London: Soulful songstress Adele capped a momentous year of Grammy Awards triumph and medical woes with a double win at the UK’s Brit music awards on Tuesday, taking prizes for album of the year and best British female solo artist before making an obscene gesture after the show’s host cut her acceptance speech short.

Teen-friendly English troubadour Ed Sheeran won two trophies, including British male solo artist, at an energetic ceremony in London.

It has been a dramatic year for down-to-earth north London diva Adele, who based her chart-topping songs of heartbreak on a rocky relationship.

Her sophomore album "21" won six Grammys last week and has sold more than 6 million copies in the United States alone. But Adele also had to undergo vocal cord surgery in November to fix a potentially career-threatening throat condition.

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Richard Sennett’s new book about cooperation shares its title with a much-loved film: Lukas Moodysson’s Together, which was made in 2000 but set in a Swedish free-love collective of the 1970s. The film is a warm, nostalgic and slightly fuzzy hymn to the pleasures and pains of cooperative living, complete with Abba soundtrack. Its message is that learning how to live together is not easy — it takes time.

Sennett’s book says much the same, though with lashings of sociology. But it has an edge that the film lacked, because of how the world has changed in the past ten years. Online social networks have given us different ways to make connections with our fellow creatures. This is potentially very bad news for cooperation.

The web might look like a giant cooperative endeavour, but it is not. It is an endless array of communities. Community life is relatively easy. All it takes is finding people who think like you do. Cooperation is hard because it is about learning to live with people who think differently or don’t know what they think at all. Sennett wants to remind us that this is a skill, and like any skill it takes patience and practice.

The view popularised by Malcolm Gladwell is that to get really good at something requiring skill takes at least 10,000 hours of practice, whether it is football or rocket science. Sennett thinks co-operation is no different, which means that only a few people are ever going to be really good at it.

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Story By: Morning Edition

A British magazine sponsored the LAFTA awards ref. Here’s the joke of the year from comedian Tom Vine: Conjunctivitis.com — that’s a site for sore eyes.

Story By: by Tom Huizenga

Simone Dinnerstein, at NPR’s Studio 4A, plays The Cohen Variations, a new piece based on Leonard Cohen’s song “Suzanne.”

Last spring I invited pianist Simone Dinnerstein to drop by our studio to spin and talk about some of her favorite tunes in a guest DJ session. We quickly found that we shared an all-time favorite song — Leonard Cohen‘s iconic “Suzanne,” an enigmatic love song with a hothouse full of indelible images. We both first heard it via Judy Collins‘ 1966 album In My Life (see below).

Dinnerstein returned to the studio recently, this time to play a set of variations on “Suzanne” written for her by New York composer Daniel Felsenfeld. The piece, called The Cohen Variations, is for solo piano, leaving Cohen’s evocative poetry behind.

“I’m not a very word-oriented person,” Dinnerstein says. “The words are not the thing about that song that gets me.” She likes what she calls the drone-like quality of the Collins rendition, and the circularity of the simple four-chord structure. Still, it’s gutsy to strip a Cohen song, especially this one, of its lyrics.

“I know that was something Danny was thinking about when he wrote the variations, how to do wordless Cohen,” Dinnerstein says. “He uses these inner voices. I think it also conjures up a feeling of words to have inner voices. It’s like the subtext of a song. It’s really deep what he’s done, and it’s quite minimal but really subtle.”

You can hear Collins’ original version and her take on a Beatles classic below. Click on the audio link at the top of the page to hear Dinnerstein discuss Cohen’s song and her studio performance of The Cohen Variations.

New York: The British hip-hop artist M.I.A. has apologised to Madonna for making an obscene gesture during the Super Bowl halftime show, Madonna’s spokeswoman said.

Madonna said in radio interviews on Friday that she had no idea M.I.A. would extend her middle finger during the performance in front of 114 million people, according to Madonna’s spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg. The singer didn’t find out about it until after the show.

"I wasn’t happy about it," Madonna told Ryan Seacrest in one interview. "I understand it’s kind of punk rock and everything, but to me there was such a feeling of love and good energy and positivity, it seemed negative."

She said it was like something a teenager would do. "It seemed out of place," she said.

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* EU expected to approve deal Monday – sources

* Deal seen winning OK without conditions – sources

* China, other countries still need to approve deal

* China could wait until March 20 to decide – source

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Google Inc is
expected to win approval next week from European regulators, as
well as from U.S. antitrust authorities, for its planned $12.5
billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, according to
people familiar with the matter.

Web search leader Google, which is buying the handset maker
to boost its patent portfolio, is seen winning unconditional EU
clearance for the deal, two people with knowledge of the matter
said on Friday.

