The Arctic Monkeys, the most talked-about new rock act in Britain today, walked off with a hat-trick of honors Thursday at the NME music awards.
The Sheffield-based foursome -- unknown a year ago -- beat rival guitar acts Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand and Oasis for the title of best British band in the eyes and ears of readers of the NME music weekly.
It also scooped up honors for best new band and for best track -- the debut single I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor -- at the awards ceremony in Hammersmith Palais, west London.
"I suppose we're supp-osed to display some gratitude and that," a distinctly underwhelmed Monkeys frontman Alex Turner said.
"We're grateful because it is voted for by the people, but in all honesty who else was going to win best British band?" he asked, alluding to the hype now surrounding the group.
Kaiser Chiefs -- deemed Britain's best group, best rock act and best live act at the Brit awards last week -- made do with best album for Employment, while Franz Ferdinand was best live band.
The Strokes were best international band and US rapper Kanye West best solo artist.
Grammy winner Sheryl Crow had surgery for breast cancer and postponed a US tour scheduled to start next month, the singer announced on her Web site on Friday.
Crow's Web site said she underwent successful surgery on Wednesday and described the procedure as "minimally invasive." Doctors said her prognosis was excellent and she would have radiation treatments as a precaution.
Rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof are among 191 nominees for this year's Nobel Peace Prize -- the second longest list in the prize's 105-year history.
Nominations for the US$1.3 million award -- considered by many to be one of the world's top accolades -- trickled in from all corners of the globe, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute Geir Lundestad said on Friday.
An expert in the work of abstract artist Jackson Pollock said 32 previously unknown paintings appear to be authentic, taking issue with a recent computer analysis suggesting they are fakes. "If evidence does turn out to indicate that Pollock did not paint these works after all, I would be inclined to judge them the most amazing fakes in modern art history," Ellen Landau, a professor of art history at the Cleveland Museum of Art/Case Western University, told a conference on Thursday in Boston.
US author James Frey, who admitted last month he made up much of his best-selling memoir A Million Little Pieces, has been dropped by his publisher, Riverhead Books, Frey's representative said on Thursday. Frey's unmasking and public confession to Oprah Winfrey, the daytime television host whose endorsement catapulted the drug-rehab memoir to the top of the bestsellers list, has rocked the US publishing industry, stirring debate about the nature of memoirs and the importance of accuracy.
Rap-rocker Kid Rock has convinced a federal judge in Detroit to block a California company from selling or promoting a video showing him and former Creed singer Scott Stapp having sex with four women after a Miami concert. The temporary restraining order issued on Tuesday by US District Court Judge John Feikens bars World Wide Red Light District, which released the Paris Hilton sex tape, from selling the video or using Kid Rock's likeness in its promotions.
British comedian Ricky Gervais' previously free podcast is going commercial.
A New Jersey-based company announced Tuesday it will begin selling subscriptions to The Ricky Gervais Show next week.
Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the team behind the BBC's acclaimed comedy series The Office, launched the podcast in December.
Podcasts are audio recordings that are posted online: most are free.
The Ricky Gervais Show averaged more than 250,000 downloads in its first month when it was available for free, making it one of the most popular entries in the fledgling platform's brief history.
The 30-minute show contains much scatological humor. It features the pair interviewing Karl Pilkington, a producer at their old radio show, about topics such as the cognitive abilities of chimp-anzees and the existence of vampires and ghosts.
-- agencies
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
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
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