Top Stories –
Brangelina rumour –
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are set to separate according to reports. The unmarried couple are said to have been in talks with lawyers to agree a £205 million split deal.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt

Pirate’s plunder blunder –
Single-mum Jammie Thomas-Rasset found guilty of sharing 24 songs over the internet has had her fine slashed from $2m (£1.23m) to $54,000 (£33,420) following an appeal. The American was accused of pirating almost 2,000 tracks but the record companies sought damages for only 24 of them.

X-files factor –
Lord Rees, the president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, says the chance of discovering life on other worlds is greater than ever. He says “Were we to find life, even the simplest life, elsewhere that would clearly be one of the great discoveries of the 21st Century.”

Top Video –
Mr and Mrs Smith Trailer

Top News –

• Live Nation and Ticketmaster complete their merger, following an agreement with the United States Department of Justice to divest some interests. (Reuters)
• Police in the Venezuelan capital Caracas disperse an opposition student protest over the closure of several television stations. Meanwhile, Vice President Ramón Carrizales resigns. (AFP) (El Universal)
• Houthi fighters in northern Yemen offer to leave Saudi Arabia after three months of fighting on the border. (Al Jazeera)(BBC) (Press TV)
• Representatives of the Dalai Lama head to Beijing for the first discussions with Chinese authorities in 15 months. (The Hindu) (AFP) (The Guardian)
• Voters in Saint Kitts and Nevis go to the polls in the 2010 general election. (Washington Post)
• New traces of melamine in milk products are discovered in China, more than a year after thousands of children became ill from a previous incident. (China Daily) (BBC)
• The European Union agrees to send a team to train up to 2,000 Somali troops to help fight insurgents in the country, as intense gun battles take place in the capital Mogadishu. (Reuters South Africa) (UPI)
• Environment ministers from the G4 bloc (IBSA Dialogue Forum & China) meet in New Delhi, India, to agree a common position ahead of future climate change talks, such as the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference (“COP-16”) at Cancún, Mexico, to be held from 29 November 2010 to 10 December 2010 [2]. (AFP) (The Daily Star)
• Dutch football club HFC Haarlem, national champion in 1946, is declared bankrupt, becoming the first Dutch professional club to be disestablished since FC Wageningen and VCV Zeeland in 1992. (Telegraaf)
• Iraq:
  • Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali”, is executed. (BBC News)
  • Three car bomb explosions in central Baghdad kill 36 people. (BBC)
• Burma‘s Home Minister General Maung Oo says Aung San Suu Kyi will be released by November this year. (Reuters)(Al Jazeera)
• The United States will reportedly “reconsider” Algeria‘s placement on its terror watch list, which requires Algerian citizens to undergo extra security screening. (Xinhua)
• Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, with 85 passengers on board, crashes into the Mediterranean Sea after taking off fromBeirut Airport, Lebanon. (BBC) (Al Jazeera)
• A Qantas terminal at an airport in Perth, Western Australia, is evacuated after police locate a “suspicious item”. (The Age)
• An inquest into the deaths of five Afghan asylum seekers opens in Australia. (The Sydney Morning Herald)
• A record-breaking half a million Australians take extra time off work “sick” as Australia Day approaches. (The Age)
• A senior Chinese Internet official says his country is now the largest victim of cyber attacks in the world. (China Daily)
• Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Prime Minister Gordon Brown meet at Downing Street to discuss the devolution deadlock inNorthern Ireland. (RTÉ) (The Guardian) (The Irish Times)
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the opening of an exhibition of Auschwitz concentration campblueprints in Yad Vashem. (The Washington Post)
• Gordon Park, convicted murderer in the Lady in the Lake trial, is found hanged in his prison cell in Garth prison, Lancashire, England, in an apparent suicide. (BBC)

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