North Korean rocket due to be launched in April may affect an area between Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines, says US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell.
Kurt Campbell is reported to have asked the three countries to condemn the launch.
North Korea says the rocket will take a new southern trajectory instead of a previous route east over Japan.
Japan is readying anti-missile defenses around the southern islands of Okinawa, which could be under the flight path.
North Korea says the rocket is intended to put a satellite in space, but the US and others say the launch is a cover for a long-range missile test – a potential delivery system for nuclear weapons.
The launch is expected to dominate a security summit on Monday in the South Korean capital Seoul, which will be attended by US President Barack Obama.
North Korean rocket due to be launched in April may affect an area between Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines
Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald said Kurt Campbell had briefed Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr on Friday on the rocket’s southward trajectory.
“If the missile test proceeds as North Korea has indicated, our judgment is that it will impact in an area roughly between Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines,” the paper quoted Kurt Campbell as saying.
“We have never seen this trajectory before. We have weighed into each of these countries and asked them to make clear that such a test is provocative and this plan should be discontinued.”
Pyongyang appears to be trying to soften the political impact of its planned rocket launch.
It has chosen a new southerly route mainly over open sea, avoiding what is regarded as a more provocative easterly trajectory over the main Japanese island.
North Korean state-run KCNA news agency said: “A safe flight orbit has been chosen so that carrier rocket debris to be generated during the flight would not have any impact on neighboring countries.”
North Korea has shown a growing mastery of ballistic technology during its three previous long range tests.
However, experts say that none has succeeded in reaching orbit, and debris has fallen to earth at various stages during the launches.
Pyongyang said last week that the rocket launch – between 12 and 16 April – would mark the 100th birthday of its late Great Leader Kim Il-Sung.
Angelina Jolie claims she has paid no notice to the furor that followed her leg-baring incident at this year’s Oscars last month.
The flashpoint, which has been given the disappointingly unoriginal “leg-gate” moniker, became a favorite subject for satirists, but Angelina Jolie affirms it is water off a duck’s back.
Speaking out about the incident for the first time, the actress initially played the familiar celebrity gambit of ignorance.
Angelina Jolie, 36, told the Huffington Post: “I honestly didn’t pay attention to it. You know what I mean?
“I don’t watch those TV shows and if I go online and see something about myself, I don’t click on it.
“And the people I surround myself with don’t really talk about that kind of stuff.”
Angelina Jolie claims she has paid no notice to the furor that followed her leg-baring incident at this year's Oscars last month
Unfortunately Angelina Jolie soon fluffed her lines by suggesting she was not as unaware as she was letting on about how famous her antics in the Atelier Versace dress had become.
The actress said: “I heard something, but I didn’t pay any attention.
“It’s as simple as a being a woman picking a dress you like and having a night, and not really thinking about anything else.”
As well as becoming a talking point on news stations around the world, Angelina Jolie’s perfect pin has left its mark on the internet.
A Twitter account named Angelina Jolie’s Leg regularly posts musings from what is arguably now her most famous feature.
Actor Frank Langella has lifted the curtain on life among the biggest stars of stage and screen in a searingly frank and supremely bitchy new memoir.
Frank Langella, 74, one of America’s most celebrated stage actors, though best known in his Oscar-nominated role as disgraced president Richard Nixon in the recent hit film Frost/Nixon, has laid bare – as only a privileged insider really can – the huge egos, crushing insecurity and, all too often, unpleasantness of stars worshipped by millions.
The actor has called his memoir Dropped Names: Famous Men And Women As I Knew Them – a subtle reference to the fact that, to spare blushes, Frank Langella has written only about people who are dead.
In the world described by Frank Langella, Richard Burton was a “crashing bore” who liked to recite poetry in a drunken stupor, Rex Harrison was a “real son of a bitch” terrified people would think he was homosexual (he wasn’t), and Laurence Olivier was a “silly old English gent who loved to play camp and gossip”. Paul Newman was dull, and Graduate star Anne Bancroft was so vain she fell in love with her own reflection.
As for John F. Kennedy – who would have thought his idea of a perfect afternoon was listening to Noel Coward telling dirty jokes and belting out Mad Dogs And Englishmen on the piano. But a 24-year-old Frank Langella was there to see it during a Cape Cod lunch party.
He was so shocked by the JFK’s “fast and furious” belly laughs at Noel Coward’s wit that he feared the president would have a heart attack.
Later, he watched in awe as – with Secret Service men staring impassively from every doorway – JFK jumped onto a coffee table to dance as Coward played his most famous tunes and Jackie Kennedy sang along, knowing all the lyrics by heart. Before boarding his helicopter, JFK turned to Frank Langella and asked: “What do you think, Frank? Should I keep my day job?”
Frank Langella has lifted the curtain on life among the biggest stars of stage and screen in a searingly frank and supremely bitchy new memoir
Few of those with whom Frank Langella has trodden the boards or worked on a film set will thank him for his revelations, affectionate as some of them are clearly intended to be.
“There will be a fair amount of forks to the eye and knives to the throat,” Frank Langella, an elegant writer, warns at the outset about his recollections of those who have crossed his path during a 47-year acting career.
Rita Hayworth was 20 years older than him, almost permanently drunk and suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The actress was unable to remember her lines unless they were written in huge block letters and placed next to the camera.
But Frank Langella, then 34, still fell for his co-star, and they began a passionate affair together on the set of the little-remembered 1972 Western called The Wrath Of God.
The couple – playing mother and son in the film – spent every evening together in her rooms, working their way through endless bottles of bourbon and wine as she reminisced mournfully about the good old days.
“Don’t stare at me, baby. You can see me in the movies,” Rita Hayworth told him loftily one night, but when he left her for the last time after several weeks, she ran out to the car and pleaded: “Don’t leave me. I gotta have a man with me.”
Two decades later Frank Langella would be pursued by another desperately lonely, ageing movie star in the shape of Elizabeth Taylor.
The actor reserves particular ire for Anne Bancroft – an “elegant” stage name, he says, which was “about as suited to her as Cuddles would have been to Adolf Hitler”. Frank Langella first met Anne Bancroft, wife of comic actor Mel Brooks, and the actress who played the glamorous Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, in 1966 when they co-starred in a play.
Although they were close friends for two decades, Frank Langella soon realized Anne Bancroft was “consumed by a galloping narcissism that often undermined her talents”.
Anne Bancroft once told Frank Langella how she had been in a New York department store when she saw a woman smiling at her. The actress felt “inexplicably” attracted to the woman and wanted to go over and “embrace and kiss her passionately” – until she realized she was looking into a mirror.
Self-love surely doesn’t come more intense than this, but Yul Brynner apparently came close. No actor ever talked about himself so much, Frank Langella recalls. And perhaps none had so little time for his fans.
The shaven-headed star – “never far from a full-length mirror” – once gave Frank Langella and his former wife, Ruth, a lift in his 20ft-long white limo. On the drive, Yul Brynner explained how he’d had a special lift – big enough to fit a car – installed in the Broadway theatre where he was starring in The King And I.
