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.
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
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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