Ian Markham-Smith's blog

Singer and actress Cher is returning to the big screen after an absence of 10 years.
Cher, who last appeared before the cameras in the 1999 movie Tea With Mussolini, is to co-star with fellow pop singer Christina Aguilera in a contemporary musical called Burlesque.
Aguilera, 28, will be making her movie acting debut playing an ambitious small-town Iowa girl with a big voice who comes of age in a neo-burlesque club on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The club is run by Tess, who is played by 63-year-old Cher. Tess is a former dancer who struggles to keep the club open and gives the young girl a chance to shine.

A deranged dad has told detectives how he sang an Eminem rap song as he murdered members of his family.
Police say 29-year-old Michael Miller stabbed his wife and 10-year-old daughter to death and severely injured his four-year-old son, who survived being stabbed 11 times.
Miller told police in Glendale, Arizona, that he tucked his son into bed the night before, and said a prayer together asking God to keep them safe.
Then, the next morning, he told a 911 emergency call dispatcher: "I just killed my family with a knife. All of them. All three of them."
Miller told detectives he was possessed and he visualised his wife, Adreana, as a demon.

Pets can pass the killer superbug MRSA to humans, according to scientists in the United States.
A news study has found that transmission of the infectious disease from dogs and cats to humans, and back again, is an increasing problem.
MRSA, which has long plagued hospitals and has evolved a resistance to antibiotics, has become more common in homes in recent years according to the boffins. It has even invaded beaches.
Scientists only began to seriously suspect pets were transmitting the bacteria about two years ago.
Richard Oehler of the University of South Florida College of Medicine and colleagues prepared the report which lays out the latest thinking on MRSA - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - and pets.

Ed McMahon, one of the best known faces on American television, has died in a Los Angeles hospital after a long battle against cancer.
McMahon, who was 86, was TV's most famous second banana, sitting alongside late night chat show host Johnny Carson from 1962 to 1992, welcoming a nightly national audience with his opening cry of "Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny."
He had been in failing health and had been in hospital in January being treated for pneumonia, said a spokesman for the American TV network NBC for whom McMahon had worked for most of his television career.
McMahon was born in Detroit but spent his childhood travelling the United States as his father worked as a promoter.

Hollywood legend Jane Fonda has undergone surgery to replace her left knee – because she decided it was worth it.
The 71-year-old L'Oreal cosmetics company spokeswoman, who pitches anti-ageing products on TV with the catch phrase “because you're worth it,” underwent the operation on Tuesday.
Fonda, a two-time Oscar winner, blogged about the operation before going under the surgeon's knife.
The actress, who is also an exercise guru known for her keep fit videos, wrote that her knee joint was to "be sawed out and in its place will go a titanium rod and ceramic joint" in a posting titled "So Long Old Knee" on her Web site.

Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise has agreed to take on a fourth Mission: Impossible.
The actor's decision to revitalise the action-packed film franchise has taken the movie industry by surprise.
It was widely regarded that pulling off such a deal would truly be an impossible mission because of Cruise's bitter row with Paramount studio boss Sumner Redstone.
Cruise will co-produce Mission: Impossible IV along with his friend J.J. Abrams, who directed the star on the 2006 third instalment of the adventure flicks which went on to earn US$395 million worldwide.
Paramount hope to have the latest Mission: Impossible film in cinemas in 2011.

R&B singer Chris Brown is finally going to have to face the music for allegedly beating his former girlfriend Rihanna.
The California Supreme Court has refused to intervene or delay a preliminary hearing into the incident.
Court records show a petition filed by Brown's lawyer, Mark Geragos, to delay the crucial hearing has been denied.
Geragos had asked the state's high court last week to intervene in the singer's felony assault case.
An appeals court had already rejected a similar request to postpone the make-or-break hearing.
Brown, 20, is due back in court on Monday for a preliminary hearing, after which a judge will decide whether there is enough evidence for his case to go to trial.

It has taken 156 years to finally come up with the truth about a murder in Chicago but a police mystery has now been solved.
Officials have decided that Irish-born Constable James Quinn should finally be recognised as Chicago's first policeman to be killed in the line of duty.
The details of Quinn's contentious death have long been the subject of debate in the Windy City.
At first it was believed that Quinn, who was a famine-era Irish immigrant, had died in a drunken bar fight.
But is was not until the Illinois city's Alderman Ed Burke and writer Tom O'Gorman joined forces to research for a book that the significance of Quinn's untimely death was realised.

A distraught Irish mother has appealed for help in finding her missing daughter who disappeared from her New York home a year ago.
Elderly County Cork-born Kathleen Meehan has broken 12 months of silence to reveal that her 49-year-old daughter has vanished.
Meehan has disclosed that she has been sitting by the telephone for the last 12 months waiting for her eldest daughter to make contact.
The heart-broken mother, who moved to America in 1955 and now lives in the New York borough of Queens, has reached out to the public in a desperate bid to get information about the whereabouts of missing Catherine Meehan Wray.

An American politician is being probed over his holiday cottage in Ireland.
U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd has become the subject of an ethnics complaint by a conservative group that questions whether the property really was a gift.
The senator's situation has come under further scrutiny after a new appraisal of the cottage in County Galway has more than doubled the value that Dodd said it was worth.
The property has now been valued at 470,000 euros, or about US$660,000, on a financial disclosure report made public by the Connecticut senator's office.
The previous year's report valued the seaside home at between US$100,001 and US$250,000.

