Pop diva A-mei (阿妹) is lending her voice to a campaign to fight global hunger in commemoration of the kindness she experienced from strangers during her impoverished youth.
The 36-year-old singer, real name Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), was in Singapore to support the local chapter of the Christian charity World Vision in its efforts to raise awareness about starvation around the globe.
“When I was very young and living with my tribe, my family was really poor and our tribe had really poor facilities,” she told reporters ahead of a 30-hour Famine Camp involving 1,000 students that ended late Saturday.
The event, featuring A-Mei as a guest celebrity, was staged to give some of the affluent city-state’s teenagers a taste of what it is like to starve. The participants were restricted to taking water only for 30 hours.
“These big brothers and sisters would bring food such as flour and rice for us, bring us to lessons and revise our schoolwork with us,” recalled A-Mei, a member of the Puyuma tribe.
“At the time, we thought, ‘why were these outsiders so nice?’ And whenever they gave us stuff, I felt really grateful and happy.”
A-Mei, who overcame poverty to become one of the biggest sensations in the Mando-pop music scene, was born in the mountains of eastern Taiwan and the third youngest of nine siblings.
“This camp would allow them to experience what less fortunate people in other parts are going through at this moment,” said
the singer.
Thai police yesterday defended their handling of the investigation into the death of David Carradine after the US actor’s family urged the FBI to step in and assist the probe.
Police say they suspect the star of the 1970s television series Kung Fu died in a sex act that went wrong after his naked body was found on Thursday in his Bangkok hotel room with rope tied around his neck and genitals.
A lawyer for the brother of the 72-year-old actor said at the weekend that the actor’s family had met US Federal Bureau of Investigation officials to ask for help to discover exactly how Carradine died.
“I am confident we are working on the right track. US embassy representatives saw every step of the investigation process in the hotel room,” said Colonel Somprasong Yenthaum, who is leading the probe.
Police are still awaiting the results of laboratory tests that will take between three to four weeks to come through before they can make an official conclusion about the cause of death.
An initial autopsy report revealed that the actor died from a sudden lack of oxygen and his body showed no signs of struggle.
Film studio Universal Pictures rejected charges against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on Friday, saying it has a video that proves that the actor did not physically harm a woman while filming his latest movie.
Richelle Olson, executive director of Desert Valley Charities, and her husband are suing Cohen and Universal for a stunt that took place in a bingo hall during filming of the satirical movie Bruno.
The suit alleges that Olson had been told that Bruno was a celebrity and would call the numbers at a charity bingo game she ran for the elderly in Palmdale, California.
Olson also says that Cohen “offensively touched, pushed
and battered” her, causing her to fall to the ground.
In a statement, Universal Pictures called the allegations “completely baseless.”
“Filmed footage of the full encounter, which took place more than two years ago, clearly shows that Ms Olson was never touched or in any way assaulted by Sacha Baron Cohen or any member of the production and suffered no injury,” the statement read.
Actor-singer Edison Chen (陳冠希) says widely circulated Internet photos of him in various sexual positions with female Hong Kong stars were a youthful indiscretion.
“When you’re young, you do a lot of things you don’t quite comprehend. You think it’s fun. You do it. You don’t really think about the outcome,” Chen told CNN’s Talk Asia in an interview that aired late Wednesday, the first time he has spoken at length about the scandal that shocked the Chinese entertainment world last year.
“When you’re young and when you’re a celebrity, and you have this and that, I think maybe you go overboard a little bit,” the 28-year-old Chinese-Canadian said.
Chen said he never showed the pictures to anyone else besides the women who were in them. He said the pictures were all taken with consent.
Chen appeared in the 2002 hit Hong Kong police thriller Infernal Affairs (無間道) and in the 2006 horror movie The Grudge 2. He also had a cameo in the Hollywood blockbuster The Dark Knight released last year.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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