outh Korean pop star Rain faced off last week against Manchester United midfielder Park Ji-sung in what was billed as a “dream match” in Seoul.
Running side by side, Rain, also known as Jung Ji-hoon, joined Park and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon in kicking off a charity match during Manchester United’s visit to South Korea, designed to capitalize on the club’s popularity in South Korea.
Each demonstrated his dribbling and passing skills. “I think the world star is better,” Park joked when asked to compare the mayor and the singer.
Team MU Rain — comprised of young aspiring South Korean soccer players — then battled Team Manchester United — teenagers selected from a worldwide YouTube competition.
Manchester United forward Dimitar Berbatov and defender Gary Neville led Team MU, while defender John O’Shea and defender Jonny Evans joined the mayor and Rain in leading Team MU Rain. Team MU Rain won the match 6-4.
Manchester United plays FC Seoul on Friday, the third match of its Asian tour.
Over in the US, the mother of octuplets born in Los Angeles last January has signed a US$250,000 agreement for her children to star in a reality television show, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
The newspaper said European production company Eyeworks has inked the deal with Nadya Suleman, the mother of the children. Eyeworks lists Breaking Bonaduce and The Biggest Loser among its television credits.
Filming is scheduled to start on Sept. 1, the report said. The toddlers will collectively earn US$125,for 36 days of shooting in the first year of production, US$75,000 for 21 days in the second year and US$50,000 for 14 days in the third year, the paper said.
The contract also states that 15 percent of the gross compensation will be deposited by Eyeworks into a trust account, and the money will not be touched until the children turn 18.
Bono and U2 rocked more than 80,000 fans in Dublin as the Irish supergroup’s latest world tour hit new emotional highs Friday night on home soil.
A deafening roar welcomed the Dubliners as they launched their three-concert homestand at Croke Park, Ireland’s biggest stadium and a cathedral to Irish nationalism. The band’s “360” tour — featuring its underselling 12th studio album, No Line on the Horizon — switches from Europe to North America in September.
“We are so young — as a nation!” shouted the 49-year-old lead singer Bono.
Before taking the stage, Bono joked that the band’s performances in Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Nice, Berlin and Amsterdam were just “rehearsals” for the Dublin concerts.
The U2 gigs are delivering an estimated US$70 million boost to Ireland’s recession-ravaged economy, with most Dublin hotels booked solid for weeks. Even the Dublin Criminal Court shut down jury deliberations for the weekend because too many jurors had U2 tickets.
Also on Friday, singer Amy Winehouse was found not guilty of assaulting a dancer at a charity ball in London last year.
The ruling came at the end of a two-day trial at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, according to the Press Association. Winehouse, 25, had been accused on punching dancer Sherene Flash in the face. The singer denied the charge, saying she had been intimidated when Flash put her arm around her and so pushed her away.
“Five foot seven [1.7m] in burlesque heels places you at quite an advantage over five foot two [1.57m] in ballet pumps,” Winehouse’s lawyer Patrick Gibbs told Flash in court on Friday, explaining why the singer had felt threatened.
Angelina Jolie on Thursday visited a settlement for displaced Iraqis in northwest Baghdad in her role as a goodwill ambassador for UNHCR, the UN’s relief agency.
The actor met four families whose members said their children could not go to school and they could not afford to pay for medical treatment.
The UNHCR estimates that 1.6 million Iraqis were displaced within the country by sectarian violence, and that 300,000 have returned home amid improving security.
In a separate humanitarian mission, the Palestinian movement Hamas said on Thursday that Egypt prevented Syrian actor Dureid Laham from crossing into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border.
Laham was scheduled to arrive in Gaza on Thursday with the Egyptian actress Fardous Abdel-Hamid in a solidarity visit to the impoverished enclave that has been under Israeli blockade for more than two years.
Laham was also scheduled to inaugurate a local Palestinian play called The Women of Gaza and the Patience of Jacob that talks about how people in Gaza are suffering due to the siege.
It would have been the first time that a play was performed in the enclave since the end of the Israeli incursion into Gaza in January.
No one saw it coming. Everyone — including the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — expected at least some of the recall campaigns against 24 of its lawmakers and Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) to succeed. Underground gamblers reportedly expected between five and eight lawmakers to lose their jobs. All of this analysis made sense, but contained a fatal flaw. The record of the recall campaigns, the collapse of the KMT-led recalls, and polling data all pointed to enthusiastic high turnout in support of the recall campaigns, and that those against the recalls were unenthusiastic and far less likely to vote. That
Behind a car repair business on a nondescript Thai street are the cherished pets of a rising TikTok animal influencer: two lions and a 200-kilogram lion-tiger hybrid called “Big George.” Lion ownership is legal in Thailand, and Tharnuwarht Plengkemratch is an enthusiastic advocate, posting updates on his feline companions to nearly three million followers. “They’re playful and affectionate, just like dogs or cats,” he said from inside their cage complex at his home in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Thailand’s captive lion population has exploded in recent years, with nearly 500 registered in zoos, breeding farms, petting cafes and homes. Experts warn the
A couple of weeks ago the parties aligned with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), voted in the legislature to eliminate the subsidy that enables Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) to keep up with its burgeoning debt, and instead pay for universal cash handouts worth NT$10,000. The subsidy would have been NT$100 billion, while the cash handout had a budget of NT$235 billion. The bill mandates that the cash payments must be completed by Oct. 31 of this year. The changes were part of the overall NT$545 billion budget approved
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
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