Playboy mansion for sale - and it comes with Hugh Hefner

Playboy Magazine's parent company put the West Los Angeles estate on the market on Monday for $200m (£138m).

The five-acre property has appeared in numerous films and TV shows as a luxurious bachelor pad.

As a condition of the sale, Mr Hefner, 89, would be allowed to stay in his home of 45 years.

"The Playboy Mansion has been a creative centre for Hef as his residence and workplace... as it will continue to be if the property is sold," Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders said in a statement.

The mansion has 29 rooms, a wine cellar and a home theatre, but real estate experts say the home would need major upgrades to match current high-end properties in Beverly Hills.

However, buyers would get history. The backyard includes a swimming pool with the famous cave-like grotto where Playboy bunnies mixed with celebrities.

In addition to "bunnies", the estate is currently home to monkeys, cockatoos, peacocks, African cranes, parrots, toucans and pelicans. And the new owner could keep them - thanks to a rare zoo licence.

Mr Hefner bought the home in 1971 for $1m. The estate eventually replaced the original Playboy Mansion, which opened in 1959 in Chicago.

The proposed sale comes as Playboy has been making changes to its businesses as demand for nude pictures has dropped with online porn becoming ubiquitous.

The magazine announced last year that it would no longer publish photos of completely naked women in its US edition.

Playboy mansion for sale - and it comes with Hugh Hefner

Playboy Magazine's parent company put the West Los Angeles estate on the market on Monday for $200m (£138m).

The five-acre property has appeared in numerous films and TV shows as a luxurious bachelor pad.

As a condition of the sale, Mr Hefner, 89, would be allowed to stay in his home of 45 years.

"The Playboy Mansion has been a creative centre for Hef as his residence and workplace... as it will continue to be if the property is sold," Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders said in a statement.

The mansion has 29 rooms, a wine cellar and a home theatre, but real estate experts say the home would need major upgrades to match current high-end properties in Beverly Hills.

However, buyers would get history. The backyard includes a swimming pool with the famous cave-like grotto where Playboy bunnies mixed with celebrities.

In addition to "bunnies", the estate is currently home to monkeys, cockatoos, peacocks, African cranes, parrots, toucans and pelicans. And the new owner could keep them - thanks to a rare zoo licence.

Mr Hefner bought the home in 1971 for $1m. The estate eventually replaced the original Playboy Mansion, which opened in 1959 in Chicago.

The proposed sale comes as Playboy has been making changes to its businesses as demand for nude pictures has dropped with online porn becoming ubiquitous.

The magazine announced last year that it would no longer publish photos of completely naked women in its US edition.

Besieged Syrian Town of Madaya Finally Gets Aid

By the time aid entered the Syrian village of Madaya on Monday evening Rajaai Bourhan had eaten nothing but wild plants for days. “Today I had a meal of weeds,” he says. “I went with my father and we picked weeds.”

Bourhan, a schoolteacher, waited in Madaya’s central market today with dozens of others watching for the trucks to come. Many residents of this besieged city were too weak to even stand and wait.

The images and stories coming out of Madaya in recent days have been tragic, as emaciated toddlers and young children with sunken eyes tell activists and reporters they haven’t eaten in days. These are some of the estimated 400,000 people in besieged areas across Syria, where rights groups say their hunger is being used as a tool of war.

The U.N., as well as aid and rights groups, are calling for unrestricted and sustained humanitarian accessto besieged areas across Syria but the logistical obstacles in their way are formidable. The transport of aid to starving masses in Madaya — held by groups opposed to the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad — was achieved only because of a difficult-to-broker pact that saw aid simultaneously delivered to Foah and Kafraya, two government-controlled towns in northern Syria under siege by opposition forces.

The deal reached with the Syrian government on Thursday came too late for some. Bourhan says he knows of five people who have died in the days since then, and as residents waited today an activist named Hassan sent TIME a photo of a dead body.

“51 years [old,] died yesterday of starvation,” read the accompanying message. The dead man in the photograph is so thin his stomach sinks well below his rib cage. His fingers are dirty and blackened, possibly from scavenging for food as many residents have been doing.

The delay was logistical, according to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the organizations involved in coordinating the aid response. Residents said the aid convoy had been held up at a checkpoint manned by pro-government militia.

“It shouldn’t take starving children and a media outrage for the Syrian government to fulfill its obligations,” said Hadeel Al-Shalchi, a Syria researcher for Human Rights Watch. But Al-Shalchi points out that it’s not just the Syrian government besieging civilians.

“You have three different parties that are laying siege on different parts of the country and using starvation techniques to pressure each other into letting go of power,” says Al-Shalchi, referring to the Syrian army and various pro and anti-government militias including ISIS, the al-Nusra Front and smaller opposition groups.

Madaya has been under siege since 2012 but Bourhan says it only got really bad in July of this year. “We’ve been under siege since four years, but the Syrian army is very corrupt so we use to benefit from the corruption,” says Bourhan. “We would give them money and they would let us bring food into Madaya.”

