November 2011

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Another one bites the dust! Sinitta becomes second casualty of I’m A Celebrity as she takes the walk of shame

Sinitta has become the second victim of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!

Fortunately she avoided the embarrassment of being eliminated first; with that blow dealt to Stefanie Powers last night, despite her melodramatic squealing during three trials and the cockroach filled cave, viewers opted to send her home.

As Ant and Dec went into the camp, Pat Sharp was the first to be saved before Jessica-Jane Clement’s name was called second.

Sinitta was then told it might be her, before Dougie Poynter, Lorraine Chase, Willie Carson, Emily Scott, Mark Wright, Fatima Whitbread and Antony Cotton were all told they’d be staying.

As Crissy Rock was the final name left, she battled the former popstar in the bottom two – but the 43-year-old was sent home as the Benidorm actress, 53, was saved.

Talking to the Geordie presenters, Sinitta said: “Amazing, I sort of knew. To leave when I actually started to love it is a great feeling. I wanted to face my fears and not be afraid of everything.

Speaking of her now infamous night in the cockroach filled cave, in which she stood vertical for three hours to avoid the creepy crawlies, she said: “It did feel like a long time.

She even praised Pat, who had to sleep next to her, saying: “He was so sweet, whenever I screamed, he’d say,It’s nothing“. It was the longest night of his life.

He wants to win, he’s not afraid of anything. He doesn’t really understand people’s deep-rooted fears.

When she was quizzed about faking her hysterics, especially during The Department Store task, she denied she was faking.

Simon Cowell’s former flame said: “I’d be a brilliant actress (if I was faking). It’s real, they (my family) find it irritating at home too.

Sinitta added that she would like to see Mark or Crissy go on to be crowned king or queen of the jungle.

Meanwhile, love is still blossoming between Mark and Emily.

The Australian model successfully completed the latest Bushtucker Trial, Coral Grief, in which she scored a maximum of 11 meals for her campmates after retrieving stars buried in a giant tank.

When she returned to the camp, the former TOWIE star offered her a congratulatory back rub.

find out more & source: metro.co.uk

Leveson Inquiry: after Harry Potter I felt like a hostage, says JK Rowling

Author JK Rowling appears before the Leveson Inquiry Photo: SKY


JK Rowling has described feeling like “a hostage” in her own home as it came “under siege” from the paparazzi following the success of her Harry Potter books.

The author told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that she had fought a running battle with the media to protect her privacy and particularly that of her three children, taking legal action more than 50 times in 14 years.

Despite her best efforts, she had been unable to prevent “private” pictures of her daughter going around the world “like a virus” on the internet.
After taking an oath under her full name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling, the 46-year-old writer said she was a passionate believer in the freedom of the press and saluted “truly heroic” journalists who risked their lives to expose the truth about war and famine.

She did not, however, mince her words when it came to the “illegal and unjustifiably intrusive” behaviour of some tabloid journalists, adding: “I wonder sometimes why they’re called the same thing.”
With her husband, Neil Murray, sitting in the public gallery of the hearing at the High Court in London, she said she had been guided by her strong belief that “children do best when they are kept out of the public eye“.

She quickly discovered how difficult it would be to ensure that when she experienced “the first burst of publicity” after the first book, published in 1997, became a bestseller.

Her eldest daughter came home from primary school and, she said: “I unzipped her bag and among the usual notes from school and debris, I found a letter from a journalist. “It said he intended to ask a mother at the school to put this in my daughter’s bag.

I don’t know whether that’s how it got there but I felt such a sense of invasion. It’s very difficult to say how angry I felt that my five-year-old daughter’s school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists.”

After buying a house with the advance for the first book, Miss Rowling was horrified to see pictures of it, including the street name and house number, appear in the press, and moved as a result, but had been forced to take legal action when pictures of three subsequent homes were published.

As a result, photographers would camp outside her house and “it really was like being under siege or being a hostage … I felt completely trapped in the house and of course that had a massive effect on the children”.

When the seventh and final Potter book was about to be published in 2007, a journalist contacted the head of her daughter’s school, and suggested that she had “distressed fellow pupils by revealing that Harry Potter dies in the final Harry Potter book”.

Miss Rowling went on: “My daughter was being characterised as some sort of bully, but there was not a word of truth in it. There had been no complaint.

“My daughter could not have possibly known what was in book seven, because by her own request she did not want to know. To approach my daughter’s school was outrageous.”

In 2004 the Daily Express alleged that Miss Rowling had based the character of the self-obsessed teacher Gilderoy Lockhart on her former husband, after she told a group of children that she had based him on “someone I lived with briefly”.