His chauffeur could drive straight in and spare the star from having to “deal with the public”. Yul Brynner even showed off a pair of blinding flash lights which he kept handy “in case blacks attack my car”.
Frank Langella admits he had looked up to the stars of the British stage since a boy, only to be disappointed when he met them. And there was no more crushing disappointment, it seems, than Rex Harrison.
At their first meeting, at a theatrical agent’s cocktail party, Frank Langella was about to congratulate him on his performance in My Fair Lady and reached out to shake hands.
He was just telling Sir Rex what a great honor it was to meet him when Rex Harrison cut him dead. “Thank you”, he said, flinging his coat over Frank Langella’s outstretched hand and marching into the main room of the party. It didn’t seem to be an unintentional slight.
Years later, Frank Langella recalls, he sought out Rex Harrison backstage at a theatre where he was performing and (undaunted by their previous encounter) delivered an impassioned speech on how Sir Rex had inspired him since he was a boy.
Rex Harrison stood and listened. “Thank you. Very kind. I’m afraid I can’t ask you to sit down,” he said, and with that Frank Langella found himself back in the corridor.
Dropped Names: Famous Men And Women As I Knew Them by Frank Langella
Richard Burton similarly failed to impress, though this time the venue was Frank Langella’s dressing room while he was starring in Dracula on Broadway in 1977.
Single-handedly polishing off a bottle of Scotch which he had offered nobody else, a slurring Richard Burton launched into a series of reminiscences about Britain’s great theatre actors and recited lengthy sections of Dylan Thomas’s poetry.
As the hours wore on, Frank Langella just wanted to get home. “Could anyone, I wondered, be so unaware of what a crashing bore he had become?” he writes. “There sat a man approximately 52 years of age, looking ten years older, dressed in black mink, with heavily applied pancake [make-up], under a tortured, balding helmet of jet black hair, grandly reciting tiresome poetry.”
At least, says Frank Langella, Richard Burton wasn’t terrified of playing roles that might make audiences question his heterosexuality – unlike Rex Harrison and Laurence Olivier. (Richard Burton told Frank Langella he had “tried” homosexuality once but “didn’t like it”.)
Since Laurence Olivier’s death, several books have speculated that he was bisexual and it’s clear Frank Langella was never sure about his co-star’s orientation when they were making the film Dracula in 1978.
Frank Langella was the count and Laurence Olivier, then 71, played the vampire-hunter Professor Van Helsing. The pair stayed in a drafty hotel in Tintagel, Cornwall, during filming. They had connecting suites and spent many weeks in each other’s company – reading the newspapers and gossiping in the morning, and dining together at night.
Frank Langella, then 40, clearly enjoyed Laurence Olivier’s company, even if the British acting giant’s language would become increasingly “ribald”, teasing his younger star about his “naughty bits”. Suffice to say, Frank Langella liked to sleep naked but made sure he quickly put on a pair of boxer shorts if he heard Laurence Olivier stirring next door.
One morning, Frank Langella decided to surprise Laurence Olivier – who was sitting reading in Langella’s room – by streaking to the bathroom, turning at the door to say: “Oh professor, see anything you like?”
Laurence Olivier howled with laughter and shouted: “Bravo dear boy!”
But he pointedly did not look up when Frank Langella came back into the room.
Frank Langella recalls how Laurence Olivier once boasted about his impressive figure as a youth, revealing that one of his fantasies had once been “to be standing in a museum and have people pay to worship my naked form”. Laurence Olivier, Frank Langella concluded, could be “charming, delightful and admirable” but was also a “deadly cobra capable of striking without notice”.
Other thespian egotists exposed by Frank Langella include Anthony Quinn, whose huge self-importance Langella liked to prick by always saying “Hi” to him, an informality he knew infuriated the star of Zorba The Greek so much that each time he would then refuse to talk to him.
And then there was Charlton Heston, a great movie star who thought he was also a great actor when – in Frank Langella’s estimation – he was a “piece of wood”.
Frank Langella says the Ben Hur star had such an enormous ego that he would always greet fellow guests at a party as if he was the host. Frank Langella last encountered him at a dinner honoring Laurence Olivier. After the audience sat through a long speech from Charlton Heston that was effectively a homage to himself, Frank Langella looked down to find his dinner companion, Maggie Smith, was squeezing his hand so hard her knuckles were white.
When Tony Curtis said out loud to their table: “Doesn’t Chuck make great speeches?”, Maggie Smith replied with true Downton Abbey acidness: “Oh yes. He should never be allowed to do anything else.”
Frank Langella knew Tony Curtis for 30 years, and aside from “the absurdity of his desperate attempts to look cool, hip and young”, he admired a ruthless honesty that once prompted him to lament at a dinner party at Julie Andrews’s home how his one-time idol Cary Grant was a “f***ing bore” who “sucked the air out of any room he was in”. Apparently, plenty of people in Hollywood agreed.
According to Frank Langella, Paul Newman – long regarded as one of Hollywood’s Mr. Nice Guys – was a frightful bore, too. “After dirty-sexy jokes, shop talk, cars or politics were exhausted, Paul was a pretty dull companion,” Frank Langella recalls.
“Never rude or unkind, just dull.” In awe of his good looks, companions would instinctively think it their fault when he suddenly went quiet.
The reality, says Frank Langella, was that he had simply run out of anything to say. Like the statue of David, Paul Newman was “physically perfect but emotionally vacant”.
Little was previously known about Frank Langella’s own private life other than the fact he was married to magazine editor Ruth Weil for 18 years until the mid-Nineties, producing two children, and then had a five-year relationship with the actress and Ghost star Whoopi Goldberg. His memoir reveals a lingering attraction to older women.
Bette Davis was well into her 60’s when, having seen Frank Langella’s films, she ordered their mutual agent to put them in touch. Though – as with his affair with Rita Hayworth – they had “a number of racy conversations, not quite phone sex but certainly rife with foreplay”, he says.
But nothing more ever happened as Bette Davis always cancelled their dinner dates. Years later, he ran into her at a hotel and – enraged, he believes, that her privacy had somehow been invaded – Bette Davis froze him out when he identified himself.
Frank Langella had more luck with Elizabeth Taylor. Put in touch in 2001 by a mutual friend who said the Hollywood icon was desperately lonely, Frank Langella reveals that their second date culminated in Elizabeth Taylor – then 69 – urging him: “Come on, baby, and put me to sleep.” After having to help her upstairs rather indecorously by pushing on her backside, Frank Langella was taken aback by the clutter in her bedroom.
Elizabeth Taylor’s bedroom was filled with pictures of her dead ex-husbands, “dozens and dozens” of bottles of witch hazel which she used to remove her make-up and a giant open box of chocolates on the bed.
Despite knowing that a relationship with Elizabeth Taylor was “quicksand”, Frank Langella began a brief affair.
Frank Langella says Elizabeth Taylor was: “A small, sweet woman who wanted a man to be with her, protect her and fill a void as deep as the deepest ocean.” At one stage, Elizabeth Taylor told him she wanted to leave Los Angeles and move with him to the East Coast of America to “find a place that’s normal”, but Frank Langella told her a relationship would never work because she would “have him for lunch”.
