Former first lady Betty Ford dies at 93

By CONNIE CASS -
 Associated Press,
LINDA DEUTSCH - Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Betty Ford said things that first ladies just don't say, even today. And 1970s America loved her for it.

According to Mrs. Ford, her young adult children probably had smoked marijuana — and if she were their age, she'd try it, too. She told "60 Minutes" she wouldn't be surprised to learn that her youngest, 18-year-old Susan, was in a sexual relationship (an embarrassed Susan issued a denial).

She mused that living together before marriage might be wise, thought women should be drafted into the military if men were, and spoke up unapologetically for abortion rights, taking a position contrary to the president's. "Having babies is a blessing, not a duty," Mrs. Ford said.

The former first lady, whose triumph over drug and alcohol addiction became a beacon of hope for addicts and the inspiration for her Betty Ford Center in California, died at age 93, family friend Marty Allen said.

Family spokeswoman Barbara Lewandrowski said Betty Ford died Friday at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage. Other details of her death were not immediately available.

"She was a wonderful wife and mother; a great friend; and a courageous First Lady," former President George H.W. Bush said in a statement on Friday. "No one confronted life's struggles with more fortitude or honesty, and as a result, we all learned from the challenges she faced."

While her husband served as president, Betty Ford's comments weren't the kind of genteel, innocuous talk expected from a first lady, and a Republican one no less. Her unscripted comments sparked tempests in the press and dismayed President Gerald Ford's advisers, who were trying to soothe the national psyche after Watergate. But to the scandal-scarred, Vietnam-wearied, hippie-rattled nation, Mrs. Ford's openness was refreshing.

Candor worked for Betty Ford, again and again. She would build an enduring legacy by opening up the toughest times of her life as public example.

In an era when cancer was discussed in hushed tones and mastectomy was still a taboo subject, the first lady shared the specifics of her breast cancer surgery. The publicity helped bring the disease into the open and inspired countless women to seek breast examinations.

Her most painful revelation came 15 months after leaving the White House, when Mrs. Ford announced that she was entering treatment for a longtime addiction to painkillers and alcohol. It turned out the famously forthcoming first lady had been keeping a secret, even from herself.

She used the unvarnished story of her own descent and recovery to crusade for better addiction treatment, especially for women. She co-founded the nonprofit Betty Ford Center near the Fords' home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in 1982. Mrs. Ford raised millions of dollars for the center, kept close watch over its operations, and regularly welcomed groups of new patients with a speech that started, "Hello, my name's Betty Ford, and I'm an alcoholic and drug addict."

Although most famous for a string of celebrity patients over the years — from Elizabeth Taylor and Johnny Cash to Lindsay Lohan — the center keeps its rates relatively affordable and has served more than 90,000 people.

"People who get well often say, 'You saved my life,' and 'You've turned my life around,'" Mrs. Ford once said. "They don't realize we merely provided the means for them to do it themselves, and that's all."

In a statement Friday, President Barack Obama said the Betty Ford Center would honor Mrs. Ford's legacy "by giving countless Americans a new lease on life."

"As our nation's First Lady, she was a powerful advocate for women's health and women's rights," the president said. "After leaving the White House, Mrs. Ford helped reduce the social stigma surrounding addiction and inspired thousands to seek much-needed treatment."

Mrs. Ford was a free spirit from the start. Elizabeth Bloomer, born April 8, 1918, fell in love with dance as a girl in Grand Rapids, Mich., and decided it would be her life. At 20, despite her mother's misgivings, she moved to New York to learn from her idol Martha Graham. She lived in Greenwich Village, worked as a model, and performed at Carnegie Hall in Graham's modern dance ensemble. "I thought I had arrived," she later recalled.

But her mother coaxed her back to Grand Rapids, where Betty worked as a dance teacher and store fashion coordinator and married William Warren, a friend from school days. He was a salesman who traveled frequently; she was unhappy. They lasted five years.

While waiting for her divorce to become final, she met and began dating, as she put it in her memoir, "probably the most eligible bachelor in Grand Rapids" — former college football star, Navy veteran and lawyer Jerry Ford. They would be married for 58 years, until his death in December 2006.

When he proposed, she didn't know about his political ambitions; when he launched his bid for Congress during their engagement, she figured he couldn't win.

Two weeks after their October 1948 wedding, her husband was elected to his first term in the House. He would serve 25 years, rising to minority leader.

