Pop princess Britney Spears, whose marriage and parenting skills are under a media microscope, tearfully admitted being "an emotional wreck" in an interview aired on US television last week.
Intermittently weeping and chewing gum, Spears denied she is estranged from her husband, Kevin Federline, saying on NBC's Today show that Federline is helping her weather the hormonal ups and downs of her second pregnancy.
"He helps me. He has to. I'm an emotional wreck right now," Spears said. "Not in a bad way. Just, just, you know, I'll start laughing hysterically and then I'll just start crying, like just because .... It's my hormones."
She called paparazzi images of her driving with her infant son, Sean Preston, on her lap "cheap shots" and said that as a small child, she sat in her father's lap as he drove.
Spears said she has wept on occasion over allegations that she is a bad mother, and wished only that paparazzi would leave her alone.
"You have to realize that we're people and that we need, we just need privacy and we need our respect," she said. "And those are things that you have to have as a human being."
Marrying a national icon can be a risky business. Divorcing one can turn the world against you -- as Heather Mills McCartney has discovered.
Within a month of separating from former Beatle Paul McCartney, Mills has been the target of lurid allegations in Britain's tabloids, prompting her to launch legal action against a paper that printed allegations she was once a prostitute.
She dismissed the allegations as "untrue and highly defamatory."
Facing weight loss, anxiety and sleeplessness after the very public bust-up of her high profile marriage, the charity campaigner against land mines and seal hunting said her detractors were trying to "make money out of her misery."
Paul McCartney, who could lose up to a quarter of his US$1.52 billion fortune in a divorce settlement, appears as baffled as she does.
"One of the worst aspects of going through what Heather and I are currently going through is the malicious spreading of rumors and made-up facts that is happening in some areas of the media," the 63-year-old complained on his Web site.
On her site, Heather's sister Fiona refutes what she called 32 "fictions," ranging from "Heather is a publicity seeker" to "Heather uses men and has had a string of failed engagements."
Spokeswoman Anya Noakes says the former model faces an uphill battle winning round public opinion. "Marrying everyone's favorite Beatle was always going to be
difficult," she said. "The last month has been absolutely hideous."
A clearly annoyed Manhattan judge issued an arrest warrant for Boy George after the former Culture Club singer failed to appear in court to explain why he wants to change his sentence for falsely reporting a burglary.
Judge Anthony Ferrara on Friday also ridiculed the singer's suggestions for serving community service, which included a proposal to hold a fashion-and-makeup workshop. But he said he would not order an arrest until a June 26 hearing on whether Boy George violated the terms of his sentence.
The singer, whose real name is George O'Dowd, pleaded guilty in March to false reporting of a burglary at his Manhattan apartment, where police found cocaine.
Under his plea deal, O'Dowd was to enter a drug-treatment program in England and do five days of community service in Manhattan. He was also fined US$1,000.
But the judge angrily complained that O'Dowd had not paid the fine and had never reported to the office that assigns community service work. "I put people in jail who don't pay fines," the judge told O'Dowd's lawyer, Louis Freeman. "Why shouldn't I do that?"
Freeman said he had told O'Dowd, who was in England, that he did not have to appear Friday.
The judge also ridiculed Freeman's community service proposals, which included helping teenagers make a public-service announcement, holding a fashion-and-makeup workshop, and serving as DJ at an HIV/AIDS benefit.
O'Dowd's drug woes reportedly led to the collapse of Culture Club, which scored the hit 1980s singles Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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