Frank Langella is vague about the extent of his relationships with other famous women who crossed his path, notably Jackie Kennedy Onassis, the first woman he knew “for whom money is an aphrodisiac”.
Contrary to her image as shy and fragile, Jackie Kennedy Onassis “relished” her fame and knew exactly how to market it, he says. Frank Langella has yet to reveal why, after so many years, he has decided to scratch away the veneer that still coats so many famous names, but perhaps he wants to prove that even the brightest stars have human foibles like the rest of us.
As Laurence Olivier put it when he grabbed Frank Langella by the arm following a Dracula photocall at which both refused to play second fiddle: “You know, Frankie, dear. You’re a monster. So am I. It’s what you need to be a star.”
Dropped Names: Famous Men And Women As I Knew Them by Frank Langella is published by Harper and available from amazon.com.
The world’s longest bridal train was unveiled in Bucharest, Romania, this week.
To show off the two-mile gown, 17-year-old Romanian model Emma Dumitrescu took a ride in a hot air balloon as part of a promotion in the capital city of Bucharest, with the dress’ 1.85-mile-long train flowing dramatically under her.
The 2,823.8-meter long ivory train, which took 100 days to stitch, was showcased dramatically on the boulevard leading up to the giant palace built by late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, seen in background.
The gown, certified as the longest bridal train in history by the Guinness World Records, was designed by a local designer, Andree Salon fashion house.
The world’s longest bridal train was unveiled in Bucharest, Romania
The dress more than doubled a previous Romanian record of under a mile (1,492 meters) from April 2009 and broke the December 2009 record of 2,488 meters, which was held by a designer from the Netherlands.
The record was tinged with the taste of a sweet political victory for Romania, since the Netherlands campaigned against that country’s inclusion in the European Union’s Schengen zone, according to The Associated Press.
“If the Netherlands does not allow us into Europe, we’ll take them out of the world records book,” said Alin Caraman, an organizer of the wedding promotion.
The stats of this wedding-day wonder are impressive: It took 15,420 feet of taffeta, 18.04 feet of Chantilly lace, 147.64 feet of lining, 1,857 sewing needles and 150 spool threads to create the dress and train. Ten workers toiled for 100 days to complete the project.
The wedding dress cost is close to $8,000 in materials alone, the AP reported.
Ebb, one of two washing-machine-sized NASA spacecrafts, has sent back a gallery of images of Earth from an orbit just 35 miles above the moon surface.
American middle school pupils at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Montana, directed the “MoonKam” to areas of the surface which caught their attention.
The school won a national competition to be first – but other schools around the world will take turns to “direct” the tiny photographer as it hurtles over the moon.
Ebb is one of a pair of NASA probes – Ebb and Flow – mapping the moon’s gravity using tiny variations in their flight path to measure what is “inside” the moon.
The images were taken aboard the Ebb spacecraft from March 15-17 and downlinked to Earth on March 20.
“MoonKAM is based on the premise that if your average picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture from lunar orbit may be worth a classroom full of engineering and science degrees,” said Maria Zuber, GRAIL mission principal investigator from MIT.
“Through MoonKAM, we have an opportunity to reach out to the next generation of scientists and engineers. It is great to see things off to such a positive start.”
Image of Earth as seen from the moon surface taken aboard the Ebb spacecraft
The MoonKAM program is led by Sally Ride, America’s first woman in space, and her team at Sally Ride Science in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego.
More than 2,700 schools spanning 52 countries are using the MoonKAM cameras.
“What might seem like just a cool activity for these kids may very well have a profound impact on their futures,” Sally Ride said.
“The students really are excited about MoonKAM, and that translates into an excitement about science and engineering.”
Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow probes will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.
Despite astronaut landings and robotic missions aimed at the moon, scientists still don’t know everything about Earth’s celestial companion. A lingering mystery is why the side that always faces Earth appears flatter than the mountainous far side.
Mapping the moon’s uneven gravity – about one-sixth Earth’s pull – should provide a clue.
The spacecraft will spend the next three months orbiting 35 miles above the lunar surface. Scientists will monitor the slight variations in distance between the two to map the moon’s gravitational field.
This in turn will give an idea of what lies below the surface whether it is mountain ranges, lava tubes or craters.
A video of toddler William Stokkebroe dancing the jive to Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock has attracted more than 3.8 million hits, 15,000 likes, and almost 1,700 comments on YouTube.
The two-year-old learned his smooth moves from his parents Kristina and Peter Stokkebroe, who run dance studio Studie43 in Denmark, according to the video’s description.
William Stokkebroe wins over the crowd by gyrating his hips, clapping, tapping his feet and attempting to sing along to the hit song.
Dressed like a true pro in a checked shirt and jeans, William Stokkebroe wows his captive audiences, who laugh and cheer, as he throws some shapes on the dance floor.
William Stokkebroe, 2, wins over the crowd by gyrating his hips, clapping, tapping his feet and attempting to sing along to Jailhouse Rock
The tiny dancer imitates Elvis’s signature moves, while incorporating some of his own style, jumping high in the air and pulling a series of funny faces.
At the end of his crowd-pleasing performance, the toddler takes a triumphant bow, applauds himself, blows a kiss to his fans and high-fives a familiar face.
Internet users reacted with delight at the adorable video. Denisethepainter posted: “ELVIS! You’re BACK! That is one super cool baby! Amazing and soooo CUTE!”
Marginalacz said: “Lucky kid, he already knows what to do in life, I am 25 and still have no idea.”
Charla Nash, the woman who lost her eyesight, lips, nose and hands in a vicious chimp attack, says she feels at home in her new skin two years after her face transplant.
Charla Nash, 58, who nearly died in the horrific mauling, told the Hartford Courant exclusively that she feels no different than she did before the attack.
“I just feel like it’s my face,” Charla Nash said.
“It’s just not working real good.”
Charla Nash, a single mother from Stamford, Connecticut, told the Hartford Courant that she’s regaining movements in her face and can express herself with various motions.
“Every day, my muscles get better,” she said.
Sandra Herold, Charla Nash’s friend and owner of the 200-lb chimp Travis, died of an aneurism in 2010. Charla Nash said that if she could say anything to her former boss and friend, she would say: “Sorry that all this happened. And, nothing we can change now.”
However, Charla Nash added that Sandra Herold was “a trouble person” that was more worried about her pet – who was shot and killed after the attack – than she was of her.
Charla Nash says she feels at home in her new skin two years after her face transplant
In past interviews, Charla Nash revealed that having a new face allowed her simple human pleasures – she has regained her sense of smell and can eat again.
Charla Nash is even regaining sensation in her forehead, cheeks, eyebrow, and nose.
But most of all, she’s learning how to smile.
“It creases up here,” she told the Hartford Courant as she pointed at her mouth.
In the interview, Charla Nash also spoke of long years of rehabilitation, and the hope of regaining some semblance of independence.
“I don’t know what the future’s doing (sic) to bring… so I don’t get my hopes up,” she said. Though she added that she wants to progress far enough that she can again ride horses and live in her own house.