Mrs. Ford was thrust into a role she found exhausting and unfulfilling: political housewife. While her husband campaigned for weeks at a time or worked late on Capitol Hill, she raised their four children: Michael, Jack, Steven and Susan. She arranged luncheons for congressional wives, helped with her husband's campaigns, became a Cub Scout den mother, taught Sunday school.

A pinched nerve in her neck in 1964, followed by the onset of severe osteoarthritis, led her to an assortment of prescription drugs that never fully relieved the pain. For years she had been what she later called "a controlled drinker, no binges." Now she began mixing pills and alcohol. Feeling overwhelmed and underappreciated, she suffered an emotional breakdown that led to weekly visits with a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist didn't take note of her drinking but instead tried to build her self-esteem: "He said I had to start thinking I was valuable, not just as a wife and mother, but as myself."

The White House would give her that gift.

In 1973, as Mrs. Ford was happily anticipating her husband's retirement from politics, Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced out of office over bribery charges. President Richard Nixon turned to Gerald Ford to fill the office.

Less than a year later, his presidency consumed by the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned. On Aug. 9, 1974, Gerald Ford was sworn in as the only chief executive in American history who hadn't been elected either president or vice president.

Mrs. Ford wrote of her sudden ascent to first lady: "It was like going to a party you're terrified of, and finding out to your amazement that you're having a good time."

She was 56 when she moved into the White House, and looked more matronly than mod. Ever gracious, her chestnut hair carefully coifed into a soft bouffant, she tended to speak softly and slowly, even when taking a feminist stand.

Her breast cancer diagnosis, coming less than two months after President Ford was whisked into office, may have helped disarm the clergymen, conservative activists and Southern politicians who were most inflamed by her loose comments. She was photographed recovering at Bethesda Naval Hospital, looking frail in her robe, and won praise for grace and courage.

"She seems to have just what it takes to make people feel at home in the world again," media critic Marshall McLuhan observed at the time. "Something about her makes us feel rooted and secure — a feeling we haven't had in a while. And her cancer has been a catharsis for everybody."

The public outpouring of support helped her embrace the power of her position. "I was somebody, the first lady," she wrote later. "When I spoke, people listened."

She used her newfound influence to lobby aggressively for the Equal Rights Amendment, which failed nonetheless, and to speak against child abuse, raise money for handicapped children, and champion the performing arts.

It's debatable whether Mrs. Ford's frank nature helped or hurt her husband's 1976 campaign to win a full term as president. Polls showed she was widely admired. By taking positions more liberal than the president's, she helped broaden his appeal beyond traditional Republican voters. But she also outraged some conservatives, leaving the president more vulnerable to a strong GOP primary challenge by Ronald Reagan. That battle weakened Ford going into the general election against Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Carter won by a slim margin. The president had lost his voice in the campaign's final days, and it was Mrs. Ford who read his concession speech to the nation.

The Fords retired to a Rancho Mirage golf community, but he spent much of his time away, giving speeches and playing in golf tournaments. Home alone, deprived of her exciting and purposeful life in the White House, Mrs. Ford drank.

By 1978 her secret was obvious to those closest to her.

"As I got sicker," she recalled, "I gradually stopped going to lunch. I wouldn't see friends. I was putting everyone out of my life." Her children recalled her living in a stupor, shuffling around in her bathrobe, refusing meals in favor of a drink.

Her family finally confronted her and insisted she seek treatment.

"I was stunned at what they were trying to tell me about how I disappointed them and let them down," she said in a 1994 Associated Press interview. "I was terribly hurt — after I had spent all those years trying to be the best mother, wife I could be. ... Luckily, I was able to hear them saying that I needed help and they cared too much about me to let it go on."

She credited their "intervention" with saving her life.

Mrs. Ford entered Long Beach Naval Hospital and, alongside alcoholic young sailors and officers, underwent a grim detoxification that became the model for therapy at the Betty Ford Center. In her book "A Glad Awakening," she described her recovery as a second chance at life.

And in that second chance, she found a new purpose.

"There is joy in recovery," she wrote, "and in helping others discover that joy."

Family spokeswoman Lewandrowski the family expects to organize a service in Palm Desert over the next couple days. Ford's body will be sent to Michigan for burial alongside former President Gerald Ford, who is buried at his namesake museum in Grand Rapids.

___

Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer in Los Angeles and Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report.

