London  - Seriously ill British train robber Ronnie Biggs is seeking parole ahead of his 80th birthday, according to media reports quoting his son Sunday.

His request is to be decided at a parole board meeting on Thursday, the reports said.

"We are hopeful that he will be freed but we're trying not to count on the egg before it leaves the chicken," Biggs' son Michael was quoted by the BBC as saying. He gave July 3 as the planned release date.

London, Apr 19 : Women dominate men with their sex appeal - this is the message that comes from the new Agent Provocateur ad.

A gang of girls dressed in lingerie and swimwear, and led by supermodel Karen Elson are shown using men as slaves in the steamy forest scene in the raunchy ad.

With the new ad, the Agent Provocateur bosses hopes to defy the credit crunch with a boost in sales.

London, Apr 19 : Rare artwork for Harry Potter books is to be auctioned at the Glasgow Art Fair.

Sketches by the acclaimed artist Cliff Wright, who illustrated the book Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, are to go under the hammer later this month.

The drawings are the instantly recognisable forerunners of the images, which appeared on the front and back covers of the second novel of JK Rowling''s series.

The front illustration, which features the bespectacled wizard and his classmate Hermione Granger clinging to the back of hippogriff, is expected to fetch 13,000 pounds.

London, April 19 : Sir Paul McCartney used his appearance at California's Coachella music festival on April 17 to pay tribute to his late wife Linda - who died of breast cancer in 1998 on the same day.

In an emotional performance, the ex-Beatle dedicated The Long and Winding Road and My Love to Linda.

He played a two-and-a-half hour set for 75,000 fans on the first night of one of the biggest festivals in the US.

Macca said that initially he was reluctant to perform on the death anniversary of his late wife but eventually agreed.

London, Apr 19 : Danielle Bux's mother has been arrested for shoplifting from a B&Q store.

Dopey Kim Lewis, mother of the Hell''s Kitchen star and fiancée of football legend Gary Lineker, along with her friend stuck her own homemade price labels on a trolley-full of items to pretend their prices had been slashed at the store.

However, cashiers immediately caught the theft.

"We still can't figure out how on Earth they thought they'd get away with it. As attempts to steal go, it was hopelessly amateurish and clumsy. There's DIY and there's DIY," the Mirror quoted a worker at the DIY store as saying.

However, things got worse for Lewis as she was caught possessing drugs by the police.

London, Apr 19 : Amid recent rumors that Madonna had turned to toyboy Jesus Luz for comfort following her failed adoption bid, fresh reports have emerged claiming that the two are no longer an item.

And the person to be blamed for the split is a Jewish millionaire businessman Abraham Moses Schimmel.

Apparently, the 50-year-old singer enjoyed a string of secret dates in London last week with Moses.