Fancy dress parties are becoming more and more popular, and the demand for eye-catching and original outfits is at an all-time high.

Oprah Winfrey is set to receive an honorary Oscar.

A Greenpeace video attacking the environmental record of Volkswagen has been dropped from the internet after a complaint from the creator of Star Wars.

Moves to give the public a say on what new laws are debated in Parliament would put power in the hands of "the obsessed and the fanatical", a Labour MP said today.

Irvin Kershner – who directed the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back, the James Bond film Never Say Never Again and Robocop 2 – has died at the age of 87.

President George W Bush considered dropping Vice President Dick Cheney from his 2004 presidential campaign to "demonstrate I was in charge," the former president says in a new memoir.

To be frank, radio is not the obvious medium for wildlife study. It's one thing being lulled into a trance watching insects eat each other on Springwatch, but on radio you're much more reliant on the presenter to convey the creature's peculiar charm. Nature study warrants pictures first and foremost and I can't be the only person whose heart sinks slightly when the blowy soundtrack of Open Country heralds some shouty exchange on a windswept moor or an intense debate of badger hunting. So a series on bird-watching, timed for staycation season, did not bode well. But how wrong can you be? Admittedly, the fact that my staycation was in Fowey, home of Daphne du Maurier of The Birds fame, where gulls the size of Jack Russells dogfight over the harbour, meant I was in the most appropriate place in England to hear A Guide to Coastal Birds. But this delightful series would have worked anywhere.

Times must be tough back at the Empire. A bank robber dressed as "Star Wars" villain Darth Vader made off with an undetermined amount of cash after pointing a handgun at startled tellers inside a Chase bank branch on Long Island.

The force was with a man when he robbed a bank wearing a Darth Vader mask and cape.

The coming war between Amazon and Britain's superstores to seize a chunk of the UK's online groceries-delivery market promises to be titanic. The chore of buying the same old fruit-'n'-veg-'n'-chicken-thighs-'n'-bread-'n'-wine every week has become so boring that lots of us have turned to using Tesco's or Sainsbury's', or in my case Waitrose/Ocado's, computerised shopping services. Not all of us, of course – just 13 per cent of food shoppers, apparently – but it's a figure set to rise. To be able to call up your weekly to-get list on screen, make minor adjustments (it's July – more sunscreen, strawberries and wet wipes!) then press a button to have it delivered to your front door – well, it's the answer to a maiden's prayer.

The Empire Strikes Back was today named the greatest movie sequel of all time.

From middle earth to a galaxy far far away, there exists a truth universal since the dawn of Hollywood time: bad guys speak with British accents. But it is a truth that British actress Dame Helen Mirren has become fed up with.