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People won’t watch film only for kiss: Katrina

Prashant Singh, Hindustan Times
“
Kissing scenes in Bollywood have always made tabloid headlines. So it’s not surprising that the lip-lock shared between Katrina Kaif and Hrithik Roshan in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD) too is creating ripples. But Katrina is not amused and remains completely unfazed. The actor feels too much attention is being given to the scene.


Why give it so much importance? I don’t feel the sequence is even worth talking about. People won’t watch the film only for the kiss, I can promise you that. Personally too, I don’t give it any attention. People will come only if they are interested in the film, like the promos, or if they like the vibe of the film,” she says. “It’s part of an actor’s job.”

Of late, talks have been rife that the makers of ZNMD were confused about the Hrithik-Katrina kiss. They were believed to be in two minds regarding how much of the elaborate sequence should be retained in the film. But apparently, the kiss remains unedited in the final version.

This is not the first time Katrina has locked lips in a film. Her kiss with Gulshan Grover in her debut film, Boom (2003) was deleted from the initial versions of the DVDs , but is reportedly set to appear in the new versions. But she wasn’t bothered about her first on-screen kiss being made public too. “What’s there to react? And what’s new about those scenes?” she had said a couple of months ago. The actor had further added that she doesn’t deny having done scenes in the past she wasn’t comfortable with.

But Katrina is clearly excited to share screen space with Hrithik for the first time. “He is an amazingly talented person. I always wanted to work with him and I’m happy to have got the opportunity now. You can really learn a lot about focus, concentration and dedication from him,” she says. As ZNMD gears up for release, director Zoya Akhtar and her team have been serving up several promotional activities, including a tie-up with UTV Movies and the entire cast going on a road trip from Mumbai to Gurgaon. Ask Katrina about working with her second female director after Farah Khan (Tees Maar Khan, 2010) and she shrugs, “A female or male director... that’s not important to me. Actually, I don’t see any difference. You are either a good director or you are not, and hopefully I have met a good director (in Zoya Akhtar).”

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Motorola’s Latest Phone Comes as No Friend to Hackers

• By Mike Isaac

For phone modification junkies, the Android software platform comes with a host of mod-friendly features. It’s too bad, then, that Motorola’s latest Android phone lacks all of them.

Motorola’s Droid 3 features a locked boot loader, which is a program that loads the operating system software on every smartphone when it’s turned on. The company said it planned to change the policy this year.

The news first came from a Motorola support forumsrepresentative.

“As we’ve communicated, we plan to enable the unlockable-relockable boot loader in future software releases, starting in late 2011, where channel and operator partners will allow it,” said a Motorola spokesperson in a statement provided to Wired.com. “Droid 3 is not built on a software version that includes this feature.”

Locking down the boot loader is a big pain for those who want to modify their Android phone operating systems. Essentially, it drastically limits the extent of modification and customization you can accomplish on your phone. If you wanted to install a particularly popular piece of modding software like, say,CyanogenMod — a very popular custom Android build that optimizes a phone’s hardware performance and adds a number of nifty flourishes — with a locked boot loader, you’re out of luck.

In today’s smartphone landscape, handset manufacturers face pressure from wireless carriers like Verizon and AT&T to lock down phone boot loaders. This is done especially to prohibit the potential installation of software used to do things that carriers don’t want you doing, like, say, capture licensed streaming content. There’s also software available that lets you tether your phone to your computer — providing it with an internet connection for free — a feature for which wireless companies normally charge users. Bypassing that charge means cutting into a carrier’s bottom line.

Motorola doesn’t want to deal with the tech support nightmare that widespread phone hacks entail. “If you brick your phone messing with it” — which basically means rendering the device useless, like an electronic “brick,” as it were — “we don’t want to have to fix it under warranty,” a Motorola representative wrote in a message board post.

Because of all this, hacker-unfriendly phones aren’t uncommon. Motorola’s Atrix debuted with a locked boot loader, as have many of the company’s phones since the release of the Droid 2. Motorola’s upcoming Photon 4G smartphone will also be locked down.

Android modification junkies aren’t happy about Motorola’s decisions. In March, one Motorola smartphone owner started an online petition, asking others who don’t agree with the company’s locked boot loader decisions to sign and bring up the issue on Moto’s Facebook page. As of this post’s publishing time, the petition has over 10,000 signatures.

