Blockbuster and world record

Cannes, France – Tom Hanks and other stars of “The Da Vinci Code” arrived at the Cannes Film Festival on board a train that broke the world record for the longest nonstop international rail trip.

The high-speed Eurostar train, named “The Da Vinci Code” for the trip, was part of a promotional blitz leading up to the movie’s world premiere today in Cannes. The London-Cannes train went 883 miles in 7 hours, 25 minutes on Tuesday.

Eurostar said an official from Guinness World Records was on board and certified the record.

Still not quite right

Los Angeles – Britney Spears has become a poster woman for child car-seat safety.

“In one regard, she’s done more for child safety-seat awareness than anyone else in California,” California Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Marshall said Tuesday.

Front-page photographs in Tuesday’s New York Post and New York Daily News depict the 24-year-old pregnant pop star driving her convertible Mini Cooper with 8-month-old son Sean Preston in the back, sitting in a car seat facing forward.

The photos – in which Spears also sports hair curlers – have sparked debate over whether the singer violated the California vehicle code.

The code states that child safety-seats must be properly installed according to federal safety guidelines, which recommend that babies up to a year old and up to 20 pounds ride in them in the back seat facing backward, Marshall said.

Sheryl Crow rocks again

New York – Knocked down by cancer, Sheryl Crow is back to rock ‘n’ rolling.

The 44-year-old singer made her first public performance Tuesday after undergoing breast cancer surgery in February and subsequent radiation treatment.

Crow was hired to sing three songs at a sales presentation to advertisers by My Network TV, a new broadcast network launching in September that will use her song “A Change Would Do You Good” as the theme to one of its series.

She played guitar and smiled, but appeared to move gingerly onstage. Showing rustiness, she stopped the song “Soak Up the Sun” and started again after flubbing the lyrics.

“The words are just coming back to me now,” she said. “I knew it last night. I think the radiation went to my brain.”

Like the lyrics suggest, she seemed to have fun while ending her brief set with “All I Wanna Do.”

“This is the first time I’ve played in ages,” she said. “I’m just happy to be here.”