Danny Puff

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Singer Bobby Brown, the ex-husband of the late Whitney Houston, was sentenced to 55 days in jail on Tuesday after admitting to driving drunk last year.

Brown pleaded no contest, an admission of guilt under California law, to driving under the influence and driving on a suspended license in October in a Los Angeles suburb.

Police said they stopped Brown after seeing him driving erratically, and that he failed a field sobriety test. It was his second arrest for drunken driving in 2012.

Brown did not appear in court on Tuesday and his plea was entered by his attorney. He must report to jail on March 20

The New Edition singer was also sentenced to four years probation, ordered to install an ignition interlock device and to attend an alcohol counseling program.

Brown and Houston divorced in 2007 after 15 years of what Houston later described as a drug- and alcohol-fueled marriage. Houston drowned accidentally in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub on February 11, 2012, from the effects of heart disease and cocaine.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iranian state media has run altered images of first lady Michelle Obama's Oscars appearance, making her gown look less revealing.

The first lady wore a sleeveless, scoop neck gown. The semi-official Fars news agency ran an altered photo that covered her shoulders and neckline with added material. State TV showed images that blurred the parts of her body that were exposed.

Under Iran's Islamic dress code, women are required to cover their bodies in public. Films showing foreign women without a headscarf are considered acceptable, but revealing clothes are forbidden.

For the Oscars ceremony, Michelle Obama at the White House joined Jack Nicholson via video link to help present the best picture prize for "Argo," a film based on the escape of six American hostages from the besieged U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Fars said the first lady's announcement suggested that the film was made with U.S. government support. Iranian officials have dismissed "Argo" as a CIA commercial.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Lindsay Lohan's attorney has suggested to prosecutors that the actress serve as a motivational speaker and perform non-jail activities to resolve her latest criminal case, according to a letter obtained Tuesday.

The letter from lawyer Mark Heller proposed several alternatives for Lohan, who could be sent to jail if a judge determines her actions in a traffic crash violated terms of her probation in a previous theft case.

His letter states that Lohan's turbulent home life has deeply impacted her and requires a different approach in the case.

The actress plans to spend time recording public service announcements and make "periodic visits to schools, hospitals, and other venues where she may provide inspirational talks, encouraging children to pursue positive goals and avoid bad habits," states the letter filed on Friday and released by the court Tuesday.

Heller also proposed the establishment of a nonprofit foundation in Lohan's name to benefit young people.

The actress "has made a commitment to herself to elevate her life and participate in activities which will advance her desire to lead a model life," Heller wrote in a motion seeking a delay in the case that returns to court on Friday. Trial is now set for March 18.

Lohan is charged with three misdemeanor charges of reckless driving, lying to police and obstructing officers from performing their duties. She has pleaded not guilty.

The actress could face 245 days in jail if she is found to be in violation of her probation.

The star of "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday" was sentenced to psychotherapy in November of 2011 in cases involving theft and drunken driving charges, but she has not been required to attend counseling since being placed on informal probation in March 2012.

Those terms were imposed by Judge Stephanie Sautner, who is retiring and will no longer handle Lohan's case.

The crash that prompted the current charges occurred in June on Pacific Coast Highway while Lohan was on the way to a movie shoot.

Terry White, chief deputy city attorney in Santa Monica, declined comment on the letter. He said discussions about a possible resolution are scheduled to take place this week.

Lohan, 26, was on her way to a beach shoot with another person for the TV movie "Liz and Dick" when her car crashed into the back of a dump truck. Police allege she lied about being behind the wheel.

Heller is also seeking dismissal of the charges against Lohan, arguing that police ignored her when she said she didn't want to be interviewed without her attorney present.

Lohan was at the hospital at the time, not in custody, and showed no signs of impairment when officers gave her a field sobriety test, the lawyer said.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Australian mining entrepreneur Clive Palmer on Tuesday unveiled blueprints for Titanic II, a modern replica of the doomed ocean liner, although he stopped short of calling the vessel unsinkable.

The ship will largely recreate the design and decor of the fabled original, with some modifications to keep it in line with current safety rules and shipbuilding practices, and the addition of some modern comforts such as air conditioning, Palmer said at a press conference in New York.

The three passenger classes, however, will be prevented from mingling, as in 1912, Palmer said.

"I'm not too superstitious," Palmer said when asked whether recreating a ship best known for sinking was tempting fate.

White Star Line, the operator of the original ship, had said the Titanic was designed to be unsinkable. Some 1,500 people died on Titanic's maiden voyage in 1912 from Southampton to New York after the ship collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Palmer, who created the company Blue Star Line last year, declined to make a similar boast.

