Most Recent Posts

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ellen DeGeneres, Steve Harvey and the soap opera "The Young and the Restless" were among the 41st annual Daytime Emmy winners.

"The Ellen DeGeneres Show" received its eighth trophy as outstanding entertainment talk show at the awards ceremony Sunday in Beverly Hills.

The "Steve Harvey" show was honored as outstanding informative talk show, while Harvey won as best game show host for "Family Feud."

CBS' "The Young and the Restless" captured best drama series honors, while its star Billy Miller won the trophy for best lead actor in a drama series. Eileen Davidson of NBC's "Days of Our Lives" was named best drama series actress.

ABC's "Good Morning America" won the best morning program Emmy.

The Daytime Emmys introduced new awards for Spanish-language shows. Trophies went to Telemundo's "Un Nuevo Dia" as best morning program, to CNNE's "Clix" as best entertainment show and to Rodner Figueroa of Univision's "El Gordo y la Flaca" as best daytime talent in Spanish.

CBS, which received eight creative arts Daytime Emmys for technical achievements at a June 20 ceremony, emerged as the network leader with a total of 14 awards after Sunday's ceremony.

PBS received a combined 13 awards, with six for HUB Network; five for TOLN.com; four for ABC and three for NBC.

The ceremony, which aired on the cable news channel HLN last year and in 2012 after losing its longtime home on the broadcast networks, this year settled for streaming the proceedings online. The change in fortune reflects the dwindling daytime audience and programming shifts.

Kathy Griffin hosted Sunday's ceremony, with Billy Bush and Mario Lopez among the presenters.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Best-selling author Vince Flynn died just over a year ago, but his terrorist-fighting protagonist Mitch Rapp will live on in new books written by someone else, Flynn's publisher says.

Simon & Schuster and Flynn's estate have commissioned thriller writer Kyle Mills to complete Flynn's unfinished novel, "The Survivor," and to write two more books in the Rapp series. "The Survivor" is tentatively scheduled to hit shelves next year.

Similar deals have kept James Bond and other action heroes alive long after their creators. Flynn's longtime editor, Emily Bestler, told The Associated Press that continuing the Rapp series was a bittersweet experience. Rapp was featured in 13 of the 14 novels Flynn published in his lifetime.

"But I know that this is what he would want and know that his readers will be grateful," Bestler said.

Flynn, who sold more than 15 million books in the U.S. alone and counted Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush among his fans, was 47 when he died June 19, 2013, in his hometown of St. Paul after battling prostate cancer for more than two years. Flynn had completed only the first few chapters of "The Survivor" when he died, Bestler said.

"He would be so happy to know that Mitch Rapp has a future and that Kyle Mills is the one who will be helping that happen," Bestler said.

A Flynn fan himself, the 48-year-old Mills knows what it's like to follow in another author's footsteps. He has written 13 books, including three in the style of Jason Bourne creator Robert Ludlum, who died in 2001.

To prepare himself, Mills said he re-read every one of Flynn's books in chronological order and took 150 pages of notes on everything from his writing style to his word choice. For "The Survivor," Mills said he plans to continue with the story threads left hanging from Flynn's last book, "The Last Man," published in 2012.

"I feel pretty confident that I can produce something that people will love, because my goal is to produce something I would have loved (to read) if I hadn't been asked to write and somebody else had done it," Mills said.

Throughout the series, Rapp survives brushes with death and battles terrorists who plot to detonate a nuclear warhead in Washington, D.C., in "Memorial Day" (2004) or who seize the White House and take hostages in "Transfer of Power" (1999). Plans remain in the works to make a Mitch Rapp movie based on 2010's "American Assassin," CBS Films spokesman Grey Munford said.

Mills grew up in Oregon, the son of an FBI man, and now lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He said he worries constantly about whether Flynn's fans will accept him.

"As a Vince Flynn fan, you come to know and love that character. As an author, you need to create that," Mills said. "I'd hate to pick up a Mitch Rapp (book) and not have it feel authentic."

In a statement, Flynn's widow, Lysa Flynn, thanked Flynn's fans for their "love, support and patience."

"Vince was very proud of his team and we are confident that Kyle Mills will be a great addition. God bless and keep the faith!" she said.

