Former Smiths frontman Morrissey is suing music magazine NME for defamation after it printed an article in which he discussed his views on immigration in the UK.
The magazine criticized the 48-year-old singer for allegedly saying the UK had lost its identity as a result of higher levels of immigration than other European countries.
"We can confirm we have received two writs from Morrissey's legal representatives pertaining to NME and its editor Conor McNicholas," a spokesman for NME said on Friday.
PHOTO: AP
"NME takes this matter - and the issues it highlights - extremely seriously and we are currently in discussion with our own legal representatives."
On Thursday, Morrissey's representatives issued a statement on Web site www.true-to-you.net. "The NME had until 1pm today to agree to print a suitable apology to Morrissey. Their only response to this deadline was to say that they 'do not have time to respond to the allegations.'"
In the interview, Morrissey was asked whether he would consider moving back to the UK from Italy. He is quoted as replying that high immigration levels meant England's identity was disappearing, unlike other countries like Germany or Sweden.
PHOTO: AFP
In a follow-up interview to discuss the original comments, Morrissey is quoted as saying that high immigration was not the reason he would not want to live in England, and that expense and pressure were important factors.
Even though her latest film, Rendition, was a flop, Reese Witherspoon is a moneymaker.
The 31-year-old Academy Award winner commands US$15 million to US$20 million a movie, placing her at the top of The Hollywood Reporter's annual list of the highest-paid actresses.
Angelina Jolie came in second with similar salary demands, though the animated Beowulf' earned the 32-year-old actress far less - just US$8 million.
Cameron Diaz was third, with a US$15 million-per-movie price tag. Nicole Kidman dropped to fourth place, two spots lower than last year, with an asking price of US$10 million.
"Traditionally, the top male actors - like Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise - make around US$30 million per film, with a piece of the film's profits," said Michelle Grabicki, associate features editor at the trade publication.
According to an Associated Press-calculated look at executive pay, published in June, typical A-list stars such as Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio earn US$20 million plus 20 percent of the gross box office take per movie.
"Men traditionally command a higher salary than the women," Grabicki said. "It's a newer trend, women getting a percentage of the back end. Cameron Diaz is catching up with the men." Grabicki said Diaz made around US$30 million for Shrek 3 because of a generous share of the film's profits.
Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan said in a court filing that his wife, who has filed for divorce, can support herself and can help support their 17-year-old son Nick.
Hogan's petition, filed Wednesday under his real name, Terry Bollea, also said Nick is old enough to decide which parent he wants to live with.
Linda Bollea, who filed for divorce earlier this month after 24 years of marriage, is seeking an unspecified amount of alimony and child support.
She also wants her home to be Nick Bollea's primary residence, with Hogan allowed liberal visitation, her petition states.
Hogan, 54, wants the couple's assets and liabilities equitably distributed. The celebrity wrestler intends to continue covering the family with health insurance, his petition states. The couple also have a 19-year-old daughter, Brooke.
Nick Bollea is facing charges of reckless driving involving serious bodily injury in connection with an Aug. 26 crash that left a friend critically injured.
Sharon Osbourne and her Black Sabbath frontman husband, Ozzy, raised more than US$800,000 for charity after heavy metal enthusiasts turned out en masse for their Beverly Hills-style garage sale, auction manager Darren Julien said on Saturday.
Bidders at the auction, which benefited the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Foundation, ran the gamut from metal heads to the high-brow.
The lots included knickknacks and furniture from the Osbournes' former Beverly Hills mansion, which served as the backdrop for their family's MTV reality television series The Osbournes.
Fans snapped up Ozzy's coat for US$3,300, his skull-adorned sneakers for US$2,625 and a pair of his wire-rimmed sunglasses for US$5,250.
Taiwanese chip-making giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) plans to invest a whopping US$100 billion in the US, after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on overseas-made chips. TSMC is the world’s biggest maker of the critical technology that has become the lifeblood of the global economy. This week’s announcement takes the total amount TSMC has pledged to invest in the US to US$165 billion, which the company says is the “largest single foreign direct investment in US history.” It follows Trump’s accusations that Taiwan stole the US chip industry and his threats to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent
From censoring “poisonous books” to banning “poisonous languages,” the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) tried hard to stamp out anything that might conflict with its agenda during its almost 40 years of martial law. To mark 228 Peace Memorial Day, which commemorates the anti-government uprising in 1947, which was violently suppressed, I visited two exhibitions detailing censorship in Taiwan: “Silenced Pages” (禁書時代) at the National 228 Memorial Museum and “Mandarin Monopoly?!” (請說國語) at the National Human Rights Museum. In both cases, the authorities framed their targets as “evils that would threaten social mores, national stability and their anti-communist cause, justifying their actions
In the run-up to World War II, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Abwehr, Nazi Germany’s military intelligence service, began to fear that Hitler would launch a war Germany could not win. Deeply disappointed by the sell-out of the Munich Agreement in 1938, Canaris conducted several clandestine operations that were aimed at getting the UK to wake up, invest in defense and actively support the nations Hitler planned to invade. For example, the “Dutch war scare” of January 1939 saw fake intelligence leaked to the British that suggested that Germany was planning to invade the Netherlands in February and acquire airfields
The launch of DeepSeek-R1 AI by Hangzhou-based High-Flyer and subsequent impact reveals a lot about the state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today, both good and bad. It touches on the state of Chinese technology, innovation, intellectual property theft, sanctions busting smuggling, propaganda, geopolitics and as with everything in China, the power politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PLEASING XI JINPING DeepSeek’s creation is almost certainly no accident. In 2015 CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping (習近平) launched his Made in China 2025 program intended to move China away from low-end manufacturing into an innovative technological powerhouse, with Artificial Intelligence
RSS