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.
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
Despite the intense sunshine, we were hardly breaking a sweat as we cruised along the flat, dedicated bike lane, well protected from the heat by a canopy of trees. The electric assist on the bikes likely made a difference, too. Far removed from the bustle and noise of the Taichung traffic, we admired the serene rural scenery, making our way over rivers, alongside rice paddies and through pear orchards. Our route for the day covered two bike paths that connect in Fengyuan District (豐原) and are best done together. The Hou-Feng Bike Path (后豐鐵馬道) runs southward from Houli District (后里) while the
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
President William Lai’s (賴清德) March 13 national security speech marked a turning point. He signaled that the government was finally getting serious about a whole-of-society approach to defending the nation. The presidential office summarized his speech succinctly: “President Lai introduced 17 major strategies to respond to five major national security and united front threats Taiwan now faces: China’s threat to national sovereignty, its threats from infiltration and espionage activities targeting Taiwan’s military, its threats aimed at obscuring the national identity of the people of Taiwan, its threats from united front infiltration into Taiwanese society through cross-strait exchanges, and its threats from
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