Rapper T.I. was sentenced to a year in jail on Friday for violating federal weapons charges by attempting to buy unregistered automatic weapons and silencers.
The sentence was part of a plea deal under which T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris, has already served more than 1,000 hours of community service.
T.I., 28, is also starring in an MTV reality show called Road to Redemption in which he speaks out about the pitfalls of guns, drugs and violence.
On the show, which is to start airing tomorrow, T.I. tells viewers that fear was the reason he tried to buy the guns. His best friend, Philant Johnson, was killed following a post-performance party in Cincinnati in 2006.
“Today I would like to say thank you to some, and apologize to all,” the rapper said at the sentencing, according to MTV. “Everything I learned was through trial and error. I’ve learned lessons in my life to put in my music so people won’t make the same mistakes as me.”
Rihanna also seems to have taken an interest in firearms of late. The 21-year-old singer of Disturbia and Take a Bow has chosen to have the image of a handgun tattooed on her rib cage, according to a photo of her posted online by her tattoo artist BangBang.
On his blog, the New Yorker said that Rihanna had flown him out to her Hollywood home to ink the design, which they decided to put on her rib cage rather than her arms to avoid jeopardizing her lucrative modeling deals.
The tattoo appears to be a sort of message to boyfriend Chris Brown, who is awaiting trial on charges that he assaulted Rihanna last month.
In other celebrity news involving weapons, prosecutors have charged a man with stalking Dancing With the Stars contestant and Olympic gymnastics champion Shawn Johnson.
Authorities charged 34-year-old Robert O’Ryan of Florida on Thursday with one felony count of stalking and two misdemeanor counts of carrying a loaded gun in a vehicle. Authorities say O’Ryan was arrested on Tuesday after he tried to jump a security fence at a studio where the ABC show is filmed. Police say they found a loaded shotgun and handgun in his car. If convicted, he could face up to four years in prison.
And a judge has dismissed a charge against Grammy-nominated singer Wayna after she was arrested at a Houston airport for trying to bring a collapsible police baton through security.
Wayna was charged with possession of a prohibited weapon on Wednesday. The third-degree felony was dropped Friday. Wayna, who attended the hearing with an attorney, uses the baton as a prop while performing.
Houston police said Thursday that security guards at Bush International Airport discovered the 61cm baton in her carry-on bag.
Wayna released her second album, Higher Ground, in 2008. One song on the album is Billy Club, a ballad about police abuse.
She twirls and points the baton when performing it live.
Wayna, who thanked prosecutors for not pursuing the incident further, said she forgot the baton was in the carry-on bag, along with CDs, makeup and “other materials she carries to performances.” “Obviously, the past 48 hours have been life-altering,” she said. “I’m incredibly relieved and grateful that it’s over and that justice prevailed.”
Lindsay Lohan is going straight — straight to DVD, that is.
The actress is falling almost as fast as the balance in her bank account, and in the midst of news about her excessive partying and overspending, it was reported last week that her latest movie Labor Pains will not even get a theatrical release in the US.
The Los Angeles Times said that in the movie Lohan plays a woman who fakes being pregnant in order to avoid getting fired — but then she finds that she has to keep up the pretence for nine months and more.
The film flop is the latest in a lengthy line of failures for Lohan, whose last movies have included the critically panned Chapter 27 and I Know Who Killed Me.
An actor whose career seems to be moving in the opposite direction, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, recently discovered that he has a four-year-old son, US Weekly magazine reported. A source told the magazine that Morgan, who starred in the hit movie The Watchmen, learned he had a son with his ex-girlfriend, producer Sherrie Rose, a few weeks ago and has since met the little boy.
“He’s shocked and surprised, but he wants to be in the child’s life,” the source told US.
Morgan also had recurring roles on the TV shows Grey’s Anatomy and Weeds.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
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