Charla Nash said she misses simple things – like being able to bargain hunt, bask in the sunshine, or even look at her 20-year-old daughter, Brianna.
“I have to depend on a lot of help,” Charla Nash she said.
“My life depends on really not being alone. I used to be very independent.”
Charla Nash also gets phantom pains in her hands, despite the fact that they were removed after the 2009 attack.
Transplants added in surgery later had to be removed because of dangerous complications.
In an interview with ABC 7 last month, Charla Nash – who likes being called Charlie – said she doesn’t want anybody’s pity.
“I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me,” Charla Nash said.
“I want to be like everyone else.”
There are very real financial concerns as well. Her surgery, care, and rehabilitation have cost millions.
According to the Hartford Courant, there is a $150 million case pending against the state of Connecticut for allegedly not protecting its citizens from an unsafe creature.
One state employee reportedly wrote in a memo that Travis’ attack was “an accident waiting to happen”.
“I hope that I do get my day in court,” Charla Nash said.
She has been told by doctors that she needs to work on bulking up, as she is still quite thin for her 5ft 10in frame.
Charla Nash, who was blinded in the 2009 attack, was fitted with brown glass eyes and hopes to get a double hand transplant after the first one failed.
She received a revolutionary full-face transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston nearly two years after the attack.
The operation – performed by a team of more than 30 surgeons and nurses – and subsequent recovery were widely covered.
Prior to the surgery, Charla Nash hid her face under a veil, saying that she chose to wear it “so I don’t scare people”.
International Space Station (ISS) crew took refuge in two Soyuz escape capsules as a piece of space junk drifted nearby.
The debris – a discarded piece of Russian rocket – was detected on Friday when it was too late to move the ISS.
NASA said the debris was barely close enough to be a threat but that precautionary measures had to be taken.
It is the third time in 12 years that the ISS has faced a possible collision with space junk.
In June 2011, a piece of debris came within 335 m (1,100 ft) of the platform.
The ISS is currently manned by three Russians, two Americans and a Japanese astronaut.
They were ordered by ground control to move into two Soyuz escape capsules in case the station was hit, but a NASA spokesman said they were given the green light to return to the main station at 02:38 GMT on Saturday.
The “sheltering exercise” was carried out with “due diligence and in a very precautionary and conservative fashion”, said the unnamed spokesman.
“Everything went by the book and as expected, the small piece of cosmos satellite debris passed the international space station without incident.”
ISS crew took refuge in two Soyuz escape capsules as a piece of space junk drifted nearby
Russia’s space agency said the debris had passed the station at a distance of 23 km (14 miles).
“The cosmonauts have returned to performing their previously assigned work,” an official told Interfax news agency.
NASA says it is actively tracking some 22,000 pieces of space debris, but there are millions of objects left over from decades of space travel drifting in Earth’s orbit.
They range in size from smaller than a centimetre across to large chunks of rockets, defunct satellites or discarded fuel tanks.
All are travelling at several kilometres per second and could cause serious damage to the ISS or vital satellites if they collided.
The single biggest debris-generating event happened in 2007, when China used a missile to destroy one of its own satellites. The explosion created more than 3,000 trackable objects and an estimated 150,000 debris particles.
Then in 2009, a Russian and American satellite collided, releasing tons of debris.
Attempts are being made to avoid such incidents happened again by drawing up an international code of conduct for space exploration.
The US announced in January that it was backing EU countries in working towards the code to address long-term safety and security concerns and establish “guidelines for the responsible use of space”.
Countries backing the code would also commit to exploring space for peaceful purposes only and to not attacking each other’s satellites.
But critics say such a code would not be legally binding, and concerns remain about countries being obliged to share information on satellites used for military purposes.
India, China and Russia, all of which have advanced space programmes, have not yet said they will back the code.
Whitney Houston died by drowning in the bathtub of her Beverly Hilton Hotel suite, according to the LA coroner, but it was also determined that a non-lethal level of cocaine was found in her body, and that long-term cocaine abuse contributed to her death.
So far left unanswered is whether any illegal drugs were found at the scene, whether anybody from Whitney Houston’s entourage is suspected of cleaning up the area before paramedics arrived, and how she obtained the drugs.
“It’s still an open investigation for us,” Beverly Hills Police Lt. Mark Rosen told People magazine when asked if cocaine was found in the hotel room.
“I can’t disclose any details about the investigation.”
Coroner Assistant Chief Ed Winter previously confirmed that prescription bottles were found at the scene but that the medications were “not in an alarming amount.” The coroner has not commented on whether illegal drugs were also found.
Whitney Houston’s death is still an open investigation for police
Whitney Houston, 48, was found unresponsive and underwater in the tub on February 11, a day before the Grammy Awards, and was pronounced dead at the scene soon afterward.
The star had a long and well-publicized battle with substance abuse and went into rehab several times, including a stint in May 2011 in an outpatient program for what her reps said was drug and alcohol treatment.
The coroner’s office on Thursday released only a brief synopsis of its findings. A full autopsy report, which typically includes details of what investigators find at the death scene and witness interviews, is expected in about two weeks.
What the coroner is announcing is that based on a February 12 autopsy and toxicology tests: “The final cause of death has been determined to be drowning (and) effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.”
Cocaine, according to the report, was “contributory to death.” Also found in her system were marijuana, Xanax, the muscle relaxant Flexeril and Benadryl, “but did not contribute to the death.”
The bottom line, according to the report: “No trauma or foul play is suspected.”
Pope Benedict XVI has arrived in Mexico, being greeted by thousands in central city of Guanajuato, and welcomed by President Felipe Calderon.
The Pope is at the start of his first visit to Spanish-speaking Latin-America.
President Felipe Calderon said the visit had enormous importance as Mexico was suffering greatly from drug-related violence.
Before his arrival, the Pope said it was vital “to fight this evil” and urged the young to renounce drugs. After Mexico, he will travel to Cuba.
Pope Benedict XVI said Marxism there was no longer working.
He said the ideology no longer corresponded to reality and called for “new models” to be found.
The Pope made it clear that “the Church is always on the side of freedom of thought and of religion”.
Pope Benedict was welcomed by cheering crowds at Guanajuato on Friday. Supporters at the airport chanted: “Benedict, brother, you are now Mexican!”
The pontiff then led a short blessing on a specially erected platform within the airport.
Pope Benedict XVI was welcomed by the Mexican President Felipe Calderon
All day under a hot sun, thousands of cheering followers – dressed in white and yellow T-shirts and waving flags – lined the route to the city of Leon to catch a glimpse of Benedict as he passed in the armour-plated Popemobile.
Security is tight – with the federal police and military deployed in large numbers.
Pope Benedict XVI is due to hold talks with President Calderon later on Saturday.
He will also spend time in the city of Silao, near Leon.
On Sunday some 300,000 people are expected to attend Mass, and huge camp sites have been set up to give pilgrims somewhere to stay.
Earlier, while on route to Mexico, Pope Benedict told journalists: “I share Mexicans’ joy and hope but also their anguish and grief,” referring to the country’s drug related violence, which has taken 50,000 lives in the past five years.
