Could “Red 40″ dye be making your kid hyperactive? The FDA is going to find out. During a two-day meeting beginning today, the FDA will review existing data to determine whether they link dyes used in everyday foods with hyperactivity. The advisory committee will then decide if the issue merits…
Continue reading …Well, isn’t this nice? In a new interview with the AP , Paris Hilton says she has achieved all her professional goals, by the ripe old age of 30. “I have done everything that I wanted to do and I feel very blessed that I have been very successful on every…
Continue reading …Bashar al-Assad gave a major speech at parliament today blaming “conspirators” for the country’s wave of anti-government protests, as crowds outside sang his praises. “I belong to the Syrian people, and whoever belongs to the Syrian people will always keep his head high,” the Syrian president said in a televised…
Continue reading …Obama just isn’t reeling them in like he used to: It turns out 25.6 million of us tuned in to Obama’s Libya speech on Monday night. That’s down 12% from his August 2010 Iraq speech, whose 29.2 million viewers were down 9% from his speech in June of…
Continue reading …Who better than Perez Hilton, famous conveyor of at least one underage upskirt photo , to write a children’s book? The gossip blogger’s The Boy With Pink Hair seems to be in keeping with his recent decision to start being nice : According to Penguin, the titular boy (who has “fabulous” but…
Continue reading …This has got to be one of PETA’s weirdest stunts yet: The animal rights group is staging a contest related to its spay/neuter campaign, and the lucky winner will get … a free vasectomy. To enter, you just get your cat or dog spayed or neutered, then submit an essay…
Continue reading …With oil companies and Republicans criticizing the Obama administration for being too slow to issue new offshore drilling permits in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Interior Department hit back with a report yesterday revealing that the industry isn’t using the majority of the leases it already has….
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Jennifer Garner, 38, has been cast as the elderly Agatha Christie sleuth for a new Disney series. But Miss Marple is not the only TV character who has got younger . . . Personally, I have no problem with Jennifer Garner, the voluptuous 38-year-old American actress who portrayed a glamorous, basque-clad ninja assassin in the 2005 film Elektra, playing Agatha Christie’s dowdy, aged sleuth Jane Marple . But a few traditionalists have made predictable points about her not being quite right for the part, and they are also exercised by the havoc Twin Peaks writer Mark Frost may wreak on Miss Marple’s sleepy home village of St Mary Mead when he transplants it to small-town America. Christie does appear to have imagined her creation as elderly, describing her as “rather like some of my grandmother’s cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl”. Margaret Rutherford was 70 when she defined the role on screen in the 1960s; Joan Hickson, generally reckoned to be the definitive Miss Marple, was in her mid-80s when she made the last of her TV adaptations. But it’s that word “definitive” that may explain why Disney, which has bought the rights to Christie’s novels, feels it has to re-imagine the character. No one can out-Marple Hickson. If that’s your idea of Miss Marple – birdlike, tweedy, superficially faltering but in reality razor-sharp – buy the set on DVD. Screen incarnations of well-known figures, real and imagined, generally seem to be getting younger. Think of Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s recent TV portrayal of Henry VIII not as a fat bloke with a taste for capons, but as a sexy young man who would be perfectly at home in a boy band. Or the way the ageing, beak-nosed, pipe-smoking Sherlock Holmes of Basil Rathbone has given way to the whizzy Benedict Cumberbatch. And of course the evolution of Doctor Who from professorial ancient to floppy-haired art student. Some will suggest this recasting is simply a matter of our cult of youth. But ignore those siren voices, often older actors moaning about their lack of job opportunities. A time lord, by definition, can be any age; Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes started solving crimes straight after university; Henry VIII was young and virile once (albeit briefly); and even Miss Marple aged in the 40 years during which the books appeared, though there is admittedly little evidence that she ever spent time in Washington State. I like to believe the re-moulders of these much-loved characters are motivated by art, not money, by a ceaseless quest to give new meanings to our collective mythos . And I do think Jennifer Garner could look very good in a felt hat. Television Doctor Who Stephen Moss guardian.co.uk
