Author J.K Rowling poses for photographers with a copy of her adult fiction book ''The Casual Vacancy'', at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London September 27, 2012.

LONDON | Thu Sep 27, 2012 7:47pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - What does the author of the most eagerly awaited book of the year do on publication day?

If you are J.K. Rowling, whose adult fiction debut "The Casual Vacancy" hit the shelves on Thursday, you watch a movie in your hotel, avoid reading newspaper reviews and later in the evening address 900 people at a question-and-answer session.

The 47-year-old read from her new novel and took questions on death, digital publishing and the Olympics opening ceremony at her first public appearance to promote The Casual Vacancy held at London's Southbank Centre (southbankcentre.co.uk).

She engaged openly with fans, at one point accepting a gift from a breathless visitor from Spain whom she embraced and kissed on stage, and later personally signed hundreds of copies of her new book.

Asked by moderator Mark Lawson how she had spent her day, she replied: "I've spent most of the day trying to avoid newspapers. I will read reviews, but I don't like to do it on a day where I've got to go out and talk about the book.

"We sat in our hotel and watched 'Men in Black 3'. I'd never seen it. It was very good".

Rowling, who received mixed reviews for her gritty tale about a small English town, added that she probably would read what critics had to say eventually, just as she did with the seventh and final Harry Potter instalment published in 2007.

"With ('Harry Potter and the) Deathly Hallows' I didn't read any of the reviews at all for ages.

"I kind of felt about Hallows the way I feel about this book. In both cases I felt well, I've done the best I can do, the book is what I want it to be, so, I don't mean it in an arrogant way, that's it. I'm done. So it doesn't really matter.

"I did later. It was months later. It takes the heat out of it if you're not reading them on publication day."

"SOCIALIST MANIFESTO"

The release of The Casual Vacancy is one of the highlights of the publishing calendar this year, with hefty sales expected for a writer whose Potter series sold 450 million copies and who went on to become the world's first billionaire author.

Rowling could not resist mentioning one review, however, which she had clearly either read or been told about.

Jan Moir wrote a scathing assessment in the Daily Mail, a newspaper considered the preserve of the middle class which Moir felt Rowling had unfairly lampooned in her book.

Moir described The Casual Vacancy as "more than 500 pages of relentless socialist manifesto masquerading as literature", a description Rowling, who was an unemployed single mother living on state benefits when she started writing the Potter books, took as a compliment.

"A 500 page socialist manifesto. I high-fived my husband!" she joked. "I thought that's all right. It made me laugh so much. Apart from Men in Black 3 that was the highlight of my day."

Rowling was asked why death was such a prominent theme throughout her work.

"Death obsesses me. What can I tell you?" she said. "I can't really understand why it doesn't obsess everyone. I think it does really, I'm just maybe a little more out about it.

"It's made me much less afraid of it," she added later. "I think things lose their mystique when you think about them a lot and you consider them a lot.

"I'm frightened of leaving my children. It's the thing I dislike most about the idea that I will die, but death itself doesn't frighten me really."

POTTER MISTAKES

She said she understood why her publishers, Little, Brown Book Group, had imposed strict conditions on allowing journalists to read the book before publication.

"The internet really has changed everything. It's the net that's done it," she explained, quoting examples of other leading writers who had seen their manuscripts end up online or proofs being auctioned on eBay.

"As a writer that is a horrible, horrible experience."

On Potter, Rowling admitted she had made mistakes, in particular a mirror belonging to the character Sirius Black in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", the fifth book.

The "Marauder's Map" used by Potter was also problematic.

"Half way through the series I cursed myself for giving Harry the Marauder's Map, because it was far too useful an object so I had to take it away from him and then give it back to him.

"That's the trouble. You invent these amazing objects, and then they cause you as much trouble as they solve. So quite a bit of that went on."

In a separate BBC Radio interview broadcast on Thursday, Rowling said that the world of witches and wizards "does sometimes tug at me a little bit," although she had no plans to write anything else Potter-related.

"I've always said never say never purely because I liked it and I might want to do it again, but Harry's stories I am as sure as you can be it is done."

Rowling added that two books for children "are pretty well developed" and she knew what her next one for adults would be, although it was "not very well advanced."

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Actress Amanda Bynes arrives for the premiere of the film ''Semi-Pro'' at the Mann Village Theater in Los Angeles, February 19, 2008.

