Dr Conrad Murray: Trial timeline

Michael Jackson's personal physician, Dr Conrad Murray, is standing trial over the singer's death.

He is charged with involuntary manslaughter.         
               Prosecutors say he caused the pop star's death by administering a powerful anaesthetic, propofol.
Dr Murray has denied the charges.
It has taken more than two years for the trial to come to court. BBC News looks back over the events that led to the court case.
1983 Conrad Murray graduates from Texas Southern University in Houston with a degree in pre-medicine and biological sciences. He continues his medical studies in Nashville, Tennessee, before completing his training in California and the University of Arizona where he studies cardiology.
2000 Dr Murray opens a practice in Las Vegas, expanding with a second clinic in Houston in 2006. Serving both ends of the community, he also provides medical care to deprived areas.

2006 Dr Murray meets Michael Jackson after treating one of his children in Las Vegas, and the pair strike up a friendship.
May 2009 Dr Murray is hired by promoters AEG Live, at Jackson's request, as the star's personal physician ahead of his This Is It 50-date concert comeback in London. He is put on a salary of more than $150,000 (£96,000) a month.
25 June 2009 Dr Murray finds Jackson unconscious in the bedroom of his Los Angeles mansion. Paramedics are called to the house while Dr Murray is performing CPR, according to a recording of the 911 emergency call. He travels with the singer in an ambulance to UCLA medical centre 
28 June 2009  for three hours. His spokeswoman insists he is "not a suspect".
22 July 2009 The doctor's clinic in Houston from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) looking for evidence of manslaughter.
28 July 2009 Dr Murray's home is also raided. The search warrant allows "authorised investigators to look for medical records relating to Michael Jackson and all of his reported aliases". are seized, and a pharmacy in Las Vegas is later raided in connection with the case.
29 July 2009 Court documents filed in Nevada show that Dr Murray is heavily in debt, owing more than $780,000 (£501,000) in judgements against him and his medical practice, outstanding mortgage payments on his house, child support and credit cards.
29 August 2009 Jackson's death is ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles coroner, who says the cause of death was . A cocktail of drugs - also including sedatives Midazolam and Diazepam, the painkiller Lidocaine and the stimulant Ephedrine - were detected in his body.
21 November 2009 Court documents reveal that Dr Murray bought five bottles of propofol in May 2009, at around the same time he was hired as Jackson's physician. The papers show that the doctor spent $853 (£515) to purchase the drug in Las Vegas, and then transported it to Los Angeles. The DEA says he has not broken any laws in doing so.
8 February 2010 Dr Murray is charged with involuntary manslaughter.  and is released on $75,000 (£48,000) bail. The judge says he can continue to practice medicine, but bans him from administering anaesthetic agents, "specifically propofol".
14 June 2010 Judge Michael Pastor refuses a request to bar Dr Murray from practising medicine in California.
25 June 2010 Michael Jackson's father, Joseph, files a wrongful death lawsuit against the physician.
8 December 2010 California medical board allows Dr Murray to keep his medical licence.
4 January 2011 Preliminary hearings begin. " before calling paramedics on the day Jackson died. They also state that he did not perform CPR properly and omitted to tell paramedics that he had given Jackson propofol.
11 January 2011  for involuntary manslaughter. He faces up to four years in prison if found guilty.
25 January 2011 The doctor officially enters a plea of not guilty. "I am an innocent man," Dr Murray says in court.
3 March 2011 The trial is delayed to allow both sides more time to prepare.
April 2011 Jury selection begins. Because of the high-profile nature of the case, 5. Potential jurors face a 30-page form, which asks questions such as "have you ever considered yourself a fan of Michael Jackson?"
2 May 2011 The trial is delayed again, as Dr Murray's lawyers ask for extra time to prepare for new prosecution witnesses.
25 July 2011 Rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson's This Is It tour , the judge rules.
30 August 2011 . Dr Murray's lawyers had planned to argue that Arnold Klein had administered the singer with painkillers for "no valid reason" but prosecutors said they were attempting to transfer responsibility for his death away from Dr Murray. Testimony from five other doctors who treated Jackson is also disallowed.
24 September 2011 The jury is finalised. Half of the chosen panelists are Caucasian, five are Hispanic and one is African-American. The jurors have a wide range of professions, including a bus driver, paralegal and a bookseller.
27 September 2011  take place in the televised trial. Prosecutors say Dr Murray acted with "gross negligence" and gave Jackson a lethal dose of propofol. The defence claim Jackson administered too much of the sleeping aid himself.
29 September 2011 Jackson's bodyguard, Alberto Alvarez, testifies that on the night Jackson died,  before phoning for an ambulance. "In my personal experience, I believed Dr Murray had the best intentions for Mr Jackson," Mr Alvarez said.
30 September 2011 Paramedics tell the court that, as they tried to revive Jackson, Dr Murray  that he had given the star propofol.
4 October 2011 Dr Thao Nguyen, an emergency room cardiologist says she and a colleague tried to resuscitate Jackson at Dr Murray's insistence but believed the efforts were futile.
6 October 2011 A recording of Jackson  is played to jurors. In the audio, recorded six weeks before the star's death, the star appears to slur his speech as he tells Dr Murray about his plans for the This Is It tour.
8 October 2011 Dr Murray reveals  that, on the night of 25 June, he injected Jackson with several sedatives but the pop star remained wide awake. He is heard telling detectives: "He's not able to sleep naturally".
12 October 2011 Dr Murray's defence backs out of claims Jackson swallowed a fatal dose of propofol when he was alone. Prosecution witness Dr Christopher Rogers, the medic who carried out the singer's post mortem, said it was more likely that Dr Murray 
13 October 2011 Jackson fans  against the courtroom wall from 7:30am in the hope of winning a draw for one of the few seats in the public gallery.
20 October 2011 The prosecution's final witness, propofol expert Dr Steven Shafer, tells the court that Dr Murray  when administering the drug to Jackson. Dr Shafer said the drug should never be used to treat insomnia.
24 October 2011 After a short break in the trial, Dr Murray's lawyers call their first witnesses. Dr Allan Metzger, a friend of Jackson's for over two decades,  had requested anaesthetics from him as a sleep aid.
26 October 2011 Nutritionist and holistic nurse Cherilyn Lee tells the court about using the sedative propofol to help him sleep. She told him: "No one who cared or had your best interest at heart would give you this". After refusing to supply Jackson with the drug in April, she never saw him again.
27 October 2011 Dr Murray weeps in court as former patients and describe him as kind and generous. "The reason I came here to help Dr Murray is I know his love, his compassion, his feeling for his patients, every one of them and I just don't think he did what he's accused of doing," Gerry Causey, from Utah, tells the court.
28 October 2011 It is likely Jackson was addicted to the painkiller Demerol, defence witness Dr Robert Waldman . Dr Waldman says records from Jackson's dermatologist show he had large doses of the drug in the months before his death and that insomnia is a symptom of Demerol withdrawal.