In July, he says, the pro-Assad Lebanese militia Hezbollah took over manning the areas around Madaya from the Syrian army. “They are not corrupted,” says Bourhan. Almost nothing, including people, has gone in or out in the past six months. The town is surrounded by landmines, and residents say they are shot at when they try to leave.

The last emergency delivery of aid was in October and was intended to last the town two months. It has long run out. Bourhan says he has dropped from over 200 pounds to less than 150 pounds as supplies dried up. His students stopped coming to class.

At last on Monday afternoon the first vehicles of the convoy, from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, entered Madaya with deliveries of medical supplies, surgical equipment, blankets and food. Madaya, Foah and Kafraya each received enough rations to last the population one month. It’s not a lasting solution. Residents fear what will happen after that.

But these are far from the only deprived areas in a country riven by conflict since 2012. As many as 200,000 people are under siege by ISIS in government-controlled areas of Deir al-Zour, a city in eastern Syria, and negotiating access with the militants is nearly impossible.

At the same time, the government has repeatedly denied access to areas under siege by forces loyal to President Assad. The remaining opposition groups, like those that surround Foah and Kafraya, are so fractured negotiating with them is difficult.

And while Madaya now has the world’s attention, the worry of human rights groups is that scores more are dying in silence. “That’s the fear, that we have that people who are starving to death in these areas,” says Al-Shalchi, “and we just aren’t hearing about.”

Thousands Of Operations Hit By Doctors Strike

Outpatient clinics are also likely to be disrupted as 38,000 members of the British Medical Association take action over threats by the Government to impose a new contract.

Junior doctors will provide only emergency care. Consultants will cover their other responsibilities as far as possible.

Anne Rainsberry of NHS England said patients can be confident they will receive safe care.

"The NHS has procedures for dealing with a range of disruptions including industrial action," she said.

"Trusts have been planning to make sure urgent and emergency care continues.

"If your operation has been cancelled it will be rescheduled at the earliest possible time."

At Ipswich Hospital extra consultants will be available on the wards to fill gaps left by striking junior doctors.

It has not cancelled any operations - and just 60 of more than 1,000 outpatient appointments have been rearranged.

Nick Hulme, the hospital's chief executive, told Sky News: "The problem won't be on the day of the strike but on the following couple of days.

"If patients have been admitted and need an X-ray or a CT scan before they can go home we may lose a day because that test hasn't been booked on the day of the strike."

The proposed contract reduces the hours in the evenings and at weekends that qualify for pay premiums, but increases basic pay instead.

The Government says the contract will help hospitals to provide more seven-day services for patients.

But doctors believe it will cut their pay in the long term and remove safeguards that prevent them from working excessive hours.

Gagan Bhatnagar, a junior doctor in Oxford, has arranged a consultant to see the most urgent patients on his cancer list.

Others have been rescheduled for another day.

"That hurts me because I do not want to inconvenience my patients," he said.

"But I look at the long term and this is a dangerous contract, not just for doctors but for patients."

Lawrence Anstey was due to have his broken hand put in a cast.

"It's going to be inconvenient. I don't want to wait weeks and weeks but as it stands I can live with it as it is," he said.

This is the first of three strikes planned by the BMA.

Doctors will only provide emergency cover during a 48-hour strike starting at 8am on 26 January.

There will then follow the first-ever full walkout between 8am and 5pm on 10 February.

Talks are continuing at the conciliation service Acas between the BMA and NHS employers.

Istanbul tourist district rocked by explosion

A number of casualties have been reported after an explosion rocked central Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet square, a major tourist attraction.

The explosion occurred at about 10.20am local time on Tuesday morning.

Ambulances rushed to the site in Sultanahmet square, close to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, in a major tourist area of Turkey's most populous city, ferrying away the wounded as police cordoned off streets.

The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.

Police are reportedly taking extra measures to protect people against the possibility of a second explosion.

Al Jazeera's Emre Rende, reporting from Istanbul, said information was scarce immediately after the blast.

"We understand there are some injuries, but we don't know if anyone has lost their life yet," he said.

"Eyewitnesses have said that the blast was heard from other neighbourhoods."

Erdem Koroglu, who was working at a nearby office at the time of the explosion, told NTV television he saw several people lying on the ground following the blast.

"It was difficult to say who was alive or dead," Koroglu said. "Buildings rattled from the force of the explosion."

Turkey suffered two major bombing attacks last year.

Hollywood Just Got a Tiny Bit Better About Sexism

Women are routinely shut out of big opportunities in Hollywood, but a new study shows that their representation behind the camera increased slightly in 2015. Last year just 9% of directors were female, up two percentage points from 2014, according to the annual Celluloid Ceiling report by San Diego State University.

