Celebrity queen Oprah top earner
Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey reigns supreme among celebrities, according to Forbes magazine's power rankings of the top 100 celebrities released last week. Winfrey moved up from No. 3 in 2004 to supplant Passion of the Christ director Mel Gibson at the top of the list. Golf star Tiger Woods held on to his runner-up position and Gibson slid into third place. The Forbes power rankings give the most weight to a celebrity's earnings over the past 12 months but also factor in popularity standards including Internet presence, press clippings, magazine cover stories and mentions on TV.
Cruise has honorable intentions
Actor Tom Cruise announced his engagement on Friday to actress Katie Holmes. Cruise said in Paris that Holmes had accepted his proposal, made in the early morning atop the Eiffel Tower. Holmes remained speechless during the news conference but was wearing a diamond ring described as massive. No date was set for the wedding. Should it take place, the wedding will be the third for Cruise, 42, and the first for Holmes, 26, who were first seen together two months ago.
Whole lotta settlin' going on
Jerry Lee Lewis' divorce settlement with his sixth wife, Kerrie Lynn McCarver Lewis, has been approved by a Mississippi judge who promptly sealed the court records. Outside the courthouse in Hernando, where the agreement was reached on the day the case was to proceed to trial, Lewis said, "It's been a long day, and it's been an expensive day." Lewis, 69, and Kerrie Lewis, 42, were married in 1984. J.W. Whitten, the road manager for Lewis, whose hits include Great Balls of Fire and Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On, said the settlement cleared the way for him to resume a regular concert schedule and complete an album for release in the fall. "We leave for Europe June 24," Whitten said. "We needed this to be over just so we could get back to making some money."
Pope TV
CBS is planning a four-hour mini-series about Pope John Paul II, who died in April. The story told by the production, tentatively titled Pope John Paul II, extends from his youth in Poland to the later days of his 26-year reign. The mini-series, a joint venture with several European broadcasters, is based on a script supervised by historians at the Vatican, said Bela Bajaria, senior vice president for movies and mini-series at CBS, who added that exclusive filming had taken place in St. Peter's Square in Rome. No date for broadcast was announced, but the series could go on the air in the fall.
Harry Potter star to play another orphan
After winning global stardom as Harry Potter, British schoolboy actor Daniel Radcliffe has signed up for a new film role that will take him outside the realms of wizardry for the first time, it was announced Wednesday. But, remaining an orphan like Harry Potter, 15-year-old Radcliffe will appear in December Boys, the story of four orphans growing up in 1960s Australia. The movie is based on the novel of the same name by New Zealand-born author Michael Noonan. It will be directed by Rod Hardy of the top the US law series The Practice.
40,000 prostitutes expected for World Cup
Around 40,000 prostitutes will offer their services to football fans at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, according to experts. Supporters from across the globe will flock to watch their teams in action at the World Cup, running from June 9 to July 9, offering a bigger market for prostitutes to exploit. Cologne and Dortmund, two of the host cities for the World Cup, have even erected a number of wooden "sex huts" for the football showpiece with condoms and showers at hand. Prostitution was legalized in Germany in 2001 but only in designated areas.
You win some, you lose some: celebrity cases
Acquittals or charges dropped:
-- June 13, 2005: Michael Jackson acquitted in Santa Maria, California, of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his Neverland ranch.
-- March 17, 2005: Tough-guy actor Robert Blake acquitted in Los Angeles in the shooting death of wife Bonny Lee Bakley four years ago.
-- Sept. 2, 2004: Prosecutors drop sexual assault charges against NBA star Kobe Bryant days before opening arguments when his accuser decides not to cooperate with the prosecution.
-- Oct. 24, 2001: O.J. Simpson cleared of all charges in a Florida case involving an alleged road-rage argument.
-- March 16, 2001: Rapper Sean ``P. Diddy'' Combs acquitted of taking an illegal handgun into a crowded Manhattan hip-hop club where three people were later wounded. He is also cleared of trying to bribe his way out of trouble.
-- Oct. 3, 1995: O.J. Simpson acquitted of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. He was later found liable for their deaths in a civil case and ordered to pay US$33.5 million.
Convictions:
-- March 17, 2005: Grammy-winning hip-hop star Lil' Kim convicted of perjury and conspiracy involving a shootout outside a New York radio station. Sentencing has tentatively been scheduled for June 24.
-- March 5, 2005: Domestic diva Martha Stewart convicted of obstructing justice and lying to the government about a stock sale. She was later sentenced to five months in prison. CBS is planning to air a movie about Stewart this fall titled Martha: Behind Bars.
-- Nov. 6, 2002: A jury convicts actress Winona Ryder of stealing more than US$5,500 worth of merchandise during a shoplifting spree at a Saks Fifth Avenue. She was later placed on three years of probation and fined US$2,700.
-- Sept. 25, 1997: Sportscaster Marv Albert pleads guilty to assault and battery of a longtime lover after agreeing to a deal in which prosecutors dropped the charge of forcible sodomy. Albert received no jail time, and the assault conviction was erased from his record after he stayed out of trouble for a year.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s