A leading Beijing newspaper has chosen actress Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) as the most beautiful person in China for 2008.
In a ranking of the top 50 most beautiful people on Friday, the Beijing News (新京報) picked Zhang, whose film credits include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Rush Hour 2, and Memoirs of a Geisha. The paper said Zhang’s press conference during the Cannes film festival to raise money for the Sichuan earthquake garnered respect worldwide. The earthquake killed 70,000 people in May.
“I don’t pay a lot of attention to matters of appearance,” she told the newspaper. “Beautiful women are fundamentally independent and confident.” Cannes best actor winner Tony Leung Chiu-wai (梁朝偉) came second in the ranking.
The mother of an 18-year-old man who plans to marry Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter, Bristol, has been arrested on drug charges, authorities said on Friday. Sherry Johnston, 42, was taken into custody at her home in Wasilla, Alaska, on Thursday after an undercover narcotics investigation, Alaska State Troopers said in a statement.
American socialite and heir Paris Hilton was robbed at one of her homes, Los Angeles police said, while local media reported that the burglar swiped US$2 million worth of jewelry and other valuables.
The break-in took place around 5am on Friday at a home the young heiress owns in the Sherman Oaks area northeast of Los Angeles, police spokesman Richard French said.
“According to detectives, a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and gloves forced entry through the front door, ransacked her bedroom and took an undisclosed amount of property and then left the scene,” said French, of the Los Angeles Police Department.
“Miss Hilton wasn’t at home at the time the burglary occurred,” he said.
US actor Ben Affleck and Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger unveiled on Wednesday a film they hope will raise awareness about refugees hit by the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The 23-minute film, Gimme Shelter, is directed by Affleck and features the Stones’ hit, taken from their 1969 album Let it Bleed, the UN refugee agency said in a statement.
The film features footage shot last month in the strife-torn eastern region of Nord-Kivu, where 250,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since fighting between rebels and government forces flared up in August.
“We made this film in order to focus attention on the humanitarian crisis in the DRC at a time when too much of the world is indifferent or looking the other way,” said Affleck.
Jagger said he hoped the film — which aims to raise US$23 million for clean water and emergency assistance kits for Nord-Kivu — would raise public awareness of the ongoing crisis.
Famously drug-addled Rolling Stone Keith Richards turned 65 last week, but was tight-lipped about any wild party plans he had to celebrate becoming a pensioner.
The legendary guitarist, songwriter and archetypal wild rocker reached the landmark age — more usually associated with gardening and cardigans — on Thursday, only a few months after Jagger, who turned 65 in July.
“He wants to keep it very private,” was all a spokesman for Richards would say when asked how the musician would mark his birthday.
Named by Rolling Stone magazine as the 10th best guitarist in the world, the shaggy-haired star has proved remarkably resilient to a lifetime of substance abuse, explained by his view that his body was a “laboratory.”
Actor Dennis Quaid and his wife have reached a US$750,000 settlement with a Los Angeles hospital for a blunder which almost killed their twin babies, court documents showed on Tuesday.
The Quaids’ children Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, born in November last year, almost died after being given 1,000 times the normal dose of anti-clotting agent Heparin by staff at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Cedars-Sinai was not sued but the hospital was described in a court filing as a “potential defendant.” Papers filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Monday reflected the new settlement.
Heparin is used to flush out intravenous tubes and prevent blood clots. Babies typically receive 10 units of the drug, but Quaid’s children were reportedly given 10,000 units before the alarm was raised.
Quaid, and his third wife Kimberley Buffington, are also suing pharmaceutical company Baxter over the blunder in a lawsuit that alleges labels on the bottles of 10 units of Heparin and the bottles of 10,000 units are similar.
Quaid, 54, is best known for roles in a string of hit films during the 1980s including The Right Stuff, Enemy Mine and Innerspace.
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
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