autopsy is planned in the Bahamas for actor John Travolta’s 16-year-old son, who died suddenly during a vacation at his family’s resort home, authorities said. Police Superintendent Basil Rahming said on Saturday the autopsy, which could determine the cause of death of Jett Travolta, was likely to be performed today.
Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, under threat of death from Islamist extremists who accuse her of blasphemy in her writings, is to take up residence in Paris, the city hall said Saturday.
Municipal authorities will provide her with a large studio in an artists’ residence in the 10th arrondissement, in the east of the French capital, and initially pay her rent.
Nasreen, who was made an honorary citizen of Paris in July of last year, put in an application for housing six weeks ago.
Nasreen was forced to flee her native country in 1994 after her novel Lajja (Shame) about the persecution of a Hindu family by Muslims in Bangladesh drew accusations of blasphemy.
A gynecologist by training, she spent several years moving between Europe and the US before settling in India in 2004. Renewed threats drove her to Sweden in March last year.
Actor Will Smith, star of Hancock and Seven Pounds, was voted the top money-making movie star of last year, dethroning Johnny Depp in an annual poll released on Friday of movie theater owners and film buyers. Smith, 40, is only the second African-American actor to win the Quigley poll in its 76 year history. Sidney Poitier was placed first in 1968 after the success of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night.
Surviving members of The Grateful Dead say they’ll regroup for a 19-city tour, their first since 2004, beginning April 12 in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The group, which now calls itself The Dead, announced its plans on Thursday.
Original band members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann have toured sporadically since the 1995 death of guitarist Jerry Garcia, but struggled to get along personally and artistically. They told Rolling Stone in November that they’ve worked out their differences, aided by a successful October benefit concert in Pennsylvania for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Warren Haynes joins The Dead on lead guitar, and Jeff Chimenti will play keyboards.
British actor Edmund Purdom, star of Hollywood blockbusters The Egyptian and The Prodigal in the mid-1950s, has died aged 82 in Rome where he was a longtime resident, his family said on Friday.
Purdom, who died Thursday, began his acting career in theater on both sides of the Atlantic.
He landed the lead role in the MGM musical The Student Prince in 1954, displacing an overweight Mario Lanzo, and moved on to replace Marlon Brando who opted out of The Egyptian the same year.
After settling in Rome in the mid-1960s, Purdom played in “sword-and-sandal” epics and Italian B movies, and then worked for many years as a voice-dubbing actor, mainly from Italian into English.
In a romantic history that included four weddings and three divorces, Purdom was best known for abruptly leaving his first wife Anita Philips and their children to marry Mexican actress Linda Christian, with whom he starred in Athena (1954).
Christian was the ex-wife of heartthrob Tyrone Power.
Mystery writer Donald Westlake, one of the most prolific figures in US literary history, has died after a career that spanned half a century, it was reported Friday. He was 75.
His wife Abigail Westlake said he collapsed of a heart attack while heading to a New Year’s Eve dinner in Mexico where he was vacationing, the New York Times reported.
The versatile writer — who banged out his stories on a manual typewriter — was also nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay of The Grifters (1990) and received three Edgar awards by the Mystery Writers of America.
Westlake’s Web site lists him as the author of 86 books and five screenplays, beginning in 1960 with his novel The Mercenaries.
In a 2007 interview he said his output was up to 104 books. The latest, Get Real, was due to be published this year.
Fifteen of his novels were made into movies, including The Hot Rock (1972) starring Robert Redford and Payback (1999) with Mel Gibson.
In a May 2007 interview with the publication On Writing, Westlake said he was less interested in historical accuracy than in developing his characters and their actions.
“It’s like quicksand,” he said about doing too much research for a novel. “You can get drowned in research and never be heard from again.”
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
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