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Amy Winehouse death: Coroner records misadventure verdict

Amy Winehouse's death was the result of the singer drinking too much alcohol, a coroner has said.

A verdict of misadventure was recorded into the 27-year-old's death after an inquest heard she was more than five times the drink-drive limit.
Winehouse was found dead at her home in Camden, north London, on 23 July.
St Pancras coroner Suzanne Greenway said the "unintended consequence" of Winehouse drinking so much alcohol was her "sudden and unexpected death".
Three empty vodka bottles, two large and one small, were found at her flat, St Pancras Coroners Court heard.
'No pulse found'   The inquest heard the singer, who won five Grammy awards in 2008, had 416mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. The legal drink-drive limit is 80mg.
The pathologist who conducted her post-mortem examination said 350mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood was considered a fatal level.

Andrew Morris Winehouse's live-in guard

The examination found Winehouse's vital organs had been in good health but she had huge amounts of alcohol in her system which could have stopped her breathing and sent her into a coma.

Toxicology tests showed there were no illegal substances in her system when she died.
The inquest was told she was found in her bed by live-in guard Andrew Morris, who looked in on her at 10:00 BST, but thought she was asleep.
Five hours later she was "lying on the bed in the same position", he said.
"I was immediately concerned, went over and checked to see if she was OK," he added.
'Very strict views' "I checked on her and realised she wasn't breathing and had no pulse, so called the emergency services."
Winehouse had kicked her drug habit but fell back into a pattern of abstaining from drink for weeks then starting again for a few, the inquest heard.
The coroner was told Winehouse had not had a drink in the three weeks to 22 July.
Her GP, Dr Christina Romete, who had been treating the star for several years, said the night before her death, the singer told her she did not know if she was going to stop drinking but "she did not want to die".
"She was looking forward to the future," the doctor said.
Winehouse was taking medication to cope with alcohol withdrawal and anxiety and was reviewed last year by a psychologist and psychiatrist about her drinking.
"She had her own way and was very determined to do everything her own way," said Dr Romete.
'Battling problems' "Including any form of therapy. She had very strict views."
After the inquest, Winehouse's family issued a statement thanking people for their messages of support.
They said it was "some relief to finally find out what happened to Amy".
Their statement added: "We understand there was alcohol in her system when she passed away - it is likely a build-up of alcohol in her system over a number of days.
"The court heard that Amy was battling hard to conquer her problems with alcohol and it is a source of great pain to us that she could not win in time."
Since her death, Winehouse's 2006 album Back to Black has become the UK's bestselling album of the 21st Century.

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How the Joy of Sex was illustrated

                        Illustrator Chris Foss explains how he become involved in the book

Forty years ago, a London publisher was working on a groundbreaking sex manual - a "gourmet guide" to sexual pleasure, with copious and detailed illustrations. But how could this be done tastefully and legally?

Think of The Joy of Sex and chances are your mind will drift to an image of a man with a bushy beard and a woman with hairy armpits.
It's not a photograph, but the nearest thing to it in pen and ink.
In early 1970s Britain, photographs would have been too risque. But hand-drawn illustrations based on photographs? Maybe society was ready for that.
"We were a bit nervous when we took this on," remembers one of the book's illustrators, Chris Foss.
"The publisher had to write a contract which confirmed that they would pay our defence if some old fart decided to make an issue out of it."

In the summer of 1971, Britain had been gripped by the Oz trial, in which the editors of a satirical magazine were found guilty of obscenity for publishing a sexualised parody of the children's comic character Rupert Bear. (The judge was famously called a "boring old fart" in court by a defence witness, the comedian Marty Feldman.)

It was also only 11 years since Penguin Books had faced an obscenity charge for publishing DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover - the full text, complete with four-letter words and descriptions of sex between the lady and the gamekeeper.
But Penguin had been found not guilty thanks to the literary merit of the work, so Joy of Sex art director Peter Kindersley calculated that the quality of the art work would shield the publishers, Mitchell Beazley, from prosecution.
The images were graphic - they showed genitals and countless sex positions - but they were also artistic, and tasteful.
For good measure, he also added a number of historical images from India and Japan.
"There was concern about the explicitness of the pictures and therefore we thought as a foil we would put in some of these ancient pictures," says Mr Kindersley.
"In a way we were relating ourselves to the past… We wanted to make the book feel as though it was related to a great tradition of explicit pictures."
Positions But before the artists could start work the team had to find models to pose for them.

