Drawing a piece of paper nets $20k prize

Art prize judge Heather Galbraith was looking for a drawing with “an intensity and an energy that gripped the viewer and would not let you out of its clutches until you surrendered yourself to giving it time”. The one she chose is a piece of folded paper – for which Auckland artist Monique Jansen wins $20,000

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JK Rowling’s real-life mystery uncovered

A real-life mystery over who blew the cover on JK Rowling writing a detective novel under a pseudonym was uncovered on Thursday when the culprit was revealed to be – her law firm, which apologised unreservedly for the leak. Rowling, whose Harry Potter series made her Britain’s best-selling author, posed as a retired military policeman called Robert Galbraith to write The Cuckoo’s Calling that was released in April to strong reviews but minimal sales.

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Is there any genre Rowling cannot master?

OPINION: Perhaps most surprising about the news JK Rowling wrote The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith is not that she should take a fake name or that she should write a crime novel – after all there were plenty of nasty goings-on in the Harry Potter books – but that she would have the time to write it given her first official novel for adults, the much anticipated The Casual Vacancy, was published only late last year. The Galbraith book slipped under the radar in this country but received positive reviews in Britain when it was published in April.

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Why the Economic Recovery Is Slowing Down

John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the most famous practitioners of the high-minded guessing game known as economics, once noted that in the dismal science, “the majority is always wrong.” How else to explain the fact that so many economists upgraded their growth forecasts for the American economy at the end of last year, often to well above 3%, when the numbers so far this year have come in below 2%? The plunge is due to many things, from higher food and oil prices to supply-chain disruptions in the wake of the Japanese nuclear disaster to a terrible housing market.

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U.N. official admits Afghan vote fraud

The top United Nations official in Afghanistan on Sunday defended himself against allegations that he has been wary to publicly address problems in the country’s recent presidential election. Clarifying his position at a news conference in Kabul on Sunday, Kai Eide admitted that the August 20 vote was marred by “widespread fraud.” Eide, the special representative of the secretary-general for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), called the allegations against him “personal attacks against me and my integrity” by his recently fired deputy, Peter Galbraith

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