Wands, potions and more than a little magic are at the ready to celebrate the midnight launch this weekend of the latest Harry Potter book, which looks set to become the boy wizard's best-selling adventure.
Coming just over a week after Britain's worst terrorist attacks, industry experts say the sixth and penultimate instalment of the spell-binding series -- in which good invariably conquers bad -- is just what the world needs.
Multi-millionaire author JK (Joanne Katherine) Rowling is due to unveil Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at an exclusive party in Edinburgh Castle, Scotland, at a minute past midnight on Saturday morning.
PHOTO: AP
At the same time, thousands of other "Potter parties" will erupt in book shops in Britain and across the planet as fans -- many in fancy dress -- scramble to get their hands on the first copies of the long-awaited novel.
"I am very excited. This is our biggest marketing campaign ever," said Lucy Holden, head of children's publicity at British firm Bloomsbury, the original publisher of the series.
A financial firm has sued Michael Jackson for US$48 million in fees it says the singer owes for help in refinancing his bank debts and claiming a larger stake in a library of Beatles songs. Prescient Acquisition Group, also known as Prescient Capital Corp, filed the lawsuit against Jackson in a US District Court in Manhattan late on Monday.
PHOTO: AP
Film star Brad Pitt is suffering from the symptoms of flu and has been admitted to a Los Angeles hospital a week after returning from a trip to East Africa, his publicist said on Tuesday. "He's fine. We think he has the flu," publicist Cindy Guagenti said. "They are just doing a couple tests."
Tom Cruise set pulses racing in the center of Rome on Tuesday as he careened down the Tiber River as part of filming for Mission Impossible 3.With St. Peter's Basilica as a backdrop, the Hollywood heartthrob piloted a speedboat under statue-topped bridges, bringing river traffic to a standstill and wowing tourists.
Malibu's picturesque coast may be home to many movie stars but residents are calling "Cut!" to the number of films and videos shot there. Malibu City Council on Monday night gave initial approval to regulations that would ban late night and early morning filming and limit production companies to 16 days at one location.
Some Hollywood actresses are cautious about revealing too much skin but 20-year-old Scarlett Johansson had to be persuaded to keep her underwear on, according to her director in The Island, Michael Bay. Speaking before Monday's New York premier of the thriller, which stars Johansson and Ewan McGregor as human clones on the run, Bay said he was prepared for the usual actress nerves when it came to shooting a love scene between the two leads.
TV advertisers are facing a potential disaster as more consumers buy digital video recorders (DVRs), according to a new study, since about 90 percent of current users fast-forward through ads. The trends are even more foreboding among the 18 to 34-year-old demogra-phic most coveted by marketers, with 97 percent saying they skip ads all or almost all of the time.
Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of a photographer accused of trying to steal topless pictures he took of Hollywood star Cameron Diaz before she became famous.
Photographer John Rutter is accused of forging the signature of the Something About Mary and Charlie's Angels star on a model release form authorizing the potential sale and distribution of the pictures.
While her publicist has refused to discuss the photographs taken of the 32-year-old blonde, they are widely reported to be bare-breasted pictures of the actress who is listed as a potential witness in the trial.
Lawyers on Tuesday began picking the panel of 12 people who will hear the case in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Judge Michael Pastor warned about three dozen prospective jurors that the case had already received "some attention from the media" and urged them to avoid any news reports about the trial, which could last about two weeks.
Rutter, 42, is charged with attempted grand theft, forgery and perjury committed against 32-year-old Diaz in August 2003.
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
From a nadir following the 2020 national elections, two successive chairs of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and Eric Chu (朱立倫), tried to reform and reinvigorate the old-fashioned Leninist-structured party to revive their fortunes electorally. As examined in “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How Eric Chu revived the KMT,” Chu in particular made some savvy moves that made the party viable electorally again, if not to their full powerhouse status prior to the 2014 Sunflower movement. However, while Chu has made some progress, there remain two truly enormous problems facing the KMT: the party is in financial ruin and
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