Actress Lindsay Lohan pleaded not guilty Wednesday to felony grand theft of a US$2,500 necklace — the most serious charge yet filed against the troubled starlet who has wrestled with drug and alcohol abuse for years.
“You’re in a different situation now that a felony has been filed,” Superior Court Judge Keith Schwartz scolded Lohan after she entered the plea through her attorney. “Everybody else has to follow the law. You’re no different than anyone else. So please, don’t push your luck.”
Saying it appeared Lohan had violated her probation in a 2007 drunken driving case, Schwartz set bail at US$40,000 and warned that if she was accused of breaking the law while free, he would have her held without bail.
Photo: AFP
Lohan, 24, posted bail and was released about an hour after the hearing. She could face up to three years in state prison if eventually convicted of stealing the necklace in January from a Venice Beach store.
The jewelry case is not Lohan’s only legal concern. Prosecutors in Riverside County are considering whether to charge the actress with battery for an altercation with a rehab worker at the Betty Ford Center in December.
Lohan may be difficult, but she’s not the worst, according to a recent survey. Outspoken, overtanned Jersey Shore star Snooki has topped a poll as the nightmare celebrity date for Valentine’s Day.
Photo: AFP
The 23 year-old star of the hit reality show about Italian-Americans, whose real name is Nicole Polizzi, got 41 percent of votes in a poll of omg! Yahoo readers on the woman with whom they would least like to spend Valentine’s Day. Socialite Paris Hilton was second.
Justin Bieber fared little better. A third of adults questioned said it would be a nightmare to go out on Valentine’s Day with the 16 year-old Canadian heartthrob.
Bieber even beat bad boy actors Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson, who came fourth and fifth in the poll of 2,002 Americans aged between 18 and 64 for the online survey.
Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie were the two top choices for “dream female celebrity date”, with Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt voted the most romantic males. Jolie was the top choice among lesbians, while gay men went for Ryan Reynolds.
As for a movie after Valentine’s Day dinner, Titanic is still the hands-down winner, followed by The Notebook.
The poll was carried out for Yahoo’s celebrity news Web site omg! last month.
Two Texas women say they turned up topless in a Jim Jones video without their permission, and they’re suing the New York-based rapper over the Summer Time shots.
Sharie Johnson and Samantha Stotts filed a lawsuit against the rapper last Wednesday in New York, saying their privacy was violated by the shots in his Summer Time video, in which Jones and various others cavort on a tropical beach while he proclaims that he “can’t wait for the summer time.”
Johnson and Stotts, two Houston-area friends in their 20s, were on a hotel’s private beach last May in Miami Beach, Florida, when they noticed the We Fly High rapper’s film crew and an entourage, their lawyer, Taso Pardalis, said Thursday.
“They weren’t too impressed” and didn’t even know who Jones was, Pardalis said.
The women initially didn’t realize they were being recorded and covered up or darted away when they did, Pardalis said. While one shot appeared to be a close-up, it was made from farther away, he said. They were aghast when a friend spotted the video online and alerted them this winter, the attorney said.
Meanwhile, Soul singer Aretha Franklin was on hand on Friday night when basketball star LeBron James and the Miami Heat visited her hometown Detroit Pistons. She sat in the second row next to the Reverend Jesse Jackson and said at halftime she hopes to resume her public schedule in May — probably at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
The basketball game was believed to be one of Franklin’s first public appearances since undergoing surgery on Dec. 2 for an undisclosed ailment. Franklin announced in November that she would be canceling all concert dates and personal appearances through May on doctors’ orders.
Neither Franklin nor her publicist have revealed what was ailing the 68-year-old singer, but she was in good spirits on Friday.
“I’m feeling really great,” she said. “Loving the game, loving the game.”
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built