J.K. Rowling gives the go-ahead for Hogwarts theme park

05/31/2007

The park is a joint venture between Warner Bros Entertainment, whose Potter films have so far grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide, and Universal Orlando Resort.

J.K Rowling, who became the world's first billion dollar author on the back of Harry Potter's success, has given the go-ahead for the creation of a Florida theme park dedicated to the schoolboy wizard.

"The plans I have seen look incredibly exciting and I don't think fans of the books or films will be disappointed," Rowling said of the Orlando park that is scheduled to open in 2009.

The park is a joint venture between Warner Bros Entertainment, whose Potter films have so far grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide, and Universal Orlando Resort.

In a statement rich in entertainment hyperbole, the builders of "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" said they planned to "create the world's first immersive Harry Potter themed environment."

Barry Meyer, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Entertainment, said: "Over the years we've received thousands of letters from fans around the world wishing they could visit Hogwarts (School) and the wonderful locations described in each of J.K. Rowling's beloved stories."

The park's opening could help to quell the withdrawal symptoms of Potter fans around the globe who have bought 320 million copies of her wizard tales and turned every one of the films into a box office hit.

Pottermania is set to scale new heights in July with the last novel hitting the bookstands and the latest film being launched in a deluge of global publicity. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final instalment in her hugely successful series, is being released on July 21.

Rowling is to mark publication with a moonlight reading for fans at London's Natural History Museum. Sweepstakes are being conducted by her British publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and American publisher Scholastic to pick the winning fans.

"Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix," the fifth film in a blockbuster series based on the books, is being given its official world premiere in London on July 3.

Rowling, whose books are always released under tight security, has said two characters will die in the seventh and final book but she has refused to give any clues.

The author has appealed to people to keep the end a secret: "I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are going."

U.S. authors John Irving and Stephen King were so worried about the fictional hero's fate that they urged Rowling to spare the bespectacled hero.

British secret service involved in Litvinenko killing, says suspect

Andrei Lugovoy said he has been made a scapegoat by the British authorities

by Nico Hines

Claim by claim: Lugovoy's theories examined

The former KGB officer wanted over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko made sensational claims today that the British Secret Service was implicated in the poisoning and tried to recruit him to spy on President Putin.

At a dramatic press conference in Moscow, Andrei Lugovoy also said that Litvinenko was working for MI6 and tried to recruit him as a British spy.

“It is hard to escape the thought that Litvinenko had become an agent who had escaped the control of the special services and they took him out, if not the special services, then those under their control, or those cooperating with them,” Mr Lugovoy said.

“The main role is played by the British special services and their agents,” he said. “The poisoning of Litvinenko couldn’t have taken place outside the control of Great Britain’s special services.”

Asked whether there was any evidence to support his accusations, Mr Lugovoy replied “there is”, but refused to elaborate.

Litvinenko was poisoned in a Central London hotel last November and the Crown Prosecution Service announced this month that they wished to charge Mr Lugovoy with his murder. The UK has formally requested the Russian’s extradition.

Mr Lugovoy, 40, again denied any knowledge of who had poisoned Litvinenko with polonium-210, but also pointed the finger at the Russian exile Boris Berezovsky or the Russian mafia, who he said Litvinenko had given evidence against to Spanish police.

The former KGB officer said the British special services “asked me to collect compromising information on President Putin”. He said they “thought I was a Russian James Bond who can infiltrate Russian nuclear facilities”.

Mr Lugovoy suggested that when he refused Litvinenko’s attempt to make him a British agent Litvinenko became “mad and crazy”.

Reading from a prepared statement, Mr Lugovoy accused the British authorities of setting him up to stop him revealing their attempts to turn him into a spy. “They thought in London that I would be silent because I would not be extradited,” he said.

Relations between the British and Russian governments have been strained by the UK’s request for Mr Lugovoy’s extradition. The Kremlin will not extradite Russian nationals, but they have asked for Mr Berezovsky to be extradited to Moscow.

Mr Berezovsky said later that the Russian Government was manufacturing the claims.

“It is now clearer than ever that the Kremlin is behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Everything about Mr Lugovoy’s words and presentation made it obvious that he is acting on Kremlin instruction,” he said.

“The UK authorities know very well who their MI6 agents are in the UK and so they know that I am not one of them. If Mr Lugovoy would like to prove his innocence, I suggest again that he travel to London and face trial in the UK courts.”

Russia’s relations with the West deteriorated further last night when Washington joined the calls for Mr Lugovoy to stand trial in London. “The United States supports Britain’s extradition request. This was a serious crime and the matter needs to be dealt with,” said Gordon Johndroe US national security council spokesman.