The deal was announced last August.

The U.S. Justice Department is also expected to approve the
acquisition next week, two separate sources who are close to the
antitrust review told Reuters on Thursday.

After U.S. and European approval, the companies would still
need approval from China. Regulators in China have until March
20 to decide whether to approve the deal or start a third phase
of review, according to source close to the situation. It was
not immediately possible to contact China’s Ministry of Commerce
for comment on this story.

Regulators in Israel and Taiwan also have not yet signed off
on the deal.

The European Commission is scheduled to decide by Monday
whether to clear the deal or embark on a more in-depth review.

“The Commission is expected to clear this deal without
requiring any concessions from Google,” one of the sources said.

The European regulator is expected to say the deal will not
stifle competition, two of the sources said.

One source said it was possible the Commission could decide
on Monday to open an in-depth investigation into the deal
instead of clearing it, but that this was highly unlikely.

While the U.S. Justice Department and the Commission are
coordinating their actions, it is possible their decisions may
not come on the same day, another source familiar with the
matter said.

Representatives for Motorola and Google declined comment.

Google announced in August that it would buy Motorola for
its 17,000 patents and its 7,500 pending patent applications as
it looks to compete better with rivals such as Apple Inc
and defend itself and manufacturers using its Android
phone software in patent litigation cases.

The legal patent war among technology and smartphone makers
has prompted the Commission to open an investigation into legal
tactics used by Samsung Electronics against Apple
and whether these breach EU antitrust rules.

Earlier this week, Google pledged to license Motorola
patents on fair and reasonable terms if the deal succeeds.

In letters to standard-setting organisations around the
world, it promised to keep a cap on the fees it charges for
licensing its technology. That cap would be 2.25 percent of the
net selling price for each phone. Google also outlined the
conditions under which it would sue companies for patent
infringement.

Microsoft Corp also promised on the same day not to
seek injunctions to ban products based on standard-essential
patents.

In 2010, U.S. business software maker Oracle Corp
won unconditional EU approval for its $7 billion takeover of Sun
Microsystems, a month after a public pledge to rivals and users
aimed at easing regulatory concerns.

Google shares closed down $5.55 or almost 1 percent at
$605.91 on the Nasdaq, while Motorola Mobility shares finished
up 10 cents at $39.45 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The government wants to launch a national reading competition in England to encourage a love of books and boost children's literacy.

The contest, for seven- to 12-year-olds, is likely to focus on who can read the most books.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the aim was "to give a competitive spur to reluctant readers".

But teachers' unions accused the government of an overprescriptive approach to literacy lessons.

The government said the competition was intended to encourage reading for pleasure in children who had already mastered the basics.

Mr Gibb added that he wanted everyone to have read at least one novel by Charles Dickens by the end of their teenage years.

He also said he hoped more 11-year-olds would achieve the higher grades in the literacy tests taken at the end of primary school.

Mr Gibb said: "Children should always have a book on the go. The difference in achievement between children who read for half an hour a day in their spare time and those who do not is huge – as much as a year's education by the time they are 15."

In particular, Mr Gibb said he wanted to encourage boys to become voracious readers of fiction, as one in 10 was currently leaving primary school with the reading age of a seven-year-old.

"I hope this competition will inspire all children to read more, but boys especially who are spurred on by a bit of healthy competition," he said.

The competition will be launched in September with local, regional and national prizes.

The details will be decided nearer the time, but the government has said that it wants parents to be involved and young people to help select the books to be included.

But there have been criticisms of government policy on literacy teaching.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "Instead of inventing new competitions, the government should provide the resources and the freedom children and teachers need to ensure all children become good readers."

She added that the government had placed too much emphasis on phonics teaching, and this risked putting some young readers off books.

"The government needs to accept that phonics is not the only way that children learn to read.

"For it to be presented as such is both misleading and detrimental to those for whom it simply won't work."

Ms Blower also said that cuts in public libraries were harming young readers.

The shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg, said cuts to a one-to-one tuition scheme for children who struggled with reading would affect up to 9,000 children.

"These are exactly the kind of pupils who need help the most – those who are at risk of falling behind with their reading and writing," he said.

Boosting literacy levels has been a key part of the government's education policy, with international comparisons showing English pupils falling behind.

According to the OECD's Pisa tests, 15-year-olds in England are at least six months behind those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia.

The government's favoured method of boosting reading standards has been to encourage the use of synthetic phonics – where children are taught to blend letter sounds to make words – in primary schools.

Since September, primary schools which sign up to teaching phonics have been offered up to £3,000 matched funding towards materials and training.

So far more than 4,000 schools have joined the scheme.