LOS ANGELES | Thu Sep 27, 2012 2:49pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former child star Amanda Bynes pleaded not guilty on Thursday to a pair of hit-and-run charges - just two of a slew of alleged driving violations over the past six months that have led to the suspension of her license.

Bynes, 26, did not show up for the brief court hearing in a Los Angeles suburb, but entered the pleas through her attorney. The misdemeanor charges resulted from two minor crashes in April and August, according to court documents.

Bynes, who had her own comedy sketch TV show at the age of 13, has been hitting headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past half year.

The "Hairspray" actress was charged last week with two counts of driving on a suspended license in the Los Angeles area in September. She has pleaded not guilty to driving under the influence in the nightclub section of West Hollywood in April.

Bynes, the latest young Hollywood actress whose life has apparently derailed, now has three court dates in October on the various charges.

She has strenuously denied drinking and driving, and has shrugged off multiple reports of bizarre behavior.

"I am doing amazing," Bynes, whose last film was "Easy A" in 2010, told People magazine last week. "I don't drink and drive. It is all false."

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Dale Hudson)

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Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, Director of the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci, points to details on a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and representing Mona Lisa during a presentation in Geneva September 27, 2012.

GENEVA | Thu Sep 27, 2012 3:17pm EDT

GENEVA (Reuters) - A Swiss-based art foundation on Thursday unveiled what it argues is Leonardo da Vinci's original "Mona Lisa", backing its claim with evidence from a U.S. research physicist, a forensic imaging specialist and a top Italian expert on the artist.

Members of the group told a packed Geneva news conference that the portrait of a woman who appears to be some 10 years younger than the sitter in the famous painting in the Paris Louvre could only be the work of the Renaissance genius.

"The facts are overwhelming and clearly prove the authenticity of the masterpiece," said Swiss lawyer Markus Frey, president of the private Mona Lisa Foundation which insists it has no financial stake in the painting.

And Stanley Feldman, an art historian and member of the group, said that critics who have rejected any suggestion the "younger" version could be by Leonardo had never seen it. "We invite them to Geneva to study it themselves," he added.

"It is absolutely clear that neither this nor the Louvre version are copies," he said, in a clear response to British Leonardo authority Martin Kemp, who told a London newspaper last week "so much is wrong" with the foundation's painting, including that it is painted on canvas and not on wood, the artist's preferred medium.

In a luxurious 300-page publication devoted to research over 30 years on what has long been known as the "Isleworth Mona Lisa," the foundation argues that it was painted between 1503 and 1505 in Florence and never finished.

Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Leonardo museum in the Renaissance giant's home town of Vinci in central Italy and a world-renowned expert on the artist, said he had long believed in the existence of two Mona Lisas.

The foundation's version -- which has been owned since 2008 by a private consortium -- seemed likely to be the one that was recorded in a recently discovered document from 1503 and which he had long been seeking, said Vezzosi.

SAME ENIGMATIC SMILE

Slightly larger than the Paris portrait, which is widely dubbed "the world's most famous painting," it shows a woman in an identical pose, the same enigmatic smile and with the same geometric proportions.

John Asmus, a former space scientist from the University of California who has developed digitization techniques to study art works and applied them to the Louvre Mona Lisa, said his studies indicated Leonardo also painted the "Isleworth" version.

And Joe Mullins, an FBI-trained forensic imaging specialist, showed how he had made a computerized version of the woman in the Paris portrait as she would have been 10 years earlier and found it almost identical to the newly unveiled version.

Neither Vezzosi, Asmus or Mullins are members of the foundation.

Documents prove the painting, known in French as "La Joconde" and in Italian "La Giaconda", was commissioned from Leonardo by Florentine nobleman Francesco del Giacondo as a portrait of his wife, Lisa Gherardini.

Leonardo -- also an architect, sculptor and engineer -- left Florence in 1506, apparently delivering the unfinished work to Giacondo before leaving, as documents record it was seen there some 30 years later.

According to backers of the "Younger" Mona Lisa, the Paris version was probably painted around 1516 when the painter left for France. Before he died in 1519 in a small chateau on the Loire he is known to have shown visitors a Mona Lisa.

After his death, it found its way into the collection of French King Francois 1, and from there to the Louvre.

The "younger" version first surfaced in 1913 when British art connaisseur and painter Hugh Blaker found it in a manor house in western England, recording that it had been hanging there for about 150 years.