Some of last year’s biggest hits were helmed by women, including Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey, Elizabeth Banks’ Pitch Perfect 2 and Nancy Meyers’ The Intern. (Angelina Jolie’s By the Sea, Marielle Heller’s Diary of a Teenage Girl and Jupiter Ascending, which Lana Wachowski co-directed with Andy Wachowski, all brought in smaller box office sums)

Still, progress has been modest. The study found that a whopping one-third of the top 250 films from last year did not employ a single woman in the roles of director, writer, producer, editor or cinematographer. By contrast, 1% of those films employed zero or one man in those roles. Women were mostly boxed out of the action and horror genres, finding more gainful employment on documentary and comedy films.

The study only reinforces what female filmmakers have been saying for years. Women who are considered “inexperienced” struggle to make the jump from indie film to big-budget pictures. Consider how Colin Trevorrow went from directing the low-budget Safety Not Guaranteed in 2012 to massive blockbuster Jurassic World this summer or Gareth Edwards jumped from indie film Monsters to Godzilla in 2014 and the upcoming Star Warsspin-off, Rogue One. But if women are not hired for big projects, they can’t get that experience they’re told that they need.

Last spring, the ACLU petitioned state and federal agencies to look into the issue, spurring the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to begin an investigation into Hollywood. Upon hearing the news, Zero Dark Thirty filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, one of the few women directors to helm a big budget flick, told TIME, “Hollywood is supposedly a community of forward thinking and progressive people yet this horrific situation for women directors persists. Gender discrimination stigmatizes our entire industry. Change is essential.”

Overall, women made up 19% of directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors and cinematographers who worked on the top 250 movies of 2015. The study compared those statistics to those of 1998 and found more women are acting as producers, cinematographers and editors than 10 years ago, but the percentage of writers and directors has actually declined.

A female director made a huge difference when it came to how many other women were employed on set. For instance, women made up over half of the writing staff on films with a female director and only 10% of the writing staff on films with a male director.

“The numbers for 2015 indicate little change in women’s behind-the-scenes employment. The celluloid ceiling remains a reality for women working in this community,” Martha Lauzen, the executive director of the Center for the study of Women in Television and film at SDSU said in a press release.

Things may improve this coming year. J.K. Rowling wrote the script for the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, while Katie Dippold co-wrote the new, all-female Ghostbusters reboot. Jennifer Yuh will return to the Kung Fu Panda franchise this winter as a co-director, while writer Sharon Maguire will go back to the Bridge Jones saga for Bridget Jones’ Baby (written by Helen Fielding and Emma Thompson) in the fall.

How David Bowie Helped Nina Simone Out of a Slump

For both David Bowie and Nina Simone, 1974 was a year of great transition. Simone, the “High Priestess of Soul” and an activist who had become one of the most emblematic and pioneering figures in the Civil Rights movement, was at a low point. Though she was honored with a day-long tribute for “Human Kindness Day” that May, she had largely stopped performing and recording, and was facing charges from the IRS. “The most prevalent view was that she was being tremendously harassed by the government,” said the politician and diplomat Andrew Young. Bowie, meantime, had recently killed off his Ziggy Stardust persona, moved to New York City, and begun a new musical direction oriented more toward soul music. He was also descending into drug addiction and paranoia. But one night, these two icons accidentally collided, leading to a friendship that has never been previously revealed.

Things looked bad for Nina Simone in the mid-’70s. But around this time an unlikely ally appeared, offering her a small morale boost. In July 1974, she took her daughter Lisa to a David Bowie concert at Madison Square Garden. About a week later, she went out, on a whim, to a private club called the Hippopotamus, and shortly after she arrived Bowie himself walked in with a small entourage and sat in a corner of the club. When Simone got up to leave and walked past his table, he invited her to sit down.

Though they had exchanged only a few words, Bowie asked for her phone number and then called her that night at exactly 3:00 a.m. “He said, ‘The first thing I want you to know is that you’re not crazy—don’t let anybody tell you you’re crazy, because where you’re coming from, there are very few of us out there.’ ”

For a month, he called her every night and they would talk for hours. Finally, he paid a visit. “He looked just like Charlie Chaplin, a clown suit, a big black hat,” said Simone. “He told me that he was not a gifted singer and he knew it. He said, ‘What’s wrong with you is you were gifted—you have to play. Your genius overshadows the money, and you don’t know what to do to get your money, whereas I wasn’t a genius, but I planned, I wanted to be a rock-and-roll singer and I just got the right formula.’ ”

What Bowie was affirming for Nina was her true calling as an artist, a sensibility that he could recognize as something different from that of a pop star. At a period of such turbulence, it was a lift that she needed. “He’s got more sense than anybody I’ve ever known,” she said. “It’s not human—David ain’t from here.”

Bowie later would record “Wild Is the Wind,” the title song from the 1966 Simone album, as the final track on his stellar Station to Station. And soon, as Bowie had done before her, Simone would leave her home country in search of a more sympathetic environment.