A local knitwear company is

A local knitwear company is thanking its lucky stars for the Harry Potter phenomenon. Hawick-based, Teviot Knitwear has won the contract to make all the knitwear for the next two Harry Potter films following the success of its sweaters, socks and stockings in the blockbusting The Philosopher’s Stone.

Harry Potter fans unable to wait for author J K Rowling to finish the next chapter in the teenage wizard’s life have taken up the challenge themselves. Young book lovers logging on to a Birmingham-based Internet website have dreamt up hundreds of new adventures for Harry, and his friends Hermione and Ron.

Harry Potter, the film, has had two premieres in China. The first was an unofficial one late last year, when the mainland’s big cities were flush with pirated copies of the film, just weeks after its successful opening in the US and Europe. Street touts charged a little extra than the usual Rmb10 ($1.20) for each DVD or VCD disc, the going price for pirated films, arguing that they were selling not just a fake, but a “blockbuster fake”. But Harry Potter’s second, and official, Chinese launch has achieved the rare feat of eclipsing the pirated version, with parents and their children packing cinemas in the urban centres since its January 26 opening. (Thanks to IHP for the link.)

After a month of debate about whether Harry Potter books are the focus of evil or a valuable teaching tool, the Lapeer Board of Education voted Thursday to provide the books as supplemental texts for an eighth-grade reading course.