Danny Puff

LONDON (Reuters) - A rare four-inch fragment of a dodo bone will go on sale in Britain in April, around 300 years after the flightless bird and icon of obsolescence was hunted to extinction.

Auctioneers Christie's said on Wednesday it was hoping to raise as much as 15,000 pounds ($22,600) for the piece of a bird's femur.

The last sale of dodo remains the auction house could find took place in London in 1934 - and it was expecting considerable interest from a highly specialised band of collectors and enthusiasts.

"It is so rare for anyone to part with these prized items," said James Hyslop, head of Travel, Science and Natural History at Christie's auction house in South Kensington, London.

"From its appearance in "Alice in Wonderland" to the expression 'dead as dodo', the bird has cemented its place in our cultural heritage," he added.

The Western world first heard of dodos in 1598 when Dutch sailors reported seeing them on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

Less than 100 years later, the birds had disappeared. Most experts say they were probably hunted down by successive waves of hungry sailors, and the pigs and other large animals they brought on to the island.

No complete specimens have survived - and scientists have been pouring over fragments of remains for years to try and reconstruct what the dodo might have looked like.

The famous image of a squat, comic, short-necked bird, immortalised in John Tenniel's illustrations for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", is widely thought to be wrong.

Christie's did not say whether the thigh bone, part of an unnamed private English collection, would provide any fresh clues.

The auction house said its bone was almost certainly excavated in 1865 at Mare aux Songes in Mauritius during a dig by natural history enthusiast George Clark.

The bone is one of 260 lots in a Travel, Science and Natural History sale held by Christie's in London on April 24. The items are open to public viewing from April 20.

Other items on the block include a fossilised egg from Madagascar's equally extinct elephant bird, more than 100 times the average size of a chicken egg, as well as scientific instruments, maps and globes.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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NEW YORK (AP) Bud Light said it with beer cans and Martha Stewart with red velvet cake as companies and celebrities from Beyonce to George Takei joined millions of social media users in posting and tweaking a simple red logo in support of gay marriage.

A square box with thick pink horizontal lines (the mathematical equal symbol) was offered for sharing this week by the Human Rights Campaign as the U.S. Supreme Court took up arguments in key marriage rights cases.

The image, replacing profile pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and elsewhere, is a makeover of the advocacy group's logo, usually a blue background with bright yellow lines. The HRC made it available in red for the color of love on Monday and estimated tens of millions of shares by Wednesday.

"It shows the enthusiasm and the passion," said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the nonprofit in Washington, D.C.

Like viral campaigns of yore, supporting breast cancer awareness (pink), President Barack Obama (change your middle name to Hussein) and even Arab Spring (green), a bit of fatigue set in on some social media streams by those questioning whether such efforts serve to change any minds or, put simply, are plain annoying.

"My Facebook feed is a cascading aesthetic nightmare. Thanks, equality," Washington Post writer Dan Zak wryly grumbled on Twitter.

A photo of Justice Anthony Kennedy made the rounds with the quip: "Before we make a ruling, did enough people change their Facebook profile picture?!"

None of that mattered to the masses of same-sex marriage supporters. Some swapped matzoh for the pink lines as Passover got under way, or added frowny Internet star Grumpy Cat, who explained marriage equality would make her happy.

Bert and Ernie showed up against the red background. (They're best friends with no plans to marry, according to Sesame Street.) Another version featured Paula Deen atop the red square and lines turned a shade of yellow akin to her favorite fatty ingredient and the tagline: "It's like two sticks of butter y'all."

Takei, a noted punster with nearly 4 million followers in Facebook, turned the equal sign into the division sign for those opposed to marriage equality.

Beyonce, with more than 44 million followers there, played it straight, leaving the logo alone and adding a personal message: "It's about TIME!!! (hash)EQUALITY (hash)MarryWhoYouLove.

Fergie let the image speak for itself on Twitter, adding: "No words necessary." Montana Sen. John Tester, a Democrat who endorsed same-sex marriage on Tuesday, put the logo up as his profile on Facebook while the clothing site Bonobos swapped its usual Facebook pic for the red square using fancy white pants for the equal sign.

Martha Stewart's Facebook page used a slice of red cake with white icing to make the image and the HBO page for "True Blood" added fangs.

All in good fun?

"There's a lot of serious conversation going on and there's an awful lot of important concepts that the Supreme Court justices are discussing," Sainz said. "What this logo going viral means is individuals have reduced it to a very straightforward concept."

Steve Jones, a professor of online culture and communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wondered whether all the mash-ups muddle the message.

"Once you throw it together with something like Grumpy Cat it's fun," he said. "But was this message intended to be fun?"

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Associated Press writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.

