Ledger was 'whacked' by criminals: Quaid

By Liam Phillips, The Sydney Morning Herald

Fugitive actor Randy Quaid has claimed Perth star Heath Ledger was one of many celebrities "whacked" by a group of Hollywood criminals from whom he is now on the run.

Quaid and his wife Evi are seeking refugee status in Canada after fleeing over the border from the United States, claiming their lives were at risk.

The actor, who played a supporting role alongside Ledger in the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain, said he was being hunted by a gang of Hollywood "star-whackers" who already had a long list of celebrity victims.

"We believe there to be a malignant tumour of 'star-whackers' in Hollywood," he said.

"How many people do you know personally who have died suddenly and mysteriously in the last five years?

"I have personally known eight actors, all of whom I have worked with and was close to - Heath Ledger, Chris Penn, David Carradine among them.

"I believe these actors were whacked and I believe many others, such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson, are being played to get at their money."

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Not his finest hour: The dark side of Winston Churchill

By Johann Hari, Independent

Winston Churchill is rightly remembered for leading Britain through her finest hour – but what if he also led the country through her most shameful hour? What if, in addition to rousing a nation to save the world from the Nazis, he fought for a raw white supremacism and a concentration camp network of his own? This question burns through Richard Toye's new history, Churchill's Empire, and is even seeping into the Oval Office.

George W Bush left a bust of Churchill near his desk in the White House, in an attempt to associate himself with the war leader's heroic stand against fascism. Barack Obama had it returned to Britain. It's not hard to guess why: his Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned without trial for two years and was tortured on Churchill's watch, for resisting Churchill's empire.

Can these clashing Churchills be reconciled? Do we live, at the same time, in the world he helped to save, and the world he helped to trash? Toye, one of Britain's smartest young historians, has tried to pick through these questions dispassionately – and he should lead us, at last and at least, to a more mature conversation about our greatest national icon.

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