Singer Van Morrison denies 'unfounded' baby story

Veteran singer Van Morrison has denied reports that he had become a father again, adding they were "completely and utterly without foundation".

The Belfast-born 64-year-old said he had been the victim of an internet hacking attack that had placed "falsehoods" on his official website.

BBC News was one of several outlets to report the hoax as fact.

"The comments which appeared on my website did not come from me," he said, in a statement issued to the media.

The singer said he had asked his management team to carry out an immediate investigation, adding it was the second time his website had been hacked in the last three months.

He went on to say, "for the avoidance of all doubt and in the interests of clarity", that he was "very happily married to Michelle Morrison, with whom I have two wonderful children".

'Alarm bells'

A statement posted on the singer's website on Tuesday said he had had a son named George Ivan Morrison III with a woman named Gigi Lee.

A friend of Morrison's has since told the BBC News website that the singer had never heard of Ms Lee.

"One of the things that triggered alarm bells was the language used in the 'statement'," said John Saunders.

"It was so unlike him to make an announcement like this."

Mr Saunders, founder of Dublin-based public relations company Fleishman-Hillard, said it was he who informed Morrison of the original reports.

"I hesitated before making contact, but my wife said you had better do something," he said.

Morrison, whose hits include Brown Eyed Girl and Moondance, celebrated his 40th year in the music industry in 2008.

He first found fame in the 1960s as a member of the band Them, before embarking on a solo career.

Amazon's Kindle has copyright protection hacked

An Israeli hacker claims to have broken the copyright protection on Amazon's Kindle e-reader, reports say.

The hack will allow the ebooks stored on the reader to be transferred as pdf files to any other device.
The hacker, known as Labba, responded to a challenge posted on Israeli hacking forum, hacking.org.
It is the latest in a series of Digital Rights Management hacks, the most famous being the reverse engineering of iTunes.
The Kindle e-book reader has been very successful since it was launched in the US in 2007.
Amazon hopes to have sold a million devices by the end of the year.
It leaves it to individual publishers whether they want to apply DRM but books in its main proprietary format .azw, cannot be transferred to other devices.
It did not immediately respond to the news but it is likely it will attempt to patch its DRM software.
DRM has long divided opinion. While rights holders regard it as a crucial tool to protect copyright, consumers tend to hate it because it limits what can be done with content.
"DRM is not an effective way of preventing copying nor is it a good way of making sales. There isn't a customer out there saying 'what I need is an electronic book that does less," novelist and co-editor of the Boing Boing blog Cory Doctorow told the BBC when the Kindle was launched.
As soon as a new DRM system is active, hackers begin to try and break it.
Most famously Jon Lech Johansen, known as DVD Jon, cracked the copy protection on DVDs in 1999.
He went on to break the copyright protection on iTunes, leading Apple to offer DRM-free music.
DVD Jon now runs a company with an application to take the pain out of moving different types of content between devices.