Emmy award-winning actor James Spader has been confirmed as the villain Ultron in the Avengers movie sequel.

Avengers: Age of Ultron pitches the Marvel Comics superhero team against a rebellious artificial intelligence which creates an android to attack them.

Set for release in 2015, it sees the return of Joss Whedon as director, with Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo reprising their roles as Iron Man and The Hulk.

Spader, arguably best known for his role as attorney Alan Shore in the shows Boston Legal and The Practice, first come to prominence in the 80s in ‘brat pack’ films Pretty In Pink, Less Than Zero, and shop-dummy-comes-to-life comedy Mannequin.

The fastest time to dress a female mannequin is 28.57 seconds and was achieved by Nuran Ozdemir (Turkey) at the GWR Live! Roadshow at Forum Trabzon, in Trabzon, Turkey, on 04 June 2010.

To the world of hip-hop, where fans of the late rapper Notorious BIG, (pictured above), are campaigning to have a street in Brooklyn named after him.

The petition, which has a target of 500 signatures and can be viewed at www.Change.org, calls for the rapper’s childhood street corner of St James Place & Fulton Street renamed as Christopher Wallace Way.

First charting a month after the rapper was murdered in March 1997, Life After Death by The Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, has sold over 10 million copies in the USA alone, setting a record for the best-selling album of gangsta rap.

Finally, we end on a sad note, with the news that Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet and playwright, Seamus Heaney has died.

Acclaimed by many as the best Irish poet since WB Yeats, the 74-year-old was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".

Heaney, along with Booker Prize winning writer Roddy Doyle, took part in a successful record attempt in June last year for most authors reading consecutively from their books.

The attempt took place at the Irish Writers' Centre, Dublin, Ireland, on 15-16 June 2012, with 111 authors in total reading from their work in slots of 15 minutes each over 28 continuous hours before an aggregate audience of 1,280.