For this year’s 10 best-dressed women, People magazine pulled out yearbook-style superlatives, choosing Kim Kardashian for “best bikinis, Nicole Richie for “best maternity” and Michelle Obama for “best accessible glamour.”

“We decided to shake it up,” said style editor Clarissa Cruz. “When you hear best dressed, you typically thinking glamorous red carpet. We wanted to open it up more.”

Leading the pack of 10, in the area of typical glamorous fashion, was Kate Winslet, chosen for Best Red Carpet.

“She had a big year,” said Cruz. “She was all over the award-show circuit. It’s hard to get it right every time, and she did.”

On the last episode of reality …

“Guiding Light,” a mainstay of CBS’ daytime schedule for decades, airs its final episode Friday.

Jon left Kate and his eight children and took up with the party girl Hailey. Audrina got a restraining order against an alleged stalker. NeNe got into an argument with Kim during a photo shoot. And Rachel was attacked — yet again — by one of the city tabloids.

With plot points like this, who needs soap operas?

Certainly not most of America. In the past decade, the audience for soap operas has dwindled, as has the number of what broadcasters call “daytime dramas.” Younger viewers, in particular, have gravitated toward reality shows, which feature the melodrama and outsized characters of soaps; it’s perhaps no coincidence that the co-creator of MTV’s “The Real World” and several other reality shows, Mary-Ellis Bunim, started as a soap writer and producer.

The latest soap victim, CBS’ “Guiding Light” — a show that began on NBC Radio in 1937 — will go quietly out Friday after 72 years on the air.

Fans lament the passing of the show, which has followed the Springfield clans of the Bauers, Spauldings, Coopers and Lewises for decades.

“I’ve been watching ‘Guiding Light’ for the past 20 years,” says Ashley Dos Santos, an account executive and pop culture expert with the Washington-based public relations firm Crosby-Volmer. “I think it’s really, really sad.”

Mary Travers, one third of the hugely popular 1960s US folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, has died after a battle with leukaemia aged 72.

A statement on the group’s website said the singer succumbed “to the side effects of one of the chemotherapy treatments” she was undergoing.

She had been suffering from leukaemia for several years.

Peter, Paul and Mary had hits including If I Had a Hammer, Lemon Tree and Puff, The Magic Dragon.

They became known for their mixture of liberal politics with folk music that won them a loyal following of fans and also five Grammy Awards.

Outspoken supporter

Bandmate Peter Yarrow said that in her last months, Travers handled her declining health “in the bravest, most generous way imaginable”.

He added that throughout her long career, Travers sang with honesty and complete authenticity.

“I believe that, in the most profound of ways, Mary was incapable of lying, as a person, and as an artist - that took great courage, and Mary was always equal to the task.”

The group released their debut album in 1962

Noel “Paul” Stookey, the trio’s other member, praised the singer for her inspiring activism, “especially in her defence of the defenceless.”

“I am deadened and heartsick beyond words to consider a life without Mary Travers and honoured beyond my wildest dreams to have shared her spirit and her career,” he said.

Travers was an outspoken supporter of the civil rights and anti-war movements.

The group travelled the world and frequently appeared at political rallies and demonstrations, including the March on Washington in 1963.

Travers kept up her activism after Peter, Paul and Mary broke up in the early 1970s. She performed as a solo artist before the trio later reunited for benefits and other concerts.

She underwent a successful bone marrow transplant to treat her leukaemia and told The Associated Press in 2006 she was “feeling fabulous”.

But by mid-2009, Yarrow told a Washington radio station that the singer’s condition had worsened again and thought she would no longer be able to perform.

Travers is survived by her husband, Ethan Robbins and daughters, Alicia and Erika.

Raymond Clark III was arrested Thursday and charged

Raymond J. Clark III, charged with murder in the death of Yale graduate student Annie Le, was smart, amiable and loved his dog, say those who knew him.

Raymond Clark III was arrested Thursday and charged with murder in the death of Annie Le.

One researcher said he often went by the lab in the Yale School of Medicine building where Le was found strangled and stuffed in a wall. Lufeng Zhang worked with Clark, he said, and thinks the police may have the wrong man.

“He’s a nice man, always,” he said.

Clark, 24, the same age as Le, was a technician in the school of medicine’s Animal Resources Center. While Le, who was pursuing a doctorate in pharmacology, conducted experiments on mice, Clark took care of the rodents and cleaned their cages.

Police will not say whether Clark and Le were acquainted or why they homed in on Clark after Le went missing September 8, less than a week before she was scheduled to marry a Columbia University graduate student who was her college sweetheart.