Plan A, explains Mr Kindersley, was to use models from London's Soho district - the hotbed of the capital's sex industry.

"We found all these people who started posing, but halfway through the pose they would ask for an extra £100 ($160) - it was just complete chaos," he says.
There was some difficulty finding a workable Plan B. As the project approached a dead-end, it was the book's other illustrator, Charles Raymond - responsible for the colour artwork - who came to the rescue. He volunteered to do the modelling himself, with his German wife, Edeltraud.
Chris Foss, who was responsible for the book's black-and-white illustrations, took the photos. The book's author, Dr Alex Comfort, had given them dozens of positions to get though, and all were done for real over two hectic days in early 1972.

The miners were on strike and they had only limited light to work with before the power cuts would plunge them into darkness.

"We'd say: 'Charlie, we've only got another 20 minutes,'" recalls Mr Foss. "And he'd say: 'Oh I'm terribly sorry' and he'd go off to prepare himself to perform again, and Edeltraud would go: 'Charles, Charles, please, please come on, we only have 10 minutes, please two more positions.'
"So it was all quite fraught shooting the positions - but it worked."
The same kind of matter-of-fact approach applied in the post-production.
"I remember Chris and Charles coming into the office with all these absolutely explicit photographs," says Mr Kindersley.
"And we all stood round saying: 'That's a good one, yeah that's very good.'
"Perhaps we were in a bubble, we were all completely bonkers!" he laughs.
"We just all took it literally. We said: 'Yes, that's a great picture of bondage' or whatever it was.
"There was never the conversation: 'Oh we couldn't put that in the book.'"
 
California
The pictures delighted author Alex Comfort, partly because Charles and Edeltraud looked so natural and unposed, absorbed in their private sexual relationship.
"The great thing about Charles and his wife was that they were completely authentic - you couldn't get more authentic," says Mr Kindersley.
"It was a real happening - it wasn't a cooked-up thing - and Alex really liked that."

Dr Comfort had been spending a considerable amount of time in California, whose permissive sexual mores, including "foursomes" and "moresomes", he believed would become the norm everywhere.

He was a frequent visitor to the Sandstone Ranch - a kind of retreat for sexual adventure, where clothes were more often off than on, and sex with multiple partners was the norm.
His message in the book - which marked a big departure from earlier writings on the subject - was that sex, and sexual experimentation, were fun. The different positions reproduced by Charles and Edeltraud were compared to the courses of a meal.
He too, however, was anxious about possible repercussions, such as being struck off the medical register. So he presented himself in the original edition as the editor, claiming that an anonymous couple had handed him the text, which he had merely tweaked and contextualised.
But there were no repercussions. The timing of the book was perfect and the marriage of a sexually liberal message and daring but inoffensive pictures was an instant hit.
As Mr Kindersley toured book fairs around the world, the response was "electric" and many big publishers took it on.
There were of course some rejections. The one he remembers best was the US men's magazine Playboy - the models were just a little too hairy for their liking.
The Joy of Sex ended up selling more than 10 million copies around the world - more than five million in the United States alone, where it stayed in the New York Times best-seller list for a decade.

''Photos take over''

 

James McConnachie Author of The Book of Love

There had been sex manuals before of course, but they had not been illustrated in anything like such a comprehensive way.

Contrary to popular belief, the Kama Sutra was not originally illustrated, according to James McConnachie, author of The Book of Love: In Search of the Kamasutra, and The Rough Guide to Sex.
The image we have of "a world of exotic, moustachioed aristocrats doing exaggerated acrobatic sex, with women on swings, or with their ankles round their ears" has nothing to do with the original Kama Sutra, says Mr McConnachie.
Miniatures from 16-18th Century India - well over a 1,000 years after the book was written in India - were only tagged on when the text was translated into French and English at the end of the 19th Century, he says.
The Joy of Sex was therefore jumping into untested water, but carried off the illustrations with such aplomb that few have dared even try to emulate it, according to Mr McConnachie.
"The illustrations are fantastic - they are legendary in the history of sex manuals," he says.

                Anne Hooper, a British sex therapist and author of numerous bestselling books, agrees.

Like many other sex books in the 1980s, the first ones she wrote were not illustrated at all.
In the years since then there has been "a general easing" in what can be published, she says.
From the 1990s onwards it became common practice - and remains so to this day - to use photography in sex manuals, and once photos were used illustrations suddenly looked dated, says Ms Hooper.
In order to mark a clear distinction with pornography though, genitals are never shown, nor do the models have real sex.
The Joy of Sex is still on sale, but is now a very different book from the original.
Its free-love message sat uneasily with the arrival of HIV/Aids, and Alex Comfort himself revised the text in light of this.
Then, in 2008, the book was significantly updated and re-worked by relationship psychologist Susan Quilliam, who added more of a female perspective on sexuality.
The illustrations were also changed in an attempt to bring it up to date.
"The bearded man was an icon - but he was a '70s icon," says Ms Quilliam.
Tenderness Chris Foss has not looked at the original black and white illustrations he did for the book for almost 30 years. Snapping open a sturdy little grey suitcase, he starts to root through.
He used to do up to three book covers a week, and so - back then - considered this just another job.
"With the benefit of hindsight, it was a seminal work, but of course at the time, you just didn't realise this."
What does he attribute the book's success to?
He stops and lingers on an image of Charles and Edeltraud, stretched out post-coitally on a rug.
"That's very tender isn't it? They are obviously having a relationship. You can just tell by the way her body lies."
He pauses for a moment. "I think the fact that they were in love had something to do with it."

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In a bedroom with Madonna

                          Madonna: "I don't know what I was thinking when I was writing the script"

The press junket interview is a strange affair. It's a cross between that moment in the Apprentice when the young hopefuls go to face the music with Lord Sugar and a visit to the doctor. It is not glamorous - even when Madonna is the interviewee.

     I am to go in fifth, after Norway, Portugal, Russia and Switzerland have each had their individual six minutes with the iconic pop star and rookie movie director. We have all converged in the corridor of a exclusive hotel in Venice where her film W.E premiered last night at the Film Festival.
The heat is stifling: there is no air conditioning. Still at least there will be once I get into the hotel suite with the diminutive director.
Wrong. Norway has just emerged to say the air conditioning is switched off in the room because it makes too much noise when the recording equipment is switched on.
Who cares, we shrug as one, tell us what was she like. "Nice", Norway responds. "Long or short answers," we ask? "Long," Norway sighs.
This is not good. In a non-negotiable six minutes, long answers equal dead time and a sharp reduction in the amount of questions you can ask.
And these are television interviews, and television doesn't really go for long answers. What's more half the questions means half the chance of getting a decent line from the interview. A tactical re-think is required.
Eighteen minutes later - with the precision of a military operation - Switzerland emerges from the hotel suite with a contented, if slightly flushed, demeanour.
It is my turn. Normally at this stage I would walk in with a BBC camera person and a producer. But today there is no BBC camera as Madonna's people insisted on recording this interview.
'All over the place'

I am ushered into a tiny bedroom. A row of six or so chairs lines the wall, upon which unidentified people sit. My name and organisation is read out from a list, at which point a blonde head peers around the corner. "This is Madonna," I am told.
And so it is. She is sitting cross-legged on a hotel bedroom chair, petit, pretty and poised. "Hi," she says and smiles warmly. "Hello," I reply, genuinely pleased to meet someone for whom I have a great deal of admiration.
She is wearing a black dress. Elegant and sober is the vibe: this is Madonna the movie director, not the rock chick version (although the after-party for her movie meant she has only had a few hours sleep).
I ask her how easy it was to make the movie. "Bloody nightmare" is the phrase she used that sticks in my mind. She's not kidding.
For a director learning her craft she has co-written a very complicated script.
The spine of the film is Wallis Simpson's affair with Edward VIII. But running parallel to their story is another about a modern Manhattanite who has a Wallis Simpson fixation (as did her mother hence calling her Wally).
And if dealing with two different stories and two different time frames wasn't hard enough, she threw in the complication of shooting in about 100 locations in three different countries.
The result, according to some critics, is a movie that is both literally and metaphorically all over the place. I asked Madonna if she had read any the reviews. "No," she said, "I daren't".
And I felt for her. Because she was being totally honest - she feels exposed. She has put herself out there to be judged in a genre where critics in the past have sometimes been less than effusive about her as an actress.
'Sweat and tears' I asked her why risk the flak. After all, her place as a pop - and cultural - icon is assured. She said that she had always liked art form and felt she could add something to it; at the very least another female voice in a male dominated world. And what, I asked, would she like people to take away from the movie?
A more positive opinion of Wallis Simpson was the general gist. "What," I said, "if they came away saying 'wow, that Madonna can make a movie?'"
She smiled shyly and said quietly with genuine humility: "that would be awesome".
When I walked out of the hotel bedroom, having sneaked a couple of extra minutes of interview time, I thought we had enough for a couple of good clips in a news package. I also thought that people can say what they like about Madonna, but she sure has a tilt at life. Some folk are radiators; others drains: Madonna is a red hot life force.
Unfortunately her camera people are not. At least that's what my producer and I thought when we watched the interview tape to chose clips for our news package.
We had been given the wrong interview: I had turned into a charming, heavily pregnant Norwegian. Disaster - we had one hour to cut the package and file it to London and no star interview. Yikes.
Back to the hotel and mayhem: everybody had been given the wrong tape. The pack of calm journalists who had stood outside in the hotel corridor an hour earlier, hot but happy, were now flaming fuming.
Sweat and tears all round, mostly from Columbia, who had flown half way round the world for her interview with Madonna only to find this technical difficulty meant that time had run out.
It is difficult to express how bad a situation that is. It's not just the expense; it's the expectation. All those colleagues back at her home broadcaster expecting their exclusive interview. Desperate.
Maybe that should be Madonna's next film, Press junkets: The Movie. The critics would probably like it.

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Cher berates 'bigots' attack on son's role in TV show

Cher has criticised the "stupid bigots" who have attacked the casting of her transgender son, Chaz Bono, on US show Dancing With The Stars.

