They are as much a part of the American television experience as daytime soaps, canned laughter and cheaply produced infomercials. But if one angry meteorologist gets his way, "auto-cutie" weathergirls may become a thing of the past.

Newt Gingrich said yesterday that there was probably no circumstance that would lead him to pull out of the Republicans' race to challenge President Barack Obama in November.

The two British stars won a joint Best Actor prize after sharing the lead in the National Theatre’s Frankenstein.

It's a fresh take on Sherlock Holmes which will transplant the sleuth to a modern-day setting. But it doesn't take Baker Street's finest to deduce the source material for a major new drama announced by American network CBS.

US Outlook: The "data-driven evaluation" to which Hewlett-Packard has belatedly subjected the proposed spin-off of its personal computer business, probably did not need to go further than measuring the share-price decline on the day it was announced. It was 20 per cent.

Ronnie O'Sullivan has apologised for claiming he felt "raped" playing in the lower-profile Players Tour Championship (PTC) series.

The wife of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff says the couple tried to kill themselves after he admitted stealing billions of dollars in the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Trade

Bad news for fanboys. Zack Snyder's take on the Superman legend, Man of Steel, has been temporarily grounded by Warner Bros.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Somebody accuses Lance Armstrong of doping. He trots out the "most-tested athlete in history" response. Armstrong's detractors accuse him of being the cancer that afflicts cycling. His defenders say he has inspired the real cancer community everywhere. The rest of us yawn slightly, write up the umpteenth piece about cycling's and Armstrong's battered credibility and then get on with the rest of life again.

One of the most lucrative franchises in American television once more revolves around Two and a Half Men, after Ashton Kutcher was hired to replace Charlie Sheen in the sitcom he was fired from in spectacular fashion almost three months ago.

It is a poignant film about a man with depression who finds salvation through a beaver glove puppet he takes everywhere and speaks through. More poignant still may be this: its star needs a little salvation himself and, according to the first weekend box office, this isn't the performance that will provide it.

The war correspondent Lara Logan said she felt certain she would die during a sexual assault by a mob during celebrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square to mark the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.