A nine-year-old girl has been shot in the shoulder after a relative mistook her Halloween costume for skunk.

Celebrate the season today at the 30th Autumn Festival and Apple Pressing event, which takes place at the Sharpham Estate (01803 732542; sharphamtrust.org; free) between 11am and 4pm. The 18th-century Palladian villa overlooking the River Dart at Ashprington provides a fine setting for this celebration of the apple harvest. But, thanks to the poor weather, the organisers need a little help this year, so take your own windfalls for turning into juice to help boost the estate's slim pickings. There'll also be an Apple Olympics and live music.

Watson sashays from wizard to vamp, but school was never this boring

I learned two things while I was reading this book. First, that true stories can be more exciting and extraordinary than fictional ones. And second, that the best books are the ones where you are glued to your seat. This is how it was with The Perfect Storm.

The phantoms in the library

I just wanted to write a play that told the story of the people involved in an extraordinary series of events. I am not a Stoppard or a Hare, I am neither intellectual nor political but I think drama leavened with humour is the best medium for communicating the complexity of right and wrong, and the shades of grey between. But most of all I want people to be intrigued, and hopefully moved by, the extraordinary story of Mirza Tahir Hussain, who is the subject of my new play, which I'm also starring in, at the Arts Theatre.

In 1985 I bought a 30p second-hand paperback because I liked the title: 'The Demolished Man', by Alfred Bester. This fits into a rare category of novel - short science-fiction - and I read it during my first two days as a student. University promised friends, drinks, adventures, but I preferred life on Mars. On the third day, I read it again.

I really like it up here. If Britain was a house, then Scotland is this beautiful airy loft with hills in it. And catching the train is like climbing the stairs. Climbing the stairs from London for four-and-half hours, after which your legs would be well achey, but the view is worth it.

Emma Stone didn't know about 'Spider-Man' before signing up to star in it.

Mike Mills tells the story of an older man revealing his true sexuality with a pleasing mix of melancholia and whimsy, aided by Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor

I wonder if I understand Jon Fosse's play. What I do know on my pulses is that the 70 minutes of Patrice Chéreau's production at the Young Vic constitute some of the greatest theatre I have ever witnessed. Three men in a boat? No – two men on a sailing vessel. Or maybe one man divided. They are called, slightly irritatingly, The One and The Other and they are played flawlessly by Tom Brooke and Jack Laskey.

American student's appeal against conviction for killing Meredith Kercher gets unexpected boost

Cavernous the main stand at the Stadium of Light may be, but within its bowels, the opposing dressing rooms are just about within earshot of each other and the hosts are determined to test that out tomorrow. Revenge might not be so much a dish served cold, more one laden with decibels.

"My sophomore year in high school, I killed a woman", confesses one narrator; "One year a kid brought a gun to school and shot his ex-girlfriend at brunch because she had a new boyfriend", reveals another.