Latest news about Entertainment And Music and Environment and more

Ranna Gill’s spring/summer ‘09 collection is vibrant and made out of fluid jersey. The kaftans, the knee-length dresses and maxi dresses have geometrical patterns in bright shades of jade, aqua, purple, orange and mustard.

The most significant element of Ranna’s designs is the modern embellishment that she has sparingly used on necklines, hems and bodices. Beads, sequins and threads adorn the garments.

Her thread work jackets and skirts are to look out for. Ranna’s mastery over colour-combos, prints and petit point embroideries promises nirvana to fashionistas.

The timeless enigmatic beauty Rekha who turns 54 on Friday still continues to mesmerize filmgoers and the industry with her glow and expressive eyes. Frequently described as ‘The Diva of Bollywood’ and throughout the 1970s till date she has been featured as a sex symbol in the Indian media.

Rekha was born in Chennai on October 10, 1954 to a renowned Tamil actor Gemini Ganeshan and Telgu actress Pushpavalli.

On November 18, Codemasters and Turbine will release Mines of Moria, the first expansion to The Lord of the Rings Online. This may seem like a perfectly normal release date at first, but take a second look.

That’s right. The World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes out exactly five days before Mines of Moria. We’re curious to see if sales of either will be affected by such a close release proximity. While we were big fans of LOTRO, we can’t help but feel that this is something of a scheduling mistake for an expansion that could help draw people who have left back in…if they aren’t already too busy with some other game’s expansion.

Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani Friday condemned the killing of Shia lawmaker Saleh al-Ugaily by militants Thursday and called on all Iraqis to join forces against terrorism.

‘We have received with deep sadness the news of the martyrdom of Saleh al-Ugaily, a lawmaker from Sadr political movement,’ Talabani said in a statement Friday.

Ugaily died Thursday after his motorcade was hit by a roadside bomb in Habibiyah neighbourhood in eastern part of the Iraqi capital.

Two of his bodyguards were also killed in the attack.

All Iraqis must unite in the fight against terrorism, the statement quoted Talabani as saying.

‘Those who committed this heinous crime are the enemies of the Iraqis,’ he said.

On Friday, thousands of people loyal to Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took to the streets in eastern Baghdad to condemn and mourn the killing of Ugaily.

Connie Talbot’s first release, “Over the Rainbow,” has already gone gold in the United Kingdom (100,000 copies) and platinum in Korea (15,000 copies) and has logged more than 46 million hits on YouTube. Not bad for a 7-year-old.

It was Talbot’s cherubic, pitch-perfect performance of “Over the Rainbow” on “Britain’s Got Talent,” spread virally via YouTube, that won the hearts of the world in June 2007. But after she finished second to opera-singing everyman Paul Potts on the U.K. TV show, major labels weren’t interested in signing her.

“Most people thought that she had a great chance to win,” co-manager John Arnison says. “I thoroughly expected that would then mean that she would be signed to Sony BMG and Simon Cowell’s management team. Then a couple of weeks after the show, I got a call from (Talbot’s father,) Gavin, and he was rather shocked to say that having been promised a deal by Simon, the Sony BMG team didn’t really know what to do with Connie, quite frankly. They decided that they’d rather let her go.”

Arnison and his partner Marc Marot — former managing director of Island Records — stepped up to the challenge and told the Talbots to “write down a list of the songs that Connie would sing at her birthday party,” Arnison says. The result is “Over the Rainbow” (AAO Music/Reality), an instant international sales success.

“What we find on the blogs all the time, it really is people going, ‘Oh, bless you, child.’ It’s very Christian,” AAO Music head Peter Kuys says. “It almost has that purity undertone; in a world which at the moment is such a mess, it’s quite refreshing to a lot of people to hear a little girl sing.”

In addition to its title song, “Over the Rainbow” (due October 14 stateside) contains standard kid fare like “My Favorite Things” as well as more grown-up pieces like “Imagine,” “Wonderful World” and even “I Will Always Love You” are also included.

“The thing with Connie is that she’d learned to sing with her grandmother, and Whitney Houston tracks were all her grandmother’s favorite songs,” Arnison says. “She hadn’t sung nursery rhymes; she’d always sung classic tracks. So it was actually quite an easy task to make the record.”

Arnison says that the young singer’s management team “thought long and hard” about whether to include a mature song like “I Will Always Love You” on the final album, but Talbot herself insisted.

“My nana used to sing it with me and we used to watch the film that it was in for like hours and hours and hours,” she says. “It’s my favorite song.” Talbot’s grandmother died in 2006.

Talbot is in the midst of a U.S. promotional tour, which included a taping of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” (whom she calls “a really nice lady”). And she’ll be the subject of a Nintendo Wii “Sing Along” karaoke game, set for release in first-quarter 2009.

Life may not have changed that much for Victoria Beckham after moving base to Los Angeles, but one thing that certainly has altered in the singer’s life is her personal style - as she has started to wear flip-flops.

The former Spice Girl is known for her fixation with high heels, but ever since she has moved to Hollywood, she has started wearing more ‘practical’ footwear.

However, it has nothing to do with making another style statement-it’s all because she has to run around after her three sons at the city’s local tourist attractions.

“I have a pair of flip-flops now. I went to Disneyland and I was wearing the flip-flops with some baggy jeans from the new dVb men’s collection. I so rarely wear flat shoes and everyone went crazy, but the last time I went to Disneyland I wore heels and it was incredibly uncomfortable running around after the kids,” Contactmusic quoted her, as telling Glamour magazine.

She added: “I don’t own a pair of flat shoes. I don’t ever wear ballerina pumps, not my sort of thing.”

