It's no secret that Hong Kong singer/actress Anita Mui (梅艷芳) has had some health problems of late, but Next Magazine (壹週刊) seems to be wandering onto thin legal ice in its latest issue by announcing that Mui is suffering from cervical cancer.
Mui has tried to silence the reports in the Hong Kong media about her health problems, to no avail, and threatened to sue anyone who writes erroneous stories on the subject. Never one to fear a lawsuit, Next references unnamed sources to back its claim that Mui has come down with the deadly disease. As evidence, the report says her family allegedly has been burning a lot of ghost money and carrying out various prayer rituals. Also, she's wearing black-bead bracelets that carry religious significance, and spent a night in hospital two weeks ago, where she received numerous mid-night hospital visits from famous friends like William So (蘇永康) and Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒).
Mui said, however, that her hospital stay was not to treat anything as serious as the tabloids were suggesting. But so far, she hasn't clearly stated what ailment she is suffering from. The ominous element in the story is the fact that her sister died of cervical cancer three years ago at the age of 41.
Leaving the serious stuff behind and diving into the inane news that Pop Stop enjoys most, the gloves have come off and the claws are out in the battle between Sun Yanzi (孫燕姿) fans and S.H.E. fans after the g-music billboard chart was released last week. The chart showed that Yanzi had edged out the cutesy trio of Selina (S), Hebe (H) and Ella (E) to grab first place in sales and since then S.H.E. fans have been going for the jugular in online chat rooms. In the first week of its release on Aug. 22, Yanzi's album The Moment sold over 250,000 copies, just a few thousand more than S.H.E.
Selina and Hebe may have fed the flames of their fans' ire by telling media after the results came out that no matter what the chart says, "S.H.E.'s album will always be number one in our hearts and in the hearts of our fans."
The messages posted by rabid fans were so vitriolic, top executives for Yanzi and S.H.E.'s respective record labels tried to urge restraint from fans and praised their competitors. The calls for harmony are nice, but Pop Stop is really hoping for a rumble in Hsimenting between the two camps.
Leaving the pettiness of Taiwan teenie bopper fans behind, doe-eyed singer Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) took her show to Las Vegas, of all places, for a one-off concert last weekend at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino. It's not certain how many Chinese music fans made the trek to Las Vegas for the show, but she probably doesn't care, the one-hour show earned her a cool NT$2.5 million.
Also earning a quick American buck recently is Lee Hom Wang (王力宏), who signed up with McDonald's for the company's new international ad campaign. Lee Hom will be the voice in Chinese-speaking areas for the four-minute ditty composed by McDonald's headquarters. Just for recording the song, Lee Hom is reportedly raking in over seven figures, albeit in NT dollars.
Lee Hom will be performing in Taipei on Oct. 11 so if you haven't seen the ad on TV by then, you can probably hear the song at the show.
If we're to believe the Liberty Times (自由時報), the past week has seen an invasion of foreign stars looking to run off with Taiwanese people's money.
"If Taiwan's entertainment industry can't improve itself and create a larger space for the arts, then sooner or later, foreign artists will run away with our money," said the paper's column "Scissors" (剪刀) in its edition last Thursday. The column followed up on Tuesday in a piece titled "Korean stars aren't gods" by pillorying Korean TV star Han Jae-seok (韓在石) for failing to show up at a press conference. According to the column, the actor, who was reported to have had to attend an urgent meeting at the time, was not showing the proper respect to the Taiwanese press.
Pop Stop will be curious to see if "Scissors" has anything to say about Japanese E-cup porn star Asakawa Ran coming to Taiwan to launch a new career. Whatever she does, it won't be porn, because that's illegal here, and anyway, the market was cornered by that Taiwan Plumber (台灣水電工) movie that's all over the Web.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and the New Taipei City Government in May last year agreed to allow the activation of a spent fuel storage facility for the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門). The deal ended eleven years of legal wrangling. According to the Taipower announcement, the city government engaged in repeated delays, failing to approve water and soil conservation plans. Taipower said at the time that plans for another dry storage facility for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) remained stuck in legal limbo. Later that year an agreement was reached
What does the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) era stand for? What sets it apart from their allies, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)? With some shifts in tone and emphasis, the KMT’s stances have not changed significantly since the late 2000s and the era of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) current platform formed in the mid-2010s under the guidance of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and current President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity. Though their ideological stances may be a bit stale, they have the advantage of being broadly understood by the voters.
In a high-rise office building in Taipei’s government district, the primary agency for maintaining links to Thailand’s 108 Yunnan villages — which are home to a population of around 200,000 descendants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies stranded in Thailand following the Chinese Civil War — is the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC). Established in China in 1926, the OCAC was born of a mandate to support Chinese education, culture and economic development in far flung Chinese diaspora communities, which, especially in southeast Asia, had underwritten the military insurgencies against the Qing Dynasty that led to the founding of
It’s fairly well established that strength training is helpful at every age: as well as building muscle, it strengthens tendons and ligaments, increases bone density and seems to have protective effects against everything from osteoporosis to dementia. But a new study based on data collected over two decades in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, suggests that another physical attribute might be just as important — and it’s one that declines even faster than strength as the years go by. The good news? It might also be less uncomfortable, and even slightly safer, to improve. Also, it will probably make you better
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