There will be no revealing costumes at US singer Gwen Stefani's concert in Malaysia this month, a newspaper said on Saturday, after a Muslim student group demanded that the event be cancelled as being too obscene.
Although Malaysia is a moderate Muslim country with sizeable non-Muslim minorities, conservative groups often frown upon departures from strict Koranic injunctions.
Malaysian mobile phone firm Maxis Communications, which is promoting the Aug. 21 show as part of Stefani's Sweet Escape tour, promised it would feature no revealing costumes, the Star newspaper said.
Malaysia's official guide for performers says women must be covered from the top of the bosom to the knees, the Star said.
Jumping, shouting and the throwing of objects are barred, while performers may not hug, kiss or wear clothes with obscene or drug-related pictures or slogans, it added.
Ethnic Malays, who are by definition Muslims, make up just over half of Malaysia's 26 million people.
O.J. Simpson dreamed up the idea for If I Did It and actively collaborated on the aborted book, including a hypothetical account of his ex-wife's murder, his ghost writer said in disputing Simpson on how the book was created.
Pablo Fenjves, whose role as ghost author has emerged since the book was pulled from publication last year, contradicted Simpson's characterization of himself this week as a reluctant, mostly passive participant in crafting a key chapter that pictures Simpson holding a bloody knife at the crime scene.
"O.J. read the book, his book, several times. I made every change he asked for, and he signed off on it," Fenjves, a Hollywood screenwriter, said Thursday.
"The whole book, the whole idea for a book, originated with O.J. Simpson and a couple of his handlers," he said.
Simpson was acquitted in 1995 of criminal charges of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman but was found liable for their deaths in a civil trial two years later. The former football star has sought to distance himself from the book project in recent months.
The book was scrapped at the last minute amid public outrage at what was seen as commercial exploitation of a grisly murder.
Rights to the book passed to Goldman's relatives last Monday, after a long legal fight.
In a rare Internet interview streamed live last Tuesday over the Web site Market News First, the Juice said publishers at HarperCollins approached him about doing a book and that he said yes because he needed the money, believing it would never actually materialize.
Simpson said he consented to a chapter about the night of the crime as told by him only after publishers agreed to label it as hypothetical. He said he found the chapter riddled with "major holes" but declined to correct them for fear making it too accurate would be taken as an indication of guilt.
"I find it completely unnecessary to defend myself against this man," Fenjves said when pressed about Simpson's comments. "All I can say is if there are errors in the book, it's because O.J. didn't correct them, or worse, he fed them to me. But that's fine, too. It's his book. Self-delusion is a wonderful thing."
On a brighter note, Hong Kong actress Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) has given birth to a baby boy, fathered by fellow star Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒), a manager at Tse's record label EEG said.
The baby, who weighed 2.9kg, was born late Thursday. Tse was quoted by Chinese news Web site Sina.com Friday as saying he had married Cheung.
The couple appeared together in famed Chinese director Chen Kaige's (陳凱歌) mythological epic The Promise.- Agencies
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated