Culture

On Friday 19^th September 2014, Andy Robins, Vicky Martin and Mohammed Abdul PR Ambassador for Sainsbury’s Nine Elms Temp, took two trolleys worth of refreshments to the South Lambeth Library where they met the children from the libraries after school clubs.

They were greeted by the children with a warm thank you and proceeded to show the books that they were currently reading. Telling Sainsbury’s Colleagues a bit about themselves, they then showed the colleagues their reading area and what happens at after school clubs.

Published: 01 October 2014

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The kiss was smoochy, the cake divine and the dancing nearly till dawn, but George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin were expected to make the most of their first day as a married couple with a Sunday gondola ride through Venice.

Hordes of excited tourists and media staked out their hotel, hoping to catch the first public appearance of the Hollywood heartthrob and his bride.

Clooney and Alamuddin, a Lebanese-born British lawyer, said "I do" late Saturday at a private ceremony in Venice's stunning Aman hotel palazzo, before celebrating with a star-spangled guest list in one of the most high-profile celebrity weddings in years.

There were wolf-whistles and cheers as the actor scooped Mrs. Clooney into his arms for a nuptial kiss, and his hands were shaking so much that he did a botch job on cutting the wedding cake, a source close to the hotel said.

Attendees including Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cindy Crawford and her husband Rande Gerber -- rumoured to be Clooney's best man -- reportedly boogied well into the early hours to hit tracks by Blondie, Jackson 5 and Daft Punk.

Those not sleeping off a hangover were tipped to be meeting for a lavish late lunch Sunday in the garden of the luxurious Cipriani resort, or recovering with Bloody Mary cocktails on sun loungers by the hotel's Olympic size, waterfront pool.

But rumours among paparazzi staking out the hotel in speed boats were that the Clooneys would ditch their guests for a few hours to glide through the City of Canals, with a possible stop at the historic Bridge of Sighs, where legend has it lovers secure themselves eternal bliss with a kiss.



On Saturday at sunset, a euphoric-looking Clooney, 53, swept up Venice's Grand Canal to his wedding, accompanied by some 20 boatloads of paparazzi and the screams of adoring fans.

Singing gondoliers, who had spent the day showing off the romantic candle-lit resort to snap-happy tourists, were swept aside in their wake as the world's most famous waterway erupted with excitement.

Published: 29 September 2014

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Guy Laroche designer Marcel Marongiu on Wednesday opted for modern, feminine looks at the Paris ready-to-wear shows with a "no-nonsense" collection featuring streamlined graphic shapes, plunging necklines and experimental materials.

On day two of Paris fashion week, Marongiu teamed light silk overalls with bikini tops and tuxedos with shorts for a "light, effortless" silhouette.

Experimental materials included luminous acrylic glass on strappy bain de soleil dresses and light scratched leather that gave a rough sheen to bags, shoes and details on coats.

Marongiu, artistic director at Guy Laroche since 2007, is one of a raft of designers such as Hedi Slimane at Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander Wang at Balenciaga currently working to reinvent fabled fashion names for the modern market.

Prior to his appointment the house had seen a revolving door of designers attempt to breathe new life into it including Alber Elbaz, now at Lanvin, and Herve Leroux, founder of the Herve Leger label.

The French-Swedish designer, who in the past has looked to David Bowie for inspiration, said the idea for his latest collection came from someone even closer to his heart than Bowie.

"The starting point of this is actually a picture of my mother," he told AFP ahead of the show.

"My mother had a very interesting sense of style. She mixed freely, she was (a) very independent, intellectual woman.

"She could one day have cropped jeans with my father's pea coat and the next day an embroidered little dress with a really tight waist. She played with everything. She was far from a fashion victim," he said.

Marongiu's summer 2015 collection, which came in a palette of butter yellow, eggshell, claret red, and navy, also featured dresses with laser-cut designs and tri-colour leather panels.

Published: 25 September 2014

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Flamboyant designer Jean Paul Gaultier's last ready-to-wear show will provide an emotional highlight of nine days of fashion collections due to get underway in Paris on Tuesday.

The 62-year-old showman of the catwalks is to bow out of ready-to-wear after nearly 40 years to concentrate on his couture collections.

The designer has said the decision was taken after an "in-depth assessment" of his eponymous fashion house's future with Spanish fragrance and fashion group Puig, which has a majority stake.

Gaultier's last show, which will be held on Saturday, is one of over 90 scheduled for the next week-and-a-half.

After New York, London and Milan, other highlights will be first collections by Georgia's David Koma for Mugler and France's Julie de Libran for Sonia Rykiel.

