Will Smith voted 2008s top moneymaking movie star

By Peter Kramer (AP)

No name on the marquee was more pleasing to theater owners in 2008 than Will Smith, according to a survey of movie exhibitors.

Smith, star of "Hancock" and "Seven Pounds," was voted the star who generated the most box office revenue for theaters in an annual survey by Quigley Publishing Co.

Smith is only the second black actor to be chosen in the Quigley poll, which since 1932 has asked movie exhibitors to vote on the 10 stars who brought in the most business. Sidney Poitier topped the poll in 1968.

Smith's superhero summer blockbuster, "Hancock," grossed $228 million....

Vice President Dick Cheney says Russia's military actions in Georgia "must not go unanswered."

Cheney spoke Sunday afternoon with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. "The vice president expressed the United States' solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Cheney's press secretary, Lee Ann McBride, said.

Cheney told Saakashvili "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community," McBride said. Read More...

Iraq's foreign minister insisted Sunday that any security deal with the United States must contain a "very clear timeline" for the departure of U.S. troops. A suicide bomber struck north of Baghdad, killing at least five people including an American soldier.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters that American and Iraqi negotiators were "very close" to reaching a long-term security agreement that will set the rules for U.S. troops in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. Read More...

Michael Rodriguez remembers the exhilaration of newfound freedom when he hid in the back of a stolen truck as he and six of his buddy convicts staged one of Texas' most notorious prison breaks.

Then he recalls seeing his photo on national TV and grasping the reality that their Hollywood-style plan to rob a Nevada casino had gone terribly awry. He and his fellow fugitives were being hunted everywhere as the killers of a police officer, Aubrey Hawkins, at a store they robbed outside Dallas. Read More...