Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas are taking time out from their marriage, a representative for the couple confirms.
“Catherine and Michael are taking some time apart to evaluate and work on their marriage,” the rep said.
It’s been nearly five months since the two have been spotted together. They’ve since been seen taking separate holidays and walking the red carpet alone.
Michael, 68, and Catherine, 43, have been married almost 13 years – they were wed in November 2000 – and have two children, Dylan, 13, and Carys, 10.
In recent years, they have seen each other through significant trials, including Michael’s throat cancer and Catherine’s bipolar disorder.
“These things are sent to try us, and we do sit back and go, ‘Wow, we got through that,’ and, ‘Oof, we dodged that huge bullet.’,” Catherine told Britain’s Stylist magazine last year of those difficult times. “I guess it does make you stronger because you have some ammunition to be prepared for something else that’s going to side swipe you, because it really did side swipe us.”
She added an optimistic note, saying: “It’s now onwards and upwards. We’re onto the next chapter of our lives. As long as we have health and happiness, nothing else matters.”
And perhaps this separation is just another obstacle for the pair in a string of recent setbacks. Michael, too, has expressed hope and determination for a bright future together.
“True love takes work. Love is an extraordinary feeling that comes from the bottom of your soul, but has to be nurtured, you know,” he told Daily Mirror last month. “The thing I’ve learned about getting older is you can’t take love for granted.”
Related video: In happier times… Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas coordinate outfits!
Canadian crooner Michael Buble has become a father for the first time.
Michael’s wife Luisana Lopilato gave birth to a baby boy named Noah in the early hours of yesterday morning in Vancouver, Canada.
Michael, 37, lost no time sharing the happy news with fans, posting a picture of himself, Luisana, 26, and the new baby in the hospital delivery suite on Instagram.
“Overjoyed and filled with gratitude at the arrival of our son,” he wrote.
Michael and Luisana have been eagerly anticipating the birth of their first child, with Michael cancelling all his appointments so he could stick by her side in the last month of her pregnancy.
“I’m about 15 to 20 minutes away from home at all times,” he said earlier this month. “Just in case anything happens, I’m there.”
Michael also revealed he had flown Luisana’s whole family up from Argentina to help her feel more comfortable about the birth.
“It’s scary for her,” he said. “She’s in a country that’s not her country, people are speaking a language that’s not her first language.
“So, you know, I’ve got her whole family here so there’s a good support system.”
Michael started dating actress and lingerie model Luisana in 2009, proposing to her in November of the same year. The couple married in March 2011.
Beyonce reportedly found herself in the middle of an altercation at the Video Music Awards after-party when rappers Diddy and J. Cole got into an argument.
According to the New York Post, the disagreement began when J. Cole allegedly “said inappropriate things” to Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ girlfriend.
“Sean immediately pounced. Some pushing and shoving happened. No punches were thrown, but it was a visible disturbance,” the witness told New York Post. “A few bottles splashed to the floor and some partygoers were knocked over.”
It’s reported that Beyonce and husband Jay-Z got involved, “yelling” at Diddy and J. Cole to stop the commotion.
“It was mayhem,” a party guest told New York Daily News. “Beyonce was yelling to stop and Jay Z was separating people and getting people away from Bey.”
Another attendee added: “We were all dancing and the fight breaks out, and it happened so quickly and bottles were crashing everywhere, and everyone was screaming. People got pushed into bottles.”
The drama reportedly ended almost as quickly as it began, with Diddy jumping on the mic to tell guests: “It’s all cool! Y’all keep having fun! It’s no big deal, it’s over.”
Related video: Cinderella set to Beyonce songs = Cinderonce!
Prince William has already farewelled the “beautiful” Isle of Anglesey he and the Duchess of Cambridge have called home since their 2011 wedding at what was to be his final royal appearance on the island before leaving for London, but now he is planning one last goodbye.
William will fire the starting gun for the annual three-day Ring O’Fire race that challenges competitors to circumnavigate Anglesey.
“His Royal Highness will met a number of the runners and their families and a selection of his volunteers involved in the administration of the race before officially starting the Ultra Marathon,” a spokesperson from Kensington Palace confirmed.
There was some confusion as the news broke that “starting” the race meant William would be competing in the race, leading to speculation that new mum Kate might be cheering him on at the finish line, but it has been confirmed that he will only launch the race and meet competitors.
Similar anticipation surrounded this year’s London marathon after Prince Harry said his older brother would be entering.
“What’s fantastic is my brother and his wife will be doing it next year, I think,” but Palace representatives later had to confirm the comment was said on BBC TV in jest.
The event will be Prince William’s final royal engagement as a resident of north Wales as wraps up the final weeks of his post as an RAF pilot based in the area, and prepares to move with wife Kate and baby Prince George to Kensington Palace in London.
