Affleck and Garner married
Hollywood heartthrob Ben Affleck has married his girlfriend actress Jennifer Garner, who is expecting their first child, at a secret ceremony in the Caribbean, US Weekly reported. The pair of stars, who have been dating for around a year, tied the knot in the idyllic Turks and Caicos islands last Wednesday and are expecting their baby before the end of the year, the publication said. Oscar-winning Goodwill Hunting screenwriter and actor Affleck, 32, popped the question to Garner in April and reports that she was pregnant first surfaced in May.
Backstreet boy arrested for drunk driving
Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter has been slapped with a US$1,200 fine and ordered to attend an alcohol education course after pleading guilty to drunk driving, prosecutors said. The 25-year-old heartthrob frontman of the famed boy band was also put on three years' probation and had his driving privileges restricted for 90 days, according to Orange County Deputy District Attorney Tate McCallister. Carter's attorney entered a standard first-time guilty plea on the musician's behalf last week, McCallister said. The singer was arrested in Orange Country, southeast of Los Angeles, on March 5 and charged with drink driving. "Nick Carter deeply regrets the current situation," his publicist Juliette Harris told E! Entertainment News. "He is on doctor-prescribed medication and was unaware of its interaction possibilities."
`Bad boy' Bobby Brown to hit airwaves Ozzy-style
Diva Whitney Houston's "bad boy" husband Bobby Brown is taking a cue from singers including Ozzy Osbourne and Britney Spears by taking to the airwaves with his own reality television series. Being Bobby Brown, which premieres Thursday on the US Bravo channel, follows the turbulent Brown, his superstar wife and their extended family over the course of six months as they battle their very public woes. Brown was one of the hottest rhythm-and-blues acts in the late 1980s and early 90s, but has become better known as the husband of the star of "bodyguard" and for his frequent brushes with drugs and the law. Bravo said the show would "demystify Brown's relationships" with Houston, their 11-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina, his two children from previous relationships and his brother Tommy, Bobby's personal manager.
Ronald Reagan named `Greatest American'
US television viewers handed Ronald Reagan the title of "Greatest American" ahead of legendary president and national savior Abraham Lincoln and civil rights trailblazer Martin Luther King Jr. Reagan, who died last year at the age of 93, headed a list of 25 contenders sorted by votes of 3 million viewers in a live finale to the Discovery Channel/AOL Greatest American campaign. Supporters credit Reagan, dubbed "The Great Communicator" who served as president from 1981 to 1989 with winning the Cold War and restoring American morale after a string of foreign policy reverses. Opponents, however, contend that Reagan's legacy has been boosted artificially by supporters since he left office.
Warner Bros settles over `Dukes of Hazard'
Hollywood's Warner Bros studios will pay US$17.5 million to settle a breach-of-copyright lawsuit that threatened to block the release of its Dukes of Hazzard movie. The 11th-hour agreement by the movie powerhouse to fork out the huge sum to film producer Robert Clark came after a judge barred the studio from releasing its US$55-million movie on Aug. 13 unless the case was settled, industry publications said. Clark had claimed that Warners had infringed on the copyright of his obscure 1974 film Moonrunners, which became the basis of the hit Warner television series, The Dukes of Hazzard, which led to the upcoming feature.
Chinese calligrapher dies at 93
Chinese intellectuals and art connoisseurs are mourning the passing of master calligrapher Qi Gong (
Da Vinci work revealed with infrared
A previously unknown work by Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered. The National Gallery in Britain owns it. Visitors will never be able to see it. The Guardian reported that the drawing of a kneeling woman, one arm folded, the other outflung, emerged when an infrared camera was trained on Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks, in the first scientific study of the 500-year-old painting. Visible beneath layers of paint, the sketch was probably intended as a Madonna gazing down on a sleeping infant, which was never drawn. Rachel Billinge, the researcher who led the National Gallery project, said the quality of the drawing was "beautiful -- it was all coming together to make a wonderful picture." Madonna of the Rocks was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in 1483 as an altarpiece for a chapel in Milan. Scholars believe that when Leonardo sought a bonus and was refused, he sold the painting to another client. (It is now at the Louvre.) The Confraternity continued to demand an altarpiece. Leonardo began a different painting, and scholars believe the Confraternity insisted on a Madonna of the Rocks, so in 1508 he delivered a second version, held today by the National Gallery.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist