Albert Einstein's handwritten note on happiness auctioned for $1.3 mn

Strapped for cash in a Tokyo hotel, Albert Einstein wrote his take on life on a note and handed it to the bellboy instead of a tip. The physicist’s formula for happy living fetched $1.3 million on Tuesday, a Jerusalem auction house said.

In 1922, Einstein was en route to Japan when the announcement came he would be awarded the 1921 Nobel prize in physics, Winner’s Auctions and Exhibitions said.

Upon his arrival in Tokyo, he holed up in his hotel room trying to put his thoughts to paper.

When an attendant came to his room to make a delivery, Einstein found himself without any money for a tip.

Instead, he handed him a signed note with one sentence, written in German: “A calm and humble life will bring more happiness than the pursuit of success and the constant restlessness that comes with it.”

According to the auction house, Einstein advised the bellboy to keep the note, saying that someday its value will surpass the amount of a standard tip.

Almost a 100 years later, Einstein was proven right after the bellboy’s nephew contacted the auction house to put the note up for sale. The identity of the online buyer has not been revealed.
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Harry Potter at 20: What makes JK Rowling's creation a money making machine

'The wand chooses the wizard, Mr Potter," said Garrick Ollivander to Harry Potter when he visited Ollivanders (makers of fine wands, since 382 BC) for the first time in 1997. Twenty years later, in 2017, a kid does not need to wait for Hagrid to arrive and take him or her to Diagon Alley to purchase their first wands. He or she only needs to pester their parents for it and they can buy it for them, off Amazon. Even an Elder Wand replica can be bought for Rs 1,500. Should a Gryffindor scarf or Hogwarts robes or even a Sorting Hat interest you, they can be easily bought on the internet.

JK Rowling's manuscript had been rejected by eight publishers before Bloomsbury Publishing offered her an advance of £ 2,500 for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first in the series of seven books. The story goes that Rowling had written the book sitting in cafes in Edinburgh where she was living with her daughter, on benefits. Bloomsbury itself couldn't have known that the book it was publishing would transform not only the company but publishing as an industry.

Established in 1986 by Nigel Newton, Bloomsbury had a turnover of £11 million in 1995 which rose to £14 m in 1997 but thanks to Rowling's books rose to £21 m in 1999. In just two more years, it went up to £61 m in 2001, crossing a £100 m in 2005. It helped establish Bloomsbury as the most important publisher in the children's books category. Scholastic Press, an American publisher bought the American rights for $ 105,000 in 1998, by which time the first two books had been published in the UK. The seven Harry Potter books (excluding the spin-offs) have so far, sold more than half a billion books in 73 languages globally.

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Indian-origin minister Leo Varadkar set to become first gay PM of Ireland

Leo Varadkar, an Indian-origin doctor and Ireland's first openly gay minister, today won the leadership race for the ruling party to become the country's youngest-ever and first homosexual Prime Minister-in-waiting.

Varadkar, 38, will officially take over as Taoiseach, as the Irish prime ministerial title is known in Ireland, in Parliament later this month after he was declared the winner in the leadership race for the Fine Gael party.

He took a majority of the votes to be declared as the 11th leader of the party as counting concluded at Mansion House in Dublin.

The final count, including all three electoral colleges, saw Varadkar win with 60 per cent to Housing Minister Simon Coveney's 40 per cent votes.

Polling had closed earlier today with a 100 per cent turnout in the parliamentary party recorded.

The Dublin-born son of Mumbai-born Ashok Varadkar and Irish mother Miriam, served as Ireland's welfare minister and had emerged as the most popular choice since he announced his candidacy after current leader Enda Kenny stepped down as prime minister earlier this year.

Varadkar went up against housing minister Coveney in the leadership race, who bagged two-thirds of the party membership votes but lost out to the more popular candidate in the end.