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Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie

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By Belinda Goldsmith

LONDON (Reuters) - Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, one of the leading sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s, is selling some of her diamond jewelry to raise money for stem cell research, saying now is the time to give back for the fortunate life she has had.

After a humble, rural upbringing, Lollobrigida played opposite Hollywood stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Frank Sinatra.

As her career took off in France, Italy and Hollywood, Lollobrigida said she started to collect jewels from Bulgari, always buying them herself and enjoying the purchasing power of her hard work.

Now 85 and having largely left acting in the 1980s for photojournalism, humanitarian work and sculpting, Lollobrigida said it was time to put the jewelry to good use.

Some 22 jewels from her collection will be auctioned by Sotheby's in Geneva on May 14 after going on display in London, New York and Rome.

Lollobrigida said she will donate the proceeds to a fund to set up a hospital for stem cell research.

"This will not be the end of the jewelry but it will be something that does good, helping a cause that is very important to me," she told Reuters in a phone interview from Rome. "I want to leave a souvenir of my life."

The pieces include a pair of pearl and diamond pendant earrings made in 1964 that are expected to sell for up to $1 million, a 19.03 carat diamond ring of around the same price mark and a 1954 diamond necklace/bracelet combination worth up to $500,000.

She is also selling a pair of emerald and diamond ear clips that she was photographed wearing one evening in 1965 with artist Salvador Dali that are expected to reach up to $250,000.

Lollobrigida, who was a student at Rome's Academy of Fine Art before being spotted in a beauty contest by Italian film director Vittorio de Sica, said she now focuses her time on sculpture so has little need for jewelry.

In the past 10 years she has exhibited her work in Moscow, Paris and Venice.

She said art was always her dream career but she ended up in acting by chance, appearing in movies such as "The World's Most Beautiful Woman," "Solomon and Sheba" and "Come September."

"Acting was not my desire but at the end of things it was destiny that I did this," she said.

"It was a very interesting experience and without the money I could not do what I like in sculpture. To do something in life, not to gain but only to enjoy life, that is the richness in life. I am lucky I can do that."

Lollobrigida, who was married once and has a son, was caught up in a bizarre 2010 marriage plot tied to her estate that is still being fought over in European courts.

She filed a complaint with police in Rome over ex-boyfriend Javier Rigau y Rafols, 51, a Spanish businessman, who insisted he had legitimately married her even though she says she was not present at the ceremony in November 2010.

"There was no marriage and it was a very ugly story. Fortunately there will be a good ending, a surprise ending," said Lollobrigida, giving little away. "I am very glad that this is nearly all over."

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen has bought a famous Picasso painting from casino mogul Steve Wynn for a record price, according to a report in the New York Post on Tuesday.

Cohen, who runs $15 billion hedge fund firm SAC Capital Advisors, purchased "Le R ve," a 1932 oil painting of Picasso's mistress, for $155 million, the New York Post said, citing an unnamed source.

The Post reported it is the highest price a U.S. collector ever paid for an artwork.

Cohen and Wynn, who are both billionaires and well-known art collectors, have a history with this particular Picasso painting.

In 2006, Wynn put his elbow through the canvas of "Le R ve" while showing it to several friends, reportedly a day after agreeing to sell it to Cohen for $139 million, several media outlets reported at the time.

Cohen's reported acquisition of "Le R ve" comes as his firm continues to face regulatory scrutiny as part of a multiyear federal insider trading probe that has ensnared nine former SAC employees. Earlier this month, SAC Capital agreed to pay a record $616 million fine to settle two lawsuits, the largest-ever U.S. insider trading settlement.

A spokesman for Cohen declined to comment. A spokesperson for Wynn, the chief executive officer of Wynn Resorts Ltd, did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Katya Wachtel; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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By Brent Lang

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Will Smith is blunt about his reasons for rejecting the role of Django in "Django Unchained."

Smith told Entertainment Weekly that the lead part, a slave out for revenge, wasn't big enough.

"Django wasn't the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead," Smith said. "The other character was the lead!"

As EW points out, Smith disagrees with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which bestowed a Best Supporting Actor prize on Christoph Waltz for his role as a suave bounty hunter in the Quentin Tarantino film.

The Weinstein Company, which distributed the film, pushed Jamie Foxx in the lead actor category for playing Django. But he wasn't nominated.

The film, which is filled with antebellum brutality and the n-word, would have been a departure for Smith. He tends to favor more mainstream fare like "Hancock" and the "Men in Black" movies.

His latest explanation for rejecting the role differs from an earlier one. Last year, he told Empire Magazine it was a scheduling issue.

"I came really close, it was one of the most amazing screenplays I had ever ever seen," Smith said. "I was in the middle of 'Men In Black 3' and was ready to go, and I just couldn't sit with him and get through the issues, so I didn't want to hold him up. That thing's going to be ridiculous. It is a genius screenplay."

