Fonda scraps festival appearance

Veteran actor Peter Fonda has been forced to pull out of the Regus London Film Festival after falling ill.

The Easy Rider star was due to appear at the festival to give a speech at the screening of his 1971 western The Hired Hand on Thursday.

But after being struck down with flu doctors advised him not to travel.

His talk at the National Film Theatre will be replaced by an additional screening of Monsoon Wedding, one of the hits of the festival.

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Multi-faith concert of Afghan crisis

A multi-faith concert to raise funds to aid the refugee crisis in Afghanistan is to be held at London's Royal Albert Hall.

Organised by composer Karl Jenkins, the concert on 28 November will feature groups such as the Royal Armouries, The National Choir of Great Britain and The Royal Academy of Music.

The concert will also see musicians from a variety of faiths and nationalities, including traditional Afghan band Kabul Music and the internationally acclaimed gospel singers The Visual Ministry Choir.

All proceeds will be donated to RefAid, the UK affiliate charity to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

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Whoopi Goldberg treads Walk of Fame

Oscar-winning actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg joined a permanent constellation of movie stars on Tuesday.

On her 46th birthday, she joined the Hollywood Walk of Fame and her commemorative star, the 2,186th on the famous Hollywood Boulevard, can be found in front of the Kodak Theatre.

She dedicated the honour to her fans and said: "I want to thank you guys because really, you guys come see my movies or you watch them on TV, and you don't care if I get fat and old."

Her movie credits include The Color Purple, Sister Act and Ghost, for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

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J-Lo hopes to conquer Europe

Jennifer Lopez plans to boost her popularity in Europe with a tour of the continent and a party in Sweden.

The American singer and actress, nicknamed J-Lo, will be joined by Swedish rock band Roxette and royal dignitaries at the party on 20 November.

Guests will watch her new video and the premiere of a television film featuring Lopez in her native Puerto Rica.

"J-Lo is huge in the United States but not as big in Europe and that's why she's embarking upon this promotion tour," said Katrin Persson, spokeswoman at Sony Music Sweden.

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IPC to axe six magazines

Britain's biggest magazine publishers IPC is set to axe six titles and close its exhibitions business.

The magazines it said it will close include Woman's Journal, Marie Claire Health & Beauty, Your Garden, Homes & Ideas, Your Life and The Complete Guide to Pregnancy.

IPC, bought by American media giant AOL Time Warner earlier this year for £1.15bn, said the closures were part of a wide-ranging strategic review and would involve 115 redundancies from its staff of nearly 2,000.

Magazines have been hit hard in this year's advertising downturn and the greater reluctance to travel by air has affected IPC's exhibition business, which it launched in February.

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Cruise for Civil War movie

Director Sydney Pollack says that Tom Cruise has signed up for the lead role in Cold Mountain, a film about the American Civil War.

Mr Pollack said that he and director Anthony Minghella were "in deep preparation" for the film, set to start filming in June 2002.

Cold Mountain will be an adaptation of the bestselling American Civil War novel by Charles Frazier, and a crew is currently scouting for locations in North Carolina and Canada.

Mr Pollack, won the best director Oscar in 1985 for Out Of Africa and starred with Cruise in Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film, Eyes Wide Shut.