Names and faces

LITTLE ROCK — David Copperfield has canceled forthcoming shows in Southeast Asia after an FBI search of his Las Vegas warehouse and a casinotheater where he regularly performs. "His management sent an e-mail to organizers Sunday to inform that his shows will be postponed indefinitely," Kittiyong Achawaphong of RSi Dream Entertainment said Monday. The company organized the 51-year-old magician's shows in Thailand. Copperfield was also scheduled to perform in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in the coming weeks. The cancellations came after FBI agents conducted searches in Las Vegas last week after allegations that Copperfield "forced himself" on an unidentified woman.Copperfield's lawyer, David Chesnoff, has said the allegations "are false because David Copperfield has never forced himself on anyone." Neither law enforcement officials nor Chesnoff has provided details about the investigation. Reached Monday, Chesnoff said the shows were canceled because tour operators in Asia default on their contracts. Promoters of some of the Asian shows said they are trying to negotiate with Copperfield's management to reschedule the performances or recoup some of their losses. "We are told by Copperfield management that David's show had been canceled by the artist," said Peter Basuki, whose company was organizing the Jakarta show. "With this cancellation, we have lost more than $1 million for advertising and other preparations."

Jake Gyllenhaal said Sunday that his new movie, Rendition, shows torture is wrong, but it also questions whether it might help save lives inthe fight against terrorism. The film, which also stars Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep, focuses on the practice of extraordinary renditions, or transferring terrorism suspects to other countries where their interrogators could abuse or torture them. The U.S. government has said it uses renditions only after it is assured that transferred prisoners will not be subjected to torture. The movie tells the story of an Egyptian-born man suspected of involvement in a Middle East bombing who is abducted by U.S. authorities and sent overseas for questioning at a secret facility. "It says that torture is wrong. I think you can see in the film that it does not work," Gyllenhaal told a news conference after the movie was screened at Italy's Rome Film Festival. "But I also think it presents the political side of it, too, which is saying that you could be torturing one innocent man, butat the same time 5,000 people are alive ... because of information that the government elicited through [extraordinary] rendition." Gyllenhaal plays a CIA analyst who comes to question the U.S. government's sanctioning of the practice.