   The singer defended Bono, who underwent a female-to-male sex change last year, saying "it took guts" to participate in the celebrity ballroom dancing show.
"Chaz is being viciously attacked on blogs and messageboards about being on DWTS!" she said via her Twitter page.
She urged fans to pledge their support for Bono on other social media sites.
Cher wrote: "I support him no matter what he chooses to do. It took courage to do DWTS!"
She added that "mothers don't stop getting angry with stupid bigots" who hurt their children, but said she was sure the "vast majority of people will love Chaz" on the show.
Bono replied to the comments on his Twitter page saying: "Thanks for all your support mom. The haters are just motivating me to work harder and stay on DWTS as long as I possibly can."
'Primetime first'
Bono, 42, has been the target of online jokes and hate messages since Monday's announcement that he would be taking part in the new series of Dancing with the Stars, which begins on 19 September.
Some fans have said they will no longer watch the show - which is one of the most popular programmes in the US - while he is a contestant, while some conservative groups have called for a boycott.
Dan Gainor, of the Culture and Media Institute, called Bono's casting "a ridiculous, agenda-driven move" by the show's producers.
"This is the latest example of the networks trying to push a sexual agenda on American families," he said.
However, Dancing With The Stars' executive producer Conrad Green said viewers should watch the new series before passing judgment.
He added the show had no agenda other than entertainment and was seeking to represent a range of people.
"I hope that a lot of the people who appear to be upset at the moment will give him a chance and maybe realise it's not quite as bad as they think," he said, in an interview with AP.
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation praised the casting of both Bono and gay TV stylist Carson Kressley on the show, calling it "a primetime first."
"Chaz Bono joining the cast of a series like Dancing with the Stars is a tremendous step forward for the public to recognise that transgender people are another wonderful part of the fabric of American culture," Herndon Graddick, senior director of programmes, said.

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Beyonce and Lady Gaga dominate MTV Video Music awards

Highlights from this year's MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles

Beyonce's pregnancy and Lady Gaga's drag act were the talk of this year's MTV Video Music awards, where tributes were paid to the late Amy Winehouse.

    Beyonce wordlessly confirmed she was expecting by rubbing her baby bump at the end of an on-stage performance.
The flamboyant Lady Gaga, meanwhile, appeared as her male alter-ego Jo Calderone at the Los Angeles event.
Tributes were paid to late singer Amy Winehouse, while Adele won three prizes for her Rolling in the Deep video.
Yet it was Katy Perry who took home the night's most-coveted trophy, picking up the video of the year award for Firework.
The promo also received a prize for its special effects, with Perry getting another "Moonman" statuette for her collaboration with rapper Kanye West on the video for her song ET (Extra-Terrestrial).
Pop star Britney Spears was honoured with MTV's Vanguard Award and won an additonal prize for her Till The World Ends video.
Elsewhere R&B star Chris Brown soared above the crowd during a gravity-defying rendition of his hit Yeah 3X.
As previously announced, veteran crooner Tony Bennett took to the stage to introduce footage of him recording jazz track Body and Soul with Winehouse in March.
"You just can't be a jazz singer - either you've got it or you haven't," said the 85-year-old. "Amy had the whole gift."
US singer-songwriter Bruno Mars also paid homage, ending a cover version of the Winehouse hit Valerie with the words: "Amy, we'll miss you baby."
Lady Gaga ended up with two awards on Sunday, receiving both the female video and "video with a message" prizes for her Born This Way promo.
Foo Fighters, Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber also collected trophies at the event, held at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.

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US drama The Help polishes off box office competition

The Help (L) made $3m more than nearest competitor Colombiana (R)

Domestic drama The Help has held off competition to retain the top spot at the US and Canada box office.

    The inspirational film about black housekeepers in 1960s Mississippi made $14.3m (£8.7m) in its second weekend, according to studio estimates.
That was enough to see off challenges from action movie Colombiana and horror movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.
They opened in second and third place respectively on a weekend that saw ticket sales hit by Hurricane Irene.
The storm forced the closure of cinemas in big markets such as New York and kept moviegoers home along much of the East Coast.

Even without the bad weather, however, pundits had expected business to be slow at the traditionally quiet end of the summer movie season.

Columbia Pictures expressed satisfaction with the $10.3m (£6.3m) Colombiana made between Friday and Sunday.
"The picture is off to a good start, storm or no storm," said Rory Bruer, the company's president of worldwide distribution.
Avatar's Zoe Saldana plays the title role in this story of a child who witnesses her parents' murder in Bogota and grows up to be an assassin seeking revenge.
The Luc Besson production - attacked in some quarters for its depiction of Colombian culture - opens on 9 September in the UK.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, starring Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce as the new owners of a haunted house, took $8.7m (£5.3m) in its opening weekend.
That put it two places above another new entry, raucous comedy Our Idiot Brother, which opened at five with estimated takings of $6.6m (£4m).

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Beyonce reveals pregnancy at MTV Music Video Awards

Beyonce revealed her baby bump after performing - courtesy MTV Video Music Awards

Singer Beyonce Knowles has outlined a baby bump to photographers after months of speculation she might be pregnant.

    The R&B star, 29, used her hands to frame her baby bump under a loose-fitting dress as she arrived at the MTV Music Video Awards in Los Angeles.
Beyonce did not talk to media but her publicist later confirmed the pregnancy, Associated Press reported.
It will be the first child for Beyonce and her husband rapper Jay-Z, who married in 2008.
Beyonce was competing for the MTV Best Female Video Award for Run the World (Girls). She also performed at the awards.
Her other hits include Beautiful Liar and Single Ladies. She has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide.
Jay-Z performed Otis with Kanye West at the awards. Other performers included Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne, Pitbull and Chris Brown.

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Is there a novel that defines the 9/11 decade?

Many books have been written about 9/11 but is there one that embodies the era that the attacks inaugurated?

    When Changez, the Pakistani hero of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, watches the Twin Towers come crumbling down, he smiles.
Little Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old at the centre of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, grapples with his father's death by creating a flip-book - 15 blurry stills, arranged in reverse order, of a man falling to his death from the World Trade Center. When he flicks through the pages, the flailing figure is restored to the top of the building - safe.

In Open City, writer Teju Cole describes Colonel Tassin - a (real) 19th Century figure - who kept count of the number of birds killed by flying into the Statue of Liberty, as many as 1,400 a night. The image is a reminder of another killing by collision, also in New York, two centuries later.