Given the hardware specs on the Droid 3, it’s especially disappointing for hackers to see the phone debut as mod-unfriendly. The Droid 3 has a beefy dual-core 1GHz processor under the hood, which, when used in conjunction with modding software, can be overclocked to faster speeds.

The future isn’t entirely grim for phone hackers. Motorola continually promises a change in locked boot loader policy come late 2011, and other companies like Sony Ericsson have even begun to court the modding community, providing a detailed list of instructions on how to unlock the company’s phones.

It seems as if the predominant feeling is “we’ll believe it when we see it.”

“There’s not a single reason to believe that Motorola has truly changed their views,” wrote an angryMotorola message board user in a post. “We’re not saying you have to unlock all our devices now, but a little sign of good faith would be much appreciated.”

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Sony game phone strikes odd balance

By ROBERT EVATT World Staff Writer 

Anyone remember the N-Gage? In 2003, Nokia tried to marry a cellphone with a full-fledged video game system. The resulting taco-shaped, button-infested mass was, in a word, horrible, and nobody has tried since. 


At least until now, with Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play. This new device, which goes for $199 on Verizon Wireless' network, blends an Android smartphone with the controls of a portable gaming system. Unfortunately, this stone only kills one bird and slightly wounds the other. 


Let's start with the exterior. When closed it looks like your standard Android smartphone, with a dominant touchscreen and the four small Android navigation buttons. It's thicker than just about anything on the market, but it's nothing that will destroy your pants pocket. 


But rotate the Xperia Play to the side and slide the bottom out, and you've instantly got an array of PlayStation-like game controls. There's the directional pad, four buttons and even the shoulder buttons in the back. 


To save space, the PlayStation's two analog sticks have been replaced by two circular touchpads, which I'll talk more about later. 


Everything you'd expect from a phone running Android 2.3 is here. You can download hundreds of thousands of Android apps, take pictures and video, customize your home screens and even place phone calls if you're feeling crazy. It all runs fine. 


But the selling point is the games, and for the most part, the phone's controls work well. The d-pad and buttons do their job admirably, and anyone who has used a game controller will be set without a second thought. 


Unfortunately, the circular touchpads are a different story. When I played Gameloft's first-person shooter "Modern Warfare" knockoff "Modern Combat 2," the touchpads had me stumbling around like a drunken and easily killed lemur. I got a little better with practice, but I still found myself wishing for the tactile feedback you get with thumbsticks. 


The games looked great - then again, they look great on other Android phones. Nearly all of the three dozen games available that use the Xperia Play's controls are regular Android games that use the buttons rather than the touchscreen. Some play better than the vanilla versions and some don't, but regardless, you've seen them all before. 


The lone unique offering for the Xperia Play is "Crash Bandicoot," the 3D platformer that first came out for the original PlayStation. The game plays well, but it's an odd showcase for the phone, since the 15-year-old game really shows its age alongside the more advanced Android offerings. 


Sure, the phone just came out, and Sony briefly mentioned a handful of exclusive games at last month's Electronic Entertainment Expo. But there's no indication of when they'll arrive, and Sony seemed a lot more interested in plugging the upcoming PlayStation Vita, the successor to the PlayStation Portable, than upcoming smartphone games. Not an encouraging sign. 


At this point it's hard to recommend the Xperia Play. If you're a gamer, both Nintendo and Sony's portable game systems offer much more robust and unique gaming experiences on the go. If you're not a gamer, there's better and cheaper Android phones out there. Maybe things will improve with time, and at least it's better than the N-Gage. 

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Week in Apple: pirates versus iTunes Match, yet more iPhone rumors

By Jacqui Cheng

It was a short holiday week in the US, but we were still flush with new iPhone and iPad rumors. Ars also dug into some of the legal issues that might be involved with iTunes Match and music piracy, and we discussed exactly how much time iPhone users spend playing games in a month. If you need to catch up, here's the roundup:

WSJ: next iPhone to be "thinner and lighter" than iPhone 4: Sources for the Wall Street Journal claim that Apple's next-gen iPhone will have a "thinner and lighter" form factor, and that Apple might want 25 million of the devices from a single supplier.

Ask Ars: will iTunes Match be used to chase down music pirates?: Plenty of people are wondering if signing up for iTunes Match could reveal the questionable source of their copy of the Village People's "Cruisin." Will Apple use iTunes Match to sort the pirates out from those that actually pay for their music? Apple won't say, but legal experts don't believe they will.