___

Online:

Vince Flynn's website: http://www.vinceflynn.com

Kyle Mills' website: http://www.kylemills.com

___

Follow Jeff Baenen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffBaenen

HONG KONG (AP) — Australian shares led Asian stock markets modestly higher on Monday after a report showed Chinese manufacturing expanded for the first time this year, signaling that the No. 2 economy's growth slowdown has bottomed out.

Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index rose 0.8 percent to 5,450.80 and the country's currency strengthened after HSBC's preliminary purchasing managers' index showed that activity in China's huge manufacturing sector rose to the highest level since December.

The bank said the reading shows that that the effects of recent mini-stimulus measures unleashed by Beijing to boost growth were filtering through to the economy. Beijing is targeting full-year economic growth of 7.5 percent and last week Premier Li Keqiang vowed that the country would avoid a so-called "hard landing."

A Chinese rebound would benefit big mining companies in Australia, where the resource-driven economy has become highly dependent on China's demand for commodities such as iron ore.

"Signs of improvement amid policy support ought to allay overdone fears of a hard landing in China," Mizuho Bank said in a report. "And this ought to inspire some optimism in broader Asia."

Gains in other Asian markets were more restrained. Japan's Nikkei 225 edged 0.1 percent higher to 15,369.54 while South Korea's Kospi rose 0.4 percent to 1,976.34. Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.3 percent to 23,262.39 while the Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China was flat at 2,027.35.

In energy trading, the price of U.S. benchmark crude for August delivery rose 33 cents to $107.16 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 78 cents to settle at $106.83 per barrel on Friday.

In currencies, the dollar slipped to 101.92 Japanese yen from 102.08 in late trading Friday. The euro rose to $1.3607 from 1.3599.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The parents of a runaway South Korean soldier holed up in a forest after allegedly killing five comrades near the North Korean border pleaded with him to surrender Monday as the military tightened a cordon meant to capture him alive.

There has been a massive manhunt for the soldier, identified only by his surname Yim, since authorities said he killed five and wounded seven Saturday night before fleeing his frontline army unit with his standard issue K2 assault rifle.

The 22-year-old also fired Sunday on the troops chasing him, injuring a platoon leader. On Monday, officials said a South Korean soldier was wounded by suspected friendly fire.

Troops surrounded Yim so closely Monday in the forest about 7 kilometers (4 miles) from the border outpost that they could toss him a mobile phone to talk to his father. Yim, who still refused to surrender, had ammunition and officials feared he might "commit an extreme act" — an apparent reference to suicide — Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said at a briefing.

Besides the mobile phone, Yim's parents also used a loudspeaker to try to persuade him to surrender, according to the Defense Ministry.

It wasn't clear what triggered the rampage, and there was no indication that South Korea's bitter rival, North Korea, was involved.

Yim was scheduled to complete his nearly two years of mandatory military service in September, according to defense officials. Initial personality tests in April of last year put Yim within a group of soldiers who need special attention and are unfit for frontline duty, a Defense Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of department rules. But tests last November concluded he had improved and could serve in the frontline area, said the official.

The rampage comes as South Koreans grapple with worries over public safety in the wake of an April ferry disaster that left more than 300 people dead or missing. And some in Seoul have raised questions about the discipline and readiness of South Korea's military, which is under near-constant threat from a North Korea that has recently staged a series of missile and artillery drills, traded fire with the South near a disputed maritime border and threatened South Korea's leader.

"Due to a shortage of troops, even some soldiers on the list of special attention had to be on border guard, which requires soldiers to be heavily armed. Needless to say, the military needs to come up with remedial measures to this problem," the Korea Times, said in an editorial Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of troops from the rival Koreas are squared off along the world's most heavily armed border. The Korean Peninsula is still technically in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Shooting rampages against fellow soldiers happen occasionally. South Korea's military maintains a conscription system requiring all able-bodied men to serve about two years because of the North Korean threat.

In 2011, a 19-year-old marine corporal went on a shooting rampage at a Gwanghwa Island base, just south of the maritime border with North Korea. Military investigators later said that corporal was angry about being shunned and slighted and showed signs of mental illness before the shooting.

In 2005, a soldier tossed a hand grenade and opened fire at a front-line army unit in a rampage that killed eight colleagues and injured several others. Pfc. Kim Dong-min told investigators he was enraged at superiors who verbally abused him.

__

Associated Press writers Jung-Yoon Choi and Foster Klug contributed to this report from Seoul.