NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

Charges dropped in Chris Brown case

LOS ANGELES

Singer Chris Brown’s lawyer has entered a not-guilty plea for him to a hit-and-run charge that led to his parole being revoked.

A spokesman for the LA city attorney’s office says charges of driving without a license and driving without proof of insurance were dismissed Tuesday after Brown’s attorney presented proof he was licensed in Virginia.

Brown was charged after a May 12 traffic accident in which he is suspected of rear-ending a car stopped at a red light and refusing to give the other driver his information.

The singer has been on felony probation in the 2009 beating of ex-girlfriend Rihanna. His trial in the hit-and-run case is set for Aug. 15.

Bynes hospitalized after starting fire

LOS ANGELES

Amanda Bynes has been hospitalized for a mental-health evaluation after a witness said he spotted flames on her pant legs from a small gasoline fire in the driveway of a California home.

Deputies responding to a 911 call Monday night said the 27-year-old actress had started the fire in Thousand Oaks, Ventura County sheriff’s Capt. Don Aguilar said. KABC-TV said the flames were fueled by gasoline. Deputies determined that Bynes met the criteria for a mental-health hold and took her into custody, where she can be held for 72 hours of observation, Aguilar said.

Passer-by Andrew Liverpool told KABC he found Bynes.

“It’s dark, it’s 8:45, and I just see her laying down, stomach up and her pant legs on fire, a trail of, you know, fire and gas, and I pull over,” he said.

Earlier this month, she appeared in a New York court on allegations that she threw a marijuana bong out the window of her 36th-floor apartment.

Actress, twin sister co-writing memoir

NEW YORK

Actress Samantha Futerman is collaborating on a book about her improbable discovery that she had an identical twin.

Futerman, whose credits include the TV series “The Big C” and the film “Memoirs of a Geisha,” has a deal with G.P Putnam’s Sons.

She will work on the book with Anais Bordier, the adopted daughter of a French family whose friends had seen Futerman’s films and swore that the actress and Bordier looked exactly alike.

Bordier learned that she and Futerman, who grew up in New Jersey, were born in Korea on Nov. 19, 1987.

She contacted Futerman through Facebook, and the women discovered in May they were twins.

Putnam said the book is to come out in fall of 2014.

Vindicator wire reports