Singer Van Morrison on Thursday denied that he had fathered a child with his manager, saying a widely reported statement that appeared on his Web site three days ago was the result of a hacking attack. Irish state broadcaster RTE published a statement signed by the publicity-shy blues and R&B singer-songwriter that says a birth announcement on his Web site on Monday was “completely and utterly without foundation.”
The Belfast-born singer interrupted what a family friend termed a “lovely quiet family Christmas” to release a statement yesterday rubbishing the widely picked-up story.
No, said Morrison, he had not become a father for the fourth time; no, he had never heard of the supposed mother, Gigi Lee — whom original reports described as both his wife and US producer — and no, he had not posted any baby chat on his Web site.
He said the hoax was the result of some mischievous hacking into the site, the second breach in three months.
In the eyes of US movie theater owners, Sandra Bullock shined as 2009’s top Hollywood star at the box office, as the actress nicknamed “America’s Sweetheart” scored with audiences after a two-year absence from screens. Quigley Publishing Company’s annual list released on Thursday of top money making stars, based on a poll of hundreds of theater executives, had Bullock beat out such stars as George Clooney and Denzel Washington, on the strength of her roles in The Proposal and The Blind Side.
Irish rock star Bono called Sunday for tougher controls over the spread of intellectual property over the Internet, arguing that file swiping and sharing hurt creators of cultural products.
“The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files,” the lead singer of the band U2 wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times.
He pointed out that “the immutable laws of bandwidth” indicate that technology is just a few years from allowing viewers to download entire movies in just a few seconds.
“A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us,” Bono noted.
The singer pointed out that the US effort to stop child pornography and China’s effort to suppress online dissent indicate that it is “perfectly possible to track” Internet content.
“Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly four percent of gross domestic product,” Bono said.
Country singer Shania Twain carried the Olympic torch in arctic conditions in her childhood hometown on Friday, as the torch relay continued ahead of the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Twain carried the torch for 400m and lit a cauldron in the town of Timmins, in the eastern Canadian province of Ontario.
“I feel proud, very proud,” Twain said. “It’s a highlight of my life to be able to carry the flame, to light the cauldron.’’ At 26 degrees below zero Celsius and windy, it was so cold that when a dozen red beach balls were tossed into the crowd, the balls came apart within seconds.
“I know that sounds crazy, but it wouldn’t be Timmins if it wasn’t 40 below with the wind chill factor!’’ Twain said.
U2 may have suffered disappointing sales for their new album, but the Irish rockers were easily the most popular draw on the North American concert circuit this year, according to data issued on Wednesday. The band sold US$123 million worth of tickets to its stadium tour, while Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band came in second with US$94.5 million, said trade publication Pollstar.
Michael Jackson’s 1983 short movie Thriller, the song-and-dance horror flick that helped popularize television music videos, will live on in the US National Film Registry. The 14-minute Thriller is among 25 films the Library of Congress on Wednesday named to the registry, and it became the first music video included in the 2009 list of cultural treasures that will be preserved for all time.
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
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
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