The piece fetched the third-highest price in the sale of 80 jewels

CNN cheap moncler jackets posted footage of a scuffle between Bale and the activist's guards on its website Friday.
The run-in and publicity is likely to cause discomfort in China's government-backed film industry, which hopes Bale's movie "The Flowers of War" will be a creative success at home and abroad. It also raises questions about whether it was prudent to bring the star to see an activist guarded by thugs who have turned away dozens of reporters and fellow activists trying to see him in the past.

Bale was due to leave China on Friday and his representatives could not immediately be reached for comment. A CNN spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about the story, but said a statement would be forthcoming.
Bale, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for last year's "The Fighter," traveled Thursday with a crew from CNN to the village in eastern China where blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng lives with his family in complete isolation.
They were stopped at the entrance to Dongshigu village in Shandong province by unidentified men.
The footage shows Bale asking to see Chen, with a CNN producer providing interpretation, but being ordered by one of the guards to leave. He then asked why he was unable to pass through. The guards responded by trying to grab or punch a small video camera Bale was carrying.
"What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is," Bale was quoted as saying by CNN.
Journalists and scores of Chinese human rights activists have sought to visit Chen in the past, all unsuccessfully. Chen's case has also been raised publicly by U.S. red jackets for women congressmen and diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, all to no response from China.

The heart-shaped, table-cut diamond was expected to fetch between $300,000 and $500,000, but an anonymous phone bidder bought it for $8.8 million.

The sale price is an auction world record for an Indian jewel — an imperial Mughal spinel necklace sold at Christie’s in Geneva in May for $5.2 million previously held that honor.

The piece fetched the third-highest price in the sale of 80 jewels, behind the La Peregrina Pearl, which sold for $11.8 million and just shy of the Elizabeth Taylor diamond, a 33-carat stone, which sold for $8.81 dollars.

While the first two pieces were expected to fetch top prices even before the auction — the pearl because it was part of the crown jewels of Spain and is equivalent to 50 carats and the Elizabeth Taylor diamond because of its size, color and because it almost internally flawless — the Taj Mahal piece’s price rose after a frenzied round of bidding.

The Taj Mahal stone, which is set as a pendant, dates back to 1627 and was originally a gift from Emperor Shah Jahangir to his son Shah Jahan, who commissioned the Taj Mahal monument in Agra, India. It ended up in Taylor’s collection of jewels when her husband Richard Burton bought it in 1972 from Cartier for 350,000 pounds as a gift for her 40th birthday men moncler jackets for cheap.