These are three books that have attempted to hew fiction from the fact of 9/11. According to Bowker's Books in Print database, which tracks print and e-books published and distributed in the United States, 164 such works have been written so far - they either directly address the event or use it as a peg to hang greater literary concerns about love, life and loss.
According to Erica Wagner, Literary Editor of The Times, such epoch-making events have traditionally proven to be great canvasses for the imagination.
"Everyone wonders: what if it had been me? What would I have done? It is the job of the novelist to think that through," she says.
Tragedy has often led to an outpouring of art. The Spanish Civil War spawned Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls; the bombing of Dresden, gave rise to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter-House Five. The single bloodiest day in the history of human warfare, the Battle of Borodino in 1812, features in Tolstoy's magnum opus War and Peace.
The 9/11 attacks shook the world and the way we think about it. It makes sense for novelists to feature it in their works. But in the 10 years since, has there been one novel that has seized the imagination more than any other - and that stands out as the story of our times?
Ping-pong The search, it seems, is still on. It is tempting, at the turn of the decade, to hand out such accolades - but as an impetus for the imagination, says Wagner, such events don't come with a sell-by date.

"Ten years is not a long time from the standpoint of fiction," she says.


"If you look at Dickens's novels, for instance, they appear to be contemporary to his times. But often he was writing about his childhood - that in itself is a distance of about 40 or so years."
War and Peace appeared more than 50 years after Napoleon invaded Russia. Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, a fictional representation of the Battle of Gettysburg, took 120 years to arrive. By contrast, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 was written in 1961 - just 15 years after the end of World War II.
According to John Sutherland, Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, there is a "hand-in-glove" relationship between fiction and current events but "it is not like ping-pong - fiction doesn't necessarily provide a direct response".
Nostradamus It is possible, he says, that the novel which comes to define the 9/11 era may have nothing to do with the event itself - at least in terms of plot.

"When the towers first collapsed, a book that shot to the top of the bestseller list was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold [narrated from heaven by a murdered child] - signifying, perhaps, a general fascination with trauma."

Nostradamus, he says, regained popularity for similar reasons - as people began thinking about the end of the world.
Teju Cole, author of Open City, says his 9/11 novel is Elizabeth Costello by J M Coetzee - although it has nothing to do with 9/11 at all.
"It takes up the question of whether there are limits to what can be depicted of human suffering. In the US, we heard a lot about 9/11 but saw very little of it - little of the actual human damage of that day and little of the human damage that came out of the 9/11 wars," he says.
"Who decides what others may see? Even photographs of soldiers' flag-draped caskets were banned."
According to Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the very attempt to find definitive novels - works that define or specify precisely - is misguided.
"Events should have as many definitions as the number of people who experience them," he says.
When Japanese forces blitzed Pearl Harbour on the morning of 7 December 1941, this was not merely an event that forced the United States to officially enter World War II, he argues.
"Pearl Harbour was many other things also: it was a kiss, it was a swim in a lake, it was a fisherman wondering what the commotion was, it was a flock of birds taking flight."
It is natural for 9/11 to reverberate in fiction, he says.
But if what we want are answers and straitjacket definitions - "history in a hurry" - then are we looking in the right place?
"Fiction is a long, rambling encounter with many things," he says. "Fiction re-complicates what politicians wish to oversimplify."

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'Ninja' patrols streets of Yeovil

A self-styled "ninja" is patrolling the streets of Yeovil in a bid to make the town a safer place.
Martial arts expert and father-of-two Ken Andre, 33, also known as Shadow, has been monitoring the streets of the Somerset town for the past six years.

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Broadway shows shut down as Hurricane Irene strikes

Broadway shows have all been cancelled as New York braces itself for the full force of Hurricane Irene to strike.

    All musicals and plays on and off Broadway shut on Saturday.
They included Cirque du Soleil's Zarkana at Radio City Music Hall and War Horse at Lincoln Center Theater.
"The safety and security of theatregoers and employees is everyone's primary concern," said Paul Libin, chairman of the national trade association the Broadway League.
The theatre closures became inevitable after New York officials ordered the city's transit system to shut down.
Refunds or exchanges were being made to disappointed would-be audience members.
The shutdown in the event of an emergency is the first since the blackout of 2003, which affected 50 million people in North America and Canada, caused by the sudden failure of FirstEnergy's Eastlake plant.
This time, the lights going out in theatreland has led to the musical Chicago having to delay becoming Broadway's longest-running American musical.
That milestone was due to be reached on Saturday with the staging of its 6,138th show. It has now to wait until Monday night, at the earliest.
Other venues to close include the off-Broadway complexes 59E59 Theaters and New World Stages, the latter of which is home to Rent, Avenue Q and Million Dollar Quartet.
Organisers of the New York International Fringe Festival, which has been offering almost 200 small shows over the past few weeks, also cancelled all its Saturday and Sunday events.
Ferocious winds from Hurricane Irene have begun to hammer New York, bringing torrential rain and the threat of flooding in the financial district.
The worst of the storm, packing winds up to 75mph (120km/h), is due to hit New York in the next few hours.

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Dame Eileen Atkins leaves Upstairs Downstairs

Actress Dame Eileen Atkins has decided not to appear in the next series of Upstairs Downstairs, the TV period drama she helped to create.

