Former Oasis star Noel Gallagher is reported to have been approached to star as a judge on the US version of The X Factor.
The guitarist has been asked to consider working on the show when Simon Cowell takes it across the Atlantic next year, according to The Sun.
In the past he has been critical of the show, saying in a 2008 interview that The X Factor had “nothing to do with music”.
Critics choice
Hotly-tipped singer Jessie J has landed the Critics Choice award at next year’s Brit Awards.
Her win has made it a clean sweep for female singers since the award was introduced four years ago. Past recipients were Adele, Florence And The Machine and Ellie Goulding.
And Jessie J, 22, has become the second high-profile Essex-born singer to win a top award in a matter of days, following Matt Cardle’s X Factor win at the weekend.
$11 million Christmas tree
Christmas came in extravagant fashion to the Muslim desert emirate of Abu Dhabi as a glitzy hotel unveiled a bejewelled Christmas tree valued at more than 11 million dollars yesterday.
It is the “most expensive Christmas tree ever,” with a “value of over 11 million dollars,” said Hans Olbertz, general manager of Emirates Palace hotel, at its inauguration.
The 13-metre faux evergreen, located in the gold leaf-bedecked rotunda of the hotel, is decorated with silver and gold bows, ball-shaped ornaments and small white lights.
Pope enjoys acrobatic show
Acrobats performed a brief show in front of Pope Benedict XVI at his weekly audience in the Vatican yesterday, where the pontiff met with a group of Catholic circus performers.
Pope Benedict smiled and waved after the performance by the four award-winning Pellegrini brothers, who stripped to the waist and jumped into gravity-defying poses wearing tight white trousers.
There were around 7,000 people in the audience.
New uniform sends soldiers to hospital
Russia’s sharp new military uniforms, created by a top fashion designer, have landed hundreds in hospital after proving too thin to withstand ferocious winter cold, a state daily said yesterday.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that between 60 and 250 servicemen have been laid up with everything from flu to pneumonia as Arctic chills sweep through the country’s northern reaches.
‘Skin-coloured’ lingerie
Swiss banking giant UBS has issued a strict dresscode for employees, calling on them to wear “skin-coloured” lingerie and to ditch “fancy and coloured” artificial fingernails.
In a document of over 40 pages, UBS underlined details from head to toe, including permissible hairstyles, what cut of skirt and which type of socks to wear.
Women should not wear “flashy” jewellery or skirts that are “too tight behind.”
Underwear must not be “visible against clothing or spilling out of clothing.” Rather, they should be “skin-coloured under white shirts.”
Fresh Arctic blast
Britain was last night facing another onslaught of Arctic weather with airports, rail companies and breakdown services putting extra snow teams on standby.
Temperatures were expected to plunge below freezing overnight, causing icy roads across most of the UK this morning before snow showers return to Scotland and the west coast.
Forecasters warned there could be up to 15cm of snow and bitter temperatures going into next week at least.
Vampire bug
A taste for human blood may help explain why the MRSA superbug is such a menace, scientists have discovered.
MRSA is a drug-resistant form of Staphylococcus aureus, a microbe that lives harmlessly in the noses of almost a third of the population.
However some people suffer serious or repeated Staphylococcus infections, the worst being caused by MRSA.
The reason could be individual differences in the blood protein haemoglobin, scientists believe.
New research shows that the “vampire” bug favours human haemoglobin over that of other animals.
Child sex offences
A children’s entertainer pleaded guilty yesterday to a string of internet sex offences involving young boys, UK police said.
Jason William Gaunt, 22, who worked at holiday camps, was arrested after Surrey Police’s paedophile online inves-tigation team probed a series of online-related offences involving children under the age of 16.
Appearing at Guildford Crown Court yesterday, he pleaded guilty to five counts of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, two counts of attempting to engage in sexual activity in the presence of a child, three counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and one count of engaging in sexual activity with a child.