outh Korean pop star Rain faced off last week against Manchester United midfielder Park Ji-sung in what was billed as a “dream match” in Seoul.
Running side by side, Rain, also known as Jung Ji-hoon, joined Park and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon in kicking off a charity match during Manchester United’s visit to South Korea, designed to capitalize on the club’s popularity in South Korea.
Each demonstrated his dribbling and passing skills. “I think the world star is better,” Park joked when asked to compare the mayor and the singer.
Team MU Rain — comprised of young aspiring South Korean soccer players — then battled Team Manchester United — teenagers selected from a worldwide YouTube competition.
Manchester United forward Dimitar Berbatov and defender Gary Neville led Team MU, while defender John O’Shea and defender Jonny Evans joined the mayor and Rain in leading Team MU Rain. Team MU Rain won the match 6-4.
Manchester United plays FC Seoul on Friday, the third match of its Asian tour.
Over in the US, the mother of octuplets born in Los Angeles last January has signed a US$250,000 agreement for her children to star in a reality television show, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
The newspaper said European production company Eyeworks has inked the deal with Nadya Suleman, the mother of the children. Eyeworks lists Breaking Bonaduce and The Biggest Loser among its television credits.
Filming is scheduled to start on Sept. 1, the report said. The toddlers will collectively earn US$125,for 36 days of shooting in the first year of production, US$75,000 for 21 days in the second year and US$50,000 for 14 days in the third year, the paper said.
The contract also states that 15 percent of the gross compensation will be deposited by Eyeworks into a trust account, and the money will not be touched until the children turn 18.
Bono and U2 rocked more than 80,000 fans in Dublin as the Irish supergroup’s latest world tour hit new emotional highs Friday night on home soil.
A deafening roar welcomed the Dubliners as they launched their three-concert homestand at Croke Park, Ireland’s biggest stadium and a cathedral to Irish nationalism. The band’s “360” tour — featuring its underselling 12th studio album, No Line on the Horizon — switches from Europe to North America in September.
“We are so young — as a nation!” shouted the 49-year-old lead singer Bono.
Before taking the stage, Bono joked that the band’s performances in Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Nice, Berlin and Amsterdam were just “rehearsals” for the Dublin concerts.
The U2 gigs are delivering an estimated US$70 million boost to Ireland’s recession-ravaged economy, with most Dublin hotels booked solid for weeks. Even the Dublin Criminal Court shut down jury deliberations for the weekend because too many jurors had U2 tickets.
Also on Friday, singer Amy Winehouse was found not guilty of assaulting a dancer at a charity ball in London last year.
The ruling came at the end of a two-day trial at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, according to the Press Association. Winehouse, 25, had been accused on punching dancer Sherene Flash in the face. The singer denied the charge, saying she had been intimidated when Flash put her arm around her and so pushed her away.
“Five foot seven [1.7m] in burlesque heels places you at quite an advantage over five foot two [1.57m] in ballet pumps,” Winehouse’s lawyer Patrick Gibbs told Flash in court on Friday, explaining why the singer had felt threatened.
Angelina Jolie on Thursday visited a settlement for displaced Iraqis in northwest Baghdad in her role as a goodwill ambassador for UNHCR, the UN’s relief agency.
The actor met four families whose members said their children could not go to school and they could not afford to pay for medical treatment.
The UNHCR estimates that 1.6 million Iraqis were displaced within the country by sectarian violence, and that 300,000 have returned home amid improving security.
In a separate humanitarian mission, the Palestinian movement Hamas said on Thursday that Egypt prevented Syrian actor Dureid Laham from crossing into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border.
Laham was scheduled to arrive in Gaza on Thursday with the Egyptian actress Fardous Abdel-Hamid in a solidarity visit to the impoverished enclave that has been under Israeli blockade for more than two years.
Laham was also scheduled to inaugurate a local Palestinian play called The Women of Gaza and the Patience of Jacob that talks about how people in Gaza are suffering due to the siege.
It would have been the first time that a play was performed in the enclave since the end of the Israeli incursion into Gaza in January.
The Lee (李) family migrated to Taiwan in trickles many decades ago. Born in Myanmar, they are ethnically Chinese and their first language is Yunnanese, from China’s Yunnan Province. Today, they run a cozy little restaurant in Taipei’s student stomping ground, near National Taiwan University (NTU), serving up a daily pre-selected menu that pays homage to their blended Yunnan-Burmese heritage, where lemongrass and curry leaves sit beside century egg and pickled woodear mushrooms. Wu Yun (巫雲) is more akin to a family home that has set up tables and chairs and welcomed strangers to cozy up and share a meal
Dec. 8 to Dec. 14 Chang-Lee Te-ho (張李德和) had her father’s words etched into stone as her personal motto: “Even as a woman, you should master at least one art.” She went on to excel in seven — classical poetry, lyrical poetry, calligraphy, painting, music, chess and embroidery — and was also a respected educator, charity organizer and provincial assemblywoman. Among her many monikers was “Poetry Mother” (詩媽). While her father Lee Chao-yuan’s (李昭元) phrasing reflected the social norms of the 1890s, it was relatively progressive for the time. He personally taught Chang-Lee the Chinese classics until she entered public
Last week writer Wei Lingling (魏玲靈) unloaded a remarkably conventional pro-China column in the Wall Street Journal (“From Bush’s Rebuke to Trump’s Whisper: Navigating a Geopolitical Flashpoint,” Dec 2, 2025). Wei alleged that in a phone call, US President Donald Trump advised Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi not to provoke the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over Taiwan. Wei’s claim was categorically denied by Japanese government sources. Trump’s call to Takaichi, Wei said, was just like the moment in 2003 when former US president George Bush stood next to former Chinese premier Wen Jia-bao (溫家寶) and criticized former president Chen
President William Lai (賴清德) has proposed a NT$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion) special eight-year budget that intends to bolster Taiwan’s national defense, with a “T-Dome” plan to create “an unassailable Taiwan, safeguarded by innovation and technology” as its centerpiece. This is an interesting test for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and how they handle it will likely provide some answers as to where the party currently stands. Naturally, the Lai administration and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are for it, as are the Americans. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not. The interests and agendas of those three are clear, but
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