Free Republic

Singer and guitarist Alex Chilton, who topped the charts as a teen and later became a cult hero with Big Star, died Wednesday. He was 59. Chilton died at a hospital in New Orleans after experiencing what appeared to be heart problems, said his longtime friend John Fry. Fry said Chilton's wife, Laura, was very distressed by the unexpected death. "Alex was an amazingly talented person, not just as a musician and vocalist and a songwriter, but he was intelligent and well read and interested in a wide number of music genres," said Fry, the owner of Memphis-based Ardent Studios.

An Arizona appeals court on Wednesday upheld a jury’s $600,000 judgment in favor of a rancher in a defamation lawsuit, rejecting an environmental group’s argument that documents it posted on the Internet were shielded by the First Amendment. The Court of Appeals upheld a Pima County Superior Court jury’s award of compensatory and punitive damages to Jim Chilton in his lawsuit against the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit with offices in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, D.C. A lawyer for the rancher said the appellate court had stood up for a person wrongly defamed, while an attorney...