Oprah’s show to end in 2011

After more than two decades on air, the Oprah Winfrey Show is to close in 2011, said the production company behind the programme.
Winfrey (photo, from bbc.co.uk) is one of the most influential women in the US. She has hosted the show since 1986.

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Eight oscars for Slumdog film

The cast and crew of widely acclaimed Slumdog Millionaire (photo, from bbc.co.uk) left Los Angelel with eight awards, including best picture and best director.

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Saudi most senior judge against ‘immoral programmes’

It is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels which broadcast immoral programmes, said Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan, the most senior judge in Saudi Arabia.

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The Games are open

Fireworks, music and dancing marked the opening of the Beijing Olympics (photo, from parismatch.com), with some 10,000 performers taking part in the ceremony, that an estimated one billion people watched on TV, before athletes paraded around the national stadium.

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Solzhenitsyn dies at 89

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (photo, from bbc.co.uk), the Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, who exposed Stalin’s prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow, at the age of 89.

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Egyptian film director dies at 82

Youssef Chahine (photo, from lepoint.fr), 82, Egyptian film director and one of Arab cinema’s most admired figures, has died in Cairo, four weeks after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

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‘Guernica’ is not in danger

The health of Guernica (photo), Picasso’s masterpiece that depicts intense suffering, is not in danger, said the Reina Sofia art museum, after carrying out the first X-ray of Pablo Picasso’s 20th century anti-war painting.

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Record on Dark Knight opening night

By taking $66.4m, Batman film, The Dark Knight, has set a single-day box office record on its opening night, said distributor Warner Bros.
The studio added that the movie, which debuted on Friday in the US, and has surpassed the previous record of $59.8m, set last year by Spider-Man 3.

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Head cut for Hitler waxwork

In Berlin, police said that a 41-year-old man was arrested as wax figure of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (photo, from mirror.co.uk) was beheaded, shortly after a new branch of Madame Tussaud’s opened in Berlin.

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State of emergency in Pompeii

In a bid to save the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii, that has fallen into disrepair, the Italian government has declared a « state of emergency ».
A special commissioner will be appointed by the ministers, in order to oversee the site, and have earmarked extra funding for it.

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