Suicide, rebirth, break-ups and comebacks: few bands have seen as much triumph and tragedy as New Order. But what has really shaken them is becoming fashionable after all these years. Interview by Ben Thompson

Trouble follows the Manic Street Preachers around like a mangy dog. Trouble, grief and political strife. And now their hotel-room door won't open! Strewth. Fortunately, Simon Price is on hand to settle things down as Wales's finest finally crack the code and open up. They've a new album to discuss, a new way of looking at themselves - and the lost Richey Edwards is seldom out of their thoughts...

Robert Earl, the multimillionaire restaurant entrepreneur behind the Planet Hollywood brand, added another £18.8m to his fortune yesterday after settling a 17 year-old dispute with the owners of the rival Hard Rock Café.

High rollers who turned the tables on Rank Group's Clermont casino in London's Mayfair in the past few months have hit trading.

THE BRITISH Government was involved in an embarrassing damage- limitation exercise yesterday amid growing dismay in Japan over the safety of nuclear fuel sent from the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbia.

It began with Queen. So, as you might expect, video has always pandered to pop's worst instincts. By Michael Collins

AEROSMITH WEMBLEY STADIUM LONDON

SIR DENYS HENDERSON, chairman of Rank, told the troubled company's shareholders at the annual meeting yesterday that a combination of a lack of blockbuster films screened at its Odeon cinemas, the rise in gaming duty in the 1998 budget, and the increase in rental payments after the group's sale-and-leaseback programme accounted for a slowdown in profits in the first quarter of the current year.

The Week in Review

LINOLEUM

THE BRIEFEST glance at Rank's third quarter figures reveals why the leisure group's beleaguered chief executive, Andrew Teare, had to go. The downturn in profits at Hard rock and Butlins, the poor performance from casinos and the Mecca bingo halls, the depressed outlook for the group's hotchpotch of other leisure activities - all these things were perhaps to have been expected given the atrocious summer weather and the sogginess in consumer spending.