During an official appearance at the Anglesey show two weeks ago — then billed as a possible final farewell from the Duke — William expressed how much his young family would miss the area.
“I know that I speak for Catherine when I say I have never in my life known somewhere as beautiful and as welcoming as Anglesey,” he said.
“I know that both of us will miss it terribly when my search and rescue tour of duty comes to an end next month and we have to move elsewhere.
“Catherine and I look forward to returning again and again over the coming years with our family.”
Australia has had its fair share of gold rushes. Ballarat and Bendigo were built on them. And though you wouldn’t know it, we’re in the middle of another that’s going gangbusters, writes Mike Dolan.
We’ve come to Canberra to meet a dashing entrepreneur who’s as happy digging up dirt in search of gold as any miner. She’s whippet thin, elegant and today is sporting a red fluffy beret. Sherry McCardle-English is her name and she’s on her hands and knees in a paddock probing a patch of dirt the size of saucer with an immaculately manicured finger.
At her elbow is an American cocker spaniel, rigid with excitement, as her mistress unearths what looks like a Brazil nut.
“Black gold”, gasps one of the tour group, as Sherry holds it triumphantly between thumb and finger. The nugget is a truffle, one of the most prized ingredients of French cuisine — a fungus, with a notoriously difficult growing temperament, that thrives on the roots of oak and hazelnut trees.
A whopper weighing in at 1kg can fetch between $2500-$3000. Sherry’s record to date is 390 grams, worth about $900, which her sniffer dog, Snuffles, unearthed a few months back on her 142-hectare truffle plantation on the outskirts of Canberra.
If it sounds rather pie in the sky: Sherry and Snuffles digging up truffles on Ruffles estate, think again. It’s a serious business. In 2007, Australian truffle exports were valued at $1.6 million. Since then, they’ve grown 10 fold. And the sky is the limit. The French can’t get enough of them. And now the Australian public is catching on, too.
Truffle hunts are all the rage from WA to the ACT, in Tassie, NSW and SA, too, and at around $60 a pop, they’re worth their weight in gold. On one of Sherry’s French Black Truffles of Canberra hunts, punters learn how to enjoy a truffle’s aroma, savour its flavour with a truffled creme broulé and venture into a paddock with Snuffles, Shelly’s wonder dog.
Snuff and I are a team,” says Sherry, as the dog ferrets around the oak trees. Snuff’s sense of smell is 1000 times more sensitive than ours,” she adds. And as if on cue, the dog pats its paw on the ground — a sign that there’s a truffle underneath.
“I reckon Snuff’s got the easier job,” says a young girl on the tour group. And she’s got a point. To establish this plantation, Sherry has had to rigorously prepare the land. Around 80 tons of lime has been dug into every hectare, 2500 of saplings have been inoculated with truffle spores, before being planted, and a rabbit-proof fence has been erected around the property.
“The fence also keeps out the roos and vandals,” says Sherry. And it’s pretty high-tech, too. Touch it and spotlights flash on and an alarm, linked to the local police station, sounds.
Even so, without Snuffles, who Sherry has rigorously trained, “I wouldn’t have a clue where the truffles were,” admits Shelly. Traditional French truffle hunters use pigs to locate the fungi, says Shelly, but “I value my fingers and wouldn’t like to get between a pig and its truffle,” she says.
Truffles are a quintessentially French delicacy, but Australian truffles are now in demand in France. They only ripen in winter, so during the Northern summer, the French import their truffles from Down Under.
French-born chef Guillaume Brahimi uses only Australian truffles in his Melbourne, Sydney and Perth restaurants. He says their quality is outstanding. When Guillaume took Australian truffles to France, the local chefs were “blown away with their quality”.
In spite of recent successes, the Australian Truffle Growers Association warns that a truffle plantation is not a get-rich-quick scheme. There are more than 200 truffle growers Down Under in a great southerly strip stretching from WA, SA, Tasmania, NSW and the ACT, but it costs about $30,000 per hectare to start a truffle plantation and that’s no small change.
Although the truffle industry is growing at 25 per cent a year, cultivating truffles also requires great patience and skill.
Sherry McCardle-English has succeeded where many have failed. And even Sherry has had her failures. Her hazelnut trees have failed to produce any truffles.
“I never imagined that at the age of 62, I would be regularly running across a paddock swinging off the end of a dog lead!” she says, momentarily unbalanced by a yank at the lead as Snuffles discovers yet another nugget of black gold.
Just up the road at Canberra’s Fyshwick Markets, truffles are for sale and so is the expertise needed to cook with them. At Three Seeds Cooking School, Andrew Haskins runs several truffle classes during his Winter Cooking School.
