The UK's only plant for processing plutonium into new fuel for nuclear reactors is to close as a result of the Japanese tsunami, threatening the loss of hundreds of jobs, it was announced today.

No Australian has ever won the Masters. The names of the six runners-up are a painful reminder of 75 years of Aussie hurt among the Augusta pines. Please bow your heads and shed a tear for: Jim Ferrier (1950), Bruce Crampton (1972), Jack Newton (1980) and poor old Greg Norman (1986, '87 and '96).

Kate Hudson and Matt Bellamy have purchased a £4 million home in the UK.

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Starring: Kate Hudson, Gael García Bernal

Kate Hudson thinks she is expecting a baby girl.

A limp romantic comedy that copies The Bourne Identity might sound like an ideal vehicle for, say, Gerard Butler and Kate Hudson.

Arguments about the need to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system will continue to rage until the next general election after the Prime Minister announced a delay of at least six years.

Adapted from Jim Thompson's 1952 novel of the same name, The Killer Inside Me follows Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (superbly played by Casey Affleck), a reliable member of the small Texan town community who hides a dark secret, which slowly reveals itself.

After starring in The Killer Inside Me, Casey Affleck made a documentary about Joaquin Phoenix. He talks fame, family and debauchery with James Mottram

I don't know when a mainstream film sparked off so much argument as The Killer Inside Me, the noir thriller by Michael Winterbottom. I've had so many heated conversations about it, my head is spinning. The film, as you must surely have read, features two scenes in which women (played by Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson) are viciously attacked out of the blue by the baby-faced, castrato-voiced, faux -charming cop, played by Casey Affleck, with whom they've become sexually involved. The violence is extremely graphic, relentless, shocking and hard to watch; but should we criticise Winterbottom for the extreme quality of his depiction? If he were depicting an earthquake, wouldn't we applaud him for making it as graphic and bone-rattling as he, and the sophisticated resources of a film studio, can make it? Isn't there a post-feminist case, that the more realistically you portray violence against women, the more you'll show complacent people how disgusting it is?

This well crafted, excessively violent story lacks irony – but largely stays true to the 'dime-store Dostoevsky' whose characters it reveals

Some of our greatest stories have always defied movie directors – but a few are finally being realised on screen.