Story Excerpt:

(Fox News)   Gentleman, stop your engines! Because race car driver Danica Patrick says she is uncomfortable being described as a sex symbol.

“People don’t know how to describe women in a pretty way. Do you call Blake Griffin a sex symbol because he was on the cover of Men’s Health with his shirt off? People just don’t know what to call women who look attractive,”  Patrick told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “The easiest thing to do, that gets the most attention, and that people are familiar with hearing, is ‘sex symbol.’”

Patrick says such characterizations are inaccurate.

“I don’t think that’s who I am, but it is how people describe me,” she said. “I’m just as a person doing things I have fun doing, and that I’m comfortable doing.”

“When I go to the race track I’m all business – I don’t have much make up on, I comb my hair, and what you see is what you get,” she continued. “With commercials I’m able to tap into my more feminine side and get my make up done – which I love to do. I love being girly, and having both sides keeps me balanced as a person, and keeps me fun.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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Story Excerpt:

(Yahoo)   Navigating your woman’s emotional ups and downs is about a pleasant as getting a root canal (and hey, at least with a root canal, you might get some laughing gas and a prescription for painkillers afterwards). The good news is, your woman’s not crazy — she’s simply physiologically wired to experience bouts of blubbering, bossiness and baby obsession, says Louann Brizendine, M.D., a Bay Area psychiatrist, professor and author of The Female Brain. The (slightly) painful news: In order to better understand her emotional ups and downs, Dr. Brizendine says that you need to learn a bit about how she’s wired (and, yes, that includes her menstrual cycle) — so, plan accordingly. No worries, OK? In order to get you started, we asked Dr. Brizendine to shed a more scientific light on what truly makes women tick in order to help you gain a more thorough understanding of your better half.

Q: Why is she so baby-obsessed? I just want to hang out and enjoy being a couple.

A: If she’s got nothing but babies on the brain, consider that it’s her sense of smell — and not the ticking of her biological clock — that’s got her so fixated on procreation. Believe it or not, “baby lust” is often triggered in a woman’s brain by simply smelling another’s newborn, Dr. Brizendine explains: “The sweet smell of an infant’s head carries pheromones that stimulate the female brain to produce the potent love potion, oxytocin, creating a chemical reaction that induces ‘baby lust.’ In many ways, this is nature’s ‘sneak attack’ to trigger the desire to have another baby.” So if you’re hoping to steer the conversation away from conception, keep her away from your brand-new nephew.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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Christiana Figueres told The Associated Press on Tuesday that her efforts to reach out to high-profile executives from companies such as Coca-Cola, Unilever and Virgin Group represent “a deeper recognition of the fact that the private sector can contribute in a decisive way.”

Since the start of 2012, the Costa Rican head of the U.N. climate agency has met corporate leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos and on a cruise to Antarctica organized by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore‘s Climate Reality Project.

“I’m hoping to accelerate what I call the push and pull process,” Figueres told AP in a phone interview from her agency’s secretariat in Bonn, Germany.

Governments act as a pull factor by shaping the policies that promote green technology and help renewable energy sources like solar and wind power compete with the fossil fuels that scientists say contribute to global warming through the release of greenhouse gases.

“But the companies, particularly these very, very high-powered companies that … have the ear of many of the decision-makers and the opinion leaders of different countries, they can act as a push factor,” Figueres said.

She mentioned Walmart, Coca-Cola and Unilever as examples of companies that have “looked at their own production and up and down their value chain” for ways to reduce their carbon footprints.

READ MORE

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Correspondence between Mexican wildlife officials and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed Tuesday that four out of the five wolves released by Mexico’s Environment Department last October are dead from poisoning.

Despite the deaths, supporters of wolf reintroduction in the American Southwest are still hoping releases in Mexico can provide a genetic boost to a small population of wolves in New Mexico and Arizona.

“They’ve been working for decades for this reintroduction so obviously this is setback, but my assumption and hope is that they will continue and make it successful,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, an American group that has supported returning the wolves to their historic range.

The Mexican agency that oversees that country’s natural resources and the environment released three female wolves — ages 11, 4 and 3 — and two 3-year-old male wolves in Sonora’s San Luis Mountains in early October. The wolves went through rehabilitation in northern Mexico and were fitted with GPS collars so they could be tracked.