"Anything will sink if you put a hole in it," Palmer said. "I think it would be very cavalier to say it."

Unlike the original, Titanic II will have more than enough space in its lifeboats for every person on board and will have additional escape staircases. Markku Kanerva, sales director at Deltamarin, the Finnish company designing the ship, said it would be the "safest cruise ship in the world."

Palmer declined to answer questions about the project's cost. Although the Titanic was the world's largest ship in her time, she would be smaller than many of today's modern cruise ships.

"It's not about the money," Palmer said. "I've got enough money for it, I think that's all that matters."

Forbes estimated Palmer's net worth to be $795 million (525.5 million pounds) in 2012. He describes himself as a billionaire.

Titanic II will be built by Chinese state-owned CSC Jinling Shipyard, which is already building four ore carriers for Palmer's mining business, he said. The contract to build Titanic II has not yet been signed, Palmer said.

"Oh, probably next week, something like that," Palmer said, when asked when that would happen. "Most things I say I'll do I do."

He hoped construction would begin later this year, and that the maiden voyage, recreating the trans-Atlantic crossing of the original, would take place in 2016, he said.

"But if it takes longer, it takes longer," he said. "But we'll do it. We've got a big pile of money."

Jaime Katz, an analyst who tracks the cruise industry, said Titanic II may find it difficult to compete with established cruise lines, particularly the economies of scale of their larger fleets. She said the Titanic II could be marketed to wealthier passengers and could draw repeat business by varying its routes rather than focusing on trans-Atlantic crossings.

"People are going to be really cautious or superstitious regarding getting on a second version of the Titanic, or it could be a really compelling idea for history buffs who really want to live the story or the legend behind it," Katz said.

"There's an audience for all sorts of cruises," she said.

Titanic II will operate as a cruise ship, and passengers will find 1912-style clothing in their rooms should they wish to dress up and pretend they are living in an earlier era as they visit facsimiles of the original gilded first-class dining and smoking rooms, if they have the appropriate ticket.

Although the classes will be kept largely separate, Palmer said he was considering offering ticket packages that would allow passengers to experience all three classes during a typical six-day Atlantic crossing.

Prices for the tickets will be announced later.

Helen Benziger, a descendant of Titanic survivor Margaret Brown, better known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown, said at the press conference that the ship would be a chance to experience the sort of grace and civility she said was sometimes lacking in the modern world.

"I think it's a chance to go back in time," said Benziger, who has joined the project's advisory board.

Palmer said he plans to travel in third class on Titanic II's maiden voyage.

"I'll be looking forward to it as you bang the drum and play the fiddle, twirling around like Leonardo does," he said, meaning actor Leonardo DiCaprio, in one of the repeated references he made to the 1997 James Cameron film Titanic.'

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Phil Berlowitz)

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SEATTLE (Reuters) - A top Microsoft Corp executive side-stepped questions on Tuesday about any plans the software maker may have to bring its Office suite of applications to Apple Inc's iPad.

Talk has circulated for more than a year that Microsoft wants to bring native versions of its most profitable product to the hot-selling iPad, which one analyst estimates could generate $2.5 billion in extra revenue for Microsoft per year, but would remove an incentive to buying Windows-based tablets.

"We don't take it from the point of view, 'Do we need to have the PC software that's running on every single device?', we look very much at 'What is the experience that we are looking to have on those devices'," said Kurt DelBene, head of Microsoft's Office unit, asked about Office on the iPad at the Morgan Stanley technology investor conference in San Francisco, which was Webcast.

DelBene, who took over leadership of Office from Stephen Elop who left to lead phone maker Nokia in 2010, did not directly address putting native versions of Office applications on the iPad, a subject Microsoft has steered clear of in public.

Asked specifically about the availability of Office on Apple's iOS mobile system - which powers iPads and iPhones - DelBene instead stressed online versions of Office apps, which can be accessed via a browser but do not offer the full richness of installed software or an app.

"We've actually done a lot of work on iOS devices this time around," said DelBene. "We have enhanced the web applications pretty substantially, in partnership with Apple."

Microsoft does offer native iOS versions of some Office applications, including its OneNote note-sharing software, Lync communication suite and SharePoint collaboration site, as well as its SkyDrive online storage service.

But the more than 100 million iPad owners, many of whom want to bring their devices to work, have to use the limited online versions of desktop staples Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Holt estimated earlier this month that Microsoft could generate $2.5 billion in extra annual revenue from Office on iPad by next year, less the commission Apple would take on sales of Office through its App Store.

