LeAnn Rimes has announced on her website that she and her husband are getting a divorce.

In a message to fans, the 26-year-old country singer wrote that she and Deane Sheremet had “agreed to move forward with dissolving our marriage”.

Rimes said the decision came after “much thoughtful mutual consideration”.

Rimes and dancer Sheremet married in 2002. Grammy-award winning Rimes is best known in the UK for singles How Do I Live and Can’t Fight the Moonlight.

Rimes said she and Sheremet “remain committed and caring friends with great admiration for one another”.

The message ends by thanking fans for their “continued love and support”, adding “it is deeply appreciated”.

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A judge Wednesday approved Katherine Jackson’s request that Michael Jackson’s estate get the bill for the cost of this week’s funeral for her son.

A private funeral for Michael Jackson, here in 2002, will be held Thursday in Glendale, California, his family says.

More than two months after his death, the pop singer will be interred in a private ceremony Thursday evening at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, the Jackson family said.

A short hearing was held Wednesday morning before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff to consider Katherine Jackson’s petition.

The special administrators of his estate — in control of the purse strings until the will is probated — did not object to the Jackson family’s request.

The cost of the burial is a secret — kept under court seal by Beckloff’s order — but it is believed to include paying Glendale police to handle traffic and security around the cemetery.

The ceremony, which will be closed to the public and news media, is set for 7 p.m. at the cemetery’s Holly Terrace in the Great Mausoleum, a family spokesman said.

On July 7, Jackson’s family and friends gathered at Forest Lawn’s Hollywood Hills cemetery for a short service just before a public tribute to the singer in downtown Los Angeles.

There has been widespread speculation about the whereabouts of Jackson’s body. It has remained a closely guarded secret.

The pop star’s siblings and parents have been divided over where to bury him, several family members have said.

Older brother Jermaine Jackson has said he wanted the singer to be buried at his former Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County, California, while others have objected.

The burial comes less than a week after the Los Angeles County coroner made public his conclusion that Jackson’s June 25 death was a homicide. The coroner ruled that the anesthetic drug propofol and the sedative lorazepam were the primary drugs responsible for the death.

Los Angeles police detectives have not concluded their criminal investigation into the singer’s death. No one has been charged.

The two U.S. journalists released from North Korea last month after five months in captivity said “the psychological wounds of imprisonment are slow to heal.”

Freed U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee said they spent less than a minute on North Korean soil.

In a column posted on the Los Angeles Times Web site Tuesday night, Laura Ling and Euna Lee also said they were seized by North Korean soldiers on Chinese soil. They raised suspicions about their guide and wondered if they had been “lured into a trap.”

“We didn’t spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but it is a minute we deeply regret,” they said.

Working for California-based Current TV, a media venture of Vice President Al Gore, the two journalists were arrested in March after stepping on North Korean soil. They were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor and eventually pardoned by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il after he met with President Clinton early in August.

Ling and Lee didn’t go into much more detail about their experience in captivity, saying there are “things that are still too painful to visit.”

But they provided information about the day of their arrest and reporting on North Korean defections to China and the human trafficking industry that supports them.

Accompanied by a guide, the pair said they had been at the “frozen” Tumen River on March 17 separating China and North Korea “to document a well-used trafficking route.”

“As the sun appeared over the horizon, our guide stepped onto the ice. We followed him,” they said, referring to a Korean-Chinese man they said has worked for foreign journalists. A producer, Mitch Koss, was also with them.

The border between China and North Korea was not clearly marked, and it had no fences or barbed wire, they said.

Greece’s PM Costas Karamanlis has called a snap general election, although no date has yet been set.

“I am seeking a fresh political mandate,” Mr Karamanlis said on TV.

There had been speculation that the conservative prime minister would go to the polls early given the wafer-thin majority he has in parliament.

The government has been hit by a number of financial scandals and recent destructive wildfires have also hit its popularity.

Resignation

Mr Karamanlis said in his address: “We have to clarify the political landscape and proceed with a series of essential measures to emerge from the downturn.

“The year 2010 will be a difficult and decisive one, and so the Greek people must choose a government that can lead the country out of this crisis,” he said.

There has been social unrest since police shot a teenager last December

Mr Karamanlis will meet President Karolos Papoulias on Thursday after which the date of the election is likely to be announced. It is expected to be 4 October.

The conservative New Democracy party trailed the Socialists by six points in two recent opinion polls and the snap election had been opposed by some conservative MPs.

The conservatives have 151 seats in the 300-member parliament.

A senior member of the party, Yiannis Manolis, resigned his seat on Monday, saying he was disappointed with the government’s performance.

His seat would have been taken by another conservative without the need for a new election.

The government has been hit by a series of corruption scandals.

Aristotle Pavlides, a former minister, was alleged to have solicited bribes in return for granting shipping contracts, although he denied any wrongdoing.

Last October two ministers resigned after it emerged that state land was given to a monastery on Mount Athos, in return for much less valuable land.

Previously, a labour minister quit after employing uninsured immigrants, and his predecessor was forced out amid a bond-trading scandal.

Greece has also been dogged by social unrest since police shot a teenager dead last December.

The death sparked the country’s worst riots in decades, leading to clashes between police and protesters in the weeks that followed.

Shortly before Mr Karamanlis announced the election on Wednesday, a bomb went off outside the Athens stock exchange, slightly injuring a female passer-by and damaging the building.

The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Athens says the blasts may be the work of the extremist group, Revolutionary Struggle.

Oil giant BP says it has made a “giant” new oil discovery in its fields in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP is currently the largest producer of oil and gas in that area, with net production equivalent to more than 400,000 barrels of oil a day.

The company said it drilled the well, dubbed Tiber, to a total depth of about 35,055ft (10,685m), making it one of the deepest wells drilled to date.

BP shares rose 3.8% to £5.38, making it the biggest gainer in the FTSE 100.

Potentially huge

Tiber represents BP’s second material discovery in the Lower Tertiary area of the Gulf of Mexico, after Kaskida.

BP said the discovery, amounting to more than three billion barrels, would “support the continuing growth of our deepwater Gulf of Mexico business into the second half of the next decade”.

The oil firm will now undertake surveys to determine the oil field’s size and commercial potential.

The industry-wide definition for a “giant” discovery is at least 250 million barrels of oil “in place”, or in other words, the likely total amount, BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams said.

But usually, only as much as 30% is extracted from the ground in practice, she said.

BP first started drilling in the Tiber well in March.

The oil firm controls 62% of the Tiber, along with 20% held by the Brazilian state-controlled company Petrobras and US firm ConocoPhillips with 18%.

It has nine projects in various stages of development in the Gulf of Mexico.