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The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful
Rowling, Clooney and Cheadle do good; Bianca gets boot
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Monica Haynes is off. This is compiled from wire and Web reports.

A book of fairy tales created, handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling has sold for nearly $4 million.

The buyer, London art agent Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox, now has one of only seven copies of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," which is leather bound with silver mounts.

The book originally had been expected to sell for about $100,000 at today's auction. The standing-room-only crowd at Sotheby's auction house applauded as bidding topped the 1 million pound ($2 million) mark.

The money will benefit The Children's Voice, a charity co-founded in 2005 by Rowling and Baroness Nicholson, a member of Britain's House of Lords.

Rowling, whose Harry Potter books have sold nearly 400 million copies and been translated into 64 languages, wrote the Beedle tales after finishing the seventh and final work in the Potter series.


George Clooney and Don Cheadle have received a peace award for their efforts to raise awareness of the plight of the millions who have fled their homes in the Sudanese region of Darfur.

The actors were presented with a bronze statue by Italian sculptor Oliviero Rainaldi for "their efforts in favor of pacifying the tormented region of Darfur and for helping save lives," organizers said.

"We're part of a tiny group of people fighting for peace," Clooney, 46, said in a speech during a ceremony today marking the opening of a yearly meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates organized at Rome's city hall by a foundation headed by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Besides Gorbachev and other Nobel winners, the Dalai Lama also took part in the ceremony on the Capitoline hill.

Clooney, who has raised money and campaigned for increased international attention for Darfur, called on the international community to increase efforts and support peace talks.

Clooney and Cheadle co-founded a humanitarian organization called Not on Our Watch together with other stars including Brad Pitt and Matt Damon to focus global attention on the plight of Darfur's people. They have raised more than $9.3 million for humanitarian efforts in the region.


Bianca Jagger has been evicted from her rent-stabilized Park Avenue apartment after several years of quarreling with her landlord over claims of toxic mold and questions about her residency, her lawyer said.

After a recent appeals court ruling against her, Jagger knew the eviction was coming. She found out from a neighbor's phone call that a sheriff had arrived yesterday to move her possessions to storage, lawyer Daniel Bryson said.

"This is an absolute travesty," he said.

A lawyer for landlord Katz Park Avenue Corp. didn't immediately return a telephone call early Thursday.

Lawyers for the 62-year-old Jagger, who was married to rocker Mick Jagger, have maintained that Katz evicted her as payback. She sued the landlord in 2003, claiming mold had made her sick and the apartment unlivable.

But Katz argued that the 18th-floor apartment couldn't be Jagger's primary residence -- a requirement for occupying a rent-stabilized unit -- since she was in the United States on a tourist visa that required her to show that she intended to leave after a temporary stay. The state Supreme Court's Appellate Division agreed in October, noting that Jagger, who is a British citizen, keeps at least one luxury apartment in London.

The actress-turned-activist has been a tenant in the Upper East Side apartment for 20 years. Under the complex rent regulation laws, evicting her may allow the landlord to raise the $4,600-a-month rent substantially.


In another auction, a Tiffany silver bowl that President Kennedy gave to Maria Callas fetched nearly $33,000 at an auction of the late opera diva's memorabilia.

Sotheby's Milan auctioned more than 2,000 items yesterday from the estate of Callas' husband of 10 years, Giovanni Battista Meneghini. He was by Callas' side during her rise to operatic fame only to be left brokenhearted when she took up with Aristotle Onassis.

The Tiffany bowl was given to Callas at Kennedy's birthday in 1962.

The golden wedding rings of Callas and Meneghini, who married in 1949, sold for about $37,000.


Tony Parker says he's not a double dribbler.

The San Antonio Spurs star and his wife, Eva Longoria, issued a statement last night defending their marriage against claims by a French model that she had an affair with Parker in September.

"I love my wife," Parker, 25, said in the statement from Longoria's spokeswoman, Liza Anderson. "She's the best thing in my life, and I have never been happier."

"Tony has been nothing short of the perfect husband," said the 32-year-old actress, who stars on ABC's "Desperate Housewives."

Alexandra Paressant made the allegations in an interview with celebrity gossip Web site X17.

Anderson said in a separate statement Wednesday the claims were "completely, 100 percent false and untrue. All high-profile couples fall victim to these sorts of things in the course of their relationships."

Parker and Longoria were married in a civil ceremony July 6 in Paris. The next day, a priest married them in a church across from the Louvre Museum.


Jessica Alba is pregnant. The star of "Awake" is expecting a baby in late spring or early summer with boyfriend Cash Warren.

Alba, 26, has dated Warren, 28, since the fall of 2004 after they met on the set of "Fantastic Four."

Jack Mackenroth, a contestant on Bravo's "Project Runway," is leaving the show to get treatment for a contagious, drug-resistant staph infection in his face.

First published on December 13, 2007 at 2:02 pm