But the risk for Microsoft is that putting Office on the iPad takes away one of the key advantages of its own Surface and other Windows tablets, that already run Office natively.

Removing incentives to buy Windows tablets would be a blow to Microsoft's flagship Windows unit, which although less profitable than Office, is still key to the company's overall strategy.

Asked by one investor at the conference when he would be able to use Excel on his iPad, DelBene instead pointed the questioner toward Microsoft's own Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets and urged him to use Web-based versions of Office apps.

"I think we've done a great job on both the consumer side, particularly with the Web apps that we are building, and on the enterprise side as well," said DelBene.

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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LONDON (Reuters) - David Bowie's first album of new music in a decade sees the influential musician back to his best, critics said in reviews rushed out on Tuesday, two weeks before its release.

"The Next Day", which hits stores in Britain on March 11 and a day later in the United States, could even be the "greatest comeback in rock'n'roll history", according to The Independent's Andy Gill.

As well as a series of glowing reviews, this week also saw the launch of the second single from the 14-track album called "The Stars (Are out Tonight)", accompanied by a surreal video starring the Starman himself and Tilda Swinton as his wife.

In it the middle-aged couple's daily routine is upset by the arrival of a group of mysterious, androgynous celebrities next door who enter their dreams and reawaken old desires and fears.

"They burn you with their radiant smiles/Trap you with their beautiful eyes" read the lyrics on Bowie's official website.

As befits an "event" album with so much hype surrounding it, several newspapers gave The Next Day a track-by-track analysis.

"David Bowie's The Next Day may be the greatest comeback album ever," said Gill in his five-star assessment.

"It's certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist's own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality," he added.

Neil McCormick of the Telegraph also gave the record top marks, calling it "an ... emotionally charged, musically jagged, electric bolt through his own mythos and the mixed-up, celebrity-obsessed, war-torn world of the 21st century."

BOWIE MANIA

Even in an age when veteran musical comebacks are a daily occurrence, the fascination with Bowie appears to be huge.

Music magazine NME is dedicating a six-page cover feature to the singer, while the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is staging a major exhibition looking at his music, art and groundbreaking fashion.

More than 26,000 tickets have already been sold to the show, which opens on March 23.

Alexis Petridis, writing in the Guardian, argued that, while containing references to Bowie's past work, it largely avoided becoming a sonic memoir of a stellar musical career.

And he said that the secrecy surrounding the making of the album, and genuine media surprise when it was announced on Bowie's 66th birthday last month, risked overshadowing the quality of the music itself.

"That doesn't seem a fair fate for an album that's thought-provoking, strange and filled with great songs," he said. "Listening to it makes you hope it's not a one-off, that his return continues apace."

Songs singled out by critics included "Valentine's Day", couched, according to Gill, "in one of the album's most engaging pop arrangements", and "Dancing Out In Space", described by Will Hodgkinson of The Times as a "nightclub smash".

"You Feel So Lonely You Could Die", the penultimate track, provides the climax which McCormick calls "fantastic, a lush companion piece to Ziggy's Rock'n'roll Suicide that drips vitriol in place of compassion."

Now that the album is complete, the question on many fans' lips is whether Bowie will return to the stage to perform live.

The singer himself has dodged the limelight altogether since the comeback, but guitarist Gerry Leonard told Rolling Stone magazine that he thought it was "50-50" that Bowie would tour.

The glam-rock star, born David Jones in south London in 1947, shot to fame with "Space Oddity" in 1969, and later with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, before establishing himself as a chart-topping force in the early 1980s.

His long absence from the music scene led to speculation he had retired, with British newspapers reporting as recently as October that he had disappeared from the limelight for good.

Bowie's last album of new material was "Reality", released a decade ago, and he underwent emergency heart surgery while on tour in 2004. His last stage performance was as a guest at a charity concert in New York in 2006.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) The TV series "Duck Dynasty" is coming between Morrissey and Jimmy Kimmel.

The singer and animal rights activist says he canceled his appearance Tuesday on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" because "Duck Dynasty" cast members will be on the talk show.

Morrissey says he can't perform on a show with what he called people who "amount to animal serial killers."

A&E's "Duck Dynasty" reality show follows a Louisiana family with a business selling duck calls and decoys.

A&E did not immediately respond to requests for comment from it and the Robertson family.

A person familiar with the Kimmel show's plans confirmed that Morrissey was to appear. The person lacked authority to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The person says Morrissey's performance will be rescheduled.

ABC says the Churchill band will perform Tuesday on Kimmel's show but declined comment on the switch.