Scientists are working on using cellulose to power microbial fuel cells, in which bacteria digest plant waste matter to create electricity directly.

These fuel cells could be used to charge batteries or power electrical devices.

Others are considering drawing power from microbes digesting human waste at wastewater treatment plants or manure from feedlot lagoons.

“Basically, we’re converting cellulose into a different energy source than ethanol,” said John Regan of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

“It’s not more efficient right now, but if you look at what’s been done over the last decade, there has been about a five to six order-of-magnitude (100,000-1,000,000-fold) increase in power density,” he added.

Microorganisms generate electrons as they break down food sources for energy, but in most species the electrons are transferred to molecules inside the cell.

Microbial fuel cells rely on the ability of certain bacteria to transport electrons to the outside of the cell. If provided with electrodes in the right arrangement, the bacteria can dump their exterior electrons through a circuit, providing power.

But these “exoelectrogenic” microbes, as Regan calls them, cannot digest cellulose. So, the system relies on another type of bacteria to break the cellulose down into simple molecules that the electron dumpers can then use.

Regan found that wastewater, which contains a diverse community of microorganisms, could generate electricity from cellulose, too, though not as much. Adding extra cellulose-degraders to the wastewater sped up the process.

Regan envisions near-term applications that would not depend on cellulose, but rather would degrade the soup of compounds in wastewater.

“In waste treatment, the incoming product is free. It’s waste material, so you could use that electricity to run pumps or aerators,” he said.

Even if the wastewater couldn’t produce enough electricity to completely power the plant, it could at least reduce the plant’s utility bill.

Heart attacks occur earlier in people who are overweight or obese, compared with normal-weight people, new research indicates.

“Obesity has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of premature heart attacks,” senior investigator Dr. Peter A. McCullough told Reuters Health. “Since two thirds of Americans have excess body fat we expect an explosion in the rates of heart attacks among women in their 40s and 50s.”

“The implications for these Americans who are in their peak earning years,” he continued, “include the need for hospitalization, cardiac procedures, the development of heart failure, medical disability, and premature death.”

McCullough of William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Michigan and colleagues took a look back at more than 111,000 patients who suffered a heart attack.

They found that the average age at first heart attack was 74.6 years in the leanest patients and 58.7 years in the most obese. “Women were predominant in both the leanest and most obese groups,” the investigators found.

After accounting for factors that might influence the results, the researchers determined that compared to study subjects with a normal body mass index (BMI between 18.6 and 25.0), subjects who were overweight (BMI between 25.1 and 30.0) had a first heart attack some 3.5 years earlier.

Obese individuals (BMI between 30.1 and 35.0) had a first heart attack 6.8 years earlier than normal-weight subjects and for severely obese individuals (BMI greater than 40) it was 12.0 years.

This study, McCullough concluded, “should be a wake-up call to all individuals who have gained weight since age 18 to re-evaluate their lifestyles and take immediate action to bring body weight down into the normal range.”

A Tennessee university student has been indicted for hacking into a personal email account of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the running mate of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

David Kernell, 20, turned himself in to the authorities in Tennessee after he was indicted by a federal grand jury and was to be arraigned before a magistrate, the Justice Department said in a statement.

It said Kernell was charged in a single-count indictment with gaining “unauthorized access to Gov. Palin’s personal e-mail account by allegedly resetting the account password” around September 16.

“Kernell allegedly read the contents of the account and made screenshots of the email directory, email content and other personal information.

“According to the indictment, Kernell posted screenshots of the emails and other personal information to a public Web site,” the Justice Department added.

Kernell’s father is Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis, Tennessee. The elder Kernell has said he was unaware of the actions of his son, a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

The McCain campaign denounced the attack on Palin’s private email as a “shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy.”

If convicted, Kernell faces up to five years in prison, a 250,000 dollar fine and a three-year term of supervised release.

Authorities did not immediately set a trial date.

Bollywood actor Arjun Rampal spoke about his latest flick ‘EMI’ that deals with bank loan and credit card fraud in Mumbai.

The film is produced by Sunil Shetty and directed by Saurabh Kadra.

Actors Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, Malaika Arora, Aashish Chaudhary, Neha Uberoi and Urmila Matondkar constitute star cast of the film.

Bollywood actor Arjun Rampal whose last films ‘Rock on’ and ‘Om Shanti Om’ have established him as a dependable actor at the box office said that story was film’s unique selling proposition.

“If you would ask me what is the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of ‘EMI’, I would say it’s the story. It is how a director has shown which is not so easy to portray on screen. When you have to pay an EMI (Equated Monthly Installment) it is not easy,” said Rampal.

‘EMI’ is a take on modern day India. It’s a narrative of interconnecting characters coming from different strata of the society. The story revolves around the lives of people who spend thoughtlessly and get into situations they do not anticipate.

Rampal further added that he always wanted to play a light character and the film has given him just the right opportunity to fulfill his dream.

“It was a great experience. I think it is a great film. I wanted to do a lighter character and it gave me an opportunity to do that and it has good music. I play a DJ (disc jockey)… it is a kind of comedy and it is also my fist film with Sanjay Dutt, so I was excited about that. It is popcorn entertainment. Sunil is a good friend and they had a really interesting script, which I think the people will relate to because of the kind of loans that they must have taken, and they have to pay EMI’s on it. So I think we all relate to the film,” said Rampal.

Chirantan Bhatt has scored the music of the movie, while Shakeel Azmi, Sarim Momin, Shabbir Ahmed and Hamza Faruqui have penned the lyrics of the film.