The greatest show in town: kauto star v denman iii may be the best
Tony McCoy on Denman and Ruby Walsh riding Kauto Star, locked in the battle is billed as the greatest head-to-head in the sport since the 1960s.
Peter scudamore's view after day three of the cheltenham festival
Another big day for the bookies. Big Buck’s (5-6) and Ruby Walsh came to punters’ rescue in the Ladbrokes World Hurdle.
The irish view of day four of the festival, with edward o'grady
The focus is firmly on the Gold Cup clash between Kauto Star and Denman but I’m hoping that my runner Alaivan will be one of the stars of the undercard.
Speedy saints can make life hell for france when england travel to paris
One is the crosscode wing. The other is a converted full back who has grown frustrated and impatient at being held back by England. Together, they are lethal.
Lovenkrands blow for newcastle: striker ruled out by ankle injury
Newcastle striker Peter Lovenkrands has suffered an injury blow ahead of the Championship leaders' visit to managerless Bristol City.
Albert riera's stock plummets as it emerges spanish winger turned on youngster during training
Albert Riera fell out of favour with Rafa Benitez after turning on a young reserve player in a training ground flashpoint at Melwood.
Bonuses cause rift between boardroom and dressing room at st mirren
St Mirren will enter their first major cup final for 23 years amid a rift between the boardroom and dressing room over bonus payments and after-match arrangements.
Shawcross not afraid to tackle demons after breaking ramsey's leg
Ryan Shawcross insists he has not lost any sleep over the challenge that left Aaron Ramsey with a double fracture of the right leg, even though his opponent refuses to forgive him.
Arsenal boss wenger voices concern over gallas's 'endless calf strain'
Cesc Fabregas and Tomas Rosicky are fit to boost Arsenal's title challenge but Arsene Wenger admits he is still troubled by William Gallas's 'endless calf strain'.
Johnson's bristol city departure sealed by alleged bust-up with sproule
Gary Johnson lost his job as Bristol City boss after an alleged bust-up with winger Ivan Sproule. Johnson left City by mutual consent after two wins in the last 12 league games.
Mcleish: sullivan will face court if he tries to poach larsson and ridgewell
Alex McLeish has warned former Birmingham City owner David Sullivan that he faces a court battle if he tries to poach Liam Ridgewell and Sebastian Larsson.
P diddy bid to buy crystal palace dismissed by club administrator
Crystal Palace administrator Brendan Guilfoyle has laughed off suggestions P Diddy is ready to buy the club - even though he would be delighted to hear the rap star’s offer.
Fulham 4 juventus 1 (agg 5-4): old lady sunk by breathtaking comeback
They will talk about it for years. The night Fulham welcomed mighty Juventus, conceded a goal after a minute - and then scored four to toss them out of Europe.
Colin hendry faces ruin over gambling debt as he is forced to sell home
An online sports betting firm has filed a bankruptcy petition against the former Scotland World Cup captain. He is understood to owe the company £35,000.
How richer sports might learn from Gaelic games
Lloyds predicts a profitable 2010
Lloyds Banking Group says it expects to make a profit this year - having made heavy losses due to bad loans in 2009.
Moscow hosts key mid-east talks
Leaders from the international Quartet of Middle East peace mediators meet in Moscow to push Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Taliban arrests halt un contacts
A former UN envoy to Afghanistan says Pakistan's arrest of Taliban leaders halted a channel of secret UN contact.
Pope to sign letter on sex abuse
Pope Benedict is to sign a letter to the Catholics of Ireland on how to address the sexual abuse of children by priests.
Rio tinto announces guinea deal
Rio Tinto says it has signed a deal with China to develop a massive iron ore project in Guinea.
Srebrenica gay theory irks dutch
Dutch officials reject a US general's claim that troops failed at Srebrenica because of poor morale over gay soldiers.
Polanski lawyers file new appeal
Lawyers for Roman Polanski file an appeal over alleged judicial misconduct in his 1970s US trial for sex with a 13-year-old girl.
Castro supporters heckle marchers
Hundreds of Cuban government supporters heckle the "Ladies in White" protesters marking the 2003 crackdown on dissidents.
China unveils homemade helicopter
China's first domestically developed civilian helicopter takes off on a maiden flight in the eastern province of Jiangxi.