“They work in the same building, passed in the hallways,” New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said of Le and Clark. “Anything beyond that, I won’t talk about.”

Though details of the investigation are scant, police said they arrested Clark on Thursday and charged him with Le’s murder after collecting more than 250 pieces of evidence.

Clark was an honor student at Branford High School in suburban New Haven. He graduated in 2004, and according to the school’s yearbook, he was a member of the Asian Awareness Club his senior year.

Murder at Yale

The latest on the investigation into Annie Le’s slaying on HLN’s “Nancy Grace.”

High school friend Lisa Heselin remembers Clark “as a jokester, kind of a class clown,” she said. “Everybody knew him. Everybody liked him.”

She and others who knew Clark in high school are shocked that he was arrested in connection with Le’s murder, she said.

Indonesia’s most-wanted Islamist militant, Noordin Mohamed Top, has been killed during a raid in central Java, say police.

The man wanted for a series of deadly attacks across the archipelago was among four killed in a raid near Solo city, said the national police chief.

It is not the first time Indonesian officials have claimed Noordin is dead.

Indonesia’s president said the raid was a significant victory, but warned the militant threat was not yet over.

“We must continue to be vigilant and prepare for steps to tackle, optimally prevent and continue to hunt down terrorist leaders,” said Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

‘Thank God’

The BBC’s Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta says police are sure this time Noordin is dead because of fingerprint tests.

The raid was the culmination of a six-year manhunt

“Thank God on this holy month of Ramadan - it’s Noordin M Top,” police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told a nationally televised news conference to cheers, reports AFP news agency.

He added that alleged bomb-maker Bagus Budi Pranato, alias Urwah, was also among those killed.

A member of the national parliament’s security committee said he and other lawmakers had been allowed to inspect the bodies of the four militants.

“Today, God willing, the radical movement has been disabled. One of the biggest terrorist masterminds, Noordin M Top, has been shot,” said the MP, Sidarto, reports AFP.

“There were signs that pointed to it being Noordin M Top, such as a big mole on the left side of his nose,” he added.

Noordin, 41, is accused of leading a more hardline splinter faction of the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.

Police are reported to have closed in on the rented house late on Wednesday after arresting two suspects nearby.

Witnesses said they heard gunfire through the night and then an explosion early on Thursday.

‘Explosives’

A pregnant woman was among those arrested during the operation, said police.

Explosives and grenades were found in the house, Maj Gen Sukarna said.

The operation reportedly left behind a charred house with no roof and collapsed walls.

Malaysian-born Noordin was also reported to have been killed during a raid in central Java last month, but it later emerged he had slipped through the net again.

Noordin is not thought to have been behind the 2002 bombings on Bali, but was allegedly involved in the blasts on the holiday island in 2005.

He was also blamed for a 2003 attack on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people, and the 2004 Australian embassy bombing in the Indonesian capital.

A lull ended in July with twin suicide bomb attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta that killed nine people and injured scores of others.

On raids in Cilacap, central Java, in July, police said they found bomb-making material at an Islamic boarding school, and explosives buried in the garden of a house of Noordin’s father-in-law.

Noordin was said to have been a key financier for Jemaah Islamiah, but was thought to have set up his own more hard-line splinter group.

A display outside a Melbourne shop on Thursday shows rows of The Herald-Sun with its headline story.

An Australian man has been arrested for allegedly fathering four children with a daughter he repeatedly raped for more than 30 years, local media reported Thursday.

A display outside a Melbourne shop on Thursday shows rows of The Herald-Sun with its headline story.

The man, in his 60s, began the abuse in the 1970s when the daughter was 11 and continued almost daily until 2007, said the Herald Sun newspaper, which first reported the case.

The assaults resulted in four children, all with birth defects, the paper said. One later died.

Authorities in the southeastern state of Victoria would not confirm details of the case to CNN, citing an overarching court gag order that bars the release of any information that may identify the man.

A clerk with the Melbourne County Court would say only that the man was arrested on charges of rape and incest.

Lisa Neville, Victoria’s minister for community services, said her agency is investigating.

“As a parent, this is just a horrific and appalling story,” she said. “Court proceedings and a very broad suppression order make it impossible to go to the specifics of the story,” she said.

The case has created a stir in the country, with many comparing it to that of Josef Fritzl, the 73-year-old Austrian man who kept his daughter imprisoned in a basement for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

Local media outlets have also compared it to the recent case of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was kidnapped from South Lake Tahoe in California at age 11, kept a prisoner for 18 years, and bore two children with her captor.

The suspect in the Australia case denied raping his daughter, but was arrested after DNA tests revealed otherwise, the newspaper said.