Pictures of Britney Spears and her infant son surfaced on the Internet on last week, but the singer said they were stolen and threatened legal action against anyone who showed the eagerly awaited images. Photos of Spears holding a
dark-haired child and another of the singer lying cheek to cheek with the baby had been removed from a number of Web sites by late on Friday.
Mario Testino, one of the biggest names in fashion photography, has come to the defense of Kate Moss, saying he has never seen the supermodel "debauched or out of control".
PHOTO: AP
Speaking on BBC radio's Desert Island Discs programme broadcast yesterday, Testino said: "I know Kate very well and I don't think she's at all tormented, torrid, depressed.
"I have to say I'm not a witness to seeing her debauched or out of control," added the Peruvian-born, London-based photographer, who listed David Bowie's Life on Mars and the Sid Vicious' cover of My Way among his favorite tunes.
Moss's career went into a tailspin in Sept. when the Daily Mirror newspaper -- which earlier lost a major lawsuit to her --
PHOTO: AP
published grainy images purporting to show her snorting cocaine in a London recording studio.
Several high-profile fashion houses reacted by cancelling their contracts with the 31-year-old runway queen, who has since gone into seclusion and into a drugs rehabilitation clinic in the US state of Arizona.
Sorry Oprah Winfrey and Madonna -- you just missed the cut.
Variety ranks the top 10 entertainment icons of the century in a new
commemorative issue marking the trade publication's 100th anniversary. The Beatles were dubbed the number one icon in the issue, currently on newsstands.
Following the Fab Four, the top 10 is rounded out by Louis Armstrong, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse and Elvis Presley.
Variety also lists 90 more icons, though not ranked. It includes Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Bob Dylan, the Marx Brothers, Johnny Carson, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna and others. Bugs Bunny did not make
Variety's list, but Pac Man did. The most contemporary choices were Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur and Quentin Tarantino.
The Saatchi Gallery, ground zero for cutting-edge British contemporary art, was evicted last week from its central London premises for repeatedly breaching the terms of its lease.
A High Court judge ruled that the
gallery had deliberately breached the terms of its lease with Cadogan Leisure Investments by offering two-for-one
tickets in violation of a minimum
entrance fee for visitors.
He also ordered the gallery, which can appeal the ruling, to pay US$17,315 for damages caused by moving works of art into sections of County Hall not included in the lease.
The Saatchi Gallery -- which helped propel the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin into the limelight -- moved into County Hall, on the south bank of the River Thames, in early 2003.
"As yet we don't know what we're going to do," a spokesman for the gallery said, adding that the judge had yet to issue a possession order setting a firm date for vacating the premises.
Donald Trump isn't exactly saying he wants to fire his old friend and fellow mogul Martha Stewart but he says she's hurting the ratings of his television show The Apprentice. The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, a spin-off of Trump's corporate-themed The Apprentice reality show, was one of the most highly
anticipated and heavily promoted
additions to NBC's schedule this fall but it has proven to be a ratings
disappointment.
One of the stars of Australian television show Neighbors had an amphetamine drug habit while working on the
internationally popular programme and was the subject of complaints from cast and crew, a court heard last week.
Shane Connor, who played builder and family man Joe Scully in the suburban drama, is suing producer Grundy Television for the wrongful termination of his contract and seeking about US$150,375 in damages.
Connor, 46, was sacked in September 2003, nine months ahead of the end of his contract and some months after he had overcome his drug habit, his lawyer Dyson Hore-Lacy told the Victorian Supreme Court.
Justice Robert Osborn told the court he would be surprised if Connor was the only actor among the 20 or 30 people working on Neighbors to use drugs.
Michael Jackson has been summoned for jury duty in California but won't be serving because he no longer considers Neverland Valley Ranch his home, court officials said last week. It was not
immediately clear where the pop star would be hanging his famous black hat, although he has been in Bahrain for much of the past few months.
-- agencies
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
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would