For the next 20 years, it hung in his home in the London suburb of Isleworth, so gaining its name.

But efforts by Blaker, who died in 1936, and subsequent owners to convince the art world at large of its authenticity failed. "What we want now if for people to come and look at this with an open mind," Feldman told the news conference.

(Reporting by Robert Evans, editing by Paul Casciato)

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BRUSSELS | Thu Sep 27, 2012 12:27pm EDT

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The outlook for Europe's economy darkened on Thursday with euro zone business confidence falling to a three-year low and a range of economic indicators across the continent pointing towards recession.

Shrinking lending and rising unemployment in Germany, until now a mainstay for growth in the euro zone, added to the gloom, with economists saying there was now no hope of growth for the region in the third quarter of the year.

"It is bad. Everything is down, we are heading towards another quarterly economic contraction," said Carsten Brzeski, economist at ING bank in Brussels.

The euro zone economy stagnated in the first three months of the year and contracted 0.2 percent in the April-June period. Economists expect another contraction in the third quarter.

Two consecutive quarters of contraction is considered to mark recession.

"While the (European Central Bank's) promise of bond buying and the German court ruling (endorsing the euro zone's permanent bailout fund) did a lot to calm financial markets, there is still the big issue of non-existent growth," Brzeski said.

The European Commission's monthly economic sentiment survey showed the index for the 17 countries sharing the euro falling to 85 points this month from 86.1 in August. Economists polled by Reuters had expected no change.

"It's yet another blow to euro zone growth hopes, especially as it follows on from the purchasing managers' surveys indicating that services and manufacturing output contracted at the fastest rate for 39 months in September," said Howard Archer, economist at IHS Global Insight.

"Consequently, it appears that the euro zone has suffered further, appreciable GDP contraction in the third quarter. This would put the euro zone officially into recession."

The European Commission's business climate indicator for the euro area, which points to the phase of the economic cycle, fell to -1.34 points in September from -1.18 in August, against market expectations of -1.19 points. The September reading was the lowest since October 2009.

GLOOM

More evidence of economic gloom in the third quarter came from European Central Bank data on lending to households and companies, which showed credit to the economy fell more than expected in August.

Loans to the private sector fell 0.6 percent from the same month a year ago, data released by the European Central Bank showed on Thursday, coming in below the expectations of economists polled by Reuters for no change.

The flow of loans to non-financial firms fell 10 billion euros after rising by 8 billion euros in July. The monthly flow of loans to households showed a gain of 7 billion euros after a drop of 1 billion euros in the previous month.

The Commission sentiment survey showed euro zone sentiment in industry declined to -16.1 in September from -15.4 in August, and to -12 in the services sector from -10.8.

"The country breakdown signals a sharper deterioration in the core than in the peripheries, the latter, however, remained at extremely low levels," said Evelyn Herrmann, European economist at BNP Paribas.

Germany, long the main engine of the euro zone economy, was suffering too.

"German economic sentiment posted another deterioration to an index level of 94.7 from 95.8, which, again, was mostly driven by the manufacturing sector, but also by the services sector," she said.

German unemployment rose for a sixth month running in September, suggesting domestic demand might not be able to compensate for weakening exports amid the euro zone crisis and power growth in the bloc's number one economy.

Joblessness remains near to its lowest level since German reunification more than two decades ago, and the unemployment rate held steady at 6.8 percent, contrasting starkly with the sickly labor market in many peers, including France and Spain.

But it rose by 9,000 in September, as the global slowdown and the euro zone's three-year-old crisis weigh on exports and prompt companies to hold back on investment, and economists said they saw it rising more in the months ahead.

The Commission data showed sentiment among euro zone consumers - the buying public - fell to -25.9 from -24.6 and to -18.6 from -17.2 in retail trade. Construction was the only sector where confidence improved marginally, to -31.9 from -33.1 in August.

The data also showed that inflation expectations rose among producers, the services sector and households alike, potentially complicating any possible decision by the European Central Bank to cut interest rates and help the economy.

But ING's Brzeski said the results of the Commission survey on inflation expectations were more closely correlated to ongoing price developments, with opinions strongly influenced by the spike in fuel prices.

"It does not make life easier for the ECB, but, under (President Mario) Draghi, the ECB has become more growth oriented with inflation more a derivative of growth, so with this drop in growth, the window for another rate cut this year is still open," he added.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski; editing by Rex Merrifield/Jeremy Gaunt)

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