Mexico’s reintroduction effort has been 20 years in the making. A release of captive wolves into the wild was first proposed in 2009 but faced delays.

As for the poisoned wolves, Mexican officials said one was found in November and the other three in December. Necropsies were done on all four animals and results in each case were positive for warfarin, a blood thinner that’s commonly used in rat poison and pesticide.

READ MORE

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Reps. Tony Klein and Margaret Cheney, the chairman and vice chairwoman of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, also said legislation passed three years ago to offer premium prices to renewable energy project developers had fallen far short of its goal of bringing 50 megawatts of new renewable power onto the Vermont electric grid. Cheney said just 7.1 megawatts worth of such projects had been built.

The two Democrats said they were surprised to learn recently from the state Department of Public Service, which regulates utilities, that the state likely would fall short of its 2017 goal. Of backing away from the more ambitious 2025 goal, Cheney said, “We don’t want to put out a percentage because it sounds good and not be able to meet it.”

“You have to balance ambition and what’s doable,” Klein said.

Citing a DPS report, the lawmakers said renewable energy projects already operating and in the pipeline currently add up to 16.5 percent of Vermont’s retail electric sales. Five years is not long enough to plan and build enough new projects to reach the 20 percent goal, they said. And development is expected to slow in part because two key federal incentives for renewable power development are expiring.

The energy committee has been working since early January on legislation that had set the new 2025 goal. Klein said he was putting that bill aside to work on legislation to move the state toward mandatory recycling of solid waste. He said he had asked DPS officials to appear before the committee next week to make a new proposal regarding renewable energy.

Klein and Cheney said they had been hearing a groundswell of concern voiced by business lobbyists that getting more power from renewable sources, which are usually more expensive than electricity generated with nuclear or fossil-fuel-fired power, would drive up electric rates and make Vermont less competitive economically.

READ MORE

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Upcycling: the process of turning something disposable into something else; something better.  

JoAnn Berman - also known as the Reigning Queen of Reconstruction – is the Ultimate Upcycler.  Unique doesn’t begin to describe her creations, which are art-inspired, brightly colored conglomerations of mostly vintage fabrics with a healthy dose of WOW factor.  She is in the midst of an incredible career, having shown 6 times in the last 2 years, including twice at the Green Shows.

JoAnn’s background is as eclectic as her collections.   A New Yorker through and through, she moved out to San Francisco at age 19.  It was the late 70s and she became a punk rocker, which had a clear influence on her style.

After a brief stint in London in the early 80s, JoAnn returned to NYC where she put herself through design school at Parsons.  Her time spent in the Madonna-era NY club scene is another  influence evident in her work.

JoAnn got her true start in fashion doing production work for a hip hop company in the 90s.  During that time, she created styles for Puff Daddy and a Michael Jackson video, among others.  She told me that she was always recycling fabrics because she liked the antique stuff better.  Then, when she struck out on her own, she would buy cheap and colorful clothing from stores, cut it up and re-imagine it, partly to compensate for her lack of sewing skills.  That process gave birth to her current aesthetic.

Not all of the fabrics she uses are vintage, because they are sometimes hard to find and fall apart.  Many are, though, and their new lives are certainly exciting ones.  I asked her which comes first: design or material.  With materials like these, she said, she designs from the fabric up.  That makes sense: they’re so interesting, even a layperson like myself can see how they speak to the designer. 

Below are some pictures from my visit to JoAnn’s Bushwick studio.  Take a look at her awesome new website as well, you’ll probably get stuck there for a bit looking at pictures of past collections.  You can also follow JoAnn on Twitter @jojoshonuf.

Born and raised in Woodstock, Ariel Azoff is an adventurer and aspiring writer who spent the past year working for a human rights organization in the Middle East. She is a contributing writer to The SNSPost & Midthoughtblog.com, and now that she is back in the U.S. is delving into the world of sustainable fashion and blogging as she goes at Heartsleevesblog.com.

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(KCBS)   Berkeley Police acknowledge they didn’t immediately respond to a call in the hills that would eventually result in a homicide this past Saturday. Officers were preparing for an Occupy protest headed to UC Berkeley from Oakland and said it didn’t appear to be an emergency.

