More than 200 celebrities from Taiwan and Hong Kong attended large charity events held by television stations last weekend, all with the goal of raising money for the victims of Typhoon Morakot. Participating glitterati included Andy Lau (劉德華), Leon Lai (黎明), Sandra Ng (吳君如), Chang Fei (張菲), Hu Gua (胡瓜), Shu Qi (舒淇) and Judy Chiang (江蕙).
One of the weekend’s most enthusiastic volunteers, Chinese action star-turned-philanthropist Jet Li (李連杰), accompanied aid workers from Taiwan’s Red Cross Society on a visit to nine locations in Kaohsiung County on Saturday.
On a sadder note, Aboriginal star A-mei (張惠妹) lost both her uncle and brother-in-law to the typhoon in her hometown in Taitung County.
In the latest installment of the developing drug-taking controversy in Japan’s showbiz firmament, police are reportedly investigating possible links between Noriko Sakai and her surfer husband Yuichi Takaso, both arrested for drug possession, and J-pop singer and actor Manabu Oshio, who was arrested on Aug. 3 on suspicion of drug use and has been connected to a 30-year-old woman found dead at an apartment in Tokyo’s Roppongi district.
Oshio, 31, tested positive for ecstasy and admitted he had fled the scene after the unidentified woman, a bar hostess and his mistress of six months, took two pills and lost consciousness.
According to the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), police suspect that Oshio, Sakai and Takaso are part of an intricate network of drug trading that involves big-name stars.
Other celebrities implicated in the snowballing scandal, according to Tokyo Sports, a Japanese daily, include actors Hideaki Ito and Shinji Takeda.
Following news that Jay Chou (周杰倫) has joined the cast of Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet, assuming the role of Kato alongside Seth Rogen, Nicolas Cage and Cameron Diaz, pop idol Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) revealed last week that he has been working on a film script for the past six months.
While keeping mum about the story, the first-time scriptwriter said that he will soon begin looking for prospective investors, as well as a suitable director to shoot the NT$100 million movie starring none other than Wang himself.
When asked by the Liberty Times if he would make a better martial arts sidekick than Chou, whose English is less than fluent, Wang brushed off the question, saying: “I heard that Chou already began intensive English courses. He should do fine.”
In local showbiz pseudo-news, Apple Daily snappers spotted divorcee Annie Yi (伊能靜) shopping for toys with her son at Breeze Center (微風廣場) last week. The paper printed a detailed account of the trip, gleefully reporting that the boy played with a toy sewing machine and read comic books for girls after being left unattended by his mother.
The concerned newspaper concluded that Yi failed as a mother by exposing her precious son to the danger of kidnapping.
Feces, vomit and fossilized food from inside stomachs have provided new clues into how dinosaurs rose to dominate Earth, a new study revealed on Wednesday. Scientists have discovered plenty about dinosaurs — particularly about how they vanished off the face of the planet 66 millions years ago. But “we know very little about their rise,” said Martin Qvarnstrom, a researcher at Sweden’s Uppsala University and the study’s lead author. Dinosaurs first appeared at least 230 million years ago, fossils have shown. But they would not become the world’s dominant animal until the start of the Jurassic Period some 30 million years later. What caused this
Last week, the government rejected a petition to amend the law that would allow permanent residents a path to citizenship. This was widely expected, but it came amid a flurry of negative trends about the future of the nation’s labor force. There was much ironic commentary on the juxtaposition of that decision with its idiotic, abusive reasoning with the urgent demand for labor across a wide range of fields. This demand was highlighted by the government’s plans for five NT$10 billion (US$307.6 million) funds to promote development in key fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), “smart” healthcare and green growth announced
The Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道) draws its name from the idea that each hiker starting at the summit of Jade Mountain (玉山) and following the trail to the coast is like a single raindrop. Together, many raindrops form life and prosperity-bringing waterways. Replicating a raindrop’s journey holds poetic beauty, but all hikers know that climbing is infinitely more appealing, and so this installment picks up where the last one left off — heading inland and uphill along the 49.8-kilometer Canal Trail (大圳之路) — second of the Greenway’s four sections. A detailed map of the trail can be found
“Bro, I can’t wait for my first dead body,” wrote an 11-year-old boy on Instagram in Sweden, where gangs recruit children too young to be prosecuted as contract killers on chat apps. “Stay motivated, it’ll come,” answered his 19-year-old contact. He went on to offer the child 150,000 kronor (US$13,680) to carry out a murder, as well as clothes and transport to the scene of the crime, according to a police investigation of the exchange last year in the western province of Varmland. In this case, four men aged 18 to 20 are accused of recruiting four minors aged 11 to 17
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