Black Eyed Peas Fergie wows Glastonbury in hip-baring playsuit with daring cutouts

Forget about the wellies and practical clothing.

It seems Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie didn't get the brief for famously laid-back Glastonbury as she rocked up in an eye-catching cut-out playsuit and high heels.

The singer, who performed with her band on the last night of the festival, looked every inch the hip hop diva as she belted out her tunes in the ensemble, which included a black leather corseted top with a revealing bottom half.


Fergie, who is known for having one of the most toned body's in pop, was clearly intent not to be be upstaged by her band's elaborate stage, which was decked out with a giant TV screen doubling as a staircase, DJ booth and bandstand.

As the band came onstage, a series of green lasers shone out over the audience.

They then launched into their hit Let's Get It Started, to huge cheers from excited fans.



However, some of the crowd booed when Black Eyed Peas member Will.I.Am asked, 'What's up, London?' several times.

The band, who performed on the Jazz World Stage at the festival, also paid lengthy tribute to Michael Jackson, who died on June 25, during their headline set.

Also rounding off the festival yesterday, its final day, was Blur frontman Damon Albarn.

He and his Brit pop band brought down the curtain as the final headline act.

They played a set of hits at their first Glastonbury gig since they topped the bill at the Somerset show in 1998.

'It seems like there's been a really, really positive atmosphere here,' Albarn told the crowd.

This year's other headliners included Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.

Miss Ellie wins title of World's Ugliest Pedigree Dog

There was shampoo, backcombing and enough diva antics to scare the steeliest of postmen but as beauty pageants go not every canine would have been quite so happy to participate.

But for those who did take part in the World's Ugliest Dog Competition at Sonoma-Marin Fair in California it was a question of ugly being the new beautiful.

In the dog-eat-dog, claw-biting contest a truly 'unique' looking creature beat off other hideous hounds to claim the crown for being the world's ugliest pedigree dog.


Miss Ellie, a pure breed Chinese crested hairless from Tennessee, is reported to be around 15 years old, has only a couple of back teeth, cataracts in both her eyes, several moles and pimples and limited hair - with such credentials the other mutts surely could not have stood a chance.

And like every good beauty queen Miss Ellie also had a heartfelt message for her adoring fans. According to her owner come spokesperson, Dawn Goehring, Miss Ellie really hopes to be a 'spokesmodel for rescue dogs of the 'not so cute' kind''.

'Her dream is to travel around to prove that ugly is just a word, and says nothing about how wonderful she is,' she said.

Ellie has come a long way from being kept in a kennel area for much of her life with an owner that saw no purpose for her.

When she was rescued she knew no commands and was not house trained but now rules the roost among her other rescue pals and even attended her owner's wedding in rival white dress and veil.

'Miss Ellie hopes that people get the message that there are plenty of wonderful rescue dogs out there just waiting for a chance,' added her proud owner.

As well as winning a modeling contract from House Of Dog lucky Ellie will also pick up a cheque for $1,000, a trophy to put in her kennel and even a professional photo shoot.

But it was Pabst the boxer who came through as the surprise overall winner of the contest.

His victory was an upset - the first place usually goes to a Chinese crested, like Miss Ellie.


The fabulously toothy four-year-old Boxer, who is also a rescue dog, has a 2in underbite, a large burn scar on his stomach and his nails grow in any direction they feel like.

While looking absolutely ferocious Pabst's bark is worse than his bite and in fact the loveable mutt is reportedly a pussy cat who likes nothing more than to take lots of naps in the sun.

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Awesome and Stunning pictures of hole in the clouds' from volcano eruption

A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere.

Sarychev Peak, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, had been sitting quietly in the Kuril Island chain near Japan for 20 years, when it suddenly sprang to life on June 12.

Fortuitously, the International Space Station was flying overhead at the time, and managed to capture this spectacular image of the ash-cloud tearing through the atmosphere, sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle.

The station, which orbits the earth from a height of 220 miles, makes nearly 16 orbits of our planet every 24 hours, and happened to be in the perfect spot to see the dramatic eruption.

The unique images have provided a wealth of new information about the eruption process, and volcanologists are now excitedly poring over the data.

Most unique is the mist-like 'roof' to the cloud, believed to be either steam or condensing water pushed ahead of the advancing cloud of ash. Known as a 'pileus cloud', it lasts just moments, making this a rare snapshot.


Also visible, far below on the hillside, is the thunderous pyroclastic flow of super-heated rock as it cascades down the mountainside. When most people picture volcanoes, they imagine red-hot lava flows. Pyrochastic flows are their deadlier older brother. Appearing at the start of an explosive eruption, they can travel at 130mph, meaning there's nearly no escape for anyone or anything caught in its path.

