A memorial service for rhythm and blues legend Luther Vandross, who died last Friday in New Jersey, has been set for tomorrow.
The 54-year-old singer, who sold more than 25 million albums, died from the aftermath of an April 2003 stroke that left him in a coma for nearly two months.
Despite the stroke, he won a Grammy in 2004 for his sentimental song Dance With My Father.
PHOTO: AFP
Actress Angelina Jolie is adopting a newborn Ethiopian girl orphaned by AIDS, People magazine has reported. Jolie, who has toured the world as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations' High Commissioner on Refugees, said the baby would be named Zahara Marley Jolie but would not reveal the child's age, height or weight, People said.
Internet auction site eBay said on Tuesday it had begun removing illegal DVD copies of the Live 8 poverty awareness pop concerts from its Web site, after the record industry complained. Some of the pirate recordings on the site early on Tuesday were on sale within 24 hours of last Saturday's concert ending, and have been attrac-ting bids of up to US$31 each.
Martha Stewart hates house arrest and resents her electronic ankle bracelet, but the lifestyle guru says she has fond memories of the five-month prison term she served for lying about a stock trade. Stewart told Vanity Fair magazine she was known as "M Diddy" at the minimum security prison in Alderson, West Virginia and even has mementos of those days.
PHOTO: AP
Fifty, or even 150 years ago, long before the advent of PR machines and paparazzi, stars and leaders had the kind of control over their image that today's celebrities could only dream of, a new exhibition shows. The World's Most Photographed at the National Portrait Gallery in London analyzes how 10 famous figures manipulated their image and how that image could in turn be used against them, starting with Queen Victoria and ending with Muhammad Ali.
Get real, moviegoers. With box office receipts down for the year and fans blaming boring remakes and se-quels, three documentaries that are part of a new style of non-fiction films are winning rave reviews for turning real people -- and in one case, penguins -- into movie stars.
Lew Wasserman, the secretive movie mogul who ruled Hollywood with an iron fist for more than half a century, could make men vomit with fear. Three years after his death, he still intimidates people. When filmmaker Barry Avrich was making a documentary about the former boss of Universal Pictures, called The Last Mogul, he found that many people in Hollywood were too scared to talk.
Johnny Depp has persuaded Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards to play a cameo role in the sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean, even though filming will clash with the Stones' US tour.
According to reports, Depp personally convinced Richards to take the role of his father in the sequels, which are being shot back to back by director Gore Verbinski. He also arranged for special filming sessions beginning in February to work around the tour dates.
"It looks like it's going to happen," Depp told reporters at a news conference in Nassau, Bahamas, where the films are shooting.
"But I don't know when. It's all going to depend on where we are and where he is, because he's got a little thing called the Rolling Stones tour to do."
Actress Drew Barrymore is pressing for a third instalment of the hit movie series Charlie's Angels so she can hang out more with her friends and co-stars Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu.
"I know Cameron, Lucy and we would all sign up if there was, but there are no plans in the works," she told Teen Hollywood. "All three of us still hang out all the time anyway, so we might as well be filming it." -- agencies
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
Yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as their Taipei mayoral candidate, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) put their stamp of approval on Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) as their candidate for Changhua County commissioner and former legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has begun the process to also run in Changhua, though she has not yet been formally nominated. All three news items are bizarre. The DPP has struggled with settling on a Taipei nominee. The only candidate who declared interest was Enoch Wu (吳怡農), but the party seemed determined to nominate anyone
What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
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