Spielberg honored for Holocaust, Darfur work

Paris – Steven Spielberg is now an officer in the French Legion of Honor.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said the honor was prompted by the filmmaker’s work on documenting the Holocaust and his efforts to help the war-racked Darfur region of Sudan.

Spielberg, 61, met with Sarkozy in the French presidential palace on Wednesday.

The French Legion of Honor is one of the country’s highest awards.

Boy band creator gets 25 years in prison

Orlando, Fla. – Lou Pearlman, the man who created the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in federal prison for engineering a decades-long scam that bilked thousands of investors out of their life savings.

It was the maximum sentence the boy band mogul could receive for allegedly swindling some $300 million from investors and banks since the early 1980s.

He pleaded guilty in March to two counts of conspiracy and single counts of money laundering and presenting a false claim in bankruptcy court.

U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp noted that many victims were Pearlman’s relatives, friends and retirees in their 70s or 80s who lost everything.

The judge said he would reduce Pearlman’s sentence by one month for every $1 million returned to investors. It wasn’t clear how, or whether, investors would ever be compensated.