Clue in the claws: new dinosaur species related to velociraptor
Scientists discover a new species of dinosaur that was closely related to the Velociraptor.
Public sector 'is wasting £25bn'
The public sector is wasting at least £25bn a year because of a failure to reform, a report says.
Deutsche bahn confirms arriva bid
Deutsche Bahn, the German national rail company, has confirmed its bid for Arriva, the UK transport group.
Fears winter harmed uk wildlife
The harsh winter may have had a devastating impact on UK wildlife, British Waterways warns as it launches its annual survey.
Doctors at Hong Kong University call for greater regulation of the acupuncture industry and stricter hygiene measures.
Appeal after abandoned baby dies
Police say they are "extremely concerned" for the health of a mother after the death of her abandoned newborn boy.
Priest paid alleged abuse victim
Cardinal Sean Brady confirms a priest in NI paid compensation to a woman who had made allegations of sexual abuse.
Student loan delays 'may reoccur'
The public spending watchdog criticises the Student Loans Company and warns of another year of delays.
Obese maternity care risk warning
Maternity services for obese women are not good enough and may be putting mothers-to-be at risk, experts warn.
Acceptance over obama asia delay
Indonesia and Australia express understanding after President Obama pushes back a much-anticipated regional visit.
Birmingham social workers sacked
Six social workers at Birmingham City Council are sacked as the council works to turn around its children's services.
Music festival guide: let the wild rumpus begin
It's the time of year that festivals across the UK start to announce their line-ups. Glastonbury may already be sold out, but there are another 485 festivals to choose between. Here we present some festival Highlights: to help you make your decision.
Doctor who - has age withered this time lord?
Icouldn't make it to Cardiff this week for the press launch for the new series of Doctor Who, but then, although mildly intrigued, I'm in no desperate hurry to make the acquaintance of the Doctor's latest incarnation. With his long, ascetic face, rather like Mervyn Peake's sketches of Steerpike in his Gormenghast novels, the 27-year-old Matt Smith has all the makings of an interesting Time Lord. And, after all, this revived version of the venerable BBC1 classic, with both David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston, has a good track record with its principal casting. I can well imagine that he will continue the vein of English (even the West Lothian-born Tennant spoke with an English accent) eccentricity that has permeated the show since its inception. However, on the whole, I increasingly can't be bothered with Doctor Who.
Two Irish wedding receptions colliding in the same hotel isn't a bad idea for a comedy, but Stephen Burke's feature doesn't even clear the hurdles of basic competence.
Album: goldfrapp, head first (mute)
Having leapt feet-first on 2008's Seventh Tree into the spooky wyrd-folk world then being opened up by the likes of Bat For Lashes, Goldfrapp now suddenly effect a complete volte-face on Head First, heading back to the electronic pop of their three previous releases.
Nissan turns over a new leaf with a zero-emission family hatchback
With their new Leaf, Nissan are offering motorists a potentially revolutionary choice; a useable, practical, conventional-looking electric vehicle that will be in dealer showrooms by this time next year and for the price of an equivalent Ford Focus. It differs from petrol-electric hybrid models on the market now, such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight, in that it entirely dispenses with the internal combustion engine. It is truly all-electric, and can be plugged in to the mains like any other appliance. As a zero emissions vehicle (not counting those produced at the power stations that generate its electricity) the Leaf is also far greener than the most fuel-miserly hybrids or small diesel and petrol models. Nissan describe their newest addition as "the world's first affordable, mass produced zero emission car".
Marco pierre white endorses firm behind turkey twizzlers
What links exquisitely cooked young leeks, girolle mushrooms and roasted guinea fowl, and factory-farmed turkey breasts? The chef-turned-stock-cube-salesman Marco Pierre White.
Texan accused of disabling 100 cars over internet
A man fired from a Texas auto dealership used an internet service to remotely disable ignitions and set off car horns of more than 100 vehicles sold at his old workplace, police said yesterday.
Econoblog: the seeds of a new british green motor industry
Good for Peter Mandelson. For just a few hundred million pounds he seems to have single-handedly created an entire new industry.
Facebook 'no objection in principle to panic button'
Facebook has "no objection in principle" to installing an anti-paedophile panic button on its site, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said today.