One Mexican supporter said: “With this wave of violence that we’re living, not just in individual states but across the country, the Pope’s visit could be a great source of comfort.”
Some 88% of Mexicans – almost 100 million people – are Roman Catholic, and the Pope’s predecessor, John Paul II, was a regular visitor to the country.
Pope Benedict XVI is not regarded with the same affection yet, but there is undoubtedly excitement about the visit among the faithful.
The Pope faces sensitive issues in Cuba.
This week the campaign group Amnesty International reported that life was getting harder for dissidents there.
Earlier this month, activists were evicted from a church they had occupied in the capital, Havana, demanding an audience with the Pope.
In Havana, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the government was open to opinions that differed from its own, in a reference to the Pope’s comments that Marxism there was no longer working.
Rihanna was pictured leaving Ashton Kutcher’s $10 million bachelor pad in the middle of the night, but it has now been revealed that the singer has enjoyed an eight week fling with the actor.
Rihanna, 24, has reportedly been enjoying late-night trysts with Ashton Kutcher after hitting it off with him at a friend’s party in December.
The popstar is apparently so besotted with Ashton Kutcher, that she’s asked about joining his Kabbalah group.
Rihanna was spotted by a photographer as she drove up to Ashton Kutcher’s property with her security team around midnight.
The snapper confirmed to TMZ that Rihanna arrived almost square on the witching hour and didn’t leave until roughly 4:00 a.m.
It was revealed that Rihanna has enjoyed an eight week fling with Ashton Kutcher
A source told The Sun: “The flirting began as soon as Rihanna and Ashton met and swapped numbers. That moved onto texts and arranging to meet. They snuck off to a santa Monica hotel a few weeks ago.
“They are two single people having a fling, so thought it would be best to meet in secret.
“Rihanna has told friends he’s funny and cute. Both of them love a good time and think they’re too busy for anything serious just yet. She’s starting to enquire about Kabbalah sessions with his rabbi.
“If she and Ashton are getting really close, she wants to be able to understand it.”
The source said he didn’t want to rub another relationship in estrange wife Demi Moore’s face.
“He’s a good guy and, with all Demi’s recent health problems, people have forgotten that.”
Rihanna has come under fire recently for asking her ex Chris Brown to work with her after he brutally beat her two years ago.
Meanwhile, Ashton Kutcher is still maligned for cheating on Demi Moore and creating the scandal that led to their marriage breakdown.
A previously unknown Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart piano composition, believed to have been written when he was as young as 10, has been uncovered in Austria.
The piece, thought to have been composed in 1767 or 1768, was found in a notebook in an attic.
Researchers recently determined there was strong evidence Allegro Molto is a Mozart composition.
It was transcribed into a notebook bearing the name Del Signore Giovane Wolfgango Mozart.
Although the music was not written in the hand of Mozart or his father Leopold, historians at Salzburg’s Mozarteum foundation strongly believe it is by the burgeoning composer.
A previously unknown Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart piano composition, believed to have been written when he was as young as 10, has been uncovered in Austria
Music expert Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider said only Leopold Mozart used this name when writing down his son’s name.
The 160-page handwritten notebook, dated 1780, also contained musical works written by Mozart’s father.
Austrian musician Florian Birsak performed the four-minute piece at Mozart’s childhood home on his original piano.
Florian Birsak said: “It’s not just anyone’s piece, there is already a touch of the great Mozart he later became.”
In 2009, researchers uncovered two pieces of music believed to have been written when Mozart was seven or eight.
Sugar, a very lucky cat from Boston, may have used up more than one of her nine lives after she fell out of the 19th floor of her owner’s apartment building.
Miraculously, Brittany Kirk’s white furred cat survived the 200 feet fall from the high rise window in Boston and walked away without a scratch or broken bone.
Brittany Kirk had cracked the window open in her apartment to let in the breeze because of the particularly warm weather on Wednesday.
Somehow, the one-year-old cat managed to get onto the ledge and fell out of the window.
Luckily for Sugar, she dodged bricks and concrete and landed on a very small patch of mulch.
Brittany Kirk told CBS Boston that she definitely believes in the old saying about nine lives.
“I think she probably used one or two or maybe eight.”
When workers with the Animal Rescue League examined Sugar, they found that she only had minor bruising on the lungs
When workers with the Animal Rescue League examined the cat, they found that she only had minor bruising on the lungs.
A resident in the West End building said she saw a “white streak” go by her window that afternoon and then saw Sugar after she hit the ground.
Mike Brammer, assistant manager for the Animal Rescue League told MSNBC.com: “You could see the impact crater where she actually did hit the ground and she actually lost some fur in the hole, too.”
After the fall, Sugar had bounced back up and ran back into the apartment building in Storrow Drive.
“Considering what she had been through, she was in really good shape,” Mike Brammer said in the report.
Surprisingly, rescuers say research suggests that cats have a better chance of surviving falls when they’re from higher than nine floors.
“The cats were able to relax, orient themselves in a flying squirrel position with the legs spread out. It slowed their descent down.”
After the incident, Brittany Kirk called the managers of her high rise to have a screen installed on her window.
“I’m just so thankful. When I came home from work today and I saw her, I was just very thankful. It’s a miracle,” Brittany Kirk told CBS Boston.
Tori Spelling has announced she is pregnant with her fourth child.
Tori Spelling, 38, who is married to Dean McDermott, announced the happy news on her Twitter account today.
The former Beverly Hills 90210 star posted a message saying: “Our family has some exciting and life changing news to share,” which linked to her website.
Tori Spelling wrote: “Dean, Liam, Stella, Hattie, and I are beyond thrilled to announce that another little McDermott is on the way!
“We feel truly blessed that another angel has found us.”
The actress also posted a picture of her bump with her children’s hands resting on top of it.
Tori Spelling has announced she is pregnant with her fourth child
Tori Spelling has fallen pregnant just five months after giving birth to Hattie.
Given that couples normally wait to the three-month mark before announcing the happy news it is likely she fell pregnant in December after welcoming her third child in October.
In April 2011, Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott, who married in 2006, took to Twitter to announce they were expecting their third child.
After giving birth to Hattie, Tori Spelling spoke of her desire to have a large family.
She revealed: “People say, <<Oh my God, it’s utter chaos after two>>. But it’s not, it’s great.
“You lost your mind after the second one, so the third fourth and fifth, it’s like you’re so far gone, it’s just kind of the same.”
Dean Mcdermott, 46, added: “As soon as I saw it was positive and it was a pregnancy, we both thought we need to have a fourth – at the same time.”
Kazakhstan’s shooting team has been left stunned after Borat spoof anthem was played during a medal ceremony at the 10th Arab Shooting Competition in Kuwait instead of the real one.
Kazakh team asked for an apology and the medal ceremony was later rerun.
The team’s coach told Kazakh media the organizers had downloaded the parody from the internet by mistake.
The song was produced by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for Borat movie, which shows Kazakhs as backward and bigoted.
Footage of Thursday’s original ceremony posted on YouTube shows gold medalist Maria Dmitrienko listening to the anthem without emotion and finally smiling as it ends.
