Cole's roles

Cole has scored two UK number one albums as a solo artist

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Singer Cheryl Cole has been confirmed as a judge on the US version of The X Factor - the latest achievement in a career that has seen its fair share of ups and downs.

When five girls were plucked from obscurity on an ITV talent show, no one would have imagined that one of them would go on to become the "nation's sweetheart".

Cheryl Cole - then known as Tweedy - was just 19 when she was chosen as the first member of pop group Girls Aloud.

"I can hardly believe it," she said shortly after winning the show.

"Four months [ago] I was sitting in a council house drinking tea and watching Oprah Winfrey on television all day."

The five-strong girl band enjoyed chart success straight off the bat when their debut track, Sound of the Underground, topped the UK singles chart.

But the singer's climb to the top of the showbiz ladder had a shaky start.

Tragedy struck Girls Aloud on Christmas Day 2002 when their tour manager, John McMahon, was killed in a car crash in Staffordshire.

Then, in January 2003, Cole was arrested and charged with racially aggravated assault and actual bodily harm after an altercation with a nightclub toilet attendant.

Girls Aloud shot to fame as the winners of Popstars: The Rivals

Cole always denied the race charge and the jury agreed. But they unanimously rejected her claim to have been acting in self defence.

She was sentenced to 120 hours of community service, ordered to pay her victim £500 in compensation and required to pay £3,000 in prosecution costs.

Despite the controversy, Girls Aloud rallied around their bandmate - who had offered to quit - and went on to score a further 19 Top 20 singles.

One of five children, Cole began modelling at the age of three. She appeared in a British Gas advert aged seven and joined the Royal Ballet's summer school two years later.

But when she was 12 she abandoned dancing and decided to pursue a singing career instead, signing with a management company and going to countless auditions.

In 2004 she met footballer Ashley Cole, then with Arsenal. They had homes in the same London apartment block and ended up dating.

They were engaged in 2005 after he proposed in Dubai, tying the knot in a star-studded ceremony the following year.

In early 2008 tabloid newspapers claimed he had been unfaithful, with two women selling stories about their involvement with the player.

"I can't hurt any more than I've hurt, I can't cry any more than I've cried," Cheryl wrote in Girls Aloud's book Dreams That Glitter.

"When I said my wedding vows I meant them. I said them for life: For better, for worse," she added.

Hinting she had forgiven Ashley, she wrote: "People make mistakes, stuff happens. I believe everyone should be a free spirit."

The singer's quiet strength during this period seemed to cement her popularity with fans - one of whom was Simon Cowell, who hired her to replace Sharon Osbourne on The X Factor.

Cowell has described Cole as "a complete brat" with an eye for spotting talent

Cole proved to be sympathetic, likeable and immaculately dressed - making her an instant hit with viewers.

The exposure of the show only served to increase Cole's profile. She gave Vogue its highest-selling February issue in 2009 and later won a lucrative advertising contract with L'Oreal.

With Girls Aloud due to take a year off in 2009, it was inevitable that the singer would embark upon a solo career.

This she did, enlisting the help of Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am to put together her debut album, 3 Words.

Helped by a strong round of promotions and a much-talked about appearance on The X Factor, both the album and its lead single, Fight For This Love, entered the chart at number one.

Many reviewers noted the melancholy tone of the record and speculated that lyrics like "we argue a lot no matter what we do" indicated further problems in her marriage.

A rash of gossip magazine cover stories prompted the star to publish a picture of her wearing the ring on Twitter with the comment: "3 words. Diamonds Are Forever."

Little did she know that, months later, her relationship would be plunged into a fresh crisis.

It was alleged that Ashley had texted compromising photographs of himself to several women, while another came forward to say she had slept with him in 2009.

In February 2010, as Cole flew into the UK from a short break in Los Angeles, an official announcement of her separation was made.

Cole has had four UK Top 10 singles as a solo singer

Three months later she filed for divorce at the High Court in London, citing "unreasonable behaviour".

Cole played support on the UK leg of the Black Eyed Peas' world tour and took a break in Tanzania, on the east coast of Africa, with friend and dancer Derek Hough.

Shortly after returning, she was hospitalised following reports she had fainted during a photoshoot.

Cole was ordered to rest by doctors, who began treating her for malaria.

In an emotional interview with Piers Morgan on his ITV1 show Life Stories in October, Cole said she thought she was going to die.

"I thought if I'm going to die, I want to die soon because I was in so much pain," she added.

Her second solo collection, Messy Little Raindrops, released in November, was a UK number one, as was lead single Promise This.