British police concluded that Mr Lugovoy was their main suspect for the murder of Litvinenko after Scotland Yard officers had traced the radioactive poison to a teapot in the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair. Mr Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, a business partner, met Litvinenko in the hotel bar on November 1, 22 days before he died.

A few days earlier Mr Litvinenko had met an Italian academic, Mario Scaramella, in a sushi bar in Piccadilly where it is said that he received documents claiming to name the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken Russian journalist and critic of the Putin regime.

On his deathbed, Litvinenko accused Mr Putin of being behind his murder. "You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price," he said, addressing the Kremlin leader. "You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed."

Mr Lugovoy rejected those claims. He suggested that if the British authorities were not responsible, Litvinenko may have been murdered by Mr Berezovsky. He said that Litvinenko could have been poisoned by his fellow Russian exile and critic of Mr Putin because he had information which would have questioned the oligarch’s right to asylum in Britain.

The evidence that Litvinenko allegedly had, according to Mr Lugovoy, proved that Mr Berezovsky had paid for his political asylum financially and with intelligence on Russia. He then allegedly became an informer for MI6.

Mr Lugovoy said that Mr Berezovsky had recruited Litvinenko to join him in working for MI6 but that the two men had subsequently fallen out.

Litvinenko was working with Mr Berezovsky in Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Mr Lugovoy became a friend of the man he has been accused of murdering.

Mr Berezovsky had been a staunch supporter of Mr Putin, but financed a documentary based on Litvinenko’s book, which accused the FSB, the KGB’s successor, of involvement in the bombings that killed 300 people in September 1999. Mr Putin, then Prime Minister, had blamed Chechen terrorists. Litvinenko and Mr Berezovsky then fled to London.

Broadcaster Defends Plan to Air Diana Photos

AP and Reuters

AOL Wire Services

LONDON (May 29) - A British broadcaster on Monday defended a documentary featuring graphic images of the Paris car crash that killed Princess Diana, including one showing a French doctor giving her oxygen through a mask, after critics demanded the program not be aired.

The film, "Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel," includes explicit images of the interior of the car - Diana's body appears thrown in the footwell behind the driver's seat - and also has new interviews with photographers and other crash witnesses, the Observer reported.

Diana, her friend Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul were killed when their Mercedes crashed in the Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, while media pursued the couple. The documentary will broadcast previously unreleased images taken by French photographers immediately after the crash, newspapers reported.

Such pictures have not been shown in Britain before but last year Italian magazine Chi published photographs of Diana dying, provoking a rare highly-critical statement from her sons.

The opposition Conservative Party has demanded Channel 4 cancel plans to air the program on June 6 because it may distress Diana's sons, Princes William and Harry.

Channel 4 said it had "carefully and sensitively selected" the images and that in a photo showing the car's occupants, the victims had been blacked out. It said that image had previously been published in the British press and that reports about the film's content were inaccurate.

"These photographs are an important and accurate eyewitness record of how events unfolded after the crash," Channel 4 said in a statement. "We acknowledge there is great public sensitivity surrounding pictures of the victims and these have not been included."

Channel 4 said the film was produced by its history department and there was "genuine public interest" in how the events leading to Diana's death had unfolded.

The Conservative Party's culture critic, Hugo Swire, said the program was a new violation of Diana's privacy.

"This kind of coverage must be deeply distressing to Princes William and Harry," Swire said. "It is difficult to see who will be served from broadcasting such sensational and private material."

A spokesman for William and Harry would not comment specifically on the documentary but said the princes had made their position "very clear a number of times in the past."

"Diana's memory should be left as it is. This kind of thing is distasteful to her family and friends," the spokesman said.

A French investigation ruled that Paul was drunk and lost control of the car while trying to evade photographers. The British investigation concluded that Diana was not pregnant or about to marry Fayed, and that the crash was caused by Paul, who was drunk and speeding.

A full jury inquest into the accident - which is held under British law when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or of unknown causes - is expected to start in October.

Dutch Pot Shops to Fingerprint Customers

May 30 01:17 PM US/Eastern By TOBY STERLING Associated Press Writer

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Coffee shops licensed to sell marijuana in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht will begin fingerprinting customers and scanning their IDs this summer to help prove they're following rules governing such sales.

In particular, the measures are expected to help stores show they are not selling to underage customers and that they haven't sold more than the maximum permitted to a customer on a given day.

"This is not something that we are doing willingly, but with pain in our hearts," Marc Josemans, chairman of the Union of Maastricht's Coffee Shops, said Wednesday. He said shops in Rotterdam and several Dutch border cities were considering following suit.