Neighbors in the area of Grizzly Peak Blvd. and Park Gate Road said that the police response to the call was slow.  Police issued a statement Monday night that said the initial call was for trespassing and that because on-duty officers were being reconfigured for the protest; only emergency calls were to be handled.

Police said they did immediately responded to a 911 call about an assault in the same area that came later that evening, but it was too late. Peter Cukor, 67, had been beaten to death with a flower pot. The suspect, 23-year-old Daniel Dewitt, was taken into custody and will be arraigned on Wednesday.

His mother Candy said it’s a tragedy.  “Our hearts go out to the other family. It breaks my heart. We’ve all lost in this,” she said.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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(Reuters)   A woman pushing her child in a stroller in downtown El Paso, Texas, was struck by an assault rifle bullet fired from across the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on Tuesday, mayor John Cook said. After Juarez police responded to a carjacking about half a mile from the border, a gunfight broke out between police and the carjackers, Cook said. A bullet — a type used in assault weapons such as M16s — penetrated and exited the woman’s calf, he said. The unidentified woman, 48, who was shopping, was treated at a hospital and released with minor injuries, and her child — whose age Cook did not know — was not hurt, he said. The mother, a Mexican citizen, is a legal U.S. resident living in El Paso, Cook said.

“I don’t think there’s any reason for El Pasoans to panic or for anyone else to panic,” Cook said. “El Paso still remains a very safe large city.” About 50,000 people have been killed in raging drug violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an army-backed offensive against the powerful cartels shortly after taking office five years ago.  More than 10,000 of those deaths have occurred in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s murder capital across the shallow concrete channel of the Rio Grande from El Paso.

The incident on Tuesday marked the first time that a person in El Paso has been struck by a bullet fired from neighboring Ciudad Juarez since the city began its slide into an abyss of violence in 2008.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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(CNN)  Food and Drug Administration officials plan to investigate whether a form of caffeine sold in lipstick-shaped containers is safe for consumers.

The inventor touts AeroShot as caffeine without the coffee, soda, tea or a pill, but a U.S. lawmaker questions whether it’s safe.

The product comes in a lipstick-shaped dispenser that puffs out a powdery mixture of caffeine and B vitamins into your mouth, where it dissolves and is swallowed.

Pre-filled devices can be purchased online or in convenience stores in New York and Boston for about $3.

“No calories. No liquid. No limits,” its website says. “Hitting the books. Hitting the gym. Taking a roadtrip. Staying awake at your desk after devouring a bacon double cheeseburger at lunch. AeroShot is specifically designed with you in mind.”

But New York’s Sen. Charles Schumer said he has some concerns.

“This product could be very dangerous,” Schumer said. “There might be legitimate uses. The business man staying up late who doesn’t want to drink that cup of coffee, that’s OK. But what about kids who go to bars and take several shots of AeroShot so they can drink more?”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

(AP)   An Ohio woman who compared animal-welfare work to the liberation of World War II concentration camps has been charged with soliciting a hit man to fatally shoot or slit the throat of a random fur-wearer, federal authorities said.

Meredith Lowell, 27, of Cleveland Heights, appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, where a magistrate judge ordered her held by the U.S. Marshals Service pending a hearing next week, court records show. One of her defense attorneys, Walter Lucas, declined comment when reached by phone after the court appearance.

Investigators say the FBI was notified in November of a Facebook page Lowell created under the alias Anne Lowery offering $830 to $850 for the hit and saying the ideal candidate would live in northeast Ohio, according to an FBI affidavit filed with the court on Friday.

The affidavit says an FBI employee posing as a possible hit man later began email correspondence with Lowell, and she offered him $730 in jewelry or cash for the killing of a victim of at least 12 years but “preferably 14 years old or older” outside a library near a playground in her hometown.

“You need to bring a gun that has a silencer on it and that can be easily concealed in your pants pocket or coat. … If you do not want to risk the possibility of getting caught with a gun before the job, bring a sharp knife that is (at least) 4 inches long, it should be sharp enough to stab someone and/or slit their throat to kill them. I want the person to be dead in less than 2 minutes,” says an email reprinted in the affidavit.

