Moore calls Bush a "fictitious president"
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Politics grabbed center stage at the Academy Awards on Sunday
as the winner for best documentary, director Michael Moore, charged President Bush with waging a
"fictitious war." Wagging his finger from the stage as he was both applauded and booed by the
assembled celebrities, Moore said, "We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you." Moore won for
"Bowling for Columbine," a provocative film on the roots of gun violence in America, whose title
refers to the Colorado high school where two students massacred 13 people before killing themselves
in 1999. Moore, who received a standing ovation from the assembled celebrities, invited the other
nominees for best documentary film to join him onstage in solidarity against the war against Iraq.
"We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious
election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending
us to war for fictitious reasons," Moore said. Oscar host Steve Martin joked after Moore finished
speaking that "the Teamsters are helping Mr. Moore into the trunk of his limo."
Harry Potter Author J.K. Rowling Has Baby Boy
LONDON (Reuters) - J.K. Rowling, author of the famed "Harry Potter" series, gave birth to a baby
boy over the weekend in Scotland. David Gordon Rowling Murray was born on Sunday afternoon at the
New Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, according to Rowling's spokeswoman Nicky Stonehill. Rowling, one
of Britain's wealthiest women, already has a 10-year-old daughter from her first marriage. She
married her second husband Neil Murray two years ago. The birth comes just three months before the
much anticipated fifth installment of the Harry Potter series. "Harry Potter and the Order of the
Phoenix" will be published on June 21.
Radio Back to Near Normal Despite War
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. radio operators returned to more normal programming on Thursday with
few other than some all-news channels offering uninterrupted coverage of the war in Iraq, a move
that relieved pressure on advertising revenues, experts said on Thursday. But industry executives
and analysts warned that the situation was fluid and an escalation in hostilities could still prompt
stations to take the expensive step of breaking with their programming to offer wall-to-wall war
coverage. "We were commercial-free last night for a few hours on the AM news talk stations, but
everything was back to normal today," said Gabe Hobbs, vice president of programming for the
265-station news, talk, sports division of Clear Channel Communications Inc. Clear Channel, the
nation's leading radio operator, has 1,200 stations. "I'm helping the FM stations coordinate their
programming and news. It's not my decision if they break format, but certainly last night there were
many who had gone to long-form news format on a temporary basis," he said, noting that FM listeners
were also being referred to the company's sister AM news outlets. Radio stocks fell on Wednesday on
concerns that war jitters were slowing ad sales and on the view that commercials would be yanked
entirely for two to three days once the war began. But that did not appear to be the case and most
stocks in the sector rebounded on Thursday. Cumulus Media Inc. rose 3 percent to close at $15.48 on
the Nasdaq, while Clear Channel rose 4.7 percent to $37.29 and Westwood One Inc, which warned
earlier this week of a slowdown in ad sales, rose 4.3 percent to $32.85, both on the New York Stock
Exchange.
