News Network

After 40 years of appearing on the silver screen, actor Amitabh Bachchan is the elder statesman of Indian cinema and is possibly the most recognized man in India.

Born to a famous Indian poet, Bachchan made his screen debut at the age of 27 and has gone on to star in over 180 films. As such an established star he has seen Indian film making change over the years, weathered changing audience tastes and the evolution of Bollywood cinema.

"I'm actually very happy with our content. Even though we were ridiculed, and the West were very cynical about the way we made our films and the content that it contained," he told CNN. Read full article »
read full article on cnn.com

The California mother of octuplets born earlier this year has signed a $250,000 (£152,000) deal for all 14 of her children to star in a reality TV show.

Nadya Suleman, dubbed "Octo-Mom" by the media, inked the deal with European TV company Eyeworks, reports say.

Contracts filed with a Los Angeles court say the children will earn the money over a three-year period.

Filming is scheduled to begin on 1 September, but a judge must first approve the contracts.

Film crews will not follow Suleman and her children 24 hours a day, but will document certain milestones, such as birthdays and special events, her lawyer said earlier.

The court documents say Suleman's children, who are up to eight years old, will collectively earn $125,000 for 36 days of shooting in the first year of production, $75,000 for 21 days in the second year, and $50,000 for 14 days in the third year.

The contract specifies that 15% of the income will be placed in a trust fund that the children will only be able access at age 18, as required by California law.

Last month, Californian authorities slapped an online site with four child-labour violations for videotaping two of the octuplets without the required safeguards to protect their health and welfare.

Suleman made headlines around the world when her octuplets - six boys and two girls - were delivered by Caesarean section in January.

She later attracted criticism when it was revealed that she was unemployed, and had conceived the octuplets, along with her six other children, through in vitro fertilisation.source: bbc.com

Chinese hackers have attacked the website of Australia's biggest film festival over a documentary about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

Content on the Melbourne International Film Festival site was briefly replaced with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans on Saturday, reports said.
In an earlier protest on Friday, Beijing withdrew four Chinese films.
Melbourne's The Age newspaper says private security guards have been hired to protect Kadeer and other film-goers.
She is due to attend the screening of Ten Conditions of Love, by Australian documentary-maker Jeff Daniels, on 8 August.

'Vile language'

Chinese authorities blame Kadeer, leader of the World Uighur Congress, for inciting ethnic unrest in Xinjiang - charges she denies.
Earlier this month, around 200 people died and 1,600 were injured during fighting in the region between the mostly Muslim Uighurs and settlers from China's Han majority.

Kadeer, 62, spent six years in a Chinese prison before she was released into exile in the US in 2005. In 2004, she won the Rafto Prize for human rights.

Richard Moore, head of the Melbourne International Film Festival, told the BBC that he had come under pressure from Chinese officials to withdraw the film about Kadeer and cancel her invitation to the festival.

He said the attacks on the festival's website began about 10 days ago.

"We've been subjected to a number of these attacks and we can see behind the scenes on our website that there are hundreds, well, if not thousands, of people from outside of Australia trying to get into our website and trying to damage us," Mr Moore told the BBC's World Today programme.

"This has been going on... since obviously the call from a Chinese consular official who told me in no uncertain terms that I was urged to withdraw this particular documentary from the film festival and that I had to justify my actions in including the film in our programme," he went on.
source: bbc.com/entertainment

What is Pakistan's government up to in South Waziristan?

Since the middle of May, the army has been conducting a military offensive against Pakistan's Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud - whose hideout lies in the mountainous terrain there.

But unlike the recent operation in the Swat valley, it says it has refrained from going all out against the militants so far.

The reasons for this are not exactly clear.

The army says it wants to surround the militants and use air power and artillery to ''soften them up".

"We are just punishing them at the moment," says Maj General Athar Abbas, head of the army's public relations wing.

"This is so that when the operation starts they can't stand up to us. We have surrounded the entire area where the Taliban are based," he says.
If this is true, the army appears in a prime position to fulfil its mission to "eliminate" Baitullah Mehsud and his organisation.

But it appears in no mood to begin the much-heralded military assault which already has a name - Rah-e-Nijat or Path to Deliverance.

"We are waiting for the right time to launch the operation," says Gen Abbas.

Taliban truce?

But the fact that people have had to wait so long for a serious assault on militants has led to fears, not without precedent, about a possible deal between the army and the Taliban.

One of the allegations concerns correspondence between Baitullah Mehsud and the head of Pakistan's army.

Maj Gen Athar Abbas flatly denied the report.

"The army will not even consider such a possibility. This is utter speculation," he said.

Gen Abbas said the army was fully committed to its goal of defeating the Taliban.

source: bbc.com

Offers for help are pouring in for an eight-year-old Liberian girl disowned by her own family in Phoenix, Arizona, after being raped by four boys.

The girl is under the care of the Arizona Child Protective Service (CPS) because her parents said she had shamed them, and they did not want her back.

Phoenix police said calls had come in from all over the US offering money, or even to adopt the young girl.

The boys, Liberian immigrants aged nine to 14, have been charged with rape.

The case has sparked outrage across the US and even drawn condemnation from Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, an outspoken anti-rape campaigner.

"I think that family is wrong. They should help that child who has been traumatised," Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf told CNN.

"They too need serious counselling because clearly they are doing something, something that is no longer acceptable in our society here," she added.
source: bbc.com

Singer Amy Winehouse has been found not guilty of assaulting a burlesque dancer at a charity ball in central London.

She was accused of punching Sherene Flash after she asked the singer for a photograph at the event in Berkeley Square last September.

The singer was accused of hitting Miss Flash in the eye when the dancer's friend tried to get into the photo, the court heard.

Ms Winehouse denied assault at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court.

Summing up the evidence, District Judge Timothy Workman said all but two witnesses in the trial were drunk at the time of the incident.
source: bbc.com

The Chinese economy may be roaring back to life, but concern is growing that record lending rates are feeding a speculation bubble
While the U.S. and Western economies have faced a credit crisis, there is a credit feeding frenzy happening in China. China state banks have lent nearly $1.1 trillion in the first half of the year -- more than the $800 billion U.S. stimulus or the $586 billion the Chinese government is spending to bolster its economy. CNN's John Vause reports on China's spending »

The record lending spree -- equal to one-quarter of the nation's total economic output -- is helping China's economy grow close to 8 percent the last quarter.

While boosting domestic consumption is seen as crucial to help reduce China's reliance on exports, economists see signs of trouble ahead.

"China has a $4 trillion economy and has (public and private) loans out of $1 trillion," Jerry Lou, China strategist for Morgan Stanley, told CNN recently. "Its loan book is out of balance."

"Somewhere between a fifth and a third of total new lending may have ended up in such things as stock market speculation, real estate speculation and even a measurable amount may be showing up in the casinos in Macau," said Michael Pettis of Peking University.
source: cnn.com