She told the undercover employee she wanted to be on site when the slaying took place so she could distribute “papers” afterward, the affidavit says. She hoped to be arrested so she could call attention to her beliefs and to get out of the home she shared with her parents and brothers who eat meat and eggs and use fur, leather and wool, investigators said.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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(YAHOO)   Rick Santorum on Tuesday stood by comments he made in 2008 about Satan attacking the United States, telling reporters here that he is going to “stay on message” and continue to talk about jobs, security, and “taking on forces around this world who want to do harm to America.”

The three-year-old speech is getting renewed scrutiny after several Web-based publications circulated audio and text of his remarks over the holiday weekend. Speaking to a group at Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., Santorum said, “This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war at all. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies, Satan, would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country: the United States of America.”

When reporters asked about the comments at a rally on Tuesday evening, Santorum said, “I believe in good and evil. I think if somehow or another, because you’re a person of faith, you believe in good and evil [and it’s] a disqualifier for president, we’re going to have a very small pool of candidates who can run for president.”

 Asked whether he still thinks that Satan is attacking the United States, Santorum called the inquiry “not relevant to what’s being discussed in America today.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

(MSNBC)  Less than a week before Tuesday’s crucial Republican presidential primary in Michigan, a new NBC News/Marist poll shows Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum locked in a statistical tie, while a separate NBC/Marist survey shows Romney comfortably leading in Arizona, which holds its primary the same day.

In Michigan – which has turned into a make-or-break contest for Romney – the former Massachusetts governor gets the support of 37 percent of likely GOP primary voters, including those who are leaning toward a particular candidate.

Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, gets 35 percent, and he’s followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 13 percent and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 8 percent.

“Michigan is neck and neck,” says pollster Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted both surveys.

But in Arizona, Romney is on safer ground: He receives the support of 43 percent of likely GOP primary voters, Santorum gets 27 percent, Gingrich 16 percent and Paul 11 percent.

And looking ahead to November’s general election, President Barack Obama enjoys a double-digit edge over his closest GOP competition in Michigan (a state Republicans are hoping to target), while he’s trailing the leading Republicans in Arizona (which the Obama camp wants to put into play).

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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(AP)  Texas authorities said Tuesday they removed 11 children from a crowded home where a registered sex offender lives after they found eight confined in a small, dark bedroom with restraints tying some to their beds.

Along with the children, 10 adults were living in the one-story, 1,700-square-foot home in Dayton, about 30 miles northeast of Houston, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Gwen Carter said. One month after a raid on the house, authorities are still trying to determine how the children are related and why they were there, she said.

The children ranged in age from 5 months to 11 years. Three who were age 5 or older had not been enrolled in school, Carter said.  They were removed after authorities found two 2-year-old children tied to a bed during a January visit to the home, according to a court document. A legally blind, 5-year-old girl “was in a restraint on a filthy mattress, and appeared to be in a daze,” the document said. One child had a black eye and knocked-out tooth.

The adults told investigators they tied the children when they slept or took a nap during the day “for safety,” the document said. An investigator noted that none of the adults said they saw anything wrong with the arrangement. Two of the children had what authorities feared was pneumonia and were taken to a children’s hospital. All have since been placed in foster homes, Carter said.

The case is still under investigation, and Dayton Police Sgt. Doug O’Quinn said officials are looking into criminal charges. Liberty County District Attorney Mike Little did not return messages seeking comment. “Our primary concern was to make sure that the children were stable and safe,” Carter said.

The home with a “No Trespassing” sign out front is in a subdivision near land used for farming and ranching. A tricycle and other toys were in the backyard Tuesday, and several cars were parked outside. People leaving the home declined to talk to media assembled outside, and other residents and their relatives declined to comment or didn’t respond to phone messages.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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(YAHOO) The remaining four Republicans vying to challenge President Barack Obama in the Fall, gather on a debate stage Wednesday for the first time in several weeks — and the last time before Super Tuesday.

There is a lot on the line for each of these guys — and ABC’s Rick Klein and Yahoo! News White House correspondent Olivier Knox offer  some unsolicited advice.

Rick Santorum arguably has the most on the line tonight. He really has never been in the center of the storm in these debates, having only risen to the level of a serious challenger in recent weeks. What should he do?

Santorum: Go Blue or Go Home, Knox advises.  The former Pennsylvania senator should lean hard on his blue collar roots, a good way to connect with Michigan voters.

