Will.i.am, of Black Eyed Peas fame, was so inspired by a speech given by White House hopeful Barack Obama that he turned it into a music video entitled Yes We Can, words repeated in a speech the candidate gave in New Hampshire.
The video opens with a black-and-white shot of Will before cutting to a shot of actress Scarlett Johansson, as an acoustic guitar is strummed in the background.
As the song and speech continue, images of Obama are juxtaposed or share the screen with shots of celebrities including basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, jazz great Herbie Hancock, model-turned-actress Amber Valletta and Johansson.
PHOTO: AP
The video ends with the word “hope” morphing into “vote.”
The video and song were made in “a matter of two days,” and can be played or downloaded for free on the Internet.
Actress Kirsten Dunst has become the latest celebrity to enter rehab, a source close to the Spider-Man and Marie Antoinette star said.
Dunst, 25, has checked into the exclusive Cirque Lodge Center in Utah, People reported, the same facility that housed starlet Lindsay Lohan last year and where actress Eva Mendes is currently being treated.
People cited a source as saying that Dunst had entered rehab after the pleas of friends.
“She’s not doing well,” the source says. “People were pushing her to go in there but there was no intervention ... It’s good she’s getting herself help.”
Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney is to pay his former wife Heather Mills US$107 million in the highest divorce settlement Britain has ever seen, according to the British Daily Mail.
The 65-year-old musician had promised his wife the money in return for her silence on their marriage, the paper said referring to sources close to Mills and McCartney.
The two parties had also agreed to share custody of their four-year-old daughter Beatrice, it was said. The little girl was to stay with Mills, while McCartney would be allowed to see his daughter any time and take her home every other weekend.
Despite the record settlement sum for Mills, the total cost of the divorce, including lawyer’s fees, amounted to only 7 percent of McCartney’s fortune, the paper said.
Only a few days ago, British media reported Mills had been planning to reveal embarrassing details from the couple’s marriage during next week’s court hearing if a settlement could not be reached beforehand.
People’s all-star, pre-Grammy concert with Timbaland ended with a resounding crash when the superproducer and rapper delivered a foul-mouthed tirade against the magazine because some of his friends were apparently left outside the venue: “Next time I have one of my homeboys in line, let that (expletive) in!” Timbaland shouted as the event wound down after 2am Saturday, adding that he was a “peoples’ person.” “I don’t like to see my people turned around for some (expletive) magazine ... (expletive) y’all!” After his tirade ended, he walked offstage with music blasting.
People magazine did not have an official comment but a source close to the celebrity weekly said they were perplexed as to why Timbaland was upset and that they considered the event a success.
Mediation talks collapsed between Tim Burton and his ex-girlfriend Lisa Marie, who claims she was cheated out of her rights to assets that the director promised her during their nearly decade-long relationship, attorneys said.
The legal fight is now scheduled to play out before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Harold Cherness on Aug. 12.
In December 2006, Marie sued Burton, saying he promised her that they would “combine their efforts and earnings and would share equally any and all” accumulated property. The lawsuit also claimed that Burton said he would financially support her for the rest of her life.
According to court papers filed by Burton’s lawyer, the director gave Marie US$5 million to sign a contract releasing him from any further claims to his assets. He maintained that if she wanted to rescind the contract, she was obligated to return the money.
A Superior Court commissioner gave Britney Spears’ father the power to fire the singer’s business manager, according to documents.
Commissioner Reva Goetz also ordered Howard Grossman to turn over “all documents, records and assets relating to Britney Spears” to James Spears, who is the court appointed conservator of his daughter and her estate.
Goetz issued her decision Friday after an emergency closed-door hearing requested a day earlier by James Spears. Grossman showed up at the hearing, but he and others were ordered to leave the courtroom.
Meanwhile, attorneys who have represented Spears in her child custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline filed papers to withdraw from that case.
A swimsuit left at a Swedish pool by Australian movie star Nicole Kidman was sold on Saturday at auction to buy cows for poor families in India.
“The swimsuit went to the highest bidder for 16,200 kronor (US$2,500). That’s enough to buy nine cows,” the suit’s previous owner Zlatko Nedanovski, 32, said.
Kidman, a keen swimmer, forgot the suit at a pool she had reserved for her personal use in the southwestern town of Vaenersborg during a 2002 stay in Sweden to shoot Lars von Trier’s Dogville.
Bids for the swimsuit had come from all over the world, Nedanovski said, but it finally went to 49-year-old Bengt Olsen from Trollheattan, Sweden, just south of Vaenersborg.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
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