Report: Apple orders 15 million iPhone 5s: Apple has ordered 15 million iPhone 5s from Taiwanese manufacturer Pegatron for shipment in September, according to DigiTimes.

Big bidding: Apple, Microsoft, RIM nab Nortel patents for $4.5 billion: A group of tech giants has entered a "staggering" winning bid of $4.5 billion for bankrupt Nortel's portfolio of 6,000+ patents which cover, among other things, 3G and 4G wireless networking. While it keeps the patents out of trollish hands, it won't help Android fight off the patent infringement lawsuits.

iPhone users spend 14.7 hours a month playing games: Nearly all smartphone users are willing to pay for games, but it's iPhone users who log the most hours with the games they buy.

Rumor: "iPad HD" with "Retina" display could launch this fall: The iPad line may get a "Retina" display model as early as this fall, but the new device might not be an "iPad 3."

Apple denied preliminary injunction against Amazon's "Appstore": Amazon can continue to use the term "app store" while Apple's trademark infringement suit continues, and Apple may have a hard time convincing the judge that infringement is even taking place.

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Pioneer Adds Computer Speakers

By Lisa Johnston -- TWICE, 7/7/2011

The S-MM751RU has a $129 suggested retail.

Long Beach, Calif. - Pioneer Electronics entered the computer speaker market with two products on Thursday.

The manufacturer introduced a 2.0 system (the S-MM301 for $49) and a 2.1 system (the S-MM751RU for $129).

The S-MM301 features triple-coil drivers, USB connectivity, metal grilles, built-in controls and a compact design meant for travel, while the S-MM751RU adds a dedicated subwoofer and more power.

"Our goal with these speakers is to bring that same ‘larger-than-life' Pioneer home audio experience onto the desktop," said Chris Walker, A/V marketing and product planning director for Pioneer's home entertainment division. "These new computer speakers bring that experience closer for those consumers who love to listen to their music collection from their laptops and home computers."

The S-MM751RU comes with a control puck that enables users to control the volume and play/pause/rewind/forward. It uses Maxx Bass Dynamic Sound technology, Pioneer said, with DSP Bass Enhancement to increase dynamic range. The system is rated to handle a total of 40 watts (20 watt subwoofer, 10 watts for each satellite).

Other features of the 2.1 system include an SD card slot, USB port and a line-in input.

Both are currently available

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Bangladesh Opposition Leads 2nd Day of Strikes

Police arrest an activist of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) during a protest in Dhaka. A 48-hour countrywide strike called by the main opposition BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical Islamist group, continues on Thursday, July 7, 2011

An anti-government strike has continued for a second day in Bangladesh, where opposition members are protesting a constitutional amendment they say will unfairly help the ruling party stay in power.

Schools and businesses remained closed across the country Thursday, and the strike continued to affect transportation.

In the capital, Dhaka, 12,000 security personnel were deployed a day after police say they arrested at least 21 protesters.

At least 20 people were injured Wednesday as security personnel and demonstrators clashed in several parts of the country.  A senior leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Zainal Abdin Farooque, was hospitalized with head injuries, and police arrested several BNP members.

Home Minister Sahara Khatun has warned the government will do whatever is necessary to maintain order.

The BNP and its allies, including the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami, are protesting last month's parliamentary approval of a constitutional amendment that scraps a system of holding national elections under a non-partisan caretaker government.

Lawmakers from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's ruling Awami League party passed the amendment in a June 30 vote boycotted by the BNP.

Opposition members accuse Hasina of amending the constitution to keep her party in power through fraud, rather than allowing non-partisan technocrats to oversee Bangladesh's next elections.

The country's supreme court has ruled the system of installing 90-day interim administrators to supervise elections is unconstitutional.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.

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Hrithik Roshan abused online!

Published: Friday, Jul 8, 2011, 11:14 IST 
By Soumyadipta Banerjee | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

Most celebrities when abused onlinego into a shell or get into a verbal tu tu main main with the haters or trolls (nicknames for those who indulge in abusing online), but actor Hrithik Roshan is probably the first Bollywood actor to respond to an abuse in an unique way on Twitter.

