Hilton says she just wasn’t ready to wed, feared divorce

Los Angeles – Paris Hilton said Saturday she ended her five-month engagement to a Greek shipping heir because “she’s not ready for marriage” and didn’t want it to end up in divorce.

The 24-year-old celebutante-turned-model broke off wedding plans with Paris Latsis, 22, because she didn’t want to rush into marriage too quickly.

“I have seen the breakups between people who love each other and rush into getting married too quickly,” Hilton said in a statement released to The Associated Press. “I do not want to make that mistake.”

The couple became engaged in the spring and Latsis gave the hotel heiress a 24-carat, $5 million diamond ring.

Hilton said she still loves Latsis and the pair will continue to work together on business endeavors and have “movies together in the works.”

“I’m still young and still have a very active career that I’m not prepared to give up,” she said. “I have worked very hard to get to where I am. Paris is a great guy and we will handle this with dignity and respect.”

Moss’ boyfriend questioned

London – Pete Doherty, the rock musician boyfriend of Kate Moss, was detained by British police in a drug sweep, his spokesman said Sunday.

“I know that he has been held overnight by police in Shrewsbury” in central England, said spokesman Tony Linkin, who didn’t know whether Doherty had been arrested or charged.

A West Mercia Police spokesman refused to confirm whether the Babyshambles frontman was detained in a drug raid after the band’s concert at Shrewsbury Music Hall late Saturday.

Doherty, 26, has reportedly been in and out of drug rehab.

British newspapers reported last week that Moss checked into the Meadows rehab clinic outside Phoenix. Pictures of Moss, 31, apparently snorting cocaine in a London music studio, were published in the Daily Mirror tabloid last month. She has since lost modeling contracts with H&M, Burberry and Chanel.

In a statement, the model said she is addressing her problems and takes “full responsibility” for her actions.

Babyshambles canceled Sunday’s sold-out show at the University of East Anglia.

“I’ve been told that two of the band members aren’t available to play tonight,” said Nick Rayns, entertainment manager for the UEA Students Union.

Roy Horn feels different kind of magic come back

Las Vegas – Roy Horn says “the magic is back.”

But two years after he was nearly killed by a tiger on stage, the magic is about walking short distances, not making elephants disappear.

“I meditate a lot, but I am constantly in pain,” Horn, of the famed duo “Siegfried & Roy,” told the Las Vegas Sun. “I’m trying to live with this.”

Monday is the second anniversary of the attack; It’s also his 61st birthday.

Horn can now walk unaided for short distances, and the grip of his right hand is noticeably firm. But signs of the attack remain: A thin white scar cuts across the right side of his neck, his left side is partially paralyzed and his walk is a slow shuffle.

His goal is to walk without assistance.

“It will be soon,” he said. “I will surprise everybody when I do it. I like surprises.”

Horn said he still finds solace in his animals and visits them at least once a week – including Montecore, the white tiger that mauled him during a performance at The Mirage.

Recalling the night he nearly died, Horn said it was not his time.

“They were not ready for me,” he said. “They were not ready for me to do the show upstairs. Not yet.”

Grammy winner to use Kansas roots in sitcom

New York – Melissa Etheridge says she’s working on a sitcom.

The show, still in development with ABC, is about “what my life might have been like had I not left to find my fame and fortune, and stayed in Kansas and became a teacher and been gay and dealt with life there,” Etheridge told Time magazine.

The two-time Grammy winner says she doesn’t want to rely on touring to make a living, and a television show would allow her to “be home for dinner.”

Etheridge, who for much of last year was fighting breast cancer, is releasing a greatest hits album and DVD this week.

Etheridge won a 1992 Grammy for best female rock vocal performance for “Ain’t It Heavy” and a 1994 Grammy in the same category for “Come to My Window.”

Road to Loretta Lynn’s cabin to become a smooth ride

Van Lear, Ky. – The way to Loretta Lynn’s famous “cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler” is about to go from hardscrabble to a smooth ride.

Construction crews are preparing to pave the mile-long gravel road that winds its way into Butcher Hollow, the mountain community of Lynn’s youth that she made famous in the autobiographical song and later the movie, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

“I was absolutely shocked at the number of people nationwide, worldwide, who would call wanting to know how to get to Butcher Hollow,” Johnson County Judge-Executive Tucker Daniel said. “We’d get calls from as far as England and Germany from people asking how to get to Loretta Lynn’s homeplace.”

Tourism officials have been trying to capitalize on eastern Kentucky’s contributions to the country music industry by building museums and performance halls. While the homes of Kentucky natives like Naomi and Wynonna Judd, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakam and Patty Loveless are all visited – none is as much as Lynn’s.

Though the $379,265 federally funded project is intended to smooth the ride for tourists, about 50 families who have to dodge the potholes every day also will benefit.