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News update
Rowling urges people not to ruin Potter’s ending
NEW YORK: Author J. K. Rowling appealed to people on Monday to leave the ending of the final Harry Potter book as a surprise and not spoil the mystery for fans of the best-selling series about the boy wizard.
Rowling’s comments were sparked by a note on April 28 on fan site, The Leaky Cauldron (www.the-leaky-cauldron.org), saying it had received “spoiler” e-mails from people claiming to know the contents of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. “We’re a little under three months away, now, and the first distant rumblings of the weirdness that usually precedes a Harry Potter publication can be heard on the horizon,” Rowling wrote on her Web site wwww.jkrowling.com on Monday.
“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.”
Rowling has said two characters will die in the seventh book of the Potter series, which will be released on July 21, but she has refused to give any clues on who they will be.
Speculation has been rife that Potter will be killed off by Rowling. —Reuters
5,000-year-old oyster shell discovered in Bangkok
BANGKOK: A giant oyster shell thought to be more than 5,000 years old has been found in a Bangkok suburb, a geologist said Tuesday, supporting the theory that the Thai capital was once under the sea.
About 100 pieces of 30 different types of shell were found at a building site at the Mahamakut Buddhist Uni-versity in Nakhon Pathom province, which borders Bangkok to the west.
Government geologist Suwat Tiyapairath said most of the shells were from molluscs, snails and blood clams, but it was a rare giant oyster shell found 10 metres beneath the ground that had his team excited.
“This is an ancient shell, this oyster is from about 5,500 years ago,” Suwat said of the discovery they made a few days ago.
The giant oyster shell was about 20 centimetres long and 10 centimetres wide, he said. Some of the other shells were also believed to be about 2,000 years old, he added.
Geologists are confident that many parts of central Thailand, including Bangkok, were beneath the sea more that 5,000 years ago, Suwat said.
“This proves that we were once under the sea,” Suwat said. —AFP
Hitchhiker steals car, then dies in crash
OTTAWA: A Canadian woman hitchhiker, who stole an elderly man’s car after he offered her a ride, died a few minutes later when she lost control of the vehicle and crashed into trees, police said.
The man picked up 20-year-old Mandy Desch-ambeault and stepped out of his vehicle momentarily at which point the female jumped in the driver seat, stealing the car. She lost control of the car, crossing the other lane hitting trees. —Reuters
Spider-Man 3 ensnares US moviegoers
LOS ANGELES: Spider-Man 3 kept its perch atop the North American box office, industry figures showed on Monday.
After smashing records on its opening, the third instalment in the arachnid superhero series grossed 58 million dollars on its second weekend of general release.
The latest movie in the Spider-Man franchise has now raked in a whopping 241 million dollars in total. —AFP
Mindoro: Nicknamed Kali, one of the only two captive tamaraws eats her regular meal of grass at the tamaraw gene pool farm in Manoot, in the central Philippine island of Mindoro on April 23, 2007. The endangered tamaraw, (scientific name: Bubalus Mindorensis), the largest indigenous mammal species in the Philippines, can only be found in Mindoro. A century earlier about 10,000 were thought to be roaming the entire islands now there are less than 500 in the mountains with their survival threatened by habitat loss from cattle ranching and farming, hunting and diseases. The tamaraw known to be more ferocious than their cousin the domesticated water buffalo, lives in the 97,000 hectare protected national park around Mount Iglit managed by the Tamaraw Conservation Programme.
—AFP
Beijing: A pedestrian walks past the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games mascots on display outside a shopping mall to attract tourists and shoppers in central Beijing.
—AFP
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