Mary dejevsky: it really won't be the internet that wins it
Not a day now goes by without someone dubbing the coming election the e-election, the Twitter election, the Facebook election, the first British election that will be won or lost in the virtual world. My inbox is stuffed with invitations to hear stars of the youthful e-establishment and their older acolytes expatiate on the theme. So far as I can judge, our revolutionary e-election has eclipsed climate change as the belief of the age – and it is being preached with similar evangelistic fervour.
Hamant verma: the british indian approach to business can help us escape recession
British Indians have a conservative culture, with a small "c", which means they are sceptical of change, resourceful and austere – perfect for dealing with a recession. While the regular sight of an Indian housewife parking a large new Mercedes saloon outside one of Ealing Road's modest vegetarian restaurants probably looks ostentatious to indigenous Brits, shrewd Desis will have the nagging feeling that her husband could probably have afforded a bigger one if he wanted.
Lives remembered: gillie johnson
Gillie Johnson, who died on 17 January aged 61 from pancreatic cancer, was a mentor, advisor, and friend to hundreds of people in the voluntary sector. A love of music, a commitment to social justice, and an expansive and varied community of friends and neighbours were central to Gillie's childhood in Wimbledon – she was born on 3 April 1948 – and remained central for the rest of her life.
Almagro collapse hands murray victory
Andy Murray eased into the quarter-finals of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells after fourth-round opponent Nicolas Almagro was forced to retire with an ankle injury. Fourth seed Murray was leading 6-2, 1-0 when his unseeded Spanish opponent was forced to call it a day having already called a medical time out at the end of the first set. Next up for Murray is a tricky looking encounter with sixth-seeded Swede Robin Soderling.
Pietersen's relief as the old swagger comes back
All the England cricketers who came on this tour will remember Bangladesh. It is not a place – in many ways at least – that easily leaves the system. None, except perhaps Steve Finn who made one of the more unexpected recent debuts, will recall it more fondly down the years than Kevin Pietersen.
Grand Imam Sheikh Mohamed Sayyid Tantawi, Rector of Al Azhar University in Cairo and the leading cleric in Sunni Islam worldwide, often courted controversy. His most notable characteristics in office were his liberal reforming pronouncements, compared to many Sunni clerics, his great Islamic scholarship and his loyalty to the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who appointed him Grand Mufti of Egypt in 1986 and then Head of Al Azhar in 1996. This loyalty was seen in Tantawi's backing for some highly controversial stances of the President: his building a security fence to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza, his condemnations of the 9/11 attack and of al-Qaeda, and of his maintaining Sadat's Peace with Israel.
Charlie gillett: broadcaster and author who championed world music
Over the last four decades, the radio presenter, author and music publisher Charlie Gillett was one of the most influential people in the British music industry, a feat he achieved without a national media profile and no trace of an ego. He typically downplayed the excellence of The Sound Of The City – The Rise of Rock'n'Roll – the authoritative book he first published in 1970, and one which has sold 250,000 copies and has remained in print ever since, a rare feat in a market littered with cash-ins and remaindered titles. He made light of the part he played in the careers of Ian Dury, Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, Darts, and most famously Dire Straits, whose demo of "Sultans Of Swing" he aired on his legendary Honky Tonk show on BBC Radio London in July 1977, the first step on their way to a record deal with Phonogram and worldwide success.
Last night's television: masterchef, bbc1kings of pastry, bbc4the lady and the revamp, channel 4
"I am now at the outer limit of my publicity potential," whinnied Rachel sister-of-Boris Johnson mid-way through The Lady and the Revamp. Johnson, freshly appointed celebrity editor (celeditor?) of The Lady and not-so-secret weapon in the magazine's campaign for new readers – codename "get Rach on sofas" – could have been forgiven for thinking she'd done enough of the hard sell what with those perky appearances on BBC Breakfast and a 5,000-word profile in a Sunday newspaper. Not quite, Rachel. There's still a Channel 4 documentary to go. Still, if this hour about her attempts to give the blue-rinsed magazine a 21st-century makeover frequently came across as another plea for readers, it didn't make it any less enjoyable.
Button: mclaren are better suited to melbourne streets
The world champion Jenson Button says he can see plenty of room for improvement at next week's Australian Grand Prix after a disappointing debut with McLaren.
