By Robert W. Butler, McClatchy NewspapersWatch the skies. They’re coming to get us all.“They,” of course, are aliens.Not from South of the Border. From outer space.Hollywood is in the midst of an alien invasion unequaled since the paranoid Cold War fantasies of the early 1950s.At theaters now you can enjoy “I Am Number Four” (alien teens outwit intergalactic pursuers) and, opening Friday, “Battle:

Quality grains boast serious pedigree, new varieties not far behindFor centuries, rice has reigned supreme at the Korean dining table, acting as an anchor to the traditional spread of banchan (Korean side dishes). In short, rice is crucial to the daily diet and is taken seriously here. Like wines, grains from certain regions are lauded above others. Rice aficionados even prefer specific varieties

Waves lap the vast sweep of pristine, palm-lined sands as a sprinkling of Westerners soak up the sun, their breezy peace punctuated only by the creaks of a passing ox-cart.Welcome to a tourist paradise, in one of the world’s most isolated nations.“I’ve been to a lot of beaches and this is just amazing,” said retired Canadian Hugh Minielly, as he and his wife Mary watched the sun set over the azure Bay of Bengal at Myanmar’s coastal resort of Ngapali.Just a dozen or so hotels are hidden amid the

NEW YORK (AP) ― Owen Laster, a literary agent and executive of old-fashioned self-effacement and intregity whose many clients included Judy Blume, Gore Vidal and the estate of Margaret Mitchell, died Wednesday. He was 72.Laster, who retired in 2006, died in his Manhattan apartment after a brief illness, said his friend and attorney Richard Snider.Numerous friends had visited him recently, includin

PARIS (AFP) ― It’s getting to be springtime in Paris, but for Karl Lagerfeld it was the moment to send a chill of autumn through the Grand Palais on Tuesday as he presented a tomboyish Chanel fall-winter collection.In a deliberate contrast to the Parisian garden theme that framed the spring-summer show, Lagerfeld sent darker, looser looks down a wooden boardwalk the length of a venue carpeted with

NEW YORK (AP) ― They do not quite stumble upon them, but high-tech, skin-care researchers and developers sometimes find new ingredients in unexpected places: under a rock, behind a tree, in the garden.The tips to look outside the laboratory can come from traditional medicine, alternative medicine, folklore and history.Just in the world of botanicals, where many beauty ingredients emerge, there is

LOS ANGELES ― A new analysis of survey data compiled by the National Endowment for the Arts since 1982 shows that blacks and Latinos have suffered from a collapse in arts education, and that their young-adult rates of arts attendance have declined far more than for whites.Childhood arts education “has played a vital role ... in developing a potential audience” for the arts, the researchers from th

Two old friends to stage complete cycle of Beethoven’s violin sonatasThey’re old, but not in spirit. When talking about their passion for music, the two musicians’ eyes twinkle like stars. The 69-year-old violinist Kim Min, music director of the Korean Chamber Orchestra, had thought his most recent recital “My Life, My Music” at the Seoul Arts Center in 2008 would be his last stage performance. Bu

PARIS (AFP) ― Stella McCartney led a very British day at Paris fashion week on Monday, sending out a chic and casual fall-winter collection to an energetic hip-hop soundtrack.Her compatriot Giles Deacon at Emmanuel Ungaro veered towards a more severe dominatrix look driven by the late Ungaro’s famous statement that he dressed mistresses, not wives.Later in the day, Hannah MacGibbon at Chloe widene

OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) ― A Moroccan film about the incestuous rape of a young woman by her father who believes she is demon-possessed scooped the top honors at Africa’s biggest film festival.“Pegase” by Mohamed Mouftakir from Morocco, late Saturday won the Golden Stallion of Yennenga, the grand prize of the Pan African Film Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) in Burkina Faso’s desert capital Ouagadougou.

NEW YORK (AFP) ― Artist Jason Polan won’t be running out of live models any time soon ― in trying to draw every person in New York, he’s got at least eight million more to go.The plan may sound crazy, but Polan, 28, is serious.Every day he’s out there with ink pen and sketch pad, posting the results on www.everypersoninnewyork.blogspot.com. Three years into the project, he’s up to about 14,000.“I

WASHINGTON (AP) ― America’s national and local public broadcast stations are hiring more journalists and pumping millions of dollars into investigative news to make up for what they see as a lack of deep-digging coverage by their for-profit counterparts.Public radio and TV stations, funded by audience contributions, foundations, and some tax funds, have seen the need for reporting that holds gover

PARIS (AFP) ― John Galliano ― the label, not the man ― presented its fall-winter collection on Sunday in the intimate surroundings of a Parisian salon, and in a far more relaxed atmosphere, after a week that saw the spectacular fall from grace of the iconic British couturier.Eschewing Galliano’s signature passion for bigger-than-life theatrics, the lower-key presentation saw some of the world’s to

BANGKOK (AFP) ― Its past may be a steamy affair, but Playboy’s Rabbit logo, stamped on anything from necklaces to notebooks, is ensuring the firm’s image in Asia is more about trend than titillation.With little exposure to the men’s magazines and the raunchy outfits of founder Hugh Hefner’s famous bunny girls, many Asian consumers are snapping up the company’s products without focusing on the sexu

CHICAGO ― Blame it on Starbucks. Consumers seem to be looking for ways to personalize everything they buy. It’s not just picking apps for their phones, special touches for their shoes or music for their iPods, but down to customizing everything from mashed potatoes to the water they drink.Alexander Chernev, an associate professor of marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, said co

WATERFORD, Ireland (AP) ― Waterford Crystal is renowned for its sparkle, and lately the city it is named for lives up to that description.Still, Waterford, in Ireland’s sunny southeast (sunny being a relative concept in Ireland), has not always had it easy. The city often is passed over by tourists in favor of Dublin’s nightlife or the emerald-green seaside hills of Kerry. And two years ago, the c

VIENNA (AP) ― The TV cameras were told to ignore her, and Austria’s rich and powerful sought to avoid her. But amid all the bling on display at the Vienna Opera Ball, most eyes were still on one particular jewel ― Ruby.With Ruby, a.k.a. Karima el-Mahroug, at the center of the scandal plaguing Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, her scheduled appearance at Austria’s ball of balls on Thursday was a s

Was there a St. Louis woman who could resist Ernest Hemingway?He married and divorced three of them, prompting Gertrude Stein to quip: “Anyone who’s married three girls from St. Louis hasn’t learned much.”One might argue it was the “girls” who didn’t learn.Yet we’ll forgive Hemingway’s first wife, who fell in love when he was only 21.Handsome and magnetic, Hemingway had little (although some) bagg

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― When Charlie Sheen threatened and maligned his bosses over “Two and a Half Men,” it was business and, to some people at least, bizarrely comic. When his estranged wife alleged that she and their twin toddlers were in peril from the TV star, the saga turned ugly.Sheen’s 23-month-old sons were removed from his home Tuesday night after Brooke Mueller Sheen claimed that he threatene

Work to build a grand scale taekwondo theme park in Muju, North Jeolla Province, is well underway, according to the head of the sport’s promotional body.The construction of Taekwondo Park, covering a total area of around 2 million square meters with $540 million in investment began last year and is expected to be completed in 2013, said Lee Dai-soon, head of Taekwondo Promotion Foundation. Lee, wh