Today's entertainment news: Lady Gaga to appear on Japanese music show

Plus: Vogue's vast archives go online; Louis Vuitton sues The Hangover for fake bag; and the Kardashians deny sweatshop allegations.

Now online: the Vogue magazine archive. Karen Bleier / AFP

American pop diva Lady Gaga will appear via a video patch on a popular Japanese music competition on New Year's Eve, public broadcaster NHK said.

The eccentric star's appearance on Kohaku Uta Gassen, an annual singing competition between male and female entertainers, will include her singing and delivering encouraging messages regarding Japan's devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The catastrophe killed about 20,000 people on Japan's north-east coast and sparked the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, leading to a plunge in visitors to the country.

The songstress visited Japan twice after the disaster and called on tourists from around the world to follow suit. She also attended events to support reconstruction of disaster-hit areas.

A song and message from the singer will be recorded shortly before the show, NHK said.

Vogue's vast archives go online

Bookshelves groaning under the weight of every issue of American Vogue ever published since 1892 - and there have been about 2,800 of them - will now see a lightening to their load.

An online Vogue archive is being pitched to fashion insiders for whom rummaging through back issues for inspiration is an everyday part of the job, reported the Associated Foreign Press.

But at US$1,575 (Dh5,785) a year, enjoying instant access to nearly 120 years of a single magazine title - about 400,000 pages - doesn't come cheap.

The archive's real value lies in how every photograph, every advertisement and - so far, from October 1988 - every garment has been assigned a "tag" or search label.

So someone looking for a pleated dress by Balenciaga from an era when pleats were all the rage will be swept back to the September 15, 1939, issue and an otherwise hard-to-find crisp line drawing of a black number from the Spanish couturier.

Graphs at the foot of the website reflect the ebb and flow of a particular trend. Corduroy, for instance, spikes in popularity in the 1910s, then subsides before its comeback in the 1970s.

Louis Vuitton sues The Hangover for fake bag

Luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton is suing Warner Bros for using knock-off LV luggage in The Hangover Part II, released earlier this year.

The unauthorised product placement took place in an airport scene in which Alan (Zach Galifianakis) tells Stu (Ed Helms) not to mess with his leather bags. "Careful! That is a Louis Vuitton," he says, pronouncing the "s" in the brand name aloud.

Turns out the bags were fakes, made by the Chinese American company Diophy, which manufactures faux luxury bags.

LV wants a cut of the film's profits, which earned $581 million from worldwide box office sales. They've also requested an injunction prohibiting Warner Bros from distributing the film until the scene is removed.

This is the fourth suit filed against The Hangover sequel. Mike Tyson's tattoo artist sued the movie for Ed Helms's fake tribal face ink in the film, a stuntman sued the film studio for a set injury and a screenwriter filed a plagiarism lawsuit.

Kardashians deny sweatshop allegations

Reality TV's first family are preparing to sue everyone who has claimed their clothing line is manufactured in sweatshops in China, the gossip website TMZ reported.

The Kardashians, led by mother Kris Jenner, are prepping for a legal attack to accusations made by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights head Charles Kernaghan, who appeared on TMZ Live on Wednesday, saying that the Kardashian brand may unwittingly be sponsoring child labour, based on their years of research on the Chinese manufacturing industry.

The family is also suing Star magazine for a recent cover that featured the headline: Kardashian Sweatshop Scandal, which Jenner claims is unfair and libellous. Star published a report alleging that several of the family's lifestyle brands are manufactured in sweatshops that employ under age and overworked workers.

Last week, the workers' rights organisation China Labor Watch published an investigative report that claimed that fashion brand Bebe had products manufactured in sweatshops, including clothing and accessories from the K-Dash by Kardashian brand.

"As far as I know, the factories have nothing terrible going on at all ... very well policed and meet factory standards," Jenner told TMZ.