Since he made his debut over a year ago, John Legend has become more confident on stage -- not in his singing, but his sex appeal.
``Now I'll take my top shirt off and have a tank top on at the show, so I'm definitely playing the sex angle up a little bit,'' the Grammy winner said in a recent interview.
Legend's newfound desire to show a little skin comes after he decided to dedicate himself to working out. Though he was hardly out of shape when his Get Lifted album debuted in December 2004, he wasn't that comfortable showing off his frame in concert. Then he hit the gym and that all changed.
``I wasn't trying to get skinny, I was trying to get in shape, which is a different thing. I was trying to build muscle in a lean way and just feel more fit and feel more sexy,'' he said.
And now his fans will get the benefit, as he's more likely to showcase his abs, toned arms and pecs. ``I have a lot of female fans, I've gotta give them what they want,'' he said with a smile.
Willie Nelson warmed up for a concert by playing a long free gig for soldiers wounded in Iraq. For the second straight year, Nelson squeezed in a show at Brooke Army Medical Center last Friday, while he and his band were in San Antonio to play at the city's annual rodeo.
``I have a lot of respect for the military,'' said Nelson, 72, an Air Force veteran. ``I like to show them that I support them every chance I get. ... We get as much out of it as [the soldiers].''
A year ago, the singer wore out his voice singing 11 songs at the Army hospital and had to cancel his performance at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. Hundreds of patients, family members and hospital staff clapped and cheered as Nelson walked into the hospital's atrium.
Sargent 1st Class Alan Hornaday, wounded in a suicide car bombing in Baghdad in 2004, had a front-row seat for the concert.
``This is really cool, him being able to come out and visit soldiers and entertain them,'' said Hornaday, a National Guardsman from Fordyce, Arkansas, who also saw Nelson here last year. ``It picks everybody's spirits up. ... It means a lot.''
Except for Broadway musicals and a few select appearances, Toni Braxton hasn't done many live performances in the past decade. But that's about to change. The R&B diva is embarking on her first tour in 10 years to support her latest album, Libra. The tour will kick off March 10 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and end July 3 in Houston at the Essence Music Festival.
``I'm thrilled to be going out on the road again,'' Braxton said. ``I can't wait to bring not only the hits that people know and love but to share the new music from Libra with the audience.''
Superstar Madonna has been treated for a hernia but is now "absolutely fine," her spokeswoman said. The singer, who performed at the Grammy awards in Los Angeles last week, re-appeared in public last Thursday night when she accepted a Brit record industry statuette in London as Best International Female Artist of the year.
An appeals court last week refused to reinstate an order granting Michael Jackson sole custody of his two children with ex-wife Debbie Rowe. California's Second District Court of Appeals said that while Rowe signed away her parental rights in 2001 to the 47-year-old performer's two oldest children, Michael Jr. and Paris, it found that the judge in that case did not properly handle the proceedings.
In 2020, a labor attache from the Philippines in Taipei sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding that a Filipina worker accused of “cyber-libel” against then-president Rodrigo Duterte be deported. A press release from the Philippines office from the attache accused the woman of “using several social media accounts” to “discredit and malign the President and destabilize the government.” The attache also claimed that the woman had broken Taiwan’s laws. The government responded that she had broken no laws, and that all foreign workers were treated the same as Taiwan citizens and that “their rights are protected,
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
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