Warrington try to break knowsley road hoodoo
Warrington have their last chance tonight to break the longest losing streak in Super League.
Alex Butterworth's account of anarchists and their pursuers, The World That Never Was sweeps the reader through France, Russia, Britain, Italy, Germany and the United States. The well-known figures are all there: Louise Michel, incarcerated in New Caledonia after the 1871Paris Commune; Peter Kropotkin, the Russian prince who renounced privilege, and the Russian aristocrat turned revolutionary, Michael Bakunin. Many lesser-known figures flit through the pages too: Enrico Malatesta, who pinned his hopes on militant trade unionism; Sergei Kravchinsky, alias "Stepniak", who alerted liberal opinion in Britain to the oppression of Tsardom, and Elisee Reclus, veteran of the Commune, radical geographer and animal rights pioneer.
Tonight BBC4's Sacred Music series turns to France, and two vital figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Gabriel Fauré and Francis Poulenc. Of all the sacred works of its time, none is better loved than Fauré's Requiem, which dates from 1888 and departed so radically from traditional Requiems that it has never lost its power to astonish us. In the film, Simon Russell Beale wanders through the Madeleine, church of Parisian high society where Fauré was first choirmaster and later "titulaire" (organist), pondering the factors that led the composer to create a piece often termed a "lullaby of death".
A ridiculously starry cast – including Helena Bonham Carter, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, James Corden and Robbie Coltrane – voice this witty adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's children's tale of a shrewd little mouse who outwits a ravenous snake, owl and a fox with the threat of a gruffalo, a creature with terrible claws, orange eyes and purple prickles all over its back. In the old days, one voice – Bernard Cribbins, say – would have voiced the whole lot, no trouble, but this was the centrepiece of the BBC's Christmas schedule so they threw the kitchen sink at it.
Ever wondered what your soul might look like if it was extracted and stored in a jar?
Storm thorgerson - my art on their sleeves
I have made over 400 album covers and as Pink Floyd said, "We've been trying to get rid of him for years, but haven't been able to." It took Pink Floyd three minutes to decide on the album cover for The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973. My memory is a bit hazy, but I think we gave them seven ideas to choose from, including a surfer on a big wave, based on a Marvel Comics superhero called the Silver Surfer. I wish I had kept them because, of course, they would have been a piece of history – but they are long gone. It's not as emotional as some of the other album covers I did for Pink Floyd, such as Wish You Were Here, or even as powerful as The Division Bell or as funny as Animals – but I feel proud of it because it is strikingly graphic.
Abdulrahman Zeitoun was born in Jebleh, on Syria's Mediterranean coast. Decades later and thousand of miles away, he awakes from dreaming of a fishing expedition out of his childhood home: "Beside him he could hear his wife Kathy breathing, her exhalations not unlike the shushing of water against the hull of a wooden boat." As so often in Dave Eggers's latest novel, the docu-drama Zeitoun, a caught image opens a window on an ocean of memory and a state of mind.
Terence blacker: the march of playground morality
"Simplistic" was the word used by the Advertising Standards Authority to describe an ill-fated government campaign to raise awareness of climate change. It was a polite way of describing the smoothing out of inconvenient truths in order to deliver a hard-hitting message in a series of public service announcements. But it was the advertisements themselves, with their use of nursery rhymes, kiddie-book pictures and primary school prose, that have raised a larger question.
Where your leading article (18 March) accepts and defends budget cuts in higher education, it positively flaunts the notion of making their institutions more like technical colleges than universities: "If, as is forecast, the number of university places overall is set to fall, it is right that students are gently channelled into areas where skills are most needed."
Leading article: hide and seek
Has ever a flower been so aptly named? The ghost orchid was presumed to have disappeared from these islands some 20 years ago. But now it has reappeared almost like, well, a ghost.
Leading article: the virtues of our armed forces
The armed forces seem to have become fodder for public argument of late. The Opposition accuses the Prime Minister of under-funding the military. There are fierce rows about the manipulation of bereaved widows by certain sections of the media. And, of course, bigger arguments still rage about the original wisdom of the military engagements in which the armed services are engaged.