"We're very afraid we're going to lose customers over this, and to be honest we're even a little ashamed we're doing it, but the city of Maastricht has such harsh punishments that we don't feel we have any choice," Josemans told The Associated Press.

Marijuana is technically illegal in the Netherlands, but cities may license shops to sell no more than 5 grams per customer per day. The shops may not sell to anyone under 18, nor permit drugs other than marijuana or hashish on the premises.

Since Maastricht Mayor Gerd Leers took office in 2002, police have strictly enforced the rules, and shops found in violation are automatically closed for a minimum of three months for a single infraction, six months for a second offense, and permanently for a third.

As a result, 11 of Maastricht's 26 licensed shops have been closed, leaving just 15 open.

Under the new plan, fingerprints would be coupled with a digital photograph and a scan of customers' ID cards—removing all personal information except birth date—and stored on a computer system at the shop.

"We're not going to give this information to anybody else, and we're not linked to each other or the Internet," Josemans said.

Josemans, who is also owner of the "Easy Going" coffee shop, said the electronic system would be tested at his store Aug. 1 and used by all licensed stores by September.

He said the shops already have video surveillance cameras and cooperate with police in criminal investigations, but the stored fingerprints would be too low in quality for use by police.

Because of Maastricht's location near the border with Belgium and Germany and not far from France, the city of 120,000 residents gets 4.5 million "drugs tourists" a year who come just to buy weed and drive home.

City spokesman Math Wijnands said the drug trade brought a host of problems, most notably petty criminals who seek to sell marijuana or other drugs in the neighborhood of the licensed coffee shops.

"They know that they have a target group here, but they go about their business in an aggressive manner," Wijnands said. "That causes problems in the city center."

The city is negotiating to move more than half of the remaining shops to the outskirts of town—angering neighboring countries like Belgium who object to having what amount to marijuana drive-through stores on their doorsteps.

Wijnands said the city was aware of the plan by the shops to store customer data, and approved.

"If they're going to take ID checks into their own hands and obey the rules as much as possible, then that's only to be applauded," he said.

Josemans said the system had been vetted with the Netherlands' digital privacy watchdog, known by its Dutch acronym CBP, and did not violate any laws. A CBP spokeswoman could not immediately confirm that.

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are not a bad start

'Righteous Kill' will give the acting superstars a rare chance to perform together in extended scenes.

By Jay A. Fernandez
Special to The Times

May 30, 2007

When Emmett/Furla Films co-chairman and producer Randall Emmett announced from Cannes two weeks ago that he was financing the $60-million thriller "Righteous Kill," he implied that the idea for the film had been sparked by the desire of friends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro to work together again.

This was news to the script's writer, Russell Gewirtz, who started writing "Righteous Kill" four years ago, before his first attempt at a screenplay, "Inside Man," had even sold. Which would mean that De Niro and Pacino had to have pitched him when he was still just a guy in real estate.

Gewirtz's original screenplay follows two cops pursuing a serial killer and will finally afford moviegoers the opportunity to watch heavyweights De Niro and Pacino do an extended duet after the teases of "The Godfather: Part II," in which they shared credit but not scenes, and Michael Mann's "Heat," which really allowed them only one dramatic confrontation. The film is being rushed into production this summer, with Jon Avnet ("Fried Green Tomatoes") directing and producing.

Gewirtz won't reveal plot details, but "what's exciting is that the movie is really about the relationship between the two of them," he says. "And there'll be plenty of opportunity for them to play with that and do what they do so wonderfully."

Edward Norton had been attached to "Kill" for a while, and Spike Lee ("Inside Man") and John Dahl ("Rounders") had briefly considered it, but nothing really got going until a month ago. Gewirtz, who's been living in Brazil for six months, flew back to New York City to meet Avnet and De Niro for the first time and sit in on a read-through of the script. Two weeks later, Avnet got Pacino onboard.

After "Inside Man" scored such major talent and box office, Gewirtz joked in an interview that, "I can only go down from here." With De Niro's casting, Gewirtz continues his streak of attracting Oscar-winning actors — "Inside Man" stars Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster each have two. (And, believe it or not, Gewirtz is also writing a remake of a French thriller called "Labyrinth" that has attached … Hilary Swank.) As for "Righteous Kill" producer Avi Lerner's hyperbolic comment from Cannes that "this is an event in world history," Gewirtz jokingly affirms that "technically, everything that happens is an event in world history — in that sense, he's correct."

"But listen," he says, "there's no doubt that when anyone looks back at the history of either of these actors, this movie will be one of the defining moments of their careers. Let's hope it's defined in a positive way."