Sunday, August 20, 2006 Rocker pleads guilty, awaits sentencing LONDON — Pete Doherty

Sunday, August 20, 2006 Rocker pleads guilty, awaits sentencing LONDON — Pete Doherty pleaded guilty Friday to five counts of possessing drugs, including heroin and crack cocaine. Sentencing for the Babyshambles singer was adjourned until the Sept. 4. District Judge Alison Rose warned Doherty that he could be sentenced to jail. Doherty, 27, had been charged with seven counts of drug possession on Thursday, after he was stopped by police in London last week. The charges relate to that arrest and two other incidents earlier this year. The singer gained fame with his previous band, the Libertines, and as the on-off boyfriend of supermodel Kate Moss. Doherty's drug habit gained international attention after a British tabloid printed pictures of Moss allegedly using cocaine at a music studio where Doherty and his band were recording. No charges were leveled against the supermodel. Performance artist angers animal activists LONDON — A naked performance artist who says she experienced fantasies of "interspecies metamorphoses" while working with dead pigs has angered British animal rights activists. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals criticized an exhibition where artist Kira O'Reilly sits naked for hours with a dead pig, planned for Friday evening at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance, southwest England. "As Miss O'Reilly seems to have to depend on the shock value of using a murdered pig as a prop, perhaps lacking the talent to make it as a proper artist, may we suggest she take up a day job instead to pay the bills?" PETA said Friday in a statement. "Cruelty is not entertainment." The exhibition is called "Inthewrongplaceness" and is described on the Tract Live Art Web site as a "slow crushing dance with a pig for one person at a time." About two dozen people have booked to see the exhibition — people watch the performance alone, for a maximum of 10 minutes — gallery director James Green said. On the Tract Live Art Web site, O'Reilly is quoted as saying that when she first started working with a dead pig she began making "fiercely tender and ferocious identifications with the pig." "The work left me with an undercurrent of pigginess, unexpected fantasies of mergence and interspecies metamorphoses began to flicker into my consciousness," she said. Today's birthdays Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, is 73. Singer-musician Isaac Hayes is 64. Broadcast journalist Connie Chung is 60. Musician Jimmy Pankow (Chicago) is 59. Rock singer Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) is 58. Rock singer Doug Fieger (The Knack) is 54. Country singer Rudy Gatlin is 54. Singer-songwriter John Hiatt is 54. TV weatherman Al Roker is 52. Rapper KRS-One is 41. Rock singer Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit) is 36.