Leading article: barack obama should keep the pressure on israel
It is a testament to the hubris of Benjamin Netanyhau's government that having seen off an attempt by Barack Obama to freeze settlement construction, it has now given the US President a second chance to claw back that defeat. Much has been said about the inadequacy of Mr Netanyahu's apologetic admission that last week's announcement of a plan to expand the Ramat Shlomo settlement was badly timed. As the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, made admirably clear to the Israeli Prime Minister in her famous telephone call last Friday, Washington objected to the substance as much as to the timing.
Molotov's magic lantern, by rachel polonsky
The genesis of this intriguingly entitled book is the writer's discovery, as an academic expatriate living in Moscow, that the flat directly above hers had been occupied for many years by the disgraced Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. His heirs, who were now renting the flat out to well-to-do foreigners, had left bits and pieces from his library, and a "magic lantern" affording faint pictures of a forgotten past. She learned this from the then tenant, an American banker, who cheerfully gave her the run of the place.
East of the Brandenburg Gate, the stones of central Berlin don't merely speak of the city's harrowed history. If you care to hear them, they positively scream. On the south side of Under den Linden, that most imperious of thoroughfares, lies the bleak expanse of Bebelplatz. Here, on 10 May 1933, the Nazis burnt 20,000 "decadent" books by the leaders of modern German literature: an early-warning crime commemorated now in Micha Ullman's eerie underground memorial.
Observations: a comic strip in westminster
Unofficially, the Houses of Parliament plays host to comedy every day, with its corridors full of bungling MPs and the Punch and Judy of Prime Minister's Questions. But next Monday will see Westminster become a comedy venue proper for the first time, when Jewish stand-up Ivor Dembina performs his show This Is Not a Subject for Comedy in front of an audience of MPs.
An edible history of humanity, by tom standage
Did you know that carrots were white or purple until the familiar variety was created by 16th century Dutch growers as a tribute to William I, Prince of Orange? Or that the first farmers were "invariably less healthy", due to a more restricted diet and heavier work-load, than their hunter-gatherer predecessors? Dense in revelations, An Edible History of Humanity demonstrates how food has continually and often radically affected the human story. Spice comes from the Latin word species, which was also the root for the word "special". Imports such as cinnamon and ginger were special and taxed accordingly.
Observations: joseph fiennes is the new face of carte noire readers
At the moment we're used to seeing Joseph Fiennes play action man. As the star of the US television sci-fi drama FlashForward, he charges around Los Angeles waving a gun, trying to work out why everyone on the planet simultaneously lost consciousness for 137 seconds.
Fly by wire, by william langewiesche
"Have you any ideas?" asked Captain Sullenberger. "Actually not," replied co-pilot Skiles. So their Airbus A320 crash-landed on the Hudson River in the shadow of Manhattan's skyscrapers. "The fluency they exhibited at such a critical moment," writes Langewiesche, "helps to explain why their passengers survived."
Fool, by christopher moorethe final act of mr shakespeare, by robert winder
Christopher Moore's Fool is a shaggy-dog story of rumpy-pumpy, a primal soup of violence and sex, the latter notably at the hands of a Quasimodo called Drool. He is the sidekick of King Lear's ever-resourceful Fool, the irrepressible Pocket. Drool either masturbates abstractedly in the palace laundry – he is eventually promoted to Royal Minister of Wank – or else, courtesy of Master Pocket, has bionic intercourse in the dark with Goneril and Regan, both under the mistaken impression that they are being bedded by a turbo-charged Edmund the Bastard. Regan, or "bunny cunny" in the Fool's all-licensed language, oozes sex. She is beautiful, murderous, insatiable, while her younger sister Cordelia, issued from one Lear's later marriages, has an unusually raucous sense of humour.
Book of a lifetime: jude the obscure, by thomas hardy
In a brief moment in my teens when I was able to concentrate on reading many of the classics, the one that lodged with particular resonance in my heart was Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Reading it some 50 years later, its potency has not faded one bit.
Great works: a complete new system of midwifery (1751), george stubbs
"Yes – the history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting, and contain events of greater moment, than all the three-score and 10 years that follow it." That was how Samuel Taylor Coleridge marked a passage in his copy of Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici.