Published: 23 September 2014

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Gucci took an audience sprinkled with fashion royalty on a mind-expanding trip back to the early 1970s on Wednesday as the global style powerhouse unveiled its 2015 spring/summer womenswear collection.

Skirts were cut above the knee, or shorter: always an encouraging sign if you believe the old maxim about global stock markets tending to rise in tandem with hemlines.

Prints had a slight psychedelic edge to them and there was a bit of a nautical/pirate theme running through a set that included plenty of embroidery and gilt-edged, oversized buttons on short-cut jackets featuring a range of exotic materials including python and Mongolian lamb.

There was also a range of three-quarter length, flared trousers and tight-waisted trench coats in an eclectic mix the company itself dubbed "kaleidoscopic glamour".

Gucci's creative director Frida Giannini has long been a fan of the hippy era and she gave full vent to that particular enthusiasm, to the apparent approval of a front-row featuring Kate Moss, US Vogue editor Anna Wintour and glamorous Monaco royal Charlotte Casiraghi.

Casiraghi, who is a top-level showjumper, has long been an ambassador for the company's equestrian line of clothing and she has now become the face of its cosmetics collection, which was making its catwalk debut here.

Elsewhere, there was much interest in the collection presented by Angelos Bratis, the latest young designer to be taken under the fatherly wing of Giorgio Armani.

The 36-year-old Greek's mastery of dresswear is seen by some to be sufficiently impressive for him to be considered a potential successor to the 80-year-old Armani, should the dean of Italian fashion decide to hand over the creative leadership of his global style empire.

Anxious to make the most of the additional interest generated by Armani's sponsorship, Bratis restricted his show to a small selection of sensual evening dresses in featherweight textiles including crepe de Chine and silk twill.

Many of them featured bold geometric patterns and vivid splashes of colour, offsetting the generally understated palate of the materials.

Published: 18 September 2014

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Heartthrob actor George Clooney is to marry his British lawyer fiancee Amal Alamuddin in Venice in a "couple of weeks", according to news reports confirmed in part by his spokesman.

The US actor's spokesman confirmed the wedding venue but not the date after Clooney let slip his plans to marry the human rights attorney in the picture-postcard Italian city.

"I met my lovely bride-to-be here in Italy, whom I will be marrying in a couple of weeks, in Venice of all places," People magazine quoted him as saying at an awards ceremony Sunday in Florence.

Reports suggested they could tie the knot on September 26, but the A-list actor's spokesman Stan Rosenfield played this down, telling AFP: "He did not give a specific date.

"I can only confirm that he is getting married in Venice," he said.

During Sunday's event, the couple appeared very much in love, according to celebrity bible People.

Clooney put his arm around her shoulder and carefully brushed her hair back whenever her "flowing locks" fell out of place as she laughed.

Oscar-winning Clooney, one of Hollywood's most sought-after bachelors, announced in April that he was engaged to his then 36-year-old girlfriend.

News that Alamuddin had stolen 53-year-old Clooney's heart caused a global media frenzy and furious speculation about when they would wed.

They had come out as a couple last October in London, and since have been seen together in New York and on trips to Tanzania and the Seychelles.

Clooney was married to US actress Talia Balsam for four years between 1989 and 1993 but has shown little interest in settling down since, instead going through a string of younger model and actress girlfriends over the years.

Published: 09 September 2014

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The liberation of the bar of the Ritz Hotel in Paris by the writer Ernest Hemingway 70 years ago, as the French capital was freed from its Nazi occupiers, is the stuff of legend.

Hemingway, a war correspondent for the American "Collier's" magazine who went on to win the Nobel prize for literature in 1954, was embedded with US 4th Division troops that landed on the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944.

Over the next two months he stuck with the foot soldiers as they marched towards Paris in support of the French 2nd Armoured Division, which entered the capital on August 25.

Hemingway had a special attachment to the luxurious Ritz hotel, and its bar, where he had spent a great deal of time before the war.

When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz," Hemingway was to say.

"He did not talk about anything else," one Resistance fighter said, but "to be the first American in Paris and liberate the Ritz."

Hemingway managed, using his name and with the help of the American army commanded by US General George S. Patton, to wrangle a meeting with French commander General Philippe Leclerc.

His request: to be given enough men to go and liberate the Ritz's bar.

To the writer's surprise he got a frosty reception and was dismissed.

But Hemingway persevered and on August 25, dressed in his correspondent's uniform, he arrived in a commandeered jeep with a machine gun and a group of Resistance fighters at the hotel, on Paris' lovely Place Vendome.

