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.”
One of the biggest sore spots in Taiwan’s historical friendship with the US came in 1979 when US president Jimmy Carter broke off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan’s Republic of China (ROC) government so that the US could establish relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan’s derecognition came purely at China’s insistence, and the US took the deal. Retired American diplomat John Tkacik, who for almost decade surrounding that schism, from 1974 to 1982, worked in embassies in Taipei and Beijing and at the Taiwan Desk in Washington DC, recently argued in the Taipei Times that “President Carter’s derecognition
JUNE 30 to JULY 6 After being routed by the Japanese in the bloody battle of Baguashan (八卦山), Hsu Hsiang (徐驤) and a handful of surviving Hakka fighters sped toward Tainan. There, he would meet with Liu Yung-fu (劉永福), leader of the Black Flag Army who had assumed control of the resisting Republic of Formosa after its president and vice-president fled to China. Hsu, who had been fighting non-stop for over two months from Taoyuan to Changhua, was reportedly injured and exhausted. As the story goes, Liu advised that Hsu take shelter in China to recover and regroup, but Hsu steadfastly
You can tell a lot about a generation from the contents of their cool box: nowadays the barbecue ice bucket is likely to be filled with hard seltzers, non-alcoholic beers and fluorescent BuzzBallz — a particular favorite among Gen Z. Two decades ago, it was WKD, Bacardi Breezers and the odd Smirnoff Ice bobbing in a puddle of melted ice. And while nostalgia may have brought back some alcopops, the new wave of ready-to-drink (RTD) options look and taste noticeably different. It is not just the drinks that have changed, but drinking habits too, driven in part by more health-conscious consumers and
On Sunday, President William Lai (賴清德) delivered a strategically brilliant speech. It was the first of his “Ten Lectures on National Unity,” (團結國家十講) focusing on the topic of “nation.” Though it has been eclipsed — much to the relief of the opposing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — by an ill-advised statement in the second speech of the series, the days following Lai’s first speech were illuminating on many fronts, both domestic and internationally, in highlighting the multi-layered success of Lai’s strategic move. “OF COURSE TAIWAN IS A COUNTRY” Never before has a Taiwanese president devoted an entire speech to
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