And in last year's X Factor, won for the first time in her reign by an act she did not mentor - Matt Cardle - she continued to attract headlines.

She attracted criticism at the start of the series for not selecting popular singer Gamu Nhengu for the finals of the show, as well as for refusing to eliminate an act at the end of a live programme.

Yet she and Cowell remained the show's most popular personalities - something they will be keen to maintain now that they, and The X Factor, are crossing the Atlantic.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/entertainment-arts-13293389

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Prizes for second place?

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This week marks the 50th anniversary of America's first manned mission to space. On 5 May 1961, a Mercury-Redstone rocket shot Alan Shepard to an altitude of 187km on a sub-orbital flight lasting under 16 minutes.

The US mission came just a few weeks after Yuri Gagarin had become the first human to fly in space - a propaganda coup for the Soviet Union.

Neal Thompson is the author of Light This Candle, a biography of the first American in space. He told BBC reporter Paul Rincon why he thinks Shepard, and his 1961 achievement, have been overlooked.

President Kennedy (L) with Shepard (R) on his return to Earth. Being second into space was a source of "lingering frustration" for Shepard

PR: Despite being America's first man in space, Alan Shepard's flight is perhaps less celebrated than other US space milestones such as John Glenn's first orbital flight. Why do you think that is?

NT: A couple of reasons: Yuri Gagarin flew first - I think that's the biggest one. I think Shepard was very frustrated by that too. Nasa had been hoping to launch his flight as early as late 1960.

THE FIRST AMERICAN IN SPACEAlan Bartlett Shepard Jr was born in 1923 in Derry, New HampshireIn 1950, he entered the Naval Test Pilot School in MarylandWas one of Nasa's original intake of astronauts - known as the Mercury 7Selected for the first American manned space mission - Freedom 7 - in 1961Freedom 7 flew about three weeks after the Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin into spaceDescribed by some colleagues as pushy or intimidating, but also enjoyed practical jokesThe character of Alan Tracy in the 1960s TV series Thunderbirds is named after himAwarded the Congressional Medal of Honour and appointed as a UN delegateCommanded the Apollo 14 mission; the fifth man to walk on the Moon and the first to play golf on itGolf stunt used by politicians hostile to the space programme as an example of financial wastageDied in 1998 of leukaemiaToo old to fly to the Moon?

But they kept postponing it - and for good reason. The Redstone rockets weren't the most reliable rockets - they had a bad habit of blowing up. So they kept delaying the scheduled flight over and over and Shepard felt that opened the window for the Russians to get there first.

Technologically, Shepard felt [the US was] ahead of the Russians and felt that we could have gone sooner. In addition to the Russians going first, they also orbited the Earth first. Shepard's flight was a great accomplishment, it was huge achievement for him to have been selected to go first [for the US], and then to have pulled off the flight almost flawlessly was very satisfying to him.

But the fact that it was a sub-orbital flight compared to Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight, combined then with John Glenn's flight the following year which had made multiple orbits of Earth - those are some of the reasons that Shepard got overlooked.

People probably remember him more for his golf shot on the Moon than being the first American in space. At the time, when the first seven US astronauts were competing for that flight, everyone wanted to be on the first one, thinking that would be the most historically relevant.

John Glenn was very frustrated that Shepard was chosen first. It's interesting that Glenn got the bigger prize by achieving the first orbital flight.

PR: Why do you think Shepard was selected for that flight? Do you think Nasa knew the first flight was likely to be overlooked, or did they feel Shepard's qualities best embodied the way they wanted to portray themselves as an agency?

NT: I think the latter is a real good description of what was at play with their selection. Clearly, they could have picked any one of the guys and, technically, they would have handled the flight the same. There wasn't a whole lot for the astronaut to do on that first flight anyway. So in terms of getting the job done, they had their pick of the best of the best.

But I do think the agency also wanted to send a message in terms of selecting who went first and I think Shepard - maybe a little bit more so than the others - had this image that Nasa possibly wanted to portray. John Glenn was a nice guy, very chummy with the press, All-American, and that was certainly an image that they cared about. But I think with Shepard, he was more the steely-eyed fighter jock, a little bit more militaristic in his bearing. They wanted the Shepard image to be the first one that people related to when they thought of the astronaut programme.

Watch: Excerpts from Alan Shepard's flight on Freedom 7

PR: Do you think that was partly a reaction to US test pilot Chuck Yeager's description of astronauts as "spam in a can" - that they were just guinea pigs?