In fact, she was referring to a former flatmate, but she “had to sit my eldest daughter down and explain it”.

She was not, however, asked whether anyone in particular had inspired one of her most vile characters, the manipulative journalist Rita Skeeter, who appears to embody all that she loathes about the tabloid press.

The hearing continues on Monday.

I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! line-up revealed: Meet the contestants

The I'm a Celebrity motley crew pose in their jungle gear ahead of the new series launch. (Picture: ITV)

Ant and Dec are returning for another series of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and its line-up has finally been announced, with rumours being confirmed as The Only Way Is Essex star Mark Wright enters the jungle with the likes of Dougie from McFly and Freddie Starr.

Joining them in the jungle is Crissy Rock, Stefanie Powers, Anthony Cotton, Lorraine Chase, Willie Carson, Fatima Whitbread and Jessica-Jane Clement, with notable exception Sinitta reportedly having dropped out at the last minute.

If you’re struggling to work out who any of these people are and why they qualify as celebs, then our I’m a Celebrity… guide is here to help you.

Freddie Starr;
Comedian Freddie has already had plenty of practice eating live animals if the notorious headline ‘Freddie Starr ate my hamster’, which appeared in the Sun in 1986, is anything to go by. The story turned out not to be true, but Starr says he is fully expecting the headline to crop up in conversation during his time in the jungle, especially if he’s forced to eat live wigety grubs during the bush-tucker trials.The comedy legend is counting on his sense of humour to help him win favour with the public and admits that he’s taking part in the show to raise his profile.

Freddie’s Phobias: “I don’t like putting my hands in a hole and not knowing what is in there.

find out more & source: metro.co.uk

Google Offers App Comes to Android


Google has released an app for its daily deals site Google Offers, making it more convenient for U.S.-based Android users to discover, purchase, and redeem online coupons.

The app offers the same deals as its Google Offers beta Web site; today’s deal is $15 for $25 worth of REI outdoor gear. You can purchase the deal through the app and flash your phone to redeem it at the merchant. The app also stores all your offers and alerts you when they’re about to expire.

An iOS version will come … eventually. “iPhone users, stay tuned because Offers is coming soon to the App store” Google said.

Download Google Offers version 1.0 at the Android Market. It requires Android 2.1 and 1.4MB of space.

Last week, Google Offers announced cross-promotion deals with 14 other daily deals sites, and will send an email of offers from partners like Gilt City, Dealfind, DoodleDeals, GolfNow, HomeRun, Juice in the City, kgbdeals, Mamapedia, Plum District, PopSugar Shop, ReachDeals, Active.com Schwaggle, TIPPR, and zozi.

Yesterday, Google faced some heat when its highly anticipated native Gmail app for iOS was launched with numerous problems, forcing the company to withdraw the app.

Apple admits there is a problem with iPhone 4S’s battery life – but says it will take weeks to fix

Apple has finally admitted that there are problems with the new iPhone 4S’s battery life, after weeks of reports of devices overheating and batteries draining in less than 12 hours.

The good news is that the problem appears to be due to a bug in the iOS 5 software that the phones use – rather than a problem with the battery itself. The bad news is that the problem will take ‘a few weeks’ to fix.

Speaking to website AllThingsD, Apple said, “A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices.

“We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

Mac websites also report that a new ‘test’ version of the software has already gone out to app developers, and one of the changes is that the new software, “Fixes bugs affecting battery life.” Australian users will also be reassured to find that the new software reportedly makes it easier for iPhone’s Siri voice control system to understand their accents No fix is in the pipeline for Scots who find that the voice-command system can’t understand them, however some temporary fixes are available for the battery problem, however. Apple’s official ‘help’ forums have been deluged by complaints about the problem – with some users reporting that the battery lasts less than a day. Sites such as Macworld have offered guides to how to ‘fix’ the handset while users wait for help from Apple.

So far, though, no one solution appears to fit all the problems. The Apple fan site iDownloadblog suggests that the problem might be in the section of the Settings menu dealing with the phone resetting its time zone when you travel.

iOS 5′s GM release introduced a bug that causes the Setting Time Zone function to keep the location tracking circuitry running constantly, draining battery power considerably,’ said the site.

Switching it off may mean that your iPhone will no longer set its own time zone when you travel. “But that’s a small price to pay for having your iPhone last more than 12 hours on a full charge.

So far, though, the fix is not confirmed to work on all affected iPhone units. Other users have reported different bugs where using the browser causes battery life to drop alarmingly. Others have found that the phone gets worryingly hot in their pockets Apple has reportedly been in touch with individual iPhone users over the past days to try and pin down the root of the problem.