The voting for the Fine Gael leadership is decided in an electoral college system that gives the Fine Gael parliamentary party 65 per cent of the vote. The 21,000 rank- and-file members of the party have 25 per cent and 235 local representatives 10 per cent.

The parliamentary party voted for Varadkar, overwhelmingly, as was widely expected.

Ireland's new Taoiseach is expected to be formally confirmed by June 13, when the country's Dail Parliament resumes following a week-long break.

Varadkar came out as a gay man in 2015, when Ireland became the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage through popular vote.

In a coming-out speech he gave in a radio interview, he had said, "It's not something that defines me. I'm not a half-Indian politician, or a doctor politician or a gay politician for that matter. It's just part of who I am, it doesn't define me, it is part of my character I suppose."
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Meri Pyaari Bindu: Hardly profound but gives you a smile and sense of loss

Abhi (Ayushmann Khurrana) first saw Bindu (Parineeti Chopra) when he was six years old. The year was 1983, India had just won the World Cup, and she was his new neighbour. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight; Abhi was too young to understand love (who isn’t?), but he remembers that as a moment when something clicked, as if two pieces met in a jigsaw puzzle, revealing a pattern and meaning of sorts, promising the others would follow suit, too. The film then follows Abhi, over the next three-and-a-half decades, trying to make sense of the puzzle that refuses to leave him.

Meri Pyaari Bindu, starring Khurrana and Chopra, has a fairly simple story to tell. Boy meets girl. They become close friends, sharing secrets and lunch, childhood and adolescence. And then, they grow up. Bindu falls for a football player. Abhi registers a protest so quiet that Bindu is unaware. Aided by the rush of testosterone, he moves on too, finding a fling here and there. But like his most prized possession, a cassette of old Hindi film songs, Abhi, too, gets stuck at times: on Bindu, his past, the two of them cocooned in a bubble. And then—the film shows it simply and quietly—life happens. They part ways. A few years later, they try to keep in touch, but places, people and jobs keep them occupied; the fondness remains, the e-mails dwindle.

Most Bollywood romantic dramas concentrate on their leads as they’re falling in love. We know what the boy feels about the girl, and vice-versa, but we don’t quite know who they’re, individually, as people. What happens in a love story when the love, or the partner, is absent—or, at least, not present? Meri Pyaari Bindu attempts to disentangle some of that mess. And it does so through smart storytelling, cutting from past to present, from blissful memories to quiet disappointments.
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Watch: Washing machine ad featuring Nawazuddin Siddiqui outrages Pakistanis

A leaked advertisement being circulated on social media in Pakistan has stirred up anger over its casual attitude toward domestic violence, forcing the electronics company behind the video to apologize.

While promoting a Kenwood brand washing machine, the ad shows a group of male friends having a laugh over the main character's story about a fight with his wife. The man brags about not tolerating his wife's “attitude” and resorting to “dhulayi,” which literally means “washing” but is used as a slang for “beating up.”

The ad wasn't officially released, but a Facebook group called “Whatsapp Videos” posted the leaked video and it didn't take long before the criticism started trickling in. Facebook user Wafa Zafar called it:

Disgusting ad….giving concept that a man should be proud among his friends on beating his wife

Another comment by Facebook user Kookie Malik detailed a complaint made to the parent company in the US:

I have made an effort to speak to Kenwood USA and Kenwood Japan and have asked a simple question: Why is it OK to use such crass and potentially violence inciting crap to make money and promote your company or your brand?? Our women and ALL women for that matter are scared and any of you that find this funny should consider a man beating your mother, sister or daughter …and you laughing and thinking it is OK. Shame on Kenwood and its Executives that allowed this to take place – Their Disclaimer is also another eyewash and stinks of the same corporate nonsense that Delta Airlines demonstrated recently. This is not over yet.

Hurmat Riaz from Mangobaaz, which describes itself as an entertainment website for Pakistani millennials, wrote that the ad is the latest in a series produced by the company showing the husband being intimidated by his wife:
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