Kazakh gold medalist Maria Dmitrienko listened to the Borat anthem without emotion and finally smiling as it ends
Coach Anvar Yunusmetov told Kazakh news agency Tengrinews that the tournament’s organizers had also got the Serbian national anthem wrong.
“Then Maria Dmitrienko’s turn came,” Anvar Yunusmetov said.
“She got up on to the pedestal and they played a completely different anthem, offensive to Kazakhstan.”
The spoof song praises Kazakhstan for its superior potassium exports and for having the cleanest prostitutes in the region.
The film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, released in 2006, follows Sacha Baron Cohen’s character, the journalist Borat Sagdiyev, as he travels to the US and pursues the actress Pamela Anderson.
The film outraged people in Kazakhstan and was eventually banned in the country. The government also threatened Sacha Baron Cohen with legal action.
Jarno Smeets, the man who posted on YouTube a video of himself apparently conducting a successful test flight of a “wing-suit” he’d invented , has admitted it was a hoax.
In the widely viewed film the “inventor” – a Dutch man calling himself “Jarno Smeets” – appears to fly using a contraption powered and controlled by the flapping of his arms.
But an animator and film-maker called Floris Kaayk has now admitted that he is in fact Jarno Smeets.
And Floris Kaayk says he faked the whole thing.
Floris Kaayk created an elaborate back-story behind the supposed invention, claiming it was inspired by sketches of a “flying bicycle” his grandfather had designed, which his mother had found in the attic of his home.
Animator and film-maker called Floris Kaayk has now admitted that he is in fact Birdman Jarno Smeets
He claimed to have used Wii technology to co-ordinate the flapping motion of his arms to a huge pair of wings made from hang-glider fabric.
The video was a huge hit on YouTube, and quickly went viral, being picked up by media organizations around the world.
But viewers started to become suspicious when the engineering institutions he claimed to belong to revealed they had never heard of him.
Floris Kaayk then confessed to fabricating the footage, which he says is an exercise in “online storytelling”.
And for anyone doubting the veracity of Floris Kaayk’s claims to be a film-maker and animator, several short films by him can be seen on YouTube, and his website describes him as specializing in “blending computer generated images with live action”.
Ray J lashed out today at claims by Leolah Brown, Bobby Brown’ sister, made on HLN’s Dr. Drew show that he may have provided Whitney Houston with the drugs that contributed to her tragic death, saying her interview was “rife with false statements”.
“Though Leolah Brown was nowhere near the Beverly Hilton hotel on the day Whitney Houston died, [HLN’s parent company] CNN proceeded to broadcast an interview with Ms. Brown in which she falsely claimed that Ray J was at the hotel and contributed to Whitney Houston’s death,” Ray J’s attorney said in a statement released to E! News last night.
The statement continued: “Even the most minimal inquiry with anyone actually in contact with Whitney would reveal that Leolah Brown had been out of contact with Whitney for more than a year and was nowhere near the scene on the day of her death.”
Ray J lashed out today at claims by Leolah Brown made on Dr. Drew show that he may have provided Whitney Houston with cocaine
What ticked off Brandy’s little brother was the fact that Leolah Brown told Dr. Drew Pinksy that she witnessed Ray J (real name William Ray Norwood Jr.) leaving Whitney Houston’s hotel room “hiding his head” on the day she died.
“Why is he hiding his face? He’s always trying to show his face when he’s with Whitney. Why now? Why you trying to hide, Ray J?” Leolah Brown asked.
Leolah Brown then accused Ray J, who was rumored to be casually dating Whitney Houston, of being a “runner boy” for the music legend because he “knows somebody that sells drugs” and bought and supplied them to her.
Ray J’s lawyer has urged media outlets “not to republish these defamatory stories” and warned of legal action should they proceed to do so without verifying the truth.
Whitney Houston’s official cause of death, released yesterday by the Los Angeles County Coroner, reveals that she died as the result of accidental drowning and the combined effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine. The drug, however, was never found in her hotel room when investigators conducted their probe.
In a shocking interview on HLN’s Dr. Drew’sshow last night, Leolah Brown, Bobby Brown’ sister, blamed Ray J and Pat Houston for Whitney Houston’s death.
Leolah Brown decided to go on Dr. Drew’s show last night to discuss the Los Angeles coroner’s toxicology report on her former sister-in-law, Whitney Houston.
She made striking claims that Ray-J was Whitney Houston’s “runner boy” for cocaine. Leolah Brown also said she found it suspicious that she saw Ray-J leaving Whitney Houston’s hotel and hiding after her death, when he has never seemed to hide when cameras were around them before.
Bobby Brown’ sister also said she finds it hard to believe Pat Houston, Whitney Houston’ sister-in-law and manager, didn’t know the singer was doing cocaine that day. And as for Leolah Brown’s first thought when she heard the news of Whitney Houston’s death: “Somebody gave her a bad bag!”
Ray-J has put out a statement after this interview saying he was unaware Whitney Houston was using cocaine and he slammed Leolah Brown’s claims. He said he wasn’t even around the day Whitney Houston died as he was in San Diego.
Leolah Brown blames Ray J and Pat Houston for Whitney Houston's death on Dr. Drew's show
Later in the interview, Bobbi Kristina Brown’s cousins, Jerod Brown & Kelsey Brown, divulged more details about what they felt were odd happenings the day of Whitney Houston’s death.
Jerod Brown said “that guy Nick [Gordon]” came into the hospital soon after they got there to check on Bobbi Kristina during her panic attack and said: “Thanks for coming out.” As if they weren’t supposed to be there.
The cousins also said Gary Houston paid no mind to Bobbi Kristina Brown once she collapsed on the hotel room floor right in front of him. Gary Houston “kept rolling the luggage from the room right past her.”
They also talked about Whitney Houston’s off shore accounts and why Leolah Brown “believes” she has legal guardianship of Bobbi Kristina Brown. .
However, Bobby Brown’s reps have been extra mum on talking about any specifics or any rumors concerning Whitney Houston’s death. They have only put out their own general statements on behalf of Bobby Brown. So there is a chance Bobby Brown knew nothing about this Dr. Drew interview and/or didn’t co-sign it.
Data from a NASA’s Dawn spacecraft revealed that the giant asteroid Vesta possesses many features usually associated with rocky planets like Earth.
Vesta has been viewed as a massive asteroid, but after studying the surface in detail, scientists are describing it as “transitional”.
The Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting Vesta – one of the Solar System’s most primitive objects – since July 2011.
They have documented many unexpected features on its battered surface.
Mission scientists presented their latest results at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas.
Dawn’s principal investigator, Christopher T. Russell, told the meeting that the science team found it hard not to refer to the object as a planet.
Christopher T. Russell said the rounded asteroid showed evidence of geological processes that characterize rocky worlds like Earth and the Moon.
Vesta is the second most massive of the asteroids, measuring some 530 km (330 miles) in diameter. It is dominated by a huge crater called Rheasilvia and bears many other scars left by the hammering it has received at the hands of other asteroid belt denizens.
