President Obama had indicated he was unhappy with the wording of the Bills

The controversial Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft is to donate up to £5m towards a new royal yacht to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

The backlash against two bills aimed at stopping online copyright infringement gathered pace last night, as eight US lawmakers announced they had decided to withdraw support for the measures.

River remix

Johanna and Klara Söderberg, the Swedish sisters who perform as First Aid Kit, are exponents of what might be called Scandamericana: this second album, recorded with Mike Mogis, is a country-rock revelation. Blessed with clear, characterful voices, employed in beautifully modulated, bell-like harmonies, the Söderbergs find beauty in the bleakness of mortality and the cyclical nature of things – "Everything gets tiresome, everything grows old/ With each secret revealed, there's another to be told". Their influences are upfront, in the Buffy Sainte-Marie stylings of "Wolf" as much as the search, in "Emmylou", for someone to be the Gram to their Emmylou. Mogis's arrangements, meanwhile, are beautifully judged, from the austere autoharp of "New Year's Eve" to the wistful, fluting mellotron that casts its shadow over several songs.

Beyond The Sun is Chris Isaak's tribute to the Sun Studios sound that gave birth to rock'n'roll, a collection of covers recorded in the same studio, thus capturing the specific acoustic traits crucial to those original recordings. Or some of them, at least: in some cases – "Ring of Fire", "O Pretty Woman" – the material dates from the artists' post-Sun careers. But there's no denying the aplomb with which Isaak handles even Presley's vocal parts, which are respectful without being slavish copies. The backings are spot-on too, Isaak's band swaggering like the Bill Black Combo on "My Baby Left Me". But it's a couple of less well-known rockabilly rave-ups – Carl Perkins' "Dixie Fried" and Jimmy Wages' "Miss Pearl" – that best evoke the greasy white-trash flavour of early Southern rock'n'roll.

By the time The Doors came to record their final album, Jim Morrison was in retreat from the millstone of rockstar idolatry, shedding his more fanciful pretensions for a straightforward blues persona, the anagramatical "Mr Mojo Risin". It freed him up to help make possibly the band's best album, full of churning gutbucket blues leading to the sinister calm of "Riders on the Storm" – which on the outtake version, Morrison amusingly suggests they do in the manner of a TV cowboy theme. The singer's boozed-up immersion in atavistic blues spirit is obvious from the guttural grunts that herald the alternative version of "The Changeling", and in the unvarnished sensuality of the strutting outtake "She Smells So Nice". But as "Love Her Madly" proved, even at this late stage, The Doors could still crank out a serviceable pop hit.

Featuring unorthodox showcases for violin and cello, this album is testament to the sensitive individualism of Sofia Gubaidulina. Performed by Gidon Kremer's Kremerata Baltica, "The Lyre of Orpheus" proceeds via a series of discrete violin flourishes and glissandi, until coaxed into the open under cover of the ensemble. Its inclusion of sleighbells is one example of Gubaidulina's characteristic use of unusual percussion, which reaches further extremes in her setting of St Francis's "Canticle of the Sun" when cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, having de-tuned his instrument to its lowest possible note, eventually abandons it to bow first a drum, then a flexatone device. Strange, but beautiful.

Can the world of art and fashion help to make the lab as cool as the club? Samuel Muston meets the publishers, artists and companies putting the 'fun' into 'fundamental science'

Tim Walker on life when you can't click on your favourite reference site

Samuel Muston meets the publishers, artists and companies putting the 'fun' into fundamental science.

Is life better when the biggest-ever (but not necessarily most accurate) encyclopaedia is out of the picture? On its day of blackout, Tim Walker searches for answers – even in books

The UK's regional press has a "very good reputation" for behaving ethically and should not be tarnished by the phone hacking scandal, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.

Blue Monday is coming, but online Bingo site Jackpotjoy have got the perfect remedy – a phone call from the Queen of Bingo herself...