American media reported that pop star Lady Gaga had given birth to her first child with her fiancé, Michael Polansky.
The 40-year-old singer and singer of the song “Bad Romance” began dating entrepreneur Polanski in 2020, then announced her engagement to him in 2024.
A source confirmed the news of the birth to Page Six and People, but no additional details about the newborn were immediately available, including his name, gender, or date of birth, according to Agence France-Presse.
In recent years, Lady Gaga, whose fans call her “Monster Mother” because of her embrace with them, has expressed her desire to have a child.
Gaga concluded a world tour in April, and her latest album, “Mayhem,” received several Grammy Award nominations, and won “Best Pop Vocal Album” earlier this year.
Sotheby's intends to offer for sale at an auction in New York, next December, the "revenge dress" of the late Princess Diana, which she wore hours after Prince Charles confessed to his marital infidelity with her.
The price of the dress, designed by Greek Christina Stambolian, is expected to range from 150 to 300 thousand dollars, with a portion of the proceeds going to charity.
The dress had previously been auctioned for charities concerned with cancer and AIDS patients in 1997, shortly before Diana died in a traffic accident in Paris at the age of 36.
What is the story of the princess wearing the dress?
Princess Diana wore the bold, off-the-shoulder silk dress to a dinner party held in London on June 29, 1994, the same day that her husband, now King of Britain, admitted to cheating on her during a television interview after years of rumors and media reports.
According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the details of the interview were leaked a few days ago, which made Diana's first public appearance after the interview widely interpreted as her response to what was stated in it.
Anna Harvey, her stylist at the time, was quoted as saying that the former Princess of Wales “wanted to look very elegant and gorgeous.” The princess made a last-minute change in her clothes before heading to the ceremony. She excluded a dress designed by “Valentino” that was less attention-grabbing, and chose instead the Greek Stambolian dress, which was nicknamed “the revenge dress.”
Diana previously told The Independent newspaper that she had bought the dress not to wear it, but because the proceeds were going to benefit a charitable organization. “I can't wear it,” she said.
Diana turned fashion into a language
The “Revenge Dress” is scheduled to tour the world before being put up for sale. It will be displayed at Sotheby's in London, from September 18 to 24, then it will move to Hong Kong in early October, and to Geneva in early November, before arriving in New York, where it will be sold.
Morgan Halimi, of the Sotheby's auction house, which announced the upcoming sale on Thursday, said: "Princess Diana turned the dress into one of the most powerful messages she ever sent, at a time in her life that was most subject to scrutiny and emotional charge."
She explained that Princess Diana “innately realized” that fashion could be a language in itself. She added that the dress “allowed everyone, especially women, to use fashion for purposes beyond mere adornment, and in a more intentional and meaningful way: as a shield and a weapon, or both.”
In turn, People magazine said that Princess Diana was an icon of elegance, but no look of hers had the same amount of uproar as the “Revenge Dress,” as it was an unusual, bold outfit for a member of the usually conservative royal family.
From time to time, Egyptian cinema remembers its golden age, one of its most prominent features was the interaction between cinema and literature, through great writers who enriched cinema with their novels and stories, and left an immortal mark in the history of Arab cinema, and films based on their works are considered classics of Egyptian and Arab cinema. Among them are Naguib Mahfouz, Taha Hussein, Ihsan Abdel Quddus, Youssef Idris, Tawfiq Al-Hakim, Youssef Al-Sibai, and others.
But with the passage of time, this phenomenon declined, and it no longer represented a remarkable case in the film industry, although films based on novels by young writers appeared from time to time, such as director Marwan Hamed’s films based on Ahmed Murad’s novels.
Hence, the Cairo Film Festival launched a new initiative entitled “From Book to Screen,” which aims to rebuild the bridge between the publishing, cinema, and audiovisual content industries, and open broader horizons for transforming the intellectual property of Egyptian and Arab literary works into works that reach the screen. This comes during the 47th session of the festival, which will be held from November 11 to 20, 2026, and within the activities of the “Cairo Film Industry Days”, with the participation of 10 of the major Egyptian publishing houses that publish works by major Egyptian writers and novelists, and whose publications achieve success and wide sales in the reading and publishing markets. These releases also include works that have a strong narrative structure that qualifies them to transfer their popular success from the pages of books to the drama and cinema markets.
The statement issued by the festival on Thursday raised questions about the mechanism for achieving these goals, and whether platforms will support the production of these films, or whether the festival’s role will stop at making the novels available and presenting them to production and distribution bodies.
Critic Zein Khairy, director of the forum, revealed that the festival’s management studied the publishing market well, and chose 10 of the major publishing houses in Egypt to participate in the first session of the forum, with each house nominating a work that it deems most appropriate for conversion into a film or series, based on specific criteria that were agreed upon and included in the application form. Among these criteria are the value and importance of the novel, and the elements that may attract a producer or platform to turn it into a film or series.
Khairy added to Asharq Al-Awsat, “The festival will provide the opportunity for representatives of publishing houses to meet industry professionals, provide them with sessions to present their projects to their makers, and also ensure the preservation of intellectual property rights through comprehensive legal contracts between producers, publishing houses, and authors.” He confirmed that the selected novels will be announced later, coinciding with the launch of the “Cairo Film Industry Days,” headed by critic Mohamed Sayed Abdel Rahim, who also came up with the idea of the initiative.
Khairy denied that the festival would obtain exclusive rights to display the works resulting from the initiative, but it would supervise the initial agreements concluded between the two parties, ensuring the rights of authors and publishing houses that own intellectual property rights with the approval of the authors.
According to Egyptian art critic Nahid Salah, the “From Book to Screen” initiative is an important step in the right direction. She added to Asharq Al-Awsat, “This initiative pays attention to one of the most important sources that made the history of Egyptian cinema, which is literature, through films that formed milestones in our cinematic memory. The importance of the initiative today stems from the fact that the relationship between literature and cinema is no longer just a search for a novel suitable as a film, but rather has become part of the content creation economy.
She stressed that “the true value of the forum, and the strength of this initiative, will appear when the books that will be presented are transformed into actual cinematic projects. Not every successful novel is suitable to be a cinematic project, nor is the issue related to best-selling novels. Because cinema needs to discover new voices and different worlds.” She expressed her hope that “the initiative will go beyond the idea of a rights market, to become a real laboratory for developing literary works and transforming them into visual content, and an influential platform in the film industry and Arab content.”
The artist Hussein Fahmy, President of the Cairo Film Festival, had stated, through the festival’s statement, that literature has always been one of the most important tributaries of Egyptian cinema, and that the “From Book to Screen” forum comes within the framework of the festival’s interest in developing the industry and creating new spaces for cooperation between its various elements. He pointed out that the forum aims to provide intellectual property rights for literary works (IP), and provide the opportunity for producers and content makers to discover Egyptian and Arab works that have the potential to be transformed into films and series.
Critic Ashraf Gharib expressed his enthusiasm for this initiative, stressing that “if it succeeds, it can restore luster to Egyptian cinema, as was the case when it approached literature strongly and presented a group of its classics, especially the eras of the fifties and sixties, based on good fictional texts by great writers that were turned into films that had a great influence on the Egyptian and Arab audience.”
Gharib confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that “the success of the conference depends on its ability to create an integrated stream of films based on literary texts, and that it will not have the desired effect if it results in the production of only two films within two or three years, in light of the dominance of comedy and action films over public taste.” He pointed out that “there must be a mechanism adopted by the festival, by organizing a competition parallel to the scenario, in which the winners receive support from it, or by promoting these films, nominating them, and facilitating their participation in major festivals.”
