"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.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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