He burst into the hotel and announced that he had come to personally liberate it and its bar, which had been requisitioned in June 1940 by the Nazis and occupied by German dignitaries, including on occasion Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels.

The manager of the hotel, Claude Auzello, approached him and Hemingway asked: "Where are the Germans? I have come to liberate the Ritz."

"Monsieur," he replied, "They left a long time ago. And I can not let you enter with a weapon."

Hemingway put the gun in the jeep and came back to the bar where he is said to have run up a tab for 51 dry Martinis.

According to his brother, Leicester Hemingway, the writer searched the cellar with his men, taking two prisoners and finding an excellent stock of brandy.

Published: 22 August 2014

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Oscar-winning movie star Sandra Bullock was the best paid actress in Hollywood over the past year, Forbes magazine reported, putting her estimated earnings at some $51 million.

Bullock, 50, won an Academy Award in 2010 for her turn in the football drama "The Blind Side."

Her big payday over the past 12 months is largely thanks to her work in the hit film "Gravity," for which she received a best actress Oscar nomination.

The film, a festival of special effects, is about an astronaut's struggle to survive in orbit after the space shuttle is destroyed.

Published: 05 August 2014

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Archaeologists in Italy have uncovered a cemetery in the 2,700-year-old ancient port of Rome where they believe the variety of tombs found reflects the bustling town's multi-cultural nature.

Ostia "was a town that was always very open, very dynamic," said Paola Germoni, the director of the sprawling site -- Italy's third most visited after the Colosseum and Pompeii.

"What is original is that there are different types of funeral rites: burials and cremations," she said this week.

The contrasts are all the more startling as the tombs found are all from a single family -- "in the Roman sense, in other words very extended", Germoni said.

The discovery is the latest surprise at Ostia after archaeologists in April said that new walls found showed the town was in fact 35-percent bigger than previously thought, making it bigger than ancient Pompeii.

Ostia, which was founded in the 7th century BC and is believed to have covered an area of 85 hectares, was once at the estuary of the Tiber River and is now about three kilometres (two miles) from the sea because of silting.

The place where the latest burials were found is inside a 15,000 square metre park close to a Renaissance castle on the edge of the main excavated area of the town, which had docks, warehouses, apartment houses and its own theatre.

The port was founded by Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome, to provide his growing city with access to the sea, ensuring it would be supplied with flour and salt and to prevent enemy ships from going up the Tiber.

Around a dozen tombs have been found so far at the site, some of them including lead tablets with inscriptions containing curses to ward off potential looters.

The cemetery "shows the free choice that everyone had with their own body, a freedom people no longer had in the Christian era when burial became the norm," Germoni said.

Published: 21 July 2014

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Samsung said Monday it temporarily suspended business with one of its suppliers in China over the suspected use of child workers, following criticism that its monitoring of illegal labour practices was ineffective.

The South Korean electronics giant launched an investigation into the Dongguan Shinyang Electronics Co. after the rights monitoring group China Labor Watch (CLW) reported the factory was employing workers under the age of 16.

"Following the investigation, Samsung decided to temporarily suspend business with the factory in question as it found evidence of suspected child labor at the worksite," the company said in a statement.

Samsung said the Chinese authorities were also looking into the case, and added that if it was proved the factory hired children illegally the business suspension would become permanent.

"Furthermore, Samsung will strengthen its hiring process not only at its production facilities but also at its suppliers to prevent such case from reoccurring," it said.

The company stressed that it maintained a "zero-tolerance" policy on child labour and conducted regular inspections of its suppliers to ensure its implementation.

"It is unfortunate that the (CLW) allegation surfaced despite Samsung's efforts," it said.

In its report, the New York-based watchdog had cited other violations at the same factory, including unpaid overtime wages, excessive overtime and a lack of social insurance and training.

Samsung said it had audited Dongguan Shinyang Electronics three times since 2013, including an inspection last month.

The executive director of China Labor Watch, Li Qiang, challenged Samsung's commitment, saying its monitoring system was ineffective.

"Samsung's social responsibility reports are just advertisements," Li said.

- 'Inadequate' labour practices -

Samsung has put its energy into audits and the production of these reports, but these things are meant to appease investors and do not have any real value for workers," he added.

The world's largest maker of mobile phones and flat-screen TVs has more than 200 suppliers in China and there have been repeated allegation over working practices in recent years.

A previous CLW report published in 2012 claimed workers at some plants were required to put in excessive overtime and could not sit down while working.

It also reported that one supplier, HEG Electronics in Huizhou, had hired children aged under 16.

Published: 14 July 2014

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