The man who made Dietrich sparkle Genius, bully, Svengali… film director Josef von Sternberg dominated Hollywood’s Golden Age.     

 Rush Limbaugh Hires an Unlikely Wedding Singer Photo: Getty ImagesElton John and Rush Limbaugh appearing in the same news item is strange enough, but learning that John performed at Limbaugh's Palm Beach wedding Saturday night is downright baffling. According to a News Corporation report, John was paid a cool $1 million for fulfilling his wedding-singer duties for the outspoken anti-gay radio commentator. We’re assuming he didn’t stick around to talk politics after his gig was up.   

 Flying has become a nightmare thanks to the CIA, not al-Qaeda The world's largest intelligence agency is always one step behind. By Con Coughlin
Published:08 Jan 2010Comments 43 | Comment on this article Closing the stable door: body scanners are the latest tit-for-tat security measure against terrorists Photo: Phil Noble  For the millions of Britons who will soon be obliged to submit to the indignity of full body scans every time they take a flight, the overwhelming temptation will be to curse the al-Qaeda masterminds responsible for the increased disruption to our normal travel routines.If it weren't for the terrorists' obsession with targeting transatlantic aircraft, the public would not be subjected to these tiresome, and increasingly intrusive, checks on their persons and belongings before boarding a flight. The last vestiges of glamour were removed from air travel after al-Qaeda operatives hijacked a number of American aircraft on September 11. Since then, they have proved to be an extremely convenient means of attacking the West, in increasingly ingenious fashion. There was Richard Reid, who made a failed attempt to detonate his shoes on an American Airlines flight in December 2001, which resulted in passengers being required to remove their belts and footwear at security. Then there were the severe restrictions imposed on bringing fluids on board after the failed 2006 Heathrow bomb plot, in which Islamist terrorists tried to smuggle liquid explosives on to 10 transatlantic flights, which would have killed an estimated 3,000 people.Our enemies' latest brainwave again involved flights into the US, with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempting to detonate explosives sewn into his underpants. The authorities have responded by promising to introduce body scanners, the electronic equivalent of conducting a strip search on every passenger boarding a flight out of the UK.Yet the fundamental problem facing those charged with protecting the world's air traffic is that no sooner have they devised a new security system to counter the latest al-Qaeda tactic, then the terrorists come up with yet another ploy. In Saudi Arabia last September, a suicide bomber went one better than Abdulmutallab and concealed an explosive device in his anal cavity. One shudders to think how British security officials would respond after a similar attempt here.Security checks at airports undoubtedly serve their purpose in protecting flights from terrorist attacks, but they have their limits. By far the best way to prevent al-Qaeda from achieving its objectives is to have good intelligence, as was the case in the 2006 Heathrow plot. And the main reason the world's transport network has again been plunged into chaos is that Abdulmutallab's attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight as it prepared to land at Detroit on Christmas Day was as much a failure of intelligence as a mark of al-Qaeda's resourcefulness.America's intelligence agencies, in particular, failed miserably to process the wealth of information they had on the Abdulmutallab plot, and must share much of the blame for the extreme discomfort passengers will now…