Grammy-award winning singer Christina Aguilera was named an ambassador against hunger on Friday by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), and said that having a child of her own had pushed her into action.
“A child dies every six seconds of hunger, which is a huge statistic for me,” Aguilera told Oprah Winfrey, announcing her appointment on Winfrey’s popular TV talk show.
“After having my own child, I just had to be a part of it and do something about it and help change that situation,” she said.
Aguilera, 29, whose hit songs include Beautiful and Genie in a Bottle, has a two-year-old son with her music executive husband Jordan Bratman.
Last year, she traveled to Guatemala to see WFP’s programs for maternal and child health programs, and in January she took part in the “Hope for Haiti” celebrity telethon that raised more than US$60 million for earthquake disaster relief.
Aguilera described her work with WFP as a life-changing experience and said she plans to go to Haiti soon: “I want to check on the situation there and help to deliver food. I want to visit orphanages and schools there and try to do my part in helping.”
After uniting Jackie Chan (成龍) and Jet Li (李連杰) in The Forbidden Kingdom, The Lion King director Rob Minkoff is planning another fantasy epic set in China.
Publicists said in a statement last week that Minkoff will direct the 3-D English-language action adventure Chinese Odyssey with financial backing from two Chinese studios, including the state-owned China Film Group.
Minkoff was quoted in the statement as describing the movie as a “supernatural high-seas adventure that pits our hero against an onslaught of deadly foes.” The cast of the US$75 million to US$100 million production hasn’t been decided.
The Forbidden Kingdom, about an American teenager who tries to free the mythical Monkey King with fellow fighters, brought together Chan and Li for their first on-screen collaboration.
The Venice Film Festival says Quentin Tarantino will head the jury that will award the coveted Golden Lion at this year’s festival.
The festival called the director “one of the major creative figures in contemporary cinema” in an announcement of his appointment on Thursday. It runs from Sept. 1 to Sept. 10.
The festival cited Tarantino’s highly original filmmaking style, work as a character actor in such moves as Sukiyaki Western Django, films that have launched and relaunched acting careers and his dedication to young filmmakers in his work as a producer.
Tarantino has directed such films as Inglourious Basterds, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. The festival says Tarantino is “perhaps the only American auteur to be adored worldwide like a rock star.”
A judge last week heard that R ’n’ B singer Chris Brown has made progress on his sentence for assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna last year on the eve of the Grammy awards.
An attorney for Brown told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg the singer had completed more than 290 hours of hard labor and attended all but one of his mandatory 52 counseling sessions for domestic violence.
Schnegg said it appeared Brown was making progress and she set a future status hearing for Aug. 26.
Brown, 21, whose hits include Run It! and Kiss Kiss, was sentenced in August last year to five years probation, ordered to perform 180 days of community service and attend domestic abuse counseling.
He attacked pop star Rihanna in the early morning hours of Feb. 8, 2009, after the couple left a music industry party in Los Angeles. The assault left Rihanna bloody and bruised and caused both a firestorm of media coverage.
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
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s