At his Truffle Master Class ($155/$125), Andrew demonstrates how to cook Truffled Scrambled Eggs, Chicken Breast Filled With Truffle Brie and Ling Fillet with Mushroom, Cream and Truffle Sauce plus Truffle Butter, as his pupils follow suit at their own cooking stations. He has the rare knack of making slaving away in a kitchen great fun and his classes are informative and easy to follow. The best part, however, is that each pupil gets to eat what they’ve cooked.
TOP SPOTS TO EAT IN CANBERRA
When in season, the following restaurants serve up glorious meals using truffles:
Italian And Sons. Canberra’s most popular Italian trattoria in Braddon that serves food as good as you’ll find anywhere in Sydney or Melbourne. Recommended truffle dish: Tagliatelle With Tartufi, Portobello And Slippery Jack Mushrooms.
Elk And Pea. Serves excellent and imaginative Mexican food and the best breakfasts in Canberra.
An exhibition at the Canberra Glassworks – works by Jock Puautjimi and Luna Ryan. Photo by Mike Dolan.
A glass tile made at one of Canberra Glassworks’ workshops. Photo by Mike Dolan.
Fred Stobagh considers himself tone-deaf, but a beautiful and heartbreaking love song he penned for his wife has turned him into an international recording sensation.
The 96-year-old US man met the love of his life, Lorraine, in 1938. He describes her as “the most gorgeous girl I ever saw”.
They would rarely leave each other’s side for the next 75 years until Lorraine passed away two months before their 74th wedding anniversary.
But now, the woman who Fred says “gave me 75 years of her life”, will never be forgotten, immortalised in a touching and heartbreaking love song that Fred has recorded in her memory.
The US man began humming a tune one night that he just couldn’t get out of his head, which developed into the song “Sweet Lorraine”.
He sent it into a singing/songwriting competition put on by label Green Shoe Studios, and was surprised to win, seeing the touching tribute to his wife recorded and already taking the internet by storm.
Fred sings that he wishes he and his wife “could do all the good times all over again” with his late wife in the single, available on iTunes.
Speaking of their relationship in a touching documentary released by Green Shoe Studios, Fred reminisces on their time together.
“That was a wonderful 75 years. I often think I was dreaming or something, but it was real,” he said.
“She was just the prettiest girl I ever saw,” he recalled of their first meeting.
Yet another beauty product that claims to delay the ageing process using antioxidants is hitting the shelves but this one has one key difference – you drink it instead of applying it.
Proponents of Fountain The Beauty Molecule claim it can for the first time be ingested in a concentrated form and this is the key to its effectiveness.
The main ingredient is the antioxidant resveratrol, which is also found in red wine, Japanese knotweed, red grapes and peanuts (all of which can also be taken orally, it should be noted!).
Scientists have been studying the effects of using resveratrol as a dietary supplement, with claimed anti-inflammatory and anti-ageing benefits.
Studies carried out on mice by geneticists at Harvard Medical School have shown consumption of resveratrol has given them “twice the endurance and relative immunity from effects of obesity and ageing” and could lead to improved treatments for memory less and melanoma in humans.
Research is focused on the specific sirtuin gene (SIRT1) that protects against disease.
Previous findings suggest resveratrol increases the activity of the SIRT1 gene.
“In the history of pharmaceuticals, there has never been a drug that binds to a protein to make it run faster in the way that resveratrol activates SIRT1,” geneticist David Sinclair said.
Unfortunately, the anti-ageing results of the product have only been seen in mice and not in humans so you mightn’t want to empty the shelves of the local pharmacy just yet.
A happy, fresh-faced and carefree Katie Holmes emerged on The Hampton scene last weekend, surprising a room full of celebrities with her non-stop dancing and overall party prowess.
The Mania Days star joined a host of A-listers for the Apollo In The Hamptons: A Night of Legends party at Apollo Theatre board member Ron Perelman’s estate.
The 34-year-old actress threw on a modest black dress and, for the first time in a while, left her daughter, Suri, 7, at home while she went out to play. And boy did she ever!
The star was seen letting her hair down as she danced along with Jamie Foxx to a line-up of star-studded performers, including Lenny Kravitz, Pharrell Williams, Jon Bon Jovi, Ciara, The Roots and Mary J. Blige.
For the modest sum of up to $125,000 per table you, too, could have been sitting with Katie Holmes, Ellen DeGeneres, Jamie Foxx, Russell Simmons, Mary-Kate Olsen or Calvin Klein.
Dispite paying such a hefty fee, People reported that Katie barely saw her table and only returned briefly to top up her drink – that’s when she wasn’t stealing sips from dance partner Jamie’s Foxx’s cocktail.