The appointment of a new American ambassador to Ireland has moved a step closer.
U.S. President Barrack Obama has sent his nomination of former Chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers Dan Rooney to be the new ambassador to the Senate for confirmation.
The hearings, which are widely expected to confirm Mr. Rooney, are to take place in the next few weeks.
Mr. Rooney will be in Dublin by July 4th if he is confirmed.
The former American football team boss is a highly very popular figure in Irish American circles and should have little difficulty being approved, according to Senate insiders.

Irish movie hunk Colin Farrell has a new role in Hollywood – as a dummy.
The Dublin-born star is one of a number of celebrities to be featured in world famous Madame Tussauds' new wax models museum to open in Los Angeles later this summer.
Farrell's statue will be among those resembling Beyonce, Jim Carrey and Clint Eastwood.
“It really looks like him,” said a source who has seen the still-under-wraps figures. “It even has a bit of stumble on his chin.”
The source added: “Clint's nearly trademarked gaze is also there.”
The new museum is situated on Hollywood Boulevard close to the famous Chinese Theatre cinema.
The museum officially opens on August 1, just in time for the last of the summer crowds.

Kung Fu and Kill Bill actor David Carradine got a star-studded send off at the weekend.
Celebrities turned out in force to say farewell to the 72-year-old star, who was found naked hanging in the wardrobe of his luxury Bangkok hotel with a rope wrapped round his neck, hands and genitals in early June, on Saturday.
Among the hundreds of guests who turned up for the private service which lasted a lengthy more than two hours were Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen and Lucy Liu, who co-starred with the actor in director Quentin Tarrantine's two-part Kill Bill movies.
Deuce Bigalow star Rob Schneider, who appeared in Kill Bill Vol. 2, arrived, clutching a basket of flowers.

Cash-strapped Hollywood actor Stephen Baldwin has become the latest victim of the worldwide recession to lose his home.
The actor, who is currently starring in the reality TV show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, will find that he is homeless when he leaves the Costa Rican jungle.
A bank has kicked him out of his house after foreclosing on his loan and is now putting the luxury home in the suburbs north of New York up for auction.
Baldwin paid US$515,000 for the house situated on 1.4-acre home in Rockland County in 1997.
But over the years he has remortaged the property to take more cash out.

Hollywood star John Travolta's plans to ease the grief he is still suffering over the tragic death of his son temporarily hit the rocks.
Travolta, who is still so sad over 16-year-old Jett's death that he has been unable to promote his new movie, decided to get away from it all on a relaxing short Caribbean cruise.
But Travolta, who stars as the evil mastermind of a train hijacking in the remake of the 1974 thriller The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, found himself a hostage when the luxury liner he was holidaying on was sealed off by authorities.

Movie makers are racing to bring the life story of controversial car maker John DeLorean to the big screen.
Three studios are now rushing to make movies about the late American businessman, whose car company at Dunmurry near Belfast collapsed in 1982 after he got embroiled in a drugs scandal.
Time Inc. Studios and XYZ Films have joined forces to become the latest film makers to develop a biographical picture project about DeLorean, who died in 2005 from complications after a stroke at the age of 80.
The innovative car designer lost everything when he was accused of drug trafficking in an attempt to save his failing DeLorean car company.

Irish singer Maura O'Connell has pulled off a coup by persuading a bunch of her celebrity pals - including buxom country music legend Dolly Partin - to get naked with her. Well, sort of.
The County Clare-born artist has managed to get a number of top stars to record with her unaccompanied for her next album Naked With Friends – but they did actually keep their clothes on.
O'Connell, who swapped Ennis for a new life in Nashville 23 years ago, is delighted that stars such as Alison Krauss, fellow Irish songstresses Mary Black, Mairéad Ni Mhaonigh and Moya Brennan as well as several celebrated American artists agreed to take part in the ambitious project.

Hollywood actress Uma Thurman has spoken for the first time about her sadness over the tragic death of Irish star Liam Neeson's late wife.
The Kill Bill actress opened up to disclose how much she misses her late friend Natasha Richardson, who lost her life following a freak skiing incident in March.
Thurman, 39, said that she missed being a "passenger" on 45-year-old Richardson's driven life.
"She would have a plan on arrival anywhere and would be carving the best out of life and every situation and every person," Thurman said.

Young Irish beauty Evanna Lynch has confessed that juggling her acting work on the Harry Potter movie series with her school studies is a hard lesson to learn.
The Co. Louth teenager, who is plays Luna Lovegood in the hit flicks, has revealed that her school friends back home in Drogheda envy her because she only has three hours of tutoring a day while filming – but, she insists, it's harder than they think.
“We have school tutors on the set and we have to do three hours a day minimum with them,” said 17-year-old Evanna, who is currently studying for her Leaving Cert.

Hot-tempered movie star Hugh Grant got involved in a bizarre fracas with photographers as he left a trendy New York restaurant on Tuesday night.
The 48-year-old British actor, who is in Manhattan filming a new movie, suddenly lashed out and kicked a shocked snapper in the groin.
Casually-dressed Grant was leaving the popular celebrity hang-out the Waverly Inn with a mystery young woman and seemed to be in a jovial mood.
As he purposely walked down the street in New York's West Village with the 30-something woman – her hair hidden under a woolly hat and dressed in a dark bomber jacket and white trousers – the Notting Hill star appeared to joke to the paparazzi waiting outside the restaurant and bar.