Ten months after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Canadian Bollywood actress Lisa Ray says she is cancer free, has enjoyed being bald, and is ready to embrace her second home, India, with new vigor.
The actress and model, frequently named as one of the most beautiful people in the world by Indian and Canadian media, says she is feeling “reborn” after a stem cell transplant in January to treat multiple myeloma.
“This has hijacked my life for long enough and now I am going to take matters into my own hands,” Ray, 38, said.
“It’s really been a kind of rebirth,” she said of her radical stem cell transplant treatment. “It’s like being reborn from the inside out. It’s a big cleaning from the middle of your marrow and spreading out.”
Multiple myeloma is a cancer of white blood cells that attacks and destroys bone and which more commonly afflicts people in their mid-60s. There is currently no known cure and treatment is focused on containment.
But Ray, born in Canada to an Indian father and Polish mother, chose to fight back, and chronicle her battle in a painfully honest yet humorous blog (lisaraniray.wordpress.com) that has won her even more admirers.
The glossy-haired star of Bollywood movies Water and Kasoor, showed off her new short-hair look last week in Los Angeles.
Her most recent movie, Cooking With Stella, opened the Indian Film Festival in the US city as a benefit for the Los Angeles-based Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research.
Ray recalled that she had cut off her long dark locks for her role in 2007 Oscar-nominated movie Water. But having her hair fall out while undergoing cancer treatment was a different matter.
“What was traumatic about losing my hair this time was I didn’t have a choice. But I have enjoyed being bald,” she added, relishing the absence of shampoos, conditioners and hair dryers in her life.
Roman Polanski’s lawyer accused US courts on Saturday of wanting to see the filmmaker “in shackles” after they rejected his bid to be sentenced in absentia for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
Polanski skipped bail and fled the US for France in 1978, and is now fighting extradition from Switzerland. Affirming the decision of a Los Angeles judge in January, a state appeals court ruled on Thursday that the 76-year-old filmmaker must return to California before he can be sentenced.
“One gets the feeling that there’s the desire to see him arrive in shackles, when there’s no reason why Roman Polanski should be extradited, none at all,” lawyer Herve Temime told Europe 1 radio.
The court has also rejected a petition filed by Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, to have the case dismissed altogether.
Polanski was charged in 1977 with raping Geimer in Hollywood after plying her with champagne and drugs. He later pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor.
British TV personality and music producer Simon Cowell increased his personal fortune by £45million (US$69 million) in the past year, according to the Sunday Times’ annual rich list.
Cowell, best known for his roles as a brutally honest judge on TV talent shows The X Factor and American Idol, earned more than half of his £165 million fortune from television work alone over the past two years, the paper said.
Cowell’s fellow X Factor judge Cheryl Cole saw her personal wealth increase 150 percent to £10 million.
Kal Penn’s former publicist confirms that the actor who played Kumar in the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and had a recurring role on the Fox show House was robbed at gunpoint in Washington, DC.
The Indian American actor whose given name is Kalpen Modi is working in the White House’s Office of Public Liaison. He is focusing on connecting the president with the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
Penn’s former rep confirmed a TMZ.com report that Penn was robbed. A police crime summary says early Tuesday, an armed robber forced a victim to lie on the ground and give up his cell phone and other possessions. It did not include names.
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,
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
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
RSS