AFP Celebrity News

The former wife of Paul McCartney told a British inquiry on Thursday that voicemail messages from the Beatles singer were hacked, slamming suggestions she had leaked them to journalists herself. Heather Mills told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that she had never given a journalist permission to listen to her messages. Piers Morgan , a former editor of Britain 's News of the World and Daily Mirror tabloids, had told the London inquiry in December that he had listened to a voicemail...Read Full Story

Madonna's big year got even bigger Tuesday with the announcement of her most ambitious world tour ever, hot on the heels of her record-setting Super Bowl halftime show. The Material Girl will hopscotch around the globe in support of her 12th studio album "MDNA" which comes out March 26, even as her second feature film, the romantic drama "W.E.", struggles to impress critics and draw audiences. In a statement, concert promoter Live Nation Entertainment said the as-yet unnamed tour -- Madonna's...Read Full Story

Sixty works by leading post-war American artists including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol feature in a new exhibition opening on Tuesday at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. The show entitled "The Guggenheim: The American Avant-garde 1945-1980" will run until May 6 and looks at the most seminal artistic movements of the era, from abstract expressionism to Pop Art to minimalism and conceptual art. Works by around 50 artists exhibited will include paintings, sculptures and...Read Full Story

One of China's most famous young writers, Han Han, is planning to sue an academic fraud campaigner nicknamed "science cop" who accused him of using ghost-writers, state media said Friday. Han, a 29-year-old blogger and novelist, has found fame through the Internet with his witty, scathing critiques of China's corrupt officials and social issues. The accusations about his popular works have circulated on the Internet and were taken up by Fang Shimin, a self-proclaimed "science cop" who made a...Read Full Story

The French actor tipped to win an Oscar for his role in "The Artist" was under fire at home Thursday for a poster showing him holding a woman's legs in the air under the line "I?m going into a meeting." France 's advertising regulator ARPP asked that the posters of Jean Dujardin -- advertising the film "Les Infideles" (The Players) -- be removed from billboards in Paris because they depicted women as sexual objects. The ARPP said it received four complaints from the public offended by the ads...Read Full Story