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Reach AP Television Writer Lynn Elber at http://www.twitter.com/lynnelber .

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PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) Flamboyant former NBA star Dennis Rodman is heading to North Korea with the VICE media company tattoos, piercings, bad-boy reputation and all.

The American known as "The Worm" is set to arrive Tuesday in Pyongyang, becoming an unlikely ambassador for sports diplomacy at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea.

Rodman, three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, a VICE correspondent and a production crew from the company are visiting North Korea to shoot footage for a new TV show set to air on HBO in early April, VICE told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before the group's departure from Beijing.

It's the second high-profile American visit this year to North Korea, a country that remains in a state of war with the U.S. It also comes two weeks after North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in defiance of U.N. bans against atomic and missile activity.

Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, made a surprise four-day trip to Pyongyang, where he met with officials and toured computer labs in January, just weeks after North Korea launched a satellite into space on the back of a long-range rocket.

Washington, Tokyo, Seoul and others consider both the rocket launch and the nuclear test provocative acts that threaten regional security.

North Korea characterizes the satellite launch as a peaceful bid to explore space, but says the nuclear test was meant as a deliberate warning to Washington. Pyongyang says it needs to build nuclear weapons to defend itself against the U.S., and is believed to be trying to build an atomic bomb small enough to mount on a missile capable of reaching the mainland U.S.

VICE said the Americans hope to engage in a little "basketball diplomacy" in North Korea by running a basketball camp for children and playing pickup games with locals and by competing alongside North Korea's top athletes for a game Rodman said he hopes leader Kim Jong Un will attend.

"Is sending the Harlem Globetrotters and Dennis Rodman to the DPRK strange? In a word, yes," said Shane Smith, the VICE founder who is host of the upcoming series. "But finding common ground on the basketball court is a beautiful thing.

"These channels of cultural communication might appear untraditional, and perhaps they are, but we think it's important just to keep the lines open," he said. "And if Washington isn't going to send their Generals then we'll send our Globetrotters."

The Washington Generals were the Globetrotters' regular, long-suffering opponents in a long-running series of comic exhibition games. DPRK is an acronym of North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

VICE, known for its sometimes irreverent journalism, has made two previous visits to North Korea, coming out with the "VICE Guide to North Korea." The HBO series, which will air weekly starting April 5, features documentary-style news reports from around the world.

The Americans also will visit North Korea's national monuments, the SEK animation studio and a new skate park in Pyongyang.

The U.S. State Department hasn't been contacted about travel to North Korea by this group, a senior administration official said, requesting anonymity to comment before any trip had been made public. The official said the department does not vet U.S. citizens' private travel to North Korea and urges US citizens contemplating travel there to review a travel warning on its website.

In a now-defunct U.S.-North Korean agreement in which Washington had planned last year to give food aid to Pyongyang in exchange for nuclear concessions, Washington had said it was prepared to increase people-to-people exchanges with the North, including in the areas of culture, education and sports.

Promoting technology and sports are two major policy priorities of Kim Jong Un, who took power in December 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.

But the often over-the-top Rodman, with his maze of tattoos, nose studs and neon-bleached hair, seems like an unlikely diplomat to a country where male fashion rarely ventures beyond military khaki and growing facial hair is forbidden.

During his heyday in the 1990s, Rodman was a poster boy for excess. He called his 1996 autobiography "Bad as I Wanna Be" and showed up wearing a wedding dress to promote it.

Shown a photo of a snarling Rodman, piercings dangling from his lower lip and two massive tattoos emblazoned on his chest, one North Korean in Pyongyang recoiled and said: "He looks like a monster!"

But Rodman is also a Hall of Fame basketball player and one of the best defenders and rebounders to ever play the game. During a storied, often controversial career, he won five NBA championships a feat that quickly overshadowed his antics for at least one small North Korean group of basketball fans.

Along with soccer, basketball is enormously popular in North Korea, where it's not uncommon to see basketball hoops set up in hotel parking lots or in schoolyards. It's a game that doesn't require much equipment or upkeep.

The U.S. remains Enemy No. 1 in North Korea, and North Koreans have limited exposure to American pop culture. But they know Michael Jordan, a former teammate of Rodman's when they both played for the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s.

During a historic visit to North Korea in 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented Kim Jong Il, famously an NBA fan, with a basketball signed by Jordan that later went on display in the huge cave at Mount Myohyang that holds gifts to the leaders.

North Korea even had its own Jordan wannabe: Ri Myong Hun, a 7-foot-9 star player who is said to have renamed himself "Michael" after his favorite player and moved to Canada for a few years in the 1990s in hopes of making it into the NBA.

