Actress Brittany Murphy died of sudden cardiac arrest earlier today in Los Angeles. Hortense at Jezebel posted a lovely, must-read tribute to Murphy earlier this evening.

Perhaps best known for her role as Tai in 1995’s Clueless, Murphy carved out a niche for herself playing likable social misfits in a variety of films over the past decade.

My all-time favorite Brittany Murphy movie is the vastly underrated Love and Other Disasters. I had never heard of the film until about a year ago when I watched it on an airplane flight and was completely enthralled. (Yes, it’s a typical indie rom-com, but it’s done exceptionally well. No need to reinvent the wheel.)

Check out the trailer here:

Murphy also had a lovely, lilting singing voice and showed it off in full force on the Happy Feet soundtrack when she covered the Queen classic Somebody To Love. My all time favorite Queen song, Murphy sang it with just the right amount of hopefulness. And who doesn’t love dancing penguins?

Murphy’s life had become increasingly troubled in recent years and no doubt all of the sordid details will come out soon. But for now, let’s remember the work of an actress who spent nearly half of her life on screen. Hope you are rolling with the homies, Brittany.

Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan returned to Los Angeles Saturday after a week in India. She visited the Sanlaap Women and Children’s shelter just outside Calcutta for a documentary on the trafficking of women and children for the BBC.

Lohan tweeted enthusiastically about the planned trip before her departure:

“Going to make one of my lifelong dreams on my list of things to do in this lifetime!!!!! Wish me luck! fill you guys in when I return to USA”

She also inexplicably tweeted this photo with the message “Count your blessings…. Please try and do something to make a difference for others.” (The photo is so out of focus that I’m not sure what it’s of, or where she is. Post your guesses in the comments.)

This being Lindsay Lohan, of course the trip attracted both controversy and confusion. After claiming that she helped save 40 children from being trafficked (a tweet that has been since taken down), activists lashed out.

The Telegraph reports:

A leading social activist and lawyer, known only as Bhuwan, of the campaign group Bachpan Bachao Andolan, accused Lohan of portraying dangerous child rescue operations as superficial events, which could be carried out in a day by passing celebrities.

… According to [social activist and lawyer] Bhuwan, they were freed on Tuesday, hours before Lohan arrived in India and a day before she and her BBC Three film crew visited the Ashram rehabilitation centre where the children were taken before being returned to their families. “She was not even in the country when this raid happened,” he said.

For their part, the BBC says Lohan was merely misunderstood. “We would like to stress that she did not say she was present at the raid, this is a misinterpretation. She was merely referring to a raid that happened connected to child trafficking – the subject of the programme,” a spokesman told the paper.

The White House released a statement earlier this week marking the beginning of Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha:

Michelle and I would like to send our best wishes to all those performing Hajj this year, and to Muslims in America and around the world who are celebrating Eid-ul-Adha. The rituals of Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha both serve as reminders of the shared Abrahamic roots of three of the world’s major religions.

During Hajj, the world’s largest and most diverse gathering, three million Muslims from all walks of life – including thousands of American Muslims – will stand in prayer on Mount Arafat. The following day, Muslims around the world will celebrate Eid-ul-Adha and distribute food to the less fortunate to commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son out of obedience to God.

This year, I am pleased that the Department of Health and Human Services has partnered with the Saudi Health Ministry to prevent and limit the spread of H1N1 during Hajj. Cooperating on combating H1N1 is one of the ways we are implementing my administration’s commitment to partnership in areas of mutual interest.

On behalf of the American people, we would like to extend our greetings during this Hajj season – Eid Mubarak.

Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating. This Yahoo slideshow contains some really nice images of pilgrims in Saudi Arabia.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Always remember, the Muppets + greatest pop song of all time = fun!

The Obama White House will host their first state dinner tonight in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Set to beginning in about half an hour, it looks like it will be a blockbuster event. Details about the dinner were closely guarded until just a few hours ago, but we now know that A.R. Rahman and Jennifer Hudson are set to perform and that the star-studded guest list will enjoy a very vegetarian-friendly meal. (The Prime Minister is a vegetarian.)

Dinner guests include prominent desis such as Fareed Zakaria, Sanjay Gupta, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kalpen Modi (aka Kal Penn), Deepak Chopra, Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

The White House website will be livestreaming the dinner starting at 8:15 Eastern. I’ll be posting links to coverage of the dinner throughout the evening on Twitter.

Post your comments of tonight’s festivities below.