             Dame Eileen conceived the idea for the original series, which ran from 1971-75, with fellow actress Jean Marsh.
She did not appear in the original, but was in the cast when the BBC revived the show for a new version last year.
However Dame Eileen, who played Lady Holland, is reportedly unhappy with the direction the new scripts are taking.
A BBC statement said: "It's with much sadness that we say goodbye to her wonderful character, the straight speaking mother-in-law Lady Holland.
"However, we respect her decision and we will be announcing new star casting soon."
The show follows the intertwined fortunes of a diplomat's family and their servants in a grand London townhouse.
The next six episodes will start filming in October and are due to be broadcast next year.
Marsh is the only person who appeared in both the original and the revived versions. She was joined in last year's series by Keeley Hawes, Ed Stoppard and Claire Foy.
When the new series was announced, writer Heidi Thomas said: "The Holland family and their servants are set for an extraordinary year and I am thrilled to be their guardian."

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The Hour writer admits 'anachronisms'

The writer of The Hour has admitted some of the words and phrases used in the BBC drama would not have been said in the period in which it is set.

        In an email to The Independent, Abi Morgan said she "holds [her] hands up" to any historical errors in the script.
"But I am a dramatist," she continued. "I elaborate. I imagine."
The writer was responding to criticism from the newspaper that phrases like "bottled out" and "note to self" would not have been said in 1956.
"When a line of dialogue jars and is seen as an anachronism, one holds one's hands up," Morgan wrote.
"But more because it has taken the audience out of the drama," she went on. "The Hour is escapism and for that moment the escapism hasn't worked."
Writing in the newspaper, columnist David Lister said "anachronisms in speech, dress and social manners" in the show had been "distracting and surprising".
                                      Despite these, however, Lister said the drama - which comes to end this                         Tuesday on BBC Two - was still "the best thing currently on TV".

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Lady Gaga set to make guest appearance in The Simpsons

The singer says recording her voice-over was "one of the coolest things ever"

Lady Gaga is set to appear in The Simpsons, producers of the long-running cartoon US show have confirmed.

     The singer, whose real name is Stafani Germanotta, recorded her voice-over earlier this month.
She's described the experience as "one of the coolest things I've ever done".
The episode, titled Lady Goes Gaga, will air in America in spring 2012 and is likely be shown in the UK later in the year.
'Iconic personalities' The 25-year-old told Entertainment Weekly: "I make music, but I don't do voice-overs every day of the week and their characters are so awesomely convincing and sincere and wild and funny, I had to remind myself constantly of the sincerity of the humour.
"That's what I was trying to focus on, not putting on a character too much and really being as sincere as I could with the lines."
In the episode, the singer comes to Springfield to cheer up Lisa, who's been suffering from low self-esteem.
Lady Gaga revealed that her character ends up kissing Marge, saying, "the apple doesn't fall far from my artistic tree".
Producers of The Simpsons said they were impressed by her voice acting and ad-libbing skills.
Matt Groening, who created the show, said: "Since the very beginning, I've always wanted to have on the most iconic personalities of our time, and she's it."
Yeardley Smith, who voices Lisa Simpson, told American website Broadway: "This is extraordinary! I'm stunned that she has time in her schedule that she's coming to our studio to record."
Gaga briefly appeared in the Simpsons once before as Elton John's Golden Globes date, but she did not voice the character that time.

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Lady Gaga and Beyonce on China song blacklist

Hits by Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Take That are among 100 songs that have been placed on an internet blacklist by China's culture ministry.

      
            Music websites have been given until 15 September to remove the offending tracks, which officials say harm "national cultural security".
Those that fail to do so risk being prosecuted by the Chinese authorities.
The internet in China is tightly controlled, with content deemed inappropriate often blocked or removed.
A notice posted on the culture ministry's website said the 100 songs had not been submitted for official approval.
It is not clear whether the directive is aimed solely at illicit music download sites or those operating legally.
But a 2009 directive, which aimed to tackle "poor taste and vulgar content" as well as copyright violations, said all hosted tracks should have official sanction.
Most of the banned songs are from Taiwan or Hong Kong, with several from Japan.
Among the Western acts, Lady Gaga has six banned tracks: The Edge of Glory, Hair, Marry the Night, Americano, Judas and Bloody Mary. Beyonce's Run the World (Girls) has also been outlawed as well as Katy Perry's Last Friday Night, which has lyrics about a menage a trois.
The list also includes the Backstreet Boys track I Want It That Way, which was released more than a decade ago.

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Fawlty Towers producer John Howard Davies dies at 72

John Howard Davies, who produced a string of comedy classics including Fawlty Towers and The Good Life, has died aged 72, his agent has confirmed.

           Davies was head of comedy at the BBC from 1977 to 1982, launching classic shows such as Only Fools and Horses, Yes Minister and Allo, Allo!
The son of a comedy writer, he found fame as a child actor, making his debut as David Lean's Oliver Twist in 1948.
Davies died yesterday morning at his home in Blewbury, Oxfordshire.
His son William Davies said: "My father had an absolutely extraordinary career, was unfailingly supportive as a parent and will be greatly missed. He died surrounded by his family."
After various non-TV jobs, Davies joined the BBC as a production assistant in 1968.
His most notable contribution in the early days was producing the first four episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74) with Ian McNaughton.
He went on to produce The Goodies and Steptoe and Son before briefly leaving the BBC in the early 1970s, returning a year later.
Davies went on to produce the now classic Fawlty Towers and the entire run of The Good Life, which ran from 1975 to 1978.
He became head of comedy at the BBC in 1977, where he launched many hit shows before being promoted again in 1982, to become head of light entertainment.
Davies then moved to Thames, where he was not so prolific, although he did produce the successful Mr Bean, starring Rowan Atkinson.
By the mid-1990s, Davies had returned to the BBC, where his credits include directing a special Easter 1996 episode of The Vicar of Dibley.

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Sir David Attenborough to receive lifetime award

Sir David Attenborough is to receive a special award from the International Broadcasting Convention, a global tradeshow for media professionals.

