Archive - Sep 2, 2008

    Chart-topping hip-hop star Estelle has suffered a massive blow to American sales of her hit single American Boy after record bosses removed her album, Shine, from a download service.
    Warner Music Group pulled the album from iTunes in a bid to get fans to buy actual CDs of the album rather than downloading individual songs.
    Now American Boy, which was number one on both sides of the Atlantic when it was released in March, has slumped on the US Billboard charts, falling from 11 to 37.
    The track, which features rap superstar Kanye West, has also fallen on the Billboard download chart, from six to 59 in a few days.

     A man who tried to amputate his arm in a busy restaurant is recovering.
     Police said 33-year-old Michael Lasiter told them he tried to cut off his own arm to save his life.
     He thought he had injected air into one of his veins while shooting cocaine and would die unless he took drastic action, police said.
     Lasiter was staying in a motel next to the restaurant in Modesto, California, when the drama unfolded.
     He rushed into the Denny's diner chain restaurant at around 10.15 pm last Friday and started stabbing himself in the right arm with a butter knife he grabbed from a customer's table.

     Waitress Michelle Secreto's menu recommendation to a couple really proved to be a good tip - because they left her a whopping US$1,000  thank-you.
     Secreto received the biggest gratuity of her life when the pair of diners asked her to recommend a gluten-free meal.
     The 42-year-old single mum told them to order two seafood specials on the menu of the Montarra Grill in tiny Algonquin, a community 47 miles north of Chicago, Illinois.
     Secreto, who has worked at the restaurant for three years, was staggered when the unknown couple paid their bill and left her the amazingly generous tip.

     Hollywood studio bosses are hoping to miraculously boost their profits by raising the dead.
     The movie moguls believe that in these uncertain economic times their best bet at having continued box office success is to give film fans more of what they have already enjoyed.
     As a result they are looking at making a series of sequels of some of cinema's biggest hits.
      The only problem is many of the characters they want to return to the big screen died at the end of their blockbusters.

    The husband of singer and actress Jennifer Lopez is being dragged into a lawsuit claiming their guard dog attacked a flight attendant.
    Lopez, 39, was sued in June by stewardess Lisa Wilson, who claimed German shepherd Floyd lunged at her, biting her trouser leg and causing her to fall, injuring her back.
    Now her crooner husband, Marc Anthony, also 39, will be added to the $5 million suit, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, because he actually owns Floyd.
    Wilson’s lawyer, William Cafaro, said: “I was told by her counsel that Marc Anthony was the registered owner of the dog.

    A 76-year-old woman has been questioned over the shooting death of her 100-year-old mother and is regarded as a “person of interest” by police.
    The body of Jessie Burke, who reached her century on August 7, was found in the million-dollar home on New York’s Long Island she shared with her daughter on Saturday.
    She had been shot once in the head and is believed to be the oldest murder victim in New York history.
    Her daughter, Jean Burke, told police she last saw her mother alive about noon, when she left to go shopping, and when she returned home about an hour later she found her dead in her reclining chair.