Michael Douglas: Don't call me Gekko

People

Michael Douglas: Don't call me Gekko

Michael Douglas fielded questions Wednesday about the financial turmoil shaking world markets from reporters recalling his role in the 1987 film "Wall Street." The actor sought to focus on the subject of Wednesday's news conference: urging the United States and eight other holdout nations to ratify a nuclear-test-ban treaty. Douglas won an Academy Award for portraying the rapacious banker Gordon Gekko, who popularized the phrase "greed is good" in the movie. After world leaders at the United Nations condemned the "boundless greed" of world markets, Douglas was asked to compare nuclear Armageddon with the "financial Armageddon on Wall Street." The likening to Gekko did not end there, with a reporter asking: "Are you saying, Gordon, that greed is not good?" "I'm not saying that," Douglas replied. "And my name is not Gordon. He's a character I played 20 years ago."

Fertility swims?

Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman, 41, said swimming in Australian Outback waterfalls may promote fertility and might have contributed to her unexpected pregnancy in the past year. The Aussie, who gave birth to daughter Sunday Rose in July, said she and six other women who swam in the waters of a small Outback town during production of the epic romance "Australia" became pregnant. "Seven babies were conceived out of this film. ... There is something up there in the Kununurra water because we all went swimming in the waterfalls, so we can call it the fertility waters now," Kidman told The Australian Women's Weekly.

Law & disorder

Art thief sentenced

French art thief Bernard Jean Ternus, 56, who admitted stealing and trying to sell paintings by Claude Monet and other famous artists, will serve more than five years in U.S. prison. A federal judge in Miami imposed a 62-month sentence on Ternus, who pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to steal paintings by Monet, fellow Impressionist George Sisley and 17th-century master Jan Bruegel the Elder.

This wasn't a gas

Jose Cruz, 34, of Clarksburg, W.Va., who police said passed gas and fanned it toward a patrolman, has been charged with battery on a police officer. Cruz was pulled over early Tuesday for driving without headlights, police said. According to the criminal complaint, he smelled of alcohol, had slurred speech and failed three field sobriety tests before he was handcuffed and taken to a police station for a Breathalyzer test. As Patrolman T.E. Parsons prepared the machine, Cruz scooted his chair toward Parsons, lifted his leg and "passed gas loudly," the complaint said. Cruz was also charged with driving under the influence, driving without headlights and two counts of obstruction.

Upcoming

A deeper look at oceans

Covering more than 70 percent of the planet's surface, the ocean is a life-giving resource and a highway. Yet it's also a life-threatening obstacle, hiding untold mysteries. More people have stood on the moon than have visited the ocean's deepest recesses. Now regular folks can plumb the depths of the seas with the opening Saturday of the $49 million Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian Institutions's National Museum of Natural History. Among other things, the hall is the only place in the world to exhibit the preserved remains of an adult coelacanth and its pup.

Passages

Dean Hoge, 71, a prominent sociologist of American religion best known for incisive studies of an aging and dwindling Roman Catholic priesthood, died Sept. 13 in Baltimore of stomach cancer.

Gerald Margolis, 65, an entertainment lawyer who counseled such high-profile clients as R. Kelly and Robin Williams, died Sept. 15. He was diagnosed six years ago with progressive muscular atrophy.

Today in History

1493: Christopher Columbus set sail from Cadiz, Spain, with a flotilla of 17 ships on his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

1513: Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sighted the Pacific Ocean.

1789: The first U.S. Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. (Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights.)

1981: Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as the first female justice on the Supreme Court.

Today's Birthdays

Broadcast journalist Barbara Walters, 79. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, 65. Actor-producer Michael Douglas, 64. Model Cheryl Tiegs, 61. Actress Mimi Kennedy, 59. Actor Mark Hamill, 57. Actor Michael Madsen, 50. Actress Heather Locklear, 47. Actor Will Smith, 40. Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, 39. Actress Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, 35. Rapper T.I., 28.

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