A bright and guilty place, by richard rayner
One of the many paradoxes of ageing is that the past seems ever more recent the older you get. When I was born, at the dawn of the 1960s, the Second World War seemed to have happened a long, long time before. Now I realise that it ended just 16 years before my birth, and 16 years no longer looks like any great span of time. The same is true of the events described in Richard Rayner's fascinating, flawed history of crime in Los Angeles in the first decades of the last century. The stories he tells are of pyramid schemes, ecological disasters, political and police corruption, greed and murder - the raw material for the novels of Raymond Chandler et al.
Three years ago, Reina (daughter of Sid) James aged 60, said of her first novel, a bleak wartime period piece, This Time of Dying: "I'm absolutely fascinated with the way we care for our dead."
With their gently melancholy wit and bittersweet harmonies, Ishiguro's five "stories of music and nightfall" feel much like the Broadway standards that inspire them.
Sex sells: the girl band that changed pop forever
In early October 1976, The Runaways, an all-girl five-piece from Los Angeles, played a sell-out show at London's Roundhouse, their debut date in the UK. At the centre of The Runaways' stage act was the appearance of singer Cherie Currie, dressed in a corset, panties, and fish-net stockings – "my way of being a rebel and out there in my underwear" is how she described it later. Such "rebellion", however, only emphasised her 16-year-old "jailbait" appeal, one exploited with no great subtlety by Kim Fowley, the group's manager.
Observations: the royal court branches out to elephant and castle
Outside Elephant and Castle shopping centre in Southwark, I stop to get directions to the Royal Court Theatre. The first person I ask is a young man exuding an air of cool fatigue in a hoodie. He is nonplussed: "What are you talking about?"
For 200 years humanity has lived in the long, deep shadow of a gloomy cleric-turned-economist from Surrey called Thomas Robert Malthus, cosily if incongruously known to his peers as "Bob". At the end of the 18th century, and in the first decades of the 19th, Malthus predicted that humanity was bound to out-breed its own food supply and so, sooner or later, must perish messily. Food, he declared, can be increased only arithmetically – by a fixed, absolute amount each year. But population rises exponentially – by a set percentage each year; and exponential growth, unlike arithmetical growth, gets faster and faster.
A spirit of discovery at the london lesbian and gay film festival
On a warm summer's evening in June 2001, a Navajo Indian teenager from Cortez, Colorado, left his mother's trailer home to visit a nearby rodeo that had pitched up on the outskirts of their reservation. Growing up in such a remote corner of conservative Middle America, Fred Martinez was always going to stand out from the crowd.
Album: laura marling, i speak because i can (virgin)
On I Speak Because I Can, Laura Marling continues to demonstrate why she's such an exciting singer-songwriter.
I love you phillip morris (15)
This must have been a tricky one to pitch. The words, "It's basically a gay prison escape movie" are not the sort a studio will rejoice to hear. And you can't imagine audiences embracing the notion wholeheartedly, either, Brokeback Mountain notwithstanding. It must have been quite a relief for the film-makers to be able to say that they had Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor on board as stars, because the level of explicitness here – anal-sex jokes, prison-sex jokes – really is the kind that spells box-office death. What's unexpected is that the film manages to be deeply peculiar in a way that actually has nothing to do with "gayness". It is not even what interested audiences think it might be.
Album: the white stripes, under great white northern lights (third man/xl)
As the notion of concert performance retreats ever further into the pre-programmed bowels of a computer, the great live album is virtually a thing of the past.
Album: various artists, the bert berns story volume 2: mr success 1964-1967 (ace)
Songwriter/producer/label boss Bert Berns was one of the great architects of the 1960s pop sound, though rarely accorded his rightful status due to his tragic death in 1967 at the age of 38 from heart failure – by which time, The Beatles' cover of his "Twist And Shout" had earned him a house with a guitar-shaped swimming pool.
Dvd: the twilight saga: new moon (12)
Kristen Stewart's Bella Swan is, like, bummed out 'cos her "hot" young/old bloodsucker beau Edward (Robert Pattinson) has gone and left her – "This is the last time you'll ever see me," he solemnly promises. Yeah, right.
Did you know that Canada, not the Middle East, is the largest supplier of oil to the US?
In which Jennifer Aniston continues to display her remarkable knack for choosing the lamest comedy vehicles on the road.
Party of the week: actresses take the lead for the almeida
The actresses Kim Cattrall, Fiona Shaw and Natascha McElhone attended the Almeida's fundraising gala, which this year raised £115,000 for the theatre.