One of his followers, who’s known to post abusive messages at celebrities, called the actor ‘dumba$$’ in response to an interview that was put up online. ‘Ek adha emotion apni acting me bhi laa dumbass!’ the follower posted on Hrithik’s page. The actor instantly acknowledged it by retweeting it and said, ‘Am trying. Will try harder...love.’

This development was unlike any of Bollywood celebrities in the past. Most chose to go offline when faced with asituation like that, the recent being actor Shah Rukh Khan.

When contacted, Roshan admitted that he has been subjected to abuses online, but decided to face it instead of resorting to knee-jerk reactions. “There are some people who might not say things that you like. Some might be a little too harsh. But how you choose to react to a situation is completely in your hands. I am a very non-reactive person that way. It is very hard to get me to react harshly to anybody,” says Roshan.

The star says that it is really hard to get him angry. “It hurts, but that doesn’t mean that you hurt people back. Nor do I think that fighting or getting angry solves any problem.One needs to think logical when you want to solvea problem,” he adds.

It is the same belief that holds him in stead during extreme criticism. “You need to accept criticism with a smile. People criticise you because they love you and they want you to do better. If you want to do well in life this is one thing that you must take positively. Criticism has always prompted me to strive better and outdo myself,” he says.

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Fans, stars, Hollywood say farewell to Harry Potter

By Mike Collett-White and Alysha Love

LONDON | Fri Jul 8, 2011 5:06am EDT

(Reuters) - Thousands of fans braved rain and battled security restrictions in London's Trafalgar Square on Thursday to say farewell to the boy wizard Harry Potter at the world premiere of the final movie in the record-breaking series.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2" is the eighth instalment -- and the first in 3D -- of a franchise that has generated more public excitement and media hype than any other in living memory.

The silver screen adventures of Harry, Ron and Hermione have been a magic pot of gold for Hollywood studio Warner Bros, with the seven films released so far grossing $6.4 billion in ticket sales and billions more from DVDs and merchandise.

For a generation of Potter fans, the movies have extended the wizarding world created by British author J.K. Rowling in her seven-book saga which began in 1997 and concluded in 2007.

More than 400 million copies have been sold around the globe, making Rowling the first billionaire author and providing a huge support base upon which the films were built.

Six-foot-high fences blocked off entrance to Trafalgar Square for hundreds who arrived too late to get their hands on the red wristbands, which allowed access to where stars walked the red carpet among thousands of screaming Pottermaniacs.

"I'm just going to stand here all night on this little ledge," said 16-year-old Lauren Kent, who arrived too late to acquire one of the prized wristbands and was perched at the base of a column across from the square.

Thousands of die-hard fans lucky enough to make it into the packed square -- some in full regalia from the fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry -- screamed out the names of characters and those of stars such as Daniel Radcliffe as they walked the red carpet past a giant TV screen to a raised platform where the main cast spoke to cheering fans.

"We've grown up in the Harry Potter generation -- I read the first book when I was five so now it's weird that it's coming to an end... like the end of childhood," said Rhys, an 18-year-old who braved the rain in the central London square watched over by the towering statue of British naval hero Admiral Nelson.

The young actors strolled among the fans, hundreds of journalists and cameras and made an emotional appearance on the platform in front of the throng of admirers.

"I don't think the end of the story happens tonight," Radcliffe said to cheers and later tears from the crowd.

Rowling joked that Thursday's premiere was the closest she's come to considering penning another Potter novel.

The actors told Reuters that -- like their fans -- they too have struggled to come to grips with a post-Potter world, despite being A-list stars with huge fortunes.

"I'll just miss being Hermione and getting to live her life and in that world and getting to bring to life a set of books that I myself loved so much," a short-haired Emma Watson told Reuters television after strolling the red carpet in a champagne-coloured gown with a sheer top.

The actors who were cast in their roles aged between nine and 11, have all agonized over breaking with the Potter films.

The 22-year-old Rupert Grint, who plays Potter's sidekick Ron Weasley, felt he was stepping into the real world from a kind of bubble that has enveloped a portion of his life.

"It's hard for me to remember life before this and for it to come down to this two-hour and 10 minute film...I don't know -- it's very strange for me," he told Reuters television.

DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

Consistent with the gradual trend toward darker content as the franchise progressed, "Deathly Hallows - Part 2" climaxes with an intense battle at Hogwarts between good and evil.

Buildings are flattened, wizards and witches die and Harry steels himself for the final showdown with his evil nemesis Lord Voldemort, played by a snake-like Ralph Fiennes who called his character a "high definition villain."

