Aishwarya Rai

The italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti has given up the job of artistic director at the Turin Film Festival, just two days after he was called to lead the event, news reports said. in a statement carried by the italian news agency ANSA, the actor and director noted that “an atmosphere of tension” had arisen after he was named director, as some of the festival’s organizers strongly objected to the choice. Moretti won top honors at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001 with his film “The Son’s Room,” and “il Caimano” - released less than a month before the April 2006 elections - served up a fierce critique of the former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and modern- day italy.

Katie Rees, Miss Nevada USA, is not getting her tiara back after losing it because she appeared in prurient pictures - and that’s final, pageant officials said in response to speculation stirred up by the pageant’s co-owner, Donald Trump. Trump, who owns the Miss Universe Organization and Miss USA with NBC, told the television show “Extra” that he was looking at the Dec. 21 decision to fire Rees, fueling buzz that she might be reinstated. Rees’s lawyer had asked that his client be given a second chance similar to that given to Tara Conner, who was allowed to keep her tiara after she admitted drinking as a minor at New York nightclubs.

A bodyguard for the Bollywood beauty Aishwarya Rai is accused of desecrating a temple in the Hindu holy town of Pushkar by entering drunk and roughing up worshippers who tried to approach the actress. Rai denied that her guard was drunk, The Hindustan Times newspaper reported. The Times of india quoted the police as saying that Rai’s guards were trying to keep fans and reporters away from her.

The pianist George Shearing, who composed the iconic jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland,” and the writer Michael Holroyd are among those on Britain’s New Year’s honors list. Shearing, 87, a London native who was born blind, led the George Shearing Quintet and other notable combos in the 1950s and 1960s. Holroyd, 71, has established a stellar literary reputation with a five-volume biography of George Bernard Shaw, two volumes on the writer Lytton Strachey and a two- volume set on the painter Augustus John. George Bell, 60, a milkman, was one of hundreds of other names on the Honors List published by the British government on behalf of Queen Elizabeth ii. Bell retired in August after delivering milk for 34 years in the Scottish village of Gullane. (AP)

The golf champion Tiger Woods celebrated his 31st birthday by sharing some of his biggest news of the year: His wife is expecting their first child this summer. Woods and Elin Nordegren of Sweden were married in October 2004. Woods did not say when in the summer the baby is due although it probably would be between the U.S. Open and British Open. Woods is skipping the season-opening Mercedes- Benz Championship this week on Maui. “i’m going to stick close to home for the next few weeks,” he said.

The veteran rocker Tom Petty not only won’t back down but he says he’s not retiring, despite a Rolling Stone article in July that suggested otherwise. Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers, recently earned two Grammy nominations for their album “Highway Companion.” The Heartbreakers also are the subject of a documentary due out this year from the director Peter Bogdanovich, who calls Petty “an American troubadour in the truest sense of the word.”

in movie theaters across the United States over the weekend, people in the audience did an odd thing during the main attraction: They clapped - between scenes and when certain characters left the screen. That’s because the show was a live broadcast, in high definition, of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera, the first of six productions to be broadcast live from the Met through April. “The Magic Flute” played at 100 theaters, mostly in the United States and Canada, with seven in Britain, two in Japan and one in Norway. The Met said the broadcasts, which are intended to attract people new to opera, seemed to be a success, with an average audience capacity of 90 percent.