Angelina Jolie makes first public appearance after mastectomy

By Edward Baran

LONDON (Reuters) - Angelina Jolie made her first public appearance since announcing her double mastectomy on Sunday, joining fiance Brad Pitt on the red carpet in London where she welcomed the debate on women's health that the surgery had sparked.

The Oscar-winning actress has stayed out of the spotlight since announcing her operation in a New York Times column last month, saying the decision was made after finding she carried a gene giving her an 87 percent chance of getting breast cancer.

The 37-year-old mother of six, praised for her courage in publicly announcing her surgery, is now reported to be planning another operation to remove her ovaries as the BRCA1 gene also gives her a 50 percent chance of ovarian cancer.

On the red carpet for the world premiere of Pitt's latest movie, zombie blockbuster "World War Z", Jolie praised her partner as being "a wonderful man and a wonderful father.

"I'm very, very grateful for all the support ... and I have been very happy just to see the discussion of women's health expanded and that means the world to me," she told reporters.

"After losing my mom to these issues, I am very grateful for it," added the American actress, wearing a long black, backless Yves Saint Laurent dress.

Jolie's mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died from ovarian cancer in 2007 at the age of 56 and her aunt, 61-year-old Debbie Martin, died last week as a result of breast cancer.

Jolie missed her aunt's funeral to accompany Pitt to London for the premiere of "World War Z", an adaptation of Max Brooks' 2006 apocalyptic novel.

Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment bought the screen rights to the novel about six years ago and it is one of the big box office releases this summer, but it is under pressure to perform before even opening.

It was due to be released late last year but suffered setbacks amid reports that the budget had ballooned above $200 million and Pitt clashed with director Marc Forster.

In "World War Z", Pitt plays United Nations representative Gerry Lane who is enlisted to help stop a zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to destroy mankind.

Pitt said he was proud of the film and also of Jolie for her decision to have a mastectomy for the sake of their family and to share that experience.

"When she's faced with a problem - and we have known this was coming for some time - she takes it by the horns," Pitt, 49, also dressed in black, told reporters. "I'm super proud of her. She's a bad ass."

Asked how important it was to have her on the red carpet with him, Pitt said: "It's just more fun to do these things with each other. More fun when she's around and same for her."

"World War Z" marks Pitt's first foray as the star and producer of his own potential franchise.

Pitt said his own children's reaction to the book sparked the project which ultimately was about survival and family.

"The boys love a zombie," he said.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith)

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China's 'first lady' Peng avoids California limelight

By John Ruwitch

RANCHO MIRAGE, California (Reuters) - China's photogenic "first lady" Peng Liyuan played steel drums in Trinidad, strolled hand-in-hand with a coffee farmer's daughter in Costa Rica and snapped pictures with her iPhone in the shadow of Mayan ruins in Mexico.

But the glamorous and popular wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping stepped out of the spotlight for two days in California while her husband held unprecedented informal talks with U.S. President Barack Obama at a lush retreat in the desert on the last leg of a four-country trip.

Peng, a singer who many Chinese say was far more famous than Xi before he became a top leader, has decisively broken the mold of Chinese first wives who have kept an intentionally low profile since the 1970s.

Many in China expected to see more of her in California and hoped that she would have a chance to interact with U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, potentially adding a fresh dimension to the nascent relationship between their presidential husbands.

But Mrs. Obama's decision to stay in Washington with her daughters rather than meet the Chinese first couple sidelined Peng to some extent.

U.S. officials said it had been made clear to the Chinese side early on that a scheduling conflict would prevent Mrs. Obama from the summit at the Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs.

But the U.S. first lady did make a gesture.

"Mrs. Obama wrote a letter to Madame Peng welcoming her to the United States. The First Lady said she regretted missing her this weekend but hopes to have the chance to visit China and meet Madame Peng sometime soon," a White House official said.

Still, Michelle Obama's absence set the Chinese blogosphere and some Chinese media outlets alight with speculation, anger, pride and more than a few jokes.

It was an "arrogant show of fear of inferiority" which caused Michelle Obama not to meet Peng, and an insult to the Chinese people, an opinion piece carried by the semi-official China News Service said. The article appeared to have later been removed from the service's website but it was widely circulated on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblog.

'DISRESPECT AND RUDENESS'

"Even if Xi's wife doesn't care, many Chinese believe this is a show of disrespect and rudeness towards the Chinese leader," it said.

Michelle Obama has had cordial interactions with other foreign leaders' wives who have visited the White House as well as with those she has met abroad. But lacking any major diplomatic role in the administration, she has shown few signs of forging close personal bonds with her foreign counterparts.

On Weibo, several commentators took their own stabs as to why Michelle avoided California.

"She was afraid of Mama Peng's charm. How shameful that the aura of the First Lady of the world's superpower can't beat that of the First Lady of developing China," wrote a user with the handle Chiki_Wang.

