Former Page Three model Samantha Fox has been fined £1,000 and banned for 18 months after being caught driving home with more than three times the drink-drive limit. The 32-year-old was followed for more than three miles by a police car with flashing lights as she veered across the road and slowed to five mph at one point on a three-lane dual carriageway, Enfield magistrates court in north London was told. Fox was taken to Edmonton police station where test results showed a reading of 107 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes.

Rush is not in danger of breaking up. The band is just in a holding pattern. At least, that's the viewpoint of Alex Lifeson, guitarist for the venerable Canadian rock trio, which has no long or short-term plans beyond the Nov. 10 release of the triple-CD live set Different Stages. Lifeson and bassist-singer Geddy Lee are giving drummer-lyricist Neil Peart time to grieve the loss of his wife Jackie to cancer this year, following the death of their 19-year-old daughter in a car accident in 1997. "As far as the band is concerned, we're just waiting for Neil to really get better," Lifeson said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I got to think in my heart there are things about what we do that Neil really loves a lot and is not prepared to give up," Lifeson said. But the musician admitted he and Lee, both 45, have "spent hours and hours" talking about the tragic turn of events. They've decided there will be no Rush without Peart.

Considerable urban interest in the band Blondie, mainly stemming from their embracing of rap on their 1981 hit, "Rapture," has prompted Loud Records to release a 10-inch of the song "No Exit," from Blondie's upcoming album of the same name, due Feb. 9 on Beyond Records. The vinyl-only release, due in early December, will feature guest appearances by Coolio and possibly members of the Wu-Tang Clan, as well as several other Loud acts, according to a spokesperson for the band. The band will embark on an extensive U.S. tour in the spring of 1999. They are also currently filming a concert video in Europe which will be released by Hal Duce Productions/Big Events to coincide with the band's American tour.

Recently, a Bjork obsessive broke into her mother Hildur's home, according to the Swedish newspaper Expressen. (Bjork is living in Sweden now while she films the new movie, Dancer in the Dark.) The fan, a Spaniard who's been stalking her for four years, entered the house while Bjork's mother was away and generally made himself at home. He slept in Hildur's bed, ate her food, and left threatening messages for Bjork. When Hildur returned 24 hours later, the man refused to leave, saying it was his home. The police were called and the man taken away. "This is worse than the mail bomb," Bjork said in the article. "My mother would not have to meet strange men in her home just because of my job. In that case, it's better to quit as an artist." Bjork's mother had been receiving strange phone calls for a while, but never told Bjork out of fear of worrying her. "That the people I love are subjected to threats because of me is horrible!" Bjork said. "And the thought alone that someone could hurt my son makes me feel sick. I feel very guilty."

Some Skinny Puppy fans were in for a bit of a shock when they bought the band's new remix album, "Remix Dys Temper." Instead of the godless goth rock of the defunct industrial veterans, they heard songs by a very godly gospel group. Nettwerk's Kim Hardy confirmed reports that a screw up at the EMD pressing plant in Jacksonville resulted in 6,000 copies of the Puppy product being shipped with Puppy packaging intact including the label copy, but with a different band's music. The CD actually featured tracks from an album called "Worship Song" by a Christian duo with the moniker Weeding of the Lamb. Hardy added that the same problem once happened to Puppy's Nettwerk rostermate Sarah McLachlan when some fans buying copies of her ethereal "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" actually heard the decidedly non-ethereal Ozzy Osbourne.

America Online and AOL Live are proud to present Barbra Streisand in her first ever online appearance on Monday, November 2 at 9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT.

In a recent interview with Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen. "It's like we're bigger than record companies. When you see people at shows singing along, they're not singing [the label's] songs, they're singing our songs. We're bigger than we were 10 years ago, and 10 years ago we had a 'hit' ["The Flame," a No. 1 single] at the time. We were opening for Robert Plant then, and he kept on saying, 'You guys should be closing the show!' But no thanks! People come from all over to see us. It's amazing. And it's not like the Grateful Dead. You don't get free acid or joints at the door. It's not even for sale--that I know of!"

Kiss frontman Paul Stanley and the band's former guitarist Bruce Kulick are being sued for copyright infringement by a music publishing company that claims a song on the group's new album is too similar musically to Alice Cooper's song "Eighteen." Six Palms Music Corp., which filed the complaint, claims that the Kiss song "Dreamin'" from the band's "Psycho Circus" album is a bit too close to the Cooper nugget. The company, which published the Cooper hit, alleges that Stanley (who co-wrote the song with Kulick) must have heard Cooper's 1971 classic track several times as the two groups rose together in the theatrical rock genre. Six Palms is seeking an unspecified dollar amount in the case. A spokesperson for both Kiss and Mercury Records had no comment on the suit, but did say that as of press time, the record label had not been served.

The seminal rap group Run-DMC is now looking to return to the studios for a new album, thanks to a new deal with Arista Records, which has also acquired the rights to Profile's back catalogue. The group, which hasn't issued an album since 1993's "Down with the King," enjoyed a revival of sorts last year when DJ Jason Nevins worked up a series of remixes of Run-DMC's very first hit, "It's Like That," from 1983, a song which will appear on Arista's upcoming "Ultimate Dance Party 1999" compilation. Run says that "quite a bit" of the new album is already completed, and that the rap group hopes to have the album out in the next five months. Run also indicated that they were in discussions with Will Smith's production company to make a movie that he described as "something like a 'Krush Groove 2,'" a sequel to the 1985 hip-hop film that featured L.L. Cool J, Kurtis Blow, New Edition and Sheila E.

Former Stone Roses singer Ian Brown has been sentenced to four months in jail for threatening a British Airways airline pilot and stewardess on a flight from Paris to Manchester last February. According to British press reports, the stewardess had been serving duty free goods when she mistakenly thought Brown had waved her over. She then realized he was actually just putting something in his pocket. She apologized with another wave, at which point Brown complained and threatened to cut off her hands for waving at him. She testified that he kept up the abuse by pointing his finger and using a menacing tone. The captain intervened and Brown repeated the threat. An argument ensued, and after the pilot returned to the cabin to land the plane, Brown got up and spent 20 to 30 seconds pounding on the door as the plane approached the Manchester airport. The pilot radioed ahead and arranged to have Brown arrested after the plane landed. Brown, 35, fronted the Stone Roses, one of the most popular groups in the country, from their late '80s inception to their demise in 1996, which followed a steady exodus of band members including mainstay John Squire who left to form the Seahorses.

The television presenter Paula Yates has lost the custody battle with her former husband, Bob Geldof, for their three children. The former Boomtown Rats singer and Live Aid hero won the right to have the children with him for most of the year after a three-day hearing at the Family Division of the High Court, in London. Fifi Trixibelle, 15, Peaches Honeyblossom, nine, and Pixie, eight, will live with the 45-year-old during term time. Miss Yates, 38, is also facing a possible custody battle over the future of Tiger Lily, her two-year-old daughter by rock star Michael Hutchence. The INXS singer left Miss Yates devastated after he committed suicide in a hotel room in Sydney last year. The child's grandfather Kell Hutchence has launched proceedings in Australia seeking sole custody of the couple's child after concerns over a new relationship Miss Yates began while being treated at a clinic for a nervous breakdown earlier this year.