NT: I think they were responding in part to that - and that was a frustration for the astronauts too… They pushed for changes to the capsule to make it more of a flying vehicle, rather than just a can that they were an occupant of. I think they had some success with that. But I think that choosing Shepard was a reflection of their desire to show these astronauts were the best that America had to offer.

IN QUOTES: ALAN SHEPARD"Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle" - Shepard to mission control before the launch of America's first manned space flight"The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder" - Reply to reporter who had asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the rocket waiting for lift-off"Man, I got to pee" - Shepard to mission controllers as he waited to be launched. They told him to go in his space suit, which he did"Either you cut the mustard, or you don't" - Shepard on the questions about his age and his ear problem in the run up to Apollo 14 mission"When you've been to the Moon, where else are you going to go?" - On being asked how he was going to spend the rest of his days

PR: How did Shepard later feel about the fact that Gagarin had been first into space? He was a highly competitive person - did that eat away at him?

NT: I wouldn't say it ate away at him, but I think it was a great frustration and disappointment to him. I learned in the course of the research that he wasn't one to dwell on the past and wallow in anything negative. I think he had a pretty forward-looking and upbeat attitude about a lot of things. That came into play later when he became sick and wasn't allowed to fly. He didn't wallow, he just focussed on getting well and getting back into the astronaut flight rotation.

As far as getting beaten that first time, he was disappointed and frustrated. He partially blamed the excessive concern, the "fretting", or "nitpicking" by the engineers because of that fighter jock attitude. He was the type of pilot who thought he could fly anything, even if there was something wrong with it. There was a "stick and rudder" attitude: just give me a plane - a stick and a rudder - and I'll fly it. So he was not concerned with technical glitches the way the engineers needed to be.

I don't think he was an overtly political person, but I think he felt the Soviet Union was a technologically "inferior" country. And to be beaten on that level, in such a public display… that was especially frustrating.

Shepard's sub-orbital flight in Freedom 7 lasted just under 16 minutes

PR: In 1964, Alan Shepard was diagnosed with Meniere's disease (a condition of the inner ear that affects balance) following a collapse, which temporarily grounded him as an astronaut. Had there been any indications of his condition prior to that?

NT: There were a couple of small indications. It's unclear that there was a direct connection between his years as a fighter pilot or the first couple of years of astronaut training. It's hard to say that those were to blame. There were a couple of far more subtle episodes that he experienced before the symptoms really got worse and started to affect his performance.

So much of this was new at the time that there was a lot of fretting that maybe this was something to do with the training, or being up in space. The press was doing its own speculation, because John Glenn had similar symptoms from an accident where he hit his head on the rim of a shower stall. Almost at the same time, Glenn and Shepard were experiencing these episodes of vertigo.

With Shepard, I don't think anyone determined that his condition was caused by anything professional. But I think there were some hunches it was related or that it might not have come out previously because he hadn't been pushed that far. It did finally come out during training for the Gemini missions, because they were doing more aggressive training than they had been for the Mercury programme.

To me it was fascinating to learn just how severe his illness was. He wasn't bed-ridden, but there were times when he would get out of bed, have these dizzy spells and fall to the floor. He wasn't able to figure out which way was up, he would have nausea and vomiting. It was pretty severe. At the time, it was not widely known how bad these episodes were for Shepard.

The capsule was fished out of the Atlantic Ocean by a helicopter

PR: After Shepard was diagnosed, he was given a desk job in the astronaut office, which he stayed in for more than a decade. Why did he persevere for so long in a role that - to someone like Shepard - must have seemed quite unexciting?

NT: I agree. That question - why he stayed - is one that drew me to Shepard and drove a large chunk of the book. He could have done anything, he could have gone into politics, or business - he eventually did go into business and made millions of dollars. But he could have done that right away or found something else that was a challenge, or lucrative, or high profile.

The fact he stayed with the programme, in a low profile position, it still confuses me. I attempted to answer that question in the book and I think one of the answers is that he did want to stick with it in the hope that he could reach the Moon. I think that's what all of them really wanted… I think Shepard was willing to take this smaller role, a desk job.

I think it must have been extremely hard and frustrating to be the one who couldn't fly, who was not quite babysitting the other astronauts, but was their overseer and caretaker. He was involved in some of the selections [for missions] and had to watch the others go up ahead of him.

I've always been impressed by the fact he stuck with the job and with Nasa. He didn't just phone it in, he played an important role in those years of firming up the training regimens and keeping the astronauts on task, particularly after the Apollo 1 fire.

He played a role in keeping the astronauts focused and motivated and helping them get past that tragedy. I think that's another of the reasons why I view him as someone who's been overlooked over the years: Not only was he the first American in space and the fifth man on the Moon, but between those two achievements, he dedicated himself to Nasa and stuck with it.