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Robin Price gets six years for spinning his own tall tales to his clients about Hollywood contacts A literary agent who duped budding authors and investors into handing over more than £500,000 for non-existent film and book deals has been jailed for six years. Robin Price, a former cinema manager from north Devon, claimed he had contacts in Hollywood including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Johnny Depp. Judge John Neligan told Price, who admitted six counts of theft: “You lived a Walter Mitty lifestyle to persuade decent folk to part with a lot of money on your wild and extravagant schemes which were bogus from the start. I am satisfied that this was fraud from the outset which became more serious and more intricate, to deceive people outlandishly as time went on.” Prosecuting, Andrew Oldland told Exeter crown court that Price, 51, was a confidence trickster: “He targeted would-be writers who wanted their works to be converted into film and TV programmes, or would-be investors interested in putting money into film projects.” But he said Price, of Ilfracombe, lied about his background and his career in the film industry and literary world. “He maintained he knew well-known names in the film industry both on the production and direction side and acting side in the US and UK. He would drop big names such as Spielberg and Scorsese and actors like Sam Neill and Tom Cruise and many others.” But Price, who used to work at a cinema in Leicester Square, central London, grossly exaggerated the extent of his contacts and claimed to his victims that he was on the verge of signing multimillion-dollar production deals. The main loser was an elderly man so keen to have his work published he handed over almost £300,000 to Price, remortgaging his home and borrowing money to do so. Another victim gave him almost £100,000 because he told her he was on the verge of sealing a multimillion-pound deal for her. Another woman, who gave up her teaching career to work with Price, said she wanted to kill herself when she found out he had lied to her. In police interviews Price claimed his efforts were a “genuine attempt to get production deals” and he hadn’t misled anyone because they had been aware of the risks of their investments. Defending, Stephen Mooney said Price was “a broken, destitute, rather sad individual” who lived on £4 a day in a bedsit with his pet cat and dog. He said he had not spent the money on trappings of a successful high life. Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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The trial of the vegan couple in France whose baby died highlights how difficult it is not to eat meat there The trial in France of two vegan parents charged with “neglect or food deprivation” after the death of their baby daughter has raised hackles on both sides of the Channel from those who feel their dietary choices are being questioned. The fact that Sergine and Joel Le Moaligou fed the child only breast milk during her short 11-month life, and treated her bronchitis with cabbage and clay poultices, would suggest their parenting skills were more to blame than their eating habits. But evidence presented to the court made a direct link between baby Louise’s death and her parents’ diet. The child was underweight and suffering severe vitamin deficiencies, making her susceptible to the bronchial infection that killed her – deficiencies possibly linked to the mother’s diet, according to the deputy state prosecutor. Even without the opprobrium a case such as this provokes, it is not easy being vegetarian in France, the land of steak-frites, foie gras and other solidly carnivorous fare. Studies suggest four million Britons may be vegetarians, though others claim 10% of the population are “meat avoiders”. In France there are an estimated one million vegetarians. A non-scientific survey of Facebook reveals that the British-based Vegan society has 60,978 fans, while the French Vegetarian Association has 1,518 and the Vegetarian and Vegan page 1,173. (By comparison the French “Slap a Vegetarian with an Escalope” page has 168,294 fans.) If it is hard work being a Gallic vegetarian, it is nigh on impossible being a vegan. The Le Moaligous were forced to educate their elder daughter Elodie, now 13, at home. French school canteens are largely run on the premise that a child should eat everything on their plate. In her blog , food writer Rosa Jackson recounts how when her son Sam became a vegetarian, a member of the school staff explained to her: “Vegetarianism is not a recognised diet in France. We’ll have to put everything on the plate even if he doesn’t eat it.” One poster responding to the blog recounted how a chef in Normandy insisted the omelette he had served was still vegetarian even though it was covered in “just a foie gras sauce”. France Europe Vegetarianism Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
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