Michael Fassbender has won the best actor prize at the Evening Standard British Film Awards for his roles in sex addiction drama Shame and as Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre.

His win comes less than a week before the Baftas, where Fassbender is up for best actor.

Olivia Colman won the best actress prize for her performance in brutal drama Tyrannosaur.

Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin won best film.

John Hurt picked up the Alexander Walker special award for his contribution to cinema.

The veteran actor is due to collect the outstanding British contribution to cinema award at the Baftas on Sunday.

Monday's ceremony, at the London Film Museum, was delayed after a fire alarm during the champagne reception meant that all the guests – including John Hurt, Birdsong's Clemence Poesy and Downton Abbey's Jessica Brown-Findlay – were evacuated outside.

Fassbender, however, was not present to collect his prize.

It was accepted on his behalf by Shame writer Abi Morgan who read a message from the actor in which he said he was "truly honoured and delighted" by the honour.

Colman beat three Oscar winners – Vanessa Redgrave, Rachel Weisz and Tilda Swinton – to take the best actress prize for her role as a Christian charity shop worker in Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur.

Presented with her prize by Doctor Who actor Matt Smith, the tearful actress said: "This film will be the thing I'm most proud of until I die – apart from my husband."

Accepting the prize for We Need To Talk About Kevin, director Lynne Ramsay said she was "pretty overwhelmed".

She admitted: "It was such a struggle making this movie, a lot of times I thought I'd give up."

Her film, based on Lionel Shriver's novel, stars Tilda Swinton as a mother who has a deeply troubled relationship with her son.

Irish comedy The Guard beat summer hit The Inbetweeners Movie to win the Peter Sellers comedy award.

Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, it features Brendan Gleeson as a foul-mouthed Irish police sergeant.

The award was picked up by actor Mark Strong, who read a suitably irreverent message from McDonagh: "I'm shocked to win the Peter Sellers Prize for comedy – I thought Tyrannosaur would win it."

Hurt's award for his contribution to cinema was presented by My Beautiful Laundrette director Stephen Frears.

Hurt, whose career spans four decades and includes the recent role of Control in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, said he was "enormously grateful".

He said the late Evening Standard film critic Alexander Walker, after whom the award is named, had once described him as "the nation's favourite victim".

Hurt added: "Well, I don't feel a victim tonight."

The Evening Standard British film awards have been presented annually since 1973.

THE WINNERS LIST

Best Film – We Need To Talk About Kevin

Best Actor – Michael Fassbender for Shame and Jane Eyre

Best Actress – Olivia Colman for Tyrannosaur

Most Promising Newcomers – Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe for co-writing and directing Black Pond

Peter Sellers Award For Comedy – The Guard

Best Documentary – Senna

Best Screenplay – Andrew Haigh for Weekend

London Film Museum Award for Technical Achievement – Robbie Ryan for his cinematography of Wuthering Heights

Alexander Walker Special Award – John Hurt for his contribution to cinema

Blockbuster of the Year, People's Choice Award – Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Lebanese singer Fadel Shaker has clarified his recent harsh
statements against Lebanese singers that created commotion and resentment against
him. He stated that his recent disputes with Lebanese singer Assi Hilani had
passed like a stormy day in summer, and stressed that his remarks about having
Algerian singer Warda resign and wear the Islamic headdress hijab is a gesture
of his admiration of her and not a sign of disrespect.

With regards to his remarks about Yara being only after the
money is due to the fact that she had refused to sing a duet with him for the
Lebanese army and had requested a large amount of money in order to agree.

Fadel said that his opinion of Maya Diab will never change
and he does not consider her to be a singer and was shocked when he was asked
if he considered Maya to be the best female singer of 2011.

With regards to his statements about singer Rami Ayash and
calling him a rusted empty pot, Fadel said that he was told on several
occasions that Rami had publicly talked ill of him. Fadel denied that he
apologized to Rami and said that he has no reason to do such a thing.

Lindsay Lohan has moved out of the Venice pad she’s been living in for the last year, and it seems the neighbours couldn’t be more pleased.

"Lohan was like a hurricane, or some other natural disaster tearing through the neighbourhood," one former neighbour told Radar Online.

Ouch. But LiLo didn’t head out on the neighbours’ account. According to TMZ, she was freaked out and felt unsafe after a male stranger knocked on her door on New Year’s Day, and has been at the Chateau Marmont ever since that trespassing incident. The moving vans that showed up on Tuesday and Wednesday were moving her stuff into storage.

"Goodbye to her and all her drama," another former neighbour told Radar. "Since she moved here it’s been a complete circus with a revolving door of friends in and out of her house and paparazzi camped out permanently. Everyone was so sick of her."

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