One important transitional feature of Vesta can be found in its topography, or elevation. Vertical elevation on the Moon or Mars might reach tens of kilometres, but these objects are also very large.
“This means the topography is about 1% of the radius,” Dr. Ralf Jaumann, from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), said. If you go to Vesta, it is 15%, and if you go to the largest outer asteroid – Lutetia – it is 40%.”
In short, this mathematical relationship between topography and radius (half an object’s diameter), puts Vesta in an intermediate position between small asteroids and rocky planets.
Data from a NASA’s Dawn spacecraft revealed that the giant asteroid Vesta possesses many features usually associated with rocky planets like Earth
Another aspect concerns the way its surface has been modified, or “processed”, by the many collisions. This is evident in dark material that can be seen in images of its terrain.
The dark material seems to be related to impacts and their aftermath. Scientists think carbon-rich asteroids could have hit Vesta at speeds low enough to produce some of the smaller deposits without blasting away the surface.
Higher-speed asteroids could also have collided with Vesta’s surface and melted the volcanic basaltic crust, darkening existing surface material.
Scientists are confident there has been volcanism on the asteroid during its history. This is because there are hundreds of pieces of Vesta sitting in museums around the world.
They form a particular class of meteorite called the HEDs; more of these objects have fallen to Earth than all the meteorites from the Moon and Mars put together. Studies of HED meteorites have revealed telling chemical signatures of volcanic activity.
Dave Williams, from Arizona State University, said: “We know [from the HED meteorites] there were lava flows at some point in history, so I expected there to be at least a few lava flows, maybe a few channels, shields or cones. Looking at all the images in places that have been illuminated thus far, we don’t see any evidence of that.
“That’s because of all the impact processing over Solar System history. It has destroyed all the evidence.”
Mission scientist Brett Denevi, from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, explained why she thought some of the collisions that have hammered Vesta were intense enough to melt its surface.
Referring to observations of a crater called Marcia, in Vesta’s northern hemisphere, Dr. Brett Denevi commented: “We think what we’re seeing here is at least a portion of this target rock has melted and flowed. The impact velocities were high enough – at least in this one case.”
She added: “Impact melt hasn’t really been observed on asteroids before. It wasn’t really expected because the speed of collisions in the asteroid belt are pretty low compared with the inner Solar System. So it wasn’t known whether you’d have enough energy to melt the target rock.”
Dawn probe is set to depart Vesta for an even bigger object – the spherical “dwarf planet” Ceres – in August for an arrival in 2015.
The EU has agreed to expand its mission against Somali pirates, by allowing military forces to attack land targets as well as those at sea.
In a two year-extension of its Atalanta Operation, the European Union defense ministers agreed warships could target boats and fuel dumps.
The move is a significant step-up in operations, but one that also risks escalation.
Several EU naval ships are currently on patrol off the Horn of Africa.
They police shipping routes and protect humanitarian aid.
The EU says the main tasks of the mission are the protection of vessels of the World Food Programme delivering food aid to displaced people in Somalia, and the fight against piracy off the Somali coast.
The EU has agreed to expand its mission against Somali pirates, by allowing military forces to attack land targets as well as those at sea
In a statement, the EU’s foreign policy head Catherine Ashton said fighting piracy was a priority of the mission in the Horn of Africa.
“Today’s important decision extends [Operation] Atalanta’s mandate for two more years and allows it to take more robust action on the Somali coast,” Catherine Ashton said.
The EU said “a budget of 14.9 million Euros ($19.7 million) is provided for the common costs of the prolonged mandate”.
A Finnish study found that people of working age who live alone increase their risk of depression by up to 80% compared with people living in families.
The study says the main factors are poor housing conditions for women and a lack of social support for men, who are both equally affected.
The research also tracked the use of anti-depressants in 3,500 Finnish people.
The study authors highlight the fact that the proportion of one-person households in Western countries has increased during the past three decades, with one in every three people in the US and the UK living alone.
The participants in the study, published in BioMed Central’s public health journal, were working-age Finns; 1,695 were men and 1,776 were women, and they had an average age of 44.6 years.
They were surveyed in 2000 and asked whether they lived alone or with other people.
People of working age who live alone increase their risk of depression by up to 80 per cent compared with people living in families
Other information about their lifestyle was gathered, such as social support, work climate, education, income, employment status and housing conditions, in addition to details on smoking habits, alcohol use and activity levels.
Researchers found that people living alone bought 80% more anti-depressants during the follow-up period, between 2000 and 2008, than those who did not live alone.
Dr. Laura Pulkki-Raback, who led the research at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, said the real risk of mental health problems in people living alone could be much higher.
“This kind of study usually underestimates risk because the people who are at the most risk tend to be the people who are least likely to complete the follow up. We were also not able to judge how common untreated depression was.”
Researchers said that living with other people could offer emotional support and feelings of social integration, as well as other factors that protect against mental health problems.
Living alone, the study said, could be linked with feelings of isolation and a lack of social integration and trust, which are risk factors for mental health.
The study said all the factors involved needed to be addressed in order to understand and reduce depression in working-age people.
EU foreign ministers are set to impose a travel ban and asset freeze on Syria First Lady Asma al-Assad, diplomats say.
The UK-born wife of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is among 12 Syrians to be added to a number of figures, including the president, who are already subject to sanctions.
It was unclear whether the ban would stop Asma al-Assad from travelling to the UK.
Anti-government activists accuse the regime of killing thousands of protesters over the past year.
In recent weeks, the Damascus government has stepped up its efforts to crush pockets of rebellion in cities including Homs and Hama.
Every day, activists report dozens of deaths and more protests.
President Bashar al-Assad has promised political reform, but observers and his opponents have dismissed his plans as window-dressing.
EU foreign ministers are set to impose a travel ban and asset freeze on Syria First Lady Asma al-Assad
For years there was a perception that Asma al-Assad’s Western upbringing could encourage reform in Syria.
Asma al-Assad, 36, who is of Syrian descent but spent much of her life in west London, has generally played a low-key role in the regime.
However, in February Asma al-Assad wrote to Britain’s Times newspaper to explain why she thought her husband was still the right man to lead Syria.
Last week activists released some 3,000 emails they said were from private accounts belonging to Bashar al-Assad and his wife.
The messages, which have not been independently verified, suggested Asma al-Assad continued to shop online for luxury goods even after the uprising was in full swing.
The UN says at least 8,000 people have died since the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s regime began last March.
Bashar al-Assad and his allies say terrorist and armed gangs are behind the violence, and say hundreds of security personnel have been killed fighting them.
Reality star Kim Kardashian was attacked with flour on the red carpet at her own perfume launch in West Hollywood.
Kim Kardashian, 31, was covered in flour after an unidentified Asian woman pelted her at the launch of True Reflection at The London Hotel in West Hollywood.
The reality star arrived dressed-to-the-nines, wearing a black blazer, leather trousers and a bright blue blouse, but within minutes she looked more like a dowdy housewife after a kitchen mishap.
Kim Kardashian’s whole back and shiny hair was covered in the substance, which was later determined as cooking flour, according to TMZ.
