Green Day singer arrested

Rock group Green Day's lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong has been arrested on suspicion of drink driving.

The star was stopped in California early on Sunday morning after speeding in a black BMW convertible, police said.

He failed a breath test and was taken to Berkeley county jail, but was released on $1,053 bail.

Armstrong, 30, led Green Day to become one of the most popular of a new generation of punk bands, with hits like Basket Case and Time Of Your Life.

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Writer Jean Kerr dies

Author and dramatist Jean Kerr, best-known for her plays and bittersweet quips about life, has died aged 80.

She wrote a number of acclaimed plays including Song of Bernadette, Jenny Kissed Me and Mary, Mary, which was one of the longest-running Broadway shows of the 1960s.

She is best-known for her 1957 book Please Don't Eat the Daisies, which was turned into a film starring Doris Day and a TV series.

Her best-known quotes include: "I feel about airplaines the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on."

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Hollywood documentary 'opens festival'

The independent Slamdance Film Festival will open with a documentary about the behind-the-scenes stories of film-making in the 1970s, according to Variety magazine.

The documentary, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, is based on Peter Biskind's best-selling book, one of the most candid accounts of what went on in the film industry at that time, and will be shown on 18 January.

The festival, in Park City, Utah, will close six nights later with the world première of Allan Mindel's debut feature Milwaukee, Minnesota.

Slamdance prides itself on featuring truly independent film as an alternative to Sundance, and says it has remained true to its motto of supporting first-time film-makers.

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Elvis hits take sales record

Elvis Presley's greatest hits collection has become his biggest selling album, his record label BMG has said.

On the eve of what would have been Elvis's 68th birthday, BMG said Elv1s: 30 #1 hits had beaten his previous best for the Elvis Christmas Album, selling more than nine million copies worldwide.

The Christmas release - first issued in 1957 and re-released in 1973 - has still not topped the eight million level.

Last year marked the 25th anniversary of Presley's death and saw him notch up a posthumous number one with A Little Less Conversation. It was his 18th number one, edging him ahead of The Beatles who scored 17.