The husband of disgraced Japanese pop star Noriko Sakai on Wednesday told a court of their drug use, fueling a media frenzy that has gripped the nation since their arrests in August.
Yuichi Takaso, 41, told the Tokyo District Court that he was carrying illegal “stimulants” at the time of his arrest on Aug. 3 because he was planning to use them later with his wife.
Takaso and Sakai reportedly used methamphetamines on a regular basis.
“If I left it at home, I thought that my wife Noriko might use it alone without me watching,” he told the court, adding that he was concerned about the dangers posed by Sakai’s unsupervised drug use.
“I was thinking that we could meet up later and do it together,” he said.
Takaso’s arrest eventually resulted in drug charges against 38-year-old Sakai, shocking the Japanese public which has seen her grow from a teenage pop idol to become an actress in high-rating television shows and films.
Further adding to the drama of the case, Sakai, who is also well known in China, Taiwan and South Korea, went on the run for about a week before turning herself in to police on Aug. 8 and admitting to habitual drug use.
More than 1,500 people queued for hours in front of the courthouse to join a lottery for 42 gallery seats to see Takaso, a self-described professional surfer who was unknown to the public before his arrest, testify.
Sakai will have her first court hearing this week, which is likely to attract even more local media interest.
Her enduring fame and girl-next-door image have won her advertising contracts with carmaker Toyota, government public awareness campaigns and a role in a 1993 celebrity-studded commercial against youth drug abuse.
Michael Jackson fans will get a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been tomorrow as the movie charting the tragic singer’s final concert rehearsals makes its long-awaited premiere.
More than 100 hours of behind-the-scenes footage for Jackson’s aborted comeback have been distilled into a two-hour film being hyped by organizers as the last ever performance by the King of Pop.
Jackson family members and stars are expected to descend on a red carpet at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theater, one of more than 15 simultaneous premieres being held in across five continents.
The movie — This Is It — will go on a limited two-week release in theaters worldwide from Wednesday, with advance tickets in several countries selling out within days of going on sale last month.
“It’s a movie about rehearsing for a concert that never happened,” Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s heartbreaking and inspiring all at the same time.”
Jackson, who died on June 25 aged 50, had spent the previous four months rehearsing in Los Angeles for a grueling series of 50 concerts scheduled to begin at London’s 02 Arena in July.
More than 800,000 tickets for the concerts had been sold, with organizers promising one of the “most expensive and technically advanced” live shows ever.
Jackson was putting the finishing touches to the show at the time of his death, which authorities in Los Angeles have ruled a homicide.
Film director Roman Polanski could face two years in prison if extradited to the US after fleeing sentencing in California on child sex charges in 1978, the Swiss justice ministry said. “The US want him to be extradited for sexual intercourse with a minor. This carries a maximum sentence of two years under US law,” justice ministry spokesman Folco Galli said on Friday.
A Bahamian lawmaker who caused a judge to order the retrial of two people accused of trying to extort US$25 million from actor John Travolta was just repeating a “rumor” when he prematurely announced an acquittal verdict, his lawyer said on Thursday. Supreme Court Senior Justice Anita Allen ordered a retrial late on Wednesday after the politician, Picewell Forbes, announced in a live TV and radio broadcast at a party convention that the accused had been cleared. But he did so before the jury in the five-week-old high-profile trial had formally issued any verdict.
Brotherhood, Danish director Nicolo Donato’s tale of a homosexual love affair within a neo-Nazi gang that targets gays and Arabs, took top honors on Friday at the Rome international film festival.
“We’ve been working hard for this movie for four years,” Donato said as he accepted the Golden Marc’Aurelio award from jury president Milos Forman. “This is a dream come true.”
Oscar-winning British actress Helen Mirren won best actress for her role as the wife of 19th-century Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy in Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station.
Best actor went to Italy’s Sergio Castellito for Alza la Testa by Alessandro Angelini, in which he portrayed a father whose sole dream is to see his son become a prize fighter.
Anyone who has been to Alishan (阿里山) is familiar with the railroad there: one line comes up from Chiayi City past the sacred tree site, while another line goes up to the sunrise viewing platform at Zhushan (祝山). Of course, as a center of logging operations for over 60 years, Alishan did have more rail lines in the past. Are any of these still around? Are they easily accessible? Are they worth visiting? The answer to all three of these questions is emphatically: Yes! One of these lines ran from Alishan all the way up to the base of Jade Mountain. Its
The only geopolitical certainty is that massive change is coming. Three macro trends are only just starting to accelerate, forming a very disruptive background to an already unsettled future. One is that technological transformations exponentially more consequential and rapid than anything prior are in their infancy, and will play out like several simultaneous industrial revolutions. ROBOT REVOLUTION It is still early days, but impacts are starting to be felt. Just yesterday, this line appeared in an article: “To meet demands at Foxconn, factory planners are building physical AI-powered robotic factories with Omniverse and NVIDIA AI.” In other words, they used AI
Last month historian Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published an opinion piece in the New York Times with suggestions for an “America First” foreign policy for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Of course China and Taiwan received a mention. “Under presidents Trump and Biden,” Wertheim contends, “the world’s top two powers have descended into open rivalry, with tensions over Taiwan coming to the fore.” After complaining that Washington is militarizing the Taiwan issue, he argues that “In truth, Beijing has long proved willing to tolerate the island’s self-rule so long as Taiwan does not declare independence
Nov. 25 to Dec. 1 The Dutch had a choice: join the indigenous Siraya of Sinkan Village (in today’s Tainan) on a headhunting mission or risk losing them as believers. Missionaries George Candidus and Robert Junius relayed their request to the Dutch governor, emphasizing that if they aided the Sinkan, the news would spread and more local inhabitants would be willing to embrace Christianity. Led by Nicolaes Couckebacker, chief factor of the trading post in Formosa, the party set out in December 1630 south toward the Makatao village of Tampsui (by today’s Gaoping River in Pingtung County), whose warriors had taken the
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