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.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
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Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless