Names and faces

Sharon Osbourne said she briefly left her husband, Ozzy, around the time their teenage son, Jack, entered rehab this spring. The Osbourne matriarch said that while the family was waiting for a bed to become available for Jack at a treatment center, her rockstar husband continued abusing alcohol and prescription drugs himself. “I just said, ’You just have to stop,’ and he didn’t. And I said,

‘Well then, I’m going.’ And I packed my bags, and I left,” she told Barbara Walters in an interview for ABC’s 20/20. Osbourne, 50, said separation lasted just a few days. “The minute I left, the next morning, he gave up drinking. But I needed to make sure that he was on a roll. That he really meant it,” she said. “And, after four days, I came back to see him. And he was trying so hard. So hard. Still is clean and sober.” Jack Osbourne, who spent two months in rehab for alcohol and drug abuse, acknowledged that he tried to commit suicide because he was so depressed about his mother’s colon cancer, which is now in remission. “I attempted to overdose,” said the 17-year-old, who gained fame with the rest of his family on the MTV series The Osbournes. The interview is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. CDT Friday.

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling was awarded Spain’s Prince of Asturias Concord Prize on Wednesday “for having helped children of all races and cultures to discover the joy of reading.” The jury in Madrid also praised Rowling, whose five books about the boy wizard have dominated best seller lists for years, for having encouraged children to “find in Harry Potter’s fascinating adventures a stimulus for imagination and creativity.” “Rowling’s books also help young people to identify essential values such as the difference between right and wrong, the importance of cooperation and solidarity to overcome life’s problems, in short, ideas which encourage and make understanding and concord between human beings possible,” the jury added. Rowling has sold more than 200 million books, which have been translated into 50 languages. Her latest is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The Concord is one of eight Prince of Asturias awards given annually. Rowling will receive a $56,000 cash prize and a sculpture by Spanish artist Joan Miro. The awards are presented in the northern city of Oviedo each fall by the heir to the Spanish throne, Prince Felipe of Asturias.