Don’t get angry, lose your temper and get caught up in social issue debates. These will be rat holes Santorum must avoid — and surely frontrunner Romney, and the moderator, will be looking to see if you head in that direction.

Mitt Romney: pick a fight with someone…anyone.  Romney can’t afford to lose the Feb 28 Michigan primary and recent polls have shown Santorum surging in Romney’s home state.  So, Romney needs to look strong and presidential and assure his party base that he has what it takes to take on President Obama.

But don’t go placing $10,000 bets, Governor. That move in a previous debate, and other debate clunkers, have shown you to be out of touch with middle class Americans. Watch your step.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE OR WATCH VIDEO

(CNN)  Twenty-seven days. That’s how long it has been between the 19th and 20th Republican presidential debates.

But that ends Wednesday, when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas face off at a debate hosted by CNN and the Republican Party of Arizona at the Mesa Arts Center.

A lot has changed in the battle for the GOP nomination since the last debate, a CNN-Republican Party of Florida showdown in Jacksonville on January 26. Romney went on to win big in Florida and Nevada, while Gingrich, who had just scored an impressive victory in South Carolina, faded fast.

Then Santorum surged in state and national polling after sweeping the February 7th contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.

The debate Wednesday is the last time the candidates will share a stage before primaries in Arizona and Michigan on Tuesday, before Washington state holds a contest on March 3, and before 10 more states hold primaries or caucuses on March 6.

“The stakes are enormous, not just because there’s been no debate for a month, but also because no more are scheduled before Super Tuesday,” CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley said. “For Gingrich, Paul, Santorum and Romney, this may be the last chance to make another impression.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

(NY TIMES)  President Obama will ask Congress to scrub the corporate tax code of dozens of loopholes and subsidies to reduce the top rate to 28 percent, down from 35 percent, while giving preferences to manufacturers that would set their maximum effective rate at 25 percent, a senior administration official said on Tuesday.

(The New York Times) Terrible things happen. Who wouldn’t want to forget?

And you’d be surprised how long a scar lasts. The urge to cover it up, to hide from the story it tells, must be overwhelming.

That is certainly true of Chris Brown and Rihanna, who on Monday each released a new song featuring the other, a notable development because three years ago, on the eve of the 2009 Grammys, Mr. Brown assaulted Rihanna, then his girlfriend. He pleaded guilty and received a sentence of probation and community service. In the course of the proceedings, information about two previous violent incidents surfaced.

It was an awful episode involving two of the most promising stars in pop, and it has continued to reverberate in the years since. Rihanna has emerged as a tough-talking dominator, one of the most striking and powerful figures in music, male or female. And Mr. Brown has made music that has largely been puerile and has had quite a few flashes of bad temper that haven’t done much for his image.

The release of the two songs, teased online for a couple of days in advance, shows a desire by both to reshape the narrative, to disperse the black cloud. For Rihanna, perhaps the goal is to avoid living forever as a victim, to replace hostility with magnanimity. Mr. Brown, on the other hand, is certainly grasping at whatever image rehabilitation is offered him. For better or worse, they both generate a tremendous amount of good will — even Mr. Brown, who remains an in-demand and idolized star.

The most revealing piece of media criticism to emerge from the drudgery that was this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony was the aggregation by BuzzFeed of Twitter posts from several young women proclaiming they would be happy to be beaten by Mr. Brown: they meant it as praise. Us Weekly also printed an item in which it accused Mr. Brown of using his notoriety as a pick-up line: “I promise I won’t beat you”

Thanks to the loyalty of their fans, these collaborations matter. In real life there are questions and ambiguities to grapple with. In music, though, Rihanna and Mr. Brown don’t have to be articulate.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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(Los Angeles Times) With an eye toward holding onto current subscribers and attracting new ones who may be tempted by Netflix, Comcast Corp. is rolling out a new subscription streaming service that boasts a mix of TV re-runs and older films.

Called Xfinity Streampix, the service launches this week and allows users to watch content on televisions and Internet-connected digital devices like smartphones.

It will be free to customers who get their video, Internet and phone service from Comcast. People who get only their TV from the company will pay $5 per month. Netflix streaming costs $8 per month.