Ever since I’ve gotten access to Zee TV via my cable company’s South Asian package, I’ve been hooked to the reality show Lil Champs (it’s like American Idol for 8-14 year-olds. One contestant, 12-year-old Yatharth Ratnam Rastogi caught my attention because of his striking resemblance to one Adam Lambert.

Check out his hair and clothes and gesturing in the above video. He looks like a mini-Adam!

He even has crazy fans (who calls a 12 year old a Romeo?!) and detractors.

The last quote on this fan forum thread is my favorite. Apparently Yatharth has a tendency to be a bit over the top:

He is good in songs which don’t require grace… or modulation… and all he has to do is yell …. liked the way he messed the impromptu on Saturday… Go Yellarth….LOL

See! A mini-Adam!

The Lil Champs finale was yesterday, and Yatharth lost to little Hemant Brijwasi. Inevitably the Yatharthians came out saying the results don’t really matter:

I am sorry that you came second.Sometimes the person who takes second place becomes the real star!Your talent will take you places!Best of luck for the future!

I shared my Adam-Yatharth theory with Top Idol and she totally agreed. Check it out.

American Idol Season 8 finalist Anoop Desai is now on the country fair circuit while he waits to get signed. Here he performs the Number 1 song in America, Jay Sean’s Down.

He also debuted an original song that he co-wrote entitled Give In To Her Love.

Anoop seems much more relaxed and his vocals sound much stronger than they did on Idol. Much of the criticism the judges heaped on Desai centered on the fact that Simon and Co. were not convinced that he could be a successful R&B artist. Now that there is a precedent for successful South Asian R&B singers in Jay Sean, hopefully Anoop can create the kind of music that he’s said he’s always wanted to do.

For the record, Anoop’s studio version of Caught Up by Usher is fantastic.

Sunday’s New York Times had a lovely profile of Nasim Akhtar, the school nurse at P.S. 70 in Long Island City, Queens.

Nurse Akhtar, who speaks four languages — Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and English — is the ambassador to parents, reminding them to fill out their emergency contact forms, refill prescriptions or update immunization records. She encounters about as many medical philosophies as countries of origin.

The piece also describes Akhtar’s early years in New York after she moved from Lahore in the early 1990s. It’s a familiar immigrant story:

The initial years in their East Elmhurst home were lonely, and she coped by studying for nursing exams, sometimes taking breaks only to sleep, hoping that a medical credential would help her earn citizenship (she has a green card). She took her books everywhere — the fifth edition of the Lippincott Manual of Nursing Practice became her bible — and memorized concepts like arterial blood gases by writing the words out in a neat blue cursive.

School nurses have been in the spotlight recently due to the emergence of the H1N1 virus. Queens was hit particularly hard by the virus last spring.

There’s also a slideshow of P.S. 70 here.

Matt Damon spoke to Parade magazine recently about his advocacy and charitable work. Damon has been working on behalf of Water.org and Bono’s ONE campaign.

He begins his essay with a reference to Mahatma Gandhi:

When I was a boy, my mom had a magnet on the refrigerator with a little picture of Gandhi along with a quote from him. It said: “No matter how insignificant what you do may seem, it is important that you do it.” As a child, I was raised to believe that, and to this day I do my best to live it.

Nowadays, sentimental magnetized credos have gone the way of nostalgia, and technology has forever changed the way younger generations communicate. But those are still really good words to live by.

Damon also writes about visiting malaria patients in Tanzania while on a trip with President Bush’s Malaria Initiative. You can read the entire essay here.

Water.org’s site features several videos on the importance of having access to clean drinking water. According to this piece, nearly 850 million Indians do not have access to safe water.

Via Celebrity Baby Blog.

It’s no secret that South Asians love gold. With gold prices hovering at around $1000 an ounce it looks like thieves in Northern Virginia might be catching on:

Burglars with a keen appreciation for gold have targeted Indian and South Asian homes in a months-long series of daytime break-ins in Northern Virginia.

The burglars are discerning. They have taken 22-karat pieces but left behind sterling silver and well-crafted costume jewelry. They have sifted through floor-length gowns lovingly stored in closets and plucked every custom-made sari threaded with gold and worth thousands, disdaining saris worth only hundreds.

Yikes! Though over 20 South Asian homes targeted police officials say the robberies are not about race. “There is targeting due to gold prices. That’s how we are talking about it, rather than ethnicity,” said Fairfax police spokeswoman Mary Ann Jennings.