Another wrote: "Michelle decided to hide before being humbled. She was afraid that after dinner the two couples would sing karaoke and so she said she needed to be with her daughters - one of the most common excuses, even in China."

Peng stepped into the limelight in her new role as first lady in March, the same month that Xi became president, when she accompanied him to Russia and Africa. She became an instant internet sensation back home.

Images of her wearing a fashionable, made-in-China wardrobe have been popular back home - a parallel she shares with Michelle Obama, who Vogue magazine said in its April cover story had "inspired a modern definition of effortless American chic."

Chinese first wives have occasionally appeared in photographs when traveling abroad with their husbands. Most have appeared frumpy and awkward, though, and none of Peng's predecessors stretching back to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 could be described as glamorous.

All have kept a low profile because of the experience of Jiang Qing, the widow of the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong. Jiang was the leader of the "Gang of Four" that wielded supreme power during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. She was given a suspended death sentence in 1981 for the deaths of tens of thousands during that period of chaos.

By contrast, Peng's easy, casual and fun demeanor were on full display once again on the earlier leg of Xi's trip, which took in Trinidad, Costa Rica and Mexico. She has also been trying out her English, which sources with ties to the leadership told Reuters she has been learning.

In California, Palm Springs' local newspaper, the Desert Sun, snapped photos of her visiting the Palm Springs Art Museum on Friday afternoon. Almost no other media were present.

And Peng joined Obama and Xi for tea on Saturday before the Chinese first couple departed, U.S. national security adviser Thomas Donilon said. It lasted about a half hour.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in RANCHO MIRAGE and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Walsh)

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Elizabeth Taylor's first wedding dress up for auction

LONDON (Reuters) - The wedding dress worn by film star Elizabeth Taylor for her first marriage to hotel heir Conrad Hilton in 1950 will go up for sale next month, auction house Christie's said on Friday.

The simple, but elegant garment created by Hollywood costume designer Helen Rose for the then 18-year-old Taylor is an oyster shell-colored, floor-length satin gown with a fine silk gauze off-the-shoulder illusion neckline.

The dress, which was a gift from MGM film studios, has a top estimate of 50,000 pounds ($75,300). Rose also designed Grace Kelly's wedding dress for her marriage to the Prince of Monaco.

By the time Taylor married Hilton she was already a veteran actress and was just a year away from her Oscar-nominated performance in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "A Place in the Sun".

The A-list of old Hollywood - Greer Garson, Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Esther Williams, and Van Johnson - were among the many stars who came to congratulate the bride.

The star of "Cleopatra" surpassed Michael Jackson as the highest-earning deceased celebrity in a survey released by Forbes in October 2012, with her estate pulling in $210 million, much of it from a 2011 auction of jewels, costumes and art work.

The auction of Taylor's jewels took in $116 million, more than double the record for a single collection, and set new marks for pearls, colorless diamonds and Indian jewels.

Taylor, who died in 2011 at the age of 79, was married eight times, twice to actor Richard Burton, and had a career spanning seven decades.

She first gained fame in 1944's "National Velvet" at age 12, and was nominated for five Oscars, winning best actress for "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), which also starred Burton.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Angelina Jolie makes first public appearance after mastectomy

By Edward Baran

LONDON (Reuters) - Angelina Jolie made her first public appearance since announcing her double mastectomy on Sunday, joining fiance Brad Pitt on the red carpet in London where she welcomed the debate on women's health that the surgery had sparked.

The Oscar-winning actress has stayed out of the spotlight since announcing her operation in a New York Times column last month, saying the decision was made after finding she carried a gene giving her an 87 percent chance of getting breast cancer.

The 37-year-old mother of six, praised for her courage in publicly announcing her surgery, is now reported to be planning another operation to remove her ovaries as the BRCA1 gene also gives her a 50 percent chance of ovarian cancer.

On the red carpet for the world premiere of Pitt's latest movie, zombie blockbuster "World War Z", Jolie praised her partner as being "a wonderful man and a wonderful father.

"I'm very, very grateful for all the support ... and I have been very happy just to see the discussion of women's health expanded and that means the world to me," she told reporters.

"After losing my mom to these issues, I am very grateful for it," added the American actress, wearing a long black, backless Yves Saint Laurent dress.

Jolie's mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died from ovarian cancer in 2007 at the age of 56 and her aunt, 61-year-old Debbie Martin, died last week as a result of breast cancer.

Jolie missed her aunt's funeral to accompany Pitt to London for the premiere of "World War Z", an adaptation of Max Brooks' 2006 apocalyptic novel.

Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment bought the screen rights to the novel about six years ago and it is one of the big box office releases this summer, but it is under pressure to perform before even opening.

It was due to be released late last year but suffered setbacks amid reports that the budget had ballooned above $200 million and Pitt clashed with director Marc Forster.

In "World War Z", Pitt plays United Nations representative Gerry Lane who is enlisted to help stop a zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to destroy mankind.