Even today, Jordan remains well-loved here. At the Mansudae Art Studio, which produces the country's top art, a portrait of Jordan spotted last week, complete with a replica of his signature and "NBA" painted in one corner, seemed an odd inclusion among the propaganda posters and celadon vases on display.

An informal poll of North Koreans revealed that "The Worm" isn't quite as much a household name in Pyongyang.

But Kim Jong Un, also said to be a basketball fanatic, would have been an adolescent when Rodman, now 51, was with the Bulls, and when the Harlem Globetrotters, an exhibition basketball team, kept up a frenetic travel schedule worldwide.

In a memoir about his decade serving as Kim Jong Il's personal sushi chef, a man who goes by the pen name Kenji Fujimoto recalled that basketball was the young Kim Jong Un's biggest passion, and that the Chicago Bulls were his favorite.

The notoriously unpredictable and irrepressible Rodman said he has no special antics up his sleeve for making his mark on one of the world's most regimented and militarized societies, a place where order and conformity are enforced with Stalinist fervor.

But he said he isn't leaving any of his piercings behind.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington contributed to this report from Washington. Follow AP's bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

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(Reuters) - Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, whose anti-smoking campaign and outspoken, controversial positions on abortion, AIDS and drugs, elevated the obscure post to one of national influence, died at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on Monday. He was 96 years old.

Koop, a pediatric surgeon, served as the leading U.S. spokesman on public health matters and adviser to President Ronald Reagan from November 1981 until October 1989. His death was announced by Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine, where he founded the C. Everett Koop Institute.

"Dr. Koop was not only a pioneering pediatric surgeon but also one of the most courageous and passionate public health advocates of the past century," said Dr. Wiley W. Souba, dean of the Geisel School.

The gray-bearded Koop, known for his bow ties and suspenders, became one of most recognizable figures in the Reagan administration.

He took stern and sometimes controversial stands on abortion, AIDS, fatty foods, drugs and cigarettes, and moved through the halls of power convinced that he knew what was best for the nation's health.

Koop enraged the powerful tobacco industry and lawmakers grateful for the industry's generous campaign funds with his insistence that smoking kills and should be banned.

Then, in the midst of a heated national debate about how best to halt the spread of AIDS, Koop blocked the Reagan administration's plans for extensive testing. To the applause of gay rights groups, Koop said the disclosure of the test results, intentional or otherwise, could ruin the careers of those tested.

He spearheaded the drive to make education about AIDS the primary means of preventing the disease, writing a brochure about AIDS that was distributed to millions of American households. Attired in the authoritative white military dress uniform of the Public Health Service and its 7,000-member medical corps he disclosed to the public the glum, often indelicate, details of the disease and how to avoid it.

He urged men to use condoms - if they were unable to abstain from sex - to prevent the spread of AIDS, which is transmitted through semen or blood.

At the time, conservative activist and Koop critic Phyllis Schlafly blasted Koop and his attempts at educating the public as "teaching of safe sodomy in public schools." She demanded, unsuccessfully, that Koop stop preaching about safe sex.

At his confirmation hearings before the Senate, he was blasted by one feminist leader as "a monster" for his deeply held position against abortion.

"He saved countless lives through his leadership in confronting the public health crisis that came to be known as AIDS and standing up to powerful special interests like the tobacco companies," U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said on Monday.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 14, 1916, Koop was badly injured as a child in a skiing accident and in playing football, which led him to an interest in medicine.

At 16, he entered Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and later graduated from Cornell Medical School.

Koop was preceded in death by his first wife, Elizabeth, and by their son David, according to Dartmouth.

He is survived by their children Allen Koop, the Rev. Norman Koop and Elizabeth Thompson, as well as by his wife, Cora, whom he married in 2010. He is also survived by eight grandchildren, according to Dartmouth.

(Reporting by Paul Thomasch and Corrie MacLaggan; editing by Christopher Wilson and Jackie Frank)

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NEW YORK (AP) Janet Jackson knows how to keep a secret: The singer has been married since last year.

A representative for Jackson confirmed Monday that the musician and Wissam Al Mana wed last year.

This is Jackson's second secret marriage. She secretly married Rene Elizondo Jr. in 1991. They separated in 1999.

The 46-year-old Jackson first tied the knot when she was 18 to singer James DeBarge, which lasted three months in 1984.

In a joint statement to Entertainment Tonight, Jackson and Al Mana said their wedding was a "quiet, private and beautiful ceremony."

The couple also said they would like privacy and "are allowed this time for celebration and joy."

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