"Nappy-headed hos," the phrase that cost radio shock jock Don Imus his job and triggered a debate on how far free speech can go, was named on Thursday as the most egregious politically incorrect turn of phrase of last year. Trailing behind that phrase in the annual survey by Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com), a word usage group, were "Ho-Ho-Ho" and "Carbon Footprint Stomping," said the group's president Paul JJ Payack.
A puppet show version of Harry Potter featuring a naked Dumbledore and an enigmatic song called Chocolate Rain by a Minnesota graduate student were among the winners of YouTube's second annual video awards, the Web site said on Friday. Tay Zonday, a 25-year-old baritone PhD student in American Studies, won best music with his original song Chocolate Rain, a rhythmic electric keyboard-backed number whose curious lyrics could be a political statement - or humorous nonsense.
Hollywood power couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt donated more than US$8 million dollars to charity in 2006 according to tax records, it was reported on Friday.
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Fox News reported on its Web site that the actors funneled more than US$4 million dollars each to the Jolie Pitt Foundation, which was set up two years ago to aid humanitarian causes around the world.
According to federal tax records, the foundation handed out around US$2.4 million dollars in donations in 2006, including US$1 million dollars each to both Doctors without Borders and the Global AIDS Alliance.
Pitt, 44, and Jolie, 32, are reportedly expecting their second child. Pitt and Jolie met on the set of their 2005 film Mr and Mrs Smith and later began a romantic relationship.
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Britney Spears' father has been given the green light by a court to start selling off some of the fancy car fleet owned by his daughter as he tries to cut her astronomical living expenses.
A court granted the singer's father on Monday the power to "sell or dispose of" an undisclosed number of her seven cars, documents show.
Lawyers for Spears' father, Jamie, stated that the cost of maintaining the fleet of vehicles was too expensive and that the sale of a "certain number of" her cars "will save substantial expense to the conservatorship estate."
Among the singer's cars are two white Mercedes (a SL65 and a CLK350), a white Mini Cooper convertible and a black Audi, according to the court filing.
According to OK magazine, Spears has a fortune of around US$40 million dollars, which her father wants to conserve to enable her and her two children to live comfortably even if she never works again.
To that end, Jamie Spears has ordered Britney's budget of US$100,000 dollars a month for entertainment and vacations to be cut by 90 percent. Her US$16,000 dollar monthly clothing allowance has been halved and she is also giving up a US$30,000-dollar per month rental house in Malibu that she never used.
Legendary Cuban musician Israel Lopez, known to the world as Cachao and credited with being one of the originators of the mambo musical style, died on Saturday in Miami, his spokesman announced. He was 89.
A gifted bassist and an innovative composer, Cachao was born in Havana in 1918 and began his career playing music for silent movies.
By the 1930s he was well known as a Latin jazz virtuoso along with his brother Orestes Lopez. The two had a prolific musical output, recording scores of records.
In this period he wrote songs in the style that became known as mambo.
Mambo became popular around the world in the 1940s when Cuban band leader and composer Damaso Perez Prado - known as the King of Mambo - came up with a special dance for the music and it began to be treated as a separate genre.
Cachao and his brother Orestes won Grammy record awards in 1995 and 2005, as well as a Latino Grammy in 2003.
Cachao died early on Saturday from to kidney failure, spokesman Nelson Albareda told local media.
British actor Paul Scofield, who won an Oscar for his role in A Man For All Seasons and was one of his country's greatest Shakespearean actors, has died at the age of 86, his agent said on Thursday.
Scofield died peacefully in a hospital near his home in the county of Sussex in southeast England, where he was being treated for leukemia.
Considered one of the leading classical actors of a generation that included Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier, he won an Oscar in 1966 for portraying the Roman Catholic statesman Sir Thomas More in the film of Robert Bolt's play.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
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