Famous Friends, Global Cooling Proposals, Great Ape Rights, and Harry Potter Dies?

1. In a groundbreaking move, Spain's parliament will become the first national legislature to declare rights for non-humans by announcing its support for granting rights to life and freedom for great apes. Did someone just watch Wicked? (Reuters)

2. Two characters will die in the final Harry Potter book, JK Rowling revealed, though she won't say if one of the corpses will be Harry's. How can you not love a woman who will make millions of children cry their hearts out? Lift and crush! (BBC)

3. Now that global warming has become somewhat of a concern, some once/still somewhat absurd proposals are finally finding a printed home in established journals. So prepare yourself to hear about ideas like building sunshades in orbit to relieve the earth of overheating itself, putting sun-reflecting disks in the ocean, spraying salt into the clouds to increase the clouds' reflectivity, etc. And you thought Mr. Burns was evil... (NYT)

4. CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, Al Gore, and Gwenyth Paltrow were at a private screening of An Inconvenient Truth the other night in London. Apparently, Amanpour and Paltrow "are friends--have been for quite some time," said one of Paltrow's reps. The world is suddenly so much brighter. (Daily News)