Judge’s facts become work of blockbusting fiction

A district court judge who lectures on international art crime has found his work in the most unexpected place – the pages of Dan Brown’s latest blockbuster. Hamilton-based Judge Arthur Tompkins, who each New Zealand winter teaches a course on art crime during war in a small town north of Rome, was stunned to find The Da Vinci Code author had lifted a passage of his writing for use in his latest New York Times bestseller, Inferno.

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Buck: Horseman, Don’t Pass By

“Equine therapist” just doesn’t sound as good as “horse whisperer,” although that’s the term to describe Buck Brannaman’s specialty as a trainer of troubled horses. In fact, the subject of the lovely documentary Buck doesn’t even whisper: he talks into a microphone so that the rapt horse owners can watch and hear him magically fixing whatever ails their seemingly impossible horses.

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A conversation between author Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers, about the new movie No Country for Old Men

A conversation between Cormac McCarthy and Joel and Ethan Coen If you were going to play the parlor game of arranging the most interesting, improbable, imaginary conversation among American entertainers, you could do worse than the one that took place in midtown Manhattan earlier this month. The participants were the filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, known for smart, stylish and slightly silly movies like Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and the novelist Cormac McCarthy, who won the National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses and the Pulitzer Prize for The Road.

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Does God Want You To Be Rich?

When George Adams lost his job at an Ohio tile factory last October, the most practical thing he did, he thinks, was go to a new church, even though he had to move his wife and four preteen boys to Conroe, a suburb of Houston, to do it. Conroe, you see, is not far from Lakewood, the home church of megapastor and best-selling author Joel Osteen.

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Jaycee Dugard opens up after 18-year kidnapping ordeal

The first images are emerging of an adult Jaycee Dugard, the woman who was kidnapped when she was 11 and allegedly held captive for 18 years by a couple in an elaborate compound hidden in the backyard. Dugard is featured on the cover of the new issue of People magazine, smiling brightly in the photo, her face framed by long brown hair

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