Sting isn’t a religious man, but he says US President Barack Obama might be a divine answer to the world’s problems.
“In many ways, he’s sent from God,” he said in an interview, “because the world’s a mess.”
Sting believes that Obama is the best leader to navigate the world’s problems. In an interview last week, the former Police frontman said that he spent some time with Obama and “found him to be very genuine, very present, clearly super-smart, and exactly what we need in the world.”
He added: “I can’t think of anyone better qualified because of his background, his education, particularly in regard to Islam.” Still, Sting acknowledged the president had a “difficult job” ahead of him.
The British singer, who released the seasonal album On a Winter’s Night this week, said he’s fascinated by American politics, Obama, and also by Obama’s opponents on the right.
“It’s aggressive and violent and full of fear,” he said of the backlash against Obama. “They don’t want change, they want things to feel the same because they feel safe there.”
An Australian rapper who was a boyhood friend of Heath Ledger has released a music video the star directed shortly before his death.
N’fa Forster-Jones posted the three-minute, 31-second clip for his song Cause an Effect on his YouTube and MySpace pages last week, along with a video in which he explains how the project came about.
Ledger, the celebrity-shy star of Batman blockbuster, The Dark Night, and the posthumously released The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, shot a handful of videos for low-profile artists he liked. Ledger died aged 28 in New York from an accidental drug overdose in January of last year.
Forster-Jones, who had been friends with Ledger since they were toddlers in Perth, said the video was shot in one day in the garage of Ledger’s beachside apartment.
“He gave me a call one morning, as he often did at crazy hours, and he’s like, ‘N’fa, I’ve got this idea for a video,’” the rapper says in the online posting.
“He was basically running around directing me each shot,” he said. “It was a really cool day.” “Every day I count my blessings that I got to have him direct this piece of art,” he said.
The video was first shown at a collection of Ledger’s work at the Rome Film Festival earlier this month.
A judge granted American Idol host Ryan Seacrest a temporary restraining order against a man arrested on suspicion of stalking the radio and television host outside his workplace on Friday, court records show.
Seacrest’s attorneys obtained the stay-away order hours after they say Chidi Benjamin Uzomah Jr was detained at the E! Entertainment Television headquarters in Los Angeles.
The filing claims Uzomah was carrying a knife and was trying to see the popular television and radio host.
Uzomah, 25, is on probation for another incident involving Seacrest. Court records show he pleaded guilty in Orange County, California, last month to three misdemeanors: carrying a switchblade knife, assault and battery. Uzomah was charged after he attacked one of Seacrest’s bodyguards outside an event.
Actor Dennis Hopper is suffering from prostate cancer and has cancelled all engagements to focus on his treatment, his manager said in a statement Friday.
Sam Maydew, told Access Hollywood that the 73-year-old actor and artist is being treated through a “special program” at the University of Southern California medical center.
The star of Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now and the TV series Crash would be forced to miss an exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne called Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood, a collection of his artwork and photos, Mayhew added.
Nicole Richie and her children are getting some court-ordered space from a pair of celebrity photographers.
A judge on Friday granted Richie’s request for a temporary restraining order against the paparazzi. Her filing states that one of the men, Eduardo Arrivabene, caused a car accident involving Richie in Beverly Hills earlier this month.
The filing added that Arrivabene and Ivon Emilio Melo Miguel continued to chase Richie and her children in the pursuit of shots.
The men screamed at Richie “in an attempt to get a reaction” and have left the 28-year-old frightened for her family’s safety.
A prosecutor has dropped a case against a man connected to two Ohio police chiefs who were accused of snooping on the woman who bore twins for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.
Special prosecutor Shawn Hervey said Friday he prefers to have Bruce Callarik testify in the other men’s upcoming trials.
All three were charged with a scheme to steal items from the surrogate’s eastern Ohio home and sell them to paparazzi.
Callarik had previously pleaded not guilty to complicity to receiving stolen property. His lawyer says he will testify truthfully but not necessarily for or against anyone.
In 2020, a labor attache from the Philippines in Taipei sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding that a Filipina worker accused of “cyber-libel” against then-president Rodrigo Duterte be deported. A press release from the Philippines office from the attache accused the woman of “using several social media accounts” to “discredit and malign the President and destabilize the government.” The attache also claimed that the woman had broken Taiwan’s laws. The government responded that she had broken no laws, and that all foreign workers were treated the same as Taiwan citizens and that “their rights are protected,
A white horse stark against a black beach. A family pushes a car through floodwaters in Chiayi County. People play on a beach in Pingtung County, as a nuclear power plant looms in the background. These are just some of the powerful images on display as part of Shen Chao-liang’s (沈昭良) Drifting (Overture) exhibition, currently on display at AKI Gallery in Taipei. For the first time in Shen’s decorated career, his photography seeks to speak to broader, multi-layered issues within the fabric of Taiwanese society. The photographs look towards history, national identity, ecological changes and more to create a collection of images
March 16 to March 22 In just a year, Liu Ching-hsiang (劉清香) went from Taiwanese opera performer to arguably Taiwan’s first pop superstar, pumping out hits that captivated the Japanese colony under the moniker Chun-chun (純純). Last week’s Taiwan in Time explored how the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) theme song for the Chinese silent movie The Peach Girl (桃花泣血記) unexpectedly became the first smash hit after the film’s Taipei premiere in March 1932, in part due to aggressive promotion on the streets. Seeing an opportunity, Columbia Records’ (affiliated with the US entity) Taiwan director Shojiro Kashino asked Liu, who had
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
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