But the most stunning aspect of the picture is the effect on the clouds: As the ash column punches its way towards the top of the atmosphere, the shockwave causes the clouds to scatter.

An alternative theory, one which these pictures is helping to test, is that as the ash rises, the surrounding air is pushed down, where it warms, and the increased heat causes the clouds to evaporate.

As the ISS continued its orbits over the next days, the astronauts could follow the plume as it drifted away from the island, incidentally causing disruption on nearby flight paths.




The volcano is part of a seismically active cluster of islands running North East from Japan's Hokkaido Island, and up towards Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

There are disputes between Russia and Japan over who owns which islands, but Matua Island, where the volcano is located, is generally agreed to be Russian territory. The Japanese call it Matsuwa Island.

The last explosive eruption from Sarychev happened in 1989, with eruptions in 1986, 1976, 1954, and 1946 also producing lava flows.

Ash from the eruptions has been recorded to reach more than 1,500miles from the volcano and commercial airline flights have been disrupted.

The height of the plume was measured at five miles high - a huge distance into the sky, although not enough to worry the astronauts peering down from above.

The International Space Station was first constructed in 1998 and is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

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10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Eiffel Tower

There’s a new book out, “Eiffel’s Tower: And the World’s Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count.”
It’s in a relationship.

In 2008, a 36-year-old San Francisco woman, formerly a member of the U.S. Army and a champion archer, “married” the tower and changed her name to Erika La Tour Eiffel.
Way back when, Chrysler stole its thunder.But who’s laughing now?

The tower was the tallest building in the world until the Chrysler Building went up in New York in 1930.

But look at the bottom lines. The tower has been a reliable money-maker. Despite a scandal over 15 workers embezzling ticket revenue, the Paris city agency running the tower reported 2007 operating income of 59.8 million euros and operating profit of 1.5 million euros.

Chrysler? Bankrupt.

One of the views from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Even before it was done, some French big shots decided it was barbarous, stupefying and odious.In 1887, as construction began, composer Charles Gounod, writer Guy de Maupassant, painter William Bouguereau, architect Charles Garnier and scores of other sensitive French creative types signed a petition in protest, labeling the tower “useless and monstrous … a gigantic black factory chimney, its barbarous mass overwhelming and humiliating all our monuments and belittling our works of architecture, which will just disappear before this stupefying folly … this odious column of bolted metal.”

Picture dated March 31, 1889, shows the Eiffel Tower in Paris just after it was built.
It’s more expensive than the one in Las Vegas.

Through March 26, 2010, the cost of an elevator trip to the top of the real Eiffel Tower is 13 euros for an adult. (That’s about $17.25, by current foreign exchange rates.)

Cost of the Eiffel Tower Experience at Paris Las Vegas in Las Vegas: $10 for an adult.
And no, you can’t climb to the top of the tower in Paris. (It’s 1,665 steps, or maybe 1,671, depending on who’s counting.) Also, wheelchair users aren’t allowed at the top.
It outdraws New York’s Empire State Building (pictured), big time.

From 2003 to 2008, the Parisian tower’s annual visitor count grew from 5.9 million to 6.9 million. (The Empire State Building’s operators report “more than 3.5 million” visitors a year.)

The Paris tower is open every day and includes two restaurants. Summer hours are 9 a.m. to 12:45 a.m.
It would make a fine billboard. In fact, it already has.In the late 1920s and early 1930s, three of its sides held vast advertisements for Citroen cars. While occupying Paris during World War II, German troops hung a sign from the tower trumpeting their victory. In 1979, a Greenpeace protester unfurled a sign that said “Save the Seals.”

A company called Apoteo Surprise will flash a personal message under the Eiffel Tower — for a price.
It wasn’t Eiffel’s only big-ticket gig.

By the time engineer and architect Gustave Eiffel began building the tower for the Exposition Universelle of 1889, he had already put up more than 50 bridges in Europe.

He was also a key part of the French effort to build a canal in Panama — an effort that fell through. (Americans redesigned the project and finished the job about 35 years later.)

The tower, meanwhile, took about two years to build, with completion March 31, 1889, several weeks ahead of the exposition’s opening day.
The paint is wet.

Or at least some of it is.

Twenty-five workers began brushwork in March on a top-to-bottom repainting job that’s expected to take 18 months. When done, they will have applied 60 tons of paint in three shades of brown (darkest at the bottom, lightest at the top).

The tower needs repainting every seven years, and it hasn’t always been brown.

For a brief spell in 1899, the tower was painted ochre yellow. And from 1954 to 1961, it was brownish red, a bit like the Golden Gate Bridge.
It suffers from shrinkage.

Not counting its antenna, the iron tower is about 984 feet tall. But on cold days it’s roughly 6 inches shorter.