly?well-suited to?being adapted for TV and film, points out Robert Thompson, founder of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture in Syracuse, N.Y. ?They were so visual and full of powerful imagery, they were almost like miniature treatments for a movie rather than a piece of literature,? he adds.

?Bradbury just exuded this kind of folksiness that made his works extremely visual,? says George Slusser, a professor emeritus at the University?of California at Riverside, which gave Bradbury a lifetime achievement award in science fiction at the Eaton Science Fiction Conference held in 2008.

Bradbury?s most well-known works ? such as ?Fahrenheit 451,?? ?The Martian Chronicles,? and ?The Illustrated Man,? which all became?highly-touted films or TV series ? were so successful precisely because they dealt with images in the mind, the stuff of poetry, says?Professor Slusser.??He is the last of the great American writers who evoke that kind of Midwestern?American world,? he says,?artists that include other American greats such as painter Edward Hopper and novelist Willa Cather.

?A lot of science fiction writing came out of that Midwestern, iconic American experience that Bradbury defined,? he adds, pointing to the writer?s Illinois childhood.

Hollywood luminaries paid tribute to Bradbury on Wednesday.? Director Steven Spielberg?issued a statement calling Bradbury an immortal, adding that he was??my muse for the better part of my sci-fi career.?

However, Bradbury himself eschewed the label of?science fiction, preferring the label of fantasy for most of his works other than ?Fahrenheit.? ?I?m not a science fiction writer,? he once said. ?Fantasies are things that can?t happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.?

Bradbury achieved this sort of?iconic power because he largely ?didn?t see boundaries in writing,? points out Slusser, noting that Bradbury never attended college?and often quoted Mark Twain who once quipped, ?never let college get in the way of a good education.?

Bradbury often said he spent his lifetime?mining what happened to him up to the age of 12 or 13.?He took the stuff of a Midwestern boy?s life ? experiences with a traveling carnival and the?Tarzan books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, for instance?? and?wove them into powerful?projections of?American life and values?in a near-future time, such as?when Americans might travel to Mars.?

Bradbury himself commented at the 2008 UC Riverside conference on just how powerful those dreams still were for him, telling the audience that?after his death, his ashes should be sent to Mars.

?I want to be the first dead person on Mars,? he said, ?one way or another, I?ll get there.??

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Obama administration sets housing agency pay caps

(AP) ? The Obama administration is clamping down on excessive pay at public housing authorities, setting caps that extend and expand limits imposed by Congress. The action comes as the administration revealed that the top official at the Atlanta housing agency received a compensation package of $644,214, the highest in the country.

After conducting a national compensation survey, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to set a maximum salary ceiling of $155,000 for public housing agency officials, according to two senior administration officials. The cap applies to the portion of executive salary paid with federal money. It does not require congressional action.

The national survey of 2010 salaries found that while most local public housing officials were compensated in amounts at or under the new limit, a few top local housing officials were getting at least twice that amount, including Atlanta Housing Authority executive director Renee Glover, who has led the city's agency since 1994. Her total compensation in 2010 included salary, bonus and other benefits, the officials said.

The officials spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss a plan and a report that had not yet been made public.

Sonji Jacobs, a spokeswoman for Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, said early Tuesday that the City of Atlanta would work with federal officials to address concerns about compensation, adding that the cap on salaries "made sense." Early in his administration Reed recognized the need for stronger governance at the Atlanta Housing Authority and appointed new board members for better fiscal stewardship, Jacobs said.

Glover, in a statement issued early Tuesday, said the compensation cited by the administration was a one-year package that included a $312,500 salary, a $126,000 payment for 12 years of accrued and unused vacation, $135,000 in two years of performance bonuses, and payments for unused sick leave and a year of unused vacation and paid holidays in 2010.

She said that for the 2011 calendar year, she received her $325,000 salary with no bonus or accrued vacation pay.

She said she explained the terms of her package to HUD officials.

"I value my integrity and my reputation above all and I am confident my professional record speaks for itself," she said. "Over the course of my tenure with AHA, my compensation package has been approved in public meetings by independent Boards of Commissioners who were appointed by three of the last four Atlanta mayors," she said.

It was unclear early Tuesday what accounted for the discrepancy between HUD's figures and Glover's.

Among others receiving large pay packages were top executives at housing agencies in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chelsea, Mass. All the executives at those agencies have left their jobs.

Those salary packages caused a furor last year, prompting calls for an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Beyond Glover's compensation package, the Obama administration pointed to $606,320 in total compensation for the top official at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, $417,688 at the Philadelphia Housing Authority and $357,635 at the Chelsea, Mass., Housing Authority.

Local media reports of those payments last year prompted Congress to set a $155,000 salary cap on housing agencies for the 2012 fiscal year. The administration's plan aligns those limits to the federal government pay scale, makes them permanent and applies them to bonuses and other means of compensation as well.

Agencies can still supplement a top officials pay with state or local government money.

The administration released median compensation packages by region, but aside from the top paying housing agencies, did not list specific compensation by individual housing authority.

Grassley welcomed the HUD action Monday, but said the administration should identify compensation packages by agency.

"Taxpayers shouldn't have to sustain gold-plated compensation packages for public employees," he said. "My review has shown that the housing authorities that go off the rails count on a lack of transparency to do what they want."

The senior administration officials said the Los Angeles housing agency has lowered its top compensation to $260,000 and the Philadelphia agency has set its top compensation at $225,000. Chelsea, Mass., a suburb of Boston with a population of about 35,000, has lowered its top compensation to $135,000.

While the top limit planned by the Obama administration would be $155,000 for agencies managing more than 1,250 public housing units, HUD would set lower limits for smaller public housing agencies. Housing authorities with between 250 and 1,250 units could pay a maximum of $125,926, and agencies handling fewer than 250 units could pay no more than $88,349.

Associated Press

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