TMZ reports that after the attack, Kim Kardashian, who arrived at the hotel with her mother Kris Jenner, was ushered into a private room where she removed her doused jacket and brushed the flour off the rest of her outfit and long brunette locks.
Kim Kardashian opted to go back to the event following the fracas, and the assailant was arrested by police who were called to the scene, according to TMZ.
The fire department was also called to the scene to inspect the substance, which after several minutes they determined as cooking flour.
Kim Kardashian was covered in flour after an unidentified Asian woman pelted her at the launch of True Reflection at The London Hotel in West Hollywood
After Kim Kardashian returned to the event she laughed off the ordeal and even made a joke in light of the incident.
“That probably is the craziest, unexpected, weird thing that ever happened to me,” Kim Kardashian told E! Online.
“Like I said to my makeup artist, I wanted more powder and that’s a whole lot of translucent powder right there.”
Meanwhile her mother Kris Jenner told the website: “If anybody comes at me with something, call security.”
According to E! Online, the woman ran off after she threw the flour, but didn’t get very far when Kim Kardashian’s representation intercepted her and held onto her before security took over.
Kim Kardashian has not pressed charges over the incident and the unidentified woman has been released, according to a press release from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Moments before the assailant launched their attack, Kim Kardashian was blissfully unaware of what was to come, happily posing for pictures and doing interviews with the press.
The attack may have quite possibly have come from a protester opposing Kim Kardashian’s love affair with fur.
In November 2011, Kim Kardashian was the target of a PETA campaign.
The animal rights group posted a billboard in Los Angeles that featured a photo of the curvy star wearing a fur-trimmed jacket.
A picture of two foxes was included, along with the caption: “Kim: These babies miss their mother. Is she on your back?”
The attack comes just a few months after somebody flour bombed Kim Kardashian’s best friend Jonathan Cheban in New York City while he was walking with the reality star near her boutique Dash last December.
The unidentified person threw the flour in Jonathan Cheban’s face yelling: “This is for Kris Humphries!”
Jonathan Cheban and Kim Kardashian’s ex-husband Kris Humphries had a notoriously rocky relationship, which was played out on Kim’s reality show Kim and Kourtney Take New York.
“I think it’s pathetic that someone would go to this length to show their support for someone,” Jonathan Cheban told Us Weekly following the ordeal.
“With fans like that, who needs enemies?”
Kris Humphries representation also released a statement at the time, denying that he had any involvement.
“[He] would never condone hateful and unacceptable behavior like that to anyone, in any situation,” the statement said.
Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries notoriously split last year after just 72 days of marriage.
Kim Kardashian’s little sister Khloe immediately took to her Twitter account to express both her outrage and praise for her sister’s dignified reaction after the flour pelting.
Khloe Kardashian wrote: “I’m proud of how Kim handled the situation.”
Kim Kardashian’ sister then later added in defense: “I wish I was with my sister tonight. I bet you that woman wouldn’t have dared tried a thing…”
Sources connected to Whitney Houston, who were with the singer on the day she died, told TMZ an individual removed all traces of cocaine from the room before authorities arrived.
The Coroner’s Office said Whitney Houston used cocaine “immediately prior to her collapse.” Investigators who arrived on scene found no traces of cocaine or any other illegal substance.
One source, who is extremely close to the situation, told TMZ that the individual who removed the cocaine was also the person who supplied it to Whitney Houston.
An individual removed all traces of cocaine from Whitney Houston’s hotel room before authorities arrived, say sources
Earlier reports claimed other items were removed from the Beverly Hilton Hotel room as well, including bed sheets.
The Beverly Hills PD told TMZ its investigation is not closed. Police will not comment on whether they are looking at evidence tampering.
Whitney Houston drowned in the hotel room bathtub on February 11, having ingested cocaine recently enough to have it be a contributing factor in her death, said Los Angeles coroner yesterday.
But how exactly did Whitney Houston, who was only 48, die in her bathtub at the Beverly Hilton?
Did she overdose? Hit her head? Simply fall asleep? Did years of cocaine use cause the heart disease that was also detected during autopsy?
Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter, who determined cause of death to be accidental drowning combined with cocaine use and atherosclerotic heart disease, told E! News that his team actually has not been able to pinpoint exactly how Whitney Houston died as far as sequence of events – but there are some likely possibilities.
“It means she could have passed out and drowned,” Ed Winter said.
“Also, continued use of drugs resulted in heart disease, and that could have led to a heart attack.
“At this time, I don’t know how bad her heart was. That will be in the final report. We know she drowned, she had heart disease, and the cocaine was considered a contributing cause to her death.”
They will be reexamining Whitney Houston’s heart for other indicators of deterioration in the coming days.
As for the traces of pills found in Whitney Houston’s body, chief coroner investigator Craig Harvey told reporters during a press conference that it was “clear Houston was taking Xanax, but the levels were such they were a therapeutic level…normal for someone following the rules of a prescribed medication.”
“The Benadryl may have created a combined effect, but the toxicology said all levels were therapeutic or sub-therapeutic and not contributory to her death,” Craig Harvey said.
Whitney Houston drowned in the hotel room bathtub on February 11, having ingested cocaine recently
They found a “moderate” amount of cocaine – an “acute dose, not too much before she collapsed,” he said, but noted that there was evidence of “chronic usage.”
“Drug use creates problems,” Craig Harvey explained.
“If you have one condition and you’re using cocaine, you’ll exacerbate it. It causes the heart to beat faster, the arteries to constrict, which can create a problem and set you up for a cardiac event.”
“It exacerbates heat disease,” he said.
“Probably in the long run, [all of the substances] didn’t help.”
The coroner’s office said earlier today that the final report should be available for release within two weeks.
Meanwhile, at least one medical expert doesn’t buy the notion that the marijuana, Xanax and other sedatives found in her system were not considered contributing factors in Whitney Houston’s death.
“I don’t know how you can say that a bunch of sedating drugs, even in small amounts, couldn’t contribute to somebody either passing out or becoming sedated to the point where you wouldn’t necessarily struggle to recover the way most people would,” Dr. David Baron, chief of staff at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Ortopaedic Hospital, told E! News.
“If we were falling asleep and slipped under the water, our emergency systems in our brain would wake us up,” Dr. David Baron said.
“When people are sedated, the brain doesn’t have the normal alarm systems working properly to make you struggle and fight for life. So I really don’t get why [the coroner’s office] said they were not contributing causes; I don’t know how they can know that unless they were in such minute amounts.”
Which is a possibility – the official report hasn’t been released yet.
As for the cocaine, Dr. David Baron said, if she ingested a “large amount…she could have easily had a cardiac event like a heart attack and an irregular heartbeat. There is no way after someone dies to know if they had an arrhythmia, they are always the mystery of sudden death where you weren’t there to witness it.”
“We are probably never going to know the exact sequence of events that took place,” Dr. David Baron concluded.
“But the question about whether the drug use caused her to drown or not I think is unquestionable. It either compromised her heart, made it weak, caused an arrhythmia and resulted in blood vessels constricting.”