Oxford history of modern slang, by john ayto and john simpson
Take a butcher's ("short for butcher's hook, rhyming slang for look") at this hash-up ("something concocted afresh from existing material") of street lingo ("probably from Portuguese lingoa language") and you'll expand your vocabulary with such terms as lallygag (dawdle) and slug-nutty (punch drunk).
Andreas whittam smith: to understand modern france, you really must see la rafle
The memory of France's most shameful wartime episode, buried deep for 30 years and then only grudgingly recognised, has finally come fully to the surface. For the appalling fate that the French state inflicted on thousands of its Jewish people one morning in July 1942 has become the subject of a film made with serious and respectful intent, a sort of documentary with actors. It is titled La Rafle (The Round-up). It opened last week in 775 cinemas throughout France. The telling is vivid and leaves one shaken.
Susie rushton: fencing for all hits the mark
this week the Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw announced a £6m scheme to fund a new network of after-school sports clubs. These won't offer football or netball, you understand, but Olympic oddities including badminton, handball, table tennis and fencing. That's right, fencing, chortled the Daily Mirror on Wednesday, under the inevitable "On Guard" headline (we fencers say en guarde, SVP). And why these particular arcane pastimes? The more minority the category, goes the thinking, the better chance Team GB will have at winning medals.
Caught in the net - making an impressive mess
Around about 2008, Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer and MGMT all hit the ground running with a sound that occupied a relatively similar sphere (give or take some different quirks here and there). The first two bands have kicked off 2010 with well-received new records and now it's getting to time for MGMT to re-enter the fray. Thus far, I can't say I've been fully convinced by the Brooklyn duo's brand of Dayglo, hipster-based wide-eyed psych-pop-rock – someone has probably come up with a more succinct label for their sound, but I'm going to ignore it. Perhaps their upcoming new album 'Congratulations' can sway me and other naysayers, when it lands in April. The first song to emerge from it is available as a free download from the band's website, whoismgmt.com. It's called "Flash Delirium", and is a promising opening salvo, full of the aforementioned elements but with more craziness added: shouty vocals, soft rock harmonies, flutes, swirling electronics, horns... Pretty much everything is thrown in there and it's an impressive mess.
New young pony club - electro stars rise from the rave
Andy Spence, one quarter of New Young Pony Club (NYPC), is exhibiting some obsessive-compulsive tendencies. He's on his hands and knees, dustpan and brush gripped in his paws, shovelling up dirt. "I just like to keep things clean," laughs the guitarist as the rest of the band – vocalist Tahita "Ty" Bulmer, keyboardist Lou Hayter and drummer Sarah Jones – buzz around their North London studio. Hayter and Jones make their apologies and leave as Bulmer and Spence bounce down on to a comfortably tattered and old-looking sofa.
Taking its cue from films such as The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity may not be the first low-budget horror movie to use the hand-held camera technique, but that doesn't stop it working to terrifying effect.
Story of the scene: the chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe (2005)
Cinematographer Don McAlpine began his working life making small films in Australia with Bruce Beresford before becoming one of the LA industry elite trusted to film big-budget Hollywood movies such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Wolverine. Cinematographers have to work closely with set and art designers and sometimes single scenes can be unbelievably complicated, shot not just in different sites, but different continents. One such was the first time we see the cave of Mr Tumnus in the first Narnia film.
Vocals - Bob MarleyWhen you watch his performances you see he was a genuine star. He was socially aware and all legendary artists usually stand for something or break the mould in some way. He really raised Jamaica into the worldwide consciousness.
The word on... liars, sisterworld
"Liars' usual creeping unease turns seductive —the increasingly rational voice of the inner psychopath... also ranks among Liars' poppiest. It compacts the band's ambient sprawl and mantra-like rhythms into recognisable song structures, even rocking out." - avclub.com
Did the runaways start pop's sexual revolution?
Cherie Currie's knickers changed the course of popular music history. When, in 1976, she appeared on stage in a basque, fishnet stockings and her pants, which might have been the standard attire if you're handing out cocktails at a Brewer Street clip joint but not so much if you were a 16-year-old girl straight out of a high school in Encino, she prematurely and unknowingly fired the starting gun in a sexual arms race which has dominated pop ever since.