While the new service inevitably drew comparisons to Netflix, and spurred a 3% drop in that company’s stock Tuesday, there are notable differences. Comcast’s initial agreements with Walt Disney Co., Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., and NBC Universal (which the cable giant owns) provide it with less content than Netflix currently offers.

Xfinity Streampix users will get access to television shows like “30 Rock” and “Grey’s Anatomy” and films like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Ocean’s Eleven,” but can’t watch TV shows like “Mad Men” and movies like “Drive” that are exclusively on Netflix.

In addition, while anyone with an Internet connection and a digital device can access Netflix, Xfinity Streampix is available only to the people who live in areas covered by Comcast. Currently, there are 23.2 million homes that have Comcast television service, including many in San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento.  Los Angeles is not part of the Comcast footprint, which also covers Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Miami and Houston.

“We have no plans to take this outside our footprint,” Marcien Jenckes, Comcast’s general manager of video services, said in an interview. ”It is not at all our intention to compete with Netflix.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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(Digital Music News) That’s right, the Complete Early Years Box Set (Limited Collectors’ Edition) from Motorhead is retailing for more than $600, according to details shared by the band late last night.  This is a 15-disc set filled with lots of plastic, posters, and extras, but no new musical material.  And knowing this band, there are die-hard collectors that have already ordered this, with a smile.

At this early stage, we’re not exactly sure where the box set will be retailing, and in what quantities (it looks like there’s a Japanese tie-in or import, but still getting details on that).  We did find this on Amazon early this morning for $644, with none available.  And we do know that today is the day the set officially goes on sale, according to the band’s representatives.

And the reason why Motorhead told us about this?  Because they’re totally pissed about it!  ”Unfortunately greed once again rears its yapping head,” Lemmy Kilmister stated. “I would advise against it even for the most rabid completists!”

The only problem is that Motorhead didn’t get a vote on this one, since they don’t own or control the recordings in question. The ‘Early Years’ bundle includes a compendium of early albums, starting with their self-titled debut and pushing through ‘No Remorse.’  And, a smattering of singles sprinkled on top.  Toss in a few posters, a photo book, some pins, concert program replicas and a plastic skull with red light-up eyes, and you get the overloaded idea.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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(Billboard) Adele‘s already packed award shelf just got that extra bit crowded. On top of the six Grammy Awards that the “Someone Like You” singer picked up earlier this month, Adele took home two of the biggest prizes at the 2012 Brit Awards, held tonight (Feb. 21) at London’s O2 Arena.

The 23-year-old London-born artist won British female solo artist and British album of the year for her triumphant sophomore set “21″ (XL Recordings). Receiving the award for album of the year, Adele said: “Nothing makes me prouder than coming home with six Grammys and then coming to the Brits and winning album of the year. I’m so proud to be British and to be flying the flag.”

The ceremony, which is the United Kingdom’s largest annual music awards show, also marked the singer’s first U.K. live appearance since recovering from throat surgery. In stark contrast to her memorable stripped-back performance of “Someone Like You” at last year’s event, Adele laid down a towering version of “Rolling in the Deep,” backed by a nine-piece band that ended with a standing ovation from the crowd.

Ed Sheeran, who sang his hit U.K. single “Lego House” at the show, took home awards for British male solo artist and British breakthrough act. Collecting the male solo artist award, Sheeran, who recently turned 21, told the audience: “I honestly didn’t think I’d get this one. I want to thank my family, the fans, every single promoter that has ever booked me, every single radio DJ that has ever played me and my label.”

Coldplay, who opened the event with an explosive, pyrotechnic-laden run through “Mylo Xyloto” track “Charlie Brown,” won best British group, as voted by listeners of the U.K.’s most popular radio station, BBC Radio 2. Collecting the award, drummer Will Champion said “We have to say a very special thank you to all the discerningly, beautiful, intelligent, clever Radio 2 listeners.”

“We’re so happy to get this award and we thank everybody who is still listening to us,” added singer Chris Martin.

Other standout performances on the night included: former Oasis man Noel Gallagher, who was joined by Coldplay’s Chris Martin on the piano for “AKA… What A Life!,” taken from Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds eponymous solo debut; Florence and the Machine, performing “No Light No Light,” and Bruno Mars, who delivered a smooth rendition of “Just The Way You Are,” taken from his multi-million selling debut “Doo-Wops & Hooligans.”

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