Pitt said he was proud of the film and also of Jolie for her decision to have a mastectomy for the sake of their family and to share that experience.

"When she's faced with a problem - and we have known this was coming for some time - she takes it by the horns," Pitt, 49, also dressed in black, told reporters. "I'm super proud of her. She's a bad ass."

Asked how important it was to have her on the red carpet with him, Pitt said: "It's just more fun to do these things with each other. More fun when she's around and same for her."

"World War Z" marks Pitt's first foray as the star and producer of his own potential franchise.

Pitt said his own children's reaction to the book sparked the project which ultimately was about survival and family.

"The boys love a zombie," he said.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith)

View the original article here

First Facebook president Sean Parker weds in California

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Billionaire Sean Parker, co-founder of music-sharing website Napster and the first president of Facebook, was married on Saturday in Northern California, a representative for the couple said.

Parker, 33, married his fiancee Alexandra Lenas in a ceremony at an inn in the costal retreat of Big Sur with 300 family and friends in attendance, his representative Matthew Hiltzik said in a statement.

Their daughter, Winter, who was born this year, was part of the ceremony.

Parker's fortune is estimated at $2 billion at Forbes.com.

In 2004, Parker joined Facebook where he became its first president. He left the company in 2005 and is now a managing partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund.

Actor Justin Timberlake played Parker as a hard-partying ladies man in a 2010 movie, "The Social Network," about the creation of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg, who was then a student at Harvard University. After the film came out, Parker dismissed the portrayal as fictional.

Aside from his time at Facebook, Parker is known for co-founding Napster in 1999 when he was 19 years-old.

Napster flummoxed music executives by allowing free peer-to-peer sharing of songs online. It was shut down by court order in 2001 over copyright infringement claims.

Parker is still involved in the online music industry, and was a backer of music subscription service Spotify.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Christopher Wilson)

View the original article here

First Facebook president Sean Parker weds in California

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Billionaire Sean Parker, co-founder of music-sharing website Napster and the first president of Facebook, was married on Saturday in Northern California, a representative for the couple said.

Parker, 33, married his fiancee Alexandra Lenas in a ceremony at an inn in the costal retreat of Big Sur with 300 family and friends in attendance, his representative Matthew Hiltzik said in a statement.

Their daughter, Winter, who was born this year, was part of the ceremony.

Parker's fortune is estimated at $2 billion at Forbes.com.

In 2004, Parker joined Facebook where he became its first president. He left the company in 2005 and is now a managing partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund.

Actor Justin Timberlake played Parker as a hard-partying ladies man in a 2010 movie, "The Social Network," about the creation of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg, who was then a student at Harvard University. After the film came out, Parker dismissed the portrayal as fictional.

Aside from his time at Facebook, Parker is known for co-founding Napster in 1999 when he was 19 years-old.

Napster flummoxed music executives by allowing free peer-to-peer sharing of songs online. It was shut down by court order in 2001 over copyright infringement claims.

Parker is still involved in the online music industry, and was a backer of music subscription service Spotify.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Christopher Wilson)

View the original article here

PHOTO: The Very First Naked PETA Ad

From PETA:

The Go-Go's were the first all-female band to hit number one writing their own music and playing their own instruments. They were also the first stars to pose for PETA's iconic "Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" campaign.

Before the gals kick off their summer 2013 tour, we chatted with vegetarian frontwoman Belinda Carlisle about her passion for animals, her historic work with PETA, and even her favorite foods.

PETA: The Go-Go's starred in PETA's very first naked ad. The "Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" campaign has since become iconic around the world. Did you have any feeling when you did it that it would redefine the movement, keep animal rights sexy and relevant for decades, and transcend cultures?

Belinda Carlisle: We had no idea at the time that the campaign would be so iconic. We knew it was clever and would get people talking. The campaign is still just as relevant, since fur still unfortunately lines the runways. Everyone loves the campaign, including my son, who's 21. And I always get asked if we were really naked behind that sign!

PETA: Well, were you?

B.C.: I'll never tell!

PETA: So tell us how you ended up so committed to living meat-free. You were vegetarian, and then you fell off the wagon for a bit, but you came back for animals. What made you recommit to a vegetarian diet?

B.C.: I fell off the vegetarian wagon and never felt good about it. I wouldn't let myself think of my plate of meat as an animal, but I knew deep inside it was, and actually it was gross, especially chicken. I was full of shame. Then I started practicing yoga, which is all about nonviolence, and realized eating meat isn't compatible with that. Now I teach yoga, and I'm so full of pride not to support factory farms and to be socially responsible.

PETA: That's great! For people reading this who would like to go meat-free but don't know where to start, what are some of your favorite vegan foods?

B.C.: Vegan Sloppy Joes, vegan BLTs, and hummus?anything that doesn't leave a bloody aftertaste.

Catch the Go-Go's live this summer.

Text and image courtesy of PETA.

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