      The 85-year-old is being awarded the International Honour for Excellence in recognition of his 60-year career in television and natural history.
It is presented to those who have "taken the best technology available and driven technology forward".
Sir David said he was "greatly honoured" to be given the award.
"When I started this was 16mm film, which gave us lightweight cameras to take into the wild," the veteran broadcaster said.
"Since then my journey has taken me from black and white to colour and from film to digital high definition, and today I am excited to be involved in 3D production."
Peter Owen, chairman of the IBC Council, said of the film-maker: "Throughout his career he has seized upon the latest developments in technology to illuminate natural history.
"Working with the BBC Natural History Unit he pioneered time-lapse sequences in The Private Life of Plants and low-light and infrared cameras to capture the behaviour of nocturnal mammals."
Sir David will be presented with his prize ahead of the IBC awards ceremony on 11 September, where footage of his acceptance will be screened.
The 2011 International Broadcasting Convention will be held in Amsterdam from 8 to 13 September.

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Girls Aloud star Kimberley Walsh lands Shrek role

Girls Aloud singer Kimberley Walsh is to take over Amanda Holden's role in West End show Shrek the Musical.

     Walsh, 29, had been scheduled to play Princess Fiona from December but is taking over two months earlier than planned because Holden is pregnant.
Holden, who lost a baby in February seven months into her pregnancy, will leave the show on 3 October with Walsh starting two days later.
The musical, based on the 2001 film, opened in London's West End in June.
Holden, 40, and her husband Chris Hughes announced on Wednesday they were expecting a girl.
The Cutting It actress went to hospital in February after her baby son stopped moving. He was later stillborn.
"The first half of this year has been unbelievably difficult for us," said Holden, adding that she and her husband were "beyond thrilled" to share the news.
The role in Shrek marks a West End return for Walsh, who made a cameo in Les Miserables as part of 2008 TV series The Passions of Girls Aloud.
Nigel Lindsay and Richard Blackwood will remain in their roles in the show at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, currently booking until October 2012.

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Michael Jackson gig organiser defends Cardiff tribute

The organiser of the Michael Jackson tribute concert is defending the event saying that they have the "overwhelming majority" of his family behind them.

      It's after opposition from Jermaine and Randy Jackson, who say the concert shouldn't go ahead because it will clash with Conrad Murray's trial.
Michael Jackson's former doctor is accused of involuntary manslaughter.
"There's nothing in this. It's not something to get excited about," said Chris Hunt from Global Live Events.
"The notion that an event which reminds people just how fantastic Michael Jackson was, what a loss he was to the world he is, what a great singer, a great performer he was, should be inappropriate - it doesn't compute, it doesn't make sense."
'Proper tribute' Jermaine and Randy Jackson also say Global Live has "mishandled" the booking as well as "misjudging" the event's timing.
Rock band Kiss were dropped from the bill after over comments made by Gene Simmons. During a magazine interview last year the bassist said Michael Jackson was a child abuser.
he singer was cleared of child molestation in 2005.
Chris Hunt says all the criticism about the concert is understandable but wrong.
"They were saying that it was a pity that there had not been a big scale, proper tribute to Michael.
"We began to think, 'Why don't we try and do one.' LaToya was the lead one but there were other family members around as well.
"There are two that aren't so happy. I don't wish to be ungenerous to anyone. I have the greatest respect for Jermaine, who I've met a number of times.
"He did a couple of times announce that he was going to organise a concert like this and then wasn't unable to do so. So I suppose it's a little understandable."
'No worries' A coalition of 35 fan communities has since written an open letter to the concert organisers asking for the event to be cancelled.
But Chris Hunt says they haven't heard all the facts.
 
Michael Jackson was preparing for a series of UK gigs when he died in 2009
"We have the greatest respect for the fans," he said. "We've been listening to the fans.
"I think what's happened is that there's been a campaign, which some of them have listened to and haven't heard our responses to it yet.
"This concert will sell out either very quickly or quickly. We have no worries about it at all."
The Michael Forever concert takes place at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on 8 October.
Artists confirmed to be taking part include Christina Aguilera, Leona Lewis, Cee Lo Green, JLS, Alexandra Burke and Beyonce, who will perform via satellite.
Speaking to Newsbeat about the controversy surrounding the concert, Alexandra Burke said: "I definitely think it should go ahead, but it's not up to me. I think the family should decide amongst themselves."
She added: "I've got three weeks of rehearsals booked in [for the concert] because I'm trying to make sure I do these songs justice."
Michael Jackson died in June 2009 aged 50 while rehearsing for his This Is It UK tour. Conrad Murray has pleaded not guilty to the involuntary manslaughter charge, arguing he did not cause the singer's death.

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Hammer Horror screenwriter Jimmy Sangster dies

Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, who wrote such Hammer Horror films as Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein, has died at the age of 83.

     Sangster began his film career at the age of 16 as a gopher and clapper boy, before moving up the ranks to become an assistant director.
He moved into screenwriting with his 1955 short film, A Man on the Beach.
But it was his 1957 reworking of Frankenstein that made his name. He also wrote The Mummy, released in 1959.
His other credits include Paranoiac starring Oliver Reed, Bette Davis film The Nanny, and The Fear In the Night - his last screenplay for Hammer.
He is survived by his second wife, actress Mary Peach, and a son, Mark.
Hammer Films historian Marcus Hearn described Sangster as "one of the most self-effacing men I have ever met".
Sangster told one interviewer in the 1990s: "All of a sudden I'm a cult figure. But it's all due to about five movies: a couple of Frankensteins, a couple of Draculas and a Mummy." 

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