Smith will next be seen in the futuristic adventure "After Earth," which hits theaters this summer.

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PARIS (Reuters) - Former French first lady Carla Bruni took up a passionate defense of her husband Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday, saying it was unthinkable he could have tricked an old lady out of millions of euros.

In a blitz of interviews with French media, Bruni said a formal investigation of the ex-president opened last week for allegedly exploiting the mental frailty of 90-year-old L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt was causing her great pain.

"It's impossible to imagine that this man could have abused the frailty of a lady the age of his mother... It's unthinkable," Bruni told RTL radio in a shaky voice.

Sarkozy, who retreated from front-line politics after losing his re-election bid last May, rejects accusations that he took advantage of Bettencourt, France's richest woman, in 2007 to raise funds for his first election campaign. He wrote on Facebook this week that the probe against him was "unfair and unfounded".

The case could scupper any political comeback for Sarkozy, whose remains a popular figure for center-right voters and has said he would consider running for president again in 2017.

His lawyer, Thierry Herzog, has said he would seek to have the case thrown out on grounds that the investigation conducted by judge Jean-Michel Gentil was biased against Sarkozy.

Singer-songwriter and former model Bruni played a restrained role as first lady while Sarkozy was in power but has since returned to the media spotlight, performing last week at the ECHO Music Awards in Berlin.

Her public defense of Sarkozy coincides with her promotion of a new album due for release on April 1.

Bruni's 2008 marriage to Sarkozy after a whirlwind courtship irritated many French people who felt the high-profile romance blurred the lines between the president's private and public lives.

Asked if she was tempted to fight back publicly against the accusations and "show her claws", Bruni said: "Yes, I want to but I don't dare. It is difficult for me to talk about this, it's painful for my family."

(Reporting by Nicholas Vinocur; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Toby Chopra)

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By Sara Webb

ARNHEM, The Netherlands (Reuters) - Digital doctors like Nicholas Haining and Frank Bosch are changing the face of medicine and the way publishers such as Wolters Kluwer make money in the stagnant or low-growth North American and European markets.

Tablet computers and smartphones are almost as essential as a stethoscope in the modern medic's kit, with doctors calling up medical journals, databases, reference works and patient records on these gadgets as they do their hospital rounds.

As a result, Wolters Kluwer is increasingly selling information in electronic rather than printed form - a change that has allowed the Dutch company to increase margins and retain subscribers.

"Medical students used to have to memorize things like the branches of the trigeminal nerves. Now they would look it up," Dr Haining, a pediatric oncologist working in the United States, told Reuters.

"You are no longer a walking encyclopedia, there is no need to have all the information in your mind, because you can get the best available data and draw on evidence-based medicine."

Boston-based Dr Haining said he uses UpToDate, which Wolters Kluwer bought in 2008, to access clinical evidence that has been reviewed by experts in the field.

Wolters Kluwer competes with Reed Elsevier and Reuters' owner Thomson Reuters, selling specialist publications and software to bankers, lawyers and accountants, as well as to doctors and scientists.

The company last year derived a fifth of total revenue and profit from its health division, which sells more than 100 medical journals as iPad apps.

The division's earnings before interest, tax and amortization (EBITA) jumped 30 percent to 163 million euros in 2012 - the biggest percentage gain of its four businesses - while the EBITA margin rose to 21.9 percent from 19.7 percent in the previous year.

Reed Elsevier's iPad app for doctors, ClinicalKey, has more than 500 leading medical and surgical journals, plus reference books and third-party content.

Thomson Reuters sold its healthcare business last year.

The apps are very different from print versions. Using video and audio, for example, they can demonstrate new advances in surgical procedures which are hard to illustrate on the printed page.

"It's very difficult to describe an operation or surgery" in print, Wolters Kluwer's chief executive Nancy McKinstry said.

Readers used to get in touch with the author of the article and then discuss it or watch the surgeon performing a new technique. Now they can see it on video, she said, which is an easier format and also allows much more targeted advertising.

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Specialist publishers have made the shift from print to online across their various businesses.

Three-quarters of Wolters Kluwer's revenue comes from online or electronic products, up from 71 percent in 2011, and 49 percent when the transition from print was launched at the end of 2008.

At Reed Elsevier, which also has a substantial exhibitions and conference business, electronic publishing accounted for 64 percent of revenue in 2012. Print has dropped to 20 percent, from 50 percent eight years ago.

Some analysts say Wolters Kluwer's transformation has gone largely unnoticed by investors, while earnings growth was lackluster until last year when results beat forecasts.