Neil Thompson is the author of Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard, the first biography of America's first man in space. As a journalist he has worked for the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post Magazine.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-13270379

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VIDEO: Preventative treatment call for over-55s

Everyone over the age of 55 should be offered preventative treatment such as cholesterol or blood pressure lowering drugs, according to a new study.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/health-13290371

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Fire crews stop 1,828 gorse fires

Since 15 April the service has responded to 1,828 gorse and forestry fires in total.

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Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue crews have responded to 1,010 gorse and forestry fires over the past four days.

The Fire and Rescue Service said it dealt with 255 gorse fires at 31 locations on Tuesday and Wednesday.

More than 200 personnel were deployed to tackle blazes across Northern Ireland including at Ballycastle, Garvagh and Omagh.

Deputy chief fire officer Chris Kerr said the service was busier than it had been in 30 years.

Since 15 April the service has responded to 1,828 gorse and forestry fires in total.

Mr Kerr said that crews were "performing magnificently", but that they have had to interrupt firefighting to rescue people who had been watching gorse fires and become trapped.

"People have gone along to effectively sight see around some of these very spectacular incidents and because of changing wind direction and changing fire conditions some of those people have been cut off by fire and fire crews have had to be diverted to rescue members of the public," he said.

"So I would appeal to people to stay away from the scenes of these fires and leave it to the Fire and Rescue Service, we have the resources and the professionalism to address the issue."

Meanwhile, NI Water has asked members of the public to help protect the Mournes and avoid walking in them until the area receives some rain.

The Mournes is a designated special area of conservation and an important part of the drinking water catchment area for Northern Ireland's water supply.

Dymphna Gallagher, head of quality and compliance with NI Water, said it was "unfortunate that these fires are ruining the beautiful scenery and the quality of raw water flowing into the Silent Valley Reservoir".

"Years of work building up this area have been destroyed in a few short days," she said.

"It will take a long time and a great deal of work and commitment from those involved in preserving the Mournes to return it to the condition it was in."

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-northern-ireland-13280201

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Holyrood battle enters final day

Party leaders are making their final pitch for votes across the country

Stepson faces murder bid charge

A 34-year-old man is due to appear in court charged with attempted murder.

The charge relates to the stabbing of a 52-year-old man at the weekend. He was found in the Market Square area of Dungannon, County Tyrone, on Sunday evening.

It's understood it followed an altercation at Union Place in the town on Sunday evening.

The man is due to appear at Omagh Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-northern-ireland-13264294

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Breathing is fun

A spirometer is used to blow slime off animals in the computer game Creep Frontier

Could computer games be the solution for persuading children with cystic fibrosis to complete their physiotherapy?

The genetic condition leads to the build-up of thick mucus in the lungs.

Physiotherapy, including breathing exercises, is used to clear the lungs and open up the airways.

Carys, aged 12, from Glasgow, has two sessions a day, - but as her mother, Michelle McMonagle, says: "There is a conflict between what she wants to do and what she knows she has to do."

For Carys, computer games, drawing, music, drama and movies are all more appealing.

"There's other things she wants to do. It's like washing dishes or any chore, you'd rather be doing anything else," says Ms McMonagle.

Doctors in the US have noticed children rarely perform their breathing exercises, preferring to do other things, such as playing computer games - so they combined the two.

Instead of using a hand-held controller or motion sensor, these games rely on a spirometer, which measures how much and how fast air is exhaled.

Breathing is used to drive a car in one racing game and to blow slime off animals in another.

Professor Peter Bingham, from the University of Vermont and Fletcher Allen Health Care, tried the games out on 13 children with cystic fibrosis (CF), aged between eight and 18.

Breathing controls the on-screen action

He said: "The key finding was that children actually use them.

"Spirometer games can be a good way to involve children in respiratory therapy.

"It's ethical and appropriate to meet kids where they are with some engaging, digital games that can help them take charge of their own health."

Professor Peter Bingham now wants to do a larger clinical trial on the games' effectiveness.

Ms McMonagle said: "I know lots of parents who already use trampolines to encourage exercise; anything that makes physio more attractive is going to help."

The condition affects more than 8,500 children and young adults in the UK.

Gemma Matthews, from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, said: "Children with CF have a heavy daily burden of treatment every day, which they often find tiresome.

"Clinicians and parents are constantly thinking of new ways to encourage children to do their treatment and engaging them through video games is a great way to make treatment less of a chore."

This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/health-13222191

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