Pete

Robert Easton, a character actor whose command of a vast array of foreign and American regional accents led to a flourishing second career as a dialect coach to Hollywood stars such as Charlton Heston and Anne Hathaway, has died. He was 81. Often called the Henry Higgins of Hollywood, he died of natural causes Friday at his home in Toluca Lake, said his daughter, Heather Woodruff Perry. A consummate phoneticist like Higgins, the exacting speech tutor in the musical "My Fair Lady," Easton taught Forest Whitaker the African inflections of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and Ben Kingsley the gruff tones of a New York mobster.

Tequila used to be the bad boy of spirits, a rough tipple to be indulged in indiscriminately and regretted the morning after. Today, tequila has gone into rehab and emerged as a suave, cultivated customer, wearing some pretty fancy packaging and at ease in our finest watering holes. Restaurant bars and liquor store shelves are crowded with dozens of gleaming bottles of fine tequila, many bearing the coveted "100% agave" designation and prices ascending through the ozone layer.

Brit­ish roots mu­sic band Mum­ford & Sons took the top hon­or for its album "Ba­bel" at the 55th Grammy Awards ce­re­mony Sunday. The night mostly dis­trib­uted hon­ors broadly to an ar­ray of young­er gen­er­a­tion acts in­clud­ing New York in­die trio Fun., Aus­trali­an elec­tron­ic pop artist Gotye, rap­per-R&B sing­er Frank Ocean and Ak­ron, Ohio, rock group the Black Keys. See the complete list of 2013 Grammy winners and nominees below. #story-body-text h2 { font-weight: bold !

The night before had been unseasonably cold for late April, with a low near 20, but now the campus was basking in sunshine. Shirtless joggers bounded past pale co-eds stretched out on blankets, and leafless trees seemed to sprout green buds in a matter of hours, as in time-lapse photography. In a dark and cramped basement room in venerable Sorin Hall, a restless freshman football player slipped on a pair of shorts and boat shoes.

SACRAMENTO - In his seven-year career with the Denver Broncos, running back Terrell Davis, a former Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, dazzled fans with his speed and elusiveness. At the end of his rookie year in 1995, he signed a $6.8-million, five-year contract. Off the field he endorsed Campbell's soup. And when he hung up his cleats, he reported for the National Football League Network and appeared in movies and TV shows. So it may surprise Californians to find out that in 2011, Davis got a $199,000 injury settlement from a California workers' compensation court for injuries related to football.

For those who want to spend more time than money in Las Vegas, here are 21 things to do for less than $21, all aimed at keeping the bottom line low and the fun factor high. 1. Springs Preserve. Forsake the fake pyramid and fake Statue of Liberty for a power walk through the real Vegas: 110 acres of pre-Bugsy Siegel desert. There are miles of cactus-filled trails, botanic gardens and a museum that pays tribute to the city's Mojave Desert roots. Open daily 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily.

Emmy Award-winning actor Harry Morgan, who played the crusty yet sympathetic Col. Sherman T. Potter in the sitcom "MASH" and the hard-nosed LAPD Officer Bill Gannon in the television drama "Dragnet," died Wednesday. He was 96. Morgan died at his home in Brentwood after a bout with pneumonia, his daughter-in-law, Beth Morgan, told the Associated Press. Morgan's eight - year run on "MASH," the pinnacle of his seven-decade acting career, began when he was 60 and had already appeared on the Broadway stage, in dozens of television shows and more than 50 films.

If you're younger than 25 and planning to buy car insurance, you can save big by shopping around. Average auto insurance premiums vary from insurer to insurer, no matter what your age, but the difference is massive when you're a young driver, said Des Toups, senior managing editor at CarInsurance.com, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based auto insurance shopping site. Whereas a 55-year-old can save an average of $456 a year by shopping multiple insurers, a driver younger than 25 can save a whopping $1,102.

Pete Townshend of The Who concluded his baby boomer anthem, "My Generation," with these words: "I hope I die before I get old." And my boomer generation may well still wish for that. I am 62 -- old enough to cash in my 401(k), too young for Medicare -- and standing with my peers on the edge of a dementia precipice. Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia afflict up to 5 million people in the United States and about 26 million people worldwide.

Frank Cox, known to generations of San Diegans as "Frank the Trainman" because of a four-decade affiliation with his own model train shop, died Thursday of a heart attack. He was 82. "He was the dean of train collectors," said Tom Sefton, president of San Diego Trust & Savings Bank, who said he and Cox had been friends since 1946. "He was responsible more than anyone else by far for the introduction of trains at Christmas time . . . for the young finding trains under the tree.