The famous girl-next-door made such an impression on the celeb crowd that when Jamie waved her up on stage the room broke into a chant of “Go Katie, go Katie!”
Def Jam’s Russel Simmons was later overheard telling Katie as he was leaving the event: “I never knew you were such a party girl!”
Simmons later tweeted that the event raised $3.3m to benefit the Apollo Theatre’s education, community and artistic programs.
Helen McCabe and Megan Gale with ovarian cancer survivors and guests in the magazine's high tea photoshoot.
Supermodel Megan Gale joined almost 200 Australian Women’s Weekly readers in kicking off the magazine’s 80th birthday celebrations and raising money for ovarian cancer research in the first event of The Weekly’s high tea tour.
Readers travelled from across the country on Tuesday to enjoy a classic high tea with sandwiches, pastries and cakes from The Weekly’s cookbooks and sip on tea in Sydney’s Centennial Parklands while being inspired by speakers including The Weekly’s Editor-in-Chief Helen McCabe, Megan Gale, and author Di Morrissey.
One group of readers had travelled from Queensland to attend the 80th birthday celebrations, some came with multiple generations of Weekly readers, and at one table high tea-goers tried to outdo each other by comparing how long they had been reading the magazine.
The winner claimed to have been enjoying the mag for close to 60 years.
But Kate Locking, a 29-year-old events co-ordinator stole the show with her incredible story of overcoming ovarian cancer at the age of 23, and going on to become a happy and healthy young mum after being told surgery and chemotherapy would cause her great difficulty in having children.
You can read more of Kate’s story in the September issue of The Weekly, where you will also find some amazing high tea recipes.
The Sydney event was the first in The Weekly’s nationwide high tea tour which celebrates 80 years of the magazine ahead of continued celebrations and the launch of the souvenir birthday issue in October.
The sold out high tea tour heads to Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide with proceeds supporting the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation.
With the release of the Diana movie imminent, tempers are flaring and nerves are fraying as the late Princess Diana’s ex-lover slams the movie and lead actress Naomi Watts awaits the royal family’s verdict.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, the 44-year-old actress revealed she almost didn’t accept the role.
“I turned it down twice,’ she said. “I was a little bit torn, but once I’d said no, I wasn’t completely at peace. Sometimes when you say no, you feel free, but it just wasn’t the case.
“The biggest reason that made me pause was how the princes were going to be feel about this,” she continued.
“There was something very intriguing about this woman’s life. It was extraordinary. She always lived a privileged life, but there was nothing ordinary about the construct she moved into. I liked the idea that there was this fame – no one at that level can really survive it – I think. It’s a very dark thing, but it’s kind of true.”
The turbulent movie explores Diana’s love affairs with British-Pakistani Dr Hasnat Khan and Egyptian billionaire Dodi Fayed before he and the princess were killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
Naomi is mindful that the release date of Diana comes so soon after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge welcomed their first son, Prince George, into the world.
“I do care deeply about how the princes feel, of course. I am a mum of two boys. But it was a story that was bound to be told at some point, and it’s possibly fresher than people expected,” she said.
Meanwhile, Princess Di’s ex-lover Hasnat Khan, who’s extensively depicted in the movie by actor Naveen Andrews, has slammed the movie’s credibility despite not having seen the film.
Khan claimed he saw enough from one still photograph of Naomi Watts and Naveen Andrews to know the movie wasn’t going to do justice to the truth.
“I could tell immediately those were never our mannerisms at all, with [my] hands folded behind the back and all that. You could tell from that picture that it is all just presumed about how we would behave with each other, and they have got it completely wrong,” he told UK’s The Mail.
“There wasn’t any hierarchy in our relationship. She wasn’t a Princess and I wasn’t a doctor. We were friends, and normal people stand like friends with each other. That one still picture told me a lot about how they will portray things in the film and I can see [it] is wrong.”
The 54-year-old surgeon said he never gave “tacit acceptance” to the filmmakers of Diana and will never watch the movie.
Khan, who was Diana’s partner of two-years, and who she dubbed “Mr Wonderful”, has been very quiet since Diana’s death, refusing to tell the story of the couple’s intimate relationship.
But Diana has now compelled him to break his silence – at least about the film.
“I don’t see this movie doing well at all,’ he said.
“It is based on gossip and Diana’s friends talking about a relationship that they didn’t know much about, and some of my relatives who didn’t know much about it either. It is all based on hypotheses and gossip.”
Officially, the film is based on Kate Snell’s 2001 book Diana: Her Last Love.
Related video: Naomi Watts Worried About the Royal Family’s Reaction to ‘Diana’.
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