So even though its stock hit a two-year high this month, the firm is valued at a big discount to peers, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine estimates, both in terms of the price-earnings multiple and the ratio of enterprise value to EBITDA.

The company is sometimes considered a possible takeover target, with a private equity firm seen as a more likely buyer than a rival given potential competition issues.

The shift online is expected to continue, McKinstry said. In the United States, nurses and physicians bring their tablets into hospitals and operating rooms, a trend that is spreading in Europe.

North America and Europe accounted for 70 percent and 14 percent respectively of Wolters Kluwer's health division's sales last year - compared with 54 percent and 40 percent of total group sales - showing room for further growth on the continent.

Dr Bosch, a physician who specializes in internal medicine at Arnhem's Rijnstate hospital in The Netherlands, is an example of that trend in Europe. He listens to podcasts he has downloaded from the New England Journal of Medicine on his smartphone while he jogs or cycles to work, and does his rounds clutching his iPad in its battered bright green cover.

One of his patients had atrial fibrillation, a condition where her heart beats too fast and irregularly. She was on digoxin but Dr Bosch wanted to check how another drug, amiodarone, would interact with it, and found the answer on his iPad using an app from WebMD Health Corp's Medscape.

"Because you can check more easily, you check more often and that improves quality" and time, he said.

(Editing by Erica Billingham)

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By Greg Gilman

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts, who was one of the first women to anchor ESPN's "SportsCenter" and "NFL Primetime," will be honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2013 ESPYS, ESPN announced on Tuesday.

The award is given annually to individuals whose contributions transcend sports. While Roberts is credited for blazing the trail for women in broadcasting, she has also inspired viewers by overcoming not one, but two life-threatening illnesses.

In 2007, two years after becoming co-anchor of "GMA," Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer and chose to turn the cameras on herself so viewers could follow her journey to beat the disease.

In 2012, Roberts announced on the air that she was suffering from myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a blood and bone marrow disease. She vowed to beat it and a few months later, once again turned the camera on herself while receiving treatment.

Following a successful bone marrow transplant and 174-day medical leave from the ABC morning news programs, Roberts returned to work February 20.

"Robin brings an amazing amount of energy, compassion and determination to everything she does. Those qualities made her an incredible asset during her time here at ESPN, and they have served her well as she battled the terrible health challenges that she's had to face," said ESPN president John Skipper. "Robin's accomplishments in so many areas - as an athlete, a broadcaster, a cancer survivor and more - demonstrate her ability to shine regardless of adversity and we could not be more proud to honor her as the recipient of this year's Arthur Ashe Courage Award."

The Arthur Ashe Courage Award is described by ESPN as the emotional pinnacle of the ceremony honoring athletic achievement. Recent winners have included Nelson Mandela, boxer Dewey Bozella and women's basketball coach Pat Summitt, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease in 2011.

The ESPYS will be broadcast live from the L.A.'s Nokia Theatre on July 17.

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ATLANTA (AP) Former Pittsburgh Steelers standout Kordell Stewart has filed for divorce from his reality television star wife.

In a divorce petition filed Friday in Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta, Stewart says his marriage to Porsha Williams is "irretrievably broken" and the two are separated. The pair appears on Bravo's "The Real Housewives of Atlanta."

The filing says the two married on May 21, 2011, and have no children together.

Stewart asks the court to find there are no marital assets to divide. He says Williams is "an able-bodied person, earning income, and is capable of supporting herself." He asks that neither side be ordered to pay alimony.

Stewart was a sensation in Pittsburgh in the late 1990s and was nicknamed "Slash" for his versatility as quarterback, running back and wide receiver.

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WARSAW (Reuters) - Teenage pop star Justin Bieber paraded through a Polish airport shirtless before flying out of the country, adding to a string of peculiar incidents that have plagued his European tour.

The Canadian singer had previously been spotted wearing a bizarre gas mask on a night out in London, where he turned up late for one concert and collapsed on stage with shortness of breath during another.

After a sold out concert in Lodz, central Poland, the 19-year-old took off his shirt in a car as it drove up to the airport late in the night on Monday.

He then walked topless to the airport building - in temperatures of about -10C (14F) - and then on to his gate, only to get dressed again before boarding a private jet.

"He wasn't told to take off his clothes. He had no metal objects on him." a spokeswoman for Lodz Airport told Reuters. "He's quite skinny so I assume he was probably freezing."

The concert's organizers put the incident down to a Bieber eccentricity.

The show in Lodz was the 19th European concert of Bieber's "Believe" tour. The next one is due to take place in Munich, Germany, on March 28.

Discovered on YouTube in 2008, Bieber is one of the pop world's biggest stars and has built up an online following of tens of millions of fans.

(Reporting by Dagmara Leszkowicz; Editing by Pravin Char)

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