Radcliffe, 21, who has played Harry Potter throughout the last decade and is now working on Broadway, appeared on the red carpet dressed in a tailored grey suit. He told Reuters TV that the splashy London premiere was a "fitting send off. It feels right. It feels like we're doing justice not only to what is a fantastic film but a fantastic series.

"It's like I'm a different actor in it," Radcliffe said of the movie. "It's the only time I've watched a 'Harry Potter' film and gone: 'Yes, I'm pleased with my performance'."

Whether critics agree remains to be seen, with most reviews coming out after the premiere.

The Daily Telegraph, however, featured an article by Philip Womack which described Deathly Hallows - Part 2 as "monumental cinema, awash with gorgeous tones, and carrying an ultimate message that will resonate with every viewer, young or old: there is darkness in all of us, but we can overcome it."

The movie opens in some countries on July 13, and in the key British and U.S. markets on July 15.

Rowling's wizarding world will not disappear altogether, however. She recently unveiled Pottermore, a website allowing fans to interact with the characters and storylines, and will finally retail the stories as ebooks exclusively on the site.

Perhaps British actor Alan Rickman -- who has played sneering Professor Severus Snape since the very first film -- summed up the Potter phenomenon best on the night.

"This thing has a beginning, a middle and an end. That's why it's a good story and this is the end.

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Sri Lankan Premier League Postponed

By Will Davies

You can follow Mr. Davies on Twitter @WillMHDavies.

The Sri Lankan Premier League Twenty20 cricket tournament has been postponed and will be replaced by a provincial tournament featuring six local teams, an official from Sri Lanka Cricket said Friday.

The buildup to the SLPL, which was scheduled for July 19 to August 4, was dogged by problems, ranging from India’s refusal to let its national players participate to the dissolution of the Sri Lankan cricket administration last Friday.

“We are not playing the SLPL,” said Yamuna Pitigala, Sri Lanka Cricket’s public relations and marketing secretary.

She said the event could be played in August, but added that even this was unlikely. It certainly is, given that the Australian team is set to tour Sri Lanka from August 6 to mid-September.

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Ms. Pitigala said the premier league would be replaced by a tournament starting on July 20 and involving only local players. International stars including Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi and Chris Gayle of the West Indies had previously been slated to play in the SLPL. The winner of the provincial tournament will go on to play in the September qualifiers for the Champions League T20 in Hyderabad, India, Ms. Pitigala said. It was initially planned that the winner of the SLPL would go to the qualifiers for the CLT20.

Ms. Pitigala didn’t say why the Sri Lankan version of the glitzy four-year-old Indian Premier League  had been postponed, but Sri Lankan cricket has come under heavy fire in recent weeks, and not just from outside the country. Wicket-keeper batsman and former captain Kumar Sangakkara, who is currently touring with the national team in England, launched a scathing attack on Sri Lanka’s cricket administrators during an impassioned speech at Lord’s on Monday.

But the main cause behind the derailment of the league came from Sri Lanka’s powerful northern neighbor, India, after cricket administrators there refused to allow 12 national players – including Munaf Patel, R. Ashwin and Irfan Pathan – to join the tournament.

There were reports that the Board of Control for Cricket in India believed its bête noir, Lalit Modi, was connected to the SLPL through the event’s marketing partner – Singapore-based Somerset Entertainment Ventures – but the  BCCI hasn’t issued an official statement on the matter.

Mr. Modi, the former commissioner of the IPL, has been at loggerheads with India’s cricket authorities since he was ousted from his post amid allegations of tax avoidance and misappropriation of funds. He denies the charges and also says he has no connection with the SLPL.

Whatever the BCCI’s reasons, the Sri Lankan league was doomed without the involvement of Indian players — the gateway for broadcasters to the Indian market — and was left without a major broadcaster.

The BCCI has been criticized for not releasing players, especially as Sri Lankan stars have been heavily involved in the Indian Premier League. But the SLPL is a far cry from the IPL, the world’s leading annual T20 cricket event.

Given the problems that Mr. Sangakkara highlighted in his Lord’s speech, along with Channel 4’s recently broadcast “Killing Fields” documentary showing footage of horrific crimes allegedly carried out by government forces during the civil war, Sri Lanka needs to address far more pressing matters than a second-rate T20 tournament in an already over-crowded cricket calendar.

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